How are ninjas damage wise?

Hi all,

The title pretty much says it all, I have heard varying points of view on this some people telling me ninjas arent as strong as other pets and some telling me there the best MM pets.

What I want to clarify, is with smoke flash how much damage gain are we actually talking about with the critical hits? I see its an endurence expensive power, but it can be slotted so it isnt too bad, and can be made perma, so to me it looks very promising, but i know necro has a pretty high damage as well so how do the two sets combine as a whole?

Also can smoke flash be used with Oni? or just with Genin and Jounin?

ninjas are similar to zombies in the fact they do better single target dmg vs AoE

i think the smoke flash works on any of your pets and gives them a crit that deals unresistable dmg (smoke flash is the unique power for ninjas like repair for robots or serum for mercs, ect)

with smoke flash and enough ninja mm's, you can actually kill RWZ practice dummies or if your solo you can kill civies in mayhem mishs (because smoke flash makes the ninja deal dmg that bypasses the targets resist)

wow that actually sounds really good, i suspect it would kick butt in pvp too if it avoids resists.

Thanks for that

As far as damage goes, they're the strongest for ST. You basically get 3 mini-MA/ scrappers with no crits (unless smoke flash), 2 mini-NB/stalkers, and a mini-FB/FMblaster.

If you have heard that they are not strong the source may have been referring to their squishyness, which is correct lol.

EDIT: in pvp, a good tip (if it works) for a nin mm is to dress up your mm like one of the genin and name him after a badge. Get the badge, set it as title, and give your other genin the same name as you and your name-matching badge. A friend of mine got some of his kills from the extra second or two it took to figure out which one was the mm Never treid it myself, though

lol thanks for the tip, guess its badgehunting time

ok one more unrelated question, does power boost from the patron powers affect -resists and -defence powers? i couldnt find it on mids, and it doesnt have a toggle thing so you can look like build up does

right ok then, so with this in mind im thinking about ninjas/poison to maximise single target damage, however im concerned with how its been mentioned they are squishy, im thinking theres probably a good chance they will die before noxious gas can take full effect, is this true?

If so other than maneuvers is there anything else that could improve there resists/defences?

EDIT: Also does vengeance apply to dead henchmen?

to help me make my ninjas stronger, i got a lot of the pet procs (soverign right resist bonus, edict of the master defense bonus) and those will help, especially if you have other things like manuevers to stack with.

about vengeance, no you cant use it on a dead henchy (otherwise masterminds would be insanely overpowered even moreso than they already are lol)

noxious gas is actually better when used on a higher tier henchmen such as tier 3 pet, on a ninja mm i would use it on the tier 2 pet since oni is mostly ranged dmg

power boost affects most mez types and it affects defense like that of maneuvers

yeah i didnt think vengeance would apply but its worth a shot (was thinking detonator, vengeance combo lol)

So purples is really the only way to increase resists/defence on a long term scale? It kinda sucks that im broke lol. Power boost you couldnt really rely on for the defence boosting propertys because it would be over as fast as its begun and the recharge is long even with hasten and slotting.

With all this in mind, ive created a build with just IO's, no invention sets for a cheap 50 build until i can afford them

Any problems you can see? I was really unsure about some of the slotting but i dont think i have done too badly... bear in mind this will be geared mostly towards single target damage, and pvp.

Villain Plan by Mids' Villain Designer 1.601
http://www.cohplanner.com/

Click this DataLink to open the build!

Level 50 Magic Mastermind
Primary Power Set: Ninjas
Secondary Power Set: Poison
Power Pool: Medicine
Power Pool: Fitness
Power Pool: Leadership
Power Pool: Fighting
Ancillary Pool: Leviathan Mastery

Villain Profile:
Level 1: Call Genin -- Acc-I(A), Acc-I(19), Dmg-I(25), Dmg-I(46), EndRdx-I(46)
Level 1: Alkaloid -- Heal-I(A), Heal-I(17), EndRdx-I(50), EndRdx-I(50)
Level 2: Envenom -- Acc-I(A), Acc-I(3), Achilles-ResDeb%(3), EndRdx-I(46)
Level 4: Weaken -- Acc-I(A), Acc-I(5), ToHitDeb-I(5), ToHitDeb-I(40), EndRdx-I(43)
Level 6: Train Ninjas -- EndRdx-I(A), EndRdx-I(7), EndRdx-I(7)
Level 8: Aid Other -- Heal-I(A), Heal-I(9), IntRdx-I(9), EndRdx-I(40)
Level 10: Neurotoxic Breath -- Acc-I(A), Acc-I(11), Slow-I(11), Slow-I(37), EndRdx-I(37), RechRdx-I(40)
Level 12: Call Jounin -- Acc-I(A), Acc-I(13), Dmg-I(13), Dmg-I(15), EndRdx-I(17), Achilles-ResDeb%(25)
Level 14: Hurdle -- Jump-I(A), Jump-I(15)
Level 16: Swift -- Run-I(A), Run-I(39)
Level 18: Smoke Flash -- EndRdx-I(A), EndRdx-I(19), RechRdx-I(23), RechRdx-I(23)
Level 20: Stamina -- EndMod-I(A), EndMod-I(21), EndMod-I(21)
Level 22: Assault -- EndRdx-I(A)
Level 24: Kick -- Empty(A)
Level 26: Oni -- Acc-I(A), Acc-I(27), Dmg-I(27), Dmg-I(34), Hold-I(36), EndRdx-I(37)
Level 28: Paralytic Poison -- Acc-I(A), Acc-I(29), Hold-I(29), Hold-I(33), RechRdx-I(34), EndRdx-I(34)
Level 30: Tough -- ResDam-I(A), ResDam-I(31), ResDam-I(31), EndRdx-I(31)
Level 32: Kuji In Zen -- EndRdx-I(A), EndRdx-I(33), EndRdx-I(33)
Level 35: Aid Self -- Heal-I(A), Heal-I(36), IntRdx-I(36)
Level 38: Noxious Gas -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(39), EndRdx-I(39)
Level 41: School of Sharks -- Acc-I(A), Acc-I(42), Immob-I(42), Immob-I(42), EndRdx-I(43), Range-I(43)
Level 44: Shark Skin -- ResDam-I(A), ResDam-I(45), ResDam-I(45), EndRdx-I(45)
Level 47: Knockout Blow -- Acc-I(A), Acc-I(48), Dmg-I(48), Dmg-I(48), EndRdx-I(50)
Level 49: Elixir of Life -- RechRdx-I(A)
------------
Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Sprint -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Supremacy

oh good, looks like you skipped poison gas trap, good call.

yeah, i read the poisons guide posted a bit further down

Only thing im considering changing is switching assault and elixir of life around, so i get res earlier which will help for teaming, and i get more slots available at higher level

the purple pet set is decent (the chance for build up on the tier 2 pets is really nice for increasing DPS)

sovereign right set is uncommon/common lvl 50 pet set which most of the set bonuses add mez resist to you and has the 10% resist to pets (all but psi) if they are within supremacy range

edict of the master set is uncommon/common lower lvl set (dont remember it off my head), but the aura bonus is 5% to all defense

what you have for your build looks pretty good (although i very much disliked school of sharks when i tried it because you cant use it on flying enemies), poison trap for poison set is HORRIBLE compared to the poison trap for traps so you made a good choice with that

what you could also try to do is slot the pets with other sets that could help you, if your going for some resist, you could use slots on the genin to slot one of the kb sets that give both smash resist and kb protection

if you wanted some rech set bonus, you could slot your oni with basilisks gaze (4 of them) and a lockdown chance for +2 mag hold, then the oni and you could easily hold bosses (especially if you slotted the same thing in your paralytic poison) if you slotted in both the powers, you could have +15% rech (global) and can do up to a 10 mag hold (3 from your hold, 3 from oni hold, 2 from oni lockdown, and 2 from your lockdown), even without the lockdowns activating you can still do a mag 6 hold from both of you.


another possibility is using genin as some of an IO mule and slotting pet procs in them (the 3 mentioned above) and then fleshing it out a little, and putting the purple confuse proc in jounin (will make the blinding powder they use really effective) and then slotting them with a melee purple set (if you have the inf to afford it)


what you have is good for starting out though (like when your looking to upgrade to IOs)

yeah, i was going to worry about the set bonuses at level 50, once i actually get some cash sorted so that would be a while away yet, hence why its still set up in IO form

As i mentioned before the biggest thing that would worry me here would be how ineffective they would be in groups, dont get me wrong i intend this to be geared towards single targets, but its likely im going to have to deal with groups when leveling, and especially since pet resist IOs are level 50, it could be a potential pain in the butt to level.

I was considering traps at first because of Force Field Generator, and Fire because of Forge, but traps i decided against because if i plan on pvping with it the mines are a pain to place so are pretty useless and the generator usually gets destroyed, and fire i dont like the fact melt armor has such a long cooldown, combining of the -resists wouldnt really be effective and would cut the damage down although i would gain resists, plus i hate being called 'Buff plz' in teams lol (also the reason i missed out antidote )

i do like the idea of detonator combined with smoke flash for damage however... but since i read its broken anyway maybe it wouldnt be such a good choice.

The problem with dark for me is tar patch, although its -fly and -jump, its still pretty easy to get out of in pvp, and once there out of it, only a moron will walk back in lol. Thus this will decrease damage again with pets since theres no longer any -res or -def debuff, where as with poisons it has targetable debuffs which are much more effective.

clearly i was wrong about the enhancements, thanks for that, i had no idea they were only that level, this makes things a bit more interesting...

if you were gonna try making a mm for pvp, i would probably not use a melee focused pet (because most poeple are scaredy cats and run around at the first sign they are losing), bots are prolly the most effective primary for pvp

if your intent is also to slow an enemy into submission then a good thing to go with that would possibly be mace pool

but honestly, most poeple are gonna resist that a lot (elec and sr can both get huge resists to slow), and i dont know if they count under mezzes so i dont know if they would be hugely suppressed

if you can manage to stack on a lot of slows then you should be fine (if you went traps you would be forced to take a slowing and -fly power)