New player, first character's a Mastermind

Hey everyone!

I'm new to CoH, currently my Mastermind is at level 11. I'm a Robotics/Traps MM.

The first 5 levels were quite boring because I only had a couple skills to work with. Then, up until level 9, it was actually quite fun. Now it's getting really difficult, though.

Up until now, my robots were fairly resilient. I gave them a health inspiration a couple times per mission to freshen them up, but ever since I've started doing missions in Imperial City, my robots are dying every couple of fights.

An Hombre can use his rock-throw and take out half my robot's health. I'm also running into missions with orange-difficulty mobs. Even white mobs are making quick work of my bots - I'm currently in a mission where white 'Blast Masters' can take out 25% of both my bot's health with this AoE fire attack.

I got a skill that let me upgrade my bots but it seems to do little difference. They don't even change appearance, so sometimes I accidentally upgrade the same bot twice, wasting a ton of stamina.

They feel so fragile now. What can I do?

The only thing I can think of is pick up Triage Beacon when I hit level 12, though I still have a whole level to go before that, and I've currently been in that same mission I mentioned for about an hour now. The only thing that really works for me now is defeating a group of enemies, then going AFK for 5 minutes so my bots recover their health. This isn't fun.

I'm just playing blind, so odds are my build is terrible. How do I respec?

From the Robotics Set, I have Battle Drones, Pulse Rifle Blast, Pulse Rifle Burst, Equip Robot, and Photon Grenade. They're mostly slotted with damage enhancements, though I put in a recharge reduction into Pulse Rifle Blast and Pulse Rifle Burst because I hate standing around waiting for powers to recharge.

Out of Traps, I only have Web Grenade so far. Nothing else looked that useful, at least until now, when Triage Beacon is looking mighty helpful.

I also took Hover so I can get Fly later.

As for mission difficulty, it's Praetoria, where there aren't any mission difficulties - it's all automatic. It's a level 11 mission, though, but I keep running into orange-difficulty Hombres that are tearing me apart.

Well, I figured out how to switch to a second build, but I had to buy new enhancements for the sockets. I'm broke now, but hopefully this build I found helps out.

EDIT: And thanks for the advice, the new build I got doesn't have any attacks for me besides traps. I guess my robots will be doing most of the damage and I'll be supporting them with traps. Here's hoping it works!

Nope, just tried the mission again.

I set up a triage beacon but my robots will not remain in its range. They continue running up to enemies to melee them and die in seconds. I try setting up a beacon right where the enemies are, which works a bit better, but then I'm left waiting for triage beacon to recharge. Way too much downtime.

I'm guessing Mastermind isn't for me. I nearly rolled a scrapper for my first toon but I figured it would have the 'noob' class stereotype. However, if it's less frustrating than Mastermind, I'm all for it now.

Thanks for the help anyway.

I have 75 months experience and am no beginner to masterminds. I rolled a Robots/FF for supporting some global friends. It was a huge boost when my mastermind hit level 12. Hang in there friends, it gets better. At level 18, you get a third battle drone with the option of 'Repair' which is a great heal for your robots.

edit: I often take it to the enemy to start the fight at the maximum range of the upgraded robots. They have superior range, can dogpile a target, and will finish problematic spawns before their spawnmates react.

Welcome to the game. A few things to think about, if you ever wanna come back to the MM:

1. Level 10-11 is arguably one of the roughest patches in the game.
2. Read the Market & Inventions forum for information about how to have enough money to afford enhancements and the like which can dramatically improve your ability.
3. "Equip Robot", you use once, and ALL of your active bots are upgraded. This is a change from the times of longago, and a very welcome change.

Have fun, and enjoy your scrapper! Don't ever feel bad about alt-hopping to get away from a rough patch for a bit; taking a break from something frustrating is usually a good plan.

One thing mentioned only once that I saw was Acid Mortar. This is a key power in /Traps and should be taken immediately at 10 (the others are FF Gen at 16 and Poison Trap at 20).

Start grabbing Medicine for Aid Other/Self when you can, but don't skip the primary/secondary powers for them. Grab Medicine over Repair though.

I strongly urge you to grab some stealth (full invis is even better...think Superspeed+Celerity IO). Dropping the mortar or trap invisibly near a group and letting the devices take the alpha is a great way to open a battle.

Good luck with Bots/Traps; it's one of the best and most fun builds out there...eventually!

A few other things:

--The critters in Praetoria are more difficult than most of the beginning critters in Paragon and the Rogue Isles. Long-time vets are complaining about their harshness.

--It's often much easier to get through 10-22 on teams than alone. You won't learn to control your toon, or understand its capabilities quite so well, but you'll likely have more fun and most of the time it will go faster. You can build the team yourself (hint: a few defenders offer +endurance powers by lvl 12; a good way to build your team is to grab a number of "support" classes together, defenders, corruptors, MMs, controllers), put up your looking-for-team flag, or respond to a broadcast.

--Acid Mortar, the new bot at 12, and (level 16) Force Field Generator will ease your job considerably. (Poison Gas Trap at 20 is a good defensive tool, too.) As recommended, Aid Other is very handy on a Mastermind, and can be grabbed by level 8 (6 goes to the pet upgrade).

--I didn't catch anyone precisely describing pulling. When you see a clump of enemies that look too dangerous to take on all at once, you can find a nearby corner that cuts line of sight--or just backup if no suitable corner exists--and lay your traps at the corner. Use the controls to put the pets in passive and on a location. Shoot the dangerous lieutenant with your long range single target weapon and run back around the corner, then switch your pets to aggressive or defensive/follow (to allow you to take more damage through the bodyguard ability). If more than one critter comes, have the bots focus fire on each, one at a time (this means you're not in bodyguard), and web-grenade one of the others so that it will be trapped out of line-of-sight while you finish off the first.

--Short of cash? Use the market to earn money for you while you play.

If you do feel like rolling something else take a look at Demon Summoning/Pain Domination while it is not as strong as bot/traps in the late game it is much more fun for a beginning player.

I love triage beacon, but the key is, you have to know which fights you want it on, and drop it first. It also becomes MUCH more useful in the 20s, when you can massively boost its heals. Mine's 5-slotted with a healing set and is amazing.

You've set yourself for a challenge, IMHO the Mastermind is the most complex AT to play, and the hardest to master. Picking it as your first choice takes guts.

The main thing to remember as a Mastermind, though, is that individually you are only one fourth of the AT. At lower levels that could be as much as one half, but you're always going to get the majority of damage and survivability from your henchmen. Your Secondary is not only intended to supplement your abilities, it protects and supplements your henchmen as well, keeping them alive and making the stronger. You can take your own attacks, but they will mostly be useful only in the lower levels when you don't have a lot of henchmen.

(Basically, your damage will ramp down from 1-20. While you can still use attacks in the 18-24 range, you're really going to be pushing it to use them. And then once you hit the 30s, they really won't be useful any more, except to attract aggro and for the occasional control effect)

The second thing to consider, as others have pointed out, is that AoEs are horrible against Masterminds. They can rip through your henchmen and even Bodyguard if they are all stacked together. You have two strategies to deal with AoEs, one is to split up your forces so half of them run into melee with the AoE throwers, while the others stand back and fire at them from a distance. The other is to go into melee yourself, attract all the aggro, and take the alpha so when your henchmen get into melee with you, the enemies won't have their AoEs recharged.

You mention that your bots run into melee. This tends to happen with one or two, but they shouldn't all be going into melee. You can work with this tendency, though, by using a keybind to make that one bot who seems suicidal move to a particular location with Goto. If he runs into melee, well, he would do that anyway, but if he doesn't, he's still away from the others.

Another thought is that you make have them on Aggressive. You should set some or all of your henchmen to Defensive. Setting some to Aggressive and some to Defensive is actually a good way to get them to split up and not draw all the AoE into one place. But setting all your henchmen to Follow Defensive is how you set Bodyguard Mode. And that's how you can get into melee with a bunch of foes and survive it. I don't know if you've read up on Bodyguard, but there was a post on the subject just now, and I'm sure you can find it.

A couple more tips:

To ensure you've upgraded everyone, open up your Pet Window, and then click on the arrow on the left side of the window that points in. It should make a bunch of icons appear next to the window. Once of those icons should represent the upgrade, it will be the same color as the upgrade power, and appear when you use the Power on the bots. Once you can recognize the icon in the set of them, you should know when your bots are upgraded.

Another trick is to always upgrade all your henchmen at once, when you first summon them. If you start losing bots, keep resummoning, but don't upgrade them if you can help it. When the battle is over, call them all back and do it with one application. Of course, don't let yourself be killed, it's okay to upgrade "on the fly" if you have to.

There should be two little red lights on the back of a bot that is upgraded. And as mentioned, they will ALL be upgraded if in the radius of the effect, even though only one gets the "machine comes out of the ground and welds on it" animation.

Don't ever try to wait for a bot to heal on its own. If you have no heal power, no green pills, and the bot is too badly damaged to keep fighting, dismiss it. It takes less time to resummon a bot and re-upgrade it than to wait for it to heal on its own. (It can also be more useful to save the green pills until you need them instead of trying to keep from having to resummon)

Of course, once you get to 12, and get the Protector bot, HE will start to heal your bots. Then you only need to worry about keeping HIM healed. (Until 18, when you can get two Protos which will heal each other)

One more thing you should do, and I'm surprised Sandolpan didn't mention it since it's his baby, is go to Sandolphan's Revised MM Numpad Pet Controls and set up your keyboard keypad to control your bots.

I've been using versions of this since CoV went live and love it for the ease of control it gives me over my minions.