Petlesss Mastermind Ranking/Rating MM Attack Powers

I think the problem with petless MMs comes from the teaming aspect.

You will be a gimp. Your team is only as strong as the weakest link, and you will be that link. Any other AT will be a bigger help than you will be. In effect, you are doing nothing but soaking up XP while others around you do all the work. And when you die (and trust me, you WILL die. A lot.) you are slowing the team down while you eat awakens, wait for a rez, or run back from the hospital. You will be a social pariah, and cast out as a leper from more groups than groups that will accept you.

In short: If you want to try it, fine. Just don't PUG and get hurt when you are called an idiot, noob, or leach.

@ Misaligned

Good flip I like what you did.

But regardless of how you said it and I think someone else said it earlier also. It is very true. How do you know if someone really does stink with their toon. You don't unless something really obvious happens. I noticed with my kin I was healing for over 100 points more then the other kin in the group.

You will notice the empath does not have RA when he never says gather for RA. Or that his direct heal is very low for his level, but he does have 2 travel powers. Things like that might make you take notice.

But if you have a tank or a brute at defense cap some decent healer and a decent dpser close to defense cap also. You notice much less because the core of the team is really what is holding the team together. Personally I am a big defense cap player. So all my 50s reflect some sort of defense cap. This is why people that know my Kin look for me or know my alts ask if I want to get my kin for a mission because I am at some defense cap. The Brutes like when they can have someone next to them that can hang buffing and healing and debuffing without going flat every other pull.

So with that all said I say a Whip Trap Petless ( or Semi Petless ) MM that is defense capped would be much better then many other players that run in and nuke and drop dead from the incoming alpha strike or unwanted aggro. If I can drop a trip mine every 6 to 7 seconds unbuffed. I can do just about if not more dps then a Nuke and the best part my Nuke ( or mini Nuke ) does not crash me. Detonator is up every 90 seconds.

People are foolish if they are going to determine what is best by dps. The reality is the best is the most reliable. I truly believe in the comment of army of one. If every player built for solo then in a group every team would be that much more massive because there is no hinge pin that can send a team crashing if that person drops out or dies unexpectedly.

I honestly considered going petless once. Was teaming with someone last night on my level 40 Necro/Poison. My pets died so often.... and so quickly that I stopped using upgrades on them because it really only meant 3 extra seconds of survival for them. I joked that I might be more helpful if I just concentrated on healing him (a fire/shield tank) and debuffing.

I never really looked at the difficulty setting they had set up... Or maybe it's a bad powerset combo, or bad slotting... but I was really hurt'n on that run.

For the record - Lone Li made if to level 14 before my buddy quit the game and I was forced to solo. I went with soldier/poison and planned to get the entire leadership pool. The rifle options did well enough, and the poison and leadership combo offered my teams enough buff debuff and healing to make me worth having around. But honestly, I felt like a weird Blaster/Defender mix jumping from distance work with the rifle to close up for team assistance. Endurance was indeed the killer - couldn't recover as fast as I needed to be firing once I had to solo.
What many here are saying is that Supremacy (your archetypal power) only benefits your (in your case non-existant) henchmen, and you're walking away from that. This is you're edge, and you don't want to use it, and they don't understand why. Much like the stalker who refuses to Hide. Bravo for trying it out, I wish you patience and perseverance. I appreciate players who make a theme first and work towards that goal more than I appreciate players who data mine the offensive and defensive potential of every power to maximize their character without any regard for background.
My advice for a Primary set is - doesn't matter - take the first silly power and toss it in a corner. Now learn to Fight and either Fly, Superleap, or Speed. These will be the other 8 powers you would have taken from your primary. Congratulations, you still get all your secondaries and all your patron and you still have 2 to go. Might I suggest the Presence pool (you laugh, but hang on) or the Teleport pool - specifically Teleport Foe.
By taking Fight and Superleap (for example) - you get 3 attacks. And yeah, they are all melee attacks which seems like a bad idea, by not if you plan to rely on Provoke or Teleport Foe to thin those mobs. Cause really, one on one you'll do okay. Fighting mobs at a time - not so much. You'll get 4 defense powers to boot. And note: slot them for recharge, not endurance reduction. You want to take down 1 opponent fast, shut the defenses down to recover a little while you pick the next victim out and then repeat.
The thing about Presence that I truly like is the Intimidate and Invoke Panic. If you accidentally draw more heat than you can handle those two Fear powers will help douse the fire. Somebody suggested Traps secondary - so lay a few landmines, teleport into a mob, Invoke Panic to freeze them, paste one with a few punches, Provoke a nearby Lt., and teleport back behind your landmines. The Lt. comes running while the mob is still scared and cripples himself so you can finish the job. The rest of the mob starts coming at you. Good landmine technique will have you place one of them out of the path the Lt. took, so now you shift to one side so the rest of the mob lines up on it.
If you do find a team, then drop Fight in your alternate build and get Leadership and/or Health to make yourself a stronger assest to the team.
And finally, there are plenty of high level masterminds who are not team assests. They do a very poor job of managing their pets and inevitably one will start chasing a target past half a dozen other mobs, bringing the entire map spawn down on the team in one spot at one time.

Would someone be able to post all the rules for a petless Mastermind please? I know you are to solo. but?

1) What about teaming with other petless MM's (we have seven in our group running petless),

2) What about the dark pet since it is a unwilling pet and isn't permanent (we have a necro/dark on the team who would like to know this answer) also in this catagory what aboout the epic pets like summon Mu etc.

3) Temp powers? we are only using if they dropped on us and only buying salvage if needed, not allowed to buying them.

anything else we missed?

aTdHvAaNnKcSe

I'd still like to know what the problem is with playing a Corruptor. None of the "Petless MM" fans are addressing that.

Is it really fun to have less damaging, less end efficient attacks? Less variety to them? No scourge? Gimped secondaries? The absolute only reason to play MM over Corruptor is the pets, unless you really have a thing for /poison (uh even as someone with a 40 something thugs/poison [can't bring myself to finish him] I can't imagine that, especially with no pets), or more recently whip attacks.

Masterminds sans pets suck! Terrible health, damage, completely lessened secondaries (especially noticable to me in /dark! Tiny radius on heal, weaker debuffs, longer pet recharge...). They're awesome with pets. I love MMs... but the only reason to play one without pets is because you're fooling yourself into the "challenge of it", when the real challenge should be mastering the AT, or going to Corruptor and mastering a petless style with all the variety of attacks in their primary.

... At least Fix_R has a team going for it so they aren't burdening anyone else, but the defenders of this are kidding themselves thinking that these petless MMs are going to solo their levels.

So what is the point? Will you guys seriously make Tankers with no toggles next? Why does only this come up? It's not the same as a kin never speed boosting. That's someone who takes a power and doesn't know how to use it (or doesn't care)... You're knowingly avoiding the best powers of an AT. You're the kin that doesn't even take speed boost or fulcrum shift.

What it ultimately comes down to is that a well played petless MM is absolutely never going to compare favorably to a well played Corruptor. Never. A Mastermind is pets.

I would place Whips above Pulse Rifle due to the -resists, though Pulse Rifle has some controls. The other power sets are irrelevant since you can get the exact same attacks in real blast sets... the only real reason to play a petless MM is to get whip or laser gun attacks. Even if you are doing it for another reason (like just to see if it's possible), you may as well take a set that gives unique attacks.

Demons/Dark is probably the best petless combo. You get -resist, significant to-hit debuffs, and a great heal. Plus you have stealth and some control. You'll still take way too long to kill things, but at least you'll be able to kill normal spawns.