Me and my Monkeys...

So, here I am, me and my monkeys: 3 robots currently. I experimented a bit with masterminds earlier and what I found is that the first 15 levels were supremely easy, and then... smack: I hit the wall, and get to experience just how squishy the pets really are, as they start dieing in droves around me. Of course, I think the problem is my background...

Background:
I've played WoW, Anarchy Online and many other games. The basic premiss for all of the "masterminds" here is that you are squishy, and your pet will tank for you.

The Villain:
Well, suddenly I get an army of up to 6 pets. Obviously these must be much weaker than a player, for game balance, and as such, I guess it makes sense that they suck as tanks.

What to do?
So how do you go about playing the mastermind around here? I have for now changed my default pet macros: def-attack, def-follow and pet-follow. My basic idea is that the best way to distribute the damage evenly is to take as much damage as possible MYSELF, and let the bodyguarding spread the damage evenly. That can then be easily undone with aura-healing, in my case dark miasma. I move with my pets as a tight group as much as possible, keeping in range of both the healing and the mastermind bonus.

So here's a bunch of questions...

• If I send my pets against a specific target, using defensive-attack, does the bodyguard damage distribution still work? If no, what about when the pets are in defensive-follow, and go off to attack something on their own? (seen two different statements, one that says it always works in defensive, and one that says only in defensive-follow)
• Is my approach still going to work for me when i get to my trouble spot around level 15-20? What about later?
• Once I get the top-level minion, the awe-inspiring battlebot-thingee, does things change? Is that usable as a "tank"?
• Despite trying to shed the wow-hunter mentality as best I can, am I still going about all this ****-backwards?

Anything but goto/defensive and follow/defensive breaks bodyguard.

Running around as a tight cluster with your pets is usually bad since any AoE attacks will hit you and the pets and the pets will then add your bodyguard damage as well to theirs.

To tank as a MM you need to bind something like this '/bind g "petcomall goto defensive"' and place them within supremacy range (check the gray power icon on your pet list), but out of reach for the incoming attacks. Then you aggro, preferrably with some sort of debuffs as that doubles up as aggro magnet and making it easier for you to be the survivor.

Position and tactics are your main skills as an MM. Play battle chess and prosper!

Bots hate fire. They are probably made of cardboard box and melt easily.


Boss-Bot @32 is awesome, and the rest of the bots is great as well post-32. Bots <32 not so much. (personal opinion)

Nerf's post is great for a super-experienced MM player. As a first-timer, I wouldn't recommend attempting to run as a tankermind.

MacOberon, my biggest advice to you as a new-ish MM player is to take ONLY your pets and as many of your secondary powers as you can, with room for power pools/fitness (if you want it). Robots are pretty hardy, and I'm wondering if you've taken your attacks instead of your secondary and are drawing too much aggro to yourself.

What's your secondary, if I may ask? If it's something without heals, you'll want to pick up Medicine. If it has heals... well I'm not sure what's happening.

A couple of things.

1. Don't be afraid to set difficulty to -1/x1 if you're having a rough spot.
2. For bots, I would recommend completely skipping the pulse rifle powers.
3. I usually try to arrange to get the INITIAL aggro. Well, no -- I'm /traps so it's seeker drones now. But the alpha strike, split up, is pretty livable.

The pets are never really great for tanking; you can make them less squishy, and defend them up some good (depending on your secondary), but ultimately, the name of the game is splitting damage up.

Thank you, thank you. I guess I'm kind of on the right track, and just need to keep going to develop a feeling for it.

My earlier attempt at this was with ninja-pain suppression. Around level 20, it was horrible. I couldn't take down a lieutenant without at least one minion falling down dead, and fast too. I switched to robots instead, because it's just so much more evil-super-genious-ish, and I figured, hey, dark miasma can debuff, buff and heal all at once: sounds like fun.

I guess that mostly leaves one question: if my bots ARE on def-follow, and they run off to kill something that is aggroing - does that break the body guard? I get the impression from your posts that bodyguard works even if the pets engage.

Mac

Yes, bodyguard will still work if the bots attack something while still in defensive follow - it's based off the stance, not what the bots' AI is telling them to do at that particular moment (well, as long as 'what the bots' AI is telling them to do' doesn't take them outside supremacy range, but that's not likely).

On a side note, while bodyguard *does* stop working if you hit your attack/defensive macro, they'll only be out of bodyguard until that target dies. Once the target of an attack command drops dead, the bots will automatically revert to following you - which puts them back into follow/defensive and bodyguard. As long as you keep track of the batte, if you're careful you can use this to quickly drop a troublesome target without too much danger.

Caveat: I've never run robots, but I did experience the same thing with the paper tissue pets, er, I mean the genin, before level 20.

One tool you have in your box that is very effective, that no one mentioned yet, is Darkest Night. It's slow to cast, but you can cast it and get out of Line-of-Sight before it activates, meaning you can usually avoid putting your bots out of defensive. (Have them goto'd waiting on the other side of the corner.) DN not only pulls and typically compacts the spawn (helpful for future AoEs), it also stacks with the -tohit in Fearsome Stare, and helps even more with -dmg.

So, here's the update on my new attempt at masterminding...

I'm now level 21, and I have NO problems at all. I will occasionally lose a bot or three, but that's only against bosses or large overpulls. I never lose a bot and say to myself "WHY did that happen?" I always know the reason.

Without a doubt, having the enemy miasmad straight to kingdom come helps a lot, but I think there's more to it than just that... I think the Ninjas somehow just... suck.

Can't reiterate enough, how wonderful miasma really is: it buffs, it debuffs, it cloaks, it heals and it controls. It does a little bit of everything on top of the massive debuffs. It's just simply delishious.

Personally, I think the devs should replace the three default pet commands with the ones I am using:
- defensive-attack
- defensive-goto
- defensive-follow
- passive-follow
For any professional mastermind this probably looks hopelessly primitive, but it really does the trick, at least so far. I get the control I need, and everything defaults back into bodyguard mode, as it should.

I even joined an 8-man mission team for a while, feeling empowered by my robots success. Sure, I lost the bots now and then, but it was nothing like when I had the ninjas. Ninjas would all be dead 10 seconds into any battle. My bots? In most cases, they all came out just fine. In fact, being a little bit of a tactician, and slamming the enemy with miasma just after the tank/troller has gone nuts - I don't even get aggro, and can calmly order my pets to kill off targets in any order I please.

This is a complicated, but hugely rewarding class to play. I'm still not much for MMs in 8-man teams, but for solo work, or 2-3 man teams, they are just so much fun!

The one small bother I have is stopping my bots from rushing in to melee after a few shots. So far, the only solution to it I have is forcing them back out with a goto.

Mac

Ah yes, the melee charge, it does become more bearable after the level 32 upgrade. The little guys especially finish up the available ranged attacks and then head in for the deth smaks. After the upgrade they pretty much double their ranged output to fill the attack chain and stay at range better. You should notice a big jump in effectiveness soon with SO level enhancements at level 22 and the extra protector bot at level 24. I am glad to hear of your success.

here's how to play MM

>send pet to attack
>throw down buff/debuff depedning on set
>heal pet
>win pve


you prob never pickup aggro ever unless its a ambush