Considering the whole package: Rate the MM primaries

In the comming Post Fitness era, Mastermind primaries can now be looked at as Whole packages.

In the past pretty much everyone used the pets and maybe the buff power.
But with fitness becoming an inherant, taking the entire mastermind primary is going to become easier and even desired.

So looking at the entire MM packages including personal attacks, how would you rate thier performance, best to worst?

I am pretty new to MMs (Long time player but I only played them PRE tankermind buff) curious how it works out.

Depends entirely on the Secondary, IMO.

But if I had to...

Pre-32 Buff:
Demons
Thugs
Bots
Zombies
Ninjas
Mercs

Post-32 Buff:
Bots
Demons/Thugs (tied for 2nd place)
Zombies/Ninjas (tied for 3rd place)
Mercs

Even with attacks, pet sets are pretty universally ranked this way from what I've seen. There may be a few discrepancies here and there, but some sets are just better at AoE spawns than others. The MM attacks don't change very much in terms of whole-package consideration.

Mercs is pretty dismal huh.

Are the Slotting advantages (Debuff, proc due to the -Def effect) availabe to mercs enough to make them competative?

This means Ninja will be "dead" last IMO. The only thing that makes Ninja stands out a bit more is using Smoke Flash whenever it's up. Smoke Flash costs a lot of endurance and all the Archery attacks deal so little damage and you can't really get fancy with them 'cause they have no secondary effects that take sets. I would rate Ninja as the worst in most cases. The potential is there but reaching that potential is hard.


I think the set that will see the most improvement having access to "personal attacks" is Necro. I have a lvl 50 Necro/Pain that I love but I skipped Life Drain in favor of other things. I would definitely pick up Life Drain when I respec.


Merc also gets more controls from M3 Grenade if most people skip. 50% for a knockback is decent for adding more controls to a supposed "control heavy" set. And my lvl 50 Merc/Storm may pick up Serum again just because it belongs to the set. I would probably forget to use it like I used to. lol


Demon will just be more melee-ish. I did take the whip attacks but since my secondary is Trick Arrow, I am already busy enough shooting arrows. With a different secondary, I can see Demon being fun.


I think most primaries will see some benefits while Ninja will lag behind even more. The only power worth taking is Fist of Arrow but even that the damage is so low. You will need one proc damage to make it worthwhile, or you can just throw Smoke Flash like most Ninja masters do before the fitness change. I see no big change in Ninja and that's not good!

You're assuming that people take Fitness on one of the best ATs to avoid having to take Fitness.

Depends on the set, really. /Traps can do well without it. (Though I admit I'd have alot more trouble with slotting, needing to put an extra endredux in most power pool toggles)

Using Sandolphan's binds it's easy enough to keep them at range, but you do have to keep setting the Goto command to keep them back.

Ninja bow attacks by your MM are beyond worthless. They're lethal damage only, the most heavily and most often resisted damage type in the game ... and you can only slot ranged damage for the two single target attacks and target AoE in short range cone attack with a stupidly narrow arc.

If one of the bow attacks was Stunning Shot ... that would be useful.

If one of the bow attacks was the "sniper" archery attack ... that would be useful.

But no ... all you get it "plink" attacks that do next to nothing. You're better off picking up Assault than taking any of the MM Bow attacks.

It's the end. But the moment has been prepared for ...

It's annoying when they run in, but it's easy to deal with with sandalphan's binds, just put them on Goto in a ranged position, though you may have to do it 2 or 3 times if the fight lasts long enough.

I got my merc/pain to lv 36 before starting a thugs/dark. the merc is ok solo, the commando pwers recharge too slow and serum is useslls that's about it. on a team I think mercs have too much dots and no front load dmg so stuff dies from your teammate before you can get the majority of your dot dmg in.

I actually expect this Fitness change to make a nice difference on my Ninja/Dark who already has Stamina and runs some Leadership powers. My Robotics/Traps doesn't have Stamina and I had no intentions of taking it, I'm just not sure if this will make any difference on him, other than I have more Endurance than I will ever us. I do welcome it though.

Here is a pic I took earlier showing them tossing punches! I noticed they use it less when upgraded, but they still like the "run up and shoot em in the face" approach. If their shirts werent soaked in gasoline, that might not be so bad.

Clicky