Is that a khled in your Icon? you should be fine.
I can tell you my experience with mine, on live it went to 26 or so, on test in closed beta with VEATS, I think it went to about 42 or 44. Might have been 44. You can be a baby taunt bot tanker, and a defender of your own little melee team with this set up. Its LOADS of fun. Wade in, and take the alpha, heal on the side, and debuff….and damage. Its great fun!
I love mine, but once i got it "down" i just never got around to playing it back up on live. It's too easy now....lol. Its a fun combo, seriously, its fun and fine. Mine works more like a "taunt" bot tank of its own private team, than anything esle. It can be some craziness (see next post), but i thought it was loads of fun. Its REALLY dynamic, so be prepared to “play” it. I don’t sit back and let it do its thing, you are constantly dropping some power (snow storm, freezing rain etc….fun stuff) I also used SS and Steamy Mist, just to charge into spawns and drop lightning storm or freezing rain, just like a tank to absorb the alpha.
You need stamina but…that is all gonna change in an issue 19. I went with purely melee build and took man and provoke (it has a longer duration than an aoe attack).
If you want a tank/taunt bot/private team, this was my take on Powers:
Ninjas, just do the usual pet set up. Take the henchmen, and upgrades is what I did. I found smoke flash, to be kinda hard to use, and I was usually way to busy to use it due to all the storm powers.
Gale: turned out to be pretty useful. Kept things on their back, and in corners, so the ninjas could attack and not take damage. Big plus.
O2 boost, yes get it, you use in down time to heal the pets. I rarely use it now compared to lower levels.
Snow storm, like it, and keeps things in close. More useful in lower levels, but good at higher levels, to drop that on boss or Eb. The -recharge can sometimes work against you in BG mode, -recharge means no able to attack, pets just stand there sometimes.
Steamy Mist: sure aoe def and resistance….added with SS, and the MM can move in invisible, but henchmen are stealth-ed…they get the alpha.
Freezing Rain: Yep, you will be dropping that all the time. I open with this, invisible (SS w/steamy mist).
Hurricane: I was surprised by this one. Unless enemies are in a corner, then I would pulse it only. It would scatter, and then the ninja got all squirrely and then I could get into too much agro quickly.
Thunder Clap: For a MM, it’s a great damage mitigation power. It is only a min disorient, but that cuts down on damage to henchmen. I liked this power. Again, slide in with SS/steamy mist and pop a TC, and drop powers.
Tornado: I used for the IOs pet bonuses. There are two sets of def/resist pet IOs. One for MM pets, once for "fast recharge pets. Didn't use it much, due to scatter and teaming and my set up.
Lightning Storm: whopping chaos..but loads of fun. The damage is nice, and its up a lot, so between Freezing Rain, thunder clap and now Lightning storm..you will be busy. Things go flying with this, its loads of fun. I would consider an immob with -kb on it which is MU patron.
APP vs Patron:
Choose what you want as patron or ancillary, I am sick of fireball on all my toons, so I am not sure what I will do on live once I get there. I think I would go for Soul Mastery, just for the Oppressive Gloom and its pure damage mitigation powers and stacking disorients with thunder clap. Mu has –kb, something to consider. Or if you are good with kb, field mastery has three kb to go with gale, so you could effectively keep everyone off thier feet. I might have to look at that for myself. If elec got lightning field, and ice got Chilling embrace…I would go with Ice. I was very unhappy the APPs really don’t reflect well on the roles of MMs. Hopefully that will change.
If you got a kheld, and use binds/macros for triforms, then you should be fine with all of this next stuff.
Here is how I played my ninja storm.
My play experience with them, is prob fitting. I was with VEATS, and with i19, stamina becoming inherent, there is lots of talk of maneuvers spreading all over the place. Endless stacking maneuvers might get the nerf bat, but I can tell you, with what I did, a couple of melee VEATS maneuvers, my ninjas were pretty stout in melee, darn near unkillable.
With the set up below, they are fairly tough.
Ninjas can be notorious for running a little amok. So keep that in mind, they are very fast, and before you know it, they can aggro a second spawn or create some problems. And I chose to avoid scatter powers unless I could control the scatter, gail was fine if used well. So, sometimes you can scramble around, because they move so fast, they get a second group. I was VERY careful about Hurricane, just to prevent scatter.....i think that is a little fun, the unexpected can happened with them. With that in mind, start NOW, looking at basic stuff, like the macros or keybinds, paying attention to BG mode. Look at naming conventions, because....it can tie into your macros.
With the fact in mind, the ninjas are a little nutsy (which can be fun), I chose to use BG mode, and provoke/taunt and maneuvers with steamy mist. Provoke does a couple things for you. Your ninjas react to taunted subjects, automatically attacking them (provoke helps when targets are slowed with snowstorm). The taunted enemies then attack you and KEEP attacking you, not your pets, so your pets live longer in melee. And the fragile ninjas take less damage and can attack more. And once i got Man/steamy and provoke/taunt, i quit O2 boosting/healing the all the time. Add in the pet resist/def pet IOs, and it gets better.
Get the procs for pet def and resist asap. You can place a second set of them in Tornado later (with both IOs for pets, its 10 def and like 20% resistance to pets thru IOs, add in steamy mist 5%def and resist, and man 5% def....thats about 20% def on the pets if you stay in melee, I think genins have 6 def, jounins have 12 def, and oni has like 6 def...so about 25% def and then provoke then focuses damage away from pets....). You become decently survivable and pets become survivable in melee. Add in taunt/provoke and its just like a tanker/defender your own private team. Its great!
If you are good with the binds/macros, you can literally choose your resistance by the number of pets in BG mode. It is just how you name the pets basically, then editing the macros (yes, you can pull them right off the pet window, and drop them into your power tray, then edit them).
Overall, loads of fun, challenging and you will learn a lot about game mechanics if you want.
It’s a great combo !
( u will kick a@# and master skills on herding, proper kb, binds/macros and all sorts of stuff)
Hey there Masterminds. I plan to make my first foray into the world of MMs with a Ninja/Storm but I need a lot of help.
First of all, what are the strengths of this combo? Off the bat I can see some synergies. The little bit of added Defense from Steamy Mist should help with the Ninjas reputed squishiness and the -Resistance from Freezing Rain will help to offset any pesky issues with Smashing/Lethal damage.
Storm Summoning seems to be best suited for work in melee range, especially alongside the Ninjas. Will the -toHit and knockback from Hurricane be enough to keep me from getting smacked around if I'm busy moving through and around the spawn?
My ultimate goal with this build is to create a high Defense Tankermind. I'm planning on Cold Mastery as my APP for the shield and running it in conjunction with Steamy Mist and Hurricane. Will that be enough to accomplish what I wanna do?
Any other general advice is greatly appreciated.
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