Why do I dislike Masterminds more and more?

One problem is other players will not pick you up.. I always make sure I say. " Robot Traps.. Def Cap.. Tier 2 Alpha slotted MM looking for XXXX "

I Feel I need to sell myself because players otherwise would rather get someone else.. I seen this first hand with Tin Mage. It was only after I got on another Tin Mage team and the original player was still looking that he decided to ask me. He just ignored my tells and then quit his original team to get on the team I was on.. Go figure..

Pet AI broken and no fix in sight.

You need a decent secondary to get in invite sometimes also.. Any healing type usually get a play because you can heal. Trap has some nice Debuffs all around. Poison is okay, but its just single target. You can have several AOE debuffs do the same as poison or a bit less if anything, but no team really gets into that type of mind set. They know they need debuffs and will take whatever comes along debuff wise. Nothing in this game is that tough, including apex and tin mage that you need some sort of special or specific debuffer.

But I need to tell people when asked.. I'm defense capped without my pets.. I do not need my pets to obtain defense cap. Some players are smart to know and ask. Again more silliness for a mastermind, because players don't know sometimes or understand.

Unlike powers other powers, these powers have a LONG casting time.. Because even after summoning the pets are not really ready to go. I have had pets die during summoning. I can't even target them for upgrading, but NPC attacks can..

On certain missions I'm golden. I can do it all. But on others OMG it can be a pain in the back side.. But my Traps AR Defender with Tier 2 Damage and Defense Debuff Alpha can handle it all. He is better then my Tankermind. And no issues with trying to summon pets. Add in the ancillary powers he never runs out of endurance unless I'm just not paying attention.

Personally I really, really don't think the devs can really fix them. I don't think they have the patience or the time to rework the AI to the way they wanted or should say the way it should be..

Masterminds and Stalkers are just going the way of the dodo.

I pretty much use my robot traps to solo and get AE tickets.. Villain merits and such. IF I get an invite to some TF I take it.. Other then that I do not going looking for them anymore since I have been Alpha slotted. I get shards as I do my missions now.

My robot FF is still hanging around by the market holding stuff. Until I get the stomach to respec him.

I just have too many toons that require LESS Work to play that can do the same thing I can with my Masterminds. I look at Masterminds more as cool look factor and for concept builds. Especially my Traps with all the gadgets and such.

Again I am only talking about a specific build limited to a few sets within the Mastermind builds.. Otherwise your pretty much in the same boat as some other AT types, relying on a team just to run 0/8 missions.

I'm just regurgitating the same stuff all over so I will stop..

All AT types should be as wanted as Kinetics and as good as Traps.

Since I run ninja masterminds, I'd say it's a Good Thing pets are going into melee. My bruiser also learned how to enter melee instead of just Chuck Rock. The rest of the thugs are no more or less suicidal then they had been. Curse you Arsonist trying to punch the rikti swordsman boss!

Probably in that with pets being immune to recharge buff/debuff, a huge part of why the MM community was drooling over kinetics is gone. Namely Speed Boosted pets. Call me crazy, but when I tried leveling a kinetics defender, I just didn't see the 'omg' levels of raw power they are famous for. What I did see was tedium and annoyances from people demanding I use speed boost on them, when they are 3 rooms away, out of sight, and still have speed boost up anyway. Then yelling at me for not healing them when they run away from the enemy.

I will say that I hope more Pet sets come out that provide a bonus to the set. It is frustrating that there are really only two types of sets that provide Pet bonuses, and that Recharge Intensive Pets isn't even available to all MMs. I'd like to see a set like Defensive Pets or Healing Pets so that Proto Bots or Enforcers, or Dark Servant can be slotted with a set that offers a pet bonus.

The same goes with Incarnate Slots. If all Incarnate abilities just buff the caster that will be a drawback to MMs.

Still, if I were to make a suggestion to Jibikao, it would be, controversially enough, to try a partially petless build. Since the problem is that your Tier 1s are dying too often, and you don't care about the defensive benefit anyway, don't summon them. Concentrate all of your tactics and defense powers on three henchmen instead of six, that are more robust and reliable than the Tier 1s.

Of course, you'll want to go Thugs, or possibly Ninjas or Necro for this. Bots is a terrible choice, not just because the Tier 1s do too much damage to skip, but also because they are in general weak offensively. Only the Tier 3 really does a lot of damage. And of course, you'll also want to use your own attacks, although I'd recommend Vet Powers since they won't cost you any slots or power choices.

And of course, you'll want to do this with a second build, as most teams will expect you to have the full selection of pets. You may just go ahead and take them, but not slot them more than just the bare minimum. And if they die, leave them dead. You don't want to lose your Tier 2 or Tier 3 because you're busy trying to keep the Tier 1 alive. And if you're doing this on a Task Force for a team, then you'll need to have all of your tools available. Just try to set priorities.

My main, Dr. Mechaniker, is a robo/ff Tankermage.

Right now he has the Def/acc Nerve alpha slot.

One of the better ways to deal with the new really hard content is to forget your tier ones.

You'll have to resummon. It cost you end. It's your primary. Deal with it.

The primary problem here is that Merc, Necro and Ninja simply do not perform at the level that Robots, Thugs and Demons do. The problem isn't (entirely) inherent to Masterminds - it's the fault of those three primaries, which are unduly weak compared to the other half of MM primaries.

Thugs and Robots, in particular, are extraordinarily strong. It is not particularly difficult to get both of those sets to the softcap on the pets, which ironically, somehow, makes a bunch of street-toughs harder to kill than ninjas and zombies. There's something wrong with that.

Of course, now that I say this, instead of pushing Ninja, Necro and Merc up to the level of the other sets, devs are far more likely to nerf the top sets instead. Because they hate villains, and really hate Masterminds.

One of the problems with MM's is that only a few builds are actually good.

These sets are playable at best, they'll always be weak though.

Mercs/* - suffers from a weak primary, no recharge intensive pet options.. poor damage, etc

Ninjas/* - suffers froms AoE's against powerful mobs, melee minions lack survivability. Any boss with an AoE will instakill the whole lot generally.

Necro/* - suffers from the same weaknesses as Ninjas, but to a lesser extent really.

*/Arrow - Just lame and weak in every way pretty much. No one complains about this set because almost no one plays it.

*/Poison - suffers from lack of AoE abilities and absolutely no defenses to keep pets alive. Its reputation as an AV killer is, IMO, bogus since AV's resist debuffs extremely well. Also, with no defenses, they'll instakill all your pets right away anyway. People still swear about this but I've never seen anything recent. I'll come out and be fair with this, my first MM was Mercs/Poison -- took him to 50, purpled him out. Still sucks.

On the other hand...

Thugs/Traps - Awesome.
Bots/Traps - Awesome.

and the rest are "OK", generally average builds.

So thats really the problem, because some people will have great success with their MM and anyone whos says the class is weak say "L2P" and rip you down. Others are having a real challenge because their build is legitimately poor. The fact with MM's is that you have to be careful to do a bit of research to see if a build is potentially any good, it sucks when you level a toon up to some high level just to realize it has no end-game viability. MM's are just a picky class in general.

I don't know what the Devs are up to ever, no one on this planet does... but they really ignore this class, throwing us DS was a nice gesture but really they need to go back and tweak the existing stuff -- adding more primaries and the occasional secondary does a lot to give the ILLUSION of choice for MM's but nothing for the reality of the situtation.

I have a 47 bot/ff, My pets are my weapons. Except for the patron powers I have no attacks.

I dont agree that pets are over powered or even over AOE'd. The reason I believe this is the level scaling of the pets. What is it, -3, -2 and -1 to 'your' level?

Against even level mobs or lower level ya us master minds can kick butt. The real XP and drops are for +3's however and there we have to use our secondary to its max to be even with other classes.

I am thinking of times I have "tanked:" The only I recall was with an AV who just would not stop going after me no matter what. I put up PFF, ate a few greens and had some popcorn while the bots finished her off. I was not trying to tank, I just did. Or do you mean people who use pets to tank while they do damage? Is the damage scaling even worth snot for MM's?

It would be nice if Pets received some form of innate AoE defense, as they do get wiped in short order on higher end TFs.

There is also a clear gap in performance between Thugs/Robotics and all other pet sets, with a direct correlation to the very significant amount of defense that their LT tier pets grant. And if you notice, the combinations deemed to be most powerful always involve stacking MORE defense or ToHit debuffs on top of this innate advantage.