MasterMinds and the new endgame

My bots/trap is a level 50+1 powerhouse. My bots enjoy 45% def if all is going well. I have provoke now that stamina is free. The typical well built MM can steam roll over most old content at 0/8 solo. I would say MMs and brutes are pretty close to the highest amount of damage and defense you would ever want to give a single toon in COH.

And now with the new level 54 content (tin/apex/incarnate trials), I see a huge shift. My end bar is getting chewed up harder than an all toggle spines/dark scrapper, because I need to resumon so often and re-equip my pets after every other spawn. My damage output has been severlry reduced because most times my pets run around unequiped or dead. My traps contributions also suffers.

Is this a Lrn2ply issue?
So is this the new normal for MMs, is this even a problem?
Do the new Incarnate powers fix this problem?
Does the AT need a buff to better handle this?

Lrn2play - dont think so; the new content does have some parts where you need to pickup the stealth IO and pop it in sprint and then unsummon all. I dont see how constantly using goto commands is gonna fly. My pets dont ever seem to do what I want them to no matter how many goto commands I give them. The pet AI is pretty hard to handle as it is, I dont see how making MMs more dependant on it would be a good thing.

The new normal, is this a problem? I think we are seeing more and more def debuff, higher tohit, and nasty AOEs. This hits us hard in 4 ways. We have no def debuf resistance, the higher levels and higher tohit bypass def, and AOEs are pretty good at killing our pets fast, our minions are already level -3.
So is this more devastating to MMs than to be expected? I think so. All def based classes now have to deal with the increased tohit and def debuff. The pet levels is something we have had to deal with all the time, and level shifts should fix it. The AOEs... this may be a problem when you stack everything else on top.

So I think the issue is AOEs with amped up tohit, from higher level foes (one shotting pets) may be a bit more damaging to MMs than how its supposed to be. The biggest problem is that pets are not smart enough to handle the AOEs. In WOW this problem was solved by giving pets massive AOE resistance to ignore the "dont stand in the goo" issue of boss fights.

Will this get any better with the new incarnate buffs? I dont see anything that will make it so pets are not getting one shotted by high powered high tohit AOEs, unless everybody picks the res/def buff and we are always close so its overlapped.

Some thoughs on the MM AT:
The MM is all about having building blocks(pets) that create your sword and shield around your toon to allow you to do damage and take damage. Each block that falls off gives you a weaker sword and shield and thats how you take down a MM. One shotting all the pets at the same time... well thats like shutting off all the scrappers armor and taking away their broadsword at the same time. Now becuase I picked traps my secondary is pretty darn strong all by itself, but I think the current AOEs of doom are abit too much for MMs.

Contrast a Fire/Traps to a Bots/Traps. In old content the bots/traps will have an easier time staying alive while still putting out good damage. In the new content the pets seem to be taking away value from the MM becuase of the end cost and resummoning time wasted when you probably should just give up and use your secondary most of the time. A fire/traps on the other hand is able to put out good damage and use traps just like normal as long as they can stay alive. The new content made it harder for both the MM and the fire/traps to stay alive but the MM is now unable to to do much of anything besides resummon alot.

If we dont go the WOW way and give all pets high levels of AOE def, what else can we do?

MM vengence.
This is a power much like nemi leuts get. So when one minion dies this power goes off and gives all other MM pets a 50% heal, 30% AOE def buff, and 50% resist all for 10 seconds. This power can not stack at all with any other copy of this power. This should help space out the deaths a MM needs to worry about, but still be short enough that its possible to kill all the pets via single target attacks when getting attacked by many foes.

-or-

Pet AI modes.
1 - Off - Bodyguard is 100% no matter what you command in this mode. Pets do nothing, not even follow you or defend themselves. You want them to move... goto or follow. Goto shuts off when they reach the target, and follow works like goto except where you stand is the automatic goto target. You want them to attack something target it and issue attack my target command. They will cycle through attacks, and if something is out of range of the attack they cancel that attack and select the next attack in the cycle until the target is dead, but they will NOT move into range. If a goto or follow command is issued all attacks and targets are lost.
2 - Attack off, move on - Bodyguard is 100% on. Pets will only follow you by default. If you give them an attack target they will close to melee/attack range if they have shorter ranged attack and thats the attack they want to execute next. Once then enter attack range they do not move back to the MM when they have a longer ranged attack. They will only move again if they need to reenter attack range. They will not defend themselves and you must target what you want to kill. If a goto or follow command is issued all attacks and targets are lost.
3 - On - Currently what we have. I think the newer content is showing just how bad pet AI is, and probably why WOW went with pets that bosses dont oneshot with dont stand here AOE patches or powers because its too much work to code the pets to respect that.

Techbot in 3...2...1...

Destiny and Lore will give more Incarnate Levels (+2 more, so henches will be +3 total). Take Barrier Destiny to boost henches Def and Res and perhaps Diamagnetic Interface to stack -ToHit so the +Def is more effective.

I've been on, and contributed just fine to Lambda and BAF, and only have an Interface Common slotted right now.

So it sounds like the new incarnate powers will solve all the issues. AOEs are the MMs weakspot and need to stay that way. I am fine with that.

Of all my 50s my MM is the one I am least interested in taking to the new raids. Tin mage and apex really cut me deep, much worse than any other 50 I got. I think resummoning and reequiping pets makes me unhappy somehow. I need a 12 step program for that. I call it fire/traps, and it only needs 12 more levels to 50

I do think the re-summoning end issue is too high. Personally I don't get the whole point behind having to spend 3/4 of your endurance bar to summon you main weapons.

It's not like you can re-summon MORE pets and cheat. It's not as if summoning your pets at once for 1/4 of your endurance would put you at some advantage. Again I just don't get it. It's something beyond my understanding.

Gonna sound silly maybe, but I have to say personally I feel more fortunate with my Robot Trap MM build then others in this new stuff. At least when my pets are down or the situation makes it impossible to summon them at least I have my traps and Trip mine to fall back on to do some debuffs / buffs and AOE damage. Others sets are sort of pigeon into either debuffing buffing or healing. Imagine being a Force Field MM without pets. You buff everyone up and your standing around for 4 minutes.

And on the flip side thank your lucky stars your not a Stalker. If a Stalker isn't the Team Lead he pretty much isn't getting a team now a days.

quite honestly I dont even know if I could put my ninjas thru the new stuff. They already get slaughtered with their paper thin defense. I come out better just being petless, thats saying alot coming from me since I see petless masterminds as an abomination. Ninjas wont live long enough to do hardly any damage against +4s. I think they should have given ninjas like extreme aoe defense so they live longer on teams for this kind of thing.

I haven't tried the BAF yet. I have run a couple of unsuccessful Lambdas with my bots/ff, and it wasn't the bots that cured me of that, it was trying to run */ff on a 16 person raid.

There is a LOT of AoE spam, especially PBAoE spam, not just in the raids, but in the newer TFs, too. The Admiral Sutter TF is the kind of aggravation masterminds haven't seen since the Virgil Tarikoss SF: requires you to be highly mobile, spams pet-slaughter AoEs. So it's not just the trials.

As a 50, not yet 50(+1), bots/ff I was able to contribute quite a bit to Lambda trial as long as I did one thing: give completely up on my previous role as a tanker-mind, play more like a blaster with mez protection and better +def, play the way most classes have to play -- TGIF, Tankers Go In First.

That being said, */traps masterminds depend so heavily on toe-bombing for a strategy that I have no idea what to tell you; you may actually be screwed. Or maybe somebody else knows how to work with those limitations; I'm not by any means the expert on */traps.

I'm NOT looking forward to trying to do the new content with my Ninja/Trick/Soul Tankermind. I suspect I'm going to have to do exactly what I had to on the Apex TF ... which is to abandon the pets as unworkable and simply become a Raptor Packing poor man's Debuffer, since without my ninjas, that's all I can do.

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

Sadly raptor packs and other temp powers doesn't work on the new trials

Eh, while i do notice the end drop from havin to resummon and reupgrade, there are situations where you just have to deal with the fact your going to lose either your full end bar, or all your pets.

As a /traps, you have plenty more to offer the team then your 6 mobile fortresses of doom. Acid mortar in itself can add a solid 20% damage increase, more so if things have a higher base def (or you have a lower tohit, which in the case of +4 mobs, you have a lower base tohit chance) FFG gives mez protection, and the trials are packed full of mez happy mobs. While it doesn't protect against fear, it covers the rest of the bases pretty well. Caltrops still messes with mobs AI, and if you can get multiple fields of them out, you can basically force the AI to run in circle while you (or your teammates) proceed to bash some face in.

I run upwards of 5 toggles at all times, and with the new trials, i've noticed i even keep super speed toggled, just to be able to get around places faster, especially if there isn't a kin on the team. That hurts the end bar something fierce, and having to resummon and reupgrade on top of that can really take its toil, but if i know ahead of time that my pets are just going to die anyways (bum rushing Marauder, the alpha almost always nukes my pets) or get in the way (temp power run in lambda) then i don't bother with resummoning until i know things are under control (after TPing out of the various warehouses after getting all 10 temps, or once marauder has some healthy debuffs on him)

a well built mastermind by default is a powerhouse, and these new trials may be the reality check people need to make them realize they aren't gods. I for one, really enjoy these trials, even if my pets get chewed up and spit out more often then not.

Adapt or die as Hanna puts it. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRUx88vRjIk)

I somehow very enjoy the new trials, but for a very different reason.

I have several MM's, thugs, mercs, necro at 50, the rest at somewhat lower.

From the very first day of my MM's, i really hated my Mercs. The way slower summoning (both summon as upgrades), the insane ammount of (useless) DoT's and the mez-abilities of the seals are a plain joke.

However, from the 3 50's i've ran, they suddenly turn out to be the most 'safe' MM to play. The trials have a huge ammount of AoE damage, as long the AI wont get retarted, my Mercs stay out of the damage for quite some time. Actualy for the first time ever, on either of my MM's, i had a smile while playing Mercs.

But on paper, i see Bots and Thugs doing equal if not better then Mercs, specialy bots being ranged and have -regen. My Thug MM had a bad run (we only had 9 players), so they were falling pretty much nonstop.

But everything that goes melee, those pets are dead. They really should pick up WoW's style of 90% AOE damage reduction, no freaking way they can survive AoE blows from +4-+6 mobs (lowest pet is afaik 48).

My /traps had best benefit overal, eventualy i just ran around debuffing with the /trap abilities, re-summon cannon-fodder on the go.

But to what level they want to keep this as a serious weakness? Majority of mobs in the trial have pretty heavy AoE damage, quite some more that i've seen in other TF's or sortlike.

True, would be nice that AI would be a bit better, but i think they pretty ran into the limit of what they can do to the AI of pets (alike melee heroes in GW).

Pet AI fix.. yes..

Still doing these trials with my Necro/Dark... Not having the biggest problems although I die with the best of them still.

Now I have some advantages compaired to some other pets as Zombies have a decent ressistance and Dark carries an (now enhanced) AoE heal. The AI makes all pets go into melee... which is good for zombies (but less so for most other mm's). Zombies also have a very quick resummoning. And the end problems that come with the resummoning I repaired by using the Cardiac Alpha... Ofcourse that is a diaster with the Alpha being bugged during the trials.

All over I noticed the dying of my pets ofcourse... Sometimes I only use them as meat shields and not even upgrade them. That saves a lot of end on the long run. Especially with Marauder. If they are still standing and fighting after 30-60 sec I hit them with the upgrade. If they are completely useless I go and do debuffing. Although that only works if I dont have aggro.

Pet-streaming (stand safe distance resummon>send>resummon) sometimes work. But not if the enemies are too strong.

I place a lot of hope in Destiny's Barrier. Even if I dont have it yet. And the level shifts will make a HUGE difference in the trials. Don't forget that the mm's benefit a LOT from the Interface power. You don't see the effects in anyway but they do devestating more damage. As mm's have it harder only in the AoE heavy trials I can understand that with progress in powers as Incarnate the survivabilty will go up immensly.

It would just be nice if the AI was better ...

- Zombies didn't have maggots for brains
- Ninja's wheren't novices
- Robots didn't run an ancient Microsoft OS
- Mercs wheren't rookies
etc

I can't stand resummoning all the time so I pretty much shelf all my lvl 50 MMs. And I don't play Robot or Thug. I only like Merc, Necro and Ninja. Of the 3, Merc does ok because most of them stay at range. Necro and Ninja have no business going in if they die in one hits.

I see less of problems for MM in BAF as you mostly fight in the "tennis court".

The second part of Lamba could be a lot more annoying as people run in to kill crates and then move on. Your pets will be lagging behind you (or dead instantly) and you lose Bodyguard. And also, pets are not very good at killing elite Turrets (luckily that part isn't hard with a full team).


I no longer enjoy MM because I believe the mechanism is broken. AoE damage is "supposed" to be Mastermind's counter? What is the counter for Brute/Scrapper and every other ATs that can do so well with set bonuses?

What used to be MM's "advantage" no longer seems like a real advantage. We all start with stamina (which used to be MM's biggest advantage early on with pets doing most of the damage). When other ATs are getting set bonuses, MMs lag behind. Yes, yes, yes...I know how mighty powerful your Robot/Thug are but I prefer Ninja (and they suck hard).

And I've said it many times. I refuse to take Taunt. If I want to taunt, I'll play Tanker/Brute. It's not my problem that my pets just die so fast even with buffs on. Destiny seems like a good team buff but they shouldn't balance an AT based on new Incarnate abilities.

Those complaining about pet survivability, I have a couple tips.

1) Lose the level 1s, especially if the level 2s are healers. Your L3 will stay alive longer, now that your L2s don't have the L1s to fuss over.

2) If you've got a buffs and heals in your secondary, turn it on the L3. Any Incarnate Trial league worth a damn anymore will have enough dedicated healers floating around, you're not gonna gimp anybody by healing your pets.

I discovered how effective this is during the BAF Trial. When the league engaged Siege, I let the Battle Drones die, fed the Assault Bot everything in my inspiration tray except blues and a Break Free, and spent the rest of the fight focusing my heals and buffs on him. With my /pain mastermind and her two Protector Bots keeping him healed and buffed, "Mossburg" stood right in Siege's face grinding away at his HP for almost the entire fight. I only had to resummon him ONCE.

I think for MM fixes three big things should be changed.

All pets agian 15% AoE Defense. Enough to be useful, not enough to really be game breaking.

Pet AI is fixed so melee pets go into melee and ranged pets stay at ranged OR the Attack Command is split into Attack at Melee and Attack at Range.

Pet Summoning Powers and Upgrades get their end costs reduced by 10%. Agian, enough to be helpful, but not enough to be game breaking.