Mastermind pets take less damage somehow?

So bare with me, if anyone remembers Drone of the Skies, Robots/Pain dom MM, he could take on a full Inferno or Nova, or whatever and he and his pets took little to no damage at all, and i tried this, and the Bodyguard mode works of course, but i have issues with my pets, if they are hit by a nova or judgement they take on that full damage. My question is, did he just have some kind of epic build that i cant figure out, or was their a method to his madness? Help please?

Btw a note, for example, just now i went agiasnt @Aiolos with a ele/shield scrapper, and it did the aoes and judgement and killed me, well the judgement killed the pets pretty much out right. But Drones took on 2 Infernos i've seen before and the pets took close to nothing for damage, and so did he. So how is that?