/Time the new TankerMind?

I was teamed up with a Thugs/Time MM last night, all of us around lvl 35. He was using the Times Juncture power and basically wading into +2/x8 spawns with it running, grabbing aggro (wasn't aware it did that actually) and then running to the next spawn, grabbing aggro there as well and pulling them to one another. Then his Thug entourage would just pretty much take everything out. Several of the rest of us were pretty much just along for the farming show.

Amazing synergy....I have seen other Tankerminds with Provoke doing this but wow...just...wow. Makes me want that combo now!

Anyone know if Bots/Time would work as well as this?

It'll work wonderfully, right until you hit spawns with mezzers.

game was not balanced around IOs, incarnates, blah blah blah.

stop being lazy and learn to plug in whatever deficiencies your powerset has with the tools that are available in the game.

Mezz? get clarion. dont want clarion? buy break frees. dont want to keep going to the vendor for BFs? make a macro to constantly combine the insp that DO drop from all the x8 spawns you are clearing b/c you are a mastermind.

etc etc etc. stop being lazy learn the game and learn to make your favorite toon a +4x8 malta/longbow/devouring earth destroyer. Teaming in fun but roflstomping b/c you built a powerhouse character is even more fun.

and yes /time is ezmode. you dont need provoke when you can softcap yourself and your pets as well as debuff your enemies to hit/damage/defense/resistance/recharge/regen in a matter of seconds.

@Vinceq1980 and Gospel NA:

The topic is about whether or not Time Manipulation is "the new tankermind".

It is not about "how can you improve it?".


Every set can be made pretty good, especially Time Manipulation, but it is not the best for a "tankermind", and sometimes just doesn't work.

Here is why:

1) Time Manipulation is almost wholly dependent on debuffs.
They can and are resisted by the enemies that "tankerminding" is done against. any other enemy is easy enough for the pets without the Mastermind tanking.

2) Those debuffs that are so important to Time Manipulation have a target cap.
They can only affect maybe 16 enemies at most. Time Manipulation really starts to fail when you are fighting over the aggro cap, such as Masterminds do when they crank the difficulty up to x8, because each enemy above the cap is not debuffed.

3) Probably the most important power in Time Manipulation is Time's Juncture, an offensive toggle.
If you're "tankerminding" then you are bound to get hit by a mez at some point, severely reducing your survival.
(Yes, you can take certain powers and inspirations to deal with it, but those are limited to certain levels and certain max amount of storage space. They're not the best choice even if they work, and they make the fight even more busy with an already busy archetype.)

4) Other sets just plain "tankermind" better, though they are not exactly easy to do that either.
Time Manipulation certainly will be more difficult to use to do the same considering how busy the set is.




Really, the first 3 points are the most important.

Debuffs have that target limit that prevents optimal effectiveness against many enemies while they are resisted by the tougher enemies, making them less valuable in both situations. One of your most important defensive powers also has the detoggle issue because it is an offensive debuff toggle.


Time Manipulation is far from ideal for "tankerminding". It's rather simple to see.









So, if you really want to "tankermind" then you're interested in performance more than a specific theme, or whatever makes you choose one set over a better one for the job.
You either want Time Manipulation and want to make it as good as you can or you want a "tankermind" and should look elsewhere for one that can reliably do so.

Traps is really difficult to beat for tankerminding. Being able to drop seeker drones on top of the next spawn in order to soak up all the alpha and mezzes simply cannot be matched by the other secondaries.

Time does have tools for dealing with mezzing without having to rely on Clarion or break frees. Having them along does open up horizons though. The real downside that I see is Time has a voracious appetite for endurance. If you're running Time's Juncture and don't have a huge amount of end reduction slotted, you almost have to choose between healing, buffing or debuffing.

All I'm going to say is just take this one experience with a grain of salt. He was part of a team and he was running 2/8. I know he was semi soloing and such, but I was fighting Death Surge ( Giant Monster ) solo yesterday and lost my FFG and all my Robots except for Assault Bot from one good AOE hit. I resummoned the pets but didn't notice the FFG for a bit. I was still getting attacked with only 1 pet and no FFG. I lost at a minimum of 15% defense wise with FFG down. I still was not getting hit.

He popped Farsight and had Time Juncture running. I forget to resummon my FFG every 4 minutes I couldn't imagine having to remember to recast Farsight every 2 minutes. Just seems too much of a pain in the backside.

So at a minimum he was AOE and Melee capped. I doubt he was range capped ( at least at that level ). And as some mentioned Mezz is gonna mess up that build because Time Juncture plays a big part in getting those defenses capped.

I could do 3/8 setting of CoTs and bring out no pets if I just wanted to make an impression.

My SOA Huntsman can solo Malta on a 4/8 setting. Yes I said it, Malta.. I just did it to see. It was a paper mission and I used it to get TIP missions. I did the mission 2 times on 4/8.. It was a busy fight but I was able to do it and I didn't die.

I think you were at the right place at the right time.

I'm not saying Time isn't good. But to you need Farsight Perma and you need to obtain range cap. It isn't that easy doing that without gimping something in the set. With Traps your not necessarily doing that and I think that is the difference.

Microcosm mentioned Clarion. I have Clarion T4 on my Dark Electric Defender because I rely on Darkest Night to obtain melee and aoe similarly to time Juncture, I have Range cap via set bonses. It kills me when I get mezzed because if I don't have a break free handy or 3 similar inspirations to make one, it pretty much means the death of me almost instantaneously. But even Clarion is not the cure all fix all.

I'm just not a fan of having rely on -ToHit Debuff to obtain my defense caps. Just too much can go wrong with it.

I really have to respectfully disagree with T Immortalus. /Time, on paper (my highest /time MM is only 24 so far), seems to have many tools for being an effective thugs/bots Tankermind. Allow me to list them out.

1. Softcapped pets and MM. Farsight, which I argue to be easily the best power in /time, provides when powerboosted 20-21% defense to all. Let that sink in. That's 5 more than FFG. It's much less than powerboosted FF shields, but softcap is softcap. Extra def does very little (except for incarnate, but def is dime a dozen in those trials). In fact, the only purpose for def beyond the soft cap is for def debuffs or high acc mobs, both of which would largely ignore the defense provided by FF, time, or traps.

2. Effective AoE backup healing. This is something traps and FF really can't match. Triage beacon does regen which is far less useful for low hp pets, and FF can't heal at all. The only source of reliable healing is the medicine pool, which 1) is available to everyone and 2) is hardly comparable to temporal mending/selection and chrono shift. Unaccelerated, temporal mending, which can be powerboosted need I remind you, provides FAR more net healing per cast than any other healing aura, despite its longer rech duration. For particularly flimsy and suicidal pets such as the arsonist or the prot bots, temporal selection makes temporal mending heal WAY WAY more than any other healing aura.

3. The debuffs are at the very least comparable to any other debuff set. I won't bore you with the minute details, but if you care, familiarize yourself with the debuff #s on the MM secondaries. Considering how /time doesn't particularly focus on one debuff such as dark but instead debuffs across the board like traps, the numbers are still significant enough to be effective. 15% to-hit debuff. 100+ slow and rech debuff. 15% dmg debuff. 22-27% def/res debuff. 150% regen debuff. Compared to the heavy favorite traps, the debuffs aren't as strong. But then the traps debuffs aren't as mobile or widespread (time debuffs at 25' ft). It's a tradeoff, but /time is certainly no slouch, especially considering the fact that the tohit debuff can be powerboosted, unlike traps.

So in the endgame, we have a thugs or bots MM who carries relatively effective AoE debuffs, has softcapped pets, has softcapped MM (with powerboosted farsight), and has actually very effective AoE healing capabilities. In fact, the only weaknesses I can find is the lack of mez protection and the weak regen debuffing. Clarion can fix the first weakness and the Assault Bot's regen debuffing will cover the other weakness. Sounds like a tankermind who's at least as strong as FF (in my opinion, much stronger) and traps.

Don't believe me? Here's two mids builds, one for thugs and one for bots. Both have inefficient slotting (terrible imo lol) and are incomplete, but both are still softcapped to S/L/E/R/AoE. And I don't buy the argument that the devs will "nerf" powerboosting farsight. Plenty of powers become ridiculous when powerboosted, why would they single out farsight?

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I made this mm a hero..Now I want to go villside and get fricken power boost..I'm demons/time and it could be a tankermind with powerboost..But I could go fire for ancillary and get the rez...idk QQ

Bots/Time here.

Power Boost + Farsight + Scorpion Shield and set bonuses and I am capped to S/L. My bots are capped to hell and back. I debuff tohit just by wading into the thick of things. If anything actually DOES get through to my unstoppable robotic army of teflon coated doom, one heal patches things back up and by then, everything is usually dead.

Now, it's not flawless. You can't be sloppy; you have to spot the mezzers and take them out, or let the bots primarily take the aggro so the mezzers ignore you. If you do get mezzed, TJ goes down... but PB+FS+SS means you still have a good amount of mitigation, and once you unmez, you can heal back anything you got smacked with.

I wouldn't call it god tier, but it's absolutely a very solid combination. I usually wade right into spawns with the pets on Aggressive Follow and any doom which occurs tilts in favor of me and against the mobs.

Whats insane about Thugs/Time for me is the amount of def they have. I looked at combat attributes on my brute and he had 57.26% to everything. I have all Blood Mandate slotted on my Thugs. NO extra def coming from the enforcers except for the base.

I have a thugs/time 50. Its a wonder combo to play. You that have not should give it a try.

Just gonna say on a 8/4 setting your probably going to meet up with more then 1 mezzer. Dark is somewhat comparable in the sense they both work hit debuffs to obtain defense cap. I can clearly say that I when the hit debuffs work they are great..

But..

When the hit debuff fails and it does more then I like it to. I face plant super fast.

I picked up Clarion to cover this weakness. The problem I fall into is when I am winding down from the initial buff of Clarion and once again I am getting hit by a mezz.

I will say that the combine 3 inspirations macro works sometimes. But is lacking because you simply get difference variances of the same type of inspiration sometime it makes it impossible to do a combine. I am more then positive many have laid there dead with a full inspiration tray and not being able to make a combine for a wake inspiration. It would be nice if they just allowed you to combine 3 same inspirations regardless of level and give you the lowest setting for the combine, which is better then nothing.

So I can agree that shoring up this weakness of the Time set will help most of the time ( no pun intended ). I think the one big, big issue is clearly going to be the debuff limit because once again with dark that is the issue I fall into when trying to do 4/8 on that toon.

So between those 2 issues your trying to shore up and work around I think that is where Traps and specifically Robot Traps is a much better set if I were going to make a choice for the BEST Tankermind choice.

I agree that Time is a good Tankermind choice concept understanding its issues.

I think the advantage that Traps has is that before incarnates your already set up with no need of anything beyond the build. So everything else you choose just boost a Traps build up even more.

I have a DS Pain tankermind build that works, but it is nothing compared to my Robot Traps. Again I do feel that Incarnate slotting will make it much better and bring it up to Robot Traps level Tankermind. But again my Robot Traps will be past that level with the incarnates.

As a simple example while a Time player is making break free inspirations for that just in case moment. I can do the same macro and make Damage inspirations that I can feed to the pets to increase their DPS not fearing that just in case moment.

So I will go along to agree that Time along with Traps and Force Field and even other particular builds can be in the Tankermind Category. But Traps is King of the hill when all the cards are laid out on the table.