Ninja and undead secondaries

Y'all were tremendous help with demon secondaries, and I appreciate it - I ended up running several to 22, and it came down to a coin flip between thermal and dark for most fun and most productive. I ended up keeping the demon/thermal one, since I haven't really done thermal before and it is thematically such a great fit.

Since mastermind seems to be a sweet spot for me, I'm experimenting with centering my chronic altitis with various kinds of minion. Thugs and mercs just don't interest me much, but undead and ninja do. So...

What secondaries have you found particularly good with each of those? What has neat mechanical synergy? What would be a path to sorrow for me?

Edited to add: my snap judgments would be for dark or time with undead, and I'm less sure about ninja - maybe poison or trick arrow. (I'd do traps but I already have robot/traps going at the moment and am trying to avoid any duplication until I cover each of the primaries that interests me at least once.) But I'm really, really open to alternatives.

You're right on the money with your sense of undead synergies. Necro/dark is a classic pairing that is amazingly strong with little investment. It also responds very well to IOs and sets.

The undead minions each can reduce enemies' tohit, and gain a self-heal with their second upgrade. Since the primary can accept recharge-intensiv pet sets in soul extraction, it is possible to get 20% resists and 10% defense with the unique IOs. It is possible to layer a variety of protective measures with the undead that can lead to a deceptively robust group of minions.

Personally the necromancy set is my favorite group, and I have enjoyed every pairing except trick arrow. I also was not fond of /sonic walking dead while in beta; the shields never seemed to offer enough protection.

Ninja is a melee set with a little native defense (and it is tiny). Time and Forcefields are both popular pairings in an attempt to build on that strength. FF is also nice since the defense buffs stick to the minions, and ninjas have a tendency to sprint (read: haul ***) away.

Generally I think any pairing can be made to work if you have a concept you love. You might have to be creative with your tactics to get it effective. Good luck and experiment away!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville ...[I]t would be more proper to say this game is slooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooowly dying.

Very much obliged! I love the bits of extra explanation - I'm gradually building up the sense of just why some things are likely to work or not, and I like that.

I have an Incarnate Ninja/Trick Arrow Mastermind, who was my main villain for years (plural), and I can honestly recommend to anyone else who is thinking of trying this combination ...

DON'T

Ninjas are practically defenseLESS and fold like origami paper when breathed upon by hostiles. For this reason, when using Ninjas as your primary powerset, it is of paramount importance that your secondary powerset be something that actively promotes the survival of your Ninjas. Trick Arrow simply doesn't do that to any useful degree. In the late game, it felt like Trick Arrow was my Primary Powerset, and Ninja Summoning was my Secondary!

Secondaries which can actively promote the survival of your Ninjas are going to be Dark (big surprise), Force Fields (no surprise!), Storm (for Herdicane's To-hit Debuff and O2 Boost Healing), and Time Manipulation.

Pain Domination simply doesn't "do enough" to prevent your Ninjas from taking damage.
Poison simply doesn't "do enough" to help your Ninjas survive the damage they take.
Trick Arrow does almost nothing to help keep your Ninjas alive.
Thermal and Sonic don't "do enough" to mitigate the damage that your Ninjas will be taking to make them worthwhile since they're Resistance powersets.

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

As was mentioned FF works well with Ninja. Use mine to tank and with the changes to the application of shields it's not as much of a headache as it used to be.

As for Necro my favorite MM out of the ones I've made over the years is my Necro/Storm. -to hit work from the pets and the -to hit from hurricane is a fun combo. Performs well on teams but I like playing solo more just so I can really cut loose. I'm guessing /Traps would work well as well. Detonator seems to be tailor made for Soul Extraction. Just rolled one but haven't gotten high enough to see it in action.

Thanks! Some fun sounding possibilities there.

I have a Necro/Poison that I quite like, though I haven't played her much since the latest buffs. Given that each of the pets can self-heal, a set that gives +def would likely work well. Dark or FF would likely do the trick.

Honestly, necro goes pretty well with anything. Necro/dark is a beast though. But I've got a necro/TA and while far from optimised in terms of sets its pretty good. Necro is nice like that.

Ninjas, I'd go something with +def or -to hit to keep them standing. Actually, I apparently wouldnt, as I have a ninja/thermal in the 40s somewhere. But its far from synergystic.

Having said that, its still an MM. I can stomp through most content at a higher diff faster then a lot of my other alts, and my ninjas dont die THAT much. Its just that they die more then any other pet set.

I can't offer much, but I can definitely say Necro/Dark is a pretty good combo, just got done running one through First Ward and jumping him to Primal Earth.

The only minor drawback to the heal is that it targets an enemy to do a -to hit (I think) but the heal effect itself is PBAoE, so you have to A) make sure it hits and B) be close enough to affect your crowd. It's really not a big issue, but it does hurt when you miss with it and lose some zombies. (Though that's what Extract Soul helps mitigate)

Tar Patch is also *golden*, offering a slow and -Res. Drop it in the middle of a mob and yell 'sick 'em' and watch the mob go down. I really wish I'd taken it sooner than I did.

But ya, basically /Dark offers a lot of nice complementary skills.

Thanks! I've just started one up - and I'm interested that you did Praetorian stuff with a mastermind, since it occurred to me over the weekend that I would probably have more success and fun doing it that way than with anything else I've tried. And so I am.

I've made a lot of Masterminds. My first 50 was a Necro/Dark, and it works great.

Ignoring that it's wonderful thematically, you share a few powers with the Lich pet (Fearsome Stare, Petrifying Gaze) and Fearsome Stare also shows up on the Dark Servant, which is incredibly easy to make permanent.

Twilight Grasp is a very powerful heal, though unless something has changed recently, it's area of effect is half as much on a mastermind as it is on a def/corr. Incidentally, your Dark Servant also has Twilight Grasp, which in addition to healing you and anyone near you, debuffs the enemy (-regen, -to hit, -dmg)

Tar Patch is one of my favorite powers in the game. -speed and -res, easy to have permanent (and stacking) and it's all an on the ground graphic, so it doesn't disrupt my view of what's going on like, for example freezing rain might.

Darkest Night... I didn't take this for a long time. I didn't really want to manage a toggle that kept dropping every time the target died, and I hadn't really read what it did. Not taking it was the biggest mistake of my first 40 levels.

Howling Twilight is an amazing Rez. AoE, stuns enemies, fears them, debuffs their regen by 500% as well as their recharge and move speed. In later levels I had the recharge low enough on this power that I was occasionally using it when no one was dead just to wreck the enemies for the rest of the party, and if people WERE dying, unless they were in separate rooms, this got them all back up at once.

Shadow fall is a decent power that I sometimes forget to turn on, but along with IOs and Base Resistances, it got the Negative Energy resist on some of the pets up in the 60% range. Admittedly, it's not the most common damage type to be hit by, but it's fairly impressive. There's also 15% Psionic resistance on this power, and that is nothing to scoff at.

The mezzes are nice, and as I mentioned they stack with the Lich and Dark Servant.

I have never, EVER used Black Hole.


I think Poison and Pain Domination would also go well with Necro thematically, but I haven't played either one above level 12.

Now, you also asked about Ninjas. I made a Ninja mastermind not long after the Necro one hit 50. I really wanted the thematic, so I put Trick Arrow on it. I deleted it less than a day later, and re-rolled it as a Dark, because Dark has enough going on that it will make a powerful match with just about any pet set, and I managed to swing the thematic to fit the ninjas. I stopped playing that MM around level 20 though, and eventually re-made it as a /Time, which has been wonderful, although it requires a very active playstyle to keep the ninjas alive (using the AoE heal a lot, and also Temporal Selection) But on the other hand, between Time's Juncture, Distortion field, and Caltrops from both Jonin, you can definitely slow things down a bit. The other Buffs and Debuffs on time are very nice, although I haven't gotten this one to get all of them yet.

Anyway, good luck with whatever you choose or have chosen.

Thank you! The extra context is very, very helpful.

Necro meshes way too well with Traps for me to want to play other secondaries. For ninjas, any of the buff inclusives would work well. Trick arrow would be good except that masterminds only get 1/3 as much out of it as defenders. With a set that already has less powerful versions of debuffs from other sets, it's a deathblow.

Ninja/Thermal works very well. Poison can be good but it's a very single target combo. Force Field is always survivable but you'd probably miss having a heal. I can't offer any opinions of Time as I've not tried it at all with masterminds yet.

Dark or Thermal would be my first picks for Ninja. Particularly now that Twilight Grasp got fixed.

Just as a bit of follow-up...

Necro/dark proved as awesome as I expected and as everyone said. Not surprising, just great.

Ninja/time proved very entertaining. It requires a whole lot of being in enemies' faces, which is the opposite of how I usually play masterminds. But with the guys in gray and black kept upright long enough to do their thing, it's quite a slaughterfest. A good addition to my mastermind portfolio.

Zombies/Thermal is kind of fun. Your zombies look really cool with fire on them. However, unfortunately it doesn't stack well. Your zombies mostly don't have smash/lethal resistance to go with the shields.

Still, I like my zombies/thermal. I skipped the zombies and just took knights and lich (and Soul Extraction, of course.)

For ninjas, I totally agree with other posters that you need some kind of defense or-ToHit to stack with their innate defense. The Jounin top off around 16% defense (I skipped Genin.... stylistic objection to their appearance.) You can raise that to 21% if you take the Edict of the Master +5% defense proc, but you need them closer to 45% if you want them to be bad a$$.

So far Necro/Time is a hoot (though I am only level 13). My undead henchmen want to be in melee, and with my big -tohit aura and a team heal, I am happy to join them in BG mode. Good stuff!

Right now my Ninja/Time is allowing me to solo every AV or GM I encounter. And, I solo them as AVs not watered-down Elite Bosses. I think my time record for killing an AV is about 2 minutes.