Are we the black sheep?

In their own element, masterminds are powerful. No, scratch that, they're an army unto themselves. But lately, especially with the majority of endgame content, it seems there has been a large shift to make them as useless as possible. Hear me out.

I was running some of the incarnate trials on my mastermind and discovered several things of note. The first is how pets are generally 1-shot by anything that remotely resembles a tougher target. The second is how, with a large majority of the maps, pets can effectively get "lost" and separated from the mastermind. The third thing, of course, is that some missions actively discourage the use of any pets, such as one where you're trying to say the public opinion. Having pets out, in the latter case, usually means civilians eating a hailstorm of bullets.

It's quite difficult to play effectively (or indeed do much of anything) without our pets and aside from in a standard fight where we will continue to shine, the incarnate content seems to put masterminds up against the wall.

If you guys have any tips for running masterminds in these types of conditions, by all means let's hear them. But it does seem that masterminds are less than ideal for the sort of missions that incarnates find themselves in.

You're damn right the MMs are the black sheep, because we're the king kong kamehameha badasses. We're the ones Scrappers aspire to be, Brutes whine to their mom's about, and tanks say "yeah, they're the redside version of me!", even though they know we're not.

For iTrials, the basics I follow are this:

1. Take your time. I'm not good at speeding with an MM, but I could solo a crate/container with +1 level shift. Push to the thing you want to kill, killing the enemies along the way, then kill it. Even if you only get one, there's 8 people on your team. You'll more than make up for it against the AVs.

2. Everything needs to avoid the patches. Keep an eye open, and use you're GoTo/Passive, then defensive. Keep pets out of patches.

3. This is league content. Yes, with 3 level shifts I can engage An AV on my own and usually wait for the team to follow. However this is stuff that requires multiple teams. Leverage the buffs to keep your pets alive against these killer enemies.

4. An extension of 3. Keep pets close. In iTrials, your pets are even level while in supremacy range. This is a huge boost, that will often be the difference in keeping them alive.

5. Know what powers your pets have, and what upgrade gives which powers. In TPN it's Grave Knights with two upgrades, and Zombies with none for Necromicus. That's completely single target. I set them to Passive and pick their targets, and it won't be my pets that take out a camera or civilian.

Masterminds in general have a hard time with higher level, fast moving content. That's anything, not just Trials. I have had to dismiss my bots in order to follow a team on a large map where they're just hitting the objectives.

I don't have a lot of advice for TPN as I haven't played it much. Maybe don't upgrade the bots fully, as most of the AoE is in the final upgrade. Use the "attack my target command" and if the bots have mostly single target attacks then the bots shouldn't damage civilians much. However I haven't tried this, so take it with a grain of salt.

The other thing to consider is just playing as a buffer and leaving the bots out of it. Put them on passive or spam "def follow", and just try to buf and support the dangerous parts of the Trial. It's maybe not how you envision playing, but part of the idea of these Trials are that they give you have different situations to adapt to, so I feel out of the box thinking is required here.

Just my 2 cents.

Itrials are getting a bit better for MMs. In MoM Trial, they made it so pets are not hurt by the purple patch on the ground.

If you've done Apex, you should know how awful that final fight is for MMs. Not only there are ambushes everywhere, if your pets run through the patch, they die almost instantly.

I think the dev do know that MMs are at disadvantage in a lot of high-end stages. They've increased tier 1 and tier 2 to match Master's level.


You are not the only one that feels MMs are worse as the content gets harder. When you include all the crazy set bonuses, pets don't get nearly as much because the most you can give them is two sets of pet uniques (and now one from ATO for aoe defense). And I disagree that the key to success is Bodyguard mode. I HATE Bodyguard mode. I never understand the concept behind it. I am a summoner and not a freaking Tanker that wants to draw aggro to myself. Being a summoner-type, the last thing I want is to draw aggro to myself. I know Bodyguard mode works sometimes but I really dislike the design behind it. Call me crazy. I rather babysit the pets than trying to draw aggro to myself and let my pets choose and chase their targets.

And then you have one or two MM set combos like Robot/Trap with taunt that can solo AVs/GM because of bodyguard mode and everyone thinks MM is superior. Sadly, I don't play Robot, Thug and Demon. I only play Ninja, Necro and Merc and my experience of them are never "superior". They require a lot of babysitting. Ninja dies too quick. Necro lacks aoe damage and dies quick too. And Merc just doesn't do enough damage.


At some point, the dev needs to decide if Mastermind's base-line performance is based on Robot and Thug. If so, they've got a lot of balancing to do. :P

While I think that good points have been raised here and there are certainly particular aspects of some of the Incarnate Trials (the tpn civilians and the lambda sabotage runs come to mind), there are also encounters in the Incarnate trials that favor Masterminds. The most obvious is the prisoner's phase of the BAF which is made absolutely trivial with enough Masterminds, but the final phase of the MoM trial with its need for rapid dps can also be leveraged easily for an MM since it's not so different from how you would take out an AV or GM solo.


Also, since the henchmens' level is dependent on your own, an MM is at an especially severe disadvantage without level shifts. However, once shifted, I've found my MM is a powerful contributor on trials. I do have to occasionally dismiss and resummon pets for certain phases, but I adapt.

Baa

Or you could join all Mastermind runs like the ones I did today. We obliterated stuff in the incarnate trials better than any other group I've been on. We completed 2 Mos and 1 normal Keyes.

We are the black sheep because we are the only AT that functions well when stacked with others of our kind.

Yes. I am serious.

I am not saying that we are the only AT that can do this. I am saying that Masterminds are the best at it.

'Best' is relative of course and you might have a case there, but as far as 'only AT that functions well with others of our kind', well, the Repeat Offenders might want to have a word with you. Also Tanker Tuesdays and any number of others, but the Repeat Offender all-defender teams in particular would be a strong contender for 'functions well'.

What makes MMs particularly more 'decimating' with more of its kind is that their secondary is full of the same kind of buffs and debuffs that Defenders have (in addition to have some controls and the buffs and controls the pets have). Then you apply that to over 70 pets who are now running around with capped stats. So, you have 8 capped defenders v. 80 capped critters. I think I know who wins in the damage department.

Masterminds struggle with two kinds of content far worse than any other AT: content where you are forced to ignore groups of enemies during a fight (which messes with the already... unimpressive Pet AI and frequently gets your pets killed), and content where heavy Area damage is a constant. Unfortunately the trials are loaded with both of these content types and there's not much you can do but grin and bear it.

I24 Proc Chance = (Enhanced Recharge + Activation Time) * (Current PPM * 1.25) / 60*(1 + .75*(.15*Radius - 0.011*Radius*(360-Arc)/30))
Single Target Radius = 0. AoE Non-Cone Arc = 360.