Pairing beasts

What secondary set will you use to pair with Beast Mastery?

After having read through the description in the Intrepid Informer it seems like Time Manipulation will be a great set to pair it with, but since I already have too many /Time toons, what other set would be good to pair it with?

/Time or /Dark seem to make the most sense to me. /Time because of all the +DEF, a heal and it works best if you are in melee (which your pets will be as well). /Dark for a lot of the same reasons, although you can easily play that at range if you prefer a more "survey the battlefield" kind of playstyle. I'm also guessing Fluffy will heal the beasts, but not sure about that.

Personally, I'm making one of each, PL both to 38-40 and then keep the one that plays better. 6 hours of investment so why not?

Until they come to their senses and allow all pet powers to be slotted with recharge intensive pet sets, /storm.

I've tried /Storm but I really didn't like its single target heal. With pets it's AOE or bust imo.

While storm is one of my favorite sets, I don't see it pairing very well with Beast. The min function of the set is knockback, and melee pet hate that. They hate it so much in fact, they go on strike until the enemy gets back up and don't spend this time attacking them.

So even if you are skilled at storm and refrain from scattering enemies to the four winds, it seems fairly counter-intuitive for Beast.

Both /Time and /Dark seems like grand sets for it, and though I would recommend /Time, you seem set against it. Some other options:

/Force Field, will keep them on their feet, but offers no significant additional damage. Also has the problem of Force Bubble being nearly useless with melee pets.

/Thermal, Heals and resist shields. Beast doesn't seem to have any natural resist, but who doesn't want flaming wolves? The buffs and debuffs are not to be overlooked either, death is always a fantastic form of mitigation.

/Sonic, while I have never played it, seems rather like a Thermal without the heals and focusing more on buffing/debuffing. Still relying on resist shields, which by themselves will not keep squishy defense oriented pets on their feet.

/Pain Domination, has fantastic healing... this will help you greatly in the early game, but the higher you go the less the healing can contend with incoming damage, until it gets completely outclassed. There is an AoE buff, but it is resistance, and probably not enough to keep them kicking. However, nothing is quite like Painbringer. Also, there is a debuff to help your bests kill the enemy faster.

/Traps, Well, you can never really go wrong with /Traps. Yes, it does require a certain playstyle, but it has quite a bit of help to give your beasts. The Force Field Generator, while it does move slow, it recharges quick enough that you can just resummon it at whichever spot you moved to. You will be restricted to being in melee range with your pets, or you miss out on most of the power, so you will have to build up some self protection... Debuffs galore, some controlling ability when you give Poison Trap the Lockdown proc, One of the best alpha absorbers in the game, and the possibilty of exploding wolves. What's not to love?

However, I still highly recommend /Time.

Dark Miasma: Assuming you don't let your pets kill the anchor and you keep Darkest Night up at all times, and slot Fearsome Stare for to-hit debuff, there's a lot of to-hit debuff there; stack that with Scorpion Shield and you're soft-capped against anything unless it has debuff resistance. Best AoE heal in the game, assuming it doesn't miss. Good pet with its own AoE heal. Easily perma mag 3 single target hold, and Tar Patch will keep at least some mobs from kiting your beasts. Honestly, you can't go wrong with Dark Miasma with any mastermind primary, it's the canonical overpowered mastermind secondary.

Time Manipulation: AoE to hit debuff combines with an AoE +def power (eventually) to make you and your beasts nearly unhittable, plus strong slows and an easily permable mag 3 hold to cut back sharply on your beasts getting kited, plus two strong AoE heal over time abilities. Perfectly playable with beasts (or anything else), it's the other canonical overpowered mastermind secondary.

Traps: Mez protection, AoE +def that stacks with their +def, caltrops to keep (some) mobs from kiting them, web grenade to immobilize runners.

Force Field: Stacking AoE +def, even better mez protection than Traps, and it has the virtue of leaving you free to use your primary attacks. Nothing much else to recommend about it.

Sonic Resonance: Surprisingly good. Strong +res, mez protection as good as FF's, and a lovely (if end-hungry) toggle debuff that is perfect for melee pets. Nothing misses you (or your pets), so learn to live with debuffs, but otherwise not bad.

Poison: Better than you'd think. Single-target hold will protect you from non-boss mezzes (albeit only one mob per spawn) and Neurotoxic Breath is a better debuff than people give it credit for being, and melee pets are necessary to get the most benefit out of Noxious Gas. But you'll have to live with drawing tons of aggro, having no self mez protection, and having only a single-target heal. Still, not bad.

Thermal Radiation: Good +res, an AoE heal ... and you'll be mezzed full time, so you won't get to use either. Not completely unplayable, especially if somebody else is tanking, but not recommend.

Storm Summoning: Better than it looks, once you get Freezing Rain, which may be the single best mastermind secondary power in the whole game, but the heal is only single target and the to-hit debuff power, the recharge intensive pet, and the pseudo-pet turret all have the unpleasant side effect, for a melee pet set, of scattering enemies in all directions. Very playable, but for expert players only.

Pain Dominance: Meh. It has an AoE heal (that you will be too mezzed to use half the time), an AoE regen buff, and (if you can slot enough global +rech to keep it perma) a little bit of AoE +res. The real downside is that it's a very active secondary, which leaves you no time for your primary attacks which costs you those debuffs, and, as I say, no mez protection.

Trick Arrow: The absolutely best AoE debuffs in the whole game. But you will scream in rage and delete the character and reroll when you get to level 35 and find out that Oil Slick Arrow disables your beasts, by causing them to stop attacking and cower at the edge of the circle until the fire goes out. DO NOT USE.

for /Sonic on a MM you can get 41.6% resist to all but sonic, 22.5% -resist to all your enemies (45% on a boss of your choice), a cage power, a power (Liquefy) that will do approx. -37.5% tohit and -37.5% Def and the proverbial anti mez power.

This is an aweful lot of toys for a MM to use with thier pet. Yes, you will want to have a heal available eventually, but this is a strong baseline on which to build your char.

Wow, all these years later and I'm still defending Sonic Resonance.

As for Storm, you'd be surprised how much melee pets don't actually mind knockback.

On my ninja/storm MM, I use KB all the time (2 Lightning Storms each fight, Tornado as a panic button), and my Ninjas haven't complained once about it. In fact, they do this very ingenious thing... they *move to the target and keep attacking*, rather than stand there mid-combat explaining the mechanics of Rise to the Challenge ( jk, jk, I don't use Tornado on most teams)

Seriously, though, because of the way Tornado chooses targets (KB's one target, then stays there until that target stands up again, then chooses another target), the KB isn't actually that bad. Usually my pets are focusing fire on troublesome enemies, or whatever's closest to me, so just summon the Tornado far away from you and you won't even notice it.

I did some very brief testing with a Beast/Sonic MM since I thought it'd be a good combo.

Beast Mastery reminds me of zombies/ninjas..."need an AoE heal"...unless you like summoning pets over and over (which I don't). Beast "henchmen" are quite squishy it seems

I'm going to flatly say nobody should play this set. And I know I'm going to be attacked for this, but I have a valid reason for it; Synapse is aware of the set's issues, but there is (EMPHASIS)currently(EMPHASIS) no time to fix them at the moment.

This means, you're going to pay for an incomplete product that has not been fully addressed, but with acknowledged problems. While some people will be okay with this, and in the end it's your money, I do not like the idea that the fact Mastermind's are a minority means Beast Mastery doesn't need further attention.

If you absolutely must play this set, something that amplifies your damage is probably going to go a LOT further than anything that keeps your Beasts alive. Because your Beasts are arguably garbage useless pieces of data because their individual damage is worse than a Controller spamming Boxing.

And before someone tells me to shove it?

I played it on test with Dark and it has good synergy. However, as stated it has some issues that make the set overall a bit mediocre at this time.

A good thing is Synapse is aware that the set could use a bit of a punch up which does ensure it will not be long for improvements to come.

Beast/ Dark look to be the overall best pair because it cover all of beast limits.
Fast enemies? Tarpatch and fear,
Wolfs need lost of healing? Call dark servant in melee and let it help you heal pets with you AoE heals
Wolf die in alpha? -tohit debuff, Mezz the before pets go in
Range/flying enemies? Hold then and when they fall tar patch

You have anything you need with the Jack of all trade.