What works well with Sonic/Force fields?

Or should it be who?


Anyway, I've been considering barrior secondaries off and on but but I truely can't figure who they would work for.

So I, the humble uninformed ask the wise greatly informed what primary aka set of minions gain more from a leader that can shield their lives but can't bandage them.

Flat and Brutal: Sonic and Force Field are inferior, on Masterminds, to Thermal and Traps for a few specific reasons. Primarily that healing is really good on Masterminds, and Traps debuffs more than outweight the paltry Defense gain from Force Fields

IF you're dead set on these two...

Force Fields: Robotics, IguessBeastMasteryUgh, Ninjas, Thugs, Demons
Sonic Shield: Demons, IguessBeastMasteryUgh.

Synergy up there. As I stressed before, Traps and Thermal do it these jobs FAR better, but yeah.

Well, just about any set of minions can benefit. It's a matter of how active and in what ways you want to be. I'm kind of sluggish at the best of times, so buffing my pets and party mates works well for me for all the times I don't feel super coordinated.

At low levels, melee pets will benefit more, unsurprisingly. Genin like bubbles. So do wolves. Robots and demons don't dislike them, but it's less of a big deal. Higher up, Repulsion Field is great for tankerminding with any set at all. At incarnate levels, force field is nice but sonic really shines.

After seeing the numbers and watching a couple in action, I decided to give the new Beast Mastery set a shot with Sonic. Despite it's shortcomings (which I feel will be looked at), Beast offers some nice synergy, albeit not the *very* best.

They're the first two sets I consider whenever I play a Mastermind and I don't have a concept in mind that requires a particular secondary. The self-mez-protection and hands-free nature are the key factors for me.

I personally can't get into Sonic. I like to have my pets avoid attacks more than resist them.

I do like Force Field.

Traps is a jack-of-all trades, master of AV soloing. Because traps is at its best in stationary, long-term fights and has ample -Regen and -Resistance. But if you don't like to wait for your force field generator to catch up with you, hate watching mobs scatter from Acid Mortar's fear, and don't care about soloing AVs with PGT's -regen, I'd recommend FF over Sonic.

FF is a one-trick pony, but its a very good trick. Your pets are very much godlike-tough. FF (with PBU from Mace Mastery) will cap your pet's defense on just SO's alone (25 defense from shields, 12 from Dispersion Bubble, 4 from Maneuvers, 5 from pet IO). If you add in the ATO +AoE Defense IO, you can get them to incarnate softcap vs. AoEs (a godsend).

Traps cannot do that, because its not as specialized. Traps will get your pets 25 Defense (16 FFG, 4 Maneuvers, 5 from pet IO). Because FFG is a pet, it cannot benefit from Mace's power boost power. One of the reasons Traps is paired with Bots so often, is the Protector Bots will make up the missing difference in Defense Traps fails to provide (with 2 prot bot bubbles, your assault bot and drones get to soft cap, the prot bots wind up at 36% def).

FF paired with Bots gets your pets to ridiculous levels of Defense, enough to account for Defense Debuffs (which again, traps cannot do). My Robot/FF/Mace assault bot sits at 68% Defense vs. Melee/Range and 83% vs. AoE. That's well over incarnate soft-cap and plenty of room for regular missions with some debuffing.

While I don't normally run Force Bubble all the time, I can use it well to herd entire groups into corners, where BigBot's AoEs can melt them down. Its also valuable in things like the BAF trial, where area denial powers can help make choke points easier to manage.

If you want a barrier power and you want pets that are tough as nails, i'd recommend FF, myself. My only major gripe with FF was the individual buffing, but since the buff patch last year, its no longer a chore to buff the pets and teammates, and I have lots of time to use my attacks (yes, MM attacks are rather anemic originally, but you'd be surprised how well +damage procs and Interface incarnate procs can up that to be respectable additions to your pets, and you can actually feel like you are part of the firefight).

have fun, either way you go, MMs are a fun class, and saying one is worse than another is like saying one high-end sports car is worse than another high end sports car.

Sonic is GREAT with Beast. Beast have respectable natural defense and resistance, slot Sonic buffs well and get the unique IOs. You can get your pets near 80% resistance to S/L/C, with about 50% to all else.

The pets start out with about 10% to all positions, raised to 15% with the unique IO. 19% with maneuevers, and then 41.5% with a properly slotted Fortify Pack. Very near the soft cap for defense and hardcap for resistance.

If I was going to pick a primary to go with Sonic, it'd be Demons. They have the most inherent and internally buffed Resistances (and can take both +10% auras, easily muled in Hell on Earth). I would imagine that, well slotted, you could hit upwards of 80-90% res to most damage types on a demon/sonic, then take Aid Other for healing.

For Force Fields, it's a toss up between Thugs and Bots, but honestly, having mained a /Force Mastermind for years upon years (my first villain, Bot/Force), I would never recommend the set. Traps has adequate pet defenses, BETTER personal defense (yes, FFG is better than Disperson Bubble), and has MANY more tools in its tool kit. The only non-defense boosting powers in Force Fields I EVER use are Force Bolt (which I wouldn't take if I wasn't forced to) and Force Bubble, which sees play in BAF and occasionally when **** hits the fan on ITFs.

/Cold Domination on Masterminds will be, in my opinion, the final nail in the coffin of Force Fields, unless it sees some dramatic improvement in breadth of ability.

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.

I like Force Field a lot on Ninja and I think Force Field should work well with Necro too. I see a lot of Robot/Force.

I don't like Sonic even on my Corruptor.

Sonic probably works better with Demon, Thug and Beast. I don't think Sonic would work well with Ninja because they have like almost no resistance to stack with, even though they are melee-oriented.

force field to me is god awful boring to play, i used it on 1 toon and that toon essentially collects dust unless i feel like breaking him out now and then

ive honestly never really had anything good with sonic, ive tried to play it on seperate occasions but its lack of debuff is very annoying (almost all the debuffs are resist with 1 long rech power doing -def/-tohit)

i LOVE traps though i think my most recent toon i started is beast mastery/traps (i can turn my weak dogs into time bombs hehehe)

The enjoyability of both sets goes up if you simply skip the tier 1 pet. I know it technically makes you less powerful, but it also does away with over half the tedium of the game, because otherwise you'll be constantly resummoning them again and again and...... again.

You've only got one heal, so if the enemy has AOE's, and most late game enemies do, you'll never keep up with the needs of six pets.

FF+AoE ATO IO+Rebirth means never having to say goodbye to any pets.

For Sonic I'd only go with Bots or Demons.

For FF, I'd go with sets that offer attacks you enjoy (like Demons or Beast), because you have time to actually do other stuff. Any set that offers base Def for pets is nice cause it stacks (Demons get high resists, which is also good)

I'm curious why nobody says to go Necro/Sonic? It's not a perfect pairing, but it's not bad. Is it just because few players like to play Necro to start with?

I have a Demons/FF in her 20s that's pretty fun; the whip attacks help avoid the main problem with FF which is the sheer boredom of sitting their doing nothing while your pets kill stuff. The same should be true of Beast I expect.

If you do go Necro/Sonic or Force Field, you will probably like having that uninterruptable heal from Life Drain. The downside is you can't really max anything out. For /FF you get your pets up to around 35% def and then stop (perhaps managing to get their AOE defense up to 45% though, for tanker minding.) For /Sonic, the upper division pets have no native smashing/lethal defense to stack on, so you'll probably only get resistance up to a max of 60% with both resistance procs. However, they'll be resistant to absolutely all damage types. (Psionics will likely only get up to 46%, as their lowest resist.)