MasterMind Thugs

Can a MasterMind thug/traps with other powers leadership and fighting be a good damagedealer or something like this?? does this sound good or no? opinions welcome

Welcome to the Forums. Thugs/anything is great but traps is especially good because you will get Tripmines for more damage (of course) but also your enforcers Maneuvers will stack with the force field generator so your pets will have a lot of defense as long as they stay nearby. So of course any foes with knockback will ruin everything but other then that you will be very strong. Leadership will also help but no need to get fighting, get something else like heal other or hasten.

Another good bonus from thugs is they do primarily 3 types of damage: lethal (gunfire), smashing, and fire. Any particular foe that spawns may resist one of the type but not all three. With traps, the acid mortar will negate the resistances to damage types.

You may not know this, but stacking leadership with multiple thugs masterminds is a very effective synergy -- unless this was modified recently.

well i chose fighting because of the thugs get killed or for whatever reason the enemies decide to fight me. I decided fighting because kick offers a knockback ability, along with the other gun knockback techniques I thought it would be a good combination, and it deals much more damage than my normal gun fighting +! less endurance. I didnt even add a damage enhancement on it, but i did on my dual pistols ability.. it completely blew away my damage ratio compared to dual pistols which had 2 +10 damage enhancements on it.
I had a question about Leadership and my pets, will the final leadership ability Vengance work if 1 of my pets die? Also, I said I chose 2 other abilities, will i be able to choose a 3rd?

Thugs/Dark

just

thugs/dark

OH! i forgot!
Can a MM become a melee damage dealer persay? like because i knew my MM would be in battle sometimes, more than i would like, but i knew it would fight to " i really wanted to be like a back up or a buffer later, but i had to start fighting earlier on. " Not a MM you want to be if you just want the pets to kill everything and live. " "
I am in battle sooo much I have somewhat wondered what is the melee capabilities of the MM.
I have leadership only the offence right now, I have damage enhancements only on my fighting abilities, and I have accuracy out the butt on my summon thug ability + 1 or 2 attack. I want them to keep aggro always. . . AIYO... dang thugs . . .
I only have dual pistols the first pistol ability and kick for damage right now.
I put a knockback enhancement on my kick ability I will probally put enhancements later on it. But
Can a MM be an effective DD with thug/traps.
With traps i want the defence shield drone, plus the other little neat buff abiliies. I want the thugs to do the most damage, but I also use damage traps later like the uhm poison mortar, and the self-destructing floating things, and maybe one of the others ...
can he become a good dd??

1. Taking an attack power is good on any mastermind. Often there are targets with 5% or less health and it saves endurance to finish them. I have the Sands of Mu power due to my length of playing months. At level 32 with both buffs, every single pet will be able to do more damage than the mastermind himself.

2. Leadership provides benefits in addition to defense, tohit, and damage. Confuse protection, taunt protection are two of the extra perks. Vengeance can NOT be activated on a pet, just an ally or teammate.

3. You will want the acid mortar, poison gas trap, and seeker drones as soon as possible. The acid mortar will increase the damage your pets, allies and teammates do on an impressive scale. Poison gas trap is the power that you will use to debuff the regeneration of the hardest targets. The hold is nice as well, but -regen makes it indispensable. Seeker Drones actively approach targets, debuff accuracy and chance for stun, but the biggest factor is that they are a major distraction while you are setting up the other important traps where you want them.

4. You didn't mention it, but web grenade actually gets better with archvillains and elite bosses the resist other mezzes. It recharges quickly so you can stack the effect on hard targets, then charge in to drop the poison gas trap on the immobile bad guy. It's got a substantial amount of -recharge as well, more damage mitigation by slowing the pace of incoming damage. Ideally with caltrops and the webnade, you can maximize the damage from the burnpatches laid out by your arsonist.

5. Dark Miasma is certainly a first rate secondary for Thugs, but I wouldn't rate Traps lower. Traps just plays differently.

Meh im not a huge fan of dark. Its full of awesome powers that gravitate between win and total fail. Like those 5% of the time your big heal won't land. Its ALWAYS when three minions are low on health and then before its recharged they spread out, then once you got everything perfect ... ups target dead or OOS, need a new one ... 2 guys dead ... pisses me off to no end.

Or how about those big groups on officemaps, where the enemies are spread out over like 2 rooms and a floor? Yeah good luck with FS hitting all of them, you know which one won't get hit? The Boss. He'll come around some corner and nuke half your pets with some AoE before you can slap DN on him.

I mean stuff like that happens all the time to me, its still a stupidly powerful set, but its also damn annoying because stuff usually will go wrong in the worst possible way at the worst possible time.

Thugs/Time FTW!

The OP clearly needs some real direction, not just build ideas... Unfortunately I can not offer that. Lol.

If you ever choose to Incarnate, Barrier destiny is great on Thugs. Not only are your pets more sturdier and avoid better... but you can even do it to your Posse guys in Gang War, haha.

I was wondering for some reason I have seen many people say that they dont want the MasterMind to actually be in a fight, wouldn't the dark power be the most easiest aggro powerset? heal/damage abilities same time, i would try to kill the person too and forget about the pets. so far i've had pretty good luck keep aggro just on the pets. i'm kind of wondering how does dark masterminds stay alive so long with a dark powerset? or do they just do less combat?

reasons i don't want dark powerset just yet, trying to see the benefits. I really dont think dark thugs would be good.... imo thugs are long range based right? i couldn't think about using dark and thugs. . . suicide right?

Umm, I'm a bit confused but will try to help.

1. Masterminds can soak up a lot of damage with their pets out and leveraging bodyguard mode. So you could safely debuff and stand in the middle of a group of baddies.

Maybe this statement means, don't bother attacking with personal attacks. Which is more generally true, because mm attacks are pretty lousy generally.

2. What you as a player would do and what the ai will do are different. It's very rare for a mm to die before their pets, if I recall correctly the pets or there attacks are coded to make them a tastier target than the mm.

3. Dark is powerset that does exactly what you said to keep alive. It combines solid control. Fear. And a lot of -tohit so mobs rarely hit them. With a few heals to make up for when mobs do hit.

4. Dark and thugs work great together. Thugs high defense benefits from the -hit, tarpatch keeps them in place, and you have some healing to keep them up. Dark works great with pretty much anything really.

One of the best strengths of the Mastermind is ' bodyguard' mode, which is when your pets are in 'defensive' and 'follow' mode. The damage you yourself receive is divided equally between you and your pets. As long as the pets stay up, you can tank like a champ. There are MM builds that focus on getting and keeping aggro, through debuffs/select attacks, and even the pool power Provoke. Dark and Traps are both excellent at this, protecting both you and your pets while adding significant and crucial debuffs.

Dark is great for reasons already mentioned, but to reiterate: Darkest Night and Fearsome Stare both debuff tohit significantly, stacking with defense from Thug leadership, personal leadership, shadowfall, and IOs. Add the heal, -res/slow patch, aoe stun + rez, debuffing pet, and you have a monster.

Traps is great for mez protect + def bubble, seekers (protip: cast them INTO the spawn before you aggro; seekers will eat the alpha and blow up), trip mine for damage. Immob + multiple mortars + pg trap regen debuff + multiple triage make them great big-game hunters, without sacrificing spawn-clearing ability.

Both are good, but very different playstyles. Dark feels more active to me, and more vulnerable to mez. Traps is a beast, and I like to have something to do after I lay down the debuffs.

I'll telling you go Thugs/Time with afterburn for double gang war.

Oh and yes I have both dark and time. GO TIME!