What would be the "safest" primary/secondary combo?

Keep in mind I've been playing this for about 6 hours now (if it matters I have a VIP account) and the only other MMORPG I've played for a while was WoW.

I have absolutely no problem with spending hours upon hours learning to play well if the build is worth it.

Anyway, ideally it should be decent enough that I can solo most stuff (kinda like a hunter/DK in WoW) but I'd rather minimize the risk of me dying. So far I like the idea of demons/thugs/zombies (and I suppose bots). I'm still a bit confused on the bots though. They're mostly ranged but won't the enemy just run into melee range so what's the advantage of them being ranged?

Oh and I have no idea about secondaries. I like the idea of actually being useful other than just buffing minions. So something that allows me to do damage or have a variety of debuffs would be nice
And uh, if it's not too counter-intuitive, I'd like the primaries and secondaries to sort of comliement one another from a story point of view. Kinda like zombies and poison/dark misima or demons and pain domination.

Cheers for any help.

Frankly, any Mastermind is going to be pretty good for solo play. You're a one man army, the only time you may have problems on your own is hitting an elite boss or the like. There are 'bad' Primaries, but that's pretty subjective and even the worst primary still makes a more solo'able character than say, most blasters.

Two strong combos off the top of my head are bots/traps and zombies/dark.

Bots/traps synergizes well because one of the bots has a defense shield and traps has the forcefield generator, resulting in some very nice stacked defenses, which can be boosted even higher with certain unique invention enhancements. You've also got good debuffs with the Acid Mortar (reduces resistance and defense) Poison Trap (can hold foes and -floors- their health regeneration) and seeker drones (Good to summon in a spawn to draw their alpha, then explodes and can stun and drops their to-hit)

Alternately, Bots/Force Field. Same idea, stacking the big Defense shields on top of each other.

Zombies/dark miasma is a lil squishier but Dark has a -lot- of tools for survivor, almost everything that targets enemies causes a -to Hit, which is as good as adding defense. it's got very strong enemy targeted heal, a debuff slow patch, an aura that gives stealth, defense and certain types of resistance, a rez, an extremely good fear power, a hold, an ally rez that doubles as a stun and floors regen. It's an amazing little tool box.

I'm sure others can talk more about good comboes. Heck, 'Beast' is considered one of the lower tier primaries but I've been having a blast with my beast/time (between fortify pack and far sight, I can nearly soft cap defense for a boss battle).

Demons and Bots, I consider, the easiest 2 MM primaries, due to good defence and a few nice melee attacks.

Thug requires a little more control but is still very good.

As for secondry, time is awesome, gotta say. Defence, some control, some heals, all sorts.

Bots/Time is incredibly safe and incredibly powerful combo.

You actually use the Bots ranged attacks to your advantage. With /Time its incredibly simple to softcap your defenses...all of them actually. Just dip into the Patron pool to get Powerboost and you then powerboost Farsight to get a massive bump in defense to whatever you can fit in from IO's. Search around the forums because someone recently posted a build that shows how easy this combo is to cap all defenses, even some of them for Incarnate trial purposes (where the defense softcap is 65% vs 45% for normal PVE stuff).

The play mechanics of the set are a bit redundant but that's what makes it simple:

1) Jump into middle of spawn with Times Juncture running. This debuffs the entire spawns ToHit which, on top of your capped defense, means you pull all the aggro onto yourself and remain perfectly safe.
2) Drop Distortion field for even more debuffing and to keep everything locked down.
3) Bots open up from range as you get the alpha, they start cooking your held and debuffed spawn while you stand in the middle and debuff the snot out of the boss and/or LT's.
4) Anything that survives the ranged salvo from bots (love those AoE's they pump out), the bots then close the distance and engage in melee.

Rinse and repeat....you also get a huge recharge bonus with /Time so this tactic works every single spawn. Quite easy to solo +2/x8 even at lower levels, and +4/x8 by time you are fully IO'd. Oh and the builds I've seen don't even need any purples so cheap to outfit to boot.

Its a great, simple and safe combo. Have fun!

**Edit** Here's the thread where I got my build from player Crisys. Its really the cheapest and yet most effective build I've ever played for an MM. Blows my Bots/Traps monster out of the water.

Bots/Traps is a juggernaut! Very safe, very formidable damage.

Bots/FF is undoutedly the safest, and it is probably the biggest snore.

Bots are good against lethal damage, so the gun wielders in the early levels are pretty well outmatched by laser fire from the robots. Robots bubble themselves starting with the 2nd tier pet at level 12. Another feature is their knockback in their attacks. This can be frustrating, but with experience you can actually focus the knockback push foes into walls and obstacles. The benefit of this is the AoE incendiery missiles that light patches of robotic death on the ground.

Bots/Traps is sturdy and straightforward in application. It will not let you down.

What Psy said. Bots/FF is easily the easiest and safest combination, but is boring as heck. You literally won't be doing anything besides maybe tossing out Aid Other on your bots.

Bots/Traps requires you to actually lay your traps down...and not much else.

I'd call Thugs/Dark rather safe too, but that's because Dark is ridiculous.

Guys thanks for all that but I have a question (actually sent in a ticket about this): I got used to using the thugs up to level 10. When I put them to defensive stance and then tell them to attack something, they kill it and anything else attacking them/me (which is what I think they're supposed to do). But with bots they switch from defensive to agressive and stay in agressive stance when I tell them to attack and end running off and constantly fighting.
I tried demons just now and the same thing happened but only for a moment. They switch to agressive for about 5 seconds then back to defensive which is fine since usually it takes more than five seconds to kill everything.
So is it a bug with the bots?

Anyway, so far I didn't really like the thugs (admittedly I only did play to level 10). They seemed far too weak in terms of being able to be kept alive. I went with dark as a secondary power but I dunno, it just seemed like one of them was always around 1/3 health (with me spamming the level 1 heal and using inspiration healing on them). The bots seem stronger (although I'm only level 4) and do pack a bit of a punch, too. But the problem I mentioned above is really putting me off them.

What are demons and zombies like? I know people say demons/thugs/robots are tied for top three (more or less) but what makes demons good? Is it just the variety of damage types they can put out.
Is necromancy actually good in endgame stuff since I am fond of soloing stuff but I'm somewhat worried that necromancy might not be good. I just sort of picture the zombies as well... zombies (slow and sluggish). Or are they actually good in melee and can hold their own compared to bots or thugs?
And why do people say Commandos are bad?

Oh and I went FF with the bots; I'm enjoying it so far. Wil lthe first level ability still hold up at endgame? (it just knocks people down but it's pretty useful)

Same Idea defense... Bots/Dark. The -ToHit stacks with defense giving you similar results as traps and FF. My decision on going dark is that I hate FF (very boring set imo) and the setup time of traps I didn't like (played traps first). Dark has a AoE heal, -Dmg, -ToHit, -Res with slow, -Regen, cone Fear, ST Hold, debuffing pet (more defense) and a team rez with a stun attached.

EDIT: Forgot to mention SF - Team stealth plus resistance to energy, neg energy, PSI, fear and Defense.

/traps is overrated. You might get away with it in normal content but its not remotely safe in I content. Especially in the new nightward content where it's just heavy commando/troopers spamming swarm missiles. No heals means you die quick.

I think the OP has somewhat a lack of understanding of the game mechanics. Because if he did then he would understand the tankermind concept from reading the sticky and about the -ToHit Debuff of Dark.

Telling someone that Robot FF is the safest alone is not enough because a poorly slotted Robot FF is going to suck as well.

I find this type of thread similar to what is the best farming brute threads.

If you learn how the math works behind the game then you can figure out what the best is in every AT and not just Masterminds. You will know what the safest is in every AT and which is the weakest or at least, the least acceptable to you.

Having a Defense cap Traps toon in every AT and a petless DS Traps mastermind that can solo 4/8 I have to disagree with Dz131. Traps is one of the best well rounded sets ever produced in this game. Yes Time set is good but to gain maximum benefit from Time you still have to spam 1 power every 119 seconds to be afford max benefit in the Time set. You do not need to do anything of the sort with Traps.

Further I would like to see any secondary from the Mastermind set or many other AT secondaries that can solo 2/8 at a minimum with just using secondary alone. I know I can with just using Traps. No other set can boast that. Again seeing that I have a DS Traps I have proven exactly what I have stated. Further as always, I would gladly show anyone otherwise of a solo traps performance.

But if the OP understood the game mechanics then he could answer and validate all these questions and statements.

The info given was great but no one even asked if he knew what he was reading.

First of all that's not right. You need to spam just as many skills as traps, including the shield drone that's prone to get killed can lags behind when you move. If you count preemptive putting down mines when you solo, that's ALOT more skill spam than /time.

With regards to soloing with only traps....well I don't see how that's relevant. Anyone can solo if you set up enough trip mines everywhere, hell you can probably solo x8 with just the trip mine skill, but that doesn't make it better than all other skills. The other sets just focus alot more on buffs, debuffs and heals rather than damage...very slow interrupt-able damage that's impracticable in fast teams.

Nightwards a couple of things. I guess I mis read the combat log so I think it is still using the 45% hit cap, which good because otherwise it'll be like pulling teeth. The heavy troopers have a stacking aoe mez in nerve gas, then they have literally no skills other than swarm missile variants and that one mez, so that's all they're going to use.

But the thing that completely blows is the fact not only does basically every mob have *** loads of AOE but half of them can summon a battle orb that gives an aoe stacking +hit or a stacking +def buff or a healing/rez orb. So if you're unlucky and get 2 +hit battle orb's you're basically done with so many aoes even with /dark debuffs and mezes. Traps and it's no heals is not surviving that, especially since with traps need the player to run in with the mobs to leverage the shield drone.

edit: I'm talking about 54x8

edit: Actually, I guess if you set up 20 mines before the battle you might survive it.

Look, guys, I appreciate everthing thus far. I basically meant "what's least likely to get me killed while learning the game".
Granted, this does have different mechanics compared to other games for the most part but it's not really anything other than reading the wiki and honestly, it doesn't seem that difficult to get into things. I get the idea of the various debuffs/buffs/resistences/etc.

Still, one thing really bothers me about MMs, the fact that it seems like most of the powers have really, really long recharge times and while I do get that the minions are going about 95% of the work, it still seems like I'm going to be just standing around.

So when people are making builds and such, are the builds set in stone or could (for example) just throw in an enhancement that reduces the recharge speed on an ability or two? So far it doesn't look like it's like World of Warcraft with the talent builds (where you maybed changed one or two points and that was that) and seems to be more "this is good, this is not so good but it's personal choice and can easily hold up on its own" since people aren't going X/Y powersets and not playing others.

Anyway, speaking generally, are most MM primaries/secondaries equal (at least in being able to solo endgame stuff) or do any stand out in particular?