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

Wow man, even I never got that nasty with planet_J over his regen guide linked in his signature.

Knives of vengeance will debuff a /traps MM into the negative defense numbers and bosses will kill a petless MM without bodyguard in 1 hit. If you run +4/x8 you'll get groups with more than 3 bosses in them in the DA story arc. Get real. Now if you're popping inspirations and using all incarnate powers you might kill a few groups but you'll still die eventually and you'd have proved nothing.

Oh and I can only laugh at plainguy trying to make fun of someone for a coh youtube video when in the same post he's trying to brag about having 1 GB of video showing him clearing DA missions with his petless MM. Great. You play a petless MM. You're real cool. We get it. Now never talk about it again please.

In your head you want it to be perfect. You want to see a petless mastermind kill as fast as any other toon or some fire fire brute. But the reality and common sense should dictate is it will not. But you don't get that for some reason. Its a game based around math like any other game. I can't make 2+2= 11. But you expect that there should be some magic that makes everything equal somehow.

Just as I stated previously ( which is apparent your not reading ) that Dz131 commenting that he could use secondary powers and solo on 2/8 would also prove my point. I never commented "Oh that would take you forever". Because I understand the math and common sense tells me it should.

But conversely lets see who has a bigger chance of dying using your analogy and thought process the guy who took 8 minutes to kill a group of mobs or the guy who took 2 minutes. Which again proves my point. Because all things being equal a fully slotted Robot Traps would use less resources.

Never, never, never did I ever say anything that would resemble what you think should happen. Never did anyone else say anything that would resemble anything you you think should happen. No one ever said you could not use incarnates or inspirations. If I did more often it would have been much easier. So imagine what a full robot traps can do. Which is my point from the get go.

Again I remind you DA is an Incarnate zone. It is specifically meant for that exact such thing.

You thought I would be one shotted and you were wrong. But now that I wasn't one shotted its something else. It's another excuse from you now.

You know lets make this simple. What toon do you have that can run DA on 4/8 solo with no inspirations. I want to see you do it, because I don't think you can. I could be wrong but I don't think there is a toon that can run incarnate on 4/8 without using inspiration or limiting there incarnate powers. But since you seem to have a toon that can I want to see. I will be more then happy to eat my word about it and can easily admit I was wrong about this statement.

You on the other hand have to make excuses. It was too long for your liking. I was at 10 percent health ( which the last time I looked was not death ), I used inspirations, I was using 2 eyes and a keyboard.

I laugh that you have excuses but don't comment about my lag comment. Its all good when its in your favor to make you look right. But when its not, oh boy stand back because here it comes.

The lowest hit point AT was able to survive a full group of incarnate mobs on 4/8 WITHOUT PETS.

I get that toon isn't for you. Its for me, you know the guy who pays for this account. I get to do what I want, not what you want. I have 15 other incarnate toons I can use if I want to kill fast. Again nothing to do with the issue. Just bring it up to round out the debate and letting you know this is not some sort of RP toon and my only toon.

Finally I have stated this several times and will state it yet again for you to try to comprehend. My rebuttal was of someone else inferring or insinuating that Robot Traps could not accomplish DA on a 4/8 setting. They never, never stated anything else beyond that. So please don't try to add anything else to the mix. I attached the quote down below so you can maybe clue in on what I am talking about instead of firing off both shotgun barrels blindly.

Now if you want to bring up something different by all means please do so.

Plainguy,

That was Awesome!!! I'll team with you anytime.

Geez - how did this thread devolve to be in such a state? I haven't seen so many posters whip out their opportunity to be pedantic in quite some time.

@Plainguy - thank you for the video. That was fun. Terrible that you had to go through the effort, but arguing with DZ131 will do that: shifting positions, ill-defined terms, etc... I especially loved how he/she redefined your position in each of his posts.

@LAST_RONIN - Too bad you don't like how Plainguy wrote. It doesn't change the fact that he was right. Next time YOU may wish to read all the posts in the thread. And getting in a twist about "soft-cap" versus "defense cap"? Really? Everyone in this thread knows the difference. OP confirmed as much. You didn't help anyone with your post, and instead demonstrated you didn't pay attention to what anyone else wrote. And since you didn't actually explain the difference between the actual defense cap and the soft-cap (which oddly, ironically even, was linked in Plainguy's sig), do you think you were helping or just being snarky?

@dmurray - as a young mastermind, I most was frustrated by an all or nothing situation: I was either untouchable and kicking *** ~or~ I was instantly destroyed. And it made no sense, at least as far as I understood the game. But I was meeting the limitations of bodyguard mode: AoE. Since pets take damage from the AoE attack and receive a share of your damage from bodyguard, they can be wiped out quite quickly. And when it happened, death was nearly instantaneous.

What Plainguy illustrated is that, regardless of primary, a mastermind can leverage the abilities in /traps to not only survive without relying on her primary but also make progress without the pets through a mission regardless of game difficulty. Traps can be, and has been, successfully paired with every primary.

Will you be standing around doing very little? That is the problem with a /force field build. That is not usually a problem though in that many secondaries have powers to use to either debuff enemies or save your pets. Plus, you will be re-summoning quite a bit on higher difficulties. Playing this AT is a metagame unto itself. While you're playing the CoX game that everyone else is doing, you're also playing a strategy game involving the interaction of your pets, their placement and stance, etc...

What did you eventually choose? How are you enjoying the experience?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville ...[I]t would be more proper to say this game is slooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooowly dying.

I have only skimed this thread but honestly Bots/DArk is by far one of the best comboes for Masterminds.

I'm sure the thread is around here somewhere but I believe Bots/Dark MM was one of the first characters to solo ITF... This was wwaayy before Incarnate crap too!

Rather than talk about how safe a well played MM can be I will say that when I first started playing MM's I didn't like them too much, but then I made a Bots/FF and I found it a very easy and genle introduction where you can learn the tactics etc without really having to worry about much. At level 50 I soloed an AV by putting Provoke on auto and going toilet which most other sets can't do.

This foundation then let me make the most of my second MM. I knew Bots/FF had it's limits, but it made a great tutorial before my Bots/Traps - which is like an advanced Bots/FF really.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Aggelakis PrincessDarkstar: "RAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGHHHHHHHHHH SOMEONE IS *WRONG* ON THE INTERNET!"

Bots/FF is a very good set to learn the game and mastermind mechanics in particular.

You need one bind to begin with, a "focus fire and kill what I'm pointing at". If you don't have that, you can't kill fast enough. Also put the "follow passive" button on your tray. This lets you yank your robots back when they are chasing somebody, or they are standing in fire.

Slotting it is fairly forgiving, but here are some simple goals for slots:

Tier 1 and Tier 2 forcefields - add 2 slots to each (total 3)
Assault Bot - at least 5 slots
Protector bot - 6 slots
Take Leadership->Maneuvers and add 2 slots to it (total 3) before level 20
Add 2 slots to stamina before level 20
take Dispersion bubble at 20 and give it 2 more slots.

The forcefield attacks don't need more than the default slot. They're high accuracy and don't really do damage. Put accuracy in and call it done. I do like detention field for reasons I'll explain below.

Tactics is highly recommended by level 14-16, it helps a lot with your tier 1 robots losing levels. It can also take up to 2 slots. Take medicine->aid other before taking repair robot (the latter is longer range, but really only useful to heal the assault bot, which you don't get until 26. You'll still have a few powers left

The reason for the slots in those powers is that with those slots and only single origins (which you can buy in a store at level 22), you softcap your tier 1 robots (and anyone else you team with) at level 22 by just putting 3 defense enhancements. At level 24, your protectorbots willl also be softcapped (ok, not vs psionic that doesn't have a position, but you still have 15% defense there) and your dispersion field also gives pretty good status protection to anyone in it.

For your bots, the tier 1 bot gets 2 accuracy/3 damage (essentially maximizing both even with the level loss) and your protector bot gets 1 accuracy, 2 damage and 3 defense.

The reason you are slotting stamina is those leadership toggles and dispersion field are huge endurance hogs. With 3 endurance single origins in stamina, you can run them and still operate normally - it is more efficient to slot them than to add endurance reducing slots to the actual toggles.

So what do you do in combat?

Before the fight, scan the enemy and decide what is dangerous. As a rule, something easy to kill and annoying gets targeted by the bots first, where tougher critters with big attacks (Lts, Bosses) get controlled. Anything with an AOE attack before level 22 is very dangerous and should be a control target.

1. Direct your bots, picking targets and getting them to focus fire. You want to make a macro or keybind that sets them to "attack defensive". A "follow defensive" is nice, but all the complex bodyguarding stuff that the mastermind guides teach is fairly optional for Bots/FF, because the bots get so durable with all the layered forcefields that the mastermind isn't really called upon to tank for them. I recommend experimenting with the bodyguard modes, you'll have the luxury to do so because Bots/FF is fairly stress free most of the time. Likewise play with the goto and stay commands and learn how to really get your pets to do what you want them to do, because Bots/FF is really not the kind of build that causes the mastermind himself to ever be in much danger.

2. When the bots are shooting at the first target on your kill list, slam the dangerous enemy with your tier 1 forcefield knockback attack. Very few things are resistant to knockback and it recharges fast enough that you can pretty much keep one enemy on its back the whole fight if you want to. You can also rotate it around, accepting that the bad guys will not be totally suppressed, but probably mitigating more damage overall.

Note...keep an eye on whomever your bots are shooting. You want to direct the bots to focus fire somebody else when they're done, rather than let them randomly pick targets.

3. If there is somebody really dangerous, and your bots have a lot of minions and such to clean up, put it in a detention field. This is a weird attack, and nothing really has any defenses against it. Some critters it won't immobilize, but they'll still be unable to attack or be attacked. Bosses won't stay bubbled long, but it can buy a breather. My primary target for this in the early levels was the exploding corpses, but anything you find dangerous or annoying enough to lock out of a fight can be bubbled. You can't turn the bubble off, so it is kind of annoying if you clean up everything else first and have to wait to kill the last guy.

4. Heal your bots as needed. Use green inspirations at first, then medicine-aid-other or repair bots if you get those powers later.

5. Use temporary powers to add a little to the dps if this is getting dull. I keep getting all sorts of weird attacks from missions (currently I have a beanbag gun...go figure). Some of the paragon rewards give attacks, as do some badge achievements, plus there are various inventions.


I don't recommend personal force field. You will be nearly softcapped by level 24 anyway and all it does is add more defense. You are not normally a target in any event, indeed if they start focus firing on you, make sure your robots aren't in passive mode and try to stay alive until your bots draw some aggro. If YOU die, all your bots die. If THEY die, you can resummon them in combat. Personal force field also blocks all of your leadership and mastermind buffs to your minions, which is pretty crippling. Finally you can't summon with that toggle on. Use that power slot for something else.

My experience is that the bots handle just about anything fine in the 1-22 range except massed AOE or elite bosses. Ok there was a "bag of gears" incident where a zillion minions chased me out of the building. Most of those fights you can still win if you just watch your own health bar, don't stand in fire, and keep summoning, equipping and force-fielding bots as they die. (this is where you will eat blue inspirations. Save a couple just in case). You can often just run away from a fight you no longer think you can win, sacrificing your bots to keep the enemy b usy.

At level 12, go to the store appropriate to your origin and load up on dual origins. You may go for more endurance reducers here than just piling on the defense, as until you get near cap, defense isn't as effective and your slots in stamina also won't be as effective as with single origins...so your toggles may be causing issues if you don't slot some for reduced endurance.

If you get bored with bots, because it is too easy, then try a more challenging mastermind. Or play a glass cannon blaster if you want an andrenaline rush.

Bots/FF very good choice!, When i started my First MM I was not only new to the AT but new to the game and was used to Hunters in WOW so i created a Bots/pain. While it is not a "weak" combination and i did player her to 50+3 I will tell you right now it was also not easy. There was many times I would look at my face planted body and say Why the hell did i not take FF!? I eventually learned that although she could solo.. She was more a support styled MM.

That Reminds me.. do not expect you're minions to be as sturdy as pet classes in other games.. the Drones.. are soft and even in Force fields they will get scrapped This is double true in endgame content. As soem one else said just keep yourself safe and summon more!

Currently i run : Bots/Pain,Bots/Traps,Beasts/Dark and i adore them all!

Right. Even when you softcap your bots defenses, the little guys will get oneshotted in the 5-9% (depending on opponent) that they get hit. Mostly they won't QUITE be oneshotted (they actually do have some resistances and most incoming attacks come from minions) and you can heal them, but some mobs hit like a truck.

The one exception to this is the level 26 bot. It'll have more hitpoints than you do...and more defenses because your forcefields don't protect yourself plus it has some innate resistances.

If you've got the bots softcapped though, even AOEs won't kill all of them and you have the luxury to resummon and rebuff the ones killed by lucky hits.

Do watch out for things that lack an attack roll. If your bots are standing on burn patches and you don't pay attention, you can find yourself standing next to your last protector bot, ordering it into the fight while you flee.