Best secondary for Ninjas

Ok so i know that ninjas are probably the squishiest of all MM and their chances of survival are slim to none, however i still want to play it. I guessing ninja/FF would be the best way to go but i was wondering if there is a better one for ninjas.

I'd suggest /Time.

Not only can you build on their defense like FF (less than but still significant), you also get heals, holds, slows, to hit and damage debuffs, -def and -res. And the Time Junction PBAOE toggle that debuffs damage and tohit is the same radius as the FF's Dispersion Bubble (+def & status protection).

FF, Time and maybe Traps would work out well because of their defense buffs; Dark and Storm would work out well for their -tohit debuffs.

You would be hard pressed to keep up with the damage ninja's take with a healing set and damage resist sets, instead of dying in 2 seconds, your ninjas will die in 4.

I would go Storm Summoning, Freezing Rain and Hurricane is a winning combo. There's a new IO coming out that changes knockback to knockup, toss that in Tornado along with the other recharge intensive pet IO buffs. Only drawback is Ninja/Storm will be the most endurance heavy MM ever.

I run a very nice Ninja/Time MM. The only time I see my ninjas taking any real damage is against some bosses and AVs (who tend to 1-shot pets regardless of what primary you have). Even then, I have a nice array of heals, buffs, and debuffs to nullify any real threats.

As a reference, I can solo most AVs up to +2 and not lose my pets much.

Also, it REALLY is effective for a Mastermind to dip into the Presence pool and get Provoke. That little power makes you the tank. And, with Bodyguard you can take quite a few hits and not even flinch. Any damage you do take is instantly healed being /Time.

I'll toss some more support to /time and /ff*. Also, traps is a very self-sufficient secondary and can work with any pairing. If interested, do a search for Plainguy's soft-capped builds. He posted a series of templates on these boards that can be modified quite easily for ninjas.









*Caveats: 1) any secondary will work at base difficulty, 2) play what you want, 3) there
is no one way to play this game so try whatever catches your fancy...

Quote:

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

best secondary for ninjas is some other primary + any secondary.

Yes this is snark, but born from the throbbing aggravation of having attempted to level a ninja MM until I couldn't take it any more.

One of the few characters I've ever really liked conceptually but deleted anyway because they drove me so crazy.

I have a Ninja/Traps that has been stuck at 40 for about 2 years now. Traps is awesome, but may not be the best secondary to use with Ninjas squishiness. I am thinking about rerolling to a Ninja/Time

If you find that Ninjas set annoys you, just skip Genin. I know it makes you weaker overall, but are you playing the game for sheer power, or for sheer fun?

Genin are the squishy part of the set. They're the ones who keep on dying and dying and dying and make you crazy having to constantly wear out your fingertips pushing buttons to heal or buff or (most often of all) resummon.

If the sense of un-complete-ness at having to play with only three pets is an issue, then certainly this won't work for you, but for high level content I'm not always sure having the extra three pets is worth the hassle. Your tier 2 and tier 3 actually have *some* chance of surviving the Boss/AV's opening AOE. If you're on a team, I'm sure they won't be unhappy to have a few less midgets running about.

Thanks all. I appreciate the advice a whole lot. Considering what everyone has told me i'm thinking of going time since it seems to be the jack of all trade. Also a special thanks to Gemini for that insightful advice on provoke. Definitely going to try it now.

Sorry to grave dig, but nin/traps was probably one of the easiest and strongest MM's I've made. I feel that it's one of the most ninjaest secondaries as well. Distraction and deception makes it powerful and different from the rest. All of the alphas are soaked up by seeker drones and poison trap. If enemies' attention goes to my ninjas, great! That just means I can put down a trip mine w/ no interruption. Even if they do focus on my ninjas, they are rarely hit because of the IO defense bonus, maneuvers, and ffg. The only issue I had, which is now solved thanks to web envelope was making sure no one escaped the 3 caltrop patches. Everything stays within my bubble of death.

Traps with a non-melee primary would force you into melee w/o your pets or bring enemies to your ranged pets to be best effective.

I realize this is a zombie thread, but: I do agree that Ninja/Time/Mace is absolutely ideal for ninjas. There are few places where I'll say something is "Best" but this is one. If you can't stand ninjas with Time and Mace, you won't be able to stand them at all.

I may give ninja/time a try...

It's 106 miles to Grandville, we got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark and we're wearing faceless helmets

... Hit it ...

Not to make a horribly bad pun at this juncture, but ... we're running out of time here ...

It's the end. But the moment has been prepared for ...

Sadly, I will have to give up my Ninja/Time/Mace mastermind thanks to the goobers at NC Soft.

Since the game is going to die, I'll brag about him while I can...

I have...

Solo'd every possible AV/GM in the game that I can. I have seen him totally wreck face on most normal content when set for +4 and once I got that +3 shift the Incarnate content was fairly easy.

Why do I take Provoke? Simply put, Provoke is the one power that lets you truly abuse all of your self protection. With the use of Provoke, I have been able to solo a few of the less complicated AVs on maximum difficulty. Max difficulty AVs do tend to wipe out the pets since they have weaker defenses. So, using Provoke I could keep the attention of the AV, thus wasting his attacks on a target they can't hit (with Power Boost + Clarion Radial I could maintain defenses well over the defense cap) and what damage did get thru would be absorbed by Bodyguard... and immediately healed with Temporal Mending.

Toward the end, I had a full set of Overwhelming Power, Mastermind ATO, and Soulbound Allegiance for my pets.

With some planning, I could go through entire Hamidon raids without losing any pets or dying.

Point being my guy was really good and waiting on more new things to abuse. I probably would have eventually turned him into my badger even tho I don't really like to badge.

Oh, we're bragging now?

Good.

My Nin/Time/Mace build is, to put it simply, terrible. It is the first thing I ever used IOs on. I used no guides and had no previous knowledge. I worked toward no build goals. I didn't even frankenslot, ever. Hell, I even put in an entire set of LotG, not just the recharge bonus. I just looked at the set bonuses and picked the one that looked the best. And I had a budget of around 100mil. Most of his build is SOs.

Eventually I spent 200mil total. I've never ever gone back and redone his build, despite having plenty of money and (dare I say) build knowledge now. There is one very, very good reason for this.

He doesn't need it.

This craptastic build handles anything the game can throw at him on 4x8. He can keep his defense at 55% without incarnate. With barrier he has the incarnate cap. The ninjas are all soft capped or close enough as makes no difference. He has solo'd ever AV and GM the game as thrown at him, up to and including Lusca. He can rush into any mob known to man and be unharmed. He can floor an entire group's recharge and run speed many times over.

Maybe if the +res IO bonuses had ever gotten to live I would have redone it, but as is I have no need.

He is, truly, more powerful than he really should be. He is definitely more powerful than he needs to be.

So that is the reason he has kept his same, terrible build all this time. He really, truly, does not need anything better.

Indeed. We will never know how good our good/bad builds could have been with the IO changes...

On my build, I don't think I really spent that much on mine... i think it might have crossed the 5 bil threshold when I started aiming for Panaceas (for the recharge bonus). But with the lack of powers in which to put any purples other than my pets, the cost of the build was rather small compared to what is invested in other characters.
Actually, I don't think the build is even worth 2 billion. And probably I spent another 3 bil over the life of the character due to various respecs and tweaks.

Honestly, Masterminds are so OP out of the box (IMHO) that IOs just make it worse. Then, if you throw 24 of them in the same league (like I eventually did), the carnage is just insane.

I don't have any builds worth anywhere near those numbers!

My closest is my perma-PA ill/rad. 1.5 bil there.

The only challenge 24 incarnate masterminds will ever face is lag.