Canine

[ QUOTE ]
I bought Web Grenade, Caltrops, Triage Beacon and force field generator which i later respecced into Web Grenade, Caltrops, Force Field Generator and Acid Mortar.

I found the Triage beacon to be a clumsy power at best. It slightly increased regen but the amount of times i placed it only for the combat to shift and i have to move away from it and lose the benefit of it is unbelievable. If it were mobile like the FFG then i'd definitely reconsider it.

[/ QUOTE ]

Solo I use Triage a lot, in a group far less.

Solo, I can keep my firing line in the AoE of Triage, and it does help a lot to mitigate incoming damage, especially with 3xSO Heal's in it.

Grouped, especially with a melee class in the team, then it's not much use for anyone else, but I tend to drop it in a position where it'll keep my bots alive, and at least for the early parts of the fight, help the rest out. If the battle moves away from thr Triage, than I'll stay in its effect with my bots and provide supporting fire.

And powers I couldn't do without.

Really, there's only one power in the /traps set that I wish I hadn't taken. Detonator. It just feels wrong to me. OK, so I can sacrifice a bot to gain a single blip of high damage, but in doing so, I lose a portion of my sustained Damage Over Time until things calm down enough that I can spare the End and Time to resummon whatever I sacrificed.

Nope, not for me, not the way I play Toybox (which would appear to be conservatively from how I've seen other bots/*** MM's play.)

OTOH, I couldn't do without Force Field Generator, Web Grenade and Triage beacon.

Poison Trap and Trip Mine are very useful in the right circumstances, but those circumstances only come up rarely, so I don't consider them essential.

Caltrops I didn't take so I can't comment on how useful or otherwise I find them Oh, and what I've seen of my PB's Seeker Drones has guaranteed I'll never, EVER take them...

So, all you ***/Traps bods out there, how do you use your secondary pool?

[ QUOTE ]
I think the Flamethrower is great, it does nice dmg but i have to agree that the animation is very slow, mobs tend to run away before it has hitted nicely. But this is a problem i have corrected with caltrops.

[/ QUOTE ]

All mobs inside the AoE of Flamethrower get a to hit check when the power is activated, and those that get hit take full damage from it, AFAIK. If they run away after they've been hit, it doesn't matter, they still take full damage

[ QUOTE ]

My Robo/Traps is very offensive, and there are few powers that get into my nerves. First one is Photon granade, it doesnt seem to hit at all, the dis doesnt work, and it's kinda slow and it eats alot of end. Going to respec that, as well as the poison trap. Dont get me even started on that one, and the seeker drones? Omg, doesnt suit my style of gaming at all. I attack with the bots, fighting with them, and slow traps dont work for me. So i am going to respec them as well. Cant wait when i get to detonators and see if they are any good. Starting to think, if traps were any good in the first place.

[/ QUOTE ]

Poison trap? For the love of god, don't get rid of that. It's an AoE hold, for crying out loud... There are two main ways I use it.

1) solo. I place it, an acid mortar and a trip mine appropriately round a corner, so that the mobs will hit poison first, then run onto the trip mine and be held just as the trip mine detonates. If you place the TM first, then mobs can run right over it and be clear of the blast before it detonates.

2) Group. Let the Brute grab aggro, run into the melee after setting your minons attacking, and drop PT. Once you've started the placing animation, the trap IS going down, and you can't be interrupted like with TM. The PT is laid, goes off immediately, assuming enemies in range, and the Melee types get a nice little respite in the battle as most of the enemy stop what they were doing to lose their lunch

And then there's Hero Fights. PT debuffs Regen and Recharge. So the insane regen rates of Hero/AV class enemies are less of an issue, and they're not hitting you as often, which is good Myself and a team of 3 others took down Back Alley Brawler using a combination of rad debuffs, dark debuffs and PT/Acid Mortar (as well as a fire/DA brute ) and the brute got hit maybe twice throughout the entire battle, and BAB spent about half the fight throwing up.

OK, I'm ranting, but PT is not a waste of space IMO.

YMMV though

[ QUOTE ]
More importantly the flamethrowers? Bah! :P
They do slow DoT - wouldn't you rather they used they used rockets instead?

[/ QUOTE ]

Umm, Flamethrower does CONE fire DoT....

Fire is not resisted a great deal by most mobs, and Stompy can tag multiple mobs with said DoT.

I've got nothing at all against it.

Oh, and it's not a dual laser thingy, it's a Dual Plasma Cannon Blast :P

[ QUOTE ]
A thing every MM should learn:

Place your (stay) bots/undeads/ninjas/mercs around a bend, move to the mobs and pull them to you and wipe the floor with them, no more running into other mobs...

[/ QUOTE ]

Not a good idea against certain mobs, in that you risk being held, and thus unable to tell your minions to come and save your squishy behind. Also not possible in a lot of maps, due to open areas with multiple mobs and no corners to hide your minions behind.

/bind rshift+button1 "team sorry folks, Damn pets just aggroed another mob... "



I can pretty much guarantee that on certain maps, then my bots WILL draw excess aggro from another spawn, due to their inability to be told NOT to use AoE. Not that it causes too many problems with my regular team mates, but it can occasionally be irritatin to be constantly saying over TS 'Balls... Sorry folks, bots just aggroed that group over there, incoming...'

This is not a rant, this is not a whine, this is not a demonstration of my lack of bot control. I just felt the need to vent Although it may be a thinly diguised dig at the level design and spawn density in certain maps

[ QUOTE ]
Robots for MM's is the most damaging primary due to it's AoE's.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yep, it's somewhat, erm, interesting to see all 3 Drones, both PB's and Mr. Stompy open up with their AoE's as their first attack on a spawn...

The opposition seems to just melt away, assuming it's not conning yellow, or a lieutenant or higher, or just resistant to energy damage (damn Crystal type DE )

But, to be brutally honest, I took Robotics for the look of it, nothing to do with min/maxing

You can't. THey do it when :

a) they notice a pet is in need of repair

b) their repair ability has recharged

c) when they feel like

and

d) usually just as you've hit your own repair power at the bot that's been ignored for the last 10 seconds by the PB's regardless of its siren going off

[ QUOTE ]
Supremacy don't work on Arena pets

[/ QUOTE ]

Correct, it doesn't. Otherwise nobody would EVER take on a MM at a gladiator event

[ QUOTE ]
Lanista is rewarded for creating a Gladiator event, not just particiapating...

[/ QUOTE ]

In which case it's broken. I created one of the two events, and didn't get the badge...

Masterminds have a slight advantage in the arena in Gladiator matches (which are either broken, or have a very strange set of rules that nobody has thought to tell the players about) in that they can use their insps on their gladiators, but nobody else is allowed to

Of course, the fact that in a 4 way gladiator match I finished off the pets of two others and was in the process of finishing off the third opponent (slowly, with my Tank Smasher against his Tank Smasher) with 4 minutes left on the clock, when the match terminated and one of the two who'd already been knocked out was declared winner with everyone on the same score is beside the point...

So, in conclusion, Gladiator matches can be a laugh, and all your pet control binds work as long as they're not specifically tied to pet names or groups. Stuff like /petcom_all attack aggressive and /petcom_all stay aggressive still work, but don't expect to win or even get the Lanista badge for taking part. I played in two matches and both times, only one person got the Lanista badge, and there was never a clearly defined winner by the game.

Tp self with 3 SO end reducers in it and you can go from one side to the other of ANY zone in the game.

My MM has it and the number of times recall lost pet, sorry, friend has come in useful is mildly ridiculous.

Pets attacking lava is a known issue. You can stop them shooting it by setting them to passive mode.

Other than that? Pass.

Hit 32 last night, and got all my robotic minions upgraded...

Got to a mob and all three drones decided the felt a need to go full auto, whilst the PB's just HAD to lob in Photon grenades and Mr. Stompy decided the incendiary swarms were the way to go...

Oh My Word. A Bigger Light show than Jean Michelle Jarre at docklands.

[ QUOTE ]
Ah okay. I understood the reasoning behind the choice of door, just not the effect it was having. I wonder if this is happening because of the sheer size of the robot minions?

[/ QUOTE ]

I was wondering that myself. But since Robotics is the only MM set I've played, then my experience of the relative size of the boss level minions from the other sets is limited. But then again, the sheer size of Mr. Stompy is half the appeal

[ QUOTE ]
I don't get what you're saying. By using a specific lift door your minions spawn on top of one another? Can't say I've ever seen this.

[/ QUOTE ]

Out of Habit, I tend to use the lift at the back on the right as you head into the lift map segment. This is a hangover from lower levels as a scrapper, where more than once I used the door nearer the rest of the level, got spotted by something and flattened by it and its mates.

Now, as my Robotics/Traps MM I find that if I use that same door, as CaptainLupis said, one or more of my bots gets stuck in place. Usually the Assault Bot and a Drone.

So, sorting them out involves

a) spotting that the idiot things have gotten stuck again (which usually only happens halfway through the second mob, when I realise I haven't seen a plasma blast or flamethrower go off for a while)

and b) using recall friend to pull the damn things out of whatever subdimensional warp they've gotten themselves stuck in.

This, frankly, is annoying. Hence I'm attempting to warn other masterminds that it's something they may want to bear in mind.

Standard practice for most people is to use the back set of doors in the common or garden office block lifts between floors. It can reduce the chance of drawing aggro as soon as you step out of the lifts, which is a good thing.

I would like to suggest that MM's stop doing this unless they have Recall Friend. The number of times I've stepped out of the back lift to see my minions attempting to form a scale model of the Great Pyramid of Giza from their metallic forms is not funny. And even when I move away, I tend to find one or two of them stuck on a plantpot or wastepaper bin.

So, there are two options, as far as I can think.

1) go up first using the front lift, expecting to draw aggro, and deal with it apropriately.

2) let the team brute/stalker go up first and have them let you know if there's a mob close enough to the lits to pose an aggro risk.

Depends on the team and playstyle really.

Now admittedly this mainly applies to office block missions, but it's another thing to be aware of when playing a mastermind.

[ QUOTE ]
POISON TRAP: worth getting?

[/ QUOTE ]

Update: Oh hell yes it's worth getting....

We took down Back Alley Brawler tonight, and for half the fight, he was puking his guts up I think our Brute got hit twice by the Brawler...

The Brawler was suffering under rad debuffs, dark debuffs, poison trap, Acid mortar and being hit/shot/blasted by a team of 4 (plus pets).

So, poison trap. Get it, love it, use it.

[ QUOTE ]
I know that Poisons has a single heal but how do you find keeping your guys alive without a big heal ? I probably only resummon ninja about one genin per mission if that though. Is it a case of simply calling forth more minions to replace lost ones as a non healing Mastermind ?

[/ QUOTE ]

Robotics/Traps here, and I don't have any real trouble keeping my 'bots alive, since :

a) I stand off at range, web grenade the opposition into place and blow them to kingdom come with hot laser death.

b) With two Protector Bots that can heal my 'bots from half health to full in one shot, and my primary set single target heal (which will totally heal any damaged 'bot), healing is less of an issue.

c) Triage Beacon. I've not got it slotted much (if at all) but it's still enabling my 'bots to survive the occasional mobs that make it past my web grenades and into melee.

d) Anything that does run into melee is likely to trigger a poison trap as well as be further debuffed by an acid mortar.

So, when I *do* start to see my 'bots dropping, I know things are starting to go pretty heavily pear shaped, and I get ready to leave if necessary, in order to TP team mates out of trouble if possible.

As to resummoning, I don't tend to need to resummon my 'bots at all in general. If I do, then it may be the occasional member of the idiot trio who has decided to run into melee, and sometimes a protector bot that decided to follow <sigh>.

On an utter tangent, poison trap. Got to love a power which has in the quick description : PBAoE, Foe choke, Vomit, -regen, -recharge...

[ QUOTE ]
erm, i dont think you can separately get seeker drones, you only get them via "upgrade robot" skill (32). Or i have missed something. Seeker drones itself; i dont know what they do besides lower accuracy BUT i have also seen mobs move slower (didnt use noxius breath). I bet they do more than that, maybe they buff ToHit changes too.

[/ QUOTE ]

Seeker Drones are available from the Traps secondary.

Personally I don't think I'm going to bother with them. I've got enough firepower controlled by dubious AI without any more Besides, having seen my idiot bots try to blow seven shades out of the lava in the first SF, I wouldn't bet against Seeker Drones deciding to try and blow a hole in the scenery for looking at them strange...

Poison Trap I go for dealing with AV's/Heroes. It debuffs HP regeneration, and one fo the things that can make AV's/Heroes so hard to take down is their regen rate. That it also slows their attack cycle rate is another bonus. Using it in general melee type combat is a bit hit and miss, although I got a good 6 waves of Longbow in a row last night with opison traps as they came roundthe same corner towards my defensive firing line

That'll teach them to shout things like 'Stop Countess Gamma from escaping with the equipment!' when they start their charge.

Besides, there's something strangely satisfying about seeing a Longbow Flamethrower losing his lunch just before a massive gout fo firepower flattens him

[ QUOTE ]
Now I don't know if anyone else but me has noticed this, But protector bots will bubble every single pet on the team, in order, before your own pets.

Now I have no issue with this, but if the bots are working through the bubble list, and it cant see the pet its trying to bubble. Then it will simply stop bubbling everything until that pet comes back in range.

This is just screaming out as a bug to me, Anyone else noticed it?

[/ QUOTE ]

From what I can tell, your Protector bots bubble all pets (and you) in the reverse order to which they spawned.

So, these days when I'm teamed with another mastermind (waves at Treason ) I summon my PB's, and then wait for the other MM to summon their pets, THEN I summon Mr. Stompy, the idiot trio and my force field generator. That way, if I'm quick enough getting the PB's out, they bubble each other, and throw a couple at the other pets, then get the rest of my pets and the FFG, and THEN start on the rest of the pets present.

Took me a while to figure out the AI rules involved though. And the whole 'not attacking anything until everything has a bubble' issue is easily enough avoided through the use of "/petcom_all attack aggressive" bound to an appropriate button. They won't bubble while they're trying to cause laser induced peritonitis in whatever my target of the moment is

[ QUOTE ]
Anything that can buff a teammate can buff a henchman. The only exception are powers that require a fallen teammate (Vengeance, Fallout), and any ressurection powers.

Have a read of the guide linked in my signature - the commands for making henchmen talk and dance are in there.

[/ QUOTE ]

However, any power which states it works on a pet/minion won't work on a team mate. Although Detonate would be amusing to try on the brute/stalker in the middle of all that nice juicy aggro

Controller holds are the same magnitude as the epic holds.

BUT.

Controllers have a (rather small) chance to get a 'critical hold' which is why sometimes you can tag a boss in one hold, instead of needing to stack two, as normal.

Not many people seem to know this.

:edit: should point out that all this is AFAIK, and I may be mistaken, but I'm pretty sure that's how it works.

Imps. Use 2 acc/3 dam and maybe an end cost if you feel like it.

Recharge is not needed any more, since one summon and the psychotic little critters are yours until you zone (into/out of a mission, or between city zones)

Just my £0.02

No, there isn't.

You can use go to and put your bots in aggressive mode to defend a location, but you can't tell them to follow and bodyguard a moving npc or other player.

Edit: OK, so maybe you don't have robotics primary, but I do, and that's obviously what my brain defaults to

[ QUOTE ]
Anything that teleports. My pets chase them and aggro the entire map. Then like good little pets run back to me. However like bad little pets they bring the rest of the map with them.

[/ QUOTE ]

Simple solution. Keep an eye on things, and as soon as you see your pets start haring off, use the predefined Follow me : Passive mode macro. Or pick a new target and tell them to start killing that instead. Or put them in Stay mode : Aggressive around you in preparation for when the porting mob returns...

Sorcerors/Porters always come back eventually, use their absence to mop up other mobs or run repairs on your army