Madam_Enigma

Yeah, but I kept getting ambushed by packs of zombies in Cap Au Diablo. Twelve trips to the hosp because of them.

Which hole is that? Psi, or toxic? They will get dang good resistances to fire (except the cold demonling so far) or cold (only the cold demonling). Then the shields I think can pretty much cap their fire resistances.

Or better yet, remove the healing nictus from the fight all together by killing it. I could be wrong, but I think that's a tactic Tokyo believes to be useless.

Since the heal seems to be an ally affecting version of dark regen, it would stand to reason that ANYONE in melee range would be a problem until the healing nictus is down. Not just pets. But those other players too.

Better avoid controllers too. They tend to have pets out, and fire controllers have pets that prefer melee. Can't have anyone with dark miasma either. They might be bringing out Fluffy in range so he can debuff and heal the melee guys. Can't have that because it's another target to fuel nictus healing.

Oh wait, if you kill that nictus it's not healing.

Ok, skippable powers... Poison Trap, Antidote (debatable but my opinion), and the rez. You do want the hold. It is very useful. The rez can be useful too, but only if teaming.

Yes, although it's only 5% resistance without slotting.

If your pet is in defensive stance, and the enemy in question either hasn't hit anything in a while or hasn't attacked period... they wont deem that enemy a 'threat'. When testing a thug/ff mastermind I frequently found my thugs would stop attacking mid fight if not ordered while in bodyguard mode. After a while of not being hit, they would lose the aggro flag I guess.

When you tell the mastermind that they can't use their entire source of damage, that is rude. It also precludes some very nice debuffs. You forget, not every pet is designed to stay at range. And even with good mastermind controls, it is pretty much impossible to prevent pets from at least half the primaries from meleeing. Nor would you want to.

If your so worried about pets fueling Romulus's healing, aren't you equally worried that the scrappers and other melee ATs are fueling it? Or, you could do what my ITF team did. You could take out the nictus that are healing Romulus first, and prevent it from happening.

Primaries which either can't easily, or shouldn't be kept at range:

Ninja
Necro
Demons
Thugs (arsonist keeps brawling no matter what, and bruiser is a melee pet to begin with)

So your telling me that you'd never bring a mastermind along because your afraid of a preventable situation. If the nictus AVs keep healing Romulus using pets or team mates, kill the nictus AVs.

Is that so hard? Or do you think the Statesman TF is impossible without a perfect team lineup because you never thought to remove the towers buffing Recluse? It's still hard, but not impossible if you do things right.

I know, and am working on it now. Downloading the install file for Avira Antivir personal edition, and Spybot Search & Destroy to take over to him. Now, I am a little phobic about viruses and spyware. My first computer was killed by them. That just means I do daily updates and scans though.

While most of your reasons can be understandable, this one struck me as rude. Even with using such things as go-to, spamming pet controls, and having near perfect pet control... you will still have that random tier 1 ranged pet which insists on running up and punching the enemy. As such it is hard, nay nearly impossible to completely prevent pets from going into melee.

And some primaries, you WANT the pets in melee. That's where they do the most damage. But then, your telling anyone who's pets melee to dismiss them. Which means your telling the mastermind they may as well have not come alone. Your removing half what they do.

And then there's sets like /poison. It has a really nasty debuff in Noxious Gas. And the debuff is centered on a pet, who must be sent into melee. But of course, you don't want them sending pets into melee.

By the same token, you should insist everyone on the team stays at range. Even the brutes, stalkers, scrappers, and tanks. For that matter, better avoid having a kin along. They will be right there in melee range too. And anyone smart will be right next to the kin. Can't have a dominator either. They have melee attacks. What about the newest mastermind primary? Yup, the pets love melee. And their good at it from what I've seen. The mastermind will probably be right up there too using their whip attacks.

But then, melee is to be avoided at all costs isn't it? Wait a minute. I just was on a ITF yesterday. Our entire team consisted of melee, a single controller, and a single corrupter. And yet, we not only won the fight. We steamrolled it. The only party wipe was due to several ambushes during the second time we dropped Romulus. And yes, we had pets being used too. The team leader was afraid the pets would be used against us. And yet, they were a help. Heck, I kept summoning a pet every minute or two.

but all that melee should have made Romulus impossible, or at least annoying right? Not really. It's all in your timing. I almost took my thug/ta on the TF. And you know what? The team leader at the end said he almost wished I'd brought that instead of my crab.

I know, I know... screenshots or it doesn't happen. So...



also, a screenie of exemped inf gain:



Note how much was given for the initiate of pain. Now look how much an initiate of pain gives when not exemped:



So, how is this a myth? What you just saw in these screen shots use to be what always happened. Now it's an option you toggle, that defaults at earning xp while exemped.

As would I.

Heh, it sure did surprise the tanks I was teamed with. At one point someone asked me why I had slotted taunt enhancements in all my powers. ^^