I’d read they were doing this, but hadn’t been on with my MM in so long I’d forgotten. Mastermind pets now zone into missions with you, so you don’t have to spend the first five minutes of each mission summoning and buffing your crew.
It’s a small thing, but a big thing at the same time. Makes playing a MM a lot more fun.
I did notice that pet ownership seemed a bit buggy last night — in a couple of chases in one mission, pets didn’t handle elevators well, or suddenly stopped responding. I had one case where my pets followed me across a zone, but stopped being “mine” — I saw just generic names, they didn’t indicate as belonging to me, and I couldn’t command them (“You have no pets”). But they kept following me, and at the next zone, all the ownership was restored.
Weird — but worth it, just to have them zone in painlessly.
Gameplay with our MM duo — Gifted Kid (FF/Robots) and Special Educator (Dark/Gang) — remains a hell of a lot of fun. And now we can get into the fun even faster.
[Yay. Lots of posts to read this morning!] : )
I absolutely love MM’s – specifically my Robo/Dark MM’s of which I now have two (lvl 50 and lvl 46).
I’ve always enjoyed AoE powers and this combo certainly gives that. You can send the bots into an area, drop the debuff dark powers and let the fireworks commence!
I’ve also found using just three simple binds works a treat. Shift+L Button sends the bots to wherever I’m pointing in aggressive mode. Shift+R Button makes them passive, stopping them aggroing or simply bringing them back to me. Numpad 0 makes all bots attack my target. Simple but effective.
I’m still getting used to not having to summon the bots each time as I haven’t played much since they brought that in, but it’s a great improvement.
All I want now is to be able to run a MM through the Hero content. Maybe Going Rogue will allow me to do that? Fingers crossed.
Thanks. My brain is reclaiming territory it ceded to Real Life over the past few months, including this blog. Plus, my Twitter feed is finally working, so I can flag some interesting articles. Not that we don’t enjoy the ongoing successes of Stilt-Walker (go, Margie!), but …
My only criticism (stability aside) with the new MM setup is that they all re-buff when you zone. Meaning I arrive someplace and am instantly surrounded by sparks as the robots get upgrade.
I don’t have much special bound — a few binds I entered once upon a time (including a Go There – Aggressive). I basically have my 1 key for Gifted Kid as my “attack the guy I’m pointing at.” That usually gets the bots in close enough to engage others as need be, and is 99% of what I end up doing with them (as they chorus, “EXTERMINATE!”).
FF
Oops, hit Enter.
FF is a sucky power in general, but it works very nicely with MM, as it (a) lets you give them some protection, (b) generally doesn’t draw aggro, (c) lets you force-push the main villain in each group around and off his/her/its feet until the pets can finish their job, or suppress others who are causing problems while they’re doing so. Main criticism is that in caves it makes it very difficult to see. 🙂
Yup, love our MM duo.
I went to 50 with FF on Day Old Shelf. One thing I like about it is most of the work takes place out of combat. It leaves you with more time to order your minions around – and trust me before they made some AI improvements you really did need to tell them where to go – a lot. I imagine the other shield sets have that advantage too. Also, minions don’t complain when you knock the mobs around and make them chase them down. Force Bolt is key to survival at low levels – keeping the boss of his feet.
It does a pretty decent job at higher levels, too.
And, yes DOS’s build influenced my choice for GC mightily.
I enjoyed taking down Infernal last night with the two MMs. He was an Elite Boss, not an AV, but basically we just swarmed him, didn’t lose any of the pets, and had him kissing temple floor in under a minute. Sweet. Then ditto with his girlfriend.
(We might consider bumping up their difficulty still further.)