Berzerker_NA

In that case, I am fresh out of excuses for my mercenaries addiction. Why? Why am I addicted to them?

#3 and #5 depend on how long your battles are lasting, and how often you need to resummon pets (who cares if they're out of end after they die.) If your pet is running out of end, they're going to be dealing quite a lot less damage than if they have lots of end.

I've been watching my Jounin do this. Certain pets seem to run out more than others.

I'm playing a Mercs/Poison at level 29 now, and I just want to plan ahead a bit. It seems I have one power available that I can use either for Poison Trap, Paralytic Poison, M30 Grenade (Already have burst, but not slug), or Teleport Ally. I probably won't do Paralytic poison, since it has a really short duration of only 6.4 seconds, and a long recharge of 16 seconds so it can't be stacked. (By comparison, a controller's hold lasts 15 seconds and recharges in 8)

Reading through what Poison Trap does, its only reliable effect seems to be a sleep effect. I'm thinking if I use that on a bunch of enemies, my commando or medic is just going to hit them with a big AOE and immediately wake them up anyway.

So.... I guess that just leaves M30 Grenade and Teleport Ally as possibilities. Any thoughts?

Why is there a new question when I go to log on about whether I agree to this big long contract? Does it say something now that it didn't use to say? Am I signing away my first born child to Crey corporation for experimental augmentation?

That seems to make more sense. I actually asked because I'm playing a squishy /FF mastermind with 10 magnitude kb power, and all the destroyer bosses are resisting it. I figured Tank players would know more about how that works than anyone.

Using power analyzer I saw that the boss had only 2 KB resist, but it was from "Integration", and I guess the power normally that also grants the 1000% resistance. So what you just said would explain it. No matter how much I enhance my Force Bolt, it will always be flagged as "resistable" and therefore incapable of pushing those guys down I guess.

Does that mean you're totally immune to KB?

Or... you know, what would be even better would be if the arrows pointed both ways! Maybe magic could get +ToHit vs. Science, and +Damage vs. Tech, but suffers -DamageResistance vs. Science, and -Defense vs. Tech.

That would be awesome.

I have to say I'd be happy with just the basic arms, or even if they just added a few possibly-human arms to the Robotic selection. Even just a few of them would change my options dramatically, since I only have one option right now. (It's either banded robotic or she has to actually be a cyborg.) Well, I guess Banded + Witch gloves kind of adds another semi-option.

Yeah. I think it's a good set for people that have already played other MM's. It's not very forgiving if you screw up like some of them are.

On teams: I think the best use is to have them focus fire on the boss, to def debuff him so your blasters/scraps can kill him easily.

Solo: Just be ready for a long, slow ride to level 26, and keep the difficulty low till you've got the Commando, or you'll be waiting...waiting...waiting.... for each mob to drop. (Which means a lot less XP per hour than if you simply dropped the difficulty and killed them faster.)

I always find something has to give, so I tend to skip my tier 1 henchmen on a /ff build. On a team, I'm not going to maintain shields well enough to keep those guys alive anyway. Either that, or maybe I just like the challenge.

Also, I'm sometimes too lazy to actually put bubbles on everyone, so I just focus on keeping the tank(s) and brute(s) perma-buffed. Always fun to take a guy who's at 30% and push him over the top.

You might consider taking the AOE immobilize, since your team's physical location is crucial to their defense. If a thug strays too far from the enforcers, they lose like 20% defense. I'm assuming the Hami-O on the enforcers is to enhance their defense bonus, right?

I don't see the point in taking maneuvers yourself on a build like this, though. It's a drop in the bucket, and you can already have your thugs running well over the defense soft cap. You'll do much better to take Assault and get the damage bonus to kill foes faster.

Using /FF, you've got:

16% defense from Shields
+10% defense from Dispersion Bubble
+10% defense from the two Pet Procs (5% each)
+20% defense from your Enforcers' Maneuvers powers

That's 56%, and those are conservative numbers. You could probably get a few more percentage points out of it using the best defense enhancements. Why add the Maneuvers pool power to that? It's like maybe 2.5% more.

I should be more clear about what I'm saying about the AI. As near as I can tell, it makes decisions on a pure damage basis. So, if the enemy boss is equally aggroed at 2 henchmen, one with 48 hp left, and the other with 100 hp left, and it's next attack would deal 50 points,..... apparently the AI will prefer to hit the guy with 100 hp, so as not to waste any damage. Nevermind that dealing 50 hp to the already damaged one would kill him off. No. The AI refuses to waste those 2 hp.

This means, the big trick to keeping all your henchmen alive is to make sure each individual enemy is either aggroed to all of them, or none of them.

The advantage with single targeting them all on the same enemy, as far as I've noticed, is that the enemy AI isn't too smart about finishing a single target out of the group off. It will hit one of my henchmen with a solid attack, bring him down to 1/4 of his normal health, then immediately turn and attack another one while the first guy is still standing.

And, by the time the enemy's attention focuses back on that first guy, I'll probably have healed him already.

That's not a bad strategy, but I were going to focus on damage I'd play as a Blaster or Scrapper or Brute. Why take an AT that deals sub par damage like the MM, and try to out kill the killers?

I usually send my guys in a concentrated strike after a lieutenant or something, just to keep them busy, and then sit back and play healer for the rest of the team. If I'm having to heal a single ally too much, then I tell my boys to redirect onto whatever bad guy is damaging that teammate so much. But, for the most part, my henchmen are like neglected children most of the time.

edit: note: This is stark contrast to how I play when I'm soloing.

Let's just admit to ourselves that defense and damage resistance are big "no no"'s. That still leaves damage, ToHit, travel speed, regeneration and maybe.... endurance recovery. Adding origin based debuff or mez resistance wouldn't be too bad either.

If we did do damage resist or defense, it should be based on just one kind of defense/resistance. Ie. Natural resists psionic. Mutant resists toxic, .... etc.

I might recommend taking mace mastery instead of soul mastery, because the immobilize power includes fly protection. Hovering enemies are a big weakness for your Genin and Jounin because the game doesn't have mechanics for pets to jump and attack in the air. Also, power up is kind of awesome when you use it with your bubbles. If you're quick about it, you can enhance 6 total bubbles to super boost 3 people.

You just have to get past the idea of them being predictable. They're not. You never know when the tear gas will arrive, or the medic will finally decide it's time to help out, so you've just got to be on your toes and adjust your strategies as the situation evolves. Sometimes I'm all ready to start dropping purples,or run for it (did I mention they hold aggro off of you really well?) and all of a sudden I see two booms go off and the enemies are all standing there flickering. If you're really committed, then you'll start to get a sense of the timing. I can kind of feel when it's time to start healing the second most damaged pet, because my medic is surely going to help the most damaged one, and I'm tired of healing them just a second too late.


If you really like feeling in control of the situation, then you will hate this set. If you're like me and you like a little chaos to keep you on your toes, this is quite possibly the funnest of all the MM sets. It's like opening presents on X-mas day. You just never quite know what you're going to get.

It's an awesome build, but a real pain in the ****, because you've got to constantly keep your enforcers near everyone at all times in order to maintain the softcapped def. If your bruiser runs out in front (like he loves to do), he dies. If the bad guys turn and run (which they almost always do after swinging and missing a few times), you've got to reign your guys in real quick so they don't get killed off.

Gotta admit, that personal FF is really nice, though. Got me out of a lot of jams.