Deacon_NA

I expect this will be a challenging MM build, but if you're 26, the worst part is behind you. Ninjas are squishy and TA doesn't offer much for protection, outside of the notion that "death is the ultimate mitigation".

Flash - wouldn't worry too much about recharge. Base is 15 seconds and effects last a minute. Good for Cloud Senses, if you want to get that set.

Glue - affects everyone on the patch. Dmg proc would be cool.

Acid - the -resist proc goes nicely in here, to make you a -res debuffing machine (proc + acid + disruption). Don't bother with damage.

PGA - I'm seemingly one of the few proponents of this power. -Dmg is one of your few "safety" abilities.

OSA - this is the opposite of Acid, you should definitely enhance the damage here, it's glorious when lit. The double edge sword for Ninjas though (no pun intended) is that they won't go onto the patch while it's lit.

EMP - slot this as a hold, similar to what you do for Ice.

Other general comments, on what I'd do for a Ninja/TA:

Get Assault - with all the -Res, you'll get bonus damage from Assault based on the multiplicitive relationship of dmg and resistance.

Get Medicine - as mentioned above, Ninja are squishy and TA doesn't do much to protect them.

You didn't seem to have any questions about Ninjas, but Smoke Flash is very very nice.

Throw a +Def IO into enforcers and boom, all pets are soft-capped between ally shields, dispersion, Maneuvers (yours + Enforcers).

I don't have my Thugs/FF build accessible, but I don't believe I used any of the +Def IOs. I do endorse the +Res IOs (though I haven't incorporated them yet). The +Def IOs are fine to use. Eventually, getting Power Boost will put your shields at a crazy level putting your Thugs well in excess of soft-cap.

Are you overdoing it? Nah. I find Thugs/FF to be pretty easy to slot for so it's not a great sacrifice to include all 4 unique pet IOs.

Repulsion Bomb? I say yes. Knockdown, a little stun, some damage, I like it.

I heartily endorse the Medicine Pool for this combo.

There's really not much more to say about Thugs/FF. As for slotting, the basics apply. Max out your pet damage (to ED) and get some solid Accuracy. Max out Defense slotting where applicable. That's it. Log on, summon and upgrade pets, turn on toggles, grant shields (repeat every 4 minutes), go. Pretty simple.

As someone with an unusual number of Sonic Resonance 50s (1 Def, 2 Corrs and 1 Troller) and an affection for the MM AT, (50s with all primaries, all secondaries), I'm not excited about porting over Sonic and I certainly fail to see how it would be OP.

The only real advantage I can think of is that mez protection comes in a toggle instead of something to micro-manage. Even that's not such a great advantage given how pets can scatter hither and yon. Even the -res toggle is dependent upon a pet being somewhere useful. Again, good luck with that.

I think, right off the bat, as a MM secondary it's clearly behind Thermal, which will grant the same +res in the shields and has Forge to boost damage instead of Disruption. Lastly I think Thermal ends up with a better toolkit to deal with hard targets (Heat Exhaustion offers -regen Sonic lacks).

Anyway, I'm not going to go down the list set by set to offer a thumbnail comparison of Sonic. At a quick glance, I'd say it would be closer to the bottom. That's not a bad thing, by any means, the worst MM set (Poison imo) is still very effective. So again, I think Sonic would be fine as a MM support set and in no way OP.

By the way, I think the same of Rad Emission and Kinetics. Given that you can't buff +Recharge on pets, I think you're missing a major component of what both of these sets offer.

I think Rad would be a very good set, not necessarily better than Dark or Traps though. Kin, on the other hand, seems a bit scary (in a bad way). Kin offers very little for pet protection. A melee heal that I think would prove frustrating due to the way pets move and Increase Density. That's it. You want to damage cap your pets? You'll have to give go-to orders to melee (since they tend to want to start from range then wander into melee) and hope they don't die.

Cold, on the other hand... well that would be very interesting indeed for a MM.

Whenever I 2-box even level characters, ever since the way setting mission difficulty was changed, I've noticed a discrepancy between the mission bonus rewards for the mission owner and the other char.

Pre i-(whatever changed difficulty), I'd always get 482 prestige for Invincible. Now, setting at +2/1, I get 344 as the mission owner. I think the other toon still gets the 482. I hate to mention specific numbers because there may be more going on and I haven't given this the full scientific method yet. So, I'll still leave it at the hypothesis phase now, that there's something screwy for mission bonuses, a discrepancy between mission owners and everyone else on team.

For those that want a translation, here's my shot. It did take MANY readings to get to it.

With GR, I brought my ill/rad redside to go big game hunting with Scirocco's arc. Phantasm now has the new-ish pet AI to go into melee, as most of you know by now. So now he gets whacked by various aoes. This is proving to be a bummer to my dps, as instead of spamming attacks, I have to either heal Phanty or resummon him.

So I post this to see if anyone has found any tips for dealing with this. What I end up doing is standing to the side of him (so I avoid cones) with him just on the periphery of my heal radius. This is fine and at the end of the day the AV/Hero is defeated, but I'd like to minimize this problem, especially since Lord Recluse will be coming up shortly and I'll need to be at max performance for him.

I'm going to give a nod to Singularity as well due to

- Reliable behavior. Singy stays by your side and does NOT go run after the mob it kbs. No other Dom pets are even competitive to Singy in this regard.
- Toughness. It has rather strong resists for a pet - 50% to s/l/f/c/e/n and 100% to psi/toxic and can't be mezzed.
- Stacking mezzes.

Maybe it doesn't win for you if you're looking for damage for a pet. That may be more of an issue for Controllers, but for Doms, not so much.

Where does the Pyre epic rate with respect to Mu? Is a FE buffed Fireball > the 2 Mu aoes?

I have an SS/Fire I self-PLd to 50 over a year ago, and just haven't gotten around to building him (still no SOs even). One of these days, I guess.

I don't know the answer, so allow me to walk through my process of getting to my answer...

I'll begin by prioritizing the effects I'd like to see on this team:

1) Very high Def. "Very high" meaning at least 55% (room for a debuff or 2)
2) Hard cap resistance
3) Max out +Dmg
4) As much -Res as possible

These are highly valued
5) Good -Regen
6) Status protection

Then a gap to desirable, but not totally required attributes
6) +regen
7) +recov
8) +recharge
9) -ToHit
10) -Dmg
11) Heals

So it's sort of like an Operations Research optimization problem.

How to get high +Def? Colds, FF, VEATs, Traps. Storm and Dark offer some Def. Empathy as well.

How to get high +Res? This is simpler, Sonic by far, then a drop-off to Thermal and also consider Pain Dom, Storm and Dark (the latter 2 specializing in a narrow band of damage types).

How to max out +Dmg? Easy enough... Kinetics. Other sources include Thermal, Empathy, Rad. Also, Assault is great stacked.

-Res is easy enough to find. Dark, Storm, Traps, Cold, TA, Rad, Sonic, Pain Dom, Thermal.

-Regen: Cold, Dark, Traps, Rad, Kin, also anything with Drain Psyche.

Easy (as in no active buffing) status protection comes from Sonic, FF and Traps. Targeted buffs come from Sonic, Empathy, Pain Dom, Thermal and to a lesser extent Kin and Storm.

So let's fill in the gaps. Cold comes up a lot, let's get one of those. On the other hand, only Sonic can really buff +Res, nab one.

Kin fills in nicely, let's go Corr since Kinetics is one of those sets where the primary values aren't a big advantage over secondary values.


That gives
Cold/ Def
Sonic/ Def
Fire/Kin Corr

Let's get another Cold, this one a Corr to buff the other Cold. Now we've achieved our +Def goal, our +Dmg goal and accumulating -res.

Still need more +res, how about a Thermal? Thermal + Sonic Def = 75% resists for teammates. Add a Fire/Thermal Corr.

Now I'm constrained to the meleers, my "pity spots", as it were.

Buffed up Brutes = Tanks survival-wise with significantly higher damage. With these buffs, I'm just looking for damage. So, mix and match Elec/, Fire/, SS/ with /DA, /Elec, /Fire, who cares.

Let's give all the Defs Sonic Blast and Corrs Fire.

My final 8:

Cold/Sonic Def
Sonic/Sonic Def
Fire/Kin Corr
Fire/Cold Corr
Fire/Thermal Corr
Elec/DA brute
Fire/Elec brute
SS/Fire brute

All Corrs/Defs to have Assault, Maneuvers and Tactics.

Well, I didn't say it was "the worst", I just said it was brutal. The fact that you believe Storm (or Fire or Ice) to be more endurance intensive does not affect my assessment.

Toggle-wise, Sonic does consume more than Storm - .52end /sec for Sonic Disruption + .26 end/sec for Sonic Dispersion > .26 for Snow Storm + .26 for Steamy Mist + .1625 for Hurricane (which most people don't leave on). I won't count Sonic Repulsion because that's also not used, but if I did, Sonic would be WAAAY more expensive. I can't argue against Earth click powers being more costly than Sonic's though.

I never thought about this combo, but Elec may well be the best primary for Sonic. Sonic is BRUTAL for endurance consumption. Elec/ can actually do something to help that with (insert name of the PBAOE power that buffs regen/recovery whose name eludes me for now).

I'll echo prior sentiments that it would be a fine toon for teams, but soloing would be laborious.

I'm almost done leveling up a Demon/Storm (lvl 48).

The first thing that comes to mind when I think of her is *gasp gasp gasp* as my blue bar plunges.

Let's say I didn't slot any endurance reductions and I place a Freezing Rain, summon a Lightning Storm and a Tornado and then heal a pet that took some damage. I would soon be getting one of those new Help tips that says "running out of endurance" and "toggles dropping" because I just spend 104 endurance.

Practically speaking, Tornado isn't used like that, but the point remains that even just FR + Crack Whip + LS (which is indeed how I start a fight) is almost 80 endurance. Even if I max out (to ED) end reduction, I'm still looking at losing half my blue bar every fight. Oh yeah, then there's the toggles, Snow Storm + Steamy Mist costs .65 end/sec (with no enh).

Hopefully that gets the point across. Storm is powerful but it ain't cheap. I suggest finding as many recovery and endurance bonuses as you can leveling up.

Also, try to frankenslot some end redux into Tier 2 and 3 pets. They're almost as end hungry as the MM.

By the way I never took a travel power either, because of Ninja Run.

I do want to counter that PGA is skippable, I wouldn't advise omitting it. -20 Dmg is effective against AVs. For soloing or spawn munching purposes, perhaps it is skippable, but when fighting dangerous targets, it will be a good help. Smoke, by the way, is resistable (unlike Flash Arrow) and will frankly be a waste of endurance and activation time for an AV, unlike PGA.

Sorry to use a sports metaphor, but it's like asking who's better between Kobe and Lebron.

First of all, I want to note I have NOT played /Dark on a Corr. I do have a 50 MM and Def so I think I pretty much can translate it to the Corr experience. Earth/Fire is a current leveling effort of mine (43 now).

Let me get to specific questions first.

Doms and Recharge, big time. Getting perma-dom is transformative, even post domination changes.

These happen to be my 2 high level Stalkers (50 Claws, 48 (and counting) Ninja Blade).

I haven't put much thought yet into what is "better". So I will now...

They're both pure lethal, so no advantage there.

I finally took Flashing Steel (for lvl 47 power) and I regret taking so long to get it. I solod for the most part but am using ITFs to get the last few levels. With it I contribute a good deal more for spawn munching. When you line it up correctly, Golden Dragonfly is beautiful if you happen to get a couple of crits.

Claws only has Shockwave for aoes. Though it's very good at what it does, you do have to use good judgement before using it with teams.

I do have to give an advantage to NB for aoes. Also, Divine Avalanche is a fine power regardless of whether you have a def or res based secondary, or regen for that matter (which is what my NB/ is).

Claws does give some interesting options for a ranged attack chain, especially with a PPP ranged attack included.

So now that I've thought about it, I'm going to give a slight nod to NB over Claws.

MM secondaries are pretty undemanding for team buffing, as a general rule.

No buffing whatsoever:
Dark
Traps
TA

Minimal buffing:
Poison (Antidote)
Storm (o2 boost)

Some buffing:
Pain Dom (Painbringer, Enforced Morale, World of Pain is PBAOE)
FF (Shields every 4 minutes)

Heavy buffing
Thermal


I'll ditto the "Play how you want" sentiment. Here's how I want to play - when I join a team, even as a MM, I'm wanting to get the team performing better. No doubt in my mind, buffs for the team are more important than buffs for my henchmen. Not that henchmen get left out. Every 4 minutes, all teammates and all my henchment (not other MM pets, I don't go that far) get bubbled. To be honest, a /FF MM doesn't have a heckuva lot more he needs to do on a team.

Similarly for Pain Dom, a teammate can make much better use of Painbringer than a pet. I never bother to de-mez pets on a team (rarely solo) but will proactively use Enforced Morale on the right team members.

Thermal... I think I teamed with my Thermal MM for 4 different SFs and have retired him from teaming. That's all the buffing from FF (shields) + the CM buffing from Pain Dom + Forge, a buff teammates really really like. So gods bless the Thermal MMs out there, I can't deal with that set for teams.

Here are my own "pros and cons"

Pros
1) Best "get out NOW" travel power. (unless you're mezzed or in a PVP zone, more on this later)
2) Fast. If you have an /energy blaster it's worth teleporting and taking boost range for the OMGBBQ! factor.
3) With practice, pin-point precision for landing at a destination. Not the biggest deal, but kind of cool
4) Prereq is either 1) team friendly (recall ally) or 2) solo friendly (tp foe can thin the herd)
5) Cheapest of the stealth IOs

Cons
1) Lag = death (potentially) It's quite possible to drop into purple mobs in a moment of lag.
2) Prereq power is least useful to me compared to Hasten, Combat Jumping, Hover or Air Superiority.
3) Useless in pvp zones if you attack or are attacked (whether npc or pc).

Bottom line, if you haven't taken it, try it. If you don't like it, then respec or make a 2nd build.

There's also the IO bonuses to consider. Some sets go straight to the top of the "uber" heap with the right build. Others don't.

Bots/Traps is certainly incredible with just SOs (and becomes MORE incredible with sets).
Ill/Rad has been mentioned a lot and is very good with SOs and becomes a different beast with a recharge intensive build.
Anything /SD makes a substantial leap when built well (with SOs, I think it's just ok).
I'll "ditto" putting VEATs on this list

I'll also submit Cold/Ice Defender, Earth/Fire/Pyre Dom and Fire/Kin Corr.

Nit pick time:

I'm avoiding this, for the most part, but one thought expressed previously caught my attention in light of some recent gameplay - mezzing foes is nowhere near the same as having mez protection. Last night on a Sister Psyche tf with my pimped-out Dom, the new Freak Stunners (whatever the boss Elec Control guys are called) kept mezzing me a dozen different ways. Yeah, I could hit one with a hold but outside of Domination, he'd mez me before I could get in a second hit. Lord help if there were 2 of them. I would have loved to have had a bubbler with me for that (or Sonic, I'm not too picky).

I suppose I have what's worse than anger: complete apathy. I haven't even used an emote for a few years now, just not my thing.

That said, I'm all for selling more micro level products that appeal to certain niches. An a la carte approach is perfectly fine for me. If it means the next pack costs slightly less because it doesn't include these emotes and I'm interested in whatever this next pack is, I'll be more likely to buy it.