Dechs Kaison

*boggle*

Did you just mention farming and causal play in the same sentence?

If you want to be able to solo, I'd suggest making a villain. As a general rule, villains solo better. Since you like ranged and controllers, I would second the suggestion of a dominator.

My personal favorite is mastermind, but that's definitely not the playstyle for everybody. If you have any questions about the AT, feel free to ask me.

Ah-HA! Thank you.

I agree, it is. The message via forums has been sent.

It showed the links provided here about Masterminds soloing GMs, and then I said, "I'm pretty sure that NO controller can match a scrapper for DPS, but this guy took down a GM." and gave him the link to the controller/kraken thing.

I wrapped it up with: "Burden of proof's on you now, show me a scrapper that can solo a GM without popping a shivan or HVAS."

Thanks everyone!

Well, I was going to stay out of this, but since my name got dropped...

You've got me pretty much on the mark. My bots are softcapped to everything, and the MM himself is softcapped to ranged/AoE with 35% to melee. My strategy is generally jump head first into the spawn (obviously set for x8, and I've gone up to +2s), soak alpha and let the bots open up. Drop proctrops and other traps to taste. Generally, I don't have to do that much.

In ugly fights, I put provoke on auto before jumping in. In particularly ugly fights, I open up with seekers.

With regards to the concentrate fire thing: 95% of the time my bots are in full bodyguard mode, but I do have a macro that makes the protector bots and the assbot attack and leaves the drones out. Bodyguard is still in effect, but reduced from 75% effective resist to only 60%. Combined with the softcap to ranged/AoE and the caltrops at my feet to keep things out of melee, I still don't take much damage. Throw in triage beacon for icing to the cake. I don't end up using this much, but the times I need it... It's really worth it.

I'm not going to say this is the only way to do things. I'm not even going to claim it's a good way. I'm just saying that "This is what I've done, and it's gotten me this far."

P.S. Thanks for the name-drop. It made me feel special.

EDIT TO ADD:

I've recently started doing this same strategy with a necro/thermal MM. It's only level 12, so the character has yet to feel ... well... like my bots/traps. Regardless, it seems to play similarly enough. I soak alpha then heal myself and the zombies/GK. I expect the strategy to be completely different in the later levels though. I imagine this character as more of a "team player."

EDIT AGAIN TO ADD:

So as not to /threadjack and in an attempt to provide something actually useful to the thread: I know a little trick to get your pets back into bodyguard mode immediately without the 10 second delay of the defensive follow command. I have "g" bound to "petcomall defensive goto" Pressing "g" and then clicking at my feet brings all the robots back to me, even if they were in attack/aggressive mode, but there's no delay before they start firing again.

Very helpful, yes. Are there more?

I'm kinda with this. I still want /rad and /cold domination on my MM though. Each AT should have at least one primary and secondary that is unique to that alignment (red/blue), if not completely unique.

*Disclaimer: The following is biased, and is a very general outlook.*

I'd rather be on a team of villains than a team of heroes.

The difference between blueside and redside is the amount of inherent independence on the redside.

Brutes are the red scrappers. They can solo damn near anything because of the pairing of survivability with damage.

Corruptors have all the tools of a defender for massive buffs/debuffs, but with damage that rivals a blaster. Survivability + damage = solo artist.

Dominators are controllers with damage. Again, the hard control allows them to survive while they pummel things with assault powers.

Masterminds are a team unto themselves, and bloody effective ones. The good ones view teammates as bonus pets that don't listen.

The point I'm making here is this: A blue team moves as one, but a red team moves in eight directions at once. Which one clears things faster is up for debate. On a closed office map, probably blueside. In an open outdoor map, most likely red.

You're right that villains tend to have negative synergy. That's because they're in general built to work on their own. But really, the negative synergy is only in a few limited cases, namely brutes and doms. Corruptors pair well with anything. Masterminds, played right, pair well with anything. If you want dominators on your team, avoid brutes. If you want a brute on your team, don't get dominators or another brute. Competition splits fury. They don't like that.

I haven't mentioned stalkers yet. Oops. Even a good stalker won't slow a team down, though. He should be the first one in the spawn with a target already marked. When the brute or dom or MM opens up the fight, he should start the assassination strike. After that, scrap it out.