Psylenz

You may be unaware that you can have 3 active builds for each character. You can have your team build, your solo build, and maybe #3 could be a pvp build or some such.

What is different about DS is that the second and third tier have abilities that suck down the endurance which is not ameliorated by endurance reduction in pet damage enhancements.

There are currently multiple strategies that will not 'bork' your pet builds. Hammi-Os can do things with less slots for level 50s, and I like to four slot Demon Prince with Pacing of the Turtle since most of the abilities of the Prince include slow features. I take the PotT that include accuracy, damage, endurance cost reduction and slow, and hit the last two slots with pet damage IOs or Hammi-Os.

Recharge intensive pet enhancements can be slotted in Tornado.

When the villain epic at's first came out, I designed my widow as a melee/support. Stacking SoA leadership is not a shabby way to go.

First option: you have 3 builds. For suggestion, you could have your tricked out team build, generic IO solo build, and a third build for whatever wacky static team fun you might fun.

You have plenty of resistance based powers you could slot some of the resistance IO uniques such as Aegis psi resist/status to plug that sleep hole in your mezz protection. You can get some sleep resistance from tempest in ranged attacks. Detonation has sleep resistance. I am pointing this out since your big 'hole' is a whopping zero status protection at this point.

My masterminds don't feel whole until level 32. I love the laser light show from the Bots. Demons really rock with their second upgrade. Necromancy explodes, especially with the Lich controls.

Defenders hit their stride right around level 12. Speed boost, Fearsome Stare, Hurricane, Lingering Rad (radiation defenders could take powers til 12 and make a good living with what they have), Dispersion Bubbles.

My new dark/dark blaster got to level 22, had his SOs, and I thought >>> there's MOAR to come?? I love that little blaster guy.

I agree with a previous poster about level 26 on the soldiers of arachnos.

Warshades when they get stygian and the end/health replenish button... woo hoo.

Depending on level and how you play your Necro MM, there is value in checking what Hammi-Ohs bring for optimal accuracy, damage, endurance, and mezz combos.

Kin/Kin would be an awesome defebcer

Nerve would definitely help purple content. Getting both musculature, for non-incarnate content, and nerve for the big bad iTrials is feasible. You wouldn't have to go to tier 4 in both, and you can switch out which incarnate ability you are using. Musculature for soloing would be very nice.

The build is not my favorite. It is far from ideal. I really like storm summoning, and you neglected to select hurricane. The enforcers are not slotted for damage even though they have the potential to be the most damaging force of your minions. Freezing rain should have as much recharge squeezed into the slotting as possible. You also have not slotted the edict of the master pet bonus.

More slotting problems are in snow storm. Between snow storm and freezing rain, extra slotting for slow is poinless. Even going for set bonuses, the acc portion of that slow set is wasted in autohit snowstorm. I see you went for the fighting pool, tricked out tough, but you left weave under-slotted for defense.

The chill mastery selections leave me scratching my head as well. Ice blast isn't going to draw or hold enough aggro to tankermind. If you were to pick up Flash Freeze and slot minimally for accuracy, you would be able to sleep a big AoE area even for a few seconds while the thugs dealt with any of the foes that didn't sleep. Frozen armor would allow you to stack more defense with steamy mist and weave for more mastermind defense.

Personally, I would ditch the fighting pool, pick up hurricane, maneuvers for additional defense to the thugs, and tactics for tohit, +perception, and protection from confusion. Slot Freezing Rain with 3 generic recharge IOs, an achilles heel proc, and some defense debuff. If all you wanted to do with hurricane is post up with the ranged thugs and keep them out of melee danger while the bruiser ran around and made friends you would be farther ahead of the game.

I have a Demons/sonic on Exalted that could 'pad' you to eight. I don't want to leave the SG I am in though.

8 Masterminds on a team is a lot. My big concern would be melee centric minions tripping over each other trying to get in position to use melee attacks. I think 8 Robot Masterminds would be faster.

With all the capping and such, 2 darks, 2 thermals, 2 traps, I would slip a couple of sonic masterminds in there to put sonic disruption of the dark servants. Dark servants like to get in melee range. I might even go 2 darks, 2 thermals, 2 traps, a sonic and a storm if you really want -defense on your chewy targets.

I took rad blast. Sonic blast should be good, too. Time is a very clicky set, very busy, almost as busy as kinetics. The quick animations in neutrino bolt and x-ray beam are good in that they don't tie you up in animations. Irradiate is PbAoE, and a bit longer animation, but it fits in with my time defender's attack style - right in the middle of everybody.

Also, time manipulation is a bit light on defense debuffing. Sonic blast should do well, too, but you would move around more to line up howl.

Proc out neutrino and irradiate, and your rad blast will do resistance debuff as well.

Holy cow, I hit submit on that last post, had two swigs of throwback mountain dew, and it dawned on me. I need to be a combat teleporter. BAM! take the MM into the spawn and the robots will retaliate in a chorus of blasting before following. I was thinking of this tactic on my Bots/storm since he has hurricane and gale to position the spawn, but I realized, I want the debuff there NOW, not some trailing, stumbling, tumbling retort from the minions. Indeed the debuff and oppressive gloom would be strongly indicated!

I have a Bots/time at 33. I am alting hard these days. Bots is not the best partner for time. On my time characters, I like to be _right there_ in melee with the spawn debuffing their damage and tohit. With robots, I like the bots to start attack powers sequencing at range for a concerted knock back on the spawn so that burn patches hold a lot of the foes in their fiery death grip.

Let me repeat, I think robots are terrific ranged minions with great defense and synergy with SOME of the aspects of time manipulation. I think Time manipulation is a great mixed set of buffs and debuffs. I don't think robots go best with Time manipulation. On speculation, thugs might have the same quibbles. I want 1+1 to be 3 not 1.9, capiche?

Although I have alted a lot, I am of the impression that demon summoning and necromancy would fit with time much better.

Last night the team leader was grabbing random folks. We had many blasters, scrappers, brutes, and tanks, no defenders, no controllers, no corruptors -- but we had a merc/sonic. The rings kept us upright. Sonic dispersion kept us mezz-free, and the hula hoop/tutu of down allowed dark blasters to actually do significant damage to banished pantheon. In such a 7 man team with no team buffs/support, ONLY a sonic or forcefield user would do.

In addition to what Deacon mentioned, webnade seems a bit meh on a minion, but the -recharge and immobilize on an AV can be the difference between win and wipe.

Poison gas trap: aoe hold, aoe -regen
Acid mortar: targetted aoe debuffs
Forcefield generator: with the defense of this big bubble, including mezz protection, you can soft cap defense about anything.
Seeker drones: squishy aggro absorbers that also debuff perception and tohit.

The trap and mortar are 'clickies' so they continue to function even if you are mezzed or otherwise occupied. They aren't anchors on foes, either.

I wouldn't put the numina's proc in anything but health.

Sorry for the oops in the Call to arms. Mea culpa.

I wonder what some others might suggest.

Dark blast is a little, teensy disappointing to me (I started a blaster altitis thread earlier). It all does smidges of to-hit debuff which isn't bad. For concept I like how I built my blaster so far, I get the feeling that fire or energy would be deadlier. I do like the hold.

Dark manipulation is wonderful. I like blapping. I like the smite, shadow maul, and sands of mu trifecta. I know the animations are long, but in large teams with heavy controls, piles of foes melt. If I wanted to I could endlessly, tirelessly spam tenebrous tentacles and the single target immobilize. I see this as a great asset in certain AV fights. I like the ranged kb power, too. The blaster gets to 'push' the strays back into the teammates kill zone if necessary. The build up and recovery powers lead up to my burning itching desire to nuke nuke nuke.

I saw the term 'blender' earlier for fire blasting defenders. My dark/dark could easily be referred to as a blastroller with the hold, immobilizations, kb push, and -tohit.