Adeon Hawkwood

I hear George Lucas is going to re-write Maria Jenkins arc so that Primal Earth attacks first.

Take a look at what generic enhancements the pets can take, those aspects will transfer over (this means that the Recharge in Soulbound Allegiance doesn't change your pet's personal recharge). Set bonuses do not transfer over although there are two IOs that increase your bots defense/resistance when they are near you (very good value for a slot).

For bots the Drones and Assault Bot basically just need Damage and Accuracy with extra slots being used for set bonuses or procs (damage should be ED capped, Accuracy you want ED capped on the Drones but the Assault Bot can manage with 1-2 SOs worth). The Protector Bots are a lot more variable in general you want at least some damage and accuracy slotting (I'd say 2 SOs worth of accuracy) plus it's useful to have both healing and defense slotting for their support powers, although as a /Pain you might find it better to skip the healing enhancers in favor of more defense since you'll be less reliant on their repair ability. It's also useful to give your Protector bots some endurance reduction slotting, mine always seem to be a bit short at higher levels.

I made a chart a while back showing how much accuracy you want based on whether you have Tactics and what difficulty you're at:


Regarding actual slotting the pet damage sets are not that great. Blood Mandate is good if you're building up your MM's personal defense and it can be useful to two slot a few sets for recovery or regen bonuses but other than that Frankenslotting is the order of the day. The pet sets have a decent selection of multi-aspect IOs you can use and the other excellent option is Hamidon enhancements if you've got the cash. Since these provide 2 SOs worth of enhancement in a single slot they are quite a bit more powerful than multi-aspect IOs (although level 50 triple IOs come very close). You can get Acc/Dam HOs which are useful for all of the bots plus Healing/Endurance and Defense/Endurance for the Protector Bots.

For procs and special IOs there are the two aura IOs I mentioned above, I'd definitely take the defense one to stack with the protector bots shields and the resistance one is handy if you've got room. The Soulbound Allegiance Build Up proc is nice in your Assault Bot and Explosive Strike has a damage proc that all three bots can use.

For overall set bonuses the two main options are Defense and/or Recharge. Defense is most useful if you want to play a Tankermind which is a possible option especially if you keep your pets close and spam your AoE heal to heal both you and them. Alternatively you can build up recharge to get World of Pain and Anguishing Cry up more often and let your Bots take most of the damage while you heal them.

3rd option: create your own

I can't open them in Mids since I don't have the fitness patch so this is going by eye but I would say the first one.

With CJ, FFG, Maneuvers and Weave you have 37.8% defense to all types and positions. If you add a Steadfast Protection +3% IO to Charged Armor you'll have 40% to everything (it's well worth doing even losing the Aegis slot bonus in the process). Given that level of Defense I would say having a S/L/E Resistance based shield is a LOT more useful than a S/L Defense based shield (of course if you then use set bonuses to increase the defense to softcap levels). The S/L Defense form Mace will but you way over the softcap there which is a nice buffer against debuffs but won't increase you survivability much unless you're getting debuffed. Conversely a S/L/E Resistance shield adds extra survivability to the three most common damage types.

Now, admittedly an AoE immobilize is nice to have but overall I think layered defenses are more useful (although you could technically do Leviathan Mastery and get both assuming you don't have conceptual problems with doing so)

The I20 pre-beta stuff was pretty vague. Part of the testing was apparently an attack on the BAF designed for 12 to 24 players. Also concept arc for the Mother Mayhem Mercy Hospital. And new tilesets for warehouses (including one with rather cool looking fighter aircraft).

I'll be interested to see how this goes. So far the numbers are just about supporting random rolls over direct buys if you ignore the LotG 7.5% (including it blows direct buys completely out of the water but given the low roll count so far it's an anomaly).

For my Bots the one thing I find annoying is the fondness my drones have for Melee. It's useful at lower levels when hey only have 1 attack and are my level or -1 but at higher levels I'd prefer for themt o hang back with the protector bots. Speaking of Protector Bots, given the 3minute cooldown on their seeker drones it would be nice if they used them a bit more intelliently.

Only power I would say is pointless is Acrobatics. FFG provides quite a bit more Hold protection than Acrobatics and you can use a -KB IO to prevent most KB attacks.

You might also skip Pistols. Personally I find it useful to take all three single target blasts but I know a lot of people who skip the first one on Blasters/Corruptors. Since DP has Piercing Rounds you're in a better position to skip the first blast and still have a decent attack chain.

I'd switch Bullet Rain and Empty Clips. Personally I find that the lower Endurance cost and faster recharge of the cone attacks makes them more useful at low levels when slots are scarce.

Regarding Defense I've gone both ways on this. The advantage of ranged is that for a ranged character it's easier to boost with IOs than typed defense and you can take a S/L resistance shield giving you layered defenses. The advantage of S/L defense is that you can almost softcap with SOs (with Maneuvers and CJ taken but not slotted for defense you'll be at about 40%). If you only go for one defense category I'd lean towards S/L simply because Traps spends a lot of time in melee range and S/L covers a decent portion of melee attacks as well as some ranged attacks. One other downside of S/L defense for DP is that it won't stack with the bonus from Hail of Bullets but I would say that's a minor concern.

With Mace Mastery I'd try and take Summon Disruptor if you can just because who doesn't want a robotic spider? Plus with Traps you want to go for high global recharge anyway so you'll tend to get high uptime on it.