anonymoose

I like the medicine pool, you've got enough defence that interrupts shouldn't be a problem.

I consider hasten mandatory.

Take seeker drones at lvl 28, they're a 100% safe alpha-strike soaker. Slot 'em for recharge.

What's your playstyle?

1) Summon seekers into the edge of the crowd.
2) While mobs are distracted run into the middle of the crowd and drop PGT.
3) Now mobs are distracted and choking, drop acid mortar.
4) By this time your pets will be attacking and the fight is mostly over. Spam caltops and later on tripmine.

You should be able to run +0x5 with this style, and won't be lvl 30 for long.

A couple of thoughts, don't know how helpful they are :P

You've got a tool for runners - spam web grenade. It recharges quickly, you can even lock down EBs... eventually.

I really like recharge on /traps, you can never have enough acid mortars.

I don't find mez a problem on traps, you're not getting hit much and I believe FFG has some mez protection.

I hate to be discouraging, but if you're new to Masterminds Ninjas are not the place to start. They're extremely squishy and you're unlikely to enjoy playing them.

If your theme includes mastery of metal I'd consider Bots. They're much more survivable themselves, help keep you alive, and have some synergy with storm.

The first thing to understand about poison is you have very few powers to keep you safe. Poison is essentially a blaster set, killing the other guy first is the only way to stay upright.

My ninja/poison MM is a ton of fun and extremely effective, even before the poison buffs, IN CERTAIN SITUATIONS. It's the squishiest, most damaging pets paired with the squishiest secondary, and DPS is your best mitigation.

Soloing small numbers of tough critters, A+, I did most of my levelling at +3x1.

Against large crowds of even weak enemies, F-

Once you get Barrier it's safer, but you'll darn well have earned your salt getting there.

I haven't tried it on a troller. On the plus side controller primaries have tools to keep you safer. But you'd lose bodyguard mode, my whole strategy relied on tanking for my pets while they maniacally chopped everything down. Also, the heal is superfluous for a 'troller, and you'd have to stick your own nose in the fight to get any mileage out of VG, yeesh. Another nice thing about MMs is you concentrate on spamming debuffs and the pets worry about the DPS.

It might be fun to on the most offensively minded 'troller set, presumably fire?

I love playing my ninja/poison MM, but I expected a challenge, actually I expected it to be completely gimp and unplayable. When I found that I could thrive in certain situations if I did everything exactly right, it became a lot of fun.

One last comment about poison - when teaming with people who provide safety (bubblers, trappers, dark, 'trollers, etc) it's very blaster-like, just concentrate on damage and evil laughter.

At the risk of extreme off-topic-ness:

Fire/Storm corr.

The scourging goodness of fire, oh my.

Bots/Storm MM.

Happiness is Assault Bot burn patches + freezing rain.

Ninja/Storm MM

Ninjas are known as extremely damaging but extremely squishy. If you're really really good with storm, you'll be able to keep those squishy ninjas alive and enjoy the extreme damage. Plus, the ninja animations are utterly badass.

Ninja/TA is one of the least powerful MMs. If you skip Oni you'll be completely gimped. Oni is ST damage, most of your AoE damage, and has good control. He's undeniably ugly as hell, but that's just the way it is.

If you take Oni and take/slot your powers appropriately, and play skillfully, ninja/TA is not completely terrible. Ninja/TA is the kind of thing you may want to try as your 5th or 6th MM, as a challenge.

Don't think there is a guide yet, sorry.

Here's some advice off the top of my head-

Demons seem like a well-balanced set. The pet AI is decent, they have a good mix of damage and survivability. About the worst people have to say about demons is complaining about the howling sound effects.

The pets burn endurance quickly, you really need to slot some endurance reduction.

Hell On Earth will take both the Pet procs and the Recharge Intensive Pet procs, which gives a constant bonus to all your demons.

Most MM attacks are junk, but the whip powers have -resist so the cone attack at least is arguably worth taking and using.

Read the guides for your secondary, it's at least as important as your primary.

Honestly, bots are better then ninjas in almost every way, so bots/storm is going to be much more survivable and damaging then bots/ninja.

OTOH /storm has more synergy with ninjas then most other secondaries, so ninja/storm would suck less then most other ninja MMs. You've got KB survivability tools, lots of -tohit, a defence/resist aura, can slot the recharge intensive pet procs, and you have a heal to spam.

If you're looking for something awesome I'd go bots or thugs or demons. If you're an experienced MM looking for a challenge I think ninja/storm played carefully and well IO'd would be pretty decent.

I've sworn off creating new alts until I get a couple more existing toons to 50, but Ninja/storm is next on my list

Concepts aside, poison is arguably the weakest powerset of any AT in the game. They're going to buff poison but from what I see it'll go from "horrible" to "average".

Pain is said to be good but I have no direct experience with it.

Dark miasma is one of the top-tier MM sets. Necro/dark is a classic combo that's easy to get started with, and stays good right to 50.

summary - avoid poison on your first MM, you can go back to it for a challenge after you run out of other MMs to try

Dark Miasma is awesome, here's a guide you should read: http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showt...44#post2354744

If played properly dark/dark will be extremely safe and pack a punch. If you don't like the idea of constantly repositioning yourself to get the best coverage from your cone attacks, consider a different blast set.

I might have to try this. If I can play a ninja/poison then ninja/sonic should be a piece of cake. Violent, bloody, high dps cake, admittedly.

It's probably not going to be as good on MMs as /traps or /dark, but what is, really :P

Maybe I'm weird, but my ninja/poison/mace does a large fraction of her damage via caltrops and rain of fire.

I open with the slow cone and follow with the web immob aoe. 2 sets of caltrops and a RoF can lay down a lot of damage.

Now often the target dies almost immediately which is a waste but on an ITF or something the DoT can be significant. The nictus ambush has a lot of hard targets packed tightly together, or the nictus dudes guarding the shards packed tightly in those tiny rooms.

My ninja/poison ran an ITF last night with a bubbles defender. This is the first time I've teamed with a bubbler since they made the shields an aoe, I was impressed with the staying power of bubbled ninjas.

So if you're starting a TF and notice some bubbles or cold shields etc. on the team, switch out to that neglected old ninja MM and give them another shot

Cardiac is awesome. Incredibly unbalancing, all those goodies you used to have to think before using are suddenly available whenever you want, as much as you want.

In my experience on several toons now, the bottom tier cardiac is enough to keep my end bar happy, and you can probably get that from a single kill-most ITF. Then I grind out the 3rd tier musculature with damage/end mod which still keeps the blue bar happy but with bonus damage.