Berzerker_NA
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Posts
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Joined
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My problem with /traps is it's too vanilla. Half the MM's out there are /traps it seems. Also it's a lot of work. I find that, even with Hasten, I'm always trying calculate out the timing on my Acid Mortar to make it coincide with the next spawn. It's kind of a pain. However, I must admit I love it when enemies aggro the to Mortar, lol. At least it's not damage I'll have to waste any trouble healing later.
Quote:Yes, but we have to skip something...Originally Posted by Emberly
You are out of your mind.
Seekers is an awesome power. -
When you're playing an MM, sometimes it's really hard to keep your pets where you want them to. Everytime there's a runner, you have the possibility of your henchman chasing after them and aggro-ing the next spawn. Also, some MM sets, like Thugs, depend heavily on positioning due to overlapping auras, and things like that. I'm sure a lot of ranged MM's would prefer if their pets could be relied upon to stand back.
The ability to AOE immobilize enemies by taking a patron pool at level 35 helps with this a bit, because a least then your henchmen aren't "tempted" to run off, but I was thinking - how difficult would it be to add a /command that puts a magnitude 100 immobilize on all of your pets?
Then the craziness of the AI is a non-issue. Instead of trying to spam a GoTo command on the same spot over and over.... and over ... desperately hoping the wayward pet will hear it at least one of those times and come back, there would be a surefire way to keep them in place and not have to micro-manage so much. -
Thugs/FF has become a bit more cool now that you can group shield your gang war. The trouble is keeping them in a group (so the three auras, you, and 2 enforcers will always overlap). Enemies turn and run away because your defense is so high and the arsonist's DoT damage triggers a fear response (I think) and it's really hard to keep your henchmen from breaking out of formation and chasing after them. However, this has the highest stacked defense potential of any MM/FF combination (at least for your henchmen). The AOE immobilize you can get from a patron at level 35 is a godsend.
Bots/FF Has the advantage that you yourself have a higher defense due to the protector bot putting its shield on you. The other advantage is the protectors healing, which helps since the only heal you yourself will have is if you take the medicine pool. You can easily get the bots' defenses up to the 45% softcap.
Demons/FF - Will be a pain. The only demon who reaches soft capped defense is your Daemon Prince, and it's damage-type based, so some types of attacks won't be quite at softcap. Also, the set is mitigation-poor, so the daemons don't do a lot in terms of knocking enemies down or stunning them (except the Daemon Prince) to reduce how often they get hit that way. The part that helps is that you have all that resistance (which applies to you too, via Ember Demon's shield aura), and the Ember Demon helps heal. -
Plainguy - Doesn't it hurt not to have medicine?
Transient - Good build, but I must add that if you could fit the speed set into there, your Acid Mortar would come up more often, will all it's damage helping goodness.
I usually don't bother taking leadership on MM's. The reason is simply because of its numbers. Different AT's get different values out of the same pool power. Leadership gets the best possible numbers if you are a Defender or a Corrupter. If you're an MM, you actually get really poor numbers compared with other AT's. Certainly every little bit of damage and/or defense helps, but I like getting value for my Endurance costs. (And power choices.) -
Oh. I noticed that I said I took afterburner. I didn't take that. That's a mistake. I took the speed set and got Burnout. That's what lets me deploy 2 acid mortars and 2 poison traps simultaneously. (And I'm still wondering ... will it let me deploy 2 Triage Beacons also?)
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Zombies/Thermal is kind of fun. Your zombies look really cool with fire on them. However, unfortunately it doesn't stack well. Your zombies mostly don't have smash/lethal resistance to go with the shields.
Still, I like my zombies/thermal. I skipped the zombies and just took knights and lich (and Soul Extraction, of course.)
For ninjas, I totally agree with other posters that you need some kind of defense or-ToHit to stack with their innate defense. The Jounin top off around 16% defense (I skipped Genin.... stylistic objection to their appearance.) You can raise that to 21% if you take the Edict of the Master +5% defense proc, but you need them closer to 45% if you want them to be bad a$$. -
Quote:Serum is awesome if you frankenslot it. You can put most of your Commando's resistances up to his 90% soft cap, in which case he becomes truly invincible (except against psionics) for that full minute. However... if you're not planning to frankenslot it (give it 6 slots and fill them), then I'd recommend you not bother taking it at all. There's a huge difference between 90% resistance and 70% resistance.Originally Posted by Mint
Question to all merc fans out there, what would you rank as the best secondary for a merc, and merc only?
Right now im rolling a merc/TA, its cool and all but serum is very upsetting so far, only lvl 18 so far. Serum only last a very short while then makes your pet into a statue that stands there useless cause he's drained of end. They need to make serum last longer, perma, and no crash then mercs might finally get some respect.
In tough battles where I'm about to lose, I heal my Commando to full health, put Serum on him, tell him to attack the toughest enemy in the group, and then run back to the elevators, where I resummon the others as they die. When he crashes I just dismiss and resummon him, and then equip everyone while I wait for the enemies to come find us.
No. He never gets better. He's only really useful for healing between battles. You'll have to take the medicine pool if you want to keep your guys alive.Quote:
Im really liking the concept of merc/TA so far but the medic is isn't that great, his heals are weak and few and far between. Will things get better?
Mercs/TA is a tough build. You're better off with a set that has its own heals.
In my successful mercs builds I do the opposite. I stand behind them and let them do the fighting. That might be why I'm so happy with the set.Quote:Also I dont stand by and do nothing and let the pets do all the fighting like some MM's do, I get in there and I have selected all 3 gun powers. Im in the fight much as my pets are constantly shooting, and I usually always have them fire all on my target. Kinda figure if they fire on my target and im helping will make this set good.
For /TA that's what you should do. Make sure and take Acid Arrow and Disrpuption arrow to amp up your damage output.Quote:Correct me if im wrong, but do most people just stand by either healing, buffing, debuffing and ect. with their MM and not shooting and fighting with the pets? Cause im doing alot of shooting and shooting TA everywhere to.
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A lot of MM's do what is affectionately called "tankermind". You know about "defensive mode", right? (You open up the text on your follow command, erase the word "aggressive" and replace it with the word "defensive")
I put both the Achilles Heel (-Resistance) proc, and the Touch of Lady Gray (chance for negative damage) proc on both the soldiers and the spec ops. Almost all of their attacks have -def to them, so both procs fire quite often. When the Touch of Lady Gray proc fires (20% of the time) I notice that it deals approximately as much damage as the attack that triggered it, so it's like adding 20% to your damage level, with the added bonus that it's an "exotic" damage type that certain enemies are less resistant to.Quote:Originally Posted by GavinRuneblade
Put achilees heel into the soldiers and a damage proc into the commando. World of difference right there. three soldiers each independently have a chance for the -20% res to go off (doesn't stack but makes it pretty reliable at least) and if you use the right damage proc it's lightly resisted. Means all your boys are doing more damage and several of the commando's AoEs will have a significant kick to them.
For the Commando, I don't bother so much with procs, just frankenslot him for damage. On both my Mercs MM's so far I gave him the full set of Blood Mandate. -
I've got a demons/traps toon up to level 24, and I'm getting frustrated to the point where I'm thinking of deleting her. I can see why this build isn't terribly popular. It's just too hard to keep them alive.
I've got the medicine pool, but I haven't taken Triage Beacon yet. I took the running set up to Afterburner, and it's kind of awesome being able to put out two Acid Mortars and two Poison Traps at once. Does anyone know, when I take Triage Beacon, will I be able to double stack that as well? Of course this only helps with boss battles. Afterburner's recharge prevents me from doing it often.
The main problem I'm having is they just don't have a lot of mitigation. The max defense they can have is pretty near 25% (with both defense procs and the force field). Council can take that down pretty fast. They have great resistances, but it doesn't really help much if you can't heal them fast enough. I have tried slotting some healing enhances to Ember Demon and it seems to help a bit. Will the Ember Demon become a lot more effective at level 32? Right now I can handle +1/+1 difficulty with bosses active in SP, but it's very work-intensive with all the resummoning I have to do. (Usually I prefer to keep things a little bit more ..... lazy... if I can help it.) On teams I don't have much of a problem. I play blasters a lot, so I'm used to coordinating around the efforts of a tank or brute to stay alive, and I just treat my demons as if they were blasters also.
Also I don't have Demon Prince yet, so I don't know what kind of mitigation he brings to the table. Looking through my other pets, they do excellent damage, but the only mitigating attacks they appear to have are the slows of the Ice Demon....which aren't very slowing. -
Yeah. Mercs/Storm is really good. I got tired of mine, but I can't really say why. I think I just got tired of the automatic win strategy of summoning Lightning Storm and Hurricane, and then just having all my guys stand behind the wind barrier and shoot everybody to death.
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Not a bad idea. It was tails: /FF. Thanks for the advice.
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Quote:Originally Posted by The SentinelF13
I've got a few questions regarding procs and henchmen...
- If I equipped my Assault Bot with the Chance for +recharge what would happen?
- This proc actually doesn't work on MM pets. It fires, but MM pets are immune to + or - Rech effects, so it won't change how fast they fight.
I'm not absolutely certain, but I think the Dark Watcher proc will only fire when they use tear gas or flashbang, but not when they ordinarily fire their guns. Only stuff from def debuf sets or pet damage will fire when they're shooting their guns.Quote:- In my mercs mastermind I'm stuck between two choices for my Spec Ops, either get 8% more damage or equip them with the Dark Watcher recharge slow, which is more worth it?
It's an aura. Put it on one pet and it will affect all of them, as long as they are close to you.Quote:- Does the resistance and defense procs give the henchman you assign it to the bonus? I saw somewhere that it functions like an aura but idk which is true.
I put it on both the bottom and middle tier ones. Not all the Commando's attacks have def debuff, so I didn't bother to give it to him. He deals a lot of damage anyway, so I just slotted him for damage bonus.Quote:- Which tier of pets should get the Chance for negative damage in Mercs.
Achilles heel -resist proc is really nice on these guys, though multiple applications of it will not stack.
I'm not sure. I haven't tried out a purple yet.Quote:- What triggers the chance for build up proc when equipped?
Quote:- Does every attack a pet make give a chance to proc in regards to interface?
- If I equipped my Assault Bot with the Chance for +recharge what would happen?
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I've got to do one or the other of these, because I just get a kick out of the idea of summoning a gang war and being able to instantly shield all of them with the new change to how shields work.
The question is which one? With /FF I can easily super cap them. Even against enemies like Council that massively def debuff, I can be sure my guys will stay well above the 45% threshold, as long as they stay together. However, the only parts of the /FF set that really appeal to me are the shields themselves, PFF, and Dispersion. The rest of my powers would go to pools I guess (including Medicine, certainly).
With /Therm there are some really awesome side powers, but it's not as strong survivability wise. Most of my henchmens' resistances would reach 40% with procs, but that doesn't guarantee survival like good old fashioned defense does. Also the problem with the set is that every power in it is awesome. There aren't any good "skippable" powers to make room for pools. -
Yeah, when you reach Level 32, the KB begins. Your Commando and Medic are the worst offenders, I think. However, they're still nowhere near as bad as bots. Their major contribution to a team is defense bebuffing. Have them all gang up on the boss, and your teammates will never have any trouble hitting. Put Achilles Heel resist debuff proc on the bottom and middle tier pets and you'll be amplifying your teammates' damage numbers too. Also the randomly applied Mezz powers of your Spec Ops (which are half useless in Single Player) may actually become useful on teams.
Going Mercs/Thermal is not a bad idea. They'll stay totally vulnerable to Psionics and Toxic, but their smashing/lethal could easily get over 50% (If you also use the Sovereign Right Resistance Proc.) But the downside of going /Thermal is that there are no control/Mitigation powers in that set. Mercs benefit a lot from those. -
No. Power boost doesn't last very long. You'd want to use it just before fearsome stare or petrifying gaze, but it would only enhance maybe 1 or 2 heals before it wears off.
The biggest advantage of mace is probably that the net AOE immobilize causes fly protection, which is great if you've got some Long Bow guy hovering around with a jet pack too high for your Jounin to use their swords on him.
I would recommend electric ancillary the most, actually. There's a hold in the tier 1 power choices, which you can stack with your Oni's hold, and also in tier 2 for the set there's a super armor power to put all your resistances up to cap for a short time, great in some battles. Also the thunder strike power seems somehow appropriate for a ninja, in a way (even though it's not exactly a martial arts looking attack, quite.) -
Yeah, if you play ninjas/dark, then having to target a specific pet would probably be quite an annoyance. I was using it on my ninjas/FF, where the guys don't get hit a lot (and I wasn't having to resummon very often), so flashing them was a good way to give myself enough time to get over and use my healing pool. I had to target the guy anyway, so I might as well use an uninterruptible power to prepare for the interruptible one.
Quote:That would be interesting to find out. Maybe try using the temp smoke flash power and see if the ninjas get the crit. I'm pretty sure they don't, though. If they did, then taking the ice ancillary and slotting the placate proc to its sleep power would have interesting possibilities...Originally Posted by Necrotech_Master
smoke flash would prolly be less annoying as well if i didnt have to target a specific minion to use it, i feel it could be improved if you threw the smoke bomb at the the enemy and placate the enemy for the next ninja attack, but idk if the ninja would get a critical (would prolly end up making the power code wise a helluva lot more complex) -
It also depends how you play. On medium difficulty, smoke bombing a Jounin who's about to die gets you a last spike of damage before you have to resummon. In a lot of cases he may finish off the opponent who's threatening him too.
I hate resummoning, so I'm all about survival tactics for my henchmen. -
Quote:Yeah with ninjas, you've got to plan on going all out defense. However, smoke bomb gives you an easy way to bail out a ninja that's gotten hit with some debuffs or needs healing (they're easy for most mobs to 2 shot, or 1 shot in the case of Genin).Originally Posted by Jibikao
I can see synergies with Necro/FF (tohit debuff stacks with Defense) and even Demon/FF. Both Necro and Demon can use two sets of pet unique. Ninja by itself can only use one set of pet unique.
With power boost, your Demon can get over soft-cap, while having better resistance and even resistance debuffs from Whip attacks and demons.
When you're just running the top 3 pets, they get hit rarely enough to make that practical. If you run all 6, then you'd be going out of your mind trying to keep them all up. -
Is flurry's problem the same as Jump Kick's problem? Does it have a psychotically long animation and then not do anything? Punch and kick at least have quick animations.
I like powers that have stun in them, because there are like 3 different procs you can slot to them to give them a bonus effect. They're not super exceptional effects, but they're alright. Also the purple stun set isn't as expensive as a lot of purple sets. -
I'm rerolling my Ninjas/ff MM, and for thematic purposes I want to give them a martial arts hand to hand attack power. What's the best one? I tried the jumping one, leap kick, and I have to say I found its performance lacking. Has anyone tried the others on a MM? Also: can anyone tell me how do you make Mids print out a build to post on here?
Speed: Flurry - It looks good, and can slot stun IO's. Will I regret it, though?
I'm feeling slightly inclined to try taking the speed set to completion for Afterburner, but not sure it will be useful enough to be worth it. (Not a lot of recharge intensive powers in the /FF set)
Fighting: Kick - Doesn't look very martial art-ish, but it seems to recharge fast.
Fighting: Brawl - Can slot stun IO's as well.
Probably I would take brawl, which I guess is... martial arts looking enough....
Flight: Air Supremecy - Doesn't look martial arts-ish at all. Probably wouldn't use it because of that. -
Quote:It's a nice way to take the heat off of a henchman who's about to die long enough for your heal to recharge. I doubt the additional damage is unresistable as well.Originally Posted by Necrotech_Master
ive actually never really liked the smoke flash power, the rech is real low, end cost is very high, and it doesnt really seem to do much of anything for the ninja
i have heard that the crits they get with smoke flash do unresistable dmg, but i have not been able to confirm this (poeple reported testing this on RWZ dummies although the dummies regen too fast for 1 mm to kill it) -
Definitely. The trouble with /FF is that, aside from the shields, dispersion field, and personal force field (which is situationally quite useful), the other powers are all just a big waste of time. Too much KB.
I'd go either Thugs/FF or Ninjas/FF or maybe Bots/FF, but for the other 3 it's kind of a waste of time and energy. -
Yes, I find that vanity drives me to play mercs anyway, in spite of their failings, but I must admit they're less powerful than most competitors.
I'd say if you're going to play them, play to their strengths, no their weaknesses. Serum can be totally bada$$ if you slot it up, putting your commando at the full 90% softcap for AV battles, but the rest of the time the 16 minute recharge is going to make it practically useless. -
Yeah. I got to agree. It sounds like other posters are merely complaining that Time Manip isn't OP enough for their tastes, not that it wouldn't work well for MM's.
The only drawback for MM's is that the +30 recharge effect is wasted when you use it on a pet. But probably the +50 regen, and the damage buff make up for that. I'm thinking it might be good to use with Thugs, and put it on the Arsonist. -
My Shoguness ran this set, skipping Genin, and it was awesome. I recently tried rerolling her as /dark, but I'm going back. /FF was the funnest ever. I could stand solo against mobs that were meant for my entire team.
The key is skipping Genin. I know that, technically, that lowers the power of the build, but it massively reduces the annoyance or "I'm getting bored with this set" factor. The question is: are you playing to have fun, or playing to maximize damage? If your only goal is to maximize damage, then by all means, summon those poor saps time after time and waste your whole end bar trying to keep them alive while your Jounin are dying.
With soft capped defense, your Jounin are super scrappers, and your oni supports them beautifully. You'll want to take Mace Mastery, both for the power up, and for the AOE immobilize, because it has fly protection to force flying enemies to engage your boys in melee. -
Probably they want the servers extra stable for Freedom.