Boerewors

Nothing irritates me more than a message saying that my country is not included in the promotion, or a MMO that won't let me play because of my country IP address.

I despise these things in an era of the global village. Damn euro and yank elitists.

Curse you MMORPG.

Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!

I just want to make the case for Thugs as a very tactical and rewarding primary. It is the only primary set where micro-management is fun and it actually pays off. It is also the only set where the different tiers actually change your game play as you get them.

Many complain about the arsonist, but as soon as you get him at 18, your game changes. Before 18 the set plays like any other ranged set: select mob, tell thugs to attack mob, mob dies or you aggro and thugs kills mobs, done.

At 18 the arsonist comes onto the scene and runs into melee, blows things up and gets the most aggro of any other pet. You now have to micro-manage him and keep him up but if you succeed, you dish out more damage than any other set at this level.

At 26 you get your bruiser, and again your game play changes. Now you can send in your bruiser first to take the hits, since he is a tank type, then you open up with the rest. Once he gets footstomp, the game just jumps another notch, at the same time your arsonist gets a nice big burn patch and things turn interesting some more.

As you can see, having different binds for different pets in this set is not only challenging but it is rewarding and it allows you to do more damage than any other set. You get to play with your own little team!

Slot the achilles heel -res proc in your enforcers and you have no more s/l damage type problems.

Thugs rock!

Not quite sure how or why you want to solo content designed for a 3 player team. Only some ATs and then some builds of ATs can solo a team's worth of mobs.

*shakes head*

I solo nicely at 1x player and +3 level and enjoy the challenge. Very few of my characters can solo anything more than that and only 1 (Thugs/TA) can solo x8 mobs at +0 level.

Besides, in a game like CoX, levelling is not all you aim for, do the arcs, read the stories, have some fun.

I can log into the server but not into any of my characters on it. I can log into a character on Defiant fine.

Cannot even log into my characters on the server, can log into Defiant fine.

Interesting mechanic around the way the game applies these buffs once you zone:

1. The game recreates your pets once you zone so all debuffs and HP/End loss is gone when you zone.
2. The game also recreates any of your MM set buffs on all your pets when you zone.

This means, if you lost pets in the final fight of a mission, resummon them before zoning and DON'T buff them. Also don't spend time healing pets once the mission is over before zoning.
Once you zone you will see that the newly summoned pets now have the pet buffs of the pets that were alive at the end of the mission before zoning.
As long as you have one pet still alive with the pet buffs on it at the end of the mission, all the newly summoned ones will also have them once you zone.

Willpower is the set of choice for soloists. Being able to not watch your health between fights is golden and provides for much fun while focussing on managing the chaos around you with your primary.

Put the +2 hold proc in and suddenly I had mobs jiggling around in elec control cages! Wow, this is by far the most visually appealing proc I have ever seen.

Love it to bits. Had team members comment on it as well. Lovely!

Bugged, reported, begged, posted. Frustrated to hell about this AI idiocy. No reply from devs, online support or offline support, nothing.

Can only hope for some kind of acknowledgment someday officially and then after that in the glimmer of the dark future, a resolution.

Frankenslot acc/dmg x4, slot 5 acc. If you have not got all 4 aura IOs yet then that 5th slot is where one of them can go. Necros have the softest pets of em all and the zombies the softest of the necro pets, they need plenty +def/+resist.

My suggestion is thugs. I have a level 45 thugs/TA that solos +0 x8. Great for farming. Burn patch + oil slick + glue arrow = yummy.

I hate using bots for farming, the KB at random just spoils my muahahah fun when I have to run after the muppets who got knocked out of my hellhole.

If you are farming for cash or anything other then purples, then running a-merits with 3-4 characters every day is much better for cash.

I would go with Thugs for these reasons:

1. The damage output on Thugs is superior. Yes it is S/L and highly resisted but this is totally overcome by slotting an achilles heel - res proc in the enforcers and of course using Tar Patch.

2. Thugs do NOT do knockback, they do knockdown. Having mobs knocked OUT of your tar patch killing zone by the bots is incredibly frustrating.

3. Thugs are smaller and less disruptive in team environments.

4. Yes, they are softer but with some careful looking after, they kill much quicker. Most notably, the Arsonist has to be pulled out of melee range but you will have the same issue with the bots. It is the bugged MM AI to blame.

5. The bruiser pet at 26 is a TANK. Yes, a TANK. You send him in first and then lay down the debuffs while he takes the hits. Pop a purple or 2 on him before you send him in and do your own thing.
This makes Thugs incredibly versatile, a good mix of ranged and the one melee pet. Yes, you have to tell him to GOTO after 32, that is a glitch in the pet AI.

All in all, Thugs are higher in DPS than bots, in my opinion.

I agree with Judas. I have 7 thugs/x MMs and in every one my arsonist is well looked after, simply because I make the effort, which then escalates the damage of the set by a big factor.

Also do not rule out the damage from the enforcers. They have the most reliable damage, very long and pretty wide cones of consistent damage ticks. Add in the lovely procs you can build into them, a cheap frankenslotted enforcer with 4 acc/dmg, achilles heel -res and an end red IO becomes the real damage powerhouse of the set.

Most people look at the burn patch and think that is where the damage is at, which in my opinion is an error.

When I am playing my demon MMs I get really irritated, really quickly with their bleh damage until I make myself realise that I am playing an easier mode set, less babysitting an individual unit. Then it becomes fun as you just order them to attack everything you see and sort our stragglers after.

I am not saying it is a boring set, most definately not, it just takes a mindset and an appreciation of the smaller details: mobs running like glued matrix soldiers, frozen mobs and lots of fire to like it. Just don't expect it to burn down mobs quickly.

As an MM nut and a Thugs enthusiast I would completely put my opinion behind thugs for highest DPS. I even tested this. I took a Demons/Dark, Demons/Thermal and a Thugs/Dark through the exact same missions in one night at the exact same level (32) and I can tell you that as long as you can keep the thugs alive and firing, the demons lag way behind in damage. Thugs just pump out high streams of consistent damage through the long and wide cones of the Enforcers and coupled with the Arsonist burn patch, nothing lives long.

Demons are a big flashy light show, they survive easier but they definately do not do the damage that Thugs pump out.

I played these missions at +3 level +1 group solo.

Thugs also have the option of slotting the most beneficial procs in them, achilles heel -res in the enforcers being the most important.

Other than looks, Demons are very meh. Good for a control based MM, works incredibly well in sets where holds are available by 32 such as Dark and Poison to stack with the Demon Prince hold.

I was playing my mind/fire dom at the same time through Praetoria doing the resistance story lines and had a MUCH easier time of it. Probably should not compare the two then for soloability.

Elec control is incredibly tough to solo with. You have one, very slow casting single target control. You might think that conductive aura makes mobs controlled when they have no end left, you would be wrong. Even one power hit from a leut and you can be toast. At 12 you get static field (which you placed at 50) and it is the only thing that gives you a remote chance of actually soloing. This with your single target hold are the only 2 methods you have to control mobs and not take hits. Remember that solo doms have only 1 defense: active defense, which means you cannot let mobs take swipes at you.

I deleted my solo elec dom in Praetoria at 13 when it became clear that even with mobs sleeping in static field that I could not solo without dying, often. The sleep in static field is very unreliable and does not constitute a good active defence.

Elec control is most definately a team based set.

If you want to solo with a dom, go with something that has early and effective controls, such as Mind (3 controls by level 8: hold/sleep/confuse) or Plant (2 control powers by 6: Hold/AE confuse).

2. Since Ninjas are a melee set, using goto for your tier 1 and 2 pets to get next to a spawn and then telling them all to attack 1 target has the following advantages:

-> All of your melee ninjas use their melee attacks, instead of weaker ranged attacks. Your tier 2 pets get to slice and dice from hidden = crits.
-> focus fire on dangerous targets first then you can move on to the next target or let them decide. It is almost always a better idea to focus fire targets quickly than let them spread around. The exception to this rule is if you want them all to have aggro and you get none. In such cases I assign tier 1 to attack a target and tier 2 to attack another. This is of course AFTER the nasty targets are down.

Letting the dangerous targets have time to do things is a quick way to defeat.

3. Frankenslot and go all IO at level 27 is my suggestion. With just 4 slots in a pet, you can get 80%acc/80%dmg. 4 different Acc/Dam pet IOs are cheap to pick up these days. IOs are pretty cheap as well, making them - even cheaper.

I would echo all here with tankermind and necro. Even necro for any kind of playstyle solo is really hard.

So far the only sort of soloing I have been able to do at higher levels with necro has been with dark (large amounts of control and -to hit) and thermal.

The low resist to fire with necro pets tier 1 and 2 make them very squishy to any burn patches or explosions.

For tankermind, the best still remains Bots/traps with the super stacked bubbles and FF generator on you.

Elixir of Life and Antidote are skippable if you are solo and even in teams. The rest are musts.

Yep, every single one of my horde of MMs have the same build setup:

1/2 Summon pet/compulsory secondary
6. Pet buff
8. Hasten
10. Air superiority
12. Tier 2 pet
14. Fly
16. Swift
18. Health
20. Stamina

It limits me to very few secondary power picks on the road to 22, but I have realised that laying this foundation makes the road from 22 on with all the yummy secondaries soooo much easier as everything recharges quickly and I seldom run out of endurance. In any other powerset, this would lead to insane boredom but MMs make up for it when your pets change and get additions as you level at 6 and 18.

Dark is great since, with some clever command work, hold a boss in one shot once you get Dark's single target hold. After 32, tell your Prince to attack a boss, watch his attack and then hit your hold.

Tar patch also mitigates some of the low damage that demons puts out with a good AE -res on mobs, even with the exotic damage that demons do.