Jeremia_Bane

I just hit 32 on my beast/ MM, and yes the second upgrade helps alot. Maybe not as much as robots, but its very very noticeable. Judging by feeling ST damage is about Thugs or Robots level, durability is much much higher though.

Then again im running /Time, hitting farsight and pack mentality at once just saved my behind when i accidently pulled 2 arachnos groups with 2 bosses each. Its pretty much godmode for all your pets. Suffice to say without the second upgrade i wouldn't have killed much by the time pack mentality ran out ...

Edit: I have a beast/time, ninja/dark and a bots/traps all around level 35. Ninja really, really stands out. Its not just the dps, but the amount of knockdowns/stuns etc. Once you got them in melee they can burn a Boss down so fast its unreal. Faster than either of the other sets can kill a LT and im not exagerating, sometimes the boss doesn't even get to fight back ...

I remember a comparison of the attack chains of the different pet sets, and if i remember correctly Beast had some trouble due to a lack of attacks. It literally would run out of attacks with the individual pets standing there waiting on attacks to recharge, which wasn't something ninja suffered from.

How much practical application this has outside of soloing AVs/GMs i don't know since the pets might very well burst an enemy down and spend the recharge time of their attacks running to the next, ranged attacks might delay the closing in to a new target or not.

Subjectively i have to say my beasts don't FEEL that much weaker than ninja dps wise. I also think that while the Jounins might be pretty awesome, the lions are also extremely good and i feel the dire wolf deals a bit quicker with the bosses i sic him on than the oni.

BM is imho one of the better sets to pair with /sonic, due to the secondary it also shouldn't really do less damage then ninja/FF and personally i like to have someone provide + res i teams since there are already so many sources for def anyway.

'LOL THIS THREAD AGAIN'

Yeah well ... with MM there ARE sets that can be called "best". The crown just circles a bit depending on the specific situation.

That being said i can find literally no fault with demons/dark, your thoughts on shadow fall evening your resistances are spot on. About the only things lacking from the set are status protection for yourself and -defense, which could be an small issue with stacked -tohit powers that autohit. Nothing like dropping some stupid amount of -def on a tsoo sorc and watch him burn.

The reason i find the lack of -defense a bit problematic is that your heal needs a tohit check, and is a PBAOE. So often you end up in the middle of some -tohit AoE thingy trying to heal your pets and failing ... atleast that happens to me occasionally. Petrifying gaze is definitely important in situations like that, shuts them right off, ofc that needs a tohit check too...

Ok, people will probably think im singleminded at this point, but i still think your ideas jibikao do not address the core issues of mercs. Pardon the figure of speech but its like adding spices to a piece of turd. Its still a piece of turd and its still tasting like ****. Sorry to be this blunt and vulgar.

The thing is, thugs are running around with 2x freaking leadership pool(at almost 2x the strength of a defenders maneuvers, for a grand total of 4 defenders worth of maneuvers ...) and we are talking wether the cone attacks of the pets should be 5' or 15' and wether we shall add a AoE to two of the tier 1 pets and buff ST of the tier 2s to EVEN OUT the damage compared to other sets.

Thats just wrong. Apply that sort of logic to blasters vs tankers. How would you feel if tankers had above blaster damage and then to even things out people propose to give blasters damage EQUAL to tankers ...


MM, unlike other ATs, can have their damage(and defense through BG mode) literally get killed. We also profit less from inspirations than any other AT, no four purples for us to waltz through a difficult situation. We NEED survivable pets, or atleast a very significiant gain for a set that purposely lacks it(ninjas insane damage).

Fixing mercs can not be archived by changing some CD numbers, or switching a couple powers around between the pets, its a fundamentally broken set that offers neither ST damage, AoE damage, controls or tankability to any worthwhile amount. Infact there are sets that beat it in every single aspect. Even if the set had good ST and AoE damage it would STILL be broken, because medic is frankly a joke as far as team survivability goes if you compare it to any other "support pet"(ember demon, protector bot or enforcer).

Again, im not saying your ideas wouldn't help, hell ANY buff to serum would be worthwhile on its own, i just think it won't be enough.

What i think would make mercs shine:

1. Give them a theme, they are soldiers so being purely ranged would be a good theme.
2. Remove ALL melee attacks from them, its not like they can't fire their guns at point blank so all these melee attacks do is making the ranged pets charge into melee(im looking at you medic).
3. Spec OPs should have much shorter CDs on their controls like the flashbang and teargas, and give them a AoE slow like the one PPD uses(sticky glue or something).

I mean think about it, 6 sec of mag 2 AoE stun every 30 sec or so might sound imba(and permadoms have mag 6 for 35 sec every 30 sec, just saying), but compared to enforcers giving +20 defense to everything and facing the usualy purple mobs ... i think thugs still get the better deal.

But this way mercs atleast would have .. something unique. Purely ranged set, with noone charging into melee and some tools to keep critters at range. Won't keep them from getting oneshotted at range, won't give them places to put aura IOs and won't keep slow immune bosses from walking all over you either. But you would have something...

Well my ninja/dark is definitely a crazy powerhouse, easily my char with the strongest sustained ST damage ... aslong as everything is going well.

Theoretically Ninja/Storm would be even stronger though ... Doing 30% more damage due to -resist is really all the rage i heard .

/Dark is good, though im not sure about doing GMs/AV with that, isn't there some mechanic making debuffs affect AVs and GMs only in (small)part? If so /Dark would only add healing to you and -regen and -res to the target, still good but not sure if enough especially considering no status protection in the set.

/Time with powerboosted Farsight on the other hand can get interesting, should reliably softcap most pets atleast vs AoE with the right +def aura IOs.

Also define best, if by best you mean most reliable it would probably be Bots/FF. Bots have massive -regen to ensure any target is going down sooner or later, and /FF plainly has the most defense which you need if you want your pets to be softcapped vs incranate content. Bots also have two single target heals to deal with the odd damage leaking through, which is something i sorely missed on my Thugs/traps.

Also /traps ... im not a fan(anymore). It will do very good vs most AV, but afaik there is no way to get ANY pet set to the incarnate softcap with /traps. And even being 5% away from the softcap would mean your taking twice as much damage if i remember correctly.


Another variant, maybe even a tad more reliable, would be Thugs/Time. That combo can also reach the incarnate softcap and would imho be stronger vs non AV/GM content.


Imho OP MM needs this:

1. Softcaped pets vs the content you want to do.
2. -Regen to the point that the odd AV with unfavourable resistances becomes killable.
3. Enough healing to take care of odd hits.

Damage of pets does imho not factor into it, for example i wouldn't want to try a ninja/pain built or /thermal anything built. Imho no amount of resistance or heals can beat having 55% defense vs anything on your pets.

Edit: The reason i dislike resistance based sets is that BG damage bypasses resistances on pets, and since they(and you) are constantly getting hit you can easily get into a situation where all your pets die at once, which usually means death to you. Whereas with defense sets pets usually die one at a time, giving you time to replace them before BG mode fails.

Well personally i think even with your changes AND procs the set would still be worse ST and AoE damagewise than any other set. I mean the only sets with a damage type as bad are ninja and thugs, and they have insane single target damage and a very decent amount of fire damage from oni and arsonist.

Every other set either has flatout higher damage in both AoE(gg Assbot) or singletarget(demons) or a combination thereof with some exotic damage as a cherry ontop(necros toxic&neg energy).

Besides the real problem is the pet AI, whats the point of the LT shooting his awesome Web Grenade if the next thing you see is the medic rushing in to throw a punch ... and getting oneshotted because he is -5 levels to the boss he just bravely tackled. Besides controls and pets only go together with VERY low CD powers, otherwise its just a gimmick thats just as likely to hurt than do good(i.e. Lich/Oni good, specops bad).

Controls are supposed to increase survivability, controls on long timers(everything over 20sec really) means you better not factor them into the balancing of the pets because survivability that goes up and down like a sinuswave isn't very fun(especially if you have no control over when the high and low peaks will happen).

Edit: I guess beast got worse AoE damage, not by much though ... But they trade that for very high res and defenses aswell as a very powerful emergency button.

Even with your suggestions, which i like, the set would still underperform.

1. Its AoE would still be based on rather narrow cones.

2. The damage would still be anemic without procs.

3. You still wouldn't know where to put aura IO's considering you need any spare slot in the pets for procs already.


So in addition to what you suggest we need to buff the LTs a bit, give them Assault leadership buff at 10% damage each and stacking(only affecting pets). Also completely remove Serum, to be replaced by something like "entrench" an toggle which makes them kneel down, immobilizes them and adds some sandbags or something around them(kinda like controllers AoE immobs just different animation) which raises their resistances and defenses by some moderate value and gives them -KB etc. Maybe even adding a random chance for a weak gun drone showing up so the power will accept pet recharge IOs.

Presto, the whole set wouldn't just get a niche, it would be actually something i would want to play for reasons besides concept.

I had this issue as well, i THINK its somehow related to localized mac OS versions.

Anyway, i "fixed" this by not dragging the "NC launcher" program to the applications location to install it(from the window you get by opening the dmg file) but instead simply dragging it to the desktop. From that location it ran perfectly fine, so out of curiosity i dragged it from there to my applications folder via the finder and it keeps working ...

For the record, deleting the preferences did NOT work for me.

But beast does go well with thermal, only demons go better with it.

Its simple really, dead pets do no dps and beast are alot more survivable with /thermal than necro. Really its not just a small difference, its night and day.

Warmth is hardly able to keep your pets up against massive AoE damage on its own(necro tier 2 and 3 pets are basically even weaker against physical attacks than ninja), fortify pack and the def IOs mean your beast pets are well past the softcap for defense. Its a bit mindboggling to me why anyone would think that worse resistances, defenses and heals would somehow make a set more attractive. Might aswell play ninja/thermal.

Demons are the way to go for sonic. The more IO auras we get the more petsets that can offload those into non MM pet powers profit. Demons will later on probably have 6 IO Auras, while still being able to 6 slot every pet for damage/end/accuracy. They are also ranged, do exotic damage and have an AoE heal. Which is alot better than NOT having a AoE heal.

If you are set on Melee pets Beast should be doable, 4 out of 6 pets have a decent heal. Though by god i do not know how you are going to manage slotting 4 IO aura pieces into your 3 pet powers, especially not if you try to add a heal IO to get a little more mileage out of their heals ...

So yeah, maybe better stick with necros for melee. With /Sonic you'll eventually sit around 70% resists (30% from IOs, 40 from sonic), and between liquify, the lich and a potential ghost you should have enough -tohit to atleast get a couple aid others off. Which you will need to do. Alot.

Dont remind me, i still have nightmares of doing that 27 click pre battle preparation(on every zone in!), and then getting completely wasted on the first LT due to him throwing a fire bomb and my pets spazzing out and aggroing 4 different groups at the same time.

Saying that was unfun might be a LITTLE understatement.

Im on the fence between necro/ and beast/ all the time, and usually go by synergy with the secondary.

For example Necro/Dark is extremely cool, oodles of -tohit. Its really one of those things you don't just want a bit of, you want enough to make em weep.

Another example from the opposite direction is Beast/Time. Beast/ has 11% defence at its lowest, 5% from aura and 20% from /Time, add a 14% -tohit from the PBAoE debuff toggle and presto, your pets got reasonable defense. The same as a necro and your pets would get hit about twice as often, be even more vulnurable to red and purple mobs.

But you are thinking about a resistance based secondary set, and like -tohit and defense you really want alot of it. Short example why:

Attack of 1000 damage:
0% resistances: 1000 damage taken
10% resistances 900 damage taken
.
.
.
80% resistances 200 damage taken

The interesting thing is this, you can see that the total amoun is always the same, you get -100 damage per 1k attack per 10% resistance. But the interesting thing is the relative difference, because gaining -100 damage on a 200 damage attack means halving the damage you receive, while gaining -100 damage on a 900 damage attack ... thats just 12.5% less damage taken(800 instead 900, so 800 * 1.125 = 900), its boring and hardly noticeable.

An easy way to visualize this is looking at the extreme ends. Going from 0% to 10% means taking a fraction less damage. Going from 90% to 100% would mean your not taking ANY damage anymore. And most every resistance buff in this game is additive, while there are limits in place for players and pets, its very worthwhile to get to these limits as close as possible since the difference between 40% to 50% is quite a bit greater than between 20% to 30%.


Long story short, Necros lack lethal resistance in tier 1 and lethal AND smashing in tier 2 and 3. So they will have about 23% resist towards that from your secondary. Beast tier 2 and 3 have about 30% smashing and lethal resists, for a total of about 50%.

The difference between 30% and 50% is quite big(i give and take a bit here, necro can have 10% extra resist due to aura but not everyone threeslots their shields). I.e. a 1k damage attack would do 700 damage to a lich or grave knight, but only 500 damage to a lioness or direwolf, and taking 200 damage less from 700 is alot more than 20%(its actually exactly 40%, i swear i wasn't trying to go for even numbers), which means beast/thermal will take 40% less damage on every smashing/lethal attack than necro/thermal(edit: actually i mixed that up, necro/therm will take 40% more damage, not beast/therm 40% less, and yeah its not the same i hate math too).

And now think about all those superpowered punchhappy/hugesword wielding bosses etc, this is litereally the difference between surviving a blow and getting oneshotted. Having heals is pointless if your pet dies in one hit. Even with 2 res auras and a 2 defense auras on necro your still looking at about 20% resistance and 6% defense lead in favour of beasts. Meaning there is no GOOD synergy between necro/thermal compared to a set that actually HAS good synergy.

Edit: Beast use their heals when they are low on health, necros use their lifedrain as an normal attack. If a beast at the softcap gets hit once in a blue moon it will have an heal ready, a necro might or might not be about to use their lifedrain.

Edit2: Rereading that ... this is really min/maxxer land, both sets will totally kick *** because your a MM that can heal. Its down to style really, i don't like how zombies have trouble following and squat down after taking a small jump. I also like the singleminded chargein of beasts, its actually very refreshing to send your melee pets on something and have them actually give chase and jump the bugger, they are the dogs to the ninjas cats.

Isn't anyone getting the feeling that WS will profit more from this than PBs? Faster double mires, a quicker gravitic emanation followed by nova blasts etc. Especially the dwarf mire appears to become a whole lot more accessible, going from a >2.70 sec cast if your not already in dwarf form to <1 sec.

I currently level both, and this has me stoked for my WS, but i can't get much excitement from my PBs PoV. I guess i get the dwarf heal a bit quicker ... am i missing something?