Lewisite

Hi fellas.

I've been wanting to make another mercs build for a while here, but I'm not coming up with any good ideas. I'm looking for something that can nicely mitigate some of their weaknesses... I've got a lot of experience with my mercs/ poison build, but in truth poison doesn't work at all for mercs imo.

I know mercs aren't very popular, but I like them anyway

I'm thinking traps would work OK, but dark is feeling good too... I hate Ff, it bores me to death and thermal isn't a favorite of mine either (no way I'm spending so much time buffing my troops).

I have, aside from my mercs/poison, thugs/storm, bots/traps, necro/dark MMs at 50. So I am pretty good at figuring out how to work a build but mercs are just eluding me for some reason.

anyone had any good success with a mercs build have any good advice?

cheers!

My Mercs/Poison was my first villain character, made many years ago. Now, because he was my first and I've played him for years he's got what should be in my mind a very good build. He's got enough purple sets to choke goat, probably running with a build around 2 billion inf worth (that takes a long time to save up for ...

Hindsight, I would have went traps with him, because every MM I have that has traps inevitably does very well. Dark is good too actually. But I digress. Here's my *opinion* after playing this character to the point where I can say he is "complete". Now CoV was brand new when I made this guy, so, you'll have to forgive me if I made a poor choice for my main character -- I didn't know what I know now back then

Mercs are under rated. They many problems, a quick look on this forum shows that, and whats very interesting is the fact that there is a strong consensus on whats actually wrong with them. Most Merc players agree that the recharge times on many of the powers are far too long to be that useful. So the fact the devs haven't tweaked Mercs at all yet is kinda disappointing. Maybe now you can get blueside MM's they'll get some love Keep the dream alive! But really, slotted right, they do some mean damage, especially to a cluster of guys. A lot of people claim the solders full auto cone is too narrow -- and they are right -- but it does hit tightly packed enemies nicely. My point is yeah Mercs need some serious love, but they can be made to work -- it just takes more effort and patience than any other powerset for MM's. Not to mention the Medic, he's actually saved my life a few times with his tiny little heal -- but if you play a character for this many years bizarre stuff is bound to happen.

Poison sucks. Its supposed to be a boss killer, but its really not. None of its powers even work on bosses for more than a second. Even stacking things like holds and debuffs till your blue in the face and out of blue everywhere else you'll never do anything. You'll get somewhere on the basic level 50 bosses but on anything much higher don't expect a lot, because you won't even get squat. Let me be a bit clear on this, poison powers work quite well on minions and lieutenants, weaken and envenom are sweet on those guys, for single target stuff. On low-level bosses power boost with stacking holds can do good stuff. On the big toughies like EB's and AV's at any + level it does pretty much nothing. In fact, no poison power does anything much. Poison has no real crowd control stuff, I mitigated this slightly with some mace master stuff.. but poison still lacks that.

Its all quite a bit worse with the new AI bugs, Mercs REALLY suffer from charging into melee. They don't have the ruggedness to pull that kind of stuff off. Watching my troops run into a fist fight with a level 54 boss is a sad, sad thing. Its amazing they last as long as they do.

In short, poison is the worst set for MM's. It sucks. Its poor for groups of mobs, and its poor for powerful mobs. If you ever find yourself playing a /Poison MM, your going to end up working a lot harder than anyone else to get the same stuff. You'll end up fighting few mobs that are low level. I'd be happy if I could get away with fighting few mobs -- but high levels (which is what I do anyway), but once you get to the boss its pretty disappointing. Poisons rep as a boss killer is completely undeserved in my mind, its effects are just too small and most importantly, too fleeting to be of much use. The whole set is not good at anything really.

Poison used to be good for PvP -- I took solace in that and kept playing him, but after the big PvP fiasco, it became useless too. I made Mercs work, I can do nothing with poison, My Mercs are solid lads, I've took them into every battle this game has and until the latest AI bug, they've made their General proud. Sure their equipment sucks, their training is miserable even by 3rd world standards, but we stuck to it and made it work. Poison is hopelessly bad.

Just my opinion Curious if other people feel the same way about Poison though.

Cheers!

oh God, I know. we get the boring elemental stuff, munitions mastery is the only one I was interested in and I don't get it. it goes so perfectly with mercs its just meant to be. its what mm's should of had from the very start. and we don't get it. so very lame man.

Well, I have a zombie MM who will likely go blueside-ish. Commissar Menshikov, I think it works pretty well, although I'll eventually make him a Vigilante for the Fear Incarnate ability, since it pwns with his other abilities... Thats how it works right? I'd go.. from Villain to Rogue, to Hero, then to Vigilante. I think Like a loop. Or would I go back to rogue? Only time will tell.

Anyway, he was a Commissar in the red army during WW2, and, at the time, a young practicing necromancer. At one point he gets told to hold a position, to resist the fascists, at no matter the cost. Well, he uses his necromancy to do what he is told and eventually things work out for the best

His zombies and other minions are essentially warriors sworn to fight fascism or other forms of tyranny -- in essence they are volunteers from beyond the grave.

He's portrayed as being somewhat ruthless and single-minded, but ultimately has good intentions. His time on the redside is fairly easy to explain: most heroes would find him fairly repulsive and it would be only after he is proved himself they'd be willing to co-operate with him.

He's gonna be fun to play now that Rogue is out, since pretty obviously he is going to view Pretoria's leadership has being rather similar to his old enemy.

Double unique points for having a Russian as a good guy Never happens in cinema!

I went technology ultimately for my Mercs/Poison. But the animations for poison are generally awful. You shoot some stuff out your sleeve like a gun (paralytic poison) then barf out poison in another animations. Its just awful. I'm hoping the alternate animations now present eventually reach poison so its possible to theme without being totally garbage.

EDIT: of course, this will probably never happen since Poison is purely the realm of MM's.

Hi fellas,

I'm working on a new build.. I always like PvP so I'm gonna take this character into the arena. Now, I don't anticipate him burning anyone down very fast, and thats not gonna get me a lot of kills, but chasing people around is fun enough for me anyway. Who knows, some people might get overconfident

Anyway. My question is really this, I understand how defense works in PvE. You get it to 45% and do whatever you please. How does defense work *in practical terms* for PvP? Is getting 45% defense the end like it is in PvE, or can/should I actually go above that?

Cheers!

Any blueside wussies. Not since CoV came out anyway

I have exactly one corrupter (sonic/thermal) and frankly she spends more time on her back then whats strictly ladylike. I'm not the right personality for corruptors.

Stalkers. People who hide, are afraid. Far too poncy for my tastes.

Dominators. Boring to play, and poncy.

Veats haven't thrilled me much, but I haven't given any a fair chance yet

So, that leaves brutes and mm's. Anything MM has is good, but ninjas are the least interesting. Force fields are good power and intense boredom.

Brutes are ok.

Yes yes, this old thread.

I can't really say this enough, all the MM's want customizable minions. Its difficult to make a thematic character without it. So, there ya go. Everyone wants it. Who cares if its a lot of work, do it anyway

Honestly, you minions can zone with you now, they said that was impossible before too. Its a bit buggy, mind you, but it works when it has too. No reason to change the model skeletons really. Just changing the skins would be a huge improvement.

Technical arguments are going to be irrelevant because 1) You don't know how the code works unless your secretly a dev and 2) code can be changed and hacked to work however it has to. Its just effort.

Hook us up in i18 or something

Sure, but there's gotta be some hard feelings about some of that stuff right? My normal human can't really go, "Oh yeah, sorry about all that. I didn't have a soul but I got some gypsy to give me one so its all forgiven."

Ok, I'm sure this has been brought up but I didn't see it anywhere.

So, lets say, my main villain decides its time to maybe drop his beef with the Goverment and bury the hatchet. Its been bloodied enough anyway.

What? Are they just gonna go, "Oh, well, I guess he's sorry then. Sure, he's robbed about two hundred banks, shot up thousands of police officers and longbow agents, burned books destined for poor children, stole several nuclear bombs and dropped them on the freedom phalanx, and far more crimes then what could possibly be said or even listed in bullet form in a single reading... but hey, he's done with all that. Water under the bridge I say."

I don't quite understand the mechanics. He goes Villain -> Rogue -> Vigilante or something right? Dandy. Whats different between a Vigilante and a Hero, mechanics-wise? So is he still on the books for all the rather nasty stuff he did previously?

I mean the cops at least gotta have a problem with a bunch of stuff that was done ;P They aren't the forgiving types when it comes to a lot of that kind of stuff.

Poison. Its animations are all over the place and I can't see them fitting any theme very well. I'm a Tech-origin, so, I shouldn't be spitting or breathing fumes on anyone.

Mind you, with a cigar, and grey-smokey looking effects noxious gas could be second hand smoke But otherwise, no.

I have a Mercs/Poison build for PvP. Very good. However, whatever build you go with -- avoid Poison Trap. Its completely useless. I promise you will never, ever notice it do anything. People have been complaining about it for years now.

The big reason for MM pet customization is for thematic reasons. For example, my namesake, General Lewisite (Mercs/Poison -- great for bosses and pvp, not so great on the chaff minions) has a theme with poisons, toxins and chemical weapons in general. He looks the part except for the truly bizarre poison animations (spitting?? please.) I'd be happy if I could change some of the animations as far as the personal attacks go for a few trees...

... as for the pets, I'd like them in some dark green or grey camo, evil looking gas masks, better helmets (seriously, no cool army uses metal helmets anymore, and I've robbed enough banks to buy my troops better stuff) and the like. It would look very fly. Really, there is no need in my mind to change the skeleton or the frame if you will. I just want to change the outfits they are wearing to fit the rest of the theme. And no randomly generated appearance business anymore, each guy has a specific name -- he's a specific guy -- so he shouldn't appear as a random guy.

Yes, this topic comes up a lot, thats because people who like MM's want it a lot. The big argument I always heard against it was we needed power customization first. Ok, well, there it is. We are not in this patch (which was annoying) but time constrains and such, alright. Well, power customization is here so lets finally get our pet customization which we've been asking for since we first got MM's.