Mad Grim

Bah. Well, still, it gets rid of the attack gaps and raises their damage. As I understand their attacks do just fine damage, so with no gap the only complaint is little AoE... the Dire Wolf has two (before the 32, don't know what he gets there), but one of them is max 3 targets, which is simply terrible.

That is very interesting. If they accept recharge buffs, and it is on purpose, then it should be entirely possible to make some of their buffs permanent. Like, say, Lion's Roar, so you'd wind up with a permanent 15% or so (adding in both) def bonus. Following this, from Fortify you can get another 15%, and their base is around 10%. Add in Maneuvers and you have them nearly soft capped without the secondary or pet uniques. Then a set such as thermal or sonic and their resist goes through the roof, making them nigh-invulnerable tankerpets.

Then their damage skyrockets due to Wild Charge being up all the goddamned time, as well as their buff at 32. Then factor in their heals are up all the goddamned time and you have an extremely powerful set.

This is assuming that what City of Data lists is true, and that it is working as intended. Both big ifs, but if so... :] Hello invincible beasts.

Even further, they now no longer have to gaps in attack timing that Reppu was speaking of.

/Time would definitely be optimum, with /Dark Miasma as a close second. I however went with /Sonic due to having too much of the first two. Sonic pairs nicely with the beast's innate resistance, and has very nice debuffs.

Also the more people I get to use Sonic the higher chance there is of me being on a team with another sonic, which basically makes everyone invincible.

Bah, forcing me to show my pitiful work in progress, as well as how ludicrously small my screen is.

Like Necromancy, I'd argue Beast Mastery is relatively good on positioning AI... the 'when do I use these buffs' AI is stupid, or actually nonexistent (Whenever they're up!) but they always go into melee. They never dilly dally about throwing shuriken, they go right up and bite off the enemy's face. This simply proves that the reverse of the Protector Bots is not true... the PBs have no melee attacks and still run up, the Beasts have no ranged and do not stay back.

Yes, the Ninja attacks are basically useless aside from helping with grabbing aggro. Like all the MM personal attacks you would never use them for damage, but unlike the others there is no other reason to use it, aside from aforementioned aggro. Even this is hard due to Lethal being the most defended type in the game.

Perhaps if each worked like a poison arrow, and provided some minor res debuffs to up the Ninja damage even higher. Perhaps even give them a -runspeed component like the BM attacks.

By the way, BM attacks are perfect. Great looking, great effects, good reasons to actually use them. Though I really would not have needed better reasons than the fact that I'm throwing bees at people.

Ok, I didn't understand that first part. If you had posted what you did now, I would have. That is weird. It is probably from putting in Beast, but that should in no way reflect on your judgement of the set.

I can solo anything the game can throw out on my Ninja MM and you wish me to think it is underperforming. I really find that hard to believe. Wanting just buffs buffs buffs is not good. You shouldn't base performance around top sets. The average set should not be the best set, that sort of kills the entire point of average. Don't base a set around the top performing sets, all sets should be equal to a middle line. Sure, putting all sets to the power of the highest WOULD make them all equal. But why stop there? Lets just buff up the enemies too, since now they're falling behind. But, oh, now you don't feel powerful enough. More buffs! It just becomes trivial. Buffing everything up is certainly a way to make it all equal, but not so good as balancing them around a middle average. However, no one likes to see sets get nerfed, so this is never suggested.

It does NOT perform equal to or better than the 'Big Three', but it shouldn't have to. Not all sets should be able to do 4x8 solo all the time, and in my (unpopular) opinion, none of them should. Games should in some way challenge you, and (again in my opinion)without challenge it isn't really fun. And that last opinion must be somewhat popular due to seeing more than one or two builds around.

I'm sorry, I can't show you the math. I'm still far too new to this game, I don't know all the mechanics. Plus, I just lain don't like math. I don't have the paper proof, but I do have experience, which is just better than paper. What I've experienced is that it is a good set. What you find on paper is never exactly reliable. It should be, certainly, but in the middle of it all I'm more concerned with having fun than with maximum DPS or anything such as that.

And that is all I have to say on it. I could continue arguing but I don't have anything more to add, I've exhausted my opinions on the matter, and my proof of said opinions.

When I said you could use the fact they they use the buffs whenever they were up, I was not inferring that you should dismiss and resummon them to make the recharge perma. I meant exactly what I said- you know what to expect. Just like with them having no ranged. You know they will run into melee, because they have nothing at all to keep them at range throwing dinky little shuriken. Frankly, comparing this set in any way to bots/thugs/demons is horrible. It is not that Mercs and Ninjas are underperforming, it is that the AT as a whole overperforms. Thugs/bots/demons are just overperforming in an AT that is inherently overperforming, so you wind up with the 'weaker' sets as still being strong. Beast is survivable, it is stable, and it CAN do good damage if you keep up the pack mentality.

As for what you said about the pets running off ahead and going crazy, that is what they do. If you've ever played Ninjas you should expect this of pets with extremely high run speeds. They will run off, they will draw aggro, it is something you live with. You learn to reign them in. I find it hard to believe that the pets ran off to the other side of the map with no provocation or targeting. They can not react to the mission directive directly... if that were the case a bots/FF MM could just do funny emotes at the beginning of the mission while his invincible pets do it themselves with no commands.

As for me apparently using that as my baseline, I was not. I was saying that that should NOT be the baseline. That is just an example of certain sets overperforming... and you should not compare it to the overperforming sets. If every set acts like the top sets, you wind up with a game that is more trivial than it already is. This is an easy game, it does not need to be easier.

I do agree with you that the baseline should not be solo everything ever, but you seem to have misunderstood me there. I also agree that putting long recharge short duration buffs on pets is stupid.

I do not agree that this is a horrible set.

As for the TPN thing, of course it is hard to keep them from ganking Maelstrom. He is constantly attacking. If you put them on defensive, they will attack him. If you put them on aggressive, they will attack him. Try targetting them to something else or putting them on passive. In my experience passive mode makes them stop whatever they are doing immediately. TPN has always been trouble for MMs, and that is well known. Yes, I have seen the thread about them doing an all MM TPN, and that is awesome, but it doesn't change that TPN is hard for MMs.

Yea I tried to make them dance, it didn't work :[

Not to say that before you get Fortify there is no critical, it simply increases the chance. You can get stacks of pack mentality before Fortify as well, but getting Fortify puts a critical chance on the stacks along with their existing damage buff. So...

Before Fortify- Each stack of Pack Mentality grants a 2% damage buff, up to ten stacks. There is a chance to critical, but it has nothing to do with Pack Mentality stacks.

After Fortify- Each stack of Pack Mentality now grants an unknown (to me) critical chance buff along with the 2% damage buff, still up to ten stacks. The chance to critical now scales with Pack Mentality stacks, with the base being the same as before Fortify.

EDIT: With Fortify, no stacks of Pack Mentality grants 5% def, and every further stack grants 1%. So, 15% max. With Regen, I haven't looked at the scaling yet, but the maximum is a bonus 1.25% regen... more than four times their original.

The Critical Chance comes from Pack Mentality, but only after you have the Fortify Pack power. Once you own the power, there is a critical buff thrown in with the damage buff. Activating the power of course gets rid of it for 60 seconds, in exchange for making them more survivable. In my experience it is best to only use Fortify Pack when your pets start dying. However, I don't see any reason to not take the power.

And no, Raven does not always grant a stack It has a very high chance to grant a stack for every enemy it hits, making it invaluable.

Update on Beast/Sonic...

22 now. The Sonic Dispersion pushes the Lionesses up to 67% res to s/l/cold, with 41% to everything else. Wolves are at 57%, with the same 41% to everything else. I also put in the res aura, but aside from that all SOs. All very tough, and make things dead very fast. Gonna compare to ninjas, as that is what I have the most experience with...

Damage is not as high, but then, nothing does damage quite like the suicidal razor blades. However, the beasts are MUCH more survivable. But then, nothing dies quite like the suicidal razor blades. The main trouble I see from beast is the buffs... long recharge, short duration, crappy AI. Not a good combination, they just use them as soon as they recharge. You can see this by letting them just stand still for a while, they will continue to buff themselves. You can't rely on them, at all. Hard to think of them as nice bonuses either, sue to them taking spots that could have been attacks.

Oh, and Wild Charge... er.. Don't know what they were going for with this. Yay, damage buff. But, a run speed buff with a run speed debuff resistance? This just means that they run off and aggro half the map before you can react. Oh, and Caltrops will make them go absolutely insane. They will go away and you won't see them again for a good ten seconds, which is plenty time to get murdered.

Despite this, I like the set. Looks great, and it being a MM set automatically makes it powerful. /Sonic certainly helps a lot, and I've picked up Aid Other to fill the healing gap. I did at one point team with another Beast/Sonic, and we may as well have been invincible for all the +res flying around. Also, all the enemies melted.

Rather than scrap the character, try picking up the AoE immobilize from any of the Patron Pools.

Really it hardly matters if this set is the worst MM set by a mile, it will still be better than any other AT by a mile. In my opinion of course. Which, as I've stated, is incredibly biased.

I went with Sonic due to having too much /Time and not wanting to do /Dark. Besides, Sonic let me use the name Calls of the Wild.

So the beats actually have a fair amount of resistance, which I was not expecting. Paired with /Sonic they are fairly tough, and it provides plenty of res debuffs, to help them kill stuff faster. Level 16 so far, put Sonic Dispersion on lioness, bubble them, and then spam my attacks for pack mentality.

I'd like to join this.

@GrimTheMad

So if I understand this, I should be able to make a macro that does double mire then turns me into nova?

Hmmm.

/Time and /Dark Miasma are really good with whatever you pair with them, though I am biased towards /Time as the all around best. If you put the lockdown proc in Distortion Field it has a surprising amount of hard control, plus loads of soft control in the form of tohit debuffs and recharge debuffs. It also heals, debuffs regen, debuffs def/res, and best of all (in my opinion), Farsight gives ludicrous defense and is easy to perma. Especially if you take Mace for power boost, you can get the def bonus above 20%.