StrykerX

I have a Kin/SR Scrapper that I made for thematic reasons: Kinetic Melee is similar to Tai Chi (or Air- or Waterbending) and those all rely on dodging or evading attacks. I've enjoyed him fairly well, though he's still low level because I keep getting distracted by making yet another Demons MM.

I tried a KM/Regen in beta (concept was a martial arts master who could regenerate due to chi control) and it was fun but I have trouble getting into Regen. Probably because of what it used to be capable of back when IH was a toggle...

I'd definitely suggest a Scrapper, simply because they benefit a lot more from Power Siphon's damage boost. KM/Shield will probably be the best damage output, and KM/SR has Quickness to help get Power Siphon recharged faster. KM/Dark Armor might be interesting as a "dark chi master" character... in fact, I think I just found my next alt.

Stamina with a single level 50 endmod IO is probably enough for most Blasters who use IOs, even without a recovery boost power. Blasters generally run few toggles so as long as you have good end reduction in your attacks you don't really need a ton of recovery. With Drain Psyche you should have positive recovery even while attacking, so as long as you can have it up half the time or so you can get away with losing endurance over time while it's down. If you are closer to neutral while it's down you won't even need it up that often, and if you are neutral or have positive recovery while it's down (quite possible depending on what toggles you use and what IOs you have) then obviously you don't need Drain Psyche at all except for the regen.

The best defense is enemies who can't attack, so a Controller with a good method of AoE control that is available every spawn (like Fire or Plant) is your best bet. There's a reason Fire/Kins are the farmer of choice... get enough recharge and you can just Flashfire + Fire Cages every mob and move in to use Fulcrum Shifted Hot Feet and whatever AoE you pick from your epic pool.

That said, I prefer Plant to Fire for mitigation. Seeds of Confusion is absolutely wonderful, and Plant has decent AoE damage. Not as much as Fire, but decent, and the mobs are attacking each other so that adds more.

Don't forget Blinding Feint... it adds a fair bit of damage. BF -> Attack Vitals is pretty much the attack chain of choice for builds that don't have insane recharge levels.

Earth Mastery has three AoEs that have -defense, but according to Mids they can not be enhanced with defense debuff sets so no tossing Achilles' procs in them. I'd only consider taking it if you have trouble hitting things or want an AoE sleep for emergencies (or a cheap purple set). On a Brute I'd rather have more endurance or a fireball though.

Some combos that might be fun:

• Two Assault Bots
• Two Bruisers (especially if they ever port /Kin)
• Two sets of Demons (double resist aura and lots of healing)
• Lich plus Demon Prince
• Two sets of Genin (just for the ninja horde look)
• Two sets of Protector Bots
• Demons and Protector Bots
• Two sets of Enforcers
• Two Commandos (had to think of something Merc related )

There are a couple of significant in-game effects of your origin. First, it controls which starting arc you do heroside... most importantly, whether you have to fight Vhazilok or Clockwork instead of Skulls or Hellions. Second, if you are Trick Arrow you can light your oil slick with the Tech or Magic origin power, which is handy if you lack any fire or energy attacks. And most importantly, it controls which of the low level SOs sold at Yin's Market you can use:

Mutant or Natural = Damage
Science = Recharge
Tech = Endurance
Magic = Accuracy

Now that you can mail these SOs (which can be slotted as low as level 10) to alts I find myself finding reasons to make melee types Tech or Magic origin and Blasters Natural or Mutant unless I've come up with a specific character concept that needs a different origin. Brutes in particular really need to not miss and to have good endurance slotting, so Yin-Os are handy for that.

Of course at higher levels origin only matters if you need it to light an oil slick. Otherwise it's all about the character's background... and if you care about background presumably your Oil Slick users either have fire or energy powers or have a reason to be Tech or Magic. As far as characters who use multiple types of powers, like training and gadgets, I go with what I feel the core concept to be. For instance my Archery / Energy Blaster uses jet boots to fly, has powered gauntlets that let him stun enemies or knock them away from him, and carries a missile launcher and a freeze ray that he occasionally uses. However, his main ability is the fact that he has spent years training to become an incredibly skilled archer, so he's Natural origin. His various gadgets (including the bow and various arrow types) wouldn't be much use without the skill to use them properly. If anyone could pick up his devices and learn to use them with little trouble, he'd be Tech origin instead.

I have a DB/SR Brute that's a lot of fun, and /WP should be at least as good. However, a Scrapper is going to hit harder... especially since Dual Blades has Blinding Feint, which is a Follow Up clone. Scrappers get a lot more out of damage buffs than Brutes. On the other hand, Brutes have more health which means more benefit from increased regeneration... so the Brute will probably be a lot tougher.

With two Plant Controllers you should be able to keep any wolves confused, and they actually can be immobilized if you stack enough. If both Plant Controllers spam Roots the wolves should be immobilized pretty quickly, certainly long before the Seeds wear off.

Also, you can always just hold any wolf that gets too close for comfort. Vines works on them just fine. I don't remember them being more than a minor annoyance on my Plant/Storm... but then they like melee and I had Hurricane so that could make a difference.

Honestly, I'm not sure /Dark is the best choice in the 1-20 game. Tar Patch is good, but without SOs and some global recharge it's not an every fight power... at low levels it's one quicker fight every few spawns. Likewise Fearsome Stare isn't an every spawn power yet, which means you can't rely on its mitigation when selecting your difficulty. Don't get me wrong, /Dark is a great set, but it's a set that keeps getting better and better as you level up and doesn't really turn awesome until the 20s and 30s.

/Thermal, on the other hand, may lack early debuffs but it does do one thing very well: it keeps pets alive. I've made a Demons/Dark and a Demons/Thermal since GR came out, and I can say the Demons/Thermal leveled from 1-20 faster and easier than the Demons/Dark. The Demons/Dark turned into an absolute beast once I got SOs and felt like downright cheating once I got IOs and Fluffy, but the /Thermal absolutely obliterated most low level content due to the resists and heals.

Both are very good, but I'd say Demons/Thermal is going to get you to 20 a bit faster. Just my opinion though... people more familiar with /Dark than me may well be able to get more out of it early on.

Just for fun I tried rushing a Claws/Willpower Brute to 20. The method I used was:

• No AE at all. I never set foot in the building.
• I was solo 100% of the time.
• Default difficulty level the whole way
• The only outside help was using an alt to email some low level Accuracy SOs from Yin's shop, no IOs or inf from alts. If you don't have an alt that has access to Yin's shop you can buy the SOs on the market.
• I did a mix of paper missions and normal contacts, including each Mayhem mission at least once, the Mr. Bocour arcs, and a couple other contacts.
• I did have all three veteran attacks, but rarely needed them past about level 4. I also had the preorder enhancements from Going Rogue which did help some.

My total time played at level 20: 10 hours. And that was hardly the most optimal play style. Claws are fast and have low endurance cost, which is ideal for a starting Brute, and just using Fast Healing and High Pain Tolerance was enough to keep me alive most of the time so no extra cost for running toggles. I only turned on Indomitable Will when fighting mezzers and barely used Mind over Body at all (I didn't even take it until 12 or so, a full attack chain was more important).

If you want a VEAT fast, go Brute. Fair warning though: you may get too addicted to the Brute to make the VEAT.

Hami-Os are great for pets. Most cost less than 100 mil, and some are far less than that, so it's not horrible to get them. Also, Hami raids are kind of fun so you can get them the old fashioned way.

In particular, pets with lots of different types of powers (like Ember Demons or Protector Bots) really benefit from them because set IOs in pets only enhance powers that can use that set, but Hami-Os enhance all their powers. I'd go with something like three Centriole (Acc/Dam) HOs, two level 50 Defense IOs, and a Golgi (Heal/Endurance) HO in Protector Bots. That caps their damage and accuracy, gives them lots of defense, and some healing and endurance reduction. You can also go with three Centrioles and two Enzyme Exposures (Defense Debuff/To-Hit Debuff/Endurance) if you don't mind using the "debuff HOs also enhance buffs" loophole... just remember that you may have to reslot some day if it ever gets fixed.

Let's see... If I was going to make one of each MM primary without duplicating secondaries I'd probably go with:

Bots/Traps (the ultimate soloist)
Demons/Thermal (resist based pets + resist shields = pets that can actually take hits)
Necro/Dark (very thematic, and insane amounts of control)
Thugs/Pain (no particular reason other than both being good solid sets)
Ninjas/Storm (Hurricane might actually keep the stupid Genin alive)
Mercs/Trick Arrow (because I don't like /Poison and /FF is too boring)

Ninjas/FF is also good if you just want to keep the ninjas alive, but the lack of debuffs or heals makes /FF a very boring set to play.

Are you taking the target cap into consideration? In general the AoEs are capped at:

Melee Cone = 5 targets
Melee range PBAoE = 10 targets
Ranged Cone = 10 targets
PBAoE = 16 targets
Targeted AoE = 16 targets
Rain = 16 targets

In general it's extremely hard to get more than 5 enemies in a melee cone or more than 10 in a melee PBAoE, so I wouldn't penalize those more than you already do due to the smaller area. Ranged cones, on the other hand, can often be aimed at more than 10 targets when fighting large spawns so you may want to consider penalizing large cones a bit because they aren't quite as good as they look.

I also wouldn't count accuracy bonuses at all. They can be handy in limited situations but in general once you get decent slotting you are going to be at 95% to hit against most things. Maybe add a "high level target" column that does count accuracy, for things like fighting +4s.

If you aren't tanking (which you probably won't be) you shouldn't be taking enough damage in a Hami raid to need Bodyguard, so I'd set the pets to Passive and manually order them to attack specific targets. The nice thing about Attack Passive is that they won't go after anything else once the chosen target dies.

As for roles, I'd say it depends on your pets. Ranged attackers like Bots, Thugs (don't summon the Bruiser until the green phase), or Mercs should probably join the Assault teams, while melee attackers might be better off helping the Scrappers kill yellows. If there's a tank shortage a MM might be able to fill in there, but I've been on a lot of blueside raids and never really seen a lack of tanks. Though if you are /Pain you might be better off healing and buffing tanks... you could even send your pets running around on Attack Passive while staying up by your tank providing heals.

Personally, I'd replace the Commanding Presence Taunt/Placate IO with either a Slow set proc or maybe a Damage/Mez Hami-O. 1.25% AoE defense isn't worth bothering with an essentially useless pet aura IO in my opinion.

I'm also a little puzzled at the lack of Fearsome Stare. Not only is it useful mitigation due to the fear, it has a large to-hit debuff. I use it constantly on my own Demons/Dark... I'd highly recommend trying to fit it in once I19 comes out and you get inherent Fitness. You could pull a slot from Hasten and only add about 5 seconds to its downtime, which would let you at least drop in an accuracy and a recharge. Or also drop the Shield Wall: Chance to Blow 3 Billion Inf IO and 3-slot it with a set.

The defender has a 20% resist debuff vs 15% for the Corruptor. Solo the Corruptor will probably do a little more damage against hard targets due to Scourge, but they'll be quite close against weaker targets. On teams the Corruptor will do more personal damage, but the Defender will cause more total damage to be done thanks to the stronger debuffs. Every Defender debuff will essentially boost the team's total damage output by 5% more than the Corruptor will, and 5-10% of the team's damage is going to be more than the difference between Corruptor and Defender damage, and on hard targets more debuffs will be stacked which will offset Scourge. Add in 7.5% more resist debuff in the Defender's Disruption Field and Sonic Siphon and I'm pretty sure the Defender is the better choice for teaming even before factoring in the stronger resist buffs.

Softcapping Ranged defense on Thugs/Poison is going to be extremely hard. You have no defense powers to stack with your IOs and you can't pile on a bunch of Thunderstrikes like a Blaster can because you have few if any ranged attacks (please tell me you didn't take both single target pistol shots ).

Your best bet is to Slot both Pet Defense IOs (Gang War can hold both), make sure your Enforcers have a couple Defense IOs, and slot up Maneuvers. You won't have a lot of defense, but yor pets will and you have that nice tough Bruiser to take the aggro for you. You also have Weaken to reduce hard hitting enemies' to-hit.

You should be able to get around 25% defense to all on your pets from Maneuvers, the two pet defense IOs, and the Enforcers (assuming two Defense IOs or Hami-Os). Add in Weaken's debuff and they'll have close to 40% effective defense... that's a lot more than you'll be able to get for yourself without gimping your build. I'd recommend just letting your pets take the aggro and focusing on supporting them...