StrykerX

Well, Archery/Electric could work as a Blapper. Open with the Archery AoEs (including Rain of Arrows if it's up) then put the bow away and melee the survivors. You'd either want high S/L defense to survive or massive recharge to just open with RoA on every spawn, but I could actually see this as being a fun build if you have a few billion inf to throw at it for softcapped S/L defense plus as much recharge as possible.

I'd go with Fire/Ice out of those three though. /Ice has enough mitigation to really let you make use of Fire's high damage. Sonic/Mental is one I'd avoid, since in my opinion the main reason to go Sonic in the first place (not counting character concept) is Siren's Song, and /Mental's AoEs negate that. Fire/Mental or Rad/Mental have more AoE power while still avoiding redraw, though I suppose a Sonic/Mental/Electric with a continuous all-cone AoE chain could be a lot of fun on teams. Just be sure you have a good tank because you'll spend most of your time rooted...

Many (most?) robots have 50% Lethal resist. Malta titans and Council / 5th Column mechs are all very annoying to Lethal-only characters, and Malta is particularly bad because their humans also have decent Lethal resists from their body armor. It's really handy to have at least one attack that does non-Lethal (and non-psi) damage when you run into bots.

I've had similar problems twice in the past... once it was a bad motherboard, the other time it was a bad stick of RAM. I'd suggest making a Memtest boot CD (or flash drive if your machine supports booting from one) and running it overnight. If you get memory errors, try one stick of RAM at a time and see if they stop and the system is stable. If you don't get any errors, it's probably the motherboard. And if Memtest crashes or won't run, it's almost certainly the motherboard...

I'm leveling a Demons/Dark right now and it's a lot of fun. At 33 I'm pretty tough, though I believe my old Bots/Traps was better. On the other hand I had a lot less trouble in the late teens through mid 20s and I suspect once I get Fluffy at 38 my survivability will go up. The thing I really like about Demons is that they have a wide range of damage types and debuffs... almost nothing is strong against all of them. Plus the whip attacks are actually worth using... not for the damage (which is a joke, like all MM primary attacks) but for the 25% or so -resist they can stack on a boss / EB / AV. You can also apply around 8% -resist to a group with the cone whip attack, which is nothing to sneeze at.

Bots/Traps is, quite simply, the ultimate budget soloist. Nothing can match it for taking down hard targets with a minimal inf investment. If you have billions to spend some other builds can outperform it, but Bots/Traps can take down giant monsters using only SOs (at least in the hands of a really good player). With even a modest IO build you can smash just about anything, and a high end build is up near an Ill/Rad in survivability with significantly more damage. You can softcap yourself, softcap all the bots except the Protectors, and drop enough -resist and -regen on an AV to seriously ruin his day. The only real drawback is the long slow (for a MM) slog to level 32 since you have no real AoEs. (Bots/FF is even tougher, but the lack of debuffs makes it a lot weaker offensively, especially against EBs or higher.)

Those are the only two MMs I've played far enough to get the second pet upgrade. Really, Bots, Thugs, and Demons are all excellent and /Dark or /Traps goes well with anything. I've never played /Thermal but I suspect it would go well with Demons too... they have decent resists already so adding more can't be a bad thing.

I love that proc on my Archery Blaster. It makes Stunning Shot look so much better to have it actually knock them on their butt instead of just bounce off their head. I slotted it for the defense but the improved look is great, not to mention being able to occasionally stop a stun-resistant mob from attacking.

I would place Whips above Pulse Rifle due to the -resists, though Pulse Rifle has some controls. The other power sets are irrelevant since you can get the exact same attacks in real blast sets... the only real reason to play a petless MM is to get whip or laser gun attacks. Even if you are doing it for another reason (like just to see if it's possible), you may as well take a set that gives unique attacks.

Demons/Dark is probably the best petless combo. You get -resist, significant to-hit debuffs, and a great heal. Plus you have stealth and some control. You'll still take way too long to kill things, but at least you'll be able to kill normal spawns.

I'm getting close to getting Dark Servant for the first time on any character and looking at what all he can do I'm sort of at a loss on how to slot him. I know he needs recharge since the MM version isn't permanent out of the box, and I'm assuming I need a generic Accuracy IO since the various debuff sets only affect pet powers that have that effect. But other than that, what's a good way to slot him until I can use Hami-Os?

I was thinking of just going Acc / 3x Recharge / Hold / To-Hit Debuff (all level 40 generic IOs) but there may be better slotting options. Once I hit 47 I'll probably go with Hami-Os, something like 2 Acc/Mez, 3 Recharge/Defense/To-Hit Debuff, 1 Heal/Endurance.

I'd vote for option 1, provided no changes were made to things like reflectivity or material type. If there was any significant change to the surface finish I'd want the old option to remain available since that can really mess up a costume... for instance, try matching "leather" and "cloth" items. Pick the same color for both and you still get a different tint on the leather so they clash.

As I understand it, they can't increase the cap on run speed because doing so overstresses the poor hamsters powering the servers. And since they want a set ratio between the various travel caps to reflect the ease of using those powers, they can't boost the others either.

Personally, I'd like to see all travel powers cappable with a single SO when unsuppressed, and have the suppressed speed boosted by enhancements so that if you slot 3 Fly or 3 Run you move about twice as fast while suppressed as you would unslotted... but that's just me.

Well, I did say putting it in the toggle is better for overall DPS (that's where I'd put it). Some people just love seeing a ton of things die at once due to a super-charged AoE barrage. Then again, the original post was about Archery / Devices, and you don't take Devices for burst damage, so...

The combos help, but they aren't absolutely necessary. Empower and Weaken are useful at low levels but you probably won't use them once you get the higher tier attacks. Sweep is handy for AoE damage but is skippable... Attack Vitals has some AoE and Typhoon's Edge by itself is still pretty good without having to use the very long animating 1K Cuts.

The best combo is Attack Vitals. Blinding Feint -> Attack Vitals is pretty much the best attack chain Dual Blades can produce without massive recharge. If you do have massive recharge, on the other hand, no combo can match BF -> Sweeping -> Ablating (and I think one or two other high recharge chains). But that sort of recharge is very hard to get, since I think you need above perma-Hasten levels. For normal builds BF -> AV (and optionally adding Sweep for large groups) is as good as it gets.

Essentially, Sweep boosts the final Typhoon's Edge damage by 50% and adds KD, Attack Vitals adds a DoT to Sweeping Strike that increases its damage by around 60%, Empower boosts Blinding Feint's buff by about a third, and Weaken adds a defense debuff and a 7.5% to-hit debuff (which is actually quite nice if you are using a defense based armor set). The big reason to use Attack Vitals is that any decent attack chain that doesn't have massive recharge is going to use all the component attacks anyway, so you might as well get free damage by using them in the right order. Adding non-optimal attacks to a chain just to get the combo bonus gets a lot more debatable, which is why you won't see Weaken or Empower much at high levels. Nimble Slash just isn't that good an attack, so adding it hurts DPS even if it does give you some bonuses.

The basic idea is to be like the actual Wolf Spider Huntsman boss mobs: tough soldiers with guns, rather than guys with goofy beam-shooting maces or metal spider legs. Supposedly it's a very viable build but you need to sink a lot of inf into it because you have a relatively small number of attacks so you need a lot of recharge bonuses.

I actually don't want Dual Pistols to get Aim. Thematically, Aim suggests carefully aiming for maximum effect, which doesn't really fit with the set's theme.

Instead, I want to see it get this:

Speed Load - 90s recharge, 0.5s activation, Instantly recharges all other Dual Pistols powers when used. (Or maybe all but HoB)

or alternately, a 100% recharge boost for 10 seconds.

Taking Speed Load would also grant the ammo toggles, which fits since they involve quickly reloading in the middle of a fight.

I love Archery, and definitely consider it better than Dual Pistols.

Archery
+ Excellent range (50 foot cone and full 80 foot range on its tier 3 blast)
+ Faster cast times
+ Great AoE once you get Rain of Arrows
+ Rain
+ of
+ Arrows
+ is
+ just
+ this
+ good
+
+ Has Aim
+ More accurate than normal
- Highly resisted damage type
- No secondary effect other than accuracy boost

Dual Pistols
+ Very flashy animations
+ Has a fourth (mostly) single target blast
+ Selectable but weak secondary effects
- Fourth blast is an energy hog with a long recharge
- Shorter range tier 3 blast
- No Aim
- Mostly Lethal damage just like archery (the alternate ammos make little difference)
- No
- rain
- of
- arrows
-

Seriously, before adding in the tier 9 powers both sets are fairly similar. They both have average damage, modest AoE, and a full ranged stun or hold. Archery is a bit faster, has Aim, and can easily make a full 80 foot range attack chain but Dual Pistols has a minor advantage in damage type and secondary effect. However, adding in the tier 9 powers changes things drastically: Hail of Bullets is decent damage but it's dangerous to use, somewhat unreliable due to the wide damage variation, and has a longish recharge. Rain of Arrows, on the other hand, is simply the best mini-nuke in the game. For that matter, it's the best ranged AoE in the game, period. Hit one button and every even con minion in a spawn usually dies without ever taking a shot? And you can do it to every spawn with decent recharge, and add in Aim + Build Up to wipe out +2s? Way better than jumping in the middle of a spawn and rooting yourself for several seconds while they all pound on you in the hopes of killing them before you drop.

HoB isn't that bad, but the only PBAoE I'd consider equal to Rain of Arrows is if Blasters got the old pre-nerf Psychic Shockwave. And even then I'd have to think about it a minute...