sprintstnyc

Nobody's pigeonholing anybody. A PC is almost always a better bet than any MM pet for ANY positive ability. Heals, buffs, anything. You already get the "pet only" buffs from your primary, but any positive buff from your secondary are almost always going to more useful on a teammate rather than one of your pets. One MM pet is a fairly minor small amount of DPS; a Defender that pays a little attention to his secondary is probably more DPS than a MM pet.

An MM who only pays attention to buffing his pets during teams should probably re-think the whole "team" thing.

DB on brutes is fine. The only real difference is that Blinding Feint is somewhat less effective due to +dam buffs having less of an effect on Brutes. You generally end up with the standard scrapper vs brute difference, scrappers do slightly more damage and brutes are slightly more resilient. They play almost identically and are both extremely effective.

I am thinking of making a new Tanker using Ice Melee, which is a fairly rare set (due to low damage, I imagine). Mostly because it's a Tanker-only set.

I was thinking of going with Shield defense for the primary, since it will give it a little extra oomph through AaO and Shield Charge, but I'd like to hear the thoughts of anybody else who's used it.

There's loads of powers useful with one slot you can cram in there. Assault, Tier 9 defensive powers, Hasten (if you don't have it already), etc etc etc.

There's no way you're worse off with inherent Fitness.

Honestly they should merge the two into one set (make both War Mace) and just let you skin the weapons as one or the other. Of course Mace does Smashing but Axe does Lethal, but that's not that big a deal.

It also has a +end component which can be useful from time to time. I'm kind of tempted on my SS/SD Brute, because the multiple crashes (hasten, rage, active defense) can some times added up.

They were the bad old days.

I really have a hard time playing classes without mez protection. I don't know how they do it.

Brutes have higher resistance caps than Scrappers, but that only makes a difference when you get lots of buffs (usually on teams), and usually only matters when you're playing a resistance based secondary (IE, not Shield Defense).

One thing I hate about Praetoria is that you can't change mission difficulty (at least I don't know how), and when it scales down the bosses to Lts when you're soloing some times it really doesn't de-fang them. Those Destroyer bosses, even as Lts, are brutal as hell.

Just echoing and adding my two cents to some of what was touched on above:

1) unpopular set IO recipes are often cheaper than generic IO recipes purchased from the crafting bench, so why not use them?

2) you're never "stuck" buying an IO of lesser level than you want with the set IO's - IE, you can buy a level 19 recipe when you're level 16, instead of either getting a level 15 generic (and having the lesser bonus) or waiting until you're 17 to buy a 20.

3) Set IOs usually use different salvage than the generic ones they're similar to, often letting you craft them for cheaper despite having more "uncommon" and "rare" salvage required. Due to the distortions in the marketplace, common IO salvage is frequently MUCH more expensive than uncommon or rare salvage at the low and moderate levels.

4) Using IOs of any strip ultimately saves you money over DO's/SO's if you are willing to use the market. Yes the salvage can get expensive at the low levels, but if you're selling the salvage you don't need, that should bankroll the occasional ridiculously expensive Alchemical Silver or what have you.

5) Yes it takes a little time to kit yourself out with IO's, but it's ultimately less inconvenient than having a ton of SO's suddenly turn red when you level. Bonus points if you level in the middle of a hard mission and suddenly don't have many +acc enhancements or the like.

6) You can use "off spec" aspects of powers to get cheap +acc/-end bonuses (IE, slotting a cheap +acc -end -rec hold IO in KO Blow instead of an expensive melee damage IO).

The fact that you guys are in here complaining about your idiotic minions demonstrates conclusively that the Mastermind is the most successful AT at making its players feel like the comic book characters they're playing.

I am against any proliferation of ninjutsu unless stalkers get another awesome stalker-only set to replace it.

Yeah, Fiery Armor kind of spoils you because they rolled the mez protect into the two damage resistance powers, so you picked up mez resist without really trying.

Oh my God how did you survive til 35 with no mez protection

It's going back on my SS Brutes once i19 hits. It's handy from time to time, but I usually have something that makes more sense for me at any given level.

SS/FA has worse status resists (no KB protect outside of IOs or Acrobatics). It does way better damage to heavily smashing resistant foes (thanks to Blazing Aura and Fiery Embrace). It has a self-heal, which is nice, but it needs it more, due to generally being a squishier set. SD is a layer set (defense, resistance, + HP, -dam from AAO). FA is resistance and healing, and that is it.

The big problem with SS/SD is the multiple END crashes (especially if you get Hasten, and what Brute doesn't love Hasten)? Rage/hasten/status effect prot all going off. Rage in particular is a pain in the butt before you get it perma, because in addition to causing 10 secs of little damage when it crashes, it torpedoes your defenses. So you need to know to duck out of combat until the debuff is off you.

SS/FA is all smash all the time, especially when you get Consume. SS/SD has higher highs but deeper lows. Both are fun.

Because of the whole layered defense thing, it looks like almost anything would be useful. I'm guessing maybe mostly regen and S/L defense?

I've never had a high enough level WP char to worry about IO's before, so help me out if you got a second.

I'd like to get rid of the "fire blast" animation. A fireball is not a baseball pitch!

One application of touch of fear doesn't fear a boss, but the massive hit debuff still works, and the duration is long enough and recharge short enough that you can stack it on bosses easily enough.

The problem is that the empower buff is tiny. It's not really worth worrying about.

Original game was terrible compared to what we have today. The broken power sets trivialized entire other archetypes, and the REALLY broken ones trivialized entire other teams. There was no REASON to have a debuffer or controller on your team when you had a good tank. The perfect team was one tank, one or two blasters, and a bunch of people leeching exp. If you had a fire/fire tank, you didn't even need the blasters.

If you guys want to relive that "game experience" where you kill everything at will, play a single player game with cheat codes or something. It has NO BUSINESS being in an MMO.

Speaking of Levitate...

I'm running a Mind/Elec Dominator right now and so far I just haven't seen the need for Levitate. I've tried the power, I know what it does. Does anybody have strong feelings about it? There's already so many single target controls a Mind Dominator can throw down on a boss, I don't really see much about Levitate that really compels me.