In my experience, clickable debuff power sets tend to be more effective on NPC's that the buff sets. If you're looking to have NPC's that buff each other, never select any set that has renewable shields. Empathy seems to work pretty well..but only because any time the NPC use any of the available powers, it's helping.
Why do I do do do things I do
Nobody was ever there for me to talk to
Once I was youngster, pure and true
Now I'm running with a sick, sick crew.
[ QUOTE ]
Empathy seems to work pretty well..but only because any time the NPC use any of the available powers, it's helping.
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See! The devs really do love Healers!
Rikti Guardians shield. I was hoping MA mobs would, too.
Sonic Resonance seems to result in mobs that permanently run its big shield. If I coast around on full invisibility I can see that all the mobs I gave that power set to just leave the big bubble on all the time.
I really like the idea of making a custom group that's harder to just steamroll but it doesn't look like it's possible to build that group with MA.
Things I hate: Anime. PvP. Lying MMO Developers. Outleveling content. Manga. ED. Comic Store Employees. Anime.
I haven't had problems with this at all. I gave the bosses in one of my arcs (Seldom Told Tales - Statesman and the Atomic Soldier Arc# 8993, if you want to check them out) Thermal Radiation and they're buffing their spawns with fire shields just fine. I've also seen sonic buffer minions do their stuff in some arcs I've played. Stormies use Oxygen Boost just fine, too.
I know all my /thermal bosses are set to ranged - are your minions set to melee? You might try setting them to ranged combat, if so. Otherwise they might be eschewing their buffs for melee attacks. Just a thought - could be wrong.
EDIT - you know what? Now that I think about it I don't remember what I had them set to - I'll go home on my lunch break and check them out myself and report back.
The Scrappers' Guide to Dark Melee | Kheldian Binds and Strategies
If you force the mob to ranged preference and give them a melee set, you may give them a preference to use their secondary. It's certainly not perfect, and hasn't worked for everything, in fact it seems to work best for my debuffers, but even so, it might be worth trying.
Also: consider trying a different buff set. I made one group with only one type of minion. These had melee preference, and fire melee (easy) and thermal (moderate I think). they didn't have any problems healing each other, on high difficulty settings you almost had to think about arranging damage spikes for them... and one of them almost always decided to be a buffer.
The cake is a lie! The cake is a lie!
These are all ranged baddies. With my Regen Scrapper I'll even herd up three or four groups of them to get a nice mix of mob types and theoretically overlapping buffs.
Granted I'm testing solo but I'm not seeing much buffing, other than Empathy mobs using healing, or the aforementioned Sonics using the big bubble.
Things I hate: Anime. PvP. Lying MMO Developers. Outleveling content. Manga. ED. Comic Store Employees. Anime.
Okay went in and looked at how I had my buffers set up and it was Radiation Blast set at easy, and Thermal Radiation set at hard. They are bosses, and are set at ranged preference.They do indeed buff. However, it may be any number of reasons.
First, it could be because they are bosses. Perhaps buffing is something minion-level mobs just don't do? If that's the case, and you want the support mobs to buff the boss mobs, try making the buffers lieutenants, and try not having minions at all. If you set some or most of them to easy lieutenants where possible, then the difference between a hard minion and an easy lieutenant might be small enough to get away with.
Second, they might not be buffing due to their difficulty setting. I have a feeling they're at least on hard, but it's something you might check.
Overall what I've noticed is that ai buffers only buff when/after they've been initially aggroed, and even then only so long as the spawn is relatively healthy, so it might also be a situation where you're outdamaging their desire to buff. If they - or any one else in their spawn take too much damage too quickly they'll go into survival mode and start healing/fighting. Maybe if you toughen them all up in general by making them at least lt's that might help?
Okay, I'm past the point of educated guesses now, and at the limit of my experience. I hope I've helped, albeit a little. Good luck, and if/when I get some time I might have to experiment with /FF and /Sonic mobs, just to see what the deal is.
The Scrappers' Guide to Dark Melee | Kheldian Binds and Strategies
I've been playing around with MA more for my own amusement than any desire to publish a mission, but one thing I have been trying to accomplish is to increase the threat from minions and LTs by giving them buff and debuff sets. To date this has mostly been disappointing; having lots of mobs with FF and Sonic shields does not seem to make them actually use those powers. Dark and Rad debuffs do come into play, but these debuffs never reach the level of crippling against any of my three test characters (BS/Regen Scrapper, Fire/Rad Controller or Fire/Kin Corr).
I realize that at the end of the day a minion is still a minion, but I was really hoping the outcome of a group of buffing bad guys would be a lot more challenging than it seems to be.
Things I hate: Anime. PvP. Lying MMO Developers. Outleveling content. Manga. ED. Comic Store Employees. Anime.