Storm has a lot of field disrupting and manipulating powers, like gale, hurricane, and snow storm are great at keeping mobs in toe. This makes it so your melee pets won't have to run all over everywhere to constantly keep up with enemies.
I'd go Necro/Pain though, I know I've loved it.This thing is amazingly durable, best team survivability MM really..
Necro/Storm is also great, you'll be with your pets often, and the -tohit of GK and Lich stacks with hurricane, and O2 is a handy heal when needed, this pairing has great synergy for being survivable and plenty able to lay down some pain.
I'm not going to say ninjas, they aren't best synergy for the options you give, still viable though. (course all IMO)
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Both Necro/Pain and Ninja/Storm are very good with the right Secondary. Necro/Pain is really good for survivability, as does Ninjas/Storm when played right. Necro/Pain brings lots of heals for the pets, along with Damage Resistance. Ninjas have very low defenses that aren't as useful to build on, so having Storm to knock enemies down or force them into corners to maximize AoEs is the most effective. I personally have both and enjoy playing them when I'm in the mood for MMs, and those two combos I mentioned are very effective especially if you don't want Dark(I don't like Dark on MMs).
If you want active, go ninja/ta. No heals, so you gotta be smart. Mine made it to 50, not easily, but there. lol.
If the choice on primary is down to necromancy or ninja, there really is no choice at all. Go Necro.
Why?
The Lich is an awesome, terrifying bad-[censored].
The Oni is chump, and looks the part.
Seriously. The lower level pets are comparable. But Lich trumps Oni in every way. Every necro MM I know, self included, loves the lich from the moment that gaunt, dark controller arrives. I have yet to meet a Ninja MM excited or impressed by the oni. Most admit to being dissappointed.
Ninja/traps. They do much more damage than zombies solo and can take down AVs more easily.
I don't mind Oni too much other than the look. I'm about to roll a Necro/Poison though to see Lich. lol.
Just remember if you go Ninja.. The Oni will do AE Immobilizes so your knock around powers turn into 8(....
I know I scrapped my Ninja/FFer right When I upgraded the Oni and could no longer hurl enemies away with Force Bolt... that was 32 levels of awsomenes till that happened.. bah shoulda read all the descriptions...
My ninja/dark was one of the easiest builds (besides fire/fire tank preburn nerf) that I took to 50. I ran all missions on the highest difficulty and solo'd a lot of the way. Very effective build! Now I pvp often with him with great success. If you want difficult you might go with something else.
I think /dark makes any MM easy/boring. I wonder if /PD would have the same effect?
Debuffs are more powerful than buffs.
PD would not be as strong a set as DM.
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I have a bots MM I enjoy but it can be a little boring. I want to try something that is much more active. I was thinking about trying the melee style MMs (necro/ninja) since I need to constantly position them to be effective. Sounds like a nice change from Bots.
I played a necro/dark up to level 11 or so in CoV Beta. I liked it and did not mind using the Goto macro like mad.
I will 90% solo, 100% PvE. I like both sets thematically.
1) Suggestions on which to try? Zombie AoE puke sounds like they might be better for soloing small spawns - not sure.
2) Secondary? I was thinking of Pain Domination for something different and to keep my guys alive. I also enjoy TA. Want to avoid Dark since I have a D3 hero side. I hear Storm is great for necor/ninja but I am not sure why.
TY for any advice.
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lots of people keep saying to go storm, but i disagree. storm is a gimmick. it doesnt have the tools i feel are necessary to deal with the large amount of arachnoids, eb's and av's you encoutner post 40.
the ideal secondaries for either of those melee primaries are: force field for added defense and self cc protection (stacks especially well with ninja +def) or traps for the av/eb neutering, web grenade and ffg.
get team teleport. team teleport into each spawn. this ensures that all of your pets are together, have no reason to run or lag behind and are all within your ffg/dispersion bubble.
Storm is excellent in the endgame. Any MM has the dps to deal with arachnoids, save for maybe mercenaries, and more importantly Storm has the kd, survival, slows, and res/def debuffs. It is not especially good at EB or AVs, but it is not useless and EBs are still easily soloable, as well as some AVs.
In most PvE circumstances, Storm's offense (mostly freezing rain) is better suited for battle than FF's defense, although of course getting hurricane detoggled sucks, there is no real way around that without losing storm's huge -tohit debuffs, click heal, and -res.
On top of that, Storm is excellent in PvP. Hurricane will take a stalker out of Stealth, O2 boost is an excellent source of +perception and endurance drain resistance, and tornado/LS are terrors. Combined with a slotted up gale for KB, storm is a very powerful package to deal with in PvP.
I would not suggest pairing storm with ninjas though. Smoke Flash is extremely hard on your endurance bar and you lose a ton of damage (Nin's forte) by not keeping it up. Storm is also a very endurance-heavy set. I recommend more end-light powersets with ninjas, with dark miasma one of the best in pve.
Necro on the other hand pairs well with anything. The damage of necro is much lower (no smoke flash, oni deals much better area damage, etc) but the survival in necro is amazing, especially after the lich.
Necro/Dark is sort of redundant, and melee pets don't synergize as well with a short-ranged pbaoe heal like Twilight's Grasp. Necro/Storm, Necro/Pain, Necro/Traps, Necro/Poison - all of these builds are excellent, high end PvE and PvP builds.
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Storm is excellent in the endgame. Any MM has the dps to deal with arachnoids, save for maybe mercenaries, and more importantly Storm has the kd, survival, slows, and res/def debuffs. It is not especially good at EB or AVs, but it is not useless and EBs are still easily soloable, as well as some AVs.
In most PvE circumstances, Storm's offense (mostly freezing rain) is better suited for battle than FF's defense, although of course getting hurricane detoggled sucks, there is no real way around that without losing storm's huge -tohit debuffs, click heal, and -res.
On top of that, Storm is excellent in PvP. Hurricane will take a stalker out of Stealth, O2 boost is an excellent source of +perception and endurance drain resistance, and tornado/LS are terrors. Combined with a slotted up gale for KB, storm is a very powerful package to deal with in PvP.
I would not suggest pairing storm with ninjas though. Smoke Flash is extremely hard on your endurance bar and you lose a ton of damage (Nin's forte) by not keeping it up. Storm is also a very endurance-heavy set. I recommend more end-light powersets with ninjas, with dark miasma one of the best in pve.
Necro on the other hand pairs well with anything. The damage of necro is much lower (no smoke flash, oni deals much better area damage, etc) but the survival in necro is amazing, especially after the lich.
Necro/Dark is sort of redundant, and melee pets don't synergize as well with a short-ranged pbaoe heal like Twilight's Grasp. Necro/Storm, Necro/Pain, Necro/Traps, Necro/Poison - all of these builds are excellent, high end PvE and PvP builds.
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heh. i want to see storm stop a running biff and then kill him as a +2 eb.
something only my /traps was able to do (mmm..web grenade. biff has pretty high immob resistance)
i consider biff and widdershins at +2 EB as good measuring tools for solo mm's doing dev content. they have insane regen and decent resists. it's almost like trying to take on an AV but without AV levels of incoming dmg. they will also completley shut off your regen for a long time if their spit hits you (it's pretty much the same as poisons envenom) and pretty much shut off all power recharge at the same time.
it also depends on whether or not you think having to constantly replace minions as the norm, or if you prefer to have to only replace them every now and then. i prefer the latter.
your points on necro/dark are way off. have yo uactually played necro/dark with team teleport? and even if you havent, it's extremely easy to floor an eb's tohit chance as necro/dark thanks to the various -tohit abilities in dark and from the dark servant - which can be made perma. really tough eb up there? know it will one shot your minions the second they get in range? drop dark servant on it, darkest night then tp in. no longer an issue. also, the lich is a great little CC'er when combined with the added CC in dark and a patron immob.
only my thugs/traps was easier to level up, however i find trying to team as a melee mm an exercise in frustration.
Biff isn't a really good example since he's pretty nonthreatening and his only gimmick is that he runs away and is hard to kill. Obviously traps is better at countering that. You can't use examples that are best cases for traps. I'd use benchmarks like Posi, or better, LR - enemies that are actually dangerous, and not just based on a test of DPS. LR is a particularly good example imo since he has a lot of different hoops you need to beat him.
He's still soloable with a thugs/traps (easily, imo) but that build can solo most things anyway. A necro/storm can solo LR, but it's hard.
A better example might be the RWZ challenge (full spawn of +4 rikti, including at least 3 bosses) which can be done by a stormie (easily) but is extremely hard to do with a nin/traps. Another good example is PvP, where stormies rule, but traps are somewhat decent but not amazing (I have a 50 necro/traps, and PvPed with it a ton prior to i13 and a little after, so this statement is not made in assumption - compared to a necro/storm, of which I know two, I am far inferior).
My arguments for necro/dark are that dark is redundant with necro. You do not need the lich to floor an EB's tohit is my point. You just get up next to him with dark servant, toggle him, and spam powers. The main purpose of necro is to provide -tohit and cone fear but Dark already does that. I'd rather have a set that does more damage or has more survivability. Dark works really well with nin for that reason (Dark is pretty end-light when it's working well, which leaves end for smoke flashes) but it also works well with bots, which have backup mez, defense, and resists. It works well with thugs, for their ridiculous damage. Necro is just redundant.
I have a bots MM I enjoy but it can be a little boring. I want to try something that is much more active. I was thinking about trying the melee style MMs (necro/ninja) since I need to constantly position them to be effective. Sounds like a nice change from Bots.
I played a necro/dark up to level 11 or so in CoV Beta. I liked it and did not mind using the Goto macro like mad.
I will 90% solo, 100% PvE. I like both sets thematically.
1) Suggestions on which to try? Zombie AoE puke sounds like they might be better for soloing small spawns - not sure.
2) Secondary? I was thinking of Pain Domination for something different and to keep my guys alive. I also enjoy TA. Want to avoid Dark since I have a D3 hero side. I hear Storm is great for necor/ninja but I am not sure why.
TY for any advice.
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