It really is your choice, try each of them and see how comfortable you are with them and if you get bored of them easily then dont use that one.Worked for me lolz and I see you havent said anything about necros up there. Thugs and Necros are probably most popular atm
Yep - depending on play style your after really - with Ninjas being a melee type of pet all three are generally ranged. I play thugs and thumbs up to them good fun so far!
I have mercs, they're quite good but not exactly what I figured they would be. They don't fit the feel of the game visually, and it's hard to consider them bad, but it's easy to look past after a while.
Personally i'd love to be able to make custom costume'd lackies...
Just to throw a spanner in the works and simply because people have already mentioned Thugs/Mercs, I'm going to suggest.....Bots of course, I currently have a lvl35 Bots MM and its an absolute blast to play. Protector Bots are awesome...they bubble you and your pets, they heal your pets, they cast their own Seeker Drones and on top of all that, they also attack. Then you get the Assault Bot...once you get the last upgrade, this thing becomes nothing more than a walking tower of destruction...missiles and burn patches everywhere.
But more importantly, I believe that its the secondary that crafts the type of MM that you'll become.
From those 3, mercs loose big time. Thugs do alot damage compared with necro, bots have somewhat more defence but still load of damage, ninja is a mix of it. Mercs.. ya well, no good 
So it comes down to your secondairy pick.
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Have you seen Gangwar in action yet?
Thanks for all the replies. I'v started testiting arround alittle to see if I can find one I like. So far I hate the mercenaries.. Where my ninjas follow me easily the merc gets stuck on very single tiny pebble or uneven piece of ground I pass.. If I run arround or jump over a fence then my ninjas jump over while the merc gets stuck...
I need a hammer so I can hammer in some intelligence into that merc...
Just wait untill u get both upgrades, thats really a laugh. Specialy Medic and the seals makes u cry..
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I thought the mercs would become more smarter after the upgrades but they get even worse.. the healer ran straight off the tower in grandville.. and then they all followed.
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Just wait untill u get both upgrades, thats really a laugh. Specialy Medic and the seals makes u cry..
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Why - what happens then? They can't act more stupid than they already do without two upgrades, can they?
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I thought the mercs would become more smarter after the upgrades but they get even worse.. the healer ran straight off the tower in grandville.. and then they all followed.
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The medic is really the most stupid pet I can imagine. I hate it when he always goes into melee rather than using his rifle from distance or healing the rest of the party.
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Just wait untill u get both upgrades, thats really a laugh. Specialy Medic and the seals makes u cry..
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Why - what happens then? They can't act more stupid than they already do without two upgrades, can they?
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Medic gets stimulant, from wich point he serious start spamming this power on every pet and u and 99% forget to heal when its really needed (when he get interupted he stops healing/stimulant for quite some time). Offcourse the melee issue is even worse.
The seals only do their sniper shot when they are at +80ft, anywhere closer and they stop using it. Their weaponbut attack is never used, teargas used when most of the group is down. They also get stealth, wich they put on and off on and off, makes no single use what so ever. (use grant.invis is 100% better).
But thats only the bit of the annoying parts of merc pets.
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The Spec Ops will use their SCAR rifle conventionally at medium range, I believe sniping is meant to be somewhat stealthy. :-P
The Tear Gas Grenade will be lobbed when it's recharged, and the Spec Ops are in attack mode. There is no *waiting* outside of this rule, which all pets follow. Not only Mercs. ;-)
I usually don't bother to give the medic the second upgrade. :-(
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Hmm, methinks I might scrap my mercs mm now after reading these posts...
:-$
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Hmm, methinks I might scrap my mercs mm now after reading these posts...
:-$
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It's ultimately a matter of taste. The actual performance of your primary set, will even out in the end, as long as you know what you can do, and not do, and take your other powers and adapt accordingly.
Some negativity has a foundation in truth, but it's not exactly sounding like the few individuals keeping up the bad reputation, has spent a generous amount of time with their Mercenary MM's at higher levels. If that is the case, perhaps they should have dropped it when they somehow found out that it's just not their style. :-p
Any marginal, yes marginal differences in performance ,will be enhanced by continuous negative focus, and a lack of will to adapt. It's a matter of taste in the end.
I would love something else than the utterly underwhelming Serum power, and a Medic that dies less often. Or Spec Ops invisibility that actually stayed on. But it's not this enormous game breaking disaster you know.
It's a marginal game of numbers in the end, and a complete lack of will to adapt, with noise levels quite out of proportion, here on the forums. But if Mercenaries don't feel like fun to play, of course they should be dropped. There is however nothing wrong with their performance, unless you seriously mismanage your other powers.
P.S.
I got 2642 hours on my Mercenary MM now. Admittedly some slack off time in there. ;-)
My first MM was a bot/psn, fun but bitty big and annoying bots. So i went to my merc/TA, at first it was quite enjoyable as they had a quite nice DoT-fire rate. Ice arrow, disruption arrow, glue, most did their job pretty nice.
The annoying moments started when i recieved the 2nd upgrade and i noticed specs were really not comparable to prot.bots or (from teaming) graveknights and enforcers.
Time started to change when i reached 32, serum. What a waste of a power on ranged pets, it has no use of a commando going FA while he's surrounded by mobs. Dropped it the next lvl anyway. Luckely i had TA oilslick and EMP arrow to come, so continued.
Now i am lvl41, the last 2 lvls were a living nightmare. Very high SL resist results in 1-1-1-1-1-1-1 damage not to mention 5 pets start to do their FA/long attacks while the 6th just finish his 5x1 DoT and took down the pet. More and more 'dropped' powers (ignite, oilslick, dis.arrow) made my pets run away 10 blocks, agro'ing entire new groups and faceplant as result. Not to mention the pathetic long animation time of casting and upgrading, going twice the time of necro or even bots (it roots 2/3sec you as long u are on 'the phone' wich is casting and 2nd upgrade). The redraw, stupid AI, wrong powerchoice/preference, pure SL dmg, useless powers (stealth) and a retarted medic...
Is it TA that made my merc weak? Not for me, TA has very nice tricks specialy going solo. Ok few bugs here and there, but its ok.
It was not untill i started my ninja, thugs and necro MM's when i found out Mercs were so pathetic stupid and weak. 10 sec of nonstop crit on ninja and awsome instant dmg, the great dmg output of thugs with leadership mayhem it was necro that made me drop my merc MM at all. Hold, fear, immobilize, knockup, selfheal, consume soul, extreme fast upgrading (animation wise) and a awsome ammount of damage.
So now my Necro is 38, enjoying every single moment to play it. Would i be necro/TA, probably still the same.
Yes i once thought mercs were great..no i have all other sets, they are the weakest of all. I agree secondairy is very helping your pets, but if i merely look at the pets alone... they are stupid. Yes a /dark set will perform great, but any /dark set perform great. Some day.. whenever, my Merc will reach lvl50. But then, i am 100% sure, i buy a transfer token and put him alone on the most deserted server i can find.
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It's somewhat tempting to say that TA don't stack well with Mercs, Sinergy_X. TA with ranged pets, is a rare sight, I can't remember many of those that made it to 50.
Got Mercs/traps myself, and that seems to work. But no doubt the introduction of Thugs have eaten up any resemblence of a Merc presence on the underpopulated servers we got. They are out there though. A few. Perhaps it would have been best if nobody played Mercs, then *maybe* the devs would take a look at some of these issues, in 2020 or thereabouts. You have to understand that if the devs had shared the worries described above, they would have... still done nothing. :-p
With that said, the Merc/TA sound like a challenge of sorts. Like an Iron Man mode, or something like that. :-p
Sadly not all Primary and Secondary power combinations mix equally well. But all those AI quirks you complain about will of course be persistent regardless of any power set combinations. You find a way to deal with them, or drop the set. That's how it goes. Certain play styles will make them stand out more, less so for others. ;-)
Edit: Mercs/TA is working reasonably well together according to the US forums. I had a bit of a read, so it boils down to the dislike of Mercs apparently. :-p
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I would try a bots/traps it rooocks i have one at lvl 28 only took a week.. was duoing with ma mate but we've currently gone back to heroes.. but i defo recommend bots
Traps
*pulls in a full team of cheerleaders*
traps traps wooooo traps
I so love that set.
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Well I like my mercs, Im a level 43 merc/trapper, and while the set clearly have the lowest DPS output, it does at the same time have the best crowd control/survivability, so they may kill a little slower, but on the other hand they last longer than other pets for the exact same reason that their DPS is lower, namely all their no damage specials.
Other MMs have between 0 to 1 pets who doesnt deal optimal damage, while the merc MM have 3 pets that deal subpar damage, this is the direct reason mercenaries have the lowest DPS, the 2 spec ops waste time going invis, casting webs, flashbangs and gas grenades, neither of wich does any direct damage. And the medic performs terribly if he gets the lvl 32 upgrade, or if you remove him from defensive/follow, so the medic does not have upgraded attack, and he does not fire when I tell the other 5 pets to fire.
But at the same time, those grenades from the spec ops add a lot to the surviveability of the group, and when I add the arsenal from my trap set I can pretty much survive anything, so I may kill a little slower than other MMs, but my pets are so darn hard to kill, I never picked any other healing power than triage, I have it 6 slotted and I love it to pieces, and if my guys do die, then no amount of "single target heal other" power would have helped anyway, if the enemy is strong enough to kill my guys off when Im bunkered down, then its because Im chewing more than I can eat, not because I need healing.
The only complaint I have with mercs is their pathing, they seem to get stuck against railings all the time, so I have to jump up and around to get them to follow properly.
2 things that makes mercs work well, never give the medic the 2nd upgrade, and always keep him on defensive follow, I have all my pets except the medic named soldier 1-5, that way I just use pet_name soldier commands to control everyone but my medic, I love mercs, and havent found them to be weak or subpar when everything is considdered.
I can sign any paper stating that Mercs/Traps is an awesome combination. The full IO set "Doctored Wounds", is pretty good and somewhat affordable for the Triage Beacon BTW. It got the right recharge values etc. :-)
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I just use 3 raw recharge and 3 raw healing atm in triage, but now Im going IO hunting 
I already got one mastermind, A Ninja Mastermind. But I'v beent hinking of testing a diferent type of mastermind and I'm thinking of either Thugs, Mercenaries or Bots so any sugestions would be welcome