Thermal is gonna be more of a tanker than Pain. Good resistance debuffs, amazing Single Target debuff, heals, Shields, Nuke Rez, etc.
Not as powerful healing wise as pain, but it'll certainly be slightly more well-rounded, especially since the shields themselves are perma out of the box.
As MM, I think I would enjoy Pain a lot more. Thermal is good if you want to keep the buffs up all the time. There are two shields to keep up and Forge.
I like Pain because it's really just one button World of Pain and the rest is similar to thermal (one single heal and one aoe heal). I am not a big fan of Share Pain only because I can't get healed for 15s. I find that quite annoying but it's up to you.
Thermal does have a good single debuff at lvl 35 (Heat Exhaustion) that Pain doesn't have.
What's left is to normalize all Assassin Strikes and improve Stalker's old sets (Claw, MA and EM)! You don't need to bring back the missing PbAoE attack. You just need to make the existing ones better! For example, make Slice a WIDER and LONGER cone.
I personally don't like /pain on an MM because a lot of it's powers give you a self +damage buff, which is pointless. MM's with personal attacks are either low level or ineffective.
Thermal should be really good for MM's. I don't like how click-y it is, but it's better than FF.
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Personally i would choose Thermal over Pain Dom.
The debuffs Thermal has are far superior than that of Pains.
The heals from Thermal are enough i believe. The extra heal from Pain (Share Pain) is a little over doing it although Suppress Pain is a nice power; low end cost for a good regen boost, i wouldnt know how useful it would be with Bots though. They are more range then melee, true but their size would disadvantage them because Suppress Pain only has a radius of 15ft and the Assault Bot is more then likely 15ft by itself...
With enough recharge you could easily buff 4 pets with Forge for a 15% To Hit and a 30% Damage bonus i believe.
Where as World of Pain only increases thier To Hit by 7.5% and Damage by 12%, though it does also buff Damage Resistance by about 11% i think and it is a PBAoE so you could hit all 6 pets.
Both have a Mez protection power, though Pain's does inflict minor damage which can be ignored but it is a little off-putting IMO...
And if you dont want to buff an entire 8 man team...dont...Tell 'em you chose this power set for the pets and for me to buff 13 things would be murder!
All of that aside for me Thermal Radiation is the clear winner but it would depend on your play style as well i guess.
I'm gonna tell ya something with bots and pain.
I had some issues with crowd control on my bots/dark. I didn't realize how bad it was with bots/pain.
Basically, mobs are gonna be flying *everywhere*. I mean EVERYWHERE. You won't get a crowd control set till your epics, and even then, you'll still have to accomadate for the fact that you'll either still have things knocked around, just not moving so much, or if you get electric fences, you'll have to worry about recasting all the time because of its pitiful radius.
It's a fantastic combination for survivability, but you will have to work around it a LOT.
I like both sets.
I've got a thermal controller, a pain MM, and a pain corr. All at 50
Thermal will be better for MMs IMO, because MMs survive better by preventing damage to pets. Healing is great, but w/ pet hitpoints, cutting down on the incoming damage is best. Pains WoP is a great buff, but isn't perm out of the box.
So to answer the question.
Non IO'd
Thermal > Pain
Fully IO'd
Thermal = Pain
Just from my experience mind you.
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A grand total of 2 out of 9 powers do this. One of them is an excellent heal which doesn't need much slotting to fully heal one of your henchmen; combined with one of your other heals they'll only die from huge alphas delivered during at just the right time during a recharge. The other power is a rez, its primary purpose is to rez, which is useless anyway if you solo, and which Thermal also has. Oh, World of Pain does buff your damage, but it also buffs everyone else's. Can't imagine why you wouldn't take this. If you're not into playing a healing secondary it's fine, but I would recommend you reevaluate the set, as you seem to be approaching it from some erroneous conclusions.|
Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison
I personally don't like /pain on an MM because a lot of it's powers give you a self +damage buff, which is pointless. MM's with personal attacks are either low level or ineffective.
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That said, I'm running a Necro/Thermal right now and it's pretty fun. Has a similar playstyle to /Pain (although Necro/Therm plays differently from my Thugs/Pain in several *interesting* ways), but the henchmen seem to be overall more survivable with the buffs in conjunction with the heals. Should be interest to see where this goes, especially with the later powers granting -Res and -DEF against enemies who are probably already lacking protection against Toxic.
"You don't lose levels. You don't have equipment to wear out, repair, or lose, or that anyone can steal from you. About the only thing lighter than debt they could do is have an NPC walk by, point and laugh before you can go to the hospital or base." -Memphis_Bill
We will honor the past, and fight to the last, it will be a good way to die...
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You're right, I hadn't really looked that deeply into the set before.|
Originally Posted by DarkGob
A grand total of 2 out of 9 powers do this. One of them is an excellent heal which doesn't need much slotting to fully heal one of your henchmen; combined with one of your other heals they'll only die from huge alphas delivered during at just the right time during a recharge. The other power is a rez, its primary purpose is to rez, which is useless anyway if you solo, and which Thermal also has. Oh, World of Pain does buff your damage, but it also buffs everyone else's. Can't imagine why you wouldn't take this. If you're not into playing a healing secondary it's fine, but I would recommend you reevaluate the set, as you seem to be approaching it from some erroneous conclusions.
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After looking at it a lot closer, I have come to different conclusions. Keep in mind that these conclusions come from a viewpoint that largely solos as an MM, always takes provoke because tankerminding is fun, and views teammates as bonus pets who don't always listen.
Three heals - Nice... but most pets die quickly if they're in danger. I'd rather have something that prevents damage than heals it. This is more a preference thing though.
Rez - Completely useless since it doesn't work on pets and wakies are easy to make. Assuming I'm on a team often enough to need it, chances are, if he died, the fight is out of control already and it's best to just regroup.
Enforce Morale - The +recharge is wasted, but having break frees for pets that aren't robots is kinda nice.
Word of Pain and Anguishing Cry - Ok, I have no complaints about these except that they come at such a late level. On any other powerset, I already have my mitigation and force multiplication buffs.
Painbringer - The damage may be a very welcome buff, but this isn't perma, and the regen doesn't help much because most pets don't have much in the way of hitpoints and the recovery is wasted because pets don't run out of end to begin with.
Maybe it's just a playstyle thing, but I don't think I'll ever take a /pain MM.
Thanks for at least making me think about it.
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Check out all my guides and fiction pieces on my blog.
The MFing Warshade | The Last Rule of Tanking | The Got Dam Mastermind
Everything Dark Armor | The Softcap
don'T attempt to read tHis mEssaGe, And believe Me, it is not a codE.
I made a Pain/Thugs MM. Spent some petty cash getting purples, IO'ed out... then I ran trhree respecs so i could get all the wasted IOs i could out of him. What a waste. Pain Corr is a little better, but im still underwhelmed by Pain.
Tanker Tuesday #72 Oct 5 @Champion
"I am not sure if my portrayal of being insane is accurate, but damn its fun all the same."
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Really? I find that shocking. I found my Thugs/Pain to be quite effective. One of my fastest leveling toons, both because of how powerful it was and how fun it was to play (Gang War + World of Pain FTW). At this point he's sitting at 48 only because I got kind of burned out on him and distracted by a terminal case of alt-itis (also because Thugs suck on ITFs).|
Originally Posted by NetMinder
I made a Pain/Thugs MM. Spent some petty cash getting purples, IO'ed out... then I ran trhree respecs so i could get all the wasted IOs i could out of him. What a waste. Pain Corr is a little better, but im still underwhelmed by Pain.
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I will admit though, it takes a lot more maintenance than other secondaries. A set like /Dark has much more offensive mitigation. As far as the comparison to /Thermal goes, I'm not sure it's going to be any better. Sure, you've got the shields, but you need to keep on top of those every 4.5 minutes, and you're still going to be doing a good amount of healing (especially on Zombies........but that's another thread).
"You don't lose levels. You don't have equipment to wear out, repair, or lose, or that anyone can steal from you. About the only thing lighter than debt they could do is have an NPC walk by, point and laugh before you can go to the hospital or base." -Memphis_Bill
We will honor the past, and fight to the last, it will be a good way to die...
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Necro/Thermal is a great pairing when IO'd|
Originally Posted by DarkGob
I will admit though, it takes a lot more maintenance than other secondaries. A set like /Dark has much more offensive mitigation. As far as the comparison to /Thermal goes, I'm not sure it's going to be any better. Sure, you've got the shields, but you need to keep on top of those every 4.5 minutes, and you're still going to be doing a good amount of healing (especially on Zombies........but that's another thread).
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Thermal Shields (Slotted w/ 3 Resist IO) + 2 Pet Resist Procs Gives you:
Fire Resist: 67% (Necros biggest weakness)
Others(Lower on Cold): 43.8%
With heals, debuffs, and Forge, its got a lot of synergy going for itself. Also you can slot the 2 Def procs for a +10% def to all, which synergies wth all the -tohit in the pets ranged attacks. Not a lot of def mind you, but its better then zero.
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Glad to hear it, I'll keep slogging through. However, I was making my comparison solely on the basis of upkeep necessary, which is what some people seemed to take issue with (and is entirely a matter of playstyle).|
Originally Posted by Gypsy_of_Paradox
Necro/Thermal is a great pairing when IO'd
Thermal Shields (Slotted w/ 3 Resist IO) + 2 Pet Resist Procs Gives you: Fire Resist: 67% (Necros biggest weakness) Others(Lower on Cold): 43.8% With heals, debuffs, and Forge, its got a lot of synergy going for itself. Also you can slot the 2 Def procs for a +10% def to all, which synergies wth all the -tohit in the pets ranged attacks. Not a lot of def mind you, but its better then zero. |
I have to say, it'll be nice to approach a Longbow Flamethrower and not go "aw crud" the way I was with my Bots/Dark and Thugs/Pain (although with the latter, I got to fight fire with arson).
"You don't lose levels. You don't have equipment to wear out, repair, or lose, or that anyone can steal from you. About the only thing lighter than debt they could do is have an NPC walk by, point and laugh before you can go to the hospital or base." -Memphis_Bill
We will honor the past, and fight to the last, it will be a good way to die...
I've been meaning to make a Bots MM with one of the healing secondaries, but I can't decide which one I would want. Is there an advantage for taking one over the other, in regards to MMs? I'm pretty familiar with Thermal and and I don't mind waiting for it to be released in the new issue, but I've never tried Pain before so I have no idea how it would go with Bots or MMs. Thoughts?