Lay your traps ahead of time and pull the mobs into them?
Poison Gas Trap, ladened with procs, alongside Acid Mortar, caltrops, and Achille's Heel Proc slotted into the mercs, makes for a surprisingly tasty ensuing gunfight.
Also, as much as I like /Trick arrow, I wouldn't recommend it highly. Absolutely no mitigation for those sticky mercs unless you're very active in the act of debuffing. A lot of hard work for very little comparative gain over /traps.
I would think the hold from Ice Arrow alone would eliminate a third or more of most spawns I would face solo, unless I crank up my difficulty high. And teams don't like to wait for trap setters to lay mines (I prefer run and gun myself).
Once you've gotten accustomed to the range of the acid mortar, you can lay it just outside of the enemy's range, and it'll take the alpha for you and your pets. It's pretty resilient.
I've only done a couple /ta MM's up into the mid 20's. it will certainly work for a ranged build, though the mitigation it offers is less than satisfactory imo. I found my thugs/ta ended up getting cut down pretty often (for a MM) and I think thugs are tougher than mercs.
While very high on offensive debuffs (lots of -def and -res) TA is very low on damage mitigation. Basically it has a little -to hit in flash arrow, a little -recharge spread out between its controls and a very small amount of -damage in PGA. To some extent this is balanced by the amount of control it offers but when you apply the low mastermind AT mods for both controlls and debuffs to the set what you end up with is way on the low end.
Defenders do OK with it because they get the best debuff values so even the low debuffs are ok. Controllers are ok because they have a lot of damage mitigation in their primary and they get the best control mods so the lack of damage mitigation in TA doesn't matter. I tried playing a corruptor TA on test during the beta and I honestly feel the set is to weak there as well - solo you have almost nothing to mitigate damage from ranged attackers and in a group you really don't add much from your secondary until you have acid arrow and disruption arrow - once you have those you will probably contribute greatly to a team but even then you won't match other sets until you get OSL. In many ways I think folks excuse way to much weakness early on in the set because OSL is so awesome (and it IS awesome - but crap until 35 is never worth awesome).
Sorry to go on - TA is one of my pet peeves - it sounds like it should be a nice set and the concept is cool but it leaves a lot to desire. People are constantly yelling at me whenever I try to compare it to the other debuff sets but the fact is that while it DOES give you more offensive debuffs than any other set it doesn't give you ENOUGH extra to balance the really low damage mitigation and the lack of a heal.
In conclusion - go traps unless you REALLY want to go TA for concept.
Globals: @Midnight Mystique/@Magik13
Okay thanks Eric, and others!
I have a mercs/traps at level 32 but I'm thinking about rerolling to /trick arrow. I dislike all the /traps powers so far except for Force Field Generator. The strategy for this character is supposed to be all ranged attacks and I don't like running forward to lay down Acid Mortar. Nor will I like running forward to lay a trip mine, I'm thinking. I'm thinking I'd rather shoot arrows from a distance, maybe Glue Arrow the enemies down and such.
Can anyone help me decide if this is a good idea?
I'm could possibly be talked into a bots/trick arrow as well, I think, maybe. /dark miasma, /storm and such are out because I don't think they go thematically with mercs or bots (no offense to people who mix and match things freely).
I apprecieate any help!