MM & healing

Well I just got back into CoV with a few friends and I'm running the MM for the group (robots). We have a brute and a dom and I'm playing the major support role. I'm looking for opinions on the best sub for a MM, healing, support, things of that nature. What helps out the most end game. then on the flip side is there one the sticks out as the highest dmg dealing or powerhouse. I guess I just don't know the 2nd powersets that well to make a good choice with out some feed back. I hear force fields and dark miasma are good ones, but then I started looking at pain dom and thermal.

Thanks for any infomation
Kyoske

Personally i would go with eather dark or pain

dark for the debuffs, u get a gd heal (when it hits), prob the best rez in the game (needs enermy to use it though) and u get fluffy at lvl 38 and pain coz u get heals and u also get some gd buffs at later lvls

Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.

"gd"? I assume that's good ^__^

I'd agree with /Dark or /PainDom. (Mainly because I haven't played or played with Thermal or FF)

The main differences between the two are:

Dark's heal requires an enemy target and a to-hit check. It's also an AE heal with a fairly small range, but, once you get used to it, it's very useful. (My /Dark is only 41 and almost has the 2,000,000 healing badge, from mostly solo play)

Dark is more debuff-oriented, where Pain is more buff-oriented. Pain also has more heals available than Dark. Dark gets a pet at 38 that uses most of the /Dark powers, including the heal.

I haven't played Pain beyond the low levels, so I can't really comment on how it is in the higher levels, but I've teamed with players that have it and it is very effective at keeping everyone healed.

Thermal is a fairly new addition to MM's, but it looks to be a very solid one. It almost seems like a middle ground between Dark and Pain; not as many heals as Pain, but has both buffs and debuffs (though the debuffs come at the higher levels).

Force Field is a different type of set in that it doesn't come with any heals, but it does come with a lot of defense buffs (not much in the offensive buff set). I've played FF up to the mid teens and it doesn't really seem to mature until you get Dispersion Bubble and get some slots into it, but after that it seems to become easymode

So, to recap:

/Dark: Minor healing with decent debuffing capabilities, pet that duplicates your powers
/PainDom: Better healing with decent buffing capabilities (mostly offensive buffs), healing aura
/Thermal: Middle healing with mixed buffing and debuffing (mostly defensive buffs)
/FF: Purely defensive buffing, minor controlling abilities

At least... that's how I see it

Forcefields, Dark, Pain, and Thermal are good. You can also be successful with the debuff sets: poison, trick arrow, and traps. Actually until you get the uber buff in poison, trick arrow with the medicine pool compares very well with poison and traps. Poison is good for when you want that one target DEAD and I mean now. Weaken counters some of the nastier effects of foes. Personally I appreciate just as much the sets that enable the minions to be killing machines as much as 'support' sets (which technically I don't consider dark primarily as support).

wonderful information everyone. From what I'm seeing I'm more then likly going to give pain dom a Go. but I will have dark to fall back if need be. I like having another pet from the dark tree. But having the extra heals/buffs seems like its a bit more "party" oriented. Ether way more info the better. ^__^

On a side note I was reading last night something about fire/kin - illusion/rad controllers being good at solo ? Is there any truth tot this and if so do the villians have a good version of this ?

/Pain at the higher levels IO'd out for some other bonuses is a walking tank of destruction, especially with Pet Uniques added on. Plenty of healing (because the set is the "anti-empathy) a nice debuff and a wonderful AoE ally buff. Not exactly the best against hardier opponents, Pain is definitely a support role with a healing, but it probably isn't the strongest possible support role available.

/Dark is a master of mass debuffs. Armed with Fear, -ToHit, -Resistance, -Regen, an extra pet, and Healing, /Dark is a huge "support" role (I count debuffs and such as support). You can fear an entire mob and reduce their damage greatly at the higher levels, and Tar patch is a massive -Resistance debuff that just slaughters hardy enemies. The -Regen is extremely powerful to boot! Oh, and against a single opponent you can debuff enough enemy damage on a single target to make AVs hit for Minion-value damage.

Force Fields, probably the most support heavy role MMs have. Basically with Force Fields you shield up and head out to smash face. While not exactly useful against extremely hardy targets (AVs, Monsters, Giant Monsters, certain Elite Bosses), Force Fields has powerful repel and knockback components that are guaranteed to keep mobs (for the most part) on their backs.

Thermal has two heals (quite enough for this set) and two shields. While presenting more to the player in question, Thermal is much more of an active set buffing wise because it comes with two shields that do last longer than World of Pain from Pain Domination, but Thermal shields must be applied to each target individually making it a pain to buff your pets and everyone. Unlike World of Pain Thermal shields can reach higher resistance values making it quite useful on resistance based and defense based players looking for an extra boost in survivability. Thermal also brings -Regen, -Recovery, -Resistance, -Defense, and a +Damage and +ToHit power that is- excuse my redundancy...- quite powerful. Overall a great support set.

(Thermal, Pain, and Dark both bring rezzes).

Now let me give you one last explanation for Pain's ally rez...It's like applying hasten with a massive recovery buff to the player. You heard me right, Pain's rez has affects that work on the caster of the power.

Conduit of Pain- Self +Damage, Self+ 70% Recharge time (stackable), Self + 4.00% recovery buff (stackable). If you go pain please, please, please take Vengeance. Not only will you be helping the team, you'll be increasing yourself as a whole by having the Pain Rez+Veng combo.

Healing ain't that big a factor; the Brute should be able to take care of himself, and Doms tend to appreciate buffs. That and as a Mastermind, your base heal/buff numbers are very low compared to other support powersets.

I hear Bots/Dark is absolutely brutal, both solo and teamed. You'll have a wide variety of heals, buffs, debuffs and a rez, often in the same power. I can think of at least four different roles that could serve in a team, so I'll just say 'your teammates are optional'.

While Force Field is strong defensively, taking the time to bubble a whole team plus your henchmen can take a while. Even more if there's another MM on the team. Many FF MMs only bubble their own pets, or only buff the team, but since you want to concentrate on the support role you would want both.

Pain will probably get you more "nice heals" than Dark. But Dark you shouldn't need to heal. As an MM folks will probably be paying more attention to your henchmen anyway, so it's down to what strategy you want to use.