Cant Decide between these

I cannot seem to find a choice to my problem! I can decide if I want Necromancy or Thugs, and once I figured that out I have to try find out if I want Thermal, Dark Miasma or Pain Domination! anyone got any suggestions, Up-sides Down-sides of each.

If you have any builds you wanna share be my guest, The build may actually help out.

but you don't need too.

I have (of your list)
Thugs\Dark
Necro\Pain
Ninja\Thermal

So I can kind of speak to each a little. Thugs\Dark is a steam roller pretty much from the get go. My Thugs\Dark is a toon that I regularly use to farm 8 man missions and he wipes spawns quickly thanks to corner pulled spawns on a tar patch. Thugs AoE damage + Dark's debuffs has FANTASTIC synergy.

I play my Necro\pain and ninja\thermal like a tank. I take Provoke at 8 and heavily slot it and set it to auto and run in to spawns. Pain and Thermal go a long way to keeping pets alive. Necro\thermal would be especially good at this, especially after lvl 32 with the necro pets since you can give your pets some really good resists plus they all heal themselves.

In the end the secondaries would pan out like this:
dark - awesome debuffs early..although the heal is a small radius for MM's which is annoying at times...especially with thugs, which spread out normally (especially the bruiser and the arsonist). Dark with melee pets can be tricky since they don't stay together in larger fights.

pain - does a great job of healing and later, providing some resistance and debuffs (and pain bringer...which is just awesome on the brute).

thermal - the resists and heals really....really help the minions (no matter what they are) stay alive longer. Thermal on top of a pet that already has decent resists (like the necro pets) would be a good mix.

For me, though, the real thing to consider is that melee pets require a lot of attention. If you haven't played them before, be forewarned.

Thugs - AoE damage plus your own personal brute. Truly a fun set, although, the arsonist WILL die a lot (as in multiple times a mission). The only way I've successfully gotten that red shirt to stay alive reliably was when I was leveling my thugs\force field MM...and even then with firgging 50% def, he'd still die every now and then.

Necro - Mostly single target damage except for zombie puke and the lich. Zombies are a great bunch and, like ninjas, are great at taking stuff down and you get a mini-controller as a boss pet. After the lvl32 pet upgrade,they become much more survivable (especially when paired with pain or thermal).

I think if you want more AOE madness, thugs\dark would be where I'd go. Thugs anything will work, but there is great synergy with thugs\dark.

Care to share your combo liek you run into a group cast tar patch use darkest night yah dah yah dah yah dah and maybe your build but If you didn't make it in mids I can easily make it myself.

hmmm very interesting. I think I will play a thugs/dark and a zombie/thermal and see which one plays out.

I have experience with 2 MM's so I will give you my take though only one is 50;

I have a thugs/Pain which is alot of fun, but TONS of micro-managing, and SF's and such will be hard to get into since people really don't want you cause it can be hard to control pets and do your heal stuff. It is my current fav though, but that could be just cause it's new to me...

As far as Combat goes I just send in half my henchmen with other half on bodyguard and direct primary attacks with my 2nd group on bodyguard doing their thing, and of course I keep them all healed/buffed up well cept arsonist who because of brawl becomes my suicide bomber cause he always tries to tank, lol. All in all a pretty powerful solo toon, and in regular team missions I can take care of alpha hits, and be main healer (and of course supply decent dps).

Very active toon will definatly keep you busy, but as I said above be aware it might be hard to get into SF's and such.

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Necro Dark is a fun combo with tons of Debuffs I can take on large groups without much worry. I use team teleport when solo and just pop in the middle of spawns, lol, and that keeps fluffy (dark pet) close to heal and debuff. With this combo your really a MM/controller with the fears, and lich, ect and of course a massive debuffer

In groups of course i dont use team teleport but I do use recal friend to move fluffy around. Your have to really micro manage your death knights alot or they will stand in back and just shoot a weak attack killing your dps. Zombies can be a pain for groups though cause they are melee, and tend to get in people's way.

All that said I think Necro/Thermal might be a better combo though then necro/dark. As the guy said above Thugs/Dark you can't go wrong, but to me theme wise it just didn't fit same as robot/dark which is your newb friendly MM. Pain is pretty active and might work better gameplay wise with robot since it doesn't require as much micro-managing even if theme seems off to me. =p