Necromancy/Pain Domination: What to do?

So, I've been thoroughly enjoying my Necro/Pain MM (my firs real attempt at an MM at all) the last few weeks. He's at Level 26 Now, and I'm happy with the way he plays so far.

But, I have a problem.

I'm not sure where to go with him at this point, as this is my first experience with both sets.

I've taken Dark Blast and Gloom, all the pets, and the first upgrade from the primary, And I've taken the first three powers from the secondary.

I'm considering dropping Soothe altogether, as it's much less effective than Share Pain, and I have No idea what ones are skippable and which ones aren't.

And then, of course, there's Soul mastery down the road...it's just a bit overwhelming!

Any advice out there from you seasoned MM Veterans?

Keep in mind, share pain stops you from being healed for a bit and damages you to boot. Over use of share pain can and will kill you. Because of that, share pain is much more situational then sooth. If dropping one of them, share pain would be my first choice.

Agree with dropping share pain you don't need the secondary buffs yourself.
Drop one of your attacks (or both) you now have a very good ranged attacker in the Lich so you can now sit back and use your buffs as required.

You haven't even really started to get into the good stuff in pain domination at L26. World of Pain is awesome with your pets, it stacks with their existing resistances and helps with the resistance types they don't have. Anguishing cry is a great debuff and painbringer is a nice single target buff. You want to take all 3 of these and get as much recharge slotted in them as possible so they are up frequently.

As for heals, I agree with Madam_Enigma, soothe is much better than share pain. While it might not heal as much it is up a lot more often (4 sec recharge vs 16) and doesn't hurt you and stop your healing. Properly slotted soothe is going to be nearly overkill on your zombies and a very good heal on your grave knights and lich. Actually, my necro/pain MM at L38 rarely uses anything but nullify pain. With suppress pain on the pets heal very fast between combats and in combat the extra regen takes the edge off small amounts of damage so all I need to do is occasionally fire off Nullify pain to catch the damage spike.

Part of this is because I stay in BG mode most of the time and took provoke so that I could keep attention focused on myself. If you do this then the pets only take minimal damage and you are good to go except for enemies with lots of AE - for those you might have to break out of BG mode and direct fire at them.

In general, I think you will find your time is better spent healing and directing your pets instead of attacking. At 26, with all 6 pets your attacks only contribute 1/7th of your total damage output but they eat up a lot of slots in order to do that, slots that can be better spent on healing powers.

Here is my current Necro/pain build - I am shooting for as much global recharge as possible to get world of pain close to perma, I also have both of the +resistance pet aura IO's for an extra 20% resistance to all:

Villain Plan by Mids' Villain Designer 1.621
http://www.cohplanner.com/

Click this DataLink to open the build!

Level 50 Magic Mastermind
Primary Power Set: Necromancy
Secondary Power Set: Pain Domination
Power Pool: Leadership
Power Pool: Fitness
Power Pool: Flight
Power Pool: Presence
Ancillary Pool: Soul Mastery

Villain Profile:
Level 1: Zombie Horde -- U'Loyal-Acc/Dmg(A), EdctM'r-Acc/Dmg(3), BriL'shp-Acc/Dmg(3), BldM'dt-Dmg(5), SvgnRt-PetResDam(5)
Level 1: Nullify Pain -- Dct'dW-Heal(A), Dct'dW-Heal/EndRdx(7), Dct'dW-EndRdx/Rchg(9), Dct'dW-Heal/Rchg(17), Dct'dW-Heal/EndRdx/Rchg(17)
Level 2: Soothe -- Dct'dW-Heal/EndRdx(A), Dct'dW-EndRdx/Rchg(7), Dct'dW-Heal/Rchg(9), Dct'dW-Heal/EndRdx/Rchg(19), Dct'dW-Heal(34)
Level 4: Share Pain -- H'zdH-Heal/Rchg(A), RgnTis-Heal/Rchg(11)
Level 6: Enchant Undead -- EndRdx-I(A), EndRdx-I(11)
Level 8: Assault -- EndRdx-I(A)
Level 10: Swift -- Run-I(A)
Level 12: Grave Knight -- U'Loyal-Acc/Dmg(A), EdctM'r-Acc/Dmg(13), BriL'shp-Acc/Dmg(13), BldM'dt-Dmg(15), LdyGrey-%Dam(15), Achilles-ResDeb%(19)
Level 14: Hover -- Krma-ResKB(A)
Level 16: Fly -- Flight-I(A)
Level 18: Health -- Heal-I(A), Empty(43), Empty(43)
Level 20: Suppress Pain -- Dct'dW-Heal(A), Dct'dW-Heal/EndRdx(21), Dct'dW-EndRdx/Rchg(21), Dct'dW-Heal/Rchg(23), Dct'dW-Heal/EndRdx/Rchg(37)
Level 22: Stamina -- EndMod-I(A), EndMod-I(23), EndMod-I(33)
Level 24: Provoke -- Zinger-Taunt/Rchg(A), Acc-I(25), Zinger-Acc/Rchg(25), Zinger-Taunt(33), Empty(43)
Level 26: Lich -- Cloud-Acc/ToHitDeb(A), Cloud-ToHitDeb(27), Cloud-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg(27), Cloud-ToHitDeb/EndRdx/Rchg(31), Hold-I(31), SipInsght-Acc/ToHitDeb(33)
Level 28: World of Pain -- TtmC'tng-ResDam/Rchg(A), ImpArm-ResDam/Rchg(29), RctvArm-ResDam/Rchg(29), RechRdx-I(31), ToHit-I(40)
Level 30: Soul Extraction -- ExRmnt-+Res(Pets)(A), Empty(34), Empty(40)
Level 32: Dark Empowerment -- Empty(A), Empty(34)
Level 35: Anguishing Cry -- AnWeak-Acc/DefDeb(A), AnWeak-Acc/Rchg(36), ShldBrk-Acc/Rchg(36), RechRdx-I(36), LdyGrey-%Dam(37), LdyGrey-Rchg/EndRdx(37)
Level 38: Painbringer -- Dct'dW-Rchg(A), Dct'dW-EndRdx/Rchg(39), Dct'dW-Heal/EndRdx(39), Dct'dW-Heal/Rchg(39), Dct'dW-Heal/EndRdx/Rchg(40)
Level 41: Dark Embrace -- Empty(A), Empty(42), Empty(42), Empty(42)
Level 44: Oppressive Gloom -- Empty(A), Empty(45), Empty(45), Empty(45), Empty(46), Empty(46)
Level 47: Soul Tentacles -- Empty(A), Empty(48), Empty(48), Empty(48), Empty(50)
Level 49: Soul Storm -- Empty(A), Empty(50), Empty(50)
------------
Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Sprint -- Run-I(A)
Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Supremacy
Level 0: Ninja Run

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I have a Necro/Pain MM at level 48. I have mulled over the same question. The way I answered it was take Soothe off the power tray for a session. The next time take Share Pain off the tray. See which one I missed more!

I dropped Sooth for a few reasons. I don't pretend to be built for tankerminding, at least not 95% of the time, so my zombies typically have the aggro. If someone comes after me, I sick the zombies on them and their -tohit and Lich's fear and hold make it all okay.

Share Pain has a damage buff and an inconsequential endurance cost. So even if you're not using all of the twice-as-much healing that it provides over Sooth, you're not completely out.

That is of course assuming you don't die. I BELIEVE the Regen in Suppress Pain is more than Share Pain will take away, so as a Mastermind you're not totally put out. The Corruptor version heals, so they are out of luck.

The last thing to consider I suppose is how much time you spend spot healing. Soothe's recharge is considerably less, so if you're content to spend a good chunk of your animation time and endurance on healing, it would become more effective. For occasionally taking a Brute from red to near full while you blast away and the people she's distracting, SP wins.

I would try just dropping each of them for yourself though. Your play style or typical team layout could be vastly different than mine.

We do have the option of two builds now. For a MM it is a good idea to have a solo build (without SP) and a team build (with).

Honestly, I don't notice Share Pain causing that much of an issue for me.

Also, I took the attacks for a reason. Sitting around waiting for the pets to do their thing and just throwing out the occasional heal isn't fun for me, so I'll likely be keeping those.

Thanks for all the input though. And, keep it coming!

EDIT: Also, Share Pain dispenses the damage out amongst your pets if you're in BG mode, which I always am. That's likely why I don't notice a problem.

I have a Thugs/Pain around the same level (25) and I'd never drop Soothe. I find the 4 sec recharge makes it a lot more flexible than Share Pain (as well as being superior "hps", at least at base recharge). Share Pain is often overkill and I don't want to be in the situation where I pop Share to heal moderate damage then 5 seconds later need the same again and it's still recharging. To me frequent moderate heals are of higher value than infrequent heavy heals.

I also don't rate the damage buff Share Pain gives, as MM's get such low base damage that +dam buffs aren't hugely significant for them.

That said I still took Share Pain because sometimes you just need a big emergency heal (or you need both, if things are getting particularly hectic).


In general the skippable powers in Pain for me, as someone who both teams and solos (but doesn't PvP):

Share Pain - I do get use out of it, but not often enough that I view it as a must-have.
Conduit of Pain - if you don't team then this is an obvious skip. If you do, eh, it's nice to have (and the self +rech/+rec is golden), but ideally your teams are doing so well that you don't get to use it.
Enforce Morale - I've never found mezzes (except maybe confuse) to be a big deal for any of my masterminds when solo. In teams the duration is short enough that I dislike using it pro-actively, and while it can be handy reactively most villain groups aren't mez-heavy enough to require more than a few break-frees. Maybe if you make a habit of hunting Malta or something. If MM pets were still affected by the recharge buffs I'd rate this a bit more highly.

On the Necro side I'd probably take one blast (I have Life Drain on my Necro/Dark - it's garbage, but I took it for flavour), then everything else.

For Soul Mastery I'd pick up both the Tentacles and Nightfall and slot for damage and procs - MM base damage may be low, but you can still dish out a respectable amount with that combo and Necro is a little light on AoE damage if you rely on the pets alone (and hey, those self-damage buff side-effects become a little more attractive when it's applying to a spawn's worth of AoE). The other three powers available are good choices too though.