Ds/dark Ds/poison

Personally I find the AoE heal only useful as a form of recovery between fights. I've never noticed Ember Demon's heal saving my little Demonlings' lives.

Madam_Enigma did a good description.

I started a DS/Poison MM and at level 18 I realised I was going the same path as my Thug/Poison MM so I made à DS/DM for novelty.

DM can handle more NPC a the same time so I usualy play solo with a 2-3 players setting but I had to put Heroes on Elite Boss. With poison on the other hand you can keep the Heroes but you should play with 1 player setting.

Both /Dark and /Poison are good secondaries. /Poison is without a doubt the #1 single target debuffing set there is. Which is Great for soloing AV's and GM's with. And /Dark will make you and all of your pets more survivable in a larger fight as you can bottom out the tohit of everything in an AOE. and Dark also gives you an extra debuffing pet with a great AOE Heal which makes it very good for PVE.

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

My ds/poison just hit 48 and I must say I'm glad I went poison. No offense to dark -- I have several */dark MM's and I love em. And in fact the reason I went poison was because I thought (correctly) that ds/dark would be so ubiquitous.

But here's why I like poison:

With any MM, the only real tough fight (when solo anyway) will be against a very tough boss. Poison fixes that problem. As others have noted, poison is the best ST debuff set in the game, and I have found that as such it has good symbiosis with DS which itself is fairly diverse.

Yes the heal is not on par with dark. But I don't need an enemy to fire it off, and with some halfway decent slotting it fires every 3 - 5 seconds for 200+ hp, and it affects pets who arent tightly clustered.

Demon Prince with Hell on Earth and Noxious Gas is just a terror. That combo alone is worth a lot IMO.

So is it better than dark? NO, its different with a different focus. Dark chews through minions faster and no doubt more safely. I think it safe to say poison has a much easier time with very tough bosses -- the ITF I participated in the other day was very happy I was along when Rommy faceplanted with nary a challenge.

So certainly viable. I'd also concur that dark is much easier to play -- poison requires considerably more micro-management.

My first and only MM is a Merc/Poison...that's right I am crazy lol. He has taught me a lot but I still wanted to try out /Dark for my Demon/ Mastermind. I love it, it's like easy mode but I admit it's not a boss killer like /Poison.

Heck with my Merc/Poison I was taking down Eb's and Av's...and he didn't even have Noxious Gas yet! I think one of my favorite powers in the /poison set is Neurotoxic Breath? It's amazing..especially when it holds.

I would love to see /Poison as an option for Corrs.

i had 1 thugs/poison up to lvl 42 and deleted it. its by far the least useful secondary IMO.
the reasons:
1. NO protection means.
your pets will get hurt regardless what you do and there always a scissors between damage eaten and damage healed. the only "protection" is noxious gas, which has very long recharge and very short duration.
2. NO useful healing means. slow weak single target heal.
3. NO useful AE controls aka alpha canceler. fearsome stare or seeker drones are the skills that allow you always to have initiative over a fight from the very beginning. that's not only the single baddies that can cause problems, a spawn of 10-15 minions with some leuts or a secondary group can be a reason for wipe too if you can't control them.

/dark will definitely outperform in almost any situation except 1on1 pvp, where poison might be better (i don't play pvp).

and btw, i've tested nearly all my of my mms in AE against some custom AVs and the poison felt like the weakest of all mms i had by that time. even after the nerv /traps still eat them for breakfast. with /dark is also never was a problem to debuff AV in to oblivion. and /storm allow you to laugh violently at any AV you encounter.