buff bot kills ds/therm

Ok,

I've played several of the different secondaries, but buff botting totally kills my love for thermal.

Now, I felt the best on my thermal, so I'm looking for a compromise.

Anyone else consider skipping the buffs on the demonlings.

Skipping the demonlings makes the set playable again for me, but I'm wondering if that sacks me end-game or not.

I can't really get into the groove for anything DS.

Storm doesn't mesh as well as I thought, and DM isn't paired as well as with necro.

If I try traps, I'd just as soon play my bots.



So question:
Will I fail if I don't buff demonlings? Or is it like ninjas where you don't have to have genin out?

Otherwise, I'm sad to say I can't support you DS/therm on my current sanity level...

Wait,

can DS/TA work?

If you HAVE to get rid of your demonlings--and I really, really can't see why you should, then you should at least keep the 3rd demonling that deals out -res.

Therm will finally feel less of a buff-bot once you get your debuffs at 35 and 38 if that helps, though whether you can go without shielding your demons then absolutely, as they still rock a lot of natural toughness, though not potentially as much as bots or even thugs, as well as getting all those heals from you and that other liut pet.

The thing is you won't be pushing your demons as hard, and therefore being less readily able to do harder challenges compared to the guy who can be bothered to throw out buffs every 4 mins.

DS/TA can work just fine, depending on your objectives.

DS/thermal will work better for hunting "big game" such as EBs / AVs / Heroes / GMs. Forge plays nicely with all the -res in your pets, the debuffs help versus hard targets, and the thermal shields and heals keep pets upright quite well. If you put both +10% pet resistance uniques into Hell on Earth, you'll have a very, very tough MM that way. DS/TA can never match the survivability of a well built, well played DS/thermal.

But, TA offers a lot more control than thermal, as well as relief from the buff bot role. Using flash arrow gives more tactical options for pet placement and for managing aggro, and with the healing offered by the ember demon you can do quite well at keeping your pets alive. TA also does far better at handling runners than thermal ever could. Everyday PvE spawns and missions are a snap for a /TA MM, because of all the control and the option for timely use of OSA. On the subject of OSA, the fire component to pet damage will take care of lighting it for you, in most cases.

There are probably players out there who are more patient about building up their /TA MMs and who can take out AVs, Heroes, and GMs with them, but it will probably be much harder to do that with a /TA MM than with a /thermal MM, especially with the demon primary, because of the synergies between forge and -res. Also, I don't have the interest or patience needed to build up a /TA MM enough to try those kinds of mobs, and so I'm not even certain of how you would go about doing that, if that is important to you. Still, for taking on the substantial majority of EBs and heroes downgraded to the level of an EB, /TA will work better than fine, even with just SOs.

Woodsman, Zenflower, Recluse, Calystix, and the other usual suspects for making a MM's life difficult will probably give you fits if you try to solo them with a /TA MM, even as EBs, in the absence of careful use of inspirations and other tactics to manage those battles. Those battles make up a microscopic portion of the game, though. If you find it boring to be a buff bot, /TA may be a very pleasant breath of fresh air for you.

I found that I got tired of all of the shielding on test during open beta on my DS/Thermal, and so I went with DS/Pain so that I didn't have to worry about it. One click on World of Pain every 90 seconds, done. Besides, you're wielding a whip - you have to go with Pain just for the horrible off-colored jokes!

Quote:

Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle it has gone from unconscionable to downright appalling that we have no way of measuring our characters' wetness.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Brillig It's hard to beat the entertainment value of Whackjob Wednesdays.

I was gonna go /pain too, but I couldn't get the pain powers to look right. Is there any combo of colors that actually gets them to have a bright, saturated look? They always looked either very dim and dark or grey and washed out.

I wish pain's customization had access to a "bright" option like many other powers do.

In fact if you look at pain's res power it IS bright! But if you customize it then it becomes dim and icky looking.