Dark.
Dark has all the essentials you need.
Shadowfall and Darkest Night provide all of the defensive support you'll need. Fluffy is just more support. You get a very powerful AoE heal in the form of Twilight's Grasp -and- you get Tar Patch. Tar Patch recharges faster than Melt Armor and provides more -resistance.
Second you have more control powers. Fearsome Stare is amazing. and the Hold isn't too shabby (although most people skip it).
Thermal will get you far but a ??/Dark Mastermind will usually take you a little bit further.
Whining about everything since 2006.
Ammo switching for Dual Pistols was my idea:
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=135484
Thermal is the better AV killer.
Dark is better at pretty much everything else.
I believe it depends on your primary too. I like dark a lot, but I find thermal works way better with demons because they like to scatter all over hell. It's impossible to keep them close enough together unless you have them all shoved into melee, which is bad if you want to use their cone attacks to their fullest advantage. Also the thermal shields are a huge pain in the *** after a while. Traps is a really good set too, with the right primary.
Personally I find bot/traps to be the best mastermind you can possibly make, for offense and defense combined. Nothing can stop you when you AND your pets are all defense capped and have mez resistance to pretty much everything, along with good debuffs (-res/-def/-rech/-regen), an okay AoE puking/hold effect (with the lockdown proc poison trap is a lot better), seeker drones to take alpha strikes, and a decent aoe attack in trip mine. /Traps alone is just an okay set, but combined with robots it's amazing.
In short, you should be able to solo AVs with a lot of secondaries, but your primary should play a role in deciding which secondary you decide on, depening on personal preference and how you play your MM.
Well, I think I am looking to spend most of my time in melee, so a more melee oriented primary.
And doesn't having forge with its 30% damage buff on 3 of your henchman more than make up the difference for the slightly more -res in dark? Not to mention the to-hit buff that goes with it?
When I look at Thermal, Forge is one of the selling points to me.
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Your pets will already have ~225% damage (100% base + 100% from enhancements + 25% from supremacy), adding in Forge will only be ~11% increase in damage output (less if you have assault or other buffs). EDIT: That probably was worded poorly. You'll be doing ~255% damage (base + enhancements + supremacy + Forge), but it's just an 11% increase over what they'd be doing without it| And doesn't having forge with its 30% damage buff on 3 of your henchman more than make up the difference for the slightly more -res in dark? Not to mention the to-hit buff that goes with it? |
With Melta Armor and Forge active, 3 of your pets will be doing 312.375% of their normal damage, while the other 3 will be doing only 275.625% of their normal output. Problem is, Melta Armor has a fairly long recharge, so it won't be up a large chunk of the time (sans lots of outside help or lots of set IOs).
Tar Patch, on the other hand, will put you at 292.5% of your normal damage all the time, for all pets. Tar Patch is perma-able with just SOs, is autohit, slows, and lasts longer than Melta Amor (5 more seconds).
I'd say that Dark wins this comparison especially if the fight lasts more than 40 seconds (in which case Thermal's damage drops to 225% and 255%, until MA finishes recharging).
Unfortunately for Dark, in comparison of -regen, the situation is reversed. Dark has -regen in Howling Twilight (-5 regen, 30 sec duration, 180 sec recharge) and Twilight Grasp (-.5 regen, 20 sec duration, 8 sec recharge), while Thermal has Heat Exhaustion (-5 regen, 40 sec duration, 120 sec recharge).
In this comparison, Thermal comes out a fair bit ahead, although not as much as people often give it credit for (Twilight Grasp's -regen is small, but isn't horrible, and is usually just ignored). For really big targets like AVs, Monsters, and Giant Monsters, generally -regen is more important than -damage (if you can hit them with enough -regen, even Brawl will take them down eventually), so I think long as survival isn't an issue, Thermal wins for which is better against Massive Sacks of HP.
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Originally Posted by ShadowNate
;_; ?!?! What the heck is wrong with you, my god, I have never been so confused in my life!
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And not to just randomly throw something else in, but to randomly throw something else in, how does traps stack up to Dark and Thermal?
Again, when facing big bags of HP...
Traps' Poison Trap has the best -regen in the game (although it'll be a bit hard to get it perma, 30 second active duration with 90 second recharge), a bit worse -res than Thermal (ST pet, -20 res... stackable with multiple uses of the power? can't recall), and some decently damaging attacks (Detonator is questionable, but Trip Mine does respectable damage, if slow on the lay). There's also various other powers, but those are more so related to survivability than of killing em faster, and generally much harder to compare (combination of -dmg, -tohit, +def, -end/recov, +res, -move, -recharge, and heals).
Bot/Traps is generally considered the best AV/GM soloer on the redside, with loads of -regen (from both primary and secondary), nice -res.
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Originally Posted by ShadowNate
;_; ?!?! What the heck is wrong with you, my god, I have never been so confused in my life!
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But if I were going to go melee, like Ninja or Zombies, I assume Dark or Thermal would be better than traps?
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Traps is the best set in the game at taking out big game.|
Originally Posted by BlackAdam
And not to just randomly throw something else in, but to randomly throw something else in, how does traps stack up to Dark and Thermal?
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Just to clarify:
PT lasts 40 seconds provided the target stays within the area. So it is pretty easy to perma and even stack a bit (though I can only think of one (even con) enemy that stacking the -regen is of value).
Acid mortar is also stackable and is reasonable easy to have 2 out most of the time. It also makes great use of the achilies proc as it rolls it every 5 seconds. If you have two out each rolling it every 5 seconds it will be on the target a lot.
Traps is fairly "set it and forget it" and as such gives you quite a bit of time to use other powers in between laying of traps. If you are a classic taunting MM this puts you in a pretty good position because you don't need to worry about your pets much and because it is so easy to have softcapped def with traps you don't need to worry about yourself much. This is different than therm or dark in most regards.
That means you can use personal attacks or lay trip mines to contribute direct damage to help take the target out faster.
So traps has:
- the best -regen by a considerable margin
- the highest persistent -res (or at least until freezing rain is fixed)
- lots of time to use personal attacks
The result is that many trap MM's view AVs like many other toons view bosses in terms of difficulty.
Why is it so easy to cap defenses with traps?
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Cause FFGen gets you to 15%
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Originally Posted by BlackAdam
Why is it so easy to cap defenses with traps?
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I'd also like to chip in that Bots/Traps gets the added advantage of a Med Bot casting a bubble on you, for another ~10%ish defense.
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Originally Posted by BlackAdam
Why is it so easy to cap defenses with traps?
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Which is the better secondary for PvE soloing and Boss/AV fighting?