Demon/Pain vs Demon/Therm

MM used to be my favorite archetype, before I rediscovered the undeniable joy of beating the everloving snot out of people.

Now, I'm tempted to try out the different pastures of a more support-oriented character, which led me to Corruptors. However, since I love to roll up my sleeves and solo when the desire strikes me, I'm thinking I might go Mastermind once more instead.

I've come to these two sets, ones that I've never played before but seem both interesting and powerful. To start out, I'm going to embarrass myself by asking some stupid questions:

1) I seem to remember the lvl 6 and lvl 32 equip powers changing so that you don't have to use it on every minion individually, is that true?

2) Do therm's shields work the same way? Or do you have to shield every pet individually?

3) Is shielding 7 Teammates plus 6 pets as tedious as I fear it may be? I've heard that Thermal is a very...demanding set. That's part of what intrigues me, even though the idea of spending 40 or so seconds out of every 4 minutes shielding gives me twitches.

Now, for some slightly less stupid questions (and a switch from numbers to letters)

A) Between Pain and Therm, which have a greater impact on your demon's survivability? Can either set help DM solo hard targets (ie, AVs?)

B) Between Pain and Therm, which is more useful in large teams? Pain's extra healing seems amazingly helpful, but resist shields can't be denied, I wager.

iii) Which is more fun*? This is obviously an extremely subjective category, but I'd love to hear some anecdotes regarding your experiences with these sets, teaming or solo.

1) True
2) No individually
3) I find it tedious.
A) Therm is more survivable I guess but you can get in trouble with timings of shields.
B) Pain
iii) Pain

Oh sorry anecdotes. Well solo pain is more fun for me because you can respond to trouble rather than having to prepare in advance constantly, once you hit 20 you can set suppress pain and forget it. I did a long sf once can't remember which and had to fill the role of the healer so I dropped my demonlings and sat back healing and let my demons and the prince do whatever, I got a lot of ty 4 healz.

Awesome, thank-you for the insight. Pain really seemed like an interesting secondary to go with, because it's heal-and thus action-heavy. However, soloing on one was a major pain. Conversely, Masterminds just felt a bit too much like backseat driving.

Dropping the demonlings sounds like a pretty interesting idea when it comes to being focused on healing, it's certainly something I considered doing in teams on my Bot/Traps.

I like my Demon summoning/Thermal mastermind a lot. Thermal is somewhere between dark and poison on the group/solo debuff scale. The direct heals are nice. Demon Prince and the two demons have buff/debuff auras that support the little guys, which are more pure damage. I think you would cut off a lot of minion nose to spite mastermind face by not keeping the lowest tier out doing damage. Sometimes I shield every minion, for boss fights. Sometimes, I don't bother at all. Other times, I start a buff cycle on the shields starting with the minion that takes the most damage, which oddly can be my ember demon.

I haven't played pain domination high enough to compare the big game skills, but I can attest at level 38 with the heat exhaust, melt armor combo, thermal is very potent indeed.

I find Thermal to be more sturdy. Your pets have low hp. 1 very strong hit could (and can) kill them outright, or perhaps a series of very quick attacks that you didn't anticipate. If they are dead, they can't be healed at all. So the +resistance really helps the pets, and your team survive these damage spikes a lot better, making your job a lot easier. You will have more time to stack Forge and your other, more powerful debuffs while throwing out less heals. Pain has to dedicate more time to healing, which i dislike.

TL: DR: just play both!

In my experience, crack the whip is all the taunt/provoke I need for my Demon/Thermal. Another tactic I use, outside of big boss/AV/hero fights, is to split my stance. I put my top two tiers, the three big flaming cows on Attack my Target/follow, and the three little guys on defensive/follow. It really seems to help keep the little guys from wandering too much, especially the cold demonling. I like when the Demon Prince gets the jump on a group and does his cold/slow magic.