My Mercs/Poison was my first villain character, made many years ago. Now, because he was my first and I've played him for years he's got what should be in my mind a very good build. He's got enough purple sets to choke goat, probably running with a build around 2 billion inf worth (that takes a long time to save up for ...
Hindsight, I would have went traps with him, because every MM I have that has traps inevitably does very well. Dark is good too actually. But I digress. Here's my *opinion* after playing this character to the point where I can say he is "complete". Now CoV was brand new when I made this guy, so, you'll have to forgive me if I made a poor choice for my main character -- I didn't know what I know now back then
Mercs are under rated. They many problems, a quick look on this forum shows that, and whats very interesting is the fact that there is a strong consensus on whats actually wrong with them. Most Merc players agree that the recharge times on many of the powers are far too long to be that useful. So the fact the devs haven't tweaked Mercs at all yet is kinda disappointing. Maybe now you can get blueside MM's they'll get some love Keep the dream alive! But really, slotted right, they do some mean damage, especially to a cluster of guys. A lot of people claim the solders full auto cone is too narrow -- and they are right -- but it does hit tightly packed enemies nicely. My point is yeah Mercs need some serious love, but they can be made to work -- it just takes more effort and patience than any other powerset for MM's. Not to mention the Medic, he's actually saved my life a few times with his tiny little heal -- but if you play a character for this many years bizarre stuff is bound to happen.
Poison sucks. Its supposed to be a boss killer, but its really not. None of its powers even work on bosses for more than a second. Even stacking things like holds and debuffs till your blue in the face and out of blue everywhere else you'll never do anything. You'll get somewhere on the basic level 50 bosses but on anything much higher don't expect a lot, because you won't even get squat. Let me be a bit clear on this, poison powers work quite well on minions and lieutenants, weaken and envenom are sweet on those guys, for single target stuff. On low-level bosses power boost with stacking holds can do good stuff. On the big toughies like EB's and AV's at any + level it does pretty much nothing. In fact, no poison power does anything much. Poison has no real crowd control stuff, I mitigated this slightly with some mace master stuff.. but poison still lacks that.
Its all quite a bit worse with the new AI bugs, Mercs REALLY suffer from charging into melee. They don't have the ruggedness to pull that kind of stuff off. Watching my troops run into a fist fight with a level 54 boss is a sad, sad thing. Its amazing they last as long as they do.
In short, poison is the worst set for MM's. It sucks. Its poor for groups of mobs, and its poor for powerful mobs. If you ever find yourself playing a /Poison MM, your going to end up working a lot harder than anyone else to get the same stuff. You'll end up fighting few mobs that are low level. I'd be happy if I could get away with fighting few mobs -- but high levels (which is what I do anyway), but once you get to the boss its pretty disappointing. Poisons rep as a boss killer is completely undeserved in my mind, its effects are just too small and most importantly, too fleeting to be of much use. The whole set is not good at anything really.
Poison used to be good for PvP -- I took solace in that and kept playing him, but after the big PvP fiasco, it became useless too. I made Mercs work, I can do nothing with poison, My Mercs are solid lads, I've took them into every battle this game has and until the latest AI bug, they've made their General proud. Sure their equipment sucks, their training is miserable even by 3rd world standards, but we stuck to it and made it work. Poison is hopelessly bad.
Just my opinion Curious if other people feel the same way about Poison though.
My Mercs/Poison was my first villain character, made many years ago. Now, because he was my first and I've played him for years he's got what should be in my mind a very good build. He's got enough purple sets to choke goat, probably running with a build around 2 billion inf worth (that takes a long time to save up for
...
Keep the dream alive! 
But really, slotted right, they do some mean damage, especially to a cluster of guys. A lot of people claim the solders full auto cone is too narrow -- and they are right -- but it does hit tightly packed enemies nicely. My point is yeah Mercs need some serious love, but they can be made to work -- it just takes more effort and patience than any other powerset for MM's. Not to mention the Medic, he's actually saved my life a few times with his tiny little heal -- but if you play a character for this many years bizarre stuff is bound to happen.
Curious if other people feel the same way about Poison though.
Hindsight, I would have went traps with him, because every MM I have that has traps inevitably does very well. Dark is good too actually. But I digress. Here's my *opinion* after playing this character to the point where I can say he is "complete". Now CoV was brand new when I made this guy, so, you'll have to forgive me if I made a poor choice for my main character -- I didn't know what I know now back then
Mercs are under rated. They many problems, a quick look on this forum shows that, and whats very interesting is the fact that there is a strong consensus on whats actually wrong with them. Most Merc players agree that the recharge times on many of the powers are far too long to be that useful. So the fact the devs haven't tweaked Mercs at all yet is kinda disappointing. Maybe now you can get blueside MM's they'll get some love
Poison sucks. Its supposed to be a boss killer, but its really not. None of its powers even work on bosses for more than a second. Even stacking things like holds and debuffs till your blue in the face and out of blue everywhere else you'll never do anything. You'll get somewhere on the basic level 50 bosses but on anything much higher don't expect a lot, because you won't even get squat. Let me be a bit clear on this, poison powers work quite well on minions and lieutenants, weaken and envenom are sweet on those guys, for single target stuff. On low-level bosses power boost with stacking holds can do good stuff. On the big toughies like EB's and AV's at any + level it does pretty much nothing. In fact, no poison power does anything much. Poison has no real crowd control stuff, I mitigated this slightly with some mace master stuff.. but poison still lacks that.
Its all quite a bit worse with the new AI bugs, Mercs REALLY suffer from charging into melee. They don't have the ruggedness to pull that kind of stuff off. Watching my troops run into a fist fight with a level 54 boss is a sad, sad thing. Its amazing they last as long as they do.
In short, poison is the worst set for MM's. It sucks. Its poor for groups of mobs, and its poor for powerful mobs. If you ever find yourself playing a /Poison MM, your going to end up working a lot harder than anyone else to get the same stuff. You'll end up fighting few mobs that are low level. I'd be happy if I could get away with fighting few mobs -- but high levels (which is what I do anyway), but once you get to the boss its pretty disappointing. Poisons rep as a boss killer is completely undeserved in my mind, its effects are just too small and most importantly, too fleeting to be of much use. The whole set is not good at anything really.
Poison used to be good for PvP -- I took solace in that and kept playing him, but after the big PvP fiasco, it became useless too. I made Mercs work, I can do nothing with poison, My Mercs are solid lads, I've took them into every battle this game has and until the latest AI bug, they've made their General proud. Sure their equipment sucks, their training is miserable even by 3rd world standards, but we stuck to it and made it work. Poison is hopelessly bad.
Just my opinion
Cheers!