Looking for a MM to pair with a Scrapper (yey GR!)

Hey All,

I'm looking to pair a Scrapper with a MM and I was wondering since I have no real experience with MM's which set would have the most Melee center'ed pets to rush in and join with the Scrapper?

Also, which secondary would you suggest? I am thinking that FF is an obvious choice, not sure how well Pain Domination fairs, the buffs dont seem as good as Emp (well, except perhaps the tier 9).

Any suggestions? which pets and what secondary to go with a Scrapper?

the melee pets are the Ninjas and the Zombies. Both are very squishy, the ninjas have better dps, but act like ADHD kids on crack that love aggroing mobs that they shouldn't and getting themselves killed. Pretty heavy micro-management. The zombies are more controllable but don't put out as much damage as the ninjas.

As far as secondaries go, I think /Pain would be a good one for melee types. If all are in a melee cluster, your AoEheals would cover everyone more easily than a couple being in ranged mode and a couple being in melee mode. /FF would be a good choice too, even though it has no heals. But then again, /Therm has good buffs, good debuffs for taking the baddies down faster (not that you'll need to kill stuff any faster with a scrapper on the team lol), a rez for if your scrapper teammate gets too cocky, and heals. I'd suggest Ninja/Therm.

Personally I'd suggestion Zom/Dark, skip the blast powers from Zom, and get right into the fight alongside the scrapper. Means you have to worry far less about healing the scrapper, as you'll be popping Twilight Grasp as soon as it comes off cooldown, keeping both him and your pets in better health.

I also personally grabbed Air Superiority to give me an extra way to occupy a mob and stop them from hitting me too much, though remember that a MM is often tougher than a lot of other characters due to Bodyguard mode.

Just make sure to avoid bots and you'll be fine. The KB from the bots will drive your scrapper buddy nuts.

As far as secondaries go, it kind of depends on what secondary the scrapper uses. If he's playing /sr or /shield, and you play forcefield, your powers will be a bit of a waste to him. Try and pick a secondary that meshes well with his secondary, and covers a hole that he has. For example /pain and /sr go well together. Or /FF and /regen.

If you secretly hate your duoing partner and want to drive them insane Demons/Storm or Bots /Storm. Otherwise I'd personally go with Necro/Dark or Pain.

I love Necro/Dark as a combo anyway. Tis wonderful fun.

I should have mentioned the scrapper (or brute) will be a DB/WP, so which would you pick then?

I'd say definitely go with Demon Summoning for a primary... You get a little bonus resistance from the tier 2 pet, but the Demon Prince is going to be your best friend... He has no knockback unlike a number of other tier 3 pets (the lich is a nice choice for that, too... but zombies are annoying), what he DOES have is POAoE slow and -recharge, so those enemies you want to surround you for Rise to the Challenge will be slowed into the area, and the -rech will be a nice form of damage mitigation for you. Demons also have a good deal of AoE damage so you can focus on the big enemy while they take down everything else (Demon Prince also happens to have a PBAoE damage aura after 32) The other pets do close to melee, although I am not sure why you want that... Most MM players dislike meleeing tier 1 pets especially. They die fast!

For Secondaries I'd recommend Pain Dom, Thermal, Dark or Traps. I'll go through each one

Pain Dom is a significant healer, and gives significant regen bonuses... If Suppress Pain and Painbringer are both on you, combined with WP, your regen will be absurdly high (and it already is to start with). Painbringer, besides regen, also adds damage, which you'll like... and recovery, which you won't care about. If anyone doesn't need more recovery it's willpower. Pain also has an AoE damage, to hit and res buff, and an AoE -Res -Def debuff. They're not as good as the buffs and debuffs in thermal, but they're less work to use (Pain is in many ways a lazy thermal, which truly has some appeal... Thermal is a busy secondary)

Thermal does everything but healing (and recovery, which you don't need) better than pain, but it's more work, as I've said. It has stronger Resistance than Pain (or any other MM I believe) and if you two are mainly duoing then it won't be too much work to keep up (a little annoying in full teams). This provides enough Res that you should be able to reach Scrapper softcaps pretty well. It also has a very good single target damage, to hit buff that recharges fast enough to keep on you AND the tier 3 pet, and maybe another if slotted well. And it has very good debuffs.

Dark is a very good AoE debuffer and also has a number of control powers which can help you out. They also have a very strong heal, and a team Def buff that's decent. The final ability is a pet that, when cast next to you in times of trouble, might save your life (heals and controls)

Finally traps is a set that tends to be more of a solo favorite but should help you out in a duo, too. It is a good debuff set and also comes with a great Def aura and is light enough on end use that your MM ally can justify taking attacks better than most other MMs. The DS attacks have -Res to them so those would help a little. It can also be a fun set to play because the MM "sets up" for the mobs, and you could lure them into the traps and then help the pets mop up. It has no heal but it has a stationary regen beacon that'll add to your regen when you want it up, and they can take medicine if needed.

For the other secondaries: Poison is actually pretty good in my opinion, amazing on very hard single targets, but very unpopular right now because it has very little AoE utility and basically no buffs (the final power is a great AoE debuff though)... FF and Storm both have way too much knockback for you. I'm not experienced with TA.

Edit: Oops I read it as you being the Scrapper and your friend being the MM, thus referring to you as the Scrapper in this.

Short and sweet:

Mastermind primaries: necromancy or demon summoning

Secondaries: Thermal or dark

Mix and match as desired.

Humm see to have found a flaw in my great plan.

Looks like the Zombies do not target the target of my MM (which is my brute), I want to play the brute and have the MM as the backup so they should be on the same target but when I have the Brute targeted the MM's pets say no target... Any ideas?

Shameless bump, I need help with this one (see last post).

Sounds like you're dual boxing.

In that case, you want

a) A low maintenance secondary
b) self sufficient henchmen for a primary

For a), I give a strong recommendation to /FF. Bubble up every 4 minutes and go. You can just bubble the brute if you want. Thermal would be quite nice too, with Shields+ Forge. Dark is an active set and I don't suggest that for what you're doing. Traps would be ok if you dual-box well (just hit 2-3 buttons for each spawn).

Demons should be fine to satisfy b). Zombies should work too. Just so your Brute holds aggro well enough.

To get the henchmen to attack, I suggest placing the boss, one lt and one minion on aggressive. The MM won't take much fire, other than AOEs, so 3 in BG mode will diffuse enough damage.

Edited to add - my one dual-box combo I took 1-50 was a Brute (elec/elec) and Thugs/FF. Worked very well. In fact it was eye-opening (in a bad way) when I started taking my Brute on teams and that layer of defense was missing (he's since been built with IOs to be more self-sufficient).

Want thematic? MA/Regen Scrapper, Ninja/Pain MM.