Which pet group is better for fighting AV's?
By
anonymoose,
Posted on: 2010-09-29 13:40 in Masterminds
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Jounin have -regen on [Poison Dart], but it's just -100% and upon entering melee they thankfully stick with their katanas.
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Originally Posted by Jibikao
Shouldn't Merc or Ninja have -regen? I mean Tear Gas from Spec-Ops is a perfect power to have some -regen IMO.
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Oh yeah.. I keep forgetting about that... oh well, Ninja will never be as a good AV killer as Robot because Genin provides good DPS while dying the fastest. |
Originally Posted by JuliusSeizure
Jounin have -regen on [Poison Dart], but it's just -100% and upon entering melee they thankfully stick with their katanas.
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It will be nice if Jounin would use poison dart as part of the attack chain but the dart only has 4s and I am not really sure if I want my Jounin to shoot that often.
What's left is to normalize all Assassin Strikes and improve Stalker's old sets (Claw, MA and EM)! You don't need to bring back the missing PbAoE attack. You just need to make the existing ones better! For example, make Slice a WIDER and LONGER cone.
My Necro/Dark can solo AVs quite nicely. I know the first one I did was Stheno...it was good fun times.
Although one is better than the other...most times all you need is a basic pulse and a brain with MM's to solo one.
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Triage beacon is mediocre but don't forget /traps has a great defence bonus for everyone from FFG.|
Originally Posted by Firewasp
I would say it is the combination of a high Resistance and the 15% Defense, the debuffs, buffs (Forge) and the straight heals (not a slow +Regen with traps), that helped me to accomplish soloing AV's and Heroes.
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edit - also poison gas trap is fantastic mitigation against crowds, and seeker drones eat the alpha.
My bots/traps took the medicine pool, which was handy while leveling but I don't seem to use it much at 50.
I'd say Bots are the best for AVs if you have a -KB immobilize. They tend to use less-resisted damage types and the Assault Bot's burn patches are extremely damaging if you can keep things in them (at least they are when working right... hopefully they'll be fixed soon).
If you don't have a way to keep the AV from being knocked out of the fire Demons may be a good option. They do a wide range of damage types and they have some -resist on the Hellfire using demons.
Also, both Bots and Demons have healing and some added mitigation. Dead pets do no damage, so being able to stay alive against an AV helps a lot. Bots are the toughest pets, but Demons aren't exactly fragile. Ninjas may well be the best for pure single target damage, even with the more resisted Lethal damage type (they hit hard), but they also die really easily and don't provide any buff to the MM to help them tank. The other reason Bots are so good on AVs is that their force bubble can help the MM softcap and tank for them.
Cascade, level 50 Blaster (NRG/NRG since before it was cool)
Mechmeister, level 50 Bots / Traps MM
FAR too many non-50 alts to name
[u]Arcs[u]
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The Assault bot also does massive -regen and all the robots stay at range (when you can make them) avoiding all the high damaging PBAoE attacks from AVs and GMs.
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Originally Posted by StrykerX
I'd say Bots are the best for AVs if you have a -KB immobilize. They tend to use less-resisted damage types and the Assault Bot's burn patches are extremely damaging if you can keep things in them (at least they are when working right... hopefully they'll be fixed soon).
If you don't have a way to keep the AV from being knocked out of the fire Demons may be a good option. They do a wide range of damage types and they have some -resist on the Hellfire using demons. Also, both Bots and Demons have healing and some added mitigation. Dead pets do no damage, so being able to stay alive against an AV helps a lot. Bots are the toughest pets, but Demons aren't exactly fragile. Ninjas may well be the best for pure single target damage, even with the more resisted Lethal damage type (they hit hard), but they also die really easily and don't provide any buff to the MM to help them tank. The other reason Bots are so good on AVs is that their force bubble can help the MM softcap and tank for them. |
"An army is a team. It lives, eats, sleeps, fights as a team. This individuality stuff is a bunch of BS." -General George Patton
-Lord Azazel
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Originally Posted by Firewasp
My bots/thermal started soloing AV's and Heroes at 35. While soloing a mission I saw an AV at the end. Started to look for others to help, but as my bots were still on aggressive they went after the AV. Soon noticed that their health was still full, so I ran over to debuff the AV (had just trained Heat Exhaustion). During the fight I had to heal the little guys sometimes. A few times they died and had to re-summon. When the AV was down to about half health she started to run away. We kept at her and reapplied the debuff on as soon as it was up. It took about 6 minutes of very nervous game-play, but we finally got her.
That bot/thermal mm is 42 now and both Heat Exhaustion and Melt Armor are all slotted up with regular IO's. Have defeated Positron both times and about 25 others. Valkyrie was the hardest to kill by far. She wiped all the bots once (I was able to run out the exit and back in to set up my bots again). I would say it is the combination of a high Resistance and the 15% Defense, the debuffs, buffs (Forge) and the straight heals (not a slow +Regen with traps), that helped me to accomplish soloing AV's and Heroes. I was thinking that with Demons doing a lot of unresisted damage that they may be better suited, but that was before I read about the -Regen from Bots on this thread. Of course I am also reading that it is bugged and is not working. Which means that they would be the same as any other pet that doesn't have -Regen, correct? Now as I have read, Dark has a better set of debuffs so this might help to kill the AV faster. I will have to see as again my bots/dark is 50 (villain that unlocked my bane). By the way, you say you can soft-cap the mm, but are you talking about me or the bots? I do not need soft-capping as I am not standing toe to toe with the AV. If you can't soft-cap the bots there is no reason to even talk about it. Bodyguard Mode and Provoke: Tried it and hated it. Some of the bots would attack, but not always all of them. Sometimes I would see two of them just standing there (like some mm players that think that once they tell the pets to attack, they can just stand there and do nothing -- Automatic AT). I don't use BG Mode even while soloing AV's and I have never died. |
My bots are soft capped for everything except psionics. My slow regen healing beacon serves me just fine considering my bots barely get hit. Poisonous Trap, seeker drones and trip mine are awesome.
I have a demon thermal hes only 22 but I can definitely appreciate the nice heal and resist shields. Cant wait to get the new abilities.
I also made a bots storm and just got thunderstorm. All I got to say is pure chaos is fun...solo'ing ofcourse. Groups seem to get pissed at me when I try to have fun with hurricane and tornado.
One thing I wonder....why do people feel they need to talk down on certain secondaries in order to boost the status of the secondary they prefer?
They all seem to do what their supposed to do and shine in areas theyre supposed to.
I wanna know when kinetics is gonna be a secondary...I WANT!! I NEED!!
As much as it'd be cool to have, I'm 110% sure they'll never add Kinetics.
However, I'd kinda like to see Sonic Resonance as an MM Secondary.
There's only a couple of moves that would be awesome for pets from /Kin
But those few moves would be crazy, and probably overpowered.
The problem with Kinetics is Fulcrum Shift is way OP. You don't want them to port that set because really we don't want them "revisiting" Fulcrum Shift.
Moonlighter
50s include MA/SD, MA/SR, DP/Elec, Claw/Inv, Kat/Dark, Kat/Fire, Spine/Regen, Dark/SD
First Arc: Tequila Sunrise, #168563
Kin doesn't have a lot in the way of keeping pets alive. Most of the set is reactionary (ie healing damage), which with how soft some of the pets are wouldn't work that great.
Very few of the pet sets shine in the absolute melee range that kin operates at. Most of the pets operate best at range or at short cone range. Either way such pets would require significant player positioning to gain much benefit from kin. The pet sets that are best right up close are largely single target (ninja and zombie) and would likely implode due to the incoming damage that kin can't prevent like all other MM secondaries.
Finally, pets gain almost no benefit from speedboost as most don't have endurance issues (though some do) and the game is so slow that the additional movement speed wouldn't do a lot offensively, but would help get them to the next spawn faster, but it won't make your assault bot an incendiary missile launching fiend because that ability was taken away in the great pet recharge nerf.
Truth be told, if a person understands MM's and understands kinetics it is actually pretty tough to say that kin would be very impressive at all on the AT. People would flock to it "thinking" it would be amazing, but it really wouldn't be for most MM pairings.
A very large part of what makes MM's so potent is that the secondaries they have are HUGELY mitigative. The exceptions are TA and Poison, both of which often get ragged on (justified or otherwise) for their inability to allow MM's to enter similar situations as the other secondaries can take on.
*although the currently broken MM AI would certainly help ensure that all pets get more mileage out of Fulcrum and the Trans(s), but one can only hope that somebody is working on fixing pet AI so that they stop preferring melee over range, even when they don't have a single melee attack (see phantasm lol).
LOL I knew there would be a big reaction from that little comment I made. Its funnier in game..."what are you stupid? That would break the game"!!!!
You know, I suggested a 'Kinetic Mastery' since I didn't think Kin would make it as an MM secondary... people didn't even like that idea.
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The problem is that people hear the word "kinetics" and automatically kneejerk into thinking that it would be ungodly on a MM (I mean MM's are like supercharged fire controllers right????). They of course are oblivious to the fact that few MM's operate at close melee range and the ones that do are either squishy and/or don't do much aoe damage.|
Originally Posted by BenRGamer
You know, I suggested a 'Kinetic Mastery' since I didn't think Kin would make it as an MM secondary... people didn't even like that idea.
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It wouldn't be a bad set per se, but it wouldn't be nearly as powerful as dark, traps, or storm. Nor would it be as good as rad or cold if those two ever get ported over.
Personally, cold is the set I'd like to see get ported.
Oh yeah baby. SUPERCHARGED!
I pretty much melt EBs very fast on my Nin/poi. @25 and the double-> triple stacked -20% res from achilles heel and the bonus negative energy damage from jounin make a BIG difference. Srsly.
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Just killed a lvl 25 barracuda AV and lost 2 genins in the process 
Shouldn't Merc or Ninja have -regen? I mean Tear Gas from Spec-Ops is a perfect power to have some -regen IMO.
Poor soldiers. They get over shadowed by everything Robot does. Soldier's damage type is mostly Lethal, more narrow cones, don't have as many resistance types, and relying on very infrequent controls from spec-ops.
"An army is a team. It lives, eats, sleeps, fights as a team. This individuality stuff is a bunch of BS." -General George Patton
-Lord Azazel