I like Demons/Thermal myself. You get an AoE heal, a targeted heal, some buffs, and resist shields to stack on the demons' existing resistances. Later on you also get a couple of debuffs.
/Pain does heal even better, but has slightly weaker debuffs (mainly due to longer recharge). Both buff well, in different ways. The main reason I went /Thermal is that the extra 20+% resists can push demons up into the 60s for S/L resist and cap them at 90% to fire... that's a lot of mitigation and healing is useless on pets if they die so fast you can't react in time to save them. Even bosses can't one-shot my tier one pets with their shields up, so I have time to actually do something to save 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]
The Scavenger Hunt: 187076
The Instant Lair Delivery Service: 206636
Yeah for healing I'd go with Thermal over Pain Dom.
Not that there is anything wrong with Pain, it's just that the resists in Thermal give alot of breathing room when trying to react (Especially as a MM, as the lowest tier of minions usually die from being looked at oddly from a butterfly across the room... If you are using them as meatshields.)
Quote:
/Pain also has resists and you dont have to target it 5 times |
Originally Posted by Kiwi
Yeah for healing I'd go with Thermal over Pain Dom.
Not that there is anything wrong with Pain, it's just that the resists in Thermal give alot of breathing room when trying to react (Especially as a MM, as the lowest tier of minions usually die from being looked at oddly from a butterfly across the room... If you are using them as meatshields.) |
. Word of Pain is 17% resist all, 7.5% ToHit and 12% Damage AoE that's perma with hasten and a few recharge.
World of Pain also applies to you, the MM, and adds resists to Toxic and Psionic. It also provides more resist to cold than the Thermal shields. That said, if you don't mind shielding every 4 minutes, you'll get better resists to Smashing, Lethal, Fire, Energy, and Negative Energy with Thermal.
The real gem in Pain is Anguishing Cry. Easy to have up for every group, it's superior in every way to Melt Armor save one: it's a PBAoE instead of a Targeted AoE, which means you have to be in the thick of it to use it.
When I rolled my DS, I ended up going with Thermal. For me, it came down to Forge vs. Painbringer and I'd rather have Forge on my tier 3 and both tier 2 henchmen than Painbringer on just one. I have to say, though, it was a very close call and if you decide to go with Pain, I'm sure you won't be disappointed.
- The laws of science were, first, God's laws. We didn't make them, we just gave them a name...likely not the name their creator gave them.
- No, no. Humans made them. The same way we made gravity, the atomic bomb, Cheetos, babies, and water.
You don't get World of Pain until 28, and it's not perma until much later since you need something like 80-100% global recharge on top of Hasten. For a no expense spared build, /Pain might be almost as good as /Thermal at providing resists. For a normal build, World of Pain will have downtime though. Likewise Painbringer requires a lot of global recharge to be perma on one pet, while Forge is easy to maintain on three with just SOs.
My two favorite things about Thermal are the fact that you get the resist shields very early, and the massive Fire resists. Being able to literally ignore Demolitionists and Blast Masters (seriously, I didn't even bother ordering the pets to move out of the burn patches) is such a huge relief compared to other MMs...
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]
The Scavenger Hunt: 187076
The Instant Lair Delivery Service: 206636
Yes, World of Pain does come much later. The tradeoff is that it provides more comprehensive resists and also affects the caster. And it's not as hard to make perma as you might think. With just Hasten and a few RechRed IO's, it's very close to perma. Add a few Doctored Wounds sets to the heals and/or Red Fortunes to Maneuvers or an epic shield, and it's easily perma'd. Painbringer, however, is a real pain to perma, but, even if it's not perma, you can get it down to the point where you don't have to slot EndRed's in the prince (hopefully that's the henchie it's being used on).
- The laws of science were, first, God's laws. We didn't make them, we just gave them a name...likely not the name their creator gave them.
- No, no. Humans made them. The same way we made gravity, the atomic bomb, Cheetos, babies, and water.
I like Pain Domination a lot on MM simply because World of Pain applies to all your pets and yourself. Yes, I can get lazy and I don't feel like putting fire shields on each pet.
What Pain Domination doesn't have is -regen debuff which Thermal has. Other than that, I find Pain Domination on resistance based pets very good. Pain Domination doesn't work that well on Ninja because they have no resistance to stack yours with. It's better to put defense on them.
I can see Demon/Pain being a good combo. I know I really enjoy my lvl 50 Necro/Pain.
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.
I actually had a /pain mastermind, and I got it to level 21 or so. So far, I really like it. Mostly because if I use both Soothe and Nullify, I can use Share Pain. Which means I can't slot all my heals with healing enhancements. Once I hit 22, I'll probably go with enforced morale. Thanks for all the opinions, if pain doesn't work out, I'll defiantly go with thermal.
My ds/pain is 41 now had an awesome time with it.
I've recently been playing the game and I really like the demon summoning power set. I've seen a lot of different opinions on a secondary, and I've looked through some in game, I more like the idea of staying behind my henchman and healing them rather than trying to DD/tank everything. Pain Domination, or so I've seen, has three heals, two single targets and a AoE. Would this be a decent choice? I understand I have to do a little bit of fighting. Also, this is a more solo build, I'm just too impatient to wait for groups, unless they come quick at later levels.
I'm up for any secondary, really, just really want to decide which one to use for the most effectiveness.