Which build to choose?

This flat-out myth is why I never see any diversity in pets. I have a Ninja/TA and that got good AT end-game. Sure it requires a bit more effort than opening fire on a group from within a bubble, but don't mark down other sets because they are harder to play.

DS/Therm works fine actually. My minions with shields and +Res enhancements mixed with HOs here and there have a 90% resistance to Fire and 88% to S/L. Other resistances are fairly high up there, but I can't recall them. Lest to say, I can solo missions spawned set for +1/8 Players, just not as fast as ranged sets.

As for the original question. Make whatever you want based on what you like playing. Beginning with these builds mentioned here can leave the player bored if played by pressing a button to shoot people. I personally couldn't stand Robot/FF until recently. With Fitness being inherit, I can actually grab powers other than the bubbles so I'm not a walking buff-slave to my pets. And my Thugs/Traps? I hit level 50 on it, got bored of it, and moved it to a server with a free transfer last year, but I am thinking of moving him back now that Fitness is inherit...

Actually, fitness being inherit opens up a lot of builds I wouldn't try otherwise because of "necessary powers"

So play whatever you want and if you're having issues with playing em, look on the boards for play advice. I am speaking from experience having played 4/6 sets to level 50. Robots I am still working on and I am NEVER going to make a Necromancy MM. I just don't like the look and I hate barfing for attacks. Seriously, screw that. It's nasty.

Edit:
Want to be active? Role a /Trick Arrow. Ninja/TA was my first MM and is still my favorite. With the addition of Power Boost from the Black Scorpion Patron Power Set, Endgame for TA has only gotten sweeter. The only problem is that Trick Arrow is a late bloomer and you need to have patience, but it indeed pays off in the end. I'd recommend Demon Summoning, Ninjas, or Robots to pair with Trick Arrow. Thugs are good too, but the Bruiser might suffer from Handclap, though I do like that power.

1) Ninjas Reasoning - Oni's and Demon Prince's Controls: Oni late-game matches with you powerset. Learn to keep the Oni at a range and have him use controls on bosses. Combine his amazing controller abilities with your own and you have a combination that can Perma-hold Elite Bosses. The trick with the combination is to have you and your Oni hold "threats" that could otherwise one-shot your other minions. Keep the problems under control and you will have a fun, active build that is not as powerful as other sets, but is definetly fun and reward to play

2) Robotics or Thugs Reasoning - Cone Control: Glue Arrow is a god-send with robotics late-game. Even if you are knocking things around everywhere, you can keep the enemy close together so they more-or-less go the same way when there is massive KB. It gives the Mastermind and active role when playing Robotics. Thugs work here as well, just beware of handclaps.

I have no experience with Necromancy so I won't say anything about them, but Try not to start out Mercenaries. They are probably the hardest pet set to use because of the Knockback and their overall poor balancing. I do enjoy playing my Merc/Pain Dom, but it is much harder than any of my other builds due to their overall effectivness or lack-there-of.

As far as that is concerned, yeah, they are the squishiest pets being mostly defense based without good defenses which is why this build is a late bloomer for sure.

Roll a Zombie/Dark and see how you like it. Classic zombie build filled with darkness, evil, and projectile vomit... Should be active and effective from what I've heard. But Zombies are squishy themselves I believe.

Well, im at 25 atm on the zombie/storm. Its pretty nice. Hurricane+Gale is working great to keep the pets undead. FR helps debuff and the 02 is enuff atm to keep them undead. lol.

Its not a myth, its a rock-solid fact. I don't like to get into potentially flamey arguments... but I'm going to anyway since it irks me when people give me the old L2P speech. Its nonsense buddy.

End-game content even minions can often one-shot or nearly one-shot your T1's. Thats an in-arguable fact. Regular bosses can usually AoE all your T1 pets in a single hit. Then you have no pets. As I said maybe with DS/Therm you can stack up enough Res to have them survive a few shots and with /Therms healing pull the whole thing off but Ive never played one or grouped with anyone who has.

My point, is that your T1 pets are going to die a lot if they get hit, the reason why the 4 sets I listed above do well is because you can soft-cap their def so that they rarely do get hit, because when they do get hit they generally die. So its best to just minimize your chances of getting hit.

You can call it a myth, but it makes me wonder how much end-game content you've actually played with a MM -- I've touched nothing but MM's since CoV first came out, I've got some builds that worked pretty well such as Necro/Dark (the AI bug actually make them work better it seems) that survive against most content very well -- he can solo on +3/5 (not alpha slotting yet) if I pay attention and pull all the stops. Maybe some builds could get a little bit farther. But those are newspaper missions and the like, I take him on end-game TF's where you get level 54 mobs rolling around and the whole thing becomes a lot less effective.

Then we get to the boss and bam! All my pets (except my Lich who somehow manages to not be effected by the pet ai bug) are stone dead right away.

Now I'll admit, my Necro/Dark relies heavily on control and healing to keep himself and his pets alive and as I said against most content he's a blast to play, but the mean TF's that are around these days you can't heal because they die too fast, and you can't control because even stacking something like a Mag 9 - 16 fear (depending on my Liches and I's fearsome stare) only works for a short duration. Against level 50's they'll be frightened forever it seems.

I just do not see how you can argue that DEF isn't King when it comes to MM pets, softcapped your pets have a pretty solid chance of lasting in battle long enough to carry the day, without it they die before they can whittle something tough down.

If your not going to be playing max-difficulty TF's and you never want to, then yeah you have more options. But if you want to go all the way and play everything in the game, you have 4 options.

The to-hit % chance and effects of softcap are facts, but the rest are just my opinions and you can take them or leave them. I know the mechanics of this game, and I've clocked in more than 4 years of sub-time, and I'm not an alta-holic so I know how this game plays at the end. The best offense and the best defense is a good defense.

Thugs/Traps
Thugs/FF
Bots/Traps
Bots/FF

This is a misinformed and overly narrow view of which MMs are playable for endgame content.
And to quote you "...it makes me wonder how much end-game content you've actually played with a MM."


I only have one Demons so I am not going to say anything about them and I will agree that Bots & Thugs are noticeably stronger than Ninjas, Zombies or Mercs.

But as far as 2ndaries go its ludicrous to claim that /Traps and /FF are the only viable sets for endgame content.


You mentioned that Defense was King so let's take a look.

Case in point: /Traps Vs. /Dark:

Slotted FFG= +15.5% Def, Vs. Shadow Fall= +5.5% Def
So /Traps is up 10% Def

Seeker Drones= 15% -Tohit, Vs. Darkest Night= 17% -Tohit & Fearsome Stare=17% -Tohit.
Leaving /Dark ahead by 19% -Tohit.

So /Traps was ahead +10% Def but /Dark was ahead by 19% -Tohit
Leaving the bottom line chance of not being hit 9% better for /Dark.

To reiterate not even counting the -Tohit that Twilight Grasp and Dark Servant give, /Dark has a 9% better chance of not being hit than /Traps.

In my experience because of /Dark's huge AOE heal and an additional pet that also has a great AOE Heal I often find it to be more survivable than /Traps. Where /Traps pulls ahead is in AV/GM soloing fights where its superior -Regen allows it kill things /Dark falters on.

/Traps is very possibly the best MM 2ndary, but I would put /Dark and /Storm way ahead of /FF.

/FF is very easy to play and very easy to Soft Cap so fairly tough, but it has no +Resistance, no heal, no +dmg, no +Regen, no -Dmg, no -Res, and no -Regen. Meaning against most Endgame AV's it has no chance compared to other sets. I personally wouldnt even put /FF in the top half of available MM 2ndaries, let alone anywhere in my list of top 4 MM combos.

And its all true! Check it out...

Actually I love /Dark, its my second favorite set. /FF makes you hard to kill and gives you lots of ability to move even powerful mobs around with kb. But /Dark is great... but.. it fails at the end game like the other sets. I'll go into why!

I think Shadow Fall has some +RES too, I have a 50 Necro/Dark but I don't recall exactly. Oh and +Stealth which is handy if you stack it with one of those Uniques that add stealth. But.. you can't beat that much DEF from FFG.

... and here is where you get it all wrong. All the -tohit abilities are worthless against high level mobs and especially useless against ArchVillains -- AV's resist something like 87% -- there is a wiki article around that describes it. But it'll do nothing to them. So you can't effect their ability to hit you a noticeable amount, you have to be able to get out of their way yourself. Your math only works *at all* against *+0 Minions* LT's, Bosses, AV's, monsters, etc will all resist to some extent. It'll vary a bit between most mobs but by the time you get to the +54 AV's of the end-game TF's your debuffs are completely, utterly, worthless. (Thats why poison is the worst secondary)

Basically, honestly, any set or power that focuses on debuffing is garbage for the late game +54 TF's. That means a lot of traps stuff too! Since none of these debuffs are going to work, /FF's lack of them actually turns out to be no weakness at all. That applies to things like -Regen. The New -Regen is +Damage.

For end-game content all you need to do is keep your butt intact and contribute where you can with whatever you can.

/FF is seriously awesome, its just boring to play. All the things it lacks can be made up with power pools or epic pools, and it really the only things it lacks aren't useful for end-game content anyway. Debuffing is a thing of the past -- which sucks because my first main (and 50) was Mercs/Poison, lol.

So according to your view that debuffs are useless and dmg is king a blaster should be better at soloing AVs for instance than a /cold, or /rad?!

And if debuffs are so useless against high lvl AVs perhaps you can explain why the steamrolling STFs and LRSF's are composed of mostly debuffing toons like /rad, /dark, /cold etc.?

If you want to see nonsense, start throwing out absolutes.

Some debuffs are (virtually) worthless against end game AVs. Including AV resistance and the purple patch they have about 93.7% resistance to -RunSpeed, -Recharge, -Endurance, -ToHit, -Defense, -Perception, -Regeneration, and -Recovery. Now most of those types of debuffs are, virtually, worthless against AVs due to the resistance, the exception being -Regeneration which is, due to the extremely high magnitudes of the power, still very useful despite the resistance.

In addition there are some important holes in that resistance. Damage and Resistance debuffs are not specifically resisted by AVs beyond the normal resistance all enemies have for resistance debuffs, they are just subject to the purple patch. This means that they are "only" reduced to 48% efficiency against +4 AVs. However because of the way enhancements work 1% resistance debuff pre-purple patch is equivalent to approximately 1% damage buff (except for Brutes, to whom -res is more valuable). The use of -damage is more AV specific since it's usefulness depends in part on whether they have damage buffs.

Now to come back to your assertion that Traps and Force Field are the only useful secondaries end game. While +Defense is the most useful manner of mitigating the AVs attacks it is hardly the only useful power to use against AVs.

Traps is probably the most useful MM secondary against AVs since it combine -regen, -resistance and +defnese helping out against them both offensively and defensively but all of the other secondaries are useful in some form. The important thing to remember when it comes to AV fights is that the relative importance of powers can shift for particular sets.

For example Dark cannot rely on it's to hit debuffs to protect the team but it is still providing -damage, -resistance, -regen and healing. Trick Arrow provides lots of -resistance and some -damage. All of Thermal Radiation's powers are useful in an AV fight. I could go on but I think that's enough for now.

tl;dr version:
Traps is the most powerful MM secondary against AVs, but all of the others are useful. If you want to try and solo AVs Traps is probably the best option since it's very well rounded but for general group play all secondaries can contribute effectively against a +4 AV, the only difference is what buff/debuffs you'll find most useful from your teammates.