Incarnate and PPP Pets for converting Bane to Crab

I'm still in the process of converted my Soldier from Bane to Crab and looking for some advice.

First: I've never taken the PPP pets with my Bane or Fort and I need some feedback. How do the compare in terms of:

- Damage Output
- Survivability
- Utility

I'm leaning towards Soul Mastery so any info specific to the Pet Widow would be helpful.

Second, which incarnate should I look at? Based solely off the sets I bought (about half so far) and looking over mids, it feels like endurance will be an issue. However, if it is manageable with movement binds to auto craft blues, I'm leaning more towards Spiritual for the Recharge bonus so that my pets and Hasten are all perma.

Should I weigh the Resistance from cardiac more heavily?

Any advice would be helpful.

Thanks.

Well, taking a look at the options:

- It's hard to judge clearly the damage capabilities of the pets without doing a thorough analysis of cast and recharge times, but from what it looks like the Coral Sentinel may be the best for damage, with the Blaster coming in second and the Blood Widow a close third. However, the Sentinel is entirely Smashing/Lethal damage and the Blaster is Energy, while the Blood Widow is Toxic. That pairs very well with Venom Grenade.

- Regarding survivability, the Sentinel and Blaster have good S/L resists and the Blaster has additional Psi resist, but given that Soldiers can employ a good bit of defense, the 5% Defense the Widow has may be more useful. It's difficult to quantify, though. I'd probably put the Blaster in the lead for survivability. The Striker is tissue paper.

- For utility, each one does something a little different, but they're all about even. The Sentinel has a -Recharge cone and an Immob, the Blaster has a KB attack and an Immob, the Striker saps and has a Hold, and the Widow does -Regen or -Recharge with every attack.

I would say the Widow has the best synergy with Soldiers due solely to the amount of Toxic damage they do. The -40% Resist debuff Venom Grenade offers makes those attacks pretty mighty. If you don't want a melee pet, the Blaster is probably your next best choice. Still, if you want to take Leviathan or Mu for other reasons, the other pets aren't too bad (although I think Mu is extremely limited for Soldiers).

Personally, I went with Mace Mastery, and I'm quite satisfied with the Blaster. I ran Ramiel's arc the other night and the spiders ate all the Elite Bosses in the arc. Whichever pet you do go with, I recommend putting a full Expedient Reinforcement or Call to Arms set in it. The PPP pet is going to be your main source of damage, being equivalent to a Tier 3 MM pet, so give it some love.

As for Alpha boosts, I haven't crafted one yet, but I'm planning to go Spiritual for the Recharge. I slotted my build for positional defense, and even using full IO sets I'm nowhere near the ED cap for recharge on any attack, and having pets up more often is only a good thing.

On the other hand, Cardiac does also have Range. Range, too, is not in itself worth taking Cardiac, but it's a pretty good bonus. It makes cones amazing, and Omega Maneuver's base range is kind of short; you have to go just inside aggro range to land it in the middle of a spawn.

If you're tight on end, there are plenty of nice things in Cardiac to make it worthwhile, but if not, Spiritual or Musculature are going to do far more for you.

Yeah, I was gonna add a sentence about Range, but figured it's more another "nice bonus" aspect - great if you're going that route anyway - rather than a reason to pick Cardiac in the first place.