Which Incarnate is best for MM?

I reached level 50 last night. I have some questions regarding incarnate.

My character is a bots/traps

Right now, my character is capped on everything except Psionic defense which is at 30% def.

My bots easily die if I don't provoke the enemies well enough. Especially if the enemies just loves to do AoE attacks on them especially the Malta bots with all those rockets.

It's no problem if I'm able to keep provoke well enough or if they're not scattered all over the place.

I definitely can't do Psionic types enemies like Arachnos, The Riktis, and basically anything with a lot of psionic type enemies at once in each group.

Endurance is a bit of a problem but It's fine as long as I am aware of it during the fights. Summoning bots and upgrading them takes a toll on the endurance too when I do that process. There are a few times when I didn't recognize my endurance. Since all my defenses are toggled, and I provoke all the enemies on to me so they don't attack my bots, if I run out of endurance, they'll all turn off, so I die in just a second hehe.

But other than that, I'm fine.

I'd like to fix at least some of these through incarnate. I need to know if incarnate affects pets too.

Musculature, does it affect pet damage too? That's my first choice if it does affect them. Since it also affects endurance modification, immobilization, and defense debuff which goes well with my traps.

Which ones would be good too? Thank you in advance.

Nerve will increase your taunt duration, as well as your and your pets Accuracy. It will also assist with any +defense powers you may have, including the Protector Bots defense powers (not a big issue since you are already capped, but it may be more of a concern if you plan on playing in the incarnate content). Other than Poison Trap, I don't think you have any other holds.

Cardiac is useful if your pets have end issues, but I think Bots are pretty good with end use. I'd think this is the least likely to be useful to a Bots/Traps.

Spiritual has several nice effects for a Bots/Traps. It will help get those Traps back faster as well as Repair. It will improve the Stun duration for the Protector and Assault Bot powers that stun. It will also improve the slow effect in Caltrops and WG (slotting for slow is helpful when facing +3s, IME).

I have to agree with your take on Musculature. It does indeed affect pet damage (generally, any power that can be slotted for an effect will accept the Alpha as if it was slotted, for reference) and it has a lot of little side effects that are useful.

My bot-poison has the tier 4 Musculature Radial, he benefits from stronger bots, enhanced defense debuff, to hit debuff, end recovery and a bit of a movement boost. The immob bonus doesn't really apply as poison has a hold.

All in all, a good choice and I suspect my bot trap will also enjoy it.

Cardiac may be better for bot/FF especially if they took the repulsor field, otherwise nerve for the def boost.

bot/arrow: musculature, nerve, cardiac or spiritual.

Bot/pain: likely cardiac or else spiritual for heal boost.

Bot/storm: musculature, cardiac or spirit.

Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.

To me it comes down to Nerve or Musculature depending on how you are slotted. The incarnate content has you fighting level 54s and even with the level shift that means your battle bots are fighting +5s. Including Supremacy that means they have a base to hit of 40%. In order to give them a 95% to hit chance you really need both tactics and for them to have ED capped accuracy. If you don't have both of these then I would recommend Nerve because bringing their accuracy up is probably the most useful thing you can do.

Assuming your bots have enough accuracy on their own I'd go for Musculature. The other contender here is Spiritual since Traps does benefit from recharge but the way I see it there are plenty of ways you can increase your personal recharge but relatively few ways to increase the damage your bots do.

Personally I went for Core over Radial on the T4 since the tertiary effects (End Mod, Run and To Hit Debuff) aren't particularly important to my build. I only have a couple of powers with each of those and none are critical so I figure a bit more damage is more useful.

Thanks everyone. I'm going Musculature first, then see the others you have suggested for situational purposes.

I'm not sure if my bots were soft capped. This was my first 50 and my first build. I wasn't aware of any way of soft capping them. I only have def buff IOs slotted on tactics/PPG atm since I can't afford luck of the gambler sets yet.

Thanks guys. I'm getting it then. When I checked the first time, it was at around 80mil. But last I checked, I think it was at 30mil or so around a day or 2 ago? I'm in Justice.

What are the hold procs you have in poison trap?

My bot/dark mm has t4 musclature. I as lucky and got the no ed with it so my bots do alot more damage. My damage is 134%/130%/117%. I took core cause of the 45% damage increase. All the other bonuses helped a little, yet wanted to kill fast.

Now I am running +3 x8 missions with most baddies(no malta or lb). It is so cool to see all huge numbers for assault bots aoes.

It really varies based on the power combinations.

My Bots/Trap started with Musculature, but Nerve(Acc/hold/Def) proved more useful.

Thugs/Posion--Musculature(Dam, -Def, -ToHit, End Mod), just became a beast.

Demon/Pain--Spiritual(Rech, Heal,+ToHit) Rech helped every heal buff and Debuff come back faster, Heal, well, my heals and Gargoyle's Heal. To-hit? Tactics and World of Pain. I was nasty before, and now just inhuman.

For my Thugs/Traps MM, I went with Spiritual Total Radial Revamp. I was considering Musculature and Nerve too but those just didn't make as much sense for my build. My pets were already at defense softcap, high damage/accuracy modifiers, as well as my leadership toogles. Plus I'm a toe bombing addict.

For my Demon/Dark MM, I'm going to go with the Cardiac line for her. Between Shadowfall, Darkest Night, all 3 leadershup toggles and personal whip attacks, she sucks endurance like there's no tomorrow. Then there's also the fact that the additional damage resistance is good for my pets own buffs.

As for my Merc/Poison MM, I guess it doesn't even matter. A toilet still functions as a toilet whether it's made out of porcelin or marble.

I just got my Notice of the Well, and some shards and pieces for my alpha slot. I am working on my first mastermind; he is Robots/Poison. I am REALLY torn over three options. First is Musculature tree for Damage, Defense Debuff, ToHit debuff, and immobilization (in the mace mastery web envelope). Second is Nerve, also very appealing, Accuracy for the 3rd tier pets, defense also from the protectors and the mace mastery shield, but also the hold is appealing for paralytic poison and the mace mastery hold. Third option is the Spiritual. Poison benefits from recharge in Noxious Gas and to some extent the faster recharging features. Poison also has a nice wide cone of Slow which benefits from Spiritual. Robots benefit from extra recharge (and heal) on repair, more heal from the protector bots, and additionally more stun from the seekers and photon grenades.

Come to think of it... buffing the amount of heal enhancement of protector bots is unwise after additional thought, but the more frequent repair (and alkaloid) might offset that.

I do run tactics and have my robots well-slotted for Accuracy. Extra defense for the protector bots and mastermind is still appealing.

Bah, I am still quite torn.

Yeah, I'm about to roll up into my Bots/Poison's alpha, too, and I'm pretty much in the same place. As a side note, don't forget Noxious Gas's 4 second, mag 1000 hold (unless they've changed that) in your calculations. I went Leviathan instead of Mace, so the +Def doesn't matter as much to me, but the thought of Musculature pushing my debuffs and bot damage past their current ED limits is appealing. Spiritual's boost to slow would be nice, but I already have Neurotoxic Breath effectively permanent (on one group, anyway), so it's not going to help a tremendous amount.

I went Core Musculature T4 for my Ninja/Storm. I throw around enough -def that the little guys hit consistently anyway, and the damage.... well, that's why I picked 'em.

Quick question: Does cardiac effect the endurance usage of the pets powers? Biggest reason I'd choose that if it does is to keep support bots in the game, they run out of endurance and become inefficient fighters/support too easily on basic SO slotting IMO.

Otherwise Nerve would be a close second (bots/traps) for more defense and to make sure every hit lands (just as good or better than slightly more damage as far as I'm concerned).