Mercs Masterminds - no love?

I've gotten up at Mercs/Pain MM to 42 and...I've just had to pretty much stop using him now.

My soldiers die constantly, and I end up chewing END to resummon them, my damage output is horrible, and my healing capabilities are less than that of defenders or other buffing classes. I feel like I've got the short end of the stick on all things - Damage, defense, AND support.

I've slotted out all three of my pets with pet damage IO sets, and my PBAoE heal with a healing IO set as well, but it still doesn't seem to remedy the situation.

From what I've read, I've picked the class that apparently in late game have high resistance to, am I doomed to watch my soldiers plink away 3-5 damage a shot, die to random AoE, and generally die in hilariously painful ways?

Wiith /pain? In my opinion, yes. MM minions don't have the health to weather damage long enough to heal them. My most successful MMs have been the ones that have heavy debuffs (dark) or high defense (traps). In fact, I'd rate Thermal over pain because the resist shields might be enough to keep the minions upright long enough for the heal to do its job.

Then again, they might not. Especially if YOU are in the AoE in bodyguard mode.

The best way to keep your minions alive is to draw the aggro to yourself, which conceptually makes NO damned sense at all (and is ill advised unless you're Traps or FF with mez protection). The criminal mastermind who puts himself in harms way for the sake of his followers? Wha?

Nope no love at all. I rolled a Thugs/Traps. way better. Not even close. and I loved my Merc MM.

Would a Mercs/Traps work then?

Since my main is a Merc/Poison combo (Mitigation? Hah!) let me tell you something
Your not going to get any combo that gives Mercenaries any kind of mitigation.
Here's the thing pet classes are divided into Resistance based and Defense based with for example Thugs and Robots and Ninja's being defense based with Mercenaries, Zombies and Demons being resistance based.

Mercenaries are resistance based, they get zero defense bonuses except for the Spec-Op's tiny 2% from their stealth. And their resistances are 26% to Smashing/Lethal with the Commando having an extra 5% to cold/fire/toxic.

However Mercs unlike Zombies and Demons does not have a 4th pet power, IE the power that's situational useful but much... MUCH more useful for slotting all the unique Pet IO's. The four pet IO's combined get you 20% more resistance to everything but Psi and 20% Defense to everything. If you had those unqiues plus world of pain your looking at getting 45% Resistance to your pets to everything and 60% to Smashing/Lethal which is quite respectable.

But because Mercs has the ever useless Serum instead it suffers in that regard. Your never going to get your Mercs up to the survivability status that Demons and Zombies can get or better still that Thugs/Robots can get with 40% resitances and soft capped defenses. Your class combo simply means prepare for them to die often and get into the habit of resummoning and only applying the tier 1 upgrade mid-battle, and carry lots of blues.

My feeling is that Mercs goes best with Storm. It gives you a place to put all those nice uniqe IOs. It has a lot of nice crowd control powers that can keep your pets safe.

I am now 42 on my Mercs/Pain MM and I havent had a problem at all. Ive been soloing +2/4 missions and its working quick and easy for me o.O For the most part at least.

I have provoke (to tank for my soldiers)

Then on my soldiers and spec ops, I have achilles heel -res along with touch of lady gray proc. I have a knock back damage IO on my commander too...

Its working great actually Ive been tanking/ taking the alpha strike for the teams I join and if Im focused, I rarely ever lose my mercs. Usually lose 1-2 on missions but sometimes I dont lose any. Ofc when wipes occur, I lose them all...

But yah!! You really need procs on them to bring their damage on par with the rest tbh... All of the soldiers attacks get a chance to proc -res and lady gray proc. All the spec ops ranged gun attakcs can proc lady gray... And most of the commandoes attacks give knockback o.o

Mercs need love. Pretty much that simple. But, with /pain, you can help them out.

You have 2 single target heals, and an PBAOE heal, plus an PBAOE +regen aura. You also have a PBAOE +res (slotted its about 22%, maybe higher) +dam, and +tohit, which stacks with leadership, and supremancy. Get assault, get tactics, and get those -res procs in atlest your t1 pets (the ones you have 3 of) the -res procs don't stack, but if you have it in those 3 pets, (even the medic) the AoEs (mostly cones) will make sure and spread that proc around nicely.

The spec ops are basically just pure damage, as the 'control' they get is mostly wasted. I personaly would just put 3 acc/dam Hami's in them, and slot the +res pet aura (maybe the +def too, but only if you grab maneuvers as well)

Between their inherent resistance, and world of pain, plus the +res aura, you should be at around 50% resistance to lethal/smash and about 30% resistance to everything else, which should give you enough wiggle room to be able to heal your pets up, especially if you have the +regen aura going at all times.

I know Serum is basically useless, but for a /pain i can see some value in it. Pain Bringer + serum means you'll have one nasty little pet for quite some time, and if i remember correctly, serum's crash is like unstoppable, so pain bringer should be able to negate is pretty nicely. Serum still sucks, but when the stuff hits the fan, you can turn one pet (probably the commando) into a Damaging god for awhile and hopefully turn the tide around.

You'd also want to basically live in melee with your pets, so you may actually want to take provoke. That way you can run (or fly, or jump) into a group, with your pets on defensive/follow hit Anguishing Cry, then provoke the boss/LTs to attack you, and with your +regen aura, bodyguard mode, and your PBAoE heal going, your pets should mow things down, and you'll be keeping them all alive.

I'm not sure if World of Pain is perma-able, but i would aim to get it up as much as possible, with Pain Bringer getting almost the same treatment. I can see a pain bringer + serum combo working great to keep your pets alive during tough EB/AVs fights and allow you to get the upper hand.