ninja/poison at lvl 25... and not hating it

Yay, I hit lvl 50 last night.

Random thoughts and impressions:

When my contact says "be careful, there might be a hero in this mish" I was expecting Overdrive and not, say, Ms. Liberty. At +3 it was a short fight, even with EBs turned off. It was like a clinic on the limitations of bodyguard mode. Punch 1 put my genin in the red and my jounin in yellow. The second punch killed all my genin and jounin. I ran like hell, right out of the map and straight to Fateweaver. I'll have you know Ms. Liberty is still not a cakewalk at -1.

I ran 2 ITFs and a LRSF this week.

Team composition makes a big difference of course, one of those ITFs had 2 dark miasma toons and a stormie. That's a lot of free defence and resistance auras and aoe healing, my pets were sturdy as heck. It's also a lot of debuff, when Oni is exuding noxious gasses while standing in triple-stacked tar patches under a freezing rain. I'd give my toon a solid B+ for team contribution.

Even the LRSF wasn't terribad. Sure it's a hard TF and sure my pets died a lot, but I'd still grade my contribution at C+ or maybe even B-. In these incarnated times a good team can make up for the deficiencies of an underpowered build, even on relatively hard content.

But most of my time was spent solo. +3x0 is very do-able if I take things slowly and deliberately. Sometimes though you'll hit a boss or hero that just isn't possible at that diff.

I've found an opening move that really increases survivability. If I open with the slow cone and follow with an AoE immobilize, the mobs reply with a ranged alpha but seem to take a very long time before getting off a second shot. I don't know if it's the -recharge or if it just takes them a long time to figure out that there are no melee targets they can hit... either way it's great.

I ran Ramiel's arc at +0x0. The only tricky bit was the Honoree and Holtz, the Rikti portals were just starting to pop out dudes as I got there. My pets made a glorious kamikaze charge that got 3 of the portals before they were cut down.

Retreat, resummon, re-kamikaze. It took 3 more waves to get the other portals, and then lots of pulling to clear the enormous crowd of summoned Rikti. Beating down Holtz and the Honoree was routine, maybe a bit anticlimactic after all that work to get to them.

I've certainly had easier Ramiel arcs, but I got it done. Ninja/poison is hilariously gimp compared to my other MMs, but it's still a Mastermind. Skilled play will be rewarded with half-decent performance, poor play will have you admiring the floor.

Honestly, I think I'm going to incarnate this toon