Crab vs. MM - Powerfulnessitude

I have a 35 Thugs/Dark MM and a 35 Crab SoA.

I am trying to decide which to take forward. I think on paper I would like to take the crab but the mm is doing much better on solo mishes with like x4+ and I am wondering if the crab gets better with some key change later or if I am "doing it wrong". Both chars have mostly SO with some damage non set IO.

I am running all the normal toggles and my attack sequence is aim if up, venom grenade, suppression, arm lash, longfang a single then repeat, with maybe a chaingun in there. I will do pets when it's a boss battle. My travel powers are cj/sj and I am auto firing hasten. I do not have tough weave yet in fact I need to respec out of fitness which would free me up for that.

I am basically getting packs of mobs up in my grill beating on me and am having the following issues:

My dps is not taking them out fast enough. I am overall disappointed in my dps. I didn't take frag grenade cause I am afraid of knock back stigma and issues. I didn't take omega bomb because people said it was only for show. Perhaps I need frag grenade.

I am sucking end badly. I worry that even if I have frag grenade in rotation it would just make the end issues worse. I run out of end before mobs die.

Even with toggles and serum I get beat down by whites so I am like wha? Would tough and weave help immediately? I think of them as more for holding sets. If I did take them that's even more end sucking which is already sad for mah crabz.

I get kd like a baby Billy goat. Pow on my butt. I am think of switch to hover for this. If I had some cc I could keep them at range and lower both the beatdown on me and the constant kb which is alps hurting my dps.

Ant tips to help plug these holes would be welcome. On a team I feel like I do ok, but solo the mobs get up on me, kd me and i kill them slower than makes sense. It's so much easier on mm and I feel like crab can do this too if fix my approach.

Thanks!!!!

The short version is that on SOs the MM will be quite a bit stronger than the Crab. However the Crab will benefit more from IOs.

Personally I recommend taking Frag Grenade, the knockback isn't really that strong and in all honesty knockback is nowhere near the problem some people make it out to be.

For Endurance, yes Crabs do tend to suck up quite a bit, my main recommendation is to slot at least 1 end reduction in all of your attacks and, if possible, get the special recovery IOs for Health (if you're short on Inf Alignment Merits are an excellent way to get them).

For survivability I'm not sure why you're having trouble. If you have Combat Training: Defensive, Fortification and Tactical Training Maneuvers and have at least a couple of enhancements in each you should be tough enough to run at +0x3 or +0x4 without to much difficulty.

Regarding you being knocked back, again the practical solution is IOs. A Steadfast Protection -KB IO is pretty cheap and an obvious one to slot in Crab Spider Armor Upgrade (which doesn't really need slotting). You can normally get those pretty cheap on the market, or worst case buy one for Reward Merits. 4 points of kb protection protects from a lot of the NPC knockback abilities in the game.

I wouldn't consider myself an expert but I play my crab way more than any other character and apart from the delightful incarnate content, I exclusively solo.

I know there are a couple different directions to take a crab, but I find that my pets do a lot to make me very survivable. They contribute a surprising amount of dps and serve and helpful distractions that keep everyone in a mob from swamping me.

I do know that if I do go down, I usually go down hard and fast. But I don't go down often.

I want to elaborate on the importance of IOs, since they are absolutely critical to high performance. For example, my Crab has 49% Melee defense. Slightly more than half of that comes from powers (Combat Jumping, TT: Manuevers, Weave) and the remainder is all IOs (Steadfast Protection 3%, Touch of Death 3.75% x2, Obliteration 3.75% x2, Shield Breaker 3.125%, and Gaussian's Synchronized Fire Control 2.5%).
You cannot cap melee or AoE defenses with any amount of SOs, even if you take every defense power you can, and slot them like mad. So, don't expect to be indestructable until you get your IO sets.

What sort of Crab do you want to be? I think taking Frenzy and not Heavy Burst is an indicator of a major lifestyle choice. You cannot get your money's worth out of Frenzy unless your melee defense is so high that you can fight completely surrounded by melee combatants. If you're going to go this route (as I have) then I say in for a penny, in for a pound. Get Slice and Arm Lash, even at the cost of dropping Channelgun and/or Longfang. If you follow this path, then Tough and Weave are in your future.

I feel that Frag Grenade is incompatible with Frenzy. If you want to stay surrounded in melee and fire off Frenzy as fast as it recharges, you don't want any knockback. On the other hand, if you prefer ranged combat and would rather line up a series of perfect Suppression attacks, Frag Grenade can protect you from melee combatants. In that case, I recommend taking Arm Lash instead of Frenzy to quickly eliminate any opponent that gets too friendly.

Omega Maneuver is a great power IF you like to solo. It's not so good in groups because it takes too long to work. By the time it explodes, half of your targets have been killed by DPS characters or they've been distracted by competing sources of aggro and are not standing by the bomb. These days anyone on the team might decide that group is a good target for Judgement and you won't have any targets left at all!

In terms of attack chain, I open with Suppression since it makes Acid Grenade more likely to hit.

Endurance-wise, you do need to slot your serious end-hogs (Weave, pool Maneuvers, etc.) for end cost reduction, and it helps to slot Stamina like you mean it, including the Performance Shifter proc. The previously-mentioned Numina's Convalescence proc in Health is a boon as well. Start saving those merits! (I'm also partial to the Cardiac Alpha Incarnate power.)

IOs are also the solution to knockback issues. Though, if you're a cheapskate, there's always Acrobatics. You are taking the Leaping pool anyway.

In terms of general tips, I would only say that it's tough to play a melee crab without IOs. Until you can really hit your defense caps, I recommend emphasizing ranged attacks, Leadership and pets.

Crab vs MM..

I will say go Crab because of the MM pet AI. MM pet AI is not horrendous but at times it can be tedious. I think having the pets go nuts on you solo adds insult to injury sometimes. Whereas with the Crab its you and only you.

I sort of read your mixed in IOs and SOs, so I am guess funding is an issue atm. So I would says level your crab and the first thing you should do each day is make sure you have done your TIP missions. Get a team rolling for TIP missions and bang them out.

As was mentioned I would go for the +3 to Def IO from steadfast and work to to get your Range Def capped and go for hover bot style for now. Until you can afford the IOs to slot up the rest.

From the incarnates you will need Cardiac because of endurance issues but once I slotted that I was okay.

My build is a full positional defense cap build which is pretty cool for me with no pets. I just could not fit them in and get the defense caps I wanted. Trust me if I could figure out how to get defense capped and have the pets I would have have.

I pretty much went aoe spec and when stamina and health went inherit I basically ended up with 3 new 1 slotted powers I added to the build. So nothing changed I just ended up with 3 new powers build wise.

On the flip side, long story short. Dark will help you get capped faster to many defenses and you have a good heal to keep pets and yourself alive IF you can keep your pets in one place. End result Dark and Traps for Masterminds are pretty much the 2 big sets.

Thanks for all the great responses.

A couple of follow up points/ thoughts.

Even without changing up powers / respeccing, I was able to do a bit better last night, playing more like a ranged character and kiting slightly, letting my ranged defense which is higher get in the mix, and just plain keeping them off me a bit. I also was more religious about firing venom grenade which I think was making my kill rate faster.

For now, I am looking for something more range-y, so I think I would like the idea of introducing frag grenade is a first step.

I will definitely think about going for sets in a few key powers as soon as possible to get the KB protection and some +recovery treats going here and there.

Also, I had enhanced almost all of my powers for recharge and none for endrdx and so this was making my end use worse (although increasing my dps I guess). Since I now know that end use is a known issue for crabs, I am going to slot up stamina as if its a higher priority. There's only so many slots, and sometimes it's hard to know when to go for it.

I have looked at several posts with specs, but I am having trouble finding one that 100% grabs me and aslso knowing when to balance preference with necessity, I feel like I am closer tho with this advice.

Thanks!

P.S. I almost forgot. I duo'd with a level 50 last night, who just randomly saw me LFT, and asked me to join them on a mission. I have no idea how fancy their IO's or whatever were, or how "good" they were, but I felt like I was seriously contributing to lay the smack down despite being only SO'd and SK'd from 14 levels lower, and I felt this was a little wink from the CoH gods saying that maybe I shouldn't quit on this char before seeing where it goes.

One thing I didn't see people mention much is that the Crab will generally be a more welcome addition to teams, from a combination of lag/blocking issues from multiple MM pets and the fact that some people will have played with MMs who don't know how to control their pets and get the team in trouble. A Crab (assuming you took your defense toggle) protects the team just by kind of standing near them, and generally brings lots of AoE to the table, both popular on teams. Plus, especially with the Mako patron pool, you can bring very substantial AoE -resist debuffing to the table, which helps the team melt mobs.

I do agree that Crabs, solo, really thrive with IOs. The difference between SO level defense slotting and IO soft capped defense slotting is about a factor of 10 in incoming damage, plus various other debuffs and such hitting. I noticed this when running tips on Crabs on 2 servers, the IOed out one was easily able to double spawn sizes. The other thing that helps is taking a patron power pool with an AoE Immob, to force everything to stay at range where your defenses are strong, again at higher levels then you are yet.

For now, I suggest teaming as much as possible, which should be easy since Crabs are welcome on teams. This lets you see what AoEs you like and fit with your playstyle, so you can do a final respec and downselect to the ones you want in your final build, which will almost certainly have some global recharge so you won't need as many.

Its not a bad idea to get the Dark/Thugs to 50 as well, mind you, thats a VERY strong soloing character or help for a struggling team. A Crab is a very optimum choice for a team that can support it, a Dark/Thugs MM can pretty much *be* the team.

I ran across this thread and wanted to ask about another veat and team potential. I'm debating leveling my robots/dark MM or Fortuna. Do Crabs and Fortuna's have the same team value in their buffs? I'm just trying to pick one to level up first based on teaming value. I'm not trying to derail this thread just noticed it was similar to my question on the Fortuna and wanted to throw it out for some input.

This topic has sort of answered some of my questions regarding Crab pets and their usefulness. For the most part on my level 41 Crab, I've completely ignored the pets and stuck with Crab, Leadership, and Fighting pool toggles along with Crab Aoe.

When it comes to single target damage, are the pets mandatory, or is Channelgun + Longfang enough for most of the higher level content while soloing?

At least play the mm to 38 before deciding. Fluffy is awesome (and cute and cuddly).

I have both a 50+1 Mastermind and a 50+1 Fortunata. I'd go the crab. Masterminds are strong in the mid 30's and 40's, but they can be a pain on some of the tough TFs like Apex and LRSF. With enough level difference, your pets die pretty quick, even for something like Bots/FF, which is my MM.

The Fort is just tons easier. I don't have to wait for pets to catch up when I move. I can run at SS or fly to a turret and my pets don't aggro everything on the map trying to catch me. It's just much easier being so self contained.

I still love my MM as it was my first 50, but not having to deal with pets is much easier. I can't say specifically about the Crab, I don't see why it wouldn't be as strong as the Fort though.

Crabs seem to go in 2 directions for build plans (though with enough money, you can get the perks of both). The first focuses on having soft-capped defenses and good AoE damage, with some recharge thrown in. This is what I call the Tank-mage Crab. Very tough, good damage. They may have pets, but they aren't the focus.

The second is the MM crab, which focuses primarily on getting pets up often or perma and giving them good defense/damage. Double Assault, Maneuvers, are pretty much always taken.

With enough money, you can softcap AoE and range and get perma-pets. I recommend getting hover so you can avoid melee. These builds are very expensive though.