Bots or Thugs?

Hey all,

I have my Bots/Traps MM to level 20 and I am really enjoying it, but I did like my Thugs as well and the Level 18 power (the one that calls an army of Thugs for a little bit) seemed very useful (I didn't get my thugs that high before switching to Bots).

So I guess in the end I wonder which set is better, that repair power for Bots is useless in my case (I team with some Darks for healing) and since they are /dark I could swap out to Thugs/FF (with the new changes coming).

So, if you'll ignore the rambling aspect of this post, which set (Bots or Thugs) is the better set?

I have a Bots/FF and a Thugs/Traps and I honestly dont think either is better. By Bots/FF is a tank build and the Thugs/Traps is more of a debuffing type of set. Both buils work very very well.

I'd be in agreement with Airhammer. Both are great.


I prefer Thugs myself because they're less clanky and bulky than the Bots.

They're both great, I guess it's down to whether you prefer watching the arsonist kamikaze or the protector bots running into melee

Matter of which theme you prefer

I have a good one for a thugs/trap but I need "mafioso" thugs and "age of piracy" traps to make come alive so it sits at lvl 1

While my Bots/Traps is almost complete in terms of slotting and has VR on each main iAbility

Thanks all!

I took my bots/traps to 22 and I am going to park him for a bit while I try my Thugs/FF, I really cant wait for I20.5 and the group shielding

I'm putting my vote in for Thugs/Traps yo. Surviving in a +4 s/l only mission, putting down Trapdoor solo as an AV, I think AV, and never having nothing to do with him during a fight is too much to pass up. Have a 36 Bots/traps mm, but just not as much fun and the fire patches still cause fear. With the arsonist at least he dies right away after running into melee for Breath of fire so you don't need to worry about his fire patch too much.

I've got 3 50s of Thugs and 3 for Bots. Performance-wise I see little to no distinction between the two. The bots are probably a tad more self-sufficient, due to prot bots heals. Really it's the secondary that will differentiate them. You'll most certainly come to a point where you find your bots/traps outperforming your thugs/ff (I happen to not only have 50s of both of those combos, but they've gotten solid IOing and Alphaing). The Bots/Traps will be doing things your Thugs/FF is not capable of, that's due to the secondaries, not Bots being superior to thugs.

Traps is better and I will explain why.

I have both a 50 Robot Traps and a 50 Robot FF. The Robot FF has accolades the Robot Traps does not. Both Characters are Personally defense capped. With Force Field my Pets are also defense capped. I do not think I am capped with Traps on my Pets.

With the debuffs of Traps I can solo AVs and GMs with my Force Field the best I can do is stalemate. I can't kill him and he can't kill me.

I think that my Traps is more in your face fighting where as Force Field is more in the back trying to keep the bad guys out of the Force bubble and pointing the pets to bosses to take out before taking on the lower mobs.

Traps I am just waltzing into the battle letting everyone know I am there.

Between my attacks and pet attacks and debuffs I am killing things much faster then I am with my Force Field.

Both can solo 4/8 settings but Robot FF is slower as I really cannot afford to really pull too many mobs. Because the slower kill rate means I will eventually get more hit sneaking in on me and my pets. Where as with Traps 2 Trip mines in 13 seconds along with pet attacks and bunch of stuff is dead or running. Poison traps helps out tons as well. The lock down proc is a great in that power.

The one great thing come up is the full buff abilities which will help keeping pets capped out before the buff wears off.

I think "better" is a subjective term in this case, unless you define what you're looking for. Traps is certainly more active and does better at taking down hard targets, no denying that. But FF is a good set too, and 20.5 will make it a lot less annoying. Traps simply can't bring as much defense and status protection as force fields can. They're different specializations.

If I had to pick one it would probably be traps, but I've had force fielders since issue 2 or so and I still do enjoy the set when I'm in the right mood for it. I've been having a ton of fun on a ninjas/FF lately.

As far as Bots vs. Thugs goes, my personal preference vote lies with robots. I have multiple bots 50s across three different servers, and I've had fun with all of them. Thugs, on the other hand, I just can't get into. I've deleted a Thugs/Traps in the 20s, and a Thugs/Storm and Thugs/FF in the 30s. I don't know what it is, but for some reason they just don't click with me. I'm by no means saying they're a bad set. Just not my thing. I think part of it might be the super-suicidal Arsonist, but I played mercs to 50 so I can obviously deal with suicidal pets.

Actually, on my 35 Thugs/Pain, I've long noticed that my Arsonist isn't so much suicidal as he is a fiery bundle of AoE aggro. He stays alive a bit better if I wander maps with my Brute on aggressive and everyone else on defensive.