Demons and their secondaries

I've been poking around with demon summoning lately. I have utterly fallen in love with the whip, gotta say. Now, I've read Catministrator's excellent guide, but it has a bit of a hole in discussing secondaries, and discussion since then has kind of been all over.

I could ask "What's the best secondary for demon summoning?", but that's dumb. Such questions bring rage to the strong and sorrow to the weak. So instead I'll ask, "What does each secondary do best with demon summoning?", and maybe also which you like best and why, if you have a preference.

In the back of my head is the hope to someday go soloing archvillains and giant monsters, but honestly, I'm not doing that right away and won't be, so...more relevant concerns, in about this order: simplest soloing, sturdiest soloing, simplest grouping, most useful grouping, all presuming a budget of SOs and some IOs, no more than a few hundred million max. If one secondary covers two, three, or four of those priorities, so much the better.

Thanks! I must whip them, into shape, shape them up, whip them good!

It's not too late, to whip them, whip them good.

In my little masterminding world, things are definitely being shaken up by Issue 21 proliferation. The gold standard is a close competition between Bots/Traps and Thugs/Traps.

Demon Summoning, I can't say. I haven't witnessed nor played a tweaked out build. Saying that, traps is so flexible, I cannot foresee Demons playing worse than Bots or Thugs/Traps.

I have played and experienced Bots/Storm and Necro Storm. It's not an obvious pairing, I have a mid-level Demons/Storm. The big AoE debuffs work very well with Demons. Hurricane puts a new twist on tankermind tactics especially with judicious amounts of gale.

I would rate /Traps as tier A, and then Storm as tier A-/B+. I would agree on teams, most of the time teammates don't allow mm/storms to maximize their full potential due to prejudice with the holy trinity and anti-kb sentiment, their loss.

I have seen Demons/Dark in a level pact with my Demons/Poison. I also have a Demons/Thermal at level 50 which is a beast. Between tohit debuff, heals (both of which are pet friendly, tactics differ) and enough debuff to make them effective, Dark and Thermal are about the same in utility. Dark's debuff is more of a defensive type debuff, and thermal is gushing with damage mitigation in resistance and heals.

At this point, for the AoE attack style of the demons, I prefer the debuffing sets such as Traps, Storm, Dark and Thermal. Now the change in this is Poison has been buffed. I haven't played my MM/poison builds, but starting a beam rifle/poison corruptor, I can see that the buff to the poison set is less than huge, but quite noticeable.

I haven't played Demons/TA or Demons/Pain. I won't quantify them other than saying the debuffs should work with Demon's AoE attacks. Forcefields is the standard on the defensive builds. Forcefields doesn't do a lot to increase damage of any pet. Build for defense and build for pet endurance. I foresee a cardiac alpha slot over a Nerve to be sure.

Someone else will have to attest to Demons/Time manipulation.

This brings us to the new Sonic Resonance. I jumped simultaneously into a new Bots/Time and a Demons/Sonic. It's a synergy thing. I put the sonic shields up, lead with sonic siphon, put the lieutenants on aggressive, and I currently found my success level to be at +1/X3 ... at level 31, without the level 32 empowerment AoE upgrades. It's outperforming my expectations. For me, it's outperforming Bots/time. I took the medicine pool. Most of the time I patch up a tier 1. I wouldn't know what I would do with sonic cage at this point. I don't have clarity yet. It's a big debuff set really with sonic siphon and sonic disruption. The shields are effective; I do notice when I lapse in re-applying the sonic shields.

I don't know yet where I would rate Sonic for a secondary, but it's far more offensive than forcefields. The set has no -regeneration powers; I wouldn't put it in the class with traps, dark, or thermal. I am happily exploring the higher content and wonder what liquefy might do for the demons

Wow. Fantastic info. Thanks!

To the character generator...

I've played Demons/Dark and Demons/Thermal to pretty high levels and both are beasts. Demons/Dark can effectively softcap against non-AVs simply by debuffing the enemy to-hit through the floor, which lets you turn them loose and focus fire on things rather than fooling with Bodyguard. However, AVs resist Dark's debuffs heavily so those will be trickier... on the other hand, you have a great heal and significant -regen plus enough to-hit debuff to make a noticeable difference even on AVs so I can see Demons/Dark soloing them pretty well.

Demons/Thermal is also nasty, since it basically turns the pets into mini-tanks and heals them quickly. The downside is that they will still get hit often, so enemies with heavy debuffs can be a problem. You will also get hit often if you take aggro, so you can't really Tankermind well... on the bright side, you can protect your pets from mezzes and make them tough enough to survive AV aggro themselves (at least to a point). I doubt Demons/Thermal would handle GMs very well though, simply because even Thermal shielded pets will go down pretty quick to that kind of damage. My personal favorite thing about Demons/Thermal is that when you come up against Scrapyarders or Destroyers and they start throwing their Burn Patches of Pet Melting Doom, you can just ignore the patches entirely and watch your demons tear the mobs apart. Between your shields and the Ember Demon's shield your pets are going to be at near Fire Tanker level fire resists... burn patches barely tickle them.

Demons/Pain can do a lot of what Demons/Thermal can, but it takes more recharge. Perma-World of Pain is a nice resist boost that can make the demons almost as tough as Thermal shields (except to fire), but it can't be made permanent without decent global recharge. You also get World of Pain and Painbringer vs Forge in Thermal, and both sets have decent debuffs. Overall I'd say they're close to even, but Thermal is better for AVs since it has a nice hefty -regen power and Pain doesn't.

I haven't played Demons/Traps, but I suspect it would be good since Traps are always good. Not as good as Bots/Traps though, simply because Demons are more melee oriented so they tend to spread out more, which makes it harder to keep them in the FFG sphere and makes the "shoot from behind caltrops" strategy rather difficult. Demons/Traps with Team TP might be interesting... pop in right in the middle of the enemy (towing your FFG) and let the demons go to town while you toe bomb with mines and Poison Traps. That's assuming FFG does teleport with you, which I would assume but haven't tested.

I'm tempted to try Demons/Sonic... since Demons have a dedicated melee pet to serve as a Sonic Dispersion anchor I could see it working rather well. Unfortunately, Sonic has no -regen so AV soloing will be painful but mowing down large spawns of normal mobs should be a blast. I personally consider Demons/Dark my favorite combo so far, with Demons/Thermal not too far behind, but I still haven't tried several.

I actually haven't played most secondaries for masterminds, or primaries either, since a few years ago.

But....


Demons/Time Manipulation:

This is pretty good, but entirely reliant on debuffs and heals, with the faults of those things as well.

1) It has no mez protection so that you are not able to easily and constantly keep everything up, especially considering the slow resistance and recharge buffs.

2) Debuffs all have a target cap of no more than 16 targets in the AoE, and single target are even less useful against groups. Masterminds tend to ramp up the amoutn of enemies on the better builds, which debuff secondaries have more trouble with than buff secondaries due to the target cap.

3) Debuffs can be/are resisted by tougher enemies so you need a lot to perform well against the tougher enemies. Time Manipulation has lower overall numbers than sets like Traps and Poison so weaker performance.

4) Slow is the only major thing Time has going for it. It's -to-hit is not very large as well as the defense buffs are not too large(unless using Power Boost which may be nerfed later).

5) Debuffs are enemy-centric, or stuck to a location, in all but the -to-hit. You'll aggro the enemies with the first debuff so the more you have to put up the longer you have to survive the alpha onslaught.


I find Time Manipulation lacking overall, especially at lower levels, compared to Traps. It is also lacking compared to the major buffing secondaries in my eyes.




Demons/Force Field:

Maybe this isn't as good as Demons/Sonic Resonance for synergy, but Demons have a lot of resistance, debuffs(including very nice slows and -resist) and varied damage types(including the very nice Toxic) to put behind the very good shields of Force Field.

While Sonic Resonance makes Demons better at what they already do, it practically guarantees that every attack hits, even if for reduced value(which it doesn't cover psionic or purely positional).
Force Field covers all attack types with rather high numbers just on its own.

Sure, you don't have the synergistic leadership auras from Thugs Enforcers or Robots Protector Bots, but they aren't so big as to make a huge difference.
Also, the Demons' Resistances are much stronger than any defenses and resistances that Robots or Thugs have.


Also, the absolute easiest sets to play as a mastermind are Force Field and Sonic Resonance. They have mez protection to the big 3(hold, disorient, immobilize) always up, always on powerful buffs(with a 255 target cap unlike a debuff's 16 cap) and the advantage of being able to keep the powers on from spawn to spawn due to them being ally-centric. They also have nice sort of gimmick powers like the amazing Personal Force Field.





My favorite combination used to be Robots/Force field, but now it is Demons/Force Field.
If I had to choose other than Force Field then I would go with Sonic Resonance. I may end up picking Sonic Resonance if I find it fairing better than Force Field as well.

My gripe with Force Field is that it's almost purely defensive. It protects very well, but aside from one moderate damage AoE attack that has a ton of KB it really does nothing to help you defeat enemies faster. Sonic protects fairly well while also giving -resist debuffs to help speed up fights. /FF MMs are pretty much the safest and easiest, but they're also generally the slowest and most boring. It's a great secondary if you like using your personal attack powers though, since you likely won't have anything better to do most of the time.

I am playing a Demon / Time at the moment.

As far as demons go , they are plain beautifull chaos. I find that Time does complement this very well. Time makes you and your pets very untouchable(buffing defense and debuffing to hit combined with high natural resistance) , maybe not as good as bubblebots but i am sitting alot in front of my screen to wait for one of my demons to get hit. Healing wise , i find it better to have it quick and small then slow and big , as you need the small bursts more then big heals.

Since i upgraded my heals (lvl 46 currently) to be quick and cheap i have upgraded from -1x4(was great exp) to +1x5 and still am waiting to loose a single demon.I do avoid Malta , Nemesis and Knives of Artemis as they plain simply reap me. Knives most because of theirlong duration hold/mez/sleep which makes you drop Times Juncture(Foe-damage - speed - to hit) , a very crucial toggle when it comes to survival. Most likely the biggest issue there is with Time , that this toggle seems to be a must in survival.

I do regret that pets are immune for recharge, seeing this set is having some skills in enhancing recharge of single targets and aoe. Maybe they should make certain skills still work on own pets.

I wasn`t aware of the new aoe buffing that happens , which would make me feel like making a thugs/thermal(personally i prefer a healing set on thugs as they don`t have that themselves.)

Sonic on the other hand most likely will be a killer too on demons , where you can place disruption field on your prince and sent him into the frey

Mmm. Thanks. Good fodder for thought! And experimentation.

/time is a great set, but it doesn't benefit demons any more than it benefits any other melee pet set.

Thermal may well be the gold standard of Demon sets. With thermal you don't really need to be a tankermind, because you can fairly easily cap the resistance of your pets, heal them, and provide status protection. Add in the late game buffs/debuffs of thermal with the whip attacks and you're pets will do high damage and be tough as nails.

Honestly, I think sonic for most cases is bad thermal. It's pretty easy to cap resistance with demons using thermal, and while sonic provides a little more -res, I think thermal just provides more useful tools overall(most notably the heals), and is very thematic.

Dark is good with all pets, especially melee pets, but it works better with defense pets. To-Hit debuffs are simply stronger when paired with defense than resistance. In any case, dark is great if you want a more active play style, and you want to protect your pets with controls/debuffs more than buffs. It also is fairly thematic.

Pretty much everything I said about dark applies to storm summoning, except in addition to being slightly better for defense based pets, SS is also a bit better for ranged based pets. It's still a powerful active set that relies on control and debuffs, but it's synnergy isn't as strong.

Traps is traps, it's a good set if you like it's playstyle. While slightly better for defense than resistance, it's not enough to matter a great deal.

Trick arrow is great is you want an active controller-y set. Bonus points for having multiple pets who can ignite oil slick arrow(which is a fairly big deal).

Force field I personally think is boring, and I think thermal does the job of protecting you're pets better. Once again Defense stacks best with defense, and resistance stacks best with resistance(-To-Hit stacks best with defense, while -Damage stacks just as well with either).

Pain Domination is actually a really good set that meshes well with demons. The heals are very strong, as are the buffs/debuffs. World of pain is also amazing if you can get it perma(which takes some doing, but if possible, especially if you slot a spiritual...which is a good idea for pain domination anyways)

I've had a lot of fun messing around with the various options. Death From Below is great for quickly getting a character to the point where I've got multiple pets to play with, yay.

I like how different Dark and Thermal feel in practice, and yet how effective they both are.

I went with Dark on my Demon Summoner and the effect was awesome. One of the pluses with dark is almost everything has some sort of debuff attached. The Heal [twilight grasp] does -dam -to hit and so does Darkest Night the actual debuff. Even Fearsome Stare can be slotted to maximize its - to hit potential. The rez [holwing twilight] is an awesome disorient and also causes - regen and - rech.

Then of course with DM you add an addition pet in your Dark Servent that can also heal and debuff. Oh and don't forget Tar Patch which slows everything to a crawl.

I'll toss my vote in for demons/time. A set that can softcap pets that have inherent resistances is very strong, and only ff and time can do that with demons. This means relying on times juncture, though, until you are 50 and can use clarion and power boost to super boost farsight. At that point times juncture is helpful for -damage and slow, but you can softcap without it. Once you reach that point you've got ff's thing plus some heals and buffs/debuffs. I haven't made it there yet, but so far at 35 it is performing great.

That does sound really cool, and I will keep it in mind the next time I make a demon character. (Like on another server or something.) Thanks!

I just started a MM Demon/Time yesterday after reading Catministrator guide ( http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=218931 ) link

I was going to go dark because that's what most of the guides did but they were made a few years ago.. I started looking at all the Darks ability's and the other secondary's. I them remembered about the new Time power set and went to see if we *** MM's can use it.. Yes we can... I looked at its ability's and dark's together and I gotta say that Time beats it big time. The ability's are so good. time has a AOE Hot. It heals everything... Its always up right when i need it...And it gets stronger if the targets has a time buff on them. Its kinda like the lower tier ability get better if the higher teri ability's are on the targets/allys. the aoe heals heal for alot more, The aoe slows will have a lover/stronger holds/slows. I'm not sure if people noticed it in the ability's info but just about every ability has a secondary effect if the target is Delayed/Accelerated/etc....I read someone that someone said that the times debuffs aren't as strong as a few other power sets.. They did not read the secondary effects... Those are what bring Time over the top of the rest......I'm so happy that I picked Time.. Powerful set....Plus the whole theme of demons goes with Time....When demons spawn on our plane they have to manipulate time/space for them to scross over to our plane....Nice combo...