Eight Masterminds - Demons or Thugs?

As the title says, I'm trying to figure out which is the most hysterical of the two to utilize as eight people. As I see it, Thugs would be capped off at Defense and ToHit with no outside help, and have a substantial amount of +DMG.

Demons would have staggering +Resistance to everything, including the Masterminds, and could stack numerous -Resistance debuffs from the Whip Attacks and Hellfire Attacks. Not to mention AoE healing and healing in general.

It would seem the Demons would be tougher by default, not considering secondaries. My 'fear', however, is 48 pets all trying to swarm into melee at some point. Mostly due to the Demon Prince and Hellfire Gargoyle only really shining from melee.

Ultimately, which would be the most brutal between the two? Finally, what secondaries should the Masterminds be for ultimate hilarity/POWAH?

If you think another Mastermind Primary would be superior for this, suggestions are good!

Pure power? Demons. Shields stack, healing works, Lord has a hold (thats mag16 hold on AV's), pretty much mayhem.

Efficient? Thugs. You dont want 24 huge size demons trying to fix through 1 door, nor you want them to trying to smash 1 mob.

Thugs will get the upperhand if you mix up several secondairy, sonic with thermals for resistance, FF and time to wrap up the defense. They are more 'agile' to move around and having 8 brute-wannabe's will give you plenty of agro and softcontrol. They only have no hardcontrol abilities, that might give minor issues.

Can it be done better? Ninja is pretty sick, 8 stacks of Fire Rain is pretty sick, 8 stacks of calltrops can wrap em up. Damage i think they will be on the upperhand, as long they have a spot to stand and wack stuff.

Necro can be fun, 8 stack fear, 8 stack hold, insane ammount of -acc debuff (if graveknight also sticks at range) and also pretty solid with selfheal to top off the cap resist/defense.

Mercs.. lol no.

Bots will suffer the same issue with movement, but they do tend to stay ranged alot more then Demons. Assault bot swarm x 8 = lol. But the sound of 8 walking robots.. thats gonna fry your speakers.

Personaly i would pick Necro, Army of Death, diverse and strong control. Most efficient i would either pick Thugs or Robots, though both lacking hardcontrol.

8 Masterminds on a team is a lot. My big concern would be melee centric minions tripping over each other trying to get in position to use melee attacks. I think 8 Robot Masterminds would be faster.

With all the capping and such, 2 darks, 2 thermals, 2 traps, I would slip a couple of sonic masterminds in there to put sonic disruption of the dark servants. Dark servants like to get in melee range. I might even go 2 darks, 2 thermals, 2 traps, a sonic and a storm if you really want -defense on your chewy targets.

Your biggest concern should be big-body Demons blocking each other's path. Most Demon pets have AI to run in.

Thug, at least, have decent range attacks and they tend to stay at range. Only Bruiser would try to go in.

Hilarity? Thugs, hands-down. Picture eight people firing off Gang War at the same time.

You've never seen TVTropes before? Oh, my friend, I predict many hours of link-trudging ahead of you.

Just make sure some of you have Team Teleport or else you'll get stuck places. Back when CoV was young and MMs were all the rage we had a team with 4 MMs in an Oranbega map. I used Team Teleport to move us down the hall. With the pets set on aggressive, we were like a Gelatinous Cube, a short TP-hopping wall of death.

Soo... is this 8-man, 1-primary team happening? Because I'm totally in: even mercs would be awesome (maybe more awesome if you staggered aggro so specs used mezzes better) if there were 8 of them.

Dibs on the /stormie!

8*(1 mm + 6 henchmen + 10 posse(2 burnout)) = a max of 27*8 for a 216 man army. That can be up rather often with enough recharge build in. Thugs will also defense cap all of them, and to hit cap them, and provide a large damage bonus. Throw in some resist shields and heals and you are ready to take on the persian army.

Welp, group has been assembled. It's only 6 so far instead of the intended 8, but I believe it's all we'll need. So far the group make-up is as follows:

3 Demon/Time (One of which is Reppu)
1 Demon/Dark
1 Demon/Storm
1 Demon/Thermal (Myself!)

Rules are as follows:

1) Demon Pet powers and Upgrades MUST be taken when appropriate
2) Maneuvers must be taken at level 8
3) Aside from that, pick as you please

So far with just the Ember Shield-stack alone, S/L and Fire resists are hard-capped for pets, and that's BEFORE Thermal's shields. MM resists rank well into 60%+ range.

With Six Maneuvers, 3 Farsights, and 3 Time's Junctures, Defense is basically softcapped (in TJ's case, by virtue of the -To-hit debuffing)

I can easily see us laying waste to TFs. It's a few degrees shy of ridiculous. I haven't even gotten into the Damage bonuses from Hell on Earth coupled with 6 layers of Assault.


However, picking out the proper PPPs is going to be a bit more difficult. The DS/TMs are likely going for Mace Mastery for Power Boost, but as for me (the Thermal) I'm not sure. I'm leaning towards Mu or Leviathan.

Woah woah woah, what server is this on? I have a Demon/Thermal that would be interested.

I have a Demons/sonic on Exalted that could 'pad' you to eight. I don't want to leave the SG I am in though.