MM differences???

I recently got my demon mm to lvl25 and had an idea for a new mm using mercs... but from watching others play it appears to be only a difference of aesthetics. What am I missing?

Everything

Demons and Mercs are different in several ways. The demons have various types of damage (be it fire, cold, etc) while the mercs dole out primarily lethal damage. Also, mercs tend to stay ranged while demons have more melee capabilities. IMO mercs are the underpowered pets in the MM sets. I like them for concept, but if you are just trying to make a beastly MM, mercs is probably not your best option.

I haven't played with mercs myself, but the upshot of discussion here about them seems to boil down to:

#1. They under-perform compared to other mastermind pet sets.

#2. This means they are merely excellent to awesome compared to anyone else.

And the folks who've had the most reliable help in exchanges I've followed seem to share the sense that a player who's happy with the character's pets will get more out of them than someone who's not. Which should be a big "duh", but often gets overlooked by people who treat one kind of data as paramount to all other considerations.

As far as play goes, like others that, mercenaries are really focused on attacking from a distance. The demons have ranged attacks, but also melee ones, and in play tend to dart in and out. Robots and thugs most operate at range, zombies and ninjas favor getting close up. And each set of pets has some different strengths and weaknesses as far as what damage they're vulnerable to, and like that.

What secondaries are you looking into? Any MM can tackle regular content but Im always trying to make up for weakness in each set.

Mercs really benefit from secondaries that play better at range(dark, storm, and force fields come to mind and in that order as well). But if you go bubbler I highly suggest picking up the medicine pool b/c the medic's heal is 'meh' and unreliable.

Other good choices would be traps, pain, or time.

People seem to go one of two ways about Force Field:

#1. It's great - I can give my pets fantastic protection, and I have something reliable and not hard to manage to contribute when grouping, and it lets me fiddle with my own attacks, pet coordination, or just sight-seeing without any worries.

#2. It's a bore! I renew the buffs a bit more than every 4 minutes and then hardly have anything to do. I could be directing my pets over the phone for all that I'm involved.

Both of these are very sensible reactions. I'm usually in camp #1 myself, but I have alts for when #2 comes to visit me.

As was mentioned, demons cover a variety of damage, fire, ice, hellfire, while mercs cover lethal and have one instance of fire damage in the Commando's flame thrower. Demon's are more apt to use their melee attacks due to having fewer ranged options. Demons have a dedicated melee attacker in the Hellfire gargoyle. Demons have a better dedicated healer ember demon, who has both a party wide ((Including mastermind)) ember shield, and a party wide heal, as well as a better single target heal then the merc medic. Demon Prince is a hybrid ice/controller.

On the other hand, past level 32 you can pretty much expect mercs to stay at range. Mercs have a lot of -defense, and can slot Achilles Heel to accent that. Mercs CC is spread across 2 minions, so with a little keying you can spread that around. The commando has access to the single hardest hitting minion attack around in the rocket launcher ((Under the consideration that things can run out of fire patches. If things are stuck in place that goes to the arsonist or assault bot)). Downside to that, and to every other high damage or useful CC attack the mercs have access to, is the long cooldown. If you could slot them with -rec it might be different, but as it stands you won't be seeing things like full auto or flash bangs very often.

Now...it might sound like I am biased to demons, but mercs are my favorite MM set. I love the feel and the theme of them. They just have a few...issues.

Traps is very very good. Still one of the top secondaries available..I just know that it also tends to favor melee for several of is key powers. I still would recommend leadership to stack defense for pets and at least aid other...but thats me and I tend to play it on safe side.


Yes force fields is easily the most passive(and potentially boring) secondary available but its still very good at buffing your minions..and force bubble is nifty for keeping a lot of things from getting up close. I have played force fields for years and still love it, I just adapted with plenty of other things to keep me busy. As a force field MM(you could try building for tankerminding with provoke), pick up your own attacks for a little extra dps and have plenty of slots/power options for full leadership and aid self/aid other.

Either of these are awesome, with traps I just parked pets in a spot, ran in to drop mortar/poison bomb, etc, then hopped back to the mercs so they get the FF generator love.

Because Mercs do primarily lethal damage, it would be more production to take secondaries with resistance debuff such as Traps, Dark, Poison, TA, or Storm. Thermal has resistance debuff, but it's a long wait to get to the debuffs in thermal, although thermal does very well on the buffing/healing side of the ledger.

Here is the deal, in today's game you can have a build created on Single Origin Enhancers and there will be enough players on the team that will cover up your short comings, for the most part. No one is really going to know how crappy your build might be unless they are reading this and decided to do the same. Then you will have a problem when 5 out of 8 players are in SOs trying to run some higher settings against certain mobs.

Perfect example of this. I have a Petless Mastermind DS Traps that is defense capped but I wanted the incarnates. So I created a SO only build with my 2nd build and ran the Incarnate missions with all my pets, thus giving the illusion I had a clue but I really sucked. I am currently short of unlocking destiny but have T3 Cardiac, T3 Lore, T2 Reactive and T3 Ion. I wanted to unlock an accolade so I had to do LRSF. I did it yesterday which took 40 minutes with a bunch of IOed and Incarnate players. They didn't even know or care I sucked. The reality is my Petless mastermind has higher defenses and higher DPS output then my SO build but other players would not get it because they would only see 1 of my pets out and would just complain that I am gimped as many are dumb and do not understand the game mechanics. So not to hear the cries and complaints I pull out this less effective SO build for the incarnate missions and all is good.

The only issue you will have if someone calls you out. Basically you die a million times and then see your in SOs or when your gimpyness is taking down the team. I have to say that really sometimes you just need that one guy on the team to be a bit better to make the missions run a bit smoother. An example of this was a mastermind which had fly that didn't use it in a cave mission and kept falling into the holes in the floor below us aggroing the mobs under us.

That was my general statement about the differences.

But now if your looking to do some thing beyond the norm like solo 4/8 setting with a mastermind. Then choices matter. Example your not gonna do 4/8 on ninja Trick arrow. Melee pets will have a bit more issues against AVs.

Each pet usually has something going on for them that you can work off of. Robot will give you a defense bubble, Demons give you some resistances and a light heal that cycles every 10 seconds or so. I think Mercs give you Maneuvers buff. You can leverage these powers when used with the proper secondaries. EG Robot Traps, Robot Force Field as the bubbles stack. Robots Dark similar because in a sense the -ToHit debuff works the same as defenses. Demon summoning Traps works as does Demons Summoning Thermal because of the resistances.

So your choices are make what you like understanding the short comings of the build or go for some max build. Max builds will cost some money.

Actually the medic isn't bad for a Tier 1 minion. Not entirely sure why he gets so much flak. The only real downside to him is the cooldown on his first aid. And MAYBE his having the only non-cone AoE of the Tier 1's, making him a bit more likely to be targeted.

Here's the truth about mercs.

They are the weakest pet primary, but still kick booty. They bring reliable steady and moderate to heavy damage to the table while debuffing the defense of the poor target into the ground. They have access to very good CC abilities and very good burst dmg with rocket launcher. They then proceed to use all of these on the last half dead minion in a spawn because OMG IT RECHARGED AND I CAN USE IT!!


That being said, if players were given the ability to direct their pets long cooldown attacks mercs would be one of the strongest, if indeed not the hands down strongest, MM set.


As a mercs player you learn to finangle it. You know that if its up they will lead the fight with uber abilities most likely. You also know if you need those abilities back right now, you can resummon and rebuff and they will be fresh recharges. That can matter when teamed or about to take on a tough spawn. Getting them to use it reliably when you want is a crap shoot though. Oh and P.S. that healer minion isn't that great but if your a secondary without heals AND/OR when he heals you at the right times you will LOVE HIM. But bare minimum you should have at least aid other yourself if your a buff/debuffer MM without heals. He's helpful for maintenance healing but you cannot rely on him to keep people alive mid combat.

Are pet's long cooldown powers affected by the Burnout power recharge, or is that just for the MM's powers?

Will a Medic merc pet Heal while set to Passive?

Nope, a passive pet will do nothing except follow you around bleed.

I like Mercs!

That being said they could use some attention. I can't really add much advice here other than..

Pick a strong secondary! Traps and Dark seem to mesh well with mercs. Remember Mercs have very good long range attacks, but poor defense. Also the Mercs (unlike other MM primaries) don't have a 4th pet power. They get Serum instead, which most people feel under-performs.

Also since there isn't a 4th pet power, you can't slot all four pet unique IO's. Which is a little trick most MM's use to boost their pets resistance and defense. (A lot of people go with Merc Storm to get around that.)

As far as I understand the best Merc combos seem to be:
Merc/Dark
Merc/Traps
Merc/Storm