Demons! But to go with Thermal or Time?

Fairly simple problem on my hands here, I recently came up with a concept for a Demons MM that'd go perfectly with either Thermal or Time no problem, the hard part is deciding between the two. Especially having never really played either to any serious degree.

Now I know Demons/Thermal fits extremely well, stacked Resistance and Healing with a couple very very nice debuffs thrown in for good measure, but Time's almost Willpower-esque style is pretty appealing too. I know Demons have no Defense to stack with it, but stacked Resistance + Defense + Healing sounds like a potent combination in itself for keeping everything alive, and I know Time brings plenty of debuffs to the party as well.

Therein lays one of the questions, just how much resistance can Thermal stack overall, and is /Time going to prove as absurdly hard to kill? I'm curious as to what either combination could accomplish. I've even heard Demons/Thermal can tackle some AV's alone, which sounds amazing.

Time would be my vote.

Power Build Up + Farsight = loads of defense.

The -Recharge from Distortion field adds a large amount of mitigation too. Plop a Lockdown proc in Distortion Field and watch them zzzz. It's lovely. Especially when you stack two.

Assuming you're willing to slot all 4 mitigation-based Aura IOs (Sovereign Right, Edict of the Master, Call to Arms, Expedient Reinforcement), which you can do easily with 4 slotted Hell on Earth, you're looking at something like ~55% resist to most types, 10% defense to all, for the T1/T2 pets, and closer to 45% to most types, 30% defense to S/L/C? and 10% defense to the rest, for the T3. Mind you, this is all from memory.

Maneuvers adds around another 5% defense to all types fully slotted.

If you go with Thermal, you're looking at ~24% resist/all for all pets and teammates, but not yourself. You also get two heals and some savagely brutal debuffs.

If you go with Time, and you're also willing to take Power Boost (IIRC, only Mace Mastery gets it for a Mastermind), you'll get around 24% defense/all for yourself, your pets, and all teammates. You get one spammable heal, some great buffs that don't do much for your pets (they ignore recharge), and some decent debuffs, as well as a bit of control.

I would say that Time is better if you care more about team play and Thermal if you care more about supporting your minions.

I24 Proc Chance = (Enhanced Recharge + Activation Time) * (Current PPM * 1.25) / 60*(1 + .75*(.15*Radius - 0.011*Radius*(360-Arc)/30))
Single Target Radius = 0. AoE Non-Cone Arc = 360.

I vote Demon/Time, simply because I have one and she's a ton of fun. And was able to solo double-spawn trick or treating in the teens, which I count as a big plus on survivability.

But then again, Thermal animations are purty, and fit very well with the whole demonic hellfire concept, so either choice would probably work well.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fulmens The plural of anecdote is not data.

Haven't tried thermal yet but I've got a time/robots MM in the 20s.

Time is very effective. I think overlapping single-enemy, AOE and and aura slow effects actually stack to some extent. The early single-enemy buff is worth taking since it will paralyze enemies that are in the AOE zone debuff. The heal is very effective when boosted. It's a nice balance of burst-heal followed by heal-over-time so it's good as an emergency fix and to maintain max health for a while. I've only got a couple heal-25s in it and it's pretty strong.

I highly recommend adding teleport enemy to your build-strategy. You can basically create a debuffing slow/stop nightmare zone and drop enemies right into it. Haven't tried the first buff yet but it looks pretty powerful.

I haven't tried the single-target buff yet.

I have a demon MM with the dark powers in her 20s. Demons + DR-reducing whip attacks + slow/stop/heal from time should work quite nicely.