Traps, Time or Pain?

Rolling up a Thug Mastermind. What secondary should I pair it with out of the aforementioned three?

Heard some good things from Traps for years! Heck as long as I can remember actually....

So theres plenty of stuff on that but the other two may give you a bigger challenge. Especially the newer Time Manipulation Set.

As far as power and usability goes, from my experence, traps is very powerful solo, and good in groups.

Time is very powerful in groups, and good solo.

I've never had a pain MM so I'm not sure how it plays.

My suggestion is to role up all three and see which one you like more. Which, I guess, may explain my altism problem.

Honcho's advice is good. The best power set is the one you have most fun with, because then you're motivated to get the most out of it.

I like traps, but then I like having things that stay up even if my character's out of it for the moment. I'm probably a lot more fretful about that than many players, in fact.

I play a Bots/pain at the time i created her i was very new to CoH so was not aware of all the -better- secondaries i just thought hmm pets, check.. healing powers.. check. next thing i knew i was turning off my exp because i was doing 0/x4 missions with bosses( yeah i know folks can do x8 but hey i'm a newbie!)

I can tell you for me it is a very exciting set! Never a dull moment. and incredibly useful both teaming and solo..You get heals, rezs, buffs, debuffs However i am also not a AV/GM killer at least not yet! ( Pain does lack Defenses how ever it did not become a problem for me until i reached 40 it is not stopping me and once i get my epic armor and set bonuses in place i'll become even stronger)

I'm also aware that pain can some times look like the red headed stepchild of the MM secondaries but again i say No team will look at you cross eyed once you save there hides!

I will add again it can be a VERY busy set even solo.. with micro managing your minions and keeping them alive but i like it.

I will agree with everyone who says Traps is great when soloing. It's not nearly as good on teams because your team generally won't stop and wait for you to set up.

Between Time and Pain, I guess it depends on your play style preference. I have a few Empathy characters and don't mind keeping a close eye on team and pet health, ready to intervene in case of danger. I will say that of all the Thugs combos I have tried, Pain has the best chance of keeping the Arsonist alive in spite of his best efforts to get killed.