MM PvP - Primary

I have this vendetta against this Demon/Dark MM who is the self-proclaimed best MM on my server. I would like to try my luck against him with some of the other power sets. I do not wish to use demons/ or /dark. I am more concerned about the primary, which leads us to my question.

Aside from Demons, which primary would be best in PvP?

Well i can tell you that i would absolutely hate having to face a bots/TA on any of my MMs. Glue arrow + OSA + EMP + ... and then the stupid assbot doing his inferno rocket thing, that would be nice ... not. Demons are not as tough vs fire as one might think(especially after eating a acid and disruption arrow), especially with /dark since more than half of them have their strong resists to toxic or cold. They also lack any kind of slow resist, meaning they are going to get baked by the sequence above while doing their best slomo running impression.

TA in general has a truckload of awesome ... well tricks. Bots i just picked for the AoE concentration in the tier 3 pet and their fully ranged nature.

Either Bots/Traps or Bots/TA would likely be an excellent choice. Thugs could work very nicely too, for more of a blitz effect (more damage but less survivable).

Thank you both for your responses.

Well for starters, one of the things I dislike about a bot/ta is the lack of survivability, atleast in pvp. The MMs playstyle tends to be in your face, and without an effective self heal, I'm not sure if it would take the punishment. I have read up on the primaries, and most agree that bots are one of the best..in PvE. The input is greatly appreciated.

thugs

Your primary line of defense is BG mode from your pets, if you take enough damage through that to require a heal your pets are about to die anyway and no amount of selfheal is going to keep a MM up without his pets BG mode.

The dark heal is a bit of an exception here because it is a AoE heal stronger than pretty much any self heal. That being said, i doubt you will be able to reliably kill a demon/dark MM with a cookie cutter thugs/traps setup or something like that. Immobilizing a MM together with his pets in a burn patch atop of a burning oil slick while stunned however sounds like a good idea. Grant invisibility will be your friend to arrange that.

Maybe the flash arrow will even prevent him from targeting you if you keep your distance, which would be pretty bad considering he needs a target for his heal.

I replied to this earlier today, but my phone glitched and the entire post was deleted, but I will try to repeat what I said.

Well, I personally believe without a reliable self heal, I would not be able to stand up to a demon/dark. The bot/TA may bring a lot of carnage to him, but I can't necessarily sustain the carnage long enough for him to die. His heal is overpowered, and as a bot/ta, aidself would be relatively useless against someone with a lot of DoT from his pets and Darkest Night, and his dark servant also has a -tohitt aura. His playstyle deems him to be 'in your face' all the time, and he does have the build capable to do so. I actually made his build, and I know for a fact that he has very high accuracy(.90 from sets, and tactics), though he did edit it and pick up TP foe.
Slowing him would be good, but he could simply walk out of it, or just heal through it. The thing is, he would be able to get me into the thick of it with how he plays, and I would have no self heal that would rise to meet the challenge, unless I took Rebirth. But even then, he relies heavily on -recharge from his Demon Prince, and it works quite well.

Your suggested tactic is worthy, but I believe it would be ineffective versus this particular person. I know this guy, and if I didn't have a line of defense from my secondary outside of the 'circle of pain' TA would give me, I believe I would stand little to no chance.

But hey, maybe I'm wrong. I want input, and I greatly appreciate your thoughts and ideas. I'm just walking around the idea and looking at all the possibilities.. analyze, then bring the pain. Lol.

I undoubtly left out some of my other points, but that's alright, it's been a long day. Honestly, I've always wanted a robo MM, and I've always liked TA, so maybe I'll make one of those just for fun.

Thanks again!

Okay here is the deal if its a straight and "Fair fight" meaning you just meet up and slug it out with no temp powers but inspirations are okay then Thug Time might be good.

The good thing about Time is it has that AOE bubble chance to hold. So if you hold his pets they don't fight. If you hold him he can't command his pets. Time has several other holds as well. Range cap and Farsight will cap you out for Melee and AOE. Time also has some heals.

I am thinking Thugs because like Demon it has the extra pet which you can slot those Pet Procs into.

If it is a standard PvP zone fight where anything goes. Then I would say Teleport foe with Oppressive gloom as well. This way if you can TP him into your bubble if the pets come with him they might be held or stunned from OG and then just spam holds on him until he runs out of BF or uses up his phase powers. Again assuming he just does not run off to recharge his powers if things go bad. Because then you will never get a chance if he is just gonna wait out his phase recharge and replenish his BFs.

TP self is also a good get away power as well.

If you can add in Burn out and get double Gang war ( don't know if this has been changed as well ) that might be great also.

The other thing is Robot Storm. Again I don't know what hurricane does now in PvP. I know it used to be big. But I don't know what exactly is suppressed in PvP with hurricane now. I know something is though.

But TPing in with storm and knocking his pets all over the place on top of tagging them with a hit debuff is good. Again Snow storm on his T3 to slow him and any pets near him up. Again putting Snow Storm on him might cause him to Phase shift to drop the snow storm, but putting it on his big demon will make him decide to dismiss his pet and resummon. One less pet is big. Thunder clap to stun his pets.. Tornado knocking pets all over. Again its disrupting his pets. Sometimes you hit them just right and they just don't get back up.

If your just looking to fight him even Force Field with Detention field on his main pet is helpful. Since there not much his pet can do to get out. It gives you 30 seconds of no T3 pet. Again using force bubble to knock his pets all over the place.

Again.. TP his T3 and hit detention field on it. Its out for 30 seconds now. Then go after him TPing in and having Force bubble just knock everyone around. As long as your on auto follow just keep slugging away at him. His pets will eventually get scattered from the bubble. His T3 will end up having to run to get into the fight once out of detention. I think you will cause enough scatter that it will hurt his bodyguard mode. Use repulsion bomb on his other pets. Just to scatter them even more. Things he cannot control with Dark.

TP also will get you out of Tar Patch and break Darkest Night once you TP out of range. So if you see Darkest Night on you TP away and then back in. Just detention his T3 when you can if he comes back.

Again if your going MM against MM you need to mess up his pets. Pet AI sucks. They TP sometimes and then run a mile for some strange reason. So TP him, TP yourself. If his pets are running it means they are not fighting. Demons are a mix of range and melee.

Time is good just because of the holds and slows and debuffs. You can hold some of his pets and then TP him away out of supremacy mode.

Mu Mastery also has an aoe hold.

End result you need to screw up his pets, not kill them just find ways to keep them separated.

Make sure you use the number key pad for commanding pets as well.

Just a heads up regarding TA, you can't just walk out of a glue arrow. Unlike a tarpatch the glue arrows effect sticks(pardon the pun) to the target. Also you can get it perma easily. I just have a hard time seeing him being able to get "in your face" with a permanent -180% run speed while being unable to fly or jump and having to face a immob power ontop.

Also a word about the damage, glue arrow debuffs recharge and poison arrow reduces damage. OSA will make his pets try to flee, which they can't due to absurd -run speed levels of combined OSA and glue arrow. The trick is they are not immobilized, they can still move, just very slow. So thats what they will try to do, instead of ... oh attacking you.

Also you have mag 3 hold(that does nasty things to his and his pets endurance btw) with 35 feet radius and your oilslick will put him(maybe) and his pets(very likely) on their face regularly. You also have a single target hold that stacks with your AoE one for mag 6.

And i seriously have trouble seeing him being able to heal through an burning OSA + the Assbots inc swarm missiles while having completely debuffed resistances. I mean he only has -tohit to protect him and his (at debuffed resistances) squishy pets, and even that will mean squat against OSA and inc missiles since they count as untargetable pets that spawn right under him. And whats stopping you from moving out of range with your pets and watch him burn from outside his heal range? Whats he gonna do, yell at you? He will have no heals, no resistances, no defenses while being almost unable to move and standing in a burning knockdown AoE with -90% perception range.

Anything that can counter that can counter anything any MM can do.

But really, Glue Arrow is 90% of the set in PvP imho. Its just sooo awesome, especially with the borderline exploit level effect burn patches have on our silly pet AI.

Edit: There is no reliable selfheal outside /dark. /Thermal and even /pain is a joke asfar as selfheals are concerned compared to the beastly twilight grasp even without considering him getting it 2x due to his dark servant. You will loose every time if you let it get down to his heals vs your heals. You need to hit him hard and fast, stop him moving around as he pleases and as plainguy mentioned mess up his pets AI as much as possible. Look at it this way, you might not be able to heal yourself, but he and his pets will not be able to get in your face. If he and his pets can still "tank" the damage your dealing out despite all your debuffs and controls ... any other combination will neither increase your damage nor make his healing less effective. Thus if his heal is the problem you still will be unable to kill him with any other combination.

The thing is, at heavily debuffed resistances his pets should die as fast as a ninjas genins, in other words almost instantly. If you are that worried about the damage you will receive take one of the armor powers of the ancillary pool powers, that will do you more good than any of the poor selfheals the other sets have access to.

Also to put things into perspective, Twilight Grasp is 4 times as strong as thermal group heal and between him and his pet he has two of them. Why would you even waste your time trying to use THAT? Times Temporal Mending is even worse and its regen buff gets handily slaughtered by twilight grasps -regen.

Any primary with /ForceFields or /Storm will do for PvP.

/FF: Pets and Player have mex proctection and are hard to hit.
/Storm: Pets on their backs cant fight back

Are we mostly talking about MM VS MM?

I am not an expert but one time I took my Ninja/FF to warburg. I saw a lonely Robot/whatever. I sent my Ninja in and caltrops and rain of fire really messed up Robot's AI. I am sure he was in BG mode but the pets' AI was really messed up for a while.

Not saying Ninja rules in PvP but I just want to bring up what I've seen from Ninja. Of course if the pets spread out, the caltrops/rain of fire effect will vary.

@Jeremia_Bane

I actually tried what you said with my TA Arch defender against a MM in PvP. Unfortunately my PvE build I guess did not have enough range that it forced me to get in close that the MM could TP into the mix. He could of course TP out. So though he was still slowed OSA was no issue or not big enough. Like anything the first few attacks when zoning work out but then players become obvious of the tactics.

Going off topic though I will say my Earth rad troller was hated and killed quickly because of the spamming holds.

When did /Poison stop being the king of PvP?

seems like poision would be good.

I was working on pvp MM and it seems like Chill Mastery is the obvious choice for Hoarfrost and Hibernate. any thoughts? Altho I was thinking this for a 8v8 MM. Maybe a resist sheild would be better for duels..

I've tried to respond the past few days but between my phone and m connection, I haven't been having much luck.

Anyway, it's somewhat of a tough choice. The storm I had already thought of, the lack of heal bothered me thougb..but if i went mace mastery andp icked up the shield and power boost, it seems like storm would be pretty good. My concern would be the endurance. It does seem like a very end heavy secondary, and the heal is worse than the poison one. However, with PB on, Mids says Hurricane will give off an impressive -50 tohitt by itself, and paired with a nice amount of defense(steamy mist, scorpion shield, maneuvers, weave, steadfast and glad armor procs) i think it could easily stand up tp an MM with no -def, and his heal would be useless. More can be said, but I'm somewhat busy.

Poison was considered, but i eliminated it due to the lack of a major survival tool.

Necro seems weak in damage from what I'be read though, but i have considered it as well.. Life drain is very nice.

I have to say.. /Storm looks like a very good set against other MMs. Tornado, Hurrican and Thunder Storm alone can really mess up Pet's AI.

Indeed. I'm very curious about Necromancy damage though. From what I've read, it's questionable. Grave Knights don't seem like good t2 pets either. :/

Grave Knights are amazing T2s, they just don't have AoE or support. From what I can tell, Necromancy's considerable ST DPS Hinges on them.

The two big issues are, the DoT delivery and the fact they are melee. I've dropped players of just about every AT, but as a MM with melee pets you'll be at a disadvantage.

Vs other MMs, I've taken down Demons, Mercs, and other Necros so how you play it is important.

The absolute worst DPS T2 pet is Spec-Ops. They have similar dps as Soldiers with the first upgrade... T_T