Mm dps

Upon returning I noticed MM's were listed under 'support' and for the first time thought of them in the context of grouping. When I played one it was mostly solo and I thought of it a lot like a controller, where I was trying to maintain a situation in my favor more so than a defender doing damage and supporting.

I'm curious now where MM's stand as far as DPS.

Assuming you have a target that doesn't fight back and you don't care about the various MM paperwork like controlling range or anything like that, you're just going to go 'GO GET THAT GUY' and let all your pets have at it...

1) Which primary will do the most damage?
Usually when people put Ninjas and Necro lower on a list they're thinking about survivability or utility as well, and this question doesn't involve those. YES I know dead pets do no dps, please read the above. Assuming you are letting your pets go to town on a held/offenseless target or at least are keeping them alive and able to attack at full strength, what primary will do the highest DPS?

2) Where does MM DPS fall compared to corruptors and defenders?

1) Ignoring resistances and assuming an immobile target probably Thugs due to Arsonist and Bruiser performing above average for pure dps in their bracket. Also Enforcers grant +10% damage for all pets due to assault leadership toggle while doing very respectable damage themselves.

2) That depends a whole lot on the primary/secondary chosen, a merc/FF will do less than a fire/kin(either corr or def) while i feel a thug/poison may very well do stupid amounts of damage to a single target due to the massive -resists and -regen.

For me MM are the ultimate supporters, not because they bring so much of it, but because they have the time to actually use it without neglecting their other set. The primary set of them is pretty much a passive set, so they can concentrate on their secondary while still doing damage through their primary. So imho they lend themselves well to the more active secondary sets.

Personally im kind of enamored with TA and Storm, your experience with your emp defender being the reason why. Most groups, even pugs, hardly need more direct survivability in the form of additional resistances, defense or even heals.

They need to kill stuff fast and in a controlled manner(no adds, scatter etc), things like glue arrow, OSA, EMP arrow, snow storm and the various -res/def powers do exactly that. Especially Storm is imho underrated, its not just about uncontrolled KB. Just using freezing rain and snow storm alone you already contribute more to the team in damage and mitigation than some entire ATs, and hurricane is about the best "i don't want you guys coming here" ability there is, i mean how can a -35% tohit debuff toggle ability with pushback NOT be awesome?

Those pure heal buff classes are on/off kind of things, awesome if you need them but saturated real quick in a team if there is more than one. And then you stand around like a clown with your finger up your nose wondering if anyone would notice if you just /follow and go get yourself a pizza.

Edit: Thermal is cool too i guess, but it doesn't really harmonize with all primaries that well. Also i don't like it conceptually as a resistance set lacking CC protection. I mean on paper it sounds like you could carry a group alone since you buff resistances and can heal. But then again, the resistances are quite a bit weaker than a defenders as are the heals. And resistances + heals are not so hot to begin with unless you already have alot of them...

Are you talking AoE or ST damage? Ninjas will have the best ST. Their attack chain is seamless, and they do nothing but attack. As for AoE, either Bots or Thugs, due to their burn patches.

I see MMs as sort of a 'do everything' kind of AT.

Tanking? Yep
Support? Yep
Damage? Yep
Control? Depending on your secondary, Yep.

Initially, MMs tied with Brutes in leveling speed. So, that says something.

@VKhaun:
Thats going to be painful, remember when i said Thermal doesn't do well with every primary? I was thinking ninja then. They have pretty much zero resists to start with(apart from oni) and their defense is only soso either. All Thermal will be adding to that will be 24% resists and two mediocre heals.

To put that into perspective a set like Beasts will have about the same resists unbuffed as your ninja buffed, while still being ahead on defense.

I have a ninja/dark and its painful. I don't even want to think about how it would be with /thermal. I have to be blunt here, imho ninja is the worst primary you could pick for /thermal, maybe tied with /poison, but that atleast will be golden vs ST. In short, you better really really love that concept ...

@Mad Grim:
Im not that sold on ninja being king of ST damage, someone actually parsed that? The genin and jounin do alot of damage for sure, but i always felt the oni to be really lacking compared to the bruiser(mainly due to fury i guess) or assbot.

P.S.: Did you count the genin dps towards the ninjas ST damage? If so thats your error right there, you can't count them, they are dead. I swear i saw one offing himself while sharpening his sword the other day, if there are actual enemies involved ...

Yes, I was counting Genin. And Actually, if you take a defense set like FF or Time (Not gonna even mention Traps, Nins run out of FFG), they can survive. Especially Time, the recharge debuffs, damage and tohit debuffs, and the res and def debuff really work with Ninjas. Farsight is the key, of course, if you try hard enough you can soft cap them all. Jounin are easy to soft cap, and actually live more than Oni because of this.

But yea, with Thermal they will be squishy as hell. However, if you're just teaming there shouldn't be much problem.

As for the Nins having top ST damage- they do, edging just ahead of Demons, who are hax.

Oh and I find that Genin outdamage the Jounin, due to Jounin standing pack and using poison dart.

The Oni... he's weird. In melee he refuses to cycle all of his attacks, I believe. Otherwise he does great damage, and is the source of much of your AoE. Though you should watch out- Rain of Fire tends to make stuff run. Though if you're running time, you have Distortion Field, two layers of Caltrops, and Time's Juncture to slow them to a crawl. Also, his RoF is based on an Anchor, probably to void him casting it constantly with no targets or something stupid like that.

EDIT: http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=286590
Some numbers regarding ST damage.

I do think Demon has the highest potential ST damage though if you include all the -resist from your primary.

The problem with ninja defenses is that 7% and 12.5% falls into the Wet Paper Towel In High Wind category of "Are You FORKING Kidding Me?!?" as a protection scheme. Heck, the +14% To Hit Buff of the Incarnate Trials is bigger than the sum total of Defense that ninjas can have natively (with no way to enhance it other than Maneuvers, or a Secondary or an Aura IO).

Unfortunately, these piss poor pitiful levels of Defense are entirely consistent with the Issue 0 through Issue 8 design mentality that all Defense based protection schemes need to be starved for Defense so as to prevent them from being effective as a survival scheme.

It's the end. But the moment has been prepared for ...

God, that damn forum just ate a huge post of mine because it logged me out while typing it up.

Basic summary:

I believe the spreadsheet linked earlier to be inaccurate, it lists genin as having triple the average dps than an assault bot, and lists his freaking incendiary swarm missiles(which if you are not familiar with, can almost slaughter an entire group on their own) with doing 20 damage, ie. sub tier 1 pet brawl strength. I think it also does not take level difference into account, tier 1 pets tend to fight enemies 5-6 levels above them.

Also melee pets take time to get into melee, especially without proper micro(ie. only using a single attack/passive macro) hurting their actual damage in team situations against anything but AVs massively. Not to mention they are severely affected not just by damage but also by status effects flying around in melee range, try standing with a SO equipped defender next to the brutes/scrappers/tankers in a battle to get a "feel" for what your pets will experience. Oh and as a extra try doing that with a AV 5 level above you while already being down to 500 HP, feel it? Thats how being a genin "feels".

Last point i think was the slotting imbalance. Ninja/Thermal will not only be unable to slot the 10% res and 5% defense auras from recharge intensive pets, they will also be forced to slot the 3 auras they can fit into the actual MM pets(and you do need them) lowering the amount of slots available for actual combat/damage purpose.

For example if you put an aura into each pet, and an achilles heal proc into jounin, you can only 4 slot them for accuracy/damage/endurance. A thugs, necro, demon or any /storm will be able to get all 5 auras without sacrificing any petslots. So not only will he gain +10% res and 5% defense over you, he will also have 3 more slots available for stuff not dedicated to survivability in his pets. Also the ranged pets that can accept them will apply procs like achilles heel -res alot faster than melee pets who have to physically run over to their target to apply them.

I also had some encouraging words to go for it still, for concept sakes and coming from a defnders pov etc blabla. But honestly im not in the mood to retype all of that due to that forum glitch. Just imagine some encouraging words here, your heals will make the combo feel alright till level 20 or so anyway. Its only when when bosses and later LTs start onehitting your pets that you start thinking about doing things a bit differently the next time around.

Edit: In the original there was something about taking into account things like the monstruos -regen of bots or even the lesser -res of demons for AV/EB fights aswell. Thats worth QUITE a bit of dps, and with a weak group(due to people leaving and having a incomplete team or whatever) is far more likely to be the difference between making it or not than a couple more or less dps on a mere (dead)pet.