fireawayx

It's probably not far off to say that Mercs are one of the worst powersets in the game, but CoH is hardly difficult enough that those sorts of tier listings really matter for group content. Most people don't even ask what your powersets are anymore, and even if they did it's more likely that they'd care about your secondary as an MM than your primary. MM pets are essentially just DoTs you can name. You deploy them and usually most of your time in combat is spent on your support powerset. As far as Mercs, the only ones that would strike me as specifically suboptimal are those that what your pets to be in melee range constantly, so things like Kinetics will probably be less intuitive*. Trick Arrow can be nice because Disruption Arrow/Oil Slick elevates your overall damage considerably, although these come relatively late in the leveling process as a secondary. Sets that have a little bit of everything in terms of utility like Traps and Dark are good as well, because Mercs are missing a little bit of everything. *I'm curious to try out Fold Space and see how impactful it could be. Fold Space/Fulcrum Shift sounds compelling?

My main issue with it in practice is the range on Spinning Kick feels confusing - perhaps the cone is overly narrow, but it feels very prone to missing if I twitch even a little while lining it up. I wish it functioned like a targeted ability rather than a freefire cone. I've enjoyed it with Plant, which I think is probably one of the sets it compliments the most strongly, albeit at the cost of repetitive damage type with s/l. Caltrops and Dragon Tail have okay damage, but the combination of the slow from Caltrops and DT's knockup with Confuse/Carrion Creepers up are very strong, and probably the biggest contribution I find myself making in groups on the MA side. It is a somewhat hectic playstyle in practice, because it requires a fair amount of movement and darting around to line AoEs up, but these are the times when I feel like I'm doing the most outside of Dom sprees. It's still worse than a lot of other sets, it's true, and crying out for a centralizing mechanic to make sense of its whacky mix of ranges and AoE types. I think getting something worthwhile out of it is possible if you orient yourself around its various knockdowns, and I bet it works nicely with other close range Primaries like Fire/Ice. Alternatively those with strong AoE CC like Mind to make staying in melee range easier.

To chime in, I recently rolled a TA/Archery Defender specifically because of @Sir Myshkin's work on the PPM build. The character is only 29, and thus, lightly invested in compared to the full version, but I have cobbled together enough procs throughout my powers to have some idea of the overall effect. I can't say I have some endgame opinion on it yet for obvious reasons, but I can at least say that I've found it to be a lot of fun, and something that has really reinvigorated the power set for me. It also opens up one particular interaction that actually benefits the playstyle a lot overall - as Sir Myshkin pointed out, with an energy damage proc you have an extremely effective 1-2 punch for an alpha. Oil Slick > (I'll usually Fistful here to fill the slight delay of the OS pet spawning) > procced Acid Arrow gets your Oil Slick up and ignited with a huge amount of efficiency. This has substantially picked up the pace for me while doing leveling content, as so much of fights are done in the first ~15 seconds now, and has really emphasized TA's place as a powerful AoE primary in my mind.

I've enjoyed Necro/Nature - there's a high amount of sustain and debuffs to assist in keeping your t1 zombies alive, and the additional CC it provides through Entangling Aura synergizes well with your Lich. It's definitely lower on damage though - seems only slightly above full passive sets like Empathy and FF. /Storm, to that end, can really pick your damage up, both through Freezing Rain (one of the most jam-packed abilities in the game) and with Tornado and Lightning Storm. The CC and debuffs are considerable as well for helping survivability. Kinetics is also famously potent, but if I'm honest I find it a little boring and repetitive to play in a scenario where it's the powerset you'll use primarily. It doesn't have much flash in terms of animation.

First, I would familiarize yourself with Bodyguard Mode if you haven't already: https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Mastermind_Strategy Generally, it isn't always a bad thing to draw aggro from your pets - the tier 1 pets in particular are often very squishy - and when soloing you'll usually want to live in Bodyguard mode for that reason. In a group setting you'll mostly need to try and protect them from AoE. Get used to resummoning and accept that your pets are going to die sometimes, especially during the leveling process. That doesn't mean you shouldn't try to keep that from happening, but it will.

Out of the options you've presented, I'd seriously consider Thugs/Dark. Thugs are known to have some of the most well rounded pets, and the addition of Gang War gives them very high burst potential. Dark is similarly robust - a potent heal, a massive slow and res debuff, a stun, defense, and an additional pet - all while dropping enemy ToHit massively. All of the options are fine though. Bots/FF is very passive in itself, unless you decide to be bold and make more use of the set's KB - which can be fun :) Arguably the latest bloomer out of the three as well.