evetsleep

One thing to consider.. while thugs leadership powers don't affect you or other pets/henchmen, there is one exception and that's other thugs. This makes multiple thug MM's a little ridiculous at times.

I like to use them to take alpha's... If the build can fit it. So it's less about a debuffs but more about starting the fight with them.

My favorite part about trick arrow and MM's is that I don't need to re-apply shields to pets I have to resummon. That gets really old for some tough battles. It's also nice that TA works really well with fast moving teams. This means that when I'm playing super aggressive with my thugs/ta I don't get too upset when the arsonist goes off to do arsonist things and pays the ultimate price. I can just quickly resummon, toss upgrades, and carry on. To the OP, there is some nuance to your question where the answer will greatly depend on the MM primary. I'm pretty sure I have just about every MM primary/secondary combonat this point and the only one I really had a hard time with was poison. So it is possible to take different strategies to keep your pets alive depending on what kind of pets you have. BUT importantly not too long ago Homecoming made the pet summons recharge super fast and cost far less than they used to. This made resummoning not being nearly as painful as it used to be. I stress out far less when my pets die because of this. You have to keep in mind that your pet's, other than the boss, are lower level than you (generally speaking), so when they get hit, it'll hurt. I think you should get comfortable with having to resummon every now and then, even if you max out defense. Even with my ninja/force field mm, whose pets have ridiculous defense, will die from time to time. It happens.

I always look at traps (for any AT) as a great soloing secondary, but if I'm going to be teaming I tend to take my trick arrow MM's off the shelf. Plays similar, but a lot more friendly to a fast moving team. I don't really have problems with traps and teaming honestly, but most teams move way too fast to make traps feel useful.

Every time I take one of my marine MM's off the shelf for a drive I'm reminded how well this set jives with masterminds (of any kind). I don't think there is actually a bad pairing between the MM primaries and marine. I honestly think (and I say this quietly) that marine is a little over tuned and will probably get tweaked later on. But I do hope not as it's an insanely fun set to play with masterminds and really performs so well overall.

If you are sticking with Pain Domination, then really (in my opinion) you want a pet to cast your buffs on (such as Painbringer). Mind doesn't really get a pet so I'd put that aside, unless you are teaming a lot. The buffs you get in Pain Domination that affect pets are World of Pain (+dmg, +tohit, +resistance) and Painbringer (+reg, +recovery, +dmg). For illusion these can only be cast on your phantasm as your other temporary pets won't really benefit from them. Dark on the otherhand will. Illusion, as a set, won't benefit greatly from pain domination because of this since the main anchor of the set is phantom army, which cannot be buffed. However you can debuff their targets which means Anguishing Cry is helpful. I have played illusion\pain and it's alright, but a bit slow to start off until you get enough recharge to bring up phantom army when you want it (which is all the time). Darkness control, of the 3, would in my view, pair nicely with pain. Everything does -tohit, which makes you far less squishy and the pets will benefit from your pain buffs and it starts off a little stronger (imho). I think you'd have a smoother ride with dark\pain. Illusion\pain can work, but just remember to use Anguishing Cry you have to get in the middle of things...so it could be a little risky. Mind\pain would good if you're teaming a lot since Mind doesn't have any pets which would benefit from your pain-based buffs. My 2 inf.

I do fairly decent with my active claws/fire brute (think my old-school rad/fire probably does better, but that's a specialized build) when I feel like farming, but I pine for the day when I make a claws/stone brute. It'll probably never happen, but super jealous of scrappers/stalkers that they can make one.

I think this is the thing that I always get aggravated about when I play any of my dark armor tanks or brutes. When the disorienting kicks in they all start to wander off. So +1 for some kind of immobilizer.

You've reminded me about my necro/sonic MM that I had not played in ages and you're right. I took her for a spin this morning to refresh my memory. When it comes to combinations which mesh well with Sonic I think necro is a fine choice. The resists along with the individual pet heals (which is part of what makes ninja's nice these days) means they can independently take care of themselves. I need to take my demon\sonic for an update spin to see how it performs, but the new necro does quite well once some basic slotting happens. I think what helps here is the updated necro and the new Liquify combines for some really nice play patterns. I suppose the thing that makes sonic tolerable if you have pets that can heal themselves. The melee aspect of necro means you can easily take advantage of Disruption Field, which is nice. Nice call out there...I did enjoy this combo.

I think what saves Ninjas here is they can all self-heal. I have a thugs/sonic too, but even with great resistances, because they cannot heal themselves they're subject to folding in a long fight. Aid other can only go so far.

I have a bots/sonic that I take off the shelf every now and then. It's not horrible, but the issues you point out are in line with my experience. The buff to Liquify helps and the layering of defense + resistance is always a good strategy. The addition of the healing drone really expanded the survivability of non-healing builds that don't have a secondary that has one built in. I have driven pretty much every MM combo at this point and I find poison the absolute bottom with sonic right above it as well. Sonic isn't as frustrating as poison, it just doesn't perform nearly as well as others and I find it's repel one of the most annoying sounds in the entire game with large spawns.

As others have said, there are some good reasons to pick a Build-up, but I'd add it's not a must pick right away. I often save it as a 30+ pick.

Is that 8x4? I haven't tried with a blaster before but if your alpha doesn't kill the spawn don't you end up with a lot of runners? Btw, not saying other AT's can't farm. Really any can, but runners would significantly slow things down I would think.

Can confirm .. but also bio helps darks lower damage. They go pretty well together and compliment each other.

The cool thing they did, as others mentioned, is they allowed you to take fish out of the powers and also have a full range of colors to use. For example, you could have a MM master bot which is infused with nanobots (in the form of animated black sludge) which can be used to control other robots (your minions) as well as be used offensively\defensively against foes. There are a LOT of different creative things you can do with this particular powerset give the color\power customizations they made available.