Riverdusk

You can use macros to make it much easier though. I can soul extract a lich on demand by pressing these two binds (I use numpad divide and numpad multiply). /bind divide "petcom_pow Zombie dismiss$$petcom_pow Grave dismiss$$releasepets" /bind multiply "powexecname Soul Extraction$$petselect 0" Someone else may be able to come up with a better way. Course you then still have to resummon and buff them all again, but it does make it a bit quicker. I still tend to only bother when I really feel the need for the extra firepower though and yes it is mostly used for the pet IO's.

Ah, misunderstood what you meant by that. I don't use a hero builder (I have my own spreadsheet I use to build), so not familiar with the tricks needed to use it. Makes sense.

Not had a lot of experience with thermal, but for your other questions: Most of the incarnate stuff affects the pets (alpha affects their slotting, destiny can protect/heal them, they proc interface (diamagnetic is a good choice if you want to make them more tanky to stack even more -tohit), hybrid support even doubles its effect for pets). Kismet only affects you. Unless I'm missing something, not sure why'd you'd take arcane bolt instead of just taking gloom. Gloom is a much better attack. Do NOT delay taking dark empowerment past level 32 when you can first take it. It is a HUGE upgrade to all your pets. It is also what gives the self heal power to all your pets, helping them to stay alive. Also gives better attacks to your knights, and fearsome stare to the lich, which also helps keep your pets alive.

Did you have all the pet IO's slotted in your previous attempts? They make a huge difference. Got my necro/sonic just to 50 recently and I didn't have too many issues during the trip up. Sure, the pets die occasionally (I find that true no matter what combo you use unless you are just soloing on lower difficulties), but far from constantly. Tends to happen when they get spread out enough to start to lose some of the protections being close to the MM gives them (like maneuvers and my dispersion bubble). In tougher content you may need to keep them close by and maybe try to let the tank/brute take that alpha before you order them in. Also not saying zombies aren't on the squisher side because honestly they are compared to some other MM pets, but if you like them for the theme/aethestics (like I do), they are definitely workable. I exemp'd down and joined a level 24 team just the other day and a demon/nature MM on the team even commented "How are your zombies so tanky? My demons are getting slaughtered" I noted he didn't have the pet IO's yet and told them they help a ton. And of course incarnate powers take it to a whole nother level once you get those. As to secondaries, /Time is definitely one of the tankiest in my experience. Between all the slows and defense and the very nice aoe heal, it is one of the easiest to use to keep everything alive. I'd definitely recommend it if you are having troubles.

And the Rularuu eyeballs who get +100 tohit. Some of the Shard TF's can be a pain.

Does Gaussian's proc rate in tactics not depend on number of "teammates" (which includes pets) anymore? I seem to still see it proc pretty regularly with it in tactics myself. Of course it doesn't do much good unless you have some attacks to use yourself.

Can't really speak definitely on actual outside buff/debuffs as I never really paid that close attention, but I've never seen this mentioned before and I'd be surprised if they aren't fully affected by them. To note though, and I often see this asked about/misunderstood in help channel is that slotting endurance reduction in the pets does affect BOTH the cost to summon and the endurance costs of the pet attacks. Some pets do tend to get low on endurance just from attacking and slotting endurance reduction definitely makes a noticeable difference. On the other hand, some pets seem to never have endurance issues so they don't have to worry about it. Those same pets probably don't have to worry about endurance drain much either since their attacks are so endurance light. This also adds a chance to knockdown in pets/attacks that don't normally have one. Great to slot in a lot of the tier 1 pets (for example putting it in zombies gives all three a chance to knockdown with every attack which greatly helps their survivability). Yes, I have noticed sometimes it sends things flying away instead of just knocking them down, but it is rare (and I assume due to it sometimes stacking from it triggering multiple times close to simultaneously).

One correction, Necro - Lich has 0% psionic resistance (strange but true). And Necro cc resistances: Zombies: 4 protect (terrorize, sleep), 1 protect (stun), 50% resistance (terrorize, sleep), 100% resistance (speed) Grave Knight: 4 protect (terrorize, sleep), 1 protect (stun), 50% resistance (terrorize, sleep), 100% resistance (speed) Lich: 4 protect (terrorize, sleep) Poor /sonic isn't even listed. 😄 Sonic Sonic Barrier: 15% resistance (smash, lethal, toxic) Sonic Haven: 15% resistance (fire, cold, energy, negative) Sonic Dispersion: 11.25% (all but psionic), 5.19 protection (hold, stun, immobilize) Clarity: 7.78 protection (confuse, terrorize, hold, immobilize, stun, sleep), 129.75% resistance (sleep), +64.88% perception And not sure if you want to include it: Disruption Field: -22.5% resistance toggle debuff to enemies around a selected pet

I'd say a lot of those design decisions made were more based on flavor than anything (just like they originally did with animation times on attacks). Zombies have to be slow moving because they're zombies right?! I think that's about as much thought as went into that one honestly and I'd love to see them get a movement speed boost. Same with the summoning differences with demons and others as mentioned. Basically they wanted to make a cool looking demon summon animation and thugs are pretty straightforward in comparison.

A design philosophy that the devs would make a bunch of powers they didn't expect their players to actually use doesn't make sense to me. I fully believe devs thought most MM's would take and use their attacks, just that they weren't as critical to be constantly spamming them since they have other (endurance free) attacks through their pets. Therefore, to balance out their (endurance free pet attacks), their direct attacks were made to cost more. That doesn't account for the cost of needing to resummon pets of course (which is when you can run into trouble). On my necro/sonic (who's attacks are actually decent and quick and one of the MM's I DO take and use the attacks), I use gloom and lifedrain (my only heal), constantly. Necro also needs to use the extra damage of the attacks imo being on the lighter side of the relative MM damage scale. And yes this combo takes a TON of endurance and I've had to IO a lot for recovery and +end and use the SG base empowerment +recovery (great overlooked buff there btw) to make it work. Recovery serums from P2W are nice as well in a pinch. Definitely the roughest of any MM combo I've tried when it comes to managing endurance. I certainly wouldn't look away from having some endurance costs cut, but I think the bigger culprit is the /sonic side. I could see the argument for cutting the endurance costs for every AT for that set.

The scrapper version of bio also has a taunt aura. Maybe not as strong, but usually enough to prevent too much issue with runners in my experience. Why I tend to only play scrapper secondaries that do have a taunt aura (several do, several do not), so I'm right there with you.

The Lava and Crystal alternate animations I find a bit shorter. I always go with those for that reason.

Original build also has stealth, invisibility, and shadowfall. Pretty sure you can't run those at the same time. Even if you can shadowfall plus a +stealth IO is all the stealth you'd need. A /dark really doesn't need concealment pool at all. I could MAYBE see getting grant invis if you really want your pets to be fully invisible (if they keep close to you) for some reason, but that'd be a stretch (and a pain to have to cast it on all 7 of them constantly).

So true, that is such a great tip and I think what helped my lower level necro more than anything.

Yep, they are probably close enough I'd definitely go with which ever one you prefer from a feel standpoint (which is generally the most important thing anyway). Sounds like elec for you.

Up to level 35 with my necro/sonic and it has been pretty easy going, but I don't tend to get too crazy with the difficulty settings solo, yet anyway. When I've teamed they've stayed alive a lot better than most other necro combo's I've tried. Some of that probably because most teams have extra +def buffs and healing, not usually so much in the way of +res, which is a plus in this case. Also have to consider what you can do incarnated out. Take cardiac (which I'll probably take as endurance is the one thing that has been somewhat of an issue) which also gives resistance and you're up to about 81%. Take barrier and you are at a minimum of all times of 86% and half the time you are at 88.5%. Now we're talking the JUST shy I was thinking of. Also tempted by rebirth too though, will have to see which works out better. Demons would be great as well no doubt, but for them sonic is actually overkill in some areas. I still think thermal (or even nature) probably works out better with them. I do particularly like this combo on necro because for both sonic and thermal secondaries there is a huge psi hole. Zombies and grave knights just happen to have built in psi resistance (demons have none). Psi resist won't be quite as high as the rest, but still respectable.

Yep, circle of thorns are notorious as well, ton of -tohit debuffs and then those demons that turn on invincibility. Don't forget focused accuracy (or targetting drone) from your epic. I tend to almost always end up grabbing them on any character I can. More for that very hard to come by tohit debuff resistance but the bit of accuracy and tohit buff is nice too. Always the kismet +6 tohit as well, one of the best uses of 1 slot.

By the way, you can't powerboost cold shields. They have resistance to them so they can't be boosted. Don't forget about necro/sonic which is the way to go if you really want to go all in on resistance. You can come JUST shy of capping resistances with it, especially so depending on your incarnate choices. Also, necro is chock full of tohit debuffs in their attacks, so they can be hard to hit just from their natural attacks. It is a huge part of the whole purpose of the Lich, it is like having a pocket dark defender. As for healing, with the 2nd upgrade your pets can all heal themselves, take life drain and you can heal yourself. I haven't seen the need for medicine. Also don't need to tankermind with it, my pets are tougher than I am really. Can see it talked about here:

It also has a very good use in aim or build up (where it has a 90% chance to go off every time to basically double or more the +damage of those powers). But since you went with follow-up (not a bad choice), that wouldn't apply for you. Have to say one of the strangest things to me still is that fortunata can take both follow-up and aim, but night widow are locked out of taking both follow up and buildup. I think them getting rid of that restriction would give night widow a bit more of a boost that I think they need. Spin is one of the best powers in the game (no matter what AT), I'd definitely pick that one up. If anything I'd drop eviscerate for it. Eviscerate is slow and not really that great of an attack (and has a silly looking animation imo, but that's more subjective). Though, if you are really looking to drop a melee single target attack swipe would probably be the best choice. For the epic I went with the same one and also only took one power, but went with fences. Personally I like having an immobilize available to prevent runners, especially on characters that don't have taunts.

To me I don't find it that hard to monitor an extra click and fire it off manually (I find the trick for me is to just make sure it is on the left side of one of my trays, I tend to notice it more). Especially for something like mind link that is a team wide buff I'd rather have the opportunity to move to try and make sure I hit more of my team ( or critical members) before it fires off. I treat it the same as things like accelerate metabolism or far sight on my controllers/MM/defenders. I don't call it out or anything, but if I can quickly maneuver to hit a few more team members I'll try to do so. A little bit of down time on it is also usually not a big deal, unlike with say a dominator where you get to start all over building up that bar if it drops for even a millisecond and you lose your status protection.

As others have mentioned, for me stalkers have taken over the scrapper spot, not brutes. In general at least. Brutes, scrappers, and stalkers all have different powersets that work best for each I feel. So, a lot of times it more comes down to which melee/defensive powersets I want to play, and that determines which AT I use. Stalkers though, once you get the 3 magical procs (the two ATO procs and a Gausian chance for BU), they do turn into insane killing machines.

I like it as well and find it does have separate uses from hurricane for me anyway. If anything just remove the accuracy penalty, not seeing the point of it. Also makes no sense conceptionally, how hard is it to hit something with a huge cone of wind anyway? If anything it should have an accuracy bonus. it's the shotgun blast of storm powers. 😄

Practiced brawler is worse to me, as it doesn't have any worthwhile extra effects for it to stack. At least shield has the extra DDR and Ninja has the extra stacking psi resistance. On my SR I was actually wishing I could slot negative recharge into my practiced brawler so I could get it to go off only once every 2 mins. Thanks to global recharge even with no recharge slotted it was still auto firing way before the 2 mins was up. Stacking practiced brawler is generally just a waste of animation time and lowers your dps.

I'd add the controller psionic mastery Indomitable Will and Mind over Body to the list, which don't have a minimal option at all. Even changing the colors doesn't help much. I find the swirling circles all over my body more distracting than the frozen armor minimal. And you can't say they have to be there for RP reasons, the armor is from my mind!, it can darn well be invisible and doesn't need visible swirling circles. The radiation armor sets are also bad enough that I refuse to play them. I think it is more the busy graphics that bother me (like radiation and the psi ones I mentioned, I find them very distracting). I might try the camera trick option mentioned earlier for this set though.

My understanding was that is working as intended, at least to my memory even back on live. The "120 second" type (Kismet, Numi, Miracle, Celerity, etc.) in a click you get the 120 seconds. In an auto it is always on. For a toggle it is only while the toggle is active. The most noticeable example of course are the +stealth ones. I guess they could have programmed the +stealth ones to work differently just to deal with the escort issue and I just assumed it was consistent across all of them though.