Coyote

I don't do farming, but the way my Plant/Savage goes through normal spawns at +3/x8 it should have no problems handling a farm at +4/x8... I only run +3 in case an AV drops by. Plant shuts pretty much everything down (and it's not like you'd be farming Confuse-resistant mobs except for practice in dealing where Seeds isn't useful), then Savage has a lot of AoE plus Creepers and Roots to eat minions fast. Then you have a lot of bodies to fuel tentacles so you get multiple tentacles hitting the Bosses... and they're hitting each other, too, due to Seeds. Plant/Earth and Plant/Thorns would also be good AoE options.

Arcanaville was gone, but her shadow lingers over this forum fore... oh, wait, my monitor was just dusty. Nevermind. 😆😝

Funny.... 5 expressed preferences for the secondary to pair with Fire... and they're all different 😄

Um, okay, but... the main effect of the Lich is -ToHit debuffs. I prefer to put Cloud Senses into it for great set bonuses, a damage proc, and enhancing the -ToHit. Its damage base is low enough that enhancing it isn't a great benefit, and while mezzing is nice, the Fear will get broken a lot by the other henchmen attacks, while the -ToHit won't. Unless you're running a set that already has a lot of -ToHit (Dark or maybe a Tankerminding Stormie), I think enhancing the -ToHit is more effective.

First, do the sets need to be different? If not, I would go with double Thugs. Sending in two Bruisers who can then split aggro and stack Handclap and double Footstomps for knockdows works a lot better than sending one in who may not survive pulling all that aggro. Then, stacking Maneuvers will help get them to or close to the softcap, so you can take two sets with +Resist to stack a lot of Resists together, or one +Resist set and Kinetics. An alternate option is double Demons, with the same plan: one set of +Resist to help get their Resists up, and one +Defense... maybe Cold and Thermal could make a theme.

3-slotted Heals and 6-slotted attacks? Clearly you don't know how to build or play a healer. Go back to the drawing board and 6-slot the three heals. 😛

You are correct. Changing their attack rate messed with the AI (for MOST pets... pets like Imps who only had one attack were probably not affected), so their powers were all blocked from being affected by Recharge buffing/debuffing. This was a deliberate design change, though I'm not sure that it couldn't be considered as having started from an AI bug.

I support this statement.

I would like to see Time Bomb changed into Explosive Drones... like Seeker Drones, but they will follow you and go and detonate when they aggro on something. So you can still use it PBAoE or pre-activate it and move around and still get some use out of them. Like Photon Seekers. Detonator could get the same effect, I think. Otherwise, make its Recharge lower and have it give some hefty debuffs, not only raw damage, so that you can sacrifice a henchman and turn a battle... an AoE explosion is good for clearing easy fights, but for easy fights do you really want to be sacrificing summonables all the time? And if it's a hard fight, then the damage probably isn't enough to turn it. And it's usually a hard fight because mobs spread everywhere and my henchmen are running in separate directions, so an AoE is likely to miss many of them. Some damage with a big -ToHit/-Damage debuff could turn a battle better than any damage lower than Overwhelming.

I had problems leveling both Fire/Fire and Fire/Rad, because neither of those secondaries help you survive (Rad's heal is clunky and undependable). I switched to a Fire/Psy and it leveled much more smoothly. If looking only at an end-game build, all three options put out very good damage. /Fire does it directly and with +Damage, /Rad uses Achilles Heel to help it catch up to the other two, and /Nrg has the Energy Release mechanism which is a bit clumsy but when it fires well it does a lot of damage in both single-target and AoE scenarios. So if looking only at the end game, I don't see that much difference in stats, it's more about how to play them: Fire is more ranged, Nrg definitely requires melee since Total Focus is the dependable Energy Stored mechanism, and Rad is mixed. For leveling up, I would personally run Fire/Nrg. Getting a lot of Force Feedback procs helps get perma-Dom earlier, the knockbacks and Stuns help with the low mitigation that Fire has before perma-Dom status, and damage is okay early and solid after you get Total Focus and can leverage Energy Release on Whirling Hands. Damage mitigation from your secondary is more relevant when leveling up than when running a level 50 perma-Dom build with good bonuses for Defense.

I got the blessing of the Gale 😉

Actually, back on Live, I think it was shown that a MM with fully slotted attacks will do better than their average Tier for every set... and for some sets, do better than their highest-damage Tier (albeit at a high Endurance cost). On Homecoming, with more damage available from damage procs, this is even moreso. My necro/sonic build will hit over 100 DPS from direct damage (before Incarnate abilities), although I doubt it can handle the Endurance burn for very long. No tier of pets anywhere does 100 DPS... granted, Necro is top for single-target DPS, but pretty much every MM except maybe Ninja can hit 50 DPS, and almost no pet tiers will break 50 DPS. Yes, taking and using MM attacks, especially with procs, will definitely make a noticeable increase in DPS. I mean, it's always going to be a higher DPS than your Tier 1s, and not have to worry as much about level differences. As long as you can sustain the drain, of course, which on MMs is more difficult.

Mind has enough flaws that I can't consider it as a very good set. Serviceable, true, especially with good play... but clearly behind other sets. 1) It lacks damage. Granted, there is a secondary for that, but it doesn't hurt when a pet is adding damage even with a separate damage powerset. 2) The opener (Terrify) adds AoE damage. But no ToHit debuff, and allows return fire, so... when you're using that secondary to do damage, the control effect of Terrify is minor, so it's just an underpowered AoE damage power with a backup utility of shutting down a portion of a fight to set it aside for later.. but not for actively fighting. 3) The other opener option (Mass Hypnosis) has similar problems but worse. It does open up some options like defeating a spawn one by one, but... doing that works against Confuse. However the real problem here is that this may have been useful when +0/x1 was the default setting. Now, with even soloers fighting larger groups of mobs, saying that Mind is good because it is very good at defeating mobs one by one... is a level of praise that evidences the problem. Alternating Mass Hysteria and Totally Dominating is cool and effective, but not so much that it overshadows the every-spawn controls of other sets. I like soloing, and I like my Mind Dominator, but the Dark Control one just gets more safety AND more damage out of her primary when soloing, and a lot more on teams.

I tried to, but it pushed me away. 😞

Is it? And if so, which I would be very willing to argue against... then, what is a "balanced damage output while running missions"? I will argue that the kind of balance using SOs also means +0/x2 or so opponents, and expecting your Endurance bar to drop and occasionally using Rest. So.... having a MM with your End bar dropping is EXPECTED and BALANCED if using SO, because frankly, if you're running a Tanker with just SOs you'll also have your blue bar dropping if you don't have a good End recovery option from your armor set. So the argument of "MM end usage is unbalanced because their blue bar drops when on SOs" is a non-starter with me because I see ALL of my characters having problems with Endurance when only using basic IOs (and that's usually including a Panacea plus a Performance Shifter), except for a few who specifically have +Recovery or +Endurance powers. If you want your blue bar to NOT drop, then you have to be considering IO sets on MMs, but that's the case for all ATs in general. I don't really buy the other argument, either, that "your blue bar stands still" when you're actively using both your primary attacks and your secondary on IOs, unless you're running Ageless. I totally can drop the End bar of almost any MM with IO sets... but that's usually at the start of the fight when putting out all of the AoE debuffs or such. In general, when fully slotted with IO sets, most MMs can sustain their power usage as long as they're not indiscriminately firing all of the powers including AoEs, and some loaded with procs rather than slotted for effect (and for endurance discount). But a single-target attack chain plus using heals is generally sustainable... leave the AoEs out and you should be okay with most builds.

EA with Demons... almost enough said 😉

Savage/Bio, Electric/Shield... because teleporting around the battlefield with AoE nukes is lotsa fun. Staff/Rad... because it has fun animations and good AoE which is rare for a Stalker. All three builds are very high in AoE for a Stalker (once you proc up the PBAoE heals from /Rad with damage procs).

None of the Immobs will prevent a Repel effect. While some will convert knockback to knockdown, I think that Electric and Gravity's AoE Immobs don't do this.

Heh, no way. +4/8 is for 50+, usually for highly Incarnate characters. It's doable in the 40s for a few builds, but... in the 30, I think you'd have to cherry pick opponents. I mean, try the First Ward/Night Ward stories, or Mr G's or Provost Marchand's stories at that difficulty level in the 30s and I doubt more than a handful of builds can do it. You don't even have to go that exotic, though... blueside is easier, but redside you face Longbow and Arachnos, and I wouldn't try those at +4/x8 without a level shift except maybe on 2-3 builds.

Way more -Def. I can probably think of most of the -Res mobs... I wouldn't even bother to try to think of the -Def ones since there are too many. But it's also an interesting fact that -Def and -Res work differently from each other. A -20% Res debuff increases the damage that you take by 20%. A -20% Def debuff... increases the damage very differently if you started at 10, 30, or 50 Defense. And maybe, on the level of the mobs (at some point, the mobs will be at 95% to hit you, and further Defense debuffing will do nothing to you).

Earth/Storm for controlled storming. Illusion/Storm for uncontrolled storming. Water/Storm for a real bad time for property values. And two AoEs with FF proc help bring out Moar Storm, and we know everyone loves more storm 😄

Yeah, I love the set bonuses on Stupefy, but turning Stuns into KB powers when you want them as openers is annoying, so I usually use a Controller/Dominator ATO set in there rather than Stupefy, since it also has a Recharge/Ranged Defense combination. And I don't use it in the Holds since I slot them up as damage powers, so putting the set into a Stun works fine for me.

What surprises me is this quote: "I cant even up the level or team size for mishes or I am eating dirt a lot." I found it slow to kill mobs, but very strong defensively. Probably Demons/EA would be stronger, maybe Thugs/EA, but... it's still a very strong defensive build. Something really seems unusual if DYING is the problem, and not slow kill speeds. I mean, at that level, I fought the two-AV fight in Night Ward, and I consider that a pretty high barrier for "is this character tough enough". Now, killing things, that was painfully slow at times. Finishing off a Zeus Titan is just painful. But survival was almost never an issue (and if it was, it was for a clear reason... like being sapped just when a Zeus Titan dropped flaming patches under my own bots, the danged copycat robot).

I don't run that anymore, but I have one simple suggestion times three: Force Feedback proc in EQ, Tornado, and LS Also, Stoney's main purpose is tanking, so put all 4 pet defense/resist IOs in him. Adding a bit more damage isn't as important as making him tougher. I'd finish with a SoulBound Damage and an Acc/Dam IO or Hami-O to get more out of him, but the defensive portion is the most important. Also, you don't need more control, you want more damage, so slot up Fossilize with damage procs.

That's similar to what I use, although there is another good option: Slot up Unkindness with two -Res procs (Achilles and Annihilation... the AA combo), and each has about a 50% chance to activate. It's not a bad option to stick that in before Living Shadows and boost the damage of the following AoEs, and it also sets you up with 2 stacks of Blood... then a full-distance Feral Charge takes you to 5 stacks, and Rending Flurry becomes 15' in radius. On teams, using the Unkindness option is definitely better since -Res boosts everyone's damage. Soloing, you get a damage boost and a radius boost, so I think it's worth it, but you're also taking longer to go into the PBAoEs. You're still doing around 200 damage with Unkindness, though, so it's not a great loss.