Crysis

Archery/Nin, take mace mastery for Scorpion Shield. You can softcap S/L/E and AoE and even F/C defenses. After soloing Redside, you’ll have an effective AE farming blaster. And it’s a very stylish blaster to boot!

There’s lots of ways to build and play MM’s. If I’m playing almost anything /Storm, it’s a DPS machine, as one example. But others play /Storm purely for the mass chaos/fun that they enjoy. That’s the nice thing about the AT, the variability. I know some MM’s who NEVER leave bodyguard mode and play entirely defensively. It’s obvious because you’ll be teaming with them and look over your shoulder and all the pets will be just be standing there, arms at their side, while the MM throws out a few attacks or debuffs or whatever. Now I personally wouldn’t say THAT style of play is “playing the AT well” but hey, its viable if the team will let you get away with it. But without trying to oversimplify things.... -Your secondary has debuffs. Debuffs are there to lower defenses, resistances, reduce to-hit or otherwise make your opponents easier to kill. -Your secondary has heals/recovery effects or shielding of some kind. Those serve to make you and your pets sturdier (or other teammates) or to otherwise allow you to sustain longer periods of incoming damage so you can whittle down your opponents safely. -Your secondary offers a powers amplifier of some kind. Better shields/heals, better DPS, less END or whatever. Or in the case of Storm, more DPS output thanks to damage-dealing pseudo-pets. The point of your secondaries all boils down to either improving your damage, improving your survival versus incoming damage or amplifying some native power effect. So for me, taking my primaries, which delivers at least SOME DPS (admittedly low levels) is in DIRECT harmony with the goal of this game. Kill the spawn before it kills you. If you are spamming your secondaries to better survive/sustain inbound damage, but you aren’t dishing out DPS to eliminate the threat faster, then they effectively are two methods of accomplishing the same goal. So use BOTH to get it done faster! I’ve read enough of the MM Pylon tests to believe that taking and slotting at least some of my primary attacks matters in overall DPS output. And this game entirely REVOLVES around a DPS formula. So honestly, there’s very little argument to be had that putting out as MUCH DPS as you possibly can, regardless of solo or grouped, is the objective of this game. And lets be real...not like our buffs/debuffs are any better than our damage relatively speaking when compared to other AT’s.

I’m interested also, but for my slightly modified version of Redlynne’s build I took: -Agility Core; I found I wasn’t getting the DEF caps listed in MIDS in-game, so Agility got me most of the ways there, and the +RECH and +ENDREDUX were also nice. Normally I’d go with Musculature on a MM but I don’t like hitting 50 and not being softcapped -Destiny Clarion. Toss up between that and Barrier. Barrier is great for the Ninja’s although you won’t need it as much. -Hybrid, Lore, Judgment...season to taste. Being Ninja’s, I went with Knives for the ninja chicks.

As others have said, this is a valid question. And the answer is like with most slotting tactics...it depends on the character. I tend to build for high recharge and some form of Capped Defense (S/L, Ranged, Melee, etc) in almost all of my builds. But that usually dictates running supplemental Defense toggles -AND- spamming a fast attack chain repeatedly....both of which burn significant amounts of END. As a result, I almost always am slotting Panacea, Numina and Miracle +END uniques in health and the Perf Shifter +END, the latter in Stamina. And if on a Scrapper with Body Mastery, often find myself two slotting Physical Perfection and Quick Recovery with additional Perf Shifter +END as well. This is typically for leveling as once I hit incarnates I’m typically grabbing Destiny - Ageless which shores up all END issues forever, allowing me to respec the build, strip out a few of the attuned Perf Shifters and pass them down to my next alt. I don’t think I’ve actually bought a Perf Shifter in months now since I follow this routine religiously. I find people often forget that Incarnate powers can pretty much fix any build deficiencies, and often allow you to completely respec the character once you have them. Many people take something like Agility for their Alpha and it’s like “Ahhhh, my END issues are gone” which is true, but then don’t realize they now have the ability to do a respec into an even MORE powerful AT because of the bonuses Alpha slots provide. You also have the Atlas Medallion which raises your Max END which, in conjunction with Perf Shifter (which delivers a % of total END as the bonus) improves performance of the proc. There’s also numerous X% recovery bonuses from a variety of IO sets and it’s worth chasing those as most don’t require six-slotting to get them. And, although frowned on by some ‘purists’ the Recovery Serum and Survival buff from the P2W vendor, if you have the money, are amaze-balls tools for END management while leveling. I usually buy max Recovery serum at level 1 with my sugar-daddy starter funds I give to each alt.....very helpful tool. Base Empowerment Buffs are also cheap +END tools although you have to refresh them often.

I have a few MM’s who wade right into the middle of the spawn (I often build for S/L softcapped +Def) and spam Cross Punch. Procc’d put it does decent damage and some soft control. Besides it looks cool when you are shoulder to shoulder with your lead henchman (especially the Bruiser on Thugs) and laying the smack down right with him.

I don’t fully understand the whole “don’t take attacks” mentality. Proc those suckers out and take ‘em. What else you doing while your henchmen attack and waiting on your secondaries to Cooldown? Scratching your butt? Take your primary attacks, they are there for a reason!

Can confirm this on a Thugs/Time, Thugs/Traps and Thugs/Storm. However only their "costume" appearance changes. They still retain their T1/T2 upgraded powers.

Bots are a lot more fun to play now, as are many of the other sets. It's really kind of cool to hang back with the Bots and manage the battlefield from range, letting them just open fire and drop the hurt. Most of their best powers work that way.

Beam Rifle vs Archery feel very different. BR in particular feels very “FPS’ish” in that the combat stances are all basically that room-clearing, gun-to-shoulder pose. Archery is more just carrying the bow before you use it for attacks. /Ninja is mostly passive stuff short of a couple of throws and the swords of course. Martial Combat is very active feeling to me. Ki Push + any attack is so much fun for animations and then the leg sweeps and such just look awesome. I have an Archery/MC but the two sets don’t really complement each other very well. Flashy Hawkeye kind of toon but obviously /Tac Arrow is the better build for that.

I’ve played the missions so many time I honestly don’t even notice if I have a “helper.” They are just disposable, non targetable NPC’s to me. Kill speed is so fast that I never usually even acknowledge I have on in the map unless I happen to notice them idle after wiping up a spawn. “Oh look, there’s Manticore.”

Most well-built MM's can solo +4/x8 reliably from about 45 onwards. But my issue with PUG's on my MM's is if I'm below 50, I'm sidekicked to 49, meaning my henchmen are 48'ish. So for them, they are swinging at +6's which is largely going to be a whiffest and a meat grinder for them. And, unlike my henchmen, I canNOT control the rest of the PUG team. Much as I try.....

I don’t but given all the fuss over Fold Space I’m wondering if it would be a viable Fold Space + Fulcrum + Nuke gimmick?

Although I abandoned him in the mid 40’s, my Thugs/Elec took Cross Punch and I was working on softcapped S/L Defense and had Rune from Sorcery as my oh crap button. It worked really well for tankerminding as Cross Punch drew decent aggro with some soft control. So the shield just stayed over me and the henchmen would mostly stick close to me since I was in middle of spawn. Ultimately I just found Thugs/Elec, and Bots/Elec, to be a highly survivable build but low damage output. Demons/EA might be better but I’ve kind of given up on WA overall in favor of /Storm, /Time and /Dark. Ninja/EA to me sounds incredibly frustrating. I loved my (well @Redlynne’s build) Ninja/Time. Can’t imaging Ninjas being any better than that combo.

I know it’s been said in this thread and countless others but the fact is you should be the PUG you wish was always the case. Lead one and call shots/tactics as you wish. Or arm yourself for PUG meltdowns by carrying temps/pets or whatever. Or do what I do and only take durable AT’s on PUG’s. I won’t take my non-incarnate MM’s on PUG’s at +4/x8 because I know at 49 All but my T3 henchman is going to be mostly useless other than as disposable aggro fodder, and my support capabilities will be equally neutered. But I can throw a decently slotted scrapper onto the team and contribute some damage and survive (usually) without much effort. I’ll save my lowbie MM/Controller/Dom for coordinated teaming with my SG or other known-friendlies.

I carry max qty Envenomed Daggers as my PUG rescue pill. Usually a Signature Summons or two as well. Works almost every time, especially if someone else has the Daggers. We’ve all had disaster PUGs. To me that’s just part of the experience of this casual MMO. Even PUG’s can succeed thanks to prevalence of temp powers and no-set-team-makeup required.

Trick to making Beam feel “meaty” is high recharge. You get a good chain going and disintegrate coupled with the nuke do very well together on teams. Solo, I can concede the point as it’s harder to get things bunched up to take advantage of the disintegrate mechanic of Beam.

Beam/TA before the nerf was an amazing ranged “overwatch” kind of character. I loved warehouse missions because I could hang out in the ceiling in one spot and pretty much just lay waste to the entire room from a distance. Post nerf it lost a lot of its abilities and I can’t recommend it now.

While I’m all for “I CAN do this thing and so I went and DID it,” I’m actually surprised that if 3 multi boxed MM’s can totally destroy the aggro limits of the AE farming maps and you basically have maxed out damage, resistance debuffs, etc etc.....it still takes THREE MM’s with all the crazy game-breaking mechanics to match (or possibly even beat) the kill speed of a SINGLE Spines/Fire Brute. 3:1 tells me Brutes were/are game breaking.

I dunno, I played a Demons/TA on Live and it sucked. Then I rebuilt it on HC and it sucked less but still wasn’t fun. Then they buffed /TA and so I played it again....and stopped at 44. It’s just a very underperforming set even with the buffs, at least relative to all other options you have available. I ended up using Redlynnes Ninja/Time build just so I could enable a bow with my concept theme. Fully procced out the Ninja bow attacks are decent. And at least that set felt fun relative to the slog that was /TA for me.

Just did a little more testing. On my Thugs/Storm, I pulled out the Explosive Strike procs on both the Thugs and Bruiser and replaced both with FF+Rech procs. If I throw out Tornado or LS, +Rech procs almost every time ON THOSE TWO POWERS, usually on Summon, although I think I saw LS proc once or twice after it was already out. If I let the boys run by themselves, NO +RECH Proc. Not on Summon, nor on play. Tested dozens of times. On my Ill/Storm, did similar test using Phantasm. Same thing, no FF+Recharge proc on summon, nor during play. LS, Tornado, Water Spout, etc....all other summoned 'psuedo-pets' or whatever those are, they procc'd. Again, tested dozens of times. So yes, can confirm on MM henchmen and at least on Phantasm for an Illusion Controller, there appears to be no FF+Rech procc'ing going on for anything I'd slot into them. But since the change to Soulbound behavior, I tend to only slot damage procs into the Hechmen so wouldn't have noticed this behavior otherwise. So the issue appears to be with Henchmen or Controller Pets (and maybe other pets too, haven't checked there yet), but not the summoned powers like Tornado, Waterspout, etc.

Just tested this.... On an Ill/Storm Controller, FF+Rech procs added to LS and Tornado, procs often ON ME. I'm averaging 253-325% Recharge while they are out, allowing me triple LS as normal. On an Demon/Storm MM, FF+Rech procs added to LS and Tornado, procs almost every time ON ME. I'm averaging 242-315% Recharge while they are out, allowing me triple Tornado and double LS. On a Thus/Storm MM, FF+Rech procs added to LS and Tornado, same results. Those are typically the only "affects caster" procs I apply to my /Storm Controllers and MM's. But I'm not seeing the bug you are indicating, at least not for that specific Proc?

Just to confirm, those two extra options show up once the client has managed to download the update. Mine did sometime overnight and they are enabled now.

I suspect because my HC client was in an error mode the three dots wouldn’t show “Verify” or “Check for Updates.” I’ll try to remove the client and do a complete reinstall, or just stick with Tequila since it works fine.

On my third reboot now. On HC launcher. Installer is pointing to d:\games\coh. Can’t update pre-release or Beta, and still can’t update game. Just downloaded Tequila on this machine. It’s downloading files now. Sounds like I’ll need to revert back to Tequila to play today.

Clicking three dots for me gives me "Settings" or "Uninstall" Went through all the Settings dialogs, no re-validate option in there. I think that's only for Tequila launcher. I'm running HomeComing Launcher on this machine. Again, on Tequila, everything is working fine.