Crysis

Did a TF earlier and during AV battle realized I had 14 pets out PLUS 2-3 Spectres at all times. 6 henchmen 6 Ghosts using Soul Extraction 2 Lore Pets ------- 14 pets +3 Spectres from primary attacks So 17 technically, although 9 of them not controllable. I suppose depending on my secondary (Storm in my case) I have triple LS and triple Tornado out at once, so those are another +6 pseudo-pets. /Dark would have fluffy, etc. But I'm thinking Necro is now about the king of pets out at once? amirite?

A glass of bourbon and fresh roasted pecans. Easy on my keyboard, and I tell myself the pecans cancel out the liver damage.

As long as it says Scourge over a spawn we are attacking, I’m doing my job. If I’m NOT REALLY doing my job, then stay quiet about this please.

Storm Blast getting absolutely ZERO love…. Color me shocked. After alllllll that feedback given during beta. SHOCKED I say!

So much seconding this. I used to be huge on /Time for Ninja’s and several other MM primaries, but /Cold and Ninja’s work really, really well together. Same for Mercs although obviously Ninja’s are going to be very melee oriented. Cold requires so few slots to be super effective that you can load up your personal attacks and if you still feel you need something else consider Cross Punch, more for the KD than the damage, although procc’d out it’s not so bad as far as MM attacks go. But otherwise, a Ninja/TA is a lot of fun and very thematic. I often show up on ITF “All Bow User” teams and people are often surprised that MM Ninja primary attacks are bow based.

I started one of these but at around 36 I parked it and rolled a Merc/Cold. Might pick up the M/D again but wow I was impressed with Merc/Cold.

You say bug I say MM buff. Actually makes me wonder what other ways I can leverage this buff.

I’ve seen it double stack on Grave Knights frequently but I’ve never seen it apply double damage bonus….just two buff icons.

Just wait until they finally get around to nerfing procs….

I was a bit surprised I had to get this far in the thread without someone mentioning pet slotting, esp for MM AT. For that matter, anyone who procs out their attacks usually is already sacrificing some IO bonus here or there in favor of more damage. HO/D-Syncs are great in these powers to shore up either Acc, DMG or both. If you are already frankenslotting it’s a good idea to see if you can free up a slot and still min/max within that particular power. Likewise for MM pets since they typically have multiple powers of their own that make it hard sometimes to fully max out with traditional pet IO sets. And almost all MM’s are starved for slots. The recent makeover Necro pets got screams for several HO/D-Sync opportunities, especially with the two “power up” enchantments. Those used to be 1-slot wonders but since one is +Res and the other is +Regen/Heal they now benefit greatly from 2-3 slots each. Ribosome’s and Golgi’s or equivalents in particular. “Min/Max” isn’t just for full builds. There’s plenty of one or two slot powers that can be effectively min/maxed with just two slots that would benefit from HO/D-Sync slotting.

Is there a full list somewhere of the ‘memorial’ NPC’s?

Not the answer the OP was looking for, but I had an alt in a RP SG once upon a great long while ago, only time I ever played RP in this game. At any rate, there were strict rules about the effects on a players’ character after engaging certain elements of the Lore of the game. For example, anytime you faced Vahz or undead you would be weakened for some period of time. In order to simulate that ‘weakness’ you were required to strip enhancements from certain powers that otherwise boost vitality, agility, etc. And you were forbidden from using travel powers for the duration of the “after effects” of the engagement. It was a well-written/conceived list of ‘consequences’ and was part of the RP fabric of the SG. There were a few “curses” that would permanently cripple your character, at least for awhile. For example, if you were defeated in combat against an AV you’d be forced to lose any Tier 9 powers in any subsequent missions against the forces aligned to that AV (COT if lost to Infernal, etc.). The RP rules of the SG effectively made the game FAR more difficult than fun to me so I didn’t stick with it, but your comment about RP curses reminded me of it. Perhaps one way you can play out the “curse” motif is to take debuff powers that are color tintable in a way to simulate the curse being applied to your targets. Radiation, Dark, etc all would work well for this purpose. Then apply some of the curses to yourself as mentioned above (lose an enh/temp loss of a power) if you are defeated as the “curse backfired.”

I won’t say who as it was actually several, but I repeatedly watched “leechers” standing around by the terminal directly opposite the entrance to the apartment complex. They were close enough to earn XP, but far enough away to stay out of the melee. Pure leeching. I’m assuming most were alts to others actively playing in the TOT league as a couple showed up in my Global Friends as new alts while their owner also showed up on their primary accounts as being in-zone on a team of 8. But more than a few times, I watched “leechers justice” kick in when people would deliberately pull aggro onto the leechers from either nearby street trash and/or (more often) directly from the apartment spawns. It was clear to see the leechers weren’t actively played as they’d just die and their bodies would lie there for some time before the account owner came back and rezzed them at the nearby hospital. Leeching has always been part of this game, door-sitting or otherwise. I even see it in the Hive during Hami raids or the RWZ raids. Leechers gonna leech.

Lots of control macro sets available. I love @Sandolphan’s myself. I even carry a small bluetooth keypad with me just to play MM’s with those binds. its so easy to just go from defensive, to aggressive, to attack my target. Its become second nature for me.

You’d have to get rid of IO’s, Enhancement Diversification (allowing you to 6-slot stuff), roll back a ton of nerfs, roll back the Global Defense Nerf, etc etc. Honestly, as much fun as it was running around with Perma-MOG running on my Regen scrappers and tanking Hamidon, while trying to avoid the packs 9-10 fiery chimps chasing every Fire/Kin controller around while tankers rounded up entire zones at a time…..I can’t say I truly miss that. It was horrifically, and in some cases, comically broken from a balance perspective back then.

Hurricane -was- a foundational power for Storm Summoning. It still is for Defenders, maybe Controllers also. But as a Corruptor or MM, you want to build for offense. So most players these days drop Hurricane, double down on +Recharge powers (even Burnout) and procs, and just go full offense. Double LS, Double Tornado every single spawn, and triple to quad with Burnout flipped on. You'll suck END like nobody's business but so many ways to offset that these days between procs and Amplifiers until you get Destiny>Ageless. It's just silly to build out any other way unless you just enjoy taking "the scenic routes" to cleaning up spawns. I've played both ways and there's just little need for Hurricane in the current game on a Corruptor. Why push them around when you can just destroy them outright?

I once took a Fire/NRG blaster all the way to 50 (pre-Incarnate days) in a 48 hour marathon ONLY street sweeping. Back then (I3 or so) Blasters were pretty fragile. It was a forum dare I think where someone kept saying Blasters needed huge help to survive. Of course, the secret for street sweeping always was/has been you can choose your own targets, those that are weak to your attacks while not throwing out status attacks of their own. Was fun though. My eyes hurt after that marathon though.

The real key to playing /Storm on a MM that I think most players don’t quite grasp is that you are NOT a defender and you shouldn’t try to use Storm’s defensive powers to “protect the team” or your henchmen. That’s fine for a Defender, and even to some extent for a Controller, but on a MM you really want to maximize your firepower/DPS. This is why the Devs in their original design of the AT nerfed our damage output so harshly and gave our henchmen level shifts. They KNEW how devastatingly OP a MM could be with pets on auto-pilot attacks. So what you do with /Storm is build for +Recharge. Lots of it. From set bonuses and all those FF +Rech procs. It’s not uncommon for me to go from spawn to spawn at a sustained 200-225% +Recharge. That means Tornado/LS is up almost all the time, and casting it gives me more +Rech to get it out there yet again. So double Tornado and double LS is very possible. On my Thugs/Storm I have Burnout as well which takes the stupid-long recharge of GangWar and lets me get those buggers out about every third spawn. Of course, this comes at a price…Endurance. I tend to load up on all the temp powers for +END (Survival Amplifier, Base temp powers, Recovery Serums…the works) until I can get Ageless Incarnate, or Cardiac if you prefer. Yes, +RECH does nothing for your henchmen, and I think this is what throws a lot of MM’s who think “Well why do I care about +RECH if my pets don’t benefit?” They don’t…but LS and Tornado -are- pets in a fashion, and the more you have of them out the more damage you and your pets are doing together. With the new changes that give you even more benefit by taking your personal attacks….also more DPS to throw out there. And since you won’t be taking Hurricane, Snowstorm, etc….your slots are free for personal attacks as well. So get all the +RECH you possibly can. Trust me…you’ll understand quickly why the Devs haven’t tweaked up our damage or given us even-leveled henchmen. The MM AT has the potential to be game breaking, and the closest you’ll get to seeing that is a high Recharge /Storm MM.

Personally, I wish the Devs long ago would have made certain powers -automatically- become "Effect Self" only. Group Fly, Group Invis, Arctic Fog +Stealth, Steamy Mist+Stealth, etc. And force a popup in the UX that says "Player X is offering you Stealth/Fly/Invis/FreeStuff do you Accept?" But I realize that's a lot of programming for something maybe not that many really care about. But for the ones that DO, they REALLY CARE about it.

Demon/Storm and Thug/Storm still top of the heap. Demon/Cold is a close second. Since /Storm is all about more DPS, you want to pair it with top level DPS henchmen. I love my Mercs/Cold and Mercs/Storm and Bots/Storm and Necro/Storm and...and...and....but always come back to either Demons/Storm or Thugs/Storm for raw DPS output. Play what you like though....pretty much any MM combo does well with /Storm since it is, after all, mostly just more DPS. Skip/respec out of hurricane and focus on Freezing Rain, Steamy Mist, Tornado and Lightning Storm. Throw in lots of FF+Rech procs and get your recharge way up over 200% easily. Take every +END temp power you can because you'll be thirsty. And go to town. Play -OFFENSIVELY- which is why you can ignore Hurricane and Snowstorm. Why herd them up when you can just take them out in half the time? Have fun!

Sents are literally the perfect beginners hero AT. Highly survivable, mez defense, decent but not great damage. Tank mages, but scaled down dps. Fun to play, but you tend to outgrow them quickly.

The best way to enjoy this game is to leave it for awhile. We no longer have (as much) to worry about since the “liberation” of the code. But I get burnt out on the game ever so often due to the repetitive nature of playstyle/missions. So I take a break, go play a new FPS or MMO game (really having fun with Battlebit Remastered right now) and/or catch up on some binge-worthy series and then I’ll see/hear/read something that inspires a new alt and I’m back again chasing the “Conga-Rats” dopamine ding-fest of leveling up a new superhero. This has worked for me since 2004. It’s an easy, pick-up-and-play game that offers various degrees of challenge (albeit all of them pretty easy) depending on your chosen AT/powers/slotting and difficulty setting/enemies presented. Just walk away for awhile and come back when you want. Nothing to force you to play so often now.

I’d not delete an alt that highly leveled. For starters, updates happen to sets all the time and while Merc’s recently got updated, it’s always possible the MM class as a whole is up for future updates, secondaries like Sonic included. So you might find yourself wanting to try that alt again after any future updates. What I do instead is what is commonly called a “meltdown” of the alt. You basically sell off all you can (or transfer to base storage), email anything account-bound where possible (combining merits into hero merits to make this easier where possible, etc) and then do multiple respecs on the character, dropping all their IO’s into your storage slots. That saves you from having to burn a stack of unslotters. It doesn’t really matter how you respec…just throw slots/powers wherever you can to burn through the respec process quickly, dragging any IO’s that don’t fit in your tray into appropriate powers that remain. That high of a level you’ll likely need to do a couple of respecs to free up everything. Then between respecs, dump the free’d up IO’s into storage/email/wherever and rinse repeat.

Better analogy than my petless MM one. It's exactly like runing a /Traps Corruptor, but with your primary acting like that secondary. I actually think Storm/Traps might be a great AV/GM hunting machine. Solo, setup time available and long duration battles.

Oh it can be -capable- in the way that almost any AT can be effective in this game. At 50, no Incarnates, I can solo +4/x8 without much danger and pretty much can take down any spawns. Against Carnies, against Malta, against Arachnos, all the “classic” PvE mobs that can cause challenges due to status effects. But that’s -mainly- due to a) my Storm secondary throwing out a lot of damage and otherwise helping to pull aggro and b) I have allllllll the time in the world solo to get everything setup and working as the mechanics intended, for the full duration of the fights. So capable, yes, I’ll agree with that. Now on a fast-moving team, far, far less effective. The spawn is typically gone before my targeted AoE “multipliers” of Cat5 and Storm Cell are even capable of getting thrown down. Same somewhat goes for my /Storm Lighting Storm big hitter. Honestly, it makes me feel like I’m playing a MM on many iTrials or HM TF’s. I just throw out what I can and often run petless as I can’t resummon and empower them fast enough to keep up. So there’s effective, which it is, and overall efficacy of the Storm Blast attacks slot for slot, shot for shot, and play by play. I’ll throw almost any other Corruptor builds I have onto a fast moving team and they will outperform the Storm/Storm/Dark. Like @DangerKitty, I parked mine at 50. There’s little value in further investments of Incarnates as by that point I’m just leaning on Incarnates to make it perform as well as many of my Corruptors do even without any iPowers.