Dixa

Are you reducing people's criticisms to "gut feelings" just because they didn't play on the beta branch? Don't you find that a bit ridiculous? 1. You don't need to play on the beta branch to know that ToHit (namely from tactics) is going back to being a useless endgame stat. 2. You don't need to play on the beta branch to know that people will have to re-work their builds and that new builds (on sets with snipe) will not work for other servers anymore. never speak in generalities. every one of my mm's will continue to take tactics. these snipe changes do not affect every AT

no replies because stalkers are not very popular. get the hero builder and play. shoot for positional softcap defenses (45%, but more is also good as that is the cap for an even con) and some recharge so you can have an attack chain without mercurial blow. at 22 start using basic io's. while the initial investment will be over 2 million, it will save you money in the long run. even the old forums were sparse of builds and threads.

this is incorrect. performance shifter and panacea will proc on those standing in lifegiving spores. you can find the information regarding this in the old forums.

you don't say what your secondary is, but in general your henchmen should be six slot immediately. if you have attacks from your primary which is fine to get through the levels until you have your henchmen and both upgrades - it's time to respec out of them and let the pets and your secondary work. My secondary is poison And my pets are 3 wolves two lions and a giant dire wolf. I have swarm and summon hawk and call ravens. it's time to /respec and six slot your henchmen and your level 18 defense/regen power. do not slot your attacks. mm's have higher end costs for their secondaries than other at's and we don't have the end to spam attacks. if you wish to keep one, keep the one that has -fly as that is useful but only put a single accuracy in it. use leftover slots to flesh out poison and your pool powers.

not a good pairing with ninja because they have no resists base, but the other two and especially demons oh yeah.

Or play as /Time which already has a perception boost in Farsight. Tactics is a great power, I take it on quite a few characters but some sets already have a power that accomplishes the same thing as part of your primary or secondary. So my Bots/Traps MM has Tactics but my AR/Dev Blaster and Time/Elec Defender don't. I have 50 thugs/time, bots/time, demons/time, demons/nature, thugs/traps, bots/traps. all still take tactics and I have less of an issue with arachnos blind 'nades then when I don't have tactics. assault however is hardly noticeable

time is the better pairing. with powerboosted farsight, your own slotted maneuvers, and all three defense io's the demons will be around 34% defense all and softcapped aoe. temporal mending heals for as much total as twilight grasp and doesn't require a tohit check. not to say dark doesn't work - necro/dark is a pretty common pairing and drops av's too. a great source of -regen is degenerative in interface. it lowers max hp, which in turn lowers regen rate. this is how stalkers/brutes/scrappers/tankers solo av's and gm's on sets without -regen.

bots resist smash, lethal and psi - 24% of it to be exact. two of the +resist auras do not grant psi there is a lot of autohit psi damage in the late game. when you have them all and fully upgraded, demons have 4 attacks that apply up to -20% resists each and stack with each other. under ideal circumstances nothing is going to outdamage demons, but good luck softcapping them.

so chance for build up in tactics is wasted for a mastermind if you are not six slotting that power for the full set for it's defense bonuses. the build up does nothing for your henchmen, only you and it's going to proc on average once per minute. without numbers on fortify pack it's hard to build a beast mm to the softcap.

ah...thermal there is one achilles heel in thermal if you will. the -resist debuff portion of melt armor can actually itself be resisted, so only boss+ it does not provide it's full -resists. the achilles' heel proc does not have this issue as it forces the target to cast a spell on itself. multiple of this io do not stack but refreshes duration.

drop tactics. it's like none of you fight arachnos or have any need of perception or love being blinded or something.

you don't say what your secondary is, but in general your henchmen should be six slot immediately. if you have attacks from your primary which is fine to get through the levels until you have your henchmen and both upgrades - it's time to respec out of them and let the pets and your secondary work.

this depends on your goal. I am partial to nature or time if you are creating a grouping mm. for soloing the really really tough stuff it's time if you don't mind being mezzed a lot, traps if you don't like being mezzed at all, but you will have to replace pets more often due to no heal unless you go medicine pool (which I usually do for a thugs/traps). some will say poison, but poison doesn't provide anywhere near the amount of defensive capability to your pets as the above two do, while the above two provide the same capability poison does to varying degrees. poison is more of a pvp set.

I actually disagree with this. the power to skip is assault. The power to skip in time is temporal selection. it is again a rather small damage bonus for a single target and your pets can not have their ability recharge modified in any way. it's...ok for teaming. throw it on a dom or ill controller. but even then it's skippable as it's nowhere near as powerful as forge or fortitude or overgrowth and other similar powers.

it's the only defense shield we get, and it helps you softcap yourself which is important if you want to do the harder trials. ff and traps can get away with a resist shield as can bots or thugs/time if you have the unique io's to softcap your pets without powerboost. the resist shield is actually preferred if you plan on tankerminding (taking and using provoke to keep everything on you, the resist shield is quite powerful when combined with bodyguards effective 75% damage resistance)

fluffy is too important to mule them. but there are three primaries that have a 4th pet that can mule them - thugs, demons, necro. Does Hell on Earth not have good dps or function so to use it as a mule? it's attached to a pet. pet dies - no more imps. the imps themselves do pretty pathetic damage especially when you consider the overwhelming force an unslotted gang war is, and the damage buff on your demon prince is hardly noticeable.

traps. your pets are not invincible like an illusion controller and you need something to keep them alive besides your heal.

fluffy is too important to mule them. but there are three primaries that have a 4th pet that can mule them - thugs, demons, necro.

until you get mezzed. and if yo uare going to leave yourself weak to cc, play the superior time.

In light of this thread... https://web.archive.org/web/20120905230405/http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=286886 ...I am looking at making a crabmind. I have never played the veat's and the regular at's are starting to bore me for various reasons. I generally play MM's. Having never played the class, I am curious on how well it survives. I mean the guy solo'd pylons without dying and his times on the stalker post without lore pets was still sub 2 minutes (fully io and incarnate obviously) but I don't see any self healing in his build at all. So how is it to level one of these things without being powerlevelled in teams? I can't find a single youtube video of a crabmind solo'ng an av even level or higher so if anyone has any experience with that it would be much appreciated. thanks

this is why beasts are actually bad and why their overall dps is extremely low.

it's odd that the +dmg from incarnate is affecting the pets. as far as I know no other +dmg source on you would do that. say for example, the build up proc from the gaussian unique in tactics. or has that changed?

why not dark primary? it works mostly in melee range as it's immob is a cone and it has a pbaoe stun. it also has a single target confuse which is pretty handy.

are you sure those damage bonuses from incarnates affect pets?

cardiac is generally the way to go as even between the same sets across AT's, mm have higher end costs. I also get reactive core in interface, ageless core in destiny (to help pet endurance), and support core in hybrid.