Dixa

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.

Here is my thugs/traps tankermind. softcapped myself and the pets and only one purple set, but just two pieces from it (honestly only one piece you need) this setup softcaps you before incarnate and your pets after incarnate, they will be at 44% before then. being slept still sucks but when tankerminding like this you are spamming provoke and tend to get attacked right after anyway. the knockdown in caltrops is quite hilarious and this is the only one that will work. other forms of chance to knockdown or chance to hold are all ppm which will only fire on one target every tick at a 3.8 ppm. overwhelming force is still percentage based and can mean a lot of fishies flopping assuming you didn't use some sort of -kb power. | Copy & Paste this data into Mids' Hero Designer to view the build | |-------------------------------------------------------------------| |MxDz;1527;704;1408;HEX;| |78DA6593594F135114C7EF2C055A405A4B2DABEC8B5006EAF28C111549684202F84| |A2630B4939469EDB489B801EA07505C883EBBBEF819348882CF6E0F2646DF5C009F| |DDEA61FE07A7496FDAFCEE9C7BFFE79C7BEEB9B1B3C72B9E0C2F0D0AC93F94D46D7| |B2AA6DB592333675A339E981E37A71541A394FE6177656A3C373797B2B489442E6E| |870AECC772B3B3DA44464FDB81112B61640C2BABED4E2AC752A9A476D28C27B2A61| |5F7395FE369C398A972A6A3863E6364EC84990E38DF31DD32D3B9A49E355356C389| |B439AD15C64FE5929CE97C0DE516A1FFAA47F0C87BC4574254157BBE31BF837B379| |95B60CD3638AF1668AF498E4D5E665E07D51BCC5B60C94DF01C69256825E9A3E2D8| |CA3E81E7694D91E0573945932ED24D4057368C6FDF38583302D64D121B552151D17| |1A4BCF0D421CFD652DCC58EADB417B60B14C3CBB97B25C5D1FA64B04261AA609F87| |590206C85939F293CB43C8ABAE1A6CF6830AEDA9C41EA9328CDC2207A1BF48B1AB5| |85F1542FEFE6A66000C923EC03508DC931D9F5DF7C1030F980F998FC09EC7E025F2| |1FC4D9D4E06BD98959FD86F916DCF79EF9131A95E28538DF109FA57FF76CB416E65| |A852D8E9562A6C1C819B03FC3B4C135BA8C5AAE7D6D0B6ABF40F9D5B3BFFA05D4A6| |6191B904EEBFCCBCC2BC0ABE247F8D5C9746EEC376EEDB4EEEDB4EEEDB4EEEDB2EE| |EDB0DD23671DCA621E4D77C94B986DE6B79CE7CC15C071729E756D6B6FE82A6ED37| |F30FF32FD89E670A685F51DC0EAE4107D7E0292D75E31CA2FB08CEB64EFB7AF94DF| |47EC6FD44BF08A71FDAE80E34F6A17D80FF67E463003679E02EEE2A7A87791B6C70| |DF28FD6888D11D0B47165E781A735FA3909C5D315797F7FA855078BEE9A39D52E1C| |EAD22CBB66B91A4D3C8233209FE70D7646985FB7A19EC6B466D068A72EE29B2448B| |2C878B2C878A2CF9FF63851E4894CFB44A171B454E18EF82AE61B060FE0F214E0A5| |0| |-------------------------------------------------------------------|

I disagree. I played a Demons/Thermal quite a bit back in the day and it was fine for soloing, on par with my Bots/Traps. Now Bots/Thermal is probably slightly weaker than either of those specific combos but it should be fine for soloing. yeah, no. don't make that claim. you can't do this with /thermal. | Copy & Paste this data into Mids' Hero Designer to view the build | |-------------------------------------------------------------------| |MxDz;1462;676;1352;HEX;| |78DA6593594F135114C7EF9D99022D20AD50CBBED322CB4045E3A3465C42421312C| |0573281A19DA44C6BA74DC40D503F80824BF4D9F5C5CFA071039FD5F8EC9B0BE0B3| |5B3DCEFF903699C94C7E73FFF79EE59E7B6EE2FCC99A6767D68E09191C4F1B8E339| |7309CBC995BB2EC055FC2485AF3AAA0A792BE4869666EBAB0B494B1F5995421E984| |CBF41385C5457D2667649DD0849D3273A69DD7F77E6AA73299B47EDA4AA6F2969D0| |CB8A3E9AC692ED4B9BF93A6B160E69C94950DB9E384615BD942DAC85B19BBF554D6| |9AD7CBE3670A69CE74B99172EBA3EFA54FF053F489AF84B826F67D637E07F76F337| |7C0C65D70592BB3BD215D4D5967DE04B50DE66DB0E21678816C256CA53CAAB85AD5| |187891E65409BF6A870ABB19D855B5D338A689C0B474D9D88571F32C8DDB3421A9E| |8D85251F89A9167376995F0272A07A15DA2187ECEDD2F55D736A080352A5303877D| |CC0A3044FEAAE14FA90E23AFE606B03308AAB4A6166B646D04B90D1D82FD658A5DC| |7F67561EC23D8C00C81F5641FE21A841EA02EB187E0C147CCC7CC27E0C053F00AF9| |AFC7DEB4FAF78A1BB3E103F32378E013F3276C348A17E67CC3BC9791BDBDD15C846| |B15B1395686990587CE812339A603BEA6C368E2F368EA42ED5728BF16F6D7B282DA| |B4AE32D7C0F6ABCC6BCCEBE05BF2D7C67569E33EECE5BE8D72DF46B96FA3DCB731E| |EDB2DB2EDE0B81DE3C8AFF338730B7DD6F58AF986B909AE52CEDD6CDBFD0B363DBF| |997F987FC1DE2253C0F69D0F77ED7F0DFAB806CF69AA9F7BB2FF08EABC49EB06F94| |E0C7EC6F9C4BF08B71F7AE80C74F6A1FBE1FF05F91885A68CDE818FF87DE63DB0B5| |7447E9A5474C7A94A9D25D14D25512A535457F500895FFB703B45296AFDCF128BB2| |545CAB3C8626816FC519A53E45DEEEA757078031CF5E437E051E21EE5B04719F328| |FF00B0AEF173| |-------------------------------------------------------------------| resists on pets is not as helpful as softcapping their defense - and yours - because their health is extremely low and best your combo gets them is about 50% to some resists. they will still die to one hit from a +3 or higher boss. maybe some of you enjoy replacing pets on cooldown. I do not.

what put you off with plant/fire? for soloing to 50's it's prob the best and can do so on x8 once you get io's into seeds of confusion making it stupid fast. mind/fire is best solo for tought single targets but doesn't have the clear speed for packs that plant/fire does.