Dixa

so it's like this - I know people have themes. concepts they want to use. but this is the reality. your pets have almost no health. at 50 your boss pet won't even break 1k health. they can't take a hit, even with resist shielding from sonic or thermal. thermal is an excellent teaming secondary, but for soloing as an mm is not a good choice. the really good soloing choices are not necessarily all that hot for teaming.

Back in the original game the markets weren't mixed, so I had a bots/traps MM without a lot of Inf. The redside story arcs involve fighting a lot more AVs than the blueside ones. I soloed over a dozen AVs on SO enhancements on the way to 50, when I actually started investing in IO sets. I don't know many other ATs that can solo AVs on SOs, without more skill than I have. :) As others have said, though, Traps is not for the ADD. You need to be willing to set them up and tinker with them to get the best results. It does have one of the most powerful -regen debuffs in the game, though, which is relevant to soloing AVs and GMs. I suspect Cold would work well too, it has great -resist debuffs, but it may need even more global recharge than Traps, which is expensive. I only ran a cold/sonic defender, not a MM. Rad and Dark also have good AV tools, but a lot of AVs are mezz heavy, which is a problem for them. aye traps can have double acid mortars and double triage beacons and spamming poison traps before their duration runs out without using a single purple set.

thugs and time is a beast, but people overvalue gang war's damage. it's pathetic, but it's the best place to hold the pet aura uniques so you don't sacrifice anything on the actual pets. gang war is at most a distraction. fully slotted as a damage pet their damage is pretty bad and their survivability is even worse if you don't have a powerboosted farsight ready when they all finally finish showing up. however I still tip my hat towards thugs/traps endgame if you ever want to up your difficulty when solo. there is too god damned much cc. only one needs to get through your personal softcap defenses and suddenly your pets are getting wiped out and you will be cc'd until killed. a lot of the cc can last a very long time and some enemy types will have sleep, stuns and holds in every single pack across several different mob types. when time works it's wonderful. when it doesn't it makes me long for the ffg. what is fun for all mm's is overwhelming force in your t1's. there are two reasons: 1) the versions we are playing across all servers have implemented PPM to procs that were only in live if you bought those unique io's from the stores cash shop. the ppm io procs rarely fire - in times juncture, in distortion field they will only try to proc once every 10 seconds and the will not check per target just once per 10 seconds, or once per ability used with more than 15s cooldown. this has made frankenslotting dmg procs in things like caltrops or controller/dom aoe immobs hardly worth it now - however overwhelming force is still a straight 20% chance per hit for a knockdown 2) your t1's hit often. with this io they will often keep a boss flopping like a fish which is an amazing source of cc. if your t1's aoe a lot it's even crazier. the new sudden acceleration kb to kd does not have the added kd proc however.

what is your goal, and how will you play? the usual sheep will say poison or dark and they are pretty off base if your goal is to solo av's and gm's or to make your pets as unkillable as possible. dark has it's uses and is excellent in teams, however the heal requires your pets to all be in melee range of the target. this is not always ideal. properly playing thugs to it's maximum potential means at least three keybinds dedicated to goto for each tier to keep the ranged guys ranged and the bruiser in melee. stacking tar patch is noticeable increase damage for your thugs, but this is not the only source and many mobs will run out of it especially av's and gm's that can't be rooted. thugs/dark does work, but it's far from optimal same deal with thugs/poison. while is has good debuffs (not the best, good) you will be replacing pets often and you need a bit of recharge to get the anchor ability perma. the two ideal, best secondaries are traps and time. here is why: with traps and time you can softcap your pets defensively. two defensive io's in enforcers gives your pets 20% def to all. ffg and farsight give another 15%. two slot gangwar and put edict of the master and call to arms +5% def auras and voila - your pets are pve softcapped. with powerboost you only need one of those +def auras. that's before you add in maneuvers. this is actually superior to bots, as the bots bubbles are not up 100% of the time and the lt pets only get one bubble each. with traps you can: lock runners in place, even av's. darkest night an av or gm? they run off. have fun! soft control in caltrops but don't bother slotting damage proc io's anymore. they don't work like they did on live with the new ppm mechanic. with enough recharge a pretty hefty pbaoe stacking +regen aura, but useless until later levels stacking -20% def -20% resist that is effectively perma the only actual total shutdown of all regen in the game. poison trap is only a -1000% regen for masterminds traps. on other at's it doesn't have -regen. poison trap also is an occasional hard and soft control, with an actual hold proc for minions and lt's and a barfing animation forced on av's and even gm's. mezz protection. malta can stun you for 40 seconds at a time. the right arachnos pack you will be perma held/slept/stunned if you aren't keeping break frees handy for EACH PACK some of the hardest content to do while you level is villain side even when you keep them to EB level. one of the arachnid story arcs has you fight biff. all arachnids have massive regen. massive. biff is even worse. my necro/dark couldn't break it because howling twilight and twilights' grasp even stacked was not enough -regen. after 30 minutes i pretty much just alt+f4. but thugs/traps? it was a 4 minute fight and nobody took a hit. When a power says -50% regen, it's actually only a 5% reduction in the targets regen rate. There is no power like mm poison trap. it is actually quite overpowered in the right hands and with enough recharge is up for every pack. if you use super speed or some stealth you can jump into a pack and drop it and negate the alpha entirely, even from the boss. time ticks nearly all of the same boxes above. it does not have mezz protection. it does not have as much -regen (spamming time crawl and the hold gets you -300%, on par with dark but also a HOLD) and would have the same issues with +2 eb biff as a thugs/dark would. what it does have is a pbaoe heal that in total heals as much as twilights grasp. it has farsight which when powerboosted is +20% def all to you and your team and pets which actually allows YOU to softcap pve smash/lethal or even positional with some slotting choices. it has a slow patch like caltrops that does no damage but can hold minions and lt's randomly. chrono shift can help with end to a degree but does not substitute slotting end in your pets and it has a pbaoe -tohit aura you run that really helps (until you get mezzed). when choosing between the above it comes down to this - traps is better solo, but poor on a team. it works best if you have team teleport to move everyone around and keep them in the ffg and can get quite spammy, but i killed a +2 av at level 29 as thugs/traps and only had to replace the arsonist a couple times because poison trap shuts down all regen, period. traps is not fun in a team. time is great solo because your pets don't need to be within a bubble to be softcapped but the lack of mezz protection has killed me and them a lot. it is however superior for teaming due to farsight, chrono shift, your hold, your slow patch. time also has -20% def and -20% resist aoe but will take some effort to make perma and unlike acid mortar which you can have two of and they stack as far as i can tell slowed response does not stack on itself. bots/time can actually softcap you the player to incarnate level defense, but bots does not do anywhere near the damage of thugs and no, i never count gang war.

I am slotted this way and time so my thugs are softcapped all positions and type yet it’s still far too frustrating trying to deal with missions on +4 or x8. The pets do very little damage now and are constantly wiped out in one aoe. edit: you are also off on thugs. all of the aura io's go into gang war and you only dedicate enough slots to them for that. no matter how you enhance them, they are weak and do very little damage but they are an excellent place to hold all of these uniques. overwhelming force goes into call thugs. it has a knockdown chance on each attack and these three can frequently keep bosses flopping forever. you put the new sudden acceleration kb to kd in the bruiser. frankenslot your bruiser and enforcers with every triple stat pet io (acc/dmg/end) as they both have major end issues even if your secondary is time, kin or rad. I find the +resist io's give very little value overall as all mm primary pets have very little health and simply can't survive any incoming damage that lands from bosses, eb's or av's if it lands beyond +2. the bruiser doesn't even have 1k health at 50. as an mm you really need to approach it as an sr scrapper/brute and work for defensive softcap. this is why on live the goto secondary for incarnate trials was time, usually paired with thugs or bots. not to say other combinations didn't complete the content, but it's pretty night and day different how often you are replacing pets and nothing is more annoying to me than replacing pets as fast as the power cools down.

for killing av's and gm's it's going to be ill with dark or rad due to phantom army. plant and dark are amazing for general play however as they can both neutralize the alpha entirely (seeds of confusion, fearsome stare - both come at level 8) and have good aoe damage (usually frankenslotting dmg proc io's in aoe immob powers)

Math was done on the old forums here. https://web.archive.org/web/20120906060446/http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=290578&page=2 ill/dark is harder and more expensive to get PA perma, but when you do it's superior to ill/rad for both av/gm killing, group killing and group play.

No. When ED happened we didn't have IO's. We now have IO's that make you more powerful than we ever were with ED. Only way you get ED back is if the IO system is stripped or people will just six slot acc/dmg/end/recharge which is moronic.