Dixa

given how powerful the absorb is in ea, that it is practically permanent if you don't take any damage before it's short recharge finishes and how much easier the heal is to use I don't see why anyone would take nature over ea now.

while melee characters are for sure easier to play and some can bring great dps, every single melee secondary has one or more enemy types that just destroy it except dark but dark is annoyingly end hungry even fully kitted out.

this is why all of my mm's take team teleport. you can actually rush to the end with it and have all of your pets (and reluctant team mates) with you.

I don't play my mm's in a team unless I have a transformative secondary that is a force multiplier for the team, like ea or force field or kinetics. offensively you aren't going to keep up with the brute or tankers or even controllers or doms on a fast moving team. and a cave map? ugh. there was a streamer/youtuber who played an mm...think it was thermal..and in group content they would just hover and use their secondary. their pets were always way out of supremacy range or dead. think they were beast. this game is not designed to have healbots, but if you are going to healbot then doing so as an mm is just silly. you pay more for abilities that are inherently less powerful than a defender.

they are in dire need of it, as do ninja's to a degree. their base damage is low and they have too many cc's on their tier 2 and 3 that are essentially useless when you can't control then when and how of using them. these cc's take away from additional damage powers that the other sets have instead. if you want to play it for a theme go for it, but I recommend picking a secondary that is going to help you kill things faster not one that is super defensive in nature. traps or something along those lines. TS fixed mercs by giving tier 1's a third soldier, making medic a separate power while taking it's attacks away and removing a chunk of the cc powers replacing with damage powers. it's quite good there.

people play beast/nature for the theme. but those people also don't normally come to the boards asking for help. if you are asking for help, understand that while beasts have excellent single target damage they lose that edge the minute you pop fortify pack as it removes their ability to crit and the stacking damage buffs for a full minute. also understand that being single target focused in this game can be quite frustrating at times when you want to ramp the difficulty up. the majority of their damage coming from their tier 1 pets will also limit their potential against mobs higher level than them and you compared to sets that have most of their outgoing damage coming from their tier 2 and tier 3 pets. if you are going for a theme here, experiment and do as you will. if you want actual power, this is not the powerset combo to go with.

demons/thermal or demons/ea if you want to be able to tackle just about everything the game can throw at you. thermal has an early lead over ea in survivability because it won't make everything run and the resist shields are quite noticeable at low levels. ea will take over once you get the absorb and the patron root, however this does mean you MUST take a patron pool and not one of the blue side pools. This is because end drains act like a terror effect on mobs and they will run. offensively thermal has more to offer. ea should in theory be the most comfortable to play if you can keep everyone in your faraday cage as knockbacks are a real bloody issue, but keeping your large pets all in that cage while also beating on your target not always so easy. the absorb in EA is the best in the game with a nearly non existent cooldown once you start building out io sets. this combined with it's heal - in my opinion - actually makes it a superior support set to nature.

there isn't one that is still thugs. all defense based sets are in actual practice weaker than any set that can cap to the most common resistances and have some defense - like demons. there are just too many mob types with +tohit and autohit abilities as you approach and play in the end game. However if you are the kind of mm player that does not mind replacing pets every pack then it may not bother you as much.

as much as I love thugs for how easy they are to softcap def, any mob with just a tiny inkling of tohit wrecks your pets. and don't get me started on all of the autohit psychic aoe's in the game. I do not like being gimped vs. any single enemy group on anything I play.

I don't have time for that but if true that would give a huge edge for EA offensively, because I can tell you that from experience not many powers will do that.

I have yet to see any proof that the -regen in ea stacks with itself

the -recharge is very minor depending on how far down the chain you are when it hits you and only affects you, not the pets. besides, bosses and av/gm is all that matters. if killing packs is your priority, then your choice of primary would also be different. Do not forget that thermal also has -500% regen, -37% dmg, and -22% def that lasts for 40s and both powers that drops these debuffs are easy to make perma.

traps isn't as great as you are making out to be, and with the p2w vendor now offering status protection by there is no reason not to go time if you want a generalist set. triage beacon is actually trash for your pets outside of the tier 3. your tier 1 and tier 2 have too little health for it to be noticeable. there is a really good version of traps out there that is actually godmode as it turned triage beacon into a pulsing pbaoe regen that heals more per 2s pulse than any rank 1 pbaoe heal in the game, has unlimited duration and a 4s cooldown. detonator was replaced with auto turret from blasters. trip mine and caltrops are one power. web nade is aoe. ffg has unlimited duration. stuff like that. but it's not here.

this is exactly what I said. the secondary's are too busy to take more than one or two attacks - if any. and that only a few at's can Ron Popeil their secondary.

when a healing proc goes off in triage beacon, it does not affect everyone in range. it may affect one or 2 or maybe 3. It used to affect everyone, but when they changed nearly every single proc io's to ppm it changed a lot of things. as an example - controllers used to do nutjob damage with their aoe roots by stacking a ton of damage procs. it would hit every single target that got rooted. today? 1, maybe 2. triage beacon is overpowered on the other server, but traps in general is god tier there.

too many people OVERestimate beasts/anything because of some pylon test some 'feeling' or anecdote. it's a purely single target set, most of it's damage is in the tier 1 making it horribly nerfed to all hell against anything higher level than you and you lose their single dps edge - the ability to crit - the minute you hit fortify pack. the top performing sets regardless of secondary is going to be thugs and demons. on the pylon, thugs SHOULD be edging out demons because all of it's damage comes from the tier 2 and tier 3 pets whereas for demons it's mostly in the tier 1 and 2. but what sets these two apart is their level 18 powers which give you a place to park practically all of the pet aoe aura's. without having to nerf the damage, accuracy, sustain and procability (is that a word? it is now!) of your actual pets. secondary can vary. I will say that when you consider your secondary you need to also understand that at it's core, this game does not have a defensive set that does not have one or more mob groups in the game that can hard counter it. there are two exceptions, and these exceptions only work with demons - EA and Thermal. Time is great, but time melts to mobs with high tohit buffs or mobs that can quickly stack several hig mag stuns on you (F malta, seriously) and because the set has no defense debuff resistance, is very prone to cascading defense failure vs. mobs group that may have no +tohit but do have -defense debuffs on one of their attacks. only one has to land to start the cascade. if all you care about is pew pew, /storm is the secondary to go with. you can buy status protection from the p2w vendor, so there is no need to even consider that in your decision making (except malta, cause really man, F gunslingers). I have only been able to take one MM combination through the maria Jenkins av arc (blue side arc with tons of av's of all shapes and sizes) on 8/4 without having a single pet death, and it was a demons/thermal. This was before ea. While I believe EA would be tougher, EA does not have the offensive punch that thermal does through it's debuffs. which is too bad, because the only time I lost a pet was when I dismissed it to replace it when it would get knocked back and stuck in some invisible rock on the floor. Faraday cage's -kb solves that and on paper should be glorious as the absorb is just as good as the nature absorb but it's cooldown is practically nothing. I do know that If I were to make an mm that exclusively grouped today it would be EA. target your tier 1's for the absorb and just let them go crazy. so bottom line: highest damage in a vacuum primary: tie thugs or demons toughest primary in a vacuum: demons. no, not bots. DEMONS highest damage combo so far: demons/storm on the pylon, in actual practice it's going to be thugs/storm because of collision, pet size and the bruiser being a brute. demons do their highest damage if all of the pets can be in melee range. on smaller targets this won't happen. the pylon is massive, so it skews practical results. toughest combo: demons/ea. NO, NOT bots/ff due to cascading defense failure which can be pretty common as you turn the difficulty up and how many mob groups have even minor +tohit buffs. For me, toughest combo is one that has the potential to not lose a single pet due to mob damage and the absorb in EA puts it over the top especially vs. mobs that have autohit aoes.

status protection shouldn't even be considered anymore. you can buy it for an hour at a time on these servers.

it would be hectic to do so especially while leveling and you'd have to burn a power pool choice to get some form of taunt. after the tanker changes, i'd just go with a tanker and let your partner go ham.

the problem is you've tried to approach this AT like it was a bloody scrapper, without realizing that 3 of the usually max 5 attacks in a typical scrapper/tanker/blaster/defender/etc. rotation are - for you - always on DoTs. you only have room for 2 spammable abilities unless you plan to 100% ignore your secondary, and only tankers/brutes/scrappers/stalkers (unless they are click heavy like bio) have that luxury.

share this build, chief. you may have here the best overall mm build - period. why do I say that? you can buy cc protection for yourself from the p2w vendor, and faraday goes a long way to addressing the actual weakness of demons - getting stuck in ragdoll after a knockback. end use would suck if you are trying to keep whip debuffs up and use the rather spammy ea stuff. I find that if you target a t1 for the absorb then the weak t1 pets get the bigger shields while your less vulnearable t2 and t3 get the smaller onces.

for all content? thermal imo. capped resists for the most part, just enough defense from the pet io's to make a dent and warmth on auto fire makes for unkillable pets. cold gets wrecked by mobs with high tohit buffs. the anti knockback from the cage is nice, the absorb is nice and the heal is actually good but that's all the set brings and the cage is TINY and does not follow you. as for cc protection for yourself, you can get that from the p2w vendor now.

as far as I can tell, everyone who has done actual testing with /ea including myself have not been impressed. it works better as a set on defenders.

teaming is always tough for mm's. not a lot is going to fix that.

until you get an immob power from the patron powers, EA can be frustrating to play with MM's. the energy drain is causing a terror response in mobs and they flee as if they have a rad emission toggle on them. the demons are so large it is likely impossible to keep them all within the faraday cage due to hit box collision. otherwise - on paper - it's a good pairing especially once you have the absorb.

it's a difference of 29% smashing/lethal resists for all but the prince, capped fire resist for most of them too while you are simultaneously healing all of them every couple of seconds. I have not taken any mm combo through the maria Jenkins arc without losing a SINGLE pet on 4/8 except demons/thermal with warmth on auto fire. the only hiccup was the prince getting stuck in geometry a few times due to knock back forcing me to replace it.