Dixa

demons/thermal - with no incarnates - was the only mm powerset combo i was able to do the maria jenkins av arc at +3/4 without losing a single henchmen. note that +3 still gets you level 54 AV's. You would need incarnates to deal with 4/8. it's probably possible to re-create this with mercs using any secondary that has both heals and +defense and enough recharge to keep serum downtime to a minimum. Like thugs, demons has a recharge pet that can be used to just park all of the pet def/resist aura uniques opening up slotting opportunities for the henchmen.

so when completed with io sets, thugs for raw clear times, demons for survivability, bots are not actually as good as the old forums would anecdotally suggest? sounds about right and what some of us have been saying for a bit now. thanks for your hard work and time invested in this.

but not defense and crits at the same time. i would love to see a softcaped beasts/time that never uses fortify.

triage was buffed on thunderspy to be a pulsing heal every few seconds and with only a 10s cooldown so you can easily move it. it's really good, but not enough to help you when sisters of artemis ignore your defenses. at least on thunderspy they gave MM's a 'hold' command that roots them in place. no more running out of caltrops or fire. then again, no more running out of fire has it's own drawbacks, and the hold command applies to all so a thugs mm can't keep their ranged in check and manually control the bruiser while using it. not perfect, but for the pure ranged sets like mercs (buffed there btw) and bots it's quite amazing to have.

Not a different discussion. If you are purposefully ignoring half the enemy groups at end game because your build can't actually take it, then coming to the forums saying defense based MM's are the best way to play you are doing the entire community a disservice. My goal posts as you put it have always been the same. look at my posting history. lore pets are a crutch that players use to band-aid poorly designed or poorly chosen powers and power sets and i refuse to use them. demons/thermal or demons/ea is the single toughest mm combo you can make for all content, and the only one that did the maria jenkins arc without losing a single pet on +3. given the power variety in that arc, that is quite the accomplishment.

This is the most punished at in the game when it comes to over-level content. softcapped pets - which is honestly a meme at this point - is not enough given how many enemy groups have tohit buffs endgame. those that claim they are not resummoning pets at a regular rate are picking and choosing what they fight and not attempting to do all of the content as it comes at them. or my favorite is when they pop lore pets, the ultimate band aid. the only combination that i have ever made that had the highest survivability against ALL ENEMY TYPES in the game was a demons/thermal, but it's still a bigger pain to play than most of the other AT's.

with the prevalance of knockbacks end game, faraday cage, the nearly non-existent cooldown on ea's absorb, how no matter where you are facing you hit all of your pets with your heal do put EA above nature for general gameplay. i'd rather have a nearly always on absorb (which i target on my t1's so they get the largest possible shield) than one big shield every now and then.

cold is fine as is any defense based sets, but ea and thermal will have little to no issue with enemy group that shred defense based secondaries. if you want to have no holes defensively so you run into fewer 'bullshit' moments that cost you more or all of your pets in a few seconds - it's thermal or ea.

as with all defense based options, there are enough enemy types end game that defenses fold against it's always worth it to have a respectable amount of resists if you can squeeze it in. the ony thug with any resists before io auras is the bruiser. electric fences will remove the need to slot kb-kd in the bruiser at all. there is no point to proc'ng out fences or caltrops. when they fire they wont fire on everything in the patch. 1, maybe 3 mobs if you are lucky. Be careful of information you get about procs on the old boards it's majorly outdated and before the ppm changes.

it's an exellent combo, but get team teleport.

er yes i confused the two powers. however i do stand by my statement elsewhere that ea has essentially usurped nature for mm's, especially those that group. absorbs are insanely powerful in this game.

ea's absorb is superior to overgrowth and has a stupidly short cooldown.

what specifically did you need from a defender or mm to finish the sf?

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.