Dixa

if you are dealing with a pack with a lot of tohit buffs - and those mob types usually do a lot of lethal - demons/thermal is capped 90% smash/lethal for all but the prince and you would play it by autofiring warmth every couple of seconds. cold however will kill a boss/av faster.

you should share this build. I know I personally poo-poo'd cold due to no personal cc protection, but since you can just straight buy that sh..tuff on the p2w vendor I would love to see what a well built cold looks like.

the two top performing for 4/8 for as many groups you can possibly deal with will be thugs/time or demons/thermal with incarnates the only thing the demons/thermal has to fear is tough bosses that knock back a lot as there is a risk that the prince and the two tier 2's can get stuck in the floor until you tp them out or resummon them. with incarnates anything with hefty tohit buffs will wreck /time and there are a couple of storylines and one offs that have such. all mm's want to punch a baby after fighting the awakened, so make your life easier and just roll blue side.

this right here is the kind of partisan thinking i'm talking about that is ruining the community. if another server team fixed it and it works, there is no reason not to adopt it elsewhere unless you really don't want to fix it ie. mercs horrible damage, standardizing end costs across at's, balancing damage vs. animation time vs. recharge time, etc. no, lets not have fixed sets or parity between sets so that when you make a thematic decision you don't also gimp yourself in some way, because one of our competitors that we don't like on a personal level did it first. i'm not saying I agree with all of the changes the various servers made, but there is only one server that has gone to great lengths to address the massive power set balance issues and defensive and QoL issues that the AT has, and it's not this one.

there are unfortunately a lot of politics and petty bickering between the various teams that is actually hurting the community at large. balance decisions are both being made in spite of, or not being made due to some other server doing it first. it's irritating and irrational but given how people behave anymore I guess I shouldn't be shocked.

this varies set by set, but mm do pay more for end for the same powers than other at's. I actually do run out of end as time because I try to stack it's two weak -regen when I can on bosses and av's. I also only fight at +4, so ymmv if you are playing at a lower difficulty. another server has fixed mm end costs and brought them in line with other at's and while it's noticeable, it didn't make them suddenly overpowered. not even a little bit. but because it was done on that other server if it was to be done here now the usual politics would jump into play so it's unlikely to happen here.

bots were overblown on the old servers, much of it being hyperbole that carried over from before the assault bot was nerfed but nobody could be bothered to run any actual numbers and continued to use anectdotes they are very weak single target even with the -regen on the assault bot and their aoe damage is not as good as people make it out to be for a few reasons: the aoes are in the tier 1 and tier 3, the tier 1 aoe is not only weak it takes 2342927507qw03423472047 seconds to animate, the tier 2 bot does pretty much no damage and it also spends a lot of animation time on casting and recasting bubbles as an example.

the pylon is nothing. it doesn't have tohit buffs, it doesn't have ground targeted aoe patches. it's so large the melee mm's can all attack it at the same time. the pylon is the literal vacuum people are trying to base balance on. it's not the actual game.

it's ok to have flavor, if you balance it slow moving zombies better hit like a truck when they catch you.

that's not a valid argument. not all secondaries just run toggles, some are very active. the base damage on the mm attacks is too low given their end costs. i'm ok with the damage being low because the pets are a constant DoT, but the end costs should be addressed. this game has and continues to have little to no concept on balance between the AT's let alone between powersets. don't make excuses or forgive it just because that's the way it always was. This is one of the weakest AT's in incarnate and +4 content by design, it does not need to continue to be crippled in other areas as well.

because with lore pets you are mostly a spectator.

with Degen incarnate, you no longer need to suffer with inferior single target damage by taking bots. plus, daggers.

lore pets make all primary/secondary combos across all at's viable for anything. they are a cheat, and should never be used in a discussion between actual performance between sets. many of the incarnate powers grant a significant power boost to most at's, but none on the level that those lore pets do.

a demon/storm will work on paper, and it will work on the pylon. it won't work that well in actual practice. It's unfortunate that the only boss dummy we have in the game is the pylon. It's size allows the demons to all be in melee range and cycle all of their attacks. in actual practice this is not how they perform against an av that's smaller than black scorpion. due to collision one or two of them wil be in melee range the rest sit back and cycle ranged attacks or endlessly trying to hop over one another. thugs doesn't have this problem. in actual practice, thugs will outdamage demons. it will outdamage all primaries in actual practice even if you can't be arsed to replace that arsonist. if you add storm into the mix then you aren't going to touch thugs/storm for damage. why? 1) the damage is entirely in their tier 2 and tier 3 pets. Other sets don't offer this. demons tier 3 is half damage half control their damage relies on the tier 2 and 3 and the one tier 2 and the one tier 3 that does toxic that also debuffs. beasts damage is almost entirely in the tier 1's. why is this important? two words: purple patch. 2) they have the fastest animating aoe's. in the time the robots tier 1 has fired off it's cones the enforcers have fired off all three. you don't actually need the arsonist to kill a pack. let it die. 3) they have a power that lets them park all 6 mm unique aura's without affecting their pet damage potential. 4) that same power - if you can keep them alive for the duration - does a ton of damage. have burnout? yeah it's pretty much no contest. now survivability wise I don't think anything can top demons/thermal with warmth on auto fire especially since you can just straight up buy full CC protection for yourself at the p2w vendor. there are enough enemy types endgame with tohit buffs that just chew right through time. again i'm not addressing what's fun here, because the OP didn't ask for fun. he/she is asking for damage. thugs/storm can't be beat. if you want the best overall will almost never lose a pet setup on +4? demons/thermal, but knockback av's will make you want to punch a baby.

lore pets should never be considered for any discussions regarding the balance between powersets.

if you are going to include personal attacks, then include them equally. you can slot -res in thugs personals as well to keep it up permanently and I never factor in lore pets for anything.

it's not the strongest. hands down, nothing is stronger than thugs. single target. aoe. it doesn't matter - nothing is stronger than thugs whether you factor in a secondary or not. it is the only set where all three tiers of pets do amazing damage AND it focuses it's damage evenly between the tier 2 and tier 3. all other sets have some sort of aura or cc or what not that takes away from their damage potential. even with leadership toggles, the enforcers lose to no tier 2 damage wise. they are also easy to softcap beasts? they can crit, but NOT with fortify pack up. if you perma fortify pack you don't crit and beast damage drops into the toilet. a purely single target focused set where most of the damage is on the tier 1's, heavily reliant on procs to handle +3's and don't bother with +4's without incarnate shift and it can't crit? point by point: good damage bc they crit - not with fortify pack up. that's a full minute of zero crits excellent buffs/debuffs from time - this is true no matter the primary beasts has nothing to do with it excellent heals/end recovery - again, nothing to do with beasts can soft cap pets defenses - not as easily as thugs who can do it without needing all of the mm unique io's allowing you to slot even more damage or procs excellent team support - mm's are not a very good teaming at in general. this is entirely on time, not beasts. mm attacks can be slotted with lots of procs - thugs beats beast in this regard. damage procs, debuff procs, a handy power to park all 6 mm unique io's without affecting your pets actual damage in any way? it beats everyone with only demons coming in second your pets hardly die? turn up the difficulty perma chronoshift - beasts has nothing to do with this. fun combo - I disagree. there is not enough power in it for me to find it fun given the total lack of aoe. it takes a beast player far longer than just about any other mm set that has aoe's to kill a pack especially if you are dumb enough to pop fortify pack and to your last point about fun - the op is likely finds the "fun" in POWER. the OP - like me - POWER = FUN. Animations? cuteness? fleeting. Power is forever in this game (until it's nerfed). thugs/whatever is where the power is. beasts is not in the running. if you want to compromise, get demons.

i'm sure beast is fine, but it's damage is horrible with fortify pack up and it's scripting is terrible. OP wanted best damage combo, and beasts is not on the list.

I was mostly being facetious. I don't think there is any one mm pet that can even take 5 damage procs.

absolute highest damage is going to be either thugs/storm or thugs/kin IF you can cap out fulcrum shift. of those two, thugs/storm is more likely to survive a 4/8 bots is NOT a high damage set. don't fall for that trap, especially post IO's. the highest damage mm primaries are those that have their damage entirely in their t2 and t3 pets. bots it's in their t1 and t3 with t2 providing mostly support. t1 pets take a massive hit to their damage due to level differences. any set that overly relies on their t1 pets for damage is going to be inferior to one that does not when it comes to straight damage unless you could do something like slot 5 damage procs or something. as for being mezzed - you can buy mez immunity by the hour at the p2w vendor.

You see the scattering effect before you have any ground target aoe's. i'm doing thugs/ela and saw it as soon as I was able to ramp up to 1/6 which was about level 8 or 9. goto doesn't stop them from running off to chase all of these mobs immediately unfortunately. not sure what goto changes you guys are talking about but the behavior is about the same as back on live.

which is why you have sets which on paper should not be doing as well that end up being best in class. Thugs for example. mostly lethal and smashing damage the two most resisted damage types in the game is always tops because their powers animate super fast and recycle super fast. bots should be doing more, but their animations are hideously long and their recharges even longer. If animation time is never taken into consideration, then this makes set balance a pipe dream.

It should, because powers do not start their recharge before the animation finishes, the animations can't be cancelled and you can't use anything else until the animation time completes.

huh. The base damage being higher makes sense because of their animation times and end costs - when looked at in a vacuum. Claws still has the best pbaoe spin move (almost twice the damage of whirling smash) if you will and Dark probably has the best short range cone now. the base damage on rend armor is way, way too high. The rest of the powers are ok. Momentum is what screws everything up. it basically removes the animation times that balance out the base damage and end costs. it's a STUPID design decision. recharge, base damage and endurance cost AND animation time since recharge does not begin until after the power has animated must always be taken together when determining power and powerset balance. you cant just look at one or two of those on their own. remove momentum, lower animation times, end costs and lower damage on rend armor which is the real outlier even for it's base animation time. I don't know what else they could do. momentum takes a full second off of rend armor. from 2.3 to 1.3. momentum is such a force multiplier that just 'tweaking' the damage alone is not enough to give it parity with other sets like battle axe or war mace or the other big hitters. if you math it out, rend armor does nearly the same damage over a minute and dps with a slightly higher end cost than knockout blow with one stack of rage baseline, all powers unenhanced. both powers have near the same animation times but knockout blow has a 5s longer cooldown and NOT EVER taking advantage of momentum. that's not ok. and if you aren't starting your attack cycle with rend armor so it's taking advantage of momentum, it just blows everything in the game out of the water and does more damage and dps than a double stacked rage knockout blow over the same duration.

you could make either work with either secondary, but not cheaply. thugs is the better choice, and pain dom is the better secondary choice if you are limiting yourself to just those two options. time is the BEST choice however, and you can make it purple.