Dixa

The fill rate you talk about here is basically just another dps measurement that so many ignore when it comes to this game and have ever since the very beginning. In a game where abilities are fully independent and there is no global cooldown, damage per second calculations must take animation time into consideration along with recast and actual damage done. Thugs does mostly smashing and lethal so their dps really should be poor like mercs. The damage of their abilities isn't significantly higher or lower than the other sets But like ninja, every damned ability has a stupidly short animation time. This is why I always laughed at people who said bots/yaddayadda was the best at dropping av's or packs. That was only true BEFORE we got thugs and has not been true after, no matter your secondary.

costumes are not the biggest change. the biggest, single biggest mm change is the hold command. you target one of your henchmen, hit hold and they are all immobilized and immune to knockback. no more ranged pets chasing things down. obviously this means they will die in a fire late game regularly if you are not paying attention, and will not move at all until you toggle it off, use goto or team teleport. and you can't pick which henchmen to do this on - it turns it on for all which makes keeping your enforcers, punks, arsonist in check while the bruiser goes ham requires just as much micro management as not having this command does. the second, more minor change is a toggle that turns all of your knockbacks into knockdowns, but debuffs your damage a tad. they did the merc changes to bots as well almost identical - tier 1 have a cone attack and they get it immediately. probots get dispersion bubble but it's bugged they don't keep it up. assault bot still has it's brawl but also can summon it's own drones. however even with those changes their damage is still not on par with demons or thugs who have not seen any changes yet. traps is...yeah. triage beacon is now a straight pbaoe heal every few seconds. web grenade is aoe. they combined caltrops and trip mine into one power that is insta cast. added turrets with a long cooldown for the capstone power. traps is basically an actual bunker set and you don't need a primary that heals itself or to grab medicine if you are like me and hate losing pets. other secondary's their heals got a minor aoe heal added to them like alkaloid in poison. nearly all of poisons debuffs are now aoe's. if the probots casting dispersion bubble was fixed, you could then take bots with any secondary and not give up cc protection. bots/poison would become the fastest killing mm combo in the history of the game - packs or single tough enemies. oh, and they moved all of the controller pets from 32 to level 1. controllers/doms are the true pet powerhouses there. they are here, too just a pain to level with for a while. honestly if pet classes are your thing, the other server is the place to play it however the AT is still one of the weakest when it comes to clear speeds and av kill times.

mm's are slow killers. even if you go demons or thugs you still won't approach the kill speed of that brute and what you do get, you will have to work harder for.

this is way off. a demons/thermal can resist cap their pets to many but most importantly to s/l. the level 1 heal in thermal is an aoe that can just be set to auto fire when Justin was first opened, I made many many MANY mm combos and ran them all through the maria Jenkins av arc at 4/8. the only combo that NEVER died was demons/thermal. fights with a lot of knockback are annoying as all hell and because of this the other server with their mm quality of life changes makes an even better demons/thermal however, you have no cc resists until incarnates. for solo, the best secondary is and continues to be traps. thre are many av's that will chew up /time because of cc and moderate to good regen even with daggers. but really it boils down to what you are wiling to deal with when solo. I hate losing pets - ever - and I hate being cc'd especially when you start to deal with malta and their 20s long stuns. the top primaries are thugs and demons, then mercs with tons of procs. bots is pretty far behind the dps department because it's abilities are not only lower in damage than thugs but animate slower and recharge slower. demons can have issues getting all on smaller targets as their best attacks are melee but they have massive models. thugs are mostly ranged except the bruiser, and no mm pet can dish out the single target damage like the bruiser especially on longer fights when it can build up fury. incarnate abilities fix a lot of issues with mm's, but you have to make it that far. still quite a lot of game to play before you get enough incarnate stuff to plug the holes and even THEN mm's fall far behind nearly every other AT when it comes to soloing.

the fact dark can pretty much cap all but toxic resists makes up for the cascading defense failure, which affects all but SR really.

nearly every defense set has a glaring hole of some kind that penalizes you against one or more specific enemy types. If you are looking for one character to effortlessly tackle every enemy group in the game, the closest you are going to get will be with anything using dark armor. however dark armor has issues with knockback and end management until you io it out.

this would nuke the hell out of the heal

the single toughest combo I ever made - and I made a ton when they made the Justin test server - was demons/thermal. there are too many mobs at endgame with +tohit buffs, which destroy any attempt to defcap your pets. too many. I don't want my characters to only be decent against some mob types, I want them good against ALL mob types. demons/thermal can cap most resists, you can auto fire warmth and keep them alive. they are mostly melee so no problem keeping them together and you have great -resists and -regen. what you don't have is cc protection for you and your pets but you can bandaid that with incarnates but no joke there are just a lot of enemies - especially villain side - with autohit powers and high +tohit buffs that just destroy attempts to make powerful /ff, /traps or /time builds. yes you will see people post how theirs is godly and it likely is against many enemy types. but against all? no, no mm build is but demons/thermal gave me the least stress (once I got them capped) against all enemy types.

Really? I don't see why that would be, since FF bubbles do. Pine's assumes it works, which is why I assumed it would... I'm not doubting you, I just think that it's just strange that the power that explicitly states it boosts defense buffs wouldn't boost those two defense buffs. deflection shield also has resists. i'm sure the reason had more to do with making sure that Ff had the edge in raw defense. It's because the cold shields have some resist baked in. It makes the entire power immune to power boost. I found it out the hard way and had to research why it didnt work.

the question you really need to ask is how does tropic thunder not apply to everything?

there is a thread out there with some data...on the scrapper forum I think..buried in another thread. the dots used to tick for upwards of 70 per tick pre shutdown. today they tickle.

it is true. it's dps deadtime. it was reported on the old forums pre shutdown as an issue for the set. it has not been addressed as of yet.

the only real change from the builds pre shut down and now is the i24 ppm changes. so when you see a crapton of damage procs in something like caltrops - that doesn't work like it used to and is a waste of slots now. that's about it. there are quite a few variations of traps builds out there and all are viable.

Well, you learn something new everyday. Thanks for the update! even if it wasn't there, you would have to dismiss and resummon your bruiser everytime you replaced your ffg or zoned. casting ffg makes the pets recast their upgrades on themselves and since they are aoe, the bruiser will get both. this change was a hefty dps loss for the bruiser, but a huge net gain for the at overall.

Found the solution! If you do this at the start of the mission the buff will refresh itself, when you activate it, on them through the entire mission. the hit has to do a minimum of 50 damage. works wonders for the thugs bruiser he hits like a mack truck, but the other pets see no benefit.

yeah, i'm done with reddit as well not to mention all of the pm's I get here for builds already on the forums. can't wait until the ADD morons start 'naming' their builds in order to gain youtube fame or some shit. You both have my appreciation for the builds and feedback you post. I appreciate that, thank you.

be sure to cut and paste the old forums thread here, because nothing on that list was ever fixed.

Degen was established on the old pylon thread to be the best overall for dropping a tough target. back then the dot from reactive did good damage. in i24 the dot damage was nerfed hard for all of the powers, making Degen the best overall now. it makes a MASSIVE dent in your kill times.

if you are able to do all of that and keep increase density on the pets making them immune to knockback, you may have something here. granted you have to cast increase density 5 times every 90s to make that happen, but knockback is the biggest pain in the ass for mm's in general. the only secondary with any way to protect the pets from it is kin you do need to massage this in pines to see if you can softcap yourself if you plan to tankermind. you are very vulnerable to CC

ember shield is 10% smash/lethal/fire/cold/toxic when you enhance it, it goes to 14% smash/lethal, 19% fire, 9% cold, 14% toxic. it's buggy, and honestly you are better off not burning the slot in your tier 2 demons to enhance it. they are your largest source of damage.

the damage proc stops the minute you level up to 21. however this thread isn't about those.

yeah, i'm done with reddit as well not to mention all of the pm's I get here for builds already on the forums. can't wait until the ADD morons start 'naming' their builds in order to gain youtube fame or some shit.

it's been tested and it's not so hot, especially when the pets all stop to howl. the big wolf has a tendency to get stuck in ragdoll animation with the pylon blasts it back too.

ideal /traps builds have first aid, aid other, field medic and maneuvers and tactics from leadership (the tohit buff helps your tier 1 and 2 pets with moderate to high defense mobs). hasten is optional after a certain amount of global recharge. travel power is optional, but team teleport really helps keep you and your pets under the ffg. provoke is also nice. start there.

posts like this must always specify what difficulty you are playing on. 40+ game is diff from the 30+ game, the 20+ game, etc. 32 is still too early to claim beasts are 'alright' when everyone testing at 50 is pretty much proving otherwise.