Elthenar

Are you just dead set on making traps work? It is very powerful on a thugs MM. Probably more than most other AT's since you have superior action economy, being able to drop traps while you thugs attack. Like I said though, the problem is that the set is so static you have issues in 8 mans. I do recommend a thug cold build while you are taking flyers. /cold is so strong it makes my ninja's MM incredible.

For me, that lack of a missile launcher killed the Munitions pool. I could deal with the redrew to pull out a big council style missile launcher.

Traps is a powerful set but you need to be aware it does have drawbacks. Traps really struggles in fast paced teams. The traps are static and the cooldowns and animations are just long enough to suck when mobs are just exploding. For a single, do everything thugs MM I'd go time or cold. Time is generally the best, as it is the one set that protects against every form of damage, including psi, and also protects the MM himself. It is also one of the few defensive buffs that can benefit from Power Boost out of Mace Mastery. On top of that, it has a strong set of buffs and debuffs to go with it, including a nice AOE heal. The only thing the set lacks is a really strong -regen. It also suffers from the downside of it's strong defense buff being on a cooldown. Cold gives a lot of defense but is missing on Psi. It doesn't help the MM himself either. It can cast them on demand though, so if you do lose pets you never have to wait to get them rebuffed. It lacks a heal but has the amazing Sleet power. It's a massive debuff and control effect. It also has a strong -regen and AOE steath. It lacks a heal though. Storm is a different thing altogether. It doesn't have defensive buffs of the other two or the AOE heal of time. What it does have is strong debuffs. It has a clone of Sleet from Cold. It also has damage and control. With Storm you can bounce people all over and drop lightning storms and tornados to apply DPS. Like I said though, time is generally the best. The one thing it lacks only matters if you are trying to solo +4 AV's or Giant Monsters.

Did no one mention Power Boost from Mace Mastery? Take it and add another 5 or 6% defense (all) on that Farsight. That will not only benefit you but your pets and team as well. It was also give pure psi defense, which people will really love you for. Scorpion Shield on top of that is just gravy

I just dropped the Superior Mark of Supremacy set in Summon Demon and I encountered a bug. I am not sure if it is a display error or what. With Musculature Core Paragon slotted that power is only showing a 101% damage enhancement. It is also showing a 101% enhancement to Resist Damage. The incorrect info is showing in the enhancement management window and in the powers info right off my bar. The Ember shields are showing the correct value on my buff bar and combat attributes. I suspect the +res aura combined with a pet with a resist power is playing with the displays and making it not read my Alpha. Is it safe to assume my pets damage is correct?

How so. Virtually every AT can with IO's. Some of them could do it while AFK.

Yeah man. Honestly, I didn't realize this had been fixed until the other day. What the OP is asking for is a disaster that some of us have already lived through. No just no, but hell no!

Did we? I thought toxic was among the least. Its possible I am out of date on that one.

It's even better. Given that most of their damage is lethal they suffer from being the most commonly resisted damage type as well. So low damage combined with getting resisted the most equals a sad powerset

You know your set is weak when you could literally double its damage across the board and it would still only be middle of the pack

I had a similar thought but I wasn't sure how slotting would work. If you put enhances in it, would it effect the ability the medic gets? I don't know if any other power works that way. Since we are talking medics though, there is one big thing I forgot. For the love of all that is holy, give the medic the same range as all the other mercs. With his current shorter range, he likes to lead from the front, which is generally a terrible idea for your medic. On a longer timeline, I'd like to see the Medic lose the grenade and pick some stuff out of pain dom. Like Suppress Pain or Nullify Pain.

My post was meant as the simplest possible way to make them competitive in the short term with a absolute minimum of dev time spent. It doesn't cover other relative shortcomings, like not having the extra pet to dump the IO auras into, but at the end of the day damage can make up for quite a lot. Plus, If my version of Serum was put in, the passive bonus would help boost survivability to near that of beasts, which are pretty tanky.

I was talking about the Spec Ops snipes, not LRM. Yet, I would be oddly ok with that too lol

I wouldn't touch the recharge times. The reason that they made pet powers have an unmodifiable recharge is because the AI was completely bonkers. Up until Masterminds in general get a balance pass, the simplest solution is to determine what role Mercs should play and buff their powers accordingly. Since fiddling with the recharge rates is likely impractical, that kind of rules out building them around the CC of the Spec Ops. So I would simply up their damage to a competitive level. My own thoughts would be to make them a strong single target set because of the powerset of the spec ops. While their damage overall is exceptionally feeble, it is the spec ops that are the biggest failure. They have 8 powers, not counting brawl, and only 4 of them attacks. 1 of those attacks is rifle butt and none are AOE. Their other powers are the largely irrelevant stealth, web grenade, flashbang and tear gas. Web Grenade is somewhat useful but flashbang and tear gas are absurdly useless. So you have tier 2 pets that don't do damage, have little defensive ability and weak, unreliable CC. Until someone has to the time to do a deep dive and completely rework mercs, IMO the best option is to give the spec ops a massive damage boost. I would do it by making SCAR snipe hit like a truck. They are Spec Ops, let that snipe be their calling card. A damage value of 120 points or so wouldn't be out of line. After that, simply increase the base damage of the soldiers and Commando (with an emphasis on their single target attacks) to get their single target near the top and not worry too much about their AOE rank. The other big problem with an easy fix is Serum. As it stands it is much to great of a cooldown for too little reward. My own solution would be to add a reasonably strong passive effect to it, similar to Fortify Pack with Beasts. I would give them a permanent, enhancable defensive bonus. I would lean towards defense, because it would give players a reason to devote slots to Serum without having a second resist bonus attached to the same power. The net result would be a top of the line single target set with middle of the road AOE and solid to great defenses. Given that they don't offer much besides ranged damage, compared to a set like bests with strong -res built in, that sounds fairly balanced IMO.

Looking at trick arrow, I see that Flash Arrow has an unresistable tohit debuff. How does that work on higher level mobs with normally have strong debuff resistance. Does unresistable mean it always applies full value? I have no idea how to test this myself.

To my knowledge, nothing about MM pets has been changed from the end of live aside from some improvements to the AI.

Seeker Drones are great. The debuff and stuns are gravy, the best thing about them is summoning them in the middle of enemys and letting them absorb the alpha while you drop mortars, caltrops, pets on their head.

I did that with my ninja/cold and it just seemed redundant with Freezing Rain. With the KD spam already inherent to storm, its a waste. I'd go either Scorpion for the shield and maybe powerboost (powerboosted KD's and debuffs) or my current fav, Soul for the resist shield and Oppressive Gloom. Between Oppressive Gloom, all the KD's and the Lich's CC's, you will literally CC the entire pack so nothing can do much to your undead. Storm will also help make up for the low damage on the LIch. You won't be soloing AV's as well as other specs, but it will have power.

I made this char on a whim and it's turned out to be very potent. With Oppressive Gloom, Bodyguard mode, Necro controls and a single 50 tohit debuff IO in all powers, it makes for a very durable Fulcrum Shift delivery system who can tarpit a lot of mobs for a team. Aside from the standard stuff like loading Soul Extraction with pet defense/resist IOs and putting Knockback protection in Dark Embrace, I am not really sure how to IO this guy. I haven't even settled on an Alpha as nothing really jumps out. Does anyone else run this combo? I'll take any help I can get

When I led with "I agree to a certain degree" that's exactly the part I agreed with. I forgot to follow up on that statement in the post. I could probably make it work to a certain degree but it wouldn't be worthwhile, I'd lose all three genin to every AOE.

I agree to a certain degree but it's not quite as cut and dried as you make it seem. Kinetics can be a very strong secondary for a MM. Take Oppressive Gloom from Soul Mastery and play a bit like a tankermind. Gloom slows down minions, you just need to make sure bosses don't AOE blap all your pets. it's definitely better in a group but that's always true of Kinetics regardless of AT. Yes, your pets don't get the benefit of recharge from Speed Boost but that's hardly a deal breaker. Time suffers from that even moreso and Time is just fine. The recovery from Speed Boost works just fine, as does the CC protection and resists from Increase Density and the heals from Transfusion. Then of course Fulcrum Shift is so strong that it can make your personal attacks scary. I came to this board to make post requesting help with my Necro/Kin but I clicked on this thread first. In the case of my Necro/Kin, I do everything I said above. Instead of going max damage like the OP is requesting, I am built around the CC and selfheal of Necro combined with Opressive Gloom and Bodyguard mode to hold down mobs so I can Fulcrum safely and effectively. It works solo but it's amazing in groups.

Isn't /ninja just awful though?

This sounds familiar. It's almost like I said the exact same stuff a few posts up lol

Most MM pets have horrific AI. That's always been the buggabo with the class. I wasn't aware that the Oni had worse than normal AI though, usually when I am playing my ninja's I am more concerned with keeping the rank and file in melee. Beasts have similar issues though. As to the level difference, there is nothing to be done about it unless they make all pets equal level and then re-balance their damage. I've been screaming for that for over 10 years though, so it's unlikely to be a thing. Still though, +1 to the idea. As for Soul Extraction, I never liked in thematically. The whole idea behind necromancy is that it is the animated, soulless dead. I've always though Soul Extraction should be targeted on an enemy. Let it function like Victory Rush, just target the best available dead enemy. Also, Mechanical enemies are differentiated in the system as proven by EMP arrow and similar powers. Use the same flag to make them invalid targets for Soul Extraction.

Necro is a strange set. It's never going to have top tier damage due to the Lich being a control pet and not a DPS pet. The T1 pets are better than you think IMO. They have a ton of resists and their base brawl has excellent DPA for a pet. The only thing I would add is an ability similar to Envenom from Poison. It would have to be weaker than the MM version, and with the pets being 2 levels down it get resisted making it even less effective. However, with 3 zombies using it would it add up to a small but noticeable effect and it would add -regen to zombies. Ninja's aren't too bad either. They need more defense though. They are freaking ninja's and they are easier to hit with a punch than pet dogs, random thugs or robots and Bots and Beasts still get those nice resists on top. Give them all the same defense as Jounin. Maybe even bump that up a few points. Make them the Super Reflexes of MM pets. Easy to soft cap the defense but when streak breaker hits you it sucks. For the Oni. Just add Fireball to his skill list. Now Mercs, those guys need help. I've given my thoughts on it before but I am willing to keep repeating because I love Mercs. They just suck is all. They are right there with ninja's as having the worst defensive stats of the MM sets. Bots, Demons and Beasts all sport better resists and they too have healing. The damage on the set is low for several reasons. A big one being that the Spec Ops are saddled with long cooldown (2 and 3 minutes), 0 damage CC skills that they will never be able to use correctly. As such the Spec Ops have no AOE at all. Then the commando. He's not nearly as bad as the Spec Ops. He's decent even. He's just saddled with all the drawbacks of an AR blaster who took the munitions pool. LRM has far to long a cooldown for the damage and activation time it has. Full Auto has a long, narrow cone making it hard to hit whole groups and it has a fairly low damage per activation. Fortunately is he does has 5 total AOE's so he can still keep busy when the two big ones are on cooldown. Oh, and serum is simply awful. Mercs need a lot. Like Ninja's, their survivability needs a lot of work, Beef up their resists across the board and give the medic the same range as the other Mercs, so he's not always the closest target amd gets wrecked. Take Frag Grenade away from the medic, so it stops getting all the AOE aggro. To the spec ops. the frag grenade you took from the medic would now be given it to these guys. Seems odd that the freaking medic has AOE's and nades and the Spec Ops guys don't. Those long cooldown CC powers, lower the recharge to like 15 to 20 seconds and make them only have a chance to CC. Make the tear gas do some damage to fill out the Spec Ops AOE dps. For the commando, again he's not so bad. His warts are just serious magnified by how bad the rest of the set is. If the only thing they did was fix LRM, I'd be ok. LRM is one of the worst skills in the game. It's awful for a blaster, it's even more awful for a pet than can't improve it's recharge by any means. There are MM pets with abilities similar in damage that have a quarter or less the cooldown and significantly faster activation times, like Foot Stomp, Swarm Missiles or Terrible Howl. You could legitimately knock 3 minutes off the cooldown and a second off the activation time and it wouldn't be OP at all. For Serum, I'd like to see a similar tack taken like what was used on the Beasts Tier 7. Add a nifty passive to it. My original idea was to give a much lesser version of the Serum buff to all the pets permanently. Specifically +res all, regen and recovery. Not huge amounts, because they would be balanced around them being enhanceable abilities.