Demons Vs Bots with Electric Aff.

[Sarion]

I love masterminds, and I love the electric affinity secondary but, I am at an impasse. Between Bots and Demons, which would go well with electric affinity and allow me to solo at max level and settings in addition do incarnate activities? From my understanding these are the pros and cons for each set if I have left anything out or am incorrect with my assumptions, please correct me!

 

Demons Positives : Higher resists, varied damage, resist debuff, mule power for auras, useful personal attacks.

Demons Negative: Narrow AoE, mix between melee and ranged causing them to wander out of Faraday cage if not careful.

 

Robot positives: All ranged (easy to keep in cage), Good AOE, defense for layered protection.(Is it possible to max defense on the bots?)  -regen for AVs

Robot negatives: Poor single target, no mule power,  insane knockback further reducing slot options.

 

Ultimately I am looking for opinions and views as to which would be better for what I want to do, and finally one more question that is probably age old. "Which is better, pure resists or layered defense with resists?" Any opinions or ideas are welcomed, and I look forward to seeing what my fellow masterminds have to say about this. Thanks for your time!

[MoisesG]

Demons and Bot are probably my favorite MM class.

 

But i think you answered your own question.

If you want pets that wont run out of Faraday Cage

and able to play at max setting (which i assume to be */8)

and provide debuff against tough targets (-regen)

then the answer should be Bots.

 

At */8 play it is all about AoEs, and that is where the Bots shine.

With Demons it will be more of kill them one at a time playstyle that is counter productive to a */8 setting.

Not to mention all of the running in and out of melee.

 

That is just my take, and others might have a different and better take.

 

But if in doubt, make both!!! 🙂

[Coyote]

Demons. The set is just better all around.

Robots do work really well with EA... I run one at max difficulty. But, I've recently started playing at +4/x6, to lower the number of Bosses in a spawn. Even with minions burning up fast, and the use of Fold Space to bunch up everyone for the AssBot's rockets, the time taken to kill off 3 Bosses at the end of a spawn is just annoying.

Demons will kill things faster, period, and are about as tough defensively as a base but heal much more.

 

Note that it's not a great disparity with this secondary... it really suits Robots better, so they close the gap against Demons. But it starts off as a pretty big gap, unfortunately. If you do play Robots/EA, it's a strong pairing, so you probably won't regret it. But Demons/EA will still be ahead.

[TheSpiritFox]

If you use goto commands its pretty easy to keep demons in the cage, and with a decent bit of recharge you can move the cage around all over the place. 

 

Demons will be a much, much happier overall set. 

[Neiska]

@Sarion

Hello OP!

 

I have run both Robots/EA and Demons/EA. Both are capable of max difficulty - +4/8 with solo bosses turned on. Here are what I consider the highlights -

 

Defenses/Resistances - Demons are argueably more durable with the double resist staking, with moderate defense rating. However, I consider this a moot point with /EA due to the fact you can have infinate Endurance on demand, which frees up Barrier for your Destiny Incarnate slot. So if you take Barrier and Support and "juggle" them, I think you will find both Demons and Robots to be very close in terms of survivability, but thats Top Endgame content you are talking about, without taking things like exemplaring down into account.

 

Pet IO muling - Demons have the clear advantage here, with Hell on Earth, allowing more freedom to slot pets as you like. Robots have no such option, and are even further restricted by having to slot KB->KD in certain areas as well, or else you will find enemies getting knocked out of your Assualt robots fire patches which is your main source of AoE.

 

Ranged pets vs Melee pets - This is completely up to personal preferance. However I would like to point out a recent discovery I made. With the change in Pet AI a few patches ago, ranged pets will stay at ranged, they wont "run in". This means if you take Robots (an entirely ranged pet set) and take group fly, you can have your entire team flying overhead. If your enemies don't have any substanacial ranged or -fly powers, you take very little damage. The robots even get little rocket boots and fly around with you. Demons do not have this gameplay option as they will run in and claw. 

 

Damage wise - Demons have a definate edge here for single target, but robots have the AoE out of all the MM sets. So thats really a question as to what you perfer. Though Robots do have built in -regen, which is even better if you use a Longbow lore pet as well. 

 

Top end - My Demons/EA at top end, was tough enough to farm the moon map AE. Everything (even my hell on earth cinders) were resistance capped. I would more or less run in, pop cage, and get to spamming. The demons aggroed half the map at once, and it would be a long 5 minute fight. More often than not, I would survive, and so would my pets. That's something not even a tanker can boast of, being able to survive fighting 7+ spawns of enemies at a time, as each pet has its own threat table. But its high risk/high reward gameplay, and you couldnt pause even for a moment or it would all come crashing down on you. But just the fact I "could" was pretty awesome. It is possible to solo quite well with Demons/EA, as well as contribute to a team.

 

My Robots/EA at top end, is my new favorite MM setup, namely with group fly. I can Farm on AEs with the highest difficulty, even being able to go AFK while doing so, due to the mentioned Group Fly interaction with the new Pet AI. I simply fly to a group with my robots, throw up cage for chain stacks, status protection, and resistances, and then put +absorb on autocast and the robots do all the work. Against some enemies, I don't even need to heal. I also like interactions with CC powers like Web Grenade, Electric Fences, or even better Bonfire with the Assualt robots fire patches. 

 

In the end I perfer my Robots/EA for a few reasons.

1. Varied play styles and power interactions - You can footslog it, you can Tankermind, you can lock things down with CC and outrange them, and lastly you can use group fly for an aireal combat sort of feel. 

2. Robot/EA I feel has more interesting combations in combat, such as Bonfire + Assualt robots flame patch.

3. My Robot/EA can afk farm even on the hardest content. So far she is the only one I have made who is able to do so. And I think only a Robot/EA could pull it off, though /ff might be able to as well.

4. I just like Robots better, theme/flavor and all.

 

I hope this helps. Really its up to you, either one is fully capable either solo or for a team on the hardest content. Personally I vote Robotics, but thats just my personal taste. 

 

Why not level both of them to 50, to get a good "feel" for them, and pick a "main" one from there? Surely you should lean one direction or another after that?

 

Happy Masterminding!