Thugs Secondary ??

[smnolimits43]

The title says it all.  What's a good secondary for Thugs MM ??  

 

This will be my Homage to Eddie Murphy, the Beverly Hills Cop.

[biostem]

If you're trying to keep things more "mundane", then maybe traps...

[Astralock]

The "best" secondaries for Thugs are Time Manipulation and Electrical Affinity.  Three words: Permanent Gang War.  Dark Miasma and Nature Affinity are both good as well.

[biostem]

4 minutes ago, Astralock said:

The "best" secondaries for Thugs are Time Manipulation and Electrical Affinity.  Three words: Permanent Gang War.  Dark Miasma and Nature Affinity are both good as well.

But if the character is supposed to be based off of Axel Foley from Beverly Hills Cop, it'd be quite the stretch to say he'd have time manipulation, dark, or plant/fungus powers...

[TygerDarkstorm]

I'm not familiar with the movie, but /Traps is considered a fairly top-tier secondary for Thugs, just saying, lol.

 

And idk if it fits the theme/concept, but /Trick Arrow is also quite good with Thugs.

[Tacheyon]

Poison and Sonic are also good with Thugs as you can use the Bruiser as an anchor for a few of the powers on each of those sets.

[SeraphimKensai]

3 hours ago, biostem said:

But if the character is supposed to be based off of Axel Foley from Beverly Hills Cop, it'd be quite the stretch to say he'd have time manipulation, dark, or plant/fungus powers...

But he could stick a banana in someone's tailpipe.

[KC4800]

Don't discount Thugs/Empathy

[Hedgefund2]

Here's my Thugs CV:

 

From live servers (50s, don't remember how far incarnated):

FF

Nature

 

From HC (all fully T4d)

Emp

Traps

Dark

Cold

Time

Poison

 

I found all of them to be varying degrees of "very good", not a dog in the bunch.  I'll provide a 1-2 sentence summary of each.

FF - Easy and cheap if you want.  Thugs are soft-capped just by slotting out your shields, dispersion and maneuvers.

 

Nature - this was far enough in the past that I don't really remember much about it, yet not so far enough in the past that I got to spend a lot of time with it since the time between the release of Nature and shutdown was short.

 

From HC (all fully T4d)

Emp - Very effective but busy busy busy, I'm frankly exhausted after playing this trying to make sure all pets are constantly forted with AB on Bruiser.  Ironically, Emp, the powerset known as "the one you need a team to make the best use of" is better for you solo than on teams since Fort and AB will be going to a player, leaving you only with heals and auras for pets.

 

Traps - Traps is Traps.  It's most effective with high recharge*.

 

Dark - Very well rounded, great at supporting pets with -tohit and an area heal that you can control where it goes.

 

Cold - on my S-tier.  Can soft-cap minions while providing Cold debuffs*

 

Time - Soft cap for minions with the 2 def IOs + Farsight (no PB needed) + your Maneuvers.  Needs a good high recharge build to be most effective (true in most cases)

 

Poison - This is the only one I'm putting in C tier, maybe leaning into B.  I honestly made this for the party trick of Noxious Gas + Gang War + Burnout + repeat first 2.

 

*But these have no heal!  Right, get good at feeding insps via macros/binds for these.

 

Looking at the rest of the MM secondaries only one has a red flag to me - Kinetics.  The Bruiser will do well with FS but the other 5 pets are much more effective at range so will be hard to buff or heal.

[evetsleep]

18 hours ago, TygerDarkstorm said:

I'm not familiar with the movie, but /Traps is considered a fairly top-tier secondary for Thugs, just saying, lol.

 

And idk if it fits the theme/concept, but /Trick Arrow is also quite good with Thugs.

I have a special place in my roster for my many trick arrow toons.  One the absolute strongest is my thugs/ta MM's.  The lack of a heal used to be problematic, but now that pet summons are quicker it's not a big deal and I go sans-Aid Other.

 

Trick arrow brings a lot to the table that meshes really well with pets like thugs (and bots).

[Tacheyon]

1 hour ago, evetsleep said:

I have a special place in my roster for my many trick arrow toons.  One the absolute strongest is my thugs/ta MM's.  The lack of a heal used to be problematic, but now that pet summons are quicker it's not a big deal and I go sans-Aid Other.

 

Trick arrow brings a lot to the table that meshes really well with pets like thugs (and bots).

 

Having your Arsonist ignite your Oil Slick Arrow with his Molotov for a double burn field is a thing of beauty.

 

Would you mind posting your build please (if possible).  I am looking to update mine (haven't since the power pick shuffle). 

[evetsleep]

On 3/11/2023 at 1:33 PM, Tacheyon said:

 

Having your Arsonist ignite your Oil Slick Arrow with his Molotov for a double burn field is a thing of beauty.

 

Would you mind posting your build please (if possible).  I am looking to update mine (haven't since the power pick shuffle). 

 

In this case my build is not really well designed (i.e. I haven't really put it down to paper\MIDs).  But that said, given how unstructured it is I imagine a properly thought out build would be even more effective.  It doesn't really solve the end-game mastermind problems with level differences and such, but other than that it is a pretty solid combination that offers a lot of opportunities to just blast away with debuffs.

 

 

[smnolimits43]

hmmm.. well first off, thanks for getting back to me.  I was almost thinking of either Kinetics , Empathy, or Forcefields.  I might try traps.  Reminds me of when Axel puts a banana up the tail pipe.

[Crysis]

Thugs/Time and Thugs/Storm are both high +Rech builds, with /Time also giving you high +DEF, but /Storm giving you some -TOHIT which can effectively produce similar results.  

 

But of the two, Thugs/Storm puts out OMGWTFBBQ levels of DPS plus GangWar is perma and PLUS PLUS you can get Double Gangwar about every third spawn with Burnout.

 

Storm is just -RES and additional Damage, plus a lot of FF +RECH procs.

 

Personally, I prefer Thugs/Storm, but /Time is no slouch either.  Thugs/Traps is a bunch of fun too, although I find in later game you seldom have the chance to use all your fun toys so its more of a solo build.  /Dark, /Kin and /Elec have some good utility value for teaming but none of those match /Time or /Storm for DPS and in the end, the best debuff is a dead critter due to higher DPS.

 

If the goal is to RP “Beverly Hills Cop” via renaming the Thugs to match in-movie characters, I’d suggest that the Beverly Hills setting for much of the movie /Nature might be a good secondary (greenery, stuff growing around the battlefield, etc).  But admittedly, that’s a bit of a stretch.

 

Then again, I have a Thugs/Time that’s built around Anchorman (Ron Burgandy and his news crew, plus Octagon, Dr. Kenneth Noisewater and James Westfall for the t1 pets) and /Time was selected partially for the opening line of the movie (“There was a TIME, a time before cable, when the local newsman reigned supreme….”), but honestly more for overall build effectiveness instead.

 

My Thugs/Storm is built around Sons of Anarchy with the leader being Gemma Teller and all the henchmen being her primary “sons” of the gang.  /Storm just seemed to fit her personality.

 

If you really want theme, look into key catchphrases, settings, easily-identified scenes, etc when choosing powers to match a theme.  You don’t have to gimp yourself by force-fitting a powerset you don’t want.  Lots of stuff in all the BHC movie franchise to choose from!  One of my fave lines from the movie would fit into the superhero world nicely:  “Before I go, I just want you two to know something.  The -SUPERCOP STORY- was working…okay?”

Edited March 16, 2023 by Crysis