Thugs is great! /Sonic is something. Can this combo work in tough content?

[Onlyasandwich]

I've polished off my latest MM, having finished my Necro/EA just a few days ago. He's amazing! Certainly can't go wrong with either of these sets.

 

Edit: Played with the build a bit.

 

Thugs is of course a very strong primary as well, and I have yet to play it. However, I have a concept that works well with /Sonic, and I've been itching to try and make the set work, as its literally the only support set in the game I haven't played. I like the idea of playing it on a character that can actually benefit from Disruption Field when solo (Thank you Mr. Bruiser), so Thugs is a good fit.

 

I don't see much of Sonic in the MM forums, however. It seems the key here is the lack of a heal, which even with the best defenses, is something we end up needing to lean on in the chaos of managing our minions at times.

 

I'm also struck by the particularly difficult end management of this combo. Lots of toggles, all of them very expensive! Some of them very mediocre even with this expense.

 

If you've played this combo, or /Sonic on a MM at all, I'd love to hear how it fared in solo high level work. Can it complete even a +4X8 Council mission without waiting for liquify with every spawn, or constantly resummoning? 

 

A few things I'd like to keep regardless:

• I want to try Sonic repulsion. It doesn't seem very good for the enormous end cost, but I'd like to see how it goes. Have you found it useful? Does FFback work in here like it does in kinetics/Repel? I believe it should from the way it flags in CoD.
• Leviathan powers are for theme.
• I am a fan of slow resist, and like to keep at least 80% as here.

 

What I've gone for:

• Max my personal S/L resist and grab recharge where possible, incorporating all the MM procs.
• Max hit chance against +3's.
• Survival strategy is uh - hope the Thugs can take it in the jaw? Really, open with either Gang war or Liquefy if possible, though it won't be always given absurd cooldowns. Otherwise, use a combination of KD procs in Bile Spray (88% chance) and Sonic repulsion to keep tagbacks to a minimum. This seems a bit dicey, but maybe my shields will hold us through!

 

Slotting and power questions:

• Is it silly to miss defense slotting for Enforcer? I can't even tell if it actually enhances the power.
• Speaking of enforcer, what do you think of my proc slotting here? I believe gaussian should hit quite often for them given they are buffing all their buddies with the tohit aura.
• I skipped Empty clips, despite being an avid MM attack getter. This thing is just plain old garbage as far as I can tell, and even a pretty bad FFback donkey when procced out. Do you like it? 
• A few of my slots were sort of thrown in for extra endredux (maneuvers, tactics, some others that are sort of marginal). Do you see any areas where I would better reallocate? 
• Endurance usage! Holy cow I'm not sure if it's really possible to balance this end usage when running all the toggles. I guess the answer is not to run them, but we'll see. Victory Rush is only ~40% up time, and fiddly to use, but pretty effective. Ideally I'd like Rebirth, but Ageless is seeming like the only answer for high levels.

 

 

Mastermind (Thugs - Sonic Resonance) mk2.mbd

 

Visual:

Spoiler

 

Edited September 3, 2023 by Onlyasandwich

[Raikao]

Well kudos it's honestly well put together. Personally I wouldn't slot Brawl, but I guess you value slow resist that much. I'm not sure why. I usually use a Winter's Gift: Slow resist and that's it.

 

Tactics I would put 2 cytos if you don't use a set bonus there.

 

Victory Rush is the only odd pick. Does that do anything? When do you even use it, when a Lt. dies or after a Boss dies as a buff for the next pack you engage?

 

Is the accuracy on the pets enough? That is something I'm always struggleing with. I just can't find information anywhere on how much Hit you actually need in total.

 

I'll drop my Thugs/Cold here to maybe give inspiration for slotting the pets.

 

Fry-FaceV2 Mastermind (Thugs - Cold Domination).mbd

[Onlyasandwich]

11 hours ago, Raikao said:

Personally I wouldn't slot Brawl, but I guess you value slow resist that much

Thank you for your review, and sharing your own build!

 

The single slot for brawl provides fairly comparable 1-slot return on slow resist to the Winter's Gift IO itself (15 versus 20%). Honestly slow resist is probably a lot less important on a MM, and even less so on /Sonic specifically. It is a bit of a quality of life issue for me, however, and this build has a lot of flex slots, so I may as well keep it.

 

Victory Rush is very powerful, especially when used on bosses. When used on a boss, it provides (enhanced) 117% recovery, and reduces end consumption by 30% across the board. Even at LT level it is ~59% and 15% respectively. The downside is the uptime, which though significant, can't be made perma, as the power isn't affected by recharge. It's also pretty fiddly to use as noted.

 

I rely on Mids for a lot of my math, so am not 100% certain on pet hit chances here. However, between a minimum of 60% local accuracy, 9% tohit from Tactics, 10% tohit from Supremacy, and 5% total tohit from both Enforcers, it should be pretty solid. Both Thugs and enforcers will also benefit pretty often from their own buildup procs.

 

2 Cytos would indeed be a bit better! However, I'm trying to cut down a bit on the most expensive enhancements where possible, and the extra tohit provided from a Cyto is pretty negligible here versus the extra bit of endredux from a plain old IO.

Edited September 4, 2023 by Onlyasandwich

[Xandyr]

I don't know how Thugs/Sonic would be, but I did roll a Ninja/Sonic. With the update to some of the pets, ninjas now heal themselves. Since they have inherently high defenses, I thought pairing them with Sonic would kinda round them out. It works decently, and I get the "Liquefy" arguement....it's nice, but sucks that it takes forEVER to recharge. While Thugs don't have a heal, and won't be near the defense softcap, I think that they will rely a lot on you,the player. Whether that's through using Heal Other, Spirit Ward, or maybe even Bonfire (with the Overwhelming Force proc), I feel that you need to have some mitigation, and strategy, before engaging any and all fights. I believe you're spot on with using KD procs!

 I'll also say that the(few) times I was able to find a team, my teammates liked what Sonic brought to the table...so it's team oriented, and should be appreciated if you do team.

   

[Xandyr]

Oh, and I never took Sonic Repulsion. Does it behave like Hurricane...aka it will repel foes and not knock them down? I do remember on a Storm toon I had, I took Hurricane and slotted the KB>KD IO, and foes were repelled and not knocked down. I'm curious to know. 

[Onlyasandwich]

@Xandyr My strategy right off hand is a bit soft right now, and I suspect it won't be sufficient for a lot of content. The idea is basically have the Thugs engage with buffed resists, with both Sonic repulsion and Disruption anchored on the Bruiser.

 

The main mitigation strategy beyond pure resist is knockdown from repulsion, bile spray, thugs, and the occasional boss hold from knockout blow when something nasty is in my face (I swapped Winter IO's to pull in the hold proc for one-shot boss holds).

 

Gang War and Liquefy provide a more sure engagement when they are up, but can only be counted on collectively maybe half the time. Pretty dicey overall!

 

Sonic Repulsion does not have a repel function - it's all KB. When you have a -KB IO slotted, it is just a static knockdown field, which should be pretty nice, though quite end expensive. If it works like other such toggles (whirlwind, kinetics repel), then the FFback also feeds me recharge pretty often from these KD hits.

Edited September 4, 2023 by Onlyasandwich

[C U R S E]

Sonic is a great choice indeed and the though process you put in to building that with thugs. The only problem is that there is going to be many times when you need that AOE heal, when you know what hits the fan.

[Onlyasandwich]

3 hours ago, C U R S E said:

when you need that AOE heal, when you know what hits the fan.

For sure! That is the real fear here.

 

Force Field can sort of get away with it, as when things are smooth, nobody's taking damage. With a resist only set though, it will add up eventually to needing a heal. Perhaps the resilience here is such that periodic resummons will work! I think I'm still going to try it, but would love to hear any special strategies that don't involve getting Aid other. 

[Ringo]

How has this set pairing been treating you, @Onlyasandwich?

 

For the heal problem, I would probably take Spirit Ward and slap it on the Bruiser hopefully letting him keep aggro while you resummon your T1s.  I'd keep the Lts in permanent Bodyguard mode and then just treat the T1s as a kamikaze squad to eat alpha strikes and such.  That's pretty much how the Arsonist AI behaves already, so no reason not to just get used to resummoning all 3.

 

The end cost of constant rebubbling and upgrading might mean you need to spare some slots for EndRedux though...

[Onlyasandwich]

1 hour ago, Ringo said:

How has this set pairing been treating you

To be honest I was distracted by other projects. I'll have to revisit it some time and see!

 

Spirit ward is indeed pretty solid, though I'm not sure how I'd squeeze it in while maintaining other priorities. End is tight enough without the extra draw from here as well, even ignoring power choice.

 

Good idea managing hench strategy differently according to tier! I have tried different binds to manage my henches accordingly, and still don't enjoy fiddling with them so granularly. Maybe this combo would be the one to motivate me to re-evaluate.

 

I suppose if LT's and T1's stay in the same mode all the time, the management is really just for the Bruiser, so it isn't too fiddly.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Riverdusk]

I'm still of the idea that necro/sonic is the ideal pairing with /sonic and the one I have, the synergy is very nice in a lot of ways.  Interesting to see it tried with other sets though, it is a rare support set to see.

 

I skipped sonic repulsion myself, the set already has such endurance issues.  I'd also be curious as to how that works out for you though.  I'd almost think you'd need incarnate endurance help to run it along with everything else.  Have also heard it can be quite audibly obnoxious, not sure if they fixed that, but it also turned me off of it.

 

And yeah, really really wish they'd re-evaluate liquify's recharge time.  It's recharge needs to be cut in half imo to really be decent.  An epic pool power - bonfire,  as someone else mentioned is the superior power and it only has a 2 minute recharge instead of 5 minutes.  Always gets me that so many control type powers have 4 or 5 minute recharges when nukes that recharge in 2 minutes are out there that  just flat out kill everything instead.  Always seemed backwards to me, but that's a whole nother argument. 

[evetsleep]

On 12/14/2023 at 7:46 PM, Riverdusk said:

I'm still of the idea that necro/sonic is the ideal pairing with /sonic and the one I have, the synergy is very nice in a lot of ways.  Interesting to see it tried with other sets though, it is a rare support set to see.

 

 

They do go together nicely.  I have one that is super solid.  However I've tried /sonic on just about all MMs and after the recent pass on some of the primaries I very much love it on ..... bots.  The healing drone provides the needed additional healing and the protector bots force field provides the layer defense to my resistance.   I know that the one toggle is melee and I often put it on the assbot and send him into packs.

 

It works really well.  Probably my top pick right now with/sonic.

Edited December 20, 2023 by evetsleep

[arcane]

I can confirm that Sonic Repulsion works with FF procs. I slotted 2 End Redux / 1 KB-KD proc / 1 FF proc the one time I took that power and it worked well enough.