Beast or Ninja paired with /Pain?

[Xandyr]

I admit...I'm a sucker for /Pain. Heals, debuffs, buffs, and a constant +Regen in Suppress Pain ( and slotted with the Panacea proc is icing on the cake). I've paired it with Mercs and Necro, and enjoyed them both. But now, I think I'm gonna pair it with a Primary that has high Defense in hopes of having an additional layer of mitigation. I imagine that either Beasts or Ninjas, with their inherent higher Defenses (and the Crits!), paired with Pain should be a pretty good combo. 

   If you were going to, which would you pair with Pain, and why?

 

Appreciate it!

 

- x

[Ringo]

I have a Ninjas/Cold at 50 and a Beast/Kin at 41.  Personally I have had more fun with the Ninjas overall and have found Beast rather lacking.

 

Part of this is that /Kin is not a very forgiving set when it comes to keeping pets alive.  Even with an entirely melee group whose targets you can direct, Transfusion isn't a replacement for Defenses or Resistances.  Plus while Fortify Pack does give your pets Defenses, and /Kin doesn't need to worry much about the lost damage, you still need to build up stacks of Pack Mentality to actually use Fortify Pack and that can be frustrating if a fight is already forcing you to resummon.

 

/Pain has World of Pain which will give your pets some extra toughness and better direct heals than /Kin, so it's not a bad choice (I really like /Pain), but in my experience I would rather have it with Ninjas than Beasts

[Xandyr]

Yeah, I'm leaning towards Ninjas.

[Lhanis]

It's a bit sad, because I really like the aesthetic of Beasts. But they really need some love from the Devs before I would ever recommend them to someone. New Ninjas are actually a lot of fun, and lot less likely to ragdoll from a strong breeze like they used to be.

 

While I'm not generally one to point at 'tier lists' because I don't feel like it's really possible to sort powersets like that in CoH, there is a reason everyone collectively agrees Beasts are at the bottom when one comes up. /Pain might be able to keep them upright and going, but it'll be far from a satisfying MM experience imo.

[Riverdusk]

Well, they may be ranked last to probably most people now, but I'd disagree that I wouldn't recommend them to anyone and that they can't be 'satisfying'.  It wasn't like they were actually nerfed (that I'm aware of?).  They are only last now because of buffs to some other sets and people used to find them plenty satisfying before other sets got buffed.   On some of the old rankings and testings of actual kill speed and safety they were often A or B tier back in the day.  

 

 

Can't deny that necro is my favorite now, but beast MM's can still hold up just fine and can be a lot of fun.  

 

I'm definitely not against them getting some love for sure.  But I also think how 'bad' they are has become a bit exaggerated.  

 

 

[Ringo]

Eh, even in that thread Beasts drop from 2nd best to 4th just by adding IOs to the MM Primary build, to say nothing of leveraging the MM secondary or the player's playstyle.  Beasts aren't unplayable by any means, but they can feel frustrating.

 

Honestly, my Ninjas/Cold is from 2019 and was specifically built to try to build up the paper-thin Ninja defenses.  If I were to make a new Beasts MM /Cold might be my goto once again

[Riverdusk]

2 minutes ago, Ringo said:

Eh, even in that thread Beasts drop from 2nd best to 4th just by adding IOs to the MM Primary build, to say nothing of leveraging the MM secondary or the player's playstyle.  Beasts aren't unplayable by any means, but they can feel frustrating.

 

Honestly, my Ninjas/Cold is from 2019 and was specifically built to try to build up the paper-thin Ninja defenses.  If I were to make a new Beasts MM /Cold might be my goto once again

 

Definitely good choice.  Beast/cold was exactly my favorite beast combo (the level 50+ one I still play sometimes).  Beast/time also worked well (/time pretty much always works well).  Being all melee pets I find having a secondary with slows or extra controls helped a lot (runners being more of an issue to melee pets).   

 

So /pain wouldn't be a choice I would recommend, to get back to the original question.