some questions about /marine with a few different pet types

[R jobbus]

So /marine is very enjoyable, lots of fun to play. I've had the most success with ninjas/marine and mercs/marine.

 

I wanted to ask, I've heard from several people saying ranged MMs are the best for doing hard content/soloing hard content, and I absolutely love mercs/marine with group fly, but is there any advantage to having bots/marine as well? I've tried them out in the beta server, they clearly do a bit less damage, but are they alot tankier than mercs? What's the main difference between the 2. Is there an advantage to having both of them available. 

 

I am surprised at how much success ninjas/marine has had but the buffs from marine make them so strong, and the concentrated single target damage is really nice. Brine really seems to do well on AVs and smoke bomb is great. 

 

I've struggled to get necro/marine to do what I want it to do, but i may not be using it correctly. My main issue with necro seems to be that it doesn't have the damage output, while also really easily aggroing anything in sight. And also, to add insult to injury, the specters use what im assuming is a fire attack which makes AVs run away from you. I could try adding assault to necro, i'm using a build that doesn't use assault. Honestly i'm totally new to it though and it could definitely be a skill issue. I'm using gloom after I summon spirits, etc. I am testing them on a solo +4/x8 ITF, which ninjas, bots, and mercs have all done well on. My test is generally being able to pass stage 3. 

 

(stage 4 is generally too much for MM/marine, aggroing the 4 AVs at once will just shred the pets. Maybe bots could do it in the air one nictus at a time? It's rough. There's likely a way to do it but I haven't really tinkered with it. The easy cheap and possibly subject-to-change way currently is to just not aggro any monsters at all, fly over to the house behind rommy and pull only him because the aggro limit seems to just glitch out and make this possible if you only pull him from afar without having killed any enemies in the zone. You might even be able to kite only him all the way up the cliff and around the zone to where he can't actually see the nictus, making the objective completed for only one death.  But, I don't want to use this as a strat cause it almost seems cheap and like something they'd just patch out eventually. I don't know.)

 

 

 

[tidge]

Having played a Robotics MM and /Marine on ATs other than MMs, I think the primary consideration is that the Robots are (effectively) entirely ranged attackers. The robots will be well-served by the debuffs from Marine. Some of what I suspect you are observing is with the henchmen classes that engage in melee; Marine should make it very easy to focus on (pretty much) all of the henchmen and the AV/GM at the same time. My experience with the robots is that they do tend to get somewhat scattered (knockback, travel, deciding when to move, etc.) and positioning them is something that has to be done if you want it done.

 

My Robotics favorite is a Traps secondary; for that I skipped the final three powers in Traps (and Web Grenade, and Triage Beacon), so a tricked out Marine MM will probably only skip Soothing Wave and Whitecap. Personally I love Whitecap, but I think a Robotics MM isn't likely to need to use it. Such a kit of /Marine should perform as well as my /Traps kit in the control/debuff  arena.... if not better. The primary "build issue" I see with a Robotics/Marine is that a Robotics MM does want at least two of the Pulse Rifle attacks for -Regen, and /Marine doesn't allow as much skipping of powers as I did with /Traps. I can see a build getting pretty crowded pretty fast.

 

 

[R jobbus]

13 hours ago, tidge said:

Having played a Robotics MM and /Marine on ATs other than MMs, I think the primary consideration is that the Robots are (effectively) entirely ranged attackers. The robots will be well-served by the debuffs from Marine. Some of what I suspect you are observing is with the henchmen classes that engage in melee; Marine should make it very easy to focus on (pretty much) all of the henchmen and the AV/GM at the same time. My experience with the robots is that they do tend to get somewhat scattered (knockback, travel, deciding when to move, etc.) and positioning them is something that has to be done if you want it done.

 

My Robotics favorite is a Traps secondary; for that I skipped the final three powers in Traps (and Web Grenade, and Triage Beacon), so a tricked out Marine MM will probably only skip Soothing Wave and Whitecap. Personally I love Whitecap, but I think a Robotics MM isn't likely to need to use it. Such a kit of /Marine should perform as well as my /Traps kit in the control/debuff  arena.... if not better. The primary "build issue" I see with a Robotics/Marine is that a Robotics MM does want at least two of the Pulse Rifle attacks for -Regen, and /Marine doesn't allow as much skipping of powers as I did with /Traps. I can see a build getting pretty crowded pretty fast.

 

 

 

Thanks for the info. Yea I like the set but I'm just wondering how it compares to mercs. Like what is the major difference there. I'm assuming mercs does more damage but might die easier, is there any real difference being the only 2 ranged MMs? if anyone knows.

 

That's good info though, I likely will just get rid of whitecap for my bots build and get the 2nd rifle -regen ability. I was actually just fighting requiem and it was particularly slow with just one rifle -regen. Though that might just be how bots are as well, as far as damage output goes.

[tidge]

As I hinted: I think the main difference between Robots and other Henchmen is that the other Henchmen will mostly engage in melee, whereas the Robots will mostly stay put. This can be an advantage, as the robots can still be within Bodyguard range but not be the target of (some) AoE attacks. There is a real holistic perspective needed with solo MMs, and approach also must change depending on content.

 

Robots are (in my experience) slower against normal (minion/Lt/Boss) single targets than other henchmen, but against huge sacks of HP (and massively large spawns) I think they are top tier, once debuff effects come into play.

[evetsleep]

I would add that a nice thing about bots is you get a forcefield bubble on your toon from the protector bots which can pair nicely with marines defence to help add to the MM's individual toughness.

 

Also in addition to -regen from the MM attacks the damage type (energy) for bots is probably less resisted than mercs.  Not a huge difference, but worth noting.  I find bots tend to be a little more resilient with their shields and heals.  Don't get me wrong.. I very much love the dakka boys, but I appreciate the pewpew crew too 🙂

[Octogoat]

I can not for the life of me come up with a concept for bots/marine

[tidge]

35 minutes ago, Octogoat said:

I can not for the life of me come up with a concept for bots/marine

 

Naughty Bots.

[TygerDarkstorm]

53 minutes ago, Octogoat said:

I can not for the life of me come up with a concept for bots/marine

You can take the fish out of most of the powers, which opens up some ideas, but as a fellow concept based player, Bots are definitely one I struggle with a concept for paired with Marine.

 

Though now that I think about it, I have a bots/nature whose name is Environmentabot and whose concept is a robot based on teaching people how to be environmentally friendly and helping to rebuilt the environment. You could do a similar concept for bots/marine, but where they're supporting lakes/oceans/etc.

[evetsleep]

1 hour ago, Octogoat said:

I can not for the life of me come up with a concept for bots/marine

 

The cool thing they did, as others mentioned, is they allowed you to take fish out of the powers and also have a full range of colors to use.  For example, you could have a MM master bot which is infused with nanobots (in the form of animated black sludge) which can be used to control other robots (your minions) as well as be used offensively\defensively against foes.

 

There are a LOT of different creative things you can do with this particular powerset give the color\power customizations they made available.

[Maelwys]

13 hours ago, Octogoat said:

I can not for the life of me come up with a concept for bots/marine