Trailblazing Guide to Fire

I personally wouldn’t just because you would limit your ability to kite lol.

On one hand yes, But what about the second tank who's just doing adds.

Well that is true too. This dlc does in fact seem a bit forgiving as someone else pointed out. The adds don’t hit as hard as past adds (of level) did.

Solar Amplifier Heat Vision - Any issues?

I thought I'd ask before posting a bug report to see if someone else could confirm this.

First off, it's taking five seconds to cool down instead of four.

Also, I noticed the past few days my damage has been way low. So I did some testing. Sometimes it'll only hit four times. This is usually the first use after typing something in. During this testing it happened five times.

Do these numbers look correct? 291 DPS - 54,547 Base Might

--- Without any artifacts using Heat Vision --- 189,139
58391 - 17 hits (13277) - 5 (29.4%) crits
44907 - 17 hits (12606) - 5 (29.4%) crits
41389 - 17 hits (6718) - 6 (35.3%) crits
44452 - 17 hits (12761) - 2 (11.8) crits

--- Only Transformation Card (180) using Heat Vision --- 186,923
49338 - 16 hits (13199) - 6 (37.5%) crits
60734 - 17 hits (13359) - 13 (76.5%) crits
38713 - 16 hits (13070) - 10 (62.5) crits
38138 - 16 hits (13315) - 8 (50%) crits
[With 3% + 540 Might there was LESS damage. If you take into account the -17% due to the Artifact trait then I actually did about 225,000. Which is the same as Solar Amplifier on its own.]

--- Only artifact Solar Amplifier (160) --- 225,994
53043 - 18 hits (7907) - 4 (22.2%) crits
59878 - 17 hits (15289) - 6 (35.3%) crits
59625 - 17 hits (15938) - 4 (23.5%) crits
53448 - 17 hits (16055) - 2 (11.8%) crits

--- Solar Amplifier (160) + Transformation Card (180) --- 268,944
61095 - 18 hits (14799) - 8 (44.4%) crits
67687 - 17 hits (15118) - 9 (52.9%) crits
69260 - 18 hits (14680) - 8 (44.4%) crits
70802 - 18 hits (15532) - 7 (38.9%) crits
[With 3% + 540 Might there was +43,000 (+16%)]

What do you mean exactly? Did you account for the fact that heat vision is also a dot and takes 11 or 12 seconds for it's full damage to tick?

Activate HV/ SA -> Wait for all ticks -> write down total which appears in the combat log window

I'm pretty sure dot ticks most abilities can occasionally be off by one. Are you certain you're missing one of the big main hits and not just a dot tick?

When you miss the hit do you get charged power for it?

Didn't notice. Right off the bat, missing one dot isn't the issue. It's missing 12 dots multiple times.

My other concern is those number make absolutely no sense. I think I'm going to do it again, do it 10 times in a row and then see what the final tally is.

It makes no sense to me that Transformation Card does less damage with Heat Vision but then does +16 damage for SA. I think this proves there's an underlying problem with TC + HV. And since that's the underlying code SA is therefore doing less damage as well.

(If I'm understanding how the power works: HV decides the damage and SA is just a buff of that damage. It's not a totally separate code being used.)

+

My Heat Vision doesn't always seem to get the last explosion at the end, but I can never seem to reproduce it when I try. It's almost like I'm cancelling out of it right before it explodes.

I also have issues with Heat Vision and Absorb Heat animations not showing up when an add dies and switches to another enemy. Seems like the damage ticks are still there, but the channeling animation disappears.

That is actually pretty common on some channeling powers. Same thing happens with nature. Are you seeing the explosion on sparring targets?

Sorry for the delayed response. More often than not, but there are instances where it doesn’t happen.

With open world adds, where the channeling sometimes gets locked on the "KOed" target until the duration is up, the explosion will always bug out when that happens. Should never see it bug in instanced content, however, since it's only caused by killing trash mobs that have post-KO cog interactions (eg. Daemons in JLD, since they all apply to a daily quest, Metal ppl in Gotham for the weekly, etc)

It's completely viable but a bit power hungry (chunks your power several times per cast). I've done it a fair bit and it's effective, especially since fire already doesn't have to kite while tanking. That said, it's not critical like Absorb Heat so I think it's a bit of a waste of a slot and Fire tank already does pretty solid tank damage without it. Not bad, not great, mostly a matter of taste. Not worth running Solar Amp for though, esp since there's no reason not to use the Empowered Channeling hand mod.

I do a lot of kiting, so you got my attention.
Health>Resto>Dom spec?
What loadouts and artifacts are using?

How evasive/turtly one plays Fire tank really comes down to SP. Fire's effective tanking min:max is achieved at approximately 517-518 SP (more if players elect to pull more from movement/iconic trees, obviously). This allows for maxed out heal crit chance/potency, 100 each into resto and dom for maximized healing and functionally optimized shield potency, and max 255 into health. You don't need to be close to that to be effective/successful though.

At the functional max, as long as a Fire tank keeps their targets on Fire and at least hits with Absorb Heat w/e it's up, they're hard to kill regardless of the skill/speed of their healers and pretty self-sufficient.

The lower one's SP, however, the more they have to compromise between those SP categories and the more vulnerable they become if they aren't at full health, as is the case with all tanks, really. Priority should be: 1) Have enough health to never get cheesed at any reasonable level of Fire Soul for the content; 2) Max heal crit chance/potency; 3) Reach the highest attainable Resto/Dom % tiers possible (don't go over 100 and take them up relatively evenly EDIT: Ie. leapfrog them up one % tier at a time resto to next tier, then dom, repeat til final 100 tier); 4) Finish maxing health.

Assuming a player has enough SP, the only artifact that's actually critical for Fire is Mystic Symbol of the Seven; Mystic Symbol is to Fire as Manacles is to Ice. A lower SP player can consider compensating for lack of stats with the gains from Manacles, Tetrahedron (actually a very solid pick on a fire tank as the group buff is close to what you'd grant on DPS due to Fire's massive health pool), Dilustel, etc., rly anything you feel like that gives health, dom, or resto. You reach a point where you can do pretty much whatever you want under the sun with the other two artifact slots though. You can do Symbol/EoG/w/e and sustain a 2500 cost SC + green circle forever with hella uptime, you can do Symbol/EoG/Scrap and sustainably spend ~50% of the time in Neo or ~100% of the time in green circles with a 2 SC build, you can rock Scepter for non-stat-based DPS gains, or even Grim if you wanted since our PI is absolutely critical and it'd proc Soul Link. You get a lot of freedom at higher SP and there are a lot of very cool and unique approaches you can take that are all equally effective.

Loadout needs to be adapted for the situation but should consider, in order of importance/priority and circumstances permitting, Absorb Heat, Immolation, Stoke Flames, and Burning Determination for your mitigation/sustainment toolkit. Fire tanking without Absorb Heat is kinda like Ice Tanking without Winter Ward but, unfortunately, there are some situations in which we can't safely use it because of the occasional block cancel issue (FIe fb sub tank is the #1 example of this, as the bug procs constantly /GuessI'llDie.meme; a tepid example is MOMe lb but I've never personally had the bug prevent me from safely blocking in there). Tanking without Absorb is obviously doable, it's just that we become a much larger burden on the other supports and are ultimately only as successful as the skill of our healers allows, which isn't a good feeling for anyone.

Regardless of what you decide to roll with, the #1 most important "you will get $%^$ $% %^& &&* if you don't do this" consideration is the burning PI. No burning PI = no Fire Soul gains/sustainment = you are a wet paper bag, so w/e you do needs to be able to keep that PI up; Fire losing PI is like Ice letting Ice Armour drop and you'll feel the effects almost immediately. Should also be using Fortified Assault and Empowered Channeling. As mentioned earlier, you an pull off a "lol I'm perma-immune and have bonus def because I'm channeling all the time" build if you want with Absorb & HV, or Absorb & HV & Snuff if you're feeling creatively greedy, but imo it's unnecessary overkill and very hard on power (but could consider tanking in Superpowered for the luls w/o much drawback if taking that approach). There is a lot of flexibility with Fire tanking and no "best" way to do it for any given situation.

Augs/mods: At lower SP, players may need to run dom origin augs for the few k bonus health they afford. I'm currently at 516 and gladly swap them out for resto for the gains to our "constant healing shield," as the ~0.4% health loss is negligible to me and doesn't let me hit any new survival breakpoints. Note: whether or not you can do that with episode augs depends entirely on the episode, eg we obviously can't give up the +16% def on the dom augs in Metal pt 2. Should run resto mods in your gen and for affinity I personally pick health +2% over resto +2% since it has, overall, the biggest net gain for Tank+DPS.

I agree with 99.9% of this. The only difference I’d suggest is that instead of increasing resto and health evenly you raise it up to the next percentage first. For example:
Resto to 20
Dom to 20
Resto to 30
Dom 30
And repeat. Same when you get to 60. One time 80 other to 80. Back to 100 other to 100.

This is because the percentage buffs are very nice to have faster.

That's exactly what I mean by "evenly" and I appreciate the amplification on that point. Was trying to cut down on the wall of text XD. I guess "leapfrogging them one tier at a time" would have been the best way to describe it. I've added a sentence to clarify and pointed to your post, thank you.

About fire soul, does it matter how many targets are on fire or is it enough to make sure just the guy in my crosshairs is always burning?

The description states:

Fire Soul is a Fire effect activated while in Tank role. Fire Soul increases Defense by 33% while not Blocking. Damaging Burning enemies increases the Defense bonus up to a maximum of 50% while not Blocking.

So from that and my experience, you can have a single target burning and as long as you're also occasionally damaging a burning target, you'll sustain Fire Soul. I suspect damaging multiple burning targets would increase the rate but it's not hard to keep maxed on a single target so I wouldn't sweat it. The effort required to sustain it isn't negligible but it's also not extreme, so as long as the Fire tank is actively damaging any burning target on a regular basis they'll maintain their 50% def buff. This is another reason Absorb Heat is so potent for Fire, because it's a triple threat sustained def buff (w Empowered Channeling) + uber-heal + Fire Soul generator.

Because of this Grim + Soul Link is actually a solid pick for Fire.

Note: The best way to get a feel for how much effort it requires to maintain Fire Soul is to set a Training Dummy on fire then poke it a bit and (very quickly) check the active effects menu.

Edit: Corrected auto-formatting error.

Yup I kinda figured lol.

Also my 2 favorite artifacts for fire are symbols and transformation lol. Such a beautiful thing being able to heal myself right through the pulse beam in dm.

After switching my main away from fire (for testing) I missed fire so one of my alts I speed leveled was fire.

I have atomic fire and earth all above 276 (cause I needed to farm more monitor energy lol) Along with HL and my main who is currently nature.

My atomic is currently 290 while my fire is 286 and my earth is 278. As soon as I got earth and fire to 276 I tanked the alert and raids. Both these toons don’t have artifacts and have about 100sp. Both ran the alert just fine with a healer. Without a healer I had an easier time fire.

When I ran the raids both did it just fine. On earth we had one wipe when the dps released all the bosses in dm without telling me or the healer so we got caught of guard. After they told us we did it just fine. Both has a fairly easy time. Brick did have an survival issue in the final bosses of dm and pc. With fire I had an easier time in dm but had a slightly harder time in pc. Not sure if it’s cause I had different healers or what but both were fun. Tanking with fire is definitely more fun thou lol.