Fire needs a buff

Discussion in 'War Room (Powers, Artifacts, & Builds)' started by Cyro, Oct 20, 2019.

  1. Cyro Committed Player

    I know this has been talked about before but i love beating a dead horse.

    Fire mechanics:

    50% health
    50% healing(while not blocking)
    gain 30% defense as you attack a burning enemy but as soon as the hit counter disappears your defense drops

    Now that may sound like a lot but have a look at rage

    20% health
    50% defense
    gain health equal to a percentage of your dom up to 100%
    with serve punishment(rage mode) an additional 50% defense and heal back 75% of damage dealt

    So lets break this down with real life numbers

    Fire full health spec 128130
    Rage full health spec combo meter to 50 119670
    Fire hit counter to 30 on burning target 50556
    rage under the influence of SP(15 seconds) 66355

    So rage has 31% more defense and 6.6% less health than fire.

    So rage has slightly less health but takes 31% less damage and on top of that for 8 out of 12 seconds you heal back 75% of the damage you take. Now thats if i only put 235 in health, if i put the remainder in dom the health gap decreases even more while fire has to invest in resto to try to heal more.

    The mechanics in content show even more why fire needs a buff. I am not sure when it started but we now have content that hits us for a percentage of our health ignoring shields and defense meaning all tanks get their mechanics ignored but this hurts fire the most. Fire is meant to be high health low defense but when we are guaranteed to take say 75% of out health its more dangerous for fire simply because of the lack of high defense and taking longer to heal back to max. Other tank powers have more of a safety net like ices shields and defense, earths brick and high defense/very high defense, rages high health and defense, and whatever atomics mechanics are. Fire is more squishy the lower health resulting in one more reason fire needs a buff.

    Fire has always been the hardest tank to tank with but it used to be rewarding when you had high sp, gear, and mods it has an amazing tank is the right places but now its just bad all around. With health that isnt even that high, meh heals, low defense, bad sc, and bad shield.

    Please buff fire it needs it in multiple different ways

    less janky fire soul
    better self heals
    higher health
    higher defense
    • Like x 8
  2. TITAN ephemeral Loyal Player

  3. Korlick Loyal Player

    I see a buff fire tanking thread and ill give a thumb up. Always.
    Dont care if asking to be op or what...thumb up.

    Every revamp fire had, tank role got screwed.
    I still remember when the self heals were broken (healing too much due to a problem with the healimg formula) and the fix destroyed them. Nerfing it to the ground. Making them almost useless for a very long time.

    One day..maybe one day, they will listen.
    • Like x 6
  4. topflow619 Well-Known Player

    Fire seriously needs to be looked and it’s sad that devs don’t care to at least check fire tanking themselves
  5. AV Loyal Player

    In elite content, Fire really isn't at a disadvantage at all... The only area in which it falls short is mitigation, which you can only actually feel in any meaningful way in high level SM. The only real issue is that our most OP tanking power, Absorb Heat, sometimes prevents us from blocking but once that bug gets fixed we'll be in a pretty good place overall.
  6. Kimone Luthor Genetech Clone


    still forming an opinion on Fire tanking in the new era : I like it more than my Ice character but they're both still pretty low CR atm.
    • Like x 1
  7. 9001BPM Steadfast Player

    Is absorb heat actually good? Every time there’s a free CR skip I make a hellfire wielding vampire queen and obviously that power would be perfect for that, but I just thought there were more effective abilities I should be using instead because fire tanking with 77 sp sucks.
  8. Cyro Committed Player

    Definitely dont want it to be op just think it needs a buff in a few places
    • Like x 1
  9. Kimone Luthor Genetech Clone

    it's like solo Ionic Drain, which makes it pretty boss for a big heal ability, but the mobility issue and interruption issue are drawbacks.
    • Like x 1
  10. 9001BPM Steadfast Player

    Surely empowered channeling would solve the interruption issue? I did look when considering the ability and couldn’t really find a particularly useful hand mod for tanking anyway.
    • Like x 1
  11. AV Loyal Player


    I had written it off for the longest time because of the cancellation issue but it's actually OP af. The Damage:Heal ratio is virtually inversed for DPS:Tank roles, so with the Empowered Channeling mod (which isn't taking the place of anything important) we get spammable +5% Defense that also maintains Fire Soul very well, immunity from control effects, and all of the healing ticks are for like 12-20k or more.

    One of my favourite single target loadouts right now has me rotating Absorb Heat and Heat Vision non-stop then just popping shield when available and other aspects of the kit when needed. It's effectively perma-max Fire Soul + an additional near-perma 10% def (Empowered Channeling + Fortified Assault) + near-perma immunity, with the only drawback being the cancel bug (which we can somewhat mitigate). It's the first time the "active" approach has felt organic to me and not like a chore, and I love it. Note: The other thing I like about this approach is that the shield becomes almost an afterthought, so it even makes Stoke Flames more viable since we're suddenly ok with constantly taking damage as we're constantly topping ourselves up better than before.

    Really looking forward to the channeling bug getting fixed so this can reach its full potential.

    Edit: Browser's not letting me hyperlink for some reason but I have a healthy bug post on this at https://forums.daybreakgames.com/dcuo/index.php?threads/channeling-no-cancel-bug.304644/ that explains the cancel issue and has helpful steps to mostly avoid/prevent/mitigate it. Would appreciate more likes on it as well so it gets the attention it needs to be a top fix priority.
  12. 9001BPM Steadfast Player

    12-20k? That much?! I was getting barely double that with this move I can’t remember the name of that I was just having to absolutely spam to stay alive. What is that move again? I’m sure I’d remember if I saw it. :D
  13. Cyro Committed Player

    backdraft - pull that gives a burst?
    stoke flames
    burning determination
  14. TITAN ephemeral Loyal Player

    fire was indirectly buffed when heat vision was given its own artifact...arguably one of the better artifacts in the game...specifically designed to boost a burn power...but what if you want fire coming out of every orifice but your eye socket...then yeah...maybe a buff...
  15. 9001BPM Steadfast Player

    I thought backdraft was the low power pull that burns?
  16. AV Loyal Player

    That's Engulf. Backdraft is a decent burst heal + 360 pbaoe pull, Burning Determination is a "shield'/mitigation heal, Stoke Flames is our HoT, Burnout is a "heal" + breakout (the heal on it is barely worth mentioning), then Absorb Heat looks like it was always intended to be our "thou shalt bloody use this" power if it wasn't for it being broken since forever. Fireball can also heal with the legs mod but meh. Also Wildfire but also meh.

    For further context, a single Absorb Heat cast damn near fills my 200k health bar from low health by itself; it's very potent to the point where when you see it you're like "yeah... yeah it makes sense why Tala's Absorb Heat in SGe is so OP."
    • Like x 1
  17. Darth Piper Loyal Player

    When you do comparisons of the healing numbers, if fire is supposed to be the "king of self healing" because that's how it mitigates damage as a tank, then why is it that rage tanks can outheal (or at least remain "competitive" with) some healers, yet fire tanks can't? If you're doing self healing as damage mitigation then a fire tank should walk out of a raid looking like a mediocre healer.

    They want you to be more active so they come up with fire soul... but the amount of effort it takes to get it from the starting 30% defense buff to the 50% defense buff and then keep it there is appallingly high... and that's to try to supplement the worst-of-all-tank-powers Defense stat and get it where it should be.

    Fire has no stunning move vis-a-vis Earthen Grip. EG will stun the adds longer than a chronometric emitter, and unfortunately when dealing with a lot of adds, fire relies VERY heavily on those chrono emitters and a troll with a good stun (Quantum's Anomaly, for example).

    Fire's survivability in most at-level elite content is difficult at best because we are too reliant on healers. Fire is also one of the few tank powers that can actually carry the group breakout/immunity in its loadout on a regular basis... but as Crash Allen noted, the healing coming from it is nothing to write home about. It's native shield (Immolation) is one of the weakest tank shields around. IIRC, only Atomic's Density (not the Mass Density supercharge) is worse. Fire needs Immolation to help activate the burning PI.

    And to top everything off, fire tanks need an absolute bare minimum of 40 SP more than any other tank power. How do I get this number? Well, fire is the only tank power that takes advantage of the Critical Heal Chance and Magnitude stats. All tank powers generally put 10 and 10 in each of those while fire will put 20 and 40.

    My guess, and the guess of a league mate of mine, is that the QA team does not run a fire tank through the content regularly except as a quick test, and those folks activate a god mode trinket when something gets too hard because all they want to do is see if they can get through the instance overall with no major bugs.

    Watching a Rage or Earth tank get through a lot of current elite content while having artifacts at maybe 120 and about 300 SP quite easily while watching a Fire tank go with 160+ artifacts, near max SP, maxed out augments, etc, struggle... come on. There is no way this should be happening.
    • Like x 4
  18. Cyro Committed Player

    I completely agree, with stats update fire feels like the poor mans rage, rage has the advantage in every area leaving fire in a really awkward position. Fire has no real advantage over rage or any other tank power.

    Fire always needed more sp than every other tank power but back in the day you were rewarded for that by having a insanely powerful tank if you had the stats for it but now we have to have double the stats to be half as good.

    I recently switched over to earth because i came back to the game not too long ago and my stats were no longer high enough to really make fire work for elite and having switched the difference is night and day. With fire i had to pull out every step use all my trinket slots and chrom emits were my best friend, but when im earth - i can zone out make mistakes and it isnt a huge deal. Hell i found a way with earth to have the adds permanently disabled they pose absolutely no threat whatsoever

    I have always loved fire being the tank that requires the most to pull off but when you have what you need it becomes one of the strongest tanks but now thats simply not the case.

    We require more to do less.
    • Like x 2
  19. Stilway Well-Known Player

    I agree. My main is fire and I'm running with 3 tank artifacts between 160 to 140 and with 400+ skill points. Maxed out points in health and the rest in resto, dom, heal crit and heal mag. Nothing seems to help my ability to survive. Personally I feel the healing needs to be doubled.
    • Like x 2
  20. Cyro Committed Player

    While that would be good i think it needs more than that. We need:

    -Higher health - We are supposed to be a high health tank yet rage can very nearly get to our level of health with a little less than 400 sp

    -Higher heals - Our heals are meh some more than others. A buff to most but some need a buff more than others (wildfire)

    -less janky fire soul - We need to get to a hit counter of 30 against a burning target which is impossible for current elite content. Hit counter of 20 at most against a non burning target. Its unfair that we need to hit a burning target but rage doesnt need to plasma burn for their mechanic


    Thats what i hope for anyway, and the sad thing is if i got what i wanted it wouldnt be over powered, it would be in a good spot thats how behind fire is when compared to other tanks
    • Like x 1