Casual Fire tank, these artifacts and build ok or not?

Hello, I used a free CR boost to remake a fire tank and try being a tank again. I'm a casual f2p player and since I've no idea how many years it'll take to get enough SPs to actually do elite stuff, I figure I'll focus on normal and open world content and build around that. Mostly just looking to be a decent tank for normal content while still doing ok as a solo player since I don't have armories to swap gear and stuff for going dps in open world (plus I like being an unkillable walking tank while questing).

My artifacts are Red Tornado, Manacles of Force, and Transformation Card. Figured this would give self healing a good boost while giving me a touch more damage for solo play. Is this a decent enough setup or would there be a more ideal way to go? I don't wanna **** myself as a tank since I do still want to actually try and be a good tank, but at the same time I know I'm not gonna be able to do elite stuff for at least a couple years, so I wanna try to add some soloability so I can grind old feats without having to spend hours trying to find a few people to do open world stuff.

Currently my load out is:

Engulf
Backdraft
Immolation
Stoke Flames
Mesmerizing Lasso (for when in a group with another tank)
Hard Light Shield

Mostly my rotation has been DW > Bow Flurry > power and repeat till things are dead.

My current allies are Krypto and Oracle, with plans on getting Calculator and Cyborg and currently working towards Future Lex. I'm on Switch so I don't think I can get Nubia as I've never seen those capsules sold on the broker. I have enough capsules to also get Zod and Black Adam as well.

My Skill points are Maxed bow and Dual Wield with DW > Flurry cross combo, all super speed passives and Dash Attack, Hybrid Focus with maxed Heal Crit Chance, Heal Crit Magnitude and working on raising max hp.

How is this so far? Any suggestions to improve my fire tank dude as a casual f2p player to make sure I can still be a useful tank for normal alerts and raids while still being able to do enough as a solo player that I'm not taking hours to kill things and be able to solo bounties so I can grind source marks without the need of hoping for a bounty train to happen when I'm on? My dude is still brand new since I didn't really do much with him after making him until now since I was in the middle of playing other games that my friend had got for me as well as having myself a bit of a Mega Man X marathon lol, so I won't loose much in changing artifacts and allies around if it would make being a good tank and soloing an overall better experience.

Imho every tank powerset has that one power that is just too good or required to actually tank. With earth you have two, jackhammer or pet depending on what style you use. For Ice it's reflect because it's just too good not to use. etc. etc.

With fire I consider absorb heat just too good not to put in a fire tank load out. Try it and I think you'll like it.

I can give it a try. What would you recommend I swap out for Absorb Heat?

Well, you have 3 pull type powers. Engulf has the bonus of setting things on fire but overall Lasso is the better cc move. Imho absorb heat in that load out would be better than engulf.

Lasso to pull them in then stoke to set them on fire. Then cycle the self heal and shield powers as needed.

It might be easier to skip the battle tank build for now. If you don't have enough skill points to at least put 100 into Health/Restoration, then it might be too much harm than good focusing on a battle tank build. They typically need a lot of skill points to be successful, so if you aren't having luck, you might be needing more than just a loadout restructure.

That being said, I've had the easiest time with Rage as a battle role. I focused on precision based damage, a shield, CC/juggle abilities, weapon buff, robot sidekick for solo (I swap this out with the Rage group heal Supercharge when grouped), and a pull. I was able to put enough skill points into two of my support stats to 100 points, get Weapon Mastery for brawling/martial arts, and then slowly build up precision. I also have a few arts at 200, and this helps tremendously. Clarion being one of them. Can't remember the other two.

I don't know if I'd quite qualify myself as a battle tank since I'm still using full tank gear and dom augments. I'm predominantly a pure tank with just a touch of extra damage for making open world a bit less tedious. I'm not having problems with surviving, I'm just wanting to make sure I'm not borking myself in the long run since I have no source of income to just buy my way to max artifacts and allies or to just buy tank powers left and right. I just want to ensure that I can do ok in open world and normal difficulty content and ensure I'm not just another dps pretending to be a tank and ending up ruining everyone's day as a result.

Most of my tanking experience in the past comes from playing Final Fantasy 14 as a Paladin main, and in that game rotations are set and mostly static and there are no things such as skill points, artifacts, or allies. All your stats come strictly from gear and your own personal skill at the job. I did well enough, being able to solo bosses in normal dungeons when the group dies from failing mechanics and I never had any real complaints from people so I feel like I can do tanking decently well, but with artifacts, allies, skill points, and more powers than one is able to fit into the limited hot bar, it can be rather daunting and I just want to ensure I don't screw myself over by trying to make a character that feels comfortable to play and able to grind out feats so that I can eventually be able to tank elite content.

Drop the Lasso and replace it with Absorb Heat or Burnout. You already have the 2 pulls you need in your loadout.
Lasso is very very situational. Like very very few bosses youll need it. And for adds its useless if you dont run the Lasso Artifact. If you dont have it, its a waste on your loadout.

Allies, i get it, Calculator and Cyborg are cheap, but theres much better options. Like Batman Who Laughs (great buffs overal) and Superman (specially if you use Burnout for extra protection). Or like you mentioned, Future Lex (another great option).
Zod, not good for this build. Black Adam, not good either. Unless you build your character around using Supercharges. But to take full advantage of this, youll also need different loadout and different set of Artifacts.

Reason I had lasso was for when I get paired with other tanks and I'm trying to maintain aggro on the boss. The last time I tried fire tanking, I remember doing dungeons and ending up with someone who would be in all dps gear (and artifacts), but in tank role so it would end up being hard to tank since I would be fighting them for aggro. From what I read, it seemed like Lasso overwrites all other taunts and forces the target on you over other tanks, so I took it for those situations. If Lasso really isn't needed, I can drop it for Absorb Heat since I only use Lasso when paired with another tank or during event bosses when they decide that my normal taunts aren't good enough for them and they go for the other party members anyway.

I only mentioned Zod and Black Adam because I do have enough capsules to get them. I've been saving capsules left and right from my first attempt at a fire tank before I ended up on a long journey of making character after character to find my place in the game and of the capsules I have, those are the 3 allies I can get. I do plan to get BWL eventually, I was just trying to go for cheap options to start until I can get a good amount of marks so I can buy the more expensive allies. My character is literally a freshly boosted dude and I'm more or less starting fresh in a sense with only the saved up capsules and various catalysts I kept and a pittance of cash so it will take a bit and I figured Calculator would be a good stop gap. I'm not having power issues anymore like I was first having, so I'm probably skipping Cyborg until I get all the important stuff first since eventually I would like to collect everything on my fire tank for collection purposes (at least what I can collect on Switch since I imagine some allies will be impossible to get on Switch, such as Nubia).

If you've JUST STARTED and haven't invested too much money and time yet. Start over on PC. Switch is a ghost town from what I've heard/read.

PC is not an option as my gaming pc broke last year and until I am able to finally get approved for disablity, I have no source of income to fix it or get a new one and the laptop I have is my dad's old one that is somehow still working after having coffee and drinks spilt on it numerous times by him (although it does go into sleep mode the second I stop pressing keys or moving the mouse), but is not capable of running even the most basic of games. So for the moment, Switch is the only option I have for the time being. Also while I say I'm effectively starting from scratch with this character, I'm not entirely new to the game as a whole as I have been playing off and on with my sorcery character on Switch since last year, I just never made any significant progress as I didn't feel right just being yet another dps, but at the same time couldn't really find a character to stick to since I kept making tons of alts.

When I had first started playing on Switch after my PC died, I had first did fire tanking and was actually enjoying it, I scrapped it mostly because of my own indecisiveness and at the time having learned that I am autistic and suffer from autistic meltdowns when I get overly stressed. I stuck to dpsing for a while, but with the constant lack of healers and tanks when trying to do alerts and raids, many would just fail before they start and I would constantly feel bad for contributing to the over abundance of dps. I tried healing for a bit and while it was ok, it just didn't feel like my place as I would get way to stressed over keeping people alive and them doing everything to stay out of my heals and get themselves killed that I felt it was better to give up on healing before it caused me more mental issues. I ended up taking a break for a while since I couldn't really find anything that stuck with me and was gonna wait til the next anniversary event to remake a fire tank and try tanking again since in FF14 being a tank was the most enjoyable and relaxing thing to me for some weird reason. However when I had logged back in on a whim, I found I had a free character boost waiting for me and so I took the opportunity to go ahead and make the fire tank again.

I do have two other guys at 444 cr, they just don't have source marks on them and since I stopped playing shortly after the added open world boss to brainiac returns, I didn't have a whole lot I could just toss around to give my fire guy a bigger head start and without money, I can't buy my way to max out stuff. This is why I was saying I was effectively starting from scratch, because I just didn't happen to have excess source marks on my other two dudes to use and I can't pay my way to end game, so I'm taking the longer way and just want to make sure I start on a good progress path so I don't end up like my last two dudes and constantly feeding artifacts into different ones and never making any real progress and ending up giving up due to how daunting the grind in this game can be, especially when you are an indecisive person wanting to be a helpful contributor to the server instead of just dead weight to other players.

Got it. I just assumed that was the goal based on how many skill points you were investing into the weapon tree.

It may be more efficient to try and fit RSK in your loadout when doing solo encounters. It's not going to completely replace a DPS in any scenario, but it may be able to outperform any damage you're currently dishing out with weapons.

That being said, my advice on allocating skill points pretty much follows this structure in terms of priority:

First point goes to the movement mode upgrade. I'm not sure you'll see much of an impact placing points into the movement mode passives. I always ignore them and do well enough, so this may be a waste of skill points.

Stats - Make sure to dump as much as you can into this tree next. I tend to max out the first two crits that pertain to my role, then move on to the main stat increases below. 100 points in a single stat is enough to get the most of this increase, anything beyond that will see diminishing returns.

Weapons - I usually skip this altogether unless I know I'm focusing on a precision-based character. If you have enough left over after doing the above, great, but if not, I would focus on the main stats for your tank role. Dumping 5-6 points in to get a combo is probably fine, but I wouldn't waste the extra points going for Weapon Mastery when you aren't built for it.

Iconics - I also tend to skip this unless I know RSK will be beneficial for a loadout. Like someone else said, Lasso may or may not be the best choice for a pull (especially considering you don't have the artifact and have enough pulls in the fire tree). I know you stated you were fighting for aggro with another tank player, and if that's the case, you have an ability already that generates more aggro in the fire power tree (fireball maybe? Not sure, it's been forever since I played fire). I would drop both the Hard Light Shield and Lasso, and pick up Robot Sidekick instead. Test it and see how it works, if nothing else, you can always go back to what you were doing or skip it altogether if you find something else that works.

As far as the artifacts go, I don't think you're going to go wrong with what you picked. I may have gone for the Trans/Strat combo to at least have options as a DPS role, and these arts don't need to be maxed out as far as I'm aware. Getting them both to 80 is usually good enough for any casual play. They'll help your damage and your self heals. No idea what would be best for your third spot if you go this route, might have to play around with what you already have and see what works best out of Red Tornado or Manacles.

Someone else already suggested the allies you'll likely need. And this advice isn't suggesting you dump a ton of money into the game, more advice on what to start building. It takes a ton of time, and it would be a waste of time to invest that much into something you won't use later on. Also try checking out the "Guides" section on the forums, someone has probably already answered all these questions with more testing/data to back up the claims.

I went for the super speed passives because what few guides I could find all mention getting them, though I have always thought they seemed a bit trivial for the amount of investment into them since I never notice any kind of appreciable difference when having them on any character, so I do always debate on having them or not, but figured I may as well get them as a tank just to be on the safe side. I'm not glued to them though, so I can ditch them if they really aren't worth the amount of points needed to get them all. As for Iconics, Lasso was for aggro control against other tanks since guides I read said that fireball was a bad super taunt and Hard Light is there as another thing guides suggests, but I don't really use it since I know full shields kinda mess with how the Red Tornado art works and also I've yet to be in a spot where I felt I needed to use Hard Light since I always have my other powers up in time enough that Hard Light ends up never used.

My artifacts was mostly to try and maximize my survivability while adding a slight bit more damage. I mostly picked trans cause I figured Clarion's shields would mess up Red's procs and after learning that Clarion's heals don't work with mastery combos, it didn't feel worthwhile to use so I went trans for the higher crit chance on heals while giving me a bit of crit for attacks to deal a bit more damage. At the moment I kinda really like Red Tornado as when it procs the attack, it looks really cool and definitely made mass pulling things in open world a more lucrative venture for me than just pulling single groups like with my dps dudes.

I only plan to level up the allies I know for sure I'd use for a good bit (krypto, calculator, Future Lex, BWL, Batman for perma radar, and Shazam for extra burst heal), otherwise I'm just saving up all the resources for when I do get those allies as I work on unlocking supply drops, orbitals and backup on my generator for belt usage (already got gear mods fully unlocked).

I’m a fire tank. I would say the best thing is to focus on one thing for now. I know the game gives you one armory but you would greatly benefit from having one more. If your goal is to be a good tank then you should try just focusing on tanking. Since you have the red tornado you have to go more of a battle tank route to get any use out of it. As for your LO you don’t need engulf and lasso at the same time, and since almost every boss fight has ads in it I would stick with engulf. If you use absorb heat I highly suggest since they “ fixed it” you use empowered channeling so you won’t get knocked out of it.

I simply can't get another armory, I can't afford it. When I say I have no income, I mean I have literally $0 to my name and have no means of getting money until I finally get approved for disability. I'm having to live with friends since I don't even have the money to live on my own. So I'm stuck with what the game gives me and until the devs decide to either add a way to swap loadouts on the fly or give another free armory, I have to choose to either be tank 24/7 or a dps 24/7 and since I already have 2 dps guys and would prefer to play something that would be a benefit to groups instead of another hinderance, I would like to make being a tank work.

If I really should give up my arts, what should I replace them with that would make sure I'm an efficient tank while allowing me to solo open world content in a non tedious manner so I can farm feats from old content without having to spend days attempting to get a few people kind enough and patient enough to do old content? Afterall, I can't sit here and expect people who have been playing far longer and have over 500 sp to help a newish character get sp to become a better character.

With my previous fire tank, he used Manacles, Mystic Symbols, and Clarion, but that would also be considered a battle tank I guess since Clarion adds damage via using Weapon Buff and it's damage proc. I just don't want to drag groups down, but I also need to be able to solo content to grind feats and get sp so that I can become a better fire tank, but I can't do that if I'm built as a tank that is expected to rely on a healer to keep me alive. It just ends up being a big giant loop of despair that gives me a headache. I just want to do a good job and be a half decent tank that people can tolerate instead of being a trash tank that people regret running into and just kicking because of being trash. I just wanna do good and be competent in the role.

Ok, so after a bit more fiddling and thinking about how to progress my character, I do concede that I may have to take a hit and be slow at clearing overworld mobs in favor of being a tankier tank for group content to ensure I'm a better tank overall. I know I gotta give up my Red Tornado and Transformation Card arts, but don't know what to replace them with that would ensure that I am an unkillable force of unbearable annoyance so that my party members are safe and enemies are glued to me with me only getting tickled left and right.

Currently I dropped Dual Wield and Bow and instead picked up Brawling with points down to mastery just to have a variety in attacks and the cc that the brawling combos give. I removed all points in Super Speed except for the advanced movement one and removed all iconics and have them all invested currently into health (along with the heal crit stuff too). Currently my loadout looks like this:

Engulf
Backdraft
Immolation
Stoke Flames
Absorb Heat
*Free Spot* (currently trying out Wildfire)

Something I was wondering while tinkering, could a fire tank work as a power spammer in the same vein as Rage and Atomic? Could I spec into superpowered and create a rotation of abilities that both damage and heal and just do a rotation of that for a fight to keep the heals rolling with little to no use of my weapon besides using lunges? I thought that if I could do this, it would add more fun and visual flare to my tank as well as free up all the points from brawling to put into health to further increase my hp, but I'm hesitant on this because I can't find anything about anyone treating fire tanking as a power spammer. Everything I've read and watched has fire tank acting as a pseudo precision with using weapon combos between a skill use and keeps skills down to mostly shields and a couple heals with Backdraft and Stoke Flames.

Wildfire isn't as good as Flashpoint, give that a try if ya want a bit more damage. I use hardlight shield in that sixth spot though, just for extra security in some situations.

Also, you talked about using lasso earlier because of needing a super taunt....use Fireball instead. It is fires super taunt and will set burning. But only use that in situations you need two tanks which is very very rare.

As to power usage, my full tank is specced in superpower with 50 sp in might/power and I never run out of power even in elite/elite plus content. But I have nearly 800 sp so you may not want to spec that extra 50 until you at least get all your healing crits and health filled up.

I can do Flashpoint. I only mention using Wildfire because I was just trying it out since I noticed that it grants a heal as a tank and it is what gave me the idea of being a power spam tank since if I could just keep the heals rolling on my powers, then I wouldn't need the healing from Red Tornado and it would make the role more fun by having a rotation to use instead weapon combo > power > repeat as that feels a bit awkward to me since I do enjoy spamming powers more than weapon attacks. Perhaps I could use Cyborg or Oracle to compensate the power usage until I get more sp that could be spared to might/power.

This video might be helpful for you:

After more thinking and tinkering, I believe I've come up with a build plan that will make y'all at least give me a C- on. Here is what my (hopefully) final build plan looks like.

Loadout:
Engulf
Backdraft
Immolation
Stoke Flames
Absorb Heat
Burnout

Artifacts:
Manacles of Force
Mystic Symbol of The Seven
Lazurus Pit Water (currently Everyman Prototype as place holder til LPW is unlocked)
Bottle City Soder

Allies:
Shazam
Superman
Future Lex Luther

Skill Points:
One-hand mastered (for combos and very minor boost in damage for overworld content)
Super Speed: Speed Force for advanced movement
Focus: Hybrid
Maxed Heal Crit Chance
Maxed Heal Crit Magnitutde
Currently 28 points into Health
Plan is to do 100 Health, then 100 resto, then max health, then 100 dom

Utility Belt:
Supply Drop
Oribital
Backup
*Undecided* (Thinking a consumable, but not sure yet)

So far this has given me the smoothest gameplay loop for my character and has kept me alive in everything (except when trying to tank those 920 cr Controlled Parasites during the dev invasion, I was getting one shot left and right so couldn't even get defensives going). So far doing open world content has not been noticeably slower than when doing it as dps (at least it's way faster than trying to do openworld as a pure water healer x_x) so hopefully this makes me tanky enough to not need to rely on having a healer all the time while being able to do old open world feats to grind sp so that I can hopefully get to a point of being able to do elite content before the game ends up shutting down lol.

Loadout:
Engulf ✔
Backdraft ✔
Immolation <- Hard Light Shield is better
Stoke Flames ✔
Absorb Heat ✔
Burnout <- you don't need a Breakout, you can swap this out for something useful like another shield

Artifacts:
Manacles of Force ✔
Mystic Symbol of The Seven ✔
Lazurus Pit Water <- stick with Everyman Prototype, Clarion is more fun and gives you heals + an extra shield
Bottle City Soder ✔

Allies:
Shazam ✔
Superman ✔
Future Lex Luther ✔

Skill Points:
One-hand mastered ✔
Super Speed ✔
Focus: Hybrid ✔
Maxed Heal Crit Chance ✔
Maxed Heal Crit Magnitutde ✔
Currently 28 points into Health
Plan is to do 100 Health, then 100 resto, then max health, then 100 dom ✔

Utility Belt:
Supply Drop ✔
Oribital ✔
Backup <- Tier 3 pets do more damage
*Undecided* <- use Chronometric Emitters for AoE stuns