Fire vs Ice vs Earth

That guide is early stages my man and I tank far more than I dps so the dps side still needs input from others. Still editing and update everything. I don't dual spec because I haven't tried it so I didn't even know about only needing 128 sp. Like I said that guide as it stands now is a starting ground for new people to Earth not an Expert's guide to how to play our power like I want you to. Please refrain from the tone you are using in your post as well. Its very negative and comes of insulting to me they way you word some things. I'll leave it at that so no arguments are started, but just for future reference double check the post before hitting submit.

I'll look into your suggestions and appreciate the feedback. Thanks for the heads up!

Might-based powers (yellow damage) are the only way a tank can taunt. Other abilities such as heals and debuffs generate aggro. Precision-based (white) damage does draw aggro but it's such a pitifully low amount that it gets overwritten by anybody using any power for any reason.

The easiest way to keep aggro as a tank (any tank) is to make sure you have a spammable power in your loadout. Use it whenever a boss finishes a combo or an attack, because that's when he resets his threat table and will go after someone else.

I agree. It does some crazying things. You've probably noticed it sometimes taking what seems like a lot of damage while others it breaks almost as soon as you activate it. I would also like a clearification from a dev on how this ability works. Does it have a damage cap? Does it scale with Dom/Resto? I have never been able to tell honestly. What I do know is it has always blocked at least one attack when the 3rd aftershock comes and I still take damage while aftershocking 1 and 2.

Anierna is a skilled player but she has a chip on her shoulder the size of Rumblecrush. Try not to let it get it to you.

after some further testing; Upheaval is a great power to the earth dps rotation. when you get knocked from jackhammer by cc or low power or maybe you just used it and there is a new group of mobs: upheaval is a great AOE filler dps

not at all I'm aware it probably came off differently than intended. I'm not worried about it as long as it wasn't intentional and even then I don't really care. I try to not be bothered too much by that kind of stuff.

Upheaval has the 250 power cost with 125 more power with the aftershocks bringing it to 625 power which is a lot to give up compared to Jackhammers 225 power with 75 more with the aftershocks. Even gem shield is 225 power with 50 for the aftershocks so I don't know if its a bug or not that Upheaval cost so much. This is exactly why I hated that they seperated the powers out into twos instead of 3s for the update. HL could've used a lot of the tweaks gadgets and mental got for trolling while Earth has some similar moves to Ice and Fire that aren't getting changed and are remaining "flawed" while we wait for our revamp. They should've just done all trolls, all tanks, and all healers together to avoid any imbalance in classes.

hahaha j/playing

Yes Im not saying use it inplace of jackhammer or that it costs less power. just when jackhammer is on cooldown and there is mob trash. I was just listing the factors that could cause you to be in an early jackhammer cooldown.
for example if I just ran out of power using jackhammer after shock and it was half cooldown and the trollers/weapon combos bump me back up before jackhammer is off cooldown then i'd recommend throwing upheaval. not anything to do with costs to use. just cooldowns

power costs mean little to me. most trollers I run with are over 1300 vit. Im not speaking on lower level terms. I mostly look at things from an endgame perspective

Lots of good info on tanking in this thread. I read the whole thing as a humble student of the game, always trying to perfect my trade. Personally i find Tanking to be my favorite role to play, so i've invested in having a Tank of all 3 powersets. Some of the talk in this thread sounds to be a bit biased towards Earth, which is okay, because I was going to endorse it some more, if I may.

My very first toon was Ice, and after Lvl 10 I played exclusively as Tank. I found Tanking a more interesting art than just going pew-pew. I made an Earth toon a when Earth first came out, though using it mostly as DPS throughout leveling. I found my first few attempts to Tank with it as underwhelming and a fail(rather just me "failing")... That was very much an oversight, as in lower level content(T1-T2) I was comparing it to my experience with ice, besides not having a proper Earth Tank loadout. Of course double Defense would "seem" tougher early on in the game.

Anyway, you are talking about End-Game Tanking, which if you ask me favors Earth. Ice is nice because it has great shields and breakouts and not much to Mod for or Spec into to make it "work". Fire is Strong because of a Huge Health pool and increased healing benefits, along with very nice CC moves. Earth I feel has the best of both worlds, not only that but with the loadout I use I never have to respec(skills or powers), to DPS, which I believe you were interested in doing.

I've probably gotten more comments about being a "beast" Tank on my Ice, but I believe it's because of my Mods and my usage of the IS pull move, which keeps enemies clumped up infront of me. But Earth can Mod the same way(basically all Dom/Pre) & have no Problem keeping aggro, pulling or knocking back mobs.

The thing with Earth is you'll have 25% absorbsion up most the time(50% if you're jackhammering properly) and if you carry Reinforce like me, you be protecting a squishy/needy teammate most the time. Which is one of those good things that usually goes unseen or untalked about, no matter how many arses you've saved(sort of like a well time breakout)...

I was even called squishy by a clueless Gates group b-hole after poping Reinforce to save a teammate. It was during the 2nd boss fight in Gates to save an overeager DPS from sure death, only to get killed myself, even while blocking. I'm all "SMH, like yeah group, wouldn't have died if the DPS didn't just take 10k+ damage to the face!" So even though Reinforce is a good thing, it can end up being bad, or rather making you look bad as you can't mitagate the damage received by whoever recieved the Reinfore buff, as was said by someone above.

All in all, I like Earth because it has a pet, I can spec for 400+ precision without much "tanking" disadvantage, get a precision buff with Reinforce, while protecting a group member and then jackhammer away, and the Pull is nice too if not sometimes a bit sloppy.

If I were to rate Fire Vs Earth Vs Ice tanking in End-Game, I'd say: Earth 9.5, Fire 9, Ice 8.5... All very high passing scores, all very even.

I agree that Reinforce, Jackhammer, and Tectonic Break are all necessary. Debris Field, not so much (because you're prec-specced) - particularly so in single-target. I sacrifice it for Localized Tremor in my dual-spec.

Pure DPS, though, I'd probably do the same as you. Reinforce, Tectonic Break, Debris Field, Jackhammer, WD.... and what's the last one? Optimally I'd have an AoE clipping move that uses the Dazed PI (like Localized Tremor), but which ones are available to you in your spec? The only one that uses the Dazed PI is Pebble Blast, and that's only single-target (not cone AoE - I just tested it to be sure, and it's single-target only). Would you use Shards or Striking Stones, even though you wouldn't get any PI damage from them? Or would you use Totem for a weak DoT? Honestly, all the options for that last spot on your loadout suck.

I disagree with this. Elec is just as competitive as HL and Gadgets. I know exactly how much damage Scum and Chill can do with Gadgets and Light respectively. Here are some pics from yesterday:





IMO, top DPS has almost nothing to do with skill. It has far more to do with your gear and the speed of your internet connection. In that first pic of Prime, Scum lost to me and Chill because he wasn't using Escalating Might or WD, whereas Chill and I were using both. I got ahead of Chill in both those pics because, as Gadgets, I benefited more from Escalating Might than he did. If the Prec white mod were at all useable, Chill and I probably would have tied in that FoS 2.

I don't have a pic of it on hand, but Impact can beat me as Elec. And as you can see, I beat Scum and Chill. So it reasons that Impact could beat them with Elec, or at least get pretty close. Elec is not at the level of Earth - it's most definitely at the level of HL and Gadgets.

I haven't gone against Scum, Chill, or Impact as Earth recently, but I'll respec soon and try it. I'm guessing I would do around 10% less damage than them - the gap probably wouldn't be bigger than that. 15% seems a stretch.

I always dual-spec my toons. Even though it's easy to find a respec machine in either your base or the WT, it's always a pain to allocate PP and SP 1-by-1. It's especially important to dual-spec as a tank, since you'll be DPS'ing the majority of content because tanks are superfluous. I'm Gadgets atm because I can dual-spec perfectly. I haven't had to reset PP or SP in months.

perhaps my wording was typed wrong or read wrong whichever.

I put electric about even with earth unless you have someone giving you PIs. such as a fast gadgets player with guass or an electric healer/dps tossing wired out.

honestly though... i never said which powerset i thought is the strongest, which would be gadgets on a constistent basis.. but you just post a scorecard of you being a gadgets beating out a light and another gadgets. there isnt even an earth player in there which is what I was talking about. and I was also mentioning where i would place electric power set and you dont have an electric dps in either of those raids.
you beating another gadgets player or a light player has nothing to do with where electricity or earth would place on a chart. every raid is situational.
Impact beat you; okay.. that doesnt mean anything to me except what were all the factors.
obsidian and scum work off Burst. your electricity DoTs wouldnt have racked up as much burst damage and youd be boosting their Burst damage even more if you ran with wired.
you cant base a DoT power set off what a burst powerset got for you in a raid. you're smarter than that and I know you just wanted an excuse to post those screenshots
also.. scorecards? was anyone using a prom buff, candy, soder buff? was it all straight up legit stats?
you have scum and chill if you were an electric in that raid they'd be getting the wired buff too if it was present.
I dont know if you and scum were both using fear gas overwriting, I dont know if anyone died and when....

The point is... you can rerun those raids and end up with a different result.

I cant acknowledge a scorecard where your third dps is so low (fos 2 screenshot)




and come on... no skill only gear and network connection ? yet a lot of us top dps players rarely ever see the second spot of a dps scorecard.

So i'll lay it out one more time and maybe you can post more unrelateable screenshots:

based off endgame
Top % DPS players who are top skill ( and apparently best internet connection) Light has no place on this chart amongst players that have no idea what they are doing

raid pve
Gadgets > Light > Electricity / Earth > Fire

operation pve
Light > gadgets > electrity/earth > fire

and with PIs complimenting:

raid pve
Gadgets > Light/electricity > Earth > Fire

of course everything is situational and this is just relflective of consistency

not saying that scum and obsidian dont play 100% every time, but im sure if you reran that they'd be happy to give you 110%
believe me, everytime we dps players jump in a raid together we see who's is bigger, but like I said, unless you say before hand: "give me everything you got, im cappin the screen at the end" then scorecards come up short.

also in both those runs its clear they are contributing extra energy to the group. thats an extra 20k power out that I can see, glad you could feed off that

In that FoS 2 shot, neither Chill nor I were buffed, neither of us were lagging significantly, neither of us were having our DoTs overwritten or benefiting from PIs from other players (him cause he's HL and me cause my PIs are self-contained via Gauss, Gass, C-Field). Chill never died before the last boss; I died once before the last boss, when I was hit by Bizzaro's special attack, but I was quickly revived so it made little difference. Chill and I were both 1-shotted at the same time a few milisecs before the last boss was killed, so that didn't impact the scores. Basically, it was a fair match.

My point was that the difference in scores is negligible. There IS a measure of variation in every match based on internet speed and gear. I had no Norseman at all, and Chill had a few pieces. I only had 1 decent promy ring (might ring with prec affinity), and my other was useless (prec ring with health affinity), whereas Chill has 2 perfect prec rings. So technically I was at a slight disadvantage. But that's my point - all the top DPS are VERY close to each other, and the small variations don't matter. It's not about skill - saying I had more "skill" is bogus. I don't. I'd say I'm about equal to Chill and Scum.

I was trying to illustrate 2 points. The first is that Elec IS up there with Gadgets and HL. Saying "Elec is only up there IF it can benefit from other players Electrifying" doesn't make any sense because, if you're testing against a Gadgets DPS, the enemies will ALWAYS be Electrified via Gauss. And even if you were testing against a HL, Elec would still be up there because you can maintain the PIs with Wired and EPD IVs.

You don't even need the Electrified PIs the entire time for Elec. For single-target (like Prime), you don't use VB, so you only need the PI for Electrocute - which can be accomplished solely with Wired (and EPD IVs if you like, but you don't even need those). So Elec is undeniably up there with Gadgets and HL. There is no need at all for you to qualify that with the word "if."

The second point was that I know how much damage Elec, HL, and Gadgets can do, so I have the necessary information to guestimate how Earth would compare (although the only time I did DPS as Earth against a decent Gadgets was when I went against Air, and that was a 10% difference). As I said, I think it would be 10%, not 15% - although, as I said, I will test it again soon.

Because I have no allegiance to a certain tank power I probably going to change my tank to earth for two reasons. The first is because after having an accomplice I like the idea of a brick pet. The other reason is because I feel ice and fire are going to be trash after all the bickering going on.

None of us died for any significant time. We all only died once, at it was when we were all 1-shotted at the same time and revived at the same time. Yes, Fear Gas overwriting did distort the scores a bit, but that was negligible. Scum's damage was lower for 2 reasons: He wasn't using Escalating Might mod, and he wasn't using WD. It's that simple. Nothing to do with skill - just gear and loadout.

But my point stands: you can see how close the scores were. Within a hair of each other. Those small differences on the scoreboard are just due to gear, loadout, and latency. At the "top 1% of DPS'ers," as you called it, it's not about "skill" - that has almost nothing to do with it. It has to do with gear and your internet connection.

Thinking someone is better because they did slightly more damage is ridiculous. That's why I was laughing when Scum and Air got into that pi$$ing contest on LFG yesterday - they both play the same way, and their scores would have been similar. However, Air is geared just like I am, so he would have beaten Scum by a little because he had Escalating Might and Scum didn't. Nothing to do with skill - just gear.


Back to the the reason for posting all this though - Gadgets, HL, and Elec are roughly equal. Earth is slightly behind, but only by about 10%.

ok since you beat them with gadgets that also means you beat them with electricity. and off that logic you can also beat them with ice, sorc and nature because you have the better internet connection and gear.

I get it now.
new PVE raid order:

ISP> GEAR> POWERSET> SKILL

LOL you wanna start posting screenshots now anierna? Real smart of you. Why don't you tell them about you going in with 2 supercharges and a lockbox soda? Why didn't you tell them that?

Right. Let's just totally ignore what I write and put words in my mouth

What I'm saying is that: Given 3 top-geared players, 1 of which is Gadgets, 1 HL, and 1 Elec, the DPS scores will be very similar (eg. equal in the aggregate, with a small standard deviation), and any variance between scores in a given sample will be due almost entirely to latency.

Therefore, trying to figure out who is "the best DPS" between me, Scum, Chill, Air, and most other "top 1% of DPS" is a fool's errand.

okay so there is a big factor.
Prime speed run attempt at a superfast time, the two other dps were helping with power out. which is either a supercharge or defib/recharge since they are both troller/dps powersets. not to mention those power dumps take like 1/4 of your power bar for a little return

Supercharges, yes. Soder, no. That screenshot is from the second time we tried Prime, since that first time was a pretty funny fail. When I checked my stats for the second try, the buff had worn off.

But as you said yourself, and as I stated in previous posts, you were behind because you didn't have Escalating Might mod and because you weren't using WD. We can try again, if you like, but the results will be so close that the difference will come down almost entirely to internet speed.