Kristyana's Incredibly Detailed Fire Tank Guide

Try reading the actual thread in testing feedback along with mine and Tunso's responses. Self healing was unintentionally buffed twice; Tunso was under the impression that Dominance and Restoration stacked together without Dominance doubling and therefore buffed the self healing base amounts by around 50%. This resulted in two buffs that more than doubled all of our self heals and scaled further the more geared you became. This would have completely broken the class if it went live.

A glitch is still a glitch. Would you have preferred it went unchecked and then a month later they gut the healing of it completely because it was so overpowered? Because that seems to be the trend. Look how the developers made Transmute useless because of all the Clown Box QQ.

Frankly, I'm sick of players in my powerset and in general that are the first ones to scream when there's a problem, but when there's a problem that gives us an unfair advantage accuse anyone who brings it up of being Judas. They're the first ones to share how to exploit a power or use a clip or something that's obviously broken, but encourage them to "keep it on the down low" so the developers don't notice it and fix it.

Even with the corrections made now, Fire healing got about a 30-50% boost depending on your gear.

If that's not enough to make you effective, then feel free to spend $10 on a respec token, because nothing is going to help you be a better fire user.

"They didn't accidentally make us overpowered and then have to nerf us a week later" isn't actually a bad thing, for Fire users or anyone else.

Moreover, that "the devs don't communicate with us" thing that players love to complain about is only ever made worse when the devs know that players will lie or keep quiet about or conceal problems that happen to be beneficial to them personally.

Im actually curious to see how much are healing got buffed being fully geared. Its been a while since I ran a healing spec, but last night I thru on my tank gear, and only specced into the 2 iconic healing abilities. Most of my skill points are in health, dom, and all the damage innates and a couple of the heal mag innates. (This way if I am running DPS I can just throw on my DPS gear and just respec my powers).

Anyway..... I was messing with stoke flames, with my DOM at 988 and resto at in the high 700's, I would get 8 heals in the 215 range. Every now and then I a couple of those would crit in the 400's. Thats almost 2000 in heals from one move. VERY nice. Burning Determination used to heal me for 3 heals in the 300 range. Now I am seeing 700+ heals from BD.

I didnt have time to mess with anymore of my healing in, but from what I have seen so far I am liking this.

There's no real way to say "our heals got boosted by X amount" because the formula relies on dominance (gets quadrupled for healing in tank mode) and restoration (which remains static). If the base healing was buffed instead, then you could definitively.

With 1k dom and the base 740 resto at 30 your heals increased by about 60%. With 1k resto it becomes 33.3%.

Well either way, so far I like what I see.

Woah now, let's not throw out words like "unintentional" because we all know things that are in this game that are stated as "working as intended" are not even working as intended. In all honestly I have yet to even try what this update offers so perhaps my earlier comment was a bit premature but I couldn't help be a bit dissatisfied with your thread (which I did indeed read the day it was created) because among all the things that people cried out about update 23 was that the devs barely made changes to the tanking aspects of Fire and Ice. I did agree with it that (without actually making any threads or QQ about it) and just sit back (like I always do) and wait for some miracle to happen in the future for tanks.

Now this newer update comes through that pretty much buffs the healing capabilities of Fire Tanking which I was greatly happy about and then after seeing you make a thread saying it is too overpowered and explaining the reasons for it kinda made dumbfounded. You of all people (a fire user) actually put it out there that you felt the buff was too overpowered. You know, maybe it was overpowered or what not and you probably were right for doing what you did but it is so odd to see that there are so many other problems wrong with this game that have been actually brought up (like the whirling dervish) and yet there is no fix for it. I say let Fire have that original buff that it had on the test server because however intentional or unintentional it is, it is not exploitation in my book because Fire Tank's specializes in self heals, you could not blame a player for using powers that were buffed. And if it became a problem "on live" then they can fix it.

Another thing that I feel the reason for that buff was because the new T5 is on it's way and Fire Tank's have to have some kind of jump in healing efficiency otherwise we would probably fall back a bit as far as tanking prowess goes. Fire Tank's self healing was fine without the buff if properly geared, have enough skill points, and correct mods so I think this update was for T5 but as it stands I am in fear that our health spikes will happen again because the buff we get now may not be high enough.

Lastly, I can't show any proof of my activities in this game or on the forums but with my word alone I can say I never complained about anything in this game until now. When things got buffed/nerf I just usually keep my mouth closed and adapt to the change. Plus most nerfs that happened in this game I never really had a problem with, I never spammed fireburst so I couldn't care less that it got nerfed. Also I never exploited and hid things from other people for my own personal gain, I play this game as fairly as possible. Back when Dash Attack was being used to clip weapon combos (before it was changed to a supercharge) and it was being used rampant, I did not use it nor did I complain about people using it on me. I have been using Fire since the beta and after all the things fire has gone through to get where it is today I just did not see the logic with your thread knowing you are a Fire user. But like I said at the beginning, I think my comment and my rant itself is a bit premature as I did not actually try it out yet so I apologize and will give a more respectful opinion after I get done testing it out myself. So sorry..

im seeing some really nice heals now,
with just under 1k dom and almost 1k resto

im seeing burning det crits for 1k, normal hits were like 300 - 400

burnout hitting around 1k on non crits

stoke flames i would like to heal more but im seeing 250 non crits 500 crits

absorb heat im seeing heals of 250 on non crits

overheat i was seeing around 600 non crits and like 1.3k crits

i can't remember backdraft but i think it was like 600 on non crits

I do apologize if I was too harsh in my reply. I've received a ton of hate for bringing it up, and I just needed to vent as well. Sorry for biting your head off.

There were two issues with the fire thread I brought up, which was for feedback and a possible actual bug.

First off, the patch notes didn't match with what was actually happening, meaning either the notes were wrong or there was an error. It wouldn't be the first time something has been doubled or halved without the developers catching it, so I brought it to their attention asking for clarification.

Tunso was the guy who boosted the self healing numbers, but he was under the impression the formula was the standard 100% Dominance + Resto stack, and he admitted that there was a bug causing at least one power to heal for more than intended. There's no doubt in my mind that Fire's heals were being buffed, and I'll agree that they could have used a bit of a buff to make self-healing builds a bit more reliable. The problem was that there were two buffs, and Tunso appeared to have no idea about the changes to Dominance in the healing equation although he did know about the base amounts being changed. That's why I wanted clarification onto which buff was supposed to hit live, or if both of them were supposed to hit together. And if they were, that brought up the second issue.

The second was my opinion on the matter as to why it would make the healing OP to have both buffs. I'm fine with either the formula or the base healing being buffed (and stated as such) because it gives fire some more help at lower levels than it does at higher ones and a way to help with spike damage. That has always been our weakest point as a tank in terms of survival. If both buffs went into effect, Stoke for example would be able to heal ~2800 health in full T4 and a single reignition could crit for over 8200. That's 80 of our health bar for a 25% supercharge that becomes basically a spammable with the Home Turf mods and the Subcon neck...something that is far too powerful. They'd soon nerf it or bring it to a 50% supercharge, and it's really our only reliable "panic" button.

Basically, both buffs would have made our self healing restore more effective health than Ice's shields prevented (even with their boost) without the drawbacks of a much smaller health pool, and we already have the same effective health as Earth to practically make no difference in the hands of a skilled fire user. Both buffs together would have made us completely overpowered by a large margin.

I was also concerned as well because when something gets released that's broken or proven to be OP, the devs swing the nerf bat down HARD and it comes off being harsher than is needed to fix the actual issue - look at everything that just happened with Clowbox or the other shenanigans from the changes in U23 to fire's DPS.

I certainly didn't want to come off as elitist as other people are accusing me of, or saying "Well, since I personally don't need it it shouldn't be added" but pointing out a legitimate concern.

i'm starting to use absorb heat combined with the hands mod from time to time

i don't think it will be a go 2 on my loadout but it does seem to have it's place in say boss fights or something like that

It definitely can be a fun "MUST AGGRO SOMETHING RIGHT NOW" power, but you've also found the weakness it has; bosses are the only thing the power can be used consistently on.

Kristyana, thank you for this awesome guide! I first read it last summer when I was gearing up Rastafiery. I have to admit that reading your guide made me that much more cautious about attempting to tank. It seemed like Fire tanking was hard mode tanking and I was not sure I was ready to take on that challenge.

In the past couple of months I've dedicated time to run Rasta through the Home Turf content as an easy way to get some tank gear. I fully socketed it with type III mods and felt I was finally ready but still apprehensive. When you are the tank, for the most part you are the only tank. As a troller or a healer in raids there is generally another to back you up. Tanks are solo. Just you and the mobs and the boss. If you drop the ball they can go crazy and wipe the whole group. I've see it happen, it's not pretty.

This week I took the plunge big time starting with the new T4 Alert which only seems to need a tank for the Zeta Drone but last night was the main event. I got a chance to tank both of the raid ops then gates and finished the evening with Prime. I had a really great time and did pretty well for the most part. Swamp Thing has this attack which does a huge amount of damage. I call it A Thousand Spike Thorns. He took me down twice with it. Out of all the bosses I tanked last night he is the most difficult. I was backed by a bunch of good guys from my league so all our runs where a lot of fun. Even when Brainiac pulled out every trick he possible could we battled through and got it done.

Reading your guide put me on the path to Fire tanking. The rest I will have to learn by doing but I thank you again for starting me off right.

Great guide! I'm new and I feel like my character is going in the way of a fire tank and this really helped put things into perspective. Now to just level up and get some gear and a good loadout!

I'm either a bit confused or I just lost my train of thought after reading every reply and I'm lazy and sick of reading for now. Does fiery weapon heal only once on the initial cast or does it continue healing as it is active? (Obviously not for every hit, giving faster weapons an advantage over slower, but for an amount of procs) You said other tanks swear by it but if it only heals once then it seems almost useless?

Also I'd just like to say how great this guide is kristyana. My main is a nature healer and after running end content repetitively I felt like changing things up and made a fire tank. I was alright but this guide has improved my game a lot, keep up the good work

Wait what? I thought there was supposed to be a buff? I'm healing about 20% less than usual with Backdraft. Admittedly I don't know what my original numbers are anymore, I went back and redid them trying to boost them back up but I could still only get it to 90% of what I used to heal for.

We got a roughly 7% buff to our base values of our heals, and the buff most people have been seeing over the last month was from a glitch causing dominance to be doubled for any heals across all classes or for anyone who used the Regenerative Shielding mod.

Backdraft got nerfed heavily in the self healing department. I'm not sure why but I would venture to say it's because it's the closest thing to a self healing spammable we have and the healing amount was brought down to keep the overall healing roughly the same across the different powers that have longer cooldowns.

I have the next version of the guide ready to go and will post it tomorrow after I make some more rewrites and edits.

my healing droped down about 40% i would say just what I saw and eyeballing the numbers

That sounds about right, from the dominance scaling being fixed. Obviously there's no set amount but a tank with 1k resto and 1k dominance got it's self healing cut by a 3rd.

man it sucks QQ .
However I still feel u did right by pointing out the glitch to them!
cheers, we will do whatever is needed to still rock fire tank no matter what

Absorb heat seems to be bugged. It does what it says at enflame juggle range and closer but any further and it does't heal on burning targets.( & probably doesn't cc either)

Assuming it worked, you have to use a lot of pp to get a power that will set a target on fire at range. Would you just not worry about it healing at range or what would you use.

I thinking about using this loadout when I get the dlc next week any comments on it?

backdraft low pressure absorb heat amazon enflame

is it me or does it seem like DOM is being fazed out or just made extremely hard to get.

Upgrades from T4 2 T5 = 8 points? Really?

2nd Tier of new SP, 4 Points per SP? Really?