| Tanking | Atomic v. Fire

Hello my fellow nerds! <3

I thought I would take this time to ask our great community some advice that I've been thinking about for around a week or so - should I be an Atomic or Fire tank.

I understand that each has their own playstyle & here's what I understand so far.

Atomic:
- Good defense
- Heavily Aura (combo) dependent for self-heals
- Crowd pull triggers NPC breakout, but good crowd control
- Dominance/health

Fire:
- Lower defense
- Counter dependent (6+ I believe?) for added defense
- Resto/health?
- Crowd pulls don't trigger NPC breakout, good juggling/stunlock ability
- Burn dependent for selfheals?

As you can see, it's mostly questionable, as I'm very uncertain but have been trying to find as much updated info as possible, lmao.
I'm more of in-the-fray type, so I was leaning towards Atomic because of the defense, but I just don't know. I have a full tanking set of gear that I've collected on standy, as well as arts & augments, so I am prepared.

I don't want to cause some huge debate, or someone start dishing out numbers & vague "wisdom" by comparing the two in one response, but if there are some Atomic & Fire tanks out there that would like to discuss their own pros & cons, & why they chose to be what they are, that would be great & exactly what I'm looking for! <3

These are the only two options I would like to discuss, please, not other tanking powersets.

I solo'd Subject Doomsday with a Fire Tank? There we go.

More specifically, Fire is probably the best straight-output Healer in the game; the mitigation method, at top end, is literally a never-ending stream of green five-digit numbers. Good battle tank platform, solid DPS performance (if not an A then for sure a solid B+) - it does want a million SP though.

You've already highlighted most of the pros and cons. Atomic tanking requires less SP than Fire.

For any Atomic or Fire tanks out there, have you run into any issues running Elites?

I can talk a lot about Fire as I'm playing with it right now. I played with Atomic before the revamp.

Fire Tank is Health/Resto. That's why it is necessary to have a lot of Skill Points. Fire Tank plays with health so little defense. Fire burns so it will always be healing.

Fire Tank works great on Elite.

Noice! I was wondering, is it better to stack dom with augments or resto? I know they both work with heals, but I was just curious.

Just enemy CCs and terrible healers.

Atomic is awesome when it comes to being useful in a group. I haven’t seen any other tank so successfully maintain enemy attention and that’s a huge help in an op. However when it comes to elites all that attention gets you killed quick. It’s two complete play styles. You can’t face tank in elite, you’re mostly running for your life.

Dominance is more important than Resto but either works.

both Dom and Resto contribute to both Shields and Heals, though they do so unequally. I bought 100 Dom, 100 Resto, I use a mix of Dom and Resto augments in my generator, and Dom augments for my "This is actual tanking" Armory.

I use Dominance in augments and my generator, Full Health, 100 sp in Restoration and the rest in Dominance.

Is this for regular content or elite?

Atomic has a super fun aggro, however, I find atomic extremely fragile as soon as "density" is no longer active, this is felt very quickly on atomic, whereas with fire, I don't feel such a problem as soon as a power is no longer active on me.

Atomic can quickly become fragile in a fraction of a second...

Atomic versus fire. So it really comes down to the type of tank you want to be. Atomic can carry through certain mechanics, but isn’t carrying through generally so so or bad groups in end game….at least not easily. Fire is generally a sturdier power, but every power has its own peculiarity.

Some of the Things I like about the powers.
Atomic is constant work, has good pulls and cc. Mass density is ridiculous and it has great battle and customization potential.
Fire is very sturdy, has great mitigation, one of the best pulls and grouping powers in the game. Solid for all content, but not the best at anything in particular.

Some of the things I hate.
Atomic: you are constantly working. The pulls make you choose your poison and depending on the pulls you sacrifice something. The aoe leads to immunity quickly. Density is a terrible shield.
Fire: SP hungry, can be healer dependent, it’s best heal has issues if you queue anything and one has no innate shield that mitigates 100% (this is an issue in certain instances/mechanics).

They are both fun powers though.

Fire can be hybrid or dom focused, but always after maxing health.

Situation dependent. All are doable with either power. Some are more of a pain or less…a troll giving cc immunity will be an atomic tanks worst enemy

Depends on how you tank . Dom has more upside overall even for fire. That said going to 100 in both first after health is the way. Augs always dom

What Allies are people running on their fire tanks? Just made a ton and not sure what allies to use.

My take:

Atomic tanking is fun, but requires combos continually. Miss a combo and you need to hurry up and get a combo going before you lose aura, however it's not hard to get the aura back up. Combos are required for healing (well). The pull is nice, warping enemies to you (except bosses), and you can juggle the enemies decently. It's shield/s were not impressive, but helpful in a pinch. Not extremely power hungry.

The DPS side of atomic (for solo, duo, etc) was not impressive and wasn't very 'fun' in my opinion.

I've ran with some great fire tanks, but that build requires a lot more skill points.
So if you're not high on SP, go atomic. If you're high in SP, try fire. If you're going to build your sp fast, maybe fire is your ticket. Fire is also powerful as a St dps, especially considering solar amp helps it with pi.

A note that Dom Augments give a lot more Health than Restoration ones, making them more desirable for Fire. I haven't re-checked the math, but I'm pretty sure that extra health makes Dom vs Resto a wash for Fire. Pick one.

For Atomic Tanks having a high health is really important. You're not constantly alternating combos and countering with them and healing yourself as the power was originally designed anymore. Most Atomic Tanks are only running one combo, one pull, Proton Remedy, and the rest shields. Some Atomic Tanks will run Atom Splitter as their pull, but the good ones never or rarely combo it.

Fire is a better tank these days by far. It's really only in the end stages of Survival mode where everything is a one-shot that Fire becomes undesirable. In all other content, Fire is really effective.