Trailblazing Guide to Fire

This! But Eye of Gemini heals you for 3% per second for 4 or 6 seconds (depending on the level):

So not only are you self healing, you're healing anyone else brave (stupid?) enough to come close to you... as well as providing them some supercharge. Add to this the Scrap of the Soul Cloak and you will find your supercharge regenerating quickly. PB is a 2500 SC, vs Reignition or Eternal Flame as 5000 SC.

Be careful of overuse of Backdraft... enemies can become immune to it, just as they can become immune to Chronometric Emitters.

Haha yea that’s what I meant.

Me: Why should I spec into health at all?

You: Because it's the best stat for fire tanks.

Me: But why? I only get 9k health out of 160 SPs. Basic enemies do that in one punch.

You: Because it's the best stat for fire tanks. There's a breakdown!

Me: The breakdown just says to block and I already know I don't have a choice but to block. So why is health the best stat?

All of you: Because it's the best stat for fire tanks.

I get that you guys have an answer, I guess I should clarify that I'm looking for a better answer. Or is it, a useful answer?

Well of course I didn't mean I take millions of damage in, like, a second. But if we're going by raids? Yes, millions of damage at a time. And I heal myself for maybe a little over a million at a time. Again, not in a second, but per raid. This is why I STILL don't understand why a few more thousand health - PER RAID - is any kinds of beneficial to me.

Earlier I said fire is broken, and this only reinforces the claim. Do you all believe that this is.. Good? I already told you that the 50% increase to my health only gets me 50k. How fast do you think 4 adds, at your CR level, can do 50k in damage? No time at all. Or how about 59k? But this is what I should prioritize, right? It's pathetic.

I know I lose my healing buff when I block, but try to think about it this way. I'm going to lose the few thousand in health that I get fro my SPs to adds on my level in a second. You can not deny this. But, I can probably heal up about 15k-20k with my heals alone. And as long as I have power I can keep that up for the entire duration of the raid. You can not deny this.

So between healing hundreds of thousands of damage, nonstop, and 9k health, once. You are all going to tell me that I should prioritize the 9k health because.. What was it again? Health is the most important stat because.. ? My self heals suck?? But they mitigate more damage than any health I can get from SPs? I shouldn't focus on healing hundreds of thousands of damage, nonstop, and instead focus on a few thousand health, once? ARE YOU SURE?

I, LITERALLY, take over 4,000,000 damage, per raid. Ev-er-y raid. that is t8

Maybe most fire tanks are wrong. I did test this myself and I found that, gee, a few thousand more health sure doesn't last that long. In fact, I last just as long without it. I'd rather have stronger heals.

L T: Your healing sucks so you have to block or you'll die. Invest in health so you can last a millisecond longer.

So here's the difference between a few thousand health, once, and hundreds of thousands of healing, nonstop.

I feel like just that statement is enough, but based on how this conversation has gone thus far, I feel I must drag it out as much as I can to make my point clear.

Say you're me and you don't have a lot of SPs to go around. I feel like a lot of us are like this. So let's say you max out your health, and have a little to spare for a little dom, a little resto. Well now you're sitting on a few thousand health, gee, you're practically the king of the world. Yes? You hop into a raid with your big fat flaming ****, and you see a small group of four basic enemies, standing in the middle of a hallway as if they were waiting for a group of 7 DPS' and 1 tank to come ambush them. You jump into the middle of the adds, pop a power, they go crazy. You will soon realize that, oh gee, these adds are hitting me for thousands and thousands and thousands per hit. And since there are 4 of them, maybe those thousands are starting to add up pretty quickly, no? You give it about 4 seconds before you realize, gee, that few thousand health I got from using almost all my SPs has left me centuries ago, what gives?

Ya see what I'm getting at? Probably not. So let's say you're me and you lost faith in your health years ago. You invest almost all your skill points into resto and dom. You rematch those 4 adds, with your big fat flaming ****, only this time you realize. Gee, my heals can push out a few thousand more points of health. But these adds are still smacking me around for thousands at a time, what gives? I just healed that up!

Ah, now here is the difference. You can heal... Again! And again. And again. And again. And again. And then you realize that you've healed 100k, 200k, 800k. You've healed hundreds of times more than the few thousand health points you get from investing almost all your SPs into health.

Now, I ask you. Up against millions of damage, which is more useless. A few thousand health ONCE, or, hundreds of thousands in healing?

oh wait nevermind

If there are any other fire tanks who read this mess, please give me your input. I really think this fire tank health myth is holding all of us back. I don't understand why everyone is satisfied with fire being one of the weakest tank powers when it could all be easily fixed.

Oh gee, that might get me to 62k, thanks. You've changed my mind completely.

That's not a completely wrong characterization.

What I actually did was look at spending 100 skill points on either Dom, Resto, or Health while you were taking a big spike in damage, and concluded that 1) you always did worse than other tanks 2) Resto was much more useful than Dom, and 3) Health kept you alive slightly longer than Resto.

I didn't check every combination of skill points and artifacts. And I didn't take into account kiting or crowd control. No; it's not perfect.

But in general I still recommend health for Fire Tanks because 1) you're not the only one doing the healing and 2) that extra Health is getting healed back over and over in the course of the raid. If you put 100 skill points in Health, every time your Health dips below 13% you can say to yourself "if I hadn't invested in Health I'd be out of the fight right now".

It seems to me like this is an argument between ideal maximum optimization vs practical self-efficiency. In a perfect world, where your healers are always on point, you have all the skill points you ever need, and you are playing tank the best you can. Health is the better stat due to the concept of effective HP. But in every day scenario's where you aren't always with you league, and the healers aren't on point, the extra self heals are a better option.

But i didn;t crunch numbers or put any work into this theory.

I get that, 13% is a nice chunk. I'm still not sold though. But what do you think about all of this? I've been fire since the game went F2P and we've always been the weakest tank. Why can't the devs balance the tanks? They all do the same job.

I remember, I think, when you got like 2 points of health per point of dominance. But even then, fire was the weakest. Right now, all the other tank powers get a boost to their survivability from dominance, ON TOP of what dominance already contributes to their self heals. So then why did they remove the health points you gain from dominance? It isn't like our heals, our defense or our health is useful. Because, sure, when you look at it percentage wise, the health we get looks like a lot. But with the amount of damage these raids dish out, just raw health isn't as effective as the other tank's defenses.

OK I didn't mean to go on this much. What I really wanna ask anyone who's interested is, what can be done to boost fire up to be on par with, say, ice or even atomic. Right now fire is the only tank power that doesn't get as much out of dominance as the others. Maybe more health? Maybe it boosts our healing, more than it regularly would, when we're in tank role? Or are you all just fine with fire being weak af because you don't use it?

I guess because I'm always PUGing stuff, I'm always in the mindset that I'm the only one who's gonna keep me alive. You kinda enlightened me, whoa~

Fire is definitely the weakest tank, which for a long time has required a lot of sp to run effectively at higher levels. Because of this weakness those extra sp are better put to use spec'd into health. Only the devs know why they went this way. Fire tanking, imo, is the most healer dependant tank and even good healers can have problems keeping it on its feet. Its self heals aren't big enough to solely rely on and since you have healers in every raid the extra health, however little you think it is, is still better than the tiny bump in self healing you would get putting the same amount of points into Resto when you're running with a healer anyways. Like I said, you really rely on good healing at top levels as a fire tank and a lot of the time most groups won't even invite you to the raid if they know you're a fire tank and have never seen you play. It's definitely the red headed step child of the tank role and needs to be fixed. That fire soul thing needs to go or needs a complete wipe and re-do.

Me: Because when you go in Elite your heals are obsolete. 135k of health vs 150k is not a lot but a slight increase in healing is even worse. Let me explain why...
You can’t reliably heal a fire tank as a healer because
1) Your bar bounces all over the place due to lack of defense and the use of backdraft
2) A smaller health pool=less time to be reactive with your heals as a healer
3) Your restoration and dominance won’t do jack in Elite when you are getting hit for 10-15k per add and hence your bar will be bouncing even more.
4) You only have 1 shield without a back mod which btw breaks in a matter of seconds.
5) After your immolation breaks and it will, very quickly, your healer has even less time to react to pop your health back up. (You can’t do it yourself and will probably die unless your healer has burst heals ready for you and is in possession of extremely, extremely quick fingers)
6) Lower health=very very burst heal dependant (from a healer-good luck if running with nature or other healers who are just spamming HoTs and don’t have bursts iin the loadout slash aren’t quick enough with priority
7) When you block with more HP (yes, you should block) you can sponge up much more damage while making it easier for your healer to see your health bar and know when to heal you and actually have the time to do so. It makes no sense to spec into Dom and Resto because you will be blocking,a lot...
8)Resto and Dom is worse because you’ll probably heal like 3 or 4k of extra health from stoke and or burning deterioration/backdraft which btw rely heavily on your crit chance of 28%.
9) Speccing resto and dom makes it even harder to predict when you are going to get popped as a fire tank since you will have bigger chunks taken away/healed back. Healer’s perspective—> (Healer: should I go dps? Do you need me to heal? How do I heal this?)
10) Someone who didn’t spec full dom&resto but instead put everything into health and rest into dom&resto could heal more if they crit and you didn’t. Those 15k of extra health could potentially buy you or your healer just enough time to pop you with a heal or for you to try your luck with an extra backdraft that could potentially crit and save your life.

Finally, someone who can explain the real deal instead of just "because dats da way it is." From 135k to 150k seems like a lot until you figure in that 15k is what you're gonna get hit for in one punch. I really, really understand where you and L T are coming from when you guys break it down like this. On paper, with the numbers and percentages, this looks nice. But in the middle of adds, I just can't bring myself around to this health thing.

I've definitely been in plenty of those situations where if I stop blocking, I know I'm gonna drop IMMEDIATELY. Can't heal, can't pop immolation, nothing. However, my thing is, that doesn't make investing in health any more viable to me. Those numbers on paper burn up in the middle of a raid, QUICK. And, you're right, quicker than most healers can react.

I don't think investing in health is a priority because it'll only get you to survive one more punch. But also, health can't be a priority because fire is just so, so, SO squishy. All that health is just warm marshmallow no matter what you put into it. It seems so counter-intuitive to me. So, on paper, the numbers look good. But in practice, being able to ride out damage with your heals is what I believe fire should be capable of doing. Not because I believe my heals are actually useful in those dire situations, but because I believe it's what fire is supposed to be able do, just like how the other tanks can ride out the damage with their mechanics. So I throw everything into my heals and try my luck with an extra backdraft. and then i die

You know what else? Fire should receive HoT in the midst of burning enemies. It could really help keeping us up and preventing our health bar from jumping all over the place. God, that has to be a massive, anxious mess for healers. Has this been suggested before? Does anyone else agree with this? We really don't have any options but to.. Um... Luck?

You haven't been around for the first few survival modes and elite raids, have you? Fire was probably the strongest tank for both of them since it had the highest health pools, often single bosses and the counter shield was really strong.
Back when it lasted longer and have you a blue-immunity-shield based on a percentage of your health, no other tank had a shield as strong as fire - if you were good at farming immunities.
Even rage could not stack as high since back then, rage's mechanic was tied to the number of enemies surrounding you.

I went fire back then for Happiness Home Elite (and later the survival version) just to show how good fire tanking was. And I rareley took any damage at all.

Now, yes, fire is probably the most challenging tank to play and with fire it is more imperative that you have a good group. No other tnak drops as low and as often as fire but it is managable. If you LFG a lot, I would not run as fire though.

If they had not changed the Immunity shield for PvE, fire would probably still be where it was - the best tank for single superstrong elite/survival bosses.

By the by, even as fire tank you could probably run with four shields - the new fire one, amazonian deflection, hard light shield and a movement mode supercharge with headmod and Eye of Gemini. Though every time a shield drops, you feel like an earth tank without being able to re-summon brick :3

Plus, your self-healing is almost reduced to zero (not counting EoG). I wouldn't run a fire tank loadout without a second shield though.

Oh, so fire was good in one specific instance for one brief moment in time? I guess everything is okay after all

I've never used shields until immolation was turned into a shield, and even then I'm against that. I don't like the idea of fire having to be more like the other tanks to be good and that's what it felt like to me when they made that change. They should've just made fire a better fire, not a dinky knock-off of the other tanks. I'd trade a fire shield, which doesn't even make sense, for better heals any day.

But that being said, if you have to run all those non-fire powers to be good at tanking, why even be fire? I'd rather fire be good on it's own than have to depend on outside sources to even stand a chance.

Nah, but good try. It was the whole time around. People started to realise this too late but the mechanics were always there. I started with Fire tanking in Halls of Power II and did it up until shortly before Age of Justice when I respecced to another tank power.

As for the shields, I never said you would have to use them to be competitive. I said you could theoretically run like four shields. I never ran with less than two though with any tank set.

15k is one more punch, yes. Speccing fire is like having to pick between two bowls of crap, one of which has slightly less crap in it (health bowl.) Not saying speccing health is amazing, but in my experience with it and having 430 sp to play with, speccing health over resto&dom for fire is better than dom&resto. Fire has mo defense or real shields, heals are laughable in elite in conjunction with its defense and passive which requires you to attack “burning enemies” just to get 2 or 3k of extra defense if your hit count is at 25x lolwut. 15k is not a lot but it might buy you or your healer just that split second to heal. Plus, now with the gemini artifact, you definitely want more health so you could just sit there and block inside the green circle while being healed with your bd&stoke(despite losing 50% bonus) while being healed from your healer and occasional backdraft which btw is out of block and is your best heal anyway

Add a fifth one... the Personal Dampening Fields. They don't last long, but they do absorb 100% of damage for up to 6 seconds... and that could be just enough to let you get out of whatever situation you are in that is about to kill you.

This is a significant part of my complaint... every tank power should be able to perform all functions when limited to its power set, though some may be a little more difficult than others. The inability of fire to be competitive as a tank without buying several abilities from outside its power set means you've basically taken the self healing ability to almost zero. Use the lasso as a single taunt? You didn't burn the enemy, so it makes your heals less effective from things like Backdraft... unless you lasso -> Stoke Flames -> Backdraft. Burning Determination used to light enemies on fire during the AM days and was also one of two powers that were group breakouts (Burnout being the other). Fire does have two group breakouts if you want to carry Eternal Flame (supercharge) in your loadout... but that's nowhere near as effective as using the iconic Pheromone Bloom (2500 SC vs EF's 5000 SC). Notice how quickly your loadout gets filled up with stuff to make up for lack of innate or power set abilities?

Fire tanks also have no stuns, so be ready to carry lots and lots of Chronometric Emitters. They won't work on bosses, but they certainly will help with adds, especially if you have a good troll with you too.

Overall Fire could be a much more effective tank if they'd tweak the self heals (bump the base healing by a little), increase defense stats a little, and ditch the Fire Soul idea and restore the health buff from AM days (Health * 1.6 + 2.2% Dom, IIRC). During the AM days, Fire was one of the best tanks while blocking... but the worst tank when not blocking. Fire tanking got the short end of the stick when it comes to a lot of stuff... including this new Pied Piper Tanking (aka "kite or die").

Don't let the descriptions fool you. The Personal Dampening Field - Undercurrent absorbs a maximum of 31866 damage. Lower dampening fields absorb less. It's a nice shield but by far not your strongest. It usually breaks in one or two hits from a boss, even faster with adds around.

Fire tanking is definitely a challenging tank power. There's a good reason why it's the only tank that has a 50% health bonus; It's not a tank that can completely depend on shields or it's own heals. I feel that to be an effective Fire tank If you can get your health as high as possible; you need to get right balance of using your self-heals and shields ALONGSIDE the healer heals, maxing your defense buff, kiteing ads and combat mechanics with bosses. The health buffer is kind of like the final barrier when all you can do is take the damage in because everything else has failed for 1 or 2 seconds.

So is 9k health on top of your 50k important? That's 1/6 of your entire health. Not even mentioning that if you get the right artifacts levelled up it could add more than 12% of your health from all 3 artifacts. It's all about survivability.

Fire gets a short end of a stick because
A) you have to spec extra 40 skill points into critical healing as opposed to other tanks who rely solely on their mechanic and spec 20 just to get down to dominance/health trees.
B) Fire soul is just a terrible passive a 4k increase in defense (from 43k to 47k) upon reaching 30x hits on combo meter is simply not realistic when tanking elites.
C) Your health turns into a yo-yo if you choose resto augments yet you’d would still have to spec dom even if choosing to play without a shield just to pull/cc the adds in elite.
D) Crap defense and reliance on your healer slash crit heals from abilities making it difficult to heal.
E) Garbage cc moves that burn enemies.
F) No matter what you spec, yoj will be at a disadvantage with all the raid mechanics because you need all: health, dom and resto and if you really want to heal yourself, you’d have to spec 40 skill points into critical heals and hence you can’t spec full dom to take a full advantage of your immolation. Vice versa, if you want to go spec health, then you take away a bit from your heals and throw away immolation and its PI. If you have 440 skill points and split it all, you’re just average whereas with ice/earth/atomic you can just go dom and be all set.
G) Your tank mechanic relies on good RNGesus slash critical heals from backdraft/stoke/bd (that cost you 40 extra SPs btw) unlike atomic that uses actual stats and sp to determine its healing, plus you don’t miss out on your shields.
E) Burning determination is idiotic... period. Now, who wants to jump into a pile of adds of throne e without defense and be hit by 15 adds hitting for 15k each for a chance to trigger additional healing up to 10 times? Well, at least it lasts for full duration while its cooling off, oh wait...

I can go on until Z then move onto cyrillic and still have more. The point is, unless you are cheesing it as fire, like I did for a few days before switching back to earth, you will never have enough stats to excel in both healing and shielding unlike mechanic/shield based tanks. You can make it work as is right now, sure you can tank and complete all the elites but it will mostly be because of your group’s dps, 8 mans and and your healer. You don’t really contribute anything as a fire tank. Other tanks do by at least being more manageable, less healer dependent and more beneficial to the group since they make contributions by at very least being not so healther dependent, able to hold their own to a certain extend. Chances are you made it more difficult for the group by kiting the adds and forcing your healer to work extra hard to keep you alive and keeping a very close eye on your bar only and not so much on other’s. That’s a lot of health to refill over a course of a raid.

To make fire tanking somewhat more reliable I’d 1) Give it heals based on your stats and not RnGesus based critical hits. 2) Increase the duration of fire soul, decrease the combo meter count to get from 30% to 50% or just give it a flat out 30% percent buff without any increase. 3)Increase healing from stoke&bd and decrease the cooldown of burning determination if you want it to be a healing tank. Alternatively, you could either remove immolation and sub in another heal or combine both immolation and burning determination into one ability instead of 2 separate ones or 4) Remove 50% healing received bonus and make it apply to both when blocking and when not blocking. As of right now, the only good thing about fire is the soder artifact that helps your group (sort of) to finish the raid due to its shield to health ratio buff. So make sure to pop that before you die, that way you bring something to the table lul.

Now, if devs don’t make changes to fire you can just cheese with 160 scrap/gemini/menacles or semi cheese with refractor instead of scrap. Meteor/stoke/backdraft for pull (if running refractor especially) hard light, immolation and wildcard slot for burning det/enflame/sonic shout/burnout. Equip a buncha dampening fields, chrono emitters, have soder artifact and optionally put guardian angel neck mod in. Spec superpowered and put everything into dom then resto and some health, maybe a few sp in might too if you can for % increase. You can also sit in green circle shielded and block. Voila, fire tanking is fixed and you are virtually immortal and can solo tank anything.

TLDR: Do something about fire tanking or that ^ will become fire tanking.

Yep. It just seems to be the red-headed stepchild of tank powers, yet it seems to be very high up on the aggro tree, meaning if you have one of every tank enter the room and cast a power, they seem to gravitate towards fire. Probably because of it's supposed self-healing ability thus making it read not only as a tank but as a healer as well.

Good suggestions... but if you drop the Fire Soul 30->50% increase in favor of a flat 30% you should probably raise the base defense a bit to put it on par with other tanks, or you should raise the base heals such that incoming damage gets healed instantly (to reduce how much the health bar dips after a hit) as well as improving the post-hit HOT. Fire is too reliant on outside forces or stuff not within its power set to even have a chance at succeeding.

As long as we are in the "kite or die" (Pied Piper) era of tanking, it's going to be that way anyway.