Trailblazing Guide to Fire

I have like 7 of them sitting at max lol but by far, on any tank maybe except for rage, scrap/gemini/menacles is where it’s at. Earth excels the most since you can clip unstoppable with a pull and have like infinite supercharge, and sorta heal brick too... I’m super-speed so you’ve probably guessed what I’m using lol. I have refractor too at 160 and have tried refractor/menacles/gemini. With them and specced as hybrid+bulldozer/compound and full dom speccedI actually had 19.7k DOM in non atlantis content, almost 20.5k in atlantis at max cr. Every time I used epicenter or a pull Refractor at 160 gave me around 9k health. It’s actually a very strong combo for earth if you aren’t cheesing with supercharge. You can simply rotate all your shields with brick out and cc the adds without much difficulty.

On fire tank I also tried and tested both gemini/scrap/menacles and gemini/refractor/menacles and ended up getting 14k of health from a pull. Now, the catch is, fire gets robbed once again because you are speccing health and throwing rest into dom (can’t max dom and health) If running with refractor instead of scrap and speccing health over dom you end up getting about 6k health more health stat but your dom isn’t as high as other tanks’. Fully buffed with max gear and health sodas, every time I proc’d my refractor I gained around 14k of health which put me at either at 164k of health (can’t remember whether this was in atlantis or in my base on a sparring target) I think it was on a sparring target and in atlamtis with proc’d refractor my health was at like 170k or 174k.

Summary:
The conclusion for running refractor over scrap was that it’s not as strong as gemini/scrap/menacles just because you can literally play fire as an ice tank and turtle with fortified blocking/guardian angel head mods using meteor/stoke/backdraft/dash attack/immolation/hardlight loadout. And you don’t have to waste 40 SPs into critical heal magnitude and just put those 40 into dom instead. This is by far the strongest combo for fire but you have to spec superpowerered, which doesn’t really affect you that much tbh. With fire, I’d definitely go superpowered, because otherwise it’s too power hungry. Clipping meteor/stoke/immolation doesn’t really work all that well with hybrid so you can always have your your dash attack ready.

If you are running hybrid with a regular healing loadout with stoke/backdraft/immolation/pull/bd or pheromone, and even with specced 40 extras into critical heals, I still think scrap is still mehh because you will have pheromone ready in case of emergencies anyway and will be able to keep supercharge full without spamming it as much as you would with dash attack. I found this to be a case, so why not take 15k of extra health and around 1k of extra DOM from refractor plus more health% from gemini circle. If you aren’t making most out of your sould cloak and able to maintain supercharge for pheromone bloom without scrap, then why run it?

Third is a bit surprising tbh, I also tried scrap/gemini/refractor and tbh I think that refractor is better than menacles because 12-14k of extra health over a 10% shield cd reduction, even with lower dom, is hard to pass on. Now, arguably, menacles can save you yes, but as fire, unlike other tanks you don’t spec full dom but health and lack a back mod for immolation so you don’t benefit much from 10% cooldown on it. As far as menacles go, idk... They could save you but I’d prefer to rely on myself with higher health pool of around 12-14k extra even if you spec like 120 sp into dom, it’s added on top of your already existing health so it’s just too hard to pass on it.

Look... the health just serves to withstand all the hits, ofc if you have a lot of adds arround you hitting about 5k each one, u will die, but that will happen to all tanks, so the trick with fire is run, pull, stun, if for some reason u think in stop a second u will die, because any healer can heal about 150k health in a blink (unless they were useing the orb artifact, and im not even sure if they can reach that amount of healing), blocking is not necesary as fire tank, acctually i recomend do not block and use the withe socket mod who allow you to gain defense while NOT block, just block when a boss pop the skull.

If you are not going to use any shield, 1st get full health, 2nd get full resto, 3rd get full dom, in that order you will withstand the hits (u will not be inmortal, but will be enough to run, heal yourself and pull again). Also u can split your SP in health and resto i mean, what is the point to have 1 millon halth if nobody can heal them? so isnt bad idea split them (acctually i think is better idea). in this case if is 2 tanks run you may have problems keeping the aggro on you.

If you are going to use shielded loadout (hard light shield - inmolation - amazonian deflection) the priority change, is 1st dom, 2nd health, 3rd resto (this last is working for me right now) full dom will make your shields strongers, not eternal but strong enough to be enable to make a shield rotation system (this rotation must includes the healer, troll n sidekick shields, is in your skills when use them and when do not, for example flux or sorcery shield overwrite hardlight shield).

In both case, if you have a LOT of adds how it happen in COTe LB or Throne E LB, u will not enable to withstand the adds dmg, unless you got all artifacts (gemini - cloak - difusel) at 160 with pheromone bloom SC, acttualy u can use it each 6 second and your resto, gemini and the healer will do all the job easy for you (and if the healer keeps in a good radius, both could spam sc as hell all the time). Dont forget you are not a healer, even if your tank hability is heal yourself, you still a tank so u can't be spected as healer. For original and adaptative, u can split in dom and resto, or go full dom. Dom gives more health than resto.

If at the end of the instance your healings are higher than the lower healer (assuming is a good healer), you are unbalanced, thats means u will survive the easy runs but u will be rapped in highers. Try to balance your resto and your health, as I said before, if you have 1 million health and u cant heal even the half of it... havent sense, the same way if is the opposite, if you have 1 health and 1 million resto, u will die doesnt matter where u are.

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Now for everyone, i dont give a **** how you all think how fire works, if you are not fire, just go away... i was sick of read a lot of ********, when was the last time you play as fire? in 2014? please... if is so amazeing tank and dps, why we dont see anywone playing as fire? I just know a few players who can handle fire tanking and less playing as dps and im sure you arent one of them. I NEVER SAW A FIRE TANK HANDLE ADDS LIKE RAGE OR EARTH (or ice when fos 1 were hard), so grab yours "go full health and block" and get them deep in your ***.

thx for read, have a nice day.

Since we talked, I've re-adopted that loadout and made a third DPS armoury for it. I just happened to test it in all the fights it did worst in when I first tried it but now I love it. It certainly dominates anything st but lags way behind my splashy loadout in fights with multiple relevant targets, especially with EoG being a big factor. My third loadout is a hybrid melee that has higher damage potential than both but is, obviously, only good/safe for multi-target trash.

Really? I've found fire is very good for aoe/multi target DPS. So good in fact that even on a single target my aoe loadout does around 22k in a 10sec parse. This is with no colas supers or any other buffs. Only downside is it's more power hungry than my true single target loadout.

Bro, we both know what Fire can do. We are the minority. I rarely ever see any Fire dps in high end game content including elite putting out the damage me and you do. I'm not saying I am the best, just saying in my experience and with the pugs, league and friends I run with with...a good Fire dps is few and far in between.

It is and aoe fire loadouts do have good st dmg, just not as good as a pure st build in pure st situations. Imo if someone has the armoury space it's worth keeping multiple.

Which doesn't make any sense, since it's not like it's any harder to use than other powers.

There’s no right or wrong way to play fire. You can spec whatever you want, depends on your playstyle. In my experience, (I’ve played fire the longest) and solo tanked the hardest raids, including tera which was the hardest at the time. ) Fire does not or incapable of withstanding the same amout of damage as other tanks, your only option for fire is to kite and cc which is isn’t ideal. You cannot take damage from adds for more than 3 seconds without blockomg, now, the shields? Investing all 225 sp into dom and using two shields isn’t worth it because it makes it harder to react as a healer once it breaks. Your healths dips way way too much already even with 160k of health, running 2 shields without accelerated mod and one iconic which does not apply burning and gets overridden by other healer shields isn’t worth it. Unless you have dash attack in addition to immolation and hard light, simply forget it. Restoration? It does absolutely nothing because stoke/bd only heal you a little bit more and relying on HoTs to save you especially if surrounded by the adds in latest elite content. Investing into restoration and relying on your heals out of block is like trying to outpunch Mike Tyson in his orime, it’s not enough. A healer might save you, your heals- I doubt it... Speccing into resto and having less health is making it harder on the healer to react. Again, I’ve healed fire tanks and have tanked all of elites. If you are speccing full dom and resto without maximizing health it’s lle shooting your healer in the foot because your shields will break regardless and you will have bigger chunks of hp taken away making it harder to react with priority. All the resto you get also makes it harder to react if you are a healer since your bar will be bouncing all over the place even worse, not because of your healing is strong but rather because you have much lower hp. Now, I’m not saying it’s impossible to complete content, you certainly can but showing up to an elite raid with all your sp invested into dom and resto and not block is like playing Russian rulette, you are asking to get popped because you are so much harder to heal. All in all, you can complete content with a good healer and burn and if you somewhat know what you are soing. My argument is, less hp=harder to heal and react to “oh ****” moments because you increase your chances of being popped because your bar will be bouncing much more. Even then, with more dom, you will absorb maybe 2 more hits before taking a big spike in damage, don’t tell us that you’ll just pop your heals recover just because you’ve spent 100 skill points into restoration. Blocking on the other hand with max hp makes it rather easier to heal because you as a healer see the bar and have more time to react especially when dealing with spikes in damage.

This kind of ******** omg...I want to get my eyes out with a spoon

did u understand what i said? cos you are talking things that I did not say... nvm play how ever u want.

Sorry but what gives you the right to dictate who can and can’t contribute? You way of tanking isn’t the only way to tank and isn’t the best way to tank either. I’m not currently fire but I was recently fire. I have tanked everything in this game as fire including throne e and cote. I’ve tanked adds and bosses. And when the other tanks died I held everything until the other rank was picked up or until the fight was over. Shields don’t always last as long as you want especially with elite adds. In fact fire has the weakest shields because all other tanks will normally have higher damage mitigation to supplement the shields. You’re talking like you know everything but by the sounds of it you haven’t even ranked elite raids or you’d know this. Kiting doesn’t always work either same as blocking doesn’t always work either.

Y

yes, that’s why I have single target and aoe loadouts. Which loadout did you use?

an engineer has knowledge of physics, but can not give physics classes because he is not a physicist, he is an engineer.

If you are not going to use any shield, 1st get full health, 2nd get full resto, 3rd get full dom, in that order you will withstand the hits (u will not be inmortal, but will be enough to run, heal yourself and pull again).

How many SP do you have? Lol. How can you spec full heal, resto and dom? Are you basically saying to play fire effectively, at least 700 sp are needed?

See above

Everyone stop getting so upset when people tall about powers and use the wrong wording. When you hear people talk about rage and earth being the best tanks. This is DCUO talk. It means content is easier with these two tank powers currently. For alot of unskilled players, easier equals better.

It's no different that people saying water and electric are better healing powers. They aren't. They are just easier because of 8man shields.

My fault im not english speaker... im spanish speaker, i was trying to highlight a priority order. And i have 366sp at the moment.

That is an idiotic statement. Not even comparable. That statement is for someone who have never studied physics. I clearly stated that anyone who has been fire has the right to share their knowledge. Just because I am currently not fire doesn’t mean that you know more about fire than I do, which clearly shows in your posts.

For "pure" ST I'm using the Inferno, Absorb Heat, Heat Vision, Overheat loadout you recommended, with Robot Sidekick and Speed Drain. Using this for most boss fights now. EoG + Scrap + Amp

For "ST" with a heavy splash component I'm using Inferno, Heat Vision, Wildfire, Spontaneous Combustion, Mass Detonation, Speed Drain. Using this for elite raid trash and any bosses where I can hit multiple relevant targets simultaneously. EoG + Scrap + Amp

For most other non-ST applications that aren't current-tier elite, I run a hybrid melee build of Enflame, Flashpoint, Snuff Out, Fiery Weapon, Phase Dodge, Robot Sidekick, with Staff spamming double overhead smash clips but doing the spin-o-rama if there's a good ST target and I get a AI proc. AI + Venom + Tetrahedron. There are a few fights where enemies are predisposed to block spam that I'll switch to PftT, h/e.

The damage potential on these in the correct situations is pretty close but I'm considering replacing the second loadout I listed with one that's purely meant for shredding raid trash en mass; the one I'm using is really designed for hitting a ST really hard and everything around it medium hard, so it lags way behind when there's only a big clump of trash mobs that I wanna burn evenly. If anyone could recommend something for that, I'd appreciate it. That said, aside from score chasing in the general damage category, iunno how much value I'd get out of it.

Finally came back to my og power fire ...took a long 2 year break and seems loads of balance changes have happened .

Is it in a sweet spot again with the melee hits hitting harder ?

PS : Crash Allen , were you always using staff melee combos as fire from the time of FoS ? I remember being carried by you for a long time

Haha yeah that was me. Until Origin Crisis I never touched PftT. Once I realized while levelling that staff's 360 PBAO physics, area, and damage stacked so well with with Flashpoint's, and that the CD time on Flashpoint, Fiery Weapon, and Phase Dodge all lined up perfectly with the combo, I pretty much ran that setup exclusively for years until Origin Crisis.I've changed my ig name though now.

To speak to your other question, I feel like fire's PftT is in the sweetest spot right now. Fire is, overall, very versatile but the loadout DeitySupreme recommended is extremely potent.