Trailblazing Guide to Fire

Discussion in 'Oracle’s Database (Guides)' started by Soulburn32, Feb 16, 2013.

  1. Darth Piper Loyal Player

    Did I misunderstand that? I thought it didn't stack with Extended Supercharge (chest mod).
  2. L T Devoted Player

    It doesn't stack with the chest slot, so you can use penetrating strikes or core strength there if you're using extended supercharge now.
    • Like x 1
  3. Darth Piper Loyal Player

    OK, then I didn't misread it. :)

    Another thing is that Solar Amplifier at 200 will automatically "install" Empowered Channeling.
  4. Darth Piper Loyal Player

    So I think my chief complaints regarding fire tanking right now...
    1. Self healing not strong enough. This is fire's damage mitigation. When I walk out of an instance my healing out numbers should look like those of a healer, especially if you're spending your SP on health and more on resto than dom, and based on prior testing this is the way to go if you're going to be more active... and that's what the devs seem to want.
    2. Fire as a tank seems to be built more for face tanking with the way its powers work, yet its only real chance for survival is being a Pied Piper with some of these adds (I could do an entirely separate rant about that). It has no inherent stunning capability and adds quickly develop immunities to our only juggle move, Backdraft. It also has the worst defense of the tanks. It gets supplemented through Fire Soul by being active. The problem is that to build up the extra 20% of defense takes a lot of work and time... and it takes just a little less effort than that to maintain it. The only power that has it worse for kiting is Atomic.
    3. Fire requires more SP, higher artifacts, and higher augments to even have a chance to be in the game. Give those same stats to the other tank powers and they'll leave fire behind. As fire you need at least 30 more SP than any other tank power (20 for Crit Heal chance, 40 for Crit Heal magnitude, vs all others being able to go 10 and 10)... and the more maxed out artifacts that boost your health the better.
    4. Fire, per prior testing, has one of the worst individual shields, yet that shield is one of the ways to activate the PI. The bigger healing move, Burning Determination, converts incoming damage to heals yet it does not burn enemies.
    Possible remedies:
    1. Bump up the base healing multiplier
    2. Revamp Fire Soul... less time to max out, less effort to maintain max, and boost the upper end
    3. Increase the health buff we get for being fire... or restore the way it worked during AM (cast a power and health gets buffed to 160% + 2.2 * Dom) so that being active will keep that health buff up.
    4. Give Burning Determination the ability to burn enemies.
    5. Create another artifact like Mystic Symbol of the Seven
    I really dislike the new artifact idea because it seems like artifacts became the crutch on how to make up for new (and even older) players not having a lot of SP, but it is a possible one.
    • Like x 1
  5. AV Loyal Player



    Options 2 and 3 are the only truly viable solutions. The problem is the eHP gap between fire and other tanks ever since they got rid of the buff we got after casting powers. No amount of self healing can fix that, as shields and health boosting effects always grant full value but a heal only matters if we survive w/e damage would have been outright mitigated by another tank's shields or health buffs. This was the problem I encountered tanking high level SM as fire, where the damage reaches a point where the self heals become less than worthless because it didn't let you reach a breakpoint where you could survive a second hit. It became outright unsustainable at R29 where there was a good chance I'd be hit for 190k through shields by normal bs. Had to switch to Ice to finish, and Ice at 29/30 ended up being less work than Fire was at 19/20.

    This is exacerbated by the fact that Fire Soul doesn't work properly. If Fire Soul was giving the buff we should have all the time, it might be better but even then, the eHP math clearly shows that Fire tanks are way behind now. That said, I think our kit is more than sufficient to deal with elite content... it's just annoying knowing that we aren't getting more bang for our buck.

    Bonus(?): Fire has one "good" thing going for it... Since Fire Soul's buff is busted and our max defense boost is so small, the block defense bug doesn't hurt us XD. Other tanks stand to lose bigtime when they block. Ice gets especially ****** since blocking can cut your def in half. Yhat was the only hard thing about Ice tanking R30.... untraining my muscle memory to not block cuz it'd get me killed turning off my power-specific def buffs. Fire is never worse off and can turtle all it wants though.... which is stupid because it's the exact opposite of what Fire Soul was going for.
  6. Darth Piper Loyal Player

    I realize that the bigger gains will come from certain options... and that to heal damage you have to actually take it in. And yeah, when the incoming hit exceeds your health pool plus your defense, you're hosed no matter what... doesn't matter how good your self healing is or your group's healer(s) are.

    It just hurts when you have some good friends and long-time players say, "You're a good tank. You're doing everything right, but you're being hampered by your power set." Then they go on and explain how another fire tank in our league is doing everything possible to avoid mechanics (and it bothers a lot of people in league to the point that they do not want to run with him/her, despite liking his/her personality)... and yet another fire player who's been playing for a VERY long time is pretty much afraid to tank with fire now (unstated, but obvious by reluctance to do so). And no, I don't take this personally. They're only pointing out what I've been noticing... and it's making me think more and more about switching away from fire. I think what hurts more about it is that I've been fire since I started playing and I'm rather comfortable with the power... but I'm being screwed over by devs who probably don't even run anything with fire toons or they would notice what's wrong too.

    Right now one of the only remedies we have as a fire tank is to max out Mystic Symbol of the Seven. Claim all you want about Manacles of Force, but Manacles will pretty much continually proc (especially in elite) which means it will forever be on cooldown. The only thing that MIGHT help from it is the instant cooldown of Immolation when it is maxed out.

    I run 50-50 Dom and Resto augments (I used to run all Dom but after reading along in here and in the tanking thread, active fire benefits from going with more Resto). I have Dilustel Refractor (160), Mystic Symbol (180), and Eye of Gemini (200)... 484 SP... It should be difficult to kill me.

    I will admit, though, that Fire does one thing really well... expose crappy to mediocre healers, as well as find the good ones. People do not see fire tanks much any more so many of them do not know how to heal with one present.

    As a side note, I wish they would restore BD's ability as an immunity too.
  7. AV Loyal Player


    If your SP is high enough I don't think it's worth switching at all. I can understand the frustration for newer or lower SP players but for anyone high end who knows what they're doing there shouldn't be much of a difference in anything but late-SM. Elite/reg isn't tuned to the point where the difference between high SP tanks who know what they're doing is noticeable for different powers.

    Manacles of Force is still op. It has excellent tank stat % buffs (12% overall) on top of its raw equipment stats in addition to it's 10% shield cd reduction (and instant cd @200) making a big difference since we only have the one shield to work with. Personally, I run Mystic Symbol + Tetrahedron + Manacles of Force. Mystic Symbol is very good in Metal pt 1 but situational overall in that it's pretty useless for ST tanking since we're getting constantly overcured anyways, not getting hit a ton, and the hits we do get are big ones. Dilustel is in a weird place for Fire, since we get the least value out of it of any tank class because the percentage by which our health increases compared to our existing health pool is the smallest + our existing health is high enough that it's rare for use to only survive anything by the skin of our teeth. If you want to replace anything for EoG, I'd replace Dilustel. Manacles is the only artifact I'd never go without.

    If your SP is high enough you can safely take resto to 100 first, run resto augs, then dump the rest into dom, especially for non-SM stuff.. The impact to overall health isn't huge and the shield strength loss is negligible while our other "shield," Burning Det, gets a big upgrade.

    Edit: Forgot I run Tetra over Dilustel in normal elite/reg stuff. Tetra on a Fire Tank is a very solid pick and adds another average DPS's worth of DPS to the group while giving you yet another 5% health buff. Assuming a tank can meet the fairly low skill/gear ceiling for normal content, we can technically go all out trying to buff others via EoG + Tetra.
  8. Darth Piper Loyal Player

    I use EoG for the SC buff to others and, given that it's maxed out, to myself if I find myself in the area... but I only use the SC (Pheromone Bloom) if I find myself close enough to the rest of the group. It's also difficult to pass up on a 4% boost to each Dom and Resto. If I tank the boss that needs to be kept away, I'm a little more likely to run HL Shield or Amazonium Deflection because my EoG effect would be wasted. Dilustel Refractor has a 5% health bonus and 4% Dom bonus... kinda difficult to ignore for fire tanks... but I do see your point in that if I have 17500 dom, the benefit for myself beyond the actual stat bonuses and percentages is only an additional 3k health when I hit that pull. I will admit that I have done the Tetrahedron thing in some circumstances too, since it grants might based on my health... and when you're at 170k+ health, you are almost as likely as not to override a DPS even with the "doubled in damage role" bonus and that fewer DPSes are running it now.

    Basically, Mystic Symbol and Manacles both provide the same kind of stats benefits... 5% health, 3% each resto and dom at 160 (I know Mystic Symbol gets 4% resto at 180, don't remember the others). At least Mystic Symbol buffs your defense as adds attack you. One big hit with Manacles and it's now in recovery for 45 seconds, and unfortunately this kind of thing happens with a much greater frequency than once every 45 seconds. The stats, however, are a help so I quite well see your point. :) It just seems that Mystic Symbol of the Seven was designed for fire tanks because we are the only ones who can truly take advantage of Restoration as a stat. Yeah, it helps any other tank's shields, but their recoveries are based on their Dominance, not their Restoration.

    In all, I keep hoping that one or more of the developers will take a look into things. The general appearance is that they don't really have anyone who plays or tests fire tanks, so they think everything is OK... but if they were really doing their jobs after this last round of SM, they would have seen that there were unlikely to be any fire tanks who completed anything much beyond round 20... and if there were, they were few and far between. I've heard from a couple of people who say that they wish fire would get fixed because they miss it as a power set in the game. I'll look a little into what you're suggesting... might help just a bit. ;)
    • Like x 1
  9. Korlick Loyal Player

    I remember people were asking for this during the Stats Revamp, Devs answer? "Sure, we could do that. But well have to nerf the heals" lol
    Fire was great before the Revamp and got screwed after that. Many people were blinded by the "oh but you dont have to turtle anymore" lol Fire Soul sucks big time.

    Hows the turtiling (with the fort. block neck mod) these days? I do remember doing some tests before i left the game and the results were slightly better using the Fire Soul. But there were no artifacts yet at that time, is it still the same or how is it?
    • Like x 1
  10. AV Loyal Player


    Turtling still tends to be the optimal, reliable, and easiest approach since Fire Soul caps out low and the blocking doesn't hurt us like it does other tanks. Fire Soul is a pretty meh mechanic. However, interestingly enough, we can do some pretty cool stuff with Empowered Channeling while tanking to keep Fire Soul high while making ourselves uncounterable/unCCable and getting an additional 5% def buff on top of that. I used this approach up to around R19 in SM; it was very effective at the time and only stopped being effective when the cr scaling enabled the bosses to 1-shot if I wasn't able to move in a split second. I might actually give that approach a shot in normal content because it was very fun running what felt like a hybrid tank/DPS loadout while tanking and ending up being tankier for it lol. Plus that lets us use 5% unblocked neck.

    I agree fire tanking was extremely strong pre-revamp but it the gen pop has never perceived that to be the case, probably because it only started to outshine other tanks at higher SP.
  11. Darth Piper Loyal Player

    You have to use a mix of things. Fortified Blocking is mostly useless for fire tanks now. You want Fortified Assault to improve your survivability when you have to be up and moving around. Given this trend to turn tanks into Pied Pipers, especially in elite, is making it necessary. Turtle tanking simply does not work in most cases with fire... unlike the AM days when fire went from the best, most resistant tank while blocking to the squishiest by not blocking. The heals are already sub-par. Fire Soul takes too much effort to get it up to full. You're much better off having something like Mystic Symbol of the Seven maxed out (up to a 50% defense buff based on adds around you, extra healing based on restoration). I'm not saying that you aren't going to hit and hold block... quite frankly if you were tanking Klarion in FOAE you had to use a mix of turtle and active if you wanted to be successful.
  12. Korlick Loyal Player

    Correct me if im wrong, what im getting reading you guys, is that fire tanks relies on artifacts more than any other tanks?
  13. L T Devoted Player

    I think that's a bit unfair. Like them or not, artifacts are a thing now, and if you want to tank end game content you have to have them leveled reasonably high.

    Fire's thing with artifacts is that you can get a really big chunk of your total health from having 3 artifacts leveled appropriately, and for obvious reasons that matters a bit more to Fire than to other tanks.
    • Like x 2
  14. AV Loyal Player

    Not so much that (I mean, we were even talking about group DPS buff stuff like EoG and Tetra because we can). It's more that fire has a lower floor and a higher ceiling than other tank powers in normal content. With low SP, fire performance is inferior to that of other tanks but at high sp it outshines them imo. It's like having a character in a fighting game/moba that's harder to use but has a bit more potential when geared/handled properly.

    We don't depend on shields or an aura and there's no mechanics that we can just lose or mess up and become suddenly way more vulnerable. We also don't get huge buffs. All tanks are ehp batteries but instead of having controlled ehp spikes fire is just a constant mega battery, so once we get ourselves beefed up past a certain threshold it starts to stand out.
    • Like x 1
  15. Korlick Loyal Player

    Cool cool. I misunderstood you. Got the wrong impression.
    I mean...it would not surprise me if it were like that, since fire always needed more work compared to the other tanks.

    Anyway...im just being curious, because i barely play once in a while lol
  16. Darth Piper Loyal Player

    Well, given our worst-of-all-tank-powers defense we actually ARE more vulnerable than any others. Supposedly our bigger-than-other-tank-powers health buff is supposed to shield us from that... but that's not always the case as you noted for SM. Yes, that's an extreme example, but it does show the vulnerabilities.

    That said, just in general fire tanks will need at least 30 more SP than any other tank. Why 30? All tanks other than fire can do 10 in critical heal chance and 10 in critical heal magnitude. Fire needs to max them out at 20 and 40, respectively... thus 30 more.

    Beyond that, I was watching some of my healing numbers last night when running Monsters of Metal (Elite), and it looks like they're better with 4 Dominance origins mods than the 50-50 split, which seemed to work better a while back. If the healing formula is to be believed, this shouldn't be happening as much... or they cap the healing we get from restoration sans artifacts, etc. Now, to say I had my mettle tested in that run would be an understatement. The guy who put the run together grabbed a second fire tank for this run... and I'll leave the drama out of this... but needless to say that I saw some bigger healing numbers and got through a few things I didn't think I would. One of the others in the group and I were trading tells and how we didn't think we'd get much past Mr. Freeze... but managed to get through Poison Ivy because I figured out how to do a certain mechanic... :)

    But suffice to say that I think they've screwed up the healing formula in regards to fire tanks in more ways than one.
  17. ObsidianChill Community "Trusted"

    -If you don't want to get mind controlled when ivy does her blow kiss animation just roll at that moment and you avoid it
    -Have the 2nd healer and 1 dps always in the 2 spores to free mind controlled players and to keep the debuff on ivy and either 1 have player in the spore deal aoe dmg to the spores or have the group dps the spores then back to ivy.
    -hide behind trees when ivy walks to the center to do her skull
    -either a solo tank with both or have the 2nd tank kyte the spores around

    that's it, rinse and repeat
  18. AV Loyal Player

    I've made a bug thread for the long-standing Absorb Heat cancellation problems that have plagued Fire and made one of our most important powers virtually unusable in certain situations or while Tanking anything serious. Please give it a like to ensure it gets the attention it needs. :)
  19. Darth Piper Loyal Player

    As a league mate of mine put it...

    1. Fire (tanking) is broken.
    2. Fire needs to have its self heals buffed by 20-30%.
    3. The devs did fire tanking wrong
    4. Rage needs to be nerfed.
    5. All other tank powers need to get buffed to where Earth is.
    • Like x 1
  20. Cyro Committed Player

    How effective is it to have all resto augments over dom?