This is a guide for Thermal Radiation. Chances are, dear reader, you may already have a Thermal Radiation Corruptor/Mastermind/Controller, or therm as they are known on tha streetz. But Therming can be hard! You’ve got to keep shields up and heals and debuffs and oh god its overwhelming oh god oh god i can’t breathe help please oh godohgodohgoddddd.
IT IS OKAY. TAKE DEEP BREATHS. I will help you. Unlike your emotionally distant father who would just disdainfully gaze over a corner of his newspaper, slowly shake his head and sigh, Silas is here for you. Unless you read this entire guide, take it all in and then continue to suck and be awful at therming. In which case your father and I will both sigh, then go have a beer, watch the game and talk about how we wished things had turned out differently. SOMETIMES THAT IS JUST HOW IT GOES. Don’t worry though, you have plenty of
prospects
That said, your father and I do hope this guide is helpful for you. Without further ado,
Why Thermal Is Awesome And You Want To Be One:
• Setting people on fire without subsequent incarceration.
• That’s definitely a big one.
• Great resist shields.
• No but seriously being in jail is pretty bad you guys
• Awesome ranged AoE –res –def debuff
• Fast cycling anti-mez and tohit/dmg buffs
• ST –regen –recov –dam –end
• Hell of flashy rez which will annoy all melee when used (yaaaaay)
• Heals to keep you and teammates on their feet
• The ability to turn teams from wiping every other spawn into steamrollers
Powers:
Warmth: PBAoE team heal
Slotting Recommendation: 5 Doctored Wounds, everything but the straight recharge, it recharges decently fast as is.
How to Use: As a heal for yourself, or as a small top-up heal for several allies. This does not root you, so if you’re getting whacked you can backpedal while hitting this. Ain’t no way no b*tthole no how that a dead therm gonna be of use to the team, son.
Fire Shield: Ally +resist (smashing, lethal, fire, cold)
Slotting Recommendation: Max out the resist, these should be giving about 22-23ish% resistance when slotted. I went with Titanium Coatings for the hp bonus. You also might want to put an end red in here unless you’re already getting good values, because shielding an entire team can be heavy on the blue bar.
How to Use: Keep on allies. All of them. At all times. Seriously. Not hard to do, dogg. This and Plasma Shield will cut down incoming damage to almost all damage types, givin’ you more time for the Cauterizin’. Apostrophizin’. Unlike Cold or FF shields which can lose some of their usefulness if the team is already softcapped because of VEATs or whatever, the chances of your team all being resist capped are minimal. So keep these up. Bind them so you don’t have to be all clicky clicky clicky.
Cauterize: Ally +heal
Slotting Recommendation: Same as Warmth. Recharges fast as it is, but needs decent healing/end slotting and heal/rech bonuses are totally the sexiest. Okay, fine, maybe not
THE sexiest, but pretty sexy.
How to Use: As an ally heal, interestingly enough. Heals for twice as much as Warmth and is ranged, so generally easier to use as an ally heal.
Plasma Shield: ally +resist (energy, negative, fire)
Slotting Recommendation: Again, like Fire Shield. Max out the resists.
How to Use: Same as Fire Shield. These powers make writing these guides so easy. Hooray!
Power of the Phoenix: Ally rez, +special
Slotting Recommendation: Barely. A single recharge or end red IO is fine. If you want set bonuses Doctored Wounds can work.
How to Use: As an ally rez. Someone dies, use this. Things to note however: the +special is a pet summon at the location of the ally who got beatdown. It does Knockback, a little damage and a stun. So anything around the dead ally is thrown back and stunned, which can be cool, but can be annoying depending on the situation. It’s also important to note that unlike some other rezzes, it makes them Untouchable for 15 seconds, so right after you rez them you can’t heal them (not that they would need it anyway) or shield them (more annoying).
Thaw: Ally +res (stun, sleep, hold, immobilize, confuse, fear, cold, slow)
Slotting Recommendation: I went with an end rdx and a range. This is so you can hit people with it from further away and Thawing a lot of people can be rough on endurance.
How to Use: Two ways. Either you’re fighting stuff that mezzes a lot like Malta because lazy design is lazy so you keep it up as a preventative measure, or as a fixer for when people occasionally get mezzed. If you’re fighting stuff that only mezzes occasionally, just keep it up on the squishies or when people say something like zzzz or whatever.
Forge: Ally +tohit +damage
Slotting Recommendation: I went with 5 Adjusted Targettings. The +damage is unenhanceable which is fine because you want to be enhancing the +tohit anyway. You want to max out the recharge on this as well. With the Adj Targettings, I went with the whole set minus the straight ToHit IO.
How to Use: ALWAYS ON THE BRUTE/TANK BECAUSE THEY SHOULD ALWAYS GET ALL BUFFS EVER. Haha, no. You can keep this on several people easily, but be mindful of how damage buffs work. They work on base damage, so ATs with high base damage (blasters, scrappers, stalkers, doms) will get more use out of it than ATs with low base damage like brutes. That said, if you’re fighting stuff that has a lot of defense or tohit debuffs, keep it on people who need their stuff to hit.
Heat Exhaustion: ranged foe –end –recovery –regen –damage. Bam.
Slotting Recommendation: 2 accuracies, 2 recharges. You want this to hit and you want it back up ASAP because it will straight up ruin a dudes day.
How to Use: This is one of two powers that separate you from being a pure buff/healbot. Underwhelming animation, overwhelming effect. Hold out your hand, the littlest whoompf. Oh, was that it? Oh, wait, your regen, recovery and damage are all totally boned. Man, it sure sucks to be you. Find a boss/AV/other thing you want to hit as like a Peacebringer and die almost as fast.
Melt Armor: Click. FWOOOMPF. AoE –res –def
Slotting Recommendation: Definitely an Achilles Heel –res proc, other than that this can get tricky. You’ll probably want to frankenslot a few sets and HOs because you want to get good values for accuracy and defense debuff while maxing out the recharge.
How to Use: Target either the biggest badguy in a spawn like the AV or whoever is in the middle of a spawn and click. Bam. Everything in its fairly big radius will have shot resistances and defense, allowing you and the rest of your team to shred them. So hit this whenever its up on nice big spawns and enjoy the
show
How To Not Be Awful:
• Blabla, keep shields up or [Insert Creative Threat]. Seriously though, it’s a lot easier to get defense buffs than resist buffs since no one plays Sonic because it’s BOOOORING so your shields will almost always be worthwhile. They also give you more time to heal people as the damage reduction is more reliable than defense.
• Bind follow to a key so if someone is getting kicked around you can target them, hit your follow key and queue up Cauterize. You may hit a wall depending on where they are, but it still quickly and efficiently sets you on the path to where they are so you can get to them in time.
• Speaking of Cauterize and getting to people in time, putting a range IO into this can be handy so you can hit people from further away which can be helpful if they’re an idiot and run away from you instead of towards you when they’re catching hell. This happens a lot, fyi. Get used to it.
•
This. A thousand times this.
• Unless you’re going to be therming a lot in PvP, don’t make frigging macros announcing your powers. If people aren’t sure you’re doing your job they can check their buff bars and for huge fireballs hitting the enemies. Unless of course, you’re not doing your job. In which case, scorn.
• Get good at judging hp bars for healing whack-a-mole. If a brute is at 75% health, Warmth isn’t the right power to go for, if a squishie is at 75% health, Cauterize isn’t the right power to go for. Roughly speaking, when enhanced and assuming some +hp from accolades/IOs/Frostwork/whatever, Cauterize will heal aboooout 1/3 of a squishies health. For Scrappers/brutes/tanks, it’ll heal about 1/4ish.
• That said, also bear in mind the nature of Cauterize and Warmth. If they’re not fully needing the full heal of Cauterize but are far away you’re better off hitting them with Caut than wasting the time running all the way over to them for Warmth.
• What you can also do (and will sometimes need to do) if someone is taking a lot of damage is run towards them hitting Cauterize and hit Warmth as you get close to them. Practice jousting with Warmth so you can run past people and hit them with it.
• Mobility is key. If you’re using SS, get Hurdle with Fitness and have 1-2 jump IOs in it. If you’re using SJ, get Swift and put 1-2 run IOs in it. Ideally run both SS and SJ for maximum movement. You’re often going to be the least protected person on the team because you can’t shield yourself and can only heal yourself with Warmth.
• Stealth is also key. Buy a stealth IO and put it in your travel power, SS being ideal for this. Thermals who can quickly get to where the buffing/debuffing/healing is needed without getting splattered are good thermals.
• Build for +hp, +rech and +rec if you’re going for IOs. You’ll want about 40-50% rech, more is overkill unless you’re a controller because it’ll make minimal difference to your long-recharging powers (Melt Armor and Heat Exhaustion). Shielding, Forging and Thawing a team as well as blasting and throwing out the debuffs can leave you sucking more wind than a fart fetishist. Which is totally gross, so don’t be that. You’ll want about 20ish% rec on top of Stamina to keep you going, less if you’ve got Conserve Power from Mu Mastery. This is important because unlike a Cold, you don’t have any way to recover end from your secondary so you’re relying on IO bonuses or PPPs for it. The +hp is more or less to taste, but you’ll want a decent chunk to keep you alive.
• Learn to judge enemy groups and team makeups for how often you need to use Thaw. If you’re fighting a group that has a lot of mez like Malta or Rikti you’ll want to keep it up on all the squishies, unless there’s an assload of defense that will stop those mezzes from hitting in the first place. Keep a row or 2 of Break Frees for yourself. Waiting for a hold to wear off while someone gets smooshed by a Chief Soldier is hell of uncool, brah.
• While you’ll always have a lot to do with shielding, buffing, healing and debuffing, do remember to blast. As a corruptor you can bring significant damage to a team, especially with Scourge kicking in on debuffed enemies. However, don’t go overboard with the offense. You want to be able to respond to a dropping healthbar quickly and being movement-suppressed with a load of aggro is a bad way to go about doing this.
•
Six times!?!?
• Part of the whole offense thing is making sure you at least have one or 2 attacks and one AoE. A lot of full teams will have a lot of buffing/debuffing going on making your heals pretty superfluous. This is totally fine. Don’t get in a big huff because people aren’t clamoring for your totally leet healz. Kill stuff. If you’ve got no blasts and everyone is shielded, you’re keeping Forge/Thaw up, debuffs are out and no one is needing heals, you’re gonna get bored in a hurry.
Battlefield Awareness:
This is something which I totally forgot to add to the guide first but is quite possibly one of the most important skills for a good thermal. Or empath. Or pain. Or any support character, really. Battlefield awareness. See which way the battle is flowing, know where people are. Icons for attacks will appear shortly before the damage does (depending on animation times) so if you see a whole bunch of attacks stacking up on someone who isn't necessarily very equipped to take them, start moving towards them so you can get to them in time.
Often times playing a thermal 100% reactively to drops in the health bars will not be enough to keep people from dying. So watch the buff bar, keep an eye on mobs to see who they're going after, as you're moving around get in the habit of panning your camera around so you've got full 360 degree awareness of whats going on. This is also comes back to your offense. If you see stray mobs going after a blaster or fellow corr or whatever, help them out with attacks too. If you're at full health and the blaster is at 10%, that aggro is better on you than on them. NB: this does not mean put grabbing aggro higher on your priorities list than healing them. I just mean, for example, in the above scenario, I would go after them with Cauterize queued up and once it fires off and is recharging I'll quickly throw out a Ball Lightning or Lightning Bolt.
As easy as it is to get healing tunnel vision on one person who is getting hammered, don't forget the rest of the team. Learn to judge when someone can handle themselves. While you can feel awfully good about yourself for keeping that Blaster on their feet with 3 Chief Soldiers trying to slice them up, if half the team is neglected as a result you have Done It Wrong.
What Goes Well With Thermal:
I think some kind of blast set that has some kind of utility to it. I personally went with Elec to stack with Heat Exhaustions –end –rec because drained dudes are dudes hitting my dudes less so I have to heal my dudes less. Savvy? I’d recommend Sonic too, because it’s got phenomenally good DPE and –res to stack on hard targets with Melt Armor.
Rad is also an option for mad proccage, but I would advise caution with Irradiate as it’s a PBAoE and melee is generally not somewhere you want to be as a therm. While Fire Blast works thematically, I personally saved it for secondaries which allowed me more leeway in blasting so I could really make the most of its raw damage.
How Silas Be Doin’ It
Observe:
Notes
• *: Usurper. I didn’t mention this in my other guides, but if you’ve got the time I would recommend you go ahead and get this on any corruptors you have. I say this because relatively few people have this, and if you’re a support junkie like me you want to be able to bring whatever the team needs and be able to start the RSF.
• 45% rech. With Hasten I find this is plenty for me in terms of getting good uptime on Heat Exhaustion, Melt Armor, Forge and Conserve Power as well as bringing my AoEs back up quickly when I can use them.
• I monitor my tohit so I can know if debuffs have shot it to sh*t before I blow Heat Exhaustion or Melt Armor.
So. Another guide done, hope it’s been helpful.
Acknowledgements:
Just Oz. For helping me a tonne with my therm build and teaching me damn near everything I know about therming. Thanks, broham. A better thermal there is not.
Untrue.
