Turning Up the Heat: a guide to Rain of Fire
By
Garthalus,
Posted on: 2008-08-22 16:20 in Player Guides
Half a screen's worth of information about one power in one powerset..... does not a guide make. Besides.... I already basically said the same thing. With less words too!
It's his first post on the forums.
Cut a brother some slack, man. 
Bah, he's had one whole registered year to read the forums and know what he's doing. No slack here. 
Your guide missed a scenario:
Rain of Fire should go down ASAP after a slow, immob, or AoE hold affects a spawn. Rain of Fire does more damage(lvl 50 corruptor unenhanced: 125.12) to a locked down enemy than either Fireball(49.75) or Fire Breath(73.20). Since it's DoT, you want to drop it first to get it started.
Some blasters can accomplish this themselves. And since Fire/ corruptors get Rain of Fire too, many types can do this themselves as well. My Fire/Storm's attack chain is: Snow Storm->Freezing Rain->Rain of Fire->Fire Ball->Fire Breath.
It's glorious. So glorious, in fact, that it's worth planning your Fire/ Blaster|Corruptor toon so that it can hinder enemy movement on an AoE level on his or her own. With that in mind...
Blasters powers that can AoE slow/kd:
Devices: Caltrops
Fire Manipulation: Hot Feet
Ice Manipulation: Chilling Embrace, Ice Patch, Shiver
Cold Mastery: Snow Storm
Corruptor powers that can AoE slow/immob:
Cold Domination: Snow Storm, Sleet, Heat Loss
Dark Miasma: Tar Patch
Radiation Emission: Lingering Radiation
Storm Summoning: Snow Storm, Freezing Rain
Traps: Caltrops, Poison Trap
Leviathan Mastery: School of Sharks
Mace Mastery: Web Envelope
A note of Rain of Fire accuracy.
This is from Circuit_Boy in the blaster forums here. In case it ever gets wiped, it says:
[ QUOTE ]
The "rain" powers almost all have normal accuracy: 75%. The "increased accuracy" is a myth based on the fact that the Accuracy Modifier of the pet-summon power is 2.0. That just means you can't miss at placing the pet. It has no effect on the pet's accuracy.
If you don't slot the rain powers for accuracy, you're significantly gimping your own damage, and it gets worse as the level difference between you and your opponents increases (in the opponents' favor, of course).
Each tick is checked to hit, so if you're fighting +2s without any accuracy enhancements or tohit buffs, only about 56% of the ticks will hit. With two accuracy SOs, it'd hit about 93.3% of the time. That means you're losing approximately 37.3% of the damage--of the ticks that could hit anyway.
[/ QUOTE ]
In other words, it's good to slot accuracy in RoF.
Slotting Suggestions.
If you're using RoF for scatter, then you're probably fine with the base slot. But if you're using it for damage, you want to soft cap damage, get about 66% recharge, and slap a little accuracy in there. Even though RoF slows enemy movement, it does not accept slow enhancements.
Common IO/SO suggestion: 1 accuracy, 3 damage, 2 recharge.
Of course, how you slot will depend on where you drop it in your attack chain as well. For instance, in mine, after Freezing Rain, I don't worry to much about accuracy. Or, a blaster that does Aim->Shiver->RoF would not either.
If you're going with set IOs, it takes the Ranged AoE damage sets only. You can get a rather nice amount of damage and recharge via franken slotting in 5 slots (I use a Posi Dam/Rech, an Air Burst Dam/Rech, and 3 Detonations of Dam/Rech Dam/End Acc/Dam/End to get 20% acc, 98% dam, 72% rech, and 43% end) and still have a slot left over for a proc.
Now that's how you supplement a short guide. Good on you, HBS.
Keep in mind that if you activate Aim before RoF, the +toHit buff wears off on RoF at the same time that it wears off on you. You'll have about eight seconds of super-accurate fiery death, followed by a lot of plain old normal fiery death. It's still important to slot for accuracy.
Ooooh... nice point, Stack. TYVM!
I wanted to share my thoughts on the best way to not only make Rain of Fire effective in an AoE fire blaster, but make it the crowning touch to your AoE attack chain.
People are always down on Rain of Fire, all because of the way it scatters the bad guys. Dont use it that way. Theres no doubt that the big attack in your fire chain if Fire Breath, and it should be the first thing you use. If you lead off with Rain of Fire, the enemy scatter and you just breathe fire on empty space.
My attack chain, which leaves everything but the bosses dead, is simple: Start with Build Up and line up the mob, selecting the central baddie. Then use Fire Breath. Once the damage starts ticking off, you can hit them with Fireball. This should pretty well finish off the minions. Then last thing to hit them with is Rain of Fire. This panics anything left standing (and satisfyingly kills them off) while making it hard for them to run up to you for melee attacks.
My Fire Blast/Energy Manipulation blasters build is not terribly subtle; I have the Fire attacks slotted for damage and recharge, along with Aim (slotted for recharge x3) and Build Up (recharge x3). I also use Hasten (recharge x3) but I dont really have much in the way of IO sets. I skipped Flares as I dont plan on fighting single targets at all, and I needed all my powers early on to get Fire Ball, Fire Breath, Rain of Fire and Build Up. Once I had those I was off to the races.
Addition melee attacks are meant for fun, and I alternate between Aim and Build Up so that I always have one of them buffing me. I dont want to waste Build Up duration time activating Aim, or vice versa.
With Rain of Fire to close the show, the only thing left standing are some seriously concerned bosses, and with Blaze to keep them nice and warm, you can just unpack the marshmallows.
Dont make the mistake of thinking that Rain is bad because of the panic it causes. Just make it so that panic is the last thing the baddies do.