Fire/Fire; My first character and build

Ok i've played a few mmos in the past and I know that i'm sure I will get several "your a noob" comments and that's fine because I am one. I am currently a level 23 fire/fire blaster. Took me and my friends maybe two weeks to get here. So i'm starting to think about my level 50 build. I used suckerpunch's planner so I didn't have to download anything (i'm at work lol). I am not really concerned about what level to get what ability. I just want a level 50 build to aim for. The abilities I want at level 50 are listed below and then I have a few questions.

Fire Blast Abilities that I like:
Flares
Fire Blast
Fire Ball
Rain of Fire
Fire Breath
AIm
Blaze
Blazing Bolt (EDIT 1)
Inferno

Fire manipulation Abilities
Ring of Fire (I dislike it but I think I have to have it)
Fire sword circle
Build up

Secondary Power Pools
1) Fitness
Swift, Health, and Stamina
2) Flight
Hover, Fly
3) Speed
Hasten
4) NO IDEA PLEASE ADVISE (EDIT 1 Removed Leadership)


This is what I like so far, I have several questions:
1) I can't decide on a Patron Pool. Any advice from the pros?
2) Removed leadership question (EDIT 1)
3) The skills above my level I have only read about/watch some youtube videos. From the descriptions I can't decide on blazing aura, consume, burn, and hot feet seem not that great but I wanted your guys opinions.

Once again i'm just interested in a starting place for a decent level 50 build. Once I settle on that and have research IO sets a little more i'll come back w enchament questions and which sets to choose. If you feel like adding to that be my guest. For now i'm just using level 25 SOs in all my abilities. Any advice is great.

Basically what i'm doing on missions now is as follows. I have build up/aim 3 sockted SOs so their cooldown is around 50s I think. I usually pop those, cast fire ball, run in fire sword circle. Then, click the farthest enemy away and cast fire/flame breath and hit 4-5 enemies (if they aren't already dead). Most enemies drop after the fire sword circle. You can always critique how I play as well if you like.

EDIT 1: I think I have 6 abilities left I don't know what to do with. 3 or 4 will be the APP at 41 but the others I have no idea. Corrected some text to reflect this.

Forget the leadership, it only gives you about five percent, and if you're planning to hover-blast you're gonna run out of endurance WAY faster than you're likely comfortable with. Your job is to blast things into tiny pieces. Please, please tell me you're not planning to play a fire/fire blaster with three extra toggles running...

I don't even have Ring of Fire in my power tray, I neve ruse it... ever.

Get Fire Sword, it's a great melee power that delivers a hell of a punch.

I don't have flares because the animation used to take forever, but not that you can use it even mezzed you might find some use for it.

Hasten... optional, you might find you like it, it depends on how your character plays. It can't hurt, I guess.

I like the /fire mastery APP, but there are other good ones. Don't worry about it now, play your character and by the time you're up to about 35 you'll know what you're lacking and which one you should take.

Consume is great, but don't rush to take it. If you can, great, if not, you're not really missing much. Rain of Fire is good too, but only as either an "Oh, [censored]!" power to make mobs scatter or if you're playing with a controller who can lock down all the mobs first.

It depends who you ask for Hot Feet, a lot of guys really like it for melee and blapping, I tend to hover-blast a lot so I don't use it or have it. Burn is a waste of time, forget it. Blazing aura will just get you killed.

Blazing Bolt is a decent power if you slot it right and use it right. It's great for picking fights, and with Build-up you can one-shot most minions. Very situational power.

So if I don't take leadership; that frees up 4 more abilities. What would be a good 4th auxillary power pool. Or should I just go w/ three and the 4 extra abilities elsewhere?

Fire sword just doesn't seem to fit my play style. I like to open up from a distance, when enemies get low i'll go in fire breath/fire sword circle. They may not be optimal but it fits my personality/playstyle. Hope that makes sense.

Hasten seems great and i've seen it in most end game builds. 3 SOs in build up/aim and hasten. I can't begin to imagine how low the cooldown on those will be.

I guess you're right about the APP, i'll just wait till 35 or so and start thinking about it.

I love Rain of Fire simply because of the animation. It looks awesome on my computer but I tend to save it for bosses. Nothing else stays alive long enough

Consume I may take after I get a feel for how well stamina helps me. I'll be getting it at 24, yes i'm sure that is late, but i'm just learning. When I started the character I didn't know I got 4 ancilliary power pools.

I don't really like anything centered around meleeing so I guess I won't do hot feet. Blazing bolt sounds fun just to one shot a lieuntant.

I edited my main post but still have some holes to fill.

If you don't have any interest in melee, */Fire might not be for you. If you don't care to re-make you character, at least pick up Consume for the post-nuke hangover!

Well at this point, I won't reroll because my friends are the same level as me and I don't want to abandon them. I come from playing a mage in world of warcraft, so my mentality for a blaster originally was like a mage which you would never dream of entering melee range. But I did get use to using fire sword circle/fire breath. So if a /fire blaster is centered around melee, could someone suggest to me what is a fun combination. I don't care about min/maxing at this point, that is what burned me out in wow, I just care about fun. Any fun melee combos you guys would suggest.

I'm not entirely sure what you're asking.

If you're wondering about how to play a ranged Fire/Fire Blaster it seems like you're on the right track already.

If you're wondering how to play a melee Fire/Fire Blaster there's another recent thread about them in this forum.

If you're wondering about fun melee combos then Fire/Fire is a great one for Blasters. Pretty much anything with */Elec, */EM, */Fire, or maybe */MM will do just fine for you. Then again, there are Scrappers, and pretty much any Scrapper build will be effective and fun in melee.

You'll get a more fulfilling CoH experience if you abandon the "mage" mentality when it comes to certain blasters.

Not saying that you should wade into melee recklessly, from the get go anyway. The progression of your learning will be as follows:

1) you'll learn how to pull, use line of sight to your advantage, what types of mobs mean the most threat to you, how to use movement to exploit AI stupidity, when to use inspirations, when to run, how to use the mitigation available to you to their fullest, and how to kick an enemy when he's down on his back.

2) after you are comfortable with the above, then you can wade into melee with reckless abandon, and live, 75% of the time

Regarding your build, it looks fine, I would try to fit in consume if you can. It's a nice post inferno end recovery power, just pop a catch a breath after inferno, and use consume on some foes and you'll get a decent chunk of endurance back.

Don't underestimate ring of fire, immobilization can be huge against bosses, most of whom do more damage in melee than they do at range, but there are exceptions. And you can use ring of fire when you are mezzed. The power does decent damage if slotted for it and it can buy you some time to recover or run away.

Regarding playstyle what you are describing is perfectly fine. If you want a more ranged approach start off with breath of fire since it does its damage in ticks, then follow up with fireball. This will allow breath of fire to get more it's ticks in. It's also not a bad idea to slot a range enhancement to extend the cone range of breath of fire so you can cover a larger area.

How much of your playtime is teamed? How much of your playtime is teamed with your friends specifically? What are your friends playing?

While my build idea is different from yours, I hope this helps. I go 100% blapper style, coming from scrappers and trollers where you have to herd a bit. I like to BU + AIM + RoF + breath + ball + fs circle, then spam blaze and fire sword on whatever is left. I often drop RoF and fire breath when I want to get up close faster. To kill a quant or void to help out the keld, for example. I haven't gotten either of the damage auras yet though, as I was buffing out all my attacks first, but with the amount of massive AoEs I'm pounding out and barely getting agro, I don't think the auras will hurt too much. They may actually redice the agro, by killing everything faster

my newest toon is fire/fire, and at 31 (can't wait for inferno) i just respec'd outta consume and burn i think (the aoe with the painfully slow and anti climactic animation). I always assumed an damage aura would get you killed quickly on blaster and i'm glad kirk up there confirmed it. I might try hot feet when I get high enough, but might not. I was debating on either boxing/tough or assault/tactics when i respec'd, and went with assault and tactics. I figure assault for more damage and tactics so I could slot only one acc in my powers and still hit purps.

One thing that I might suggest is taking and slotting fire sword even if you don't go into melee. This is just to take care of anything that runs towards you and survives the range blasts as they are approaching. It comes in handy, and the vet powers im assuming aren't an option yet, and you can't slot them for acc anyway, so they are unreliable at best. Its always nice to have something else to use if your in trouble, which playing fire/fire ive found myself using it quite a bit. I just switched it with fire sword circle as I plan not to enter melee.

I guess I'm just sayin it always comes in handy having one melee power for when you really need it, and fire sword seems to be your best bet.

I plan on takin fire mastery just for the self rez, and it fits concept, which fits ranged death from above more than melee (I suffer from the disorder scrapperlock, so I've spent the vast majority of my time im melee range just straight killin stuff, so I've done plenty of melee toons)

My team play consists of 90% of my playtime to be honest. My friends play a tanker and a controller. So together we have the basics: tank + heals + dps to beat most situations. We planned that from the get go.

It sounds like i'm on the right track. I will probably take Nemu_s approach to the character. Thanks for all the advice it was very helpful.

If your always on at least a 3 man team with a tank and troller, just take all the melee, auras, and aoes cause you shouldn't have to worry about dyin, take assault as well to help overall damage.

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My team play consists of 90% of my playtime to be honest. My friends play a tanker and a controller. So together we have the basics: tank + heals + dps to beat most situations. We planned that from the get go.

It sounds like i'm on the right track. I will probably take Nemu_s approach to the character. Thanks for all the advice it was very helpful.

[/ QUOTE ]

One point to make: Unlike WoW, the holy trinity of Tank/Healer/DPS is not crucial or even necessary most of the time.

The game is designed so ANY group of characters can handle the vast majority of the content.
Heals are the least effective form of damage mitigation, the buffs and debuffs in this game are that good.
I mean, which would you prefer? To heal back all the damage you've just taken....or to not have taken the damage in the first place?

The trio of tank/heals/DPS will work just fine, there's nothing wrong with that playstyle. I just wanted to point out that you don't NEED a particular combination to succeed. I'm presuming that since you referred to your controller partner as a healer that they tooke either Empathy or Thermal? If that is the case, and I can't stress this enough, MAKE SURE THEY DO NOT IGNORE THEIR BUFFS IN FAVOR OF HEALS. In both sets there is a power that will protect YOU from mez effects, just like your tank partner has, there is another that boosts damage and defense. I have friends who play WoW and they told me that buffs in that game are pretty much useless. That is not the case in CoH. One of the first things you need to do is take all the stuff you learned in WoW....and forget most of it. Different game, different mechanics. The teamwork you learned will serve you quite well, but CoH plays very differently, which I'm sure you're starting to see.

You picked one of the highest damage output blaster builds there is, with the downside of having almost zero damage mitigation of your own. A ranged playstyle will work, but if your tank is good at holding agro, you will shine in melee range.