i hear the complaints on melt armor is the recharge time..takes forever to make fireball better everytime.
i usually take fire cage ,fireblast and fireball myself
I think calling Fireball "lackluster" is pretty insane considering it has a higher DPA than pretty much any other tanker AoE, including FSC, and by a handy margin (FSC does like 1.6x the damage, but takes like 2.7x as long to activate, so... do the math). Hell, even if you halved the damage, I'd still happily take another AoE attack on my tank. And it's *ranged*!
I also love Char for Sappers and the like, but that's just me. Melt Armor recharges so slowly that even when I take it (to open up Fireball), I rarely end up using it. In fact, the only time I take Melt over FBlast (another *ranged* attack whose DPA isn't great, but better than almost all the T1 tank attacks and the same as Scorch, and have I mentioned it's ranged?) is when I don't have the slots to spare for FBlast, so I just grab Melt and don't bother slotting it. YMMV and all that.
An Offensive Guide to Ice Melee
I actually like to slot melt armor. Some of the set bonuses for def debuff, and accurate def debuff are great, and can be a rarity for a lot of tanker combos.
I typically go 5 slotted for analyze weakness, but there are a lot of other great sets to consider too.
My Ice/fire passed 41 a while ago but i didnt take any of the APPs. i thought about taking Pyre then but when i saw i needed to take either the hold or immob to get at the other powers i was turned off. my build lives for getting as many foes around me as possible for AoE goodness....i want those foes to be mobile in most cases so they get as close as possible so i can freeze/burn their faces off
anyway i was talking to another tanker who noticed that i didnt get any APPs and he said that he loved Melt Armor from Pyre and that i should just suck it up and take the hold for stacking with controllers on bosses or whatever
so i took another at look Pyre and noticed another concern. since i love the AoE of my Icicles/Fire build i was interested in fireball from Pyre to add to the AoE goodness but it looks like piddly damage for a lvl47 pick. the fireblast ST power from Pyre is just as underwhelming. plus its ST.
if i take and slot Melt Armor will the -def compensate for the lackluster damage of fireball making it a "much" better attack overall? will it also help my ( and my team's) other AoE attacks 'enough' to make the choice worth it? or was i right from the start in skipping the APP altogether?
what do you all think?