All blaster secondaries have a large element of melee orientated powers - and generally they are very good in one way or another and help to make a blaster alot more powerful than with the primary alone.
That said, both primary and secondary blaster sets need tweaking imo.
All secondairy of blasters are melee based.
It is a plain a risk-vs-reward system, if you decide to go melee, the usage of its powers will give you a high reward (great damage, mezz, or even survivability).
As for fire, its just a great mixture of several aspects each other secondiar has. You can group it next to /Ice, as /elec and /nrg are grouped.. /Dev is kinda alone.
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Fair point re the other blaster secondaries and I should probably have included this counter in my original post....
I feel that most of the others (ice in particular) allow you a greater degree of mob control. This control limits the amount of melee agrro you atually face. Fire does not seem to have this element (pun intended) to it.
That is kinda related that fire is the 'damage/dot' of all sets.Ice master of Mez, nrg of stun/dmg, elec drain and dmg, sonic of debuff, AR/dev for the stealthy tricks. Ok, that said in a quick nutshell. Each set got its pro and cons, as so fire has too.
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melee as a blaster is NOT wise
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Are we playing the same game? I can handle a brute without problems, fury or not. Now if I fight a blaster in melee, I get beaten senseless. Blasters are not listed as a ranged archetype, but as an offensive juggernaught, doing damaged at ranged and in melee. Therefore the high damage melee attacks are, as said, risk v reward.
Having said that, fire doesn't get much in the way of control at 14, when you're 38 you have hot feet to slow the enemy and cause them to run, but thats about it.
Fire Secondary is mostly PbAoEs.
This makes it bad for a blapping set but good for team support in a good team so long as you have a tank keeping aggro or a controller holding. I wouldn't be suprised if a /Fire could wipe out a spawn without even worrying about their primary within one attack chain if someone bunched them up enough.
IIRC the AoEs are Combustion ( large ), FSC ( small ), Blazing Aura ( small ), Consume ( large ) , Burn ( small ) and Hot Feet(large).
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Fire Secondary is mostly PbAoEs.
This makes it bad for a blapping set but good for team support in a good team so long as you have a tank keeping aggro or a controller holding. I wouldn't be suprised if a /Fire could wipe out a spawn without even worrying about their primary within one attack chain if someone bunched them up enough.
IIRC the AoEs are Combustion ( large ), FSC ( small ), Blazing Aura ( small ), Consume ( large ) , Burn ( small ) and Hot Feet(large).
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Blazing aura being much like lightning field is great for blappers...providing you can stay alive. You don't need to use as many other attacks as the pbaoe will finish them off meaning a quick cycle and 1 or 2 attacks per minion, rather than perhaps 3, is all that is needed
As noted, a tank to take the aggro is very handy..as is a kin and fulcrum to boost all those lovely numbers.
But a group of 8 is easily soloable with LF, so the extras from /fire will drop em even quicker.
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Fire Secondary is mostly PbAoEs.
This makes it bad for a blapping set but good for team support in a good team so long as you have a tank keeping aggro or a controller holding. I wouldn't be suprised if a /Fire could wipe out a spawn without even worrying about their primary within one attack chain if someone bunched them up enough.
IIRC the AoEs are Combustion ( large ), FSC ( small ), Blazing Aura ( small ), Consume ( large ) , Burn ( small ) and Hot Feet(large).
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Indeed, I've built an Elec/Fire Blaster to try to do exactly that, but utilizing Consume and Short Circuit, to try to chomp away mob endurance to be able to safely PBAoE them to cinders.
So in essence building a Fire Tank from a Blaster mould 
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Fire Secondary is mostly PbAoEs.
This makes it bad for a blapping set but good for team support in a good team so long as you have a tank keeping aggro or a controller holding. I wouldn't be suprised if a /Fire could wipe out a spawn without even worrying about their primary within one attack chain if someone bunched them up enough.
IIRC the AoEs are Combustion ( large ), FSC ( small ), Blazing Aura ( small ), Consume ( large ) , Burn ( small ) and Hot Feet(large).
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In my experience, FSC normally hits all the same targets as Consume - it seems to have a much bigger AoE than its animation implies.
As to the purpose of /Fire, it helps me blow **** up more quickly. What more do you need? 
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what the others said is pretty spot on. At 14 you wont really see the inherent secondaries playing a massive part in your play (any mor than the other secondaries).
For all intents and purposes fire gets no control, the slows and drains that it gets are negligable and the combo is all amount high damage followed by DoT.
As for melee being a bad idea and ice seeming to have great control, melee, as Sin said, is all about the risk you take, for elec blasters this risk is somewhere between 0 and 0.1 on a scale of 1 - 100, but for fire blasters its probably more like 80-90 out of 100. Ice has good crowd control but elec is the PBAoE controller. nrg has stuns and self buffs galore.
i hate to be a pescimist, but my advice is usually to avoid fire blasters unless u really want the concept, they are pretty much second to the other sets imo, although people furiously claim it can be great. so play away and let us know how it goes
Plight
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/fire works great if you know how to play and don't die every 2 seconds in pve like plight
I ended up with a fire/fire blaster yesterday on my nrg/ice blaster. As i run in the fire hits RoF, CE keeps em together and i pop icepatch. As jumpy fishes the /fire guy ran in and spammed his aoe's (with BU/Aim). Before i even could hit 1, they were all dead.
For plight:
I teamed with a fire/fire blaster yesterday, on my nrg/ice blaster. He did RoF, while i ran in running CE, to keep mobs stuck to their spot. I hit Ice patch, mobs were nonstop falling down. He did BU/Aim, ran in and did all his AoE's. They all got defeated before i got a chance to attack.
Happy now? 
I'd say, fire is (next to elec) master of (melee) aoe dmg, beating elec partly since it has no single knockback-down-up.
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I ended up with a fire/fire blaster yesterday on my nrg/ice blaster. As i run in the fire hits RoF, CE keeps em together and i pop icepatch. As jumpy fishes the /fire guy ran in and spammed his aoe's (with BU/Aim). Before i even could hit 1, they were all dead.
[/ QUOTE ]You're mumbling again Sin, can u repost that? :s
Plight
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melee as a blaster is NOT wise
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I have to say this is totally untrue - my best attacks are my melee ones. I really only have 2 proper ranged attacks.
Blasters need some kind of defense to keep the mobs at bay if there not taunted by tanks but in my last fire build I had Fire Sword Circle which prooved mighty useful in most occasions along side with consume, a majorly handy power dont forget if you have blaze that can also be very helpful in close combat... in other words Fire Secondary = Fire Scrapper ^_^
if you wanna complain about to many melee attacks take devices... problem solved 
The blaster is a 99% attack class, thats why thay get both melee and ranged attacks... And thay are Low HP... so what ? So is stalkers, and thay are only melee based 
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And thay are Low HP... so what ? So is stalkers, and thay are only melee based
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There's a slight difference between Low HP and Low HP & Defense secondary.
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Blasters need some kind of defense to keep the mobs at bay if there not taunted by tanks
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It's called the lv32 Primary Power
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Ok, we all know Blasters are the ultimate squishies in the game and melee as a blaster is NOT wise. This being the case why does the fire secondary seem so melee/close up orientated? Whats the idea in making a Blster do things that are harmful to his continued upright status?
[/ QUOTE ]That's so ignoreant I'm not sure I'm actually reading this.... Melee blaster is wise, for those who know how to play the game. If you don't, go roll /devices, or maybe an empath.
Before we start I should make clear I have a fire/fire blaster at lvl14 and hes fun to play. (Debt bigger than my mortgage mind you!)
Ok, we all know Blasters are the ultimate squishies in the game and melee as a blaster is NOT wise. This being the case why does the fire secondary seem so melee/close up orientated? Whats the idea in making a Blster do things that are harmful to his continued upright status?
Any thoughts?