For a PvE Fire Blaster Flame mastery can be pretty good actually, basically because it gives you a good hold. You simply cannot overstate the increase in ease of survivability that a single hold gives you on a Blaster.
The shield is handy, and Rise of the Pheonix can have its uses on occasion (although I wouldn't view it as a must have, given you tend to have power picks free with /fire it's worth sticking in at 49 if you don't have anything else). The only real non-starter is Bonfire which is definitely not friendly to an AOE set.
Force Mastery (with the medicine pool) is also extremely good but from a different perspective. It still gives you no way of taking a mezzer out the fight at the start, which if you intend to do any soloing at all at higher level you really do need or you'll be carrying 15 break frees per mission. It does make you tougher, and PFF with Aid Self is an extremely handy panic button, but I find Flame Mastery allows me to avoid a lot of the situations where I'd need a panic button anyway. I've always had Flame on the live server (although I've tried them all on my Fire/Fire on test), it works absolutely fine, and I really don't die much.
If you intent to PvP, while you don't really have the best sets for it, Force Mastery would be a big help.
So, basically, either can work fine, you wouldn't be "gimping" your character for concept if you went with flame.
I took Flame mastery on my Fire Blaster .. and took Bonfire as first pick.
I have to say I'm delighted with it. The best use I've found for it, so far, is to position it at your feet - just at the range you're going to throw your heavy stuff at the mobs.
Once Bonfire is lit, with you in the middle of it, fire off your attack chain as normal. The inevtable response from (surviving) melee based enemies is to charge right at you - seeing as Fire generates a great deal of aggro.
With Bonfire active, they can't get to you. You can then pick them off or deal with any ranged enemies first, or even leave the Bonfire have a few blaps and go back into it to avoid excessive retaliation.
I also found the less sturdy members of my team were liking this as well and happily stood next to me - on the Bonfire patch.
I certainly wouldn't activate it in the middle of my target mob. As OVWyx rightly says, thats no use for an AoE based powerset.
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I am only known with force mastery. As said, PFF is a lovely panic button to have, you can make great escapes with it. Temp.inv is like the Inv scrap/tanker one, bunch of s/l resist to help you around. FoN is where the fun comes, it turns you into a mini-tanker (without slotting much, you can hit your cap with temp.inv) wich can turn tides in a battle massive. Recharge is annoying long and the crash (though easier to see now) can occur at a very very wrong time. It boost your end-recovery massive, whenever i see it start blinking i make myself ready for nova, since that drains your full end also.
In PvP as said, you wont beat mez'ers. Good thing is you can take a bunch more punches long enough to hope your team or your BF can be used.
1 power that is fun to have, the repulsion shield. Not slotted i would never never use it, you loose a bit of endurance (... i rather say alot) per mob repeled by it. For fun i slotted this 3 end-reds and just went into random missions to see what it can do. Its fun, you can perma hold a mob in a corner, but it remains a massive end-eater. In PvP its lousy, as iirc it is stated as KB rather then repel now. When you fight at range in PvE its like bonfire, but nonstop, making yourself able to move around and keep mobs floored if they try to attack ranged. The tick-per-second is way way lower then the kinetic version, but i was able to perma-floor a +6 boss with this. Its just a fun power to show off with.
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ah brilliant, i have gone for the flame mastery in the end, but i am still unsure what i would prefere, i might go with this for a while, and if i feel i want to change to a respec, thanks for all the advice
Hi
i have a fire/fire blaster, and am now getting to the stage when i need to choose epic powers, i know i should take flame mastery, to go with my character, but i kinda think that force mastery would be a good one to go for, anyone got any thought on what is better?