tough/weave or assalt/tactics for a firekin?
By
Carnifax,
Posted on: 2009-08-24 15:30 in Controllers
If you use Fulcrum Shift on 10 foes, you're at the damage cap and Assault is no longer doing you one bit of good. So once you hit lvl 38 you need to take that into consideration.
Most of the posts you've seen with Weave are combining them with Combat Jumping, Stone Armor and IO set bonuses for very high level defense numbers.
If you take a different ancillary, like Fire, your shield is resistance based, which stacks with Tough, making Weave perhaps skipable.
Thanks for the feedback jthig.
For the ancillary I will be taking fireshield (along with combat jump) so I will give your advice a try.
It depends a lot on what you're building your fire/kin for. A lot of farming builds have tough/weave to either cap smashing/lethal or because they honestly don't know any better and generally follow the herd. 
I personally prefer leadership (maneuvers/tactics) largely because I tend to use my fire/kin for TFs first, farming second. I've teamed with a number of pure farming built fire/kins in the past, and I notice that many of them don't have good accuracy (especially if they fall outside of my leadership buffs and are in any way debuffed), don't have key kinetics powers (increase density, speed boost, siphon speed), and often do pretty poorly in situations where the mobs aren't neatly packed together in a certain city map. This isn't to say, that all of them are bad...some are phenomenal, but those that are have builds that reflect billions of influence of investment. But I digress...
This build is for general missions only. I very rarely join farming teams.
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If you make a farming build, it will always be an effective team build. Being able to solo a full sized mob is benificial to any team. |
Originally Posted by ricktu
This build is for general missions only. I very rarely join farming teams.
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If you are going to be fighting up close and next to the tank, I'd suggest take tough/weave. If you are going to be more controllery using smoke, flashfire, cinders, etc skip them. It's three extra powers you can take.
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ID is hardly a key kinetic power. |
Originally Posted by Fury Flechette
It depends a lot on what you're building your fire/kin for. A lot of farming builds have tough/weave to either cap smashing/lethal or because they honestly don't know any better and generally follow the herd.
I personally prefer leadership (maneuvers/tactics) largely because I tend to use my fire/kin for TFs first, farming second. I've teamed with a number of pure farming built fire/kins in the past, and I notice that many of them don't have good accuracy (especially if they fall outside of my leadership buffs and are in any way debuffed), don't have key kinetics powers (increase density, speed boost, siphon speed), and often do pretty poorly in situations where the mobs aren't neatly packed together in a certain city map. This isn't to say, that all of them are bad...some are phenomenal, but those that are have builds that reflect billions of influence of investment. But I digress... |
I definitely agree that a lot of kins don't build for enough accuracy. I buil global accuracy into my IO build and thus don't worry about any of the leadership toggles.
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ID is a key power if you team with a lot of squishies...any anti-mez power usually is. And slotted out with just 1 res IO, it provides around 23% smashing/energy resists. That's a great power to put on a tank or a scrapper to allow them to take an alpha. Because of it's short duration and the fact it has no sleep protection, I can see why people dislike it.
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Originally Posted by jthig32
ID is hardly a key kinetic power.
I definitely agree that a lot of kins don't build for enough accuracy. I buil global accuracy into my IO build and thus don't worry about any of the leadership toggles. |
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On a defender perhaps it's a key power. On a controller that has other things to do, ID is a breakfree power that doesn't work on a very common type of mez.|
Originally Posted by Fury Flechette
ID is a key power if you team with a lot of squishies...any anti-mez power usually is. And slotted out with just 1 res IO, it provides around 23% smashing/energy resists. That's a great power to put on a tank or a scrapper to allow them to take an alpha. Because of it's short duration and the fact it has no sleep protection, I can see why people dislike it.
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In the early-mid levels the resistance can be useful for your alpha taker, no doubt. Late game any tank worth his salt is going to be largely unaffected by ID.
I'm not saying it's useless. My Fire/Kin had it all the way up to 50, through several respecs before I finally dropped it.
But it's certainly not "key", in my mind. I don't bat an eye when finding a Kin that doesn't have ID, and that's the definition of key, to me.
One aspect if you always team with a tank partner . . . Tough/Weave will only affect you. Maneuvers/Tactics will affect your teammates. While the small amount of defense won't have that much of an affect on YOU, a small boost in defense to a character which already has high defense will make a big difference.
If the tank is doing his job and taking most of the aggro, it may be that boosting HIS defense will be the best defensive action.
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I took maneuvers/tactics on my fire/kin. I figured that as a controller I'm more of a support build and maneuvers/tactics gives out some support to the whole team. Though I did pick up fire shield from the fire ancillary for a little damage resistance and a spot to slot a steadfast protection kb IO.
Most of the time, what I have notice on my fire/kin is that if I'm not farming bosses, I can open up with flashfire/firecages and the spawn is dead shortly after not really giving me much of a need for tough/weave.
The last reason to take leadership over fighting is it gives you access to VENGEANCE! This power is amazing if someone happens to fall. It really helps prevent a domino effect of death if you lose a player or two on the team.
I think it just depends on a couple of factors. 1. Are you going to be a pure farmer and not team much? If so, take tough/weave. 2. How much money are you putting in? If you have global accuracy from set bonuses, tactics is not necessary. 3. This has nothing to do with the thread but I saw you say you were taking the fire ancillary. You may want to reconsider because with psi and stone you can slot the force feedback proc which is godly in large mobs (in an AoE attack like fissure or psi tornado). Also, the knockup/down on psi and stone helps a lot with damage mitigation
Oh yeah, boxing from the fighting pool is a great set mule so take that into consideration if you have some spare slots
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I was planning on taking from the fire ancillary but I'm not locked into it. As it's my second firekin I'm open to trying new things. |
Originally Posted by DaveMebs
You may want to reconsider because with psi and stone you can slot the force feedback proc which is godly in large mobs (in an AoE attack like fissure or psi tornado). Also, the knockup/down on psi and stone helps a lot with damage mitigation
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I'll have a look at those rock sets. Thanks.
Oh, another reason to get stone/psi would be the higher overall dmg. Psi/stone have approximately a base dmg of 50 and i believe fireball has a base dmg of like 75. Stone/psi both have a recharge time of 20s whereas fireball has a base rech of 37s. This results in overall greater dmg for stone/psi....Lastly, stone has earth's embrace which is essentially dull pain which is an awesome power. Psi has indomitable will which protects you from mez which is great since a firekin doesnt have any mez resistance....The only special power fire mastery gets is consume but you already have transference so it is unnecessary
Heh, i keep forgetting to add stuff, stone/psi can also slot the force feedback chance for recharge proc which gives you a huge rech boost. So I really see no reason to take fire mastery...hope it helped
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Nope, Fireball has a recharge of 32 seconds, and a much quicker animation time. For a quick recharging build (which any Fire/Kin will be, even without IOs) Fireball will do more damage over time. |
Originally Posted by DaveMebs
Oh, another reason to get stone/psi would be the higher overall dmg. Psi/stone have approximately a base dmg of 50 and i believe fireball has a base dmg of like 75. Stone/psi both have a recharge time of 20s whereas fireball has a base rech of 37s.
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But Fissure rocks (ahem). The stun can stack with Flashfire. The knockdown isn't that handy since you'll probably be caging things on a Fire/Kin for more Damage and Containment & to stop things wandering about.
Tornado has the advantage of a bigger AOE. Psi also has the upcoming advantage of another aura in World of Confusion which could be nice on a Fire controller.
just take tough to combine with fire shield..you wont need weave
nuff said
First a bit of background. I'm at level 30 with my second firekin and I am tossing up between tough/weave or assalt/tactics for him. My first one has assalt/tactics which seems to be working well but I'm wondering if once you add Fulcrum shift to the mix this is overkill and I would be better of boosting my defenses instead.
I have noticed that a lot of the guides on this forum seem to contain tough and weave and I'm now wondering if my initial thought that the boost to the trollers slight base defenses too low to be worth the two power slots.
I should also mention that this guy has a stoney as a permanent travelling partner so I'm still leaning towards boosting damage rather than defenses but I thought I would check with some of the resident number crunchers to see if I was on the right track.
Any opinions?