I look at it as a game of "Can I kill them before they kill me?"
I usually win the game.
With a Fire/Fire your best bet as far as playstyle is to out-aggressive all but the most psychotic scrappers. Hurdle and Combat Jumping are your friends. Use the unsuppressed combat movement to hop in, lay down AoE death, and hop back out. If you are fast enough at it you will sometimes cause a delay in the enemy's AI while they switch from ranged to melee and back. NEVER stop moving for longer than it takes to fire a power off.
I skipped Fire Breath and Combustion because they both forced me to stand still for too long. I skipped Blazing Aura but took Hot Feet. When you jump in with Hot Feet running, more often than not the mob will start to run before they fire an attack (at least in my experience)
It seems to me, Sam, that it's not the powers that are the problem, you're just having trouble adjusting to the hyper-aggressive playstyle that makes Fire/Fire blasters really shine. Once you fire your AoEs it is best to finish the fight, one way or the other, if you try to disengage after you've agroed them all, you're probably going to die.
Edit to add my personal adage: If your Fire/Fire blaster is not low on endurance by the end of a fight....you weren't trying hard enough. Besides, that's what Consume is for 
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Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison See, it's gems like these that make me check Claws' post history every once in a while to make sure I haven't missed anything good lately. |
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That's actually something I did consider doing. I was never a fan of fighting things too high level and always a fan of big crowds, even on my Stalkers, so dropping enemies to -1 (which makes them significantly less dangerous) yet cranking out their numbers to those of a three-four man team might be a good tactic. Generally, I play on Tenacious/Malicious, which in practical sense is even cons set for team size +1, so solo it is set for two. That ought to be replicable with the new difficulty slider, but dropping their levels down to -1, I have to wonder how much I need to crank up their numbers to get roughly the same rewards as before.|
Originally Posted by Reptlbrain
This is why i16 will be such a boon. Although it seems counter-intuitive, your survivability will go up with the ability to increase the number of mobs soloing. As a non-defensive blaster, you can go sub-heroic or heroic set for 4-6. Since you're firing your AoEs anyhow, more minions almost doesn't matter, except as a way of garnering more inspirations.
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On that subject, would anyone have any idea how experience scales based on con level and between minions, lieutenants and bosses? I'd really like to know.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Experience
-Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. - Albert Einstein.
-I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use. - Galileo Galilei
-When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty. - Thomas Jefferson
I use all those tools as someone would use thier cliche "healer". If a team is doing badly, someone always says, "Want me to get my healer?" When a team is doing good and a tank is tanking well, I say "Want me to get my fire blaster, to speed this up?" It is just that way with me, because I like not dying every group. If I unleash and don't kill them, they kill me, on a bad team. That's just me though.
Other note on Hot Feet/Blazing Aura: While my fire/fire blaster is still L30ish and hasn't actually unlocked Hot Feet yet to test it firsthand, I have heard they can be brutally effective in conjunction with Invisibility (ACTUAL invis from the concealment pool, not just stealthiness) or an alternate power with the Only-Affecting-Self tag. That way, the damage ticks won't aggro anyone until you are in position, and the Avoid effect from Hot Feet will trigger as soon as you drop invis. The enemies will start fleeing at a snail's pace before they fire a shot, leaving you to pummel them with all of your AoE attacks like FSC with significant safety and extra aura damage. Teleport should work reasonably well for this too.
Rule number six of an empathy defender is NEVER underestimate a blaster's ability to die. I don't care if he has CM, Fort, both RAs, bubbles (both FF and Sonic), and is fighting next to a Storm defender with hurricane on. If there is a way to die in that situation, the blaster will find it.
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Unfortunately, that doesn't actually list the one modifier that I was actually looking for - the way enemy experience scales with con level. I did find the following table in the Talk page:|
Originally Posted by Miladys_Knight
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Critter's Relative Level XP Multiplier
-2 0.44
-1 0.55
0 1
+1 1.35
+2 1.78
+3 2.53
+4 or higher 3.2
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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That's true Sam. Which means you'll want to set your missions for -1s, 5 man team, with bosses reduced to lieutenants.
It should be doable too since you are more than doubling the rate that inspirations are dropping and your second AoE in each spawn should be dropping the minions.
You can copy your character over to the Test server right now and experiment with it before it goes live to see if it will work for you or not.
-Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. - Albert Einstein.
-I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use. - Galileo Galilei
-When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty. - Thomas Jefferson
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Ugh! I don't want to reduce bosses to lieutenants. That would be the ultimate cop out. It's just cheap and cheesy. If I have to go that route, I might as well change nothing from how it is now.|
Originally Posted by Miladys_Knight
That's true Sam. Which means you'll want to set your missions for -1s, 5 man team, with bosses reduced to lieutenants.
It should be doable too since you are more than doubling the rate that inspirations are dropping and your second AoE in each spawn should be dropping the minions. You can copy your character over to the Test server right now and experiment with it before it goes live to see if it will work for you or not. |
Sadly, I can't say the experience restrictions are undeserved. -1 enemies ARE significantly less dangerous, so it makes sense they'd be significantly less rewarding. I guess I should figure in the time taken to wipe them out and see if it won't be worth it anyway, going for something like -1 three-man spawns.
*edit*
Does the character copy tool even work? Last time I tried to use it, it took the better part of a week to follow through.
*edit*
Just as a test of mettle, I decided to melee a Voltaic Tank. I fired up Blazing Aura, ran into melee and started attacking. His Thunderstrike took me down into the red and he and his scientist pal managed to finish me off before I could react. That's my big problem with going into melee. It gets me killed.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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I'm in a mission on test at -1/8/want bosses, and the spawns are ranging from even con minions to blue minions. I've seen 3 bosses in the first quarter of the map. This many blue minions are definetly a threat.
When I'm dealing with hard hitting LT's and bosses, I usually make sure all the minions are gone on my alpha, then move in to melee the LT's or Boss. By the way, are you fire/fire?
With an 8ft range, Blazing Aura just isn't going to win any fights for you.
I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.
Thomas Jefferson
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Learn to joust. Turn on BA and HF, queue up Fire Sword and jump past him. Your attack will most likely fire from outside of melee range, and his AI will usually (not always though) dictate that, since you attacked with an attack flagged as melee, he will attempt to respond in kind. Fire a Blaze in his face and hop back. When he tries to close to melee Hot Feet will usually kick in and at least slow him down, if not make him attempt to flee. if there are minions in the fight as well, hop in and fire FSC and hop back out. |
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Just as a test of mettle, I decided to melee a Voltaic Tank. I fired up Blazing Aura, ran into melee and started attacking. His Thunderstrike took me down into the red and he and his scientist pal managed to finish me off before I could react. That's my big problem with going into melee. It gets me killed.
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Using a blaster's melee attacks is a tricky thing. The key to doing it successfully is to not STAY in melee range, but rather hop in and out, using your melee attacks in conjunction with fast activating ranged attacks. If you stand there and try to slug it out like a scrapper or tank, you will probably get squashed.
For AoE blapping, I have perfected the technique of jumping toward a mob, with Fireball queued up, and then hitting FSC on landing, and jumping out again. You might take a few hits, but if your timing is good you will deal a lot of damage and be in relative safety outside of melee range after you're done attacking.
I skipped Blazing Aura on my fire/fire, but I kept Hot Feet. I use it for it's avoid mechanic, while they're running away they're not attacking. It buys a few seconds to pop a green or purple, combine inspirations, fire off a quick chat message, or whatever you need to do.
Tell you what, if you have any characters on Pinnacle I'll show you what I mean in person. My fire/fire is slotted with generic IOs, just like yours seems to be, so there is no major survival difference.
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Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison See, it's gems like these that make me check Claws' post history every once in a while to make sure I haven't missed anything good lately. |
Jumping towards things isn't an option, as I'm constantly hovering.
But if I'm not going to be staying in melee, what use am I getting out of Blazing Aura, which is only a tick above melee range anyway? It's not going to give me any fast damage, of that I'm well aware, so the only way to make any real use of it is to stay in melee, which gets me killed. Also, I do try jousting when I can, but it always ends up with me trading attacks with the enemy. As mine activates while I'm out of range of him, his activates while he's out of range of me. I've eaten more than a few Thunder Strikes and Total Focuses that way.
That, and this is very different from playing melee on Energy Manipulation, which allowed me to dive in for fast, strong attacks and then dive back out. Lacking fast, strong melee attacks as is the case with Fire Manipulation, what is there to joust with? I mean, sure, Fire Sword isn't half bad, but just that on its own doesn't make for much of an offence and neither Fire Sword Circle nor Combustion are really all that good for jousting, between their slow animations and high reliance on positioning. And my damage auras are outright incompatible with jousting altogether, seen as how they need time in melee to do anything meaningful.
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The Fire/Fire Blaster in question is on Pinnacle, as well. Drop me a line on the same global as my name (with a space instead of the underscore) and I'd love to see that | Tell you what, if you have any characters on Pinnacle I'll show you what I mean in person. My fire/fire is slotted with generic IOs, just like yours seems to be, so there is no major survival difference. |
Though I'm out right now, and might be for the next couple of hours.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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See, I've mentioned a couple times that I don't have Blazing Aura in my build. That, burn and Combustion, were my skipped powers. Hot Feet is situational, I don't run it constantly, only when I need to buy myself a few seconds while the mob is milling around trying to get out of it. So, subtract those 3 and I have 6 out of 9 powers of my secondary. That is my criteria for a secondary, if I don't have a use for at least 2/3rds of the powers in it I pick something else. |
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Jumping towards things isn't an option, as I'm constantly hovering.
But if I'm not going to be staying in melee, what use am I getting out of Blazing Aura, which is only a tick above melee range anyway? It's not going to give me any fast damage, of that I'm well aware, so the only way to make any real use of it is to stay in melee, which gets me killed. Also, I do try jousting when I can, but it always ends up with me trading attacks with the enemy. As mine activates while I'm out of range of him, his activates while he's out of range of me. I've eaten more than a few Thunder Strikes and Total Focuses that way. That, and this is very different from playing melee on Energy Manipulation, which allowed me to dive in for fast, strong attacks and then dive back out. Lacking fast, strong melee attacks as is the case with Fire Manipulation, what is there to joust with? I mean, sure, Fire Sword isn't half bad, but just that on its own doesn't make for much of an offence and neither Fire Sword Circle nor Combustion are really all that good for jousting, between their slow animations and high reliance on positioning. And my damage auras are outright incompatible with jousting altogether, seen as how they need time in melee to do anything meaningful. The Fire/Fire Blaster in question is on Pinnacle, as well. Drop me a line on the same global as my name (with a space instead of the underscore) and I'd love to see that Though I'm out right now, and might be for the next couple of hours. |
My reasons for skipping those 3 are as follows:
Combustion is WAY too slow for my playstyle, that is far too much standing still, and will get me killed while it is animating.
Blazing Aura just doesn't do enough damage to justify taking it in the short amounts of time I'm in melee. It's endurance that could be better used elsewhere.
Burn is a nice power, I just never managed to get the performance out of it that some people get. Against an immobilized target, it's awesome, but with my frenetic hopping about like a crazed jackrabbit I just don't have time to make use of it. (I still think Controllers should get access to Burn, with their AoE immobilizes it would be a godly power)
Hot Feet I use when I want to keep things AWAY from me, if I plan on jumping in and out of melee I usually turn it off. Alternately I'll use FSC and Fireball (at point blank range) while in melee and while they're slowly running away I have just enough time to fire them both off (Works better if you use Fireball first actually)
I'm actually in agreement with some of the other posters here, Blazing Aura IS kind of useless for a blaster. Hot Feet works much better for it's intended purpose and has a useful side effect.
Edit: I'll be on later today sometime I'm sure, I might need to bust a respec on my blaster. If I do, I'll shoot you a tell afterward.
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Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison See, it's gems like these that make me check Claws' post history every once in a while to make sure I haven't missed anything good lately. |
Sam, you needed to just go a bit farther down the page. The con multipliers are:
| Critter's Relative Level | XP Multiplier |
| -5 or lower | 0 |
| -4 | 0.2 |
| -3 | 0.4 |
| -2 | 0.6 |
| -1 | 0.8 |
| 0 | 1 |
| +1 | 1.2 |
| +2 | 1.4 |
| +3 | 1.65 |
| +4 | 1.9 |
| +5 or higher | 2 |
So a -1 gives 80% of the experience of an even-con.
EDIT: I see that these are under discussion as possibly out of date. I know that they were correct as of the "XP curve adjustment"--I checked them myself at that time. I'm not aware of any change since then, and from the discussion there I think it has not changed--I'll check it out when I get a chance.
As for /fire, I have to admit that it's the one blaster set that I can't really get a handle on playing either. I understand it in theory, but I've just not been successful with it.
Part of this is my teaming preferences. If I were regularly playing with a good team, I can see that things would be much, much different. But I solo most of the time, and when I'm not soloing I'm usually in a PuG, and to me /fire just isn't a good set for those situations.
I'm not good enough or fast enough on the game controls to pull off the kind of aggressive jousting techniques that /fire blasters describe, and still stay alive. I know this is a weakness, but I live with it; it's unlikely to change. And by nature, I tend to have a more cautious and analytical approach to playing. There are plenty of other sets where that approach pays better dividends.
i don't think this makes me a bad player (and to those who disagree: whatever.) It also doesn't make /fire a bad set. It just means the two of us don't mesh very well together. It sounds like it may be the same with you.
When it comes down to tass bracks, Fire Manipulation is unfortunately a sub-standard partner for Fire Blast. They both go best with other stuff.
But on the other hand it's not as bad as you think. Well... except for Consume, Combustion, and Burn. Those pretty much suck.
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That's why I didn't choose to list them. I saw them being listed as out of date, so I didn't know what to think and chose to believe they WERE outdated. If that is true, though, that's very good, because it means I could potentially drop down enemy experience rewards and still have only 20% more reward to make up. I have a sneaking suspicion that JUST the increase in survivability and kill speed and the reduction in downtime might be enough to make up for that over time, though if I could, I'd still go higher.|
Originally Posted by Ipso_Facto
Sam, you needed to just go a bit farther down the page. The con multipliers are:
So a -1 gives 80% of the experience of an even-con. EDIT: I see that these are under discussion as possibly out of date. I know that they were correct as of the "XP curve adjustment"--I checked them myself at that time. I'm not aware of any change since then, and from the discussion there I think it has not changed--I'll check it out when I get a chance. |
This then brings me to my next question - how do spawn sizes vary with team sizes? Or rather, what happens to spawn composition? I know that Tenacious (faux team of two) spawns either three +1 minions, a +1 minion and lieutenant, just one +1 lieutenant, five even con minions, four even minions and one lieutenant or two even con lieutenants and a minion. That's up from three even con minions on Heroic, but I'm afraid I haven't played enough to be aware of the spawn composition there.
Let me put it this way: If I go from a two-man team to a three-man team, how would enemy numbers and composition change?
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| I don't think this makes me a bad player (and to those who disagree: whatever.) It also doesn't make /fire a bad set. It just means the two of us don't mesh very well together. It sounds like it may be the same with you. |
What I have with Fire Manipulation is more a lack of understanding as to what the bulk of the powers are supposed to do. If I take something like Devices, most are fairly obvious, though using mines and bombs can be tricky. If I look at Ice Manipulation, the intended use of the powers is very much directly evident. If I look at Energy Manipulation, the apparent use of the powers is outright suicidal, but the control and RAW DAMAGE they provide actually makes up for that. When I look at Fire Manipulation, however, I see things that appear more at home on a Tanker or a Brute than anything which would be useful to a Blaster with a Blaster playstyle.
I've done my share of both Blasting and Blapping, and the one crucial piece of information I left with was that I would ideally want to strike fast and hard and end battles or at least kill the biggest dangers fast. Fire Manipulation doesn't seem to do "fast," it's more a slow and steady burning, albeit over a larger area. Now, I know how that works - eventually, all enemies will drop dead, and often faster than I could have killed them one by one, but during that time they are all alive, all kicking and all fighting back. Oftentimes, I don't live long enough to see all that damage come about.
*edit*
Well isn't that just precious? I specifically picked three-man spawns at -1 with bosses in them. And I expected to see, you know, more enemies than I was used to. Fat chance. Almost all of them were +1 (actually making them even con to me) and every spawn had at least one boss, with several having two bosses. This actually made it both harder and slower to move through missions while simultaneously marginalising my AoE even more. Ugh...
Did saying I want to fight bosses cause this? I thought that meant whether bosses would scale down into lieutenants, and I didn't want them to. I didn't think it'd force a boss to always spawn.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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What are you fighting? Different enemy groups spawn differently. Banished Pantheon come to mind as a group that spawns oddly. Council have a tendency to spawn large numbers of enemies, they are always good to fight with a Fire/Fire.
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Well isn't that just precious? I specifically picked three-man spawns at -1 with bosses in them. And I expected to see, you know, more enemies than I was used to. Fat chance. Almost all of them were +1 (actually making them even con to me) and every spawn had at least one boss, with several having two bosses. This actually made it both harder and slower to move through missions while simultaneously marginalising my AoE even more. Ugh...
Did saying I want to fight bosses cause this? I thought that meant whether bosses would scale down into lieutenants, and I didn't want them to. I didn't think it'd force a boss to always spawn. |
Why Blasters? Empathy Sucks.
So, you want to be Mental?
What the hell? Let's buff defenders.
Tactics are for those who do not have a big enough hammer. Wisdom is knowing how big your hammer is.
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It was a Freakshow mission that I picked blindly off the paper. I didn't have any active other than a hunt, and that wouldn't have been much help testing instance difficulty.
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Originally Posted by StratoNexus
What are you fighting? Different enemy groups spawn differently. Banished Pantheon come to mind as a group that spawns oddly. Council have a tendency to spawn large numbers of enemies, they are always good to fight with a Fire/Fire.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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Scanners sometimes spawn oddly on the first floor of office maps. Even on live I have walked into them and had a floor of all single LTs despite my difficulty being set to Unyielding. I can only imagine what the slider will do to them. I avoided using scanners to test the slider for that very reason, although maybe now would be a good time to bug it again, maybe it will get attention this time.
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
It was a Freakshow mission that I picked blindly off the paper. I didn't have any active other than a hunt, and that wouldn't have been much help testing instance difficulty.
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Why Blasters? Empathy Sucks.
So, you want to be Mental?
What the hell? Let's buff defenders.
Tactics are for those who do not have a big enough hammer. Wisdom is knowing how big your hammer is.
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absolutely.|
Originally Posted by Reptlbrain
This is why i16 will be such a boon. Although it seems counter-intuitive, your survivability will go up with the ability to increase the number of mobs soloing.
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my fire/ice blaster burns inspirations as fast as they drop when I farm DA and at any time has 4-5 effects stacked up.
come I16, anyone will be able to set up giant spawns of minions in their missions, turning the whole game into a giant hazard zone for inspiration eating purposes.
and Sam, I was using the "drop and burn" inspiration technique last night to farm the Skyway door of the Hollows with a level 11 archery/electric blaster. It wasn't as super efficient as my fire blaster, but it still worked pretty well considering I had one AoE and most of my powers were unslotted.
Any blaster with good AoE capability and access to large spawns should be able to generate enough inspirations to greatly increase their combat efficiency. I save purples, delete rez's and burn everything else as it comes in by periodically banging on my F1 and F2 keys.
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
I had a really long post that got eaten when I pushed the wrong button. I am sad and this post will be briefer (which may be for the best).
OK. Spent some time on my lvl 37 Fire/Fire built to melee in order to be more cognizant of current situation. Conveniently, this is a hover blaster, so it is somewhat applicable to your desire.
As a solo blaster, at this level, a mix between range and melee is a better choice. When Aim or Build Up is recharged, it is probably wise to get into melee for Fireball and Fire Sword Circle with BA ticking away. The nastier bosses, usually, will need inspires. You have to be cognizant of when you can and should live in melee and when it would be better to dart in and out.
Blazing Aura is such an end pig and it really frustrates me that it is lower damage and higher endurance than the armored set's version.
I recorded some video, which I will probably put up on YouTube in a day or two, although watching other people play does not appeal to many people.
I dinged level 38, which means I have Hot Feet, which does not excite me much without getting the +recovery procs.
Why Blasters? Empathy Sucks.
So, you want to be Mental?
What the hell? Let's buff defenders.
Tactics are for those who do not have a big enough hammer. Wisdom is knowing how big your hammer is.
This was an interesting read though I skipped around and only read long bits and pieces here and there. I won't really offer advice, but I will share my experience with my currently level 30 fire/fire blaster:
+Blazing Bolt, Fire Sword Circle and Consume
I'm often one to solo, but this is one character that I tend to make teams or join teams for. On a team, I find that the AoEs are mostly all I need, with flares and bolt for filler. I plan on taking burn and hot feet but not blazing aura. I look at them both as defensive powers, for when I'm getting crowded and need to get a little breathing room. I imagine I will have to use them a little pre-emptively to account for their animation time, so we'll see how that goes. I find myself using Fire sword circle on good occasions, I don't notice the animation time myself as I think it's a nice looking power, though I also use combat jumping instead of hover which I'm sure makes a difference. It also helps that I make use of the resusscitate temp power from an earlier safeguard.
Good luck, personally I am greatly enjoying my fire/fire blaster and will try to solo a bit and come back and tell how it went.
I have to say Bubba that it makes little sense to me to have done that with your Fire/Fire. You could have paired it with ANY secondary other than Devices and done the same thing.
Well ok Energy too since there's no immob in it. But with your power selections you would have been much better off going /energy to pair with Fire/ just for boost range.
Or if the top tier powers for mitigation are what you wanted you could have gone /Ice and got quite a bit more mitigation quite a bit earlier.
So I have to say ???????
-Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. - Albert Einstein.
-I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use. - Galileo Galilei
-When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty. - Thomas Jefferson
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I play using the arrow keys to move and the number keys to fire powers, it lends itself well to the hyper, frenetic playstyle I prefer on my fire/fire. I play on a laptop with no offboard mouse, so using a mouse to click things isn't even an option for me. If you use the mouse to click powers it may slow you down enough to where it doesn't work as intuitively. |
Originally Posted by Ipso_Facto
I'm not good enough or fast enough on the game controls to pull off the kind of aggressive jousting techniques that /fire blasters describe, and still stay alive. I know this is a weakness, but I live with it; it's unlikely to change. And by nature, I tend to have a more cautious and analytical approach to playing. There are plenty of other sets where that approach pays better dividends.
I don't think this makes me a bad player (and to those who disagree: whatever.) It also doesn't make /fire a bad set. It just means the two of us don't mesh very well together. It sounds like it may be the same with you. |
I queue things up a lot, so I have powers waiting to go off at any given time in a fight. This is both an advantage and a disadvantage at the same time. It gives me the ability to change my mind on what I'm using with split-second timing, but it also means that sometimes my timing is off and something will go off that will get me killed.
I soloed from 22 or so to about 35. I won't lie, there was a lot of debt involved, but it also led to learning survival skills on a character with zero mitigation.
My playstyle in general lends itself to playing characters like this. On the opposite side of the spectrum, since I don't use a mouse, I really suck at playing support characters unless I make extensive use of keybinds. The only exception to that is my Rad/Sonic defender, because it has only a couple ally targeted powers, which I can auto-target just by pressing the button (if you activate Fallout or Mutation it will auto-target the nearest defeated ally). I'm a lousy empath, a bad kin, and a sub-par bubbler because of my playstyle, but I'm excellent at playing scrappers and blasters.
I don't spend a whole lot of time in melee with my fire/fire, just enough to get the job done. Breakfrees are my best friend, I'll often use them pre-emptively to keep Hot Feet active while I'm hopping in melee and hopping out. It also makes that playstyle possible when fighting enemies that mez. I can't even count the number of times I've tried to joust and found myself mezzed in the middle of a spawn.
I don't think that makes you a bad player at all, just different. I would wager a guess that I am probably better at playing scrappers and blasters than you, but you are better with support characters than I am. That's not a bad thing. If you want the most mileage out of me being on your team, your best bet is to make sure I'm playing an offensive character. Asking me to play an empath or a kin is asking for a team wipe, or at the very least inefficient support.
It may come down to some payers just not being suited to some powersets.
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Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison See, it's gems like these that make me check Claws' post history every once in a while to make sure I haven't missed anything good lately. |
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Concept trumps all? I mean, alot of his characters use the burnt match motif, right?|
Originally Posted by Miladys_Knight
I have to say Bubba that it makes little sense to me to have done that with your Fire/Fire. You could have paired it with ANY secondary other than Devices and done the same thing.
Well ok Energy too since there's no immob in it. But with your power selections you would have been much better off going /energy to pair with Fire/ just for boost range. Or if the top tier powers for mitigation are what you wanted you could have gone /Ice and got quite a bit more mitigation quite a bit earlier. So I have to say ??????? |
Anyway, the way I see fire manipulation: It's an AoE set. It's focus is on dealing alot of AoE damage at the expense of danger. One of the sets had to do it. /Energy is the ST killer, /Ice is the mitigation monster, /Devices is the bag-o-tricks chessmaster, /Elec is the jack-of-all-trades with different utilities..../Mental I don't really know.
You can pair it with a similar set for extreme specialization (Fire/Fire has a lot of AoE), or one that covers over a weakness (Energy/Fire which covers over some of Energy/ lack of AoE and the soft control covers over /Fire's lack of mitigation).
I hear that a lot, but inspirations simply don't drop with the speed with which I need them. I never really let my tray get completely full, and I've even taken to carrying around purples which I save for special occasions, but even then I rarely get enough inspirations to match the inspirations I use. In fact, I constantly end up having to combine things into break frees. I just don't see myself being able to rely on inspirations more than just tangentially.
For emergencies have a column of BFs, two columns of purples, one column of greens, and a column that you just eat constantly as fast as they drop (f1 - f1 - f1). You won't always get what you need, but you usually will. (Using the Milady's Knight's suggestion about combining during long animations is a great one, if you run out of your needed kind.) Start the eating column with purples. Eat them at the first spawn. Then don't stop killing and eating. With minions being obliterated you'll be stacking 5 - 10 - 15, or maybe more insps, and that's not including the blues and greens.