Build for defense (either smashing/lethal or a mixture of positional concentrating on melee defense) first and then some recharge and you should be good to go in terms of IOs.
As for concept, why limit yourself to fire armor? With power customization alot of armor types can be faked for fire. Electric and dark could probably sub in for fire armor pretty easily. With a name like Coalfist, dark melee would probably work with a secondary like WP or Invunerability. In fact, DM/Inv would make it conceputally interesting as well as synergistically powerful. Fire melee/Dark Armor would work pretty well too.
Definitely roll what you find fun, but don't let specific primary/secondary choices limit your concept.
my kat/fire is fun as hell. Survivable also through DA and melee set bonuses. 5 obliteration sets, which have bad end reduction, but don't have to worry about with consume goin. It definatly took some more survivablity for me to stick with /fire. I rolled a fire/fire when it first came out, and somewhere in the upper 30s, it was apparent that it just wasn't for me.
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Did you use parry? Parry can counteract a LOT of squishyness.
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Originally Posted by zeldo
I rocked a BS/Fire to the low 30's before deleting it in frustration while running Croatoa and RWZ arcs and getting frustrated at the squishiness...
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If we are to die, let us die like men. -- Patrick Cleburne
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The rule is that they must be loved. --Jayne Fynes-Clinton, Death of an Abandoned Dog
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Parry can only save you from the melee squish. In Croatoa you have fire-chucking pumpkins, rock hurling deermen (with a PBAoE explode on a few of them), lightning bolts from teh witches, hopping archer midgets, and the ghosts that I think have no melee attacks at all. Parry is great in many places, but Croatoa is not one of them.|
Originally Posted by Sailboat
Did you use parry? Parry can counteract a LOT of squishyness.
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And as for the Rikti, they are more dangerous at range with the knockdown/stun on their blasters.
"Hmm, I guess I'm not as omniscient as I thought" -Gavin Runeblade.
I can be found, outside of paragon city here.
Thank you everyone at Paragon and on Virtue. When the lights go out in November, you'll find me on Razor Bunny.
Remember if the pulsing of some personal toggles screws you up, you can suppress close FX so that you don't see it. I do this on my toons so I can see thru the auras.
It's true. This game is NOT rocket surgery. - BillZBubba
I'd agree with the suggestion to suppress close effects, I use it all the time on my fire/fire scrapper and don't notice the aura at all. Blazing aura is a big help in finishing off minions and just adding to your kill speed once you get the endurance issues under control.
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This.|
Originally Posted by Minotaur
Remember if the pulsing of some personal toggles screws you up, you can suppress close FX so that you don't see it. I do this on my toons so I can see thru the auras.
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Dont gimp yourself when you have the tools to have your cake and eat it too... you dont need to see the effects, and you can still take the aura which is essential to your overall damage and speed of kills.
Agreed.
Perhaps the main advantage to /fire is to do damage with your secondary. Get your endurance consumption under control with IOs, drop one of Consume or Dark Consumption and add Blazing Aura. Slot it up and run it. Once you hit Soul Drain and Fiery Embrace and jump into a mob, you won't even need to target minions; just go after the boss or lt. and the minions will be dead by the time you get the tougher guys down.
Burn is also very handy on a scrapper, in my opinion. It does AWESOME damage, and can be a lifesaver when you are in over your head. The fear effect can give you enough time to get Healing Flames back up. It's great on teams with someone who can hold them in place for you, and while soloing, it can still do good enough damage because they run in and out all the time.
Never argue with stupid people. They drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.
@vanda1 and @nakoa2
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Anyone remotely near a corner or even a tree can be in melee instead of at range if he or she so chooses.
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Originally Posted by GavinRuneblade
Parry can only save you from the melee squish. In Croatoa you have fire-chucking pumpkins, rock hurling deermen (with a PBAoE explode on a few of them), lightning bolts from teh witches, hopping archer midgets, and the ghosts that I think have no melee attacks at all. Parry is great in many places, but Croatoa is not one of them.
And as for the Rikti, they are more dangerous at range with the knockdown/stun on their blasters. |
If we are to die, let us die like men. -- Patrick Cleburne
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The rule is that they must be loved. --Jayne Fynes-Clinton, Death of an Abandoned Dog
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I had been using Burn when there were too many critters on me Healing Flames wasn't recharging fast enough, but then they sometimes just switch to ranged attacks and decrease Parry's effectiveness.|
Originally Posted by PuceNonagon
Burn is also very handy on a scrapper, in my opinion. It does AWESOME damage, and can be a lifesaver when you are in over your head. The fear effect can give you enough time to get Healing Flames back up. It's great on teams with someone who can hold them in place for you, and while soloing, it can still do good enough damage because they run in and out all the time.
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Originally Posted by madsness
I'd agree with the suggestion to suppress close effects, I use it all the time on my fire/fire scrapper and don't notice the aura at all. Blazing aura is a big help in finishing off minions and just adding to your kill speed once you get the endurance issues under control.
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I got somewhat stymied yesterday when I realized that aside from armor FX, this would be basically the same ride as my level 50 DM/SR, except that I'd be getting hit all the time. So I'm taking a second look at Blazing Aura for the tics. Perhaps if I turn the Blazing Aura a shade of black, it won't be so visible, and I'll tinker with suppress close fx again.
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It will work zoomed out provided you set the distance high enough
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Originally Posted by zeldo
Does that work when you're zoomed out, though? I played with the setting some time ago, and couldn't notice it having any effect, but I usually keep the camera zoomed out almost as much as possible, and if it only works when the camera is "close" then it didn't help. |
It's true. This game is NOT rocket surgery. - BillZBubba
once you enable the option then play with /suppressclosefxdist values till you find what suits you. I find 30 is fine for me, but you may want to set it higher. I just tried setting it to 100 and that allowed me to zoom right out without seeing the auras
Agreed with the blazing aura. You can probably color tint it to be less obnoxious as well. The constant ticks of damage are nice, esp if you are mostly single target like DM.
My recent project has been a MA/FA with blaze mastery.
Dragons tail and burn work quite well together with blazing aura though it can take a while to drop burn and I wind up sticking to fireball and DT on teams with decent aoe damage unless there are a lot of lt or bosses around the character.
The damage from burn isn't as effective if you dont have an AoE KD, but as Puce said, it can make stuff run around and not melee you while you recover HF. So it *might* be worth considering.
I built mine to 30 s/l defense, with CJ and Weave going, and 20 ranged defense. I also built it to 50 recharge, with a decent chunk of +hp and recovery. Especially if I supplement my defense with a single luck and dont stand in bad spots, the character does alright alone on the second ITF mission and medium-challenge things like that.
It is a bit light for things like the scrapper challenge, pylons, or ship raiding without support, but I have been pretty happy with it overall.
If you go blaze, it should be a pretty flexible character, decent survivablity, decent aoe and single target.
FA is also fairly fun to poke yellow mitos with during hamidon raids, though that may just be me.
Concept is a funny thing.
I'm making a Dark Melee / Fire Armor guy, but not taking Blazing Aura because the pulsing of it makes my eyes bleed. I'll take Combat Jumping instead for the immob protection, and throw a KB IO in there. No Temperature Protection. Probably no Burn. I expect the occasional Soul Drain + Fiery Embrace to give awesome damage, and I'll be going with the Fire epic if this toon gets that far.
I rocked a BS/Fire to the low 30's before deleting it in frustration while running Croatoa and RWZ arcs and getting frustrated at the squishiness... particularly when a slow prevented Healing Flames from coming back ASAP. I'm hoping Siphon Life will make up the difference.
Also pondering putting off Stamina until the 30's, and alternating Dark Consumption and Consume for constant battle-Endurance... although it'd be a 40 second or so gap between them.
Which IO set bonuses best benefit Fire Armor? Recharge to get the heals back faster, with +HP and +Regen, or Defense to avoid getting hit? +Def is difficult to build for with none to build from.
I just like being on fire, and I hope I enjoy this toon. Coalfist is live on Victory!