Fire Ancillary pool - Is this the best for my build?

Thanks for all the help on figuring which power sets work for me.

I am looking at massive damage output. Plan to purple it to achieve this. (I have a brute if I need to be a conservative damage dealer.)

Is Char or Bonfire useful are really my major questions I guess. ? Since I will be having massive rech I will mostly be spamming my main AoEs.

I am thinking seriously about fire as the ancillary pool. I have heard melt armor is no good. My real question is should I take Fire Shield? I plan to run on teams, which will hopefully help with not taking agro and/or having buffs and heals. I do not want a toggle to drain my end, because i want everything available for laying out the pain.

Rise of the Pheonix is a definite. I plan on faceplanting regularly.

Bonfire is definately not a "great" power for teams, the kb can have people complaining. Fire shield is always a good extra boost. Char is meh i believe, and as you have stated with RotP is a really nice thing to have.

I am not truly familiar with the fire ancillary, but I wouldnt consider it to be that "great."

Char and Bonfire are both useful but they are more useful for the damage mitigation they provide than for the damage they deal. Bonfire in particular has very high knockback so enemies will tend to get thrown out of the patch before they take much damage (unless a controller applies an AoE immobolize first). Similarly Char is more about the hold than the damage. It's only a 1.1 damage scale power which is the same as most of the 4second recharge blasts in the blast sets themselves.

Depending on your primary/secondary given your goal of massive damage you might prefer Electrical Mastery. Static Discharge is a decent cone in terms of damage, area and recharge although the cast time is a little long. If you can fit it in between your existiing AoEs it will mean an increase in AoE damage.

The only other ancillary with a solid damage power is Munitions Mastery. If you've got a decent amount of recharge LRM is up surprisingly often. It doesn't deal as much damage as the true nukes but if you use Build Up (or eat a red) it will kill most minions. The trick is to remember the the 5.87s cast time and time it so that the rocket hits the spawn just after than melee characters do.

Personally I'd take the shield in whichever epic you choose. You should be able to run one toggle just fine and the extra resistance means the rest of the team can concentrate less on keeping you alive and more on dealing damage. Remember there is no I in team. Keeping yourself alive means other people can concentrate on more important matters.

Ach, forgot to mention the build is Fire/Mental. I like the KB Aoe power for crowd control in weird situations, or as extra AoE damage in a lockdown situation. Similarly the hold will stack with the mental ranged hold i think. So I am really leaning towards this set even more.

The main benefit of Bonfire is as a way to keep things out of melee if you do not have Fly/Hover. Drop a bonfire on the ground, then stand in it and shoot. You can use it to block ambushes (such as on mission #2 of a speed ITF). However, the long 3s animation makes it difficult to use as a panic button power.

The damage it does is insignificant. You actually lower your damage output by using it as an attack due to the long animation.

Char, on the other hand, is very useful as a fast-animating hold (it uses the Spectral Wounds animation) and as a place to slot Basilisk's gaze.

Another option witch I find better then just purple out a blaster. Is to take cold ancillary pool and soft-cap smash/lethal defense. I do this on all my blasters and run around with no problem. You also have a nice heal with hoarfrost. To do this easier I take tough/weave and combat jumping.

Much cheaper then going all purple, plus you can also get ranged defense/energy around 20.

Still leaves plenty of room to slot purples and other recharges in powers.

I love it when I get comments about my survival rate for a blaster especially on the 2nd part of a speed ITF.