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For the most part, the Fighting pool provides little benefit for Controllers . . . unless you are trying to maximize your personal Defense. The Fighting Pool provides no benefit to your pets. If you have enough defense from IO sets, then you can get a fair amount of benefit from Weave. This is mainly because as you get more and more defense, adding small additional amounts provides a greater and greater benefit as you get closer to the softcap. Boxing or Kick has to be taken to get to Tough and Weave, and generally they are not used or rarely used.|
Originally Posted by DragonShadow
I have a fire/kin at the mid 30's and really starting to enjoy the build now, but while looking at other builds I've noticed that most select the fighting pool with either boxing or kick selected along with tough and weave. My question is why this pool? and what does it do for the build?. Is is just to allow extra slotting options or is there a purpose behind it? I've noticed that while fire imps do a decent amount of damage, while aggroing everything in range, they tend to be a bit squishy. Does this pool help them out as well as the user?
Any help or answers to this question will be appreciated. Thanks. DragonsFyre |
I would suggest skipping these powers as you level up. Wait until you can get all the other IOs needed to maximize your Defense -- if you choose to go that route. Some of us don't -- some of us do not want to make a max farming build, and like to play our Fire/Kins as team characters. For most controllers, you should be more interested in building for Recharge rather than Defense. If you do want to maximize your Defense, then take the fighting pool as part of a late respec.
Instead, try out some of the other powers in the primary or secondary as you level up. For example, Bonfire can be a lot of fun and quite useful in the right situation. It takes some thought and some trial-and-error to learn when it can be effective.
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Guide Links: Earth/Rad Guide, Illusion/Rad Guide, Electric Control
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It is all about survivability (of the character, not the Imps). Boxing or Kick is just a prerequisite on the way to Tough and Weave. Some people use Boxing/Kick as a mule for certain melee IOs, though.|
Originally Posted by DragonShadow
I have a fire/kin at the mid 30's and really starting to enjoy the build now, but while looking at other builds I've noticed that most select the fighting pool with either boxing or kick selected along with tough and weave. My question is why this pool? and what does it do for the build?. Is is just to allow extra slotting options or is there a purpose behind it? I've noticed that while fire imps do a decent amount of damage, while aggroing everything in range, they tend to be a bit squishy. Does this pool help them out as well as the user?
Any help or answers to this question will be appreciated. Thanks. DragonsFyre |
Tough can be slotted to give roughly 23% resistance against smashing and lethal type damage. These are very common damage types and even if you don't combine it with resistance based shields like Fire Mastery/Fire Shield or Psionic Mastery/Mind over Body or Primal Forces Mastery/Temp Invulnerability you should note the increase in survivability.
Weave on the other hand gives roughly 7% defense against all damage types (typed defense, i.e. smashing, lethal, fire, cold, energy, etc.) and vectors (positional defense, i.e. melee, ranged, AoE) after slotting. This is a large step towards the soft cap of 45% defense and not only useful for defense based shields like Ice Mastery/Frozen Armor and Stone Mastery/Rock Armor but also for people who try to cap ranged and AoE defense or at least get close to the cap.
Mostly those people are soft capping smash/lethal defense on their fire/kins for farming or just because they can. You can take the fighting pool and still have a decent teaming controller, but you will have to sacrifice some control options to do so.
My fire/kin has the fighting pool, my fire/rad does not. My fire/kin is a damage dealer/damage enabler primarily, my fire/rad is a controller primarily. I much prefer teaming with the fire/rad.
@SBeaudway on Pinnacle, TaskForce Titans Supergroup.
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Not really? I guess you could argue that Rad has more control than Kinetics, but that's not Fighting's fault. It's perfectly possible to get the full gamut of Fire controls and still have plenty of room to softcap S/L. S/L is great for teaming because it leaves you less vulnerable to a whole slew of mobs and helps to keep otherwise annoying control abilities (like Freakshow Hand Claps) off of you so that you can keep the damage coming.
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Originally Posted by SBeaudway
Mostly those people are soft capping smash/lethal defense on their fire/kins for farming or just because they can. You can take the fighting pool and still have a decent teaming controller, but you will have to sacrifice some control options to do so.
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I don't agree. I find it overrated for anything other than the very specific mobs you fight on farms. |
Originally Posted by Vermain
Not really? I guess you could argue that Rad has more control than Kinetics, but that's not Fighting's fault. It's perfectly possible to get the full gamut of Fire controls and still have plenty of room to softcap S/L. S/L is great for teaming because it leaves you less vulnerable to a whole slew of mobs and helps to keep otherwise annoying control abilities (like Freakshow Hand Claps) off of you so that you can keep the damage coming.
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I like leadership myself mostly because it affects everyone on your team, it increases tohit and provides a little defense to everything not just smash/lethal. Sure smash/lethal is great against mobs that use it; however, exotic damage types and defense debuffs abound in non-farm mobs.
At the end of the day, this is just my opinion and a lot of other factors such as build, the missions you play, teammates and play style probably influence your perspective as much as it influences my own.
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You have to give up three powers to fit in the Fighting Pool. That means that you have to somehow squeeze out three more powers. The classic build has to leave out 4 powers from the primary and secondary to fit in 2 travel powers and 3 Fitness powers plus Hasten. That is assuming you save 4 slots for APP powers. So, to fit in the Fighting Pool, you have to find a total of 7 powers to skip. Fire has a few powers that are skippable but nice to have -- Ring of Fire, Smoke and Bonfire. Kinetics has Repel that is clearly skippable, and IR that is skippable if you take a travel power. Siphon Power is skippable for a farming build but nice to have for single targets like Bosses and AVs. I would never skip Speed Boost, but if you only solo, it is skippable.|
Originally Posted by Vermain
Not really? I guess you could argue that Rad has more control than Kinetics, but that's not Fighting's fault. It's perfectly possible to get the full gamut of Fire controls and still have plenty of room to softcap S/L. S/L is great for teaming because it leaves you less vulnerable to a whole slew of mobs and helps to keep otherwise annoying control abilities (like Freakshow Hand Claps) off of you so that you can keep the damage coming.
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Now, Kinetics has some options to find those three extra power choices . . . you can cut to one travel power if you take IR for travel, but you give up the benefits of the pre-requisites (Air Sup or Hover, Combat Jumping, Hasten or Recall Friend.) An alternative option is to use Super Speed for travel, with Hasten as the pre-requisite. So far, you have picked up one of the three needed.
Let's assume you are taking Hasten+Super Speed. Then you are skipping Smoke, Repel, Ring of Fire and IR. So, to fit in the fighting pool, you will have to skip either two APP powers or something like Bonfire and Siphon Power. Any of those make you give up something useful.
Now, it may be a trade off you are willing to make, but it is certainly a trade-off. Personally, I really like having those powers and would take them on a team build over some extra survivability.
LOCAL MAN! The most famous hero of all. There are more newspaper stories about me than anyone else. "Local Man wins Medal of Honor." "Local Man opens Animal Shelter." "Local Man Charged with..." (Um, forget about that one.)
Guide Links: Earth/Rad Guide, Illusion/Rad Guide, Electric Control
Come on people, a controller can survive just fine in normal teaming situations without protection from outside shields including their epics. Softcapping is a neat trick but in no way is it vital or important for a controller to be effective. Several of my trollers have zero outside protection and they don't live or die any more than my shielded controllers. Proper use of primary and secondary and aggro management are all a controller "needs".
@Mental Maden @Maden Mental
"....you are now tackle free for life."-ShoNuff
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This is assuming you're actually taking a travel power. I have IR but I could easily survive without it. Siphon Speed and Ninja Run + Sprint easily puts me at near-Super Speed (a 2x stack puts me at the speed cap) and is very easy to maintain. |
Originally Posted by Local_Man
Now, Kinetics has some options to find those three extra power choices . . . you can cut to one travel power if you take IR for travel, but you give up the benefits of the pre-requisites (Air Sup or Hover, Combat Jumping, Hasten or Recall Friend.) An alternative option is to use Super Speed for travel, with Hasten as the pre-requisite. So far, you have picked up one of the three needed.
Let's assume you are taking Hasten+Super Speed. Then you are skipping Smoke, Repel, Ring of Fire and IR. So, to fit in the fighting pool, you will have to skip either two APP powers or something like Bonfire and Siphon Power. Any of those make you give up something useful. |
As for Smoke, Repel and Ring of Fire, I've never found them that useful. Fire Cages fulfills my Immobilize needs, Smoke's only great for splitting mobs (a situation which I haven't come across frequently enough to justify taking/slotting it), and Repel is far too situational and dependent on mob positioning (especially when you can just Flashfire + Fissure to keep an entire group locked down).
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Originally Posted by MentalMaden
Come on people, a controller can survive just fine in normal teaming situations without protection from outside shields including their epics. Softcapping is a neat trick but in no way is it vital or important for a controller to be effective. Several of my trollers have zero outside protection and they don't live or die any more than my shielded controllers. Proper use of primary and secondary and aggro management are all a controller "needs".
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And I argue, not that much. /shrug
@Mental Maden @Maden Mental
"....you are now tackle free for life."-ShoNuff
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Err... I assume "just smash/lethal" is referring to Tough? Because Weave gives +def (all) and gives almost twice the value Maneuvers provides.
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Originally Posted by Fury Flechette
I like leadership myself mostly because it affects everyone on your team, it increases tohit and provides a little defense to everything not just smash/lethal.
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I think they're talking about the common Smash/Lethal defense builds that use Weave plus one of the defense-based epic armors (Ice or Stone). Weave + Earth Armor or Ice Armor gives 30% S/L defense when slotted, which is 2/3 of the way to the softcap and quite useful even without adding more... if the enemy uses S/L attacks. Some people believe that S/L defense really only helps farm builds where you know you will be fighting only S/L users, while others think S/L defense is worth going for on a generalist build. (I personally consider it useful since many exotic damage attacks have some S/L component to them, but not vital since Controllers have a ton of ways to deal with aggro.)
Personally, I'd take Maneuvers instead of Weave on a non-farming build since it's only 3% lower defense and it helps the whole team (plus it doesn't cost a "wasted" power slot). Weave is very nice for farmers though... 4 Kinetic Crash in Boxing, a 3% defense IO in Tough, and three SOs worth of defense in Weave gives almost 14% S/L defense. I just hate giving up two power picks and three slots that could be used for more team-oriented powers unless it's a pure solo build.
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My Controllers don't have the fighting pool and do quite well. But neither of them is built specifically for farming. For farming specific kinds of mobs with certain IO builds, having Tough and Weave would be very useful. But if you aren't making a toon for being a primary farmer that power pool is quite skippable for a controller.
the reason i get tough ( no i dont get weave) is not cause its ok...but it stacks onto fire shield making it worth grabbing.
soft capping isnt worth the effort for a farmer imo..theres nothing that should be giving you that much trouble.
How much S/R resist is really needed? my trollers have Tough/Weave and Manouvers and I think they help but I've never really bothered to do the math and see?
you dont need any really..
say i go into the bm mish to farm..
ill run lvl 52's at 6 player mobs.its the best run for the money ..with my purpled out fire/kin i can stun them ,run in hit all my toys and fireball in a matter of seconds.and by the time i get to the next mob its all back up again.
i get tough and fire shield cause i think its faster to just firecage and run in and take a hit or two...the object is not to get into melee range until they draw out their crossbows.which is only a quicky second. then run in and blast away. their will be a axe or mace hit maybe in a couple of mobs. but nothing you wont be able to worry about .
it really is about how safe you wanna act..i dont tend to even use flashfire
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No, I'm referring to the fact that most people who take fighting (pre-req, tough, weave) do so in order to cap smashing/lethal defense by also loading up on a lot of set bonuses that grant smash/lethal defense (Kinetic Combat, etc.).|
Originally Posted by Myriad
Err... I assume "just smash/lethal" is referring to Tough? Because Weave gives +def (all) and gives almost twice the value Maneuvers provides.
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Yes, you could use Maneuvers for the same purpose, but my point is that while a little bit of defense, especially to range, is helpful, soft capping defense to a specific damage *type* isn't that great outside of farm situations. A bit of defense to range and proper use of controls is far better in helping your survivability.
Does that mean that a soft capped to smash/lethal defense can't properly use controls to do the same thing? Of course they can; however, what I've seen is that a lot of soft capped characters tend to have players who become overly reliant on it. It tends to foster a farm playstyle inside and outside the farm. Also, unless heavily purpled, fighting pool-earth epic controllers tend to have below average accuracy which hurts both their controls and their kinetic powers. It's why I like leadership for both manuevers and tactics.
I have a fire/kin at the mid 30's and really starting to enjoy the build now, but while looking at other builds I've noticed that most select the fighting pool with either boxing or kick selected along with tough and weave. My question is why this pool? and what does it do for the build?. Is is just to allow extra slotting options or is there a purpose behind it? I've noticed that while fire imps do a decent amount of damage, while aggroing everything in range, they tend to be a bit squishy. Does this pool help them out as well as the user?
Any help or answers to this question will be appreciated.
Thanks.
DragonsFyre