Tell me about Rain of Fire

What is the best use for this power? when do you use it? when do you NOT use it? any other pros and cons and anecdotal experiences you'd like to share are welcome

When I rolled up my Fire/Ice I was originally going to avoid RoF because of all the hate associated with it in teams.
Tanks and scrappers will hate the scatter is all I heard.

Well, I was lucky enough to have Ice Patch so I went ahead and took it, to help with soloing before Blaze.
Ice Patch plus RoF works some wonders. While thats keeping them busy a few well placed Fireballs/Breath and most groups melt. Only had a few teams mention not using it, once they realized I'd only use it with a patch down they were cool with it.
I was insta-kicked by a moronic tank once, simple because he saw it in my build. We hadn't even entered the mission yet.
Thankfully thats rare and more based on their stupidity than anything else.
My Eng/Eng blaster always caught more flack, mostly before any fighting took place. As once it did they'd shut up when I used it to help them instead of frustrate.

Anyways. Rain of Fire.
I used it quite a bit when levelling up. It was dropped from my 50 build though for lack of use at higher levels.

It's rain made out of fire.

RoF is a great soft control in the early game. Way back in the day, when everyone did the Hollows, which meant everyone was doing Frostfire, I took RoF cause I new I could keep teams alive at a certain point in that mission. You come around a corner and the hallway goes forward and then heads to the left, there's a door to a room at the point where that hallway cuts to the left. There's a mob in that room and a mob between you and the that room.

Nowadays people have learned and generally pull the first mob, but back then people would rush the first mob and get wiped by the second mob pouring out of the room. RoF if dropped in that doorway would force the second mob to scatter to the back of that room and leave the team alone for the duration of RoF.

One of the other things I liked about RoF, was if you're going to use it as a control power it doesn't require alot of slots. This all took place back when I was 6 slotting stamina and hasten. So having a power that only required the default slot, filled with a recharge, was a great bargin.

The higher in level you get the less need there is for the kind of soft control RoF offers , and since it's not really a power you can spam every time it's recharged you can't take it too early or your attack chain and DPS is gonna suffer.

I use it any time there is a power that will ensure they stay in the vicinity for roughly the full duration.

If that requirement is met then the scatter is a non-issue because they will be dead before they have strayed more than a couple dozen feet. So at that point the scatter is actually good mitigation without being intrusive.

There are tons of powers in teams that let you use it without worry, but far less while solo for a blaster. For a solo blaster it isn't a bad panic button though.

Whats your secondary ?

If it is something Mental, it comes in really nice after you hit drain psyche/psychic shockwave. if you are /EM not so much, if you are /ice you can have all kinds of fun trapping the spawn between an ice patch and a rain.

Bottom line is you get a couple seconds of the spawn trying to run away from the rain of fire.

Obviously never use it on mobs resistant to slows (like wolves and pumice) with no other way to lock them down. Such mobs are often very quick and the rain will cause all kinds of scatter.

I like RoF on my fire blast characters. It offers reasonable DPE and DPA, and it has utility as a damage mitigation power. Its also "something different", and using it provides a nice change of page from the more typically used AOEs.

As others do, I like RoF best on characters that have some way of slowing mobs down, to keep them in the area of effect; I particularly like it on my fire / ice blaster, when paired up with shiver. I also like it for my fire/TA corruptor, who definitely benefits from having a little more mitigation.

I also tend to slot RoF up relatively slowly because it does at least have utility as damage mitigation even with a base slot, until I have enough slots to spare to slot it all the way up.

Biggest con: You can't buff or enhance RoF's movement speed debuff. Bummer, too. What a glorious rebirth it would be for the old school Fire/EM blaster. :nostalgic sigh:

It's my belief that you'll be on a team with a crowd controller often enough to justify having RoF. Either a Fire/Kin farmer, or ... oh, who am I kidding, it's always a Fire/Kin farmer.

one very good thing about RoF if you participate in mother ship raids is that you can whack it down in the middle of the fighting and it guarantees that when the mobs die you and your team also get the added bonus of more merits. Also good if your hunting down low level enemies for defeat badges cause you can hit em with a fireball, drop RoF and move to next mob and be certain all the previous mob has been wiped out

I ALWAYS open with it. Aim+BU+RoF.

My fire/ice blaster and fire/dark corrupter both love it to death.

Ice patch/Shiver + RoF = Fun
Tar Path + RoF = Fun

RoF + Ragnarok chance for knockdown = Super Fun

It's also fantastic on teams that can lock down lots and lots of enemies.


It also makes a pretty good Panic Button power, as it will immediately scatter whatever it touches. It's also handy for taking out things that are super hard to hit since it doesn't need to roll.

It does, it turns out, have a "chance to hit"- just a very high one (+100% To Hit). I had not realized it was that accurate.

I'm not sure why pet summoning powers have high accuracy, since it doesn't take a to-hit check to summon most pets.

The Rains' actual attack powers are normal accuracy, 75%, so I slot with the usual amount of accuracy.

Freezing Rain and Sleet are the exception, since the damage is minor, and you really only need 1 tick to stick the debuff. Streakbreaker will get 1 tick to hit just fine.

Adding to the Aim+BU+RoF+FBall+FBreath crowd. I don't care about the aggro, and they aren't going anywhere but the floor. All should be recharged by the time we get to the next tight spawn, at least toward the higher levels.

I've taken Shiver now, so just add Shiver to that.

Sure, tanks and scrappers may not like it, and I know I don't when I'm one, not due to scattering, but becaue we're killing them too fast. Which is always irritating, .

My Fire/Energy didn't take it and never missed it. He plays very fast and deadly and usually opens with Fireball.

My Fire/Fire has it and so i like it so far. It does make for a slightly slower style. Sometimes i cast it close enough to the character to make enemies run away from him.

I tend to take RoF late after my build has matured some so that I can 1) survive the aggro, and 2) do something about the scatter, either by ensuring I have enough other AoEs to kill everything, or some method of control (RoF + Shiver = win). Its use is a bit situational, but it's not nearly as situational as some might suggest. I mean, it's not like AoE immob spamming controllers (hi, Fire/Kin!) are exactly in short supply.

RoF is also pretty awesome for zone events like zombie/Rikti invasions and MS raids.