question about fire/kin perspective

I have yet to create a fire/kin troller and am interested, but a few questions first. All I seem to hear about is the hate from other players concering fire/kin controllers. Why are they considered to be so bad?

Also I've played a kinetic def build and found it to be a very busy build. I think fire/kin will mesh well together but it seems like a very busy build, and quite powerful. Is it too busy that I wont be able to do both?

Fire/Kin is a pretty good combo that happens to be popular for one main reason: it is very good at killing masses of easy enemies quickly. Outside of this function it is not particularly better than other Controllers. It does good solo damage but in terms of team safety offers very little. People will say that "death is the ultimate debuff" and that's true--as you will find out when Malta, Carnies, Arachnos, and Rularuu send you to the hospital.

Strategically speaking, Fire/Kin is rather inflexible. If you can't survive in melee there's not a lot for you to do but stand back and Speed Boost and throw out heals. Unless you go with the Mind app enemies with mezzes will absolutely wreck you. Whether this matters to you depends on what you care about. If you just want to solo very easy enemies quickly, it's top of the line. If you're doing AE gauntlet runs, it's going to be frustrating. My Fire/Kin can solo a map of enemies in minutes that would take one of my other Controllers an hour to do. And yet compared to my other Controllers he struggles hard to do anything meaningful to truly difficult targets.

As to the reason Fire/Kins are sometimes disrespected, it has a lot to do with the combination being very popular and also often poorly played. A lot of Fire/Kins are designed for solo play and take this mentality with them when they join teams. Fire/Kin is not necessarily an easy combo to play, so a lot of folks roll them up because they hear they are "the best" but never really grasp what makes that the case.

Fire/kins aren't weak outside of farming and it does just fine on teams. It may not have additional soft controls like a KD patch or sleep like earth does but flashfire and cinders with siphon speed recharges fast enough, leverage that with your kill speed boost from FS you don't really need those additional controls.

Against hard targets it's no slouch either, siphon power, for those fire/kins that take it, will neuter an AV's damage output once you start stacking it. You may have gotten the impression that fire/kins are weak against hard targets due to player behavior. Most controllers, not just the kins, are too busy using their primary during an AV/GM fight, instead of using their secondary. Also, most of these controller players have no idea where to position themselves, they stand too close and get wrecked by PBAoEs and they stay there.

If you're looking for something which excels from 1-50, doesn't have the stigma of Fire/Kin and doesn't require you to Speed Boost people try Fire/Rad. Safer than Fire/Kin, better before level 38 and still superb after. It's a great combo. Hotfeet & Choking Cloud is horribly effective.


My Fire/Rad/Stone scraptroller is just ridiculous fun.

Another thing about Fire/Kin is that there is a sort of...rhythm to their attacks...a chain of events most kins..even team kins..follow, and since you can't speed boost yourself (insert shaking of fists at Devs emote here>, that particular Godsend team buff IS NOT part of the general rotation.

This gets into the whole WoW-like concept of casting rotations, so I'll keep it brief, but the best thing any team can do for a Kin is to give the kin one person to 'hang out with' in battle...usually the guy with the star. The kin can target enemies THROUGH that person (most of the time...not all)...and then whenever you need a speed boost...REMIND the kin.

Forgetting to SB seven people every 1.8 minutes is NOT a sign of a bad kin, or even a bad player...its a reflection of the fact that I have almost two entire rows of buttons to mash, in particular (situationally changing) orders.

Here's a rundown of a fairly common combat flow:

-Turn on toggles, Open with Flashfires, follow with cages. Close distance to melee. Pop Fulcrum shift. Pop heal. Pop transference. Pop heal. pop fireball. Pop siphon speed. pop heal. reapply cages. pop cinders. pop heal. pop transference. pop fireball. giggle repeatedly while doing /e dance6

Thats a pretty tight time limit on popping HEAL by the way. Mistiming heal or transference or fulcrum shift is a fast trip to the hospital.

Fire/Kin and Plant/Kin are both pretty fragile IME. /Kinetics in general is pretty much a glass cannon secondary, and for well rounded game play I think it's best paired with a Primary with a BIG box 'o tricks, like say... Mind/Kin. But then that's what Arg is, so I might just *possibly* be less than totally objective there.

I agree with Lewis, for regular play, where you come up against a wide variety of mob types with different def and mez abilities, I *much* prefer Fire/Storm or Fire/Rad to Fire/Kin, even though I love Kinetics as a set. Storm has a big bag 'o tricks and brings a lot of dmg to the table to boot.

One of the biggest pains with playing Fire/Kin is everyone (well a lot) of people you team with will *expect* you to suck as a team player, just because so many PLers go with it 'cause it's what they have seen run on farms.

::shrug::

I had fun breaking that stereotype years ago with Pyrokinthesis, and I never had trouble getting a team, but it was still annoying dealing with the "Oh, another Fire/Kin..." :: sniff :: attitude.

The easiest way to breat the Fire/Kin Stereotype? As soon as you get on the team, speed boost everyone. Let them know that you are team-focused, and don't mind if they remind you to speed boost them . . . .

Most players in the game have never seen a team-focused Fire/Kin . . .

Took Psi epic on my fire/kin and I don't have as much difficulty going up against Carnies/Malta, if anything transference is the answer to sappers and ring mistress debuffs and transfusion is spammable. These are not pleasant mobs to go against for most toons but my experiences with fire/kin puts it ahead of my ice/storm, both played aggressively on a big team.

Cimerorans are more difficult due to their ability to shrug off mezzes, but fire/kins can deal with anything that can be mezzed just like any other troller.