I18: Fiery Aura and your interest in the set.

With the buffs to Fiery Aura in Issue 18, how many of you are interested in playing the set now? Burn has had its Fear component removed, does most of the total damage upfront, with some of the DoT afterward. Consume has an additional effect of +Recovery for 30 seconds (I think.) Fiery Embrace now gives a 45% Damage boost to Primary, Secondary, and APP/PPP powers. This is not strict, as some powers actually gain more than the 45% damage boost. Overall this should be more damage, which even works when you are at the Damage cap.

Are there any of you that have played Fiery Aura extensively, found it to be not to your liking and shelved the set? Are these changes enough to make you play with the set again?

When Fiery Aura was proliferated over to Scrappers there was a decent amount of discussion going on, but ever since that small surge in interest there hasn't been many talks on the set. There was the thread asking what could do better than Shield Defense, which got the ball rolling on changes to a few sets. Even then though, I had to butt in that thread and repeatedly say things like "Hey! Fiery Aura is a mostly offense set and Shield Defense outshines its very own gimmick!"

From my observations in-game, I don't see many Scrappers that pick Fiery Aura. But what do I know? I only play on one server. I think this will definitely get more people to play the set, but I still feel that it isn't going to cause a big surge in played time for it.

I know I probably should have made this post after Issue 18 hits the live servers, but I'm just anxious and maybe a little discussion in advance might not be too bad.

... and because tags are no longer in use I'll add my own in the post: Fiery Aura Best Aura, Scrappers on Fire

Well, my Martial Arts/Fiery Aura Scrapper has apparently been significantly buffed, and I was already enjoying him. I'll keep leveling him, at least when I can pull myself away from committing crimes against humanity with my Fire/Shield.

And now I have to give serious thought to Katana/Fire instead of the Katana/Electric I was thinking of making.

Personally, I think the changes make the set substantially more playable, though it's not like FA was all that unplayable on Scrappers in the first place. The problem with FA was never so much as it being a bad set, per se, until SD came out and simply blew it out of the water. Compared to SD, I'd still say that SD wins out on the sheer awesomeness quotient, even with the "nerf" to SC and the numerous buffs to FA, and, while I'm not going to be rolling a */Fire Scrapper (I don't replay sets as a personal rule), the changes will make me take another look at my Fire/Ice Tanker. Nothing is really going to look good compared to SD until SD gets brought down to saner levels of performance (and that's not just talking about SC).

I've considered making a MA/FA Scrapper before, but never really got around to it. I very much like the idea of fiery kicks.

I too believe that before Shield Defense, Fiery Aura on Scrappers was not unplayable. I actually did quite well with my Fiery Aura Scrapper, but I never felt like the amount of offense capability was enough for the mitigation the set gives up. With the changes in I18 I believe it is much closer to where it should be. When Shield Defense came into the mix it was good (and later made too good), but also served to make Fiery Aura's disproportionate trade-off much more glaring.

When the changes started rolling into the Closed Beta I was flipping out, smiling ear to ear like an idiot. I made a revision to Sacred Fire's build and am actually considering Purple IOs for the first time, because of Alignment Merits. At the very least, the 3% Defense IO. Haven't quite figured out which of the sets to use beyond the previous consideration. This is the build post-revision: http://tinyurl.com/24yzxfz

Fiery Aura getting Buff up, Can some one explain to me what type of buff is being added to make it Fiery Aura more Awesome.


And Fiery Aura never really was bad, Still like Regens and Willpower the most so far.

I plan on giving FA a whirl. I want to make a Kin scrapper, so I'm trying to decide between a Kin/WP or a Kin/FA for my praetorian character on day 1.

Doh. I probably should have listed the changes in the first post. I will scrounge up the patch notes for Fiery Aura.

[Edit] Ah whatever. To lazy to scrub the patch notes. I'll just put the changes down in my own words.

My opinion of the set remains unchanged even after testing the changes: Too Damn Squishy.

Good news for my fire/ice tanker and perhaps ill now roll an km/fa instead of km/sd (perhaps)

I am going to throw my hat in the ring on Mr. Bubba's side. /Fire has never been offensively weak. Its problem has always been durability. I have a pretty decent DM/Fire Brute (all IO's but not extreme, lots of +melee def) that is just getting chewed the heck up in the 40s. I have a MUCH less well equipped /Nin stalker who is far more durable.

The Burn change, while great for more damage, is still going to mean even squishier /FA, because running from the fire DOES make them not attack you for a bit.

The big thing for me is the change to Consume, that could be handy, especially since I end up dealing with lots of end drain from Mu mobs.

My first toon to 50 was an FA/Axe Tanker. That was a long and painful road. I had managed at the end to get him softcapped to S/L and E/N but it was an extreme build to say the least but definitely took the squishy feel away. I wish I could say that I'd dust him off now and play him again, but IMO nothing plays like a Scrapper/Brute.

I've always been interested in fire, but haven't gotten it up past the 30s before I get a little frustrated with it's relative squishiness. I like the changes. They didn't shore up the defenses but added more utility to the +damage to make up for it.