I18: Fiery Aura and your interest in the set.

I haven't played a fire character since my fire tank way before ED. I wasn't too impressed in closed beta with FA on a tank, even after the buffs. I plan on making an MA/Fire scrapper as my praetorian on Tuesday, just to see if the set's damage on a scrapper makes up for the lack of defensive mitigation. Having access to Shadow Meld will be very good for FA on a scrapper, and will help to allow me to get my damage on for the first few seconds of the fight before I start getting torn into. It will be a long road up to that point though.

Shadow Meld would be excellent, but for my build I'd have to get rid of Blazing Aura and Physical Perfection. Something I am not prepared to do anytime soon.

Anyone know how often burn checks to hit a target: i.e. would a proc function better in burn or firey aura?

These changes still dont make the set remotely playable. Like Umbral was saying, Shields still simply outperforms it.

Besides Im a scrapper, my Primary deals the damage, my secondary keeps me alive. Fiery Auras jack of all trades and lack of KB protection on top of it makes it as bad as it was before. (Yes I know about IOs and I disagree with being forced into IOs to fix the weakness of a set thats still going to underperform compared to all the other sets)

Looking at builds in Mids and Excel, will probably make a Fiery Aura character as my first I18 alt, although I'm still confused at what Fiery Embrace actually does.

Is Shield better ? Yes. Would that answer also be "yes" comparing Shield against any other secondary ? You bet it would. So I don't really care about that.

The new Fiery Embrace adds 45% Fire damage straight to the attack, like a proc. If your attack deals 100 Damage, itll suddenly deal an extra 45 Fire Damage when you trigger it.

And Shields does have analogs in the game, Fiery Aura is just not one of them.

Well, you're wrong about Shield, so I'm crossing my fingers about you being wrong about FE too.

If it's like a proc, +45% unenhanceable damage would be pretty meh. I'm not so often at the damage cap to make it worth it. I hoped it'd be +45% base fire damage, enhanceable by +damage ; admittedly that might be borderline OPed.

Edit : I guess it wouldn't be so meh if it lasts 20 or 30s. Does it ?

I agree Shields still majorly outperforms FA. I agree the KB hole is ridiculous. I actually started a thread about it in the closed beta section. From a min/max standpoint there is no reason at all to play fire over shields. I'm still making a FA scrapper anyway. I have crazy karate guy with fire stuff idea, and I don't care if he sucks

In all reality, I do hope FA gets looked at again in the near future. It needs a little more to be on par with other sets.

Eh, I finally rolled a FM/FA Brute just because I like the effects of fire powers and there's something just purely evil about burning mobs. >

I've been play an SS/FA for a few weeks and now that I've got Foot Stomp slotted up, it's fun. Getting Burn (with the I18) changes is going to rock hard.

Man, I don't get the "if you need IOs the set sucks" people. I'm a latecomer to the world of defense base sets - I played mostly resistance and regen sets - and defense sets (like shields) BLOW until you've spent tons of money on IO sets. God help you if your primary doesn't have a heal (IE, you're not dark melee).

I find it less onerous to slot a -KB IO or two into FA than slotting dozens of expensive IOs into all sorts of powers I HAVE to six slot (even if I didn't want to!).

FA is a lot more functional at the SO level, IMO, than SR/Shield/etc. Resistance-based sets are easier to "gauge" incoming damage than defense sets. YMMV.

My Fire/Fire tanks says thanks for making me close to what I was originally. My Spines?Fire Scrapper laughs and says you dont realize what you have done.. muahahahahahahaha

Calamity I have seen several posts by you lately hovering around the same topic of discussion. Fire does have some holes. Those holes however are by design because Fire Armor was always designed with them to offset the fact that it is a far more offensive set than all the other defensive melee primaries. Shield is a late comer to the game as far as offensive powers go and that power is getting reduced tomorrow aka " nerfed " although I think its more balanced than anything.

Fire Armor has more energy resistance that other sets, it obviously has the best resistance to fire. It doesnt have the resists to smashing lethal that other sets have making tough more of a requirement and it has no defense.

However it does have a massive heal which can literally heal you for half your hit point about every 15-20 seconds with a half decent recharge build. Burn now that it is closer to the original power with help fire melee toons defeat foes faster and dead foes are the ultimate mitigation. Fiery Embrace allows you to effective have TWO build up type powers in a build which you can alternate for a consistent buff to your damage and NOW it works across Primary, Secondary and APP powers as well.

The KB hole really is such a small issue now and it is so easily fixed its not even funny. You CAN spend a few million for an IO. You can also get the same IO for FREE from drops, from AE ticket rolls and MERITS. So the devs have made several ways to fill that holes relatively EASILY.

I would be FAR more concerned about the lower resistance to Smashing and Lethal than anything else in Fire Armor.

And we havent even talked about IO's yet. My Fire/Fire who is expensive has 35% melee defense, some resistance to Psi and defense to Psi and with all the Numina and Miracles and other stuff in his build actually dropped Consume to pick up Conserve Power and Physical Perfection.

Sure there are tanks that can tank things EASIER and are far less squishy.. But my Fire/Fire can get the job done with the best of them and can defeat foes FAR faster than all of them.

Personally I think you are a guy who may just like defense based sets more than resistance based sets and there is NOTHING wrong with that !!!

I Im pretty positive Fire has the Same Energy/Neg Res as S/L, it caps to Fire and loses out to Cold Res as its weakness.

However the KB hole in exchange for damage doesnt really balance out regardless. We know that Fiery Aura loses some mitigation in exchange for damage, in the end though Mitigation is required to deal damage, and without the base mitigation there, the set just underperforms.

And yes, you CAN IO to fix the KB Hole, but its never as good as having 10000% KB Resistance on top of it to shut down *all* incoming KB. Not having the KB res doesnt matter for 90% of the game because its not common to encounter much KB above mag 4, but the instances where it does happen is where it matters most: Like the STF or other AV situations.

The middle line of performance that everyone achieves is for the most part acceptable. Its when you get into extremes that you see sets absolutely surpassing others. Why would I logically IO a Fire over a Shields? The difference in high end capability is what most people strive to bring into line anymore, cause hardly any armor sets underperform in general PvE.