Fire Tank Weakness: Electric Tank?

the only way tanks are equal is if one person builds both


if i give you 10 billion influence and i take 10 billion influence and you make a elec tank and i make a fire tank and outlast you is it because fire is better or cause i built a better tank? and dont give me the excuse on influence either. with hero merits,reward merits ,ae tickets and everything else in this game you and everyone else here can make as much money as you want or buy whatever you want from fort trident based solely on doing tips and tfs which thanks to the wtf is even easier to do now.

numbers unslotted or s.o's clearly say elec has better resistance. that much i agree with.but thats all i agree with. its all in the build and experience.plain and simple!

i watched a wp tank last night on a itf ( while on my troller)and he faceplanted hard before the fire brute did.is this cause fire brutes are better then wp tanks?...i mean after all numbers dont lie right? so why would a fire brute outlast a wp tank?

cause of the build!..the wp tank didnt take tough or weave and was relying souly on their teir 9 power to keep them alive.where as the fire brute took tough and weave and THAT is why you people need to stop thinking just inside the box.'

fire tanks are not weak their different!

Severe,
I don't think anyone here is saying "fire tanks are poo'..... far from it.

I just wanted to ask about late game survivability because lately I have been burning though (pun intended) levels, trying to find my favourite tank!

I am hating the idea of working every minute in game to get to 40ish to figure this out with fire, so that's why I ask the comunitty. I know a lot of you guys have experience with Fire/Fire and I thought a fair assessment, and comparison would be helpful for me.

Low and behold I've been having fun with the toon at low levels, but the end game concerned me, so I thought I would ask for help.... and opinions.

Of course up front there are inherent strengths in elec/elec, but I didn't want to make assumption.

in this game you have every chance to make whatever you want if your willing to with tips/reward merits/hero merits/wtf/tickets/market

Severe, thanks for the reply. And I mean that.

I think it's fine if you want to put things in either column A or B, but don't put words in my mouth like 'easy' or 'safe'.

Actually I am finding my Fire tank the easiest toon I've played in a long time. There are so many great powers early on, it's really quite offensive out of the gate, and has early resists that, let's say a blaster, can't access.

I think maybe some people have ruffled your fire-feathers and I don't want the topic to get lost in your 'defensiveness'.

I think I had a fair question on the validity of Fire-Fire in late game. You've definitely given your opinion, and thanks for that.

Without completely repeating myself- I understand you are saying 'everything' (tank wise) can tank in any situation.... But for a time people tried to convince my my Claws/WP scrapper could do -anything- in late game too.... while that is feasible, and accurate, my Dark Melee- Shield toon mopped the floor with him.

So a very vanilla statement like 'anyone can do it' is a little misleading and not quite what I was asking for. I mean I didn't want a tank that has to avoid enemy type A/B/C but can handle X/Y/Z. To repeat your words... do you get it?

I've stood next to a WP tank that (with the thanks of Spiritual Core) generated so bloody many hit points, he could have worn his underwear as a shield and had an ice tea while taking. So of course I am familiar with making a concept work.

I'm going to continue my Fire-Fire. I legitimately mean that I am not going to spend a zillion influence on him. YES I realized everything is accessible, but with a career/family/house I just can't spend quite as much time chasing carrots as some can. I need to... maximize my fun time. The forum helps me do that.

So I'll keep barreling through with Fire/Fire..... and see what happens in the 30's.

I have not played an Electric tank, but found a Fire/Fire tank (with tough and eventually weave) fine for all the content up to end game.

For end game content, I put considerable effort into IOing out my Fire tank, but that was part of my plan all along. Its much easier to add Defense, Hit Points, etc. through IO sets, accolades, temp powers and such and improve survivability by several orders of magnitude then to add Damage and improve *that* by several orders of magnitude. With an IOed out Fire/Fire tank, I have both. That has been handy on low damage teams, no team I'm on is ever moving slowly, and I consider setting the team pace one of the responsibilities of a tanker.

So thats something of the tradeoff to consider; if you don't plan to work on improving your tanks survivability at end game, a Granite tank is great out of the box. But it doesn't have the potential to ever move very far into "high damage" territory. Electric sounds like its much further towards the "more damage but more squishy" territory, but not quite as far as Fire. I'm only going to have the one tank on that server, so I invested a lot of effort into making sure that (1) it could handle any tanking content for the team, and (2) it could finish the content if half the team bailed.

Elektro, have you looked at the guide in my sig? Either of the builds there are not going to set you back much, as I go much more for middle of the road builds (in terms of cost).

I don't have an Electric Tank, but I have an Electric Brute, and I would say that Electric and Fiery Aura really aren't all that different, you just have slightly different strengths. I found myself missing the faster heal whenever I run with my Electric. Even with the slightly higher numbers for some resists with Electric, you'll probably still notice the difference.

Electric is obviously going to have a slightly easier time with Rikti, but Fiery Aura really doesn't have any issues there. The only thing I really have issues with on my Fiery Aura Tanks are defense debuffs, as those let hits get in a little more quickly than he wants them to (though effective use of inspirations and the ancillary holds help out plenty there).

It's not quite six one way and half dozen another, but it's close. Flavor is going to be the biggest difference. I'd personally say I prefer Fire's look more, and how it plays, but Electric can be fun, too. Go with what you like, but both are plenty solid.

Pilgrim,

Yes I've read your guide and it's really good, and one of my favourite parts of it is the builds. They are really affordable.

I've tweaked my own up at this point, but I'm not sure if I like it yet: too soon to tell. But you made a great resource there.

I'm coming in late to this thread but since I've played (mostly solo) both a fire/fire and elec/elec into the low 40's I figure I've got some perspective.

I'll go along with what the reasonable people have been saying: fire is on the lower end of tanker survivability (which is still very high) but compensates by killing mobs dead. "Let's do it to them before they do it to us," as the replacement sarge on Hill Street Blues used to say. I'm very much an adherent to Grey Pilgrim's Wall of Fire philosophy of fire tanking. Run in, let the mob form up on me while I pop BU + FE, then hit the AoEs and clean up the survivors.

I'll also throw in that Rise of the Phoenix is the best melee self-rez there is, IMO, and I'm not shy about getting killed to come roaring back.

Electric, OTOH, has great resists, a decent heal (and don't discount +regen on a tanker) and awesome End management. It's relatively easy to perma-Hasten. Capped Energy resist is much more useful in the high levels than capped Fire resist. Power Surge is useful when you need it, which isn't often but does happen (more than, say, Unstoppable in Inv). Flooring your enemies' End is a viable secondary mitigation tactic with Power Sink. And of course, /elec is no slouch either in the BU + AoE department.

So really, asking which is a better tank is like trying to decide between sex and ice cream... it's not an either/or choice, each can definitely add some enjoyment into your life and everybody should really try both before they die.

If you want to try a fast-as-he11 single-target tank, try combining Electric Armor and Dual Blades. You'll chew through targets like mowing grass and DB is so fast for a tanker set that I've forgotten I was on a tank and thought I was playing a scrapper when playing it.

While this is a discussion on fire vrs electric tanks, I am not sure you are all on the same page.
All tanks are different and will handle different types of incoming damage differently.
I have watched stoners that solo tank the STF die in the sewers of Apex. My fire goes right after the pylons (as long as I have hit healing flames at least twice, by the third healing flames the toxic is no issue. Electric would fair no better than the stoner.
And it’s not really the build that matters (important yes) – it’s more the person driving the character that matters.
I was sick and tired of watching shield / electric scrappers do what my tank couldn’t on speed ITF’s. So I completely changed his build from a health, regeneration, endurance and damage build to a soft capped defense.
I even followed Grey Pilgrims guide to a degree. But I went with soft capped s/l as well as melee. Keeping all the pbaoe’s and scorch, incinerate and GFS for av’s. That is with BU and FE.
Expensive if you bought everything but I did mine with drops, merits and hero points. The most costly being the 3% defense pvp io and the 3% resist pvp io that I am still working on.
The incarnate system has really added to his survivability too…The extra resist while not a lot really shows in how often I have to heal. His s/l resist went from 70 to 78+% and will be 81+% with the 3% resist pvp io.

So keep on tanking. I use to consider my Fire Fire a scrapper with extra hit points. He is back to being a tank

@_Elektro_ Well what are you not willing to do as a tank? Cause LR for example irritates me a lot because most people outright refuse to do anything but stand there getting pummeled by him. When it comes down to it in fights like that its keeping people alive that counts so if you have to play tag with LR so be it. Otherwise I find my kin/arch defender on an average team can always be the first to run in and survive 98% of the time.(71% SL resist and 30-33% defense across the broad and transfusion doesn't hurt either). He only has ever had problems with drawn out solo fights with more then an aggro cap around that is not SL. This week he even was the closest thing to a tank on an Apex with 3 defenders, 3 corrupters, 1 dom and an MM. He only died once after I failed to transference during force of nature crash and even went toe to toe with a pylon helping keep aggro off people ranging(and didn't die!!!! was so awesome).

Quote:

Originally Posted by Severe then you missed the part where if you dont have it then its your own lazy fault cause in this game you have EVERY chance to make whatever you want if your willing to with tips/reward merits/hero merits/wtf/tickets/market clearly your not willing too...so you actually made my point thank you

NO.

Yes a small percentage of people can make whatever they want off the market but it is completely, totally and perfectly IMPOSSIBLE for everyone to.

Telling people that the market can make them some inf is valid but telling everyone that "its your own lazy fault cause in this game you have EVERY chance to make whatever you want if your willing to" is just pure unrated stupid on your part because VERY few people have a chance to make a MASSIVE 10bil(for each toon) if and ONLY if the vast majority doesn't get that chance.

To the OP:

It's worth noting that I'm happy with both my high-investment Fire/Fire/Pyre and Inv/SS Tankers and am often undecided as to which one I'd rather saddle up for missions with friends.

And if I want to mindlessly solo at x8, Fire/Fire/Pyre is fantastic.

Throwing in my 0.02...

When playing my (admittedly lower level) Fire/Fire, I feel like a Scrapper with really good aggro management. To put it another way, Fire/Fire seems to be the last Tanker on the Tanker-to-Scrapper continuum. Damage is high, protections are low and mitigation is absent compared to Tanking peers. That's not a bad thing, because the damage is really, really good. It's just a tradeoff. With that tradeoff in mind, know your limits and work within them. If you're weak to something, then look for help from the team.

Another thought: what's slightly less-survivable in today's content may become noticeably less-survivable in tomorrow's. If to-hit numbers continue to edge upward in endgame content, a lot of softcap builds won't really be softcapped for that content. -ToHit and +Def will become increasingly valuable in those circumstances, as will mitigation. There may come a time when players have to say "my character isn't really fit for this" and choose some other build or AT for specific content.