Fire/, Fire/, all I see is Fire/

So, I have a question. I recently returned to CoH after a 3 year break, and am trying out villains. Since i could never stand redside, praetoria seems to be perfect for me.

I read through threads, do my research, and above all..really seems to be frustrating, since there doesnt appear to be any reason not to be fire/ something.

So on that note, please sell me your favourite non Fire/ primary! I enjoy aoe damage and large groups, long walks on the beach and candlelit dinners.

thanks

It's just that Fire is really, really good. Of my Corruptors, the majority are Fire but I've got several of the others. My /Cold and /Storm are Ice/, my /Kin and /Therm are Rad/, my TA is Archery and my old Thermal and Rad were Elec and Sonic respectively. There's plenty of reasons to go with the other sets though.

Ice for multiple rains and great ST mitigation in the holds.

Sonic for great -resistance debuffing and super safe soloing due to the cone sleep.

Rad for an awesome PBAoE attack and -def debuffing allowing you to slot Achilles Heel procs for -res.

Archery because Rain of Arrows is stupidly good. Blazing Arrow and Fistful ain't bad neither.

Dark has great utility and a self heal, damage is a little on the low side though.

Elec is pretty good on AoE, has good sapping but the value on that depends on playstyle and secondary. Little on the weak side for ST though.

AR has several great AoEs, downside is no tier3 blast and RoA is way better than Full Auto. Full Auto is damn cool though.

If you like AoE damage your best bet is probably Archery or Rad.

I'm currently leveling up a Dual Pistols / Dark Miasma Corruptor, and am really enjoying it thus far. Dual Pistols is versatile in that you can either do extra damage with incendiary rounds, or switch to chemical rounds and stack -damage with Darkest Night. It does a decent amount of both single target and AoE damage. Plus, crashless nuke + tar patch = love.

Well, it's because Fire is, for most purposes, simply the best.

The devs still maintain this illusion that the secondary effects of the other sets actually mean something (particularly knockback.) While there are somewhat gimmicky reasons to choose other sets, in the end, Fire is always going to out-damage all of them, which is hard to turn down.

That said, Fire/Cold is my favorite, with Fire/Dark slightly behind. The main reason being Rain of Fire + slow + -resist + SCOURGE to go along with all of the other goodies found in Fire Blast, Cold Dom, and Dark Miasma. Fire/Rad and Fire/Kin are also great. They're more straightforward buff/debuff -> huge damage. Fire/TA can also be a fun little ball of AoE destruction.

I'm one of the Fire/ people you see running around, in my case Fire / Traps. I think part of the issue is that if I really wanted something besides Fire for your primary then there are good reasons to either choose a Defender or a Blaster. This is especially true since you can choose any AT and go red-side or blue-side.

Now that Defenders get a +damage when soloing or on small teams they are a more tempting than before. If there were such a thing as a /Traps blaster I would probably have chosen it over Corrupter. It's the status protection that I crave!

I've been thinking about making a Corr who is not fire also, as I have three fire that I love, /Dark, /Traps, /Storm.

The decision has been between Ice/ and Archery/ but I've decided to go with Ice. I think I will be pairing it with /Kin since I haven't played that set yet.

I think Ice/ would be a good non fire for you to try, and try pairing it with /Traps (great defense), /Dark (great debuffs), Storm (you will feel like a god!) or /Kin (if you like AOE damage, think about a fulcrum shifted Blizzard's damage!)

Archery/ and its rapidly recharging (20 seconds-ish) crashless nuke would be the other set you might consider.

would an arch/storm have some serious redraw issues?

Fire is the best simply because no other sets offers a top end single target attack chain and a top end aoe attack chain simultaneously.

Since you like aoe that puts you in the assault rifle, radiation blast area and of course fire. Both have 3 aoe attacks at least but they are both disjointed AR the cones are all different sizes, and radiation has pbaoe, cones and ranged aoe. Pick up teams wont be fans of the AR knockback either.

So let me try to sell you on my current obsession...dark blast. It's a quirky set but puts out a suprising amount of aoe between teneberous tentacles and torrent. The single target damage sucks no way around that, gloom is awesome then you get dark blast...horrible damage and life drain (the same amount of horrible damage as dark blast). But they animate fast and you can put some damage procs in there for enhanced damage. My particular joy is putting three damage procs in teneberous tentacles, this really increases the aoe output and is fairly satisfying (but those procs arent cheap).

Dark blast is not for the min/maxer's but it gives a different play style and has some nice synergies with several secondaries. This is the key finding and maximizing those synergies because without it, dark blast just feels weak.

Fire blast has always been the go-to set on any ranged At that can get it- just because it has big orange numbers.

Me,? I like the depth some extra tricks bring. The most obvious performance gauge is lots of stuff dying. But when questionable waste matter hits the fan, having a stun, kb, sleep, immobilize, heal, or any of those various tricks other blast sets bring is more than worth it.

...Not to mention secondary effects.

Case in point, sonic attacks. Stacking -res debuffs building up as damage stacks toward higher and higher scourging?
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