[Pointless Complaining] Incarnate SS Fire ruins the game for me

... and I suppose I have nobody but myself to blame for it.

Before incarnates, SS/Fire was a good combo, somewhat balanced as it could in theory do very impressive damage output but realistically you weren't ever going to run an attack chain with Gloom at full speed without running out of end.

Then came the Alpha Slot, level shift, and of course Cardiac. 300 pylon DPS became the norm (which means ~330 real DPS), and that's all-the-time DPS as opposed to specific situations (if I have 10 foes around me that never die while I fight a lone target i.e. DM/SD, etc.). Not only that, but I always felt the real strengthes of SS/Fire were underrated. Namely, two heavy hitters with KO Blow and Burn animating reasonably fast, which tend to be much more useful than faster animating, smaller damage attacks dealing the same DPA in actual gameplay, as you're not standing still trading punches *all* the time, there is an amount of time (more and more significant as we get more and more powerful) spent moving from mob corpse to future mob corpse. Add to that one of these heavy hitters is actually AoE, then throw in another AoE with a gigantic radius by melee standards. I know, I know, people can supposedly hit 10 all the time with the war mace cone, good for them. Personally, I'm lucky to hit 3-4 with a 180° degree cone, and even with Foot Stomp 15' radius I find I'm often not hitting the target cap. Not only that, but most people I play with do about the same or worse as me, so these mythical skilled players who aim perfectly somehow never end up on my teams. I guess I'm cursed.

Aanyway. Then you have a strong ranged attack in Gloom, which is more and more useful as incarnate content proves to be more dynamic than the good old warehouse full of guys punching their fists and doing their best to stand still and get AoEd to death. Against i.e. Apex Battle Maiden, I find my brutes to outdamage my scrappers quite a bit between Gloom and the bigger hits per attacks (making it easier to joust).

Even RotP, which is often considered as a joke, is a staple power for me. Deaths sometimes happen, and the ability to get back into the fight instantly is, again, more and more valuable IMHO as content becomes harder. The lone brute falling down and having to hosp or wait for a rez rather than using RoTP on a small scale PUG lambda against Marauder can all too often be the difference between a team wipe and a ten second setback.

My point being, SS/Fire rocks, alright. And now we get those new slots, and the only real, significant drawback to the combo (lack of defense/DDR) is all but gone with Barrier, while damage output is supercharged with Reactive, and to a lesser extent Lore (for ST) and Judgement (for AoE).

Soloing +4/x8 against malta, longbow, arachnos, vanguard is a sleepwalk, everything dies so ridiculously fast there's barely time to use ST attacks. Sometimes I log onto my other melee characters, play them a bit, realise it takes me longer to take on +0/x8 with them than +4/x8 on my SS/Fire, and give up.

It's admittedly not as sturdy as other secondaries, but then again, where is this extra mitigation really needed, if you use inspirations? Not in +4/x8 solo missions against the toughest factions, barely if at all in minimum-size PUG iTrials, and never in preformed teams, which is the norm, at least on Freedom.

Wah wah wahhhh. Yes I'm whining, I'm ranting, and I don't have a point. I find the whole "SS/Fire/Soul" so completely silly from a concept PoV - attacking by dropping a burn patch on the ground, then throwing skulls, then doing a Popeye punch. Yet the difference is performance is so drastic compared to my other characters, I can't help but play it. Spreadsheet numbers might not show it to be that way, but if you ask me a SS/Fire is worth two other melee characters, assuming same quality of builds/players.

I kind of wish melee characters would get the "dom treatment" for PBAoEs. When the AT got revamped PBAoEs were bumped to 15' in radius. A 8' radius simply isn't realistic in today's super fastpaced game IMHO, and it's kind of sad that you're better off picking Ball Lightning or Dark Oblit than using your primary PBAoE for most combos (save for ambush farming I guess). Then you've got Judgement with what, 40-50 feet radius? It just seems like for most attack powersets you're better off using anything but your primary these days. I sure would feel a lot better about picking anything but SS as a primary if PBAoEs would be bumped to 15' or even just 12'.

So, yeah. As it said in the title, pointless whining, and I don't have a conclusion. I should probably start a blog or something instead of using the forums as my personal soapbox, but all the cool kids use facebook or twitter these days and IT IS CONFUSING. Alright, time for my pills.

Also, the Burn, Consume, and Fiery Embrace buffs came at a time when SS/FA was already considered the best farmer, which I found odd.

Most recently, Burn got another buff with the way reactive currently works, but I doubt that will stay for long.

Well, game is balanced for SOs (or so they say) and SS/fire is kind of sucky when it comes to that.

TBH I'm pretty sure I could strip all the IOs out of the character and do all the non-DPS locked things I can do with it now, just at a slower pace (most likely still faster than my other IOed out incarnates meleers). Or, in other words, I don't really buy the "SS/fire / shield scrappers / fire/kin controllers are bad with SOs / while leveling" because this has never been my experience while doing just that, whereas it has been my experience that there are far, far worse combos even IOed out. Energy/dev blaster for example.

Well Incarnate is meant to be challenging for our builds and Archtypes, however now we can buff ourself more with the Destiny pool and that will help you be a better tanker. Get Barrier, the buff will let you over come the Incarnate trial, also they didn't change anything for none incarnate Content, so you should be fine for it. These Incarnate trial are meant to be hard, to be honest any build or Archtypes will Suffer, but we can over come these trials by getting lvl Shift with the tier 3-4 Lore and Destiny. Once you got those, Incarnate trials be easy again and you SS/fire should be over power again like my SS/Wp Tanker is now.

Well, to be even somewhat viable without using any IOs you would need some kind of -KB. So thats super jump and acro right there.
And then you will have at most about 10% def. So Guns and swords are gonna strip away your def within a matter of seconds, resulting in a likely faceplant.

I too am guilty...
Promise not to play him too much until next issue.... promise

I just got T3 reactive on my SS/Fire (the one with 75% proc) and decided to give it a whirl.

HOLY CRAP!

I thought my SS/Fire was an unstoppable killing machine before. According to hero stats the Reactive proc was doing about double the damage of any of my other powers. This was on +0x8 in a ambush map. The only "problem" I had was that I couldn't pop inspirations as fast as they were dropping.

I'm gonna go back and try it on +4, and I'm sure that'll only give Reactive more time to "burn" and make it an even bigger hitter. Now, I'm aware that this is due to the fact that it procs on every tick of a psuedo pet rain type power and Burn basically uses the same mechanics. Don't know if that's gonna last, but I'll enjoy it while I can.

Boo Nerfherding

Boo lolPVPer making new account to troll

you need to start typing in lowercase because it's cooler

Your buttons are kinda easy to push. Now is when I should make a passive aggressive apology for hurting your feelings or something, but eh, let's not play that game and try to clear things up instead.

"lolPVP" is a forum meme due to the lack of developer's attention to PVP, it has nothing to do with superiority or what have you. I have a blast PVPing in some other games. In that same vein, typing in all lowercases is something often done by people trying to look cool - the whole, "I have so many cool things to do in my life I just come here in a hurry to post one liners like some action hero and wander off in the sunset, no time for punctuation".

I don't really hold grudges over forum stuff unless xenophobia is involved, and that's thankfully restricted to a few individuals that most often lurk in other sections than the AT boards. For that matter I don't see a single personal attack directed on this topic. If my answers seem harsh or something, add some smileyfaces to them, there was no intent to berate anyone, just clarification.

Trolling is defined as posting stuff with the intent of getting answers, posting "boo nerfherding" is pretty much just that (or an immense failure at communication). People tend to add an additional stigma to it, I don't, nor am I making a statement on you personally when I say you troll, I'm just saying you troll. My whole OP could be called a troll because, yes, from a specific perspective it can be seen as nerfherding and in that light will provoke emotional responses.

As for forum rules, I believe rants aren't allowed, so, there you go. Don't even need to look for anything else.

"I have so many cool things to do in my life I just come here in a hurry to post one liners like some action hero and wander off in the sunset", indeed. Kinda breaks down when you reply a mere 6 minutes after I post, though.

Regardless, I do enjoy your posts. I will admit that I am worried about hurting people with words, it's certainly a good way to push my buttons, so well played if that was deliberate. I'm not buying it completely, based on past experiences with people generally, but certainly can't rule that out as a possibility.

I dont feel like it's necessary to type an essay. You are making a bit too many assumptions about me and my intent.

As already said, I'm making no assumptions about you. As far as I'm concerned you're a random guy on the Internet. Not sure how much more clear I can make this. Not sure why my opinion matters so much, as I'm just another random guy on the Internet. *shrug*

I explained myself poorly - I meant that, for concept/looks reasons, I'd like to play other powersets just as much as I play SS/Fire, but the performance gap makes me come back to SS/Fire.

To put it another way, I prefer picking the powersets that fits my RP rather than build my RP around the powersets I picked for performance reasons. No doubt there's tons of valid concepts for SS/Fire, just as much as for any other character.

A then B rather than B then A

Better?