Fiery Embrace or Build Up?

Working on finalizing a build for my Fire/Ice Tanker, I've found that my power choices are at something of a premium. On a few candidate builds, it comes down to a decision between these two powers. My instinct is to keep Build Up since I can have it much earlier in the build and not lose it when exemplared. However, would Fiery Embrace be better to have?

@Rorn ---- Blue Baron ---- Guardian

Fiery Embrace is slightly better with 95% damage enhancement in your powers, and WAY better in the presence of damage buffs.

Even below the damage cap, FE is better, although circumventing the cap is nice too. Let's take, say, Frozen Aura as an example (although we'd get proportionally identical results for any power, really). It deals 63.17 damage base, so Build Up adds 50.5 damage. Fiery Embrace adds 28.4 damage without any enhancements, but 55.4 with +95% damage enhancement, and 69.6 if you also have +50% damage from buffs.

On the other hand, Build Up provides a tohit buff, which is sometimes valuable.

Fiery embrace is better. It's roughly +40%-45% base damage that is affected by damage buffs. To give you an idea of how much this is, it would be roughly equivalent to giving all your attacks the same base damage as scrappers. As for tohit and accuracy, there are plenty other places to get those.

Both!

If you care about damage output, the ONLY answer is take both. Something else is not that good.

If you do not care about damage output, FE is better at doing damage, but buildup will let you hit things. FE has no to-hit component. Buildup does, but only lasts ten seconds.

So I use BU as the icepick to hit things I'm having trouble with, and FE as the incinerator to clear out a few pesky mobs.

Fiery Embrace, Build Up, Consume... spawn is dead.

Damn you Blazing Aura, you kill-stealing sob, damn you to hell.

Truthfully, I couldn't imagine making a FA character and not taking both! But if one had to be dropped, I'd drop BU over FE.

I took both and cannot imagine not having both. YMMV.

I'd drop something else... but since that's not the question you asked... FE is better for damage output... BU is better if for things like hitting that dark servent that's making the whole team miss and possibly wipe when fighting a +3 carnie master illusionist spawn.... Since you're not really the damage dealer for the team, you might prefer the +tohit boost.

I have tried my fm/fa brute with builds that had both and one or the other, and I am never truly as happy as I am when I have both of them available at once.

True enough, your role as tanker is not exactly a damage dealer, but who would turn down having both in a build if it means you don't lose anything else critical?

It's worth noting that although Fiery Embrace is better (partly because it adds in a way roughly equivalent to base damage), Fiery Embrace PLUS Build Up is better still (and Build Up raises FE's damage in addition to the non-FE damage.)