Non-Farm Fire Armor

[QuiJon]

Wow trying to find any info on building a non-farming fire toon on these forums is pretty much impossible. 

 

I have been looking to make something new that i dont see a ton of. I was thinking either a scrapper or brute /fire and am kind of leaning to wanting to do staff/ as the primary. I dont see any builds for staff/fire but was curious, as i have only ever build a farming fire toon, just round about what can i expect to be able to squeeze out of /fire as far as general game play numbers go? Resistances, def mostly. Money isnt really an object. So if anyone has a decent build for a non-farming fire armor toon that they can share even if it isnt staff i would be interested to see it. Thanks. 

[Troo]

this may be of little use:

 

It does mention staff's Guarded Spin and building around it in additional to a couple other nuggets.

[Nyghtmaire]

IOs can fix just about anything. I’ve been running my claws/fire brute through tons of non-farm content. I don’t think I’ve switched to my “farming” build in months. Staff primary will certainly increase slotting and set flexibility. Here’s a thread from a bit ago that illustrates an approach.  Might be an idea or two in there:

 

(Nonfarm build bear the end)

[Hjarki]

Fire is actually one of the better resist sets out there.

 

That being said, I'd argue that you've picked the two melee AT that you don't want to use for the Fire + Staff combo.

 

A Fiery/Staff Tanker can easily be built for hard-capped S/L/F/E/N/T and soft-capped L/F/C/E/N/M. By exploiting Staff's combination of L/M bonuses and +resists, you can have a full-fledged Tanker. The Tanker version of Staff also has much stronger AE damage than other versions of the set due to arc/radius buffs.

 

A Staff/Fiery Stalker can use a 'fixed' version of Staff with serious single target damage and combine it with Fiery's additional AE damage to make a fairly comprehensive melee dps build.

 

In contrast, the Brute and Scrapper don't really bring much to the table. You can't make your Brute as comprehensively tough as the Tanker and your AE isn't as good. You can't make your Scrapper deal the kind of single target damage your Stalker would.

[Camel]

I posted some Fiery Aura builds here. More of a parody guide, but the builds are pretty decent. I've had zero issues so far Tanking for any content at +4 with my Fire/Energy Tanker.

[QuiJon]

1 hour ago, Hjarki said:

Fire is actually one of the better resist sets out there.

 

That being said, I'd argue that you've picked the two melee AT that you don't want to use for the Fire + Staff combo.

 

A Fiery/Staff Tanker can easily be built for hard-capped S/L/F/E/N/T and soft-capped L/F/C/E/N/M. By exploiting Staff's combination of L/M bonuses and +resists, you can have a full-fledged Tanker. The Tanker version of Staff also has much stronger AE damage than other versions of the set due to arc/radius buffs.

 

A Staff/Fiery Stalker can use a 'fixed' version of Staff with serious single target damage and combine it with Fiery's additional AE damage to make a fairly comprehensive melee dps build.

 

In contrast, the Brute and Scrapper don't really bring much to the table. You can't make your Brute as comprehensively tough as the Tanker and your AE isn't as good. You can't make your Scrapper deal the kind of single target damage your Stalker would.

In addition to a wider radius does the tanker version of staff allow for more targets to be hit? I have a staff/elec scrapper. I find that for the most part the range of the attacks really does seem to come close to hitting target caps when you figure that the damage aura is pulling in enemies for me. So my main concern was kind of do i really want to live with the lower damage of a tanker. Granted i have not played much with tankers since the rework of them, but prior i was always pretty unimpressed with their damage compared to a brute or scrapper. So my main thought was that if i was not going to get over 75 percent resistances to those other damage types but fire anyway, did i want to go with a critting scrapper or stick with the fury in brutes. And what concerns me everytime i see someone say they you can hit all the hard caps or soft caps in defense or resistances is what you give up to get it. A character with 3 attacks is not fun IMO. Maybe just have to sit down and hash it out was just hoping maybe someone already had i guess. Thanks for the info.

[Hjarki]

1 hour ago, QuiJon said:

In addition to a wider radius does the tanker version of staff allow for more targets to be hit? I have a staff/elec scrapper. I find that for the most part the range of the attacks really does seem to come close to hitting target caps when you figure that the damage aura is pulling in enemies for me. So my main concern was kind of do i really want to live with the lower damage of a tanker. Granted i have not played much with tankers since the rework of them, but prior i was always pretty unimpressed with their damage compared to a brute or scrapper. So my main thought was that if i was not going to get over 75 percent resistances to those other damage types but fire anyway, did i want to go with a critting scrapper or stick with the fury in brutes. And what concerns me everytime i see someone say they you can hit all the hard caps or soft caps in defense or resistances is what you give up to get it. A character with 3 attacks is not fun IMO. Maybe just have to sit down and hash it out was just hoping maybe someone already had i guess. Thanks for the info.

The two Cones in Staff do work a lot better on a Tanker than a Brute/Scrapper (Stalkers only get the one Cone and it's primarily for +defense buffing anyway). So you'll probably see your Tanker version doing competitive AE dps vs. Brute/Scrapper, but still falling short on single target.

 

In terms of hard-capping Resists, let's consider S/L:

Toughness/Fire Shield = 45%

+55% Enhanced = 25%

Defense set uniques = 8% (scaling)

ATO proc = 6% (potentially multiples)

ATO set bonus = 6% (presuming you split the other ATO for E/N resist)

Skysplitter = 13.3%

 

That's easily over the hard cap

 

For E/N, you'll have to put in a lot more work.

Plasma Shield = 30%

+55% Enhanced = 16.5%

Defense set uniques = 8% (scaling)

ATO proc = 6% (potentially multiples)

ATO set bonus = 12% (presuming split ATO)

Skysplitter = 13.3%

 

So that would leave us 4% - 5% short on E/N, which you can probably bridge with something like Shield Wall 4-set.

 

Toxic is trivial - you can layer Healing Flames and stack its bonus multiple times. Fire is hard-capped from the three stacking FR buffs (and you don't really need Temperature protection).

 

So you're left with weak Cold and weak Psi - and you haven't done anything but slot attacks/toggles pretty much the way you'd slot them anyway.

[Camel]

Take Temperature Protection. Always take it. Skipping it is only hurting any Fiery Aura build. You’ll save multiple slots and it allows you more places to put IOs that are vital to making any Fiery Aura build top tier. I would say that standard slotting is the two +3% Defense IOs, a KB Protection IO, the Aegis Psi resist unique and an Impervium Armor Psi resist IO. It’s a no brainer. It allows you to slot one more Psi resist than you otherwise could and it gives you more cold resist AND it gives you slow resistance. There are other things you can sacrifice to fit in whatever you’re trying to fit in. That being said, any top tier build follows the same pattern of cutting excess fat. What I mean by this is, you wouldn’t want to take EVERY power from Staff. Could you? Absolutely. But your build will be substantially less effective. This is the same for every single Melee/Ranged set in the game if you are trying to make a build top tier.

Edited June 2, 2020 by Camel

[Without_Pause]

17 hours ago, Hjarki said:

You can't make your Scrapper deal the kind of single target damage your Stalker would.

The Scrapper will do more AoE as it has Innocuous Strikes and Blazing Aura so I wouldn't consider going Stalker as a win.

[Hjarki]

3 hours ago, Without_Pause said:

The Scrapper will do more AoE as it has Innocuous Strikes and Blazing Aura so I wouldn't consider going Stalker as a win.

• Innocuous Strikes isn't all that great on a non-Tanker
• Stalkers don't need to waste a slot on Staff Mastery
• Stalkers get Build Up; Scrappers don't
• Stalkers can crit with Burn; Scrappers can't

So while Scrappers will generally do more AE damage than Stalkers across-the-board, something like Staff/Fiery is at the low end of their AE advantage.