Fire/Staff or Shield/Dark Melee?

[Khalual]

I've come back to CoX, gone since about six months before it shutdown. The above pairings are what I'm thinking about playing. Any advice on which one might be a better choice as well as any builds would be greatly appreciated. 

[SeraphimKensai]

Depends ultimately on what you want to aim for but both have are interesting builds. I have a shield/dm or a dm/shield somewhere otherwise I just made a fire/staff that I was contemplating leveling up and slapping a build on it.

 

SD/DM could be made pretty strong as far as pushing towards incarnate softcapped defenses and AAO+ SoulDrain and the expanded cones/aoes on a tank will make for a pretty strong tank.

 

FA/Staff you break dance in burn patches. Staff has a bunch of knockup/knock down so that will help you burn things. You can get pretty reasonable resistance levels and come pretty close softcapping some defenses depending on build but knocking mobs down into your burn patch is extra mitigation.

[Aeroprism]

My own experience with Fire/Staff is that it's extremely situational.  It works, it can be specced to do some interesting things, but I played one for a very long time and it never got me to the giggly/OMG feeling my other tanks do.

 

I rerolled it as an Elec/Staff and that so far is a lot more promising.

 

The fact that Fire armor has visuals that intensely irritate me probably doesn't help.

[Nemu]

FIre Armor/staff is more satisfying on Stalkers. Burn can crit, and staff gets a heavy hitter in assassin's strike. Double build up burn crit will make you giggity giggity goo.

 

Not saying that it won't work fine as a tank, Staff compliments Fire Armor well by offering it defense, some soft control and force feedback slotting, but I find the stalker version more fun to play.

[ihatethewind]

SD/DM is probably one of the best combos you could pick. Great def and res, +dmg in both sets, close to capped  ddr if you go ageless, a self heal and end mgmt if you need it. Plus a cool teleport attack. To be honest I’m not sure why I haven’t played one yet.

[Without_Pause]

Shield/dark would be on a short list of builds you could stick in a mission and know it wouldn't face plant regardless of the mobs.