The time has come for another tank. This time it's Fiery Aura. Help me decide on a secondary.

[SeraphimKensai]

Good morning folks. I realized the other day I have around 20 lvl 50 tanks of various forms but not one of them is a Fire Tank. My only logical recourse is to correct this deficiency post-haste.

 

I don't really need any build help, but what I could use is pooling everyone's mind together to help me narrow the secondary choice down to one.

 

Of all the secondaries, I've narrowed it down to the following (in no particular order of preference): battle axe, dark melee, claws, martial arts, SS, ice melee, staff, and TW. I'm familiar with each of the powersets, but torn on the overall decision.

 

I've read several threads on fiery aura including @Sovera's brunker thread and @Spaghetti Betty's fire/ss scrapper thread.

 

Thanks for your counsel.

[Sovera]

Tbh I was thinking on what to make (or re-make since I re-make favorites all the time as I like the leveling process) and realized nothing grabs me anymore. Fire Melee has pretty much taken the BiS spot for no other reason than having two PbAoE which when paired with Burn makes an insane three pbAoEs where we just sit there and dish out damage.

 

My most recent was Energy and it got old super fast to realign for Power Crash and not even get good dividends out of it.

 

But I guess Axe fills the same duty now. Pendulum is almost kinda like a PbAoE thanks to being inflated by the Tanker inherent. It then suffers from being slash damage which IMO lets Fire pull ahead again (plus Fire only needs three attacks where Axe wants four attacks and all slotted), but it does add a lot of mitigation from both Axe Cyclone and Pendulum doing AoE wide KD.

[Warboss]

Fire/Axe! Drag em around and burn em down!!

or

Fire/Fire, just plain burn em down!!

or

Fire/Ice, freeze them up then burn them down!!

 

I could list more, but I think I'm done. Enjoy your new Tank!

[PLVRIZR]

Fire/Fire/Pyre Mastery.  The ultimate Fire tank, IMHO!

[SeraphimKensai]

So taking all three of your counsel into account, I rolled it as a fire/fire tank, but will likely go energy mastery in this one. I normally don't match powersets, so that's a bit of a change for me, but I was playing around in mids with it and was honestly surprised. I hadn't looked at fiery aura for tankers since back on live.

Edited March 12 by SeraphimKensai

[Infinitum]

14 hours ago, SeraphimKensai said:

So taking all three of your counsel into account, I rolled it as a fire/fire tank, but will likely go energy mastery in this one. I normally don't match powersets, so that's a bit of a change for me, but I was playing around in mids with it and was honestly surprised. I hadn't looked at fiery aura for tankers since back on live.

Reconsider Pyre - mine started out energy too, but fireball is the cherry on top of the burn, combustion, fire sword circle aoe goodness. 

 

All that's left after that carnage GFS, incinerate and fire sword will take care of the hapless stragglers and round 2 is only a few seconds away also. 

[PLVRIZR]

11 hours ago, Infinitum said:

Reconsider Pyre - mine started out energy too, but fireball is the cherry on top of the burn, combustion, fire sword circle aoe goodness. 

 

All that's left after that carnage GFS, incinerate and fire sword will take care of the hapless stragglers and round 2 is only a few seconds away also. 

And I'll add..... 

 

Pyre offers Melt Armor as a fantastic AOE debuff.  Always nice for a tank to bring that to an AV party.  If you've got a third Pyre slot, I also highly recommend Char, as a great ST hold (for Sappers and the like) and it takes the Entomb +absorb shield proc (and fires alot), since Fire can use all the mitigation it can have.

[SeraphimKensai]

@Infinitum and @PLVRIZR I'll check it out on test when I get a chance later. I mean I like melt armor all all that, but I'd have to juggle around some powers/slots. I got the toon up to 26 now, so maybe I'll have it ready for next Tuesday's TT, depending on how much time I am able to put in to it.

Edited March 13 by SeraphimKensai

[SeraphimKensai]

Following up....the character is lvl 50 on live. I tested it with both digging into fire mastery for fireball and energy mastery for FA. I found using the build I came up with I was pretty comfortable with the attack chain without adding fireball in. Fireball did allow for slotting an annihilation proc for more -res which I did like, but even without it things were typically melting on +4/8. I settled on the energy mastery app for this toon and I definitely like ensuring everything is hitting my targets.

 

The toon is fully slotted out on live now save +3 nucleolus/microfilament enhancements in fire sword and swift (it's a flier so a micro in swift work well). As I get some downtime during naps for my daughter and such I'll be working on accolades, but will try to make it to TT on Tuesday to give it a test drive with other tanks.

 

Thanks folks, I'm really enjoying fire melee with it as it's unusual for me to pair themed powersets like that but it's pretty satisfying just burning everything to a cinder.

[Snarky]

Dark.  Dark melee pairs exceptionally well with Fire armor

[Diatribe1974]

Myself and a friend decided that we'd both have Fire/Ice Tankers and just run the same build & missions to maximize those play times together.  It's been stupid easy with the whole Burn/Ice Patch combos just roflstomping pretty much everything.