Rad/Fire Not for Farming or....

[WuTang]

Just tossing this out but there is no rush. Still working my Inf back up...but looking for suggestions from folks a little more creative and knowledgeable about the game's looks and mechanics.

 

I'm kicking around a dragon concept build. I've got the costume ironed out and I want Radiation for my primary and I want Fly but not hover as I want to fight in Beast travel form. However, I'm on the fence about my secondary choice. I've initially went with Fire, ya know...cause dragon, but I'm having a difficult time figuring out how to make that playable in general. I'm guessing it's all about melting face before being melted and fire resist....lots of fire resist. My SG mate has a dragon that is Ele/Ele so I don't really wanna duplicate his thing, and I've already got a Scrapper and a Blaster that are both Ele/Ele, so really, I'm all electric'd out at the moment. 

 

So is it possible to make Fire Aura work for general play? Cause I like the thought of all the fire around him. All I've really been able to find is farm builds. OR...what would be a good secondary that works well with Rad melee and could be all dragony? Energy? Bio? SR maybe?

 

Too vague? Let me know. I'm really want to make this work, the costume is one of my best yet.

 

I run alot of ITFs (it's my favorite) and any other TF people will have me on.

 

Thanks!!

[Sovera]

Fire/Fire? You mention beast running, so maybe Savage Melee for the clawing?

[WuTang]

41 minutes ago, Sovera said:

Fire/Fire? You mention beast running, so maybe Savage Melee for the clawing?

No I want Radiation melee. I tried Fire melee but don't like the sword animations. But yeah...Savage Melee... That didn't cross my mind. I was in the whole "fire effect" mindset when I was choosing my primary. But can Fiery Aura be made for general content? I'm open to another that might work better. Just the only talk I found about Rad/Fire was all farm talk.

[Sovera]

10 minutes ago, WuTang said:

No I want Radiation melee. I tried Fire melee but don't like the sword animations. But yeah...Savage Melee... That didn't cross my mind. I was in the whole "fire effect" mindset when I was choosing my primary. But can Fiery Aura be made for general content? I'm open to another that might work better. Just the only talk I found about Rad/Fire was all farm talk.

 

My dude, I have this, like, whole thread about Fire Armor being made for general content. 😄

 

My own dragon was a Fire Armor/Claws and how I got into Fire Armor.

 

Rad Melee isn't that great (wasn't to begin with) and didn't get better with Irradiated Ground being fixed, but if you skip Devastating Blow (it hits hard and it increases your ST damage instead of the alternative, but, slow ass animation) and go with just Radiation Siphon, Contaminated Strike and Radioactive Smash you have a pretty simple and forgivable ST rotation. Do try Devastating Blow though and it might click.

 

 

Keep in mind that the tailor lets you faff around like wreathing your body, or just the hands, or just the eyes, in a dozen different auras likes flames or such so you can take something else and dress it up.

[WuTang]

44 minutes ago, Sovera said:

 

My dude, I have this, like, whole thread about Fire Armor being made for general content. 😄

 

My own dragon was a Fire Armor/Claws and how I got into Fire Armor.

 

Rad Melee isn't that great (wasn't to begin with) and didn't get better with Irradiated Ground being fixed, but if you skip Devastating Blow (it hits hard and it increases your ST damage instead of the alternative, but, slow ass animation) and go with just Radiation Siphon, Contaminated Strike and Radioactive Smash you have a pretty simple and forgivable ST rotation. Do try Devastating Blow though and it might click.

 

 

Keep in mind that the tailor lets you faff around like wreathing your body, or just the hands, or just the eyes, in a dozen different auras likes flames or such so you can take something else and dress it up.

Gonna ask the stupid question... How does the tanker build translate over to a Brute build? 

 

Edit: Oh I see you had a Claws/Fire Brute too. I'd lean toward Savage, I think.

Edited April 23 by WuTang

[Sovera]

15 minutes ago, WuTang said:

Gonna ask the stupid question... How does the tanker build translate over to a Brute build? 

 

Edit: Oh I see you had a Claws/Fire Brute too. I'd lean toward Savage, I think.

 

It doesn't 100% if wanting to reach certain thresholds but you can level it just fine and worry about respecs once/if at 50. For leveling you just slap the usual culprits on since reaching thresholds while leveling is not easy or even necessary.

 

Tbh I'd stick with Claws/Fire purely on playing the game without looking at theme. Savage Melee can feel a lot like flailing at the air since it's a DoT set and you notice bosses melting when the DoTs stack but for hitting a minion it kinda feels bad to flail three times to kill it since the DoTs take a while to get going.

 

 

But if the heart wants Savage then listen to the heart. I happened to just have fixed a Savage/Fire Brute for someone else so I'll respost it here:

 

Master Rune Brute (Savage Melee - Fiery Aura).mbd

 

Since it was for someone else it doesn't have Fly as I usually take but it's not hard to move things around.

[WuTang]

14 hours ago, Sovera said:

 

It doesn't 100% if wanting to reach certain thresholds but you can level it just fine and worry about respecs once/if at 50. For leveling you just slap the usual culprits on since reaching thresholds while leveling is not easy or even necessary.

 

Tbh I'd stick with Claws/Fire purely on playing the game without looking at theme. Savage Melee can feel a lot like flailing at the air since it's a DoT set and you notice bosses melting when the DoTs stack but for hitting a minion it kinda feels bad to flail three times to kill it since the DoTs take a while to get going.

 

 

But if the heart wants Savage then listen to the heart. I happened to just have fixed a Savage/Fire Brute for someone else so I'll respost it here:

 

Master Rune Brute (Savage Melee - Fiery Aura).mbd 42.36 kB · 4 downloads

 

Since it was for someone else it doesn't have Fly as I usually take but it's not hard to move things around.

Ok... I read your post where you said "Claws/Fire held a PR for the fastest run." 

I have a good idea how to slot Claws...except for Shockwave and Focus as a Brute do we really wanna be knocking people back? And I know there are different claws to pick from, but my Scrapper Claws is a Wolvey clone, so I didn't go any further after finding the right ones for him. I'm wondering now if, thematically, there'd be a set that would look right for my dragon. Have to check that out this afternoon. I'm not opposed to Claws at all, it a fun and fast primary.

 

The Savage/Fire build is really good! I made the changes needed to include flight and only lost the immobilize protection CJ got me, still has 10 though. Res and Def remained, practically, identical. The End use is real though! Guessing Ageless Core for sure and/or Agility Core... Hmm but I bet you'd Go Cardiac Core for the End reduction and Res boost and then Barrier to plug some holes if only for a short time? Or does Consume slotted out like you have it fill the hole good enough?

 

I was wondering, about defenses though... I heard mention of changes to S/L that made the "old" way of building not so good now. Are we still building for higher S/L Def for general gameplay, or are we supposed to focus on positional Def, or just average out all of them best we can?

 

Just to get your thought on... well my thought 🙂 ....  I know 2 travel powers is cray cray, buuuut what if instead of taking Hover to mule a recharge I took Super Speed to mule a touch more knockback protection? I was looking and the loss of 7.5% recharge only adds 4 seconds on Hasten's CD and on the attacks it's in the hundredths of a second increase.

 

Thanks for all the help...again!! :)

[Sovera]

29 minutes ago, WuTang said:

Ok... I read your post where you said "Claws/Fire held a PR for the fastest run." 

I have a good idea how to slot Claws...except for Shockwave and Focus as a Brute do we really wanna be knocking people back? And I know there are different claws to pick from, but my Scrapper Claws is a Wolvey clone, so I didn't go any further after finding the right ones for him. I'm wondering now if, thematically, there'd be a set that would look right for my dragon. Have to check that out this afternoon. I'm not opposed to Claws at all, it a fun and fast primary.

 

The Savage/Fire build is really good! I made the changes needed to include flight and only lost the immobilize protection CJ got me, still has 10 though. Res and Def remained, practically, identical. The End use is real though! Guessing Ageless Core for sure and/or Agility Core... Hmm but I bet you'd Go Cardiac Core for the End reduction and Res boost and then Barrier to plug some holes if only for a short time? Or does Consume slotted out like you have it fill the hole good enough?

 

I was wondering, about defenses though... I heard mention of changes to S/L that made the "old" way of building not so good now. Are we still building for higher S/L Def for general gameplay, or are we supposed to focus on positional Def, or just average out all of them best we can?

 

Just to get your thought on... well my thought 🙂 ....  I know 2 travel powers is cray cray, buuuut what if instead of taking Hover to mule a recharge I took Super Speed to mule a touch more knockback protection? I was looking and the loss of 7.5% recharge only adds 4 seconds on Hasten's CD and on the attacks it's in the hundredths of a second increase.

 

Thanks for all the help...again!! 🙂

 

Focus is KD, not knockback, and Shockwave has the the IO to make it a KD as well. Shockwave can do a lot for survival since it is a wide and 40y deep cone constantly knocking things on their butts. That said neither my Claws/Fire Brute nore the Tanker take it and just went to town with Burn and Spin.

 

My own dragon used a mix of Vanguard claws colored firey since they glow and look cool, and then an 'in combat' tailor aura (which is when we pop out our claws) to further make fists wreathed in flame with one of the firey auras.

 

If you took Maneuvers you can safely replace it with Combat Jumping as it gives almost the same defense and costs 0.06 instead of 0.28. If you don't want to use Hover (though you could have wings and flap flap in combat) then Combat Jumping is great for combat mobility.

 

I never bothered to use Cardiac of ageless in any of my builds. Consume is enough. It's not as high as it looks because A) Focused Accuracy costs half than what the tooptip said since this last patch but Mids did not update that, B) there are four endurance procs in the builds that Mids does not account for. At worse just toggle off Focused Accuracy and only use it for debuffing mobs but I can say I never bothered to. If I meet recovery debuffing mobs I can always fall back on Recovery Serums. Other mobs that make other combos quake like Sappers are a joke for Fire Armor since Consume makes us immune to endurance debuff (just not *recovery* debuffing).

 

S/L defense is still useful-ish as not ALL attacks were changed, just some in some factions. The devs did not want to castrate that approach and just wanted it to not be so OP. So it's not what will save you if you're in too deep, but then rarely does salvation come from one single thing. It's just another layer for mitigating danger. You can skip it if you want, but, I don't see much else to go for barring some super procced out 4-procs-per-attack approach.

 

You don't really need to take SS if you want more KB protection. Replace the LoTG for a Karma -KB. Or do take SS. Same end result. Tbh I barely noticed KB, but, I also play with Hover and Evasive Maneuvers and EM has a ton of KB resistance and when in Hover even when get KB we just do a lil twirl in the air. If you're not hovering your mileage may vary.

[WuTang]

On 4/23/2024 at 4:26 PM, Sovera said:

 

It doesn't 100% if wanting to reach certain thresholds but you can level it just fine and worry about respecs once/if at 50. For leveling you just slap the usual culprits on since reaching thresholds while leveling is not easy or even necessary.

 

Tbh I'd stick with Claws/Fire purely on playing the game without looking at theme. Savage Melee can feel a lot like flailing at the air since it's a DoT set and you notice bosses melting when the DoTs stack but for hitting a minion it kinda feels bad to flail three times to kill it since the DoTs take a while to get going.

 

 

But if the heart wants Savage then listen to the heart. I happened to just have fixed a Savage/Fire Brute for someone else so I'll respost it here:

 

Master Rune Brute (Savage Melee - Fiery Aura).mbd 42.36 kB · 10 downloads

 

Since it was for someone else it doesn't have Fly as I usually take but it's not hard to move things around.

So I wanted to see just how slow Rad/Fire is.....so I joined a few MSRs and a few PI +4/8 groups to zip up the levels. Now at 40 I've slotted some enhancements and started soloing. Yup sa-la-oh-wa doesn't even do it justice. But it does melt bad guys pretty quick just not very exciting. Prob gonna reroll....we'll see. May hold on to him for comparison. 

The animations....I mean even Atom Smasher is in slo-mo. What is the point?

[Sanguinesun]

3 hours ago, WuTang said:

So I wanted to see just how slow Rad/Fire is.....so I joined a few MSRs and a few PI +4/8 groups to zip up the levels. Now at 40 I've slotted some enhancements and started soloing. Yup sa-la-oh-wa doesn't even do it justice. But it does melt bad guys pretty quick just not very exciting. Prob gonna reroll....we'll see. May hold on to him for comparison. 

The animations....I mean even Atom Smasher is in slo-mo. What is the point?

 

This is a common issue:   concept/thematic play vs the meta of play.  They're not uncommonly contrarian to each other, even in cases where folks get creative.

 

So you're going to need to make a choice.  Are you going to go for the effectivity meta potentially sacrificing your wants for theme or are you going to stick with a theme, only casually play it and not worry on optimizing effectivity?   That's where you're currently stuck.

 

 

 

If you want more effectivity in terms of the fire though in its resistences, then you'd really be wanting to look at a tank.  Brutes --by the time they end game--  can more effectively flesh out their resistances on fire to be near 90% cap'd but its at a big sacrifice to other effectivities such as damage etc.  Tanks on the other hand have it easier to hit those caps but yes a tad less damage. 

 

Also, you talked about concept with fire not matching you on a brute due to the sword powers above but there's something worth mentioning that is different with tanks vs brutes in the fire melee: Combustion.  Its AOE with decent recharge(made lower with good +recharge bonuses).  Brutes get the single target cremate instead(but not a bad power since you can slot a +recharge proc in it).

 

If you want to start to be more flexible in your concept considerations as well, recoloring things like Radiation armor also give you better resistances(cold being one of the only smaller holes) since it has multiple aoes doing damage that also double for more benefits such as regen/heal/endurance etc.   

 

For melees you can also consider as mentioned savage(savage and radiation armor are a good combo  on may different AT's btw), you can also consider changing colors for darm melee, flexibly considering spines(as you can change them to look more like flat spines of a dragon either in slate or crystal colorizing (but the set isnt necessarily more damage effective mind you just a variation you may thematically consider).... and more.

 

But if you're wanting to min/max and forego your thematic concerns, there are a plethora of threads for brutes or tanks that start talking about numbers and the meta more you can start to consider.

 

 

 

[Erratic1]

6 hours ago, WuTang said:

So I wanted to see just how slow Rad/Fire is.....so I joined a few MSRs and a few PI +4/8 groups to zip up the levels. Now at 40 I've slotted some enhancements and started soloing. Yup sa-la-oh-wa doesn't even do it justice. But it does melt bad guys pretty quick just not very exciting. Prob gonna reroll....we'll see. May hold on to him for comparison. 

The animations....I mean even Atom Smasher is in slo-mo. What is the point?

 

Radiation hits like a truck dropped from orbit...but it takes about as long as a truck falling from orbit for blows to hit.

 

It is not a fast-paced set but it does plenty of damage. Of course you can also go for a set with plenty of immediacy in your blows landing, but the faster ones tend to also hit for smaller amounts of damage. If you check out Mid's Powerset Comparison graph, you'll see Radiaton Melee is on par with Katana for damage/animation and damage/per second....

 

,..well, ignoring Atom Smasher. Just ignore Atom Smasher.

 

[WuTang]

17 hours ago, Erratic1 said:

 

Radiation hits like a truck dropped from orbit...but it takes about as long as a truck falling from orbit for blows to hit.

 

It is not a fast-paced set but it does plenty of damage. Of course you can also go for a set with plenty of immediacy in your blows landing, but the faster ones tend to also hit for smaller amounts of damage. If you check out Mid's Powerset Comparison graph, you'll see Radiaton Melee is on par with Katana for damage/animation and damage/per second....

 

,..well, ignoring Atom Smasher. Just ignore Atom Smasher.

 

I've been looking around and noticed some take Devastating Blow and some don't. Some only use a rotation of T1,T2,T5. Are you just joking about not using Atom Smasher? I'm going to build this guy, right now. I'm not disliking the combination.

[Erratic1]

46 minutes ago, WuTang said:

I've been looking around and noticed some take Devastating Blow and some don't. Some only use a rotation of T1,T2,T5. Are you just joking about not using Atom Smasher? I'm going to build this guy, right now. I'm not disliking the combination.

 

I have two Radiation Melee characters (Scrapper and Tanker) and the only attack I suggest skipping is Proton Sweep. Atom Smasher is slow as molasses flowing uphill in the winter but unless you're on a team able to kill quickly, it does eventually land.

 

I typically resort to Cross Punch when an AoE is worth skipping (SS: Hand Clap). 

[TheMoncrief]

I actually really like Radiation Melee. It's slow, but it hits hard enough for the slow animations to feel rewarding. And it honestly feels enough like Super Strength on a visceral level that I can play it on my thematically SS characters if I don't want to be bothered with Rage. But it's definitely not for any character I want to feel quick and agile. It's the set I take when the concept is "I'm so tough I don't *NEED* to maneuver around, and I'm so powerful you have to deal with me no matter how much it hurts you. Which will be a lot, in case you were wondering." So basically a Tanker, or a really tanky Brute.

[Meknomancer]

On 4/23/2024 at 6:22 PM, WuTang said:

Just tossing this out but there is no rush. Still working my Inf back up...but looking for suggestions from folks a little more creative and knowledgeable about the game's looks and mechanics.

 

I'm kicking around a dragon concept build. I've got the costume ironed out and I want Radiation for my primary and I want Fly but not hover as I want to fight in Beast travel form. However, I'm on the fence about my secondary choice. I've initially went with Fire, ya know...cause dragon, but I'm having a difficult time figuring out how to make that playable in general. I'm guessing it's all about melting face before being melted and fire resist....lots of fire resist. My SG mate has a dragon that is Ele/Ele so I don't really wanna duplicate his thing, and I've already got a Scrapper and a Blaster that are both Ele/Ele, so really, I'm all electric'd out at the moment. 

 

So is it possible to make Fire Aura work for general play? Cause I like the thought of all the fire around him. All I've really been able to find is farm builds. OR...what would be a good secondary that works well with Rad melee and could be all dragony? Energy? Bio? SR maybe?

 

Too vague? Let me know. I'm really want to make this work, the costume is one of my best yet.

 

I run alot of ITFs (it's my favorite) and any other TF people will have me on.

 

Thanks!!

 

I've been playing one of these since day 2 or 3 and ended up with 1 on every server with a farm and content build. I ended up running this after repeated respecs and trying different levels of defence/resistance/recharge etc. Its pretty squishy. And i have no idea how you'd get fly in unless you dropped ss+cj for hover+fly and ran with hover on. It'll melt stuff just about fast enough for you to kill before you get killed but its no +4/8 itf tank thats for sure, i'm still running ageless on it. If your after something tough you may want to consider a fire/rad tanker. Damage wise there's almost no difference but the survivability is much higher.

RAD FIRE SLOW RES - Brute (Radiation Melee - Fiery Aura).mbd

[PhotriusPyrelus]

On 4/23/2024 at 3:06 PM, WuTang said:

don't like the sword animations.

I can't test it right now, but can't you modify the animation to get rid of the weapon?  I know stone melee has that option.

EDIT:  I *can* test it right now and no, no it does not.  Wow, what a bummer...

Edited May 11 by PhotriusPyrelus

[WuTang]

7 hours ago, PhotriusPyrelus said:

I can't test it right now, but can't you modify the animation to get rid of the weapon?  I know stone melee has that option.

EDIT:  I *can* test it right now and no, no it does not.  Wow, what a bummer...

Right! Because all the other animations are really cool!

[Shin Magmus]

On 4/23/2024 at 10:22 PM, Sovera said:

 

My dude, I have this, like, whole thread about Fire Armor being made for general content. 😄

 

My own dragon was a Fire Armor/Claws and how I got into Fire Armor.

 

Rad Melee isn't that great (wasn't to begin with) and didn't get better with Irradiated Ground being fixed, but if you skip Devastating Blow (it hits hard and it increases your ST damage instead of the alternative, but, slow ass animation) and go with just Radiation Siphon, Contaminated Strike and Radioactive Smash you have a pretty simple and forgivable ST rotation. Do try Devastating Blow though and it might click.

     Proton Sweep is the most optimal single target attack in the set actually, then Devastating Blow (but slow like you said), then Smash/Strike.  Proton Sweep's DPA is solid but the real draw is slotting 2x dmg procs and 2x -res procs into it: both Achilles and FotG.  This means you use Proton Sweep first to soften up targets for your follow ups.  After that, it's not unrealistic for Epic Pool attacks to be your best options.  If OP wants to make a Dragon, then the only ST attacks he should really need are: Proton Sweep, Radioactive Smash, Fire Blast, Char (5 dmg procs), and one extra Rad Melee attack as filler... from the 3 available choices Siphon has the most utility but Devastating Blow has the best DPA.