Deciding between Fire or Force ancillary, for my Siesmic/Fire blaster

[normalperson]

I'm still working on learning how to post builds, but right I have a Stone/Flame blaster that just reached level 35.    Her biggest problem is she draws crazy amounts of aggro.            Every time I fire of flaming sword circle, the nearby enemies basically flatten her.   To help with this, I took Concealment and Ethereal Shift.   That's how bad my dying problem is. 

 

So the two ancillaries I'm considering as a fix to this are Fire or Force. 

 

If it's fire, I'll take Bonfire, then Fire Shield, Rise of the Phoenix, and then optionally maybe Melt Armor. 

 

If it's force, I'll take personal Force Field, then Force Bomb, then Force of Nature, and optionally temp invulnerability. 

 

 

Pros that I can see for Force Ancillary are : 

 

-  With Personal FF I can tank nearly anything for as long as I need, but.... I have to activate it in time, and I'll want to attack eventually. 

-  Force Bomb gives me another AOE KB attack, with the nice added damage reduction.    (Upthrust also achieves this, as does Meteor)

- Force of nature could put my resistances to 50% with good enhancements, which would buy me more time to act before I die. 

 

 

Pros that I can see for Fire Ancillary are:

-  Bonfire is persistent knockback over time, right?    So I might get a bunch of attacks off maybe?

-  Rise of the Phoenix will save me from pretty much anything, even if I don't remember to click in time.   Can always go to the START vendor and buy "self destruct" if I want to avoid debt. 

 

-  Getting fire shield doesn't really affect my decision much, other than that I'd like to put a proc or two on it. 

 

 

Are there any benefits of one set over the other than I am missing?              Right now I lean toward taking Fire Ancillary, but when doing Rikti Raids personal FF can be really handy sometimes, so I'm still open to Force Ancillary. 

 

[Nemu]

You can post builds by dragging the Mids file onto the post.

 

Both pools are fine but people generally favor bonfire over personal force field for protection because the former lets you attack while providing area mitigation.

 

On survival, consider adjusting your playstyle as well. Inspirations, especially lucks and breakfrees are crucial to blaster survival. Proactive inspiration management is the key to blaster success - pop 3 lucks and a breakfree before you dive into spawns, combine other inspirations into lucks and breakfrees during downtime.

 

You can also seek mitigation through your toolkit, you mentioned knockdowns/ups through attacks and that is the way. Bonfire and fire shield will add another layer to what you are doing already.

 

You can also use invention sets to augment your defense so you get hit less, and there are tanky blaster builds that use those sets to achieve softcap (~45% defense) against one or more damage vectors. That route takes more financial investment but can be well worth it in the end.

 

Take a look at the videos below. Read my first post on defense and the reasoning behind why range defense is paramount on even those blasters that wade into melee range.

[Uun]

16 hours ago, normalperson said:

If it's force, I'll take personal Force Field, then Force Bomb, then Force of Nature, and optionally temp invulnerability.

Temp Invul will serve you much better than Force of Nature. TI is a toggle that's always on. Slotted it provides about 32% S/L resistance. Force of Nature will provide 54% S/L/F/C/E/N/T resistance for 2 minutes, but it has an endurance crash at the end and you can't get the recharge under about 4 minutes.

[Doc Spectre]

The name of Temporary Invulnerability is a bit of a trap for new players. If I recall correctly back in the olden days of City of Heroes the tanks and scrappers could only run one toggle shield at a time and you had to switch between them depending on what the type of damage the enemy was dishing out at the time.

I think that is why Granite armour was so popular, because was the ‘everything armour’ all in one toggle.

[normalperson]

Yeah.  I recently discovered on a big Rikti raid, with multiple Defenders buffing us all - Blaster soft cap is 75%.             Not the same as my brute that can go Temp Invuln and see everything spike to 90%.    

 

I'm leaning even stronger toward flame.     I can still take that power set's persistent shield, which is only slightly weaker than temp invulnerable, and with lesser coverage for more damage types. 

 

 

Mainly that leaves the decision being Personal FF vs. Rise of the Phoenix.              I recently discovered you can purchase a self resurrect power for a million inf from START vendors, making RotP's benefit mostly just its recharge time.        I cringe to consider how often I would have to die in order for that to be beneficial.           But once per hour I can use "Self Destruct" and not suffer xp debt.