Fire Force build

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Ok so my main, as it was in CoH, is a radiation based hero. I chose Force as my energy builder and Fire as my basic power. I mainly did this to represent the heat and power of an atom bomb. Im not quite sure if this was a good decision however. I seem to do a great deal of dmg with my fire abilities but I cant tell if (rarely or ever)that my force bolts have knocked anything anywhere. I would like to keep these as my main sets but need help on what stats to focus on. Also any opinions or Ideas about a Fire/Force build would be awesome.

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If you have your heart set on really big knockbacks, you need to take Strength. It increases knockback distance.

Other than that, Endurance is always good, especially since from what I understand, fire powers suck down energy pretty fast.

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Fire powers do suck energy, but endurance is not what helps there. You need a high equilibrium to play Fire, it really relies on Recovery a great deal more. Endurance is for high cost powers that do absurd amounts of damage and basically one-shot everything. Stuff like most of the melee powers and Archery or Might. The best you can do with an Endurance build together with Fire is max charged Pyre... after that you're waiting for energy to come back.

I prefer to stick to Intelligence, since it cuts my power costs by a lot. Having high endurance is nice, but Fire doesn't have a gazillion charge powers, your basic attacks are Clicks. Recovery is a must. Of course Endurance/Recovery is a popular build and works with most offensive ranged builds.

The main thing would be... are you offensive or defensive? If you're defensive, Endurance/Recovery is a great option. But if you're offensive, it only works if you take the Ice energy form, since Fiery Form is based on Presence. There's also a problem with being offensive with Fire/Force... mainly that your Fiery Form does not affect crushing damage. Nothing does. Force cannot have its damage boosted by anything except generic buffs, like Circle of Ebon Wrath from the Sorcery tree. So if you go with Force, it's purely for the knockbacks and defensive stuff. Except your knockbacks aren't going to be ridiculously strong without Strength, so keep that in mind.

So your options are basically:

- Endurance/Recovery, Offensive stance, slot Regen as your passive (since Fiery Form will suck anyway), Regen is based off Recovery, get Force Block and give it Force Sheathe advantage. You'll get a ton of energy this way and you can spam your Force and Fire powers all you want. Fire will keep things burning, Force will knock them off their asses.

- Endurance/Recovery, Balanced Stance, slot PFF as your passive (based on Endurance), grab Immolation for a damage booster (affects all damage), get all the damage over time Fire effects like Fiery Breath and Pyre and just slowly cook mobs while your shield takes all the beating

- Strength/Recovery, screw Fire and its damage, Defensive Stance, Regen as your passive, maximum Force build, go knockback crazy. Extremely safe way to level. If your enemies are ever standing up and get an attack off on you, Regen heals it automatically. Toss in a few melee powers for a damage.


Especially with this last build, you can see that the main reason I dislike Fire/Force builds, besides the fact that they are incompatible damage types, is because Fire wants mobs to GROUP TOGETHER, while Force wants mobs to BLOW APART. These two powersets work against each other. To maximize their effectiveness, you need to either go heavy fire and play Alpha Strikes, heavy force and play Keep Away, or mix between and use DoTs/CCs.

[Archived Post]

Isn't regen balanced or defensive? How can you do offensive stance?

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Yeah, Fire and Force aren't really compatible with each other. The only Force attack that doesn't do knockback is Force Bolts, so, if you want to play a fire guy effectively yet still take force, all you'll really be able to take from Force are PFF, Force Bolts, Containment Field, Force Shield, Field Surge, and whatever that bubble you can place on your teammates is called. You're going to need to go End/Rec to do fire effectively, so, I guess you could do PFF provided you focus on Ego as a third stat.