Fire/Ice City

So, I decided to go join the FOTM club by trying a fire/ice. I needed some experience with a dedicated 'tank' build so I can write my fire tank primary section of my guide anyhow. And I'm curious about ice patch in conjunction with herding mobs.

I don't know if it was all the experience putzing about on Raggy, then Thrym that did it, but suddenly it all clicked for me about how to level with a fire tank. Found myself speeding to level 6 and I didn't feel agonized or even count the umpteen mobs hunted down to go past the next milestone. Didn't feel this way on the fire/ss or fire/fire, they were painstaking and trapped at lvl 8 and 4 respectively. Should resurrect 'em again eventually.

Of course...it was all about -herding-. Or rather, gathering small groups. The way I used to do it was just like the ol' clueless noob style, run into a group, flail away with fists and have aura running to help it along. And worse, one kept looking for even-con or higher mobs to hunt.

This time I focused on mass clumps of blues, greens and even greys. Of course, mass clump at this level means like 6-8 mobs, ie, about 2-3 groups.

Raggy taught me long ago the art of out-of-sight pulling and clumping around corners. Used it to good effect on Frosty the scranker also.

And then Thrym provided the missing link by showing me what a real taunt aura was like.

Blazing aura is sorta midway between Chilling Embrace and Mudpots. Not as damnably slow as mudpots (ie, near useless for catching aggro) and yet not foolproof autotaunt like CE, since accuracy comes into effect. So...solution? Slot two training accuracies in, and stick to sub-con mobs for better chance to hit like autohit. And it can kill like mudpots, muhaha.

I never had to stare at the durn hps of the mobs wondering when they'd die and give me some xp cos I was always scanning at max cam dist for the next group I could go grab. And I didn't have to worry about mobs running away cos they eventually came back and I'd be going on to the next group anyhow, no pathethic scrapper-like chasing for moi, more than enough xp to go around even if I missed one or two, it was all about the bulk, fast, cheap xp anyhow.

Fire tanks are so messy when they feed, heh.

Can't wait till I can move on to a real hazard zone with mobs at -1 or -2 to me. That should be extremely fun.

Looks like fire tanks have it really tough to be a 'real tank'. They are squishy. But they do significant damage. Ie. durn good soloists.

So really, seems like the most effective way they can provide aggro control is to train the even-squishiers on how to behave -while- they are doing the herd routine. No wonder the fire tanks I meet are always a) soloing, b) herding to a corner, (ice patching) and burning, or c) pleveling by essentially soloing by their lonesomes.

So much for that section of the guide...