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Defensives

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How to not die

Overall fire’s typical defensive gameplay is proactive not reactive. We want to preemptively use defensives to incoming damage, not during or after it. Fire prefers to use our 0GCD defensives when inside Combustion as much as possible, holding our on-gcd defensives for times in filler, and pre-using them before entering Combustion if we wont have a 0GCD defensive available for it. It’s a guaranteed DPS loss to use on-gcd defensives in Combustion and should only be done if you know you’re going to die.

  1. Alter Time This is 0GCD, a 50 second cooldown before accounting for Shifting Power, and hands down one of the strongest buttons in the entire game. It’s our go to defensive used inside Combustion if you wont get one shot, as you can and should use both of its start and end when casting an instant spell. Thus not interrupting your damage at all.
  2. Ice Cold This is 0GCD as well, and our “oh-shit” button for inside Combustion if something will one shot us and Alter time or isn’t enough. Beware it’s a very long cooldown. 4 minutes base without Winter’s Protection talented or accounting for Shifting Power reduction.
  3. Ice Block This is an immune, and more often than not a sub-par version of its above variant. We only take this if we specifically need to immune something.
  4. Blazing Barrier Our bread and butter defensive with a very short cooldown of 25 seconds. Applying this in filler when you know damage will be coming before you enter Combustion or Sun King’s Blessing is the best manner to use this. You should only ever use this inside Combustion or Sun King’s Blessing if you will guaranteed die if you do not use it.
  5. Mass Barrier Follows the same rules as Blazing Barrier above, 2 minute cooldown, although can be used to help your teammates out in a pinch too.
  6. Mirror Image Follows the same rules as Blazing Barrier, with a small caveat that while this is purely a defensive, you can use it pre-pull or during high damage amp phases to squeeze a tiny fraction of DPS out more. This is the one defensive I try to get used as close to on cooldown as possible because it does do a very tiny fraction of DPS, and if you aren’t maxing, you’re minning.
  7. Greater Invisibility is our “oh-shit” button for outside of Combustion, and like the others should only ever be used inside Combustion if you will guaranteed die without it.