Hero A Day - Cinder - Block

We have several accounts here at the Fortress Alumina and I have always liked to theme my characters of the same type on a given account. Most of my blasters on one account are Aluminum Men. My Fire Tanks on one account are all dragons. My brutes on one are all knights. On one account, all of my tanks are stony-looking characters and that particular trend started with...

Cinder - Block

This character started when I kept seeing good things about Stone/Fire tanks on the forum and decided that I needed to try one. The back of a napkin concept is a gas line worker who falls into a crack in the earth during an earthquake while repairing a gas line. He emerges with fire powers and a new stony form - not very detailed I know but this was more mechanically-inspired than concept-inspired.

Additionally Triumph server is where a lot of our kid characters are located and we didn't have a solid tank there. When I run with them a tank would be good to have and I knew this would be a strong both offensively with AOE's and defensively vs. everything so it would be a good choice for this role - only tank, usually teamed up.

Stone armor is widely considered the strongest tanker primary having a mix of some defense and a lot of resistance. It also has some very harsh movement penalties with it's higher level powers so there are some tradeoffs to be made. I have not run a stone tanker up out of the single digits before so this is another new set for me, although I have teamed with one for 30+ levels so I've seen it up close.

Fire melee is widely considered the best AOE attack set among the tanker secondaries and considering that the job of the tank is to pull in and hold the attention of enemies they are usually surrounded by multiple opponents which makes AOE's a very strong way to fight. At low levels Fire has Combustion for its first AOE which combines with Mud Pots, the Stone Armor damage aura, for a nice AOE damage zone in battle. During the leveling up process fire has decent single-target attacks too so it works even then.

The synergy of these two powers is in their lack of synergy - Fire doesn't slow the opponent, or knock them back, or drain endurance, or stun them - it's "extra" is that is does more damage. Stone armor is so strong it doesn't need any mitigation from the offense - it can handle the load on it's own, having no real weaknesses in its defensive capabilities. This makes Fire melee a very good fit with Stone, as opposed to some other primaries which need some mitigation from the attack set.

His travel power is Super Leap - it just seems to fit, and Combat Jumping + Acrobatics just makes his defenses that much stronger.  Other pools will include Fighting and possibly Leadership. I don't care much for Hasten on tanks as it tends to burn through their endurance that much faster. Many Stone tankers like teleport as a movement power to bypass the speed penalties from Stone but I am not going to take it unless I absolutely have to.

For the look I wanted a huge flaming stony guy. Huge body model + Stone costume was the base. I wanted him to look as if his powers manifested from some internal fire so I gave his stone armor the "Lava" look and went with red as the main hot color. I carried this over to his attack powers as well tuning the color until the swords in particular looked just right. He still needed some personality though so sunglasses and a cigar topped off the look. For future costumes I may give him more color in his basic stone outfit and I may add the Omega aura in some fashion with a red tint to the flames. Down the road he might even get a cape as his "dress uniform".

Cinder - Block runs on the Triumph server and is usually on a team - if you see us passing by give us a shout.