3dent

You may want to read this thread: http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=275643 It's about FF/Beam but there's a lot in it that will apply to any FFer.

And yes, FF/anything can work pretty well without any IOs. No need for global recharge or defence from sets. (well, defence would have been nice, but you can live without it and/or compensate by picking pool and epics.) and lots of slots and power picks you can free by not taking things like cage or repel powers.

It's okay. FF is fun primary to level, esp if you like teaming. It may be a little redundant in the megabuild land most of the regular posters inhabit, but no, it's not useless even in a fully IO'd out team, just not as good as it is while levelling.

FF (and other powersets with "small bubble" type powers) were buffed recently by making all such powers AoE clicks, now applying small bubless is mich less of a tedious chore.

Elec... Well, I have a slight prejudice against the set, and never really played it to high levels, so I might be not the best person to comment on its strengths and optimal strategies. But it's a blast, it has attacks and causes damage, so it can't be all bad choice too.

Plus it was well, Trapdoor.You either need enough damage to knock him out before his gimmicky regen kicks in or have some way to attack him and his copies simultaneously.

Broadly speaking, the short words are the best, and the old words best of all. /Churchill/

Thanks And sorry for posting in the wrong forum, was a bit sleepy.

Less probability of a horde of Fire/kins and MMs farming everything in sight? Not that you can't build most other ATs (incl. doms) into combine harvesters but it's usually easier with trollers and MMs...

And they needed some kind of pet-based AT being available, so they choose the least game-breaking of the 3.

Are you kicked outright or is your membership just "withheld" and restored immediately if you switch back?

One more thing...

FF is somewhat under-appreciated on this forums, because too many forumgoers think in terms of IOed builds. It may be also sometimes under-appreciated in-game because of "Defender=healer" mentality of some novice players. It's in fact a very good set, if somewhat limited in what it does.

Good pool and epic powers you may want to pick are Maneuvers, - it provides even more defense from you and teammates and Power Build Up/Power Boost (although latter requires you to be a villain/rogue at level 35 or higher.) to make your small bubbles even more powerful. For prersonal survivability, you would get more mileage out of powers like [Combat Jumping] and so on than most other sets, see the link below as to reasons why.

You need to understand your main tool, that is, defense buff, very well. This guide: http://dechskaison.blogspot.com/2011...important.html explains wwhat those %s meen in gameplay terms and why 45% (and now 59%) are "magic numbers" everyone wants to have for their defense.

Repel/knockback powers: Force fields have plenty of those, but, please, think what you're doing with them on teams. Most melee armors have a power that works better when a character is surrounded. Shields gets [Against All Odds] (a damage boost), Willpower gets [Rise To The Challenge] *lots of HP regeneration( and so on. All Brutes get bonus to their powers damage when they're attacked. Melee archetypes, thus, understandably, are very annoyed when that nice pile of enemies they assembled around them is thrown away by a "helpful" repeller. Ranged ATs are usually counting on most enemies being around melee characters to use their area attacks most efficiently.

So, however awesome those powers are solo, use them VERY SPARINGLY on a team. Repulsion bomb, and anything that does less than 1.0 of knockback are the exceptions: This kind of knockback doesn't (usually) throw anyone away any significant distance, just on the floor (often referred to as "knockdown") This is in fact, a good thing, except, maybe, for Brutes.

"Cage" powers, like [Detention Field] are a big and unconditional no-no on team, though you may get some mileage out of them solo with a secondary like Beam Rifle, which is geared towards defeating enemies one-by-one.

Awesome! Thanks for the info.

I remember they altered it so that TFs, Ouro arcs, and so on always start as x0/+0 a few years ago (to prevent people from getting easy MO badges) but promised a better fix sometime in the future. So, when trying SSAs I noticed that they reset to x0/+0 and that a few TFs I've been on so far were apparently +0 too... So, that future didn't yet come?

Hmm... If you mean I-Trials, then softcap is higher there. Honestly, I can't quite see a squishy having 59% def without too much sacrifice in their buffs and attacks.