BurningChick

We've got a kitten with the same issue

Unfortunately, claws / poison doesn't work in CoH ...

And neither does claws / spazz (everyone in the family has a kitten-related injury from things like doors slamming, thunder, bug flying close, etc.) ...

Claws / SR hepped up on SB, maybe. I'm thinking full-on scrapperlock, attention span of a fruit fly. But there has to be a side of BAF-induced confusion.She's not so good at telling friend from foe, so everything ends up scratched, but not really finished.

The old cat? An ice tanker. Who never leaves Hibernate. Always seems to be cold, no matter the temperature. Secondary's irrelevant 'cause ... well ... he's not apt to do anything.

Nope -- I spent the first few weeks of I5 trying to creatively use FF's Final Three. Hovered over mobs to minimize KB. Practiced playing billiards with Force Bolt. Tried, as Statesman once suggested, to use Repulsion Bomb (the ally-targetted version) to save teammates from unwanted melee attention. Used Repulsion Field more effectively than Repulsion Bomb to save teammates from melee. Pulsed Force Bubble to push mobs into debuffs. Ran missions with FB always on. Used it selectively to clump mobs in convenient geometry. Tried to track the difference in mitigation before and after FB got a KB component (minimal -- on solo spawns, I'd see something get KBed once every 3 or 4 spawns). You name it. I'm neither stupid nor all that lazy.
What I will say is ...

Maneuvers is more effective at reducing incoming damage on one's teammates than Force Bubble, Repulsion Field, Detention Field, and Repulsion Bomb combined through over 99% of the game's content. FF's design is fundamentally, if not fatally, flawed.

Keeping mobs at range for the ghetto damage debuff of 20ish % (30 if you have the end to consistently bounce mobs with Repulsion Field) isn't good enough to deal with the hassles inherent with KB and 50' worth of repel. Especially when you consider that a passive, pool toggle /halves/ incoming damage for your teammates.

That said, I'm not saying that Force Bubble isn't fun -- it's one of the game's coolest powers. It's just not one of the game's most useful. And if you want use KB and repel? I'm not going to stop you. And, frankly, I won't ***** about it in-game, either. You pay your $15, just like me. I might part ways with you earlier than otherwise, but you know that some players will do that anyway.

As for the comparison between Force Bubble and Hurricane? At least Hurricane has a heavy -ToHit debuff to go along with the repel. All FB has is a token KB component that, in my experience, fires too irregularly to be of much use.

Ahhhhh ...

You can't attack my argument, so you attack me instead.

Nice

Well ...

A long time ago, I ran some tests with Force Bubble on my FF / rad -- nothing all that rigorous, but what I found is that Force Bubble reduced incoming damage by about 20% compared to not using it (piece of trivia: lieuts / snipers have the same 1x modifier for their ranged and melee attacks), but reduced MY damage output by nearly a third. So ... it would take longer to finish a mish, resulting in my bubbler taking more damage over the course of the mish than if she hadn't bothered with FB.

Granted, Cosmic Burst had a shorter range back then, but FB negated my best ST attack (Cosmic Burst) and my most versatile AoE (Irradiate).

Those sweet spots for FB in tight corners just don't happen all that often. And, over the course of a mission, will result in ... well, not much overall protection.

The devs have added in a few high level missions tailor-made for Force Bubble, but that's simply throwin' a dog a bone, as it were.

The primary fault of FF is that Maneuvers adds more protection to a bubbler's teammates than the final three powers combined.

Edit: Also worth noting: to the best of my knowledge, the devs haven't add a new cage since Sonic, even in sets where it would be thematically appropriate. FF is filled with dogs, and the dearth of new caging, repel, and (high mag) KB powers since CoV's release speaks volumes about how useful the devs feel these powers are.

Just to play devil's advocate ...

When you're playing on a team when it's likely your teammates are /more/ than softcapped, why even bother with Force Bubble?

Why would you throw out an AoE that disrupts other people's AoEs?

FF was designed for a game with a ST, tactical component, but we ended up with an AoE zergfest, a design the devs have embraced, whole-heartedly, with only one detour during the I5 nerfs.

Quick ... how many powers have had their KB mag increased since release? How many powers have had their KB decreased? How many repel powers have been added? In fact, one of the only times the devs have broken their coveted cottage rule was by removing a Repulsion Field clone from stalker EA.

The game has changed, significantly, since release. The playstyle the devs anticipated FF would slip into doesn't exist. FF should've been re-tooled years ago. But the devs took the easy way out and simply turned three powers into an "I Win!" combination for a bubbler's teammates.

I like the game. I like the devs. But I think the devs have horribly mismanaged FF.

Yup -- FFG has a base def of 13 (for defenders) versus Dispersion Bubble's 10.

And, Psylenz, I /did/ say "outside of PFF"

Hmmmm ...

Just to add on to what Deacon said about FF, I'll toss out a few things.

FF's primary (if not quite its only) focus is protection. Some of the sets introduced since release have weaseled into that niche while offering (admittedly) lesser protection with some other goodies. The problem with focusing on protection is that some toons (and, frankly, some ATs) don't need all that much protection to go from tough to unkillable. And FF is completely over the top for them.

FF's lack of flexibility means that min / maxers generally avoid the set.

For the soloist, defender Traps has a version of Dispersion Bubble that, over time, costs less endurance to run AND has higher base def. So, outside of PFF, bubblers can't even lay claim to having the best +def self buff available in a defender primary.

The best reason to play FF? It's freaking easy. If you do it right, you can buff you entire team in 2 clicks once every 3:45 and spend the rest of your time punching mobs in the face.

And, honestly, FF is NOT bad, not by any stretch. It's just that it's a relic from the game's early days when the devs clearly believed that they had made a game with a single target, tactical element ... instead of the AoE-fuelled zerg-fest it really is. And the devs have tried to maintain FF's flavour (distance / defense / mez protection) while keeping its performance OK (FF's buffs right now are FAR more effective than they were at release).

Worst combination?

My release-era fire / fire tanker with an OMG bad build.

I heard there was a great T1 power in speed and took ... flurry.

I didn't build with with stamina in mind, so I had some end issues.

I had no idea that taunt was single target. Not that this toon needed aggro.

And ... I skipped burn

Otherwise, I deliberately took two sets that the forum crowd didn't like for CoV's launch, stone and EA. And made one. Some things were, hmmmm, challenging.

These days? I don't think any set stands out as uniquely awful (I would've said Poison a few weeks ago, but it seems to be getting buffed). What I will say is that is that one class of powers, cages, underwhelms.

And FF is still larded with situational / pointless powers even if, as a whole, the set performs pretty well.

Howdy,

Sorry for the late reply -- didn't see your post.

If you go through my post history, you will indeed find me taking the devs to task for not supporting PvP. Worse, Posi actually promised on-going PvP support during I13's beta and didn't deliver (yup, I've mentioned that one also).

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showt...si#post3436163
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showt...si#post3414267
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showt...si#post3207160

I'm sure I've missed some others.

Posi's broken promise about on-going support for PvP, IME, stands out as the worst broken promise from a dev in the game's history.

I soloed my way through all the Praetorian AVs, no issues, and can drop 2 Rikti pylons in under 5 minutes.

FWIW, I think the build could be tightened up but ... I hate respeccing.

Just remember to lead with Seeker Drones (if they're slotted with -ToHit, nothing much will hit you, no need to go nuts to be soft capped with traps / dark) to soak up the alpha, than start unloading. Depending on what's charged, I'll throw down Acid Mortar > Tentacles > Caltrops > Nightfall. I LOVE the combination of Tentacles and Caltrops -- the DoT combined with procs is lovely to watch.

Edit: I should also add that, while Traps does have a lot of powers with long(ish) animations and long(ish) recharge times, the ability to slot a surprising number of procs into your key debuffs means a couple things: your DPS won't by hurt all that much if you focus on using your primary (loaded with damage procs); you can layer on complementary effects from different powers (i.e., stacked holds + stacked disorients + the immob from Tents mean you can keep mobs within range of all your traps).

One last thought -- don't be afraid to pull additional spawns into your traps.

From the outside looking in, the bolded bit is how people see science fiction and fantasy -- as one genre loosely defined as depicting the world as something than it is or was. From the inside, people not only see divisions between SF and fantasy, but they can further pigeon hole works into "cyberpunk" or "steampunk", "swords and sorcery", or "high fantasy".

People like labelling things -- the story of labelling things even shows up rather early in western literature. And, further, people also like arguing about those labels, especially if some sort of group identification is at stake.

FWIW, I actually think the SF / Fantasy section in a bookstore is relatively sane. But ... fiction? Krikey. You can have 3 solid centuries' worth of novels crammed in next to each other, from the epistolic (The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker) to the psychotic (The Naked Lunch) and lord knows what else in between.

But ...

Complaining about omissions and egregiously bad choices is more than half the fun of lists

In other words, much depends on context and the way the story's been told

Frankenstein's a bridge between Gothic and SF -- it used many standard motifs and themes, but turned some well-established Gothic traditions upside down by replacing the supernatural with the scientific (or, at least, more centred on physical reality). That was a bold move. It was even bolder for a young women at the time to earn her living by writing (her husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley) died young.

Mary Shelley's a very, very special writer.

At least that's my story, and I'm sticking to it. I'm a long ways out of university so I might be fuzzy on the details

From day 1 through to about i7, the dev line (per Jack, during a speech at a conference) was that bases were the single most expensive piece of tech added to the game. Bases were originally PvP-driven (CoP / base raids) -- that is, any way you slice it, a pretty fair amount of coin. RV, by i7, was the most technologically advanced zone released (ability to change the appearance of the zone based on in-game conditions was huge). Throw in The Arena, the PvP zones, and the dev-time required for Issue 13, and I feel I'm on solid ground saying that PvP has seen an awful lot of time and money thrown at it.

As for my credentials? Meh. I read a lot, and have a solid memory for what I've read. Been around off and on (but mostly on) since day 2 or 3.

Uhhhhh ...

Dude? Seriously.

I've been around this game for a long time. I remember the cries for PvP. I remember the cries for zones and lewt and mini-games. The players asked for them, and the devs delivered them. Whether or not the devs had these on their white board from alpha is irrelevant.

I have absolutely no idea what your point is.

The devs have a pretty good record in delivering the features the game's players asked for. That's the bottom line. You can pick nits about "king of the hill this" and "carry the flag that," but the devs delivered many of the features people wanted for PvP.

How many people farmed PvP IOs. Hands up!

I'm guessing relatively few, less than 20%. That's still indifference, and is certainly not widespread activity.

A handful people certainly did get mad over PvP. But the I13 changes caused not much more than a ripple in the larger population (BaB famously said that the number of people leaving and coming back around I13 wasn't all that different from the numbers seen in previous issues).

Not sure what the vandalism thing's about. Indifference, to me, has something to do more with a low rate of acceptance and less to do with acting out.

The devs have put a large effort into PvP -- fact.

The devs have seen little return for their effort -- fact.

The devs have delivered, broadly, on many of the features people have asked for -- fact.

What, precisely, are you disagreeing with?

Edit: I should add that there's little reason to assume that reverting PvP to i12 rules would cause a massive influx of people to PvP, and there's even less reason to assume that further dev time spent on tweaking the current PvP rules would generate better RoI than working on PvE content. Argue all you want, but I think it's pretty safe to say that the devs made that business decision some time during I13's beta. Unfortunately, the devs lack the stones to come out 'n' say PvP's development has been shelved for the foreseeable future.

Bill,

You're glossing over the fact that PvP has chewed up disproportionate resources over its history for the number of hours spent PvPing.

That's what it comes down to.

Not to be dismissive of the PvP community's legitimate complaints, but the devs have done a pretty fair job of implementing what the players have asked for: the arena itself; zones; mini-games; rewards. But nothing ever stuck with the broader community, and attempts to make PvP more broadly popular have been met with, at best, indifference.

PvP has been a boondoggle in CoH, and I don't think any amount of dev and community time would fix it.

This game has PvP?






I kid I kid!

But, honestly, I can't see the devs gating PvP since access to PvP, IIRC, is still a requirement for one or two red-side accolades that can be had through PvE blue-side.

As for bringing in fresh meat? I doubt it. I once had Arcanaville try to explain DR to me and ... it didn't go well. I don't think I'm all that stupid, but the current PvP baffles me. It's too arcane, if you will, for wide acceptance in an otherwise straight-forward button-masher.