Yeah, there's already a guide that claims to be ff/rad -- but it only covers ff. And it's all big on facts and low on emotional gut choices! So here it is... Mar-Vin's Guide to Force Field / Radiation Defending! I know you're excited.
You can find rundowns of the powers and their mathematical implications elsewhere if you're into that. It's all about gameplay here.
So you've decided to be a FF/Rad defender? Great choice! A lot of people will give you guff for not being a healer, believe me. But those people don't realize what we already know: you don't need to heal a toon that nobody can hit.
I'm going to go through my build power by power and tell you why I picked the powers I did, how I slotted them, and why I ignored other ones. Follow this blueprint, and you'll end up with a team player that's also capable of soloing in a pinch. If you're not interested in teaming, you shouldn't be building a defender in the first place...but this guy can do some damage.
FORCE FIELDS!
1. Personal Force Field (1xAttack Rate, 2xDefBuff)
This power gets a bad rap, doesn't it? Well, it's saved me from death more times than I care to count. Slap this sucker on, and it takes some seriously powerful bad guys to get through. You can't hit them either, of course, but still. Also great for aggravating gullible PvPers.
2-4. Deflection Shield, Insulation Shield, Dispersion Bubble (1xEndRedux 3xDefBuff each)
Any bubbler who doesn't have these three powers is completely useless in my book. These are the powers that make bubbling worthwhile. The first two only work on teammates; the third works on everyone near you, yourself included. DS and IS stay on your teammates for several minutes, so every now and then you just have to click through and re-bubble each teammate. Now, thanks to you, they're very difficult to hit. This is why people love bubblers.
5. Force Bolt (1xAcc, 2xKnockback)
I like FB as a solo power mostly. Obviously it's not nice to knock bad guys off your scrapper friends. On the other hand, it's great to knock them off your squishy pals, and yourself. Plus you can send flying robots crashing to the ground. All in all I found myself using this power often. Also this power is apparently particularly good for PvP, as it shuts off your enemy's toggles...
6. Detention Field (2xAcc, 2xRange)
It took me a long time to get this power. I avoided it because, let's face it, it's not for teaming. Usually you just end up detaining a villain for too long, and everyone stands around glaring at you. Yes, this is a power for soloing. In that respect it can come in quite handy. Up against a Fake Nemesis and his underlings? Pop a bubble on the Fake Nem, take out his cronies, and then you're ready to face the big bad one on one...as soon as that damned bubble drops...
7. Force Bubble (1xEndRedux)
I got this power dead last, at level 50. Unfortunately, you picked maybe the only primary power set with a nearly-worthless top 3 powers. I only got it because it seems silly to not use your top primary power, and maybe because it looks cool. Feel free to put something else in this slot, if you can think of anything good. Some people use FB to pin their enemies for better blasting, but I prefer my enemies close enough to Cosmic Burst, as you shall see.
I never found any use whatsoever for Repulsion Field or Repulsion Bomb. (Or Force Bubble for that matter.) Repulsion Field eats up the endurance like you wouldn't believe; Repulsion Bomb is used to seldom to be effective in my book. (You have to target an ally, and then remember where the heck you stuck that power...by the time you're ready, the danger has passed.) But all the other powers are pretty great.
Now then. Thanks to Enhancement Diversification, you can't enhance your FF powers as much as I'd like to be able to. (Most of them can only really benefit from defense buffs, you see.) That means you'll have to slot the more versatile Rad secondary powers.
RADIATION!
8. Neutrino Bolt (1xAcc, 3xDefDebuff, 2xDamage)
9. X-Ray Beam (1xAcc, 2xDefDebuff, 3xDamage)
Early on, these two will be your one-two punch. X-Ray Beam takes a little longer to recharge, but it's a bit more powerful, so it'll be NB - XRB - NB - NB - XRB - NB and on and on. It does some pretty good damage, let me tell you.
I've heard people complain that X-Ray Beam doesn't fit with their character design. Hey, look, I'm a three-eyed Martian, and I've only got two beams coming out of my face. What's that about? Is my third eye purely decorative? Anyway, if I did it, so should you. Not picking X-Ray Beam is just plain foolish.
10. Irradiate (1xAcc, 3xDefDebuff, 2xDamage)
Just a nice little AoE to take your foes down a peg or three. Great for big groups -- it weakens their defenses and drains some health too. I'm a fan.
11. Aim (1xAttackRate 3xToHitBuff)
I resisted for a while, but I gotta admit, we need it. You'll notice most of these rad powers have a Acc buff. Well, that's because we can't hit to save our lives. Aim helps in that category, plus it boosts your power, which is great when you're about to jump on someone big and scary. So why did I avoid it so long? Because it only lasts a few seconds, that's why. But many have been the times that I've needed to make absolutely sure the next shot counted, especially when using the next power to disable a major player...
12. Cosmic Burst (1xAcc, 2xDisorientDuration, 2xDefDebuff, 1xDamage)
This is the one, kids. Write this down: COSMIC BURST. If there's one power in this set that makes you a "defender, but..." it's this. Get it as soon as you can. You have to get in pretty close to use it, but when it hits, it hits for some pretty major damage, and more importantly it disorients big time. This is my first strike power, always, and it makes up my 1-2-3 punch: Cosmic Burst, followed by a barage of NB and XRB while I wait for Cosmic Burst to charge up again. By the time my enemy gets his head together, CB is ready to roll again...with this power, no moderately-powerful individual villain should ever threaten you again.
13. Atomic Blast (1xAcc, 2xDefDebuff, 3xDamage)
Why am I slotting all of these for DefDebuff? Because we're defenders darnit! That's our whole milieu! Anyway, this power's pretty fun, but avoid using it solo; it'll hurt everyone pretty bad, but it won't necessarily kill them, and they'll recover before you do. Still, a pretty great nuke, and much better than the three top FF powers. Any survivers will be disoriented for a while, and you'll be totally without endurance, and it takes forever to recharge. But get it anyway.
I left out Electron Haze, which is actually pretty cool; Proton Volley, a snipe for which I had no use (X-Ray Beam has a fine range); and Neutron Bomb, which isn't all that easy to use. None of these are particularly bad, but there's other stuff you might need more, like, oh, let's say...
POWER POOLS
FITNESS
14. Swift (1xRunSpeed)
15. Health (3xHeal)
16. Stamina (3xEndMod)
Yeah, yeah, I know. Everyone gets stamina, and that's totally lame. Well, look, Mar-Vin tried to dump the Fitness pool post-I6, since there was this across-the-board stamina increase, but that lasted all of five seconds. Slot your toon the way I have, and get stamina, and you'll get tired a lot less often. That's important enough to me that I got stamina back and stuck with it. As for health, well, a lot of people seem to think it's not all that great, but I definitely notice a difference, and when you find yourself just barely surviving a battle with 1hp left, you'll thank me. Whether you get swift or hurdle is your call of course.
TELEPORTATION
17. Recall Friend (1xDecrease Interrupt Time)
18. Teleport (3xRange, 3xEndRedux)
Teleport is the least user-friendly travel power, it's true. But it's also the fastest single travel power, and slotted as I have, you can traverse just about any distance faster than your teammates without breaking a sweat. In fact, you could probably slot it a little less zealously and still be in pretty good shape. As for Recall Friend, well, it's just a nice thing to have. If you're a team build like Mar-Vin, you're interested in making things easier for your teammates, and Recall Friend is great for getting slower guys to the action fast, and for pulling people out of nasty situations.
Caveat: I used to have TP Foe, way back in the day, before PvP. It had some problems. Namely, I could pretty much only use it on minions; and even then, it only worked about half the time; and even when it did work, it generally alerted all of the bad guys to my location. So, entirely useless. I understand it has some PvP applications, but whatever. I'm against.
LEADERSHIP
19. Assault (1xEndRedux)
20. Tactics (2xToHitBuff)
21. Vengeance (2xToHitBuff, 2xDefBuff, 2xHeal)
I think most defenders will agree with me that Leadership is an excellent pool for us. If you'd rather get Maneuvers than Tactics, that's perfectly reasonable, and you can slot it with defense buffs, a much more useful enhancement. I used to have Maneuvers, but I switched to Tactics, mainly because I was already buffing everyone's defense to an insane degree. Don't get both, though -- too many toggles can be a drain. Tactics is a must-have, of course. Everyone loves an accuracy boost.
Oh, what's that you say? You think it's odd that I six-slotted Vengeance? Well, here's the thing: I LOVE Vengeance. It's great! HUGE buffs all around, plus it's my one and only heal. If one of my teammates dies, I can use that corpse to make the rest of us a virtually unstoppable fighting machine. I think a lot of people avoid Vengeance, thinking it's their job to make sure nobody dies in the first place. Well, face it: toons are gonna die. It happens. You're not a healer; you did all you could. Now your friend's on the floor and everyone else is hurting worse for it. Now is the time...for VENGEANCE! Well, maybe it's just me.
So we can buff our teammates' defense, and debuff our foes' defense. We can even buff accuracy and damage to a small degree. But we have no control over endurance. Enter Electricity Mastery.
EPIC POWER POOL: ELECTRICITY MASTERY
22. Electric Fence (2xacc, 3xImmoblilizationDuration, 1xEndMod)
Did I say you were unstoppable back when you got Cosmic Burst? Well, now it's just unfair. First, hit your foe with CB. Then, slap an Electric Fence on them. Now they're disoriented, so they can't hit you; and they're immobilized, so they can't limp away while you take out their friends. Like Cosmic Burst, sometimes it takes a few tries before you get the immobilization to take hold on a powerful baddy, but even high-level bosses will eventually be stuck in the fence.
23. Charged Armor (2xDamageResistance)
Not much to say about this one, except that I feel like we have a lot of powers that buff our friends' defense, but not much to buff our own, except for Dispersion Bubble. Hey, I'm not knocking Dispersion Bubble...but our teammates have two other bubbles on them! Sometimes you need a little extra protection.
24. Power Sink (3xEndMod)
Sucks endurance from your foes and into you. Even with the stamina and the EndReduxes, you still get wiped out sometimes. Believe me, it comes in handy. And picture this: You're in a spot, so you use Atomic Blast. Everyone's disoriented but still alive, and you're completely wiped out. Without missing a beat, you pop a small blue, hit Power Sink, and suddenly you're up to full endurance again -- you still aren't growing it back yourself, but you have enough power now to take out the remaining bad guys before they even recover from your nuke.
There you have it. What a truly fantastic, fun toon. Just remember, when people send you the following tell:
"r u healr?"
...you tell them healers are for WIMPS.
