NarfMann

Originally Posted by Grausigkeit

o How do you, oh veterans of City of Heroes, make the game feel fresh, or at least somehow continue scrounging up fun?

Originally Posted by PoptartsNinja

Can you honestly think of any reason to take both Repulsion Field and Force Bubble?

Originally Posted by PoptartsNinja

Forcefields is killed by itself. By the entire powerset.

There are precisely three useful powers in Forcefields, and you have them all by level 12. Once you reach level 12, you have basically every truly useful power in the set, and can spend all the slots you would've spent picking up leadership, stamina, and heck, why not get 'whirlwind'? It's marginally more useful then Repulsion Field.

After level 12, the Forcefield set basically turns schizophrenic and isn't sure what to do with itself, and therefore fills itself with powers that are either borderline, redundant, or in some cases directly harmful to team survivability.

That said, Deflection and Insulation Shield are great and Dispersion Bubble is downright amazing for what it is. The two shield powers have a fairly long duration that makes re-applying them slightly less tedious then re-applying speed boost (or it would, if there weren't two of them).

The rest of the set just lets the three good powers down.



For example:
Personal Force Field is a huuuuuuuge offender, because it actively kills Forcefield's contribution to the team. Not only can you not bubble or blast through it, it also kills the effect of Dispersion Bubble for teammates, potentially cripping your own buffing potential. Even worse, once PFF's on (which can happen accidentally, if you're not paying attention), it's potentially very difficult to notice that it's working if you're running any of your big bubbles. Also, it's great that PFF let you survive the total party wipe! What're you going to do while you wait for the rest of the party to run back from the hospital? For PVP reasons alone I dont' suggest removing PFF, it's iconic and not bad for what it is--it's just awful when taken in the context of Forcefields as a whole. PFF actively hamstrings your contribution to the team.

Force Bolt looks like a damage power. It pretends to be a damage power. But it's not a damage power, it's an anemic soft control that's marginally useful while soloing at low level and you need to keep a melee boss away from you and can't be bothered to turn on hover. Force Bolt tends to annoy melee-centric teammates who now have to chase that very same melee-centric boss half-way to the next spawn, and doesn't provide enough (read, 'any') alpha control to make up for not being a force multiplier. Knockback is basically the second-most maligned form of 'control' in the game. Force Bolt is anemic, situational, and pathetically underpowered

Detention Field is a phase shift. Another control power of dubious merit; and one that can potentially be indirectly harmful to a team's survivability as people can and will waste time and endurance attacking the intangible target. Even better, with D-Bubble up, D-Field becomes basically invisible and only the most canny of teammates will notice the string of 'unaffected' floating above their target's head and switch to a new one--usually just in time for the phase shift to wear off. Also, it doesn't work on bosses, EBs, or AVs which means D-Field is hilariously useless for taking a tough target out of the fight while the team cleans up the minions. D-Field is only useful for removing from the fight (a single) mob of minion or lieutennant level: aka types that your team will simply eliminate during the first 3-4 seconds of combat anyway.

Repulsion Field Hey, remember Force Bolt and PFF? Well, R-Field the reason PFF exists. It's a PBAOE Force Bolt, so it's great at uncontrollably scattering a mob to make combat take longer, tossing mobs into other spawns so your allies AoEs will agro them, and attracting so much agro to you that you'll need to hit PFF to save yourself from the adds. Repulsion Field is both directly and indirectly harmful to your team's survivability; because you can't count on the knockback pulses triggering when you'd want, which makes it really easy to accidentally throw a melee-centric boss at one of your blaster friends rather then into the corner like you'd been aiming for. R-Field is situational, redundant, will piss off your entire team after a few minutes of screwing up their AoEs, and it is, in terms of reliability, outperformed by Force Bolt.

Repulsion Bomb for defenders is a great soft control. It's a targeted AoE knockdown that does reasonable damage. For everyone else, it's a targeted AoE radial knockback which means it's like Repulsion Field but more annoying because you can use it before anyone else can fire off their attacks to scatter a mob all over the place. As a defender power (i.e., performing at its absolute best), Repulsion Bomb renders Force Bolt and Repulsion Field utterly redundant and useless. Once you get Repulsion Bomb, you'll probably never use Force Bolt or Repulsion Field again.

Force Bubble is the final nail in the coffin for Force Bolt and Repulsion Field, and renders Repulsion Bomb a bit less attractive. It's a huuuuuge area repulsion effect that's of a circular shape, so unless the mob you're affecting with it is in the corner it'll simply scatter all over the map. Even better, Force Bubble is simply so huge that it will agro things you can't see due to corners and boxes, which makes running it in a mission (or really, running it at all) an iffy proposition. Even better, it's just as good at making mobs hate you as Repulsion Field, but on a faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar larger scale, which means after running it for a while you'll probably need to use PFF to save your own butt while the rest of the team dies due to the seven or eight spawns you just accidentally aggro'd. That said, Force Bubble is still infinitely more useful then Repulsion Field, since the two basically do the same thing (keeping mobs out of melee with you), but Force Bubble is actually almost good at doing that, while Repulsion Field will just make them (and the rest of your team) punch you in the face. Force Bubble will still typically make your entire team want to punch you in the face.



And that's why Forcefields is awful. It can still be leveraged right, but it has four powers that do basically the same thing (Force Bolt, Repulsion Field, Repulsion Bomb, Force Bubble) and no powers that debuff, boost team damage, or otherwise render the team more potent. If the +defense from the bubbles isn't enough to save people, Force Field has literally no other way to assist them. GG on that PFF, buddy! Now play some solitare while the rest of the team comes back from the hospital.

And yes, I've got a level 50 FF/Elec Defender. I will never play the set again.

And yes, I'm being overdramatic. This entire rant is my opinion, not gospel truth, and if Forcefield has been improved recently I honestly wouldn't know. When I last played it, however, Forcefields was (and likely still is) the Martial Arts of the Defender primaries. It has so much potential that I want to like it, but is typically played so poorly (or is simply usually so unfun to leverage correctly) that it doesn't get used in favor of the more universally effective sets like Dark and Kinetics (and for good reason).

Originally Posted by Tyrrano

It's not like there's a guy standing there sticking a laser pointer in your eye. I think the chances of permanent eye injury are less in a lasik procedure than the chances of a hailstone hitting your glasses and driving a shard of glass into your eye.

Originally Posted by Dr_Mechano

(see new villain arcs for where they finally get the writing right for villains).

Originally Posted by Scythus

It's okay... you just made this DOOOOM post right here, so everything's okay.

Originally Posted by Golden Girl

This is why Emperor Cole will be an awesome Hero

Originally Posted by Darkfaith

Hit up the Tech forums, you'll find plenty of DOOM there at the moment ^.^

Originally Posted by Carnifax_NA

Win!

Your ruining our image of you*, who are we going to cast into the role of the shadowy evil ones now? The janitoral department? Stationary (curse their pen counting ways).

*(Kinda the point I suppose)

Originally Posted by Black Pebble

I'm not watching any videos that don't star me.

Originally Posted by Bramphousian

No, it says you don't get the inf bonus from the victim if you don't take out the whole mob, which is absolutely correct. The civilian doesn't run up and say "Thanks!" and give you the bonus influence/prestige if you take out one of three enemies.

Originally Posted by The_Thorny_Devil

Buzz Lightyear