Pyrthas

Yeah, Vigilance is a joke. But we know why.

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showt...12#post3659012

PBU will do it, too, albeit at twice the recharge.

Anyway, I agree that this isn't as exciting for FF defs as it is for others. The main concern raised here has been that def buffs aren't incredibly useful, and if that's the problem, it won't be solved by making everybody's def buffs Power Boost-able. Of course, this isn't a bad change; I'm not complaining! I just don't think it'll address the major concerns raised in this thread.

I never meant to imply that I wasn't happy. I've been playing this character since a couple days after launch, and I never stick with alts for very long 'cause I always like my main more. I probably made a mistake putting it in terms of how I felt on trials instead of just saying that I thought def buffs were totally useless on trials, which is all I meant to be saying. That's why I started with "I'm not disagreeing with the overall point," only disagreed with UberGuy about trials, and ended by saying that I didn't think FF was bad in other content (which is where I was agreeing with UberGuy about everything else).

Sorry for any confusion!

I'm not disagreeing with the overall point, but I'm pretty convinced that my FF/Dark is nothing but a bad blaster with force bubble in BAFs, and just a bad blaster on everything but the split phase in Lambdas. Yeah, some enemies have higher tohit in the trials, but they just get overwhelmed by the numbers, and it never matters. I throw bubbles around during downtime, but once the fighting starts, I'm just blasting, because I'm confident that it contributes more than the def buffs ever would.

I'm still more than a bad blaster on pug TFs, though.

I figured he meant route.

I'm still confused about how someone who says all that can also say
Maybe I'm just reading too much into "accept"? Maybe you just mean "we must believe that there are people who enjoy this role, since there are, but I discourage them from playing in this style by kicking them from my teams; to each his own, but on my teams, there's only mine"? I don't know.

And on this point, while I lament the terrible damage from /Dark, I will say that I've liked the tohit debuffs occasionally on the trials. As long as I can get a few shots off, those stupid victorias go back to not hitting me at all, and I didn't even have to respec out of my just-barely-hitting-45% build to get there. And the cones debuff everybody, so that's good.

The other thing Amy said is definitely true: Def buffs feel totally useless sometimes. But I leveled up a Traps/Archery def recently, and realized just how big a deal having those shields really was. People were suddenly taking damage again! I even failed two STFs because the teams were badly organized and couldn't tank LR. That never happens with my FF def, because I can softcap whoever's tanking and phase the blue tower and we're probably safe enough to power through. (Especially now with the lore pets; I love Warworks on the towers.)

So yeah, sometimes I feel totally useless, but I know that sometimes I'm still making a difference, and I suspect that sometimes I only feel totally useless, and I'm underestimating the impact of my shields (because sometimes I feel totally useless and then a scrapper tells me at the end of the ITF that they loved the shields because they never had to use their heal).

seems a strange thing to say in light of this: I guess you're saying that being a pure-healing empath (one that ignores not only buffs, but also the entire secondary) is better for the team than being a non-healing empath (one that does everything but the heals). Otherwise, the pure-healing empath would be kicked for not being built such that they can make a good addition to an average team, right?

I think you're completely insane if you think that heals alone are a good addition to an average team but everything else an emp/* can do is not.

Edit: Also, this is a joke, right? Because fortitude, auras, and defender blasts (with defender debuffs) aren't welcome additions if they don't come with heals, right?

Ah, yeah, I can see that. For me, I think that part of it is just what I got used to. I never got used to hover--I've almost never had it--and I'm really used to playing on the ground, so I only fly when I absolutely need to, and then jetpacks are enough.

I'll add: I only really run low when I have some recharge buffs and I'm spamming the cones. And often, in those circumstances, you're in some big AV fight or something and you can drop some toggles. Sprint, at the very least, can go off. Tactics often doesn't matter much, either, and assault isn't a huge deal. But I almost never even bother to drop those two, because I just don't have many end problems.

A lot of this has to do with all the +recovery set bonuses and procs, though. I was using a t1 cardiac before I finished getting all my IOs (and especially the miracle), and it wasn't until after finished that (except for the Glad's Armor, but that doesn't matter) that I felt comfortable dropping the cardiac and building my musculature. Edit: But with a cardiac, it will absolutely have zero end problems (and you'll max your s/l res!), so you could do that if your recovery ends up too low. I really don't have much endrec in the toggles, so cardiac is huge. I just played without it for a bit, and decided that I could get by well enough that I could afford to get that 32.5% damage buff from musculature.


I took fighting because I wanted to softcap myself with weave, and then realized I could also get some good s/l res with tough and an APP shield. As you say, it's possible to resign yourself to being the squishiest person on the team. But where's the fun in that? Every FF def knows how much the softcap can help the rest of the team. Well, it helps you that much, too! And you get good res to two of the commonest damage types to boot! I'm really not very squishy at all. The low hp still makes things a little dangerous, but I run around with a full tray of greens, and actually, it's always at least three full columns of 50% greens that I just collect from drops, which tells you how rarely I have to use them. This is for TFs and trials mainly; ymmv in other situations.


My thoughts on the rest of dark blast: I don't need a damageless disorient (especially when I have repulsion bomb! more on that later), I really don't need kb (especially with the two cones), I never used blackstar when I had it (because the damage is mediocre and I really hate dropping all nine toggles and really the damage sucks), and I don't need a heal because I have insps. That leaves moonbeam. But outside of a couple of special circumstances on TFs and stuff, a snipe just isn't important for me. It definitely isn't important for normal fights--those go soul drain, repulsion bomb if it's recharged, spam cones and ST blasts on the lt/boss/whatever. And I wouldn't want to move slots to it anyway, because that would detract from my damage with my main blasts.

The tohit debuff isn't all that important most of the time, because you and your team should already be softcapped. But when it does make a difference, it's not hard to get enough stacked up with dark blast, gloom, and a cone or two.


Force bubble is almost entirely useless. I would respec out of it for soul transfer or something, but now it's cute on BAF prisoners (just remember to turn it off afterwards! I forget that a lot of the time), and I don't need a self rez either, so I don't mind keeping it. It's also funny on the ITF computer, because you get to push all the robots away and it looks cool, but it can be a little dangerous there so I only do it when I know we'll be fine and it's funny.

You can also use it to push groups into corners to make aoes more effective, but in my experience (on infinity pugs; maybe other servers are different? But I kinda doubt it), things die too quickly to make cute tricks like that actually a good use of everybody's time.


Repulsion bomb, though, is completely awesome, because it's a foe-targeted kd now, not the old ally-targeted kb. The biggest drawback is its terrible activation time, but that's not quite so big a problem as long as you mostly use it to start fights.


And, of course, all of this is based on how I wanted to play. I'm basically a bad blaster with great survivability (compared to other blasters) who happens to also softcap his entire team (and give them good status res), which seemed to me to be the best contribution I could make to my team with my powersets. The survivability helps me there, too. I have no problem jumping into a spawn alongside a tank/brute/scrapper to hit soul drain on, say, an ITF or a Lambda split or something like that, which means I can get started doing damage that much quicker. And that's important, because my damage (even with reactive!) is pretty bad.


Edit: Oh, one final thought. On trials, I often don't even bother bubbling people. Mostly I do it during downtime, like on a BAF while you're waiting for prisoners to spawn or someone to pull the AV, just to have something to do. There are so many buffs flying around anyway that doing bad damage is, I think, a much bigger help to the league. So then I'm really just a bad blaster, which kinda sucks. Oh well.

As another FF/Dark, I fully endorse this. And if you do want to put in the time/inf, you can softcap at all positions and psi with good s/l res (and -kb IOs) and still have lots of slots left over for your attacks. It's not exactly a strong combination, but you can make it work out all right.

This is definitely how I feel. After leveling my Traps, though, I've kept playing my bubbler, partly because I'm stubborn, partly because it's already slotted, and partly because I get annoyed at waiting on FFG.

Also, FF is kinda tankmagey, and it's kinda fun to just run around blasting. With traps, I have to set things up. With FF, I jump into the middle, hit soul drain, and start spamming aoes.

But yeah, Traps is a whole lot more versatile.

Yeah, that's true. It'd be a good thing to have in serious emergencies. I just feel like survivability is almost a complete non-issue in almost every endgame situation with almost every pug. So Rebirth feels like overkill, like Doctor_Kumquat said, and I worry that it would end up sitting unused most of the time. At least Ageless always does stuff (more rech is always good!), even if its impact isn't quite as huge when it's used.

I certainly don't think there's one right answer here, though. Certainly if you want to be more safe, I think Rebirth is the choice. I just don't like spending more powers on safety, because that seems to so rarely be a concern.

Sadly, you can't get both debuff res and recovery at once, but oh well. Like I said earlier, I'm pretty sure I'll go for the debuff res.

That does sound fun. Kinda makes me wish I was //Soul instead of //Dark. But I like my short soul drain recharge too much.