Starshield

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Well the reborn Philotic Knight is now a level 21... it's been a while since I've been above the travel power level, and I just discovered yet another use for an old power. I was playing against some Devouring Earth and I made the lovely and suprising discovery that with Repulsion Field on, SWARMS can only hit you once before they get knocked off of you. I know swarms are a thorn in the side of many, so you might want to consider trying this.

Rather than being able to sit there and sting you over and over, slowing your recharge speed substantially, with repulsion field on they can't stay on you! And as long as you stay out of melee range, the endurance drain with the power on is almost negligible.

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Hm. I'm a bit surprised here. They must have changed the way swarms work with KB and Repel recently. It used to be that Star never used RF at all in DE missions primarily because pesky swarms would sit around in RF range without being blown away thus draining her dry in seconds.

I wonder if Force Bubble now works on them... That was one of my bigger disappointments upon first getting the power way back when. It can't even keep freakin *bees* away from me???

Its funny. Every toon I've ever had that didn't have easy access to high level twinking pretty much intentionally accrued mass amounts of debt around levels 18-22 to save up influence for 22. And I pretty much consider it mandatory to spend a fair percentage of my time in debt the few levels before enhancements go red all the way up to the late 30s or so when I'm swimming in more influence than I know what to do with.

If you don't get debt, you'll go broke much easier!

Just a note here that as far as I am concerned the "Big 3" should really be the "Big 4" - as I don't consider Force Bolt to really be an optional power for a Bubbler. Its the one utility power in the set that absolutely any build of FF'er with any focus at all - PvE, PvP, Offender, Defender, Deftroller, etc - can get a *lot* of good mileage out of.

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Knockback is a VERY effective tool if used by a skilled

[/ QUOTE ] I have enough skill not to need knockback in the first place.

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Now behave. Force Bolt (for example) is one hell of a useful and effective power used properly. Knockback doesn't *have* to be used to spread mobs out! Force Bolt bounce shots to drop strays into debuff fields was always a Starshield specialty.

It just takes skill to use KB in such a way that it sometimes benefits an AOE focused team, while it is extremely easy to use it in such a way as to completely cheese off your teammates.

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Heck. I'd vote for nixing the whole freakin "purple arrow" system entirely and just making some variant of PvP suppression apply to AVs and Monsters.


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I would swear this is what they have currently just working in reverse. It supresses the Monster/AV's mez resistance.

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I thought the purple arrows were on simple timers that raised and lowered their MAG resistance completely unrelated to the amount of mezzing flying about.

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As to normal AVs, I have been able to stack enough knock with my energy blaster to knock them down occasionally (its possible this only works in tandem with someone else with knockback), although they are normally extremely resistant to single applications of knockback.


As to skill, I was referring to controlling KB in general, not on monsters specifically. When you do manage to knock over a monster or an AV, their KB resistance virtually always guarantees that it will be knockdown, not knockback, so control is not an issue in those fights specifically.

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And my larger bone to pick is.... how many other Defenders have half their powersets invalidated against the strongest opponents in the game? Holds, Sleeps, Disorients - all of these can be easily and predictably stacked to affect AVs during their vulnerable periods. KB/KD? You've gotta get the timing just right, hit them at just the right time, and even if you succeed you've managed to prevent them from attacking for two seconds... And Repel (the effect, not the power by that name) - which doesn't prevent them from attacking at all - has no effect on them whatsoever!! What's wrong with this picture? I get that they want to make AVs and Monsters nasty and scary. I'm not sure I get why that means they should be so much more effectively resistant to "soft controls" like KB and keepaway powers than they are to the big controller guns that shut them down entirely for long stretches!

Heck. I'd vote for nixing the whole freakin "purple arrow" system entirely and just making some variant of PvP suppression apply to AVs and Monsters.

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Considering none of the KB and Repel powers work on Monsters *at all* (or the majority of AVs for that matter), I fail to see where the skill of the Bubbler even enters into it...

[/ QUOTE ] Ha...I guess that explains why I felt so worthless.

As far as Knockback not working "at all" I know that KnockDown does. I know that KnockDown/Back can be implemented as the same power but differentiated by magnitude. I am pretty sure I've seen AV's get knocked back...but i won't bet my life on that. I thought I'd seen Monsters get pushed around, but maybe they we AV's, or maybe there part of missions or maybe they were doing that thing were they they move, but you dont' see the animation of their feet moving and I thought it was a Hurricane or Force Bubble pushing them around.

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I have seen this too on very rare occasions. But the chance is so low it cannot be counted upon. I have spammed the likes of Force Bolt at AVs non-stop with no effect. And I've never seen Force Bubble have the slightest effect on one. There are a few KB vulnerable AVs. So there may also be a few "Monsters" that can be affected as well. But the majority simply ignore both effects.

Note also that there is (spotty) evidence that Controller's "critical mez" works with KB/KD - allowing them to occasionally knockabout things that would otherwise be unaffected.

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I'd be willing to argue my perspective is much broader than yours. Rather than bemoaning what I can't do and acting like everyone else can do what I can...I recognize what I can do that others can't. I've played the other sets. I've teamed with the other sets. If you want to feel worthless in a fight, go fight a Monster with FF. Unless you can find a corner to FB him into...you are going to annoy others if you push it into other mobs or out of location AoE's.


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A good FF, someone with skill comparable to that necessary to get trick arrow out of the gate without tripping, doesn't need a corner.

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Considering none of the KB and Repel powers work on Monsters *at all* (or the majority of AVs for that matter), I fail to see where the skill of the Bubbler even enters into it...

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Its not entirely accurate to say Defender secondaries function at 65% of Blaster primaries, across the board.

Defender secondaries do 65% of the DAMAGE of the equivalent blaster primary power.

They do not have 65% of the range or cost an extra 35%, or have an extra 35% recharge time.

The secondary effects are not necessarily at 65% Its not like PowerBurst has 35% less chance to Knock-back, or a weaker Knockback distance for defenders. Defenders do drain more END than blasters do, even though that is a Defender Secondary vs. a Blaster Primary.

When comparing the relationship and inequalities between Blaster/Defender and Defender/Controller sets, it is necessary to keep that in mind.

Glossing over those type of things can turn an otherwise objective post into a partisan rant.

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That's a double-edged sword you're pulling out there Q. Controllers don't suffer 80% endurance, range, recharge, etc in using our primaries as their secondaries either....

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For FF at least, there is very little, if any, incentive to take it as a primary other than concept. The whole set works much better, more synergistically, with controllers and MM's.

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You know what? I think this is probably close to the crux of the whole Defender/Controller/Blaster issue. Controller Primaries/Secondaries synergize extremely well. There are *lots* of ways to use the powers together to make the whole greater than the sum of the parts. Defender primaries / secondaries (and Blasters for the most part) do not work together *nearly* so well. It is no coincidence that the Defender sets considered to be the strongest - like Dark and Rad - are those whose primaries best leverage their secondaries. And this is in large part because for most Defender secondaries the damage component is the only power function that can be meaningfully leveraged by primary powers. It is no coincidence that the Dark secondary - for example - is so much stronger for many primaries than the others. Powers like TT can work together with other Defender abilities to synergize in ways that no power in Energy Blast can manage. And the to-hit debuff stacks with many Defender buffs and debuffs better than anything in...say...Archery. Even Dark doesn't go nearly far enough to my mind, but it shows hints of the direction all Defender secondaries ought to go in order to bring Defenders as a whole up to par.

Blaster secondaries... I'll leave to a different discussion. That's a whole 'nother kettle o' fish.

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then why play a Defender at all

[/ QUOTE ] This is a different subject all together. But...I think the answer to this questions is more accessible following the AT modifier method than the Primary>Secondary philosophy. In other words, I'd rather defender superiority be achieved through our AT modifier than the fact we have it as a primary and they have it as secondary. I can't give you anything substantive to base this on so I know you'll accept it as gospel postehaste.

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I would actually agree with this. I think the Defender's problem is simply that their declared "speciality" is not nearly common enough in their own powersets. It rarely consititutes more than half the powers in their primary sets, and its impact on the secondary sets is largely unnoticeable because the base values are so low. And far more effort has been sunk into making Controllers unquestionably the masters of Control than into enforcing any such mastery of buff/debuff for Defenders. Possible fixes?

1) Defender buffs/debuffs last longer than anybody elses in addition to being quantitatively stronger. Problem: This would do very little for some sets (like FF) unless a way were implemented to make mobs take longer to get up after a Defender knocked them down. Then again since KD is almost more a "control" than a "debuff" it may not even be applicable.

2) Accept that one of a Defender's roles is "soft control" and let Defenders have a bonus to such powers as slows, Immobs, KB, Repel, etc. "Hard controls" like Disorient and Hold are obviously Controller turf, but this is such a strong bailywick there is no reason for them to need a strong advantage over Defenders at other forms of control.

3) Allow Defenders to be "second-best" at control - giving them say half the Controller control bonus. Controllers are clearly the second-best buff/debuffers. Note that they get half the "AT bonus" to leadership powers that Defenders receive. And AT overlap is already extreme. Why should Defenders not intrude on their turf as much as they intrude on Defenders'?

4) Allow Defenders low-level self-status protection. I know. It will never happen. But it would suddenly give Defenders a concrete, useful, meaningful edge in both PvE and PvP. Look at how ubiquitous IM is among Controllers even since it became non-perma. It would make them more effective at their primary purposes. And their damage is low enough that there is little danger of Defenders suddenly acheiving tank-mage status.

5) Substantially increase the debuff values and/or durations of defender blasts. Problem: What to do with Archery and Energy? Increased KB distance on Energy would be of questionable utility, and increased KB chance would actually be detrimental as often as it would be advantageous.

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It would also be difficult to make a strong case for force bubble being significantly in favor of controllers, since it has a defense component.

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Just a comment here... Force Bubble has *no* defense component *whatsoever*. It does Repel with a very small percentage chance of Knockdown. That's it. Nothing else. For long while the text *said* that it included a to-hit debuff as well, but that was removed in *Beta*.

This is actually one of the big complaints with the power. It draws a lot of aggro without effectively mitigating the incoming damage to the defender. Sure most of it will be ranged. Most of it will *also* now be concentrated on the least-defended member of the team rather than distributed. And the extreme range to which it pushes mobs and its unlimited effect means that in any large team it can easily draw more aggro than any other power in the I6 world. Heck. I would *love* the power on a Granite tank....

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Containment certainly helps controller damage, but that's not strictly speaking relevant to whether or not the controller FF set outperforms the defender FF set.


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It is in that as one of the unlucky Defender sets with no offense boosting capabilities FF has less to distance it from equivalent Controller damage. Radiation can (ostensibly) rely on a stronger AM and a stronger EF to increase its offensive prowess relative to a Rad Controller. An FF Defender has no such additional counter to containment.

Clearly the Devs believe the "greater damage" of Force Bolt and Repulsion Bomb to be a meaningful difference (even though the base damage for both is trivial). This would imply that "greater damage" is supposed to be one of a Defender's advantages. For Defenders with no offense boosting primary powers it is very questionable how true this is. Given how *unquestionable* is a Controller's superiority at controlling even relative to the Defender's superiority at buffing/debuffing... I would think that for the relative damage capacity of the two ATs to even be arguable is problematic. Either Defenders need to be as much better at buff/debuff as Controllers are at Control - i.e. qualitatively as well as quantitatively, unquestionably better at offense across all powersets, or Defenders need to be penalized much less heavily in the Control department relative to Controllers.

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To my mind, controls are "binary" effects. You're either hit with it fully or not at all.


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But doesn't that mean that (for those of us that have been doing it) arguing that mez effects are "too binary" has been, in effect, totally nonsensical?

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No. It just means that's the way the powers *as currently implemented* seem to me to most logically be differentiated. I'm no happier than you are with binary control. I find it a poor game mechanic on a lot of levels. But that's the game as currently written. And so decisions about whether Defender bonuses or Controller bonuses apply to a given effect in the current game ought to be made in that light.

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I understand the logic that something that "reduces" is debuff, and something that "eliminates" is mez; do we want to stick with that definition permanently?

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Do we want to? It sure wouldn't be my preference. But are we likely to? Yes. In which case why differentiate "control" vs "debuff" via more complex definitions when the current game implementation already encapsulates a pretty clear one.

I've gotta say.... toss me into the pile of folks who just cannot see how either -speed or -recharge can sensibly be considered anything except "debuffs". To my mind, controls are "binary" effects. You're either hit with it fully or not at all. There isn't any fuzziness about degree of effect. You're held or you're not. You're disoriented or you're not. I can see an argument for KD being a "control". It can be resisted as a status effect. It obeys MAG rules. And you're either knocked down or you're not. But Slow??? Debuffs modify numbers. They don't prevent you from doing anything - they just make you worse at it. And that to me is Slow to a "T".

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Dark Defenders and Rad Defenders are better against AVs, but their debuff toggles are a PITA to use with teams who don't know what they are doing. A bubbler's bubbles are working whether you have an anchor or not.

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So the primary advantage of FF is that it works better with the unskilled and inexperienced? That's a fair tradeoff for Rad and Darks healing, offensive prowess, utility powers, and ability to protect themselves? Wow. Now that's a great way to sell a set....

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But the big three powers in FF will work twice as well as a Controller or MMs bubbles after I7 against bosses and AVs. After I7, FF Defenders will be able to cap defense to all damage types for their teammates with Manuevers. Controllers and MMs will be able to get them down to 15% or so (which works out to about 22% for AVs and such)

So why are you worrying so much that a Controller can KB a mob as far as you can?

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How about - 'cause KB is the only freakin thing my primary allows me to do that doesn't involve passively standing around.... How about 'cause it would be sorta-kinda-nice if at least half of my powerset did much of anything better than anybody else? How about 'cause FF is already the most over-specialized of all Defender sets, it would be nice if we at *least* got to be the best at both of those tricks.

Nevermind the entirely separate issue of "how many other power sets in the game could take and slot only three powers from their primary and be considered to provide 95% of the utility of the set".

As a Bubbler, what it boils down to me is, I only have *4 powers* between my entire primary and secondary that function any better for me than they do for any other AT in the game with access to them (and several other ATs have such access). In return, my entire secondary is inferior in every way to the Blaster equivalent (I am FF/NRG - and we do not get any KB bonus or such with energies secondary effect). And several powers in my primary (Detention, RB) actually function *better* for Controllers than they do for me.

So show me *any other AT in the game* that gets hit like that. I can certainly point to other Defender sets in similar situations (Trick Arrow, Storm Summoning). We Defenders are just "lucky".

I am absolutely flabbergasted that anybody can say with a straight face that the Defender versions of Repulsion Bomb and Force Bolt doing more damage than the Controller version is any way whatsoever a balancing feature. The damage on both is utterly negligible, and nobody with any experience with the set whatsoever pays the slightest attention to the "damage" of these powers. The *meaningful* effects of both are either identical between Controllers and Defenders or weighted towards Controllers (better mez from RB). This means that we have two powers which are as effective or more effective as secondaries than they are as primaries. Same with Force Bubble and Detention Field. The only powers in the entire FF set for which an FF Defender has any *meaningful* advantage over an FF Controller are the +DEF powers. So what happened to "Primary" > "Secondary"?

Dyslexics of the world, untie!

Just a note here that the primary team use for Detention Field for my Bubbler has always been to put AVs in Detention while the team clears out their hired help. In other words, Detention most certainly does work on Bosses, AVs, Monsters, etc. Theoretically it may not work out-of-the-box on a +5 AV - say - but even there it can be made to work. Phase enhancers - unlike every other status effect enhancer in the game - increase MAG rather than duration. But I have never had Detention Field fail to effect anything in the game that I could successfully hit with it.

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That's what I'm talking about! And 'defence'? Come on SS, you're in Baltimore, you know us Americans spell it defenSe like it ought to be spelt!

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I'm Irish. We've always been "creative spellers".

I'll just chime in here that "proactive" does not necessarily mean Offense. I definitely prefer proactive defence to supplement my defensive buffs, but for me that generally means liberal use of Epic Controls and KB to prevent the enemy from attacking in the first place. I may not be a Controller, but most Defenders - even FF - have a wider variety of effects available to them to disrupt enemy offence than they may be aware of. Many secondaries, pool powers, and ancillaries are full of such options.

That said - I do consider Offense one of the many tools in my kit for defending a team. Sometimes the best defensive option really is to blast the remaining life off a straggler, to help take down a tough boss with dangerous powers faster once you've done whatever you can to interfere with his ability to counter-attack, etc. The difference between me and an Offender is that I consider offence just one more tool in the kit rather than any particular end unto itself.

The *team's* focus is ultimately arresting enemies. And there's nothing wrong with an Offender built to pursue that same purpose. *My* focus simply tends more towards "defence" in the purest sense - doing whatever I can to interfere with the enemy's ability to harm my team.

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Nice guide StarShield.

I lost faith in my FF defender due to I made the wrong power choices. This has gave me the will to roll a new one. I was thinking Electricity as a secondary. I like the debuffs of what dark can do.. but I am a hero. I don't wan't to be shooting skulls out of my hands lol.

I like the concept of hitting villans with my mind (Pys). But I am not very confident to roll one. It seems not many people think Psyhic is any good.

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To my mind Electricity is an excellent choice of secondary for a Bubbler. It is among the most end-efficient secondaries you can get now that all the single target attacks occasionally return the end they drain to you. And it provides a fair bit of utility in Short Cirtcuit, Volt Sentinel, and Tesla Cage. If you pair it up with the Psy Epic you end up with two single target holds - meaning you can hold a boss outright in seconds. That's a pretty good synergy!

I've never actually played a Psy secondary Defender. Its the only secondary with which I have no personal experience. It has a lot of powers which sound good on paper, but which from what I have heard don't play out quite so well in practice.

And another link - to Ninja's FF Guide:

Fission Wall's I6 Guide to FF/Rad - which amongst other things gives better PvP FF info than I do.

Just consolidating links here:

CDN Guardian's FF/NRG Offender Guide - For FF Defender's preferring an offensive bent.

Philotic Knight's Guide to FF - For a build heavily focused on FF itself.

Bionexus' Comprehensive Guide to Force Fields v3.0 - For some good general information about FF powers and their uses.