Starshield

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Guilty as charged (though technically I have a level 4). Now that you mentioned it, I checked out FF's powers and they mostly seem to be more controller like than Defender, with the exception of a few buffs.... Not sure what's up with that, especially since they probably don't operate on the level of Controllers.... No wonder most of the Defender type FFs train stuff like Medicine.... Yeah, it looks like Force Field could be reworked a little to fit in more buff/debuff/heals, maybe get rid of Force Bolt, even. But I say this, again, not having really played a FF character.

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You'll have to pry Force Bolt from my dying grasp. Its the most useful power in the set after the big three by far. You can, however, have the upper four powers in the set and I'd barely miss 'em.

There's nothing wrong with a Defender set being Controller'y. Look at Dark Miasma. The problem with FF isn't that it gets control powers instead of buff/debuffs. The problem is that FF's "control" powers don't actually control much of anything.

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Never mind the fact that Force Fielders actually have a straight-out direct damage attack in their Primary. That alone -no matter whether you like or dislike it- would lead any reasonable person to presume that they were not meant to just stand around and update their bubbles every few minutes, End allowing of course.

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Um....No. No they do not. If you are suffering under the misconception that any FF power has any use whatsoever as direct damage you are *sadly* mistaken. Force Bolt does half the damage of Brawl for twice the recharge. That's one quarter Brawl DPS... Repulsion Bomb does even less than that. That is not direct damage in any meaningful sense.

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I think that FF is "balanced"- its main trick is so great when it works that everything else the set does has to be weak to compensate- but that's a different thing from "enjoyable to play."

If FF got more "secondary utility" (Say a power called Net Force that makes party attacks hit harder? ) I would think it would have to lose some of the primary utility. That might not be a bad thing. . . FF's are very "all or nothing" right now.

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I would have to say....try out a mid-to-high level Dark or Rad Defender for a while and then get back to me on how "overpowered" FF would be with worthwhile upper level powers. I've played all of the above to at least the 30s at one time or another. FF with stronger upper tier powers would not be in any danger of being uber compared to Dark and Rad unless the new powers were over-the-top by themselves.

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I fully expect that the last 25 levels of my FF'er will be as a "FF Blaster" , with the idea that 2/3 of the best damage in the game is still pretty good. Whether that will turn out to be enough incentive to get S-Orbital through, that I don't know.

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That's entirely a matter of how you choose to focus. You won't be able to focus on upper-level FF powers and expect to do much, but you *can* focus on an APP like psychic and become a ghetto controller on top of bubbles. Thats what I did with Starshield. She's no Bubble Controller, but the control tricks in the APP combined with the Medicine pool make her much stronger team support than she is with just FF.

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I said:
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Force Fields have a lot of holes- all the Super Reflexes ones and all the Invincibility ones. . .

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Jesterman replied:
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I know you think that psi is the only hole that FFs have, but it's not.

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Sigh.

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The real problem with FF isn't the amount of holes. There ought to be holes in the team defence provided by a mere three powers. The problem is that none of the other powers in the set allow an FF Defender to do anything significant against opponents who negate the "big three". The entire rest of the FF set is not sufficent to support a team against anything they cannot handle without support. When a Dark runs into Fear-resistant foes he still has plenty of tools at his disposal. Nothing ever negates the entire Dark, Empathy, or Rad bag of tricks - for example. There are plenty of late-game foes - including a fair number of the endgame AVs - which negate everything in the FF primary save PFF (useless for team assistance) and Detention Field (useless for actually helping to defeat said AV). *That* is a problem. No other Defender set has to face being so completely invalidated.

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I'd also make that trade. Even if it was an Ice Tanker.

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Ouch! Burned! The ultimate insult to Defenders everywhere! NO BUBBLES FOR YOU!

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They should just let us buff ourselves and be damned with the consequences.

The only set that'd get really crazy would be Empaths and they'd still be no more powerful than Dark Defenders are now. And their damage would still suck.

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An Empath with self-Fortitude, self-Aid Other, self Adrenaline Boost, and self Clear-Mind.... Would be freakin scary. Can't buff their own damage? Have you seen what a combo of AB and well-slotted Fortitude can do to somebody's offence?

I tried out the Arena with Star. What I found was if HO's aren't in the picture I can hold my own even 1-on-1 against non-Ice and non-stealth Blasters (no protection from KB or my Epic holds) and some Scrappers (MoB neuters a lot of Scrapper primaries, but I can't damage most Scrappers enough to hurt them in return). Just about any Controller will kick my butt in a hurry. Just about any Tank is either a draw - or certain types like Invul/NRG will take me out quickly (can't keep Invul away with Force Bubble).

In teams I do "decently" if no HOs or skilled Controllers are involved. Anything offensive with HOs and both my team and personal shields turn to paper. Just about any Controller can quickly make me a non-factor.

What it boils down to for me (other than the HO factor) is that the system is almost rigged to encourage ganging up on the Defender. Most Defenders are as almost as easy to mez or kill as Blasters, while as force multipliers they make far more important strategic targets. Combine "high priority target" with "little significant personal defence" and you just painted a big bullseye on your chest. Controllers would be in the same boat....save that they tend to have much better tools for defending themselves. Particularly after APPs. Mez protection by itself makes such a huge difference for high level Trollers in PvP its unreal.

It is rather decidedly un-nerving the degree to which Force Bubble is so much more useful in the Arena than in PvE. To the point that in PvE I don't use it much because it doesn't help me enough to be worth its cost. While in PvP I don't use it because its such a massively unfair advantage against many opponents that its practically an "I win" button....

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Star, if you makes you feel better, on my FF controller, I have only taken, with the exception of Detention Field, those powers that work at 80% effectiveness, because I was more interested in my primary. I also have no intention of taking any of the others in upcoming slots when I have better EPP choices available.

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What's sad is that even I as a Defender ended up investing far more slots in APPs and power pools than any of those "100% Controller Efficiency" powers. I took em all and tried em - but ended up cutting back in respec because they just didn't add anything to my capabilities. One or two of them can easily cover all the situations for which any of them might apply. Taking all five of them is completely pointless.


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On the other hand, that may not make you feel better, since it means the rest of the FF line is so lackluster I couldn't be bribed to take it with 100% efficiency.

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Heh. Yeah. I feel *so* much better that even at 100% efficiency you can't be bothered to even take half my powerset...

Pfltht.

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I personally have never had a problem finding teams when I got into the upper levels. I have only taken a Rad/Rad into the upper levels, and I more often then not got thanked and told what adifference I made to the team. These may have had more to do with my supergroup than anything, but I am extreamly happy with my defenders. My only complaint is not being able to take more powers!

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Reinforcing yet again the point that not all Defenders are created equal. The life of a 40 plus Rad Fender is vastly different from the life of a 40 plus FF Fender - for example. Your biggest complaint is not being able to take more powers. My biggest complaint is not having more powers worth taking...

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This is a good point, and I could add many more powers to that list too. Gale, Tornado, Thunderclap, Lightning Storm and thats just from Storm.

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Just look at the entire FF set.

PFF, Dispersion, Deflection, and Insulation operate at 80% for a Controller relative to a Defender.

Now look at everything else....

Force Bolt, Force Bubble, Repulsion Field, Repulsion Bomb, and Detention Field are *identical* for a Controller and a Defender. No meaningful differences whatsoever! Not only are these powers a highly situational bag of tricks - but the Controller can use them at *equal* effectiveness to the Defender. How's that for a fair trade-off?

Statesman,

I have to say for the most part I agree that Defenders as an AT are reasonably well off. Most of my issues with Defenders as a whole are primarily a result of HOs and APPs in the late game allowing other ATs to grow so strong their need for our help diminishes. Who needs DMG buffs when you already cap yourself? What difference does Defender vs Controller buffs / heals / debuffs make once everybody's numbers hit the stratosphere with HOs? What advantage does the Defender have over the Controller anyway approaching 50 when the Controller has slotted everything useful in his Secondary, has Epic attacks to round out his offense with his pets (save Mind), and has Controls which outmatch any Defender in the team defense department. Again - a large portion of the problem as I see it has everything to do with power inflation from APPs and HOs and little to do with the AT designs themselves.

All that said, a few Defender powersets do need some serious looking at. Ever wonder why there are so few high level FF Defenders? Take a look at the last three powers in our set. That's why. There are all of *three* must-have powers in the set to go with a whole lot of situational fluff which can be occasionally to regularly useful but which don't hold a candle to the upper level powers in most Defender sets. Compare Force Bubble to the likes of Fulcrum Shift, Dark Servant, or EM Pulse.

FF'ers provide great DEF (save against toxic, psy, auto-hit, or to-hit buffed enemies). That sees us through a lot. Force Bolt and Detention Field are decent utility powers (though for heaven's sake *please* make Detention Field more easily visible to teammates). But the rest of the set? FF'ers are the only Defender that cannot buff Offense in any way or Heal in any way. In compensation we get more knockback than any one hero ever has a use for and great Defence (against most but not all things) - but not so much better than the likes of Dark as to justify our narrow focus.

Repulsion Field is too expensive for what it does, and is made obsolete by Force Bubble at 32. Honestly. Since the changes to End cost in RF to prevent us from effectively corner juggling with it what does it do that Force Bubble does not? Some people may prefer one or the other, but what possible use is there to have both?

And Repulsion Bomb.... Wow. Every FF'ers dream. A slow AOE knockback in a set that already had no shortage of knockback. Ally targeted only for no good reason I can see so that we can only use it reactively instead of proactively. And it would be so easy to fix into something far more useful.

If FF'ers are intended to be KB masters why not allow us the full range of knockabout powers? Give us a Knockback (Force Bolt), Repel (Force bubble), Knockup (Repulsion Field), and Knockdown (Repulsion Bomb). Then at least our powers would overlap less and the package as a whole would cover a greater variety of situations. As is half our power set covers the *same* situation - when I want to keep melee heavy mobs that don't happen to be KB resistant off of squishies.

Related complaint - why is KB the only status in the game that cannot be stacked against resistant foes? That gives rise to the other reason FF'ers drop out at high levels. Not only are our upper tier powers less generally useful than most other Defenders, but against many of the late game heavy-hitters (AVs, Monsters, many types melee-heavy types) they do *nothing at all*. Seriously. RF, RB, Force Bolt, and Force Bubble - half our set - do *nothing* in any fight with the game's primiere opponents. We don't even get to knock them down during occasional "purple arrow" periods like Controllers. Literally half our powerset does jack squat in such encounters. The "almighty" Force Bubble doesn't even slow them down a tad.

So in conclusion, while you may be happy with Defenders as a whole, please take a serious look at some of the individual powersets. I focused on FF in my rant, but Storm and Kinetics also have some bones to pick. But not having played either to high level myself, I'll let them speak for themselves.

I'd just like to toss in another post to the point that seems to keep being glossed over when folks make it. I don't have any particular problem with some folks having HOs and some not - though it might be nice to have HO heavy builds in a different "weight class". My big concern about HOs is simply that they are inherently unbalanced *against each other*.

An FF defender or and Ice tanker *completely* decked out with HOs is defenceless against a blaster or scrapper similary decked out in SOs. An FFer - no matter how many HOs he collects - literally has the core of his powerset made irrelevant in HO heavy matches. Only an SR scrapper can acheive defense high enough to make even a dent in a fully HO's offense. And thats a problem that the Ice Tanker/FF defender can do nothing about....

Just check the numbers.

A bubblers max granted defense with all hamis is (I think):
56% (6 x 30% def hamis) Deflection/Insulation
35% (6 x 30% def hamis) Dispersion
22% (6 x 30% def hamis) Maneuvers

Total - 113%

Any offensive power with 6 Acc/Dmg hamis is at +300% accuracy. Check-and-mate.

And even if defense hamis granted a 50% bonus as accuracy does - we're still hopelessly outgunned. Full FF plus maneuvers with theoretical 50% defence hamis would top out at 165%......

The numbers just don't match up.