Turbo_Ski

And I would say Rad, Cold, Kin, Dark, Empathy, Sonic, Storm, Traps, Trick Arrow, Pain, and Thermal would better options than FF since they bring abilities that enhance your control abilities (+tohit/-def/+recharge and mag stacking) and your damage (-res/+dmg/-def/+tohit/+recharge). This is of course with additional protection that compliments the dmg mitigated by your controls just fine instead of overcompensating past the need of your controls and offering none of the previous mention benefits.

EDIT: if it's any comfort, I think Poison is a far weaker set than FF. Though that isn't totally fair since it was design solely as a MM support set.

Status ailments are binary and not a constant effect as damage output is. It's something you react to and not constantly needing to maintain and it's frankly not something you'll have to be popping non-stop to maintain to see the benefit as red inspirations are.

These are all things available across all ATs and builds, including the other support set we are comparing FF to. It's pretty irrelevant since APP/EPP + specific DEF/RES IO slotting + non-FF support set will yield the same or better results overall. IOs also have never been considered when balancing a set in the first place, since they require long-term investment to see any result.

-Tohit/+Def, controls, and high damage output greatly reduces the chances of getting mezzed in the first place. These are all common things found in teams and reduce the frequency of needing to pop readily available BFs to maintain toggles. Again status protection isn't as valuable as it once was because of these changes.

Or you could be advocating for FF to be better than it is now. As I said, status protection doesn't hold enough weight to justify the set having so little and neither does soft capping defense. I would say the complete lack of offensive capability in FF is just as gaping as hole as you seem to think status protection is for blasters (which I don't find that gaping for blasters if you take a ST hold).

You're assuming that teams are specifically picked compositions when they are actually a mix of a variety of ATs and builds. In this case, it's not stability, but redundancy that FF brings.

What is more likely,
FF + 7 blasters without APP/PPP shields
OR
FF + any combination of tankers/brutes/masterminds/doms/controllers/defenders/corruptors/VEATs/HEATS/Scrappers (all ATs that bring some form of self or team protection)

Now ask yourself, which team is FF going to bring less to. FF's value decreases the more variety you add to the group or in other words the more survivability the group obtains thru their powers or others. Stability would be if FF had some offensive component to keep it worthwhile to have around when survivability is already moderate or high.

PS: if I'm looking for the "stability" as you call it, I would invite any controller instead.

Don't know where you thought anyone was talking about Tanks here. We're talking about FF compared to other support sets in an endgame environment.

Ship raids aren't the best example for FF here, since half the mez tossed out is sleeps anyway and the entire encounter is reliant on stacking obscene amounts of buffs and debuffs. As buff/debuff variety increases, FF's value to the team decreases, though it just takes a lot longer for that to become apparent on a ship raid because you need a lot more than the average 8 man STF/LRSF.

Katie TF's end drain can be handled by many support sets pretty easily. That TF is a breeze with any Kin, Rad, Dark, Cold, Kin, Empathy, and Storm on the team or any controller/dom for that matter. Thing is those previous mention sets bring more than endurance insurance and protection, they bring offensive capabilities as well which in itself strengthens defensive buffs/debuffs.

I'm going to assume you were the only support AT on the katie and did not have enough support ATs on the ship raid, either way the team needed additional support ATs for the task. That being the case, any support set helps to ensure the team doesn't die, the difference is that FF offers almost nothing if the team is already in no danger of dying. It's a set that only performs well in the absence of other support sets, which is problem when you need to start stacking support sets for endgame encounters.

The game has changed a lot since the early days. Malta and Carnies aren't as tough as they were prior to CoV. We have Break Frees now, the ability to convert other inspirations into BFs and CABs, more variety in sets on teams, more options in personal power choice, and toggles not dropping when mezzed. All of this eases the burden against end drains and status ailments and lessens their impact on teams.

All this lowers the potential worth of FF's status protection and end drain resist, which wouldn't be a problem if those along with +Def weren't all that the set had to offer. The set is weak because it overspecializes on things that have become less important as the game has changed and as power variety increases.

Quality of the game doesn't equal popularity. Halo became popular because it filled an FPS genre void in the Xbox library at the time when most were trying to find something similar to Goldeneye to play on the next console gen. It was picked up by Microsoft along with few other titles that have been forgotten to be Xbox exclusives in order to get people to justify buying an Xbox. If Halo had been released onto the PC at the same time, it probably would have done worse with the Xbox floundering as a result. This is mainly because it was widely regarded as inferior or a step backwards from popular PC FPS titles like Quake, Unreal, and CoD. However not releasing it on PC avoided it being compared on the same level as those titles and the bad press that would come of it.

In a way, Halo is a lot like Twilight in that regard. You take something that is mediocre or average overall and make it popular by monopolizing it in an area where there is no competition to hamper it.

We're talking end-game here when even blasters have access to +res/+def self abilities through APP/PPP and -tohit/+def abilities are all over the place in teams. In this environment an excess of +Def is heavily devalued, which leaves FF only with KB control (easily the weakest control and negated by immobilizes) and status protection (which is almost irrelevant because of the abundance of sleeps and easily obtained break frees). It should also be noted that End resist doesn't have much weight because by 50 people have their end management handled and there is plenty of +end/+rec flying about on teams to cover the damage of a sapper hit. Overall this makes for a pretty weak set end game even compared to Sonic which at least offers -Res, stronger status protection, -Tohit, -Def, -recharge, and aoe knockdown + mag 2 hold in the situation that +res is capped (something far more rare than Def capped).

No one is arguing that FF doesn't give superior +Def and decent status protection. The problem is that it's the only things it offers, because it specializes so much in so little that it handicaps itself when every other set has bloomed.

Microsoft is hoping to strike gold with another game like they did with Halo. Unfortunately they fail to take into account that most poeple that play MMOs don't care to play MMOs on consoles, where Microsoft wants to put them with Xbox Live. Of course Halo's popularity was dumb luck to begin with.

...except in offense and variety. It's easily the weakest of the support sets end game because of that and it along with Sonic needs revision. Particularly in how detention/cage works (like why aren't these timed toggles?) and complete redesign of Force Bubble, Repulsion Field, and Sonic Repulsion.

A lot of the problems with Champions Online stemmed more from Microsoft and not Emmert. There were issues with development being halted or delayed because Microsoft kept jerking them around, starting with Marvel Universe's cancelation over a licensing disagreement with marvel. There was also the whole thing with Microsoft being indecisive whether they wanted CO to be on Xbox Live or not, after wasting development time and money having Cryptic make it playable on Xbox360 from the get go. The whole Xbox port thing has been supposedly scrapped at this point, so it was truly wasted.

uh dude it was two scenes only.

Don't remind me, I wanted to slap the 8 out of 10 people that said it was all about blue *****

It was far more than just 3 consoles...Game Boy Advance, Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, PlayStation Portable, Wii, Xbox, Xbox 360. GBA version being vastly different as it was a 2D sidescroller.

The problem with that logic is that the graphical limitations of the Wii are only slightly above PS2 and far below what the 360 and PS3 put out. This creates development problem of having to choose Wii only or 360 and PS3 only. Also the 3 systems use entirely different motion control systems making multi-platiforming games across them a major pain.

Again that's not luck, it's called making the first good CD based console and using a big brand name like Sony to get lots of 3rd party support, something even SEGA had a hard time doing. Microsoft did the same thing to get the Xbox off the ground, and judging by how it was released it probably would have failed if not for the Microsoft name and the money funneled into exclusives like Halo.

That's rather overshadowed by all the praising he gives them in the rest of the review. Also calling the success of the playstation and playstation 2 as luck is just retarded, they were reasonably priced and powerful consoles for their time. Nintendo sticking with cartridges and Sega's poor timing into market with the dreamcast and saturn doesn't equate luck on Sony's part.

Also take in account that Sony's method for consoles has always been building upon the foundation of the previous console and not building a new one from scratch. This is clearly seen in backwards capability going from PS1 to PS2 and the addition of DVD drive. With the PS3 they took a risk by going with blu-ray format which upped the price tag, which would have been fine if Microsoft hadn't been soaking American game developers for about a year in advance and dropping down budget models of the 360 around the same time. Bob also seems to ignore that the PS3's long-term hardware investment is paying off now in more sales and exceeding Xbox in worldwide YTD sales and only 5.4 mil units behind Xbox in the grand total. Sony is also doing 10.4 mil more in game software sales than Microsoft. It only shows that Bob's perspective is a year and half out of date if he thinks Microsoft is dominating Sony, when in actually they are pretty dang even with PS3 promising to surpass with the current trend.

As for the Wii, Bob seems to ignore the current Wii sales are getting less with each passing year. It's proving to be a very strong short-term investment console, which isn't good for Nintendo in the long-run considering they can't get decent 3rd party software support now and will find more difficulty once Sony and Microsoft release their motion control peripherals. If these peripherals prove successful (one most surely will if not both), then the Wii is looking at a future of even greater loss in yearly sales in both hardware and software, despite their strong lead in sales in 2007. The continue lack of 3rd party titles will most likely accelerate this if people are getting rid of their dusty Wiis in favor of 360 and PS3 motion releases, thus decreasing the sale of new Wiis dramatically.