Westley

So then are you saying that your guide should be retired?

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In other words, an unabashed [Censored].

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This sentence right here pretty much guarantees that this thread WON'T get a sticky. Thanks BadStorm!

Am I happy about that? No. Was it worth it? Most definitely YES!

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My thighs deserve a sticky but that's a whole other story...

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Call me up sometime... 1-555-MAN-STUD.

Trying to follow this guide, I've been running radio missions in PI for almost entirely CoT/Carnival of Shadows to get the Arcane Salvage. I've been selling off the common IO recipes and crafting the uncommom and rares. I have about a half dozen IOs on the market now that I posted for exactly one million influence, and I've had them out there for a week. No sales.

The only money I've made so far is by defeating enemies pretty much.

Speaking of shameless self-promotion... does anyone think this thread deserves a sticky?

You forgot one very important and simple thing in your guide. You can bind ANY set of commands to ANY key - this INCLUDES F10. So you do not have to limit your battlecry to 32 characters, and you can even add an emote. Here is my example:

/bind f10 "say All you villains will suffer the pain and agony that is being bodyslammed by the Incourigable BULK!$$emote taunt"

If you type all that in and press enter, your character will say that phrase in whatever channel is the active channel and also perform the "taunt" emote.

Special note, the command "say" is the ONLY command that will let you say a phrase in the current channel, all the other commands like Local, Team, and Request are specific to those channels.

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Cool you reposted it!

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It's here for NOW... until it disappears into the void of message board heaven. It's bound to happen sooner or later.

Huh, I just got it too... I wonder if all the people viewing it made it go up in the ratings on Google Image search... intersting... very interesting.... but stupid!

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[pure innocence]
But, legs akimbo just means cross-legged.
[/pure innocence]


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That's not what I saw when I did a google image search on thighs akimbo

[/ QUOTE ]Whoa BadStorm's avatar is the first result!

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Really? Your computer must be set up weird... this is the first result I got and I don't see BadStorm's avatar anywhere...

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[pure innocence]
But, legs akimbo just means cross-legged.
[/pure innocence]


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That's not what I saw when I did a google image search on thighs akimbo

For anyone that doesn't know...

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Empaths suck.

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This is what it means when you see /BadStorm


Oh, and looking at your Location BadStorm.... um... are you having a baby, or does that mean something else....

Jock, I appreciate your fine addition, it fills my humble thread with prestige and gravitas.

And yes, this post was also just a shameless way to bump the thread...

The Conscience of a Defender v2
by The Philotic Knight - Written on June 23rd, 2007; updated November 27th, 2007

Another one got trolled today, it's all over the papers. "Crimefighter Defeated in Crey Lab Debacle", "Defender Faceplanted after Suicide Debuff Attempt"...

Damn fruitsalads. They're all alike.

But did you, in your three-piece psychology and 1980's D&D-brain, ever take a look behind the eyes of the Defender? Did you ever wonder what made him tick, what forces shaped him, what may have molded him?
I am a Defender, enter my world...
Mine is a world that begins with Outbreak... I'm smarter than most of the other archetypes, this crap they teach us bores me...

Damn gimped n00blet Defender. They're all alike.

I'm in Atlas Park or Galaxy City. I've listened to scrappers try to explain for the fifteenth time how to defend them. I understand it better than they do. "No, Mr. Wulfereen, I didn't heal your HP. I prevented damage with defense buffs..."

Damn blue-shield. Probably spammed the h34lz. They're all alike.

I made a discovery today. I found my secondary blasts. Wait a second, this is cool. I can pwn mobs too! If I take a dirtnap, it's because I screwed it up, I don't have to just be a buffbot for other heroes. If my teammate died, it's not my fault, it's because they didn't look at what my powers DO. Not because I didn't rock the aura...
Or debuff the AV...
Or heal at just the right moment...
Or babysit the blapper that attacked the next mob solo and should have made a DAMN scrapper in the first place...

Damn fruitsalad. All he does is play games. They're all alike.

And then it happened... a door opened to a world... rushing through my endurance bar like heroin through an addict's veins, a website is loaded, a refuge from the day-to-day PuG gripes is sought... an AT message board is found.

"This is it... this is where I belong..."
I know everyone here... even if I've never met them, never talked to them, may never hear from them again... I know you all...

Damn blue-shield. Taking up all the bandwidth again. They're all alike...

You bet your [censored] we're all alike... we've had to take down gray-con “Skuls” when we wanted to best Lord Nemesis... the bits of mobs that you did let slip through were already half-dead and disoriented. We've been kill-stealed by scrappers, or ignored on the teamseek window. The few that offered to team with us found us willing compatriots, but those few are like drops of water in the desert.

This is our world now... the world of the Gale and the Force Bubble, the beauty of the buff. We make use of powers that would be considered 1337 if they weren't denounced by some WoW rejects with a one-track mind, and you call us gimp. We explore unique power combinations and alternative enhancement slotting... and you call us gimp. We seek after new unconventional playstyles... and you call us gimp. We exist without power prejudice, without mindless hack and slashing, without pre-made "internet" builds... and you call us gimp.

You build farming teams, bridge in Peregrine, cry nerf, post flames, troll us and try to make us believe it's for our own good, yet we're the gimped ones.

Yes, I am gimped. I'm gimped because I choose to team with you. I'm gimped because I choose to use EVERY power at my disposal to save your squishy butt, not just seek out the most uber leet build for the best XP per minute. My crime is that of being smarter than you, something that you will never forgive me for.

I am a Defender, and this is my manifesto. You may stop this individual, but you can't stop us all... after all, we're all alike.

+++The Philotic Knight+++

---

Post style shamelessly jacked from the much better and more powerful "Hacker's Manifesto", aka "The Conscience of a Hacker" by The Mentor.

By request, here is my George Lucas Special Edition version of The Conscience of a Defender*, tell me what you think...

*Now with 30% more CGI creatures!

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Looking for a post-I10 guide for a Dark/Dark and an Emp/Archery Defender.

Anyone?

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None of the Defender primaries or secondaries have changed substantially since Issue 7, so all of the guides newer than that should still be good. Also, by trying to find a guide for one or two specific builds you might be missing out on alot of good info! Try looking at ALL the Dark/*, */Dark, Emp/* and */Archery guides, you might be surprised by the wealth of valuable information out there.

<QR> Yet ANOTHER one of my impassioned FF "speeches" from another thread for your enjoyment. Damn I'm one heck of a bloviator! This thread was about the "usefulness of Vigilance", and UberGuy Didn't think it was particularly useful....

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Here's the problem I have with this perspective. It assumes that the Defender is not running these toggles already. If they are not, why aren't they? Why have they waited until their team is getting hurt to run them?


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Once more, if the Defender is holding back and that is causing the team to lose health they are not a good Defender. A good Defender should be using every tool at their disposal to ensure that their team is as safe as possible.

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If I ran Repulsion Field all the time and jumped into mobs, or even if I had Force Bubble just UP all of the time, more than likely I would be kicked off of 99% of teams. That's why.

FF Defenders are generally NOT ALLOWED TO use "all of their tools all of the time" because of the stigma of knockback and repel and the fact that most of their powers directly effect their teammates damage over time. If enemies are knocked back, they are generally also spread away from each other, which KILLS AoE DoT. That means that most teams hate knockback.

When the S**T HITS THE FAN however, the good FF Defender is "authorized" to cut totally loose and knock everything in every which direction and get them all on their butts and not attacking their teammates. This is where Vigilance and the benefits of it kick in the most. It makes FF the ULTIMATE damage mitigator for three reasons:

1) It knocks enemies AWAY from your allies and in GENERAL ranged damage from enemies is less than melee damage. What also helps with this is that enemies that are stuck in "melee" mode often times WON'T ATTACK BACK with a ranged attack, they will just keep running to try to get to you and attack you in melee.

2) Enemies ON THEIR BACKS aren't fighting and aren't attacking, so that means that with every knockback attack that you use on every enemy, that's about 5 seconds break you get from that enemy doing ANYTHING to you. Multiply that by the entire MOB getting knocked on their butts after you jump in the middle of them with Repulsion Field and your whole team gets a 5 second break to get out of there!

3) It draws the enemies attention AWAY from your teammates, allowing you to tank for a short time as the enemies turn to look at the guy that knocked them on their butt. Use Force Bubble and you will get the attention of almost the ENTIRE MOB! Then when the heat is on the FFer and the FFer looks in trouble due to their weak personal defense? Personal Force Field, BAM! The enemies try to attack the FFer and they can't TOUCH him. That gives the rest of the team another 5-10 seconds of protection as the enemies "discover" that this guy is untouchable. After they discover that, they slowly "peel off" of the FFer one by one and THEN try to find another target.

But my point is here, you couldn't do all of that half as well without Vigilance. After bubbling your whole team AND blasting all the time with your attacks, all of these knockback/repulsion/capture effects would be useless if you didn't have the endurance to use them.

Vigilance truly lets the FFer be "always vigilant". Vigilance lets FFers be more than a buffbot, it allows them to attack freely, knowing that they will have the endurance that they need to turn the tide of the battle when things get rough.

That is the power of Vigilance.

A few of my old guides here ready for deletion. These have all been replaced by newer versions.

FF Defenders v 1.5 old
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showflat....rue#Post7826572

FF Defenders v 1 old
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showflat....rue#Post4222659

Combat Handbook v 1 old
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showflat....rue#Post3974963

Thanks Plasma, coming from you, that means alot. Your guide has helped me quite a bit from making any major mistakes with my Warshade from the start.

In another story, here is yet another one of my FF-related posts from another thread that I thought I should save for future generations:

DPS is like cholesterol...

The BORING DPS is Damage Per Second.

The FUN DPS is Defense Per Shot!

This refers to the fact that every time you knock an enemy back, it essentially provides you with 100% Defense and 100% Damage resistance for the 5 seconds it takes him to get knocked back, recover, and then get up again. If you KEEP using knockback powers all over the place, enemies will only have a CHANCE to get off an attack less than 25% of the time.

Knockback powers sure kill your boring DPS but it adds a HUGE injection into your FUN DPS!

Throwing in some more of my writings from another thread to save for posterity...

Knockback = 100% Defense AND Damage Resistance. Plus another damage resistance buff for most allies because "in general" ranged damage from enemies is far less than melee damage from enemies, so if they are knocked back away from you and your squishy friends, they can't hurt you as much. It also gives a -50% debuff on melee players' damage-per-second as a side effect. Basically an enemy that's flying backwards and has to take the time to get up IS NOT ATTACKING YOU OR YOUR ALLIES. However, the melee players have to chase it down. Or they could ignore it and attack the enemies near them while the blaster attacks the flying enemy....

Do I think it's worth it to sacrifice some offensive power for defensive? Most of the time yes, because debt really kills your xp/hour ratio alot more than the dent in your damage-per-second. That's all opinion and playstyle preference though, it's very hard to quantify some things....

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Yeah, while its very effective at what it does, easily 50% or more of the high level teams I've been on are really ok defensively without bubbles, and need more offensive leverage. Most other defender primaries can help offensively as well as defensively, FF has nothing there.


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Ah, but defense *IS* offense if you look at the metagame, which most people don't. If you're out there with a tank on your bubbler, your bubbles should give them enough defenses that they don't HAVE to have all of *THEIR* defenses on, which means they have more endurance with which to attack enemies. Also, if your team has great defense it can take on greater powered enemies without fear. Whereas on some other teams with less defense your blaster may not blast as much because they are afraid of drawing aggro, on a team with more defense everyone can let loose safely and hold nothing back.

But like I said before, this is the "metagame", and most people don't look at that. I do. The metagame is the game beyond that game, the part of the game where numbers don't matter as much as logic does. The metagame means looking at all the powers that you have and seeing how they help/hurt your team and how your allies' powers help/hurt you. It means that if someone is providing something that you have in abundance (like defense) then that means that you can concentrate on something that they CAN'T provide (like more offense).

If you can get 8 people that are looking at not just the game but the metagame, they will very quickly "gel" into a coherent team that works with each other's strengths, instead of fighting with each other's weaknesses. That is a recipe for success, but it doesn't happen often.

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Knockback was nerfed so it can never be total protection from incoming damage. Even if you could chain-knockback more than one enemy at a time, they still get to fire back at you while standing up.

Knock*down* doesn't have that problem, but FF doesn't have knock*down*.

Hurricane from storm summoning is better than the entire force field set -- more -tohit than FF has +defense, and better chain-knockback, for what it's worth. AND it doesn't ever make anyone intangible.

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Knockback was NOT nerfed, it was merely made more reasonable. Enemies now have an invisible "knockback timer", which is actually tied to the "get up" animation. When they are knocked back, they have X amount of time to get up, during which time they CANNOT use any powers. If a hero knocks them back WHILE they are getting up, their timer runs out, and they can attack even while they are being knocked back the second time.

HOWEVER, if the hero is smart, he can see when the enemy is JUST about to get up all the way, he can send a knockback right at the enemy. When the knockback hits the enemy, the enemy has just gotten up, and so the knockback timer is over, thus the enemy gets knocked back and is incapacitated.

I'd say it takes about a half hour of paying attention to this to understand the "rhythm" and timing, but once you got it, you never lose it, and it's not hard.

Knockback is not nerfed, it was just changed. You just have to learn how to deal with the change and you can still keep the enemy 100% knocked on their butts.

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Oh, and yes, some of FF's powers are very selectively situational, but much like some of the powers in my stormers repetoire, they are valuable enough in those situations that there aren't many things that can do those jobs better. That alone makes them worth having.

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QFT

ALL defensive powers are "situational", some are just used in more situations than others, and the more situations where you can find uses for your powers the better. If you want to get a head start on your FFer and all the many uses of the "other" powers in the set, read my guide. It will jumpstart you into the realm of using your FULL powerset effectively. Also, if you can think of even MORE uses for the "other" powers, please feel free to post them in the guide for all to see.

Any Defender knows, when we work together, we work better.

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That's totally not true. Anything that flies or hovers is essentially immune -- all the CoT ghosts, council hoverbots, witches, longbow eagles, rikti and arachnos drones, wing raiders...

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Nope, flying enemies are NOT "immune" to knockback... they will still get either knocked back or even better knocked DOWN. I've actually noticed on quite a few flying enemies when you use a knockback power it almost acts like a -fly debuff for a moment and they get knocked down from the sky, pretty nice actually. SOME flying enemies are merely knocked further up and away into the sky, but hey, they are still further. And yes, I will say that knockback is resisted by quite a few bosses and AVs, but minions? Nope, they all fall to the power of knockback. At least repulsion field.

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...but still gets to fire back. It's almost as good as a 3-second fear.

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Are we playing the same set??? I've played with ForceFields for over 3 years and 150 levels of pure FF Defenderdom and I've NEVER had the problem you've described. When I knock the enemy back, they CAN'T attack until they get up. The ONLY times they can attack back is if I try to knock them back after they were already knocked back. If I try to do that, then they "get up" while the knockback effect is still on its timer, and so the timer is still going, but they are standing up, so they get to attack. I've NEVER had an enemy that had a "falling backwards animation" attack me. Never.

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1. Its not fun to play because its primarily about buffing your allies pre-combat, with very little in the way of useful combat powers. The fact that a lot of inventive FF strategy involves pool powers only serves to highlight the limitations of the set. I know that "fun to play" is a subjective reason, but the lack of FF defenders out there makes it valid IMO.


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Actually my entire guide to FF Defenders is quite long and has nothing said at all about pool powers, in fact, I hardly even mention the secondaries. I almost entirely focus on the primary, and it's still a pretty long guide. So to say that the powerset has "few" uses, well, I think my guide speaks for itself on that point, most of the powers have uses much of the time. And I spend a TINY amount of time talking about the powers that everyone takes, MOST of the guide is spent talking about the many many uses or the other powers in the set.

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2. Its hard to solo with. 9 powers, none debuff the enemy. With poor damage output, the FF defender is the worst at solo-ing.


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I will give you that one easily, FFers are MEANT to team, and I say as much in my guide. Sure you can solo, but it will be excruciatingly slow to most people, unless you are an FFer in name only and mostly use other powers to speed up solo-ing. Does that mean that the set is WORSE because you can't solo very well with it? IMHO no, because this is an MMO, if you wanted to play solo, you could do that on your Playstation. I play this game not just to play a game, but to play a game WITH OTHERS. But that is my opinion, you can use your $15 however you see fit. Not every powerset is for everyone.

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3. Its forms of control are knockback and detention which annoy many players, and can make team strategy difficult - and since the FF defender relies on being in teams...

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Yes, they do annoy many players, I will give you that, but it's because those players are looking for the "l337357 builds" that can do 1 gazillion damage per second, and anything that slows down that progress one tiny bit is "teh suxx0rz". I understand that point of view, I don't share it but I understand it. Like I said before, FF is not for everyone. IMHO I am glad to trade some dps for extra defense in the form of enemies on their backs. I'm fine with them flying through the air and away from me, it saves my butt from getting hit with a sledgehammer. But then again, I also make it a point not to go knocking everything in every direction and try to keep my knockback powers away from my melee allies unless they look like they are in trouble.

I see FF alot like Storm. It's easy to make an FFer that teams love because they take the defense powers and slot them. It's also easy to make a knockback machine that teams hate because mobs are flying everywhere and no one can hit anything. I think the true FF master knows how to use knockback to the team's advantage rather than disadvantage. That's the key. Then again, on those rare occasions when I team with the Repeat Offenders, they never really seem to care about the knockback in ANY direction, so who knows. Different strokes for different folks.

I guess my main point is, I think FF is awesome. I think it provides EXTREME damage mitigation. That is its job, that is its role, and it does NOTHING else, but it does that one thing so well that nothing else does it better. The OTHER side of that coin is that some players don't know how to use the "alternative" forms of mitigation well, and that causes headaches for most players. I understand both sides of that coin.

The set is not for everyone, but it is for me.

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I've never said that FF wasn't playable or viable - just that it is much tougher and potentially less rewarding.

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And see, I think it's MORE rewarding BECAUSE it's much tougher to play well. I tried a scrapper a few times and I was bored out of my MIND! Go to the first mob, click a couple of attacks, goto the next one, click a couple of attacks. I was bored to tears.

So I went back to my FF Defender and guess what? I had to THINK again! It was wonderful, I couldn't just keep spamming the same powers over and over again, I had to choose the right tool to use at the right location at the right moment. It was like a game of chess mixed with a battlefield of insanity, and I loved it.

It was wonderful.

But once again, some people LOVE scrappers, they love the playstyle, it suits them, so they play it. Defenders don't work the same way as scrappers. Most scrappers are essentially the same thing with slight differences. Most Defender sets are COMPLETELY different and operate in completely different ways from each other. I like that, but what it means is that each powerset is almost like an archetype all its own. So you can "like" playing an empathy defender and hate playing a force fielder. They are completely different playstyles. With all of the differences between them, there will of course be more people that like to play one set than another, that's the nature of humanity.

We don't roll the same way others do. We have limitations and we LIKE it. We like to keep our team defended with Defense numbers. We also like to keep our team defended by doing things that no one else can do.

We can phase shift enemies at will to save them for later, put them in the Glass Bottle of Doom while we take out all of their friends, then when they are all alone we can see the fear in their eyes as the Glass Bottle that was protecting them fades away.

We can precisely Force Bolt an individual enemy away, and slotting that power well, we can do it forever.

We can knock an entire mob backwards, off of their feet, away from you AND leave half of them disoriented.

We can CLEAR A ROOM or the center of the Rikti Mothership of all enemies with one 3 second "tap" of one power. We can choose to keep them out of there by keeping that power on, or we can let them run back to us by releasing it. It is our choice.

We can aggro an entire room while we are standing in ONE place, and then protect ourselves from any retaliation.

We can take the alpha better than a tank, and make sure that that aggro gets spread evenly so that no one hero takes it all.

We can also make ourselves virtually invincible and untouchable by all but the most powerful enemies.

We can't heal, we can't debuff, we can't make you do damage faster. We don't WANT to. We WANT the challenge that comes with our powers, we THRIVE on it.

We are the few, the proud, the bubblers.

You either understand our mentality, or you wish the powerset was something else. If you understand us, you are with us, and we are glad to have you. If you wish the powerset was something else, then play something else, and enjoy it!

ForceFields are not for everyone, but they are for us.

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Hmmm... maybe I need more time to adjust to not having the controls then, because right now I can't imagine putting off the heal till after travel and stamina.

With a good healer on the team it's fine. I can even use Provoke. But with a meh healer or no healer.... ouch. And that's without using Provoke. Solo it's fine. But soloing on Heroic should be fine for any toon.

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Yeah, one of the keys to playing FF as a Defender primary instead of a Controller secondary is that we can't "tank" like Controllers can because we don't have the other controls to back us up. What we have INSTEAD are blasts that do 2/3rd of the damage of a blaster, but do twice the secondary effect of a blaster's. That means we get better mileage out of endurance drains, -tohit debuffs from dark, -recharge from psi and the like.

What that means for you is that instead of taking all the attention as you would on the Controller, you will be taking some of the attention and letting the team take the rest. Or in the case of PFF and Force Bubble you CAN still take all the attention, but you'll want to turtle up as soon as you got that attention so your teammates can "peel" the enemies off of you.

To shorten that a bit, think "spread aggro evenly" instead of "controller takes aggro". It's a whole different playstyle. If everyone is taking the aggro evenly, then the bonus higher defense numbers you give your team over a controller's numbers along with your knockback-repel-phasing powers should allow the team's own natural regen to keep them alive.

For the case of the "streak breakers" or emergenies, well, that's what inspirations are for. At least this is the way I play, and I find it to be VERY successful. There are others that get ALOT of mileage out of Medicine. I'm not one of them but I've seen it done, and it seems like a nice complement to the primary. Usually I'm too busy jumping around to stand in one place and wait for the power to activate. That's why I respecced the pool out.

Another one here that I took from one of my posts on another thread. This one I call my Guide to Leading a Cavern of Transcendence PuG!

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[ QUOTE ]
Ooh, he's a confident one!

Okay, up the ante. Cavern of Transcendence Trial PuG. Go.

[/ QUOTE ]

Actually, speak of the devil, I make it a point to run that trial every chance I get. It's worth a fast and easy rare recipe for me. I form the PuG myself, educate the masses on where to sit and stay, and always make sure that I have Recall Friend and either Stealth, Phase Shift, or Personal Force Field. With me running the show and tp-ing everyone, the missions always end up running something like this:

1. I tell a mythical story about how "difficult" the mission is, how we can't have any deaths because all 8 people are needed to open the door, so there can't be ANY mistake. Everyone gets all nervous, especially considering the timer and the fact that the mobs keep respawning so we can't clear the mission. They LOVE that part. So I basically scare them into submission.

2. I then tell them how WE are going to run the mission, which basically means that they aren't going to do ANYTHING for most of the mission except stay where I put them and not touch anything unless I tell them. A huge sigh of relief permeates the team.

3. I proceed to "place" everyone at the stones, while they have a good old time chatting with each other and BS-ing. If there happens to be a mob too close to a stone, I tp the whole team near the mob, we destroy them, and I start over. I actually doesn't take as long as you would think.

4. I place the last person, then get to my stone. I tell them to hit their stones when they SEE me say the number 3. We always get it right the first time by using this method.

5. I tell them to stay put until I tp right by the door and tp them in a "safe zone" between two mobs.

6. We then proceed to clear out the mob right in front of the door, then I have either the tank or myself open the door and we clear out the mobs holding the hostage. Mission Complete.

7. There is usually at least 45 mins still left on the timer.

The ONLY time that things don't go exactly that way is when someone doesn't do what I say.

On my PuG I am almost NEVER leader, but I end up becoming the de facto combat leader. After a few team wipes and after I show them how *I* play and the results I get, they usually step in line and start doing as I suggest.

Once the team "gets in the groove" and stops playing stupidly, I step back and shut up and do my part. The leader keeps his star and a good time is had by all.

The Cavern of Transcendence Trial is the only mission that I've ever had to take true leadership over. And my method works perfectly if everyone does as they are told.

On all other PuGs I've been on, if they don't work out right away, I "train" them and then they work out fine with little input.

Then again, this might have come from the fact that I EXCLUSIVELY play PuGs (I have no in-game friends at all), and I've been playing almost EXCLUSIVELY on Freedumb for the past two years of my three year heroic career.

I have become the PuG master.

[/ QUOTE ]

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I had planned on updating this guide with several different ways of herding without a Tank. Unfortunately, due to the never-ending changes in CoH i've decided to leave the game and move on.

[/ QUOTE ]

Just curious... what brought you back two years later after you had made the statement above?

Adding on another addendum from another thread here for your use.

FF/Dark is really redundant IMHO. The buffs from FF alone are plenty in the ToHit/Defense equation. There are WAY better ways to assist in defending your team than with the ToHit debuffs.

I would suggest you go one of these routes instead, sort of following the "DDR" theory from Catwhoorg, but in my own special way:

Electrical Blast - and become a sapper, that way they are out of endurance pretty fast AND when they can try to hit you, they fail because of the defense you provide to the team. This is Philotic Knight's secondary.

Psychic Blast - Adds all sorts of controllery-type powers to your arsenal as well as a lot of -Recharge, which sort of works the same way sapping does on enemies.

Those are the two I suggest to complement a "Pure Defender" build.

Now if you want to be more of an Offender and dish some more damage, I'd recommend the following:

Archery - Since all the powers in this set have in inherent accuracy bonus, you don't have to waste as many slots for accuracy, which means you can put more damage slots in there and max it out easily, along with taking more damage dealing powers because you have the slotting freedom.

Radiation Blast - Basically the same reason as Accuracy from the other side of the coin, reduces enemies' Defense so you hit them more often, which means you do more damage overall.

Sonic Blast - The power that REALLY lets you do literally more damage to them, because they have lower damage resistance. This is the secondary of choice if you're just looking at pure damage-per-hit.

The ones I can't really recommend for an FFer are really Dark Blast and Energy Blast. Both because they are somewhat redundant to what FF already does, help Defend and Knockback.

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It might be a good idea to double check some of the information with City of Data. For instance, CoD indicates that Dispersion Bubble is .26 endurance per 0.5 second pulse. Also it shows Force Bubble to be a mag 10 repel, with only a 1% chance of a 0.1 knockback.


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Later I said.....
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Okay, I guess I wasn't quite sure just how the MAG numbers worked. I just assumed MAG1= 1 Hold. Silly Me. Anyways, anyone that reads my guide, just click the link to Red Tomax' Guide (nicknamed City of Data) for the latest known numbers for just about everything in every powerset, and keep on bubbling!


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Repeat Offenders has demonstrated time and time again that there is no reason to limit yourself to being a buff bot. The nice thing with forcefields is that the team mate bubbles last 4 minutes! So, you have far more leisure time to enjoy dealing destruction compared to several of the other defender powersets.

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I am actually a part-time auxillary member of the Repeat Offenders Network, and I embrace their playstyle (or lack thereof!) fully. In fact, if you read my guide a little more carefully, you'll notice that the purpose of MOST of the guide is to DISPROVE the theory that FFers are "buffbots". In fact, one of my closing lines is:

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And to all you old-timers out there that are set in your ways and see yourself only as a buff-bot, I truly do feel great sympathy for you, for you are missing out on the strengths of 2/3rds of your own powerset, and you are gimping your ability to DEFEND your teammates substantially.

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and to subquote what you already quoted me as saying for emphasis....

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While you may have offensive powers, these can and should be used in a DEFENSIVE way whenever possible rather than an offensive way.

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What I meant when I said "use your offensive powers in a defensive way" was that you should use them more for the secondary effects rather than damage, because the damage is pitiful compared to a Blaster's. That's why I also listed what the secondary effect ARE in my guide. I WANT FF/Darkers to debuff accuracy, I WANT Psychics to debuff recharge times, I WANT electricians to drain endurance. That was the whole point of the secondary section.

Please read the whole thread and think about things a little more before posting.... man, now I know how Jesus must feel with everyone messing up the content of his intended meaning. Wow.

I've heard people have had good luck with Red Fortunes. Here, take a look at this thread, it might give you a good start. I haven't messed with any of the sets yet, I've just replaced my SOs with common IOs of the same types.

Correction to your guide. The inspirations are large (called Tier 3) inspirations, not medium. That's why they are worth so much. Tier 1 is a 25% bonus (to damage, defense, etc), Tier 2 is 33%, and Tier 3 bonus is 50%. This is true for all inspirations except damage resistance inspirations, which I think are 5%, 10%, and 15% (correct me if I'm wrong somebody). But yeah, they are worth that much to higher level heroes because they give you a 50% bonus to Damage and 50% health back from ONE inspiration. Saves alot of space in the tray you might imagine.

Level 50: Go sit under Atlas and show all the n00bs all of your cool costumes/capes/auras/pets/buffs/effects that they can't get for 49 levels! Hehehe.