Just 2 days ago, after a few years of playing, I finally got the final FF power on my bubbler (I play lots of alts). I had been excited about this power for a long time, because its description sounds great. What a disappointment!
Based on the short in-game description, the EXPECTATION I had for this power was that it would push enemies away from me (as it does), and that it would continually knock them down along that perimiter -- similar to how ice slick knocks foes down. Instead, it just pushes them back and let's them all kill me!
Clearly the power is supposed to have a knock down component to it. Right now it appears to knock down enemies once every minute or two (I stood among a group of level 20 enemies for a while). It should CONTINUALLY knock them down.
That would put it in line with an ultimate power for FF, and would not be unbalanced because it would only knock down along a perimeter, and you'd have to manually navigate your bubble around to knock foes down (unlike ice slick which covers a static area that enemies can't leave).
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Just 2 days ago, after a few years of playing, I finally got the final FF power on my bubbler (I play lots of alts). I had been excited about this power for a long time, because its description sounds great. What a disappointment!
Based on the short in-game description, the EXPECTATION I had for this power was that it would push enemies away from me (as it does), and that it would continually knock them down along that perimiter -- similar to how ice slick knocks foes down. Instead, it just pushes them back and let's them all kill me!
Clearly the power is supposed to have a knock down component to it. Right now it appears to knock down enemies once every minute or two (I stood among a group of level 20 enemies for a while). It should CONTINUALLY knock them down.
That would put it in line with an ultimate power for FF, and would not be unbalanced because it would only knock down along a perimeter, and you'd have to manually navigate your bubble around to knock foes down (unlike ice slick which covers a static area that enemies can't leave).
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According to City of Data it does indeed have a knockdown component, but it's only a 1% chance. Having a toggle knockdown power with any real ability to KD foes would be way too powerful. The only thing even remotely close to it would be Choking Cloud, which has a 15' radius, 80% chance to hold a minion, 50% chance to hold an LT, and a whopping 4.16 end cost (Force Bubble has a 0.17 end cost).
But as you've noticed, using Force Bubble doesn't deter or stop foes from attacking you as MagicJ has stated (due to some cockamamie BS about how it changes the AI behavior), it just pisses them off and makes them all want to attack you after a quick switch to their ranged attacks. The only foes that you can effectively neuter are those without ranged attacks. And the number of critters in CoX without ranged attacks that aren't resistant to repel? About 6.
But it's good to see another eager young FF Defender completely disgusted with getting Force Bubble as their tier 9 power. You join the ranks of a very long list of Defenders who have experienced the same disgust over this crap of a power.
Just don't tell MagicJ, otherwise we'll be subjected to another 20 posts of "but you're just not using it right", or "well it works great on my Mind/FF troller, and here's a video to prove it", or "changing it by giving it debuffs or changing the size of the bubble would be a nerf cause then I couldn't effectively use it with geometry and my troller and mastermind won't be uber-soloists anymore".
Yeah, we really don't need any more of that nonsense.
I'd take a whole lot of time reading all the posts on this topic so I'll just add my two cents. I have a 50 FF Defender which I would love getting some improvement..
PFF: no changes.
Dispersion, Insulation Shields: make the cast times and recharges the same as sonic rings would be too much? I feel that bubbling many people in a team is a slow process, at least slower than applying sonic rings on them.
Detention Field: Even with the changes to the bubble effect, it's not as noticeable as the new Sonic Cage (which is really flashy and can really tell the enemy is "caged"). So my only suggestion here is just to make the effect noticeable - for good.
Force Bolt: Fine as it is. No disorient, please! It's a force field, not a rock. It *pushes* you, not *hits* you. It does almost no damage for that reason. Disorienting is moving away from the concept of the power.
Dispersion Bubble: I'd love to have Sleep protection on it but I see it's unlikely (yet I'll mention it, anyway :P).
Repulsion Field: It's fine as it is. I would *not* like to see it changed from KB to KD, for the simple reason it's a player-based repel (the Defender being the center of the effect), and since it's going to repel the enemy away, it is *supposed* to do knockback, not knockdown. If the power were supposed to knock down, the effect would have to come from below (the ground), like Ice Patch does. It's not the case with RF.
However, if I were to add something ELSE to Repulsion Field, I'd add a small resistance to the caster. As it is a repelling effect, you can imagine a material object, like a sword, slashing through it. The repelling effect from the power would reduce the speed/strength of the attack being applied, and reduce its damage. Of course, it would be applied to everything else, melee, ranged or area, even elementals (i.e., fire blasts can be slightly dissipated when hitting the force field thus decreasing its damaging effect, same with energy, and so on), but certain damage could not be resisted that way. Intangible types, for that matter, like psionic damage, since Repulsion Field repels material things.
Repulsion Bomb: I don't have any experience with this power, but I'd suggest the same resistance effect with RF, applied to the ally instead. I don't understand why it does disorient, concept-wise. If, allegedly, knocking someone back can stun them (I don't think it could, if you ask me), then by all means do it. But again, it's a force field, not a rock...
Force Bubble: I'd add Defense to everyone (allies) inside it. Let's say an enemy shoots something from outside the bubble, as the thing (a bullet, a fire ball, whatever) hits the bubble and gets deflected during that moment, having a chance of missing the target.
I am indeed thinking a lot about the concept of the power rather than anything else. That's why I don't suggest Force Bubble debuffing the enemy (i.e., -damage, as someone suggested on this topic). Force Fields are supposed to protect the team, it's not a debuff set, although you can already achieve similar results (it can decrease the -acc of the enemies by improving the allies -def) but it is just consequences of having buffs by one side (which will "debuff" the other).
Now if I didn't think of the power concept, OBVIOUSLY I'd suggest Repulsion Bomb to do KD and 100% stun, Force Bolt with stun etc etc. But it would be one effect the power, visually, isn't meant to do. That way of thinking can make the suggestions actually coherent.
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I'd take a whole lot of time reading all the posts on this topic so I'll just add my two cents. I have a 50 FF Defender which I would love getting some improvement..
PFF: no changes.
Dispersion, Insulation Shields: make the cast times and recharges the same as sonic rings would be too much? I feel that bubbling many people in a team is a slow process, at least slower than applying sonic rings on them.
Detention Field: Even with the changes to the bubble effect, it's not as noticeable as the new Sonic Cage (which is really flashy and can really tell the enemy is "caged"). So my only suggestion here is just to make the effect noticeable - for good.
Force Bolt: Fine as it is. No disorient, please! It's a force field, not a rock. It *pushes* you, not *hits* you. It does almost no damage for that reason. Disorienting is moving away from the concept of the power.
Dispersion Bubble: I'd love to have Sleep protection on it but I see it's unlikely (yet I'll mention it, anyway :P).
Repulsion Field: It's fine as it is. I would *not* like to see it changed from KB to KD, for the simple reason it's a player-based repel (the Defender being the center of the effect), and since it's going to repel the enemy away, it is *supposed* to do knockback, not knockdown. If the power were supposed to knock down, the effect would have to come from below (the ground), like Ice Patch does. It's not the case with RF.
However, if I were to add something ELSE to Repulsion Field, I'd add a small resistance to the caster. As it is a repelling effect, you can imagine a material object, like a sword, slashing through it. The repelling effect from the power would reduce the speed/strength of the attack being applied, and reduce its damage. Of course, it would be applied to everything else, melee, ranged or area, even elementals (i.e., fire blasts can be slightly dissipated when hitting the force field thus decreasing its damaging effect, same with energy, and so on), but certain damage could not be resisted that way. Intangible types, for that matter, like psionic damage, since Repulsion Field repels material things.
Repulsion Bomb: I don't have any experience with this power, but I'd suggest the same resistance effect with RF, applied to the ally instead. I don't understand why it does disorient, concept-wise. If, allegedly, knocking someone back can stun them (I don't think it could, if you ask me), then by all means do it. But again, it's a force field, not a rock...
Force Bubble: I'd add Defense to everyone (allies) inside it. Let's say an enemy shoots something from outside the bubble, as the thing (a bullet, a fire ball, whatever) hits the bubble and gets deflected during that moment, having a chance of missing the target.
I am indeed thinking a lot about the concept of the power rather than anything else. That's why I don't suggest Force Bubble debuffing the enemy (i.e., -damage, as someone suggested on this topic). Force Fields are supposed to protect the team, it's not a debuff set, although you can already achieve similar results (it can decrease the -acc of the enemies by improving the allies -def) but it is just consequences of having buffs by one side (which will "debuff" the other).
Now if I didn't think of the power concept, OBVIOUSLY I'd suggest Repulsion Bomb to do KD and 100% stun, Force Bolt with stun etc etc. But it would be one effect the power, visually, isn't meant to do. That way of thinking can make the suggestions actually coherent.
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Well I do find your comments interesting.
First off, FF and Sonic shields have the same end cost, duration, and recharge time. The only difference is the cast time. Sonic is 1.33 seconds vs. FF which is 2.07. Personally I think they should both be shortened to 1 sec and be done with it. It can be really hard to get a full team of 7 people to stand still long enough to cast 14 shields @ 2 seconds per shield. But this is neither here nor there, FF has a lot more problems than this.
I am a bit perplexed by your comments about repulsion bomb and force bolt, and why you feel they shouldn't have disorients. I guess you could argue the "real life" applications, but since we have no way of knowing for sure if you'd be dazed and disoriented if a large bolt of force plowed into, hurling you across the room, we can only speculate.
Now from first-hand experience I've been hit with a number of objects over the years that have knocked me off my feet and left me dazed or disoriented (like that soccer ball to the face in college, and that unfortunate incident with an old 70s telephone...), without causing serious injury (very minor damage, in game terms), so it's not completely out there as a concept. Force Bolt may not be a rock, but it IS a big ball of force. And I think getting hit with something like that *could* possibly leave one disoriented.
But then you gotta ask, what makes Force Bolt so different from the Nemesis Staff? Identical animation; both big balls of force, so why does one knockback and do lots of damage, but the other knockback with very little damage? The answer is "just cause that's the way it was designed".
And think of Repulsion Bomb like a stun grenade -- they're not designed to hurt you, just daze and disorient you. RB is not really any different from Super Strength/Hand Clap except that it's ranged instead of PbAoE. And just so you know, the in-game text has been wrong for years. RB was originally a teammate-targeted power, but was changed to foe-targeted a number of years ago. The in-game text, unfortunately, was never changed. So I can completely conceptualize the idea of a big ball of exploding force that knocks you down and dazes you. Again, completely logical IMO.
And I don't think anyone suggested changing Repulsion Field from KB to KD. That I think is the one thing that would actually make the power worse than it already is. At a minimum I would like it to perform on par with Kinetics/Repel, as the two powers do exactly the same thing. But Repel is available at lvl 2 and has a cast time of 1.07 seconds, while RF is available at 18 and has a cast time of 2.03. It also KBs in long pulses; foes often can get right up next to you and launch a melee attack between pulses. I've never seen that happen with Repel, as the KB seems instantaneous. If two powers are virtually identical in form and function they should be available roughly at the same level. Repel is superior to RF simply because it has no pulses. Yet it's a tier 3 power, where RF is tier 7. And honestly, I don't know too many Kins that take Repel either. It suffers from the same issues as RF does -- uncontrolled 360 degree knockback is counterproductive 99% of the time, that 1% being an "oh crap" moment. And because it's PbAoE, all the aggro it generates is right on you.
Honestly I don't like the power any more than I like Repel, and I'm willing to accept that, as nearly every set in every AT has at least one stinker of a power the majority considers undesirable. The problem is that FF has 5 stinkers where most sets only have 1.
I came up with a few workable ideas to enhance Repulsion Field that I think would be of varying improvements over what we have now, but it's gonna be a hard sell to make any radical changes to these powers, even if you can keep within Castle's "core function" limitation.
Detention Field is just another one of those stinker powers that most people simply just skip because they are counterproductive on large teams. Remember, these powers were designed almost 4 years ago, and the game was a lot different at release than it is now. Characters had a lot more protection and did a lot more damage, and teaming wasn't nearly as necessary as it is now, especially for the "weaker" ATs.
These cage powers are great for soloists, but the game just isn't really solo-friendly anymore. Jack somehow got it into his thick skull that forcing people to team would build people's social interaction with others, which in turn would keep them playing. Though not readily acknowledged, this rather draconian concept is what inevitably led to the global defense nerf (GDN) and enhancement diversification (ED). After trying numerous gimmicks and tricks to persuade people to team (like increasing XP on teams and halving debt in instanced missions), he finally just nerfed the hell outta everyone so they no longer had much of a choice.
Although I think virtually every character now *can* solo (with a few notable exceptions), for many it's a slow boring grind -- and exactly the way Jack wanted it.
Ok, I digressed a little, but there was a point to all that. Many powers were designed to be useful for the soloist, cage powers being among them. But since soloing, especially for the Defender, is pretty much an excruciating experience, these powers simply are no longer useful for most players, and are almost universally skipped. It's not necessarily because they are badly-designed powers in and of themselves, it's because the game has evolved (or devolved, take your pick) to a point where they have no utility based upon the way the majority play. Yes, I think there is some room for minor improvements to make cage powers better for those that do use them, but to make them appealing and useful to the majority requires at least a moderate overhaul -- and again, that's unlikely to happen.
Force Bubble is a completely different beast tho. This is the one that completely baffles me. There is no other power in the game like it at all; it is completely unique. The only other power in the game with a repel is Mind Control/Telekinesis, which also contains a hold and is actually quite useful. So unlike Detention Field, which is essentially like all other cage powers; Repulsion Bomb, which is similar to Hand Clap and its relatives; Force Bolt, which calls Power Push a cousin; and Repulsion Field, the red-headed stepchild of Repel, Force Bubble is like no other. Which makes its sheer and utter uselessness even more bewildering.
I mean, compare FB to the other Defender tier 9 powers. None of them you'd even consider skipping. FB is the only one that is universally reviled. Why? For exactly the same reasons no one like Repulsion Bomb and Repulsion Field -- all it does is scatter the mobs, pushes them away from the aggro controllers, and directs all their attacks on YOU. Oh, and let's not forget, like the 3 powers in the set that do nothing but (or little more than) knockback, there are too many foes that will simply ignore the repel, making the power completely useless cause that's all it does.
Now from my point of view I see Force Bubble as just that -- a giant sphere of outward-pushing force. The closest approximation in real life I can think of would be a wind tunnel. If the force exerted by the wind is so strong that you cannot move forward and all attempts to move forward simply push you back (repel) then it's logical that any physical projectiles, whether they be matter or energy, are also going to be slowed by the outward force, either not making to the target (-range) or having a reduced effect once they get there (-damage). It is also logical that your ability to accurately aim your weapon will be diminished, as the outward force could cause your projectile to alter course, missing the mark (-tohit).
Now in the event you were actually strong enough to move forward in the wind tunnel, chances are it will require great effort (-recovery/-regeneration), and be very slow going (-speed). Any kind of physical acrobatics would be impossible as you're hard pressed to just stay on your feet as it is (-fly, -jump). And since your movement rate and agility is so hampered by the force of the wind, you're a lot easier to hit (-def). You could also say that any projectiles traveling in the same direction as the wind are going to be accelerated, and consequently do more damage (-resistance). All of this would of course be in addition to all the detriments you'd suffer by just being at the edge of the wind tunnel (-range, -damage, -tohit).
Another way of visualizing Force Bubble would be like a giant ball of Jell-0 brand gelatin dessert (only without the Cos). Most would never be able to enter the ball at all, and trying to shoot projectiles into the ball would prove difficult and highly inaccurate. And if you were strong enough to actually fight your way thru the goo, you're going to be moving very slowly, with very little agility, and expending a lot of energy to do it.
Either way you look at it, Force Bubble should be doing a lot more than simply pushing foes away from you. Any foe at the edge of the bubble should have their attacks severely debuffed in terms of range and damage (and though there should be a -tohit like in beta, -tohit is in essence +def, and I really don't think the set needs any more +def than it already has). And any foe that is strong enough to enter the bubble should have the rest of debuff library placed on them, as the bubble's force should not be binary (either you can enter or you can't), but should be constantly applying pressure to foes that are able to move through it.
Yes it's a lot of debuffs for one power to have, but here's the key to making it work without being overpowered -- the lesser debuffs like -range and -damage are only applied to those foes that can't enter the bubble, while the greater debuffs like -speed, -regen, -def, etc. are only applied to the stronger foes that resist the repel effect, mostly EBs, AVs, and GMs. This makes the power less effective against weaker foes, and more effective against harder foes, keeping things balanced. It's a lot like the changes Castle just made to Stalker's Assassin Strike. If nothing else, this would make the power a must-have for all FF Defenders, as it would be the only power in the set with foe debuffs, and the only thing they can bring to the table when fighting difficult foes. Not to mention bringing it in line with other Defender tier-9 powers.
Hey, I can dream, can't I? Do I have any expectation of a change like this being implemented? Not a chance.
I think the reason that FF has gone so long with so many stinkers in the set is because the 4 powers that are good are REALLY good. And there are a ton of FF Defenders with just those 4 powers who prove it every day. The problem isn't that the set on the whole is underperforming, it's that it's BORING. You're basically an underpowered Blaster that has to stop blasting every 4 minutes to re-apply bubbles. Then it's back to blasting.
So where other Defenders can do cool things with all their nifty powers like Tar Patch, Speed Boost, Hurricane, and Oil Slick Arrow (just to mention a few), all you get to do is cast bubbles every 4 minutes, over and over and over again. Are the bubbles very effective? Sure are. But is the set fun and interesting to play? Uh, nope. Does it give you fun and nifty powers to use that make you feel like you're contributing in every battle (besides the trivial amount of damage your secondaries do)? Nuh-uh. Anything to help take the sting out of fighting EBs, AVs, or GMs? Not a single thing.
And that's the biggest problem with FF. There simply isn't enough meat in the set to keep it interesting and fun to play.
tl;dr 
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....
I think the reason that FF has gone so long with so many stinkers in the set is because the 4 powers that are good are REALLY good. And there are a ton of FF Defenders with just those 4 powers who prove it every day. The problem isn't that the set on the whole is underperforming, it's that it's BORING. You're basically an underpowered Blaster that has to stop blasting every 4 minutes to re-apply bubbles. Then it's back to blasting.
So where other Defenders can do cool things with all their nifty powers like Tar Patch, Speed Boost, Hurricane, and Oil Slick Arrow (just to mention a few), all you get to do is cast bubbles every 4 minutes, over and over and over again. Are the bubbles very effective? Sure are. But is the set fun and interesting to play? Uh, nope. Does it give you fun and nifty powers to use that make you feel like you're contributing in every battle (besides the trivial amount of damage your secondaries do)? Nuh-uh. Anything to help take the sting out of fighting EBs, AVs, or GMs? Not a single thing.
And that's the biggest problem with FF. There simply isn't enough meat in the set to keep it interesting and fun to play.
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Good post Poobah.. again. This is probably the longest post that has actually kept me interested the entire time. Thank God we have you to balance out the MagicJ-ackass (Hey! I figured out what the "j" stands for!).
I'll admit that I loved being able to blast as much as I did with my bubbler, but the truth is, after trying more active sets, like TA or Storm, FF felt boring.
Instead of having 4 or 5 cool primary powers to use in conjunction with my 4-6 blast powers, I had a toggle, 2 primaries, and 4 blasts to fill my time with. The two primaries only got use every 4 minutes as well.
Thanks for the reply! Very detailed. Most things you said indeed changed my mind, but I'll go through them one by one. 
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I am a bit perplexed by your comments about repulsion bomb and force bolt, and why you feel they shouldn't have disorients. I guess you could argue the "real life" applications, but since we have no way of knowing for sure if you'd be dazed and disoriented if a large bolt of force plowed into, hurling you across the room, we can only speculate.
Now from first-hand experience I've been hit with a number of objects over the years that have knocked me off my feet and left me dazed or disoriented (like that soccer ball to the face in college, and that unfortunate incident with an old 70s telephone...), without causing serious injury (very minor damage, in game terms), so it's not completely out there as a concept. Force Bolt may not be a rock, but it IS a big ball of force. And I think getting hit with something like that *could* possibly leave one disoriented.
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IMO, two main things are responsible for disorienting a person: Sound and Impact. Hand Clap does the noisy clap thing which gets to the enemies' ears, leaving them stunned. As for impact, have Stalagmites as an example (I love how strong and impacting this power is, by the way -- it really fits as a stunner). I see it has to do with the hardness and speed the object hits you, not necessarily both at once (a soccer ball may not be hard but if it hits you at fast speed enough...), but a rock slammed at your face doesn't need much of speed to get this effect.
(As an aside: I do think Sonic Blasts should disorient foes rather than -res them, if you ask me. Oh, and Stone Melee too, but I think some powers already do that. I don't understand why Energy Melee does stuns, too, but that's subject for another topic. :P)
Force Fields are not hard, in fact, they are more like a pushing force. As a reference, you can see that from the Fantastic Four movies, where the Invisible Girl (I don't know if that's her name, we get a dubbed version here :P) has force fields. They seem mostly to push things away, rather than "knocking" them away (as in, hard-hitting them). There might be other references, but that's the only one I can think of at the moment.
However, I've seen in other super hero series, too, that force fields can be hard as glass. But the way they look in CoH doesn't suggest they're like this (well, they're even referred as "bubbles," and bubbles are everything but hard).
When I see a Force Bolt flying through a room and hitting an enemy, I do imagine a "pillow" hitting him. A pillow that gets constantly pushed towards the target and doesn't stop until the enemy is pushed back far enough: the aspect of the "force" in it. I get the same feeling about all the other FF powers in CoH, since they all look very alike.
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But then you gotta ask, what makes Force Bolt so different from the Nemesis Staff? Identical animation; both big balls of force, so why does one knockback and do lots of damage, but the other knockback with very little damage? The answer is "just cause that's the way it was designed".
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I think the devs thought the Force Bolt effect was cool as a blast, and reused it. Yeah, I think NS is lame because I see a Force Bolt being tossed, not a green energy ball (which I think was the idea of the NS). They could just have changed that effect, I suppose? I guess they got the "reusable" way of coding way too much to the letter in this case. But, again, I'm getting off-topic here, just wanted to share my thoughts about it.
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And think of Repulsion Bomb like a stun grenade -- they're not designed to hurt you, just daze and disorient you. RB is not really any different from Super Strength/Hand Clap except that it's ranged instead of PbAoE. And just so you know, the in-game text has been wrong for years. RB was originally a teammate-targeted power, but was changed to foe-targeted a number of years ago. The in-game text, unfortunately, was never changed. So I can completely conceptualize the idea of a big ball of exploding force that knocks you down and dazes you. Again, completely logical IMO.
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I had no idea RB was now enemy-based, really. So you toss it around him and his "friends" in melee range get KB'ed and stunned? At first thought I could go from "that blows!" to "hmm might find interesting tactics on that." So I'll give it more thought, maybe play with it on Test sometime, too, to see how it feels.
About the stun, I would understand if the wave impact of the Repulsion Bomb had some factor that could disorient a foe, may it be impact or sound. I do think a stunning sound could be made into repulsion force fields, or, the first burst of impact of the repelling cycle could be strong, yet having a short radius. It could be a concentrated force during that burst, which could make it for the "impact" requirement, making it able to stun an enemy. Some things to wonder about.
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Force Bubble is a completely different beast tho. This is the one that completely baffles me. There is no other power in the game like it at all; it is completely unique. The only other power in the game with a repel is Mind Control/Telekinesis, which also contains a hold and is actually quite useful. So unlike Detention Field, which is essentially like all other cage powers; Repulsion Bomb, which is similar to Hand Clap and its relatives; Force Bolt, which calls Power Push a cousin; and Repulsion Field, the red-headed stepchild of Repel, Force Bubble is like no other. Which makes its sheer and utter uselessness even more bewildering.
I mean, compare FB to the other Defender tier 9 powers. None of them you'd even consider skipping. FB is the only one that is universally reviled. Why? For exactly the same reasons no one like Repulsion Bomb and Repulsion Field -- all it does is scatter the mobs, pushes them away from the aggro controllers, and directs all their attacks on YOU. Oh, and let's not forget, like the 3 powers in the set that do nothing but (or little more than) knockback, there are too many foes that will simply ignore the repel, making the power completely useless cause that's all it does.
Now from my point of view I see Force Bubble as just that -- a giant sphere of outward-pushing force. The closest approximation in real life I can think of would be a wind tunnel. If the force exerted by the wind is so strong that you cannot move forward and all attempts to move forward simply push you back (repel) then it's logical that any physical projectiles, whether they be matter or energy, are also going to be slowed by the outward force, either not making to the target (-range) or having a reduced effect once they get there (-damage). It is also logical that your ability to accurately aim your weapon will be diminished, as the outward force could cause your projectile to alter course, missing the mark (-tohit).
Now in the event you were actually strong enough to move forward in the wind tunnel, chances are it will require great effort (-recovery/-regeneration), and be very slow going (-speed). Any kind of physical acrobatics would be impossible as you're hard pressed to just stay on your feet as it is (-fly, -jump). And since your movement rate and agility is so hampered by the force of the wind, you're a lot easier to hit (-def). You could also say that any projectiles traveling in the same direction as the wind are going to be accelerated, and consequently do more damage (-resistance). All of this would of course be in addition to all the detriments you'd suffer by just being at the edge of the wind tunnel (-range, -damage, -tohit).
Another way of visualizing Force Bubble would be like a giant ball of Jell-0 brand gelatin dessert (only without the Cos). Most would never be able to enter the ball at all, and trying to shoot projectiles into the ball would prove difficult and highly inaccurate. And if you were strong enough to actually fight your way thru the goo, you're going to be moving very slowly, with very little agility, and expending a lot of energy to do it.
Either way you look at it, Force Bubble should be doing a lot more than simply pushing foes away from you. Any foe at the edge of the bubble should have their attacks severely debuffed in terms of range and damage (and though there should be a -tohit like in beta, -tohit is in essence +def, and I really don't think the set needs any more +def than it already has). And any foe that is strong enough to enter the bubble should have the rest of debuff library placed on them, as the bubble's force should not be binary (either you can enter or you can't), but should be constantly applying pressure to foes that are able to move through it.
Yes it's a lot of debuffs for one power to have, but here's the key to making it work without being overpowered -- the lesser debuffs like -range and -damage are only applied to those foes that can't enter the bubble, while the greater debuffs like -speed, -regen, -def, etc. are only applied to the stronger foes that resist the repel effect, mostly EBs, AVs, and GMs. This makes the power less effective against weaker foes, and more effective against harder foes, keeping things balanced. It's a lot like the changes Castle just made to Stalker's Assassin Strike. If nothing else, this would make the power a must-have for all FF Defenders, as it would be the only power in the set with foe debuffs, and the only thing they can bring to the table when fighting difficult foes. Not to mention bringing it in line with other Defender tier-9 powers.
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That was really insightful. I think I was thinking too much only about at the repelling abilities of it. I can agree with everything you mentioned about it, but...
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Do I have any expectation of a change like this being implemented? Not a chance.
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I keep all my hopes up until a dev comes and says "we're not doing that." As far as noone of them aren't saying that -- so far -- I can only keep my hopes up.
Adding up something as for my post-50 FF Defender experience, I totally turned him into an Offender. His secondary is /Energy Blast, and I had a lot of fun filling my attacks with Force feedback: Chance for +Recharge enhancements (and some other enhancement that has Chance to Hold on single-target attacks) and playing like I have Hasten on most of the time. And I don't even have Hasten itself. The point in that, though, is that he's way more fun to play now as a (weak) Blaster rather than as a Defender. And I (and probably many other players out there) thought it was supposed to be the other way around.
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Based on the short in-game description, the EXPECTATION I had for [Force Bubble] was that it would push enemies away from me (as it does), and that it would continually knock them down along that perimiter -- similar to how ice slick knocks foes down. Instead, it just pushes them back and let's them all kill me!
Clearly the power is supposed to have a knock down component to it. Right now it appears to knock down enemies once every minute or two (I stood among a group of level 20 enemies for a while). It should CONTINUALLY knock them down.
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The problem with Force Bubble is that it pretty much nullifies itself. It is only possible to put a debuff on a foe that is WITHIN the area of effect of a power. But Force Bubble's sole purpose is to push foes OUT of its area of effect. Once they are out of the area of effect, they aren't effected by it any more and thus can stand up and shoot at you. (Which they will, since they will have gained a huge amount of aggro from you)
At one time, Force Bubble had a -Acc component associated with it. Most people believe this was removed because it made it too hard for foes to hit you, it was too overpowered with FF's Defense. However, it's my believe that the effect was removed because it never worked, foes that entered the field and got the -Acc applied to them were flung out, and the -Acc immediately wore off.
The only way people who support Force Bubble and encourage its use are able to use it to keep foes down is by taking advantage of terrain features. They trap the foe in a corner or against a wall and then move forward so their Force Bubble continually tries to shove them into the wall. The foe is continually knocked off his feet and is unable to fight back.
Truthfully, Force Bubble IS useful when you use it that way. The problem is that it's situation, you must either wait for a wall or corner in a mission that you can use in this way, or actively seek out such terrain. In other words, you seek out missions that have walls, and attempt to herd your opponents so they can be trapped against walls.
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Force Fields are not hard, in fact, they are more like a pushing force. As a reference, you can see that from the Fantastic Four movies, where the Invisible Girl (I don't know if that's her name, we get a dubbed version here :P) has force fields. They seem mostly to push things away, rather than "knocking" them away (as in, hard-hitting them). There might be other references, but that's the only one I can think of at the moment.
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Well, when Invisible Girl (yes, that's right ) uses her force fields, there can be situations, according to the plot, that give her a big advantage in doing that. For instance, she can slam a foe into a wall and knock him down. Or, she can "fold" her force field around someone and pick them up and fling them. Or, contain someone so they can't get away. She doesn't have to always cause the person to be knocked in a trajectory of an arc away from her person, she can push or hold objects in any number of ways to manipulate them.
In a video game, though, a power can only do what you program it to do. And in this game, Knockback is programmed to cause your foe to fly away from you. While this is useful for a ranged fighter, who might want his foe further away, it's an annoyance to a meleer. When Invisible Girl constrains a foe and knocks him into The Thing so he can clobber him, that's a good thing, but if she knocked the foe out of his range so The Thing had to keep running after him that would be bad.
The problem is that you can't control the distance or direction of the knockback. If Super Strength was real, you know that you could just punch somebody to cause him damage, without causing him to fly away from you with every punch. You just wouldn't punch that hard. Yet, if you wanted to, if you needed to, you could punch him into the nearby building. In this game, you can't control it to that degree, either an attack will cause knockdown, at which time it won't do knockback, or it will do knockback, at which time it can't just knock the guy down where he is.
Disorient was an attempt to add another effect to Repulsion Bomb to make it more useful. First of all, in its original design if it was used on a meleer with Invincibility, it could cause him to lose all of his defense because that depends on the number of foes in range. It could also cause him to lose aggro, resulting in the foe charging at weaker teammates. This was so disruptive to a battle that many FFers wouldn't even use the power. At least now with a Disorient there is a chance the foes will stagger around until the Tanker can gather them up again. (And you don't have to fire it at an ally, you can just use it as a regular AoE knockback)
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Force Fields are not hard, in fact, they are more like a pushing force. As a reference, you can see that from the Fantastic Four movies, where the Invisible Girl (I don't know if that's her name, we get a dubbed version here :P) has force fields. They seem mostly to push things away, rather than "knocking" them away (as in, hard-hitting them).
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I've always thought the exact opposite. I picture force fields as being very solid; as solid as a steel wall would feel.
I see your point about the Invisible Woman in the movie, but that isn't how she's always portrayed in the comic. See in Civil War where Taskmaster shoots Mr. Fantastic and she crushes him with an invisible cylinder? It wasn't a push; it was a sudden impact of a solid object with a lot of force, leaving a crater with Taskmaster gibbled at the bottom of it.
This is why I see a disorient effect as being in-line with Force Bolt; a bolt of force, projected at high speesd would easily disorient you if the bolt was solid enough.
Anyhoo, just my perspective. You've got some good points.
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I've always thought the exact opposite. I picture force fields as being very solid; as solid as a steel wall would feel.
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I personally think of Jade Dragon's power (my main FF Defender) as being very "soft". Rather than making bubbles around people, he instead has a field of vaporous energy that he can expand into a cloud. Which is why I never took the ally bubbles until I was well into my 30s. Not just because I was always solo, but also because I saw his force fields as being "diffuse".
I'm the exception, though, not the rule. When I think of Force Fields in general, I think of "walls" of energy. They don't gently push you out of them, it's like hitting a steel wall. Or that's the concept, at least. They can't really be that solid, you can attack through them. (Maybe they open up "windows" to let punches or shots out, but not to let them in)
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This is why I see a disorient effect as being in-line with Force Bolt; a bolt of force, projected at high speesd would easily disorient you if the bolt was solid enough.
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Being hit in the head with a sphere or cylinder of force as hard as steel would definately daze you.
I see the disorient as being more getting knocked around and not quite knowing where you are. You take a second to get back your bearings.
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....
I think the reason that FF has gone so long with so many stinkers in the set is because the 4 powers that are good are REALLY good. And there are a ton of FF Defenders with just those 4 powers who prove it every day. The problem isn't that the set on the whole is underperforming, it's that it's BORING. You're basically an underpowered Blaster that has to stop blasting every 4 minutes to re-apply bubbles. Then it's back to blasting.
So where other Defenders can do cool things with all their nifty powers like Tar Patch, Speed Boost, Hurricane, and Oil Slick Arrow (just to mention a few), all you get to do is cast bubbles every 4 minutes, over and over and over again. Are the bubbles very effective? Sure are. But is the set fun and interesting to play? Uh, nope. Does it give you fun and nifty powers to use that make you feel like you're contributing in every battle (besides the trivial amount of damage your secondaries do)? Nuh-uh. Anything to help take the sting out of fighting EBs, AVs, or GMs? Not a single thing.
And that's the biggest problem with FF. There simply isn't enough meat in the set to keep it interesting and fun to play.
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Good post Poobah.. again. This is probably the longest post that has actually kept me interested the entire time. Thank God we have you to balance out the MagicJ-ackass (Hey! I figured out what the "j" stands for!).
I'll admit that I loved being able to blast as much as I did with my bubbler, but the truth is, after trying more active sets, like TA or Storm, FF felt boring.
Instead of having 4 or 5 cool primary powers to use in conjunction with my 4-6 blast powers, I had a toggle, 2 primaries, and 4 blasts to fill my time with. The two primaries only got use every 4 minutes as well.
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Thanks. Glad to know that someone took the time to read it considering how long it took to write
Another downfall of the FF set that really hasn't been mentioned is the Defender power Vigilance. FFers get very little benefit from it compared to other sets. Being a proactive instead of reactive set means we stop the team from taking damage instead of trying to heal them up later. Well if the team isn't taking damage, then we get zippo from Vigilance.
Basically, the better you are at providing +def to your team, the less of an endurance discount your going to get. So in essence, FFers that slot up Deflection and Insulation Shields, Dispersion Bubble and Maneuvers at the expense of slotting up their attacks get *penalized* for being really good Defenders. Kinda stupid, right?
You're better off slotting up only Dispersion Bubble for your own defense and then focus on your attacks, since that's what you'll be doing most of the time anyway. This way the team takes a moderate amount of damage and you can easily get a 40-50% endurance reduction buff from Vigilance, simply by being a sucky Defender. Dumb... just dumb.
A better way IMO would be to base Vigilance off the number of foes around you instead of the health of your teammates. The more foes within, say, a 100 ft radius of you, the more of an endurance discount you get. This gives you a big discount at the beginning of a battle, which then gradually decreases as the foes are defeated and the threat lessens. And if by chance an unexpected ambush shows up, then whammo, your discount shoots up again, giving you the extra oomph to recast bubbles, heal, debuff, attack, etc.
This way every Defender gets the same amount of Vigilance regardless of whether they have a reactive or proactive set, are slotted to be good Defenders or good attackers, good team or bad team.
And it would be nice if the solo defender gets something out of his inherent as well. Though you might not get much of a discount from the 2-3 foes in your average solo spawn, if you accidentally aggro another spawn or have multiple spawns close to one another it would definitely help pull you thru considering the pathetic amounts of damage a Defender does. As it stands now, the solo Defender gets NOTHING from Vigilance.
And while we're on the subject of pathetic damage, something else occurred to me. In the grand scheme of things Corruptors get 75% of Blaster damage and Defenders get 65%. And any talk of increasing Defender damage always gets derailed cause of this "balance", cause if you give Defenders more damage, then they encroach upon Corruptor damage levels, so you'd have to give them a boost, which puts them too close to Blaster level, yadda yadda yadda...
But here's the problem with this line of thinking. Both Corruptors and Blasters have inherent abilities that buff their damage output by a significant amount. So while a Corrupter's base damage is 75% of a Blaster's, it's probably closer to 85% once you factor in Scourge. And we all know that with Defiance, even Blasters don't do Blaster level damage, it's more like 120% on average. And these aren't bullsh*t numbers. I'm sure Castle could give us the exact percentages on average from datamining, and I'm sure even Arcanaville could run the numbers and generate some pretty accurate statistical figures. But I'm betting they'd be pretty damned close to mine, if not even higher.
So while Blasters are doing, on average, 120% damage and Corruptors are doing 85% damage, Defenders are still stuck at 65%. And I'll tell ya, just play a Defender and you know the damage is absolutely pathetic, even compared to a Corruptor who is supposed to be only 10% more. There is something very wrong here.
If you're going to scale damage by AT you should be factoring in the effects of inherent damage buffs, otherwise the scaling is simply not proportional, accurate, or even fair, especially when you consider the scaling of buffs and debuffs across ATs aren't affected by any of the inherents.
For example, a Corruptor's Radiant Aura will do 87% of what a Defender's RA will do. In turn, a Defender's Neutrino Bolt will do 87% of what a Corruptor's NB will do. Sounds fair, right? But wait, Corruptors get Scourge, which can increase their overall damage by at least 10% or more over time, putting the Defender not at 87% of Corruptor damage, but more like 75%. Well hell, that ain't fair at all. Defenders really get shafted.
And the picture is far worse when you look at Blasters. With an average 20% buff from Defiance the Defender isn't doing 65% of Blaster damage, only 54% -- almost HALF. But not so when it comes to debuffs -- Blasters still get 65% of Defender values. So the Defender gets shafted again.
So while the game's buffs and debuffs are accurately proportional across ATs, damage most certainly is NOT, and the Defender suffers badly in both directions.
So not only do we get a highly inconsistent, imbalanced inherent, but we also do significantly less proportional damage with absolutely nothing to make up for it.
Frankly, it's [censored] up. Defenders are by and large my favorite AT, but they've become so weak and annoying to play that most of mine have been shelved indefinitely. I think it's high time the AT damage scale is rebalanced and Vigilance turned into something useful for all Defenders regardless of set or team size. Cause the way it is now, Defenders are getting nothing but the short end of the stick.
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FFers get very little benefit from it compared to other sets.
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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.
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And while we're on the subject of pathetic damage
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Huh. Just tonight I was fighting CoT in the Portal Corp parking lot. A Willpower/Mace tanker was fighting near me. We both attacked one of those "twin spawns" of Death Mages, you know, the ones where there's two Death Mages facing each other? Anyways, we both each attacked one of them. I had mine down a full minute before he had his down. I ran over to him and did an /emote sit, laughing at him while he was still attacking his mage.
I think Defenders, even FF Defenders can do pretty damn good damage, if you build for it....
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I've always thought the exact opposite. I picture force fields as being very solid; as solid as a steel wall would feel.
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I personally think of Jade Dragon's power (my main FF Defender) as being very "soft". Rather than making bubbles around people, he instead has a field of vaporous energy that he can expand into a cloud. Which is why I never took the ally bubbles until I was well into my 30s. Not just because I was always solo, but also because I saw his force fields as being "diffuse".
I'm the exception, though, not the rule. When I think of Force Fields in general, I think of "walls" of energy. They don't gently push you out of them, it's like hitting a steel wall. Or that's the concept, at least. They can't really be that solid, you can attack through them. (Maybe they open up "windows" to let punches or shots out, but not to let them in)
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This is why I see a disorient effect as being in-line with Force Bolt; a bolt of force, projected at high speesd would easily disorient you if the bolt was solid enough.
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Being hit in the head with a sphere or cylinder of force as hard as steel would definately daze you.
I see the disorient as being more getting knocked around and not quite knowing where you are. You take a second to get back your bearings.
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Well personally I think force fields can go both ways. You can create a large, softer bubble (like Dispersion Field), a small, much harder bubble (like PFF) or very small but rock solid balls of force (like Force Bolt and Repulsion Bomb). They are all just variations of the same ability, used in different ways to achieve different effects.
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So while Blasters are doing, on average, 120% damage and Corruptors are doing 85% damage, Defenders are still stuck at 65%. And I'll tell ya, just play a Defender and you know the damage is absolutely pathetic, even compared to a Corruptor who is supposed to be only 10% more. There is something very wrong here.
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Given that defenders have very strong ally buffs, how much damage do you think defenders should do, relative to blasters? Some of those buffs are very high: Enervating field is a -30% resistance debuff on the targets, which is effectively 30% more damage. 30% true increase, not +30% damage buff. So if a blaster is 1.125, and slotted to 1.125 * 1.95 = 2.19, or defiance buffed to a constant +50% damage (the high end) of 1.125 * (1.95 + 0.5) = 2.76, then defender damage is 0.65 * 1.95 = 1.27, or with something like an EF debuff 0.65 * 1.95 * 1.3 = 1.65. If we stop right there, and do not factor in other damage buffs like AM, we end up with average blaster damage being in the range of 2.76/1.65 = 1.67; the blaster is doing 67% more damage.
Is that already too high when comparing an archetype that specializes in dealing damage with the archetype that does not specialize in doing damage, but does specialize in ally buffs? Defenders are also, in the general case, a lot less squishy than blasters are: even with lower health, they have a lot of damage mitigation relative to the average blaster. How does that factor in?
Actually, I made this spreadsheet of exactly these types of numbers back in I11 beta. It seemed to show that if you compare blaster damage and damage mitigation to everyone else, the blaster ratio was lower than everyone else if you make the simplifying assumption that blasters as an archetype have no more offensive damage mitigation (damage mitigation effects intrinsic in their offensive damage powersets) than any other archetype. This included defenders.
That doesn't mean there isn't anything wrong with defenders, just that comparing them to blasters is probably the worst possible comparison to make. Datamining showed that when placed in the hands of average players, blasters levelled much slower than everyone else, including defenders. That combined with the damage/mitigation archetypal ratios suggest that blasters do not have a special advantage in combined damage/defense capability over defenders.
Blasters certainly kill a whole lot faster. But they seem to pay for that in the general case by being a whole lot more fragile.
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FFers get very little benefit from it compared to other sets.
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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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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.
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A power that most FFers never get to use. Like you said, no FFer in his right mind is going to be using Repulsion Field, Repulsion Bomb, or Force Bubble on a large team as they are 100% counterproductive. So you're going to have on Dispersion Bubble, perhaps Maneuvers and Tactics, throwing bubbles on your teammates every 4 minutes and blasting in between. Such is the life of a typical FFer on a team.
But because all that +def is stopping your teammates from taking damage, their health never drops. And if their health never drops you get NOTHING from Vigilance. Nada. Zippo. Zilch. And if you were silly enough to use any of your other toggles (assuming you were silly enough to take them in the first place) it would only make the matter worse, as all that scattering prevents foes from doing damage, and once they are able to attack again they are going to come for YOU. And there is no Vigilance to be had based on YOUR health, only the health of your teammates.
This is why I said it's better to be a sucky FF Defender who slots up all his attacks instead of his defenses. It's the only way the team is going to take enough damage for you to get any benefit out of Vigilance.
If you were to 3 slot Deflection/Insulation Shields, Dispersion Bubble, and Maneuvers with defense SOs your teammates just about hit the 45% soft cap on defense, meaning they are going to take little to no damage from anything short of an EB or maybe a high level boss (and in such situations it's usually the tank taking damage, not the whole team). If the team doesn't take any damage, you get NOTHING from Vigilance.
Now if you were to just slot up Dispersion Bubble for defense and left the other powers at base values you'd be giving your teammates only 34% defense, which will allow them to take much more damage. And once your team starts taking damage is when you start seeing the power of Vigilance.
And that, IMO, is [censored] up. I shouldn't have to purposely nerf my primary powers so that I can take advantage of my AT's inherent ability. But that's exactly what you have to do to get any benefit from Vigilance as an FF Defender.
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And while we're on the subject of pathetic damage
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Huh. Just tonight I was fighting CoT in the Portal Corp parking lot. A Willpower/Mace tanker was fighting near me. We both attacked one of those "twin spawns" of Death Mages, you know, the ones where there's two Death Mages facing each other? Anyways, we both each attacked one of them. I had mine down a full minute before he had his down. I ran over to him and did an /emote sit, laughing at him while he was still attacking his mage.
I think Defenders, even FF Defenders can do pretty damn good damage, if you build for it....
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Well you're comparing apples and oranges. For starters, Mace tanks certainly are not known for their damage, and you have no way of knowing how this tank was built. He very well could have been built for tanking, not damage, whereas most FF Defenders are built for damage, not Defending.
Also, Death Mages have that ridiculously overpowered Chill of the Night PbAoE tohit debuff -- something that in combination with the tohit debuffs of his dark attacks could easily floor that tank's accuracy. Being a ranged attacker, CotN would have no effect on you unless you got into melee range, which I'm guessing you didn't do.
And you also don't mention what your secondary set is. Not all secondaries are created equal, and some are well known to do a lot more burst damage than others, something that makes taking out a boss a lot easier.
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So while Blasters are doing, on average, 120% damage and Corruptors are doing 85% damage, Defenders are still stuck at 65%. And I'll tell ya, just play a Defender and you know the damage is absolutely pathetic, even compared to a Corruptor who is supposed to be only 10% more. There is something very wrong here.
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Given that defenders have very strong ally buffs, how much damage do you think defenders should do, relative to blasters? Some of those buffs are very high: Enervating field is a -30% resistance debuff on the targets, which is effectively 30% more damage. 30% true increase, not +30% damage buff. So if a blaster is 1.125, and slotted to 1.125 * 1.95 = 2.19, or defiance buffed to a constant +50% damage (the high end) of 1.125 * (1.95 + 0.5) = 2.76, then defender damage is 0.65 * 1.95 = 1.27, or with something like an EF debuff 0.65 * 1.95 * 1.3 = 1.65. If we stop right there, and do not factor in other damage buffs like AM, we end up with average blaster damage being in the range of 2.76/1.65 = 1.67; the blaster is doing 67% more damage.
Is that already too high when comparing an archetype that specializes in dealing damage with the archetype that does not specialize in doing damage, but does specialize in ally buffs? Defenders are also, in the general case, a lot less squishy than blasters are: even with lower health, they have a lot of damage mitigation relative to the average blaster. How does that factor in?
Actually, I made this spreadsheet of exactly these types of numbers back in I11 beta. It seemed to show that if you compare blaster damage and damage mitigation to everyone else, the blaster ratio was lower than everyone else if you make the simplifying assumption that blasters as an archetype have no more offensive damage mitigation (damage mitigation effects intrinsic in their offensive damage powersets) than any other archetype. This included defenders.
That doesn't mean there isn't anything wrong with defenders, just that comparing them to blasters is probably the worst possible comparison to make. Datamining showed that when placed in the hands of average players, blasters levelled much slower than everyone else, including defenders. That combined with the damage/mitigation archetypal ratios suggest that blasters do not have a special advantage in combined damage/defense capability over defenders.
Blasters certainly kill a whole lot faster. But they seem to pay for that in the general case by being a whole lot more fragile.
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I just knew if I started talking numbers I'd get you to come out of hiding!
The problem with factoring in primary powers when seeking to balance secondary powers and vice versa is that not all of the complementing sets are created equal. A Rad/Rad Defender is certainly going to do a lot more damage than an Empathy/Rad or FF/Rad Defender would. It's simply the nature of the beast. But not all Defenders have a -resistance ability to help them do more damage. And even the secondaries themselves play a role. Radiation is full of def debuffs, meaning you're going to hit more often, doing more damage overall. Sonic has stackable resistance debuffs that allow you to do more damage as well when compared to Energy, Electric, Psionic, and Dark, none of which have any debuffs that alter damage.
But this same reasoning can also be used with Blasters too. Fire/Fire Blasters are notorious for their damage output, whereas Assault Rifle/Devices are notorious for their lack of overall damage. So when trying to balance Blasters, do you factor in Build Up? Aim? BU + Aim? What about those Blasters that don't get BU? Or those that don't take it?
Honestly, since individual powers are not balanced by their secondary effects (sonic attacks have the same damage/sec and damage/end ratios as any other sets, even though they can do more damage because of the resistance debuffs), I don't think ATs should be balanced that way either. You really should be looking at the lowest common denominator and balancing around that, and ignoring any specialized abilities that aren't inherent to every member of that AT.
If Defenders are supposed do 65% of the damage a Blaster does, that 65% should be based upon the true amount of damage a blaster does, not simply the base damage. Since every single Blaster, regardless of sets and power choices, gets roughly the same damage buff from Defiance, then that buff should be considered when balancing the "base" damage of other ATs. This is especially important because other buffs and debuffs are balanced by the same formula as damage, which gets completely skewed in favor of Blasters and Corruptors because of their damage buff inherents.
This imbalance is not unlike what was recently done to Controller ancillary powers. When the ancillaries were first created there were no AT inherent abilities, so their damage was balanced to the appropriate modifier at the time. But this balance was lost once Controllers got Containment, allowing them to do double damage on any mezzed foe. Now you had Controllers throwing fireballs that could do at least 50% more damage than a Blaster's fireball. And we all know that is not right. And the ancillaries were eventually re-balanced, taking Containment into consideration.
The damage scaling imbalance between Blasters, Corruptors, and Defenders is no different. The balance is supposed to be 1.0, .75, .65. Right now it's more like 1.2, .90, .65, or 1.0, .75, .54 when normalized. If this is indeed what the devs intend to keep as the "new" AT modifers, then the other buff/debuff tables should be modified as well, so that Corruptor buffs and debuffs are .72 of Defender values, not .87. And Blaster debuffs are .54 of Defender values, not .65. Why should the Defender get both less damage AND lower proportional buffs? That's no more right than allowing Controller fireballs to out damage Blaster's.
And as a personal aside, I enjoy both team play as well as solo play. And in my own experience I find soloing with Controllers and Corruptors to be much more enjoyable than any of my Defenders (and I have nearly one of each primary). While my Trollers and Corruptors can solo missions on the base or +1 difficulty settings at a reasonable and rewarding pace, all of my Defenders struggle to solo on heroic. I can do it, sure, but it's no FUN. It's slow and laborious, and the lack of comparable damage to other ATs is PAINFULLY apparent.
And let's face it, even that Rad Defender with his 30% resistance debuff is STILL going to less damage than a Corruptor without any resistance debuffs, and a helluva lot less than one with a resistance debuff. And while debuffs are all well and good, they still take both time and endurance to apply. Tohit debuffs, knockback, slows, disorients, defense buffs, etc. only reduce the incoming damage, they don't improve the speed at which you defeat your opponents, nor reduce the amount of endurance needed either. Defense debuffs only work to a certain degree, and in many cases don't improve kill speed for the solo Defender because they are already over the accuracy cap with one accuracy SO. So you're left with only two abilities, resistance debuffs and damage buffs, that actually help the soloist kill faster. The problem is that for the Defender, faster does not mean more efficiently.
Now it would be nice if all Defender sets got one or other other, but they don't. Empathy and FF have neither a self damage buff nor a foe resistance debuff. And even amongst the sets that do have them, they are all of varying degrees of effectiveness, endurance cost, area of effect, and duration.
The very best of them, Freezing Rain, provides a 35% AoE resistance debuff that lasts for 15 seconds, can't be made perm-able even with Hasten, and costs nearly 1/5 of a Defender's total endurance to cast. And as I pointed out earlier, that 35% resistance debuff barely brings Defender damage up to Corruptor damage, and requires a lot more endurance to do it.
And that is yet another area where the solo Defender falls flat on his or her face. They simply do not have enough endurance, even with 3 slotted Stamina and endurance reduction SOs in all toggles and attacks, to be able to efficiently defeat even level foes. Remember that Vigilance does absolutely nothing for the solo Defender. Let's also remember that while a Defender is doing 54% of a Blaster's damage, they still use exactly the same amount of endurance per attack. So the Defender needs to use twice as many attacks and burns thru twice the endurance per foe as a Blaster does. Even when you factor in the extra damage that a resistance debuff or damage buff might give you, the extra damage dealt is offset by the extra endurance needed to fuel the debuff. So while you'll likely defeat foes faster, you'll require more rest between mobs to recover enough endurance before moving on to the next spawn.
No matter how you slice and dice it, soloing a Defender is a slow and tortuous experience. With significantly less proportional damage than other ATs and an inherent ability that has the potential to alleviate some of the difficulties but simply doesn't, you're getting hit badly from two sides.
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But as you've noticed, using Force Bubble doesn't deter or stop foes from attacking you as MagicJ has stated (due to some cockamamie BS about how it changes the AI behavior), it just pisses them off and makes them all want to attack you after a quick switch to their ranged attacks.
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Only if you have them standing in one spot at the edge of the bubble or a against a wall. If you move around they will charge towards you and then fight the repel once they're back inside the field. You can see that happening over and over again in Chaos Control video. Baddies want to attack at melee range. It's why Mass Confusion clumps baddies together, and it's why Force Bubble drasticly slows their attacks.
As I said before, the normally recommended procedure of pushing them up against a wall or corner is probably one of the _worst_ uses of Force Bubble there is. You're basically doing nothing but having them all attack you.
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Frankly, it's [censored] up. Defenders are by and large my favorite AT, but they've become so weak and annoying to play that most of mine have been shelved indefinitely. I think it's high time the AT damage scale is rebalanced and Vigilance turned into something useful for all Defenders regardless of set or team size. Cause the way it is now, Defenders are getting nothing but the short end of the stick.
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Something we agree on. Defenders have been held up as the example of a perfectly balanced AT. It's really not true now, and probably never has been. Force Field's biggest flaw is that it's simply unable to mask the flaws in the Defender AT the way the other sets can. Force Fields actually highlights Defender flaws. A few examples:
<ul type="square">[*]FF's lack of damage buffs highlights Defender's low damage.[*]FF's Knockback highlights their poorly designed cone attacks.[*]FF's remarkable ability to herd highlights the uselessness of Defender's nukes solo.[*]FF's low Defense for the FFer highlights Defender's lack of a Defensive shield in their Epics.[*]FF's strong ability to keep a team healthy highlights the poor design of Vigilence.[*] The common FF playstyle of shielding the team and then using your other powers means you spend the majority of your time using the flawed secondary.[/list]
That combo is just seriously sick, and is a perversion of gameplay mechanics. - Excelsio
The Infernal Challenge
Building a WarTroller
Troller Damage
Great post Poobah, you pretty much echo my thoughts 100% Which is also why my three defenders gather dust while my Fire/Dark corruptor gets all the play. From day one the buff/debuff + blast combo has been my favourite, and I do love my defenders - but they just don't stack up anymore compared to corruptors - which get to contribute healthy damage AND healthy buff/debuffs.
Maybe its a conspiracy by the devs to gimp defender blasts to a point that they can't solo at all (which is pretty much the case already) to make sure none of that valued primary is wasted to the greater CoH populace.
Is it just me, or does it seem like there's a huge elephant sized box in the dev studio with "DEFENDER" printed on the side that no one wants to look at? Throw 'em a frickin' bone for crying out loud.
Sorry to get OT, but my original and favourite-est AT needs love.
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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
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The thing is, you can cover your Endurance needs simply by turning off Repulsion Field when it's not needed.
If you need more than that for some reason, you can put an Endurance Reduction in your attacks, or get +Recovery bonuses from IOs. My lvl 50 Dark/Dark/Dark doesn't even have Stamina and can blast, run multiple toggles, debuff, and heal all she wants to. No Vigilance required.
The basic flaw with Vigilance is when you're doing your job well, which is hopefully most of the time, you're not going to get any benefit from it. That means you need to build your toon to work well without it anyway.
That combo is just seriously sick, and is a perversion of gameplay mechanics. - Excelsio
The Infernal Challenge
Building a WarTroller
Troller Damage
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If Defenders are supposed do 65% of the damage a Blaster does, that 65% should be based upon the true amount of damage a blaster does, not simply the base damage.
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The problem is that that presumes the archetype damage modifiers are "right." We can work the other way around: when blasters were 1.0 and defenders were 0.65, the devs discovered that blasters were broken, because their levelling was much slower than defenders (and everyone else). So they gave blasters more damage. The original 1/0.65 ratio was in effect proven to be incorrect, which prompted the change in the first place.
However, the 0.65 number itself hasn't been "proven wrong" yet because the devs haven't seen numbers which suggest the number is too low for defenders to function. It may or may not be but what they see so far suggests its not.
I consider the 1/0.65 number to be a first guess at what the blaster/defender ratio should be, not a conceptual decision on what they ought to be. Moreover, its not specifically saying what the ratio of total damage should be, but rather what the ratio in damage should be when given identical powers.
You say "not all defenders get damage buffs" and that's true. But you can't argue for a damage modifier increase based on the defender primary with the *lowest* damage buffs available, without simultaneously implying that the ones with the very high damage buffs need to have them taken away. Because if the damage ratio argument is valid, its valid in both directions. If FF defenders can use it to compare themselves to blasters, for example, the blasters and turn around and use the identical balance argument on rads, darks, and kins. That makes it a very dangerous argument to employ, because it ultimately creates a lot of collateral damage.
I happen to consider the damage boosting (and other) effects of rads and kins to be, in not balanced with the defensive benefit of FF, then presumed to be balanced for the sake of inter-archetype balancing. Meaning, when I compare "defenders" to "blasters" I assume FF defenders and Kin defenders should be considered equal representatives. Because if they are not, then there is an intra-archetype balance problem to solve that has nothing to do with blasters.
Having made that assumption, I then realize its really hard to compare an FF defender to a blaster, because the blaster has nothing to compare even remotely to an FF defender. But its at least not crazy to compare the offensive power of a kin or a rad to a blaster, so I compare them so see how the archetypes compare, using Blaster-ish criteria.
I then use Kins and Rads as a form of "pivot point" around which both archetypes are balanced. If the "offensive" defenders can be balanced against blasters (which is itself a subject of massive debate), then they can go back to defenders as "representatives" of the archetype balance model, and then the defenders can be balanced among themselves using more Defender-ish criteria.
Doing anything else is probably going to stall. You really can't compare a Fire blaster to an FF defender in a meaningful way directly, because there isn't a convenient way to normalize the benefits of the two around something you can quantitatively compare. Basically, you can't compare apples and oranges, but sometimes you can compare apples to apple juice and oranges to orange juice, and then you're left with the simpler problem of comparing apple juice to orange juice.
[Guide to Defense] [Scrapper Secondaries Comparison] [Archetype Popularity Analysis]
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If you move around they will charge towards you and then fight the repel once they're back inside the field. You can see that happening over and over again in Chaos Control video.
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That video is actually quite interesting, and although you're using it more to prove a narrow point about mob behavior vs. repel effects, it possibly can be used as a great demo of generalized FF quality. It certainly demonstrates the nature of FF's repel and knockback qualities in gameplay.
Unfortunately there seems to me to be two flaws that undercut the video's ability to demonstrate for the general argument: 1) without medicine's heal self power, the ff'er in the demo would have died quickly before 99% of the knockback quality could have been demonstrated, and 2) if any of the nemesis lts had been actively being killed, and vengeance went off, the ff'er would have died quickly again, so at most to pull off the results shown in the demo, any team supported by such an ff'er must remain pacifistic at all times which is incompatible with general CoH encounters.
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<ul type="square">[*]FF's strong ability to keep a team healthy highlights the poor design of Vigilence.[/list]
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I would argue that Vigilance isn't poorly designed. Players simply don't want to play it to its design (which is not necessarily unfair). The 'flaw' is only, arguably, that the psychological satisfaction of having a full green bar at all times is too much to overcome any impulse to be a teammate to a defender insofar as juggling less-than-full health values. Vigilance is actually a complete design, and somewhat interesting. It's just being ignored by non-defender players who have no real vested interest in it, and thus defenders are forced to ignore it as well.
One way to fix Vigilance is after all to change the game so that a full green bar all the time is much less common, much less an entitlement, and is much less a big deal to players. Vigilance isn't really broken, it just doesn't fit us. *shrug*
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<ul type="square">[*] The common FF playstyle of shielding the team and then using your other powers means you spend the majority of your time using the flawed secondary.[/list]
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The nature of having a 'fire and forget' primary that leaves you a lot of time to play with your secondary likely shouldn't be thought of as anything other than a variant of powerset interaction design. It's not good or bad, it's just a different choice, and the FF implementation and the general secondary implementations available have proven to be far from ineffective with this variant in play.
And I've got to say, my extensive experience with the psi secondary really leverages strengths out of the FF 'fire and forget' style. I get lots of time to sleep and stun and kb and -recharge and blast all over the place. I've found it very satisfactory myself.
The only time I'm disappointed with being an FF is when I get into groups who're prejudiced, ignorant, unforgiving, and intransigent about letting me play with all my powers. This is really very common, and includes a lot of people who are great, fun, mild people who are also great and fun teammates. But they turn in a hurry if I pull out my Repulsion Bomb straw to stir their drinks. For the most part, it's not worth it to tackle the problem of getting them past those hangups when I can have a lot of fun with these people so easily just by being more power-demure and supporting what they want to do with their powersets. Tragically, being the badge hunter that I am, this approach to interacting with the community has led me to regrettably give up on trying to get many badges until someone feels like opening up a pity slot for me on a 'good' (ie, can survive or even dominate without FF) team.
In so many ways I can earn my place on a team, but commonly I have to wait until someone feels like giving me a silver platter of team benefits before I get a chance. FF isn't bad, it's just that teammates design their styles to be effective without FF and thus the players have made FF expendable. FF doesn't need to be changed, if only teammate mindsets were changed instead.
Howdy,
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The nature of having a 'fire and forget' primary that leaves you a lot of time to play with your secondary likely shouldn't be thought of as anything other than a variant of powerset interaction design. It's not good or bad, it's just a different choice, and the FF implementation and the general secondary implementations available have proven to be far from ineffective with this variant in play.
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I'm probably in the minority, but I think that having a "fire and forget" primary focused on three powers that don't benefit, at all, from heavy slotting is god-awful design and is an unintentional side-effect of the devs having [censored] up distance as damage mitigation.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Defender FF is too effective with too few slots and powers, but isn't effective enough with heavy slotting and heavy power choices. Every other defender primary gets demonstrably more powerful the more slots and power choices you throw at it. FF? Not so much.
Further: Defender FF doesn't suck up nearly enough endurance /because/ it's so reliant on so few powers.
I'm willing to go out on a limb and say that the current implementation of Defender FF is not at all in keeping with the devs' design philoshophy, either now or at some random point in the past.
We know the history. We know Statesman's post(s) about FF. We know that Castle wants there to be tough decisions about what powers to take and how to slot all of them (although that post might have been in I12's beta boards). And we know that Castle mentioned FF's ability to get by with few powers.
Statesman's view was laughably out of touch. But I can't see Castle being very happy with the majority of FF defenders skipping the set's final three powers, and only taking 4 or 5 of the first 6. That's not in keeping with how he wants players to play, or even to think about, a set.
So ... Castle's looking at FF, and the first step (I think there'll be others), is to add raw damage to Repulsion Bomb. I don't think it'll be much of a benefit to defenders, mind you (lack of damage is /not/ the reason defenders skip the power) ... but there's still room for Castle to surprise us -- like having the power amp up its damage against AVs, an area where FF is traditionally weak.
But we'll see what happens.
I have to agree that the video demonstrates several points quite eloquently, but perhaps not the points intended by the creator. Insofar as I was able to discern (and I did watch the entire video), it basically just proved that PFF is some potent stuff at keeping you alive.
...
Which, hopefully, we already knew. The use of all other FF powers in that video was unimpressive and unremarkable. Not bad, just not anything special. I don't know what you thought you were proving.
~Gabriel
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CDN_Guardian
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But both are fine at your basic crowd control.
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If you're going to quote me, use the whole quote.
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Hahahaha, you are such a [censored] loser it's pathetic. You edited that bit in after I'd already quoted and responded to you.
Edit: Ah, I see that now in the first post I quoted. Yeah, in one sentence you state that there isn't a significant difference in the level of control offered by Defender and Controllers and then add that both are fine at basic crowd control.
As I've already stated, I'd love to see the Defender that could even come close to , say, a Gravity Controller.