Make Your FF Change Suggestions Here!

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I would love to see - COMPRESSION FIELD

Basically the opposite of Force Bubble.
A target AoE force field that compresses down and pulls in all foes in nice and close together.
Kinda like a AoE immob except the foes can move, they just cant move out of the area. (maybe an acc check to keep them in the field)
It would be nice if it had a minor DoT (due to the increased pressure)

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I've wondered about this, and magicj asnwered it for me. There is already a power that groups enemies together. It's in the presence pool. You have defense, PFF, knockdown, and potentially Aid Self to help you survive.

I am currently on my path to making a tanking ff/arch.

But baring that choice, I'd love to see a power such as the one you describe. However, a toggle, reverse-repel, tics of knockdown power would be my suggestion

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General Requests
* Add a Defense DeBuff somewhere.
I don't see where it could be added.

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As one of any number of debuffs that should be placed into Force Bubble. IMO, when foes are inside Force Bubble they should be hit with the kitchen sink of debuffs. There are plenty of powers in the game that apply multiple debuffs to foes. Force Bubble should be one of them. I went into this in some length at one point, but the beauty of this is that it would only affect foes that are strong enough to resist the repel. Foes stuck at the edge of the bubble perhaps just get a -tohit and/or -damage. But those inside the bubble get the multiple debuff effects such as -tohit, -dam, -defense, and slow, with perhaps even a debuff to recovery and/or endurance. Basically the idea is that it takes a tremendous amount of energy to withstand being inside the bubble, so it's going to severe adverse effects upon your fitness and ability to attack and do damage.

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* Allow the field to be "suppressed", allowing the bubbler to fire through it with either a loss of defense or with a severe defense and/or resistance penalty.
This is a good suggestion.

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Sounds like a good suggestion, but I think in terms of actual gameplay it won't really work so well. How often does a Defender just use one or two attacks? And then you'll have to sit there for 10 seconds or so, completely vulnerable to attack, while you wait for the suppression to wear off. If you make the suppressed defense/resistance high enough to be useful then the power becomes too powerful. If you suppress the defense/resistance to a very low level or zero then there is no point, you might as well just turn it off to attack and turn it back on when you're done.

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Deflection and Insulation Shields:
* Switch the Defense percentages between Dispersion Bubble and Insulation and Deflection Shields.
What would be the reason for this? In the end, wouldn't the percentages be the same? I'd not like to see that changed, because I want my castable shields to be more stronger than Dispersion Bubble, as they are currently.

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No, because if you switched them then the caster gets more defense, while there would indeed be no change to allies as long as they stayed inside Dispersion Bubble.

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Dispersion Bubble:
* Replace the sleep weakness with an immobilize weakness.
I think the devs have decided that the main weakness of Force Fields is sleep and psi. Since both are related, I see it makes sense. Because you can say sleep relates 100% to mental powers, but you can't say the same for holds, disorients or immobilizes. A solid shield cannot block a mental power, and that's probably working as designed.

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Well that's debatable. PFF gives you psionic protection, and it's no more or less solid than any other power. Personally I don't think it should have any holes in its protection. If you can protect yourself from a mental hold, why not a mental sleep? The reason for the lack of sleep protection has never really been explained. But it carries over into Sonics as well. They have the same lack of sleep protection in their big bubble.

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* Add some defense debuff resistance.
It would be interesting, but I think that debuff resistance only relates to self-powers that grant defense. Super Reflexes, for example. Even so, a minor def debuff resistance would be something.

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My understanding is that at some point all melee defense powers (Super Reflexes, Ninjitsu, Ice Aura, Stone Armor, Energy Aura, and perhaps Invulnerability) will get defense debuffs added to their defense powers. I don't know if Castle plans on doing the same for FF or pool powers that grant defense. It might wind up being a Tank/Scrapper/Brute/Stalker ability.

Honestly I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for it to happen for FF.

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Force Bolt:
* Add a low percentage chance to disorient, or a minor disorient.
Would make some sense, but if it does, all attacks that are blunt and do knockback would deserve the same treatment, so I don't think it's likely.

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Actually, most smashing attacks usually do have some kind of disorient and/or knockback in them. Think of Mace, Super Strength, Stone Melee, Energy Melee, etc. Not all KB powers have a disorient, but it's not uncommon for both to be in the same power.

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* Change it into a pet that follows you and has it's own PBAoE Repel ability.
Eek! I bet it's gonna be suicidal. I vote no.

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This was one of my very outside the box suggestions. Honestly it would be no more suicidal than a Gravity Troller with Singularity. The only difference is that the FF pet doesn't attack. Having a Grav Troller with a Sing I can personally attest as to how useful the repel affect on the Sing is. Boss bearing down on you? Hide behind the Sing and watch it go flying. That's pretty much the idea I was going for, essentially a non-attacking Singularity.

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Repulsion Bomb:
* Decrease the animation and/or ca st time SUBSTANTIALLY.
Don't touch the animation. I love it. One of the best in the game. My opinion.

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I haven't checked this, someday I'll get around to it. Repulsion Bomb shares the same animation as Neutron Bomb, but I believe NB's animation runs significantly faster. If so, the same treatment should be applied to Repulsion Bomb.

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* Make it the same radius as Dispersion, or switch the radii of the two powers.
I think that, due to lag reasons, that would become a problem. Enemies would be able to get into melee range if the server response isn't fast enough to understand the enemy is being repelled. I already saw that happening with the current version of the power.

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The size of Force Bubble presents two distinct problems. First, it forces all melee toons to fight at the edge of FB, which puts them outside of Dispersion Bubble and dangerously close to being outside the range of Leadership powers. Second, it has a nasty tendency to generate unwanted aggro from nearby spawns. It also places critters beyond the range of many of a Defender's blast attacks.

If there is indeed an issue with server lag and application of the repel effect, perhaps adding a slow would help here. Not sure why repel would be subject to this problem while the KB effects of Repulsion Field and Repel are not. If it's a matter of pulse times, then you simply have to increase them when you make the field radius smaller to ensure the repel effect gets applied faster.

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* Reduce the endurance cost or the recharge.
The endurance cost is not a problem, currently, I don't think. For Controller, that would be good.

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Actually, if Castle were to throw in a bunch of status effects (and he *should*) it will most likely result in a hefty increase in the power's end cost, or some kind of limitation as to how often it can be used (such as turning it into a click power or limited toggle). I'm thinking something along the lines of the cost of Enervating Field and Radiation Infection combined. That should cover having at least as many debuffs in those two powers and keep the end cost in line for such a toggle.

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* Change it into a pet that follows you and has it's own PBAoE Repel ability.
Eek! I bet it's gonna be suicidal. I vote no.

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This was one of my very outside the box suggestions. Honestly it would be no more suicidal than a Gravity Troller with Singularity. The only difference is that the FF pet doesn't attack. Having a Grav Troller with a Sing I can personally attest as to how useful the repel affect on the Sing is. Boss bearing down on you? Hide behind the Sing and watch it go flying. That's pretty much the idea I was going for, essentially a non-attacking Singularity.

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For this, I had a mental image. I keep seeing my teammates' "fairy" pets chasing enemies. So if it did repel, it would repel the enemy. Chase the enemy, repel it again. Rinse, repeat. How many nearby groups would be aggroed by that?

On the other hand, Singularity behaves quite nicely. I don't know if the AI is different or specific for it, but I don't remember seeing Singularity chasing much, if at all. Now the "fairy" pet is just scary, and I had that in mind while looking at this suggestion. :P

I'd vote yes, if the pet behaves.

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* Change it into a pet that follows you and has it's own PBAoE Repel ability.
Eek! I bet it's gonna be suicidal. I vote no.

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This was one of my very outside the box suggestions. Honestly it would be no more suicidal than a Gravity Troller with Singularity. The only difference is that the FF pet doesn't attack. Having a Grav Troller with a Sing I can personally attest as to how useful the repel affect on the Sing is. Boss bearing down on you? Hide behind the Sing and watch it go flying. That's pretty much the idea I was going for, essentially a non-attacking Singularity.

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For this, I had a mental image. I keep seeing my teammates' "fairy" pets chasing enemies. So if it did repel, it would repel the enemy. Chase the enemy, repel it again. Rinse, repeat. How many nearby groups would be aggroed by that?

On the other hand, Singularity behaves quite nicely. I don't know if the AI is different or specific for it, but I don't remember seeing Singularity chasing much, if at all. Now the "fairy" pet is just scary, and I had that in mind while looking at this suggestion. :P

I'd vote yes, if the pet behaves.

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Since it doesn't attack there is no reason it should chase anything except you. I'm about 2 month away from having a vet pet, so I really can't compare, but I think the reason Sings and other Troller pets work so well is because they never get too close to you when they follow. They always stop about 8-10 feet behind you. The trade off is that it's sometimes hard to get them to take the alpha attack because they're too far away to attack, and by the time you move close enough to get them close enough YOU'VE got the aggro, not them.

And I don't know about your Defenders, Trollers, and MMs, but I try to keep mine of melee whenever possible. So it's not like I'd ever have to worry about running into mobs and scattering them. I mean it's no different than the way Repulsion Field and Repel is now. If you use them you certainly don't go running into big mobs cause you know it's just gonna piss them off. It would be no different as a pet. The advantage to the pet is that the KB can be somewhat directional instead of omnidirectional. Stand in front of the pet and anything that comes from behind gets KBd. Stand behind the pet and anything that comes from the front gets KBd, etc. It gives you some control over what gets KBd and what doesn't. And hell, if for some reason you want to engage in melee with some critter heading towards you, you can cause the pet is 8-10 feet behind you and outside of melee range. This is something you absolutely can't do with RF or Repel. If it's on, anything that gets close to you get's KBd, with zero control over it.

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* Change to a timed toggle power so that it can be turned off at will but is forced off if left on too long.
That would be an improvement.

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I believe this has been stated many times as being impossible with the game mechanics:

Toggle Powers work by pulsing their effect for short durations on their target. If the effect is to make the target unaffected by powers from another source then the toggle will not effect the target on the next tick allowing the effect to wear off. Leaving us with an enemy that due to Server Latency could affect others but would be Practically Immune to return fire.

However, if paired with this change:

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Make into a "reverse Personal Force Field". The enemy has high Defense and Damage Resistance but can't attack.

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It would be a possible and highly usable effect

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* Change to a timed toggle power so that it can be turned off at will but is forced off if left on too long.
That would be an improvement.

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I believe this has been stated many times as being impossible with the game mechanics:

Toggle Powers work by pulsing their effect for short durations on their target. If the effect is to make the target unaffected by powers from another source then the toggle will not effect the target on the next tick allowing the effect to wear off. Leaving us with an enemy that due to Server Latency could affect others but would be Practically Immune to return fire.

However, if paired with this change:

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Make into a "reverse Personal Force Field". The enemy has high Defense and Damage Resistance but can't attack.

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It would be a possible and highly usable effect

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It can be done if you design it as a pet effect. You flag the pet as being able to attack that which is un-attackable (ala Hamidon) so it can continuously apply the status effects. Once the toggle is turned off, the pet goes bye bye and the effects wear off.

I wonder what Castle thinks of FF as it stands?

It certainly is an odd duck in a defender's hands -- the set seems to have been made to go hand in hand with the assumption that distance is damage mitigation*, but CoH has evolved into, especially on teams, an AoE zerg-fest that doesn't jive with 50' repel powers.

I mean ... the set works well most of the time. And you can do some interesting things with set bonuses (up to and including milking more def than my freakin' EA brute can). But it's missing some, you know, 'zazz. Damage mitigation is easy to come by in CoH, and defender FF isn't that great a performer on teams that already have good mitigation -- the set is too focused on mitigation, and isn't even the best at mitigation in all situations.

Anyway, some suggestions.

Def debuffing resistance. All other sets that rely heavily (or, in the case of WP, minimally) on def have it. I'd gladly give up the borderline pointless immob resistance in DB for this.

A debuff (or two) added to Repulsion Field. If a mob can stand within it, and the bubbler can deal with the nutty end drain, the power should, you know, DO SOMETHING. No other class of powers in the game has the potential to drain so much end and yet deliver so little. Make it worth my while to risk being in melee with an AV.

Force Bubble: can't be fixed into the "always on, always good" power States figured it should be for defenders without redoing the power. Solo, many primary / secondary combinations lack enough ranged damage to deal with Castle's 3 +3 minions at FB's edge. Teamed, it tends to be overly dangerous since it's awfully tough for teammates to pull aggro from the bubbler once the mobs get spread out.

Detention Field needs to be a click / toggle hybrid.

Repulsion Bomb: its range should be bumped to 55' from 50 so that it can more easily be used at Force Bubble's edge. Without slotting for distance, Force Bubble comes /awfully/ close to negating this power.

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I wonder what Castle thinks of FF as it stands?

It certainly is an odd duck in a defender's hands -- the set seems to have been made to go hand in hand with the assumption that distance is damage mitigation*, but CoH has evolved into, especially on teams, an AoE zerg-fest that doesn't jive with 50' repel powers.

I mean ... the set works well most of the time. And you can do some interesting things with set bonuses (up to and including milking more def than my freakin' EA brute can). But it's missing some, you know, 'zazz. Damage mitigation is easy to come by in CoH, and defender FF isn't that great a performer on teams that already have good mitigation -- the set is too focused on mitigation, and isn't even the best at mitigation in all situations.

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My guess is that Castle sees nothing in his datamining statistics to indicate the set underperforms compared to other Defender primaries, Controller & Mastermind secondaries. 'Zazz unfortunately has nothing to do with it. I think he's well aware the set is rather dull and has many powers that are by and large highly situational and often times detrimental to teams. But the powers that work well work so well (as you said, the ability to hit the defense cap is nothing to sneeze at) there is no pressing need to start revamping the underperforming powers. The change to Repulsion Bomb was a nice gift -- but I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for more changes.

In many ways the Sonic Resonance set is very similar to Force Fields, but at least that set manages to squeeze in at least a little 'zazz.

Seriously tho, Defenders as a whole have not been given any major love in a VERY long time. I have no idea if they're even on Castle's "I'll get to it eventually" list. Personally I think a revamp to Vigilance is way overdue. Fixing that one inherent so that the buff can be had while soloing and is not dependent upon the team's health (which favors reactive sets like Empathy, but absolutely kills proactive sets like FF) would go a long way to making Defenders much more pleasant to play at all levels.

Ah I forgot about the code implemented for Hammi, that could work then.

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Fixing that one inherent so that the buff can be had while soloing and is not dependent upon the team's health (which favors reactive sets like Empathy, but absolutely kills proactive sets like FF) would go a long way to making Defenders much more pleasant to play at all levels.

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ARRRRGH!


I want to pluck out my own eyeballs everytime I hear that Force Fields is a "proactive" set. We have THREE powers that are proactive, and the rest can be used EITHER proactively OR reactively. I wrote a long diatribe a year or so ago about Vigilance and Force Fields, but I can't remember it. I'll give you a quick summation of what it said though:

all those "situational" powers that FF has? Yeah, when your team has almost no health... you can use ALL of them. Why? Because you'll have the endurance to have Force Bubble, Repulsion Field, Dispersion Bubble on all at the time time while you're running all over and whacking things with Force Bolt, Repulsion Bomb and Detention Field.

You can save a team from a team wipe like that, THANKS to Vigilance. If it didn't exist, you couldn't do all that at once because you'd be out of blue in a moment.

I never understood why people think vigilance is better on an Empathy defender. When things start to go south, an Empathy defender can use vigilance to remove vigilance or use their secondary to remove enemies, a FF defender is using vigilance to remove enemies with their primary and secondary so they don't get more vigilance. Hell, if someone on a team with my FF/Nrg takes damage, I am going to get use out of vigilance, because I sure as hell can't eliminate my vigilance bonus like an Emp might be tempted to. More Energy Torrent and Repulsion Bomb please.

Edit: What Philotic said.

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Fixing that one inherent so that the buff can be had while soloing and is not dependent upon the team's health (which favors reactive sets like Empathy, but absolutely kills proactive sets like FF) would go a long way to making Defenders much more pleasant to play at all levels.

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ARRRRGH!


I want to pluck out my own eyeballs everytime I hear that Force Fields is a "proactive" set. We have THREE powers that are proactive, and the rest can be used EITHER proactively OR reactively. I wrote a long diatribe a year or so ago about Vigilance and Force Fields, but I can't remember it. I'll give you a quick summation of what it said though:

all those "situational" powers that FF has? Yeah, when your team has almost no health... you can use ALL of them. Why? Because you'll have the endurance to have Force Bubble, Repulsion Field, Dispersion Bubble on all at the time time while you're running all over and whacking things with Force Bolt, Repulsion Bomb and Detention Field.

You can save a team from a team wipe like that, THANKS to Vigilance. If it didn't exist, you couldn't do all that at once because you'd be out of blue in a moment.

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But the simple truth is that while your teammates are fully bubbled they are going to take little to no damage. If the team also has a healer who likes to spam their AoE heal on auto, what little damage they are going to take is quickly erased. The only time you're realistically going to get any benefit from Vigilance is when Deflection and Insulation Shields drop, which basically gives you enough of a buff so you don't run out of end as you throw out 14 bubbles in rapid succession and keep your toggles up.

The FFers job (as is the Sonic's) is to prevent the team from taking damage. That's why it's called a proactive set. The Empath's job is to restore HPs after damage is taken. And that's why it's called a reactive set. And it's why my Empath has no need for Stamina, while my FFer withers away without it, even on a full team. If I'm doing my job and keeping everyone bubbled they simply do not take enough damage for me to see any major benefit from Vigilance.

Now this is not to say that FF can't be reactive if you've taken those powers. But by and large the main core of the set are the two shields and Dispersion Bubble, all of which are proactive. If your team is facing a total wipe while fully bubbled then something is very wrong -- you're either in way over your heads or you're on a sucky team.

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I never understood why people think vigilance is better on an Empathy defender. When things start to go south, an Empathy defender can use vigilance to remove vigilance or use their secondary to remove enemies, a FF defender is using vigilance to remove enemies with their primary and secondary so they don't get more vigilance. Hell, if someone on a team with my FF/Nrg takes damage, I am going to get use out of vigilance, because I sure as hell can't eliminate my vigilance bonus like an Emp might be tempted to. More Energy Torrent and Repulsion Bomb please.

Edit: What Philotic said.

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Yeah, but in practice it doesn't really work that way. If the team is taking damage even an Empath can only do so much healing at one time. You have one moderate single target heal, one extreme single target heal (that sucks 25% of your HPs away and leaves you unhealable), and a low yield PbAoE heal.

Now if it's only the tank that's taking significant damage, then yeah, you probably won't get much from Vigilance. But that's usually not the case. Usually the whole team is taking some amount of damage at the same time. You might toss out you PbAoE which just keeps them going, and use your single target heals on the mates that are in the worst shape. It's not like you can fire off your PbAoE heal and restore everyone to full health instantly. And as soon as they're healed, guess what? They start taking damage again. Lather, rinse, repeat.

A good FFer doesn't see that much variation in their teammate's health as they should have anywhere from 35-45% defense. What little damage the team does take usually just heals away on it's own due to regeneration or other available healing powers.

At least this has been my experience. And both my Empath and FFer are in their 30s, so it's not like I haven't played them enough to know how they function on teams.

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The FFers job (as is the Sonic's) is to prevent the team from taking damage. That's why it's called a proactive set.

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You may call it that. I don't.

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And both my Empath and FFer are in their 30s, so it's not like I haven't played them enough to know how they function on teams.

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Lol, if you want to get into "experience", I could tell you that I've spent 4 years bringing PK to level 50 at least three different times, along with playing him at level 50 the third time for the last year and having copies of him on every server at varying other levels. So that's well over 150 levels and four years of bubbling experience to your level 30ish experience. I don't like to talk experience however because I don't consider "experience" a valid form of authority. I think the words should stand on their own as truth without any backing. But you brought it up, so there you go.

If your team isn't taking enough damage.... your mission scalar isn't set high enough or you're not pushing your team hard enough. What's the fun in complete safety? I'll tell you on most the teams I'm on, we DON'T slow down until the damage to the characters starts to get past the shields... and that's when the real fun starts.

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The FFers job (as is the Sonic's) is to prevent the team from taking damage. That's why it's called a proactive set.

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You may call it that. I don't..

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I have to chime in here, P., because I agree with the first poster and not you. FF is front-loaded team protection. Sets like Empathy are rear-loaded team protection. Both provide protection in terms of Hit Point mitigation.

FF provides the mitigation by exclusively applying the power before damage from combat takes place. How you ask? Let's look at it...
[*] DS, IS and DB all add to defense so the attacks miss instead of doing damage.
[*] Force Bolt knocks down a mob before it can activate an attack that can do damage to a team mate or our own character.
[*] Detention Field outright prevents attacks from happening so there is no concern about incoming damage.
[*] Repulsion Bomb knocks down mobs before they can attack AND renders a percentage of them unable to attack for a period of time thus allowing the team to avoid damage.
[*] Force Bubble forces mobs into 1) temporary melee animations, 2) aggro on the Bubbler, and 3) knockdown. All three prevent damage by shifting it away from the team members.

I could go on, but you get my point.

Damage is fundamentally mitigated before it happens through methods designed to prevent it from being applied to a character, after it happens through HP regeneration, or during it's application through damage reduction. Three fundamental methods of prevention apply to ALL defender sets. FF, along with the sets that add -ToHit mitigate by preventing damage. Sonic mitigates by reducing damage, and sets like Empathy mitigate by rapidly removing damage after it happens.

Therefore FF is proactive. It can only prevent damage from happening. There is NO argument that can state FF removes damage after it takes place (which is the realm of a reactive defense set).

- B.

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all those "situational" powers that FF has? Yeah, when your team has almost no health... you can use ALL of them. Why? Because you'll have the endurance to have Force Bubble, Repulsion Field, Dispersion Bubble on all at the time time while you're running all over and whacking things with Force Bolt, Repulsion Bomb and Detention Field.

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Honestly, as I have played more on teams, I have come to agree with you more. The situations have definately come up where the proper use of Repulsion Field, Force Bubble, and Repulsion Bomb have helped the team recover when the "big 3" bubbles fail. The energy wouldn't be available if my teammates weren't taking critical damage, although quite honestly, I have felt Vigilance kicking in even previous to real trouble. Then again, my group is a large one, and we are always running with 8 members.

Even so, I am hard pressed to eliminate a description of "proactive" from FF. Knocking your foes on their butts may save the team, but it's not the same thing as eliminating the damage. And the truth is, the more capability you have to eliminate the damage, the less capability you have to prevent the damage. So "reactive" and "proactive" are not the same thing. Even though "reactive" sets can take action to prevent damage before it happens, and "proactive" sets can take action once the allies start taking damage, that does not make them identical.

And the difference is still much more noticable solo and in smaller groups. In fact, in working with a Sonic Corruptor I believe I've concluded that specifically when solo, proactive defense works much better when coupled with high damage. If you can heal up after the fact, you can buy more time to defeat the foe.

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the set seems to have been made to go hand in hand with the assumption that distance is damage mitigation

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When forcebubble forces things outside of the range of some of my blasts it stops being mitigation and starts being a pain in the [censored].

And then the enemies try to run away and I plink away their health with my defender scalar damage.

Maybe I was misunderstanding the definition of the word "proactive" then. I was interpreting it to mean that all effects and prevention were applied BEFORE combat, and that nothing was done during combat. That's how I was translating the word. However, your two comments have shown me that I'm in error of mistranslation.

I'll admit when I'm wrong. You're right, we can't do anything after the damage is taken.

I guess my point is that while most people see FF as a primary that CAN'T be the only "defense" on the team, I see that with an active use of "the other six" that we CAN successfully keep any team alive no matter the circumstance without assistance from the dreaded "h341z0rz."

That's what I guess I'm trying to get across. FF with just the shields can mitigate 75% of all incoming damage (that's a "meta-game" number, not a real one) and the "other six" can mitigate 20% more. The other 5% is easily taken care of with a green or two.

I guess that's all I'm trying to say.

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Damage is fundamentally mitigated before it happens through methods designed to prevent it from being applied to a character, after it happens through HP regeneration, or during it's application through damage reduction.

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As I said previous, I don't agree or disagree with Philotic, but I think I see where he's coming from, and where you have a difference in terminology.

You are defining "proactive" as "before the attack". That is, all FF powers are proactive because they prevent the attack from hitting the ally the foe intends to hit. The attack is either deflected, or the foe is prevented from firing. Thus, the damage mitigation is "proactive", it occurs before the attack itself hits.

However, Philotic is not using the term in that fashion. In fact, it really isn't proper to use the term that strictly because we are talking about "proactive" in regards to Vigilance. Vigilance is a power that provides Endurance to the Defender AFTER HIS ALLIES HAVE TAKEN DAMAGE. Therefore one could define "proactive" as taking action not before an attack hits, but before the ally has taken damage. "Reactive" would be an action taken after the ally has taken damage.

In other words, you are entering a grey area here where your allies have already been hit, and you are now taking reactive action to prevent FURTHER damage. Your action is not proactive because you didn't take it prior to the start of combat, as you would in applying bubbles. Instead, you take action during combat, just as the reactive Defender would take action to recover the damage taken not after the combat is over, but while the combat is still going on.

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Therefore FF is proactive. It can only prevent damage from happening. There is NO argument that can state FF removes damage after it takes place (which is the realm of a reactive defense set).

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In this I have to agree with you. FF can only prevent damage from happening, it cannot remove it. Unless you get Aid Other from the Medicine Pool, which in my opinion goes outside the concept of Force Field, your allies must rest in order to recover any damage they have taken.

To use the terminology above, a reactive set can take proactive action before the combat begins, take both reactive and proactive action during the combat to remove damage and prevent more, and take reactive action after the combat to remove the remainder of the damage. Force Field can only take proactive action before the fight, and proactive and reactive action during the fight. Once the fight's over, the FF cannot help any further.

Then again, Dark's post combat capabilities are limited as well, so that's not unique.

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In other words, you are entering a grey area here where your allies have already been hit, and you are now taking reactive action to prevent FURTHER damage. Your action is not proactive because you didn't take it prior to the start of combat, as you would in applying bubbles. Instead, you take action during combat, just as the reactive Defender would take action to recover the damage taken not after the combat is over, but while the combat is still going on.

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This is exactly what I was talking about when I used the word "reactive". I meant that I was "reacting" to something that had already ocurred with what KDR would call a "proactive" power.


I need to go now.... before my HEAD EXPLODES.

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before my HEAD EXPLODES.

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It'd make your avatar more entertaining, at least.

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Maybe I was misunderstanding the definition of the word "proactive" then. I was interpreting it to mean that all effects and prevention were applied BEFORE combat, and that nothing was done during combat. That's how I was translating the word. However, your two comments have shown me that I'm in error of mistranslation.

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Actually, I think I understood what you meant. However, in replying to Gargoyle, I think I figured out that I see it more as a grey area. To me it's a balance, just because Force Field can be used reactively doesn't mean that Empathy isn't MORE reactive.

Plus, of course, there's the obvious benefit of being able to recover HP faster than your allies can regenerate it naturally. I think that that's actually an indication that healing is really much more powerful than other forms of mitigation. It is, as I have pointed out before, the only form of damage mitigation that was not nerfed in the GDN. Individual healing powers have been reduced, but there has been no universal across the board cut of all healing powers by one half.

Of course, it is just so difficult to compare healing to other forms of mitigation that it's impossible to tell if that's fair or not. It does, however, in my experience, get frustrating.

And I'll add, all frustration aside, being the sole Defender in a team of 8 and keeping them all alive (with the help of the lone melee heal of a Kin -- and her "tricorder" ) I have learned that I CAN keep that post combat recovery to a minimum. And I may even be getting as much Vigilance as the Empath.

Glad to see the FF discussion continues!

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Glad to see the FF discussion continues!

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Must have been because I looked in here, because there was nothing, and then I looked again and there were all these posts.

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FF provides the mitigation by exclusively applying the power before damage from combat takes place. How you ask? Let's look at it...


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That is true, but I find that I often hold back on some of my FF powers and blast instead, much like on my Emps I do not heal when unneeded and blast instead. If we do not seem to need Repulsion Bomb's or Force Bolt's mitigation, I blast away. Only when I see the green bars start going down do I start with the heavier knocks. I react. Granted, frequently I may judge a situation ahead of time as dangerous enough to use the knocks in a more preventative fashion, but I still get to use vigilance when it comes my way and I think I get to use it more than most Emps since they often fritter theirs away.