The Force Fielder's Bible

The Force Fielder's Bible
By The Philotic Knight
Last Update on 10.05.09

Introduction
So, you want to be a Force Field Defender huh? You wish to join the Few, the Proud, the Bubblers? Well, there are a few things you should know. First of all, you can make a team into GODS. You got that? Gods, that's right. And that's with only three of our powers. The second thing that you should know is that most players of this game don't read the forums, have almost never seen a bubbler in action because there are so few of us and thus don't KNOW that we can make them into gods. They will want a healer. At this stage, you can do one of two things:

• Try to educate them or show them, and if they still don't listen just shut up and do your job or...
• Find a better team or start one of your own.

The fact that so few of us exist out there means that few people know what we really do. The best thing you can do for your fellow hero and for the bubbler community is to be the best DAMN bubbler you can be, and to do that, you must read this Bible. Every. Single. Word. You want to know why? Two reasons (and you'll find very quickly that I love to do lists):

• This Bible is the single best source of information about bubbling out there. Period. Yup, I am saying it, as conceited and cocky as that may sound, I believe it to be true.
• This Bible is your BOOT CAMP. If you decide to dedicate yourself to playing a bubbler you will be casting FOURTEEN bubbles EVERY three and a half minutes. For literally hours and hours of your life. This job requires patience and dedication, and if you can't sit through and read all of this Bible, then quite frankly, you don't have the patience to play a good bubbler and I want you to go find another powerset to play. It's really that simple.

The purpose of this Bible is to concentrate specifically on the primary powers in the Force Field Defender set. I will mention the secondary blasts a little bit but I think there are far better guides to the power pools and epic pools out there. There are many people much smarter than I that can work on providing information about the vast array of other powers players can take. This Bible is already long enough without adding all THAT crap into it.

Why call this a Bible? Just take a moment to scroll down and see how long it is. Enough said?

I'm going to give you a quick powers summary so you know what the powers DO, then I'm going to talk a bit about overall strategies and specific power tactics, with a bonus of Force Field Zen moments thrown around at random! Just some nuggets of wisdom that I've collected from my over three years on the CoH forums. Now, let's move onto the powers!

Powers Summary

Note: The numbers provided are derived from Red Tomax's Guide to City of Heroes

Personal Force Field

Level Available: 1
Recharge: 15 seconds
Endurance: 0.13/second
Def: 75% (All)
Res: 40% (All but 100% Res to enemy teleport)

Deflection Shield

Level Available: 1
Recharge: 2 seconds
Endurance: 7.8
Defense: 15% (Smashing, Lethal, Melee)
Res: Toxic (40%)
Duration: 240 seconds (4 minutes)
Range: 80 Ft.

Force Bolt

Level Available: 2
Recharge: 4 seconds
Endurance: 5.2
Accuracy: 1.4
Knockback: MAG 18.7
Range: 80 Ft.

Quote:

FF Zen Moment Here is the timing for knockback. You activate the power, the enemy starts flying back. They fly through the air for about 1 to 2 seconds. Add to that animation time for them to get back up again, 2 MORE seconds. Add to that the fact that if the enemy was in "melee" mode, the AI tends to like to STAY in melee mode, so it will take them ANOTHER 1 to 2 seconds for them to run back to you. So if you add it up, you get 4-6 seconds of complete protection from EACH knockback. That's good stuff, and not something that most people think about. If you actually add Knockback Distance modifiers to your KB powers and knock the enemies back through a clear unobstructed path, they fly farther, so they have more "air time" AND take longer to get back to you. It's all gravy.

Insulation Shield

Level Available: 6
Recharge: 2 seconds
Endurance: 7.8
Defense: 15% (Fire, Cold, Energy, Negative, Ranged, AoE)
Resistance: Endurance Drain (86.5%)
Duration: 240 seconds (4 minutes)
Range: 80 Ft.

Detention Field

Level Available: 8
Recharge: 60 seconds
Endurance: 10.4
Accuracy: 1.4
Duration: 30 seconds
Immobilize, Untouchable, Only Affects Self: MAG 5.96
Range: 80 Ft

Dispersion Bubble

Level Available: 12
Recharge: 15 seconds
Endurance: 0.52/second
Defense: 10% (All)
Status Effect Resistance: MAG 8.65 (Hold, Immobilize, Stun/Disorient)
Range: 25ft Radius around the user
Important note: Every major set in the game was designed with one major weakness, that was a part of NCSoft's design philosophy. Force Fields' major weakness is Sleep. None of your powers provide you with ANY resistence to Sleep effects. However, remember that Sleep only affects you if it actually hits you, so your only defense against sleep aside from pool powers is, well, more Defense!

Repulsion Field

Level Available: 18
Recharge: 20 seconds
Endurance: 0.39/second + 1 per enemy hit (whether resisted by the enemy or not)
Knockback: MAG 6.2 (each hit)
Range: Melee (7 Ft.)

Repulsion Bomb

Level Available: 26
Recharge: 30 seconds
Endurance: 10.4
Accuracy: 1.2
Damage: 36.1 (Smashing)
Knockback: Estimated MAG less than 1
Chance to Stun/Disorient: 40%
Important note: This power's in-game description is incorrect, it is now an ENEMY-targettable power, not an ally targettable one. It now does real damage and can be slotted for damage. The most important change however is that it has been changed to a knockDOWN power. I will get more into why this is important later.

Force Bubble

Level Available: 32
Recharge: 15 seconds
Endurance: 0.17/second
Repel: MAG 10
Knockback: MAG 0.1 (1% chance)
Range: 50 Ft. Radius around the user

Strategies

Your strategy as a Force Field Defender will depend a lot on your team makeup and the circumstances of the battlefield. ALL defense is situational, so with most Defender powersets, you are more than likely not going to be using all of your powers all of the time. The smart Defender knows where and when to use his/her powers for the greatest team efficiency. Think of all of your primary powers as being tools in a toolbelt: you might use that Phillips screwdriver all the time so you keep it out all the time, but that doesn't mean you throw out that saw, because you can't saw with a screwdriver!

These are the primary strategies that you could follow, depending on the team makeup:

Tanker or AoE Heavy Teams: Since a lot of your powers are knockback or repel based, you will want to avoid using them in this team to scatter mobs. However, that doesn't mean that they are useless. Instead of scattering the mobs, you should use your knockback powers to actually knock enemies TOGETHER, into one big mass. That way the toughies can stand in the middle of them and smash them to pieces, and AoEs do the greatest good. Hop around the battlefield like a crazy whack-a-mole and keep circling the central mob, knocking enemies into it or BACK into it, whatever the case may be.

Scrapper or Ranged (Single Target or non AoE) Heavy Teams: Here you can use your knockback powers to their greatest effect, by keeping all of your enemies as far from your allies as is possible. The Blaster will love you both for the extra defense that you can provide them, but also for keeping the enemies far away and on their backs. The key to working with scrappers is to always be wary of the enemy that your scrapper is attacking, and to knock all of the OTHER enemies away from him, to keep his health bar up and his annoyance meter down. Knocking your scrapper's target away from him is a NO-NO!

Mixed Teams: Pay attention to the first few mobs that your team runs up against and see how your allies perform. If you notice a certain ally always taking too much of the aggro, concentrate your knockback abilities on that person and help keep them alive longer. If your team is doing well, you can concentrate on your blasting more than your knockback, but keep those shields on, and make sure that you are wary of the battlefield! In a mixed team things can go wrong very quickly, so be prepared to turn into a knockback machine if this happens. The few seconds you can keep your enemies busy and off of their feet could mean the difference between life and death for your team.

Blaster With Benefits: Since Defender's secondary powers are blasts, you could conceivably build a character that only used the defense providing powers, and then concentrate on your blasts and optimize them for damage. However, since Defenders do only 2/3rds of the damage of a blaster, I'd recommend against this and instead defend those teammates that can do far more damage than you can.

No matter what you do, you are more than likely going to be using alot of knockback, so I strongly suggest you also read Let Fly! - A Guide to Knockback Control by Midnight_Flux. It is an excellent guide and a must read for beginners on knockback. The final word in considering any specific strategy is this: KNOW your teammates' powers and how they use them. That is the key to good team synergy and to a successful bubbling career.

Tactics

Deflection and Insulation Shields - Recommended Slotting (Single Origin Enhancements): 3 Defense Buff (1 Endurance Reduction Optional)

The simple strategy with these is this: always keep them on all of your allies. No matter what. Period. They last 4 minutes, so either get yourself a timer, stopwatch or use a program like HeroStats to make sure that your allies' bubbles never expire.

I will provide you however with a tool that I consider to be very valuable, a bind! Using this bind is simply one of the FASTEST ways to buff up your team with both shields. Create a directory to place the bind files in, I place mine in a directory called c:\CoH. Then create the two text files shown below:

File name: shield1.txt

g "powexec_name deflection shield$$bind_load_file c:\coh\shield2.txt"

File name: shield2.txt

g "powexec_name insulation shield$$bind_load_file c:\coh\shield1.txt"

Now go into the game and type the following line to initialize the bind: /bind_load_file c:\coh\shield1.txt

What these files will do is make the letter G on your keyboard an insta-shielder, so that every time you press it, it will place a shield on your selected ally. Then the next time you press it, it will place the OTHER shield on the ally. The order doesn't matter, since it loops back anyways. So all you have to do to buff your team really quick is to select a teammate on the list, hit G two times in a row, wait to hear both shields apply, then click on the next teammate. You can also click the blue arrow on the right hand side of the team window to see all your teammates buffs and make sure that both shields took effect. If you wish to, you can of course edit this bind to point to a different letter, and you can put the files in any directory that you wish, as long as you change the directory listed in the bind files to where you put them.

If you are having trouble with this, or if you just want to learn more about binds in general, try out The Incomplete and Unofficial Guide To /bind by Curveball.


Dispersion Bubble - Recommended Slotting (Single Origin Enhancements): 3 Defense Buff (1 Endurance Reduction Optional)

This power should also be on at all times, unless for some reason you are running low on endurance and your teammates are doing okay in the health department. Also, try to make sure as many allies as possible are within the power's 50 Ft range. If you can't get everyone, at least try to make sure that the weakest allies are within range (i.e. Blasters, Controllers, and other Defenders). If you are facing alot of enemies with Status Attacks (like Sleep, Hold or Stun) then you might want to make sure that this is over your tank, who will be holding most of the aggro, or whoever is 'acting' as the tank for the team.

Now onto some powers that require a bit more thought.

Personal Force Field - Recommended Slotting (Single Origin Enhancements): 1 Defense, 1 Recharge (Up to 3 Defense and 3 Recharge Optional)

The very first power in the Force Field set, and what I consider to be the signature power. What do force fields do? Provide defense. And what does PFF do? Provide ultimate defense. It makes you NEARLY invulnerable to almost all types of attacks (about 75%), and the attacks that do get through have their damage reduced by about 40%. Higher level enemies may still be a danger, especially if they are more than 4 levels above you. This is a great 'emergency' power, as well as a great power to use while traveling to ensure your safety. However, I do not think that these are the only uses for this power.

Note that the power makes you invincible but not INVISIBLE. What does this mean to you? It means that while the enemy cannot hurt you, they CAN see you. What this means is that you can be a "fake tank"! You can do this one of two ways. You can either turn on PFF first and run or teleport into the middle of a mob before your team gets there, or you can use an attack power on the boss of the mob (preferably an AoE) and then instantly turn on your PFF to absorb the retaliating attack. This works especially well if you stand far back, activate your attack power when you are OUT of range, then run into range. The attack will finally activate and you can have your mouse over the PFF to turn it on instantly (assuming you move with the keyboard). Now you can't be a TRUE tank with this trick, since you can't hold aggro, but you can hold SOME of the aggro while dispersing the rest of it to the rest of your team evenly. And dispersed aggro on teammates is always better than concentrated aggro on one teammate (except tanks), because it can be handled easier. Do not attempt this trick if any of your buddies like to use alot of AoE attacks, because then THEY will most likely draw the concentrated aggro right away.

Another facet of this power is that it prevents any of your powers from effecting the outside world. This means that you can use Force Bubble or Repulsion Field to grab the attention of all the enemies, then rather than having to turn these powers off, you can just turn on your PFF and the powers don't work on them anymore. After the enemies try to hit you a few times and they find out they can't, you will lose aggro and can probably turn PFF off again, which will reactivate these powers. Be careful with this though, as Force Bubble in particular is an aggro magnet if PFF won't come back right away.

PFF has a pretty decent recharge speed, so while it doesn't come back fast, it does come back quick enough if you want to use it to 'sit out' a bit of a battle, or if you need some time to regenerate or heal. If an ally or your entire team looks like they are in trouble, then you can instantly drop the PFF and give the team/ally the bonus that they provide. A benefit of this tactic is that since you have NOT been attacking any other mobs, all of your attacks are READY and can be fired off in a chain to hopefully destroy any dangers that an ally might be facing.

Force Bolt - Recommended Slotting (Single Origin Enhancements): 1 Accuracy, 1 Recharge (1 Endurance Reduction, 2 More Recharges Optional)

This is probably one of the most useful 'utility' powers in the game. It does a TINY amount of damage, but it's not worth slotting for it. Use this for pinpoint knockback to pick enemies off of an ally that's taken on more than he can chew, or to supplement what Repulsion Bomb didn't knock away. You can make this power into a machine gun with a few recharges and can keep enemies on their backs by shifting your target every second. Another trick is to use this on a boss or really nasty enemy to get it away from the team, then immediately use Detention Field on it while it is flying away. That way by the time the team gets the the enemy, the Field should have lifted. Also good for sniping around a corner, just run around the corner, fire off this quick blast, then run back. It is quick enough that you shouldn't feel any return fire before you get around the corner. This is probably the most important power after the three shields.

One special note about knockback is that with the new ragdoll physics, you will want to make sure that the enemy is standing back up before you try to knock him back again. If you try to knockback the enemy before he gets up, he could get up WHILE he is being knocked back the second time, which means he can and will still attack you with a ranged attack. It's a weird glitch to see an enemy flying backwards while still getting up, but until NCSoft fixes it, we just have to deal with it and time our knockback appropriately.


Detention Field - Recommended Slotting (Single Origin Enhancements): 2 Accuracy, (3 Recharge Reduction and 1 Endurance Reduction Optional)

Imagine that the battlefield is like a chess board. Wouldn't you like to be able to take the Queen out of the game until there are no other enemy pieces left? This is essentially what Detention Field can do for you. You can use it on an enemy to take that enemy out of the fight for a short while, 30 seconds to be exact. I have found three general uses for this power. When soloing you can use it as an alpha strike to make one less enemy that you have to fight at the same time. You can also use it on a dangerous boss or Malta Sapper to take him out of the picture. The third use I've found for this power is to take out enemy 'buffers' from the battle, such as Devouring Earth eminators that they drop on the ground, Malta auto-turrets and Sky Raider's Force Field Generators. After all the other enemies are gone, the Detention Field should have lifted, and you can easily take out the helpless buffer if you choose to (they give no xp as far as I know). A very versatile and useful ability. I also recommend a separate macro to warn allies that the target cannot be harmed, something like this:

/macro Det "team Don't attack the $target! It is Detained and cannot be harmed! Wait for the bubble on it to wear off!"

And use that macro AFTER you've successfully trapped the target. I tried to bind it along with the power, but when the power did fail once in awhile, it just made me look dumb and confused my allies.

Repulsion Field - Recommended Slotting (Single Origin Enhancements): 2 Endurance Reduction (3 Recharge Reduction if you want to use it alot or even Enhance Knockback if you want them to fly farther)

This is called Repulsion Field but the effect is actually a knockback effect, and its primary purpose is to keep melee enemies away from you by knocking them back. It does cost a bit of endurance when you are surrounded by a mob, but if you are on the outside edge of combat, this should not be an issue. The field itself doesn't use much endurance when no enemies are near you, and it can save you from sneak attacks from the back (I'm looking at you, Stalkers), or it will keep alot of tiny minions off of you (like Devouring Earth Swarms!). It, along with the PFF are the two primary powers to defend YOURSELF from attack. Note that with PFF on, this power is useless, so you would use this power when you still want to be able to attack enemies rather than hide from them. This power is also not as much of an aggro magnet as Force Bubble is, because it will only aggro enemies that you CHOOSE to bump into.

You can also choose to be a more active Defender and run around like crazy with it on to keep all the enemies off their feet. Just make sure you're not pissing off any tankers or scrappers and leave their mobs alone! The 'crazy man' strategy is very useful for saving your team from a wipe and giving them a few precious seconds to escape.

You can also use this power to save a teammate in trouble. Simply turn the power on and run to them, knocking the enemies away from them. If any attackers are killing your ally, you can also go towards the enemy and keep them off their feet for a while. If you get into trouble from this, you can always turn on your PFF to protect yourself and to disperse the aggro you've obtained. The cool thing about this trick is that since it is an "auto-field", you can be doing this at the SAME TIME that you are targetting another enemy at the other side of the battle and knocking HIM back with Force Bolt!

Finally, sitting with it on next to all but the most powerful villains (some Bosses and all AVs) will stack the knockback effect and make 90% of mobs go flying where a regular knockback power might just make them grunt. Repulsion Field is probably my favorite power in this set to use, as I've found it so useful in so many situations that it isn't even funny anymore, it's just that good.

Repulsion Bomb - Recommended Slotting (Single Origin Enhancements): 1 Accuracy, 3 Recharges (2 Damage and 1 or 2 Stun Durations Optional)

This power is a targetted AoE knockDOWN power that does the same damage as a Defender's first blast AND has a 40% chance to disorient. SIX-SLOT THIS POWER! The power used to be a knockback power that did crap damage and just pissed teammates off, now it's a power that you'll want to use almost every time it's up! Let me go through a few of the tons of uses for this power.

• Start every battle with it!
• Use it as another power in your attack chain! Stack it with other AoE attack powers!
• Teammate gets into more trouble than they can handle? Click on them and toss the Bomb at whoever they were targetting!
• Use it along with Force Bolt and Repulsion Field to cause as much mass chaos as a Storm Defender!
• Max out it's recharge and keep tossing it as soon as it's up to keep enemies off of their feet!

I cannot stress this loudly enough: TAKE THIS POWER, six-slot it and use it for whatever you want to use it for but for God's sake use it whenever you can! The cast time is 3 seconds which is a little long, but it is well worth it in my opinion for all that it can do. Since this used to be a strictly knockback power, Castle decided to give us players the CHOICE in whether to make it into knockback or knockdown. The power as it stands now will knock DOWN most enemies your level or above (I think only Clockworks are weak enough to be knocked back by it even-con), and most enemies below your level will be knocked back. However, you can change this power into a knockBACK power just like it used to be by slotting in just one single Knockback Distance enhancement. I would recommend against this because of how much more useful it is as a knockdown power, but if you do decide to do it and don't like it later, you can always just drag the knockback enhancement to the trash icon and get rid of it.

Force Bubble - Recommended Slotting (Single Origin Enhancements): 1 Endurance Reduction (1 Extra Endurance Reducer and up to 3 Recharge Optional)

Finally we come to the final power of the set, the Force Bubble. It keeps enemies away from you, and pretty FAR away from you. There are two different ways you can use this power: as an always on power, or as a "click-when-needed" power. Here are some strategies for both:

ALWAYS ON:

• Stand in the far back of the team formation and use it to keep your squishy friends safer, you can 'pin' enemies against walls and corners to keep them immobile.
• Have the tanker or scrapper on the team stand right on the edge of the bubble and if they run into trouble, they can hop back just a couple of steps into safety! You can also do this the other way where you stand with the bubble at the edge of their reach and step forward if they run into trouble.

CLICK WHEN NEEDED:

• Aggro some enemies around a corner and use this power to KEEP them around that corner, while your buddies blast away at them and you are relatively safe.
• If the battle starts to turn sour, use this power to help your allies escape with a little more safety from melee attacks.
• You can also make USE of the fact that the Force Bubble draws aggro towards you. Spread aggro is almost always better than aggro concentrated on a squishy, so you can use Force Bubble to push against the enemies and draw aggro to yourself. Then if you start to get low on health due to their ranged attacks, you can quickly turn on Personal Force Field. You now should have most of the aggro still on you, but you're almost invulnerable. When the enemies are aggroed by other heroes, the aggro will be more spread out, and will be less dangerous to any individual hero. You can rinse and repeat if another hero for some reason draws most of their fury.
• Finally, the enemies in the game have two 'modes', melee mode (when you can see a melee weapon in their hand) and ranged mode. It usually takes a few seconds for them to switch modes, and when they are in melee mode, they many times prefer to STAY in melee mode. You can take advantage of this with the Force Bubble. You can either wait until the enemies are engaged in melee battle with another hero, or engage them yourself up close and personal, and then instantly activate the power. For many of the enemies, they will still remain in melee mode for a while and will keep trying to run at you rather than attack. If you continually back up and move forward again, moving the bubble and pushing against them in the process, you should be able to keep this up for a good while.

SPECIFIC EVENTS/MISSIONS:

• Rikti Mothership: If a bubbler stands in the center of the Rikti Mothership during a raid and turns on Force Bubble for a couple of seconds, then turns it off right away, it clears the center of the ship and the bubbler should have gained almost no aggro! A good way for the bubbler to help start the raid, or to clear the board when the going gets tough. Keep doing it off and on over and over and the sub-ring around the center will keep the Rikti near the center, but still out of melee range of the squishy heroes/villains! This makes the raids MUCH safer and easier!
• Statesman's Task Force: Stand next to the tower that your team is trying to destroy to keep the Repairmen away from it so that they can't repair it!
• Mender Lazarus' Ouroboros Arc: Use it in the final mission of the "Rise of the Council" arc to keep all of the other Council soldiers OFF of the platform that the three Archvillains stand on so that your team can take down the AVs without interrruption!

Secondaries - Our Offensive Powers

I will not go into too much detail about this subject, since there are so many possibilities to test here and I don't have the time or patience to test every build. The only note that I will make is that the Philotic Knight is actually an electrical blast secondary, and that the secondary effect of electrical blast (endurance drain) is a Godsend. There is nothing more beautiful in the world than using a Short Circuit or two (using PFF between uses to protect yourself) and watching the the mob of enemies sits helpless staring at you, devoid of any will to do ANYTHING. Defenders got all of their secondary effects boosted in Issue 5 so take full advantage of this!

Here are the list of the blast powers and their secondary effects. As a Defender, I would recommend slotting at least one enhancement in the 'secondary effect' of each of the powers in these sets if you have the slots to spare:

• Archery - None (Has an inherent Accuracy Bonus to all of the powers instead): Since all the powers in this set have in inherent accuracy bonus, you don't have to waste as many slots for accuracy, which means you can put more damage slots in there and max it out easily, along with taking more damage dealing powers because you have the slotting freedom.
• Dark Blast - Reduce Enemy's Accuracy (ToHit DeBuff): FF/Dark is really redundant IMHO. The buffs from FF alone are usually plenty in the ToHit/Defense equation. There are WAY better ways to assist in defending your team than with the ToHit debuffs.
• Electrical Blast - Endurance Drain (Can make enemies helpless, and can sometimes return endurance to you): Become a sapper, that way they are out of endurance pretty fast AND when they can try to hit you, they fail because of the defense you provide to the team. This is Philotic Knight's secondary.
• Energy Blast - (in case you wanted even MORE of that wonderful knockback!): I didn't used to recommend this set because of all of the knockback that was already in Force Fields. Now that there are only two powers that still do knockback by default, I think this may be a good set to look at again.
• Psychic Blast - Slow Enemy Recharge (and the set has alot of controllerish powers): Adds all sorts of controllery-type powers to your arsenal as well as a lot of -Recharge, which sort of works the same way sapping does on enemies.
• Radiation Blast - Reduce Enemy's Defense (Defense DeBuff): Basically the same goodness as Archery from the other side of the coin, reduces enemies' Defense so you hit them more often, which means you do more damage overall.
• Sonic Blast - Reduce Enemy's Damage Resistance (Resistence DeBuff): The powerset that REALLY lets you do literally more damage to them, because they have lower damage resistance. This is the secondary of choice if you're just looking at pure damage-per-hit.
• Ice Blast - Another decent pairing, but for another reason. With Ice Blasts "controllery" aspects and FF's knockback, and FF/Ice Defender could give a Controller a run for his money with how much control he has over a mob! Give it a try if you want to control without rolling a Controller!

As for our secondary blasting powers however, our role as stated before is to DEFEND. There are many FF defenders out there that see themselves as a blaster that can buff. I see this as the biggest mistake an FF defender can possibly make, since they only do about 2/3rds of the damage of a blaster with the same damage slotted (estimated). While you are out there adding your minuscule damage to the team's effort, some of your teammates may be dying by your side. While you may have offensive powers, these can and should be used in a DEFENSIVE way whenever possible rather than an offensive way. If you have all of your allies shielded up and they don't seem to need any other type of defense, then go ahead and blast away all you want, but be ready to switch into defensive mode at a moment's notice.

Repeat my mantra over and over again:

My primary powers should be PRIMARY, my secondary powers should be SECONDARY.

If you want to play a blaster, PLAY A BLASTER.

But hey, it's your $15, do what you want. I'm just trying to help you be the most effective Defender you can be. And a dead enemy is not attacking your team, so there is something to say about slotting some extra damage in a couple of powers...

Conclusion

I hope that this guide has been enlightening and educational to the new and old Force Field defenders out there, feel free to add to this thread any new tricks or strategies that you may have knowledge of. And to all you old-timers out there that are set in your ways and see yourself only as a buff-bot, I truly do feel great sympathy for you, for you are missing out on the strengths of 2/3rds of your own powerset, and you are gimping your ability to DEFEND your teammates substantially. In the end, you need to remember one thing: you are a Defender. This is your name, this is your role, and this is your destiny. Embrace it!

And while I do have alot of information here, you should never rely entirely on one source for all of your knowledge, here are a couple of other FF guides that I strongly recommend reading:

Starshield's Guide to FF/NRG DefTrolling

This guide is an excellent companion to my own guide for the Active Defender.

And

CDN_Guardian's Guide to FF/NRG Offenders v6

A great guide for the person that wants to play an Offender or a solo bubbler.

Appendix

In this section I will be copying and pasting information that I find from other players that do not directly fit into my guide for some reason or another.

Here are some nice tips from fellow bubbler McNum

There is an interesting synergy with certain Pool powers, which you don't mention at all. Now Medicine is simple enough. Hits get through once in a while no matter how good the defense is, spot healing can be nice. Aid Self + PFF is a particularly fun combo. You rarely get interrupted. The Medicine Rez... is ok. It rezzes to full HP, but no End.


Another pool power you might want to consider is Maneuvers. On anything but a Forcefield Defender this is a mediocre choice. On a Forcefielder, it's the difference between 40% and 45% defense, which is very significant. Why? Base minion accuracy is 50%. 50-40 is 10%. 50-45 is 5%. So Maneuvers can double the defensive power of a bubbled teammate who's inside the Dispersion bubble. Quite handy.


In the same style as Maneuvers, you can look at Grant Invis. Also a so-so Defense Buff that becomes great paired with Forcefields.


Other things to note... Epic pools. In general there are two big ones for Forcefield Defenders. Power and Psychic.

Power gets you Power Build Up (double power on two sets of double bubbles!) and Total Focus. Also there is Conserve Power, but frankly with Stamina forcefields isn't that much of a drainer. A full team every 4 minutes does take a bit of end to bubble, but that's about it. Temp Invul is nice, nothing special, but it is nice. Sadly, Total Focus doesn't hit that hard for a Defender. Our melee damage is quite pitiful, even TF feels it.


Psychic gets you Dominate, Mass Hypnosis and Telekinesis. Pretty much the controller style pool. Do note that some of the Forcefield powers may not mesh too well with Mass Hypnosis, Repulsion Bomb in particular. MH doesn't draw aggro, though, so it's a nice opener. Telekinsis and Force Bubble might also be overkill to have both, but one shouldn't undervalue the usefulness of Force Bubble in a Safeguard. You can pretty much make the bank lobby heroes only, with the villains trapped inside the bank. TK stacked with Domination pretty much holds a boss outright, but if you have a secondary with a hold already you probably won't need TK for this. Also with Mind over Body, you can together with PFF get truly awesome Psi resist. Like one of the best Psi resists you can get heroside. Who takes the Psi Clock King's alpha? The Forcefielder, of course!


About secondaries. Dark is pretty nice with FF. ToHit DeBuffs combined with Defense is never a bad combo. Energy gets you some alternatives for knockback, like Energy Torrent instead of Repulsion Bomb. But it's a matter of playstyle. You can play Forcefields in many ways, often decided by secondary. Some lend themselves well to more control, others for a more direct approach to defeating bad guys. Don't undersell the secondaries, Defender damage may not be high, but any damage you can do is damage the other team members won't have to and some secondary powers come with massive debuffs, like Irradiate (/Rad) does.

Forcefields is the set to counter Malta Sappers with. High Energy Defense and an End Drain resist so powerful that a Sapper at best gets 5 End from a hit. The End Drain resist of Insulation is massive.

Arcas, a vetran FFer posted the following quote a long time ago in one of my old threads. It is preserved here for your perusal:

The fact is, force field does work. The problem: The majority of the players do not work with force field.

I make force field work. Through brute force. And the way I do it is very unique to me, and honestly, it's not something I expect most other people to do.

My force fielder leads all of his pick-up teams. Every single one. A force fielder (to me) is a knockbacker with a few shields on the side (as opposed to the other way around). Anyone can roll out of bed and toss up a few shields every four minutes. I'm a lot more concerned with what else a force fielder does.

A force fielder that doesn't do a lot of knockback is on the same page as the attackless empath. They have tools to protect the team that they choose not to use. Most FFers that don't knockback and don't use detention field... usually do so because they are afraid of being booted. People don't like knockback after all. When you lead the team yourself, it's not something that you have to worry about.

My force fielder rarely recruits melee heroes. I know knockback would probably annoy them and I wouldn't want to put them in an uncomfortable situation. So they just aren't brought aboard. Mostly he teams with defenders, blasters, kheldians, and the occasional controller when the defenders are a bit low.

The missions for his teams are always invincible. And in them, he plays the role of the knockbacking artist.

Take a team of the force fielder and 5 blasters. Normal force fielders, probably throw up some shields, grab a book, and let the blasters get to work. Maybe safe, if the blasters combine fire and know what they are doing. But you might lose a couple teammates to too many hits leaking through the shields.

The knockbacking artist on the same team: shields up, opens the battle with a personal force field battle charge to soak up a few hits. Launches out of personal force field to unload force bolt on two bosses. Deftly turns to encase the third boss in d. field. Then returns to juggling the two bosses completely out of the fight until the team is ready for them. Everyone probably gets out of this battle with no less than 80% health.

Damage mitigation for force fielders: knockbacking artists >>> shield and stand around. Enemies on the ground aren't attacking your team.

As for power choices:

Force Bolt: The first 6-slotted power, and from 1-25, easily the most used power. Through enhancement, it becomes the chain-gun. Juggle bosses out of the fight, blast melee opponents off your friends, or just plain unload to cause some chaos and knockback damage mitigation. The use tappers off a bit after repulsion field comes into play, but it remains one of the core powers from 1-50.

The shields: Enough has been said.

D. Field: Nicely slotted. Used whenever I deem it necessary. Much like Tornado on my stormer. It isn't rocket science, when my teammates find they can't hit a certain opponent, they just switch to another for a few seconds. They don't like it? No one is twisting their arm to make them stay on my team.

Personal Force Field: The trickster. Decently slotted, especially with recharges. For opening battles, taking initial aggro, ducking inside for a few seconds as needed, and following Longbow forces around in Siren's Call with dispersion bubble, shields, and a on-off-on-off motion with PFF to annoy and confuse the villains of the world.

Repulsion Field: On as much as possible. Takes some of the effort off of Force Bolt which was used near constantly in earlier levels. And leaves Force Bolt for more critical targets. One of the key blaster/defender team tactics, is just keeping everyone close together, so all auras stack and the aura heals overlap and reach the maximum number of teammates. When everyone is close, everything coming the way of the team tends to run into repulsion field. Enemies on the ground, aren't attacking your team. No, it doesn't do this job as good as hurricane, but it does hold its own.

Repulsion Bomb: Main use is the battle opener. Repulsion Bomb, followed by PFF, and running in. In most cases, once those first few shots (from those who managed to stay on their feet) are bouncing off PFF, the rest of the team is charging in with a wave of offensive fury. Once the battle begins, 90% of the time it's already over.

Force Bubble: Aka the "I win" button. I get tons of use out of Force Bubble, completely because I never hang out with anyone that would complain about it. It tends to alternate with repulsion field, because there is a time for one and a time for the other. You never want force bubble on 100% of the time for a variety of reasons. Usually the battle begins, the aggro begins to be split between the team, then force bubble is activated. Giant four branch room lab room? Probably want to switch it off to not aggro everything and hop on repulsion field for a bit. Much like a storm defender in a combined space, force bubble is the warehouse/sewer map "I win" button. And a borderline unfair/overpowered "I win" button. I know this has a lot to do with how I use it, and the types of teams I run, but it works for me.

Getting aggro from force bubble? Switch it off. Can't do that? That's why we have PFF. That's why we have inspirations. And most importantly, that's why we have teammates.

There is a great fallacy in every defender whine thread that the defender in question is somehow the only person resposible for defending the team. You have help. Other defenders/controllers are usually there. And beyond that every teammate is resposible for the defense of the team, regardless of AT. Even if its something as simple as tossing you an inspiration when you need it. You're not in it alone.

There's this public perception that the force fielder is somehow charged with this impossible task of simultaneously shielding up, knockbacking away all enemies, tossing out inspirations, running leadership powers, using his medicine pool tricorder, and keeping himself alive... all in the defense of 7 thin-skinned fetuses who otherwise do nothing but stand around and need to be protected. Your teammates are tough. You protect them, but they also do the same for you, and more. Everytime I hear a defender say, "I can't protect my team," I immediately wonder what the team was doing to protect itself.

Moments before I started writing this post, I just left a group led by my force fielder. Half the team left after a successful invincible mission and I looked for a few more before the next. With all the defenders/controllers locked up in teams or not interested, the final team ended up being myself (force fielder), a peacebringer, 5 blasters, and the final addition a ill/emp controller. The blasters were emboldened by the presence of the shields and the empathic buffs/heals if needed. The controller contributed heavily with the illusion powers. And of course I was there with knockbacking fury, force bubble, and shields. But the fact is, the major defensive contribution for the team came not from my force fielder or the controller, it was from the blasters and the peacebringer. Sure, we support types did our part. But the sheer damage, rain aura chaos, extra knockbacks, sonic attack/ice attack/peacebringer attack debuffing. These played a huge role that, combined with the support, made the mission comically easy, even on invincible.

There is more to defending a team than heals, buffs, shields, and anchors. Things like slows, knockdowns, knockback, disorient, blast-based debuffs, chaos (from rains), immobilization, intangibility, holds... a continued underappreciation of these tools is rampant in the defender community. I wish I could just plug into everyone matrix-style and download instant experience of playing a storm summoner or trick arrow for 20-30 levels, sitting them in a room with 5 blasters and saying "Ok, figure out how to defend your team." The things they would come up with are the same things PhiloticKnight talks about all the time.

Other issues:

Archvillain fights - I'm not going to sit down and whine because my force fielder is "useless" in 1% of the fights he'll ever be involved in. So he can't knockback. He still has shields, he still has blasts and their related debuffs, he still has leaping in their face waving his arms madly then jumping in PFF. But most importantly, he still has teammates....

Anchors, Knockback, and XP/hour: I've had more than a few people, some of them from the SuperTeams, tell me that my thoughts on knockbacking and chaos are just wrong. That to get the best XP/hour, you have to keep mobs cluttered together, you have to have them in anchor range, etc.
My stormer would be the first to say that in an invincible mission with 7 teammates... there are armies of enemies. No matter how much knockback is present, you can still fire in a random direction and still hit 10 villains, especially in warehouse/sewer maps.
For anchors, knockback is only a problem because most anchor defenders don't anchor the most critical target (read: boss). They try to get cute and outsmart their team by anchoring something that won't be defeated quickly (boss) or easily (minions), in order to keep the anchor going as long as possible. Why not just anchor the thing that needs to be debuffed the most, the most critical target to the team... the boss. Then if any knockback happens, the debuff is still exactly where it needs to be. Once the boss dies, rejoice that a critical target is gone, and in another 5-8 seconds, re-apply to the next critical target. Worried about the team during that time? They'll be fine. Bosses kill teams. Lieutenants hurt teams. Minions tickle teams.
As for XP/hour, a four defender, four blaster team with knockback steamrolling through an invincible mission, really doesn't look all that different from a all-rad SuperTeam steamrolling through an invincible mission. Sure the rads are probably a few steps faster. But they're both in that same category of "ridiculously fast". The slower knockbacking/chaos team is really only dealing with 1/3 of spawns at a time, because the other 2/3 are on the ground, running from rains, or involved with something other than the attacking your team. Thats serious damage mitigation. And any XP/hour arguments become moot the moment ANYONE on the team hits the ground and gets some debt.

Situational Powers: 'Situational' is what defending is. A true empath is thrilled to never EVER have to heal. My storm summoner (who also did invincible blaster/defender teams), would go 5-6 straight missions without using tornado a single time. But when it was needed, he was glad it was there. Likewise, my force fielder would have a blast if he could just shield and fire attacks. But sometimes force bolt has to be used. Repulsion field has to be used. D. field has to come out. Force bubble needs to be activated. I'd rather have the powers to deal with those situations when they arrive, as opposed to having the situations arrive and not having the powers to use. If you're power is situational and you never have to use it... guess what? That means you're doing great.