The problem with Cold and FF is that you can never find teams, at least in my experience. There's a few ppl in my SG who play a lot, but still I find myself alone a lot.
Since I already took Cold to level 50 on an Ice/Cold Corr, I rolled a FF Defender. FF/Ice to be exact.
Wondering if I shoulda went with NRG...but Ice has more control and damage than NRG.
A bunch of 50s and too many alts...
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I like ice blasts on defenders for the two blaster equivalent rains in ice storm and blizzard. I think FF/* defenders should be designated nukers since their bubbles don't crash with the bubbler's endurance; the team stays safe!
Added bonus: both rains can be cast from outside of line of sight of foes.
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HelinCarnate:OMG it is so terrible. I have the option to take 3 more powers but no additional slots. Boo F'ing hoo.
Cold can do more things than FF and seems to have more fans. Cold is regarded by many as awesome, including me. I find it a lot easier to find teams with my cold def than I ever did with my ff defender. People really like the debuffs, and most are happy with a lot of def, as opposed to maximum def. If you wonder which to take, take the cold. I think you will enjoy being able to do more than just bubble people and blast.
Highly depends on the team makeup for me and what you want to do. Since I'm grouped with a kin 98.8931% of the time, I prefer an FF, I prefer 2 specialists over a specialist+generalist or 2 generalists. If I'm not grouped with any other defenders I prefer the cold. For generic grouping and playing I prefer cold. For speed TF runs and master runs I prefer an FF, especially with PBU.
But in all honestly, it's what you have the most fun playing and what you prefer 
. In the end all the sets work out to be pretty much the same (despite how much the set fanbois/grrls argue their favorite set is teh bestest), they just do it differently.
Except empaths, because they're useless. :P
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I reckon pretty much every set has something annoying about it. Rad and Dark Defenders (and Storm and Cold) complain about teammates killing their anchors - this can get old for the teammates.
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I don't complain about it. I just wait until the team wipes because someone killed the anchor and point out the mistake. I also have in my search comment "I am not responsible for deaths that directly result from the killing of my anchors"
I'm on the fence about Cold and FF. Either one is rare enough that I'm pleasantly surprised when I get ANY kind of shield. That includes Sonic and Thermal as well.
For personal play I prefer FF. I dislike the look of some of Cold's powers. If I wanted to be running around with a team of Ice tanks, I would be.
Come to think of it....I haven't seen an Ice tank in a long time....
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Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison See, it's gems like these that make me check Claws' post history every once in a while to make sure I haven't missed anything good lately. |
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Come to think of it....I haven't seen an Ice tank in a long time....
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It's summer (at least in North America). They all melted 
Both. At least I have both types, and enjoy them about equally. One thing I can add that hasn't been said is that FF's upgraded Repulsion Bomb makes the set more fun, as well as offering the defender some welcome AoE direct damage, It also offers a knockDOWN debuff (not knockBACK as the name implies).
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One minor issue on the "Force Fields, grouped with a kin" thing: It is VERY hard for the team to be anywhere near each other under Speed Boost. All of a sudden that nice big 25' bubble of protection seems really small.
So it goes. You provide layers of defense. People know where to run when they start getting hurt.
Mini-guides: Force Field Defenders, Blasters, Market Self-Defense, Frankenslotting.
So you think you're a hero, huh.
@Boltcutter in game.
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One minor issue on the "Force Fields, grouped with a kin" thing: It is VERY hard for the team to be anywhere near each other under Speed Boost. All of a sudden that nice big 25' bubble of protection seems really small.
So it goes. You provide layers of defense. People know where to run when they start getting hurt.
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Well, generally how we play is I PBU bubble people and everyone breaks up into smaller groups to finish multiple tasks simultaneously with the squishier people following me. It's pretty easy to keep 6 people PBU bubbled on a coordinated team.
On other missions where everyone moves as a whole, people generally don't get too spread out because we all huddle together in the center of the spawns for tasty, tasty FS goodness so most people are hanging out in the big bubble anyway. Those that run out after FS (e.g. AS blasters for optimal cone usage) I'll usually hit with PBU bubbles anyway.
Usually, the only time I ever, ever see anyone die on our teams is either blatant stupidity (which no amount of shielding can protect against), I forget to rebubble or people just being silly.
Cold. FF is boring, bad/old graphics and late-game, people tend to just steamroll stuff, where a skilled Cold keeps that fast pace going. It's also invaluable against AV's.
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FF is boring...people tend to just steamroll stuff,
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LMAOROTF. 
Thanks, I needed that.
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Cold. FF is boring, bad/old graphics and late-game, people tend to just steamroll stuff, where a skilled Cold keeps that fast pace going. It's also invaluable against AV's.
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How anyone can prefer Cold and cite a graphical preference as a reason is beyond me. Cold is the go-to set for making everyone look [censored]-ugly.
I'm an FF man, myself. Lots of tricks, and it's the best there is at what it does. Even endgame it's good stuff. My FF fender has been the sole support on an ITF, on a Doc Q, and on every single FPTF, with no issues. Not to say that Cold isn't great, or can't handle the same challenges, I just prefer FF and its elegance.
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...I just prefer FF and its elegance.
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While being able to bounce the bad guys around like a bunch of pinballs can be useful, effective, and fun I must admit that "elegant" wasn't one of the adjectives that came to mind.
Simple: Preference. The Dispersion bubble, just like Sonic, messes with my eyes. I like Ice Armor, thus the shields f/x are appealing. I will admit I despise the looping sound of Arctic Fog, though. I thought they were going to adress things like this while I was away. 
Still at it, are you? Shouldn't you be in an asylum?
I'm not the one that eats kittens. 
Cold. If player skill is equal across all support/debuff sets I'd put FF at the bottom of the list for what I'd grab for a team.
Then again, 25-30 minute ITFs, 35 minute LGTF's and 39 minute STF's (All non super teams) are the pace I like to run at.
I do the exact same things using my FF. We will typically run a SpeedTriTF where we run the ITF, STF and LGTF all in under 100 minutes or we fail, counting travel and inbetween TF time, where half the team or more are puggers.
Edit: I don't include recruitment in those times, as that is highly variable, but since I'm known for speed running TFs it usually doesn't take long to get people. Incase you were curious, my SG of 4 people provides the core team (of which 3 are core team, the 4th doesn't play as much). The core trio is WP/EM tank, FF/Sonic, Plant/Kin and the occasional 4th is a sonic/sonic (when I can convince the wife to play). We used to use a cold/sonic, but found it wasn't sufficient due to the lower toxic resist for the tree and no end drain protection (my WP tank's only weaknesses).
Too bad you don't like FF then. My FF/Dark/Dark usually comes in on ITFs at the 20-25 minute mark with the teams I run with.
-Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. - Albert Einstein.
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I don't think the speed of finishing a TF has much to do with the choice of FF or cold.
Not really, no.
edit: Generally, it comes down to your ability to skip/ignore most things or knowing the tricks to skip them.
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I don't think the speed of finishing a TF has much to do with the choice of FF or cold.
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The amount of force multiplication has a lot to do with how fast you finish a TF. Pure speed runs where you skip all the content this doesn't exactly apply, and you can get by with just about anything. But for actually crushing most of the content that is there, you'll want debuffs. In this case, bringing a Cold over a FF.
That was probably a poor example on my part citing speed runs as a reason to bring a cold over a FF. But for normal runs where you just want to crush the content. Always cold over FF. (even though I'd still bring the Cold on the speed)
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The team will be 2 scrappers and 2 blasters. I'm thinking FF would be more useful,though I'm sure they would love teh Heat Loss.
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Cold.
As long as the blasters let the scrappers eat most of the alpha cold will be considerably better for your group. If you had no one to eat the alpha and were all blasters+you I'd say FF.
That said, if you shield then slot arc fog for def and run manuevers that is 37% def. All anyone needs is 8% def to be softcapped.
Once at softcap FF doesn't do much for the team. However cold adds a ton of +offense, eats up AV's and the -rech/slows+softcap is easily as good at mitigation as softcap+knocks of FF.
Cold
Cold is just too darn ugly. I really tried to like it, but in the end I'll take FF any day of the week and twice on Sunday.
As long as they both have their tagreted ally defense buffs, I'll take either.
If it's a TF/AVs, I'd prefere the COLD. However, just doing normal missions, either will work nicely (I'll still grab FF's for TFs though).
From a player standpoint, I find Force Field's mez protection to be valuable.
For Raids, I also find Force Field's Mez protection valuable.
So, int he end, can't go wrong with either one imo.
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