Force Field question

Princess Darkstar - Proud Member of the Handprints of Union, the #1 ranked SG in Europe!
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Originally Posted by Aggelakis PrincessDarkstar: "RAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGHHHHHHHHHH SOMEONE IS *WRONG* ON THE INTERNET!"

*wonders if JanusFrs is part ferret...*

anyways, to directly answer your question, the developers don't often talk about why they give powersets to one archtype or another, and by the same token, don't often talk about why they DO NOT give certain power-sets to one side or another. I didn't find any obvious red-named posts specifically on this subject with the search function.

I can, however, hazard a guess from a design perspective. One of the problems... and it's not really a problem, is that the Force-Field set only has one debuff type... which is knockback. Outside of knocking enemies down or away, Force Field does not deploy any other debuffs.

In CoH you have one strong debuff / buff type, the defender, and one weak type, the controller. In CoV there isn't actually a strong debuff / buff type. The buff / debuffs on Corruptors and Masterminds are secondary sets. Going through and looking at the sets that were originally available that were common across both, you'd find that Corruptors were mostly using the Controller secondary values for their buffs / debuffs, say like on Radiation Emission, and that Masterminds generally had even weaker values, say comparing Dark Miasma to the Corruptor and Defender variants.

Because of these design limitations almost all of the Corruptor sets contained enemy debuffs. Thermal Radiation, the original answer to empath for example, got Melt Armor and Heat Exhaustion in addition to it's mix of player resist buffs and strong heals. When Pain Domination was introduced as an inverse empath set, it also got an enemy debuff, Anguishing Cry.

From a design standpoint, only one Corruptor set actually lacks a -resist debuff and -defense debuff, which is the Kinetics Set. However, the Kin still functions as a strong buff / debuff type as a kin can kill endurance and regeneration values.

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Since ForceField doesn't fit the observed design requirements for a Corruptor secondary, that's probably why it hasn't, and probably won't be, ported over to the Archtype.

That's actually a well thought out answer that makes perfect sense.

Also partially explains why Masterminds haven't gotten Kinetics either. If you look at MM secondaries, they have a common theme of all being able to do something to protect your pets. Kinetics does very little in the way of protecting. The heal, for example, is based around being within melee range, or close to it, of an enemy. There aren't many MM pets that prefer melee range enough for it to be useful.

Forcefield, Pain Dom, and Thermal all directly protect your pets through buffing them. Dark Miasma, Storm, and to a lesser extent, Traps protect them through debuffing the enemy. Kinetics' main strength is increasing damage output, and since pets are now unaffected by recharge boosts, Speed Boost does very little for them, leaving Increase Density as the only actual buff in the set. Also, my aforementioned point of not many pets liking melee would mean that even Fulcrum Shift wouldn't be that useful, since it would miss half your pets.

The general theme of MM powers is that they be just as useful solo as teamed, Kinetics doesn't fit that bill for a Mastermind.

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.

I think most mastermind players would kill for kinectics for a secondary. From the way you talk maybe your not to use to playing the AT but simple goto commands solve any problems about where your pets are when your buffs/debuffs go off. It wouldn't be hard at all to fulcrum shift a full team of mastermind pets of any variety in most any situation.

I hate Masterminds.

Correction, I don't hate them as an AT, I hate playing them. Too much micromanaging for me.

So that covers Fulcrum Shift. I'm not going to argue that point, but what about the other powers? I'd say my theory on why MMs don't have Kinetics is plausible, but I won't go so far as to claim it as fact. A Kinetics MM would probably be pretty squishy until level 38 due to lack of mitigation.

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.