New player question

Hello all,

I just started playing COH again after a bit of a break. I played for a bit last year, and started a defender. I thought the concept of force fields was awesome, so my original character was a FF/Dark defender. At the time, my thinking was that the protection afforded the team by my bubbles + the accuracy debuffs provided by dark blast would be great synergy.

After re-upping my account and taking some time to read the incredibly good FF Bible post, I'm now wondering if FF/Dark was a good choice after all. I've seen it mentioned several times that it's a kind of redundant build. My question is, am I wasting my time with this build? Should I just start over with a different secondary? My character is only level 34 atm, so it wouldn't be an utter disaster to start over.

If anyone has experience with FF/Dark and any advice I would appreciate it.

Thanks!

Here is my current build (from memory, but I think it's accurate):
Hero Plan by Mids' Hero Designer 1.601
http://www.cohplanner.com/

Click this DataLink to open the build!

Level 34 Mutation Defender
Primary Power Set: Force Field
Secondary Power Set: Dark Blast
Power Pool: Flight
Power Pool: Fitness
Power Pool: Leadership

Hero Profile:
Level 1: Deflection Shield

• (A) Defense Buff IO
• (3) Defense Buff IO
• (3) Defense Buff IO

• (A) Thunderstrike - Accuracy/Damage
• (5) Thunderstrike - Damage/Endurance
• (9) Thunderstrike - Damage/Recharge
• (11) Thunderstrike - Accuracy/Damage/Endurance
• (15) Thunderstrike - Accuracy/Damage/Recharge
• (17) Thunderstrike - Damage/Endurance/Recharge

• (A) Accuracy IO
• (34) Recharge Reduction IO

• (A) Thunderstrike - Accuracy/Damage/Endurance
• (5) Thunderstrike - Damage/Endurance/Recharge
• (9) Thunderstrike - Accuracy/Damage
• (11) Thunderstrike - Damage/Endurance
• (15) Thunderstrike - Damage/Recharge
• (17) Thunderstrike - Accuracy/Damage/Recharge

• (A) Defense Buff IO
• (7) Defense Buff IO
• (7) Defense Buff IO

• (A) Flight Speed IO

• (A) Jumping IO

• (A) Defense Buff IO
• (13) Defense Buff IO
• (13) Defense Buff IO

• (A) Flight Speed IO

• (A) Accuracy IO
• (19) Range IO
• (19) Range IO
• (25) Immobilisation Duration IO
• (31) Damage Increase IO
• (33) Damage Increase IO

• (A) Healing IO

• (A) Endurance Modification IO
• (21) Endurance Modification IO
• (21) Endurance Modification IO

• (A) Positron's Blast - Accuracy/Damage
• (23) Positron's Blast - Damage/Recharge
• (23) Positron's Blast - Chance of Damage(Energy)
• (25) Damage Increase IO
• (31) Damage Increase IO
• (31) Accuracy IO

• (A) Endurance Reduction IO

• (A) Razzle Dazzle - Accuracy/Stun/Recharge
• (27) Razzle Dazzle - Endurance/Stun
• (27) Stupefy - Accuracy/Stun/Recharge
• (33) Stupefy - Accuracy/Recharge
• (34) Damage Increase IO

• (A) Razzle Dazzle - Accuracy/Recharge
• (29) Razzle Dazzle - Accuracy/Endurance
• (29) Stupefy - Accuracy/Recharge
• (33) Stupefy - Endurance/Stun
• (34) Disorient Duration IO

• (A) Endurance Reduction IO

• (A) Recharge Reduction IO

• (A) Empty

• (A) Empty

• (A) Empty

A good Force Fielder is never a waste. I have like five of them. I don't like FF/Rad as a combo and I have one of those at 50.

If you were level 3 I'd suggest restarting, but for level 34... only if you want to.

What you can do with Dark Blast:
* protect your tender self by debuffing accuracy.
* when solo, immob people with the Tentacles, back up and hit them with Nightfall for double debuff, double cone damage. Eventually they will die and you will win.
* use some very solid singletarget attacks on teams.

Where you might run into trouble with Dark Blast:
* The two cones are disproportionately good at getting and keeping aggro. (There are mechanical reasons; AOE, DOT, with a mez effect in the Tentacles. ) Everyone else on the team is tougher than you are, by the design of the set. Force Fields is the only set I've ever played where "Aggro control" is a real meaningful concept.
* If you start missing people with the two cones, they will hit you, like, twice as often as if you'd hit them. So you might have sudden moments of extra drama while soloing.

What Fulmens said.

Also, I'd suggest making full use out of power color customization.... Dark Blasts look REALLY cool in colors other than black!

Sure it's a LITTLE bit redundant once you've reached the "soft-cap" of defense... but only for the TEAM. You still don't have as much defense as the rest of your teammates unless you IO out. So the Dark Blasts help YOU keep alive a lot longer too!

Also, depending on your playstyle, you might end up wanting to respec out of either Force Bubble or Repulsion Field... if you find yourself using one more often than the other or find one never being used at all... I'd say respec it out for something you'd get more use out of... like another blast or perhaps another Leadership power.

thanks alot for the replies. i was very glad to hear that ff/dark wasn't an absolutely ridiculous combo.

I was already trying to figure out what I was thinking when I picked up repulsion field and force bubble tbh. I'm actually thinking of dropping both of them for right now and replacing them with PFF and maneuvers, especially if ff/dark tends to be an aggro magnet at times. That would give the whole team a bit more +def plus give me an oh crap button. Then I'll snag repulsion field a bit later in the build. I remember a few times when that power has saved some people.

Westley (formerly Philotic Knight) and I have a long history of hassling each other about various things FF-related, but when it comes down to the basics we tend to give most of the same advice to new FF'ers.

/em looks at timer on desk

I definitely approve of the idea of picking up maneuvers. For FF, maneuvers is the difference between providing 39% defense to your team and providing 44.5% defense. Thanks to the way defense works in this game, someone with 44.5% defense is literally *twice* as hard to kill as someone with 39%, so I personally would never even consider not taking maneuvers on a FF defender.

Plus, as you mention, more defense for yourself is never a bad thing either. With maneuvers, one application of TT+nightfall will put up to +1 opponents down to the 5% tohit floor against you, leave +2s with about 6.2% tohit, and +3s at about 9%. Without maneuvers, you can't even floor even cons (they are at about 8.5% tohit).

I would certainly also take PFF, simply because of how many different uses it has. Not only is it a panic button, it really allows you to manipulate mob behavior in neat ways. You can use it to take alphas, get safely into the middle of a spawn for a nuke or similar, draw aggro to yourself and then become invincible, and even ghost missions. The best part is that it needs no slotting - just toss a recharge in the base slot and go to town.

I would think that you don't need both repulsion field and force bubble in the long run. I would definitely take *one* of them, but not both. Of the two, I would actually pick force bubble - if something is aggroed on you, unless it's a boss it is more than likely immobilized and thus can't run up and smack you - and if it is a boss, force bolt works fine. On the other hand, force bubble's range ought to let you do some interesting pseudo-stormie 'herdicaning' with the immobilized foes - shoving them into corners and whatnot. Force bubble also costs less endurance than repulsion field (even *before* you actually start touching things...), which is good if you're thinking about running both maneuvers and assault as well as your other toggles. Just don't make the mistake of leaving force bubble on all the time - even more so than hurricane, poorly applied force bubble will leave teammates pounding on the walls in frustration. Either way, though, both of them are definitely less important than PFF and maneuvers at this point, so I completely approve of respeccing them out and putting whichever one you choose back in later.

Looking at your build, there are a couple of slotting suggestions I'd make. First, I'd suggest frankenslotting TT and nightfall even more. Dark's biggest strength is its very good spammable AoEs, so I would definitely make them as strong as possible.

For nightfall, I would replace the two damage IOs and the accuracy IO with an acc/dam, dam/rech, and acc/dam/end. Assuming your IOs are about level 30ish, this should still leave you with capped damage, while slightly improving your accuracy and giving you some free end reduction and recharge.

For tenebrous tentacles, if you want range slotting I would go with acc/rech (from an immobilize set), acc/dam/end, dam/rech, dam/range, dam/range, range. Compared to your current slotting this gives slightly better accuracy and range, some recharge, some endredux, and more damage (there's no point in slotting for immobilize as the duration is already twice as long as the recharge). Two of the three available damage/range recipes do require rare salvage, but you can always get the one piece you need from AE tickets.

I would also slot repulsion bomb differently. The stun is only a 40% chance for mag 2, but it does do about as much damage as your other AoEs, so I would slot it for damage. A slotting similar to nightfall would definitely work.

OK, I followed the advice I got from you all and got back into the game last night. I was really glad I dropped repulsion field and force bubble, because PFF saved my behind twice last night. I got into a team almost immediately and gained 2 levels in about 2.5 hours! The team leader was really nice. I explained that I was a newbie, but everyone was really cool about it. Nice change from some other games I've played lol. At one point we had 2 bubblers on the team, and I don't think anyone took damage...ever. LOL

I wasn't able to get all my frankenslotting done yet (friggin positron's blasts are expensive hehe), but I did get TT and nightfall slotted pretty much done and now have repulsion bomb set up to do damage instead of trying to use the stun effect with it.

I do have a question though. I went ahead and picked up force bubble again at level 35. I can see that I'm going to have an issue where it looks like i'm going to have slots to assign but no obvious place to put them. Do you think it would be a good idea to 4-slot my bubbles / maneuvers and maybe put 4 red fortunes in them to get the +dmg bonus?

Also, for the epic pool. I am currently leaning towards dark. It looks like dark consumption would be very nice to do right after a blackstar to build my endurance back up. Plus it has pbaoe power that pumps up my damage. Does that sound like a decent plan?

Thanks in advance!

When you use your nuke, you have ZERO endurance left. Dark Consumption, like any power in the game, costs endurance. So unless you're willing to pop a blue after every nuke in order to use Dark Consumption, you won't be able to do anything.

LOL I need to learn to read the power descriptions better.

OK, so that won't work without popping a blue. Can I bother you for your opinion on the various epic pools?

I personally pick the Electric pool for every Defender that I get to 50... but I'm biased. I believe that Power Sink is one of the best powers in the game. Keep in mind as well that Dark Consumption has a "ToHit" check... it has to hit the enemies... and Power Sink auto-hits. Also, the electric shield provides resistance against the THREE most used damage types in the game, smashing/lethal and electric. The electric fence is AWESOME with how fast it recharges... Thunderstrike was "meh" for me, I always respecced out of it and into the fence again. I'm not that familiar with the new hold that was added... I never picked it up.

That beind said, my second favorite set is the Psy set... the extra controls are great, and having some resistance to Psychic damage for Defenders is rare and wonderful.

Here's all the stats for the APPs so you can make an informed choice outside of the game.


One final note.... Repulsion Field is ALSO auto-hit... that's one of the reasons why I love it so much. It never misses and only enemies with resistance to knockback aren't affected, and they are relatively rare.

One of the things I might consider doing is to pick up life drain at some point. /Dark only has two 'regular' single target blasts, but life drain does do as much as dark blast, so it can help out a bit there. As well, life drain could possibly help a bit with the aggro problem, seeing as you're the one likely to be taking the most damage. That could easily soak up 6 slots.

As far as epics, I don't think dark is as good of an idea. The thing about soul drain and oppressive gloom (the signature powers of the set) is that they need you to be in melee - but not only is that not a very safe place to be, you also can't use your cones properly in there. I personally went power mastery for theme, but power build up is really the only important power there. Double power on two sets of small bubbles *is* wonderful, mind you (and it helps nuking too), but the rest of the pool isn't very special - although force of nature does look interesting. Electric and psi both look good. Psi has several nice control tricks, and the electric immob can even be used to help fill out your ST damage chain.

When it comes to extra slots, if all of your core powers really are slotted well already, it certainly can't hurt to go looking for set bonuses. I wouldn't go hunting damage bonuses specifically, however - in my opinion, defense bonuses (especially ranged defense) benefit force fielders the most. You've already got a good start on that with the thunderstrikes in your blasts - each provides 3.75% ranged defense. (If you get it, I would personally frankenslot life drain for both damage and healing, but it can take a set of thunderstrike as well if you like.) Red fortune is also good - at 6 slots it gives 2.5% ranged defense, as well as 5% recharge, 2% damage and a lot of end reduction in whatever you slot it in - putting it in maneuvers and dispersion is a good idea. Explosive strike is dirt cheap and gives 1.88% defense - 3 of them plus an acc/end/rech works well in force bolt.

Getting somewhat more expensive, your epic armor can take the steadfast protection 3% defense unique. Also, if you put 1 extra slot in hover and fly, you can put the blessing of the zephyr travel and travel/end in for 3.13% ranged defense each. These will be more expensive, but if you put in a bunch of lowball bids and wait, you still have a decent chance of getting them eventually (go for level 25 or below zephyers as they use less expensive salvage).

If you work at it, it is possible to get yourself up to 45% defense to at least ranged damage, and (depending on your budget) melee and AoE as well. My FF/nrg is only softcapped to ranged, but that coupled with force bubble and his resistance shield still makes him by far the toughest 'squishy' I've ever played. It's really quite silly how hard he is to kill.

The OP reported two forcefielders rock, so do a FF and a cold. I had an FF teamed with a sonic and a stormy for all the damage mitigation on a Kahn TF, very successful. When a FF teams with a kinetic, it's truly golden. All defenders teaming with other defenders find their AoEs become big buzzsaws of destruction.

I agree with Philotic aka Westley that the electric pool is the gold standard with a nod to Psychic mastery as a close second for the psy damage mitigation. My kinetics pick psy mastery usually, for the mass hypnosis to get in close and get a good fulcrum.

I would also concur that getting the red fortune set bonuses in your defense powers is a nice perk.

Finally, the knockdown in repulsion bomb is the key feature, it's like a mini ice slick or earthquake. With psy blast, you can ramp it up with psi tornado so they don't stand much at all.

I tend to 5- or 6-slot Red Fortune in my bubbles, depending on availability of slots. You don't NEED more than 3 slots to do their job, but as you've noted, Force Fielders tend to have a few spare slots in the later levels.

Life Drain is an excellent idea, as mentioned- it provides free healing for the one who needs it on the team. You can make it a "heal that does damage" or "An attack that heals" - I'm not sure you can fully slot both until level 50 and purples/hamidon enhancements become available. (And oh my are those expensive...)