Force Fields and Psi

Hi All,

I've always assumed that as per the descriptions, outside of Dispersion bubble (defence to all) FF offers no protection to Psi damage.
However I was looking at Red Tomax a short while ago and it described Insultation shield as also offering Ranged and AoE defence - as most Psi is ranged does this mean that FF does indeed offer Psi defence?

http://www.redtomax.com/data/powers/...ulation_Shield

Psi is a funny thing. As you probably know, there's typed defense, and then there's positional defense (typed being psi, toxic, smashing, fire, energy, etc., and positional being melee, ranged, or AoE). Most player/NPC powers have both a position and a type, so as not to completely ignore defense. However, when the game was created psi damage, like toxic, was meant to be a "screw you" kind of damage, which essentially bypassed all defenses except those provided by Minerals in Stone Armor (which was, at that time, the only melee armor set that gave any protection from psi damage at all). Because of that, some attacks were only flagged as psionic and didn't have a position associated with them (many powers from the Mind Control set and their counterparts in the epic pools are examples of this).

With very few exceptions, however, NPC powers that deal psi damage (Mental Blast, Psi Scream) will also have the corresponding position, which means your FF bubbles will offer some protection against them. Rikti do have a few attacks that aren't given a position (such as Total Domination) which can cause issues, but those aren't common.

It doesn't offer offer psi defense, it offers positional defense (melee, ranged, AoE) and typed defense to all but psi and toxic.

Psychic Blast attacks (Mental Blast, Psychic Scream, etc) have a positional component, so you will get defense against those. Mind Control powers however don't have a positional component, so you'll be wide open to those unless you team with a VEAT or something that grants specific psi defense.

Thanks guys

The basic idea was that Force Fields originally offered typed defense only, but this made it impossible for it to stack with positional defenses like Super Reflexes. In other words, if a SR Scrapper with an Insulation Shield was hit with a Fireball, the 15% Fire Defense would be picked over the 13.8% Ranged Defense, pretty much making the SR's own shield useless. (Actually, I think back then the numbers were more like 18.4% and 20%, and I'm not counting Dispersion, but you get the picture)

I guess that since FF then provided protection against Psi using the positional defense, it was thought that since it didn't stack with any kind of Psi defense there was a similar issue with that. So the Psi protection was added to Dispersion, even though it had not had it previously.

As mentioned previously, non-positional Psi attacks will only be effected by Dispersion Bubble's Psi Defense, stacked with any of the target's own Psi Defense. Most Psi attacks are going to fall back on the position, though, since Deflection or Insulation will then apply. (And this will likely be greater than the target's own Psi Defense)