FF needs love

I don't think there's anything better for survivability than an FF defender, but it's so boring to play as a primary. We need incentive to play it in the form of it being fun for US to play!

Well, at least Force Fielders can now go villain and pick up the Mace pool for a defense-based slash/lethal shield. My FF/Ice Defender will definitely be going that route. And he will also get the AoE immobilize power, which will finally allow him to somewhat use his rain powers when solo.

Whether it is sounding like the rath of 1000 angry whales, or having a bunch of useless powers, it seems to be a constant in CoH that something has to be screwed up with FF.

I have to say I kind of enjoy the fire and forget nature of FF. Refresh the shields every few minutes, keep whatever toggles you want going, and you can spend the rest of your time blasting away.

I'd describe Sonic Resonance as even more boring. You shield everyone, you sacrifice a big chunk of your endurance to apply Disruption Field and thats about it.

At least Force Fields allows you to Force Bolt juggle a dangerous boss every now and then.

I actually enjoy playing both sets though, as they give me plenty of time to use my blasts. They're much more fun in that way than Empathy, which requires constant monitoring of your own buffs icons to play well.

How would you suggest changing it, Vanden?

Forcefields is so incredibly fun to play on a team that every time I do, my Empath gets jealous.

1) Buff every 4 minutes and spend the rest of your time being a mini-tank blaster ...check

2) Turn on reliable status protection so you dont have to worry about the stray stun or hold ...check

3) Fire off massive and viscerally fun Knockback powers like force bolt to protect less fortunate "squish....err... teammates".... double-check

what could be more fun. Oh Yeah.... Fire up your personal force field and laugh maniacally at your enamies as you use a tricorder to heal yourself. ....Good Times

My force fielder is a soloer. Turn on force bubble and kill everything at range. With capped ranged defenses, there's not much that gets through, and the stuff that does there's the epic shield and aid self. She's probably the safest soloer I have, though it also makes her the most boring.

I would be a bit torn about any substantive changes to FF. One the one hand, I like the fact that I can get 99% of the team contribution I require from a set in just 4 powers (Dispersion Bubble, Insulation Shield, Deflection Shield, and Repulsion Bomb). Similarly, I enjoy the fact that I can fully support my team with 30 seconds every 4 minutes, leaving me plenty of time to use my secondary. On the other hand, I dislike the fact that, for all intents and purposes, my Defender plays exactly like a Blaster for 3 and a half minutes out of every 4. Similarly, I dislike the fact that it's so incredibly easy to simply skip half of the powers in the set.

As to whether FF will ever get "fixed", I highly doubt it, unless Castle is really willing to go completely ape **** on the Cottage Rule. The skippable powers in FF are skippable explicitly because of what they do rather than how they do it. They could mess with Detention Field all they wanted and it likely wouldn't make the power any more likely to be taken by players (though I expect they could probably have the power provide intangibility protection that is unaffected by enhancement equal to the intangibility mag itself while providing a mag 3 hold as well to make it a power that you can enhance to provide intangibility but is otherwise slottable and usable as a hold; which would somewhat preserve cottage rule while making it an option that players might actually take). Repulsion Field is pretty much the same since there is a power in the set that does pretty much the exact same thing while being cheaper about it as well (though making it a PbAoE toggle with a flat endurance cost that provides a chance to KB akin to Ice Patch (~10% chance for mag .67 KB) would probably make it more popular and useful).

The other powers are situationally useful and likely wouldn't be changed simply because there are substantially more players that find them useful (still not enough for me to consider them "must have" or even "good" powers). I could see Force Bolt getting a bit of a damage buff to make it a more popular attack power. Force Bubble could probably stand to have its radius reduced a pinch since the primary problem for many people is that, when it's on, you're going to be getting more than just a single group with it. I would probably reduce the end cost by a bit too because that thing is almost prohibitively expensive (though not to the same degree as Repulsion Field).

Why not turn Forcebolt into a targeted AoE knockDOWN power? Increase the recharge of course, but would give a great active control power to the set. (Obviously, leave it unchanged for PvP)

Other possible changes....

1. Change Detention Field into a Toggle. (I think there was some tech issues with this... So they should fix that!)
2. Reduce the Animation time of Repulsion Bomb.

I'd change one of the big KB/Repel bubbles before Detention Field. I don't have a Forcefielder but I know the enemy phase is quite handy on my Sonic.

Admittedly, it's useless for 95% of the game but for the endgame TFs it can be an immense help.

Additionally, FF has plenty of ways to move stuff around and other sets do too, but only FF and Sonic have ST foe phase powers. Black Hole is a turd because indiscriminate foe phasing is fail but DM doesn't need any help

The fundamental problem with FF, IME, is that it's FAR too good with 3 primary primary and 1 pool power with 10 additional slots.

And it's not good enough with 9 primary powers and 45 additional slots.

Let's face it's freaking easy to immob most of the game's mobs. An immob keeps mobs at range for squishies, within reach for melee, and clumped together for AoEs. The fact that a relatively common, lowbie controller power can trump a T9 defender power is, frankly, bad design that speaks to how poorly the original dev team understoon how powers interact with each other ... and how players would use, or not use, their powers.

But I still think FF works OK as it is. FWIW, I see fewer Trappers than Bubblers, and Traps is borderline overpowered.

I enjoy playing a bubbler, lets me just do a few buffs every now and then and help the team out by blasting away. Skippable powers means I'm not missing out on anything to take Fitness, Leadership and travel pools while still taking most of my secondary.