FF needs love

I completely agree Umbral,

One thought that had occured to me was to simply throw out two of the options ( soft-capped defense by itself and the capped resist(all but Tankers)) and just have the solo model, the baseline (no def or resist) and the midline 22.5% defense and 37.5% resist.
The last model I chose as a halfway point between typical caps and is something that EVERY class can achieve by level 50 with IOs.

My issue with just solo and baseline is that (as you have pointed out to me), the contributory protection of every set is impacted greatly by the team-mate that you are "enhancing". You could chart all 4 of these models on a curve(s) to show contribution factors as you move from baseline to capped in each category (res/def) and contrast them.

The question becomes, what would define an "outlier" using this metric and how would you identify it ? What is our tolerance ? 10%, 20% ?

Edit: Of course there is also the factor of sets like regeneration who would gain a great deal from certain powersets, but would gain nearly nothing from Empathy's healing and regen. Gotta love that.

Umbral: You're correct and I'm wrong. I misread your Rad point.

... so how do you model a Rad debuff? Assume it hits, say, 80% of the spawn? Assume it's ineffective (misapplied , Rad stunned, whatever) in, say, 20% of the fights? Useful for,say, 80% of a given fight, and is that the first 80% or the last? +1s? +2s? Lot of potential approaches to the problem.

A few years back I was convinced that Rad could do everything the three big bubbles could, plus debuff incoming damage, buff outgoing damage, increase recharge and recovery, and juggle geese while whistling. Then I actually played it. Most of those things are true most of the time. The advantage FF has is situational. . . or rather, it is NOT situational. FF can provide ALL of its benefits damn near ALL of the time, providing excellent benefits when the situation goes to hell. (consider the effects of the 1/10 second Knives of Artemis sleep on both sets.)

Reliability has a significant but difficult-to-measure benefit. A slept or dead FF defender still provides about 25% defense to the whole team in the small bubbles, and an FF defender hit by any other mez effect [that I can think of] is perfectly functional.

On the other hand, a model needs some sort of measure of synergy or lack thereof, because support (unlike mitigation) is not something you do solo. Each teammate has a large chance of providing teamwide support, Defense-based or otherwise. I'd estimate only 20% or so of my recent teams had no Defense/acc-debuff support, and also had less than two near-capped Defense characters. The other 80% had (or would have) severely overkilled Defense on several or all characters, if I brought a Force Fielder. I've been playing mostly level 33-35 characters, Blasters, Tanks and Force Field defenders.

I don't need to be Beloved Defender of the Team - but FF only makes me happy around half the time I bring it. (most people don't notice the fights that WOULD have gone bad except for FF. I do... and people say things like "Very smooth team." That was me; you're welcome. ) My Rad/Sonic makes me happy EVERY time I bring it.

Consider that extra damage (or -Resist) is never wasted according to the Umbral model; it pretty much always results in a shorter fight, so increased survivability. (I consider this an elegant way of valuing +damage, by the way.) I may have been on a team that did "too much damage" once or twice. . . there was a SG team with something like five Sonics and four Assaults that took out Dominatrix in well under a minute. But it is extremely unlikely that I will ever dismiss more damage as "not improving matters." This is in no way a strength of Force Fields.

Every time I've tried to quantify mez protection, It's gone like this:

1. Take a blatant guess.
2. Attempt to justify.
3. Throw up my hands and just put in a disclaimer. "Large but unquantified."

50% more survivable? 33%? 100%?
/e throws up hands.

The rad debuff calculation is good - I always forget that higher-rank critters have debuff resistance- but there are situations where the rad debuffs don't "work right". User error, early enemy mez, scrapper killing anchor while you're landing the debuffs, whatever. I don't know how you'd model that. The set does have some "oh ****" buttons built in, possibly for just that case, and in some cases you get very good synergy with the secondary [rad/psi lets you just CRASH enemy recharge, as long as you don't need to do it very often.]

Choking Cloud, to get very specific, has a problem. I couldn't find a cite for this, so I could be wrong, but I believe it's on a very long (5 or 10 second) pulse. So you could jump into a crowd and get NOTHING while they unload a ranged and melee alpha on you, and possibly a second round of critter-level brawl, before the cloud kicks in.

Only way I can think of to model it would be to try and model the amount of status effects encountered from 1-50 in PvE, which has too many variables and data to properly model.

Of course since there are plenty of ways to avoid certain groups and abilities, one can make the analysis that status protection is less important as critter variation increases. I like to think of it as a drop of vinegar becoming less apparent the more you dilute it with water, it's just a matter of coming up with percentage of NPC with harmful status over total. The severity has also been reduced since they changed them to no longer de-toggle the player, which has a negative impact on FF's initial design philosophy.

We're still talking about a fun game where you can blow things up and wear a silly cape, right?

I'm with you up to enhancement numbers, but once people start talking about models and calculations and algorithms, my eyes start to glaze over.

Good on you, Umbral.

Numerical modelling like this is a really important tool for game designers, and one that's unfortunately a bit lacking sometimes. Favouring a suck-it-and-see approach over numerical models in MMO development leads to back-and-forth rebalancing and nerfing, which is no fun for the players or the developers (I imagine).

Of course, numerical modelling isn't necessary to play the game, but its still fun for some of us.

Sarcasme on
No they dont its the last powerpool PRIMARY powerset still excist .
Bleh dont nerf it . i only need to take 3 primaries and be done with the powerset :P
And i dont even bother with bubbling others too lazy/selfishe cost way too much slots and time
Come on 20% Team DEF to all but toxic is good enough with manouvers
Sarcasme off

So sadly yes it needs help big time
But then again it still one of the few classic powerset left , that you take so little primaries and tons of powerpool and secondary powers .
So i would be sad to see it go , but its really outdated .