Cold vs FF

The difference between COLD and FF. On the Buff front only......

Assuming 4 IO's worth of Defense in the shields (to show what they can do at the ED Cap) and slotted maneuvers on a defender.. Assuming the team lets you buff them.... And they stay near you....And you buff them on time.

FF
Def
all but Psi 46.6 (capped at 45)
Untyped Psi 21.75
40% Toxic Resist
Tons of knockback/Knock down and some stun

Chance to hit 5% unless it's untyped Psi (or devouring earth/Rularuu/Auto hit AV Fluffy etc Everyone hates these)

Cold
Def
All but Fire,Cold, Psi 37.34
Untyped Fire, Cold and Psi 13.04
Res
29.9 Energy
39.9 Fire
54.9 Cold
+535 max HP's
20% Toxic
Chance to hit 12.66 unless it is untyped fire cold and PSI (or devouring earth/Rularuu etc)

Chance to hit difference 7.66% higher chance to hit a person buffed by an Ice defender (assuming of course they let you, are standing near you, and you remembered to buff them). Now add 1 night widow to the team. Congrats everyone on the team is soft capped.

I am of the opinion that this is a silly argument everyone keeps getting into. Find the power set with the most fun extra's for you. They both offer a unique play which is more then buff every 4 minutes. Inherent stamina and Ninja Runs means you can easily take Everything from the whole powerset including the stinkers now. Your blasts are meh fun compared to lining up a Heatloss so that blasters and controller can start doing rolling nukes. It's less fun that a FF er using Force Bubble to Block a hall way from around a corner to stop a devouring earth ambush saving a retreating team

I'm looking at that penultimate mission in the numina TF before all the shield users figure out they need inspirations when they agrro 3 8-man spawns of devouring earth.

I have a cold defender, but not a FF (yet), so I can only comment on COLD.

Cold is great. I love it. Not only can I nearly cap your defense (I took manuevers), but I also get a nice stealth power that combines with Super speed to make me totally invis. I also picked up Recall friend, because I'm a nice guy like that. On top of the fact that my team is VERY hard to hit, the enemies rarely get the chance, because theres a 20-30 second delay between each of their attacks! Heat loss is great for low end teams, but hard to get it on the people who need it, unless everyone stays packed together nicely .

Now, onto the downsides. I have nothing for myself once I've been spotted. Even my fog + manuevers does very little to protect me. And a dead me means no debuffs, because my MAIN debuff is a toggle, and the others have short durations. Arctic fog is the ONLY power I have to buff my own survivability, and all it gives is 5% defense. FF has PFF, which is great, basically a 'save your life Oh_Sh*t' button.

Benumb is nice, but honestly, very situational. Ever checked the recharge and duration on that guy? 2 minute recharge, 30 second duration. You need a LOT of +rech to get that perma. On big teams, most other things die too quickly to make it worthwhile, so its situational, and mostly used for AV's. With such a slow recharge, its not something I find myself using every fight.

To counter the argument about the knockback agroing another group -- Oh look, my snowstorm anchor started running away and agro'd a nearby group. Woops! And who do they all have at the top of their 'hate' list? Why me, the ONE guy in the group with no defenses.....crap .

Now, looking at the bubbler, it has better defenses (you can softcap without manuevers, where I only get close WITH manuevers). The AE +defense (big bubble) has a twice as much defense compared to Arctic Fog (10% vs 5%) and has protection from mez, while mine has +stealth (but not enough by itself for total invis). +Stealth isn't doing much for you while IN combat (does it?).

My debuffs are awesome, and can seriously slow enemies down (which is devastating), but the bubbler has some VERY cool tricks up his sleeve. He has more soft controls in the form of knockdown/up/back. Force Bubble is really cool, and dispersion bomb is an AE Knockdown + disorient on a SHORT recharge (30 seconds un-enhanced.)

In short -- they're different. Of course! I want variety in play styles and tactics more than just visual effects. If they were identical, it would make for a boring game. But is one "better" than the other? I don't think so. And if so, its by a VERY small margin. They just have different tricks up their sleeve. You have QUITE a few bubblers out there who just buff the team, then do little more than play like a blaster. However, I think if you find some bubblers who use the set to its full advantage (properly), you'll find them to be VERY powerful.

Perhaps FF is just a little HARDER to play properly compared to Cold? Like one of the first replies in this thread, its all about who's playing the toon.

P.S. -- Cold/Cold defender is great, because you get snow storm + 3 other 'rain' effects. Muaahahaahha.

I would take a Cold over a FF every single time. Although, in most cases, I'd take a Cold over anything else.

The more I read the more I wonder if Cold doesn't just need a nerf to slap it back into line. The other obvious set to compare it to (IMO more obvious than FF) is Storm Summoning, and it doesn't make that set look too hot either.

The comparison isn't close from a survivability standpoint and especially not from an offensive standpoint. Cold is vastly superior to FF.

At keeping a fellow defender w/ 1 slotted health alive over a 2 minute window FF is about 2.4% better (10043 pts of damage vs 9803 pts of damage) vs S/L damage and Cold is about 22% better against energy damage and even more against Fire or Cold.

The reason for this is because layering mitigation > one mitigation type. Cold utilizes +hp, strong def, and resistance whereas FF just uses defense*

*Worth noting is that the cold must use frostworks for this to happen, which is limited to ~4 teammates on SO's. So if for some reason all 7 other players are drawing considerable aggro the FF may start to pull ahead. Or at least until the cold uses some of its debuffs...

Repulsion bomb+FBolt while terrific don't hold a candle to sleet+snowstorm in terms of control or further mob mitigation. The cold will -rech (and movement cap) +1's with that combo, which approaches an additional 75% damage reduction over a long enough window. If they were roughly on par for surviving incoming damage from straight buffs the cold is now considerably ahead once adding in a couple of its debuffs.

So now that we know that cold is vastly superior at mitigation and at offense it basically comes down to comparing the unique powers that each set has.
FF: mez protection, Forcebubble, cage
Cold: slow/rech protection, heatloss, -special/-damage

Mez protection vs slow/rech protection: I won't downplay mez protection, it is great, but there are lots of sources of it and/or means to make it less imperative. I personally prefer the rech/slow protection of cold because that is a very rare form of mitigation. Simply put, I have lots of way of making a mezzer less of an issue, but few ways of making quicksand less annoying.

Cage vs benumb: I don't think I even need to go into detail on this one. Benumb is the best debuff in the game limited only by the long recharge. It makes tough single enemies crumble, whereas Cage just puts them in a timeout.

Forcebubble vs Heatloss: I like both these powers, however HL is a lot like benumb - amazing and limited only by long recharge.

Anyway, yes FF responds better to manuevers and yes Cold responds better to hasten. Cold responds better to IO's and the additon of other buff/debuffers due to its flexibility and the fact that it is really good at a lot of things, but doesn't put all of its eggs in one basket.

It is also worth noting that at the upper limits cold is superior to every buff/debuff set (yes even rad), so a decisive victory over FF on SO's becomes a landslide. That isn't to say that FF is junk, Cold is just that good at making teams excel. It isn't hugely popular due to it maturing very late and the fact it doesn't offer a great deal of personal mitigation.

And where'd you pull your numbers from? And why are you comparing individual apples from Cold to individual oranges from FF?