Cold vs FF

Well I don't necessarily agree that debuffs don't fit the concept of the set. I could see -res (and -def) easily being added to powers like Fbolt or Repulsion Bomb in the sense that they hit with so much force that they break armor.

If Fbolt had like 30%-res I wouldn't feel so bad for FF users being stomped on by nearly everyone and their dog having nem staff that not only serves a similar purpose it also does a heap of damage.

I dunno, but I look at it this way. FF is essentially a pure buff set. As a result it should be a better buff set than any hybrid buff/debuff set. It currently isn't. You can either make FF a stronger buff set (which it already is quite good at), you can turn it into more of a hybrid by expanding the foe affecting powers, or you can nerf some of the existing hybrids to improve FF by proxy.

Interestingly enough this is almost an identical conversation that can be had regarding TA, just replace pure buff with pure debuff being out performed by some of the hybrid sets.

I'm of the mindset that it is actually the hybrid sets that are too good. Rad, dark, cold, and traps for example, are all very powerful sets that can encroach well into the territory occupied by some of the more 'pure' sets, while still excelling at things that the 'pure' sets can't even begin to do. But if given the choice I'd probably prefer to see FF and TA improved rather than lowering other sets.

Unfortunately, Mr. Wall feels the need to feed fairly often and has no trouble chowing down on stuff that gets knocked into him. (especially the smooth cave version of Mr. Wall)

DDR would be nice in FF, but I'd have to nix the idea of putting it in Dispersion Bubble. I have a few FF trollers, one that is softcapped to ranged and AoE; with an AoE immobilize that becomes very powerful. Allowing such a character to resist defense debuffs would (while plenty of fun for me) make it nigh untouchable.

I don't see a problem placing DDR in the ally shields though. It would certainly make FF welcome even among some of the AT's that cap their defense via IO's.

Force Bubble offers a unique tool that can be absurdly useful when used correctly.

If you want to get rid of dead weight, kill off Repulsion Field.

Cold. SPTF caps at 25 so you have your level 30 powers. So Cold has everything except HL and FF has everything except Fbubble. So cold hands down.

Even at the levels before cold gains offensive boosting abilities it is still easily on par with FF from a mitigative standpoint as long as the player is using their abilities.

The only way I wouldn't prefer the Cold is if the user picked some garish over-bright color for the ally shields. Then again, Dispersion can be made fairly ugly too.

The other exception would be on something like Synapse TF with heavy end drainers. However, late game end draining enemies I'll still prefer cold as HL does a good enough job keeping everyone full most of the time, plus you have the rest of superior cold helping out.

It seems some are forgetting, Cold also provides lots of SLOW!

So not only is it pumping up the defense, it's slowing down the attacks, so the defense isn't being hit as often.

Mind you, I'd still bring either one to the team. For mid-late gameI just prefere the one.

What does that mean? It means, if I'm looking through the search window, I'd likely send a tell to the COLD looking for a team before the FF.

If it helps in this discussion, I'd usually send a tell to either of them before the empath. But I've run into lots of "rock the aura, I have one attacks" I know they're not the majority, but for a PuG, I've seen it before. *sigh*

Was made worse on the Emp/Archery, who had the first blast, but skipped RoA! I mean really?! Skip RoA!?!?!?

The one who's player won't quit the TF or AFK half of it!

+1. The only TF/Trials where FF could outshine Cold is the Posi TF and Cavern Trial because Cold wouldn't have Sleet.

I think the point everybody is missing is that if the sets are close enough that good (not great, not awesome, just good) FF beats average (not bad, terrible, or clueless) Cold, then the problem isn't all that huge after all.

By contrast, back in the dawn of time when the game first released, a terrible /Regen Scrapper was orders of magnitude harder to kill than an awesome /Super Reflexes Scrapper. The sets were just completely out of balance with each other.

Given that perfect balance is impossible in a game as diverse as CoX, and that a stated design goal is to have a game that appeals to widely divergent play styles, getting two sets that, despite the similarity of some of their powers really are quite different, close enough that you only have to be good with the poorer one to beat an average player of the stronger one is an acceptable balance point. Assuming that the assertion that FF really is poorer than Cold is correct, which I only grant for the sake of argument. I like mez protection, and no amount of skill with Cold will grant mez protection. Not having to manage my inspirations to make sure I've always got a break-free for that errant mez that manages to hit is very valuable to me. Lets me save my inspiration tray for other stuff.

I was on a team with a Dark while I was on my Cold. It was awesome.

The one I could find.

But personally I run 10 radio missions for every task force. I have several Cold, Thermal, Sonic Res, and Force Field characters. None of them are really the best. Sonic Resonance is most definitely my least favorite of the 4, though, and IMO deserves much bigger changes than Force Field does. At least I can bring a Force Fielder out and people stop dying. I have no such guarantee with Sonic.

EDIT: Make this a raid, and it's Force Field (or Traps) all the way.

When making teams I rarely have the absolute luxury of deciding between a /cold or /ff. I am usually pretty dang happy to get any defender at all. If anything I chose the first available defender over the first available blaster

Sorry, just didn't want to take up a lot of space by quoting several paragraphs.

I can appreciate the thought and math you put into that to come to your conclusion. And, in the long term play, it's probably all more or less accurate. Though, when you talk about short term fighting, such as a single encounter with a mob, it's probably not so accurate. For HP, Resistance, Regen, and Healing, yes it'd probably match up perfectly. Defense, however, confounds it all by being all or nothing. Assuming no other mitigation, defense by itself either stops all the damage or none of the damage. That 900 damage swing, if it connects, still does 900 damage (unless you're fighting someone like Cimerorans and it crits). So, while having X amount of defense might be like having Y amount of HP, you can still get two-shotted by a fraction of damage below your Y HP.

In short, you can probably describe defense as luck manipulation rather than adding raw HP, at least for the short term. It's not reliable like, say, Resistance, which always provides its protection. You can get enough that it'll protect you most of the time, but I've even had my /SR Scrapper, soft-capped, go from 100% to 0% before I knew what hit me on occasion.

Also, streak breakers.

For the long term, I suspect you're pretty much right on, or at least in the right direction. I'm not a math person, so I can't check it myself. For the short term, the values would probably be quite different and I'm not sure how close. If I recall, Arcannaville had some good short term equations she used when she compared the survivability of the Scrapper secondaries back when there was only four.

I guess it's not so obvious to me since powers like Heat Loss and Force Bubble are so dramatically different we may as well compare different species of fruits. Particularly since a number of FF's more "unique" powers can't be quantified on a spreadsheet. Much, if not all, of Cold can. The powers provide v debuffs and w buffs for x targets over y amount of time and recharge in z amount of time. Powers like Force Bubble don't work like that. Using said bubble as an example, it doesn't repel x targets for y time, it does it when the target meets the bubble, whether they ran into it or the bubble ran into them. Additionally, the mitigation it provides largely depends on both positioning and what you're fighting. Rikti Drones, for example, have no melee attacks and therefore Force Bubble mitigates 0% damage against them. In contrast, enemies who's ranged attacks are only short range, such as many shotgun toting enemies, may not be able to move close enough to even attack, thus causing Force Bubble to provide 100% mitigation.

Both are edge cases, of course, but still serve to show that some powers have too many variables and/or are too different to really compare them with. Or, at least, that's why I wouldn't compare them. Buff/debuff sets provide a huge amount of variety among each other. That's what's so awesome about them. But, on the other hand, it can make direct comparisons a pain.


And now, to move away from responding to a specific post...

There's one big issue with this (and other) Cold vs FF discussions: the level 50 Defender on a helpless or perfect team vacuum. It seems as though almost everyone is assuming these are Defenders, when they could be Controllers, Masterminds, or Corruptors (I know MMs don't have CD and Cors FF yet, but we know their modifiers and would know how strong the sets would be on them). It seems almost everyone is assuming level 50, when there's 49 other levels too. It also seems almost everyone is either assuming the Cold/FF is providing the sole source of team mitigation or the team already has perfect mitigation.

So, big question: which set interacts with more general teams better? Who works better with an Empath? What about a level 30 Empath? 12 Empath? 48 Empath? What about the Dominator? What if he's Elec/Stone? What if he's Fire/NRG? What about an Ice Tank? Invuln Tank? Super Strength Scranker? Level 50 SOed? Common IOed? Set IOed? Uber set IOed? A newb and totally unslotted but otherwise well played? A newb and poorly played but otherwise uberly slotted? What about the Stalker? What if the Stalker is some weird stealth-support specced Stalker relying on Medicine, Leadership, and Concealment to buff and heal teammates from Hide? What about the Brute's Fury Bar? Which set generates more fury? What about Scrappers? Will they care if you're even on the team shielding them while they solo +4/x8 spawns as they typically do? What about Fusionette and Lady Jane? Which set will let them survive going Leeroy Jenkins mode better? What about that level 1 Hellion Slicer taunting you? Which set has more amusing powers to use on said foe?

Next big question: other power options! Which works better with Sonic Attack? Ice Blast? Rad Blast? Psy Blast? Bots? Thugs? Fire Control? Illusion? Gravity? Leadership? Presence? Teleportation? Fire Mastery? Earth Mastery? Mu Mastery? Throwing Sharks? Warburg Nukes? Which set does better against Hamidon? Which set works better just with Hami-Os? Will my set make a cottage if I use Build Up?


Ok, I know some of those are silly and non-sensical, but there's still a lot more variables that haven't even been scratched. For example, a Cold could use Dark Blast to make up for the rest of the way to the softcap. A FFer could abuse Dispersion Bubble with control set's AoE auras with little worry about them getting turned off by mezzes. Cold can grief RPers on fire-themed toons better, whereas FF can grief melee toons better. And so on.

I bet someone is thinking "You don't really need to worry about all that." Of course not, this is CoH. You can survive and accomplish much in this game with whatever team you throw together as long as everyone knows what they're doing. But, if you want to go into uber min-maxing for maximum pwnage, might as well consider all variables!

Yes, it's great for those .05% of situations. Still would prefer something that's useful the other 99.95% of the time.

what kind of changes would you recommend for Sonic? Aside from the repel toggle...I thought the set worked rather nicely. Help capping resistances is good too Though maybe changing the debuff toggle might be nice, like instead of having to be on a ally, you could attach it to a enemy as a alternative.

They ALL float down here. When you're down here with us, you'll float too!

@Starflier

By contrast, Force Field Defenders are a myth, like unicorns.

They ALL float down here. When you're down here with us, you'll float too!

@Starflier

Sonic is what I would call a "secondary buffer." It's not so bad it's unplayable, but I would never, ever, trust Sonic Resonance to keep a team alive like most of the other buff-debuff sets can on their own. Maybe if I was on a team that already had another buff character it's not awful. IMO my 2 Sonic Resonance characters (Defender and Controller) are probably the two weakest support characters I've got, at least among this list of characters in their 40s - 50s:

Ice/Therm Controller
Earth/Storm Controller
Earth/Therm Controller
Force Field/Ice Defender
Mind/Cold Controller
Elec/Force Field Controller
Sonic/Dark Defender
Dark/Pistols Corruptor
Fire/Sonic Controller
Ice/Radiation Controller
Illusion/Trick Arrow Controller