Cold vs FF

Truth be told FF is arguably better short term against damage types that cold provides no resistance to. Over a longer duration and against anything that cold resists it is always better.

Also when I say 'short term' it has to essentially be capped at the initial volley (ie however many attacks the foe(s) have before needing to repeat attacks) from the foes because the -rech of cold will kick in. Cold very easily -rech caps +1's with its 'every spawn' powers of just sleet and snowstorm. Aside from that both sets are both good at breaking up the flow of attacks with sleet and Rbomb+Fbubble respectively.


It's worth noting that I didn't actually compare Fbubble vs HL other than noting they are both t9's. I even mentioned they are both good powers, but that I prefer HL because it is both an amazing buff and debuff allowing one to use it for multiple functions if they desire. I prefer flexibility, which imo Cold has in spades.

The other two 'utility' powers line up very well and can be compared directly as they actually perform similar roles though achieve so by different means.

I don't think that has been the case at all. Even when directly asked what was preferred on content that caps out at 25 the answer has been Cold outside of some specific mob types.

Yes we are largely pretending that the cold/ff is the only mitigative source on the team, but that is actually to the advantage of FF. Cold stacks better with other buff/debuff sets because it is layered mitigation.

Lastly, a def vs def is the best scenario for FF as cold is actually comparitively even stronger for controllers vs controller FF. Def FF is actually quite a bit stronger than troller FF, but Def cold isn't as trollers have largely the same values (or even better for benumb) on the offensive and active mitigation powers. And as we know cold has multiple tricks up its sleeve, a huge one of which is -rech/slow and offensive boosting.
The answer more often than not regardless of level is Cold. It stacks better with other powersets.
Almost invariably Cold; assuming it is an available pairing...
A bots or thugs/cold would decimate compared to a bots/ff. Illusion/cold is one of, if not the, most powerful combos in the game judging on the work I've seen in the pylon thread and in one or more controller threads.
Aside from RP motivations and purposefully choosing unsightly color configurations Cold is almost always better than FF in almost every scenario. From an uber-min/max perspective FF will never be on that players radar, but cold should be near the top of their list as long as the player is looking at the set from a team perspective which was the premise of this thread. If someone is looking for ultimate personal survivability they would pick FF. Cold is the strongest teaming set in the game, so I don't think FF should feel bad about losing such a comparison, just as Cold wouldn't feel bad if someone asked what the best set is to wade in to an entire spawn and go afk and the answer was FF w/ pff. Nor would cold feel bad if someone asked what the best alpha absorbing set is and the answer was traps w/ seeker drones. etc. etc. But for what this thread asked, the answer is almost invariably cold.

There's something about this that came up in the last thread on this subject (it's been tearing up the boards for two weeks now... at least this one didn't take a turn for the "and Force Field is the worst buff set in the game" like the last did though.)

Basically if the extra defense in FF isn't enough to recommend it, logically speaking you should avoid Cold Domination on Defenders altogether because the main benefit it gains over other sets is the Defense. The key powers, Sleet and Heat Loss, are exactly the same for all archetypes that can access Cold Dom. The -Recharge values are lower on Corruptors (but the same on Controllers), but you should be hitting the -Recharge cap so frequently it shouldn't matter. There is a small amount of difference in the HP between the various versions of Frostwork, and small variations in Infrigidate that should be barely noticeable. Benumb's -Damage is slightly lower for the other two ATs, but the -Special is actually better on a Controller than on a Defender, and IMO that aspect is the more important of the two.

Now in the previous thread on this subject one of the things I said is that just because something isn't a Ferrari doesn't mean it's a stage coach. Cold Dom on a Defender is pretty fierce, but really loses value on Defenders if we devalue defense. The wild card there is the question of the Defender's secondary (Sonic Attack? Then it's a win.) Ironically though, an individual Force Fielder who happened to be Sonic provides more resistance debuff potential than an individual Cold who happens to be, say, Electric or Archery, so only looking at the primary in decision making is somewhat perilous. There is also the open question of whether you really want the Ice/FF Controller who can jump into melee with Arctic Air and keep it running versus the Ice/Cold who has fewer control options in some scenarios.

It is not possible for the -recharge of Cold to even matter. After all, the whole reason I kicked the FF defender off my team to invite the Cold was because the Cold makes me kill stuff so fast the enemies don't get a 2nd volley anyway. Right? Right?

I don't know what your motivations are. I prefer cold because it makes a team faster and safer than FF across a wider array of content. But I'll echo the sentiment that a FF toon (regardless of AT) is generally quite welcome...just not as welcome as a cold

I'm not devaluing defense, but I can't speak for anyone else really. A single FF def is capable of putting everyone withing a stones skip of softcap, so adding a second one, or even one of the other buff/debuff sets that brings solid def/tohit debuffing quickly becomes overkill on that aspect of mitigation.

On the other hand, even when you have an abundance of defense cold still brings things of high value to almost any team. Heck the only set that brings better stackablility than cold is radiation.

FWIW I already said that cold is comparatively stronger on Controllers against its brethren than it is on defenders explicitly because of benumb, HL, sleet, infrig, snowstorm, and FW being just as good +/- a tiny bit (very similar to how kin translates between the two AT's). But that isn't the same thing as devaluing defense, but rather highlighting one of cold's best tools - recharge/slow debuffing. Which is something a lot of people overlook. Heavy recharge debuffing provides huge amounts of mitigation.

When it comes to specific combos though really that is a can of worms best left unopened. But I stand by my earlier statement that cold/x (or x/cold) is almost always better on a team than ff/x (or x/ff). It's especially true the more forcemultipliers you start to add to the pot, but it is also true as the only source of support. But again, when I say 'almost always' i don't mean 100% of the time, but easily often enough where if you care about that kind of thing it will be tangible.

A more lofty statement is that cold/x is > ff/y. While this is also true for most configurations as you mentioned a superior blast set like sonic for single target take down, or archery for aoe damage is powerful enough to negate the statement. But again that is a different premise than the discussion of Cold vs FF.

I think you're right, sonic is a secondary buffer, but it's also one of the best secondary buffers there is. say a team has a kin and an emp. Sonic would be one of the only things to make the team both consistently kill faster, and aid the empath with resist buffs. Sonic and thermal buff teams also work great for the stacking resistance, -resistance, and heals and damage buffs of thermal. On MoTFs it's one of my favourite toons to bring, to help the empath out with its resistance shields, nullify tough AV fights with power boosted (tho it only stays power boosted for 10 seconds it's often long enough for everyone else to have him debuffed to poop) liquefy, and cage for if the pull goes wrong. To cap it all off i spam DF on the tank to make things die faster even when people are at the damage cap. So I don't think it's not useful or not 'as useful' as other sets, i think in situations it's better and situations it's worse, just like pretty much everything in the game. It is however a great addition to a buffing team 10 times out of 10, in my opinion.

Force Bubble? It is useful the other 99.95% of the time. And, frankly, we don't care how much the melee's whining about having to keep running all the way out to its edge to get at stuff.

Yes, because it's unreasonable to expect people to bring their own greens to repair what little damage does get through, or purples to stop some of the damage from getting through in the first place.

What is valuable (to me) about a Force Fielder is you can put one on your team and stop paying attention to defense at all. When people examine power sets they usually assume you have a static team with no one joining or leaving. My experience with actual teams is that you gain or lose a person every one and half missions or so. This is why I will always seek out a FF'er if I can find one. The team is capped and mezz protected and even if other people quit mid-mission you're still covered. The endurance drain protection is nothing to sneeze at either.

"What little damage does get through" is actually 50%. I hope you brought a lot of greens.

I'm not someone who believes direct set comparisons are really appropriate. But it really does raise my eyebrows that a single cast of Cauterize unslotted provides more effective HP than Sonic brings relative to Thermal.

Obviosuly, someone hasn't seen some of the /Force Field Trollers out there.

I see Sonic as a secondary buffer, as mentioned above. If you have someone else workin' it on the team, that's generally 50% of what didn't get stopped by the other guy[s].

Sonic's great with Rad, Dark, FF, Cold, another Sonic, you name it. By itself? pretty meh.

If by useful you mean annoying and slowing down the rest of the team, then sure.

It's really that good. It lacks popularity because it matures so late and doesn't provide a much survivability to the caster as some other sets (especially rad and dark).

It isn't out of line though.
Cold - squishy with little self protection, but you are able to make your team phenomenal defensively and offensively
Rad and Dark - huge amounts of personal protection/survivability and still make the team very strong offensively and defensively.
FF - unparalleled personal survivability, makes the team very mitigative, but lacks the ability to increase offense.

And so forth. Each buff/debuff set has a niche that it excels at (well except TA).

But if the specific question is what set makes a team shine under more scenarios, the answer is Cold > FF.

If the question were, what set makes a team very defensively strong while also ensure that I the caster never dies, the answer is FF > Cold.

8 of any buff/debuff sets in this game are crazy strong. It is more that Cold mixes in better with other buff/debuff sets than most others because it does everything well. It is strong enough to stand on it's own, but regardless of what the team is running with Cold will still bring a lot of value.

Originally Posted by BackAlleyBrawler That...was a Herocon 09 exclusive easter egg. The powerset will not have doves associated with it. Namely because you guys would want to color tint the damn doves, or make them hawks/ravens/flying sharks/etc and that's just a headache I do...not...want...to deal with.

I think what is happening is the hyperbolic statement you made as your first sentence is what people actually see Cold supporters as saying even though such a statement has not been made by anyone. I'm not necessarily saying you believe your own statement, but your final sentence suggests your 'hyperbole' may be what you are reading into the messages.

Basically there is nothing to debate/argue unless one casts the people supporting Cold as vehement, frothing at the mouth FF haters. Regardless of the fact that it isn't true in the least.

Originally Posted by BackAlleyBrawler That...was a Herocon 09 exclusive easter egg. The powerset will not have doves associated with it. Namely because you guys would want to color tint the damn doves, or make them hawks/ravens/flying sharks/etc and that's just a headache I do...not...want...to deal with.

I seriously doubt the intent of most posters is to belittle people that have made the choice to use FF. However, if a FF user wants to be stubborn and proclaim how awesome it is, I see nothing wrong with someone pointing out what cold does better.

Anyway, what better way would you suggest to get FF attention than comparing it to its closest analog and pointing out where it falls short and where it excels?

It worked great for Fire Armor in the thread comparing it to Shields. Not only was a serious multi-stage dev oversight corrected with shield charge, but fire was shown to be lacking in its role as an 'offensive armor set' and received a couple great buffs.

It is very difficult to demonstrate that anything is under performing to the point of needing dev attention as a standalone because players don't have access to the datamining that is needed (Not including the countless bugged powers that require fixing). What we can do however, is clearly compare and contrast similar sets and hope that raises a flag.

Actually I hope the flag that is raised is that knockback and intangibility really do not pan out as serious debuffs. Looking at Force Field's abilities what we have is a set with 4 buff powers and 5 aggressive debuff/utility ones, yet the set is universally regarded as a pure buff set. For some reason the developers continue to rate knockback higher in value than players do, and that has created some of the issues with this set and a few others.

As someone who's leveled both a COLD and a RAD to 50, from personaly experience, for how a lot of teams go, COLD is better for quite a few reasons.

RAD's toggle debuffs are good, but it requires the team to pay attention a bit more, or they'll kill the target who's keeping the debuff going.

Luckily I haven't run into the problem of people thinking RAD's heal is all that (I have before), but RAD's AOE heal is rather weak, it's meant to supplement RI and EF. Both of which have don't have biggest radius, so if you're not keeping things clumped, you can have enemies outside of it.

AM is a nice buff as well

And for normal missions, I'd say that's a lot of what RAD comes down to...AM, Heal. Fighting enemies like the Cims, this changes a bit, they can still be scattered, but the target of the toggle debuffs tends to stay a round a bit longer.

Now COLD, does away with the -tohit, and buffs teammates defense instead, get an awesome END recovery powerm but I wouldn't call it all that, in that again, it's needs proper placement of the team for best results, but it's good.

The other nice things about Cold, is it's debuffs are clickies (barring one, that I personally don't tend to see needing constant use), this imo is just more fun for the player as they get time in to attack.

Now, one could say this about RAD just putting the toggles back up, but on a steamrolling team, that might be all you're doing...up BAM dead enemy...up BAM dead enemy.

This also leaves RAD's -tohit not always up, but the +DEF of COLD always up (in theory anyways...the COLD could always forget to reapply the shields).

Now, FF does have other benefits for the player. Face it, bubble and attack.

Yeah, there's Force Bubble, it has uses. I personally find it better on a team of ranged toons.

One poster said, don't worry about the complaining melee, which doesn't make since, seeing as how melee is very popular.

Now, being the TF junkie that I am, I'll gladly take either to the team (if not both), but seeing as how the question seemed more of a "one or the other" it'll go to COLD, because it delivers what I want...+Defense Sheilds, and an easier time on the AVs.

Both sets have their AOE damage power, but Sleet comes with -resist, so on a game that a lot of teams want AOE lawnmowers, how would COLD not be popular?

Sleet group, tanker/scrapper/brute shield charge in then lightning rod or whatever AOE, for even more damage!

However what I will say, is at least with a Force Field Defender ona PuG I'm more likely to believe they have the Bubbles.

Defender wise, I'm usually just suprised if I don't see a COLD with the sheilds, but it's happened a few times.

COLD Corrs I've seen skip the team shields on multiple occaissions.

When Force Fields get ported to Corrs, I think we'll see a few who skip the team bubbles.

As for those Trollers...*sigh*...more and more seem to skip the ally shields. :/

MMs...will need to do more teaming! But, they're all off soloing everything.

Kinda the wrong attitude to have when defending one set over the other mate.

If pressed to make a choice, as I said in a recent thread, If I was playing a blaster with no defenses or mez protection, I would rather have an FFer. A scrapper that already has decent mitigation and mez protection? Pass me a cold one please.

Course I am more likely to see a leprechan in game before either. The last time I teamed with a (bad) FFer was 4+ years ago. Last time I teamed with a cold was when it was first proliferated to defenders.