Skipping the shields on FF

I've never seen that done in raw numbers due to Insulation and Deflection having Toxic Resistance and End Drain resistance respectively, two things which aren't affected by Power Boost. Last I checked (and I remember an old thread complaining about it) if your power has an aspect that can't be boosted, the entire power can't be boosted.

Edit: Well I'll be damned.

My mistake aside, that still doesn't account for a Granite Tank's utter lack of Psi Resist, and the fact that you can't heal a dead ally.

Sticking your fingers in your ears and altering your examples whenever you realise your initial one has been disproved does not constitute winning an argument.

I asked you in a previous post how you would propose to heal upwards of 4000 HP/second worth of Smashing/Lethal damage, and you responded by ignoring the figures (indeed, saying they're irrelevant, even though they were based on your own initial extreme example of a "Granite Tanker") and starting up a completely different argument based on a single AV with non-positional Psionic Damage attacks.

By your own comments on "How often does something like that crop up in actual gameplay", I have to ask: how much "actual gameplay" contains non-positional Psionic damage, compared to Smashing/Lethal...?

Well, to be picky, I didn't exactly say they were irrelevant, I asked about their relevance. I've never seen a Granite tanker who was getting decent healing die, regardless of whether or not math says it could happen in theory.

Also, my note about the Granite tanker getting once shotted by Psi while fully bubbled with power boosted bubbles wasn't really an argument, just an observation I added parenthetically.

We all make mistakes, Nalrok. It's not a big deal. Just try to cut back on the insults a bit please and stick to the discussion. It's about the pros and cons of FF's little bubbles.

What is comes down to is that if the power is tagged to not benefit from external buffs then PB will not work. If a power takes resistance enhancements it is always tagged to not benefit from external buffs but if it has non-enhanceable resistance values it generally is not (there are exceptions such as Scorpion Shield). This is why FF's bubble benefit from Power Boost but Cold Domination's do not.

I have, many times on PUGS.

Versus Lord Recluse, versus Hamidon, versus Lusca, versus Rularuu, versus Malta, versus Babbage, versus the Psionic CW King...

But most often versus Ghost Widow.

Typically she will one-shot hold them, making Granite shut off, then they die faster than an empath can heal them- due to both the lingering DoT plus extra (unmitigated) damage from her subsequent attacks.

With FF Bubbles, leaving aside from the fact that the inital detoggling attack would also have had a far smaller chance of hitting them, such a Tanker would still have had a fairly large amount of mitigation which could not have been detoggled.

Then I believe I've already proved my view, which is that Healing is the weakest form of Damage mitigation, and that a FF'er without Bubbles is like a Petless Mastermind (whilst possible, you're basically crippling yourself and your teammates for no good reason....). In which case we have nothing more to discuss...

I'll admit I get a little mouthy. If I do it I usually take it back later, provided I don't encounter a work emergency.

I would still recommend Insulation/Deflection for MM's simply for the benefit it provides just the pets.

Just going to give a real quick answer to this because I need to take a break or a bit.

● Lord Recluse - I'm not sure what that tanker could been doing to get killed. I've seen a Granite Tanker tank him with the aid of a healer for over half an hour (yes, I've been on some less than perfect PuGs )
● Hamidon - Hami damage bypasses bubbles. This tanker forgot to pop an EoE.
● Lusca - Very hard to believe. I can tank Lusca indefinitely solo with an FFer using only Dispersion Bubble from force fields. I even have video of that here at the 1:03 mark: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUBYFlcNs3A
● Malta - I assume we're talking about sappers here. Granted the little bubbles will offer defense and energy drain resistance. But that's hardly the preferred way to deal with sappers. Killing them or putting them in a hold is what teams will usually do.
Babbage
● Babbage - Like Lusca, this is hard for me to believe. I can tank him with an FFer using only Dispersion Bubble.
● Rularuu, Psionic CW King - These I will agree with.
● Ghost Widow - Like malta, what you're saying is true, but it's generally not what teams look for to handle the problem. What they look for, as far as I've seen, is Emps and Kins to stack CM and ID on them.

So, of this list we have CW King and Rularuu where I can honestly agree might cause a tanker to consider an FFer. In the case of CW King, an FFer with no little bubbles can raise PFF and take the alpha rather than having the tank do it. It's much safer than using little bubbles.

So that leaves us with "misc" groups like Rularuu. We can talk about whether or not its worth taking the two little bubbles for groups like that later. Unfortunately, I really have to head out now.

I'd be a bit wary of ruling out Empathy as a powerset.

Fortitude is a *wonderful* buff. When Powerboosted it is nothing short of Magnificent.
CM and Adrenaline Boost are lovely to have along too.
The Auras reduce downtime and keep everybody topped up nicely.
The Heals are the proverbial "icing on the cake".

I'd usually rather have a good Empath on my team than a good FF'er, if contribution from their other powersets were identical. A good Empath can get a team through virtually anything, and can certainly bring more "shinies" to a team than FF can. But it's primarilly due to their buffs, NOT their heals. Fortitude will mitigate a heck of a lot more damage over time than heals will, and it improves a team's damage output as well.

The problem is that there are so few good Empaths about.

I can count on one hand the number of Empaths I've met since joining the game which are capable of stacking Fortitude on more than two people at once. For the majority of Empaths I encounter on PUGs, I'm lucky if they have taken CM.

Heals are Pants. Empathy Isn't.

:-)

Endurance drain from LR, like many of the other sources, can shutoff Granite Armor fairly quickly. Granite Armor + Rooted takes longer but is still quite possible. An Empath can keep a Granite Tanker alive indefinitely through the use of Recovery Aura or Adrenaline Boost, or a Kinetic can Spam Speed Boost on them... but at that point, it's not "Heals versus bubbles" any more, it's "Other Buffs versus Bubbles"... which I'm not debating.

If you're honesty still questioning whether you should take the bubbles: of course you should. They apply an obscene amount of damage mitigation for a pittance of slots (four in total- two extra slots are needed each to ED cap Defence, or one each if you use Enzymes) and power picks (again, two). If you don't take them then, like a petless MM, you can still function but you are intentionally gimping yourself.

The simple fact is that for the vast majority of situations you can think of where heals will be useful, FF bubbles will be MORE useful. And for the few situations you can think of where FF bubbles will be superfluous, Heals will ALSO be superfluous in all but the rarest of rare occasions.

+Damage might be generally more useful than +Defence on high-end teams, but +Healing is not.

So take the darn bubbles already.

Actually it is. If you've buffed them to the point that they're not taking damage, or taking damage that their native regereration can overcome, there's no need for healers.

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So instead of spending a short time every 4 mins bubbling and the rest blasting you spent the whole time healing? Where did you get the time to blast if you were healing all the time?

And if you weren't healing, either someone was, who could have blasted if you'd bubbled, or the whole team were at the defence cap or near enough already in which case neither heals nor defence were much use.

PFF is an EFFECT SELF only power. What job are you doing when you are not doing anything? Not healing thats for sure. Dispersion bubble also isn't working, or the Leadership pool. Although you could probably use vengence when one of your team dies, but you'll have to drop PFF to do it.

That's why granite tankers HAVE a heal. But if I'm facing Recluse I'll take 75% defence over active healing any time. It puts ME in control. Do you know why Tankers like having a healer on hand when tanking recluse? Because they have popped purples to get up to the defence soft cap. A bubbler, thermal, ice whatever, will help reduce the reliance on purples.

Damn fine job there Pum.

Because of a cheap tactic of untyped damage. Essentially making defense and resistance useless. I mean, tanks can quite literally TURN OFF THEIR ARMORS in a hami raid and lose no survivability.

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How many uncapped granites are in the game?

Yep. ITF gone bad. We beat Romulus after pulling the nictus away then had to try to deal with three overlapped Nictus. His Energy/Neg defenses weren't high enough and he was getting *****. Then came the ambushes and the defense debuffs... The Rad and the Emp tried though.

While, technically, you can't be one-shotted in the game, the way certain attacks pulse DoT effectively makes certain shots "one-shot-like".

And yes, with defense, you're always subject to the occasional 5% "lucky hit". Had a tank with 80% all-around defense get two-shotted by Lord Recluse on an MSTF a while back. The random number generator hated me that night.

But, if your granite guy with his high defense went down in a one-shot attack, how were you going to heal that? Oh wait! YOU WEREN'T!

Real argument please. Not pointless anecdotes.

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No, he's not going to win this debate because it's not a debate. It's a troll from you on the rest of the people in the thread. You're simply standing there spouting BS and looking to see what kind of rise you get out of people.



Yup. Keep shoveling that BS. Maybe, some day, you might actually believe it. Of course, nobody else with two synapses to rub together will.

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I'll agree on this, and take back my comment on emps - the buffs are indeed sweetsauce.

Also, I'm not sure why you would denigrate Pants. I happen to like Pants. And, if you were to see me sans Pants, I hazard to say you would find a new appreciation for Pants as well. Joey Pants would also take some offense.

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The team already had a healer and the healer needs to heal anyway, if for no other reason than to heal pets. You're not going to spend time bubbling a bunch of mastermind pets. But healers keep them going (and buffed as well) for free.

As I mentioned earlier, you don't turn PFF and leave it on. You use it for survivability with Aid Self, then come back out of it.

A fair argument. But is one AV in one mission a strong enough reason to take the little bubbles? I would have to say no because the vast majority of the time LR gets beat with no bubbler on the team. Like with Malta, bubbles just aren't the preferred way to fight end drain, even though they do help in that area.

Yes, but this isn't a "heals vs bubbles" debate. It's a discussion about the pros and cons of the little bubbles. Healers enter the discussion only because most teams have a healer of some sort.

Given that most teams have a healer, what do the little bubbles bring that a team needs? You can't separate the "other buffs" from the heals. The healer has both. That's why teams get healers.

I'm sorry, I said I would stay away, but this troll is too much. If you need someone else to babysit your pets, you are a bad MM, plain and simple, regardless of whether or not the ridiculous fact of a 'healer' in this game.

But this is talking to a trolling brickwall. So please go back to your other game that requires healers and stop trolling the players here that want to help players and give sound advice.

PS. Earth Control has better control then Fire Control.

So now you think getting your pets healed and buffed for free is a bad idea? Why?

P.S. Still looking forward to seeing an Earth troller complete my Infernal Challenge. Give it a try. The links in my sig. You could be the very first.

Because other players have better things to do then make up for the fact that your pets have less mitigation then they would have if you actually took your own buffs. If they get healed from random AoE heals fine, but you have failed as a MM if you expect people to actively try to keep your pets alive for you.

PS: Using biased tests and stating that it is the end all be all test is extremely presumptuous statement and really shows your personality, and not to mention that audacity of so badmouthing this game elsewhere and then coming back to give terrible advice in its own forums, like nothing happened. Bravo.

Then we agree. Getting your pets healed and buffed for free is a good thing and yet another example of why teams look for healers, not bubblers.

P.S. there's no reason to feel bad just because you couldn't complete the challenge. No Earth troller has to date. Mind, Plant, Fire, and Illusion, yes. But no Earth troller yet.