Is There Any Point to Playing Level 50 Bubblers?

My namesake is a level 50 + 1 Force Field / Dark Blast Defender, which I made primarily for Rikti mothership raids. Now with Issue 20, I just don't see the point in playing him. Between the Barrier and Clarion Destiny buffs, he's essentially useless with nothing to provide level 50 teams. Sure, he can be of some benefit by providing bubbles while exemping for lower level task forces and such, but that's once in a blue moon, and not what he was designed for. I haven't bothered running any Incarnate trials with him, because I just don't see the point. The only thing a Force Field Defender brings to a level 50 team is pitiful Defender damage now.

Am I missing something?

I will admit, the mez protection that he provides is less useful than it used to be, however the defense is still very useful. Barrier (like all Destiny buffs) only provides it's full benefit for a few seconds so most of the time people just have 5% or so defense from it. Combined with the higher base to hit of enemies in the trials and the fact that several of them have to hit buffs extra defense is still very much appreciated, especially by squishys.

I still think bubblers have their place. The incarnate buffs are too short-lived to be totally game-changing. A good bubbler who keeps his teammates bubbled is still worth what he was before, as is the icer.

Oh my, I love my Forcefield Defender. I took detention field for the tower battles against Lord Recluse in the Statesman task force. I used force bubble, repulsion bomb, insulation shield to great effect against Director 11 in the Tin Mage II task force. Good ole insulation shield is still good for endurance draining making teams sapper proof.

In the ITF, people like to think they are soft-capped until the defense debuff kicks their butt. Extra layers of defense help.

I took an involuntary break from the game right when BAF and Lambda went live due to medical constraints. I have been working back into the game. In most situations, my bubbler and my stormy also, look for little wrinkles that really kick in to help teams. As was noted the +4 of incarnate gameplay means many folks who think they are soft-capped ARE NOT.

On the BAF trial, not only can you use your dispersion bubble to affect the whole league, you can use your force bubble to repel the escapees(so i heard).

On the Lambda trial, the targeted bubbles are helpful during the glowie hunt, as people often like to run it on their own with no support.

Overall with increased mob To-Hit chances, softcapped characters can always use extra defense.

The thing is, the main reason I rolled a Force Field Defender was for the mez protection. Before Issue 20, a bubbler offered +defense, and mez protection. A Cold Dom offered +defense, and debuffs. Before Issue 20, most teams would pick a Cold Dom over a bubbler. Now with Issue 20, there's even less reason to pick or play a bubbler compared to a cold dom, who can now offer +defense, debuffs, and mez protection. I just don't see the point to bubblers any more. It makes me sad that I pretty much wasted all that time on him. I soloed him from level 1 to 32 back in Issue 16, before the changes to Vigilance. Got a lot of badges on him. Now there's no point in playing him. Meh.

I have to be honest. When I was deciding between support characters to make Incarnates my Cold/Ice Defender beat out my Ill/FF Controller and it wasn't a hard decision. With Clarion and Interface, my Cold/Ice just plain out brings a lot more to the table.

If you enjoy playing him and you like the character, that's reason enough. If you want to talk purely mechanical benefits, no, not really. Sorry CL.

I think Adeon and Puce have it right. If you don't like the character, that's one thing, but don't stop playing him just because you think you're expected to not like him, if that makes any sense.

Later on,
Gate

I'm actually dusting off my grav/FF controller again for the first time in a long, long time. The Trials are the first time since after IOs came out where people actually NEED boosts to their defense, because the new mobs have higher then previous tohit. Not a lot of builds can get to "the new soft cap" without being horribly gimped, so FF actually helps survivability considerably. Its a rare BAF or Lambda where half a dozen people don't die at various points, that right there tells you more defense would be helpful.

Other bonuses;
-Even very sturdy melees run into trouble with End Drain in the Lambda containers. Your bubbles block that.
-Lambda requires some splitting up, and in virtually every run has even more than required. Bubbles can keep people alive for that phase, which is rather important for the next phase.
-Force Bubble, as mentioned, could be very handy for the BAF escapee phase.
-I've had my Crab, who has mezz protect and good defenses, Held several times during BAF fights. Think about most other squishies without mezz protect in that situation. I'd be happy to have Dispersion Bubble there.
-Barrier lasts something like 10 seconds for the really high numbers. Your bubbles last for 4 minutes. Easy call.
-There are ideal times in both Trials to shield everyone on the league. Waiting for the AV pulls in the BAF, fighting the Security Guard in the Lambda, since defender damage isn't going to turn the tide on that one.

I've seen that kind of discussion several times now, in terms of "Judgement makes blaster obsolete. Interface makes debuffers obsolete." etc. Yet, at the end of the day, I know that if I want a supply of something, be it damage, defense, debuffs, or whatever, I'm most likely to find it if I recruit someone who built their character around it.

If I have a FF/ defender on the team, its very very likely that they'll actually try to support the team, because nobody picks that power combo to self Powerlevel. If I have a blaster with Barrier, eh, not such good odds. . .

In this game, no AT or power combination is ever "needed." Incarnates really make this point stand-out.
A lot of /SR players thought this way when shields came out, too.
Last, IMO, we currently have a content gap. Too many powers not enough things/challenges for them. If it were the reverse, too many would complain. Be patient. I think more challenges are ahead.

Now that you can no longer breeze through life with 45% s/l def bubblers are cool again.

As has been brought up, the higher hit rate makes defense valuable on trials...especially for characters that depend on not getting hit. While cold has a lot of tools, forcefield had a bigger, better toggle for if you don't want to individually shield the whole league. Also, camping the spawn point to repel minions is actually quite effective when done correctly.

Soloing AV's and such is not the measure of a 'good set.' Debuffs are great, but just because the set isn't the Über set best of the best that a min-maxed team must have doesn't mean the set is junk. It's the best set for defense, and for knocking things around. Take that for what it is, and it can be very powerful.

If you enjoy the character, you'll have enough contribution - even if it's more invisible than usual to many - to keep playing. The incarnate trial mobs do have a higher base to-hit (in addition to being higher level, which applies an accuracy adjust) and so most characters who are softcapped to 45% do need some additional buffing to reach the 'incarnate softcap' of 59%.

However, any significant defense buffing character provides enough to close that gap; most also offer other benefits over forcefield. Forcefield does provide more defense to people who don't have any, or more a debuff pad, but those things tend not to be as heavily valued or even noticed. So if you are looking for maximum mechanical leverage and the acclaim of your teammates, yeah, you probably would be happier with a different character.

I have long defended Force Field as a set that is good for PUGing as teams level up. As of the current state of the game though, I feel the set is in need of a serious kick in the pants. Mainly because there is more to playing your lvl 50 character than the 2 trials, and my FF characters have very little to offer an ITF, Khan, Lady Gray, Apex, or even a standard mission. The huge tradeoff in damage and debuffs is not worth the extremely small amount of extra defense that originally justified Force Field's numbers (i.e. the fact that it could soft cap characters by itself).

Case in point: a Cold with the Clarion power provides better mezz protection to more things than Force Field's actual dedicated mezz shield does. Cold's +resist/def aura is then 15 ft bigger than Duspersion Bubble (that is, it covers more than three times as much total area), and offers +Stealth, 60% Recharge resistance, and 60% Speed resistance. Two Colds standing next to each other are immune to these effects entirely. If you are serious about protecting teammates, under the current implementation give Force Field a pass and grab Clarion on Cold. Cold is a debuff set swimming in defense and resistance buffs and Force Field meanwhile doesn't even get the defense debuff resistance that supposedly justifies Super Reflexes.

IMO Force Field is still useful--as a support character on low to mid level teams. But my lvl 50 and lvl 40 Force Field characters are now considered retired until the set gets a revisit. I think that's really unfortunate, because I love FF as a concept. IMO in the incarnate levels though it is currently among the most underperforming sets in the game, behind even Gravity Control.

The problem with feeling shafted by incarnate buffs is that people don't USE them. That's where you have an advantage. As a FF'er, you know how to watch your allies shields, when to re-cast, how to position yourself so the squishies get the benefit of your shield, and just generally know how to play the set. Some Blaster who casts Clarion when no one's near him isn't a threat to your role as the team's protection.

Now granted, if you're on a team with 7 other guys who're so well-organized that they know to have only one of them cast barrier every 20 seconds when people are nearby, then yeah, you're a bit redundant. But I honestly don't see that being an issue!

Forcefields is taken for granted. The level of defense from forcefields has been static for some time. People build their incarnate characters with more defense and resist in response to tougher content.

Forcefielders have been said to be situational. Perhaps, but individual situations seem to crop up regularly in different occasions. The ITF has a bunch of defense debuffing npc's intent on skewering heroes and villains alike. So, extra defense above 45% seems redundant until it's being chipped away. The statesman task force has a situation with an incredibly buffed AV at near hax levels. A good tank and team have worked around this, but in a lot of situations being able to use detention field (or sonic cage and others) on the towers makes the ordeal faster and easier. I have found a killer combination in Force Bubble and Insulation shield that minimizes damage received and protects against sapper drains and Malta in the Tin Mage II task force.

I am sure there are other 'situations' that are more frequent than not. Forcefields isn't mandatory, neither is empathy or radiation, but all buff/debuff sets bring something to a team.

In short, force fields were once the dike behind whose defense a team could operate pre-incarnate levels. At the later levels, it's more like the finger in the dike that prevents the extra considerations from getting through a team's defense and resistances. In such teams, there isn't imminent collapse looming, but it makes the event smoother with that added layer.

If you're not having fun playing the character, don't. I don't play my Ice/Dev blaster anymore because my Fire/NRG outclasses him in every department (every useful department, anyway).

Speaking to its potential once IOs came into play and the I13 mez changes went live, Force Field has always been pretty far down on the totem pole. The set is incredibly one-dimensional in that once a team's survivability is assured, FF contributes little else. That said, I'll take a competent Force Fielder over GenericDPSToon#59873 any day.