Best Buff's?

That's fair enough. I can't stand repulsion myself for the end drain, although I understand it did get a buff to its end cost. Repulsion field is 99.9% worthless while running force bubble. How many upper tier powers of any other set cancel each other out?

I just shudder when words like always and never are bandied about regarding certain powers, which is not what you have said. I don't think you are stupid or lazy by any stretch. It is being reflected in real-life when decisions by leaders are ALL or NOTHING - another matter for another day.

To emphasize what Nihilii said: the team should adapt to each other and not 'always' to one pattern or 'never' to another. The developers should have instituted an in-game voice communication package, just so everyone in team or league can hear "in place, please" or "taking them to the wall". Who knows, maybe with the influx of Free 2 Play players, we will see some exotic tactics that work as well as fail.

Edit: Devil's advocate again - do bubblers skip maneuvers?

A couple more things, then ...

If there's an influx of new players, I will guarantee that they won't be looking for creative uses of Force Bubble -- they'll be asking how to max out healing. It's gonna' be tank'n'spank.

If teams started requiring voice chat, I'd quit -- hate it, hate it, hate it.

I rarely see FF defenders, so no idea how many take maneuvers or not. But ... it's a shame if they don't.

Repulsion Field's buff, IIRC, reduced the cost of running the toggle, not the end cost of hitting a mob. FWIW, not even Vig reduces THAT cost.

Depend on what team size we're talking about. Empathy excels at small teams (4 or less) but really isn't very good on larger groups(5 or more) like Thermal is.

That said for mitigation...

Teams size =< 4:
1. Empathy
2. Kin
3. Cold
4. FF
5. Thermal
6. Sonic

Teams size >= 5:
1. Cold
2. FF
3. Thermal
4. Kin
5. Sonic
6. Empathy

excluded Dark Miasma, Storm Summoning, and Rad simply because they are so very middle ground all around.

Play what you think is fun though in the end.

EDIT: Oh and obligatory Cold >FF. You know to stay on topic apparently.

Which is the best buffing set?

Depends.. On what your team size and make-up is, and what you'll be facing. And if you're solo or not (which I guess is just restating 'what is your team size').

But, if you forced me to answer, I guess I'd say Empathy, if you could healing as a buff. If so, it's the only 'Buff (tm)' set. ALL of empathy is a Buff. No utility powers, no debuffs, nothing but buffs. All other def sets have some powers that that do other things. So to to even consider other sets without considering the other things they bring to the table isn't a comparison that is really worth much, in my opinion.

I think Sonic has some of the best buffs. Defense is a lot easier to come by than resistance, and Sonic gives out 35% extra resistance to almost everything before slotting, and to the entire team (or as much of it as will fit in the dispersion bubble, anyway) without any need for recharge bonuses. On top of that, it's giving out the most critical status protections to everyone in the dispersion field too... and is if that wasn't enough, you can anchor on a team-mate a -30% damage resistance aura with a 15 radius. That's just brutal, and it never expires. It can do the single target mez protection boosts, and while it's not something you're going to typically desire, it can anchor a knockback aura on a team-mate should the need arise, which is a weird and unusual buffing capability.

Sonic pays for it in other ways, but it's really got a strong set of slightly unusual buffs.

The best buffer is the one you need at the time. Kind of a loaded answer but that's really how it boils down in this game.

Kinetics is a very good buff set unless there are three of them. And then it might still be a very good one if all of them are decide to split off into separate groups.

Force Field is kind of lackluster in normal high level content but IMO for incarnate trials or exemping it is the one set I'd give 5 stars to after the AoE shield change. I've been hard on the set recently, but the defense it gives to say, a Lambda team, is very noticeable and perfect for that situation (including endurance drain resistance). Hands down when I am playing any of my Dominators it is the FF'er with Power Boost who completely turns my survivability into an assured thing.

Thermal, IMO, brings the most to a Keyes trial.

Time has some of the best personal buffs in the game and is very formidable as well.

I can't speak for time with experience, but it appears to be mixed buff and debuff, and all the good stuff stacks with teammates buffing. It looks like it will be a fun ride. I did get to test out lowbie land with time juncture and it was amazing on my lowbie Time M/Rad defender.