FF: Repulsion Field or Force Bubble?

So I've started on a new FF/Fire Defender, and I'm liking it so far, along with all of the potential slotting options for it. When all is said and done, I should have softcapped S/L/E and ranged defense, at the very least.

However, having never played a high-level bubbler before, I have questions about Repulsion Field and Force Bubble. Which of these two is better? Which should I take? Both? Are there different strategies to these powers? The guides section's latest FF guide is from I11, and seemed to assume that you'd take both of these. Just wasn't sure if this had changed with more IO knowledge and Incarnate content or not.

Thanks for any help you can offer!

So 100% of responses say that I should get both.

Are they both "ASAP" powers? Or can you hold off on one of them for a few levels?

While they use different mechanics (kb vs repel), they're basically the same. However RF has a much more managable radius, one that would be less disruptive to a team and provide you the ability to more strategically choose which mobs you want knocked away. I honestly can't think of a good use for Froce Bubble in today's game except for maybe the computer in ITF, and again, you can still accomplish the same by running around the robots to kb them.

Okay, worked up a mock build for myself, starting with what Hyperstrike gave me, and then working in some of the things that I wanted to grab instead. So, while I know that this build is expensive and will take me a while to get, I was hoping to grab some additional suggestions on it.

Right now, I can not only softcap my entire team to S/L/F/C/E/NE/M/R/AoE, but I myself will be over the softcap for S/L/E and ~40% to Ranged, which should be good enough, considering. Endurance use might be a bit high, but I'm not sure how much I can bring that down, with all of the toggles.


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Fireguard: Level 50 Technology Defender
Primary Power Set: Force Field
Secondary Power Set: Fire Blast
Power Pool: Leadership
Power Pool: Flight
Ancillary Pool: Mace Mastery

Hero Profile:
Level 1: Deflection Shield -- LkGmblr-Def(A), LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(7), LkGmblr-Def/Rchg(11), LkGmblr-Rchg+(31)
Level 1: Flares -- Thundr-Acc/Dmg(A), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx(3), Thundr-Dmg/Rchg(19), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(31), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(34), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(37)
Level 2: Fire Blast -- Thundr-Acc/Dmg(A), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx(3), Thundr-Dmg/Rchg(15), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(31), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(34), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(37)
Level 4: Fire Ball -- Posi-Acc/Dmg(A), Posi-Dmg/EndRdx(5), Posi-Dmg/Rchg(9), Posi-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(15), Posi-Dam%(25)
Level 6: Insulation Shield -- LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(A), LkGmblr-Def(9), LkGmblr-Def/Rchg(11), LkGmblr-Rchg+(33)
Level 8: Assault -- EndRdx-I(A), EndRdx-I(17)
Level 10: Fly -- Zephyr-ResKB(A)
Level 12: Dispersion Bubble -- LkGmblr-Def(A), LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(13), LkGmblr-Def/Rchg(13), LkGmblr-Rchg+(33)
Level 14: Hover -- Flight-I(A), Flight-I(45)
Level 16: Rain of Fire -- Posi-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(A), Posi-Acc/Dmg(17), Posi-Dmg/EndRdx(21), Posi-Dmg/Rchg(36), Posi-Dam%(42)
Level 18: Repulsion Field -- FrcFbk-Dmg/KB(A), FrcFbk-Acc/KB(19), FrcFbk-Rchg/KB(25), FrcFbk-Rchg/EndRdx(46), FrcFbk-Dmg/EndRdx/KB(46), FrcFbk-Rechg%(46)
Level 20: Aim -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(21)
Level 22: Maneuvers -- LkGmblr-Def(A), LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(23), LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx/Rchg(23), LkGmblr-Rchg+(45)
Level 24: Force Bolt -- FrcFbk-Acc/KB(A), KinCrsh-Acc/KB(43)
Level 26: Repulsion Bomb -- Posi-Acc/Dmg(A), Posi-Dmg/EndRdx(27), Posi-Dmg/Rchg(27), Posi-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(37), Posi-Dam%(43)
Level 28: Blaze -- Thundr-Acc/Dmg(A), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx(29), Thundr-Dmg/Rchg(29), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(33), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(34), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(42)
Level 30: Fire Breath -- Posi-Dmg/Rng(A), Posi-Acc/Dmg(39), Posi-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(40), Posi-Dmg/Rchg(40), Posi-Dam%(40)
Level 32: Personal Force Field -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A)
Level 35: Scorpion Shield -- LkGmblr-Def(A), LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(36), LkGmblr-Def/Rchg(36), LkGmblr-Rchg+(39)
Level 38: Web Envelope -- GravAnch-Acc/Immob/Rchg(A), GravAnch-Hold%(39)
Level 41: Blazing Bolt -- Mantic-Acc/Dmg(A), Mantic-Dmg/EndRdx(42), Mantic-Dmg/ActRdx/Rchg(43), Mantic-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(50)
Level 44: Force Bubble -- EndRdx-I(A), EndRdx-I(45)
Level 47: Summon Disruptor -- BldM'dt-Acc/Dmg(A), BldM'dt-Dmg/EndRdx(48), BldM'dt-Acc/EndRdx(48), BldM'dt-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(48), BldM'dt-Acc(50), BldM'dt-Dmg(50)
Level 49: Vengeance -- Empty(A)
------------
Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Sprint -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Vigilance
Level 2: Swift -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Health -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Hurdle -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Stamina -- EndMod-I(A), EndMod-I(5), EndMod-I(7)
Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A)
Level 4: Ninja Run

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IMO, Repulsion Field is redundant. Force Bubble is good enough. I have three level 50 Force Field Defenders. All have Force Bubble, none have Repulsion Field. Force Bubble is useful on ITFs, and while soloing. It's also a good "oh crap" power on mothership raids.

My new main toon is a level 50 Force Field / Fire Blast Defender. For a Defender, he is a beast. He can softcap the entire team to Incarnate content with 59.6% defense to everything, and is softcapped to range at 45.7% for personal defense. Admittedly, I spent three billion INF on IOs and $80 on Enhancement boosters, but neither is necessary by any means.

He is currently slotted with a Cardiac Core Paragon Alpha, Reactive Radial Flawless Interface, Pyronic Core Final Judgement, Rebirth Radial Epiphany Destiny, and Warworks Core Superior Ally. The Cardiac Core Paragon Alpha gives him additional range in addition to the reduced endurance, so I can safely stay out of melee range behind my Force Bubble while soloing.

If it'll help, my current Force Field / Fire Blast Defender build is here.

My personal choice would be force bubble every time, but not because the two powers are redundant.

In many ways the two powers serve different purposes. Force bubble is for making entire spawns go thataway or into a corner, or for pushing enemies out of a large area like the center of the bowl on a mothership raid, or for creating ranged squishy safe zones. It can also serve the personal 'nobody is allowed to melee with me' function, but it's harder to use it for that without accidentally spreading out spawns all over the place since it's got such a large radius and will easily affect more mobs than just the ones trying to punch you in the face.

Repulsion field on the other hand isn't a tool for affecting whole spawns. It's more of a anti-melee shield and more precisely placable area denial tool. Unlike force bubble, it admirably fulfills the role of keeping stuff out of melee without much required effort on your part in terms of controlling it and preventing mass scatter. It's also a more precise area denial tool in that you can jump next to a squishy and use it to knock away the swarm of enemies trying to punch them without affecting the whole surrounding area.

Force bubble is a large-scale spawn positioning tool and a safe zone creator. Repulsion field is personal anti-melee protection and a small-scale enemy removal/positioning tool. Really, in an ideal world I'd like have both. I'd run repulsion field all the time and use it to protect me from melee and forcibly remove small clumps of problematic foes, and I'd activate force bubble when I wanted to engage in large-scale spawn moving or protect everyone from some horrible ambush-pile or something.

Unfortunately, the problem with this ideal scenario is repulsion field's utterly ridiculous endurance cost. Force bubble costs 0.69/s, which is very high but still manageable for a toggle that you only turn on when you need it. Repulsion field costs a whopping 0.78/s *on top of* the unreducible 1 end per foe repelled. In other words, *while it's providing absolutely no benefit at all* it's one of the most expensive toggles in the game, and then it drains additional end on top of that if you actually try to do anything with it. I'm already running dispersion bubble, maneuvers, and temp invul all the time, force bubble occasionally, I actually use my attacks, and I like to turn on assault and tactics if I can. I don't have the endurance to even contemplate using something that ridiculously expensive - it was only at 50 with a fair amount of attention paid to endurance use and recovery in my set slotting that I stopped constantly running low on endurance in the first place. I don't want to be forced into cardiac alpha just to run repulsion field.

In my personal opinion, repulsion field should cost something like 0.1/s when not repelling anything. It's the only power I can think of that requires such a punitive cost to do literally nothing. At that point I'd definitely be able to take and find uses for both, since I could *choose* when I actually wanted to spend endurance knocking things back. And it's definitely not like we need to worry about making the set overpowered by such a minor overall buff.

If the option was either or, I probably choose Repulsion Field. Both powers are extremely situational but repulsion field is less so and far less annoying to teammates, especially melees. It should be said I don't like either of the powers personally, and would take almost any power that enhances mine or my teams damage or stats over it.

Looked at the build.

I would go range cap hover blaster and use Repulsion to keep away or knock down any fliers that come near you. Using force bubble as was mentioned is gonna get you absolutely nothing on a team in today's game play, except get you people to yell at you or kick you. Further even if you decided I'm gonna keep this as my "Oh shoot" button you still lack the defenses to fend off all the mobs that will immediately aggro on you. I have a robot FF MM and I learned this the hard way during a TF and I am completely defense capped.

To be honest and equally harsh at level 50 FF are bit useless when someone pops a Barrier or just simply with all the stacked defenses that teams are running these days. So with that being said I think you have done your duty of giving out bubbles and anything else done to the toon should be for your personal benefit.

Any defensive powers you slot with LOTG should just have 3 IOs from the set in them. the +recharge, Defense and either Defense / End Redux or Defense / Rechage depending on the power. Use the 1 extra slot somewhere else.

This is something I would go with.

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