Force Field question

I recently respecced a DP blaster and it went well so I thought I might apply some of what I learned into doing the same thing for my FF/DP defender, but I've run into a road block. This character is not only my first real defender (meaning "lasted past level 10") but also my first FF'er. Working on my build, I think I'll have to choose between Repulsion Field and Force Bubble. I currently only have RF and have no experience with FB. So far I only rarely use RF and then as a panic button; once or twice I have played "squishie protector" at the rear of the team with it though.

My question is which one is ultimately better? Has more use? Would you perhaps argue I really should have both? I'm leaning towards dropping it and taking FB, based on what (little) I know.

Well, I've played scads of Defs, but not many FFs. That said, my one FF I've put time into is into the mid 40s, and I have respeced and tried a number of different builds. Point is I'm no great authority, but not an armchair commentator, on this set, but I can offer my opinion.

I find Force Bubble pretty much better in every way, with perhaps 2 exceptions.

Force bubble is a lot cheaper on the endurance bar. It has a higher mag effect. It recharges faster. Costs a lot less end. Has a bigger area/repel distance. Casts faster, even.

Some folks think it might just be too big though. And Force bubble can't really be slotted anything, except Generic IO.

I definitely wouldn't pack both.

I've tried both, I find I get more use out of repulsion field actually. RF can let you run around and mess with mostly just the mobs you want to mess with. Force bubble is huge, but honestly, the only things I REALLY need it to keep out just walk right through it anyway. In the dark recesses of my memory I seem to recall it used to work around corners but I'm pretty sure it doesn't anymore (sad face).

Anyway, I have both but don't find Force Bubble very earth shattering in terms of a T9 power.

On a FF/DP, I would think both Repulsion Field and Force Bubble would be kind of counter productive to your Tier 9 in DP. That being said, Force Bubble can make you nigh immune to melee attacks as the repel is strong enough to prevent nearly anything from reaching you. As others have mentioned, though, that bubble is *HUGE*.

I don't have this combination, my FF experience comes from a Bots/FF MM, where keeping all of my enemies at range is a good thing. If I was planning a FF/DP, though, I'd probably skip both or only take one or the other as an emergency 'Get off me!' kind of power. If I were only to take one, it would likely be Force Bubble. It's much better at the 'Get off me!' aspect, I think.

Personally, I don't find many uses for Force Bubble at all. It is just way too big. It's great for dead ends in office maps... Turn it on and shove everyone against the wall. Other than that, I find it spectacularly useless. YMMV.

I've had a bubbler since issue 9, and I've respec-ed in and out of Repulsion Field and Force Bubble over the years. Mostly, once past 40th level I respec out of Repulsion Field due to actually having S/L res softcapped. By then, the guys you don't want to hit you are too powerful themselves to be affected by RF. And Force Bubble, is really just a laugh power for me. Its rare you find yourself in a situation that demands it, so its more just me having fun when I use it.

So my advise, if you have room I would take either. With Repulsion Field, some of the knockback sets have pretty good set bonuses. With Force Bubble, you could always take it at 50th level and one slot it with a endurance reduction if you needed the slots elsewhere (which is what I did).

Or you could just skip both, and take something else.

I never really liked either power on my ff / rad -- they both mucked up Irradiate too much.

And my free pass was always PFF.

If you're wondering about the potential for damage mitigation, my not-very-scientific tests (done waaaaay back in I5 or I6) show Force Bubble reduces incoming damage a fifth or so, Repulsion Field by a third.

To me, this is a situation that simply screams for a dual build. Do a couple newsies with RF and then do a couple newsies with FB. And see which one suits you. When it comes to powers that are idiosyncratic at best and counter-productive at worst, you're well off into the dark forest of personal preference.

Edit: one neat thing about Repulsion Field -- its KB effect has a duration effectively allowing you stack KB with Force Bolt. A /really/ determined bubbler with an awful lot of endurance can KB otherwise resistant mobs.

Play style choice really.

Force Bubble has a 50 foot radius. While you have it on NONE of your powers that have a range of 50 feet or less (or your teammates that are near you in the bubble) will be able to fire (your targets will all be out of range).

Both are situational powers. It just depends what situations you run into most often.

Force Bubble has some applications on incarnate trials (Keyes, UGT), but I use Force Bubble almost never in any other content. I keep a build with FB available in case I know it will come in handy for specific content. Neither FB nor RF are on my main build.

Attention Bubblers!

One key factor has NOT been discussed. The effect of Repulsion Field will be drastically modified with one of the fancy KB>KD procs. You could run around and keep things falling down like a mobile ice patch. Force bubble is repel. Repulsion Field is KB like Repel from kinetics.

Also, I find Force Bubble very useful on the map with the director (Tin Mage) and the incoming Malta. Bubbler and Team hug tank inside dispersion and wail away at director while the malta try in vain to push into melee range or even line of sight.

Both are incredibly situational (hopefully that changes whenever the devs get around to reviewing the set). I like Force Bubble more, but honestly hardly use either.

Trickshooter's Characters | @Trickshooter @Brightside

I always liked Repulsion Field better.

It has a very small radius, so it affects who you want to affect.
Its also autohit, which can be very handy against enemies with god-mode powers like Paragon Protectors.

I remember using it to juggle a +5 boss without much fear of reprisal.

Force Bubble always seemed a bit more situational, whereas I could make good use of Repulsion field solo or in teams during normal play.


And yeah, I'm amazed that they're allowing that Knockdown enhancer to be slotted in Bonfire. Fire Control just gained Ice Slick with damage.

I can honestly say that I've never really liked either power, as such I generally skip them.

I don't think my namesake has had either RF or FB in going 4 or more years, and I've never once missed having them. (I did *try* liking them (specifically FB) once upon a time, they just don't do anything for me.)

@Oathbound & @Oathbound Too

RF certainly has a greater edge with the KB->KD IO, so my vote is there. Also Force Bubble's range is frankly too big, which makes it very cumbersome compared to RF.

On the question of 'force bubble vs repulsion field', the key point I think is that the two powers aren't actually 'two ways to do the same thing', which is a fairly common misconception. They actually serve two related but still different purposes, and in an ideal world I'd take and use both of them. In the world we live in, though, my answer is force bubble, simply because repulsion field has an absolutely *obscene* endurance cost even *before* you start paying extra endurance to KB things with it. If they ever properly balance the power, though, I'll be taking it in addition to force bubble.

As to exactly why and how I think the two powers are different, I'll simply repeat my post from the last time I addressed this topic. The one thing I didn't mention at the time was that, no matter which you actually use, the best way to really leverage them is to get lots of ranged defense though IOs and/or powers like maneuvers, weave, combat jumping, hover, etc. When mobs can't melee you, ranged defense is almost an I win button.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Muon_Neutrino 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.