Force Field with most teammates having soft capped defenses?

I'm a COH newb. so bear with my newbie question.  No matter how high defenses go mobs always have at least a 5% chance to hit.  People on the forums are always posting builds with soft-capped defenses.  So does this minimize the Force Field player?  Is there some hidden aspect to the FF shields that I am missing?  Does it help stop the -DEF attacks that land on a teammate to keep the -DEF from a cascade failure?

Any input is appreciated.

You're right, IMHO. With Incarnates, IOs, Cold and Time... For FF, it's a tough world out there.

You get mez resist and KB/KD/Repel toys. Frankly, none of it seems enough. To argue for the relevance of FF requires an increasingly narrow focus on the first part of the leveling phase. It's not like FF is broken, but...

People posting builds does not always mean people playing said builds.  ^_^

I would say that the vast majority of players -- certainly the vast majority of non-melee players -- are not actually softcapped, or if they are it's just to smashing/lethal defense only.  In most situations, additional defense is very helpful (and remember, incarnate trials have a higher softcap, 59% I think).

That said, Force Field is kind of the least of the sets that provide extra defense.  Cold and Time do this and have some other nice utility powers.  Perhaps the best place where a FF defender/corr still really shines is on a mothership raid -- but yeah, if you're on a high-powered team with a lot of well-built level 50's, what you bring to the table is of limited use as compared to other sets.

Force Field is still a good set, but with some caveats I think.

Shinobu beat me to it, but yeah, what he said, although I'd stress again that these builds you see posted here aren't as common as you might think.

As much as I like FF it can be a difficult one to justify at times. Having extra defence above cap is nice for -def effects, but they aren't a constant so a lot of the time it can feel like wasted effort. What it does help with are any back line team members, ranged masterminds (who are who I tend to take FF on personally with a tendency towards bots), defenders and controllers etc who may not have capped their defences off as easily as people with access to armours. It's also a solid set to have in groups if you know the people and tend to team most of the time since it allows them to not focus as much on slotting for defence. I'm also a great fan of the Force Bolt and Force Bubble powers, back on live their kb and repulsion helped me and others survive numerous times when high damage melee opponents slipped past the front line fighters. Though admittedly Force Bubble can be a pain when people run it carelessly and split carefully grouped mobs up.

All in all it has its place, it's not a bad set and I've never encountered anyone that's kicked me off a team for having it like some other sets. But it's not one of the top tier competitors.

You're not completely wrong that the value goes down somewhat, BUT there are defense debuffs to worry about in general so added defense guarantees you stay not only softcapped but hardcapped against difficult challenges (I may be wrong about the importance of this so feel free to correct me).

Also keep in mind if you run in a group that you know well you would actually enable them to worry less about soft capping defense, everyone could respec into more offensive builds AND worry less about toggles dropping.

Been playing with Pines, still don't get how blasters etc can softcap defense but I'm sure someone can explain.

I think nihilii already got the most important points out there: the overkill +Def at the cost of everything else is probably not optimal for most content. On the other hand, not everyone builds for Def and a force fielder with Maneuvers and power boost can soft cap the whole team from 0 on their own, which is actually a pretty spectacular feat. Also teammates who do build for defense still appreciate the extra buffer against -Def opponents (pretty much all factions) and enemies with +ToHit (any incarnate content, Nemesis, Arachnos, etc).

Wow, very constructive thread.  Thanks for the input everyone.    I'm always on the fence between FF, Sonic, Cold. 

Wow, very constructive thread.  Thanks for the input everyone.    I'm always on the fence between FF, Sonic, Cold.

Sonic is res no?

FF is typed defense. Some players who cap will only be capped to positional defense (e.g. ranged). It's an amplification in that case, even if it might be a difference with only the most minor distinction.

From running on teams of VEATs, I can also say that high-level defense debuffs get CRAZY. Longbow, Nemmies and Arachnos can actually cut in to 150% defense values enough for players to start taking real damage, so the higher their defense values are, the better. I remember being shocked the first time my all VEAT group, with 250% defense when we were all clustered together, got wiped by combination of the right Longbow bosses.

Remember too that you're offering status protection to the back line. That's a fantastic value for a lot of late game enemy groups.

You can also play area denial if that's important. The Ms. Liberty TF needs to keep mobs from healing the tower thingie and Force Bubble is probably the best tool for that particular job. You can also keep mobs well away while somebody rezzes or uses a medicine pool power or snipe.

And FF is great if you want to spend most of your time doing something else. It pairs well with busy sets like Mind Control or Fire Blast.

You really have to build for +Def or be a defense based set to soft cap, and there's several other valuable avenues people might be optimizing towards (+Recharge being the most common, I would expect).  You help a lot with people in that situation.

Even with softcapped people, forcefields help a lot in dealing with cascade defense failure.  You need to be way over the softcap if you go up against a pack of Rad blasting enemies, for example, unless you have very strong defense debuff resist, and forcefields help with that a lot.  They're also useful for dealing with some +ToHit, though you need massive overkill in some cases due to the size of certain buffs (one of my favorite memories on my one of my previous forcefield defenders was playing with another forcefield defender and a super reflexes scrapper against the devouring earth.  They dropped one of the +100 To Hit emanators....and the SR scrapper popped a purple and remained soft capped.)

Also, Forcefield defenders have the second best team Toxic resist buff behind Sonic Resonance, effective team immunity to endurance drain, full team status resistance vs. the major non-sleep effects without needing to spend half their time casting single target short duration buffs and the big bubble gives both some of the strongest psi defense buffs available to help cover non-positional psi effects.  They cover pretty much all the protective bases except truly untyped or autohit damage, while a lot of the other shielding sets have holes that don't show up often but hurt a lot when they do.

Repulsion Field was always strong but situational, but I feel like there's a lot of potential there with the Knockback->Knockdown IO to just make it really strong most of the time instead.  Force Bubble remains also very strong but situational.

I really like forcefields overall, I'm in a static trio playing a Thermal/Ice defender with a FF/Rad defender and an invulnerability tank, and it is pretty glorious.

Thank you for the wonderful replies.  I made a Electric/FF controller

I've been waiting on you to respond. Even considered making a comment about Cold being a lot better just to bait you.

I've been waiting on you to respond. Even considered making a comment about Cold being a lot better just to bait you.

I'd expect nothing less from you.

I had 40+ characters on live. None of them had IOs outside of commons. Not everybody walks around in min/maxed builds. I think FF might be the easiest set to make a steamrolling team. It also adds the least amount to one that already is.

I had 40+ characters on live. None of them had IOs outside of commons. Not everybody walks around in min/maxed builds. I think FF might be the easiest set to make a steamrolling team. It also adds the least amount to one that already is.

Bingo.

While the forums seem to 'revolve' around soft-capped, min-maxed builds, in reality, even way back on Live, they were not _that_ common.

Bubbles, IMO, are never a bad thing, unless of course, they give you a headache some such. :)

My only bubble issue is that I have never been able to make one I stuck with...

FF is typed defense. Some players who cap will only be capped to positional defense (e.g. ranged). It's an amplification in that case, even if it might be a difference with only the most minor distinction.

FF offers both typed and positional defense. Every +Defense buff in the Buff/Debuff sets was changed to make sure they could stack with either category of Defense. I think it was as early as either Issue 5 or 6.