DreadShinobi

"Unless youre running around naked" I didnt explicitly type that but it was not ignored. It takes 2 slots to get sufficient recharge slotting in RoP to meet 33% uptime

Actually the 33% uptime value is about the same as on live with an SO build and hasten. So unless youre talking about a buff for a character running around nekid, the RoP change is only a nerf/rebalancing around a character using IOs or characters that have internal recharge buffs like chrono shift, accelerate metabolism, quickness, etc. Even just 20% additional global recharge beyond hasten and SOs has better than 33% uptime on RoP currently pre patch.

It is insufficient to look at that through a closed lens. A time Manip character gets 12.5% base def from farsight, pbaoe. Fortitude is base 15% def. If you cast Fort on yourself you are delaying casting it on the next ally. Time Manip also has a tohit debuff aura to pad its defense, Fort is the only +def available to empathy. Time manip also has relevant debuffs, force multipliers, and control options. Empathy (and FF) do not. Should Farsight be changed to only affect allies and not self when clicked? I can already hear the outrage. Compared to a brute or tanker, that will also hit resist caps and/or defense softcaps, and have a higher resist cap, an empathy or forcefield character doesn't have punchvoke, a taunt aura, or in-set click taunt to really leverage being harder to kill. Already wrote about the irrelevance of self-sb kins getting all that much out of such a QoL change. A bubbler with tough/weave/maneuvers/IOs is still going to hit defense softcaps with or without being able to bubble oneself. If anything being able to affect oneself evens out the playing field between IO min/maxing and playing an SO character, which relevant to this thread, has been the targeted direction of the Rune of Protection change. RoP has been balanced around a non-recharge affected balance point and can be used as a precedent that future changes may look towards making the SO-enhanced game state something that is more fluid and enjoyable.

brutes were used as a close comparison tool. Tankers were absolutely also looked at individually with attention to their leveling speed.

Speed boost is a great power because it can be cast on everyone with no cooldown. Its actual numbers arent all that high. Kinetics already get immense access to +rchg from siphon speed, unlimited endurance from transference, and capped unsuppresses movespeed from siphon speed. The overall impact from being able to receive the speed boost effect on oneself wouldnt be such a world of difference compared to the effect it has on everyone else that don't have access to kinetics inherent tools. Also fulcrum shift is what makes kinetics the powerhouse of a set that it is, not speed boost. In terms of things like adrenaline boost or painbringer, it is a single ally buff. If you cast it on yourself you don't have it available to cast on anyone else, who likely will benefit alot more from it, whether by access to higher hp cap, higher damage modifiers, or more potent long cooldown powers worth buffing the recharge on. I already have strong opinions that mez protection is not something that should be a heavy tax for certain archetypes while others 100% ignore most interactions with enemy factions meant to make them feel any different than fighting a council spawn. Self casting clear mind on an empathy defender, or making it a pbaoe buff that affects oneself is really no different than a force fielder having access to mez protection. It is nice to have but does not fundamentally change what an empathy or force field character can do, they're still stuck with pitifully low offensive output. I am with @Luminara that self buffing buffers would be a welcome QoL change, and not something that would break the game. The dps increase provided to tankers is a good precedent that game balance is moving more towards self sufficience. The original addition of rune of protection to the game, regardless of its uptime/downtime values, was long overdue in addressing the mez protection disparity between archetypes. I hope that the future of this game includes more tools to deal with mez effects or debuffs. I would also like to see more prevalancy of mez effects and debuffs in the toolkits of enemy factions alongside more tools to react to more interactive encounters. This edges on a mez system overhaul but can also be as simple as adding more powers to enemy critter kits, and more player tools to respond to those new threats. I also feel that there should be mez effects in certain encounters that can break standard mez protection values that are available to any archetype. A good example is some of the current discussions in the blaster forum that illustrate how playing a blaster makes you very aware of every way that an enemy spawn can affect your character. Playing a melee character does not have that immersive interaction with what you put your character up against (scrapperlock)

I prefer farming tfs over farming farms, so when it comes to IOing out a new character I have enormous amounts of merits to drop on getting the purples, pvp ios, atos, etc where i end up spending a minimal amount of actual inf currency.

Scrappers may have more balance and consistency between powersets and performance, however for blasters at top end performance, and especially when it comes to fire blasting, well, lets just say you gave me a good laugh this morning. Also buff blasters. Clearly underperforming.

Doms are the only archetype in the game where building in an excessive amount of +recharge continues to improve your effective recovery the more you have of it. Domination can be made perma at 128.75% global recharge, which is achievable without hasten, meaning you add hasten on top of that giving you an effective buffer against recharge debuffs and bring your domination click to 65-70 secs for your full endurance refill. For leveling a dominator I recommend picking up the +recharge and +recovery base buffs, which are essentially free and last 90 minutes. For a leveling dom the knockback protection base buff can be good too if your domination drops. I would also invest in recovery serum temps, which i believe I pick up on every character that I play, because the buff is pretty intense and lets you ignore your blue bar thoroughly. I even use the recovery serum on things like my kinetics characters because it means clicking transference less often. Cardiac can be nice if you are running tough/weave/maneuvers/tactics/hot feet/arctic air. I usually dont invest in slotting things like weave and maneuvers for endredux, the slot opportunity cost is pretty high there, so cardiac can make a very large difference. Musculature is very good for dominators though because their base damage is quite high. You can certainly build both though cardiac and musculature though. Run musculature with ageless or when teaming with anyone that provides a recovery buff or when you plan to use temps or base buffs, and run cardiac when you don't want to be bothered by blue bar management or want to run some other utility from destiny slot. I find ageless to be uncompetitive with other destiny choices, mostly and by a large margin incandescence, but also with barrier and rebirth for what dominators naturally lack in survival mechanisms.

I mean if burn makes clearing out trash so easy and painless by the time you get to the av encounter you should have whatever insp you could possibly want. Since the avs are typically the last encounter in tfs, i usually just unload my whole insp tray anyways and restock afterwards.

Agree here. Doesn't matter if they're ST or AoE, FF does not need anything more to protect its allies. Dispersion, Insulation, and Deflection are plenty. The set does not need an absorb mechanic to be a stellar protective set. The powers that interact with enemies and how they interact with enemies is what needs attention.

I don't see that as a "have to" but it would probably be pretty easy to implement because they already have such similar roles. t7 Force Bubble, repel/knockdown in a large radius, more forceful knockback within 9ft radius, still allows kb-kd io. However honestly with how long force field has been ignored from any changes or updates, when/if it is ever actually looked at I don't see redefining reworks as out of the question.

Force Bubble could always replace Repulsion Field in the t7 slot and make room for a new t9.

I would like the repel effect to not exist.

What force fields does well: -Outstanding defensive buffs for teams -Mez protection for self and nearby allies What makes force fields lacking: -Purely buffing the defense stat is undesirable at endgame -The powerset is extremely passive. -Powers that interact with enemies: ---have extremely niche usage or are undesirable outside of correct usage (detention field) ---have no real value at all (personal force field) ---are lacking in impact by means of an actual debuff or relevant damage (force bolt) ---have an inappropriate cast time and recharge (repulsion bomb) ---can be replaced by a pool power that everyone hates anyways (whirlwind) and has excessive endurance cost (repulsion field) ---competes with time bomb for worst t9 in the game (force bubble) There are 3 powers that people will roll a force fields character for: Insulation Shield, Deflection Shield, Dispersion Bubble. These are great powers, but along with the rest of the set do not actually help convert enemies into xp or mission objectives to completion because it is so excessively passive. Force Fields faces much competition from its fellow support sets that do more than just making everyone very difficult to kill off: Thermal- provides +res shielding, healing, damage buffs, resistance debuffs, -regen Cold Dom- provides +def shielding, an aura, resistance debuffs, -regen Time- provides team +def, healing, +rchg, +recov, resistance debuffs, crowd control Sonic- provides +res shielding, mez prot, resistance debuffs Empathy is probably the closest comparison to what Force Fields actually does, and the consensus about Empathy is about the same. It is one dimensional.

My issue with force bubble is that the radius is too large and the repel effect is both hard to have consistent control over as well as often counterproductive. To be completely honest I wouldn't want to see your suggestion to force bubble providing a damage buff, or provide an endurance buff/absorption buff that Spectre mentioned because then people might actually not skip the power without a second glance and try to use it with all the detrimental effects of the Repel effect intact.

The problem with force fields is that it is so obtusely one dimensional that keeping the status quo is not going to help it adapt to modern day CoH.

this would make an underperforming set literally unplayable lol

Takes 20 seconds to plug that into mids. With 130% global recharge, Hasten, and 100% local recharge enhanced into RotP you can drop the recharge to 75 seconds, and 60 seconds at the recharge cap. edit: granted if you are dying every 60 seconds, you are also retoggling, and Hasten buff lasts 120 seconds, so you would end up losing alot of Hasten uptime by constantly letting that drop half way through the cycle.

Here are some of the things I'd like to see for force fields: Force Bolt: -damage was a great suggestion to add to this power. I'd like to see it dealing -res and/or -def as well, all non stacking. 4-8s duration. As a power that is extremely disruptive towards an enemy being able to fight back or defend oneself, I believe any or all of these debuffs would fit in. Force Bolt: Attacking an enemy caged by detention field disabled the phase effect. (possible coding issue) Repulsion Bomb: Reduce animation time from 3.07s to 1.67s (same as neutron bomb from rad blast). Reduce recharge from 30s to 16s. Repulsion Field: Replace with Gravity-Singularity's new reverse repel vortex effect. Force Bubble: Redesign completely from the ground up. There's no saving this one.

If you turn detention field into a toggle, then the recharge does not begin until you detoggle it, meaning it cannot be made permanent on anything, or used on multiple targets with enough recharge.

Blasters absolutely do not need to build for softcapped defenses to be effective, whether teaming or solo. Damage and death is not only damage mitigation by reducing the number of attacks an enemy can get off (sometimes to zero) but higher kill speed means more inspiration drops that can last you through multiple spawn encounters. 20% positional defense or 32.5% def are very valuable numbers to hit for blasters because it is 1-2 purple insps from softcapping, where you then have solid layered mitigation with a resist shield and the absorb or HoT or regen from the blaster sustain. I've found scorpion and ice armors to be very ineffective at true tank-magery because your one dimensional survivability is more likely to fail, fail more often, and fail more quickly. You need 0% def to aim/bu/nuke. Timing your nuke cooldown to delete a spawn when your insps are not active extends what you can do with your insp load, and will likely drop you a few more. Rune of Protection is also super valuable for blasters, and will continue to be even after an (excessive) nerf to its performance. It functions as an extra ~4 insps, and can be rotated with your nuke. Nuking when your RoP is down reduces the effective downtime of RoP, because it isn't needed at the time. When both nuke and RoP are down pop 2 purples and continue going to town. I have a fire/ta blaster that i built as "pure ranged" and honestly it constantly feels lacking in output and fluidity of combat. Being able to just spam blaze/blazing bolt from your primary and fill in the gaps with hard hitting melee attacks makes the fire/ta feel pretty weak in comparison to fire/fire fire/em fire/elec etc that have full rotations of all high dpa attacks. Getting OSA was pretty great though. Being that my other blasters dont suffer a survivability issue by playing in melee, it isnt a trade off that i would ever consider again. Also "blasters exemping poorly" is probably the most hyperbolic of your statements. Blasters fly through low level content like nobody's business. And scrappers cannot use ranged attacks like a blaster can use melee attacks. Scrappers outside specific primaries cannot build effective dps chains at range only. Scrappers cannot deliver aoe output like a blaster can, not even including their nuke.

Agree with @Ukase. There is nothing about being a fire/fire blaster that says you have to pay some sort of death tax. My fire/fire blaster doesn't faceplant any more often than the p2w Return to Battle recharges, and I am not the type of person to wait for anyone else to initiate on an enemy spawn group or archvillain before me unless they are already there.

Fire/Fire is top tier, and stays consistently strong at any level. Fire/Fire blaster is great for speed running the freedom phalanx tfs solo. I recommend taking a hard look at mu mastery for lvl 35+. The energy resists in the shield is far more valuable than fire shield. Bonfire is a nice CC tool but has a very long cast time. Bonfire is really the only thing that makes fire mastery worth because with the right build and good insp pacing you shouldn't be dying. Charged armor does a better job than Fire Shield+Rise of the Phoenix at keeping you on your feet because energy resists are really that valuable. Especially relevant for apex and tin mage tfs, which due to their reward value are worth weighing into build considerations. Electrifying fences nearly has the same cast time as fire ball, does really well with at least 2 damage procs, having higher proc % than fire ball, the immobilize can increase your effective dps with cauterizing aura, hot feet, burn, reduces overall scatter, and can be combined with ring of fire to quickly stop an archvillain from fleeing.

This is one reason i feel energy aura is better as a scrapper/stalker set, as its particular defense numbers and easy softcap allow it to be built very offensively. Brutes tend to do better with resistance based armor sets. Outside of using rune of protection, i dont find plugging EA's psi hole to be worth slot investment. Shield wall and reactive defense global resistance uniques help, as do preemptive popping of orange and purple insps that are on hand. Healing and regeneration from energize help alot with psi damage mitigation. With energy aura I really recommend just playing to the set strengths rather than trying to build as a generalist tank that can handle the more exotic damage types. Mitigating alpha strikes with knockdowns is also helpful. As others mentioned, elec and dark armor are superb at handling enemy factions that other armor sets can struggle with like malta, carnies, arachnos, and rularuu.

Fiery Aura tankers get burn at level 18. For an exemping tanker on lower level TFs, your survivability should not be an issue no matter what armor set you play, but you can always do better with more damage, and Burn delivers.