BurningChick

Hey, thanks for this! It was a nice trip down memory road. I always appreciated how the devs interacted with the community. And I loved how someone snuck in some FF bait for Castle. If anyone cares, I traded PMs with Castle about FF. I think he felt constrained in not wanting to completely change how powers work, so FF was stuck with some dreck. But he did change Repulsion Bomb to mob targeted, gave it a 10x damage buff, then lowered the magnitude of the KB to KD based on feedback. Not sure about others, but the outdoor RWZ missions had me knocking mobs through geometry which limited its use. KB was never a great fit for / Rad. Heh.

Bonfire went from "easily skippable" to "OMG this feels like cheating" with inventions.

Thanks for pointing that out! It didn't on live, at least while I was subbing. One of my beefs with FF when inventions went live was that FF had powers that didn't take any sets.

Once the live devs moved from the original view of FF as a ranged tanker ( pre-release, bubblers could shoot through PFF, there were 3 small bubbles on 2 minute timers) to FF as a buff set with soft controls, the devs were caught in a bind. In some groups, FF is overpowered in ways no other defender primary is. While, in others, it's underpowered. But the aggregate performance is fine. Anyway ... The big thing that rankles me is that Bonfire can use the KB to KD proc and then leverage damage procs for pretty good safety and damage. Meanwhile, Repulsion Field still has, IIRC, an end cost of 1 / mob and can't take KB or damage sets. Force Bolt could also do with something ... anything ... to make it useful against AVs that tend to be immune to Detention Field, KB, and repel.