How is Personal Force Field supposed to be used?

[Rafkin]

From the description I thought the "abilities can only affect self" just meant that I can't buff, heal, shield other players but it seems it also stops me from even attacking. So I'm confused on when I would use this?

[Blackbird71]

When everything else goes wrong and you need to get out of Dodge.

 

Or, when everything else goes wrong, and you need to stop and reapply buffs/use a bunch of inspirations to recover before getting back into the fight.

 

Basically, it's a panic button.

[TombTyrant]

As a suppository. ZING!

 

I kid.

 

You don't use it very often in the course of normal gameplay. If you need a panic button after drawing a pile of aggro you can throw it up until the mob has been killed or redirected by your team mates.  

[Twisted Toon]

I had one friend use it as an Almost TPK button.

 

Would have been a different story, had the team actually been ready and not half afk.

 

But, yeah. Mostly it's a "Help me mister wizard!" button.

 

Which reminds me, I need to make a keybind for my magic themed character with Teleport Other...

[DreadShinobi]

1) Throw a fireball or other aoe at an innocent group of critters.

 

2) Use PFF

 

3) Use line of sight and wait for them to run around the corner and clump up tightly on you.

 

4) Your initial aoe used to pull is now recharged.

 

5) drop PFF and reapply your initial aoe and any other aoe that benefits from a tightly packed cluster like a fire breath cone. 

 

Modify step 3 if a nearby second spawn has a line of sight object to pull the first group into the same area as the next spawn. This can let you clump 2 spawns together in a way that may exceed the aggro cap. This is the pseudo-wormhole technique. Add Fold Space to stack a 3rd spawn on top of the two you clumped together. Best used when you run ahead of your heavy aoe team to prep 3 spawn groups together and have them murder all 3 groups at once when they catch up.

 

Option B: just dont bother with this useless power and pop a couple purple insps instead cause PFF isnt even needed to do the above.

[Blackfeather]

Includes Personal Force Field, along with Force Field's other powers. It's a good read!

[Snarky]

The “best” use i have seen on this was a newer player.  They made a Blaster and i was helping them with some farms on my Brute.  They would go in once I had agro, use T9 Nuke, the PFF and run.  It was very effective.  They died a couple times in an hour.  
 

This actually inspired me to do some tinkering with a Range only Blaster.  I have PFF and Stealth’s Phase Shift on the character.  When in trouble there are multiple options to just check out

[Player2]

Remember, "Only affecting self" means that you can't affect your teammates (with heals or buffs) OR your enemies (with attacks or debuffs).  You can only affect yourself.

[oedipus_tex]

PFF is a strange power, a bit outdated IMO. It's probably more effective as an APP power than in the Force Field set its native to, especially on Blasters that have a strong heal or regen. It is also marginally useful on pet builds or for certain iTrials that have dash segments.

 

PFF provides you with amazing Defense to all and some Resistance. However on the archetypes that actually get PFF, the Resist cap is still 75%, so in practice PFF is like being soft capped without needing sets to do it. As most players with experience being soft capped are aware, even with 95% chance to dodge, you can still take damage, so PFF doesn't make you as invincible as you might hope. As you add set bonuses the value of PFF tends to drop off, especially if you already soft capped to thing that is attacking you, where ducking into PFF may not have any effect but cut you off from attacking them.

 

 

 

[Omega Force]

PFF has value for soft cap toons because they lack DDR, so it will help them get back to cap under debuffs.

[Blackbird71]

2 hours ago, Player2 said:

Remember, "Only affecting self" means that you can't affect your teammates (with heals or buffs) OR your enemies (with attacks or debuffs).  You can only affect yourself.

 

I'm pretty sure the OP said exactly that...

[roleki]

In response to the question in the thread title: "As a LotG mule."

[Xenosone]

Well you mostly turn it on long before you get attacked. Run to an objective, teleport team to said objective.

Trying to use it during combat will get you killed unless you were already at the -1 mission parameter because you will incur instantaneous return fire and pff takes a second or 2 to finish casting. The games pretty binary. Either you werent going down or its too late. Not 100% binary but the edge cases really arent done by the City of Ae player

[Snarky]

2 minutes ago, Xenosone said:

Well you mostly turn it on long before you get attacked. Run to an objective, teleport team to said objective.

Trying to use it during combat will get you killed unless you were already at the -1 mission parameter because you will incur instantaneous return fire and pff takes a second or 2 to finish casting. The games pretty binary. Either you werent going down or its too late. Not 100% binary but the edge cases really arent done by the City of Ae player

It all depends on strategy and tactics.  Left out of your analysis is "who has agro"  If you are solo your statement holds up.  It can hold up depending on agro cap, etc.  But I have seen this used effectively IN COMBAT to mitigate mounting agro from +4/x8 in farms.  Not 100% effective in that situation.  The person I saw had good timing and over an hour of play I would give them 90-95% success just eyeballing it.

[Rishidian]

I had a bubbler that tried to use PFF when hit points got low (happened WAY more often than I thought it should).  Found I couldn't do much, but also found I wasn't 100%protected.  Only 95% - they can still hit you in that 5%.  So don't think you are totally safe.

 

I think that should work the same both ways.  If you are 100% unable to attack, you should be 100% unattackable.  To me, this made it worthless.

[Snarky]

I agree it is not a perfectly “fair” trade off. What i think of it as is an escape button. Perfectly fair would be my accuracy debuffed 95% lol.  That is why the build i am building it on also has Stealth’s Phase Shift.  These two powers give me great flexibility.  Stealth gets me many places.  Stealth plus PFF will get me almost anywhere.  PFF gives me an escape 90% time.  My best escape is Phase shift but it might be on cooldown or I might be saving it. 
 

I do not think of PFF as all powerful. I think of it as part of a kit for getting strategic solutions or saving my butt tactically

[arcane]

41 minutes ago, Rishidian said:

I think that should work the same both ways.  If you are 100% unable to attack, you should be 100% unattackable.  To me, this made it worthless.

Are you ok with:

 

(1) the increase in recharge and

(2) the nophase timer and

(3) the being unable to be affected by ally heals/buffs and

(4) the loss of ability to slot defense sets, including LotG,

 

that would all logically have to come with this being a phase power like you’re suggesting?

 

I’m not, personally.

[Rishidian]

My apologies - Didn't know I was asking for it to be a phase power.  I'll have to reread my post and look again.

 

I don't know about 'the increase in charge time' or 'the no phase timer'.

 

Since I solo almost exclusively, I'm usually not targeted by ally heals/buffs.

 

I also don't know why it would affect LotG, but I'm not knowledgeable about how LotG works either.

------------

 

I'm not suggesting it become a phase power - just that it is a false sense of security, since I had died multiple times while it was up because some attacks get through.

 

What I was inferring was about being attacked.  If the forcefield does not allow attacking at all, then it shouldn't allow one to be attacked at the same time.

[arcane]

11 minutes ago, Rishidian said:

What I was inferring was about being attacked.  If the forcefield does not allow attacking at all, then it shouldn't allow one to be attacked at the same time.

This means you think it should be a phase power, in case you didn’t know what that meant.

[Rafkin]

Wow, thank you for all the replies. I thought it was something of a small passive defensive to help soloing but it sounds like it's a rather strong "oh crap" button. That makes more sense then. Thanks again.

[Rishidian]

Hmmm...ok.  I see them as being different powers, but that's me.  I'll acquiesce the point.

 

My point still stands - it's still a false sense of security.  And still worthless in my opinion.

 

Thank you for your patience and understanding.  Much appreciated.

[DougGraves]

You use it for getting around in the Hollows if there isn't a taxibot online

[srmalloy]

20 minutes ago, DougGraves said:

You use it for getting around in the Hollows if there isn't a taxibot online

It's also useful for getting the exploration badges in The Hive -- not only are several of the badges inconveniently close to a 'wall' of Monster DE, but the 'Wild at Heart' badge is inside a forested area at the north wall that has several mobs close to the badge, so you have to dash in and back out, hoping that either your stealth/invisibility will let you get in and out without drawing aggro, or you've got enough resistance to eat the hit you'll take. PFF will give you enough Defense that you should be able to floor their attack chance.

[Yomo Kimyata]

It's an "oh shit!" button that gets a lot of use on my iron corruptor.

 

[roleki]

5 hours ago, Rishidian said:

[...]My point still stands - it's still a false sense of security.  And still worthless in my opinion.[...]

 

'Worthless' is a pretty strong word, but only by a shade.

 

In 180-odd levels of running Fire/FF controllers, I've only ever activated PFF in earnest maybe 10 times.  That said, I've done so understanding that even with PFF active, everything still has a 5% chance of clobbering me... so I usually only activate it if escape is possible.

Edited July 29, 2021 by roleki