Why not just use a bubble?

[quill]

I understand there is much talk about the balancing act with set bonuses and extra powers you need to take from the auxiliary pool to get defense capped.

I just wanted to point out a Force Field defender will get you 45% with no repels or knockbacks.

 

Peace!

\o/

[Coyotedancer]

I'd have to build one on my second account and set it to "follow"... I've never had much fun soloing a Defender on its own. 😝

 

(Yeah. Not all of us team.)

[nihonsean]

Defense for Dispersion Bubble (on a defender) is 10%, slotted up you're at 15.6%. You'll still need weave + leadership + hover, and even then you're going to be a little short. That being said where Dispersion Bubble really shines is protecting you from stuns, sleeps and holds. 

 

In Traps, Force Field Generator gives 13.3% defense, making it a little easier to cap defense. It also provides stun/sleep/hold protection as well.

[Xenosone]

So who plays them? Few people. Sure its an easy set if you wanna support in a worthwhile fashion unlike an empathy defender and get to blasting stuff but hardly anyone plays it because the wow children think green number gud.

 

Not taking damage or suffering mez> taking less damage>>>>>>>>inspirations> a toilet plunger>>>>>aoe immob on autocast>h34l0rz

 

 

 

[quill]

 

8 minutes ago, nihonsean said:

Defense for Dispersion Bubble (on a defender) is 10%, slotted up you're at 15.6%. You'll still need weave + leadership + hover, and even then you're going to be a little short. That being said where Dispersion Bubble really shines is protecting you from stuns, sleeps and holds. 

 

In Traps, Force Field Generator gives 13.3% defense, making it a little easier to cap defense. It also provides stun/sleep/hold protection as well.

You are forgetting deflection shield and insulation field + dispersion bubble (3 slotted with a defense enhancements for each) gets 45% - at least it did 1 hour ago when I tested it.

[quill]

3 minutes ago, Xenosone said:

So who plays them? Few people. Sure its an easy set if you wanna support in a worthwhile fashion unlike an empathy defender and get to blasting stuff but hardly anyone plays it because the wow children think green number gud.

 

Not taking damage or suffering mez> taking less damage>>>>>>>>inspirations> a toilet plunger>>>>>aoe immob on autocast>h34l0rz

 

 

 

 

chicken and egg - no one plays them because no one wants them on a team. "possibly". I need to be more aggressive in getting a regular 'raid team' together. It would be great to let dps slot for dps and not worry about the extra crap.

\o/

[Apparition]

People build to reach the defense softcap on their own for two reasons.

 

1. Soloing. ‘Nuff said, really.

 

2. You simply cannot depend on having teammates with buffs.  When PUGing, the vast majority of the time I am the only support character on the team.  And in that case, I would rather bring debuffs instead of buffs because playing on a team of mostly Brutes, Tankers, and Scrappers without any debuffs can be a real slog.

 

Now, for Force Field in particular.  Cold and Time are better.  They both provide good defense.  In Cold’s case, it also comes with great debuffs.  In Time’s case, it also comes with other solid buffs, healing, and an okie debuff.  Force Field also provides mez protection (which is largely no longer needed between Defense Amplifier and Clarion Destiny), and… knockback.

[arcane]

Yeah I don’t build my characters under the assumption that they will never ever play without a bubbler but thanks.

[quill]

9 minutes ago, Apparition said:

People build to reach the defense softcap on their own for two reasons.

 

1. Soloing. ‘Nuff said, really.

 

2. You simply cannot depend on having teammates with buffs.  When PUGing, the vast majority of the time I am the only support character on the team.  And in that case, I would rather bring debuffs instead of buffs because playing on a team of mostly Brutes, Tankers, and Scrappers without any debuffs can be a real slog.

 

Now, for Force Field in particular.  Cold and Time are better.  They both provide good defense.  In Cold’s case, it also comes with great debuffs.  In Time’s case, it also comes with other solid buffs, healing, and an okie debuff.  Force Field also provides mez protection (which is largely no longer needed between Defense Amplifier and Clarion Destiny), and… knockback.

 You could be right about time and cold being better - however those are all Pbaoe/targeted area of effect and ground based buffs - if I am not mistaken - which would work greet for mdps teams. A heavy ranged team with mobility would function better with  a Force Fields, imo <-----  \o/

I appreciate the conversation.

Edited September 9, 2021 by quill

[nihonsean]

47 minutes ago, quill said:

 

You are forgetting deflection shield and insulation field + dispersion bubble (3 slotted with a defense enhancements for each) gets 45% - at least it did 1 hour ago when I tested it.

You can't apply deflection shield and insulation field on yourself. On other people sure, but not on yourself.

[quill]

3 hours ago, nihonsean said:

You can't apply deflection shield and insulation field on yourself. On other people sure, but not on yourself.

I am well aware of that. My point is this:  If you team with other players regularly and have access to a force field defender it is possible to reach a soft cap in defense without the hassle of set bonuses and other powers from the auxiliary pool to achieve the 45%.

 

 

[Triumphant]

@quill There have been recent hints from the Devs that we may be getting the more challenging high-lvl content, that so many of us have been wishing for, in the next update.  If this occurs, I have a feeling that some of the more neglected AT's and powersets may once again become useful and popular in team play and that team play, itself, may become more popular (hey- one can hope!).  Keep your fingers crossed!  🤞

[_NOPE_]

Hi! 🙂

[kiramon]

I’ve always found the “everyone is at defense cap” to be a total made up lie. There’s usually one or Two- and they still tend to get flattened by debuffs.

 

I’ll always take a FF, even tho it would be THE FIRST power set Id adjust if I were in that position 

[merrypessimist]

Because the exercise of "maximizing my personal performance within the limits I set for myself" by its very definition precludes requiring the services of a second person.  😀 

[Miss Magical]

I would play force fields if the playstyle were more active. 
 

I play cold domination, which has comparable powers, and while the +def is valuable, at low level the set contributes little to the “play” part of “gameplay”; the shields are buttons you press once every 4 minutes and forget about after. There’s nothing engaging about that.

 

While cold changes at high level with sleet and heat loss (which make the player think about the positioning of teammates and critters), force fields has unattractive offerings of repel and knockback. I would find knockback more useful if you could precisely knock an enemy to X location on demand (more like that Gravity control power) rather than something vague like “magnitude xx knockback”. I don’t like the fact that moving enemies around with the repel bubble means I can’t attack because characters cannot animate attacks while moving.

 

Conversely, set bonuses offer an engaging challenge of balancing +def bonuses while achieving other design goals such as procs, endurance consumption, accuracy targets, enhancement values and more. I’ll happily tinker with a build for an hour before deciding that the old one was just fine and closing mids with a satisfied nod.

 

I’m not going to complain if a forcefields character joins the team (provided they do not reduce the effectiveness of my powers with their knockback) but personally, I don’t find the set attractive enough compared to Cold to play.

[Outrider_01]

Because I can cap 45% soft cap smash/lethal, bypass 3/4s of the damage in game from split types like fire/smash (Fire ball) or cold/lethal (Ice blast).  Energy blast is a joke at this point, defense against smash or if it hits you got KB protection from IO.  Biggest weakness being pure energy like Lighting blast or Dark Blast is the only one I worry about more so for side effects of -end or -tohit.  Toxic and Psi are so rare even end game, you only have to worry about carnies.  I worry more about heavy front loaded lethal/smashing attacks that fail the defense check, because its going to hurt...badly.  Otherwise I hope to get hit with a splash heal or pop a green. 

 

In the process I can get perma hasten at 180% with 2 IO 50 which is +5 boosted, resulting in 2 dominators taking the Cold Mastery to get almost perma Hoarfrost for an extra 550 hitpoints with only 20 seconds downtime (Incarnate only brings it closer).  Frozen Armor is just as good as Scorpion shield, with a bit added cold resist.  Hibernate, only 1.5 min recharge or less, iPWN! button for endurance recovery between perma domination/hasten and hoarfrost on a seperate keybind; swapping 3 powers as auto clicks.  One dom has Ice Storm/Sleet for minor debuff with slow/-resist, other has more attacks and in Psi I can get pretty decent regen for 30 seconds as well as slow the attack rate of stuff; which is minor but enough recharge puts a cone or AoE on sub 5 second recharge.

 

Pretty much none of my characters feel like powerhouses, but the dominators are still good at locking down with pretty decent survivability.  Brutes feel more like tanks, probably because they are built similar to the dominators and have slow animation powers; even on electric armor with 3 different primaries they gulp down blue like its going out of style.

 

the tl;dr - almost no point for a force field, it doesn't bring much to the group you can't fix yourself.  No debuffs, so the rest of the set is useless in most cases unlike Cold/Sonic/Fire that have buffs/debuffs.

[Snarky]

17 hours ago, Apparition said:

People build to reach the defense softcap on their own for two reasons.

 

1. Soloing. ‘Nuff said, really.

 

2. You simply cannot depend on having teammates with buffs.  When PUGing, the vast majority of the time I am the only support character on the team.  And in that case, I would rather bring debuffs instead of buffs because playing on a team of mostly Brutes, Tankers, and Scrappers without any debuffs can be a real slog.

 

Now, for Force Field in particular.  Cold and Time are better.  They both provide good defense.  In Cold’s case, it also comes with great debuffs.  In Time’s case, it also comes with other solid buffs, healing, and an okie debuff.  Force Field also provides mez protection (which is largely no longer needed between Defense Amplifier and Clarion Destiny), and… knockback.

Apparition is right.  Take a look at people chatting about end game builds.  The vast majority have a softcap strategy on at least S/L damage.  My mostly ranged Blaster ended up softcap to Ranged damage, as well as Energy and Negative by coincidence. (most sets that give range Def give Energy/Neg Def)

 

yes a Bubbler is good.  But since everyone who plays hardcore already have that base covered (to a decent extent) it does take away some of the value a Bubbler would provide.  Fire insurance salesman have a difficult time after everyone throws fireproofing material on the outside of their houses everywhere...

[Carnifax]

9 hours ago, kiramon said:

I’ve always found the “everyone is at defense cap” to be a total made up lie. There’s usually one or Two- and they still tend to get flattened by debuffs.

 

I’ll always take a FF, even tho it would be THE FIRST power set Id adjust if I were in that position 

And that's the really sad thing about FF. It'll give you excellent defenses (except Psi) but it gives no protected against Def Debuffs at all. So even though your FF is giving excellent Def it's as easily stripped. Your only hope is that FF gives enough buffer to deal with that. 

 

I'd be happy to see any other "Shielder" over FF to be honest : Time, Cold, Darkness Affinity (Fade has a huge chunk of DDR). Thermal & Sonic are more useful for IOed out builds too I feel, because the +resists sit nicely behind the IOed def someone has for themselves. 

 

FF really needs DDR and some sort of Absorb minimum and realisically a proper revamp. At the moment it seems the question is "Why bring a bubbler", especially after level 30-35ish when builds mature. 

 

 

 

 

Edited September 10, 2021 by Carnifax

[Seigmoraig]

17 hours ago, quill said:

chicken and egg - no one plays them because no one wants them on a team. "possibly". I need to be more aggressive in getting a regular 'raid team' together. It would be great to let dps slot for dps and not worry about the extra crap.

\o/

That's where you're misunderstanding. "Letting DPS slot for DPS" isn't nearly as good as you think it is.

Powers have caps to how much damage you can slot in them. No matter how much you want to jam more Red enhancements into powers you get severe diminishing returns after 95% (IIRC)

Even if you decide to get a bunch of aux power pool attacks instead of Leadership and Fighting you still run into the action economy. Once my primary attacks are finished being on cooldown, there is no point in using other attacks from auxiliary power pools because they typically deal much less damage per click that my primaries. Factor in perma Hasten and these tertiary attacks are even more pointless because I won't even need to click them since my primary chain comes back up when I finish using the last power. 

Enhancement Bonuses from defense sets contribute a lot to damage. You will be getting a lot of your recharge buffs from def/resist sets. Luck of the Gambler can only be slotted in Def sets and is a major component to builds and people choose powers that they practically never use (vengeance) just to slot LotG. 

Forcefield is a great set for new players who don't have any funds for a proper build, but money is extremely easy to get once you get the ball rolling and FF gets left on the wayside. It's also a very boring set to play, opinions may vary on this but it is a very passive set with many skippable powers and powers that need to invest in Knockback to Knockdown to be playable

[ZemX]

10 hours ago, kiramon said:

I’ve always found the “everyone is at defense cap” to be a total made up lie. There’s usually one or Two- and they still tend to get flattened by debuffs.

 

If you stare too long into these forums you will end up believing not just FF bubblers, but everyone who isn't a soft-capped incarnate Blaster is irrelevant at the endgame.  

[Ukase]

19 hours ago, quill said:

I understand there is much talk about the balancing act with set bonuses and extra powers you need to take from the auxiliary pool to get defense capped.

I just wanted to point out a Force Field defender will get you 45% with no repels or knockbacks.

 

Peace!

\o/

While this may be true, I've always found that on a team - some players don't move their characters to the battle fast enough. Some have longer load times, some just seem to march to the beat of their own drum - which is fine, but the fight is usually over when some of them arrive. 

Anecdotally, the "best" use I've seen of a bubbler is in the MSR. Solo, even with the damage boost, they are woefully inadequate to suit me. And, in the early levels, they are painful to play. Unless you take the PL to 50 route, and for me - when I do that, it just creates work, as now I've got to gather and use emp merits to play a character that is not fun for me to play.

But you are right, there is a balancing act. That fine line between Damage, recharge, defense, resistance and hitpoints. The only 5 characteristics I've ever bothered to chase with set bonuses (aside from the kismet accuracy). When you reach that balance point, teaming pretty much slows you down just because of the recruiting process. I can usually get more merits per minute solo than I can teamed up, even with a good team, except when the weekly is particularly good, like Apex/Tin Mage or one of the Shard TFs. 

On some moments, when I see a low level defender state they're looking for team, I almost what to stop what I'm doing and form a team to help them out. Then, I think again, and remind myself that no good deed goes unpunished, in life, or in game. 

Edited September 10, 2021 by Ukase

[arcane]

1 hour ago, Snarky said:

Apparition is right.  Take a look at people chatting about end game builds.  The vast majority have a softcap strategy on at least S/L damage. 

We should get some data on this as I see no reason to believe it tbh. 

[Seigmoraig]

1 minute ago, arcane said:

We should get some data on this as I see no reason to believe it tbh. 

Go have a look around the various AT forums, there are basically 0 builds that don't aim for some sort of defcap and the that you will find that aren't defcap in some way are asking for help to get there builds there

[arcane]

8 minutes ago, Seigmoraig said:

Go have a look around the various AT forums, there are basically 0 builds that don't aim for some sort of defcap and the that you will find that aren't defcap in some way are asking for help to get there builds there

Forum frequenters are a tiny subsection of the game population and do not represent it well overall. This is a broadly known fact. I don’t post my builds anywhere, personally. I also don’t aim for soft cap very often.

 

Do you have any data evidence that supports this assertion or just the known-to-be-skewed forum anecdotes?