FF vs Sonic vs Cold

[FenrisWolf44]

I usually go with resistance based sets, but I want to try defensive for a change, and have settled on either FF, Sonic or Ice. I want to be able to shield/bubble my pets, which is why I have gone with these three sets over others. Does anyone with experience of these three sets know if one is much stronger than the others?

 

A few caveats, I will be exclusively solo, only doing door to door missions from 1-50, I'll only be using SO's mostly, and I will probably be pairing it with bots.

 

Thanks for any advice.

[Omega Force]

Sonic is a resistance set, FF is strong but I've heard it's boring, so you should try Cold.  T1 can be proced into a strong attack, you'll have nice defense shields, and at higher levels your debuffs will do a number on tough targets.

[pblue]

Sonic is Resistance-based, so I am not sure that is what you are looking for. For the record, levelling up my Necro/Sonic was hard, but now at Incarnate Level it is pretty good.

 

I think Force Field is still a good solo choice on the basis it allow you to Defence soft-cap any of you pets (with Power Boost from Mace) and it offers a lot of knockback and repulsion. It is particularly good for ranged pets because then you can take advantage of Repuslion Field.  You also get good deal of Defence for your Mastermind in the bargain and lovely, lovely mez protection (except Sleep, damnit!).

 

Cold has a much richer set of tools. Sleet is awesome and you get an Endurance leaching power to help. The shields are a bit weaker (the Power Boost trick doesn't work with Cold) and building Defence for your Mastermind takes a bit more effort.

 

Neither have any healing, so there is that.

 

Time is a very strong contended in the Defence secondaries and it also has heals.

 

Edited May 18, 2022 by pblue

[ExeErdna]

Sonic has a lot of low investment/skippable skills so you can focus on other things. It's better played mid range with your pets to me it's very suited for a demon build.

Force Field is kinda the same way but yeah boring, but powerful crazy good on robots.

 

Cold is overall great since it's active you may want to play around with everything BUT it really doesn't have anything that protects you. I mean you can get some high def yet you won't get the mez protection as the others.

As pblue said Time is the best one since it gives crazy good healing, the best aura that lowers acc to a bit over 20% which makes all the Def bonuses stack. Thugs/Time is very interesting if you can get Burnout going.

[kelika2]

FF is weird to me because depending on primary, its too strong, or too weak.

Bot/FF is a classic and is waaaaaay over Def at max level with an expensive endgame build

But Merc/FF is only at or around the softcap with Mace Mastery's Power Boost and pet buff IOs

 

Sonic is another oddball that can synergize well depending on primary

Demon/Sonic was nice because of stacking +resist and -resist, with pet inherents and pet buff IOs I was easily capping s/l resist at 85% and whatever their quirk resists were

Merc/Sonic was a slight upgrade to Merc/FF, but still not much synergy

 

And my Beast/Cold only worked because I PLed it to 50 for the pet buff IOs and access to hamis to really frankenslot Fog and Pets to really maximize +def to get softcapped

[pblue]

2 hours ago, kelika2 said:

FF is weird to me because depending on primary, its too strong, or too weak.

Bot/FF is a classic and is waaaaaay over Def at max level with an expensive endgame build

But Merc/FF is only at or around the softcap with Mace Mastery's Power Boost and pet buff IOs

 

Sonic is another oddball that can synergize well depending on primary

Demon/Sonic was nice because of stacking +resist and -resist, with pet inherents and pet buff IOs I was easily capping s/l resist at 85% and whatever their quirk resists were

Merc/Sonic was a slight upgrade to Merc/FF, but still not much synergy

 

 

 

I see the fact with Mace you can Defence any pet set as one of the attractions of Force Field. I agree, with some set it is overkill, but for squishy sets like Mercs and Ninjas it is transformative. 

 

Also I am not sure about Merc/Sonic. One of Sonic's best features, Sonic Disruption, works best with aggressive, melee pets. Force Field on the other hand is very good at keeping enemies at range, which is excatly what Mercs like.

 

 

[bustacap]

FF has the same trick Time has in power boost. Defense pets and the Pet uniques. Not what I would call expensive (unless you put shieldwalls in all the defesive powers =p)

[kelika2]

1 hour ago, pblue said:

 

Also I am not sure about Merc/Sonic. One of Sonic's best features, Sonic Disruption, works best with aggressive, melee pets. Force Field on the other hand is very good at keeping enemies at range, which is excatly what Mercs like.

The Spec Ops have no cone attacks and their level 6 upgrade grants a melee attack

[Meknomancer]

Cold is easily no. 1 of the 3 choices. Its not just the 2 buff shields, sleet+heatloss+benumb put it so far above sonic+ff its not even funny. Throw in frostwork which you can perma on all 6 pets (although its kind of annoying to do so) and they actually survive hits instead of just gettin 1 shotted vs tough content. I have soloed tough stuff with ff+sonic but it took forever and required temps and lore pets (for the bubbler, sonic manages without...just) cold makes av's/gm's laughably easy regardless of your primary pet choice, which makes it a better soloer and less annoying on teams if you minimise the graphx of the buffs. Bubblers often annoy team mates with the knockbacks/force bubbles repel, sonics often annoy team mates with the sound effx. Solo this isn't a problem. However if you plan on only SO's and pairing with bots.....i'd still say cold, its one of the few pairings i don't mind soloing tf's on and it actually exempts well which surprised me after years of playing /cold corrs, no need to worry about not having heat loss low level because the pets do all the work.