Why is the Personal Force Field so useless ?

[josephgudgeon]

If you take the Force Field power set, the first power you get is the ( Personal Force Field ) only it's completely useless. You can't use it in battle because you can't attack anything while it's active, and you can't use it with the ( REST ) power to protect yourself when resting. So you can only use it when your not in battle, and don't need to rest. Which means you can only use it when you don't need it. So what is even the point of the personal Force Field ? As far as i can tell, it is a completely useless power that does absolutely nothing for my / your characters benefit. Please , either let the character attack even when the power is on, or at the very least let the rest power be used with the Personal force Field

[Taxes]

Based on how it's designed, I think the idea is that it's like an "oh crap" button when you start taking the heat in a battle with a team. In that case you can pop it and protect yourself while the team regains aggro or finishes off the mobs.

 

That said, I do agree it's kind of poorly thought out, and probably not even close to relevant the way the game is played today. It's also a baffling choice for a level 1 power since as you pointed out, it's kind of useless in 99% of scenarios.

[Jiro Ito]

It's super useful for zipping through missions to an objective at the end without fighting your way through everyone, or a mid-combat power to save your life and let you regen or use an inspiration.  It's also nice that it is 100% effective with zero slot investment, and you can even use it as a place to put an LOTG +rech.

 

That said, it's Tier 1, and you can skip it if you don't want it.

[CloudMouse]

It definitely is useful, even as a blaster epic with limited slotting and stats. That said, definitely believe it's worth revisiting allowing rest during PFF. Totally fine with it's high def numbers locking out attacks/ally buffs, imo. 

 

 

[Luminara]

5 hours ago, josephgudgeon said:

let the character attack even when the power is on

 

As long as all of the Defense and Resistance suppress, and that suppression includes when the character buffs teammates in addition to attacking.

 

Also, we have a Suggestions & Feedback forum.  Help & Support isn't it.

[Parabola]

 

I'm not sure you've thought this through - the prevention of using rest and personal force field at the same time isn't a restriction, it's there to prevent you killing yourself. Rest has something like a -100,000% defence penalty and a similarly huge resistance penalty - enough to make you hit the floor for both defence and resistance regardless of any other factor. It also completely immobilises you. Adding the ability to accidentally toggle rest on during PFF would be a flat out nerf (but it would make an entertaining noob trap).

[Captain Fabulous]

It's primarily a getaway power. But it's also good for traveling around zones or maps and not getting spanked.

[Wavicle]

You can use this power to absorb alpha strikes for your team. It's not tanking, but it's something.

With the other powers in the set, you can use your Bubbles, put up Dispersion and Dampening, lead off with your Force Bomb, and then hit this to avoid retaliation while your teammates attack, with all your buffs still on them. Then after controls and aggro are established you drop the force field and join in the attack.

 

But I and others have made suggestions of how to make it better, still it was left alone in the recent update. Hopefully it will get another look in the future.

Edited March 16, 2023 by Wavicle

[Hyperstrike]

Thing is, PFF doesn't really help much if your enemy can still hit you through capped Defenses.

You're an egg.
Crack the shell, and wind up with a mess.

So, at low levels, it ain't bad.
But at L50/Incarnate or other debuff heavy scenarios, it'll maybe eat the Alpha, but when you're going "Where'd all my Defense go?"

Kinda like locking yourself in a cage with a tiger prowling around the outside...

[Captain Fabulous]

5 hours ago, Hyperstrike said:

Thing is, PFF doesn't really help much if your enemy can still hit you through capped Defenses.

You're an egg.
Crack the shell, and wind up with a mess.

So, at low levels, it ain't bad.
But at L50/Incarnate or other debuff heavy scenarios, it'll maybe eat the Alpha, but when you're going "Where'd all my Defense go?"

Kinda like locking yourself in a cage with a tiger prowling around the outside...

28-40% resistance to all damage types is nothing to sneeze at.

I'm not sure what people expect from a T1 power. It's gonna be pretty basic no matter what.

[starro]

Why would you lock yourself in a cage with a tiger prowling?  The tiger just ate the team. You might be at 25% health as the controller or healer.  It’s looking pretty grim. 

 

You put up force field as you flee.  FLEE! 

[Luminara]

1 hour ago, starro said:

Why would you lock yourself in a cage with a tiger prowling?

 

Don't look at me.  I'd be chewing my way through the bars to get to the tiger.  BELLY RUBS!

[BazookaTwo]

7 hours ago, Captain Fabulous said:

28-40% resistance to all damage types is nothing to sneeze at.

I'm not sure what people expect from a T1 power. It's gonna be pretty basic no matter what.

 

I'd expect resistance cap, if you can't do anything while you're in it. 

[Captain Fabulous]

3 minutes ago, BazookaTwo said:

 

I'd expect resistance cap, if you can't do anything while you're in it. 

On top of it giving defense that's 16-258% above the soft-cap?

[Luminara]

37 minutes ago, BazookaTwo said:

 

I'd expect resistance cap, if you can't do anything while you're in it. 

 

Got you covered.

 

[Rudra]

From City of Data:

https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=controller_buff.force_field.personal_force_field&at=controller

 

Personal Force Field gives you +40% resist damage (all), +67.5% defense (all), +100% teleport resistance, and +50% elusivity. All at level 1. You are untouchable. It takes some high end enemies to break down this level 1 power. So as has already been stated, if you want to breeze through a zone unharmed? This lets you do it. If you want to not die when all the Tankers, Brutes, and other meat shields and damage dealers die? This lets you do it. If you want to stand there as the high end mobs work on debuffing you to the point they can attack you? That's on you.

 

This is why you cannot attack enemies while PFF is active. Because you are in a nice little shield that would let you rain doom on them with impunity. As a level 1 power. So no, PFF does not need to be able to let you attack through it. And if you want to rest? Get out of the fight. Run away. Resting in mid-combat when the things that want to kill you are trying to kill you is a bad idea.

 

Edit: PFF also buys you lots of time to go through your inspirations and merg them into any greens and blues you may want. As long as you have enough of different types to merge. So you can merge and then use inspirations to recover rather than heal. Or just stand there if the mobs can't debuff the shield that bad and just let your own regeneration and recovery restore you.

Edited March 17, 2023 by Rudra
Edited to remove duplicate "the".

[PoptartsNinja]

11 hours ago, starro said:

Why would you lock yourself in a cage with a tiger prowling?  The tiger just ate the team. You might be at 25% health as the controller or healer.  It’s looking pretty grim. 

 

You put up force field as you flee.  FLEE! 

You put up PFF to buy yourself a second to activate Force Bubble and make space for your team to pop wakies and--oh.

 

Wait.

[Wavicle]

Just now, PoptartsNinja said:

You put up PFF to buy yourself a second to activate Force Bubble and make space for your team to pop wakies and--oh.

 

Wait.

You can still do that with Repulsion Field. 

[PoptartsNinja]

Only if you want to instantly die because everything's still close enough to hit you with basic ranged attacks.

[Wavicle]

Just now, PoptartsNinja said:

Only if you want to instantly die because everything's still close enough to hit you with basic ranged attacks.

Add more def. You should be soft capped.

[PoptartsNinja]

I am soft-capped, and capped on smashing/lethal resistance.

 

The historic use of PFF was to buy time for you to toggle Force Bubble on in an emergency since it took it a few moments to get going and you could make sure that repel would start ticking the moment you dropped PFF. Now it's a proc mule if you've got an open power pick and don't have a spare slot for a LotG.

[Wavicle]

Just now, PoptartsNinja said:

I am soft-capped, and capped on smashing/lethal resistance.

 

The historic use of PFF was to buy time for you to toggle Force Bubble on in an emergency since it took it a few moments to get going and you could make sure that repel would start ticking the moment you dropped PFF. Now it's a proc mule if you've got an open power pick and don't have a spare slot for a LotG.

Ok, but if we’re really being honest, even THAT use was an unnecessary novelty that only applies when everything has gone wrong already. Now you are giving your team debuffs resistance and debuffing the enemies to make fights a little faster so that catastrophic situation shouldn’t be happening to begin with.

[PoptartsNinja]

I'm still allowed to miss Force Bubble. It was a unique power with a lot of utility that a PBAOE knockback aura does not provide. The new power has more general utility but I still almost never remember to actually use it unless we're fighting a hard mode AV.

 

 

I'm also personally still an advocate for turning PFF into a selfish version of Dispersion Bubble. Leave all the numbers the same as D-Bubble but give it some inherent defense debuff resistance and make the two mutually exclusive. Defend the team and/or your pets or defend yourself slightly more reliably while soloing.

 

They'd have to duplicate and change the name of the APP version so people can still use it to proc mule without doubling up on Force Mastery's actual shields.

[Wavicle]

I absolutely agree I want PFF made more useful. There have been many suggestions.

[0th Power]

I like personal force field