Finally, the enemies in the game have two 'modes', melee mode (when you can see a melee weapon in their hand) and ranged mode. Decently slotted, especially with recharges. It, along with the PFF are the two primary powers to defend YOURSELF from attack. So should I have both an Emp/Water and Grav/Emp then? As I'm sure you've noticed as you've started to play more, being an Emp can be really rough in the current meta - even when things are going well your teammates may die a frustrating number of times and the second you hit AP you practically turn into a magnet for the entire enemy team's damage lineup. If you decide to dedicate yourself to playing a bubbler you will be casting FOURTEEN bubbles EVERY three and a half minutes. Get breaking news and articles as City of Heroes continues to grow.Follow me on Twitter for constant City of Heroes News and Updates: https://twitter.com/SPJimmyYTCome and join the SP Jimmy community for bonus content!https://discord.gg/SFJPkFa- Drag and drop your costume to me in Discord and I might use it in an upcoming video! Sadly, Total Focus doesn't hit that hard for a Defender. Most of the time yes, because debt really kills your xp/hour ratio alot more than the dent in your damage-per-second. It's really that simple. Ancillary power pool | City of Heroes Wiki | Fandom If you wish to, you can of course edit this bind to point to a different letter, and you can put the files in any directory that you wish, as long as you change the directory listed in the bind files to where you put them. Will start up my Emp/Water tomorrow! It is kind of a miserable time to emp with the current meta, but here is hoping it gets better! Instead of bubbling 14 bubbles every 4 minutes, you are doing 2, which means you have a lot more time to blast. About secondaries. They are: A Defender's secondary power sets are designed for ranged attacks. Vigilance truly lets the FFer be "always vigilant". But you might lose a couple teammates to too many hits leaking through the shields. I know knockback would probably annoy them and I wouldn't want to put them in an uncomfortable situation. Psychic gets you Dominate, Mass Hypnosis and Telekinesis. * Time Manipulation used to require VIP status or purchase on the Paragon Market. It is Detained and cannot be harmed! Stack it with other AoE attack powers! You have help. - A Guide to Knockback Control by Midnight_Flux (sadly gone forver from the internet, from what I can see.. :'( ). They don't like it? Inherent Powers - Unofficial Homecoming Wiki Proc information and chance calculator spreadsheet(last updated 28JAN22), Player numbers graph(updated every 15 minutes)Graph readme. I used to have a summary and breakdown of all of the powers here, with screenshots, but that's all a moot point, now that all of that information is available on ParagonWiki. Some of those uses are just needed more often than others. Force bubble needs to be activated. Could you flip me a build at some point? But the fact is, the major defensive contribution for the team came not from my force fielder or the controller, it was from the blasters and the peacebringer. When the enemies are aggroed by other heroes, the aggro will be more spread out, and will be less dangerous to any individual hero. In general though, yeah pain is perfectly viable. And a borderline unfair/overpowered "I win" button. Zapp drains Endurance, some of which may transfer back to you. It's a weird glitch to see an enemy flying backwards while still getting up, but until NCSoft fixes it, we just have to deal with it and time our knockback appropriately. * Beam Rifle used to require purchase on the Paragon Market. There are many people much smarter than I that can work on providing information about the vast array of other powers players can take. 9 replies; 5.8k views; Herotu; May 25; They both have their places, but I've personally found RF to be more useful in more situations because of the FINESSE that the power provides. Half the team left after a successful invincible mission and I looked for a few more before the next. Pretty sure they didn't believe me though :(, Dear jeebus, thank you for bringing this back. Just like the regular power pools, you can choose a different APP or PPP . Patron Power Pools - Unofficial Homecoming Wiki With the Big Three on our side, the rest make a VERY nice supplement to keep our team alive when the heat is on. Many of the more successful hardmode teams I've seen have multiple Colds. They'll be fine. Our melee damage is quite pitiful, even TF feels it. First time playing a bubble defender or a defender ever actually. Repulsion Bomb: Main use is the battle opener. This is our role, to Protect and Serve our teammates. Force Bubble - Recommended Slotting (Single Origin Enhancements): 1 Endurance Reduction (1 Extra Endurance Reducer and up to 3 Recharge Optional). After all the other enemies are gone, the Detention Field should have lifted, and you can easily take out the helpless buffer if you choose to (they give no xp as far as I know). PattyAceeMay 25, 2019 in PvP Build Discussion. Empathy/xxx Defender - Secondary? - Homecoming Oh my goodness Dan thanks so much for sharing, and it looks like it won't break the bank either, which is a nice bonus! Note : That is base damage, not counting the blasters inherent ability to ramp damage by having more attacks. The attack will finally activate and you can have your mouse over the PFF to turn it on instantly (assuming you move with the keyboard). They attempt to balance the Archetypes' builds. Flame Mastery, Pain Domnination, and Poison were proliferated to Defenders in, Electrical Affinity was added to the game in. If you go defender I'd go /Ice right now since you can slot range bonuses in BFR and freeze ray. This means that you can use Force Bubble or Repulsion Field to grab the attention of all the enemies, then rather than having to turn these powers off, you can just turn on your PFF and the powers don't work on them anymore. Thermal Radiation and Fire Blast were proliferated to Defenders in Issue 21. I will provide you however with a tool that I consider to be very valuable, a bind! Builds. Even if its something as simple as tossing you an inspiration when you need it. Now onto some powers that require a bit more thought. I've seen some Emp builds start to take Medicine instead of Sorcery and I can certainly see why it's attractive but I'm not entirely convinced it's the better choice. Much like a storm defender in a combined space, force bubble is the warehouse/sewer map "I win" button. Why? On anything but a Forcefield Defender this is a mediocre choice. Power Pools - Unofficial Homecoming Wiki All of the toons are capable of soloing the general content of CoH up to level-cap. /A chronology of "the talks" between HC and NC/Buckets of Lore! 3 Archetype Sets 3.1 Blaster 3.2 Brute 3.3 Controller 3.4 Corruptor 3.5 Defender 3.6 Dominator 3.7 Kheldian 3.8 Mastermind 3.9 Scrapper 3.10 Sentinel 3.11 Soldiers of Arachnos 3.12 Stalker 3.13 Tanker 4 Defensive Sets 4.1 Accurate Healing 4.2 Healing 4.3 Defense 4.4 Resist Damage 5 Mez Sets 5.1 Confuse 5.2 Fear 5.3 Holds 5.4 Immobilize Is there a trick to get these links to open up in mids? In what situations would someone switch to a Defender build over a Controller, and vice-versa? Gods, that's right. No, this was specifically relating to damage. Anchors, Knockback, and XP/hour: I've had more than a few people, some of them from the SuperTeams, tell me that my thoughts on knockbacking and chaos are just wrong. Here is the timing for knockback. When the S**T HITS THE FAN however, the good FF Defender is "authorized" to cut totally loose and knock everything in every which direction and get them all on their butts and not attacking their teammates. Enough said? However, I do not think that these are the only uses for this power. The Defender is able to attack at quite a range, however, the Defender is not built for hand to hand. If you look under "Options" there's a box you can check that will close Tequila automatically once the CoH clients starts. Add to that animation time for them to get back up again, 2 MORE seconds. So he can't knockback. That's why we have PFF. If you settle into a main build, it is worth it to drop KB from a second build and go for a max range one as well. Have a finished build that isn't here? Also with Mind over Body, you can together with PFF get truly awesome Psi resist. Use it as another power in your attack chain! Also, try to make sure as many allies as possible are within the power's 50 Ft range. Mender Lazarus' Ouroboros Arc: Use it in the final mission of the "Rise of the Council" arc to keep all of the other Council soldiers OFF of the platform that the three Archvillains stand on so that your team can take down the AVs without interrruption! There is an interesting synergy with certain Pool powers, which you don't mention at all. They fly through the air for about 1 to 2 seconds. Sure, we support types did our part. Enemies on the ground, aren't attacking your team. Then create the two text files shown below: Now go into the game and type the following line to initialize the bind: /bind_load_file c:\coh\shield1.txt. Plus the Defender inherent has changed, making it much more solo friendly than it used to be. I've not updated this Bible AT ALL, but I may come back to it sometime in the future. Take a team of the force fielder and 5 blasters. It is an excellent guide and a must read for beginners on knockback. So all you have to do to buff your team really quick is to select a teammate on the list, hit G two times in a row, wait to hear both shields apply, then click on the next teammate. | Buff Poison! The lower one asked for advice. Deftly turns to encase the third boss in d. field. Other defenders may be able to heal, or debuff, or buff in other ways, but no other type of defender is designed to be as much of a team player as the Force Field Defender. Building a character for resilience in CoH is not a straight line affair. The cool thing about this trick is that since it is an "auto-field", you can be doing this at the SAME TIME that you are targetting another enemy at the other side of the battle and knocking HIM back with Force Bolt! 209 Posted October 3, 2019 (edited) Hello, I'm @Hopestar and I'll be maintaining a build list thread for each Archetype. Defender Build List - Defender - Homecoming Seems like most people with both controller and defender emps are switching between them depending on the match/night, either AT works depending on where you'll be playing mostly (zone, kickball, scrims, match size, etc.) That way in a team I can decide if I want to fill the secondary role of blaster or controller. The Defender tends to help his allies, and attack his foes, from a distance. As was mentioned in the start of the article -- and anyone who has played a tank in MMOs knows -- the difference between a 85% defense and a 95% defense is 300% the damage. By The Sentinel is a powerful ranged combatant with moderate protective powers and protection against control powers. This is probably one of the most useful 'utility' powers in the game. Knockback = 100% Defense AND Damage Resistance. Elec/* Defender is a godsend. For range>heal you have a lot more leeway for your own+your target's positioning and you're more likely to be in range to heal people when you need to be which is important since heal timing is much more important than heal amount for most matches. It makes you NEARLY invulnerable to almost all types of attacks (about 75%), and the attacks that do get through have their damage reduced by about 40%. PFF has a pretty decent recharge speed, so while it doesn't come back fast, it does come back quick enough if you want to use it to 'sit out' a bit of a battle, or if you need some time to regenerate or heal. Through brute force. But to play this kind of Force Fielder you have to think ACTIVE, and most people don't like to think active. About. Been trying to use memory to rebuild my Bubbler, and the memory isn't what it used to be. They have tools to protect the team that they choose not to use. CoH Setup Info and Community Guide - Help & Support - Homecoming Blasters, Controllers, and other Defenders). If you're looking to be a pure support, try dark or water blast. Spread aggro is almost always better than aggro concentrated on a squishy, so you can use Force Bubble to push against the enemies and draw aggro to yourself. Repulsion Field: On as much as possible. FFers are MEANT to team. You only knock back what you want to knock back, and at the same time, it gives you some small degree of protection of melee attacks. That way by the time the team gets the the enemy, the Field should have lifted. Think? So I'd say anything below level 40 is where you really want to concentrate on learning to use our "utility belt" full of powers effectively. Repulsion Bomb, followed by PFF, and running in. This Bible is already long enough without adding all THAT crap into it. Emp is generally preferred because fortitude is arguably a better buff than world of pain, and adrenaline boost is very useful to put on your teams other emp, as apposed to painbringer which buffs a blaster to the detriment of your fellow support comrade. Too great a focus on a single tool to enhance survival can lead to disappointing results - as can, ironically, too great a dissipation of that focus. Wouldn't you like to be able to take the Queen out of the game until there are no other enemy pieces left? Thanks for the points guys, as it's been years since I played. None of your powers provide you with ANY resistance to Sleep effects. No, it doesn't do this job as good as hurricane, but it does hold its own. Sentinel - Unofficial Homecoming Wiki Do not attempt this trick if any of your buddies like to use alot of AoE attacks, because then THEY will most likely draw the concentrated aggro right away. Darkness Affinity (exclusive to Controllers) and Cold Domination are fantastic for both of . Yeah, this guide is over a decade old. This is essentially what Detention Field can do for you. I'm going to give you a quick powers summary so you know what the powers DO, then I'm going to talk a bit about overall strategies and specific power tactics, with a bonus of Force Field Zen moments thrown around at random! Important note: Every major set in the game was designed with one major weakness, that was a part of NCSoft's design philosophy. A force fielder (to me) is a knockbacker with a few shields on the side (as opposed to the other way around). Well, there are a few things you should know. No matter what. Giant four branch room lab room? What these files will do is make the letter G on your keyboard an insta-shielder, so that every time you press it, it will place a shield on your selected ally. It keeps enemies away from you, and pretty FAR away from you. After bubbling your whole team AND blasting all the time with your attacks, all of these knockback/repulsion/capture effects would be useless if you didn't have the endurance to use them. So out of curiosity what's the argument for max range instead of heal? Usually the battle begins, the aggro begins to be split between the team, then force bubble is activated. If you're power is situational and you never have to use it guess what? But it's a matter of playstyle. Best Defender Builds & Powers | City of Heroes: Homecoming But when it was needed, he was glad it was there. You got that? Power gets you Power Build Up (double power on two sets of double bubbles!) If you actually add Knockback Distance modifiers to your KB powers and knock the enemies back through a clear unobstructed path, they fly farther, so they have more "air time" AND take longer to get back to you. All rights reserved. Getting aggro from force bubble? And leaves Force Bolt for more critical targets. It is provided for historical purposes. Rikti Mothership: If a bubbler stands in the center of the Rikti Mothership during a raid and turns on Force Bubble for a couple of seconds, then turns it off right away, it clears the center of the ship and the bubbler should have gained almost no aggro! The Defender tends to help his allies, and attack his foes, from a distance. Forcefields is the set to counter Malta Sappers with. They're exchangeable enough that I wouldn't worry about having both. Trying to remember where some of the other guides I loved are, "If you decide to dedicate yourself to playing a bubbler you will be casting FOURTEEN bubbles EVERY three and a half minutes". Usually it works better for people to set their team's target caller as waypoint rather than an emp. Not at all. IMO, Defender is better overall, because the Defender/Corruptor support sets are just stronger than the blast sets. And dispersed aggro on teammates is always better than concentrated aggro on one teammate (except tanks), because it can be handled easier. It makes FF the ULTIMATE damage mitigator for three reasons: 1) It knocks enemies AWAY from your allies and in GENERAL ranged damage from enemies is less than melee damage. It's all gravy. Thats serious damage mitigation. This section contains information about changes that took place in City of Heroes/Villains. Can't wait to get back to kickball in two days. Force Bubble: Aka the "I win" button. Sentinels were doing 95% base damage of blasters. Now Medicine is simple enough. And use that macro AFTER you've successfully trapped the target. Guides - Homecoming It rezzes to full HP, but no End. That change was made shortly before the sunset of the game, I haven't gone back and updated this guide to reflect those changes. Hello, I'm @Hopestar and I'll be maintaining a build list thread for each Archetype. But they're both in that same category of "ridiculously fast". https://twitter.com/trickshootah, The Strange Relationship between Damage Buffs and Damage Resistance OR "Why doesn't Power Boost work on Cold Shields!?". Through enhancement, it becomes the chain-gun. That's why we have inspirations. A focused blast of Mu electrical energy that can travel great distances with high Accuracy. My primary powers should be PRIMARY, my secondary powers should be SECONDARY. Let me go through a few of the tons of uses for this power. You can also use this power to save a teammate in trouble. The power used to be a knockback power that did crap damage and just pissed teammates off, now it's a power that you'll want to use almost every time it's up! The only note that I will make is that the Philotic Knight is actually an electrical blast secondary, and that the secondary effect of electrical blast (endurance drain) is a Godsend. In most cases, once those first few shots (from those who managed to stay on their feet) are bouncing off PFF, the rest of the team is charging in with a wave of offensive fury. Wow those are really great arguments for maximizing range on heals macskull, especially the AP portion I highlighted. War Wall Defender Badge Edit Description You foiled a plot to undermine the War Walls that protect Paragon City . Heal range is 139 or a little bit further than blasters with boost range. FWIW prevailing wisdom has changed a bit regarding Emp builds, moving the focus more toward maximizing range (Emp/Ice is popular, I've seen a few builds with 190ft range on the heals), and Grav/Emp is also gaining traction because Dimension Shift is awesome. I also have repulsion bomb 6 slotted and those are my main 4 attacks. If you continually back up and move forward again, moving the bubble and pushing against them in the process, you should be able to keep this up for a good while. Register Login. Peacebringers and Warshades do not have access to any ancillary or patron power pools. While you are out there adding your minuscule damage to the team's effort, some of your teammates may be dying by your side. I absolutely agree with you and macskull about timing. That simple change has been a game changer for me. It's been my experience from playing my FF defender that when you bubble one person, every other person in range and LoS in your team also gets the same bubble. Note that with PFF on, this power is useless, so you would use this power when you still want to be able to attack enemies rather than hide from them. Mostly he teams with defenders, blasters, kheldians, and the occasional controller when the defenders are a bit low. What about secondary choice? 50-45 is 5%. Sturdier than a Blaster, it also has the ability to distract enemies to avoid being overwhelmed. Just remember kids: Knockback = 100% Defense and 100% Damage Resistance for 4-6 seconds at a time. But that is the tradeoff that we have for having the best Defense providing powers in the game. You can solo if you wish, but your home is in a team, and you can see that this is true because a large portion of our powers cannot be used on ourselves! The best thing you can do for your fellow hero and for the bubbler community is to be the best DAMN bubbler you can be, and to do that, you must read this Bible. Not every powerset is for everyone. Here is a grav emp that covers all your bases (mag 49 KB/hp capped / decent recharge, range and heal values). Plus another damage resistance buff for most allies because "in general" ranged damage from enemies is far less than melee damage from enemies, so if they are knocked back away from you and your squishy friends, they can't hurt you as much. XD, Love your guide!! All the Archetypes have damage modifiers for ranged and melee damage; for Blasters, their modifier for Ranged damage is 1.125, while Defender's is 0.65. Clicking on the link should download an .mxd file which can be opened in Mids. Embrace it! I've not gotten any younger, you know. Also there is Conserve Power, but frankly with Stamina forcefields isn't that much of a drainer. Things like slows, knockdowns, knockback, disorient, blast-based debuffs, chaos (from rains), immobilization, intangibility, holds a continued underappreciation of these tools is rampant in the defender community. If you have all of your allies shielded up and they don't seem to need any other type of defense, then go ahead and blast away all you want, but be ready to switch into defensive mode at a moment's notice. And of course I was there with knockbacking fury, force bubble, and shields. Yup, I am saying it, as conceited and cocky as that may sound, I believe it to be true. In this section I will be copying and pasting information that I find from other players that do not directly fit into my guide for some reason or another. You now should have most of the aggro still on you, but you're almost invulnerable. Anecdotally, I've found it easier to keep targets alive with slightly weaker but longer-ranged heals (though it is pretty much impossible for a solo Emp to heal through anything but the sloppiest of spikes in anything larger than a 5v5). Now you can't be a TRUE tank with this trick, since you can't hold aggro, but you can hold SOME of the aggro while dispersing the rest of it to the rest of your team evenly. though grav/emp does seem to be the current trend. Once the battle begins, 90% of the time it's already over. In what situations would someone switch to a Defender build over a Controller, and vice-versa? HopestarOctober 3, 2019 in Defender. Ah I rarely play offense and I am horrible at locking so I didn't realize this was a thing. Below is my fully restored (with the exception of the power breakdown which is no longer necessary with the ParagonWiki having pages on it) Force Fielder's Bible. Would someone be willing to put that build together in mid's reborn and share a link to it? that, and ragdolling punks off a rooftop is hilarious Ahhh I have missed this. What this means, and I've noticed this from my playing -- is that you can bring some decent punch as a FF defender. I'm just trying to help you be the most effective Defender you can be. That leaves 6 powers (!!!) | Powerset Suggestions: Circus PerformersTelepathy| OldPowerset Suggestions:Probability Distortion| Magnetism| Hyper-Intellect, Some day, the prophecy will be fulfilled; Trick Arrows will be buffed and I will finally be allowed to die. Moments before I started writing this post, I just left a group led by my force fielder. If the battle starts to turn sour, use this power to help your allies escape with a little more safety from melee attacks. And what does PFF do? Force Bolt: The first 6-slotted power, and from 1-25, easily the most used power. This page was last edited on 23 August 2022, at 13:36. Most FFers that don't knockback and don't use detention field usually do so because they are afraid of being booted. 1 Overview 2 Power Pools 2.1 Older Pools 2.2 Specialized Pools 3 Selecting Pool Powers 4 Historical 5 See Also Overview Power Pools are supplemental power sets available to all archetypes, beyond the primary and secondary power sets selected during character creation. Other defenders/controllers are usually there. Anyone can roll out of bed and toss up a few shields every four minutes. Vigilance lets FFers be more than a buffbot, it allows them to attack freely, knowing that they will have the endurance that they need to turn the tide of the battle when things get rough. There are two different ways you can use this power: as an always on power, or as a "click-when-needed" power. I should be able to Glue Arrow a few peeps between evasions/respawns, hopefully. Why call this a Bible? / Winter Event Badges! Finally, sitting with it on next to all but the most powerful villains (some Bosses and all AVs) will stack the knockback effect and make 90% of mobs go flying where a regular knockback power might just make them grunt. Every. If any attackers are killing your ally, you can also go towards the enemy and keep them off their feet for a while. Your teammates are tough. This is your name, this is your role, and this is your destiny. Only 3 of the powers are defense providing powers. Nature Affinity was added to the game on August 21, 2012. Imagine that the battlefield is like a chess board. Use Force Bubble and you will get the attention of almost the ENTIRE MOB! When you lead the team yourself, it's not something that you have to worry about. When soloing you can use it as an alpha strike to make one less enemy that you have to fight at the same time. One of the key blaster/defender team tactics, is just keeping everyone close together, so all auras stack and the aura heals overlap and reach the maximum number of teammates. 3) It draws the enemies attention AWAY from your teammates, allowing you to tank for a short time as the enemies turn to look at the guy that knocked them on their butt. It tends to alternate with repulsion field, because there is a time for one and a time for the other. Let's give a quick rundown of what all these powers do, and maybe we can see why the majority of Force Field defenders are sadly gimping themselves by not making good use of half of their powers. Positioning is pretty important so at the end of the day you want to stay as far away from the action as possible while still being able to heal people. In general there are two big ones for Forcefield Defenders. We have 3 defense raising powers - Deflection and Insulation Fields, and Dispersion Bubble, We have 4 enemy positioning powers - Force Bolt, Repulsion Field, Repulsion Bomb, Force Bubble, We have 2 'untouchable' powers - Personal Force Field (keep away from ME! A full team every 4 minutes does take a bit of end to bubble, but that's about it. Emp is generally preferred because fortitude is arguably a better buff than world of pain, and adrenaline boost is very useful to put on your teams other emp, as apposed to painbringer which buffs a blaster to the detriment of your fellow support comrade. Defender - Unofficial Homecoming Wiki The missions for his teams are always invincible. You protect them, but they also do the same for you, and more. The set's not for everyone, but it is for me. See how well that works out? They will want a healer. Likewise, my force fielder would have a blast if he could just shield and fire attacks. Normal force fielders, probably throw up some shields, grab a book, and let the blasters get to work. IMHO no, because this is an MMO, if you wanted to play solo, you could do that on your Playstation. Look at the powers in the set. When all blasters are glass cannons and the controllers can't keep the WHOLE mob held, that's when all of our other powers do the most good. Cold/* and */Cold is fantastic buffing and debuffing. I wish I could just plug into everyone matrix-style and download instant experience of playing a storm summoner or trick arrow for 20-30 levels, sitting them in a room with 5 blasters and saying "Ok, figure out how to defend your team." It means that while the enemy cannot hurt you, they CAN see you. Simply turn the power on and run to them, knocking the enemies away from them. I would recommend against this because of how much more useful it is as a knockdown power, but if you do decide to do it and don't like it later, you can always just drag the knockback enhancement to the trash icon and get rid of it. Knockback powers sure kill your boring DPS but it adds a HUGE injection into your FUN DPS! Pick something to play that you find interesting, unique, or engaging to play. So Maneuvers can double the defensive power of a bubbled teammate who's inside the Dispersion bubble. Arcas, a vetran FFer posted the following quote a long time ago in one of my old threads. Then returns to juggling the two bosses completely out of the fight until the team is ready for them.