Biospark

I would say skip fighting. Just take an Ancillary shield and you will have 40% (slotted) to S/L and depending on which epic pool you will have resistance to another type as well.
My team build has always done just fine without fighting pool. Only my solo build has Tough/Weave.

Yep, I have both Mass Hypno and Terrify recharging at about the same speed, so they work well solo. The real issue (if thats what you would call it), is that after I terrify a spawn, containment is done. Now how do I set contain again ? Mass Dom recharges too slow. So this makes me think of two seperate choices, both possible, but waaaayy too many slots too fit them both in.
MH + Terrify and CC + Fireball.

Perhaps, I am missing something important though.

Question for you Local (And anyone else willing to jump on this one),

How would you leverage CC with a Mind-Rad. I am debating the use of this power since I have an AoE Sleep to open a spawn with. I understand that this would not be as effective on a team, but solo I could see some potential for setting "contain".
My biggest concerns are two-fold. A) Terrify is a cone, which creates a problem for AoE damage dealing until I can grab an ancillary AoE like fireball. B) Mind-Rad has been a very slot-hungry build so far. I find myself looking at ways to minimize slots used on various powers that seem like they would be more useful overall than CC (Like total Dom, Mass Confusion and epic powers).

Well Said Schismatrix

The constant bashing of my two favorite defender primary sets is very silly. It just seems that some folks derive pleasure in bashing powersets that they don't like. When they could be educating new players that come to the game and form these bad playing habits.

That's what I see other Veteran players on these boards attempting to do

I don't have anything against you Turbo, so far its just been a difference of opinion on the value of FF at the end game. But please don't put words in my mouth.

"ignorant and incapable" WTF is that !

I assume no such thing about players. Each person earns their stripes individually, but I can assure you that I would not feel this way about a fellow player. Perhaps later when your blood is cooled, you should come back and re-read my statements to see where I really stand. Till then, have fun

Ooops, yeah I keep forgetting that Defenders have that set now too. My Bad.
But that still leaves the majority of defender primaries needing to be pro-active against mezzers rather than having some measure of protection from them.

I submit to you Turbo that this appears to be a more manageable situation because of your veteran playing experience. When you approach a spawn, there is no mystery which villains you need to address first and which second. A newer player does not have this benefit and such will view mezzers as OMG! I need to defeat that #$%% right now. By then it may be too late to recover. This does not lower the threat value that mezzing mobs pose to typical "Squishie" characters, just illustrates that you have learned the tactics to quickly address them and use break-frees as a "fall-back" measure.

Oooh Ohhh, I know this one ! Pick Me ! Pick Me !

Convinced of what ? Your whole argument ?

I actually agree that forcefield would reach zero benefit before Empathy.
I also agree that forcefields could use something added to it make it less one-dimensional (even though it is not really strictly one-dimensional).

What I will not agree on is that Forcefields doesnt offer much benefit at the end game, even at the extreme end-game, because that does not match my in-game experiences. Perhaps you run with a very "special" crowd of players that most of us don't get the opportunity to see.

I also refuse to place Forcefield as the worst end-game set, because at the levels of team mitgation strength that you are talking about, why not just bring 8 of these maxxed-out blasters and forget everything else (AT-wise). At those levels of performance, just skip the support and grab more DPS. Well except the days of 8-Blaster God Teams kinda died with ED and GDN, right ?

Finally, I dont need to see more comparison models like the one you displayed, unless you care to explain the chart to all of us. It doesn't show evidence to support your case, since you have not explained what each value represents. I see number of team members across the top, a list of powers along the sides, and no cell formulae or additional information to explain what your displaying.
Additionally, you are not quantifying Heals and Holds, but yet I see regen Aura on the list of powers. It would be kind of misleading to not include heals in "empathy's" mitigation breakdown since it does this thing pretty well. By the same token you are doing Forcefield a disservice by not factoring in Knockback into its mitigation as well.

But I understand how hard defender primary comparison's are. Keep working on it though. Maybe yours will be done before Umbral's or mine. Would love to see the whole thing one day.

SECONDED !

It would cool to change breath powers to another animation and change Eye Beams to another option. I specifically avoid X-ray beam powers and Breath powers because of it and these are pretty decent powers that I would take otherwise.

This same thing was true of Crippling Axe kick. I NEVER took the power because of the animation. Now I love this power.

edited: Oh ! just thought of another animation that has prevented me from playing entire powersets : Tentacles. Can we get some other option for these. Some RP concepts may work, but to me the colorization options are just not enough. I would rather have clouds of smoke than mysterious tentacles sprouting from the ground.

Other powers I would change;

Optional animation for medicine pool. Tricorder works for tech or natural, but not for other origins IMO.

Jump Kick, shortening the animation solved its inherent disadvantages as a power, but its still a funky animation that doesnt flow well with most characters. Make it like Storm Kick or Crane Kick, or better yet something like the Karate Kid crane kick (original movie).

Completely agree with Dechs and Dr.Mike on elemental swords; Options for either ALL Swords or NO-Swords.

Not related to animations, but colored options for Dark, Bright and Minimal could be extended more universally. For example, Pain Domination does not have a Bright Color option.

And finally, how about alternate running animations similar to how we can choose the flying options. I have always wanted to play a character that has a resting stance more animalistic and runs on all fours. This one could be quite a challenge to do and I was hoping for it on the mutant pack, but maybe something for a future beast-y pack.

Yes, and you also said that FF would reach zero benefit before all other sets, but what I am trying to say is that at that extreme level of team mitigation ALL supports sets are offereing nearly zero as well. In essence, they are not very far behind.

And back to FF

at the point where my empath is only offering +recovery, +tohit, +dmg and +rech,
a Forcefielder is offering +KB, detention, AoE KB, AoE dmg and Mob keepout

lets not forget that he is also providing his own mezz protection, which is not something my empath can say.

That is sig worthy Amy

What you are saying here pretty much applies to ANY support based character.
Take for example my Empath (my main support character atm), what good do any of my powers do when my teammates are at their mitigation caps.

Healing Aura, Heal Other, Absorb Pain ( no one is getting hurt, so powers unused)
Fortitude, Clear Mind (again unnecessary since no one is getting hit)
Regen Aura (regenerating people at 100% health... cool, but useless)
Rez (no one dies... move that to another power tray)
Recovery Aura (Ok here is a power that does not mitigate, but any player worth their salt has recovery under control, so this power means that they stay pegged at 100 endo instead of flucuating between 75-100, I guess they needed me afterall)
Adrenaline Boost (ditto on the regen/recovery, but here we finally find a power that probably fits your "idea" of a useful power under maximum player conditions due to the recharge. Well except for those players that are heavily recharge enhanced and this would only shave a couple seconds off their longest powers... awesome!)

So thats 1 power that definitely satisfies your needs, and I can keep this running on ONE, exactly ONE teammate.

Your point has merit Turbo, and I think most folks here are not disagreeing with the idea that FF could use some versatility, but the scenario you describe as the point where FF provides zero benefit (none of us believe that point is commonly achievable) would relegate any support toon to similar near-zero performance.

Most people will tell you that Mass Hypnosis is a good solo power, but more of an emergency button on teams. And I agree that your team-mates will often wake everything up right after you sleep them, but here are a some things I do on teams.

The recharge on Both Mass Hypnosis and Terrify is such that you can have these two powers as an every spawn combination. And I use them as a 1-2 combination all the time. It's much harder to get Total Domination's recharge (or Mass Confusion for that matter) down to this level of up-time, so I actually tend to use Total Dom as an emergency power rather than Mass Hypnosis. Or I alternate Mass Confusion and Total Domination on spawns.

However, if you can learn your team's timing, or better yet, move at the forefront of the team initiating contact, you can Hit Mass Hypnosis and immediately hit terrify. This gives you a contained AoE blast of your own on anything sleeping. After using Terrify, it doesn't really matter if your team AoE bombs stuff, because eveything is either asleep, feared or dead. You can also wait a few secs and hit these two powers in tandem after all the inital AoEs from your team have gone off.

Using Mass Hypnosis as a way to sleep a spawn that is really close to the team and avoid accidental aggro is also a very good use of Mass Hypnosis. Since I play Mind-Radiation, I tend to "lean" on my secondary alot for increasing team mitigation while my controls recharge. Since you are an Empath, I can see how important AoE control will seem to you, but don't let that steer you away from Mass Hypnosis as a team power. It is very usefull, even on AoE heavy teams.

The basic message I guess is that total lockdown is somewhat over-rated IMO. Tactics and timing are much more valuable. Figure out what team tactic seems to work the best for your specific team and your personal tastes and then join in the fun.

I am in the camp with you on fixing "Nukes" to make them more attractive for typical builds, but I have to disagree somewhat on one of your comments.

Electric is not that lackluster on AoE Damage IMO. Where is lacks: It doesn't have a "big-hitting" single target attack (other than the snipe). Voltaic Sentinel took the place of having this kind of big hitter, and although some would argue that the dps of VS more than compensates for the lack of another single target attack, I disagree. And the reason I dont value VS as highly as a big hitting attack is that VS spreads its damage around, and there are times (ALOT of times) when I need to take down a target as fast as possible.

I can understand why some would call Electric's AOE lacking though, and that is due to Short Circuit having such a dual purpose. You can slot it for damage and reduce your draining strength, or slot for drain and not have another decent AoE.

how to fix Electric.... different thread perhaps

P.S. I am under the impression that you are advocating that weaker sets get pushed up to the performance of a set like Ice. Although I would not complain, its more likely that the damage dealing strength of Ice will be "toned" down to match the other sets.

Fulmens, you and I have not seen eye-to-eye on everything in the past, but this just made me laugh out loud.

People can undervalue FF all they want, its like a classic car. Yes there are new models out there that are all "shiney", but the old "betty" still makes a team smile when that motor rumbles to life.