StratoNexus

I recommend just using the little bubbles while testing, in order to avoid confusion. Also remember to keep Maneuvers off, because it too gains benefit from PBU, but also only during PBUs duration.

One of the nice things I can use PBU for on my bubbler is for a mini-MOG. I built myself to be capped to AoE all the time, but the other defenses are lower. When I hit PBU I am nicely over the cap on everything. I also know it will boost my whole team nicely for that duration. Now if only it recharged a bit faster.

On Dispersion Bubble, the defense drops to normal when PBU ends.

On the clicks, your description has never been true and is still not true, I just tested it in case it had changed with I18.

When I used my click bubbles they granted 23.43% defense. When I clicked PBU and then my bubbles, they granted 38.18% defense and the higher values lasted the full four minutes.

When I used Fortitude it granted 23.34% defense. When I clicked PBU and then Fort, it granted 38.09% defense and the higher value lasted the full two minutes.

Eight out of ten stalker attack sets have an attack that can hit more than one target. Five out of ten have more than one attack that can hit multiple targets. While some of those AoEs are small cones, most sets do have an AoE that is large enough to easily hit two or three targets and some sets can regularly hit more than that.

I am not sure you actually know what powers the stalker attack sets have, so it is hard to believe your claim about its single target focus. You claim Fiery would likely lose both (using the scrapper version as base) its AoEs, which is a sure sign you do not understand what is in stalker attack sets. Why would that happen? One AoE would be dropped for AS and taunt/confront would change to placate. It would keep the other AoE(s), just like all the other sets with more than one AoE have up to this point.

While I agree that losing an AoE often makes stalkers less capable in that department, in the general sense they have significantly more than zero ability to damage multiple targets at a time. And they can supplement what ability they do have with an AoE from the APPs.

I have to agree that CC is a bit better than controller RI at upping my mitigation. My reason for skipping CC is that I almost never need the extra mitigation from CC, so it is just an end drain to say I locked the spawns down, when I don't need to lock them in order to live (I do have other toggles draining my end in order to help me live though ).

It is true that you have to be mindful of where you need RI and where you don't. If I know I don't need it, I'll save it for an emergency. I'll toggle it off partway through a spawn once I have it locked down (as much as I need) in order to help make sure it is recharged if I am concerned about maybe needing it for an ambush or a close spawn that might aggro.

I am a minimalist when it comes to control. The less you need to use, the better, IME. Hot Feet is awesome, because it has control with damage. Ring of Fire, control with damage. Heck, I don't even use Fire Cages, because I rarely find I miss it. I have an admitted bias against control, because I think it is overused and often creates more problems than it solves.

All the situations where you list CC as useful, I find myself living through them just fine without it, while killing very fast. This is especially true on teams. I want to be clear, I am not challenging the fact that the power is potent once slotted. But if you would rather take your build a different way, you can skip it and still fly through tough missions, killing stuff extremely quickly. CC is not very helpful increasing kill speed, so I would need to see a mitigation (or spawn grouping) reason to take it. While it can help keep enemies inside my Hot Feet, I find that HF itself, FF, LR, my single target controls, and any teammates I may have do that plenty well.

I do play on teams that over aggro, but I can almost always use one of my other tools to prevent disaster. While I do take special glee from using Vengeance + Fallout, there are very few deaths on my teams that are caused because the mob I am standing in is not controlled. There are rare times where someone dies where I may have been able to save them if I had FF recharged, and it is possible I might have saved it if I had CC. Those times are not enough to make me want CC (after all, Vengeance + Fallout not only kills stuff, but it makes everyone else on the team into even more devastating killing machines).

No doubt it is a lost control option. Minority, majority, or plurality, the OP appears they may want to try out the non-CC route. It would appear their experience matches mine, never used it, never felt like I was lacking, kill fast, die rarely.

If you are not taking it because you think HoB does not perform well, you are making a grave error.

It seems it has gone well.

I disagree. It is an extra, unneeded control in almost every circumstance. It is a security blanket that makes you feel better. There is nothing wrong with that, but I would rather have my security blanket work in more varied situations, which is why I chose a different route (although not necessarily better, but I also contend it is not worse).

That is a great way to play a Fire/Rad and I play like that whenever I can get a tank who will move that fast (which is often enough thanks to my SG). I don't have or need CC for that. As the tank gathers, I toggle RI, once collapsed run in with HF and start Char and Ring of Fire (maybe FF if it is up and if I want containment). Tanker moves on, whatever is left for me to be the clean-up crew tank is easily handled with my single target controls and RI/EF/LR/Imps. Sure, with CC I may not need the single target controls, but they are also part of my damage output, so the endurance spent on them is doing double duty, damage and control.

CC is a fine power. But it does not in anyway define the Fire/Rad experience (although on a team of all Fire/Rads it stacks to goofiness, so if you do the super team thing, it may be more set defining). Outside of those heavy Rad teams, all the things I have ever seen you describe a Fire/Rad do is exactly how I play and it works just like you say, except I do not have or use CC.

How can I get the same experience and the same feeling for the combination you do and yet skip CC? Because CC is not a vital part of the combination.

It takes 8 seconds to become hidden. Recharge of Placate is irrelevant.

Run up to spawn. Build Up - attack stuff, Placate - CS, Build Up - attack stuff. Once spawn is done, wait for hidden, run up to spawn, CS, Build Up, attack stuff.

Even if its not Perma, Build Up would be available quite a bit.

On test they have fixed the cast time of KM Build Up to be the same as the other Build Ups.

Oh. Instant recharging of Build Up seems like something that is better handled randomly, rather than as a guarantee.

Are you suggesting that there should have been a 20% chance for CS to place the stalker into the hidden state, like Placate does? That would have been pretty cool.

Ironically, when I play my Fire/Fire blaster, I do often hear kins saying they can't get Fulcrum Shift off because the enemies die too fast (and I think, "Then we don't need FS now, do we?"). I often consciously slow down my kill speed on teams in order to let things like FS and Spine Burst happen, not because I think it will make us faster, but because I think it will make the other players have more fun (and it is also fun for me to stand in the center of a mob with Hot Feet ticking and then watching the Rain of Arrows fall around me killing all of our enemy).

After all, when you FS buff that Tanker who then Foot Stomps, you don't stand back and say, "OMG! I rawk so hard and my buffs are so uber and its ALLLLL thanks to ME cuz FooT Stomp is crap without FS and I could face these spawns solo too!!!!"

I was reminded of this the other day when I was blindly charging into things on a blaster and having some difficulty keeping my green bar up. I had been playing a Mastermind, and forgot that I needed to use inspires occasionally on my blaster. Once I started using them, I never ran out and never needed to buy them that play session. It was just a matter of needing a few here and there and combining as I went.

OTOH, while the corruptor is animating a buff or debuff, the blaster is likely animating something that will make dead things.

I know I often charge into a mob with my Kin/Elec thinking Fulcrum, Short Circuit, Ball Lightning and then end up doing FS and Lightning Bolt, because the rest of team was animating attacks while I was animating FS. Do I get credit for the damage from the previous FS and from the SB that means they all have their AoEs back so fast? Sure. But I still find it is useful to have some blasters and scrappers and brutes and doms to benefit from my buffs/debuffs (OK, OK, all buff/debuff teams are fun and have plenty of time to attack and buff/debuff as well, but even at +2, you can quickly get into overkill territory, so play whatever you want, it all works).

Really? I find it pretty compelling actually. I see all the time in the defender and tanker forums people who say you can't save the stupid. Well, FF can. I think that is a pretty strong argument myself.

Also, you are missing my point. When you have bubbles, tactics that will kill the enemy quickly, but are normally stupid because they will likely get the teamed killed, become possible. When I say excessive FF lets me play like an idiot, what I thought I was strongly implying was that it allows me to go faster, precisely because I do not have to worry about dying. I don't have to wait for the tanker. I don't have to wait for the Sleet. I don't have to wait for RI. I don't have to wait to see which way my team is going. Pure scrapperlock from every teammate is fun for me (one type of fun, I would not want to play that way all the time).

Of course, the "partial contribution" from the second bubbler is actually huge because of how strong every point of defense is the closer you get to the cap. Defense over the cap is quite useful due to the prevalence of defense debuffs as well.

I do not believe I would call the contribution decay rapid, when I have to get to three teammates dedicated to +defense in order to start rendering the FF "not useful". Sure, on a team with two colds or two FF or one cold and one FF, adding another FF is not very useful. I honestly do not find that to be a big concern in game. That being said, it may be interesting to see how VEATs affect this in the long-term.

I like that statement better than your previous ones. It takes quite a bit of mitigation from the rest of the team, but you can get to points where a FFer contributes very little. That happens to me in game very rarely and I would dare say it is a rare in game occurrence overall.

For now I consider it anything 40+ (maybe with some of the 35+ stuff).

ITF, LGTF, STF, Crimson, Harvey, RWZ, Grandville arcs, 40-50 tips, etc.

Maybe after Issue 20 I will think differently.

Not true when you play like an idiot. If you haven't aggroed the entire room and part of the next hallway, you are doing it wrong.

Generally, the more mitigation you bring, the more insane I play. I turn the difficulty up. I aggro more stuff. I try not to split much, but we may have people spread out and outside of Leadership buffs/Steamy Mist/Tactical Training/etc.

One bubbler is very nice, but I have to remember that when I go out of the DB, I am no longer capped. The 2nd bubbler does not add significantly less contribution, but instead adds significantly more, since now both bubblers are capped and the whole team is likely capped even if they wander away from the team too far.

Sure, the third was a just a security blanket. But the point was not that they were doing anything, the point was that they were desired by the players. While you can attempt to make it seem like FF brings less in the endgame and you can talk about mitigation curves and contribution amounts, the fact is that in game, people WANT bubbles. And they want them in the endgame and they bring a lot more than you credit them for in that endgame.

All that still does not change the fact that I think they could use some variety and some type of offensive contribution through a buff or debuff. I just think you overstate the case considerably. So I can agree when you say this:
Although I'd rather have one of each, and IME there are plenty of times (but definitely the minority) I'd rather have the FF, if I can only have one.

However, I have to take issue when you make statements like:

I did not miss any words. I will simplify. Everyone I have ever met in game that expressed an opinion has always wanted, desired, and loved having a FF defender join every team I have ever been a part of. No joke. All the time. Never have I ever encountered anyone, anywhere being saddened by adding a bubbler. That includes when I have been on a team that already had two bubblers and we added a third.

I am not joking. I am not exaggerating. People generally seem to like being buffed to the gills with bubbles (even though I sometimes prefer to die).

I do not believe I have EVER been on a team or in a scenario where a FF defender just using the three defense powers are contributing nothing. Even the team with three bubblers.

I guess you run on more teams where everyone has capped defense and mez protection without bubbles. That is cool. I think it is also extremely rare.

I think you misunderstood me. I, too, like the weaken/confuse/control aspect that stalkers can bring, I just think they fail to bring enough (in the general case, some combinations are actually already within a range that I think is good).

When I said Bruising, I was talking of the new tanker ability to weaken a foes resistance to damage. Stalkers could use more stuff like that. I was not talking about making them more damaging or more brutish.

If you like dominators, you will probably like blasters, they play similarly. I would encourage you not to skip your AoEs, Energy Torrent + Explosive Blast are a great combination.

It is not just target based toggles. All toggles seem to act this way. On my Kat / Fire scrapper for example:
Fire Shield, Plasma Shield, Assault, and Tactics all fail to animate if I already have the sword drawn and none of them force redraw.

Blazing Aura animates but also does not force redraw.

Caltrops, Consume, Burn, Healing Flames, and Fiery Embrace (the last two have the same animation as Build Up (if the sword is already out)) all force redraw.