Ever since the launch day patch the boards have had numerous complaints about PFF — or Personal Force Field — and the Force Framework. I’ve decided to give Force a try as I like a good challenge, and so I can try and find the best possible solo build for it — or at least a work-able one. My little lowbie is now level 10, barely getting into her Force powers, and starting to get an idea of what people are talking about. I’m also doing things a bit differently.

The two recommended Super stats for Force users are Endurance and Ego. Endurance is quite useful by itself — providing more maximum Energy and increases your Energy build rate — and in a Force build it’ll increase the health of your PFF. Ego, on the other hand, does not provide much past increasing your PFF’s regen rate… and I’m not even sure what the regen rate is or how much it increases it. Looking at PFF I knew one thing: this is a buffer. It’s an extra pool of health. I have Ego Form on my Telekinesis character; the damage reduction scales with Constitution — I swapped out an upgrade with nearly 30 Constitution for one without any, and the damage reduction dropped 1%. It seems stats effect some powers very poorly, and I think Ego/PFF regen might be the same. I can’t say for sure, as I don’t have any numbers to go by, but from reading people’s complaints — having to wait between fights just to regen — it seems Ego may not be worthwhile. So I went with Constitution as my first Super stat, saving Endurance for the second. I did not choose Endurance first for one reason — the Constitution gave me a bigger increase in effective health then the Endurance did. If your health scales better with Constitution then the PFF’s with Endurance, you’ll be better off getting more Constitution. It’s all in the effective HP’s with PFF.

There is one active defense that works in tandem with PFF — Field Surge. Essentially this is a heal to your shield, should you have it on, or a temporary shield, should you not. The not bit is pretty interesting to me. Should it work properly, and well, Field Surge could be a nice addition to Regeneration/Invulnerability passives. That’s something to think about if PFF just isn’t doing it for you. Still, if you’re going the Regeneration/Invulnerability route — Resurgence would probably be a better option. I’m not going either route, however, because I want to try and stick as close to Force as possible. Anywho, Field Surge works pretty well, but might be a bit buggy at the moment. It’s hard to tell since you don’t have any indication of how your PFF is really doing till you start taking bigger hits to your health.

Since my character is still a lowbie she still has very few powers. All the extra powers I’ve picked up (all two of them) have been defense oriented. There’s something to be said about needing DPS. Looking at the force list, I see a few DPS-type powers on there, but it is pretty slim. Force Bolts and Force Blast are the initial abilities — Bolts is your average weakling energy builder, with the added bonus of possibly knocking back an enemy, and Blast is a pretty average charged nuke that takes most of a Henchman’s health out and has a higher chance of knockback. Looking down the list I see three more damaging attacks — and all are AoE/Cone. Good stuffs. The next three power points I spend are going into those.

What I’ve noticed in fights is the power of the henchmen. These fodder are weak… health-wise, but don’t let that fool you — they can put some DPS out in small numbers. Taking on villains+ with henchmen still alive and kicking is typically foolish — always slaughter the little guys before taking on the big one. To do this, AoEs and Cone abilities are excellent — and that’s what a chunk of the Force damage powers seem to be. A typical Villain-Master Villain fight with added henchmen seems to work in one way: Containment Field the big guy, AoE the henchmen to death, Blast the big guy to death (with blocking and such thrown in as needed). PFF might hold out during the henchmen fight, depending on how many there are and how high your Endurance is, but it will likely fall towards the end. Field Surge will be used during the fight with the big guy, as needed. The wild card here is knockback, and how often it proc’s. Knockback is a major part of Force defense — it interrupts damage. Using your AoE abilities you should be able to knock around a group of henchmen pretty well — killing them while interrupting their damage, prolonging your PFF. This is part of the reason, along with Energy costs (they seem cheap to me), that Force does less damage than other builds — it has some extra utility.

Grouping seems the be the most fitting playstyle for the Force user. Not simply because of Protection Field (used it back in open beta and found it quite handy) but because of the knockback and health buffer. You can get in near the tank and blast mobs back — that’ll take some of the heat off the tank for a bit, enough for a shield or heal to make a difference possibly. Protection Field also gives you energy when being struck so you can use it and all your powers more often, without having to take as much time to build up energy. Then there’s Containment Field, fairly useless when you want to hold something and beat on, but good as crowd control. I use Ego Hold on my Telekinesis character and have had great success with it; while I doubt the hold will last as long, you can damage the mob through it. It might be worthwhile to use Ego Hold, and the animation is a wobbly sphere — so you could think of it as an unstable Containment Field, thus the damage seeping through without resistance. At times it’s not the exact framework the power came from, but how well you can modify its meaning and use to your character concept — don’t gimp yourself if you don’t have to.

I’ll be putting much of this to work over the long weekend, hoping to max out my main as well. I’m confident Force is a very stable and reliable build. But we’ll see. Perhaps some screenies later today.