Part 6

City of Heroes Part 6 covers Force Field, Kinetics, and Radiation Emission power sets. Learn about Dispersion Bubble, Siphon Power, and Accelerate Metabolism.

Force Field

Force Field is an alternate to Empathy. Instead of healing damage as it's taken, you are stopping the damage in the first place. Personal Force Field is nice; if you turn it on, you basically can't die unless you are fighting enemies much higher than you. Good for escaping. Deflection Shield and its brother Insulation Shield are very nice. Cast them both on a hero and they will be hit much less by anything, which is your job. Force Bolt is bad. If you are a Controller, you shouldn't need knockback to do your job. If you are a Defender, you shouldn't need knockback to do your job. If a mob is a threat to you, turn on Personal Force Field instead of throwing a Force Bolt. Detention Field isn't as bad as I had originally thought. You can use it to hold off a boss or lieutenant whilst killing his minions, which can be very useful, especially at lower levels combined with a Controller's single target holds (a type of crowd control). They can completely take a boss or lieutenant out of the fight, and by the time the boss comes back in, your entire team can just gang up on him. Dispersion Bubble is a godsend. It provides +DEF (Defense) to all attacks, stacking with Deflection and Insulation Shield, and also resistances to "disable" powers (powers that prevent you from acting). Your best power, use it constantly. Repulsion Field and Bomb aren't good. Knockback is generally bad, especially in groups. You will knock away the mobs from the Scrappers (melee damage dealers) and Tankers (defensive characters). Force Bubble seems basically like an AoE (Area of Effect) Personal Force Field. I don't think it's worth the cost, but I've no experience with it.

Rating - 5/5. It edges out Empathy because Dispersion Bubble, Deflection Shield, and Insulation Shield combined are completely unstoppable. Empathy is still great, however. The massive defense provided also edges out Radiation, but very barely.

Kinetics

Kinetics is an interesting set. Transfusion isn't bad. Siphon Power is excellent. A very, very good ability, use this constantly. Repel isn't too great, but it can control decently until you get better controlling abilities, if you are a controller. Siphon Speed is good only for kiting (attacking from a distance while moving away), I guess. It can't really double as a travel power, because it's not nearly fast enough. I don't recommend it. Increase Density is a very, weird power. It provides resistance to status effects, and some Smashing and Energy resistance too. The movement speed penalty is probably negligible. Seems like standard resistance to "disables" to me. Speed Boost is very nice. +REC (Recovery) and +RCH (Recharge) are both very nice, and its recharge is low enough to cast on all allies easily. Definitely a worthwhile power. Inertial Reduction can double as a travel power, I guess, but wouldn't it be better to just get a travel power? Transference is basically Consume, which is nice, but it's gotten quite late. Still useful however. Not ultimate like Recovery Aura though. Fulcrum Shift is AoE Siphon Power. Used in conjunction with Siphon Power, it's excellent. Definitely worth getting.

Rating - 2/5. Definitely has great powers, but the two "I wanna be a travel power!" powers, and the need to have a target for every power really bring down the usefulness. It's still a great set. After finding out that Transfusion is one of the stronger heals, and Repel is more worthwhile than I thought, I have to keep my rating. The Buff/Debuff powersets are very hard to rank, as all of them are really useful. Don't be discouraged by Kinetics' low rating; all except for Storm Summoning are all excellent choices, and even Storm Summoning can be quite effective.

Radiation Emission

Radiation Emission is a very nice set, with the most utility. Radiant Aura is standard PBAoE (Point Blank Area of Effect) healing. Radiation Infection makes enemies easier to hit, and makes them hit you less. Quite useful. Accelerate Metabolism is one of the best powers in the game. It's Hasten, Siphon Power, Recovery Aura, Integration, and Siphon Speed all in one, albeit all weakened. Used in combination with Hasten, it can make all your powers recharge so fast you wouldn't believe it, because I'm under the impression it stacks well with Hasten. It's powerset-defining. Definitely take this. Enervating Field is quite useful. Enemies deal less damage, while taking more. Noticing a pattern in the toggles? Mutation is basically Resurrect. Again, don't let them die and you won't be needing this, and they should also have an awaken (a state of being revived). Lingering Radiation is nice, but note that it's not a toggle, it's a click, so be ready to re-cast it. It's recharge is low, so re-casting shouldn't be a big problem. Choking Cloud looks useless. Very, very high endurance cost, and it's PBAoE. Fallout is horrible. It has very little range; the enemy must be nearly on top of the corpse for it to work. Also, not to mention the fact that they shouldn't be dying in the first place. EM Pulse is kind of nice, but is very situational. I guess if your team is getting totally destroyed, you can pop this as a run away spell, but I don't think that would be worth a power slot.

Rating - 4/5. It has tons of debuffs, and one of the best powers in the game. Force Field edges out over it, but barely.

Storm Summoning

Storm Summoning is an interesting powerset. Gale is generally considered worthless. Knockback is bad.