The Defender Sphere is a new power-up introduced in Ground Zero. It is found in both single-player and multiplayer. Once activated, the Defender Sphere protects its bearer by reducing the damage taken by 50% while its effects last, and it is capable of firing blaster bolts at any enemy who attacks the bearer. Its effects last for 30 seconds.

The damage taken after the 50% reduction is rounded down if the original attack was an odd number, so for example a Light Guard's blaster that normally deals 5 damage would deal 2 damage to a player with an active Defender Sphere. However, attacks that deal 1 damage, such as the blasters of a Flyer, Technician, Icarus or Daedalus, are not hindered by the Defender Sphere at all and deal 1 damage as before. The damage reduction also takes effect against other sources of damage such as slime, lava and falling from heights. It even reduces the damage suffered from drowning in water.

The Defender Sphere's blaster deals 10 damage per hit, and fires roughly 2-3 shots per second. However, it will only fire once an enemy has hit you, and it will automatically target the last enemy that hit you, potentially switching its target each time a different enemy hits you.

Like most other usable power-ups such as Quad Damage, Invulnerability etc, the number of Defender Spheres a player can carry in their inventory depends on the difficulty level - three on Easy, two on Medium, one on Hard/Nightmare. However, unlike most other usable power-ups, an active Defender Sphere still counts as being in the player's inventory until it has expired. In other words, supposing Hard/Nightmare difficulty, whereas a player can pick up a new Quad Damage after activating their existing one, they can't pick up a new Defender Sphere until 30 seconds after activating their existing one.

Defender Spheres are rare, only appearing four times in the Ground Zero campaign, and not being present in any other single-player campaign.

Strategies

• The item is useful any time you have a tough fight ahead of you - such as when you're about to fight a boss or a Medic Commander. It can be viewed as a less effective version of the Invulnerability power-up, reducing the damage taken for 30 seconds but not completely cancelling it. It is therefore worth saving one for the fight against the Black Widow Guardian, and another can be used against the Carrier. Its most useful property is the fact you'll take reduced damage while it's active - any damage its blaster might inflict is a bonus. However, on the lower difficulty settings its blaster might cause enemies to flinch in pain, thereby interrupting their attacks for a moment.
• The Defender Sphere has one significant advantage over the Invulnerability: it can't be mirrored by the Black Widow Guardian. This enemy has the unique ability to use certain power-ups in response to power-ups used by the player. On Hard difficulty, if the player activates Invulnerability, the Widow will activate her own Invulnerability; on Nightmare she'll activate an Invulnerability and a new Power Shield with 750 cells, even if her original Power Shield has already been depleted. In other words, using the Invulnerability on Nightmare against the Black Widow Guardian is actually a downright bad idea. However, she doesn't have a response to the Defender Sphere, and so this is a far superior defensive boost to bring to the fight against the final boss, with no downside to it.

Appearances

Ground Zero: Tectonic Stabilizer, Waterfront Storage, Waste Processing, Ammo Depot

References