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It could be better. I'd say it's workable, but definitely a set designed before many lessons were learned about the game. I have an empathy defender, and while I still need to finish the incarnate stuff, I've got some notes from my leveling journey: It can be pretty reactive compared to its peers. Sometimes I even end up using Fortitude to keep the HP on teammates in a tight spot. Against enemies with a lot of -defense, Fortitude doesn't help too much. I appreciate that Fortitude and Adrenaline boost serve both offensive and defensive purposes. Because of it's reactive nature, when the team splits, even if it's right around the next/previous corner, somebody won't have my attention. On a strong team, particularly with other support, the pace slows down significantly and I get to use my blast powers and most of my complaints aren't as much of a problem. With Fortitude, and to a lesser extent Adrenalin Boost, there's a noticeable amount of set up time when starting a mission, before switching to "upkeep mode". Absorb Pain is overly punishing for the user, and I ended up dropping it because I already have enough healing most of the time. Regeneration/Recovery Aura aren't very easy to use with a fast-moving team, and I Do Not Like the "gather for buff" nagging, both as the caster and recipient. It's made worse by the fact that these two have very long recharges out of the box, so you don't want to miss with them. Keeping the single target buffs on the team can be pretty busy, I know some people feel like it's too much and... I guess I agree there, but how necessary it is depends on the team composition. The slotting options for Clear Mind and Resurrect are weirdly limited. Everything doesn't need to be 6-slotted, but these don't take IO sets at all. What I'd like to see: Give the set a little more interest. Boost Empathy's single target ranges a bit, like how Psychic Blast has a range bonus with its powers. Allow the single target powers to be used without line of sight to allies. Heal through walls with the power of feelings! Change the recharge time for Regeneration and Recovery Aura based on how many teammates hit. The fewer you hit, the quicker it comes back. Add something like 10-20% defense debuff resistance to Fortitude. Add a small amount of psychic resistance or defense to Clear Mind. Provide a lingering buff with Resurrect. I'd personally like to see +max HP or an absorb shield. Absorb pain needs something. Even just dropping the self -heal/-regen effect would be appreciated. Casting Fortitude (and maybe Adrenalin Boost) on an ally that doesn't already have it reduces the power's cooldown by a small amount.

"I don't like it" on its own and without any particular reasoning isn't constructive feedback, it's just feedback.

The leveling experience was my primary criticism when testing the regen changes... But once you get the majority of the powers, and start getting a couple enhancements in them, it should feel a lot more stable. At level 23, you're right around the corner from Reactive Regeneration and I think that'll be pretty noticeable in a good way. Edit: and to clarify, I'd recommend Reactive Regeneration for leveling, but for a completed build things are a little more open-ended.

I don't think the game really drives the point home very clearly, but they (or their leaders) have slavic roots. https://homecoming.wiki/w/index.php?search=slavic&title=Special%3ASearch&go=Go

I think I'll miss the original lineup a bit. It'll take some getting used to looking at the tanker version and only seeing 6 of the original power names.

Agreed that resistance is still the way to go. I made a high-defense build to test, and found that many little defense debuffs will chip away at your total, while simultaneously getting Reactive Regeneration up to speed and it smoothly takes over some of that mitigation work. But then there's also some stronger debuffs out there where this won't happen, and that's noticeably more ouchy.

I like both the attention to numbers and mechanics as well as the overall flavor, but have to wonder about how it interacts with... itself: I'm not aware of too many mechanics in the game right now that rely on stacking and consuming debuffs/tokens on enemies. This seems to be done mostly on the player side of the equation. I think the reason for that is when you have multiple Broadsworders in the mix, sever is going to end up benefiting one of those players, and the others don't get the big orange damage number. I think that could be solved in a couple ways, both of which I'm not sure are currently possible in the game: A. only remove 1 stack of laceration when sever is procced, or B. only remove stacks of laceration created by the player. Edit: I didn't mean to resurrect this thread. My apologies!

First off I'd like to say thanks for the clarification regarding Ailment Resistance, Dull Pain and Reconstruction. I fully agree with the motivation behind it. I've never really felt that Reconstruction pulls its own weight. I think a big reason is while it's roughly in line with other standard-size heals in the game, the overall set doesn't provide much in means of reducing damage, compared to the other sets with heals like this. Often I'll see incoming damage, while Reconstruction is activating, take a big bite out of the health I wanted Reconstruction to recover in the first place. Dull Pain / Second Wind get around this through brute force, but the 15% healing increase doesn't quite elevate it to that level.

Mechanically at level 50, the set performs well. Meaningfully better. The changes address a lot of issues people have complained about over the years. But I think the leveling experience hasn't been entirely factored into the changes, and may suffer as a result. Leveling is something I found to be rough even before the changes. I also share @Troo's take on Dull Pain and its shifting usage over time: However, I think that feeling this loss could be attributed to Reconstruction under-performing. That can be addressed in its own straightforward way, or Second Wind could be pulled earlier in the set.

The most common +healing effect might be in nature affinity, and it's the same negative resistance to "heal damage" as mentioned already. The stacks of Bloom effect it grants provides 4% increased healing received and stacks up to 20%. It only affects heals though, not health gained through regeneration.

Totally. Several things that were considered shortcomings of regen were completely reversed for WP. It has layered mitigation, doesn't rely on click powers, and has a scaling regeneration effect instead of just having 2 speeds: IH on, and IH off. Like Troo, mine's somewhere around 90s. I built my regen brute for resistance bonuses so I don't always need to reach for MoG, but it's really nice for alpha strikes, especially in those level 50 TFs that have you facing off against an entire group of Heroes/Archvillains.

I can kind of read between the lines with these suggestions, but what do you folks think Empathy isn't doing well today? I see a lot of talk about the set attracting people who aren't interested in the buff powers, tedious upkeep on the single target buffs, and reactive nature of healing being difficult to pull off when things get especially busy. Oh, and big big recharges on the auras. Anything else?

I've always wished for a burnout-like effect, since regen has so many long cooldowns.

If you want to play from the couch, you might want to look into a wireless mouse and keyboard like you'd use for a home theater PC setup, or one of those newer game streaming consoles. I think some players have even had success using a controller as well, you should be able to find some threads around here on that. Cross-platform support is usually one of the hardest things to do as a game developer for design, technical, monetary, and even legal/regulatory reasons, so thinking outside the (console) box is probably the solution. I'd of course love to be wrong here!

Nice! That reminded me I haven't posted Man Clay, who is also a little bit waxy.

I'm flattered that you went to the trouble of tallying the click power counts, but I was trying to say what you opened with, much more clumsily: it's a preference thing and some prefer to not be so closely involved in damage mitigation. I wouldn't call somebody lazy for not liking that either, but it IS more work. I'll try my best. I'm not thinking as much about level 50 and endgame builds. Maybe this is where our perspectives differ? It's hard to forget how rough leveling pre-40-ish was, and needing to use whatever powers I had unlocked (rune of protection too) with urgency. Sometimes followed by revive. I probably would have shelved the character without being able to reliably join teams. That changed pretty quickly as powers could be fully slotted, and even more with IOs. While not burdensome, it is noteworthy that 4 of the 9 powers are clicks that are defensive in nature. I don't think many people consider them optional, and they don't provide additional utility beyond not dying. It's a different experience with different motivations than using something like fiery embrace, shield charge, or power sink. With a "completed" level 50 brute, I also don't need to constantly click the powers, but I wouldn't attribute that to regeneration itself. Don't get me wrong: I'm a regen enjoyer and do a lot of challenge mode stuff with my brute, where I actually use more of the set than usual. But the gap between a finished level 50 and a "just got my T9" level 30-something character is huge for regen. More than any other build I've, uh, built.

With all the click powers, regen really does make you work for it. I'd say it makes you work a little too hard, out of the box.

Looking past how this is implemented (badges), I totally get the goal. Most memorable to me was an MO run of the market crash TF, where somebody died almost immediately before the final boss and we had a very effective teammate (understandably) get frustrated and quit. We still wanted to finish the TF, but that final boss was much, much harder to fight without the full team. If I wanted to go for that MO badge again, would I want to team up with that same player again? Were they a serial-quitter or was this just a bad day? It's not feasible to say with the tools we have available. (Edit: I say feasible here because you have to actively make use of the notes feature, and that only involves your own personal interaction with other players. You have to be bitten once or twice before you can form that conclusion.)

Indeed, people will go for the badge because you gotta catch 'em all. What if we flipped it? Have something like a "TF quitter survivor" badge?

I meant that question more in legal/ncsoft agreement terms, not so much the costumes coming out of such a change. Back in the day it was probably relevant for things like the ESRB rating.

My 2 cents: This would help with muted and neutral colors, which aren't very well represented in the default color palette. I've always felt a bit limited with my options for brown, for example. I think it was an intentional design choice that you can't pick flesh tones for, say, tights. What changes, if anything, if that's possible?

Your screenshot is a little hard to read, it looks like you've probably got Rest toggled on. Maybe Moment of Glory, too? It's hard to tell what bonuses you've built up with those two active but it looks like you've got some good resistances.

That's an interesting thread to pull on. I think a damage-adjacent debuff like -Max HP has potential, but maybe that's too strong for a PBAoE. But then my thoughts wandered to making fury provide more reliable damage. What if fury provided a smaller damage bonus, but let you bypass a portion of enemy resistances? You'd keep most of the status quo for the other melee ATs, and brutes would occupy a "hard target specialist" niche where they'd be uniquely equipped to beat up big beefy baddies. Like minotaurs, for example.

There's plenty of animations and effects to borrow from too, between poison, water blast, and probably a bunch of other powers I'm forgetting.

I know the villain alignment power grants brutes 100% fury... why couldn't Build Up, Follow Up, etc. also grant some amount fury?