LeoTheCat

The idea of self-casting should definitely be on the table for discussion as part of the solution, subject to Doomguide's caveat: But I think that the set needs significantly more than (and other than) self-buffing. We should see if it would be possible to make changes in-set before modifying the self-targeting code. Arcane, it seems as though you are beginning to see where many of us are coming from in terms of powerset parity. Now take the same logic that you've applied to the self-buffing discussion and apply it to the rest of the powers. I would be thrilled if Empathy had comparable performance to Time. And before you say it: no, people love Time and it should not be nerfed into the ground.

Why? Serious question. Who set "variety" as a goal, when, and what, specifically, is the metric by which we measure success? Why is "variety" inherently good? Should certain powersets underperform in order to have a "variety" of gameplay experience? This entire line of argument doesn't make sense. Same question. I hear this asserted quite often, and I even remember this being a reputation for the powerset in live. But it's over a decade later. Most of our players have multiple alts that they've taken all the way to 50. I would surmise (but I don't have the data to prove it), that we have more players being welcomed back then arriving here for the first time. So is it your position that: a) Otherwise experienced players are bad at playing Empath (in which case, are you implying that they are bad at all of their sets, or uniquely Empathy, and why); or b) New players disproportionately play Empathy, to the extent that the powerset should not be improved in order to ensure that new players... receive a lackluster experience on their first character? c) The dozens of enfranchised players on this thread and the others linked in the first post are bad players? Either way, I don't see this as a justification for not improving the powerset, even if any of those facts were true. I love my Empath too, which is why I made this thread. We can definitely still be useful, but I want us to be more useful. Specifically, I want Empathy to be at parity with the top sets (numerically and in terms of gameplay) and have a unique mechanic that makes it feel different. I still believe in the powerset, and you're definitely not alone :D

Popularity was introduced as an argument for why changes shouldn't be made. I refuted the argument, then inverted it. You seem to agree with me that popularity is only one variable (therefore should not preclude changes to the powerset). To be clear, I didn't consider popularity at all in my original post, but if the community wishes for it to be considered as a factor, then the popularity is clearly on the side of improving the powerset. Also, Tex nailed it. In general, there are several lines of thinking in response to this thread that I simply don't understand, i.e.: Fear: "if we try to fix anything, everything else will have to be nerfed," Discourse Limitation: "we're not allowed to think about the endgame," Popularity Paradox: "people want to play something, therefore we are not allowed to fix it." I had hoped that I had cleared these up in my very first set of posts. I am not encouraging nerfs and I am not discouraging improving other powersets. I am also not likewise not on board for any ludicrous comprehensive nerfpocalypse or exponential design singularity where there is only Empathy, forever :p You're right Naraka, and I take your criticism seriously, because you are asking about the value proposition of the proposed changes. But what Menelruin is arguing is that the proactive element needs to be stronger and more useful. I agree with him. Kikyoku's comments here address the same issue that Naraka raised: how to improve the quality of the proactive elements of the set.

bruh https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_regression https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sales_comparison_approach Value is the quantified composite of the effect of individual attributes. Improving attributes = improving value. Evaluate for marginal utility and cost of improvements, and scale for population. Compare with alternatives. Here we are proposing to improve the attributes of the powerset, and the large population makes it more valuable. Life-altering individual, market and geopolitical decisions are made on a daily basis using this form of analysis. This is how consumer price indexes are derived, the foundation for how the Fed sets monetary policy, and how trends emerge in improvements to consumer goods and assets, among many, many other things. It's actually more "bizarre" to just dismiss it, especially when it was intended primarily as a counterargument to the implication that, just because a larger number of Empathy players exist, therefore Empathy must be just fine. I think the clear challenges for the powerset are enough of a warrant for improvement; this analysis just makes it even more desirable. Think of it as an overheal :p We actually don't have (or at least I don't have) the most valuable data here: hours played per powerset per level. This would be the true "market price" or "sale" for the powerset, as creating a character is free (except for the opportunity cost of time, which can be heavily mitigated by AFK farming), and there is an infinite supply (anyone can create as many Empathy defenders as they want). Another useful secondary proxy for this could be Veteran Levels. Do we have that data anywhere? What can we say about Empathy and playtime? Is Empathy more likely to be AFK farmed than other sets? I don't know for sure. But I have my suspicions. I appreciate the general spiciness of this post. The durations and target saturations of buff effects are at the heart of the matter (but not the whole solution). When those buffs are off, the Empath is performatively not there (except for their secondary blast set, or control or MM primary, all of which have nothing to do with Empathy itself). Current recharge of the RAs, as has already been stated, is 90 up / 500 down. SOs slash that roughly in half. Fortitude (with SOs) can be kept on four other players. For the other three players in a full party, the Empath is not there except in some tertiary sense (other players are killing faster because the Empath is helping them). Compare this with Time, Thermal, Cold, Pain, etc. with 100% uptime. Numerical improvements are specifically based on the numerical attributes of the other competing powersets. The Absorb is specifically to manage players who run off on their own (i.e., how the game is actually played). The Line of Sight proposal and animation speed increases make it easier for Empaths to engage in direct healing at all stages of the game. I think that I also answered you re: soloing earlier when bringing up the ability for the Empath to self-buff. This isn't intended to be power creep; it's intended to be power parity.

The effect of this graph is precisely the opposite of what you seem to be suggesting. Based on your graph, improvements to Empathy would make at least 2817 players happier. Furthermore, imagine that improving Traps (79) and improving Empathy (2817) would require the same amount of time in order to increase each individual player's happiness by the same amount. This would mean that an hour spent improving Empathy is 27.68x as valuable as an hour spent improving Traps. We contend that it's actually easier to fix Empathy, because, unlike Traps, we have a set of proposed changes in one location (this thread). As a possible caveat, the numbers from that graph are out of date, but the ratio probably hasn't changed by an order of magnitude. Last week, my wife took our Jeep to the mechanic to replace a burned out headlight. The mechanic said that he could fix it, but only under the condition that he was allowed to pull out a sledgehammer and smash up our windshield. Just kidding. That didn't happen there and that wouldn't happen here. We've identified fixable problems with clear solutions. The dread economy of hypothetical zero-sum improvements is just another thought-terminating obstacle. I'm generally skeptical of any paradigm that asks us to think in terms of fear, or that we aren't allowed to think about something. You should be too. Citation needed. Please demonstrate Empathy's numerical superiority over Pain. https://cod.uberguy.net/html/powerset.html?pset=defender_buff.empathy&at=defender https://cod.uberguy.net/html/powerset.html?pset=defender_buff.pain_domination&at=defender Soloing is less important to me too. My comments re: soloing strength were directed at the standard that America's Angel set out. The best solo improvement would be to allow self-targeting and self-buffing, which, as I said in my first post, is part of a wider discussion (as it would need to be proliferated to other powersets). Kazrack is right; although new IO's would always be cool, Empathy itself needs some specific love at the level of the powerset.

The overwhelming majority of Empathy's powers cannot target self, so we have Healing Aura, Recovery Aura and Regeneration Aura. Apart from Recovery Aura, that's not a significant boost to soloing ability. The player is essentially playing only their secondary without having to worry about using blue insps for 90 out of every 500 seconds. Empathy has variable performance on teams, based on the level of the team between 1-50 on SOs. An Empathy Defender is especially useful at 20, but less so at 30, and even less so as we progress toward 50. We're looking at a several different performance benchmarks rather than a single rating of "hugely useful." The crucial benchmark that I brought up in the first post is balance: analysis of the powerset in relative terms compared to other Defender sets in terms of numerical output, power uptime and synergy of powerset with playstyle. As we have already identified, Empathy has extreme recharge times, unique positional challenges related to primary role as designated reactive healer, a self-debuff in Absorb Pain, lower numbers and higher APM for similar effects. All powersets in all ATs are currently evaluated in relative terms. See Galaxy Brain's (and others') threads on DPS and solo simulations. We contend that relative output is already used as a standard by the Dev team, as seen most recently in the nerf to Rune of Protection and Titan Weapons. This line of argument is disingenuous. The purpose of this thread is to strengthen Empathy (and other sets), not to nerf other sets down to Empathy's level. This is a cool solution, and should certainly be on the table. But as others (including myself) have stressed, a central feature of Empathy is its buff capability, and its buffs are not competitive with other powersets at any level, SO or IO, incarnate or exemplar. We should also make its healing sufficiently unique, balance CM and improve the Rez. Several level-agnostic ideas for that have been suggested so far in this thread.

It's awesome to see more people throwing their ideas into the ring regarding Empathy revisions. It seems that the majority agrees that Empathy needs some help; we have a good dialogue happening on precisely how that should be achieved (this proposal, fortitude combo, rez improvements, CM, positional auras, toggles, etc.). Although some of these ideas are more popular than others, many of these ideas are mutually exclusive with one another, and perhaps combining all of them at once might be a little overpowered, it's still good to have all of them on the board as a resource for evaluating community perception and as a toolkit for redesign. Keep it coming :D There are several comments in this thread as well as half a dozen threads linked in the initial posts about how Empathy is not performing well at the midgame or the very endgame. The set is not "fine." In the alternative, even if Empathy were to be perfectly acceptable up to level 49, your standard of "1-50" includes 50, where there is a significant amount of group content and the set fails to perform adequately. The general sense is that Empathy struggles even with IOs; without them, Empathy's performance is unusually poor compared to other Defender primaries. As Arcane notes, Empathy's problems are magnified at 50+ with IOs and incarnates, but those problems still exist even at lower levels. To the extent that the play experience from approximately 30 forward, fully inclusive, is not covered by your balance heuristic, then that heuristic itself should be rejected. If we too narrowly define the problems and measurement standards, then it's impossible to analyze, improve and control for them. This is why I suggested a set of performance and playstyle standards in the original post. I understand if you think that performance in that context is a useful standard (which it is), but should we be limited to that standard alone? Should we otherwise reject evidence and experience from the community out of hand? Per my initial post, discussion of improvements to Empathy does not have a preclusive effect on improving other powersets. This is a good "bigger discussion" to have, and, from the looks of the Suggestions and Feedback forum, people are already enthusiastically engaging in it.

Not to threadjack or anything, but we have a good discussion going on at the Suggestions + Feedback board about revising Empathy. We'd love to hear from you guys if you have any ideas for making the powerset better or want to comment on some of the changes proposed by myself and others.

Kazrack, thanks for the awesome write-up and for your suggestions. I really like the idea of a stacking mechanic based on Fortitude. Very cool. If that happens, would it then make sense to move the power way earlier in order? The suggestion of a time limitation on ignoring Line of Sight is also a useful and interesting proposal to prevent that benefit from getting out of hand (if such a limitation is decided to be necessary). Counterproposal, based on your Fortified idea: What if the Empath ignores Line of Sight for Heal Other only when the target is Fortified? This would have the potential to reward careful play and attention to detail from the Empath. Doomguide, I also hear where you're coming from on 8 End possibly being too strong for Healing Aura. It would be worthwhile to playtest different values (4, 6, 8, etc.) in order to properly calibrate the ability. All of these proposed numerical changes, from endurance, to recharge, to ranges, and all the way down, should get some scrutiny on beta. But I agree with your premise: careful clickery should be encouraged; spamming, not so much. That said, it's cool to see that we're arriving at a consensus as a community that Empathy needs a buff and that there are several good ideas from everyone here in this thread for how to do it. Thanks for keeping this thread alive guys and putting in tons of effort for making Empathy a better powerset.

Thanks for the clarification everyone. Much appreciated.

Slotting the IO (Range/Fast Snipe) from Expert Marksman turns off the additional damage and range from Sniper Rifle while out of combat. My understanding was that this would increase the animation speed and attack speed, not remove the additional benefits of the power. In its present state, I'm not sure what the benefit of slotting this IO would be. Is this intentional? Thank you for reading.

Hey Doomguide, good catch on live Absorb Pain. I probably should have rchecked the numbers before making an offhanded comparison. The point still remains, however: HO and AP are designed to be emergency reactive heals. At the current animation speed and recharge, they don't do their job quite as well as they should (and AP should be converted into a low recharge single target absorb buff that can be maintained on all party members). Even with high recharge (as a properly built Empath should have), there is still a lag time between casts. Also if we lower the animation speed per the proposal, we should correspondingly lower the recharge so that the ability can be sequentially cast without interruption.

Right, but it has no endurance cost and no recharge with a self-healing debuff. This proposal is to adopt the no/low recharge of AP on HO and chop the animation time in half. I'm not saying that it's a one for one numerical comparison; I'm comparing intended design and functionality.

Some more great suggestions here from everyone. Special thanks to Razor Cure for explaining the current state of Clear Mind, although, subjectively, I often see teammates with my Clear Mind precast on them getting Immobilize and Hold (at least). It would be cool to get some clarification on the discrepancy between the mids, live and city of data. Galaxy Brain really hit the nail on the head: what Empathy does to a limited set of single targets or for a limited period of time, right now other sets can do party-wide and perma. I hope that this thread is part of the process to help move Empathy up to parity generally and give Empathy some unique and original strengths. Resurrect My original post only suggested a range increase and recharge decrease, but really... why not also simultaneously implement Menelruin's suggestion for 10 seconds of Untouchable and Oklahoman's idea for Targeted AOE? If we implement all three, it would maybe make sense to not also lower the recharge, but the range increase would still need to happen. Currently Resurrect has a range of 15 ft., which is one body away from standard melee range (7 ft.). The Line of Sight removal idea for Heal Other and Absorb Pain and team-wide Auras is specifically to answer this problem. It also gives Empathy a unique advantage in gameplay that wouldn't imbalance the game numerically. I can't tell you guys how many times I've been in a cave mission, warehouse, or MSR where there is a tiny ridge or terrain feature that separates me from an injured teammate. By the time I run over, they're already dead, or I have to then run back to heal everyone else. People have commented that positioning is part of the challenge of playing an Empath, but, once again, other support sets do not suffer this disadvantage to the same degree. Remember that we don't "encourage" or control the play habits of other players; they are responsible for themselves. The set needs to take our limited degree of control over others and the current state of the game into account. Plus the changes would be cool, flavorful and fun :D Right now there is a noticeable delay between castings of Heal Other if you need to provide a strong single target heal to two or more teammates in sequence. If you cast Heal Other and another party member needs a heal, you either wait for the recharge or hope they're within Healing Aura radius, because using a secondary blast would spend more arcanatime than just sitting there waiting for a recharge. It's frustrating and clunky. Two seconds is an eternity in a large scale fight, and especially when it matters. A faster cast speed and non-existent recharge would allow Empathy to properly react to incoming damage. Right now this is what Absorb Pain is designed for on live (high output, no recharge, no endurance cost), but the self-debuff is devastating and outdated. New Heal Other as proposed above is basically a better Absorb Pain. Thanks to everyone participating in the conversation, whether for or against. I appreciate you guys keeping the discussion alive.

Thanks everyone for reading and for your comments so far! Clear Mind As far as I understand things (which admittedly may not be perfect), Clear Mind actually has different values for Sleep Resistance vs. other Mezzes. It applies a mag 12.9 general mez protection and then adds a specific resist to Sleep (+216%) carried forward. The +129% Resist carried forward against Confused, Terrorized, Held, Immobilized, and Stunned carried forward is currently PVP Only. If Empathy gets an update, it would be awesome if all of these resistances were added to PVE and pulled to the level of Sleep. It's entirely possible that City of Data is wrong, but here where I sourced my data: https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=defender_buff.empathy.clear_mind&at=defender The general powerset description here is nonspecific about the numbers and PVE/PVP distinction. https://hcwiki.cityofheroes.dev/wiki/Empathy This would be awesome. Killer suggestion ^ If this proposal ends up going anywhere, your idea should be in the final draft :D I would argue that Empathy does, in fact, "need it." There is a general sense in the community that Empathy is "dead" or in serious trouble. While I understand and respect the old-school challenge mentality (and practice it myself in real life), it is a fact that, in the present state of the endgame, Empathy is not at parity with other powersets with comparable functions. Several other sets have all of the convenience, party-wide buffs and numerical superiority that I am suggesting here. Why should Empathy have a lower capability coupled with a disproportionate set of disadvantages and complications? Your comments have helped to clarify something for me. Empathy is currently the victim of another paradox. On one hand, it is the powerset designed to rescue the team when it is most in trouble with a suite of reactive heals and mezzes. On the other hand, the toolkit requires a certain standard of play from one's teammates in order to be viable: tight stacking at precise intervals, positional and situational awareness, etc. The problem is that parties most likely to observe that standard are the parties least likely to need reactive support (unless they are really pushing difficulty). This is another reason in favor of party-wide auras and removing line of sight from Empathy heals; it makes the powerset more resilient against (and less reliant upon) poor decisions of other players, while simultaneously giving the Empath better tools to manage emergencies. On Bad Emps I hear you guys. Unfortunately Emp has something of a reputation for not attracting the best players or for people choosing not to use their secondaries. My hope is that improvements to the powerset will raise all boats, advancing the performance of new/learning players who don't invest adequately in their secondary, as well as the endgame players who often have no choice but to leave their Emp on the shelf. Although the idea of some mechanical interaction with secondaries would be interesting, it seems that it would be so strong of a revision of the powerset that it would change the feeling or the playstyle and an insurmountable programming challenge. Likewise, the buff for consecutive Emp powers seems as though it would encourage focusing on Empathy to the exclusion of the secondary. But I'm very interested in hearing more and we should certainly take the opportunity to talk about it. Emp/Dark Chads rise up :D /Sonic and /Beam are also useful partners for Empathy. You're right about Psi, but frankly Psi needs a revision of its own.