Doomguide2005

So there you have it "any/any" defender, corruptor or controller. And really build to their strengths, cover each others weaknesses and you'll have a hell of a ride regardless. Part of the beauty of this game is the way any/any does in fact work.🙂

Yeah Empathy's AB is relatively easy to make perma and Fort is readily 22% defense buff plus to hit and damage. Add in Assault, Tactics and Maneuvers on both of you for 30% defenses, 60+ damage buff and a ton of to hit before sets come into it.

The other option potentially if this is to be a dedicated pairing that might be worth considering is team teleport +/- IO's for individual stealth. Or a set like Storm with Steamy Mist. They stack from different casters and should pretty much allow you to stealth into place as long as you keep their areas overlapping.

For me my team focused Empaths I built for recharge, then more recharge, and even more recharge. These days I'd probably squeeze in some defense. My personal mitigation would come from having my Auras up with as little downtime as possible, teammates and inspires. It would be "Green Machine" compliant. Heal Aura and Heal Other -> 5 or 6 slots. One would get Preventative Medicine, the other would get either Doctored Wounds (lower cost) or Panacea (high cost) Absorb Pain and Resurrect -> I generally skipped. I'd probably drop an endred on the base slot of Resurrect if I did take it, no further slots added. I'd use it mostly if I wanted a particular character up and running asap. Clear Mind -> base slot pretty much slot with any choice. I often went with range. Fortitude -> anywhere from 3 to 6 slotted with any of a number of enhancements. 3 Membranes +/- a LotG global recharge, 4 LotG, 5 Red Fortune + LotG global recharge being some common enhancements. Recovery Aura -> recharge, endmod/recharge, endmod/recharge Regeneration Aura -> 5 or 6 slotted either Doctored Wounds or Panacea Generally I'd be looking to ensure my two RA's recharged within seconds of each other. Fire one, then the other afterward. Adrenaline Boost -> 5 or 6 Doctored Wounds or Panacea. Formerly included an endmod/recharge but with crashless nukes that would be unnecessary. Hasten, Assault, Tactics included. Likely Vengeance. Solid attack chain in secondary. Sets for recharge (Decimation, Positrons Blast and purple sets). Never really understood not slotting blasts for recharge even on 'healer' builds. That's giving up a whole lot of recharge. Slotting them doesn't mean using them, they work fine as set mules 🤪. Epic -> varied some but included things like Power Boost, Soul Drain, Oppressive Gloom etc..

Yeah I don't disagree. Going to think on it more as I don't know if I'm conveying well what I mean currently. Ultimately the broader the gap between -1/×1 and +4/×8 builds and players the more resources (as in Dev/design time) involved to meet both. Something, I imagine , to be avoided when possible.

Yes making it harder isn't really the issue. That's relatively easy to do. It's not making it too hard for other end of the spectrum to handle or get frustrated trying to complete, something you want everyone to be able to complete. Things like elite mode and the difficulty slider only go so far and the wider or broader that gap gets the harder it is to design for (or you end up with ultra elite mode). For example designing missions to unlock 'things' such as an alpha slot.

The thread makes me recall being on a team with 6 Masterminds in the late 30's. Something like 36 pets plus us. All I can say is thank the cosmos I was on a Corruptor and for tab targetting. I pitied the poor brute that got invited as the 8th (while the MM's chuckled in team chat about it prior to the invite 😯).

Yes this is definitely a large component in the overall picture. There is a absolutely huge spread of character/player capabilities, especially by the time you reach the endgame. Trying to design content for such a broad range of capabilities is probably close to impossible if not impossible. You'll tend to either slaughter or bore a chunk of the player base at one end or the other. There's even a fair spread among IO/Incarnate builds at 50 owing to build expertise, player preferences and even things as simple as how finished the current high end build is for a particular player. By default if the story arc(s) are intended for everyone to be capable of completing the Devs are kind of stuck to a certain max difficulty or it becomes a sort of gate in itself.

Well some of that is probably exactly what I said is coming ... arriving. Remember your first encounters with Super Stunners? Those were brand new critters, introduced to a very old faction, who had new powers. So yes we might very well see new types of Council, Carnies, and others. Is this going to happen in one big change probably not, but it could happen as a series of changes over a series of issues over time. Afterthought: And again that's a foe change/buff not a player based response.

My own overall impression is the Live devs were headed much more down the adjust things foe side not player side as a way to counter growing player strength. They gave us foes who across the board who had their To Hit base buffed, which led to the I-cap. They gave us foes who spawned much more scattered (gold side), etc., etc.. Found it amusing to see arcs where the foes use Earth powers (defdebuff) and sonic attacks paired up (resistance debuffs). I remember watching tanks and scrappers (rather brutes and others) a long time back getting shredded redside when they first encountered a new enemy ... wailers who debuffed the living %&$#@% out of their resistance based mitigation. I'm guessing we have new foes with new 'stuff' coming our way ... not nerfs to player powers and abilities particularly across the board changes.

The difference is one bolsters solo play the other encourages teaming. And in some cases it is complicated by the power granting multiple buffs. Cold shields for example also buff resists, Clear Mind doesn't just grant potent mez protection but also buffs perception. Does this mean we can't or shouldn't consider it. No but the Devs at the time obviously didn't allow them to self buff (or aoe buff or both) and probably had good reason for it which to me anyway says go slow before changing the way those powers work.

QFT, Pretty much nails my opinion overall. There have been AT's from the get go that could posses high to capped defenses and resists with minimal effort solo. There were teams, even small teams, that could do either or both while running purely on SO's ... 3 Empaths could all but HARD cap an entire teams regeneration rate (just shy of 3000%, almost double a Regen scrapper running IH), while hitting the Incarnate defense cap individually, before it even existed, on SO's for example. Tanks could and did herd huge mobs without dying on Unyielding (the difficulty setting not the power) again on SO's. They tweaked the ability to round up such mobs by limiting aggro but notably not by tweaking defenses or resists in a large measure overall. So it seems obvious the Devs were aware that it was possible to cap a teams defenses without any IO's or sets and were fine with that in general.

It sits at +100% iirc ... possibly one of the few reasons to still have Elude in the tray (and enhanced). And of course the whole reason for the "Incarnate" cap on defense is the +14% to hit buff Incarnate content foes have (although I'm a bit foggy if that's an actual to hit buff vs their base to hit value simply being moved from 50% to 64% and can't check in game currently ... ).

Well I mistook your comment about filling the team with non-50 non-set as you didn't use them. That's my bad. And I agree missing constantly is in fact no fun especially half the time. That's why Beginner's Luck was implemented. Snowdaze suggested the Ouro-type buff is that even close to what you're looking for?

I'd add What is your To Hit buff? And then I'd do as @tidge did and point them to the Attack Mechanics page of the wiki. There is lot of not understanding Accuracy vs To Hit (as well as 'English' usage vs game terminology) involved.

I'm hearing what appears to be a bit of a disconnect between I don't want to gimp myself and not wanting to need more to hit/accuracy to deal with 'whiffing' Sounds like what you want is +0 foes with +4 (or greater) health, dps, resists etc. Or you want +4's with +6 (or greater) health, etc.. But the 'whiffing' factor is tied to 'gimping' yourself not the foes. You can build to not whiff like mad vs +4's. Doing so while not using IO's is difficult, but choosing to do so without IO's is essentially gimping yourself given the current game. Making them survive longer is, I think, your actual issue (regardless of level differences or manner of build) so you have a chance to use more of your powers on any given foe(s). And that's more a fundamental design issue than a 'simple' notoriety problem.

Color me puzzled. The foe having more health, hitting harder and even being more accurate won't have any effect on your ability to hit them. If I follow you I'd guess the answer is they're real unlikely to boost your base (scaling by relative level) to hit since that affects you and not the mobs. And PS: You want to hit bonuses more than accuracy bonuses to successfully strike foes of higher relative level (though both help). I'm thinking you might have a better shot at accomplishing your goal by creating an SG with a requirement of non-IO builds only or something along those lines and teaming just within the SG.

It's largely a legacy thing born of a time of paid monthly subscriptions, travel powers coming at 14th level, no jet packs or other p2w travel powers and mission design that including burning player in game time to help the profit line. Hence far worse in the early hero side (the only side at the time) vs later game content. Then they added CoV, then Praetoria, radio missions and the growing realization by all (Devs included I'm thinking) that the player base reached 50 ... and then started over doing it again and again and again rather than move on to the next mmo. Bye bye any profit reason to 'burn player time" to keep them paying longer. And greater reason to design to avoid annoying the player base with filler missions and travel times between missions.

And I'm somewhat the opposite of MTeague. Had one Mind Controller back on live and a lot of Empaths though all but one was a Defender. The Controller was an Earth/Emp. Usually on my Empaths I'd take Healing Aura, Heal Other, Clear Mind, Fortitude, Recovery Aura, Regen Aura, Adrenaline Boost. I generally skip Absorb Pain and Resurrect. First and foremost on my Empaths on a teaming build I'm looking for recharge, then some recharge, then even more recharge. I pretty much ignore(d) adding defense by and large. My mitigation was massive regen plus epic shields (typically resist based). I'd be more likely to try adding defense these days. HA and HO -> one would be either 5 slotted Doctored Wounds (low cost) or Panacea (high cost). The other would be 6 slotted for Preventative Medicine CM -> just the base slot and usually for range. But pretty much anything works in the slot. Fortitude -> got anywhere from 3 to 6 slots with a variety of enhancements. 3 Membranes +/- a LotG global +recharge or 4 LotG, or 5 Red Fortune + LotG global +recharge being common choices. Recovery Aura -> 3 slots (recharge, endmod/recharge, endmod/recharge) RegenAura -> 5 Doctored Wounds or 5 Panacea Adrenaline Boost -> used to be 5 Doctored Wounds and an Endmod/recharge but with crashless nukes nowadays the endurance enhancement is unneeded. That's roughly where I'd start these days. That and I'd look for a thread by Auroxis titled "Empathy/Sonic/Soul, The endgame friendly empath". A good read even if you are running a controller.

Fair enough, I might be slightly guilty of remembering 7yr old memories with a bit of a rosey hue. On the other hand an all Empathy team isn't probably quite the same as an 8-man GM team either. GM teams were highly optimized both in build and use of their buffs. And no, a GM is by no means reflective of the average solo experience of an Empath, but it is a reflection of how powerful the individual buffs are in the Empathy set considering what they could do on SO's only (or even unslotted). I don't think you can tweak the set too much without running into either making the set overpowered or reducing the power of those buffs significantly.

Have you ever been on a full (or nearly so) Green Machine team? Having been on such teams I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if a full GM team wreaked havoc on your average Incarnate lvl 50 builds while unslotted. They'd slaughter a great deal of existing lvl 50 content. Empaths trade their solo ability for some very potent single target buffs. Fortitude is not just defense and to hit, but a damage buff, Adrenaline Boost is not only a large buff to regen and recovery, but a large recharge buff packed with large resists to recharge related debuffs. About the only thing I've seen slow them down much is other teamed empaths. Do I think they are as needed for league/team post 50 content as other defender sets? Arguably not, but I see no reason based on that to alter those potent buffs since I can solo. We've got multiple builds to use. If I want to solo "scrapper-style" lvl 54 Rikti mobs or the ITF I can put that alternate build to use.

Totally agree. Unfortunately I've no clue if Mids' is even an option for me since my only access to the internet is via my phone (or I'd happily put one up). I saw a fair number of views without a reply so figured to try get something going.

What are his goals for the build?

Congratulations! Remember my stab at such things. Went well until I ran into Antimatter who chewed me up and stomped all over me. Enough defdebuff and damage that my much younger IO'd issue 13 self, a Claws/SR, couldn't handle him and his bots.

Initially I was focused more on trimming slots rather than what you might due with extra slots generated (then if I could use Mids' ☹ I'd build back adding slots for things like a Kismet or purely for set bonuses). I agree with Coyote about looking to add in some uniques such as Kismet. I generally try to fit in Kismet somewhere in any build along with the +end and +recovery uniques and actively seek the accolades that add endurance and health. As for does your build specifically need more To Hit vs more Accuracy depends a lot on what difficulty settings you generally run. Typically you get more benefit with +To Hit when fighting +3, +4 or even harder mobs. +Accuracy gets better bang with mobs with a lower relative level to you. Mostly that's due to your scaling base To Hit. Versus +4 your base is 39% to hit. Even level mobs you're sitting at 75%. So essentially barring everything else you start off at nearly half the to hit vs +4 as you do vs +0 mobs. Accuracy acts as a multiplier on the 'final' to hit. The Attack Mechanics page on Paragon Wiki is very thorough on the topic) And you could do far worse than use Hops' build as a template.