Abysmalyxia

Perhaps I can simplify. Healing Aura becomes a healing toggle with an area roughly the same size as Force Field's Bubble. When you take the powers Clear Mind, Regeneration Aura, and Recovery Aura their functionality is added to Healing Aura. In essence your Healing Aura clears the mind, adds a regeneration buff, and a recovery buff when you have it active for everyone in the area. You're Voltroning Healing Aura. Absorb Pain confuses its target when you target a foe. Clear Mind is the same as it ever was, but is improved with Fortitude. Fortitude changes significantly. When you take Fortitude you now have a toggle that benefits the Empath. However, when you cast Clear Mind on a teammate they gain the benefit of Fortitude for the duration their minds are clear. This ensures the Empath doesn't lose one of its best buffs, but benefits from it as well and also reduces "buff spam" required of the Empath. Recovery and Regen Auras become auto powers with lesser effect. This is to ensure those Empathy Defenders who didn't take Regen/Recovery for whatever reason still have the opportunity to benefit from the abilities. So why am I tripping over myself to maintain the functionality that currently exists? Because the goal, as much as possible, is to maintain the "Cottage" element that I know people will bring up. VVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV And if we're being honest my idea does violate this in a few ways. First, tying the auras together is done for one explicit purpose: Action Economy. People who play D&D (and lots of tabletop rpgs in general are often familiar with the term. The Empath, at any given moment, can only be utilizing one active power at a time and in doing so they have to make a decision as to which power, of their available options, do they have the have the resources for, and will cause the impact most desirable. This decision is why Empath Defenders are less likely to engage the battlefield than others. This isn't a situation other defenders powersets labor under. Why? Because their powers, almost universally, are fire and forget. Force Fielders being a good example. Their bubbles go on and they forget about them for the next four minutes. With the changes made on Homecoming these bubbles go on everything within a wide radius and thus become even less intensive. This means the FF Defender can then focus on attacking, creating damage, using any controls they have, etc. The Empathy Defender, as a rule, has to watch health bars. So, the changes to the auras, the combining of Fortitude and Clear mind into one. This is all done to give the Empath more time to *do* things other than click Heal Aura/Heal Other/Absorb Pain and then micromanage a series of single target buffs. So why tie it all to the Healing Aura? Because it's the power virtually everyone who gets the Empathy powerset gets. The only ones who have the option to *not* get healing aura, to my knowledge are Empathy Defenders. So, we create a Voltron power that continually improves as the Empath does and we do this to ensure the Empath is free to do more to the opposition than just stand there looking at health bars and waiting for buffs to fall off. And if you think I'm being unfair in my assessment... Ask yourself which other support primary has *no* direct impact on the opposition? So... yeah, that's why I voltroned the Healing Aura.

tl;Dr Suggestions to create a more solo-able and proactive empathy set via amending the clear mind, fortitude, and absorb pain powers as well as the Empathy auras while still keeping the cottage in mind. Empathy needs help. It's a playset designed for a different game. Remember back in the day when people would play "dedicated healers"? I do. Those were terrible days. Truth is most people woke up to the realization that healing is the least efficient form of damage mitigation, really only especially useful when everything else has failed and not even necessarily then. But there's another part of empathy that people rarely pay attention to due to old ways of thinking: Soloing. Everyone and every play set can solo to varying degrees. Every playset is now built with the expectation that people will both solo and team and do so at their leisure. But not the empathy playset. To the contrary Empathy is the only power set who has 6 out of 9 abilities that are entirely useless when solo. No other powerset suffers from this level of drawback. Amend these powers: Healing Aura: Toggle that heals those near the caster. Is improved by clear mind, recovery aura, and regeneration aura. Absorb Pain: When cast at a teammate the effect is normal. When cast at an enemy acts as a high mag confuse. Additionally your Healing Aura gains a minor absorbtion effect. Clear Mind: When you take this ability, in addition to receiving the standard Clear Mind ability you improve your Healing Aura. The Healing Aura toggle becomes a Toggle Bubble in the same vein as Force Field with the added functionality that it provides defense and resistance vs. Psionics, as well as it's current benefit against status effects. The Clear Mind effect is improved by Fortitude. Does not stack with itself. Fortitude: Stays the same numerically but is a toggle that targets the Empath. Additionally when you take this power the beneficiaries of your Clear Mind targeted ability receive the benefits of Fortitude as well. Recovery/Regeneration Auras: Their overall effectiveness will be reduced but they become auto powers. Simply standing near the Empath at any given time increases your recovery and regeration. Additionally adds a recovery/regeneration component to your Healing Aura toggle. This means that if you take these auras without taking healing Aura you will still recover and regenerate faster than normal but if you take all three your Regeneration and recovery would be the same as if you took all three in the game normally. So, what does this actually mean in game terms? The Empath gains a significant degree of survivability that isn't exclusively dependent on Healing Aura. Empathy become less explicitly buffbotty and more aura oriented. Empathy becomes much more able to solo effectively. The goal is to make the set wider, not taller. Meaning no individual power is exceptionally stronger numerically than it already is but instead expands who benefits from the power (typically this means the Empath) or expands it's functionality (such as the confuse added to absorb pain). Finally it turns the Healing Aura into a sort of Voltron power that improves as the Empath does. I was hesitant to do this but the reality is that for every Empath other than Empathy Defenders this is a required power and few and far between are the empathy Defenders who skip this power entirely.

Both.

*glare*

Is there a means or a mod available to eliminate the super flashy happy rainbow that splashes all over my super evil Dominator when she wants to destroy someone's body and mind utterly?

The issue isn't the current recharge values as most of the game is balanced around hasten already. It's the requirement that people take the power to begin with. It creates an enormous gulf in playability. That's not a position a pool power should occupy.

No, I made my position quite clear from the beginning. I want to bring balance to the game.

If only we were all the pastmaster you are at the online video game all our sorrows would be solved.

They said the same thing about Fitness becoming inherent yet wouldn't you like at that.

Imagine there was a pool power that upped your resistance by 70%. Imagine there was a pool power that upped your damage by 70%. Imagine there was a pool power that upped your accuracy by 70%. Then imagine you showing up on these forums and telling people that you think that shit is perfectly balanced. Do that and then hopefully you can understand why I'm making the puzzled black guy face dot gif while reading your post.

Which would be a perfectly workable solution. I don't oppose keeping the current recharge times because the game is already balanced around the reality of everyone having hasten. My issue is that it creates a staggering gulf in power output between those who have it and those who do not. No pool power should have that kind of impact.

"There are about 60k characters at level 50. About 50k of them use Hasten." <=Is this a lie? Seems legit.

Maybe people keep raging out about it because they keep being problems? Walk with me through this land of shadow where people keep gnashing their teeth and crying out for sustenance and you stand there bewildered asking yourself "Why do people keep bitching about going hungry? They were doing the exact same thing last week. It's the strangest thing. Maybe we should put up a sign saying "We know you're starving, no need to keep reminding us. Jeez".

A pool power that is placed into the build of virtually every high level player in the game is broken.

I'm adding myself. I'm new.

Your first "Reasonable Case" is literally the same BS justification everyone uses to maintain the status quo: THE DEVS JUST HAVEN'T GOT THE TIME TO LOOK INTO THIS POWER THAT IMPACTS VIRTUALLY EVERY SINGLE ASPECT OF THE GAME. That's not a reasonable justification. Saying "The Devs haven't got the time" is bad. Reasonable Case #2 is similarly terrible. Maintaining broken game design because it would upset those exploiting it is just terrible.

No reasonable person thinks Hasten should be kept as is and anyone who argues to do so is merely arguing to keep their current *build* as is, indifferent to the damage it causes to the game itself. Let's examine the reality of Hasten: Every single power in the entire game that utilizes recharge must be balanced around the existence of this single pool power. Read that sentence again. Now tell me you think that is sane. That it qualifies as good game design. Tell me you're going to argue in favor of that status quo. You're going to tell me that a player in "the know" who knows how to make a single power permanent, giving themselves a SEVENTY PERCENT universal reduction in recharge time for every single power they have isn't at a significant advantage over one who does not? There's no other ability in the game that carries that kind of influence, certainly not any pool power. There's no reasonable case to be made for keeping hasten as it is. None. SOLUTION 1: Reduce recharge times across the board by 70%, essentially granting everyone the perma haste they already want. It won't significantly alter game balance because arguably the majority of players do this already anyway and those who don't will be happy to see the change. In essence those who depend on hasten will see no real loss (and will gain a few slots and a power back) while those who don't have it will be brought more up to par. SOLUTION 2: Change the Swiftness inherent power to accept recharge reduction enhancements that reduce recharge globally. This would demand greater fine tuning on the part of the developers as well as requiring some kind of investment on the part of the player while not leaving those unaware of the situation so far behind as to create an unbreachable gulf. (Edit: merged another thread into this discussion, I changed the title accordingly. OP, feel free to alter as you see fit. --GM Tahquitz)

sUP?

I appreciate your super useful comment.

Women wear makeup. Strange, I know... but it gets weirder. A woman might want to wear black eye shadow... and *gasp* NOT black lipstick. Mind blown, right? And we all know exactly what I'm talking about SOOOOOOOOO... *ADD LIP COLORING TO DETAIL 2 ON THE HEADS*