Hateborne

Minor tweak to Absorb Pain, but I think the rest of it will stands up.

Hackily compiled data

tl;dr - Empathy's abilities are met identically in most cases by the others, or outclassed by miles in others. Can Empathy get some minor tweaks/buffs to help it stand out as the "just heals" powerset? After spending the last hour comparing the power sets and compiling a list of all the abilities (see the spoiler box in the first reply), it is kind of apparent that Empathy was really left behind in most cases. It was the "just heals" set for awhile, but a lot of the later (or newer) powersets left Empathy behind in the way DVDs surpassed VHS tapes. To help minimize the post length, I am shortening the powerset names as shown here: Empathy -> E, Nature Affinity -> NA, Pain Domination -> PD, Thermal Radiation -> TR. Here are some areas I noticed issues: Single Target Healing - E's Absorb Pain heal value is only 25% better than PD's Share Pain, while dealing more self damage and granting no self buffs. E's Heal Other is identical in all respects (cost/cd/healing) to PD's Soothe and TR's Cauterize. Group Healing - E's Healing Aura is identical to PD's Nullify Pain and TR's Warmth in every respect (cost/cd/healing). NA's Regrowth and Lifegiving Spores could easily outpace that with Bloom stacks over a 30 or 60 second window of combat. Resurrection - E's Resurrect is a full heal with 90s of debt protection, but PD's Conduit of Pain is a full heal with massive self buffs for 1min and minor/negligible self debuffs (if playing support) for 1min. I assume debt protection isn't provided with Conduit of Pain as the tooltip doesn't mention it and the advanced tooltip shows nothing that indicates it. Spammable/Toggle Buffs - E's Clear Mind is outclassed by PD's Enforced Morale (1) & TR's Thaw (2) which do the exact same thing with the same cost/cd, in addition to (1) 5% recharge reduction or (2) 10% cold resist and 80% movement slow resistance. TR's Thermal Shield and Plasma Shield provide effectively permanent resistance to smashing, lethal, fire, energy, negative energy, and cold (while also nearly maxing out fire resist without other buffs). Cooldown Buffs - E's Regeneration Aura is much stronger in terms of regeneration than all others and E's Recovery Aura is helpful, NA's Wild Growth & Wild Bastion & Overgrowth can turn everyone in range into absolute monsters in nearly every respect with half the cooldown (8m20s on either of E's auras vs Wild Growth 3m45s, Wild Bastion 4m, Overgrowth 4m15s). E's Adrenaline Boost is the only thing that provides significant regeneration & recovery to a single target, but it's not spammable and not going to prevent a truckload of incoming (burst) damage. Debuffs - Empathy does not have, nor does it need, debuffs. However, it's hard to overlook the significant advantage things like NA's Corrosive Enzymes, NA's Spore Cloud, TR's Heat Exhaustion, or TR's Melt Armor provide in terms of reducing incoming damage. Additionally, in the later game, recovery is (mostly) moot as IOs/sets/etc make most characters fully self sustaining. With ambient healing, incarnates, and self abilities: the direct healing isn't even that useful anymore. What does empathy even bring to the table anymore? I feel like Empathy could be made useful with relatively minor tweaks, not full redesigns or ability replacement(s). I feel like converting overhealing into minor absorption is the main path to success. Below are some minor suggestions that I believe could give Empathy a seat at the raid table. Passive - Add a passive to Empathy that converts overhealing into a shield at some percentage (50%?) where only the most powerful applies, not cumulatively stacking. In example: The next heal overheals 150 which adds 75 hp absorption, but the next heal overheals 80 which doesn't increase/reset the absorption value. Direct Healing - Bump the direct healing amounts (Heal Other, Healing Aura) by 30% or more to stand above others in direct healing. Absorb Pain - Remove self damage and just add absorption. Recovery Aura - Half the cooldown and add a recharge reduction of maybe 25-30%. Regeneration Aura - Half the cooldown and add healing received increase of 25-40% (reminder that the duration is only 40s, unlike NA Bloom's potentially unlimited duration). This also could interact with creation of absorption buffers. Adrenalin Boost - Add a small resistance to all damage (10-20%?) as it thematically fits with an adrenaline surge in real life. If you made it this far, thanks for reading and take care!

What harm/danger would allowing Radiation Infection and Enervating Field to self-radiate if no target is selected? (Optionally) The player has live more dangerously, but it feels like a happy compromise for quantity over quality situations (looking at you Mapserver events too).

This isn't an issue of speed running. This is more of an issue of feeling clunky and rather useless often as I'm waiting to apply one of my signature abilities only to have the fight be over. I can hold off for the next pull, but that leaves me feeling like I'm sporadically contributing. By comparison, my Force Field / Electrical Blast defender feels like an absolute monster. I built entirely around stupid high defense and obliterating enemy endurance. The only time I was really "idle" was when I died from being too cocky rushing in too soon. --- I was unaware of the change to allow them to persist on the enemy post-defeat, thank you for the heads-up! As for cooldowns, I keep a relatively high uptime of Hasten and Accelerate Metabolism to bring both debuffs to 4ish second cooldown. Valid point on the the mezz and detoggle, thanks again! --- I understand and agree to some extent about power creep, but I don't have the depth or hours of play to accurately/honestly defend that stance. When playing a Force Field / Electrical Blast defender (mentioned earlier in this reply), I feel that I'm almost always busy doing something useful. I'm sapping endurance, dropping shields, using either repel ability to herd enemies back into the meat grinder, or simply stunning/rooting problem foes. Both Force Field and (obv) Electrical Blast feel extremely interactive by comparison. --- That's an excellent point that I overlooked. I'll edit the original post and thank you!

This is a small list of changes that feel appropriate to keep up with faster clearing teams (excluding Mutation). I do not feel that anything here is truly game changing, more of just removing tedium. Radiation Infection - Allow players to affix it to other players (e.g., tank) (thanks Luminara), reduce cooldown to 1 second, -or- (if possible) allow target swapping without triggering cooldown[1]. Enervating Field - Allow players to affix it to other players (e.g., tank) (thanks Luminara), reduce cooldown to 1 second, -or- (if possible) allow target swapping without triggering cooldown[1]. Mutation - Could this be altered to function loosely similar to Phoenix Rising? "Similar" in the sense of being able to use it against a non-dead target, with greater potency with lower health on activation (max effect when used against dead ally). It should still be targetable, unlike Phoenix Rising, to fit with the Controller/Defender/Dominator role. Choking Cloud - Reduce cooldown to 1 second as it feels like a situational toggle. Having a 20 second base cooldown feels just bonkers. (thanks Uun) If there is something unknown to me, such as the ability to potentially abuse cooldowns and stack multiples via a single character: please let me know! I might be overlooking or simply not knowing of current caveats or shenanigans. [1] - I am using target swapping here to mean the effect is currently active on one target, then selecting and activating on another target to effectively "move" the effect without toggle off->wait->toggle on. This would only function if the effect is still active when attempting to "activate" it on another target. EDIT 20240330: Thanks Luminara and Uun for the valid points!