Mini contentious rant (empaths)

[Mikazuki]

I'm setting up teams every day for tasks forces, missions, anything. And i'm not picky, i try to take anything and everything and make it work as long as the overall team is properly balanced.

 

My only pet peeve is: The so called "Pure Support Empath"

 

Dont take me wrong, i have no issues with empaths, sensible ones. The ones that irk me are the ones that take NO powers on their secondary power set aside from the lv1 power you are forced to take, and have nothing but empathy, leadership, teleport powers and so on.

 

If this was a roleplay choice i'd be fine with it, non-violent type that only wants to help his team and everything, but somehow certain players have this belief that pure support is the only way to play empath.

 

So my groups that end up with a pure empath tend to go like: No one takes damage because people are doing their jobs and/or regenerate fast enough to cover the minimal damage they take, and the empath just... stares.

 

So an entire slot in the party is reduced to a leadership totem that helps occasionally with fortitude and AB. 

 

tl;dr: Please take your secondary powers v:

[subbacultchas]

I try not to knock people's playing styles. Some people min-max, some for RP or vision purposes, some people slot all willy-nilly, and some people get just flat out strange ideas about how the mechanics work. I only offer advice if someone's asking and don't tend to down their choices, let them play as they will.

 

That said, WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS? Your secondary lends so much more, oft times even in the form of more debuffs and control.

[_NOPE_]

And honestly, with how hard it is to get in over your head in this game, especially in a team situation... I don't know what a "pure empath" would be actually DOING most of the time if there WEREN'T contributing in some way other than "teh h34lz".

 

Where's BadStorm at? I need some sexual innuendo about Empaths "sucking" STAT.

[subbacultchas]

I am not going to knock heals either. Many times things have gone south and I've had my butt saved by a heal or rez. But they've never really been as important as most think, even back in the day, and especially with all the newer sets. Buffs/Debuffs can really obviate the need for heals in a lot of cases. So the idea of *only* healing is just a double whammy to me, you need that backup for when you're steamrolling content and no heals are needed.

 

Please don't hate me healers, I will never turn you down for a team.

[Vanden]

Heals are pretty important in the later incarnate trials...

[Zolgar]

But. My healz.

 

Healbot 9000 has no attack powers, and only the heals from Empathy, none of that silly Clear Mind or Fortitude. For added benefit I also took the Medicine pool, because healz. I am the best healer ever. No one heals better than I do. I'll make healing great again.

[Mikazuki]

No one ever said heals are bad :v

 

But you can heal -and- at the very least help Debuff with /sonic /rad /dark etc

 

Grab a few powers, slot them, help Debuff, things die faster and in turn things last less.

 

Nothing other than that is being said here lol

 

Sidenote: a well played emp/sonic is one of the best things ever for incarnate content

[subbacultchas]

Heals are pretty important in the later incarnate trials...

 

I barely recall those honestly, but I don't doubt you in the least.

[Zumberge]

For what it's worth this is a problem that crops up in FF14 as well; the White Mage who doesn't DPS which, ha ha, no.  You DPS.  Everyone DPSes.

 

This is probably preaching to the choir, but the damage output of Defenders might be sub-par but arresting killing arresting enemies is the single best way of mitigating damage to your team, and there's certainly enough secondaries with quality debuffs on them.  If push comes to shove, hey, stop shooting; better to have attacks and not use them than to not have them and need them.

[khy]

I feel like if you want to be the healer that focuses on the team the best option is to be a Mastermind, so you can focus on your heals and let your pets just do their thing. You can focus on topping people off and helping out, while your pets contribute damage. One of my favorite 'pure support' builds is a Thugs/Thermal MM which has zero attacks (I use a blackwand and my apprentice charm during periods where there's little to no incoming damage) but instead focuses on buffing, group-wide topping off health with warmth, cauterize for spot healing, and phoenix if someone does manage to fall. Just because I myself am staring at the team's life bars doesn't mean I'm not helping DPS because my thugs just do their thing. If we need to focus down a specific enemy, I do have an attack button that'll focus them but otherwise they just attack whatever they want.

 

It also means that you can, potentially, do some solo work if you really felt like it. Options are never a bad thing to have!

[Call Me Awesome]

Frankly the "Healer Only" mentality was quite prevalent from launch to shutdown as well.  I found on most PuG's that if a Defender took Empathy more often than not they were worthless.  Far too many players couldn't get their heads around the fact that in this game buffs and debuffs were MUCH more useful than heals in the vast majority of situations. 

[AlBQuirky]

I find myself nodding in agreement here. It's one thing to "roleplay" and another to "add to a viable group." My Empath LOVES his Radiation secondary :)

[HelenCarnate]

I think a lot of it has to do with the mindset people get from most other MMO games.  The majority of them have group content where you need at least one person in charge of keeping everyone healed up.  Those that come here don't seem to realize that this can be done in all sorts of ways and one of the least effective (at least in this game) is pure healing.

[Primantis]

On the flip side, an Empath that uses their secondary, keeps the team forted, AB'd and CM'd is quite a nice asset!

 

Empathy itself is a fine set, sadly it gets a bad rep from people doing nothing but "Rocking the Aura" xD

 

 

 

[MechaCrash]

For what it's worth this is a problem that crops up in FF14 as well; the White Mage who doesn't DPS which, ha ha, no.  You DPS.  Everyone DPSes.

 

The derisive nickname for people who do this is "Honest Healer," although I don't know the etymology of the phrase off the top of my head. It's especially annoying because the entire point of the story for Conjurer (the thing that becomes White Mage and the only sub-30 healer) is that standing around spamming heals isn't the most useful thing, so toss some rocks, ya dingus.

 

Every single "healer" I have ever met in City of Heroes has been worthless, and every team that asked for a "healer" has been a disaster. The word is a giant red flag for me now.

[THEDarkTyger]

Comes from the old "holy trinity" MMO mindset. I've seen teams refuse to start until they have a "healer" on board. For the frigging DFB trial. Seriously. You can run that with a full team of blasters and do just fine.

[Rylas]

But. My healz.

 

Healbot 9000 has no attack powers, and only the heals from Empathy, none of that silly Clear Mind or Fortitude. For added benefit I also took the Medicine pool, because healz. I am the best healer ever. No one heals better than I do. I'll make healing great again.

 

Wait a second! I played with Healbot 9000! And I coulda swore your Fortitude made my Ice/SS tank (SCP-2300) pretty damn tough.

[Zolgar]

But. My healz.

 

Healbot 9000 has no attack powers, and only the heals from Empathy, none of that silly Clear Mind or Fortitude. For added benefit I also took the Medicine pool, because healz. I am the best healer ever. No one heals better than I do. I'll make healing great again.

 

Wait a second! I played with Healbot 9000! And I coulda swore your Fortitude made my Ice/SS tank (SCP-2300) pretty damn tough.

 

That must have been Healbot 8999.9 v2, he likes to try to claim he's 9000. ;)

[Rumors]

Empathy?  Check.

 

Healing Aura on auto?  Check.

 

Healing Aura on auto 24/7 even when waiting at mission door or at the auction house?  Check.

 

No secondary powers?  Check.

 

Puts the Tank on follow the whole mission?  Check.

 

"GATHER FOR RA!"  Check.

 

"I SAID GATHER FOR RA WHY ARE YOU NOT LISTENING?" when I'm busy fighting something because I don't need the RA?  Check.

 

Yeah... I remember that type.  Please no to that type.  I mean, at least they're better than the "Healer Rads" who don't take their debuff toggles because "they're too expensive", but... still.  Even just throwing an occasional blast is much more contribution than spamming a undeeded healing aura constantly.

 

 

Not gonna knock Empathy itself though because a well played Empath is awesome.  There was a really good Empathy/Dark I used to be friends with and, if I remember, she had her blasts slotted for -ToHit just to keep everyone even safer.  Even ended up duoing an ITF with her.

 

 

Anyway, on the bright side of this mindset, it was always fun taking like... a FF Defender to a PUG that was freaked out over the lack of heals and using my buffs to force them to steamroll the mission.

[Adeon Hawkwood]

Can we add to the list Tanks who insist on doing complicated pulls on every spawn?

 

It's like if you don't want to initiate combat that's fine just pass me some purples and let me initiate, but don't waste everyone's time with unnecessary pulls.

[Oubliette_Red]

Comes from the old "holy trinity" MMO mindset. I've seen teams refuse to start until they have a "healer" on board. For the frigging DFB trial. Seriously. You can run that with a full team of blasters and do just fine.

 

Yeah, those would be the same that would PM on my Emp troller, to which my response was always "Sorry, not a healer."

[Harlequin565]

Poor Empaths.

 

My main (and unfortunately badge hunter) in 2004 was Emp/Psi and I'm glad I don't have to re-roll her. The amount of teams I got turned down from because "we don't need a healer tx" was just frustrating.

 

Unfortunately there are about the same amount of people thinking that "Empathy is all about healing" as there are that think "all Empathy players know how to do is heal".

 

 

[Lunchmoney]

I quite enjoy playing my emp/duel pistols. If people want heals they can get them, otherwise I shoot things.

[mikeywyatt91]

Yeeeeeah my first 50 back in the day was emp/psi.

The mez powers from secondary were always helpful when there wasn't the need to heal.

(Plus Physic Scream SFX is the coolest.)

 

If a team needs you to concentrate on healing/buffing, then that's probably what you should aim to do.

If they don't need you to solely concentrate on healing...then don't.

[Ukase]

My first level 50 was an emp/elec.

 

This was because my blaster - which was my first character spent more time defeated than he did actually dealing damage. I was new to the game, and I didn't want to read the forums. I wanted to play!

 

But, I will share this, maybe it's a perspective you haven't thought about. Some folks are just so ignorant about a power set that they have no idea that they have no idea what they are doing. It's one thing for someone on a pug to give warning and say, "Sorry, but I just got out of a task force, and well, I trained and got these last two powers and am not really sure if I know the best way to slot/use them."

 

That person at least understands enough to know that they don't know what they're doing.

 

There's another type of person - and that's a person who simply lacks the experience and knowledge that you may possess.

 

I know when I was playing mine, I wasn't that good at it in the beginning. I used to think it was me. And it partially was, but the other part was the leadership of the team tackling +4 with players that didn't have adequate slotting to deal with the NPCs. Taking a level 9 tank into a level 16 mission, so he's sk'd to level 15, yes, that tank can take the alpha, but not much more than that - and the level 16 emp/* defender can only use heal other and heal aura so many times when the mobs are conning purple before that tank goes down and the team wipes. Now some teams can handle that - but they've probably got the aforementioned balance, and they might have players that team often and know what to do.

 

All of this is stuff you've likely thought about, but I thought I'd share. Some folks just aren't there yet. They lack the experience and intelligence that you may have.