Emp Defender always LFG

[kingschosen]

Hi, everyone. I'm a survivor from the Victory server and made Everlasting my home.

 

Anyway, I'm always looking for a team. I'm full support... I have 3 attacks: brawl, starting secondary attack and origin attack. I say this because it is all but impossible for me to level by myself.

 

So, if you need a healer, I'm up for anything (albeit TF... depends on my availability). Please look me up.

 

My IGN is Rectified.

[Zumberge]

I say this because it is all but impossible for me to level by myself.

I'm full support... I have 3 attacks: brawl, starting secondary attack and origin attack.

 

...perhaps this problem could be easily resolved if you took more attacks?

 

_{(It's always the Empaths that are "honest healers."  You never hear anyone pull this with Cold Domination, I can tell you that for free.)}

[Ghost49X]

Not to be mean, but people seem to think Empaths are bad especially if they do nothing but heal and hand out leadership buffs. Some heals are nice, but fights don't always require them and you could be doing damage or providing some other form of active utility while waiting for your team to take damage. Other defender powersets bring a lot more to the fight, with buffs and de-buffs that help the whole team in most situations.

 

I'm not saying this to dissuade you from playing empathy, but to let you know what you're up against so that you can compensate and work something out. You can play compensate for Empathy's shortcomings by delving a bit more into your secondary, not just for damage but for utility as well.

 

PS: I have found memories of my Empath back on the official servers, so I hope you can find a good team.

[kingschosen]

Wow.

 

I never knew full healing/support was thought this badly of.

 

This is news to me. Granted, I played early in live and Emps were sought after... same in WoW.

 

I do have various buffs from different pools, but again, I may have to abandon the healer if pure healing is considered "bad". Chalk this one up to ignorance.

 

I'm not interested in taking secondary damage powers on this guy... I'll just make a controller or something that can fulfill the role of support and damage... better than a bad archetype with sub-par damage.

 

PS: me saying I only have 3 attacks wasn't a whine. It was meant to show how committed to support I am. That backfired.

[Ghost49X]

If you want to focus on support, consider taking Mastermind as your AT, then you can focus on your support secondary and let your pets take care of the damage. Your starting alignment is no longer based on your choice of AT so you can play either side with this concept. I think I read about this concept in a similar discussion on Empaths, not sure if it was on the forums or in game though.

 

As for wow, healers are required for most group content in wow (at least back when I played) hence they were very well in demand, not so much in CoH.

The equivalent role for wow would be the support role, as in the guy who brings buffs or debuffs to the party. I mean didn't care if you threw down a curse of weakness here or there, but they preferred that you brought more dps or healing and no one to my knowledge sought out support roles in wow. (if I lost you here, I played wow during vanilla, through to Lich King, I know the game has changed a lot since then)

Defenders themselves are still useful and appreciated for their buffs and debuffs, it's just that pure healing is very situational and even then people will prefer resistance or defence buffs over reactionary healing.

[Jon]

If you want to go for more of a full support role, I would definitely check out Controllers! The control primaries are all great ways to support a team that keep the gameplay active and help you contribute beyond more than just heals. I personally play Darkness Control/Empathy and enjoy being able to lock down groups and lower their to-hit with the darkness powers. It is a really fun support character.

 

Empathy is a great set, but what makes it great is way more than just its healing capabilities. There are lots of great buffs in the set that, when properly utilized, make it so that you don't have to rely on your heals as much and can focus on your other powers. Think of the healing as more of a way to patch you up if damage gets through all of your other buffs.

[NekoAli]

I mean, I'm just echoing what others have said... But the 'pure support' character in City is not just a healer. In most games the supports are only pure healers playing whack-a-mole with health bars, often to the point that the player base will heavily push back any character who gets labeled support that's not primarily a healer, or possibly a shielder. Though again, in most games a shield is really just extra hit points.

 

City does it quite differently on all aspects. Healing is useful and important, but it's also secondary as a support. Better rather to prevent or mitigate the damage before it happens. Part of that is... well as read. It's better to not take the damage at all. Also because of ability cool downs vs damage taken only healing is not a great option. Someone trying to only heal in a group that has no other defenses is going to lose, period, flat out, no chance. On even levels, without changing the difficulty level there will always be more enemies putting out more damage than can be just healed through. The key then is to block as much damage from happening as possible.

 

And fortunately there are a number of ways to do that. Most characters have ways to self buff their defense to avoid getting hit and resistance to take less damage to various types of attacks. Good support characters can help to buff those numbers so they reach the cap and people take minimal damage, allowing the empaths and other healers to just do clean up duty when the lucky hits go through. That is really the intended purpose of healing in City.

 

The other side is debuffs and control sets. Reducing the enemy's chance to hit, speed of attacks, amount of damage done also helps mitigate and stacks with defensive buffs. Using control powers to slow down, immobilize, sleep, confuse or outright hold enemies also will drastically reduce damage. Unlike a lot of other MMOs, both in the past and especially now control characters are a huge part of group success and always useful. Which is good because solo controllers struggle with taking out enemies since much like defenders their damage output is below par.

 

In the end, pure healing is really secondary tier and if your character focuses on that there are two basic states... The group has sufficient other defenses and you spend most of your time just waiting for someone to take a little damage that you can erase. Or they do not have sufficient defenses and you are frantically spamming all your powers on cool down until your group inevitably wipes. There's no 'good zone' were you get to be the golden god just spreading out healing energy and keeps the group going.

 

That is not saying healing is useless! Even the best defenses and controls means some damage gets through, and you'll need those heals. Especially early game where healing is more valuable because it's harder to soft cap defenses, so people take more damage. In the mid to late game though pure healing really drops off in usefulness. My old Emp/Dark defender go so much more use from her Dark set and the -ToHit it provides. I had originally imagined her as a traditional WoW priest at the start thinking like many that heals were the way to support. It was with that character that I learned all of what I've said above, and how she got to 50 first of my characters relying more on the Dark secondary set.

 

If you want to be a pure support character I recommend Controller. Defenders are support primary/attack secondary. That means the class is designed expected you to fight in between providing support. If your concept does not involve blasting people, you can play that way as a Defender. Just understand you are deliberately limiting yourself by not taking the attacks expected by the archetype. Controllers on the other hand are control primary/support secondary which makes them almost pure support. Controller attacks are far more about debuffing targets than hurting them, while your secondary allows you to buff your team and heal them. Depending on how you want to play there are a lot of control sets that can lock down enemies and allow your team to wipe them up. But you personally won't be defeating enemies and they tend to solo safely, but slowly because of low damage output in most sets.

 

 

[Saeletra]

Neko, this is an amazingly articulated post! I think it should be required reading for anybody new to the game. It touches a bit on why CoX doesn't really require a Holy Trinity of Tank/DPS/Heals for most content!

 

Empathy is very desirable as a team mate, people want empathy! Just... not necessarily for the heals.

 

Clear Mind is amazing for people with out hold/mez/sleep

Fortitude for +defense, and thoese tasty Damage and Accuracy Buffs

Recovery Aura Gives us that nice nummy endurance regeneration

Regeneration aura Keeps our health ticking smoothly.

Adrenaline Boost, such a wonderful shot of endurance, regeneration and recharge speed!

 

And the rez is nice for when the team meant to pull 1 clockwork, but the whole room pulled and suddenly nobody has any endurance left! Recovery Aura is god in a sitation like this too!