Empathy Rehashing

[@T3h Ish]

Empathy

1. Healing Aura (No Change)
2. Heal Other (No Change)
3. Absorb Pain (Ally +All Res for 30s, Ally Absorb 30s degrades over time, replace effect not stacking, no other changes.)
4. Mass Resurrect (Mass AoE Rez + HoT)
5. Clear Mind - > PbAoE Toggle and/or Targeted AoE Mez Prot + Psi Res
6. Fortitude - > PbAoE akin to Widow's Link Mind
7. Recovery Aura (Recovery / Regeneration Aura combined, 250 Recovery / 500 Regen, 422s CD, 120s Duration)
8. TBD
9. Adrenalin Boost (No Changes)

Absorb Pain should probably do an absorb bubble to represent that but also have some residual +All Res for the same duration or longer. Latter absorb would maybe have the new degrading tech considering it's high cost vs. the current benefit of sacrificing HP and getting +Heal Resistance to self.

Having a mass rez alongside a large Heal over Time would increase it's overall utility, Dark Miasma's AoE rez is very good. Even if not used to rez, it's still a potent stun and -Regen

Edited May 17 by @T3h Ish

[biostem]

1 hour ago, @T3h Ish said:

Absorb Pain

You're fundamentally changing the power - it's supposed to be that *YOU* are absorbing the other character's pain, not that you are helping them to do so.

 

1 hour ago, @T3h Ish said:

Clear Mind - > PbAoE Toggle and/or Targeted AoE Mez Prot + Psi Res

This would be too good, IMHO, and steps on the toes of those sets that specifically provide various resist shields.  I could see the psi component, though.

 

1 hour ago, @T3h Ish said:

Fortitude - > PbAoE akin to Widow's Link Mind

Again, probably too good.  The buff values would also have to be significantly reduced if such powers were made into AoEs, which I don't like.

 

1 hour ago, @T3h Ish said:

Mass Resurrect (Mass AoE Rez + HoT)

Dark's rez, IIRC, needs a target.  What would be the tradeoff, here?

[Rudra]

1 minute ago, biostem said:

1 hour ago, @T3h Ish said:

Mass Resurrect (Mass AoE Rez + HoT)

Dark's rez, IIRC, needs a target.  What would be the tradeoff, here?

Yep, Howling Twilight needs a living enemy to trigger off of.

[@T3h Ish]

20 minutes ago, biostem said:

You're fundamentally changing the power - it's supposed to be that *YOU* are absorbing the other character's pain, not that you are helping them to do so.

 

This would be too good, IMHO, and steps on the toes of those sets that specifically provide various resist shields.  I could see the psi component, though.

 

Again, probably too good.  The buff values would also have to be significantly reduced if such powers were made into AoEs, which I don't like.

 

Dark's rez, IIRC, needs a target.  What would be the tradeoff, here?

Understandable for Absorb Pain, but it's moreso to give it more of a benefit for sacrificing HP and getting immunity to being healed for however long it is, it's an often skipped power in my experience playing with others when I do encounter it. Healing is effective at low-level play, but not-so-much in mid to late-game. Having an extra bit tacked on to be a "oh shit" power to help ensure they don't go down is nice.

As for Fortitude, honestly making the set easier to use would be better overall, good players obviously use it on cooldown to as many players as possible but having it a PbAoE would be a large quality of life so-long as it has the same modifiers as Link Minds, but it can still be boosted via Power Boost.
World of Pain is obviously a foil of it in effect, it's just that it does +Def instead of +Resists when that set was created for villains.

What changing Clear Mind to a PbAoE Toggle or Targeted AoE would make the set more desirable than it currently is when weighed against Cold, Thermal, Sonic Resonance and Force Field. It exclusively would apply Psi Resist, and no other types of resistances, differentiating it from other resist powers from other support sets.

As for the AoE res, it wouldn't ideally need a target, even if it doesn't pick anyone up, it's just a large area heal on a decent cooldown.
Arguably the massive stun and -Regen that Howling Twilight can do in addition to the rez, makes sense to require a target.

Generally speaking, the goal of these suggestions is to bring the Issue 1 set up to some reasonable par with other sets that have healing, raw healing is just isn't as important as it used to be, and while the set should still have potent heals, it's carried hard by Fortitude in general gameplay. The t7 and t8 have insane cooldowns, and low durations. Combining them and putting the cooldown/duration roughly the same as Accelerated Metabolism would make sense to me. As for what power to put into that void, i'm unsure what i'd suggest at this time.

[biostem]

3 minutes ago, @T3h Ish said:

Generally speaking, the goal of these suggestions is to bring the Issue 1 set up to some reasonable par with other sets

Empathy is actually an extremely powerful set - it just isn't "set-it-and-forget-it", and the trend seems to be that people don't want to actually have to select which teammate to use what power on and when.  I think that there are alternatives that cater to the former already, so taking away other options is not a good thing, IMHO.  Not being able to have every power perma on everyone is actually *NOT* a bad thing...

[Doomguide2005]

 

13 hours ago, @T3h Ish said:

As for Fortitude, honestly making the set easier to use would be better overall, good players obviously use it on cooldown to as many players as possible but having it a PbAoE would be a large quality of life so-long as it has the same modifiers as Link Minds, but it can still be boosted via Power Boost.
World of Pain is obviously a foil of it in effect, it's just that it does +Def instead of +Resists when that set was created for villains.

What?

Neither Link Minds or Mind Link are anywhere near as potent in base value to the To Hit and Defense offered by Fortitude.  And then there's the +Damage offered as well.  I'll take Fortitude over this any and all days of the week.  You could used Power Boost and still not reach those values (15% and 18.75% unenhanced) delivered by Fort.  Fort may also be Power Boosted.

[Shin Magmus]

     Empathy needs buffs and, at this point honestly, I don't care what form they take or whose suggestions make it into the game: please for the love of god just buff Empathy already.  To my knowledge, nearly EVERY OTHER buff/debuff set in the game has received at least one buff since Homecoming started.  Cold Domination is the only set that was nerfed, TA/FF received overwhelmingly powerful reworks and shot up in power, and tons of other sets have received a random one-off buff including animation times in Radiation Emission, and cooldown reductions in Thermal and Sonic Resonance.  They've also added the new set Elec Affinity which eviscerates Empathy when it comes to purely defensive ability to keep targets alive, and is S-Tier on MMs.  Even Traps got a pretty significant buff last patch with the new Temporal Bomb power.  All of this... while Empathy sits in dead last place and I just can't understand why.  Tons of uninformed players pick Empathy and spam Healing Aura on auto: thinking that they are helping when they aren't.  It's gotten to the point where irrespective of the powerset's issues, Empathy players now have a bad reputation as generally being useless.  Like a lot of people have mentioned in passing, my first lv50 (on live) was an Empathy Defender; This state of affairs is just depressing.

 

     The main point that most people agree on is merging the RA's together and giving Empathy a new power: I noticed that immediately in OP's suggestion.  This gets said fairly often, and is in my suggested rework thread too: 

 

Edited May 18 by Shin Magmus

[@T3h Ish]

12 hours ago, Doomguide2005 said:

 

What?

Neither Link Minds or Mind Link are anywhere near as potent in base value to the To Hit and Defense offered by Fortitude.  And then there's the +Damage offered as well.  I'll take Fortitude over this any and all days of the week.  You could used Power Boost and still not reach those values (15% and 18.75% unenhanced) delivered by Fort.  Fort may also be Power Boosted.

When referring to "PBAoE Akin to Link Mind" I mean that it affects everyone it hits including the user, value would go down terms of overall numerical count, but with that trade off, it would affect more teammates, in both team settings and League settings, and more importantly, also affect the player using it.
Fortitude would still be able to use in concert with Power Boost as that's historically what's been done with it, just like Farsight can be.

Edited May 19 by @T3h Ish

[Doomguide2005]

Still inclined to say no thanks as I'm fairly certain the trade of current values for new values would leave it vastly weaker.  And that's not a trade off I'd want to make.

[AmbiguousOmen]

I posted my own version of an Empathy rework a few days ago on Shin Magmus's thread. It is fairly close to what the OP is suggesting, but I think OP goes a little too far.

 

From what I understand, CM is unlikely to become an AoE Break Free, as the devs have said they don't want to add powers like that. That's why in my suggestion the mez protection would remain single target, and only the psi/neg energy res would be AoE.

 

I wouldn't support making Fortitude into a Mind Link, either: picking the best targets for Fortitude and keeping it up on them is pretty much the core gameplay loop of Empathy. It's a big buff that you have to use responsibly, and the choices you make about using it are central to your performance as an Empath and to the identity of the set.

 

Making both CM and Fortitude AoE would remove any gameplay decisions for Empathy: at that point you just have a bunch of buttons that do good things and so all you have to do is push them.

 

 

[Shin Magmus]

     The main thing people agree on is the need for some sort of buffs to the set, but an argument that isn't brought up as often is that many Empathy players are extremely bad and don't use Fortitude often or at all.  The average Empath will use Fortitude on only one teammate, while Lumii with (400 vet levels) will go an entire TF without using Fortitude or Adrenaline Boost at all because "nobody needs them".  These are real examples of real gameplay that happens.

 

     Replacing Fortitude with a weaker PbAoE (that also buffs the user) causes it to hit 4x more targets minimum than most Empaths currently do with Fortitude, and like 100x as many on an MSR with pets out.  This suggested change was already implemented in Pain Domination, by the live devs, with World of Pain.  It's hard to argue against it after teaming with Empaths.

[AmbiguousOmen]

7 hours ago, Shin Magmus said:

     Replacing Fortitude with a weaker PbAoE (that also buffs the user) causes it to hit 4x more targets minimum than most Empaths currently do with Fortitude, and like 100x as many on an MSR with pets out.  This suggested change was already implemented in Pain Domination, by the live devs, with World of Pain.  It's hard to argue against it after teaming with Empaths.

 

I begrudgingly concede this point.

I'm probably under Stockholm syndrome of trying to squeeze as much value out Fortitude as possible after all these years.

On the plus side, Link Minds has a really cool animation, and it'd be great to recycle it for a version that adds +damage to replace Fortitude (name suggestion: Link Psyches).

[Shin Magmus]

Yeah I just assumed that it would be the same power (+dmg, +def, +tohit) but slightly weaker and PbAoE.

[RadiantPhoenix]

On 5/18/2024 at 10:27 PM, @T3h Ish said:

When referring to "PBAoE Akin to Link Mind" I mean that it affects everyone it hits including the user, value would go down terms of overall numerical count, but with that trade off, it would affect more teammates, in both team settings and League settings, and more importantly, also affect the player using it.
Fortitude would still be able to use in concert with Power Boost as that's historically what's been done with it, just like Farsight can be.

For reference:

Fortitude: (Empathy)

• +1.5 scale To Hit (ranged)
• +1.5 scale Defense (ranged)
• +2.5 scale Damage (ranged)

Farsight: (Time Manipulation)

• +1.25 scale To Hit (ranged)
• +1.25 scale Defense (ranged)

Mind Link: (Both Widow branches)

• +0.5 scale To Hit (melee)
• +1.0 scale Defense (melee)
• +3.0 scale Psi Resist (melee)

Link Minds: (Psi Epic for Sentinels and Dominators)

• +0.33 scale To Hit (melee)
• +0.5 scale Defense (melee)
• +2.0 scale Psi Resist (melee)

 

Source: City of Data homecoming-20240227_5928

Edited June 2 by RadiantPhoenix
Adding source for numbers

[golstat2003]

On 5/18/2024 at 12:10 PM, Shin Magmus said:

 

 

     The main point that most people agree on is merging the RA's together and giving Empathy a new power: I noticed that immediately in OP's suggestion.  This gets said fairly often, and is in my suggested rework thread too: 

 

 

IF  this is all they did I would be fine. But I don't trust this team on full reworks.

[golstat2003]

On 5/19/2024 at 1:19 AM, Doomguide2005 said:

Still inclined to say no thanks as I'm fairly certain the trade of current values for new values would leave it vastly weaker.  And that's not a trade off I'd want to make.

 

Pretty much this. I DO NOT trust that there wouldn't be signifigant trade offs that might end up making Empathy WORSE. lol

[MJABBAR88]

Combine the two auras, lower duration  so you can make them perma or close to. Add an absorb type power. Increase the duration fortitude slightly. Boom 

[AmbiguousOmen]

For the sake of diversity, to not immediately make Fortitude into another Mind Link/Farsight clone, it could also be turned into an AoE toggle that targets an ally: a reverse Radiation Infection.

That would keep the gameplay decision of who to target with Fortitude, while still increasing the default number of targets. You'd basically end up buffing only half the team, either the frontline or the backline, but that's still better than the current state.

[Shin Magmus]

On 6/3/2024 at 8:19 AM, AmbiguousOmen said:

For the sake of diversity, to not immediately make Fortitude into another Mind Link/Farsight clone, it could also be turned into an AoE toggle that targets an ally: a reverse Radiation Infection.

That would keep the gameplay decision of who to target with Fortitude, while still increasing the default number of targets. You'd basically end up buffing only half the team, either the frontline or the backline, but that's still better than the current state.

     It's more like a reverse Disruption Field: instead a toggle that debuffs all around an ally, it's a toggle that buffs all around an ally.  The nice thing is that I don't think the power needs to be renamed in this case, nor have its numbers adjusted much at all.  It's just now a toggle AoE on someone.  This change, plus merging the RA's, plus adding a new power in the new slot, is at least enough to make Empathy basic and relevant finally.

[Doc Spectre]

Some sets give the option to choose between two variations of a power. For example Sentinel Super Reflexes (Master Brawler or Practice Brawler).

How about being able to choose between current Fortitude or  slightly weaker Mindlink style aoe click.

You could then have 2 builds depending on what style of content you were doing.

[megaericzero]

6 minutes ago, Doc Spectre said:

Some sets give the option to choose between two variations of a power. For example Sentinel Super Reflexes (Master Brawler or Practice Brawler).

How about being able to choose between current Fortitude or  slightly weaker Mindlink style aoe click.

You could then have 2 builds depending on what style of content you were doing.

The HC devs stated they don't want to do that kind of power choice again.

[Doc Spectre]

Then I guess I favour the ally toggle option then. Frees up more time for blasting and other things.

[Rudra]

49 minutes ago, Doc Spectre said:

Some sets give the option to choose between two variations of a power. For example Sentinel Super Reflexes (Master Brawler or Practice Brawler).

How about being able to choose between current Fortitude or  slightly weaker Mindlink style aoe click.

You could then have 2 builds depending on what style of content you were doing.

ONE set does that. The one you mentioned. And as @megaericzero already stated, the devs said they will never do that again because of how much of a pain it was getting just that one power choice in that one set to work that way.

[DrIlluminatis]

As for the empty slot by combining the Auras, We have a Def buff with Fortitude, a Mezz resistance with Clear Mind, How about an Evasion buff with "Intuition"

 

" As you resonate with your allies and enemies it makes it easier to predict and evade attacks" Basically make it a toggle like Arctic air that you can turn on or shut off and anyone in the aura field receives the buff. Have to play around with the numbers though, maybe 6ft from the caster, and an XX% buff to evasion.

Edited June 5 by DrIlluminatis

[biostem]

2 minutes ago, DrIlluminatis said:

How about an Evasion buff

Other than the SR power, what is "evasion" in this context?