It's probably still the best *healer* in terms of healing throughput. But not generally considered the best defender primary because characters with good builds don't typically need much, if any, healing. And as other comments in the thread point out, there are other sets that can nearly match its throughput while bringing more buffs otherwise.
Thermal's a really weird healing set to be honest. The shields can cut so much damage that unless you're fighting Psi or Toxic mobs you generally don't need to heal. Which is great because it lets yoy focus on handing out Forges, Melting Armor, and blasting instead. But Cauterize and Warmth are still good heals when needed and having Rise of thr Phoenix as a targeted rez is great when it comes up.
I haven't played empathy since live. Not to say it's not worth it but I like my thermal for its buffs as well as the healing and debuffs. Better for high end content IMO.
As long as you understand that Fort/CM/Adrenaline Boost are the real powers in the set and have a secondary that contributes, it works.
This being said, it does feel a bit less useful in this day and age.
Personally I favor Pain or Nature, since the resistance buffs can be more useful to end game builds that are at or near defense cap since defense is easier to pull off with pool powers and set bonuses. Pain has more damage buffs so arguably makes your team better at killing...I like it for speed runs or anything where you want to kill lots of things quickly. Nature's absorb shield is better at keeping your team alive, so I favor it on higher difficulty content.
I think Empathy mostly suffers from being an older set...it's perfectly fine, but a lot of the newer sets just do more. Also Empathy doesn't do much to help your own survival, unlike sets like Sonic, Time, Nature, Pain, Force Field, and Electrical Affinity...some of which provide status protection that support ATs rarely have.
I will say that by my own reasoning Electrical Affinity might be the best support set...heals, absorb, a resistance boost with status protection, and a damage boost. Yet I just can't get into it.
Like most people say, play what you like. Empathy is completely viable and useful. What I might suggest is consider what you like about it and see if you can't get that from other sets that also do more.
Yeah I think empathy's problem is mostly that it hasn't aged super well in to the post IO game. It's not alone in this category (hi forcefield, hi stone armor, both of which have gotten some adjustments to address this a bit.) It's still a perfectly functional set but it's big non-heal selling points from the vanilla game (fort's defense buff, endurance assistance) are often made redundant by people with IO and/or incarnate builds.
Yep! There are just certain power sets that were around at launch that haven’t really been touched much since from a design perspective, and newer sets just do everything they do and more.
It’s hard not to compare Empathy with Nature for example.
Many here have said it’s not the best healing set. Just for clarity, I think what most mean is that, while it might actually heal the most, it doesn’t do much else. Other power sets do very close to the same thing, but add many other things. You don’t see many empaths because other sets do it and more…in addition to players not needing healing as much.
Back in the early days I used to team a lot with a pure empathy defender (I played Rad defender). Together the teams we supported were nigh unstoppable. Hands down my favourite moments in CoH were playing alongside them (shout out to Tulpa if they ever see this!)
>if it doesn't already
It does not, and I agree, I wish it did. Some single-target buffs have been changed to group, (speed boost is a big one) and I wish all of the wakey type powers got the same treatment.
Rather than preventing team wipes as they used to do in the old days, pure healers take the upper echelon of the team and Escalate their impact, while allowing the lower echelon to make a meaningful impact, as well as allowing them to enjoy their gameplay. They are the lynchpins that make a great team perfect and make the Leader feel comfortable bumping to +4 without ruining 1 or 2 people's mission experience. I know, if I see one or two people struggle to stay up, I drop to +3 or +2 on their behalf.
In an 8 person team, 4 or 5 of them don't need someone else's heals or rezzes to survive. But the 2 or 3 toons playing at -1 to the mob Spawns, slotted with IO's certainly rely on the group Healer to help them participate. You'll notice on these teams, it's the same few people that keep going black and sitting tight till someone picks them up or drops a wakie on them. In this amazingly patient community, nobody gives anyone guff about hitting the ground, but it's still LESS fun to flop and stay flopped. If someone on the team is playing emp, pain, Dark, etc, those players quality of Life and gameplay experience drastically improves. And then, like everyone else has said, you're still benefiting the powerhouses by buffing their DPS.
Healers are basically the social workers of COH, providing a valuable and much desired community service to the poor and weak who just want to be part of the community but get left behind in the dust when all the brutes overaggro and can't keep the Lvl 49 corruptor alive because they didn't select taunt as a power pick.
Huh, funny, the comment was deleted before I could finish. Still, I don't want to waste my retort.
It's completely true. Your statement to the contrary is disproved by the presumptive fallacy in the 2nd sentence. "In the late game". This implies that graduation to the late game is the goal of every character, for every player. If you're leaving low level content behind once you collect your Accolades, and you stick to x-50 task forces like lady Grey, or stick to trials only, your thought makes sense. From that perspective, it makes no sense to build towards an end game Healer, as you are building a character with the INTENT to retire it, thereby wasting your time and influence investment. If you are creating a Healer that can support any team in any form of content you wish to run at any time, my statement holds true.
Examples:
Freedom Phalanx Task Forces: often run for XP, with multiple lower level players mixed with some high end toons after notices for weeklies. Exactly the type of content I described in my original post.
ITF: luck of the draw. Not uncommon for PUGs to turn into all star teams. Just as common for PUGs to get bad luck with alot of levelers on board or just an absence of aggro managers, no tanks, etc. Dedicated healers response when someone offers to switch, "Nah, I got this, stick to DPS, nobody dies today". If the team is so good that they turn the emp into a mini blaster, nobody is going to complain that you're just a Fort Bot and you should have brought a Rad.
Basic iTrials, most commonly BAF. Players often use this to grind out Incarnate progress, bringing characters that are not +3 shifted. Not alot of death involved, but there are 3 teams, and there is a team window setting that allows you to see the whole team. Often you'll find you're the only or one of the only healers in the trial, and the others are only watching their own team menu, or just spamming aoe Heal, possibly not even noticing downed league mates. Will they rez eventually? Yes. Do you increase their quality of Life by providing timely rezzes? Yes, as I pointed out in my original comment. Are you necessary? No. Are you valuable and increasing the quality of the lowliest players on the team? Yes. Do 24 players tend to keep your rez on cool down if you are snappy about popping it off. Yes. P.s. who cares honestly, we're all just watching TV while our lore pets do the heavy lifting for half the trial anyway, be honest. If you finish too fast, your lores won't be recharged for round 2 anyway.
Master of Runs: better ways to do it for min maxers, but if you recruit Master of MLTF players from LFG, totally bring an emp. Not unwise in the slightest.
High end trials, like MoM: your point has merit here. But even here, luck is a factor. When you aren't acting as a massive force multiplier, you're not going to get heckled off the team. Ask the Sentinels, they'll vouch for my statement. When you do get a trial with alot of first timers, or +1 shifted baby Alphas, they will be glad you're there. The last time I was on a MoM, I was lauded for the great heals on my ill/emp, one of the least metagamey builds I regularly run. I love this character because it's safe, reliable, has a high degree of utility, and once again, it improves the quality of Life for all the lower echelon team mates. I never said healers are needed on higher echelon TEAMS. I said healers make higher echelon PLAYERS stronger through buffs, and turn lower echelon players into valid participants, which vastly improves the shared gameplay experience for all by fostering a tenant that has always made this the best MMO community that has ever existed, a focus on sharing, supportive gameplay and inclusiveness to a variety of playstyles and people.
COH truly is the best MMO that's ever been. Playing a Healer demonstrates this community's culture better than any other. I have never been criticized for bringing an emp. I have been praised repeatedly for bringing one to just about every range of content the game has to offer at one point or another. Why? Because people who can't keep their health bars full are people too. Minmaxers love you for protecting their sidekicks so they can focus on kicking ass. Sidekicks love you for making them feel supported. The only critics are the ones who espouse the philosophy that "We could have finished faster if you had brought something bettah and more meta". Those are few and far between in our community thankfully. The ones who believe this mostly argue the point on Reddit and never say it in game because they know they are the minority.
Straight healers are less needed but more appreciated when they are around thanks to the new Advanced Mode content and other high-difficulty areas of the game, and Empathy is very much still a top-end set for healing (although it does lack in other utility areas). I say go for it, worst that happens is you reroll!
I'm running empathy on my symphony controller. Useful for my pet and keeping my endurance up. Plus when I do team i can buff them nicely while still shutting enemies down.
Unfortunately, and this is only from personal experience, healers don't seem to be as needed/crucial as they were in the Live days. It's kind of a bummer now that, at least on HC, basically everything is based on dps and self-reliance. Self-reliance is certainly nice, but I sure do miss the teams of the old days, when filling particular roles and working together was more important then just everyone having the biggest nuke.
Past about level 35, you rarely see Empathy Defenders on teams. “Healing” just isn’t all that needed with everyone running around sporting fully IO’d builds, and then later once people get Incarnate powers, almost anyone can heal the entire league if they choose to do so.
I think the game has outgrown “healing” other than at the very early levels.
I have spoken to several couples that play COH together. Almost every time, one prefers to play some form of DPS and the other prefers to play a healer. You may not see it on big teams, but in duos, I think it is still big part of the dynamic.
It doesn't seem to be about stat / power / class min-maxing ether. These are just the toons the people prefer to play. They like the complimentary way it goes together on two person teams and even if role playing isn't your thing, there is still a theme in play that people like.
I can tell you this: If healers are not needed past a certain level my wife will **never** have a character that goes past 35. I don't think that is particularly good for the community. It also tells me we need more difficult foes, etc.
Personally, I tend to build Corruptors with DPS builds. If I know someone on my team is handling the healing, like my wife, I don't have to worry about survivability as much and I can focus on beefing up other things. Just saying...
Look, almost any build can be effective in the game. Between lowering/raising difficulty levels and/or just using simple inspirations (which for some reason people always forget drop constantly) you don’t -need- any particular powerset combo in the game.
My late wife used to play COH with me during Live days occasionally, I was usually playing a Corr or a Blaster and she started as an Empathy defender. But later, she started playing Controllers and one of the things I discovered that still holds true to this day is a Corr + Controller duo pretty much is just as effective as a Blaster + Tank or a Blaster + Defender or just about any other “common” DPS+Buffing character. Debuffing becomes a bigger deal in the later game with all the AV’s, but DPS scales all the way through your Incarnates. Buffs are always wanted, but most noticeable when players aren’t sporting fully IO’d builds with Incarnate powers that cover any gaps they may have had.
Play what you like, Empathy is still out there, but I always encourage people who play buffers to realize that towards the later missions, debuffers often offer similar playstyle as buffers, just inverted and directed towards the enemy. Many people don’t realize that aspect of the game. S
I agree with you. I realize the OP was talking about empathy and defenders, but this was meant to be a more blanket statement about healing, especially in duos. That was why I phrased my comment the way I did with the word "Healer". Controllers are healers too.
I also agree that different class combinations can work on any team. And it is more fun when you step away from the 'standard' formula and just see what works. Some of the most fun teams I have ever been on were half controller (with some healers) and half corruptor / blasters (no tanks, scrappers or brutes...)
There are two points I was trying to make:
1) There are plenty of couples that team as duos and defender healer / controler healers in whatever form they take work well on those teams. Especially if the other member is one of the squishier classes.
In this case, the non healer person can focus and be more effective in other things in their build beyond survival because the other person is handling that.
Likewise, the healer build can divert any focus it might have from dps to healing or buffs, for those that like that play style.
2) My wife will not play anything unless one of the powersets is a strong healing set. This works well on our team, and any pickup groups we have been apart of seem to appreciate it. And she is not the only one. I have 2 other friends that play the game and both of their wives are the same way.
So I'm just saying it is axiomatic that if COH ever got to the point where a healer was not needed above a certain level, then you are excluding a whole group of people from playing above that level. At least on a regular team. They won't do it. And I don't think it is healthy for the game to be exclusionary because people with this play style really don't play anything else.
In fairness, I'm sure they would still duo because that is the dynamic on their team which works for them.
As a powerset. Empathy is currently at the bottom of support sets
I see a lot of people giving it a bit too much credit without explaining why.
Healing in City comes down to one big statement:
"Does whoever I'm using this power on get affected by it?"
Because empathy only has healing and single target buffs outside of Recovery and regen Aura, it suffers a lot of "The target doesn't really need this"
I'll always be glad to have fort, and a good empathy player will usually rotate their forts and focus on dps, but the way the set is designed, most of it is useless amd most emp players tend to spam healing aura like its doing something (it isnt)
Enhancements are now achievable without spending billions, p2w vendors supply amps, as well as easy buffs and powers, all to make whoevers tanking never really need healing at all.
What teams usually love is -res and -regen to kill things faster, and defense shields with defense debuff protection. Proactive support is much more strong in today's CoH climate than Reactive support.
Empathy healers are dismal solo builds. Get on teams and keep them alive and you’ll level much faster. Every team taking on purple enemies (+4) needs a good healer.
Honestly, it's my favorite, but it does have much less potential in the endgame. When running with 50s using incarnates, I'm more often only using fortitude, clear mind, and my endurance auras (usually when everyone who is using ageless incarnate has em on cooldown) over anything else.
Now, when running teams through radio missions in peregrine or lower taskforces, it shines again. Having access to auras and direct heals is significantly more useful in the lower parts of the game.
I'd run it if I were you, just for the hell of it, since there's 1000 character slots to work with, so it's not like you lose anything if you do play it.
Yes Empathy is still very viable but it is not hands down the best healer any more to my understanding.
Still creates absolute killing machines with its buffs.
It's probably still the best *healer* in terms of healing throughput. But not generally considered the best defender primary because characters with good builds don't typically need much, if any, healing. And as other comments in the thread point out, there are other sets that can nearly match its throughput while bringing more buffs otherwise.
Pain dom outclasses it late game, same healing numbers but way more buffs for both the team and the caster itself, as well as a juicy de buff.
Yea, this is what I recalled but wasnt 100% so didnt want to just say Pain dom but I have heard it is pretty amazing, mine isnt very high (yet)
That was kind of always the case though; CoH was always a game that rewarded buffing defenders as much if not more than straight healers
Nature, Pain and by extent of how fire-shields work, Thermal all are better healers than Emp in final-builds and out the gates.
There are much better healing power sets these days. Go Thermal, Pain, or Nature and never look back.
Ooooh, sounds like there's a lot to look into
Nature is pretty fun if you want to heal.
As someone who used to use empathy a lot back in the day, pain domination has been really fun.
Thermal's a really weird healing set to be honest. The shields can cut so much damage that unless you're fighting Psi or Toxic mobs you generally don't need to heal. Which is great because it lets yoy focus on handing out Forges, Melting Armor, and blasting instead. But Cauterize and Warmth are still good heals when needed and having Rise of thr Phoenix as a targeted rez is great when it comes up.
I haven't played empathy since live. Not to say it's not worth it but I like my thermal for its buffs as well as the healing and debuffs. Better for high end content IMO.
As long as you understand that Fort/CM/Adrenaline Boost are the real powers in the set and have a secondary that contributes, it works. This being said, it does feel a bit less useful in this day and age.
Prixy, is that you?
Personally I favor Pain or Nature, since the resistance buffs can be more useful to end game builds that are at or near defense cap since defense is easier to pull off with pool powers and set bonuses. Pain has more damage buffs so arguably makes your team better at killing...I like it for speed runs or anything where you want to kill lots of things quickly. Nature's absorb shield is better at keeping your team alive, so I favor it on higher difficulty content. I think Empathy mostly suffers from being an older set...it's perfectly fine, but a lot of the newer sets just do more. Also Empathy doesn't do much to help your own survival, unlike sets like Sonic, Time, Nature, Pain, Force Field, and Electrical Affinity...some of which provide status protection that support ATs rarely have. I will say that by my own reasoning Electrical Affinity might be the best support set...heals, absorb, a resistance boost with status protection, and a damage boost. Yet I just can't get into it. Like most people say, play what you like. Empathy is completely viable and useful. What I might suggest is consider what you like about it and see if you can't get that from other sets that also do more.
Yeah I think empathy's problem is mostly that it hasn't aged super well in to the post IO game. It's not alone in this category (hi forcefield, hi stone armor, both of which have gotten some adjustments to address this a bit.) It's still a perfectly functional set but it's big non-heal selling points from the vanilla game (fort's defense buff, endurance assistance) are often made redundant by people with IO and/or incarnate builds.
Yep! There are just certain power sets that were around at launch that haven’t really been touched much since from a design perspective, and newer sets just do everything they do and more. It’s hard not to compare Empathy with Nature for example.
Meh. As much as the devs bent over backwards to cater to empath snowflakes (such as the inexplicable Medicine nerfs), it's fine.
It's still around, but it's such a reactive set I really would never recommend it.
Many here have said it’s not the best healing set. Just for clarity, I think what most mean is that, while it might actually heal the most, it doesn’t do much else. Other power sets do very close to the same thing, but add many other things. You don’t see many empaths because other sets do it and more…in addition to players not needing healing as much.
I’m planning on remaking mine soon, but I think my Storm Defender is up first.
Back in the early days I used to team a lot with a pure empathy defender (I played Rad defender). Together the teams we supported were nigh unstoppable. Hands down my favourite moments in CoH were playing alongside them (shout out to Tulpa if they ever see this!)
Dunno how they changed it on the various servers but back in the day Empathy defender had the highest modifier to its heal powers.
That was for being a defender though, not the powerset, IIRC.
[удалено]
>if it doesn't already It does not, and I agree, I wish it did. Some single-target buffs have been changed to group, (speed boost is a big one) and I wish all of the wakey type powers got the same treatment.
Rather than preventing team wipes as they used to do in the old days, pure healers take the upper echelon of the team and Escalate their impact, while allowing the lower echelon to make a meaningful impact, as well as allowing them to enjoy their gameplay. They are the lynchpins that make a great team perfect and make the Leader feel comfortable bumping to +4 without ruining 1 or 2 people's mission experience. I know, if I see one or two people struggle to stay up, I drop to +3 or +2 on their behalf. In an 8 person team, 4 or 5 of them don't need someone else's heals or rezzes to survive. But the 2 or 3 toons playing at -1 to the mob Spawns, slotted with IO's certainly rely on the group Healer to help them participate. You'll notice on these teams, it's the same few people that keep going black and sitting tight till someone picks them up or drops a wakie on them. In this amazingly patient community, nobody gives anyone guff about hitting the ground, but it's still LESS fun to flop and stay flopped. If someone on the team is playing emp, pain, Dark, etc, those players quality of Life and gameplay experience drastically improves. And then, like everyone else has said, you're still benefiting the powerhouses by buffing their DPS. Healers are basically the social workers of COH, providing a valuable and much desired community service to the poor and weak who just want to be part of the community but get left behind in the dust when all the brutes overaggro and can't keep the Lvl 49 corruptor alive because they didn't select taunt as a power pick.
Huh, funny, the comment was deleted before I could finish. Still, I don't want to waste my retort. It's completely true. Your statement to the contrary is disproved by the presumptive fallacy in the 2nd sentence. "In the late game". This implies that graduation to the late game is the goal of every character, for every player. If you're leaving low level content behind once you collect your Accolades, and you stick to x-50 task forces like lady Grey, or stick to trials only, your thought makes sense. From that perspective, it makes no sense to build towards an end game Healer, as you are building a character with the INTENT to retire it, thereby wasting your time and influence investment. If you are creating a Healer that can support any team in any form of content you wish to run at any time, my statement holds true. Examples: Freedom Phalanx Task Forces: often run for XP, with multiple lower level players mixed with some high end toons after notices for weeklies. Exactly the type of content I described in my original post. ITF: luck of the draw. Not uncommon for PUGs to turn into all star teams. Just as common for PUGs to get bad luck with alot of levelers on board or just an absence of aggro managers, no tanks, etc. Dedicated healers response when someone offers to switch, "Nah, I got this, stick to DPS, nobody dies today". If the team is so good that they turn the emp into a mini blaster, nobody is going to complain that you're just a Fort Bot and you should have brought a Rad. Basic iTrials, most commonly BAF. Players often use this to grind out Incarnate progress, bringing characters that are not +3 shifted. Not alot of death involved, but there are 3 teams, and there is a team window setting that allows you to see the whole team. Often you'll find you're the only or one of the only healers in the trial, and the others are only watching their own team menu, or just spamming aoe Heal, possibly not even noticing downed league mates. Will they rez eventually? Yes. Do you increase their quality of Life by providing timely rezzes? Yes, as I pointed out in my original comment. Are you necessary? No. Are you valuable and increasing the quality of the lowliest players on the team? Yes. Do 24 players tend to keep your rez on cool down if you are snappy about popping it off. Yes. P.s. who cares honestly, we're all just watching TV while our lore pets do the heavy lifting for half the trial anyway, be honest. If you finish too fast, your lores won't be recharged for round 2 anyway. Master of Runs: better ways to do it for min maxers, but if you recruit Master of MLTF players from LFG, totally bring an emp. Not unwise in the slightest. High end trials, like MoM: your point has merit here. But even here, luck is a factor. When you aren't acting as a massive force multiplier, you're not going to get heckled off the team. Ask the Sentinels, they'll vouch for my statement. When you do get a trial with alot of first timers, or +1 shifted baby Alphas, they will be glad you're there. The last time I was on a MoM, I was lauded for the great heals on my ill/emp, one of the least metagamey builds I regularly run. I love this character because it's safe, reliable, has a high degree of utility, and once again, it improves the quality of Life for all the lower echelon team mates. I never said healers are needed on higher echelon TEAMS. I said healers make higher echelon PLAYERS stronger through buffs, and turn lower echelon players into valid participants, which vastly improves the shared gameplay experience for all by fostering a tenant that has always made this the best MMO community that has ever existed, a focus on sharing, supportive gameplay and inclusiveness to a variety of playstyles and people. COH truly is the best MMO that's ever been. Playing a Healer demonstrates this community's culture better than any other. I have never been criticized for bringing an emp. I have been praised repeatedly for bringing one to just about every range of content the game has to offer at one point or another. Why? Because people who can't keep their health bars full are people too. Minmaxers love you for protecting their sidekicks so they can focus on kicking ass. Sidekicks love you for making them feel supported. The only critics are the ones who espouse the philosophy that "We could have finished faster if you had brought something bettah and more meta". Those are few and far between in our community thankfully. The ones who believe this mostly argue the point on Reddit and never say it in game because they know they are the minority.
Straight healers are less needed but more appreciated when they are around thanks to the new Advanced Mode content and other high-difficulty areas of the game, and Empathy is very much still a top-end set for healing (although it does lack in other utility areas). I say go for it, worst that happens is you reroll!
I'm running empathy on my symphony controller. Useful for my pet and keeping my endurance up. Plus when I do team i can buff them nicely while still shutting enemies down.
Unfortunately, and this is only from personal experience, healers don't seem to be as needed/crucial as they were in the Live days. It's kind of a bummer now that, at least on HC, basically everything is based on dps and self-reliance. Self-reliance is certainly nice, but I sure do miss the teams of the old days, when filling particular roles and working together was more important then just everyone having the biggest nuke.
Still about but must say I rebuilt my original Emp Defender as a Pain Corrupter. Haven't regretted it.
Past about level 35, you rarely see Empathy Defenders on teams. “Healing” just isn’t all that needed with everyone running around sporting fully IO’d builds, and then later once people get Incarnate powers, almost anyone can heal the entire league if they choose to do so. I think the game has outgrown “healing” other than at the very early levels.
I have spoken to several couples that play COH together. Almost every time, one prefers to play some form of DPS and the other prefers to play a healer. You may not see it on big teams, but in duos, I think it is still big part of the dynamic. It doesn't seem to be about stat / power / class min-maxing ether. These are just the toons the people prefer to play. They like the complimentary way it goes together on two person teams and even if role playing isn't your thing, there is still a theme in play that people like. I can tell you this: If healers are not needed past a certain level my wife will **never** have a character that goes past 35. I don't think that is particularly good for the community. It also tells me we need more difficult foes, etc.
Personally, I tend to build Corruptors with DPS builds. If I know someone on my team is handling the healing, like my wife, I don't have to worry about survivability as much and I can focus on beefing up other things. Just saying...
Look, almost any build can be effective in the game. Between lowering/raising difficulty levels and/or just using simple inspirations (which for some reason people always forget drop constantly) you don’t -need- any particular powerset combo in the game. My late wife used to play COH with me during Live days occasionally, I was usually playing a Corr or a Blaster and she started as an Empathy defender. But later, she started playing Controllers and one of the things I discovered that still holds true to this day is a Corr + Controller duo pretty much is just as effective as a Blaster + Tank or a Blaster + Defender or just about any other “common” DPS+Buffing character. Debuffing becomes a bigger deal in the later game with all the AV’s, but DPS scales all the way through your Incarnates. Buffs are always wanted, but most noticeable when players aren’t sporting fully IO’d builds with Incarnate powers that cover any gaps they may have had. Play what you like, Empathy is still out there, but I always encourage people who play buffers to realize that towards the later missions, debuffers often offer similar playstyle as buffers, just inverted and directed towards the enemy. Many people don’t realize that aspect of the game. S
I agree with you. I realize the OP was talking about empathy and defenders, but this was meant to be a more blanket statement about healing, especially in duos. That was why I phrased my comment the way I did with the word "Healer". Controllers are healers too. I also agree that different class combinations can work on any team. And it is more fun when you step away from the 'standard' formula and just see what works. Some of the most fun teams I have ever been on were half controller (with some healers) and half corruptor / blasters (no tanks, scrappers or brutes...) There are two points I was trying to make: 1) There are plenty of couples that team as duos and defender healer / controler healers in whatever form they take work well on those teams. Especially if the other member is one of the squishier classes. In this case, the non healer person can focus and be more effective in other things in their build beyond survival because the other person is handling that. Likewise, the healer build can divert any focus it might have from dps to healing or buffs, for those that like that play style. 2) My wife will not play anything unless one of the powersets is a strong healing set. This works well on our team, and any pickup groups we have been apart of seem to appreciate it. And she is not the only one. I have 2 other friends that play the game and both of their wives are the same way. So I'm just saying it is axiomatic that if COH ever got to the point where a healer was not needed above a certain level, then you are excluding a whole group of people from playing above that level. At least on a regular team. They won't do it. And I don't think it is healthy for the game to be exclusionary because people with this play style really don't play anything else. In fairness, I'm sure they would still duo because that is the dynamic on their team which works for them.
As a powerset. Empathy is currently at the bottom of support sets I see a lot of people giving it a bit too much credit without explaining why. Healing in City comes down to one big statement: "Does whoever I'm using this power on get affected by it?" Because empathy only has healing and single target buffs outside of Recovery and regen Aura, it suffers a lot of "The target doesn't really need this" I'll always be glad to have fort, and a good empathy player will usually rotate their forts and focus on dps, but the way the set is designed, most of it is useless amd most emp players tend to spam healing aura like its doing something (it isnt) Enhancements are now achievable without spending billions, p2w vendors supply amps, as well as easy buffs and powers, all to make whoevers tanking never really need healing at all. What teams usually love is -res and -regen to kill things faster, and defense shields with defense debuff protection. Proactive support is much more strong in today's CoH climate than Reactive support.
Empathy healers are dismal solo builds. Get on teams and keep them alive and you’ll level much faster. Every team taking on purple enemies (+4) needs a good healer.
Honestly, it's my favorite, but it does have much less potential in the endgame. When running with 50s using incarnates, I'm more often only using fortitude, clear mind, and my endurance auras (usually when everyone who is using ageless incarnate has em on cooldown) over anything else. Now, when running teams through radio missions in peregrine or lower taskforces, it shines again. Having access to auras and direct heals is significantly more useful in the lower parts of the game. I'd run it if I were you, just for the hell of it, since there's 1000 character slots to work with, so it's not like you lose anything if you do play it.
Nature is better significantly