Silas

I love it when people post the long export of their builds.

Then, I love it even more when people quote it.

scrollscrollscrollscrollscrollscrollscrollscrollsc rollscroll

Empathy guide is in progress. ohhhhhh nooooooo

I've held a door alone without Lore pets on small team BAFs, so I think it should be doable. The pets are actually really good at the escapee phase because pets can target the enemies before players can. A lot of the time the minions are defeated before they're even visible.

With all the level shifts the Lts are only +1 which can be burned down pretty quickly with SW-Blind-APP Blast, even without Containment. Can always pop reds if we need to.

Bear in mind the spawns should scale down to two people. I'm not sure how many bosses would appear per ambush with two people, but illusion has the ST confuse for that. If we target the same boss, we can instantly confuse them.

Rad having two AoE -regen powers is definitely a great boon. I'm hoping that the extra -res in Cold can make up for it. As you say, a missed tick of regen could really throw a spanner into the works.

What I would be most concerned about is the pull to the tennis courts. PA couldn't be relied upon to do that effectively, the only way I can see would be just eat insp and try to pull them as fast as possible.

Anyhow, this is all theorycrafting. I think it should be doable with either two ill/colds or a SS/FA and an ill/rad.

Aneko, you are the big anime fan.

Empathy is one of the weakest primaries offensively. That you can solo an AV with it doesn't mean it isn't. Any other primary (except maybe FF) could have done the same thing, under the same conditions, but faster and probably safer.

I'm not trying to detract from your achievement, congratulations on the AV solo. I'm just saying it doesn't prove Empathy is not weak offensively. It is. It has no debuffs, it has nothing to boost your own damage, the only thing it contributes to your solo ability are the three auras which help keep your health and endurance bars up.

When you bring Lore pets into the equation, you get a very different result due to the buff-heavy nature of Empathy. However, that still doesn't mean Empathy is a strong set offensively. IMO It means Empathy has great synergy with summoned pets (or teammates).

Now, I'm not saying your Empath does little to no damage, that's clearly not the case. My point is that Empathy remains one of, if not the weakest Defender primaries offensively. I think all Defenders should be attacking, regardless of whether their damage could be seen as comparatively weak. Defender debuff mods on their attacks are great.

fogey*

WB all the same.

Are you sure? I'll need a doctors note and a confirmation signed by a public notary in triplicate.

Origin: Scourge.
Affiliations: Scourge.
Archetype: Scourge.
Powersets: Scourge.
Height: Scourge.
Weight: Scourge.
Eyes: Scourge.
Hair: Scourge.
Distinguishing Marks: Scourgescourgescourgescourge.
Brief Summary: Scourge.
Screen Shot: Scourge.

While I see the advantage of using HL after nuking because the +end will fill your bar, I'd still recommend using it beforehand.

Nukes are pretty certain to kill most if not all of the minions in a spawn, so you'll get a much smaller +rec buff. Additionally, the extra -res helps a lot on the lts and bosses.

Ah okay, that's what my confusion was. I thought it went both ways, (-res doesn't influence -dam, -res doesn't influence -dam) but its just that -dam doesn't influence -res.

Good to know.

Yeah. I don't think I can explain it very well since the whole thing doesn't make 100% sense to me either. I'm not sure if Arcana would be cool with me posting the PMs so I let them know about this thread. Hopefully they can shed a little light on the subject.

Paraphrasing from one of the PMs, -DMG can't increase the strength of -RES because mechanically there's no such thing as -RES. You don't really have resistances so much as strengths to a given damage type. -RES debuffs affect the targets strength and are affected by the targets resistances.