Steelhelm

Thank you all for your assitance and now my forum name is changed to my main character.

Well... because my account originally belonged to my father, and my Main toon's name is not WarMage. I don't even have that name in game anymore.

Would prefer my forum name to match, if possible, my actual main character.

Yep. Probably going Fire/Time myself once the set makes it to Live

Hehe, No I meant Brutes. They are insanely fun Melee pounders and only need a few more proliferations to have everything I could want (like Martial Arts)

And Dominators are the Ranged equivalent of Brutes to me. Tons of Ranged powers but more limited on their powerset choices.

So perhaps a better was to say it would be Dominators need ALOT more choices, while Brutes only need a few more to be complete.

I didn't comment on this because I completely agree with the idea.

I have even suggested this in the past, and been met with several attempts to rationalize the existing numbers from the community.

Having played a Sonic/Energy side by side with a FF/Energy, I can tell you that they are completely different animals when played solo. FF/Energy is "hands-down" the better solo-er, while Sonic/Energy is probably more "team-useful" because of how it helps "speed-up" kill rates.

Just taking these two sets into consideration, I would say Sonic needs more "survival" on the solo front, and Forcefields needs some form of debuff that would help in a team environment.

Your suggestions would help the set a great deal.

Another thread that discussed Sonic had another great idea of making Sonic Siphon either a Cone or a Targeted AoE (5 targets max). This would help bring Sonic up a little in the solo area. In that same thread, I suggested that Sonic Siphon have an additional debuff added to it (like -damage) to bring it up to par with other single target debuffs like "infrigidate" or "siphon power".

Yeah, I know how much people feel that is a sign of a bad Empath, but...
Healing Aura is pretty much all you have solo when the Auras are down, and it would be an alternative to lending status protection to the set.

Thanks Garent for the response,

Let me try harder in keeping with the spirit of your thread.

What if.... Healing Aura was able to be cast while under status effects.
The Empath could attempt to heal thru a bad situation on teams and (especially) while solo, without changing ANY of the other powers.

I have also felt that Healing Aura should have its cast time reduced somewhat. When you are in your teens and twenties, you can use this power to heal and lose as much health during the cast time as the amount that gets healed back.

The original Post was thoughtfull and put together well.
I hope that the developers consider these suggestions.

My experience with Empathy in particular makes me willing to throw in my 2 pennies on these suggestions.

The suggestion for resurrection is very interesting and I like it. However, it doesnt do very much to help strengthen Empathy in the solo game, nor improve (a.k.a reduce) the amount of time spent rotating buffs).

Clear Mind is definitely a case for improving Empathy. The argument regarding stacking status protection for certain AV fights has been used alot, and personally, this is more of an argument to change said AV rather than CM. What would be more helpful for Empathy is to grant the set the same benefit that FF and Sonic currently have, which is self status protection. Change Clear Mind to a PBAoE power which affects the caster and all within a certain radius. Bump the cost and recharge somewhat, and Empathy is fixed IMHO.

Although I like the idea of reducing the recharge on Recovery Aura, I would like to see BOTH auras dropped down to 360sec. If that meant that their effectiveness also was lowered, so be it. Being able to make them Perma SHOULD be possible. The original recharge when the game launched was shorter, and it was changed way back then because of how this could be abused with 6-slotted recharge and multiple empaths. So make it Not-Stackable with itself or other empaths, but allow it to be perma (at 200% recharge or more). But again, if these Auras were left alone and CM was made a PBAoE which affected the Empath, I would consider the set balanced for solo and team play.

***Another option suggested by someone else in the past would be the following***
Leave CM as is, reduce the recharge on both auras to 360sec, but make them both "unstackable", and finally, add certain status protections and/or debuff resistances to the auras, so that the caster and his allies get additional mezz protections. This would involve the least impact on the cottage rule.

Recovery Aura could grant protection from any of the following; Slow, Endurance Drain, Sleep, Hold, Confuse etc...
Regen Aura could grant any of the following; Stun, Knockback, Regen Debuff, Resist Debuff, Defense Debuff, Fear, etc...

Great work Garent and Diellan !