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Honestly do you really think a trick arrow defender is going to be saving more people from the carnies, cot, arachnos, and devouring earth mobs than an empath or thermals will? Empathy/Thermals is the catch all net when it comes to these given situations, nothing short of getting 1 shotted is going to kill you with these powersets if that healer is doing their job.
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I think you totally fail to get the point. There are other options. You may have to adjust your playstyle to take advantage of them. That includes pulling sometimes to diminish spawns to a more manageable size, carrying break frees, having a pet take an alpha strike, or whatever. As the original poster said, it's the Diablo2 paradigm: mitigate damage in whatever way you can. You remind me of a tank I played with recently when I was on my Grav controller. We did the Psychic Clockwork King mission twice and both times he insisted on taking the Alpha and died, despite me saying I could spawn my pet on the king to take it. (I tried soloing the PCK actually; I didn't succeed but my pet tanked him for 3 minutes.)
I think this is a great commentary post. I think discussion about this outdated paradigm needs to happen. Here's one of my experiences.
During the test of Recluse's Victory I got to build a 40th level version of my Illusion Controller. My Illusion/Empathy controller. Now, the real version of that character is someone I play with friends and I do split myself 50/50 between the power sets. However, if I weren't, I'd really like to focus on Illusion. So, for Recluse's Victory testing, I built a version which did that and only took Empathy powers that I could apply to myself or my several pets and thus skipped 2 of the 3 heals and the rez power. I ended up in a small group of 4 or 5. I buffed normally, except that single-target buffs went onto my Phantasm first, and then whoever I could get them onto. Under the cloak of Superior Invis, I ran behind the tank and scrapper and used my heal aura on them some as well, but not lots as they were wading through area attacks.
Then someone realized I didn't have direct target heals, or the rez. This person then started foaming at the mouth and practically screaming about it. It was, in fact, another defender if I remember correctly, an Offender at that. "You don't have rez? HOW CAN YOU CALL YOURSELF AN EMPATH!?!" My answer was, "I don't; I'm an Illusion Controller. I can empathically buff my pets, and sometimes the team as well. My priority is to Blind or Deceive that lieutanant so he's not hitting you in the first place."
Nobody else on the team had a problem with my build. They got all the buff auras. But this one person just kept going off like a crazy person. And that attitude is a problem for the game.
Fire_Brick:
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You have no idea how relieved I am to hear I'm not the only one who made a screensaver (for work, of course) out of their demotivational poster series!
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Erm...do your co-workers give you funny looks too?
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My despair.com screensaver, desktop, and poster are the LEAST of the things I get funny looks from my coworkers about!
Erydanus:
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I think you totally fail to get the point. There are other options. You may have to adjust your playstyle to take advantage of them. That includes pulling sometimes to diminish spawns to a more manageable size, carrying break frees, having a pet take an alpha strike, or whatever. As the original poster said, it's the Diablo2 paradigm: mitigate damage in whatever way you can.
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Hear, hear!
Erydanus:
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You remind me of a tank I played with recently when I was on my Grav controller. We did the Psychic Clockwork King mission twice and both times he insisted on taking the Alpha and died, despite me saying I could spawn my pet on the king to take it.
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Tell me he was at LEAST a stone tanker. Please tell me that. Any other tanker trying to tank a psionic damage AV is just... idiotic.
Erydanus:
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(I tried soloing the PCK actually; I didn't succeed but my pet tanked him for 3 minutes.)
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Singularities are awesome, no?
I've been playing COH for two weeks now. I started with my husband who was an Everquest/WOW player. He is a natural leader and he always starts his own team. At first, he was looking for healers, too. He is a scrapper/regen, and now we both know that you look for a DEFENDER for your team, and they will keep you out of trouble. Didn't take that long to learn.
The other day we did a mission with a force field defender. 7 people on an invincible - half the mobs were red to me, the rest half orange/half purple. We went through and nobody died - and we only healed a couple times.
I have a fire/rad controller and I can heal a bit but now that I played the game for a while, I really only use it when I am hurting (usually if hte tank doesn't draw the aggro). If I keep the mobs immobilized/debuffed/held, and AM everybody, we rarely get hurt.
One point people are forgetting to discuss here is leadership. I am very lucky because my husband plays a good leader and we almost always get our own team to do missions - so he sets the style of play. I'd say 3/4 of our teams are excellent. We almost always have a couple people who do stupid stuff - run ahead and pull 4 mobs with 6 purple bosses in them - but they usually get it after a couple times being told what to do.
If you don't like the RUHEALER people - start your own team. I got a new character and after being on a team that was a total disaster, I just started mine. The first battle sucked - we split up and got hammered - I told them to stick together and just fight one group at a time. That is all they needed. We did the mission just fine with noobs.
So I guess my 2 cents are:
1. You don't need heal if you have good defenders and controllers, but it is nice to have a backup heal for emergencies.
2. Leadership makes the biggest difference in a team - if you don't like the team leaders, start your own team.
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Recently, my Earth/Storm controller duo'ed with a lv 20 scrapper, in Talos.
He jumped into a spawn of four +4 mobs. With all my controls and debuffs, his health stayed in the green for the entire battle. I never once used my heal, O2 boost. Surprised that he survived the encounter, he turned to me and said, "nice healz."
Go figure.
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Saw this today while playing my archery blaster, we added a rad defender to the team and our success went way up. he was a good buffer debuffer, keeping RI and EF on the right mobs and making sure we got AM. Mission ends and 3 people chime in with 'nice heals'. I corrected them but i dont think it stuck.
As a refugee from wow i was briefly guilty of ruhealeritis, it was when i solod after a particular mission that it occured to me i was missing something. I went after the exact same mobs that the mission had held and got my backside handed to me in a few seconds. Now i knew that in the mission i had been hitting them and they had been hitting me, but i was doing way more and they were doing way less. Last time i ever [censored] about not having some 'pure' healer along because the thought dawned on me that buffs and debuffs in this game were actually substantial, unlikes WoW's which are so weak they just dont matter (like scorpid sting.)
It was at this point i respecced my Necro/Dark MM and actually added debuffs lol. Can you believe i got to lvl 20 something with no tar patch....?
touche
Wavicle, Energy/Energy Blaster, dinged 50 in Issue 4, summer of 2005.
@Wavicle, mostly on the Justice server.
Empathy is a set that will work well pretty much regardless of the rest of the team's makeup. However, it doesn't actually do that much in terms of speeding up the rate of defeating of mobs. Instead it offers a safety net of Endurance, Defense, Tohit Buffs, Mez Protection, Regeneration and Heals.
Trick Arrow, Kinetics, Storm Summoning, these sets actually help make battles faster. They boost team damage and limit incoming damage.
Trick Arrow, Kinetics, some of the other sets, really benefit from a slightly more balanced team, with a (dare I say it) Tanker who knows to go in first and grab aggro.
My Stone Tanker and my friends Trick Arrow Defender are the core of a great team for fighting Carnies, or just about anything else for that matter.
And although you would never know it (cause no one ever seems to play it) Sonic Resonance is the best set in the game for Mez Protection buffs, as it is the only set that gets both an aoe mez resist toggle AND a single target buff.
Wavicle, Energy/Energy Blaster, dinged 50 in Issue 4, summer of 2005.
@Wavicle, mostly on the Justice server.
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The problem with healing is that a team can take on challenges with it that they never could without. So "healers" are specifically sought out, and Defenders/Corruptors etc. of all types are asked if they can heal (becuase of this expectation). It is not necessarily the result of having come from a different game.
Yes, non-heal buffs help, but healing trumps them because it's the only buff that prevents faceplants. Non-heal buffs delay faceplants, and make them less likely overall, but healing outright does away with them for the most part. This is at the heart of the reason why "healers" are specifically sought out.
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Uh...this isn't right.
Non-heal buffs and debuffs absolutely prevent faceplants. Generally, they are BETTER than healing, provably so. They certainly allow you to take on bigger fish better than healing does -- although they're comparable for normal situations.
Example: Archvillain does 2500 damage beyond tanker's defense. Exceeds tanker's life in one shot. instantly follows up with one point of DOT to overcome stupid one-shot rule.
Healer says: Too bad you died. Couldn't heal you because the damage was too big.
Forcefielder says: *deflected*
Dark Defender says: Too bad he missed from the debuffs, I was hoping to show that my debuffs halved his damage output.
Ice/Storm Controller says: Wel, he missed this time due to Hurricane...watch out in ten minutes, he'll get to shoot again.
An argument can be made that healing rises up to reach the level of effectiveness of buffing/debuffing. I don't buy it, but it could be made. But claims that healing, or any other reactive repair, is significantly better than preemptive mitigation, show the kind of misunderstanding that prompted The Mighty Scourge to write this kind of guide.
Sailboat
If we are to die, let us die like men. -- Patrick Cleburne
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The rule is that they must be loved. --Jayne Fynes-Clinton, Death of an Abandoned Dog
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Your faq is good but it is lacking something. I know alot of you will not want to hear this but you do need to put in the faq the situations where having a healer is ok. Alot of the Empathy/Thermals hate I have been seeing is that alot of people will not give credit where credit is due when it comes to those powersets. There are just as many situations where those 2 powersets will out do the others. And there are a few situations where based on your team make up those debuffing powersets would actually slow your team down quite a bit.
For example, this past weekend I joined a team with a rad corrupter, this team had 3 electric melee brutes. I had asked the corrupter to invite another corrupters that can buff or heal but he said no, that the group was fine with just his powers. I had to explain to him that electric melee's single target damage is very very anemic when it compares to the other brutes and having 3 of us would make it even more slow. He still did not want to add another corrupter. After about 2 missions this leader left and someone else got the star and invited another corrupter to replace this guy. It was like night and day. By having a thermal corrupter to heal and buff, I was able to herd up some enemies which allowed all 3 electric melee brutes to use alot of aoe smash. We went thru missions about 4 times as fast. Had we had just rad or dark there is no way we could have done as well on clearing speed. If we had both thermals and rad or dark it would have helped on clearing speed much more.
Lastly I want to say this, you should be allowed to ask the powerset prior to the invite, especially if it is the last spot on a team. If I am going up against some mez heavy mobs a dark defender is not going to do us much good unless it is like fear or something. In these cases all the buffs/debuffs in the world is not going to save the team when everyone is perma held. So why waste your time and theirs by letting them on the team anyways? Sure their are sonic players with clarity but look how rare it is to see someone with that powerset. My post is not to take away from what the non-healing powersets can do but to help curve some of the empath/thermal hate that is out there where people dont give them the credit they deserve.
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It sounds like you're talking about buffs after all. You say "In these cases all the buffs/debuffs in the world is not going to save the team when everyone is perma held. " But Clear Mind is a buff, and it prevents that.
You're right that Empathy and Thermal in total are useful. I think the OP is aimed at the "healing" and "healer" aspects being inordinately worshipped...as opposed to just dissing Empaths. An Empath who puts Fort and Clear Mind on me isn't necessarily performing as a "healer".
Sailboat
If we are to die, let us die like men. -- Patrick Cleburne
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The rule is that they must be loved. --Jayne Fynes-Clinton, Death of an Abandoned Dog
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Tell me he was at LEAST a stone tanker. Please tell me that. Any other tanker trying to tank a psionic damage AV is just... idiotic.
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I believe he was invulnerability. He was a good tanker in other missions I had run with him, he apparently just had his hands over his ears when I suggested my pet take the alpha. Twice. On two separate occasions. Sometimes people will just not listen.
Now, to the person above who commented that some of this is a "leadership" issue, I do agree in part. A good leader is always going to maximize the team. The thing is, I think the original poster's goal was to just get at the very route of a perceptual/assumption problem and bring it to light. That's not so much of a leadership issue as a "good player knowledge" issue. It really is a truism that a lot of people get stuck in the Hollows and learn some bad play techniques. I personally think that Frostfire should be a 2 hour timed mission just so that it can't be farmed as extensively as it is.
You pretty much defeated your own point there. Virtually every defender set OTHER than Empathy has tools for A) Crowd control and B)Speeding up the defeat of mobs. In fact Empathy is the LEAST effective set for those two things. So your own examples of what works better than healing is something defenders BESIDES Empaths have in spades.
Wavicle, Energy/Energy Blaster, dinged 50 in Issue 4, summer of 2005.
@Wavicle, mostly on the Justice server.
Adr boost and Fort help a fair amount in speeding up foe defeat. Throwing them on something like a broadsword scrapper makes bosses go down much quicker. Throwing them on a fire blaster or spines scrapper makes the minions go down much faster.
sure, but compare them to say...Fulcrum Shift and Speed Boost...or Oil Slick and Disruption Arrow...
Wavicle, Energy/Energy Blaster, dinged 50 in Issue 4, summer of 2005.
@Wavicle, mostly on the Justice server.
I noticed that any noob can heal, on any noob team. Healers will actually increase the team's survival rate even if the team is completly borked with blasters aggroing first, controllers blasting instead of holding, tanks acting like scrappers, and scrappers running aroung in the mission collecting glowies. Even in this terrible, aweful, horrible, completely noobish situation, healers are helpful.
But wait... defubbers and buffers on the other hand, if playing in a borked team like above, will be almost useless. Their AOE debuffs typically require that the baddies be grouped up tightly so that they AOE radius will affect them all. That takes teamwork to accomplish.
There's the rub.
Otherwise, I also really, REALLY like debuffer defenders. I think there are some cases where a healer is more useful on a team, but then the same is true of debuffers.
Level 50s:
BlackSpectre, Dark Defender (Guardian)
Thorin, Invul/Axe Tank (Justice)
Volcano Juice, Fire/Stone Tank
Professor ?, Mind/FF Controller
Stone Forge, Stone/Fire Tank
Sure, healing is good. That's one of the reasons why I play Kinetics. Transfusion is probably the strongest heal in the game. Kinetics also lets me spend the other 90% of the time buffing and debuffing.
Good players will not need contant healing under most circumstances. AV fights may be a different story, but even then Transfusions heal with -Regen component is still probably more usefull than any heal an Empath is capable of, in that situation.
Centinull
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Example: Archvillain does 2500 damage beyond tanker's defense. Exceeds tanker's life in one shot. instantly follows up with one point of DOT to overcome stupid one-shot rule.
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Just an FYI, 1-shot rule doesn't drop you to 1 health. It reduces you to 10% health. On some tanks that's still a lot of hitpoints.
I personally think Frost Fire should never have been made in the first place. The Hollows teaches some VERY bad behavior. If it were up to me A LOT of things would change about the Hollows.
COV doesn't have Empaths, Tanks, or the Hollows, yet people level just fine there. In fact I would dare say that starting villians learned and now understand more about buffs, debuffs, mitgating damage, the importance of immobs, holds, than the heros did when they frist started.
I'd like to see the knowledge about game design that the Devs used in building COVs early areas applied to COH.
Blazara Aura LVL 50 Fire/Psi Dom (with 125% recharge)
Flameboxer Aura LVL 50 SS/Fire Brute
Ice 'Em Aura LVL 50 Ice Tank
Darq Widow Fortune LVL 50 Fortunata (200% rech/Night Widow 192.5% rech)--thanks issue 19!
Right, but Kinetics mostly works the best when everyone is working together as a team. The tank grabbing agro, while anothe controller holding the stragglers in place, allows Kin to take full advantage of fulcrum shift. If everyone is not working together and the mobs and teammates are all scattered about, then fulcrum shift loses a lot of its effectiveness. Though this ALSO applies to empathy. In fact even more so.
Buffing and "healing" needs the team to be working well. IMHO, it doesn't matter if you have all the buffing/debuffing/healing in the world. Bad team tactics, people not paying attention, people thinking they are superman, etc., can still easily cause a team wipe, or one or two deaths.
Blazara Aura LVL 50 Fire/Psi Dom (with 125% recharge)
Flameboxer Aura LVL 50 SS/Fire Brute
Ice 'Em Aura LVL 50 Ice Tank
Darq Widow Fortune LVL 50 Fortunata (200% rech/Night Widow 192.5% rech)--thanks issue 19!
Heh, in the things like the LRSF, it might as well be one point of health. 
But that's off topic, as the LRSF is the exception to MANY of the games rules. 
Blazara Aura LVL 50 Fire/Psi Dom (with 125% recharge)
Flameboxer Aura LVL 50 SS/Fire Brute
Ice 'Em Aura LVL 50 Ice Tank
Darq Widow Fortune LVL 50 Fortunata (200% rech/Night Widow 192.5% rech)--thanks issue 19!
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. . . I just needed to say that my first toon ever was a kinetics defender, and IMO kin/ or /kin is by a small margin the most helpful defender set, followed by FF, followed by Empathy and Rad. This is from the perspective of someone who plays an ice/EM tanker most of the time.
. . .
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No love for Darks? 
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. . .
Dark Defender says: Too bad he missed from the debuffs, I was hoping to show that my debuffs halved his damage output.
. . .
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Don't forget, "But since they missed, I'll up your damage output by lowering damage resistance and slowing them (tarpatch), fear them (fearsome stare), or hold them (pentrifying gaze). IF that doesn't work, we'll spam a -regen, -acc debuff that, oh-by-the-way, has a nice heal (twilight grasp). And if you happen to fall, I can rez you and all our friends at once -- assuming I'm still standing (howling twilight)."
Sorry, I got carried away. Basically, I haven't teamed with a decent player running any type of defender that hasn't helped out the team greatly in one way or another.
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Right, but Kinetics mostly works the best when everyone is working together as a team. The tank grabbing agro, while anothe controller holding the stragglers in place, allows Kin to take full advantage of fulcrum shift. If everyone is not working together and the mobs and teammates are all scattered about, then fulcrum shift loses a lot of its effectiveness. Though this ALSO applies to empathy. In fact even more so.
Buffing and "healing" needs the team to be working well. IMHO, it doesn't matter if you have all the buffing/debuffing/healing in the world. Bad team tactics, people not paying attention, people thinking they are superman, etc., can still easily cause a team wipe, or one or two deaths.
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Umm..... I agree with you, but I was just trying to point out that Kinetics is superior to Empathy, with any team that doesn't play like chickens with their heads cut off.
Centinull
both have their place
kinetics can miss with many of their powers, they draw aggro to themselves pretty easily
even really smart teams can get ambushed by multiple spawns
as I like to say: Empathy is Insurance, Kinetics is Potential
Wavicle, Energy/Energy Blaster, dinged 50 in Issue 4, summer of 2005.
@Wavicle, mostly on the Justice server.
Heh, I love empathy. Granted, my empath's job is easier when there's a defensive defender on board as well, but I don't think empaths are inferior to other defenders in any way.
I remember a mission in my teen levels, playing on Unyielding... Tanker got wiped out when he stepped into the boss room... about 10-12 mobs, all orange/red/purple to us (Boss was purple, all LTs were red, minions were orange).
Tanker said "Don't come, the boss is here and he hits like a $%&@! I'll hosp it"
And I said "[censored], I'm coming."
Mobs were blocking the door, couldn't slip past with stealth, so I just rushed it, popped rez, fort, heal other, and hit my auto-healing-aura key and kept him up. He was smart enough to taunt immediately as he rose from the grave, and went to work... Our blaster started blasting, and we pulled it out without any death. I may have had to pop AP a couple of times, but it was no sweat in the end.
He was like, "Dude, you're the best healer I've ever seen!"
But honestly it was pretty easy. I don't understand how you can be a bad healer... It's an easy job.
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Obviously someone who's healing is doing nothing wrong.
[/ QUOTE ]If you have to spell that out something is wrong with this guide.
"I'm sooooooo sorry I fired off that Healing Aura Mr. Scrapper sir. I promise it won't ever happen again! *sniff*"
Bleah.
I hoped I had everything covered, but I guess to be fair I should address some points.
Rad_Hot is absolutely right. The best way to improve the experience for defenders is to start a team, invite some defs/controllers and then treat them like the valuable team members they are, regardless of their powerset. That includes empathy. Obviously you wouldn't tell a bad player they're doing well-that's beside the point.
However, what I find can be frustrating is that a team will disintegrate if people don't believe they have adequate support/damage. I've had some really fun all-def/troll teams, and people started flaking out because there wasn't enough blaster or scrapper dps. By the same token, balanced teams have fallen apart because of the perceived need for healers. Keep in mind, I'm not obstinant 24 hours a day--I do look for empaths when it seems like the team demands that we have one. But sometimes you can't find one, and the team disappears because they don't believe that the dark and rad can possibly keep them alive. This is frustrating for anybody.
I'm of the attitude that people are smart but life is complicated. You can be Einstein and still make silly little mistakes. In fact, Einstein sucked at math--did you know that? And why? Because math is hard. People who like math are psychotic and dangerous--they need to be kept away from the general population. I'm not claiming I'm smarter. I think absolutely, what I'm saying is that you can play this game and get the wrong impression about the importance of a single powerset as compared to others, and that the best way to deal with this is to say something so that people have a chance to change that impression.
And yes, I hate tankers, scrappers and blaster. In fact, I hate them *so* much, I think I have about 12 of each on various servers. I actually have a claws/regen scrapper called The Defender, which I consider to be poking fun at myself, and and nobody else.
Remember kids, there's no such thing as an antihealer. There are only people who want to have fun. And hug.
and also, there are plush sea turtles.
http://www.thisplaceisazoo.com/produ...le.html#J98101
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The entire poster series is my screen saver. My desktop? Sometimes the best solution to morale problems is just to fire all of the unhappy people. Those things are great!
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You have no idea how relieved I am to hear I'm not the only one who made a screensaver (for work, of course) out of their demotivational poster series!
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Erm...do your co-workers give you funny looks too?
Fire Brick - Fire/Stone Tanker
Plasma Brick - Fire/Fire Blaster
Dark Brick - Dark/Regen Scrapper
Electron Transfer - Kin/Elec Defender
Zeake Ferrari - PB
Mr. Rick - Inv/SS Tanker
Einsiedler - Bots/Traps MM
Ice Brick - Ice/EM Tanker
One man's paranoia is another man's engineered redundancy.