There's no problem with an Empath soloing but I think you'll find it very slow going, mainly due to the fact that the majority of your primary powers only affect your teammates. 
If yu're after a soloer Defender, try going with something like Storm, Radiation, Dark or Kinetics.
Thanks - I just wanted to do the "priest" role as I enjoy healing others - but wanted to solo a bit as well.
Keep in mind that while empathy seems like healing, in the high levels and with good teams you end up being a boring buffbot most the time, as there is no need for heals.
If you want to heal, but still do some some Soloing, you may want to build a controller with Emp as the secondary?
I think the heals are a bit less, but your controller powers will be very useful throughout the game.
One of my main toons at the moment (Harlequin Healer) is an Empathy/Psionic defender, only on lvl 13 so far but no real trouble soloing yet.
Like you, I enjoy the "healing hands" on approach so most of my powers are EMP ones with a few PSI offence powers. Even with this build I am soloing fine.
Looking ahead to future power choices I can see that the post about being a buff machine might be true. The higher end EMP powers do seem to be buffs not true heals. This being the case I will probably focus on more PSI/offensive powers for a while thus making her even MORE viable as a solo performer.
So, in answer to the original question, DEFINITELY YES!
I'll say yes... a challenge, but yes. I chose stealth at lvl 12 and then SS at lvl 14 = you can ghost a fair deal of missions. I picked Radiation Blast as secondary, so I could debuff their defense and make it easier for myself to hit them.
Goodluck with it... need advice/help i'm at /t @md,<message>
You will have trouble soloing compared to some other sets. Most of your primary affects only your teamate. And the secondary powers are a bit lacking in damage. But it's still doable, just slowly.
Yes you can. I do with my level 27 emp/energy occasionally.
Heal Aura, RA and erm... RA (Regen and recovery) all work for you. Choose a secondary well though, because you'll struggle with reduced damage.
Anyone can solo. Some just do it a lot slower than others. Empaths are ok so long as you have a decent secondary and can maintain your endurance and know when to run like hell.
"Pride is all well and good but a sausage is a sausage"
For Lent I gave up...
Hope
You nca solo with an empath defender, but you'll be damn SLOW (and bored probably, as being a healer if funny as you work in team). As someone else said, a troller would be maybe funnier to play solo, but still not fast at all.... I have an earth/empathy, and I get rarely killed when I solo, but killing mobds with just holds requires a lot of time 
I like soloing my emp, but then I love psi blast more than empathy, so it gives me a chance to pretend to be a blaster for a while 
It can take a while compared to my rad, but it's not any less fun. Having a toon you adore helps though!
soloing an emp makes you feel like the king of the world!
duoing with another empath makes you feel like some sort of strange god
I have an L45 Empath/Energy blaster and I regularly solo. I'd wholeheartedly agree with the 'perfectly possible but slow' school of thought. I've solo'd pretty much all my own missions on heroic all the way to 45, AV/EB's excluded of course, and my empath only had two or three attacks for most of her career.
Although I've found getting my empath onto teams generally pretty easy (until recently I'd often be fighting off invites with a stick almost as soon as I'd logged her on) it's actually been a case of having to solo her if I want to complete my own arcs as teams rarely if ever seem to want to do my missions. I've noticed that my empath is particularly prone to being invited by much higher level teams which doesn't help, though my other alts are also beginning to suffer from this problem. It seems like a lot more team leaders are now wise to the tactic of inviting quite a few players who are 3 or more levels lower than them so they don't have to waste time doing the lowbies missions. Can't even remember the last time I got a same or slightly lower level invite, even though my search comment specifically asks for them, AND says I'll decline higher level offers and won't SK. Best way I've found of turning this around is to try to actively invite a single lower level blaster to a duo to get my missions done faster.
I'd also agree that it can get pretty boring at high levels on competant teams as you become pretty much a 2-buff bot - apart from Fortitude and Adrenalin Boost (with maybe the very occasional Clear Mind) you can end up being pretty much deadweight IMO. Random PUG's are another matter - you can usually earn your keep big time in a poor team if you're even half capable, but really, I don't much enjoy only being useful purely because my team mates are... well, possibly sub-optimal.
From my experience (and I had a near guarantied team so was a fairly team centered build) it depends on your level and your build.
Low levels an empath solo's as well as anyone else, 20-40's depends very much on your build, and will probably mean dropping out single target buffs and heals in favour of your attacks.
40+, especially with stamina, you are a regen blaster. Stick your difficulty up to invincible and go for it.
This requires a fairly secondary heavy build (I have all bar 3 attacks, and the 3 I'm missing I consider not worth having ) and I couldn't handle invincible until 44, but that's because I play like a controller and needed telekineses before I could actually get enough mag to knock out bosses.
In all seriousness, I recommend finding a duo-partner if you don't want large teams. Inv tank+RA+RecA+Fort+AB is a scary thing to behold, and you can sit back and blast quite happily knowing you're not going to pull the aggro back onto yourself, and their health bar ain't dropping a bit, no matter what you're fighting.
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In all seriousness, I recommend finding a duo-partner if you don't want large teams. Inv tank+RA+RecA+Fort+AB is a scary thing to behold, and you can sit back and blast quite happily knowing you're not going to pull the aggro back onto yourself, and their health bar ain't dropping a bit, no matter what you're fighting.
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Indeed. I love duoing with tanks, particularly Invuls. Last time I had the pleasure was a while ago (big up to High Pain ) and we had a blast, tearing through the goons in his Invincible missions like a lightsaber through lard. Despite the fact that he was herding pretty hard, never has empath/blasting been so worry free - Invuls are just so easy to look after one-on-one, and I don't think I took a single direct hit in our session together - heck, I almost felt sorry for the bad guys.
I duo with an ice tank nearly all the time on my emp, my little pet Nezorf, and it has to be, at times, the most boring time I have in game! I just know nothing is going to go wrong, and we arent going to find anything a real challenge!
Empathy/Tank combo is godly!
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Empathy/Tank combo is godly!
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A few times I've had 'Can I join your team?' requests from empaths. One of these was when Golden Golem was soling in his late 30s-40s. I invited him to increase the spawn sizes.
Halfway through the mission the empath says, "I'm not really needed here am I?". Of course this was I5 but I think the same would apply.
Personally I would suggest a duo with an Inv scrapper if I was an Empath. He/She still holds aggro ( not as well ) but also would benefit far more from the buffs and do more damage.
Other scrappers would be good too, but regen would benefit the least.
@Unthing ... Mostly on Union.
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Halfway through the mission the empath says, "I'm not really needed here am I?". Of course this was I5 but I think the same would apply.
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have to agree here... Psygon originally mainly duo'ed with a Inv/Energy Tank (from about 1-30) but it got pretty pointless and luckily Gonk had a scrapper to fall back on so we ended up duoing those more. It was still pretty pointless (it was in I4) but was at least a bit better than duoing with his tank where my prime role was to TP him about since he didnt have a travel power until level 36
Hi - I have created an Empath Defender
Is it possible to solo using one of these - or are they only for playing in a team ?
Thanks in advance - sorry for a noob question...but I'm a noob !