SOLO Empathy Quest

Hello Folks,
Many of you know me as a player that feels very strongly about improving balance between the various Defender primary sets, with particular interest in how this will even-out the solo-ing experience.
Also (you probably can guess) that I have met with great resistance to my ideas from Veteran defenders. I feel that it is necessary to reach peace with this, since many of the Veterans (whose opinions I respect) have played their Heroes more hours than I have and reached higher levels than I have been willing to reach.


I have decided to embark on a Quest;

I will SOLO a defender from level 1-50 (not using AE farms), and

I will prove what the veteran Defenders have been telling me is, in fact, True.
That Defenders are fine as is.

I will suspend ALL of my current beliefs (based on playing this AT many times, but to a maximum level of 28) and not make any further judgements until I have reached level 50 (regardless of how many times I face-plant)

Further, I am going to do this with (possibly) the worst combinations of Powersets I can choose.

So..

I have deleted Biospark, my Level 24 RAD/ELECTRIC and recreated him as Empathy-Electric.

Luckily for me, I love each of these powersets, so this character will be one I can get behind and enjoy.


WISH ME LUCK !


P.S. I have plotted out my build and also a good portion of the IO sets that I will be trying to slot, but any advice would be appreciated. Afterall, I WANT this experiment to succeed.

Hang in there. I mostly soloed my emp/dark--my very first character and my first 50, started at launch--all the way through. The main exceptions were AV missions. There was no difficulty setting back then, so all bosses and AVs spawned in their base category, and I had to have help with AVs. I even soloed with him during the rather nasty period when all bosses were ramped up to be way more difficult and dangerous. I still occasionally solo missions on Invincible with him, just as a reminder that he can do it, and I've been flashbacking him through the Elite-Boss heavy content that came along after he leveled.

Make no mistake, empaths can solo. It's not quick, but it's entirely possible. You don't even have to sacrifice your team support capability to do it, though you might as well, since you're going to play solo-only. Unsurprisingly, I prefer balanced defenders.

Good luck.

You are in for a long and painfully slow leveling experience.

(and it's a pain that no power in empathy can cure)

Maybe like below. Electric is tough in the early levels. but if you can survive to the second Short Circuit, even bosses at that point become cake. Late in the game, Electric becomes much better, sparky + two decent AoEs + end sapping make life very nice.

I still think you should have stuck it out with the archer.

Hero Plan by Mids' Hero Designer 1.401
http://www.cohplanner.com/

Click this DataLink to open the build!

Why not Archery: Level 29 Magic Defender
Primary Power Set: Empathy
Secondary Power Set: Electrical Blast
Power Pool: Fitness
Power Pool: Flight
Power Pool: Speed

Hero Profile:
Level 1: Healing Aura -- (A)(9)(15)
Level 1: Charged Bolts -- (A)(3)(7)(17)
Level 2: Lightning Bolt -- (A)(3)(7)(13)(17)
Level 4: Ball Lightning -- (A)(5)(5)
Level 6: Swift -- (A)
Level 8: Air Superiority -- (A)(9)(13)(15)
Level 10: Short Circuit -- (A)(11)(11)
Level 12: Hasten -- (A)(23)(25)
Level 14: Health -- (A)
Level 16: Aim -- (A)
Level 18: Recovery Aura -- (A)(19)(19)
Level 20: Stamina -- (A)(21)(21)
Level 22: Zapp -- (A)(23)(25)
Level 24: Fly -- (A)
Level 26: Regeneration Aura -- (A)(27)(27)
Level 28: Tesla Cage -- (A)
Level 30: [Empty]
Level 32: [Empty]
Level 35: [Empty]
Level 38: [Empty]
Level 41: [Empty]
Level 44: [Empty]
Level 47: [Empty]
Level 49: [Empty]
------------
Level 1: Brawl -- (A)
Level 1: Sprint -- (A)
Level 2: Rest -- (A)
Level 1: Vigilance

Good luck with this, Biospark.
I hope you find what you're looking for.

I'm a bit dubious about the effectiveness of a sapper strategy to be honest, having taken a Kin/Elec and Elec/Elec Blaster to 50. Even with a secondary drain tool (Power Sink or Transference), Short Circuit is risky, slow to activate, and slotting it for end drain further cuts in to your damage.

The best times I've had with Short Circuit are on teams - let the tank take aggro, use it, use it again in ten seconds or so and drain everyone.

Solo, Tesla Cage was way better. The fact that its single target is less relevant if you're facing only two or three enemies, it recharges very quickly and can permahold bosses quite easily. It also lets you use Zapp in combat.

When you get an Epic, Dominate in Mind Control means two fast recharging holds, much better than holding out for Power Sink IMHO.

Another point with End drain is that many enemies run off when they can't hurt you for a certain amount of time. High Defences will do this as well, but so will Short Circuit. You can get a group stading around you down to 1/4 health only to have them all run off in different directions out of range of the next one - thats very frustrating.

All I'm saying is that end drain can be quite dissapointing if you plan around it too much. Solo, its very fiddly and unreliable compared to the power of a single very good hold.

Thanks Dr.Mike,

Great words of wisdom. I was actually leaning toward Psychic Pool anyway.
I figure if Sapping actually has success for this combination of powers, an AoE sleep could be a great setup power for Short Circuit.

And yes, I definitely had Tesla Cage + Dominate on my Radar.

I will let you know how this goes. I expect to be 13th with level 15 IOs tonight.
And my build is very much like yours, but I took AS at 6th to have 3 ST attacks and Swift at 8th. But the rest are the same all the way to 20th.

Best of luck. My Emp/Dark was mostly solo, my Emp/Rad was half and half.

Not sure I could do it with Elec. Had an Rad/Elec at one time and Elec just felt really lacking.

Just because it is POSSIBLE to solo, doesn't mean it makes any sense to, or that it is balanced with other archetypes.

Good Luck. I might do Emp/Ice, Emp/Sonic, Emp/anything but electric.

As somebody with a level 50 Kin/elec, here's where I see /elec having issues.

1. It has no third ST attack so it's soloing speed is lower. If you can accept Sparky as a 3rd attack versus a pet you have to keep resummoning fairly often, then that helps. Sparky doesn't come until fairly late either, but there are other sets(even really good ones) with that issue as well.

2. It has two AoEs which should, in theory, make it better for larger spawns, but most any and everybody slot SC for end drain and not damage. This means /elec only really gets 1.5 AoEs. Add in the lack of ST damage, and you get the rep that it has lack luster damage.

3. End drain is a pseudo control aspect given to non control ATs. They can't make it too good as it would start to overshadow the other blast sets since it gives damage and credible mitigation to two ATs that would welcome that sort of thing. If you have a controller, or more on your team, end drain is so a second class type of mitigation that you are left feeling like a defender with just under performing damage and no practical additional mitigation. I have to be in the top "x" percent who would be interested in seeing the fallout of controllers getting an Elec control set.

How to fix it? Ugh. I think the end drain in a way works well enough using SC twice that you could maybe cut back the end drain a small amount, and then boost the damage. I'm not really sure that works from a practical point of view though. If it works functionally the same, then cutting back on the end drain doesn't really matter. I would certainly boost the damage in SC. Giving it a better animation time would be awesome as well. You and/or teammates will at some point die because you were stuck in SC's animation for 3 seconds. You play /elec long enough it's going to happen.

Not not be all doom and gloom, here's a couple things I do like about elec. The biggest not talked about mitigation aspect of /elec is the shock animation your targets go through after you hit them. It's not a lot, but if you keep tossing out blasts you can slow down incoming damage. There are times when end drain becomes a very underrated mitigation tool because it can be a control aspect that gets kind of forgotten about. My Kin/elec absolutely owns the end drain EB in the LGTF, and that thing can put a world of hurt on a team. IIRC, the Cimerorans were given some resist against controls. End drain wasn't one of them.

One of my better soloists is Emp/Archery. The fighting style is very "hit and run" but it seems to work well. Add in Recovery aura and Regeneration aura later on in the set and you get a fair ability to stand and fight.


I support this project.

So after you spend an absurd number of hours "proving" that it takes an absurd number of hours to solo emp/electric to 50, what will you have "proved" that isn't already patently obvious going into it?

It should get hard in the late 20s, that is where I usually experience "trouble". Of course, I never built a defender just to solo, so I always had some short slotting in attacks until the late 30s. Building specifically to solo, you may have an easier time.

I strongly recommend Zapp at level 22 or 24. I am not fond of snipes, but in solo play, and especially for a defender, they can be very valuable.

I don't exactly know what you expect to prove with this experiment, Biospark. We all know it will take much longer to solo that build than any other set combo in the entire game.

Anyway, do you use veteran powers? If you do, you shouldn't as the majority of the player base (I guess) don't have access to these attacks. Defenders benefit from these more than any other AT as the damage is the same regardless of the AT.

Personally I'd rather had my tonsils removed by a rusty spoon than soloing an Empath/Electricity Defender to 50. I tip my hat to you for your obvious self loathing, sir.