Empthy- does not suck

I agree with your post, yet I still feel EMP is better for lower level content before, as you pointed out, toons become self sufficient. An EMP can still be valuable at higher levels, but much more situational in use. IMO, they are certainly less desirable to have around than a solid debuffer. My first 50 was an EMP defender and back in the day, she was a whole lot of fun. Now, I rarely bring her out to do much of anything.

I'm just curious whether Empathy will still be held in high regard once Thermal comes to Defenders. I personally love Thermal, but could never get into Empathy.

Thermal's like Pain Domination - it's better than Empathy at spreading the love around on an 8-person team, but not as good for small teams.

Thermal for Defenders will offer 31% Res vs S/L/E/N (is that right?) and 62% vs Fire, but can do so effortlessly for the whole team, whereas Empaths offer 24% Defence (=48% Resistance) vs everything (including Psi, and of course, half the debuffs and end drains now miss) for the select few.

I recently got a Plant/Thermal Controller to 50 playing mainly in dual-box duos, and compared to Empaths I've played, she offered pretty poor mitigation, say when paired up with a Blaster.

That said, this is all logic and reasoned argument, and probably has little to do with the popularity of the Empathy set

I just never could get used to the recharge on Empathy's top tier powers. 300 second recharge on a 90 second power is an eternity, even after you train it down.

My biggest problem with playing empathy and forcefields is no debuffs. They are both cool sets and like having them around but i just cant play a defender/corr unless it has debuffs or massive damage buffs.

**********Warning below is written by someone who is mentally scarred by car crash pugs and car crash tf´s************

With that said i have a hard time playing thermal. Deleted a plant/thermal at 40 and a thermal corr at 25. People think they are invincible wiith resistance shields and run around like idiots .
I have tried again with a Earth/thermal but after a pug in the hollows i decided that i couldnt deal with it again.

I am now trying it on an MM, so far so good. Bots are good teram members. They just blast meatbags until they drop without stopping and yelling HEALZ PLZ YUR SHILEDS SUCK and say you are bad at healoring and kick you when you respond that i cant heal you idiots when i have no endurance.


Ok i feel better now.

Yeah, exactly.

Pain Domination gives everyone on the team 10 bucks worth of buffs, Empathy gives 50 bucks to its best friend and 20 bucks to a couple of runners up. Call me a commie, but sharing with everyone seems more heroic to me

When I saw the stats for Pain Domination I was very let down. I've started playing it now, and I'm not expecting it to be particularly brilliant.

For myself, sometimes, when basic team effectiveness or survival is not in question, my buff allocation priority is determined by a simple "spread the love" philosophy, in particular with Adrenalin Boost which is a fun magnifier that I like to try and give to as many on the team over the course of a mission/TF as possible. Stone tanks dig it of course, but so do trollers with long-recharge AoEs and nuking blasters (and recently shield and Electric melee chars). Some people clearly recognize when they've been the go-ahead to go extra gonzo and some do not. The ones who turn things "up to 11" tend to get more repeat doses than ones who maintain their status quo playstyle.

No, it's true. Empathy does suck. Suckiest power set to ever suck. I got to go my damn sucky girlfriend is calling.

Problem with Empathy is that with the introduction of IOs much of what it can give became redundant or not all that noticable. Extra recovery, +def, and +rech buffs aren't that needed on high end IO builds. Where debuffs are a force multiplier and aren't really ever redundant.

Empathy is never really a bad set but there are many cases where a rad, dark or cold can provide the extra mitigation your team needs, but at the same time increases team kill speed or weakens AVs.

In the high game when all the ATs have their personal mitigation tools (epic shields or control) you don't need a buff/debuff set to provide a large amount of extra survivabilty. The sets that offer some mitigation and debuffs to boots become a better option. I would even go so far as to say that a therm is more useful in the high game than an Emp. The +res and heals will provide enough extra mitigation while Melt armor and forge will increase kill speed and heat exhaustion will help overcome AVs.

My emp/en Defender just hit the slippery slope part of her career at level 35. Coming from other MMOs, learning the real strength of her powerset has been fun and interesting in how it has forced me out of my traditional playing-style.

Reading this thread and others has helped me to see the shift that is occuring more clearly. The last 10 levels has seen a consistent shift towards focusing on buffs. Depending on circumstances, I may still just set HA to auto to keep everyone topped up, but I spend a lot of my time ensuring that Fort and Clear mind are always on people who can benefit from them and hitting as many people as possible with auras if there is no way to call a group hug. Based on what I am reading, I am becoming the right kind of 'empath' to ensure that I will be a useful, even valuable, member of teams as I continue up the levels.

I'm encouraged. I loved playing my monk in GW because it was hectic and required that I always be paying attention. Here in CoH, once my scrapper started getting a little boring, I decided to try a defender and so far she has been fun and rewarding.