Which powersets for a strong healer Defender?

Like the title says

Well, the most obvious is Empathy.

Dark and Kinetics are also rather adept at healing, and Radiation and Storm both can heal as well.

However, if you ask around I think you'll find that most people agree that a Defender's buffs and debuffs are even more important. Who needs healing when your team is shielded up, or the enemies are severely weakened?

Even if you are looking strongly for heals, you can't reasonably play without getting a good use out of your buffs and debuffs. Even Empathy, the first set people think of when people call out for 'teh healz0r', I'd say its strongest point is its excellent buffs, especially endurance recovery.

As for secondaries... take what you want to do some damage with. On top of that, depending on the secondary effects, you can enhance them to add even more debuffing.

If by "strong healer" you mean "maximizing healing per second," you're playing the wrong MMORPG. Incoming damage is too fast and furious for purely reactive support. Un-mezzed, un-debuffed Freakshow Tanks will laugh at your heal-centric build as they shred through your un-buffed teammates faster than you can say "ohnoes we need moar heals." But if you mean a "regen tankfender," well, that's more viable.

You've got two routes to get a regen tankfender, Traps and Empathy.

Traps Pros:
* Partial mez protection means you only need Break Frees for sleep and fear effects, and Health will help with that.
* Photon Seekers and Acid Mortar can take some hits as well.
* Poison Trap will hold enemies, letting you focus on a high-damage secondary, like /Archery.
* Trip Mine adds even more damage to the mix.
* +Def and -Tohit synergy.
* Don't need expensive enhancements to do well. SOs will do just fine.

Traps Cons:
* Concealment pool will be important to pull off some of your tricks.
* Low regen from Triage Beacon, Aid Self will probably be important too.
* Some powers are unusable or annoying to use while Hovering, making hovertanking of somewhat less use.
* Many PuGs won't want you or won't consider you as taking up a vital team role. This is a problem for all non-Empathy defenders. These PuGs are clueless, of course, but it still means you'll have to be comfortable soloing a lot.

Empathy Pros:
* Huge regen from Regeneration Aura, and you're not tethered to any spot.
* Can skip Stamina thanks to Recovery Aura.
* Can skip Aid Self thanks to Healing Aura.
* All powers work fine while hovertanking.
* Only three primary powers (the auras) help you directly; the rest you can skip to make room for Provoke, defense toggles, etc.
* Can add the usual team support powers back in, in your second build, for Empath duoing. Which breaks the game and gives Castle cold sweats, by the way.

Empathy Cons:
* Zilch for debuffs and crowd control, so you might need a high-utility secondary, like /Sonic.
* Regeneration Aura isn't always on. Not even at the recharge cap.
* Break Free intensive. Health, Acrobatics and CJ will help, to a point.
* Recharge speed bonus intensive. The IOs you'll want for recharge bonuses will be expensive.
* No damage whatsoever in the primary. Veteran Reward powers, invention temp powers will help.

Short version: If you're relatively new to the game, go Traps/Archery (or your favorite AoE DPS secondary). If you've been around long enough to have access to LotGs and vet powers, go Empathy/Sonic (or your favorite utility secondary). If you team regularly with an experienced Empath, also go Empathy/* (to abuse Empathy duo dynamics).

Empathy being the obvious (IMO boring) choice, but the appeal of that set is actually the buffs not the heals. Although Empathy will probably lose appeal after GR comes out since /Pain corruptor is simply more fun to play with and just as effective as a empathy/ defender.

Kinetics, Dark, and Rad have a good heal AoE each but again all defender sets are more about buffing/debuffing than about healing.

A fully slotted forcefields defender "heals" 95% of incoming damage. It also has a toggle mez protection power.

An empath heals the damage that hurt you.
A Force Fields heals the damage before it hurts you.
A Kinetics heals the damage before it leaves the hurter.

If you are interested in healing (which is a perfectly valid approach to support in this game), I prefer a controller. Yes, your green numbers are lower, but you have an extra set to choose from (Thermal) and your other abilities are also extremely useful for supporting the team.

It's too bad thermal and pain aren't available to defenders. I always thought that two heals was as much as I'd ever need.

Mids' .NET 2.0 requirement unfortunately locks that program to Windows users only. But as long as you have Hasten you're probably on the right track.

If you think that Defenders are "healers", you need to seriously rethink the way you play the game. Seriously. I wrote a whole thread about this once.

Empathy by far provides the most heals. The Aura combined with heal other allow you to keep the team healed and provide even better healing to anyone that is in trouble with Heal Other. Frankly I skip Absorb Pain.. 1) you already have an outstand solo heal in Heal Others that recovers very quickly and 2) I tend to avoid any power that takes away from MY hitpoints to do anything. Basically you can't heal anyone if you wind up face down on the floor because you died after using it and then got attacked. You have a good Rez and some pretty good buff. One nice thing is two of those are also aura so they will benefit you as well as the members of your team.

Thermal has good heals and adds some great buff. It has only one debuff but Melt Armor is outstanding. The one drawback is that while Empathy also has 2 buffs (auras that can actually help you. Thermal has graet buffs but the only person on the team you can't buff is YOU. One added advatage of Themal is its Rez which brings back your fallen team mate and causes an explosion damaging anything around them.

Dark has a good heal and Rez but also has a huge advantage in that both of them provide added avtanges. your heal will debuff an enemy while your rez slows and disorients. Many players, myself included, that use dark actually use the REZ more for that then they do actually rezzing a team mate. Hey if its not available when a team mate falls that's why they make Awake inspiratioins. No buffs with this set but it the slows, disorients and debuffs more than make up for it. One small disadvantage is that your rez, if using to rez a teammate, requires an enemy to activate or it simply doesn't function.

Kin has a good heal but no Rez which is not a huge issues considering the other advantages that KIN provides. The one drawback to the heal is your teammates have to be close to you for it to work and it does require an enemy to work. This can mean you may need to move into Melee range if you want to heal a tank or scrapper in trouble and find yourself taking added damage. The huge advantage with Kin is SB along with the powers that buff you. Everyone can attack and recover faster so they can do a lot more damage.

Rad has a good heal and rez and perhaps the best debuffs in game. My Rad/Rad Defender picked the badge title GIANT KILLER based solely on the fact that she has taken on and helped defeat ever single GM in game and most of the AVs. You also get Accelerate Metabolism which works similar to Speed Boost from the Kin powerset in that it makes your teammate quicker and they heal, recover end, etc faster until it wears off. The advantage here is AM is an aura so it doesn't just buff your teammate it buffs you as well.

If you take EMP do NOT skip your later powers. Fortitude and Clear Mind will become your go to power in the later game. CM recovers very quickly and doesn't require much more than a single Recharge Reduction to enable you to quickly protect the entire team. Fort is slower and needs 1-2 Recharges to get it down to being available about every 30 seconds. It does buff the individual you use it on adding to their defense and increasing their accuracy.

Whatever you decide on do not think of yourself solely as a "healer". By the later game most players defense is strong enough that no one cares if they have a HEALOR along or not. Take your attacks from your secondary and enhance them.. My phylosphy with my EMP always was a good offense is the best defense. I may not do as much damage as a Scrapper or a Blaster.. heck in some cases not even as much as a Controller but ANY damage is good damage and if everything in front of us is on the ground and not moving the need to heal has ended. I like to call that preventative medicine LOL

defebcer build

all emp, med pool, no attacks, group fly.

do et for the lulz or if you're serious do et because you're stupid

Great now we scared another player away from the game.

And OP, heals are always important, but no, you can't get away with a pure heals build like you can in... Actually I can't think of a game off-hand where I wouldn't want you buffing. The point is, do both

Learn to troll, kid. Id suggest reading /b/ for a month....