Can Absorb Pain replace Heal Other?

I have a 40 Empathy/Archery who I'm thinking about doing a respec on. The heal on Heal Other at this level isn't quite enough to save tankers and scrappers who are near death in just one casting. I'm wondering if taking Absorb Pain instead would be viable. I'm definitely not taking both of them.

I'm not concerned with the damage to myself, but it has a much larger recharge time than heal other, which could be bad in some situations. Any thoughts?

Take both, that's my opinion. I can't tell you how many times I've been killed because I can't heal myself while Absorb Pain's -heal debuff is running. Often times when that happens, I wish I'd used Absorb Pain less, and Heal Other more often. Just turbocharge the heal power's recharge and settle into using both. You and your team are probably better for it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Deus_Otiosus This entire post should receive some kind of award for being both hysterical and fantastic. Well done.

If heal other isn't enough, what I do is heal other, jump in, heal aura, jump out, heal other. That'll get just about anyone back up to safe health. Also keep in mind that in one more level you're going to have the option to take power build up, which would make heal other hit for about 250 more.

I don't think it can replace heal other, simply because you can die from using it too much, Dmg combined with the -Heal component are not good. If you're at a one or the other junction then I'd take heal other. If there's space in your build then take both.

What kind of situations are you playing in...? It may help to have some kind of context to work with.

If your are fully slotted, Heal Other gives a heal of around 500+. Absorb Pain gives just over 1.4k however if you have Power Build Up from the Power Mastery pool you can boost that upto around 2/3k.

I personally use it as a safeguard for tanks, sometimes tanks can take a massive amount of damage and heal other will not restore their HP significantly during the recharge, so popping a absorb pain on them will make them happy chappys again!

Sometimes it can replace heal other -- only in the dire moments however.

If you really do want to take AP but not HO, that's fine. It's workable. Perhaps not very helpful on a defender, and I don't recommend it for most players, but workable if you think it suits you.

If possible, use it while Regeneration Aura is running on yourself. Or in an empath duo with the other empath AB'ing you. Health and +regen set bonuses also help. AP makes you immune to heals and Respites but you still regen at a -100% penalty, easily overcome through these methods.

Besides, it might do your playstyle some good to learn survival techniques other than Healing Aura and Respites for a change!

You won't need end redux slotting in AP, so another potential minor upside is that AP instead of HO may free up a slot. If you're using cone blasts a lot, that's another potential minor upside, since hopping into melee for HO+HA and back out again for cone blasts is a pain. A final minor upside is that AP and HO have the same animation speed, so AP frees up more time for blasting (this is the reason I take AP but not HO, incidentally).

Yes, I did die a lot at first, but it's a learning curve. AP rarely kills me now, and when it does, I'm always pretty sure I would've died anyway.

I have both. Absorb Pain never gets me killed as my position is pretty much uncompromiseable. I wear my health down during AV fights for a joke just to scare people.