"pure" healers + going rogue

My faith in blue side support has been renewed. My rogue crab was teaming with heroes last night, and I must say the emps on the team had almost everyone with fort, had clear mind on the mezz-vulnerable people, and went to town with their blasts. I don't think we needed very many heals, if at all.

I get the feeling the reason at least some people hate on Empathy is because they are piling on. That doesn't apply to anyone in this thread. But it's a fact that there is a faction of zealous 'anti-healers' who will argue you to the ground about whether a heal is ever useful. They are essentially the same as the 'pure healer' crowd in terms of game-smarts, although, in my experience, somewhat bigger bullies.

One of the very few times I've /tell'ed to a team leader to boot a team mate was because one individual spent an entire mission berating the Empath on his power choices and announcing how much better his Trick Arrow powers were. Obnoxious is obnoxious. Especially when it's true bullying, and not just because the player sucks at playing the game. I'd rather get stuck with a team of crappy players any day than a be forced to deal with a jerk.

"pure healer" as i understand it is an emp who takes all the emp powers. I have an emp/archer fender in the mid 30s atm and have all emp powers bar Absorb Pain (for personal reasons). Also have the 3 main leadership toggles and intend on getting the 4th asap

Now i understand that people like it if your dealing damage etc but on some teams i have been on recently *sigh* i've maybe pulled off an attack or 3 during a whole mish all the rest of the time i've been CM'ing, Fort'ing etc the team to the hilt as well as healing here there and everywhere. If i'm in a really good team i can attack more but will still get the buffs out on the right people at the right time.

Now i have teamed with some people who don't like how i play but as i say to most, would you rather i keep the team buffed and alive or trying to get a shot at the minions which are going down faster then you can say empath? If they want something sniped i do have the power for that and generally don't mind doing so if i'm the only one with a snipe.

Yes sometimes the team faceplants, it could be one of those occasions where the team splits and i follow the tank, and i get called a bad healer cause i can't as of yet heal through walls, but most of the time we all have fun.

Only thing i will say to the teams that takes on an empath is don't forget to remember empathy is a very hardwearing set to play, we have to know wth we're doing with buffs and if you run off and die don't blame us for not healing you through walls. And if you get a noobie emp, let them know when your mezzed so they can hit you with CM.

Yes i know theres bad empaths out there but theres a lot of us who DO know wth they're doing, if we don't attack much its cause we're buffing you up so you can do more

My healer blows stuff up.

I'm sorry but I've yet to see a pure healer build really shine. Yes you can heal and you can do it a lot at the drop of a hat. But mostly it is not needed you can be a good healer and do other stuff and its that other stuff that is going to get you into teams.

Lets take my First CoH toon vs my First CoV they are basically the same.

CoH
Defender Emp/Elec
CoV
Corrupter Elec/Pain

Built mostly the same. But hands down my Corrupter solos better, gets invited to teams more, and just basically ends up being more useful.

I've even tried respecting the Emp/Elec into primary heals and while yes I could heal more it just was overkill people were not dying less, because they rarely died in the first place. I just had less to do. Sad to say the Defender that was created on day one final was deleted to make room for other toons while my Corrupter from day one (CoV day one) is still alive and living the high life working on her morality missions.

I'm not saying pure healer is not playable or good at what they do. I'm just saying you have two power sets for a reason and you will be more useful over all if you used it more.

My "healer" (emp/rad, currently shelved because I'm having way too much fun with my Crab and Fortunata) is a buffer/debuffer/blasty destroyer, and that's the way teams love her. I PuG almost exclusively and people tend to be amazed that the second person into a group of enemies is the empath, throwing out PBAoE, AoE, and cone attacks to debuff the things the tank is eviscerating. It's enjoyable. Occasionally I'll have to heal or reapply buffs, but for the most part, helping destroy things means the team is taking less damage.

The simple fact of the matter is this: there are a lot of just really bad players in this game. When a large number of those bad players play one powerset poorly, it changes the perception of the playerbase completely. You brought up the fact that you've kicked a stormy or two for poor knockback control. For storm defenders, this was an all too common occurance back in the single-digit issues. The mere mention that one of your powersets was storm, despite how seasoned a veteran or how good a player you were, often earned you "ROFL reroll something useful, n00b!" in broadcast. God help you if you were storm/energy...

The point of this is that empathy continues to be one of the most poorly played support pools in the game. There are bad stormers, there are bad blasters, there are awful scrappers, and there are laughable tanks, but empathy...s/he's making green numbers! He must be good at what he does!

No.

A good empath isn't just about rocking the aura and throwing out pretty pretty green numbers for all to see. The vast majority of what defenders do is in the little animations that people don't particularly pay attention to -- the little yellow targets that swirl around a mob and then drop to show that, hey, they're not shooting you in the face as much because that dark defender hit them with something, or the swirling clouds of green smoke that slow a target and violate their defenses resulting in those oh so sweet swirling purple shield animations -- but empaths can somehow get away from actually having to play their sets properly. People see a flash of green (or whatever color you've changed it to) and then numbers pop up above their head but seem to ignore the little swirl of blue that Recovery Aura leaves and dismiss it as "not something a healer would do." The fault here is not with empaths, as you've decided a lot of us think, but in the reciprocal relationship between bad empaths and bad players of other classes. We know this. We've known it for years. Don't act like you're the only one privvy to this sparkling gem of information that is so glaring it's actually blinding. That's already been said in this thread by, oh right...me.

I didn't read all of this thread and don't want to read all this thread.

Op? Any player that makes a "pure" anything build is a player I likely wouldn't want to team with. I would imagine many of the " purists" are going to be sitting on their fannies thinking " WTF Just happenned!!??" when corruptors get a hold of Paragon. Thoughts such as " OMFG!! That dudes debuffing, buffing AND dooing DAMAGE ALL at once!!!" Most likely the outcry will focus on " defenders need a buff" in the beginning. Although I must say I have had the great pleasure of playing with many defenders not of that particular mindset who were awesome multitaskers. Hopefully the devs will be smart enough to ignore that general outcry and realize people need to be players. Any archetype can fill multiple roles on a team.. it's time for more players to figure that out. I see GR as a great way to emphasize the importance of non"purist" play.

One more thing.... I have had the distinct pleasure of playing with many hero non" purists". My observation is that villian players tend to be more likely to adopt that multitasking sort of pixel play.


Peace out!

Sorry for any redundancey above. I had to deal with Hellmart school supply shopping today...
Edited to say.. If all a player is doing is " healing" and their AT has the capability to do other things AND heal then said player isn't playing their pixel( whatever the AT) to full potential.

Honestly I have to disagree with early game teaching healers to play as spam healers. Even on autocast you still have time to blast/debuff/buff or basicly make yourself more usefull. I,ve played emp and pain to many diffrent builds and never came to a point where I see heals only heals all the time to dp anything but reenforce other people bad playstyle. Sometimes the best thing the healer can do for a poorly playing gourp is let them die so they learn to deall with agro and dmg managment better.