Ideas for a guide to Empathy (only slightly humorous)

During the patch downtime today I made note of some thoughts regarding powers in the Empathy set. I am thinking of formatting them into a guide, since the last posted guide for the powerset is rather old now. I tried to keep a light tone but am looking forward to hearing input from you if there are points where that obscures the actual meaning.

If this seems helpful I will reformat the text for easier reading before moving it to the Guides forum.

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Guide: The "selfish" empath I am writing this because I have on more than one of my characters that has Empathy as primary or secondary been told by teammates that I am good at "healing". Empathy is more than that though, and I would like to showcase some thoughts on all its powers (including heals). I also noticed most guides on this forum that focus on Empathy seem rather old. You should read up on the real numbers for the powers, but there is no point writing those numbers into this post. It is already written more comprehensively in City of Data and will be updated there if the powers are changed in the future. Defender version: http://tomax.cohtitan.com/data/power...r_Buff.Empathy Controller version: http://tomax.cohtitan.com/data/power...r_Buff.Empathy Healing Aura This is the only direct self heal you get. If you are a controller it will be your starting power. As a defender you may postpone it depending on your playstyle, one of my characters waited until level 10 but that was a bit late. It will also heal any allies within a 25 foot radius (a 50 foot diameter circle), standard melee attacks have 7 foot range for comparison. If you can use the full heal effect on two allies at once (including yourself) it will achieve the same endurance efficiency as one cast of Heal Other, any less than that and this becomes inefficient. A special note for efficiency freaks is standing within a group of mastermind pets, often catching both them and the mastermind. Healing yourself during combat takes time away from shooting enemies. If you only use this power when necessary it will improve your damage output which could give a shorter battle. When you are the only one in need of a heal, a green inspiration is faster and does not cost you endurance. On the other hand, you can still move while using this power. Remember to heal yourself while you reposition yourself for your next attack or move from spawn to spawn, since that is "free" timewise. The targets healed will be those which were in range when your command to activate the power reached the server, even when you move before the power is finished. Enhance this first for maximum heal (whenever you spend the time to use it, make it count), second for endurance discount, third for recharge. A sample enhancement at level 50 could be five Doctored Wounds (all except the plain Recharge) and the Heal/Endurance/Recharge from another set. This will both enhance the power very well and give you a recharge bonus for your other powers. Heal Other As a defender, this is your other choice for starting power. If you feel that healing yourself is a waste of time in the early levels, this may be a better initial choice than Healing Aura. As a controller, you might delay it a bit since you probably have more important powers to take early (damage dealing or controls). Just like Healing Aura, don't waste your valuable attacking time by healing too early. Your teammate might take care of things by himself, leaving you free to keep shooting stuff. If you have the safety net of Absorb Pain, you can delay Heal Other even longer. Try to get a feeling for which teammates will just take the occasional hit and then stop there versus those that will require your full attention when they get aggro. Remember to use this in between fights. Whenever your endurance reaches full, check if you can "store" some of that excess endurance in a teammates health bar by topping them up. This is endurance you won't have to spend later, when you have better things to do. As long as there is only one injured teammate, Heal Other is always better than Healing Aura. If there are two teammates hurt, you will have the same endurance cost and total amount healed from two casts of Healing Aura or two casts of Heal Other (assuming equal enhancement in the powers). I would personally still prefer Heal Other, since it recharges faster and does not require me to consider my positioning as much. Try to figure out which of your attacks and control powers have cast times equal or less to your Heal Other recharge time. Try to fit them in even if you are maxed out and casting Heal Other as often as you can (if you are a defender, you probably have a good endurance discount from hurt teammates since you are chainhealing, meaning the attacks give good value for endurance right now). Don't bother targeting enemies, just keep whoever you are healing/planning to heal targeted and shoot their targets. Exceptions from targeting through others could be if they or you are a controller trying to put enemies to sleep, or if your powers have knockback and they are melee. If you are standing near the tank (and that character really needs the healing), you can alternate between Heal Other and Healing Aura, the aura will help against the area effect damage you are likely to take in that position. You can't put either of them on auto though since you would need to stop queuing up attacks for an auto power to fire. Unless you have enormous recharge buffs there should still be time for a fast casting attack to be mixed in during each cycle. My enhancement recommendations for this power are similar to Healing Aura, but with a higher priority on getting some recharge in it early. With base recharge time it will be annoying to heal several individuals with it, and even if you have only a single tank taking damage you still don't want to have to waste endurance interleaving Healing Auras between your casts just because your recharge on Heal Other can't keep up. The sample enhancement for a level 50 character is still the same, at that level and with six slots there is enough room to get both decent recharge and endurance efficiency. I have so far only rarely been in situations where I would have wanted to enhance its range, having a wall in between you and your target that blocks line of sight is more common than having them too far away. Absorb Pain This is a power with restrictions on its use that make it impractical or dangerous in some of the situations when you need it the most. I still like having it available, since this power has the potential to make you more efficient even when you don't actually cast it (most of the time). Regardless of the recharge you put in the power, the main limitation for how often you can use it is that you need time to heal yourself up between the 20 second periods of heal immunity/regeneration debuff caused by each cast. In most situations aggro and area effect attacks are too hard to predict to use this all the way to low HP on yourself. It is better to just let the teammate drop and use Resurrect. The heal effect from one Absorb Pain is equal to about 2.5 Heal Other and exactly 5 Healing Auras, for the same casting time as one Heal Other and negligible endurance cost. As I mentioned for Heal Other, the fact that you know you have Absorb Pain as backup means you will delay your cast of Heal Other more often, making it more likely to use its full healing power. This also gives more time for natural regeneration (or Regeneration Aura) to take care of the teammate without you having to cast anything. Normally Absorb Pain would be the reserve, not your first choice. On the other hand I have one controller where their build plan actually does not include Heal Other, only Absorb Pain. So far it seems to work since the controller (Illusion) can decide pretty well whether to draw aggro or not. While taking hits myself, Healing Aura is efficient enough, otherwise Absorb Pain is safe. That is a special case since the controller is also trying to work without the Fitness pool and the high endurance efficiency of Absorb Pain gives some benefit, combined with the fact that it is very time-efficient (no wasted time for healing means I can focus on control). During periods where you have Regeneration Aura active on yourself Absorb Pain might move up to primary heal, since that nice regeneration boost you have might otherwise be wasted. You would have to stack five of the regen debuffs from Absorb Pain to equal the buff from (unenhanced) Regeneration Aura. Since the powers work so well together, you may want to delay this power and take it closer to the level you get Regeneration Aura. Enhancements can be pretty easy for this power, two common heal IO:s will give it about the same healing power as most squishies have hitpoints (tankers still have room to fill up more). On the controller I mentioned the final plan puts three Numina's in it (Heal, Heal/Recharge, Heal/Endurance/Recharge), the set bonuses to regeneration and maximum HP are valuable both in general and for using this particular power. Resurrect Some people will claim that if you are good enough with the other powers, this power isn't needed. Especially now that you can combine to make awakens, use charges from a day job power or buy a temp power recipe. Personally I see this power as the extra backup plan. When aggro risk prevents using Absorb Pain safely I can let the teammate rest a second on the floor, then quickly put them back on their feet with a complete health/endurance recovery. The other options for getting them back either require longer cast time, give less health and endurance or would require me to cast Clear Mind on them once they are up. The refresh on this power keeps you from using it again during the same fight so you might still want some charges of the day job version for situations where more than one friend drops. Since the teammate will be unbuffed when standing back up, check if your Fortitude is recharged. If there was too much incoming damage for them to stand up against before, you have to change something to avoid them dropping back to the floor immediately. My enhancement for this power is usually the same, just one slot with a common endurance IO. Since it is most useful during combat, it is important not to waste endurance on it that could be spent shooting stuff. If you need recharge someone on the team seems to be doing something wrong (charge up your day job to alternate with this instead of wasting slots!). Clear Mind For me, this used to be the only power in the set that I feel forced to take but didn't like since it only protects for 60 seconds. However, cast time was reduced from 3 seconds to 1 second in Issue 18. This means keeping this up preemptively on squishies in the team might now be less annoying than seeing them type "zzzz". Stun and hold removal or prevention on teammates is what I consider its primary function. In some situations you will stack up several casts on the same teammate preemptively when you know you are sending someone into a situation where they will receive abnormal mez magnitudes. Enemies that blind are rare but very annoying, be ready to cast this to free your teammates. Since you can't cast it on yourself, you might want to bring some yellow inspirations. Confusion and fear are rare and I'd rather keep tactics running to protect both myself and my team, but if you don't have that use Clear Mind there too. For sleep, it is easier, faster and more efficient to wake them with a shot of Heal Other. You can still use Clear Mind because it adds future protection though, and also because most teammates don't care and will just type "zzzz" regardless of whether they are slept or held/stunned. An immobilization is annoying but not usually something that requires Clear Mind (melee characters should use their own protection, most others have ranged attacks, many will have Combat Jumping for protection anyway). Note: This power does NOT protect against knockback/repel like Increase Density from Kinetics does. Unfortunately if you have a Kinetics player on the team they will probably claim to be too busy and still leave you with this duty (and they are probably correct, too). Comment thanks to Memphis_Bill: You can take this power earlier than even some non-squishies get their own mez protection from their armor set. Especially Fiery Aura, Regeneration and Invulnerability on scrappers, brutes or stalkers are late in getting their own ways to handle mez. Enhancements: Consider whether to use recharge, or endurance reduction. Used reactively and seldom, no enhancements are needed. When used preemptively to stack on someone or when you need to cast it on more than one teammate at once (if the enemy has area effect mez powers), you need the recharge. For keeping it on squishies in advance, endurance enhancements might be nice. I don't like to spend more than one or two slots on it in my builds but you might have room for more depending on your planned use of it. Fortitude With decent recharge and Hasten you can reach about 22 seconds cycle time (cast time + recharge). That is enough to put this power on about four teammates (you will not be able to keep it up gapless on all of them when Hasten runs out though). In my opinion, this power is useful whoever you are putting it on. Also remember that it does not have to be the same group that you rotate through, you can mix and match who gets it depending on who you feel it would help you the most to put it on. A teammate taking damage: 15-24% extra defense means you probably don't need to heal them as often, giving you more time to blast. Only players already past the softcap might say no to this. A teammate who is dealing damage: 25-31% extra damage enhancement is useful on anyone, unless some Kinetics friend nearby is keeping everyone fulcrum shifted to the damage cap. A teammate who is dealing damage/controlling/debuffing: 15-25% extra to-hit buff makes a very large difference. Only people who are already at the 95% cap for final to-hit chance would lack benefit from this. However, since many characters are actually built to reach that on their own, this will be your lowest priority for enhancing. If all your teammates already fit the criteria for "no-benefit-from-Fortitude", have a nice shooting trip for the remainder of the mission! Enhancements: It looks like the perfect fit would be Hamidon enhancements, namely Membrane Exposures, giving very good enhancement with just 3 slots. Unfortunately they can be expensive. A cheaper mix at the cost of two extra slots could be four from a defense set (the three with recharge enhancement plus the global recharge from Luck of the Gambler, for example) plus one Membrane or a common recharge IO. Real cheapskate slotting would be taking a plain Defense and a Defense/Recharge from any set plus two common recharge IO:s, this is assuming your teammates are responsible for their own softcapping and you mostly buff them for the damage. Recovery Aura This power is very useful for soloing, since you can use fewer endurance enhancements in your powers and possibly even skip Fitness if you accept that you might need to rest once during the gap where you don't have Recovery Aura active or conserve power through other means. This power (slotted) can add 400% recovery which will put anyone except a Defender, Controller, Dominator or Mastermind at their hardcap for endurance recovery without any other buffs or Stamina (it is eight times more powerful than Stamina). See http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Limits#Endurance_Recovery On teams, you may want to consider where you position yourself before you refresh it. Think of which teammates would make you the most happy if they had more endurance on hand. This depends both on their playstyle and their builds. If your tanker wants to rest before running to the next spawn, standing near him when you recast the aura will give you more stuff to shoot faster. If your blaster is overnuking so much that you spend all your time healing him, giving him even more endurance becomes a low priority (though hopefully the rate of kills on the team is fast at least). The radius of the buff is 25 feet, same as Healing Aura. Since you should be familiar with that range it should be easy for you to determine who will get hit. In the very rare situation that I really feel that two people on the team must have this buff, and they never stand within 50 feet of eachother before I need to refresh the buff for my own needs, I might call out something like "RA near tank next fight". If they don't listen to that it is their loss... If I know that a boss fight is coming up I may hold off on refreshing Recovery Aura and then try to catch everyone on the team just before they run through a door or other chokepoint. If you plan to use Recovery Aura to soften a nuke crash for yourself or a teammate, check up on the amount of the recovery crash. For example, Blackstar (the tier 9 in the Dark Blast set) has a crash that first removes all endurance, then applies a 1000% debuff to recovery. Recovery Aura won't help against this. On the other hand, Force of Nature in the defender Ancillary Power Mastery will only cause a 100% debuff to recovery after removing all endurance, so with Recovery Aura on you will start gaining again immediately. I tend to sixslot this power, but it is much more important to get some recharge in early to even out the ups and downs than to enhance the actual endurance modification. You could easily get by with fewer slots. For a level 50 sixslotted build plan, you could mix items from two different End Mod sets with two common recharge IO:s. The plain End mod and the End mod/Recharge ones from the sets seem a given but you may want the End mod/Endurance IO from Efficacy Adaptor instead since it really stinks to lack the endurance to cast this power when you need it the most. This power is one of the bigger differences between controller Empathy and defender Empathy. For defenders, it comes at level 18 and will be available even when exemplared to Positron's Taskforce, the lowest you will normally need. Controllers have to wait until level 28 and may want to consider alternate measures for endurance efficiency during levels 1-27 (or 1-22 exemplared). Regeneration Aura Like Recovery Aura, this power is very useful when you play solo since you can regain hitpoints without having to waste time casting actual heals at that particular time. However, as long as you lack some resistance/defense armor, you are still not quite a tank. Your lower hitpoint maximum will also mean fewer hitpoints regenerated per second than for an actual tanker. On a team, while this buff is on the team you can switch to full blast mode, normally waiting for your teammates to recover health on their own and only using Absorb Pain as a last rescue. Those who also have Fortitude should be safe without causing you any bother. The buff radius is the same as Recovery Aura. Since the increased regeneration on your teammates is more relevant to you than to them (if they expect you to keep them standing with heals when they missed the aura), plan your target selection accordingly. The characters who benefit the most from high regeneration are the ones with high maximum hitpoint level, exactly the ones which require a lot of work and time from you to heal using normal Heal Others. I would normally never bother announcing the cast of this one, saying "now the other RA near tank next fight" will just get people confused. Note: Sometimes it is smart to cast both Recovery Aura and Regeneration Aura at the same time and hit the same people with both buffs, while other times you want to cast Regeneration Aura shortly before Recovery Aura runs out (so you have time to recover the high end cost of this buff before the recovery buff ends). That way they overlap and help out in different ways during different periods. Which is better? Since you will be shooting a lot during the active period for Regeneration Aura, this may depend on if you have enough endurance recovery to blast fulltime without Recovery Aura active. Since I like to be able to solo my build plans usually spend five or six slots on this but I probably would do the same even if I teamed exclusively. You will have to decide whether to go for recharge or heal enhancements first, but if you plan to cast it together with Recovery Aura it helps a lot to go for a similar amount of recharge. If you plan to alternate the two buffs it is more important to have enough recharge to be able to recast this with some margin before Recovery Aura runs out. A sample fiveslot build at level 50 could be all Doctored Wounds except the Heal/Endurance, with six slots I'd add a Heal/Recharge from some other set to that. Adrenalin Boost Recharge: Almost a Hasten-and-a-half, or the same as the Geas of the Kind Ones accolade. Useful on anyone except a character with an attack chain so speeded that it would take more than a 100% buff to enable them to cut out the worst power and switch to a better chain. Regeneration: Exactly the same as Regeneration Aura. Both powers together (enhanced) can put most archetypes at their hard cap for regeneration. As mentioned by that power, putting regeneration on characters with high maximum hitpoints will save you a lot of time casting heals on them. Recovery: Four times as much as Recovery Aura, 32 times as much as Stamina. Even without End Mod enhancements this will put any archetype at their recovery hard cap, unless they also have recovery debuffs active. Since you can already put most characters at their recovery hard cap with just Recovery Aura, this is not as interesting as it might sound. Together with Recovery Aura, or alone with some End Mod enhancement, it can keep a character recovering endurance straight through most tier 9 crashes. Those tend to debuff recovery by either 100%, 1000% or 10000%. Only the last type can't be ignored after Adrenalin Boost (an example of that "worst case" is Power Surge in Electric Armor). Slow resist: 80%, really high, and applies to both movement and recharge debuffs. How useful this is depends on what enemies you fight, most characters will love it against caltrops and some cold/psi attacks. Blasters and brutes are archetypes I find it very interesting to put this on, but it could be useful for many different people, in different ways. Unfortunately you can only get enough recharge to put this on one person at a time, and even that may have a gap unless you have really extreme recharge. Either stick to putting it on one player all the time or swap it around occasionally (you can give the excuse "I am sure your fingers must be getting tired from keeping up that level of intensity..."). Ideally you want it to be on the player that will help the team most by using it. Special mention goes out to someone with a buff/debuff or control power that is really nice for the entire team but has a long recharge timer (especially area effect versions such as Heat Loss, Liquefy etc). If your team has two empaths, you might even set up a deal with the other one to buff eachother, use it for your blasting but justify it to the team with "you really like getting those RAs more often, right?" . When I looked at my build plans for this power on different characters I saw I had it scheduled to use from one slot (on a mostly solo build using it to give its pet some occasional regeneration) to five or six slots. If you have the slots go for recharge to ED cap, then consider whether you want to slot end mod so a blaster buffed by this can use his nuke and still gain endurance afterwards. Unless you specifically plan for that use case, end mod enhancements have no effect here. Heal enhancements are the only other thing I'd use (from sets, of course, to get both heal and recharge maxed easier). Some strategies and general tips that are not tied to any particular power: - Viewing the game from a third-person vantage point, slightly behind and above your character, will make it a lot easier to determine when you have the right people within your aura radius. - Try to check who else on the team has a heal. If they like using it, cooperate so they get a chance to do it efficiently. Especially valid if you are teamed with a Kinetics or Dark Miasma character, their area effect heal does twice the amount of your Healing Aura. Try to wait and see if they will cast it so you don't have to. Their heals will also give useful debuffs on the enemy. Since their heal requires a to-hit check and is centered on an enemy, be ready to back them up if they miss, and fill in with Heal Other on people outside the radius of their circle. On the other hand, your Heal Other is more efficient than what most other healers will be using if you have enhanced it according to my preferred lines (Heal first, then endurance, recharge last). I rather dislike when I am deliberately waiting to heal to let someone lose enough hitpoints that my entire heal will fit without overfilling their health bar but someone else on the team is wasting their time chaincasting inefficient small heals and keeping the bar from dropping to the level where I would cast my heal. The same applies if they cast during the animation for my heal so we both spend the cast time but one of the power applications is totally wasted. I tend to avoid Absorb Pain when teamed with another character that likes to heal. First there can be confusion because I am waiting so long to use it, then they don't know how long to wait before they can heal me afterward. - For teammates with lower maximum hitpoints, you need to be a lot more alert when healing. Try to test how large a percentage of their hitpoint bar you will cover with a single cast of Heal Other. For a squishie that has not enhanced their maximum HP with accolades or set bonuses, a single cast might represent half their hitpoints or more. On a tank, it might be 15-20% of the bar. Try to cast Heal Other on a squishie slightly before they reach the level where it will fit, for safety margin purposes. When a squishie has already gone below the level where Heal Other would take them to full, Absorb Pain is preferable if it is safe for yourself. If they lost the first bunch of hitpoints too fast for you to notice in time, they are likely to keep hurting faster than you can recharge Heal Other. On the other hand, on a tanker or high HP scrapper, it is better to wait until the entire heal will fit. This is for three reasons: First, to avoid using your own healing inefficiently; second, a good tanker or scrapper might take care of it on their own; third, to leave room for them to regenerate. This applies even if you are using the very large heal from Absorb Pain. Exception: If you are using Power Boost or Power Buildup with Absorb Pain it can heal over 2000 hitpoints, at that point trying to ensure the entire heal will fit may become dangerous even for some tankers. - What heals you want to use may depend on your attack powerset. Powers may also influence your teammates positioning. Since I usually try to use single target heals as my first choice of heal, I don't care too much about where people position themselves. Most importantly, it also means I am free to move around and set up my own cones without hugging the tanker. Though I can usually get decent cone placement while still keeping within 25 feet from the tanker, the more narrow a cone is, the further away you want to stand to get decent width. - Though I normally don't bother filling up the health bar for someone who is close to full, there is one important distinction when facing certain enemies that can do more damage with a single hit than a squishy character can even have hitpoints. If the target was originally exactly full health, it will stop at 1 hp and require a second attack before falling. When the health of the target is anything less than completely full, it can drop immediately from the first shot. - I won't discuss your control/attack Powerset much, but to leave your options open for switching to some Empathy power when needed I can really recommend to focus your other powerset around powers with a short cast time. How many of them you take depends on what you need for a complete attack chain and control requirements. I have one Archery defender that gets by with just three attacks plus the tier 9 Rain of Arrows (the quick recharge gives a gapless attack chain and acceptable area effect damage) but at least all the attacks are sixslotted.

I got the impression you had a little passive agreesive guilt about empathy having heals.

Having abilities that heal really isn't a bad thing. Other than that, like most guides I have seen, a little overkill on pontification.

Updated the text slightly, trying to improve the tone since it was coming across wrong as per Transhade's post.

Especially nice with Memphis_Bill's input since it reminded me of something that I had not thought of at all, which is that some powersets for melee characters don't get mez protection until level 16. I will move Clear Mind down to level 8 on one of my Empathy characters on next respec and see if I find it useful down there, thanks! I removed the information about when I take it from the entry for the power since it will no longer be accurate after that respec.

Finally, a note about sounding "passive-aggressive" regarding Empathy and healing. This was probably caused by an incident when I was on my Kin/Sonic defender and got teamed with an Earth/Empathy controller that said in team chat she was very happy to be on her first "pure healer character". I actually had to heal her more than anything else (she seemed to like using area effect immobilization with DoT to attack, negating my normal area effect crowd control of sleep and knockback cones). Yes, she had taken the Medicine Pool and tried to use Aid Self during combat... She also put Adrenalin Boost on me before I told her it was better on someone else, since I already had enough recharge to Fulcrum Shift us to permanent damage cap. No Fortitude though. If people are going to try to build "healers", some of them really need some guidance.

I always thought cm protected longer than 60secs. If I am wrong then perhaps I need to go over the entire set and make sure I know what to expect.

forgot the part that Empathy is really only great in small team settings while awesome sets like TA are just great in all size teams. m

I do like it when people make healing trollers...skipping most of thier primary to healbot. Oh the idiotic antics that surround this mediocre set.

Heals only help if youre getting hit. If youre getting hit youre subject to one shot(+dot). If youre not playing at a high enough setting to be subject to getting vaporised then heals are sufficient, which every other set but sonic, either prevents or is so much better that heals are unnecessary.

So why do people play with subpar sets? Why do people think Empathy and Paindom are the end all be all of support?

I vote to rename it to Lamepathy, which it is. I believe in truth in advertising and you should too.

Not reading through it just picking up the CM lasting 60 secs thing. It is meant to be 90secs. I regard this as one of the greatest powers because someone allowed to aid their own survival should be better than someone held taking knocks of which the dps is surpassing my hps (rare cos I AP). I couldn't leave it late on any character. I'd proactively use it, if necessary on a full team, 7/90 secs is np.

You were right, this is only slightly humorous.

But only slightly.