Empathy Opinions

The other night there was a discussion on broadcast that I took a slight exception to.

The main points that bothered me where:

1) Only a looser takes Absorb Pain
2) Only a looser puts Healing Aura on auto

I've only created one defender with empathy and I do both of these things. I did a bit of research and when I started this character I decided that she would focus on her primary. The only attack she has is the one that I had no choice in taking. She is completely useless except for her ability to keep everyone else alive and moving.

Healing Aura on auto: I'm usually quite busy with other things to want to worry about manually using this power. For example, I am busy cycling through each of my team mates and using Clear Mind on them. I can usually keep Clear Mind doubled up on every member of the team, the only one that ever gets mezzed is my character.

The same holds true for fortitude, which I usually reserve for scrappers. I have it now so that I can keep this on at least one team mate continuously and almost on two continuously.

Having Healing Aura on auto allows me to concentrate on those that need the extra healing and not just the buffing (Heal Other, Absorb Pain, Resurrect)

Absorb Pain: lets face it, sometimes a team mate will suddenly go from full heath to near face plant before you can react. Yes, I've taken this but I try not to use it except in emergencies.

The only thing I agreed with in the conversation was not running after team mates that separate from the group. I stay with the main group and place myself so that my auras cover as much of the group as possible. If someone decides to run off in a different direction I'm not going to leave the main group vulnerable to pull one characters bacon out of the fire.

So, am I doing this wrong? Am I really a looser because I take Absorb Pain and put Healing Aura on auto?

Hello Hube02 ,

No you are wise to take Absorb Pain, used effectively and with forethought (and when aware of your surroundings) it can be absolutely invaluable.

You do not need to put Heal Aura on auto though as it restricts your capability & reaction-speed to fire off other powers should the situation arise
Every split second counts reaction-wise and any power on auto is potentially a disadvantage.

Ps: you spelt 'loser' wrong, (not that anyone is in-game anyway).
/endgrammarnazi

I've heard plenty of people say that they don't like Absorb Pain, but I've never come across people saying that you're a bad player if you take it. When used at the right time, it is an awesome power.

I think my main objection to having Healing Aura on auto is the people who stand around with it on auto when there's no fighting happening. It just gives me the impression that they want to do nothing more than follow the group around with it on auto and leech XP. And I have met people who do that. (They are known as healbots, pronounced "terrible players".)

Clicking Healing Aura onto auto when the fighting's really crazy and lots of people are in aura range? Completely justified. Although I prefer using lots of Heal Other, and then splashing a little Healing Aura to top things off.

Healing aura should never be put on auto. It has a specific radius, and if you want to heal people with it you need to be in range of them at the time of casting. Its animation time can also get in the way of you attempting to heal people with heal other.

It's dumb to call someone a loser over something like this, because your worth as a person doesn't hinge on your ability to play this game, but I can tell from your post that you have a problem with juggling all your powers. You shouldn't be using clear mind on every person on the team, and you definitely shouldn't make it a goal to have it doubled up on everyone. A single application of clear mind is enough to make someone impossible to mez in most situations, and melee archetypes have their own status protection and don't need it from you. As for fortitude, you shouldn't just automatically put it on scrappers. If it's well slotted, you can have it on three people at all times. Blasters probably benefit from fortitude the most, but pay attention to who on your team is taking the most damage and give it to them. Strategic fortitude use will make your team take a lot less damage.

Taking absorb pain is a personal choice -- some like it, some don't. I personally think it's a waste of a power option, so I don't ever take it. If you want to, that's fine.

Throwing healing aura on auto shouldn't be done, it's just a waste. The activation interferes with other powers that you potentially need to fire off at the drop of a hat.

Absorb Pain is good for alpha strikes in some high end SF/TF like LRSF and STF. I use it paired with Heal Other ( one right after the other ) when the tank/brute either jumps into the middle of all the heroes (lrsf) or tanking LR (stf). It is especially useful in that situation if you are doing either of those without a stone or are light on the team buffs.

AOE heals on auto are good for things like AV and GM fights where the squishies are all bunched around you for things like RA’s. As you said , its one less thing to worry about when you are focusing on the tank/brute with heals, forts, CM stacking and AB’s.

Playing an Empath and knowing how many folks view Empaths in general makes me avoid these kinds of threads. My suspicion is that the majority are folks seeking to start up the "monthly" Empathy sucks threads.

With that being said, my instinct is that you are truely asking for assistance.

So here are my opinions on your two questions.

I don't have Absorb Pain. In 2004 when I first began playing the game, it was from the experience of a support specialist from other MMOs, so when I looked at the description Absorb Pain seemed a no brainer. Well, it is a highly situational power. And even up to the first time I ever ran the STF, I had my doubts about the decision to NOT take it on my latest and greatest Empath. On my first ever STF run, my friend StratoNexus even sent me a tell saying that NOW was the time that I was going to wish that I had Absorb Pain. He was correct, of course. Lord Recluse is one character out there that can take a character's health down fast. But, I consider Rez more usefull in 99% of every team encounter by far, and here is why; Anything nasty enough to take a character to death fast enough to need Absorb Pain, may just be TOO fast for you to stop a player from dying<-- enter Rez.

IF you play Empathy correct, you will focus your build on as much recharge as possible.
Combine high recharge with Heal Other and you can spam enough healing to bring anyone from the brink of death quickly, even on the STF. Heal other doesnt have any nasty side effects associated with it, so its a "no brainer" to me. Perhaps at lower levels and with a lot less recharge, you will find Absorb pain more needed on teams, but I have never missed it since 2004 when I played my first Empaths.

Healing Aura on Auto. Not a chance. And there are several reasons (some have been mentioned already). First of all, if you get your recharge built up (something most Empaths do), then you should have several on your team buffed with fortitude, your RAs should be firing frequently and Adrenaline boost should be near-perma on one team member. Between all your buffs there should be very little need to fire off Healing Aura very much at all. I find that I use Healing Aura mostly solo these days. I do use it on teams, but only in situations where my Regen Aura is not up, and multiple team-mates are getting hurt. I will target the one that (I believe) is in the most danger of dying and fire heal other followed by healing aura. This assumes that I am standing near everyone that is getting hurt as well.

The second big reason that you dont want Healing Aura on auto is cycle-time. With no recharge enhancement, Healing aura takes 2.03 seconds to cast and 8 seconds to recharge. Thats 2.03sec per 10.03 seconds that you are rooted and cannot react and cast ANYTHING else. Approx 25% of your cycle time. Now if you increase your global recharge AND enhance Healing Aura the way I have you can get the recharge down to 2.62sec, this means I would be using 43% of my available cycle time CASTING Healing Aura. But the amount it healed would be the same as when I have ZERO recharge in it. Healing Aura on auto fire is simply bad use of cast times at the end game. Its not even a really good use of your time at lower levels. I have run a few POSIs recently where my in battle actions would go something like this: Heal Team-mate (A) with Heal Other, Lightning Bolt and CB a mob attacking the same player to draw some heat off them and keep blasting until mob down, cast healing aura to bring me and team-mate back to full health and switch to a new target.

The truth is, Heal Other and Fortitude are your two best powers until you get into higher recharge and higher level powers. And then they are still your most Basic and useful powers.

I Hope this helps you in some way

-Bio-

AP- great power, I've been able to make some clutch saves using alternating AP/heal other on 2 different characters. The most recent example that comes to mind was on a recent STF, Scirc did his little nuke and hit most of the team, 3 players dropped instantly to red(almost dead) I was able to fire off heal other on one and AP on another then heal other on the final target. If I only had heal other I'm guessing it would have taken me close to twice as long to heal all three of them.

Heal Spam? Eh, if you don't have any good attacks and you have already finished your buff cycle why not throw out a heal other, you never know when some softcapped squishy is going to get a bad roll. Spaming Healing Aura doesn't make you a bad player/emp unless you are standing next to me at WW.

I've seen Empaths with all four combinations of Heal Other and Absorb Pain and all four work. It really comes down to style and personal preference.

1. Healing Aura Only: The least direct healing but for most content this is fine, especially if the team has a second person with a support set or if the Empath has a mitigation heavy secondary (such as Dark or Ice) to reduce the healing required. The main downside is that it has less ability to react to spike damage which isn't a big deal most of the time but can be problematic against very tough enemies, especially with teammates who are reliant on Defense for damage mitigation.

2. Healing Aura and Heal Other: Healing Aura does the heavy lifting if multiple people are taking damage while Heal Other serves as a means of countering a spike or simply healing a single target if only one person is taking damage.

3. Healing Aura and Absorb Pain: This is generally played like type 1 with Absorb Pain as a backup power to handle spikes. It's ability to provide continuous healing is lower than type 2 but a lot of the time Healing Aura is all that's required anyway.

4. All three. Personally I think this is overkill but it does provide maximum continuous healing along with excellent ability to react to spikes.


As for having Healing Aura on Auto. There are times when that is useful (mostly Mothership/Hamidon raids where you want to spam it to heal people not on your team anyway) but in general it's not a good option. It limits your ability to react to what's going on instead you're hoping that whomever needs healing is near you when it goes off. Also depending on how much recharge you have you're spending one third of your time rooted and casting HA which is probably not the best use of your time.

Absorb Pain saw me through to the low 20's on my Empath Controller because of its incredibly low endurance cost: 0.52 end as opposed to 13 end for Heal Other.

Once I'd got my endurance under control, I respecced into Heal Other and never looked back.

Don't bother double Clear Minding everyone. They onl;y need it once, and then only those who dont have their own mez protection.

Out of the box Fortitude will do 2 people. With recharge slotting it will do 4 (slot for 3 recharge, 3 defence ASAP). Get Hasten as well so you can do even more, Hasten will also help out biug time with your last three powers, all of which are on a long recharge.


Empathy has a lot of emotional baggage with a lot of players, and invites more name-calling and wrong opinions than almost any other set. Just ignore them unless your team is dying around you.

You aren't a loser, they are just jealous.

I consider emps that think AP is bad and dont take it to be less than a good emp. AP is win.

The best option for me is to play a different character. I *always* feel more helpful on other defender/controllers than my Emp/Psi 95% of the time. I know how to play her well (in my opinion) with her being mostly SOs, but I've yet to feel a real draw or need to make a real effort on her any more. I'd rather play any of my other Defender/Controller/Corruptors first.

That MoLGTF on my Empath was really boring... I just Fortituded and spammed Psionic Tornado and Psychic Scream. Who needs healing when everyone's perfectly fine. Absorb Pain is good to either take almost dead characters to full or mostly dead tankers to not mostly dead. That's about all I've seen for use of it, but then again since I prefer to blast away, AP is nice because I can hold off on the heals in order to blast longer.

As for auto healing? Only in really laggy times where having it on auto A) helps when I'm lagging so much I can't do anything myself, yet am still being useful with a heal going on or B) Healing myself for one reason or the other. Then again, I enjoy psychic screaming 1 or 2 mobs ahead of the team and run the mobs into the tanker as my Empath. Who needs conventional? I sure don't.

Seeing a PBAoE heal on auto screams "bad" to me, and I make a playernote about it. Defenders who don't take their attacks get kicked, because ignoring half your powers is awful.