Healing as a Defender

Sb plz.

One of the things I find ever so amusing about this whole ... um ... debate is it's phrased as if having good support and healing capabilities are somehow mutually exclusive with the role of a blasting offender.*

My latest Empathy/Sonic/Elec build (on Rianna) has HA, HO, and AP (a first for me for AP) along with Fort, CM, AB, Assault, Tactics, Maneuvers, and Vengeance effectively slotted. The HA with Spritual is something in the neighborhood of 307 hp, the HO over 600. I can and do run an attack chain with fully slotted screech. shriek, scream, EF buffed by Aim and Assault. In the various Weekly target TFs I think I hit my Dreadful Wail roughly once every 3rd spawn or so (about once every 90 seconds or so) and usually the first thing I try to do to every spawn is lay into them with Howl and its 60+ ft cone. She also has 65ft stealth with Recall Friend. And while only my teammates can say just how delusional I may be, I think I'm reasonably safe to say that those little green icons along side their names are usually abundant enough to be consider "supportive" despite my tendency to lay into whatever spawn looms into view.

Guess I think they aren't nor should they be. The only limit on one vs the other is the Player at the keyboard.

Reyna Morningdew (Lvl 50 Emp/Rad/Dark/Spiritual)
Rianna Sidhe (Lvl 50 Emp/Sonic/Elec/Spiritual), both of Green Machine

Dark Lightning (Lvl 50 Emp/Dark/Dark/*)
Tryth (Lvl 50 Emp/Sonic/Elec/Spiritual)
and several more in the 35+ range

*Nevermind most defender blasts are also "support" by virtue of their secondary effects.

I tell ya, to me after player close to 6 years if you just happen to read some good threads you learn a lot.

Goes to show you how some info about anything let alone info about a game or game mechanics can be either really useless stuff or really insightful.

I was fortunate to read the Force Field debate over in the Mastermind forums and had my eyes opened up to this similar question just from another angle.

Sadly as in many MMO games the core ideas fall to the way side as the game evolves. Back in the day Empaths were a must you just could not rely on the dark heal to work all the time and you couldn't afford to have them fail when you needed. Empath was the must have goto healer. Stone Tank was the must have. Kinetic with increase density was next on the list. Of course every kin had speed boost but teams with a stone tank would take a kin with ID over another that didn't have it.

Today Inventions along with sets that have been ported over from either side has changed all of that. Before where a stone tank was the only tank just about defense capped. Today the defender is defense capped let alone EVERY Tank and Scrapper.

Today set bonuses now give that dark defender tons more accuracy that really limits the heal from missing even against AVs. Even if it does miss the protection players are afforded today allow the ability to miss one or two heals. Let alone all the recharge, endurance increase, defense, heal, etc that set bonuses offer.

I know something is askew when a retard like me can tank an AV with my defender while the moving away to give the actual Tank player a chance to ress and set back up after a death.

Personally I would take something other then an empath. I feel there is enough for everyone to go around and fix themselves up that I don't need to be holding their hands. Further you do not need 8 players for much of the TF / SF content. How many times have you had a scrapper, blaster, tank or a brute who talks so much trash talk just to play half the TF on his or her back.

Sonic blast is a good thing to give an empath. Also any control/emp though they can be slow to level at first.

As an empath, three of your powers only do the effect you paid the endurance for when someone's actually hurt, and one of your powers only works when someone's dead. Oof. Because so many powers are situational, you'll rely on your secondary more - play (and build) an empathy defender like a blaster who has the best Medicine pool ever. My favorites are Radiation Blast (fast recharge plus lots of AoEs), Sonic Attack (resistance debuff helps your entire team almost as much as a global damage buff), Ice Blast (two holds), and Psychic Blast (often not resisted), but the most important thing is having a good attack chain that keeps you continually putting out damage whenever you're not needed to save someone's bacon.

Fortitude is your speed boost. With three recharge IOs, it comes up just under every 30 seconds, and lasts for two minutes on each. That's enough to keep four teammates with perma-fortitute, which on most pick-up teams will cover all your melee allies.

Look into six-slotting Heal Other (Heal 3, Recharge 1, Endurance 2). Instead of healing your entire team for a seventh of their health every eight seconds, you heal one person for half of their health (with three heal IOs) every four seconds. Considering you're usually only worrying about one person (the one who grabbed all the aggro) dying, use this and save Healing Aura for the rare times when you can't find someone right away or when everyone's taken a notable chunk of damage.

Finally, consider another powerset. Three unorthodox healers are Traps, Cold Domination, and Storm Summoning. Traps defenders get AoE defense and healing (Triage Beacon and Force Field Generator), plus crowd control in Caltrops, -resistance in Acid Mortar, and -regen in Poison Trap. Cold Domination is an endurance healer, not a hit point healer, what with the ability of Heat Loss to grant everyone Endurance and thereafter cap everyone's Recovery (great against Malta) to go with their three shields. Storm Summoning's O2 Boost is a single-target heal and Clear Mind rolled into one, as well as an AoE defense buff and many minicontrol powers.

I have a suggestion (thats only valid if you can do this, and are willing to.. Starting in Praetoria or Villian side would be required).

You could go Pain Domination. It fills an intersting bridge between a heal set, buff set, and a debuff set.

Can't be a Defender however, but Pain Domination gives you those 3 non-To hit heals, buffs, and even a debuff, along with a Regeneration Toggle.

Closest to a Defender would probley be Corruptor Root /Pain

Never liked Empathy's play style much, Pain however I'm digging since it mixes things up a bit.

Just a thought however.

Pain will have you healing more than Empathy. Once Empathy gets Fortitude and some recharge bonuses up, you won't be needing to heal nearly as much. Pain has significantly inferior mitigation tools, but it does give more damage output to the team.

After 7 years (off and on) of playing my Emp/Dark, I can tell you that being a total buff/heal bot is absolutely boring. I've managed to set up a nice buff cycle that provides long enough gaps for me to do other things.

Though, I am of the opinion that all these new trials and other content being introduced may increase the usefulness of Empathy. I've seen some of these new AVs, etc put out some big damage. And, it is nice to have good old PBU + Healing Aura to help an entire league recover faster.

IMHO, this is a game where the usefulness of any single AT or power set has more to do with what the situation requires.

Come to think of it, with everyone having access to Interface for debuffs and Destiny for AoE buffs, there are a lot of times when traditional "support" characters may be less required. But, I still prefer to have the classic support available. Nothing like having a good player covering your "six" sometimes.

My 0.02 inf worth, I think empathy is fine as a buff set in addition to a heal set. My preference however is /thermal. The thermal shields can really cut down on healing. The top tier debuffs are very satisfying.

Boring for some people. Always have to remember that different people enjoy different things.

I do agree with the rest of what you said, though. My FF/Dark is basically a bad blaster on the trials. The buffs are kinda nice, sometimes, for the Lambda split, and force bubble is cute for the BAF prisoners, but that's about it.

Of course, FF/Dark is pretty underwhelming to begin with, but whatever, I've had it for 7 years, too, and I'm too stubborn to change.

I keep planning to make an empath one day.

I can't figure out how to make one without any of the heals, though. You have to take one of the first two powers.

I guess I could settle for taking only the PBAoE heal and only using it when no one else is around as a self heal.

Would like to take issue with some things you said...

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zombie Man I did that once with a character I called Dr. Irony and dressed like a surgeon. When the team leader asked why I didn't heal, I'd say I didn't have any heals, thus, the name. Then I get kicked.

While such a tactic may be worth some humor, it is not something I would tolerate. If you are going to play a certain AT (doesn't matter what), I don't think it is being unreasonable to expect you to build and play that character such that they can make a good addition to the "average" team. Personally, if I was the team leader, I would have kicked you too. In fact, I tend to kick people who bring a toon to my team and you do not have the key powers that make you valuable to my team. I've kicked Kins who don't have SB...

Quote:

Anyway, to the OP: "Healing" for the most part is the least desirable buff, since it assumes damage was taken and now needs to be fixed. Tactically, it is much, much better to never take damage in the first place, and other Defense and Control powers do that pretty well in CoH. Healing isn't a buff at all. People who even think that healing classifies as a "buff" needs to go pick up a dictionary. However, "Healing" does come in handy in lower levels before toons have all their other mitigation powers (shields, debuffs, controls). It also comes in handy when the team gets in over their heads, or, when there is a foe that bypasses ordinary defenses (e.g., Hami Raids) or there is overwhelming odds (e.g., MotherShip Raids). Slightly disagree. I tend to favor the approach of having a variety of characters who can increase the survivability of the team and keep us rolling. IMHO, everything is a welcome addition to my team. The problems with "Healing" and the Empathy set are: 1. The Empath ignores their buffs (e.g. Fortitude) and their attacks (Primary Set) to be a dedicated "Healer". Most teams don't need that much healing, and so, the healer is basically doing nothing helpful most of the time. Already addressed a long time ago. But, we must accept there are people who enjoy this role. I discourage people from this style but to each his own. 2. Non-Empaths, most notably certain team leaders, require a "Healer" to be on their team even though they're just going up normal content. They'll exclude other Defenders in order to get that "Healer"; or, they're planning on engaging in over-their-heads activities like herding +4 spawns and need a "healer" to keep them alive. The rest of the team sits backs and waits for the herd, which makes this tactic *less* rewarding since so many people are doing nothing for long periods of time. Again, we've been over this recurring issue before. Education of the masses is the best solution here. 3. See here.

Most things addressed in bold type. Your post does speak of an attitude among some "vet" players that isn't helpful either, but that is a discussion for another time.