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I think I'm going to fill a last spot on a team now with this request "ITF looking for comic, observational humor preferred. No mimes"
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Originally Posted by ClawsandEffect
...Even telling a joke, in fact if you were on my team, I would RATHER you stand at the door and tell jokes than follow the tank around spamming Healing Aura.
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Global = Hedgefund (or some derivation thereof)
FYI, the new Mercedes Lackey superhero novel (inspired by her CoH play) includes an excellent discussion between two characters about whether support/healers should be available for combat or just rock the aura.
I was very amused.
City of Heroes was my first MMO, & my favorite computer game.
R.I.P.
Chyll - Bydand - Violynce - Enyrgos - Rylle - Nephryte - Solyd - Fettyr - Hyposhock - Styrling - Beryllos - Rosyc
Horryd - Myriam - Dysquiet - Ghyr
Vanysh - Eldrytch
Inflyct - Mysron - Orphyn - Dysmay - Reapyr - - Wyldeman - Hydeous
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Dude, have a heart and make an exception if the mimes promise to do pratfalls!|
Originally Posted by Deacon_NA
I think I'm going to fill a last spot on a team now with this request "ITF looking for comic, observational humor preferred. No mimes"
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Everybody loves tripmimes.
If we are to die, let us die like men. -- Patrick Cleburne
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The rule is that they must be loved. --Jayne Fynes-Clinton, Death of an Abandoned Dog
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That was awful.|
Originally Posted by Sailboat
Dude, have a heart and make an exception if the mimes promise to do pratfalls!
Everybody loves tripmimes. |
...
/considers new alt.
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Oh... and some people might deliberately be looking for terrain features that will let them 'scrape off' an auto-follow character. |
Originally Posted by Wicked_Wendy
Its really not a great idea to auto follow anyone. There will be times where that tank you are following makes a sharp turn in a building or especially in a COT Cave and suddenly your character is bashing its head against a wall trying to turn and follow.
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Unless, of course, they gave warning. "Have to AFK a minute. Putting so-and-so on auto-follow."
Paragon City Search And Rescue
The Mentor Project
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If you're comparing damage to blasters, you're missing the point of defender blasts. Yes, they do some damage, and yes it helps the team. Sometime, take a look at the real numbers info on the Defender blast debuffs and think about what they offer.|
Originally Posted by Arbegla
That's my point. Defender damage is so low, its really not going to make much of a different, especially when a blaster literally out damages the highest damaging attack a defender has, with its t2 blast that it can use while mez'ed.
Its not worth skimping out on my buffs to use my attacks when the AT next to me is dishing out double my damage in the same time frame. I might as well boost their damage more, and keep them alive, instead of trying to deal damage. |
Dark: -9.375% tohit
Electric: Endurance Drain (less useful because the computer cheats)
Energy: Powerful damage mitigation through knockback
Ice: -25% recharge and movement speed
Psy: -37.5% recharge
Rad: -25% defense
Sonic: -20% resist
AR: -def, kb, etc
Dual Pistols: Selectable based on ammo (kb & -def, -dmg, -rchg)
Oh, did I mention that those can stack? So if you're a */dark defender, you can easily keep up 2 applications of your tohit debuff on a target or even a whole spawn (night fall + tentacles), reducing their tohit by 18.75%. That's almost as good as putting a DO-slotted Fortitude on the entire team! Hell, that's exactly as good as unenhanced Darkest Night.
Sonic's -20% res is like having an [Achilles' Heel: Chance for -Res] slotted in every single attack, except that it's guaranteed to go off rather than a 1 out of 5 chance. One hit from a /sonic attack increases everyone's damage by 20% in many cases and is about as good as putting Fort on the entire team. 2 hits is better than Fort.
Psy's -recharge is a huge damage mitigator. Everything except Archery has some useful effect, and Defenders get the best debuff values of any AT on their secondary.
Any defender who doesn't use their secondary and stands in the back twiddling their thumbs between buff cycles is a detriment to the team. I'm not saying you're one of those, as you implied that you do use them in between buffing, but I've seen too many who do exactly that.
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Archery has a large bonus to Accuracy (1.15 compared to 1 for most powers and 1.05 for AR) which means less need to slot for Accuracy which in turn means more slots for other things, so it's an indirect benefit. For example a Defender with slotted Tactics could realistically manage with no accuracy slotting in all attacks except Rain of Arrows on +0 or +1 and only needs 1 enhancement for higher difficulties.
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Originally Posted by MTS
Everything except Archery has some useful effect
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The best healer autopower is the one not on my team.
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Originally Posted by PRAF68_EU
Dispari has more than enough credability, and certainly doesn't need to borrow any from you.
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Where's the love for Absorb Pain?
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Originally Posted by ColonelKomphort
Would it be better to autopower Healing Aura, or Clear Mind.
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My postings to this forum are not to be used as data in any research study without my express written consent.
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Now that i could get behind.
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Originally Posted by EarthWyrm
Where's the love for Absorb Pain?
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Dr. Todt's theme.
i make stuff...
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How about a power that makes them cast absorb pain against their will. |
Originally Posted by Schismatrix
Now that i could get behind.
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What's the name of this novel? I have a Barnes and Noble gift card sitting around somewhere that I need to use.
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Originally Posted by Chyll
FYI, the new Mercedes Lackey superhero novel (inspired by her CoH play) includes an excellent discussion between two characters about whether support/healers should be available for combat or just rock the aura.
I was very amused. |
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Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison See, it's gems like these that make me check Claws' post history every once in a while to make sure I haven't missed anything good lately. |
I think the name is Invasion: Book One of the Secret World Chronicle.
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The "Follow the Tank" mentality works like this. |
Originally Posted by Carnifax_NA
I'll never understand the "Follow the tank" mentality. When I'm playing my Plant/Emp the tank is generally the last person I worry about, they tend to be built well enough to hold their own.
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It is presumed that:
1) The tank is trying to gather as many of each group to him.
2) The tank will stay in melee range of those he has gathered.
3) The other melee types will also be attempting to enter melee.
4) A percentage of the non-melee types will be very close to melee some percentage of the time, to use short ranged attacks, or PBAOEs.
5) The tank has an aura that has a taunt element, or a damage component, and that it is on.
6) The tank will be attacking and thus using gauntlet, and that those attacks are most likely melee, or PBAOEs.
If most or all of those presumptions are correct, being close to the tank is ideal positioning. Most if not all of the melee types will be in PBAOE range (of Heal Aura, or Leadership toggles) as will a fair percentage of the close blasting types. Heal other, and similar powers of tat nature, have a good deal more range, so if a specific team outside that range gets in trouble there is a good chance that they are in range of that, if they haven't headed off on their own to tackle a totally different group. And, by being in such close proximity to the tank provides a great deal of protection in that aggro will most likely go to the tank first, then any of the other melee types about.
Yes, there are times when this strategy is all bad. Against enemies with lots of AOE attacks, it's pretty much suicide if you're squishy. But I'm specifically responding to the "I'll never get the 'Follow the Tank.'" If by that you meant that you'll never get why someone would want to do that 100% of the time, I'd totally agree. If you don't get that mentality ever, I hope I've been able to explain it's advantages in a lot of situations.
All that said, I wish to point out that I at no point condoned auto-follow, aura rocking, or failing to attack. Nor did I suggest to blindly follow and not consider what was going on. If a fair number of the assumptions above aren't true, one should us a different strategy. If the team is a tank, a def, and 6 blasters/trollers, etc, and all the rangey types seem to stay at max distance and rain death for example, the follow the tank should obviously not be used.
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You can also get it (and a bunch of other Baen books) from the free CDs which are archived here (and before anyone asks, yes, it's legal the CDs come with permission to distribute):|
Originally Posted by ClawsandEffect
What's the name of this novel? I have a Barnes and Noble gift card sitting around somewhere that I need to use.
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http://baencd.thefifthimperium.com/
Of course, I'd still encourage you to buy it since it encourages Baen to keep putting out the CDs
.
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Years later, these numbers still amaze me. Also, I could be wrong (It's probably been close to six years since I last played my empathy/elec defender) but if I remember right short circuit for Defenders also halts recovery. This makes completely draining them actually stop them from attacking.
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Originally Posted by MTS
If you're comparing damage to blasters, you're missing the point of defender blasts. Yes, they do some damage, and yes it helps the team. Sometime, take a look at the real numbers info on the Defender blast debuffs and think about what they offer.
Dark: -9.375% tohit Electric: Endurance Drain (less useful because the computer cheats) Energy: Powerful damage mitigation through knockback Ice: -25% recharge and movement speed Psy: -37.5% recharge Rad: -25% defense Sonic: -20% resist AR: -def, kb, etc Dual Pistols: Selectable based on ammo (kb & -def, -dmg, -rchg) Oh, did I mention that those can stack? So if you're a */dark defender, you can easily keep up 2 applications of your tohit debuff on a target or even a whole spawn (night fall + tentacles), reducing their tohit by 18.75%. That's almost as good as putting a DO-slotted Fortitude on the entire team! Hell, that's exactly as good as unenhanced Darkest Night. Sonic's -20% res is like having an [Achilles' Heel: Chance for -Res] slotted in every single attack, except that it's guaranteed to go off rather than a 1 out of 5 chance. One hit from a /sonic attack increases everyone's damage by 20% in many cases and is about as good as putting Fort on the entire team. 2 hits is better than Fort. Psy's -recharge is a huge damage mitigator. Everything except Archery has some useful effect, and Defenders get the best debuff values of any AT on their secondary. Any defender who doesn't use their secondary and stands in the back twiddling their thumbs between buff cycles is a detriment to the team. I'm not saying you're one of those, as you implied that you do use them in between buffing, but I've seen too many who do exactly that. |
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Yes, Short Circuit does have a large -recovery debuff. In my time playing storm/elec, it was the only endurance drain power that actually seemed useful, as you can drain them to 0 all day long (even that can be tough to do before they die anyway), but they'll still attack the instant their recovery ticks... unless you Short Circuit.
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Originally Posted by Kailure
Years later, these numbers still amaze me. Also, I could be wrong (It's probably been close to six years since I last played my empathy/elec defender) but if I remember right short circuit for Defenders also halts recovery. This makes completely draining them actually stop them from attacking.
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If I try to grind my teeth and ignore all the things in the OP that I find annoying and counterproductive, and just answer the question posed.... And if I assume that the OP means Emp when he says Healer, I'd say RA would be the best autopowers. Pretty much a tie, with the deciding factor based on the team. But, if you were going to do that, you'd be pretty much obliged to stay close to the largest concentration of teammates..
That said, I'd never set even RA to autofire. As several have said before, auto firing the aura is for very specific, limited circumstances. Pretty much what others have said before, when in mass combat where you just can't monitor all of the allies health situations. Even then, I usually don't as massed auto-fired AOEs from many alts with heal-type auras just make lag worse for folks. I always prefer to use my own judgment in response to the situation over auto firing a healing power.
My personal choice of autofire powers in general are things like Practiced Brawler. I do also auto fire Parry on my BS scraper on occasion, as I like knowing if I pause in my offensive attack cycle, I will get a quick Def bump,and still do a bit of damage.
Hello, OP, and welcome back to the game!
Except in extremely laggy conditions, like trials and raids, the two most acceptable autofire powers on an empath are Hasten and Vengeance. If you've got your incarnate Destiny buff, maybe that. If you don't have any of these powers, autofire will almost certainly do you more harm than good.
As an aside, I urge you not to play Empathy as your first defender. The set is full of traps and pitfalls. It entices new players to make serious build and gameplay mistakes by placing highly situational powers (heals) at the top of the list (where the "good all the time" powers are supposed to go).
I encourage every new player's first buff/debuff set to be Dark Miasma. Although it is a slightly flawed set, in that it is not Storm, it will introduce you to a broad range of gameplay concepts: heals, slows, soft mez, hard mez, anti-minion powers, anti-AV/GM powers, PBAoEs, targeted AoEs, cones, drop powers, toggle buffs, toggle debuffs, even a pet. If you get Dark Miasma to level 50, you can apply that experience to any other buff/debuff set, and already be an expert from level 1. It does fine with just SOs, and if you want to buy IOs, many of the IO sets for Dark Miasma powers are affordable. Finally, it's a good set for soloing, and the best powers in the set come fairly early, so you can develop good playstyle habits at low levels while soloing.
If you're going to be a waste of space and go afk/follow with a healing power on auto, warmth is the prettiest of the aura heals, you should probably reroll as a therm.
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Invasion just came out in March, and includes a CD with a bunch of stuff on it. I finished reading it about a week ago. Not bad as Chapter 1 of a much longer story. I thought that the main bad guys were a little bit on the Stereotypical side. They had a bit of a Sky Captain/Max Fleisher feel to them. Some interesting characters. Every now and then, you can really see the CoH influences.|
Originally Posted by ClawsandEffect
What's the name of this novel? I have a Barnes and Noble gift card sitting around somewhere that I need to use.
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There are a couple of scenes where the "healer" is supposed to stay out of battle, but runs in anyway to save the day by using some offensive powers. No "Rockin' the Aura."
LOCAL MAN! The most famous hero of all. There are more newspaper stories about me than anyone else. "Local Man wins Medal of Honor." "Local Man opens Animal Shelter." "Local Man Charged with..." (Um, forget about that one.)
Guide Links: Earth/Rad Guide, Illusion/Rad Guide, Electric Control
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My Kin/Elec was designed as an endurance drainer -- before Elec control did it better. My best way to End Drain a group was Power Build Up--Thunderous Blast--pop a blue--run in and hit Short Circuit. Short Circuit alone doesn't drain enough endurance to work, but it does prevent Recovery for a little while.
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Originally Posted by MTS
Yes, Short Circuit does have a large -recovery debuff. In my time playing storm/elec, it was the only endurance drain power that actually seemed useful, as you can drain them to 0 all day long (even that can be tough to do before they die anyway), but they'll still attack the instant their recovery ticks... unless you Short Circuit.
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LOCAL MAN! The most famous hero of all. There are more newspaper stories about me than anyone else. "Local Man wins Medal of Honor." "Local Man opens Animal Shelter." "Local Man Charged with..." (Um, forget about that one.)
Guide Links: Earth/Rad Guide, Illusion/Rad Guide, Electric Control
Thank you for the reminder that, if my guide does not mention the importance of autopowers, it should be updated to do so. Yes, definitely, there should be a reminder to turn on an autopower.
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awesome.
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Originally Posted by seebs
Thank you for the reminder that, if my guide does not mention the importance of autopowers, it should be updated to do so. Yes, definitely, there should be a reminder to turn on an autopower.
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"I have ridden the mighty moon worm!"
-Al Gore
Fiery Aura is only good for farming, I'm cereal
@Caucasiafro
Quit healing and start dealing.