several questions: instances, tumbleweeds, healer/defender.

Hello,

I've been playing for about 3 days now, and I'm up to level 12.
I'm playing a defender and focusing on healing (though there's only two healing abilities right now with a side-focus in combat and stealth so I can move around and complete missions in under 69 thousand hours.

My questions are these:

1. Is it possible, at my level or a not-too-far level, to level via instances? I hate missions. Really, the only reason I'm doing missions is to get to a level high enough to do instances.
I like healing people. That's why I'm a healer. Combat is not my forte.
2. In my entire three days on the game, I've seen maybe 4 people. I've created several characters and it seems they each started in different areas. I'm currently in imperial city, working with the PPT. Other areas seem more heavily populated. How do I get to a more populated area, or can I at this level / would it be ok to do so?
3. There seem to be no place to buy/sell anything. My salvage is full, but I can't sell it to anyone. I know in other cities there are places to sell, but none in imperial city that I can see.
4. If I, as a weak-*** defender, can't complete a mission due to being so weak on my own, is there anything I can do? I can't seem to abandon some missions, n'or move on at this level.

Finally, my last question is - What are some things you wish you'd known when you first started out in this game?

Thanks for all your help!

1) Missions are instances. You mean Task Forces, which are really just a string of missions, designed to do with a team. Apart from that, yes it is possible to level that way. You will spend more time getting teams than you will playing, at least in the long run, unless you get a reliable group of friends to run with consistently.

Aside- This game relies very little on healing and direct heals. Even the pools with multiple healing powers devote more of their design to buffs and/or debuffs. You won't find a dedicated healing Class or Power pool in this game (even Empathy). If you team with people as a focused healer, you will accomplish more than you would trying to solo with such a build, but you will also be putting more burden on them for your progress than you would with a more balanced outlook.

2) As I said, missions are instances. Most of the game's population is in those instances at a given time, thus you don't see them. If you seek out some global chat channels on your server, you will be in touch with more people, regardless of where you are and they are, and the game will rapidly feel more alive to you.

3) As far as I know, there are no Auction Houses in Praetoria where you are. I think there are banks, but I'm not sure. I do know there are vendors (not Merit Vendors) marked on your map that you can sell to. To sell Salvage and recipes to them, use the slider on to move the left side of your window down to see them.

4) there is something you can do. Stop thinking of yourself as weak. Unfortunately there isn't any way to change your difficulty settings in Praetoria, but you can start a character as a hero or villain and get some more control over the settings in missions (and get some overall easier missions). But really, you're not weak unless you ignore parts of the character pools available to you (overfocusing on heals early on). Another good way to handle over hard missions is to kill things on the streets that are easy for you until you get a level or two above the missions you have trouble with.

My last advice to you is to find a friend. Someone who likes to do the combat thing more than you do and doesn't mind letting you focus on support as long as you do a good job supporting them.

Check out the Mentor Project thread and join the "N P C" channel. Plenty of advice and help there.

Also, since you mentioned level 12 and Empath, make sure you grab the Fortitude power. It's a very important buff for you. When you're on a team, who ever you're spending the most time healing, put Fortitude on them and suddenly you don't need to heal them so much.

That'll teach me to talk about Praetoria when I've only been up through level 8 there, or sped through badge hunting. Thanks for the corrections, I knew I should have double checked before I said that, because even I didnt think I was right.

Also if you're having trouble finding players ... are all your new characters in Praetoria? You might have better luck finding players in Paragon City or the Rogue Isles. If all your characters are low level, you might be better off re-rolling them in PC or RI.

You're not a druid, you've got specialty ranged attacks with some of the headiest team buffs in the game. If you focus on sole HP heals, you'll be a detriment to yourself and any teams you're on.

If you want some assistance, ask some more questions. As a point of general consideration, I've been playing my Empathy Defender nonstop since the dawn of the game. And it kicks butt.

I will echo what everyone else is saying about "don't be a healer because you're grossly shortchanging yourself." I'll be blunt: "healer" is kind of a hotbutton word. Most people who know what they're doing shun "healers," and the people who actively ask for "healers" do so because they have no idea what they're doing.

This ties in to why you can't solo for beans. You have a secondary that's full of attacks; take and use them.

1. You're going to feel weaker in Praetoria where you're at no matter what AT you're playing. Praetorian missions are just generally harder than the older missions found in the rest of the game. So that's kind of two strikes against you currently, because you're at a location where finding teammates is more difficult and where it's harder to solo.

2. As everyone has said: in other games, healing is vital to high-level encounters. In CoH, healing is useful in low level encounters and less and less useful the higher you go. This is a game where people can solo entire groups of enemies and deal massive damage; the support characters that are most wanted at the high end of the game do things that makes it easier to do massive damage more quickly. Defenders/Corruptors/etc can still be very awesome support characters but healing winds up being one of the least of your abilities, except in certain specific situations. Making enemies weaker, increasing ally damage, increasing defense and resists, replenishing people's endurance are all things people tend to appreciate more. ^_^

Just thought I'd throw this out there too:

Don't be discouraged by us saying healing isn't very useful in the high level game. If my guess is correct and you're playing an Empathy defender, then later on you will get some VERY powerful buffs, which will make you quite useful to just about any team.

You'll find as you level higher that you'll start using your buffs more often and your heals less. High level Empaths morph from being healers to being buffers.

Also, as you get higher in level, you'll find that as you're using your buffs, you'll find that you have more time to blast as well, so start slotting your attacks up too.

Welcome to the Forums.

Most of the Advise given is solid enough, but a couple of other things:

What Server(s) are you playing on? Some servers tend to not be as populated as others.

You also might wish to look in the Defender Forums as well.

Also to mention again Paragonwiki is you friend.

Thank you for the time...

@Travlr (Main) / @Tymers Realm (Test)