?/Empath support troller

I have never played an Empath before so I'm wondering...

What would be a good primary for an Empath troller? Thinking of Mind control/ice control/elec control mainly because I've tried the other sets quite thoroughly. Any advice with pros/cons? Also, what would you recommend as IO bonus focus?

I heard that Mind control is the heaviest control set nowadays. Ice would be nice for general mitigation, I guess, and Elec seems to be quite solid too. Any positive/negative personal experience with any of these combos?

Thanks!

A key question is whether you want to be a Controller first with the Emp secondary, or do you want to focus more on Empathy but provide some control? Personally, I would put Earth over Mind as the "heaviest" control set, plus you get a little tank as a pet. Mind's damage falls off in higher levels, while Earth's damage increases with its pet. Earth's controls are persistant (they stay around and keep working) while Mind's controls are one-shot (fire it off and you're done until it recharges).

My choice for best pairing with Empathy would be Illusion. Why? You get full invisibility to get to teammates without a problem. You get Deceive to pull foes off of teammates without drawing aggro (same as Mind's Confuse). You get Phantom Army to distract foes while you heal/rez your teammates.

Comparing Mind (which I like better as a Dominator set), Ice (melee AoE soft control) and Elec (which has significant weaknesses when you have teammates with AoE DoT powers or an AoE Immob with -knockback . . . and a Fire Controller using Fire Cages invalidates several of Elec Controls main powers).

I have to agree with the Illusion/Empathy.. those two sets are just made to go together so well that its not even funny. Healing from hiding and confusing from hiding are wonderful combination.

OK, here's a question. I'm thinking about a /emp as well. I know I'll probably be soloing more than a bit of the time (due to the sporadic nature of my play time sometimes). Would you still recommend Illusion over something a bit more... err... visceral?

It's 106 miles to Grandville, we got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark and we're wearing faceless helmets

... Hit it ...

I'll add another vote for illusion/empathy. Why?

Pet-centric/summoned control works well with an active secondary. Why? you may miss having strong influence in fights, but this aspect means your pets help mitigate/distract so you have more space/time to work.

The pet aggro/ally-based approaches work well with invisibility, as you will stay hidden easily and not draw attention.

Blind/spectral wounds are fast, so interspersing them with some heals is easy.

Both illusion and empathy benefit from +recharge bonuses very well, giving you pets more often, and buffs for more team members.

Downsides: phantom army can't get your tasty buffs, empathy can offer nothing to make the army work any better through debuffs. You have less control, so you have less ability to soften damage with lockdown, putting more stress on your secondary. As such, you have to be strategic about you holds/confuses in tight spots.

One more vote for Illusion/Empathy - go-go gadget stealth support!

Anything should work. Especially with the recent addition of iTrials, content is varied enough to warrant a number of different tactics. Illusion is fine but doesn't strike me as better than other sets.

I will say I specifically disagree that "melee" oriented sets don't pair well with Empathy. Empathy provides a very powerful Regen effect, a self heal, and a recovery aura to deal with the typically high endurance costs of these sets.

I also disagree with the characterization of Electric Control as low in control. It is not a steamroller set. But Electric has a non-aggro-Confuse-from-stealth power that is so abusable during iTrials and other places where teams have to break apart that IMO it deserves a spot at the top. IMO CoH is evolving very quickly away from a game where the main objective is to obliterate groups of mostly easy enemies who stand in tight clumps and don't move around much. Aggro-less powers are a huge asset once the focus becomes "complete the objective" instead of "kill everything you see." Especially against enemies who have high base accuracy and are almost guaranteed to kill you if you engage too many of them directly.

i would prolly vote with ill/emp too

stealth + heal/buffing is very good

you can help phantasm survive in melee range with fort AB, ect unless your fighting like an AV or GM that could 1 shot it

you could tank with your PA while your buffing an ally (be it the phantasm, or another teammate)

If Illusion isn't an option I'd suggest Plant. My Plant/Emp/Primal has been a blast to play 1-50. You end up being a green machine, quite capable of handling yourself while also turning team-mates into God Mode.


You get lots of AOE damage, especially once you proc Roots and Carrion Creepers up.


Elec/Emp sounds like it'd be fun too but would have low damage.

Illusion is one of the better choices, for the reasons said above. Illusion works fine without a lot of attention, letting you focus more on the empath side when things get heated without losing effectiveness. With PA to tank for you, you're free to ignore defense completely and go all out on recharge. PA offers stealth and aggroless control that works well against all the things that foil most controllers - mez immune enemies, masses of bosses/EBs, and AVs.

Having played both Mind/emp and ill/emp (100 levels of the former and 50 of the latter) I wouldn't recommend Mind in general or Mind/Emp in particular. Mind has no spammable immobilize to set containment, so on controllers it's forever doomed to be low damage. Illusion at least procs reactive well - my Ill/emp solos pylons in 5 minutes, no Lore pets.

Mind's control ability is overrated. Total Dom and Mass Confuse combined have only the same uptime as Flashfire. Mass Hypnosis + Terrify make up for the shortfall but the advantage isn't as significant as some people think. TK is terrain dependent, endurance heavy and has a low target cap. What Mind does have a lot of is single-target control options. It's fun in the low levels to juggle bosses with Levitate and turn off Mary's hurricane in the KHTF, but at high levels where the game is all about steamrolling large spawns of enemies with the occasional AV or three thrown in, it's pretty lackluster.

I dont think you should rule out mind control. The aoe sleep is up enough that solo, you can at least get mass hyp + terrify off once in a fight, maybe twice. Also, aoe isnt a big deal when soloing and on teams you are planning to work your empathy side.

But lets say its down to ice and grav.

Ice has super low damage if you care about that, especially aoe damage is low. And it also has no reliable aoe hard control to prevent retaliation to aoes you launch, and the one passable mitigation (ice slick) requires some trickiness to apply safely and it interacts awkardly (tho not a deal breaker) with the aoe immobilize that grants containment. Plus your arctic air power can generate a lot of aggro at times ... Not always the best for an empath.

That said, I played ice/emp to 40 or so. I deleted her but only because I needed a new character and I was absolutely out of slots.

Gravity control is rough in a way. Aside from getting its aoe stun late, it also has a long cast animation which can get you faceplanted every time you try to use it. Now, you can leverage the non-line-of-sight aspect of wormhole, but I think its more accurate to say that you are obligated to leverage it, not merely that you can do so. That long animation time is killer.

But I know someone that swears by his grav/emp. I just feel that empathy is one of the least helpful powersets for smoothing out some of grav's weaknesses. Well, you do get a self heal, and the fire epic has a self rez

I have fire/emp, illusion/emp and earth/emp at level 50 and I love all three. But if they are out and mind/emp is out, I would say ice/emp.

Tho what about elec/emp? Or did someone turn you off of that? It has an aoe confuse that is up frequently, it has the best sleep power in the game (in that its location based, aoe, and re-sleeps foes) and you have an aoe for immobilization to set up aoe damage from the epic. And since the confuse can be active all the time, its pretty safe to leverage that aoe.

So elec/emp would be nice.

Lewis

I made an ice/empathy troller 3-4 years ago. After already having a defender emp., I was thrilled playing it ... at first. Empathy? With something actually strong and effective?! Something NOT team-dependent?! WOW! As I got into the midlevels, though, I came to dislike it intensely. During the alpha strike, I had to make a choice - heal all the incoming damage, OR do something effective to prevent that damage from occurring. There was no way to do both. To make matters worse, empathy as a secondary is not as strong as it is on a defender. As the caster, it's not obvious buffing before the fight, but it IS noticeable when you're applying lukewarm heals over and over.

If you want to play an empath, I'd suggest just making a defender empath. If you are really set on a troller version, I'd strongly recommend illusion. You can set your pets to work right at the outset, then stay back, heal, and reapply buffs. If your team is floundering, you can do some stealth confusing (deceive) before the fight to mitigate damage.

This is just my experience. I have friends who have have troller empaths and really enjoy them, saying they are better for small team play. They bring out the defender versions for large teams. Now that I think of it, they all have illusion/empaths, too.

IMO the only real way to "lose" City of Heroes is to play it with the mindset that only the best will do. "Average" performing sets just aren't far enough behind the "top" ones for that sort of analysis to matter, nor is the game hard enough to need to excessively min/max. There is also no pressing reason you need to be able to farm or solo an AV on your 10th or 20th character.

In other words, whether the sets are technically "equal" is kind of irrelevant, at least to me. I have played one or two of each of them and they all have their ups and downs. Barring the fact that some of the Controller sets lean heavily on teaming until the 40s, all of them IMO offer worthwhile and unique game experiences and the main way to lose is to worry too much about whether there is something better. One day the game will be over and everything you have "earned" will be gone anyway, so you might as well enjoy the game for what it offers while you play it. And even the most heavily min/maxed character can be reduced to crap in an instant with the introduction of a enemy type or challenge. For example, all it would take is one major enemy type with Dispersion Bubble to nerf Fire Control into the floor.

All of that aside, speaking from a purely objective standpoint on relative power, it is my belief that 7 of the 8 Controller primary power sets are so strong that they all deserve an A- to A+ grade. Gravity is the only one I'm not crazy about (I'd give it a C), but it's not so terrible no one should ever play it. IMO taking your Mind Controller farming and complaining that it sucks is missing the forest for the trees... trees that went extinct some time ago.

I haven't seen it mentioned yet, but in addition to ill/emp just being awesome, Empathy's recharge buff from Adrenalin Boost works on Lore Pets, so it has an extra source of obscene damage beyond PA, Phantasm, and the Blind-Wounds one-two punch.

It's worth considering that Plant Control is obscenely powerful, if you don't like Illusion.