Does your secondary REALLY matter as an Empath?
By
Adeon Hawkwood,
Posted on: 2011-07-29 05:16 in Defenders
Ice is actually one of the best secondaries available to defenders. It's only second to Sonic, IMO.
You get Ice Storm and Blizzard with blaster modifiers, great single target attacks, and 2 holds.
Mains (Freedom) @Auroxis
Auroxis - Emp/Rad/Power Defender Pylon Video Soloing an AV
Pelvic Thunder - SS/Elec/Mu Brute
Sorajin - Elec/Nin Stalker
Neuropain - Sonic/Mental/Elec Blaster
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You are probably going to attract a bunch of posters who are going to tell you about the damage potential of your empath and that you are ignoring large part of your character by not taking more attacks.|
Originally Posted by Deathstroke33
I came back to playing an empath I made a very long time ago yesterday, and was suddenly reminded how much I really enjoy playing that type of support role. Keeping the team alive and moving along was a lot of fun, but then something happened later last light. Between missions someone said to me "Great heals, but why ice?" I initially took ice for the minor protection Ice would give to me in a crunch, but clearly this was lost on this person.
So I began to wonder, as an Empath, my biggest job is healing and buffing, right now at lvl 26 I only have 2 attacks from Ice. So does secondary really matter? Did I somehow gimp my character by taking ice? |
I say, do what you enjoy. If you like healing and buffing and not so much attacking then whatever your secondary you choose is good enough. However, if you wanted a secondary to compliment your primary (heals/buff) I would go with a secondary with some good debuff potential to help your team. Ice has good slows but I would have went with dark (great -hit debuff) or rad (-def). I have also seen some /Sonic Empaths with primarily heal/buff builds that help alot.
Good luck with your toon and have fun!
Paragonian Knights
Justice Company
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Let's take that question in 2 parts.| Did I somehow gimp my character by taking ice? |
Did you gimp your character? Yes, by having only 2 powers from ice at level 26, which means you don't have at least 2 of the following: Ice Blast (meaning you have no attack chain), Freeze Ray (meaning you are missing a great hold), and/or Ice Storm (so you have no aoe, with Blaster damage to boot).
Are you gimped due to taking ice? Absolutely not.
Global = Hedgefund (or some derivation thereof)
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If this person was simply inquiring about why you had picked ice, then no problem (see below). If he was criticizing the choice of ice on anything but conceptual grounds, he is a blithering idiot.|
Originally Posted by Deathstroke33
I came back to playing an empath I made a very long time ago yesterday, and was suddenly reminded how much I really enjoy playing that type of support role. Keeping the team alive and moving along was a lot of fun, but then something happened later last light. Between missions someone said to me "Great heals, but why ice?" I initially took ice for the minor protection Ice would give to me in a crunch, but clearly this was lost on this person.
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| So I began to wonder, as an Empath, my biggest job is healing and buffing, right now at lvl 26 I only have 2 attacks from Ice. So does secondary really matter? Did I somehow gimp my character by taking ice? |
The City of Heroes Community is a special one and I will always look fondly on my times arguing, discussing and playing with you all. Thanks and thanks to the developers for a special experience.
As others have said, if you like empathy (and I do, as well), then there's nothing wrong with focusing on that. Have you considered working with your /ice as a means of more damage mitigation/support for your team? While the others are correct that you can get some damage out of an ice secondary on a defender (more solo and on small teams), there is another option. You could slot for slows (the powers slow attack speed as well as movement), holds, and tohit debuffs and use the secondary very usefully as support to complement your primary. Whether you slot primarily for damage or not, /ice is an awesome secondary for a defender (but you do need to choose powers from it for it to shine 
).
I have Dark Blast and love it for the ability to debuff mob accuracy and immobilize a bunch as well. I did not take a lot of the secondary but I made sure to have enough of it to do something with.
@ Dr Gemini
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| �If we would come together and be great role models, it would be amazing to see how the next generation turns out.� |
If you're not blasting in addition to all your Empy stuff, you're not contributing as much as you could. Or should.
To echo what others have said, Ice Blast is great.
Support Guides for all Corruptor secondaries and Fortunatas
The Melee Teaming Guide for Melee Mans
The Melee Teaming Guide for Melee Mans
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Take an ice blast, even just for pulling. Adding Freeze Ray and just Ice Storm on that, and your contribution while minimal is still worthwhile. Especially freeze ray against sky raider - raider engineers, Malta - sappers, Rikti - Communication officers -- you get the gist.
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Originally Posted by Silas
If you're not blasting in addition to all your Empy stuff, you're not contributing as much as you could. Or should.
To echo what others have said, Ice Blast is great. |
Triumphant Defenders Forever
Psylenz FF/Psi, ArticQuark Storm/Rad, Symon BarSisyphus Bots/psn, Max VanSydow Thugs/Dk, Cyclone Symon Bots/stm, Blue Loki Ice/Cd, Widow 46526
HelinCarnate:OMG it is so terrible. I have the option to take 3 more powers but no additional slots. Boo F'ing hoo.
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Your choice of secondary is not critical, some are better than others but the only one I'd really advise against on an Empath is Dual Pistols (Empaths tend to spend a lot of time alternating between attacking and Empathy and DP has a very long redraw time).|
Originally Posted by Deathstroke33
So does secondary really matter? Did I somehow gimp my character by taking ice?
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As others have noted Ice Blast is generally rated as one of the top Blast sets for Defenders in part because Ice Storm is a pseudo-pet that was never re-scaled for Defenders so it does Blaster level damage. Additionally Ice Blast provides good control (two holds and several AoE slows) and has a nuke that, as with Ice Storm, deals Blaster level damage.
So no, you aren't gimping yourself with Ice unless you don't take the attacks.
Did you gimp your character?
No, absolutely not, despite what some of the posts above may say.
A character that is 'gimped' is useless, and unable to do even the basic function for which it was intended. Obviously, you are still able to do your PRIMARY function on the team, which is buff/heal as your Empathy primary provides. Therefore you are not 'gimped'.
Could you be doing more for your team than you are?
Yes, certainly, though it depends on what other powers/pools you have. Since you don't say what else you have besides the primary pool and a couple of secondary attacks, its not clear what else you bring to the table for the team.
For example:
Are you running the leadership toggles?
Are you the designated stealther on the team, who zips to the end of the mission and ports the rest of the team into position?
There's lots more to being a good defender (empathy or not) than just maxing your primary skill set.
Teamsaver (Earth/Rad controller) and his trusty hench-boulder, Rocky
RezQ (Emp/Dark defender) member of Paragon City Search & Rescue
iTeam (Robotics/FF mastermind) with apologies to fans of "The A-Team"
Globally, I'm @Teamsaver, on the Infinity server
I don't play Defender much but I find myself very hard not to pick Sonic Blast. Defender's version debuff so much.
I would also consider Ice and Fire Blast because just like some have said, the Rain type of powers do the same damage regardless of AT (although Corr's Rain can scourge).
I would only consider Archery if I am Trick Arrow.
What's left is to normalize all Assassin Strikes and improve Stalker's old sets (Claw, MA and EM)! You don't need to bring back the missing PbAoE attack. You just need to make the existing ones better! For example, make Slice a WIDER and LONGER cone.
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I disagree, the quote I like (from another similar thread on the topis) is:|
Originally Posted by Teamsaver
A character that is 'gimped' is useless, and unable to do even the basic function for which it was intended. Obviously, you are still able to do your PRIMARY function on the team, which is buff/heal as your Empathy primary provides. Therefore you are not 'gimped'.
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"If you can't take out a couple of minions without help you aren't a support character, you're a character that needs support"
At the end of the day what really matters is damage, everything else is just making that damage slightly better. Consider it this way, a Defender deals half the damage of a Blaster. A good Defender can use their support powers and attack. That means if you aren't attacking you should be increasing the team's damage output by half a Blaster's damage more than the attacking and buffing Defender. Pool powers just do not do that. The only pool power that provides a damage boost is Assault and most Defenders take that anyway.
If you don't blast you are short-changing your team and making them work harder to compensate for you. That's my definition of a gimped character. I don't care which Blast set you choose (I am personally partial to Assault Rifle) but whichever you pick, please USE it.
At some point I guess I have to wonder what powers are you taking instead. I can get all of the powers I want and full use of whatever power set I have besides Emp.
I did go through a respec and I now have 4 ice attacks. I'll give those a shot later tonight when larger teams will be easier to come by.
That said, I'm a bit confused. Some of you have said that by not blasting, I'm hurting my team, but I would counter with the fact that I'm spending a lot of my time healing anyhow. If I wait until people are really low, it might be too late for some of them, or I get caught in an animation while they die.
Hearing that empathy is the 2nd most useless set end game, is kinda discouraging. Why put all this time into a toon that doesn't serve much of a purpose team wise later? Wondering if my time would be better spend working on my Thermal cor instead, or maybe going Pain Dom.
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I assume this is taken from my quote elsewhere. Here is somebody who LOVES playing Emp and FF. I consider these the two sets that lose out the most in end game content and for me it is difficult to have fun with those sets. Guess what? They don't care what I think and they are having fun. If playing in Emp is fun for you, then play it. I play an Ice tank, which is the red headed stepchild of tank sets in terms of IOs. I still play one because it's fun for me.
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Originally Posted by Deathstroke33
Hearing that empathy is the 2nd most useless set end game, is kinda discouraging. Why put all this time into a toon that doesn't serve much of a purpose team wise later? Wondering if my time would be better spend working on my Thermal cor instead, or maybe going Pain Dom.
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Yay!|
Originally Posted by Deathstroke33
I did go through a respec and I now have 4 ice attacks. I'll give those a shot later tonight when larger teams will be easier to come by.
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| That said, I'm a bit confused. Some of you have said that by not blasting, I'm hurting my team, but I would counter with the fact that I'm spending a lot of my time healing anyhow. If I wait until people are really low, it might be too late for some of them, or I get caught in an animation while they die. |
The other side of it is your level. You're level 26 and are, presumably, teaming with people of similar levels. At level 26 healing is still pretty useful, people do have SOs (which help a lot) but still tend to be somewhat short on slots. As characters get into the early 30s they start getting a lot more slots which really makes a difference. Extra recharge and endurance slotting helps with endurance issues, melee characters can start really shoring up their defenses, damage goes up accross the board (mostly due to having slots for recharge) and support characters start having the slots to really maximize their powers. As you get into this range you'll find that the team needs less and less healing (assuming sensible use of Fortitude) which means you have more time to blast anyway. Yes, you will occasionally need to just sit and spam heals but those times will be the exception and not the rule.
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| Hearing that empathy is the 2nd most useless set end game, is kinda discouraging. Why put all this time into a toon that doesn't serve much of a purpose team wise later? Wondering if my time would be better spend working on my Thermal cor instead, or maybe going Pain Dom. |
It gets a bit blurry in Incarnate content. On the one hand Destiny powers mean that everyone starts picking up some buffing capability and the large team sizes decrease the usefulness of single target buffs compared to AoE buffs. On the other hand, things like the Keyes Reactor Trial increase the value of healing abilities; they aren't essential, despite what some people will tell you, but having a few people with AoE heals around does make Keyes run smoother.
Overall I would say that even in end game content Empathy is a solid middle-of-the-pack support set.
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It really just depends on your play style and how your toon is built. There is nothing wrong with buffing and healing your team, but they shouldn't need constant attention, so you should have time to toss holds (freeze ray is fast, with aim and good slotting, you won't miss often; shoot that at baddies that rush the squishies or on flying types as mentioned above). Blast when you can to do damage and slow/to hit debuff, etc. |
Originally Posted by Deathstroke33
I did go through a respec and I now have 4 ice attacks. I'll give those a shot later tonight when larger teams will be easier to come by.
That said, I'm a bit confused. Some of you have said that by not blasting, I'm hurting my team, but I would counter with the fact that I'm spending a lot of my time healing anyhow. If I wait until people are really low, it might be too late for some of them, or I get caught in an animation while they die. Hearing that empathy is the 2nd most useless set end game, is kinda discouraging. Why put all this time into a toon that doesn't serve much of a purpose team wise later? Wondering if my time would be better spend working on my Thermal cor instead, or maybe going Pain Dom. |
As to your last question: you answered it already in your OP. You love to play your emp defender; that's all the reason you need to put time and effort into it. As to the comment about emp being 2nd most useless blah blah blah, everyone has their own opinion, and for every person who thinks that, there's another who doesn't agree. If you look through the forums, you'll find this said about just about every AT there is (it's useless, doesn't contribute as much, who needs [fill in the AT] when you have [fill in another AT]?, etc.). There are no useless ATs endgame or before. It's far better to play a set you love and have fun with and want to invest time and effort into than to pick an AT you don't care about or enjoy just to be more "useful" (by someone else's definition). At least that's my two inf.
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Playing a buffer to their fullest is pretty hectic. It requires a lot of switching targets, not just of enemies, but also targeting allies. Even between spawns, when many others get a second or 4 to rest their fingers, a buffer is likely thinking about and often even activating a buff.|
Originally Posted by Deathstroke33
That said, I'm a bit confused. Some of you have said that by not blasting, I'm hurting my team, but I would counter with the fact that I'm spending a lot of my time healing anyhow. If I wait until people are really low, it might be too late for some of them, or I get caught in an animation while they die.
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Which people on your team do you place Fortitude on?
Why Blasters? Empathy Sucks.
So, you want to be Mental?
What the hell? Let's buff defenders.
Tactics are for those who do not have a big enough hammer. Wisdom is knowing how big your hammer is.
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You might want to learn word meanings. The actual definition doesn't mean anything close to "useless", but rather it means "hobbles" or "crippled".
| A character that is 'gimped' is useless, and unable to do even the basic function for which it was intended. |
Global = Hedgefund (or some derivation thereof)
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Even with only two attacks from his ice secondary, I seriously doubt he has trouble taking out a couple of minions.|
Originally Posted by Adeon Hawkwood
I disagree, the quote I like (from another similar thread on the topis) is:
"If you can't take out a couple of minions without help you aren't a support character, you're a character that needs support" |
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| At the end of the day what really matters is damage, everything else is just making that damage slightly better. |
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| Consider it this way, a Defender deals half the damage of a Blaster. A good Defender can use their support powers and attack. That means if you aren't attacking you should be increasing the team's damage output by half a Blaster's damage more than the attacking and buffing Defender. Pool powers just do not do that. The only pool power that provides a damage boost is Assault and most Defenders take that anyway. |
There are things you can be doing (other than blasting out damage) that are helpful to the team - but only if you don't subscribe to the point of view that 'only damage matters'. /shrug
The only pool power that provides a -pure- damage boost is Assault. Tactics increases the team's accuracy, which means some of those attacks that missed (without Tactics) now hit...that's a net increase in damage for the team, possibly *much* more of an increase than Assault's modifier to base damage. The larger the team, and the more powerful the attacks being used, the larger the benefit Assault and Tactics bring to the team's damage output. Time for Beer Math. Consider a team of 7 blasters and a Defender running Assault. They each potentially contribute 50 points of damage per volley, say. With the buff from Assault, the Defender is adding 35 points of damage per volley just standing there with the toggle. If he has Tactics running and only one (1) attack that would have missed now hits instead, he added 50 points of damage. Without firing a single attack he easily contributes more damage to the team than 'half a blaster's worth'. Now add in the 2 attacks he took from his secondary - yeah the 'gimped' defender is pulling his weight on the team, I think.
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| If you don't blast you are short-changing your team and making them work harder to compensate for you. That's my definition of a gimped character. |
Not picking a bunch of attacks from your secondary doesn't make you 'gimped'. That is why they are your SECONDARY power set, because they do not define your Hero is supposed to be doing, as your PRIMARY power set does. If you have a couple of attacks which are well slotted-and you use them efficiently-then you are doing fine. The key is to be using whatever powers you picked, to the best benefit of the team.
Teamsaver (Earth/Rad controller) and his trusty hench-boulder, Rocky
RezQ (Emp/Dark defender) member of Paragon City Search & Rescue
iTeam (Robotics/FF mastermind) with apologies to fans of "The A-Team"
Globally, I'm @Teamsaver, on the Infinity server
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You might want to check your sources, before you correct me on word meanings, especially ones that are neologisms - like gimp.|
Originally Posted by Deacon_NA
You might want to learn word meanings. The actual definition doesn't mean anything close to "useless", but rather it means "hobbles" or "crippled".
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Dictionary.com defines it as:
noun
1.a flat trimming of silk, wool, or other cord, sometimes stiffened with wire, for garments, curtains, etc.
2.a coarse thread, usually glazed, employed in lacemaking to outline designs.
Merriam-Webster's Dictionary defines it as:
1. an ornamental flat braid or round cord used as a trimming (perhaps from Dutch; First Known Use: 1664)
I gave my definition of it, just like the OP and others who replied also did. Gimp is a neologism, but most commonly used in urban slang to mean crippled, useless, and so forth.
Teamsaver (Earth/Rad controller) and his trusty hench-boulder, Rocky
RezQ (Emp/Dark defender) member of Paragon City Search & Rescue
iTeam (Robotics/FF mastermind) with apologies to fans of "The A-Team"
Globally, I'm @Teamsaver, on the Infinity server
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Hilarious that out of both of those 2 sources you omit the definition that both provide that is closest to the meaning in the game. Anyway I can infer from your last message a belief that crippled = useless. I do not share that, I know many crippled people that are very productive members of society.
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Originally Posted by Teamsaver
You might want to check your sources, before you correct me on word meanings, especially ones that are neologisms - like gimp.
Dictionary.com defines it as: –noun 1.a flat trimming of silk, wool, or other cord, sometimes stiffened with wire, for garments, curtains, etc. 2.a coarse thread, usually glazed, employed in lacemaking to outline designs. Merriam-Webster's Dictionary defines it as: 1. an ornamental flat braid or round cord used as a trimming (perhaps from Dutch; First Known Use: 1664) I gave my definition of it, just like the OP and others who replied also did. Gimp is a neologism, but most commonly used in urban slang to mean crippled, useless, and so forth. |
Global = Hedgefund (or some derivation thereof)
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How old does a uasge need to be to cease being called new? Gimp and gimpy have been around for quite some time (sure, relative to language, it is young, but it is hardly new). I have never seen anyone claim it to mean useless until this thread. Limp, lame, crippled, hobbled, but never functionless.
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Originally Posted by Teamsaver
I gave my definition of it, just like the OP and others who replied also did. Gimp is a neologism, but most commonly used in urban slang to mean crippled, useless, and so forth.
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Why Blasters? Empathy Sucks.
So, you want to be Mental?
What the hell? Let's buff defenders.
Tactics are for those who do not have a big enough hammer. Wisdom is knowing how big your hammer is.
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"hobbled" ftw
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Originally Posted by StratoNexus
How old does a uasge need to be to cease being called new? Gimp and gimpy have been around for quite some time (sure, relative to language, it is young, but it is hardly new). I have never seen anyone claim it to mean useless until this thread. Limp, lame, crippled, hobbled, but never functionless.
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I came back to playing an empath I made a very long time ago yesterday, and was suddenly reminded how much I really enjoy playing that type of support role. Keeping the team alive and moving along was a lot of fun, but then something happened later last light. Between missions someone said to me "Great heals, but why ice?" I initially took ice for the minor protection Ice would give to me in a crunch, but clearly this was lost on this person.
So I began to wonder, as an Empath, my biggest job is healing and buffing, right now at lvl 26 I only have 2 attacks from Ice. So does secondary really matter? Did I somehow gimp my character by taking ice?