Does your secondary REALLY matter as an Empath?

Since we have shared some war stories, in answer to the thread topic:

Yes, an empathy defender's secondary matters in that yes, you have a secondary, you should contribute without hurting the empath's primary function to buff the team to maximum effectiveness.

Does it matter which secondary? I don't think it matters terribly which, but I myself might stay away from archery. Having just typed that - Rain of arrows from an empath as a non-crash nuke would be gravy on any balanced team attack. I have posted previously: I like having single target stuns and holds available to defenders to help controllers and dominators take out nasty targets like sappers, sky raider engineers, vahzilok embalmed cadavers, etc.

Thirdly, this breakdown should apply to ALL defenders. For my defenders, I plan builds not so much as to whether I take leadership as to whether I take vengeance because the defender modifiers are so compelling to take as much leadership as is possible within the most effective functions of your defender.

I have always said, if you don't want to blast as an empath, then roll a controller. A handful of blasts that rarely, if ever get used are far less useful than a handful of good controls.

I've been playing empathy since headstart, and in the early levels my blasts were more plentiful and probably better slotted than my primary. I wouldn't dream of playing an empath without blasting. For anyone wondering how they can balance blasting and primary usage, there's really a one word answer - practice. If you slot for recharge primarily both in your top tier buffs and for set bonuses once you get to IO sets, you should be able to spread out fort and AB to mitigate a lot of incoming damage, and with regen aura cycling regularly, you can cover the whole team. I don't allow myself to get mesmerized by hitting one attack after another so that I get a cued attack up that can lock me in animations, I make sure that I can turn and react. Psi blast has some really quick animations in the later powers, so it's pretty easy to turn and pop a heal if someone gets low. It does take some work to get used to the constant whack-a-mole, but with some effort you can learn to start whacking enemies in between the buffing and the healing on all but the most overmatched teams.

Empathy provides all the healing you really need, the first aid power pool just adds crappy heals that are far inferior to the heals you already have as an empath.

The fact is, you get 24 powers from level 1 to 50, and empathy only has 9 powers, which means you have 15 other power choices to pick from. You're not going to get any better heals with power pools, the the only good buffs from the pools are from leadership, which accounts for 3 power choices. Assuming you take 2 from a travel pool, you still have 10 powers left(well 9 minus the required power from your secondary).

So in short, empathy already has enough healing to keep a good team up and running, and you have more power choices than there are good support abilities in the power pools, luckily you have a secondary power set that has some very good powers, so you might as well invest in it.

And you know what, dealing damage helps your team, the faster foes die, the less hp your team looses, and defenders do pretty good damage. Right when you picked the archtype it was pretty clear that the class was support and ranged combat, so if you don't blast, you're only playing half the character.

If you don't want to do direct damage, go roll a Mastermind or a Troller.

((TLR would you play a scrapper without taking defensive abilities? They why would you play a defender without blasts))