Pain Domination or Empathy?

Yesterday I dusted off my empath that I haven't played in about 3 years. After a few hours of playing it all came back to me why I enjoyed playing a support role character, especially in the earlier part of the game (she is lvl 25 now). As I played I started to wonder about Pain Domination on a Cor, and if it's damage would have been more handy for the team. I've never played a pain domination character, so I don't know how it stacks up to empathy. Should I just keep trucking with my lvl 25 emp defender, or will I be more beneficial to the team later in the game with pain dom as a cor?

That entirely depends on what your team consists of, with Empathy usually contributing more mitigation and Pain usually contributing more damage. What really matters is whether or not you're enjoying your character, though.

Empathy has significantly better buffs, Pain Dom is more offensive and has an AoE debuff. Both solid, I'd say it depends what you want to do.

Pain is easier to play, with the rez granting you a massive buff and less focus on ally buffing. That said, IMO Empathy is a much stronger set. Fortitude and AB are just stupidly powerful buffs. If you want a more hybridized set like Pain, I'd recommend Thermal over it any day.

I'd suggest taking a long look at Pain Dom in Mids to see what it brings to the table later in the game and compare that to what Empathy can, and then remember that /Pain will NEVER be a defender primary.

PD gets some nice PBAoE buffs and debuffs late in the set. World of Pain is basically a PBAoE mini-fortitude what with the +damage, +res , and +tohit. It all depends on how you slot it, and frankenslotting along with recharge bonuses can give it a really good uptime percentage without hasten. Just off the top of my head in a minute I was able to get it to a 122 second recharge (90s duration)...granted it only gives 11.3% resist and 10% to-hit with no enhancements and my quick-slot choice for example purposes only got those to 15.6% and 14.4%...

Then you have Anguishing Cry which comes with a base debuff of -30% Def(all) and -22.5% Res(all) AND can take the Achilles proc...in a PBAoE. 5/6 pieces of Analyze Weakness(No proc) and the achilles proc gives it a -48.2% debuff to defense and a potential -42.5% res(all), although 20% of that will vanish in only 10 seconds while the base sticks around for 30... This cannot be made permanent, but the slotting I JUST used gets it to only 71 seconds recharge time. Fast enough to be used right before your judgement every time once you get incarnated out.

I guess I have a second part to that question. Do either lose their usefulness in end game where everyone has incarnates and full set bonuses? Do either power sets have an advantage then, or is it the same argument?

Right now, at lvl 25, Fort makes the tank rock solid, and a scrapper or brute almost a tank. When RA is up, the team can roll and not worry about end. Those are 2 of my best buffs, but in end game, none of the 50's I have ever need end, and all have very significant bonuses from sets.

Very good point Auro, thanks for putting it into perspective.

Debuffs are more important than buffs in the end game since players can personally buff themselves to such high levels. I have yet to play a /pain character, but in my own personal opinion Empathy is 2nd least needed hero side support set for end game stuff although Keys certainly gives some life to it. Yes, people like playing the under performing sets and enjoy doing so. They may very likely rank those sets higher than other ones. They would be wrong, but it's at least their opinion.

The problem with Pain is that it is effectively a more "dangerous" version of both Empathy and Thermal without the perks of each. The unique things that Pain can do are mostly offset by the unique things that the other two sets can do or they're just plain bad in comparison.

Empathy is by and far a complete buff set. Fortitude at the high end, assuming high recharge, is amazing considering that sources of +damage are rarer then seems (Musculature, Lore, Kin, self buff, assorted buffs); as well as the fact that it gives 15% defense and can be placed on several people. Adrenalin Boost is, for the most part, is an almost completely unique ability that is basically awesome to almost anyone you put it on.
Thermal Shields speak for themselves as does Forge is nothing to sneeze at (50% damage on a defender). Melt Armor is Anguished Cry at range, and Heat Exhaustion is something neither set has. Meanwhile, Pain's two "unique" tools are an absolutely terrible toggle heal...thing... and Painbringer. Painbringer gives the same damage buff as Forge, has five times the cooldown, and is laughably bad for a T9.

Worse yet, a few of the other pain abilities are literally cheap copies of Thermal/Empaths or just strange combinations. World of Pain is Thermal Shields + ghetto Fort (keep in mind, a high end thermal can forge everyone AND shield them). Conduit of Pain buffs the user, Power of the Phoenix makes the target immune for a few seconds. Plus that particular toggle that is just downright garbage on a corruptor becomes moderately passable on a mastermind, for everyone not the mastermind.

What it comes down to is that Pain has an air of deception in terms of its end game use. Thermal and Empathy gain a very notable return for time invested (more forts/ABs/Forges) while all Pain abilities were intentionally designed to not stack from the same caster. It is by and far a "lip service" set, created as a way to shut people up back when the design philosophy was "Heroes will not get poison, villains will not get empathy." I'm more than a little bitter that controllers get poison and villain ATs are stuck with pain, by the way.

Pain's biggest perk is that, out of the box, it's a decent set: an equal to empathy and thermal. Once sets are involved or any modifications past base, Pain gets effectively thrown off a cliff and even starts to grow worse compared to other, non "healer" sets.

Empathy is a significantly better buff set, but Pain is a much better offense set because, aside from the +dmg and -res, it means you are a Corrupter.

I recently dusted off my Fire/Pain to get some incarnate stuff on him and to me running the iTrials it could have possibly been some of the most fun I've had on a toon blending formidable offense for all phases of the trials with the ability to buff, debuff, and heal.

As far as buffs, Fort vs. World of Pain I prefer the latter as defense seems to be everywhere now, and hitting the new softcap is seldom an issue. The extra resists to all definitely makes things easier, that with the fact its easy to perma for the whole team makes it an easy winner.

For Soothing Aura vs. Regen aura, I feel like for Squishies Soothing Aura is a better deal (Especially nice on Keyes with power boost) but for Higher HP toons, even with its down time Regeneration Aura wins easily thanks to Soothing Aura being based around corrupter base HP, where Regen benefits even further from +HP.

Anguishing Cry vs. Recovery Aura, once I added a T4 Ageless I never missed it (and I don't think anyone on the team/league did either). Granted an Emp could pick something something else for their Destiny to bring something to the table.

Pain has slightly better Clear Mind, Absorb Pain, and Resurrect clones in that they do more either for the person buffed or the caster.

I'd say Empathy wins easy with Adrenaline Boost's effects vs. Painbringer.

That all being said, neither is really obsolete at high level content (I find I'm healing for the league quite a bit when AV attacks get through) and played well a Pain or Emp in Keyes is great. On the Corruptor side of things, even if the buffs aren't as great you still get corruptor damage which is pretty awesome.

Having only played PAIN at level 50 on a Test-bumped toon (live only made it to the 20s),
I can only offer limited comparisons.

Empathy offers more protection in a team setting, while Pain helps Kill Rates.

Empathy when Regen Aura is up has better survivability, while Pain doesnt have that Dr.Jekyl/Mr.Hyde feeling at all. Pain can most likely solo better on an IOed build versus an IOed Empathy build. (Sorry, I can only compare IO'd Emp versus SO'd Pain)

Bottom Line:

If you only Team and are planning to IO the heck out of your toon, My vote would be Empathy.

If you mostly/often Solo ...OR... are not planning on IO-ing out your toon then I would choose Pain.

Empathy>Pain in most situations, if you really want to know the honest truth.

Having done both, I'd say it's really to close to call. At different levels and slightly different SO/IO levels invested it can swing 1st one way, then the other. Neither is a solo specialist, and neither is ever worthless.

Pain has a debuff, if you enjoy that sort of thing, and Emps don't. Emps of course have better buffs in most cases, and are defenders. But by the same token, a pain has corrupter damage scale and several ways to buff his own DPS even higher.

They're subtly different. And the subtle differences are more a preference. If you're like me, there isn't a better choice, it's more like, "Which do I more feel like playing at the moment?"

In the old days, I'd say, it might matter more which attack set you want to play. But now that Defs are getting Fire Blast, I can't even use that excuse to decide between the 2 now..

With an Emp defender the whole team will know they have a "healer" (which means sometimes "yay, we can do what we want and aggro everything, the *healer* is here for us!"), whereas with a Pain (or Thermal) Corr there will always be somebody to ask "excuse me but do we have a heal?"

(I'm kidding, even with perma-Fortitude on 4 members of the team, sometimes people don't notice that my Controller is an Empath - often the ones who have Fortitude on them actually)

Re: Pain VS Thermal (since it was brought up)

It may have been already said, but I find Pain a better defensive set, and Thermal a better offensive set. I went through the same decision recently and the following are just my opinions on the matter.

With 2 lvl 50 Common IO's for each applicable enhancement value...Plasma Shield / Fire Shield = 22.5% Res to S/L/F/C vs. World Of Pain = 17% Res to S/L/F/C/Toxic & Psi (Plus 15% To Hit and 16% DMG buff, plus the placate protection). I think Pain comes out the farthest ahead here since it offers resists to those exotic types and gives you leadership-pool level bonuses without the toggle costs. I'd say this wins over Forge also since you give that +DMG and +ToHit to the entire team, at once, and it's easily perma.

Heals are comparable, but obviously in the favor Pain with Soothing Aura and the "Oh teh noes! Squishy fire brute that just pulled nightstar is about to faceplant" button. Also handy for when Lord Recluse hits that stone tank when the RNG isn't in your favor. Thaw = Enforced Morale (though that extra 5% rech may give someone perma PA, Hasten, Domination, etc...).

Anguishing Cry comes back 120 sec (before enhances) which is 30 seconds faster than Melt Armor, and it does an more Def Debuff (30% vs 20%). I still say they're a tie since MA is ranged vs AC's PBAoE.

Biggest difference? Heat Exhaustion vs PainBringer. One hurts that hard target, and one makes a team member a hard target. Both sides of the fence, really.

Honestly, either set can swap out for the other with a little change in playstyle and be just as effective....but for me the choice this time around was Pain Dom.

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I posted that a while back and figured it was easier to just copy/paste then reinvent the wheel. I prefer Pain to EMP's much much more b/c of the AoE team buffs to DMG/ToHit/Res, and still having the option to get leadership if you wanted to for even more support. The AoE Debuff is also pretty nice, and seldom resisted too b/c of it's type of attack. If you want an offensive-ish healing set that can do most of what a EMP can do, definitely give Pain a go. Add in Ageless if you want fill the +Endu gap from the lack of RA's. You're already heals-a-plenty as is.

I officially want to make a Pain and Emp again. Perhaps I shall wait for Beam Rifles...

hmmmmm