After seven long years in limbo

This is one of those sentimental love letter posts.


The first character I ever made for CoH was an empath/psi defender. I made her because the workcenter on the ship I was on (in the Navy back then) had migrated from EQ to CoH and our normal Cleric/Priest players were sick to death of playing the healing classes.

So, figuring "how hard can it be" I made an Empath with the Psi secondary (trust me, I had no idea what I was in for with /Psi). LOL After most of them left with ED, the stragglers that didn't want to play another fantasy mmo, least of all one designed by Blizzard, stayed on. Since they were gone, I put my emp/psi in cold storage, remembering how much I absolutely despised playing her. That feeling put me off defenders for five years. Once CoV came out and I discovered Corruptors and my favorite AT for a long time to come. Somewhere, though, in the back of my head, that little emp/psi sat there begging me for another chance. I ignored her.

Recently, with the news of the upcoming free to play status of CoH, I've been looking over all of my old toons. I was surprised at how representative of their eras in the game they were. My first villain was a Mind/NRG dominator that's still around today. There are toons in there that represent the issues their powersets were introduced, where rules changed, etc. Somewhere in that list was Aeorna, my first toon, the emp/psi that put me off defenders forever. So, looking over the list of project toons and 'era' toons I have had lying around for years, I resolved to get them to fifty and slotted before the game went f2p, since I don't know what will happen after that.

Today, after five years in limbo and seven years since birth, Aeorna Hateborn, my first toon hit fifty and was slotted out. I had her at 32 for five years and played her through her final levels in PI and the RWZ. I have to say I had no idea how much fun playing an emp can be. The /psi powerset.... well, we'll leave that alone for now, but playing as an empath on tip teams, on TFs, on the one Rikti raid I was able to find, she was incredibly fun.

I had no idea what I'd been missing out on. It was a great feeling, being everywhere. I have heard (and even said) that you don't NEED a healer in this game, the EMP set it kind of superfluous. That may actually be true. I didn't care, she was a hell of a lot of fun anyway. It was very different than my normal CoX experience, and it was like playing a different game. I enjoyed every second of it, and now that she's finally set I think I'm going to be playing her a LOT.

All of my characters have a different concept and must be played differently. I min/max to a concept, I change my concerns, I focus on my roles by different amounts, which is why all my toons get played. No matter how things seem leveling to 50 I know, that most of the characters play hours will be after 50, respec after respec and some bright ideas I finally get an eureka moment that makes my character a joy to play and different from all the rest. For years I was lost on my Sonic/Sonic, who could of been the first to 50 of her kind euro side but I stopped 2 bars away, but long by now even she's finally arrived with her own niche that fits her concept. Its only recently and by no small means, through incarnates that my Peacebringer will not only all the best flexibilities of one, the rate on offer is enjoyable.

I recently took my emp/rad through the incarnate trials with great success, I did have to respec and add stealth for the middle bit of lambda but otherwise they play really well. You do need to be both a blaster and a buffer but because everyone else has their own buffs it isn't too difficult.

Also, what the hell are you doing playing games when you need to be watching for terrorists!?

I think you've discovered the downside of calling empaths healers. Empaths can heal, yes. But the further outside of that box you get, the more fun it is to play.

So you don't like playing healers? Fine. How does playing a bufftankdebuffblasthealer sound? Where you can walk into a room, most of your team has the equivalent of Instant Healing and Siphon Power and bubbles on, your self-heal recharges in 3 seconds flat, most of the enemies' recharge is floored, and you have the good version of Will Domination and a good cone blast and an O.K. targeted AoE? (Oh, and you can heal others a little, too?)

Good, you'll love Emp/Psi.