Silas Heals Leet and So Can You!

Oh noooooooooooooo my Emp guide is done D:

Look what my careless hands have wrought!

X: Empathy

Oh god, an Empathy guide. Fortunately for the neckbearded among us, I refer to Empathy the support set, not the ability to understand the feelings of another. Empathy is a support set with totally bitchin’ buffs and some heals (and also a rez!), empathy is a cornerstone in any real human relationship.

No, your love pillow doesn’t count, no matter how well you think it understands you.

So, Empathy with a capital E! Not like the entertainment news channel, which is much like your fanfiction in that no one cares about it.

And thus:

Why Empathy is Awesome and you wanna play dat emp:

• Most importantly, the buffs. They’re stupidly good. Even with Controller mods. Or they would be with Corruptor mods. Sadly, it is not to be. We have to settle for Pain Dom. Which is also nice, but the younger sister of Empathy. Smaller boobs, less experience, you know how it is.
  
  
• Or maybe you don’t?
  
  
• Doesn’t matter.
  
  
• So back to those buffs. One is IMO the most powerful single target buff in the game by a significant margin. Another is probably the second most powerful single target buff in the game and can be maintained on several people.
  
  
• Big ol’ +regen and +recovery auras which both buff you, hooray.
  
  
• AoE/self heal for when you get punched in the head. Yes, when, not if. If you’re an Emp and you never get aggro, you’re a bad Emp. More on this later though.
  
  
• Speaking of heals, generic ally heal for playing health bar whackamole. Great at lower levels, still desirable later on but generally second fiddle to the buffing.
  
  
• Another single target ally heal which in the hands of a Defender can be the most powerful heal in the game. *cough* whiiiiiich doesn’t require enemies. Shut up Dark Regen, we know you’re buff as sin.

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Healing Aura: PBAoE heal, nice and simple Slotting Recommendation: What’s most important is that you max out the healing on it. Decent end redux is good too, recharge to taste. This and Heal Other recharge pretty quickly at base so you don’t need to worry about the recharge so much. I’d recommend Doctored Wounds or Panaceas. They both give recharge bonuses which are awesome for Empathy. Panaceas give better set bonuses overall, but DW gives a heal bonus earlier and is much cheaper. How to Use: For healing yourself and/or several allies at once. Good for healing up people after a nasty AoE hit (y helo thar Keyes Trial). Don’t put it on auto. Not even on the Keyes Trial. The AoE on it is decently large but try and get a feel for it nevertheless so you can position yourself to hit as many people as needed with it.

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Heal Other: Ally heal oh goodness even simpler! Slotting Recommendation: same as Healing Aura, really. Heal being most important, some end redux too. How to Use: to heal allies, mostly. Heals for about twice as much as Healing Aura, has decent range, recharges and activates fast. I bind it to Q for fast access.

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Absorb Pain: strong ally heal, self moderate damage (special) Slotting Recommendation: This is a monstrously powerful heal. You can slot it similarly to Healing Aura or Heal Other, but IMO it doesn’t need it. A slot or two of healing is more than enough to make it a big enough heal for even Tanker healthbars. The end cost is negligible, because the main cost of this power is…in blood! Dun dun duuuuuun. Or hitpoints and regen, like, whatever, man. How to Use: When you need to do a massive heal and you need to do it right now. Heal Other is enough to keep people on their feet 99% of the time. Sometimes you need two single target heals right after one another. Or you need to bring someone with a lot of HP back up from low health right now. These are the times you need Absorb Pain. The special noted above is that it ganks your health regen and means you cannot be healed for 20seconds after using it. 20 seconds is a long time if stuff is mad at you. Be smart about how you use AP. Because danger lurks around every corner

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Resurrect: ally rez Slotting Recommendation: A single end reduction IO. It costs a fair chunk of endurance (26 at base) so you want to bring that down. It doesn’t really need recharge IMO since even though its somewhat long (3 minutes), people shouldn’t be dying more than once every 3 minutes. I’ve found global recharge and Hasten to be more than enough to bring it back up fast enough even when the poop is hitting the fan. Splut splut, poop joke. God, you guys are immature. How to Use: to rez people, funnily enough. They’ll be protected from XP debt for a minute and a half afterwards, not like XP debt matters though. Unlike Rise of the Phoenix from Thermal or a few of the self-rezzes from armor sets, it does not make the target untouchable. This means they can be beat right the **** down right after they rez. Hit ‘em with Fortitude right after to avoid this.

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Clear Mind: ally +res (Disorient, Hold, Sleep, Immobilize, Fear, Confuse) +perception Slotting Recommendation: Doesn’t really matter. I’d go with an end rdx or a range enhancer. It doesn’t cost a lot of endurance but what the hell else are you gonna put in there? The range enhancer would be just if you want it to have similar range to Heal Other. Personal preference. How to Use: Either proactively or reactively, depending on the situation. Ideally proactively. I wouldn’t recommend maintaining CM on the whole team all the time, because that’s totally stupid. First of all, most melee types won’t need it except for very rare occasions (more on that later). Secondly, not all mobs have mezzes. Most lategame mobs have a lot of mezzes, but its only a few who are nasty enough to require full time CM upkeep on the squishies. Mobs like Rikti, Malta, Arachnos and Rularuu. When fighting easier mobs like Council or Nemesis you can get away with using it reactively. Most of the mezzes won’t land anyway due to Fortitude, so when fighting mobs that don’t mez a lot I’d just hit people with it when you see a mez land on their buff bar or they call it.

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Fortitude: ally +def(all) +damage +tohit Slotting Recommendation: Membrane Hos are perfect for this power, since they'll enhance every enhanceable aspect of it. They can be pricey though. Enhancing the tohit is a nice benefit, but what's really important is maxing out the recharge and defense on it. So if you don't want to go with Membranes or want to use some other set, just make sure you get burly defense and recharge numbers. Frankenslot if you gotta. How to Use: This one depends. Fortitude can be used for two major purposes, to boost damage or survivability. The damage and tohit buffs are great to put on high damage characters, the defense can turn a squishy into a, uh, not squishy. Well still sorta squishy, but like SR squishy. Your first priority is trying to keep people alive though, so put Fort on the people who are taking a lot of damage first. If the healthbars are pretty stable, put Fort on the damage dealers. More on this later.

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Recovery Aura: PBAoE +recovery Slotting Recommendation: Maxed out recharge, good recovery. If you have to cut slots, this is one place you can do it since it gives a boatload of recovery at base. Getting it to recharge as fast as possible is what's really important. It'll give everyone hit by it far more endurance than they'll know what to do with in any case. How to Use: position yourself within range of as many teammates as possible, fire it off. Both this and Regen Aura have the same radius (25') as Healing Aura, so you can get to grips with how big it is by playing with HA.

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Regeneration Aura: PBAoE +regen Slotting Recommendation: Again, maxed recharge. Unlike Recovery Aura, IMO its also very important to max out the healing enhancement on this one, because of how drastically the +regen can affect people with high hp. Combined with Fortitude, huge amounts of damage are negated. How to Use: Exact same as Recovery Aura. gg laziness

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Adrenaline Boost: ally +regen +recharge +recovery +godmode awwww yissssss Slotting Recommendation: First priority, max out the recharge. Second priority, max out the healing. Endmod if you want, I've never bothered. How to Use: Put on whoever you want to turbocharge. The recharge boost on this is massive, twice as powerful as Speed Boost. It'll also give them the recovery to fuel it and huge regen to boot. Throwing it on whoever is leading the charges is generally a good idea, since the regen will help them absorb the alphas. If no one is taking any serious damage, throw it on a damage dealer (like with Fortitude). Use it! Seriously, Adrenaline Boost should never sit unused in your tray. It's a phenomenal buff, using it only for end bar crashes or whatever is nonsense.

How to Not Be Awful, the Empathening:

• Playing support and attacking are not mutually exclusive. Empaths who never attack are bad Empaths. Support takes priority, sure, but learning when you can attack and doing so is important too. Especially given the mods on Defender Blasts (sup, Sonic Blast).
  
  
• Knowing who to put Fortitude on can be tricky. Make it easier for yourself by getting loads of recharge so you can put it on as many people as possible. You want to be using Fortitude as soon as it recharges. Don't let the poor dear languish neglected in your tray.
  
  
• First priority is using it on people taking a lot of damage so the defense will help them. If no one is taking a lot of damage, you want to throw it on the people with high damage first. Blasters, Scrappers, and Dominators are all good targets due to their high base damage.
  
  
• Know when to use Absorb Pain. If everything is going as it should, you should almost never have to use it. I know, it seems silly to take a power that is useful so rarely. The vast majority of the time, HO spam will do the job. But sometimes HO won't be fast enough, no matter your recharge. For Master of TFs it can come in very handy. AP+HO is a very quick and very powerful healing combo. I've got HO bound to Q and AP bound to lshift+Q, so I can hit them in quick succession.
  
  
• Don't stack CM on people with mez protection. Outside of like, two exceptions, its stupid and a waste of time. Those exceptions being fighting Ghost Widow and Romulus. Stacking it on whoever is tanking GW can help them survive her haxhold and throwing it on melee people when Rom dies can ensure they don't have to evade the rez stun. If you've got time to spam CM like a cretin, you should be blasting instead. Kisses, Silas.
  
  
• Or at lower levels, when people don't have their mez protection yet. Circle of Thorns can also be really nasty with mez at lower levels, y helo thar Ruin Mage!
  
  
• Keybindings can save you a lot of time and energy. I bind Heal Other to q and Absorb Pain to shitt+q. That way I've got fast access to them since they're right next to my movement keys. Binding Follow to a key can also be helpful, so you can target someone for healing, hit the bind and zoom off in their direction rather than wasting time panning the camera round to find them to get in range.
  
  
• Given the large recovery buff on Adrenaline Boost, you can hit someone with it right after they've nuked or had a godmode crash to help them out. It's very helpful, but not helpful enough that you should save AB for these times. AB is too powerful a buff to have sitting around waiting to be used.
  
  
• Stay mobile. Combat Jumping + Hurdle is fantastic. You'll often be the most vulnerable person on a team, since everyone else can get Fortitude, CM, heals, etc. Being quick on your feet and kiting a lot is important to keep yourself alive. Superspeed and a stealth IO also helps a lot. Allies can be much more easily healed than you, who has to rely on Healing/Regen Aura. Don't stand next to people with a lot of aggro so you stay clear of the Aoe effects.
  
  
• If you like to rock the aura, please follow these navigational instructions.
  
  
• Watch buff bars if you can. Not just to see when Fortitude/CM are expiring, but also to see incoming damage spikes. If you see the KO Blow icon appear on a squishies buff bar when you're fighting Statesman, you can target them and get ready to heal as soon as the damage hits.
  
  
• I've not really PvPed in a long time, but if you're into it, it can teach you a lot that can help you in PvE too. As an Empath a lot of people will want you dead, so you've gotta learn to evade well and support your team at the same time.
  
  
• You don't need IOs to be a good Emp. They can make you much more effective through higher recharge or more survivable through defense or +hp, but people were Emping well long before IOs. With just SOs you can still maintain Fortitude on 3 people reliably, 4 briefly.
  
  
• Powerboost is also really good for Empaths. Like, stupidly good. It turbocharges your heals and makes Fortitude monstrously powerful. With zero slotting in Fortitude and PB, you'll be giving people 29.8% defense and 37% tohit. For the record, that's equivalent to Scrapper SR (assuming all toggles+passives 2 slotted with level 50 Def Ios). With Fortitude 2 slotted for Defense, Pbed it gives 37% defense. Madness!

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What Goes Well with Empathy: Given that Empathy can often require split-second reactions to catch a falling healthbar, a blast (or control) set that has quick animations is very helpful. Keeping a full team buffed and in good health requires a fair amount of time investment, so ideally you want to pair Empathy with a set that doesn't require a lot of maintenance. For Controllers, Illusion is a great example. I personally went with Sonic Blast due to omgdebuffvalues, I mean, -20% resistance a blast? What in the hell is going on with that? It's nuts. You can stack 60-100% -res on a target just spamming Shriek and Scream. If you bring Screech into the mix you're reliably at 80-120% -resistance. For non totally broken sets, I'd recommend Ice or Fire. Okay, Fire is still a little broken, but not as broken as it is for Corruptors. Both have fast activating attacks that deal good damage, both have the advantage of the rain power which will do Blaster level damage. The problem is that you don't have any way to keep stuff in the rain. They're both end-heavy sets but that generally isn't a problem for Empathy due to Recovery Aura.

The Manner in Which Silas Conducts his Empathic Affairs:

Feast your eyes, peasants!

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Notes: Something I didn't cover in the screenshot is the placing of Absorb Pain and the rez. Basically, the former is bound and the latter doesn't get used so much so I don't mind moseying the mouse over there to hit it. Yes, I've got Vengeance. Ideally people won't die, but **** happens. When it does, Veng is an incredibly powerful buff that can keep the rest of the team/you alive to prevent things becoming a wipe. As far as Incarnate stuff goes, I went with Spiritual for my Alpha. Extra recharge and extra healing power = do want. Went Reactive for more damage and -res, Clarion Destiny for mez protection. Same as the rest of my builds, I've got the accolades. Demonic helps when thing are going down the toilet and the +hp/end accolades help shore up low Defender hp as well as increasing the benefit you get from Regen/Recovery Aura. Even though Power Boost is stupidly powerful for Empaths, I decided I wanted s/l softcap instead. Personal preference, really. I like the added survivability it gives me, I find slotted Fort to be plenty to keep people alive.

My Build:

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Here it is: Code: | Copy & Paste this data into Mids' Hero Designer to view the build | |-------------------------------------------------------------------| |MxDz;1430;684;1368;HEX;| |78DA65945953D35014C76FBA585A0AA5B4652DD052D622A11D50677C711478105BA| |CE0E0326A0D6D808E9864D230236F7E017D70195CBF98FAA01FC0E591B77A72FE97| |D29964DAFCEEFDDF73CF724F92F28BB5A8102FAF09A577F5506B36AB6BFA9E6ED47| |53B58D6F61B35111242A4CEB4EA8DA3BD3D75FDB9A53907C7E9B6BAA519FB7A5DDD| |368D46AD7ADD71B4DAB3F84DE340B775C351CF06918A691EAADB96AED7633C2CE91| |A6D6E1E34ACE8D9DC6A18FBFD3CB9AB1FEA96693B9AD3308DD175AB5153574DDB3E| |B21CD3AE96B59A4EB7A6A3DBC743945F9EFE8F7C425EAD8018F70B51148109C6853| |120CDE8CA30BE759A7F24CC8AAE4F8CC807E08411FDCCF84EE68A34578A3ED743B4| |C0E85D0454C6C012E331DDFDD2DC8FF003C86908390D21991124F383CC83D23C788| |93D8C5C61A457806546F632E329DD433017A1AC70A5499A8739C196125E60290B68| |64DC0D637F774A71A5A9AB340BF83DCC91931EE9B7A7459788931283DB600C9BFB7| |A8108A3BF1B8831923D8C5D0A1997E5C4DF72CAC9778CE27BE035F08AD14F411208| |2212282749524A669242DC01920665858390664E6936266AE46558861BBE8D95126| |3B60C54804DC64F321F95E6A33B9C41FE21E3E27DE01EF000671E7263E0FCC6EE10| |26C5F816B00D541875B29E906E279045065964103E8364B2C822157237C1ED24DCE| |6E036077F39784F90DDB42C7BFA0BC5488899AF0C8B1E9D39D99B391CC83C7A338F| |6ECCA34579B4288FDEFCA2BD0B32CD854DAE707183B1740B2801654695EEAA6C848| |ADE3C21A920A5C2144BE940FB65F20B14E343313E5411404DF9733BFAB90F58C1A3| |143DCAB24759F128258FB2E92A389E5625D07E7B85C2ABE1BEF60BDAFA1DA155A57| |3F5EFB9A2281B8AFB0158DCE1E3FBE3B1FDD7697B82037D838F40C4D51043EB18EF| |768C2B9DE304ED92E3FF6D3BE86D| |-------------------------------------------------------------------|

As for how it could be improved, there are a couple ways, mostly full reworkings of the build. Since Empathy doesn't really have any melee powers, going for ranged defense is a very viable route. I went with s/l because it doesn't require a lot of investment slot/power wise, so I had a lot of room to get stupid levels of recharge.

I considered going with 6 slots of Panaceas in HA/HO for the heal bonus, but decided against it. Couldn't find somewhere else to take the slots from and the proc is prohibitively expensive. Speaking of Panaceas, I personally went with them in HA/HO because they don't need recharge. Putting Panaceas in AB/RA isn't a good idea IMO, since the extra global recharge from the set compared to DW doesn't make up for the weak enhancement values. Meaning you'd need to dedicate a 6th slot for recharge.

Soooo. There is is, hope its of use to some of you. All feedback welcome

bwahahah, hilarious as always.

Cheers Ashcraft

For the link-clicking averse, the guide has been posted in its entirety here too.

Thanks Silas.

Been wanting to make an Emp for a while, this might just give the final push to do so.

Still torn between Emp/Son Defender and Mind/Emp controller, though...

Send a link to Prixy...

MMM, nice guide. I have an Emp/Arch Defender at 45.

Archery is so darn awful, though, that its difficult to motivate myself for the next five levels. On teams I feel unneeded often - at that level a lot of teams seem to be surviving fine without my heals or buffs (AB and Fort and CM are still useful, yes, but not as mandatory; the heals are rarely used) and my damage is too low to be noticed (I can't even solo a mob of only minions on default difficulty settings). So whenever I make my build for it I'm going to have to focus on recharge and damage, somehow.

Emp/Dark anyone?

Tenebrous Tentacles and self heal attack thrown in for good measure. Immobilize your foes en masse while your fort/ab boosted buddies hack n slash to their delight. Semi-trollery while getting all 'fender benefits. Also, thoughts on leadership pool thrown into the mix.

I will apologize, I read this on my phone and the type was really small, so I might have missed it....

Oh man, reading and posting on the boards from my phone is such a bad habit for me. Aside from how damn fiddly it is, the autocorrect wreaks mayhem on all the ingame terms.

I've had to edit many a post where Hami got autocorrected to Hamilton or some nonsense.

Awesome as always, Silas!
Thought it might be time to further explore emping for i21. Think you just motivated me to do so

Looks really nice, I will try this. Thanks

I am a lil confused why would you make a PvE emp build so expensive? Also why smashing lethal when an emp really has no need nor should it be in melee range?

Also recall friend pairs nicely with Rez so I would have forgone something like flurry for that. Also you took rez so late then when you exempt and it would be most useful you won't have it.

I see you have a ton of recharge and that is nice but honestly you really don't need that much seems like overkill and an expense on a toon that doesn't need it. Just my opinion btw. I would re do this to be much more team friendly, but again that's my opinion and my playstyle. Some emp's like to pew pew.

I'll post some thing if you like, let me mess around in mid's. Also I have about 130% recharge on one of my PvP emp and my AB is just about perma (1 sec off) and can still keep 6 people fort'd. My AB is slotted for both health and endurance. Also I have played many of my emp's with just SO's and I don't die so the need to slot an emp for def I just don't see, but then again I've been playing emps a long time and i have i think 4 or 5 now i forget.

Regarding TP i don't mean for you to run away and tp and rez I just tp to outer edge where i am and rez. (thats only on emps with rez many of mine don't have it)

Gahhhhhh the forum logout bug just ate a big response.

Don't really want to type it all out again. Cliffnotes:

I'd appreciate it if you could show me a sample build. Again, I'd like to see what it is I'm missing that would make my build "much more team friendly". From what you've said about your Empaths, I'm sure you've got much more experience than I so your input would be great.

So far you've mentioned endmod in AB and Recall Friend. Even without running far from the fight, Recall takes you out of the fight way too long for my tastes. To each their own. As for the endmod in AB, personal preference. I found other things to be a bigger priority in the build given the times when having endmod in AB will realistically be useful. Bear in mind this is a PvE build, I'm sure things would be different in a pvp build.

You said your Emp has 130% recharge, I'm assuming that includes Hasten since otherwise you'd have even more ridiculous recharge than me So that means 60% global recharge, which isn't enough for Hasten to be perma, even if you 6 slotted it (which I highly doubt you did).

So you won't have the full recharge benefit of Hasten all the time. You can work out the average recharge buff you're getting from Hasten though, so you can look into that. Long story short, with your recharge you'll be able to maintain Fortitude on just under 6 people assuming you always had 130% recharge, which you wouldn't because Hasten isn't perma. Without any Hasten buff, it'd be about 4.5 people.

So realistically we're talking maintaining Fortitude on 5 people, not 6. To reliably maintain Fortitude on 6 people you need it to recharge in about 17 seconds.

To address the IOs issue, I know a build like mine isn't needed, a build like mine is what I wanted. To address this point I specifically said in the guide that you don't need IOs, let alone a build like mine to Emp well. Here:

Silas is ballin'.