Empathy/?? (or something else?)

Hey all,

So, after about a 4 year hiatus, I have decided to come back. I played several AT's and decided that I wanted to return as a support class. I like "lending a hand" more than "leading the charge" and an empathy defender was something that caught my attention over the other powersets (although, if someone wants to give ideas as to why another set might be more "team-oriented" I would be open to listening as I have not created the character yet).

I was thinking about empathy/dark for the -tohit on the dark side as I feel it would be very team friendly. My original idea was to go empathy/rad for the -def but I trashed that idea because I felt that the -tohit would be more beneficial in the long run. Anyone have any experience with a high level empathy/dark defender?

Just a reminder, I'm open to listening to any ideas on team friendly powersets. I don't think something like force fields or sonic is my play style because they do not have any heals and personally, if I play a team-oriented defender, I will want at least 1 heal.

All feedback is welcomed and much appreciated!

Empathy/* can help a team. Heal other, heal aura, and absorb pain are three powers that heal of the nine primary powers. Using fortitude, recovery aura, regen aura, and adrenaline boost will decrease the need to feel like your only purpose is to heal.

Second, I noticed you said you like dark blast for tohit debuff. Please whatever secondary you have, USE it. There have been too many cases where 9 secondary powers are available and the empath took only the default blast. In short, YES! dark blast goes well with an empath. There are some decent AoEs and a strong candidate for defender secondary power of all powers - tenebrous tentacles, damage + cone immobilize + tohit debuff for the win!

Well, most of the secondaries have additional effects that help your team in one manor or another. Below I list each and how they can help you:

Sonic Attack- This is my personal choice of secondary. While its effects do little in the way of defensive mind they definitively help out the offensive mind. With each sonic attack you stack -res on your targets causing your team to do more and more damage. Not to mention you get a very nice st mez for protecting your team or causing more damage to be taken by the enemy. Its also a very quick attack set from personal experience so you don't get locked up in attacks when you need to pop that quick heal or buff on a friend in need.
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Radiation Blast- This is a fun in your face type of blast set. A lot of your powers tempt you too get in close on enemies. Not such a bad thing really cause if your in close your melee friends are in range of your heal aura. Now, the -def is not to be taken lightly either. Stacking -def is nice for a team that has trouble hitting the target. Additionally if you stack enough you can keep even some of the most annoying enemies from dodging your attacks.
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Psychic Blast- This is what I feel is a classic combination for empathy. Psi is pretty decent cause its hardly resisted but when it is you will know. In addition you have a fair amount of tools to keep enemies under some control. You have a sleep, and immobilize, a knock back, and a stun. Not to mention most powers are causing -recharge which means they will have to wait even longer to launch their next attacks. All in all a veritable toolbox of win.
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Ice Blast- This set, at first glance, is similar to psychic with its -recharge. However, that's where that ends. Where psi was a toolbox, this is more of a powerhouse in my personal opinion. You get a sexy single target attack chain which is sure to keep enemies from running too far or attacking too often and a nice AoE that can help drop the minions quick in a group and keep them from attacking your buddies. Now, you even have 2 mag 3 holds although arguably only the first one is worth taking but YMMV and really I encourage you to experiment with all the powers.
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Fire Blast- What can I say but massive carnage. You can seal someones would with one set and cause them with the other. So one thing to keep in mind with this set is that dead enemies cause no harm and this sets good at knocking down all the pins.
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Energy Blast- While I little to no experience with this set I am always in awe of those who can handle it well. The great thing about this set is its largest annoyance factor. Knockback. Now, for some that is a nasty word but I absolutely love the chaos that it can cause. While enemies are flying the can't keep attacking! Not to mention its fun to turn your enemies into popcorn. With enough practice you can even hover above your foes and turn that knockback into a knockdown or if you need to stave off a group in and emergency you can keep em bouncing in a corner.
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Electric Blast- Not a bad set overall. You get a pet that can't be killed and attacks for free and with the levels of recharge you need for empathy hes easy to keep out even if you fall and pick back up. You also get a nice little hit and run hold. Another fun tidbit is its nice to stack with friends who do -recovery and -end to keep them blue bars down.
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Dark Blast- Such a sexy, sexy powerset. Not to mention its great for slotting potential. Now, all of the attacks in the set do -tohit which is kinda like +def for your team cause your making it harder from them to hit you. Additionally you get two very sexy cones. Night Fall for massive -tohit and Tenabrous Tentacles with nice -tohit but an immobilize that will still allow for enemies to be pushed and bounced. All in all very sexy and easily paired with emp/. You even get a self heal that does fair damage too.
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Dual Pistols- A very nice set that is also very flashy! Whats best is you get to choose your secondary effect with Swap Ammo! Want less damage against your team? Switch to Toxic Bullets. Need more damage? Switch to Incendiary Bullets. Want to slow your foes? Switch to Cryonic Bullets. Need to drop some defenses? Use Normal Bullets. Its nice to make yourself useful in nearly every situation. You only suffer from a small lack of range which is dealable. You also get a nice little stun/hold power as well. Lastly, your nuke.... its crashless.
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Assault Rifle- This is a nice set that just makes you feel awesome. The lower levels focus more on Knockback control to keep your enemies on their butts and the later levels bring you some much needed damage. Top that off with another crashless nuke that will be up even more than Dual Pistols. Did I mention crashless nuke?
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Archery- This is another nice set like Assault Rifle. However, most of the powerset focuses on pinning down your opponents by dropping their HPs to 0. As for the set it gets an inherent accuracy bonus so you hit more often. Now, it does have to good tools. One is a target aoe knockback and the other is a single target stun. Both great powers to use to help protect you and the team. Oh, and it has another CRASHLESS NUKE! <~~Love These
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Beam Rifle-This set is a lot of fun, is very flashy, and has a veritable toolbox hidden behind its Disinigration mechanic. Additionally it also has some very nice slotting options. The biggest boon to your team is that ninja 200% - regen hidden in the powers. Not to mention that you will keep your main targets health dotting as well as the targets it spreads too. Not to mention, if you have any other beamers on the team they can benefit from your desinigration effects to. You also have stuns, knockbacks, and -def to name a few other tools in the set. Also, slap me if I said this before but..... Crashless... Nuke! On an extra note to add more to the tastiness that is Beam you also get -res from piercing beam! Thanks to Madadh for pointing that tid bit out.
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Water Blast
To be fair, I will hold any judgement till this is off of beta. However, all I can say at the moment is Muwhahahahah!

Now, these are all based on my opinion and YMMV. However, I hope that this little review of each helps you out some in your decision. If you stay /Dark, awesome! If you choose something else, awesome!

Wow! Such awesome replies... So detailed. I appreciate the input and the breakdown of the powersets. I decided to go with Emp/Dark but my next defender will most likely be */sonic.

Thanks you guys!

Dark might cause you trouble with the Aggro cones. I don't know the details of the mechanics, but enemies hate people who do the following:

Debuffs
Damage over Time (keep reminding them why they hate you!)
AOE

What do the two Dark cones do? AOE, debuffs, damage over time. As a bonus, because you're doing damage over time, even if you have done "enough" damage to kill them, they still have a plenty of time to take you with them.

If I was doing Emp, I'd either do Emp/Sonic or Emp/Fire with a Green Machine build. Emp/Sonic will have minimal endurance issues while Emp/Fire will burn blue like mad when the buffs are down. Sonic also gives you some more soloing options with the Siren's Song sleep power that can be combined with the Epic Mass Hypnosis Sleep power to sleep entire spawns including Bosses. However, I would only play an Emp if I had a steady and reliable Emp partner with a Green Machine build to duo with, I would not bother with soloing it since it would be half-power solo as compared to paired with another Green Machine.

Without a partner, I prefer Dark/ or Time/

My current favorite is Time/ for team support.
I'm useing Time/DP, but Time/Fire has more offense while costing more endurance. I'm built for very balanced endurance over the long term. The Time/DP can fight indefinitely non-stop, for hours if need be. Time/Fire will have to mitigate the endurance issues somehow to do the same. This is really only an issue if you plan on doing something crazy like soloing an ITF +4x8 instead of the more reasonable +1x8 or +2x8.

+37 to +55 defense to the entire team.
+Recovery to the entire team
+Recharge to the entire team
+To Hit
Moderate healing
-defense debuffs
-resist debuffs

With Tier 4 Incarnates I can both solo 99.9% of the game and buff an entire team to similar levels of durability. Before incarnates I can solo 98% of the pre-incarnate game. I used the incarnates to add mez protection and offense. I have to carry BFs pre-incarnate and my offensive kill speed slows down significantly. However, as far as offensive speed goes the same is true of any pre-incarnate. For instance, Staff/Fire/Mu pre-incarnate is almost exactly half the offense/skillspeed as it is after incarnates.

@Sonic Remedy, your post makes this thread sticky worthy.

If I were power-gaming a Defender build with a strong healing flavor, I would probably go with Thermal Radiation/Sonic Attack. In fact I really want one of those, just haven't found a suitable concept yet.

I see lots of Empathy Defenders and very few Thermals. Not that Empathy is bad or anything.

As a side bonus of sorts, although Thermal has debuffs later on, compared to Empathy its the heal-y set I usually find myself doing the most traditional healing with. Thermal doesn't have powers like Regen Aura or AB that recover HP without you keeping an eye toward health meters (not that it should only be on health meters).

Otherwise Empathy/anything is at least suitable. I would personally like to see Empathy gets some small buffs--have its rezz either recharge faster or be an AoE, and a few other small things. But it's serviceable.

I should add that if you want a really, really team-oriented support character, Empathy (or Thermal) Controllers are probably even more suited to that. Defenders hae better buff values, but in general I would say they are more Protector/Blaster than Protector/Protector.

Awww shucks, Psylenz and Nethergoat, you two can make a guy feel awesome.

Awesome is as awesome does.

Indeed, awesome breakdown Sonic..

However...


Sorta surprised that for Beam you didn't mention the -res, too. It comes late on a def, true, but in a high recharge build (which is what ya get for most Emps) you could probably perma stack, or at least close to perma -40% res on a target, when needed.. -40% res isn't anything to sneeze at when added to all the other goodies. It's technically a cone, too, but in my experience, a second target getting hit isn't to be relied upon.

Buff/debuff sets range between "great for teaming" and "so good it's practically cheating." So you'll do fine with Empathy.

Just be aware that Empathy has a few quirks that can lead people into ineffective builds and playstyles:

1) Empathy gives the most specialized and situational powers at low levels, where the always useful powers are supposed to be. This results in silliness like "rocking the aura" (putting Healing Aura on autofire). Keep in mind that your mid- to high-level buffs are the set's greatest strengths, and heals are only situationally useful.

2) The description of Fortitude implies you can only buff one teammate. It's true you can buff one teammate per cast, but the duration greatly exceeds the recharge, so you can keep multiple teammates buffed by changing targets each time.

3) No Empathy powers target enemies. This means you have to be good at rapidly switching between targeting enemies and targeting teammates. By default, SHIFT+1 through SHIFT+8 target your teammates. Try setting up a key to work like TAB except for allies, for example using these keybinds:
/bind ` target_friend_next
/bind SHIFT+` target_friend_prev
/bind CONTROL+` target_friend_near

4) All Empathy powers are clicks. No passives or toggles. Some on very large recharge times. This means recharge buffs are key to effective Empathy play. Speed pool will do more for you than Medicine pool, Spiritual Alpha will do more for you than Vigor Alpha.

5) Defender Fortitude is better than controller Fortitude, but the remaining eight powers are either identical across both archetypes, or defenders have an insignificant advantage. Consider rolling an /Empathy controller unless there's a defender secondary you want, such as Water Blast, Sonic Attack, Dark Blast, Psychic Blast, all excellent support-ish blast sets.