Doomguide
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Quote:This!Originally Posted by Rodion
The heal doesn't fire very often and it doesn't heal for much. But if you slot all five pieces of the set you do get a 6.25% recharge bonus. That's the real reason for slotting that IO.
I used several sets in my Cold/Ice, primarily for the 5 slot bonuses. The set reminds me a little bit of Kinetic Combat in its enhancement values with the poor net accuracy (on a Cold with Tactics, Sleet and PBU the +accuracy isn't needed). Damage is a bit more than Decimation. But bottom line I was looking at for the recharge for 5 slots while getting a bit more regen and damage over Decimations. That I might get an occasional heal out of the proc was just gravy. I also run Power Build Up and just as a side note it DOES effect the heal of the proc if it triggers while PBU is active. Worth a mind boggling
100 or so heal with PBU boosting it on my defender ... might almost be worth it if it triggered on an AoE sleep like Siren's Song while PBU was running.
Edit: Just a thought about the AA To Hit debuff. Have a sg mate and friend who uses it in a proc happy Stone Fist (4 procs including this one) on her Stone/Stone tanker. The AA proc is Unresistable and therefore just a effective vs a Lvl 54 AV as a lvl 50 minion. After running thru her attack sequence a few times the To Hit debuff (at the full -7.5%) is quite likely running on that AV she's got focused on her. -
And if Endurance is an issue look into Destiny Ageless if you have the mez side otherwise handled in particular (breakfrees, teammates etc.).
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One single AV at once?? ... I think the record is around 11 simultaneously
I've no idea what the best farming content would be for such a character but one could certainly go in search of or perhaps create it in AE.
And I'll second TwoHeadedBoys thoughts. -
Quote:Perhaps I stated it poorly. The last line of my post in particular I was trying to say more or less just that ... that buffs alone outweighed healing alone (and by a safe margin). What might be tough but possible with heals alone would be much easier with buffs alone.Originally Posted by Pyro_Master_NA
You seem to be defending (no pun intended) empathy here. The debate at hand originated from a post by EvilRyu, in which he stated healing was the best form of defeat prevention. No one here is saying empathy can't or shouldn't buff. I agree that an empath can keep a squishy alive through a lot more than just 2 rikti bosses, but Ryu was suggesting that healing alone would do the trick, and that is where the debate began.
It's also a fairly artificial set of conditions (as Madadh points out). No well played Empath is going to do one or the other. They will be 1) healing as needed, 2) buffing AND 3) attacking. And of those 3 things I think, outside of Evil Ryu, it's fairly obvious to most in this thread which is going to have the most work cut out for itself keeping a teammate upright. -
@Madadh,
I'd probably swap the Stupefy in OG with the AA in Dark Pit. The knockback proc in Dark Pit mostly annoying if/when it knocks something out of Tar Patch etc.. Same thing happening in OG and by the time they get up likely the OG stun has worn off. Thou I've heard the amusement value of things getting randomly thrown around from the proc in OG is relatively high
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Oh I'd say if the Blaster was attacking, moving and otherwise acting remotely like he wanted to live and had anywhere near capped resists I'd be able to keep the Blaster alive with just healing (and assuming the aggro stayed on the Blaster). Of course, let me use my buffs and it reaches certainty if they still have the resistance. And it's probably near a certainty even if our Blaster doesn't have anything other than my buffs, of course, as the likelyhood of two simultaneously synched hits on an active Emp BUFFED Blaster (30% defense and 1000% regen from AB alone to 2000% for about 90 of every 120 seconds) who is only worrying about 2 foes is, about as likely as a some proverbial pigs or snowballs. Which, of course, is the whole point ... no resistance, no other buffs and I will have trouble even if it is doable. With buffs and it becomes more a question of how fast the blaster destroys the two bosses rather than IF he lives.
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Quote:Originally Posted by EvilRyu
If you want to have any remote chance of being able to solo then you want to do this as a mastermind or controller with good damage pets. Otherwise you will basically be riding a team to 50 if you want xp in a timely manner. As for as sets to heal empathy has always been the best. People always try to down play healing in this game when its has always been the best damage mitigation. As long as your reaction time is good it will serve you well regardless of the situation so long as there is no -heal being thrown around. and wow.
Only one part of that do I agree with ... Empaths do have the strongest heals around, thou if you count ONLY the heals (HA, HO and AP) Pain does this almost as well.
Remote chance to solo >>> Have one Empath who has solo'd a level 53 mob in RWZ with no inspires, no deaths etc. pre Incarnate. Another solo'd thru the RWZ arcs on Unyielding until I ran into Sefu. "Remote" is safely in the realm of hyperbole at best.
Riding to 50 ... yeah that's an absurd statement unless one is playing Empathy quite poorly.
As for timely manner, that's very subjective. Will any of my Empaths ever solo like my Claws/SR or pretty much any other scrapper no not a chance in a gazillion. Silly to think they ever will. It's equally silly to think a second scrapper would speed up the first scrappers mission speeds anywhere near as much as my Empaths would. Not what either AT/sets are respectively designed to do.
Makes my want to use a 3rd build identical to my main Incarnate build but move all "heals" out of play and run 'normal' level 50 pug content. Wonder how many missions it would be before anyone would note that I've yet to throw a heal. Pretty safe bet it would be lot longer than if I did the inverse and only used my 3 heals. -
Won't comment on Beam as I've yet to play with it.
>> I'd drop the Rectified Reticle Increased Perception for a common lvl 50 endred IO.
>> I'd move the LotG def/endred from CJ to FFG for a bit more defense.
>> Consider using a BotZ -kb in SJ and trading the Karma -kb in Maneuvers for another LotG
>> Find a slot for Acid Mortar and add a Devastation chance to hold, it triggers with fair frequency. Health is likely where I'd go looking for the slot. -
Quote:Nevermind Howling Twilight's MINUS 500 REGEN debuffOriginally Posted by Zombie Man
Howling Twilight is a great stun and slow and group rez and since it does minor AoE damage, with Reactive, it will do moderate damage. ...
or its -62.5% recharge debuff
or Mag 3 Afraid (Fear) effect
Edit: to add the recharge and Afraid effects ... it's Mass Ally Rez is possibly the least of its effects.
PS: and in theory with a very high recharge one could stack HT ... at least in Mids there's no "effect does not stack from same caster" notation ...
Scatch that thought I was looking at the duration not base recharge ... at the recharge cap you'd be about 6 seconds off firing it as the effects dropped at 30 seconds.
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While it dealt with Defender Sonic Blast this is a very detailed thread dealing with the attack chains possible with Sonic Blast.
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=195250 -
Quote:All this is more to the point of why direct healing is in CoH one of the least important forms of mitigation than to why an Empath has more Healz than a Kin. Solid teams with solid players really don't care if their healing is coming from an Empath or a Kin or the scrapper using Aid Another ... long as the green bar doesn't vanish. They'll be far more interested in the potential buffs and debuffs being offered by their teammates.Originally Posted by DreadShinobi
Depends. Needed healing is relative to how much damage is being taken. In most situations if you are playing with people who know how to play with a kin then they will be in melee anyways (for fulcrum shift mainly) and Kin will be the most team slot effective heal there is since there are also bringing so much more than just healing, really it's main limitation is people who can't adapt their playstyle to what their team mate's powers do (ie running away when they are damaged instead of staying in melee when a reliable kin is on the team). Kin healing can do anything emp/pain/thermal healing can do with half the activation time and twice as powerful aoe healing. Kins can heal scrappers tanking recluse in the STF by having them bring recluse to a tower and healing off the tower (using extreme example to show how kin healing is more than enough for content that is less dependant on healing than such a situation) and in pretty much any other tf a single kin is plenty of healing for the entire tf (big exception being keyes due to how much the AM tank has to move around) and at the same time they are providing speed boost, unlimited endurance, damage cap, and damage debuffs.
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I'm not totally sure but
Quote:I believe in general if the power can take Accuracy enhancements you'll be able to place Accurate Defdebuff IO's in the power. Same for Accurate To Hit Debuff and Accurate Heal sets, for example, Twilight's Grasp vs Heal Other, TG can take both Accurate Heal and Heal sets whereas Heal Other will not take Accurate Heal only Heal sets.The flaw in your argument is that the majority of those powers DO take accurate defense debuff sets. Every single katana attack does, as do all radiation blast attacks, attacks from AR that do -def, etc. I haven't gone through EVERY attack that does -def as a secondary effect but it looks like the standard appears to be that attack powers that do -def as a secondary effect are supposed to take the accurate def debuff sets. -
Count me in the "they should expire when their caster does"
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The answer really is "it depends". Depends on what you are building for. Do you want recharge, defense of some variety, +max health, etc.etc.. In turn what you are building for depends on other things such as which sets, concept, available playtime, play style or what one can spend? There is no truly clear cut answer.
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It's also very much assuming a solo situation. Fire's DoT adds only to your damage, sonic's -resist adds to everyones damage on the target.
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I wouldn't choose Soul Drain over Howling Twilight. Not sure I'd go Anything over Howling Twilight it's that great, solid, awesome etc..
At a quick glance (very quick) I'd drop either Petrifying Gaze or Life Drain to keep both Soul Drain and Howling Twilight in there.
On anything either while leveling or if I have ANY intention of ever running below 50 I'd also get HT in there much earlier.
Or am I not following the changes you've made since the last posted build? -
Mine loves them.
The level shifts do help particularly with hitting and damage. But alone I'd say the basic Alpha shift makes the largest impression. Dropping +4's to +3's is a much more significant change than from say +2 to +1's.
Once you hit 45% I'd put my efforts much more strongly into increasing +max health and +regen. I'm currently running Musculature and Rebirth (for the +regen) typically, thou the badge hunting side of me was enjoying Barriers rez ability to finally start making a dent in my Healing Badges as until recently I never had or used Medicine for Aid Self/Aid Another. And honestly the Medicine pool is as much a set mule for a couple sets of Numina's (for the health and regen set bonuses) as anything. For Incarnate defense I find either Lucks or teammates enough 99+% of the time (And the rest of the time I do have Barrier to swap to, Eye of Magus and Aid Self)
My Claws/SR currently uses Warworks, but I don't think any particular Lore pet says "Use Me!" more than any other for /SR specifically.
EDIT: The 9CU's in the BAF probably involved the most adaptation to deal with. Level shifts+ Shockwave KD and making sure Rebirth is fresh before tackling a large mob of them (where there aggro would likely all end up on me) plus using purple and orange inspires are key for me. -
Between the thread overall (specially concerning binds and/or hot keys) and Seldom's excellent post ... not much to add.
Quote:First sign I see that I've let my offender side get the better of me and I've come down with scrapperlock is when my brain finally sees the number of teammates under Fort is less than 4. Happens way too often some days... To be blunt, the best empaths are the aware ones, and fortitude use is one of the best litmus tests of a good empath. ...
QFEQuote:... Empathy benefits more than other buff/debuff sets from knowing how other powersets work. ... -
Quote:Quoting again for emphasis.Originally Posted by Muon_Neutrino
Addendum to the above: said character is also a massive investment of RL $ for not much return in terms of +5ing all those IOs, and probably improves a team's performance by at most the same as a purely SO'd rad/, dark/, kin/, cold/, or (probably) time/ defender who can actually supply both offensive and defensive buffs and debuffs. Especially if you take a nice secondary like /sonic or /ice (for example) and actually use it as intended instead of ignoring it or slotting it for mostly irrelevant debuffs like -defense.
Healing in this game is probably the single *least* important form of mitigation available. It can be useful, but empathy's (for example) best powers are the buffs. If I was doing a +4/x8 TF, a 'pure healer' empath would be about the *last* character I would want along. No amount of healing is going to save a squishy who just pissed off a +4 rikti chief soldier, I want buffs and debuffs in that situation.
And if one of my Empaths does find themselves trying to keep the above squishy alive, you can bet it isn't just healing getting tossed in their direction. More likely it's going to be HO rapidly followed by Fort then my ATTACK chain which typically for high end content would be a series of -resist /sonic blasts with Electric Fence to pin the offending foe in place. And somewhere in there I'm going to try and fit in Regen Aura (and quite possibly AB as well). If I'm on my Emp/Rad I would likely start the attack with Air Superiority to knock said boss/foe on his behind, then Cosmic Burst (and he's already in my Oppressive Gloom aura at that point) to mez him. It's a very rare situation (or very specific situation) where I'll do (or have to do) more than a single HO and HA for someone in trouble. The rest of those 'hairy' few seconds are going to be making sure they're buffed and every attack I have is tossed in there. -
As is it is a solid build.
Decide if you want to soft cap or not. Right now you're between 32% (enough to cap with a small inspire) and the soft cap of 45%. I personally, especially on a team build, wouldn't worry too much about defense at all. Stealth, teammates, PA and Phantasm should be more than sufficient to avoid most aggro. And none of that takes RI into account. That said I was able to cap range without losing perma AM or perma Hasten while playing around in Mids (and hit 32%+ on everything else) but it would cost you a couple seconds on PA's recharge from around 63 to 65 sec prior to any Incarnate boosts. Spiritual Core Paragon put it at 58.54 seconds. (EDIT: To clarify by only changing slotting and enhancements. No change to power choices)
Slot Apocalypse chance for instead of Apocalypse Damage ... better damage output as you are hard up against ED. Procs apply the damage without concerns for ED.
Same choice pops up with Ragnarok in Fireball but the choice is about damage vs mitigation since the proc isn't a damage proc.
Lingering Rad needs accuracy (or the build needs more global +Acc) ... RI, do to AV debuff resistances, isn't going to help enough to reliably land LR on endgame AV's at least it wouldn't be reliable enough for me (unless your level shifts drop them to effectively +1 AV's I believe or a teammate with a nice To Hit buff to drop on you).
Suspect Fly is a personal preference? I skipped both Superior and Group Invisibility and went with both Deceive and Flash gaining my stealth from Super Speed + stealth IO. Of the two suspect I'd miss Deceive far more than the pbaoe of Flash (not to mention the cheap purple set with a +ranged def in the Confuse set of Deceive).
I'm sure there are things I'm missing as well ... so I also do recommend you do read Local Man's Guide
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For pure hit point replacement (healing and +regen) an Empath is going to lead anything else. Fortitude and Adrenaline Boost are 2 of the strongest single target buffs in the game. The flip side as alluded to above is Empathy has no inherent debuffs on its own, all the others do. Pain then Thermal follow (in that order) for the next two strongest (again for strongest hp replacement), Pain going ahead primarily as Thermal lacks both an Absorb Pain or an Adrenaline Boost type clone (a huge heal and a huge +regen respectively). Pain's AB clone exchanges the +100% recharge buff of AB for a +50% damage buff while the Fortitude clone in Thermal lacks the +defense but has higher +damage and +to hit buff values. The 3 (Empathy, Pain and Thermal) are at the top of the heap as all 3 have both a pbaoe heal and ally targeted heal that do not require a foe to be used.
If you are looking towards the endgame and choose an Empathy defender I'd lean strongly towards either /Sonic for single target -resist nastiness or /Ice for AoE ability that doesn't use defender AT damage mods (i.e. Blizzard on a defender hits as hard as it does on a Blaster). -
Just using Mids quick without actually counting you gain 67 slots to place as desired on the way to 50. 67 Does not count all the base slots you gain for merely taking powers.
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Probably gimp ... likely even in the case of MoG. But /Regen has no DDR so consider what happens in a strong defdebuff situation such as your aforementioned Dark Ring Mistresses or other strong defdebuffer(s) (And I have been under the effects of 2 Masks of Vitiation at once on a soft capped /SR on more than one occasion). Bottom line they give us choices to decide what we think is "best" in many cases, I'd rather learn and make my choice than not.
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Quote:I would add that the amount of time you are likely to have available to blast will tend to go up as you play on higher level teams/content. Higher level characters in general tend to be overall more self sufficient. You'll spend less time tossing healing and can devote the time to blasting and buffing.
As for the teaming bit, you aren't finding much opportunity to shoot stuff because empathy is one of the most active buff/debuff sets. If you want a character that focuses on blasting, you might want to reroll to one of the fire and forget sets like force field or sonic. Traps might actually be the best choice for you, since it just needs to set up its traps at the beginning of a fight then spend the rest of it blasting, and it performs well solo. -
Quote:The true full complete answer is "it depends" With no other buffs/debuffs in play yes equal amounts of -To Hit and +Def (all) are effectively the same. Problem is that is NEVER true if you are fighting anything above +0 level to you do to Purple Patch scaling which always effects To Hit Debuffs. (http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Purple_Patch). Then on top of that is any foe with To Hit Debuff resistance will further mess with the equation, specifically this equation (http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Attack_Mechanics). So while it is often reasonable to count some of the debuff as if it were defense one must always take the above into account as well.Originally Posted by Crysys
I've seen people post Times Juncture as having an "effective" +20% Defense boost due to its -20% ToHit debuff. Does -ToHit = +Def on a 1:1 basis? I didn't think so.....