View Full Version : Empathy as a secondary powerset
How does Empathy scale as a secondary controller set? Could a controller be a group's main healer?
If you have a tanker that knows what hes doing, yes. Which...really shouldn't be the case, but yeah you can if your using your single heal on a tanker
If you pay enough attention to it in terms of slots, etc, yes. it can work very well.
In Fact, an Empathy Controller is easily a better healer than any non-empathy defender. Their heals are 75% as big as an Empath Defender's Heals. So you'd have to burn more endurance, but not a huge amount more.
The trick is that when you are doing Your Crowd Control thing, you probably won't be able to do that AND full heals for a large group at once. But in a smaller 3-4 person group, you should be good.
Several Healers in Beta decided that when live came they were going that route, thinking that would give them slightly lower damage ehaling power, but a lot more Damage mitigation power, and thus make the healing job easier.
The one downside: Aggro. If all you are doing is Healing, it is a cakewalk to avoid Aggro. If you are doing Crowd control and healing for te grou, you will be getting a large share of Aggro, which will interfere with your ability to be an effective healer, and make it much mroe risky to use Absorb Pain. AP Heals a ton, but takes like 15% of your health per cast, and makes you unhealable except by direct heals for a while. i.e. No using AP and then Healing Aura to repair the damage, you'd need someone else with a targetted heal to help you recover from that.
But It would give you a lot of versatility. Assuming both sets of powers were appropriately slotted, you could join a group and Fill a role as a Healer, or as a Crowd Control Expert, but both might be pushing it in a large group.
Expatriate
05-20-04, 06:31 PM
I play a Mind/Empathy Controller, and while I can heal nearly as well as a Empathy Defenter, my main focus in Crowd Control, so I don't always look at the health bars of others, though I do notice when they change color, signifying low health.
I would probably watch health more if I were to be main healer, but I always group with Nyssa's Defender who is an Empathy/Psy, so I am always a backup healer, and she lets me know when I need to help.
I think the Controller with Empathy is a better healer than any of the non-empathy defenders because of the Heal Other ability, but I'm not sure about the differences in damage avoidance of a Controller verses some of the other Defender Power sets. Sure, I can lock down all the adds, unless I am grouped with people who like to AE, which make my Hypnotizes useless. At 18th I do get Total Domination, an AE Incapaciate, and AE damage will not matter at that point.
I have a feeling my way of damage avoidance is best, but don't we all :)
I was trying to get a friend to go as Mind/Emp with me as Emp/Psi.
Then he decided he wanted a blaster instead. Like we need more of those around! :lol