I read the defender forums regularly, and there seem to be some defenders who have suffered from the 'r u healr' syndrome so badly that they virulently expound their equality or superiority to the empathy powerset. However, I've never actually met any defender in pickup groups or otherwise that expound a 'hate empathy' philosophy. The converse is strangely true...
Personally, I like grouping with an empathy. Let me just start by listing the reasons why.
1) Restorative Aura. I run a very endurance intensive build. With Shadowfall, Darkest Night, Tactics and sometimes acrobatics (more and more nowadays) running, gazing and staring, my endurance regeneration just about breaks even. I cannot blast. I don't even run maneuvers, or my endurance goes away as fast as I drink water. Restorative Aura is a god bless on me. The same for speed boost or transferance or Accelerate Metabolism.
2) Clear Mind. I have problems with status effects. Being a dark defender I cannot save my teammates if they get hit by status effects. Sorry, they are on their own. It's just not possible unless I dip into the Medicine pool, and my spare slot has already been given to leadership. I might respec out leadership and take up Medicine in the future though, if I ever get a chance to respec again. I am seeing more and more mezzing these days.
3) Healing. Yes, this is what Empathy defenders are 'famous' for. Just yesterday, I was in a supergroup outing when I saw that in action. Our assist-tank, a sidekicked ice, suddenly had a bad streak, and he went from green into blinking red, with a tiny little bump in his health bar that showed he was just alive. Barely. I rushed to his side, and pressed Twilight grasp. Everything was purple but I haven't missed yet. ... But. I missed. Beep! Beep! Beep! Suddenly, a huge green number appeared right above Mr. Goodbye-Tank's head. I mean HUGE. And he was Mr. Hello-Tank again. Without an empathy and that unconditional Heal Other or Absorb Pain (not sure what was used), there would have been a death. With an empathy, I can just let the empathy heal instead of stressing out on when and whether I would miss a critical heal.
There are just many empathy defenders running around, and many who don't have a lot of respect for their own secondary abilities or finesse in playing. Which sometimes makes it hard to differentiate the good defender from a lot of randoms.
That is not to say I have not seen bad dark defenders running around. I saw one with three blastery attacks in his secondary and twilight grasp in his primary only. In my humble opinion, you're simply not a dark defender if you do not take Darkest Night and slot it. While it is true that dark blasts and twilight grasp do a very very good job of debuffing accuracy, it is almost a joke if you do not take Darkest Night and slap it on your clustered mobs, then blast away, since you can't blast all your mobs all at once to debuff them. It is the difference between tanking eight even cons and getting splattered by four. Dark/dark's are getting a bit FoTM, I think. I guess I am a pretty harsh on my Darkest Night requirement -- same way Juli is harsh on the taunt requirement. Whenever I am on a lowbie and group with a Dark defender who does not throw Darkest Night on first thing in those big bad fights, I start to cry. I feel like screaming DO YOU KNOW WHY OUR TEAM IS GETTING PLASTERED BY TROLLS? YOU ARE NOT DEFENDING? WHERE IS DARKEST NIGHT? IS IT SLOTTED?
I mostly soloed my way up to now 32 (Yay pet) on Tenacious, which isn't that high-levelled or that boastworthy, and sure, and I'm having difficulty now. But it's mostly the difficulty of time consumption. So I like to group up with a damage dealer nowadays and just play pseudo-controller while they get a heyday shredding through stuff with almost no downtime. So I really don't call myself an 'offender', just a soloable defender.
For some reason that seems to draw down the wrath of some other defenders. Am I pointing a finger? Yes, I am pointing a finger at some empathy defenders. Some. I do not generalise. Yet, I am getting a lot of hate from, for some reason, a lot of the empathy defenders I sometimes group up with. It is almost as if I have an offensive aura around me that offends their sensibilities, as if I am stepping on their turf by being in the group. As if there is only room for one defender in the team and it is them. Or something else. I have no idea.
I really have to rant. Just today I was grouped with one. Ignored my request for a teleport so I had to run halfway across Crey's Folly in my lag with every sniper taking potshots at me. Ignored me when I went into red when some swarms suddenly decided I was yummy. Had to eat emergency inspirations. If it was the other way around, I'd have rushed to him and helped him. Or am I suddenly being denied that absorb pain/heal other to be handily tossed to others?
That incident was just the straw that broke the camel's back, and a rehash of similar scenarios in the past. I have never had this problem with other type of defenders. I get hurt. Of course I do. When I throw fearsome stare, sometimes I miss, and you bet those misses are going to come after me. When I debuff and there isn't a higher aggro priority (yay AoE blaster!), things start coming after me. Hey, the mob besides me exploded with a kinetics heal. Hey, green glow from a controller! But why is it that when I group up with an empathy, I get that very iffy feeling that comes from those bad experiences...will that guy heal me if I get hurt?
That is not to say empathys are bad. I remember the time I was doing a Lost mission with a huge group and still playing my endurance drain games. I got mezzed right through clear mind while draining three Lost bosses, and I grouptalked 'held'.The next second the empathy defender was besides me spamming healing aura as the bosses I missed drain on hacked me with those giant blades. My health didn't even go down.
But that experience was in my teens. These high-levelled defenders are supposed to 'know better', right? Right, then why am I seeing these badly behaved empaths?
Not a bash empath article. Just an observation.
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