Koopak

I'm slowly working on an attempt to provide a full look into Regen and other power sets that factors in as many elements as possible because of how much more complex Regen is since it shifts states to much over the course of a fight. Honestly at this point it may be easier to make contributions to Mids or something lol. Anyways I'll just repeat my usual. I FEEL that Regen is fine, provided the player puts in the effort to play it well, save for two main things. 1. Nearly every debuff type crushes it. Most defense sets simply don't care much about one or two of them. For instance Willpower basically doesn't give a shit if its hit with -1000% recharge. Radiation or other resist sets, don't care as much about -defense, and SR and other defense set have -def resist. Regen however crumbles under -regen, -defense, -recharge, and even -endurance 2. Regen has no built in compensation for the DPS loss of using so many active defenses. Toggle sets like Willpower don't lose any dps, because they don't have to do anything other than attack. Energy Aura, or Super Reflexes both have +Global Recharge to compensate for the cost of spending time on their active powers. Bio Armor doesn't have recharge, but it does have a damage aura and a damage proc via Offensive Adaptation. Regen has none of these while arguably depending on its active powers significantly more often. These two facts, regardless of where Regen stands in raw durability, are objectively true. These two issues are the first place any changes to the set should focus.

I'm not against minor taunt auras like EA's something weak. However i do think that for powersets that aren't dependent on nearby enemies for durability, it should cost something. I've debated suggesting a taunt aura to the Presence Pool but i haven't done so yet because of the weird effects that proposes for other ATs. Blankers? I don't think it'd be a serious issues since most other ATs, even with optimal slotting, struggle to have the durability to handle a big pack of +4 mobs, but yeah it could be a problem. I main a Katana/Regen Scranker essentially, and make use of Provoke and Melee Radial to hold aggro for my team. So you can see why i want a taunt aura but heres my concern. 90% of people here arguing for taunt auras are doing it under the argument "runners suck" which, i agree. However this is a solo mindset, and we should not make changes solely based on the solo experience when they impact the group experience. So let me ask the question, is it okay for all Scrappers to be able to hold aggro for a team? If not, what we really need then, is some kind of "anti run" mechanic, a psudo taunt. This would probably require more effort on the devs part though, but i seem to recall some flags that dictate if a mob runs, perhaps they can make a power that just flips that flag?

All crit bonuses are additive to my knowledge.

On the argument of fun? I support this ( all you KB->KD purists make me sick! ❤️ ) On argument of balance, i don't see any issues? I don't recall why it was removed in the first place but I do know large knock back strength with ragdolls can get janky with the game's collision though so eh.

I will add, Project Will needs love. Wall of Force has value as a big chonky knockback wall, and Weaken Resolve is a great debuff, but Project Force has a long animation time, low damage, and inconsistent and low knockback. I'd love to see something done to make Project Will a more useful power, either boosting the knockback, adding some minor status, or just upping the damage. Arcane Bolt got a great improvement, hoping for something similar down the line but im sure it on the to-do list already.

Its worth keeping in mind how bad humans are at gauging probability. What seems like "i never crit" to you, could easily be, and given the games code on this matter, likely is, normal. Aetherial provided a reasonable example of the actual math and probability, and while its entirely possible you are just the one in a billion exception, its highly unlikely. I do recommend taking a look at how PPM mechanics work to help you understand where to put the Critical Strikes ATO, and the Scrapper's Strike ATO is a nice global boost, but what I really recommend, is dumping your combat log, or counting your hits until you've seen, say, 10 crits. Before either of those ATOs you should see 10 crits within 200 attacks on average, if yer getting less than that, then we can talk. Speaking for myself, I actually favor Critical Strikes in an AoE attack sometimes, because while the proc rate is lower, its per target. Katana for instance can get a ~30%ish proc rate on The Lotus Drops, per target, as long as I have 3 or more targets, its a better proc rate than any single target power. Not always great since small PBAoEs get dicy with hitting and killing AVs is less optimal, but when clearing packs of mobs, that and my high global recharge means I actually proc it on probably around 70-80% of my uses, resulting in loads of crits from my hardest hitting attacks. Trust me the scrapper inherit is fiiiiiiiine, it just doesn't afford you a lot of control over it. (Edit: Heres Bopper's excellent guide on the topic. Theres also a good calculator out there so to can fidn the actual chance of a proc triggering based on the stats of a power. )

This, all of this, minus the slightly aggressive tone going back and forth here. The forums make people who seek "The Meta" seems more significant than they really are. That shouldn't be surprising, people looking to get the absolute maximum out of a character build are more likely to seek feedback and information on the topic, run numbers, and discuss. Meanwhile the average player base is generally more interested in making a character that fits their concept, or play style. I routinely put together builds for a largish SG, and while that's still a small pool, its worth note that 90% of the builds i get asked to help on are "I want this, this, and this, and i know its not meta but how can i make it work and be strong on my budget?" So I think claiming that we have to design around the defense focus of the meta is false. Sure if you look at the data Leadership, Fighting, and Speed are the most common, but that's just as often because "Eh nothing else fits my character and the raw stats help" or "I wanna cast X as much as possible regardless of validity" or even just "Yeah my character has leadership skills and basic hand to hand training." If some people wanna always take the best bang for their buck defense powers, that's a decision they are allowed to make, but you cant put to much effort into developing around 'the meta' because at the end of the day the meta chasers will always find and do the optimal thing, and its not possible to make disparate systems 100% equal, its fools errand. Instead the goal is to get most builds within a certain percentage of the meta, while maximizing variety in ways of accomplishing that. I have several builds that can handle +4x8, even easily, without defense cap. Granted I think the gap between some builds is still to wide, but id much rather than have more ways to close that gap than slapping defense on everything.

There seems to be a misplaced vertice on the Vanguard boot type for pants. See attached image.

Are you going for a bit more PvP viability? The lack of Gaussians is weird, the fact that you have Rectified Retical instead for +perception is of very niche use in PvE. The eng/neg weakness could be shored up with 4 sets of Shield Wall, and you might be able to come out ahead by mixing in 4 sets of Reactive Armor as well. Alot of places you seem to be grabbing small regen bonuses but those are likely overshadowed by other options like Preventative Medicine's 2 slot 2.25% S/L resist. Your End per second is significant over what youll likely drain in combat too, which means lost slot value. Just the notes i spotted. To be clear the build probably be just fine, im just noting optimizations i see.

I personally find DB to lack impact, feeling like its just flailing without reason. That said, i have had a few and enjoyed them well enough. DB has more mastery involved, knowing when to use what combo, or if at all, while Katana can often be simplified down to a rotation or two. Overall though i tend to lean Katana due to my interest in martial arts and the fact that its the closest thing to "real" sword play in the game. Broad Sword is to sluggish and clubby, and DB is overly stylish. End the end id say try both and go with the one you like the aesthetics and mechanics of the most in practice.

That does sound fun, but ill note that defense and resistance are almost certainly going to result in superior effective health per second, but id need to slap it together to be certain.

So fun factoid about the Scrapper inherent, the power itself doesn't do anything. I'm sure this is well known by those who dig into the mechanics a lot, but the way Critical Hit works, is its actually an empty power and all Scrapper attacks have the critical chance worked directly into the power itself and use flags to communicate with the AT set procs if I'm not mistaken. While i always love having a little something extra, i have to concur with the general response that its just not needed. Scrappers are in a very good spot due to their raw numbers and the power of crits.

@Galaxy Brain Holy cow, thanks for that massive breakdown. I may need to DM you once i have something cooked up so we can merge or compare notes. I really wanna build a couple of calculators that take a number of armor sets and calculate EHP and EHP/s for each of them with and without given enhancements. Also i curse you because i am AGAIN revising my regen scrap's build, this will be the 9th time since i started counting. I actually disagree with the importance of MoG in factoring this. I like to use it, but realistically its a power I only use in dire circumstances on a Scrapper, when Soloing +4x8 and things go wrong. Thats like 90% of the time I need it. Given Regen's mechanics, using it at other times is largely pointless since you wernt going to die anyways. Thats why I dont think T9s as a rule, need to be considered when discussing the set as a whole. The majority of them are just only applicable in niche situations. This is very true, but to be fair, trying to represent this skill element is, essentially, an impossibility. At best one could write a complex bit of calculation code like the WoW raiding communities SimCraft. I think most of us can agree that, when distributing these reactive powers over their entire duration, we should get somewhere close to the other power sets. Perhaps lower, to pay for the fact that your burst survival is so great, but the average should be in the neighborhood. I actually really like this basic idea, though not necessarily the numbers or specific buffs. I'd love the idea of a "combo" driven armor set.

This is actually why I so aggressively push the idea of EHP and EHP/s. These two values cover the entire scope of an engagement by giving you a flat value that the raw incoming dps must exceed before a character even begins to fall, and then a total that can divided by that value to give a survival duration. This greatly simplifies the conversation by eliminating assumptions. That said some assumptions are still in play yes, namely that no auto hit powers are in play (to be fair those aren't super common else defense sets would be worthless), and that the damage is coming in a consistently, or rather, at least not in waves sufficient to take large percentages of your health all at once before your regen can work on the taken damage and even out the curve. In the end these factors don't come into play THAT much, as you still have EHP to measure against alpha situations, and if its just a case of the mob doing 10% of your hp with every attack, then you are only losing a survival time of one attack rotation at most. That is usually below 5 seconds, and well if you aren't going to last long enough for plus or minus 5 seconds to be an issue, yer gonna have a bad times regardless. As for the multiple mobs, that only applies to the above, a single mob doing 100 dps with a bunch of 10 damage attacks, and 10 mobs doing 10 dps each with slower attacks, are comparable to the point of irrelevance. The only reason "one mob" might matter is because USUALLY that one mob is doing one slow big hit which introduces the above. I want to note I feel those numbers for recharge are a bit off base, but it shouldn't effect your point to much. I'll agree MoG tends to be so reactive as to make assessing it as a distributed factor is a bit dubious due to its uptime, the build i used in my example accomplishes a ~17% up time, plus or minus some depending on Force Feedback procs. I also think you just treated it as a 75% resisst 45% defense when the effective values of those will be lower. That said, I don't think the uptime and recharge are the main reasons to not assess it, as I feel Instant Healing SHOULD be assessed in that way. The reason being IH should be used on cooldown much more often, and while MoG is easily one of the best T9 armor powers there is, its still an oft unused T9 Armor. I'll try to find some time later this week to mock up a full assessment with recharges and such considered.

Soooo.... tell me more about this spreadsheet....

Its a bit more complicated than that, if yer calculating effective hp/s the formula shifts to begin with. Personally I consider that the optimal way to quantify things because otherwise you have to assume a given dps value. More importantly though that equation doesn't account for the 15 seconds of active time. What you'd want is something like... ( ( ( HPs / ( 1 - ( 0.5 + Defense ) ) ) / ( 1 - Resistance ) ) * 15 ) / Recharge Since that's a lot of parens thats... HP per second, divided by the percentage chance of a hit getting through That divided by the percentage of the damage you would take That gives you the effective regen while MoG is up. You then take that and times it by 15 seconds, the duration of Mog Then finally take that value and divide it by the Recharge. However this doesnt factor in existing resistance and defense, so you need to FURTHER modify it like so ( ( ( HPs / ( 1 - ( 0.5 + ( MoG Defense - Base Defense ) ) ) / ( 1 - (MoG Resistance - Base Resistance) ) ) * 15 ) / Recharge This accounts for how much MoG is ACTUALLY giving and you obviously have to clamp those values to their caps.

Okay I went back and cleaned up the math, I do agree with @America's Angel in that to many of these discussions, even my giant ass post, omit ALOT of details. I did try to narrow it down to the standing mechanics however, the things likely in play in 90% of fights. MoG, while excellent due to the fact that Regen can actually benefit fro ma giant resist/defense T9, is something i try not to have to account for due to the complexities of working it into the math. At some point I need to sit down and do that, likely dividing the effective resistance (likely the 75% cap minus the resistance when tis off) across its full activation+recharge period) but that would be an even deeper dive than the one I just wrote up. I will note that after cleaning up my math, the numbers look shaky for regen, despite my confidence I have the math right. (gonna go back and edit in the formulas real quick too)

You made a small error here, you used the effective regen on the effective dps, this compounds the effects of resistance inaccurately. The 127.55 ehp/s regen of rad, would be scaled against 400dp, not agains 128dps as that 128 is after resistance, and that regen is after resistances. Accurate numbers would be: Rad 400dps vs 127.55 ehp/s net 272.41 dps 2,865.16 / 83.22 = 34.42s Regen 400dps vs 32% = 272 dps vs 66.66 hp/s net 205.34 dps 2,894.17 / 205.34 = 14.09s Which while far from dismantling your point, does reduce the severity of the disparity painted. I should also note that what is show here is the "immortal or dead" issue of regen. 400 dps is ALOT of incoming damage for CoH, not that such situations don't exist but its definitely in the big encounter range. That said i realized my effective hp values are WAY off and i horribly miscalcualted so give me a bit

I suppose I should do similar breakdowns at various level ranges to give us a better view regarding that but yeah, Ideally wed have sets that are mostly balanced at every point in content. I would argue that getting the balance 'just right' is more important at endgame than it is in the midlevels as long as those midlevels aren't abhorrent. Endgame is just where the majority of play is always going to occur, and the place where balance issues are most likely to become an actual problem for clearing content. That all said, I've always felt that regen levels fine, iv leveled the slow way on a half dozen of them so far, so maybe I'm just experienced, but the only spot i tend to have a rough time with is the 12-16 gap before integration.

This argument keeps coming up because i mentioned Shadow Meld essentially in passing. A big mistake in a debate thread on my part because it presented what I thought was a weak point to attack, even if that point is completely disconnected from my actual arguments. However I thank everyone who keeps thrusting for this target so far out because its forced me to realize WHY it came to mind in the first place. The argument people are making against it is that pool and epic powers shouldn't be considered in the context of the balance of a set because everyone has access to them. I refute this argument wholesale. Different sets have different levels of SYNERGY with different out of set powers. This cannot and should not be ignored in discussions of balance, now if you want to argue that Regen shouldn't need Shadow Meld to compete with sets that don't take any pools or epics, id agree with you, and then proceed back to my original argument that is doesn't. Regen has a unique synergy with pool and epic survival tools. Shadow Meld is nearly useless on defense sets, and while its good on resistance sets, often all it'll do is buy you 15 seconds, and then you die anyways. Regen can take those 15 seconds and easily recover most, if not all, of their hp, resetting their health and dramatically extending their lifespan while under attack from more damage than they heal. Regen's low base resistances means this is also true for resistance based survival pool powers and epics. This also applies to outside buffs, resulting in Regen receiving a greater force multiplier. Thus I contend that Regen has a unique advantage of higher synergy with other powers and that that should not be discounted when discussing the power set's capabilities. I believe Regen could use some of the small bonuses i and others have outlined elsewhere in the thread, but its not in need of significant changes. Just a couple lines in a power define or two somewhere. Mostly agree with this, but I disagree with the Instant Healing issue. This may simply be a difference from one player to the next but I find I usually either know "This is going to be nasty" from experience, and pop Instant Healing early, or I realize its getting nasty and my health is dropping fast, pop Reconstruction and maybe another defensive tool followed immediately by Instant Healing. I also find that my sub optimal recharge from enhancements and such of about 150 seconds, or 2.5 minutes to be generally fast enough. I only need IH while tanking for a group, saving a wipe, or soloing as well so again not a huge issue and the gap is easily covered by pools and incarnates. In lower level content I find that i can rely solely on using it reactively due to the fact that is is exceedingly rare for something to do enough damage to overwhelm me before I can react. That all said, that MY experience, so it holds no more or less weight than your'se here, not exactly an objective argument one way or the other. I honestly don't think Revive needs anything, just being able to get back up, and have time to reactivate toggles, and fight again with 15 seconds of immunity is pretty good. However I'll be the first to second giving it a little something extra just because so many people skip it under what I consider the horribly misguided idea that any death is a failure. This is one those arguments that, while at least partially true, over exaggerates the issue due to simplifying the combat system to comparing just resistance to just regeneration. This would be true if Regen ONLY had regeneration, and thus 0% resistance and 0% defense. In practical terms, a regen build is likely to have 30-60% resistance, and 20-40% defense depending on pools, slotting, and so on. There is significantly more resistance and defense to be obtained from pools, epics, and enhancements than there is regeneration. (edit: Corrected horribly incorrect math) I find the most effective method for comparing defensive sets is to convert it all into Effective HP and Effective HP/s This is calculated by dividing your hp or hp/s by 1 minus your resistance or for defense 1 minus 0.5 plus your defense (caped at 45). In the case of both you divide by each subsequently. HP = Health or HP/s regeneration Def = your defense as a decimal, 25% = 0.25 Res = your resistance as a decimal, 75% = 0.75 Defense: HP / (1 - ( 0.5 + Def) Resistance: HP / ( 1 - Res) Complete: ( HP / (1 - ( 0.5 + Def ) ) / ( 1 - Res ) Lets take a Rad armor character with no enhancements and no pool powers. Partical Shielding will be active because its easy to perma, Ground Zero and Meltdown will not. We will compare it to Regen will Dull Pain as its again easy to perma, no MoG and both with and without IH. Then I'll do the same comparisons with both sets fully built from some not quite optimized builds I have on hand. If requested ill provide the builds as reference, since I know taking numbers of an unknown build is a bit iffy. Absorb is included in HP and Effective HP, but its 'regen' is ignored because that depends on recharge. Radiation HP: 1,740.59 (1,339 Base, +401.59 Absorb) Regeneration: 19.25 hp/s S/L Defense: 0% S/L Resist: 22.5% Effective HP: 4,491.84 (3,455.48 Base, +1,036.36 Absorb) Effective Regeneration: 49.67 ehp/s Regeneration HP: 1,874.45 Regeneration no IH: 28.51 hp/s Regneration with IH: 90.99 hp/s S/L Defense: 0% S/L Resist: 9.38% Effective HP: 4,136.94 Effective Regeneration no IH: 62.92 ehp/s Effective Regeneration with IH: 200.81 ehp/s As we can see, Regen is 354.9 hp less effective hp, and either 13.25 hp/s or 151.14 hp/s more effective regeneration. You can quantify this as a -8.5% loss in Effective HP and a 26.67% or 304.28% increase in regeneration. I can do this with other sets if desired as well, I just don't have a willpower set built out on hand, but I can resolve that with a little time. So lets look at two builds for these sets I have on hand. For reference, both have Maneuvers and both skipped Fighting, I am not factoring in anything without a 100% uptime with the exception of the separate calculations of IH, which i do only because of that power's value to Regen. To properly reflect its effect, one would want to divide its effect out over the entire recharge time, but that's math for later. Additionally these numbers are without the influence of Incarnates, but do include the basic passive hp and end accolades. The odd absorb comes from Preventative Medicine, and odd Regen from heal IOs in Auto or Toggle powers. Radiation HP: 2,865.16 (1,792.46 Base, +1,072.7 Absorb) Regeneration: 44.77 hp/s (38.2 hp/s Base, +3.23 Panacea, +3.34 Power Transfer) S/L Defense: 25.39% S/L Resistance: 62.46% Effective HP: 31,012.94 (19,401.87 Base, +11,611.07 Absorb) Effective Regeneration: 484.59 ehp/s (413.48 ehp/s Base, +34.96 Panacea, +36.15 Power Transfer) Regeneration HP: 2,894.17 (2,409.51 Base, +484.66 Absorb) Regeneration no IH: 66.66 hp/s (56.75 hp/s Base, +3.23 Panacea, +6.68 Power Transfer x2) Regeneration with IH: 167.43 hp/s (157.52 hp/s Base, +3.23 Panacea, +6.68 Power Transfer x2) S/L Defense: 22.14% S/L Resistance: 32.65% Effective HP: 15,424.29 (12,841.33 Base, +2,582.96 Absorb) Effective Regeneration no IH: 355.25 ehp/s (302.44 ehp/s Base, +17.21 Panacea, +35.6 Power Transfer x2) Effective Regeneration with IH: 945.11 ehp/s (892.3 ehp/s Base, +17.21 Panacea, +35.6 Power Transfer x2) So this lends some credence to OP's argument by highlighting the alpha issue Regen has always had on some level. Though, again, keep in mind this is comparing to a set (Radiation Armor) with a pretty solid Absorb power, that is available once every 45-60 seconds on a good build. This also does not factor in the potential healing from Reconstruction, or Dull Pain. which in this build equate to another 118.59 ehp/s and 24.74 ehp/s respectively. Nor does it count other survival tools that aren't permanent. So what are these in relative terms? Well Regen has ~-50% less effective hp than Rad, and has ~-26% less effective regeneration without IH or ~+95% effective regeneration. Now both of these builds can be improved, I chose them specifically because while i didn't have minmaxed builds on hand, I had these two which had a similar amount of "fluff" jammed in for RP and had similar build goals. I'd also like to note the Alpha advantage here is somewhat mitigated by the fact that if you drop the absorb from Particle Shielding, though not entirely, and many power sets do not have +maxhp or +absorb, but this Rad set is pretty close to resist cap, and this Regen is no where near it. This is what I am getting at when i say Regen benefits and synergies with "out of scope" buffs, like pool powers, epics, and team buffs, better than other sets by a significant margin. Additional notes besides editing the math above: As stated earlier its very possible to push this resistance number up to 60%, and if thats done the no IH regen becomes 598.15 ehp/s, just as an example of what resistance can do I do like this idea in general for scrappers at least because it reflects their increased crit chance against bosses. Don't think its needed by any means, but solid cohesive design idea. To be fair, ALOT of suggestions for "how to fix regen" center around the rough argument of "I cant react fast enough!" or "I don't like clicking defense powers, I just want to hit things!" or some variant there of. Obviously I'm strawmaning, but the point stands, a common amount of the argument that regen is somehow bad is centered on it not working the way other power sets do and some players not liking that. In those cases "just don't play regen" is a valid counter point, since I, and a non zero number of others, consider it a highly enjoyable and rewarding set of mechanics to engage with. None of that discredits well thought out legitament criticisms of the set in its current state obviously, but when the suggested changes are to make the set less reactive, then they are essentially calls to homogenize it with other sets, which in my opinion, would be a huge mistake. Not every power set will click with every player, I hate Willpower and other set it and forget it sets, and regen becoming more like them would make me do a big sad. If regen needs/gets buffs, I want them to enhance the reactive nature of the set, not reduce it. TL;DR: Local nerd considering changing is name to TEDx

Tri-form, need it for the nova damage scale and the double mire, i recommend the MFing Warshade guide, changed my goddamn life. https://dechskaison.blogspot.com/2011/01/mfing-warshade.html My only regret is my only active warshade is redside which means "active" is a relative term. As for regen theres a few people around that can really help you learn and master the set. I consider myself pretty good? I've put ALOT of effort in but I havent had a good chance to compare notes with my fellow regen mains.

I'll slap my build down if you want. I only have Maneuvers and MUCH lower defenses. I had to drop fighting to jam in flavor powers from teleport, and Provoke because my intent was to be a psudo tank, and i needed the aggro control. Despite this i can handle +4x8 anything as long as I bring the right incarnates and keep my wits about me, though part of that is my primary is Katana so i have a strong defense tool in Divine Avalanche. That said its hardly the only set with that option. Your current build is going to be notably tougher than mine, no two ways about it, but thanks to Shadow Meld, MoG, Recon, and Dull Pain getting me HP capped I can hang with the hard assets and I regularly find myself turning fights that have gone south.

Ill note /regen when well built spends most of its time asleep. But once ya bump up to actually dangerous stuff or if yer trying to tank when there's no Brute or Tanker around, then it becomes a very active set that can survive almost anything if you manage your powers right, but you collapse fast on a mistake. Personally I find Tri-form Warshade to be great for this, good management of powers and enemy counts allows you to be a little god, unkillable and slapping out big damage AoEs, but if you goof you keel over fast.

Thanks 😄 i was just on my MM getting my binds setup to use the nice numpad command setup but with my MMO mouse, and it occured to me thatd itd be nice to not have to click after activating the goto command, and for bots and other MMs with cone attacks, or other odd AoE powers, its nice to have commands to position them in a specific place relative to yourself. In the future this also has potential value for MM pets that do weird AoE buff stuff maybe? But thats obviously way down the line

If its not unreasonable to do so id love to have all the mechanics present in the power execution location command added to the goto command for Master Minds, so we could do something like: /petcom_all goto cursor send pets to cursor with a single bind /petcom_all goto 10:0 array pets just infront of the MM and similar commands