Galaxy Brain

Well, Siphon Life is a 10% heal every 10s at base (though it requires a tohit check). A small green is a 25% heal instantly, and can be rapid fired... tho we could also say it could be fired off every 25s to be roughly equal HPS wise. Siphon life in theory could also be buffed to a 20% heal every 10s too which is just about equitable given with rech it'd be on-demand too.

In the interest of time due to having to rebuilt a ton of tankers, I could also just go in with like 1 luck Insp at all times, or a tray of X respites to emulate those factors?

This also all hinges on the content. S/L/E are the most common damage types by far across the game, so if you have those locked down you are basically set vs 70% of any fight if not more due to how defenses work (even Psychic enemies often carry Telekinetic Blast which Smashing defense negates).

So, the change Bopper suggested is not currently anything official but it was decided on by extensive playtesting + edits to a personal version of City of Data for the official look 😛 Those particular changes do not replace any powers in the cottage-sense outside possibly Reconstruction losing the ability to slot for resistance (but who did that?). All the powers work basically the same as before power-to-power where they are still a click, still a toggle, still a passive and the main thing they did prior is still in tact. What changed is the addition of new effects or alterations to the timing of the powers / shuffling of values. Outside of Return to Glory being a super-revive, all the changes presented could be boiled down to "Basically the same power but with added stuff".

@Troo, if you rename Quick Recovery to "Last Longer" and it still gives the exact same Recovery bonuses, but also +10% Hp, is the power truly replaced?

The green ones technically, and other sets give +Hp and +Regen Yes, this can be done by anybody but it still requires a lot of prep work and is still a finite resource. If we are going this far though, is that not the same as multiboxing with a personal buffing character? Anybody could do it and it will make your currently played character better. How is this fact specifically a boon for the Regeneration Set when every set can use this tool to patch up any holes or bolster any strengths they already have? It'd be one thing if Regen had a power that say, made X inspirations more likely to drop or Y% buff to using inspirations compared to other sets. But, with that not being specifically the case, I stand by that a global mechanic does not specifically favor one set over another if there is no direct edge associated with it (unless we are comparing strictly "Only Purple Insps" or the like but even then...) Yes, they have shown that they as a player can do awesome things, but what I am curious about is how much of that was REGEN specifically? If you have a ton of IO boosts, incarnates, temp powers, epic powers like Shadow Meld, and inspirations, that is a lot of extra layers besides /Regen that come into play. All those things could be used on another set that has a higher "base" level and in theory achieve even better results. I was able to solo the Night Shift arc on a lvl 20 Empathy/Assault Rifle defender vs EB's that were +2 to me on SO's and minimal slots due to my level. Does this make Empathy and AR an amazing combo for solo play, or does it mean I as a player was able to accomplish that feat? If I redo that arc with a different combo, given that we can use "Galaxy Brain is playing this character" as a control, and I complete it faster / with less defeats / damage taken, what can we conclude from that? If I used the exact same inspirations in the same way each run, the same general tactics, etc. If I do everything exactly the same but with a different power, due to the RNG of accuracy / ai / etc it could still be a wildly different result which is why I try to limit tests to as few, easy to control variables as I can to ensure "ok, we are seeing what impact Regen itself has vs what Willpower itself has vs....". @UberGuy had a good idea with running my missions with a neutral attack set and seeing the success rates / damage taken, but IMO even that has a grain of salt. If set A completes the mission without dying 5 times and takes 100,000 damage, and set B completes it 5 times with no deaths and takes 120,000 damage, set A could be said to be "tougher" but they both were able to win without dying at the end of the day... so at what point does it really matter? Where a lot of us are stuck is that Regen can pass that test just fine up to a point, but then other sets can naturally surpass it, like my test with it vs Willpower showed that in that small sample fight, WP on average performed just about as well as Regen with IH active. IH is not available at all times while WP's mitigation is in the comparison, and in the fight it was not even able to have a fully saturated RttC. To me that takes away from Regen in that it has "burst" tools that are not equitable to the passive abilities other sets can achieve, and throughout a mission it will have to take time away from direct combat to manage resources to just catch up to a set that does not have to worry about that.

So, there is a couple things we can do that would preserve the feel of regen while boosting it's effects. Bopper has a post here that goes over a lot of what could be done, but basically what we need here is both mechanics to buy Regen time to act, and to increase the speed of how it acts. There are some highlights: 1) Scaling Regeneration gives you more buffer when you actually do get in trouble where your healing factor kicks in harder the less HP you have. Bopper had it slated as a max of +450% bonus regen when at 0% hp, so on top of the ~580% you normally run passively on a regen with basic slotting, you could stack another 400% to get near IH levels without clicking. This buffer allows you to take on a few more seconds of damage, which can make all the difference. On top of this, many powers grant Regen Debuff resistance which helps with keeping your performance consistent. There are also Slow resists which like in Fiery Aura should be in every set that relies on click powers, as well as significant End Drain/-Rec resists with the altered Quick Recovery (Perseverance). That power also now comes with a small passive +HP boost to make up for Dull Pain not being as strong + having a better baseline for all your Regen stats / general toughness. 2) The clicks are both more reliable and offer extra lingering benefits. Reconstruction for one now grants ~9.5% res vs all instead of 15% Toxic res only for it's duration on top of it's normal stats (this is unenhanceable) in order to make it so when you have to pop your heal, you are also made to be that much tougher vs whatever was able to hurt you. Dull Pain was shaved down to offer less effects (less max HP, less up front heal), but had it's recharge significantly reduced from 360s to 240s so that it is not only easier to maintain higher HP but it is up more often as a back-up click heal. Instant healing got a small (comparatively) recharge boost from 650 to 600s, but now also grants a % increase to all healing while active which, like Dull Pain, allows all Regen powers to be even more potent while active. Mog was made to animate much faster + the duration was made from 15s to 20s (with an increased rech of 240 > 300s) so that when you do pop it, you have far more time in your invincible state. On top of that, it swapped places with a revamp to Revive called "Return to Glory" which is literally a SECOND MoG you can use that doubles as a Revive if you die (you pop back up in MoG if used this way), which while on a longer rech by a whole minute, you now get an extra "avoid damage" button built into Regen that you can cycle with the other big clicks. 3) Add in a slight buff to integration where it has more unenhanceable regen (it had 50% unenhanceable /100% enhanceable and now it's 100/100), and everything layered together provides Regen with a stronger base outside of when it needs to use clicks, on top of more reliability when clicks are used thanks to better uptimes, better cycling of key abilities with 3 god mode powers, and the debuff resistances to keep it all consistent. Outside of a second MoG, Bopper's changes keep the core playstyle and mechanics intact but just allow it to work better. I myself would love to play that version, though with maybe a tweak to make Reconstruction available more often yet weaker per click, but still it sounds like it'd be just a better version of it's current self while still being uniquely Regeneration compared to the other heal-y sets.

So, thinking about it the groups all have had similar results so far with mostly the same sets on top and bottom... what X factors could we start to include? The suite of "given" IO's with the 3% defs, Scaling res, regen, LotG, etc?

Just curious on this, you mean DDR would scale with your current Defensive value?

Agreed, the tough test is more looking at the raw base stats of each armor and nothing else. In reality, there are a lot of factors that can impact every set and have them ultimately perform to different degrees. That said, even on SO's a lot of the showings in that thread are impressive to me given the survival vs 4/8

On mobile so can't respond to everything, but I want to touch on the topic of variables. The reason I run my tests with controlled conditions is to isolate the trial only to what the tested set can do as much as possible. If one set gets to use an x factor that they all can use, then I would likewise use it for all of them which ends up being a kind of moot point. A Granite user swinging with an AoE knockdown and a Fiery Aura user doing the same both get the benefit of enemies knocked down and not being able to act for a short time, regardless of the comparative need or relative benefit to each. When the enemies stand back up, they would treat you the same as if you had just been standing there. I see it more like the room for error on the armor sets, so something like Ice Armor being a rather active set and surviving well enough on many tests indicates it has a lot of wiggle room while you fight. Invuln can pretty much be set and forget, and fiery needs to be super active but you also get the benefit of a ton more offense. With Inspirations, we can patch nearly anything about our character if prepared enough. However mid-mission if you are not able to whip out the one you want on demand like if you hit a store before zooming to a specific encounter, then you are at the mercy of RNG for what drops (if they drop, if you get the right one, if you have enough to combine, etc) which ultimately makes them something you cannot 100% rely on. These two combined make them a moot point when it comes to the set's balance. Don't get me wrong, its definitely a factor if one set needs just 1 purple to soft cap at all times and another doesn't, but on the whole they cannot be leaned on. Stocking up on X inspiration for a fight you know is coming doesn't equate to the normal gameplay where they come in at random. I want to preserve the core playstyle of regen as that is what people take it for over other sets. Its just in practice, the extra effort that goes into that playstyle does not seem to equate to extra power compared to sets with other mitigation that are also more passive. We can maintain that active style while also boosting the effectiveness of its buttons.

I played an ma/regen scrapper for quite a long time on live, I have exp with the set. I know it can be effective, much like @Bill Z Bubba and @Wernerhave mentioned, anything can be effective as a defender has passed the Warner ITF challenge but both of them, two incredibly skilled melee players, have both come to a similar conclusion about Regen as I have. I know that it can work. I know it can be effective. I know that many, including myself, find how it works fun. However, this does not cover up that the concept and the mechanics do not match up in a way that they could. Regen's main things as of right now are that it has a few very powerful situational powers unique to it with Instant Healing, Moment of Glory, and I would even argue Revive given it does give you the most intangible time and health/end returned when you bounce back (on paper this is cool but... yeah). Other sets feature equivalents of Dull Pain, Reconstruction, Quick Recovery, even resilience and integration, but none have the combo of all these and 5 purely defensive clicks. Other armors may be busy with click powers, but they are often contributing to offense at the same time either through raw damage or debuffing, and usually have a smaller defensive benefit too. The layers all come together to make the set function over time given these clicks are often up every fight or so. Regen only has Reconstruction that is usually up every fight, and then you can kind of pick your poison each fight between the remaining 4. Dull Pain can be used as an emergency heal, but its main use is to grant more HP and the benefits that brings, often making it something you'd pop before a fight. Revive only works after you've been dropped, which depending on the perspective can already mean you failed and while it does bring you back to near full HP, other revives come with offensive boosts to help turn the tides a bit more. This leaves instant healing which has an atrocious uptime, and as I have shown even with it up, Willpower can passively outcompete it as a whole. Lastly there is MoG which also has an awful uptime, 15s/120s is about 13% of the time, even worse than the 90/333 = 27% uptime of IH. When everything is working, you have DP up, IH up, and MOG on deck you're amazing! However, that is only good for one fight out of many you face in a mission and alternating between your big clicks means you're lacking options for most of your fights 😞 If the options were made more reliable so that your skill could really be put to the test, thatd be one thing. Bit as is, even when you play properly the set is very restrictive on when you can use your tools and how effective they really are which means you gotta use more outside options than other sets.

Liking the idea / concept of something but not liking how it plays out are not mutually exclusive. I really like the concept of how Regen works. Its just in practice, that concept does not match what other sets can do without needing all the extra effort which can sour the experience. In the same post you even say to give Ice Armor attention to keep up with Rad, how is that ok to say but touching up Regen isn't? 😛 (also I've posted about Ice before hah)

This For real, I *love* the IDEA of Regen as a set. Where you have a series of "oh crap" buttons of varying degrees that can technically get you through anything.... however as it is it does not work out that way, at least not on it's own. The idea of "burst survival" is weird in practice as yeah... you can survive bursts on occasion but the way other forms of mitigation work is just way better. 1000 damage coming in? Well, defense means the odds you even have to deal with it are slim, and resistance lets you just tank it as a smaller number. Regen/Healing only lets you live if you can not be defeated by that 1000 in one go / there isn't anything else coming in too. This is where the clicks come in, but their uptimes are too small to be truly reliable if they only come into play every Xth fight while other armors do not need to juggle such resources for similar if not better end results. If anything, Regen should outperform other armor sets with the caveat that you do have to juggle resources and use active mitigation from your armor set. It just needs some numerical help to get there. Hell, if you slash MoG's values by half it'd still make you practically invincible with it giving 35.62% Def/Res to All (but psy) in one click, with one enhancement putting you within 2% of the soft cap and the resists stacking with Resilience to put you at 50%ish res to all. In return, you can slash the recharge from 240 base to 120 base (60s with normal slotting if not more) and make it a much better "reaction" button. Likewise, an idea I've tossed around is to turn Reconstruction into a new form of Jaunt/Burst of Speed. Slash the healing value from 25% to like 15%, but then allow you to use it up to 3 times instantly within a certain time window (lets say 10 seconds just like these powers). If you use it 3 times, then it enters cooldown, otherwise if you pace it you can have a relatively large amount of active healing as you rapidly reconstruct yourself. The animation would need to be shaved for sure as you are now activating 3 times in an emergency instead of once, but I always felt that the 50% self heal in one go on even it's base 60s cooldown could be improved. Just spitballing here. Another thing that could be looked at is Revive. Luckily, Regen only has 1 toggle to put back on after using it if you do go down... but with that thing being on a 5min timer it is not really competitive with Wakies or even just hosping unless you are 100% surrounded (odds are you may get smacked down again). Making this a much smoother process where a Regenerator is simply near impossible to keep down could be a cool boon for the set, hell even make it so using it "doesn't count" as defeats for anything that tracks that.

Lvl 51 enemies as a lvl 50 character on SO's Which benefits more from Green or Orange or Red or Yellow or Blue? Isn't that SR doesn't need to use as many purples a benefit in of itself? I want to address the highlight here.... why is this specifically a special thing for Regen? If a WM/Regen, WM/WP, and WM/Bio brute ran the same content, they would all have roughly (except Bio lol) have the same benefit from War Mace in terms of defeating enemies and getting extra mitgation from Stuns and Knockdowns. So yes, by defeating and using "active" mitigation you would get better performance out of Regen... but so would the other sets. I didn't use Strength of Will on WP despite it having less than half the recharge of Instant Healing (even with it's locked recharge, it will still beat IH with 100% rech enh by over 30s), and 50% longer Duration than Instant Healing. Even without that, and with Regen using one of its "godmodes", WP was able to outsurvive it on average. MoG is weird in that it's literally a "moment" of 15s (technically 12 due to the cast time?) where you are basically invincible, but the uptime on it is still kind of atrocious and that is where Regen runs into a lot of trouble vs comparable "Healing" sets. WP is pretty much static as mentioned, and then there is Bio which has it's clicks with 30-45s durations that offer Absorb as burst damage buffers + scale to the threat of enemies around you + have much faster recharges. This test is meant to isolate the armor themselves as active mitigation would effect all of them roughly equally outside of powers like Parry or something. Even if I was to go all-out, including SoW would skew WP even higher than Regen as these numbers were gotten with Instant Healing, available essentially once a mission? Bio likewise can have it's clicks all active per fight, something Regen cannot boast for it's "big" clicks, instead having to rely on Reconstruction and occasionally Dull Pain which does heal you even when you perma it. How else would we measure how "good" it is compared to other sets though? Specifically it as Regen vs other Armor Sets, given the slotting options (+3% def uniques, LotG, Panacea, etc) + inspirations are free to use by all, leaning on them to say "see, Regen can work!" doesn't mean much to me as for every insp or slot you give Regen, WP can make better use of it. Shadow meld? WP and Bio could technically pick it up too if they wanted. I guess I am at a loss here for what would even be something measurable in terms of even just Regen vs Willpower, it's "direct competition" thematically and even somewhat mechanically. Ideally, anything you'd give to Regen to say "see, it can use X to win!" is 100% fair game to be mirrored on Willpower too, so unless we are planning on giving Regen a crutch and denying the same to WP I'm not sure where to go with it. Y'all give me the parameters and I'll run the data

So, I decided to try things out with a Brute between Regen / Willpower / Bio (Efficient) as they are the three "Regenerator" sets. For this test, I ran +1/x6 on SO's, with each character also having Combat Jumping, Maneuvers, Tough and Weave (the latter two 3 slotted for res/def). Rules are simple, wade into a group of Crey / Council / Cimerorans 5 times and record how long you can last. If you get to 3min, that'll be the cutoff as there is no way a fight should last longer than that. So, each of these are interesting. 1) Regen I made sure to lead with Instant Healing as the first action when jumping into the mob. Even still, Crey and Cimerorans did not care about that even when popping Dull Pain and Reconstruction once I hit about 60-50% hp. Council were much easier for Regen to handle, but once IH dropped... so did the Brute. 2) Willpower held up well, but had a harder time vs Cimerorans than Regen did thanks to no "reactive" mitigation vs their burst damage. It was sort of all over the place vs Crey with some runs having hard hits come at once, and vs Council while it could usually live all the way to 3 minutes it definitely took licks and with one run it got rather unlucky. 3) Bio Efficient Mode combines the best parts of Regen and WP. Both with great toggle/passive mitigation and a handful of reactionary click sustains, combine that with a damage aura where after X time a good chunk of the mob is defeated and well... look at the above. I could have used MoG on Regen each run as well, but it would likely have just added +15s each time and it is not up every fight. Hell, using IH each fight is just as if not more disingenuous as it is on an even harsher cooldown to it's T9. Especially compared to WP, Regen was only better vs 1 enemy type when running INSTANT HEALING vs a set that was not even 100% saturated with RttC.... Yes, the primary's mitigation would 100% matter... but all 3 of these sets could equally use the primary's mitigations. Yes, team buffs and inspirations / IO's would help a lot.... but all three can get buffed in those manners....

Just for giggles, lets compare to Willpower in the same scenario: Willpower: Over time, WP will have: 35.66% SL Res, 32.69% Psy Res, 8.91% other Res 3.92% SL Def, 11.89% Psy Def, 15.45% other Def -6% ToHit on nearby enemies 63.86 HPS (with these 6 enemies) 1945 HP 17.3% Def debuff res 25.95% Regen res (lol) Ok, this is gonna be 3 different values for SL / Psy / Other S/L: M Dps = 58.62 / LT Dps = 100.1 / Boss Dps = 129.29 after Defenses and -ToHit (it matters at even level) Total DPS = 288.01 vs 35.66% res = 185.31 DPS -63.86 HPS = 121.45 DPS / 1945 HP = 16.02s (1.34x regen) Psy: M Dps = 46.95 / LT Dps = 80.18 / Boss Dps = 103.58 after Defenses and -ToHit (it matters at even level) Total DPS = 230.71 vs 32.69% res = 155.29 DPS -63.86 HPS = 91.43 DPS / 1945 HP = 21.27s (1.77x regen) Other: M Dps = 41.76 / LT Dps = 71.3 / Boss Dps = 92.09 after Defenses and -ToHit (it matters at even level) Total DPS = 205.15 vs 8.91% res = 186.87 DPS -63.86 HPS = 123.01 DPS / 1945 HP = 15.81s (1.32x regen) Avg = 17.7s (1.48x regen) This is again, a hypothetical score vs infinite DPS every second, but it still shows the relative strength even at 6 enemies...

More to @Troo's point as I got cut off: The ability to have drastically different playstyles is amazing, and contributes to a huge pool of fun. The issue is when you have certain playstyle options that, when it comes to objective ability, trump other playstyles. Look at the knocks against Sentinels and Crowd control AT's: you can build other characters tough enough to not need CC for protection / cover yourself well enough to where your raw damage outpaces the other AT while being "tough enough". Regen has sort of the opposite problem where all other armors are relatively tough enough if not tougher without having to work as hard. Even looking away from that, the set itself has weaknesses that really screw with how you wanna use it. Any slows will mess you up hard, the fact that your heals are not instant make it so your key ability to reactively heal is impacted at times, and with the cooldowns on many abilities you have to be able to predict beforehand when to use an ability (mainly for IH) in order to adequately use it, and there many be many times where it is just the wrong call and you "waste" your power.

It should not be the same, my main problem with it is that it IS FUN! But.... then I realize all this effort could be circumvented if I had a different armor set for much the same payoff if not more where those extra clicks could be made into attacks and I could be more more effective. Related experience was challenging myself by taking an Empathy/Assault Rifle defender through the Night Shift arc solo to see what that was like on SO's at lvl 20. I could do it! But, it took a lot of effort in terms of player tricks (kiting, corner pulls, LoS, etc) to do what I am sure a Scrapper or Sentinel could have just done by plowing on ahead. Same result, but vastly different effort. However, part of this is due to the "test" itself. A good anecdote is that you wouldn't grade all the animals on how they climb a tree, the monkey will win and the fish stands no chance. If there are multiple tests, but the only water available is a puddle... then yeah the fish is out of luck despite it being a participant. Similarly, I was able to complete the missions with a terrible combo for Solo Play, but it was still out of it's element much like how a /Regen would be able to protect you but not as well as some other armors simply because it is not within it's niche. Invuln laughs at SL, Fire laughs at Fire and provides a ton of offensive synergy, Elec laughs at end drain, etc, etc, etc... but Regen doesn't seem to have as common a space where it can shine. Its actually similar to SR in a regard where it doesn't *really* care about what kinds of enemies you face, but the game mechanics favor SR more than it does Regen (plus all that DDR gives it a niche). There's VERY few encounters where the ability to take sustained damage non-stop is a factor, maps where there are environmental hazards like active fires / poison gas / special enemies with untyped damage / etc that would actually FAVOR the ability to heal really fast are not on the test as often as "survive all this SL damage / end drains / etc", stacking the odds against it given that all the other sets have lots of chances to strut their stuff compared to it.

I mean sorta, but that is a hyper specific example. At least by running through actual enemy mobs you'd encounter a lot of you get a gist of what'd on average the toughest as a general character.

In defense of @Tigraine, what he is describing is Technical Debt to a tee. TO's are basically worthless to begin with, but they are even moreso now with them being utterly replaced by the origin specific enhancements earlier on. But, they still "exist" in the game and drop for players all the same despite being completely obsolete.

....actually I made my Fire/ tanker because I knew I'd get more survival while getting a bunch of damage still lol

No, its a good reason. If set A requires you to manage clicks, timing, environmental pressures encounter to encounter to get by which takes away focus from your other powers, then set B gets the same if not better defensive power without such sacrifice then yeah set A needs help since you spend much more effort for nothing.

Yeah, you can make anything work. But the effort to reward for Regen is way off. You gotta put way more work into a regen to make it compete with the more unga bunga armors, and then it just competes... it doesn't become the unkillable Wolverine/Deadpool/T2 type of character as advertised compared to other sets for all the effort you gotta put in.

Sentinels definitely need a little something, what it is I'm not 100% but I feel their identity needs work + the inherent. However, the discussion around them VS IO'd Blasters are a real talking point. Assuming SO's only, they would probably fit in fine. But in reality, there are ways to make a Blaster tough-enough to where the Sentinel's perks often get overshadowed.