Psi-bolt

Maybe unpopular opinion, but I think one of CoH biggest positives is that on most content you can roll with 8 random players and go have fun. Sure this is only a small additional reward, but it will lead occasionally to exclusionary behavior and that's to be expected. Even if you don't bother to recruit for that, there will be times when someone on the team will try to switch to meet the bonus or some other behavior intended to ensure the bonus exists. It's just natural for people to want to ensure that they get those additional rewards. It's going to lead to minor drama. This is one of those weird things where it would be better just not to do a thing or if you're going to encourage this behavior, then you might as well make it worth it. My preference is that CoH has made it 20 years without this and it's not necessary now.

I think this is the way. Energy Aura already mechanically is similar to force field in that it provides type based defense.

I think this would be a good idea. Better if you got auto-exemplared to the max level of that mission contact. But even if not, it doesn’t make sense for some contacts. For example, Tina at Portal Corp stopping at 45 even though she has you fighting the Praetorians.

I understand that the game will be free an supported by donations, but is there going to be a voluntary subscription or some other kind of funding model now that NCSoft has sanctioned the server? Honestly, I would love to go back to having all of the veterans rewards without the money sinks of the P2W vendor and would be willing to pay for it. Just a thought if it is possible.

Regarding Jack Emmert, I don't think that the community hated the guy, we were just frustrated because well, he wasn't honest about what he was doing and he couldn't just move off some very weird views that he had about the game. It's hard to remember being almost 20 years ago now, but the nerfs in the 2004-2005 ranged leading up to ED were absolutely brutal. And you know, much of that was needed, but he just needed to say, "we screwed up, we may have to do more, but we'll talk to you and be honest about what we're doing and why." The thing that made me personally go off on him on the forums was this line, "Concern = small tweak. Don't worry Regen Scrappers." And then they proceeded to turn Instant Healing into a very long recharge click and basically permanently changed the set. That led to something that I don't necessarily blame on Statesman alone because the devs stuck to it long after he was gone and that's the infamous "Cottage Rule." Basically stating that they won't ever change the basic function of a power. And while I don't blame that on him, I do think that the application of the cottage rule to specific changes in the game was ad hoc and dishonest. Changing Instant Healing to a click was much more of a change in the essential function of the power IMO than if they had made it another type of defensive toggle. But with Statesman, he would selectively argue that this or that change wasn't an essential change. Another thing that I absolutely thought he was nuts was that he argued to the end that we didn't need to have the real numbers for what powers did. Even after they changed it he would comment that he didn't think it was necessary. And that more than anything was emblematic of my biggest problem with him. He was a real smart guy, IIRC he studied classics at the University of Chicago. The Lore of CoH, which I know he had a lot to do with, was outstanding. But his rigidity really was grating. Sorry for the semi rant. I have moved on, I promise! 😄

Agreed actually, I just forgot to mention that I would remove the taunt aura from Integration. I think they only put it there because there was literally no other place for it. I don't think the mez protection toggle is a good place for a taunt aura. It's just out of place. As for giving it to Scrappers, it's inherent in all the "scaling mitigation" toggles like Invincibility, Rise to the Challenge, etc. I find it interesting that you mention that because the set already has three powers that give resistance: Reconstruction, Resilience and MoG. It literally has just as many resistance powers as it does powers that buff regeneration. Resilience is the best passive resistance power in the game. The set has more resistance powers than it does reactive heals. Sure one might say that the resistance in Reconstruction is just for "flavor" but resilience and MoG certainly aren't. As you say, fundamentally, the set will never work for tankers unless it has some MORE resistance or defense. I don't think MoG is the way to bridge this. I don't think there's a way to make MoG fill that role unless you do make the set revolve around it. I hate that about Granite Armor and the Kheldian capstone powers. I also don't think Tankers should have to rely on ally buffs until level 26. Also agreed. This was more just getting the idea off my chest, I had these fights with the live devs 15+ years ago I don't have much hope that the Homecoming devs want to wade into the mess the live devs left Regen in.

Do you honestly think so? Because this greatly reduces the amount of potential regeneration in IH in exchange for the scaling resistance.

Regeneration buffs are based on your base regeneration which is 25% of your max health per minute. So if you have a 100% regeneration buff, you now regenerate 50% of your max health per minute. Regen has about 450% enhanced regeneration buffs active at all times, which means a Regen player is regenerating 137.5% (base +buffs) of their health per minute also counting Health. Enhanced Instant healing ups that to 387.5% while it's active. Instant healing enhanced is about a 1000% regeneration buff which is the equivalent of 2.5x your max health per minute.

Yes, this is true. I debated long and hard before posting this thread because the futility of seeking buffs for a set nerfed 18 years ago seems futile, but I had to get it out on paper.

Ever since this thread: I have been thinking about what realistic changes could be made to the Regeneration sets to close the gap between it and other sets. I have also been thinking about what Regeneration would need if it were proliferated over to Tankers. To level set, I do not believe that Regeneration needs to be as capable as the defense sets in handling high difficulty content. I also don't think that the set needs to change from it's more active form of protection. What I do think is necessary is for Regeneration to have some form of layered protection that is enjoyed by just about every other set. Regeneration depends in large part on healing. It has a bit of resistance in the excellent passive Resilience. MoG gives it an incredible "defensive cooldown." But the constant mitigation that Regen provides is very weak. This makes it very weak to "alpha strikes" those big spikes of damage that a tank especially needs to be able to counter. So the suggestions below are intended to do two things: Improve the constant, baseline mitigation of the set Make it an acceptable set for Tanking, if it were proliferated With that as my goals, here are my suggested changes: Make the Regeneration buff of Integration full enhanceable; Change Instant Healing to a toggle with the following effects: For Tankers, Brutes and Scrappers 200% Regeneration (unenhanceable) 10%/7.5% Resistance to all damage (fully enhanceable) with one enemy in range 2%/1.5% resistance to all damage (unenhanceable) for each additional enemy in range (up to 9 or 18%/13.5%) 400% taunt (for Tankers, Brutes); 300% Taunt for Scrappers For Stalkers 200% Regeneration (unenhanceable) 15% resistance to all damage (fully enhanceable) For Sentinels Absorb Shield (at current values) 14% resistance to all damage (fully enhanceable) I would also change the order of the powers to move Instant Healing to Tier 4 and Dull Pain to Tier 7 (Sentinel Order wouldn't change). That's it, that's what I would do if I had the ability. I think this would be enough to make Regeneration a decent Tanking set and good for the other ATs. It doesn't even break Statesman's silly rule about not changing the essential function of a power since it stays a Regeneration ability, in part at least.

I'm going to go with an old anime character, Ranma Saotome. https://hero.fandom.com/wiki/Ranma_Saotome#Physical_Abilities Ranma is a martial artist who like many anime protagonists has abilities that cross into the superhuman. As the main character, he definitely draws his share of attention and has "tanked" for many of the support cast.

Exactly. I know SR just as well as Regen. But I don't like it. It sucks for how I like to play. In your other post about speed runs, you described how you like to play and I can see SR (eventually) being extremely good for that. I literally can't stand sets that don't have a heal and/or endurance management tools. It's why /EA might be the best set FOR ME even if it's not exactly the best. Regen isn't the best set, not by a mile. Not for the way I like to play nor for how you like to play. But the set is fine. It needs a buff, but any buff that doesn't turn the set into something completely different would not likely change your evaluation of the set. And if I have had a point in this whole thread it is this. Regen is different. Much different than other sets. That doesn't make it bad, it just makes it different. For the game that the devs created through EOS, it works fine solo for most content. In teams it does even better with a few buffers. Realistically, defense stacking shouldn't have ever been as easy as the devs made it after Inventions. But what's done is done. Inventions ticked me off so much because I literally couldn't understand why Regen needed to be nerfed so hard if they were going to let the defense based sets be gods. But...oh well.

Speed runs are just another way to play the game and equally valid. Knowing the objectives and how best to complete them quickly can be fun. So long as the TF leader communicates the expectations, everyone should have fun playing their way.

Off-topic but when they buffed the Sentinel AT, I think its Team viability went way up. The Vulnerability debuff and damage changes help a lot.

This is right. We even see this in the structure of sets like Stone Armor and in the very early iterations of the mez protection toggles in Invulnerability and Stone.

There are a few reasons I think including: 1) Smashing, Lethal damage was far and away the most common damage type at launch; 2) Power Pools weren't really intended to be used by characters who already had those powers in their primary/secondary; 3) the game was intended (but not designed) to be much slower and harder than it actually was; and 4) the developers thought about building characters like developers and not players. A little bit more on that last point. What I mean by that is that especially early on in MMORPGs, many, many developers failed to even consider min-maxing as a thing and the CoH devs had this blind spot worse than most. I guarantee that Statesman at the time would never even have considered the idea that players might want to stack additional resistance with a set like Super Reflexes because it was "good enough" for how they thought the game would be played. I swear, developers seem to have this weird idea that players will ever consider a character "good enough". Sure some people will, but most MMORPG players would build their characters all the way to the power level we see in the Mender Ramiel arc if they were allowed to. So the fighting pool was intended to be used by characters who didn't have many attacks and little defenses like Controllers. The devs said as much. They probably didn't see why anyone would want even more resistance powers in the pools. "Who would take them?"; I can see them saying. Until they saw it with their own eyes they never considered that melee players would want to stack as much resistance/defense possible on their characters.

I agree with all of this. I do think that if you want to do a KM for a TF that is normally sped through at certain points like Manticore, then the team leader should be VERY clear on that point while recruiting and prior to starting the TF.

Invulnerability works and plays very differently for sure. It is much more survivable to be sure. It's not any easier to slot or play, I would argue. Regen is actually pretty easy to use. It just doesn't give you as much mitigation as Invulnerability.

Ironically, Instant Healing was so good that people actually ignored how good the rest of the set was. IIRC, Integration used to be a 400% regen buff at launch. That's literally the same value that Regen gets with slotting now outside of Instant Healing. And you could slot from there. It's just that Instant Healing being a 1000% Regen buff (enhanceable to 3000%) was loony toons broken. As for being unkillable, it was darn near immortal, but getting Dull Pain as close to permanent as possible was essential to that. There were absolutely enemies and mobs that could one-shot a Scrapper pre-HP accolades and Dull Pain. Taking Tough to shave off some damage was also helpful with that. Taking Stamina and give it and Quick Recovery SIX slots so you had enough endurance to attack was essential. In other words, just like today, you had to add things outside of the set to make it immortal. It required a very specific and restricting build, Stamina wasn't inherent then. This is why I think there's no real fix that will make folks that don't like Regen happy. As you stated, stacking Resistance/Defense is just not something that Regen will ever be able to do to the same extent that the other sets will absent a complete rework of the set. Even if we gave Regen back toggle Instant Healing at the same numbers that it is at as a click now AND gave it 100% regeneration debuff resistance, it would still not match sets that can softcap defense, have a decent amount of resistance behind that, and has a heal (looking at you Ninjitsu, Invul, EA, etc.).

This used to drive me so nuts. I also remember that even after they added real numbers, Statesman would occasionally make comments to the effect that people didn't really need them to play the game. Absolutely insane.

I remember getting on a big team and street sweeping in Perez Park on a lowbie team. That was really fun.

Absolutely fair point. It's like SR isn't for me. It's a great set, but for me it's not fun.

Have done so many times, most people think it's OK but too clicky. I have given people tips on how to make it less so. Usually this is when I'm playing my Brute and people are surprised that I'm not dying. No one is saying that Regen is some godlike set that stands above all others. As I said earlier in the thread, it's not that, and frankly even going back to Issue 1 it wasn't that. But likewise, no one I have interacted with has said that Regen is this terrible set that has no value. Regen's issues have been debated ad nauseum in this thread, so I won't rehash. I'll just reiterate my point. Regen is...fine. Not good, not bad, just fine. It plays so much differently than other sets that I think most players would just prefer to take a set that allows you to softcap defense and steamroll. Hell, I personally enjoy that too. I'm a big fan of Ninjitsu and Energy Aura for that reason.

The darn horse took Revive, Snarky. It’s not our fault it keeps coming back for more.

No quarrel with your point here, but I remember when I was playing SWTOR and PvPing regularly if there were a power like MoG given to any class, there would have been a riot talking about how broken and unfair it is. City of Heroes is a funny but deeply odd game.