Blackjoy

I don't know all the sets, but DM is not a good pair for /Regen. I do recall seeing DM/Regen's on Live, but I don't recall that they were anything special on account of DM. The reason DM pairs poorly with /Regen is that DM's main benefits over other sets are the +Heal and +Endo from SL and DC. These things are arguably superfluous for /Regen. In addition, the -to hit on /Regen is of minimal benefit when compared to a the survival benefit of a set like /SR or /Shield, or any set that has a high level of +DEF or even +RES I've found DM/SR to be a fantastic set. DM fills the gaps that /SR has in terms of survivability, as well as /Shield, especially the +Heal. /Shield probably benefits even more from its Taunt aura, which /SR lacks. DM works well with any set that lacks healing and endurance recovery. The only issue with DM is that the single target damage output is fairly mediocre. I suspect that is on account of Soul Drain and the fact that Shadow Maul is an cone AoE. At max Soul Drain, the damage would trounce other sets. But it's essentially impossible to stay at max.

Yeah, I got that. It's not like I'm offended or anything. But you took a statement out of context, so wanted to make sure others were clear on what I was talking about.

I've been leveling KM/Regen. I am not in love with KM. The animations feel way too long. The sound isn't nearly as satisfying as something like DM. I do love all the KD, it works very well with /Regen. The range on Repulsing Torrent is just crazy. One thing I feel is somewhat unique to KM is my ability to queue attacks and have them fire on mobs even when they have moved away. I've tried this on DM, SM, Staff, and SJ, and it doesn't seem to work the same. Maybe I'm imagining it.

The "defense" sets are capping defense. If they aren't capping, or within 3 or 4 points of it, they are getting crushed by the content we are talking about. I saw a Katana/SR turn off Maneuvers and go from defeating a 4x8 incarnate spawns to dead in 15 seconds. Going from 90% +DEF to 95% +DEF doubles your survival time. And let me point out that none of the +DEF builds are using just +DEF. They are also putting in a ton of S/L resist and/or relying on cycling Barrier/RoP, etc. It's not easy to calculate survival time on /Regen. The set is designed under the concept that your +Regen will generally be lower than the incoming DPS at the start of the fight. But through the use of Reconstruction, you survive long enough to reduce the incoming DPS to the point where your +Regen exceeds the DPS. DP and Instant Healing let you do that on steroids for short periods, and MoG is designed to survive alphas on a periodic basis. How much +RES and +REGEN do you need to simulate capping +DEF? Impossible to say. It depends on what the average incoming DPS is of the content you're trying to solo and your out going DPS (which gets you past the inflection point of the "I win" equation). Without those two stats, it's impossible to know. Because the real point of your secondary is to keep you alive to the point where your Primary has reduced the incoming DPS until it is lower than your +Regen with Reconstruction or your "effective health" if you're using DP or IH. So you don't have to be able to tank stuff...just take the alpha and kill it faster than it can kill you. For scrappers, +RES is capped at a much lower threshold. 75% vs 95%. So capping +DEF is mitigating a LOT more damage than Resists. That's why there is no +RES counterpart to /SR. Every +RES set has multiple other forms of mitigation or way to tip the scales on the "I win." Look at /Invul and /EnArm. Both those "resistance" secondaries use +DEF and +HEAL. /DA has a +Heal and some -To Hit (which is essentially +DEF). And admittedly, /SR and /SD both use +RES as well. /SR's +RES just isn't useful against AV's and that high Psi content. /RAD has +RES, +Absorb, +Heal, and +Recharge that synergizes with its mitigation. The /Regen builds that supposedly can get to the upper echelon are doing it with Shadowmeld, not with Rune of Protection. But from what I hear it's really hard to build /Regen to those levels of +DEF.

But he wasn't asking about mitigation, he was making the claim that /Regen doesn't have anything that helps with offense...and it does...just sayin'

Enough for what? What is your metric? But you have to understand that every additional iota of +DEF is more valuable than the last. The same is true for +RES. And there is a world of defense between 60% +RES and 70% +RES. I think the best form of mitigation you can add to /Regen is soft mitigation. Attacks that knockdown or disorient slow down the incoming DPS and allow /Regen's healing to be a bigger factor. I've been leveling a KM/Regen after leveling an SM/Regen. The SM kills faster and recharges faster,, but the KM holds it's own on account of so many KD powers. It doesn't scale because it was never designed to solo at 4x8. And without perma-IH, it doesn't solo AV's well either. The other sets weren't designed for this either, but later additions to the game allowed several sets to cap +DEF or +RES way more easily/consistently than was intended, so these sets are getting asymmetrical benefits. Actually it does in the from +Recovery and it's a big deal....when you're leveling up. Without Set IO's /SR and /SD run dry and you aren't killing anything when you can't fire your attacks and your toggles drop. But...Set IO's and +Recovery Provs have allowed Scrappers to have eliminate Endurance issues almost entirely. So one big advantage that /Regen has is totally undermined. You might argue that /Regen should be free to chase +DMG in the Set IOs, but I don't know if it works out that way. I don't know that I can get anough +DMG bonuses for a /Regen to make up for all the +Recovery that other sets can get.

That's a big part of it. The difference between capping +DEF or +RES and getting within 5% of cap is tremendous in terms of survivability against damage for which those mechanics function. The other part is that everyone is speaking from a different context/set of assumptions/build. Leveling up, /Regen dominates. But at 50, when it's all about capping one form of mitigation, /Regen has the hardest time doing that. Capping +Regen doesn't work as well when the spike damage can exceed your total HPs. /WP has the advantage that it can get closer to capping than /Regen can. That having been said, /WP has its own issues. One of the biggest is that it has no +Heal. So if /WP is in a situation where it gets unlucky, or the incoming DPS is too great, it has no quick HP recover to get pass the inflection point of the "I win" equation. /SR and /SD are in the same boat, but those sets can cap at least one form of mitigation and in the case of /SD, maybe two. The +Regen on /WP is nice, but it's no Instant Healing. The other issue with /WP is that's not obvous how to build it. So when people talk about a set like /WP, people are speaking from very different build experiences. A set like /SR is comparatively easy to build. I think even /Regen is more straight forward to build than /WP. So yeah...my lvl 50 /WP is underwhelming. I've put a lot of money into it, but I don't have Mids, so my build is average and struggles doing 4x8 solo sans Incarnate and candy-popping. So yeah, for the average build, I would say an average /Regen is as good if not better than an average /WP, if we're just relying on the Secondary. And agree about slow resist. Why would you put that on a secondary whose one click is immune to recharge enhance?

I ran 4* ITF and it wasn't that bad. We had one Tank, one Defender, two scappers (SM/SR and DM/SR), and some Controllers and a Dominator. We probably had about four total party wipes by the time we had destroyed the computer. Defender died a lot. I definitely got one-shot at least twice, once by a minotaur. I would say half the time I running without any added mitigation boosts, the other half of the the time, someone had fired off Barrier. The Tank had a hard time not trying to herd. But as Linea says, if you go slow, it feel like back on Live. One area we ran into some trouble is on the march up the hill. We were pulling, but then we got stuck at a spawn point. So by the time we'd clear a new spawn, another one would find us. At one point we were fighting Romulus and Requiem. Tank died. I hit Elude and was able to survive Requiem, tank him. We were using Barrier randomly. I had to drop before we fought the big robot. I think at that point we were going on about 2 hours if not 3.

Tier lists are always fun...but often misinformation. The problem is context. Performance is based on the context of what you're up against. /SR may do great against Malta, but fight DE when they drop Quartz and you will die to +0s at +0x8. Yeah...so I assume you are only looking at lvl 50 comparisons? Then the problem is that people are comparing "builds" not the actual sets. People's opinions are based on their ability (or lack there of) to optimize their own builds, as is evident in several of the posts above. What you can do with a set in a build is very different from what the set does naked, on both the Primary and Secondary side. The Primary side is influenced by the amount of recharge you can get as well as how much soft mitigation/utility. You mean once they reach level 50? Because how a toon levels up and plays is very different from how it may perform at lvl 50 with 100m invested. Here is my anecdotal evidence, mixed in with actual testing. Granted, I haven't tested every combo and others will undoubtedly have different or even contrary experiences. I"ll point out that lately I've been testing /Regen without using set bonuses or Power Pool mitigation. Secondaries Rad is the top Secondary in terms of realized builds I've seen put through pseudo trials. It has a synergy that I'm not sure other sets have. /SR is one of the worst sets naked. It rises in performance because of the ease at which a "build" can cap defense by adding off-AT +DEF. Based on play experience, /Regen is one of best solo from 1-40, assuming you're running +Xx0. It also works extremely well in teams so long as you aren't trying to regularly take the alphas, but /Regen is also the hardest to play in terms of skill. Primaries - Typically people are only looking at DPS or talking DPS. So your ranking seems to reflect that. But if you're running a set like Shield or SR which has no inherent +recovery or +heal, you're getting a lot more mileage from a set like DM. But by 50, most people have solved their endurance issues and can ge some proc healing/set IO healing, so this reduces the benefit of utility sets. DM is the best in terms of utility and survivability . ST damage and AoE damage are comparably average and I suspect that's on account of Soul Drain. Iin groups, you can get a huge boost from Soul Drain and I'd be interesting actual data on how that affects its ranking in DPS. I'm sure someone could run the hypothetical numbers of DM's DPS with max damage from SD. KInetic Melee feels slightly below average in damage, but above average in soft mitigation. I believe it has FOUR KD powers and THREE disorients as well as a build-up power that causes your target to take 5% strength reduction, which stacks up to 28%. The crit is also all energy damage so that's something. I've been teaming with a Claws/Regen for about 10 levels and the Claws damage is not flat out superior when you're running chains at mid-game. I can imagine that with enough recharge, but remember Claws is all Lethal, which is one of the most resisted damage type. KM also has a ranged KD power...which is very nice on non-taunting aura scrapper. I will say the activation times of KM are weird. There is some weird queuing I've noticed with KM that can chain attacks that doesn't seem possible with Savage Savage Melee - At mid game, this feels on par with Claws for damage and feels superior to Dark. The bleed damage probably puts it past both. With the -DEF cone early in the set, it has better than average accuracy and the endurance and recharge boosts are noticeable. This set does lack a ranged attack and is very short on utility.

I would love to run with you on my Trick Arrow. Look for Jaed Arrow next time you run an 801, or ping me as La Noir and I'll swtich.

Was fun to be the only scrapper in that group. I think one death was my trying to take an alpha because things had been going so smoothly. Thanks for recording this.

What is it that you are trying to do as a metric? Do you have a specific goal in mind? Like 4x8 carnies or something?

If you're not talking about 4xX settings, then you defenitely don't need RoP to make /Regen work. I've solo'd two /Regens up, and it easily outperforms my /Shield (Brute), /SR, and /Willpower scrappers pre-50. I end every encounter at full health and endurance. I don't think of /Regen as being "tough," I think of it being resilient. /Regen gets hit and takes damage. But you heal it back and once you start slotting up your primary, mobs are dead. At 43, I am soloing +3x0 content with no power pool mitigation. The only set bonuses are from Overwhelming Fear and that's it. Everything else is just straight IOs . I do use Hasten after popping DP or IH, but 90% of the encounters I complete with just Reconstruction.

None of the sets are doing 4x8 without massive aid from either power pools, set bonuses, or Incarnates. I find it hypocritical when players poo poo SM or RoP, but then their build relies on cycling Barrier or Ageless.

One of the problems in many of these discussions is that people are speaking about a specific context.. /Regen absolutely doesn't suck from 1-45, I would submit it's one of the best sets for leveling. But prevailing mindset on these forums is based on "what can I do at lvl 50?" approach. At level 50, the expectation is about soloing content at 4x8 and the dynamics of that type of game-play make succeeding with /Regen more difficult. The majority of /Regen's survivability is dependent on the player's decision making. This is in direct contrast to sets like /Willpower, /Shield, or /SR, which put comparatively little to no demand on the player to effect mitigation. At level 50, soloing 4x8, a player's window for decision making and threat assessment is markedly smaller than soloing 2x0 at 30 or even 3x0 in the 40's. Naked, burst/spike damage from encounters is more deadly to /Regen. MoG and DP+IH can handle that in specific cases, but it's not as consistently effective as capped +RES or +DEF, which other sets can more easily achieve by end game.

So are you trying to see which secondary is better, of which secondary can you make a better build? The two are not automatically the same. I have little doubt that Bio allows you to more easily cap +DEF or +RES compared to /Regen, and if /Regen isn't capping something, it's just not going to have the same ceiling. II also find that /Regen is going to require more information management to fully leverage as a player. While Bio has three click powers, I think Ablative Carapace is something you essentially fire whenever its ready in combat. Contrast that with /Regen where you need to efficiently manage your click powers and time the use of Recon, DP, IH, and MoG to maximize their benefit and uptime. Bio also just has more bells and whistles and layers of defense. A damage aura that you can put in a proc KD is not something /Regen easily competes with. The other big advantage Bio has is the adaptability in going offense, defense, or efficiency. I have only played Bio on a Tank, so I don't know how useful those modes are when soloing, but by certainly you can start spawns in Defense mode for the alpha, swich to offense for the bosses, and then run efficient to clean-up. But it would be interesting to see a timed run of naked Bio vs naked Regen and see which could clear a 4x0 mission faster.

Shadow Maul is one of my favorite powers, even if the animation was stolen from the Matrix. Put a KD proc in it for lots of fun. I got into /SR back on Live before we even had access to the numbers, but it is one of the easiest Secondaries to slot, imo. I'm at 81% recharage pre-hasten. So yeah, I also play a DM/SR as my main. Are you attempting the DA stuff on 4x8? The only time I've run into what you're saying is doing 4x8 IDF spawns when I was only +1 level shift. I've since attempted those same spawns at +3 and it's a much different story. They are still extremely dangerous, even at +3, but I can do them without using RoP or Elude, Inspirations, or any active Incarnates...as long as I move around tactically. But, at +1, they will pretty much shred you in less than 20 seconds if you try them naked. I'm running just slightly above cap for ranged and AoE and slightly under for Melee. With DM's to-hit debuff, liberal use of ToF and whatever that Incarnate that adds additional -To Hit, I'm pretty sure I'm capping anything in melee. Are you on Excelsior? I'd love to see what you're fighting and give it a go.

What + did you solo it at? +4? Did you find lack of comparative DDR to be a problem?

Your response is nonsensical. You, nor anyone else has presented any "mechanical facts" or evidence. And if by "mechanical facts," you are referring to published formulas, there's nothing that contradicts anything I've said. The closest we've come to evidence is Troo posting someone's table of survival times which showed /SR dead last, by a factor of 4, which is something I essentially predicted. Nor does anyone have any empirical evidence, it's all anecdotal. All of it. That's why I've maintained that the devs have to run the stats to tell us what's really going on. In addition, your attempt to state the obvious about people always finding optimal builds misses the point entirely. What's apparent is that the only concept many of you have of the sets is what they do at lvl 50, and then you're incapable of understanding or perhaps admitting that at lvl 50, your /secondary's performance has little do to with the actual sets, but about what stacking mitigation is available. I got into the thread when Kopok started talking about /Regen's performance and how it underperforms at lvl 50 and why. For me, that naturally leads to an exploration of other sets. /SR is a contrast because it over performs at higher levels. Why? There are variety of reasons: 1) Because none of /SR's mitigation (excluding Elude) is dependent upon decision making, in contrast to /Regen. As such, /Regen's realized effectiveness will always be lower than its potential effectiveness. IMO, that's unavoidable and some would argue a feature, not a bug. 2) The mechanics of the game allow for 95% mitigation if you can get to 45% (59% for incarnate mobs) +DEF. This essentially trumps all other forms of mitigation for scrappers. This is easier to achieve for some sets than others, notably /SR, /Shield, and probably /Invul in big groups. /Regen cannot easily achieve the to-hit floor. So this contributes to /Regen being perceived as less capable. This led to a discussion of raising the to-hit floor and putting /Regen on an even playing field. Based on observation, people in these threads are focused on level 50 dynamics. At level 50+, the bar for performance is intentionally unregulated by the developers. That means people are arguing for balance in area that is not only intentionally ignored by the devs, but cannot be balanced. The devs can't do it, certainly not to any degree of precision, and it would be a waste of time to try without a universal benchmark (which we don't have). The fundamental problem with almost all "balance threads" for scrapper secondaries is people are focused on level 50 and there is no metric for balance at these levels. The devs can tweak/improve stuff all day along, but how would they know when you've tweaked it enough if lvl 50 is the focus?

I would agree with that...almost. Over the last six months, I've randomly connected with scrappers, and some brutes, and had them come try out 4x8's. There was ONE scrapper out of like 20 who hadn't even contemplated doing 4x8 solo (and I still think he was pulling my leg) and he was able to do it on some of the standard mobs. Every scrapper I talk to, at lvl 50, is pretty focused on high-powered builds and was either already doing 4x8 or clearly had a concept of that being a benchmark. Now, very few of them could reliably do IDF's at 4x8. But there were definitely 2 or 3. Outside of scrappers/tanks/Brutes, I would agree that it's far less common. But I'm pretty sure there are some squishes that can do it.

Yes, min/maxes will find new optimized builds. But you're overlooking the fact that there may be many ways to achieve it versus a handful. Or to put it more accurately, the various optimized builds may all be indistinguishable from each other in terms of performance. Right now, if you aren't capping +DEF, you're hard pressed to find a build that can compete with those who are. There are some, I did see a /Rad scrapper that was unworldly with just Tough. But without the superiority of capped +DEF, you'll probably see people focus on things like Max Health, capped /Res, Max Health, max +Regen. I don't know. But they want all start with capping +DEF, or rather they will, but that will be trivial to accomplish and will not be the crux of the build. So I would bet you'll see a lot more variety. Now, is that better for the game? I don't know. It will change how much you need to go dipping into the Power Pools for "mitigation," at least for +DEF dominant's sets. If I can soft cap with just Hover, then I don't need to take Combat Jumping and Weave and Maneuvers and Shadowmeld, and chase a bunch of +DEF in set IOs, etc. That all having been said, a floor of 20% probably wouldn't help diversify /Regen, after thinking about it. Since /Regen has no base +DEF, it might still be want all the +DEF it can get to try and get to the 80% mitigation cap. The whole point of this tangent is, again, exploring whether the "problems" with /Regen are a result of the inherent problems with /Regen, or problems inherent to allowing the to hit floor to be 5% and the overwhelming survival advantage of sets that can achieve that. "Buff" /regen calls only result when people perceive other sets are better. If a change were made so that many of the sets were suddenly a notch or two lower, without actually changing any of the sets or power pools, would people find /Regen a lot more capable? I'm saying yes, but I acknowledge that this type of fix isn't likely at this point, so it's more of an academic discussion.

I was there too. And I don't recall any "explicit" statements as such. What I do recall is that the devs essentially considered lvl 50 a free-for-all. So I think you're conflating the fact that the devs specifically chose not to try and balance lvl 50 with the devs being fine with a lvl 30 toon soloing 4x8. They weren't. And we know this because they nerfed /Regen from god-like with Toggle IH down to solid. If what you said was true, then they wouldn't have cared what /Regen was doing.

Absolutely. Hence my comment that 99% of the /Regen builds would probably not be affected, nor would anyone below lvl 40 probably even notice. It's also the reason I zeroed in on raising the To Hit floor because it would specifically reign in +DEF builds that were based on flooring to hit at 5%. Without changing the sets or the power pools...one iota. As I see it, the reason to do something like this would be: 1) You'd open up the build options. If taking just Combat Jumping or Hover capped your benefit from +DEF, then you'd be able to choose a lot of other options. Right now, EVERY SINGLE SCRAPPER at level 50 has the Tough and Weave. Well, not every single one. But it's north of 90% based on my anecdotal evidence. 2) You'd level the playing field for all the builds that don't have a strong +DEF base. And that would by extension make /Regen look better. 3) You'd most likely encourage more cooperative team play. Of course, I'm not advocating the devs do this. I think that the lvl 50 game is intended to be largely unregulated, so if some builds are out on the upper end of the bell curve, so what. I'm not motivated by any desire to nerf lvl 50. It just becomes apparent that doing so might address some of the imbalances people talk about now. It might also create new ones, but since I'm not advocating this, it's not really worth my time trying to figure it out.

So it's clear you are just trolling my /SR discussion...agian. I generally don't like to use that term (and have already used it once in this thread, much to my disdain), because it's kind of lazy and arguably vulgar, but when you blatantly ignore statements that contradict your narrative and attempt to try maneuver a win, I am not sure there is a more succinct or appropriate term. You, and several others, used the same tactic in the /SR thread, and continue to use it here. I figured you were up to the same thing here, but I thought I'd give you the benefit of the doubt and see if you actually were trying to have a discussion this time around. Nope. By all means arcane, carry on. It's odd that there is a small minority of players who get emotionally charged at the idea that /SR, naked, is probably dead last. I attribute that to a flat-out inability to separate a build at lvl 50 from a set from levels 1-49 (really the DEF capping probably starts around 40 for /SR). Or as Brutal Justice seemingly suggests , it's just intellectual dishonesty, for what purpose, I cannot fathom.

I haven't read any of your previous posts on the topic and I don't recall this ever coming up on Live, but I Ieft sometime around 2007, so it's entirely possible that it was discussed. And this thread is the first time I've actually contemplated this type of change and that is entirely due to coming up with a way to "fix" /Regen without screwing it up or devoting a supercomputer to the problem. Or more accurately trying to determine why people perceive /Regen to be weak. It's an interesting development. Clearly an oversight on the part of the original developers or an acceptance of unavoidable evil? Someone said they thought the developers didn't understand the math....I don't know if I agree with that. The 75% RES cap for scrappers says they must have had some concept. Scrappers already have less hit points than Tanks, so lowering the RES cap suggests advanced knowledge and purpose. However, it's possible that not everyone who knew was involved in all the decisions. What is also perplexing is that the +DEF is capped given there is a to-hit floor.... Why? If you're going to let someone get 200% +DEF, why even cap it? What is the cap even doing for the game at those numbers? Is it a byproduct of the Inspiration system and needing to cap them?