Bill Z Bubba

Troo, there's always going to be folks against any change. It's been me in the past, it's you this time. Pretty sure in that tank god thread there was a defender that pulled off a Werner rules ITF. A lot of things CAN be accomplished by any number of players if they just set their mind to it. That's got absolutely nothing to do with powerset balance. Folks' opinions about what's good don't mean much when the data presented showing otherwise just gets ignored. Folks' opinions about what's fun aren't open for contradiction because we all have different ideas about what that means. I'm fully aware that many find my playstyle of mashing 1-4 on the keyboard to get the job done is boring as hell to others.

I thought about not posting this earlier but feel I should now. After watching my sm/regen brute faceplant again, even with everything I had thrown at it mentioned in a prior post, I logged back on live with my claws/sr brute, unslotted all but his alpha incarnate, and cleared the first mish of the ITF without using a single inspiration. No barrier or rebirth, no hybrid upping my damage, no lore pets to help out, nothing but alpha musculature core to give him the same +1 lvl shift that the sm/regen brute effectively had on his test. Why do I mention this? Because the question I've quoted means as little as the question of which set benefits more from oranges and greens, SR or Regen? It ignores the far more important question of why bother playing an armor set that must use inspirations or team buffs to get the job done when other sets don't need such crutches? I do have an answer: some folks really enjoy, as they have stated, the high maintenance, high clicky, easy to fail with sets because they get more personal reward out of it. And that is 100% valid. *But that should not be confused with what a set is capable of by the numbers.* I have lot of alts that I have chosen concept over performance and I don't regret a single one of them, nor should anyone else. Just seems to me that discussions about actual performance shouldn't get confused with discussions about personal preferences. @UberGuy's ITF run up there is impressive to me just on its face. The low number of faceplants? Also very impressive. But I am curious to know what the actual run time was and how much of that time was spent kiting around waiting for clicks to refresh or gettin out of the thick to avoid faceplants and that curiosity comes from seeing what I was having to do to survive. I know it took my claws/sr scrapper a helluva long time in comparison to a lot of builds to get through a standard max diff solo ITF just because that autohit fluffy hurts my scrapper a HELL of a lot more than it does my sr/claws tank who laughs and ignores it.

Wow was I wrong. Faceplanted with DP, IH and Darkest Night up on the very first pair of spawns at +1/x8. Ok, ignore this. Soon as I started really leaning on fault and tremor everything got much better. But at +4/x8? Umm, yea, it's doable long as I spam MoG and eat insps like crazy. But this is without incarnate powers. I'll get them crafted and see what's what. Ok, yea. This works. As long as I lean on my knockdown, and cycle through IH, Hybrid Melee. Barrier, MoG, Void judgement for the -damage, Spiritual Alpha for the +recharge and +heal and keep DP clicked when available, I can get through these Cimerorans at max diff. Or... I can just run SR, set PB on auto and go make dinner while being immortal. But Hamidon can certainly mess up my SRs and Shielders. It's bad. What I'm trying to say here is that melee regen is bad. I do still really like it on my two Sents that have it, though.

Where Sentinel regen only has reconstruction and MoG for clicks. Well, 3 since Second Wind is a click but it's also skippable since the Sent can hit the HP cap without it. That's one thing I'll give the crew from the secret private server days, the reworks of the armor sets for Sents all seem quite sound.

Sitting here staring at this sm/regen brute build in Mids and pondering. I'm not so much worried about the first mission of the ITF. Sure, with crappy defense and no DDR, it'll take a ton of hits but the regen, damres, -damage from darkest night and all the knock should carry it through. The second mission, however, when the squids and fluffies start laying down the -recharge, this thing is gonna fold like wet tissue. Ain't gonna help matters that even with perma-dullpain I'm sitting 600HP short of the cap. (Edit: With accolades he'll be sittin at just under 3000 HP, so that'll be a must get.) Maybe the force feedback procs in tremor and fault will help. Honestly, by the numbers, this is looking even worse than I expected.

I was just talking for proc builds. My normal chain is FU, Focus, Slash repeat with only 1 proc in FU and 2 in the other two but only get about 2 mins on a pylon with the claws/bio scrap. The claws/sr sits at 3. Edit: If yours is heavily proced, I'm guessing ageless for more recharge?

At what diff level? Doing what? Any AV fights?

Pretty sure CP-SC/PP would be kinda superfluous in this situation. I'll need to find another way to crank up +acc/+tohit. Thankfully, I'm a LotG junkie.

Brute can go gloom for more ST damage and darkest night for -tohit AND -damage while having superior HP and thus superior Regen. Also... shadow meld.... 3 sec animation for 12 secs of buff. Meh.

I'd rather go softcapped SLE def but I have major issues doing that with builds for some reason. Softcapped melee seems a lot easier. If I can get SL DR to near capped after that, yes. Nah, went stone melee for all the KD. I've got enough claws.

Nonononono. We know SR is vastly superior. We're trying to make regen as good as possible to COMPARE to other sets.

Meant to hit on this point earlier as prep for my build. Seems I should lean heavily on winter IOs for -recharge debuff resistance. Go max recharge for both the ST attack chain AND the click heals. Ramp up melee defense as much as possible. Is it agreed by all that these are the priorities?

Been there on Max's mission in DA sooooo many times. Course, my SR users laughed at everything but the unresistable puke thing.

Math is always true. Arguably true. As is "balancing things properly can increase fun for everyone."

And this is where I falter. I hate faceplanting even when I'm on a squishy being stupid and I can laugh it off, somewhere, in the recesses of my brain, I scream "FAILURE!"

No, it's really not that. It's that mastery with regen will still be less than mediocre talent with any other set. That's the point we're trying to get across.

Between work and age, I'm gettin slow on the PL. Gonna take me at least 3 hours to PL this guy to 50. Then another hour in Mids... another hour slottin everything. Jeez, it's gonna be like tomorrow before I'm T4ed.

Brute Armors = Scrapper Armors at base values. Yes, they have higher caps but IF the regen caps are different and we know the HP caps are different then that still doesn't make a whole lotta sense. If ALL > Regen on brutes, then ALL will also be > Regen on scrappers.

I'm pretty sure I already know how this will turn out. Street hunted with Rocky Healins to lvl 6. Hittin Talos now to PL to 50. Will work on build in Mids after that.

Same thought here with all the KD from Stone Melee.

Ok, off to make a stone/regen brute. Cuz work is boring.

And yet still managed to create a game that we're all playing 17 years later.

The old rule was "cuz the devs hate regen." Having regen resist regen debuffs does seem to be a no-brainer but I've no clue if there's some underlying reason it can't be done.

Nerf Werner. He broke the game for me by *FORCING* me to build that shield/em tank.

If Regen should be considered the balance point, then all the other armors need to get nerfed.