Would it be possible to unnerf regen?

[Katharos]

Sorry I'm late to the discussion, and extra sorry that I'm definitely going to say a few things people have definitely said, but there's persuasive power to reiteration, yeah? 

I made a pretty good (katanna) regen scrapper build and took it to the test server, thinking that it'd be the best way for me to understand regen's situation as it stands. I decided to lean hard into regen's shtick instead of trying to make it do things it didn't seem intended to do - that is to say, I prioritised recharge, max hit points, and regen in that order. In service to these goals, I did take spiritual core, though not other incarnates, for my alpha. More on that later.

 

I think I came out looking pretty good with 196.3% global recharge, 1670 hp before dull pain and 2409, the hp cap, with dull pain, and an idle 689% regen. With those numbers, reconstruction was at a 14 second cooldown for 55% health, dull pain was at an 87 sec cooldown for 88% health,  instant healing was at a 157 second cooldown for 604% regen, moment of glory was at 56 seconds, and shadow meld (not part of regen, but again, more on this later) was at 23 seconds.  In any given fight, I would have most of my survivability tools available to me, and even if I used them in the fight, most of them would recharge before the fight was over. For a set with a minimum of toggles, I think creating an environment for the clickies to perform the best they can was the best way to understand regen's personality.

The build was pretty expensive to be able to manage that! I don't think that's inherently a bad thing - bear with me, I'm going to repeat that a lot here - as long as, in exchange, I get high performance. Big investment in, big results out, yeah? That seems like something we should be able to reasonably expect from any activity. I can provide it upon request, but I don't think it was anything special or particularly notable as far as common regen consensus goes.

I took it through +4x8 Council, Circle of Thorns, and Rikti with about the same level of difficulty. That's a nice thing for a set to be able to do, and plenty of completely good and fine defensive sets can't claim the same. Especially on a scrapper. That said, it face planted in 10 seconds against Arachnos. The tests took about an hour and a half, all said and done. 

I came out of it with weird feelings. In many regards, it didn't feel like a real set. I've played the defence sets pretty thoroughly on COH across a wide variety of ATs. I think, at this point, the only sets I haven't touched whatsoever are super reflexes and fiery aura, and I don't think they'd be useful in informing my perspective on regen. I'd come into the test after having a great deal of success with my savage/ice stalker and my bio/spines tanker, and the fun I had on them motivated my looking into regen, because along with willpower - as everyone points out - they're the closest analogues to regen we have. It didn't feel like either set. It didn't feel like any other set I've played. Right away, I had to unlearn habits and tactics which I'd picked up from previous playing. As I said before. Again. Not an inherently bad thing.

 

It functionally doesn't feel like having a defence set at all. It felt more like playing a blaster which isn't built for defence but also doesn't do damage, constantly chugging inspirations (in this case, my clickies) to stay alive. I felt uncomfortably naked, even though I was coming out of fights with full health. I had to put a lot of conscious thought and active energy managing it, making it perform. I ended up feeling a lot that if I wasn't careful with my animations and thinking ahead about the timing of my clickies, I was going to die. Here, I was very well served with katana as a pairing, due to katana's short animation times, and due to being able to spam divine avalanche (another point of active management.) Also, katana has no redraw! I found, unlike other sets with dull pain, I needed to keep dull pain up constantly. It was not good enough to hit dull pain after absorbing an alpha - I needed the capped max hp from the start for a couple of reasons I'll go into later, but for the moment, just for the sake of absorbing alpha and being able to regen enough hp immediately so I could attack.

 *Again,* not inherently bad things. I'm getting to the part where I go into more detail about inherent badness, promise.

In a lot of ways, regen is functionally a resist set in that I ate every status effect and debuff the game threw at me. Because the central conceit of regen is that you always get hit, but you always come back. Unlike other resist sets, I only had a way to counter two types, and I think most regen builds and characters would only be able to counter one. Regen debuffs could be, if not directly countered, then circumvented by pure heals. Defence debuffs - in my case, which is not broadly applicable to regen as a set - could be countered by stacking more defence. As mentioned earlier, shadow meld is not part of the regen set, but I don't think I could have succeeded in the tests I did succeed in without it. It fills in the holes where the clickies are still on cooldown, because those are some long friggin cooldowns, and gave me some much needed breathing room to actually get attacks off, because it's a clickie that applies its extra survivability over a longer duration. The other crutch mentioned earlier was divine avalanche, which is legitimately an incredible ability and I can't imagine ever skipping it. I don't think regen would have functioned without both. Also, regen's survivability doesn't depend on hitting enemies like warshades or dark regen does - technically - so tohit debuffs aren't direct counters to regen as much as they could be, though they're still pretty crippling. That said, only being able to work around one or two types of debuff in a game that has 9-10 is a serious problem, and makes regen much worse than just having a blaster secondary instead of a defence set. 

Let's look at the debuff effects for a second. We have, and correct me if I'm forgetting some, defence debuffs, resist debuffs, endurance debuffs, recovery debuffs, perception radius and tohit lumped together under 'blinds,' recharge and movement lumped together under 'slows,' regen and healing that get lumped together too, and max hp. Of these, perception radius and max hp debuffs are rare. The rest are common to frequent, even just levelling up on your normal +1x1 difficulty. Regen has no inherent protection from any of them. It has no inherent counter to them, not in the quantities they show up in. And regen *will* eat them in the face. Unlike its comparable sets (willpower, bioarmour, and ice) it doesn't even have the layer of not-getting-hit-to-begin with to at least make it so that regen lasts longer than 5 seconds against Mu electricity drain. Which was why the Arachnos test failed as soon as I walked in, by the by. These are the reasons why electric armour and dark armour both have endurance drain protection and elec has power sink. Because without them, resist sets are *objectively worse* than defence sets. This, out of everything, *is* inherently bad. 

The lack of end drain protection in regen is made especially egregious by the fact that all of its clickies need endurance. If you're bottomed out on endurance, you cannot click your T9 and buy yourself 15 seconds to figure out what to do next. If you try to anticipate the end drain and click it first, 15 seconds isn't enough time to clear a group of Mu, and even in my best case scenario, then you have to wait 41 seconds for it to come up again. Bleh. That's basically waiting for your nuke to recharge so you can use it as your opening move every time.

 

I mentioned earlier that it felt a lot like playing a blaster which isn't built for defence but also doesn't do damage. I want to get back to that for a second and explain what I mean by that. The first thing I felt and noticed right away was that using regen the way it was intended is incredibly punishing on your dps. Every time you need to stop and smack a clickie, that's a second you're not doing damage to your enemies. And you need to be smacking those clickies all the time, because most of them only have instant benefit, rather than a prolonged duration that gives some breathing room. It also means that at the height of when you want to be doing damage - right when you run in - you have to be clickity clacketying your heal buttons instead, because it happens to be the height of when you're taking damage. You don't get the benefit of cutting down the incoming damage by killing the things around you. That felt uniquely bad for me playing and what made the experience not fun. Made playing a chore. Actually headache-inducing. Basically, like single-player empathy, but without the tasty buffs like fortitude. It's even uglier because I know that it's worse for most cases of regen play, because Shadow Meld and Divine Avalanche propped up regen by having a durational benefit. I'd often open with Shadow Meld so I could get a Lotus Drops in to cut down the trash, then spam Divine Avalanche so I'd have a little more breathing room after Shadow Meld fell off. In short: Shadow Meld is the best power regen never had.

 

A smaller issue for the damage was that Spiritual Core tanks proc rates. Again, I don't see regen working without Spiritual Core, so I don't see a way to get around that. I didn't overly proc the build out, but it is standard practice in the general community to have one in a power. Like how you pick a purple proc over its pure damage IO.

 

So, in the end: Yeah, actually, a set that can handle max settings Council, Rikti, and Circle of Thorns with equal effort is fairly strong. However... I might have said a great number of details weren't inherently bad, but we're not looking at the details. We're looking at the big picture. Regen is emergently bad at the one thing I want out of a set more than anything else: I didn't have fun playing it. 

 

~~~

Q: Why didn't you just test it on a lower difficulty setting?
A: I could, yeah, but the thing is that I can take for granted built right bioarmour, ice armour, and willpower can handle a large swath of content at +4x8, though they would struggle with some types more than others. We're comparing regen not to the content as much as we are comparing it to other sets and the ways they interact with content. Plus, +4x8 has the benefit of immediate results: I could get feedback about what worked, what didn't, and the in between within seconds.

Q: Why didn't you aim to softcap?
A: I could, yeah, but that wouldn't be playing the set the way it was intended to be played. Softcap defences on regen is more a test of how flexible the IO system is than it is a test of regen's merits and performance. The end result would be something that's worse than a defence set at defending. Plus, healing set IO bonuses are kind of just bad for stacking defence, so as far as I can tell, building regen to softcap would be an active detriment to the things regen are supposed to do.

Q: How would you change regen to make it more fun?
A: Awh, man. I don't know. Making something more fun is trickier than just making it good, you know? I think making elements of the set more proactive than reactive would help - looking at the durations of existing powers compared to their cooldowns, for example. I don't necessarily agree with the others here who advocate for making the rez apply its own benefits outside of death, because that would be just another clickie to make busywork, and having things you can skip in a set is good. The game's designed around an expectation you'll take a certain number of power pool powers. I would say that regen *needs* Shadow Meld, or something comparable to it. I really cannot imagine playing regen without it.
 

Q: You just hate regen! Not all sets are all things to all people, and that's okay.

A: Well, yeah, maybe that's it, but I really wanted to like it. If I had to say one good thing that I liked about the total experience, I'd say that it's neat and interesting and unique that regen had a certain level of custom-tailoured survivability. I could choose for myself how much I wanted and adjust my play accordingly. I felt the pay off for thoughtful play within seconds of taking an action. I additionally liked that, other than the exceptions listed above, it didn't feel like I was especially weak to anything. Regen had an internal rhythm that I could see being fun.

Edited June 12, 2020 by Katharos

[ROBOKiTTY]

My first character ever in CoH was a katana/regen scrapper. I essentially stopped playing the character after i5 in anything but Hamidon raids.

 

The problems with regen are many. I'll go with some conceptual ones. If we look beyond mechanics, regeneration is typically a passive process that just happens, with perhaps one dramatic burst for key moments. The CoH implementation makes regen one of the most active armour sets, which is completely counterintuitive. Willpower is a much better version of regen in that regard.

 

Regenerating kind of conceptually goes hand in hand with recovery, which makes it odd that the set is so utterly crippled by regen debuffs and end drain and recovery debuffs. Because of the way the game has been designed, many debuffs, but especially regen and recovery debuffs, tend to be all-or-nothing. That is, you're often either undebuffed or you are debuffed into nothingness. Regen and recovery debuffs just tend to have such high numbers that being hit by one often completely negates that aspect of regen. It should have the highest regen resistance and a good amount of recovery resistance at least. This won't mechanically help that much, of course, especially with all the unresistable debuffs in the game.

 

Next, moment of glory is just strange conceptually. It's a power that briefly does none of the things regen actually excels at. With instant healing now a clicky since i5, it feels thematically irrelevant (although it's mechanically quite important to regen's survival).

 

Thematically, self-rezzes should be one of regeneration's key powers. Unfortunately, self-rezzes have always been marginal in CoH. For some reason, it gets the same five-minute cooldown as other self-rezzes but is no better. It might be more appropriate if it had a much lower base cooldown, because getting up again after being apparently beaten over and over again should be a signature move of a regenerator.

 

I don't know how you might fix regen without fundamentally redoing the set, which would be too disruptive. It could be improved in little ways, but it wouldn't deal with the conceptual problems above all. I support giving up and telling people to roll willpower instead, and leaving regen as it is as an unsupported legacy set.

 

Actually, I do have one idea. Remove revive from the game and use that slot for something else to give regen a fighting chance. Make MoG castable while dead and make it a self-rez on top of being a T9. Give fast healing or resilience a passive proc that has a chance to refresh MoG on very low health or defeat. This would allow a regenerator to get up again and again in the face of repeated beatdowns, which is very thematically appropriate. As a bonus, it will make 'self-rez as a part of attack chain' more than just a meme.

Edited June 12, 2020 by ROBOKiTTY

[Leogunner]

6 hours ago, Katharos said:

[snip]

~~~

I like this post.  Although it shares a contrary opinion to mine of the Regen set, it still goes over the points well enough to understand why they come to that conclusion and therefore can agree to the assessment overall.

 

6 hours ago, Katharos said:

Q: Why didn't you just test it on a lower difficulty setting?
A: I could, yeah, but the thing is that I can take for granted built right bioarmour, ice armour, and willpower can handle a large swath of content at +4x8, though they would struggle with some types more than others. We're comparing regen not to the content as much as we are comparing it to other sets and the ways they interact with content. Plus, +4x8 has the benefit of immediate results: I could get feedback about what worked, what didn't, and the in between within seconds.

Something to be wary of, however, is that solo-ability on that setting isn't necessarily a balancing point...especially if you're not following the meta to maintain this aspect of solo.  Overall, the meta has formulated the best method of survivability objectively with numbers and it tends to lean toward a blend of defensive buffs.  Not discounting your chosen method, just stating my perspective that doesn't particularly agree with you but it felt more complete replying to all these parts at the end rather than just skipping this one.

 

6 hours ago, Katharos said:

Q: Why didn't you aim to softcap?
A: I could, yeah, but that wouldn't be playing the set the way it was intended to be played. Softcap defences on regen is more a test of how flexible the IO system is than it is a test of regen's merits and performance. The end result would be something that's worse than a defence set at defending. Plus, healing set IO bonuses are kind of just bad for stacking defence, so as far as I can tell, building regen to softcap would be an active detriment to the things regen are supposed to do.

 To me, it's more a system of benefits and disadvantages.  What I mean is, soft cap defenses work great and a set like SR can get their easily.  It's benefit is the ease to reach that point and surpass it (and technically, how it can stay at that point due to its debuff resistance).  The disadvantage is that, there isn't much in the realm of healing SR can take advantage of outside of incarnates and you're likely going to aim to dip into resistances to shore up your survivability.  The advantage of regen in this system is, it gets a *huge* benefit by not being hit therefore reaching that point either through IOs or team buffs, is much better than what SR could get from healing/regen through IOs/team buffs.

 

The proportional benefit can be a boon or a disadvantage for the sets themselves.  Sets that kind of do a lot of things moderately tend to get the most benefit though, which is why bio and elec armor and dark armor can be so good with a finished build.

 

6 hours ago, Katharos said:

Q: How would you change regen to make it more fun?
A: Awh, man. I don't know. Making something more fun is trickier than just making it good, you know? I think making elements of the set more proactive than reactive would help - looking at the durations of existing powers compared to their cooldowns, for example. I don't necessarily agree with the others here who advocate for making the rez apply its own benefits outside of death, because that would be just another clickie to make busywork, and having things you can skip in a set is good. The game's designed around an expectation you'll take a certain number of power pool powers. I would say that regen *needs* Shadow Meld, or something comparable to it. I really cannot imagine playing regen without it.

I don't particularly agree that it needs Shadow Meld, but then I've only taken it on one character that is a /nin scrap.  My regens, I could certainly see a use for it, couldn't fit it in for concept reasons.  They still function quite well.  Or perhaps I'm coming from the perspective opportunities of a Stalker regen.  Being able to drop a Lightning Rod to break an alpha and/or an Assassin's Strike to take out a particular foe and leave the rest of the spawn demoralized does assist in the beginning busywork of initiating your own alpha strike.

 

I sort of agree with your premise on Revive, though.  Rather than making that another in-battle click, I'd probably rather Instant Healing work as a "reset" button and actually instantly heal with a 30% heal on top of the regen buff.  As is, it almost relies on be using Dull Pain first since my HP isn't as good as a scrapper and if I'm using IH, I need *instant* healing pretty often.

 

I think someone in this thread already mentioned the suggestion I made once to help give Regen a bit of "omph": just give it debuff resistance in most of its powers.  Put a little bit in Fast healing and Resilience and put a decent stacking chunk in Reconstruction and Dull Pain, and a large chunk in Instant Healing and Moment of Glory.  Give it -def, -ToHit, -recovery and -rech resist in those amounts in the mentioned powers stacking to a high amount if you actually have them all active at once (which, if you've activated all your clickies at once, might mean you need it).  It also adds value to every point of buff you get if you have the capacity to defend it.  It doesn't outright put you on even effective survival as outlier sets but gives you the potential to surpass them.

 

6 hours ago, Katharos said:

Q: You just hate regen! Not all sets are all things to all people, and that's okay.

A: Well, yeah, maybe that's it, but I really wanted to like it. If I had to say one good thing that I liked about the total experience, I'd say that it's neat and interesting and unique that regen had a certain level of custom-tailoured survivability. I could choose for myself how much I wanted and adjust my play accordingly. I felt the pay off for thoughtful play within seconds of taking an action. I additionally liked that, other than the exceptions listed above, it didn't feel like I was especially weak to anything. Regen had an internal rhythm that I could see being fun.

A nice way to end the post.  I personally enjoy Regen.  I'm not a hardcore enthusiast or anything but I do like my characters to play and feel different.  I don't like it when two characters using 2 different sets feel exactly the same and that tends to be what you get with a lot of armor sets.  I'm not trying to change though samey sets, but I'd prefer people not make the unique sets the same as those samey sets.

 

A personal story of mine: I played an Elec/Regen stalker on live that I adored to death.  He even had some art of him done as well as making a kind of narrative web of other characters he was involved with.  On HC, I remade him as an Elec/Bio stalker and, while he was good...it just didn't feel like the original concept at all so I had to scrap all his IOs and send him over to a remade /regen stalker who I put on the back burner because of other reasons but will likely start him back up once I have the time.  That feeling of custom survival and razor's edge blastery play is probably why I feel it fits his concept.  

[Llewellyn Blackwell]

On 6/7/2020 at 9:01 AM, Heraclea said:

This is an important point too.  Regen is just not well suited to run Incarnate content or Dark Astoria missions because of its issue with eating every debuff and not resisting them.  It starts going bad with those endless Marksman plinkers and Galaxies on Council missions.  Every large spawn will have several.  The constant -recharge hurts Regen where it is most vulnerable, taking away the ability to use the self-heals it is supposed to depend on.  Regen needs the same kind of resistance to recharge slows that Electric has against endurance drains. 

 

As for the incarnate stuff, those mobs and encounters are just badly designed and need a pass to make them more melee friendly. 

Yep because the Melee ATs the most powerful, best solo-ability, and all around strongest ATs  are just so unfairly punished when they are so blatantly much easier out of the box to pick up and play then every other AT in the game.

 

I mean do you hate mobs that have auras to because they unfairly punish melee?

[Llewellyn Blackwell]

On 6/7/2020 at 9:34 AM, DrInfernus said:

This is very very true. Regen is already so good that the reason it cant simply be given to tanks is as is, with its current performance, added onto a tanks higher base HP alone would lead to something beyond OP, factor in a tanks higher %s with heal effects and it goes into mountains of madness levels of horror.

 

Regen is good as is, and great if one wants it to be.

[ShardWarrior]

On 6/8/2020 at 10:18 PM, 0th Power said:

5. Have the heals in dull pain and reconstruction fire off at the beginning of the animation, rather then towards the end. 

This does not help when stuck in an animation.