Weekly Discussion 71: Regeneration

[CaptainLupis]

20 hours ago, Ironblade said:

Overall, I like it a lot.  Ironblade is broadsword/regen and he was the first character I made when I started playing just before the 1st anniversary.  He has remained my favorite and most-played character.

 

My only gripe would be that Resilience has such low numbers that it's basically useless.  So much so that I have never even considered taking the power - on Ironblade.  I DID take it on another scrapper to see if it was as useless as I thought and I decided it was.

It helps when you use an awaken, and you can slot res set +def IOs, and unbreakable guard +hp etc. Beyond that I'm struggling...

 

My very first 50 back on live was a DM/regen scrapper that I loved. I also had 50s spines/regen, broadsword/regen. I disliked the instant heal nerf, but I rolled with it and continued playing and adapted, they were still good, but what I really hated was how clicky the set became. I suffer from severe lag spikes a lot of the time, so being able to tell when to use heals is hard. I can often go from appearing to be fine to dead in a blink, and when your set is based around click heals that's not good. It's why I never play the set now, I prefer defence and res sets as at least I know that if I get hit by the dreaded lag monster I will almost certainly still survive long enough until the spike is over and I can do something. It's a shame as I absolutely loved playing regen back in the day.

 

In conclusion, less clicks please. Make IH a toggle with a lower regen amount, I would also give reconstruction a regen boost as well as the heal, but make that part a diminishing value over say a 15 to 20 second duration. And also give it and integration more regen debuff resistance. I don't even know what I would do with MoG and revive.

 

Edit: Scratch the regen debuff resistance in reconstruction, it should clearly be in resilience. Too many R words!

Edited October 7, 2020 by CaptainLupis

[Zepp]

2 hours ago, DSorrow said:

My biggest issue with Regeneration is being locked into quite a bit of animation time in order to stay alive. This wouldn't be a problem if Regen actually offered above-par survivability or offense, but it doesn't do either so a Regen character ends up having to choose between sub-par offense or defense. Another huge issue with Regen is that it's extremely weak against debuffs, especially -Regen, -Heal and -Rech out of which the last one is very common. Also given the lack of innate Defense, most of those debuffs are likely to land. Finally, we get to its main weakness: spike damage, which is prevalent everywhere in the game unless you play at very low difficulty settings. No Defense means that at +3 (+4, but let's assume basically everyone playing +4 has Alpha) enemies have 65-85% chance to hit depending on their rank, so jumping in to a full spawn means you'll get hit by a majority of them. This extremely short reaction time brings me to the clickies, their effects should kick in instantly, as in, when you click the power, not when the animation ends.

 

Thematically the set is cool, but every time I play it the performance just makes me wish I was playing something else instead. Bopper's list of changes looks pretty good, though.

The only excessively long animation is MoG, the other animation times are about a second. I wouldn't object to having all the animation times cut in half, but they are not "locking you in" to the extent you imply.

[Galaxy Brain]

17 minutes ago, Zepp said:

The only excessively long animation is MoG, the other animation times are about a second. I wouldn't object to having all the animation times cut in half, but they are not "locking you in" to the extent you imply.

Part of it is that you do not instantly heal when activating Recon / Dull Pain

[CaptainLupis]

I would have suggested having instant healing switched to a toggle but doing a heal over time, as opposed to regen, however I think the constant green numbers floating over your head would be annoying, unless they could be disabled.

[DSorrow]

34 minutes ago, Zepp said:

The only excessively long animation is MoG, the other animation times are about a second. I wouldn't object to having all the animation times cut in half, but they are not "locking you in" to the extent you imply.

They are short, yes, but constantly activating even short activation powers eats up the time you could be using for offense. Let's say you use a combination of Reconstruction / DP three times a minute, which I don't think is an outrageous assumption, 5% of your overall animation time is being eaten up by trying to stay alive. Once you add in Instant Healing, MoG, Shadow Meld, Hasten and so on, you're suddenly using in excess of 10% of your overall animation time for mediocre survivability when most sets get the same results in <5% total animation time. Maybe 10-15% isn't much to you, but numerically it makes Regen offensively worse than probably all the other sets besides Granite Stone builds out there with not much to show for it on the survival side. Of course, you can choose to avoid using the active abilities, but then you're choosing between sub-par survivability or offense.

 

Then there's the other side of the coin: being locked into animations from your offensive set that completely prevent you from using your survivability tools for what might be too long... I'm still convinced animations are a big source of issues for Regen.

[RageusQuitus2]

Give the sets taunt aura an enemy debuff.  Like -max hp or - regeneration.  And give back + regen or healing or max hps.  Maybe a max number of foes affected 5-10. 

 

My regen brute has alot of things going for it.  3800 ish hps, i think perma dull pain iirc.  But the clicking and no damage aura had me shelve it. 

Edited October 7, 2020 by RageusQuitus2

[Tsuko]

4 hours ago, Supertanker said:

Make Reconstruction usable when defeated. Drop Revive for some other power.

yeah, that's what regen need atm, a rez every 15 seconds 😄

[Tsuko]

 

double post for some reasons ^^

Edited October 7, 2020 by Tsuko

[Eldyem]

13 hours ago, Brutal Justice said:

I feel like a lot of people try to use IH as a save click.  Clicking it when they start to notice they are in trouble, hoping it will save them.  It’s much better used as a preventative click.  Proactive instead of reactive.  As a toggle it filled that proactive role and performed much higher. 

Unlike other MMOs, defensive cooldowns just aren't really a think in CoH, so I understand why people struggle to use click powers like this effectively; every other defensive click, bar maybe Icy Bastion or Shadow Meld, is either (somewhat) trivially made perma or is better off used reactively.

 

IH, in its current state, feels designed for a completely different type of game.

[Zepp]

@Galaxy Brain, it would definitely be preferable to move the heal to the beginning of the animation.

@DSorrow, if you are using that much Reconstruction it is a heavy burden. However, making Instant Healing reliable (either Toggle or perma-able) would reduce the number of times you need to click it, which would be a better fix than messing with the animation times of all the powers.

I do agree that animation time management is a bigger issue for Regen than other armors. That being said, I see that as knowing the set rather than a definitive drawback. Regen does take skill to use well, more than most armor sets. That means that performance will be more closely tied to how you play. When teaming with Scrappers, I find that Regen Scrappers are preferable because they actually pay attention to the entire field of battle.

 

As I stated before:

• Regen should continue to be a set that requires skill (that means click-management).
• Regen needs increased reliability: status protections, (reducing IH timer to 270s or making it a toggle), possibly reactive resistance (I would prefer they scale to incoming damage than to HP).
• There should be some recharge reduction: Instant Healing (270s or Toggle), Revive (150s), MoG (change to 30s duration and 180s recharge).

I will add:

• Move effects to the beginning of animations.
• Reduce MoG animation time if possible.
• Reduce other animation times if it is not overly burdensome.

[DSorrow]

2 minutes ago, Zepp said:

I do agree that animation time management is a bigger issue for Regen than other armors. That being said, I see that as knowing the set rather than a definitive drawback. Regen does take skill to use well, more than most armor sets. That means that performance will be more closely tied to how you play.

I actually like sets that require player skill, but I just think it's a bummer that especially in the case of Regen the skill requirements don't translate to higher performance potential. For me the biggest issue about this whole thing is that even an optimally played Regen is probably about as good as a decently played any other defensive set with a similar level of build investment, so because there is no mechanical upside, I just fail to see how it is not a drawback.

[drbuzzard]

For those who have not tried sentinel regeneration, the reason it is well liked it because it doesn't have click Instant Heal. It replaces it with an early accessible power (tier 4) called instant regeneration. It's an absorb shield which replenishes rapidly enough that you can fully ignore a few even level minions beating on you. However it's not like the IH of the old days where you had the whole health bar as a rubber band, where if something didn't like you in one burst, you'd never die. Personally I think it was a brilliant solution for bringing back the old feel of regeneration without making it overpowered (gloriously I might add) as it once was.

[Coyote]

2 hours ago, Eldyem said:

Unlike other MMOs, defensive cooldowns just aren't really a think in CoH, so I understand why people struggle to use click powers like this effectively; every other defensive click, bar maybe Icy Bastion or Shadow Meld, is either (somewhat) trivially made perma or is better off used reactively.

 

IH, in its current state, feels designed for a completely different type of game.

 

This is a good explanation. I'm having success with a Regen Brute (though he sucked until the 30s), largely because I treat the defensive clicks as kind of a rotation, and use them pre-emptively. If you wait to take damage and then set up the regeneration, things can get rough. Especially with an offensive set with slower animations.

Given that it's easier and more intuitive to react to damage rather than anticipate it and set up defenses ahead of time, it seems like if you DO set up the defenses properly, you SHOULD have top-end performance. But instead, you have to set up the defenses just to have a balanced result, and if you don't, the set is quite weak.

I don't think the concept is that bad... as stated, having a "different playstyle" defensive set is not a bad thing. But if the playstyle is more difficult and active, then it probably should result in higher performance when done right.

[Replacement]

15 hours ago, Bopper said:

I full-heartedly agree with this statement. Absorb is not thematic to regen, despite the fact folks say it is. Regen takes incoming damage and quickly heals from it, Absorb removes damage from ever getting through in the first place. It's complete opposites. Resistance is closer to being thematic to regeneration, which is why I added the 2nd Res(All) effect to the set. 

You know I understand this assessment but I would like to propose a grisly counterpoint:

 

Absorb effects typically represent an ablative effect taking the damage in your stead (with some exceptions). Regen is uniquely positioned in the lore to describe it as your own flesh providing the ablation.  Essentially: you are the expendable barrier.

Mechanically, it's just a way to provide some regeneration without dealing with the deep system rules (predefined universal interval, max hp scaling).

[Heraclea]

15 hours ago, ForeverLaxx said:

Another problem with Regen stems from the player's focus of "requiring" a set to reach the defense softcap for end-game content, and that makes Regen the hardest and most expensive set in the game to achieve this due to it having no innate ways to get there without IO bonuses and pool powers. That might be worth the tradeoff considering how strong Regen is once you're unhittable (as noted by MoG), but it may be worth consideration somewhere.

This is as much a design flaw of the later added, Incarnate level, and Praetorian content as it is with with Regen per se.  There are just too many enemy attacks you just can't be hit with. 

[Replacement]

Also, I think I will feel differently in an hour but atm...

 

I'm liking the idea of 8/9ths @Bopper and 1/9th @Vanden -- get Revive earlier in the set instead of mega Revive at the end.

@Supertanker mentioned basically rolling it into Reconstruction and that's maybe a bit much, but I could see rolling it into Dull Pain.

 

Better yet, I could see Instant Healing moved earlier and give it a pulsing revive effect. As in, stays active through defeat, pulses a self-revive every 10 seconds or so.

[Troo]

3 hours ago, drbuzzard said:

For those who have not tried sentinel regeneration, the reason it is well liked it because it doesn't have click Instant Heal. It replaces it with an early accessible power (tier 4) called instant regeneration. It's an absorb shield which replenishes rapidly enough that you can fully ignore a few even level minions beating on you. However it's not like the IH of the old days where you had the whole health bar as a rubber band, where if something didn't like you in one burst, you'd never die. Personally I think it was a brilliant solution for bringing back the old feel of regeneration without making it overpowered (gloriously I might add) as it once was.

do you think this would scale well to Tankers?

[BrandX]

On 10/6/2020 at 10:06 AM, Yomo Kimyata said:

I was going to make some Energy Melee/Regen alts since they are so hated, but it’s too popular a combo for my tastes!

Made a Brute EM/Regen, but I really want it as Scrapper.

[drbuzzard]

3 minutes ago, Troo said:

do you think this would scale well to Tankers?

This is a rather moot point since tankers don't get regeneration. However the great thing about this technique is that it is easily tuned. Basically an amount of instant healing (at a high level) is a set amount well lower than the total level of health. Basically it defines a set level of damage mitigation. You can essentially ignore X damage per time, but big hits make it rather less impressive. Say you're fighting Bobcat in a Tin Mage TF, the big hits will blow right through this and you better have other things going for you or you will dead immediately. It doesn't have an ability to scale against the incoming damage like resistance or defense. Both of those are scaling. An 8k hit from Bobcat does 0 or 8k with defense, but only 5% of the time. An 8k hit from Bobcat against 90% resistance is scaled down to 800. Against this flavor of absorb shield 8k is 8k (well say it's a 600 HP shield, it's 7400). but is will be proportionally better against lesser attacks IMO, which would be interesting and unlike the rest of the defensive sets.

 

Playing a regeneration sentinel is rather interesting in that you learn your threshold of incoming damage which you can basically ignore, and you avoid stepping past it because it means you die very quickly.

 

 

[Troo]

1 hour ago, Heraclea said:

16 hours ago, ForeverLaxx said:

Another problem with Regen stems from the player's focus of "requiring" a set to reach the defense softcap for end-game content, and that makes Regen the hardest and most expensive set in the game to achieve this due to it having no innate ways to get there without IO bonuses and pool powers. That might be worth the tradeoff considering how strong Regen is once you're unhittable (as noted by MoG), but it may be worth consideration somewhere.

This is as much a design flaw of the later added, Incarnate level, and Praetorian content as it is with with Regen per se.  There are just too many enemy attacks you just can't be hit with.

I think Heraclea could be correct here.

 

Also, for those trying to chase defensive soft caps.. are you sure that's the best way to go?

 

Regen is more akin to resistance. You're gonna get hit, how hard is then the question. Would adding resistance have a bigger benefit?

[ShardWarrior]

7 hours ago, Zepp said:

The only excessively long animation is MoG, the other animation times are about a second. I wouldn't object to having all the animation times cut in half, but they are not "locking you in" to the extent you imply.

I could be wrong but I believe this may have more to do with being stuck in an attack animation when needing to click a heal.  Other sets do not need to worry about this as much as regen does.

[BrandX]

Agreed with not thinking Regen needs absorb.  Personally, I'd just like to see it upgraded enough, that it doesn't have all the suggestions for melee set to go with it, being a set with a +Def attack 😛

 

I can't say exactly what exactly it needs, but I have felt Resilience could use more +Resist.  MoG could use Defense/Resist to ALL, no gaps.

 

 

[Troo]

22 minutes ago, drbuzzard said:

This is a rather moot point since tankers don't get regeneration. However the great thing about this technique is that it is easily tuned. Basically an amount of instant healing (at a high level) is a set amount well lower than the total level of health.

Your response makes sense.

I was looking forward with the question to Tankers getting a proliferated set. For ATs with a larger pool of hit points, is it more beneficial to take away from regen to add absorb.

[Zepp]

@ShardWarrior I addressed that in the next post. Yes, if you do not know Regen or make a mistake in planning you can get locked into an offensive animation at the wrong time. That is why melee Regen generally tries to focus on offensive sets with shorter animations - or avoid powers with long animations. Again, I do not think that is necessarily a problem with a set as much as something you have to work around.

[srmalloy]

4 hours ago, drbuzzard said:

However it's not like the IH of the old days where you had the whole health bar as a rubber band, where if something didn't like you in one burst, you'd never die.

Back before Regen got nerfed reworked the first time, what I noticed with my Katana/Regen Scrapper was that, in a fight, your survival depended on whether you could whittle down the incoming damage to less than your regen rate before you ran out of hit points, that reaching minimum HP in a fight generally occurred about 25% of the way through a fight, and that learning where the line between the groups you could and couldn't do this with was one of the primary skills you needed to play Regen. This was back when all you had were SOs, with limited ability to get Resistance and Defense on top of your regeneration. The thing that supported the arguments for nerfing Regen was that, regardless of how tough the fight was, Regen characters almost always came out of it at full HP, because you healed the hits you took over and over again until all the damage was gone.