Is Regen still worth playing?

[DreadShinobi]

I think the thing about regen, is that even if you make a great build for it with softcapped defenses and over 100 global recharge, which is much more difficult than other sets, there is no offensive pay-off at all. You still have to manage your clicks, which will reduce your dps. You don't get any recharge buff. The recovery buff is minor and you still have to factor in your endurance consumption while other armor sets may be able to disregard it completely. You don't get any debuff resistance. You don't get a damage aura. You don't get a damage buff or any offensive tools. You don't get any crowd control. You don't get a good taunt aura or none at all. And with all that said, you still have to deal with having poor baseline resistances, possibly poor defense numbers. Or you put so much of your slotting into getting good defense numbers and recharge that you're missing out on some good proc slotting potential. It is a large tradeoff to make regen .... still not perform as well as most other armor sets can.

[Sir Myshkin]

I feel like playing Devil's Advocate.

 

I won't input a side on "good" or "bad" about Regen as a set, but I want to put a theoretical analysis out there based on my own experiences with the set over the years. I played a Claws/Regen Scrapper all those many moons ago on the Retail servers, and I wasn't going to replicate the set here on Homecoming until a bit of a challenge/debate came up last year about pairing Regen with what should have been the most ineffective choice (based on mechanic/animation) in Titan Weapons. I built and IO'd the character much to the same degree I did the first time and ended up with a character that had mid-line defenses that could be insta-patched in MoG and Shadow Meld, runs with Dull Pain on auto, and through Instant Healing and Rebirth is capable of spending a ridiculous amount of time at 170 HP/s regeneration (sans heals).

 

In most teams at the 50+ range I was often diving in head first and clearing through most of the basic content in the game with relative ease, often surviving just on passive choices and Dull Pain bumping up stats alongside any lingering team buffs (so many people floating around with Maneuvers and such). Even in Incarnate content, so long as I was being mindful of my surroundings, I could handle most situations fine solo, but the team dynamic is what's important about what I want to point out. A lot of this thread has been focused on solo performance of the set, very selfishly the prospect of "look how good I am (or am not, in this case) alone!" Teaming is still a big corner stone of this game however, and even in the case of high-end builds, many people are still taking those into 8-body groups and 40-body leagues where they stand out less and less...

 

If I take a Resistance capped Tanker, with 45% S/L added Defense into a League, what is that build truly net positive on? Might manage to fill in some exotic damages, but the core bump really comes down to "not much." We'll even go so far as to exclude Incarnate abilities like Rebirth and Barrier bringing in significant--and massive radius--buffs. If I put two support characters onto the team that bring +Res and +Def, they add next to no value benefit to that Tanker, but if I apply those values to the Regen character I've no exponentially enhanced that character's value/ability.

 

What is truly the superior build, a character that self-caps, with minimal values on healing potential and regen, or a high-performing regen/heal build that can be capped by the support of other team members? I drag along a Force Field and Sonic Resonance Defender (each with Maneuvers), and I've now got 48% Def with 55% Res to all but Psionic being applied on top of my own stats. Even without inherent debuff protection these values start to over compensate for one or two if my own defense is already 32% or higher. If I'm running a Brute for sake of the larger caps, I'm looking at 80% Defense and easily capped S/L Resistance at a minimum, possibly across the board with the correct choice of investments to diversify 35% on each. That Brute, compared to its non-Regen counter part however is packing an insane amount of healing power and at least one instant-kick "get out of jail free" card in MoG in the invent of a potential cascade failure.

 

From this perspective Regen is really the optimal team armor in the game.

[Verfall]

I said it in a thread awhile back, but I'll repeat it here; regen should be the king of debuff resistance.

 

Slows, defense, tohit, regen(of course), resistance etc. If its a debuff, regen should barely notice.

 

Than give it boosts to everything that isn't defense or resistance. Recovery, recharge, accuracy, endurance total, hp total, give the absorb for sentinels to all regen sets.

 

Follow up by making all regen sets the best at regen even with base SO slotting and I'd think the results may be worth something.

[Galaxy Brain]

@Troo, as I mentioned the seconds thing is more of a score with the assumption that the damage would actually come in per second in this infinite trial. Of course in a real test the times would be longer, but I'd reckon that against anything but psy damage invuln will pull ahead both passively and actively. 

 

[Spinal]

7 hours ago, Sir Myshkin said:

From this perspective Regen is really the optimal team armor in the game.

Well said (your whole post). I have about the exact same thoughts.

[Snarky]

8 hours ago, Sir Myshkin said:

I feel like playing Devil's Advocate.

 

From this perspective Regen is really the optimal team armor in the game.

Well, I must be batting for the other side then.  To me (just to me. ? !) You are saying Regen is best for teams/leagues because it is hands down so crappy it gets the most boosts from everyone's buffs.  

[archgemini24]

On 3/3/2021 at 11:01 PM, Galaxy Brain said:

To be honest, the other half of it being hard to master is that it is not *rewarding* to do so. It'd be one thing if Regen were super reactive and hard to pin down but doing so makes you immortal, but other armor sets are tougher with 1/4th the IQ required.

This part. Right here. And to pile on, not only does equal investment (I/O, strategy, execution) not only lead to lesser mitigation results, but using a lot of that mitigation also reduces offensive output, because (as a lot of Super Reflexes users used to say), Regen has to click to save its a**, whereas SR clicks to kick a**.

Edited March 5, 2021 by archgemini24
snipped for simplicity

[Galaxy Brain]

 

 

I respect you a lot @Sir Myshkin, but wouldn't a Blaster Sustain (not saying which one is which) make for an even BETTER team armor set given it has even more room to be buffed while having similar healing rates + better AoE damage?

 

 

While yes, Regen does gain a lot more from outside buffs.... the other armor sets do not need those buffs to succeed and can get them just the same as the Regen character.

 

 

Actually, a better comparison would be looking at Regen vs Willpower and Bio (and arguably Rad Armor too) as they are all the "healing" sets if one were to thematically roll a regenerator.

Edited March 5, 2021 by Galaxy Brain

[Erratic1]

13 minutes ago, Galaxy Brain said:

Actually, a better comparison would be looking at Regen vs Willpower and Bio (and arguably Rad Armor too) as they are all the "healing" sets if one were to thematically roll a regenerator.

 

I am NOT posting that picture a 3rd time!

 

[Galaxy Brain]

1 minute ago, Erratic1 said:

 

I am NOT posting that picture a 3rd time!

 

There's a reason that pic exists! lol

[Bill Z Bubba]

8 hours ago, Sir Myshkin said:

What is truly the superior build, a character that self-caps, with minimal values on healing potential and regen, or a high-performing regen/heal build that can be capped by the support of other team members?

The one that can survive without said team members.

[Snarky]

Aragorn: "Give me your sword." Aragorn: "What is your name?" Háleth: "Háleth, son of Háma, my lord." Háleth: "The men are saying that we will not live out the night. They say that it is hopeless." [Aragorn stands up and swings the sword.] Aragorn: "This is a good sword, Háleth, son of Háma." [He lays his hand on the boys shoulder.] Aragorn: "There is always hope."

[Heraclea]

22 hours ago, Rathulfr said:

 

No, it's me, too.  Sometimes I log in to a "sub-optimal" alt to start playing it for fun, and then I remember how much better it would be if it were (insert more optimal AT/set combo), and my enthusiasm just drains away.  I have to remind myself that I'm playing the char for "fun", not for optimization.

 

I find I have the most fun when I am playing a character that's attuned to the content and strong or useful in it.  Somebody wants a Kahn TF?  Let me bring the poison/dark defender.  Malta missions?  Looks like a job for the /electric armor brute.  Apex? One of my radiation armor characters is good for that.  (With combat jumping, which I think they all have.)  And so forth.  This is the main reason why I even have a /Regen character at all.  They're not whole game characters or mains by any means, but the excel at exemping and are good in a limited selection of late game content.  

[Erratic1]

Darn this thread, I am now thinking about a Willpower Tanker.

 

Isn't it enough I got goaded into an SR Tanker (whom I really enjoy)?

[Snarky]

Just now, Erratic1 said:

Darn this thread, I am now thinking about a Willpower Tanker.

 

Isn't it enough I got goaded into an SR Tanker (whom I really enjoy)?

I just 50's a Energy Melee / Willpower Brute.  I am really surprised how strong Energy Melee is now.  But what shocked me more was how, without even being softcapped, Willpower just rocks content.  Granted I did I/O him like crazy and pushed to get energy resist to the mid 40s.  But still, it plays WAY stronger than what I see when I look at MiDs buildout.

[Hew]

8 minutes ago, Snarky said:

Aragorn: "Give me your sword." Aragorn: "What is your name?" Háleth: "Háleth, son of Háma, my lord." Háleth: "The men are saying that we will not live out the night. They say that it is hopeless." [Aragorn stands up and swings the sword.] Aragorn: "This is a good sword, Háleth, son of Háma." [He lays his hand on the boys shoulder.] Aragorn: "There is always hope."

Yay LotR quote!

[Heraclea]

10 hours ago, DreadShinobi said:

I think the thing about regen, is that even if you make a great build for it with softcapped defenses and over 100 global recharge, which is much more difficult than other sets, there is no offensive pay-off at all. You still have to manage your clicks, which will reduce your dps. You don't get any recharge buff. The recovery buff is minor and you still have to factor in your endurance consumption while other armor sets may be able to disregard it completely. You don't get any debuff resistance. You don't get a damage aura. You don't get a damage buff or any offensive tools. You don't get any crowd control. You don't get a good taunt aura or none at all. And with all that said, you still have to deal with having poor baseline resistances, possibly poor defense numbers. Or you put so much of your slotting into getting good defense numbers and recharge that you're missing out on some good proc slotting potential. It is a large tradeoff to make regen .... still not perform as well as most other armor sets can.

This is it in a nutshell.  At minimum, what regen needs is practical immunity to -regen, -health, -heal, -end, and -recharge.  If you're going to try to make an armor set that works so differently from the others with their mixtures of resistance and defense, you need let it to do its thing. 

[Erratic1]

2 minutes ago, Snarky said:

I just 50's a Energy Melee / Willpower Brute.  I am really surprised how strong Energy Melee is now.  But what shocked me more was how, without even being softcapped, Willpower just rocks content.  Granted I did I/O him like crazy and pushed to get energy resist to the mid 40s.  But still, it plays WAY stronger than what I see when I look at MiDs buildout.

 

Heaven give me strength to resist these endless attempts to provoke me to making yet another alt.

 

[America's Angel]

Do any of you actually play min/maxed regens at level 50? They're insanely good. You can tank anything in the game, in both PVE and PVP.

 

It's harder to play well than something you can fire-and-forget like WP or Invuln. But it's a great armour set. I'd hate to see it rebalanced because people don't know how to play it.

[Galaxy Brain]

18 minutes ago, America's Angel said:

Do any of you actually play min/maxed regens at level 50? They're insanely good. You can tank anything in the game, in both PVE and PVP.

 

It's harder to play well than something you can fire-and-forget like WP or Invuln. But it's a great armour set. I'd hate to see it rebalanced because people don't know how to play it.

Yeah, you can make anything work. But the effort to reward for Regen is way off.

 

You gotta put way more work into a  regen to make it compete with the more unga bunga armors, and then it just competes... it doesn't become the unkillable Wolverine/Deadpool/T2 type of character as advertised compared to other sets for all the effort you gotta put in.

[arcane]

Side question that might be covered by walls of texts here... intuition tells me higher HP would make regen better on brutes... but most regens seem to go the scrapper route per my limited anecdotal experience. What are your opinions on what’s best between the two?

[Ratch_]

1 hour ago, America's Angel said:

Do any of you actually play min/maxed regens at level 50? They're insanely good. You can tank anything in the game, in both PVE and PVP.

 

It's harder to play well than something you can fire-and-forget like WP or Invuln. But it's a great armour set. I'd hate to see it rebalanced because people don't know how to play it.

Got a build?

[Bill Z Bubba]

14 minutes ago, arcane said:

Side question that might be covered by walls of texts here... intuition tells me higher HP would make regen better on brutes... but most regens seem to go the scrapper route per my limited anecdotal experience. What are your opinions on what’s best between the two?

More HP does make regen better. By the numbers Brute Regen > Scrapper Regen.

I suspect, as GB just stated, that a lot go the scrapper route due to Deadpool/Wolverine reasons.

[America's Angel]

1 hour ago, Galaxy Brain said:

Yeah, you can make anything work. But the effort to reward for Regen is way off.

 

You gotta put way more work into a  regen to make it compete with the more unga bunga armors, and then it just competes... it doesn't become the unkillable Wolverine/Deadpool/T2 type of character as advertised compared to other sets for all the effort you gotta put in.

"It's harder to play" is a bad reason to rebalance a set that is already balanced.

 

21 minutes ago, Ratch_ said:

Got a build?

Whenever I post a build people start nerfherding. So no. :)

Edited March 5, 2021 by America's Angel

[Infinitum]

1 hour ago, America's Angel said:

Do any of you actually play min/maxed regens at level 50? They're insanely good. You can tank anything in the game, in both PVE and PVP.

 

It's harder to play well than something you can fire-and-forget like WP or Invuln. But it's a great armour set. I'd hate to see it rebalanced because people don't know how to play it.

I am finding this one hard to believe - a while back I ran tests on regen to identify its weaknesses for potential buffs.

 

The long and short of it is even if you go into the pool powers its substantially weaker than every other set from a survivalist stand point.

 

It has few redeeming qualities - that other sets like willpower and bio don't already do better.

 

Its playable - yes and can be made decent - but it's the equivalent of taking a ford escort and spending 200k on it to make it compete with corvettes and Ferraris - which even Then would not do - and at that point its still a 220k ford escort.

 

It just needs help by almost anyone accounting it.