Will Regen ever be reworked?

[Naraka]

10 minutes ago, Solarverse said:

 

I'm not sure how you take somebody attaching "you have the audacity" to you, but when somebody attaches it to me, I take it the way it reads, it's like saying that you think that I know what I am saying is bull, but I am saying it anyway, in other words, calling me a liar. It's a very passive aggressive statement and I have never been one to mince words and I can't stand passive aggressive people. So if you didn't mean it in that way, that I owe you an apology, but if this is the way you meant it, then my responses stand, moderated or not.

You probably spent more energy justifying your aggression than you did clarifying your statement.

 

I told you why I didn't believe what you were saying (taking x% pool def from SR and Regen isn't the same) so it'd be on you to clarify why you think it would be equal.

 

Talking about removing the res from toughness would be closer to being an equal gimp to the sets but that's just that one power... The more stacking pool def you remove from both, the more you affect SR than Regen.

 

If you want to take subtext out of the use of audacity, it's more that you think I'm that ignorant of how stacking def works.

[Solarverse]

Just now, Naraka said:

You probably spent more energy justifying your aggression than you did clarifying your statement.

 

I told you why I didn't believe what you were saying (taking x% pool def from SR and Regen isn't the same) so it'd be on you to clarify why you think it would be equal.

 

Talking about removing the res from toughness would be closer to being an equal gimp to the sets but that's just that one power... The more stacking pool def you remove from both, the more you affect SR than Regen.

 

If you want to take subtext out of the use of audacity, it's more that you think I'm that ignorant of how stacking def works.

 

And what I am saying, is that even without the defense from pools, I think...think...that you are more survivable than Regen can heal through getting hit with everything, not dodging a single shot with not much to speak of resistance to damage. I think Regen will drop far quicker than SR would under those circumstances. I may be wrong, but my money is on SR. Not sure why that had to be such a big fuss or why I even had to explain myself. you took a quick reply that showed my lack of faith in Regen that I didn't feel I needed to explain and turned it in to a huge mess. Congrats. Think we can move on now?

[Erratic1]

3 minutes ago, Naraka said:

 

Yeah, my comparison was mainly on the route of 1 to 35. Early on, you don't even have the next toggles on DA and if you do later on, you can turn them off mid fight to reserve END (tactically, you only really need them if you are trying to slow enemies from running). Further still, because of the way the resists are spread, you need to run those 3 toggles on Elec but you can opt to run just what you need on DA.

 

The first four powers in Dark Armor are toggles. Leaving aside the damage aura (and its 0.52/s cost), if you want the full spread of resistances and mezz protection you are looking at 0.63/s cost for Dark Embrace, Murky Cloud, and Obsidian Shield (all available by level 10 in the secondary position).  Electric Armor will run you 0.73/s for its equivalent powers (also all available by level 10 in the secondary position).  Electric Armor is running you 0.10/s more.  So Electric Armor does run more, but the amount is negligible. Compare that 0.1/s to the cost to use the initial attack in Savage Melee, Savage Strike, which is 1.2/s. Savage Strike, which you are highly likely to have taken and be using in the 1 to 35 level range, is consuming 12 times as much endurance. Slotting one SO in Savage Strike saves you nearly 3.6 times as much endurance as the difference between running Electric Armor's base required toggles and running Dark Armor's.

 

 

3 minutes ago, Naraka said:

 

There's also the prospect of ghosts early on in the game. Elec is getting eaten alive.

 

There is also the prospect of facing Freakshow...heck, a much better chance of it in my experience. You kind of laugh at their endurance drain too. 😛

 

3 minutes ago, Naraka said:

 

Overall, I think I'm just more experienced with early DA than Elec but having extra tools to stay alive with Elec is good. For DA, you just need END to stay alive lol

 

Yeah, but Electrical Armor brings its own endurance recovery to the party. 😁

[Naraka]

1 minute ago, Solarverse said:

 

And what I am saying, is that even without the defense from pools, I think...think...that you are more survivable than Regen can heal through getting hit with everything, not dodging a single shot with not much to speak of resistance to damage. I think Regen will drop far quicker than SR would under those circumstances. I may be wrong, but my money is on SR. Not sure why that had to be such a big fuss or why I even had to explain myself. you took a quick reply that showed my lack of faith in Regen that I didn't feel I needed to explain and turned it in to a huge mess. Congrats. Think we can move on now?

 

And this is an example of gaslighting, ladies and gents.

 

Apparently I'm the one (the sole source!!!) that made a big fuss so I get to take all the congratulations for it. I'm so very grateful lol

 

I still think you're being overly critical of Regen.

 

In the side discussions about Electric armor, I was commenting about the difference mitigation attacks can make. While Regen does have to contend with all the attacks that make it through, there is a measure of control you can apply to make up for that (depending on your attack set). When attacks get past that, Regen can just head it off while SR has to hope it takes them low enough to get that res to kick in.

[Bill Z Bubba]

11 minutes ago, ForeverLaxx said:

What I'm getting at is that these sets were "balanced" around the idea that their self-rez powers would be utilized.

 

Balanced to fail. Yea, that concept sucks as much as 1 hero = 3 minions but I'm not arguing. I agree with you. Yank the rule. If you have a self-rez, use it! But at least try to keep track of how many times it needs to be used.

 

Or ignore the whole damn thing. Choose everything by concept, ignore everything else. Let's fix nothing and make no attempts at correcting old and poor decisions... other than buffing tanks more, of course.

[Troo]

3 hours ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

hell, you might as well be building a blaster.

 

In some ways this is spot on.

 

3 hours ago, TheZag said:

If i could click my heal from regen in the middle of a shadow maul, or any animation for that matter,  then the set would actually feel reactionary to me.  As it is now,  i have reacted that i need a heal and i get to hit the button 12 times while i wait for an animation to finish.  Letting regen clicks overlap with other abilities would go a long way to fixing the set in my opinion.

Hitting the button 12 times gave me a chuckle. Been there.

 

Once I got a better feel for regen it became about choices and consequences. If I go for the long Energy Transfer right now, I might not get to use Dull Pain later.. better use it now. I have always enjoyed that aspect.

 

Your idea of overlapping is interesting.. All power sets would want that.

 

Edited January 28, 2022 by Troo

[Naraka]

13 minutes ago, Erratic1 said:

 

The first four powers in Dark Armor are toggles. Leaving aside the damage aura (and its 0.52/s cost), if you want the full spread of resistances and mezz protection you are looking at 0.63/s cost for Dark Embrace, Murky Cloud, and Obsidian Shield (all available by level 10 in the secondary position).  Electric Armor will run you 0.73/s for its equivalent powers (also all available by level 10 in the secondary position).  Electric Armor is running you 0.10/s more.  So Electric Armor does run more, but the amount is negligible. Compare that 0.1/s to the cost to use the initial attack in Savage Melee, Savage Strike, which is 1.2/s. Savage Strike, which you are highly likely to have taken and be using in the 1 to 35 level range, is consuming 12 times as much endurance. Slotting one SO in Savage Strike saves you nearly 3.6 times as much endurance as the difference between running Electric Armor's base required toggles and running Dark Armor's.

 

 

 

There is also the prospect of facing Freakshow...heck, a much better chance of it in my experience. You kind of laugh at their endurance drain too. 😛

 

 

Yeah, but Electrical Armor brings its own endurance recovery to the party. 😁

Ah, so you're saying my intuition was correct lol but yeah, energy is a pain for DA early on and it's refreshing being able to shrug off their electric attacks and drains but DA also has a moderate resistance to drains.

 

I think one prospect not touched on about Elec armor is, if paired with something that drains END (later on, power sink), you can floor the END of those tough targets with the damage aura. Problem is, that is nearly unusable for other sets like early Savage Melee. 

 

Funnily enough, I've drained foes on my Elec/Regen and Elec/Bio stalkers too. 

 

[arcane]

K guys my calculations indicate this thread is ready to move into the kumbaya phase, I got the need to PvP out of my system.

[Erratic1]

5 minutes ago, Naraka said:

 

I think one prospect not touched on about Elec armor is, if paired with something that drains END (later on, power sink), you can floor the END of those tough targets with the damage aura. Problem is, that is nearly unusable for other sets like early Savage Melee. 

 

Truthfully is it now worth trying to floor endurance bars on things you fight over flooring health bars. AVs cheat in any event.

 

If draining endurance inconveniences anything you are fighting, look on it as icing on the cake as opposed to something to shoot for.

[Saikochoro]

Can Regen survive +4/8 content solo? Absolutely, I can do it fine. If a blaster can do a Werner rules ITF, then any armor certainly can. Does that mean it is on par with other armors? No. 
 

Can it be fun to play? Absolutely, I enjoy my Regen characters. That is the armor set that I missed the most and remembered most fondly during the snap. 
 

Is it more high maintenance than say inv or wp? Absolutely.  Is that necessarily a bad thing? Depends on who you ask. There are other click heavy armors that people like and don’t view as gimped (bio armor is a good example). Some people like the busy playstyle of it and that is fine. Others don’t like the fact that it takes away time from damage. I think that is every bit as fair of an opinion. 

I enjoy Regen and can still see value in giving it reasonable buffs. Giving it Regen and recharge debuff resistance is a no brainer. Adding scaling resists also would work wonders for the set. Neither of these things would prevent an alpha strike from taking your health down enough to still need the reactive playstyle. It would help smooth out the danger health zone and prevent you from being -rech to death. 
 

I think it’s reasonable for people to request buffs to the set. Most suggestions I see aren’t crazy and wouldn’t make it the top tier armor or overpowered compared to what else is in the game. And many of the suggestions wouldn’t really change the nature of how the set plays either. It would merely improve it. 

 

TL;DR: Can Regen survive what it needs to survive and get the job done? Yes, as is true for all powersets and archetypes. Does that mean requests for reasonable buffs are misguided or wrong?  No, absolutely not. 

[Luminara]

49 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

Pretty sure not dying is how one compares mitigation.

 

Well, you do stop taking damage while you're in the Defeated state, so...

[A Cat]

40 minutes ago, ForeverLaxx said:

Consider the sets that have a self-rez, though: Regen, Fire, and Dark. Regen is very reactive, and if you can't out-heal what you're fighting then you're guaranteed to lose to it, which means a self-rez effectively forces enemies to take out 2 of your HP bars to put you down. It's meant to be used not necessarily as mitigation per se, but rather, a second chance once the enemies have "wore themselves out" taking you down the first time. Fire also has low mitigation overall to everything but fire damage and it tries to make up for this by bringing more damage to the table. That includes its own self-rez power; meaning that the set was "designed" to fall in tough fights, but stand back up after nuking the things that defeated it.

 

Dark is a bit of an outlier, at least today. However, back in the day, you had to pick and choose which toggles to run as Dark which meant you weren't always mitigated against everything a mob could do. Since the set has so many toggles, its self-rez stuns foes which gives you time to get the toggle you want back up and running to finish off the weakened spawn.

 

What I'm getting at is that these sets were "balanced" around the idea that their self-rez powers would be utilized. This usually means those sets were meant to be overwhelmed in some circumstances so that they'd have to take their self-rez power and use it in order to keep fighting. It's as much of a defensive tool as Elude or Unstoppable used to be, but they're used after a defeat to keep fighting instead of before a defeat to hopefully outlast the group before your endurance is drained and you die anyway. The game has changed dramatically without these sets being updated to reflect it, but I still feel that "no deaths" for sets literally designed to die as part of their balance is unfair.

Willpower also has a self rez right? 

[Saikochoro]

1 minute ago, A Cat said:

Willpower also has a self rez right? 

Yes, resurgence. 

[Troo]

2 hours ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

 

Works for me but it should be a group effort. Get all the secondaries into the mix.

 

Trap door is short enough that we could do this. Pick our favorite primary and then start pairing. Folks can provide tips on pairings we may not be awesome at. I'd do Brutes or Stalkers.

[Bill Z Bubba]

7 minutes ago, Troo said:

Trap door is short enough that we could do this. Pick our favorite primary and then start pairing. Folks can provide tips on pairings we may not be awesome at. I'd do Brutes or Stalkers.

 

Nah, screw it. Doesn't matter. I give up.

[Troo]

6 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

 

Nah, screw it. Doesn't matter. I give up.

 

Ah, I'm still catching up. The thread takes a nose dive? nevermind..

Edited January 28, 2022 by Troo

[JnEricsonx]

17 hours ago, Crysis said:

Didn't read the whole thread 'cuz "LOL Regen" but as far as I'm concerned the rework of Regen is actually over in the Sentinel AT now.  On a Sent, it's actually pretty decent.  Wouldn't mind seeing some of these concepts scaled up a bit and applied to Scrappers/Tankers/Stalkers.  It's nowhere near the ridiculous levels of game breaking mechanics it was back in the early days of Launch on Live, but it's playable and actually fairly sturdy if you can avoid -Regen powers applied against you.  And when you run into -Regen, and my experience is by no means the benchmark, I tend to find most of those are ranged attacks.  So doing a little around-corner pulling and/or herding actually negates most of that stuff (again...not all). 

 

I encourage you to play a /Regen Sent to get a feel for what "could be" and not compare it so much to the Regen set on Scrappers.  That powerset was seriously "grudge nerfed" to oblivion, to ridiculous levels of punitive changes.  I'm totally serious....at least one of the devs had a serious case of "I'll show THOSE players" and just busted it down to almost idiotic levels of gimp.  Classic example of a dev throwing their emotions into a fix.  

 

 

First Regen character I ever properly played was a Regen Sent.  Fairly survivable.  But again, I'm at mid-range as compared to melee range, or blaster long range.

[PeregrineFalcon]

56 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

... other than buffing tanks more, of course.

Confirmed! BillzBubba wants to buff tanks even more! Don't forget, you heard it here first, folks!

 

Wait, what? What do you mean I have to roll initiative? Not again.

[Psi-bolt]

3 hours ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

As a test why don't you and Arcane both run an SO only Scrapper through the Trapdoor test?

 

Let's say... MA/SR for Bill and MA/Regen for Arcane. First test on 0/x4, second on +1/x4, etc. Then post times AND deaths.

 

If that doesn't prove that Regen has less mitigation than other Scrapper powersets I don't know what will.

So in the interest of science and because I'm bored, I ran this test at 0x4 with my Ice/Regen Scrapper both with an SO no pool defense build and again with my normal some set IO/some common IO build.  The set IO build was designed to have around 70% Sm, Le resist to deal with alpha strikes.

 

I started the timer when I zoned in to the Trapdoor mission and stopped it when Trapdoor de aggroed.  

 

All SO build 16 min; 16 seconds; IO build 10 min; 58 seconds.  I died once on the SO build mostly because I was getting used to the set and misclicked.  After that it went smoothly all things considered.  It was slow going and I did have to kite a few mobs, but all in all it wasn't too bad. The IO build was never in any danger whatsoever. 

 

I will say that I don't know what value this experiment has to a balance discussion.  I wouldn't imagine that most people playing an SO or common IO only build is playing this mission at +4 players.  I think of an SO only build as playing on baseline or maybe +1x1 difficulty. 

 

I still believe as I have for over a decade, that the only thing Regen needs is a better answer to  alpha strikes, but even then it just needs to be enough to give you time to click something.  

 

Going to try this with another Scrapper with a more offensive primary as well.  I'm guessing that Ice both made this a bit safer but a lot slower.

[Troo]

1 hour ago, ForeverLaxx said:

I hesitate to get into the middle of this ePeen slapfight, but I'm pretty sure that sets which contained a self-rez were intended to use them as part of their suite of "defenses." By that I mean, a Regen character dying, but using Revive to get back in the fight, is how it's supposed to work.

 

Good points @ForeverLaxx. I've always looked at it a little different. I thought powers were available as we leveled, and then as we became stronger we might not need them anymore and could respec.

This is how I've looked at some of the T9s and other powers, they just aren't needed later when we get more refined builds. Just thought I'd an alternate perspective.

[Replacement]

4 hours ago, Naraka said:

Buffing the melee attack sets (pick any) in conjunction with buffing Regen would then qualify as power creep by your definition then 

(first, as an aside: understood on your first response.  Thumbs up for clarification)

 

Onto the quoted bit: this either doesn't make sense or is just irrelevant. 

Buffing Kinetic Melee buffs all Kinetic Melee characters, but it does not buff War Mace characters.  

 

If you are saying buffing Kinetic Melee buffs Bio Armor because you can combine them, that's irrelevant to Bio Armor.  Because stronger Melee set+Bio Armor combinations exist as the natural ceiling already.  If a Kinetic Melee buff brought it up to, say, Rad Melee levels, and Regen were simultaneously buffed up to Bio Armor levels -- that just means it's competing with Rad/Bio combos.  Those particular characters are improved, but the AT as a whole is still not contributing more than was previously expected of them.

 

If my delineation of "at the AT level" is confusing or seems random: it's the core "package" level.  Only AT defines what Primary+Secondary(+Epic) combinations are possible, and therefore what the performance ceiling of that particular package can be.

 

Of course, if we want to get lost in the weeds on this topic... for some reason?  Yes: the exception is "emergent" combinations.  AKA "The Soul Drain" problem.  You can take a mediocre set and combine it with the right set and get a sum greater than the parts.  I boil this down to a simple A+B=power level for simplicity in conversation (five pages into a tired topic that has now doubled that in a few hours), but I'm not ignorant of this reality.

 

Thank you for coming to my TED talk, etc...

 

Edited January 28, 2022 by Replacement

[MTeague]

2 minutes ago, Troo said:

 

Good points @ForeverLaxx. I've always looked at it a little different. I thought powers were available as we leveled, and then as we became stronger we might not need them anymore and could respec.

This is how I've looked at some of the T9s and other powers, they just aren't needed later when we get more refined builds. Just thought I'd an alternate perspective.

 

I can't buy into that, only because the T9's for the vast majority of powersets, pre-date the existence of IO's an Incarnates.

Now, today in time?  Yes, you can hit a point where the T9's are not always needed. 

But the design intent, I would argue, is that they were a form of "oh-crap" button, with very few exceptions (granite armor).

[Troo]

11 minutes ago, MTeague said:

 

I can't buy into that, only because the T9's for the vast majority of powersets, pre-date the existence of IO's an Incarnates.

Now, today in time?  Yes, you can hit a point where the T9's are not always needed. 

But the design intent, I would argue, is that they were a form of "oh-crap" button, with very few exceptions (granite armor).

 

Not just T9s. Take something like Hand Clap or Fault, good mitigation at lower levels but maybe not needed later on.

Maybe not even needed once someone gets more familiar with the game.

But can I remember early in my COX, Hand Clap was helpful to thin out incoming damage.

Edited January 28, 2022 by Troo

[MTeague]

6 minutes ago, Troo said:

 

Not just T9s. Take something like Hand Clap or Fault, good mitigation at lower levels but maybe not needed later on.

Maybe not even needed once someone gets more familiar with the game.

But can I remember early in my COX, Hand Clap was helpful to thin out incoming damage.

I don't think I've ever taken Hand Clap, ever. Pre-IO's or after. 

 

But I admit, I always did have a soft spot for Thunderclap, in Storm Summoning, even though there's almost always better powers to use, and even though anything close enough to me to be affected by Thunderclap was already going to have it's to-hit SAVAGED by Hurricane.  That animation and sound effect...

 

I get your point though. Bean Bag got a lot more use before my AR/Dev fully matured.

[ForeverLaxx]

59 minutes ago, A Cat said:

Willpower also has a self rez right? 

It does, and I'm frankly not sure why. That said, it's only considered "the buffed Regen" when you're saturating its toggles for maximum gains. Willpower is actually kinda weak defensively if enemy saturation drops low enough. Maybe that's why it has a self-rez. Perhaps the devs thought that set could use something to make finishing off one tough target more likely, when Willpower is at its weakest. Plus it kinda-sorta fits the theme? I don't really agree in that aspect but I see what they were going for.