Regen for the Masses

[TheZag]

Some people love regen,  but not so much for everyone else.  So i thought about what regen seems like it should be able to do but falls short of (in my opinion) and came up with some ways of addressing it.

 

Regen is a click based set.  Click a heal,  click a rez,  click a Moment of Glory,  click instant (over time) healing.  Being click based leaves you in that difficult position of deciding if you should be proactive or reactive with your ability usage.  The click heal doesnt leave much room for being proactive since overhealing is wasted.  A reactive ability suffers since a player in combat cant use these abilities while another ability is animating.  This is where i feel the set falls short of other armors that make more heavy usage of toggles and was the starting point of my thoughts of something to help regen.

 

My idea is for each regen click ability to grant a stacking buff.  A single stack of the buff will grant a small amount of regeneration debuff resistance and recharge debuff resistance and possibly a regen buff.  At 3 stacks of this buff,  your regen click abilities are no longer stopped by other ability animation times.  You just started a shadow maul and can activate your heal while it is still animating.  This means some of the damage loss by constantly having click animation times from your armor set can be partially recovered after you build up stacks of your buff.  Also having some regen and recharge resistance that builds as you use abilities rewards players for using their regen abilities.  Players would be able to be reactive with their click abilities instead of activating an attack and realizing they need a heal partway through the animation and hitting their heal button 15 times only to die before their attack finished animating.

 

Moment of Glory would give 2 stacks of the buff and revive would give 3 stacks.  This lets MoG give a little extra nudge as a tier 9 power and have some remaining effect after its short duration has expired.  Revive gets 3 stacks because if players even took the power in the first place,  using it means your armor failed and it should be helping you get back in the fight quicker.

 

I tried to come up with something to give regen a nudge without just revamping every power.  The abilities remain the same,  but after some usage they become available when needed instead of guessing that you might need it and using too early or being stuck in an animation and using too late.

 

And while i do apologize for yet another regen topic,  i wanted to get my ideas out there.  Even if nobody likes it,  it may inspire someone to come up with something else thats new.

 

 

[MTeague]

I suspect there are non-trivial technical hurdles in allowing you to pop power B while power A is still animating. That seems sort of central to the engine. However, HC devs have already wow'd me on a multiple points. Maybe it's do-able. 

 

I very much appreciate the effort of trying to retain the essential nature and character of the set, while trying to work around what many object to. 

[TheZag]

It was what i was aiming for.

 

Also i know people will think its tuesday since another regen thread popped up,  but its actually wednesday.  Dont be late for work tomorrow.  😉

[Enamel_32]

As you've mentioned, regeneration is...

• Reactive, requiring players to activate powers after taking damage. Using these powers proactively is possible but wastes a lot of their potential.
• Clicky. You've got 4 powers on different cooldowns to manage if things go south.
• Weak against specific debuffs like -Recharge, -Healing, and -Regeneration, it doesn't really protect itself like other sets do (Resistance naturally resists resistance debuffs, and most defense-based sets provide defense debuff resistance).

 

To that, I would also add these faults:

• Almost binary in terms survival - the regeneration set is dominated by sustain-type powers. If you're feeling nerdy enough you can average out the health-over-time value for the click powers and end up with a rough total health-per-second figure. Any environment where incoming damage exceeds that value is not sustainable over time. On the other end of this, any environment where the incoming damage is below that threshold is going to feel easy, maybe even too easy.
• Building upon that thought, regeneration is "shallow" in terms of damage mitigation. Compare it to other sets where healing is provided as a secondary concern to other forms of damage mitigation, and as a result the effective regained health is some multiple of the green number you see on the screen. An enemy can't directly remove the health regained though electric armor's Energize, for example, because that regained health is bolstered by resistances. They'd have to deal more damage than the heal provided to break even.

 

Regeneration is very old and has had some serious ups and downs over its lifetime. When considering changing a power set like regeneration, there are some constraints I try keep in mind:

1. Try not to require a respec: breaking this rule means players will feel like they need to respec or change their build in some way to get the most out of it, and that can be frustrating even if the end result is a universal improvement.
   • Introducing new enhancement types: adding a bunch of enhanceable defense to Dull Pain would prompt players to reconsider the balance of Heal, Recharge, and Defense enchancements for the power.
   • The cottage rule: the core purpose or intent of a power shouldn't be changed unless absolutely necessary. Swapping Moment of Glory out for something else entirely probably wouldn't fly.
2. Changes should make sense thematically. Changing Reconstruction to steal life from nearby enemies like dark armor doesn't make sense.

 

So to me this means we want to keep things thematically centered around healing, add more mitigation layering if possible, and attempt to make the set either more proactive or less reactive in some way.

1. Add debuff resistances to click powers. By putting them into powers that aren't active at all times, we get some variability in game play and perhaps allow for a player to make conscious tradeoffs. Even with something as wasteful as Reconstruction, there could still be some benefit in hitting it earlier in a fight.
2. Introduce the absorb mechanic. Absorb functionally works like a heal, but doesn't decrease downtime between fights since it doesn't contribute to the main health pool. As a bonus, absorb uses the same enhancement types that players are already using for this set.
   1. Add a constant, low-strength absorb shield to Integration or Instant Healing, similar to powers you can pick from blaster secondary sets like Frigid Protection. This would let you shrug off some static amount of DPS without simply out-healing it. If we make the tick rate for this absorb shield frequent enough, it starts to look more like a "flat -X damage per attack" rather than a "+X heal over time". I think this makes a ton of sense for a power named "Instant Healing".
   2. Add some amount of absorb to Dull Pain, either net-new or by replacing some portion of its current effects with Absorb. One option might be to consider the player's current health level to determine how much healing vs absorb it grants. At full health, you could give more +absorb and no +heal.
3. Crazy idea time: pick one click power. Make it activate automatically if the player's health drops below a certain threshold.

 

[Major_Decoy]

On 2/23/2022 at 10:39 AM, MTeague said:

I suspect there are non-trivial technical hurdles in allowing you to pop power B while power A is still animating. That seems sort of central to the engine. However, HC devs have already wow'd me on a multiple points. Maybe it's do-able. 

 

I very much appreciate the effort of trying to retain the essential nature and character of the set, while trying to work around what many object to. 

Well, the preventive medicine proc can fire without animations and in the middle of an attack, right?

 

I kind of suspect that the "don't activate another power while this power is activating" is baked into things, so you can't actually activate a power like that, but you can have a passive power activate if certain conditions are met. So throw some new stuff into Fast Healing that interacts with the blooms.

[kiramon]

Stop the propaganda

[Troo]

2 hours ago, Major_Decoy said:

Well, the preventive medicine proc can fire without animations and in the middle of an attack, right?

 

I kind of suspect that the "don't activate another power while this power is activating" is baked into things, so you can't actually activate a power like that, but you can have a passive power activate if certain conditions are met. So throw some new stuff into Fast Healing that interacts with the blooms.

 

This is an interesting thought, using the proc mechanic.

 

It could be that:

Powers have to wait for the animation time to complete before using another power.

Animation time can be different from the hit time or the application of effect. That could open the opportunity for application during an animation.

Edited March 3, 2022 by Troo

[aethereal]

I think an easier way to accomplish the same basic thing would be to give a damage buff effect to all the clickies.  Take the edge off the dps loss.

[Menelruin]

Weird idea for a toggle, just brainstorming something odd from another game I played recently:

 

When active, every time you take damage, automatically heal some tiny percent of your life.  Yes, this means you're incredibly resistant to DoTs, but won't have as much protection from alpha strikes.....but I think that thematically fits for Regen?  Alternatively, it could only proc when hit by a damaging attack (so the first tick of poison might trigger it, but not the rest?  Not sure about Rain of Fire though).

[aethereal]

Just now, Menelruin said:

Weird idea for a toggle, just brainstorming something odd from another game I played recently:

 

When active, every time you take damage, automatically heal some tiny percent of your life.  Yes, this means you're incredibly resistant to DoTs, but won't have as much protection from alpha strikes.....but I think that thematically fits for Regen?  Alternatively, it could only proc when hit by a damaging attack (so the first tick of poison might trigger it, but not the rest?  Not sure about Rain of Fire though).

 

Rain of Fire is, under the hood, a bunch of different attacks (it's a pseudopet that, basically, has a fast-pulsing damage aura).

 

CoH's power engine doesn't exactly have a "when hit by an attack do X" system.  It has a "when I pulse, count the number of attacks that have happened since the last time I pulsed" (this is how Brute Fury works, and as far as I know it's the only power that uses that mechanic, and I'm not sure of its details).

 

In practice, I'm not sure that this idea is all that different from something like Willpower's "increase regen by every enemy within range" toggle.

 

I think it'd be fun to have a power in Regen that automatically healed all attacks over the X seconds since they happened (so, like, when you got hit by an attack, it looked at the damage you took and healed you over time/regenned you by exactly the amount necessary to heal that attack over say 12 seconds).  But that's definitely not possible within the current powers code.

[TheZag]

52 minutes ago, aethereal said:

I think it'd be fun to have a power in Regen that automatically healed all attacks over the X seconds since they happened (so, like, when you got hit by an attack, it looked at the damage you took and healed you over time/regenned you by exactly the amount necessary to heal that attack over say 12 seconds).  But that's definitely not possible within the current powers code.

 

Possible or not,  thats exactly what reconstruction makes me think it should be doing - rebuilding what was lost and not just X amount every time.

[Enamel_32]

Yeah the engine limitations are pretty weird but there's probably still a few methods that could get you that desired effect. One option might be to grant nearby enemies a power that, when they attack you, grants you a single stack of a regeneration power.

 

Thinking on being able to handle smaller attacks better than large ones... Imagine we've got a regen scrapper at level 1 with 100 HP. Enemies probably do what... somewhere between 5-15 damage per attack at this level range? We give our scrapper an absorb shield of 1HP (1% max health). The frequency of how often they're granted that absorb shield changes what it feels like:

• A one-time shield will reduce the next attack by 1. I'd probably think of it working like temporary HP or a proactive shield power.
• Once every ~2 seconds, like the blaster secondary powers, we're blocking 1 damage for the occasional attack. This probably feels like an innate ability, but more like a random dice roll than a guaranteed effect.
• At maybe twice per second or faster, we're consistently blocking 1 damage for most attacks. Large attacks and/or alpha strikes are still large, but small attacks become much less of a threat than before. If you squint your eyes, it kind of looks like instant healing.

[Gobbledigook]

Turn reconstruction into an auto power that heals every 20 seconds or so, unaffected by +recharge or when a certain percentage of health is lost. Possibly with the more health lost the greater the heal.

 

Turn MoG into a death preventive power that when health drops to zero instead of dying MoG activates with a 20% heal. Hopefully giving time to recover health and avoid death entirely. A cooldown on this with no +recharge would be required. 

 

Just throwing ideas out.

[srmalloy]

3 hours ago, Menelruin said:

When active, every time you take damage, automatically heal some tiny percent of your life.  Yes, this means you're incredibly resistant to DoTs, but won't have as much protection from alpha strikes

This resembles how I thought 'Instant Healing' should have worked -- a toggle power that made all damage act the way Spectral Wounds does: you take all the damage, then after a short interval an enhanceable fraction of it 'instantly' heals back. Mechanically, it would mean that when you take damage, it would create a heal for part of that damage on a time delay. That means that you only 'instantly heal' each occurrence of damage once, as opposed to the current 'heal it again and again until it's gone' mechanic that has been Regen's shtick since it was introduced. However, barring going down to the initial hit, it has in the long run the same effect as either Resistance or Defense -- you sidestep taking a percentage of incoming damage, but only once per attack. It's a little better than Defense, because it would apply to each tick of a DoT, but not as good as Resistance, which takes its percentage off up front.

[SwitchFade]

Nerf Regen. Twice.

[Rudra]

Reading through the later posts in this thread, and am wondering... why? Why do you think or want regen to only heal you up to the damage a given attack inflicted or make it only heal back a portion of damage you just took? I'm probably reading this wrong, but that is what it seems like the later posts are asking for. Every regen character I've ever read in a comic did not stop regenerating after they healed the amount of damage they took from any given attack. They healed. Until fully recovered. Every time. Some took longer to do so than others, but they all healed to full health regardless of what affected them. (Hells, look at Wolverine. He was constantly regenerating even when not injured because of his adamantium skeleton. And even when he didn't have it, he was regenerating over his claws, requiring him to injure himself routinely to keep the channels clear.)

 

Regen as a power set as is does that. It may be a nuisance set with all its clicks, but that is it.

 

Now for the OP? It sounds perfectly fine to me. If it can be implemented. (Or, you know, just make the heals toggles instead of clicks.)

 

Edit: That was actually one of the few things I liked in CO. Their regen power gave damage resist and regeneration. The higher your health, the more resist you had and the less regen you had. The lower your health, the less resist you had but the more regen you had. So when you were mauled, you were healing insanely fast as you tried to wipe out what was killing you, but you took a lot more damage for it.

Edited March 4, 2022 by Rudra

[Menelruin]

46 minutes ago, Rudra said:

Reading through the later posts in this thread, and am wondering... why? Why do you think or want regen to only heal you up to the damage a given attack inflicted or make it only heal back a portion of damage you just took? I'm probably reading this wrong, but that is what it seems like the later posts are asking for. Every regen character I've ever read in a comic did not stop regenerating after they healed the amount of damage they took from any given attack. They healed. Until fully recovered. Every time. Some took longer to do so than others, but they all healed to full health regardless of what affected them. (Hells, look at Wolverine. He was constantly regenerating even when not injured because of his adamantium skeleton. And even when he didn't have it, he was regenerating over his claws, requiring him to injure himself routinely to keep the channels clear.)

 

Regen as a power set as is does that. It may be a nuisance set with all its clicks, but that is it.

 

Now for the OP? It sounds perfectly fine to me. If it can be implemented. (Or, you know, just make the heals toggles instead of clicks.)

 

Edit: That was actually one of the few things I liked in CO. Their regen power gave damage resist and regeneration. The higher your health, the more resist you had and the less regen you had. The lower your health, the less resist you had but the more regen you had. So when you were mauled, you were healing insanely fast as you tried to wipe out what was killing you, but you took a lot more damage for it.

I don't mean for ALL the powers in the set, just maybe have ONE toggle that does this.

[Gobbledigook]

3 hours ago, Rudra said:

That was actually one of the few things I liked in CO. Their regen power gave damage resist and regeneration. The higher your health, the more resist you had and the less regen you had. The lower your health, the less resist you had but the more regen you had. So when you were mauled, you were healing insanely fast as you tried to wipe out what was killing you, but you took a lot more damage for it.

So they could increase the resists in Resilience a bit more then turn Instant Healing into a toggle that gives regen constantly and as you lose health the regen increases, or something like that?

 

I think they would need to be careful if they ported it to Tankers with their higher resists/health and ATO.

 

But losing the resists to buff the regen doesn't seem right to me.

Edited March 4, 2022 by Gobbledegook

[Rudra]

Never said I recommended it for CoX. It worked for CO because you could only have 1 slotted power/aura. Regen was a slotted power, so it did both damage resist and regen, depending on which the devs thought was most applicable based on current health. CoX has 9 powers in each set. It needs to be addressed differently.

 

That said, I could see some scaling resist added to regen in CoX. I could also see regen clickies other than Instant Healing becoming a toggle. I don't expect either to ever actually happen, but I can see them as possibilities. I'm weird though.

[Troo]

LOL

 

"all the clicks"

Stalker = toggle, auto, click, click, toggle, auto, IH (4-10 min click), Revive, MoG

Brute/Scrapper = auto, click, auto, click, toggle, atuo, IH (4-10 min click), Revive, MoG

 

IF the beef is the number of clicks, Homecoming could return IH to a toggle.

 

[edit] Dull Pain can be perma. (I don't use it that way even though I have the recharge) [/edit]

Not gonna count Revive as a click.

MoG is a click but many folks use it as a 'oh shit' button or skip rather than a frequent used power. (I use it lots solo, not so much teaming)

 

It is a REACTIVE power set. Not everyone has to enjoy that. It doesn't need to change drastically to become more like other powersets. Variety is good.

 

Edited March 5, 2022 by Troo
confused.. removed inaccuate IH, added DP perma

[Troo]

FYI

Chasing Defense softcaps on a Regeneration character could be a mistake. There is no Defense debuff resistance.

If a player doesn't like playing Resistance power sets they are likely not going to like Regeneration. You're gonna get hit, you're gonna take debuffs, this is baseline.

Using Dull Pain before taking damage could be sub optimal. It is a reactive power.

 

[aethereal]

52 minutes ago, Troo said:

Brute/Scrapper = auto, click, auto, click, toggle, atuo, IH (perma click), Revive, MoG

 

IH (Instant Healing) is essentially still a toggle since it is perma which we just have to remember to click every couple minutes.

 

It'd be cool if you said things that were, you know, correct.  MoG is a click as well (so is revive, though who cares).

 

IH has a duration of 90s and a base cooldown of 650 seconds, it is impossible to perma.

[TheZag]

1 hour ago, aethereal said:

IH has a duration of 90s and a base cooldown of 650 seconds, it is impossible to perma.

 

I should have given this more consideration in my original post.  Im not sure how long the individual stacks from the buff i suggested should last but IH should keep its stack refreshed for the entire duration as its not a power that is recharged for another click very often.

 

On 3/2/2022 at 10:10 PM, aethereal said:

I think an easier way to accomplish the same basic thing would be to give a damage buff effect to all the clickies.  Take the edge off the dps loss.

 

While recovering a portion of the damage loss was part of my consideration i was mainly trying to come up with a way for regen to reach 'normal human' levels of reaction time.  Having the power of regeneration and you cant heal while you punch seems counter to the idea.

[Major_Decoy]

4 hours ago, Troo said:

Using Dull Pain before taking damage could be sub optimal. It is a reactive power.

That is actually something that could be changed.

 

Take the heal off of thee activation of Dull Pain and give it a "If you drop below 50% health while this buff is active, you lose this buff and heal for the amount that dull pain would heal you for"

 

The +maximum health could then be used proactively and you'd get the reactive heal, but one that would activate without an animation during the middle of an attack

[Troo]

7 hours ago, Major_Decoy said:

That is actually something that could be changed.

 

but why? it works really good.

maybe I'm confused about what is broken with Dull Pain that needs fixing..

 

 

11 hours ago, aethereal said:

 

It'd be cool if you said things that were, you know, correct.  MoG is a click as well (so is revive, though who cares).

 

IH has a duration of 90s and a base cooldown of 650 seconds, it is impossible to perma.

 

you're totally right. Dull Pain is what I meant is essentially perma. (but looking at Mids maybe not for everyone) (I'll make an edit)

I did address Revive and MoG as clicks

IH was a toggle but is now a looong recharge click available on my build about once every 4 minutes.

 

 

 

Edited March 5, 2022 by Troo