Regen for the Masses

[Solarverse]

I don't dislike the idea, however, I always felt Regen should be more about Regenerating and less about Healing. In my head logic, I feel all those click powers should be turned to Regeneration Toggles; some with a heavier endurance drain than others depending on the amount they Regenerate. Click it, forget it, but watch your endurance bar or else toggles drop and you lose all Regeneration minus your passive Regening abilities. Regeneration shouldn't even have a heal. But that's just me if I were to rebuild the Regen power set from the ground up. Lose the click heals, that is not Regeneration in my mind.

[aethereal]

4 hours ago, Solarverse said:

I don't dislike the idea, however, I always felt Regen should be more about Regenerating and less about Healing. In my head logic, I feel all those click powers should be turned to Regeneration Toggles; some with a heavier endurance drain than others depending on the amount they Regenerate. Click it, forget it, but watch your endurance bar or else toggles drop and you lose all Regeneration minus your passive Regening abilities. Regeneration shouldn't even have a heal. But that's just me if I were to rebuild the Regen power set from the ground up. Lose the click heals, that is not Regeneration in my mind.

We call this set "Willpower."

[Solarverse]

4 hours ago, aethereal said:

We call this set "Willpower."

 

You insult my intelligence.

[aethereal]

58 minutes ago, Solarverse said:

 

You insult my intelligence.

I mean, I have no idea if you were just slyly describing Willpower as a joke, but it is clear that regardless of you personally, a lot of people want a low-or-no-click regen-oriented set, and somehow have a mental block that says that Willpower, which is that set, doesn't count because it's called Willpower and not Regen.  And I do like to get the word out on occasion that if you want a no-or-low-click, well-performing regen set, it exists, it's called Willpower, and people don't need to try to turn Regen into it.

 

EDIT:  And that having two low-or-no-click regen-oriented sets that are minorly different in a few details is obviously a waste of design space.

Edited March 5, 2022 by aethereal

[Solarverse]

59 minutes ago, aethereal said:

I mean, I have no idea if you were just slyly describing Willpower as a joke, but it is clear that regardless of you personally, a lot of people want a low-or-no-click regen-oriented set, and somehow have a mental block that says that Willpower, which is that set, doesn't count because it's called Willpower and not Regen.  And I do like to get the word out on occasion that if you want a no-or-low-click, well-performing regen set, it exists, it's called Willpower, and people don't need to try to turn Regen into it.

 

EDIT:  And that having two low-or-no-click regen-oriented sets that are minorly different in a few details is obviously a waste of design space.

 

Willpower is absolutely nothing like what I had described, in fact no set is anything like what I had described. Yet you still compared it to Willpower. And what I had described is hardly over powered, in order for anything to be over powered it would need to have stats that make it over powered. Since it would seem at least half of the gaming population finds Regen to be seriously lacking, I decided to toss out an idea that nobody has came up with yet that is nothing like any other set in game. So when you took my idea and tried to tell me that there is already a set like it, it was an instant insult to my intelligence because we both know that Willpower is simply not that. So when I try and make an honest attempt to come up with something completely different than what anyone else has ever considered and it is met with the same ol tired song of, "We already have that, it's called Willpower" it honestly makes me question why I even bother posting anything at all on this forum.

[kelika2]

Even at max regen available, you still dont heal anywhere near as fast as pre-pvp.

 

Regen really needs a heal over time (nature, time) added to reconstruction or fast healing to use in conjunction with its regeneration to overcome the games hard limit on regen per tick

[Major_Decoy]

I don't think regeneration can hit the regeneration cap solo. You heal a percentage of your health per tick, but the ticks happen faster the higher your regeneration is.

[aethereal]

55 minutes ago, Solarverse said:

 

Willpower is absolutely nothing like what I had described, in fact no set is anything like what I had described. 

Yes, it is.

 

Just for funsies, let's deep dive into how much it is like what you described:

 

Solarverse:  "I always felt Regen should be more about Regenerating and less about Healing."

 

Willpower is not at all about Healing and is very much about Regenerating.

 

Solarverse:  "In my head logic, I feel all those click powers should be turned to Regeneration Toggles."

 

Willpower has two clicks: a resurrect and a (skippable) T9, and is broadly played with no clicks.  It admittedly only has one actual regeneration toggle (and one regeneration auto, and one max health auto, and three toggles which support its core regeneration mitigation, but provide defense, resistance, and mez protection).

 

Solarverse:  "some with a heavier endurance drain than others depending on the amount they Regenerate."

 

Willpower has different endurance drain for Rise to the Challenge versus the other toggles.

 

Solarverse:  "Click it, forget it, but watch your endurance bar or else toggles drop and you lose all Regeneration minus your passive Regening abilities."

 

If you run out of endurance, your toggles drop and you lose all your Regeneration minus your passive Regeneration.  And it is perhaps the most click-it, forget-it set.

 

Solarverse:  "Regeneration shouldn't even have a heal."

 

Willpower does not have a heal.

 

 

So there you go.  Willpower is satisfies your stated requirements, almost to a T.  Now, look, I'm sure that you can reply with a whole bunch of, "Well, in my MIND what I meant was blah-blah-blah," but the bottom line is that Willpower is a toggle-based, passive regeneration-oriented set.  And it's a decent one.  It is of course possible to envision another toggle-based passive regeneration-oriented set with mildly different powers.  But it is, first, deeply unlikely that it would in actual play significantly differentiate itself from Willpower.  Second, if it did, because they are incredibly similar in concept, one would outperform and obsolete the other.  And third, we just don't need another passive regeneration set besides Willpower.

[Rudra]

11 minutes ago, aethereal said:

Yes, it is.

 

Just for funsies, let's deep dive into how much it is like what you described:

 

Solarverse:  "I always felt Regen should be more about Regenerating and less about Healing."

 

Willpower is not at all about Healing and is very much about Regenerating.

 

Solarverse:  "In my head logic, I feel all those click powers should be turned to Regeneration Toggles."

 

Willpower has two clicks: a resurrect and a (skippable) T9, and is broadly played with no clicks.  It admittedly only has one actual regeneration toggle (and one regeneration auto, and one max health auto, and three toggles which support its core regeneration mitigation, but provide defense, resistance, and mez protection).

 

Solarverse:  "some with a heavier endurance drain than others depending on the amount they Regenerate."

 

Willpower has different endurance drain for Rise to the Challenge versus the other toggles.

 

Solarverse:  "Click it, forget it, but watch your endurance bar or else toggles drop and you lose all Regeneration minus your passive Regening abilities."

 

If you run out of endurance, your toggles drop and you lose all your Regeneration minus your passive Regeneration.  And it is perhaps the most click-it, forget-it set.

 

Solarverse:  "Regeneration shouldn't even have a heal."

 

Willpower does not have a heal.

 

 

So there you go.  Willpower is satisfies your stated requirements, almost to a T.  Now, look, I'm sure that you can reply with a whole bunch of, "Well, in my MIND what I meant was blah-blah-blah," but the bottom line is that Willpower is a toggle-based, passive regeneration-oriented set.  And it's a decent one.  It is of course possible to envision another toggle-based passive regeneration-oriented set with mildly different powers.  But it is, first, deeply unlikely that it would in actual play significantly differentiate itself from Willpower.  Second, if it did, because they are incredibly similar in concept, one would outperform and obsolete the other.  And third, we just don't need another passive regeneration set besides Willpower.

Actually... if you drop the -ToHit from RttC... yeah... Willpower is a comic book regeneration set. You have the resilience the typical comic regen' character has shows in the damage resist... you have the quickness/agility of the typical regen' character in their defense bonuses... and you have the regeneration with no active heal component.... (Thinking of Wolverine, Sabertooth, and Deadpool here.)

 

That was a very good point. (Now... about that danged -ToHit component of RttC that forces the best regeneration in the set to shut down when mezzed....)

Edited March 6, 2022 by Rudra

[Solarverse]

53 minutes ago, aethereal said:

Yes, it is.

 

Just for funsies, let's deep dive into how much it is like what you described:

 

Solarverse:  "I always felt Regen should be more about Regenerating and less about Healing."

 

Willpower is not at all about Healing and is very much about Regenerating.

 

Solarverse:  "In my head logic, I feel all those click powers should be turned to Regeneration Toggles."

 

Willpower has two clicks: a resurrect and a (skippable) T9, and is broadly played with no clicks.  It admittedly only has one actual regeneration toggle (and one regeneration auto, and one max health auto, and three toggles which support its core regeneration mitigation, but provide defense, resistance, and mez protection).

 

Solarverse:  "some with a heavier endurance drain than others depending on the amount they Regenerate."

 

Willpower has different endurance drain for Rise to the Challenge versus the other toggles.

 

Solarverse:  "Click it, forget it, but watch your endurance bar or else toggles drop and you lose all Regeneration minus your passive Regening abilities."

 

If you run out of endurance, your toggles drop and you lose all your Regeneration minus your passive Regeneration.  And it is perhaps the most click-it, forget-it set.

 

Solarverse:  "Regeneration shouldn't even have a heal."

 

Willpower does not have a heal.

 

 

So there you go.  Willpower is satisfies your stated requirements, almost to a T.  Now, look, I'm sure that you can reply with a whole bunch of, "Well, in my MIND what I meant was blah-blah-blah," but the bottom line is that Willpower is a toggle-based, passive regeneration-oriented set.  And it's a decent one.  It is of course possible to envision another toggle-based passive regeneration-oriented set with mildly different powers.  But it is, first, deeply unlikely that it would in actual play significantly differentiate itself from Willpower.  Second, if it did, because they are incredibly similar in concept, one would outperform and obsolete the other.  And third, we just don't need another passive regeneration set besides Willpower.

 

We will just have to agree to disagree, otherwise we will just end up going back and forth for weeks on this. And honestly, in my old age, I am just tired of caring enough to make anyone understand to even put forth the effort.

[Naraka]

Well, Regeneration as a comic book concept, is going to have a limitation inside of a game, namely that a component of "high regeneration" in such settings is time.  While sure, there are crazy feats like regenerating back to full from a skeleton or regrowing a body after you're decapitated, if that happens in seconds, then that isn't regeneration. That's mechanically replacing your HP, i.e a heal.

 

If you get an arm blown off and over a few minutes, you get the skeletal structure back but you're still in the process of regrowing your muscle tissue or skin back, then that is closer to mechanical regeneration...you just need a basic structure to regenerate off of (likely a shield/barrier/tough exterior).

 

The concept of regeneration is being able to shrug off damage.  Getting your arm blown off isn't a big deal because it will grow back...not because it will grow back in 2 seconds.

 

It's nearly impossible in this game for purely regeneration to be your only sustain....you need mitigation, be that from resistance, defense, absorb and/or heals. In the case of the Willpower set, it is the closest proxy for "standard regen sustain" but it is a blend of a bit of everything.  Because it gives a slight touch of everything besides heals, none stand out to make it a "defense set" or "resist set"...it leans on the +regen enough that it creates a concept similar to the above "getting your arm blown off but not sweating it".

 

The Regeneration set, I'd agree, isn't actually comic book Regen unless you consider the Hulk coming back from a skeleton as a staple.  No, I think when people think of regen for the Regen set, they want Wolverine getting peppered by gunshot and healing it off almost as fast as he receives it.  The only problem there is, Wolverine also has that metal skeleton that is indestructible (i.e. resistance). In-game Regeneration is closer to cartoon regeneration (where specific comic book feats of ultra fast regeneration from nothing is either a unique feat of resilience rather than actual regeneration or just cartoon logic applied to American comics lol. If an anime does it, it likely knows it's ridiculous) and I personally like it like that.

 

tl;dr: I don't think a regen-only set would ever work well.  Willpower is comic book regen. Regen is cartoon regen. You might scoff at cartoon regen, but that is what those super comicbook feats are based off of.

 

[aethereal]

The key reason that both regen-oriented sets that postdate Regeneration (Willpower and Bio) aren't 100% pure regeneration is because pure regeneration is a highly thresholded system.

 

So like, let's say that our goal is to reduce 100 DPS to 20 DPS for a normally-functioning armor set.

 

So for a resistance set, we'll say it does 80% resist.  (So 100 DPS in attacks becomes 20 DPS in damage).

For a defense set, we'll say it does 40% defense.  (So instead of 50% of attacks hitting, 10% will, so damage is reduce by 80%, so 20 DPS)

For a regen set, we'll say it does 80 HPS.

 

Great, they all are now taking 20 DPS.

 

Now let's say that the player aggroes two spawns.  Whups.  Instead of 100 DPS incoming, we have 200 DPS.  Oh shit y'all.

 

The resistance set now takes 80% of 200 DPS, or 40 DPS (twice the damage as one spawn does).

The defense set now takes 10% of all hits, so 40 DPS (twice the damage as one spawn does).

The regen set...  heals 80 HPS, so it takes 120 DPS (six times the damage as one spawn does).  And just instantly melts.

 

Armor sets are much, much, much more robust to small variations in challenge if they scale to the incoming damage.  Willpower accomplishes that with some baseline resists/defenses/-to-hit and also scaling its regen to number of enemies around it.  Bio does it with baseline resists/defenses/-damage and scaling its heals/absorbs and regens (primarily through DNA Siphon, though also Parasitic Aura).  A fixed Regen will need something like this, something that lets it scale up its heals/regen when more damage is coming in.

 

As discussed, the power system lacks any real method to have a power's damage itself trigger a larger regeneration.  You can count the number of attacks since last pulse, as Brute Fury does.  You can scale up by percentage of currently available hit points.  And you can scale up by number of nearby enemies.  But defense/resistances offer a lot more fluid, built-in scaling that don't have as many special-case issues (for example, Willpower's scaling by number of nearby enemies makes you notably weak to single high-damage opponents).  So...  having defenses/resists/-to-hit/-damage is a pretty helpful tool in making the armor set non-fragile.

[archgemini24]

23 hours ago, Rudra said:

Actually... if you drop the -ToHit from RttC... yeah... Willpower is a comic book regeneration set. You have the resilience the typical comic regen' character has shows in the damage resist... you have the quickness/agility of the typical regen' character in their defense bonuses... and you have the regeneration with no active heal component.... (Thinking of Wolverine, Sabertooth, and Deadpool here.)

 

That was a very good point. (Now... about that danged -ToHit component of RttC that forces the best regeneration in the set to shut down when mezzed....)

 

I often wondered if that -ToHit was tacked onto RttC just to make it drop when mez-overwhelmed. How critical is it to the set's toughness, really?

[Rudra]

It does help. In PvE. It doesn't contribute a great deal to the set's survivability, but as a hodge-podge set, it does contribute enough to help keep you alive. It does absolutely nothing in PvP because it is always getting shut off by opposing players' mezzes.

 

That said, it would work just as fine if it were an equal defense buff instead, and then you wouldn't lose it when a mez gets through. (Unless, of course, you're one of those players that figured out how to cap your defenses as a /Willpower. I am not one of them.)

[TheZag]

1 hour ago, Rudra said:

Unless, of course, you're one of those players that figured out how to cap your defenses as a /Willpower.

 

For a savage melee/willpower brute,  the totals can look pretty good.

 

Spoiler

 

Of course your power selection has almost no flexibility.  It makes me wonder if a tanker can do better but i havent tried.

 

 

[aethereal]

5 hours ago, archgemini24 said:

 

I often wondered if that -ToHit was tacked onto RttC just to make it drop when mez-overwhelmed. How critical is it to the set's toughness, really?

Rise to the Challenge is the taunt aura in Willpower (and Willpower is one of the sets that gets taunt even on a Scrapper).  I suspect that, at least at that point in the game's design history, the feeling was that for a toggle to be a taunt aura, it had to be enemy-affecting/offensive.  Since then of course we've gotten taunt auras on powers with no other enemy-affecting component (like Evasion in SR for Brutes/Tanks), but at the time that Willpower was created, I don't believe that such things existed.

 

To my mind, that's the most likely reason why RttC has -to-hit instead of +defense.

[Major_Decoy]

No, Invulnerability has had invincibility as the taunt aura since launch. (It was one reason why Invulnerability scrappers was popular, you had a taunt aura and you could hit 95% resist all... also Invincibility was pulsing twice as much as it was supposed to and giving twice as much defense as they had designed it to)

[aethereal]

Fair enough.

[SwitchFade]

Aside from my usual Nerf Regen joke, what really plagues Regen powers, like Regen, willpower, etc...

 

Is that if it is hit with -regen, it's a one way ticket to dirt-napping with sweet baby Jesus.

 

What Regen needs as a first pass change is Regen debuff resistance that is scalable, much like SR has for resistance scaling below 50% health. This would have to be balanced with hp/sec so it's not overpowered, but this would allow a Regen power to not suffer cascade so egregiously.

 

Once this is tweaked properly, more could be built upon it. I have played WP extensively on scraps, brutes... and even with the layered mitigation, when Regen debuff hits rttc flops and everything goes south rapidly.

[kelika2]

Start carrying around a power analyzer temp power from the P2W vendor, the -tohit isnt as big as you think it is and a great many resist debuffs, moreso if you factor in level differences.  even if I had an extra slot and 25 extra merits i wouldnt even 50+5 -tohit in rttc.  even stacking it with muscle radial paragon would something.. soemthing

 

hmm

[aethereal]

On Scraps/Brutes, RttC's to-hit debuff is 3.75%, unenhanced.  So, taken at face value, it's the same as Weave's defense bonus.  It's not an amazing effect, but it's a nice bonus stacked on top of the primary benefit of RttC (massive regeneration).

 

Since it's a to-hit debuff, not a defense buff:

 

• It scales with level differences (generally to your disadvantage unless for some reason you're fighting lower-leveled foes).
• It is reduced by debuff resistance, notably with Archvillains.
• It is unaffected by defense debuffs
• It does not affect enemies that are not in melee range (RttC has an 8' radius), or potentially even some in melee range if you're mobbed (RttC has a 10 target cap)
• It potentially gives benefits to your team if some of the hit opponents attack someone else (though since it is accompanied by a taunt effect, this is fairly rare)
• It doesn't have any holes for non-positioned attacks or toxic or anything.

 

All things considered, I think RttC would be significantly better if it gave 3.75% defense-all instead of -to-hit. 

Edited March 7, 2022 by aethereal

[Rudra]

5 minutes ago, aethereal said:

On Scraps/Brutes, RttC's to-hit debuff is 3.75%, unenhanced.  So, taken at face value, it's the same as Weave's defense bonus.  It's not an amazing effect, but it's a nice bonus stacked on top of the primary benefit of RttC (massive regeneration).

 

Since it's a to-hit debuff, not a defense buff:

 

• It scales with level differences (generally to your disadvantage unless for some reason you're fighting lower-leveled foes).
• It is reduced by debuff resistance, notably with Archvillains.
• It is unaffected by defense debuffs
• It does not affect enemies that are not in melee range (RttC has an 8' radius), or potentially even some in melee range if you're mobbed (RttC has a 10 target cap)
• It potentially gives benefits to your team if some of the hit opponents attack someone else (though since it is accompanied by a taunt effect, this is fairly rare)
• It doesn't have any holes for non-positioned attacks or toxic or anything.

 

All things considered, I think RttC would be significantly better if it gave 3.75% defense-all instead of -to-hit. 

And even better? Since it would no longer be an offensive aura, it would not drop when you get mezzed.

[aethereal]

7 minutes ago, Rudra said:

And even better? Since it would no longer be an offensive aura, it would not drop when you get mezzed.

 

I mean, that's actually somewhat unrelated?  It's just a convention, not a rule.  I kind of wonder why the convention seems to be that taunt auras aren't "offensive" if they don't have a debuff -- you can after all actually do damage through the Perfect Zinger proc on a taunt aura.  But yes, the convention appears to be that if an enemy-affecting aura only taunts and nothing else, it suppresses rather than drops when you are mezzed.

[TheZag]

On 3/5/2022 at 8:57 PM, aethereal said:

The key reason that both regen-oriented sets that postdate Regeneration (Willpower and Bio) aren't 100% pure regeneration is because pure regeneration is a highly thresholded system.

 

So like, let's say that our goal is to reduce 100 DPS to 20 DPS for a normally-functioning armor set.

 

So for a resistance set, we'll say it does 80% resist.  (So 100 DPS in attacks becomes 20 DPS in damage).

For a defense set, we'll say it does 40% defense.  (So instead of 50% of attacks hitting, 10% will, so damage is reduce by 80%, so 20 DPS)

For a regen set, we'll say it does 80 HPS.

 

Great, they all are now taking 20 DPS.

 

Now let's say that the player aggroes two spawns.  Whups.  Instead of 100 DPS incoming, we have 200 DPS.  Oh shit y'all.

 

The resistance set now takes 80% of 200 DPS, or 40 DPS (twice the damage as one spawn does).

The defense set now takes 10% of all hits, so 40 DPS (twice the damage as one spawn does).

The regen set...  heals 80 HPS, so it takes 120 DPS (six times the damage as one spawn does).  And just instantly melts.

 

Armor sets are much, much, much more robust to small variations in challenge if they scale to the incoming damage.  Willpower accomplishes that with some baseline resists/defenses/-to-hit and also scaling its regen to number of enemies around it.  Bio does it with baseline resists/defenses/-damage and scaling its heals/absorbs and regens (primarily through DNA Siphon, though also Parasitic Aura).  A fixed Regen will need something like this, something that lets it scale up its heals/regen when more damage is coming in.

 

As discussed, the power system lacks any real method to have a power's damage itself trigger a larger regeneration.  You can count the number of attacks since last pulse, as Brute Fury does.  You can scale up by percentage of currently available hit points.  And you can scale up by number of nearby enemies.  But defense/resistances offer a lot more fluid, built-in scaling that don't have as many special-case issues (for example, Willpower's scaling by number of nearby enemies makes you notably weak to single high-damage opponents).  So...  having defenses/resists/-to-hit/-damage is a pretty helpful tool in making the armor set non-fragile.

 

This is probably the best example of how regen is interacting with incoming damage as a form of mitigation.  You are unkillable if incoming damage is less than your regen.  But any DPS that is greater than your heal per second isnt mitigated at all while resistance and defense continue to provide mitigation.

 

I tried to address this with my original suggestion by letting players gain some regen debuff resistance through usage of their abilities.  A set with low defense and low resistance shouldnt have a huge 'off switch' in the form of a regen debuff.  They are going to hit you and you are going to take damage.  Moment of Glory and instant healing made the set invincible back in the day and the set was gutted to balance it afterward.  I may attempt an entire regen overhaul someday,  but for now i tried to leave the set alone and offer improvements from a different direction.

[Solarverse]

9 hours ago, TheZag said:

 

Moment of Glory and instant healing made the set invincible back in the day and the set was gutted to balance it afterward. 

 

And here in lies the problem. It was gutted all to hell and back to balance it afterward, yet somehow it was never balanced afterward, it was left with the gutting it received and no matter how many times the players have yelled at the top of their lungs to have the set fixed, (or balanced for people who believe it to be fine as is) the original Devs never gave it a second glance. The set is pure trash as far as I am concerned. I don't care if every damn player in this game tells me it's fine as is, I will just believe that they have all gone mad. The set needs some tweaking. It should never be as powerful as it was, but it does need regeneration adjustments at very least.