Regen and an epic'ed out build

[Stormwalker]

1 hour ago, Haijinx said:

 

I've never made a character that didn't have the fighting pool by level 50.  

 

I've never made a melee that didn't have it by level 50.  I've made Blasters that didn't, though.

[Doomguide2005]

10 minutes ago, Stormwalker said:

 

I've never made a melee that didn't have it by level 50.  I've made Blasters that didn't, though.

     How many melee didn't have the the Fighting pool between now and Sunset on Live?  No idea honestly.  Very few probably with each successive build adding to the numbers with.  But I hit 50 on my first SR and it was several respecs in before she had taken Tough/Weave, lacked a travel power and had dropped Elude.  The 'culprits' were real numbers, Mids' and the combat attributes monitor.  It simply makes SR (and most builds) harder to kill.  

 

     I rarely use Hasten on SR, favoring survival and mitigation first in the build.  Outside the 2 × 3% IOs pretty much no set bonuses are for +def, it's all about the defense in power choices leaving the set bonuses for +max health and +regeneration.  She's overdue for a respec and I'll be trying for even greater max health, hoping to push it over 2200 (about another 75+ health).

[Stormwalker]

1 hour ago, Doomguide2005 said:

     How many melee didn't have the the Fighting pool between now and Sunset on Live?  No idea honestly.  Very few probably with each successive build adding to the numbers with.  But I hit 50 on my first SR and it was several respecs in before she had taken Tough/Weave, lacked a travel power and had dropped Elude.  The 'culprits' were real numbers, Mids' and the combat attributes monitor.  It simply makes SR (and most builds) harder to kill.  

 

     I rarely use Hasten on SR, favoring survival and mitigation first in the build.  Outside the 2 × 3% IOs pretty much no set bonuses are for +def, it's all about the defense in power choices leaving the set bonuses for +max health and +regeneration.  She's overdue for a respec and I'll be trying for even greater max health, hoping to push it over 2200 (about another 75+ health).

 

The Fighting Pool makes anything harder to kill.  That's one of its two functions - provide offense, and provide mitigation.  Which is why the idea that sets shouldn't need outside mitigation is a bit ridiculous... if they didn't need outside mitigation, why would we have a power pool which provides so much of it?  I even take Fighting on some of my Blasters, my Sentinel, and my Defender.  Taking it on a melee is just a given.  Besides, as noted, what power pool could possibly be more in-concept for someone who spends all their time in melee than Fighting?

 

As for Hasten, whether or not I take it depends as much on the Primary as the Secondary.  Almost any set can benefit from it, but it's practically mandatory for some (Claws, DB come to mind).  Actually, I have to admit, /SR makes me MORE likely to take it, because having Quickness makes me greedy for all the speed I can get.  One of the reasons I like /SR and /EnA so much is they feed my need for speed.

 

For +def in set bonuses - the Scrapper ATO's have quite a bit (5% AoE on Sup Critical Strikes and 2.5% Melee on Sup Scrapper's Strike)  The Melee Damage (Touch of Death has Melee and Mako's Bite has Ranged) and Melee AoE  (Obliteration has Melee and Scirocco's Dervish has AoE) sets tend to have some defense on them also (but not the purple ones, mostly).  Red Fortune (defense set) has 2.5% ranged.  Numina's Convalescence (heal set) has 3.75% ranged.  Mostly these are the 6-piece bonuses, however.

 

The other thing to remember with /SR is any damage resistance you pick up stacks with your scaling resist, which makes that scaling resist substantially more powerful.  Aside from allowing us to slot the resist set uniques, this is why Tough is so useful to an /SR.  Not to mention all the resists available in various IO sets.  I just posted a build in another thread for my Claws/SR who has 47% S/L resist (not counting the scaling resists).  And that's on a build that is very nearly perma-Hasten and is perfectly capable of demonstrating why people call Claws a "fast blender".  I had to give up some of my procs to accomplish this, but let's be honest, I think we all know the Aprocalypse is coming soon, anyway.

[Doomguide2005]

Mine is Claws/SR as well.  She's softcapped (~48/48/46) with the +6% from the uniques, so unless I go for an alternate build with the i-cap etc., I don't need any further defense.  More resists (like from Tough, which she has if that wasn't clear), more health/regen yes so her Main build pushes the max-health and regen mitigation part of the equation.  Incarnate work finds her teaming typically and usually there's so many other defense buffs I've never sought an i-cap build.  I did have a 2nd build on Live as well as Mids' versions with Hasten used, but frankly continuing to lay the smack down after getting double-tapped for 1800+ damage and using neither Aid Self or Rebirth despite having them available is its own reward/adrenaline rush.  The only things SR I've seen with more health than her have the Tanker AT going for them.  There might be a Brute out there with more but I've yet to team with them despite 3500 hours of in-game time spent on her on Live.

[Stormwalker]

44 minutes ago, Doomguide2005 said:

Mine is Claws/SR as well.  She's softcapped (~48/48/46) with the +6% from the uniques, so unless I go for an alternate build with the i-cap etc., I don't need any further defense.  More resists (like from Tough, which she has if that wasn't clear), more health/regen yes so her Main build pushes the max-health and regen mitigation part of the equation.  Incarnate work finds her teaming typically and usually there's so many other defense buffs I've never sought an i-cap build.  I did have a 2nd build on Live as well as Mids' versions with Hasten used, but frankly continuing to lay the smack down after getting double-tapped for 1800+ damage and using neither Aid Self or Rebirth despite having them available is its own reward/adrenaline rush.  The only things SR I've seen with more health than her have the Tanker AT going for them.  There might be a Brute out there with more but I've yet to team with them despite 3500 hours of in-game time spent on her on Live.

 

Ah, I misread your earlier post.  I thought you were saying there isn't much def to be had in set bonuses, but I see now that what you were saying is that you aren't using set bonuses for defense.  It sounds like you've gone for a more defensive power selection than I did.

 

My build is more of a mid-point between offensive and defensive builds.  In fact, in terms of what was being run back on Live, it would probably be considered a pretty offensive build, but offensive builds have evolved since then and run up to stratospheric heights.  I don't have the massive offense of a modern proc build, but I still wanted enough recharge to run the Follow-Up -> Focus -> Slash and Follow-Up -> Spin -> Shockwave attack chains gapless at any time, thus allowing me to double and sometimes triple-stack Follow-Up, so Hasten was pretty much a must..  The only defense powers I've taken outside the set are Weave and CJ (well, technically Infiltration also gives defense but that defense doesn't work in combat, so I don't count that as a defense power); I got the rest of my defense from sets.  Mind you, in many cases, that defense comes from sets I was going to slot anyway (the ATO's, for example).

 

As for mitigation, I have a fair amount of +HP and +regen, but I focused more on augmenting my defense with damage resistance via set bonuses.  After all, the way resistance works, the more of it you have, the more each bit you add helps.  Tough by itself doesn't do much, but Tough stacked with set bonuses stacked with the Reactive Defenses unique stacked with /SR's inherent scaling resists does quite a lot.  This is where dropping the procs from my build came into play as it let me six-slot certain sets (like Scrapper's Strike) that give large resist bonuses.

 

EDIT:  All that said, whoever it was further up the thread who pointed out that all this SR and defense discussion is off-topic because this thread is supposed to be about Regen is correct, and we should probably endeavor to get back on topic.

Edited July 9, 2022 by Stormwalker
wrong unique, but that one is good, too :p

[Myrmidon]

8 hours ago, Haijinx said:

 

If this is the criteria, how can SR even be considered here?  Once you have a mid-priced softcapped build you can walk over almost everything (level 35, or exemp 30+)  but AVs 

 

And most AVs aren't really that scary.  

 

I agree wholeheartedly that max level should be a challenge rather than a joke, however, that was a perfect opportunity to use the quiet Batman voice when he first meets Gordon, so I took it.😁

[ScarySai]

8 hours ago, Haijinx said:

And the SR tweeks over the years have made it better.  While Regen has just resulted in Regen? I am still convinced they had completely fixed Regen, but named it Willpower to avoid the fire storm.  

I'd dispute this by saying bio is regen perfected, and willpower was merely the prototype.

[Doomguide2005]

58 minutes ago, Myrmidon said:

 

I agree wholeheartedly that max level should be a challenge rather than a joke, however, that was a perfect opportunity to use the quiet Batman voice when he first meets Gordon, so I took it.😁

I'd say that overall it probably is a fairly significant challenge for most folks and their builds solo.  Homecoming is absolutely stocked to the gills with veterans of Live and the forums are likely a quite knowledgeable subset.  We get a rather distorted view of how common +4/×8 destroying builds are i think though probably only the Dev team has enough knowing to even make an educated guess about it.   Now teams crushing content in general probably does say it's hardly a difficult game but even that is distorted by the populations average experience and knowledge level.  The question is, "How much is that experience contributing to the easy factor?".

[Stormwalker]

1 minute ago, Doomguide2005 said:

I'd say that overall it probably is a fairly significant challenge for most folks and their builds solo.  Homecoming is absolutely stocked to the gills with veterans of Live and the forums are likely a quite knowledgeable subset.  We get a rather distorted view of how common +4/×8 destroying builds are i think though probably only the Dev team has enough knowing to even make an educated guess about it.   Now teams crushing content in general probably does say it's hardly a difficult game but even that is distorted by the populations average experience and knowledge level.  The question is, "How much is that experience contributing to the easy factor?".

 

I would say most likely a whole lot.  As Arcanaville once observed, the CoH community seems to have always had (from the beginning) a much larger percentage of players who actually want to--and now do--understand the game's underlying math than most other games   Then you add the invention system, which is explicitly designed in such a way that you can calculate exactly the effects you are getting out of it - which means that if you know what you're doing, you can absolutely maximize your performance.  In a lot of other games, there is still some guesswork involved in optimization, and there's essentially none here.  As such, experience is everything.

[Bill Z Bubba]

18 hours ago, Stormwalker said:

I would say most likely a whole lot.  As Arcanaville once observed, the CoH community seems to have always had (from the beginning) a much larger percentage of players who actually want to--and now do--understand the game's underlying math than most other games   Then you add the invention system, which is explicitly designed in such a way that you can calculate exactly the effects you are getting out of it - which means that if you know what you're doing, you can absolutely maximize your performance.  In a lot of other games, there is still some guesswork involved in optimization, and there's essentially none here.  As such, experience is everything.

 

Had it as my sig line for a while: CoH is the ONLY game where I've given a shit about the underlying math. I still don't know why that is but I do know it's part of the reason I still play it.

[Bill Z Bubba]

19 hours ago, ScarySai said:

I'd dispute this by saying bio is regen perfected, and willpower was merely the prototype.

 

How exactly is a powerset with two absorption powers, damres, defense and a heal a regen powerset? It has... 2 powers that grant +regen?

Edited July 10, 2022 by Bill Z Bubba

[ScarySai]

Have you played bio? Regen on it is fairly strong.

 

Bio is much closer to regen's playstyle than willpower is. Nothing else really comes close. They even share the same general weaknesses, but bio has more layers to it's mitigation to fall back on.

[Bill Z Bubba]

19 minutes ago, ScarySai said:

Have you played bio? Regen on it is fairly strong.

 

Bio is much closer to regen's playstyle than willpower is. Nothing else really comes close. They even share the same general weaknesses, but bio has more layers to it's mitigation to fall back on.

 

Yea. I have an nrg/bio/soul scrapper, a dark/bio scrapper, a bio/claws tank, a claws/bio scrapper, a stone/bio brute, a mace/bio scrapper, a bio/rad tank, and a staff/bio scrapper. While it's just as clicky as regen, I'm just not stupid enough to call it a regen set. Since it's not a regen set.

 

Edit: That would be like calling SR a resist based set because it has scaling resists. Or Inv a defense set because of Invincibility. Ya know, really stupid comments like that.

Edited July 10, 2022 by Bill Z Bubba

[Erratic1]

1 hour ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

 

Yea. I have an nrg/bio/soul scrapper, a dark/bio scrapper, a bio/claws tank, a claws/bio scrapper, a stone/bio brute, a mace/bio scrapper, a bio/rad tank, and a staff/bio scrapper. While it's just as clicky as regen, I'm just not stupid enough to call it a regen set. Since it's not a regen set.

 

Edit: That would be like calling SR a resist based set because it has scaling resists. Or Inv a defense set because of Invincibility. Ya know, really stupid comments like that.

 

Bio has 3 click powers--two at 90s base recharge and one at 270s. There cannot be that much clicking going on.

[Bill Z Bubba]

53 minutes ago, Erratic1 said:

Bio has 3 click powers--two at 90s base recharge and one at 270s. There cannot be that much clicking going on.

 

Semi-fair. But backed by 280% recharge (110 global, 70 hasten, 100 rounded enhancement) you're down to 23, 23 and 71 seconds. And then tack on any other mitigation clicks you might take on. Vs, say, SR where I click PB once every 120 seconds when hasten recycles.

 

Edit: I should really notate some things here. I obviously dig bio but when I'm playing it, (damn, forgot my fire/bio sent and he's one of my mains!!!) I click Ablative as soon as it's up, DNA Siphon every time I'm low on health (or end in the Sent's case) and if Parasitic Aura is up for a fresh spawn, it's my alpha absorb. The set is VERY clicky for me. Your mileage may vary.

Edited July 11, 2022 by Bill Z Bubba

[Erratic1]

1 hour ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

 

Semi-fair. But backed by 280% recharge (110 global, 70 hasten, 100 rounded enhancement) you're down to 23, 23 and 71 seconds. And then tack on any other mitigation clicks you might take on. Vs, say, SR where I click PB once every 120 seconds when hasten recycles. 

 

 

True as goes recharge but there is the issue of necessity.

1. You do not invoke a heal unless you need to heal. There is nothing gained if you're doing fine.
2. A periodically refreshing ablative shield has a better basis for why one might want to click it. But I have to say as the player of an SS/Bio Brute that I only activate it when something is actively threatening the health bar. In most cases capped Resistance and suitably high Defense (not capped I admit) means it is not needed.
3. The long recharge power is best used in advance as a precaution against needing to use either of the ones mentioned above--If you answer yes to the question, "Did you just enter a group of a half-dozen (+4x8) or more?" then you activate it and it provides you cover while you whittle the crowd down. How often you need to use it will depend somewhat on playstyle.

 

1 hour ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

 

Edit: I should really notate some things here. I obviously dig bio but when I'm playing it, (damn, forgot my fire/bio sent and he's one of my mains!!!) I click Ablative as soon as it's up, DNA Siphon every time I'm low on health (or end in the Sent's case) and if Parasitic Aura is up for a fresh spawn, it's my alpha absorb. The set is VERY clicky for me. Your mileage may vary.

 

It is a subjective thing and as noted somewhat determined by playstyle. For me, it just is not meaningfully intrusive on the routine of punching and stomping things. From the standpoint of someone used to playing Invulnerability...I suppose it could be considered click hell. 😄

[ScarySai]

3 hours ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

That would be like calling SR a resist based set because it has scaling resists. Or Inv a defense set because of Invincibility. Ya know, really stupid comments like that.

That's nice, but that's not what I did.

 

I appreciate the insults though, which I assume stem from you being memed on in discord earlier. You can't really deny that regen and bio have similar playstyles - certainly more in common than regen has with willpower. Though, to your SR comparison, I could very easily call shield the perfected form of SR and you can't really argue with that.

Edited July 11, 2022 by ScarySai

[Bill Z Bubba]

5 minutes ago, ScarySai said:

I appreciate the insults though, which I assume stem from you being memed on in discord earlier. You can't really deny that regen and bio have similar playstyles. Though, to your SR comparison, I could very easily call shield the perfected form of SR and you can't really argue with that.

 

Yes on the tone of my reply.

 

I won't deny that regen and bio are both very clicky powersets.

 

I would argue that neither bio is regen perfected, it's just a better set, just as shield isn't SR perfected, it's just a better set.

 

Edit: And in both cases, almost entirely due to the +damage. Imagine that.

Edited July 11, 2022 by Bill Z Bubba

[Thrax]

On 5/1/2022 at 1:21 AM, Thrax said:

No, it’s not. Not on a scrapper. Not on a brute. Not on a sentinel. 

Probably not on a stalker either. Maybe pvp though?  But who gives a shit about that jumping ss clusterfuck. 

[Troo]

5 hours ago, ScarySai said:

I could very easily call shield the perfected form of SR and you can't really argue with that.

 

..and you'd be wrong short of calling it your 'opinion'. I thought we learned that around the 4th grade.

 

//////////////

 

How'd we get here?.. wait, backup..  Ah right, is full blown maximum +rech on a Regeneration build worth it? Answer: Nah (but get close, if you can)

 

 

Edited July 11, 2022 by Troo

[Thrax]

Shield isn’t better than sr. Can’t proc out attacks as easily at all. Aoe attacks better but even the buff from shield doesn’t make up for the ability to straight proc out all attacks you care to use. And get recharge 20% to boot which makes it even better. Shield is more sturdy aside from def debuffs. But 54*8 ITF I’d rather had sr before sd any day. Ea just sucks there. 

[ScarySai]

57 minutes ago, Troo said:

and you'd be wrong short of calling it your 'opinion'. I thought we learned that around the 4th grade.

Not really, it's better in every way for a scrapper. Objective advantages aren't an opinion.

 

But I'll refrain from further derailing this hot mess of a thread. #buffregen

[Troo]

7 hours ago, ScarySai said:

Not really, it's better in every way for a scrapper. Objective advantages aren't an opinion.

[Blackjoy]

On 7/8/2022 at 10:23 PM, Errants said:

No, the min/maxers would find some new optimal edge... it would percolate out to the masses, and then eventually become common knowledge.

  Yes, min/maxes will find new optimized builds.  But you're overlooking the fact that there may be many ways to achieve it versus a handful.  Or to put it more accurately, the various optimized builds may all be indistinguishable from each other in terms of performance.  Right now, if you aren't capping +DEF, you're hard pressed to find a build that can compete with those who are.  There are some,  I did see a /Rad scrapper that was unworldly with just Tough. 

 

But without the superiority of capped +DEF, you'll probably see people focus on things like Max Health, capped /Res, Max Health, max +Regen.   I don't know.  But they want all start with capping +DEF, or rather they will, but that will be trivial to accomplish and will not be the crux of the build.  So I would bet you'll see a lot more variety.  Now, is that better for the game?  I don't know.  

 

On 7/8/2022 at 10:23 PM, Errants said:

It doesn't change the fact that there WILL be powers/pools/slotting that is the "best" possible for a given AT/Pri/Sec. And removing one won't create diversity (Read: Enhancement Diversification, writ yet again), it'll just make a new "best" option.

It will change how much you need to go dipping into the Power Pools for "mitigation," at least for +DEF dominant's sets.  If I can soft cap with just Hover, then I don't need to take Combat Jumping and Weave and Maneuvers and Shadowmeld, and chase a bunch of +DEF in set IOs, etc. 

 

That all having been said, a floor of 20% probably wouldn't help diversify /Regen, after thinking about it.   Since /Regen has no base +DEF, it might still be want all the +DEF it can get to try and get to the 80% mitigation cap. 

 

The whole point of this tangent is, again, exploring whether the "problems" with /Regen are a result of the inherent problems with /Regen, or problems inherent to allowing the to hit floor to be 5% and the overwhelming survival advantage of sets that can achieve that.   "Buff" /regen calls only result when people perceive other sets are better.  If a change were made so that many of the sets were suddenly a notch or two lower, without actually changing any of the sets or power pools, would people find /Regen a lot more capable?  I'm saying yes, but I acknowledge that this type of fix isn't likely at this point, so it's more of an academic discussion.

Edited July 12, 2022 by Blackjoy

[Blackjoy]

On 7/9/2022 at 7:27 PM, Doomguide2005 said:

I'd say that overall it probably is a fairly significant challenge for most folks and their builds solo. 

I would agree with that...almost.   Over the last six months, I've randomly connected with scrappers, and some brutes, and had them come try out 4x8's.   There was ONE scrapper out of like 20 who hadn't even contemplated doing 4x8 solo (and I still think he was pulling my leg) and he was able to do it on some of the standard mobs.  Every scrapper I talk to, at lvl 50, is pretty focused on high-powered builds and was either already doing 4x8 or clearly had a concept of that being a benchmark.  Now, very few of them could reliably do IDF's at 4x8.  But there were definitely 2 or 3.

 

Outside of scrappers/tanks/Brutes, I would agree that it's far less common.  But I'm pretty sure  there are some squishes that can do it.