Regen and an epic'ed out build

[Bill Z Bubba]

4 minutes ago, Stormwalker said:

I know crap all about /Bio, so obviously I wouldn't begin to try to make that argument.  I can only speak for the sets I've played.

 

Also, there's a difference between saying "no other sets benefit from Shadow Meld" and saying "No other sets benefit from Shadow Meld to the degree that Regen does", which is what I was getting at.

 

I'm stating emphatically that /bio benefits from shadow meld more than regen does because bio is already superior to regen in every way. As neither can hit the defense softcap easily on their own, shadow meld allowing either to do so with bio's superior mitigation at base values means specifically that.

[Bill Z Bubba]

Honestly, same goes for the defense armors and rune of protection.

 

And on the insp front, how do yall really want to test that. If one says insps are ok and I walk in with ANY armor set and a full loadout of T4 insps specifically chosen to fill the holes of my given armor and email filled with them that I can pull at will vs someone else that made the mistake of only using what was in their tray and what drops, what the fuck is that supposed to tell us in regards to actual balance between said armors?

[Stormwalker]

5 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

 

I'm stating emphatically that /bio benefits from shadow meld more than regen does because bio is already superior to regen in every way. As neither can hit the defense softcap easily on their own, shadow meld allowing either to do so with bio's superior mitigation at base values means specifically that.

 

You're defining "benefit" differently than I am, so this is an argument of semantics.

 

To clarify what I was saying, specifically:  The difference in performance with and without Shadow Meld in Regeneration is greater than the difference in performance with and without Shadow Meld in any other set that I have played.

[Bill Z Bubba]

4 minutes ago, Stormwalker said:

You're defining "benefit" differently than I am, so this is an argument of semantics.

 

To clarify what I was saying, specifically:  The difference in performance with and without Shadow Meld in Regeneration is greater than the difference in performance with and without Shadow Meld in any other set that I have played.

 

Ok. Are you comparing it to only defense based armors? Cuz that's the only way it makes any sense.

[Stormwalker]

3 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

 

Ok. Are you comparing it to only defense based armors? Cuz that's the only way it makes any sense.

 

No, I'm saying that Shadow Meld serves as an effective patch for a specific and glaring problem with Regeneration that other sets don't have, namely Regeneration's difficulty in mitigating spike damage.

Edited June 30, 2022 by Stormwalker

[Bill Z Bubba]

Just now, Stormwalker said:

No, I'm saying that Shadow Meld serves as an effective patch for a specific and glaring problem with Regeneration that other sets don't have.

 

Ok. And I'm saying that shadow meld benefits resistance based sets more than regen and rune of protection benefits defense based sets more than regen.

 

While also stating that at no time under any circumstances is regen better than any other armor set outside of perhaps a Hamidon raid.

 

So can we reconcile our statements?

[Blackjoy]

52 minutes ago, Koopak said:

If you can give an example of how debuff resistance added to regen would somehow make it behave notably different in low level content, you will have an argument here.

As we both agree that there is no closed-form solution, nobody can do that on either side of the table.   If we know there is no debuffs or we know that they compromise only X%, then we know what the upper bound is.  But there is no way to prove anything is true about changes without implementing them and seeing what happens.  How does one get the devs to acknowledge that there is a problem and then get them to investigate it?

 

55 minutes ago, Koopak said:

If your primary concern is the 1-50 level grind,

That isn't my "primary concern" but it's one area where I think the devs are will to fix problems.   For me /SR has problems leveling up.  I would also be willing to bet folding money that naked, it's near the bottom of the heap at 50,   But since it doesn't run naked, since it's one of the easiest sets to build, I doubt the devs are going to make changes before (if) they address the power pools

 

58 minutes ago, Koopak said:

that climb to your mez protection is rough.

I didn't really notice that, but maybe running Double XP has something to do with it.

 

1 hour ago, Koopak said:

I'd KILL for 15 seconds of survival against the first defense smack without having to rely on my survival tools or kiting.

But the irony here is that /SR has no survival tools.  Once the cascade failure happens, I don't have any other forms of mitigation in the set.   There is nothing an /SR can do once this happens outside beside possibly popping Elude.  Even with my scaling resists, and the IO scaling resist and a base 20% resist to S/L from Set IO and 130 proc heal every cycle, and being at +DEF cap on all positions,  I died in under 15 seconds once the cascade failure happened.   So the question I have is whether DP+IH+MOG and my suite of bonuses can allow you to survive an 4x8 ITF spawn with two bosses longer?  If it can, then we are in this unresolvable zone of what's fair?  Is it fair that /Regen can always survive that when fresh and dies when it's not vs  /SR who can typically survive that, but dies when it can't.  I and I would bet that /SR naked, wouldn't last as long as /Regen naked.  

 

1 hour ago, Koopak said:

You say i can 'talk about anything i want' but that doesn't hold much water when your counter argument is 'but what do the devs want?'

I think you're misconstruing my intent.  This is an invitation..  I'm trying to get problems solved, so the first obstacle is getting them to agree there is a problem.  If this is just a thread to talk about /Regen, then I'm over dressed.  But your /regen thread and in-depth understanding says you have a goal, as do I, and if I don't have any way to get them to shine  a light on it, then I feel talking about it is somewhat futile unless it increases my understanding of the problem (which I think this discussion definitely does).

 

1 hour ago, Koopak said:

I'd highlight that when the community was asked to vote on what the devs should focus on a couple years ago, new endgame content won out hard.

It's a maxim that Internet surveys are a tally of what people on the Internet think.   What  % of people who play the game are on the forums?  I'm pretty sure that on Live, it was exceedingly small.   Now let me ask what % of people on the forums have lvl 50's?   So I'm not going to put a lot of stock in that survey as being representative of the player base at large, though I will concede that the Forum:Game ratio is probably much higher on HC than it was on Live for a variety of reasons.  

 

I'll also point out that there is so much 1-49 content that I doubt any average player gets through it all.  Where as at lvl 50, I've run the same TFs over and over.  But even if that survey is an accurate reflection, asking for more content at lvl 50 does not translate to people saying that they enjoy lvl 50 more than 1-49.  And even if it is true, but that survey doesn't logically get you there.

 

What I do suspect is true is that people with level 50's enjoy slumming it on sub 50 teams and feeling like gods against the weaker mobs and against the true-levels.  And if that is the primary motivation, outside of Incarnate grinding, then I'll argue that isn't any place where balance is going to be investigated by the devs

1 hour ago, Koopak said:

And again just because an issue might be small does not make it unworthy of discussion.

While that may be true, if I knew that my my concerns with /SR were only going to improve the game for .1% of the players, I would not spend time advocating for the changes.   I might be motivated to discuss them in random threads, but I wouldn't expect anything to be done about it.

 

Again, I certainly understand your POV with regard to wanting /regen to perform closer to its potential in the hands of the casual player. 

 

 

 

[Stormwalker]

25 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

 

Ok. And I'm saying that shadow meld benefits resistance based sets more than regen and rune of protection benefits defense based sets more than regen.

 

While also stating that at no time under any circumstances is regen better than any other armor set outside of perhaps a Hamidon raid.

 

So can we reconcile our statements?

 

Frankly, I think our statements are orthogonal to each other rather than in conflict. 

 

What I'm saying is that Regen has a specific point of weakness that NEEDS to be patched in some form or another and Shadow Meld effectively patches it, thus the degree of improvement that Shadow Meld introduces to Regen is greater than the degree of improvement it introduces to other sets.

 

What you're saying is that the end result with other sets is better than the end result with Regen.  Since I don't have as much experience with resist sets, as /Inv is pretty much the resist-focused set (not counting /WP as a resist set)  I have played a lot of, and I never felt a need for Shadow Meld on my /Inv - it did just fine without it - I can't really argue this point with you and am not attempting to.

 

All I'm saying is that Shadow Meld makes a huge difference in survivability for a /Regen, specifically in the area of alpha mitigation (which /Regen sorely needs), and this is why you see it crop up a lot in discussions about /Regen.

 

To expound on this a little bit, a few points:

 

1). Regen has less mitigation than any other armor, by its very nature and design.  This is in theme for a Regeneration set, as it heals damage rather than mitigating it.  However...

2). This characteristic introduces a weakness to Regen that no other set has.  Specifically, Regeneration is much less capable of mitigating alpha strikes from large spawns than any other set.

3). In order to successfully play "in the big leagues", so to speak, a /Regen player MUST have a method to manage this weakness.

4). The method provided by the devs to this end, MoG, is inadequate to the task as it doesn't have enough uptime to allow you to cull enemies and reduce the incoming spike damage before it runs out.  Thus, another solution is needed in addition to MoG.

5). Shadow Meld is very nearly perfect for this purpose.  I don't have experience with Rune of Protection, but given that it also shows up in these discussions from people who have used it, I would guess it provides a similar benefit.

 

The benefit of Shadow Meld (or Rune of Protection, or any other tool that assists in mitigating alphas in this manner) to Regen is, bluntly, the ability to even enter the arena of high-end play.  This is why I say that Shadow Meld is transformative for /Regen.

Edited June 30, 2022 by Stormwalker

[SomeGuy]

13 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

 

Ok. And I'm saying that shadow meld benefits resistance based sets more than regen and rune of protection benefits defense based sets more than regen.

 

 

Wait wait wait wait...are you saying layered defenses is the way to go? /s

[Bill Z Bubba]

1 minute ago, Stormwalker said:

ll I'm saying is that Shadow Meld makes a huge difference in survivability for a /Regen, specifically in the area of alpha mitigation (which /Regen sorely needs), and this is why you see it crop up a lot in discussions about /Regen.

 

Then we are not in disagreement. If I were to add SM and RoP to my existing armor users without them, they would be even more ridiculous than they already are. The fact that regen needs both to be on par with the other armor sets (some without either) should tell everyone everything they need to know about Regen's current mitigation values. My main claws/sr tank/brute/scrapper have neither and they were always superior to what my fire/regen brute has shown from level 1 onward. This may, of course, change, should I decide to take both and utilize them as I have been told to do so by those backing regen as an armor set. But it will not change the fact that were I to respec my existing armor users to follow those same rules, they would quite simply become that much more superior to regen.

[Bill Z Bubba]

2 minutes ago, SomeGuy said:

Wait wait wait wait...are you saying layered defenses is the way to go? /s

 

No. I'm saying that shadow meld and rune of protection should be nerfed into the frelling dirt.

 

Also, yes.

[Stormwalker]

Let me say something else (as a separate point to the previous post, and I don't want to get them crossed up).

 

Regen, as a set, is fragile.

 

No, I don't mean the Regenner is fragile, though this is sort of true in the sense of alpha mitigation.

 

I mean the set itself is fragile.  The Regenner is always riding the ragged edge of disaster.  He exists in a delicate balance of multiple forces, and if any of those forces is upset, the whole house of cards is rapidly in danger of collapse.

 

This is what I was getting at earlier when I was talking about all the different weaknesses sets have.  Regen has all the weaknesses.  It is vulnerable to every type of debuff.  It is, in addition to that, vulnerable to spike damage in a way that no other armor is.

 

Thus, it can be true that Regen has the greatest potential of any armor, and also true that Regen is the weakest scrapper armor set, because it will not ever actually achieve that potential (or if it does, won't sustain it for any length of time), because any kind of debuff upsets the apple cart.

 

Having played a Regenner fairly extensively, I know the feeling when you get everything working and manage to hold onto it long enough that for a little while you feel completely invincible because the sum total of all your strengths exceeds any other set.  I also know the feeling of watching all of that crumble to dust because the sum total of your weaknesses also exceeds any other set.  

 

This is what it is to be /Regen.

 

What /Regen needs is a little bit of stability.  The ability to endure at least some erosion of its capabilities without falling apart.  In short, it needs debuff resistance.

 

Start with -regen resistance.  I suspect that won't be enough by itself, but it's a good place to start.  I'd look at -recovery and -recharge resistance next.

 

Once you reach the point where keeping a regenner running on all cylinders regularly is possible for a fairly skilled player (i.e. not only the very best players can make it work, but at the same time not expecting "a chimpanzee and two trainees" to be able to run the set, with apologies to Montgomery Scott) to hold it together in high-end combat, it's in about the right place.  Right now it's not there.  It falls apart too easily, and that needs to be fixed.

 

/Regen should be a set that you have to work at for it to survive.  It shouldn't be easy.  But it shouldn't be a labor of Hercules, either.

 

[Koopak]

1 hour ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

Please do. Run the math. You'll see that caps matter and getting closer to said caps matters even more.

Ill see if i can get time to put together a calculator for this tomarrow, will be useful to have some of this done already for my other projects.

 

 

1 hour ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

I just got off a Posi 1 with my Bestest Bruter, a fire/regen brute at around level 25, exemplared down to whatever Posi 1 is. It was a complete shitshow and I was eating every farkin insp that dropped. Regen is a crap set. Full stop.

On Brute? I don't want to be a dick but my man.... how???

[Stormwalker]

32 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

 

No. I'm saying that shadow meld and rune of protection should be nerfed into the frelling dirt.

 

Also, yes.

 

Sure, but if you do this /Regen will become unviable at the high end, specifically because of its alpha weakness.

 

Of course, there's an easy solution to this!

 

Buff MoG.

[SomeGuy]

Just now, Stormwalker said:

 

Of course, there's an easy solution to this!

 

 

 

...reroll?

[Bill Z Bubba]

1 minute ago, Koopak said:

On Brute? I don't want to be a dick but my man.... how???

 

To be fair to reality, many of us were on our "Bestest" alts. Meaning, the worst choices we could make for a given AT. Diff was at +2 but the team was only at 6 players. So any time I ended up being the primary aggro, it meant death.

[Bill Z Bubba]

1 minute ago, Stormwalker said:

 

Sure, but if you do this /Regen will become unviable at the high end, specifically because of its alpha weakness.

 

Of course, there's an easy solution to this!

 

Buff MoG.

 

Maybe if regen didn't suck so bad it had to rely on two broken pool powers to be viable, it wouldn't be an issue. But thanks for bringing that up!

[Stormwalker]

1 minute ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

 

Maybe if regen didn't suck so bad it had to rely on two broken pool powers to be viable, it wouldn't be an issue. But thanks for bringing that up!

 

It's not really a matter of /Regen sucks.  It's a matter of /Regen has a specific glaring weakness by design that it has no means within the set to adequately mitigate.  Give Regen a means to mitigate that one weakness, and suddenly the set looks a whole lot better, and depending on how you fix it, it might even be overpowered.  (Though even with that, I still think it would need debuff resistance, because of previous notes about the set being fragile).

 

The reason I suggest buffing MoG (and don't do this if you don't also nerf Shadow Meld and Rune of Protection, or the results will be hilarious) is because it retains the skill element involved in mitigating that weakness.  Which is to say, it's not a set-and-forget ability, you actually have to use it and use it correctly.

 

If I wasn't concerned about the skill element, there are certainly easier ways to fix it.  But if you take the skill element away, it's not /Regen anymore.

[Bill Z Bubba]

12 minutes ago, Koopak said:

Ill see if i can get time to put together a calculator for this tomarrow, will be useful to have some of this done already for my other projects.

 

Please be sure that your model incorporates an average of the various debuffs that occur at the various stages of leveling, ie defense debuffs from guns from 1-15, etc.

[Koopak]

Sorry for double post, page moved on me.

 

1 hour ago, Blackjoy said:

I didn't really notice that, but maybe running Double XP has something to do with it.

It really does, but way back in the day (the first few powers have not changed in damn near forever) it was pretty hellish.
 

 

1 hour ago, Blackjoy said:

So the question I have is whether DP+IH+MOG and my suite of bonuses can allow you to survive an 4x8 ITF spawn with two bosses longer?  If it can, then we are in this unresolvable zone of what's fair?  Is it fair that /Regen can always survive that when fresh and dies when it's not vs  /SR who can typically survive that, but dies when it can't.  I and I would bet that /SR naked, wouldn't last as long as /Regen naked.

Possibly, the thing id the debuffs stack so much harder and faster there you need to open with MoG to accomplish it and even then it could collapse out from under you. Im not saying SR is in a good spot, it is way better than it used to be but anecdotally it seems to still underperform when pressed IMO. However unlike regen thats purely a feel, as i havent put much effort into the set.
 

 

1 hour ago, Blackjoy said:

So I'm not going to put a lot of stock in that survey as being representative of the player base at large

Neither would I, but I also wouldn't disregard those results. Its just one of several pieces of circumstantial evidence.
 

 

1 hour ago, Blackjoy said:

I would not spend time advocating for the changes.   I might be motivated to discuss them in random threads, but I wouldn't expect anything to be done about it.

like we are doing now. I'm not making a call for action, im arguing what i think should be done if and when the time comes.

 

 

20 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

To be fair to reality, many of us were on our "Bestest" alts. Meaning, the worst choices we could make for a given AT. Diff was at +2 but the team was only at 6 players. So any time I ended up being the primary aggro, it meant death.

Im not going to say more until i can try this myself but i've soloed Posi on Kat/Regen Scrapper, and Brute is much more durable. If there are any other details id be interested what i should do to reproduce this.


 

 

10 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

Please be sure that your model incorporates an average of the various debuffs that occur at the various stages of leveling, ie defense debuffs from guns from 1-15, etc.

I mean that will ultimately skew things more in my favor but doing so is a bit difficult to accurately model without taking a lot of over time data. What ill probably do is include a field to add the debuff% and then have it auto apply the given sets debuff resistance to that.

Edited June 30, 2022 by Koopak

[Bill Z Bubba]

4 hours ago, Koopak said:

Im not going to say more until i can try this myself but i've soloed Posi on Kat/Regen Scrapper, and Brute is much more durable. If there are any other details id be interested what i should do to reproduce this.

 

Katana has Divine Avalanche. 15% extra melee defense would help considerably. And I would have had a much easier time of it had I been solo at base diff.

 

Course, I'm also forgetting as usual that brutes can't get shadow meld but darkest night's -tohit and -damage will still help considerably when the time comes.

[arcane]

Again Bill, nobody is saying Regen stands up well next to meta sets like Bio, Shield, EA, SR, Rad, etc. Well someone might be saying that but he’s wrong. What *I* am saying is that, with modest inspiration usage, the job. Gets. Done. (With ease). That’s all 🙂 

 

And saying “well some sets don’t need inspirations” is irrelevant to me because I have zero problems with using inspirations and consider them an integral part of the game - and so my response to that is a resounding “k?”. We’ll agree to disagree here because you have a severe inspiration allergy. Ok, fine. 

 

I don’t feel the need to play set comparisons unless a set truly makes the game a slog. Sonic Blast or Kinetic Melee are a slog. I have never found Regen to play like a slog, since the only way an armor set truly fails is death - which will only happen in coincidence with severe inspiration allergies - aka not for me. 
 

But yes, obviously, let’s hurry up and add some of these debuff resistances and other modest buffs and such to Regen. I am all in favor of that. But I shouldn’t have to join the chorus of “lol regen sux” to advocate for minor common sense buffs.

Edited June 30, 2022 by arcane

[ScarySai]

12 hours ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

While also stating that at no time under any circumstances is regen better than any other armor set outside of perhaps a Hamidon raid.

Contrary to popular(?) belief, regen is not the best hamidon raid armor.

 

 

Edited June 30, 2022 by ScarySai

[arcane]

Think I want a /regen scrapper now because my brute has neither RoP nor (obviously) Shadow Meld. Curious how that would go - definitely seems like it would help me feel less like Barrier Core vs Ageless Radial is just too hard a choice on Regen.
 

I would’ve made one already but admittedly all this talk lately about Scrappers with vs without taunt auras has been steering me away from playing some secondaries as Scrappers.

Edited June 30, 2022 by arcane

[ScarySai]

It's not -that- bad, it's just slightly more annoying to deal with solo.

 

Some sets like katana, DB and martial just kinda work best on scrappers, too.