Commentary on Regen

[aethereal]

This thread will be heavily on the "Feedback" side of "Feedback and Suggestions."  I've come to think that creating detailed proposals isn't very worthwhile.

 

So I've been playing an Energy Melee/Regen Brute recently.  Brute for the higher hit points, given that Regeneration is a somewhat struggling armor set.  Energy Melee mostly because I just like EM and thought of a theme that worked for the character.

 

Things that Are Just Table Stakes for Regen

 

I'm not here to rail against the click-heavy nature of Regen.  I actually like active-play secondaries, and enjoy that Regen involves lots of clickies.  If I wanted a non-clicky Regen, I'd use Willpower.

 

I'm also not here to complain about debuff protection.  Could Regen use some Slow Protection?  Sure.  Does it need Regen Debuff Protection?  Not really, in my experience.  But neither of these are crucial.

 

Some Nice Things About Regen

 

Moment of Glory feels very good.  The animation time is pretty long, but with the effect kicking in about a second rather than waiting to the end of the animation time, you can be very reactive about MoG.  I've punched it when my health was around 10% a lot of times, and I think only once have I hit it too late and died before it kicked in.

 

It's not to be underestimated how much QoL there is in having just one toggle on an armor set!  Especially early game when I'd often Revive after face-planting, it was nice to have my durability set up without 10 seconds of animation time for clicking seven toggles.  Obviously, as you fill in your build, you end up with toggles from pools, but I appreciated the minimal toggles of the set.

 

While Regen ain't a great armor set, once you force your way through some of initial awkwardness, it's not as bad as its reputation implies.  I play at slightly lower difficulties than my other melee characters, but that means like +2/x4 at level 39, not like +0/x1 at level 39.  You can easily feel like a superhero, playing Regen.

 

Observations on Some Fundamental Issues with Regen

 

Global Recharge and Its Awkwardness

 

Okay, so Regen lives and dies by its clicks, and thus wants global recharge in spades.  Nothing wrong with that conceptually, recharge is powerful to build for your other powers as well.  However, this sets up a couple of different annoying dynamics with Regen.  First, it creates an uneven leveling experience.  Second, it sits uncomfortably with Regen's important secondary mitigation layer choices (ie, Defense vs Resistance).

 

So first, the leveling.  We live in an environment in which you can shoot for 180% global recharge or so, and a Regen character really should be looking for perma-hasten, given how much of their durability is tied up in Reconstruction, Dull Pain, Instant Healing, and Moment of Glory (and maybe also Shadow Meld for Scrappers/Stalkers).  But that global recharge tends to come late in the build, since you'll get it through pool powers (Hasten and defense powers to put LotG into) that you'll mostly push off until after more powerful primary/secondary powers are available, and in the 10% global recharge set bonuses that are only available at level 50 (Purples/Superior ATOs).  Before you get substantial global recharge, you have awkward downtime periods while you wait out cooldowns on MoG and Instant Healing (and even Dull Pain), if you want to push your performance.  Obviously this is an endemic issue in CoH, but it's perhaps more painful for Regen than any other armor set.

 

Second, Resistance/Defense choices.  Regen would like to be able to build its secondary mitigation through Resistance, because it gets a decent base layer of resistance in-set, and because it gets no DDR, and because it's generally more thematic for Regeneration to be resistant than defensive.  That also complements Rune of Protection, which seems like a good fit for Regen if you go that way (I'm playing a non-magic character and am ignoring RoP).  Buuuuuuuuuut.  You really, really, really want to go ahead and find four LotG slotting opportunities to make Regen work, and if you're buying four defense powers in pools, at that point it kinda feels like you should just go ahead and build Defense?  In general, the tying of global recharge to defense through LotG is an awkward point in CoH's meta.

 

The General Lack of Anything Special

 

So Regen underperforms as a pure mitigation set.  That's not terrible.  Fiery Aura underperforms as a pure mitigation set too.  But Fiery Aura, in return, gets pretty massive offensive capabilities.  Regen gets...  nothing.  There's no real reason to suffer through Regen's mitigation problems, the set doesn't get you much of anything special.  I guess in high-level team play, where you can expect to get beyond-softcapped defense through your teammates, you may find that you're more durable than other players because some of their mitigation is redundant, while yours likely isn't.  But that feels like a small niche.

 

At the dawn of CoH, Regen's schtick was "low downtime."  In an environment where people might spend a significant amount of time between each spawn healing or waiting for endurance to return, early Regen perhaps had a meaningful niche here.  But in modern CoH, everything is low-downtime, and as mentioned above, Regen's reliance on long-cooldown panic button powers may actually mean it has more downtime than other armor sets.

 

As we'll see in the power-by-power commentary, a lot of Regen's powers suffer from the sucky feeling of being clones of other (better) powersets' powers.

 

Power By Power Commentary

 

Fast Healing

 

Well, it's a power, all right.  Honestly, I kind of wonder if, now that T1s in armor sets can be skipped, it's a good choice to skip this power.  Seems hard to imagine that you'll notice it that much in mid to high level play.

 

Reconstruction

 

Your bread-and-butter mitigation in Regen, Reconstruction is a fine power, but something that doesn't feel awesome is that it's strictly inferior to Fiery Aura's Healing Flames.  It feels a little like a slap in the face that you aren't even the best at generic click healing.  It could use something, whether it's a lower animation time perhaps resist-all for a short duration.  As click heals go, this doesn't feel special.  (It's also worth noting that while other sets' click heals aren't necessarily strictly superior to Reconstruction, there are a lot of click heals, and a lot of them are either baaaaasically as good as Reconstruction or Arguably Better, If Not In Every Way.  Electric, Dark, Energy, Ninjutsu, Fiery Aura, Radiation Armor, and Bio all have click heals and I mean mooooost of them are better?)

 

Quick Recovery

 

How the mighty have fallen.  This was a really exciting power back in the day, when there were few armor sets that got any endurance tool, when Stamina wasn't inherent and wasn't available until level 20 after a painful two speedbumps, and before the profligate availability of IO endurance tools.  Nowadays, I mean, I guess it's another place to slot the Power Transfer proc.  There was a time when endurance management was a big strength of Regen, but I would much rather having a click endurance power like Ninjutsu's or Electric/Energy than Quick Recovery.  (It would be hard for me to list Regen has having a particularly good endurance management component, at this point:  I think Elec, Energy, Bio, Rad, and Ninjutsu are all better than Regen, and Willpower has the exact same power, so, while end management isn't a weakness the way it is for like SR, Invul, Dark, Shield, Regen is kind of middle of the pack).

 

Dull Pain

 

An important bread-and-butter power, serving as your first panic button early on, and then eventually being perma'd for the effective regeneration increase/hit points.  Like Reconstruction, it's hard to feel like this is a cool special power when it's shared by Invulnerability, while Ice Armor gets a strictly superior version, and Stone Armor gets something similar and arguably better.  At low levels, the cooldown is awkward and contributes to a downtime problem, though this mostly goes away by mid levels.  I'd personally rather have the +hp in the toggle or an auto power, and have just a second pure click heal on a longer cooldown that could serve as a mini-panic button.

 

Integration

 

As previously mentioned, I like the one-toggle approach to Regen and appreciate that they didn't break up the +regen and the status protection into different powers.  Bravo.  Other than that, not much to say.

 

Resilience

 

The stunned protection/resistance is cute and thematic, and the resistance is sorely needed (though see above comments about resistance/defense for Regen).  Might be nice to provide a small amount of enhanceable defense just so that it's a spot for another LotG, thus putting less pressure on Regenners to get four pool defense powers.  Would be a good spot for some slow resistance.

 

Instant Healing

 

I basically hate this power.  Everything about it is user-hostile.  It's a panic-button power that you have to use preemptively, since it doesn't actually provide enough mitigation to rescue you if you're at very low health levels.  It lasts too long for a panic button, taking you awkwardly past the mob that you're in, and pays for that with an obnoxious, painfully long cooldown.  It's just a power that's expensive to use and hard to use well.  Mostly I end up not using it, which sucks because obviously it's got a lot of power.  It would be a much better power with a three minute cooldown and a 30 second duration.  It would be better yet if it was completely rethought into something overall better.

 

Revive

 

I like Revive!  Early-game, I just treated it as another panic button power -- this one used after you actually died.  I found I was very able to Revive and successfully fight my way out of a mob that had just killed me, partially due to the Untouchable buff you get from it (that I didn't get killed through, unlike the P2W self-rez powers where I typically do get killed through them if there are significant numbers of enemies around), partly because of Regen's user-friendly one-toggle approach.

 

Still, it has to be said that like Reconstruction and Dull Pain, Revive is Not Special.  Armor sets that have a self-rez:  Willpower, Fiery Aura, Dark Armor.  And is Regeneration's the worst of the four?  I think it might be?  It's just deflating.

 

Obviously, making the self-rez be the T8/T9 of a set is an old design choice and especially on Regen I think it's a missed opportunity.  You're most likely to need a self-rez in early levelling, not once your build is mostly together, and it's a bread-and-butter trick for Wolverine and Deadpool.

 

Moment of Glory

Great, no notes, 10/10.  Perhaps the only thing in Regen that truly feels unique and awesome.

 

So What Should Be Done?

 

Like I said, I'm not going to try to give detailed suggestions here -- the track record of HC staff taking people's extensive suggestions and putting them into practice is, what 0 for 10,000?  But what Regen needs -- what was successfully given to sets like Energy Melee and Sonic Blast (and I think maybe Trick Arrow and others) in HC revamps -- is an identity.  It needs a coherent thesis statement for "why should I make a Regen character?"  I think that could be something like "we'll give you a bunch of damage bonuses after you click your clicky powers" and make Regen kind of another version of Fiery Aura -- a low-mitigation, offense-oriented powerset.  Or maybe we could ramp up the resistance provided by Regen (again, maybe keeping with the click powers for identity) and make it a mitigation powerhouse, albeit an attention-intensive one.  Or maybe something more exotic.  But it needs, not just fixing some of its grievous flaws, but a reason for being.

Edited January 24, 2023 by aethereal

[BrandX]

You can slot up to 5 LotG

 

I wouldn't skip Fast Healing, as that's 75% Regen and I believe Regen Debuff protection, however, I'd now likely take it later in the build.

 

Love Revive, but it's because I just feel it's so thematic 🙂  

 

MoG could use 15 seconds more duration imo.

 

Instant Healing, I personally would like to see it a toggle again.

 

As it is though, Regeneration is the one set I feel I must take Hasten.  I know others think that for EVERYTHING, but for me, it's regeneration.

[aethereal]

5 minutes ago, BrandX said:

You can slot up to 5 LotG

 

I know.  I presume you are referring to my suggestion that Regen needs to find four defense power pools -- that's because it can slot one of the LotG in MoG.

 

5 minutes ago, BrandX said:

 

I wouldn't skip Fast Healing, as that's 75% Regen and I believe Regen Debuff protection, however, I'd now likely take it later in the build.

 

26% resistance to regen debuff, yes, though I don't think that in practice that's a very meaningful amount.

 

It is of course 75% regen, and that's not nothing.  But it's like 1/5th of my character's total regeneration (when not using Instant Healing), and there's no increasing returns deal with regeneration.  So it's...  I don't know, it's not like the power is exactly bad.  But it's definitely not amazing.  It could use something.

 

5 minutes ago, BrandX said:

MoG could use 15 seconds more duration imo.

 

I can't imagine that happening.

 

5 minutes ago, BrandX said:

 

Instant Healing, I personally would like to see it a toggle again.

 

Also seems deeply unlikely.  I also think it's a very boring approach to Regen that would neither fix its problems nor give it identity.

[Zepp]

37 minutes ago, BrandX said:

As it is though, Regeneration is the one set I feel I must take Hasten.  I know others think that for EVERYTHING, but for me, it's regeneration.

 

Regen, Titan Weapons, and most of the Control/Support sets...

[BrandX]

48 minutes ago, Zepp said:

 

Regen, Titan Weapons, and most of the Control/Support sets...

 

Made TW and Control/Support Sets without it 😛

[Zepp]

2 hours ago, BrandX said:

 

Made TW and Control/Support Sets without it 😛

Titan Weapons can easily be made without Hasten, it's just one of the few attack sets that benefits from it.

Some control sets work without it, others require it. Most depend on what they are paired with. That being said, the Control and Support set timers are so much longer than they ought to be that it isn't even funny.

[PoptartsNinja]

Regen's biggest issue is that only Moment of Glory gives the actual regen powers time to work. Everything else requires dipping into pool powers since regeneration on its own is really slow.

 

It could use a +absorb-over-time toggle, like a stronger version of Blaster Martial Combat's Reaction Time. Give it some fairly small stacking absorb tics but a high cap (say 50-60% max HP?) so it can spend a little time out of combat between fights bolstering itself up. Absorb is a slightly weaker version of +max HP but coupled with +absorb over time it also becomes a weaker version of a heal-over-time power where even in an extended fight mobs have to chunk through some absorb HP before they hit actual health with each attack. That would give the set's regeneration a chance to actually do its job.

 

Coupled with moment of glory to give you a chance to regen and reacquire absorb stacks and I think that winds up being fairly elegant. Stick 15-25% +absorb on reconstruction to make it even more of a buffer power and I think you wind up with a set that's still killable while also feeling much more durable. At that point the hard-ish choice between defense and resistance also becomes a little clearer since defense gives absorb-over-time longer to build up.

Edited January 24, 2023 by PoptartsNinja

[MirrorDarkly]

I agree Regen is held back by far to many of its powers being weaker versions of what other sets get or balanced for a game that no longer exists.

 

My first stab at fixing it would be:

 

Fast Healing

Compare it to Temperature Protection to see how bad this is.  Increase its regeneration and add slow protection.

 

Reconstruction

Is now just a worse version of Healing Flames.  Add a heal over time for 20 seconds after the main heal plus 60 seconds of additional regeneration resistance (more for theme than anything else). 

 

Quick Recovery

Replace this with  Durability from the Sentinel.

 

Integration

Make all 150% of the regeneration bonus enchantable.

 

Instant Healing

Reduce the duration and recharge by half.  Add an absorb shield when activated. 

 

Revive

Needs something.... maybe port over the Sentinel version, idk?

[Rudra]

1 hour ago, MirrorDarkly said:

Quick Recovery

Replace this with  Durability from the Sentinel.

 

Tweak powers. Don't replace them. And +30% recovery in an auto-power is nothing to sneeze at.

[BrandX]

1 hour ago, MirrorDarkly said:

I agree Regen is held back by far to many of its powers being weaker versions of what other sets get or balanced for a game that no longer exists.

 

My first stab at fixing it would be:

 

Fast Healing

Compare it to Temperature Protection to see how bad this is.  Increase its regeneration and add slow protection.

 

Reconstruction

Is now just a worse version of Healing Flames.  Add a heal over time for 20 seconds after the main heal plus 60 seconds of additional regeneration resistance (more for theme than anything else). 

 

Quick Recovery

Replace this with  Durability from the Sentinel.

 

Integration

Make all 150% of the regeneration bonus enchantable.

 

Instant Healing

Reduce the duration and recharge by half.  Add an absorb shield when activated. 

 

Revive

Needs something.... maybe port over the Sentinel version, idk?

 

I like a lot of this.

 

Fast Healing I'd also say add in toxic resist.

 

Reconstruction change looks good.

 

Don't know if Quick Recovery needs that myself.

 

For sure make Integration fully enhancable.

 

Your suggestion for Instant Healing, I like it, but this is where I think the absorb should go by your suggestion, however, make the Absorb passive and enhancable.  So the slotting of IH will effect the absorb too.  Absorb is like a constant small heal and you click it to go into overdrive (still keep the passive going even when recharging).

 

Never felt Revive needed anything, pretty okay with it myself.

[aethereal]

I understand why people look to absorb as a solution to Regen's problems, but in terms of giving the set an identity, I think that Bio is already a heals-and-regen-plus-absorb based set, and a good one that also provides a damage aura and an offensive bonus.

 

It's hard for me to imagine Regen not suffering in comparison to Bio if given an absorb layer.

[Glacier Peak]

Some good discussion in here so I'll add that Regeneration was a set built upon teaming concepts and solo strategies that aren't really necessary now with IOs and Incarnates. 

 

Remember pulling enemies behind a wall? Kiting with hit and run tactics? Or attacking a boss then running away to heal or hit Rest? Those were methods used by all ATs and primary/secondary power sets back then. Now I don't need to do that. I jump in to the mob or hover out of range because my set bonuses have allowed my positional defenses to prevent enough incoming attacks from landing. Now I can really rely on the team pouring out volumes of AoE attacks to saturate a mob where minions of even con die in seconds.

 

So how has Regeneration adapted to the new game play? I think that's a users prerogative. Maybe it doesn't adapt so it feels clunky or like it's missing something. Or it feels godlike when ran with support buffs like Adrenaline Boost. 

 

Has any other power set that was available at launch seen less buffs than Regeneration? Why is that?

[aethereal]

1 hour ago, Glacier Peak said:

Has any other power set that was available at launch seen less buffs than Regeneration? Why is that?

 

I'm sure there have been lots of reasons over the years, but a few probably are:

 

1.  The initial overpowered natured of Regen and subsequent nerfs took a lot of the design energy early on.

 

2.  The Regen revamp didn't respect the cottage rule and was called "Willpower."  That sucked a lot of the oxygen out of the room for a cottage-rule-respecting Regen revamp.

 

3.  It's remained a popular set because people want to make Wolverine and so it's never seemed that urgent to attack.

 

4.  It's, like, hard.  There's not a super obvious way to fix Regen and to some extent I'm sure people have looked at it and thrown up their hands and said, "I'm not sure what to do here."

 

One thing that hangs heavy over the whole topic that I realize I forgot to explicitly state is the thresholded nature of regeneration/healing as a mitigation strategy.  The stylized example is:

 

Suppose that you have three sets that commonly face 100 DPS incoming damage and want to mitigate it down to 20 DPS.

 

So you have 40 Defense, which mitigates 100 DPS to 20 DPS

Or you have 80 Resistance, which mitigates 100 DPS to 20 DPS

Or you have 80 hp/s healing, which mitigates 100 DPS to 20 DPS

 

Now, you get hit by a debuff or an ambush happens or whatever, and you're facing 120 DPS instead of 100 DPS.  Not a ton more damage, but some.

 

With 40 Defense, you now take 20% of that 120 DPS, which is to say 24 DPS, which is to say 20% more damage than you did before

With 80 Resistance, you now take 20% of that 120 DPS, which is to say 24 DPS, which is to say 20% more damage than you did before

With 80 hp/s healing, you now take...  33% of that 120 DPS, which is to say 40 DPS, which is to say 100% more damage than you did before

 

This is why things like "make Instant Healing a toggle" don't really solve fundamental regen problems -- as long as Regen depends on static heals and regeneration, it'll remain very fragile to scenarios where you expect more DPS than usual.

 

Willpower and Bio both scale the regeneration that you get to the number of enemies around you (Willpower through RttC and Bio through DNA Siphon), which helps remove a lot of this thresholding (and also makes both of them slightly fragile to single hard-target enemies).  And they also both have a lot more defense/resistance than Regen does.  But that's sucked a lot of the design oxygen out of fixing the same problem for Regen.  Do we basically just clone RttC for Regeneration?  It'd be expedient, but it's another identity problem for the set.

[Glacier Peak]

8 hours ago, aethereal said:

 

I'm sure there have been lots of reasons over the years, but a few probably are:

 

1.  The initial overpowered natured of Regen and subsequent nerfs took a lot of the design energy early on.

 

2.  The Regen revamp didn't respect the cottage rule and was called "Willpower."  That sucked a lot of the oxygen out of the room for a cottage-rule-respecting Regen revamp.

 

3.  It's remained a popular set because people want to make Wolverine and so it's never seemed that urgent to attack.

 

4.  It's, like, hard.  There's not a super obvious way to fix Regen and to some extent I'm sure people have looked at it and thrown up their hands and said, "I'm not sure what to do here."

 

One thing that hangs heavy over the whole topic that I realize I forgot to explicitly state is the thresholded nature of regeneration/healing as a mitigation strategy.  The stylized example is:

 

Suppose that you have three sets that commonly face 100 DPS incoming damage and want to mitigate it down to 20 DPS.

 

So you have 40 Defense, which mitigates 100 DPS to 20 DPS

Or you have 80 Resistance, which mitigates 100 DPS to 20 DPS

Or you have 80 hp/s healing, which mitigates 100 DPS to 20 DPS

 

Now, you get hit by a debuff or an ambush happens or whatever, and you're facing 120 DPS instead of 100 DPS.  Not a ton more damage, but some.

 

With 40 Defense, you now take 20% of that 120 DPS, which is to say 24 DPS, which is to say 20% more damage than you did before

With 80 Resistance, you now take 20% of that 120 DPS, which is to say 24 DPS, which is to say 20% more damage than you did before

With 80 hp/s healing, you now take...  33% of that 120 DPS, which is to say 40 DPS, which is to say 100% more damage than you did before

 

This is why things like "make Instant Healing a toggle" don't really solve fundamental regen problems -- as long as Regen depends on static heals and regeneration, it'll remain very fragile to scenarios where you expect more DPS than usual.

 

Willpower and Bio both scale the regeneration that you get to the number of enemies around you (Willpower through RttC and Bio through DNA Siphon), which helps remove a lot of this thresholding (and also makes both of them slightly fragile to single hard-target enemies).  And they also both have a lot more defense/resistance than Regen does.  But that's sucked a lot of the design oxygen out of fixing the same problem for Regen.  Do we basically just clone RttC for Regeneration?  It'd be expedient, but it's another identity problem for the set.

Great reply! I also failed to mention the precarious balance between making a powerset invincible and making one that is balanced around risk and reward. If the damage healed is higher than the damage received, nothing could defeat a regeneration character (assuming that is taking in to account potential spikes somehow). How can that even be done? Scaling resistance works to shore up some Defensive-based sets. Absorption works to shore up some Resistance-based sets. What can benefit the niche that is Regeneration as a set (not the Attribute itself). Debuff resistance to -rech and -regeneration might seem like the right direction, but those debuffs themselves are not a catch all and not every enemy group presents such obstacles.

 

It sure seemed like Instant Healing as a toggle (at the time, mind you) was a great power - but folks may forget that was during a time when player could six slot Healing SOs without diminishing returns from ED. What can players even reach now on Homecoming in regards to regeneration numbers? Even with everything running (IH, Melee Core, all the regen set bonuses, etc.) the regeneration numbers are constrained to a percentage of hit points. 

 

I don't know the answer to this or even what problems exist, but I can tell you that the Sentinel version of Regeneration feels the closest to what I remember on my Scrapper in Issue 1.

[Zepp]

Just to clarify:
 

On 7/12/2022 at 11:39 AM, Zepp said:

Regen 1.0 was insanely amazing (pre-nerf)

Regen 2.0 underperforms (current version)

Regen 2.5 Sentinel Regen

Regen 3.0 is Willpower, and pretty good

Regen 4.0 is Bio, and is really good...

(minor edits were made)

 

We are talking about Regen 2.0. Looking into using aspects from Regen 1.0 (Insta-heal toggle ftw!), Regen 2.5 (they made some interesting choices...), Regen 3.0 (layered protections booyah!), and Regen 4.0 (like the iPad 4, extra absorbent...).

Also looking at novel ideas and approaches.

Mainly, these adjustments need to address the key issues of Regen's weaknesses in scaling, alpha absorption, recharge (like control/support bad recharge), uptime (their T9 has the lowest uptime of any super-protection click among armor set and IH, a keystone power, is up less than half the time in most builds), and damage penalty (you can't attack if you are clicking a defensive power). These adjustments need to address these issues while maintaining Regen's feel and style.

Is this an accurate description of where the conversation is at?

Edited January 25, 2023 by Zepp

[Captain Fabulous]

• Don't skip Fast Healing. Regen needs every drop of +regen and +HP you can get. 
• You can never have too much +recovery. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth.
• Resilience should be at least 12.5%. 15% would be better. Give it some +absorb while you're at it.
• Instant Healing needs to go back to being a toggle. There, I said it. As a click it takes too long to kick in and the recharge time is just comical. If it must absolutely be a click power it should front load itself with a moderate heal or absorb shield to give you some kind of buffer effect while you pray you don't die before that first regen tick hits. I can also see shortening the uptime to say 30 seconds and then drastically cutting the recharge to 180 seconds. Another option for IH (and the more I think about this idea the better I like it), is to give it a scaling HoT instead of pure +regen. The more damage you take the faster it heals you. I mean, it is called Instant Healing, right?
• Revive is completely skippable IMO. I'd rather use the power slot for something I'm going to benefit from all the time. If you're dying so much that this is actually useful to you you're doing something wrong. Just pick up the P2W version or one of the temp versions. Or keep a bunch of Restoration inspirations in your email box.
• I want to love MoG. I really do. Bonus points for not having a penalty like other melee T9s (all penalties on powers really need to go -- there is no legit reason for them to be there and they make the power largely useless). But a 15s duration on a 4 minute CD is even more comical than Instant Healing. The only reason to use this is to take an alpha strike (which will be 1 out of every 3-4 groups) or to save your ass when Instant Healing isn't enough (ala Paragon Protectors). As is it's a power you hold back on using it cause you don't want it on cooldown when you need it and ultimately wind up almost never using it. That being said it's a good place to stick a LotG, so you shouldn't skip it.

Regen right now is really lackluster, and has been for a long time. It's a struggle to play while leveling and requires a lot of IOs just to gain parity with other sets (+defense, +resistance, +regen, +HP, +absorb, and so on). Focusing on defense is likely better than resistance, since you get a nice chunk of resistance in Resilience and Tough (on your way to Weave), and you'll need those defense powers for as many LotGs you can stuff into your build. I recently pulled my level 35-ish Claws/Regen Scrapper out of mothballs (a recreation of a character from the early live days when Regen was amazeballs) and even at +0/1 it was a slog.

 

That Regeneration doesn't have any kind of absorption is criminal, and proves it's been neglected for far too long.

[twozerofoxtrot]

I really liked reading the OP, even if I disagreed in places. I've leveled an EM/Regen Brute so I can understand where the perspective is coming from. I've also leveled other Regen characters and found that the upper performance of the set is heavily influenced by how many FF+ Procs you can cram into your Primary, and not incidentally how much your primary soft locks your enemies. EM is good for the latter, but not the former. SS, WM, and now BA are better choices. 

 

But @aethereal is so right that Regen just really doesn't do anything other than keep you alive. Other sets that sacrifice a bit of protection have way more versatility and that's what truly hurts Regen, imo.

 

On 1/24/2023 at 9:35 AM, aethereal said:

But in modern CoH, everything is low-downtime, and as mentioned above, Regen's reliance on long-cooldown panic button powers may actually mean it has more downtime than other armor sets.

 

Probably the biggest takeaway from the OP, in terms of how any changes should be approached. 

 

However, 

 

On 1/24/2023 at 9:35 AM, aethereal said:

it kinda feels like you should just go ahead and build Defense?

 

This is a trap. You don't build for either in any great capacity, just Recharge. Good Regen builds have maybe 33ish Melee defense from powers and use of Unbreakable Guard 4pc set and roll with that.

 

On 1/24/2023 at 9:35 AM, aethereal said:

Instant Healing

 

I basically hate this power.  Everything about it is user-hostile.  It's a panic-button power that you have to use preemptively

 

Yes to preemptively, no to panic. This is your hard target tanking power, and in my experience is best used in a fashion similar (and usually in conjunction with) Dull Pain. It's a great power if used well.

[twozerofoxtrot]

Separate post for changes I'd appreciate to Regen, some of which have been mentioned by other posters or are common asks.

 

1. Fast Healing: Add Recharge (~20%) and Recharge Debuff Resist, or RDR (~25%)
2. Reconstruction: Add an absorb. Absorbs are overpowered in the meta, and this will hopefully allow Regen users to play more with procs in their primary as well, bringing the set up to where basically every other set is for most users (not you, Mr./Ms. Power Player with a spreadsheet to prove why Regen is S-Tier).
3. Resilience: Add another chunk of RDR (~25%)
4. Revive: This is the worst self rez in the game, which is sad. If it doesn't pick up a port from Sentinel's version,  then I think it would show up better with an obscene boost to recharge that matches the Untouchable duration,  something in the ballpark of +200 recharge.  Two reasons for this are being able to quickly fight down whatever dropped you before you're vulnerable, and getting your defense clicks (and Hasten) off CD ASAP. Alternatively, instead of a big Recharge buff then basically replicate Burn Out on rez.

Edited January 25, 2023 by twozerofoxtrot
Minor formatting

[srmalloy]

13 hours ago, aethereal said:

This is why things like "make Instant Healing a toggle" don't really solve fundamental regen problems -- as long as Regen depends on static heals and regeneration, it'll remain very fragile to scenarios where you expect more DPS than usual.

That's true as long as Instant Healing is just a "Heal a lot faster" power. One of the things that I have long believed about Regen is that Instant Healing isn't doing what it should. It should be returned to being a toggle, and instead of just cranking your regen rate to the sky, what it does is make every hit you take behave the same way Spectral Wounds does -- you take all the damage that gets past any Resistance you have, and then a second or so later, an enhanceable fraction of that damage 'instantly' heals. This also partially addresses one of the reasons why Regen was perceived as overpowered back on Live -- a Regen scrapper would end a fight at full health, where a Resistance- or Defense-based character would end the fight significantly down on hit points; what wasn't noticed is that a Regen scrapper's HP would nosedive early in the fight, where they would be trying to reduce the incoming damage to below their regen rate before they ran out of HP. Once they got ahead of the curve, then barring surprise shots, they were guaranteed to win, because their healing would heal the same hit over and over and over again until it was gone. Making IH into a 'one and done' effect for each hit turns it into a mitigation power like Resistance or Defense -- it will stop its 'instant' percentage of each hit, but only once. So if you had IH slotted for a 'heal' of, say, 54%, if you got hit for 100 points of damage, you'd take all 100 points, then a second or so later, 54 points would 'instantly' heal -- leaving you having taken the same damage as if you had 54% Resistance; your other healing powers would have to take care of the other 46.

[BrandX]

6 hours ago, Captain Fabulous said:

• Don't skip Fast Healing. Regen needs every drop of +regen and +HP you can get. 
• You can never have too much +recovery. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth.
• Resilience should be at least 12.5%. 15% would be better. Give it some +absorb while you're at it.
• Instant Healing needs to go back to being a toggle. There, I said it. As a click it takes too long to kick in and the recharge time is just comical. If it must absolutely be a click power it should front load itself with a moderate heal or absorb shield to give you some kind of buffer effect while you pray you don't die before that first regen tick hits. I can also see shortening the uptime to say 30 seconds and then drastically cutting the recharge to 180 seconds. Another option for IH (and the more I think about this idea the better I like it), is to give it a scaling HoT instead of pure +regen. The more damage you take the faster it heals you. I mean, it is called Instant Healing, right?
• Revive is completely skippable IMO. I'd rather use the power slot for something I'm going to benefit from all the time. If you're dying so much that this is actually useful to you you're doing something wrong. Just pick up the P2W version or one of the temp versions. Or keep a bunch of Restoration inspirations in your email box.
• I want to love MoG. I really do. Bonus points for not having a penalty like other melee T9s (all penalties on powers really need to go -- there is no legit reason for them to be there and they make the power largely useless). But a 15s duration on a 4 minute CD is even more comical than Instant Healing. The only reason to use this is to take an alpha strike (which will be 1 out of every 3-4 groups) or to save your ass when Instant Healing isn't enough (ala Paragon Protectors). As is it's a power you hold back on using it cause you don't want it on cooldown when you need it and ultimately wind up almost never using it. That being said it's a good place to stick a LotG, so you shouldn't skip it.

Regen right now is really lackluster, and has been for a long time. It's a struggle to play while leveling and requires a lot of IOs just to gain parity with other sets (+defense, +resistance, +regen, +HP, +absorb, and so on). Focusing on defense is likely better than resistance, since you get a nice chunk of resistance in Resilience and Tough (on your way to Weave), and you'll need those defense powers for as many LotGs you can stuff into your build. I recently pulled my level 35-ish Claws/Regen Scrapper out of mothballs (a recreation of a character from the early live days when Regen was amazeballs) and even at +0/1 it was a slog.

 

That Regeneration doesn't have any kind of absorption is criminal, and proves it's been neglected for far too long.

 

Forgot about that, yes on more resist with Resilience.  Think it would help, and that may be were to put that slow resist.

[MirrorDarkly]

I really want to highlight how bad Fast Healing and Quick Recovery are, because having what in other sets would be two core powers be, relative, garbage really hurts Regen (and Willpower too in my opinion).  Now of course having any amount of extra regeneration and recovery is always going to be better than not having it in a vacuum, but that doesn't mean they both are not far underperforming what you find in other sets. 

 

So lets compare both of them combined against a single Bio power; Inexhaustible.  All three of these powers are auto and Inexhaustible is a T1/2 so in theory a T1/2 + a T3 power should be at least twice as good.

 

The two Regen powers combined will get you:

• +75% Regeneration
•  +25.95% Resistance (Regeneration)
• +30% Recovery

 

Now here is what the one Bio power gives:

• +50% Regeneration
• +25% Recovery
• +133.8* maximum hit points (one half enhanceable)
•  +69.2%* Resistance (Endurance)
• +30% Resistance (RunningSpeed, FlyingSpeed, JumpingSpeed, JumpHeight, RechargeTime)

But wait there is is more!  Depending on your stance Inexhaustible can also grant and additional 60.2* max hit points or +10% more recovery and +15% more regeneration. 

 

*Scrapper values, varies by  AT.

 

I'm not sure how the power formulas work but it's hard for me to see any sane argument for the Regen side of that being better than the Bio, much less twice as powerful. 

 

 

 

 

[Rudra]

Except Bio is already known to be OP.

[MirrorDarkly]

8 minutes ago, Rudra said:

Except Bio is already known to be OP.

 

You can compare them to Rad if you prefer, Gamma Boost.

 

Another single T1/2 power that increases both regen and recovery (scaling amounts depending on your health) as well  as Resistance (Endurance, Recovery) and Resistance (Regeneration).

[twozerofoxtrot]

Yeah this is tricky because while Regen is at the bottom, putting them up against Rad and Bio isn't really illustrative because they're both top tier sets that outclass every set put against them.

 

Which makes sense if you take into account you were supposed to buy them from the Paragon Market (supposed to, since Rad wasn't released before shutdown).

 

It's probably more fair match Regen up against Invul, or even Fiery Aura, since these are sets that have been around since i0; Invul in particular sharing in common it's lack of offensive traits with Regen (short the stacking ToHit from Invincibility). 

[Troo]

I think the first post here is good stuff..

 

Then as I read some responses I start to wonder. Do some folks really play it, or did they just give it a whirl and then go back to their preferred power set.

 

I have taken /regens through much of the game including bench mark and higher difficulty content. It can totally get the job done, it just does so a little differently. There is some anticipation and timing that comes into play which, to me, makes it more interesting and fun.

 

It is nice to have a power set or two without chasing defense.