Is Regen poor or simply challenging (Psi/Regen build request)?

[Wavicle]

36 minutes ago, Sir Myshkin said:

 

That's like saying a bald tire has tread. It should be 100%!

 

No set in the game has always on 100% debuff resistance to its primary mitigation.

[Wavicle]

3 hours ago, Captain Fabulous said:

I guess we'll have to disagree. SR, like Regen, is a one trick pony, and we know the best armor sets have layered protection.

 

This reads as "received wisdom".

Layering protection is great. It doesn't change the fact that SR is one of the best armor sets in the game.

[DyingLegacy]

Doesn’t SR have built in layered?  A few of the powers have scaling resistance that get higher as your hp drops.  Not sure how high it scales, but with tough running you should have AT LEAST 50% resistance to s/l, which is a good layer for a set that is easily soft capped.

Edited February 27, 2023 by DyingLegacy

[Captain Fabulous]

57 minutes ago, Wavicle said:

 

This reads as "received wisdom".

Layering protection is great. It doesn't change the fact that SR is one of the best armor sets in the game.

Nope. It reads as "I'm not going to argue with you, believe whatever makes you happy." 🤷‍♂️

 

5 minutes ago, DyingLegacy said:

Doesn’t SR have built in layered?  A few of the powers have scaling resistance that get higher as your hp drops.  Not sure how high it scales, but with tough running you should have AT LEAST 50% resistance to s/l, which is a good layer for a set that is easily soft capped.

It has scaling damage resistance (all but psi and toxic) in the 3 auto powers which kick in when you're at 59% health for ~1% to a max of ~53% when you're at 1% health. While it's better than nothing for sure, it won't stop you from dying from a massive full-value hit when you're between 60-99% health.

[Wavicle]

Everyone has a kryptonite. SR's doesn't come up particularly often. If you find yourself getting killed a lot on your SR you did something wrong.

[BrandX]

3 hours ago, Wavicle said:

Everyone has a kryptonite. SR's doesn't come up particularly often. If you find yourself getting killed a lot on your SR you did something wrong.

 

This is what I'm thinking.  SR may be a one trick pony, but get that trick high enough with some IOs and you're good!  Plus there's some easy healing to go along with it...Panacea and Power Transfer: Heal Proc, for when hits land.

 

Took Rebirth (the heal) on my SR and I hardly use it.  Softcapped SR is pretty decent in not getting hit over and over.

[Sir Myshkin]

14 hours ago, Wavicle said:

 

No set in the game has always on 100% debuff resistance to its primary mitigation.

SR disagrees with you, it just gets capped at 95%, but it does generate more than the cap.

[Wavicle]

1 hour ago, Sir Myshkin said:

SR disagrees with you, it just gets capped at 95%, but it does generate more than the cap.

Like you said, it’s capped at 95. I stand by my statement. 

[Brutal Justice]

17 minutes ago, Wavicle said:

Like you said, it’s capped at 95. I stand by my statement. 

Ice armor 100% resists slows with wet ice, permafrost, and energy absorption.  

[Wavicle]

1 hour ago, Brutal Justice said:

Ice armor 100% resists slows with wet ice, permafrost, and energy absorption.  

that’s true, but I was talking about primary mitigation, that’s Defense, Resistance, Regen, not slows.

[Spaghetti Betty]

Well, if you get 100% RES on any RES-based armor, it becomes immune to RES debuffs.

[Wavicle]

Just now, Spaghetti Betty said:

Well, if you get 100% RES on any RES-based armor, it becomes immune to RES debuffs.

I know, but no set can do that perma for all damage types. Some can do it for a couple types, some can do it for all types sometimes but not all the time.

 

So, in principle I am all for giving Regen 100% -Regen Resist, it just should be in a click, like Instant Healing.

Keep in mind, the -Regen Res in Fast Healing is slottable, so even just increasing it somewhat would help a lot.

 

How does -Regen Resist work anyway? If you did have 100% res and you were hit with a 500% Regen Debuff, what happens?

[DanaDark]

Regen scrapper is alright I think. I've had fun dual-boxing a MA/Regen scrapper with a Grav/Time controller. The combo is quite fun really.

I wanted something that can just keep going and regen allows for that very nicely. I'd hazard to say a brute would have been better since the keep going factor works very well with fury.

Another thing that makes me like regen is grouping up with support characters. If I am maxed on DEF all by myself, getting DEF buffs don't really go the distance for example. RES and DEF buffs from the group go a long way it feels.

As for a /REG scrapper to solo 1-50 content, a brute might be better for that to take advantage of the more HP and the fury build up. I do think /REG will definitely help you learn game damage types, timings, and the works. Otherwise I strongly suggest /Willpower instead as it really is what people think of when they think "Regeneration".

[Spaghetti Betty]

20 minutes ago, Wavicle said:

I know, but no set can do that perma for all damage types. Some can do it for a couple types, some can do it for all types sometimes but not all the time.

 

So, in principle I am all for giving Regen 100% -Regen Resist, it just should be in a click, like Instant Healing.

Keep in mind, the -Regen Res in Fast Healing is slottable, so even just increasing it somewhat would help a lot.

 

How does -Regen Resist work anyway? If you did have 100% res and you were hit with a 500% Regen Debuff, what happens?

I always figured it was cumulative just based on some of the numbers being slung around in game. It's hard to tell at face value, considering most of the Regen debuffs you get hit with or are either inconvenient at best or -a million. Where is the nearest Numbers Wizard?

[Wavicle]

I just really enjoy the clicky reactive nature of the set and I don't want that lost. The Sentinel set is stronger relatively speaking but is not as much fun in that regard, imo.

[aethereal]

Regen Resistance Max appears to be 95%.

 

Honestly, I think that the (Damage) Resistance Max not applying to resistance's property of resisting resistance debuffs is a borderline bug and it should also be capped, probably at 90 or 95% (but I expect that this may be a difficult-to-change element of how the game actually works on a low level).

 

I think that this mentality that people have that obviously armors should be highly resistant to things that are intentionally supposed to cut through that particular mitigation type is conceptually weird.  When are regen debuffs supposed to shine, other than, "When you're dealing with a regenerator"?  What is the point of regeneration debuffs if they don't work on "people who depend mainly on regeneration"?  But we have SR, and how resistance works (again, that's probably not so much a feature as an emergent property of the deep nature of the game), so people expect it.

[aethereal]

2 hours ago, Wavicle said:

How does -Regen Resist work anyway? If you did have 100% res and you were hit with a 500% Regen Debuff, what happens?

 

I believe, but am not sure, that it works like damage resistance, so if you could have 100% regeneration resistance (as I said in my previous post, max appears to be 95%), it would eliminate all regeneration debuffs.  If you're at say 60% regeneration debuff resistance and you get hit with a -500% regen debuff, it would reduce it by 60%, leaving you with a -200% regen debuff.

[Blackjoy]

On 2/26/2023 at 12:18 PM, Wavicle said:

SR is one of the best armor sets in the game.

Actually, it's not.   What /SR does is get you close enough to the +DEF cap that it's comparatively the easiest set to cap +DEF with +DEF not coming from /SR.   

 

On 2/26/2023 at 12:11 PM, Captain Fabulous said:

SR is great until you actually get hit, which is gonna happen on average 1 in every 20 attacks.

It's far more than that if you start fighting up.  A +4 AV is capped at around 10% to hit you.  And that's capped with both -To Hit and +DEF.    As an /SR, you aren't gong to do enough damage to a +4 AV to survive that.  This goes back to the "I win" equation.

 

The simplified form:

Time for your hit points to go to 0 = A

Time for your opponents hit points to go to 0 = B

 

If A>B ....I win.

 

You'd be surprised how often an AV can string two hits together and flatline a scrapper.   What's worse, /SR's passive +RES is worthless against AV type hits.

 

/SR's Quickness isn't going to up your damage output enough to survive getting hit 1 every 10 attacks from +AV type of damage.    Especially when /SR doesn't have any natural heal.  In addition, you'd run out of endurance.   So with /SR, you have to build massive +RES or massive +Heal or +Regen.  And if the damage is Toxic or Psi, you're +DEF isn't helping you either. 

 

Contrast that with my SM/Regen at 50 and he only has a single endurance mod in QR and Stamina, and Endurance is never an issue.  No endurance procs needed.

 

So for /SR to compete at the +4 layers, you need a bunch of extra stuff on top of capped +DEF.  But the good news for /SR is that you can get it.  You can easily cap +DEF and then go out and grab a bunch of +RES S/L.   I met a DM/SR the other night who said he had +47% RES to Psi in his 900m INF build.   So what was CF saying?

 

 

Quote

No, the fallacy is that just because you can stack pool powers and have a billion INF worth of set IOs and be godly doesn't mean the underlying set is actually good. You've just filled in all the holes. And Regen Super Reflexes has a LOT of holes

 

On 2/26/2023 at 12:49 PM, Captain Fabulous said:

I guess we'll have to disagree. SR, like Regen, is a one trick pony, and we know the best armor sets have layered protection.

Again, that's true in engineering, it's not true in CoH.   The best defense is the one that gives you the best value for A.   Adding 25% +DEF with 25% +RES, is not better than adding 25% +DEF with +25% +DEF.   In CoH, because there's a cap, and because of the way the +DEF and +RES work, adding more of the same is better than adding the same of the other.   In fact, if you have 40% +DEF, adding another 5% +DEF is going to double your survival time.  Adding 20% +RES, is not going to double your survival time.  

 

Now, once you're at the soft cap, you need to start adding other forms of mitigation.  Mathematically, +RES and +Regen work better together than +DEF.   In fact, the more +DEF you have, the less benefit you get from adding +RES and +Regen, but it's still better than adding nothing.

 

I will admit that back on Live I petitioned the devs to add +RES to /SR similar to what CF is arguing.  A certain person, whose name I will not mentioned, insisted that what /SR needed was more +DEF.   The reason why she argued this is becase of what I said.  More +DEF on +DEF is better than adding something else.  She wanted /SR to get closer to the cap unaided.  I wanted something that worked when +DEF did not as I felt that if /SR needed more +DEF, you can hit Elude.

 

The devs obviously agreed with me, but they had their own twist of scaling +RES (something I had not aruged for).  Unfortunately the way the scaling resist work, it still leaves a massive hole to AV hits.  I would have rather it give you +RES equivalent to what it would have left you at, now what you are at now.  

 

I do believe the Scaling +RES makes /SR much more playable and survivable for normal content.  There were no iTrials or Incarnates mobs back when they did this change.    I still think /SR needs more Quality of Life improvements for 1-30.  Having to take a knee after every fight for 30+ levels is lame.    A the top end, I think it's fine.

Edited February 28, 2023 by Blackjoy

[Captain Fabulous]

2 hours ago, Blackjoy said:

So for /SR to compete at the +4 layers, you need a bunch of extra stuff on top of capped +DEF.  But the good news for /SR is that you can get it.  You can easily cap +DEF and then go out and grab a bunch of +RES S/L.   I met a DM/SR the other night who said he had +47% RES to Psi in his 900m INF build.   So what was CF saying?

 

That any set or AT can be godly with IO sets and globals and that they aren't a measure of how good a set is on its own. The game is balanced around even-level SOs. If you want to know how effective a particular set is or isn't that's what you slot. With enough INF you can make a Defender or Controller godly. It's irrelevant. It's not something most people are ever going to want or be able to do.

 

2 hours ago, Blackjoy said:

Actually, it's not.   What /SR does is get you close enough to the +DEF cap that it's comparatively the easiest set to cap +DEF with +DEF not coming from /SR.   

 

It's far more than that if you start fighting up.  A +4 AV is capped at around 10% to hit you.  And that's capped with both -To Hit and +DEF.    As an /SR, you aren't gong to do enough damage to a +4 AV to survive that.  This goes back to the "I win" equation.

 

The simplified form:

Time for your hit points to go to 0 = A

Time for your opponents hit points to go to 0 = B

 

If A>B ....I win.

 

You'd be surprised how often an AV can string two hits together and flatline a scrapper.   What's worse, /SR's passive +RES is worthless against AV type hits.

 

/SR's Quickness isn't going to up your damage output enough to survive getting hit 1 every 10 attacks from +AV type of damage.    Especially when /SR doesn't have any natural heal.  In addition, you'd run out of endurance.   So with /SR, you have to build massive +RES or massive +Heal or +Regen.  And if the damage is Toxic or Psi, you're +DEF isn't helping you either. 

Pretty much what I said but was then told I was delusional. 🤷‍♂️

 

2 hours ago, Blackjoy said:

Again, that's true in engineering, it's not true in CoH.   The best defense is the one that gives you the best value for A.   Adding 25% +DEF with 25% +RES, is not better than adding 25% +DEF with +25% +DEF.   In CoH, because there's a cap, and because of the way the +DEF and +RES work, adding more of the same is better than adding the same of the other.   In fact, if you have 40% +DEF, adding another 5% +DEF is going to double your survival time.  Adding 20% +RES, is not going to double your survival time.  

Ah, but here's the thing, DEF is very dependent upon what you're fighting. As you pointed out, higher ranking and level critters will be able to bypass more of your defense, not only hitting you more often but doing more damage with each hit. Resistance is the same regardless. The benefit of layered defense and resistance is that the damage is spread out over time, greatly reducing the chance of being 2-shot, and allowing regeneration to do its thing. It also benefits you when you're hit by debuffs, as critters typically will only debuff one layer of protection at a time. On paper it looks better to have a large amount of one thing but in actual gameplay it's not, for a variety of reasons.

Edited February 28, 2023 by Captain Fabulous

[Blackjoy]

2 hours ago, Captain Fabulous said:

On paper it looks better to have a large amount of one thing but in actual gameplay it's not, for a variety of reasons.

Yeah, it actually is until you reach the cap.  The difference between 90% DEF mitigation and 95% DEF mitigation is probably far greater than all the +RES, Heal, and +Regen you can get from Set IOs.   If you have 1400 hit points.  90% mitigation gives you an effective health of 14,000 hit points.  If you add 5% more +DEF and get to 95% mitigation, your effective health goes to 28,000 hit points.   That's right.  Simply adding Weave to get you from 40% +DEF to 45% +DEF provides as much mitigation as everything you've done to get to 40%.  Weave is waaaaaaaay more effective for a /SR and /Shield than Tough.

 

I witnessed this first hand.   I used to run a scrapper test with some Incarnate mobs and invite scrappers and brutes to come test it out..  A Katana/SR was able to clear a 4x8 mob of incarnates without without too much difficulty.  I had her turn off Tough and she still cleared it without much of a difference.  Than I had her turn back on Tough and turn off Weave.  She died in like 15 seconds.   She couldn't clear the spawn without Weave.   No other power pools made a difference.

 

Again, if you can cap +DEF or +RES, adding different types of mitigation is the only way to improve.  

 

Now the irony is that I don't run Tough or Weave on my /SR.  I actually wanted to diversify my mitigation as you suggest.   But my lack of Weave makes it hard to fight Incarnates at 4x8...and it's one of the few times that Elude is actually really helpful.   I can still do 4x8 Cimaroreans on my /SR, but it's a roller coaster.  And my lack of Tough makes it hard for me to weather +2 or higher AVs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Captain Fabulous]

9 hours ago, Blackjoy said:

Yeah, it actually is until you reach the cap.  The difference between 90% DEF mitigation and 95% DEF mitigation is probably far greater than all the +RES, Heal, and +Regen you can get from Set IOs.   If you have 1400 hit points.  90% mitigation gives you an effective health of 14,000 hit points.  If you add 5% more +DEF and get to 95% mitigation, your effective health goes to 28,000 hit points.   That's right.  Simply adding Weave to get you from 40% +DEF to 45% +DEF provides as much mitigation as everything you've done to get to 40%.  Weave is waaaaaaaay more effective for a /SR and /Shield than Tough.

 

I witnessed this first hand.   I used to run a scrapper test with some Incarnate mobs and invite scrappers and brutes to come test it out..  A Katana/SR was able to clear a 4x8 mob of incarnates without without too much difficulty.  I had her turn off Tough and she still cleared it without much of a difference.  Than I had her turn back on Tough and turn off Weave.  She died in like 15 seconds.   She couldn't clear the spawn without Weave.   No other power pools made a difference.

 

Again, if you can cap +DEF or +RES, adding different types of mitigation is the only way to improve.  

 

Now the irony is that I don't run Tough or Weave on my /SR.  I actually wanted to diversify my mitigation as you suggest.   But my lack of Weave makes it hard to fight Incarnates at 4x8...and it's one of the few times that Elude is actually really helpful.   I can still do 4x8 Cimaroreans on my /SR, but it's a roller coaster.  And my lack of Tough makes it hard for me to weather +2 or higher AVs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But this is exactly my point. Against trash critters defense is fine. Against tough critters, EBs, and AVs not so much. And Tough is only S/L resistance. If you're getting hit with something else it's not helping. While SR has nice DDR, a room full of +4/x8 Cimerorans are gonna slice right thru you. Numbers on paper are great, but they don't tell the entire story. There's a reason why Shield, Rad, Bio, and Invul are at the top of the list and SR isn't. I mean, you can test all this yourself. Hop on the test server and make a bunch of Scrappers with the same primary but different secondaries. Boost them to 50, kit yourself out with even-level SOs, set the slider to +4/x8 w/AV and take on different types of critters, AVs, and GMs and see who lasts the longest on average.

 

Edited February 28, 2023 by Captain Fabulous

[Gobbledygook]

I think is the second time I've seen a Regen discussion turn into a SR discussion.

[Blackjoy]

9 hours ago, Captain Fabulous said:

Boost them to 50, kit yourself out with even-level SOs, set the slider to +4/x8 w/AV and take on different types of critters, AVs, and GMs and see who lasts the longest on average.

With Elude up, /SR is going to be near top tier, if not top tier against all non-Psi/Toxic.  With Elude down, I think you're probably going to top out around 40% with CJ, Stealth, and Weave?   The problem is you probably won't have the endurance to really sustain that on SO's.

 

Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't /Shield a set that you had to pay-to-play on Live?  Maybe /WP, /BIO  were as well?  If I'm right, then it's not really fair to compare the legacy sets.  /Shield was designed to better than /SR and it is.  Not overwhelmingly so, but in small ways.  For example it's four toggles cost the same as /SR's three.  And if it we drop Grant Cover, it burns less endurance than /SR.  It also has Fear protection and a straight up tele-attack. 

 

Regardless, /Shield is a tougher call.  I'm not an expert on /Shield's numbers, but it looks like it's base +DEF is just under 22% with Phalanx running. Let's get that to 32% with Power Pools.  If on a team in a 4x8, /Shield is getting around 18% more +DEF? That would crush /SR if my numbers are correct.   So even without power pools, /Shield is in a fight with 4 or more mobs teammates seems to be getting around the same +DEF with three powers as /SR is getting from six.  And we haven't even gotten to /Shields +RES powers.  

 

However, without Power Pools, I think /SR might out performs Shield in a 4x8 as with T9s running, running solo.  With Power Pools, /Shield is going to do better, assuming it can manage the endurance.  

 

I've run SJ/Shield brute to about 40 and it has been horrible using IOs.  I have similar health issues as /SR and worse endurance issues.  And because I'm having to contirually take a knee, my Fury is low and I take more damage and use more endo during the next fight.   I finally bought some Endo Procs and that helped, but running IO's, /Shield is not the great.

 

/Willpower I ran to 50 and it started out wonderful.  But then it peaked about mid-20's.  It still ran much better than /SR, but not as predictable in running away.  /WP has a weird balancing point with wanting more mobs, but not as high a level.  I also felt that /WP's lower +DEF meant that if I started taking damage massive, I wasn't going to recover.  Unlike /SR, you aren't going to get as lucky and you don't have the rising +RES to try and risk getting lucky.   So overall, better play experience and slightly better output.  But..../SR with Elude would blow away /WP's survivability with its T9.  I actually feel /WP's T9 is one of the least effective

 

I don't have scrapper experience with Bio.  /Rad is definitely better than /SR sans Elude.  It's almost as good as /Regen leveling up.  

 

Without Elude, I suspect /SR would be dead last on SO's.  

 

EDIT:

Oh wait, if you're talking +4 AV's, /SR will probably the the swingiest.  You can die in two hits, or you might survive until Elude drops.

 

EDIT EDIT:  Mistakenly thought Phalanx was per enemy, instead of per teammate.

 

 

 

Edited March 1, 2023 by Blackjoy

[Blackjoy]

1 hour ago, Gobbledygook said:

I think is the second time I've seen a Regen discussion turn into a SR discussion.

I know, having my cake and eating it too.

[aethereal]

Guys, for real, just buy some IOs.