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

[InvaderStych]

So, are folks really claiming they're routinely taking down +4 AVs with an x8 spawn size on even level SO builds with no incarnate powers, no temp powers (meaning no daggers, etc), no base empowerment or other player buffs, and not chewing down an Ultimate or any other Inspiration in the process while totally solo?

 

Because that's what I'm extrapolating from this thread.

 

Edited March 1, 2023 by InvaderStych

[Seed22]

On 2/27/2023 at 3:04 PM, Wavicle said:

know, but no set can do that perma for all damage types.

Capped res resist debuffs right?

 

If so then my dark/ss does this. All damage types as far as im aware are capped after standing in a mob for a little bit. Amazing what cardiac and tank IOs can do! Now on SOs, who cares because SOs=trash by endgame, but for IOs...

 

People trash on cardiac but that got me capped res! Oh and the stacking tank IO means it's effectively perma. I think what you mean to say is it's hard to do constantly, but it most certainly can be done.

Edited March 1, 2023 by Seed22

[Wavicle]

1 hour ago, Seed22 said:

Capped res resist debuffs right?

 

If so then my dark/ss does this. All damage types as far as im aware are capped after standing in a mob for a little bit. Amazing what cardiac and tank IOs can do! Now on SOs, who cares because SOs=trash by endgame, but for IOs...

 

People trash on cardiac but that got me capped res! Oh and the stacking tank IO means it's effectively perma. I think what you mean to say is it's hard to do constantly, but it most certainly can be done.

We’re talking about scrappers, maybe brutes. Not tankers.

Edited March 1, 2023 by Wavicle

[Seed22]

3 hours ago, Wavicle said:

We’re talking about scrappers, maybe brutes. Not tankers.

Oh! lemme walk that back then haha!

 

 

[Blackjoy]

19 hours ago, InvaderStych said:

So, are folks really claiming they're routinely taking down +4 AVs with an x8 spawn size on even level SO builds with no incarnate powers, no temp powers (meaning no daggers, etc), no base empowerment or other player buffs, and not chewing down an Ultimate or any other Inspiration in the process while totally solo?

 

Because that's what I'm extrapolating from this thread.

 

No.  That's not what anyone is claiming.  We're talking about how you can assess the different secondaries as separate from someone's individual build.   We're also talking about the paradigm on which the game was balanced.   According to Wiki, the game was released in 2004 and the Invention System didn't come along until 2007.   So the game was originally balanced around SO's.   And this explains why a power like Elude was a big deal back then, and now, hardly anybody even takes it.

 

It's a safe bet that the devs were not able to balance the impact of the Set IOs would have on all the various ATs and their Primary/Secondary configurations.   But if you were to play the game using SO's, you'd have more insight as to why the Secondaries work the way the work and how they would have balanced out under the game's original vision.

 

When I level up toons for comparison, I try and play the same Primary.  I use SO's until I can afford IOs with just money from that toon.  I try and play the same Story Arcs.  I don't use Inspirations unless I'm fighting +2 EB's or higher.  I also don't use any mitigation from Power Pools.  But I have used Hasten on /Regen to reduce the downtime on IH and DP.  

 

By way of Anecdote.  I fought Nosferatu as a +2 EB with a SM/Regen and and SM/SR at around level 35.    With /SR, he beat me like five times, even with Elude.  He has some Psi power that cuts right through /SR.  He also has  damage aura and can still get lucky and crit.   I finally was able to beat him with Elude up and a ton of reds and yellows.   But in previous Issues, Elude wasn't available until lvl 38, so had that still been the case, I'm not sure I could have beaten him.  Maybe.  Elude allowed me to not have to take any purples.

 

With /Regen, I couldn't beat him at +2. I couldn't pile on enough small purples and reds and yellows to get him down.   IH and DP just weren't effective for long enough and the real issue was the To Hit Debuff and his use of Siphon Life.  

 

This is the first time I've played /SR since they re-ordered the powers.  Being allowed to take Evasion and Elude by lvl 30, does dramatically improve /SR's experience.  Now, you can take out EBs and have an Oh Crap option.   

 

 

Edited March 2, 2023 by Blackjoy

[Nayeh]

1 hour ago, Blackjoy said:

 

With /Regen, I couldn't beat him at +2. I couldn't pile on enough small purples and reds and yellows to get him down.   IH and DP just weren't effective for long enough and the real issue was the To Hit Debuff and his use of Siphon Life. 

 

 

Axe/Regen Brute at Level 39 in the Mender Lazerus arc - Nosferatu down as an EB +2 without any inspirations or fancy tricks. Just a decent build and hacking him with an axe.

- I don't have Instant Healing (Maybe I'll get it one day if I can drop Boxing or Spirit Ward lmao). Didn't have access to Moment of Glory at that level.

- Used Dull Pain once just to raise my HP cap.

- Used Reconstruction once.

 

Admittedly, I couldn't take him on as an AV+4. Though, I wouldn't advise bothering to fight him solo because of his -ToHit Debuffs, LifeDrain, and Dull Pain. Just ain't worth the time.

 

Edited March 2, 2023 by Nayeh

[Yomo Kimyata]

On 2/26/2023 at 3:49 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.

 

I agree with this.  I keep trying to like SR, but my playstyle just has too many attacks coming in, and 5% of attacks getting through is just too many without mitigation.  If you are playing x3, or on a team with a taunter then sure, it's great!  But for me it's a numbers game and the numbers on the other side are many and irrational.  Possibly imaginary.

[Blackjoy]

19 hours ago, Nayeh said:

 

Axe/Regen Brute at Level 39 in the Mender Lazerus arc - Nosferatu down as an EB +2 without any inspirations or fancy tricks. Just a decent build and hacking him with an axe.

- I don't have Instant Healing (Maybe I'll get it one day if I can drop Boxing or Spirit Ward lmao). Didn't have access to Moment of Glory at that level.

- Used Dull Pain once just to raise my HP cap.

- Used Reconstruction once.

 

Admittedly, I couldn't take him on as an AV+4. Though, I wouldn't advise bothering to fight him solo because of his -ToHit Debuffs, LifeDrain, and Dull Pain. Just ain't worth the time.

Did you exemp down from 50 to do this arc?  If so then, I would totally expect any scrapper could handle a +2 EB.

 

My results were with a true level 35, strict non-Set IO build (excluding 4-5 Overwhelming Fear), so unfortunately the comparison doesn't really provide much insight, imo.  I do have my naked SM/Regen at 50, so I will go back and try this arc and see if I have better results exemp'ing down.

 

[twozerofoxtrot]

On 2/28/2023 at 8:13 AM, aethereal said:

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. 

 

This has been my experience.  Observed in two places:

 

1) +4 ITF - Rommy's fuzzballs can't have their Regen debuffed... by Envenomed Daggers at least. 

 

2) +4 Willpower AV in AE - Fast Healing's normal 25% Regen Debuff Resist turns into 100%. Tried debuffing with a Rad/Rad defender and couldn't. 

[bustacap]

On 2/28/2023 at 4:05 PM, Blackjoy said:

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.  

 

 

All power sets were introduced in Issues to all players. What we call p2w was mostly prestige stuff for subscripes (see p2w vender) and things like mystic fortune and ninja run and the Boosters/ATOs Packs. I don't remember if you could just buy ATOs directly. You could buy a numinas that would work at level 1 for $5 though.

 

This reminds me of an other thing Arcanville did. Immortality lines.

 

Repost: I7 scrapper secondary comparisons - City of Heroes Forums (archive.org)

 

 

Might partly explain where these arguments started...

 

[Paragon Vanguard]

It looks like people really hate regens, but I have to say that I have one that works well enough. He is a claws/regen and I play him +1x8 solo. Due to him being a regen I accept that I may get dropped solo, heck, I know I probably will with multiple bosses and above, but that is kind of due to the concept of a regen. I utilize the quick regeneration of the set by removing myself from the fight for a moment to heal up (again solo) or just simply by using revive when needed, which is 15 seconds of immunity. With a tricked out incarnate scrapper that means quickly removing baddies from the field. Having a secondary revive does not hurt either. 

I am not negating what people feel as negatives, I think regens are hard to play and there is no cruise control with them for the most part. You have to actively pay attention to heals, inspirations, etc. You can get some "oh crud" powers to get you out of a jam (sorry, at work and I dont remember the ones I chose). I know that is not considered ideal play, but regen is not completely unviable. It is simply a set you really have to work. 

 I don't do anything +4 solo, as to me the time versus xp is not worth it, and I know solo it would be difficult for a /regen if possible, so no defending that here. 

 

All my toons are concept and I know I make things work how I want them to, so it may well not be for everyone. However, if a person is looking for regen as a concept, it is do-able. I find it fun. I don't play him when I want to cruise control, but I do play him when I want the challenge. "Dying" cannot be a factor of why one does not want to play a regen, you have to kind of play them with the idea that they will, and you will use revive to it's fullest. Just my input. Again, this does not negate what anyone has said, it is a difficult set to play, but can be very fun as well. 

Edited March 6, 2023 by Paragon Vanguard

[Blackjoy]

15 hours ago, bustacap said:

 

All power sets were introduced in Issues to all players. What we call p2w was mostly prestige stuff for subscripes (see p2w vender) and things like mystic fortune and ninja run and the Boosters/ATOs Packs. I don't remember if you could just buy ATOs directly. You could buy a numinas that would work at level 1 for $5 though.

 

Thanks for clearing that up.

 

15 hours ago, bustacap said:

This reminds me of an other thing Arcanville did. Immortality lines.

 

Repost: I7 scrapper secondary comparisons - City of Heroes Forums (archive.org)

 

 

Might partly explain where these arguments started...

Which argument?

 

I was on Live before poster A was making these posts.  I was there when IH was a toggle and it /Regen was God-Mode after you got it.   So I'm not sure what arguments you think were started by that post.  This analysis by poster A is fundamentally incomplete and presents a flawed analysis or methodology when analyzing the Secondaries.   It fails because it doesn't look at the full scope of how scrappers were designed:  Primary + Secondary.

 

Poster A uses a methodology that has been used by others and which focuses Secondary mitigation, and nothing else.  Another form of this is called "effective health."  But these models all fail to grasp a crucial aspect:  Your secondary only needs to keep you alive long enough for you to get the incoming damage to so low that your mean-time-to-failure approaches infinity.   It's all about the "I win" equation, which poster A's analysis fails to discuss or evaluate:

 

Time to Defeat Me  - Time to Defeat Them > 0

 

The reason why /SR is playable despite the worse "immortality line" is because it's paired with a Primary that is designed to eliminate incoming damage rapidly.   /SR doesn't have to be immortal, it just needs to keep you upright for the 15-180 seconds it takes for you to beat down the spawn so that your no longer in danger of dying.   So the fact that /Regen can take more damage lying down is largely irrelevant for game play.....because no one takes the damage lying down.   

 

The "I win" equation also explains why the devs game /SR a power like Quickness and /Regen Quick Recovery.  Sure, they are thematically appropriate, but  these powers offer no benefit to mitigation, so why have themt?  Because Quickness improves the rate at which a scrapper can cycle its attacks and thus statistically reduces the Time to Defeat Them....and Quick Recovery extents the duration a /Regen can sustain its attacks.    And when you think about it, both powers are very well suited for their respective sets.   /SR wants a short fast fight  /SR can't recover health fast enough so it wants a higher DPS.  /Regen wants to extend the fight so it's superior +regen can do its thing.  

 

The other part of poster A's analysis that leads to misinformation is that there is no ability to evaluate debuffs OR reaction times.  On the debuff side, /Regen's effective health or "immortality line" is impacted by debuffs.  -Defense, -Res, -Recharge, etc.   The Time to Defeat Them  equation is also extended by debuffs that lower a scrappers ability to do damage e.g. -To Hit, -Damage, -Recharge,  -Speed, Fear, -Perception.  The "immortality line" can't contemplate the factors, so it leads to incorrect conclusions.   How good is DA going to be if it can't use Dark Regen on account of -To Hit?

 

It should also be pointed out that when poster A wrote this, MoG worked completely differently.  IIRC, it lowered you down to about 10% health and gave you massive +DEF and +RES.  I think it still works this way for boss Paragon Protectors.   So a powerful untyped psi attack was often a one-shot, but more importantly, you couldn't heal while it was active and this is why many hated the power as it was inconsistent with the rest of how the set worked.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Blackjoy]

5 hours ago, Paragon Vanguard said:

It looks like people really hate regens

What you're seeing is the zeitgeist of people on these forums whose singular focuses is  "what are the extremes I can accomplished at lvl 50?"  Little to no value is given to quality of life aspects or the journey from start to finish.

 

 

[aethereal]

3 hours ago, Blackjoy said:

What you're seeing is the zeitgeist of people on these forums whose singular focuses is  "what are the extremes I can accomplished at lvl 50?"  Little to no value is given to quality of life aspects or the journey from start to finish.

 

 

Nope, that's entirely your pathology.

 

I enjoy the leveling process so much that I don't create arbitrary barriers for myself, like inability to slot IOs or take power pools, so that my characters can feel awesome from the start.

[InvaderStych]

3 hours ago, aethereal said:

I enjoy the leveling process so much that I don't create arbitrary barriers for myself, like inability to slot IOs or take power pools, so that my characters can feel awesome from the start.

 

So much this.

 

I don't understand this fiction that people either use SOs exclusively or they build with IOs exclusively, and that only the former group levels slowly through regular game-play.

 

I use SOs while leveling because I am lazy, and I pepper in IOs as I go because some are known "always use" pieces, or I get an idea of what the final build should look like as I go along. I level everything slowly, about 50/50 solo/team, because I enjoy it and it gives me insights for what I might do to max out whatever looney concept combo I am working on.

 

This idea that leveling through "normal/standard/linear/whatever you want to call it" game-play and developing a maxed out final build for post-50 content are mutually exclusive is just nonsense.

 

The irony here is that I've nothing against /Regen, I already know what it can do when maxed and what it is like to level. I had the Brute version during Retail from the moment it was ported. 😉

[Sir Myshkin]

On 3/5/2023 at 11:01 AM, bustacap said:

All power sets were introduced in Issues to all players.

In the spirit of what @Blackjoy was asking about paid sets, your response would... not entirely be accurate.

 

All sets were released and available to all players, but not in issues; some of them did have a transactional value required to play them, and thus were not just "free." Those who were on the subscription service were give 500 coins/points/whatever each month that they could use towards packs, costumes, power sets, whatever extra goodies that came up with costs associated, so for more of the "Pay to Win" (if you will) crowd, they were getting it by happenstance of their "subscription."

 

The list of what sets can be found here on Paragon Wiki. There were 16 total sets released specifically to the "Paid" category, no Shield was not one of them that came out much earlier in Issue 13 which predated the F2P system by quite a bit.

[Blackjoy]

14 hours ago, aethereal said:

Nope, that's entirely your pathology.

Oh, I wish it were just me.  But forums have a way of getting people to group think.  I didn't invent the pylon test or the trap door test, or the posts about soloing ITF on 4x8.  Or post videos of me on Monster Island.  Tankers are all about soloing TFs on 4x8, or tanking Lord Recluse.  Even Defenders talk about soloing ITF on 0x1.    And it follows that the people that frequent the forums are more concerned about min/maxing than those tthat don't.  So it's not a surprise the 50+ game is framework for how people talk about the game.  But is the predominant framework and the basis under which people trash /Regen.

 

14 hours ago, aethereal said:

I enjoy the leveling process so much that I don't create arbitrary barriers for myself, like inability to slot IOs or take power pools, so that my characters can feel awesome from the start.

 

10 hours ago, InvaderStych said:

I don't understand this fiction that people either use SOs exclusively or they build with IOs exclusively, and that only the former group levels slowly through regular game-play.

The fact that you both keep harping on this tells me neither of you are actually grasping what is being discussed...at least on my part.   I'll explain it one last time so that the next time either of you post a statement like this, I'll flag it for trolling.

 

I am more interested in how the "sets" play as a function of their design.  I am not interested in what I can build with the sets.   In order to understand how the sets play in comparison to each other, I play them with what every I can afford leveling up...and then non-Set IO's (except Overwhelming Fear which I just love)  I don't use power pools and I don't use inspirations (except when fighting +2 EBs or higher).   I also try and play the same Primary.   

 

If you aren't interested in how the sets play naked, then you do you  But stop acting like I'm telling others how to play the game or accusing others who do things different of badwrongfun.

 

 

 

 

Edited March 7, 2023 by Blackjoy

[Paragon Vanguard]

You know, to answer the OP.....challenging. It can be challenging but really fun!!! 🙂

 

[bustacap]

On 3/6/2023 at 7:28 PM, Sir Myshkin said:

In the spirit of what @Blackjoy was asking about paid sets, your response would... not entirely be accurate.

 

All sets were released and available to all players, but not in issues; some of them did have a transactional value required to play them, and thus were not just "free." Those who were on the subscription service were give 500 coins/points/whatever each month that they could use towards packs, costumes, power sets, whatever extra goodies that came up with costs associated, so for more of the "Pay to Win" (if you will) crowd, they were getting it by happenstance of their "subscription."

 

The list of what sets can be found here on Paragon Wiki. There were 16 total sets released specifically to the "Paid" category, no Shield was not one of them that came out much earlier in Issue 13 which predated the F2P system by quite a bit.

 

Yeah I was a subscriber since launch with a slight hiatus (wow launch until mid burning crusade) so yeah I did get them all without p2w mentality as I was always a subscriber. It ticked me off more that I wasn't subscribed long enough to get the anime wings on the subscriber duration rewards (I did get 1 staff and maybe att?). The end made me sad.

 

 

Edited March 15, 2023 by bustacap
grammar