Lets talk Regeneration Set

[Psi-bolt]

3 hours ago, Solarverse said:

 

I guess SR isn't for everybody...

 

Exactly.  I know SR just as well as Regen.  But I don't like it.  It sucks for how I like to play.  In your other post about speed runs, you described how you like to play and I can see SR (eventually) being extremely good for that.   I literally can't stand sets that don't have a heal and/or endurance management tools.  It's why /EA might be the best set FOR ME even if it's not exactly the best.

 

Regen isn't the best set, not by a mile.  Not for the way I like to play nor for how you like to play.  But the set is fine.  It needs a buff, but any buff that doesn't turn the set into something completely different would not likely change your evaluation of the set.   And if I have had a point in this whole thread it is this.  Regen is different.  Much different than other sets.  That doesn't make it bad, it just makes it different.  For the game that the devs created through EOS, it works fine solo for most content.  In teams it does even better with a few buffers. 

 

3 hours ago, Solarverse said:

 

Then clearly every power in game is by far overpowered and should be nerfed to be in line with Regen then. Hell, that's the best idea I have heard all day, thanks for pointing that out. You're not so bad after all! I think I'm going to end up really liking you.

 

Realistically, defense stacking shouldn't have ever been as easy as the devs made it after Inventions.  But what's done is done.  Inventions ticked me off so much because I literally couldn't understand why Regen needed to be nerfed so hard if they were going to let the defense based sets be gods.   But...oh well.    

[Without_Pause]

8 hours ago, Blackjoy said:

But I am skeptical the devs designed the Fighting Pool expecting Scrappers to take it.

Considering how old the Fighting pool is, that's a hell of a statement.

[Without_Pause]

30 minutes ago, Psi-bolt said:

I literally can't stand sets that don't have a heal and/or endurance management tools.

Incarnates takes care of that. Same for Shield. Even if Incarnates patches holes for various builds, those two by far make out the best to me. 

[Solarverse]

5 hours ago, Psi-bolt said:

 

Exactly.  I know SR just as well as Regen.  But I don't like it.  It sucks for how I like to play.  In your other post about speed runs, you described how you like to play and I can see SR (eventually) being extremely good for that.   I literally can't stand sets that don't have a heal and/or endurance management tools.  It's why /EA might be the best set FOR ME even if it's not exactly the best.

 

Not liking something does not mean that you don't know how to play it for what it is. I don't like Regen because it was originally designed to be so much more than what it is. I could be wrong, but I do not believe that the OG Devs intended on it to be the lowest tier power set in game. I used to love Regen, I mean absolutely loved it. Now, it's like the set has betrayed me due to what the Devs did to it to punish the set. This is why I sometimes say, "Set Regen Free" because the set has been punished enough.

 

I don't expect nor want the set to be the best, but I would at least like to see it removed from the bottom tier and not be so darned squishy. I think doing something as simple as given the set a nice Absorb shield might be all the set needs since it doesn't have any built in defense or much resist. Something has to make up for the lack of these things. It can't completely rely on Regen when there is not enough Regen there to rely on. Regen is fine solo to be sure, it is fine with teams that have lots of buffs, sure. But sappers can destroy regen if you have more than one, even Freakshow can obliterate Regen with their End Drain abilities and those insanely hard hitting Boss hits.

 

Regen needs a cushion of some type. IMHO it could use either a fast regenerating Absorb Shield, a much higher Resistance to Regeneration Debuffs and an adequate Resistance to Recovery/Endurance Debuff and that would put the set in a proper place. It wouldn't be the best by any stretch, but it would be in a position where it can sit within the ranks of others without being shamed.

 

P.S. I appreciate you taking this to a serious discussion instead of insinuating a set is not for me. Trust me, it's for me, it was once my favorite set and thematically it still is...I just don't like the punishment it received and I believe the set needs to be adjusted to fit the times.

 

 

Edited September 28, 2023 by Solarverse
Sentencve Structure

[A Cat]

9 hours ago, Solarverse said:

 

I love SR, it's actually my favorite Stalker and Scrapper Secondary. As far as I am concerned, Regen doesn't even come close to SR...not even remotely close. I guess SR isn't for everybody...

I've only played /SR with a stalker, but the leveling could have been smoother. You get AoE defense ridiculously late in levels IMO. 

[Solarverse]

2 minutes ago, A Cat said:

I've only played /SR with a stalker, but the leveling could have been smoother. You get AoE defense ridiculously late in levels IMO. 

 

I can see that mattering more for Scrappers than Stalkers. But yeah, SR isn't perfect furing the leveling process, but end game it is unparalleled IMO. Most speak of a lack of heal, but I always pick up Aid Self to cover that hole, works great.

[Blackjoy]

18 hours ago, Without_Pause said:

Considering how old the Fighting pool is, that's a hell of a statement.

Not really.  There are a lot of things that seem obvious in hindsight but apparently were not considered during development.  Things like six slotting attacks with Damage, everyone taking Health and Stamina, and people learning the value of stacking +DEF on top of more +DEF.  

 

It may have been something I read at some point back during Live, but I got the sense the Fighting Pool was for Defender/Controllers/Blasters to add some survivability and melee attacks.   In addition, there are a number of reasons scrappers weren't taking the FP as they are now:

 

1.   It's not hard to imagine the devs not expecting an /SR to invest a bunch of extra feats to get a 3.75% +DEF boost that is a toggle.  

2.  Remember, you had to buy Health and Stamina as well, so there were fewer open choices if you wanted all your primary/secondary.

3. There were no Set bonuses to push /SR to the cap and really utilize that last bit of +DEF.

4. As I recall, nobody knew the numbers at launch.   Crytpic didn't add numbers to the Combat Logs until after several issues.  So there was no one doing the math to clearly identify the benefits.

4. I'll also point out that benefits of the Fighting Pool were communicated on the forums....not so much in game.   

5. There was no difficulty slider at launch. That is another reason why scrappers weren't looking into the Fighting Pool.  No one was trying to make a build that could survive 4x8 because you couldn't do that solo.

 

So no, I don't think the devs added the Fighting Pool expecting it to become a thing for scrappers as it became.  

Edited September 29, 2023 by Blackjoy

[Yep, Nope is right]

17 hours ago, Solarverse said:

 

Regen needs a cushion of some type. IMHO it could use either a fast regenerating Absorb Shield, a much higher Resistance to Regeneration Debuffs and an adequate Resistance to Recovery/Endurance Debuff and that would put the set in a proper place. It wouldn't be the best by any stretch, but it would be in a position where it can sit within the ranks of others without being shamed.

 

P.S. I appreciate you taking this to a serious discussion instead of insinuating a set is not for me. Trust me, it's for me, it was once my favorite set and thematically it still is...I just don't like the punishment it received and I believe the set needs to be adjusted to fit the times.

 

 

 

You're not wrong. And yet... the hero pictured as my avatar has been my main since right AFTER the big regen nerf. People told me I was nuts for going with /regen. They were probably right. <grin> It was rough going at times learning the ropes, but I made it work, with a lot of advice gleaned from the old scrapper forum. I've stuck with katana/regen scrapper for all those years, and it's still my favorite. If it underperforms, I can't tell. <shrug> Well before I hit 50, BladeSnow was for most purposes unkillable if I did my part - which included knowing when to bounce to give the regen time to catch up or one of the 'oh shit' clickies that vital second or two to recharge if the inspiration tray was looking a bit thin. And that included going into +4/x8 missions; until Incarnate dropped and massacred us all I thought I had survivability all figured out.

 

Part of the reason I was an early adopter of IO sets was getting more tools to work on my main. When my fellow blade the katana/SR had a defense cascade failure every few missions, I was the one left standing. Also a katana/invulnerability scrapper who often joined us., same deal - I had put a LOT more work into layered mitigation than either of them at first, though they were not dumb and quickly followed suit. We all had our strengths and weaknesses, but unless one of us was having an off night, we could all three get thru any content with the teams we could cobble together out of our SG - we were never big on PuGs. If one of us was getting hammered, the others would cover long enough to take the heat off - that's the point of a team, after all.

 

Most nights nobody on the team died at all, and barring lag or just old fashion screwups of all the various sorts it wouldn't be the scrappers. My SG mates were always marveling that the 'weak' regen could keep up with the 'stronger' sets, but you just had to pay attention and use the tools you had to keep in the fight. Including 'wasting' power slots on fighting pool - the one I always hated was boxing, had zero use for that nor kick (on a scrapper, I mean, weapon redraw alone was a killer). Always had but never slotted boxing, but such was the price of getting more resistance and defense. Even before IOs, CJ, weave, maneuvers, and stealth layered on top of tough and regen worked pretty well. Best of all, that was one hero who never had to worry about his blue bar, which freed up a slot or two in the ol' inspiration tray and paid lots of OTHER dividends.

 

I've tried just about every variant of scrapper, and played *all* the blueside ATs from the very beginning. Finally got serious about the redside ATs when Going Rogue hit, though still not as familiar with anything but MM and Stalker as I'd like, only so many hours in the day. Yet despite all that, katana/regen/body was always my main and go-to for the toughest content. My first 50, my first incarnate, and the first character I recreated when the new servers came up. Only character I make a point of recreating on EVERY server. Regen has gotten SOME rework since the big nerf. MoG was tweaked at least 3 times that I can remember, and emerged better every time. There are some other scrappers better known in the community who played big katana/regen, too, and did just fine. It may be in theory weak, in practice it's more than strong *enough*. I tried a katana/willpower variant, and just didn't perform as well for me.

 

Castle at one point told us that willpower was what regen should have been had the team understood things better at the beginning, or something to that effect. You can likely find his exact comment in the old forum archives. I like willpower a lot, and have played it all the way to 50 on a hero or two. But at least in my hands, it just can't quite hit the sort of peak I can on regen, when I'm firing on all cylinders, probably due to long experience.

 

There is more or less universal agreement regen needs a fix, but you keep coming back to the simple problem - the most logical way to fix it in the current paradigm would leave it looking a LOT like willpower. So much so that there is arguably not a lot of point in having both. No idea what the solution is, and from my experience at least, not sure it's enough of a problem to tie up scarce development resources solving. <helpless shrug> Some powersets match people's personal play and build style better than others, is all I can really say.  "Regen has been bery, bery gooda to me."

Edited September 29, 2023 by TheHunterJLJ
typo

[Yep, Nope is right]

Blackjoy commented "I am skeptical the devs designed the Fighting Pool expecting Scrappers to take it.  I could be wrong." We actually had several comments from the developers indicating that at least by that point, they DID expect scrappers (and tankers) to take both tough and weave IF they wanted to build layered mitigation. Whether that was the original concept, who knows?

 

The two contexts I know it came up in was in discussions about the 'wasted' pick of boxing or tough, and several times in a couple of  huge long threads in the old tanker forum from a tank whose name I've forgotten who was always arguing for invulnerability to be buffed. I'm far too lazy to go dig those out, but I do remember direct statements from developers that they *expected* someone wanting a truly solid melee capable of eating an alpha to take the fighting pool. That sent the tanker advocating for invulnerability to be, ya know, invulnerable, into a quite eloquent if ultimately futile tirade. I've forgotten that side of the discussion, but I distinctly remember the comments from the developers about the fighting pool. 

[Without_Pause]

5 hours ago, Blackjoy said:

So no, I don't think the devs added the Fighting Pool expecting it to become a thing for scrappers as it became.  

There's more armor sets than /sr. Regen absolutely could take on more toggles and adding Res and Def as you have gone out of your way to state how well those work would make Regen even better. Seriously, the one power set you are dying on the hill in terms of how good it is destroys your argument. Skipping powers wasn't THAT difficult as it meant taking less of other pools and Epics. My Regen Scrapper had zero issues fitting everything I wanted in, no real End issues, and I was using common Level 25 IOs when it was all said and done. SOs would have worked just equally as well if not better. Level 53 SOs would have. And yes, I was soloing on as difficult of content as the game allowed at that time. 

 

Even in the days of taking Stamina, taking the Fighting pool was an absolute norm for melee characters. If the Devs didn't intend for Scrappers to take it, then are we to expect that they only intended for Tankers to take it? A whole power pool for 1 AT? Tankers have the same issues taking it as Scrapper did, and they didn't have Regen or WP to offset the End cost. Lets not forget Dark Armor players using the Fighting pool as well and their tales of woe about end issues. Any squishy AT would also have the same issue with fitting it in, dealing with the end cost, and get even less value out of it. More so when Leadership exists.

 

'What the Devs intended.'

[drbuzzard]

9 hours ago, Blackjoy said:

 

 

1.   It's not hard to imagine the devs not expecting an /SR to invest a bunch of extra feats to get a 3.75% +DEF boost that is a toggle.  

 

 

You have a partial memory. It wasn't that number in the time you were talking about. It was 7.5^% for scrappers before GDN and you could six slot it for 16.5% defense. You could toss in combat jumping for another 5% base up to 11 six slotted. Throw that on a regen scrapper and you're effectively doubling your regen since half of everything misses . With numbers like that who wouldn't take it?

 

Yes, builds were much tighter due to fitness as a pool power, but people found a way. There was definitely a lot of opportunity cost in the optimization game in those days. 

[Blackjoy]

8 hours ago, drbuzzard said:

It was 7.5^% for scrappers before GDN and you could six slot it for 16.5% defense.

Thanks for the post, but I think my main point is that at Launch and not for several issues CoH did not make these numbers available, so nobody was doing the math and figuring out how great Weave would be on top of /SR.   More to the point, there was no suggestion or push from the developers or in-game information that the FIghting Pool was intended as a scrapper staple as people would eventually flock to it.

 

13 hours ago, TheHunterJLJ said:

We actually had several comments from the developers indicating that at least by that point, they DID expect scrappers (and tankers) to take both tough and weave IF they wanted to build layered mitigation.

That doesn't actually mean that intended for all, or even a majority, of scrappers and tankers to take it when it was created.   It's also not accurate as sets like /Invulnerability and / Dark Amor already had multi-layered mitigation, even /Regen had some +RES.  Only /SR, at Launch, was pure +DEF.   In fact, in teams, I think /Invul was getting more mitigation from +DEF than +RES.  And ultimately that statement would be true for anyone who took Tough and Weave, not just scrappers and tanks.

 

Again, my point is that the Fighting Pool was not created as an intended path for Scrappers or Tankers or intended that it be more important to those sets than any other sets.  Sure, they expected some to take it, certainly /Regen which had the +Recovery to support a couple of additional toggles.  But sets like /SR and /DA were starved for endurance and  not until the Fitness Pool became inherent did it become viable. 

 

The ultimate points it the game was not/is not balanced around scrappers having to take the Fighting Pool.  I don't use it on any of my scrappers and my /SR, built without Mids can comfortably do 4x8.  And my /Willpower, also built without Mids can do some 4x8 (because I have no idea how to build a /WP scrapper).

 

 

 

 

Edited September 30, 2023 by Blackjoy

[drbuzzard]

1 hour ago, Blackjoy said:

Thanks for the post, but I think my main point is that at Launch and not for several issues CoH did not make these numbers available, so nobody was doing the math and figuring out how great Weave would be on top of /SR.   More to the point, there was no suggestion or push from the developers or in-game information that the FIghting Pool was intended as a scrapper staple as people would eventually flock to it.

 

If you were on the forums, the derived numbers were available. I played the game for a while before I went to the forums. Once I did, the effect on my builds was night and day. Yes, the devs didn't give out the numbers for a long while but people still figured things out. The fact that the devs didn't anticipate people using every tool at their disposal to increase defenses shows they were rather clueless. To be quite honest I don't think 'intended' existed. The design philosophy seems closer to 'throw crap at the wall and see what sticks' rather than something coherent. Their vision of how things would work and how it did work had very little in common. 

 

 

[venetiasilver]

Repost: I7 scrapper secondary comparisons - City of Heroes Forums

On 9/29/2023 at 9:39 PM, drbuzzard said:

 

If you were on the forums, the derived numbers were available. I played the game for a while before I went to the forums. Once I did, the effect on my builds was night and day. Yes, the devs didn't give out the numbers for a long while but people still figured things out. The fact that the devs didn't anticipate people using every tool at their disposal to increase defenses shows they were rather clueless. To be quite honest I don't think 'intended' existed. The design philosophy seems closer to 'throw crap at the wall and see what sticks' rather than something coherent. Their vision of how things would work and how it did work had very little in common. 

 

 

 

[Herotu]

My 2p...

 

"If you can't use clickies, you don't be regen. "

 

Can't we do better than that?

 

So we've got this divergence between [themes and visual style] and [functionality and user-friendliness]. 

 

It's hard to disagree that active play should be rewarded better than passive.

In an ideal world, we'd probably have "active" and "passive" variants of each power, with the passive being weaker. 

 

 

 

Edited March 17 by Herotu

[Crysis]

Perma-MOG was a highly recommended build back in the day before Regen was rage-nerfed by the Devs for destroying all those monkeys in AE.

 

[bigmarty]

On 9/19/2023 at 12:32 PM, srmalloy said:

You're looking at it from the wrong direction. Make it a toggle, and change its mechanics from just a big boost to healing to an effect like how Spectral Wounds works, but reversed — when you get hit, you take whatever damage gets past any resistance you have, and it queues a delayed effect that 'instantly' heals you for an enhanceable fraction of that damage. So, for example, you might get hit for 250 points of damage, and a second or two later, heal 100 points from that. But because it only affects each incoming hit once, it becomes comparable to resistance and defense, each of which only affect an incoming attack once.

You either do this or like a staggered effect with the damage you take. So damage you take is split over 5 or so seconds instead of all at once.

[catsi563]

meh Ill stand on my original thoughts on regen it needa a mild boost to resistance and Instant healing needs to be a toggle again  do that and regen as a set will be fine

 

I have a Warmace regen brute she does just fine at high levels. but the making IH a toggle would let me swing more freely without having to hit a button every few minutes

[Snarky]

Yeah. Let us talk Regen…

 

[Haijinx]

Just Nerf it.

[venetiasilver]

The more pressing question is, what is the correct adjective for Regeneration?
Flawed, Good, Great, Awful?
How can we ascertain its true description?

[Indystruck]

I've read this topic and I have come to the conclusion that this isn't the set for Solarverse.

[venetiasilver]

For the overall purpose I see, is that there's some kind of element to Regeneration that both works way to well and not so well at the same time.
This is more of a "Top Down" type system.
Where 96% of the game is diving into packs of enemies, let's just say 16 Enemies.
2 Bosses / 4 Lieutenants / 10 Minions.
Most armor sets get stronger when you dive into this pack. Invuln / Energy Aura / and many more.
They all augment your stats to survive this sudden threat level.
3 of these sets do not from memory.
SR / Ninjitsu / Regeneration.
2 of these have a sustain option; Nin and Regen.

As I read the Arcanaville breakdown she did in 2006. Defense sets are strong in the first 30 seconds and have longevity problems, resist sets are stable from 1 minute to 3 minutes.
However Regeneration is just several layers of damage recovery that have to play layered together.
Since the MoG change after 2006 its basically the most safe option to "Wait" Jump in with MoG then clean up the boss duels with Instant Healing almost being too strong for the duel.
This begs the question is if in the 2% of the game you're fighting AV's is if Regeneration is the best duel armor against them. Since they have a predictable DPS flow you can eclipse?

[Maelwys]

It's the (now downright ancient) case of Flat damage mitigation versus Scaling damage mitigation.

Regeneration and Healing are "Flat" damage mitigation.
You heal or regenerate a certain amount of hit points over time.
It doesn't matter if you take 10 or 100 or 1000 damage, you still always recover X hitpoints in Y seconds.

Defence and Damage Resistance are "Scaling" damage mitigation.
They allow you to avoid different amounts of damage, based on what attacks are currently being inflicted upon you.
For Defence, you either take 0% damage or 100%.
For Damage Resistance, you always take X% less damage.

Regeneration therefore tends to be either completely immortal or dead. The old adage goes that /Regen Scrappers are basically immortal providing that (i) they never take more damage than X over time Y and (ii) they never take a single huge spike of damage that is greater than their maximum HP.
Moment of Glory (after the rework in 2008 which removed the stupid health crash) became a very useful Emergency Button for /regen - in cases where you start taking more damage than your flat mitigation can cope with, it gives you some valuable breathing room. It's not supposed to be a "always wait for this to recharge before jumping in" power or a "save this for the end boss" power but somewhere in the middle. 

- - - - - - - - - -

Personally, on my own /Regens I always liked layering mitigation further, so taking primary sets with buffs like Divine Avalanche (melee softcap before IO came out? Yes please!) and even Tough and Resilience. I didn't always run those constantly; but popping MoG gave me a chance to "turtle up" and get a double-stacked DA going, for example.

Although admittedly it's been a looooooong journey from this:



to this:

[venetiasilver]

That Old School hero planner looks so fascinating.