Recharge: How fast is fast enough

[Troo]

Near perma Gang War is absolutely possible but trust me, it's just not worth it.

 

Even with recharge enhancements, invention set bonuses, and other sources we can only recharge so fast.

"it is subject to diminishing returns — the more you add, the less each new amount helps." https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Recharge

 

Best Value (Original Un-enhanced Value)

 

180s	(900)
120s	(600)
96s	(480)
90s	(450)
24s	(120)
18s	(90)
12s	(60)
4.8s	(24)
4s	(20)
3.6s	(18)
3s	(15)
360s	(1800)

Hasten as an example: 90s (450)

 

There is an exception to the diminishing returns. 

Burnout: Allows you to instantly recharge all of your Primary and Secondary powers. Burnout is very expensive in terms of endurance, and reduces your maximum endurance slightly for 60 seconds after use. 

[BassAckwards]

Not sure if the question in your title "How fast is fast enough?" is rhetorical, but I try to shoot for perma-hasten in all my builds when possible, but realistically, whatever amount of recharge gets you to the most efficient or highest DPS attack chain your toon has available is all you need (though I hardly ever stop there personally). Any more is really a waste or to give you some wiggle room against recharge debuffs.

 

There are the exceptions of trying to make singular powers permanent of course (Phantom Army for example).

 

Interesting table with the best case scenarios for sure!

[Hatchet_Manners]

Just today I was thinking about this. Normally I always take hasten in an effort to have as few attack powers as possible; it's more slot efficient (you need fewer attacks to 6 slot) and you're strongest attacks are up more often.

 

However I thought about skipping hasten on my new character because of diminishing returns, and I noticed that hasten is only saving me 4s on Full Auto. (The power already has heavy recharge slotting, plus a good share of global recharge). 

[Frozen Burn]

Yep, there is a max recharge to all powers - it's 1/5 of the base recharge.  So, divide you base by 5 and that's the fastest recharge you can get a power to.  So, no need to worry about memorizing a chart... unless you really suck at math.  😄   

[MonteCarla]

Yeah, there is usually a point where more Recharge doesn't make a difference.

Your attack chain starts to get limited by animation times instead of +Recharge.

You've got perma-Hasten, -Domination or -Phantom Army sorted out.

You've got Adrenalin Boost perm-able on one target but it can never be perma'd on two.  and so on. 

[Zect]

On 4/10/2025 at 4:42 PM, Troo said:

"it is subject to diminishing returns — the more you add, the less each new amount helps." https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Recharge

 

It absolutely is not.

 

Let's say you have a power that does 100 damage, and has a base recharge time of 1 minute.

 

Using the formula in the link you yourself quote:

 

Quote

RechargeTime = BaseRechargeTime / ( 100% + Buffs - Debuffs )

 

We can construct this table for our hypothetical power:

 

+Recharge%	BaseDamage	EnhancedDamage	RechargeTime	Power uses / minute	Damage done in 1 minute
+0% (base)	100	100	1.000 min	1	100
+100%	100	100	0.500 min	2	200
+200%	100	100	0.333 min	3	300
+300%	100	100	0.250 min	4	400

 

We can clearly see that the effect of adding recharge is linear. The first +100% and the last +100% both have the same effect, each granting 1 more use of the power per minute and hence, +100 damage in that time. In general, adding +x% recharge grants an additional +x% uses/min of the power compared to the base (unenhanced) rate, all the way up to the recharge cap. Hence, recharge is subject to linear returns. 

 

The key insight is that it is not the time left until the power is recharged that matters, but rather the number of power uses per unit time (i.e. the rate) that is the correct way to compare the effects of +recharge. 

 

The example used is damage, but this applies equally if the power does heals, mezzes, etc. This is applicable to your gang war example, too. We can model each posse as dealing a certain amount of damage over its lifespan, and gangwar therefore is a power that does x damage per use, upon which the above analysis applies.

 

For the exceptionally thick-skulled, I invite you to answer this question: is damage subject to diminishing returns? (You might want to write down your answer on a piece of paper, so that I can force you to eat it after I prove my point.) Let's see what the effect is when we slot +damage enhancements in our hypothetical power:

 

+Damage%	BaseDamage	EnhancedDamage	RechargeTime	Power uses / minute	Damage done in 1 minute
+0% (base)	100	100	1.000 min	1	100
+100%	100	200	1.000 min	1	200
+200%	100	300	1.000 min	1	300
+300%	100	400	1.000 min	1	400

 

We can clearly see that adding +damage is exactly identical to the effect of adding +recharge, with each +100% damage exactly matching the effects of +100% recharge. So why single out recharge for having "diminishing returns"? Under such an interpretation, damage, healing, buffs, debuffs and most quantities you can enhance are also subject to "diminishing returns".

 

There are a few exceptions to the above (does not apply if you are at the recharge cap, etc). The biggest one is that it does not apply when the animation time of powers is not negligible compared to its recharge time, since recharge has no effect on animation time and powers only start recharging after they finish animating; hence in such situations the benefit of recharge is less than calculated (but this is still not diminishing returns, since it depends only on the animation times and not how much rech you already have slotted). In general this only matters for ST rotations (attack chains in oldschool parlance), since ST attacks all have short base recharge times of 25s or less. However, certain clicks are notably affected - an example is Aid Self, with a base recharge of 20s and an animation time of 4.488s (!), nearly a quarter of the base recharge time. Also, for buffs which do not stack with themselves, the benefit is always capped when the power becomes perma.

 

The real reason you should think carefully before going for perma gangwar is that, when you already have a lot of recharge, it gets really tough to get even more recharge.

• Getting +40% global rech from set bonuses is free. 5 lotgs and some set you were going to slot anyway.
• The next +40% is easy. A couple of purple sets and ATIOs, done.
• The next +40% suddenly gets difficult. Halfway through, you run out of purple and ATIOs and lotgs. All the easy options for rech are gone and you've spent over 1/3 of assignable slots.
• Anything beyond that is really fucking hard. At this point you are at +190% with hasten and unless you have help from things like your powersets or incarnates or external buffs, you're reduced to doing desperate shit like blowing slots on 5x and 6x set bonuses for measly amounts of 5% to 7.5%.

Most sets, taking hasten, naturally reach about +130% to +160% global rech before the difficulty of getting further rech suddenly shoots up a cliff as you run out of slot-efficient options. This is the real diminishing returns and it applies to any build goal, including def, res, and whatever you care to build for, and this is why 80% of two things is usually stronger than 100% of one and 0% of the other in coh.

Edited Thursday at 06:08 PM by Zect

[Troo]

You might have some good points..

 

[tidge]

perma-Hasten does not interest me, but perma-Domination does.

 

A recent build:

 

5x +7.5% from LotG

4x +10% from Purples (3x Damage, 1x Control)

1x +10% sATO

1x +8.75% Reactive Defense <- 6 slots

1x +7.5% Gladiator's Net <- 5 slots

1x +7.5% Basilisk's Gaze <- 4 slots

1x +6.25% Decimation <- 5 slots

1x +6.25 Cloud Senses <- 4 slots

1x +6.25 Positron's Blast <- 5 slots

1x +6.25 Expedient Reinforcement <- 4 slots. I', not crazy about this, because of the set level

 

(and there is a Force Feedback in a power as well)... all this is slight overkill, but I found that the target of +136.25% was covering all my attack chain shenanigans.

 

Perma-dom would be easier, and might scale down below lvl 20, if I used Hasten... but I rather like the sets where I have them, even without considering the global Recharge.

 

I will note: I have at least one Dominator where I didn't catalyze the ATO so I could get 5x +10% and another +8.75%. Practically this typically results in a net of only +1.25%

[shortguy on indom]

RechargeTime = BaseRechargeTime / ( 100% + Buffs - Debuffs )                    
                    
"NEW" RechargeTime = BaseRechargeTime /(1 + Buffs - Debuffs )                    
                                                              60 sec/1                                          = 60 sec
                                                              60 sec./(1+1.0)                                = 30 sec
                                                              60 sec./(1+2.0)                                = 20 sec
                                                              60 sec./(1+3.0)                                = 15 sec

 

"new" recharge time is not linear, but how it actually works is.
 

[Zect]

3 hours ago, Troo said:

 

I've added a handy tldr. Enjoy!

 

[Zect]

3 hours ago, tidge said:

perma-Hasten does not interest me, but perma-Domination does.

 

A recent build:

 

5x +7.5% from LotG

4x +10% from Purples (3x Damage, 1x Control)

1x +10% sATO

1x +8.75% Reactive Defense <- 6 slots

1x +7.5% Gladiator's Net <- 5 slots

1x +7.5% Basilisk's Gaze <- 4 slots

1x +6.25% Decimation <- 5 slots

1x +6.25 Cloud Senses <- 4 slots

1x +6.25 Positron's Blast <- 5 slots

1x +6.25 Expedient Reinforcement <- 4 slots. I', not crazy about this, because of the set level

 

(and there is a Force Feedback in a power as well)... all this is slight overkill, but I found that the target of +136.25% was covering all my attack chain shenanigans.

 

Perma-dom would be easier, and might scale down below lvl 20, if I used Hasten... but I rather like the sets where I have them, even without considering the global Recharge.

 

I will note: I have at least one Dominator where I didn't catalyze the ATO so I could get 5x +10% and another +8.75%. Practically this typically results in a net of only +1.25%

 

You could lose 30% rech and take hasten, which will put you at +176.25%, just a hair off permadom + permahasten. So the tradeoff is paying 2 slots and a pool choice for hasten, or paying 30% more rech. That's around 18 slots worth of set bonuses in your build.

 

For many powers the rech needed to perma them without hasten is higher or close to that needed for permahasten itself. Eg. dull pain only needs +200% rech total to perma, so you might think that a turtle-tank could just drop hasten and perma it with set bonuses alone. But even with +100% rech from enhancements, that means you still need +100% from set bonuses. Which, if you take hasten, would put you at +170%, again just a hair off permahasten (which increases hps from more frequent castings of dull pain and helps claw back some dps). 

 

Generally this type of hasteless design is only worth it if you really want the extra pool choice freed up by not taking hasten (when I pioneered such builds fitness still cost a pool choice!), or you struggle with keeping up multiple powers on cooldown.

[tidge]

13 hours ago, Zect said:

Generally this type of hasteless design is only worth it if you really want the extra pool choice freed up by not taking hasten (when I pioneered such builds fitness still cost a pool choice!), or you struggle with keeping up multiple powers on cooldown.

 

I see Hasten as burning a pool choice. On the character I referenced above, I have 4x from Force of Will, 2x Concealment, 1x for Combat Jumping and 1 for Aid Other. Only the Force of Will powers are holding more than 1 slot.

 

EDIT: I also want to add (since it only occasionally is brought up) that the slotting of any Recharge IOs in Hasten will have their potency scale down as a player exemplars. Practically this often means that for some lower content and some builds it becomes necessary to have 3-slotted Hasten in order to have it be "perma". As a practical matter, I rarely take Hasten before level 20 (Hasten doesn't really help most lower tier primary/secondary powers IMO, other pool powers provide more bang-for-the-choice IMO below 20) so I'm pretty comfortable having something like perma-Dom tied to the lowest level an attuned LotG will work at. For such low-level content perma-Dom isn't really necessary IMO, especially if I've got my attacks and controls 5-slotted.

Edited Friday at 12:07 PM by tidge

[Galactiman]

7 hours ago, Zect said:

 

It absolutely is not.

 

Let's say you have a power that does 100 damage, and has a base recharge time of 1 minute.

 

Using the formula in the link you yourself quote:

 

 

We can construct this table for our hypothetical power:

 

+Recharge%	BaseDamage	EnhancedDamage	RechargeTime	Power uses / minute	Damage done in 1 minute
+0% (base)	100	100	1.000 min	1	100
+100%	100	100	0.500 min	2	200
+200%	100	100	0.333 min	3	300
+300%	100	100	0.250 min	4	400

 

We can clearly see that the effect of adding recharge is linear. The first +100% and the last +100% both have the same effect, each granting 1 more use of the power per minute and hence, +100 damage in that time. In general, adding +x% recharge grants an additional +x% uses/min of the power compared to the base (unenhanced) rate, all the way up to the recharge cap. Hence, recharge is subject to linear returns. 

 

The key insight is that it is not the time left until the power is recharged that matters, but rather the number of power uses per unit time (i.e. the rate) that is the correct way to compare the effects of +recharge. 

 

The example used is damage, but this applies equally if the power does heals, mezzes, etc. This is applicable to your gang war example, too. We can model each posse as dealing a certain amount of damage over its lifespan, and gangwar therefore is a power that does x damage per use, upon which the above analysis applies.

 

For the exceptionally thick-skulled, I invite you to answer this question: is damage subject to diminishing returns? (You might want to write down your answer on a piece of paper, so that I can force you to eat it after I prove my point.) Let's see what the effect is when we slot +damage enhancements in our hypothetical power:

 

+Damage%	BaseDamage	EnhancedDamage	RechargeTime	Power uses / minute	Damage done in 1 minute
+0% (base)	100	100	1.000 min	1	100
+100%	100	200	1.000 min	1	200
+200%	100	300	1.000 min	1	300
+300%	100	400	1.000 min	1	400

 

We can clearly see that adding +damage is exactly identical to the effect of adding +recharge, with each +100% damage exactly matching the effects of +100% recharge. So why single out recharge for having "diminishing returns"? Under such an interpretation, damage, healing, buffs, debuffs and most quantities you can enhance are also subject to "diminishing returns".

 

There are a few exceptions to the above (does not apply if you are at the recharge cap, etc). The biggest one is that it does not apply when the animation time of powers is not negligible compared to its recharge time, since recharge has no effect on animation time and powers only start recharging after they finish animating; hence in such situations the benefit of recharge is less than calculated (but this is still not diminishing returns, since it depends only on the animation times and not how much rech you already have slotted). In general this only matters for ST rotations (attack chains in oldschool parlance), since ST attacks all have short base recharge times of 25s or less. However, certain clicks are notably affected - an example is Aid Self, with a base recharge of 20s and an animation time of 4.488s (!), nearly a quarter of the base recharge time. Also, for buffs which do not stack with themselves, the benefit is always capped when the power becomes perma.

 

The real reason you should think carefully before going for perma gangwar is that, when you already have a lot of recharge, it gets really tough to get even more recharge.

• Getting +40% global rech from set bonuses is free. 5 lotgs and some set you were going to slot anyway.
• The next +40% is easy. A couple of purple sets and ATIOs, done.
• The next +40% suddenly gets difficult. Halfway through, you run out of purple and ATIOs and lotgs. All the easy options for rech are gone and you've spent over 1/3 of assignable slots.
• Anything beyond that is really fucking hard. At this point you are at +190% with hasten and unless you have help from things like your powersets or incarnates or external buffs, you're reduced to doing desperate shit like blowing slots on 5x and 6x set bonuses for measly amounts of 5% to 7.5%.

Most sets, taking hasten, naturally reach about +130% to +160% global rech before the difficulty of getting further rech suddenly shoots up a cliff as you run out of slot-efficient options. This is the real diminishing returns and it applies to any build goal, including def, res, and whatever you care to build for, and this is why 80% of two things is usually stronger than 100% of one and 0% of the other in coh.

 

If you are currently doing 100 damage per minute and you increase that to 200 damage per minute, then you have doubled your damage. If you are currently doing 300 damage per minute and you increase that to 400 damage per minute, you only increased your damage 33%. Assuming the cost is the same to go from 100 to 200 as it is to go from 300 to 400, then that is a diminishing return on investment.

[Zect]

1 minute ago, Galactiman said:

 

If you are currently doing 100 damage per minute and you increase that to 200 damage per minute, then you have doubled your damage. If you are currently doing 300 damage per minute and you increase that to 400 damage per minute, you only increased your damage 33%. Assuming the cost is the same to go from 100 to 200 as it is to go from 300 to 400, then that is a diminishing return on investment.

 

That is because you are shifting goalposts (changing the base amount for each comparison). You first compared 100 to 200, in which 100% = 100 damage. Then you compared 200 to 300, where 100% = 200 damage. Then 300 to 400, where 100% = 300 damage, and so on and so forth. Since the value of 1% across your calculations increases continually, naturally you see "diminishing" returns.

 

There can be good reasons to do this depending on the purpose of the comparison, so I'm not going to nitpick too much. But the fun thing is that this equally applies to rech, damage, healing, etc etc. As shown above, the behavior of rech and damage enhancement is exactly the same. So if you think that rech has diminishing returns, you would also need to admit that damage, healing, mez duration, and most things you can enhance etc. are also subject to diminishing returns, so it really makes zero sense to post PSA's that recharge has "diminishing returns" when damage works the exact same way. I'll concede the former if you concede the latter, deal?

[Galactiman]

No need to concede it since it's already my belief. I also don't think I'm moving the goal post. When you're building your character, especially if you're doing it organically while leveling and not using a tool to min/max, it's good to know how much effect your next choice is going to have relative to your current power level. It's good to know about some of the quirks of the math that may be unintuitive. For instance, the fact that damage resistance and defense have increasing returns. Going from 5% resistance to 10% resistance increases how long you survive by roughly 5%, but going from from 85% to 90% increases how long you survive by 50%.

[tidge]

5 hours ago, Galactiman said:

 Going from 5% resistance to 10% resistance increases how long you survive by roughly 5%, but going from from 85% to 90% increases how long you survive by 50%.

 

I don't like this argument about increased resistance... specifically because "85% -> 90%" is referring to an AT that has already extremely high HP, such that the player shouldn't be ignoring how much HP they'd be Regenerating (or gaining, through something like a %Heal), or extra resistance they might gain through a Scaling Damage Resistance effect, or whatever.

 

This specific "math claim" about resistance seems to be ignoring half-a-dozen other features of the game.

[Galactiman]

In fact, HP, regeneration, and resistance stack multiplicatively with each other.  So increasing your resistance will actually increase your time-to-live by more than the pure resistance math tells you, unless the raw incoming damage is orders of magnitude higher than your HP, at which point you will see resistance increasingly become the only relevant factor (since it is the only factor which continues to scale proportionally due to being a percentage of incoming damage and not a static value). It will never go below the resistance "math." Of course, when the damage is that high, increasing your time-to-live by fractions of a second doesn't mean much, even though in percentage terms it looks like a lot.

 

Example with 100 raw incoming dps:

HP	Regen % HP/s	Resistance	TTL	Difference %
1000	1.00%	5.00%	11.765 seconds
1000	1.00%	10.00%	12.500 seconds	6.25%

 

Now with 1000 raw incoming dps:

HP	Regen % HP/s	Resistance	TTL	Difference %
1000	1.00%	5.00%	1.064 seconds
1000	1.00%	10.00%	1.124 seconds	5.62%

 

Now with 10000 raw incoming dps:

HP	Regen % HP/s	Resistance	TTL	Difference %
1000	1.00%	5.00%	0.105 seconds
1000	1.00%	10.00%	0.111 seconds	5.56%

 

As you can see, as the incoming damage increases, the TTL difference tends toward the isolated resistance calculation of 5.55%. For the practical scenario (i.e. you're not fighting something that will kill you instantly no matter what), the increase in resistance is actually more valuable than an isolated calculation tells you.

 

tldr; Due to the multiplicative interaction with other game mechanics, increasing your resistance will have even greater returns than the isolated resistance "math" indicates, for all practical scenarios.

 

 

Edited Friday at 04:08 PM by Galactiman

[tidge]

 

...I need my Reactive Defenses, Power Transfer, and Preventive Maintenance to start kickin'!

[Snarky]

[shortguy on indom]

• THINK IT EVOLVED INTO DAMAGE PER POWER CYCLE KINDA THING AND STILL GOING.  VERY EXPENSIVE, BUT IF ENOUGH TIME AND MONEY IS THROWN AT THE ISSUE IT WILL BE RESOLVED.

[golstat2003]

On 4/10/2025 at 12:42 PM, Troo said:

Near perma Gang War is absolutely possible but trust me, it's just not worth it.

 

Even with recharge enhancements, invention set bonuses, and other sources we can only recharge so fast.

"it is subject to diminishing returns — the more you add, the less each new amount helps." https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Recharge

 

Best Value (Original Un-enhanced Value)

 

180s	(900)
120s	(600)
96s	(480)
90s	(450)
24s	(120)
18s	(90)
12s	(60)
4.8s	(24)
4s	(20)
3.6s	(18)
3s	(15)
360s	(1800)

Hasten as an example: 90s (450)

 

There is an exception to the diminishing returns. 

Burnout: Allows you to instantly recharge all of your Primary and Secondary powers. Burnout is very expensive in terms of endurance, and reduces your maximum endurance slightly for 60 seconds after use. 

At least on Dom’s the answer is always Yes. 😝

[Erratic1]

On 6/26/2025 at 5:14 PM, Zect said:

Generally this type of hasteless design is only worth it if you really want the extra pool choice freed up by not taking hasten (when I pioneered such builds fitness still cost a pool choice!), or you struggle with keeping up multiple powers on cooldown.

 

Got a Street Justice character who manages, without Hasten, to hit some nice numbers in crowds: 

 

 

He doesn't have Hasten but does rely on Force Feedbac. Granted, he would not be able to that on a GM or boss.

 

Edited Saturday at 12:41 AM by Erratic1

[WumpusRat]

Most of my characters don't have hasten. The few that do are generally characters with powers I want to bring down as close to perma as possible (Overgrowth, Phantom Army, Carrion Creepers, Serum, etc), or on my couple doms in order to get perma-dom. Most of the others don't bother, since it's easy to get 4-5 attacks with a smooth attack chain, especially if I mix in a cone or pbaoe even against 1-2 mobs. 

 

Taking hasten seems like "wasting" a power pick and pool a lot of times since in order to get the most out of it you kind of need to try and bring it down to perma or as close as possible, at least imo, which means being forced to build for as many recharge bonuses as possible, rather than other set bonuses that might push the character towards benchmarks I'd rather have (capped resists, zero endurance issues, etc). I don't tend to lean on incarnate powers to get around weaknesses, so I tend to build within the concept to account for as many of them as I can.