Focused Feedback: Powerset - Regeneration / Proliferation to Tankers

[Wavicle]

5 minutes ago, Taoquex said:

solo 54x8 paper missions  

sorry i dont really have a easy way to share my build

well, just describe a little.

Did you make any changes from live? Do you have Ailment Resistance...are there any adjustments you would have to make to take advantage of the changes?

[Grandfeatherex]

I thought "Ailment Resistance" was already renamed, and hoped the same would happen for Second Wind

aside from bad sounding names, that don't really fit, I don't want a pop up on my screen if i die, i'd rather "second wind" just recharge as a revive on death, or pop up a 4th bar, not get in the way of the hospital/sg base option

I think i will just be respeccing it out for "ailment resist", the max hp is no longer worth it to deal with having a rez that i don't want

[Taoquex]

47 minutes ago, Wavicle said:

well, just describe a little.

Did you make any changes from live? Do you have Ailment Resistance...are there any adjustments you would have to make to take advantage of the changes?

 

[Taoquex]

This is a side by side comparison of my toon Live vs Beta

[Snokle]

Did a run today on my scrapped with the new endless missions in KW, I really just kinda kitbashed it together and tested it out against the new mobs that are coming. I only ran it at +1x8, as I did see the new Protectors can pack a punch (spoiler they do), also I was very lazy and just wanted so see what it looks like on normal game play.

 

Usually taking all Regen powers, and need more work on slotting as I just slapped some of it together for now, but man it was a big difference than how regen feels right now. I did die a couple times, when I was not paying attention or not thinking a lot as I pulled way to much aggro, but for the most part I felt very sturdy and when I was starting to feel some pressure, I had a heal backup or the MoG/SM in time for the extra save needed.

 

The -Regen debuff was huge usually sitting at 49% I saw some enemies dropping it on me, and before when I saw it cripple me, I barley noticed it now, maybe a point or two lost nothing major. Adding to that I was getting around 70% -rech debuff so I was always able to get a timely heal or buff when I needed it. While there might be a tweak with the Reactive with stacking as it dropped off pretty quickly once I started seeing stacks, I think it is pretty small overall.

 

It feels sturdier than before, and I want to replay the character and see if I can squeeze out more damage or a better set for it now.

[Wavicle]

15 minutes ago, Taoquex said:

This is a side by side comparison of my toon Live vs Beta

Some slotting adjustments may be advisable. On test I was easily able to get capped hp, and my second wind, reconstruction, and moment of glory are all well slotted and get used.

[Major_Decoy]

On 5/27/2025 at 9:05 PM, Troo said:

 

But here your point REQUIRES taking another TWO powers to equal what was lost.

 

I think this is a difference in design philosophy between Cryptic Studios in the early 2000s and the Homecoming developers.

 

Cryptic Studios had a whole bunch of mutually exclusive powers, and stronger powers, and no enhancement diversification which led to skippable powers. As the game diveloped, a lot of the mutually exclusive tags went away and the global defense reduction made it harder to hit your defensive goals.

 

Current design philosophy seems to hold that every power in your primary and secondary set should be worth taking. For defensive sets, that kind of leads to a situation where you don't really want to skip any power.

 

I like the idea of "skippable powers"; it gives more opportunities for character differentiation, but it is a difficult build goal.

[Maelwys]

6 hours ago, Taoquex said:

This is a side by side comparison of my toon Live vs Beta

 

So on Live you have capped MaxHP and an additional 475 Absorb buffer for ~2563 total. And on Brainstorm you have slightly less than capped MaxHP and no absorb for ~2037 total. Not counting Preventive Medicine.

 

I can see how the loss of ~526 effective HP would negatively impact your ability to weather alpha strikes. However the higher base regeneration on Brainstorm should more than counter the loss of absorb whenever you're in the middle of a fight (e.g. so whilst you'll be more likely to die to a quick spike of extreme damage than before, you'll also be able to cope with a greater amount of average incoming damage than before)

Chucking more Defense or Damage Resistance at it would potentially help with the alpha strike issue. Or adjusting playstyle to pull less things simultaneously (splitting up an alpha strike so you have a second or two to click a heal between damage spikes will help).

 

To be fair, Sentinel's lower MaxHP cap is probably hurting that AT a lot compared to a Scrapper (let alone a Brute) for mitigating bigger alpha strikes. So if the absorb buffer that was propping that up was suddenly taken away? Yeah that'll be pretty jarring for a lot of players. Swapping the +MaxHP from Ailment Resistance (or the +MaxHP from Dull Pain!) to +Absorb on Sentinels would counteract this a bit; but that assumes that the devs can conscience the idea of keeping some Absorb in a set that is named "Regeneration".

[Edit:] - @Devs: I know from personal experience that realistically Regeneration Scrappers and Stalkers are always sitting at the maximum HP Caps; and as shown above Sentinels have it even worse. The proposed changes remove a substantial amount of on-demand +MaxHP from Dull Pain and add a large amount of constant +MaxHP into Ailment Resistance - and whilst more +MaxHP is a boon for ATs with large +MaxHP scalars such as Brutes; other ATs like Sentinels (and Stalkers) will get little if any benefit from slotting Healing Enhancement aspect into these powers. So what would the chances be of a further tweak to Dull Pain (and potentially similar on-demand +MaxHP clicks in the future!) so that whenever it gets activated it performs a check against your current Maximum HP... and any +MaxHP it would normally grant that overflows that cap instead becomes +Absorb? That way nothing would change for regeneration characters with no +Absorb and low +MaxHP; but characters that already sit at or very close to their +MaxHP value would see at least some benefit from taking and slotting up both Dull Pain and Ailment Resistance (honestly the various +HP accolades and set bonuses already eat into Stalker and Sentinel +MaxHP something shocking!).
 

Edited Thursday at 07:42 AM by Maelwys

[Troo]

9 hours ago, BrandX said:

 

I feel a set should have every power worth selecting and it should be a hard choice to pass a primary/secondary up, but I get that people like the idea of a bad power, so they can fit in more Pool Powers. 🙂

 

I agree there should be no garbage primary/secondary powers.

I prefer more nuanced choices where a player can choose to take everything or decide to focus on specific aspects of a set. Like a set that does both knocks and stuns where a player can choose to focus on or lean into one or the other through power selections and enhancement slotting. To me, that is more elegant design with the benefit of more variety.

 

If a player wants to lean into a set's knocks and isn't interested as much in the set's stuns, that doesn't make the stuns garbage.

 

[MrAptronym]

7 hours ago, Troo said:

 

I agree there should be no garbage primary/secondary powers.

I prefer more nuanced choices where a player can choose to take everything or decide to focus on specific aspects of a set. Like a set that does both knocks and stuns where a player can choose to focus on or lean into one or the other through power selections and enhancement slotting. To me, that is more elegant design with the benefit of more variety.

 

If a player wants to lean into a set's knocks and isn't interested as much in the set's stuns, that doesn't make the stuns garbage.

 

 

I think this is much easier for sets that are heavy on active clicks. For protection focused sets, where there are a lot of toggle/auto powers, it becomes much more difficult. You can skip attacks once your chain is fairly seamless, you can have enough control, even buffs/debuffs compete for your limited time.

 

In armor sets, nearly everything contributes towards more survivability, and very little has an opportunity cost in combat, so the only easy skips are situtational powers like T9s with crashes, or rezes or just flat out bad powers. More survivable is usually better, regardless of form, and it would be hard to balance the game around a power point of players being so survivable that they would rather lower their sustain for more pool powers. If it doesn't come at an opportunity cost in combat, why skip? Endurance has been tried, but this clearly frustrated players a lot and is usually eventually circumvented, leaving it just a set that is unpleasent to use without extensive planning. (Haven't played dark armor in like 2 decades, but that is the general experience I have heard)

 

I still like the idea of powers each having a bit of a niche so they feel unique, but I think armor sets are a particularly tough spot to balance power choices. In this instance, splitting the +HP does serve a purpose to lower the delta between dull pain and no dull pain so that perma-DP isn't as appealing a build goal. I think these changes make sense and I like the new regen... I do wish I had a good solution to make power choices in armor sets more dynamic though. I don't think making sets more full of situation choices, or making every set super clicky is a good design, but I don't see another way haha maybe if pool powers were much more enticing, that could draw people away, but that comes with its own problems.

[Troo]

6 minutes ago, MrAptronym said:

In armor sets, nearly everything contributes towards more survivability, and very little has an opportunity cost in combat, so the only easy skips are situtational powers like T9s with crashes, or rezes or just flat out bad powers.

 

Having powers that a character can grow out of is good design as well. A rez may be helpful earlier in the game than when someone has a slotted 50 dipping into incarnates.

 

Different ATs also prioritize their armor differently. 

Tanks have armor as their primary while Brutes and Scrappers it's secondary, It's right there in the name.

Stalkers take it an extra step reducing armor powers by one when adding Hide to each set.

 

It's troo some armors have more 'skippables' than others.

T9s with crashes, folks may not like em but it's a choice. With this proposed Regeneration the choices definitely are taken away. 

 

So far: Transferring strong builds over and becoming very squishie is telling (missing some power(s)!). Have-to-take-all-the-powers where this was not previously the case.

 

 

[Troo]

Second Wind:

If you miss the window for the rez popup, you lose the opportunity to get up and have to wait for the power to recharge.

The message popping up in the same place as other popups is problematic.

Question: Is there a downside to the power just recharging on defeat with a lock out timer after use?

 

Comment: I get that this is an interesting swiss army knife design for rez powers. I get that folks feel the rez is skippable once they have a completed endgame build (which is telling). But do we have to do this to existing powersets?

 

Edited Thursday at 04:03 PM by Troo

[Rieze832]

Noticed slotting Ailment Resistance with a Health IO at level 50 only adds 17 HP.   Seems to me no point in slotting it or just making it the resident slot mule is the best option.   I have to wonder, though.  What would have been the issue of adding the effects of this power, minus the +HP, to Resilience?  Just wondering.

[lemming]

So, I notice some chat about sentinels, and since I do have a Rad/Regen Sentinel, I went ahead and made one on Open Beta to compare.

 

I note that keeping the same slotting I have in Dismiss Pain in Ailment Resistance gives the same boost to Max HP.   The only bit missing is of course the noted point of 476 HP of Absorb.  I did note that Second Wind does nothing to add to HP when at max.

 

Looking over the stats, the only difference is a higher regen rate just sitting around, 107 on Beta vs 70/sec.

 

Feel wise in combat, no difference at the usual level of stuff, but will screw around a little more today.

 

 

 

 

[Taoquex]

11 hours ago, Maelwys said:

[Edit:] - @Devs: I know from personal experience that realistically Regeneration Scrappers and Stalkers are always sitting at the maximum HP Caps; and as shown above Sentinels have it even worse. The proposed changes remove a substantial amount of on-demand +MaxHP from Dull Pain and add a large amount of constant +MaxHP into Ailment Resistance - and whilst more +MaxHP is a boon for ATs with large +MaxHP scalars such as Brutes; other ATs like Sentinels (and Stalkers) will get little if any benefit from slotting Healing Enhancement aspect into these powers. So what would the chances be of a further tweak to Dull Pain (and potentially similar on-demand +MaxHP clicks in the future!) so that whenever it gets activated it performs a check against your current Maximum HP... and any +MaxHP it would normally grant that overflows that cap instead becomes +Absorb? That way nothing would change for regeneration characters with no +Absorb and low +MaxHP; but characters that already sit at or very close to their +MaxHP value would see at least some benefit from taking and slotting up both Dull Pain and Ailment Resistance (honestly the various +HP accolades and set bonuses already eat into Stalker and Sentinel +MaxHP something shocking!).
 

this is at the heart of my issue

I have no reason as a sentinel to take dull pain/second wind-- as it is effectively an heal inspiration.

*also on live 

absorb shields and health pools  have mutually exclusive regeneration pools. 

 absorb shield is gone = twice the regeneration rate until  absorb was refilled-   this is a huge loss not just a few more hit points.  

 -Double Regeneration Rate- that was the reality for the Sentinel 

it was the difference between looking at the battlefield and staring at a health bar hovering over moment of glory

Edited Thursday at 06:17 PM by Taoquex

[lemming]

Went thru a few groups with my rad/regen sentinel.

 

Second Wind isn't worth hitting until you're down HP.   However, I notice the same on live.

 

My regen rate is peaking at around 130 hp/sec instead of the 67 that the live version is. And that's with the same slotting since Dismiss Pain & Ailment Resistance take what I had in there. (Four Panacea)

 

 

[stryve]

My two Regen toons are a Psi/Regen Scrapper and a Rad/Regen Sentinel.  

 

Dove into trying out the Scrapper right off, running PI radio missions.  This toon has Dull pain perma on live and kept that with Second Wind on beta, but gets there with Ageless Radial (T4).  He also has T4 Musculature Radial, but no other Incarnates yet.  First batch of missions were all Carnies, so I decided it was fate and all testing was done with Carnies.  Breezed through +1x6 and +2x6 with no issues.  Increased to +3x8 and was just having to be a little careful... until I ran face first into a series of merged groups with 4-6 bosses between them, evenly split between Master Illusionist and Dark Mistress.  That many debuffs dropped me real fast, plus all the Phantasms started overwhelming my KB Protection. Faceplanted a bunch (Second Wind's auto-rez was working just fine) before I started retreating to recover and string them out.  Instant Healing and Reconstruction just weren't enough to keep me up otherwise.

After the first group I respeced into Reactive Regeneration to see if it would make a difference, but the end result was about the same.  Which is really an improvement for consistency, since I was seeing about the same performance with a toggle as with a long-recharge self-buff click.

 

Then I decided to compare performance with live.  Turns out I can still mostly manage +3x8 Carnies, but just 2 bosses in a regular sized group are likely to take me out.  Overall, the increases to Debuff Resistance was very noticeable between beta and Live.  The Carnie defeat power barely moved my blue bar on beta, but I still had to keep an eye on it on live.  Ageless Radial caries a lot of weight there for both, but even then the higher floor made a big difference on beta.

Spoiler

Regen Scrapper Live

Spoiler

Regen Scrapper Beta

 

[victusfate]

Got a chance to test out my claws/regen scrapper with second wind and reactive regen and it felt good. If we are still in the tuning phase, a small recharge or other offensive boost might make it perfect. Just noticed MoG gives a small damage boost - awesome!

 

The set still relies on fighting pool and willpower or sorcery to really shine. I haven't tested it without the above.

 

Quick question, whats the intended design for MoG? Is it to serve a similar role as other t9 O.S.B. or as a means for soaking alphas more regularly?  I was using it like a long cooldown/stronger version of shadowmeld to help with heavy alphas and to help with recovery.

Edited Friday at 12:46 PM by victusfate

[Maelwys]

43 minutes ago, victusfate said:

Quick question, whats the intended design for MoG? Is it to serve a similar role as other t9 O.S.B. or as a means for soaking alphas more regularly?  I was using it like a long cooldown/stronger version of shadowmeld to help with heavy alphas and to help with recovery.

 

The fact that they've lowered the activation time suggests that it's supposed to be at least partially a reactive measure (use it when you're already taking damage) rather than purely a proactive measure (use it before you're going to be taking damage).

 

Personally I've used it for both cases. It's not unusual that my Scrappers will decide to go jump in the middle of a big group of Elite Bosses, but occasionally I'll just want some extra breathing space mid fight.

 

Shadow Meld is a good point for comparison, as it's a short duration defense buff too but its cast time is loooooong so is a bit less suited for use mid fight.

[lemming]

While I haven't done +4/x8, I copied over my Psychic/Regen scrapper and did a light respec.  I didn't take either sorcery or the fighting pool.

 

They definitely are more doing better than on live. 

[Kai Moon]

✅The old typo with Stalker/Regeneration/Moment of Glory is fixed. Its display_short_help now correctly includes status resist. (Same as brute/scrapper/sentinel)

 

ℹ️The old typo with Stalker/Regeneration/Hide is still there. Its display_short_help should be +DEF(All), same as all other Hides. Now might be a good time to fix it.

 

[Snokle]

One thing I did notice with Moment of Glory on Scrappers, on Live there was an audio queue when you activate the power. When activating the power during the Beta at different times outside in KW, or during missions, while it was quick and spiffy, there was no audio queue of the power triggering.

[aethereal]

I think that Second Wind should exist in the old Dull Pain slot  (ie, the T4 power), not the old Revive slot (the T8).

 

Being able to stand yourself back up after death is an iconic Regeneration thing to do!  And it's more useful early in your career than late.  Having another reactive heal is also useful early.

[ghotistix]

if all versions of regen get to have an instant vs reactive option, sentinels should get it too. if reactive regen is better than instant regen then anyone who wants it can have it, but i don't like the idea of taking instant regen away from anyone who prefers it especially when other ATs get a choice.

[aethereal]

Okay, some low-level testing:  I made an Energy Melee/Regen brute.  Did a little street-sweeping in Atlas -- unsurprisingly, that went fine, got a couple of levels, normal stuff.  Leveled myself to seven and did the Toothbreaker Jones mission at +0/x2, slotted with just the prestige enhancements from START.

 

Toothbreaker mission went very smoothly, leveled up to 8 during it.  Picked up Whirling Hands and did the next mission at 8 -- kinda stupidly died in ambush by hitting an attack instead of a green insp.  Finished that mission with a level up to 9.

 

I'm going to keep going through much of the Skulls arc, then probably jump ahead to 20.

 

-------------

 

Initial thoughts:

 

I've only taken two regen powers at this point, Fast Healing and Reconstruction.  As usual, Reconstruction unslotted (or now I have one DO green enhancment) and with no global recharge feels awkward, but that's just the nature of CoH -- you can't really have a click power feel good at lowbie levels of recharge without being overpowered at 50 levels of recharge.

 

Taking just two armor powers in the first 10 levels is also not unusual for me at least -- gotta actually have some attacks -- but I will say that Regen's powers made that easy.  Honestly, I barely took Fast Healing.  The lowbie set of powers in Regen are super, super uninspiring, and feel like they are (still) a holdover from the early game.  Like, having Fast Healing and Quick Recovery I'm sure felt good in a world in which Health was at level 14 and Stamina was 20 and you had to burn one of your precious lowbie power slots on hurdle or whatever, but in the modern game it's like, "Do these things even do anything?"  Reconstruction eventually is a good solid power, but as a lowbie it's underwhelming as previously mentioned.

 

I'd honestly like to see Quick Recovery replaced with something better.  It's just a bad power in today's game.  A click endurance power would almost certainly be better.  But if it's going to have to stay, maybe it could switch positions with Ailment Resistance?  Getting some max hp buff in the early game would be welcome.

 

It also continues to feel bad that Reconstruction is such a mediocre self-heal, outclassed by lots of other click heals in lots of other armor sets.  Just like, giving it some kind of cute effect to make it stand out from other click heals would be nice for the Regen experience, even if it wasn't super impactful.

 

Obviously all of this is not the biggest deal in the world -- these levels fly by and many players literally won't even experience them, either just get power-leveled in some way or another or do easy content like DFB past this point.