Focused Feedback: Powerset - Regeneration / Proliferation to Tankers

[StarkWhite]

2 hours ago, aethereal said:

 But Regen is the reactive click set.

 

It wasn't always.

[aethereal]

3 hours ago, StarkWhite said:

 

It wasn't always.

Yes, it only has been for 15 years or whatever.

[Troo]

General comments:

Again, thank you for the Moment of Glory cast time change.

• Do we really need the +Damage though?

I find the changes overall interesting. I can see where this helps some players and where it's a forced play style change for others.

 

I really wish some of these changes were put into Integration & Resilience rather than requiring Brutes/Scrapper/Stalkers to use a Revive power location replacement.

• For many existing characters/builds adding the Revive replacement results in an additional power pick.
• Integration & Resilience probably are not often/never skipped.
• I use all nine powers over the 50+ levels, respecing out of Revive when I have a more flushed out build allowing other power picks. 

I use Dull Pain differently at lower levels than I do in later levels. It evolves with the character. (primarily another big heal -vs- perma +Max HP plus a big heal)

• Losing that big heal early on has an impact.
• Maybe that isn't as big of a deal for ranged characters (Sentinels).
• Stalkers with the lower base HP having an extra heal at level 10.. it gets used. Maybe Brutes and Scrappers don't need the heal.

 

In a nut shell, this feels like Sentinel tuning which is being proliferated to Tankers and then pushed as a revamp onto Stalkers/Scrappers/Brutes.

 

[Troo]

Question:

These aspects cancel each other out? The benefit of making all heals 15% stronger does not apply to Second Wind?

 

Dull Pain > Second Wind

• This heal ignores resistances.

Revive > Ailment Resistance 

• Grants -15% resistance to heals (making all heals on you 15% stronger).

[twozerofoxtrot]

16 hours ago, aethereal said:

Regen is the reactive click set.

 

This is such an interesting take to me because I've never played it like that.

 

Similar to Cendwar I keep Dull Pain up for the maxed HP.

 

I use MoG before a big dive (in a way the +Damage makes sense to me because it will help my opening AoEs).

 

I use IH before taking on EBs or AVs because I expect the fight to be a bit longer and that sustainment will pay off throughout. 

 

And the only reactive click for me is Reconstruction. 

 

I'm not pushing back on your suggestions or concepts, but I figured it's worth pointing out that reactive is certainly not the only way to play this set. I've enjoyed it on Brutes primarily because it's proactive.

[KaizenSoze]

Three builds played. Took Reactive Regeneration on every build. Instead of Instant Healing.
Ice Melee/Regen Brute

• By far the best of the three, high max hp, combined with high regen, made for a very durable brute
• Solo'ed everything in KW and PI at 4x8. Not easily, but everything was possible.
• Max HP 3K with Second Wind running
• Regen without extra Reactive Regeneration stacks 113 hp/sec
• 161 hp/sec fighting three Freaklok bosses. Around 6+ stacks of Reactive Regeneration.

Dual Blades/Regen Scrapper

• Felt very durable, but testing was cut short by my dislike of Dual Blades
• Max HP 2.4K, capped

Ice Melee/Regen Stalker

• Viable, but much more fragile. The lower max hp is really noticeable at only 2K capped.
• Struggled against mobs with high amounts of Energy or Neg Energy damage at 4x8. PPD Awakened, Skulls
• Awakened wsa a very tough fight, but doable. Just so much accurate Psi damage even with 38% psi resists.
• Fighting at lower difficulties or team size should be much easier.
• On a team with some buffs. Probably unkill-able.

 

 

[Troo]

I'd like to point out that for a reactive set the player seems to be removed from reacting.

 

Hide > Toggle
Reconstruction > 60sec base recharge Click
Fast Healing > Auto
Ailment Resistance > Auto
Integration > Toggle
Resilience > Auto

Instant Healing > 10min 50sec base recharge Click

 -or-

Reactive Regeneration > Toggle

 

This guts much of the timing, situational awareness, game play skill from this set. This, in my opinion, is a dumbing down of the power set and a fundamental departure.

 

Stalker Willpower: Toggle > Auto > Click > Toggle > Toggle > Toggle > Auto (potentially 3 toggles, 2 autos, 1 click)

 

Stalker Regeneration (beta): Toggle > Click > Auto > Auto > Toggle > Auto > Toggle (potentially 3 autos, 2 toggles, 1 click)

 -vs-

Stalker Regeneration (current): Toggle > Auto > Click > Click > Toggle > Auto > Click (potentially 3 click, 2 toggles, 2 autos)

 

 

[Troo]

As I am assuming we are fairly committed to something along these lines at this point.

 

Suggestion:

Take another look at the power ordering.

I would strongly suggest at a minimum moving Second Wind (if it is to remain the second heal) to the level 10 spot. (Sentinels could have a different opinion and stick with their order)

• This could help mitigate the feel of losing Dull Pain for existing characters.
• It may also help retain some of the reactive aspect.
• Doesn't depart substantially from the beta design.

Part of me is guessing this was already a potential adjustment that would be considered if (reasons).

Heaven forbid Regens get a rez earlier in the game.

 

[Enamel_32]

Mechanically at level 50, the set performs well. Meaningfully better. The changes address a lot of issues people have complained about over the years.

 

But I think the leveling experience hasn't been entirely factored into the changes, and may suffer as a result. Leveling is something I found to be rough even before the changes. I also share @Troo's take on Dull Pain and its shifting usage over time:

6 hours ago, Troo said:

I use Dull Pain differently at lower levels than I do in later levels. It evolves with the character. (primarily another big heal -vs- perma +Max HP plus a big heal)

• Losing that big heal early on has an impact.

 

However, I think that feeling this loss could be attributed to Reconstruction under-performing. That can be addressed in its own straightforward way, or Second Wind could be pulled earlier in the set.

 

[aethereal]

I'll do another +1 on Dull Pain's usage going from reactive early, when it can't be perma'd, to proactive late when it can.  And Second Wind + Ailment Resistance is a good change which gets you half of the max HP earlier, and which also frees up your Second Wind usage to be somewhat more flexible by not pushing you as hard into the "you shouldn't care about the heal, just the max HP" paradigm.  But then Second Wind comes super late in the set.

 

Anyway, I did a little testing at 30, with better slotting, and predictably my endurance woes go away at this stage.  Right now, MoG and Second Wind are in the somewhat frustrating "very low uptime" mode, but that's not really something that you can do anything about, it's just the City of Heroes global recharge situation.

[Troo]

4 hours ago, Troo said:

As I am assuming we are fairly committed to something along these lines at this point.

 

Suggestion:

Take another look at the power ordering.

I would strongly suggest at a minimum moving Second Wind (if it is to remain the second heal) to the level 10 spot. (Sentinels could have a different opinion and stick with their order)

• This could help mitigate the feel of losing Dull Pain for existing characters.
• It may also help retain some of the reactive aspect.
• Doesn't depart substantially from the beta design.

Part of me is guessing this was already a potential adjustment that would be considered if (reasons).

Heaven forbid Regens get a rez earlier in the game.

 

 

@Player-1 I meant to tag you on the quoted above and welcome your thoughts. (I realize the team is reviewing all the comments)

 

Edited 20 hours ago by Troo

[Captain Powerhouse]

Hello,

 

Second Wind is being kept at a higher level precisely so it is not a trap for low level players that buy into it and find they can only use it every 6 minutes. Low level players will rarely have the tools to speed up that recharge. We really want low level powers to be usable regularly. It really sucks as a new player experience to spend one of your few available power slots on a power that can be used so rarely. If you already have Dull Pain at level 10, though, and don't respec, you will keep the power at level 10 until that build is respecd.

 

The combination of Ailment Resistance and Reconstruction can do a lot to improve low level play as Ailment Resistance will make Reconstruction a stronger heal.

 

As for Second Wind ignoring resistance, this is a treatment that is being given to extremely high recharge heals as a compensation for their high recharge. If you are heavily debuffed by Res(Regen) and use reconstruction, it will be back in a few seconds for you to retry. A minute tops if you did not slot anything there. But waste the Dull Pain's giant heal and you are in a lot of trouble. So it was considered that these powers in all ATs get the ignore-resistance treatment.

[aethereal]

1 hour ago, Captain Powerhouse said:

Hello,

 

Second Wind is being kept at a higher level precisely so it is not a trap for low level players that buy into it and find they can only use it every 6 minutes. Low level players will rarely have the tools to speed up that recharge.

 

I appreciate that concept, but the low-level powers for Regeneration are so underwhelming.  When I did a lowbie Regenerator (before these changes that we're testing), Dull Pain was my panic-button power, the way Instant Healing later was, where it bailed me out when I was in over my head.  It's not great -- the recharge is indeed too long for a lowbie -- but it was an okay compromise.

 

If you don't want to move Second Wind down to T1-4, then consider moving Ailment Resistance earlier, or even Integration.

 

I agree that Ailment Resistance + Restoration feels decent -- I noticed that in my testing, Restoration felt a lot better once I had Ailment Resistance.

 

I think the core of the problem here is that Fast Healing and Quick Recovery are both low-end powers that are just not impressive, Restoration is fine but not really good until you get both Ailment Resistance and some recharge, and of the first four powers, only Ailment Resistance really feels impactful.  I don't totally understand keeping Fast Healing and Recovery unchanged in a medium revamp of the set.  It feels like even with the other improvements, Regen has some power budget to spare, and something to up both the power level (minorly) and the charisma (majorly) of the first half of the powerset would be welcome.

Edited 15 hours ago by aethereal

[stryve]

I likely will not respec my Psi/Regen Scrapper for that reason.  Pretty happy with how it is now, and testing with Ailment Resistance and Reactive Regeneration showed about the same performance.  On the other hand, I do remember leveling him up, and Dull Pain's long recharge was very painful before I started getting things properly slotted.

 

Finally finished comparative testing on my Rad/Regen Sentinel, as I was a little more methodical than with the Scrapper.  This is an old toon, with a build that predates the major Sentinel rework, but he still does pretty well.  Full T4 Incarnates, all four +End/Max HP Accolades, etc.  Between power enhancement, Accolades, and set bonuses, Max HP is at the cap for the AT; Second Wind is slotted with a single Recharge Red and mostly used for Rez when I get overwhelmed.  I was very worried about loosing the Absorb shield from Instant Regeneration (95.17 every 3 seconds, capping at 475.86), since it's great for soaking alpha and then giving some breathing room for general regen to work during a fight. 

 

Porting the toon over to Brainstorm with no build changes, the differences in Regen Rate and Debuff Resist are very apparent:

Spoiler

Live | Beta

Losing the Absorb hurt, but nearly doubling the resting Regen Rate makes up for a lot.  To ensure an equivalent test on both sides, I ran the Welcome to Vanguard arc from Levantera in RWZ on both  live and beta, escalating difficulty from +1/x6 to +4/x6 at the end.  That arc has enough spawn density to easily get well over the agro cap shooting you, so x6 just means a few less bosses than x8.  Overall, performance seemed pretty even between the two.  Getting the attention of multiple groups at +4/x6 pushed me to the edge and kicked me over if I wasn't right on the ball, but that's what Second Wind is for.  I was honestly expecting an experience closer to what Taoquex reported earlier in this thread, but it's just not what I saw.

 

Now, a lot of that is probably down to build choices, as I have a fair bit of DEF and Resist from Pool Powers and set bonuses which with capped Max HP likely let me eat the alpha long enough for Reactive Regeneration to kick in.  Pretty sure I saw my Regen Rate hit ~150 hp/sec at least once during the worst of it, though I unfortunately didn't think to grab another screenshot.  Adding in Reconstruction and the occasional MoG was usually enough to keep me up long enough to reduce incoming fire.

 

Overall impressions of the changes for a Sentinel: 

• Trading Absorb for greatly increased Regen Rate works out about even. 
• Decreased cast time for MoG is greatly appreciated; feels much smoother to activate, especially reactively.
• Adding +20% Debuff Resist to all categories may not seem like much, but it has a noticeable effect in practice and gives a better base to build from.

[lemming]

2 hours ago, stryve said:

Finally finished comparative testing on my Rad/Regen Sentinel,

What are the odds I was trying out my Psi/Regen Scrapper and Rad/Regen Sentinel.

 

My results were pretty much the same, though a respec on my scrapper did make a difference.  Though mainly because it was one of my first chars, and there were some poor choices on live. 😉

[Troo]

5 hours ago, Captain Powerhouse said:

Second Wind is being kept at a higher level precisely so it is not a trap for low level players that buy into it and find they can only use it every 6 minutes. Low level players will rarely have the tools to speed up that recharge. We really want low level powers to be usable regularly. It really sucks as a new player experience to spend one of your few available power slots on a power that can be used so rarely. If you already have Dull Pain at level 10, though, and don't respec, you will keep the power at level 10 until that build is respecd.

 

First, thanks for the reply... Wait a second, Homecoming is saying DULL PAIN was the problem with Regeneration?!

 

Is Dull Pain also an issue in the Invulnerability power set (available at the same level)? Is that a change folks have to look forward to there as well? Probably shouldn't answer that.

 

Spoiler

"It really sucks as a new player experience to spend one of your few available power slots on a power that can be used so rarely." I empathically disagree. Besides, one recharge SO and it's a 4.5min power. With Hasten it is up in less than 3min. It is not burdensome as a second big heal.

 

"If you already have Dull Pain at level 10, though, and don't respec.." Poppycock. Players will no longer have Dull Pain but a replacement power that does not do what Dull Pain does. We HAVE to respec to retain near the full functionality.

 

Having played Regeneration throughout and participated in many many (too many) Regeneration discussions. I don't remember it being mentioned as a serious issue or at least never making say the top 10 issues folks had with the set.

 

 

I'm gonna be frank here. This response reinforces the perception that this is really Sentinel tuning being forced as a revamp onto Stalkers/Scrappers/Brutes.

 

Ranged vs Melee

3 autos, 2 toggles, 1 click

Reactive vs Passive

 

Edited 11 hours ago by Troo

[archgemini24]

If the idea is to have something available frequently for newer players early in the powerset, might Reconstruction warrant another look if Dull Pain/Second Wind is less of an option?

 

If the idea is that Reconstruction is available for a "retry" more consistently due to debuffs, does it make sense for it be more available for retries overall (base recharge change: Healing Flames is 40 seconds instead of 60). Perhaps a small post-click Regeneration boost and/or Regeneration and Recharge debuff resistance would give Reconstruction some uniqueness against other basic click-heals even if the base recharge is left alone; it would gain a lingering effect, and the temporary debuff resistance (again) helps it be more available for retries.

 

Other notes on running the set (Brute):

• It felt strange to finally see that all 9 powers had just enough of a use to warrant taking them all. At one point in my Regen-life I had builds where I did not take anything after Integration unless they were slot mules.
• Reactive Regeneration felt really good, but the stacks were a bit erratic. I am sure there were a few times where they saved me, but it did not feel like something I could leverage for myself (not particularly helped by the fact I run a Defense build; that is on me). If there are options for modification, please place my vote with doubling stack duration.
• Appreciate the cast-time reduction and bonus damage on Moment of Glory. Duration is still seems short even if this is meant to be a (now) Full-Body (offense and defense) Build-Up.
• Generally, the set felt better while maintaining the risk factor of getting Spiked. Will definitely enjoy my Regeneration character more, but will still pull out other melee characters when I need more top-end performance. I have not tried it on Tanks, yet. Life has been Lifing, recently.