Regen Update Question

[WuTang]

Fast Healing Instant healing vs. Reactive Regeneration

 

Looking at just the wording it sounds like Reactive Regen might be less effective on a team if your defense numbers are high enough that you are dodging attacks. So would Instant Healing be better if this is the case?

 

Guess from my layman perspective one looks better for solo the other for teams.

 

Anyone got any practical knowledge they can lay on me?

 

Also, cause I don't know anyone that's rolled one, how is Regen on Brutes now? I've got my first sitting on go.

 

Thanks!

-WT

Edited Thursday at 02:52 PM by WuTang
Corrected a mistake

[aethereal]

You mean Instant Healing rather than Fast Healing, right?  Fast Healing is the auto-power that is frankly kinda bad, Instant Healing is the click power that is mutually exclusive with Reactive Regeneration.

 

You're right that Reactive Regeneration's utility degrades if you rarely get hit.  On the other hand, if you rarely get hit, then, uh...  do you need it?

 

In general, in high-level, large teams where people are giving substantial amounts of defense through support powersets, Maneuvers, or Barrier, you're going to find that you're highly durable with or without these powers except in situations that cut through a lot of defense (like Hard Mode content or highly defense-debuffing mobs), in which case...  you're back to your usual tradeoffs because you are getting hit pretty often.

 

Instant Healing is more powerful when it's up, but Reactive Regeneration has 100% uptime and Instant Healing does not.

[Spaghetti Betty]

If you're asking what you can give up when concentrating on building for team scenarios, I can give you a nice list from a completely meta-driven perspective!

 

-Fast Healing and Quick Recovery (Don't offer much in terms of sustain. Endurance would be handled by the Kin and Heat Loss)

-Resilience (Minor +RES and Stun RES, not needed)

-Ailment Resistance (Debuff protection not needed on an optimized team and Second Wind has more utility as a heal/Max HP boost)

 

Everything else is pretty much a required pick, even with a lot of healing in the team, since healing is your primary form of mitigation, and you need to do some of the legwork yourself! Also, I really don't see any reason to take Instant Healing over Reactive Regeneration. The toggle just offers way more consistency!

 

And Regen on Brutes is still fantastic! You can take it from me, they're only in a better spot than they were previously!

[Lazarus]

1 hour ago, WuTang said:

Looking at just the wording it sounds like Reactive Regen might be less effective on a team if your defense numbers are high enough that you are dodging attacks

If you'r dodging attacks and there fore avoiding damage,..what are you trying to regen from???

take the toggle that is 100% UPTIME.

Edited Wednesday at 08:19 PM by Lazarus

[Sarrate]

Another way to look at Reactive Regeneration is that each stack is basically worth a 2% heal over 20 seconds.

 

100% Regen is a full health bar every 240 seconds, or 0.41667% hp / sec.

Thus 25% Regen is 1/4 of that, or 0.1041667% hp / sec.

Since a stack lasts 20 sec, that's 20 time the above, or 2.083%.

 

hp = (100% hp / 240 sec) * regen * seconds

hp = (100 / 240) * 0.25 * 20

hp = 2.083%

 

(You could also write it with 100% hp as 1, but then you'd get 0.02083, which is a bit harder to read.)

 

-----

 

If you want a mathematical comparison between IH and RR, you can work out how much recharge you'd need for the two to equal each other (over time).

 

ih_regen * (ih_dur / ih_rech) = rr_regen
ih_dur / ih_rech = (rr_regen / ih_regen)
ih_dur / (rr_regen / ih_regen) = ih_rech

ih_base_rech / ih_rech = total_recharge

 

So for IH to equal RR without any stacks:

 

ih_dur / (rr_regen / ih_regen) = ih_rech
90 / (400 / 1000) = ih_rech
225 = ih_rech

ih_base_rech / ih_rech = total_recharge
650 / 225 = total_recharge
2.8888 = total recharge

 

It would take +188% recharge.

 

For IH to equal RR regen (full stacks) over time:

 

ih_dur / (rr_regen / ih_regen) = ih_rech
90 / (650 / 1000) = ih_rech
138.46 = ih_rech

ih_base_rech / ih_rech = total_recharge
650 / 138.46 = total_recharge
4.694 = total_recharge

 

It would take +369.4% recharge.

 

 

(This glosses over the fact that sometimes more potent, but lower uptime/strength over time can be beneficial. It also ignores any of the extra debuff protection you can get from RR that is absent from IH. For me, I can't see a reason to take IH... but I also remember toggle IH.)

Edited Thursday at 03:33 AM by Sarrate

[WuTang]

Thanks everyone!

[WuTang]

19 hours ago, aethereal said:

You mean Instant Healing rather than Fast Healing, right?

Yup! Lol thanks!

I corrected it in the OP.

[Nemu]

11 hours ago, Sarrate said:

This glosses over the fact that sometimes more potent, but lower uptime/strength over time can be beneficial

This is the main context that I'm evaluating IH vs RR. I feel that RR provides little to no value if things are going ok, especially if you supplement the build with heals/ROP/etc...

 

Regen playstyle doesn't really change because of RR, you are still leaning heavily on secondary mitigation and heals to survive. But when you need that big burst of survival, IH delivers.

[Erratic1]

31 minutes ago, Nemu said:

I feel that RR provides little to no value if things are going ok....

 

Is this not like saying auto insurance is providing little value if you're not in an accident? 

[Nemu]

I'd focus on this statement instead:
 

47 minutes ago, Nemu said:

Regen playstyle doesn't really change because of RR, you are still leaning heavily on secondary mitigation and heals to survive. But when you need that big burst of survival, IH delivers.

 

IH is better auto insurance when you do get into an accident.

 

Or put it another way:

RR covers standard wear and tear, and I firmly believe any well built regen can cover that regardless of RR

IH covers when your bumper falls off and when your engine explodes, and even well built regen need help with that.

Edited Thursday at 03:59 PM by Nemu

[aethereal]

1 hour ago, Nemu said:

This is the main context that I'm evaluating IH vs RR. I feel that RR provides little to no value if things are going ok, especially if you supplement the build with heals/ROP/etc...

 

Regen playstyle doesn't really change because of RR, you are still leaning heavily on secondary mitigation and heals to survive. But when you need that big burst of survival, IH delivers.

 

I think there's something to this, and I argued before and during the beta for, instead of adding a toggle, to let IH be more useful as a survival button (I think IH as a survival button kinda sucks because you probably don't need 90 seconds of "oh shit things are going badly," and then the downtime for the power is inconveniently long to make up for the long duration that you probably are ignoring the back half of).

 

That said, I think there are some styles of play/goals issues here:

 

1.  There are players who really want to have a thematic regenerator.  They aren't interested in making a character who builds a thick layer of resistance with Rune of Power and Melee Hybrid and then supplements that with regeneration, they want Wolverine.  They are much more interested in a character who mostly relies on their regeneration for day-in-day-out mitigation, and to the extent that they supplement that with a layer of defense or resistance, they want it to be "invisible," so it doesn't interfere with the class fantasy. 

 

2.  Then there are players who just want to be a regenerator and who also don't want to do active clicking (and who for whatever reason don't like Willpower).

 

3.  And finally there are people who are mostly concerned with performance, particularly performance on team content (probably mostly hard mode).

 

These people have different preferences and I think people in group 1 and 2 will clearly prefer RR, while people in group 3 might find IH more appealing.

[Erratic1]

1 hour ago, Nemu said:

IH is better auto insurance when you do get into an accident.

 

So long as you only have one accident in a 6 month period. 

[WuTang]

I think I can see the appeal of controlling mitigation. 

 

I think the tipping point for me is the debuff resistances RR brings to the table. If things go South all hands will be swinging at the Brute, so RR will get jacked, then pop MoG for 15 secs of godmode, by which point you should be back to 100% HP, if you were down at all.

 

Couple questions about RR from MIDs data.

It states "2.5 sec recharge." Does this mean it can only activate once every 2.5 seconds?

It has accuracy, so can it "miss?"

Does each stack reset the 20 second duration?

Edited Thursday at 08:12 PM by WuTang

[aethereal]

1 hour ago, WuTang said:

I think I can see the appeal of controlling mitigation. 

 

I think the tipping point for me is the debuff resistances RR brings to the table. If things go South all hands will be swinging at the Brute, so RR will get jacked, then pop MoG for 15 secs of godmode, by which point you should be back to 100% HP, if you were down at all.

 

Couple questions about RR from MIDs data. It states "2.5 sec recharge." Does this mean it can only activate once every 2.5 seconds?

It has accuracy, so can it "miss?"

Does each stack reset the 20 second duration?

 

Generally better to look at City of Data than Mids for this kind of question:  https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=brute_defense.regeneration.instant_regeneration&at=brute

 

I don't know where MIDS gets a 2.5 second recharge, CoD shows a 10 second recharge.  The activation period is what I think you're actually concerned about, it's 2 seconds (that's how often the power "pulses").  So every two seconds, it looks back and says, "Were you damaged in this 2 second period" and if so it applies another stack to you.  (I think, it's sometimes a little hard to interpret the CoD notation, not sure what it's checking for with the missed-since thing).

 

Stacks do not update the duration of previous stacks.

 

It auto-hits self and doesn't target any other entity, it's not like checking whether someone else is still close to you.  Accuracy is irrelevant.

[Sarrate]

6 hours ago, Nemu said:

RR covers standard wear and tear, and I firmly believe any well built regen can cover that regardless of RR

IH covers when your bumper falls off and when your engine explodes, and even well built regen need help with that.

 

I feel like you're underplaying RR's effect a bit. It's anywhere between 40% to 65% the strength of IH. I think it being on all the time is also incredibly valuable.

 

The problems I have with IH are:

 

1) It's a bad (reactive) "oh crap button." Regen is at its most vulnerable when low on health, as that's when it's possible to be burst down before you can react / regen. By using IH at low health, it's more likely you'll die before it stabilizes your position. It's better when used proactively, in which case its regen will make it harder for your health to get that low in the first place. However, it feels bad to use proactively because...

 

2) Its duration / recharge / uptime feels really bad. While it feels great when its up, it'll be down most of the time. (You need +260% recharge just to have it up half the time.) If you use it preemptively, then it's possible that you either didn't need it or it's less visible that you did need it. Also, while you can improve its uptime via recharge bonuses / buffs, the inverse is also true. If you're facing a lot of recharge dubuffs, then IH's uptime will be impacted as well.

 

3) It's all in on Regen, if you ever run into a fight with -Regen, its possible it won't help at all (if your regen gets floored). While having a "god mode" button get completely stuffed isn't unheard of (Elude vs DE Quartz, Unstoppable vs Longbow -Res Grenades), it's really awkward that IH's alternative, RR, has scaling regen (and recovery) resistance, and it's always on. 

 

---

 

If it were me and I wanted to make IH more appealing, I'd consider the following changes:

 

1) Give IH some form of instant heal / absorb so that it's better when used reactively. (This could happen dynamically, based off how much health you had when it was used.)

2) Change IH into a time limited toggle (like Icy Bastion / Hibernate) with a max duration of 90s, then adjust its recharge based off how long it was toggled on. This would allow it to be used preemptive or in short bursts without eating a 650 sec (base) recharge.

3) Give it a fixed amount of regen (and possibly recovery) resistance.

 

---

 

Disclaimer: I haven't put an extensive amount of time into Homecoming I still haven't made it to 50, let alone completely IO / Incarnate out any characters. This is based off my previous experience on Live as well as my leveling experiences with Regen here as a Scrapper (TW/Regen) / Brute (EM/Regen) before and after (SS/Regen) the changes.

[Terenos]

4 hours ago, Sarrate said:

3) It's all in on Regen, if you ever run into a fight with -Regen, its possible it won't help at all (if your regen gets floored). While having a "god mode" button get completely stuffed isn't unheard of (Elude vs DE Quartz, Unstoppable vs Longbow -Res Grenades), it's really awkward that IH's alternative, RR, has scaling regen (and recovery) resistance, and it's always on. 

 

Totally agree with your points, but one thing I will say is that the new regen makes it very, very hard for your regen to get floored - they added a lot of -regen debuff resistance at all levels of the set (making it less volatile as a mitigation option, even at early levels in places like Praetoria where it can feel like it rains regen debuffs on lowbies).

 

So while IH being floored is less likely, this still makes RR a better choice because it provides a stacking -regen debuff resistance buff as part of its main function, where IH doesn't add any to it.

[Erratic1]

1 hour ago, Terenos said:

 

Totally agree with your points, but one thing I will say is that the new regen makes it very, very hard for your regen to get floored - they added a lot of -regen debuff resistance at all levels of the set (making it less volatile as a mitigation option, even at early levels in places like Praetoria where it can feel like it rains regen debuffs on lowbies).

 

So while IH being floored is less likely, this still makes RR a better choice because it provides a stacking -regen debuff resistance buff as part of its main function, where IH doesn't add any to it.

 

Boy, it really does add a chunk, doesn't it?