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This is, point-blank, a power-by-power breakdown of the Regeneration secondary for Scrappers, in comparison to the other Scrapper sets. The goal is to prevent anyone from ever considering playing the set for any reason other than concept, or the fact they
want the game to be a pain in the rear. It'll mostly look at Regeneration's role as a regen-based set and the many,
many weak spots it has that render it one of the weakest Scrapper secondaries.
First, you need to ask yourself, "why would I be dumb enough to want to play such a horrible, underperforming set like Regeneration?" I'll go over some of the more popular excuses people have given me when considering this step.
1. I heard that Regeneration lets you ignore damage types and I can see myself possibly doing quite well against all enemies.
STOP. Moment of Glory has a huge psychic damage hole and -Regen completely castrates you. What causes -Regen? Malta. What causes psychic damage? Carnies, Rikti, Rularuu, Arachnos. Once you hit the endgame you're basically hamstrung.
2. I heard that Regeration only has one toggle to worry about. That sounds very cool!
HOLD IT! You probably want to look at the following ATs: Blasters. Corruptors. Defenders. Dominators. These ATs all have little or no toggles to worry about.
3. I have a concept that revolves around being a quick healer and want a powerset that reflects that.
WHAT?! NO! Did you know that when it has ten people in range of Rise to the Challenge, a fully-slotted Willpower has more regen than a Regeneration Scrapper without Instant Healing running? Plus it has the resistances to keep that health around long enough to enjoy it.
4. I want a lot of hit points!
WHAT ON EARTH IS WRONG WITH YOU? Both Invulnerability and Willpower have powers that increase your maximum hit points and don't involve the general weakness that Regeneration entails. Both sets will, with proper power choices and slotting, give you more hit points than Regeneration can.
5. I want to have a self-rez!
NO! HOW COULD YOU BE ANY MORE WRONG?! Every other self-rez in the game is better than the one that Regeneration has.
If you, after reading this guide, still want to play Regneration, please post any questions and I will call you an idiot for having the nerve to contradict me.
Of course, when referring to Regeneration as weak and useless for Scrappers, you have to look at the powers available to the Scrapper in question. So let's go over them briefly and compare them to several other options that are out there before starting your career as a Scrapper. I mean really, the nine powers in your secondary are what determine whether or not your teammates are going to be cursing your name for dying every mob.
1. Fast Healing: You need to take this power, but you'll be wishing you didn't. This is what will be keeping you "alive" in the early levels. This power, unslotted, provides +75% hit point regeneration. No resistance, no defense, nothing that will actually keep you from getting killed. I should point out that melee attacks and smashing/lethal damage are almost always present and that having no resistance or defense to any of it will impair your survivability. Compare this to Invulnerability, which gets a S/L resist passive right off the bat.
2. Reconstruction: This power is a click that heals you. It is, hands-down, the backbone of Regeneration. It's what you - if you're some sort of barely-literate man-child who doesn't know good advice when he hears it - should six-slot and stick under your arm, because it's going to be your CRUTCH. It'll barely prevent you from being utterly worthless in PvE, but for what it does, Reconstruction is horrible. IT is the reason Regeneration is never useful for anything other than dealing with minions. IT is the reason that, when someone says, "hey Scrapper, take that alpha" you will either reply "you need another Scrapper or a Tanker" or try it and die. It sets the stage for what little Regeneration is really capable of: Dealing with the crap every other defenseless AT can deal with.
Unslotted, it takes 10.4 endurance and gives you back 25 percent of your health. That's right. This power takes up a power slot and does the same exact thing as a small green Inspiration, something you can get off of every mob and from every contact for 50 influence. Also, when facing single targets, this miniscule bit of healing is easily knocked off. When are you facing single targets? When... you're fighting an AV or a player; things that will gleefully tear through your nonexistent defenses like tissue paper.
It's only a must-take power because you can't live without it and it's horrible because you only need it when soloing so you can handle the occasional lieutenant. When you're teamed it's a waste of a power: The Tankers will be drawing aggro, Controllers will be locking down enemies and Defenders will be defending your defenseless rear end.
Out of all the melee secondary self-heal powers, it's hands-down the worst in execution.
3. Quick Recovery: Unslotted, Quick Recovery provides a 30 percent boost to endurance recovery. A lot of people point to this as one of the powers that makes Regeneration worth using. These people do not know anything about anything. Endurance recovery is useless if you're unable to stay alive long enough to make use of it and unfortunately, Regeneration can't. So those three power choices you'd normally use to get Stamina with other Scrapper secondaries? Now you can use them to get Tough and Weave and
still underperform.
Three-slotted with SOs, Tough and Weave would give a Regeneration Scrapper 17.6% smashing/lethal resist and 5.85% defense at a total cost of .64 endurance a second. Compare this to Invulnerability, which can get 35.1% S/L resistance from a toggle that only costs .26 endurance a second - twice the resistance for less damage. Invulnerability also has a power that grants 5.85% defense when fully slotted: An inherent, which doesn't drain endurance. In addition, Invulnerability has a toggle that grants a defense bonus based on how many enemies are in melee range, something which Regeneration lacks. Even Super Reflexes' positional toggles outperform Regeneration with Weave, with a whopping 21.6% defense fully slotted for that same .26 end/sec cost. Even taking Stamina's slightly lower recovery boost into consideration, Invulnerability with Stamina is much better at staying alive than Regeneration is with Tough and Weave. Would you rather have endurance and be alive or slightly more endurance and be dead? You tell me.
4. Dull Pain: This power is a click that both heals and increased your maximum hit points, shared with Invulnerability. Sounds good, right? It isn't. Unslotted, it heals 40% of your hit points and gives you a 40% boost to your maximum hit points for two minutes. Unfortunately there's a delay between activating it and having it take effect. This will frequently lead to it going off just as the Scrapper gets killed, and will contribute to the comical effect lots of Regeneration Scrappers will see, referred to as "too little, too late!" Compare this to Invulnerability, with its heavy resists and defenses; an Invulnerability Scrapper's green bar will be going down more slowly, so Dull Pain will actually be able to take effect when you need it to. Plus having those defenses apply to 40% more hit points ensures that it can actually survive long enough to win the fight.
5. Integration: This is your mez protection toggle. This prevents you from being held, stunned, slept, immobilized or knocked back. Sound good, right? No. There is no protection to fear here, there is no protection to confusion here or anywhere else in the set, there is no protection from taunt, or placate or repel. The power, for mez protection, has more holes than Bonnie and Clyde's getaway car. Everything Integration does, other mez protection powers do better: Willpower's Indomitable Will protects against confusion, fear AND knockback and gives you psionic defense. Super Reflexes has Practiced Brawler, which protects against everything Integration does, only it's a click power, so if you do get held you still have your mez protection once the hold expires, plus it has Confusion resistance in Focused Fighting. Dark Armor's Obsidian Shield protects against fear as well as provides psi resist. Invulnerability's Unyielding protects against everything Integration does and has resistance to nearly every damage type. It does, however, also hold the only thing Regeneration is good for. A 150% boost to your regeneration rate. Sounds like a great strength for the set, doesn't it? Maybe enemies will wait for your hit points to recover when you get this power if you ask politely.
6. Resilience: This is a passive resist that provides a base of 5.63% smashing/lethal resist and 7.5% toxic resist as well as resistance to stuns for some ridiculous reason. This is the power that you're expected to rely on to reduce incoming damage long enough so that maybe you'll have a chance to heal some of it back before the next hit kills you. Compare this laughable amount of damage mitigation with every other set: Dark Armor has toggles that stun or fear enemies, Willpower's passive has resistances to all damage types, Super Reflexes has defense against all damage types and Invulnerability has passives that boost both resistance
and defense. Even for a set like Regeneration, Resilience is worthless. You know it's a horrible power when even the social reprobates who think Regeneration is a good set refuse to take it.
7. Instant Healing: This is a click power that provides a +800% boost to your hit point regeneration rate for 90 seconds, at which point it takes almost eleven minutes to recharge. People seem to think that this is a substitute for resistance, because you're recovering hit points as fast as they're being taken off. These people forget that it's only for ninety seconds and that you're still defenseless the entire time: If something could take you down in two hits without Instant Healing, it'll still be able to do it in two hits with it. Furthermore, there's a maximum limit to hit point recovery and you still need to wait to recover health. As a Scrapper, you're expected to run into situations where you're going to be attacked en masse by enemies, and more often than not this power either won't be up or won't be enough to save you.
Think about that last sentence for a minute while I break out a brief history note. Even after the change to Moment of Glory, many people have called Instant Healing the "real" Tier 9 of Regeneration. But the tier 9s of every other set allow you to either greatly reduce incoming damage (Invulnerability, Willpower) or avoid it entirely (Super Reflexes). Even Dark Armor's self-rez helps reduce incoming damage post-rez with a mag 30 stun. Yet this fake Tier 9 was actually relied on to help keep the user alive.
8. Revive: Regeneration was built around the inevitability that the set provides. With no resistances, no defenses and powers that are all based around you waiting for your hit points to recover, you will be dying. Revive, at this point, provides you with the ability to resurrect yourself with 75% hit points and 50% endurance. Whereas Dark Armor has a magnitude 30 stun, Willpower has a 30 percent boost to to-hit and recovery and a 35 percent boost to damage and Fiery Aura has knockdown, stun, PBAoE fire damage and brief invulnerability, Revive has... nothing. If nothing else, they're keeping the trend they set with the rest of this set's powers. This is the power that is made for that situation where your regeneration rate is easily overwhelmed by enemy mobs. For the sake of brevity, I'm not going to go over the problems with the power in arena matches.
If nothing else, at least this power will let the Defenders focus on keeping other, better teammates alive instead of stopping every two minutes to bring you back to life.
9. Moment of Glory: This click power gives you about 70% resistance and defense to all damage types except for psychic for fifteen seconds. Yes, for fifteen seconds you can pretend that you're a real Scrapper. In lieu of a real Tier 9 we get one that's watered down and a power that a bunch of basement-dwelling goons think passes for a real one. Compared to every other set, Moment of Glory either underperforms or is just outperformed. Super Reflexes's has the defenses, plus it doesn't have the psionic defense hole that MoG has. Willpower's, while not as much of a resistance bonus, lasts eight times as long as MoG. Finally, Invulnerability has the resistances, plus it lasts twelve times that of MoG. Plus all three of those sets can take on multiple mobs before their Tier 9s expire. A Regeneration Scrapper with Moment of Glory can take on a lieutenant... if he's lucky.
It should be pointed out that the issues with Regeneration on a Scrapper cannot be properly pointed out without some comparisons to other sets.
1. Invulnerability: The set features nearly across the board the highest resist numbers of every Scrapper secondary with any possible "holes" that can be plugged with its tier 9. Its weak spot is supposed to be its lack of psionic resistance, one would guess. This can
easily be fixed with an Impervium Armor or Aegis IO making Invulnerability, in my personal opinion, THE set to choose if your main concern is survivability.
A quick glance at its numbers, with all resist powers taken, versus Regeneration with all resist powers taken. I'll place the tier 9 boosted numbers for Inv in a separate column. These numbers are for unslotted resists.
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Inv Inv w/ Tier 9 Regen
Smash: 31.9 75(capped, true 84.38) 5.6
Lethal: 31.9 75(capped, true 84.38) 5.6
Energy: 13.1 65.6 0.
Negative:13.1 65.6 0.
Fire: 13.1 65.6 0.
Cold: 13.1 65.6 0.
Psionic: 0. 0. 0.
Toxic: 13.1 65.6 7.5
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Hands down, Invulnerability is the better set. Invulnerability provides a defense against burst damage, which Regeneration does not offer. Invulnerability also provides defense as well as resistance and a "true" tier 9. The only things that Regen does that Invulnerability isn't capable of is faster endurance recovery and a self-rez. Regen, to cover the burst damage and def/res hole, has to invest in three powers for Tough and Weave. Invulnerability covers its hole with two IOs and a single 250 inf inspiration.
To top it off, when the going gets tough for Invulnerability, you click Unstoppable for the above second set of numbers for resists, making you harder to kill. When the going gets tough for Regeneration, you die. It's the way the set is designed.
2. Super Reflexes: This set is a completely different beast from most Scrapper sets. I have stood toe-to-toe, back-to-back and in battle against this set, and Regeneration falls short. Of note is the fact its lack of a heal can be completely undone with two powers from the Medicine pool for Aid Self, and Super Reflexes by design will decrease the likelihood of it being interrupted. Being built around the concept of defense a number comparison means very little; however, one note should be pointed out for endgame play: When the going gets tough for Super Reflexes, you pop Elude, get 45% more defense to all positions, double your running and jumping speed and a bonus to endurance recovery for the duration of the power. When the going gets tough for Regeneration, you die. It's the way the set is designed.
3. Dark Armor: This set is probably the closest, truest side-to-side competitor with Regeneration. It suffers the same lack of a decent ability to exceed its own expectations and is given a self-resurrection power instead. Yet, as pointed out in the Revive notes above, the self-resurrection from Soul Transfer exceeds Revive due to the PBAoE stun. There are a few other reasons that, for a Scrapper, Dark Armor is superior to Regeneration. I'll provided them for you in a bit, but first, let's just match up the numbers.
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Dark Regen
Smash: 22.5 5.6
Lethal: 22.5 5.6
Energy: 15 0.
Negative:30 0.
Fire: 22.5 0.
Cold: 22.5 0.
Psionic: 37.5 0.
Toxic: 15 7.5
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On paper, Dark is overall across the board more capable. Furthermore, once you look past the basics of resistances, Dark Armor provides the Scrapper more of what it needs and less useless, miniscule boosts. Dark Regeneration is completely superior to Reconstruction due to an incredible heal that doesn't even need to be slotted with healing enhancements to be useful. Dark Armor also provides the tool of Oppressive Gloom, which while Regeneration is focused on being overwhelmed by foes, Dark Armor is giving you a way to stop them in their tracks. Finally, Cloak of Fear just flat out says, you're not going to hit me. It's not exactly Invincibility, but it does provide a to-hit debuff and can lock foes down with fear. Meanwhile Fast Healing and Resilience are doing nothing to prevent you from getting hit or taking damage. Bottom line? Regeneration has no resists and says "please don't hit me!" Dark Armor has resists and says "Afraid of me? YOU SHOULD BE!" Now, which do you think is more scrapper-like?
4. Willpower: Willpower is the new shining baby boy of Scrapper Defense. It provides a mix of regeneration, resistance and defense as well as endurance recovery. Its tier 9 is not, admittedly, the Next Big Thing, but it does make it much more durable in a fight. Willpower is a new set and, as such, I'll need to give it an honest shot to see where exactly it falls on the Scrapper chart of defensive sets. Regardless, the combination of resistance and defense will place it well above Regeneration, as shown by a few test runs side-by-side with other Willpower players. It also has the added benefit of having mez protection that resists just about everything imaginable, so there's no need to worry about any holes. Also, Resurgence is of note as being a great self-rez, as it doesn't just rez you but provides you with an actual, tangible benefit instead of just putting you back on your feet and shoving you back into the fray with a mumbled, sarcastic "you're welcome."
In closing, when compared to the other Scrapper sets, Regeneration is complete and utter trash. All sets save for it provide some degree of survivability: Invulnerability has godly resists and defense together in one package. Super Reflexes represents the defense camp, for what it's worth, has a tier 9 to push it to the limit and walk along the razor's edge and can easily fit in a self-heal if need be. Dark Armor represents the "kill it before it kills you" camp. Willpower provides a little bit of everything, complete with a nifty self-rez if things go bad... and Regeneration? Regeneration lets you recover hit points almost as fast as they can be taken off and a self-rez that props you up to get knocked back down by anything nearby.
Think on that when you look over defense sets for your next Scrapper.
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Wow...
....umm.....
...WTF?
No really man, I had to stop doing research on my new SR build to reply to how much BS this is, most of your reasons for hating regen are completely null and it sounds like you are pulling the n00b mastermind stunt and neglecting your secondaries. I'd like to point out that every other set has more holes than regen (except maybe Willpower, since it's so spread out it doesn't get hit too hard by anything), Invunl has problems with elemental and energy heavy mobs, super reflexes has issues with lucky hits and +to hit, dark armor has problems with... ...actually now that I think about it dark armor is pretty effective once you hit SO level, and most of it's holes can be covered easily. Hmmm. Well, the point is, everything has weaknesses, something is going to poke you in your sore spot from time to time and with a little effort you can usually get around it (heeeellloo, what are insps for class?).
I wish.
