Werner

I'm considering a much bigger post, but in brief...

If Dull Pain and Instant Healing are not enough to let you survive for long in a particular group, that is NOT the kind of group you will ACTUALLY be facing in the game. You'll turn down the difficulty. When the difficulty level is such that you can normally survive, but sometimes need your click powers, then Dull Pain and Instant Healing WILL be a huge boost to your survivability in relative terms.

Similarly, if you somehow run 45% defense to all and 50% damage resistance, you'll be running on +4x8 to avoid boredom. Sometimes you'll need your click powers. When you do, Dull Pain and Instant Healing will provide the SAME boost to your survivability in relative terms. Obviously not in absolute terms, but absolute terms mean very little for how the game is probably actually played (challenging but not suicidal).

Double the regeneration is double the survivability, pretty much independent of how much damage mitigation you have.

(Edit: And yes, I'm partially playing devil's advocate. I could probably argue just as well for the other side. I just think this side of the argument is more often overlooked.)

Yeah, I think inherent fitness is probably doing as much as the alpha slot on most of my characters. Werner (Katana/Regen) is going to benefit tremendously from both, and from the fact that he's still running an I12-I13 build so has a lot of possible IO and power choice upgrades. But most of my attention has actually been going to Alexei (Katana/Dark). He recovers from the IO nerfs/fixes and gets solidly better DPS and survivability. Nothing dramatic, like you said, but nothing to sneer at either.

Yes and no - they lower your DPS, but you do more DPS alive than dead.

I suppose your point is that if you have 45% smashing/lethal, then you won't have to spend all your time cycling Moment of Glory and Shadow Meld? As long as you're only fighting smashing/lethal enemies, that's true. But unless I was a farmer, I wouldn't want a character that's great against smashing/lethal enemies, and falls apart against other damage types. And you're not likely to get a Regen up to 45% to all. I figured with trade offs, you could get a Regen that had enough defense of the various types that you have several god mode options - one small inspiration, Moment of Glory or Shadow Meld. In normal play, you probably wouldn't be clicking your defenses constantly. It would just be an issue against particularly difficult content. I suppose it depends on how much you pick and choose your difficult content?

And to be fair, against others much less than 10%, assuming I estimated correctly for the average amount of incoming AoE damage for an average Scrapper. Also, you can sometimes choose your enemies to avoid your weaknesses.

I feel the same way - I just dislike weaknesses. I like Invulnerability OK, for instance, but I dislike that it is SO much better against smashing/lethal and so much worse against psionic, even if I agree it makes thematic sense and gives the set flavor. Sure, you can sometimes choose your enemies to avoid your weaknesses, but I like the feeling of "anyone, any time". It makes me feel more super.

But as weaknesses go, being at "only" 41% against AoE is hardly a big one. I wouldn't do it, but it's not completely unreasonable, at least if you're getting something of equal value out of taking that minor weakness. Maybe think of it like skipping Resilience on a Regen. Lots of people do, and it's not that big a deal. I wouldn't, but you CAN, and you won't feel gimped in actual play even if the numbers say you're slightly worse off.

I'd probably only worry about the probably 8 seconds (I could calculate it if we need to be exact (Edit: 8.78 seconds)) if you need the recharge for your attack chain. I haven't fiddled with Martial Arts attack chains since the buff so I'm not sure what's good these days. And damage is about all the recharge is doing for you. Nice to have your AoEs back more often, of course, but the small gap won't make much difference in that regard.

Incorrect. It isn't all or nothing. It's a longer gap than reported by Mids, but not by much, and the closer you are to the 120, the smaller the difference. Hasten speeds up its own recharge while its up, but it doesn't suddenly become LESS recharged as soon as Hasten drops. It simply finishes recharging a little more slowly than it otherwise would have.

I can give a little more detail on my response, then, rather than leave it at "seems silly not to".

Let's work through an example. As our first case, we'll take a Shield Defense has 45% melee, 45% ranged and 45% AoE. For simplicity, let me ignore damage types and resistance. For simplicity we'll say you can regenerate or heal 30 DPS. And we'll use a survivability line approach to calculating survivability (lots of drawbacks to it, but fairly simple to apply). Well, 5% of attacks get through, so the damage output of the crowd you're facing can average 30 / 5% = 600 DPS.

For our next case, we'll take a Shield Defense with 45% melee, 45% ranged and 40% AoE. I'm going to say that 10% of incoming damage is AoE. Plug in a different number if you prefer. Well, DPS * 90% * 5% + DPS * 10% * 10% = 30, (4.5% + 1%)* DPS = 30, DPS = 545 DPS.

So the extra 5% AoE defense means the difference between surviving 600 DPS of enemy damage output vs. surviving 545 DPS of enemy damage output. Yes, it's going to be hard to notice that seat of the pants. But it IS a 10% improvement in survivability by adding those last few percentage points of defense. You might notice it more if it was 10% resistance, but it's a different and much less visible mechanic. I'm not going to sacrifice 10% resistance without good cause. I'm not going to sacrifice 5% AoE defense below the soft cap without good cause.

The simple answer is that both AVs are probably going to kill you. If the best the Regen can do is 25% defense, the Regen is dead - outside of buffs like inspirations or teammates.

The better answer is that the defense will be MORE useful against the +4 AV. Enemies up to +5 have the same to-hit as +0, which is to say 50%. That's what your defense is subtracted from. In other words, in a fairly relevant sense, your defense is just as useful against +4 AVs, because 25% will reduce a +4 AV to 25% to hit just as much as it'll reduce a +0 AV to 25% to hit. The level difference shows its ugly head in accuracy modifiers. A +0 AV has a 1.5 accuracy modifier, so a 37.5% chance to hit you. A +4 AV has a a 1.4 * 1.5 = 2.1, for a 52.5% chance to hit you.

Not sure the real average numbers, but let's say that the +0 AV putting out about 400 DPS, and the +4 AV is doing about 600 DPS due to the level difference. In the first case, you're taking 150 DPS of damage. In the second case, you're taking 315 DPS of damage.

Now let's say we were willing to trade 5% of our defense for regeneration. How much regeneration would we need to counter the extra incoming damage?

The +0 AV now has 30% to hit, or a 45% final chance to hit you. It's now hitting you for 180 DPS. You would need an extra 30 HP/S of regeneration to counter that. You're not going to get that from a simple set bonus trade of any sort. But what about the +4 AV? It now has a 30% to hit, or a 63% chance to hit you, so it's hitting you for 378 DPS. You would need an extra 63 HP/S of regeneration to counter that.

So, against a +0 AV, that 5% defense = 30 HP/S of regeneration. Against a +4 AV, that 5% defense = 63 HP/S of regeneration.

The example is poor, since as I said, both AVs are probably going to kill you. All we're talking about here is how fast they'll kill you on average, which may not be of much general interest. But the differences ARE representative of a general rule. In general, the tougher the enemies you face, the more valuable defense becomes in comparison to regeneration.

No, don't add more regeneration. It's not that extra regeneration is bad, but merely that it is less helpful to a Regen than more recharge and defense. Do not, DO NOT drop Tough and Weave to add slots to Fast Healing and Health. Particularly Tough. Tough is a key power for a Regen in my opinion. Anything that slows down how fast your green bar moves downwards when you're taking damage spikes is a good thing, and a much higher contributor to survivability than a little better passive regeneration.

To be fair, my current build has more passive regeneration and less recharge than ideal, and so likely will my I19 build if I end up focusing on my Katana/Regen. I just like having passive regeneration, even if it's not optimal. I like barely touching my clicks in normal play at normal difficulty levels, even if it gimps me a little at the highest difficulty levels.

If we're still confining ourselves to Dark Melee, I'd say you're correct. But I think something like a Katana/Regen could do it, and that it might do even better comparatively with I19. I haven't actually started on my I19 builds yet, though, so all I have are rough ideas of what I'm doing and rough ideas of how much survivability I'll get. I think my Dark Melee/Super Reflexes is going to get much better. But I think my Katana/Regen is going to get massively better.

Yes it can. My Fire/Shield has capped DDR except for a short period while the double-stack of Active Defense drops. Add some more recharge and I could remove that drop, but I was balancing a lot of different priorities. I still prefer Super Reflexes' version, since recharge can be debuffed and since clicking takes time. Plus it takes some serious work to pull off on Shield Defense, while it's easy easy on Super Reflexes.

I think the first way people look at it is in terms of how many seconds are shaved off of the recharge:

So in that sense, the first 30% is MUCH better. You will likely notice 13.85 seconds more than 1.82 seconds. So yes, it's more noticeable.

Here's another way to look at it - how many additional hit points per second do you get out of the 30%?

Almost the same, but since the cast time isn't affected by recharge, the higher the recharge, the lower the effect. But these are VERY close. So in another sense, you won't notice it, because you'll never notice 0.15 HP/S of healing.

But here's another way to look at THAT. If you heal 10.7 HP/S, the extra 3.16 HP/S is improving a simplistic measure of your survivability by almost 30%. It won't be nearly that much in practice since we're just looking at a single power in a vacuum, but still. Whereas if you already heal 31.36 HP/S, the extra 3.01 HP/S is only improving your survivability by about 10%. That will probably be less noticeable.

There are surely other valid ways of looking at it as well.

So really, whether or not you notice the difference may just depend on which numbers you paying attention to as a player. It's not so big that I think I'll really notice from a seat of the pants perspective.

The number I tend to pay attention to is "survivability", and I suspect I notice it in play more in percentage increase terms - 30% more survivable vs. 10% more survivable. So the way I tend to look at things, the first 30% is about three times as effective as another 30% when I'm already sporting 200% recharge. But still, 10% improvement in survivability? It's not bad.

And of course we're neglecting the heal component of the very rare, and that it's going to be more than +30% recharge. And things probably get more complicated for the other clicks. Still, should be good.

Since I'm all about the survivability, I'll probably be going Spiritual Core.