Katana/Electric Armor IO Build

First off, 100% is a perfectly large buff, even with 50% uptime. Even averaged, it's larger than health and that's all that health really does (woo... sleep resistance). Energize isn't just a +regen buff. It's a full strength heal, a substantial +regen buff, and a powerful end assistance tool. You're acting like the +regen is the only trait on the power that matters. The heal is, in fact, more powerful than the +regen will ever be (you'd have to have more hp than the cap in order for it to be more powerful), and it's instantaneous to boot.

Yes, a regen scrapper which has FOUR powers to use to help save his A#$, unlike elec armor, which functionally only has the one.

Considering thats not Invulns only means of negating those debuffs, whereas elec armor, with zero defense it is, no.

The heal of which, is on a 120 second base timer, no thanks. The end discount, with power sink in the set, not as much either. The regen, granting a consistent boost to survival, i hold in MUCH higher regard during actual combat.

*/Regen has 4 click powers, 1 passive, and 1 toggle. Elec Armor has 4 toggles and 1 clicks (ignoring Power Sink and Power Surge, the first because it's more often used as an endurance tool and the second because it's a traditional god mode). */Regen is having to use those powers to save his/her "A#$" a lot more often than */Elec (with its not insubstantial resistances) is.

You honestly think that just because you don't see much use behind a fully enhanceable 25% heal and the equivalent of 2 end redux SOs applied to all of your powers compared to some +regen only slightly better than Fast Healing that every other value should be ignored to balance around the weakest contributive factor of the three? Really?

Mods, I'd like to ask for a forum facepalm please. I mean really. It's situations like these that we need something to demonstrate our frustration with the ignorance of some people.

The end discount, with slotting end reduction in your powers and power sink, is easily unnecessary. I make most of my toons who really don't need any kind of end ability, so having one of any kind is more than enough. That tends to end up more as overkill.

And the heal, is NOT so good as you think it is. Its a normal 25% heal, but you are gravely forgetting that as the heal goes its on a 120 second base timer.

The regen is weaker than it should be you're right, which is why i'm saying for it to last for 60 seconds so its constant, that WOULD make the regen a much larger aspect of the power as it should be IMO. As mentioned the end discount can easily be brought down to compensate.

You can pop a green to see you through. But that is why I like the idea of pairing Dark Melee. Siphon Life is part of the attack chain and can help you get to the next energize, when ever that will be.

why right now the only elec armor i can see myself playing is an elec/dm.

All sets are deteremined without the use of inspirations. They help you, but are not factored in to a sets survivability.

And this is why you're going about this in a completely wrong way. This is purely your opinion. The power is not, nor was it ever intended to be, a +regen power. It was redesigned to be a self heal with a couple benefits attached. The end redux remained to prevent breaking the cottage rule. The +regen was added to provide a small amount heal after the initial big heal. The +regen is the exact size and duration that it needs to be because it's not the primary focus of the power.

That's because it's not just a heal (especially considering neither of those heals is considered to be a "baseline"; Recon is the "normal" self heal). It's a swiss-army knife power. It's not just a heal. It's a heal with a HoT component and an endurance assistance component. It shouldn't recharge as fast as the other powers simply because it does more. It "heals", at the very minimum, 50% more than either Healing Flames or Reconstruction (thanks to the +regen component) and provides a much more significant secondary benefit (because we all know how wonderful that toxic resistance is, right?). The very fact that it does so much means that it's going to recharge slower.

That's true I was thinking that as I was typing it, and just looking at a decent recharge build for katana/electric it is possible to have energize down to a 10-20 second interval which would rock considering the regeneration bonus and if I recall correctly the heal bonus are both enhanceable.

And its completely your opinion, that it shouldn't be mainly used for the regen buff, with the self heal just there so that it gives the regeneration time to work so you're not using it when your about to die anyways.

If it was designed mainly for the self heal, whatever bonus they added, i would NOT be expecting a 2 minute recharge for just a 25% base heal if thats the main focus.

And i am fairly sure i understand what you mean, but where did the term "cottage rule" come about?

Actually, no. That's Castle's opinion and that's the only one that matters. He wanted to give the set a heal and, thanks to also wanting to prevent cottage rule, he had to retain the end redux benefit. Because this would force the power to have a longer recharge, he gave it a +regen benefit. In the original incarnation, the heal was actually weaker (a 15% self heal, iirc) but, with player testing and spreadsheet analysis, it was increased to be on par with Recon and Healing Flames (i.e. 25% self heal). The +regen benefit was completely left alone.

The 120 second recharge is there because it's not just a self heal. It's a self heal with two other substantial benefits.

The "cottage rule" comes from a power change discussion wherein Castle mentioned that there would be no changes to powers that completely altered their functionality. Recharge, duration, additional effects, debuffs, etc. could be added, but the overall function of the power would not be rendered completely different. His example was that he would never change Build Up to build a cottage around the character rather increase damage. People eventually just started quoting this as the Cottage Rule.

I'd like to point out that for some reason, your missing the point. The fact of the matter is, a 25% heal is far more valuable, EVEN ON A 2 MINUTE RECHARGE, when its just one component of a power. I dont understand where your argument lies. Its basically to the point where your just arguing, to argue. Its almost as if you forgot how to use IO's, and overlooked the fact that the power(if YOU were going to use it for just a "heal") can be brought down to a minimal recharge.

Case in point: Pretty much sums up what a respectable reply would be.

Actually, I've never done that. I've already specifically looked at Regeneration compared to other mitigation sets in much more detail than the spreadsheet can: the spreadsheet was originally created as a power proliferation comparison tool.

According to the spreadsheet, Regen is actually *stronger* than most powersets out there strictly in terms of damage mitigation strength, for most temporal circumstances. Anyone who wants to factor in potentially countervailing issues is free to do so. Anyone claiming that the numbers "don't match the game" is also free to do so; however as was the case with the Scrapper Comparison threads, I'll point out that I've actually played essentially all of the defensive sets and thus I have at least a comparable amount of first hand experience with all of the sets as anyone else. If I observed a very strong discrepancy between my analyses and actual in-game performance, I would have noted them. My spreadsheet is *not* an analysis: its a simplified quick reference sheet for damage mitigation (and what-if tool) more than anything else. Within that context, its extremely accurate.

And I have, in the past, at least six or seven times, analyzed factors outside of direct damage mitigation. In particular, I wrote extensively about the role of endurance drain on survivability that is normally not factored into survivability calculations, so its not that I'm incapable or unwilling to investigate them.

Debuffs have never been a factor I've "ignored." Rather, I've explicitly considered them secondary factors in the value of a mitigation set**, in the same bucket with powers like Quick Recovery which also has a survivability and other benefits which are also non-trivial to account for, and which are typically presumed to be secondary advantages of the set outside of primary mitigation: things which are qualitatively and not quantitatively balanced for (because in CoH those things have no quantifiable model by which they are granted, unlike damage mitigation which had an implicit one even if the devs were not in possession of an explicit one).


** In the I4 version of the Scrapper Comparison thread, I posted a specific article on this subject detailing just exactly what the challenges are in attempting to quantify such things, and giving reasons for why quantifying them might not even be consistent with the design of the game at that time. Briefly, some things seem to be granted to some sets even *knowing* that at some level they are an unbalanced-for advantage, but since numerical advantages do not always translate to measurable performance (levelling) advantages, some things simply are better with the knowledge that its an acceptable advantage if its not performance-skewing. The (original) Claws modifications seem to be an example of this, as is quick recovery. Positional defense itself seems to fall into this category, at least in intent if not in implementation. The powers design seemed to be (at least at that time) analogous to trying to give everyone the same amount of vanilla ice cream, and then giving everyone a different set of topings on top without being all that careful to make sure everyone gets precisely the same ounces of toppings, so long as everyone's toppings are different enough.

A little more of Case in Point.

Honestly it all comes down to opinions, even that of the devs. Which is why i wish they really would just allow us to create petitions and take votes on such matters.

Until a redname comes in the middle of a post like this, we're just left blindsided.

Like any authority they have to watch what they say especially in official updates. When they chime in these discussions they tend to be a little less formal and can iterate a little better the way things are and might possibly change, and how strict they are on such opinions for the future.

And this is one of the big problems with the discussions that I've had with you on this very topic. I don't doubt the accuracy of your spreadsheet and your analyses for average gameplay. I've always doubted them in specific subsets of overall gameplay. The two concerns I've always brought up are the situations in which the secondary factors that you've explicitly excluded from the spreadsheet actually matter substantively: debuffs (specifically recharge and regen debuffs) and animation time.

I don't think it's at all untowards to say that a set that lives off of powers that are (or at least should) be recharging a majority of the time is disproportionately disadvantaged by recharge debuffs. For every other set, -rech is largely a matter of decreased offensive capacity. For */regen, which is the only set without any debuff resistance, -rech is of substantially greater significance because nearly 75% of its survivability is negatively impacted by it and its damage is similarly impacted negatively.

There's also the entire issue of animation time consumption which isn't factored in whatsoever. Ignoring balance considerations such as reaction time and effect delay (whether due to player skill, natural delay in a power's effect, or the interference of other simultaneous animations), */regen uses more than 6 times the animation time of any other set, a resource that is universally used for damage dealing. In every other set in the game, any power that uses up a nominally offensive resource such as animation time offers gains in survivability (DA/Parry; Granite Armor offers the same but inflicts -rech and -dam rather than using animation time) generally greater than the reduction in kind. Assuming you double stack DA, it will use up 10% more animation time over the course of a 10 second attack string compared to using GC (the closest comparable power) but provide 60% mitigation to more than 50% of incoming attacks (conservative estimate considering a majority of incoming attacks are going to be melee anyway). 10% animation time for roughly 30% mitigation (assuming that a single data point is sufficient) would then allow you to at least assume that a reasonable exchange rate would be for every 1% extra animation time, you'd get an extra 3% mitigation.

I did the math and figured out the percent animation time used up by */regen as it compared to all of the other sets (you actually commented on that thread several times). */Regen in SOs (it actually scales up pretty quickly as you get more +rech) uses up 6.01% of total animation time. */WP uses up 1.1% (and only if you're using SoW; though it's not really a fair comparison: */WP is stupidly strong, though the argument could easily be made that it doesn't really pay for that huge level of strength beyond not having click powers) to achieve it's assumed level of survivability. */Invuln uses up .5% animation time (1.1% if you include Unstoppable). */SR uses up 1.4% animation time (1.8% if you include Elude). */SD uses up 1.4% as well (2.1% if you include OwtS). */FA uses up roughly 7.7% (purely because Healing Flames recharges so friggin' fast but also because HF takes so long to animate), but it's also an "offensive" set with above average survivability for a normal set by the spreadsheet's determination. */DA can use up roughly 7.9%, but that's a highly doubtful case (it's much more likely DA wouldn't have any +rech slotting at all and would instead use up 4.2% or less thanks to the prohibitive end cost of DR).

The only sets that get even remotely close to */regen are */FA and */DA (the high percentages of which are actually explained by their performance and the design of the powers). If anything, */regen should actually be noticeably more powerful (15% if you put any trust in the "DA exchange rate") across all if not most of temporal situations thanks simply to requiring a greater investiture of animation time to achieve its assumed level of survivability.

Assuming this logic still applies, */regen would be left horribly out in the cold if only because it's only got QR and Resilience (gotta love a tiny bit of redundant stun res/prot, right?). Every other set at least has some decently quantifiable and at least situationally useful debuff protection/

The problem with statements like this is that they create cherry-picking opportunities; its not really a quantitative statement.

Here's another one: SR is the *only* mitigation set that does not have *any* means to mitigate an entire class of attacks (non-positional psionics), whether by direct damage mitigation or by attack debuffing. That means while people like to talk about "holes" SR is the only mitigation set that actually has an actual hole: one that you can look all the way down to the bare health of the character.

How do you counterbalance these two "only"s? Let me know when you come up with a way.


And how would you counterbalance that against the fact that Regen has far more endurance to burn on offense than sets like Invuln and Dark Armor? The game is balanced around endurance as a constraint, and Regen has a far lower constraint on offense intrinsicly.

The calculations for endurance constraint on offense are not difficult to do. Most people throw them out, however, because "everyone" can build around it. Which is another form of balance cherry-picking: counting what is perceived as a problem, while ignoring all countervailing effects that are not perceived as independent problems.

I've done this calculation myself, by the way: its not favorable to making a case for Regen.


Now keep going and compare SO SR to SO Regen, and see what the mitigation advantage actually is. I'll give you a hint: its not 15%. Since you got this far, I'm rather surprised you didn't go all the way and calculate by how much Regen "lags" the other sets, based on this theory of animation time exchange (which I'm not saying I necessarily buy, by the way: if that theory operated reasonably well we'd then have a theory that would allow one to exchange offense for defense and compute, say, the value of a damage aura relative to a defensive power, which is the Holy Grail of balance calculations; unfortunately, this doesn't work in the general case).


By the way (and this is not your fault) your Dark Regen numbers are slightly off. Dark Regeneration's cast time is listed as 1.17 seconds, but it actually roots for 40 frames: about 1.33 seconds (its one of those powers that is on my list of root discrepancies). With server clock considerations, DR's activation cost per cycle is actually closer to a whopping 5.3% all by itself (if you're lucky on clock alignment, its possible for it to occasionally be 4.8%, but that won't happen very often). My guess is that eventually that will be fixed downward, towards the 1.17 cast time, but at the moment Dark Armor is surprisingly "expensive" in terms of animation time, given it has only one click to deal with (it is, however, probably the singularly most problematic defensive click in existence).

Actually, it was a quantitative statement to some degree because I calculated the sustainable survivability contribution of */regen with and without the click powers. I never tried to say that */regen would completely lose 75% of it's survivability when affected by any degree of -rech debuff. In fact, if you're willing to accept average click power contribution as an acceptable substitute for the real binary nature of the */regen buffs, the 75% would be itself be reduced by a level approximately equal to the average magnitude of the debuff (i.e 40% -rech up roughly 50% of the time would reduce the 75% contribution from the clicks to 60% contribution thanks to how recharge rate affects real click power contribution over time).

The entire point of that statement was to point out that */regen is unique in the degree to which -rech negatively affects its survivability (*/Fire and */DA are similarly effected, but their click powers matter substantially less to overall survivability than */regen's). Of course, this is, and has always been, my position as to why */Regen needs some recharge debuff resistance, at the very least.

The first question when counterbalancing the two of them would be to first figure out the population and intensity of attacks without positions (re: */SR's hole) compared to the population and intensity of -rech effects. If you can decently gauge comparative populations and the comparative effects of the two different holes upon the powersets, you could feasibly balance the two of them against each other (re: the loss in survivability for */regen times the occurrence of -rech powers would be equal to the loss in survivability times the occurrence of non-positional powers). Of course, that would involve a hefty amount of research and analysis of how the AI chooses specific attacks, but it would be possible.

Considering that, at SO levels, */Invuln only uses base .778 end/sec (reduced to .487 end/sec with assumed slotting) compared to */Regen's .62 end/sec (reduced to reduced to .536 end/sec with assumed slotting), which is actually rather high thanks to click powers not having gotten the endurance reductions over the course of the game that toggles have. The only reason that */Regen has less endurance woes than */Invuln is because it's got Quick Recovery (for an extra .977 end/sec with assumed slotting). */DA end problems extend from DS and DR, though it's also got the advantage of having excellent animationless mitigation from OG and CoF (though OG is only endurance efficient one, honestly). I've always felt that */DA was one of the few sets actually based heavily around the idea of using endurance as a primary balancing mechanism.

Of course, at this point, you also get into a debate as to whether endurance is a more offensively or defensively oriented resource. Considering the fact that endurance costs are comparatively higher for attacks and other damage powers than they are for more support oriented powers (re: you get better returns reducing the endurance cost of your attacks than you do reducing the endurance cost of your support powers) and the devs changed the endurance costs of powers to make endurance costs more heavily weighted towards attacks, I'd venture to say that the devs decided a long time ago that endurance is an offensive resource. */DA actually follows this line of logic, insofar as it's capable of grotesque levels of survivability but is limited by its ability to actually keep its blue bar up.

Of course, you also have to consider how useful additional recovery beyond the point of infinite sustainability is. There isn't really a way to use endurance beyond that point while there is always a use for more animation time. You also get into the use of outside resources: there are many more ways to get additional +recov or +end, even without delving into IOs (insps, buffs, etc) but there are no ways in which to get more animation time (which would most likely be accomplished by reducing animation times). Simply including Stamina into the Invuln v. Regen endurance consumption debate would change everything substantially.

I didn't bother determining the actual mitigation advantages of the sets simply because there were too many variables and situations to account for (something which I think you can agree with me on at least for the analysis in question). The first problem is determining what the appropriate time frame to calculate survivability within is. Immortality inflates */regen's performance while burst or even short term inflates */SR's. Another would be determining an appropriate level of contribution from pool powers. Without pool powers, */Regen looks much better, but that's not a realistic assumption, especially since, thanks to the growing nature of mitigation contribution and the greater usefulness of pool powers to */SR than */Regen, that would deflate */SR's numbers. Even including Hover/Combat Jumping would give */SR a substantial increase to survivability, especially stacked with Health, Tough, and Weave, though it's hard to determine whether any of those should be included because, while they're incredibly common (to the point that you'll almost never see an intelligently built toon without them), they're not actually native to the sets. Even worse would be trying to determine the relative benefits of the indirect survivability contributions the sets offer. */SR gets Quickness and virtual immunity to defense debuffs, along with the ability to avoid most debuffs in the first place. */Regen gets Quick Recovery (and Revive, if you actually want to count that).

I agree with you completely. I wouldn't trust that specific ratio anyway, since it would really require that animation time be included on a fundamental level at the point that every power were created and not just hand-waved away (an actual balance theory would determine equivalence for every potential variable rather than just 2). The point of it was to take one of the most easily recognizable powers that offers an exchange of animation time for mitigation and derive some approximate value for the exchange to demonstrate that, if animation time were balanced in the sets in the same manner as it is in that recognizable power, */Regen would be noticeably more powerful than every other set even using heuristic assessment to account for the increased use of animation time that is only just now being recognized as a point of balance.

This is also ignoring the entire point of the animation time issue I keep bringing up: */Regen lowers its own damage dealing ability in order to bring its survivability up to the level of every other set out there. Assuming that both builds are capable of dealing 100 DPS if they only use their animation time to attack, the */SR is going to achieve roughly 99 DPS while the */Regen is only going to achieve roughly 94 DPS. That's completely and totally unfair to the */Regen that, if they're going to achieve the same survivability, the */Regen isn't going to be dealing as much damage simply because it has to consume an offensive resource in order to achieve the same level of survivability.

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