What defenses are there against -Regen?

Actually, back then Inv was more powerful then regen. At least the first scrapper soloing AV vids I saw were a dark/inv.

Back then MoG put you to 20% health, with no ability to heal.

Dull Pain's +HP was static and not affected by enhancements. The ability to affect the +HP was a bug that they chose to leave in. I believe this actually occured when they were looking at inv tankers.

IH was a toggle, and it was fully enhanceable, with much higher regen rates then it has now.

Integration was only a status protection, it had not +regen component.


The basic history is:

IH - lowered max regen
Integration and Dull Pain buffed w/ IH lowered max regen
Integration and IH given Enhanceable/Unenhanceable sections
IH changed into clickie.

MoG "fixed" - I like the change, but I know it was controversial at the time. However it didn't do anything to improve the playability of regen for me.

To be honest, the only time I feel like bringing out my /regen is the one area it's still the best in. When I decide to go to a Hami raid (and then i'm reminded why I quit going to hami raids 4 years ago).

I liked riding that edge with regen. Knowing that if I slipped up jsut a bit, I could face plant. I just don't get the feeling from that with any of the newer sets. I still get that with regen, but that bar is so much lower now.

What primary are you using?
Because I still feel that way.. And the new mog made my build more tight (skipped it before) and adds one more tool to the "if I slip up I could face plant."

Kat/Regen

Rolled her the first day of I2 so I could get the new badges, deleted my claws/regen not too much later. Was tanking Hami just after I3 came out. I won't deny this was regen's heyday and it was really strong back then.

I tried a lot of things with that character. Took down some stuff solo, even went perma-mog to take care of nemesis.

Regen doesn't get huge gains out of +recovery, +regen, or +hit points. Looks like none of us disagree on +recovery, so let's look at the others.

+Hit Points

Most well-built Regeneration Scrappers are going to have perma Dull Pain. Add that to the accolades, and you're only a hair from being perma hit point capped. Hit point bonuses beyond that are literally doing NOTHING for you while Dull Pain is up. Now yes, they're useful while Dull Pain is down, if, as I would strongly suggest, you use Dull Pain situationally rather than leaving it on full time. But now we're talking about highly situational benefits like the danger of getting hit so hard and so fast that you can't react with Dull Pain (or other mitigation) in time. Just about everyone else is getting serious benefits out of hit point bonuses full time. Even Invulnerability gets MORE benefit, since it is likely to have lower recharge, and is more likely to spend more time outside of Dull Pain.

+Regeneration

Borrowing from Umbral's way of describing this, think of survivability as a rectangle. Along one side is Damage Mitigation (primarily defense and resistance). Along the other side is damage recovery (primarily regeneration and heals). Your survivability is the AREA of that rectangle. The Regeneration secondary has HUGE damage recovery, and very little damage mitigation. For the sake of argument, let's say it has a damage mitigation of 10, and a damage recovery of 100. Your survivability is 1000. Now, let's say we go nuts with +Regeneration. Your damage recovery score might increase to 120. That's only a 20% improvement in your survivability.

Now let's say we add a ton of recharge instead. Well, Moment of Glory is mitigation, so your mitigation improves a little, let's say to 15. And your damage recovery improves a lot, possibly to 200. Now your survivability is 3000, a 200% improvement.

Or what happens if we add a ton of defense instead? You could probably easily double your damage mitigation to 20. Now your survivability is 2000, a 100% improvement.

20% is much less than 100-200%, so in that sense, Regeneration benefits very little from additional +Regeneration compared to +recharge or +defense.

Now we could compare this to other secondaries. Like let's say Super Reflexes. Super Reflexes is all damage mitigation with no damage recovery. So let's say Super Reflexes has a damage mitigation score of 100, but a damage recovery score of only 10. Add that same +regeneration to Super Reflexes, and its damage recovery increases to 30. Its survivability is now 3000, a 200% improvement. Other secondaries fall in various places on the damage mitigation vs. damage recovery line, but Regeneration is way down at the bottom with almost pure damage recovery.

So because of that, Regeneration benefits less from additional +Regeneration than other secondaries.

I believe I could similarly explain why +Defense isn't a huge benefit to Regen, less than a number of secondaries, but I do agree that it's a big benefit, so I'm not sure there's any argument here, depending on our definitions of "huge" vs. "big". Still, the general outline of it would be what I showed above, with defense improving survivability 100% vs. recharge improving survivability 200%. But yes, these numbers are coming from nowhere and mean very little without something more rigorous to back them up. And Regen probably isn't getting the LEAST benefit from +defense, I'll agree.

Well, calculated models fail to take into account two things: the time-dependent nature of Regen, and the effects of debuffs. The effects of debuffs are a subject of some debate, but the time-dependent nature of Regen is not: to settle that score I did a high-precision comparison between the time-dependent model and the time-averaged model which showed that the time-dependencies do not disadvantage Regen enough to make average calculations' conclusions invalid.

If someone wants to construct a better balancing model, they're free to do so. None so far has survived close scrutiny. Not surprising, as discrete time-based calculations show that the average models are guaranteed to approximate the time-dependent true performance of the sets to within single digit percentages for virtually all regimes the devs balance the PvE game for. Its not until you get to within 50% of the sustained performance of a soft-capped SR scrapper or equivalent in other sets that the numbers start to potentially diverge by enough to be meaningful at all (i.e. someone walking around with 40% defense to all). You have to get above soft-capping performance before the inter-set differences become meaningful, which is a different thing altogether.

In other words, if someone makes a different model, and it diverges from the average calculations by more than a little, its pretty much guaranteed to be wrong.


The real reason why its hard to justify a buff to /Regen is basically that (I'm assuming) there are a lot of regen scrappers, and on average they do very well. That's the same reason it took four years to buff MA even when the devs admitted there were on-paper issues with the set.

I guess that makes sense. I had commented that:

"hit points that are on a random walk can easily hit zero, and... for an equal survivability number in my model, the probability of hitting zero on a Regen scrapper (where the random walk takes frequent and HUGE steps) is much higher than the probability of hitting zero on pretty much any other set (which take less frequent and smaller steps, sometimes much smaller)"

However, I can see that this is most relevant in the area of the game I care most about personally, extreme situations for extreme builds - AV soloing without inspirations, RWZ challenge, that sort of thing.

I can see that my comment applies much less to the normal PvE game that the devs balance around. Most Scrappers in the PvE game are not soft capped, so they're getting hit much more frequently than most anything I'm looking at in my own models. And everyone is probably getting hit for significantly less damage at a time in the normal PvE game, particularly when compared to AV soloing. More frequent and smaller hits should make our random walks be more comparable, and make it much less likely for a Regen scrapper at "sustainable survivability" to random walk themselves to zero hit points. If that factor makes less than a 10% difference in the normal PvE game the devs balance around, as you suggest, I can see how that's just not going to be enough to justify a buff, particularly when quantifying that difference is fairly difficult.

That's always been something that bothers me. If they know there is a discrepancy, why don't they take measures to address the discrepancy rather than waiting for data mining to catch up to what is already known (and, yes, they have to wait for the data to be created so that they have something to datamine in the first place)?

I'm not even entirely sure that average leveling speed is even a decent measure of performance for specific sets within an AT anyways since leveling is so often done in a group and therefore minimizes the differences between the sets in question (due to dilution of importance while on a team), especially if it can somehow be used as evidence for not buffing a set that is known to be underperforming and has been known for a long enough time to make it largely common knowledge (pre-MA buff, I had met pugs that agreed that MA was rather limp wristed). Average leveling speed is useful for things like inter-AT balancing, but I honestly have to wonder how applicable it is for intra-AT balancing.

Datamining methodology is extremely well guarded, and even my educated guesses are something I can't post beyond a certain point, but I will say that when Castle discussed datamining of blasters in I11 he did mention, and I did echo to the forums back then, that the devs do datamine both solo and teamed performance, for precisely the reason you mention: that teamed performance can dilute performance problems.

When the devs look at powerset performance, based on the I11 discussions regarding blaster performance it is safe to say that the devs look at least at:

1. Solo vs teamed performance
2. All combinations with other powersets
3. Performance at different level ranges (i.e. 1-5, 6-10, 41-45, etc)
4. Various reward earning rates: XP, influence, etc
5. Debt
6. General offensive output and kill speeds


The devs don't know there's a discrepancy. The conjecture that regen suffers inordinately from debuffs beyond what they should isn't universally accepted, nor has it been demonstrated conclusively by logical argument. Thus, datamining would be a way to verify that hypothesis, but I'm guessing that the data currently doesn't bear that out. If it did, there have been years for that data to accumulate: regeneration debuffs were added to the game a long time ago, but haven't accelerated rapidly in frequency since then to such a degree that there would be any reason to believe that the last year should be markedly different from the previous years.

I was actually speaking in general terms rather than specific terms.

Regeneration debuffs are not the major achilles' heel of Regen anymore, not since the set began depending on click powers more than passive regeneration. Do you honestly believe that most people that know */Regen care about regen debuff resistance any more than people that know */Fire care about end drain resist or slow resist? The more important debuff resistance would be recharge debuff resistance for pretty much the exact same reason that DDR is important to defense based sets: it stops a single debuff type from rendering an important mechanic of the set null.

As to whether there is a logical reason to provide some debuff resistance to */Regen, I think the better question is to ask whether there is a reason for */Regen to be the only set out there without any debuff resistance. Every other set has some degree of debuff resistance to both primary (DDR in sets with native +Def) and secondary (-rech resist in sets with sets with 1 click power) attributes. What makes */Regen so different that it's assumed that it should have absolutely none (not even any substantial pseudo-debuff resistance like +def)? Is there any logical foundation for */Regen to not have debuff resistances? */Regen doesn't even have any of the exotic protections that sets with few debuff resists sport (like confuse prot, fear prot, +per) that would equate to roughly the same thing. While every other set in the entire game got debuff resists over the course of the years, */Regen was pretty much ignored. Is there actually a reason why or is it just a feeling that */Regen doesn't deserve buffs because it was awesome way back when?

And I think this may be where my experiences with my /regen differ from other people on this threads. I've never tried making an AV soloer. Not with any of my scrappers. So my builds are "solid" PvE builds, but not the extreme situation builds. That being said, going back to how I look at +hp and +regen, and how dull pain is used, I don't need dull pain up perminentely (though my build can achieve that if need be). So it gives me a number of tools. While when DP is up there's some over the cap HP sitting around, it does add up when I don't feel the threats are big enough to warrant DP.
I've had plenty of times playing with some friends that I'm the only scrapper and the other 2 are blasters and I get to play tank where the standard regen with my half decent defenses as well parry have made any incoming damage simply heal back up a few seconds later.

And this is another reason it's going to be hard to justify a buff. Because in standard PVE it plays pretty well, comparable to other sets not looking to be made extreme.


The thing is, most people who look at the /Regen set don't KNOW that regeneration debuffs resistance isn't that important. I see it plenty of times through the forum (I wanted to find a post to show, as I'm sure I saw one recently, but can't find it) where people ask why regen has no regen debuff protection. There's plenty of people out there who don't really understand that recharge is the real achilles heel of regen.

Can't say I disagree here, I'd love to see recharge debuff resistance equivalent to SR's defense debuff resistance.. Especially since regenners can get slapped with stupid -defensive numbers..


You do get Mag 15 stun resistance which is more than any other set except for stacked Active protection or practiced brawler.. but I agree.. nothing really fancy there..

I'm quoting myself because there were a few people that responded to that post, and I don't feel like multi-quoting to explain a possible misconception of what I was saying.

I wasn't trying to say here that regen shouldn't get debuff resistance, far from it in fact.

I was just speculating on a possible reason for why it has gone for so long without being addressed.

Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison See, it's gems like these that make me check Claws' post history every once in a while to make sure I haven't missed anything good lately.

It seems entirely plausible that the reason no debuff protection has been added is because the set is not underperforming relative to the other armors. Why buff a set that is operating well and likely is still near the top of datamined performance? For the vast majority of gameplay, Regeneration is an excellent set, even though it "suffers more" from debuffs.

This

Generally, when you get hit in this game with a -Regen debuff, you get hit with such a massive amount at once to make the -regen debuff resistance in fast healing feel like it's non-existent.

And /Regen as a set would be better off with -recharge debuff resistance than -regen debuff resistance.

I'd like to have both considering those are both how regeneration primarily deals with damage mitigation. I made a thread a while back ago about regeneration needing both recharge and regeneration debuff and slew of people starting making a huge stink about how it doesn't need that.

Cannot remember which one. One of the "horsemen" in the LGTF took my normal +146% recharge on my brute down to -300 something. I had to wait for jab and brawl to recharge.

No, the question really is why, not why not. For no powerset was the question why not; every powerset with mitigation-based debuff resistances were given those resistances because there was a good reason to add them, not because no one could give a good answer why they shouldn't have them. Regen faces the same hurdle as every other powerset in that regard: no more, no less.

But the most direct question is neither of them. The direct question is: who are regeneration debuffs supposed to hurt?

If they are too strong against *everyone* then they should simply be dialed back: making them strong and then giving everyone resistance to them is simply insane. Contrawise, giving debuff resistance to the things that get the most benefit from regeneration implies the purpose to regen debuffs is to hurt people who least benefit from regeneration debuffs, which is a different kind of insane. The same applies to recharge debuffs.

Regen (and recharge) debuffs are supposed to hurt. The strong ones are supposed to hurt a lot. If you want to make a case that regeneration should have either recharge debuff resistance or regeneration debuff resistance, you have to argue that it hurts more than intended. Arguments like "why not" are unlikely to be effective.

When you're talking about something that every other set gets and doesn't get appreciably factored into balance equations then I think the applicable question is "why not". You can make the claim that other sets got debuff resistance because they were too weak, but, honestly, can you really say that Invuln was too weak until it got the debuff resists in the passives? Debuff resistances are such a largely situational effect that it's impossible to make any decent claim that a set is disadvantaged without them unless you're willing to ask yourself why a set doesn't have them in the first place.

I've made that argument for recharge debuffs quite a lot actually. The fact that you ignore it whenever it comes up doesn't somehow stop it from existing. I've gone on quite long rants about how */Regen is more recharge dependent than any other set out there and how recharge is, in virtually all other cases, an offensive attribute (which you've made hilariously inaccurate counterarguments to largely because you don't actually bother reading my argument before making a response). I can make numerous cases that any amount of -rech is going to more negatively impact */Regen than any other set out there (not that it'll stop you from bringing up inappropriate examples as a counterargument).

If you want to have this argument again, I'm game for it, though don't expect me to bend over like people generally do for you. I'm actually going to hold you accountable to your ******** statements and force you to actually tackle the math in question rather than avoiding it with completely meaningless deflections.

I'm still waiting for an answer to the question of what makes */Regen so special that it's allowed to be the only set without any debuff resistance at all, though. Every other set is allowed to have debuff resistance to important attributes to the set's function. Is */Regen really just so awesome that it doesn't get anything to protect how it protects itself? Just trying to see if there's a double standard or something.

PS. I'm still waiting for you to finally realize that an assumption of indefinite survivability is a completely biased against sets with damage recovery capabilities.

I'd say Electric and Fire are more negatively affected by -recharge than Regen, with Fire being the one that is most negatively impacted. Regen would probably be next, although a case could be made for DA.

Does it need to be so awesome? What if its just plain good? If it is good to very good, does it still need to have added protections? What if it is performing just fine in the game? All other sets get x, so regen should have x too? That is not compelling.

... Do we have documentation of this? Last I knew the recharge floor was -75%, and I just checked Paragon Wiki and that seems to match.

Is there a good way to test this?

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Softcapping an Invuln is fantastic. Softcapping a Willpower is amazing. Softcapping SR is kissing your sister.