What defenses are there against -Regen?

*/Elec has Energize and Power Sink. Energize is a decent bit of */Elec's survivability, but it's a majority of your ability to survive. It also has Charged Armor, Conductive Shield, Static Shield, and Grounded, all of which function equally well regardless of your current -rech state, and Lightning Reflexes, which both provides +rech and debuff protection from the very same -rech.

*/Fire has Healing Flames, Burn, Consume, and Fiery Embrace. Burn, Consume, and Fiery Embrace all contribute to survivability by killing targets (which is kind of what -rech is kind of intend), Consume largely marginally, FE in much the same way as BU (so it's similarly marginal where -rech concerned since its primary survivability contribution is applied before -rech is actually applied), and Burn in a manner about as impressive as any other PbAoE attack from your primary. It also has Fire Shield, Plasma Shield, and Temperature Protection, all of which function no matter how much -rech is on you, and provide debuff protection to keep those clickies coming up.

*/Regen has Reconstruction, Dull Pain, Instant Healing, and Moment of Glory. 3 of those are integral to */Regen's baseline survivability (all but IH). Without them, it has to subsist on Integration, Fast Healing, and Resilience. FH and Resilience are essentially jokes because neither of them means much without some mitigation to actually make the values meaningful and Integration is great mainly because it's just a fancier version of FH.

I think I can make the claim, rather well actually, that */Regen is more recharge dependent than either of those builds since those other sets at least have some decent mitigation to rely on when their click powers are down. */Regen has some bare bones damage recovery which, while it looks good on paper, if that paper assumes that the only thing that matters is how long you can survive indefinitely which every single survivability index seems to care about, means about as much as the weather patterns in India do to a potato farmer in Idaho.

To not have something that every other set has and largely takes for granted but completely destroys the functionality of the set? Yes, it would need to be "so awesome" as to actually validate not having something that is fundamentally essential to the baseline survivability of the sets.

People keep screaming about the awesomenes of */Regen, but I really have to wonder if anyone has actually looked at how the set performs compared to other sets. In meaningful time frames, */Regen performs remarkably substandard and that's assuming that you're a friggin' god with those click powers. I'm tired of people screaming about the incredible awesomeness of */Regen largely because I'm pretty friggin' sure, from both my personal experience and from observations I've made of others, that */Regen isn't nearly as awesome as some of the other sets out there. About the only thing that */Regen really has going for it nowadays is a smooth ride for the first 20 or so levels, and that's not even something unique to */Regen.

Just look at the numbers and start asking yourself whether you'd rather have a */Regen or a */WP. Or a */Shield. Or a */Fire. Or an */Elec. In all of those cases, I can tell you with a large degree of certainty that the better option quite simply isn't */Regen, from a numerical perspective: */WP has better survivability except in a few edge cases and is simply easier to play; */Shield has better survivability and kills things faster and IOs better; */Fire and */Elec both have substantial damage recovery capabilities but also have the damage mitigation mechanisms to make them count for something without heavy IOing, not to mention they also provide superior kill speed and endurance assistance. I can tell you, without a doubt, that */Regen is not as awesome as people still think it is. If anything, it's probably nearing the bottom of the heap, what with the */Fire buffs recently, and the only reason that people keep thinking it's the devs' gift to Scrappers is because they still believe the fool notion that somehow damage recovery is better than damage mitigation because the ability for a target to sit there taking hits forever when a mitigation set would die after 5 minutes of being beat on. Seriously, it's a complete farce.

Knowing what I know now, I wouldn't touch */Regen if I were to start a character today. It doesn't have any real redeeming qualities and the only reason I really hold to using it anymore is because I like the playstyle (which the devs seem to have given a giant "**** you!" to with their new sets since they only seem to care about "toggle-on-and-lol" playstyles) and because I feel a sense of nostalgia and kinship for the set. Seriously ask yourself if you see any reason to roll */Regen rather than any other defensive set now that */Fire isn't a complete bust. The only possible contender I can think of is */DA, and that's only if you can't adapt your playstyle to endurance limited performance rather than because of actual numerical performance.

I think, at the very least, */Regen can ask for some ******* friggin' debuff resists when every other set seems to have gotten noticeably stronger over the years (with the sole exception of */Shield which the devs seem happy to allow to prance about at the absolute top of the heap without any serious contenders for the position, even with the nerf that ignored the real overpowered mechanism in the set), even in areas that the sets weren't even considered weak for (the Invuln passives got debuff resists, not because the set was considered weak, but because the devs thought that there wasn't enough reason to take those powers).

The total recharge floor is -75%. This does not mean that, when you check your global recharge, that the lowest you will see is -75%. This means that, after all debuffs and buffs are applied, the lowest an individual power will see is -75% total.

Imagine you have 150% +rech from global buffs and 95% +rech in the power. Your combat info will only register you as having 150% +rech. When you are hit with 100% -rech, it will register you as having 50% +rech, even though all of your powers really have 145% thanks to slotting. If the visible recharge bottom was only 75%, then you would never actually see any recharge below the baseline because you're always going to have that 95% that isn't factored into what you see because it's power dependent rather than character dependent.

I understand this.. And one would think that Defense debuffs are supposed to hurt a lot too as you're taking more damage.. But when something like Super Reflexes can reduce the impact of one of the major debuffs that hurt EVERYONE by like 95% thus keeping their defensive abilities intact for survivability purposes it's unreasonable to say that Regen and even will power should have their own sets of debuff resistance to keep their armors at least working.

Think about the def debuff.. When/if a SR scrapper gets hit with it, his defense is still able to be relatively high. Now apply the -defense to a regen.. oh no.. If your an AVERAGE PLAYER
(not someone who's looking to hardcore create their character with all the best IO's) you're in negative defense, as you probably have little to none.
So now as a regen you're getting hit even more often. and unlike SR you've got no mix of defense and "scaling resistances" Which is yet another factor. So you're soley dependent on your regenerating ability and your click heals.

now Lets take SR Scrapper and Regen scrapper and apply a regen debuff that essentially floors both their regeneration abilities (no defense debuff applied).

The SR scrapper getting hit with a regen killer isn't really going to hurt the SR scrapper much, as chances are they're still going to make it through a pretty high level of combat (maybe around 80%? Accounting for the natural 50% chance as well as a reasonable 30% defense attainable without any IOs) without taking much damage, and an SR scrapper certainly is not primarily relying on the regen as their damage soak power (as their DEFENSE is clearly what takes the majority of the damage away). Now we look at regen.
We're floored on regen.. That's awesome.. Because unlike an SR scrapper or even an resistance based set like /elec out primary method of mitigating damage is that 5x higher ability to replenish life per sec. When that's gone you've essentially taken the 30% defense an Sr scrapper has or the 50% resistance an elec scrapper has and dropped them to 0. Because there is no debuff protection for the /regen.

But we certainly can't say that the mitigation comes soley from the +regen. no we've got clickes.
Now lets take SR scrapper again and we apply a 50% slower recharge to them. What exactly is affected?? PB is affected I suppose, but it's relatively easy to make overlap as it is, and chances are the slow effect won't last long enough to have a drastic overall effect to the performance of pb. So you've simply limited the speed at which a /sr can attack. For other sets you've limited things like, healing flames, dull pain, shield charge, dark regen, etc. While all these tools are mitigation tools NONE are the primary mitigation of the set.

Now apply a -rech of 50% to a /regen.. Now your 30 second heal is taking 45. Your instant healing which is already on a ridiculously long timer is drawn out a bit more. Your Dull pain is either no longer permanent or can risk being down when you're needing it the most.

Essentially not giving a /regen AT LEAST -rech reduction is like not giving a /sr defense debuff protection.

If the developers TRULY think that's fair than I argue that Focused Fighting, Focused Senses and Evasion should also become clicky powers that last 2 minutes (with a natural 2 minute recharge), that way SR is similarly effected in terms of survivability as a /regen.

Because that's what -recharge does.. It shuts off a regen's mitigation almost entirely in many cases.
If you don't want to add -recharge.. Then I may stand behind the crowd that says make IH a toggle again.

I absolutely 100% agree with you here! recharge is very important to regen more so than the natural regen. Natural regen looks great when you're being beaten on by characters that have no form of debuffing you and there aren't enough of them to take any significant amount of damage out of your life bar.. But a natural 50 hp/s regeneration isn't really worth squat when you've got 2 guys who are hitting you for 100 hp each ever 2 seconds.. That's still a net damage of 100 hp every 2 seconds, making regen not nearly as good as it sounds.
The more people hitting the worse it becomes.

Another way to look at it.. an invuln with 50% S/L resistance getting hit by two characters dealing 100 damage (each) every 2 seconds both get reduced by 50% for a net of 100 damage.
Now lets apply a 3rd..

In the case of the regen scrapper in 2 sec we've recovered 100 hp (that didn't change), we got hit for 300 hp now. For a net for 200 hp

Invuln we've got the same 3 people attacking, we'll ignore it's minor regen of 15/s or whatever and just focus on the res. 3 people deal 300 damage in 2 seconds (total) but out DR reduces that by 50% now our net is 150.

Shall we add a 4th?
the Regen took 300 hp damage
The Invuln took 200 hp damage

5th?
Regen took 400 hp damage
Invuln took 250

6th?
Regen took 500 hp Damage
Invuln took 300

Shall we assume we've got the agro cap of 10 people attacking?
Regen took 900 Damage
Invuln took 500

It's easy to see that the "infinite damage" model is f'ed up.

So the next logical thing to do is take into account the healing options that Regen has.. Because that's damage mitigation too.. That's correct.. But when -rech is applied to us that damage mitigation is taken away and if we just go back to our core resistance.. Well the numbers above show that.. Besides MOST sets have a self heal option, and the two that don't certainly rock the ability to miss incoming damage enough to make using the medicine pool easier (than with any other scrapper type).

I am a proponent of the Regen set. I DO see it's deficiencies though.. But I've also seen it pull off some really amazing things. I've also seen Regen scraps who go running into combat with their 120 hp/s regen only to faceplant in 2 seconds.
Katana and Bs do bring a TON to the survivability of Regen. But I agree with you Umbral. Those benefits can benefit almost every other set as well. You're completely right in that regard. And I agree that I don't think the measure of how well the set performs should be tied directly to how well it performs with 2 of the particular primaries. Regen is a fun set I love it, I like playing Regen toons, but It does need some unbiased looking at. There's simply things there that need to be addressed by someone.

Agreed.. My invuln/ tank saw a big buff when they messed around with invuln. And I never felt he was weak before hand.. Heck he was only number 2 of the tanks I made to my Granite Tank (thanks to some smart use of IO's) and usually became the tank I'd more often play since he could deal more damage than old stoney..

Except for the fact that Elec is resistant to -recharge debuffs because of Lightning reflexes.

Edit: while giving you some +recharge as a small buffer to them as well.

You could add Shadow meld if you really want. I'm adding it to one of my builds as a second oh crap button when thigns are bad and MOG is about to drop..
That being said Kinetic combat sets are great for melee defense though.. Which every time you click Mog or Shadow meld is going to give you 3 seconds of not dealing damage (aside from the agro aura) due to cast time. So you Plus it's a lot of stuff to be clicking around, where as you could just try to keep building for as much melee defense as you can (better alternative than just SL since it covers all the melee exotic types like fire and dark and such).

If you can find a place to drop shadow meld in it wouldn't hurt to have a second oh crap button.. But I wouldn't gimp your build's ability to deal with damage.. I don't think you want to be attacking in 27 sec bursts (probably get boring).

Simply comparing the number of click powers in the secondary is not the whole story (and I know you have to know that), especially when you can demonstrate that regen's greater number of clicks is actually an advantage vs. recharge debuffs. If Electric armor needs to heal, but Energize is not recharged, they have to fall back on the tier 9 (which is not always the best thing when you are low on health to start, IME). If regen needs to heal but Recon is not recharged, they can fall back on DP or MoG and MoG especially can be a big help vs. debuffs. Fiery has RotP, which certainly beats out Revive (by a large margin), but both can be useful when facing heavy debuffs (I use RotP a lot to help shed DRMs nasty debuff). It is also of note that 2 of regen's clicks are powers with longish durations. That simple fact actually makes those powers more functional in a case where you are recharge debuffed, simply because you do not need to use them again soon, because they are still giving you (in DPs case, most of) their benefit.

Those two facts are especially true when we only consider what you want to call meaningful time frames. The greater number of clicks and the duration of two of those clicks are a huge advantage vs. recharge debuffs in smaller time frames. The very type of scenario you want to diminish in meaning, long-time survivability, is actually where recharge debuffs would hurt a regen the most (but still less than Fire and Electric, IMO).

Fire and Electric armor are both more dependent on their primary over the entire course of a fight (and mission) in order to live. If a regen does well at the beginning of a fight, they are likely to survive, even if they have slow recharging attacks. Both Fire and Electric are usually going to be in more danger after eliminating some of the enemy than a regen. Looking past singular fights, regeneration is usually going to be much better prepared to leap from fight A to fight B, and recharge debuffs are more likely to hurt Fire or Electric even in that scenario.

You really jump the shark when you start proclaiming that you feel Fire and Electric are superior when you "just look at the numbers." In my play experience, both WP and SD are far easier to get killed than regen before IOs. I'll grant that with IOs both can be made to exceed regen in many, and maybe even most, gameplay scenarios. I also believe that regen's early game "smooth ride" advantage lasts at least until 30 (although Fiery, SD, and DA are also nicely rounded from 21 to 30).

Recharge debuff is a bigger stalker issue than scrap?? How? you get added mitigation with a scrapper with placate and the ability to hide..

Yes but a /elec has the mitigation of resistance based armor which is just as effective for each person attacking them (IE 3 people damaging a /elec all have to deal with the resistive armor). Regen does not have that.. If one on one someone can overcome the regen rate of a scrapper without the heals you've essentially "lost your damage resistance." and now only have the heals to rely on.. Regens have MORE heals, but what good are they when they are all down? Ever play a /regen who's recon was used, dp, was used and IH is down from a previous encounter.. sure recon is 15 sec away from recharging.. doesn't do you any good when you're at half life or lower and you defense is in negatives and you've got almost no resistance.. At least with /elec you've got resistances helping you when your heal is down. That's an important thing to take into consideration.. when all heals are down (which can happen) a /regen has only their native regeneration to help them as opposed to resistance or defensive based armors to help them.

Yeah you can do that.. But unless you have a high recharge on DP, it may not always be available same goes for mog and recon. It's happened to me plenty where NONE of my heals are up.. Does it happen everytime I play? No.. Does it happen when I'm fighting a real tough crowd and I get a -rech.. YES..

Keep in mind that IH being up doesn't mean you're automatically garunteed to live.. i've hit it with like 1/3 life left and still got hit hard enough to die.. Why? Because even at 150hp/s someone in one second nailed me for more hp than I had left.. with no resistance to reduce it Regen went down.

RotP is a great power when you die.. that being said you shouldn't have to bank on dying.. But fine I can see the merit in building a build with it. It has the utility of res, with knock down and disorient as well as an invulnerable time (heal up re-toggle).

Revive is not the same.. a) chances are if I died my heals weren't up. B) there's no untouchable component c)there's nothing stoping the mob that was beating on me from turning around right when I get up.. Kinda like using a wakie without the stun (and more health).

Again.. Dull pain is a great power however it's not like without IO's you can easily make it
permanent so there will be 60+ seconds (without a rech debuff) where it's down in most cases. Again being that it's a form of mitigation that's supposed to compare to +def or +resistance when you can't use it as a heal (used it to absorb the alpha) or you're unfortunately in that in between time you're left "shield less."

Instant healing.. 90s that's a good duration.. But even with ridiculous hp/s (I can get in the 150's) you can STILL die. All it takes is a EB or AV that can hit you pretty hard every few seconds.. It's not uncommon to have a slew of people around you and still find IH on it's own not allowing you to survive.. It's a great power, I love IH.. But for every 90s it's up it's down an extra (with 3 rech red) 236.5s. It would be equivalent to some resistance based armor to me if you either a) turn it back to a toggle with some lower +rech numbers, or b) lower the native recharge time.. a lot.. so it can be run a bit more often.

But the thing is Fire and electric BOTH offer resistances that offset the fact that when the power recharge is neutered due to -rech and you can't heal. Regen offers the measly +regen that is great vs. one character (who doesn't hit hard) but is not usually help full against higher levels and EB's and AV's.. Even conned minions maybe.. But not above that in large groups.
IT does NOT hurt Fire and Electric more.. not until I see some +def or +res in Regen. Regen RELIES ON CLICK POWERS to get most of it's survivability.. Even if the powers have a longish duration. You may understand it better if /elec and /fire had their armors on 90s recharge with a duration that you can JUST overlap if you play with IO's otherwise in between time you need to rely on the passive resistance buffs.. Because THAT is Regen. IH, DP, MOG are our armors.. And they're on clickies.. and when that's down.. it's our passive resilience (HA!) and Instant healing (HA) (well and integration) that give the passive +Regen functioning as an armor.

In other words, Fire and Electric absolutely CANNOT be more dependent on recharge.

That makes no sense..
Mitigation through killing is just as beneficial to Regen whom also has no defense, and no resistance.. So regen is bound to take more damage and be forced to use their powers.. more liberally in many cases.
Regen provides great tools to jump from fight a to b faster when you need to stop inbetween (they recover everything faster without rest). But when Regen's powers drop again there's no defense no resistance (well next to none) making regen more survivable..
I'm failing to see how you are thinking that the duration of +hp or +regen on Regen makes it superior to +Res which is essentially an INFINITE DURATION.

The only time I think this is true is when you consider end issues.. and that's why regen plays nice through level 20.
The only reason I can agree with willpower is the lack of a self heal in the early levels and the placement of defensive powers. Focusing on +regen in for most of the begining (RTTC is a great power). If Heightened senses came where Fast healing was or in place of HPT.. I think it'd be pretty excellent.

But Levels 1-20 for a regen are only good because of QR providing stamina so the lack of ability to attack isn't gimping them.. in that sense the mitigation is coming through killing before you can be killed.. Dull pain as much as you like to think of it is NOT an effective armor. And instant healing doesn't come until 28.. So you've essentially got 2 nice heals from levels 1-20 and some hold resistance which comes late for a scrapper.

So the only part that really feels like it makes a regen scrap "smooth" through 1-20 is the fact that you can spam your attacks more than your peers..

I am not going to refute your post point by point. You say a great many things I disagree with. You overvalue the resists in Fiery and Electric. You undervalue the regen in FH and Integration. You want to approach the discussion as if all 4 of regen's clicks are not recharged frequently (trying to setup the worst case scenario as the commonplace is not a good place for an honest discussion). You fail to see that offensive mitigation is more necessary for Fiery and Electric, especially past the first 10-15 seconds. You fail to grasp how regen on a stalker is significantly more dependent on the primary powers as well as the secondary clicks. You even attempt to underplay the lowbie experience for regen while setting up a make-believe scenario to make WP feel better in unicorn and rainbow land (If I got Wormhole at level 12 on my Grav contoller, I think it'd be pretty excellent early game too).

I do not believe we could be further apart in our understanding of the game or our experiences. I rarely just up and try not to explain or convince, but our foundations appear so different, I cannot begin to fathom how to approach disputing you. Both our posts are here and I believe you understand me and I believe I understand you. I leave it up to the reader to determine which experience more closely matches their own and from there they can ponder the topic themselves.

Well, good luck with that.


And that. I already did my zero-assumption analysis years ago (at least as it pertains to mitigation mechanics). When a competitive analysis even appears, I'll be happy to put it up against it. Until then, I'll stick with my analysis over your random guesses.


Also, these are the relevant passages from my scrapper analysis articles:

From part one:

And from the discrete analysis in part two:
Your grand realization was old news back in 2005, and conclusively driven into the ground in 2006.

What?? I agree with you that Regen is better in levels 1-20 and state the reasons why, even pointing out where the problems with willpower are which would make the ride 1-20 easier defensively.. And I am willing bet that your +regen at low levels is not so astounding that it's game breakingly easy to get through levels 1-20..
And honestly the added regeneration from things like integration means a heck of a lot more when enemies are hitting you less often (there's a big difference in how quick things attack in the low levels to later in the game) and their likelyhood to hit you.. so yes.. natural regeneration in the low levels is great for a scrapper..

Hell playing a SR in the low levels is helish because you're always out of end and the defense never seems to work.. But late level SR blooms to be one of the best (same with shields) and regen does not.

But, the fact of the matter is it's the quick recovery that gives the tools to make levels 1-20 easier for a regen since you can spam more attacks. The same way you say I'm failing to see the offensive mitigation.. Regen clickable recharge dependent heals for mitigation.. and regular regen. As I've pointed out you seem to undervalue +regen vs +res.

Personally I'm insulted by your "rainbow and unicorn land" comment about willpower when i'm merely agreeing with the struggles of willpower being MORE dependent on Regen as mitigation in the early levels..

You point out that I make the argument about clickies not being recharged frequently enough.. Well levels 1-20 you certainly aren't firing them off once every 20 seconds.. so no they aren't fequently enough.. Even Dull pain is not going to be up enough to be reliable in 1-20.. so your mitigation is through killing..

I do not undervalue the natural regen.. you apparently undervalue resistance..
Let's look at this way..

I'm fighting bad guys that hit for 100 s/l damage. I can get 35% resistance to s/l with a resistance based level 50 character (that should be easy as it's 3 level 50 SOs with no outside help from any other pool)


And I've got a regen scrapper that can heal and for sake of this argument we'll pretend I've got permanent DP with 3 level 50 SO's and FH with 3 level 50 So's and Int with 3 level 50 SOs. that gives 43.6 hp/s lets be generous and say 44.

Now lets say the average bad guy is attacking once every 3 seconds for 100 s/l a shot.

1 Bad guy:
Resistance based: 100 damage - 35 reduced = net damage 75
Regeneration Based: 100 Damage - 130.8 = Net damage 0 (we've healed more than he can dish in 3 sec)

Add a second guy:
Resist: 200 damage - 70 (each attack was reduced 35%) = Net damage 130
Regen: 200 Damage - 130.8 (we don't heal anymore over 3 seconds) = Net Damage 69

Add a third guy because lets face it this game is all about mobs of people beating us down.
Resist: 300 damage - 105 = Net 195
Regen: 300 - 130.8 = 169.2

See how we're creeping up? Certainly Regen isn't horrible, but let me remind you I'm comparing this to fire melee's resistance without any other help.. SO lets keep going

4th guy:
Resist: 400 damage - 140 = Net 260
Regen: 400- 130.8 = 269.2

So now we're at a 4th guy who's hitting us (not unreasonable to expect that) and we're under performing fire..

I wonder what would happen if we were doing ITF and jumping into a group of 10 guys (something i've seen SR and shield do quite frequently)

Resist: 1000 Damage - 350 resisted = Net 650 damage
Regen: 1000 Damage - 130.8 (still not regen'ing anymore) = Net Damage 869.2

Sure we can pop Instant healing.. But there's my argument for +rech tehre.. it's on such a long timer that sometimes it's just not up. Lower the REcharge or make recharge debuff part of the regen set. Heck even with instant healing in that last example pushing our regen to 114.7/s (which I won't argue IH is a KEY part of the regen Scrapper's defense):

Regen : 1000 Damage - 344.1 = Net 655.9 damage.

EVEN with Instant healing up which is NOT a toggle (it's a power that's up 90 seconds a shot and has HUGE cool down even when building for perma DP) you're STILL taking more damage every 3 sec than a fire scrapper to s/l.. Yet he's had to devote 2 slots and one power for that level of s/l resist.

Certainly the Regen scrapper's defensive abilities are standard through all types of damage (toxic hurts as much as fire which hurts as much as psi thanks to the regen), which is nice. But regen itself needs something.. I'm ok with taking more damage as long as the powers I'm banking on being there to mitigate (Mog, instant healing, and recon) are not slowed down on their recharge.

I understand a stalker regen only has more problems than a regen scrap simply because of the hp limit (DP means a lot more for a regen scrap than it does for a regen stalker). But similar statements can be made with any stalk to scrap. But if Regen gets re-evaluated for a scrap you'd assume it'd also get reevaluated for a stalker.. just like invuln got looked at for tanks.. and scraps.. and brutes..
But still stalkers have plenty of outside mitigation thanks to their primary.. Assassin strike the biggest target kill it first.. and if there are problems hit placate. But stalkers will STILl suffer the same downfalls with regen (if hit with -rech).

I'm sorry you feel that way. I'm not trying to insult you or your thoughts, but provide evidence for why I feel this way.

The intent of that ginormous set of articles was more to document the methodology and what some of the advanced computational techniques were saying about the simpler approximations. The closest I've come to redoing that was the mitigation powerset proliferation spreadsheet (which now that I think about it, I have to upload somewhere new because the old link to it appears broken). I don't think a rehash of the same thing with updated numbers would be as interesting for the effort, and if I were to do something on that scale again I would probably focus on situational debuffs and critter faction issues. But those articles were a culmination of several hundred hours of work, including mandatory testing all four secondaries in-game at all level ranges. Testing *all* the mitigation powersets under all critter faction situations would be an order of magnitude more work.

The bottom line on those four secondaries is that they are now a lot closer in performance than they were back when those articles were first conceived, at least with standard SO slotting. Inventions have changed the situation somewhat at lower levels, and more dramatically at the end game and higher levels of performance. Regen's downtime and other advantages have been significantly diluted by Willpower, but Shields has done that to a lesser degree for SR. Most of the interesting discussion on balance comes from proliferated and new powersets that didn't exist for scrappers back then: Fiery Aura, Electric Armor, etc.

Probably the most interesting development since those articles were written regarding the original four is that Dark Armor is a much less controversial powerset than it once was. DA used to be a highly polarizing subject: some thought it was awesome, the rest thought it sucked. Now, the more moderate viewpoint on DA seems to be the norm. Its usually seen to have situational strengths and situational weaknesses, and nowhere near as many people think its broken or unplayable due to knockback weakness or endurance costs.

Hmm, maybe there is an article or two in there somewhere. Never say never.

You should say where you came up with that premise, since it seems out of line with reality and therefore may totally invalidate everything else you post afterwards. It also seems you are not including any type of to-hit in your numbers. I am not trying to be rude, but as far as I can tell, your numbers are meaningless and your assumptions are poor. Your in game experiences do not seem to match my own if you believe Fiery and Electric are better off than Regen when it comes to mitigation and if you feel Regen is more dependent on more stable recharge than either of those sets.

I don't feel insulted, I just disagree with a large portion of what you type. I disagree so much, I don't see a point of common ground to start from. I am glad you are trying to find that common ground, but so far I still think you are very mistaken in a lot of your beliefs.

Indeed, I'd love to have that mitigation spreadsheet handy again.

Heroes, Villains ♦ Reviews ♦ Retrospect

Indeed, that was always one of the intents. And I wish the original discussion threads for the four iterations of those articles (from I3ish to the latest version which is reposted at the links when the originals were purged) could have been saved. They would have been fascinating to read through now. In some cases, with the advantage of unambiguous hindsight, incredibly amusing also.

Your deflection is amusing. Now can we get back to the debate at hand (whether */Regen is actually in need of debuff resists) or are you going to pull some ancient analysis from the depths of the forums yet again because you don't want to actually answer the questions I'm asking?

Heh, my Willpower tanker reduces that all the way down to -41.67% ! That is only -1104.25 hp/second. Thankfully, it doesn't seem to proc too often.

I thought for a moment that the fact that all of your assumptions were false might have some bearing on your conclusions. I forgot who I was talking to. Nothing has any relevance to your conclusions. You're like the game balance equivalent of a photobomb.


But what the heck, I've got a few minutes. The question was:

And my answer was: this question is irrelevant, because its *always* irrelevant. Powersets get things because they need them, not because everyone else has them also. This is a simple statement of fact you seem incapable of accepting.

You make it sound like the other sets were "allowed" to have debuff resistance as if it was some sort of privilege. Defense sets got it because of the existence of cascade failure, something which mathematically does not exist for regeneration or for recharge as it functions in the regeneration set. It wasn't Halloween candy the devs had to give out to everyone once it gave them out to the powersets that actually needed them for a specific reason. Other protections, like recharge protection, actually trade their roots to when Quickness was given recharge debuff protection because the power was considered too weak with its original design. Quickness' competition was powers like Quick Recovery. +20% recharge vs +30% recovery? No contest.

From there, powersets received debuff protection specifically when they were buffed due to underperformance. At *no time* after the defense debuff resistances were put in to address cascade failure was a powerset given debuff resistance "just because."

So the answer to your question: what makes regen so special? The answer is: it has never suffered any of the problems all the other sets did that granted them debuff protection. Simple as that. To grant it debuff protection, it is necessary and sufficient to demonstrate Regen suffers from a problem that specifically warrants debuff resistance. Either a mechanical problem or a performance problem.

"Feeling left out" is neither a mechanical or performance problem.


And in case you didn't notice when I last mentioned it:

My tolerance for such statements from people like you currently borders on the non-existent. I'm asking nicely for you to cease. I won't ask again. If you have a case, make it. If you think you can contradict my case, do so directly. Don't make implications that you're somehow the safeguard of rationality. I frankly find that insulting in more ways than one, not the least of which is that your arguments tend to fall apart every single time I challenge them, and yet you keep claiming victory time and time again.

-Recharge kills more */regen scrappers than anything else out there. With -regen debuff, you can have almost perma IH without having to try too hard for it in a build. Most of the time when my DM/Regen dies, it's because I've been stupid and forgotten to pop a power before charging in.

I've taken alpha alongside a Shield Tank (much to his annoyance) and survived well.

/Regen is still the set that takes a licking and keeps on ticking. SR is about the only other set I've seen with stupid survivability and frankly */SR is much slower to kick in as a powerful set, not really getting fun (IMHO) until around lvl 30. Regen gives you better odds right out of the starting box, plus with Quick Recovery by lvl 4-6 (can't remember which but it's shockingly low) you sail through the late teen to twenty levels while everybody else is gasping for blue.

I'm not sure that /Regen has that much more shocking lack survivability than any other /defense for a scrapper. Then again, I'm with a previous poster in so far as I'm pretty much a PvE player that doesn't try to push the extreme builds too far. I prefer to be more 'rounded' in my builds.