Could /Regen use something else?

Its absurd that regen as a set has no -reg resistance, considering the fact that's it's main form of dmg mitigation, like super reflex uses defense (and gets massive def debuff resistance).

Secondly, the fact the set is so dependent on user skill/activity/effort, justifies the set being able to OUTPERFORM a competing set that is completely passive, and that is certainly not the case as of right now. In fact, I'd argue that the opposite is true.

I would vastly prefer -recharge resistance to -regen in Regen and it makes thematic sense.

I expect the green bar in Regen to be ebbing and flowing. Regen's strenth, IMO, isnt flat-out regen anymore. It is *burst response* to damage (burst or otherwise). In order to maintain a more consistant availability of its tools (recon, MoG, Dull Pain (or whatever), and IH), -recharge would make this very thematically consistant: get me my tools back and consistantly. This has nothing to do with getting them back faster via hasten. Needed? No.

Willpower, on the other hand, would benefit from -regen because although it can get extra mitigation more easily from other sources, its main source is regen. Needed? No, because extra mitigation is much more readily available.

The regen - willpower debate is understandable, considering how much regen has changed from day one.

In my play experience though they both are great, but suffer differently.

With Willpower, you can see yourself in over your head, and know that there is nothing you can do about it but RUN.

With Regen, you feel like your doing fine until ... your NOT and your in the hospital.

If my vote counted, I think Regeneration needs to be top-of-the-heap on Regen. Whether you achieve this by giving regen debuff protection or lowering the recharge in Instant Healing doesnt really matter to me. It would just be nice if regen did not have to "rely" so heavily on one power(reconstruction) and +recharge. <---heh says the guy playing empathy as his main

IH as a toggle , heck yeah, but doubt the devs are gonna reverse that decision.

A pipe dream at best would be that IH fast healing and integration be 100% enhancable.

Another would be is to give recon a non stackable regen effect that last the duration of the toxic res effect.

Yep Cyber_Naut,

I am actually in agreement with you. Was just pointing out your mention that no one had any survivability statistics on the scrapper secondaries.

Personally, Regen could use some regen debuff protection, since (similar to +def for SR) it relies pretty heavily on regen and reconstruction to survive. All "layered" methods of increasing the survivability of Regen are going to come from pools/IOs and the few extras in the set like tough hide and dull pain.

I know the other commonly asked for protection is slow protection, and whether that is thematic or not, it would be cool to get both. The problem will be proving that Regen "needs" to be improved, and as Arcana aptly shows, Regen has its limitations, but cannot be considered "under-performing".

So, that's that I guess

There's something else I want to address, because apparently we're overdue and its been a while since this has been hashed out. Umbral (and others) have often made the claim that because fights rarely last longer than 30 seconds, only the 30 second calculations are relevant (to balance). The 180 second calculations are basically meaningless, because almost no fights last that long. 1800 second calculations are even more meaningless, because they have no connection with reality.

This is false. But rather than talk about the math, I'll illustrate with an example first because I think it will make more sense. I'm going to use a farming example. I have no interest in discussing the merits or detriments of farming: I'm only using the example because I think it will make the most sense to the most people in an intuitive manner.

Suppose I decide I want to figure out how fast I can earn XP (or Inf, or whatever). So I make a farm mission. It doesn't matter what kind for our purposes. And when I test myself in it, I discover that I can sustain up to 0x4 and still kill every spawn without risk to myself, with enough health so that by the time I move on to the next spawn I'm basically back to full health, which means this is sustainable all the way to the end of the mission. But if I set to 0x5, while I survive, I end up with sufficiently low health that if I don't rest before engaging the next spawn, I end up with even less health and eventually I have to rest or die. And when I factor in rest time, I actually earn less XP per hour than if I just stayed at 0x4. And when I increase to 0x6 for giggles, the first spawn just kills me.

My character can *sustain* 4, and can *survive* up to 5. Now my friend comes along and wants to try my mission. He discovers that just like me, he can sustain 4. But when he tries to increase to 0x5, the first spawn kills him. While I am 4/5, he is just 4/4 - he can sustain 4, and he can only survive 4. He can't survive 5. You could say I am more powerful than he is: we both can sustain the same amount, but I have the edge in the highest I can go without dying. So we tie on sustainability and I win on maximum survival, so I win. That's simple enough.

Now our friend wants to try *her* luck. She discovers that she can set this mission all the way up to 0x7 and not die. 0x8 kills her. She is much more survivable than either of us. But curiously, she can only sustain 0x3. Although 0x4 is no threat to her, at 0x4 she ends each fight with less and less health, and eventually has to rest. And she finds that she earns XP faster going continuously at 0x3 than stop and go at 0x4. So while I am a 4/5 and my other friend is 4/4, this friend is 3/7.

Now who's more powerful, she or I? She's obviously tougher. But I'm faster. When fighting spawns set to 4, they whittle her down faster than me. But when fighting spawns set to 7, I'm just plain dead. She can survive. How do you reconcile that?

Clearly, neither number tells the whole story. In terms of what individual threat can we survive she wins. In terms of what individual threat can we mow down continuously for rewards I win. The first number represents best case reward earning, and the second number represents toughest survivable threat. In terms of *game* balance, the first number is more important. But there are times the second number is more critical.

If I am playing a scrapper, I will tend to think the first number is more important. What matters most is what maximum threat I can simply play through. But if I am playing a tanker, I will tend to think the second number is more important. What's the worst case scenario I can tank for, especially in case of sudden emergencies.


Thinking that the 30 second number is "more important" than the 180 second number misses the point. Both numbers are important *always*. The first one tells you *what* you can kill. The second one tells you *how often* you can kill. The combination of the two represents a qualitative measure of the strength and sustainability of a character. Which one is more important, and to what degree, is somewhat situational. But usually, the shorter window number (30s in this case) represents more of a limit than a metric. In other words, you don't really want the character with the best 30s score. What you want is the character with the best 180s score of all the characters that meet a certain minimum 30s score. In other words, switching scales a bit, a 30/90 is better than a 10/50, but a 40/70 might be better than the both of them simply because you would rather sustain 40s and be able to take on the occasional 60 than be forced to sustain only 30s even though you can take on the rare 90. If anything higher than 60 is fine with you, then both 30/90 and 40/70 "qualify" but then 40 beats 30, and the fact that 90 beats 70 is less important to you.

Personally, I think this is how *most* people look at survivability *except* for tankers and other characters that are played like tankers by their player (like some brutes, masterminds, crazy blasters, etc). For those people, the exact opposite is probably true. They have a qualifying *sustainable* number, such that any lower would be too mind-numbingly slow, but anything above a critical value is fine, and then they want all out maximum burst survivability. So maybe they want at least 25, but anything above that is fine. So 30/150 and 50/90 both qualify, but then they would rather have the 30/150, because even though the 50/90 sustains a far higher level of activity, they really want the 150 and are willing to pay for it.


And that's why my mitigation spreadsheet *AND* my I7 calculations look at different time windows. Each looks at just one aspect of survivability, neither of which makes the other redundant.

And that is the relevance of 1800 second calculations. It presumes an average 30 minute mission, and looks for the best sustainable activity within it. Because the unit of measurement for reward earning is not the critter or the spawn, but the mission. Once the mission is cleared, you can't sustain any more activity even if you want to, because it will be empty. So any health you have at the end of the mission becomes essentially worthless. A player that can finish that hypothetical farm with full health has no advantage over the player that finishes the farm with half health. And that is why that calculation is relevant, even though no fight lasts that long. Because its not a measure of the best fight you can take on anyway. Its a measure of how many fights you can take on over a long period of time, a completely different limiting factor on combat.