Theoretical Question Regarding Instant Healing

It'd be nice if Castle could change that for Regeneration, when you die the current recharge time is halved so they recharge some what faster in order to compensate for using those powers and dying.

Heh, I can design an Invuln Tanker with that much passive regeneration -- before accounting for resistance and defense. I don't mean to be snarky or nitpicky here, but it is worth mentioning.

The real problem with Regen is that it's a debuff pinata. The lack of mitigation and the high requirement for active maintenance are important too, but not as much.

The days of toggle IH are irrelevant in more ways than one. A lot of people like to talk about how super powerful Regen was back then -- and they're right, but they're also over-simplifying. The game's high-end content is far more varied than it used to be. Every build will have weaknesses, no matter how well-planned, no matter how expensive -- and that goes double for Regen, because it's highly vulnerable to debuffs of all stripes.

Our ability (our incentive) to cherry-pick our opponents is very much reduced these days, too. Fine if you want to farm, but just running tip missions will tend to give you a less than optimal matchup -- whether your kryptonite is Carnies, Malta, Paragon PD, Devouring Earth, CoT, Longbow, Arachnos; even Rularuu make at least a couple of appearances in high-level Tip missions. And you can bet that Incarnate content won't be a wolf farm.

And in the age of IOs, one of the few holes you really can't fill is debuff vulnerability. You can blunt their over-time effect indirectly by pumping your DEF, but Regen is perhaps the least well-suited among Scrapper secondaries to stack DEF bonuses.

My first character -- my only character for almost the first full year I played CoH -- was an MA/Regen Scrapper. I spent a long time campaigning to have MA's animations fixed. It was my baby, and I'm proud to see it much improved, but that's neither here nor there. Regen was stupidly overpowered at first (before Issue 1, you could stack perma-MoG with IH; now that was funny), then just overpowered, then progressively worse until what we have today is a set that competes reasonably well on paper, assuming the player does everything just right.

In practice, not so much. And doubly not so much if you don't have a Primary with significant amounts of (preferably passive or AoE) mitigation. What's kind of amusing to me is that after all that time, and after all of the much-deserved improvements to Martial Arts, it's my formerly overpowered secondary that is now the problem. In the age of IOs, almost every character concept I can conceive is more appealing to build than ever before. My Scrapper?

Again, not so much. It's true I may have been spoiled by previous godhood (at least defensively, because offensively the old MA was less than impressive), but it's also true that many current IO builds are no less qualitatively impressive to play than old-school Regen. They just take a lot more investment and planning to get there.

Originally Posted by Iggy_Kamakaze Nice build

Well put. This is what I was getting at in a round about way. For a crashless godmode to provide the same mitigation as DP+IH you have to be fighting stuff that will probably kill you anyway. What you'll fight against in actuality is stuff that (normally) wouldn't kill you before IH and before SoW/OWTS. In that case, IH provides more mitigation because the portion of damage that SoW/OWTS reduces is a much smaller number. In fact, IH may shine because adding resists means you continue to lose HP over time, but adding +regen might mean you're gaining it.

However, in either case, it should just mean you survive.

Oh, absolutely. I don't think it sounds snarky at all. My point was apples to apples, DP+IH compared to crashless god modes is pretty impressive. In all cases, regen is just one layer of mitigation. The reason (as I noted) it becomes so complicated to analyze is it's not apples to apples anymore once you start adding different layers of mitigation from different sets. I'm sure most of us who have been around a while have read Aracanaville's virtual dissertation on the immortality line. It's not a simple matter to compare different types of mitigation in the context of different powersets.

I agree with the rest of your post, and I too was devoted to /Regen early on. My first 50 was a Spines/Regen (side note: my name sake actually... I think my name was referencing the flowers on cacti or something to allude to spines...). I would just add to your notes that part of /Regen's problem is it's a one trick pony. As you said, +regen a veritable pinata, and from there all it takes is a good amount of -recharge to really stick it to /Regen.

All things being equal, while you could make an Invul Scrapper with that much regen, you could also make a Regen Scrapper with that much more regen or a good chunk of defense, etc. It's not the best set by any means in City of Invention Sets, but again, all else being equal IH is a pretty impressive power. I do not skip IH, but I do skip OWTS and SoW (at least on Scrappers).

Yes in a heart beat. This set is so much harder to play than it used to be because of the unneeded toggle change in the first place. I would rather they came out and just added -regen to player attacks in pvp so that instant healing could be a toggle again. Its sad that in order to play regen you have to play WP instead.

You mean like when they utterly dynamited the cottage with breaking the cottage rule when they changed it from a toggle to a click? To me changing it back would be them finally addressing their initial screw up.

I prefered the old mog alot more. The day the changed it I deleted all my regens. Since IOs I have tried and failed numerous times to make one that is even remotely close to survivable as my WP scrapper. I tried building for HP, recharge and even more regen. But it just feels like a pointless battle to even try anymore because you die faster than you can click the powers. I am going to give it one last shot with the incarnate system. And if my regen still sucks after that then I dont know what else to do.

They changed it a click only after trying a boat load of other things that I could have told them was doomed to fail. They did more to try to preserve toggle IH than I think was actually intelligent. That does not violate the cottage rule.

I think every time someone improperly invokes the cottage rule, they should owe Castle a buck. He'd be a rich man now, and after my 10% cut I would be pretty well off myself.

Wasn't really disagreeing with your point; I was just using your post (probably unfairly) as a place from which to leap into a long-pent quasi-rant.

I don't have a problem with click IH in principle. It could stand a little improvement I guess, but I don't believe that's Regen's problem in the age of IOs and Inherent Fitness. Regen's problem is that its former strength at the low end (smooth leveling curve) has been indirectly diminished, and it doesn't gain as much as most other sets at the high end.

Interestingly, the set that used to send Tankers into a tizzy because it was so very consistent -- oblivious to the opposition's damage or attack type -- is now perhaps the most consistently vulnerable. Regen and Recharge debuffs are only the most obvious weaknesses.

More power to you. If there's anyone who can make the set sing, I'm sure you can. My issue is mine alone, a combination of being burnt out on my Regen character and a dissatisfaction with what I can do to improve it with IOs. Maybe with a little touch of spoiling nostalgia.

YMMV and all the usual jazz. It's not like Regen is so terribly weak that it absolutely must be buffed yesterday.

Originally Posted by Iggy_Kamakaze Nice build

Well in either case if it wont get changed back then they will have to do something for when this set eventually makes it to brutes and tanks. There is no way based on regens numbers scaled for tanks that the set would be tankable. IH would have to be alot stronger and they would have to give some other form of resistance or defense in the set way before mog. This gives hope for regen but not to scrappers or stalkers.

Takers used to care about regen not because of consistency, but because of practical immortality. I2ish Regen was just as strong as perma-elude and unstop-invince, but it didn't crash, couldn't be debuffed, was type-blind, and came in a set with (comparably speaking) unlimited endurance.

And most regens back then did it with stacked DP and IH alone. The ones that *also* took recon were literally unkillable. They were the ones that could not be killed by any level of normal damage a single player could possess in PvP originally, and could tank Hamidon without heal assistance.

The main consistency complaint about regen scrappers back in the day was that their green and blue bars didn't move.

Consistency was another one of their complaints. Hamidon was probably the most cited example of the immortality you mention. Because Hamidon was basically untankable by anyone else (without support), it followed that Regen was more survivable than anything else.

Or so their argument went.

Regen was very very strong; no one's denying that. At least after Issue 1 though (when the you-can-heal-with-MoG-on bug was fixed), it wasn't so strong as to make all other options categorically inferior. Perma-Unstoppable was pretty sick too. Sicker, even, under the right circumstances. Alpha strikes would still kill Regen occasionally.

But again, perma-Unstoppable had a hole or two. Regen effectively treated all damage sources equally.

Frankly, I don't even know why you'd condescend to try to correct me on this point; it's self-evident even if you weren't there -- and I was there. Seems like you just want to bang the drum about how uber-strong Regen was back in the day, which is fine, but it's also not a point of contention here. Or do you disagree that Regen is now vulnerable to debuffs of all kinds?

Originally Posted by Iggy_Kamakaze Nice build

I was there also, and I'm stating a correction because you're mistaken. Consistency across damage types was only a minor point when it was brought up at all: SR had a similar type-independence and virtually no one complained about its type consistency. And whenever Hamidon came up, there were people, like me, quick to remind people that Hamidon attacks were untyped and therefore unresistable and unevadable by defenses and resistances, so it was an invalid comparison to compare any def/res set to a heal set under Hamidon attacks.

And by the way, Regen tanking of Hamidon existed for only a very short period of time relatively speaking, especially as a discussion item. Open raiding of Hamidon with regen tankers didn't really become common until April of '05 - which was just prior to I4, by the way, and went away with toggle IH in I5, August 2005. Regen Hami tankers existed for basically one issue, and was never a major source of complaints about Regen scrappers. It happened, but it was minor.

But if you want to compare memories, we can do that: lets talk about regen's performance in the quad spawns in PI, or PvP beta testing, or the original respec mission, or when perma-MoG was a viable choice over toggle IH. If you like, we can talk instead about tankers specifically: original invincibility testing which was done on tankers and not scrappers for the most part, or Fire's mez holes, or the issues with Ice Armor prior to I5, or about that time I invented Bodyguard for tankers over a year before it was created for Masterminds. Talk about condescension: assuming I wasn't there is not just rude, its also bordering on retarded in my case.


Of course, regen is vulnerable to debuffing: that's what happens when you don't have access to significant defense or resistances. Is it a balance-significant issue? I'm not really convinced. At the highest levels of performance, Regen is at a disadvantage in high debuffing situations relative to most other mitigation sets. But that's a complex matter to resolve, because no one has a guarantee that their maximum top level performance will be exactly equal to everyone elses. And even if that were true, regen would still not be at the top of the list of problem areas.

In all other areas of the game besides that, everyone has vulnerabilities, not just Regen. I don't think its been demonstrated that Regen's vulnerabilities are greater than everyone elses relative to its strengths. Dark Armor is probably hit just as hard by recharge debuffs as Regen is, and SR is hit even harder by higher tohit than Regen is by either debuff. It would be an interesting question to ask what there are more of: enhanced tohit critters (75% critters, 64% critters, and critters with tohit buffs) or critters with recharge and/or regen debuffs.

If I was reviewing mitigation sets, Electric, Energy, and Fire would all be higher on my list than Regen. Then Regen, SR and Invuln in that order.

So you say. Why this issue is a major point of contention, I have no clue; suffice to say that I disagree. Part of the reason that Tankers were bent out of shape was that IH ignored the damage or attack type, as you yourself demonstrate here:

As for whether it was a significant point of complaint, that's a subjective judgment, one about which you're exercising an uncommonly and unjustifiable degree of certainty. You'd have to poll the forums from that time period, of which most of the relevant posts have since been purged. Heck, I remember people on this very forum complaining that Regen handled Rularuu better than SR.

(Edit: Come to think of it -- how many times have you personally corrected an INV Tanker's misperception that Invulnerability is actively penalized against psi damage? INV is weak to psi to the extent that it doesn't have any explicit protection against psi, but it does have vastly increased hitpoints as a kind of generic protection relative to the character with no protection at all. The point is that INV Tankers have always been sensitive about their situational weaknesses.)

Boy, you're a little touchy, aren't you? I never said or even meant to imply that my memories trump yours. I merely expressed a desire not to have my memories hand-waved on the basis that you disagree with them.

I said I was there. I never said that you weren't. "Even if you weren't there," doesn't mean I think you weren't, though to my recollection you didn't start to post actively on the Scrapper forum until some months after you registered. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong on that point; for some reason I feel like you were more interested in Blasters at first, but I could be wrong. Regardless, you were certainly here early enough to see the bulk of Regen's glory days.

Yes, we're all very impressed with your track record. Relax.

(I was one of the people sending samples to Circeus for the Invincibility testing, by the way. Unfortunately, at the time, we hadn't yet realized that the pulses were double-stacking.)

Regen is affected fully by, and easily hit by, every kind of debuff.

It's as much a qualitative complaint as it is a mechanical one.

Originally Posted by Iggy_Kamakaze Nice build

That statement also disguises a lot of practical differences. For example, before defense debuff resistance was added to SR, it would be technically correct to say that Regen was fully affected by, and much more easily hit by, defense debuffs than SR. But that would be a complete disguise of the truth.

Similarly, Regen is "fully affected" by defense debuffs but is actually hurt by them to a similar degree as Invuln even with Invuln's debuff resistances. From a mechanical perspective, debuff resistance should be set to a value comparable to the damage mitigation value of the defenses being protected to roughly balance the vulnerability to cascade breakdown (its a little more complicated than that). With TH and Invince Invuln can generate defense levels in the neighborhood of 25% defense without outside power pools of buffs. That suggests a value of defense debuff strength of about 50%, which is what Invuln has in PvE.

Its been a common tactic over the years to portray things as having critical problems simply by virtue of those issues being semantically describable as unique. That's not enough. They must be unique and either demonstrably negative in its uniqueness or a violation of some basic balance principle. Regen's vulernability to "all debuffs" doesn't satisfy either criteria on its own.

There doesn't exist a mitigation set that I cannot make a "its the only set with this problem" statement, many of which are more likely to be worse. Conversely, regeneration has never been forced to recognize the uniqueness problem when it operated in its favor. Like uniquely having dramatically higher endurance recovery, which is a primary offensive balancing metric. The number of ways that have been asserted to justify that are many.

Its still a large advantage of the set that has traditionally been glossed over, and now is being revisited to be considered redundant in the face of inherent fitness. Just like the lack of stamina does not make you an invalid, there's no way I can take seriously the notion that having 60% more recovery is a minor advantage.

And just so there's no confusion, I'm not attributing those statements to you. I'm simply stating them for context.


That's true, but irrelevant. Invuln has always generated complaints that its non-s/l defenses were weaker than what some people thought they should be, but that had nothing to do with Regen. It didn't translate to people saying how come regen gets to be type-independent and Invuln can't." It was a complaint about Invuln, but not a complaint about Regen. And not specifically from Tankers in general. Its relevant to the notion that tankers complained about their own type-dependency. Its not relevant to the notion that tankers complained about other sets' type-independence.

The biggest Tanker complaint in the early days was that Scrapper damage mitigation strength was so high it subverted the need to even have tankers exist. Whether Regen was type-blind was more of a trivia point compared to that one. I stand by that statement. I'm not stopping you from actively disagreeing, but if I think you're in error, I'm still going to say so. Its nothing personal. It means the same to me as correcting someone who says all sniper blasts originally had the same recharge.


I'm always slightly surprised when someone can post something like this:

and then a) act surprised when I respond and b) think I'm displaying a disproportionate response. If you've been around long enough to know my first posts were on the blaster forums, you've been around long enough to know what a disproportionate response looks like also. This is just the response I make when someone decides they want to address the topic of my motives or my objectivity, both of which I am far more capable of speaking authoritatively upon.