If 2% Resistance equals 1% Defense, How much Regen is equal to 1% Defense ?

Pretty much like the title says.. I read the thread where players where just about equating 2% resistance to 1% defense. So my question is how do you determine how much regeneration is equal to 1% defense ?

That would vary by AT--different Health totals change how much one heals.

That depends on three things, 1) how much Defense and Resistance you have currently, 2) how much maximum HP you have and 3) how much damage per unit of time you're taking.

Regen is "direct" mitigation whereas Defense and Resistance are relative to incoming DPS. They both also multiply the usefulness of your Regeneration and stack in a different manner. Maximum HP determines how much regeneration in HP/s the percentage equals.

EDIT: Results will also differ depending on if you try to calculate an "immortality line" or time to defeat.

A formula you can use for this:

Time to Defeat = (MaxHP / (DPS * (1 - Res) * (Enemy_ToHit - Def) * Enemy_Acc - Regen)

If Regen (in HP/second) is higher or equals the DPS (enemy base DPS, power accuracy isn't applied yet) after Resistance and Defense are applied you can sustain that damage "forever". If Regen is lower than the DPS with the same conditions the formula will give you the time it takes to reach 0 HP. You can use it to try different combinations of Defense, Resistance, MaxHP, time to defeat, etc. to see how much Regeneration would get you the same increase in survivability in each situation. It is very important to note that because Regen works very differently from Res or Def there is no real rule of the thumb for converting it to either of those.

(I hope I got the formula right, a bit sleepy...)

They aren't directly comparable.

You can hit a theoretical (actually, maybe not so theoretical) point where your Regen exceeds incoming damage and you will never die versus the damage you are facing. Resistance and Defense alone will always eventually result in your death. However since all characters have some base Regen it doesn't quite play out that harshly. It's just that Regen by itself approaches infinite survivability while neither Defense or Resistance alone does the same on their own.

Leaving Resistance out, a character with soft capped defense dodging an attack that does 1500 damage has a 1 in 20 chance to take that damage. A character with normal defense (facing same level enemies) has a 1 in 2 chance to take that damage. If the damage killed the character in one hit there is nothing to Regen because the character is dead.

Keep in mind that armor models as they are presented on the boards are almost always treated as if the person is a Scrapper or Tanker type and base assumptions about chance from there. Real life chances for squishier characters are very different because most of them are not trying to tank through the damage, and are only handling a few die rolls at a time. This means the odds are much less likely to normalize within an individual exchange of fire.

As many have stated, it is not a direct conversion.

Reason being, regen restores damage, and is therefore only used after damage has been taken, but def/res prevents the damage, and is used before the damage is taken. Def/res reduce the damage, regen doesn't. So if something can hit you in 2 shots and kill you, regen won't do anything really, but x amount of resistance will lower the total damage and make you live, while def will make you take no dmg at all and live. Regen is best used when some res/def is already in play, to restore the lowered amount of damage taken. So the more def/res you have, the more useful regen will be at getting you to the "immortality line" others have mentioned.

Ow. My head hurts.

The way I like to look at it is, healing is like a debuff to your foes' damage. It's not a flat percentage, though, like Res or Def, it knocks an amount off the top, and then anything beyond that gets to you.

As a result, healing based characters tend to be immortal until the point where the damage they are taking exceeds their regen, at which time they tend to die really fast. This is a characteristic very different from Res, which just dies slowly but steadily, and Def, which dies rarely, but suddenly and without warning.

I didn't know that Regen was based on your hit points. I thought it was just a static number for everyone.. So with that said I can see the point everyone has made..

I guess I need to mess around with that Google Doc that Dech made.

But at least I learned something new.. Which is always good

Thanks for the insight

What about if we assume that the player doing the fighting is a level 50 Scrapper, without accolades, fighting even-con minions and Lts? This way there is a constant stream of damage coming in rather than big spikes. We could, as an exercise, choose a common faction (such as Freakshow) and if somebody has the numbers on the average dps of said minions and Lts we could guesstimate just how many of these foes a max regen character of this type could fight. Then, using the same enemy DPS metric, we could compare a hypothetical softcapped defense Scrapper with no damage resistance fighting these baddies and compute the max number of foes he could face and keep the incoming DPS equal to his regen. We could have a very very rough idea then of comparable defense to regen numbers.

It would be of limited use to be sure, but interesting.

I'm actually somewhat disatisfied with the standard models of defense and resistance, regen not withstanding. Not because they are completely wrong or not somewhat helpful, but because I feel people trust them too literally. The same with DPS models and other such things. One day if I feel like dealing with the board hate I may write a detailed explanation of my issues with this type of assessment.

That's not to say I think such models aren't useful. They demonstrate something, I'm just not always sure it's something as conclusive as what's assumed. It's a little bit like deciding whether to wear a coat based on a weather report rather than the fact that you opened the door and found out it was 30 degrees outside. Although the flip side of that is only trusting subjective experience, which can also lead astray.

The short explanation though is this. You are rarely, if ever, in an "average" situation, so any talk of averages can only be theoretical. The average models, of Defense in particular, fall apart when the numbers get too extreme, which happens in particular on squishy characters. You simply cannot look at a 5% chance to die in two hits as the same as taking 5% of incoming total damage, which is what you do when you map Defense over to Resistance using 1% D = 2% R model. Nor can you view a chance to get hit by a DoT that takes 6 seconds to deliver its full damage payload the same as a huge upfront damage spike. Survivability models are still useful, but they flatten a lot of realistic real world scenarios onto a flat posterboard that as often as not does not present the full scenario.

DPS (% of Health) = ((100 + (Regen * Time to defeat)) / (1-res)*(To Hit - Def)) / Time to Defeat

***All the following are based on Time-to-defeat of 60 seconds against minion based incoming damage***

DEFENSE
0% = (125.2/1*0.5)/60 = 4.173%
10% = (125.2/1*0.4)/60 = 5.217%
30% = (125.2/1*0.2)/60 = 10.433%
40% = (125.2/1*0.1)/60 = 20.866%
45% = (125.2/1*0.05)/60 = 41.733%

RESISTANCE
0% = (125.2/1*0.5)/60 = 4.173%
20% = (125.2/0.8*0.5/60 = 5.217%
60% = (125.2/0.4*0.5/60 = 10.433%
80% = (125.2/0.2*0.5/60 = 20.866%
90% = (125.2/0.1*0.5/60 = 41.733%

REGEN
0.42/s (Baseline) = (125.2/1*0.5)/60 = 4.173%
0.94/s (+124% regen) = (156.5/1*0.5)/60 = 5.217%
3.55/s (+745% regen) = (312.9/1*0.5)/60 = 10.433%
8.77/s (+1988% regen) = (625.9/1*0.5)/60 = 20.866%
19.2/s (+4471% regen) = (1252.0/1*0.5)/60 = 41.733%

As you can see regen starts at
10% regen = 1% defense at the first point, but scales up to;
12.4% regen per point of Defense at 10%
24.8% regen per point at 30%
49.7% regen per point at 40%
99.4% regen per point at 45%

The reason is simple, for defense and resistance the amount of incoming damage is reduced by
greater and greater amounts as the numbers get higher, while regen needs to "double-up" its base value
constantly to achieve the same results. One way we can offset this scalar is to consider that a
smart player who focuses on regen will also focus on +HPs. so lets see how that will smooth out
the curve.

REGEN PLUS +HP
+ 0% HP and Base regen = (125.2/1*0.5)/60 = 4.17%
+10% HP and 100% regen = (165.4/1*0.5)/60 = 5.51%
+40% HP and 400% regen = (316.4/1*0.5)/60 = 10.55%
+80% HP and 800% regen = (588.2/1*0.5)/60 = 19.61%
+120%HP and 1600% regen = (1162.5/1*0.5)/60 = 38.75%

You can see the uphill battle that regen faces trying to keep up with Defense and resistance,
but it is interesting to note that Combining 1%HP per 10%Regen consistently will keep up with
Defense and Resistance to a point. Realistically, only WP and Regen are going to get over 400%
constant regeneration, which brings us back to the whole point made in the thread that Defense
and Regen are only comparable at lower amounts. They diverge too quickly (especially after 30% defense).