ReeeeeeeGGGGeeeeennnnnn!!!!

My only real complaint about regen is that late game factions tear it a new one in a big way.

Note the following observations are based on SOs only, and no primary. (Otherwise, since my own 500+ hours of playtime /regen is Broadsword, I'd be slanted into making regen a lot tougher than it actually is thanks to permanently being at the lethal and melee softcaps from stacked parry).

Arachnos - kill recharge, apply hefty defense buffs, high burst damage, lots of endurance drain.

Longbow - Minions that floor regen even through instant healing, resistance debuff, defense debuff, wardens as wild cards

Cimerorans - Heavy defense debuff, high DPS

Carnival of Shadow - Heavy endurance drain, recovery debuffs, regen debuffs, high damage

Malta - It's freaking Malta. -defense, -regen, -endurance, -recovery

None of that is healthy for any secondary, of course - those factions have earned their reputations. However, broken down each of those status effects hit regen in a painful way.

- Recharge: Recharge is life. Your passive regeneration (35 - 50 hp/sec or so) isn't what keeps you standing for the most part. It's your clicks. Regen is a very active secondary. No clicks = no survival.
- Regen: Usually this doesn't affect a regen much, funnily enough. When it does, though, is when dull pain or instant healing are running (especially both, which on my bs/regen scrapper gives me a hearty regen of 147 hp/sec).
- Def and -res: Nasty for anyone but especially nasty for regen, as is lacks both resistance and defense (outside of moment of glory, which rocks). Without any values in these to start with every single application drastically increases the incoming damage. It's nice to have two huge heals available. It's less nice when due to debuffing there's no way you're surviving 25 seconds for that heal you used after the alpha strike to come back.
- Recovery, - endurance: Other than lacking any kind of defense against these (end drain reduction, recovery debuff resistance, energy defense) regen isn't particularly vulnerable. It could be pointed out, however, that every other brute secondary now has end drain resistance, recovery debuff resistance, or energy defense natively available to them.

It's not a terrible set as its strongest detractors decry but personally with the game's current state I'm not sure I'd roll another one.

I play Invuln, Elec and SR on SOs but people who have never met me nor know anything about my playing habits claim I don't.

Edit: not targeting you personally StratoNexus. I'm just thinking it seems to be a common trend for people to assume speaking about IOed out builds on the boards means that player never plays on SOs, and seeing how so very wrong this is for me, it could be the same for some other people.

I might try DM/Regen

That is not what I meant to say, but as a matter of fact I actually think these three powersets on SOs and on scrappers are better than Regen, yes.

SR on Just SO's can nearly softcap, though I think you also have to have weave going as well, havent actually messed with SO's in a looonnnng time.

I don't think you can softcap a SOed SR unless you take a stupid amount of toggles ; looking at my level 46 SR right now I have 38.75% to all with 3 level 45 SOs in everything, including cj weave and maneuvers, but the softcap is another thing that I feel is overvalued in that defense is too often seen as an "all or nothing" proposition. Having ~40% def with very high DDR although not capped yet is already going to make you rather sturdy, at least for me at the kind of reputations I fight on on SOs.

It gets better once you add insps and eventual team buffs into the mix. Having someone with maneuvers isn't all that uncommon in this day and age of inherent stamina, or even receiving the right kind of magic buff/mutation can push you to the softcap.

I'm not saying Regen is all doom and gloom, sure enough you can convert everything to purples and take on a stupid amount of stuff stacking insps on top of cj/weave/maneuvers (which, unlike on the SR, won't force you to slow down/rest/use the occasional blue insp thanks to QR) for high defenses + high regen and heals. My issue with it is that if you (I?) require a certain amount of extra mitigation to pull off a certain task, you (I) will have to use it proactively, otherwise DDR / lack of res can wreck you (me) before you (me) get to say "ouch" (actually a much nastier word not suited for PG rated forums). For example, even at softcapped def or higher I find arachnos tarentula mistresses hit much more than I'd like them to with their psi defense debuff, and on x8 I think there can be up to 3 in a group (2 lieuts 1 boss). Or I could be aggroing two groups at once. Honestly, when I have two or more of these dreaded psi debuff on me, I'm too busy running around screaming to stop and do a headcount.

Elec is of course in the same boat as far as defense goes, and I won't argue it has much more time to see damage come in as DP +60% hp isn't all that different and not too much lower from Elec resists on SOs. It gets very nice offensive tools and even endurance drain, which I'm so not a fan of when we're talking IOed out builds doing tough stuff fast, becomes more useful when the rep isn't so high and the fights aren't so quickly done.

To try to sum my position on this, can regen do anything these other secondaries couldn't do? It doesn't seem so, for my particular playstyle. Does regen require more effort than these other secondaries to play? Yep, at least for me.

Got 45.1% to melee and ranged at lvl 29 using SO's and the Steadfast Protection unique.
Ok, so I had to use one IO, my apologies.

I am anxious to start a mirror for my main scrapper. A DM/Regen brute.... hmmm.

My DM/Regen scrapper is still my favorite toon after 5 years. I have run several other scrapper secondaries to 50, but all have been deleted. Too boring. I love the edge of your seat, active feel of regen.

As to the argument over min/max or SO baseline builds... I think I might have a crushing impact in one of my attacks. Otherwise, everything is basic IO for my toon, and I *still* have been the last man standing often enough to realize how good the powerset is. I just don't appreciate a min/max, uber/perma/whatever build. It works fine for me and just about any team I've ever been on.

I actually love the idea of seeing how I can do with a taunt aura - I already tank (regen + scrapper means WHAT ARE WE STANDING AROUND FOR!?) at times, and as long as I time my click powers, I do fine. So I am interested to see how the taunt dynamic will play out.

Otherwise, I see nothing but love.

Oh, the build I have planned will be tons of fun. I just wanted to get as much def as soon as I could. I hate def sets sometimes.

I don't really see the big deal of brutes getting regeneration, on SOs its good, but without any large defense buff from a primary or set bonuses regeneration is barely middle of the road.

Darkest Night, especially with Quick Recovery and Stamina will help out a /regen a lot, due to the high AoE -tohit values (even on a brute) and the even higher -dmg values. Think of -dmg like +res, and you got yourself a pretty durable character

Its not balanced around inspirations, inspirations benefits it as much as everything else. Nowhere did i say it was balanced around it.

First you have to understand the 'balance' metric, which is 'Can this powerset run solo on +0/1/no/no on SOs without serious performance issues'

In that regard, /regen not just runs without performance issues, but it shines in the fact it gets quick recovery early, 2 major heals pretty quickly as well, and nearly double the passive regen of any other powerset without popping IH.

Quick recovery plus stamina allows you to run more toggles then most any other powerset (even willpower, due in part to the fact /regen only has 1 build in toggle, and willpower has 4) and getting recon at level 4 allows you to literally have a 25% heal (which is a green inspriation) up every minute or so, on TOs. Once you get into DOs and SOs you can just as easily tackle the 'balance' metric without even breaking a sweat.

You don't have to be an amazing player to play /regen well, you just have to understand its a very active secondary, and if you try to play it like a passive secondary you will fail, a lot. While IH is nice, recon provides more hp/sec on SOs, and dull pain nearly matches IH's benefits (due to increased regen from a higher HP base) MoG is there to soak the alpha, and once you do that, you have about 10 seconds to down as many things as you can before you have to actually use your secondary.

Plus /regen's biggest benefit is that fact there are no major holes in its mitigation. Psi damage, the biggest killer of the main armors (stone, invuln, SR, etc) is much more common and a much bigger killer of the other armors then /regen. All damage is treated the same with /regen, and nothing really cuts it down quickly.

You have to remember that 0/1/no/no on SOs is the metric, and the main question is can the armor run on that difficulty successfully. /regen not just runs on that, but does it with ease.