You Build on Regen

Dark armor can built either for specific damage defense or positional, it has its own heal and res, you van get 90% res to psionics and and negative energy, softcap it, and get the end down quite a bit.
Regen takes more money to build around and more time and effort, havin barrier and mog is its only callin card if im honest, but u can build up softcap on s/l easily and possibly energy, get good resistance aswell, I would personally go for dark but I hear lately that regen brutes are quite good now so all depends if u can plow money and time into ur character.

I'm just starting to mess around with a /Regen scrapper right now (so same numbers for defences / resistances as Brutes - cap excluded) and I don't know how accurate this ^ is. I haven't mucked around with Mid's for too long yet but from what I've seen so far there's really going to be a balance between s/l defence and recharge. Both are pretty vital for /Regen and hitting the s/l cap is probably going to leave you with very little in the way of recharge, an incredibly expensive build or an unwieldly build that skips things to eek out every bit of defence possible. Unless your primary assists you (katana for example) i'd probably aim at getting within 1 purple of soft cap and call it a day there.

There are two 'bubbles' inherent to Regen which are Instant Healing and MoG. Instant healing with enough recharge can have ~50% up time and will dramatically increase your survivability.

Resistances aren't really 'good' at all on a Regen character unless you consider ~32% including Tough already to be that. Really your Defense score is probably what will save you from the damage in the first place.

Finally there's a quote about someone being killed by a Cimeroran boss as /regen. I hope that is being sarcastic because you should be able to kill one of them without even having a secondary... effortlessly.

This is really not true. Regen scrappers can and do tank, and have been tanking (scranking rather) hamidon/mitos and other top end challenges since before IOs. On pure SOs regen is one of the more survivable sets. Brutes should be better at it than any scrapper has been. Hell Brute /regen should be good enough to hold Hami himself on par with /wp.

The problem you are seeing is that the build is only 40% of the performance. Another 30% comes from your primary, and the remaining 30% is player skill managing those damn click powers. /regen is a ***** that way.

It is impossible even with two pocket kins constantly speedboosting you to make IH permanent. You can get permanent dull pain, but it is almost never a good idea to put it on auto and "waste" the heal component just for higher max HP. Reconstruction is a great heal, but it's not up as often as healing flames (this is intentional , HF was buffed specifically to be faster than reconstruction). And MOG is currently godly, but not permanent. You need to know when to use your powers ahead of time, and how long you can hold out before firing them off.

Dull Pain: Gives +HP which also jumps your hps considerably. But you don't want to use it all the time, because it is a 1300+ heal when slotted. So you often want to save it for when you're down to only 20% of your health. Let it take you back to 90% full AND give you better healing for a while both. But sometimes, you want to use it first, just because you know you'll need that extra 20-40hp/sec.

IH: Gives huge healing over time bonus but no up front heal. At best it is up 30% of the time. So you need to use it before you need it. This spikes my healing from 59/sec to 178/sec. An extraordinary power when used right.

MOG: 15 seconds of invincibility to all but PSI. I can drop a pylon in the Apex TF with this and reconstruction's toxic buff. I can use this at 1 HP and be back to full before it wears off using no other heal. This is your alpha absorber. Use it while approaching the enemy. With enough recharge, it is back up during the fight if you need it. Every now and again, if the enemy spawn is spread out, you might want to save it for just past the first salvo.

Reconstruction: Gives 25%+ heal. Use it as soon as you need it. This is the one click you want to abuse. All the rest hold until you see your spleen falling out on the floor.

If you manage your clicks just right, regen is a phenominal set. If you screw up, you're toast and you will die again and again and again until you get so frustrated you rage quit. Personally, I don't feel the devs balanced the difficulty of using the tools it has well enough with what they do. But oh well.

To hit some of your points directly:

This is a halftruth. The full story is that Regen benefits immensely from mitigation in the primary (mace, katana, Dark, etc) much more than other sets. If a /SR uses parry, or debuffs the tohit of an enemy with dark, or keeps an enemy on their back with clobber, so what? The /sr was probably at full HP anyway so who cares if the enemy made one less attack? But the /regen expects to get hit. Each second you don't get hit, you recover a big chunk of hp. At full bore in excess of 180/sec is possible. That means if a castrated prefect in cim crits you for 700 damage you only need 3.5 seconds to recover. On a /sr if that crit got through, you need to pop aid self or a green, or you are one lucky streak away from hitting the floor. The /regen can just knock the cim off his feet. By the time he gets up and is ready for another attack you've recovered 80% of what he took.

Fire/ claws/ SS/ spines/ and others are really not ideal pairings for /regen if you want survivability.

What you get with /regen if you play purely passively is an invincibility line. At this point you can walk away and come back later and be fine. I once made a cup of tea while my /regen was being pummeled by 14 crey tanks. came back and I was still at 95% health. But go much above that amount of damage and you die really fast. Your clicks can mitigate this, your primary can mitigate this. But you gotta learn it and learn how to control it. MOG, Shadowmeld, and similar tools let you reset the fight (unless you're up against psi damage, then you need purple insps).

100% false. First of all MOG lasts for 15 seconds. That is a LONG time. With dull pain and IH going that's probably over 2000 hp worth of healing. Secondly, if you were barely over the invincibility line, taking say 150 hp/sec more than you can recover, when MOG ends it will take another 10-20 seconds for you to go down. Dull pain or reconstruction may be up in that time. then by the time those HP are gone, you might have gotten a purple insp as a drop, or whatever. Last, you don't have to kill everything. Usually, you just gotta be able to drop 1 enemy or 2. At that point the remaining ones don't do as much as you heal. I don't know about you, but ALL of my brutes and scrappers and stalkers can drop 2 bosses in 15 seconds. Now, if it's one nasty EB that is the problem, yes you are just buying time. But it is possible to cycle powers to keep buying time long enough to wear him down. That's why scrappers like having both shadowmeld and mog. You cycle them. Mine is a bs/regen, I can also just stack three parries before it wears off and be above the softcap for melee/lethal. As long as I use those attacks to drop one or two enemies dealing ranged damage, when MOG ends I'm still protected.

Go into the scrapper forum and look at the 100+post thread about top end kat/regen builds. Werner and Eldegost posted builds that can indefinitely survive over 6,000 damage per second. I used one of the builds a BS/Regen to hold AM's attention on a Keyes run while the tank came back from the hospital (no taunt so I'm not holding him for long), I've held Nightstar on a take 'em where they stand BAF when the whole rest of my team was down for over a minute, I've held requiem busy while the rest of my team killed romulus, and thats with my crap reflexes on a scrapper. A brute /regen would be much more survivable and I bet any of you can drive them better than me. Several /regen scrappers have soloed the ITF.

Yes, I do often run into a full spawn of cims and faceplant. Then laugh because I forgot to hit MOG before going in. AND I accidentally used IH (+regen with no up front heal) instead of Dull Pain. I do that way too often. When I'm doing it right, I can MOG, jump in the middle, target a prefectus parry, buildup, headsplitter hack disembowel parry headsplit parry and he's down and I've got a LOT of melee defense left over from three parries, even with the -def they're tossing out. With the prefectus down usually the mob can't spike me, they gotta grind me down. But I still have dull pain and reconstruction if I need them.

With katana, you want to go for positional not typed. Parry/Divine Avalanche give melee/lethal only. No Smashing. This is pretty significant.

And I think most of the /regen builds aim for 32-35% defense rather than 45%.

Your experiences and mine differ greatly.

I've been the last man standing on numerous TFs, while "stronger" characters were sucking pavement.

The key to playing a Regen effectively: Learn to anticipate what is going to happen, instead of expecting to be able to react after it's already happened. Remember you have inspirations. Know when you need to hit a heal and when your passive regen will see you through.

Regen has a learning curve to it. It's a harsh curve, and you WILL eat floor a lot while you're mastering it. But once you have it mastered, the things you can survive are impressive.

Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison See, it's gems like these that make me check Claws' post history every once in a while to make sure I haven't missed anything good lately.

Everyone has trouble with sappers. The best I can think of is to keep doing what you're doing. AS the first... then maybe placate the second to minimize the damage it does before you attack it.

Oops... I think I remember that ITF, I ran it with you on my Shield/Axe, Alakur. Forget, was there any other melee's on that team? I know I was hard-pressed at times, and the fact I started it running at +2 pro'ly wasn't beneficial either.

Regardless, I was still intrigued by what you were doing to look into Brute Self-Empathy, after having been long disillusioned by it on Scrappers and Stalkers. AKA, you didn't suck that bad. Still debating 'tween either Stone or SS though, myself.

Seconding everything that Claws is saying. I have been playing my DM/Regen Scrapper since launch and regularly tank the AVs in task forces while the Tanker or Brute is being rezzed. And I still haven't taken the time to finish my build (Extreme Alt-itis means I still need 2 more LotG +Recharge and the switch to Villain to unlock Soul Mastery).

The fact that I can survive better than Tankers and Brutes shows that /Regen is an extremely durable set *WHEN PLAYED PROPERLY*. I still faceplant occasionally for the same reasons that Gavin mentioned as I don't play Archaic enough to always remember which green icon is which and I don't have the luxury of Shadow Meld yet.

As has been said, if you're easily frustrated or looking for a fire and forget secondary, you might want to avoid /Regen but if you take the time to learn it, slot it and love it, /Regen will allow you to do some absolutely ridiculous things.

I don't have a problem with people that say that they don't like playing /Regen. I just have a problem with the people who say that /Regen sucks.

TL;DR: Don't believe people if they say that /Regen sucks. Just know that /Regen takes some work and isn't for everyone.

Thanks. This makes me feel a lot better. I was under the assumption it was at default difficulty. Come to think of it... you and I (Regenerating Rock) were the only melee toons on team.

If you do decide to level a /Regen Brute, I would definitely try for Super Strength. Stone Melee is fun, but Super Strength clearly wins out with Rage and Footstomp. The only reason I didn't roll mine as SS was I had just made an SS/DA brute a short time before that and wanted a bit of variety. It also fits better thematically...

Oh well. I guess I'll get off my soapbox now. lol.

Actually, that's the main reason why I ain't settled on SS/... it is that uber, and I kinda take a perverse pleasure in doing bad *** things with toons that aren't the top of the line. I also have a baby DA/SM Tank, and am looking at a Grav/Stone Dom long and hard... but then I've already got an Ice/SS* Tank.

Altitis sucks.

*rolled for PvP ages ago.

I said you were compltetely wrong on a few very specific points.

First, I did mention you were half right.
And when I said you were all wrong it was a specific paragraph with three statements (note I'm not ganging up on you here, just restating that I was responding to specific claims you made, not your whole post. these claims are wrong):
#1
Two problems here: first, unless it is psi you absolutely will be able to survive. second, 15 seconds is not "a few". Some builds crush whole spawns in that time and see #3 below.

#2
Total horse pucky. If you heal 170hp/sec and are taking 190/sec and you have 2100 hp, you can hold out for a long time. if you're taking 240/sec you can probably hang on at half health forever due to how fast reconstruction and dull pain recharge.

#3
Again false. First 15 seconds is not a few. Also you only need to reduce the incoming damage beneath your healing rate. You don't need to polish off the whole spawn. Often this means kill one boss or lieut and you're fine. When was the last time you ran a brute that can't do that before buildup wears off? Build up is only 10 seconds. you still have 5 more seconds before MOG is down and that's 2 or more attacks for most primaries on top of the 3-5 you got while buildup was running.

So you made three statements and even used the word "guaranteed". I said that was 100% wrong. and it was. and it still is.

Your experiences on the ITF are your experiences. they are not the guaranteed experiences of all players with a /regen. they are not the absolute truth. My experiences are my experiences and they are not the absolute truth. But the math shows that /regen is a powerful set that works well with the right strategy.

You also stated:
Again, wrong. /regens can tank. Scrappers have been doing it for years and /regen is significantly better on brutes than scrappers. Again, /regen scrappers have solo'd the ITF.

You also stated:
Again wrong. The IOs are only part of it. /regen is not a passive set. You have to use the powers right. Claws mentioned you gotta anticipate. I mentioned the difference between jumping into a spawn prepared and jumping in unprepared is instant death. Same IOs, different player response. With /regen the cause is almost always pebkac. the few times it is a build issue is when someone builds their /regen with all +regen IO bonuses and no recharge or defense. then they are screwed and not even a god can make that character work. =)

Now, with that out of the way, lets look at your experiences:

The resistance comes from a click power the bosses use. That "roar". Mog, buildup, charge, knockdown. they don't roar they don't get the mes resist. Dominators use similar tricks to ensure they don't resist controls.

I think that Stone Melee is going to be a bit rough with /regen as knock is not the top form of mitigation. parry protects you from all enemies at once. knock only protects you from the one who falls. And many attacks only have a chance for knock, while parry is guaranteed. Dark melee has -tohit and an awesome heal in siphon life. I think you're better off than say claws/regen, but overall I think you'll have to spend more time defending yourself than smashing faces in.

With the stone, you will likely outperform bs/ on small groups and underperform on big ones. Stone is higher damage than bs and it will give reliable mitigation against small spawns. Against melee and lethal enemies in particular BS has the edge in large numbers because hte self buff protects against every attack. on the other hand, I bet you can handle PPD just fine and bs and kat get ripped to shreds because those are ranged/energy/smashing with no lethal and very little melee. It might be the case that cims are just one of your character's weaknesses.

How do you fare on carnies? I find most regens can tear them up.

This gets at what claws was saying and I looked at in the strategy for the specific powers. Know when to anticipate. If you just click when you need them, you will die. You gotta use them ahead of time. You gotta know if you can get through this pack without IH then do it, so you have it for the harder one around the corner with three bosses instead of just one because it isn't up 100% of the time. Know when you need the +hp of dull pain to survive a boss's crits rather than saving it for a big heal. But also know when to save it for a big heal if there is no spike as a threat.

I agree 100%. Which is why I said this:

and I said:

Honestly, look at my history of posts about /regen. I don't recommend it often. I don't usually defend it. The set has issues. but the issues are not what you are saying they are. The issues are that you can have a godly build worth many billions of inf focused on all the "best" bonuses to maximize what /regen does, and still die so much you think you're a gimp. Because it needs help from the primary and from the player. /wp doesn't. /sr doesn't. /stone doesn't. /invuln doesn't. /shield doesn't. Only regen is like this. It is a unique set in that regard as far as I am aware.

I will often tell people that 99.99999% of the time what they want out of /regen they will get from /WP but more of it and it works better. And that is true. There is NO mechanical or mathematical advantage to /regen over /wp. It is inferior in every mechanic you can track. That said, /regen is still a very strong secondary it's just not in the top 3 and /wp is.

=) I'm even worse in person. Sorry.

Shortened short version: I only disagreed with a few of your absolutes and I agree Regen isn't perfect and gave some examples.

Also, with stone as your primary, how do you fare vs PPD? You should be pretty solid on them and they obliterate kat/regen and bs/regen. Plus you should be ok vs Knives and Malta who often give /sr and /shield trouble thanks to autohit damage and tohit buffs.

I think Cims are just a bigger problem for your build than some other enemies no matter what. Everyone has some holes.

In terms of general survivability? Obviously opinions will vary... I'd say it's pretty universally understood that Stone Armor (granite armor) and Will Power (IO's make them gods) occupy first and second place, respectively.
Third place and beyond... personal preferences play a bigger role. For me it's:

3. Invuln
4. SR
5. Shield
6. Elec Armor
7. Regen

And these are all really close together. When built right, each set can be insanely awesome in it's own way. It might as well be a tie for third, honestly. lol.

lol, it's alright. I tend to ramble sometimes too. =)

Oddly enough, I did the Vig Alignment mission where you have to break Blast Furnace out of the Zig. Tons of PPD in there and I did pretty well. As I said earlier, it was at +4 difficulty. Those friggen drones were hard to hit, but a few accuracy inspirations solved that nicely.

Most poeple rank /invuln above will. With special note that dark melee/invuln is in some ways more survivable than granite with none of the drawbacks and it's even possible to build around the psi hole with the help of siphon life healing you. Unless I missed, dm/invuln has the record for most dev created AVs solo'd at once (12).

But I think that people are overrating it because of how common s/l are and that you might be right in a more well rounded sense.

Shield and elec are pretty far below the top 3.

And /sr was good, but currently is not. /sr is destroyed by auto damage and there is more than most people think. Take a /sr into the rescue Jocasta tip mission set for x5 or higher. I've had 14 caltrops stacked on me. That's well over 80 damage per second auto hit and unressistable (ticks of 1 don't get reduced) and enough slow that you're not getting out unless you fly. Or the DE with their quartzes That completely negate any defense value below 100. Or all the pets that come with +25% tohit built into their powers (turning a softcapped /SR's 5% chance to hit into a softcapped 30% chance to hit). Or all the +4s with bonus accuracy and bonus tohit on the incarnate trials.

/sr is one of the best on a budget and it rocks if you compare SOs vs SOs. but at the top end, it is not in the same league as the big three.