Regen...?

I've been wondering.

There has been a lot said of how Regen underperforms when compared to other sets.

What about changing IH back to a toggle?

Or at least reducing it's recharge so with enough +recharge it can become Perma? (like the most recent change Light Form from PB's)


...or, are people just overreacting when they talk about how Regen underperforms?

I bet that horse is really tender by now.

Now, having said that, let me explain that I have close to 6000 logged-in hours across four Regens, and play three of them regularly. Don't think I'm not interested in Regen's performance, or that I don't agree it has some issues. I think the public perceptions of those issues are rooted deeply in Regen's lack of in-set +defense powers, which limits how close it can get to 45% defense. The ability to get defenses in the 35% and higher range makes what I consider the largest, most immediately noticeable difference in survivability on any character.

I think to a less-noticed extent, but more fundamentally, Regen is the only powerset that relies heavily on survival tools that behave linearly instead of proportionally and are reactvie to boot. By that I mean that defense and resistance both remove a fixed (average) percentage of incoming damage, while Regen mostly repairs/replaces a fixed (average) amount of it per time. Finding a balance between those two that behaves the same across all incoming DPS levels is just not going to be possible.

Bear in mind that Regen just got some buffs. Personally I think they were nice to have, but not game-changing. But I think the conservative nature of those buffs may indicate that the devs don't feel that Regen needs a survival tool change on the scale of making IH (at its current strength, certainly) able to be always-on.

A number of threads already exist of a similar nature to this one. Two that contain a lot of /Regen information are:

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=260718

and

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=277089


That said, I will reply by saying that I largely agree with Uberguy. I'll take it a step further than him by saying that the reactive nature of Regen's survival tools makes its performance vary wildly from player to player. More than any other set, Regen requires an understanding of the game and the abilities of your opponents so that you can anticipate when you will need each power. Talk about Regen underperforming comes from the two extremes of the playerbase for the most part:

1.) People who do not truly understand what they are doing and don't care enough to learn.

2.) People (myself included) that are interested in making high-end IO builds that often reveal Regen isn't able to achieve the same level of insanity as some other sets. In actual gameplay situations, there aren't a lot of times where that matters. Just because we believe Regen performs slightly below other sets on paper (in loose approximations) doesn't mean it's a bad set. I think this a part of the problem with the public perception of Regen. People see some of the threads on the forums and don't fully understand the context of the discussion.

To allow IH, at it's current strength, to be on all the time would make Regen way overpowered in situations where it is already good and do little to make it better in situations where it is bad. It doesn't matter if you are healing hundreds of hitpoints per second if you die in three seconds. IF Regen were to receive another buff beyond what it already has received, it would probably be more resistance. Possibly by having Resilience scale with your current hitpoints in a way similar to the passive resistance in SR. But I would say that's far from needed.

@Rorn ---- Blue Baron ---- Guardian

They're overreacting.

But yes, performance varies wildly with build and player ability. Since its top end performance is really only comparable to other sets, rather than exceeding them, my guess is that it underperforms a bit on average.

My skill level is moderate to above-average.

I've had no major issues with regen at all.

But I've heard from a great many new/unskilled players about how much it sucks.

Regen rewards player skill more than any other set in the game. You know that when you pull off something crazy with a Regen, it wasn't your uber-expensive soft-capped build that got you through it. YOU got you through it.

@Vitality: Well, I think there are things that Regen's nature makes it not as well-suited for as some other powersets. One that's a popular pastime around here is AV and other hard-target soloing. Regen's good at staying alive, but the way it's designed, doing so under the harshest conditions means you have to either defeat your foes really fast, or you need to run around and wear them down. By definition, you don't beat down a hard target really fast. (Well, these days some folk are getting damn fast, but we're still talking minutes.) And most hard targets also regen pretty fast, so backing off to heal some is going to let them regen enough to hammer your shot at a record takedown time.

In more normal content, I don't find this to be a big problem. In standard missions, I can usually defeat my foes fast enough that they can't run me out of survival tools before I defeat too many of them (reducing their DPS) for them to overcome me. The more AoE-centric your primary, the better you can usually pull this off.

One place that "normal" content becomes sort of abnormal is the Incarnate Trials. I've seen some of the best Scrapper builders in this forum contend that Regen is disadvantaged in those settings. I'll certainly say that you probably don't want to volunteer your Regen to go tank most of the iTrial AVs solo. Beyond that, though, I find mine perform very well in that content. Their high burst survival though things like MoG and strong (but limited) burst recovery tools let them take a hell of a beating before having to fall back, and high recharge means they can return to the fray quickly. (Two days ago I found myself soloing multiple Molecular Acid containers on a MA/Regen Stalker.) Of course, I have invested heavily in my Regens, so they are by no means representative of all Regens in the field, and having played Regen fairly consistently since just before Issue 2, I'm probably not representative of all Regen players in the field. But in this forum? I'm not all that. (Edit: See vid Werner linked to.)

Here's my problem with Regen.

Because it requires so much relative time activating defenses it is the only secondary that actively reduces my damage output.

Every other set has at least one power that boosts offensive capability, or a taunt aura to prevent you from chasing runners which I consider an offensive boost. Even SR has Quickness. Meanwhile the only offensive advantage Regen used to have, extra Stamina, has been watered down by inherit fitness, IO and Alpha endurance management tools, and even the sewer trial Endurance buff.

While most soft sets have increased DPS as the reward for exceptional builds and playstyle, Regen still forces lowered damage with no real benefit.

I don't know.

The way I look at it...toggle IH or even inherent IH...would make the set actual Regeneration. (I say even inherent IH because I think Regen should offer the best recovery/sec)

You would still be reliant on your three clicks for the tough battles and taking alphas.

Therefore, it would still be more click intensive than all the other sets.

It would be the same attentive playstyle...just smoothed over.

This is just my opinion.

PBs get Reconstruction and Dull Pain to go along with good resists and a permable 85% resistance power.

Willpower gets Fast Healing along with Integration or Instant Healing (depending on the number of enemies) to go along with good resistance and good defense.

I really don't think perma IH would make this set outperform others at high levels...I think it would just smooth over the playing of the set.

Maybe. I'm not sure what that'd make the power look like at level 28, when you can first get it, for them to be satisfied with us running it full time at its current power at level 50.

There's also the fact that we're talking about heavily IO'd performance. Arcanaville's Scrapper analysis puts Regen near the top of SO-grade performance. So what's our target here? And is it a target the devs care about?

Stuff like this is why such dramatic changes to the set are so unlikely.

Well let me say that Regen will always been near & dear to my heart, no matter how long & play or abstain from playing. My first character back in i4 was a DM/Regen, and my joy at playing that character was the foundation of my appreciation for the game.

I've tried out all the secondaries, and I can say that the only one I really don't appreciate it Dark Armor - and even THAT is a result of my personal play style, rather than any shortcomings of the set itself. So it's clear to me that your mileage will vary on any power set or combination thereof.

Having made those two disclaimers, I think that the real foundation of the issues with Regen is not its imagined shortcomings, or performance when fully slotted out with IO's at high levels.

I think the bigger issue is that many players enjoy using melee sets that feature weapons. Any set with a weapon redraw will inherently not blend as well with Regeneration as other sets due to the fact that weapon sets have redraw, and Regeneration is very clicky. If you're not an experienced player, you will often be frustrated by the delay in redraw from using your active powers. More experienced players will not have this issue - because they have a better feel for how & when to use their abilities when they will do the most good, require the least attention, and when they will lose the least amount of DPS.

Alot of newer players expect Regeneration to be an all-inclusive, 100% passive, fire-and-forget set. Once upon a time it was that way, but even back in those days the set had weaknesses that could be exploited - the same as every other set. Back then, when IH was a toggle, hasten was permanent, and Dull Pain was permanent, you would still find yourself in situations where the alpha from a room full of enemies was just a little too much, and you would end up faceplanting & feeling silly.