Best Primary for Regen?

After the recent discussions of Regen, I'm considering trying out Regen again on one of my many, many, alts. When I played the set before IH was a toggle. That's how long it's been. I have a TW/Regen character on the Beta server, which isn't as problematic as forum discussions suggest it would be. However, I'm not sold on TW as a set yet because it seems like it takes forever to kill things. I'm not sure if that would be better at higher levels or not, but I imagine it would be. Especially since Defensive Sweep is still in my attack chain on that character for it's damage not just for the Defense bonus. At any rate, I'm considering other primaries for the character.

The obvious first suggestion is Broadsword or Katana, but my main is a Broadsword Scrapper so I'm not sure I want that.

Looking for mitigation in sets, Kinetic Melee and Dark Melee are both options with the -Damage and -ToHit. I was wondering which of them is better offensively. -ToHit seems more desirable defensively than -Damage and Dark Melee comes with an extra heal. However, does Power Siphon outperform Soul Drain in typical gameplay situations? If so, is it by enough that I'll be able to live using the "kill them before they kill me" approach?

Street Justice has a lot of mitigation as well, in the form of stuns and knockdown/up. So that's a possible option. I have a SJ/Regen Brute at level 10 that I can't decide if I like or not already though.

Spines doesn't seem to have much mitigation, but it works well conceptually (total control over the body) and I could see the AoE damage being enough to take out minions before they overwhelm my Regen and ability to click heals quickly.

I'd prefer to avoid being a clone of a certain popular comics character....so no Claws

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

I think that depends on how much room for error you want in your /regen playstyle. I've seen good regen players do any primary. I've used MA for some soft-controll (stun/KB) and added Torrent from BM epic to give me more time to react, and no redraw issues. Spine was also good. I'd immagine StJ would be, too. I'd think fire would be more difficult, never tried tho.

To each their own.

I know you are in the scrapper forums, but I'd recommend a Stone Melee/Regen brute. A brute's higher hit points combined with the awesome mitigation in SM will let you have a lot of breathing room for Regen and there is no redraw problem like there is on sword sets. Regen will also help the end use on stone melee.

A Defender with Cold Domination, Sonic Resonance, or Forcefield.

Electrical Melee - My two cents - Why not?

*It has multiple AOE knockdown powers for some mitigation.
*You would presumably build for recharge with regen which goes well with Lightning Rod.
*It's different. I have never seen an electrical regen. Yes yes, I am sure they are out there....just not so common in my neck of the woods.
*If you are going to use LR on a toon with its pet damage cap....it's best on a scrapper.
*It also has the AOE damage "mitigation", it can deal out some serious damage to large groups fast and knock them down while doing it.
*Single target is kinda brutal along the way but again with high recharge, you can put together a nice attack with an APP.

I have a STJ/Regen Brute and the mitigation from STJ is OK but I think Electrical is better.

Now I will have to say.....I totally dig the double AOE wallop of a Ele/SD scrapper.

Electric Melee = Multiple KD powers

Dark Melee = to ST focused for the -ToHit to really be useful in added survivability, even with the added heal of Siphon Life.

Kin Melee = Some okay KD, might even be worthwhile to take Repulsing Torrent for added survivability. Regen doesn't need enemies close. Of course, there's also the -DMG.

Strett Justice = More AOE KD, and some ST effects.

I think I'll have to go with Super Flu on this.

It gives you the AOE knockdown, and works with the control of one's body (bio-electricity) that you mentioned with Spines.

Regen don't need no stinkin primary mitigation

Hmm, hadn't even thought of Electrical. That's actually brilliant.

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

Slight tangent on Dark Melee.

DM/Regen used to be highly regarded before IOs but the extra survival offered by IOs has shifted the game's focus towards what is possible with many foes around, because most everyone can survive with lots of foes around. DM doesn't debuff large numbers of foes to speak of. The -toHit then really only effective against single hard targets, but the only hard targets an IO'd Scrapper is likely to be challenged by is an AV, who will resist the debuff into near meaninglessness (though it might remain relevant if you have near-softcap defense).

However, the heal on Siphon Life makes a noticeable difference even on a Regen. I have two /Regen Scrappers, one DM/ and one DB/. Until recently, the two had very similar builds in terms of +defense and +recharge values. Having Siphon Life had a dramatic difference in how much attention I had to spend on surviving when playing the DM compared to the DB. The DB/Regen survived lots of foes by mowing down large numbers of minions rapidly with AoEs, but the DM/Regen could survive the same numbers of the same foes despite having to take them down more slowly, and the primary survival difference was Siphon Life.

My criteria for picking a Regen-friendly primary is tend away from sets with long animating powers. To give an extreme example, if we were talking Brutes, I would not want an EM/Regen Brute. Setting aside whether EM is attractive on its own merits, I feel it's a poor fit with Regen, because high-end Regen play calls for fast reaction times on hitting click powers, and EM's two biggest attacks tie you up in very long animations.

Dual Blades, something I do have paired with Regen, does suffer from this to an extent. Over time, I've developed the build to where its attack chain doesn't use the longer-animating powers, and I don't have One Thousand Cuts at all, so I skirted that problem. But those long-animating DB attacks did get me killed (well, kept me from saving myself) every now and then as I was leveling up.

The most widely useful benefit of a primary is one that gives +defense, but you don't want more BS or Katana characters. Titan Weapons is going to have +defense in its tier 1 attack, but I think it runs afoul of the long-animation "rule" I apply. We also don't know when TW is going to become available. Given all that, I agree that KD is probably your next best bet.

I have to say, I have not seen Electric/Regen very often, if ever, so you certainly won't be a clone.