Regen! A discussion.


ArchGemini

 

Posted

Preface:It was pointed out that there are acronyms in this post that are used for other power sets. To make this easier, here you go.

OP=Over Powered/Original Poster
DP=Dull Pain
IH=Instant Healing
WP=Will Power
Reg=Regeneration
FH=Fast Healing
Int=Integration
ED=Enhancement Diversification
HP=Hit Point
HP/s=Hit Point per second


Before this turns into a flame war, I want to point out that I want this to be a serious discussion.

In, I believe the brute section, someone pointed out that combined with the level shifts and Rebirth Destiny, that regen scrappers were almost back to the point were they used to be. But how well does regen do on its own?

I used to love playing on my Claws/Reg scrapper back in the day. The Devs decided that regen, the powerset, was overpowered. I personally do not believe that was the case. Now back then I didn't even know the forums existed. I know that on my toon, I was sometimes in awe of what other regens were doing. One day I asked one of them how she was surviving. They had tough, and weave, and combat jumping, and perma hasten buffing there def along with permanent DP. That was how I discovered the forums. Shortly after that the discuccions on "Adjustments" were happening. One forum poster even pointed out to the Devs that there data was inaccurate, something to do with the server they were testing on. I can't find that info though, still looking. So you see, it wasn't Regen that was OP, it was regen along with a slew of pool powers combined that made it OP.

I'll be honest, I do not know where to get the numbers from the powers before the nerfs.
However, according to Paragonwiki, here are a few of the changes.

Regeneration/Instant Healing Max Regeneration buff was slightly reduced. Additionally, it gains less of a boost from each added Enhancement.

Reduced the amount of Regeneration Buff that can be enhanced in Instant Healing and Integration (base values were not changed). A step in bringing Regeneration powerset more in-line with other equivalent powersets.

Changed Regeneration/Instant Healing from a Toggle Power to a Click power.

Slightly reduced the non-enhanceable health regeneration buff of Regeneration/Integration.

Reduced Defense bonus from Pool/Concealment/Stealth. Defense bonus is partially suppressed if you attack.

Reduced Defense bonus from Pool/Flight/Hover (and Kheldian Combat Flight).

Reduced Damage Resistance bonus from Pool/Fighting/Tough. Increased its
Endurance Cost.

Reduced Defense bonus from Pool/Fighting/Weave. Increased its Endurance Cost.

Reduced Defense bonus from Pool/Leadership/Maneuvers.

Reduced Defense bonus from Pool/Leaping/Combat Jumping.

Pool/Speed/Hasten no longer buffs Defense.

And then of course, there was ED.


Now, this is from Scrapper Secondary Information for Issue 7, by BUFFYASUMMERS. Other than the buff to MoG and Resilience, there haven't been any changes to regen, so this information is still completely valid.
FH (3 SO Heal), Int (3 SO Heal), Health (3 SO Heal) - Total 469.3%

469% regen.



This is from Scrapper Issues List - Welcome to Issue 18! from Stupid_Fanboy
Regeneration - unresolved

Balance: Post-Enhancement Diversity, is it still necessary that regen powers have both enhanceable and unenhanceable healing? - MAS0N, 2005-10-11

Balance: In comparison to the Regeneration % that Willpower can achieve, is it still necessary that regen powers have both enhanceable and unenhanceable healing? - SpiderTeo_OC, 2009-02-10

Wishlist: Revive: Revive is not a good power for resuming a fight immediately. Without some defensive power or inspirations, it is better used when the enemy has left the area. A Short large defensive or regen buff in addition to the HP and End recovery would be nice. from several requests - 2010-09-21

Wishlist: Regeneration is the only secondary set that does not have some sort of resistance to the debuff that affects its main strength, in this case Recharge or Regen. from several people – 2009-10-07

Now, two key points from all of this information stands out like a neon light to me.

1. Balance: In comparison to the Regeneration % that Willpower can achieve, is it still necessary that regen powers have both enhanceable and unenhanceable healing? - SpiderTeo_OC, 2009-02-10

2. FH (3 SO Heal), Int (3 SO Heal), Health (3 SO Heal) - Total 469.3%

469% regen.
Now, putting the same slotting recommended here into mids, no sets, just SO's, no procs, no Incarnates gives me 569% at lvl 50 that's 31.75 Hp/s

With WP, the same powers slotted I am getting 519% regen. At lvl 50 28.96% Hp/s. That's a difference of 3 Hp/s.

Now, lets say we bump the foes in range of Rttc up to 2.

617% Regen for a total of 34.4 Hp/s. Willpower has gone from being behind regen by 3 Hp/s to being ahead by approx 2.7 with only one additional foe. Now lets look at something a little more common in game, let's throw some more foes at the melee man.

I think 7 is reasonable.

860% Reg, 47.99 Hp/s

With 10 in range, that's 1006% Regen, or 56.15% Hp/s

But what about with DP?

At 50 with the previous slotting, and DP with 3 heals, regen goes to 50.47 Hp/s.

Well, lets boost WP max Hp by putting three slots into HPT.

72.71 Hp/s

With IH, Regen jumps up to 1369% regen for 76.38 Hp/s
With IH and DP running that brings us a total of 121.4 Hp/s

So to regenerate more health than WP you need all the passives, and IH up.

With hasten, IH is up every 245 seconds with a 90 second period of being active which brings its inactive time 155 seconds. Two and a half minutes.

Now with all of this being said, I really have to wonder, why would I want to roll a regen again? Yes, I understand that with IO's you can increase the max hp, regen and recharge of Regen but the same cand be said of WP.
I personally have a build on Mids that has IH down to just over 60 sec recharge. Of course it would cost more than all of my other toons combined along with using incarnate powers.


Willpower has more passive regen than Regen does. Who thought that was a good idea?

Can we get a fix for Energy Melee instead of more new sets?

 

Posted

Not sure I see the point in listing all of the changes to the set that happened 4+ years ago, but I am always up for a good /Regen discussion.

I see the difference between Regen and WP as a matter of play style. WP is a set and forget set that does what it does so you don't have to. Regen gives you tools to do a little bit of everything, and you have to choose what to use and when. A good player with a good build can get a LOT out of Regen and do some amazing things, it just takes a little more focus and attention to what is going around (and to) you.

Don't be misled by the name of the set. Regen is not just about always healing really fast. It is about using a pretty deep set of reactive tools to adapt to situations as the develop.


- Xyzor, Lightning.Rod, Kagyx - Rubber Mulch / Wholesale Candy - Freedom Server

 

Posted

The reason I listed the changes was in case some of the newer folks weren't aware of all of the changes.

As far as being misled by the name of the set, I think that's kind of unfair for any newer players. Especially when you read the description of the powerset. I wouldn't mind a change to the name.


Willpower has more passive regen than Regen does. Who thought that was a good idea?

Can we get a fix for Energy Melee instead of more new sets?

 

Posted

I don't have much to say on this topic. As a small pointer, though, for detailed discussions like this it's helpful to spell out power names. Acronyms are re-used thoughout the game, so it takes a lot of concentration for me not to read portions of the opening post as having something to do with Dual Pistols.


 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Oedipus_Tex View Post
I don't have much to say on this topic. As a small pointer, though, for detailed discussions like this it's helpful to spell out power names. Acronyms are re-used thoughout the game, so it takes a lot of concentration for me not to read portions of the opening post as having something to do with Dual Pistols.
You're right of course. I've thought the same thing myself sometimes when seeing attack chains, having no clue what the attacks are.


Willpower has more passive regen than Regen does. Who thought that was a good idea?

Can we get a fix for Energy Melee instead of more new sets?

 

Posted

I have an idea here... Why not replace IH with RttC, and turn RttC into a +Res instead of +Regen, thus keeping in the respective themes of Willpower and Regeneration? Just a thought.


 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Gobbledygook View Post
I personally have a build on Mids that has IH down to just over 60 sec recharge.
Do you mean 60 sec downtime? 60s recharge is impossible due to to the recharge cap.

I'm not even qualified to have much of an opinion on /regen since I've never played it to any meaningful level, but I think comparing passive regeneration only isn't very useful, since both sets have several other things they use to stay alive.


 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Hopeling View Post
Do you mean 60 sec downtime? 60s recharge is impossible due to to the recharge cap.

I'm not even qualified to have much of an opinion on /regen since I've never played it to any meaningful level, but I think comparing passive regeneration only isn't very useful, since both sets have several other things they use to stay alive.
You're right, 60 seconds downtime.


Willpower has more passive regen than Regen does. Who thought that was a good idea?

Can we get a fix for Energy Melee instead of more new sets?

 

Posted

Some nice history, there, but you forgot a major boon that Regen has that Willpower doesn't: Reconstruction.

Using the standard slotting example you have so far, giving Reconstruction 3 Heal SOs and 3 Recharge SOs, you can heal 49% of your HP every 31 seconds.

Considering how health regeneration works (in "ticks", so 5 hp/sec may mean 10 hp every 2 seconds w/ no regen in between), being able to choose when to heal a lump sum can be beneficial. This only gets better w/ +recharge (something WP doesn't really benefit from)... in my current /regen stalker build, I heal ~55% every 20 secs, and my final build will heal ~60% every 15 seconds


 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Scirion View Post
I have an idea here... Why not replace IH with RttC, and turn RttC into a +Res instead of +Regen, thus keeping in the respective themes of Willpower and Regeneration? Just a thought.
Sorry to quote myself, but I wanted to expand slightly on what I meant by this, now that I'm not typing on my phone while at work. >.>

I think we can all agree that Regeneration (as a powerset, not the mechanic) should rely largely on Regeneration. Click heals are nice of course, but Regeneration should survive (within reason) on just that. Regeneration. Willpower as a powerset, implies (to me, at least) that you are surviving purely by the strength of your will. Your drive to keep going, no matter the odds, no matter how wounded you may be.

Thus, keeping this in mind, my suggestion would be to move Rise to the Challenge in it's current toggle form, minus the -ToHit portion, to Regeneration - replacing Instant Healing. You could even keep Instant Healing for the name. However, I would suggest increasing the endurance cost (just to throw out a number, .33/s, the same as Weave), and slightly increase the regeneration per target. Right now, if Mids is giving me the correct number (for Scrappers), RttC gives an unslotted buff of 5.58 HP/s, plus 1.39 HP/s per target. Bump it up to say, 1.8-2.2 HP/s per target (somewhere in that area), to help offset the increased endurance cost, loss of -ToHit, and coming into the set at 28 instead of 16, along with Regeneration having less forms of alternate mitigation, like Willpower does.

Also, on the note of Regeneration, we all know that Revive is a terrible terrible power. I can't think of another rez power outside of Peacebringers and Empathy that does not provide *any* sort of buff or other method of staying alive long enough to re-toggle/heal/escape combat, whatever the case may be. So, to that end, I would suggest giving Revive the +Regeneration buff that currently exists in Instant Healing (in it's current form) for 10 seconds, plus 10 seconds of the unslotted MaxHP boost of Dull Pain. Both effects would be unenhanceable. Increase the recharge of the power if needed to balance out the fact that the self rez might actually be useful in any situation where you would actually need a self rez.

Now, to handle Willpower, to account for RttC making the logical move to Regeneration. I would suggest keeping the same mechanic, but making it +Resistance instead of +Regeneration. Say, a base of 1% Resistance per target, 8 target cap. Enhanced, at 8 targets, that would be giving you (throwing out a rough, non-mathematical guess), something like 16-18% Resistance. Not alot, but it's also stacking with the ~9% from High Pain Threshold, the ~26% (to S/L/Psi) from Mind Over Body, along with Heightened Senses, etc. It could even keep the -ToHit it has right now. Logically, Willpower should concentrate largely on Resistance and MaxHP, to keep with the concept the powerset is based upon. This would help fix that.


 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Zeh_Masteh View Post
Some nice history, there, but you forgot a major boon that Regen has that Willpower doesn't: Reconstruction.

Using the standard slotting example you have so far, giving Reconstruction 3 Heal SOs and 3 Recharge SOs, you can heal 49% of your HP every 31 seconds.

Considering how health regeneration works (in "ticks", so 5 hp/sec may mean 10 hp every 2 seconds w/ no regen in between), being able to choose when to heal a lump sum can be beneficial. This only gets better w/ +recharge (something WP doesn't really benefit from)... in my current /regen stalker build, I heal ~55% every 20 secs, and my final build will heal ~60% every 15 seconds
This.

I kind of understand the conceptual complaints that lead to calling Regen "Self-Empathy," but IMHO Recon is just a massive burst of Regen available really often (at high levels of recharge).

Honestly all Regen really needs at this point is a smidge of -rech resistance. If /fire gets it, I don't see why Regen shouldn't.


 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Scirion View Post
Willpower, as a powerset implies (to me, at least) that you are surviving purely by the strength of your will. Your drive to keep going, no matter the odds, no matter how wounded you may be.
I agree with this, but part of that willpower is being able to get back up and keep going after an injury (indeed, this is arguably THE defining trait of the set, conceptually). Recovering hit points fits that. Hit points don't necessarily correspond directly to how wounded you are or aren't, only your ability to weather additional harm.
And mechanically, removing the regen from RttC for <20% resistance would gut the set. It would have no healing, low-to-moderate resists, and low-to-moderate defense. You'd have to rework the whole set for it to still be viable. Not to mention that in doing this you'd be dramatically altering the most important power in one of the most popular melee sets, even though its performance is about where it should be.
Basically, Regen's problem is not that /WP also has good regeneration. Regen has problems of its own, /WP is just an easy comparison because it's the only other set that relies so much on passive regen (but still not a very good comparison, as I said in my previous post).

As I said, I'm not qualified to have much of an opinion on /Regen, but having thought about the similarly worthless rez in /WP, another idea for Revive would be something like the Return to Battle vet power, which gives you one of every large insp buff along with the rez, like leveling up. It doesn't need a huge nuke and total invulnerability like Rise of the Phoenix, or a huge stun like Soul Transfer, but if it just did something to prevent you from dying before you finish the animation so that it was actually usable as a rez, that would be nice.


 

Posted

Would it be overpowered if you could use the rezz while still alive for quick burst healing and endurance bar boost? It has a longer recharge than the main burst heal so you couldn't do it as often, but if you healed with the main one and needed a second burst you could use that. I've suggested the same for Empathy in the past (but having that be a full endurance and hp bar heal).


 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Oedipus_Tex View Post
Would it be overpowered if you could use the rezz while still alive for quick burst healing and endurance bar boost? It has a longer recharge than the main burst heal so you couldn't do it as often, but if you healed with the main one and needed a second burst you could use that. I've suggested the same for Empathy in the past (but having that be a full endurance and hp bar heal).
Dunno if that would be OP or not, but it's an interesting suggestion.

IMHO though, I'd rather the rez be given an Untouchable status like other rez powers.


 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by MayorOfAngrytown View Post
Dunno if that would be OP or not, but it's an interesting suggestion.

IMHO though, I'd rather the rez be given an Untouchable status like other rez powers.
Yes, this.

I have discovered that I can usually use my Eye of the Magus right after the rez and it actually fires and gives me time to get up and re-toggle. Anything else I try, and as Hopeling mentioned above, I am dead again before the animation is over.


- Xyzor, Lightning.Rod, Kagyx - Rubber Mulch / Wholesale Candy - Freedom Server

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Hopeling View Post
And mechanically, removing the regen from RttC for <20% resistance would gut the set. It would have no healing, low-to-moderate resists, and low-to-moderate defense. You'd have to rework the whole set for it to still be viable. Not to mention that in doing this you'd be dramatically altering the most important power in one of the most popular melee sets, even though its performance is about where it should be.

Not necessarily. Assuming SO's, no Incarnates/Accolades/etc, on the most basic of slotting, without pool powers, you're still looking at 1,733 HP, 23.4 HP/s regen, and (rounding my proposed RttC change up to 20% at max targets for the sake of easy math) 55% S/L, 30% F/C/E/NE/Toxic Resistance. Add in Tough/Weave, and you have 73% S/L Res, just short of 10% S/L, and 21% F/C/E/NE Defense, 18% Psi Defense, 32% Psi Resistance. All values on a Scrapper.

I wouldn't call being 2% short of the S/L Resistance cap, plus a fair amount of resistance to every other (resistable) damage type in the game on top of decent MaxHP/Regen and a smidge ("a smidge" being 21% to all but S/L, still respectable all things considered) of Defense "gutted", I would call it "layered mitigation".

Add in Strength of Will every 5 minutes (IE: 2 minutes of capped S/L, 43% F/C/E/NE/Toxic Resistance every 5 minutes), and it's still looking very survivable to me, without even considering a complimentary primary (Dark Melee, Titan Weapons, Axe, Broadsword and Katana all come to mind for various reasons, to start with), or IO's/Accolades/Incarnates yet. Also, if people aren't happy with just the Resistance, there is also the option of either A) Up the Resistance per target (say, 40% max total?), or B) add in +Defense as well. Say, 20% Res/15% Def with 10 targets? I'm just giving suggestions, here. I leave the numbers to the developers.

Since I've got Mids open for the WP numbers, I swapped it over to Regen. With the same slotting, Regen gets 6% Defense across the board (from Weave), 32% S/L Resistance, 15% Resistance to F/C/E/NE/Toxic/Psi, 50 HP/s. 1,339 (Scrapper base) HP with DP down, 2,128 with DP up (65 seconds downtime). Instant Healing takes just over 5 and a half minutes to recharge, and provides 90s of 138 HP/s total regen, while MoG provides capped Def/Res for a whopping 15 seconds every 2 minutes 22 seconds. Not particularly reliable mitigation in any form. IH and MoG combine for 1 minute 45 seconds of survivability (or near-invulnerability, depending on how you look at it) out of every 7 minutes 55 seconds, leaving Reconstruction with a 31s cooldown as your main survival tool outside of zero defense, minimal Resistance, and a moderate amount of regen.

All that said, I'm not necessarily advocating changing Willpower "just because". I'm advocating buffing Regen and giving it Rise to the Challenge (that includes Stalkers, by the way), the powerset it should logically be in. WP can stay just the way it is, for all I care. I like the fact that by level 20, a WP/Ice Tank on DO's can be SK'd to 49 and solo-tank level 51 Carnies nearly indefinitely with a handful of inspirations. I actually deleted said tank because surviving was too easy. >.>


 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Scirion View Post
All that said, I'm not necessarily advocating changing Willpower "just because". I'm advocating buffing Regen and giving it Rise to the Challenge (that includes Stalkers, by the way), the powerset it should logically be in. WP can stay just the way it is, for all I care. I like the fact that by level 20, a WP/Ice Tank on DO's can be SK'd to 49 and solo-tank level 51 Carnies nearly indefinitely with a handful of inspirations. I actually deleted said tank because surviving was too easy. >.>
Tanks survive. That's their gimmick


BrandX Future Staff Fighter
The BrandX Collection

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by BrandX View Post
If IH became a toggle again, Id be in love! ^_^
Same here. People say it would be overpowered, but if you look at regen and wp, wp has a toggle that gives nearly the same bonus as IH in a toggle. Plus Wp has a passive +hp, decent res and def included in its powerset without having to dip into power pools. The power pools help it that much more. Doesn't Wp also have -regen resistance? Did regen get that in it's latest update?


Willpower has more passive regen than Regen does. Who thought that was a good idea?

Can we get a fix for Energy Melee instead of more new sets?

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Gobbledygook View Post
Wishlist: Regeneration is the only secondary set that does not have some sort of resistance to the debuff that affects its main strength, in this case Recharge or Regen. from several people – 2009-10-07
Fast Healing has Regen Debuff resistance (25.95% at level 50)


Deamus the Fallen - 50 DM/EA Brute - Lib
Dragos Bahtiam - 50 Fire/Ice Blaster - Lib
/facepalm - Apply Directly to the Forehead!
Formally Dragos_Bahtiam - Abbreviate to DSL - Warning, may contain sarcasm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Shubbie View Post
Im very good at taking a problem and making it worse.

 

Posted

RTTC is nowhere remotely close to the IH toggle as people remember it, i.e. six slotted with golgis back when that meant something. I don't remember if its base was initially 600% or the full 800% regen (or was it 1000%?) but you ended up packing either 1800% or 2400% regen with all said and done. RTTC is nice but old IH is never going to happen again for a variety of fairly obvious reasons. See the uptime of rebirth's ultra-regen period for a window into what the devs currently consider to the maximum allowable buff level for a single player power.


 

Posted

Even without Hami-Os back in the days of IH-toggle I was able to solo every AV in the game, iirc (there may have been 1 or 2 I couldn't kill, but I could fight any one of them indefinitely). While I absolutely loved it, I have to admit that it was insanely OPed.


- Xyzor, Lightning.Rod, Kagyx - Rubber Mulch / Wholesale Candy - Freedom Server

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle View Post
RTTC is nowhere remotely close to the IH toggle as people remember it, i.e. six slotted with golgis back when that meant something. I don't remember if its base was initially 600% or the full 800% regen (or was it 1000%?) but you ended up packing either 1800% or 2400% regen with all said and done. RTTC is nice but old IH is never going to happen again for a variety of fairly obvious reasons. See the uptime of rebirth's ultra-regen period for a window into what the devs currently consider to the maximum allowable buff level for a single player power.
Which is part of the reason Devs claim that the game is balanced around SO's. Looking at equal slotting, with SO's they are indeed comparable. So why not make IH a toggle again.


Willpower has more passive regen than Regen does. Who thought that was a good idea?

Can we get a fix for Energy Melee instead of more new sets?

 

Posted

I think regen does need some love.

My thoughts:

* It needs more resistance vs -regen effects
* It needs a little scaling damage resistance as your health goes down (like SR) to help survive massive alphas.
* Revive needs to be worthwhile. In keeping with regen it should provide a temporary large regen +recovery effect and some strong damage resistance
* It needs good resistance vs -recharge
* I think it needs some resistance to -recovery


 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Gobbledygook View Post
Which is part of the reason Devs claim that the game is balanced around SO's. Looking at equal slotting, with SO's they are indeed comparable. So why not make IH a toggle again.
They're only comparable when RTTC is fully saturated. That means you definitely have ten targets in melee range at your peak regeneration with WP. Making IH a toggle without reducing it in some way means you get performance better than that with zero enemies in range. Clearly that isn't balanced by any recent standard.

What I suspect would happen if IH were made into a toggle again is that it would get its old ~.7 EPS cost back but it would be reduced to 200% unenhanceable, 50% enhanceable regen. Something along those lines. So for permanence, you would be sacrificing most of its current potential. Frankly I prefer it how it is now compared to just being an even paler shadow of its former self. The advantage to click IH that nobody talks about is how much cheaper it became end-wise, as well. Plus, it just fits in well with regen's new style as "the super clicky set." Taking clicks away now would mess with its identity.

Not saying regen couldn't possibly be buffed but toggle IH doesn't seem like a good approach.