Regen! A discussion.

Part of the reason I listed all of the changes at the beginning was to illustrate that with the way things work today (ED GDN) that regen performing like that most likely wouldn't happen. I freely admit to being terrible at math though.

Honestly, I feel this thread is becoming less and less helpful: it's degenerated into "Regen sucks b/c my Regen keeps dying" vs. "Regen is fine b/c my Regen never dies" posts (note: I'm guilty of this as well ).

I say, we hit the restart button, and try to be more constructive than "I [don't] die!" posts:

If you feel regen needs some help, why do you think it's lacking and how can it be made better?

Maybe putting up some builds (SOs as well as decked out IO) for comparison so those of us that think Regen is invincible can help those that think it's squishy?


Thank you for this. The original intent is to be a DISCUSSION, not a contest to see who has the biggest E Peen.

Hey, if somebody gives Regen recovery debuff resists, I'm not going to gripe. I'm pretty happy with most buffs to anything, even if I don't think they are particularly what they need most. I just go from the perspective that I'm never likely to get everything asked for, and so I'd be more interested in either recharge debuff resistance (probably not likely, but hey, Fiery Aura got it) or an up-front heal in IH (in addition to strong +regen).

I wouldn't mind if they got rid of the unenhanceable +regen in Integration, but I could live with it if they didn't. Folks who build for higher passive regen and less for massive +recharge might disagree.

I do like the passive regen in integration, and I would like it more if it were actually enhanceable...

Based on the analysis I did above for L/S, I'm pretty sure SO'd Regen would handily beat SO'd pre-buffs EA, not counting their "oh crap" powers. That's possibly even for energy damage, which is saying something.

It'd have to do a much more complex analysis to figure out what they could both do with IOs. I'd have to give the Regen build IOs too, and to do that equitably I'd have to pick some shared primary. I'd also need to start including the effects of recharge, since IO'd regen starts to get access to much more.

In short, that's not something I'm going before I go to bed tonight.

Edit: It's also hard to account for the energy drain in EA, and always has been. I don't know enough about how it affects DPS to model it even in the very rough, averages-only way I did the accounting up above. It always did something for EA, but there was very little agreement on how much.

Okay, so I've done some homework (not my *real* homework that's due Friday, though ) and came up w/ two SO-only builds to use by comparison.

The first is a Stone/Regen Brute, fully slotted. It has 30 slots in its secondary (including the initial slots), and every /Regen power was taken.

The second is a Stone/WP Brute, only secondary slotted. It has 27 slots in its secondary (including initial slots), and every /WP power was taken.

Differences that I found? They have the same recovery, but WP drains more endurance due to more toggles. WP obviously has more resist and more defense for the same amount of investment.

As for HP regeneration:
WP, w/ RttC and 6 enemies surrounding gains ~58 HP/s
WP, w/ RttC fully saturated gains ~71 HP/s.
Regen, w/ no Instant Healing, no Dull Pain, gains ~33 HP/s.
After activating Dull Pain, which has only a minute downtime w/o Hasten, Regen bumps up to ~52.5 HP/s

Woe unto Regen! , unless you count Reconstruction: w/o Hasten, Reconstruction heals for 730 HP every 30 seconds. You may not want to count this in the calculation (I would), but if you do, it comes out to +~24 HP/s

All said and done, 2/3rds of the time (DP being 2 mins up, 1 min down), Regen is a *little* better than WP on passive regeneration, even on fully saturated RttC, even w/o touching Instant Healing, and 1/3rd of the time being pretty handily worse than WP.

By the by, Instant Healing is up for 1.5 minutes, down for 4 minutes, which is comparable to Strength of Will being up 2 minutes, down for 3 minutes.

My verdict: Regen is about as good Willpower, but takes more effort. Also, Willpower is a smooth ride that never gets any better or worse, whereas Regen has it's great spells and it's not-so-great spells.., which is exactly what everyone's known all along!

Here's the build:

Villain Plan by Mids' Villain Designer 1.951
http://www.cohplanner.com/

Click this DataLink to open the build!

SO Regen 30: Level 50 Magic Brute
Primary Power Set: Stone Melee
Secondary Power Set: Regeneration
Power Pool: Fighting
Power Pool: Leadership
Power Pool: Speed
Ancillary Pool: Arctic Mastery

Villain Profile:
Level 1: Stone Mallet -- EndRdx(A), Acc(40), Dmg(40), Dmg(40), RechRdx(43)
Level 1: Fast Healing -- Heal(A), Heal(3), Heal(3)
Level 2: Reconstruction -- RechRdx(A), RechRdx(5), RechRdx(5), Heal(7), Heal(7), Heal(9)
Level 4: Quick Recovery -- EndMod(A), EndMod(9)
Level 6: Heavy Mallet -- EndRdx(A), RechRdx(34), Acc(36), Dmg(36), Dmg(36)
Level 8: Fault -- EndRdx(A), Acc(37), Dsrnt(37), RechRdx(37), Dsrnt(39)
Level 10: Dull Pain -- Heal(A), Heal(13), Heal(13), RechRdx(15), RechRdx(15), RechRdx(17)
Level 12: Build Up -- RechRdx(A), RechRdx(21)
Level 14: Boxing -- Acc(A)
Level 16: Integration -- EndRdx(A), Heal(17), Heal(19), EndRdx(19)
Level 18: Seismic Smash -- RechRdx(A), EndRdx(33), Dmg(33), Dmg(34), Acc(34)
Level 20: Resilience -- ResDam(A), ResDam(21)
Level 22: Maneuvers -- EndRdx(A), EndRdx(23), DefBuff(23), DefBuff(25)
Level 24: Tough -- EndRdx(A), EndRdx(25), ResDam(27), ResDam(27)
Level 26: Weave -- EndRdx(A), EndRdx(31), DefBuff(31), DefBuff(33)
Level 28: Instant Healing -- RechRdx(A), RechRdx(29), RechRdx(29)
Level 30: Hasten -- RechRdx(A), RechRdx(31)
Level 32: Tremor -- EndRdx(A), EndRdx(43), Acc(46), RechRdx(46), RechRdx(46)
Level 35: Revive -- RechRdx(A)
Level 38: Moment of Glory -- RechRdx(A), RechRdx(39), RechRdx(39)
Level 41: Block of Ice -- Hold(A), Hold(42), RechRdx(42), Acc(42), RechRdx(43)
Level 44: Shiver -- Acc(A), RechRdx(45), RechRdx(45), EndRdx(45)
Level 47: Ice Storm -- Dmg(A), Dmg(48), Dmg(48), RechRdx(48), RechRdx(50), RechRdx(50)
Level 49: Tactics -- EndRdx(A), EndRdx(50)
------------
Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Fury
Level 1: Sprint -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A)
Level 4: Ninja Run
Level 2: Swift -- Run(A)
Level 2: Health -- Heal(A), Heal(11)
Level 2: Hurdle -- Jump(A)
Level 2: Stamina -- EndMod(A), EndMod(11)



..Aaand, the second:

Villain Plan by Mids' Villain Designer 1.951
http://www.cohplanner.com/

Click this DataLink to open the build!

SO WillP 27: Level 50 Magic Brute
Primary Power Set: Stone Melee
Secondary Power Set: Willpower
Power Pool: Fighting
Power Pool: Leadership

Villain Profile:
Level 1: [Empty]
Level 1: High Pain Tolerance -- ResDam(A), ResDam(7), Heal(7), Heal(9)
Level 2: Mind Over Body -- ResDam(A), ResDam(9), EndRdx(11), EndRdx(11)
Level 4: Fast Healing -- Heal(A), Heal(5), Heal(5)
Level 6: Boxing -- Empty(A)
Level 8: [Empty]
Level 10: Indomitable Will -- EndRdx(A)
Level 12: [Empty]
Level 14: Tough -- ResDam(A), ResDam(15), EndRdx(15), EndRdx(17)
Level 16: Rise to the Challenge -- EndRdx(A), EndRdx(17), Heal(19), Heal(19), ToHitDeb(21), ToHitDeb(23)
Level 18: Weave -- EndRdx(A), EndRdx(23), DefBuff(25), DefBuff(25)
Level 20: Quick Recovery -- EndMod(A), EndMod(21)
Level 22: [Empty]
Level 24: [Empty]
Level 26: Maneuvers -- EndRdx(A), EndRdx(27), DefBuff(27), DefBuff(31)
Level 28: Heightened Senses -- EndRdx(A), EndRdx(29), DefBuff(29), DefBuff(31)
Level 30: [Empty]
Level 32: [Empty]
Level 35: Resurgence -- RechRdx(A)
Level 38: Strength of Will -- ResDam(A), ResDam(39)
Level 41: [Empty]
Level 44: [Empty]
Level 47: [Empty]
Level 49: Tactics -- EndRdx(A), EndRdx(50)
------------
Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Fury
Level 1: Sprint -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A)
Level 4: Ninja Run
Level 2: Swift -- Run(A)
Level 2: Health -- Heal(A), Heal(3)
Level 2: Hurdle -- Jump(A)
Level 2: Stamina -- EndMod(A), EndMod(3)

Just finished running 5 trials tonight on my regen scrapper...had a blast...got lots of good salvage and for the most part we won.

I would just like to say...when you're on your "A game" with a regen...it is a thing of beauty...the only time I died all night was in a Keyes when we failed because there were too many people getting disintegrated...(lots of new players in that run and the league was only minimum number of players)...and that was at the end when Anti-Matter annihilated everyone and the entire team wiped because we failed.

I still say recovery debuff resists would be great though...

Something I've always wished regen had is a reactive regeneration power, something like the reverse of the caregiver day job power (http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Caregiver_Badge). Imagine having a power that grants a modest regeneration bonus, but when you are attacked, it grants a much larger bonus for a few seconds. It goes against the whole "no downtime" idea of the set, but in return could allow it to be less hands-on, a complaint I've been noticing a lot as of late. You would end up with distinct in and out-of-combat performance levels, as well, which I assume is desirable from a balancing standpoint.

The reason why I never brought it up was because the massive def and res that you were once capable of getting was one of the reasons that regen was looked at so hard by the Devs.

It wasn't regen that was the real issue, it was regen combined with tough+weave+cj.

Well, IIRC, back in those days the highest difficulty setting was equivalent to something like +2/x1 in todays standards...but it was far more difficult then versus now on an equivalent setting. And used to be when you SK'ed you wanted to be about 6-8 levels lower than the person who SK'ed you for XP purposes...now you end up just one level lower...no matter what...and if you got too far away on map even you lost your SK until you got back close enough to the hero you were sidekicked to.

I had Tough, but back then weave didn't matter really...I didn't bother with fitness...with IH toggled and DP and hasten permanent while running tough...lmao...you could solo max diff all day long on regen...I watched tanks go down around me more than one occasion and they were asking me what powers I took...lol...REGEN..."oh...that one...yeah I heard it was good but wow."