aethereal

We see that in practice, this does not nearly make up for the Tanker advantage. Those people don't actually care about melee classes, to the extent that they believe this they can play Blasters and Corruptors. It's also broadly sophistry. People are like, "Four star content is the hardest in the game." Sure, by some measure, but it's hard in a very specific way (and a way that was specifically designed to undervalue mitigation in general and defense in particular). It's not representative of the rest of the game. This is kinda like saying, "The hardest thing in baseball is to do a super-fastball pitch (arguably true), so we don't need to care about whether someone can hit or catch a ball." Perhaps true if you only care about pitchers, but ignores 90% of the game.

This is a fundamentally bad lens for analysis. Yes, Tanker caps are the same for resistance/defense as Brutes -- but Tankers have a much, much easier time reaching those caps. This gives them vastly more build versatility than Brutes. It can make Tankers higher damage mitigation than Brutes (the Tanker can reach one cap and then build towards a second one in a way that Brutes simply can't achieve), or they can build overcap in various ways (Tankers certainly have a much easier time hitting incarnate softcap than Brutes do), or they can build for offense. Tanker's durability advantages can't be "free." They're a massive advantage that can be (imperfectly) traded off for other build goals. (I also think it's a mistake to imagine that Tankers will not, at some point in the future, be able to trade their inherent durability for offense. Procs might be nerfed in some way, but unless they nerf them specifically by only allowing one proc to be slotted per power, Tankers will still be able to fit more of them.)

Procs are a huge, huge, perhaps dominant, feature of CoH's meta across every AT. That's perhaps the exact reason why you can't say, "Well, before we do anything else, first we have to fix procs." Like, you think that people are upset in this thread, wait until every single engaged builder in on the boards turns out to post fifty times each about their feelings on your proposed proc fix. But it's also just straightforwardly true that large target caps are a big deal, they've been a big deal everywhere, and Tankers who get enlarged AoE areas and relaxed target caps without any loss of base damage to their AoE attacks have a huge advantage, even without procs.

Is there any chance that you're doing this against some kind of exotic mob that has huge Hold Resistance?

Yes.

Could it be intended as an AFK Farming nerf? Just trying to think about what situations people might do fairly low chip damage to a large number of mobs in a way that some might deem problematic.

I appreciate that concept, but the low-level powers for Regeneration are so underwhelming. When I did a lowbie Regenerator (before these changes that we're testing), Dull Pain was my panic-button power, the way Instant Healing later was, where it bailed me out when I was in over my head. It's not great -- the recharge is indeed too long for a lowbie -- but it was an okay compromise. If you don't want to move Second Wind down to T1-4, then consider moving Ailment Resistance earlier, or even Integration. I agree that Ailment Resistance + Restoration feels decent -- I noticed that in my testing, Restoration felt a lot better once I had Ailment Resistance. I think the core of the problem here is that Fast Healing and Quick Recovery are both low-end powers that are just not impressive, Restoration is fine but not really good until you get both Ailment Resistance and some recharge, and of the first four powers, only Ailment Resistance really feels impactful. I don't totally understand keeping Fast Healing and Recovery unchanged in a medium revamp of the set. It feels like even with the other improvements, Regen has some power budget to spare, and something to up both the power level (minorly) and the charisma (majorly) of the first half of the powerset would be welcome.

The gap narrows a lot if you increase the damage buff (because Tankers get more per percent of damage buff), and especially if you give them both procs. But the big juice for Tankers in terms of damage comparison with Brutes isn't in apples-to-apples comparisons (150% damage buff + 2 procs each, say). It's that Tankers have a (much) easier time fitting more procs in their attacks while hitting any given durability goal.

I'll do another +1 on Dull Pain's usage going from reactive early, when it can't be perma'd, to proactive late when it can. And Second Wind + Ailment Resistance is a good change which gets you half of the max HP earlier, and which also frees up your Second Wind usage to be somewhat more flexible by not pushing you as hard into the "you shouldn't care about the heal, just the max HP" paradigm. But then Second Wind comes super late in the set. Anyway, I did a little testing at 30, with better slotting, and predictably my endurance woes go away at this stage. Right now, MoG and Second Wind are in the somewhat frustrating "very low uptime" mode, but that's not really something that you can do anything about, it's just the City of Heroes global recharge situation.

Yes, it only has been for 15 years or whatever.

To some extent, sure. Longer and less powerful, but with a somewhat similar use case. But Regen is the reactive click set. It's gonna have several different powers with similar functions. Like, nobody complains that all of SR's powers are duplicates of each other except for different categories of defense. Why would it be a dealbreaker for regen to have powers of similar broad function but different details?

I really want to make the case that the basic problem with Instant Healing was just its duration versus its recharge. So its recharge was/is 650 seconds, its duration is 90 seconds. If you're slotted for 250% recharge (like: 180% for perma-hasten + 70% for near-maxed local recharge), then it has 185 second recharge, so a touch less than 50% uptime. 50% uptime isn't bad! It's a powerful power. But the problem is that 90 second duration. Since this isn't a power you can perma or come close to perma, you want to be strategic about using it. Once you use it, you have three minutes until you can click it again, even with level 50 kinds of recharge. So you use it sparingly. You build around mostly not needing instant healing and then use it to push you over the line. But that kind of use case almost certainly doesn't need to be 90 seconds. Probably in 15 seconds, you've pushed past whatever problem you had and now you're back in your default case of "you're doing okay." The remaining let's say 60-75 seconds of the power are largely wasted. And then you have 95 seconds without it. This means that you try not to click it until it's a real emergency, but Instant Healing actually struggles with really deep emergencies, it wants a little buffer to work with -- it is after all a regeneration power, it operates over time. If the power had a 30 second duration, and a 240 second recharge base, then the same 250% recharge assumption would put it at 68 second cooldown, so 30 seconds up and 38 seconds down. You could then use it to get yourself out of trouble with a spawn, back up to full health, and then have it available reasonably quickly again. The result of that is you feel better about clicking it when you start to need it, instead of trying to save it, and 30 seconds is almost certainly long enough to get yourself out of any trouble that you're going to get out of. Honestly, I think that simple a change to Instant Healing would be better than Reactive Regeneration, and better at making Regen feel unique.

Huh, well, maybe I'm wrong.

You're misunderstanding where to-hit checks exist. You seem to think it goes like this: Gather up all targets in area > roll to hits against them in some order > when a to-hit results in a hit, deduct the 1 from remaining target cap > stop when either you run out of targets or target cap hits the appropriate value. But it doesn't. It goes like this: Gather up all targets in area > if there are more than the target cap, remove from the target list any over the target cap > then roll to-hits against the remaining targets (if you miss, they still take up target cap) EDIT: I guess if you just remove the thing about to-hit, what you basically mean is you want the logic for excluding targets from the area when you need to cut the list down to the target cap to prioritize non-mezzed targets. I believe (but am not totally sure) that right now it just looks at distance from the center-point of the target. I don't imagine that a code change to intro mez status into the target cap selection process is in the cards, but it's an interesting idea!

That's not how target cap works: The game selects a number of targets in the area equal to the cap (if there are more targets in the area than the cap), then rolls to hit checks against them, it doesn't like roll-to-hit, then only if it's a hit does it count against the target cap.

8' radius autopower/toggle with 3.5 PPM proc rate: 31% 12' radius autopower/toggle with 3.5 PPM proc rate: 25% (Chance is checked every 10 seconds in each case, and it's per target. So approximately 1/4 of your targets will be hit by your proc every 10th second, rather than a little less than 1/3rd.)

It's really great how responsive Cobalt Arachne is.

I leveled to 25 and got Reactive Regeneration, three-slotted it, and put in Harmonized Healing. -------- I started off by pushing difficulty to +1/x4 doing the Unholy Masquerade mission or whatever it's called from the Freaklok arc. I died a lot, but, like, that mission is really annoying? So I started the Roy Cooling arc and did the first mission there (still at +1/x4). So, first of all, personal idiosyncratic feedback: I don't really like that Reactive Regeneration is a toggle. I'd have preferred a click power (but not instant healing, which has just a garbage combo of long recharge and long duration). I think that some of the charm in Regeneration is having only one toggle, it makes it stand out. I particularly think it's kinda weird in the set as it is currently constituted that what will ultimately be a pretty click-heavy set only has one click in until you hit the last few powers. I imagine that most people will disagree with me here, but for whatever it's worth, I think a click would be more fun than the toggle. More universal feedback: Reactive Regeneration felt relatively strong, but I didn't get much flavor from it. Its baseline regeneration seems like it swamps the reactive regeneration it gives. My normal regen was about 35 health per second, and when I was fully in the middle of a mob and topping out the reactive regeneration, it was 45 health per second. I mean, that's not a bad amount of difference per se, but it was hard to feel viscerally. Since it ticks up pretty slowly (two seconds), it was still pretty easy to get overwhelmed. It did have a nice synchronous play with Restoration, I often felt like, "Oh, Restoration gives me the breathing room for Reactive Regen to come up to speed," but just the speed it came up to was kinda underwhelming. Regen still feels thresholded at this level: one spawn was no real problem, but two spawns went very rapidly to dead. This is always a problem with Regen and maybe it's part of the intended flavor of the set, but to me it #feelsbad that there's such a thin line between "you're not in any trouble at all" and "you're dead." I was thinking Reactive Regen would help with this, but at least at this level I didn't really feel it. I also continue to have endurance problems -- I was chewing blue insps all through the mission. This is no doubt due partially to my (intentionally) lackluster slotting, and like all endurance problems in CoH it'll work itself out as enhancement values become better and slots become more plentiful, but it's kinda annoying. Bottom line: With Reactive Regen and Ailment Resistance, regen feels reasonably sturdy (in a way that's positive compared to the old set), but at this level not really very interesting or distinctive.

According to @macskull the Tanker inherent taunt does not drop off, so you can control aggro pretty effectively even if you're doing lousy to your last several targets.

Level 20/21: I slotted 4 of one of the Brute ATOs, and 5 of Harmonized Healing in Restoration, all of Bruising Blow in a couple of attacks, then I put SO level 20 healing and accuracies in powers that wanted them. Still not fully enhanced, but pretty close. ----- I did the first two missions of the Freaklok arc (Agent Watkins), still on 0/x3. Definitely having more powers and slotting them made a difference. I remained pretty insp-dependent on the first mission, with heavy-hitting Vazhilok doing a lot of damage. On the second mission, mostly Freaks, they were embarrassingly unable to move my health bar, but I kept running out of endurance, and had to manage that pretty carefully, which was... not bad, but less good than I would've imagined for an armor set with only one toggle and an endurance tool even if it's a bad one (seriously, can we please replace Quick Recovery?) Anyhow especially when I leveled partway through mission 2, it was pretty lol-worthy. I just facerolled Dubstitch at the end with no insp defense. His Zoombies and sneaky champions and he himself did get me to fairly low health, but I took him out fast. Regeneration definitely feels better than it did on live (I played basically this same character through solo levelling on live). Like, I think it took me into the 30s before I was doing 0/x3 on this character on live. Amazing the difference that Ailment Resistance makes, as I think that's the only real difference I've so far actually encountered in the new set. Since I'm still only really testing ailment resistance, I think I'll push my level again and try to get to some of the new powers.

Okay, so my lowbie adventures continue: I did the Chernobog and, uh... whatever the next EB mission is called, with the female Skull who teleports in and out to attack the councilwoman? Whatever. Both at 0/x3 with solo bosses turned on. 0/x3 is pretty rough for lowbie Regen that's slotted with just a smattering of DOs. The EBs themselves are pretty easy for me with Energy Melee, but the normal mobs require about two orange/purple insps to survive for the most part. That feels about right? Like, trying to do that difficulty level at levels 10, 11, and 12 with bad enhancements feels about right. ---- Ailment Resistance feels like the first Regen power that actually #feelsgood. It's not a dramatic difference in survivability, but it gives you a little buffer to eat insps/click Restoration before you go down. It makes Restoration better as well, I assume. I put one DO healing enhancement in it -- I'm not sure it makes sense to slot heavily with its only-half-enhancibility? And... that was basically it for Regen at those levels, I picked up I think Quick Recovery at level 12, after the missions were over. Getting knocked around was getting annoying in the latter missions. Next up: I raised myself to level 20, picked up Integration (huzzah!) and the auto-power that gives resist damage/resist stun. I'm going to actually slot some enhancements, which is how I'd normally do it if I were levelling myself solo (I buy attuned sets early) and find some mission to do. More later.

It is genuinely startling how much of the meta of City of Heroes turns almost entirely on the hinge of procs. Like, think about just how much the falloff in performance of Tanks in this patch comes from going from "given favorable treatment in terms of proc chances" to "given normal treatment in terms of proc chances." Think of how much of the performance in Tanks is dependent on their ability to fit more procs into a functional build than other classes. Here, I think it is definitely not crazy to prefer the patch 1 version of seeds to patch 2 -- that says a LOT about how big a deal procs are. Any change to procs would definitely be super controversial exactly because they are so extremely powerful, but it's hard for me to see how they aren't taking up too much design space.

Oh, ooops, just got to level 10 and realized that Ailment Resistance is just one power after Quick Recovery: obviously that means that swapping them isn't very impactful -- I had in my head that it was much later. Ailment Resistance feels noticeable in the early game in a way that the T1-4 powers do not. Character is running smoother now.

Okay, some low-level testing: I made an Energy Melee/Regen brute. Did a little street-sweeping in Atlas -- unsurprisingly, that went fine, got a couple of levels, normal stuff. Leveled myself to seven and did the Toothbreaker Jones mission at +0/x2, slotted with just the prestige enhancements from START. Toothbreaker mission went very smoothly, leveled up to 8 during it. Picked up Whirling Hands and did the next mission at 8 -- kinda stupidly died in ambush by hitting an attack instead of a green insp. Finished that mission with a level up to 9. I'm going to keep going through much of the Skulls arc, then probably jump ahead to 20. ------------- Initial thoughts: I've only taken two regen powers at this point, Fast Healing and Reconstruction. As usual, Reconstruction unslotted (or now I have one DO green enhancment) and with no global recharge feels awkward, but that's just the nature of CoH -- you can't really have a click power feel good at lowbie levels of recharge without being overpowered at 50 levels of recharge. Taking just two armor powers in the first 10 levels is also not unusual for me at least -- gotta actually have some attacks -- but I will say that Regen's powers made that easy. Honestly, I barely took Fast Healing. The lowbie set of powers in Regen are super, super uninspiring, and feel like they are (still) a holdover from the early game. Like, having Fast Healing and Quick Recovery I'm sure felt good in a world in which Health was at level 14 and Stamina was 20 and you had to burn one of your precious lowbie power slots on hurdle or whatever, but in the modern game it's like, "Do these things even do anything?" Reconstruction eventually is a good solid power, but as a lowbie it's underwhelming as previously mentioned. I'd honestly like to see Quick Recovery replaced with something better. It's just a bad power in today's game. A click endurance power would almost certainly be better. But if it's going to have to stay, maybe it could switch positions with Ailment Resistance? Getting some max hp buff in the early game would be welcome. It also continues to feel bad that Reconstruction is such a mediocre self-heal, outclassed by lots of other click heals in lots of other armor sets. Just like, giving it some kind of cute effect to make it stand out from other click heals would be nice for the Regen experience, even if it wasn't super impactful. Obviously all of this is not the biggest deal in the world -- these levels fly by and many players literally won't even experience them, either just get power-leveled in some way or another or do easy content like DFB past this point.

I think that Second Wind should exist in the old Dull Pain slot (ie, the T4 power), not the old Revive slot (the T8). Being able to stand yourself back up after death is an iconic Regeneration thing to do! And it's more useful early in your career than late. Having another reactive heal is also useful early.