Why is health regen so bad?

[DragonMasterHawk]

Tome in general seems to err on the side of uselessly low permanent (or sustainable) regen effects. You commonly see equipment with things like "+0.7 health regen", and Fast Metabolism gives you 5 health regen at the cost of 5 whole points!

Tome is not really a game of long-term attrition. You have many short skirmishes, and you are generally back up to 100% on all of your resources inbetween, barring special resources like hate, vim, and negative. This means that regen effects need to be effective and satisfying for short term attrition.

But then, maybe I'm misunderstanding something and/or devaluing something. So, discuss--is health regen really as shitty as I think it is?

[Crim, The Red Thunder]

Nah, it's not that bad. You're forgetting healmod, which adjusts your regen, and often comes stacked with it. You're also forgetting some skills that base themselves OFF your regen (the sudden growth from the fungus tree) and a varity of high-grade items later on. (Goedelath Rock, Lifebinding Emerald, a few artifact armors) I've even seen a ring with +2 health regen, later on in the game. (Just a random ego!)

Start stacking from multiple sources (and from regen infusions too) and you can start to get a decent amount. Enough that all the minor mooks aren't any longer a threat. Is it enough to make you take it over better armor? Probably not. It's just an extra kind of mitigation. And you also forget that some races don't GET better healing. Ghoul in particular is limited to regen rate and ONE iffy talent for healing.

So yeah. Regen rate can be useful, but outside of special circumstances involving huge stacks, it's not a top of the heap aspect to focus on.

[donkatsu]

It's more that certain health regen talents and egos are tragically small. Fast Metabolism, as you mentioned, is really bad and no feasibly attainable amount of healmod is going to save it. +0.7 life/turn is negligible, sort of like the +3% cold resistance stuff you see once in a while. Just pretend they're not there. However, the mechanic as a whole is okay, and there are some regen talents that are actually very good, such as the Berserker one.

[BoomFrog]

That's the problem. It's better than nothing but its never what anyone ever is looking for. Healing mod % is fabulous, and with that and regen infusions and fungus your regen can be great. But the +5 to 10 from items and 5 talent points is nothing compared to the 50-70 per turn from a regen infusion.

I've had extended cat and mouse boss fights that lasted 50 turns or more, but even then the 250 health from 5/5 combat veteran is not impressive for the talent points invested.

[donkatsu]

That's more of a specific problem with Fast Metabolism, then. I suggested a while back that the regen from Fast Metabolism should scale off of Constitution, because a static amount of life regen gets relatively worse and worse as you progress and enemies start to deal more damage. It's the only talent of its kind that depends solely on talent level. If it was just changed to say, a flat 10 life per turn per talent level, it would become decent endgame but way too good early game. Fast Metabolism must scale off of something, and Constitution seems pretty intuitive.

[pheonix89]

Tome in general seems to err on the side of uselessly low permanent (or sustainable) regen effects. You commonly see equipment with things like "+0.7 health regen", and Fast Metabolism gives you 5 health regen at the cost of 5 whole points!

Tome is not really a game of long-term attrition. You have many short skirmishes, and you are generally back up to 100% on all of your resources inbetween, barring special resources like hate, vim, and negative. This means that regen effects need to be effective and satisfying for short term attrition.

But then, maybe I'm misunderstanding something and/or devaluing something. So, discuss--is health regen really as shitty as I think it is?

Truely passive health regen is that bad. Faking it with a couple of highend regen infusions and proper use of the fungus tree and +heal mod gear is gloriously OP. 11 generic points (5/1/5 distribution) and going AM gets you constant disgustingly high regen, the infusions cost a fraction of a turn if that thanks to the third fungus talent, and you're restoring equilibrium like crazy. 5 equilibrium/turn, thats enough for a wyrmic to spam their basic specials without gaining equilibrium. Oh, and the fourth skill is a monsterous spike heal. Starts at 620% of your regen rate, which is itself gonna be upwards of 100 by midgame, for easily 3/4 of your life bar.

[SageAcrin]

There's some buffs to Fast Metabolism in SVN, probably due to this thread. I approve of them.

Having said that, I do have to note that not all regen should compete with Fungus. Fungus takes a very notable investment(Antimagic) for most classes, as well as a fair deal of Generic and either multiple infusion slots or good luck to maintain.

Sure, eventually the values are "60+ healing a turn" and really good. But heavy investment, heavy reward.

Equipment works on a much lower investment scale, and the rewards should be correspondingly less. They might be too low, overall, don't get me wrong, but equipment shouldn't have huge bonuses on the order of 5+ life regen, in general. Each point of regen can be thought of as mitigating that much damage a turn, and allowing someone to stack tons of regen/healmod can easily get out of control in this regard.

Especially as it already enables one of the better playstyles for physical fighters(Fungus) to start with.

[Canderel]

Svn changes is stamina = 1 per point, and health = 2.5 per point. Also it scales with tree mastery.

[lukep]

Nice. I was getting 15-20 regen on some of my characters before, now I should be able to get almost 30.

[SageAcrin]

Honestly, the part I like about it is that it's a benefit to AM playstyle that doesn't aid mindmages.

The playstyle that appreciates heavy regeneration and life modifier most is AM-this gives a good way to produce a higher constant "defense" of regeneration, and a conditionless layer as well, but it only really applies to characters that get this category...which are physical fighters.

[HousePet]

And better yet, we also get to see how the new passives function works.

[supermini]

So, with the svn changes, you get to run momentum without stamina drain quite easily...Or am I missing something?

If that's the case you might want to consider the stamina drain to be on each attack rather than a flat -x/turn.

[SageAcrin]

In fairness, I believe regeneration only happens on the global turn, not the subjective, so Momentum would still show a net disadvantage. (Wait, does Momentum just apply a -regen or does it apply a differing effect? If it does just apply -regen, you're right...)

Regardless, Momentum's borderline overly powerful and this would be a good time to make that change, probably, given that it's much more sustainable with the Stamina regen gains.

[Narilera]

I love health regen. Early on when I play berserkers I prioritize regen+heal mod for everything i can get those things on.

I've found that combined with vitality and the stacked heal mod it adds up and significantly increases your survivability.

Not so good later on perhaps, but if you rush fungal tree you can ride the regen survivability up to lvl 30 at least.


My berserker died around 35. I foolishly attempted to clear the room of death. made a single misclick. all 1200 hit points of me went boom that turn.

[Strongpoint]

Berserker is quite strange choice for a regeneration tank, because berserkers aren't attrition class. Bullwark and brawler work better for max constitution, maxed vitality, fast metabolism and regen items stacking route.

In fact one of my planned characters for 1.05 is a dwarf brawler with maxed health regen , saves and conditioning tree