What is the value of Health Regen Traits?

[Holdur]

Let me start by saying that while I do not own the game, I have played a lot of the demo and had a lot of fun with it, but I promised myself that if the the team didn't change the way health regen worked, I'd just avoid the game at all. That being said, I do like to keep an open mind so I'm curious to see if I missed anything regarding this category of trait.

Looking at streams, things don't seem to have changed, the HP regen traits give you 0.1 to 0.2 regen per second that means it takes from 5 to 10 levels to get to one point of HP per second, and for some classes you'd have to rely on the class trait to achieve that. When your max HP is on the several hundreds for most classes and each hit you take, removes from 30 to 60 HP. That means, with 5 to 10 points invested in a category of trait it it could take a full minute to regen a single hit.

Now let's say you are on the last 6 minutes of the mach, have been hit a lot and need to regen most of your HP. That could take 10 minutes.

You'd be better off trying to rely on the RNG from potions by memorizing the breakable objects locations on the match and running in between them as fast as possible with + movement speed traits. Or use the instant regen from picking a + max heath trait which almost acts like a health potion. The caveat is that these two traits actually have extra utility by either allowing you to dodge more easily or providing some extra safety against hits, health regen traits do only that pitiful amount of regen.

Now compare it with the offensive traits: extra damage, extra range, extra area, stun chance, attack speed. All of those help you stay alive more simply because they help you kill enemies before they get too close, or help you pick off ranged enemies before they fire, and killing provides experience, which further compounds into more power. I don't think any game should have such an absurdly bad trait that you'd rather have it not be on the game at all simply because it competes for a slot on your level up picks against actually useful traits. Five level points can be the difference between melting a boss or running around like a headless chicken if you invest them in offensive traits.

Looking at gear, the HP regen on them doesn't seem to be better off either. Killing an enemy has 3% chance to give you a single health point? Who would ever pick something like this compared to +10% HP? I'm confused, do the developers just not want defensive builds to be viable? I didn't do the math on the other defensive traits like block chance or defense, but they don't seem to be that good either. But it begs the question, if the defensive options are so, so bad, why have them in the game at all? It's not like you need to invest on them to finish a match, but variety of options isn't something negative.

The last thing I have to say is that since the demo at least didn't explicitly support modding, I'd have to actually decompile the game files, edit the values, recompile them, probably using the game engine itself instead of the decompiler to avoid errors. But this just feels like too much work for what should be an obvious and easily fixable issue. I'm not even mentioning other games on the genre, because I know that each game doesn't has to follow the same path with the same solutions to the same game design problems, but I also know that one can get way more creative with the concept of defensive builds than just pure stat increases.

Again maybe I just missed something.

[Aristocratic Cthulhu]

You take HP Regen traits so you can unlock Maiden's Tear (why do you need 100'000 total healing for such an underwhelming unlock anyway) for 100% completion. After that you stop being a silly person and just use Blood-Soaked Shirt instead.

[Nauzhror]

I honestly don't find regen useless at all. It's incredibly helpful for the boss fights due to how long they last.

It's not super fast regen, but it doesn't need to be, it is fast enough though to keep you capped off if you occasionally get hit, but manage to dodge most attacks.

[Nonexistinghero]

Health regen is really awful until you put a few levels into it and this includes a max health regen blessing. I feel like some of the benefit for things feels too low. Like raising base crit chance by 0.2? Like what, 0.2%?

[wingzeroz98]

yea early game regen looks bad. mid game regen its actually decent as is.
that being tho if they scale the 4th level as much as they did we might need a slight buff but not by much. you go in with .75 regen a tick with max shrine buff just getting a couple levels into regen puts you at 1 regen which is as stated pretty good. you dont take damage every second of the match. it is generally 2-3mins in between hits and the boss fights you can just run away if you need to regen. literally had to my 1st time on the 3rd stage lol and it worked just fine. i also played a pure defense character on shield maiden every time defence or regen popped i took it and it took longer to win but it was still enjoyable was even able to stand still and let them swarm me would be cool if we got a thorns ability to make that build a little better ended up with around 2200 hp on that run and regen was 2hp a tick but i was taking 1 hit every 10-20 and it was only doing about 15-25 damage per time i got hit so regen is more than enough at the current stage

[Swank]

I never get the regen trait on it's own, but I'm happy to grab it when it's in conjunction with another trait when other options are unfavorable. I find gradual regen supplements my search for food/potions when needed. What would, say, a regen of 30 HP/second bring to the table? Invincibility? If you beef up rings, orbs, block, and defense then you have near invincibility. If you can't lose then it's not a game.

[Get Rekt M8™]

Originally posted by Operation40:

*edit*
there's a spectrum here:
0 dmg run <--> take dmg occasionally <--> take dmg often <--> constant dmg

if you're only looking at the extremes then life regen makes no sense, but most runs are somewhere in between

Just this really, once you get used to the game you will only sometimes take dmg making health reg not useless, since it can easily heal back a couple hits over the course of a run. What I can't understand is how Op says health is good cause it legit does nothing, The only class that might take it once or twice before banishing it would be warlock, or if you run, summon traits.

[Nightsbane]

Why would health regen not being changed stop you from getting the game? The game's balanced around this amount of health regen do you just not know how to move or dodge attacks ? You're not going to get 5 Health regen a second or some silly number. Get good? Also blood soaked shirt is great don't underestimate it.

[RedRune]

Originally posted by Holdur:

It happens with crits, max HP, movement speed, base damage, attack speed, area, why shouldn't with regen?

My view on this:
In order to become relevant trait choices, enemies need to have more HP and/or defense, a lot more movement speed to deal more damage to the player - and besides that, at least ranged mobs need to shoot faster and from greater distances as well. Buff mobs!

Again, i'm hoping for the upcoming stages to be a lot more difficult, so that everything about defense and health becomes important.

[Prophet419]

Didnt really read much but long story short in most runs health regen, defense, block strength, max hp, etc does not matter. The best defense is a good offense.

At the end of the day though, its early access and the dev wants key features first rather than niche health regen builds. I can almost guarantee a full health regen/lifesteal overheal build will happen at some point, the dev just needs time to build the game. If you want a different version of this game with more builds play vampire survivors until this has the build variety youre looking for.
This game is better than vampire survivors imo but it needs time for more characters/items/traits/abilities

[Mr. Popo]

Regen is fine. As many people have already said, it compliments your effective max life by healing up the occasional hit you take. It is also fairly useful in max defense/block builds where you are taking only single digit damage every few seconds and the regen offsets it.

Since you want hard numbers, shield maiden with 80 defense and 70 block using only passive shield slam, blood stained shirt, not moving and swarmed by wraiths on dungeon 3 will take about 7 damage every 2-3 seconds, roughly 3 dps, easily offset by blessings + trait regen of 2.6 hps and blood stained shirt returning roughly 1 hps.

The cleric and swordmaster also get great use from regen. The high move speed guys like archer and sorceress also make better use from regen due to not taking constant damage.

Keep in mind that after blessings, pretty much every class can get between 1-2 regen per second, which is effectively a potential 1800-3600 life per 30 minute run. Classes that stack max HP can just run straight through nasty monsters and use their HP buffer up then regen it.

Also, by dungeons 3, you are regularly approaching level 100+ and you will have extra traits to spend, making choosing defensive stats not a big issue like it is in early game.

Personally, its saved my butt countless times.

[Halfshell]

I wouldn't mind if they just merged the traits for max HP with health regen. Like unless they have plans for characters that specifically key off on or the other its just not really that interesting of a choice to make. Usually the regen I have off the blessing is enough to refresh any hits I take anyways.

Like if its about the pool having X generic traits in it surely we could brainstorm something more interesting than 4 defensive traits with the other 2 effectively reducing damage.

[Remus]

Personally thought the hardest map was the first one, all the other final bosses end up being much easier to dodge mechanics. if you get enough move speed you can run through the second map's exploding balloons without taking damage, and the bridge king ends up being a joke compared to that two phase boss from map 1

[ez game ez life]

just like crit dmg only really scales well when you also have a lot of crit chance atk speed...

...health regen only scales well when you got a lot of dmg mitigation

[MDuh]

Originally posted by Remus:

Personally thought the hardest map was the first one, all the other final bosses end up being much easier to dodge mechanics. if you get enough move speed you can run through the second map's exploding balloons without taking damage, and the bridge king ends up being a joke compared to that two phase boss from map 1

Exactly what I found so far. First boss is always in your face and dashes towards you so it's much harder to dodge. 2nd boss is kiting and 3rd is the easiest with 3 easy attack patterns to avoid.

To OP:

The only reason I see regen to be useful right now is for achievements that needs you to heal passively.

Offense is the best defense so picking defensively in this game to me has always been a skill issue. Well, that's a little bit harsh but you def need it at the very start since you don't have enough offense yet.

I haven't played a VS-like game yet where something scales with health regen.

There's a character here that scales with block strength. But even then, it's just 1 attack out of the others that your character is dealing dmg with

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3003190614

(2nd attack skill on the left is the one that scales with block strength).

Even though I have it since the timer started, it's 2nd lowest damage in there

[H4NS]

Because devs dont understand the concept of dopamine generators and this game is just another obvious cash grab like every other Vampire Survivors clone. Theres 0 thought put into balance, skills, characters and enemy behaviour. I bet they just wanted this game to be MoRe ChAlLeNgInG by having almost no health regen. Its just changes for the sake of changes with basically 2 area stats (which should be 1), +10% to double strike upgrades and just awful in-game explanation for basically everything. Theres no "one more run and i'm done", no unlocks chaining one into another, no sound effects getting right into your brain. Artstyle is nice, but thats all.