Thoughts on changes to life regeneration

[Hypothesis] Life regeneration from gear feels particularly odd.

[Context] Unless I am greatly mistaken, it functions much like bonuses to movement speed or resistances in two regards. (1) Its flat bonuses are in a fairly restricted range, ranging from 1 to 7 times that amount. (2) These bonuses cannot be modified by investing in nodes on the skill tree.
This feels particularly odd for life regeneration because of the interplay between these two factors, because life regeneration can also be obtained in much different ways, and because life regeneration (as opposed to resistances or move speed) scales poorly.

Obtaining a small amount of flat life regeneration on gear early in the game feels appropriate -- similarly to the way that obtaining a small amount of increased damage on a weapon or a small amount of armour, ES or flat life feels appropriate. Obtaining better rolls later in the game for any of those statistics feels meaningful, because (a) they scale well with the challenges in the game and (b) we as players get the sense of accomplishment and satisfaction of synergizing our passive tree to enhance the bonuses we obtain from our gear. I think (a) is a good indication of content design, and (b) is an excellent factor in game design.

But this doesnt hold true for the affix "Of the Phoenix" (or its lesser counterparts). Even by investing vast quantities of energy into obtaining a perfect Of the Phoenix roll on every single item you can wear (certainly no mean feat), you would gain 56 life per second. This simply scales poorly. This would equate to about 1% of a characters maximum life (taking 5k as a not particularly ambitious investment into life for someone willing to invest in 8 perfect regeneration rolls). This performance is trivialized by any other means of obtaining healing through regeneration, either in the form of a low-level skill gem slot (golem, vitality, etc.) or through investing in % life regeneration nodes.
What's odd is that there are no passive nodes which increase flat life regeneration from gear, possibly offering players some incentive to attempt to synergize these statistics. Rather, life regeneration is treated like resistances or movement speed, instead of any form of mitigation, damage, life, or most of the other statistics available.

[Problem] This makes life regeneration rolls feel unsatisfying.

[Suggestions]
(i) Let there be passive nodes on the tree similar to those which affect maximum energy shield or shield recharge, life, any type of damage, etc: An Increase to [flat] life regeneration.
(ii) enhancing "Of the Phoenix"
(iii) changing flat regeneration into % of max life regenerated or making all life regeneration a hybrid component (that is: every bonus to life regeneration would add a smaller flat amount and a smaller % amount, e.g. "Of the Phoenix" could add 2-5 life per second and 0.05-0.2% of max life regenerated per second)
(iv) a combination of the above

Just some ideas, thanks in advance for constructive discussion

I'm fairly certain the purpose of life regeneration on gear is to reduce the occurrence of mods you want, its fulfilling the same role as thorns and while I agree with you that I think they could make them useful if they did zealot's oath ES characters would become even stronger and they'd probably have to re-balance the tree nodes down to compensate.

So it'd be fun but the best regen builds would kill the viability of buffing the gear regen nodes to be anything other than taking up an item affix.

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Draegnarrr wrote:

I'm fairly certain the purpose of life regeneration on gear is to reduce the occurrence of mods you want, its fulfilling the same role as thorns and while I agree with you that I think they could make them useful if they did zealot's oath ES characters would become even stronger and they'd probably have to re-balance the tree nodes down to compensate.

So it'd be fun but the best regen builds would kill the viability of buffing the gear regen nodes to be anything other than taking up an item affix.

Yes, I mostly agree, although
(a) any game which has to rely on useless "fluff" (increased light radius) to make obtaining the right combination of rolls has serious suboptimalities. The affixes you don't want to have on your particular item should at least be useful in another context. The life regeneration nodes are currently almost as fluffy as increased light radius
(b) I didn't really understand your last sentence
(c) I was hoping that the entire tree would be rebalanced, these are thoughts for 3.0, not for a hotfix. I hope the entire concept of life regeneration will get looked at, fixing hopefully things such as Vitality (which I also believe to be quite fluffy now, with the obvious bonus of not having to use it if you don't want).

my last sentence is that if you could get % regeneration on gear 20k ES characters would be able to achieve something like 4k/s ES currently. Because of that they'd have to tone the actual regeneration increases on the passive tree down which would lead us to exactly the same place we already are with a major buff to ES (as they have to travel to get regen)

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Draegnarrr wrote:

my last sentence is that if you could get % regeneration on gear 20k ES characters would be able to achieve something like 4k/s ES currently. Because of that they'd have to tone the actual regeneration increases on the passive tree down which would lead us to exactly the same place we already are with a major buff to ES (as they have to travel to get regen)

You don't have to travel to get to regeneration. My low life ES build has: 10k ES, and has 1.7k ES regeneration. And I don't bother getting any life regeneration on gear. It is completely useless. I could easily invest more into getting higher ES by grabbing an ES based shield or more yellow gear. It is simply a throw away stat as you can already get super high ES, and regeneration without it. I could also get more regeneration from the shav's ring. But Doesn't really seem worth it.

Even for HP builds flat life regeneration is stupid bad.