Retune *all* The Frames! (11/19: Wildfire)

[taiiat]

Guess it came out wrong, I mean if you don't cast the other to send out the radial javeling. It will still take 100 to activate the swords.

okay.

though now it's the other way round, lol. 100E for a Deflection Shield, but still costs further Energy to 'finish casting the original Ability'?

yikes.

[Renkai141]

okay.

though now it's the other way round, lol. 100E for a Deflection Shield, but still costs further Energy to 'finish casting the original Ability'?

yikes.

Well he has a max of 150. And not taking any damage can be the value of that, and if you don't really care about doing the dmgs. Which is why I think Radial Javeling should also to more dmg. 50 to pop it up and 100 to send it out.(so u still got the flexibility of using slashdash/blind).

[Archwizard]

Guess it came out wrong, I mean if you don't cast the other to send out the radial javeling. It will still take 100 to activate the swords.

 

Forgetting that they're dropping RJ to his 75 energy skill...

 

What if they made it a toggle with a maximum 5 second duration, 5 energy per second, 75 energy base cost. Spend 75 to fire away, spend 100 for a quick bullet shield.

Edited May 5, 2015 by Archwizard

[taiiat]

Forgetting that they're dropping RJ to his 75 energy skill...

the Slot an Ability is on does not and should not determine it's Energy Cost.

[MixterFox]

the Slot an Ability is on does not and should not determine it's Energy Cost.

Its generally the rule. Tho there init any abilities that are not in the 4th slot that cost 100e. So unless the new 4th is gonna be toggled they're prolly not about to give Excalibur two 100e powers.

[taiiat]

Its generally the rule.

there is no rule.

Energy Costs should be based on what the Ability does, to try and give a bit of a cost to using the Ability.

appropriate numbers chosen based on what you're pressing the button for.

not set values.

breaking out of the paradigm mold for more Warframes can only benefit the game.

blah blah Ability doesn't need to cost N Energy just because it's on Y Slot.

[Archwizard]

there is no rule.

Energy Costs should be based on what the Ability does, to try and give a bit of a cost to using the Ability.

appropriate numbers chosen based on what you're pressing the button for.

not set values.

breaking out of the paradigm mold for more Warframes can only benefit the game.

blah blah Ability doesn't need to cost N Energy just because it's on Y Slot.

 

"No rule" on paper, but certainly not in practice.

 

Did you know that Sonar originally cost 100 energy to cast? Banshee was the first Warframe to have 2 ultimates. They dropped it down because they believed that to be excessive, in spite of its strength generally deserving it.

 

Ultimates are intended as the power you build up to, the full raw potential of your Warframe in battle; that's why it's called an ultimate. Sort of kills the notion when you have two.

 

And, naturally, energy costs are adjusted to match their output and the expected usage. Speed's 25 energy because Volt's intended as a full-time speedster, in spite of complaints that he doesn't have naturally increased sprint speed (it did used to be personal, after all). Terrify's 75 energy because being able to completely lock down enemies and troll your teammates at the same time is something they want to limit.

... It's a quaint and outdated notion since they added Fleeting Expertise, but an understandable one.

Edited May 7, 2015 by Archwizard

[Elydir]

Probably Valkyr should be able to calm down her rage (Hysteria) with a Meditate Emote.

 

I think I'd rather just tap the button than have to have Black Widow tell me the suns getting low.

[Archwizard]

-snip-

 

While I really like the idea of using the Regulators for more than just her ultimate, it still begs the question of whether it harms the scalability of Ballistic Battery; while it pidgeonholes you into weapons with high base damage multipliers (eg crit) like Bows, it does provide significantly stronger results than skills such as Fireball.

Edited May 10, 2015 by Archwizard

[taiiat]

While I really like the idea of using the Regulators for more than just her ultimate, it still begs the question of whether it harms the scalability of Ballistic Battery

while it pidgeonholes you into weapons with high base damage multipliers (eg crit) like Bows, it does provide significantly stronger results than skills such as Fireball.

if anything, i just made it scale better. hitting an area of Enemies, and looking much cooler while doing it, as well as increasing flexibility because you can use it any time you'd like, or change your mind and put it away for later.

 

will it necessarily be doing the same Damage as it is now with your Soma of 1200 * 8.4 * 2 for Multishot to maximize the Crit Bonus? well, no, not really. but that's because it is capable of hitting more than just a few Enemies now.

 

 

trimming Ballistic Battery to more around 300 Damage (but actually affected by Power Strength now) sounds acceptable to me. above average Damage, but more importantly IMO, Staggers Enemies and can knock them down.

 

 

 

all in all it sounds much more useful to me. no, it isn't adding ~20,000 Damage to your Soma. but so what? sure, i guess you could say that would be useful if you had crazy Punch-Through on your Soma, and you were part of an AFKFarming group where you are shooting into Vortex's... but otherwise oneshotting one or two Enemies super hard is not particularly Efficient in Warframe when there's 30 other dudes. as that's like using a Vectis with a 10 second Reload against a room full of hundreds of Infested and other Melee Enemies. sure, you can pierce and hit a few at a time, but certainly you can see how inefficient this is.

(yes yes, people will say "Charge it up, and just use it on Heavies". this works fine against like, Lv10 Enemies... but at the later end of the Solar Map, there are quite a few Heavies, and also a lot of trash mooks. shooting trash mooks to charge it to oneshot Heavies is quite a slow process, and not very safe within the scope of this game or most games, due to priority targets - which are often the Heavies).

 

if that's really a concern, hell, make it 400 Finisher Damage base if you must.

or perhaps 300 Blast Damage + 150 Finisher Damage, with that decent Status Chance and a forced Stagger on any Enemy that does not get Blast.

[FelisImpurrator]

Holy master thread, Batman. This is nice.

 

A (large) scattering of comments and suggestions, and going by the last update date these haven't been suggested yet. Warning, this will be long.

 

Ash - Bladestorm is straight up useless on bosses because it hits once and cancels. I know it's for balance - a regular cast would otherwise oneshot bosses and be completely broken - but come on, I want it to do *something* to them besides one hit of damage. Maybe reduce the damage it deals per hit *to bosses*, or apply diminishing returns to them, but - partly because it looks great, partly so it doesn't waste a cast - have him able to wail on bosses the way he does on heavy regular enemies by themselves. I like the ability, though; Ash's kit feels almost exactly like being Nightcrawler, and being Nightcrawler is great.

 

Banshee - Seemingly built to be a melee-caster sort of frame, but is one of the squishiest in the game. What's up with that? Silence stun doesn't last nearly long enough to keep her from being wrecked before she can close in for those finishers, and reducing range also makes her other abilities useless for the sake of making Silence a melee stun. Not sure how to solve this, but it is troublesome.

 

Hydroid - For the love of all that is decent, make his 1 scale better damage-wise. The flat impact damage tapers off horribly, being the least generally-useful physical damage type and not scaling at all. Also, Tempest and Tentacle are both so unreliable with high range that I'm tempted to say Tempest at least could have inverse range scaling - range buffs 'focus' the bombardment's accuracy, making it pummel a smaller area relentlessly the way people already force it to do with Narrow Minded. Or it could gradually narrow down toward the target point, the way a real-life old-style artillery crew would close in on their target.

 

Mag - At least make Fracturing Crush scale to some degree. Any degree. It doesn't have to make CP obsolete; it just has to be viable on its own in a game where enemy armor scales to the point that anything less than 100% reduction is borderline useless.

 

Mesa - Bullet Hell sounds like a fun replacement. I'd go for that, honestly.

 

Nova - Null Star reverted to stagger sounds great, but besides that, I'd like to see some additional functionality: For starters, recast on second activation. It's just annoying not being able to refresh. Also, possibly make it so that holding down the key while targeting an enemy makes every remaining orb launch at that enemy; the augment would replace that effect with the explosion. That or the unaugmented 'recast' simply sends them all flying. Honestly, right now all it can be used for unaugmented is detonating Prime, and even that's useless at high levels.

 

Nyx - I'll take anything that makes Psychic Bolts useful, because seriously? If Phorid's bolts are those unholy oneshot monsters, ours should at least approximate a sizable fraction of that power. Not 'oneshot everything' tier, but they should do a lot more than just tickle enemies.

 

Vauban - Tesla Link really should find a better balance between current 'meh to useless' and former 'ridiculously OP'. Maybe Vortex shouldn't make all the loot violently explode away, too - half the stuff flying out of an open map when it ends? Not fun.

 

Volt - I'm not sure what's even going on with Electric Shield anymore; there are threads all over saying it was nerfed too hard or some weapons (Tonkor, for one) are still bugged, and DE hasn't clarified how they changed it. 

 

Limbo I already posted about in another thread. TL;DR of the important bits: Limbo seriously needs more survivability in Rift, agreed with several others; also, possibly fold Rift Surge into base rift mechanics, but add some sort of 'rift bomb' effect, radial pulse from Limbo that 'detonates' all banished targets in the area for some debuff. Banish should allow you to hold the key and sweep the reticle to 'lock onto'/'paint' a specific target in addition to standard targeting; optional augment could allow you to multibanish by sweeping over a line of enemies, maybe. Proper CC proc on Cataclysm, too.

 

Ditto for Zephyr. TL;DR: Instead of Gale Force, maybe an ability that sweeps enemies into clusters, but IF Mag's Pull starts doing that again it's not necessary. Better damage scaling on divebomb-merged-with-tailwind. Someone said Turbulence isn't a proper sphere, which if true makes no sense, especially for a frame meant to stay above enemies. Tornado augment's mini-tornadoes either pick up an enemy each or have much stronger homing, possibly both.

 

EDIT: A bit more for Zephyr - why doesn't Turbulence even mildly hinder enemy movement? Surely being buffeted by gale-force winds would at least knock an osprey around, or slightly slow ground enemies. Ospreys especially, they're annoying enough by themselves. And beam weapons should logically have *some* dispersion from it - lasers are not that good at staying coherent.

Edited May 10, 2015 by FelisImpurrator

[Archwizard]

Sorry for the lack of activity here, been pressed for time lately and Felis' post demands... a lot of it.

 

-snip-

 

Ash - Sounds reasonable.

Banshee - I'd say she's more Sniper oriented than melee, honestly; she has a knockback, a sniping buff and a weapon that makes enemies ignore gunfire... it just happens to make them vulnerable to melee too.

Hydroid - I don't see his 1 as being an out-and-out damage skill, so much as a CC-oriented version of his 4. Not sure about inverting the range.

Mag - Hilariously, I think FC is the only armor-reduction augment that doesn't scale with Power Strength. Granting, it also affects an unlimited number of enemies...

Nova - While I know the bitter annoyance of trying to recast it well, I think those suggestions would sort of encroach upon the augment.

Volt - From what I hear, the weapon damage multiplier calculation was altered slightly, causing a drastic decrease in the critical damage bonuses. Most explicit thread I've seen here: https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/449490-volts-nerf-and-how-he-works-now/

[FelisImpurrator]

Sorry for the lack of activity here, been pressed for time lately and Felis' post demands... a lot of it.

 

*snip*

Whoops. Kind of went absolutely nuts on this thread. That's a huge backlog of stuff I noticed while trying a lot of new frames. (You did say ALL...)

 

Banshee - hm, point taken. Didn't really think of that because I never really run dedicated snipers in WF, which is odd because I tend to like sniping... Silence stun still has that problem of being wasted on a lot of enemies, though, but that's not a huge deal - bigger thing is, she's theoretically viable at both ultra-long and ultra-short range but is way too squishy for the latter, so a *bit* of durability would still be nice.

Hydroid - his main problem is that all his CC is hideously unreliable with the random strike patterns, which makes it hard to use his 1 and 4 with massive range and/or duration, and thus drives a lot of people toward minimal-range builds to focus fire. Possibly removing/minimizing a lot of the lag between activation and execution, and/or, say, increasing the density of his 1, would go a long way. (Also, Undertow doing 20 damage... I thought the ability said 'drown enemies', not 'mildly inconvenience enemies'.)

Mag - Unlimited number, sure, but so does 4xCP, which means most players will ignore it in favor of running that, and at very high levels I'm pretty sure 50% armor is still absurdly, absurdly high.

Nova - The idea was to provide a default behavior that provides extra functionality, but also makes the augment a direct sidegrade (from single target damage to AOE) - as in, whether you have it on or not, repeat press does *something* other than beep annoyingly.

Volt - Saw that thread, wasn't sure how solidly confirmed it was... but damn, no wonder it barely had any oomph when I tried it.

[Archwizard]

-snip-

 

Hydroid - I agree that it's unreliable, but its most frequent use is to create a quick snap CC on a crowd. I feel just being able to create interlocking lanes of fire (a la the suggestion in the OP) would be more than enough to cover it - especially since, if it hits an enemy and you have four more Barrages going off at the same spot, they're not likely to get up again. Makes it sort of a perfect offensive Rain skill, honestly.

 

Mag - True, but 4x CP requires that A) you have at least 4 players and B) you can coordinate them to run with them at the cost of other auras. Potent as it may is, it's not the natural default of most players in public matches (my experience includes randoms favoring things like Physique or Steel Charge more often than I'd like, due to laziness and the presence of Corpus and Infested), nor can it be drummed up by solo players.

I'm not trying to defend its existence - I've been decrying Terrify's armor debuff for the past year and a half, and being able to ignore armor is something players have been saying Crush should be able to do baseline for years - but I can understand why they thought it was comparable to Link and Shuriken's target-limited but more potent armor reductions. It would take more to convince them.

 

Nova - I completely understand, but depending on your Power Duration and the execution, you're swapping from what is potentially a mini-Radial Javelin or even instant Bladestorm, to a limited explosive in one of the weaker damaging elements. The side-grade with this one is particularly underwhelming compared to the direct upgrades caused by 95% of other augments.

 

Limbo - Admittedly, I've been pondering him a lot lately. When he came out, I was upset with the lack of variety to his skills - you have three different kinds of Banish, and then a bland damage buff that only works if you cast at least one of the other skills first. He's a potent frame in the right hands, sure, but the interest he generates is primarily in your ability to micromanage.

(Ironic sidenote, I do what I can to write up a loose system of pet management for Nekros and everyone screams they don't want to micromanage.)

Balance-wise, it makes sense that Limbo is more vulnerable within the rift; the mechanic is limited to him, so entry of enemies is determined entirely by him, and enemies he excludes (which should be >90% of foes at any given second) can do virtually nothing to him. However, barring Rift Surge, it's an underwhelming mechanic since he really has nothing he can do within the Rift - especially as they cut down more and more on the amount of crossover to incentivize him using it purely as a defensive or initiation effect - and of course, it generally penalizes using Cataclysm as anything other than Snow Globe 2.0.

They won't give him a direct-damage skill, since the constant energy regen in Rift Walk ensures that he'll never leave, and never need to Banish enemies in with him so long as he can hit them with an ability. They won't give him a raw mitigation skill, because that's what Rift Walk is supposed to be. While I could see him getting a skill like Blink, it would have to be limited to the Rift to cover the niche you speak of without making Rift Walk redundant as a method of free movement - and then would be under the same disgusting penalty as Rift Walk.

Edited May 17, 2015 by Archwizard

[FelisImpurrator]

Hm. I actually forgot that Hydroid's 1 can be spammed. The delay is not by any means snap CC, though; it's wait half a second and hope the enemy hasn't charged forward in the meantime CC. Even a *bit* of execution speed would be amazing; as it is enough people hate Hydroid and think he's unusably weak. Tentacles, as another thread mentions, should actually stick to their damned range circle. Fixed pattern sounded nice.

 

I didn't actually know anyone seriously ran Physique. Especially when it doesn't match polarity. As a solo I run ES but occasionally drop in CP. Honestly, just letting the Crush buff stack (and last long enough to stack) would work; tradeoff for all armor stripping, or at least making 50% permanent like the standard 'double proc' effect, would be Crush's large energy cost and slow cast time.

 

I actually... straight up forgot how insane the number of orbs gets at high duration. Rolling >220% and that translates to 13 - while useless on their own, now I realize how quickly it would stack to have them all hitting one primed enemy. Although I never intended that idea to hit more than one target, so it's not quite Pocket Bladestorm. At the bare minimum, though, recast without augment. And yes, knockback.

 

For Limbo - besides the micromanagement, it's that the 10% he brings in has a nasty tendency of oneshotting him the way they normally would out of the Rift, and if that's somehow mitigated his TTK still gets driven into the ground by having to pick enemies off while everyone else in the cell just nukes them to death. At this point there are a lot of people who think he's better used without casting, except to restore shields under fire or banish heavies. Possibly the hardest warframe to rework now, honestly, and beyond reducing in-Rift squish and maybe mass-debuff support casting, I'm not sure what can be done about him anymore.

[Blackout751]

Loving most if not all of these changes you'd like applied.

[Archwizard]

Hm. I actually forgot that Hydroid's 1 can be spammed. 

 

Admittedly, it's not spammable... yet. It's in the list in the OP.

 

Personally, I feel that Hydroid's biggest issue is just that he's dull - after all, his most forward-thinking mechanic is a glorified AFK button. Tentacle Swarm is far too similar to Tempest Barrage, and we all know how overdone Tidal Surge is.

 

I don't particularly understand the complaint that he's unusably weak. Area Denial may be an overdone role, but it's that kind of CC that's vital to the survival of the team. While his other skills deal low damage, Tentacle Swarm is one of the few sources of armor- and shield-ignorant Finisher damage, which means it loses its offensive potency at a lower rate compared to most other methods. The only real issue is that it's unreliable, not impotent.

 

For Limbo - besides the micromanagement, it's that the 10% he brings in has a nasty tendency of oneshotting him the way they normally would out of the Rift, and if that's somehow mitigated his TTK still gets driven into the ground by having to pick enemies off while everyone else in the cell just nukes them to death. At this point there are a lot of people who think he's better used without casting, except to restore shields under fire or banish heavies. Possibly the hardest warframe to rework now, honestly, and beyond reducing in-Rift squish and maybe mass-debuff support casting, I'm not sure what can be done about him anymore.

 

The devs pretty much thought of that when they gave Banish a knockdown - pick off targets one-by-one with Rift Surge-empowered Finishers without fear of reprise, an increased TTK as the tradeoff for near-invulnerability. The only issue is that their take on a mass-Banish does nothing to mitigate damage coming from within the field; your choices are take none of the damage very slowly or all of it all at once.

 

I fully expect they'll add a CC augment to Cataclysm in an ill-advised attempt to rectify this. Only so much you can do without completing the transition into Snow Globe.

[taiiat]

Tentacle Swarm is one of the few sources of armor- and shield-ignorant Finisher damage, which means it loses its offensive potency at a lower rate compared to most other methods. The only real issue is that it's unreliable, not impotent.

don't oversell it - Tentacle Swarm needs to be dealing Finisher Damage in order to be useful into Mid Level Enemies.

it still CC's well ofcourse, but the vast majority of the time, it's not going to be Killing Enemies quickly, that's for sure.

dealing Finisher Damage allows it to be 'okay' for Killing things. it's clearly far better off used as Area Denial, ofcourse.

frankly, Tempest Barrage is the only Ability i have any interest in. the other ones are simply not particularly enjoyable to use.

Tempest Barrage is a bit of a pain to use, but i quite like the concept, and it's pretty satisfying to use.

- - - - -

*mumbles something about one of the suggestions for Cataclysm Augments that would be awesome and hopes it'll become a thing - it might be a form of CC but it also introduces new Playstyles into the Warframe, just as Augments should be doing, unlike the fairly large percentage that are just Stat Increases*

[Archwizard]

*mumbles something about one of the suggestions for Cataclysm Augments that would be awesome and hopes it'll become a thing - it might be a form of CC but it also introduces new Playstyles into the Warframe, just as Augments should be doing, unlike the fairly large percentage that are just Stat Increases*

 

I'm fairly certain being vague about it at this point is no less likely to receive consequences for DC discussion.

 

Plus I'm also fairly certain they haven't been talking about or voting on augments for a few months.

 

[size=2]Worst case, you could have just said what it is and claimed it came from your head.[/size]

Edited May 20, 2015 by Archwizard

[FelisImpurrator]

Well. Apparently Tempest's non-scaling... was a bug. All this time. Although they failed to include the updated damage in the Ability view, so there's still that. On the other hand, it's still impact, impact still sucks, and it upgrades to a grand total of... 150. Amazing.

 

Tentacles still need reliability. Fixed pattern would be nice, or more/smaller tentacles.

 

And spam or no spam, Tempest would be more interesting if it got more accurate with range, or at LEAST drew in toward the center over time, because besides making sense for an artillery ability, that would distinguish it from Tentacles a bit more. (Although it would break Narrow Minded compact tentacle builds if it used inverse scaling... maybe the closing in over time would work better.)

 

If Tidal Surge is too generic, though, I'm not sure it's enough to make it pick up enemies.

Edited May 20, 2015 by FelisImpurrator

[TheGrimCorsair]

Tidal Surge, "generic" as it may be, still give Hydroid the ability to reposition swiftly while being mostly immune to CC, which is fairly important for a warframe that seems hellbent on being *the* premier kiting/targeted ranged CC frame.

[FelisImpurrator]

Tidal Surge, "generic" as it may be, still give Hydroid the ability to reposition swiftly while being mostly immune to CC, which is fairly important for a warframe that seems hellbent on being *the* premier kiting/targeted ranged CC frame.

Mm. I suppose, since Slash Dash is getting reworked and I'm still holding out for a straight up retool of Rhino's Charge (honestly, it doesn't even feel like it has any *impact* - you just rush right through things, no impact noises or anything to indicate you actually hit), Tidal Surge that picks up enemies would certainly have its niche vacated by the other dash-clones.

[taiiat]

Mm. I suppose, since Slash Dash is getting reworked and I'm still holding out for a straight up retool of Rhino's Charge (honestly, it doesn't even feel like it has any *impact* - you just rush right through things, no impact noises or anything to indicate you actually hit), Tidal Surge that picks up enemies would certainly have its niche vacated by the other dash-clones.

yes, it would be somewhat different then. having the same core mechanic isn't terrible, as long as there's still unique facets to each one.

also, Rhino Charge should Ragdoll all Enemies that you hit. fits the theme of the Warframe plus Ragdolling Enemies is always entertaining.

[FelisImpurrator]

yes, it would be somewhat different then. having the same core mechanic isn't terrible, as long as there's still unique facets to each one.

also, Rhino Charge should Ragdoll all Enemies that you hit. fits the theme of the Warframe plus Ragdolling Enemies is always entertaining.

Not just that. The audio/visual overhaul has to happen for these, too - again, the problem is partly that you never feel like you're actually hitting anything with dash abilities, which is also a problem with melee slides and the like. No way of telling whether you hit or missed until you look back and see very much not-dead and not-ragdolled enemies pointing guns at you.

[Azamagon]

Not just that. The audio/visual overhaul has to happen for these, too - again, the problem is partly that you never feel like you're actually hitting anything with dash abilities, which is also a problem with melee slides and the like. No way of telling whether you hit or missed until you look back and see very much not-dead and not-ragdolled enemies pointing guns at you.

A part of that problem is because, in contrast to all other melee attacks, slide-attacks NEVER melee-stagger enemies. Oversight from DE, as usual.