Equinox Pacify Ability Has Diminishing Returns, Falloff With Range And Broken Efficiency? (Data And Videos)

[Sci_Ant]

Sooo, got around to playing Equinox and there seems to be a big, huge problem with it.

 

Pacify doesn't scale multiplicatively with Power Strength and Efficiency mods do nothing for it.

 

I ran a lot of tests and found the following :

 

1. At 100 % base power strength the damage reduction at point blank melee enemy range (with Butchers or Chargers) = 50 % as advertised.

 

2. At 185 % power strength the damage reduction for the same enemies at point blank range = 73 %  (while it should be 92.5 % if it was multiplicative)

 

3. At 266 % power strength the damage reduction for the same enemies at point blank range = 82 %

 

 

So obviously the whole 'diminishing returns' thing is in effect here, but according to the wiki there is also a falloff of the effect with range?

 

To be honest there should be either diminishing returns or falloff with range, not both at the same time. And frankly, since no other damage reduction ability has diminishing returns why should Equinox suffer? Mesa and Mirage get 95 % damage reduction with hardly any power strength, Trinity gets almost total invulnerability with Link and on and on. Squad buffs such as Chroma's Elemental Ward or Nova's Molecular Prime also aren't affected by it.

 

To add to the problems I confirmed that at Max Efficiency of 175 % the drain per enemy is exactly the same as that with 100 % Base Efficiency, 0.5 energy per second at Rank 30.

 

Why was a broken frame given to us? Or if this was intended, it would be the first ability that isn't affected by Power Efficiency mods!

 

 

All my findings are in an Excel Sheet which can be downloaded here >

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6Iv0IAMwbTEdVVXSEV6ajUwcW8/view?usp=sharing

 

All the data comes from video recordings of the Simulacrum which I have put into a .RAR file and uploaded here >

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6Iv0IAMwbTEQWtQblBKdXI1TkE/view?usp=sharing

 

The same thing has been confirmed by another player on the wiki on this page (first comment) > http://warframe.wikia.com/wiki/Pacify_%26_Provoke

 

And it seems the same player [member=] has made the comment on the forums in this thread (https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/504107-equinox-pacify-enemy-damage-reduction-cap/#entry5637437) too, thus confirming my data >

Pacify is crap. I've tested Pacify extensively, and used it a few times in high lvl survivals, and found that I'm better off not using it a all. Here's what I found during testing.

 

100% Strength = 50% dmg reduction

175% Strength = 72% dmg reduction

256% Strength = 81% dmg reduction

 

Sounds good? But here's the problem, those numbers are if the enemies are attacking at point blank. The further the enemies from you, but within range, the less reduction you get. Here's a sample of an enemy shooting around 15-25m. This is with Stretch mod on.

 

100% Strength = 22% dmg reduction

175% Strength = 47% dmg reduction

256% Strength = 54% dmg reduction

 

So why not use it? I've tested and found that power efficiency mods don't affect the energy drain one bit, so when you encounter a large pack of enemies, your energy drains like crazy. If at all, you might use pacify when you're reviving a member.

 

As for the puncture proc, it's probably multiplicative like Trin's Link and Blessing. For example, 50% pacify and 30% puncture would equal 65% reduction. So if a shot's damage was 100 dmg, 50% pacify would reduce it to 50 dmg. 30% Puncture would reduce 50 dmg further by 30%, so the end damage is 35 dmg. 

 

About the Power Efficiency not working there have been multiple reports of this as follows >

https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/503644-equinoxs-pacify-drain-is-seemingly-not-affected-by-power-efficiency-bug-video-inside/

https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/503437-pacify-the-first-ever-ability-that-isnt-affected-by-efficiency/

 

 

Power Efficiency problems fixed in Update 17.1.0 + 17.1.1

 

Please can we get some answers as to how this ability was intended to work, DE?

Edited August 12, 2015 by Sci_Ant

[SullyTheStalker]

The Pacify & Provoke ability is perhaps Equinox's most broken aspect.

 

• Metamorphosis' 2-second delay is understandable for preventing rapid-fire power abuse, and the decaying buffs aren't exciting either, but they're just there to spice things up.
• Even though the range on R&R is in need of a slight buff, it would be too exploitable if it were huge.
• Mend doesn't really compare with Maim, but it does its job.

 

But as for P&P, the Day-Form effects - although somewhat meager IMO - are far superior to the Night-Form's effects.  The energy drain that stays constant regardless of mods and doesn't decrease with the diminishing returns almost makes it feel as though we're being punished for using Pacify in the first place.

 

Although Equinox (as with other frames) could use some fine-tuning in general, Pacify is beyond awful right now, and I hope that DE addresses this defective ability sooner rather than later.

Edited August 11, 2015 by SullyTheStalker

[XxCurtennoxX]

The power strength tests on Pacify are interesting. Didn't know it worked like that. Yup, even more useless than i thought.

A lot of people have noticed the power efficiency not affected by efficiency (I posted a video and thread a few days ago about it, too.)

 

Ever since i got the frame, Pacify has never been worth using. It's terrible and drains a 600 energy pool in less than a minute if you're using it against the usual 20+ enemies that we're against at one time.

 

EDIT: Oops, didn't realise you linked my thread xD

Edited August 11, 2015 by XxCurtennoxX

[Skore]

It's scaling with power strength mods doesn't seem so bad, considering it's a debuff that an entire squad can benefit from.

The things that absolutely cripple the ability are the extreme falloff of the effect with distance and it's incompatibility with efficiency mods.

[XxCurtennoxX]

It's scaling with power strength mods doesn't seem so bad, considering it's a debuff that an entire squad can benefit from.

The things that absolutely cripple the ability are the extreme falloff of the effect with distance and it's incompatibility with efficiency mods.

True, i might bother using it if didn't drain so much damn energy. And yes, that falloff over range is horrendous. 

[Sci_Ant]

The power strength tests on Pacify are interesting. Didn't know it worked like that. Yup, even more useless than i thought.

A lot of people have noticed the power efficiency not affected by efficiency (I posted a video and thread a few days ago about it, too.)

 

Ever since i got the frame, Pacify has never been worth using. It's terrible and drains a 600 energy pool in less than a minute if you're using it against the usual 20+ enemies that we're against at one time.

 

EDIT: Oops, didn't realise you linked my thread xD

 

Thanks for making your bug report thread, helped to corroborate my own findings!

 

It's scaling with power strength mods doesn't seem so bad, considering it's a debuff that an entire squad can benefit from.

The things that absolutely cripple the ability are the extreme falloff of the effect with distance and it's incompatibility with efficiency mods.

 

Well yeah I guess if looked at as a squad buff it is ok, but then Trinity shouldn't be allowed to sqaud buff everyoen to 99 % damage reduction either. :P

 

And yes we need to get rid of the falloff or atleast cap it at half the strength of the ability.

[Tesseract7777]

 It's been clear to people playing Equinox that Pacify doesn't seem to be working right, and probably wouldn't be useful if it was. Right now it's basically a broken -- in the bad sense of the word -- mess. We need to hear from them exactly how it's intended to work, because right now it's essentially useless. 

 

Thanks for getting all the numbers and evidence together. 

[XxCurtennoxX]

 It's been clear to people playing Equinox that Pacify doesn't seem to be working right, and probably wouldn't be useful if it was. Right now it's basically a broken -- in the bad sense of the word -- mess. We need to hear from them exactly how it's intended to work, because right now it's essentially useless. 

 

Thanks for getting all the numbers and evidence together. 

With the amount of threads about this you'd think we'd have some word on it by now.

But nope, nothing. I understand DE have a lot to get through on these forums, but i was expecting at least some sort of confirmation on this by now.

[Skore]

Well yeah I guess if looked at as a squad buff it is ok, but then Trinity shouldn't be allowed to sqaud buff everyoen to 99 % damage reduction either. :P

That's an unfair comparison as Blessing not only is an ultimate ability, but it's buff is also conditional. Of course you can engineer some situtations where it becomes reliable, but that already takes more effort than pressing one button and not touching it again for the rest of the game.

[Darkmoone1]

Oh god that is horrible. Too many ins and outs with an ability with the simple goal of providing defense and tankiness to your group. 

[Sines314]

The diminishing returns seems to be based on a "Every 100 Power Strength halves the damage". A quick math check with your data shows that it fits the following formula...

 

Reduced Damage = Based Damage * ( 50 / Power Strength)

 

This is a pretty standard formula for damage reductions in games, and isn't too surprising. It means that every 100 power strength will half the damage again. So at a base of 100 strength, you'll be taking half damage. At 200 strength, you'd be taking half of half damage, which is to say 25%. This also means that the power stops functioning at 50% power strength, and will cause you to take MORE damage if power strength is below 50. I'm willing to bet DE has placed a minimum damage reduction threshold on the power to avoid it becoming totally useless in builds running Overextended, however.

 

The alternative would have been to give the skill a standard power increase, but with a hard cap for maximum amount prevented. I suspect DE wanted to avoid this as they just don't like powers wherein you're supposed to have exactly so much power strength and no more (Banshees Sonic Armor Shred and Nova's MPrime slow both max out at 45% power strength, for example). That's just conjecture though.

Edited August 11, 2015 by Sines314

[Sci_Ant]

The diminishing returns seems to be based on a "Every 100 Power Strength halves the damage". A quick math check with your data shows that it fits the following formula...

 

Reduced Damage = Based Damage * ( 50 / Power Strength)

 

This is a pretty standard formula for damage reductions in games, and isn't too surprising. It means that every 100 power strength will half the damage again. So at a base of 100 strength, you'll be taking half damage. At 200 strength, you'd be taking half of half damage, which is to say 25%. This also means that the power stops functioning at 50% power strength, and will cause you to take MORE damage if power strength is below 50. I'm willing to bet DE has placed a minimum damage reduction threshold on the power to avoid it becoming totally useless in builds running Overextended, however.

 

The alternative would have been to give the skill a standard power increase, but with a hard cap for maximum amount prevented. I suspect DE wanted to avoid this as they just don't like powers wherein you're supposed to have exactly so much power strength and no more (Banshees Sonic Armor Shred and Nova's MPrime slow both max out at 45% power strength, for example). That's just conjecture though.

 

So basically it increases inversely proportional to the power strength. Why couldn't they just make it linear like literally every other power in the game. Mesa gets to have 95 % damage reduction at just 30 % power strength, Trinity gets max Blessing with 25 %, even Mirage gets 95 % damage reduction, but noooo not for broken Equinox.  The couldn't even make a single aspect of the power work correctly. :/

Edited August 11, 2015 by Sci_Ant

[tripletriple]

This is one of the many issues that plague this warframe. Bumping so people know this. 

[Kruglov]

This is a good thread.

As for why it's not fixed I think it's because DE are still overseas at some game conference thing.

The one where Steverino was talking about Starmap 3.0 (4.0?) and the Second Dream quest.

[DelialFallen]

Very interesting data and findings.

 

Oddly, Pacify seemed to work fine for me up until last Friday.  From then on, it appears to have began working as your findings suggest.  Perhaps a change to it was made, or maybe I simply assumed the effect was in place considering how little damage I would normally be taking without shields on.  Maybe it had an excellent synergy with Rage that has since been revised.   I don't know.

 

What I do know is that it's not been working well for me since.

[XxCurtennoxX]

Very interesting data and findings.

 

Oddly, Pacify seemed to work fine for me up until last Friday.  From then on, it appears to have began working as your findings suggest.  Perhaps a change to it was made, or maybe I simply assumed the effect was in place considering how little damage I would normally be taking without shields on.  Maybe it had an excellent synergy with Rage that has since been revised.   I don't know.

 

What I do know is that it's not been working well for me since.

I managed to get my hands on Equinox after the second hotfix of U17, and pacify has always been this useless.

[Sci_Ant]

I managed to get my hands on Equinox after the second hotfix of U17, and pacify has always been this useless.

 

Yeah same here, I got my Equi just a few days ago and it's been like this since then. Currently only Day form Maim ability is really useful on the frame, the rest are either broken like Pacify or situational like Rest for stealth.

[DelialFallen]

I managed to get my hands on Equinox after the second hotfix of U17, and pacify has always been this useless.

 

I got it on release and was a very vocal 'pacify is fine' advocate.  Not that it means anything.

 

As I mentioned, and as anecdotal as it is, Pacify seemed to be working brilliantly for me up to a point when it mysteriously seemed to perform indescribably poorly.  I reported it as a bug even, stating it no longer seemed to work.  Maybe it's due to switching mods around, or bugs to T4 (there were suspiciously so few Nullifiers I thought they had removed them), or that my client was bugged, I do not know.

 

Here is video proof of Nullifiers being absent and Equinox taking suspiciously little damage with Pacify on:

 

 

And that's how it went up to 35 minutes in (latest attempt) before Friday. 

 

Edit: 

 

Provided video link

Edited August 12, 2015 by DelialFallen

[XxCurtennoxX]

I got it on release and was a very vocal 'pacify is fine' advocate.  Not that it means anything.

 

As I mentioned, and as anecdotal as it is, Pacify seemed to be working brilliantly for me up to a point when it mysteriously seemed to perform indescribably poorly.  I reported it as a bug even, stating it no longer seemed to work.  Maybe it's due to switching mods around, or bugs to T4 (there were suspiciously so few Nullifiers I thought they had removed them), or that my client was bugged, I do not know.

 

Here is video proof of Nullifiers being absent and Equinox taking suspiciously little damage with Pacify on:

 

 

And that's how it went up to 35 minutes in (latest attempt) before Friday. 

 

Edit: 

 

Provided video link

Seems to me that it was bugged that it was working that well. I've tested it with several builds and its never been useful at all.

[LilLemay]

I got it on release and was a very vocal 'pacify is fine' advocate.  Not that it means anything.

 

As I mentioned, and as anecdotal as it is, Pacify seemed to be working brilliantly for me up to a point when it mysteriously seemed to perform indescribably poorly.  I reported it as a bug even, stating it no longer seemed to work.  Maybe it's due to switching mods around, or bugs to T4 (there were suspiciously so few Nullifiers I thought they had removed them), or that my client was bugged, I do not know.

 

Here is video proof of Nullifiers being absent and Equinox taking suspiciously little damage with Pacify on:

 

 

And that's how it went up to 35 minutes in (latest attempt) before Friday. 

 

Edit: 

 

Provided video link

I had something similar to this guy, where it worked pretty decently and I even managed to stay above the 200 energy mark (i dont have pflow so i have the regular max) without that much issue, but on t4 it just dropped off after 30 - 35 mins, whereas most abilities seem to slowly degrade and become less and less useful as enemies grow in level, pacify just.. stopped

[XxCurtennoxX]

I had something similar to this guy, where it worked pretty decently and I even managed to stay above the 200 energy mark (i dont have pflow so i have the regular max) without that much issue, but on t4 it just dropped off after 30 - 35 mins, whereas most abilities seem to slowly degrade and become less and less useful as enemies grow in level, pacify just.. stopped

I've never experienced Pacify working this way, even against loads of low level enemies :/

[Kruglov]

Another problem I've noticed with Pacify, and oddly MEND/MAIM is that they seem to work less well if the Warframe is in midair.

 

Maybe I'm drunk but often when I release my burst of heals or hurt, if I am off the floor the amount seems to be severely reduced.

 

A couple thousand points of healing suddenly becomes 50.

10k worth of saved up MAIM damage suddenly becomes like 200 at best.

But when I'm on the floor and perform the same actions, the powers do their full amounts.

 

Anyone else noticed this?

[XxCurtennoxX]

SUCCESS! 17.1.0 fixed efficiency problems!

 

After a quick run on Eris exterminate, the drain is much better and more manageable. However, not entirely sure how effective it is with Overextended and a rank 8/10 Transient Fortitude. That equals only 85% strength so i'm not sure if i can even use this ability effectively.

[Tesseract7777]

They also included it in the list as a "change" and not a "fix". 

 

Are they telling us they intentionally planned to make an energy drain ability that wasn't affected by efficiency mods? WTF? 

[Sci_Ant]

SUCCESS! 17.1.0 fixed efficiency problems!

 

After a quick run on Eris exterminate, the drain is much better and more manageable. However, not entirely sure how effective it is with Overextended and a rank 8/10 Transient Fortitude. That equals only 85% strength so i'm not sure if i can even use this ability effectively.

 

Lol yeah, with the diminishing returns and falloff with range the power is effectively still useless in any high level content even with 200 % or more power strength.

 

They also included it in the list as a "change" and not a "fix". 

 

Are they telling us they intentionally planned to make an energy drain ability that wasn't affected by efficiency mods? WTF? 

 

Haha, good eye! Seems they were maybe testing how we react to it, or how we use the ability. Anyway, it's fixed now and that's one step closer to make the ability more usable. :)