Raikh

Eh, you can create means to deal AoE damage w/o it being a straight up nuke. If they aren't willing to create use cases for Warframe designs that are in the game they need to reinvent the Frame's identity in a way that works with the current game. Decoy is such an outdated ability that it should be very doable to re-invent the idea and turn it into something that works in the current and future game. Being a Trickster and about Deception doesn't exclude the possibility of having dmg in there somewhere. Maybe he could spawn a ton of decoys like Archon Amar that start pulsing dmg and some CC when attacked or when enemies are close and they could possibly detonate or buff Loki when Switch teleported with him or when destroyed. Still very much in line with Loki but a little more deadly.

I'd have upvoted just for the creative aspect of combining Captura and the Simulacrum as a matter of principle but this point is probably the largest for me personally. Even just for the silly numbers tests it can often be difficult to really compare things properly because Level 200 SP enemies end up being really squishy for full setups. And I'd also love to just see how far I can push something w/o needing to sit in a mission for hours upon hours to find that out. And since I do not expect to see regularly accessible content with enemies in the thousands, atleast let me have that in the Simulacrum to explore a bit. Game might not be balanced around that, but it surely gives us the numbers for it, so I'd like to see that in action from time to time.

The Corrupted Mods are definitely not done uniformly and they are weighting the different Stats themselves very differently, which we can already see by how much we can get of each Stat. Power Strength we can get pretty absurd amounts of, Duration and Range still quite a lot but still a good bit less than Strength and lastly Efficiency is the Stat we can get and well need the least of. Also notable that Archon Shards offer only Duration and Power, not Range or Efficiency. Similar story for Warframe Arcanes. For instance I don't expect to see more Range Mods in a big way. Ability Range has been a control rod for a lot of abilities and some abilities probably have a bit less base range than they should have jsut because 180% more is technically available to them to cover a lot of space. Efficiency is the Stat we can use the least of since we can only reduce the cost of abilities by up to 75%. But it also behaves a bit differently than the other Stats. Negative efficiency incurs less of a penalty, whereas positive efficiency behaves much more strongly than the other Stats. Logically if you were twice as efficient (200%) you'd incur half the cost and on the opposite end being half as efficient (50%) would double your cost. But in Warframe this is effectively reversed. To half the cost you only need 50% more Efficiency, but going down to 50% efficiency only increases your costs by 50%. Thats also why Blind Range can be a deceptively cheap ability cost increase and using Efficiency to counteract it is often not very efficient. I'd love to see more modding options, more combinations and generally stuff to try out, but I also think the reaosn why some Stats see fewer mods and options and why some combinations only exist in the way they do is quite deliberate, atleast on some ends, Efficiency and Range, primarily.

Agree with pretty much everything. Been sitting here since the introduction fo Acolyte Mods baffled as to why Exalted Weapons would be excluded from them and since then the list has only been growing longer with Melee 3.0 marking the death of Exalted Melees for me personally and even past that much has happened to only make the situation worse. Psuedo-Exalted have been enjoying a much better life and if they were to finally become moddable themselves and we can finally do away with Stat sticks for them aswell, then the whole system definitely needs a look at. Particularly because its not something you can solve with raw numbers Buffs since there is a lot of scaling power in things Exalted Weapons do not have access to that cannot be replicated by making just a base nubmer bigger, not to any reasonable extent atleast. I see such a sentiment from time to time and I've been trying to replicate this and I can't even hope to come close. Serene Storm has great AoE, thats for sure, but in terms of raw damage it falls off and begs for Armor Strip so much faster than any good Melee Weapon and don't get me started on Incarnons. Especially now with either Melee Influence or Exposure in the mix. Its also not fair to compare them to a melee weapon by itself. You build your entire Warframe around Serene Storm or Exalted Blade etc. A much fairer comparison would be to compare it to a Melee Weapon with a melee oriented Frame behind it, say Kullervo, and there the differences are incredibly grim.

It is tricky and useful niche applications are definitely something to consider. Balance doesn't have to mean homogenization where everything needs to be comparable on the same scale. But there are plenty of Helminth abilities that are not only unpopular or niche but powerful/valuable enough if you are looking for what they provide. And I think shaking some things up on the lower end of the spectrum is easily just as helpful to the system as reigning in outliers at the top, But as stated before these things also tend to hint at issues with the original Warframe and as we all know even the most minor changes happen at best at glacial speed so I understand that some might have almost entirely given up on the prospect of an active balancing process ever being a thing in this game. That sounds to me like its very much the same thing in this case. How many different things an ability provides does not necessarily make it an outlier worth adressing, but ultimately how meaningful the impact of these things is. I'd also argue that most people using Nourish mostly care about the energy and just see whatever else it provides as a cherry on top. Especially the Retaliation effect is something I expect comparatively few people to care about. And from the way it sounded on the stream, we're not expecting a change in functionality but numerical changes. So it may still provide 3 effects after the nerf, just less potent ones, which is leading us back to the power aspect. And hypothetically, if they decided to remove the retaliation effect but leave the other aspects unchanged, I think a lot of people would celebrate that they dodged a bullet moreso than if they reduced the energy gen increase of the ability.

It being optional doesn't mean it shouldn't be somewhat balanced to offer interesting choices. Ofc balance would never be perfect but there should atleast be an attempt to introduce useful abilities into the system, rather than abilities the Warframe seeks to replace or ignore themselves, which is also an indicator that something may not be quite right with the original Warframe and thus hinting to a larger issue. You can't really argue Helminth balance is irrelevant and turn around and say a Helminth ability is too powerful. If balance doesn't matter at all then something being way too strong doesn't matter either. Otherwise I agree that Nourish in its current state is probably too good but on DEs terms they have been balancing more around popularity than straight up power and if most Helminth choices are inherently uncompelling nerfing Nourish to a reasonable level will probably not have a notable impact on that end.

Nourish is probably a little too good right now, so nerfing it within reason would technically be appropriate. However, this doesn't really help balance the Helminth system in any meaningful way. A lot of abilities just aren't worth taking and some are even what their original Warframe is actively subsuming away themselves. Balance adjustments for the top end choices only start mattering when plausible alternatives even exist and right now, they often do not. Depending on the gravity of the upcoming Nourish nerf it will probably even the scales a little more among the top 5-10 , but do absolutely nothing for the rest. Only if they gut it completely will people hop to the next best energy generating Helminth ability and thats not creating more compelling choices either.

Not to mention that building for Health Tanking is much more costly in terms of mod slots and possibly also Arcanes comapred to using shield gating to live. So you invest more to get something thats much more vulnerable and much less scalable. So there is just something very very wrong with it on a game wide level. I think the Inaros rework is looking pretty nice overall for being advertised as not being too large scale. He actually has abilities now, some failsafes atleast and sounds more like a Warframe than a walking HB bar with arms to carry weapons with. The fact that he keeps failing as a tank much earlier than other tanks do or anyone with functional and restorable shield gating does is more of an overall game problem than an Inaros one. He is just the poster child of that problem.

Having access to Overguard + Shield Gating solves survivability, which is a good start for any Frame in my book. The verse mechanic and combination effect on his 4 are conceptually neat, but Warframe is such a fast game that it has me wondering whether it will be practical enough. Especially with reagrd to reacitonary play, like casting 2 to gain Overguard to save yourself but wanting a 3-3 or 3-2 Final Verse. So now you have to cast additional abilities, spend more energy and delaying the next 4 cast. Passive doesn't sound like much, depends on how fast things are scanned, whether this is instantaneous and quasi free Status on Noctua or maybe even in general or if this takes too long and doesn't really work on enemies that die instantly (so 99%+ of them). If he gives a considerable amount of Status Chance "for free" then I'm fine with it as a Passive, even if its not crazy exciting necessarily but if the functionality of the kit checks out overall I take it. None of the suggested passives really speak to me and If I got to choose between some free Status Chance and a super specific perk that requires me to bring a specific weapon or none at all, I'd rather have the Status Chance.

Thats my last hope for what they presented. If one could decide being forced to play a loadout from a limited selection or alternatively burden themselves with other constraints or stronger enemies then it could be an intriguing enough system. If you have to take on everything to get all rewards it not only becomes less interesting as a system it will also become incredibly frustrating just based on the rng involved. Matching an rng arsenal against concrete debuffs or something of the sort is gonna be pretty awkward though because one may not even be a downside if the Frames or Weapons are already ones you can use perfectly well for the given tasks. On the flipside if you get awful weapons or frames you haven't built it would automatically become the best choice to circumvent that, pretty much regardless what the other options are. The commentary on the specifics seemed pretty hesitant and I can see the above being the reason why. A little worried they are too keen on forcing a randomized arsenal upon players, rather than let players play what they want and will make design decisions that will enforce that to a large extent for whatever likely misguided reason.

Fair. Probably could've used a slightly better wording. Oh, I absolutely get that. There are plenty of Warframes that could use a much more significant fresh paint of coat and attention. I just find it sad to think that minor tweaks and some possible oversights can't be adressed timely just because a frame is already strong or that any minor attention needs to be shared with the big reworks. And I decided that I just wanted to put my feedback out and see how it goes. I also don't think what I mentioned would require rebalancing. Collective Curse maybe? But particularly for the Recompense related points I'd merely like to see his survivability curve smoothed out because most Warframes do not have such a steep drop-off into trouble (mostly thanks to shield gating) and possibly use the untouched potenital of his Base Stats for that.

Haven't checked Ancient Healers since I absolutely do not like the huddle up next to a Specter playstyle. Puncture is a debuff on an enemy, bit of a different story. And well immunity is just that, it doesn't make your Overguard more valuable. Point is that you can't enhance Overguards value with building choices beyond Power Strength on Kullervo. Building for Armor or Health doesn't do anything, Adaptation doesn't do anything etc. So how good Overguard is at keeping you alive is much more grounded in the amount you are allowed to have at base and eventually just in the gating. So up to a certain point his Overguard absolutely trivializes survivability and as you go up you eventually reach a point where its mostly a 0.5s gate. Rhino gets around this by having scaling based on dmg taken and also has a shield for shield gating beyond that, For Styanax and Frost its an Augment that just adds to what they already have, including shield gating. For Kullervo its all he has, he can't scale it like Rhino and he can't get a safety net in shield gating either. Meanwhile his High Base Health and Armor go unutilized because they do not mesh with Overguard.

Before they get me to keep and Forma things that are outclassed in every way and insufferable to use I'd quit the game, which isn't exactly how they keep me giving them money. Same for me but to a limited extent. And by now I see the negatives outweigh the positives. There is plenty of times where I look at my selection and its either do one round and leave to reset or wait till the next spiral. And to an extent I'm willing to expand my roster but there are limits well beyond the scope of the rng involved. And in Duviri I can atleast reset my selection. They way it sounded for the new game mode thats not possible and its just a fixed 3 options per slot per week.

As I stated myself, he surely isn't a priority but this also isn't a rework. I'd hope that atleast eventually this game could reach a point where some minor tuning and QoL adjustments could find their way into the game regularly w/o needing some glacial speed revisit angle to get anything changed.

After SP Circuit my hopes for this are well below the ground. Can it be fun having to play something a bit unconventional, just something different than whatever your comfort or most optimal loadout is? Yes But there is a worlds difference between having to pick1 out of 3 out of 10-20 frames you have built and invested into and maybe 20-30 of every weapon type and having a selection of 3 things from 50+ Warframes and hundreds of weapons, of which a good amount are not only terrible but certainly aren't worth your time and resources to build and keep in your arsenal. Warframe isn't build to pick at random from everything it has. Some things are outdated, investing into things and keeping them in your inventory costs resources. And having everything levelled doesn't mean you have everything properly build and can use everything to proper success. If they require us to pick all the modifiers for maximum rewards this is just gonna be the most awful experience based on weekly rng I have ever seen in a game. Its not even real difficulty. You could have the most meta loadout and breeze through it, but you could also be stuck with only mastery fodder and a Warframe you despise and don't wanna sink time and resources into, why is this a thing? I'd rather have enemies have 10x to 100x times more health than feel forced to use things I explicitly don't want to play or aren't even meant to be played in that kind of content.

Had this thought recently aswell. Would be great QoL and doesn't intrude on anything Volt shouldn't be able to do.

Don't think the numerical ramifications are the largest concern for now. But that these changes are now coming based on a community vote which was held under the assumption that Mirage's Eclipse would go unchanged besides becoming a toggle. And now its being changed, not only nerfed, but mechanically changed, which is well beyond what was originally on the table. So thats a bit of a cheap shot. Balance can be sorted out, not that the game has any balance worth talking about to begin with. If they don't want these multiplicative Buffs in the game, fine, if they felt like they needed to nerf Eclipse, fine. But communicate that properly and don't make these changes around the back after stating these kind of changes won't happen.

Kullervo is a Warframe that has really grown on me as a melee focussed player and is probably my favorite Warframe right now. I think he has a really well-rounded kit, so much so that subsuming any ability makes for a difficult decision and I consider him to be a very powerful Warframe. So my feedback in this regard isn't aimed at making him more powerful. I think he has plenty of power. But I have encountered some rough edges and partly frustrating aspects of his abilities that I do not think need to be there and polishing some aspects of his abilities up would benefit how he plays out and make some parts of his kit more consistent. TL;DR at the bottom since this turned out to be quite long. Passive: No complaints here. If one thing I wish his Passive was an Exilus Mod for Melees so I can enjoy a hybrid Light-Heavy Melee Playstyle on more Warframes and Tennokai isn't quite the same. It single-handedly solves a long-standing issue where Hybrid Melee builds haven't been quite worth it because you have to make too many compromises in the modding department to make Heavy and Light attacks co-exist. That alone makes him enhance melee gameplay significantly before I even get to his abilities. Wrathful Advance: The envy of Ash players. Both an absolutely ludicrous Buff to Melee damage and great mobility tool at the same time. Amazing as this ability is, it is troubled by some functionality issues, which can make for a bit of jarring experience from time to time. The free Teleport: The free teleport (default input Hold) likes to get stuck on all kinds of things that are not actually obstacles in your way if your were to jsut bullet jump into the very same directzion. Railings, decorations on walls or ceilings, narrow pathways and basically any door with the ability to close, even if its currently open. Sometimes you do not even end up directly in front of whats "stopping" you and you merely teleport on the spot. I'd reckon these have to do with the detection of there being a path and destination your Warframe can move along and exist in but it might be a bit overzealous for a lack of a better word. Would love the requirements along which paths you can teleport to be loosened up a little so he isn't getting stuck on any little corner when just regularly bullet jumping along that way would be perfectly possible. Another minor thing is that while I'm perfectly happy with doing the Heavy attack when free teleporting on top of an enemy its a bit frustrating when sometimes the teleport doesn't happen at all if the target can't be the target of Wrathful Assault, rather than atleast bringing me right in front of the target anyway since my input was the free teleport. The Teleport Heavy: (Default input Press) Subject to a few bugs, specific to some weapons or weapons with unique heavy attacks. Just at the top of my head Whip, Glaive and Syam Heavy Attacks triggered via Wrathful Advance like to violently spin your camera, which ranges anyhwere from a mild annoyance to being disorienting. And while the free teleport version seemingly goes a bit overboard trying to protect you from going out of bounds, the targeted version had me falling through the floor a number of times. Particularly on uneven ground, likes stairs, when teleport on to a target with a Heavy Attack. Recompense: His main defense/means of survival. I consider Overguard to be a very powerful form of defense, and I'm overall quite happy with it, but there are some cases where he goes from being almost too convenient to having too much trouble to stay alive. Overguard isn't affected by dmg reductions of any kind. So even a 30-40k Overguard bar can be deceptively fragile. So when facing particularly damaging enemies his Overguard being limited to 10k x Power Strength quite quickly leads to a situation where its a fairly binary oneshot protection via the 0.5s gating mechanic. Especially since you need a minimum of ~3 Recompense Casts with enough enemies around to even reach his Overguard cap. For one it eludes me how Warframe Augments like Icy Avalanche come with a higher Overguard cap than Kullervo who has an entire ability dedicated to it. While those Augments take longer to stack it up, they are also applying to your team mates and are at the end of a day not full abilities but extensions of an already functional ability. Recompense "immune" Bosses Secondly, there are bosses like The Fragemented One which cannot be hit by the daggers of Recompense and thus Kullervo can't generate any Overguard when its the only available enemy. This has been insanely frustrating as Kullervo doesn't even have any shields for some innate protection. So all you have for some fights is the Overguard you start with entering the fight w/o a chance to replenish w/o addtional enemies coming from somewhere. His Overguard generation is already severely diminished against single targets, so I don't see why it is needed that there are enemies where he literally can't generate his means of survival on. And I can only laugh at the concept of "ability immune" Bosses when I see an Octavia Mallet shredding them to pieces anyway, so it can't be that hard to make an exception for an ability that isn't meant to do or help with doing damage. The short 0.5s gate and the weird relation of Overguard with his high Health and Armor As a Warframe w/o Shields, the 0.5s Overguard Gating is quite short, sometimes too short to react and save yourself. He has among the highest base Health and Armor but him being about Overguard heavily disincentivizes building on these Stats as they mean virtually nothing as long as Overguard is active. if one thing building for Health Tanking likely makes you end up with less Power Strength on a build and thus a weaker Overguard. And if you flip it and subsumed Recompense away you just gave away a oneshot protection, status and CC immunity and now need to commit more Mod slots to just surviability with no real benefits. I'd honestly rather see him have some shields as a second layer of protection, since the Overguard gate is so very short. Or let him have a longer Overguard gate, possibly scaling with Health, or have some other interaction with it so his Base Stats actually mean something, rather than being a straight negative compared to just having any amount of shields. Collective Curse: Collective Curse is a really powerful AoE ability. As such it has its necessary restrictions. But sometimes this ability is too difficult to make work in an efficient manner. I do not mind the cone as it rewards positioning. But on some maps, especially older ones it just misses enemies so easily. In open spaces or corridors this ability works phenomenaly. Anything beyond that it starts to become sketchy fairly quickly. Any slight elevations or minimal obstacles like to block the ability from affecting enemies despite these enemies being both in the visual effect of the ability and in line of sight of the player. Funnily enough sometimes enemies that clearly weren't visible for me got affected but some I could see werent, so it feels pretty inconsistent and spending 75 energy on something where I don't really know if it does what I want it to do this time around just because its not empty space I'm fighting in is not a great experience. Maybe this is more of an augment case, that may change how this abilitiy operates or gives it some spreading properties, but I'd like if this ability was a bit more lenient. I get that it just going through walls would be silly but small railings, boxes, and moderate elevations like balcony's and similar which I have cleary view on and the effect of the ability clearly travels through shouldn't stop this ability's effect so easily, so that it can actually be used effectively in a more complex environment if you position yourself appropriately. Storm of Ukko: Originally I thought this would a so-so ability. Turned out I was wrong. It does respectable damage, adds to the combo which is nice if you want to use Heavies more aggressively and also features neat synergy with his Collective Curse. But I only really got to appreciate this ability after building for a ton of range. 10 meters Base range for this kind fo ability is just a wee bit too small. It really feels like you have to get 200%+ Range to make this ability feel good and thats a little restrictive if you ask me. I don't need this to be 20 meters base range, but even something like 12m would already help make this ability feel good at more moderate levels of range. I guess there is some worry that this ability with too large of radius trivializes lower level content too much, but at the the same time there are abilities that already do this with a lot more base range. I'm looking forward to seeing how his upcoming Storm of Ukko augment works out for this and if this might already help with this minor issue, but I still wanted to include this point because I can't quite look into the future. Conclusion This turned out a lot longer than I initially thought it would. I hope it doesn't make a too negative impression because I really do like Kullerov and his kit. I merely wanted to take the space to properly explain these points that are ultimately not grave issues but rather rough edges that are about consistency and functionality and not about power or fundamentally changing or reworking an overall incredibly well designed Warframe. He certainly isn't among the needy for changes, but at the same time I hope some polish and QoL could slip in along the way to make the experience just a little better. TL;DR for what I'd like to see: - Wrathful Advance Free Teleport should be more lenient to not get you stuck on map decorations like railings or wall/ceiling ornamentations, narrow corridors or open tile doors - Fix camera spinning bug on Teleport Heavy Attacks on certain weapons (e.g. Whips, Glaives, Syam) - Make Recompense Overguard generation work on all Bosses/enemies so he isn't left w/o any defense because a Boss is "immune" to being directly targeted by abilities. - Either increase Overguard gate duration for him or create synergy between his Overguard and high Health/Armor Base Stats so they are not a downside over just having shields - Make Collective Curse more consistent in complex terrain and elevations as long as its in line of sight/the effect visually travels through the environment - Slightly increase the base radius of Storm of Ukko, so this ability feels more meaningful at moderate Range levels and doesn't require 200%+ Range builds to feel good (Might be remedied by the upcoming augment, to be seen)

This was definitely communicated very differently than it turned out. Not only was it said that they were fine with the strength of the ability on Mirage herself and wouldn't change it even if it was to become a toggle, this is more than a simple nerf but a functionality change on top. Even if they reconsidered and said they felt like they had to nerf it for Mirage afterall, its still very different to nerf it from say 200% base to 150% (and Helminth possibly from 150% to 100%) as a multiplicative source to changing it to being regular mod weapon dmg%. So in a sense its a double betrayal of what they originally stated because not only are they nerfing Mirage herself but they also change how the ability functions in a fairly significant way. I still think a toggle is necessary due to the lightnign mechanic being a mess that keeps on giving, but ti doesn't leave a good taste in my mouth that the ability will be changed in a far greater way than was initially proposed for the vote on the matter.

Just as a matter of principle I wouldn't say no to the Buff timer being made easier to see, it would obviously be a practical addition. I just can't say I would care much personally. I play mostly melee and Incarnon uptime is a non-factor. Combo is pretty much always up for me, so once Incarnon form expires it makes a sound, the combo bar flashes again and I know I just need to use another Heavy and Incarnon form is back up. So even if there was a timer on my reticle or any other additional visual it wouldn't matter to me at all. Dual ichor is already the best case for Melee Incarnon effects being meaningful. There is maybe 3-4 more that have a gimmick thats notable. Some have gimmicks that are completely worthless, like Skana triggering a 10m AoE stun on activation or finisher or Furax Heavy Slams generating a small heat zone that doesn't scale off of mods properly and thus does practically no damage. And a good number have no Incarnon gimmick at all and just get some Stats. Still very powerful weapons just by virtue to how many Stats they get, but no functional additions like all guns have.

When I read the title I was thinking this was about how Melee Incarnon forms don't even all have any additional features besides stats and some of the Incarnon features that are there do next to nothing productive. Which would've been a legitimate complaint imo. Since on that end some Incarnons are only best of their weapon type bc of the sheer amount of stats they get or are only being elevated to be among the best options but do not offer anything additional to make the weapons more interesting. But activation? Why would I need a counter on my reticle when Melees don't have Ammo to generate? None of these points relate to how Melee weapons work. Maybe they could do a different approach to Melee Incarnon activation but building a measily 5-6x combo really isn't an issue and the combo itself serves as an idicator just fine. Nor is it being on a timer an issue because if you are using your melee weapon Incarnon form will be up all the time as you will have combo all the time. Tennokai is now also offering a way to activate Incarnon form w/o sacrificing your combo or making other modding compromises. Melee Incarnons do not work well if you are only on your melee once in a blue moon. But I'd say the same for Incarnon guns. If I play melee 90% of a mission I won't have a great time generating Incarnon Charge and it not expiring isn't a huge factor there. Some Melee Incarnons also have the Tenet perk of combo not expiring when you holster the weapon, which can be used to save a combo for activating the Incarnon whenever. Maybe all Incarnon Melee's could have that by default to add to their special snowflake status? Not sure.

If you want a god roll and expect to invest a few hundred rolls for that the difference between an unrolled one and one thats already rolled more than 9 times is super negligible and I wouldnt be aware of a system that would indicate the future likelihood of a godroll happening going down just because 100 rolls already happened on that Riven. Do you expect to pay a little less for a rolled Riven that has nothing to show for it? Yes, absolutely, but the times where it completely devalues a Riven should be over. You can buy up to 250k Kuva each week for Steel Essence, 375 Essences in total. Just doing my regular stuff in SP (Leveling/Forma-ing/Fissures) + Daily Incursions got me enough to buy the relevant weekly items + the Kuva in recent weeks just fine. Not talking about Kuva endless missions at all for the 320k. Ofc depending on how much time you have and what your current focus is on farming those 250k for Steel Essences aren't free. But I think anyone who can play SP comfortably has access to enough Kuva to get their Rivens somewhere eventually w/o needing to specifically grind Kuva.

As already mentioned Trash Rivens refer to Rivens that are already rolled a good number of times w/o reaching a point of usefulness and thus are considered less valuable than an unrolled one. Pretty much an outdated term by now if you ask me. Earlier on Kuva was kinda annoying to get. You had to go out of your way for it and the returns weren't necessarily great. Especially not if you don't fully optimized for it. But nowadays you can get 320k Kuva weekly with much less effort and practically w/o directly farming for it. Add some random Kuva occasionally from stuff like Sorties and you are looking at close to 100 rolls w/o directly farming Kuva weekly. which is plenty to keep you going and make the initial 9 cheaper rolls from an unrolled Riven much less impactful than they were at one point. So unless you wanna buy some completely abandoned Riven for Endo the term is more or less null and void nowadays if you ask me.

Might be one part of it, but the largest factor remains armor. Its not like Slash brutally outperforms other status dmg effects fundamentally, but it ignores armor. So as long as you dont bring Armor stripping there is no comparison against high level armored targets in tersm of status dmg. Ofc as you mention, now that Corrosive can strip armor fully again with Green Shards alternatives may and will appear, which just shows its more the armor than the viral factor. I don't understand why they buffed it. It was already strong before and the only reason it wasn't as popular back at "only" a 100% more damage was simply again, armor. Removing armor scaling or capping it significantly early would definitey require adjustments to both status effects again, and also armor stripping abilities to keep these things relevant and not let just everything become single elements and viral or maybe occasionally Gas for AoE. The Murmur faction is actually showing us that non-armored high HP enemies can work, kinda hoping that they are experimenting with that idea since that stood out to me pretty significantly. I think the current one has its merits but they buffed the wrong things and left the already lacking things behind. I do appreciate the single elements more now than back then, to a point where I'd like to be able to circumvent elements combinign altogether sometimes. Stuff like Blast and Magnetic on the other hand were left as silly and ultimately pointless, while viral just fed into the balance issues coming out way too strong. Even if they got rid of armor scaling yesterday and Slash was less powerful it would still increase the dmg of other stuff just the same. Although I recon some elements would like to stack themselves enough that we could see some more pure single element setups in general play.

Usually what the status effects provide is much more impactful than matching resistances. Only exception are specific Boss Fights. Some elements are just bad as they get neither good match-ups nor good statuses, some have both, some just have good statuses. And as long as Armor scales with level something like Slash will always be dominant. It just shouldnt be a thing. Enemy Armor should be capped at reasonable levels and they should simply have more health. That alone would go a long way helping a number of elements w/o requiring Armor stripping as if it was a core game mechanic. And I do find building elements for their effects much more fun than building around enemy resistances, so thats definitely the way to go in my book. The game just needs to level the playing field that elements become more of a playsytel choice than some being generally better than others and some being practically useless altogether.