VisionofFire
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Posts posted by VisionofFire
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Feedback on the Mag change: Buffs while appreciated look a bit misguided.
Polarize change:
Will be mostly non-relevant, it's essentially solving a problem that doesn't exist. The shards interaction with magnetize has thus far always been irrelevant because pumping damage into the bubble has never been an issue, because it scales off of weapon damage. Anything that enters a bubble today is straight up dead, unless it's protected by high level scaled armor, ancients aura, etc. It may make a lot more sense to have the effect be something other than damage, perhaps the synergy could be localised % armor strip for shards in the bubble, so that 100% armor strip is conditional and not applied to all enemies. If the argument is that this change is meant for lower level content or for newer players, then that argument falls down because polarize already does murderous amounts of damage to trash mobs below lvl 50 due to the echo interaction.
Crush change
Not a fan of this. While I understand this is an attempt to address the issue that Mag is left vulnerable during Crush, it overlaps very strongly with the role of both Polarize and the Shield Transference augment. It also fails to address the actual problem with Crush, which is the immobility makes it very risky to cast in higher level content, unless done under the umbrella of a Magnetize bubble. Overshields willl not prevent a random slash proc that will end Mag. Crush is not a guaranteed stun unfortunately, it's not uncommon for enemies to occasionally ignore the initial stun on cast and fight freely until the final tick with the ending knockdown, and if you were counting on the Crush to actually CC, that's a downed Mag. Crush being magnetic damage also takes a huge damage penalty against Alloy armor, so if shards scaling is a thing on Crush, it still doesn't solve the problem of the skills failing to perform against scaled armor.
Thoughts on skills that buff/rework may wish to address:
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Magnetize is a very interesting skill, but it has several major problems
- The skill is not friendly to new players, as the performance of Magnetize varies wildly depending on what weapon is equipped, with some fairly egregious issues when using hitscan weapons (bubble DoT math and not being able to target other enemies standing in or in front of a bubble.) Not every player is willing to sit down and read a manual before getting frustrated and giving up. This is compounded by the fact that Mag is a starter frame. The slow cast time combined with only being able to cast on enemies often results in awkwardly placed bubbles. While there are ways around this, it's just not a great skill to pick up and use.
- Magnetize suffers the same problem as Limbo, being one of the few skills that can actively negatively impact teammates gameplay. This is partially a meta problem, Magnetize specializes in dealing far more damage than is currently needed in 95% of gameplay right now, but is relatively slow to cast and lingers after cast. Teammates get upset because their clear speed is already fine without magnetize, and clear speed drops once the first enemy is dead due to the bubble lingering. Going back to the above, since most weapons don't function properly with magnetize, teammates are generally unable to take advantage of pumping damage into bubbles.
- If I was asked to make a concrete suggestion, a toggle for the behaviour of magnetize might be in order. Change the dev build version of magnetize to have a faster cast and immediately explode upon enemy death. Might have to mess with damage absorption values/explosion damage a bit to compensate. Having this be the default behaviour for magnetize would be far more team friendly, as bubbles would no longer block team fire once the initial target is dead. New players would also have a "nuke" that's easier to understand and much quicker to trigger. Allowing it to scale off weapon damage/enemy health keeps the damage relevant across the starchart without requiring stacking power strength mods, which keeps her beginner friendly. The key points to address though are the speed and ability to immediately generate value off magnetize, preferably with an AOE effect of sorts, while not impeding fellow players.
- Can't be an augment because then new players can't take advantage of the new behaviour, and moving it to the default with the old behaviour as an augment is bad, since Mag still needs normal defensive bubbles to survive in a lot of high level content.
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Polarize is also quite inconsistent
- Currently does nothing to Infested.
- The explosion damage is highly inconsistent due to enemies running out of shields/armor, as well as relying on proximity of enemies. Due to the nature of polarize, you can run fairly low power strength like 130% and kill or cripple trash mobs up to around lvl 50.Polarize/Crush Mag can easily serve as DPS on Hydron with no mods over rank 5. On the flipside, a high power strength polarize may fail to clear low level trash, because enemies that have no armor left will not splash each other. If you changed Polarize to deal it's full damage + splash on enemies with only health alone, I suspect the echo effect would make the skill stupid broken for clearing trash below lvl 50. Corpus tends to be a larger offender here, as damaging their shields with either a Pull or Crush before the Polarize reaches results in less shields => less splash from polarize => greater likelihood of stuff surviving.
- Hilariously enough, the above also results in a good leechers that bring Corrosive Projection murdering your damage output. Again contributing to the inconsistency of the skill.
- To summarize the above, Polarize is not only viable, but great at bullying almost all non-endless starchart content, if the all the conditions line up. That's a pretty big if.
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Tying into the above: Polarize looks like it should be the panic button of choice for new players. Unfortunately:
- Mag's Polarize relies on timing and circumstance to have full effect.
- Compared to Excal's and Volt's panic button (Radial blind/ Shield), Mag's is overcosted early game at 75. Energy is hard to come by early, and it's not uncommon for new Mag players to burn their energy on Polarize or Crush, then go down because they have no energy left to defend themselves from the next mob
- Feedback from the skill is not clear, whether it kills or not, how much extra damage you're getting from debuffed armor, etc. are all not easily visible from the UI. This again goes back to the whole "reading a manual" problem
- As pretty much everyone has noted, Polarize armor strip currently has no way to scale, which means the skill falls into disuse outside of the shield regen at sufficiently high levels. Some form of scaling needs to be added, whether it be via shards synergy or something entirely new.
- Shield Transference would actually be worth running if it worked on Grineer/Infested, and affected teammates. The effect itself is arguably quite powerful, as not only does it massively boost the shields restored per cast granting a level of scaling to Polarize, shields continue to be regenerated as the wave continues to spread. The closest comparison to an existing skill would be Vampire leech. Shields aren't great protection, but being able to cheaply apply and regenerate overshields while continuing to perform other activities is an effect worth spending an augment slot for.
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Crush
- As above, the biggest problem with Crush is it takes forever to cast, and it locks Mag in place with no consistent effective tricks you can play to mitigate incoming damage.
- Crush also needs a purpose beyond raw damage + unreliable CC in order be useful in higher levels.
- Fracturing Crush is a good augment tied to an unwieldy skill. If Crush wasn't terribly slow and/or the armor debuff was moved to the start of the skill rather then end, double crush to stack the armor reduction => polarize to remove the remaining armor locks in the 100% armor removal with relatively low power strength.
- Given that Polarize + Crush is currently decent for clearing trash, a synergy between these two skills (both hit AOE) might be a more natural fit.
Closing thoughts:
Mag is currently a very polarized frame. Below lvl 50 or so, her 3 and 4 combo well to murder trash, but is inconsistent. In high level, most builds tend to transition to building around her 1 + 2. Her 2 actively blocking teammates needs to be addressed. Would also be useful to know what benchmarks the balance team is using to assess these changes. Something along the lines of:
- How doe the frame perform with zero mods, as a starter. Are the abilities effect and stats relevant while the frame is leveling up? Or do they require a near max level to function
- How does the frame perform with the a basic set of mods? (No corrupted mods, basic setup may be something like Vitality, Redirection, Flow, Stretch, Streamline, Energy Siphon.) What happens if the player is running a non optimized setup? Does the energy economy for the frame work at this level? (synergies generally are not usable at this stage)
- How does the frame perform midgame with corrupted mods? (net build cost should be around 50-100 plat, no mods above rank 5) Frame should be fully starchart viable by this point.
- How does the frame scale into endgame? How does the frame intend to mitigate damage (reliable CC, damage reduction, projectile blocking, etc.)
Misc bits:
Comments on Existing synergies:
To a large extent, the current official mag synergies simply didn't make the transition from drawing board to implementation successfully. A large part of this is that most of the synergies focus on just a raw damage buff in some way, which means they have very limited application and fall off too quickly to matter.
- Pull extra synergy: Non relevant because pull's damage is mostly relevant only early on, and its single target.
- Pull energy refund: Great idea, but was poorly implemented. Pull generally has trouble outright killing things, and given the % chance at an extra energy orb does not appear to guarantee a refund even with very high power strength, it fails to serve its purpose. A beginner Mag player who's pressing a 1 lot early on though will have a much easier time in warframe, as her 1 even with the basic Stretch mod has excellent range, and will help to compensate for undermodded weapons, as enemies will be softened in an AOE. Although it may be a bit complicated to understand for a new player, adding a energy regen mechanic over time to pull, similar to the arcanes for zaws, with a low cap that depends on # of enemies hit. Capped energy regen means pull can't be spammed, and players will incentivized to hit clumps of enemies with it, every encounter.
- Magnetize / Polarize shards: Already covered above, weapons scaling means the shards damage is either non relevant or would have to be buffed to extreme levels to compensate, which would be another can of worms
- Magnetize / Crush: Double crush damage, but again the problem is simply doubling the damage will not make Crush scale.
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Magnetize is a very interesting skill, but it has several major problems
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Please read the Power efficiency article on warframe wiki.
http://warframe.wikia.com/wiki/Power_Efficiency
Excerpts relevant to your situation:
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The Arsenal will not display a Power Efficiency above 175% because abilities cannot consume less than 25% of their base costs.
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Channeled abilities formula: Final Energy Drain = Energy Drain × (2 − Power Efficiency) ÷ Power Duration
An important point worth mentioning is, as seen in the spreadsheet on the right, that the cost of such abilities is minimized at 190% efficiency and 40% duration, which is achievable with just two mods (Streamline and Fleeting Expertise). (The game displays 175% efficiency, but in actuality, the real formula is the sum of all mods.)
Railjack Revisited (Part 1): Railjack Pacing Feedback Megathread
in Missions & Levels
Posted · Edited by VisionofFire
Hi team,
Please urgently start looking at the drop rates for core avionics in Railjack. Core avionics that should be on every railjack should not be placed on low spawn rate enemies with poor drop rates. Right now most players will not notice, as conversion means many players have extra copies, but new players are going to be hit hard by this change.
Not having any form of bulkhead seems extremely dangerous to early game. Taktis are at a lower spawn rate, and it only spawns on the Elite version, which means it's only available in the latter half on Earth. At roughly a 3% effective drop rate, there's a surprisingly good chance players can clear Earth entirely without seeing Bulkhead. If the player chooses to skip farming Earth for Bulkhead, they will not be able to find it in early Saturn which means even more time spent with a fragile Railjack.
Not having access to a base damage modifier without extensive farming is trouble. The weapons feel significantly less good without Hyperstrike. As a test run, using Zekti Pulsar II on Spiro Gap felt similar to prepatch time to kill. This is bad because Spiro Gap is not even end of Saturn, and Zekti II weapons effectively are only acquired at end of Saturn and should be viable for early Veil Proxima. If I were instead using Zekti Pulsar I's, which would be appropriate for a player just entering Saturn Proxima, the lack of damage would be extremely noticeable. If in doubt, please ask the Partners to test weapons without Hyperstrike, Predator and Section Density, as all of these mods are now very rare.
The speed and boost mods also being super rare is bad, as they have the greatest impact when the player does not have a decent form of engines, and are required to push boosting to a decent modifier.
Beyond the core mods, there also mods that are dropping too commonly that should not be.
Void cloak dropping in the very common slot seems like a mistake. Breach Quanta is another candidate for replacement, as it common/very common slots open.
I would strongly recommend rebalancing the drop tables so that core mods that go on all railjacks should not be worse than either uncommon on a lower spawn enemy, or a rare on a common enemy (cutters). If you would like me to compile a list of candidates that these mods can be moved to in the drop tables, let me know.