SneakyErvin

I agree bullet sponge is overused, but it doesnt change that this encounter is a bullet sponge. It is two large health bars that needs excessive sustained fire to deplete with a few boss mechanics per stage and a bunch of adds. The adds alone also adds to the sponge of the fight since most frames will likely need to take care of them. Kinda the same poor boss design that Neverwinter Online had (still has probably) where they had a sponge with some moves and then tried to drown you in adds ontop of it.You can also just look at the ammo consumption of the fight to see why it is a health sponge. It drains even top tier "endgame" weapons. The problem is that it also stacks everything to practically cheese you. It isnt designed with good punishing mechanics, it only has punishing mechanics with little thought put behind them. Which is likely why it has the sponge health aswell, so there are more chances for it to land these poorly designed punishments instead of having a well designed kit. Compare this to PT, while it has adds around it, the phases are done in several smaller steps instead, so it doesnt feel like a sponge. Same deal with eidolons that have several shorter stages instead. Those encounters also manage to bring punishment, but they do it in a proper way where it is mostly not down to a single mistake for success to turn into failure. Though Eidolons come with their own issues imo that make them hard to enjoy, as in being too large so you constantly need to look up, losing sight of your surrounding and the ground and thereby losing sight of hazards. I mean, there is a reason why other games either allow you to manually zoom out or have a dynamic camera for those types of specific encounters. Those guys are either stoned beyond comprehension or their raiding experience is isolated to WF trials and perhaps Destiny 2 or some similar "raids" and have never set foot in actual raid games. I mean, dont get me wrong, WF has some really golden boss encounters, but they are sadly overshadowed by the amount of utterly terrible bosses in the game. It is also shocking that something like Archons went from actually cool bossy fights during TNW as Drifter, to complete trash when they got reworked for frames.

For those that used Pack Leader or the primed version prior to the companion improvements noticed that it didnt work like supposed to with ranged melee attacks after the companion update. Seems as if that has been fully fixed in WitW when they fixed the gunblade thing, since it now works on both direct hits and explosions from things like Exodia Contagion again. Just wanted to share if others did like me and stopped using the mod together with ranged melee.

Sadly just another cheesable bullet sponge. Ivara+Dispensery+Torid+Dual Toxocyst Torid to clear adds during the eye collection if they even bother getting close to the scanner and not just decide to hang out at the water cooler or the stairs. And used to clear the initial and between phase mobs during the boss fight. Dual Toxocyst to take out Fragmented One as he paces back and forth doing nothing. Took around 30 minutes total, would have been faster if my #*!%ing Drifter didnt bug out "void blast" spamming, so I could have actually used him to dash during the eye collection. Ivara wasnt exactly built to take hits, so had to be careful where and when I bullet jumped to grab eyes. Hood ornament looks like utter crap though.

That uhm isnt how false narratives tend to work. Those tend to understate the situation, not go out and admit to having ran into one of the worst possible scenarios with something. And I'd say risking clans is one of those scenarios since peoples time and money are invested in them. Also, testing in house in a controlled environment wont help them with issues that can arise when you bring it out to literally millions of users from all parts of the world.

But the whole "keep people coming back" doesnt work, since the system doesnt end up doing that except as I said as a "look at us!" number on a paper, while the usage of the content is actually rather low over the same period of time. The content is so short per visit that any real number of activity besides X visits over Y years wont be visible. Which is likely what they aim for to show to people not fully in the "know". Which is why these gating methods are so popular in mobile games, which WF is about to become aswell. It is no wonder this type of gating and RNG ended up in the game at this point in time. Plus it isnt greed, since clearly no one has any problem with investing the time. And no, waiting on a gate for a week is not investing time, it is waiting while doing anything else, including non-game related stuff. So you should probably look inward regarding who the person is that isnt getting the actual point of concerns here. You can just see how little time we actually spend on Archon content. So far I've spent roughly the equal in time on the new update as 40+ weeks of Archon hunts would allow me. That looks like a horrible implementation of a gate if their idea behind it was for people to engage with the content they released. The infinite nature of shards along with a RNG based drop system would have led to far more longevity of the system and much higher usage.

I'll start of by saying I absolutely love how Qorvex looks. The on to the ugliest frame. Well as much as I love playing Lavos, I still very much dislike his looks. The problem could be solved by allowing us to remove his gloves. Other than him I have a strong dislike for base Frost and Frost Prime (not his helmet though) aswell.

With how the world works today I wouldnt be surprised. Though it might take a turn in the other direction aswell, since in this upside down world we live supporting terrorist groups openly is somehow A-OK. I'm frequently looking out my window these days, towards the sky, the streets, the hills and the sea, but still I havent seen a massive giant of fire, a ship of nails, hordes of zombies or a huge meteor or asteroid heading this way. Any of those things happening would make more sense than the world of today.

Yeah that is my plan aswell. It just doesnt feel strong enough as a dedicated damage dealer with all other options we have. But as an actual utility tool it has some nice potential on certain frames.

No lol really I'm not. Hence why I gave the example of having individual gates per frame, like how actual characters i.e alts are treated in practically any other RPG. And in a game like WF where they look at it all like a tool box, being able to progress several different tools should be quite an obvious design approach. And we still would, at the same rate as a player completely focused on a single "main" frame. And no, that is not true. If you focus on 1 you can look at getting done in a maximum of 15 weeks depending on shard spread for the frame you like. If you have 2 frames you enjoy you are suddenly looking up to 30 weeks depending on the spread of shards you want and so on the more frames you enjoy playing regularly. Then if we add in Tau here, which I'm not even asking for to be farmable we are looking at a further gap going from 1 frame and upwards in use. Which is a further things that adds to the gap between players, since it fully depends on what shards you actually want. Where some players may be done in 5 weeks and others in 15 with just 1 frame. That isnt fair either, that is another stupid design decision that I didnt even want to bring up. But since you went with "absolutely fair" I had to point that out. A fair system would have allowed us to pick which color we want each week, that way it would be absolutely fair no matter which combination you want. But no one is asking to not have to play the missions. I'm asking to be able to play it more while still being gated per frame. And there is no "required amount of time", it is simply a gate that tell us no. We arent asking to shorten time spent on missions. Even though you for some odd reason seem to think the gate = time spent getting an item, that just isnt how it is. We still only spend miniscule time on the actual content. We spend far less on it due to the gate than what we would have if it was gate per frame or ungated. You are aware that if WF lasts another 10 years it will result in the content they spent so much time and resources on creating will only have been played roughly 520 times by a person that has been here for every hunt since it released. Which would add up to barely 200h played over 10 years. I spent around twice that time on Duviri over the course of 3 months. I thought you said DE wanted us to play Veilbreaker alot? Clearly that isnt the case. That system did not improve a single thing, it actually managed to end up making it far far worse across the board and added further unfairness due to the heavy RNG on EVERYTHING shard related in that mode. So someone came out of this week with 5x shards of various colors and quality, which someone else got none and others something in between. Yuz, clearly fair system! Such improvement, much wow. Which if you do the math results in the content getting utilized and replayed far far less than any other form of setup. Saying "aren't the best" is quite an understatement. They are the worst form of longevity mechanic, since it just results in artificial "we see activity in our content for this many years" reports to slap in the face of "media" and potential investors and owners. And in the case of Veilbreaker and when it went live, it is kinda clear this approach is rooted in making the game more mobile and less player friendly, since this type of gate is a typical mobile game gate adopted from S#&$ty asian MMOs of the past. That you bring this up in a discussion regarding shards is concerning, since you clearly dont see what makes the shard gate an issue while NW, Standing and so on arent. Those are finite systems, shards are infinite more or less, so there is no way for anyone to be able to catch up either due to how the gate works. Which in itself can be a massive turn off for newer players that DE according to you want to hook and have come back weekly or daily with activities. Imagine 2 more years down the line when a vet sits with 156+ weeks worth of shards and a new player starts looking around to see how long it will take him to catch up, then realizes he cant and that it will take him 3 years to get to that point, at which point the vet will still have 2x as many shards to play around with. That is if we dont get more types of fusions as shard dumps aswell, which would result in further disappointment for a new(er) player. Also, where the hell do you find any gates tied to resource grinds?

You clearly do not get the point at all. It isnt about the power between frames etc. It is about how different playstyles get to interact with the system. People that enjoy several frames are penalized by how it is set up. It doesnt matter what content we can do or not, it is about enjoying the #*!%ing system to its fullest no matter what #*!%ing playstyle you prefer, main or altoholic. Not sure how much clearer I can make it. Which means there are limitation and punishment placed on those who enjoy more frames than someone else. It is as simple as that. It shouldnt matter if you want to enjoy 1, 5 or 10 frames, all should have the same potential and not be gated by time. Since there is no further power added to your "account" by gearing more frames, it is simply a choice and a matter of enjoyment, so no reason to have any limitation beyond that which they deem fit to min-max 1 frame since that is the power ceiling they wanna gate. I would for instance not mind if shards were bound to frames if it ment I could work on more frames per week. Both in order to enjoy more frames and the content itself. Plus it would remove a layer of cheese if we required to clear archons with the frame that wants to use the shard. The new ways of getting them utterly suck. They managed to make the system worse than it was when Veilbreaker released, which is quite an achievment to pull off. Now we dont only have RNG on Tau per player, now we have RNG per shard even if each player invests the same exact amount of effort. So #*!%ed up I honestly cant believe it. Plus the mode is practically just exterminate with new dragon key modifiers, some consoles and 2 priority targets that literally do nothing. We are killing poor little carpenter/builder drones.

I came here to say "when they break the silence hue hue hue!" but you kinda beat me to it good sir! With that said, I hope the whispers in the walls are more pleasant that the voices in my head.

For me when it comes to best support overall it has been Citrine since her release. No intrusive buffs (hello Wisp). Passive small healing that requires little to get rolling where needed. A straight DR buff with affinity range that builds to max through everyones actions. An abundance of orb spawns through a very cheap skill. Scales with several different gearing options and also syncs with several other gearing options, no matter if you've grabbed those things from mods, pets, shards, arcane or frames. Plus the orbs are there to be picked up when needed and not really wasted on nothing. Grants a status chance buff which is powerful even with low strength. Plus the same skill also deals quite reliable damage and inflicts a multitude of statuses that end up increasing crit damage, lower armor, pin enemies down with CC and so on. Can get even further supporty by swapping her 4 for Nourish for even better return on energy orbs, or grab more CC through Breach Surge or perhaps poop on Eximus with Silence. The girl is a mean mofo.

I'd suggest just jumping into public with Citrine and swap her #4 for nourish while running a high ranged build. With the relatively low enemy count it means that a well placed crystal helps debuff and damage practically any enemy attacked on the map but most importantly around your goal, which slows them down severely thanks to her cold, heat and electric procs. You also cover most of your team mates with Nourish, plus you have an 50m damage absorbtion buff along with an absurd amount of health/energy orb spawns from your fractured blast. Oh and passive minimal reg for everyone heh. It wont have time to stack up properly for any significant amount though. And if no one else wants to play goalie she is more than fine at that. When I recently did it with her all I did was run around tracking the mini-map enemy markers and engaging/killing them with fractured blast and her crystal mostly. While staying close enough to our goal to keep track of potential spawns around it. Just make sure to clean up the shards and turn them in if needed, if others are close let them pick them.

But it isnt about the total number, it is about the simple fact of playing more frame than someone else regularly. 50 is his number, not mine, just to further exaggerate his "point". The difference becomes noticable even at just a few frames between players. It also has nothing to do with thing becoming easier or not, it is as I said about being able to fully enjoy the frames that you play i.e min-maxing them, gearing them out fully etc. Sure for some, but that would be their choice and no actual problem. What is the difference if a simple red, blue or yellow shard trumps all other shards for some, while a combined one trumps all others for someone else? It is about choice. And why would people want frames with only such shards? You dont see "looking for 3 more Hydroid/KHora/Necros" for instance. And the shards would work like those frames i.e no stacking. Someone could on the other hand enjoy a frame besides Hydroid, Khora and Necros. I mean the mechanics are already there and we are far from seeing a Khora, Hydroid or Necros in every group or lfg message in chat. As to Blast, it all depends on your weapon and frame. Look at someone like Hydroid, or any other frame that can access corrosive/armor strip and viral in their kit while making use of a high RoF/status weapon. They'll alll be able to give up a combined element in favor of Blast to be able to utilize a single shard for constant shield replenishment. So it will be like all other shard stats, some frames use them, others dont. I still havent decided if I'm gonna skip gas+cold for blast+toxin on my Hydroid's Torid. And if the new combined mods come for primaries aswell and blast is one of them, then the option to use the shard spreads to more parts of the roster. I'm not sure how you can even take the step all the way to common resources when someone has simply mentioned easier to obtain. Heck I even included that they should be random drops from killing archons. It's a long long long long long way between that and avarage resources, Kuva or Thrax plasm. Think of frame blueprints or weapons, or you wanting that very specific relic, arcane or mod from some rotation. It would be like that. And while it indeed sucks for people who havent done the weekly hunts or garrison missions for shards, those that have ignored parts of it willingly only have themselves to blame. Many people told them at the release of veilbreaker when they said they'd ignore Kahl "cos normal shards only" that doing the content anyways would be smart. Since something was bound to be added eventually since it is in the end a GaaS game with an MMO mindset. I have no real issue with fusion, not now atleast since we are so far into the shard system that many have shards piled up and unused. And we are getting more ways to get shards aswell so less of a problem. Plus if done right, the new addition to obtaining shards is designed around the idea of us using them to fuse, so the amount we can get is balanced around the idea that X amount is supposedly fused per week. It might however be way to restrictive aswell. But we should also remember that the new shards are far more specific in use and not like blue, yellow and red. With the exception of the green so far due to the stack count increase to corrosive, which can be used on the whole roster if people want to bring back the old corrosive meta. But outside of that the other stats seem far more niche. And since the use is so niche for the most part, I'll likely not fuse much at all and instead just wait for them to drop from the new content. I might fuse a single green Tau for Saryn if we can obtain Tau, and they arent just used as meterials that end up as normals either way. And later down the line I'll probably make another green Tau for my Citrine, unless they can also drop from the new activities. I kinda hope that red, blue and yellow can be obtained from the new activities aswell since as far as we know we cant break down emerald, topaz and violet. Because it is since it effectively puts limitations on a certain type of playstyle and not another. It isnt about having all things now, never has. It is about how the system effectively treats a certain type of playstyle differently from another. What is the reason to limit someone that likes 3 frames more than the player that only plays 1? Does the player that enjoys 3 frames instead of one somehow obtain excess power compared to the "main" frame player? What would be the harm in allowing the player playing 3 frames to progress all 3 frames throughout a week? He'd still spend 3 times the time on what he enjoys compared to the player that enjoys just 1. So again, if you read what is written it isnt about having things now, since there is clearly no issue with investing the time into the activites if the option to do so was there. Your idea that this is about having it now along with the toddler analogy means you dont really grasp what is asked. I dont mind us having to spend weeks on a frame to gear it out, I mind us not being able to work on several frames during those weeks if we enjoy more than one. Which means it isnt a question about "now", since no one asks to be able to gear out a frame in a single day by farming over and over on that frame. It is about having the option to work on several different frames and getting to the same point of enjoyment with those 3 that someone else gets from 1. No one asks to get more powerful quicker, what is asked for is getting to the same level of enjoyment as someone else no matter the number of frames someone enjoys. Hence why the current system is horribly implemented when instead they could have added a system where each frame owned can progress in the system each week individually. There is no reason to have some players wait excessively longer than others, since that is what the current system does, where it goes from 5 weeks up to 15 weeks just to get the normal shards you might want for a single frame. And to keep player coming back can be solved in so many other ways, a time gate does not solve it. We can already see that now where we have many people just ignoring Kahl for instance. What would incentivice people to do that content would be... wait for it... more shards types and other mechanics to spend shards on... oh wait, isnt that what we are getting this upcoming patch? Oh why yes it is! Which shows that players have been done with their gate system for long while us that still sit with frames we might want to gear out need to do it. So their system didnt really do much to keep players coming back. Howerver us that were punished by wanting to gear out more frames to enjoy like those others enjoy their smaller roster of active frames were given the bonus of having shards stocked up for the coming system. Which in itself is also a problem with the gate, since people that skipped it after being done with their chosen frames are now behind on a massive amount of shards they could have potentially used in the new system, with no way of going back to catch back up. Which is also a flaw that sets newer players even further behind. Something that DE also patched regarding other pieces of activities within WF in the same freakin patch that introduced veilbreaker and its silly gate. As to the bolded part. Do you even keep up with the intent of DE? You claim DE doesnt want it, while at the same time they tried to speed up that grind in the Veilbreaker patch, not to mention that WitW will make it even more probable that people grind to the end quickly by streamlining quests, all in order so people can hit that end of current content as quickly as possible. Even to the point where they had people within DE considering to sell skips so people could get to the grinding quicker. People feeling forever beind as they likely do with the Veilbreaker system is probably a bigger hit to their revenue and player health/interest.

They can always limit that combination by restricting the new dual mods to 1 per weapon. Sure you can still get Corrosive/Viral/Heat in that case, or the Toxin combo by using Nourish. Plus, so far these mods only come for secondaries, so I'm not sure how much I'll actually use them. And considering that bosses are immune to full strip from corrosive, using the secondary as a new stripper option wont be a thing either.

That really depends on which frame people us. My point is, adding multiple options would be good and if it is done through big investments that lead to more farming of something the better, in comparison to just gating that is. Atleast when expensive things are introduced, the player has the choice regarding if they find it worth investing time in or not, while a gate is just a illusionairy "look at our game, people engage with our content for this long!". If I had the option to grind freely and obtain things like a high investment anti-alarm trigger you can bet your ass I'd farm 5 of those shards for a frame so I could skip Ivara or Wukong when I want quick and 100% safe spy runs. The idea of bonus loot would be that it works like loot skills, with 5 shards being 100% chance to roll an extra time. Sure shields on blast needs specific modding, but we will have frames that can utilize it quite well without bigger drawbacks. And depending on if the upcoming combined elemental mods will be available on all weapon types or just secondaries more build combos might pup up that can actually utilize the shield/blast effect from Topaz. And depending on how the game treats the shard, it is possible you might be able to trigger it through companions, since things like Growing Power trigger on companion weapon status application already. The crit can probably turn out quite crazy when needed in case the cap on it is high enough. A single shard will be atleast 20% extra crit per minute in survival for instance, 5 shards and you are at 100% or more crit instead at that point. There is also the question if it is additive or multiplicative, if additive it can be really fun with weapons like Knukor and other low crit chance secondaries. That doesnt make it a good design for limitations. And it is punishing, since it could have been done in ways where playing multiple frames wouldnt feel like a negative. The whole game is about using different frames yet they implement a system that is pulled out of class based games with at most 1/10th of the roster to play around with on avarage. If they wanted to limit the push they should have put individual restrictions per frame instead, so you could run the content several times per week across different frames. That would have treated people with 1, 2, 5, 10 or 50 frames in use equally. And that is really as far as you need to look, the difference between someone playing 1 and someone playing 2 frames regularly, where the person playing just 1 frame will be done much faster and be able to fully enjoy what he plays. So yes punish is the right word. Since the systems gets more and more punishing the more frames you enjoy playing. And it isnt that I'm against limitations, I'm against the lazy and horrible implementation of limitations that is the gate we have.

Saying "always a mess" when we've had a single messed up end of the year update is quite the exaggeration. And that update was also expected to be massively buggy, hence why they even went out and warned us ahead of time that it was a work in progress update when it released. And even in the mess that was RJ, the most apparent bugs were caused by the same old same old, host/client issues. Sadly it wasnt exactly a mode to solo really. And still during that buggy period I think I had only a fail rate of 5%, with a handful of missions out of 100+ thart ran into progress stoppers, some of which were circumvented by the group. Progress stoppers like getting stuck inside the Crewship in the hangar prior to unlocking the Omni. It was far from unplayable or broken, since a huge chunk of the players were finished with it all in about 2 weeks with pimped out RJs and and intrinsics unlocked. I cant think of another end of year update that has been "excessively" buggy, I have a hard time thinking of any update that has been "excessively" buggy outside of Empyrean and potentially Duviri with a few progress stoppers. Have we seen buggy content releases? Sure. Have the bugs mattered? No not really.

Yes, finally combined elemental mods! Hope there will be more and hope we'll get them for primaries and melee too. And hope they do not combine with single elements. Would love to be able to run things like Viral+Cold, Rad+Heat, Gas+Heat, Corrosive+Gas+Electric, Corrosive+Gas+Heat or other new combos. I'd be fine with if they restrict it to only 1 of these mods slotted per item at a time. Except they said they'd likely end up changing stuff before the release, stuff similar to Qorvex's S#&$ty passive, like the stats on the new shards and so on. I'm extremely glad that Qorvex wont force radiation on the equipment he uses. I was pretty much about to just use him as mastery fodder soley due to his passive since radiation without control is utter and total S#&$e.

Crimson, Prison Break, Nira+Amber this week.

But they dont need to be more powerful, they can simply bring rarer bonuses otherwise barely seen. They could give those super rare or high investment shards stats like bonus loot, movement speed, knock down resistance, weapon silence, chance to not trigger alarms or be seen by cameras (which could reach 100% with 5 shards), resistance to X status (like the arcanes) and other stats we see in other games of similar types, stats that simply bring utility and not direct power that improves TTK/KPM/DPS or whatever you wanna call it. Topaz and emerald from what has been seen will be powerful but situational due to the requirements for their procs or the stats the shards improve. Topaz, if going live as seen will require Blast damage modding to bring the biggest benefit. The majority of the roster will not even consider it. It will have some benefits for radiation, heat and impact, but nothing mindblowing. I've considered Topaz for Hydroid since I can potentially use Blast without any bigger drawback, but I doubt I will since there will be a drawback by having to give up Gas and Cold. And Emerald will be something for Saryn or if you maybe run Nourish in your build so you can mod weapons for full armor strip like in the old days while still having access to viral. It's all about making things more unique between frames and give us something that can practically result in infinite farming and tinkering. So far I will likely use 1 or 2 of the new shards on a couple of frames, but the majority will likely never touch them at all. Unless Violet turns out to be bonkers. But it will be hard giving up cast speed, armor, power or duration for the very situational stats we've seen that also come with heavy pre-requirements to proc and work. So far only the +corrosive stacks has been interesting thanks to Saryn and the exsistance of Nourish. Yeah it's harder to miss but if you do miss it you are that much further behind. I dont see the issue with people being able to catch up if they spend the same active time on the activity. That someone has been around for 10 years doesnt mean they've spent more time on things than anyone else, same as if someone has been here for all Archon hunts, they've still only spent X amount of time on it per week. So if a new player joins and invests the same time on the mode but without the gate the two have in the end spent the same time on getting the same amount of shards. It shouldnt matter if the person has been around for 10 years or 1 month if the time spent on Archons has been the same for both. There is absolutely no reason to time game content. Plague Star is limited because it is an event, and when it is around there is no gate on it, only you decide how much you want to get out of it by farming more or less during that period. So there is no reason for the limitation, since like you say, most people only play a few frames and those will be geared out quickly even with the gate. So why punish players that enjoy plenty of switching when it doesnt impact the meta focused players or the power ceiling itself one bit?

Yeah sortie reward should be granted 1 time per week. That could be accessed from the mission window like now and be tied to a specific archon per week. Then to farm them you'd just access it through the star chart on a boss node. Skipping the 3 step set up since you'd instead have RNG based shard drops when you farm them. So the 3 step would only be tied to the sortie version. All it does it add more room to experiment and use more frames actively, since you are in the end capping a single frame fast with the current system aswell. So all that the current system does is limit the amount of frames you wanna engage with and play. I dont suddenly get more powerful as I start progressing a second frame in the shard system after I'm finished with my priority one frame. I'm at the height of power after my prio one is min-maxed. And I think we need to complicate things more, since WF lacks depth overall. More shard options to fill more niche needs across the roster of 55 frame would be good. Plus if we were able to farm freely consuming wouldnt be a problem in itself, since we wouldnt be limited to a weekly amount of shards. Again, once you are done with a single frame you are already at the height of your power, so the gate and limit is in reality pointless and only reeks of mobile system implementations atm. And it wouldnt have to result in powercreep either to add more fusions, it could simply mean different stats. And the hard bound shard I talked about could be specific to a certain type that doesnt positively increase power, but does something else, some form of utility. I also dont think adding an even longer gate would be good, it is already problematic when people miss a week. Imagine missing a month for some reason. If anything a yearly total of hunts would be better, or a gradually increasing cap people can catch up to no matter when they start. So someone starting now would be able to do all their hunts and garrison missions in a row if they are up to it, from the day it went live and up to the current week. With shards sold in the garrison shop having a stack increasing weekly so people can always catch up.

Right now I have 4 frames that I tend to revisit mostly. Lavos with high range, high strength, Roar instead of Vial Rush. Using a Viral+Heat Torid, Heat Furis and Exodia Contagion hammer build for maximum crit and damage. Accompanied by either a status spreading Hound or a stat stick Panzer for crit damage and fire rate. Avenger and Grace used as Arcanes. 5x Strength shards. Unairu focus. Dagath built around scything, dooming things and beating them with dead horses. Fractured Blast instead of her #3 buff. Same weapons as Lavos but they are practically never used. Pet is a status spreading hound. Blessing and Augmented as Arcanes. She is practically a Necrotech Death Knight, absurdly tanky through shield gate combined with Health Conversion, Fractured Blast and Blessing. Cast speed and armor shard mix. Unairu focus. Revenant with a high strength build. Roar instead of Enthrall. Using same ranged weapons as the others but running Dual Ichor as melee on him mostly. Stat stick panzer as pet. Avenger and Augmented as Arcanes. He will likely end up as my dedicated melee frame when TennoKai and melee arcanes arrive in the update. So will likely set up specific Panzer modding for him, right now just using my regular stat stick without any health sustain for the pet itself. Will probably drop shield+fire rate bond and use primed pack leader and something else for him. Some duration, some strength and cast speed shards iirc. Naramon focus. Hydroid gun platform/debuff build with barrage and plunder augments in a Umbra setup. Gas+Cold Torid, Heat Furis and the same max crit/damage contagion as the other frames. Stat stick Panzer, though it never dies due to the plunder augment. Avenger and Blessing as Arcanes. Cast speed and duration shards, might have an armor shard in there aswell to hit 90% DR when plunder is maxed, or I might have that covered with Unairu and Umbra modding. I also swap in Garuda from time to time if I plan on doing Disruption, and Khora or Atlas aswell when I wanna rely on skills and dont feel like playing Dagath.

I really dont see why not. Maybe not at that speed, but we should be able to farm them far more to incentivice use of the game mode they've added. Kahl could stick to a 1 per week thing, but Archons should be a repeatable mission type with RNG shard drops, where we pick which Archon to hunt whenever we like. It would also remove the whole "falling behind" thing, since people could play at their own pace whenever they have the chance to. I mean consider this. Over a year Archon hunts will see up to 53 visits per player due to it being time gated. Sure that looks great, oh wow the mode has been used for a whole year, or two even as time passes by. But it is still just 52-53 measly visits per year. If they instead allowed us to farm shards the usage of the content they've spent time and resources on creating would skyrocket. And instead of gating it they could introduce other types of shard fusions over time to keep us hunting archons for years, just as they add now with WitW. Blue+Red, Blue+Yellow, Red+Yellow, Red+Blue+Yellow, Red+Purple, Red+Orange, Red+Green, Purple+Green and so on as time passes by. And they could also replace the Tau failsafe system in such a case with fusion and make the fusion requirement costly enough to not be too fast. edit: Just an example. Duviri made me engage with the update for roughly 3 months straight, and that is an update where all rewards are practically get-one-and-done. So even if we could farm shards as much as we like it would still have the potential to last forever since the system would have the potential to be infinite or well evergreen in its reward setup. More so if they constantly introduce more ways to combine shards, since it would constantly alter how we want to shard individual frames etc. Meaning upgrades or changes would always be a possibility and an incentive to engage more with the modes that reward us "basic" shards. Imagine something like a black shard, in order to create it you'd need something crazy like 5 rainbow shards, where each such shard would require you to combine red, blue, yellow, green, purple and orange to begin with. Or if they add hard bound shards, that also create some crazy pre-steps but would provide higher than usual stats since you consume so many shards in the process and can then never recover the shard if you change your mind or sell the frame.

Frisky in the stable: Can be used in Teshin's cave once per day. Allows Loki to interact with the Kaithe, turning Loki into a mare to be boinked by the Kaithe. 5% chance that your current Kaithe is permanently replaced by an 8 legged Kaithe with 2x the speed. Discord, Dessent and Doubt: Disables eximus and ancient auras against attacks made by Loki (guardian shield would still apply to the Guardian Eximus itself but not its allies). Also adds a 10% chance that targetted enemy special abilities (grenades, eximus skills, acolyte skills, boss skills etc.) are used on the nearest friendly target instead of Loki. And on AoE skills like the Eximus heat wave a successful roll would result in the skill hitting enemies aswell and not just Loki.

Yes they should. since that is practically what you can do in all of them, including WF, with the exception being Archon Shards. It shouldnt be a matter of who has been there the longest, if the newer player wants to invest the time in the system they should be able to. Timegates are utter and total rubbish, and the way the shard gate is implemented it reeks of rancid fetid mobile mechanics. I actually wouldnt be surprised if DE starts throwing even more weekly and daily mandatory bullS#&$ into the game, and it wouldnt surprise me if the Veilbreaker setup came from a mobile gaming "expert" consultant they might have accidentally tainted the company with in preperation for the mobile port. If that is the case and that entity is no longer at DE they should probably consider getting a cleansing done for the place to get rid of lingering piece of that evil. If someone at DE came up with it, my suggestion is taking a break, cos when thoughts like that cross your mind and also end up getting implemented you are likely not in a good place. That is very far from true. Since in the games where certain things might become unobtainable, they also tend to become obsolete at that point since the endgame has effectively changed to a brand new setting where people can catch up even if they join later. And most games dont have an infinitely obtainable item that is also time gated harshly without a catch up in place. The way shards are set up is horribly player unfriendly since FOMO is an effective part of the system, since if you miss just a single week you can never catch up again and would be missing out. Just look at a player joining or coming back from a break a year after veilbreaker, they are 50+ shards behind that they can never ever catch up to no matter if they spend as much time on the game as the "vet". That is just #*!%ed up. I mean sure, WF has other time gated systems, but they are all finite so everyone can catch up and have the same of the things that matter to power and builds.