Egathentale

Okay, so there's a new update on Reddit. To summarize: The Pageflight nerf is getting reverted Chroma will get additional ways to build Vex Armor (damage on ranged and armor or melee kills) even while Overguarded Rage/Adrenaline will work with Overguard, but only if the frame doesn't have shields at the moment (meaning, Kullervo, Inaros, and Nidus should be able to gain energy all the time, regardless of OG) No solid word on the LoS changes, calling them "a big correction", without implying further changes No word on the Nezha augment The changes are apparently coming with a hotfix next week.

Emotions are running high right now, and seeing people yelling that this nerf completely ruined Dante, or how he's now never going to get used, made me want to give him a proper rundown, and see where he stands. I took him into the Conjunction Survival Fissure, which is some of the highest difficulty "normal" content people are expected to play, plus it has almost all of the annoying enemies in the game, from simple nullifiers and energy-draining ancients to disproportionately deadly disco ball sentients and pretty tanky thrax enemies, providing a good spread to test utility, sustain, and damage. My build is nothing fancy, or hyper-optimized, just a simple feel-good build with a 170/130/145/199 spread. Energize and Augmented for arcanes (though I think Energize might be overkill, because I never had any energy economy problems with this frame), Primed Flow for a big energy pool, and double yellow shards for quicker casting speed. These were my findings: Noctua was untouched, so it still works pretty well, and can easily shred enemies of this level while providing armor shred, energy regen, and constant buff uptimes with the right tome mods. Light verse is noticeably weaker. At the build's base strength, it gives under 500 Overguard, which evaporates the moment anything as much as looks at it, while the healing is kind of meaningless due to the double-gating mechanic of regenerating Overguard on top of his shield. Dark verse works as before. Honestly, while it does good damage, especially with Viral priming, I never found it to be as overpowered as some claimed it to be, but it's a decent damage dealing ability on its own. Powerful, but not overpowered. As for the combination abilities, I have mixed feelings. Triumph does the same as always. In fact, it kind of works better than before, because of the faster regen. I practically never had my Overguard anywhere close to the cap, but it never mattered, because even if I somehow got it up to the 39k-ish maximum on this build, it would've still evaporated in moments. The real source of the sustain is the regen, because it provides a multi-layered death gating effect, with the Overguard stacking on the shield, meaning as long as the ability is regularly recast, and you keep killing enemies (which is something you always do), Dante is still practically invincible. Wordwarden is... still useless. Or at the very least I never noticed any meaningful contribution to either damage or utility. Might be more impactful in a team? Pageflight still works as advertised, acting as soft CC and a status booster. It's neat. Tragedy is... Oh god, it's bad. Really bad. This ability now feels absolutely terrible to use. Cast it in front of thirty enemies, and it will only hit the three in front, because they are blocking the line of sight of the others? Pretty bad. The ability not working on an entire group because there's something on the ground that blocks their vision (yes, LoS checks are performed on your frame's feet, not their torso or head)? That's painful. The ability getting blocked by stairs? What is this I don't even... So, overall, Tragedy now feels terrible to use, but otherwise, the nerfs didn't impact the rest of Dante's viability. Furthermore, I've heard one of the reasons why Light verse and Triumph got nerfed was because it interfered with Hunter Adrenaline/Rage, but the constant regen is still going to do that, so nerfing the flat gains feels entirely counter-intuitive. Maybe it was to disincentivize spamming the ability due to diminishing returns? In any case, I don't think it did anything to address the core issue of it still interfering with Adrenaline/Rage based energy regen all the same. At the end of the day, Dante feels noticeably worse to play if one relied entirely on Tragedy to deal burst damage. If one's build is more focused on DPS Noctua and/or weapon damage, the changes are entirely negligible. Is he worse than before the nerf? Definitely. Is he now a bottom-tier frame? Definitely not.

So, after a day, all I can say is that all the nerfs to the various Melee Influence builds were expected, yet it shows that DE really isn't on top of their own game. It's been over two months since the release of Melee Influence. If these interactions were nerfed right away, I think nobody would've shed a single tear for them, because they were obviously bugged interactions. However, because they were left in the game for two whole months, people got used to them. People built around them. People made weird, OP, and overall fun builds around these interactions, so even though everyone knew it was coming, them being ripped away still feels disappointing and annoying, something that wouldn't have happened if they hotfixed them early on. Sure, maybe we can blame the whole console certification malarkey for this delay, but just because you know why a hammer fell onto your big toe, it wouldn't make you curse any less. The fact that half of the touted fixes don't work, and the update broke new stuff (as usual), is just the icing on the cake.

Welp, all the really silly Melee Guidance setups are dead now. It was only a question of time, since it was obviously a bug, but I'm still sad to see it go.

So, anyone looking into the constant crashes in the new tileset? I had two crashes during the Awaken The Sleeper part, and I am literally unable to finish the Eyes and Ears quest, because the game keeps crashing at completely random. First, a ten-or-so seconds long freeze, with audio still playing, and then CTD. I already sent in a diagnostics report after a crash, and I know that things are always a bit wonky after a new mainline update, but the game had never been this unplayable for me.

Since it was announced that there will be some more reworks, and looking at the amazing success of the new Hydroid, I can't help but get my hopes up for Inaros finally getting a touch up. Hopefully one that doesn't change his core identity, but makes his abilities (and much more importantly, his useless passive) into something. Anything, really. For example, here's a rework idea off the top of my head, aimed to keep his core design (read: Egyptian mummy themed around pharaohs, sand, and scarabs who has to kill enemies to regain health) and core use-case (read: low-maintenance face-tank weapons-platform) intact. As such, Health, Armor, and all other stats remain the same. Step One: Throw out the current passive. It is a liability that disables the operator revive, and even without it unlocked, it's completely useless in SP levels. New passive: Scarab Curse. Each time Inaros damages an enemy, they have a 50% chance to apply a debuff on them, stacking up to 10 times. Killing a cursed enemy restores Inaros's Health by 1% of his Max Health per stack. The goal is to give him a consistent way to recover health, as well as to get rid of the biggest, most glaring issue of his kit, the useless sarcophagus. 1st Ability: Desiccation. Cast from HP (10% current HP), doesn't life steal, but it still blinds, and immediately applies 5 stacks of Scarab Curse. Modified by Efficiency and Range. Good ol' pocket sand, with a twist. The use-case should be straightforward: your Inaros has 10k HP, and you are down to 1k. You need some healing right now, so you throw sand into the face of some enemies. Your sacrifice 190 HP, and hit 5 enemies twice. Now they are blinded, and have 10 Scarab Curse stacks. You shoot them down, and recover 5000 HP on the spot, for a new total of 5790, and you can keep trucking along. Since it doesn't use Energy, it can be spammed, but the higher your current health, the more it costs. 2nd Ability: Wrath of the Dunes. A 30s weapon buff that additively increases the damage Inaros does to enemies by 20% for each Scarab Curse stack on them. Scales with Duration and Power Strength. A straightforward damage buff for his weapon platform play-style that synergizes with the rest of his kit. You want to shoot enemies, so the more you shoot them, the more stacks you put on them, and the more damage you deal to them while also recovering your health, so you can focus on shooting them. The damage would work like Mirage's Eclipse, and at 10 stacks with 100% Power Strength, it would have the same 200% buff magnitude on an fully Cursed enemy. 3rd Ability: Awakening the Curse. An AoE omnidirectional blast that detonates Scarab Curse stacks on nearby enemies, removing 10% of their Defenses (both Armor and Shield) for each stack, and disabling them for 0.5s per Scarab Curse. If killed during this time, they turn into Sand Shadows, for 30 seconds, and their attacks also apply Scarab Curse. Scales with Efficiency and Range. I wanted to shoehorn Inaros's sand soldiers in there somewhere, and make them more useful. Now, they help Inaros spread his Scarab Curse, which allows for more healing, more damage, and more Defense shredding. The disabling part might be a bit strong, but considering Magus Lockdown is a thing, I think we can live with it. 4th Ability: Living Sand. Would work like current Scarab Armor, sacrificing up to 50% of Max Health in exchange to up to 50% Evasion and proc immunity, no scaling. Procs reduce the buff by 4%, and with it, the Evasion percentage by 2%, until fully depleted, or the buff is recharged. If Inaros is killed while the ability is active, he survives with 10 HP, Scarab Armor is dispelled, and then refunds its casting cost and gives Inaros up to 5 seconds of invulnerability, depending on the percentage of Living Sand buff remaining at the time. This would do three things: first off, merging the proc immunity of the augment in to the main ability to free up the slot for something more interesting. Secondly, instead of more armor or DR, I think giving Inaros Evasion (simulating that he literally turns into sand and allows bullets/beams/whatever to pass through him) is both more thematically and mechanically interesting. Finally, Inaros already has a mechanic where, if your Scarab Swarm gets nullified, he gets his Health refunded. I would push this one step further, and give him a version of Dagath's survival mechanic on top of that, as a way to avoid stray one-shot kills. So, for example, let's say your 10k health Inaros used 5k to charge his Living Sand. During, say, and Archon mission, you don't pay attention, and first get your buff whittled down to 50% (so, you only have 25% evasion), and then one of those Narmer beam-guys catches you off-guard as you round a corner, and you eat its projectile. Now, instead of dying instantly, and not being able to revive due to the sarcophagus, the buff sacrifices itself for you. Since it's at 50%, it only refunds half of its cost, so you regain 2.5k Health, and gain 2.5s invulnerability, which you can use to emergency heal, or get out of the cross-fire. However, if you mess up and eat another chest beam before you can re-cast the ability, you go down, and you get to revive yourself with you operator. This is the kind of thing I would like to see in an Inaros rework. Address his two biggest issues (namely, his useless 2nd and 3rd abilities, as well as his sarcophagus), and give him a survival tool that doesn't just give him one bazillion EHP yet helps him avoid 1HKO scenarios in places like SP Circuit. What's your opinion?

Been around for quite a while, yet DE's haphazard attitude to their updates never ceases to amaze me. Oh, wait. Did I say "amaze"? My bad. I meant to say "fill me with a deep and profound sense of utter confusion lightly tinged by at least ten different hues of exasperation". Almost the same thing, really.

So this update pretty much bricked Duviri, your flagship new content by introducing a consistent progression soft-locker that breaks both the Circuit and the Plains content, making them practically unplayable at the moment, and also screwed over people who play with controllers by breaking their configs, and you looked at this and said "Eh, we'll fix it on Monday."

Ever since The New War, my theory had been that DE just really, really wants to make other games in other genres and with more finely-tuned mechanics and damage-economy (read: Railjack, New War, Kahlframe, etc.), but Tencent is holding their collective balls in a vice and forces them to make more Warframe, so their solution is to just make said games inside Warframe.

Okay, so after finishing the quest, here's my opinion so far: -Style over substance is still in full effect, and I pretty much guarantee that this "intro and tutorial" will somehow leave the newbies even more confused and annoyed than the original one, which is quite an achievement in obtuse design -The writing of the characters and the pacing is horrendous -The drifter is exactly what I expected; slow, clunky, underpowered, and not why I play Warframe -The new environments, enemies, and overall design elements are just as high-quality as always -The open world is awesome, easily the best DE had ever done (though it's admittedly a low bar to clear). It took waaay too long for them to finally get actual exploration and puzzles into an open world environment, and even though it's five years too late, progress is still progress and should be applauded -The space-horse looks incredibly stupid, but it controls well, and the ability to either run or fly makes it probably the best traversal tool DE made so far. Considering that its competition are the Archwings and the hoverboards, that might sound like damning with faint praise, but I genuinely find them a fun addition to the game, even if they seriously don't fit the overall sci-fi aesthetic of the rest of the game. -The whole cycle thing is interesting on a narrative/design level, but I'm pretty sure it would outlive its welcome soon, so having the Lone Story is a nice bit of foresight I haven't tried out the Circuit yet, but on the surface, it seems like yet another annoyingly long time-sink grind for not much in terms of rewards (though the Arcanes at least look nice), and I'm not looking forward to it. Overall, it's more-or-less what I expected (read: disjointed story told melodramatically, style-over-substance, lots of enforced grinding), but there have been a couple of pleasant surprises as well, and while this probably won't make me play the game more, it's an interesting experiment, if nothing else.