[With Ivara Prime on the horizon, here is the comprehensive overview of shortfalls that should be investigated and addressed.]

Sad to see that no feedback was used to improve Ivara's kit. Hopefully it's just a case of poor release timing alongside the more demanding Empyrean update - couldn't spare anyone to dive in to make and test out these fixes properly while all those Railjack bugfixes are more universally important.

[With Ivara Prime on the horizon, here is the comprehensive overview of shortfalls that should be investigated and addressed.]

Gear hasn't been revised. There was zero positive feedback about the Aksomati and plenty of negative - it doesn't fit the frame, doesn't fit the game when we have a glut of same-y akimbo crit pistols already. It was a terrible choice, and they've gone ahead with that.

I feel trepidation about the possibility of Ivara herself getting the necessary QOL if something as straightforward and unilaterally agreed as that can be summarily ignored.

[Cetus bonuses must be reviewed]

Find the Caches ceases to be a problem once you have a little experience. Not only because you know the likely spawn points, but because once you find one, or two, you get a fairly good intuition of where the others generally are. It's vaguely triangulated across the valid mission area, so finding any cache narrows down the others a lot, even if they are up in the sniper towers.

Capture is mostly stupid because of the delay after capturing, and the fact that dropping the target causes immediate unit spawns around him which you have to worry about in addition to the previous poster comments about indirect unit deaths.

 

From a solo player perspective though, several more bonus objectives are terrible and unlikely-to-impossible.

Liberate the Camp is not only oppressive to bonus, but sometimes outright fail-stated since you can't be everywhere finding those hidden extras causing 3% loss per second. Since enemies on dropships count from ship spawn, you better hope you can pop the ships and you don't just get silent orbital-drop-squads. Keeping the bonus is practically luck-based. Enemies not in the immediate area, on foot, doing something to contest the outpost should not be affecting control level. The worst thing? This objective is almost always present in every single bounty. It's the most problematic, the slowest, and yet the most common. I hate it.

Exterminate, Assassination and Sabotage - all of these suffer heavily for the solo experience due to reduced spawns. If you're extra unlucky, Sabotage can be literally impossible to score bonus on. You can get fewer than 30 enemies spawning, and if you're in a remote enough location, you can't go top up with other spawns without going into the abandon-zone. Time limitations for Assassination and Exterminate can also be oppressive if your target camp happens to be a wide area and/or have too few initial spawns.

 

Rescue, Drone Escort and APC Mob-Defense objectives are all reasonable.

[With Ivara Prime on the horizon, here is the comprehensive overview of shortfalls that should be investigated and addressed.]

13 minutes ago, Xzorn said:

No. I'm the only active member most the time in the Clan.

I got the number of points needed Solo or in most events 90% of required points and it's hardly the first Event I've done that. I did it for Rathuum, Ambulas, Defection, Index (though that didn't have a trophy), ect. I enjoy Soloing this game's "group" content in fact. Demos never got to move the moment I saw them and nothing ever shot me the entire mission. Towards the end it took a good minute to kill one but there was never any danger outside Health Drain status.

Just a big magical DR enemy that kept trying to dispell Sleep only to have it instantly applied again before they got out of the waking animation.

I never bothered to do that mission type after the Event.

I do much the same, and I respect that. But in much of the recent event content it's been solo-unfriendly, at least to reach beyond entry-level. I can see Ambulas and Rathuum being possible to solo-gold. I know I did Rathuum personally, though I think for convenience and time's sake I ran pickup group for Ambulas (however I had solved the scaling problem for the solo approach, figuring out the status vulnerability logic to handle the armour on the Ambulas units themselves). Defection and Disruption, however, you weren't touching clan gold alone - unless Loki-exploiting the latter, which got summarily fixed.

_{Defection was a special catastrophe to personally score for even when in a pub group, I'm lucky I could pull my ex-clanmate out of retirement to tip me over the edge and earn that research.}

Just now, DatDarkOne said:

As do I.  It still amazes me how people still think this game is Co-op only when damn near everything is soloable.  I will also enjoy Railjack solo too unless DE blocks it in the same way they did the old Raids.  

It's not a hard block, but judging by the devstream, we're going to be soft-locked out of it until the second round of updates gives us AI crew. Or at the very least, progress will be glacial as we try to struggle to viability through sheer numbers as we hunt those upgrades.

The Stealth module should help a ton though. Fingers crossed for all of us finding that one sooner than later, but I expect they'll probably gate that one behind the harder content to make it self-defeating.

[With Ivara Prime on the horizon, here is the comprehensive overview of shortfalls that should be investigated and addressed.]

25 minutes ago, Xzorn said:

Energy pads and don't fail those ones. Same with the Life drain ones.

I did that Event solo for the gold Clan trophy using Ivara. It was excruciatingly slow but easy.

That's pretty misleading. You made up your own contributions for the gold trophy while alone, perhaps, but you didn't solo-gold. Considering the event points were rated on both time-to-kill and concurrent console activity, it's incredibly unlikely that you could camp on the consoles and keep killing that long without an autokill or scaled damage. And I'm pretty sure Demos were finisher immune, so CL was obviously out.

 

As for the whole discussion regarding the ship in the Devstream demo - by the time Rebecca got onto the pilot seat, any number of other frames could have wiped the crew out completely, and as has been pointed out already, fatty tank frames could just ignore the damage with their sheer mountain of EHP.
For a meaningless difference in energy cost, you could have your Oberon sit there with Renewal active and replenish health faster than it's being shot away.
What's the difference? Ivara maintaining stealth is no more overpowered and non-interactive than Mesa jumping up onto a ledge, entering Peacemaker for 1 second, then having a clean and empty boat to fly around at her leisure.

[Ivara: Teleport and other requests summary.]

This 'flexing' thing you're doing is ridiculous @bibmobello. Saying it's alright in your personal build is literally meaningless because a hyperspecialised build cannot and should not be the metric for the overall design.

If it takes 75% efficiency to be reasonable in costs? It's probably a flawed design (see new Ember). If it takes Arcane Energise or restore pads to keep comfortable energy supply? That's not an accurate measure of balance, that's relying on a rare drop and/or crutch consumables. A proper design should be comfortable to play and viable without maxing efficiency, without Arcanes or consumable spam.

If we want to play anecdotes, half the time I go into a pub Sortie Defense mission using my lazy supporting loadout (duration Limbo with Vazarin focus for picking up friendlies) I still somehow manage to top the damage and even kill charts. With a riven-less bow and Sheev. So they're overpowered now, I suppose.

 

So let's have a think on this build you won't share. We know that there's no survivability mods - you pray not to be caught in crossfire or to have a Venomous Eximus creep near you, or you're probably dead in short order.

You're spending two mods on 175% efficiency and at least two regular slots on Strength to surpass 200% without Blind Rage. There's also at least one augment in there, if not both Empowered Quiver and Concentrated Arrow. That narrows the final 2 to 3 mods, one of which I imagine is Primed Flow (buffering between Energy Orb refills). This leaves us two unaccounted slots for taste (one if using dual augments).

I'm imagining FleetEx, Streamline, Transient Fortitude, Umbra Intensify, Empowered Quiver, Primed Flow, with possibly Concentrated Arrow + range mod in the last pairing or, more likely for the general usage, one mod for Duration to keep the Prowl channel minimised and one unaccounted for. Exilus holds Power Drift (as maxed TransiFort + U.Intensify + Power Drift = 214%) or possibly switched out with Cunning for the extra range in the Concentrated Arrow build.

Maybe the mystery mod is Infiltrate. You did extol the virtue of not needing to move, but also talking about running long Disruptions and void Survivals makes me feel that was probably just for the Concentrated approach and normally you'll be needing that speed back so you can find your targets/pickups and not get surprise Nullified.

[With Ivara Prime on the horizon, here is the comprehensive overview of shortfalls that should be investigated and addressed.]

We have a date, now we can only hope DE has seen this and we can get some quality of life. If only we'd had more forewarning on the Prime we might have also stood a better chance of a rethink in the design and gear too.

Also, watching Devstream just now showed several of the little problems in Quiver and Prowl showing up in @[DE]Rebecca's gameplay... although the energy issues of Prowl seemed to be circumvented by Dev God Mode making all energy costs free. With any luck our discussions will resonate with such recent dev experiences.

[With Ivara Prime on the horizon, here is the comprehensive overview of shortfalls that should be investigated and addressed.]

17 minutes ago, BlindStalker said:

You're speculating that the graph is still in reverse alphabetical (like it was in 2018) and that Ivara's position in the 2018 graph should roughly give us a 'ballpark' reference on where she still sits on the 2019 devsteam graph? I mean, that probably is a reasonable guess (looking at where Excalibur, Mag and Volt sit on the original 2018 graph and extrapolating those same positions on to the 2019 graph). If that blue one (in the lower middle section) is supposed to be her then I'm actually more surprised if that's Inaros' usage bar right below her (his usage looks to have skyrocketed in comparison to his overall numbers in 2018, I mean in relative comparison to where he was at before. But then again, people just wanting to play something that can stay alive without putting in much effort isn't too surprising).

Ivara does look like she tapers a bit lower towards the final mastery ranks (26(?) to 28). A little disappointing since her actual usage numbers grew a little bit consistently higher, as the mastery rank increased. Still, would like to see Ivara get some QoL changes for her to just help her out a bit more.

This is why I want raw numbers, I can't determine which funky shade of 'golden brown' she is. Either I'm seeing a spike towards mr28, or (wait, no that could be Revenant?) If so, okay Octavia sort of looks like she's kind of steady, but tapers off as well towards the end?

Loki looks like he still sits as top most frequently used stealth frame (compared to his other peers) across the board overall again. Not too surprising to me (but maybe his usage numbers overall did fall a bit. Though that might be the case for all the stealth frames overall too). I'd love for Ivara to catch up a bit with Loki, in terms of usage numbers. But that's realistically never going to happen. 

Just using the orientation of the key from 2018's to recognise it's bottom-up, then purely looked at the Devstream 133 graph. That massive block of magenta-ish is Inaros, and Ivara's sitting above in that tapering-off blue band.
I knew there'd be a visible block for Inaros, and in retrospect, since he's been a common fixture in the tank-oriented content in most recent updates it doesn't surprise me that it's so prominent:

Spoiler

Both Orbs primarily need to be tanked - Profit Taker doesn't need a damage buff of any sort with a properly dedicated loadout and Exploiter doesn't offer much of anything to warframe kits. Upscaled Corpus in general (Terra + Vapos), plus the Disruption demolyst opposition being hardly affected by abilities and pulsing nullification constantly, again it's easiest to simply choose the non-ability face-tank option. Now there's Kuva Liches, which are dangerous even to Inaros (although I suspect there may currently be a problem with Adaptation causing this vulnerability?) - having something capable of taking the brunt of the opposition while awaiting free Thrall conversions is understandable.

In terms of Ivara's popularity 'growth' over the ranks before that tapering-off in the final bracket, it should also be considered that she's commonly thought to be one of the 'worst to farm' frames, which will naturally push acquisition numbers down in the earlier ranks. _{Totally inaccurate; she's easy to get if you just take a minute to learn vaults, but regardless.} In the very early term as well, Ivara cannot be acquired except through the market until the player has access to a planet with third-tier Spy. By the time most non-marketplace Ivaras are in play, their users are probably MR10+. From there we have a probable mix of "I finally got the drop, let's try her out for a while" with the previously mentioned bad/lazy spies - who have roughly equal opportunity between acquiring Ivara and standard Loki for that purpose. Having Loki Prime separate is useful here because the vaulting process would skew 'natural acquisition' numbers further.

Octavia's golden colour is the lower one which doesn't spike at MR28 - that's Revenant's right above her, before the deep reddish-purple of Rhino Prime and Saryn Prime. Octavia usage starts strong (oh look a shiny music maker) but settles into a steady groove through MR28, not really tapering or re-growing any further beyond that. Whether that's because her overpowering capabilities are slept on by the general playerbase, or it's just being 'annoying' to use it with the beats/repetitive audio, I can't say.

[With Ivara Prime on the horizon, here is the comprehensive overview of shortfalls that should be investigated and addressed.]

2 hours ago, Skaleek said:

Very well written. I find myself agreeing with 99% of what you've written and your asks are not unreasonable in the least. I do have two minor issues, actually more like 1 clarification and 1 issue:

1. You can stealth arrow your own sentinel/companion which (more with the sentinel) allows you to stealth yourself with a stealth arrow given that you have enough range modded. I think 100% or 145% range gets the job done.

2. I use infiltrate to learn new spy vaults (sort of like training wheels). The new vaults in Jupiter and Kuva Spy are easy now that I know them, but before when I didn't, I used ivara as a dependable way to bypass laser walls/barriers. I like this functionality and I do not want to see it removed. In Warframe i enjoy unique tools and i feel like this is one of them.

1) Sentinels may be usable in this way. I vaguely recall trying to hit my sentinel with Navigated cloak after failing to attach it to myself back when I was testing that, but since everything's in wispy invis-mode it's possible I just missed with that. Companions, on the other hand, are of dubious use whether possible to attach or not. The last thing you want is your survival-necessity zone gallivanting off to attack some random mook 20m away. It's bad enough when you accidentally attach cloak to an enemy and it gets knocked back or projectile-weapon killed, with much the same outcome.

2) If you're learning how to complete the vault without bypassing lasers, then you're somewhat doing yourself a disservice by using exactly that in your trial runs. You wouldn't know if you messed up (moving skill-check barriers); you aren't finding the natural path to circumvent or disable the obstacle (stationary navigation-checks). I'm hesitant to strongly suggest baking Infiltrate's barrier immunity into the base ability because I feel that's likely to become a "one or the other" decision between that and freedom of parkour - and the latter is far more liberating than the former.

I will admit two of the Jupiter vaults are definitely more aided by laser immunity than any previous ones which can all be simply learned to insignificance. The 'security shield' vault goes faster when you can cut directly through the fencing and the vertical sweep between the two unlocking consoles, and (albeit only at over-natural levels e.g. Sortie) there's the vault ending in that 'rave tunnel' which gets difficult to time when the sets of sweeping side-lasers are added into the mix.
Given that Limbo is the only other frame who can ignore these things outright (not counting teleporting beyond) it might be desirable to keep that available in Prowl's augment, but it was always a situational benefit. The augment needs to do something more concrete, that's usable in most or all mission types, once its backhanded 'Let me take some weight off that ball-and-chain which I attached to you ' property is no longer relevant.

[With Ivara Prime on the horizon, here is the comprehensive overview of shortfalls that should be investigated and addressed.]

18 minutes ago, DatDarkOne said:

You mean to tell me that this "Scare" of Ivara not being utilized by the masses is all because of a faulty graph in a Devstream?  LMMFAO!!!!!!! 🤣

Nah, it was just faulty attribution of evidence. It was a nice concept to strengthen the imperative for change originally, but I think we've dug deep enough in discussion and backing up the various arguments either way that the issues are still clearly visible without it.

After all, I'm not here making deep-dive threads on the other frames sporting insignificant presences on that graph, because I'm not as intimately familiar with them and their own shortfalls and it's not an opportune time for big overhauling changes to be made.

[With Ivara Prime on the horizon, here is the comprehensive overview of shortfalls that should be investigated and addressed.]

1 hour ago, BlindStalker said:

I was referring to the new usage stats that Rebecca showed us on Devstream 133 down below (it's the same type of graph, but it's the most recent data they had on hand. It's new because it has 28 columns now, referring to now the highest MR 28). Problem is, still can't tell where Ivara's usage stat is because there's 4 different shades of blue and I can't decipher which one she is. (Chroma Prime, Valkyr, Loki and Ivara have shades of blue on the new 2019 stats). Just like the old 2018 graph, the 2019 graph is virtually unreadable, and without the raw numbers (Reb provided a google sheet last time iirc for 2018), it's pretty much impossible to tell where Ivara is in among the jumble of colours. (Well I tried using MS paint's colour picker earlier and I couldn't match Ivara's shade on the graph. Maybe somebody else has better picture tools where they can determine where Ivara is?). It's why I was hoping Reb also had the raw numbers on hand as well. The graph is really only for showing on a stream, not really something that can be mulled over with a fine tooth comb.

To be honest, I kind of appreciate them separating Prime and Non-Prime. Those little details count (plus I figure it would make not yet primed frame usage look lower if the primes and non-prime usage stats were mixed, at least I think).

Okay, I have to concede here. I may have slightly eyeballed the graph on some assumptions because the layout is pretty poor. I looked not for Ivara, but for the more popular frames surrounding her alphabetically, since there's so much colour overlap and the top legend just becomes an impossible-to-reference jumble without the graph sitting in front of me.

I think I actually got myself lost between two different shades of magenta as I was working top-down instead of bottom-up and looked for some keys of more popular frames. What I thought was a completely missing Ivara between Inaros and Khora may actually have been the Mirage section of the graph. Now I can zoom myself in and take time to look at it, I can see there's Ivara's blue right there above a chunky block of Sand Daddy. 

So the graph isn't as damning as I originally thought. I can admit a mistake when I make one. @DatDarkOne

But those numbers in a vacuum include edge-cases like the emergent Castanas Eidolon hunter Ivaras - and while they're naturally padded out with that common player sentiment 'I need something because I'm bad/lazy at spy', she's still crowded out by Loki and his Prime lumped together. Octavia usage seems pretty standardised across the board, which is surprising. For the general player base she must be 'sleeper OP' for stealth and scaling prowess. Ash isn't looking so hot, but that's likely because Loki's more accessible for stealth purposes and people still hate the bladestorm rework, otherwise finding more engagement with different kits when stealth isn't the operant condition for selection.

Despite the barrier to entry of spying for Ivara, you can also see a notable drop-off in usage towards the last couple mastery ranks. This could be seen as people who, as they master everything available, begin realising the comparative flaws of Ivara and favouring alternative approaches, either in the stronger stealth game or tanking-meta. But that's just my armchair diagnosis.

[With Ivara Prime on the horizon, here is the comprehensive overview of shortfalls that should be investigated and addressed.]

19 minutes ago, DatDarkOne said:

I Answer was in direct reply to your question of, "Have you ever broken stealth to cross the open area of the Rescue vault and gotten 360-No-scoped by the Grineer Wardens and their old variant, cheap-shot Vulkars?"  To which my answer was No and the why.  As I also told you that I've done multiple Sorties and higher where I have been out of Prowl BulletJumping without getting ganked.  

You've either been exceedingly lucky in each of those times, or are omitting them through purpose or faulty memory. I also never said it happened every time either, but it very well can happen.

19 minutes ago, DatDarkOne said:

This is personal opinion as to whether you feel "Hobbled" or not.  Again, while I would mind a speed change to Prowl, you are over-exaggerating it a tad bit.  

50% speed may not quite be a Hobbled Key (which was only a hyperbolic suggestion to experience slowvara even after shackles removed) but it's not something that can be called personal opinion. We only differ on how much we personally feel the difference negatively affects us in our everyday, that doesn't stop it existing.

19 minutes ago, DatDarkOne said:

Temper temper, and watch the name calling.  😛

I hope you're just playing along with the absurdity of the non-insult. Lotus knows I've been given infringements for less.

19 minutes ago, DatDarkOne said:

You didn't read what I said at all.  I said, " You only need one or two mods total to have max Efficiency while still having duration above 100% in pretty much any build." Then followed it with, "You can have a balanced build on Ivara and not even need forma."

This is you admitting that what I said about getting max efficiency with 2 mod.  That leaves a whole lot of head room in mod slots for quite a bit in build flexibility now doesn't it.

You don't need all those mods to have max Efficiency without ganking Duration.  I just did it with only rank 3 Fleeting, Streamline, Constitution, and Auger message.  While this is taking 4 slots, it's also still very new player friendly.  But all a new player really needs to do is just use all normal mods and have a Balanced Build, which will take them all the way from start to finish of the Star Chart.  

I have the benefit of knowing this is true because I had Ivara right after unlocking the Marketplace.  My Beginner Excal was still at rank 4 when I switched.  Meaning I made Ivara my Starter frame and had to get mods, endo, etc as a new player, TWICE.  Once before the SoR update and then second time after the SoR update to the StarChart.

Ah, I see the mis-read. You lacked a comma to separate the statements. To re-arrange: "Max efficiency while keeping >100% duration takes only one or two mods" is how it looked to me, which is of course ludicrous. I see now that you meant "Max efficiency takes two mods" and then "Duration can be recovered over 100% in the remaining build".

So I suppose yes, if you don't mind your Cloaks and Sleeps being nothing, and your Artemis being.. mediocre at best (since corrupted Strength mods both axe channel efficiency), you can slot maxed Fleetex and Streamline alone. But by the time you've recovered Duration, as we've both described, you've filled out the mod space that accomplishes much the same for other stealth options.
I wasn't saying you need every expensive mod listed - but the average player is probably likely to be running either overcapped Efficiency because they don't keep a second FleetEx around half-ranked, or to run at 60% efficiency stat and chuck an extra duration mod in Streamline's slot. This will want either Narrow Minded or Primed Continuity for the same outcome. Primed Flow is on there for the original quote's sake.

I rolled 'new player experience' using Ivara too, although unlike you I approached it via the pure f2p approach, Excal grinding up to tier 3 spy capability and farming out the pieces from there. New players almost certainly aren't thinking about efficiency caps any which way, though, for traditional duration-based stealth or Ivara's channel - they've many other problems to worry about first, and probably want other parts of the toolkit to excel for what it costs. It is important to step back from yourself when trying to investigate that sort of thing; I drew from some of that experience for smaller desirables in the OP, for the players who maybe don't have all their ability stat mods found and maxed yet.

[With Ivara Prime on the horizon, here is the comprehensive overview of shortfalls that should be investigated and addressed.]

21 minutes ago, DatDarkOne said:

Nope, can't say that I have. Ever.  If the gap is large enough then I'll just use Dashwire and not de-cloak at all all while speeding across the open area.

 

So you've A) spent energy B) spent time for that projectile to hit and C) unless augmented, are still only going at sprint pace. Doesn't sound like an improvement.
Otherwise, it's still a thing that can happen. Higher levels make this worse as enemy accuracy is directly linked with this. If they do spot you at Sortie level, you are toasted. Even if you're running Redirection and Vitality in the build you can quite plausibly get gibbed.

21 minutes ago, DatDarkOne said:

This is misleading as Loki players have to deal with exactly that EVERY time the timer runs out. 

It takes one mod to solve this without simply using proper placement. That's not the only option, either. No one mod fixes all of Ivara's limitations. Besides, Loki is also aged. He could use a TLC pass of his own, but that doesn't mean Ivara shouldn't be given hers at such an appropriate point in time as we are.

21 minutes ago, DatDarkOne said:

Only if the group is rushing to the end like it's a race.  There is NOTHING in Warframe that requires you to do the mission fast except for that one AW mission.  Even in cases like that I just don't bother with Prowl as the enemies aren't going to hit me anyway as long as I'm not going straight vertical.  Yes, I have done and still do it at high level when with a group if I have to.  Usually going to extraction.

You can use a hobbled key in every mission if you like, but you can't enshroud the fact that plodding along at half the pace means Ivara's going to lag significantly far behind most groups.

I don't Prowl all the time myself either, because it's so intent on being a waster of my time. Its limits make it more efficient to simply take that occasional unexpected instant-death and spend a revive. Great design?

21 minutes ago, DatDarkOne said:

You know that's straight up BullShyte because you are completely ignoring player choice.  Also if you are wanting the efficiency when playing with a group, then why are you using Ivara?  Going by that same logic you posted, you could use any other frame.  While I have no problems with some of the suggestions, others of yours are changing aspects of Ivara's style and character in which I just don't agree with.  

Of course I'm 'ignoring player choice'. I use Ivara predominantly myself you great doughnut. We're talking objective, not subjective. There's always people who will use an inferior option on personal choice, but that doesn't make the option any less inferior in the big picture.

21 minutes ago, DatDarkOne said:

That's not true at all.  You only need one or two mods total to have max Efficiency while still having duration above 100% in pretty much any build.  You can have a balanced build on Ivara and not even need forma.  And 1 or 2 forma to equip Primed mods.  I know this for a fact as I've done it 4 times with 4 Ivaras on two separate accounts.  On both accounts starting with Ivara as a beginner.  So it's not a lot of investment at all other than getting the common mods themselves if you don't already have them.  You only run into specific builds when you try to tack on corrupted mods or more corrupted mod than you actually need.  

It's impossible to max channel efficiency with only standard mods. You will require a corrupted mod. Even including Primed Continuity and Constitution - Baro's costly fare and a Nightmare reward respectively - it is not possible to hit 75% reduction to channel at Streamline's 30% efficiency (also Augur Message, but I call that one reasonable to attain).

Narrow Minded, Primed Continuity and Streamline (all maxed) do not quite cut it either. You're still a few % short. So you add Augur Message or Constitution in there. Four mods.
Using Fleeting Expertise it is possible to reach efficiency cap more easily. In fact, just FleetEx and Streamline work, because the Channelling cost equation can account for more than the normal 175% efficiency stat cap. However, Fleeting Expertise kills Duration. So if you want that 100% you'll need at least one more mod in there to compensate. Three or four mods now.

The player also mentioned having Primed Flow capacity in there too, so +1 the efficiency requirements. Total cost for efficient prowling without tanking duration stat: 4 or 5 mods. Half the build. Also a fairly big chunk of Endo and Credits for maxing some of the following: Primed Flow, Primed Continuity, Narrow Minded. Not new player friendly.

It is fair to say that gated mods and a focused build can be expected for other stealthers (Ash, Loki) to be permanently invisible too. But it's certainly not better for Prowl. That's going by Energy Siphon's provision, as well - once they have access to energy restoration from Zenurik Focus then they need only one, or zero mods at all.

21 minutes ago, DatDarkOne said:

You're trying to make it sound way harder than it really is.  There is only one place in the game where I needed to use Dashwire to go vertical and that in the circular Grineer Room with the platforms on the side.  It's a straight shot with Dashwire from the lower platform entrance to the upper level on the other side.  The one sec you spend casting Dashwire is made up in the straight path.  I'm doing all this with a Controller.  

Ah, controller. That changes matters somewhat. What I call 'standard mobility' is very different there, from my (admittedly limited) experience - I found it's significantly less accessible to spam bullet-double-jump-rolls while keeping yourself pointed in the right directions at all times.

Still, I think you're understating the impact of not being able to just propel yourself up at a moment's notice to whatever angle you need. Getting stuck on uneven wall surfaces if you try the wallrun approach is not uncommon. Also, again, using a Dashwire - extra cost, still not taking you above baseline speed unless you're running Infiltrate as well.

[With Ivara Prime on the horizon, here is the comprehensive overview of shortfalls that should be investigated and addressed.]

3 hours ago, (NSW)Sk0rp1on said:

I really disagree about prowl.

If you need mobility, just bullet jump out of stealth and recast it on the way down. I think that’s fun. Feels like being Gray Fox.

And sure, when you make explicit how energy drains during prowl it sounds bad and complicated, except that you can stay invisible basically forever if you use the right mods. 

I genuinely don’t get why people want Ivarras stealth to be exactly like Ash’s and Loki’s. Between the 3 of them there’s a good spectrum of stealth abilities that are all different levels of duration, mobility and offense.

Until the second cast decides to instant-break, which it does sometimes if you try to be clever that way, depending on exactly when you re-cloak. Bullet jump -> prowl -> double-jump during the windup animation usually makes this happen. So that's wasteful.
And then there's the instant-acquisition problem. You can be exposed for only a split second and get deleted. Loki players know this problem too well, but they don't have to deal with it every time they want to just get somewhere.

Duration is only superior 'per cast'. Sustainability as explained elsewhere is actually inferior for Ivara (unless sitting in one place, AFK). She already has a separate cloaking tool for immobile purposes, and since she's reliant on stealth for survival, mobility in Prowl is a must, especially to allow her in co-op play without falling behind.
We're not slow-paced 2014 Warframe any more. We have things like automatic Rescue alarm triggers in Sorties, for example. Have you ever broken stealth to cross the open area of the Rescue vault and gotten 360-No-scoped by the Grineer Wardens and their old variant, cheap-shot Vulkars?

It's not really a case of making it 'exactly like' the others. It'd still be a toggle (despite that being implicitly limiting in its own right), it's about both Ivara's options being just objectively worse. Why would you not pick standard Weapon A when the alternative Weapon B has half the fire rate and twice the reload, but oh boy, 40% more headshot damage? That's not a balance. One is clunky. You can spend two mod slots on faster fire rate and reload for Weapon B, likely still not-quite-completely closing the factor-2 stat gaps, or you could spend two mod slots getting Weapon A 40% or more extra damage in general, not just on headshots.

I'd be moderately satisfied if they at least brought back the 'stationary bullet jump' so-called bug. That was a skill element. Experience and nimble fingers could make it efficient enough to keep up pace without breaking stealth. _{It also fit froggy girl amusingly, but that's just a thematic interpretation, not the theme itself, right, DE design teams?}

1 hour ago, Kouden said:

i never had any problems with prowl after installing the augment. i got 612 energy with Ivara and have a base drain of 0,25 E/s. Also i just roll through the missions with her wich is kinda equal to sprinting speed. So if you still see a problem with that you must be doing something wrong

Ps: fully agreed on your view on the quiver 🙂

That's still just one build and a lot of investment for that sole purpose. Mathematically it's still inferior to the other stealths, who can all build, sole-purpose, to an effective cost under the 'energy siphon threshold' of 0.6 energy per second - since Ivara's "base" drain is only relevant for sitting around, movement is 0.75 energy/sec at best. They can also choose to equip Energy Siphon and have a negative net drain; they don't need orbs or anything to sustain invisibility forever, even gaining energy above wherever they started. Ivara can put on Primed Flow, yeah.. but she has to fill it up before using it, and all it does is delay the inevitable. No need for Primed Flow when your energy supply naturally increases while remaining hidden, without picking up a single orb.

Meanwhile those stealths aren't shackled down in mobility or otherwise at all. Bare-bones sprinting speed is approximately half the speed of bullet-jump based mobility. Rolling doesn't help much when you need vertical movement either. You have to go the long way around, or hope there's a wall nearby that won't be annoying when trying to run up it, or spend more of your slowly dwindling energy on dashwires (assuming they cooperate too).

[With Ivara Prime on the horizon, here is the comprehensive overview of shortfalls that should be investigated and addressed.]

1 hour ago, (XB1)Knight Raime said:

So double jump->roll->double jump->roll?

Something like that. It's really janky in practice but I'm sure it generally works out faster, when the air-time doesn't last too long. Just rolling at least feels smoother and steadier, but I was going for fastest, not comfort.

47 minutes ago, DatDarkOne said:

Actually, this one has been known for awhile now.  Well, to be honest I figured it out after first finding out it wasn't guaranteed under 100% PS. The steal chance percentage is directly represented in the Power Strength up to 100.  So a PS of 95% would be a steal chance of 95%.  As noted in the Wiki I've included below:

Has a 100% chance to drop an item from an enemy if the Ability Strength is 100% or above; reducing the Ability Strength reduces the chance for an item to drop equal to that of the Ability Strength (40% Ability Strength has a 40% chance of dropping an item). If the attempt was unsuccessful, it will attempt to try again.

Now if you meant showing that directly in game, then there are lots of abilities that didn't show nuanced stats in game.  For example like how Ember's old WoF didn't show that it had a hard limit of only 5 targets. 😄  

I meant in the ability stats readout - along with the 3 out of 4 energy cost factors., there was no 'steal chance' for a long time. Wiki lists all of them and it's not hard to figure out the proportion, but still, penalties (especially those caused exclusively by the player's build) have no business being hidden out of the stats pane.

Oh, and Ember's WoF wasn't just 5 concurrent targets. It was 5 on the initial cast, then only 3 per subsequent tick for the duration. I know that one all too well. Nothing like those times you were standing near a couple invulnerable (but still 'valid') targets and having your ability just... wasting energy making a few grey zeroes appear.

[With Ivara Prime on the horizon, here is the comprehensive overview of shortfalls that should be investigated and addressed.]

30 minutes ago, (XB1)Knight Raime said:

I gotta be honest with you i've never pushed bunny hopping into my prowl play.  I have always just did standard on the ground rolling only jump into roll when needing to clear a short gap.  (and well bullet jumping when that was possible pre bug fix.)  Does it really make that huge of a difference if I add hopping into the rolling?

It's mostly in the double-jump. In pure rolling you only have the direct movement of the action, but there's some physics shenanigan that adds/maintains momentum when doing it in conjunction with those little hops, where normal rolling has you slowing back down during the animation's recovery time. Technically the absolute fastest might be in back-dodging, but that's unrealistic to use as the measure of constant movement. You're going to want to look where you're going sometimes.

(The rest we've pretty much reached our best conclusions on, just wanted to clarify that since you asked.)

[With Ivara Prime on the horizon, here is the comprehensive overview of shortfalls that should be investigated and addressed.]

9 minutes ago, (XB1)Knight Raime said:

I...guess I don't really have more to add here.  Sorry.  I just don't see it as a big deal.

Doesn't have to be a big deal, we're just acknowledging it as some measure of drawback. It's just something other stealthers don't need to pay for, outside of threats which only require the sound cue to pinpoint and attack targets.

12 minutes ago, (XB1)Knight Raime said:

I mean that's a cute statement but i'm pretty sure the faster movement on arrows was mentioned as an intended thing for her.  This is why I suggested giving her a base movement speed in prowl and a small movement speed buff whenever you hop off a zipline.  I think these plus the ability to roll repeatedly give her enough movement.  My fear of giving her full mobility while in prowl really just falls down to power creep of sorts.  If she could run, slide, and bullet jump while staying completely invisible i'd only ever take her for stealth missions.  Currently I pick between loki and wisp.  Loki if I want to be lazy.  Wisp if I want the extra survivability, movement, and situational invisibility.  Ivara is my go to choice if I want to steal things while i'm scanning things for the simulacrum.  Just being able to turn my invisibility on at the start of a mission and never having to worry about it ever again would be enough for me to never consider other options even if other "stealth mechanic" having frames were situationaly better in some instances.

I decided to do a test while I was out on my daily farm this morning. It's fairly anecdotal, but I was out on the Vallis and I picked paths between two clear scenery points - ends of fencing, lampposts etc - and tested 'natural mobility' and Ivara's best current option purely within Prowl itself, rolling/bunnyhopping along the path. There's a distinct difference depending on the elevations for Prowl. I found going uphill was easier because I would land sooner from the roll-hop sequence, thus allowing me to reduce downtime where roll momentum is lost.

On average, the time difference between the full parkour and Prowlkour was a factor of approximately 2 to 3 times (depending on terrain). That's a pretty significant difference, and although it was across open ground, lack of a bullet jump would likely make matters worse in tileset missions where it's less inclines and more sheer step changes.

I suppose then, the difference between a completely unencumbered Ivara and others is that your longer missions would necessitate Ivara to actively kill or still slow down to steal so that energy orbs could keep her topped up. In other situations, basic energy regen makes Loki etc. the superior 'pacifist option' when you just want to go along to non-combat objectives, at the cost of occasionally refreshing the stealth.

29 minutes ago, (XB1)Knight Raime said:

1. I don't think it would be complicated at all.  But if you're attempting to say you think it's too much stuff for DE to expect to change about one ability I could kind of see that.  But also we've seen extensive reworks before.  Though if it is too complicated i'm fine with the low priority aspect  being added to her passive and leaving the current augment alone.
2. That is a fair point.  I didn't consider cloaking defense targets.  The main idea here is I don't enjoy having to constantly refresh a cloak arrow for someone.  Maybe we can go half way.  Areas cloaked by the arrow are not tied to duration and shooting inside them doesn't break the cloak.  Shooting another person/defense target does have a duration but firing doesn't break the cloak.
3. If you're referring to her being overbuffed to the point of people crying about her i'm just going to have to pass on that.  Can you elaborate further on the a to b and two immobile stealth part please.
4. While I don't believe I have a huge issue with your prowl modifications to my idea I feel like mechanically that's probably going to be more complex for DE than the simple changes i've suggested.  Though credit where it's due I was thinking about different methods of effecting how long it takes to recloak after temp exposing yourself.  It is an interesting idea if nothing else.
5. Yeah that's kind of the idea.  cheaper usage all around but you're stuck using the artimis bow.  And buffs with the bow in other areas to make it so the bow itself doesn't feel like a huge nerf for attempting to synergize her kit.

1. Just consider the state of the ability pane with baked-in Empowered Quiver plus a separate additional augment to display. Too much. Ivara already fails to display crucial Prowl cost information (and for a long time, the chance-to-fail on steals wasn't even shown!) 
   Also, it might be considered 'too powerful' since Quiver is generally in a stronger spot than, say, Vauban's mines. Both have their favoured choices in the set, but you can build stronger results purely targeting Quiver than a Vauban player could purely targeting Minelayer, I think.
2. DE doesn't do explicit 'permanent abilities' very often. Saryn's reworked Spores, I believe, were a noteworthy breaking of that ground - definitely the most prominent example. I just have doubts it'd pass the dev judgement.
3. People would judge new bonuses more harshly than removal of limitations, I figure. The 'point A to point B' problem is that one Seeker that seems to pop you the instant you're visible in his line of sight - being why a brief instant reveal is not acceptable for such a soft target. Two immobile stealths is the lacking diversity between using Cloaks and Prowl instead of allowing one to shine in movement (Prowl) while the other is stronger when in place (Cloak, because energy can regenerate and allies also benefit).
4. I tried to offer something that would keep some possible penalty to indelicate Prowling, while not punishing an occasional mis-press or necessary jump with the risk of instant obliteration at higher enemy levels. It's a more forgiving middle ground between our 'slow Ivara' and 'free Ivara' preferences.
5. I find the bow pretty beefy when built for, but agree sometimes it can definitely feel like a 'one or the other' situation for the rest of the kit. I'm unsure whether restriction of guns is enough of a caveat to this now that we can, at least, still swap into melee. Maybe the 'half cost' breakpoint could be lessened to two-thirds if it's more balance friendly. But yes, it definitely makes visual and logical sense with the abilities as they are.

[With Ivara Prime on the horizon, here is the comprehensive overview of shortfalls that should be investigated and addressed.]

(Snipped most of the part where we've exhausted discussion - let disagreements be disagreements there)

5 hours ago, (XB1)Knight Raime said:

Your chosen verbiage and tone implies that going with naturally silent weaponry is some sort of negative.  And the only route in logic my mind can take me with that assumption is in regards to the capability with the weapons.  SO, if these naturally silent weapons are about as effective as any other weapon in killing efficiently/quickly sans for AoE weapons then I can't see how it would be really considered a limitation in a negative fashion beyond player preference.  Regardless of your intent with this specific point I think this is another matter of perspective than objectivity.

It's an inexact science, but balancing things is generally based on a total power 'budget'. In Warframe that's distributed into and affected by numerous factors, and the base differs as MR requirement increases. Silent weaponry then is one of the expenses that has to be weighed against this budget. It may not be an enormous proportion, the weapons may still be functional, but the however-many percentage has been spent on the 'free silence' makes it an implied tax - just like sacrificing mod capacity/slot on Hush - so if it is necessary to have silent weapons, whether it's the mod or a natural facet, you've paid up a portion of potential power.
Also, again, it's a matter of variety if you want it natural - Baza, bows and thrown secondaries are the majority of your options, which amounts to... let's estimate some 15 out of 160+ (unique type) weapons in Primary and Secondary slots. 90% of options denied for the natural stealth.

5 hours ago, (XB1)Knight Raime said:

To repeat:  Cloak being a toggle, extra headshot damage, and loot capabilities.  There really isn't much more I can say here that i've not already said.  I'd rather lean into the idea of making her cloak special with extra benefits compared to standard invis, rather than your proposed suggestions with prowl.

Toggle supplies its own drawback making it only superior as an AFK tool, accessing the headshot damage is inconsistent or costs more outside of Prowl's own design and the loot is awful. It's not that they don't exist, it's that they're not significant enough (or come with their own implicit counterbalances). Tying into the next statement though:

5 hours ago, (XB1)Knight Raime said:

I don't really have anything specific to address this.  I enjoy the design intent of having a slower more methodical stealth frame that has a varied set of tools to fit different situations.  There are probably a plethera of ways to improve this specific design intent.  But I don't think granting her full mobility is a step in the direction of improvement.

You can choose to be slower for your own enjoyment if you treat Prowl as it currently is. But if you keep her slow and shackled in her obligatory survival state then she's going to be absent most matchmaking. That, and the worries others have expressed about her being called 'overpowered', is why I say 'remove shackles' instead of 'buff a ton to make shackles justified'.

You can't expect to toss dashwires along every tile in the map to compensate, because that's enormous extra cost (and you never know when DE will call the fast-Prowl-movement on the Dashwires a 'bug' like other long-running luxuries have suffered), and without mobility-in-survival, since we're not talking about things like Assimilate being fully immune, or Mesa's Waltz and her overpowering damage output but about a stealth which still leaves you potentially vulnerable, Ivara is not going to be brought into many co-op missions by the general player base.

5 hours ago, (XB1)Knight Raime said:

But to close it out here is my list of suggested changes to Ivara should DE make a pass at her:

1. -Roll iva's empowered quiver into base ability
2. -New quiver augment grants Ivara the lowest priority target for enemies.  Health and shields continually regen while on zipline. (priority situation to be similar in behavior to using revenant and thralls to distract enemies from attacking fissures in the orb valus.)
3. -Cloak arrow duration removed and base range of ability increased.  Now grants perma cloak so long as allies do not attack with a non silenced weapon.
4. -Noise arrow now deafens alerted targets in a disorientated fashion (think banshee's silence situation.)
5. -Can refresh sleep duration by shooting the area of effected targets with another sleep shot.
6. -Leaving zipline increases base movement speed for a brief period of time.
7. -Remove all energy drain effects from Prowl beyond the base drain of the ability.
8. -Base headshot damage bonus buffed from 40% to 70%.  When firing artimis bow shots from prowl you get a general damage increase in addition to the headshot damage bonus.  More of a bonus damage based on how many of the arrows hit the target.
9. -Prowl's loot functionality is now static.  Ivara can loot from multiple targets at once.
10. -Prowl gets base movement speed.  sprinting and bullet jumping only temporarily remove her from cloak like firing a non silenced weapon would.
11. -Prowl augment adjustment.  Keeps the ignoring laser aspect.  Killing already looted enemies has a chance to yield an energy orb.
12. -Artimis bow when firing quiver arrow's drastically reduces the cost of said shots.
13. -Consentrated arrow augment now combines all arrows into a single shot for higher damage.  Landing a headshot will cause a non self damaging explosion equal to the damage of the shot.

Coloured up to my opinions.

1. Rolling in Empowered Quiver (and giving another on top) feels like it could be too much complication for one ability.
2. De-prioritising Ivara (maybe as part of her passive outright) might be nice to offset co-op issues with necessary exposure.
3. There are times I use Cloak Arrow strictly because I can shoot loud things in there (albeit mostly if I made a mistake in my loadout or am Randomising), so I don't think I like that. Also might be considered OP for AI targets - take the sortie defense operative's guns away and one arrow essentially wins the mission?
4. Anything for Noise Arrow is good.
5. Refreshing Sleep would actually be really damn useful for those times when more enemies swarm in and you have to start juggling the different timings even on groups in that one area.
6. I have no strong opinion on Zipline Boost.
7. We agree on removing the energy shackles of Prowl, at least. _{Arc Traps plague me no more!}
8. The damage buffs in prowl might-be-nice but see earlier comment about risking external complaints with buffs. Also leaves the A to B and 'two immobile stealths' issue.
9. Fixes to awful pickpocketing gameplay are good.
10. No-slowing in Prowl at baseline is a positive step, but even brief exposure is enough to get tagged by Little Johnny Seeker with his hacked Kraken and die instantaneously. How about we flip that script? Instead of brief exposure on parkour/gunfire directly, make it a lingering stealth - if you keep firing or hard Parkouring, you are revealed after.. something like 3 seconds * Duration? Re-stealthing is instant on ceasing loud gunfire, landing or wall-running/latching, but to refresh the 'grace timer' you have to spend a few seconds longer being a good sneaky girl and using non-violating weapons and movement. This would allow quick re-positioning strategies and let Ivara keep up a little better without being so immediately at risk.
11. Some people do really like the anti-barrier Prowl (for whatever reason, maybe they bought her instead of Spied for her) so I suppose if it's not replaced wholesale, adding some other benefit for actual gameplay is a step forwards.
12. The 'Redline rule' for Quiver shots? I like. It makes sense - Quiver has to partially summon the Artemis Bow to shoot an arrow, so if it's out already it's cheaper to use them. Only problem is that Artemis isn't duration limited, so you pay a small tax pulling it out then it's cheap Quiver forever. On the other hand it does restrict you to A-Bow and Melee, so maybe that's enough in trade?
13. We agree on Concentrated Arrow.

[With Ivara Prime on the horizon, here is the comprehensive overview of shortfalls that should be investigated and addressed.]

29 minutes ago, (XB1)Knight Raime said:

I see, there is some redundancy with his tether mine.  In that case I do think tether mine is a poor thing to add to his kit.  (mineslayer still mostly is a mess.)  Vauban did see some improvements but overall it didn't move him away from his problems.  He's mainly a gimmicky cc frame.  While tethermine functionally works okay I wouldn't use Vauban's current kit as a good example of acceptable overlap.  I will try to restate my point here.  There isn't inherently anything wrong with a kit having some overlap as long as each ability provides something the other does not.  Dashwire is only mobility.  You could argue with me about how much it's benefit would be lessened by allowing full movement in prowl.  But that wouldn't change anything or be productive.  You'd have a better chance at coming up with a way to buff tether with an additional effect and debating that with me.

It's far from the only example, just one on a similar 'does it really matter' paradigm because it is, ultimately, only a fraction of an ability. Ziplines don't see much use whether they're level elements or artificial from Ivara; you should be asking the question of "If all it really does is counter this (inconsistent) drawback, should it be replaced and the drawback simply removed?" Much like Infiltrate in that regard, if you're going to call Dashwires strictly there to offer the mobility Prowl withholds. (I'd still say there are some situational uses for convenient ziplines offering positional advantages and extra anchor-points for problematic parkour sections, though, even without crippled Prowl.)

29 minutes ago, (XB1)Knight Raime said:

I disagree about it harshly limiting you.  it's not like the baza or bows are bad.  Hell the Daikyu is a monster these days.  And it's not like other frames do not run loadout types that greatly benefit their kit.

an innate drain isn't enough of a drawback imo.  We could remove the penalty for her taking energy loss whenever she takes tick damage from aoe or traps.  We can remove the extra energy you spend when meleeing.  But I think her slow has to stay.

Sleep arrow makes headshots easier to land and even if some enemies don't have a head so long as they're not in an alerted state you're still getting more damage.  Overall, i'd rather increase her benefits of the extra damage and make looting as part of that ability better rather than simply removing all the drawbacks she has in favor of a stronger passive energy drain.

Sure i'd be fine with removing the energy penalty for taking any kind of damage.  The main drawback that I believe should stay is her slow nature.

The quality of those silent weapons is largely irrelevant. It's still an objective limitation that restricts 90% of weapons to either non-usage or mod tax. The Acceltra has even been called 'a better Baza' by some, part of which is because silent weapons do still pay some of their net power budget for that property, overall.

I'm still yet to see any actual justification for what makes drawbacks necessary. The ability's secondary benefits (in comparison) are not actually all that great. However accessible you find headshots, with sleep arrows, there's too much of a spread in stat requirements in that approach for it to reach the peak output necessary to be a significant factor. You want Efficiency, Duration and Range to make those sleep arrows tag as many units as possible and keep the extra energy expenditure down, you don't get much room left for Strength. It's only a 1+(base*strength) multiplier, remember. You're getting about 230% damage at maximum baked-in strength stats, on headshots alone. You can't max every stat. Something has to yield.
The less said about the pickpocket the better. It's clearly just an afterthought to the ability, implicitly taking you out of the fight to wait for the damn thing to do its job.

Our stealth frames can't afford to be immobile. They're already deafened in a way you can't alter settings to fix - which makes grenade death odds even worse - but the snapshot aiming possible at higher enemy levels mean you can be instantly acquired and deleted if you do break that stealth as a squishy target like Ivara. That's why temporary prowl breaks while you're going from point A to point B just don't work. No matter how fast you think you are, that Seeker in the hallway is faster. Other than that, you have the 'no co-op' option of permanent slow-mode. Unsatisfying and DE takes many opportunities to make solo less viable, so having a frame be essentially solo only should be considered a red flag.

29 minutes ago, (XB1)Knight Raime said:

Would be an interesting function for sure.  But I still struggle to see a use for her cloak arrow in general.  As making others invisible isn't super beneficial.  And even if it was trying to maintain cloak for someone else just sounds exhausting.  Only way I could see it working is if duration was outright removed for her cloak arrow and it instead was used to create pockets of invisibility for people.  Additionally you could still stick that to other players, but them attacking with a non silenced weapon would break the cloak.

It's nice for those AI ally targets - escorting drones in the Plains is a non-issue for example. But in the rare occasion Ivara appears in a non-solo game, it's nice to be able to throw out cloaks, and nicer that she can do it without having to be next to the recipient. Granted that some of its best uses in that regard were made less relevant because Void Mode Operators can hack and revive without a care, though.

29 minutes ago, (XB1)Knight Raime said:

No actually I don't really have any arcanes.  My build for stealth missions uses around 200% duration and a good amount of efficiency.  I forget if I use P flow on it or not.  been awhile since I have used ivara let alone done spy missions in a stealth fashion.  I feel like if we removed a lot of the extra energy drain sources for prowl it would drastically buff her survivability without making prowl imbalanced.

Okay, I admit it's gone either way with me, but my usage has been heavy enough to see both sides of the coin.

Mathematically, assuming just prowl with maximum efficiency whilst moving; base is 3 energy per second, reduces to 0.75/sec. You're looking at an orb drop every 33-34 seconds to maintain, which is.. certainly possible, but RNG is what it is. Sometimes you get an orb every 4 kills. Sometimes you feel like you get 3 in a mission. Oh, and without Flow capacity you're sitting on about 5 minutes 40 seconds of walk-time.

Maths become screwy if we try to balance off the potential steal-rolls to flatten orb chances against the cheaper non-mobile drain that would go with that. Ultimately that's kind of anecdotal to any individual mission and how the enemy spawn patterns are.

Perhaps in a vacuum that sounds fine. But that's if you're only Prowling. The moment the player starts throwing out Bow and Quiver usage, expected reliability plummets without those external factors. Rarely - since it's another layer of randomness - even having Energise can still leave you out to dry if you get few orb drops and they don't care to roll the extra 100.

11 minutes ago, DatDarkOne said:

That's a mod that I always found to be useless.  Mostly because it's defining trait is adding PunchThru to projectiles.  Which is something most of the Projectiles already have either innately or mods on the weapon.  

The punch through is only a fairly recent addition, at that! It was just the crit chance on successive targets. Without punch-through built on, that was even more laughably incompetent. Still hindered a lot by the energy scale-up though.

11 minutes ago, DatDarkOne said:

I know @BlindStalker said this, but it's easier to quote it from your post.  I've been promoting Power Strength on Ivara due to how it effects all her powers for over 3 years now.  Mostly because the general playerbase build her like they would Loki.  Which in turn pigeonholes her into nothing but Spy.  I don't really see this changing due to how often People on the forums constantly say use the "best tool" for the job.  

All that said, I really don't care if more people don't play Ivara.  This is something I've said to BlindStalker in convos before.  I like that Ivara caters to a more Methodical and Tactical type of players.  I love that she has a slightly higher learning curve than most other frames.  In truth a learning curve that doesn't exist when using some form of "Common Sense".  

I admit I have a weakened strength as my main loadout, although I try not to leave it at 40% in case I run into something steal-worthy. Navigator is more useful as a quick and remote control for Quiver arrows, and the Prowl headshot bonus is so background as I've said elsewhere I don't miss it going from 1.4 to 1.3 in the slightest. I do lose out on Artemis on that build, yes. But you don't need any Strength to finisher everything to death because your sleep arrow is cheap, wide-ranged and reliable.

Build diversity though. I have the par-strength Steal and middling Artemis loadout and the max-strength Artemis and occasional Navigator loadout for their own purposes.

11 minutes ago, DatDarkOne said:

I agree with these two statements.  

 I myself didn't get arcanes until very recently as I just don't need them.  They are nice to have but aren't an absolute must to have.  I have 1 Arcane energy at base rank.  I don't really run into energy issues with Prowl on my 160% Eff/95% Dur general purpose build.  That said, I do have all of Zenurik unlocked and that might make a difference.  

The only time (and I do mean ONLY) I ever have energy issues is during Vampire mode Nightmare missions. 

Zenurik doesn't matter, which is of course because.. its Orb pickup bonus is also applied as a regen, which the channelling factor invalidates! (And they say it's not a negative effect..)

But yes, throw Vampire Mode in with the other myriad "I'm taking sort-of-damage so the game accidentallied me out of my core survival tool" problems in the game. Just today I got annoyed defending a Railjack piece on Europa because it was out in the cold area that.. ticks damage.. and therefore energy.

11 minutes ago, DatDarkOne said:

As for Umbra Ivara, LMAO.  I laugh because I already know that Ivara can be considered a premier Sentient Hunter without the Umbra label.  Her Artemis Bow can already brute force it's way through Sentients adaption ability.  Sleep, Noise Arrows, Navigator, and Prowl all still work on them.  So what would an Umbra version bring that would help her against Sentients that she doesn't already have.  Well other than an Umbra Ivara having a new skin, that's really the only thing I can see it really being.  

I just had to pick something that wasn't already in progress. I would have said Deluxe, but that thing has been teased already, so 'umbra, whatever' was the next arbitrary 'official alternative'. Just for the sake of needing a visual design.

[Excavator Level Scaling]

1 hour ago, ShortCat said:

I understood your point just right. I just find it extraordinary stupid to design defensively oriented Frames out of defensive mission types. Not the Excavators have low health, Defense Cryopods have too much health.

But you already can clear a lvl 1 (or higher) Excavation without Frost/Limbo/..., because you can delete enemies faster than they can approach your position. If Excavators die, you deal not enough damage and give enemies time to destroy them. Higher health just moves the goalposts. This suggestion will result in an even stronger push towards DPS meta and against all the other roles, while...

You're arguing the ceiling, OP is arguing the floor. There will always be a desire for defensive frames when defending mission objectives is an endless process.

Enemies are a lot tougher now than they used to be. If you're a few years deep in your career, try rolling up a new account and attempting to solo your way through the defense missions on your path - you might be surprised how tough they actually are, even the ones which are scaling the objective's health to the base level of the node.

So the decision process goes:

• Do I want to not use specifically defensive frames (which I may not even have access to)?
  • I can feasibly complete the run without pushing to higher drops and rotations, albeit with some measurable risk (to mission failure or time)
• Do I want to clear the node in a safer, reliable fashion?
  • I can choose a defensive frame to spread out the necessary reaction speed and TimeToKill on my opposition, reducing the risk substantially or removing it.
• Do I want to stay in the node longer and aim for rotation rewards (or more Cryotic)?
  • I will need to ensure a defensive frame is present to handle the increasing threat enemies will pose to my defendable objects, as the enemies scale beyond base level.

Believe me, I love citing the Warframe stock achievements - The right tool for the job; Each tool with its own purpose - as much as the next person. But Excavator non-scaling forces the issue in a clearly inconsistent way. It's like the difference between a 'Dense Fog' Sortie and an 'Elemental Enhancement (Toxin)' Sortie. One of these things is vastly more oppressive than the other.

[With Ivara Prime on the horizon, here is the comprehensive overview of shortfalls that should be investigated and addressed.]

On 2019-11-24 at 10:31 AM, BlindStalker said:

@TheLexiConArtist A rough template of most of the ideas that I had in my head. Many of these are similar or same ideas proposed by your op as well. Sorry, I think there were a couple of others, but I might have forgotten them (hopefully I'll remember them later). Most of these changes are just numbers tweaking, but some other slight changes.

Note, all "base values" presented are assumed for an Ivara at max level (rank 30).

Alright, thanks for the input. I'll go through this as well for discussion's sake, even though we're broadly in agreement:

Passive

On 2019-11-24 at 10:31 AM, BlindStalker said:

Passive: update it to also include loot on the radar (basically give Ivara 'animal instinct' instead of just pure 'enemy radar')

A nice-to-have that at least doesn't currently step on any other passives' toes. Admittedly the enemy radar alone isn't the strongest of passives, but it's thematic and they do vary wildly over all frames, so this isn't a sole outlier.

Quiver

Spoiler

On 2019-11-24 at 10:31 AM, BlindStalker said:

2. Quiver:

• Sleep Arrow
  • Change base radius from 6m to 8m
  • Change base duration from 10s to 12s
• Cloak Arrow
  • Change base radius from 2.5m to 4m
  • Change base duration from 12s to 14s
• Dashwire Arrow
  • If the dashwire cannot materialize, the energy is not spent (no one likes firing an ability and having it do nothing. Dashwires do no materialize sometimes, due to level geometry issues, but still cost energy when used).
  • Possibly increase the range from 100m to 150m (purely only for open-world tilesets)
• Noise Arrow
  • Update noise arrow by adding a duration mechanic to it as well, base time 6s (affected by mods). When enemies are attracted to the noise arrow, upon arriving at the designated spot they will stay attracted to it for the given duration before returning to their normal behaviour. (The other side of this is that 'ai coding behaviour' with stealth mechanics must be improved too, to further emphasis the usefulness and uniqueness of noise arrow). Noise arrow though, does still need something else to make it more useful, but I can't come up with anything else at the moment.

 

It's possibly best that Sleep and Cloak are simply standardised to each other's stronger stats - a 6m base Cloak and 12s base Sleep would go a long way. The Cloak bubble can get pretty sad - in the ability demonstration video you can even see the player almost getting shot inside the basic size of bubble just from the enemy shooting at last-known location.
On the other hand, there's an argument to be made not to make it too big due to the omnipresent Nullifier Problem. I would immensely like DE to return that to the way it used to work, where the null-bubble reveals on player overlap instead of deleting the whole cloaking area. That's not just an Ivara issue, granted, but I've gotten used to my overextended Sleeps and having to reduce them to keep functionality of Cloak would be just awful-tasting.
Other than Nullifiers, there's only good things to be said about extending build flexibility by making the baselines less restrictive.

We agree on Dashwires wholly. Refund energy on fail, minimum. Nice to have better range and fewer fails based on hitbox pickiness.

What did you think of the Noise Arrow in-combat usage discussed recently in the thread where it could minimap mark and possibly outline-highlight enemies in range, albeit probably smaller than the current non-combat function's 20m base as 50+m of enemy highlight is a bit much for a partial/first ability? It's still fairly niche, but it would at least be useful and thematic to extend her 'passive radar' benefit when situations call for it.

Navigator

Spoiler

On 2019-11-24 at 10:31 AM, BlindStalker said:

Navigator

• Fix current existing client/host bug (see this bug report: Ivara Navigator bug with glaives as host vs client)
• Fix navigator so that it has the ability to pause projectile self-detonation time/projectile range limit again. This is complicated to explain, but navigator used to override the limit of how long a projectile could be flown before it exploded/detonated. Example, formerly you could fire a sonicor shot and navigate it indefinitely until Ivara ran out of energy. Now you'll get kicked out navigator once the projectile reaches its max range limit (not sure if it's a range thing or projectile self-detonation thing).
• Possibly reduce the energy drain by a little bit (key emphasis, by a "little bit"). I don't have an exact value on hand.
• (Keep the damage multiplier and scaling multiplier growth. Navigator is Ivara's cannon ability. it is buggy and the choices are limited for weapons that pair well with it, but its one of the most unique defining features about Ivara and I don't want this ability to be removed from her.)

 

I don't have a problem with the basic energy drain, but I'm absolutely certain the exponential growth of cost over time has to go. Not only is this preventing potential usage of the baseline ability, but it also severely hinders the augment as later discussed. On an ability that intrinsically prevents topping up channelled energy by removing control from the frame there is no justification to need something that reinforces a Total Time Limit Per Usage in this way.

The scaling multiplier growth is a problem in its current form as it encourages antisynergy with Ivara's survival - needing to tank Duration as hard as you can so you don't have to wait for multiplier growth puts both defensive/utility Quiver arrows and Prowl into a far less functional/sustainable spot. If the growth stays it needs to be changed to some other relation or dependency, whether that's making it positive duration growth or by tying it in as a proportion of the total (and therefore not becoming linearly more prohibitive as strength increases). We don't have many abilities that co-depend stats, mostly it's the Duration+Efficiency Channelling cost structure, but there are some mono-stat outliers such as Nova's Null Stars and Gauss' Redline abilities which scale from Duration where ordinarily Strength would be used. Making Navigator a 'Duration+Strength' combination shouldn't be too unreasonable an option.

Prowl

Spoiler

On 2019-11-24 at 10:31 AM, BlindStalker said:

Prowl

• Change duration steal time from 2.5s to 2s
• Change headshot bonus from 40% to 50% (No reason to actually put this, I just like 50% more)
• Change base steal range from 4m to 5m.
• Possibly remove the drain multiplier on melee entirely
• Possibly change the drain on hit from 10 energy to 2 energy per hit.
• (Only for 'Infiltrate' - increase the base movement speed of mod from 25% to 50%).

We've discussed the issues with baseline cripples and the Infiltrate augment in particular being barely identified as anything more than a compensation for that.

I wouldn't complain about better headshot bonuses, but I don't feel these minor number tweaks would be enough to make the stealing viable. Fail-steals have to go, because there's not really anything DE can add in on the positive side of the spectrum to make it a build choice and not an arbitrary penalty. The stealing may be 100% chance, but that's not unheard of even in AOE (is it, Hydroid?) and the implicit limiting factor of living targets is more than enough of a consideration. The steal time for single targets needs to be absolutely slashed if it's not moving to a multi-target model, so that heavy Duration isn't the only way to make it happen in any reasonable time - alternatively, allowing multiple targets under the current model with only minor tweaks to range and/or duration would be a safe alternative. (Maybe this single/multi targeting steal could even be a tradeoff in a REAL Prowl augment?)

Artemis Bow

Spoiler

On 2019-11-24 at 10:31 AM, BlindStalker said:

Artemis Bow

• Change the charge rate of Artemis Bow from 1.00 to 0.9
• Make the vertical spread of Artemis Bow significantly tighter to encourage vertical shots as "long range accurate shots for headshots" while keeping horizontal shots as its normal wide spread. Basically Artemis Bow starts out with tight vertical spread and widens out to wide horizontal spread when charging it. See screenshots for significant comparison between Cernos Prime's vertical spread vs Artemis Bow's huge vertical spread. The Cernos Prime can be used effectively at longer ranges, Artemis Bow is sadly too wide-spread for long range engagements:

  This is how wide the vertical spread of Artemis Bow is at 10m. I have split chamber and VA mulit-shot mods on. You can't realistically get all 18 arrows to hit an enemy's head in vertical angle, even at point blank range. Read screenshot for further details.

  

  This is the Cernos Prime's vertical shot, and by the way that's all 8 arrows being shot in a very tight grouping (due to mulit-shot mods). Cernos Prime can accurately hit headshots at range with its vertical shot, all 8 arrows! Read screenshot for further details.
  

• (Investigate the mulit-shot bugs with Artemis Bow, if they exist. Refer to OP's post in the original spoiler above.)

I can see where you're coming from with this, especially with the Cernos Prime in comparison. However, I'm not absolutely convinced. I feel like Artemis is still pretty solid single-target with the vertical spread, even if it's not all hitting the head bonus. It might not be in-mission diversity like you'd prefer, but making the Concentrated Arrow do what it says on the proverbial tin would make the out-of-mission choice a matter of favouring AOE or favouring the single shot.

Iif the bomb was still kept on Concentrated along with the actual-concentrating-of-arrows, then it becomes the better single target with the more dubious AOE clear (depending on the surrounding build and Hunter Munition).
Base AB then becomes the nicer and convenient AOE spread option with a lesser favouring of the single target.

The more efficient headshots you make of them, the more the two build options narrow their favoured fields - Concentrated gets its area damage in through bombs that wouldn't otherwise happen on bodyshots, while basic Artemis can squeeze out more of its single-targeting damage potential the closer you are with more of the arrow spread connecting headshot bonuses.

(The bug absolutely exists, by the way. I fancied Void Strike Artemis Bow as a potential super-damaging meme build until Simulacrum testing showed me how '20x per shot' damage multipliers got slashed into a functional 2x.)

Augments

Spoiler

On 2019-11-24 at 10:31 AM, BlindStalker said:

Augments: baking them into Ivara's kit

Now comes for a more unique change that is designed to encourage players to understand that Ivara can be used outside of 'spy missions'. I am disappointed when players only view Ivara as a frame that is only 'good for spy missions and nothing else'. Sure Ivara can do spy missions, but she can do SO MUCH more if the player just puts in some effort to understand her better. I keep calling Ivara a 'technical utility glass cannon, jack of all trades, master of none' type of frame.
Most people don't even understand that Ivara is a glass cannon and just focus in on 'prowl' and nothing else. This narrow-mindness causes people to only regulate Ivara to spy missions. My other proposal is this, Bake some of Ivara's augments into her kit so that the glass cannon and technical utility aspects of Ivara's kit are better emphasized to players.

•  Empowered quiver - baking EQ into Ivara's kit, should send a message to the player that she can give unique team buffs with crit-wire, that her cloak is also useful for status effect cleansing. They would at least better encourage players to use dashwires in combat more frequently. It would be basic QoL if EQ got added in as standard for her kit. It would send a message to the player that Ivara can provide obvious meaningful buffs to the team if EQ was baked in without having to balance modding around it (this issue is probably what stops people from using it as often, besides not taking Ivara out at all). This would then free up the augment slot for 'Quiver' so that something new can be created for Ivara.
• Infiltrate - over time, I've been disappointed with this mod. Not because its bad, but because this mod accidentally caused Ivara to be 'pigeon-holed' into the spy niche. So many people just stick this mod on her, not really caring about the other stats and call it a day, building Ivara. At this point, you might as well just make it a permanent part of her kit. I don't want people to constantly just slap this augment on Ivara and to not do anything else with her. It would hopefully encourage people to realize that 'power strength' on Ivara isn't a "dump stat" since power strength affects 3/4th of Ivara's kit including this augment! Power strength is really juicy on Ivara, it should be emphasized to the player to not dump it, unless you truly are building only for quiver. This would then free up the augment slot for 'Prowl' so that something new can be created for Ivara.
• Piercing navigator - just bake this mod into her kit already! We know that PN is the least used augment out of all of Ivara's augment. DE's own internal statistics even showed this during Update 25.6. DE only touched/updated augments of which they noticed were severely under-used by the community. Guess which of Ivara's augments got updated? Now navigator is supposed to be Ivara's "cannon" shot. But realistically speaking, PN is such an underused augment that if DE deleted it, nobody would bat an eyelash about its disappearance. However, to emphasize to the player that Ivara can be built as a 'glass cannon', PN should just become a standard part of navigator overall. This would then free up the augment slot for 'Navigator' so that something new can be created for Ivara.
• Concentrated Arrow - .. okay don't bake this augment into her kit. It should remain as an augment. Update it like others have suggested (combine all the default 7 arrows into 1 arrow, instead of being misleading and only taking the damage of one arrow). Make it actually concentrated in damage.

Now, you might have noticed that I kept saying 'free up augment slot' for 'x' ability. The point of baking augments is a few reasons.

1. Again, to change perception in the wf player community that Ivara has unique abilities and that she can be useful outside of her spy niche, and to encourage people to view Ivara as a 'technical utility glass cannon, jack of all trades, master of none' type of frame instead of 'goes invisible and is only useful for spy...'. Ivara's augments are useful and I know some might say OP. But the fact that the average player isn't bringing Ivara out to more end-game activities like Eidolons, or Arbitrations or whatever end-game, and is instead regulating Ivara to just 'spy missions' only, strikes me as disappointing. Baking some of her augments into her kit should hopefully change the perception of the average player into trying more things with her. Encourage players to build for other aspects of her kit, instead of just infiltrate.
2. Freeing up augments would allow new ideas to be proposed for Ivara. For those of you who don't know, Piercing navigator, is an augment that was unfortunately born from extremely poor feedback mis-communication on DE's part. Basically DE polled the design council on what Ivara's navigator augment could have been. The design council voted on 6 different options, and there was a clear favourite that the design council leaned on: "Ivara travels with the projectile, appearing at the location where the ability ends." Basically, give Ivara something similiar to Nezha's Warding Halo teleport ability. This was the top voted choice by a fair margin. However, DE didn't go with that option (I think the reasons were for technical reasons, but I don't if that was the case). In any case, DE didn't go with the top voted option, DE didn't even go with the 2nd most voted option (which was: "reduce energy cost per target hit"). DE gave us Piercing navigator instead, which by the way, was not even option that could be voted on in that poll. In other words, DE what was the point of polling the design council if you were going to just ignore their poll and ultimately give something completely different in the end for Ivara's navigator augment? Baking PN could free up the navigator augment slot and would give DE another chance to try again at maybe creating that voted on idea (or give us a new navigator augment that we would likely use).

This is a rough template of idea proposals. At the end of the day, I'm hoping for Ivara to be improved in a way so that more players, take Ivara seriously as a frame and realize that she has great potential and can offer so much more than just 'spy and invisibility'. I don't want Ivara to just be a "pretty face and nothing more" type of frame to the average player. I would like to see them bring Ivara out more, especially out of her comfort zone (But honestly, she is very pretty and beautiful. Of course I'm bias in that regard)

With the exception of Infiltrate (as I've made quite clear) I think the existing augments aren't without potential. It's just the design flaws that make them too inconvenient or unreliable.

Empowered Quiver suffers because the base Cloak is poor and the Dashwires are temperamental. It's also lacking benefits for half the ability, but I suppose there might be only so much you can ask for. I think baking those in might be excessive; Quiver is already in a strong place notwithstanding those flaws we've pointed out before. I'd personally like Power of Three made cross-content instead of Conclave only, as I've stated - yes it would be the first ability with two augment choices in the same content bracket, but it's got more potential than people credit, although it depends on how wide the spread is - I imagine it's quite tight for Conclave given the lack of range mods but it shouldn't be impossible to give it a more generous angle in PVE. Maybe even scaling the spread arc with range to ensure best coverage, as this would be unaffected by the static stats in Conclave?

Piercing Navigator suffers most because the ability makes you want to not keep one projectile going thanks to the ramping cost. The flat punch-through limit also doesn't do as much as it could to ensure the projectile doesn't 'run out'. Fix the channel-cost to the static drain, let the projectile punch through (unit) targets freely, and it's suddenly at least able to be fun, even if not high-meta.

Infiltrate should never have been passed. Like Piercing Navigator, I recall it wasn't the council-favoured option (although I think it was actually on the list this time). With the caveats to Prowl it's still too inconvenient to make use of the laser bypass. Without the caveats it's not a strong enough identity for the slot. The speed 'buff' is just salting the current wound. Bake in the anti-laser, perhaps, while removing Prowl's cripples. Either way, new augment required.

Concentrated Arrow as we've discussed primarily requires its name to be reflected in what it does, both to not mislead and to promote Navigator synergies. Keeping the bomb would allow that single-target/AOE gradient to narrow in gameplay as I mentioned under Artemis Bow. Giving the mod the Exilus treatment without the bomb would make it instead into a more accessible tweak to the ability, with no direct statistical influence (only Navigator cross-compatibility is really gained potential this way).

[Kuva Chakkhurr & Arcane Momentum]

1 minute ago, nslay said:

It's also seemingly not an Assault Rifle either since it can't equip Tactical Reload. But I think that's a bug because Kuva Chakkhurr is just another semi-auto hard hitting weapon like those other hard hitting assault rifles Opticor/Opticor Vandal.

The category names do get a little odd at times, in particular "Rifle (Bow)" is an actual tag state where "Rifle (Shotgun)" is not. But some of these are just relics from an older time when things were probably less flexible in the game's internals.

As it is, from mods, we can imagine that there is "Rifle, 'Unique'(/Launcher)" (e.g. Firestorm) "Rifle, Bow" (e.g. Thunderbolt) "Rifle, Assault"  (e.g. Overview) and "Rifle, Sniper" (e.g. Sharpshooter) all subcategorising the general "Rifle" classification. _{Ask me why 'Rifle, Generic' even exists categorically, and what material unbalance there would be from the literally 6 non-conclave Assault Rifle mods that exist which are all secondary or tertiary stats, and I couldn't tell you.}

There are occasionally edge cases within categories as well, and Ammo type can actually be separated entirely nowadays - see the Twin Rogga which take full-scale Shotgun ammo despite being 'pistols', where other pocket-shotties are still loaded with standard pistol drops.

Always check your mods for best guess.

[Kuva Chakkhurr & Arcane Momentum]

The Chakkhurr is a 'special-ammo category' rifle-type weapon, in a similar way to how Launchers operate.

It is not a sniper rifle, as can be seen from its lack of compatibility with specific mods such as Charged Chamber, Sharpshooter and Sniper Ammo Regen. Arcane Momentum, as another sniper-specific buff, will therefore not affect it.

[Blink nerf and railjack archwing gameplay.]

2 hours ago, Snaccine said:

No pizzas necessary. Just throw the ability range mod on (forgot what it’s called) and system reroute for the efficiency. The left over unused points count towards your starting energy pool. You’d have a little over 300 starting energy or so if I remember correctly. The pizzas are more for Eidolon hunting.

Best case scenario, catalyst and both polarised up, you hit 300, I just checked. You have some 27 blinks in bank at that. Dredging out the Blink ability from the wiki history tells me it was a base range of 40m in free-roams. Adding the 60% range mod into the equation you have a total, 27 blinks of 64m distance = 1728m net blink range before energy becomes an issue. So, let's say optimistically 3 objectives at 600m apart or just 2 at 900m apart. Then you better call the Ninja Turtles because it's pizza time!

I suppose if all you ever did was Tier 1 Bounties then you might get away with it? Any four or five-step bounties are out. Any time in the open zones with more than a single reference point in mind for your sojourn is also out. 

With an Energise stack and orb luck you're getting yourself 150 so another objective-or-so of distance, but honestly, that's a proc and you're spending time and/or more energy actually popping out the orb and grabbing it in-wing (while the local wildlife endeavours to rocket you into oblivion).

[Blink nerf and railjack archwing gameplay.]

Let me ask those of you who used blink extensively and want to complain about your 'losses':

How many of you got that energy organically, and how many were munching on pizzas?

I've dabbled in all Archwings. I even spite the anti-air abuse and get something useful out of them in open-worlds.

I also do not use energy restore pads unless as an absolute last resort.

Whenever I've been using the Itzal, sooner or later, that little bit of energy regen doesn't cut it. 'Later' in this case being a frame build using Arcane Energise, since that does carry over to any energy orb pickups while still 'winging it. At full pelt, you'd get between a couple places before coming up short, at best, since you're not even generating energy while out-of-wing in the open worlds. You're likely to be sitting invisible if you're staying in wing - no energy regenerating back there either.

 

Your Blink may have cost - assuming it was standard ability cost rules and with System Reroute in play - 11.25 energy per cast. But you don't start with your tank full, and you're blowing 11.25 energy maybe...5 times per second. Where else but pizzas do you get that sustain - and without it, how much have you really lost by going to the current Blink model, considering the 25% greater range (200% static new / 160% modded old), and that downtime being filled with your (presumably Hype Thrusters empowered) afterburners anyway?