Oberon and Health Orbs

[Varzy]

Oberon's ability to create health orbs on Reckoning kills has always been an interesting but somewhat useless quirk of that skill. Reckoning is expensive to cast and at higher levels is more useful for stripping armor than it is for damage.

Recently, Nezha's Blazing Chakram got the ability to mark enemies and make them drop health orbs. This gives him great synergy with different mods and opens up build diversity. I think it would be amazing for Oberon if he was given the same flexibility.

 

My suggestions:

Passive: Enemies affected by Radiation status effect have a 25% chance to drop Health Orbs on death. (This is in addition to his companion buff)

This is probably the most elegant solution, giving Smite, Hallowed Ground, and Reckoning the ability to generate health orbs. It also buffs his passive for people who don't use kubrows or kavats, which could be important in Fortuna, if his passive doesn't work on the upcoming Moa companions.

 

Alternativly, if we don't want to give him a second passive, or instead want to encourage more use of his abilities as a caster:

Smite: Targeted enemy drops a health orb on death, and enemies hit by secondary projectiles have a cumulative 10% chance to drop health orbs on death.

Reckoning: Enemies struck by this ability have a 50% chance to drop health orbs on impact, and are marked for a duration. Marked enemies have a 100% chance to drop health orbs on death.

I personally would prefer to see this version, as it'd encourage healing and support through a more agressive playstyle, and would make new builds using mods like Health Conversion and Equilibrium really relevant to Oberon. The extra health orbs being generated would also make Oberon players and their team less reliant on Renewal, giving Oberon more freedom in how energy is used and what powers are being cast.

 

Incidentally, I think that health orb generation could be a key mechanic in giving Garuda a team role, letting her give a little support in between violent murders.

[Urlan]

As unreliable as Reckoning is for generating Health Orbs, its chance is 50% on Reckoning Kills. I tried a build for it using Equilibrium and other functional mods for it and it wasn't reliable enough to use for energy or life requirements.

[Varzy]

45 minutes ago, Urlan said:

As unreliable as Reckoning is for generating Health Orbs, its chance is 50% on Reckoning Kills. I tried a build for it using Equilibrium and other functional mods for it and it wasn't reliable enough to use for energy or life requirements.

Right, exactly. 50% chance to drop on kill is only useful at low levels, which is why I suggest that Oberon be buffed with better ways of generating health orbs, such as making it a 50% chance on hit, not kill.

[Knowmad762]

6 hours ago, Varzy said:

Oberon's ability to create health orbs on Reckoning kills has always been an interesting but somewhat useless quirk of that skill. Reckoning is expensive to cast and at higher levels is more useful for stripping armor than it is for damage.

Recently, Nezha's Blazing Chakram got the ability to mark enemies and make them drop health orbs. This gives him great synergy with different mods and opens up build diversity. I think it would be amazing for Oberon if he was given the same flexibility. 

I agree that the Reckoning health orb thing is odd, but i don't think more health orbs is the solution. I would eliminate it completely. It's not fair to compare with Nezha, because health orbs are Nezha's only way to heal himself and his team; with even a moderate 200% strength, Oberon is constantly healing all allies for over 3 health orbs per second.

I would rather see a mechanic where a percentage of the damage from Reckoning (and possibly Smite) gets stored in a new UI element. Change Renewal so that holding the button toggles the traditional on/off, but pressing the button now releases this stored damage as a burst heal to all allies under Renewal's effect. At full capacity it would be a 100% burst heal, but it decays constantly if Oberon is not doing ability damage.

This does two things: gives Oberon access to a burst heal to compliment his heal over time, but it is not as powerful or reliable as Trinity's burst. And it makes Oberon more interactive. Want more heals? Do more damage. If one teamate takes a big burst of damage, do you unleash your stored burst heal, or save it for a better opportunity and trust your HoT deal with it? Having enemies spew more health orbs is not interactive at all, and keeps Oberon's healing a hands-off affair, with no real strategy element.

And opening Oberon to more build diversity could be dangerous. Look at Health Conversion alone: Oberon's highish base armor (472 with Steel Fiber), plus the bonus armor from Iron Renewal (400 with 200% Strength), and Health Conversion (1350). That's over 2200 armor he could keep up consistently, or about 88% damage reduction. This would make him well beyond even Nidus levels of broken: they both have a crazy high EHP, and can abuse the Rage mechanic for essentially endless energy. But Nidus can only passively heal in a small fixed area and cheat death himself, while Oberon passively heals the whole team at a much higher rate anywhere in the map, while auto rezzing the entire team with Phoenix Renewal.

[(XBOX)Aquarii Ptosi]

17 minutes ago, Knowmad762 said:

I agree that the Reckoning health orb thing is odd, but i don't think more health orbs is the solution. I would eliminate it completely. It's not fair to compare with Nezha, because health orbs are Nezha's only way to heal himself and his team; with even a moderate 200% strength, Oberon is constantly healing all allies for over 3 health orbs per second.

I would rather see a mechanic where a percentage of the damage from Reckoning (and possibly Smite) gets stored in a new UI element. Change Renewal so that holding the button toggles the traditional on/off, but pressing the button now releases this stored damage as a burst heal to all allies under Renewal's effect. At full capacity it would be a 100% burst heal, but it decays constantly if Oberon is not doing ability damage.

This does two things: gives Oberon access to a burst heal to compliment his heal over time, but it is not as powerful or reliable as Trinity's burst. And it makes Oberon more interactive. Want more heals? Do more damage. If one teamate takes a big burst of damage, do you unleash your stored burst heal, or save it for a better opportunity and trust your HoT deal with it? Having enemies spew more health orbs is not interactive at all, and keeps Oberon's healing a hands-off affair, with no real strategy element.

And opening Oberon to more build diversity could be dangerous. Look at Health Conversion alone: Oberon's highish base armor (472 with Steel Fiber), plus the bonus armor from Iron Renewal (400 with 200% Strength), and Health Conversion (1350). That's over 2200 armor he could keep up consistently, or about 88% damage reduction. This would make him well beyond even Nidus levels of broken: they both have a crazy high EHP, and can abuse the Rage mechanic for essentially endless energy. But Nidus can only passively heal in a small fixed area and cheat death himself, while Oberon passively heals the whole team at a much higher rate anywhere in the map, while auto rezzing the entire team with Phoenix Renewal.

Lol this doesnt in anyway break oberon. What? And 88%DR vs nezah's 90% before applying HC or adaptation? Why are you encouraging DE to keep their halfway okay mods S#&$ty and trash can levels of garbage as are?

As for Health conversion on the first instance of damge you loose a stack after like 3 seconds that doesnt make oberon op if he has to kill the enemy to get the orbs within a window of 3secs for each stack every time as KPS decreases the higher you scale into late game.

 

I've asked for this for a while even before HC health orb generation needs to be more prevalent in game imo and reckoning is one of the best places to take advantage of this. Not to mention how "positive " build diversity actually is despite what you think.

 

Also Phenox renewal HC Adaptation and the like all take a lot so to add one over the other cripples him somewhere else usually his PS and Phoenix renewals deyal is pretty substantial dude if you're in a position where you're relying on that to survive you're probably gonna die after the first trigger. And nidus plz dont compare nidu to oberon that almost insulting.

 

The man can cheat death 6 times back to back without doing anything

 

 

[Varzy]

18 minutes ago, Knowmad762 said:

I agree that the Reckoning health orb thing is odd, but i don't think more health orbs is the solution. I would eliminate it completely. It's not fair to compare with Nezha, because health orbs are Nezha's only way to heal himself and his team; with even a moderate 200% strength, Oberon is constantly healing all allies for over 3 health orbs per second.

I would rather see a mechanic where a percentage of the damage from Reckoning (and possibly Smite) gets stored in a new UI element. Change Renewal so that holding the button toggles the traditional on/off, but pressing the button now releases this stored damage as a burst heal to all allies under Renewal's effect. At full capacity it would be a 100% burst heal, but it decays constantly if Oberon is not doing ability damage.

This does two things: gives Oberon access to a burst heal to compliment his heal over time, but it is not as powerful or reliable as Trinity's burst. And it makes Oberon more interactive. Want more heals? Do more damage. If one teamate takes a big burst of damage, do you unleash your stored burst heal, or save it for a better opportunity and trust your HoT deal with it? Having enemies spew more health orbs is not interactive at all, and keeps Oberon's healing a hands-off affair, with no real strategy element.

And opening Oberon to more build diversity could be dangerous. Look at Health Conversion alone: Oberon's highish base armor (472 with Steel Fiber), plus the bonus armor from Iron Renewal (400 with 200% Strength), and Health Conversion (1350). That's over 2200 armor he could keep up consistently, or about 88% damage reduction. This would make him well beyond even Nidus levels of broken: they both have a crazy high EHP, and can abuse the Rage mechanic for essentially endless energy. But Nidus can only passively heal in a small fixed area and cheat death himself, while Oberon passively heals the whole team at a much higher rate anywhere in the map, while auto rezzing the entire team with Phoenix Renewal.

I actually really disagree with you more about introducing more mechanics like this. Nezha's Chakram used to have similar burst healing that barely ever saw use, and found much greater success on being able to generate health orbs. He was given this expansion with the explicit goal of taking advantage of existing mods. Nezha has other ways of supporting his team besides the health orbs -- he's got excellent CC with his Divine Spears, and Charkram deals soft CC with a heat proc and applies a massive damage vunerability.

The point of health orb generation is to take advantage of existing mechanics in the game to expand on how Oberon can be played. I've had the opinion for years that more frames should have wider Health Orb generation abilities, as it's a quick and easy way to expand the viable playstyles available while supporting your allies.

Opening up build diversity isn't dangerous -- Oberon can still reach the levels of armor you describe right now in game if he plays alongside a Nekros or a Nezha. Giving him this high degree of armor helps him stay viable at higher levels, where he's all to often killed faster than other tough frames. It's not a bad thing to buff a frame so they can compete with the likes of Nidus or even Inaros. In a perfect world, all frames would be just as strong.

[Knowmad762]

15 minutes ago, Varzy said:

I actually really disagree with you more about introducing more mechanics like this. Nezha's Chakram used to have similar burst healing that barely ever saw use, and found much greater success on being able to generate health orbs. He was given this expansion with the explicit goal of taking advantage of existing mods. Nezha has other ways of supporting his team besides the health orbs -- he's got excellent CC with his Divine Spears, and Charkram deals soft CC with a heat proc and applies a massive damage vunerability.

The point of health orb generation is to take advantage of existing mechanics in the game to expand on how Oberon can be played. I've had the opinion for years that more frames should have wider Health Orb generation abilities, as it's a quick and easy way to expand the viable playstyles available while supporting your allies.

Opening up build diversity isn't dangerous -- Oberon can still reach the levels of armor you describe right now in game if he plays alongside a Nekros or a Nezha. Giving him this high degree of armor helps him stay viable at higher levels, where he's all to often killed faster than other tough frames. It's not a bad thing to buff a frame so they can compete with the likes of Nidus or even Inaros. In a perfect world, all frames would be just as strong.

The problem with Nezha's old Chakram healing mechanic was its laughably small range restriction in a game the revolves around crazy high mobility, as noted by the devs. Oberon does not have a range restriction at all, so this mechanic is much better suited to him. Sure, let Nezha take advantage of existing mods, doesn't mean Oberon should also. They fill completely different roles, and either old or new Nezha could never get near Oberon levels of healing, because that was never his job.

I have no problem with DPS/tank/multirole frames contributing to the team with health orbs, but using them as a main component of a dedicated healing frame is pretty lazy. There's only 3 main healer frames in the game: give them proper and distinct intrinsic healing mechanics, and let the other 33 non healer frames use health orbs. Trinity and Harrow do not generate health orbs in any way, so why should Oberon?

I agree, but the key difference here is that to exploit that build requires active communication with teamates. There has to be discussion and forethought for team members to use specific frames and build for synergies between them, and doing so should unlock higher power levels. This is healthy for the overall game and community. You are proposing that Oberon reach game breaking armor levels completely independently; no matter what frames he is teamed with in a PUG and even in solo mode. This runs counter to the entire design intention of this cooperative team based game.

[Urlan]

8 minutes ago, Knowmad762 said:

The problem with Nezha's old Chakram healing mechanic was its laughably small range restriction in a game the revolves around crazy high mobility, as noted by the devs. Oberon does not have a range restriction at all, so this mechanic is much better suited to him. Sure, let Nezha take advantage of existing mods, doesn't mean Oberon should also. They fill completely different roles, and either old or new Nezha could never get near Oberon levels of healing, because that was never his job.

I have no problem with DPS/tank/multirole frames contributing to the team with health orbs, but using them as a main component of a dedicated healing frame is pretty lazy. There's only 3 main healer frames in the game: give them proper and distinct intrinsic healing mechanics, and let the other 33 non healer frames use health orbs. Trinity and Harrow do not generate health orbs in any way, so why should Oberon?

I agree, but the key difference here is that to exploit that build requires active communication with teamates. There has to be discussion and forethought for team members to use specific frames and build for synergies between them, and doing so should unlock higher power levels. This is healthy for the overall game and community. You are proposing that Oberon reach game breaking armor levels completely independently; no matter what frames he is teamed with in a PUG and even in solo mode. This runs counter to the entire design intention of this cooperative team based game.

That is a really good suggestion on moving the heal burst to Oberon's Reckoning! I do feel though that it would have worked well with Nezha if the devs had just made it take mods into consideration - range to boost the incredibly low radius, and power strength to boost the effect - instead Nezha got married to Health orbs for his design.

[Knowmad762]

1 hour ago, (XB1)Aquarii Ptosi said:

Lol this doesnt in anyway break oberon. What? And 88%DR vs nezah's 90% before applying HC or adaptation? Why are you encouraging DE to keep their halfway okay mods S#&$ty and trash can levels of garbage as are?

As for Health conversion on the first instance of damge you loose a stack after like 3 seconds that doesnt make oberon op if he has to kill the enemy to get the orbs within a window of 3secs for each stack every time as KPS decreases the higher you scale into late game.

So if you give them equal damage reduction, Oberon has a higher EHP because of him constantly healing himself, while Nezha's self heal is weaker and less reliable. Also, Oberon can auto rez himself every 90seconds, while Nezha can not. This makes Oberon much stronger, and could be called broken.

Did you read the OP at all? the proposal is that health orbs are generated not on kills, but on damage. This means they are generated constantly at all levels of scaling, keeping up three stacks of health conversion constantly is quite easy.

[Varzy]

1 minute ago, Knowmad762 said:

The problem with Nezha's old Chakram healing mechanic was its laughably small range restriction in a game the revolves around crazy high mobility, as noted by the devs. Oberon does not have a range restriction at all, so this mechanic is much better suited to him. Sure, let Nezha take advantage of existing mods, doesn't mean Oberon should also. They fill completely different roles, and either old or new Nezha could never get near Oberon levels of healing, because that was never his job.

I have no problem with DPS/tank/multirole frames contributing to the team with health orbs, but using them as a main component of a dedicated healing frame is pretty lazy. There's only 3 main healer frames in the game: give them proper and distinct intrinsic healing mechanics, and let the other 33 non healer frames use health orbs. Trinity and Harrow do not generate health orbs in any way, so why should Oberon?

I agree, but the key difference here is that to exploit that build requires active communication with teamates. There has to be discussion and forethought for team members to use specific frames and build for synergies between them, and doing so should unlock higher power levels. This is healthy for the overall game and community. You are proposing that Oberon reach game breaking armor levels completely independently; no matter what frames he is teamed with in a PUG and even in solo mode. This runs counter to the entire design intention of this cooperative team based game.

I respectfully disagree. The bulk of the armor would come from Health Conversion, which itself would constantly be in flux due to the damage Oberon would be taking in combat. In addition, to reach 'game breaking armor', you'd need to dedicate most of his mod slots to armor and power strength, and would have to sacrifice efficiency or duration if you wanted to fit mods like Rage, Phoenix Renewal, or potentially Equilibrium. I've spent the afternoon shuffling mods around, so I know it's not as easy as you claim it to be.

Oberon isn't a 'dedicated healer', or at least the Oberon I've mained for years isn't. He's a tank/support frame -- it's absolutely fitting for his paladin aesthetic to get access to high boosts in armor and mitigation. There are already examples of other frames that can mitigate damage to an even greater degree than an Oberon with Health Conversion -- case in point, Nezha isn't a DPS -- he's also a tank/support frame, with soft CC area denial, who has 90% damage mitigation at the press of a button without any mods.

You've missed my point when I said "Oberon can already reach those levels of armor with a Nezha in the team". My point was, that I've played with an Oberon with a useable Health Conversion build, and found it to be a fitting upgrade to his current level of survivability. Phoenix Renewal is a boon to the build but demands a sacrifice of another mod, which left me without any additional Range for CC or efficiency, therefore in my opinion it was balanced -- you couldn't have everything, but you could fight for longer in high level missions, which is something Oberon currently struggles with despite his healing.

As for 'why should Oberon get this extra mechanic and not Harrow/Trinity'? It's because he's had the health orb creation gimmick for years. I'm suggesting that it get revisited.

[Varzy]

4 minutes ago, Knowmad762 said:

So if you give them equal damage reduction, Oberon has a higher EHP because of him constantly healing himself, while Nezha's self heal is weaker and less reliable. Also, Oberon can auto rez himself every 90seconds, while Nezha can not. This makes Oberon much stronger, and could be called broken.

Did you read the OP at all? the proposal is that health orbs are generated not on kills, but on damage. This means they are generated constantly at all levels of scaling, keeping up three stacks of health conversion constantly is quite easy.

Actually, I need to ask, did you actually read my suggestions fully?

My proposal was that enemies be marked by Oberon's abilities, and that health orbs are generated on killing these marked enemies.

The only exception Reckoning -- his expensive 4th ability -- would have a 50% chance to drop an additional orb on hit. This could easily be coded to be only once per enemy, or players could spend +200 energy to try and get multiple drops. The higher chance of orbs is in line with the high cost of the ability.

Edited October 27, 2018 by Varzy

[Knowmad762]

41 minutes ago, Varzy said:

I respectfully disagree. The bulk of the armor would come from Health Conversion, which itself would constantly be in flux due to the damage Oberon would be taking in combat. In addition, to reach 'game breaking armor', you'd need to dedicate most of his mod slots to armor and power strength, and would have to sacrifice efficiency or duration if you wanted to fit mods like Rage, Phoenix Renewal, or potentially Equilibrium. I've spent the afternoon shuffling mods around, so I know it's not as easy as you claim it to be. 

I didn't say it was easy, but it is possible. Game Breaking Armor: Steel Charge, no Eximus. All 3 maxed Umbrals, Fleeting and Streamline for max efficiency, Rage, Phoenix and Health Conversion. His Strength takes a hit at only 166%, but with Renewal and Health Conversion charges he has 2340.50 armor for a damage reduction of 88.64%. And with that insane damage reduction, he also has the full 1337 hit points. Add 66/sec constant healing and his EHP is now completely asinine, but he also self rezzes if he should die.

 

41 minutes ago, Varzy said:

The only exception Reckoning -- his expensive 4th ability -- would have a 50% chance to drop an additional orb on hit. This could easily be coded to be only once per enemy, or players could spend +200 energy to try and get multiple drops. The higher chance of orbs is in line with the high cost of the ability.

With maxed efficiency, this ability uses 25 energy. With Rage, energy is virtually endless, so this ability is completely spammable. With health orbs dropped on hit, keeping all 3 stacks of health conversion is quite easy.

 

49 minutes ago, Varzy said:

As for 'why should Oberon get this extra mechanic and not Harrow/Trinity'? It's because he's had the health orb creation gimmick for years. I'm suggesting that it get revisited.

Just because he's had it for years doesn't mean it's a good mechanic. I'm also suggesting it get revisited, in a removal and replacement with a better unique mechanic. In my opinion, Oberon's current survival is fine, bordering on overtuned if you run the Umbrals.

[Varzy]

50 minutes ago, Knowmad762 said:

I didn't say it was easy, but it is possible. Game Breaking Armor: Steel Charge, no Eximus. All 3 maxed Umbrals, Fleeting and Streamline for max efficiency, Rage, Phoenix and Health Conversion. His Strength takes a hit at only 166%, but with Renewal and Health Conversion charges he has 2340.50 armor for a damage reduction of 88.64%. And with that insane damage reduction, he also has the full 1337 hit points. Add 66/sec constant healing and his EHP is now completely asinine, but he also self rezzes if he should die.

 

With maxed efficiency, this ability uses 25 energy. With Rage, energy is virtually endless, so this ability is completely spammable. With health orbs dropped on hit, keeping all 3 stacks of health conversion is quite easy.

 

Just because he's had it for years doesn't mean it's a good mechanic. I'm also suggesting it get revisited, in a removal and replacement with a better unique mechanic. In my opinion, Oberon's current survival is fine, bordering on overtuned if you run the Umbrals.

The numbers you're quoting require a huge amount of work and mod investment for relativly little return -- especially considering that at 166% power strength, he needs multiple casts to actually strip armor, and Hallowed Ground needs multiple ticks to spread radiation. Plus, you've got no additional range to bump the meager 15m that Reckoning has at base or cover the ground with HG to block procs, which are core parts of his kit. Similarly, you're in the negative for Power Duration, hurting HG and the blinding effects of Reckoning. Phoenix Renewal also only works once every 90s, and takes up a mod slot, so it's not as reliable as you think, and you'd need to forma a slot especially for it. And to top it off you lose use of your Exilus mod, which is a loss of utility and resources.

You're also missing something about Renewal -- it's constantly healing you, topping up your health. You'll also be constantly taking damage, which will deplete your Health Conversion stacks, but Renewal will be healing that lost damage and stop you from rebuilding stacks. You'll need to actually turn off Renewal in order to keep picking up health orbs to maintain your armor stacks -- therefore you may find yourself using Renewal more as a panic button than your chief source of healing. You might even look at choosing Equilibrium over Rage in this instance.

And after all this effort, Oberon still can't achieve the survivability Nezha has with 3 stacks of Health Conversion and one cast of Warding Halo -- because lets not forget, any damage that goes through the 90% dr of the Halo is affected by Nezha's armor (which, at base 175, is higher than a non-prime Oberon). This isn't the impressive a build you see it as.

So you could absolutely pour your mods into boosting up his armor to a huge degree, but you wind up with a weaker heal and average range, which will harm your ability to support your team. It's still a very good build and a buff to Oberon's survivability, but it's nowhere near gamebreaking considering the sheer sacrifice of time and resources that go into it. It brings Oberon up to par with the new Nezha, as well as Nidus (who can revive without using a mod space), Rhino, Valkyr, Inaros, etc.

Honestly the big point of contention here seems to be that you don't want Oberon using Health Conversion, whereas I mostly want more frames to have Health Orb generating skills so that more frames can use Health Conversion and Equilibrium.

Edited October 27, 2018 by Varzy

[Knowmad762]

14 minutes ago, Varzy said:

Honestly the big point of contention here seems to be that you don't want Oberon using Health Conversion, whereas I mostly want more frames to have Health Orb generating skills so that more frames can use Health Conversion and Equilibrium. 

Oberon can use Health Conversion all day long, as long as his teamates are generating the health orbs, as this fosters teamwork and friendship and synergy and happiness. I don't want Oberon to be able to easily generate his own Health Conversion charges alone in a vacuum.

So you say that you want more build diversity, then you say you want more frames to generate more health orbs. But if more frames generate more orbs, Health Conversion will very quickly become a must-have on every frame, which actually encourages less build diversity. And this would likely lead to a hefty nerf to Health Conversion's unusually high damage reduction potential as it moves from niche to mainstream "meta".

This could easily ripple into other larger problems. If every frame can now sport an additional 1350 armor consistently because it is raining health orbs always, balancing the game becomes even harder than it already is. Veterans will complain even more about the lack of "challenging end game content" for their now much harder to kill frames, they will get bored of the lack of challenge, and they will leave. New players will be able to blast through the game's content at breakneck speed, using nuke frames that used to be fragile by design to prevent this, but now always have at least a flat 81% damage reduction from a single mod, to very quickly join the complaining veterans at end game.

I would much prefer that Oberon be unable to generate health orbs at all, and that be replaced with a better and more interactive mechanic that is unique to him.