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Garuda, how I think she should have been done.


LazyBunnyKiera
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It's a bit of a long read, but if you aren't particularly loving Garuda right now, maybe these changes would be more your style.
This is just my opinion, yours may differ, and that's fine, this is just how i think she should have been done. Because right now. I can't imagine her fitting into my normal rotation. So she'll be collecting dust if she isn't changed up. 
I've thrown 8 or 9 hours at garuda already so i have a general feel for her.
For the most part, Garuda doesn't bring anything special to the table. But there are some changes that would have made Garuda a bit more fun.
Her entire skill lineup needs to be changed, including her passive. And my Garuda revamp concept is built around a constant energy drain. I'll explain.
To summarize her current skill set.

  • #1 creates a damage shield that absorbs and ticks up damage into her blood-ball. She can also hold #1 to supplement the charge with energy for a bigger blast.
  • #2 impales an enemy and creates a 7-10m healing circle for garuda and allies.
  • #3 consumes health and grants energy.. I like this ability, but i rarely use it, as i often have more energy than i consume.
  • #4, which is nearly useless, cause an aoe slash that causes bleeding within melee range. I almost never use her #4, it's a waste of energy.
  • Passive, damage increases as she nears death. Uses talons by default of no melee weapon is equipped.


How i think her skills should be (and this is just my opinion)

  • #1 The pounce should consume 0 energy, but instead 5% health(reduced with efficiency), and should instead of a tiny delay after pouncing before re-pouncing about 1 second, reduced with +duration.
    When the blood ball is active, it'll constantly drain energy and build up the blood ball. It'll still be usable at rank 0 as a pounce.
    Holding it down will just increase how fast the energy is consumed. And the higher the blood ball charges, the more damage the pounce does. double damage at 50k blood ball, triple at 100k. So it's not overkill, but it'll give us a reason to keep our blood ball. So we have to decide, do we want to nuke everything, or more pounce damage.
    External energy sources will still recharge her, such as energy pads, but at a reduced amount. Low Rank, the health drain would be compensated by using melee attacks after pouncing, see passive.

 

  • #2 should consume about 25 energy at 100% efficiency, the duration should be increased by 50%, the heal radius should be increase by 50%, and the healing effect reduced by 35% low rank garuda's can still use it, so long as they don't have an active blood ball. And will also recharge a small amount of energy for Garuda's allies, but not for Garuda. This ability will become more useful with #3
  • #3 should remain almost the same, but the energy return should be increased by about 10% (so 20% to 30% return)
  • #4 should be changed to 75 energy at 100% efficiency, and would generally work the same, but the bleed will have a 1% of player max health return for garuda and allies, per tick. 10 ticks = 10% of your max health returned per enemy. #3 will have her health reduced so you'll want to get that back, but more enemies = more health, but also more danger. Risk/Reward

Her passive should add either a 0.5% to 1% heath leech to all melee attacks. 0.5% if it's an equipped melee weapon, 1% if it's her own talons. So melee will constantly have health coming in. but only a small amount. Since right now, equipping the Hirudo would be a better choice for her. In addition to the increased damage with reduced health.

With this setup, all of her abilities would work together. #3 will become more useful, as we'll have a reason to keep her energy up, since #1 would have a constant drain. #2 will be more useful to keep her health up as her #3 will be eating away at it. her #1's blood bomb will be more useful as it'll charge up higher, faster, and would be launched more frequently, or her pounce will do more damage. Right now the pounce isn't particularly strong.
Her #4 will actually be useful, and would synergize with her #1, and #3, as you'll need a quick burst of energy to use it. and would work best with her #1 as you can pounce into a group and then use her #4 to get some health back, followed by another #3 for more energy while the health is coming in.
And lastly her passive's melee drain would give us a reason to use her talons, and/or get into close combat. She would become a high involvement frame that actually makes proper use of her abilities.
Since right now, i rarely use her #2 and #3, her #4 is pretty much useless, clan-mate says they might have missed a zero on the damage, ie it's 1/10th of what it should have been. Or even % based so she would scale better. as it sits, it's useless vs level 50+.

Over all, this would make Garuda a unique Risk vs Reward frame. Because right now, she does not stand out. She's being compared to Valkyr, with good reason. With these changes, she would become more of a vampire themed frame than she already is. Health consumption and leech would be her whole theme. I don't believe this would make her overpowered, but would make her more useful in a normal rotation.

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Not to put too fine of a point on it, but your proposed change to her 1 would be a massive nerf because Drain would block the energy return from her 3. And from any form of energy regen that's not the Rage mechanic or physical orbs. You can't change that mechanic just for Garuda, it's literally used as a nerf for frames. The only frames that have a persistent ability that is an aura that costs energy are Nekros and Ivara, and that is because their ability costs by the unit, by the arrow fired or by the body desecrated. Since Garuda does not have a tally other than 'over time', the only way to do energy drain is the nerf version.

Just saying 'external sources would still recharge her' doesn't count. Because the Drain mechanic is not for that. On purpose. Deliberately.

Also, the blood ball consistently gains damage anyway, both from damage taken by the shield and for every single enemy you pounce on it gains more and more, it's a persistent object even after the shield goes. It doesn't cost you energy and already can scale (as far as I know) infinitely. That's the reason for keeping our blood ball, it already has a function to encourage you to keep it.

Plus, the energy drain while 'charging' the ball is expensive because it increases the damage of the ball by 50% per second. So if you've already built up a 50k damage ball, you charge it for 1 second to get a 75k ball.

And then, why would you even need extra damage on her 1's pounce? It's already a percentage of the enemy's health with an instant-kill mechanic at any level if their health is lower than 35%.

As a final note, you have completely, and I mean completely, mis-understood what her 4 is and does.

Garuda's 4 is a debuff that works like Hunter Munitions on steroids. With a good build you basically mark every enemy you hit with that ability with a debuff that grants a decently modded value of 85% chance of Slash Procs from any weapon source (allies included) and your own 1 ability. Even if that weapon has 0% Slash or 0% Status chance, the little icon over the enemy's head grants that weapon up to and over 85% status chance for causing Bleed. And this is independent, as far as we've managed to test, of the actual damage's own Status, so you could be laying down two slash procs for the price of one hit. 

This quite emphatically makes Garuda a monster against all factions. She can take any weapon she likes and lower time-to-kill on high level enemies by a metric factor, just by pressing 4 in its general direction. You don't even need to be in line of sight.

In terms of team buffing, for damage, this can be considered on the kind of playing field that Rhino Roar, Vex Armour and possibly even the outlier multipliers of Sonar occupy. It's the kind of skill that long-running players will look at and say 'oh, yeah, I can take this to insane levels'. I'm expecting three weeks from now a LifeOfRio video showing her up versus the multi-hour mark and how he builds so that his treasured Zarr and Zenistar combo can do infinite Bleed on enemies.

Don't you dare try to change this ability. DE are going to have to nerf it soon enough, so I'm going to enjoy it while it lasts.

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2 hours ago, Sajochi said:

Huh, don't know what you mean by melee range. Charging her 4th sends those daggers flying way out of melee range. It is directional but I mark a lot of enemies with a good charge up.

I'm not going to lie, i didn't realize it charged up. I mean i totally missed that. i had only used it as a press and cast.

Thaylien, thanks for the feedback, It's definitely eye opening. As for the drain, it would be a different mechanic, so external sources, not like ivara's #3 drain or titania's #4, where only energy orbs affect it. So a different mechanic that doesn't leave a person out in the cold. IE zenurik dash, or energy pads would still supplement it. Unline other drain frames.
I think it all just came down to that she wasn't quite what i was expecting. I was expecting a vampire frame. I was really hoping for a frame that would consume health and use health in it's attacks. Essentially a warframe version of the Hema(burst primary) Where it consumes health, and regains it with attacks.
Infact it would have been better if Garuda didn't use energy at all, and all her abilities were health based.
Keeping her in a constant state of consuming of life-leeching.

BTW, i just got done playing my first run through of "Vampire - The Masquerade - Bloodlines". So i got vampires on the brain. And Garuda, as she stands, is definitely not vampire related, not what i was expecting. Not terrible, but not what i was hoping for.

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16 hours ago, LazyBunnyKiera said:

Thaylien, thanks for the feedback, It's definitely eye opening.

No problem, try her out with that more open mind, you'll be surprised ^^

16 hours ago, LazyBunnyKiera said:

As for the drain, it would be a different mechanic, so external sources, not like ivara's #3 drain or titania's #4, where only energy orbs affect it. So a different mechanic that doesn't leave a person out in the cold. IE zenurik dash, or energy pads would still supplement it. Unline other drain frames.

Again, with respect, saying that does not make it possible.

Drain has to work off something for it to function. That's why all but three drains in the game (out of seventeen frames with drain) are 'per second'. What could Garuda's possibly work off? If it worked off the damage, like Nyx's absorb, then you would run out of energy in seconds at higher level. It can't work off 'enemies affected' like Equinox or Nekros, because after the pounce it doesn't affect enemies in any way. There would only, and I'm saying this with absolute surety, be 'per second'.

And all, every one of them, all of the drain-per-second abilities block energy regen.

It's why DE use Drains as variable nerfs to warframes, as ways to prevent you from using that ability constantly. When they thought Revenant's 4 was too powerful, they upped the cost of the Drain. When they thought that Ember's 4 was being abused, they upped the Drain (and put on a range reducer). When Nezha's 1 was making it unwise to consistently use his 2 and 4 in most games, Pablo made it into a duration so he could buff the warframe. And I was here back when Valkyr's 4 stopped being a duration, because people were abusing that, and became a Drain instead.

DE use Drains as a nerf. That's what they're for. So don't think that a Drain will solve any problems, especially when the ability already has a reason for you to keep your Orb active and charge it up continually without needing a drain to sustain it.

16 hours ago, LazyBunnyKiera said:

I think it all just came down to that she wasn't quite what i was expecting. I was expecting a vampire frame.

Ahh, then you may have missed a lot of the discussion about her.

Revenant was supposed to be the Vampire themed frame, creating thralls, turning to mist, reeving health and shields, creating dark shields and putting whole fields of thralled enemies to sleep.

It was only when they themed him visually on the Eidolons that things turned sketchy, and his 4 became lasers, his 2 became 'adaptive' shields, and his 3 turned into a Vomvalyst charge (although it still reeves health and shields).

Garuda, on the other hand, was always a blood mage.

She rips life force from her enemies to protect herself, redirecting damage into a ball that she can cast back at her enemies. She sacrifices her foes on an altar of spikes to drain their life and replenish her own, and then sacrifices her own life force to gain power, and finally she curses enemies to bleed, so that anything that hurts them will cause them to bleed and bleed more with every strike.

She's quickly becoming one of my personal favourites. Hope she doesn't get nerfed too soon ^^

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Been playing her a bit more, she's pretty tanky. Her #4 doesn't seem to scale very well. It shreds lower level stuff, but she is not sortie 3 ready for me. She can survive alright, but if i need survival, i'll bring an immortal build inaros. I'd still be happy if they removed energy cost and switched to a health consuming frame. So most abilities would consume health and then heal. Vampire, blood mage? Why not both! Tremere!
 

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1 hour ago, LazyBunnyKiera said:

Been playing her a bit more, she's pretty tanky. Her #4 doesn't seem to scale very well. It shreds lower level stuff, but she is not sortie 3 ready for me. She can survive alright, but if i need survival, i'll bring an immortal build inaros. I'd still be happy if they removed energy cost and switched to a health consuming frame. So most abilities would consume health and then heal. Vampire, blood mage? Why not both! Tremere!
 

I don't know if you'll see this, but Garuda, based on what her Sigil described her as, is a Maiden of Death, so, I think a combination of both, blood and death, should you help in terms of having an idea of what her abilities should be like.

Edited by Xinis00
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14 hours ago, LazyBunnyKiera said:

Been playing her a bit more, she's pretty tanky. Her #4 doesn't seem to scale very well. It shreds lower level stuff, but she is not sortie 3 ready for me. She can survive alright, but if i need survival, i'll bring an immortal build inaros. I'd still be happy if they removed energy cost and switched to a health consuming frame. So most abilities would consume health and then heal. Vampire, blood mage? Why not both! Tremere!
 

From what I hear, her 4 actually scales insanely well because it turns any damage done to marked enemies into slash procs

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16 hours ago, LazyBunnyKiera said:

Her #4 doesn't seem to scale very well. It shreds lower level stuff, but she is not sortie 3 ready for me.

Try putting on 200% Power Strength so the Slash proc chance goes up to 100% then use anything on that enemy while it's marked with the symbol. Independent of the weapon's status you cause guaranteed Bleed.

But for the real fun, use your 1. Grab the enemy with the highest health, then let them shoot your mirror to charge it up. When you hit a decent number (which at level 100 you will quite easily) hit everything in range with your 4 then use the stagger time built into that to charge up your 1 for just a second or so. Release and watch as bleed numbers in the thousands just eat those enemies.

Sortie Tier 3? Chump change. That combo could probably scale up to level 3-400 without a hitch, as long as you can stay alive long enough to keep it going.

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@Thaylien

Thank you!, i'll give that a try, my Garuda already runs with 224% Strength.
With this build, i could sacrifice 12.5% strength by using an unleveled power drift, and replace augur message with primed continuity.
So i could sacrifice 12.5% strength for 31% duration.
She still isn't what i wanted out of a "blood/Vampire" frame, but I still have a lot to learn. I still stand by my desire for her to use health instead of energy, and have more health-drains in her attacks.
1PeY0r0.png

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On 2018-11-13 at 8:49 PM, LazyBunnyKiera said:

Thank you!, i'll give that a try, my Garuda already runs with 224% Strength.

Let me know how that runs. When I put the first Forma on her (so still not a finished build, and certainly no Umbral mods), I ran the stereotypical solo Mot to test against the different enemy types, got to 56 minutes before my first death, and it was like the Ancients weren't even there, they died from the status-redirect before I even saw them.

As a thought, though, Adaptation is kind of over-kill with the Umbral mods and two Arcane Grace in there, you're at an effective health of 3820 (from 772 armour) with the ability to heal up at 40-80HpS from the Arcanes if they proc, not to mention that if you're at low health Blood Altar will heal 50% of your missing health in the first second it's active while point-CCing different enemies and you also have an invulnerable forward shield. I'd drop that out for a rank 7 Narrow Minded (since you have Stretch to keep your range about neutral and you've got enough points to fit it... just...), what you're really looking for is to keep that shield and your 4's debuff going for the longest times possible.

With good positioning and even just one other player in mission to help with CC, you're golden. Go have fun!

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@Thaylien

I just tried that, and vs 8x  LVL 145 kuva heavy gunners, and she died soo fast. I know that in real world scenarios, it'll be unlikely that i'm ever taking that much incoming damage. But the shield just wasn't enough. 
But with the adaption on, she was able to handle it easily. So it's a really hard choice. If i know i'm going to get beaten up by some toughies, I'd just have to go with the adaption. But for pretty much anything else, the narrow minded was pretty nice. I only have a Rank 8 Narrow Minded though. *shrugs* I think i'd be ok with something a bit lower, just so i can get my jumps in, try to keep my pounce at at least 30-35m the 25ish wasn't enough to get in close to get my shield up.
Was using a corrosive/munitions amprex to chew through the enemies though.

Since my reflexes aren't what they used to be, i've been building for durable frames, such as adaption trinity, immortal adaption inaros (can't die by enemies under 200, and even then they'd have to really bring on the hate)
 

Edited by LazyBunnyKiera
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5 hours ago, Fiewel said:

I thought the mirror will absorb any ranged- and melee damage? How is it possible that you die vs some gunners with a mirror between you and them?

They do tend to flank you in the Simulacrum if you're not careful, in the main game your positioning can cover for a lot of that.

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8 hours ago, Fiewel said:

I thought the mirror will absorb any ranged- and melee damage? How is it possible that you die vs some gunners with a mirror between you and them?

Try fighting 20 lvl 125 Arid Heavy Gunners in the Simulacrum as Garuda and you would see why.

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