Garuda : Fun frame, not good enough.

[LascarCapable]

Garuda, the newest warframe released with Fortuna... I wanted to farm her at day one. Gathering all the parts was a breeze, building them was a nightmare. To be honest, I actually gave up when I had to build the system and directly bought the Thyst cristals with cold hard plats to start her craft. I am not proud of myself. But feedback was needed, and desperate times calls for desperate mesures. Now excuse me while I chastise my body with a Maining Strike modded Lacera for such a waste of platinums and disrespect to my very soul.

So Garuda. She's supposed to be the blood mage of Warframe. Doesn't exactly play like one actually, but it's kinda understandable. Her whole kit revolves around self sustain and tremendous amount of damage. And by tremendous, I mean it : one of your nuke is going to bury your foes with sheer damage so much that even the damage will get damage itself, while the other one makes everyone bleed so much you can call the floor tomato. The catch ? Well, unlike some nukers like Saryn or Mesa, you will need to build your nukes up and you won't be able to spam this over and over again in a galactical radius while the rest of your squad dies of boredom. This, my friends, is what I call decent design : you can dish out insane damage while letting your squadmates actually enjoy the game.

On the other hand, Garuda is plagued with multiple flaws that overall makes her much less viable than she should be, which is quite a waste. Garuda has a very strong potential to be a very good warframe and a decent teamplayer on top of that, but she actually struggles to due to a few critical flaws that could use some patching. Let's review all of this, ability by ability.

1 - Dread Mirror :

Wonderful ability. I love shields and this one is no exception. Garuda's shield has the very good taste of not impairing your mobility unlike Volt's shield. Its cast can also be used as a mobility manoeuver to reposition yourself (though it's always going to be in an enemy's face). The dread heart mecanic is also, as explained earlier, pretty nicely done. You have to build it up in order to make it effecting. And when you do use it, it's an extremely good nuke that also scales very nicely in higher level due to the scalability of your buildup mechanics. The icing on the bloody cake : if you roll into enemies with your shield active, you'll ragdoll them. It's hillarious.

There's a critical issue to Dread Mirror though, reminiscent of Volt's older version of electric shield : the shield does NOT seem to be able to prevent area damage from wrecking your face, or at the very least that mechanic is very inconsistent. It's not uncommon that I think of myself in a fine position holding the enemy fire until a bombard shows up and sends me back to butt-on-the-floor city. Dread mirror is already a very powerful ability for a 25 energy ability, but the things it's able to block absolutely needs to be on par with what Volt's electric shield is able to block.

2 - Blood Altar :

Blood Altar is an excellent healing ability, able to fill up your health extremely quickly due to its percentage based health replenishment mechanic, making you Inaros' best waifu whether you like it or not. It's also your cornerstone ability, the one that will keep your ass alive while you're literally giving yourself infinite energy with your Bloodletting ability (I'll talk about this one later) or attempt to maul everything else granted that the Peacemaker Mesa of your team didn't already wiped everything from the planet's surface. Add to this the the speedy and long ranged dash you to do the target of your Blood Altar, and you get an awesome ability allowing you to stand your ground... That is, at least, in theory.

In practice, blood altar is very efficient at keeping you alive against moderate forms of sustained damage (if it's too much, think about using Dread Mirror as well), but that is until some crazy shield-toting degenerate hurls a huge metallic plank at your face, sending you flying ten meters away looking like a sorry sod while the rest of the grineer squadron peppers your face with oversized BB guns. Blood Altar's radius is fairly low, which means that it's extremely easy to knock you out of it, or force you to leave the area. Despite her extreme survivability and her tremendous amount of damage, Garuda isn't that great when it comes about standing her ground. You can still try to use that Dread Heart to flush the Blood Altar or cast another one to juggle through multiple healing spots I guess.

Now I don't think doing something along the lines of giving you CC invulnerability inside Blood Altar without some kind of augment would be a good idea, because I'm afraid it would be a bit too much. Instead I kinda wish there would be a way to make that healing affect you from further away instead of requiring you to stand in such a narrow place. Perhaps the way blood altar works should be slightly reworked. Increase blood altar's range by a large margin, but make it so the further away you are from the altar, the less healing you get. Like this, you get much more margin to keep yourself healed and won't be kicked out of your altar so easly.

Another very annoying thing : Blood Altar's targetting is very capricious. If your target don't fully appear in your reticle, you won't be able to launch the ability. Sometimes you're also able to launch Blood Altar, but you get in very awkward areas instead popping near your altar like you should. I even managed to fall out of the map while trying to impale a Corpus goon somehow : bless that /unstuck command. Make the targetting less akward and turn the dash into some kind of pseudo-teleportation to the target (so you don't collide with stuff) : I think it would solve a lot of issues and make you less prone to end up in akward spaces if done right.

Last thing that bother me is related to the movement mechanics contained by both Dread Mirror and Blood Altar. They're effectively the same, just that Blood Altar triggers that movement much faster. Considering that you don't always want to charge on your target while using Dread Mirror, I'd perhaps remove the mobility feature from Dread Mirror and turn the cast into a long ranged attack with a very long talon, so you don't have to leave your altar while using Dread Mirror. Of course this would mean spending 50 energy for some mobility instead of 25 with dread mirror, this is why I would add that compensation as well : casting Blood Altar on a target that has been knocked down by Dread Mirror reduce Blood Altar's cost by 50% : that's now 50 energy to create a shield, an health dispenser, and teleport to that dispenser instead of 75 total. That should do the trick.

3 and passive - Bloodletting and Death's Gate :

I'm putting those two together considering how tightly bound together they are.

The concept of Bloodletting is as simple as it's efficient : You press 3, you hurt yourself because if feels good to you, and you get energy while triggering your passive. It's as boring as it's mandatory. Bloodletting is one of the multiple reason why Garuda can afford such a huge freedom when it comes about modding. About your passive ? Simple as well : the lower your health is, the more damage you deal, up to x2 if you stand at 2hp or less.

So what's wrong then ? Well, the issue mostly lies in Death's Gate passive : any kind of health generation will instantly affect your passive and reduce its bonus to nothing. In short, good luck actually getting that 100% bonus when the Oberon in your team seems so dedicated to be the best medic in the world : he's going to mend you so much, you're going to piss red orbs for a week. This also applies to sentinel precepts, you get a damage bonus and it's automatically ruined by medi-ray.

So you're probably going to say "Don't play with Oberon and remove Medi-Ray from your sentinel, duh", but it would seriously be a shame to force other players some choices just because I happen to play Garuda and wish to actually enjoy my passive ability. I mean, who am I to force that Oberon to not use his 3 ? Community Moderator ? That would be mod abuse, son ! How about just making it so you keep your damage bonus for a few seconds shall your health go up instead ? If the decay doesn't trigger as soon as I get healed, it means that I can enjoy my bonus for a few seconds while my Oberon can keep sustaining everyone with renewal without giving me the middle finger too much. Just don't make the duration too long, or it would maybe be a bit cheesy.

4 - Seeking Talons :

For one hundred energy, you send a volley of bloody boned talons rip and tear everything in front of you, while making all those poor sods take forced slash procs. That's metal as hell and as useful as it looks. If you're a sucker for hunter munitions you're going to love this one. The ability can be charged in order to cover a much wider radius. One issue tho : why the hell am I paying a hundred energy for sending what's basically a straight line of AoE damage ? The cost of Seeking Talons should work more like Hydroid's Tentacle Swarm : base cost should be haved (50 energy), while increasing up to 100 energy depending of your charge level. It would make Seeking Talons much more fair and versatile. Also, speed up that charge time a bit please : it really feels like I am waiting for that Ballista to send me a welcome gift when I charge that thing.

Garuda's Talons :

Last part of Garuda's kit, though this one is rather optional. If you don't equip any melee weapon, you get to use Garuda's Talons themselves as a melee weapon. And they're... Disappointing. Garuda's Talons are an incredibly average melee weapon. No special mechanics, no outstanding stats. In one hand I think that's nice because it doesn't automatically make other melees worthless to use. On the other hand, some special mechanics along the lines of something comboing with your other abilities would have been really enjoyable. Consider giving something special to that melee weapon, that would make those talons interesting to use instead of your usual top tier melees.

In the end, do I enjoy Garuda ? Well, a lot. Despite her very annoying flaws, I really appreciate how all of her abilities remain useful and how her kit feels. I just wish to see the issues I listed in that thread corrected. I don't consider her worthy of high level content yet, but I am confident those few suggestion would definitely give her very good utility in those one-hit-kill fest high level missions. Don't hesitate about sharing your thoughts about that feedback, and share it if you feel like it's worth a read. I hope you enjoyed the writing style of that feedback : I tried to make my text much more fun and lively to read as a compensation for pooping such a lenghty pile of text.

Have fun with the fortuna content and Garuda !

[iDragolyte]

Eh, I'm actually fine with everything Garuda has right now except the 1st and 4th abilities

1st ability spawns a shield, making you invulnerable to anything that's shooting in front of you, channeling it will charge up a small nuke that deals hella dps.
No doubt I absolutely love the shield, but the nuke's blast radius seems a little too small and it's heavily reliant on the 4th which makes it VERY inconvenient to use, it also bothers me when the casting speed between those 2 are so slow, even Titania can clear waves faster than Garuda.

Now for the 4th ability, I really really love how unique the ability is, the mechanic is awesome, the casting speed can be easily fixed by adding natural talent to it. But what bothers me the most is again, comes back to the 1st ability, it's heavy reliant on 1st ability to actually deal damage. If this ability can be anymore independent, that'll be so good. Imagine: channel 4th for 2 secs, boom, everything within that circle gets wiped out.

So my idea is,
- Change how 1st ability works, maybe make it a CC ability instead of damage.
- Add more damage to her 4th ability and maybe slightly improve the casting speed so she doesn't need to rely on natural talent too much.

Edited November 19, 2018 by iDragolyte

[Ikusias]

To Op: nice analysis of garuda.

My personal gripes?

- She shouldn't need a slot permanently occupied by Natural Talent because her #4 is so damn slow to charge to max radius (and energy intensive even with the bloodletting crutch)

- her passive should have just been an energy regen when damaged like the rage mods... current passive is demanding to be oneshotted

[GPrime96]

18 minutes ago, iDragolyte said:

Eh, I'm actually fine with everything Garuda has right now except the 1st and 4th abilities

1st ability spawns a shield, making you invulnerable to anything that's shooting in front of you, channeling it will charge up a small nuke that deals hella dps.
No doubt I absolutely love the shield, but the nuke's blast radius seems a little too small and it's heavily reliant on the 4th which makes it VERY inconvenient to use, it also bothers me when the casting speed between those 2 are so slow, even Titania can clear waves faster than Garuda.

Now for the 4th ability, I really really love how unique the ability is, the mechanic is awesome, the casting speed can be easily fixed by adding natural talent to it. But what bothers me the most is again, comes back to the 1st ability, it's heavy reliant on 1st ability to actually deal Slash damage. If this ability can be anymore independent, that'll be so good. Imagine: channel 4th for 2 secs, boom, everything within that circle gets wiped out.
 

FTFY

[iDragolyte]

5 minutes ago, Ikusias said:

To Op: nice analysis of garuda.

My personal gripes?

- She shouldn't need a slot permanently occupied by Natural Talent because her #4 is so damn slow to charge to max radius (and energy intensive even with the bloodletting crutch)

- her passive should have just been an energy regen when damaged like the rage mods... current passive is demanding to be oneshotted

I agree with your opinion on the natural talent mod slot, sorry, just edited my comment a min before you sent yours.
For the passive, I think that would kinda break the mechanic of her 3rd, it shouldn't be anything relating to regain health/energy.

[Erl-King]

About Garuda's talons. Personally I don't see it as a combat suited weapon, like Valkyr battle claws, but as an executioner tool, rend'n'tear helpless prey style. It would be really good if talons had some unique effect on finishers and ground finishers (which would have nice sinergy with her 1st power).

It could be instant kill (like covert Lethality mod) or just greatly boosted damage.

Ideally claws would have unique animations for finishers, something with fountains of blood and gore. Extra style points if claws would be dripping blood and maybe even have some flesh pieces impaled on them after a finisher.

 

Edited November 19, 2018 by Erl-King

[LascarCapable]

Il y a 16 heures, iDragolyte a dit :

Eh, I'm actually fine with everything Garuda has right now except the 1st and 4th abilities

1st ability spawns a shield, making you invulnerable to anything that's shooting in front of you, channeling it will charge up a small nuke that deals hella dps.
No doubt I absolutely love the shield, but the nuke's blast radius seems a little too small and it's heavily reliant on the 4th which makes it VERY inconvenient to use, it also bothers me when the casting speed between those 2 are so slow, even Titania can clear waves faster than Garuda.

Now for the 4th ability, I really really love how unique the ability is, the mechanic is awesome, the casting speed can be easily fixed by adding natural talent to it. But what bothers me the most is again, comes back to the 1st ability, it's heavy reliant on 1st ability to actually deal damage. If this ability can be anymore independent, that'll be so good. Imagine: channel 4th for 2 secs, boom, everything within that circle gets wiped out.

So my idea is,
- Change how 1st ability works, maybe make it a CC ability instead of damage.
- Add more damage to her 4th ability and maybe slightly improve the casting speed so she doesn't need to rely on natural talent too much.

I don't see the point of turning dread heart into a CC considering it's charge mechanic. Making it a small nuke is good enough. Keep in mind that the ability allows you to nuke a 10m area for 25 energy, which is half an Antimatter Drop. You need to charge it up for a moment, but unlike AmD you have potential to release a decent nuke for half the cost that would end up much faster in the enemy's face (AmD on the other hand is very slow to travel and costs 50).

Point of your 4th ability is not the base damage output, it's the massive debuff you inflict that allows you and your team to clear a huge group of enemies no matter how much armor they have (remember, slash procs bypass armor). That slash proc is based on the TOTAL DAMAGE of your shot, which is why it's incredible. The only thing it needs is better casting speed so you can reach maximum range a bit better, this I agree with.

Il y a 16 heures, Ikusias a dit :

To Op: nice analysis of garuda.

My personal gripes?

- She shouldn't need a slot permanently occupied by Natural Talent because her #4 is so damn slow to charge to max radius (and energy intensive even with the bloodletting crutch)

- her passive should have just been an energy regen when damaged like the rage mods... current passive is demanding to be oneshotted

Natural Talent should remain a viable choice IMO, but I do agree casting speed is too slow in its current state. As for your passive suggestion, I feel like it would make her 3 pointless. Which would mean that DE would have to replace that 3rd ability by something else since that passive Rage mod would very likely do a much better job at giving you energy, and very likely a small stat change as well (Rage mod means that you need less shields to work decently). I'm kinda okay with such a passive, but then you would have to come out with a good alternative for Garuda's 3rd ability.

Il y a 15 heures, Erl-King a dit :

About Garuda's talons. Personally I don't see it as a combat suited weapon, like Valkyr battle claws, but as an executioner tool, rend'n'tear helpless prey style. It would be really good if talons had some unique effect on finishers and ground finishers (which would have nice sinergy with her 1st power).

It could be instant kill (like covert Lethality mod) or just greatly boosted damage.

Ideally claws would have unique animations for finishers, something with fountains of blood and gore. Extra style points if claws would be dripping blood and maybe even have some flesh pieces impaled on them after a finisher.

 

One hit kill on finishers is maybe a bit too much though it's already present on daggers. But I'm all for giving them a unique effect.

[koryfunny]

2 hours ago, D20 said:

I don't see the point of turning dread heart into a CC considering it's charge mechanic. Making it a small nuke is good enough. Keep in mind that the ability allows you to nuke a 10m area for 25 energy, which is half an Antimatter Drop. You need to charge it up for a moment, but unlike AmD you have potential to release a decent nuke for half the cost that would end up much faster in the enemy's face (AmD on the other hand is very slow to travel and costs 50).

I'd like to point out that you forgot the fact that charging up the ball consumes 50 energy/sec but it also increases the current stored damage by 50% per sec.

as for her 4 I don't mind using Natural Talent but even with it I agree it needs a faster charging ASAP!

now about her passive - I agree with you. right now to actually enjoy her passive I run a full defensive build:
adaptation, quick thinking, primed flow, hunter adrenaline, vitality, steel viber, enemy radar to adjust my position without relying on pets and handspring to counter knockdowns.
combined with healing-return melee weapon I can stay on low-health enjoying her passive but staying just above that 2HP to make sure I keep getting energy (and of course I use her 2 and 3 when needed to "reset" my position in dangerous places)

but as you can see, with such setup I have no slot left for ability strength mods!

so what I think is that her passive should be like this:
first, like you suggested, when Garuda triggers her passive - the damage buff will remains for a while if she gets healed.
I think Garuda's passive damage boost should remain for about 10 seconds - refreshing as long as she remains at the same health level or drops even lower (which will increase the buff), and if after 10 seconds her HP is higher than the buff value - then it'll reset, reapplying the passive buff according to her current health level.

second, her passive should be split between weapons damage and ability strength (instead of just damage buff to weapons and abilities - her abilities don't deal much damage anyway except her 1 which can be increased with ability strength too)
so at 2-HP Garuda will have 100% increased weapons damage, and 100% increased ability strength.
that way Garuda can have 100% bleed proc with her 4 (200% ability strength) and more damage to her 1 (compensating for taking away the 100% damage buff), without relying on strength mods. 
it will also give players more build varieties now that they won't need strength mods for that 100% bleed proc - as long as they actively use her passive!

[LascarCapable]

Il y a 4 heures, koryfunny a dit :

I'd like to point out that you forgot the fact that charging up the ball consumes 50 energy/sec but it also increases the current stored damage by 50% per sec.

as for her 4 I don't mind using Natural Talent but even with it I agree it needs a faster charging ASAP!

now about her passive - I agree with you. right now to actually enjoy her passive I run a full defensive build:
adaptation, quick thinking, primed flow, hunter adrenaline, vitality, steel viber, enemy radar to adjust my position without relying on pets and handspring to counter knockdowns.
combined with healing-return melee weapon I can stay on low-health enjoying her passive but staying just above that 2HP to make sure I keep getting energy (and of course I use her 2 and 3 when needed to "reset" my position in dangerous places)

but as you can see, with such setup I have no slot left for ability strength mods!

so what I think is that her passive should be like this:
first, like you suggested, when Garuda triggers her passive - the damage buff will remains for a while if she gets healed.
I think Garuda's passive damage boost should remain for about 10 seconds - refreshing as long as she remains at the same health level or drops even lower (which will increase the buff), and if after 10 seconds her HP is higher than the buff value - then it'll reset, reapplying the passive buff according to her current health level.

second, her passive should be split between weapons damage and ability strength (instead of just damage buff to weapons and abilities - her abilities don't deal much damage anyway except her 1 which can be increased with ability strength too)
so at 2-HP Garuda will have 100% increased weapons damage, and 100% increased ability strength.
that way Garuda can have 100% bleed proc with her 4 (200% ability strength) and more damage to her 1 (compensating for taking away the 100% damage buff), without relying on strength mods. 
it will also give players more build varieties now that they won't need strength mods for that 100% bleed proc - as long as they actively use her passive!

Oops. You're right about that charge mechanic. Though at least you get to actually have a smallish chance to get kills with it compared to the poor AmD Nova who's going to get cockblocked by her three other bloodthirsty squadmates. :p

About the passive suggestions :

• For the first one, a very important thing to implement : if the change to the passive is a positive one (ie. if Garuda takes enough damage so she should get a better damage buff than the one currently showing), the passive damage bonus should update immediately ! On the other hand, the passive should linger for a few seconds if your health goes up. I'm just adding some precision to the mechanic here, so we don't get something that works wierd. :p
• About the power strenght thing, I need to point out that the good thing of your 4 is not the raw damage and slash procs : it's the debuff. You use your 4 to spread a debuff that will cause any of your shots to trigger some huge slash procs based on the total damage of the weapon. That's pretty much your second way to nuke things. I'm neutral about making that bonus power strenght based when it comes about Garuda's power, but to be honest Garuda doesn't need that much power strenght to begin with. Heck, I don't even think Power Strenght is somewhat needed at all, though it's far for useless as well. That's kinda the beauty of Garuda : she really doesn't need a specific stat at level 30, she can work pretty damn well with 100% on each stat. Just bringing a few analysis precisions here. :p

 

Il y a 7 heures, moostar95 a dit :

she is really fun but flawed. I ran into a few bugs with her one making her fall out the level. Her four has a really slow charge to it as well. 

I do run into those issues a lot as well. It usually happen to me when I try to use Blood Altar mid air because I can't get the targetting to work due to that one pesky grineer using a barrier type cover that doesn't even hide half of his body. Turns out that one useless cover is actually a deadly transdimentional trap meant to get me stuck in an alternate reality.

200 IQ Grineers.

[koryfunny]

18 minutes ago, D20 said:

Oops. You're right about that charge mechanic. Though at least you get to actually have a smallish chance to get kills with it compared to the poor AmD Nova who's going to get cockblocked by her three other bloodthirsty squadmates. 😛

About the passive suggestions :

• For the first one, a very important thing to implement : if the change to the passive is a positive one (ie. if Garuda takes enough damage so she should get a better damage buff than the one currently showing), the passive damage bonus should update immediately ! On the other hand, the passive should linger for a few seconds if your health goes up. I'm just adding some precision to the mechanic here, so we don't get something that works wierd. 😛
• About the power strenght thing, I need to point out that the good thing of your 4 is not the raw damage and slash procs : it's the debuff. You use your 4 to spread a debuff that will cause any of your shots to trigger some huge slash procs based on the total damage of the weapon. That's pretty much your second way to nuke things. I'm neutral about making that bonus power strenght based when it comes about Garuda's power, but to be honest Garuda doesn't need that much power strenght to begin with. Heck, I don't even think Power Strenght is somewhat needed at all, though it's far for useless as well. That's kinda the beauty of Garuda : she really doesn't need a specific stat at level 30, she can work pretty damn well with 100% on each stat. Just bringing a few analysis precisions here. 😛

for the passive - of course that what I meant, just typed so much I didn't want to make it longer xD

now about her 4: the base bleed proc chance of the debuff is 50% and it scales up to 100% with 200% ability strength.
since, like i've said, I had to build her as tanky as I could, I have no place for strength mods and so her 4 bleed proc chanceof the debuff remains at 50%.
I think that giving her passive ability strength would help fix this issue without hurting her builds varienty, in fact it should increase the builds varienty!

and as for her 1, 100% increased damage is just as good as 100% increased ability strength, so such change to her passive wouldn't hurt her 1 damage at all, while giving Garuda the option to scale her 4 bleed proc chance to 100% without using 200% strength build - as long as the player is willing to go risky and activate her passive at maximum power

Edited November 20, 2018 by koryfunny

[GPrime96]

8 minutes ago, D20 said:

 

• About the power strenght thing, I need to point out that the good thing of your 4 is not the raw damage and slash procs : it's the debuff. You use your 4 to spread a debuff that will cause any of your shots to trigger some huge slash procs based on the total damage of the weapon. That's pretty much your second way to nuke things. I'm neutral about making that bonus power strenght based when it comes about Garuda's power, but to be honest Garuda doesn't need that much power strenght to begin with. Heck, I don't even think Power Strenght is somewhat needed at all, though it's far for useless as well. That's kinda the beauty of Garuda : she really doesn't need a specific stat at level 30, she can work pretty damn well with 100% on each stat. Just bringing a few analysis precisions here. :p

 

Power Strength is good for not just for her 4, also her 2. Her Regen increases with Power Strength so if you have 200% Power Strength and you have three Blood Alters up, you can regen health very fast. Probably as fast as Nidus with his Ravenous.

[LascarCapable]

Il y a 4 heures, GPrime96 a dit :

Power Strength is good for not just for her 4, also her 2. Her Regen increases with Power Strength so if you have 200% Power Strength and you have three Blood Alters up, you can regen health very fast. Probably as fast as Nidus with his Ravenous.

Good point.

[csaszar]

She is massacred at later lvls. Weak frame with no sustainability. Necros can take much much more beating and still be fun and effective at his trade.

[koryfunny]

59 minutes ago, Csaszar said:

She is massacred at later lvls. Weak frame with no sustainability. Necros can take much much more beating and still be fun and effective at his trade.

that why I have to rely on so many defensive mods, leaving no space for strength mods and my 4's bleed proc chance stays at 50% - which is why I suggest changing her passive to give 100% WEAPON damage and 100% ability strength (instead of just 100% increased damage)

[Azamagon]

I like your ideas here. Especially making her #1 a ranged attack. Potentially having to hop in to a group of enemies to get a shield which only protects from one direction is ... not always particularly safe.

Garuda's claws are fine (CO-build works wonderfully with them). The problem with her claws (as with all claws... and some other weapontypes too, particularly the polearms and warfans) is the angle those claws are used in some attacks; Sometimes you actually slash enemies with the sharp part, but sometimes (more often than I'd like) you actually just "slap" enemies with the blunt side of your claws! For a game that seemingly takes a lot of pride in its graphics, this graphical flaw that exist in claws and many other melee weapons, is outright disgustingly bad.

Edited November 21, 2018 by Azamagon

[csaszar]

The problem with her claws are pretty obvious: outside of lore and role playing there is no reason to use them.

Make them special find something uniqe way to make it worth. For example make a synergy with the 4th ability: the bleed effect proc from her 4th ability increases the combo counter of her claws. Or make them like the venka claw with increased xombo counter effect or something like that uniqe and useful way to propagate its use. Or simply make special combos with uniqe bonuses (well much better than the current).

[koryfunny]

49 minutes ago, Csaszar said:

The problem with her claws are pretty obvious: outside of lore and role playing there is no reason to use them.

Make them special find something uniqe way to make it worth. For example make a synergy with the 4th ability: the bleed effect proc from her 4th ability increases the combo counter of her claws. Or make them like the venka claw with increased xombo counter effect or something like that uniqe and useful way to propagate its use. Or simply make special combos with uniqe bonuses (well much better than the current).

personally, I think her claws should have life leech like Hirudo has, but considering the claw's nature as status weapon - you'll heal when you proc a status effect instead of heal on crits.
something like built-in Healing Returns

[notHunky]

My only gripe with Garuda is her profile trailer. Serously, GORE QUEEN?!

No but really, this frame is everything I hoped it would be. Although I thinking making some tweaks mentioned by Brozime would be nice.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7jFJBaSZTA

I don't agree with him calling the frame "useless" though. It probably just needs a little tweaking and it will be fine. Garuda has a lot of good things going for it. I like that all of her abilities have utility yet require players to be a bit more methodical in how they painfully eviscerate eliminate the enemy, since in most situations you can't just jump in and repeatedly "press 4 to win". This is already my new favorite frame.

[Xzorn]

I do really like Garuda's kit and I'm not usually one to come to the aid of a new frame. I either use it or throw it in the closet but I really want this one to be good. I like the concept of riding the line of death but the problem is. She can't really afford to. She's squishy and her Mirror is not nearly reliable to justify her eHP. I personally think she should gain 0.5% mitigation as her health drops maxing at 50% with 2 HP.

This gives her more room to play her theme though you do bring up a point of other players healing you and countering that damage bonus.

I would argue if Oberon's healing is enough to keep her alive than she probably doesn't need the damage bonus anyways though and there in lies the problem with her. By the time you want that damage bonus; she's getting one-shot because she has the eHP of a caster while being a Caster / Melee hybrid. She could heal 100% per second and it won't save her.

If she had more durability and she's at a level range to make use of her passive than she could actively counter other player healing by being more reckless and going into melee like her Claws suggest she can but there's no way I'd try to melee anything adversarial with 8k eHP or half that trying to make use of Bloodletting.

[Yousho]

I *really* like the way Garuda plays...but I just can't seem to build her in a way that means she can survive Sortie, Arbitration or even higher level Fortuna content...

[iuki.]

garuda is to squishy to have a passive like she does: going to 2 life is suicide in higher level play. heck losing any life at all is bad lol. i have to use magus elevate's to make her some what viable. natural talent is also a must, those cast times wow are they slow.

 

Edited November 22, 2018 by iuki.

[koryfunny]

4 hours ago, Yousho said:

I *really* like the way Garuda plays...but I just can't seem to build her in a way that means she can survive Sortie, Arbitration or even higher level Fortuna content...

 

1 hour ago, iuki. said:

garuda is to squishy to have a passive like she does: going to 2 life is suicide in higher level play. heck losing any life at all is bad lol. i have to use magus elevate's to make her some what viable. natural talent is also a must, those cast times wow are they slow.

 

that is EXACTLY why I have nearly every defensive mod on her that comes to mind - and I can ssurvive sorties and high level enemies no problem (except the occasional bug or bullS#&$ that happens) but that leaves me no room for power strength and other frames can still survive better 😕

that why I proposed having her passive give 100% ability strength and 100% weapon damage, instead of just 100% increased damage.

on another note: I use Healing Return to keep healing while not healing too much so her passive is active, but that risky sometimes...
I could use lifestrike instead but that would over-heal and neglate her passive completely

[Kotsender_Quasimir]

Easily the best designed frame since Harrow imo. Fun, fair, varied. Build-up mechanics done right, extremely satisfying.

I gotta say i even like the charge time on her 4. Makes the release feel so good. Also takes some strategic positioning before casting (you'll want to have your shield active, of course). The idea about cost changing according to charge level sounds good tho.

[Peter]

For me just remove the noise of blood ball (skill 1) and let apply the mark of 4 on the target, increase the range of 2, make 3 working with str instead of efficiency, and more speed for 4.

[Xzorn]

On 2018-11-21 at 5:16 PM, notHunky said:

I don't agree with him calling the frame "useless" though.

 

Lol yea. A frame that gives your group +240% Finisher damage over 6 seconds regardless the weapon they're using can't be useless.

Natural Talent and spamming her 4th is currently the only thing I'd do with her right now while hiding behind a Volt's shield or Frost's Snow Globe. You can further exploit it by using the multiplicative damage buffs in the game that Chroma's nerf claim don't exist like Rhino's Roar and Primed Bane giving your team about +732% Finisher Damage on top of the 3x damage those buffs / mods would normally give. ( Bane and Roar are additive 150% + 55% = 3.05 x and multiplied again for DoT effects 5.1x )

I can say one thing for sure though. A frame that uses % HP based abilities and not using HP mods is dunce level. If I were someone claiming Raids/Sorties are max level I'd have Vitality + Primed Vigor + QT + P. Flow + Steel Fiber on her. Of course now you've got three slots left to work with which means she's suffering of Valkyr-ism where most the mods are just there to keep her alive and not actually modifier her abilities. Which is awful.

But since I'm not one to think lvl 100 is max level. I'd use Natural Talent, 200% Power Strength, P. Flow with some efficiency then spam the heck out of her 4th and simply play something else if there's no one to help protect me. Similar to Banshee, Ember or Saryn. A shame that her scaling potential IS actually 4 to win.

Edited November 23, 2018 by Xzorn