Garuda: a mix of two incompatible playstyles

[Aktriaz]

Garuda is, simply put, a mess.

Not to say she is weak, or in need of a buff exactly. That would be a gross simplification of the issues Garuda has.

Garuda is half caster, half bruiser, but has neither the traits that are required to be effective at either. She is how you DON'T do a hybrid.

She has no reliable defensive ability to protect her whilst surrounded by enemies, and is not tanky enough to survive without one. She is not a good bruiser.

She has no CC, and is most safe at range, but NEEDS TO GET INTO MELEE to use her abilities. Bad caster.

Garuda is essentially a caster that plays like a bruiser. She's not even a hybrid of the two, which she should honestly be.

All she needs to become a proper hybrid build is something that can actually protect her while in melee. The shield is useless when in melee.

I think a fair compromise would be to give her first ability duration-based damage reduction after use on a foe, like Mesa or Gara. Maybe add some lifesteal as well. You can rename it to "Dread Armor".

Additionally, you could keep the Mirror, but move it to when she uses her first on an enemy effected by her second, and give it a much longer duration to compensate for the extra setup.

That way, she keeps her current playstyle for the people who like her setup currently, and make her more capable of bruiser play. A proper hybrid.

 

Right now, Garuda is nothing more than a gimmicky nuke for endurance runs. She's terrible literally everywhere else.
I really want to like this warframe, but I can't stand her current state.

[Holonomic88]

An excellent summary of Garuda's issues.  I would also add that her passive is in need of help.

[Fiewel]

Why does her passive need any help? Its not utterly pointless like (example) Mesas, do you seriously mod her for the passive?

[Sorrode]

5 hours ago, Holonomic88 said:

An excellent summary of Garuda's issues.  I would also add that her passive is in need of help.

change from damage bonus to power strength bonus so it synergizes with her 2 and give her extra survivability

[(PSN)ErydisTheLucario]

Well say you wanted to have max damage from her passive, but she needs to be next to dead to have 100% damage. What happens if toxin or slash comes into play. Dead instantly. I think the passiva would be fine if her abilites reflected that a bit more. That's just me though, she is disappointing to me.

[(PSN)AbBaNdOn_IGN]

Umbral mods take garuda to 1k+ armor  If I sacrificed something 1100+.   With the umbral mods you also get strength by default so your Blood Altar is buffed and should heal you atleast 37%/s.   Which also makes her 4 more deadly as well.    

I use 3 umbra mods, stretch, auger reach, hunter adrenaline(for now, may be useless),  gladiator resolve/aegis AND an exilus mod of power drift.  That gets me to around 165% strength? 14meter healing circle (range drift only added 1 meter which I thought was worthless).   

I need alot more experience watch if Hunters Adrenaline even helps because I dont think it will.... I'd much rather have streamline so I could maybe cast both Dread Mirror and Blood Altar from a single cast of Bloodletter.    Adrenaline/Rage probably grants me the ability to use her 4 alot early on in fights before energy suckers start to show up.   

[Shelusine]

13 hours ago, (PS4)ErydisTheLucario said:

What happens if toxin or slash comes into play.

Use quick thinking + armor

1 hour ago, (PS4)AbBaNdOn_IGN said:

Umbral mods take garuda to 1k+ armor 

877* 

1 hour ago, (PS4)AbBaNdOn_IGN said:

I use 3 umbra mods, stretch, auger reach, hunter adrenaline(for now, may be useless),  gladiator resolve/aegis AND an exilus mod of power drift.  That gets me to around 165% strength? 14meter healing circle (range drift only added 1 meter which I thought was worthless).   

You don't really benefit from boosting her survivability that way, being an unkillable warframe who sit there and heals itself over learning how to use her shield and having offensive stats for your debuff and AoE is just going to handicap you greatly. Now everyone builds like they want but the frame is not squishy, it has an almost unpenetrable shield, good base armor and energy multiplier. Just slot QT+Armor and possibly add 1-2 arcane guardian to boost  your healing efficiency and prevent staggers against lvl160 or so

[birdobash]

Hey this is actually a really accurate breakdown of her situation. Even though I like the idea of dread mirror, in application in a game like warframe it just doesn't suffice as a defensive ability. Dread armor sounds like a much better alternative, and it could probably work like inaros scarab armor where you have to build it up and instead of a duration it breaks down when attacked, but you build it up by jumping multiple enemies with the ability. 

But alas, knowing DE's trend, they most likely will make the idea of dread armor into an augment for dread mirror, instead of actually doing the change straight on.

I do hope they actually change it to dread armor though, either that, or somehow make the dread mirror actually work by changing it in some way.

[CodeUltimate]

Unfortunately I don't think DE will pay more attention to garuda even though she needed some changes they still released another frame and that frame(baruuk) feels incomplete too. So yeah I'm not having high hopes for this anymore :b

[GideonWilhelm]

Garuda is fantastic.  Her passive does need looked at, and her 4 needs to be made more clear, because I don't think people understand that she is a walking Hunter's Munitions on steroids.  Her 4 doesn't have a chance to proc bleed on cast, it creates a bleed chance on all damage a marked target receives, including weapons, warframe abilities, gas procs, and so on.  I've never had an issue using her first two abilities with proper positioning... use her 2 on an enemy that gets to close, then dodge roll away if you need more distance.  Wanna refresh dread mirror?  Use her 1 on something, then dodge roll away from the enemy pack and cast her 4 before laying waste to the whole lot.

Seriously, she's one of the best damn frames in the game right now, you just need to know how to use your maneuvers and mind your positioning to play her safely.  I only die if I forget to check for incoming enemies or put my back to a door I shouldn't have (or, in 75% of cases, I blow myself up with the Zarr).

Edited January 7, 2019 by GideonWilhelm

[birdobash]

1 hour ago, GideonWilhelm said:

Garuda is fantastic.  Her passive does need looked at, and her 4 needs to be made more clear, because I don't think people understand that she is a walking Hunter's Munitions on steroids.  Her 4 doesn't have a chance to proc bleed on cast, it creates a bleed chance on all damage a marked target receives, including weapons, warframe abilities, gas procs, and so on.  I've never had an issue using her first two abilities with proper positioning... use her 2 on an enemy that gets to close, then dodge roll away if you need more distance.  Wanna refresh dread mirror?  Use her 1 on something, then dodge roll away from the enemy pack and cast her 4 before laying waste to the whole lot.

Seriously, she's one of the best damn frames in the game right now, you just need to know how to use your maneuvers and mind your positioning to play her safely.  I only die if I forget to check for incoming enemies or put my back to a door I shouldn't have (or, in 75% of cases, I blow myself up with the Zarr).

It's not that she isn't a good frame, she is and works in todays meta recently, it's just that some of her kit doesn't work with other parts of her kit as fluidly as you would like.

Why give her health regeneration when she doesn't have damage reduction, but instead a shield that is invulnerable to damage? That's the equivalent of giving rhino health regen, but he can't utilize it at all because iron skin, although in the case of garuda the defensive capabilities of her shield are lesser but offensively it's better. Also, her passive and her 2 contradict each other in their uses, she has health regeneration that is faster the lower her health is, but she has a passive that boosts her damage the lower her health is, meaning most of the time her passive isn't in use. 

If they made her passive have some sort of decaying buffer on it so even if you suddenly got healed to full at max passive, it only slowly went down instead of going down immediately it might work a lot better as it would encourage quickly burning down your health with bloodlet, and still getting the buff for a bit after healing with her 2.

[GideonWilhelm]

6 hours ago, birdobash said:

Why give her health regeneration when she doesn't have damage reduction, but instead a shield that is invulnerable to damage?

Because of her 3, though after sleeping on it I will agree that she doesn't have nearly enough reason to spam her 3 since her 1 often takes you out of range of her 2 and her 4 isn't strong enough on its own to be spammed.

[Shelusine]

7 hours ago, birdobash said:

Why give her health regeneration when she doesn't have damage reduction

7 hours ago, birdobash said:

Also, her passive and her 2 contradict each other in their uses

It was about damn time someone agreed with that. 

 

26 minutes ago, GideonWilhelm said:

Because of her 3

No, there really is just... no reason to that ability at all. There are way too many better healing options that doesn't require any energy nor get in the way like her 2 does. Healing return (since she KD enemies), life strike, the furis, magus repair, magus vigor,... Honestly, (and it is sad) the frame works better if you don't use that ability and rely on these options to heal yourself. And even if the ability had some kind of more "controlled" healing potential, healing without extra gimmick or damage reduction/negation is not good enough. What kills you in warframe are burst damage, AKA things that you can't recover from. That's why frames who have such abilities usually have a kit that revolves around that or have extra things specs added to the ability. Why did they make an exception with Garuda? I have no idea.

[GPrime96]

36 minutes ago, Shelusine said:

Healing return (since she KD enemies), life strike, the furis, magus repair, magus vigor,... Honestly, (and it is sad) the frame works better if you don't use that ability and rely on these options to heal yourself.

You know Hyeeka Masters and Scorches can damage you with their ignis through the Mirror right? GL trying to deal with that without her 2.

[Shelusine]

6 minutes ago, GPrime96 said:

You know Hyeeka Masters and Scorches can damage you with their ignis through the Mirror right? GL trying to deal with that without her 2.

Press 1? I am not sure about the point you're trying to make, you can't kill an enemy that damages you without an healing ability? Or was it sarcasm and I failed to see the joke?

Edited January 8, 2019 by Shelusine

[CatboyPrincess]

59 minutes ago, Shelusine said:

Also, her passive and her 2 contradict each other in their uses

I disagree. 2 and 3 effectively act as dials for Garuda's current health and the passive only complements it. Ideally, 2's rate of healing is counter-balanced by the rate of incoming damage resulting in a relatively static heath ratio. That said...

8 hours ago, birdobash said:

If they made her passive have some sort of decaying buffer on it so even if you suddenly got healed to full at max passive, it only slowly went down instead of going down immediately it might work a lot better as it would encourage quickly burning down your health with bloodlet, and still getting the buff for a bit after healing with her 2. 

I support this idea. I would describe Garuda's passive, 2, and 3 as interacting in a clunky manner and that this would smooth things out a lot. To further expand on this idea, I would like to see the damage bonus increase instantly on taking damage but decrease at a capped rate over time in response to health increases.

I really like the idea of changing the 1 to better complement Garuda's playstyle. The shield and charge attack feel very gimmicky.

59 minutes ago, Shelusine said:

healing without extra gimmick or damage reduction/negation is not good enough

I'd be very happy if the Blood Alter areas provided damage reduction on top of healing.

Edited January 8, 2019 by Gwyndolin-chan

[GideonWilhelm]

10 hours ago, Shelusine said:

No, there really is just... no reason to that ability at all. There are way too many better healing options that doesn't require any energy nor get in the way like her 2 does. Healing return (since she KD enemies), life strike, the furis, magus repair, magus vigor,... Honestly, (and it is sad) the frame works better if you don't use that ability and rely on these options to heal yourself. And even if the ability had some kind of more "controlled" healing potential, healing without extra gimmick or damage reduction/negation is not good enough. What kills you in warframe are burst damage, AKA things that you can't recover from. That's why frames who have such abilities usually have a kit that revolves around that or have extra things specs added to the ability. Why did they make an exception with Garuda? I have no idea.

I get what you're saying, and I agree.  I kinda went on a posting spree when I should've been sleeping, but I was trying to think of things from the development side... I'm positive they gave Garuda that kind of heal as a common blood magic trope and a way to compensate for the health loss on her 3, because DE rarely seems to think through the way actual players might use the stuff they put in the game, nor do they seem to want to design for endgame players... They probably built Garuda around newer players who do not have access to most of these options yet.

[Kontrollo]

Things that may have not been mentioned about her Blood Altar:

• When it works, it's very hard single target CC in its own right.
  • It acts as a literal meat shield; enemies don't shoot you/can't hit you when standing behind it
  • ... and their life is slowly draining away.
• It's also meant to be used as team utility, not just for herself.
• It's an even faster gap closer than her 1.

I think it's useful, and with my loadouts, my abilities are more expensive to cast. It's always good to have an altar in the vicinity to replenish energy or when things get a bit more sticky. Doesn't mean I have to stay in it all the time. She's all about juggling the different resource bars she has. On that note, with this frame I'd love it if they weren't tucked away in the corners, and opposing ones to boot. Custom HUDs, when DE? 😄

 

P.S. @OP she's also half bird now, btw.

[Aktriaz]

2 hours ago, Kontrollo said:

Things that may have not been mentioned about her Blood Altar:

• When it works, it's very hard single target CC in its own right.
  • It acts as a literal meat shield; enemies don't shoot you/can't hit you when standing behind it
  • ... and their life is slowly draining away.
• It's also meant to be used as team utility, not just for herself.
• It's an even faster gap closer than her 1.

I think it's useful, and with my loadouts, my abilities are more expensive to cast. It's always good to have an altar in the vicinity to replenish energy or when things get a bit more sticky. Doesn't mean I have to stay in it all the time. She's all about juggling the different resource bars she has. On that note, with this frame I'd love it if they weren't tucked away in the corners, and opposing ones to boot. Custom HUDs, when DE? 😄

 

P.S. @OP she's also half bird now, btw.

That cover given by her second would certainly be more useful if she didn't have to get into melee range to use them. 60~ degree cover is not very useful when surrounded by enemies.

This is exactly my point; her moveset does not match her strengths. She's not bad per say, just a mess design wise.

I mean, even bloodletting is a huge mess. It scales with efficiency, meaning the amount of energy you get scales up with efficiency. But, the more efficiency you get, the less likely you will even consider using the ability. And, if you decide to ignore efficiency to build other things, Bloodletting only nets you a small amount of energy in exchange for slashing her health, making rage (theoretically) just a better option. Either way you build, this ability is rarely useful.

I can't use a rage build because she is not tanky enough to safely do that, I can't use a Quick Thinking build because I actually want to mod for her other abilities (and the stagger is not ideal), and if I build max efficiency her third ability becomes almost useless.

I've done lots of tests, against mobs of heavy gunners with a power strength/efficiency standard build and a quick thinking one, and the survivability between the two is virtually the same, with the standard power/efficiency one having a better survival rate due to no staggering and increased healing from blood altar, and it's less micromanaging.

[Shelusine]

4 hours ago, Kontrollo said:

• When it works, it's very hard single target CC in its own right.
  •  It acts as a literal meat shield; enemies don't shoot you/can't hit you when standing behind it
  • ... and their life is slowly draining away.
• It's also meant to be used as team utility, not just for herself.
• It's an even faster gap closer than her 1.

There are a lot of things to say about that but mainly I'd focus on the practicality of these assets relative to her kit.

Her 1 KD and thus put single targets in a position where they can receive finisher damage, why would you use her 2 instead of her 1 to CC an enemy ? 

Why would you need a meat shield when you have a shield and the other healing options allows you to heal yourself from a more advantageous positioning without having to compromise with your passive and thus dps ?

A lot of healing options are AoE and thus can be used on your team regardless however as already said, there's no point to healing without damage reduction or additional specs, if one of your ally dies it's because they got burst damaged (or because they are so low MR that their loadout is just that bad) and healing doesn't help with that. That's something you can quickly notice in arbitration. 

As for the gap closer I honestly never noticed but if that's true the difference must be very pointless. 

 

4 hours ago, Kontrollo said:

I think it's useful, and with my loadouts, my abilities are more expensive to cast. It's always good to have an altar in the vicinity to replenish energy or when things get a bit more sticky.

That's actually the ironic part, no matter what build for and whether or not you use her 2, if things get sticky with Garuda it most likely means that you have no energy, meaning that if things "actually" get sticky you want to have an healing option that doesn't require energy to begin with. That's why her 3 is an ability that I would never call bad at all despite the fact that I have access to max arcane energize.

1 hour ago, Aktriaz said:

Doesn't mean I have to stay in it all the time.

Unless you don't build for range and thus have a limited AoE ratio and thus lower dps, not staying in it isn't really an easy choice to achieve. That being said the issue is the practicality, hoping in and out isn't practical over deciding of the amount you need to keep going no matter what you mod for. Unless you play tank garuda which... is a questionable choice on its own when talking about the viability of an ability.

1 hour ago, Aktriaz said:

I can't use a rage build because she is not tanky enough to safely do that, I can't use a Quick Thinking build because I actually want to mod for her other abilities (and the stagger is not ideal), and if I build max efficiency her third ability becomes almost useless.

Actually she is and stagger do not happen if you use armor to reduce incoming damage. Here is a QT/Armor build with rage and 2x arcane guardian against lvl130 heavy gunner. As you can see I cannot die even without shields and I don't get staggered. I tried with 16 heavy gunners and same result as long as I have 2 altar up and that's without moving and without a shield. The issue is that it's pointless as you already don't die without rage as long as you know how to use the shield and movement mechanics. It's just taking a dps slot. 

 

Edited January 8, 2019 by Shelusine

[GPrime96]

34 minutes ago, Shelusine said:

If one of your ally dies it's because they got burst damaged (or because they are so low MR that their loadout is just that bad)

^ or if one of your Teammates is so bad, they die in 10 mins of Arbitrations as Rhino Prime and i’m not joking (which is nowhere near Mot’s difficulty). I’ve seen Players that trash in Arbitration.

Edited January 8, 2019 by GPrime96

[Leyers_of_facade]

In my opinion, her kit is fine as it is now, and she probably just needs a bit of a buff on her passive as it is definitely a bit weak for the cost you have to take.

 I do believe that she requires a lot of investment to be strong, definitely not a frame that you can just throw a potato and mod her to be amazing. A strength + efficiency half-tank build can definitely take you far if you play her carefully and Regenerative molt saryn comes into mind when thinking of similar builds.

[Kontrollo]

5 hours ago, Aktriaz said:

This is exactly my point; her moveset does not match her strengths. She's not bad per say, just a mess design wise.

...

Either way you build, this ability is rarely useful.

I guess here's where we disagree. She has a few seemingly disparate tools which can be combined in interesting ways. Granted some of it is situational and sometimes even frustrating, but the whole kit makes for a very interesting playstyle.

I'm mainly using Blind Rage and have 60% Efficiency, it works well enough for me. I'm not using her abilities all the time, though.

 

3 hours ago, Shelusine said:

There are a lot of things to say about that but mainly I'd focus on the practicality of these assets relative to her kit.

Her 1 KD and thus put single targets in a position where they can receive finisher damage, why would you use her 2 instead of her 1 to CC an enemy ? 

Why would you need a meat shield when you have a shield and the other healing options allows you to heal yourself from a more advantageous positioning without having to compromise with your passive and thus dps ?

A lot of healing options are AoE and thus can be used on your team regardless however as already said, there's no point to healing without damage reduction or additional specs, if one of your ally dies it's because they got burst damaged (or because they are so low MR that their loadout is just that bad) and healing doesn't help with that. That's something you can quickly notice in arbitration. 

As for the gap closer I honestly never noticed but if that's true the difference must be very pointless. 

Well, when there's a group of enemies out in the open and one of them is a heavy unit, it can make sense to use her 2, or maybe a 1-2 on the heavy unit first. Then kill the mooks and release and kill the heavy afterwards. Her 1 + ground finisher takes quite a bit of time in comparison.

Because my main loadout has 40% negative efficiency from Blind Rage, I use her 3 quite often.

Also, my Blood Altar's circle isn't so big that it's hard to step out of it so I can take advantage of her passive when I feel like it. (The build isn't focused on nuking with her 1.)

About the meatshield and allies dying:

• Dread Mirror in front, meat shields around me. I'm a fort and Vauban is jealous.
• Allies usually die to burst, true, but rarely from a single source. More often we get caught off guard in some way and it's several enemies doing us in. The altar heals a lot at low health.

 

Anyway, that list was just me bringing up some of the finer points of the ability, I didn't/don't plan on starting an argument. I mainly use Blood Altar to manage my bars.

[GPrime96]

3 hours ago, Leyers_of_facade said:

I do believe that she requires a lot of investment to be strong, definitely not a frame that you can just throw a potato and mod her to be amazing. 

One of the reasons why she’s not easy to master or build. Especially when you played Mot from 45 Mins to this:

Lvl 150+ enemies without Quick Thinking. Two of the things Meta Frames have like Nidus or Octavia is the ease of Modding and low effort.

Edited January 9, 2019 by GPrime96

[Shelusine]

3 hours ago, GPrime96 said:

^ or if one of your Teammates is so bad, they die in 10 mins of Arbitrations as Rhino Prime and i’m not joking (which is nowhere near Mot’s difficulty). I’ve seen Players that trash in Arbitration.

That is way too relatable

13 minutes ago, Kontrollo said:

Well, when there's a group of enemies out in the open and one of them is a heavy unit, it can make sense to use her 2, or maybe a 1-2 on the heavy unit first. Then kill the mooks and release and kill the heavy afterwards. Her 1 + ground finisher takes quite a bit of time in comparison.

Her 1 + ground finisher takes more time than pressing and unreleasing 2 while canceling your damage buff in the process ? What gives you that impression ? Even more relevant to your scenario why would I not press 4, use 1 to leap and kill that unit instantly ? Even more relevant to 99.99% of the situations why would I not one shot that enemy from a distance ? At what level are heavy units scary enough for me to use a hard CC on them and slow down my slaughter ? 

17 minutes ago, Kontrollo said:

 Also, my Blood Altar's circle isn't so big that it's hard to step out of it so I can take advantage of her passive when I feel like it. (The build isn't focused on nuking with her 1.)

I didn't say that it's hard, I said that it's unpractical no matter the range. There isn't a reason to hope in and out of an area to recover your health when you could just use any other instant recovery option that has control on the amount recovered. That's just a fact. 

22 minutes ago, Kontrollo said:

About the meatshield and allies dying:

•  Dread Mirror in front, meat shields around me. I'm a fort and Vauban is jealous.
•  Allies usually die to burst, true, but rarely from a single source. More often we get caught off guard in some way and it's several enemies doing us in. The altar heals a lot at low health.

But you are giving up on the OP multiplier on gas dots just because you decide to press 2 and end up in a situation where you are surrounded and thus need that fortress. As for the allies I would agree on paper but in reality when your allies are caught off guard it means that they are several meters away from you doing who knows what and dying because they are alone (I am pretty sure it is a veeeerryyy familiar situation to most players). You can't prevent that and if you are in a preventive mind set you are not caught off guard to begin with and can kill the enemies without them arming your team. 

39 minutes ago, Kontrollo said:

Anyway, that list was just me bringing up some of the finer points of the ability, I didn't/don't plan on starting an argument. I mainly use Blood Altar to manage my bars.

Fair enough