Strain mod set - a major Bug and Feedback.

[Bristoling]

Let's talk about a new mod set for our Helminth Chargers out there: the Strain mod set. I've been testing it recently both in Simulacrum and in real time gameplay, and to be honest, there are some big issues with it. Let me start off by listing the first but most important bug:

1. Out of 4 Strain mods, only Strain Fever actually allows the Helminth to grow cysts.

This is a pretty big bug that should be fixed as soon as possible. In my hours of testing different mod combinations, I found out that only Strain Fever starts the cyst growing sequence.

2. Strain Infection bonus can be manipulated to provide a constant bonus of up to 160% melee critical damage, if you let your Helminth Charger bleed out while growing last pair of cysts with all 4 set mods.

Helminth dying with 160% bonus: https://imgur.com/SL7wlPi

Helminth dead: https://imgur.com/gshdfTy

Damage test with 140% bonus (had to redo the thing and ended up with 140%): https://imgur.com/jTfx5Ci - 98

Damage test without any bonus: https://imgur.com/2qNpCVh - 41

3. Nidus's 1st ability explodes the maggots spawned with the mod, however you do not get extra virulence stacks from it. It means that Nidus has an actual anti-synergy with the mod set, as the maggot explosion deals pathetic damage (I'm going to come back to that below), and you lose the only useful part of the set, which is 6-8 seconds of CC on an enemy every 30 seconds. Its especially bad since you Nidus appears a few times on the art of the mods from the set.

Before hitting 8 targets with 8 maggots spawned: https://imgur.com/LXI97LH

After casting Nidus' 1st ability: https://imgur.com/pWco0XD

For reference, if normal maggots from Nidus 4th ability are spawned, hitting the same targets would generate up to 7-9 full mutation stacks, instead of 1+ 3/5.

 

 

Now for the feedback on the mod set:

- Strain Fever:

In all honesty, at enemy levels 30 and above the Helminth doesn't deal much damage at all. Yes, it can one shot a level 50 Butcher or Elite Crewman with enough cyst bonus and maxed Maul, however these are super lightly or non-armoured targets. A level 30 Heavy Gunner takes only around 15-25% damage per attack with both mods. A non-prime sentinel weapon can kill such a target in around 10 seconds, and Helminth could potentially do that as well, but the problem is - Helminth seems to be missing around 80-90% of his attacks, and he attacks roughly once every 2-4 seconds. It took over a full minute and a half for my Helminth to kill one lvl 30 Heavy Gunner due to his attacks dealing no damage/missing. 

I hope the accuracy issue is fixed at some point, but even then the mod itself is pretty underwhelming. If it also provided some attack speed bonus, it would greatly help with the dps issue. Other option is a health bonus in addition to damage, since Fever causes the pet to grow in size, and bigger pets, while more fashionable, are also easier to hit by enemies and therefore take more damage.

Please don't forget that beast pets have very limited number of mod slots so damage mods should be powerful enough in order to be worth it (or unless we get beast "weapon slots" like sentinels have).

 

- Strain Consume

Pretty bad. Warframe mod slots are the most important out of all of them, and I highly suspect that only a very tiny minority of players would sacrifice such an important mod slot for this. But lets start with 3 biggest issues.

1. Dead maggots turn invisible. This, coupled with small range makes it impossible to know where you should move in order to get healing.

2. It isn't clear how long these invisible dead maggot bodies persist, its probably anyone's guess if its 3 seconds or 30.

3. It restores 4% of your missing health, not total health. For example if your frame has 700 out of 1000 health, you will restore only 12 health per maggot, or 96 with full set bonus IF you consume all of the maggots. That is a whooping 96 heal every 30 seconds.

In my humble opinion, it should be clearly indicated how long the maggot bodies exist, and range should be increased from 5m to maybe 8-10m. Heal amount should be changed to either some flat (20-40 per maggot) or a percentage of your maximum, not current health. The heal could also apply to your Helminth anytime you get healed yourself.

All the feedback below is based on having 4 mods equipped since I wanted to test it throughout, but having 3 out of 4 mods would be more accurate just because Strain Consume feels so weak compared to all the modding options we have for our frames.

 

- Strain Infection

Its a fun mod and on average it will mean around 80% critical damage bonus with full set, or around 60% with 3 set mods if I'm counting it correctly. However, I think most players will prefer consistency and not time based buff when it comes to critical damage and therefore use Organ Shatter. This mod is only really useful if your weapon has free mod slots, like on a crit heavy/low status melee, but most good melee weapon setups use status mods which makes slotting in Strain Infection a big sacrifice in weapon utility vs higher level targets. Although it could probably work with stances that force slash procs etc.

 

- Strain Eruption

Simply bad. Very, very bad. If you group 8 Heavy Gunners level 30, let all the maggots latch on and explode, the Gunners will take roughly 30% of their health damage. Yes, Corrupted Heavy Gunners have high armour, but at level 30 they only have only 890 of it, or 78% damage reduction. Considering that Corrosive damage bypasses 75% of their armour, we are talking about maggots from full set bonus, which deal 75% extra damage against Ferrite, and are affected by roughly 225 armour (or 42% damage reduction), against a target that is only level 30. Not to mention, you get this damage bonus from maggots once every 28-30 seconds, since Helminth doesn't start growing new cysts right after dropping them and there is a bit of delay before new set starts growing.

This is the type of damage you've been waiting for 30 seconds with full set bonus against 30 level targets bunched together: https://imgur.com/pWco0XD

At best, a bunch of maggots latched onto Heavy Gunners or other high health targets might one shot a single Butcher. At worst, you don't even notice the mod has been equipped. To add insult to the injury, the % of damage is also based on current enemy health, just like Strain Consume's heal is based on your current missing health. It means that the more damaged the enemy is, the less damage Eruption does. 

If the maggots were also applying Corrosive status procs (and dealing % of maximum health), then maybe we could see some use out of the mod, but in current iteration its almost like a blank that you equip to get some more benefit from the set.

 

- Set Bonus

The maggots are great as a form of Crowd Control and perform this job very reliably when they are alive. The problem is that you only get to see them in action every 30 or so seconds, and maggots themselves last only a short amount of time. 

If at max rank we were getting 4 cysts, but taking 12 seconds to erupt and grow, the whole mod set would be more attractive. Crit damage from Infection would be less spread out (of course it would need a buff from 20 to 40% since number of cysts has been cut in half) and therefore more reliable. Healing from Consume wouldn't come in big batches but be more steady. Eruption would perform better (if it was granted a Corrosive proc) stripping armour more often, even if less. The roller coaster of some buffs followed by nothing for the next 30 seconds would be gone.

 

 

In conclusion, Helminth has 2 pretty bad damage precepts. This mod set was a chance for the Helminth to least be useful at something, and the maggot theme does promise some great defensive and even offensive potential. However, remember that Helminth has to compete with Smeeta Kavat or Adarza Kavat, both which have some pretty serious utility and damage buffing potential, Huras Kubrows which have amazing defensive potential with caster frames, and Mecha set which can absolutely obliterate things with right setup (Link). 

It needs serious buffs to numbers, more consistent/frequent maggot spawns, and step away from % of current or missing health mechanics, as well as fixing bugs like only Strain Fever actually letting the Helminth to grow cysts. And finally, I'd be good if it had some synergy with Nidus, since at the moment, he is the only frame in the whole roster which gets the absolute least out of the mod.

Edited December 30, 2018 by Bristoling

[Bristoling]

Please don't let this thread get buried, some of the bugs need addressing even if suggestions for changes to the mods are ignored.

[Ayures]

DE pls

[Xaxma]

It's a shame one of the coolest sets is riddled with so many bugs. And maggots!

[Ayures]

Well, they got part of it working right. Still needs a lot of work, though.

[Ayures]

Can we at least get word on whether it's bugged or if this is how it's supposed to work...?

[Ayures]

So it's been 3 months. I guess DE just doesn't intend for this mod set to be used by anyone.

I was sooo looking forward to the really good synergy with nidus with this set, too. 😞

Edited March 2, 2019 by Ayures

[Bristoling]

10 hours ago, Ayures said:

So it's been 3 months. I guess DE just doesn't intend for this mod set to be used by anyone.

I was sooo looking forward to the really good synergy with nidus with this set, too. 😞

Same. My guess is that people use it without knowing what it actually does or how much it actually contributes to kill speed/etc., so DE sees the mod as being represented to some degree and based on usage decides not to change anything. Personally, I kind of given up on the mod set.

[Ayures]

10 hours ago, Bristoling said:

Same. My guess is that people use it without knowing what it actually does or how much it actually contributes to kill speed/etc., so DE sees the mod as being represented to some degree and based on usage decides not to change anything. Personally, I kind of given up on the mod set.

It wouldn't be so bad if it were one or two parts that don't work right. But nearly every aspect of it is somehow broken or massively underpowered.

[Alejandrokek]

It's really sad, this kind of things makes me think they don't even play their game.

Everything this set has to offer is 8 seconds of cc, that's  it. 4 mods occupying 1 warframe slot, 1 melee slot, 2 pet slots.......for 8 seconds of CC. After dozens of missions grinding It, after getting to max level fortuna. That's what you get.

I'm not gonna open another tread so I will put my feedback here, just to bump the thread.

Analysing what this set tries to offer:

Healing? Why waste a warframe slot to get...what...12 health...sometimes. and ONLY IF you are beside your AI poorly controlled dog, when you can put medi-ray on your sentinel, get more healing, everytime, and don't even lose a wf slot.

Melee damage boost? Why put a temporal, inconsistent melee critical damage buff that depends on using 4 mods to be decent, when you can throw organ shatter and have that damage always?

Why put a temporal damage boost to your dog, when you can just put maul... wait, why even boost his damage at all? The helminth doesn't have a good status chance so it's useless in killing past lvl 30 enemies (And you can't equip the status-link on him, which will make him actually kill stuff).

Why 4% of corrosive doesn't proc or is not even affected by status chance? Would all this be too OP? Would that be much more powerful than a 60% additive critical chance to you and all your teammates, using any weapon?

Please DE, play your game for 20 minutes using this set. Wait and see what the dog does, then change to a kavat or any sentinel and you'll see our point.

The Helminth is so cool, I love it.  Such a shame is so useless.

[Ayures]

At this point, I'd be somewhat happy with it if I could at least use the maggots towards nidus' stacks. That alone would make the set at least somewhat useful.

[Bristoling]

On 2019-04-05 at 2:20 AM, Ayures said:

At this point, I'd be somewhat happy with it if I could at least use the maggots towards nidus' stacks. That alone would make the set at least somewhat useful.

5 months later, we're still waiting. Apart from breeding the biggest Charger I could and taking a few pics with my "horse", I haven't used the set at all. I was really hyped when I first seen it on a devstream. Wasted potential.

[Ayures]

On 2019-05-03 at 8:27 PM, Bristoling said:

5 months later, we're still waiting. Apart from breeding the biggest Charger I could and taking a few pics with my "horse", I haven't used the set at all. I was really hyped when I first seen it on a devstream. Wasted potential.

I still run a few parts of it just for the flavor. It's definitely a handicap, unfortunately. The devs don't seem to care.

[H0PE]

Hi,

I really don't understand this set at all.

AFAIK, all set mods should work alone, individually, even the secondary stat too right? Sure it would give me the minimal amount of the set bonus.

However Strain Consume doesn't work at all, alone.

Should it work at all alone guys or am I missing something? That is the minimum for a set mod(s) to work?

I've tried to use the Helminth Charger as a pet in simulacrum, still didn't do a thing.

[Ayures]

On 2019-05-16 at 6:02 AM, H0PE said:

Hi,

I really don't understand this set at all.

AFAIK, all set mods should work alone, individually, even the secondary stat too right? Sure it would give me the minimal amount of the set bonus.

However Strain Consume doesn't work at all, alone.

Should it work at all alone guys or am I missing something? That is the minimum for a set mod(s) to work?

I've tried to use the Helminth Charger as a pet in simulacrum, still didn't do a thing.

They claimed to have fixed that a while back. Apparently not.

[H0PE]

7 hours ago, Ayures said:

They claimed to have fixed that a while back. Apparently not.

Thanks for the reply.

Now I also have one additional mod in the set, that is working, the Strain Fever, that is working and I can see the Helminth Charger Growing and releasing the maggots.

Altough I don't see the buff icon on my UI as this guy does so I assume this is bugged (On my Nekro, with Despoil, Shield of Shadows and Adaptation are equipped that might affect the mod):

 

Edited May 18, 2019 by H0PE

[Ayures]

I'm watching the livestream and might be playing again because neat new stuff, but I guess the Strain set was just completely abandoned by DE. 😞

Please at least let the maggots work like nidus' regular maggots to help us get stacks.

Edited July 7, 2019 by Ayures

[Bristoling]

Bumping the thread since the problems/bugs like cysts only starting to grow with specific mods from the set are still present. Some buffs would be great as well.

[Ayures]

Now it looks like the new Pathocyst's maggots work the same way. I'm beginning to wonder if it's even possible for them to work the way we're asking.

[Bristoling]

Bump

[AeroXZX]

I just want to bring this back up. It's an old post, but still a valid one. Both the Pathocyst and Strain Mod Set's maggots still get blown up by Nidus's Virulence (1), with no bonus in doing so.

Could we either get this fixed so the maggots can help do their job better and crowd control, or keep it as is but also let it help build stacks for Nidus? Just have to be careful and not let Nidus blow up anyone else's maggots, and should be okay. Either of these choices would be wonderful, and I'm sure anything DE can think up will be wonderful too! Just need something, really. Please DE, don't forget!

[Moofits]

Resurrecting an old thread to add:

Vauban's Bastille pull's in the maggots produced by the strain mods and they just spin around until they disappear.

Also DE please fix the strain mods.  I use them even though there is a down side because I think they add a bit of fun to the game.

[xcrimsonlegendx]

Some pretty good points, really hoping they go above and beyond to fix this set when the pets update launches this month.

[Bristoling]

Jokes on you, it never launched. But seriously, maybe this needs a reddit thread to highlight it or something. 

[Alejandrokek]

Call Jim Sterling and pay him for a video, they'll fix it tomorrow