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Attempting to compensate Zenurik "Pocket Trinity" dominance with a different energy buff for each school.


BrazilianJoe
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Data shows that Zenurik dominates over all other schools. 

Zenurik's Void Dash energy buff is at Vaccuum-level ot "too much utility to pass" which makes it very desirable, trumping other schools in popularity.

I don't think it's overpowered. It's just that the game is too much energy-centric. One way to unskew it would be to make that ability waybound, which I have proposed in another thread. 

A different approach could be to have energy efficiency and energy gain related abilities to every school. 

Madurai - each second spent in operator form accumulates 1 energy, which is given to the Warframe when player leaves operator form. Energy drain skills do not prevent this. Magnetic procs and energy drain auras do not deplete this.

Naramon - killing enemies with finishers and stealth attacks has a chance of dropping an additional energy orb.

Unairu - Warframe energy and Operator energy are stacked up, allowing them to be used interchangeably. When Warframe Energy is depleted, abilities can still be cast using Operator energy, and vice-versa. Limited to one cast every X seconds. Initial proposition: 60/45/30/15 seconds, subject to balance.

Vazarin - Each second spent in Operator mode increases Warframe's ability efficiency, strength, duration, range by 1% for 1 second, stacks up to X% for X seconds (need to tune for balance, propose X = 30). 

Hypothetical new school which may or may not exist in the future - Operator attacks accumulates ability strength, duration, range, efficiency. Accumulated stats are spent in next ability cast. Just to have one extra idea in the pocket.

Alternative to Unairu or Naramon (or whatever you think fits) - Damage suffered on health replenishes X% energy to Warframe/Operator. 

 

Edited by BrazilianJoe
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The day Operator content will be more developped, Zenurik will be middle-of-the-pack-tier.

Each Focus school is dedicated to something. Putting Energy somewhere else than Zenurik entirely negates Zenurik's purpose. And to be honest, a lot of Warframes do not even need Zenurik. It is still the most-used school because... When a newplayer asks which focus he should invest in, everyone answers "Zenurik".

If something has to be made, I'd rather they buff the other schools while remaining within their purpose (Naramon for Melee, Unairu for tanking, Vazarin for healing...) than another round of nerf to Zenurik.

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Your ideas are kinda meh undependently of the actual need for this kind of change. Unairu is way too overpowered and the other ones way too weak compared to the energy dash of zenurik. Just think about it for a second ... Unairu would be 190 extra energy for your Warframe that regenerates itself automaticly in a few seconds. The other ideas need specific conditions and are not nearly as convenient as both energy dash and your op unairu suggestion.

Edited by Feyangol
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6 minutes ago, Feyangol said:

Your ideas are kinda meh undependently of the actual need for this kind of change. Unairu is way too overpowered and the other ones way too weak compared to the energy dash of zenurik. Just think about it for a second ... Unairu would be 190 extra energy for your Warframe that regenerates itself automaticly in a few seconds. The other ideas need specific conditions and are not nearly as convenient as both energy dash and your op unairu suggestion.

Hmm, thinking about it, yes. It can all be balanced, these are just initial concepts.
 
The Unairu could be locked behind a cooldown, like 1 cast every X seconds. I'll update the OP with that.

I tried to fit them within the school concept. If you are going Naramon, you are going to melee. Making an energy regain skill conditional to melee for that scholl fits in organically, the player will have regular extra energy come in naturally within th school theme.

The attempt is to make the condition meet how the school will be naturally used. 

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vor 20 Minuten schrieb Chewarette:

Each Focus school is dedicated to something. Putting Energy somewhere else than Zenurik entirely negates Zenurik's purpose. And to be honest, a lot of Warframes do not even need Zenurik. It is still the most-used school because... When a newplayer asks which focus he should invest in, everyone answers "Zenurik".

If something has to be made, I'd rather they buff the other schools while remaining within their purpose (Naramon for Melee, Unairu for tanking, Vazarin for healing...) than another round of nerf to Zenurik.

+1, Energy regen wouldn't really fit the other schools.

The problem with Zenurik is also that you have 2 skills pumping Energy, I think one would have been enough but it is not really OP, just a bit to easy to get Energy and the other schools don't offer something this good.

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12 minutes ago, BrazilianJoe said:

I tried to fit them within the school concept. If you are going Naramon, you are going to melee. Making an energy regain skill conditional to melee for that scholl fits in organically, the player will have regular extra energy come in naturally within th school theme.

The attempt is to make the condition meet how the school will be naturally used. 

But energy is mostly used to cast. You're not going full Melee in that case.

The only thing I would see possible, is to add Rage/Hunter Adrenaline's effect as an Unairu passive. Would allow QT/Rage Tanks to free up a mod slot without necessarily going Zenurik.

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14 minutes ago, Chewarette said:

But energy is mostly used to cast. You're not going full Melee in that case.

The only thing I would see possible, is to add Rage/Hunter Adrenaline's effect as an Unairu passive. Would allow QT/Rage Tanks to free up a mod slot without necessarily going Zenurik.

You are always going to cast, even going melee.

Saryn would use her 2 and 3 frequently, just as an example. Other melee-focused frames also have abilities which complement and enhance their melee focus.

I have thought of Rage/Hunter Adrenaline, I think it fits somewhere, maybe an alternative to Unairu, which I think is a more defensive school. Or Naramon as well, which is melee-focused. 

Edited by BrazilianJoe
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The problem I think is more a systemic one with the way the focus system is currently implemented. I'm not gonna argue that Zenurik isn't very useful, but that there's more to it here.

First, the consensus online is that Zen is by far the best school to start with. It gives you the most immediately useful abilities and doesn't require you to fight too hard to figure out the new system. So players who go looking for help regarding focus (of which I think there are quite a few considering the game presents this choice to you completely blind) are going to read this all over the internet and as a result we're going to see a lot of people picking it up. I think this creates a kind of self fulfilling prophecy where everyone goes Zenurik because everyone says you should go Zenurik. 

Additionally, Zenurik is definitely the most universally usable tree.

This normally would just be whatever, because people can change their schools later and progress through the system, but...

Second, the entire Operator system is very segregated from the rest of the game. The game gives you one really bad lens when you first unlock the focus system and getting better lenses requires you to engage in specific forms of content. Actually making that farming efficient requires you to engage in even more specific content, as does upgrading your Operator's gear. This means that for a lot of players who aren't at least moderately engaged in PoE/OV content, that first lens they pick up is going to be all they have for a long time and they're going to be progressing through the system very slowly.

It's not a coincidence that the 'best' tree is the one with the most useful first and second skills. 

Additionally, the content that encourages the use of the Operator is generally tied to that content too (or story quests that are tuned that even someone with no investment in the system can complete them). So you don't NEED to try to make your Operator better unless you're doing the content that helps progress your Operator. The system is both self contained and kind of hard to get into.

The fact that the Operator system is so impenetrable and so disassociated from the rest of the game is a huge contributing factor to the current balance problems Focus has. After all, we say that Zenurik is overpowered, but the truth is that for a large number of players, you could get rid of 80% of Zenurik's skills and they wouldn't even notice either.

That's not to say that there aren't balance problems, even looking at the other T1 passives it's easy to see some serious discrepenacy between them, I just don't think that's the whole story.

tl;dr Zenurik is widely advocated as the best starter tree because of how useful its first two skills are, and since the Focus system is a such huge pain to progress in without playing in a specific way, many players are going to be stuck with those initial choices. Additionally, the operator system itself just isn't all that impressive without that specific investment, which further discourages players from exploring the rest of the focus system, including the rest of Zenurik.

If it was easier to progress through the focus system and upgrade amps within the Star Chart portion of the game and Operator content itself was more relevant I think the focus on Zenurik would be a bit less extreme.

Edited by Elementalos
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Thing is a lot of the other abilities require team cooperation and pre-meditative planning. Neither of which Warframe demands of it's players.

Zenurik or Naramon are the safe picks. If you're going full melee, grab Naramon otherwise grab Zenurik.

Vazarin - Void Aegis got nerfed real quick and sadly I'd say Vazarin has become the weakest of the group. Operator mode can revive without risk and there are ample healing methods and Magus Arcanes. Void Aegis' Protective zone of immunity was it's big perk and that's turned into pretty much a Snow Globe you can't shoot through.

  • Madurai - 25% Multiplicative damage output.
  • Unairu - Perma Invis and 80% DR for the group long as you eat energy pads.

The other schools could easily be better like sunder 100% Armor instead of 75% for instance but they seem to have been purposely made unable to scale well. Which is odd considering some of the new Operator Arcanes. Even the more useful Naramon's Void Blast 50% Chance to Rad proc and 50% chance to disarm. Why 50% and not 100%? It doesn't help that by adding more features to your Focus tree you're making the Operator scale worse by taxing more energy from their very good utility of stealth and Dash either.

I actually have a lot of my abilities turned off due to the extra energy cost.

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thing is, zenurik provides smth we dont usually get from normal sources(normal being mods and abilities)

 

DR/Armor? modding's got u covered(hello adaptation, hello armor mods)

healing? modding's got u covered, also magus nourish/elevate just being.. ridiculously good, especially a full set of elevate

armor stripping? just use smth with high status and corrosive dmg, or any of the frames that can strip armor

naramon's combo thingie is rather unique and REALLY helpful, but not really needed for anything, just a really nice *bonus* to have

madurai's bonus to dmg is nice,but again, not really needed, and not unique like naramon's combo mechanic, the blind is nice tho

 

now, energy? not really many ways to get a steady amount of energy without some drawbacks or without using pads: energy siphon is a pitiful 0.7/second, rage/hunter adrenaline require taking dmg(obviously, not all frames can make full use of this), arcane energize still being mad expensive, exodia brave just being bad(in virtue of channeling being bad atm) and only 2 frames are energy givers, another 2 having energy regen passives(that arent that strong, but help)... theres also some syndicate weapons/mods but they arent exactly accessible and theres still the downside of limiting weapon choice

but as it so happens, energy is ridiculously important, every frame uses it, so unless you're going max efficiency on every frame, zenurik is a ridiculously attractive option! 5 energy/sec for 25 seconds? and all you need to do is an operator dash? AND it affects allies? well dont mind if i do!

theres been discussion on this, on whether all frames should have a base ammount of energy regen, if all schools should have energizing dash and zenurik given a new gimmick, making energy orbs drops more reliable instead of being completely RNG and while i dont know the answer, i sure do know that the energy economy in WF is not doing well atm, and zenurik is our current "band aid"

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I really like the idea of a hard to obtain item that drops only from the most difficult content in the game, perhaps the later orb mother (if it is actually challenging, unlike profit taker), that allows you to way-bound any node. But, you have to then relevel, with maybe double the focus cost for each level, and spend the 1mil focus to unlock the waybound. So, with substantial focus investment you could unlock zenurik energy dash to be used with any tree. 

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On 2019-01-03 at 10:17 PM, WhisperBiscuit said:

I really like the idea of a hard to obtain item that drops only from the most difficult content in the game, perhaps the later orb mother (if it is actually challenging, unlike profit taker), that allows you to way-bound any node. But, you have to then relevel, with maybe double the focus cost for each level, and spend the 1mil focus to unlock the waybound. So, with substantial focus investment you could unlock zenurik energy dash to be used with any tree. 

Hell no getting Focus is annoying enough as it is, i don't wan't to spend *more* time doing it.

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2 hours ago, PapaKrampus said:

Hell no getting Focus is annoying enough as it is, i don't wan't to spend *more* time doing it.

So then it only costs the extra million focus to way-bound the node, but its at half effectiveness when used with other schools.

Either way, nothing added or changed with the focus tree system will ever be great until the focus acquisition system is revamped. Farming tridolons and eso as saryn to max focus trees, or the old sleep equinox build, will always be boring and more about maximizing efficiency of farm than trying to be fun. Focus in general, now, is all about how to not have fun and farm in order to maybe have a different kind of fun later. 

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On 2019-01-03 at 5:28 AM, BrazilianJoe said:

Data shows that Zenurik dominates over all other schools. 

I think some of the other reason is focus was not madea part of load out from the get go. People may fiddle their builds before a mission, but operator is one more layer of fiddling.

 

Hm.. now here’s an idea. Run maim equinox with unairu in ESO...

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