AOE RUINING ALL THE GAME

[(XBOX)Knight Raime]

1 hour ago, TheGreenFellow said:

Incorrect, you have the cart before the horse. Things like ESO now exist because Warframes like Saryn/Equinox/Mesa existed. DE tried to cater to players crying out for "more difficult endgame content", instead of addressing the core reason even Sortie content had become a breeze, which is primarily the modding power gap situation, but Warframe imbalances are also a variable there.

Efficiency is the commodity of this game.  Which is why people flock to the "best" things.  If Warframe's actual gameplay interactions were fun then people would probably not be seeking out the most efficient things in the game as a casual player.  Enemy scaling has demanded a player power increase.  Which in turn has demanded stronger enemies.  it's a cycle.  A cycle that can't be broken by only nerfing enemies or only nerfing the most efficient warframes.  DE has to address both at the same time.  While also redoing mission structure so killing isn't the only valuable role.  And redo enemies so they're actually interesting to fight.

There is no current reason to nerf the "best" frames at killing because you can complete any content with any setup in a reasonable time.  It's not the old void days where saryn's press 4 to kill enemies in spawn for 40+ minutes was a monopoly.  The fact that our operators basically fulfill the role of both CC and support via arcanes should tell you something.  Frames like Saryn exacerbate the game's core issues.  They don't cause them.  Nerfing them alone doesn't accomplish anything.  it's simply a quick bandaid to appease people who struggle to conform to the games current reality.

[(PSN)deathwolfclaw666]

10 hours ago, Gawizard said:

Is it just me or did OP really just made this to farm likes? The only persons giving any suggestions are us.

Pretty much. Imagine the number of dislikes if that was an option.

[(XBOX)coO0Ookiecrisp]

On 2019-04-12 at 3:35 PM, BlackFox66 said:

Is there any chance to get all aoe abilities fixed? its so boring gameplay to press 4 for win, like what the point of other dmg frames? if there is a saryn, equinox, banshee, octavia, etc. Like those aoe frames are killing 80% of all frames, because there is no point to play garuda, mirage, mesa, excalibur. i know that those frames are good and people are playing them, but the fact u can just pick saryn and press 4 and deal 2 times more damage then other frame using different abilities, guns and actually playing the game is ridiculous. just hope that balance will appear someday...

good post and I tend to agree.

DE backed themselves into a corner with this one.  Half the community like "press 4" to win and the other half wants it to be fixed.  From a gameplay perspective, I hope they fix it.   

[_Mannaroth_]

I have to say, i like those "press 4 and win"-Frames. They are utterly useful to fill a very special niche in this game: I-have-to-open-like-10-bazillion-Lith-relics-and-don't-want-to-deal-with-all-those-ridiculous-weak-low-level-enemies-one-by-one.

Sure - I also enjoy playing non-meta Frames just because I like their kit, how they play, how they look, and so on. But when it comes to the immense grind, DE is throwing at us, I'll surely grab a Frame, which get's the job done as efficient as possible, to prevent me from going mad over all that neverending, boring, repetitive task, you have to get through, when you want to obtain xyz. I mean, who wouldn't?

And Meta is nothing, you can nerf in any way! Meta I just the most efficient way to achieve something - just like evolution it will always find it's way. LoL has it's Meta (try to play with a second toplaner and see how people get furious about you xD), Diablo has Meta builts. Hell, even the need for some kind of Healer in any MMORPG is kind of a Meta!

So, no matter what changes you apply to any Warframe - there will always be one, that get's an exterminate mission, for instance, faster done than the rest. And voilà: A new Meta is born.

 

But there's a solution: If DE would reduce the grind, by making the missions more challenging and at the same time more rewarding (!) - if they would remove the necessity for those map-clearing abilities and you would see far more diversity in Frame usage. And far less Nukers.

I think, people are more willing to use a Frame, they enjoy over a Meta Frame, when they don't expect having to do one and the same mission hundreds of times.

Edited April 15, 2019 by _Mannaroth_

[Veridian]

Aaah, the sad call of a mighty rhino getting his supremacy challenged.

P.S. Op's avatar matches his attitude 😄 

Every frame excels in something, if a frame exclusively excels in damage you don't just take that away.

Oh, if you want to focus solely on guns, there are plenty of other games.

I'm fairly certain most of the people agreeing to the nerfs to AoE frames haven't actually played more than 2-3 frames for other than MR fodder.
If they have, they'd know that those frames shine in certain aspects, but are outshone in others.

[Xepthrichros]

2 hours ago, (XB1)coO0Ookiecrisp said:

good post and I tend to agree.

DE backed themselves into a corner with this one.  Half the community like "press 4" to win and the other half wants it to be fixed.  From a gameplay perspective, I hope they fix it.   

so they lose half their community and profit? not smart.

[DeMonkey]

2 hours ago, _Mannaroth_ said:

They are utterly useful to fill a very special niche in this game: I-have-to-open-like-10-bazillion-Lith-relics-and-don't-want-to-deal-with-all-those-ridiculous-weak-low-level-enemies-one-by-one.

The niche you are suggesting they fill is "I have to complete an objective in the game wherein killing something would be beneficial to me".

That "niche" is the majority of the game's content, and is therefore not a niche.

[Teridax68]

The OP perhaps doesn't really frame things in the most explanatory or convincing way, but I agree that there's currently an issue with abilities in Warframe, especially with AoE:

• A lot of radial abilities tend to be fire-and-forget: the player presses a button, and that's pretty much enough for them to start damaging every enemy in a radius, including through walls.
• When these radial abilities can kill enemies in short amounts of time, this deprives other warframes of things to do, causing missions with AoE frames to sometimes turn into walking simulators.
• DE acknowledges that AoE abilities such as these tend to be a problem, which is why there have been so many nerfs and redesigns over the years to AoE abilities: Ember received a "rework" to her 4 that made it even less useful at higher levels, Banshee received a ton of cost increases to her Sound Quake, Ash got his Blade Storm nerfed/reworked, and so on.

So effectively, there is a problem with AoE damage in Warframe, and refusing to admit that much is pointless. Moreover, defending this purely out of one's interest for a specific AoE-reliant frame, e.g. Saryn or Equinox, simply leaves that frame open to getting nerfed at any point in the future for that reason, which would obviously be detrimental to those frames in the long run.

With this in mind, I think we need to accept the basic fact that abilities should exist to give players more ways of playing the game, not to make the game play itself. Pressing a button to clear a room of enemies can be fun if it's the result of careful setting up or good play versus those enemies, but when the player can just press a button each time, without any thought or preparation, to achieve the same effect, the cool factor is lost, and what could be a climactic moment ends up becoming boring. The fact that we're all used to some baseline level of gameplay where enemies die en masse within a fraction of a second of appearing near us I think is one of the reasons why some players feel incapable of deriving excitement or challenge from regular gameplay. We need to reverse this, so that we can arrive at a point where AoE abilities in Warframe can a) feel good to use, and b) feel good to use without constantly running the risk of getting neutered.

In this respect, I think there are three main traits of AoE abilities that need to be examined:

• Interactivity: i.e. how the ability lets the player and enemies interact with each other while in use. Pretty much every AoE nuke can single-handedly remove interactivity, by either disabling the opponent completely or killing them outright.
• Setup: i.e. whether or not the ability requires preparation of some kind to activate. Most AoE abilities don't require any setup, and can be used on-demand whenever the player feels like it, so long as they have the Energy for it (and they usually do). A select few, though, like Ash's Blade Storm or Baruuk's Lull, do in fact require the player to anticipate the ability a little.
• Targeting: i.e. whether or not the ability requires the player to focus on its victims one way or another. There's more of a divide on this, because whereas some abilities don't require targeting or even line of sight at all, e.g. Ember's World on Fire, Equinox's Maim, Banshee's Sound Quake, other abilities do, like Mesa's Peacemaker or Ash's Blade Storm, and some, like Saryn's Spores, are kind of in-between.

When one looks at most "problematic" nukes or other AoE abilities, one starts to notice some commonalities: all of those abilities are a) single-handedly capable of killing or fully disabling enemies on their own, b) usable on-demand without any sort of prior buildup, and c) able to affect enemies without the player even necessarily having to be aware of them. In the above terms, these AoE abilities tend to minimize interactivity, while also requiring minimal setup and targeting. It is therefore not surprising that many players feel like these abilities are bad for gameplay, because they do in fact remove gameplay, rather than add to it.

Thus, moving forward, it would likely be better if abilities always had at least one of those traits: this isn't to say that all abilities should all maximize their interactivity, need for setup, and need for targeting all at the same time; rather, abilities should avoid lacking all of those three traits at once, because that's when they start being unhealthy. With specific regards to AoE abilities, you could therefore move to at least three subtypes of effects:

• Type 1: Utility auras: Basically, abilities that can easily affect enemies in an area without having to focus any of them, and without having to prepare anything first, but that can't single-handedly stop enemies from doing their thing (i.e. cannot kill or stun them outright on their own). This should likely be the solution to AoE abilities on more utility-oriented frames like Saryn, who are known for debuffing enemies already.
  • Examples: Nova's Molecular Prime (can slow down all enemies in a wide radius, but never stops them entirely), Equinox's Pacify, Hildryn's Pillage.
• Type 2: Climactic finishers: In this case, abilities that can single-handedly kill everyone, without really having to focus anyone in particular, but that'd require some kind of setup to get there. These'd be flashy, room-clearing abilities that could nicely complement frames whose other abilities already push them to get in the thick of combat.
  • Examples: Equinox's Maim explosion (not the aura).
• Type 3: Focused fire: This is where the nukes get closer to single-target abilities (and in some cases there might not even be a distinction), where the player gets to kill enemies with the ability, and doesn't necessarily need to set those kills up, but needs to be aware of the enemies they're killing, and possibly even needs to make an effort to target them. Because all single-target abilities fit this description (and tend to be pretty fine), this type of ability could fit anyone, but especially frames whose theme emphasizes skill or dexterity.
  • Examples: Ash's Blade Storm (kinda), Mesa's Peacemaker (kinda), exalted weapons (mostly), pretty much any targeted ability.

This wouldn't necessarily guarantee that those abilities would be healthy no matter what (Blade Storm's optimal mode of casting is to toggle the ability on and spin around like a lunatic, which doesn't really reflect the intent behind the rework, whereas Peacemaker's aim and damage are both... generous, to say the least), but would likely at least set a stronger foundation for those abilities to be balanced into becoming healthy, without having to gut their damage each time or the like. At the very least, I think we can agree that it's likely not healthy for the game to have abilities that can be used non-stop to kill all enemies in a radius and through walls, and that abilities of that type tend to always be either too weak (e.g. Excalibur's Radial Javelin, Ember's World on Fire post-nerf, most AoE nuke abilities above level 50) or too good (e.g. Equinox's Maim, Saryn's Spores).

While this would obviously not be the One True Way^TM of changing things, off the top of my head, here are a few examples of how the above methodology could be used to meaningfully improve abilities the OP listed as a problem:

• Spores I think should be capable of reducing enemy health down to 1, but not kill its victims (which would make it a Type 1 by the above classification): Saryn would still be a top-tier debuff frame, because literally any other source of damage would be capable of killing her targets, but she'd go from denying allies kills to enabling them, thereby reducing frustration. Because using Miasma to propagate Spores is already an intended part of her design, this would therefore not bend her into a completely different design in this respect, and could in fact make her job easier by preventing enemies from dying before she can use them to propagate Spores.
• With Equinox, I think the solution could be to simply give her some charge meter, built up from doing whatever, and then expend that charge with Mend or Maim for a big radial burst of power, which could be damage or protection of some kind (so a Type 2 ability by the above standards).
• Banshee's Sound Quake could probably also be a Type 2, e.g. she could "steal" all of the sounds that she silenced, then could use Sound Quake to expend the stored energy. This could allow the damage and CC to be buffed significantly, and it may also be better for Banshee to leave the ability on without needing to stay put and channel the whole time.
• Octavia's Mallet could probably just massively amplify all damage it takes as periodic AoE bursts, instead of releasing baseline damage all the time. The taunt function could also probably be attached to the Resonator roller, which already charms enemies on its own, and moved away from her 1.

Edited April 15, 2019 by Teridax68

[_Mannaroth_]

vor 14 Minuten schrieb DeMonkey:

The niche you are suggesting they fill is "I have to complete an objective in the game wherein killing something would be beneficial to me".

That "niche" is the majority of the game's content, and is therefore not a niche.

Okay you might be partly right. But I wrote more.

The problem is, that the majority of the game shouldn't be speeding through mind-boring low-level content due to drop chances of 0.00000bla%.

I suggested to make missions challenging and rewarding. As soon as enemies don't die within seconds, even the highest AoE-damage-Frame has to face challenges like avoiding nullifiers, focussing parasitic eximi, staying mobile to prevent damage and so on. On the other hand, this needs to come with drop chances (and especially drop tables), that grant rewards in a reasonable amount of time. I'd rather fail 4/5 missions when I can expect a nice reward in the remaining one case, than finishing all 5, then 10x5 again and still need that utterly rare drop.

less grind -> more challenge -> need for actual cooperative gameplay -> less need for only-AoE damage

[KaijuKraid]

7 hours ago, TheGreenFellow said:

Incorrect, you have the cart before the horse. Things like ESO now exist because Warframes like Saryn/Equinox/Mesa existed. DE tried to cater to players crying out for "more difficult endgame content", instead of addressing the core reason even Sortie content had become a breeze, which is primarily the modding power gap situation, but Warframe imbalances are also a variable there.

I disagree: ESO has a magnitude of problems that isn't just from the 'Overpoweredness' of Saryn and Equinox. ESO's mechanics need to change because SO/ESO itself is fundamentally broken at this current time. Plus Saryn was changed, TWICE, during the time ESO was around. The only frame this statement refers to is Equinox, since at the time the best way to farm focus was Adaro. 

ESO is mostly used for two things currently: Focus Farming and Weapon Levelling. In a majority of pub games, many people end up usually leaving at Wave 2-4. Many people even end up quitting ESO at Wave 1 or just quitting as soon as they get in because there can be 0 Saryns or Equinoxes in a pub game. This usually ends up meaning that people need to rely on Saryn or Equinox to be able to level up their weapons more quickly.

Not only that but if you do end up going into a group game because you used recruitment chat, people mostly want Saryn because she has the best way to clear out ESO quickly enough and give a substantial amount of Focus. Even better: When I go into both Pub and Solo ESO without a Saryn when I'm playing Khora, I actually get more Focus from the solo ESO rather than the pub unless there is a Saryn around. It's a test I've done many many times.

Not only that, but you can tell ESO (as well as Arbitrations) have basically been basically abandoned by DE for the time being. If you want more difficult content in the form of ESO, you need to reward people for staying and doing the more difficult content. Arbitrations is very good on this because it either drops Endo, Tradable Endo or very interesting mods (even if only two of them are actually worth using) as well as adopting a ABCC recurring reward structure. There's still plenty of things wrong that people can argue about Arbitrations, but the rewards are probably the one thing I have never heard people complain about aside from a bug that can happen with the display of C Rotation Rewards. ESO needs to change before Saryn and others need to change, otherwise you completely nerf ESO for other warframes also.

A lot of the 'Nerf Saryn' threads look at the Symptoms and want to fix the Symptoms, not the problems. Saryn and her dominance of ESO is a Symptom of ESO having problems, not the cause of ESO having problems. We had about a week of ESO with Saryn 2.0 and I can tell you there were basically no complaints about her. We got to Saryn 3.0 and ESO and she was laughably overpowered in ESO and pretty bad everywhere else. So they changed her again to where she was still great in ESO, but also allows her to be used in other missions. 

And finally: Damage Types in Warframe are broken also. To be fair though, this is a huge issue. We need Corrosive/Radiation to be able to break through insane amount of armour that Grineer can have later. But when people are wanting Riven Mods which want -Impact/-Puncture, dislike the Blast Status and find that Magnetic is pretty much next to useless. We're pretty much forced into Corrosive Projection against Grineer if we're going to be doing End Game and, once again, Saryn has answers to that solution. It's not as immediate as Oberon or Mag, but it costs far less energy and can spread out quite far. We're in a game where we favour mostly Status over Criticals. 

So yes, I don't think I have the 'Cart before the Horse.' There's a lot of problems that need to be fixed if we ever truly want a 'End Game' experience. ESO has problems, There's a reason we were going to get a Damage 3.0 (and still need it in my opinion) and many MANY other problems that need to be fixed. Then, after those changes and if those changes are good, if Saryn STILL dominates you can then nerf her. But her 3.X Version was already changed mostly because of ESO because at the time, THAT was end game. End Game at the moment is Arbitrations, which even that has fallen flat. 

[Case1]

So basically this is "I dont like the way these people are playing so DE should nerf the things they want to use so they all have to play how I want them to play"

lolno 

Even if by some miracle DE actually listened to you and nerfed these frames then people would switch to all ignis wrath and amprex and spin to win and then you would complain about that...

Save us all a headache and switch to solo and never switch back, k.

[SenorClipClop]

On 2019-04-14 at 2:31 PM, LuckyCharm said:

It's not fun killing trash enemies. It just isnt. You don't get any sort of gratification for killing them, they simply are in the way when you're running, and when you're in one place they're just pretty much sources of energy orbs and ammo for the most part.

That doesn't justify AoE spam-to-win though, and using this argument as a defense of it is just defending one of the game's problems with another of the game's problems: uncompelling enemies. Make enemies more engaging to fight. Make them faster, smarter and more tactical. Let them take cover from us instead of just plodding straight toward us. Have them recognize what we can do and react to best suit how they want to accomplish their own goals.

And again, make the room-wiping stuff we can do with a frame more difficult than the small-scale damage we can do with a frame. Big nukes are fine, but make us work for them, make them feel earned. The biggest moves should not also be the easiest.

[(PSN)Hopper_Orouk]

"we had created monsters we couldn't control..."

[Revantis]

Speed meta mentality is dominating almost every game i play atm, Its a modern expectation it seems. They really need to just add content to the game that makes the other "non" AoE frames shine. For instance, in arbitration i pretty much only take Gara. I dont think i have ever considered taking saryn a single time and i have most of my time played on her. Nidus, Inaros,Gara, and Garuda to just name a few have Literally insane survivability while also providing amazing utility/damage/CC of some kind.

What you are seeing is the game itself has grown into speed min/max game because its main focus is farming. When other content that is less based on speed clearing and is centered around something else, more group CC/defensive builds and play styles will follow, until then nerfing Ember hasnt stopped low level map clearing it just moved other frames to the forefront. Will we nerf every frame until AoE is useless the game moves at a snails pace and your favorite frame is the best one?

[(XBOX)coO0Ookiecrisp]

6 hours ago, Xepthrichros said:

so they lose half their community and profit? not smart.

Get real bud, people would complain but we all know they wouldn't go anywhere.

[(PSN)deathwolfclaw666]

26 minutes ago, (XB1)coO0Ookiecrisp said:

Get real bud, people would complain but we all know they wouldn't go anywhere.

People would just move on to other efficient ways then the crying would continue.

[TheGreenFellow]

On 2019-04-15 at 2:07 AM, (XB1)Knight Raime said:

Efficiency is the commodity of this game.  Which is why people flock to the "best" things.  If Warframe's actual gameplay interactions were fun then people would probably not be seeking out the most efficient things in the game as a casual player.  Enemy scaling has demanded a player power increase.  Which in turn has demanded stronger enemies.  it's a cycle.  A cycle that can't be broken by only nerfing enemies or only nerfing the most efficient warframes.  DE has to address both at the same time.  While also redoing mission structure so killing isn't the only valuable role.  And redo enemies so they're actually interesting to fight.

There is no current reason to nerf the "best" frames at killing because you can complete any content with any setup in a reasonable time.  It's not the old void days where saryn's press 4 to kill enemies in spawn for 40+ minutes was a monopoly.  The fact that our operators basically fulfill the role of both CC and support via arcanes should tell you something.  Frames like Saryn exacerbate the game's core issues.  They don't cause them.  Nerfing them alone doesn't accomplish anything.  it's simply a quick bandaid to appease people who struggle to conform to the games current reality.

Efficiency-seeking is a natural expectation of any video gamer. Where I think you are mistaken is that "enemy scaling has demanded a player power increase" - it's the other way around. DE has designed enemies around the player power increases, which is primarily thanks to the modding. If we didn't have those mods, I guarantee enemy scaling would not be so crazy.

It is absolutely true, though, that DE has to address both at the same time - really, everything in the domino chain of armor scaling, damage types, status types, and enemy design as you mention - all of that would need to be part of the overhaul. It'd be a big project, there's no denying that, but I think it is absolutely necessary for the long-term health of the game.

I'd also somewhat agree that Warframe balance is not as big of an issue, but the baseline numbers of Warframes/guns are what get magnified exponentially by mods, so any existing imbalances in guns & Warframes are indeed a causal factor. You are correct again, though, that just nerfing Warframes would not be successful.

 

On 2019-04-15 at 7:01 AM, Xepthrichros said:

so they lose half their community and profit? not smart.

I sincerely doubt the community (and generated profits) would just disappear over changes to the game.

 

23 hours ago, KaijuKraid said:

I disagree: ESO has a magnitude of problems that isn't just from the 'Overpoweredness' of Saryn and Equinox. ESO's mechanics need to change because SO/ESO itself is fundamentally broken at this current time. Plus Saryn was changed, TWICE, during the time ESO was around. The only frame this statement refers to is Equinox, since at the time the best way to farm focus was Adaro. 

ESO is mostly used for two things currently: Focus Farming and Weapon Levelling. In a majority of pub games, many people end up usually leaving at Wave 2-4. Many people even end up quitting ESO at Wave 1 or just quitting as soon as they get in because there can be 0 Saryns or Equinoxes in a pub game. This usually ends up meaning that people need to rely on Saryn or Equinox to be able to level up their weapons more quickly.

Not only that but if you do end up going into a group game because you used recruitment chat, people mostly want Saryn because she has the best way to clear out ESO quickly enough and give a substantial amount of Focus. Even better: When I go into both Pub and Solo ESO without a Saryn when I'm playing Khora, I actually get more Focus from the solo ESO rather than the pub unless there is a Saryn around. It's a test I've done many many times.

Not only that, but you can tell ESO (as well as Arbitrations) have basically been basically abandoned by DE for the time being. If you want more difficult content in the form of ESO, you need to reward people for staying and doing the more difficult content. Arbitrations is very good on this because it either drops Endo, Tradable Endo or very interesting mods (even if only two of them are actually worth using) as well as adopting a ABCC recurring reward structure. There's still plenty of things wrong that people can argue about Arbitrations, but the rewards are probably the one thing I have never heard people complain about aside from a bug that can happen with the display of C Rotation Rewards. ESO needs to change before Saryn and others need to change, otherwise you completely nerf ESO for other warframes also.

A lot of the 'Nerf Saryn' threads look at the Symptoms and want to fix the Symptoms, not the problems. Saryn and her dominance of ESO is a Symptom of ESO having problems, not the cause of ESO having problems. We had about a week of ESO with Saryn 2.0 and I can tell you there were basically no complaints about her. We got to Saryn 3.0 and ESO and she was laughably overpowered in ESO and pretty bad everywhere else. So they changed her again to where she was still great in ESO, but also allows her to be used in other missions. 

And finally: Damage Types in Warframe are broken also. To be fair though, this is a huge issue. We need Corrosive/Radiation to be able to break through insane amount of armour that Grineer can have later. But when people are wanting Riven Mods which want -Impact/-Puncture, dislike the Blast Status and find that Magnetic is pretty much next to useless. We're pretty much forced into Corrosive Projection against Grineer if we're going to be doing End Game and, once again, Saryn has answers to that solution. It's not as immediate as Oberon or Mag, but it costs far less energy and can spread out quite far. We're in a game where we favour mostly Status over Criticals. 

So yes, I don't think I have the 'Cart before the Horse.' There's a lot of problems that need to be fixed if we ever truly want a 'End Game' experience. ESO has problems, There's a reason we were going to get a Damage 3.0 (and still need it in my opinion) and many MANY other problems that need to be fixed. Then, after those changes and if those changes are good, if Saryn STILL dominates you can then nerf her. But her 3.X Version was already changed mostly because of ESO because at the time, THAT was end game. End Game at the moment is Arbitrations, which even that has fallen flat. 

ESO was created to appeal to players asking for more difficult endgame content. This is fact, you can go back and look at streams and posts about ESO when it was still in development to see for yourself.

I'd agree ESO has many problems, but it stems from being designed around the (modded) Warframes and abilities and weapons available to us. It being flawed in turn is just a natural consequence of being designed around something that is flawed to begin with.

Focus farming is a bit of a nonpoint, handing in rewards from Eidolon hunts seems like the way to go with that; sure, one can do it via lenses but it's kind of a pain and just doing missions like Hydron or ESO *just* for Focus is really pretty inefficient. I prefer to crack relics for leveling gear, for instance, since it accomplishes two objectives at once and really, affinity isn't hard to get. I think most people just do those things because playing by riding the bandwagon suggestions is how many people approach games.

People leaving at early waves tends to happen when they've done what they want and don't want to fuss with the later drops, to be honest. It's not a matter of difficulty really, anybody can take a whip with the meme-strike wombo combo and do just fine in ESO.

DE does have a habit of adding things then kind of...abandoning it. There's a lot of cans they've been kicking down the road now and I think they'll soon find there's only so many feet they have to kick those cans with, and sooner or later they're going to have to pick up those cans and do something about it. (And I've seen plenty complaints about Arbitrations rewards, just over time browsing here and reddit.)

I was there for Saryn's rework, frankly I don't know why DESteve thought she needed one to begin with. I thought she was a fine frame beforehand - the "toxin" to Frost's cold and Ember's fire and Volt's electricity. She's certainly more powerful and useful now, but...look at how Ember got treated. I don't think DE has a consistent internal ranking approach to Warframe ability design in general, and that's a problem that's been showing in a big way as more and more Warframes show up.

With armor & damage types, the issue is trying to keep enemies 'difficult' against player's ability to literally make weapons and abilities exponentially better by the power of modding. If we couldn't take a Braton and make it do thousands upon thousands of times more damage than it does baseline, I guarantee the armor scaling and damage type wonkiness wouldn't be nearly so out of control. (About CP and Saryn, the fact she got *corrosive and viral* status effects in her kit, the two most valuable status effects by far, adds to why she is such an overpowered frame after her rework. She used to just be about "toxin", now she has the perfect status effects to kill everything and...again, I point you to Ember by comparison. And neither Oberon nor Mag have damage scaling for their abilities.)

It is true there a lot of problems that all tie into each other and need to be addressed at the same time, but the core reasons for that definitely includes the baseline Warframe ability imbalances that the modding situation multiplies exponentially to be out of control.
___

For Saryn specifically, I think it's much too strong to get Corrosive (and more than that, Corrosive *as a DOT that keeps applying itself over time*), potentially infinite damage scaling, high range, high duration, Viral, damage nuking, self-healing (via augment) and status immunity, AND a huge damage buff ability, all contained in one Warframe package. She's been toned down many times since release, yes, but it's still far too much all in one package.

Look at Vauban. Look at Ember. Look at Harrow. Look at Ash. Look at Loki, Inaros, Excalibur, Frost, Nekros - really, just look at the rest of the roster and compare. Hardly any other frames have comparable abilities, much less having all 4 abilities be so useful at the same time. Many of the Warframes in the game have a severe lack of damage scaling, for instance, let alone useful status procs, high range, high duration, nuking, healing, status immunity - most Warframes are lacking of many of these benefits and definitely don't have all of them at once.

To deny there is a Warframe balance problem in the case of Saryn specifically is, I feel, a bit disingenuous.

Edited April 16, 2019 by TheGreenFellow

[KaijuKraid]

2 hours ago, TheGreenFellow said:

To deny there is a Warframe balance problem in the case of Saryn specifically is, I feel, a bit disingenuous.

Never denied there was NOT a problem with Saryn currently, just that the places she's 'OP' in kind of requires her to be at the state they chose her to be in because ESO needs changes. As I said: Change ESO, Armour Scaling and Damage Typings, then work on Saryn. No one in their right mind can think Enemy Armour Scaling is in a good state at higher levels of the game currently (Just look at what Wolf is like without anyway to shred his armour during a full squad Kuva Flood Mission.) Saryn's 'infinite damage' does need a while to build up still. 

I did actually want to use Ember as a big example of what happens when a Frame who was designed for basically a different part of the game ends up not only getting a complete ability change (Overheat to Accerlent) but also how changing how her other three abilities have ended have ended up making her pretty much not used by the rest of the community. 

But yes, let's take a look at Loki and Inaros. Loki, once probably considered the best all-round warframe has definitely fallen off hasn't he? But at one point he was pretty much a good pick for everything. Inaros, on the otherhand, is always a welcome pick to any team for anything outside of Eidolons and perhaps ESO and no one complains that Inaros essentially doesn't die so there's no real risk/reward factor for him in Arbitrations. 

Damage is only king in one place: ESO. 

2 hours ago, TheGreenFellow said:

I'd agree ESO has many problems, but it stems from being designed around the (modded) Warframes and abilities and weapons available to us. It being flawed in turn is just a natural consequence of being designed around something that is flawed to begin with.

Focus farming is a bit of a nonpoint, handing in rewards from Eidolon hunts seems like the way to go with that; sure, one can do it via lenses but it's kind of a pain and just doing missions like Hydron or ESO *just* for Focus is really pretty inefficient. I prefer to crack relics for leveling gear, for instance, since it accomplishes two objectives at once and really, affinity isn't hard to get. I think most people just do those things because playing by riding the bandwagon suggestions is how many people approach games.

Then what is the point of ESO if it's not about Focus Farming? It's certainly what was used originally and how DE wanted to balance ESO. Their first change to ESO even points this out. Is it for the Lato/Braton Vandal Pieces? Because 15/20 minutes for a 1-2% drop rate is pretty atrocious. Is iit for the Radiant Relics? Because, again, while they are nice to have it would be better to wait for a Endless Fissure or just do something like Xini or Mithra. I can at the moment max Focus daily cap in 2 runs which also gives me Radiant Relics or a chance for Lato/Braton as well as perhaps flaming steps.

You say it's a 'non point', but if it's a non-point, then what IS the point of ESO at this point in time? Remove the levelling of weapons and focus from ESO and you're left with a game mode where once you got the Lato/Braton/Flaming Steps, there's nothing left for it. At this point, I think we can agree that ESO needs to be changed. 

2 hours ago, TheGreenFellow said:

With armor & damage types, the issue is trying to keep enemies 'difficult' against player's ability to literally make weapons and abilities exponentially better by the power of modding. If we couldn't take a Braton and make it do thousands upon thousands of times more damage than it does baseline, I guarantee the armor scaling and damage type wonkiness wouldn't be nearly so out of control. (About CP and Saryn, the fact she got *corrosive and viral* status effects in her kit, the two most valuable status effects by far, adds to why she is such an overpowered frame after her rework. She used to just be about "toxin", now she has the perfect status effects to kill everything and...again, I point you to Ember by comparison. And neither Oberon nor Mag have damage scaling for their abilities.)

The thing is, we have problems in general with armour and damage. A lot of damage types need to be changed or reworked. Physical Damage Typing, aside from Slash, just seem to plain suck also. We're coming to a point where people want Negative Impact/Puncture in Rivens. We definitely don't want to see Magnetic since it's resisted by the most tankiest stuff in the game and just generally doesn't do anything except V Shields. We don't want to see Blast because status wise it makes it harder to kill enemies and damage wise everything weak to Blast (aside from Machinery enemies, which are only four things like Rollers, Latchers, Regulators) are MORE weak to Corrosive.

Again, we bring up Ember and look how bad she was treated.

And finally Oberon. Oberon can be used in more content. Oberon was never made to be a damage dealer on the same level as Saryn or Mesa. But his 'lack of damage scaling' is made up for the fact he can radiate enemies and entirely strip their armour as well as blinding them. He is almost like Inaros in a way that he is a safe pick for the majority of content.

Aside from ESO and Defence, where else is Saryn actually important? Her damage does not matter in any other Endless Mode. Exterminate? As you said, anyone with a whip can clear that out easily. Arbitrations don't need her except in Defence and we can say for sure that Arbitrations are broken when most people just rather want to wait for Excavation or Interception to come up. (That or the Hydron/Helene Map for Defence.) Sorties? Again, Defence. 

Again I point this out: Fix the damage/armour problems, since this is something that many people do complain about. Most of the time we're building for Status/Corrosive and having to pretty much equip Corrosive Projection all the time. Saryn allows people to use their other weapons. As I said before: Saryn is at the moment definitely a symptom of problems. If after changes Saryn is still a problem, definitely nerf her.

Otherwise: We may end up with another Ember, who has been changed so many times and nerfed many times due to both content that no longer is relevant to her and for her ability to turn low level content into a bullet jump/walking simulator. 

[TheGreenFellow]

1 hour ago, KaijuKraid said:

Never denied there was NOT a problem with Saryn currently, just that the places she's 'OP' in kind of requires her to be at the state they chose her to be in because ESO needs changes. As I said: Change ESO, Armour Scaling and Damage Typings, then work on Saryn. No one in their right mind can think Enemy Armour Scaling is in a good state at higher levels of the game currently (Just look at what Wolf is like without anyway to shred his armour during a full squad Kuva Flood Mission.) Saryn's 'infinite damage' does need a while to build up still. 

I did actually want to use Ember as a big example of what happens when a Frame who was designed for basically a different part of the game ends up not only getting a complete ability change (Overheat to Accerlent) but also how changing how her other three abilities have ended have ended up making her pretty much not used by the rest of the community. 

But yes, let's take a look at Loki and Inaros. Loki, once probably considered the best all-round warframe has definitely fallen off hasn't he? But at one point he was pretty much a good pick for everything. Inaros, on the otherhand, is always a welcome pick to any team for anything outside of Eidolons and perhaps ESO and no one complains that Inaros essentially doesn't die so there's no real risk/reward factor for him in Arbitrations. 

Damage is only king in one place: ESO. 

Then what is the point of ESO if it's not about Focus Farming? It's certainly what was used originally and how DE wanted to balance ESO. Their first change to ESO even points this out. Is it for the Lato/Braton Vandal Pieces? Because 15/20 minutes for a 1-2% drop rate is pretty atrocious. Is iit for the Radiant Relics? Because, again, while they are nice to have it would be better to wait for a Endless Fissure or just do something like Xini or Mithra. I can at the moment max Focus daily cap in 2 runs which also gives me Radiant Relics or a chance for Lato/Braton as well as perhaps flaming steps.

You say it's a 'non point', but if it's a non-point, then what IS the point of ESO at this point in time? Remove the levelling of weapons and focus from ESO and you're left with a game mode where once you got the Lato/Braton/Flaming Steps, there's nothing left for it. At this point, I think we can agree that ESO needs to be changed. 

The thing is, we have problems in general with armour and damage. A lot of damage types need to be changed or reworked. Physical Damage Typing, aside from Slash, just seem to plain suck also. We're coming to a point where people want Negative Impact/Puncture in Rivens. We definitely don't want to see Magnetic since it's resisted by the most tankiest stuff in the game and just generally doesn't do anything except V Shields. We don't want to see Blast because status wise it makes it harder to kill enemies and damage wise everything weak to Blast (aside from Machinery enemies, which are only four things like Rollers, Latchers, Regulators) are MORE weak to Corrosive.

Again, we bring up Ember and look how bad she was treated.

And finally Oberon. Oberon can be used in more content. Oberon was never made to be a damage dealer on the same level as Saryn or Mesa. But his 'lack of damage scaling' is made up for the fact he can radiate enemies and entirely strip their armour as well as blinding them. He is almost like Inaros in a way that he is a safe pick for the majority of content.

Aside from ESO and Defence, where else is Saryn actually important? Her damage does not matter in any other Endless Mode. Exterminate? As you said, anyone with a whip can clear that out easily. Arbitrations don't need her except in Defence and we can say for sure that Arbitrations are broken when most people just rather want to wait for Excavation or Interception to come up. (That or the Hydron/Helene Map for Defence.) Sorties? Again, Defence. 

Again I point this out: Fix the damage/armour problems, since this is something that many people do complain about. Most of the time we're building for Status/Corrosive and having to pretty much equip Corrosive Projection all the time. Saryn allows people to use their other weapons. As I said before: Saryn is at the moment definitely a symptom of problems. If after changes Saryn is still a problem, definitely nerf her.

Otherwise: We may end up with another Ember, who has been changed so many times and nerfed many times due to both content that no longer is relevant to her and for her ability to turn low level content into a bullet jump/walking simulator. 

Sure, it's fair to say ESO should change along with a Saryn nerf, if it were to happen.

Regarding Inaros, *all he does* is not die. The tornado thing is mediocre at best, 1 provides relatively minor CC, and his 2 is purely self-sustain. Like, sure, Inaros can be relied on to not die, but he also doesn't do anything helpful. Also his passive is useless (as many Warframe passives unfortunately can be) because its damage can't scale and there's no way low-level enemies will down him.

The point of ESO is, as I've pointed out twice now, to try providing "challenging endgame content". Relics, affinity, exclusive rewards, those are just incentives - they are not the reason behind its existence. Focus can be done just as well with any source of rapid affinity gain, nothing about ESO offers a bonus or anything specific to gaining focus, so yeah, it's not directly a factor here. We are agreed that it could do with changes, though to my mind those changes would occur as a knock-on effect of directly addressing the modding situation and the chain of dominoes regarding damage scaling, damage types, status effects, armor scaling, enemy scaling, etc.

Rivens, for their part, just made the modding power spike even worse. It is telling though that negative IPS on Rivens is preferred. (I really wish Rivens had never been introduced, it was a bad idea all-around for player trading, for the power increase, for failing miserably to address weapon imbalance, for adding a thoroughly frustrating source of multiple layers of RNG - but lord knows hell would be raised if they were to be removed now, especially with how much some players have invested in them....)

Blast has its moments of utility, having some soft CC isn't terrible on low fire rate weapons or melee - but that's the only thing it's useful for and it suffers damage penalties, so yeah, it's pretty subpar as-is.

Oberon is my favorite Warframe, but he has *no* high-end damage utility, save for the very specific niche of Smite-ing Kela de Thaym to death. Everything about his kit is effectively CC, healing/survivability, and low-level AOE damage. The main reason I like him so much is simply being able to keep allies alive against scaled-up enemies, and I just like using my guns to kill things - but in terms of actual effectiveness he's not that great for high levels of difficulty. Yes, he does have the armor strip - but that's *if* you can get enemies all onto your hallowed ground *and* use the 4, which is a huge energy investment - especially if you're considering his channeled 3 ability, which I like having on at all times - and not at all something you're going to be able to just spam on every enemy around, in contrast to Saryn's 1 which spreads itself in large AOEs, continues ticking, and scales itself up, while also costing *significantly* less energy.

As for outside ESO, Saryn was always useful against Corpus by virtue of her Toxin focus; now, she's useful anywhere. She can significantly buff her weapons, she can do AOE nuking, she can inflict all enemies in a wide area with Viral (which is a *hugely* useful thing!), she has her 1 which has self-scaling and Corrosive to deal with armor, her 2 can act as aggro and thus provide her with a means to contribute to defensive mission types...assuming she doesn't just kill everything before it can damage the objective.

Like, sure everyone can make due with the memeing strike whip (which is another thing that's broken ONLY because of the mods), but that doesn't mean Saryn's just not useful outside of ESO. The only thing she actually lacks is a means to heal teammates.

I'll agree that Saryn's rework was definitely a symptoms of the problems plaguing the game. But she is now one of those causal factors. I don't want her to become another Ember either, but I just don't see why she got such a perfect package when so many other Warframes have such lackluster kits.

Edited April 16, 2019 by TheGreenFellow

[KaijuKraid]

2 minutes ago, TheGreenFellow said:

The point of ESO is, as I've pointed out twice now, to try providing "challenging endgame content". Relics, affinity, exclusive rewards, those are just incentives - they are not the reason behind its existence. Focus can be done just as well with any source of rapid affinity gain, nothing about ESO offers a bonus or anything specific to gaining focus, so yeah, it's not directly a factor here. We are agreed that it could do with changes, though to my mind those changes would occur as a knock-on effect of directly addressing the modding situation and the chain of dominoes regarding damage scaling, damage types, status effects, armor scaling, enemy scaling, etc.

You may keep pointing out the reason, but I also pointing out that there is no reason to do ESO though if there's no real rewards to it. If you want people to do your 'Challenging End Game Content' it needs to have something to it to make it worth playing. Arbitrations are played because people either want Vitus (Which in the future is said to have Archgun Riven Mods), Want a ton of Endo or want to get the Mods from it (or to get Seeding Step.) It also, in my opinion, does the 'Challenging End Game content' far better than ESO does. 

5 minutes ago, TheGreenFellow said:

Rivens, for their part, just made the modding power spike even worse. It is telling though that negative IPS on Rivens is preferred. (I really wish Rivens had never been introduced, it was a bad idea all-around for player trading, for the power increase, for failing miserably to address weapon imbalance, for adding a thoroughly frustrating source of multiple layers of RNG - but lord knows hell would be raised if they were to be removed now, especially with how much some players have invested in them....)

Oh I agree with this. I like the IDEAS of Rivens, but I don't like their implementation. Though I find it hiliarious that people are getting mad now that DE have continued their promise on how they wanted to balance Rivens in the first place. However we have Rivens now and we have to learn to live with them. 

6 minutes ago, TheGreenFellow said:

Oberon is my favorite Warframe, but he has *no* high-end damage utility, save for the very specific niche of Smite-ing Kela de Thaym to death. Everything about his kit is effectively CC, healing/survivability, and low-level AOE damage. The main reason I like him so much is simply being able to keep allies alive against scaled-up enemies, and I just like using my guns to kill things - but in terms of actual effectiveness he's not that great for high levels of difficulty. Yes, he does have the armor strip - but that's *if* you can get enemies all onto your hallowed ground *and* use the 4, which is a huge energy investment - especially if you're considering his channeled 3 ability, which I like having on at all times - and not at all something you're going to be able to just spam on every enemy around, in contrast to Saryn's 1 which spreads itself in large AOEs, continues ticking, and scales itself up, while also costing *significantly* less energy.

But this was my point exactly. Oberon can remove armour and can radiate enemies. I never said ANYTHING about his damage because I know his damage is also not the greatest. (I like using him quite a bit.) My point is that Oberon can appear in more content because of his ability to do more stuff to enemies and help support a team more than Saryn. Oberon can appear in far more Arbitrations, can appear in a lot more sorties and even appears in Profit Taker. He even has a niche use in Eidolons, though Harrow or Trinity may be better, Oberon is definitely a very good fifth choice behind the main four. I never said anything about his damage because I know Oberon is never played for damage, but for his utility. He also can keep teammates alive when you're doing an arbitration and someone decides to do something really stupid. (Come on DE though, remove his interaction with his 3 + Nekros already please. You make playing Survival Arbitrations very difficult.) 

 

12 minutes ago, TheGreenFellow said:

As for outside ESO, Saryn was always useful against Corpus by virtue of her Toxin focus; now, she's useful anywhere. She can significantly buff her weapons, she can do AOE nuking, she can inflict all enemies in a wide area with Viral (which is a *hugely* useful thing!), she has her 1 which has self-scaling and Corrosive to deal with armor, her 2 can act as aggro and thus provide her with a means to contribute to defensive mission types...assuming she doesn't just kill everything before it can damage the objective.

Here's the thing. At pretty much all levels of Starchart and to Sortie level, bringing Saryn can actually be slower than bringing another Warframe for the meat grinder. Say we're up against Corpus Exterminate with Shield Enhancement level. Saryn definitely has her uses here, I agree. However I can also tell you modding certain weapons with Gas or Toxin can also get the same effect.

But when it comes to other 'defensive mission types', aside from Defence, none of those require you to actually kill enemies. Go into a public mobile defence mission and I can assure you almost most of the time you'll come across a Limbo. On Excavation (+Arbitration), it'll be Frost or Gara. On Interception (+Arbitration) unless it's a farming (people still do Bere Farming? Most likely not) then you'll find people just bring whatever they can with good survival. As for Defence Missions... oh boy. Things can go very slowly without a Saryn or Equinox. Like, slower than Interception for sure. 

Plus bonus: If I'm doing a lot more killing on Excavation/Interception Arbitrations than other people, like say I'm 70% of the damage (which happens quite a bit as Khora for me on those missions), I'm still not in a position where I am actually helping. My Strangledome and my Ensnare are the parts that are helping, with the damage being icing on top of the cake.

21 minutes ago, TheGreenFellow said:

I'll agree that Saryn's rework was definitely a symptoms of the problems plaguing the game. But she is now one of those causal factors. I don't want her to become another Ember either, but I just don't see why she got such a perfect package when so many other Warframes have such lackluster kits.

Well, I think I can certainly understand this. First, you mentioned it was Steve in a earlier post, but that was actually Pablo. Didn't want to correct that because it's such a minor thing, but here it's important. Pablo found a way to make Saryn's kit 'mesh better', despite the fact that I too found no real reason to change her from 2.0 version. (But if you ask me back in the day, I'd also tell you I found nothing wrong with her 1.0 version where negative duration basically made her a press 4 to win frame. But now I definitely see why they changed that.)

Ember was 'reworked' and was... just bad. She wasn't reworked by Pablo. A lot of Pablo's reworks have seemingly made Warframes more played/more fun, such as the Nezha Rework and the Saryn rework. Ember is pretty outdated and has changed a lot since her original time that I remember her. If you don't know, her 2 used to essentially make her near invincible and gave essentially an aura that dealt more fire damage. She played more like a Close Range Mage rather than a long ranged Mage. She got up close and with her Fire Blast allowing her to panic if enemies started actually hurting her and her world on fire constantly also dealing damage, she could stay thick in the fight.

With Overheat gone and Accelerant taking it's place, she changed from that to now having to stay longer range so she doesn't take as much damage. Yes, they increased her armour, but she never regained that damage reduction. Overheat was removed because it basically allowed Ember to stay alive for a very long period of time. These days though, we have Nova, who not only has an easier damage reduction, but has a far more better thought out kit. Strange though that Nova was definitely out and released long before Ember lost Overheat. 

Not only that, but with some abilities now changing from set duration to toggle (Sound Quake and World on Fire) as well as World on Fire gaining several changes even before the last one, Ember basically became the go to frame at the time to super clear low level content trash. Now we're left with a frame that lost its identity years ago and then keeps getting changed because they want to keep whatever shred of identity she has now.

Plus back in the day, Ember was literally marketed as the Warframe of Choice to deal with Infested. And this also ties in to the problem of damage types. Fire is just weaker than both Electric and Poison. (Fire is also good V Cloned Flesh, but that means you need to strip all the armour from the Grineer just to actually get that extra damage.) Once again, coming back to the problem of Damage Types and some needing buffs and nerfs. 

Saryn got reworked well because someone found a way to make her work again. DE were clearly tired of people spamming Spores on Molt, but then felt that would weaken her too much. (I never really played that way except to put Spores on SOMETHING.)

[Pizzarugi]

23 hours ago, Revantis said:

Speed meta mentality is dominating almost every game i play atm, Its a modern expectation it seems. They really need to just add content to the game that makes the other "non" AoE frames shine. For instance, in arbitration i pretty much only take Gara. I dont think i have ever considered taking saryn a single time and i have most of my time played on her. Nidus, Inaros,Gara, and Garuda to just name a few have Literally insane survivability while also providing amazing utility/damage/CC of some kind.

What you are seeing is the game itself has grown into speed min/max game because its main focus is farming. When other content that is less based on speed clearing and is centered around something else, more group CC/defensive builds and play styles will follow, until then nerfing Ember hasnt stopped low level map clearing it just moved other frames to the forefront. Will we nerf every frame until AoE is useless the game moves at a snails pace and your favorite frame is the best one?

I take it you play Path of Exile as well? That's what got me started on the "nerf all the minmax speed meta" mindset. As players grow stronger and more efficient at trivializing the game, the developers have to come up with ways to make the game more challenging to keep them interested. The easy way out for developers is to introduce tougher enemies and bosses, with far greater health, immunities to abilities and mechanics, and strong enough to 1shot the players with next to no telegraphing. Path of Exile has all of these, Warframe's starting to show signs of it with things like nullifiers, combas and scrambuses, shield dargyns, terra shield ospreys in Orb Vallis, and the absolute cluster#*!% that is the Profit-Taker Orb fight.

The downside to all of this, for both games, is that this raises the skill floor and makes subpar builds and playstyles less and less viable for endgame. Not everyone is a meta cheese mechanic abuser, we shouldn't be screwing over the lesser skilled or equipped players because they want to run bad builds they enjoy.

We need nerfs. We need to lower the skill ceiling instead of raising the skill floor, and doing so will encourage players to actually run more builds and playstyles they like rather than always gunning for the most efficient one that'll finish missions in as little time as possible.

[Test-995]

15 hours ago, Pizzarugi said:

I take it you play Path of Exile as well? That's what got me started on the "nerf all the minmax speed meta" mindset. As players grow stronger and more efficient at trivializing the game, the developers have to come up with ways to make the game more challenging to keep them interested. The easy way out for developers is to introduce tougher enemies and bosses, with far greater health, immunities to abilities and mechanics, and strong enough to 1shot the players with next to no telegraphing. Path of Exile has all of these, Warframe's starting to show signs of it with things like nullifiers, combas and scrambuses, shield dargyns, terra shield ospreys in Orb Vallis, and the absolute cluster#*!% that is the Profit-Taker Orb fight.

The downside to all of this, for both games, is that this raises the skill floor and makes subpar builds and playstyles less and less viable for endgame. Not everyone is a meta cheese mechanic abuser, we shouldn't be screwing over the lesser skilled or equipped players because they want to run bad builds they enjoy.

We need nerfs. We need to lower the skill ceiling instead of raising the skill floor, and doing so will encourage players to actually run more builds and playstyles they like rather than always gunning for the most efficient one that'll finish missions in as little time as possible.

We need buff for everything, to the point of grineer armor scaling.

[TheGreenFellow]

(mods please feel free to delete this post, something spazzed out)

Edited April 17, 2019 by TheGreenFellow

[TheGreenFellow]

Wow, something spazzed out with the forums when I was trying to compose a reply and I have NO idea what just happened. Will try and fix.

Edited April 17, 2019 by TheGreenFellow

[TheGreenFellow]

17 hours ago, KaijuKraid said:

You may keep pointing out the reason, but I also pointing out that there is no reason to do ESO though if there's no real rewards to it. If you want people to do your 'Challenging End Game Content' it needs to have something to it to make it worth playing. Arbitrations are played because people either want Vitus (Which in the future is said to have Archgun Riven Mods), Want a ton of Endo or want to get the Mods from it (or to get Seeding Step.) It also, in my opinion, does the 'Challenging End Game content' far better than ESO does. 

Right. Incentives. You just seemed to be claiming they were the reason for ESO's existence, which is different - hence the phrase I used, "cart before the horse".
 

Quote

Oh I agree with this. I like the IDEAS of Rivens, but I don't like their implementation. Though I find it hiliarious that people are getting mad now that DE have continued their promise on how they wanted to balance Rivens in the first place. However we have Rivens now and we have to learn to live with them.

I do wonder if it would be more appropriate for Rivens to have 2 drawback stats and 2 beneficial stats, as a sort of "super-corrupted" mod...but that's waxing off-topic for this thread!
 

Quote

But this was my point exactly. Oberon can remove armour and can radiate enemies. I never said ANYTHING about his damage because I know his damage is also not the greatest. (I like using him quite a bit.) My point is that Oberon can appear in more content because of his ability to do more stuff to enemies and help support a team more than Saryn. Oberon can appear in far more Arbitrations, can appear in a lot more sorties and even appears in Profit Taker. He even has a niche use in Eidolons, though Harrow or Trinity may be better, Oberon is definitely a very good fifth choice behind the main four. I never said anything about his damage because I know Oberon is never played for damage, but for his utility. He also can keep teammates alive when you're doing an arbitration and someone decides to do something really stupid. (Come on DE though, remove his interaction with his 3 + Nekros already please. You make playing Survival Arbitrations very difficult.)

Oberon is always useful to a squad, but his kit does not offer near as much as Saryn does where defeating enemies is concerned. You have to 'carry' with weapons when using Oberon as opposed to relying on abilities for damage. So where this discussion is concerned, Saryn has clear superiorities *except* where team support is concerned, and there's a few other examples as well of Warframes that are much better suited for dealing AOE damage (Mesa, Equinox, Garuda, Volt all come to mind).
 

Quote

Here's the thing. At pretty much all levels of Starchart and to Sortie level, bringing Saryn can actually be slower than bringing another Warframe for the meat grinder. Say we're up against Corpus Exterminate with Shield Enhancement level. Saryn definitely has her uses here, I agree. However I can also tell you modding certain weapons with Gas or Toxin can also get the same effect.

But...using Saryn together with those weapons would very likely be the best possible combination for that. She can add Viral, enhance the toxin by a *lot*, and add spores to help deal with robotic enemies. Hydroid and Equinox can do alright, too, for bypassing shields and all, but still.
 

Quote

 But when it comes to other 'defensive mission types', aside from Defence, none of those require you to actually kill enemies. Go into a public mobile defence mission and I can assure you almost most of the time you'll come across a Limbo. On Excavation (+Arbitration), it'll be Frost or Gara. On Interception (+Arbitration) unless it's a farming (people still do Bere Farming? Most likely not) then you'll find people just bring whatever they can with good survival. As for Defence Missions... oh boy. Things can go very slowly without a Saryn or Equinox. Like, slower than Interception for sure.

Good luck completing a high-level excavation with just a Frost or Gara, especially with Corpus around! Certainly, Limbo is effective at Mobile Defense, but similarly doesn't work too well against Corpus - and really, why focus on freezing enemies if you can just kill them all before they become troublesome instead? Saryn's AOE range is much higher than even Limbo can push out as well. No mission is difficult when the enemies are all dead, y'know? (Granted that Corpus bubbles do stop spores and nuking, too.) And defence is just slow as a mission mode, killing enemies faster doesn't necessarily mean much when it's mostly limited by spawn rate timers - I really do wish DE would reduce the waves to 3 instead of 5 as baseline....
 

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Plus bonus: If I'm doing a lot more killing on Excavation/Interception Arbitrations than other people, like say I'm 70% of the damage (which happens quite a bit as Khora for me on those missions), I'm still not in a position where I am actually helping. My Strangledome and my Ensnare are the parts that are helping, with the damage being icing on top of the cake.

I'd argue it's both.
 

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Well, I think I can certainly understand this. First, you mentioned it was Steve in a earlier post, but that was actually Pablo. Didn't want to correct that because it's such a minor thing, but here it's important. Pablo found a way to make Saryn's kit 'mesh better', despite the fact that I too found no real reason to change her from 2.0 version. (But if you ask me back in the day, I'd also tell you I found nothing wrong with her 1.0 version where negative duration basically made her a press 4 to win frame. But now I definitely see why they changed that.)

Ach, you're probably right. I just know it was some particular DE dude that had a hardon for reworking Saryn. 
 

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Ember was 'reworked' and was... just bad. She wasn't reworked by Pablo. A lot of Pablo's reworks have seemingly made Warframes more played/more fun, such as the Nezha Rework and the Saryn rework. Ember is pretty outdated and has changed a lot since her original time that I remember her. If you don't know, her 2 used to essentially make her near invincible and gave essentially an aura that dealt more fire damage. She played more like a Close Range Mage rather than a long ranged Mage. She got up close and with her Fire Blast allowing her to panic if enemies started actually hurting her and her world on fire constantly also dealing damage, she could stay thick in the fight.

With Overheat gone and Accelerant taking it's place, she changed from that to now having to stay longer range so she doesn't take as much damage. Yes, they increased her armour, but she never regained that damage reduction. Overheat was removed because it basically allowed Ember to stay alive for a very long period of time. These days though, we have Nova, who not only has an easier damage reduction, but has a far more better thought out kit. Strange though that Nova was definitely out and released long before Ember lost Overheat. 

Not only that, but with some abilities now changing from set duration to toggle (Sound Quake and World on Fire) as well as World on Fire gaining several changes even before the last one, Ember basically became the go to frame at the time to super clear low level content trash. Now we're left with a frame that lost its identity years ago and then keeps getting changed because they want to keep whatever shred of identity she has now.

Plus back in the day, Ember was literally marketed as the Warframe of Choice to deal with Infested. And this also ties in to the problem of damage types. Fire is just weaker than both Electric and Poison. (Fire is also good V Cloned Flesh, but that means you need to strip all the armour from the Grineer just to actually get that extra damage.) Once again, coming back to the problem of Damage Types and some needing buffs and nerfs.

Yeah, with Ember it's really bizarre - their reasoning was wanting to avoid "afk affinity farming" or whatever? Yet look at all these other powerful AOE Warframes...it's such an odd inconsistency. The way you describe her old kit makes her sound quite useful though, despite (as you mention) her damage type being one of the least useful.
 

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Saryn got reworked well because someone found a way to make her work again. DE were clearly tired of people spamming Spores on Molt, but then felt that would weaken her too much. (I never really played that way except to put Spores on SOMETHING.)

Meh, she worked before though - she didn't "need" fixing, though you do raise a great point about the goofy spores + molt interaction - that was pretty dumb and shouldn't ever have been a thing to begin with.

Edited April 17, 2019 by TheGreenFellow
fixing spacing