Garuda Mechanics: Notes/Feedback

[Staggeringking]

Hi, I'm just trying to focus on the more subtle parts of her abilities, not trying to make a rework post here or state obvious things that anyone who's played her for 10 minutes can figure out. (pardon the rude disclaimer, I just want to keep things specific)

Some things I've noticed while testing Garuda:

Dread Mirror :

• The "health to shields" damage number is halved if the target has a viral status proc on them
• Despite the Abilities menu saying "health to shields" is 10% and unaffected by mods, I gain more "health to shields" if I add more power strength.
• Even if you execute enemies with just under 40% health, you still only gain "10% health to shields" (EDIT: you get twice as much as a non-execute cast)
• The initial cast (where you rip out their life force) can generate (relatively) powerful slash procs if the enemy is under the effect of Seeking Talons since it will always scale with the enemies health (see, it CAN do damage)

Blood Altar :

• Enemies transitioning between Limbo's rift seems to cancel this ability early
• Using the shield from Dread Mirror is a good way to "re position" enemies (by rolling into them) to set up a Blood Altar in a more preferable/safer location

Seeking Talons :

• Apparently, you can't get "double slash procs" (just like Hunter Munitions) so if your weapon is already good at reliably getting slash procs, this ability won't add much to the overall damage output. This was surprising to me but maybe the interactions don't work properly in the simulacrum where I tested it, I hope I'm wrong but even in mission it didn't seem to change my damage output much when using Zenith/Veldt/Vasto/Zylok/any slash based melee. 

Ironically, the Nagantaka doesn't synergize well with Garuda... in fact no viral+slash weapon synergizes well with her. (No, I'm not saying they are bad weapons..)

• When casting in air, the "hop" that launches you higher up will move the aim circle up as well, this will move enemies at the bottom of the aim circle off screen so they will not be affected by Seeking Talons (much more noticeable with a non-charged aim circle as it will almost always miss your targets in the narrow "aim cone") 

 

If you just wanted to learn a bit more about Garuda, feel free to stop here. Past this point is mainly for DE devs since it's me just asking for things that I hope one of their staff thinks is worth implementing.

A few tweaks that retain her overall kit/play-style while also making her more effective :

Dread Mirror :

• Make it more clear and consistent how much "health to shields" you will generate. Power strength affects it in some way, either directly increasing the %of enemy health taken OR adding a bonus afterwards to that base 10% health taken, this difference in "Dread Heart" (the floating blood ball) damage can really affect the slash procs it generates with the 4+1 combo.

Also, maybe make it 10% of enemy MAX health? so viral procs don't half the damage you store.

• Make executing enemies more rewarding, (not mentioning Dread Ward), if an enemy is below 40% health (and somehow not at 0%) they tend to have a few corrosive procs and are much easier to finish off than using Dread Mirror's execute which takes energy, time, and possibly puts you in harms way afterwards. Adding all the enemy's remaining health to your "Dread Heart" will make it much more appealing and add real value to the execute mechanic rather than just "saving a few bullets"

Along with the suggestion above, if executing enemies will be able to significantly boost your "Dread Heart" maybe add an indicator to enemies who are below that 40% heath threshold to make it simpler to tell when you should go for that execute. For example, those enemies have their own "Dread Heart" above them to intuitively show what executing this enemy will provide you. (Ideally only visible to Garuda so as not to clutter squad-mate's screens AND/OR only have a visible indicator for enemies in range of Garuda's 1)

Seeking Talons :

• Allow double slash procs (for Hunter Munitions too). If my testing was accurate and you really can't get multiple slash procs from ONE instance of damage (ignoring multiple pellets/multishot) then it doesn't seem to make much sense to work this way. Unless DE intended for this "pseudo-nerf" to slash based weapons, it basically rewards weapons with lower slash damage (or status chance) a lot more than weapons that can already reliably proc slash. (Personally I'm fine either way, gives me an excuse to diversify my weapon selection even more) 
• When casting in air, make Seeking Talons target the enemies in the aim circle before Garuda is launched higher in the air.

 

Thanks for taking the time to read. Sorry for the essay but I had to go into detail to properly discuss some of these points. If you also have some feedback for Garuda's EXISTING kit, feel free to post below.

Edited May 3, 2019 by Staggeringking
missed one piece of info for Dread Mirror, added note to ST

[Annnoth]

One thing i learned and this applies to other frames with similar mechanics lile nezha, hitscan weapons with punchthrough will hit enemies multiple times if they are ragdolled. Meaning blood altar can be used with certain weapons to have a huge damage boost if you shoot down the length of their bodies.

[Teridax68]

As an aside, I don't think the Nagantaka really synergizes well with itself, let alone Garuda: the reload-on-headshot mechanic would be better on another weapon, meanwhile it would likely be better if the weapon itself gained some bonus effect when hitting a Slash-procced opponent, e.g. critical hits or the like (which would work both with the weapon's high Status chance + Slash damage, and Garuda's propensity to bleed her enemies).

As for the abilities and feedback in the OP:

• Agreed on an indicator visible to Garuda showing the execution threshold on enemies: I think Dread Mirror in general isn't great at conveying its damage mechanics, and its modified damage feels a little janky: having it deal a strike's worth of damage, with perhaps an additional amount based on max health/the execution threshold, would already likely give much better feedback when using the ability. Being able to see more clearly when the ability will finish enemies off could also potentially lead to Garuda feeling more approachable to newcomers, who'd be able to string together far more gory executions.
• Don't Slash procs not stack already on their own timers? That's at least what's listed on the wiki.

[Birdframe_Prime]

It seems to me that there's a couple of things that you're curious about that indicate you're not taking into account how other things in the game work.

For example, your very first point about Dread Mirror:

21 hours ago, Staggeringking said:

The "health to shields" damage number is halved if the target has a viral status proc on them

Which is... accurate? Because that's how Viral procs work? They reduce the maximum health to 50% so you would get precisely 50% return on the initial numbers on the Damage portion of the ability, the Dread Heart.

21 hours ago, Staggeringking said:

Despite the Abilities menu saying "health to shields" is 10% and unaffected by mods, I gain more "health to shields" if I add more power strength.

Are you sure you're reading the ability right? Because the Shield genuinely is unaffected, and you will always only remove 10% of the enemy's health when you attack, but the thing that displays visible numbers when you cast the ability is the Dread Heart orb on top, and the 'damage absorb' that it has on it definitely is affected by Ability Strength.

This in no way affects the shield itself, not its strength, not its range, not its duration. And it in no way affects how much damage Dread Heart can absorb either. Just the initial value of damage absorbed by the orb. The starter value, as it were, and the value that you get for repeat attacks with the ability to refresh the shields. That's it. And it's never the thing that really makes the damage increase on the Dread Heart anyway, as you want to be using the enemy damage with a high Ability Strength in order increase it faster.

And this:

21 hours ago, Staggeringking said:

The initial cast (where you rip out their life force) can generate (relatively) powerful slash procs if the enemy is under the effect of Seeking Talons since it will always scale with the enemies health (see, it CAN do damage)

Yes, but this is because of what Seeking Talons is doing, specifically, which I'll get into in just a second. But loosely, all instances of damage are given a chance at creating a Bleed status, and Dread Mirror works on a percentage of the enemy's health, so there's actually a lot of room for high capacity Bleeds from this... even though they will only ever then deal an additional 24.5% damage to the enemy since they're working off 10% to begin with...

Anyway, moving on:

21 hours ago, Staggeringking said:

Apparently, you can't get "double slash procs" (just like Hunter Munitions)

Because, and I can't stress this enough since it affects your improvements you want to make, it is applying Status Chance for the effect as an addition to any other effect that is not Bleed.

What this allows is for other effects to also be used, such as Corrosive, Viral or Radiation, as the base status type, with their own Status Chance, and for the Bleed to be applied as a secondary effect. When you're applying Bleed as the primary effect, why would it be a secondary effect?

Your answer as to why Slash doesn't double up; a 100% chance to create Bleed + another X% chance to create Bleed is still a 100% chance to create a Bleed. The odds are in your favour, mathematics cannot take you further than that, my friend.

Double Bleed Procs sounds cool, yes. But you're actually right on the money; Garuda's 4 is designed to get you to use things that are more damaging, but do not conform to the Slash 'master race' of weaponry. It, in much the same way as Hunter Munitions, is better for benefiting those non-status, high Crit weapons that don't function on a lot of Slash in the first place. Except that it's also great for those high Status, but non-IPS weapons too... And for damaging Abilities... and for every other way to deal damage...

The best combo, to be fair, is actually to use her Dread Mirror instead. 201% Power Strength not only leads to great damage absorb on that ability, but it also means that priming enemies with ST first gives you 100% chance for that ability to proc a Bleed for all of that damage. Standing in front of a Heavy Gunner for a second or two to appreciate how fast they fire, and then tapping 4 to hit everything directly ahead of you, stunning them for exactly as long as it then takes to charge her 1 up for a half second... before you hit them with something that then does three times as much damage as Nova's AMD with a guaranteed Bleed of 2.45x that amount of damage if you allow it to play out. It's pretty devastating actually.

Yeah, you'll be vulnerable until the next enemy wanders along, but seriously, you will nuke anything and everything... Heck, team up with some AoE damage dealers and you won't believe the kinds of levels that are achievable... Or you can just spam it in the general area of the enemy on Sorties and let your team have some fun.

Honestly, my friend, while some icons are occasionally nice (and I'm fairly sure that looking at a health bar gives you a good idea at which enemies are low on health anyway), the meat of your feedback on here is... kind of unnecessary.

[Staggeringking]

My post was mainly about educating, not complaining/pointing out things I don't agree with. I know how to build and play Garuda in general, that isn't the point of my post. If I mentioned anything that seems obvious to you, please remember that it might not be for others.

Not everything I said was mind-blowing stuff but I still figured it was worth noting so others might learn. It's not like everything about Garuda is fully explained in game....most things in Warframe aren't. (disclaimer over)

 

1 hour ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

It seems to me that there's a couple of things that you're curious about that indicate you're not taking into account how other things in the game work.

For example, your very first point about Dread Mirror:

I was just pointing out how viral affected Dread Mirror as it didn't seem too intuitive that it would change the damage stored in Dread Heart, I know it makes sense, I know the mechanics, but not everyone will "connect the dots" instantly, it's just something to take note of, if you already figured that interaction out, great, some people might not have.

 

1 hour ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

Are you sure you're reading the ability right? Because the Shield genuinely is unaffected

As far as I know, the shield is only affected by duration mods, no reason to think strength would affect it, I kept saying "health to shields" because that's what the UI says and it seemed clear that it referred to Dread Heart as well. Since the shield doesn't have any mod interaction besides duration, which I never bring up, I assumed people would understand I'm not talking about the actual shield, rather the damage stored. I guess I could've been more clear but we do all share the same tooltip.

 

2 hours ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

And it's never the thing that really makes the damage increase on the Dread Heart anyway

Though I'd rather not discuss nuances in playstyle (as it really depends on the player), a few casts of her 1 will almost always give me enough damage to wipe out a room with her 4+1 combo, maybe not always in one slash tick but definitely quick enough, as well as being a more reliable way to store damage as enemies might not always be shooting at you. Either way is a good way to accumulate damage for her Dread Heart.

 

1 hour ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

Honestly, my friend, while some icons are occasionally nice (and I'm fairly sure that looking at a health bar gives you a good idea at which enemies are low on health anyway), the meat of your feedback on here is... kind of unnecessary.

Yeah, looking at health bars gives you a good idea....but I want a better idea and I know I'm not the only one who thinks that. Sure, I'll make do without an indicator, but please tell me how it wouldn't be an improvement, regardless of now "unnecessary" you find it to be.

[Staggeringking]

3 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

Don't Slash procs not stack already on their own timers? That's at least what's listed on the wiki.

Yeah they do, but each of those slash procs come from separate instances of damage,

e.g. a Veldt with 100% multishot (2 damage instances from one trigger pull) means 2 slash procs can occur from one trigger pull, which will stack (each having their own timers) but each individual damage instance cannot proc multiple slash procs, even with both Hunter Munitions and a Garuda 4 with 200% power strength.