[Maiming Strike] and Dominant Strategy - Why [Maiming Strike] Hurts Warframe as a Whole

[RaDiaFox]

Eh. I never see people spin attacking in missions, are you sure its an "all of the time" thing? Maiming strike is kinda hard to get, so most players don't have it. My friend uses it for collecting mutagen samples or used it...I forget if she still uses it, she might of given it to a friend from her clan....................Anyways, something about this thread bugged me, if you do not want a nerf or any kind of change to it, then why bring it up at all? You, throughout this, say "I never called for a nerf" or say things like "I don't want to change it" thus dismissing some of the points those people were making with an invalid statement. I mean towards the end of your opening statement you say "So what can be done?" You're clearly calling for action. " I want to include some ideas for potential fixes" is the first part of the opening line for this section. Not to mention you list possible nerfs, so how are you not calling for a nerf? Will a spade be spade?

[(XBOX)Calliber]

I pretty much main a double Maiming Strike (Riven) Ooltha Stave Zaw, but on console so my take will be a little different.  The issue is not nearly as rampant on console since macro's basically don't exist which makes Condition Overload more popular.  It's much more difficult to pull of repeated slide-attacks and sometimes impossible if you're not hosting.  I'd argue that Maiming Strike is properly balanced with CO on console because of the lack of macro, so any change to it would have to be taken into consideration with the way the game works on the consoles. 

Does the capacity drain reflect it's strength, no.  It should be 15-16 drain but like you already said, this just delays it's use until enough Forma is present.

Mobility from the slide attack is not about to go away any time soon, so we'll just move on.  I pretty much use my zaw excluviely and even with a significant nerf I'd still choose to open my melee attacks with a slide attack because of the mobility it provides.....also I main Nezha.  

Alone Maiming Strike isn't all that overwhelming when you remove the macro's.  It's when you combine it with 2 other factors that you see it become a problem: Blood Rush and Range.

Range: its a big contributing factor to making Maiming Strike builds work.  Take the whips/staves/polearms, remove all Range mods and then try it.  It's not nearly as overpowering.  Now how Range mods work is supposed to be getting changed with Melee 3.0, but Range will still be king (just reeled in a little).  For PC Macro's this will be a trivial change, just have to aim/move a little more than before.

Blood Rush: This is where things get silly though, and is the actual problem.  Now this was supposed to also get changed with the removal of the combo counter with Melee 3.0, which hasn't happened yet and I'm not sure it will happen anymore.  This mod combined with attack speed and range gets out of hand, and magnifies the affect of Maiming Strike due to how they interact (and gets crazy with Macro's).  Without this mod Maiming Strike builds would be significantly less effective.  An elegant fix, simply make Blood Rush and Maiming Strike exclude each other similar to Amalgam Serration and Serration, you can have one or the other (how you would account for Rivens I am unsure).  It would be an over-shot nerf to Maiming Strike builds which could then be fixed with a buff to Maiming Strike itself.  Or change the way the two mods interact all together which would also address Rivens.       

Edited July 3, 2019 by (XB1)Calliber
Grammar

[bibmobello]

2 hours ago, .Dracula. said:

Maiming strike isn't even as good as a Zaw with condition overload and literally only works on weapons with a lot of range. Until melee weapons get universal range increase I see no reason to change maiming strike.

In fact it's impossible to get an hit with a dagger or dual swords but it's stupid easy with other long range weapons dealing even more damage.

[Cubewano]

31 minutes ago, ADDpillz said:

I did respond to you.

You claim that "Maiming Strike" negatively affects your gameplay because DE has to use broken balance schemes like "bullet sponged" EHP to balance it.

I retorted that your argument is a fallacy.

You have absolutley no idea why DE implements those mechanics because your not a dev and DE has never said any information that supports your claim.

"Literally read the forums and watch the devstreams and use basic logic. The community "voted" through their continued expression of opinions through the forums and streams and multitude of media platforms."

Ill let this cringey response speak for itself. You have 0 empirical data supporting that your OPINIONS reflect the majority of the community's views on this subject. This is not evidence, this is confirmation bias.

Going out on a limb here, for a game that has 50 Million registered players and out of those 74,000 currently active players on STEAM, the fact that there is only a handful of these posts complaining about a single mod probably means that you are not speaking on behalf of the majority. Theres literally just a handful of the same people complainging in an echo chamber.

" DE never officially blamed maiming strike of power creep"

Glad we agree.

"but they haven't shied from acknowledging it exists"

Source please.

"that it has caused issues, and even called mechanics of the recent spider fights means of giving us a power fantasy without using such cheese methods which I hope you can put two and two together on. "

The word "cheese" is subjective. Just because you see it as "cheese" does not mean the devs or the rest of the community does. Unless the devs have called it a "cheese" method then this is simply your biased opinion.

"Don't assume all topics exist in a vacuum around solely your opinion in a platform that's been having opinions pummeled into it for years, educate yourself at the least and look outside self affirmation. "

Nothing like the pot calling the kettle black.

I could go on about the irony and hypocrisy displayed in this statement alone but instead I think "no u" will suffice.

In the past ridiculous armor scaling was reserved for duration runs only where they belonged, with players pushing the limits of their potential, most bosses had phases at best but nothing as severe as we have now. Not in durability, not in ability nullification, not in cc spam or multi layered damage gates. 

Your creating a causal relationship between maiming strike and and DE's balance choices on bosses with no evidence to support your claim. This is a fallacy.

"Now what about the rest of my initial response, I'd like to hear your full opinion not just pieces."

Your welcome.

Now I'm going back to play warframe with the rest of the 74,000 active PC players instead of complaining on the forums about how those players choose to play.

That was a part of the argument yes, the rest I guess was just meddlesome? Such as the issues it poses to co-operative play? 

You also didn't refute anything, at most you said neither of us has an absolute argument, while rejecting basic logic and critical thinking. Being dense for the sake of density. 

I think the community providing their own opinons on a matter is about as empirical on the opinions of the community as one can get without the ability of a hivemind. You want to paint everyone as agreeing with you and that isn't remotely accurate, and isn't reflected in any even remotely viewable display of largely scale opinions. If anyone is practicing confirmation bias here it is you, I'm not even vying for the opinion to be on my side, I'm just saying it most definitely isn't universally on yours. 

I speak for myself just as others players have spoken for themselves, you're the only one trying to assume dominance over others opinions. 

One of the devstreams post exploiter, don't recall which

It doesn't matter what term something is called by, semantics aren't important, what matters is the actual message being delivered, in this instance the implied using of these new mechanics to give us power in a way that gets around the type of high power we have now. 

Not sure anything to be said on this, sling that mud I guess. 

If you don't want to see I suppose you won't. 

For? 

There you are again painting the world in only shades you want it to be. 

[Ikyr0]

2 hours ago, Cubewano said:

This game isn't balanced around that level of dps and it functionally kills actual co-operative play.

Couldn't agree more. WF isn't actually a coop game, it's only marketed as such. There are no roles or classes, or rather no point to them. People criticize group minmaxing for Eidolons, but th game actually needs more of this and better balance around this. Right now it's just kill everything as fast as possible, facetank the damage, get the garbage reward and repeat. Empyrean better change this or I'm out when BL3 and D2 release. WF is the only looter/shooter without scaling difficulty or rewards. It's downright pathetic how they keep sweeping the endgame problems under the rug, and shove fluff content down my throat. And just a few weeks back SPACE MAWM was selling the same garbage in an interview, about how WF has no endgame. As if that's a good thing. DE has gotten away with a lot of horrific design decisions, but I'm telling you guys they will bleed players like crazy come September, unless they seriously step it up.

Edited July 3, 2019 by Ikyr0

[(XBOX)ECCHO SIERRA]

On 2019-07-02 at 9:10 AM, (PS4)Hikuro-93 said:

Stuff

Ah, the old "I dont like a thing so its HuRtInG tHe GaMe" routine but with a walk of text. Neat.

[Firetrucksrule]

3 hours ago, Cubewano said:

but nothing as severe as we have now. Not in durability, not in ability nullification, not in cc spam or multi layered damage gates. 

Gee you mean the game's actually progressed in those years? Good, it's always been to easy. Hope they double down on that strategy. Worst part about this game is the enemies are all like high school girls, we keep getting stronger, they stay the same age *cough* level. 

Seriously if you think maiming strike is the only problem then you haven't kept up with the current meta too well. Most squads can one shot eidolons without maiming strike melee. Most bosses, at least without I frames, can be insta killed without melee. Grineer drop ships can be killed quickly without melee. Nox can be easily near insta killed up to ridiculous levels without melee. Even solo demolyst kills are easy without melee up to at least the fourth round, eighth if you've got a decent weapon. 

Yes DE needs to introduce more powerful and difficult enemies to keep caught up with our power level. While I can't fathom how that could be a bad thing, nerfing melee won't change the need for that.

[seprent]

40 minutes ago, (XB1)ECCHO SIERRA said:

Ah, the old "I dont like a thing so its HuRtInG tHe GaMe" routine but with a walk of text. Neat.

oh no the walls of text have evolved they can walk now everyone briskly jog for your lives less you die of boredom 

[Cubewano]

Just now, Firetrucksrule said:

Gee you mean the game's actually progressed in those years? Good, it's always been to easy. Hope they double down on that strategy. Worst part about this game is the enemies are all like high school girls, we keep getting stronger, they stay the same age *cough* level. 

Seriously if you think maiming strike is the only problem then you haven't kept up with the current meta too well. Most squads can one shot eidolons without maiming strike melee. Most bosses, at least without I frames, can be insta killed without melee. Grineer drop ships can be killed quickly without melee. Nox can be easily near insta killed up to ridiculous levels without melee. Even solo demolyst kills are easy without melee up to at least the fourth round, eighth if you've got a decent weapon. 

Yes DE needs to introduce more powerful and difficult enemies to keep caught up with our power level. While I can't fathom how that could be a bad thing, nerfing melee won't change the need for that.

Progress is an interpretation of what has happened sure, not one I would fully subscribe to, being forced into a more restrictive design direction to create a semblance of difficulty feels like a regression to me, but to each their own. I do agree that enemies have failed to keep in line with us (or us keep in line with them) however, but that's also more or less why boss design has reached where it has, because enemies didn't keep up and frankly can't keep up with our progression pardon hard limitations. 

I don't think maiming strike is the only problem with this game, it is just one branch on the tree, but it is still a problem none the less. 

Nerfing cheese mechanics/combinations will help facilitate more challenging content/enemies. 

 

[Firetrucksrule]

9 minutes ago, Cubewano said:

being forced into a more restrictive design direction to create a semblance of difficulty is exactly how every other succesful MMO style game addresses progression. 

FTFY

I've never viewed needing to get better gear when I level up in a game as being restricted. This is literally the only game I've ever seen where people even make that argument. If you want to get stronger you need stronger gear and should have more powerful enemies to use it against. If DE isn't willing to do that then we'll never see further progression from where we are. 

There's more cheese in this game than the majority player base, or I even suspect the devs are aware of. 

They will never be able to clean up this mess with player nerfs, all that'll happen is the meta will continually shift. Nerfing things just makes less options viable, it doesn't make the alternatives any better. If you need to build for level 250+ enemies then right now you have a lot of options to go with. Nering MS or saryn or Mesa or w/e won't make it so you can't cheese that level of content. It'll just reduce the number of options we currently have towards building for it. 

[Cubewano]

27 minutes ago, Firetrucksrule said:

FTFY

I've never viewed needing to get better gear when I level up in a game as being restricted. This is literally the only game I've ever seen where people even make that argument. If you want to get stronger you need stronger gear and should have more powerful enemies to use it against. If DE isn't willing to do that then we'll never see further progression from where we are. 

There's more cheese in this game than the majority player base, or I even suspect the devs are aware of. 

They will never be able to clean up this mess with player nerfs, all that'll happen is the meta will continually shift. Nerfing things just makes less options viable, it doesn't make the alternatives any better. If you need to build for level 250+ enemies then right now you have a lot of options to go with. Nering MS or saryn or Mesa or w/e won't make it so you can't cheese that level of content. It'll just reduce the number of options we currently have towards building for it. 

I don't recall many games in my experience turning off full parts of your character regularly to impose challenges, usually they just push the limits of available systems, and ya know, make sure the systems have maintained limits to test. In gear based games as you've brought up they have limits to your gear so you don't make content invalid, and then build around the ranges you are supposed to be in. They don't disable gear, they don't toggle off your class abilities, as means to create difficulty. Similarly shooters don't disable your guns, or randomly remove or alter your ability to aim or move as a means of challenge, they test the limits of those systems instead, they build towards being more precise with gunplay, more mobile or spatially aware with movement systems. What games are you playing that are shutting off systems of the game to make things challenging? 

And I don't think they'll fix this mess without nerfs, we have no power ceiling right now, and that's just not something you can balance around without nerfs. Whether by just nerfing us outright so we aren't so mindbogglingly broken with our weaponry and durability and range, or indirectly as they have more recently done with boss fights who just circumvent aspects of our arsenal, I can't see balance coming without restrictions to our otherwise limitless power potential. I'm also not sure how you think bringing down the highest preformers so other categories can compete, and team play can be reintegrated into the game, results in less options. The whole effect of highest preformers/metas is that they damage choice, and the broader the divide is between the top preformers and the rest the worse that situation gets. CC effectively died as a result of nukes, an entire category of play, that isn't bringing more options, it's homogenizing what doesn't fit the new bill. Likewise with maiming, most people using the same weapons and same builds in the same uniform playstyle is not an expansion of choice. 

[DDixon286]

Honestly I don’t really use miming strike as much...sure it’s nice to have if you’re gonna go for a super long survival but other than that why? If you think maiming strike should be nerfed then what about blood rush? This mod drastically increases damage much more than maiming strike with no downsides whatsoever. 

[Firetrucksrule]

1 hour ago, Cubewano said:

I don't recall many games in my experience turning off full parts of your character regularly to impose challenges

 

1 hour ago, Cubewano said:

They don't disable gear, they don't toggle off your class abilities, as means to create difficulty

Nullifiers basically just cast an aoe silence spell. If you seriously haven't seen a silence spell mechanic then I can only imagine haven't played very many rpgs. It's a pretty common feature and if anything it's easier to deal with in warframe than most games with a comparable feature. They're very easy to bypass and only disable your abilities in a pretty small zone. 

Beyond that plenty of games tie in mechanics to make bosses immune to different things. Mild puzzling, weak points, different stages or even mechanics that just stretch out the fight are pretty commonplace in boss fights outside of warframe. Even a really basic game like maplestory uses physical/magic immunity and reflection statuses in their boss fights. I always thought the modern bosses in Warframe are all massively superior to the old bosses because they use those some of those different mechanics now too.

1 hour ago, Cubewano said:

In gear based games as you've brought up they have limits to your gear so you don't make content invalid

Except old content usually is invalid in those games once you've geared past them. Unless the game uses a fair fight mechanic you just delete everything in front of you and get little in terms of worthwhile sustainable rewards. 

1 hour ago, Cubewano said:

Similarly shooters don't disable your guns, or randomly remove or alter your ability to aim or move as a means of challenge

Where in warframe, other than sortie challenges, are your guns actually disabled? A good gun with a good build will scale well into the level hundreds, thousands with the appropriate ability synergies. Even a typical maiming strike melee build isn't worth using for long unless you have a good status spreader to strip armor before you hit. 

1 hour ago, Cubewano said:

or indirectly as they have more recently done with boss fights who just circumvent aspects of our arsenal

That's not a nerf, that's just a boss mechanic. There should be more of those. On top of everything else it helps make the player base smarter about how they build and play. Guns, powers, and melee are all overpowered compared to our enemies, it's good that players learn to use all of them properly with bosses. I'd rather we just get regular enemies that scale to our current power but for boss fights thats an excellent fix in the mean time. 

1 hour ago, Cubewano said:

I'm also not sure how you think bringing down the highest preformers so other categories can compete, and team play can be reintegrated into the game, results in less options.

Right now if I want to jump into a survival and go up against level 500+ enemies I can make it up there with melee weapons, with just guns or with just powers. If you nerf one of those so I can't then you haven't made me any less able to perform that feat, you've just eliminated one of my valuable options to do so. The top end of any of our offenses, gun blade our power, is so high that you'll never be scaled out of that option unless you're going for a try hard multi hour endurance run.

Unless you're aiming for over two hours at selkie or mot those two other categories very much can compete. If you're actually pushing past that then you should be very well familiar to the fact that at the top level some methods of killing will always be better than others.

1 hour ago, Cubewano said:

CC effectively died as a result of nukes, an entire category of play

No, CC effectively died as a result of DE's decision to continue progressing player power while regressing or maintaining enemy power. CC was never particularly useful in general star chart missions, nukes were always better for that even then.

CC was valuable back in  the day because the game's void system encouraged players to somewhat regularly run endurance missions past the point that their frames could damage anything. If you got hit once you were dead and no warframe could hit high enough with ability damage to continue.

Crowd control could keep the team alive and keep the enemies down while they fed bullets into the sponges. Melee was also nearly universally considered worthless trash back then, just good for coptering. If we either had stronger enemies or had a real motivation to go for long runs again you'd start seeing support builds and CC builds become more valuable again. 

1 hour ago, Cubewano said:

that isn't bringing more options, it's homogenizing what doesn't fit the new bill. 

Like before when melee was trash and CC was king and the only things that mattered to an endurance run was 4* CP a CC frame and a lot of bullets? This game has always been about meta hopping through homogenized setups. The only difference between then and now is that unless you're aiming to fight enemies well over the level 500+ range, the top option for a run isn't the only option for a run anymore.

Edited July 3, 2019 by Firetrucksrule

[(PSN)dursereg]

I have 92 melee weapons and only one is modded with maiming strike and i haven't used that weapons in over 2 years.

[bibmobello]

i use maiming strike only on the shaku because i have a riven with +damage, +crit change on slide, +80% damage against corpus... Otherwise the weapon is pretty useless but for stripping armor against eidolon.

Edited July 3, 2019 by bibmobello

[Melanholic7]

omg. And what about slide crit in rivens? nerf all? so people will lose probably thousands of plat cause of this? If its boring to you - DONT USE IT. Simple as that.  

Also, zthere always will be some “best op weapon” build. Anyway. 

and even more - maim strike enables some super useless weapon, so they are good in late game. And u want make them trash again. Pathetic “veteran player”. 

Edited July 3, 2019 by Melanholic7

[bibmobello]

Just now, Melanholic7 said:

omg. And what about slide crit in rivens? nerf all? so people will lose probably thousands of plat cause of this? If its boring to you - DONT USE IT. Simple as that.  

We are not speaking about nerfing anything, we are speaking about abusing such system. It's pretty stupid to see people spinning for hours using macros.

[Melanholic7]

58 минут назад, bibmobello сказал:

We are not speaking about nerfing anything, we are speaking about abusing such system. It's pretty stupid to see people spinning for hours using macros.

it will be just slower with same keybuttons without maiming strike and macros, lol. Just weaker and more hurting players hand. So, ur purpose is to make players suffer, cause its hard to play for a long time without slide macros  while using it with ur own hands? wise. 

Edited July 3, 2019 by Melanholic7

[kwlingo]

lol I will say Im one of those players and use berserker and arcane fury so Im the guy you guys are chasing killing everything in front of you. lol

[(NSW)Katsuro]

On ‎2019‎-‎07‎-‎02 at 10:59 AM, JaxMess said:

In a recent post I made about blocking and it's current state in Warframe I had a segment talking about [Maiming Strike] and it's current place within the game.

I will make a video illustrating my points. EDIT: VIDEO ADDED

My argument is that in it's current form it introduces a Dominant Strategy into Warframe.

A Dominant Strategy in this case is defined as something that "just always works" requiring no thought, no use of clever mod combinations, and no use of game mechanics. This problem is greatly exacerbated by the growing and prominent use of "spin to win" macros in order to automate the process of inputting perfectly timed spin-attacks to not only optimize movement, but also DPS.

This does not imply or explicitly state that the mod is "over-powered" although in this case I think there are many arguments for this.

Also, I think this is probably a PC problem, I have never played Warframe on anything other than PC and am unfamiliar with the potential for macros in the console space. Because of this I am not speaking to anything other than my own experience.

The Problems:

A Dominant Strategy -

One of the indicators of a problem as I see it is simply that every time I load into a mission there is a higher than 50% chance that at least 2 of the "random" teammates I'm grouped with will be using a [Maiming Strike] + Macro build (excluding myself - Yes I also use one, more on that later).

This is an enormous red flag, reminiscent of the days when loading into a mission there was a higher than 50% chance that 2 of the "random" teammates I'm grouped with were using the Tonkor; a weapon that had it's critical strike chance greatly reduced and brought in line with other explosive weapons by adding self-damage. A welcome and needed change in my opinion, and one that greatly improved the game as far as I'm concerned. The Tonkor introduced a Dominant Strategy(DS) into Warframe at that time, and once players came across it, they adopted it, consciously or not. That is the inherent problem with a DS.

Further discussion about DS might help to consider that any video game based in PvP dies a quick death once a DS is found unless a "balance patch" is issued to deal with it. I'm not going to provide any examples, because I'm sure just reading this your mind lept to the first time you were on the receiving end of one. This is not to say that there aren't imbalances or holes in any PvP game, those things are not a DS, a DS is, by definition, dominating in it's field. "The thing that always works."

[Maiming Strike] -

My major beef with [Maiming Strike] is that it does too many things for too little cost; it's too efficient. And because of this it greatly hurts melee as an effective game system, and makes melee weaker as a result.

I know based on how many responses I've already responded to that people think that I want it "nerfed" or to make melee weaker or to make it deal less damage or to make certain weapons less prominently used or to kill fewer enemies all at once - I don't care about any of those things. What I care about is melee as a whole, a game system, and it's health within Warframe. I want melee to be a more robust system within Warframe. While there are many issues that contribute, melee weapon range and range mods, for example. [Maiming Strike] is just one of them, and the one I'm focused on in this post.

So what about [Maiming Strike] makes it so prone to Dominant Strategy? Slide attacks. Slide attacks already do lots of things. It's a movement ability. It often has higher base damage. It looks cool. It's fun to use. It's easily made into a looping macro. It attacks in a wider than usual attack arc. Simply put, it does too many things. Adding a flat improvement to critical strike on all melee weapons during the already dangerously-close-to-being-a-Dominant-Strategy slide attack, just further cements it as "the obvious choice," in any melee situation. Again, this isn't about whether or not it deals the most damage, or having the same results achieved by some other measure. It's about answering the question "why wouldn't I choose a slide attack if slide attacking solves all of my problems?"

Arguments I've already rebuked:

[Maiming Strike] is not as powerful as Xmod or Yweapon or Zability, therefore it cannot introduce a DS.

This argument is attempting to fight an argument that is not the one I am presenting. A DS is not dependent on anything other than the use cases it finds itself contained within, nor does it matter if something else "does more damage" or "is more effective against shields" or whatever other scenario is displayed. The only thing that matters is the principal of "least resistance," as applied to what it can accomplish with minimal effort. In this case the argument is not that it's "too strong" or "too overpowered," the argument is that it's "too efficient" and shuts out other options.

[Maiming Strike] is only viable on weapons that have long base range, therefore it cannot introduce a DS.

This is simply fundamentally untrue. While the problem is great exacerbated on whips and other weapons with a long base range, much in the same way that the macro makes the problem worse, to say that simply making the mod unusable on whips would make it's inherent problems disappear is simply false.

[Maiming Strike] is very difficult to get, therefore it cannot introduce a DS.

There is some validity to this argument, in my opinion, which is why I think the flat critical stat is fine on [Riven] mods, but even still, a universally equip-able mod that only takes 7 capacity drain is a problem. Potentially, making the [Maiming Strike] cost what's worth in terms of drain, 15 or 16 by my calculation, may fix the problem outright. However, it also just may make people use more [Forma] and only slightly delay the problem.

So what's your point?

Does any of this really even matter? No. What's your point? What do you want out of making this post?

I dunno man! I'm just so freaking sick of loading into a mission and everyone just twirling away the enemies in a race to the end. With melee 3.0 just around the corner I feel like they have an extremely good window to address a lot of the things that make the current melee system lackluster. My previous post about blocking, this post about [Maiming Strike], I think a lot about Warframe, it's Devs, and it's community and I hope to see all of them happy! In this case it feels like I'm telling everyone to "take their medicine" or at the least telling the Devs to make the community "take their medicine" which I'm sure a lot of people don't want to hear, but I wouldn't bother if I honestly didn't feel like changes to these systems wouldn't be beneficial to all parties involved.

Basically, I think of it like this: Spin-attacks are really freaking cool, honestly one of my favorite parts of Warframe, but they are a spice, not the main course. Spin attacks are the cinnamon of the Warframe ingredient list. You cannot live on cinnamon alone, in fact, eating pure cinnamon is toxic and can kill you. But as a smaller part of a greater whole, it can dramatically improve the entire dish. For the last few years, playing Warframe is increasingly more and more cinnamon flavored, to the point where if I don't also just eat cinnamon in many cases, I'm basically left behind.

So what can be done?

I want to include some ideas for potential fixes, not because I think [DE] should listen to me, but because I don't like being the type of person who complains or raises issue with something without already having a potential solution to suggest. I am honestly trying to help after all. My hope is that suggestions like these inspire the right people to make a better and more informed decision that I can.

1. Simply make it normal crit and not flat-additive crit. (This will piss a lot of people off, but honestly this just makes a lot of sense to me. MS is the only mod in the game that gives flat crit. That means it's universally equip-able and has a 100% uptime. The only other things that give flat crit that I can think of are the Harrow buff and the Kavat buff. Things that are both fine in my opinion.)
2. Give it an internal cooldown. (Once every 8 seconds? Every 15? Every 30? Maybe it lasts for 5 seconds every 15 seconds? The options here are endless.) 
3. Remove the mod outright. (Potentially there could be some amount of compensation if this is the route taken, anything from just giving all weapons higher base crit, applying the mod to all weapons at all times, doing nothing to compensate, increasing melee base damage - basically anything, but I think this is the least likely option anyway.)
4. Increase the capacity drain cost. (Again, without access to the internal code and basic design philosophy of the Dev team it seems to me that it should be worth 15 or 16 drain, that makes it 8 with a [Forma], but again, this might not solve the problem of it's overuse and over-saturation at all.)
5. Make it equip-able only on the melee weapons that the Acolytes use. (I really like the way this one ties into the world and the story.)
6. Some combination of the aforementioned suggestions? (Maybe give it normal crit all the time and flat crit on a cooldown?)
7. Do nothing. (Honestly, I meant to have written in my other post about how because this option gets boring and tedious after a few years, it tends to fall off after people use it for a while. Because just holding a macro is often less fun than actually playing the video game, maybe all they need to do is make the other melee option more fun than just partially AFK grinding by holding a macro button.

Anyway, thanks for reading!

Video: (If you're watching this freshly uploaded, the resolution will improve after YouTube finishes processing it. Just wait til then I guess.)

 

If you care so much about what others do in a video game instead of just enjoying your own game.

Make Maiming strike effect apply to block combos only or any combo in general but no effect on slide attacks.

[Heiven]

"Why MS hurts warframe as a whole!"

Well lets see the illustration video and see why you ended to that conclusion.Venka prime the "fun build",only crit mods and mods for speed(+ smite grineer for god knows what reason).No elemental mods or even pressure point,only crit and speed - 60 sec later all enemy's dead.Then the "MS build" Ppp,CO,MS,crit mods and elemental mods for max viral dmg - 23 secs later all enemy's dead.

And boom the verdict that MS shuts down other options just because of it self!?!Mmm yeah,no nope not even close.If it was the same build with MS and after without it plus time detected to see just how much it adds up sure but not this.This was basically like showing a comparison of a unmoded weapon to its self but fully moded with the argument at the end that just because of that 1 mod the weapons goes full nuclear.

 

On 2019-07-02 at 5:59 PM, JaxMess said:

One of the indicators of a problem as I see it is simply that every time I load into a mission there is a higher than 50% chance that at least 2 of the "random" teammates I'm grouped with will be using a [Maiming Strike] + Macro build

So do you ask the players if they are going with a MS and Macro build every time you go in a mission?!And in the span of how many missions people were with this set up of the total missions you played?!So far good argument for your claim but i don't see the facts to this.

[Cubewano]

32 minutes ago, Firetrucksrule said:

Nullifiers basically just cast an aoe silence spell. If you seriously haven't seen a silence spell mechanic then I can only imagine haven't played very many rpgs. It's a pretty common feature and if anything it's easier to deal with in warframe than most games with a comparable feature. They're very easy to bypass and only disable your abilities in a pretty small zone. 

Outside turn based rpgs? Not really. And fights with a perma silence spell? Not at all that I can recall. 

32 minutes ago, Firetrucksrule said:

Beyond that plenty of games tie in mechanics to make bosses immune to different things. Mild puzzling, weak points, different stages or even mechanics that just stretch out the fight are pretty commonplace in boss fights outside of warframe. Even a really basic game like maplestory uses physical/magic immunity and reflection statuses in their boss fights. I always thought the modern bosses in Warframe are all massively superior to the old bosses because they use those some of those different mechanics now too.

Making people utilize mechanics better is not the same as removing mechanics. Being asked to utilize your aim better is not removing aiming. Asking for platforming is not removing mobility. So on and so forth, do you specific examples of games circumventing core systems to create difficulty though because that was a bit of a vague response. Maplestory for example is a very stat focused game with a linear progression path so it plays to that strength with class roles and stat distribution systems, and then you build around those stats and roles to counter enemy resistances. Warframe doesn't have too dissimilar a system with modding, which is meant to be a vague progression path for gear for us, with numerous stat values the go in kind with enemies own unique stat values, unfortunately however the system is under utilized in Warframe because a combination of power creep and high priority mandatory mods invalidate the importance generally of those individualized stats and subsequently the purpose of build diversity and utilization. DE hasn't done much to utilize the system better, there was the attempt with status 2.5 to bring down some stat values into better sync that never fell through, and the want at some point to remove serration as a first step at addressing the more high value default mods that also never fell through, but I will acknowledge at least Profit Taker made some use of the system though in a very messy kind of unorthodox way. I can only imagine how much more interesting our build system would be if build diversity mattered to any real extent beyond one boss. 

32 minutes ago, Firetrucksrule said:

Except old content usually is invalid in those games once you've geared past them. Unless the game uses a fair fight mechanic you just delete everything in front of you and get little in terms of worthwhile sustainable rewards. 

To which they bring new content to match the new levels because even solely gear progression focused games are aware there needs to be a balance between players and whatever content they are facing. 

32 minutes ago, Firetrucksrule said:

Where in warframe, other than sortie challenges, are your guns actually disabled? A good gun with a good build will scale well into the level hundreds, thousands with the appropriate ability synergies. Even a typical maiming strike melee build isn't worth using for long unless you have a good status spreader to strip armor before you hit. 

Didn't say they were? And there isn't any content that a maiming strike build can't dominate outside absurd endurance runs which it isn't reasonable or promoted for people do. 

32 minutes ago, Firetrucksrule said:

That's not a nerf, that's just a boss mechanic. There should be more of those. On top of everything else it helps make the player base smarter about how they build and play. Guns, powers, and melee are all overpowered compared to our enemies, it's good that players learn to use all of them properly with bosses. I'd rather we just get regular enemies that scale to our current power but for boss fights thats an excellent fix in the mean time. 

It is a nerf, it is an action that weakens our performance/tools and causes them to do less than they originally could. Making a gun deal less damage by reducing it's damage output directly is no different from making it deal less damage through added damage mitigation on an enemy, it's purely optics. But at least we agree indirect nerfs aren't a good permanent solution it seems.

32 minutes ago, Firetrucksrule said:

Right now if I want to jump into a survival and go up against level 500+ enemies I can make it up there with melee weapons, with just guns or with just powers. If you nerf one of those so I can't then you haven't made me any less able to perform that feat, you've just eliminated one of my valuable options to do so. The top end of any of our offenses, gun blade our power, is so high that you'll never be scaled out of that option unless you're going for a try hard multi hour endurance run.

Which is why you should address them on all fields clearly. Of course DE shouldn't just balance melee and leave everything else alone, that'd be pointless. 

32 minutes ago, Firetrucksrule said:

No, CC effectively died as a result of DE's decision to continue progressing player power while regressing or maintaining enemy power. CC was never particularly useful in general star chart missions, nukes were always better for that even then.

So what I said, powercreep into the nuke/dps meta killed off the value of cc. 

32 minutes ago, Firetrucksrule said:

CC was valuable back in  the day because the game's void system encouraged players to somewhat regularly run endurance missions past the point that their frames could damage anything. If you got hit once you were dead and no warframe could hit high enough with ability damage to continue.

Fairly accurate, CC was valuable back in the day because enemies were still capable of being threats to us and we couldn't kill them at the pace we can now so they were able to actually fire and land shots if you weren't properly shutting them down. Not much of an option today since nearly all nukes scale which was similarly not a thing back then.

32 minutes ago, Firetrucksrule said:

Crowd control could keep the team alive and keep the enemies down while they fed bullets into the sponges. Melee was also nearly universally considered worthless trash back then, just good for coptering. If we either had stronger enemies or had a real motivation to go for long runs again you'd start seeing support builds and CC builds become more valuable again. 

Which is all a support can do, take away the enemies with say near instant map clearing high scaling nukes that don't even need los and then you no longer need the holding down bit all that much. Bringing back more incentives for endless would not change the impact the growth of nukes has had on content, amongst other power creep factors, after all death is just a more effective method of cc and its just as easily applied these days. The recent disruption event showed me that fairly well, the only reason to even bother with a cc frame was for the Demolyst if their cc worked, otherwise just killing everything with immense firepower was far more practical even for extensive runs. Also I'm not sure what you're on about with melee, but stealth melee was one of the most powerful combos in the game, and I had Loki's provide dps during endless runs back in the old void. 

32 minutes ago, Firetrucksrule said:

Like before when melee was trash and CC was king and the only things that mattered to an endurance run was 4* CP a CC frame and a lot of bullets? This game has always been about meta hopping through homogenized setups. The only difference between then and now is that unless you're aiming to fight enemies well over the level 500+ range, the top option for a run isn't the only option for a run anymore.

Melee still seems to be a mess outside specific combinations. And do you mean back when team composition still had some semblance of value, and filling roles was desirable? Sure CC may have been king, but at least it wasn't just fifty shades of aoe clear, you could bring multiple frames to cover multiple roles, and the game wasn't just being the fastest to the room/cast. So sure we had metas, but they were far more diverse, and complimentary of team play. The gap of effectiveness between what was and wasn't meta in the past is laughable to the size of the gap we have now. 

[Cubewano]

1 hour ago, Melanholic7 said:

omg. And what about slide crit in rivens? nerf all? so people will lose probably thousands of plat cause of this? If its boring to you - DONT USE IT. Simple as that.  

If it's busted why not? DE do it with rivens, and if DE shouldn't touch anything people potentially invest in then they could change a single thing in the game post launch. Does this apply to all broken combos, do we also get to just not do the balance decisions made in response to such methods? Exclude players from matchmaking who use such methods since they clash with group play? How is the simple way to navigate around this without great hindrances? 

1 hour ago, Melanholic7 said:

Also, zthere always will be some “best op weapon” build. Anyway. 

and even more - maim strike enables some super useless weapon, so they are good in late game. And u want make them trash again. Pathetic “veteran player”. 

Not a reason to ignore balance. Sure there will likely always be best tools, but the divide between the best and worst can be made closer for a better and more balanced experience. Fortunately the OP isn't even asking to bring down maiming strike, but rather bring up other melee methods to match it which I assume you didn't get to. 

1 hour ago, Melanholic7 said:

and even more - maim strike enables some super useless weapon, so they are good in late game. And u want make them trash again. Pathetic “veteran player”. 

That sounds like a bandaid fix that should be looked at. All weapons are supposed to be viable for all content, that weapon should be getting rebalanced, not propped up with a mandatory mod to work. Nobody wants weapons to be terribly weak or useless, at most they just want balance done better. (stance improvements, stat updates, those are the things that should be getting applied to the weapons you speak of)

[Firetrucksrule]

4 hours ago, Cubewano said:

Outside turn based rpgs? Not really. And fights with a perma silence spell? Not at all that I can recall. 

I literally just got silenced on Oblivion about an hour ago. I'm sorry, what fight in warframe has you perma nullified? I'm really lost on that. 

4 hours ago, Cubewano said:

do you specific examples of games circumventing core systems to create difficulty though because that was a bit of a vague response. Maplestory for example is a very stat focused game

When a boss puts up magic reflect and you're playing a mage your entire existence is irrelevant until it goes down. They don't do that for any reason other than to pad put fights for longer and give the bosses more chances to kill you. That's why I mentioned MS, because it's probably one of the most accessible MMOs where someone could have seen that. That happens all across the genre with boss battles.

My buddy was playing the last wow expansion and he was complaining that he was made irrelevant for a raid boss. Can't remember his exact complaint and he said there was a way to manage but on mythic melee characters being close to a boss could get the squad killed because of some obscure mechanics. His class is melee only, that's about as much of a core mechanic circumvention as I think you can get. 

4 hours ago, Cubewano said:

Didn't say they were? And there isn't any content that a maiming strike build can't dominate outside absurd endurance runs which it isn't reasonable or promoted for people do. 

There also isn't any content that a nuke frame can't dominate outside of ridiculous endurance runs. I've beaten out people using memeing strike by try harding with launchers before. The reverse has also happened to me when I was spin2winning. If someone wants to get the most kills, or even outright hog them every match they'll find a way to no matter what happens to melee. Unless you're intentionally bringing bad weapons anything can absolutely dominate any content.

Also even though it's often considered a fail, arbitrations were released to promote long endurance runs. I've also definitely seen Megan and Rebecca go 90 minutes on the kuva survival map for a prime time before. It's not widely promoted anymore but I wouldn't say it outright isn't. 

4 hours ago, Cubewano said:

To which they bring new content to match the new levels because even solely gear progression focused games are aware there needs to be a balance between players and whatever content they are facing. 

Which is exactly what I've been asking for. Every. Single. Comment. This game is too easy to the point that it feels like the devs are scared to bring out high level challenges. Aside from the odd crumb here or there this hasn't happened since the old void got ruined like 3 years ago now. 

4 hours ago, Cubewano said:

It is a nerf, it is an action that weakens our performance/tools and causes them to do less than they originally could. Making a gun deal less damage by reducing it's damage output directly is no different from making it deal less damage through added damage mitigation on an enemy, it's purely optics. But at least we agree indirect nerfs aren't a good permanent solution it seems.

Buffing enemies isn't a nerf. Releasing stronger enemies with natural damage resistance is no different than releasing enemies with a natural larger health pool. What matters for the game play there is how their resistances relate to their ehp, not how their resistances relate to your damage. Enemy guns weren't nerfed when inaros came out, or when we got gara's 90% squad DR. That's like saying releasing higher hp enemies nerfs weapons because they can't kill as quick. Tougher enemies isn't a nerf, it's a buff just not one for the players. I do agree that it's a bandaid fix to the real problem but it's one that fits quite nicely on a boss. 

4 hours ago, Cubewano said:

So what I said, powercreep into the nuke/dps meta killed off the value of cc. 

The value of CC was always reduced in the star chart. CC was still king when everyone was spamming radial javelin in Draco. There just happened to be things it was good for and things it wasn't, CC was never particularly valued in your typical low level star chart runs. Thanks for taking that statement out of the context of its next qualifying point so you can pretend I agreed with you though. 

4 hours ago, Cubewano said:

Bringing back more incentives for endless would not change the impact the growth of nukes has had on content

And removing nukes would just leave us with one less trick in the bag. Saryn still has a time to kill and still benefits from support on endless runs. If you can keep her going up against level 1000 enemies without a squad with good support abilities going then you're a lot better than almost anyone else here. Endless runs and legitimately high level enemies, not this low level arbitration junk, would necessitate team mates for most of the player population even if they have a nuke with them. 

4 hours ago, Cubewano said:

Also I'm not sure what you're on about with melee, but stealth melee was one of the most powerful combos in the game

Yes and if you knew how to take advantage of stealth slash/gas procs then you could get your dps up into the millions before focus even came out. Regardless most people considered it trash because unstealthed melee was notorious for getting people killed and regular melee attacks typically did less damage than good gun builds. I do appreciate that you knew that though, I've got some great memories of using stealth gas builds before they fixed the damage. 

4 hours ago, Cubewano said:

Melee still seems to be a mess outside specific combinations.

Memeing strike builds, condition overload builds, hybrid crit builds, builds that use all of those features into one and a handful of pure status builds are all really high damage. There's lots of options for building high damage melee. No offense to anyone but if something's a mess with melee then it's probably either not a good weapon or not built very well. 

4 hours ago, Cubewano said:

And do you mean back when team composition still had some semblance of value, and filling roles was desirable?

If you wanted to run a 3 hour survival those roles would still be important. If we had content of an equivalent scaling they would be as well. You'd want to go with a squad that looked something along these lines. You'd want either a killer or a nuke. You'd want something like a Volt so the squad can use his shield to survive. You'd want either a nekros or a speed nova to keep up spawns or life support. You'd have a lot of freedom on the number 4 to either shoal up a weakness, add some CC or survivability, get a buffer or even another damage dealer. It's a different comp than the classic void run but the biggest difference isn't our arsenal, it's the modern lack of reason we'd ever have to be in that situation. 

4 hours ago, Cubewano said:

The recent disruption event showed me that fairly well, the only reason to even bother with a cc frame was for the Demolyst if their cc worked

And that game mode was a completely different beast than the rest of the game though. That mode was designed almost entirely around the notion of maximizing player damage. Aside from the amalgam that had a Komorex the enemies weren't much of a threat even in late rounds. Only real gate for the whole mode was how much damage you could fit in a small time span. Even then it was only particularly onerous if you were shooting for a ridiculous endurance score.

I also understand magus lock down could keep the demolyst basically perma locked down. I was kind of annoyed with all the cheaters on that event so I was being super stubborn about not cheesing and didn't test it, but if it worked right then one person using that could make up for the other 3 people not doing enough damage. Which I guess just shows why they added the nulli pulses in the first place. 

 

Edit: after looking at this post we've gone completely off the tracks. Not going to ask you to not respond but for the sake of everyone else's scroll wheels I think I'll make this my last comment on this exact issue here. 

Edited July 4, 2019 by Firetrucksrule

[Alpha56]

Don't allow macro, at all.

Il y a 7 heures, Melanholic7 a dit :

it will be just slower with same keybuttons without maiming strike and macros, lol. Just weaker and more hurting players hand. So, ur purpose is to make players suffer, cause its hard to play for a long time without slide macros  while using it with ur own hands? wise. 

What are you talking about ?

So basically you are saying that you are scared to make suffer your hands by using some combinaisons of touch, by playing the game in a normal (legit) manner ?

Wasn't using a combinaison of keys something that should be rewarding on purpose (like on any games that use heavy attacks, melee combo) ?

Slides attack aren't the problem, noor maiming strike, people will use macro for combo too, and everything that will follow.

Some peoples are abusing slides attack + maiming strike because of macro, they are lazy and prefer to make all the community suffer, because they don't want play the game normally.

I think that all of this mess came from macro users, abusers at first, it's time i think to adress the problem mess and make something about this.

 

The solution is to BAN definitely macro of the game.

Just do it DE.

 

I would have named the topic :

Why [Macro Users] Hurts Warframe as a Whole (Including Making Lose Devs Time)

Edited July 4, 2019 by Alpha56