In the wake of Wukong's Rework

[Formous]

So I think we can all say Wukong's rework was a big success.  However as I watched Tribulos' video on the matter, he raises a very good point regarding Wukong's minion.  For once, the Minion is actually work a damn. 

Obviously, It's quite strong, and I know people are enjoying playing around with this new Prime, but I want to raise a point.  I think it is a good idea now for DE to take a look at ALL minion based powers and address their flaws.  What comes to mind most of all is Nekros's Shadows of the Dead. Being the prime example of a Minion Spell, as it summons the most foes and is integral to Nekros' survival with the augment, These undead minions lose potency massively come the later levels.  While resummoning them as the enemy level increases can help, it's by no means actually going to see these pets landing all that many kills. If any.  While I certainly use my pets to go on a Scythe-ing spree, They only ever draw bullets away from me and mitigate damage, while shooting nerf darts.  Other classes of minions like Venari are also quite bad, not making use of mods like swipe when calculating it's special attack, and said attack only works in one of Venari's modes.

 

Given how strong Wukong's Twin is, I would like to make a request of Pablo or the Design team to look at the deficiencies of the other Minion types like Shadows of the dead and Please increase their viability and Lethality.  While Nekros can be fun to watch the undead kill things at level 20-30, they can't usually kill things, especially against infested and grineer, at anything 40 and above.  And 30 is pushing it as it is.  

 

While it's easy to propose their damage scale higher (and it REALLy should. And maybe have some kind of status proc to help their viabilities, IE. copy nekros' primary weapon's status effects?), I would like to hear ideas on how to improve the other minion based powers. Nyx's Minion is laughable to a extreme, given it can be shooting walls half the time instead of foes.  Ironically, It's nekros' pets that seem to engage the best with foes, but that may be due to them being actual enemies and fighting like them.  Furthermore, improving their DPS and effectiveness at a Base level would help nekros players get to summon pets and viably say the pets are helpful. (they are guys. 7 less foes won't hurt your pretty little drops if Nekros is properly desecrating.) 

[LascarCapable]

Heh dunno I'm still not very fond of Defy and the exalted weapon. But I'm not a Wukong main.

First of all it is necessary to say that Wukong's clone works very well because it's a specter. The main perks of a specter AI is that they won't waste some precious time with useless animations, contrary to enemies, while also being able to use a copy of the user's weapon and mods. A huge part of the weakness of Mind Control and Shadow Of The Dead lie in the way enemy AI is coded and the fact that they don't scale the same way.

Despite that, Shadow Of The Dead doesn't need a buff really (aside from fixing the enemy AI). You're supposed to use them more as a distraction than anything. There's so much of them, it will distract enemies very easly. If in addition to that they become powerful enough to clear Sortie level content, it's a press 4 to win power.

On the other hand, I agree that Nyx's Mind Control is quite disappointing. It would be much more acceptable if your duration wasn't limited. Right now, you have something like 30 seconds of Mind Control and the enemy wastes like 15 of those. No more duration means that at least the MC target can afford to waste a bit of time mid animation since it wouldn't reduce your precious MC duration (duration is infinite and power is channelled, a bit like Hydroid's Undertow or any exalted weapon). Of course changing the AI so it won't try to do stupid stuff such as shooting a wall would be a no brainer.

[Isokaze_BestKaze]

I disagree with you on Khora's Venari. Sure it's not the best DPS around especially at higher level, but leaving it as a permanent healer is actually pretty damn useful. Also since you can set up Venari like a Pet, it have a lot of very useful ability like opening lockers, stunning enemies and so on.

And it's pretty much unkillable.

Paired with another Kavat or with a utility/offensive Moa it makes a very good combo and makes Khora a pretty fun and tanky frame.

However I do agree that Wukong overshadow other summoning ability. Loki's 1 comes to my mind. As well as Wisp's 2 (well this one is more of a teleport ability than anything else) or Nyx Mind Control.

Edited July 8, 2019 by Isokaze_BestKaze

[(PSN)smb-twisted]

36 minutes ago, Formous said:

Given how strong Wukong's Twin is, I would like to make a request of Pablo or the Design team to look at the deficiencies of the other Minion types like Shadows of the dead and Please increase their viability and Lethality.

Power creep is alive and well.

Whilst at the same time people complain about a lack of high level content.

Also i disagee, i don't like wukong's rework. 

[Formous]

25 minutes ago, D20 said:

Heh dunno I'm still not very fond of Defy and the exalted weapon. But I'm not a Wukong main.

First of all it is necessary to say that Wukong's clone works very well because it's a specter. The main perk of a specter AI is that they won't waste some precious time with useless animations, contrary to enemies. Hence, the apparent weakness of Mind Control and Shadow Of The Dead lie in the way enemy AI is coded.

Despite that, Shadow Of The Dead doesn't need a buff really (aside from fixing the enemy AI). You're supposed to use them more as a distraction than anything. There's so much of them, it will distract enemies very easly. If in addition to that they become powerful enough to clear Sortie level content, it's a press 4 to win power.

On the other hand, I agree that Nyx's Mind Control is quite disappointing. It would be much more acceptable if your duration wasn't limited. Right now, you have something like 30 seconds of Mind Control and the enemy wastes like 15 of those. No more duration means that at least the MC target can afford to waste a bit of time mid animation since it wouldn't reduce your precious MC duration (duration is infinite and power is channelled, a bit like Hydroid's Undertow or any exalted weapon). Of course changing the AI so it won't try to do stupid stuff such as shooting a wall would be a no brainer.

I mention Shadows because I often see their ability to harm a foe petter out to near nothingness.  This to me, is problematic as it makes the Shadows do next to no damage, despite that power strength affects their hp and Damage to raise over the base value of the enemy that was resurrected.  However this value is not enough to make the Shadows actually remain Viable as the enemy level increases.  Even if you keep the shadows up to date over the course of a mission.

Edited July 8, 2019 by Formous

[LascarCapable]

1 minute ago, Formous said:

I mention Shadows because I often see their ability to harm a foe petter out to near nothingness.  This to me, is problematic as it makes the Shadows do next to no damage, despite that power strength affects their hp and Damage to raise over the base value of the enemy that was resurrected.  However this value is not enough to make the Shadows actually remain Viable as the enemy level increases.  Even if you keep the shadows up to date over the course of a mission.

That's not what I experienced. When used as a distraction, the shadows usually last for long enough and lower the pressure on yourself quite dramatically, even at sortie level. Considering that Nekros is meant to be a supportive Warframe and not a damage dealer, bringing on the table CC, damage reduction, constant supply of red orbs and additional drops, I don't see that as being problematic at all. Nekros brings already a lot on the table for the average squad.

[(PSN)ErydisTheLucario]

31 minutes ago, (PS4)smb-twisted said:

Power creep is alive and well.

Whilst at the same time people complain about a lack of high level content.

Also i disagee, i don't like wukong's rework. 

Why, did you enjoy being a useless immortal monkey before? This time around he feels much as he should, and defy is way better this time around in my opinion. 

[Formous]

22 minutes ago, D20 said:

That's not what I experienced. When used as a distraction, the shadows usually last for long enough and lower the pressure on yourself quite dramatically, even at sortie level. Considering that Nekros is meant to be a supportive Warframe and not a damage dealer, bringing on the table CC, damage reduction, constant supply of red orbs and additional drops, I don't see that as being problematic at all. Nekros brings already a lot on the table for the average squad.

And I agree, whole heartedly, but I feel he is overly gimped as well.  His minions simply are outshined to such a Nth degree that I wish they were better. Even if they draw fire, they should have the capacity to land kills all their own, instead of relying on me to kill all their targets alongside my own. My arsenal  is certainly able to do it with blistering ease, but I wish that the undead were far better then they really are.  I get what you mean, but I don't see meaningless bullet sponge fighters as Minions.  Sure they help with CC, but CC is kinda Dead. It helps nekros more then other frames, but even then they should be more capable in my eyes to fight a foe.  Which is why I argue augmenting their damage or at least improving their combat ability in some manner such that it can matter against enemies is not all together a bad idea. Its for this reason Shadows prioritizes the strongest of your most recently killed enemies during Summoning, yet for being the stronger, they don't work.  Enemy Health and Armor increases proportionately with the damage they do. Obviously, only a frame or two has 4000 hp or more, and obviously enemies doing that much would kill us at insane rates, but Enemy HP and armor values increase at several times the rate their damage does.  The result is that while Our Nekros summons are multiplying the base value of the resurrected foe by our power strength, the damage the summons do is Scaled to attack players, not other enemies.  Where we have to do thousands of damage to fight our missions, our Undead realistically do a couple hundred or less because armor is reducing their realy damage heavily, and their real damage isn't even that high to start with.  This negates their purpose as Undead warriors for a minion master warframe.  Lets be honest, nekros isn't just a Loot warframe alone.

[Neuerwinter]

“Guys, there’s this one frame who got buffed up recently and I d like the same treatment on my favorite frame as well”

[Formous]

1 hour ago, Neuerwinter said:

“Guys, there’s this one frame who got buffed up recently and I d like the same treatment on my favorite frame as well”

Hardly. Its more as one person above said, Power creep, and asking that something be done Not just for Nekros, but for the others as well to fix their AI and make them more viable combat companions. You give a power slot to have these guys on your side, they should be viable in their own rights.  Nekros, Nyx, Venari, and so on. Only Equinox's augment for your day/night form to be active for a bit really comes up, and Wukong's Kicks butt and takes names, doing Exceptionally far more then any other summon by magnitudes greater.  Asking for AI fixs to make Venari more fearsome or to actually use the mods you equip on it is not a complaint, but a real balancing request, even if some people use Venari for heals or swap between the modes.  You can easily catch Nyx's mind control pet shooting walls and the ground instead of foes, and it's certainly lack luster as a ai at times.  Nekros just has more allies on the field so you can miss a lot of the ai pecularities, but even they simply can't hold a candle to Wukong's Minion. Not that they should, but they should be at least combat effective.

[(PSN)smb-twisted]

8 hours ago, (PS4)ErydisTheLucario said:

Why, did you enjoy being a useless immortal monkey before? This time around he feels much as he should, and defy is way better this time around in my opinion. 

iron jab was pants. have a spectre is just the same as having a spectre, only it's much more powerful. hello power creep.

defy & cloud walker were kind of the point of this frame, taking them away makes him a totally different frame imo.

buffing your armour, wow there is an ability that about 3 or 4 or 5 other frames already have. oh but basing it on damage took is new. or not.

cloud walker is about the same as it was, duration is way short but the increase in speed i guess counts up for it. but lets heal and ignore lasers. hello again power creep.

primal stick, is what it is.

so yeah, if you need a frame to be that OP to not be useless i'd say that is on you not me.

[(PSN)ErydisTheLucario]

34 minutes ago, (PS4)smb-twisted said:

iron jab was pants. have a spectre is just the same as having a spectre, only it's much more powerful. hello power creep.

defy & cloud walker were kind of the point of this frame, taking them away makes him a totally different frame imo.

buffing your armour, wow there is an ability that about 3 or 4 or 5 other frames already have. oh but basing it on damage took is new. or not.

cloud walker is about the same as it was, duration is way short but the increase in speed i guess counts up for it. but lets heal and ignore lasers. hello again power creep.

primal stick, is what it is.

so yeah, if you need a frame to be that OP to not be useless i'd say that is on you not me.

No I legit just wanted to know why you preferred the old wukong over this one. This rework just made him better to play for me. Sorry but I'm still not seeing why you prefer the old one, its fine that you do believe that, I just don't see it.

[xMarvin732]

50 minutes ago, (PS4)smb-twisted said:

iron jab was pants. have a spectre is just the same as having a spectre, only it's much more powerful. hello power creep.

defy & cloud walker were kind of the point of this frame, taking them away makes him a totally different frame imo.

buffing your armour, wow there is an ability that about 3 or 4 or 5 other frames already have. oh but basing it on damage took is new. or not.

cloud walker is about the same as it was, duration is way short but the increase in speed i guess counts up for it. but lets heal and ignore lasers. hello again power creep.

primal stick, is what it is.

so yeah, if you need a frame to be that OP to not be useless i'd say that is on you not me.

"defy & cloud walker were kind of the point of this frame, taking them away makes him a totally different frame imo"
cloud walker literally is still there, its just not a useless Snail speed ability anymore, it isnt infinite duration but thats understandable, play the game, dont float around in a cloud the whole time over the game.

" but lets heal and ignore lasers. hello again power creep"
People complained about this, Wukong going into a cloud and being literally USELESS for spy since hes practically invisible but still gets detected by lasers, compared to Ivara for an example, Loki has runspeed in his invisibility so the way Loki is being detected with lasers is ok.

"so yeah, if you need a frame to be that OP to not be useless i'd say that is on you not me."

so, staying invisible in cloud for almost the whole time over is not Power creep?

his old Defy ability is now in the passive which activates 3 times per mission.

[Ahniar]

Let's take a moment and pray to our Lord Pablo so he may have the inspiration to continue his reworks... 

[(PSN)smb-twisted]

19 hours ago, (PS4)ErydisTheLucario said:

No I legit just wanted to know why you preferred the old wukong over this one. This rework just made him better to play for me. Sorry but I'm still not seeing why you prefer the old one, its fine that you do believe that, I just don't see it.

 

all i said is i don't like the rework, not that it isn't fun. being stupidly OP is always fun.

the problem as i see it is this - 1st abilities are generally bad. once you replace 1 with something great (wukong, wisp etc) then what do you think when you look back at frost, excal, volt, rhino, trinity etc etc who all have terrible 1st abilities. where does it end?

tbh i would have been perfectly ok with just taknig infilitrate off ivara and giving it to wukong and calling it job done. ivara is too ludicrously op at spies with that mod. wukong would make more sense for spies (why does a cloud set off a laser?) without being OP as you still need to come out to hack. tbh wukong was still legitamately fine in spy missions anyway. ok so he wasn't a frame where everytime you use an ability it's the ride of your life but i enjoy warframe. i don't need 4 abilities on every frame to have fun, using weapons is fun too

[Lutesque]

On 2019-07-08 at 9:14 AM, Formous said:

  I think it is a good idea now for DE to take a look at ALL minion based powers and address their flaws. 

This is the first step to dissapointment....

In all seriousness though Celestial Twin and Excalibur Umbra I think  isn't even that complicated.....  they stay glued to you and will be forced to teleport just to keep up with you unlike Pets and for the Twin Specifically he was given a Stat Boost to compensate for how stupid AI can be.... again.... unlike Pets....

All in all he's well designed simply because someone put alil bit of thought as to how people play warframe and what they would use Minions for.... Pets and Spectres and everything else.... not so much....

For example:

Why is it only 60% ? Infact why is it random at all ?

How about we use a cool down Trigger instead like Rolling Guard...

"Kavat had 100% chance to ignore lethal damage and becomes immune for 4 seconds.... 10 Second Cool Down" 

This shouldn't even be a Mod.... I shouldn't have to waste a slot into compensating for poorly designed companions.... which is what makes celestial twin so great.... 

 

[MaryoSlayer]

Umbra's AI is pretty bad too

[(PSN)smb-twisted]

1 hour ago, Lutesque said:

 

"Kavat had 100% chance to ignore lethal damage and becomes immune for 4 seconds.... 10 Second Cool Down" 

so pretty much kavats are invincible forever?

[(XBOX)Hyperion Rexx]

With nekros, if his army was able to kill all the enemies around you instead of acting as a distraction and giving you a large amount of damage reduction, it would just be waaaay too op.  Simply because there are so many in his army you could activate them then sit back and do nothing while they slaughtered everything for you.   Forget saryn in eso, bring a nekros and watch as they kill rooms full of enemies.   

If they ever get round to looking at giving him a rework I'd rather they redesigned his soul punch, always seems extremely meh whenever I've used it.

[Formous]

17 minutes ago, (XB1)Hyperion Rexx said:

With nekros, if his army was able to kill all the enemies around you instead of acting as a distraction and giving you a large amount of damage reduction, it would just be waaaay too op.  Simply because there are so many in his army you could activate them then sit back and do nothing while they slaughtered everything for you.   Forget saryn in eso, bring a nekros and watch as they kill rooms full of enemies.   

If they ever get round to looking at giving him a rework I'd rather they redesigned his soul punch, always seems extremely meh whenever I've used it.

I think you misunderstood.  It's about how they scale. They scale upwards based on the PS of Nekros, and use the stats of when the foe was slain to make the boost.

 

With this in mind, consider that Hp and armor raise far faster and higher then enemy DPS. While we have way less HP then a normal foe, they also do way less damage to avoid just killing us outright. We think of 500 damage as really low for a gun we use and it won't kill most enemies, but if THEY did 500 damage, they'd kill us outright all the time.

So a enemy may have 1000 hp, and 300 armor, and our PS will scale that up by a percentage when we use nekros's 4, but the damage that enemy actually does is somewhere around 20 damage.  Or a bit higher. Just to give you some idea of where I come from. It's simply not enough to scale.  A PS of say 150 on nekros would just make the 20 damage 30 damage, while raising the HP of the undead to 1500 and the armor to 450.  While these later 2 stats are just fine in my example, the damage the udnead does is FAR too little.  No, they shouldn't kill with impunity, But they should be able to kill at least whatever they are shooting at.  This is my argument. That their damage should rise a lot more based on the amount of PS a nekros invests into.  For myself for example, my Nekros is duration, with as much strength as I could squeeze in.  Not a lot, but enough to be respectable. But that does not factor in at all because the base enemy damage values is simply so small that there is almost nothing the PS can scale for fighting that same enemy.

[(XBOX)Hyperion Rexx]

But his shadows are not meant for dps, they are meant as a distraction, which they're great at, and to provide damage reduction, which they are also great at.  Add in all the health orbs, adaptation, health conversion, as well as arcanes etc and nekros is one of the best tanks in the game.   Yes, you then have to kill the enemies yourself.  That's usually not a problem either.  Allowing them "to kill whatever is in front of them" means you can then pretty much afk and let the shadows run riot.   Wukong has one spectre, nekros has at least half a dozen in his army.

 Imagine a team of 4 nekros, total shadows would be in the mid to high 20's, all capable of killing the enemies themselves with no input from you.  I really can't see de ever implimenting something like that, and to be honest I don't think they should as it would be kinda ridiculous. 

[Formous]

Just now, (XB1)Hyperion Rexx said:

But his shadows are not meant for dps, they are meant as a distraction, which they're great at, and to provide damage reduction, which they are also great at.  Add in all the health orbs, adaptation, health conversion, as well as arcanes etc and nekros is one of the best tanks in the game.   Yes, you then have to kill the enemies yourself.  That's usually not a problem either.  Allowing them "to kill whatever is in front of them" means you can then pretty much afk and let the shadows run riot.   Wukong has one spectre, nekros has at least half a dozen in his army.

 Imagine a team of 4 nekros, total shadows would be in the mid to high 20's, all capable of killing the enemies themselves with no input from you.  I really can't see de ever implimenting something like that, and to be honest I don't think they should as it would be kinda ridiculous. 

But it doesn't exonerate that the whole purpose of his shadows resurrecting higher level mobs and the Strongest mobs is specifically for the purpose of dps.  I don't say they should match Wukong, but given a little time, a Shadow should be able to kill it's living counterpart, since the Shadow's very Stats are literally boosted of it's equal.

[(XBOX)Hyperion Rexx]

Forgot to mention,  power strength is verrrry important if putting together a tank build.  I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but with his aug 200% p's gives you 90% dr.  Add that to adaptation etc, crazy.

[Formous]

1 minute ago, (XB1)Hyperion Rexx said:

Forgot to mention,  power strength is verrrry important if putting together a tank build.  I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but with his aug 200% p's gives you 90% dr.  Add that to adaptation etc, crazy.

Adaptation won't affect the Shadows. Do not mistake me. I know Nekros' shadows primary purpose is to tank, but even a tank has a gun, or in our case, machetes, shotguns, rifles, ect, and they should have more punch.  Nekros does better with duration though for this purpose in a desecrate build.

[(XBOX)Hyperion Rexx]

3 minutes ago, Formous said:

But it doesn't exonerate that the whole purpose of his shadows resurrecting higher level mobs and the Strongest mobs is specifically for the purpose of dps.  I don't say they should match Wukong, but given a little time, a Shadow should be able to kill it's living counterpart, since the Shadow's very Stats are literally boosted of it's equal.

I would disagree on your base premise, that they are designed for dps.  They aren't.  They are designed as a shield, hence the name Shield of Shadows.