Dev Workshop - Revisiting Augments

[Maka.Bones]

3 minutes ago, DeMonkey said:

You're not making any sense, what has that got to do with anything?

This thread is about poor augments for "good" abilities, yes? You get that, right?

Enveloping Cloud is a poor augment for a "good" ability as well. So if they were planning tweaks for it they would have included it in this list. Yes?

Since it isn't in this list I have to assume they aren't planning tweaks for it, and thus will express my feedback that it does need tweaks and absolutely should be included.

Chill man. You were asking me why I think they're doing the augment reworks in waves. I'm just answering the question you asked me. Idk why you're so pent up about; you already submitted the feedback so what do you need to prove by arguing with me? lol

[MrMrs]

I know I'm probably the 50th person to say this but I think it's not enough. FIX VALKYR'S INVULNERABILITY. I don't get why you're able to pull out your primary while you're using your any of your exalted weapons it messes you up seriously and it pretty much restricts your movement when using these types of abilities. It especially hits Valkyr hard as she loses her invulnerability if you happen to be unlucky enough to right click. Making an augment that takes up a mod slot only to have it slightly fix this problem really is no help.

[freakstartab]

hace 6 horas, [DE]Bear dijo:

Target Fixation - Tail Wind Augment - Zephyr

• Remove buff after 2 seconds of being on the ground, instead of immediately
• Damage increase per target hit

I suggest bring like 3 o 4 seconds before the buff is remove due we have use the Zaw arcane Exodia Hunt to attract nearby enemies and cast again the Tail Wind and we have the change to stack more damage buff per target

[(PSN)QIDOM]

Sound great....could you please consider making all augments useable in the exilus slot? I would love to use more augments but they disrupt builds by taking up valuable slots that could be used to improve stats such as range or strength. I know some already do work in the exilus slot so please consider converting the rest. Thanks 👍

[DeMonkey]

7 minutes ago, Maka.Bones said:

Idk why you're so pent up about, you already submitted the feedback so what do you need to prove by arguing with me?

You quoted me and suggested that the reason it wasn't released was because things were being done in waves. I explained that future waves won't include Enveloping Cloud as Cloudwalker is no longer considered a bad ability. Then you suggested other reasons that seem a lot like "guesses" as to why it wasn't released, to which I have responded with the argument that this doesn't matter. It should be included in this wave, this is the wave (if there are waves) it should be categorised under. That's all. 

[1000_Up]

6 hours ago, [DE]Bear said:

Fireball Frenzy - Fireball Augment - Ember
Freeze Force - Freeze Augment - Frost
Smite Infusion - Smite Augment - Oberon
Venom Dose - Spores Augment - Saryn
Shock Trooper - Shock Augment - Volt 

• Holding the casting button will send out a wave (much like similar, expanding Warframe Abilities) giving the elemental buff to every player it touches, including the caster

Sounds great!

[Damocles]

My thoughts:

These augment reworks are a waste of time. Remember when abilities needed to be slotted in like mods? Well the only fix is to give these augments their own slots. Perhaps 1 augment slot is fine (or perhaps move more augements to exilus slot, with explanation later).

The problem is that augments are typically used if any one of the following criteria is met:

1. It makes a mission critical ability recastable/sustainable (Iron Shrapnel/Eternal War/Neutron Star/Molecular Fission)
2. It changes the behavior of an ability (Chromatic Blade/Fracturing Crush/Iron Clad Charge/Peaceful Provocation)
3. They make you do crazy damage boosts (Accumulating Whipclaw/Fatal Teleport/RazorWing Blitz/Primal Rage)
4. They fix a bad ability (Assimilate/Funnel Clouds)

I believe recastability should just be innate on all abilities and removed from augments. There is no reason why recasting an ability is inconsistent between warframes as well as correlated to their time of debut where older frames were less likely to get recastable abilities.

We should get one augment slot so we're not losing out on opportunity costs that a single mod slot provides. This also means you no longer need to buff arbitrary numbers that won't stay relevant or scale. This is because an augment slot makes any number of boosts gained by an augment a bonus value rather than an opportunity cost as augments are directly competing with Augur Secrets, Message, Reach for their mod slot. Making it an exilus slot also works too because you'll then be competing with 15% power strength or range instead of 24-30%

Example cases:

Take my favorite rhino for example. Excellent tank with a 2 mod slot handicap for Ironclad Charge and Iron Shrapnel. The use of Iron Shrapnel is purely so I can recast Iron Skin. It can be level 0 and still work, which means the purpose of the mod was it's side effect, not the intended affect of doing AoE damage, and thus should be detached as a mandatory mod that prevents rhino from either entering rooms without being at 5% armor or finding a place to jump off the map to debuff yourself; it's silly. The IronClad charge is GENUINELY a good mod that acts as a really good bonus because it has a scaling potential with strength/range mods AND a skill based scaling. Ironclad charge should be the model augment.

Now lets look at some bad design examples. Assimilate lets you move... wow. QA did not see that the default range of Absorb will never catch an enemy inside the AoE, nonetheless at half the radius. It's genuinely a bad mod but still used because the augment allows you to hop into operator and dash around. We dont need whatever Assimilate does, we just needed the unintended side effect of being able to hop into operator. Less so, mesa's waltz was okay because sometimes you may have casted 4 in a bad angle and need a small adjustment or even a simple roll to dodge a grenade or rocket. Some may argue the art from default 4 is way cooler and also argue the cost of 15% power strength from power drift may be better. Funnel Clouds is only used by those who don't want to troll team mates by making the mission harder to complete. I'm still waiting for the limbo augment that allows all tenno to damage enemies in both planes, this would finally put an end to trollimbo and players actively leaving missions. But these last two should be move to innately inherited by the abilities because NOBODY in their right mind would sacrifice a mod slot for the convenience of others.

In summary:

1. Make recastability innate on all abilities so we dont have mods that exist for the sake of it existing as a mod slot handicap.
2. Give 1 augment slot so that you can lessen the need to move chairs around on arbitrary numbers (as everything you gain without sacrificing a slot is always a bonus). This could even be just an exilus compatibility like mesa waltz and hysterical assault so they're not directly competing with augurs for 24% Strength, 30% range or 24% duration
3. Design augments to scale properly, or intrinsically fix the limitations of an ability because we want to move away from [mod = usable ability] [no mod = no ability] because we moved away from mods that turn on abilities for a reason
4. Remove the dumb pick-up enemies (seeing the augment directly tackles this, YOU KNEW PLAYERS HATED THIS) from Zephyr's 4 and remove damage troll from Limbo's rift on tenno.

[1000_Up]

6 hours ago, [DE]Bear said:

Piercing Roar - Roar Augment - Rhino

• Allow Roar to be recast when equipped
• Increase debuff duration based on equipped Mods
• Generate a stagger effect on enemies when the Roar hits

Like it! Are AOE staggers radiating from Rhino for duration like Volt's Shocking Speed augment possible?

[ReaverKane]

Very cool, ESPECIALLY that last one!

It always struck me as weird that i couldn't buff myself with that damage, now we can, and we can buff the whole team with one cast! Pretty awesome!

[(NSW)Kromatia]

6 hours ago, Morisabeau said:

We've waited for oh, so long. ;w;

 

edit: Duality augment for Equinox, as I think, needs some attention too, because it is basically the same as Wukong's 1st entire ability now.

What Duality needs is an AI update. Wukong's augment for his 1 is essentially Rhino Stomp, so it's ok for abilities and augments to overlap.

[Vasari.Nagushi]

I want a volt augment where i can hold down his 1st ability and continue to shock people while energy drains. 😍

I would pay for this to be put into the game too. Just hold down first and continuously have lightning shoot out of my hands.

[Llamatronian]

7 hours ago, [DE]Bear said:

Piercing Roar - Roar Augment - Rhino

• Allow Roar to be recast when equipped
• Increase debuff duration based on equipped Mods
• Generate a stagger effect on enemies when the Roar hits

I think that being able to recast the ability should be built in, not added by an augment. For Roar and Iron Skin it feels like we're given a flawed ability, then told "but the augment fixes it" rather than the ability just being fixed.

[Worldbrand]

I'm glad you are taking a look at older augments! I think the stated goal here makes sense.

For the most part, I am happy with this list.

I am not sure the tweaks and buffs are enough to counteract some issues that players are unhappy with:

• Valkyr's Hysteria and aiming: thematically, I think that should be the one exalted weapon that does lock you into melee. In practice, there are still big issues with melee 2.9997 regarding auto-blocking and quick switch. Lots of really gameplay-disruptive stuff like dropping carried objects, auto-blocking in the air forcing you into aimglides- too much to discuss in the scope of this thread.
• I think Tidal Impunity is a weak augment tied to an alright ability. I would prefer something else, because I certainly wouldn't use a slot to chase around allies. You can already avoid really dangerous status effects with Undertow or your get-out-of-jail-free spoiler mode.
• Regarding Mag's Magnetized Discharge, I hope the range buff only applies to the explosion radius. Her bubbles can get quite large already, and can be disruptive to allies trying to shoot in or through them.

Quote

It should be noted that some Augments are tied to abilities that see very little use (such as Pool of Life), however, these will be looked at later on when those same abilities are considered for a rework.

I think Zephyr's Tail Wind and Mirage's Sleight of Hand belong on that list, however I do look forward to trying these augments after the buffs. Just please be prepared to look at those abilities again in the future. I know many people are unhappy with them, myself with Tail Wind included.

[Zharun]

The only good changes here that bring a few of these mods into relevancy are:

the elemental Buff Augments applying to yourself and making buffing allies easier is a nice bonus too

Rising Storm -  basically being a Bodycount that is not on your weapon freeing up a valuable modslot on a frame that has a lot of flexible slots

Hallowed Eruption -  allowing for some low level nuking meme-build

MAYBE Magnetized Discharge - depending on how much Range it gives making it so you can drop all Range mods on a mag

MAYBE Furious Javelin -  Depending on how high you push the numbers but Excal already has retarded high focus damage so outside of lvl200+ this will probably not matter

 

The rest will still never be used with these proposed changes

 

Hysterical Assault - is basically just a half hearted fix for a problem caused by Melee2.9 when the real problem is that we have a frame that almost always has -66% ability Range on a full build getting an Augment that needs Rangemods and in return gives a mediocre mobilityskill that is already provided by basic warframe movement

Titanic Rumbler - Rumblers are useless overall and a good Atlas build dumps around 50% duration anyways to make his 1 (the only reason to play him) as OP as possible. His 3 does not need more than 10 seconds duration after all. If Rumblers had infinite duration you might be like "Ok lets press 4 why not. Maybe the Rumblers will do some dumb S#&$ for a laugh in this mission." but otherwise they will never be used much.

Tidal Impunity - A bad augment for a bad ability on a frame I never see in public games outside of Pink tentacle memes, especially now that his lootbuff does not stack with better lootbuffers like Nekros and Khora

Muzzle Flash - So you think having to kill enemies to blind the enemies around you that you just killed is a good use for a modslot on a frame that has like 0 modslots to waste?

Explosive Legerdemain - A hilariously useless ability and this Augment buff does not change a thing. Sorry. So you basically have to forego the use of Vacuum for this to even work and you also have to kill enemies around you and hope they drop stuff to turn it into mines and wait for enemies to move up to the spot you just killed enemies in to trigger these and then they do insubstantial amounts of damage that could be outclassed by a swing of a half decently built melee-weapon. Why? Just why would you ever? Bonus: You also loose the drops by turning them into mines.

Total Eclipse - The base ability is too inconsistent to ever be used over other reliable Damagebuffers. Not to mention it cannot even be used in Eidolon Hunts at all because it is nighttime and you either have a Trin or Oberon already providing damage resistance AND healing to the team. Make it so the augment gives everyone half the effect of Shadow and half the Effect of the light buff and then it is actually useful in a lot of situations and would also make Mirage herself a lot better in a lot of situations and missions.

Piercing Roar - would only ever be used if you wanted to be able to recast Roar for some reason, like the Iron skin augment just less essential, the other effects of this augment are a waste of a modslot

Contagion Cloud - Useless effect because creating Clouds of low Dotdamage in places where enemies just died is basically nothing you would ever want in a mission, Saryn sure as hell has no need for a tiny inconsequential fartcloud that might not even affect a single foe considering the strength of the Dots she wields already.

Transistor Shield - Maybe if the Damage Multiplier is astronomically high otherwise the tradeoff in missions to slow down to a crawl just for some small damagebuff for the Volt player will never be considered useful. And even then Volts passive is capped so even if 1 damage absorbed would max his Static Discharge it would not be worth it.

Target Fixation - I am sorry but using Tail Wind to damage enemies is an absolutey horrible Idea. You would have be a lunatic to try it and you would have to be an escaped convict of a mental institution to think it is an actual good Idea and not Meme territory.

 

I appreciate the revisit though and hope you consider some of the communities feedback. Ideally all augments should be desired in certain situations.

[AriaSTG]

7 hours ago, [DE]Bear said:

Hallowed Eruption - Hallowed Ground Augment - Oberon

• Additional passive ability that triples base duration

Pardon me for asking, is there a chance that Oberon's Renewal getting QoL changes? either Augments or base. It would be favorable if the ability itself acts as an aura like how Equinox do instead of placing somewhere without indication. 

[daqilin]

6 hours ago, [DE]Bear said:

Hysterical Assault - Hysteria Augment - Valkyr

• Let invulnerability linger for half a second when aiming to prevent getting downed immediately in high-damage areas 
• Increased Range 

Valkyr has been a long-time favorite of mine, and I was happy to finally see something new for her! However, to my mild disappointment this doesn't (on paper) look like a decent revisit to the augment at all. 

Even before the addition of auto-blocking/aim-switching and the controversial interaction with Valkyr's Hysteria (which also does need to be fixed without the need of an augment), I honestly found this mod not very compelling to use for these two reasons:

•  It provides a noticeable boost to mobility, but a similar mobility boost could be achieved by many of the parkour mods that also fit into the exilus slot.
• The attack that you do when you leap to a target is insignificant to say the least, especially in any higher level content. 

It's fun in some ways, don't get me wrong, but even in that aspect it begins to fall short. It sounds like an awesome concept, having Valkyr leap into an enemy's face 30 meters away. In reality, it unfortunately just feels...weak. She leaps, smashes into a unit, and then they just...sort of stumble if they're a high enough level. 

The discussion about this augment could easily transition into the talk about how Valkyr might be in need of a revisit as a whole to fit into the current game better (tbh I like her fine just as she is, but it would be nice to see her get some love), but that's a discussion for another time. 

Overall, I think this augment should provide just a tiny bit more than just a gap closer for Valkyr. In this game, gap closing abilities aren't even super important for a large proportion of content, especially when we have bullet jumping and other mobility options. To me, it would be interesting if the ability offered something else (either instead of or on top of the gap close): 

• Added range to her claws - I saw a post on Reddit suggesting to incorporate her Rip Line into her Hysteria attacks as almost whip-like appendages. To me, that sounds: a) super sick, and b) a nice way to let her fit into the current meta of killing lots of things over a wide area. However, this would obviously require a significant amount of work on the back-end. Something that (might be) easier to implement would be energy wave slashes in the style of Exalted Blade or Desert Wind with shorter range but still enough to extend her damage to a bit wider area. 
• Adding status chance and slash damage or attack speed - Easiest to implement (I assume) and adds a bit of incentive besides mobility to use the augment. Some might say this is overpowered on an exalted weapon, but I would like to argue that many current melee weapons can out-scale exalted weapons, and also Chromatic Blade exists and Primal Fury exist. 
• AOE CC - a knockdown or something, my least favorite idea but still interesting I guess?

All in all I want this augment to provide the actual feeling of a "hysterical assault" rather than an Ash teleport. Am I fishing for a buff for Valkyr? Yes (lol). Do I personally think that this augment needs a little more? Also yes.

I'm writing all of this out not expecting an immediate change to the augment, but rather I'm hoping that this gets read over and considered as a sincere suggestion of some ideas that could be implemented in the future. 

tl;dr I (and many others I assume) want Hysterical Assault to be cool and actually worth using. 

[Loza03]

7 hours ago, [DE]Bear said:

Let invulnerability linger for half a second when aiming to prevent getting downed immediately in high-damage areas 

I would much rather, especially considering that melee 3.0 puts additional emphasis on the aim button, for the default right click input to just be block again. It's bizarre to have a button that dequips melee be so fundamental to the melee combo system. Auto-block has also caused a wealth of other problems, which should be fixed, primarily by just restoring block to a manual input.

In terms of maintaing the smooth switching, Aim-down-sights could be bound to a double-tap of the aim button, or be rebound. Auto-block and the associated 'switch on aim' is and remains the biggest problem and source of problems with the new system.

[FreeWilliam]

I'd use the Ripline augment if it gave us a way to choose when to yeet and when when to yoink

[YandereWaifu]

7 hours ago, [DE]Bear said:

 

Target Fixation - Tail Wind Augment - Zephyr

• Remove buff after 2 seconds of being on the ground, instead of immediately
• Damage increase per target hit

 

sorry but no one uses this augment at all and this change wont change that, frankly given my status as one of the few zephyr mains it would be much better if the augment was changed entirely. 

to clarify for you guys

- zephyr needs duration

-high duration means tailwind takes you further 

- most tiles are tight corridors with a few open but not very big rooms

- high duration tailwind isnt useful due to how much stuff you will crash into

- low duration tailwind can possibly work but -duration likely wont affect this augment well. 

my suggestions

- 50% less tailwind distance/ immediate stop + let it knock down enemies she collides into or stops near to in an area (imagine her divebomb but horizontal) (imagine rwby where they were having the food fight and the move ruby used to beat everyone).

or

- let zephyr pull and knock down enemies she flies past in an area around her along her flightpath.

 

 

 

[(PSN)Deeceem]

I hate to be a negative Nancy here (well, maybe not really, I'm just typing my honest opinion after reading the post, I guess), but I struggle to be interested in any of the considered changes. None of them makes me really go: "Oh! I want to equip this augment now!". A few, like the Piercing Roar one sounded interesting until I realized it would probably be best on a power strength/range build (aka Iron Skin/ Roar build) which already uses the Charge and Iron Skin augments that are way more essential for a Rhino generaly. I also would have Stomp still as decent crowd control on such a build - without an augment. So running this as a third augment seems unlikely to me.

That's just one example.

Quite a few others, like the Zephyr one seem still, I don't know, redundant and maybe should be how the ability works without an augment in the first place? That's one of the problems with quite a few augments in general in my opinion. Lets take the Octavia ball augment (forgot the name) that "allows" you to tell the ball to stand still at a position for an entire mod slot. I always found augments like that to be odd since they add basic functionalities to abilities they could/should(?) have at base.

I might have to look at some of the current numbers and then would have to see the new ones on something like Furious Javeline or Rising Storm to see if they could have more potential to be run instead or alongside things like Chromatic Blade or the Ash Teleport one. I'm a bit skeptical though.

These are just a few, potentially wrong opinions and an initial reaction from me and I hope everything turns out cooler and better than it seems to me right now.

In the end most popular augments tend to either have a big impact on the ability's strength and/or useability (Ironclad Charge, Chromatic Blade) or add needed or very convenient functionality to an already strong ability (Iron Shrapnel, Mesa's Waltz) and as of right now and with the information given i hardly see either being the case for the things mentioned. Tweaking them a bit wont change much. If you want to popularize more/a bigger variety of augments being used you have to buff the abilities they are for (Primal Rage/Iron Staff is a good recent example), buff the augment tremendously in strength and/or utility it adds to the ability to make it worth the mod slot (Accumulating Whipclaw comes to mind as example) and/or change how augments work and are applied entirely so players feel not punished for using the weaker ones and giving up mod slots for them.

[DecadeX]

So Blade Storm clone attacks already add to the combo counter, and as far as I can tell, it has literally always been that way. As long as there have been both Blade Storm and combo, Blade Storm has added to combo. In 22.12.3 you even had to fix clone hits not adding to combo, so we know beyond any shadow of a doubt that it is intentional. So unless that aug lets us double dip, it's not doing much. Like currently the Blade Storm slash procs don't affect Relentless Combination, so you could enable that with the aug but that's not a lot.

[shut]

7 hours ago, [DE]Bear said:

Hysterical Assault - Hysteria Augment - Valkyr

• Let invulnerability linger for half a second when aiming to prevent getting downed immediately in high-damage areas 
   

- vomits profusely -

This is just a band-aid for Valkyr now that "blocking" disables the melee weapon and makes you vulnerable. Which is something that a huge portion of the community has been vocally against since Melee 2.9 dropped.
DE, manual blocking CAN be reintroduced into the new melee system! Just let RMB block, and let Reload (R) swap to gun without reloading instead.

[Kinperor]

7 hours ago, [DE]Bear said:

Hallowed Eruption - Hallowed Ground Augment - Oberon

• Additional passive ability that triples base duration

 

One thing I'd like to see with Oberon, is an interaction between his fourth augment and his second augments. As in, augmented Reckoning creates some radiation patches, and Hallowed Eruption pop these patches. Now whether it would be too strong or not, I can't really tell, but I feel like it's always worth going for extra synergy in a kit when possible. 

 

Otherwise, the series of first-abilities augments are sort of interesting, but I've always thought that they weren't a very enticing use of a mod-slot. They would be more viable as exili mods. 

[(XBOX)Angryspy101]

8 hours ago, [DE]Bear said:

Rising Storm - Blade Storm Augment - Ash

•  Attacks by clones will raise the combo counter 
• Include a passive benefit to extend the combo counter by a duration

I'm just going to assume this isn't a nerf to the base ability but rather the lack of knowing the ability. Bladestorm already adds to the combo counter.

Why not just make the augment into something the gives buffs or maybe spawn shadow clones specters or something?

[Timepool]

8 hours ago, [DE]Bear said:

Rising Storm - Blade Storm Augment - Ash

• Attacks by clones will raise the combo counter 
• Include a passive benefit to extend the combo counter by a duration

Am I misremembering things, or isn't the combo counter being removed with melee 3.0? Why add an augment that deals with it if it'll be gone?