(PC) Gauss / Signature Weapons Feedback

[Lyravain]

I am now levelling my Gauss so there's not much I can say, but one thing jumps up to me to an extreme degree; every time I'm Mach-Rushing and there's any kind of ledge, I just crash into it. Please give us the ability to jump and slide while mach-rushing. We can already move in a direction mid-air if we're already air-borne, give us a little leap or vault to help the mobility. Kind regards and thanks if you read this.

[alseltas]

I used him for hours and I can say he is not completed at this time.

I don’t say about damage because I haven’t use him for that purpose.

His 2 is really killing the battery while active.

I don’t see any reason why the range of 3 is decreasing every second.

And his 4 is a joke. to get 100% fast I have to spend insane amount of time to spam 1 or 3 but not to do any damage activity. Also his 2 obstructs the battery charge that reduces the speed of increasing percentage. Once it reaches 100%, it’s pretty good. however it’s not worth at all.

[Twistedsparkle]

alrighty!

I think I have enough playtime to give honest and accurate feedback

first things first
gauss blitzed his way to my heart

I think he must be my new all time favorite frame
his gameplay is very twitchy and demands attention and its just so darn satisfying to play him

going fast has never felt so good

however! I do have couple of concerns
first I dont understand why building up battery meter seems so slow and draining it so fast
maybe balance that outs alittle?

second! mach rush seems to drain a ton of energy especially when you go ahead and add more speed
going with lots of efficiency seems to be an absolute rather than a option
it would be nicer if the energy drain would be just a teeny tiny bits gentler

passive with shields and stuff still seems pointless well because we still dont have universal shield gating so building for shields is still kind of garbage

otherwise I really dont have much to complain
he is so much fun to play

EDIT:
one very important thing I forgot to mention!
it would be super nice to be able to refresh redline
losing that battery is always a bummer!


Im not so sure about his weapons tho

both acceltra and akarius have amazing designs and oomphy sounds and awesome damage to back it up
but....... self damage? really? 
the corinth fix here is pointless tho because gauss can and will run into the projectiles
cmon DE isnt it about time to let go of this ridiculous stubborness and actually do something to self damage
playing over carefully isnt that fun especially on frame like gauss who screams for reckless gameplay
and yes its worth complaining because 1 tiny mistake and you are dead

getting killed by your own weapon with one shot is too much risk
either fix self damage or get rid of it whichever comes first I welcome it

Edited September 3, 2019 by Twistedsparkle

[Magondi]

After playing with him for several hours and trying different builds around him, this is what i conclude:

Its a fun frame, the type i like where you have to keep using his abilities actively to make him shine. Thing is you have to spam his abilities so much that feels like you spend less time killing and more time casting than in my opinion you should be.

What the frame is about as my understanding is to keep his 4 up, and the battery level between 80% - 100 % in order to have your DR from your 2 at a nice place (have more advantages i know but lets say thats the main one). Each time you cast your 1 or your 3 (cold) you gain 10% battery level, meaning once you hit your 4 you have to use your 1 or your 3 (cold) a couple of times to achive 100% battery level. After that battery starts to drain over time, i estimate around 10% every 5 sec (although if you take damage it drains faster) that means that every 5 sec i have to use my 1 or my 3 to get back up to that 90% - 100% battery level, and if i manage to do that, i only reach the point 100% redline where your abilities dont drain battery for around 12 - 15 seconds. And then start again, 4 then 1 or 3 a couple times, and then every 5 sec press 1 or 3 to keep the battery up and at the end 12 sec of not worring about the battery. Seems to me too much spamming abilities to mantain a buff and a DR in a nice spot.

What i suggest is simple, give your 1 instead of 10% battery rechage 20% of it, that way feels like you dont have to spam it as much. I also feel that you should arrive to 100% redline (where it doesnt drain battery) much sooner, leaving you around 30 sec of using your abilities without worring about your battery (in a balance build).

Hope this helps, and great work DE.

Edited September 3, 2019 by Magondi

[LucMakai]

Might have been said already, but Thermal Sunder should work like an aura, the effect following him around. It would definitely give more reason to use it, and it would pair well with the melee bonus on 2 by further incentivizing players to get close to enemies, and it would better fit his playstyle of active mobility.

[WellIHopeThisOneWorks]

To add my voices to the masses here, I've been staring at his numbers for a bit here, and while I still got to wait for him to build (Just farmed him this weekend) from reading through this a bit and doing my own thought experiments, I have a few thoughts that I think will still be useful to put here.

I feel his 1 being distance based is incredibly counter intuitive, I feel I sum-what understand why you wanted it to be that way, gaining 10% battery per cast does mean it needs to cost something to begin with, but when Volt can cast his 2 to sprint long distance for what will end up being a fraction of the cost at relatively the same speed, if feels Gauss is kind of cheated in this regard, given he is the 'fast' frame. My thought was maybe making it so that it costs energy/second, and then if you ram into a wall it costs a bit of energy to actually do the explosion, gaining the 10% charge on impact for that extra energy cost (or just that part fizzling if you don't have enough energy.) Would fit his theme a bit more to, being it is a Kinetic Battery, so on impact a lot of kinetic energy would be formed, at least if my physics is understood. 

His 2, has way to much drain to it. Considering Mesa has a 95% damage reduction for alll types of damage from bullets at the press of a button, having so much cost for Gauss to have SPECIFIC types of damage reduction seems ridiculous. Granted, it does go up to 100%, but personally, I feel it should EITHER cost battery per second, or battery per hit, my preference being battery per hit. The ability, in my opinion, should be a safety net, or a way for you to convert your battery to energy when you need it. That is accomplished by it costing JUST battery per hit, meaning if your moving around rapidly it will just get drained from the stray shot here or there, or if your standing still, it will get drained to give you energy, requiring you to get moving to jump around again. But having it cost battery per second ON TOP of that, and having that drain per second not be effected by efficiency, is just way to much to me. Even with the energy regeneration that seems like way to much of a cost, considering how much you have to do to beef up the battery to begin with for that damage reduction to start being felt. 

His 3 is...fine. I personally would feel better if the cast and hold generated an aura around Gauss, allowing you to ignite enemies as you run and be a bit more synergistic (instead of making the frame that runs off of moving around stop...and wait...) But the snap cast seems like it be good in a pinch, especially with red line active, so wont complain to much here.

And his red line seems incredibly powerful, Ill be it a little slow. Though I get the reasoning behind making it take longer to ramp up the more duration you have then scaling the buffs off of duration, I'd rather be able to get to that 100% quicker so I can start using that Kinetic plating with no determine faster as well, getting that nice damage bonus and knock down in the process. But I get wanting to keep that type of power on more of a timer, just feels annoying to get 'punished' for trying to beef up the duration of that massive buff to everything. But, I will admit this is more off of reading than anything, and I might be back to remove this later when I actually get to play around with it (or maybe come back with more concrete things to say instead.)

Though this post is, rather negative in just pointing out things Id change, I do really like the concept of him and he seems like a great brain teaser to figure out how to use him the best. Just feel a few tweaks would make him feel a lot better, hope this does indeed help!

[am0rtized]

Gauss has outstanding visual design.  He looks like he's fast, and the way he dances around during his idle animation gives him an air of confident agility.  Sadly, the unfortunate reality is that he is neither fast nor agile.  Yes, it's true that Gauss has an amazing base running speed.  It's also true that Mach Rush sends him hurtling forward at a breakneck pace.  However, Warframe is not a game designed around running quickly in a straight line.  The reason why Volt, Wukong, and Nova are fast is because their traversal abilities allow for rapid changes in direction.  Gauss has none of that.  Turning during Mach Rush is basically impossible in an enclosed space.  Doing anything other than running (i.e. jumping, shooting, etc.) cancels the skill altogether.  The initial dash distance seems to be fixed (i.e. unaffected by mods), and there is a cooldown animation so the dash cannot be spammed.  I haven't checked how the running speed during continuous Mach Rush compares to that of a speed Volt build, but Gauss does not seem substantially faster, even over short distances.  Over long distances the only thing he does better than Volt is running into walls.     

Edited September 3, 2019 by am0rtized

[AnFangs]

I take issue with Gauss's passive. How does part of Khora's passive convert extra power strength to extra sprint speed, but our boy Gauss's doesn't? His kit is otherwise unreliant on strength, there should be at least some reason to build him for it. Let him have some extra horsepower, especially if it comes at the opportunity cost of mod slots and capacity.

[SteveCutler]

Please, for the love of God, get rid of the "holding W keeps Mach Rush going" thing, or at least make it a toggle option. It hurts my brain. I hold 1 to speed and I let go of 1 when I don't want to speed. But I still want to move forward, so I'm still holding W! It's very confusing.

Edit: I take this back. After getting used to it, I actually love the controls.

Edited September 6, 2019 by SteveCutler

[WellIHopeThisOneWorks]

10 hours ago, The_Grimmrock said:

as a side note: could we get a number/percentage for the interactions of thermal sunder with Redline? we see from the tooltips that it removes armor when you blast proc, but we have no idea how much, if its percentage or base armor or anything like that.

From me reading the wiki, it will strip armor up to 50% of current armor value based off of battery percentage (which considering its based off of battery Id think it should go up to 100% so you actually have a reason to use it but ehh). 

Most people gimp his range though do to his 3 being nothing but CC, and in this game currently, the best CC is death, which his 2 and 4 excel in, so people just spam moch rush (for less energy) to amp up the meter then run around with super High duration and a buff to everything ever (besides straight damage). Though I fully agree with your thought on changing it though, having the radius be bigger to actually give some area denial and beefing up the battery generation from it would see that trend very quickly tapper off I think, it's just right now the most effective use of him is to ignore the fact he has a 3 entirely.

[basgemm]

Ree I wanna love this big boi, copy pasta from another thread since I'm dumb

 

the design of gauss visually is nothing short of fantastic, you can tell at a glance that it's the racecar warframe, personally I've always wanted a mecha themed warframe, in that matter I've very satisfied with what gauss brings to the game aesthetically and to a lesser extent with his abilities. as much as I love gauss I gotta complain about some of his abilities simply because I want him to be better deserving of the design work put into him.

Passive: i'm happy he has an effect tacked along with it, given that it could have just been where they put the battery mechanic without having any use besides abilities.

March Rush: MR is thematically great, It's essential to the frame and isn't something we've seen before, especially since it has no other discernible purpose bar building battery faster and decent mobility, yep it's damage is a joke, yep it's cc is limited by not being tied to duration and frankly making it harder to hit enemies, but the ability remains fun to use and depending on the tileset very practical.

The biggest problems for me being that it doesn't scale with strength in any truly beneficial way (ideally speed would increase based on str), efficiency is dismal mainly due to it using X energy per Xm meaning it doesn't benefit from duration to provide additional efficiency.

Kinetic plating: my only problems with streamline comes from redline itself and it constantly draining battery, as such I'll just say this since it's be bugging me; why in tarnation doesn't the shield visually cover from head to toe like a big ol' bubble shield? it feels like his feet and head can still get shot! idk maybe it's my fov making it look that way...

Thermal sunder: this sucks.. I mean the cc on cold is great, and using the pull combo for melee is fun but thematically it doesn't really fit in my opinion and it feels as if it were thrown in just to fill the 3rd ability slot, I'd understand if gauss had more of an overheat mechanic making it dangerous to go at high battery (imagine sienna from vermintide 2) but since that doesn't exist it just slows down gameplay and wastes your energy to use fire, I'd have preffered a chanel ability like harrows where you channel it to cool gauss down and the longer it channels/cools the more battery efficient kinetic plating becomes and the faster the battery builds charge (or idk make it give battery charge when you ram into fools)

Redline: it's solid, the dps increase comes at the sacrafice of sweet sweet ammo, something especially limited when playing with his signature weaponry, the melee speed is good, reload and holster speed depend much more on your loadout than a flat attack speed buff. overall it's underwhelming for what and how long the casting animation is, which leads me to the last bit, who the #*!% decided to make it so it takes longer to get to 100% when you increase duration? IN WARFRAME'S CASE DURATION HAS ALWAYS BEEN GETTING THE MAXIMUM AMOUNT OUT OF THE SAME ENERGY COST SO THE LOGIC THAT IT'S INCREASING THE SIZE OF THE BATTERY AND THUS THE TIME IT TAKES TO CHARGE IT ,IS INAPPLICABLE. this ability is outstanding.. for the last 5 seconds of it's duration that is...

 

the 4th ability is normally where you get the game changer, the ability that makes the warframe stick out, be it Mesa's peacemakers or hildryn's apache mode there's there's always satisfaction when you press 4 and something big happens, In Gauss' case the only big thing to happen is a cool animation... gauss' attempt at imitating harrow's quick shooting, a melee speed buff similar to valkyr and the ability to make thermal sunder and kinetic plating good..  for 10 seconds... What a boatload of ass... and did I mention none of those buffs scale with strength?

 

Changes I'd make:

1. battery gain scales with power strength or efficiency passively

2. thermal sunder empties the battery and grants a movement speed and attack speed buff which scales of STRENGTH and duration

3. redline is now channeled and no longer drains battery. redline no longer provides attack speed buffs but it increases the battery cap by 100%  scaling of power strength to increase the cap further, redline provides a damage multiplier equal to the redline percentage, redline also allows thermal sunder to achieve much greater buffs due to filling the battery beyond 100%.

4. make march rush a channelled ability consuming energy only when you sprint or roll, and make the energy drain into energy/s, maybe even make it give battery per enemy ran over (march rush doesn't need to do damage since it has it's place purely as mobility and lite cc)

5. Kinetic plating with the aforementioned changes to the other systems would be a god tier ability, imagine old immortal wukong but it actually requires upkeep and player interraction

 

*Edit*1: essentially if it sounds like gauss'd be overpowered, then so be it, it's better to be op in warframe than to quietly fall into obscurity as the honeymoon period ends , think titania; she got some love recently but is still mediocre and underused, she released mediocre and stayed mediocre and without continual community interest she wouldn't have gotten any changes. just remember that frames like mesa, chroma, trinity etc exist, most seem to fill one specific purpose but when did we forget that mesa can constantly be rocking 95% damage reduction whilst staggering and damaging enemies that do shoot her this is on the same frame that has a 4th ability with good enough efficiency to melt anything given enough time regardless of how poorply modded it is

[SteveCutler]

Be careful what you wish for when asking for Strength to affect speed. It would affect builds a lot, and make Overextended more punishing. Being able to build for fewer separate stats is a blessing. I personally really like how Gauss is mostly focused on Duration and not Strength. I like how they've made the Sprint Speed stat more important and relevant. Normally this stat goes neglected, and now it has a more impactful effect. It also helps to separate Gauss from Volt. I don't want to see this changed. Instead, for more speed capabilities, I'd suggest any of the following:

• Redline should give a Sprint Speed bonus.
• Gauss's passive could include an extra bonus that doubles the effect of Sprint Speed mods.
• Add Primed Rush to the game with the next Baro. 🙂

Edited September 3, 2019 by SteveCutler

[ShadowFel]

I feel that having a passive battery drain on Redline is unnecessary, since he already loses all of his battery when the ability expired (unless he has "saved" past the red line) so the passive drain just makes it more tedious to raise the battery within Redline, and makes having Kinetic Plating and Redline active simultaneously entirely impractical.  I also feel that the bonuses of Redline don't really warrant 100 energy, and reducing the cost to 75 energy would be practical.

[teKritin]

Random thought, more power strength or sprint speed= tighter turns?

[5H4DE]

6 hours ago, Lyravain said:

I am now levelling my Gauss so there's not much I can say, but one thing jumps up to me to an extreme degree; every time I'm Mach-Rushing and there's any kind of ledge, I just crash into it. Please give us the ability to jump and slide while mach-rushing. We can already move in a direction mid-air if we're already air-borne, give us a little leap or vault to help the mobility. Kind regards and thanks if you read this.

Iirc during Parkour 1.0 we had animations for crossing over obstacles while sprinting, I'll be honest I've been just bullet jumping over them for so long I don't even know if we still have them. That said, I think Mach Rush is one ability where those could fit perfectly, make it so Gauss will automatically jump over those kind of obstacles while running.

[Mu_Gera]

So along with mach rush not damaging enemies you directly run into and redlines overall inefficiency, thermal sunder seems too expensive when it feels like you're supposed to use the two functions at the same time. Maybe halving the cast cost in some way could mitigate that. 

Edited September 3, 2019 by -Bv-Concarne

[Wolfchild07]

As many people have already pointed out, he is too inefficient and has too much micromanagement to use. He's fun for his speed but that's about it. He has way too much upkeep. Easier to just play Nezha or Wukong.

[SkyWitch]

Very fun and strong frame. Bit of an energy hog, though. Battery Bar is easy to manage. Thermal Sunder doesn't seem to be of any use. 

Edited September 6, 2019 by Banette

[Azvalk]

Okay, I played Gauss since his release, with 4 formas one of which is an aura one..
I simply, love him +.+ well done DE !

But '-' ( haha ).. In my opinion, he has some tiny details that need some changes.
I read the forum, collect opinions on many twitch stream, within my clan and friends, and we are pretty much agree about what he needs to really be like he "logicaly" should be and function.

So..
Mach Rush: Perfect '-'
The only changes to that, would be totaly optionnal, and would be additions that might be contrary to what it's intented to be in DE's mind, so I will tell all this kind of inessential ideas at the end.

Kinetic Plating: Great.. '-'
But, there is a major issue with it..
Slash proc °-°
This ability is supposed to protect Gauss from all physical type damage right ? So all physical type damage, should never proc their status effect, if they encounter Gauss's shield ( Kinetic plating ). Maybe even when he doesn't even have normal shield anymore.
We trust this ability, with our life, on the battle field.
If this ability betrays us, we're doomed.
So please, total immune to all status proc that come from physical, fire, cold and explosive damage types.
We are accepting that poison, gas, magnetic, radiation, viral, can hurt Gauss, and we are prepared to face those elements with other protectives means, like arcanes, but being hurt by slash proc, is a pure nonsense.

Thermal Sunder: Great+  '-'
Synergies are perfect, visual and sound are gorgeous.
Damage.. hm..  fine.. It's not an ability to do extreme damage, it's control + damage..
Maybe it could be better if cold damage stay as they are, but fire damage be upped a little. ( and the explosive one also, just a little )
 2 major details need some change.
- Battery level should charge more, with the number of ennemies affected, especialy if they are frozen by it.
Because we are absorbing their kinetic energy, right ?
No need of big number by ennemy, we are smart enought to search groups of ennemies on our radar to maximise the effect, it's more gameplay for us ^^
And this could help Redline a little more.
- The synergy with Redline, for striping armor, is too hidden, and has poor number.
50% of current armor, if Redline is maxed ?
The ennemy is dead long before we see any result..
Many other warframes can strip armor with much more ease, please, little buff for that synergy.
-- Either 50% of max armor ( at Maxed RedLine), influenced by power strenght.
Or
-- 25 or 50% of max armor, at minimal Redline, and 100% at max, not influenced by power strenght.

RedLine: Impressive '-'
But.. a little weird..
The buff are scaling with duration.. hm.. strange, but understandable, they are speed buff, so time is more important than power..
The issues is:
- Why are we taking half of the duration to building up the charge ?
This mecanism puts pressure on us, and maybe it's intented, but.. the problem is, we have no option to find some confort.
I mean, even with the use of many mach rush, or cold aoe, when we reach 100%, we have generaly just a few second to enjoy our power..and there are no ennemies around, because we've kill them all already while building the charge xD

So, I suggest a small exponential part, somewhere in the calculation of the charge we are accumulating, to be able to reach the 100% before the half of our duration.
And, it doesn't need to be a big number, because the change to thermal sunder could also help.

Here are all the changes needed in my opinion ^^

The inessential ideas that I would love to see are:
- Using Mach rush just after doing a vertical propulsed jump, could send us very high, and, using it again, while facing the ground, could send us to the ground for a massive aoe, with damage proportional to our battery level. I know, only usefull in open world..
And Zephyr already exists.. hm.. Gauss is about kinetic energy..
He's as legitimate as Zephyr to have that ^^
- Mach rush could have a boost, with the usage of sprint key, that would use much more energy.
Aoe could be more powerfull and have better range if the crash happen while sprinting.
- Recast Kinetic Plating by holding the key ?
- Total self damage immunity from his signature weapon if Kinetic plating is active. '-'
He is faster than the projectiles >.<
The security distance is lovely, but, it makes us think we are safe, and so we rapidly become not careful, and boom '-'
Gauss is designed to run toward the ennemies, but with such weapons, it's suicide. ( I'm not asking that the self damage give us energy )

Overall, it's a great warframe, with lots of interesting synergy in his kit,
it's all we want I think, but it's sad to notice that he is not at his full potential, he is at 95%, and it's frustrating xD
It's always some little details that makes the difference..
I hope he can get the little tweaks he needs, feedbacks exist for this reason, right ? ^^

Well, I return play with him, he's too fun ^^

Edited September 3, 2019 by Azvalk

[SteveCutler]

Mach Rush:

Currently jump and slide do nothing during Mach Rush (aside from jump cancelling it). You also can't use it backwards or to the side (even though you can turn the camera around to get the same result, but with much more awkwardness for the player).

I'd love to see the slide key put Gauss into a drifting mode for sharper turns. This would absolutely fit his theme of being a speedster, being a racing car, and being modern Sonic. See here for how it's supposed to be done:

Make it happen DE.

I'd also like to see the jump button just work normally during Mach Rush, without cancelling it. Let us hop over small objects while keeping our high speed!

[AnFangs]

1 hour ago, SteveCutler said:

Be careful what you wish for when asking for Strength to affect speed. It would affect builds a lot, and make Overextended more punishing. Being able to build for fewer separate stats is a blessing. I personally really like how Gauss is mostly focused on Duration and not Strength. I like how they've made the Sprint Speed stat more important and relevant. Normally this stat goes neglected, and now it has a more impactful effect. It also helps to separate Gauss from Volt. I don't want to see this changed. Instead, for more speed capabilities, I'd suggest any of the following:

• Redline should give a Sprint Speed bonus.
• Gauss's passive could include an extra bonus that doubles the effect of Sprint Speed mods.
• Add Primed Rush to the game with the next Baro. 🙂

I'm pretty careful.

If you look at the strength minimized value for Khora's strength to sprint conversion, you'll see that even minimizing strength to 10% still results in a 1% boost to sprint speed.

What you count as a positive I would not count as a positive.

I do like how they've made sprint speed relevant to his kit, however, doing so by making building another stat irrelevant to his kit is not a gain. Yes, it makes it easier to recognize a certain good build, but by factoring out one of the core stats to build for, the potential for build variety becomes more limited, and any build experimentation and variation boils down to taking that one build, and tweaking those few useful stats slightly towards one end or the other until an augment is released, and even then that's no guarantee that it'll open up the potential for a new build and playstyle.

As an example, let's look at Revenant, as he's in a similar situation with an overly easy stat to ignore, albeit a worse case than Gauss. Because range is a safe dump stat for his 4, it's normal to feel excited seeing the potential of a range dump build; then, his 3 similarly benefitting from duration instead of range, and his 2 benefitting from strength, and hey, the build just lines itself up without having to do much.

But let's take a look at his kit through the lens of building for range instead of dumping it or ignoring it: his 4's beams get marginally wider, which isn't a meaningful gain or change to its function, which works for that power since range being irrelevant to that particular ability is its main modding gimmick; his default 3 gets wider, but to no particular benefit, as its primary function is to change location, rather than how many enemies it itself can damage while changing location, so building it for range isn't as beneficial as it being built similarly to his 4 particularly with their conjunctional use and modding synergy, so its range build is not very relevant overall; his 2 is unaffected by range; and that leaves his 1, which could be interesting with high range and its ability to propagate new thralls, and could open up at least one other playstyle for Revenant, so how does building it for range go? It starts at a 2 metre effect radius and is range maximized to an abysmal 5.6 metre effect radius, again another ability that sees more benefit from being built for duration and stuck on chokepoints than for range. Then you have his augment, which adds crowd control to his 3, because the crowd control on his 1 isn't all that good on its own, and even with the two maximized and used in conjunction he's still trailing behind the other crowd control frames, while sacrificing his kit's damage and tankiness, which I wouldn't call a relevant build.

And here we hit upon the problem of having an irrelevant stat: mono-builds. Frames whose two dimensional builds' only variety comes from tweaking the few useful stats of the one build slightly one way or the other. I won't try to badger you into agreeing with my Revenant assessment, I'm sure there's room to disagree with my particular Revenant nitpicks, but I think you get my point, and if Revenant doesn't cut it for you as an example, then there's always Chroma.

Having a stat be irrelevant to a kit, not a power but a kit, is not a good thing for that frame's build variety, even if it consequently makes the one build more readily apparent. I will gladly take slightly harder modding decisions, and spend more time experimenting to find the sweetspots of more than one build if it means Gauss isn't stuck in the mono-build pit with Revenant, and a number of other frames. I like Gauss and I want more for him than that. Even if it's just recycling part of Khora's pet's passive to convert strength to a slight sprint boost to a more appropriate frame.

I'll gladly take a Redline sprint bonus and Primed Rush though.

[ThatRoomba]

It looks like a lot of people are missing the fact that his 3 sustains his redline very, very efficiently and effectively.

[SteveCutler]

I have to say, I am really having a blast with Gauss despite wanting some tweaks. The core concept is great. Activating Redline, speeding around, smashing into enemies and knocking them down, mowing them down while they lie helplessly on the floor, speeding off while reloading, spamming Thermal Sunder... Great fun. Really fast and engaging gameplay. I mainly just want control improvements with Mach Rush, more maximum speed, and more reliability on Kinetic Plating.

[ebrl]

Gauss is what you get when people ask for more ability synergy. Have fun spamming Mach Rush to keep battery up during Redline since without Redline at high battery every other ability is underwhelming. He's not bad, but you're not playing Warframe anymore, you're playing Redline.

[Modus-Pwnens]

I've played Gauss for a few dozen hours now, including in sorties every day, arbitrations, ESO, two long kuva survivals, and a smattering of other things. I've also seen a lot of the response to him. I think the problems that need addressing are primarily UI related.

1. Redline is fantastic. The buffs are gigantic, it's trivially easy to sustain with a little efficiency since it makes Mach Rush so cheap, and it promotes a fun, unique, fast-paced playstyle that matches the frame perfectly.
2. A huge proportion of people misunderstand Redline because they see that percentage next to the meter that appears when you activate Redline and (quite reasonably) think that's the focus of Redline.
3. The fact that it's so easy to hit "100%" with default Redline duration is further reinforcing the idea that the main goal of Redline is to get that percentage to "100%". People think that adding Duration is a negative because it makes it harder to get to "100%".
4. The ability descriptions for Gauss are incomplete even by Warframe's usually low tooltip standards. The number of people who know about the melee damage bonus from Kinetic Plating is probably in the dozens.

The numbers are all absolutely fine. Everything works great. One of the best-balanced warframe releases in recent memory.

The UI for Redline needs changes.

Here is an example of how it might be made more intuitive:

With Redline off, there's a percentage next to the meter which simply tells you how full the meter is (and thus how strong your buffs are):

 

When you turn Redline on, the battery meter gets uncapped just like it does right now, and it also gets a second outer meter that fills as you keep the meter above the red line (replacing the current UI's "percentage" display). This means that the percentage displayed over the battery meter is still just telling you how full the battery is - this prevents confusion about which of the meters/percentages matters for your buffs and damage reduction:

When you're at 100% battery power, but have only been over the red line for a few seconds, it's a lot more obvious that you're still getting full buff power:

When you've had your battery over the red line long enough to fill the outer meter (corresponding to the current UI's "100%"), neither meter goes down for the rest of the duration of Redline. This makes it obvious that this is the reward for filling the outer meter, while still remaining clear that the thing that governs buff strength is the inner meter because that's the thing the percentage above the meter was telling you even when Redline was off:

Something like this would go a very long way to helping people to understand Redline. Right now, it's clearly confusing: because the top of the meter unlocks and a different percentage appears at the same time, people aren't clear on which one they're supposed to be filling, leading them to think that it's "too hard" to get to "100%" even though getting to "100%" isn't actually very important - it's a little bonus for playing actively, not the main goal.

Some other, smaller things:

1. Mach Rush should probably just do the same thing when you rush through enemies as it does in the AoE when you wall slam (including Kinetic Plating's additional effect). It's awkward that, at least at lower levels, it so clearly rewards a playstyle of purposefully slamming into walls over and over. Making the effects the same would also make the ability easier to understand.
2. It would be nice if Kinetic Plating absorbed other damage types, maybe to a lesser degree without giving energy back. As it stands, there are certain situations where you just shouldn't bring Gauss, like sorties with the wrong elemental enhancement. Similar frames don't really have this problem. It's thematic and it's cool that we have to pay a little more attention, but I think a middle ground might be better.
3. Kinetic Plating effect looks very, very cool when it absorbs hits. The passive visual effect with the faint orb clipping through Gauss looks pretty silly though.
4. Thermal Sunder's AoE rings seem unnecessarily complicated for an ability that is already absurdly complicated. Why do they do this fancy shrinking thing? The way they combine is also confusing - since they have a duration, it's not clear when you look at them whether dropping a cold ring onto a heat causes an instantaneous blast or creates an AoE that will blast anything that steps into both rings.

Edited September 4, 2019 by Modus-Pwnens