Baruuk needs a few tweaks.

[TheGodofWiFi]

Firstly this is not a rework I'm suggesting, just some QoL tweaks.

Baruuk is one of the Warframes you very rarely see running around in random missions, which is a shame, because his concept is very interesting. It's just the implementation of some of his powers is really not that great. Desolate Hands does not synergise well with the rest of his kit as it directly suffers as a result of you building for his first two abilities; Elude and Lull. Right now you either build for range or build for strength with negative range. The former high-range build renders Desolate Hands useless as a player defense power as it means the trigger distance for a dagger to fly off onto and enemy/ally is extremely far, especially when you have Elude active. The latter negative range build in-turn renders Elude and Lull a virtually useless as they require decent range to be effective.

Desert Wind also is not a very good exalted weapon due to the energy waves not counting towards the combo counter. Since it's doubtful Baruuk will get something like Excalibur's Chromatic Blade augment, this means that Desert Wind is just not very good as the ragdoll effect works directly against building a combo counter.

His kit needs tweaks in order to put Baruuk in a decent place, because right now he is another victim of being less useful than a lot of other frames that can do his job and he is rarely used/seen outside of dedicated XP farms like Hydron as a result.

My suggestons for tweaking Desolate Hands and Desert Wind/Serene Storm inparticular would respectively be;

• Tweak DH so that the daggers do not automatically fly off onto enemies/allies and instead make it so that the daggers stay with the player until the ability is cast again, upon which the daggers will then fly off all at once to the nearest group of enemies/allies.
• Tweak Serene Storm so that the waves count towards the combo counter or sacrifice some crit chance to buff up the status, so the waves at least have status build potential. Both options would increase Serene Storms usefullness as an exalted weapon.

I would also add a few tweaks to both his Restraint passive and an extra one to Serene Storm;

• Increase the amount of Restraint lost when using abilities as right now it is too slow even when using all three of his abilities.
• Remove the 50% damage Reduction on Restraint and the 40% damage reduction on Serene Storm. This is to compensate for having more control over the daggers which already give you enough damage reduction at a cap of 90% with nine daggers which is easy to achieve with a small amount of power strength.
  • Baruuk simply does not need to have so many different ways of reducing damage. That sounds like a silly thing to say on paper, but in practical terms it really is not. All Baruuk needs is for his Desolate Hands to be tweaked so he has more control over them and you don't need anything else. A flat 90% damage reduction on one ability is good enough. Having too many ways of reducing damage ironically means he ends up being more of a hassle than other frames with the same damage reduction capability.
• Replace the damage reduction on the Restraint passive with a melee attack speed and/or reload speed buff perhaps. This would also go with his theme of becoming more agitated as his Restraint goes down.

These are just some QoL tweaks that would make Baruuk more attractive to use IMO. The concept of pacafist Monk who is actually a John Wick style badass fighter is an awesome one and Baruuk should live up to it, but right now he really doesn't. As the old saying goes; other frames can do his job but a lot better. With these changes, his Desolate Hands would synergise with the rest of his kit, Serene Storm would be a more useful exalted weapon and his Restraint would be able to offer us a different buff as opposed the same one that two (one if these tweaks were implemented) abilities already do.

Baruuk has a lot of potential, but right now he is just another forgotten frame.

Edited September 3, 2019 by TheGodofWiFi
Updated wording.

[(XBOX)GearsMatrix301]

Damage reduction stacks. You’re pretty much just asking for a nerf to Baruuks tackiness when what he needs is a buff to his 4s damage capabilities.

[EinheriarJudith]

2 hours ago, (XB1)GearsMatrix301 said:

Damage reduction stacks. You’re pretty much just asking for a nerf to Baruuks tackiness when what he needs is a buff to his 4s damage capabilities.

there is too much overlap in his kit when it comes to defenses. the DR from his passive and 3 are pretty much all he needs so why does he have his 1 when the enemies can also be slept with his 2? his 3 imo should have about 4 daggers that are defense only that do not fly out to enemies or allies (this same thing need to happen to nova). his 4 getting more damage is not the only tweak he should get.

[TheGodofWiFi]

5 hours ago, (XB1)GearsMatrix301 said:

Damage reduction stacks. You’re pretty much just asking for a nerf to Baruuks tackiness when what he needs is a buff to his 4s damage capabilities.

Sure in technical terms this would be a nerf to Baruuk's tankiness, however doesn't need anymore than his Desolate Hands to be tanky, if they were tweaked so they don't fly off immediately. Add Adaptation onto him and you truly are laughing. He needs more than just tweaks to his 4s damage. His kit doesn't synergise well at the moment. Like I said; while saying he doesn't need that many ways of reducing damage sounds silly on paper, in practical terms it's not. Look at pre-rework Wukong. He had one of, if not the best tank ability in-game. Yet he was hardly ever played, kind of the position Baruuk is now in. So while tankiness is always a nice thing to see on paper, it doesn't always work out when implemented.

The damage reduction from his passive and his 4 are flimsy to use and just not as good as one ability that gives you flat 90% damage reduction. This is another exmaple of how his kit seems to be fighting itself. Fully draining your Restraint gives you 50% damage and Serene Storm with decent strength gives you 40%, but then when you use his 4 his Restraint goes back up so you loose that DR over time. The daggers are not help either as they keep flying off the moment you cast them.

Like I said; there are other frames who can achieve what Baruuk does only in far less time and doesn't have to almost fight their own kit to do so. Baruuk is a very contradictory frame in the fact that a lot of his kit/mechanics relies on either not using them or you making some of them useless in order to properly get some use out of the others. So its not just his 4 that needs looking at.

2 hours ago, EinheriarJudith said:

here is too much overlap in his kit when it comes to defenses

Exactly. It's not like having abilities based on defence doesn't work, its just that they are designed in such a way that makes them conflict with the others. Like you said, why use his 1 (which requires enemy fire) when you have his 2 which can put enemies to sleep. It's contradictory.

2 hours ago, EinheriarJudith said:

his 3 imo should have about 4 daggers that are defense only that do not fly out to enemies or allies (this same thing need to happen to nova)

I'm more of the mind for freeing up Baruuk's passive so that it can give us a different buff instead of something that Desolate Hands already gives us. It would make Baruuk have a bit more variety.

Edited September 1, 2019 by TheGodofWiFi

[(PSN)CommanderC2121]

Baruuk needs a lot more help then just these ideas. 

 

Chief among his biggest issues are the many anti-synergies in his kit. Why use elude when you have 4 instances of DR, why use his 3 when you have elude, why does elude make your 3 range double, reducing its effectiveness, why does your three disarm targets, making it harder for elude to dodge projectiles (kinda hard to dodge projectiles when all enemies have melee), why does your 4 reflect projectiles hit, if you want them to hit you to get elude restraint proc, etc. 

 

he just needs a new first ability imo, along with buffs to his 4.

[vFlitz]

Desolate Hands is fine, in fact it's his only truly good ability. It's Elude that needs to be changed, it's entirely redundant with the DR he has, and even without that in the picture it'd still be far too unreliable as a defensive ability.

Then his 4 needs to be good enough to justify the amount of work that has be put into managing restraint. Currently it only feels good to use against unarmored enemies, and that is a problem.

[TheGodofWiFi]

7 hours ago, (PS4)CommanderC2121 said:

Chief among his biggest issues are the many anti-synergies in his kit. Why use elude when you have 4 instances of DR, why use his 3 when you have elude, why does elude make your 3 range double, reducing its effectiveness, why does your three disarm targets, making it harder for elude to dodge projectiles (kinda hard to dodge projectiles when all enemies have melee), why does your 4 reflect projectiles hit, if you want them to hit you to get elude restraint proc, etc. 

This is something I mentioned before; his kit is fighting itself.

7 hours ago, vFlitz said:

Desolate Hands is fine

I disagree. You have virtually zero control over it beyond the initial casting. Baruuk is normally built for range as that is what the majority of his powers benefit from but that renders the daggers entirely useless as they fly off the minute you cast them. Tweaking the ability so the daggers stay with you until cast again would really make the ability good.

[vFlitz]

4 hours ago, TheGodofWiFi said:

Baruuk is normally built for range as that is what the majority of his powers benefit from

That's just not true. Elude benefits from range, yes, but as an ability it doesn't contribute anything other than easy restraint dump when there's a high firerate enemy around. Lull's benefit from high range will be limited due to line of sight requirement. Desolate Hands it affects negatively, and changes nothing for Desert Wind.

On the other hand, Strength highly benefits his better abilities which are 3 and 4, while having no influence on the other two. Saying that he's built for range in a general sense just means you're not weighting the pros and cons objectively. My high strength build with 145% range is just fine when it comes to dagger count management (without the range doubling from Elude anyway, it still baffles me that this kind of anti-synergy was added to his kit) while Lull is unlikely to benefit from having more than that.

Without the daggers flying off Desolate Hands would be just an 'activate and forget' ability, and besides they're consistent aid in getting a bit of restraint down. As for disarming enemies, it might not be that much use on starchart levels, but its utility grows steeply as enemies scale higher, especially for less tanky allies who might happen to carry some of the daggers. While I'll admit that the minor tweak of sending out the remaining daggers on ability recast instead of them just vanishing would be welcome, Desolate Hands really doesn't need any changes beyond that. It's solid and his other abilities, Elude first and foremost, need changes more.

[shadowstormr]

I run a build of 205 range and 240 str, 55 eff and 73 dur. Running with adaptation works magic with desolate hands, you don't mind the daggers having too much range and there's enough str to maintain 4-9 daggers for a reasonable amount of time until you need to recast. I only use elude when I need to lose restraint quick or need to survive something nasty. While the way I play him keeps him alive for stupid amount of time, the damage output of his 4 is very lackluster. It's like he's built to be a caster-tank hybrid with cc potential on his 4. Don't know why you'd want him on team while equinox exists with much higher cc and dps potential.

I feel like he'd be great as an aggro sink if there was a such a mechanic outside of guardian derision. Who knows, maybe that's what DE had in mind when designing his kit. Not a killer, just someone really good at stacking damage reduction and pulling aggro.

[TheGodofWiFi]

6 hours ago, vFlitz said:

That's just not true. Elude benefits from range, yes, but as an ability it doesn't contribute anything other than easy restraint dump when there's a high firerate enemy around. Lull's benefit from high range will be limited due to line of sight requirement. Desolate Hands it affects negatively, and changes nothing for Desert Wind.

Lull is probably one of the best CC’s of its types in-game only surpassed by Equinox, as the range is insane. Yes line of site is required, but that doesn’t mean you should not invest in it.

Thats exactly the reason why I suggested Desolate Hands getting tweaked, since building for range means it gets rendered useless.

Elude and Lull are his two main abilities due to the fact they way Baruuk is designed, it actively encourages you to no use his 4 or his 3 really.

7 hours ago, vFlitz said:

On the other hand, Strength highly benefits his better abilities which are 3 and 4

Investing in strength for Serene Storm is absolutely pointless as it is one of the worst Exalted weapons we have right now in terms of mechanics and stats. Worthless status chance means that it won’t be stripping armour anytime soon and that is what many players will be encountering in high level missions. Its damage levels are abysmal due to the waves not counting towards the combo counter, so you can’t get a decent stack going nor is it feasible to try and get in close to enemy because the minute you hit the attack button, they go flying. You’ll be lucky if you can get more than two hits on the same enemy unless there are backed up against a wall.

Desolate Hands is really the only ability that benefits from a strength investment, but again, you both have little to no control over it and now your other two abilities are not as useful. Elude might as well be thrown in the trash at that point and Lull won’t have the same CC level (Yes I know CC is no longer the meta due to no real rewarding endless missions or raids, but it is still king in terms of scaling).

7 hours ago, vFlitz said:

Without the daggers flying off Desolate Hands would be just an 'activate and forget' ability

There are many frames out there with “activate and forget” abilities and they are still popular, like Inaros. Wukong got his Defy reworked because it was a press and forget ability, but one that was boring and basically the only thing useful in his kit.

You can have this type of ability done right. Like say adding a timer.

7 hours ago, vFlitz said:

While I'll admit that the minor tweak of sending out the remaining daggers on ability recast instead of them just vanishing would be welcome, Desolate Hands really doesn't need any changes beyond that.

The daggers automatically flying off is incredibly annoying and does not benefit the player. Before you say “it disarms enemies how is that not beneficial?”, the daggers do not out all at once, they go one at a time. This incredibly slow and not beneficial in a practical sense when you are surrounded by enemies and you have to patiently wait until they are disarmed.

Having the daggers be permanently surrounding the player until either a timer runs out (like Mesa’s Shatter Shield, or Gara’s Splinter Storm) or the player casts the ability early upon which the daggers fly off all at once towards the nearest group of enemies, would far more useful than the current state it is now, in which they just fly off randomly.

Elude is very anti-synergy of course, but I view DH and Serene Storm to be on the same priority level.

[(PSN)allfatherthor77]

His 2 and 3 are great but his exalted weapon needs to be pure status chance. I notice how faster i killer higher level enemies with Wukong prime than him but Baruuk is still great. 

[(PSN)CommanderC2121]

35 minutes ago, (PS4)allfatherthor77 said:

His 2 and 3 are great but his exalted weapon needs to be pure status chance. I notice how faster i killer higher level enemies with Wukong prime than him but Baruuk is still great. 

Pure status chance? No

buff the status from 10% to 30%? Yes

[devildevil21]

Uhm, I don't really think baruuk is weak. He is just underrated. This is my baruuk build (Note: Augur reach is missing 1 rank, just pretend like it's max rank, and umbral vitality in my build isn't max rank since I lack the endo atm to max it, but overextended is intended to be 1 rank below max)

Putting it simple, with this build you can reach 360º with his first skill, you got a massive range and duration with his 2nd skill to sleep enemies and gain energy for his 4th skill, you got lots of range to with his 3rd skill to disarm every enemy on the whole world while summoning up to 12 daggers per cast. The high efficiency allows you to spam his 2nd and 3rd skill constantly plus keeping his 1st skill active all the time, and with your 4th skill, since you got power strength in this build, if you make a decent weapon build like this (look image below) you'll have an insane high DPS exalted weapon to add on top of your overloaded build already.

 

Baruuk is many things, but weak isn't one of them. He's underrated and many people don't even give him a chance to shine. Maybe due to a lack of understanding of this warframe? Or maybe because they just don't care? Maybe because they think baruuk is ugly? Honestly, I don't know. But baruuk is perfect the way he is. 24/7 immunity with sleep and disarm and damage reduction and a really powerful exalted weapon (if built properly). Can't ask for much else, to be trully honest.

[TheGodofWiFi]

35 minutes ago, devildevil21 said:

Uhm, I don't really think baruuk is weak. He is just underrated.

He’s not underrated. He is weak in terms of mechanics, certain abilities and synergy. Everything he does other frames can do simply much better and with much less hassle. There’s no illusion of him being some hidden gem. He’s not in a good spot and not very well designed. Pre-rework Wukong is where I’d put him at right now.

35 minutes ago, devildevil21 said:

Putting it simple, with this build you can reach 360º with his first skill

Which requires you to be doing nothing in order for it to work and like other users have said; Elude suffers directly as a result of his other abilities which put enemies to sleep and disarm them.

It also doesn’t help against splash damage, which a lot of enemies have.

35 minutes ago, devildevil21 said:

you got lots of range to with his 3rd skill to disarm every enemy on the whole world

You are really overselling Desolate Hands. Twelve enemies is hardly what many would call “the whole world” and Loki can disarm a lot more enemies than that, plus he can do it instantly, whereas the daggers only fly off one at a time with a period of at least one second between each dagger. That is not fast at all and enemies will be getting more shots off at you long before they are all disarmed. 

DH is also supposed to be one of his primary tank abilities, but it really is not a good choice as the daggers fly off instantly with a high range build.

35 minutes ago, devildevil21 said:

you'll have an insane high DPS exalted weapon to add on top of your overloaded build already.

You’re overselling Serene Storm now. It is one of the worst exalted abilities we have in the game. For clearing out trash, its great, but any frame can clear out trash. For mid content, it really really struggles and for high level content it is practically useless against the high armour values.

You can make a case for the weapon being good if you accompany it with an armour stripping weapon, but thats a symptom of how Exalted weapons used to work; forcing you to use certain weapons which you might not like in order to get maximum efficiency out of an ability. There is a reason DE made Exalted weapons their own thing.

Serene Storm cannot hold a candle to Chromatic Blade or Iron Staff.

The weapon has pitifully low status chance and the waves from Serene Storm do not count towards the combo counter. It’s rag-dolling mechanics also work against it as in order to build a combo you have to physically hit the enemy with the fists themselves, but that is impossible as they go flying after the first hit.

35 minutes ago, devildevil21 said:

Baruuk is many things, but weak isn't one of them. He's underrated and many people don't even give him a chance to shine.

Speaking as someone who spent a decent while running Baruuk, I can say I have given him a chance to shine and my conclusion is that he is weak right now due his mechanics. 

Many others have given him a try and found him lacking. That is why you do not see Baruuk’s common in the star chart, in any sort of request in recruitment chat and high level content. He is simply inferior to a lot of other frames. 

35 minutes ago, devildevil21 said:

But baruuk is perfect the way he is. 24/7 immunity with sleep and disarm and damage reduction and a really powerful exalted weapon (if built properly). Can't ask for much else, to be trully honest.

He most definitely is not perfect. You are really trying hard to make an awkward frame seem good. 

Everything Baruuk can do looks good in writing, but in-game he falls down. Other frames do his job easier and with less hassle and their kits synergise with each other, whereas Baruuk’s does not.

He needs looking at one way or another.

Edited September 2, 2019 by TheGodofWiFi

[devildevil21]

1 hour ago, TheGodofWiFi said:

He’s not underrated. He is weak in terms of mechanics, certain abilities and synergy. Everything he does other frames can do simply much better and with much less hassle. There’s no illusion of him being some hidden gem. He’s not in a good spot and not very well designed. Pre-rework Wukong is where I’d put him at right now.

Which requires you to be doing nothing in order for it to work and like other users have said; Elude suffers directly as a result of his other abilities which put enemies to sleep and disarm them.

It also doesn’t help against splash damage, which a lot of enemies have.

You are really overselling Desolate Hands. Twelve enemies is hardly what many would call “the whole world” and Loki can disarm a lot more enemies than that, plus he can do it instantly, whereas the daggers only fly off one at a time with a period of at least one second between each dagger. That is not fast at all and enemies will be getting more shots off at you long before they are all disarmed. 

DH is also supposed to be one of his primary tank abilities, but it really is not a good choice as the daggers fly off instantly with a high range build.

You’re overselling Serene Storm now. It is one of the worst exalted abilities we have in the game. For clearing out trash, its great, but any frame can clear out trash. For mid content, it really really struggles and for high level content it is practically useless against the high armour values.

You can make a case for the weapon being good if you accompany it with an armour stripping weapon, but thats a symptom of how Exalted weapons used to work; forcing you to use certain weapons which you might not like in order to get maximum efficiency out of an ability. There is a reason DE made Exalted weapons their own thing.

Serene Storm cannot hold a candle to Chromatic Blade or Iron Staff.

The weapon has pitifully low status chance and the waves from Serene Storm do not count towards the combo counter. It’s rag-dolling mechanics also work against it as in order to build a combo you have to physically hit the enemy with the fists themselves, but that is impossible as they go flying after the first hit.

Speaking as someone who spent a decent while running Baruuk, I can say I have given him a chance to shine and my conclusion is that he is weak right now due his mechanics. 

Many others have given him a try and found him lacking. That is why you do not see Baruuk’s common in the star chart, in any sort of request in recruitment chat and high level content. He is simply inferior to a lot of other frames. 

He most definitely is not perfect. You are really trying hard to make an awkward frame seem good. 

Everything Baruuk can do looks good in writing, but in-game he falls down. Other frames do his job easier and with less hassle and their kits synergise with each other, whereas Baruuk’s does not.

He needs looking at one way or another.

I can't really force my opinion into you. You believe baruuk is weak, you "supposedly" tried him out in high level missions and found him weak. I tried him out in high level missions and didn't find him weak at all. Bounties, sorties, 2h+ survivals, ESO and arbitration, he didn't fail any of them. He isn't as powerful as say, mesa with her 4th, or immunity like rhino with his shield, or cc'ing like loki with his 4th, but he has it all. He is a jack of all trades master of none, which for some people means "WEAK", for me means "OP" because no matter the situation I'm thrown at, I can resolve it with baruuk. He is fine the way he is, but if you want to overpower the warframe, then go ahead. Don't forget that OP jacks of all trades master of none will become the fotm classes in every game, which will happen to baruuk if DE decides to increasse his effectiveness.

[(PSN)CommanderC2121]

2 hours ago, devildevil21 said:

Uhm, I don't really think baruuk is weak. He is just underrated.

Ill agree he isnt weak, but that doesnt mean he isnt without issues, because he does have a lot of issues

2 hours ago, devildevil21 said:

This is my baruuk build (Note: Augur reach is missing 1 rank, just pretend like it's max rank, and umbral vitality in my build isn't max rank since I lack the endo atm to max it, but overextended is intended to be 1 rank below max)

Ive got a similar build to this, but mine focuses on mote strength, range is slightly lower and duration is much lower. 

2 hours ago, devildevil21 said:

Putting it simple, with this build you can reach 360º with his first skill, you got a massive range and duration with his 2nd skill to sleep enemies and gain energy for his 4th skill, you got lots of range to with his 3rd skill to disarm every enemy on the whole world while summoning up to 12 daggers per cast.

Id argue that summoning 12 daggers isnt amazing. While a 360 elude is fun to use, elude is a poor ability when combined with the rest of Baruuk’s kit (mainly due to the anti synergies it causes). Given that elude turns off when you attack, and this is Warframe so we attack a lot, you need that DR from his Desolate hands, and with the cap of 90% being rather important as you playing longer missions having to recast DH because 4 daggers flew away can be tedious. 

2 hours ago, devildevil21 said:

The high efficiency allows you to spam his 2nd and 3rd skill constantly plus keeping his 1st skill active all the time, and with your 4th skill, since you got power strength in this build, if you make a decent weapon build like this (look image below) you'll have an insane high DPS exalted weapon to add on top of your overloaded build already.

 

2 hours ago, devildevil21 said:

Baruuk is many things, but weak isn't one of them.

You’re right, he isnt weak. But his kit fights itself constantly and leads to him being subpar in some situations. 

2 hours ago, devildevil21 said:

He's underrated and many people don't even give him a chance to shine. Maybe due to a lack of understanding of this warframe? Or maybe because they just don't care? Maybe because they think baruuk is ugly?

I love baruuk, but man is he hard to fashion xD

2 hours ago, devildevil21 said:

Honestly, I don't know. But baruuk is perfect the way he is.

False

2 hours ago, devildevil21 said:

24/7 immunity with sleep and disarm and damage reduction and a really powerful exalted weapon

Powerful? Yes. But its not near the top when it comes to other exalted. Mesa/excal/wu have much better exalted, due to things like being guns (for mesa), guaranteed status procs (for excal), or being able to reliably stack combo multiplier (Wukong) put them ahead of baruuk in terms of exalted weapons. But baruuk still beats out Valkyrs exalted, rip the kitty.  

2 hours ago, devildevil21 said:

(if built properly). Can't ask for much else, to be trully honest.

Ohhh yes we can

[TheGodofWiFi]

1 hour ago, devildevil21 said:

You believe baruuk is weak, you "supposedly" tried him out in high level missions and found him weak. I tried him out in high level missions and didn't find him weak at all.

There is no debate about his fourth being incredibly weak at high levels, his first being rendered useless by his second and third and his third being annoying to use as well as less effective than other disarm powers. Also there is no “supposed” about my playing him at high level. Its the whole reason I made this thread to begin with because I can see Baruuk’s potential.

1 hour ago, devildevil21 said:

He is a jack of all trades master of none, which for some people means "WEAK", for me means "OP" because no matter the situation I'm thrown at, I can resolve it with baruuk.

We’ve done this before; a frame that tries to do everything is a frame that focuses on nothing and ends being inferior to everything its trying to emulate. Oberon used to have this problem before he got tweaked.

Baruuk can resolve low to mid level content alright, as can most frames. High level content is where he struggles and is outclassed easily by frames better designed then he is.

Baruuk is most certainly not OP. Most frames in the game can handle whatever situation is thrown at them and some do it a lot better than others. Baruuk is not part of the latter category. He’s in the category of being an inferior version of things we already have and consequently does not get used.

1 hour ago, devildevil21 said:

He is fine the way he is

No he is not. This isn’t something you can say with confidence. He is not a popular or commonly used frame and his abilities were poorly designed as they conflict with each other, are inferior versions of powers we’ve already seen and are just straight up useless at high level in the case of his fourth.

1 hour ago, devildevil21 said:

but if you want to overpower the warframe, then go ahead.

The changes proposed would not overpower Baruuk in any way. It would actually fix his anti-synergy and poor mechanics.

1 hour ago, devildevil21 said:

Don't forget that OP jacks of all trades master of none will become the fotm classes in every game, which will happen to baruuk if DE decides to increasse his effectiveness.

This is false. 

Edited September 2, 2019 by TheGodofWiFi

[Netheren]

Build baruuk with adaption and 315 strength, 15 duration, 145 range.

Instant sleeps that only last a couple seconds but that's all you usually need.

24 daggers.

His 4th one hits any mobs 100 and under. Which is like 99% of the game.

 

Oh you want him for hour long survival or whatever? Play someone else. For those of us who use him to do EVERYTHING else and demolish it with ease the only change we want to see is combo counter on waves.

[(PSN)CommanderC2121]

2 hours ago, Netheren said:

Build baruuk with adaption and 315 strength, 15 duration, 145 range.

Instant sleeps that only last a couple seconds but that's all you usually need.

24 daggers.

His 4th one hits any mobs 100 and under. Which is like 99% of the game.

 

Oh you want him for hour long survival or whatever? Play someone else. For those of us who use him to do EVERYTHING else and demolish it with ease the only change we want to see is combo counter on waves.

Id like combo counter on waves and a status buff, just like 10 or 20% more. Wukong got a similar buff with his Exalted weapon

[vFlitz]

16 hours ago, TheGodofWiFi said:

Yes line of site is required, but that doesn’t mean you should not invest in it.

Doesn't mean you should go overboard with it either, as anything past a certain amount will be wasted in 90% of locations in the game. Precisely why I went for 145% range.

16 hours ago, TheGodofWiFi said:

Investing in strength for Serene Storm is absolutely pointless as it is one of the worst Exalted weapons we have right now in terms of mechanics and stats.

You're exaggerating now. Truth is, in the level range that it works it's probably the best exalted weapon. Clears entire rooms of enemies so fast that it might as well be a nuke. And with the right build that level range is generous enough for majority of warframe's content, level 80 armored heavies are still no problem and any unarmored enemies don't stand a chance far past that point. It is true that it doesn't perform at endurance run levels though, and that is disappointing since running it requires far more maintenance than other exalted weapons. Doubly so as out of all frames with exalteds, Baruuk is the tankiest one.

 

17 hours ago, TheGodofWiFi said:

There are many frames out there with “activate and forget” abilities and they are still popular, like Inaros.

Doesn't mean you should be adding more. Inaros is a poor example anyway, he's popular for his abnormal base stats, not his incredibly bland abilities.

 

17 hours ago, TheGodofWiFi said:

The daggers automatically flying off is incredibly annoying and does not benefit the player. Before you say “it disarms enemies how is that not beneficial?”, the daggers do not out all at once, they go one at a time. This incredibly slow and not beneficial in a practical sense when you are surrounded by enemies and you have to patiently wait until they are disarmed.

Most enemies aren't important enough to care if they're disarmed or not, they die too quickly so on them all that matters is that it reduces your restraint a little. But high priority targets that take more effort to kill definitely will get disarmed. Take a level 150 nox eximus for example, and you'll see what a difference disarming makes for your experience in fighting one. Of course, that's past Baruuk's normal effective level range, but that's an issue with Desert Wind or Warframe's enemy scaling, rather than with Desolate.

 

17 hours ago, TheGodofWiFi said:

Having the daggers be permanently surrounding the player until either a timer runs out (like Mesa’s Shatter Shield, or Gara’s Splinter Storm) or the player casts the ability early upon which the daggers fly off all at once towards the nearest group of enemies, would far more useful than the current state it is now, in which they just fly off randomly.

And just how in the world having it be duration-based would work better? You said it yourself, the daggers only go one at a time. That's like counting down, except the counter stops when you have no enemies around you. A timer is also more difficult to keep track of, getting distracted once at the wrong moment can easily kill you. Not to mention that it would make ability duration a necessary stat for him, and it doesn't really do much for his other abilities. Even on Lull, being prevented from recasting for longer is annoying, and enemies wake up once they take damage anyway.

As for the second option, like I said, that should be added to recasting the ability in its current state, not as replacement to how it works otherwise. You can't just give a frame a permanent 90% DR ability that requires no upkeep and be like 'oh, you can do something more with it, but you really don't have to'. It'd also get in the way of the team synergy of giving the daggers to other players. So really, Desolate Hands is fine they way it works now. Stop trying to fix what ain't broken and maybe focus on what is, instead.

[TheGodofWiFi]

2 hours ago, vFlitz said:

Doesn't mean you should go overboard with it either, as anything past a certain amount will be wasted in 90% of locations in the game.

Investing in a really good CC ability is not going overboard. A lot of our new locations are now large open areas. You can tell with the new Gas City tileset that DE are making the mission areas less tight and more spread out.

2 hours ago, vFlitz said:

You're exaggerating now. Truth is, in the level range that it works it's probably the best exalted weapon. Clears entire rooms of enemies so fast that it might as well be a nuke.

I’m not exaggerating at all, unlike you. Excalibur’s Exalted Blade has the same range. They both have Exalted weapons that send out energy, only Excals is far better and less clunky.

Serene Storm can clear out trash like no tomorrow, but that can be said of any frame. You are definitely exaggerating there.

2 hours ago, vFlitz said:

level 80 armored heavies are still no problem

He squeezes by that level and unlike the other user who falsely claims he can “one-shot up to level 100”, he is having a much harder time than say Wukong or Excalibur.

2 hours ago, vFlitz said:

Doubly so as out of all frames with exalteds, Baruuk is the tankiest one.

This is debatable. Wukong is probably the tankiest Exalted frame right now with the right build.

2 hours ago, vFlitz said:

Inaros is a poor example anyway, he's popular for his abnormal base stats, not his incredibly bland abilities.

His abilities enhance his stats and yes he is popular for both his stats and abilities. He’s the best tank in the game and a popular choice for people who like that gameplay.

You see absolutely no one complaining about him and he is played frequently by high-level players. 

2 hours ago, vFlitz said:

But high priority targets that take more effort to kill definitely will get disarmed. Take a level 150 nox eximus for example, and you'll see what a difference disarming makes for your experience in fighting one.

I never ever once said that disarming is not a good ability. I am saying Baruuk’s disarm is completely random and annoying compared to Loki’s, which is far far far superior.

That 150 level Nox will usually be surrounded by a number of fodder and your daggers simply do not prioritise enemies based on their type. They are random. So that Nox could get a lot of shots off before one of the daggers actually goes for him, which means you’ll be dead.

Compare Baruuk’s DH to Loki’s RD and there is zero guesses as to which is better.

2 hours ago, vFlitz said:

but that's an issue with Desert Wind or Warframe's enemy scaling, rather than with Desolate.

Not at all. Like I said; Loki’s Disarm serves him beautifully and is a very good and easy to use ability. It is also a “hit once and forget for a bit” ability which you are apparently not a fan of.

Desolate Hands has issues.

2 hours ago, vFlitz said:

And just how in the world having it be duration-based would work better? You said it yourself, the daggers only go one at a time.

You seem to have completely misunderstood my post. I am suggesting that the daggers fly off all at once instead of one at a time, once the duration is over. That gives Baruuk a little breathing space to recast the ability again.

2 hours ago, vFlitz said:

A timer is also more difficult to keep track of, getting distracted once at the wrong moment can easily kill you.

Other frames for more popular than Baruuk like Gara and Mesa have timers on their tank abilities and they somehow manage just fine.

This is a completely hollow argument as well because a players level of concentration is entirely irrelevant to whether or not an ability is good. 

2 hours ago, vFlitz said:

Even on Lull, being prevented from recasting for longer is annoying

The fog will continually put any enemy aware of Baruuk to sleep, so I don’t see why you’d need to recast Lull when one is already out.

I took two builds one of low duration and one of high duration. I found the latter to be more useful in late game personally as the enemies sleep for longer and the field is more useful.

2 hours ago, vFlitz said:

As for the second option, like I said, that should be added to recasting the ability in its current state, not as replacement to how it works otherwise.

Thats entirely pointless though. Why would you want a slow gradual disarm that takes one second between every individual enemy when the daggers could fly off all at once? It makes zero sense.

You either wait 15 seconds to disarm 15 enemies or you could just disarm them all in one instant. The former is just a headache and not useful at all as by the time you’ve finished disarming those enemies, more will have shown up and are already taking shots at your now less tanky Baruuk.

2 hours ago, vFlitz said:

You can't just give a frame a permanent 90% DR ability that requires no upkeep and be like 'oh, you can do something more with it, but you really don't have to'.

I have not ever suggested that Baruuk should have a permanent 90% damage reduction. Again you seem yo have completely misunderstood what I am saying. I said his daggers have a timer, which will eventually cause the daggers to fly away from you all at once when the end is reach or when you recast the ability early, as in before the timer runs out.

Also just for the record, you do know that building for extremely low range gives Baruuk exactly what you just described; a permanent 90% damage reduction buff that requires little to no upkeep thanks to the negative range and positive strength.

2 hours ago, vFlitz said:

It'd also get in the way of the team synergy of giving the daggers to other players.

How would it? Unlike now you’d actually have control over who receives the daggers and when.

This is also another case of Baruuk trying to be another frame. Gara can already cast her Splinter Storm on other players (along with a lot of other things), giving them a full 90% damage reduction and she doesn’t have to wait patiently for each shard of glass to transfer over either. IMO the daggers should not be given to players full stop. Baruuk needs to stop focusing so much on trying to cover every other frames ground and actually focus on making a niche for himself, because he currently has none.

He already has good team synergy by providing a really good CC ability.

2 hours ago, vFlitz said:

So really, Desolate Hands is fine they way it works now. Stop trying to fix what ain't broken

It really is not fine the way it is as evidenced in-game. It is clunky, anti-synergetic and is just plain inferior to other abilities of its type. DH suffers from trying to be three abilities at once and consequently is worse than all of them.

Tweaking the ability so as to allow you to keep the daggers until the timer runs out or you recast the ability before it does, upon which the daggers fly off all at the same time as opposed to one at a time, is a far better state than what it is right now.

There is a reason why Baruuk is one the rarest frames to ever see outside of Hydron where people are just levelling him as MR fodder.

He is not in a good place. His kit needs to be looked at. All of it.

Edited September 3, 2019 by TheGodofWiFi

[vFlitz]

10 minutes ago, TheGodofWiFi said:

Investing in a really good CC ability is not going overboard. A lot of our new locations are now large open areas. You can tell with the new Gas City tileset that DE are making the mission areas less tight and more spread out.

Sure, let me know when most of the game is actually like that.

13 minutes ago, TheGodofWiFi said:

I’m not exaggerating at all, unlike you. Excalibur’s Exalted Blade has the same range. They both have Exalted weapons that send out energy, only Excals is far better and less clunky.

Of course, lets ignore the fact that Desert Wind's waves are about 5 times as big and fast. Exalted Blade doesn't even begin to compare to Desert Wind's performance in the level range that Desert Wind is effective.

23 minutes ago, TheGodofWiFi said:

This is debatable. Wukong is probably the tankiest Exalted frame right now with the right build.

**

Inaros is the best tank in the game

Nope. Wrong on both accounts. No one who has any idea what they're talking about when it comes to frame survivability would say that.

28 minutes ago, TheGodofWiFi said:

That 150 level Nox will usually be surrounded by a number of fodder and your daggers simply do not prioritise enemies based on their type. They are random. So that Nox could get a lot of shots off before one of the daggers actually goes for him, which means you’ll be dead.

No, the fodder won't live long enough to protect the Nox for long. That's the point.

 

31 minutes ago, TheGodofWiFi said:

Not at all. Like I said; Loki’s Disarm serves him beautifully and is a very good and easy to use ability. It is also a “hit once and forget for a bit” ability which you are apparently not a fan of.

And Disarm doesn't give Loki or his allies 90% DR. So? You're comparing apples to oranges here.

45 minutes ago, TheGodofWiFi said:

You seem to have completely misunderstood my post.

You missed my point. What I was saying there is that duration is strictly inferior for the way the ability is managed.

47 minutes ago, TheGodofWiFi said:

Other frames for more popular than Baruuk like Gara and Mesa have timers on their tank abilities and they somehow manage just fine.

So they're popular because timers are good, not because of the other things they offer? Good to know, I had no idea.

For real though, don't try to imply correlations that don't exist. Sure, they manage with the timers. Doesn't mean timers are good or comfortable. Gara also can refresh hers at any time, while Mesa can literally be caught with her pants down and it's a well-known downside of the ability.

 

33 minutes ago, TheGodofWiFi said:

The fog will continually put any enemy aware of Baruuk to sleep, so I don’t see why you’d need to recast Lull when one is already out.

For correction when a positioning mistake makes your Lull cast useless because of line of sight. And yes, the fog has some uses, but much range, increasing duration past a certain point falls off in usefulness here. And a defensive ability on a timer would incentivize far more duration than that. And again, for Elude it'd only reduce the channeling cost, and it would do nothing for his 4 (which, if it got improved, you would want to use and mod for.)

 

39 minutes ago, TheGodofWiFi said:

Thats entirely pointless though. Why would you want a slow gradual disarm that takes one second between every individual enemy when the daggers could fly off all at once? It makes zero sense.

What I meant is, when you recast Desolate Hands, which you currently do to refresh your dagger count, all the daggers your currently have should be instantly sent out to disarm nearby enemies instead of simply being replaced. That's a simple but helpful change, and it gives him a more proactive option for the disarm, which fixes the lack of control issue that seems to be your main problem with it.

51 minutes ago, TheGodofWiFi said:

I have not ever suggested that Baruuk should have a permanent 90% damage reduction. Again you seem yo have completely misunderstood what I am saying.

Touche, I indeed have misread that sentence. Thought an 'or' was pertaining to something else than it actually was, my bad.

52 minutes ago, TheGodofWiFi said:

Also just for the record, you do know that building for extremely low range gives Baruuk exactly what you just described; a permanent 90% damage reduction buff that requires little to no upkeep thanks to the negative range and positive strength.

Which is a kinda S#&$ty way to build him, because you gut all your utility and every way to get restraint down. You might as well play decaying key Hildryn at that point. You're abilities are similarly rendered useless, but at least you're actually immortal.

58 minutes ago, TheGodofWiFi said:

It really is not fine the way it is as evidenced in-game. It is clunky, anti-synergetic and is just plain inferior to other abilities of its type.

It's really not. To name a few, t's more effective and less clunky than new Defy, less effective but far more reliable than Shatter Shield, superior in literally every way to Null Star before it got bandaided with an augment. Sure it might not be as good as Warding Halo or Splinter Storm, but point is that it's easily on par with all the good defensive abilities. 

 

1 hour ago, TheGodofWiFi said:

Tweaking the ability so as to allow you to keep the daggers until the timer runs out or you recast the ability before it does, upon which the daggers fly off all at the same time as opposed to one at a time, is a far better state than what it is right now.

At the end of the day, the disarm is just a side bonus. What really matters is that 90% DR. That is what people use the ability for. Switching it to be duration based is a nerf to that purpose and Baruuk's modding as a whole.

 

1 hour ago, TheGodofWiFi said:

There is a reason why Baruuk is one the rarest frames to ever see outside of Hydron where people are just levelling him as MR fodder.

And the reason is that Elude is a wasted ability slot, Desert Wind can't be accessed immediately when the mission starts like other exalteds and it requires a lot of ability juggling to maintain, so people expect it to be amazing in any kind of content after all that effort but then it turns out it isn't. Also Lull is practically forced to be a spammed restraint dump instead of a cc skill that it's designed as, and its delayed activation is hardly satisfying when current meta is all about annihilating everything instantly. Then people go back to playing Mesa or Saryn and annihilate everything instantly at the press of a button, instead of jumping through a dozen hoops to have subpar results with Baruuk.

[TheGodofWiFi]

1 hour ago, vFlitz said:

Sure, let me know when most of the game is actually like that.

Its starting to be and that is a clear focus with the new Duvuri open world and the incredibly spaced out Sentient ship tileset.  Not to mention Railjack. Thats the direction the game is going. The tight corridors and claustrophobic environments while slowly be phased out over time in favour of more open tiles.

1 hour ago, vFlitz said:

Of course, lets ignore the fact that Desert Wind's waves are about 5 times as big and fast.

Slightly bigger, not faster. That also doesn’t suddenly make the ability better evidentially. Distance wise it is the same.

Ask anyone which Exalted ability they’d rather take.

1 hour ago, vFlitz said:

Nope. Wrong on both accounts. No one who has any idea what they're talking about when it comes to frame survivability would say that.

Okay you’re officially moving the goalposts now. We are discussing tanking, survivability is another matter entirely. They are not synonymous. Tanking is about how much damage you can take. Survivability is how good you are at surviving. For example, Desolate Hands is a tank ability, Elude is a survivability type power.

If we go by survivability, Limbo is the king, hands down. All he has to do is go into his Rift and he is immune to everything but nullifiers.

You have blatantly confused tankiness with survivability here.

1 hour ago, vFlitz said:

No, the fodder won't live long enough to protect the Nox for long. That's the point.

At level 150. You just said yourself Baruuk struggles at level 80. That high level, the frame won’t be killing anything fast. We’re excluding guns and normal melee in this scenario. 

Put Excalibur in front of Nox and accompanying mob and he takes care of it just fine. A Baruuk, not so.

1 hour ago, vFlitz said:

No, the fodder won't live long enough to protect the Nox for long. That's the point.

False. You stated that the scaling was the issue as to why Baruuk’s DH doesn’t function well as opposed to its poor design.

Loki completely disproves that. Loki’s Disarm doesn’t need to give allies a damage reduction, simply for two reasons;

1. The Radial Disarm is useful enough on its own.

2. He’s not trying to copy another frame. He’s focusing on what makes him a standout.

1 hour ago, vFlitz said:

What I was saying there is that duration is strictly inferior for the way the ability is managed.

So you’re saying that the current way of one dagger floating off at a time without your control is better than having a timer that allows you to keep all your daggers.

How exactly does that work?

1 hour ago, vFlitz said:

So they're popular because timers are good, not because of the other things they offer? Good to know, I had no idea.

Changing the goalposts again.

You said the ability would be inferior as you would actually have to pay attention to the timer, otherwise you die. I was using Gara and Mesa as an example of how 90% damage reduction abilities can be very easily managed with a timer. 

Deliberately trying to misrepresent what I’m saying helps no one.

1 hour ago, vFlitz said:

For real though, don't try to imply correlations that don't exist.

They do exist and you provided them for me by talking about how timers are “bad”.

1 hour ago, vFlitz said:

Doesn't mean timers are good or comfortable.

It also doesn’t mean timers are bad. The reason why we have timers on certain abilities is because they would be very OP without them, which means other methods of balancing would be made which could render them as useless as Desolate Hands.

Timers are far more comfortable than what Desolate Hands is right now. The whole reason for a timer would be so that the ability is not overpowered. Like you said; you can’t give a frame a permanent 90% DR buff. Its not balanced. The timer would be a compromise to having more control over the daggers but loosing the ability to have them float around you permanently, which they do right now.

Gara can refresh hers and Mesa cannot. Your point is what exactly? That a timer is useless if it can’t be refreshed? Again this is provably untrue with faithful Loki.

1 hour ago, vFlitz said:

For correction when a positioning mistake makes your Lull cast useless because of line of sight.

The enemies that come into the line of sight are affected by Lull as well even if they were not in line of sight during the initial casting.

1 hour ago, vFlitz said:

And yes, the fog has some uses, but much range, increasing duration past a certain point falls off in usefulness here.

CC never falls off in usefulness. That is fact. It is the only thing that can stand up the games scaling. Its the king of end-game even though its no longer the meta.

1 hour ago, vFlitz said:

And a defensive ability on a timer would incentivize far more duration than that.

Not if the defensive ability requires just a decent investment in power duration to be good. Like say 20-25 seconds at base. You’d only need a small investment of duration to make the ability perfect to use while also not making Lull last too long.

For example, Mesa’s Shatter Shield has a 25 second base duration at max rank. Add on a Primed Continuity and you’re looking at a pretty nice 38.75 seconds. Thats nearly two thirds of a minute. A pretty decent amount of time if you ask me. And thats just with one mod.

Lull lets 7.75 seconds with one Primed Continuity. This can also be tweaked to make it last less as well. This is the whole reason why this thread exists; to make Baruuk’s kit better.

1 hour ago, vFlitz said:

What I meant is, when you recast Desolate Hands, which you currently do to refresh your dagger count, all the daggers your currently have should be instantly sent out to disarm nearby enemies instead of simply being replaced. That's a simple but helpful change, and it gives him a more proactive option for the disarm, which fixes the lack of control issue that seems to be your main problem with it.

My issue is not just with the fact that you can’t send the daggers out all at once, its the fact that the daggers currently seek enemies/allies of their own accord when they come into range and you have no control over that.

Like I have been saying since the beginning; the daggers never seek out enemies randomly on their own anymore and stay with you. They should only seek enemies when the timer runs or you cast the ability before it does, whereupon all of the daggers will fly off at once. 

1 hour ago, vFlitz said:

Thought an 'or' was pertaining to something else than it actually was, my bad.

That’s fine. I’m guilty of misreading sometimes. Everyone does it. 

1 hour ago, vFlitz said:

Which is a kinda S#&$ty way to build him, because you gut all your utility and every way to get restraint down

Exactly. A stone-cold example of Baruuk’s Anti-synergy. You end up making the job harder so you can survive better.

1 hour ago, vFlitz said:

It's really not. To name a few, t's more effective and less clunky than new Defy, less effective but far more reliable than Shatter Shield, superior in literally every way to Null Star before it got bandaided with an augment.

The new Defy is pretty straightforward. Press a button and get extra armour that stays with you for a good while. Don’t see how that means its more clunky than Desolate Hands because that is just not true. You have full control over Defy, you do not have that with DH.

DH is more reliable in the fact that it can be refreshed. Nothing else. Loki and Mesa still are far more effective and more frequently used than Baruuk for that reason. They can’t refresh their two core abilities but that doesn’t mean the are inferior to DH.

Null Star I’ll give you that one as it disarms enemies rather than applying a pitiful 200 slash proc.

1 hour ago, vFlitz said:

Sure it might not be as good as Warding Halo or Splinter Storm, but point is that it's easily on par with all the good defensive abilities. 

Stat wise you are correct. Mechanics wise it really really isn’t.

The daggers having a mind of their own just makes the ability an absolute annoyance, far more so than unreshreshable tank abilities. The grand majority would rather take a Mesa or a Loki over Baruuk any day, simply because they are more reliable in their mechanics and are easier to manage as a result.

1 hour ago, vFlitz said:

What really matters is that 90% DR. That is what people use the ability for. Switching it to be duration based is a nerf to that purpose and Baruuk's modding as a whole.

The purpose is to keep you alive. A timer has no effect on that concept. Desolate Hands being tweaked to make it duration based and have the daggers stay with you would be a massive benefit to his overall tankiness and reliability. You can already refresh it as well. 

Also DH wouldn’t just be the one ability getting looked at. This is what we’ve been talking about, Baruuk’s whole kit would be looked at. Desolate Hands is not the only ability that suffers from anti-synergy/poor design.

1 hour ago, vFlitz said:

And the reason is that Elude is a wasted ability slot, Desert Wind can't be accessed immediately when the mission starts like other exalteds and it requires a lot of ability juggling to maintain, so people expect it to be amazing in any kind of content after all that effort but then it turns out it isn't. Also Lull is practically forced to be a spammed restraint dump instead of a cc skill that it's designed as, and its delayed activation is hardly satisfying when current meta is all about annihilating everything instantly. Then people go back to playing Mesa or Saryn and annihilate everything instantly at the press of a button, instead of jumping through a dozen hoops to have subpar results with Baruuk.

You’re saying Baruuk is designed poorly which I obviously agree with. But you don’t seem to recognise that Desolate Hands is also included in the reasons as to why people don’t play Baruuk. 

Its as much of a problem as the other three abilities are. Changing it would not nerf Baruuk at all, but rather buff him and make him that little bit more attractive to the crowd. Then his other abilities would need work to and then he could actually become a meta frame.

At the end of it all, Baruuk needs a good going-over by DE. To be honest he really does feel like a frame that DE hastily threw together and then forgot about, which is the mentality reflected within the community. He’s the new poster-child for being an apprentice at everything but a master of nothing. Trying to cover too many fronts at once just means he has no actual identity of his own and as such is a confused mess of abilities that try and do multiple things at once but end up failing at all of them.

All of Baruuk’s abilities need to be given another look.

Edited September 3, 2019 by TheGodofWiFi

[vFlitz]

25 minutes ago, TheGodofWiFi said:

Its starting to be and that is a clear focus with the new Duvuri open world and the incredibly spaced out Sentient ship tileset.  Not to mention Railjack. Thats the direction the game is going. The tight corridors and claustrophobic environments while slowly be phased out over time in favour of more open tiles.

Perhaps. Even so, at this rate it will take years for that kind of environments to make up for the majority of the game where we tend to actually most of our missions.

29 minutes ago, TheGodofWiFi said:

Slightly bigger, not faster. That also doesn’t suddenly make the ability better evidentially. Distance wise it is the same.

You can literally hop into simulacrum and check how much faster it crosses that 20m range, and how much more you can angle away from an enemy and still hit him. I played Baruuk a lot for a time, switching to Excal after that was painful even though he does better damage.

 

35 minutes ago, TheGodofWiFi said:

Okay you’re officially moving the goalposts now. We are discussing tanking, survivability is another matter entirely. They are not synonymous. Tanking is about how much damage you can take. Survivability is how good you are at surviving. For example, Desolate Hands is a tank ability, Elude is a survivability type power.

You're nitpicking, but okay. Tanking is a form of survivability, and it's exactly what I meant by that. Baruuk tanks better than Wukong because of his extreme amounts of damage reduction.

 

38 minutes ago, TheGodofWiFi said:

At level 150. You just said yourself Baruuk struggles at level 80. That high level, the frame won’t be killing anything fast. We’re excluding guns and normal melee in this scenario.

And why would we be excluding that? Abilities don't work in a vacuum. Besides, even if, fodder can be killed at that level with Desert Wind no problem. It's only the heavies with high armor that it's too slow against.

 

40 minutes ago, TheGodofWiFi said:

False. You stated that the scaling was the issue as to why Baruuk’s DH doesn’t function well as opposed to its poor design.

Loki completely disproves that. Loki’s Disarm doesn’t need to give allies a damage reduction, simply for two reasons;

Again, radial disarm is a dedicated AoE CC ability that does nothing besides that. Desolate Hands is a DR ability with a side bonus of minor CC. Comparing them by CC potential is silly. Apples and oranges.

 

43 minutes ago, TheGodofWiFi said:

CC never falls off in usefulness. That is fact. It is the only thing that can stand up the games scaling. Its the king of end-game even though its no longer the meta.

I'm not saying it does. I'm saying that in most cases it makes little difference for you if your CC is 20s or 30s long. Especially when in this particular case it's interrupted when enemies take any sort of damage.

49 minutes ago, TheGodofWiFi said:

Not if the defensive ability requires just a decent investment in power duration to be good. Like say 20-25 seconds at base. You’d only need a small investment of duration to make the ability perfect to use while also not making Lull last too long.

For example, Mesa’s Shatter Shield has a 25 second base duration at max rank. Add on a Primed Continuity and you’re looking at a pretty nice 38.75 seconds. Thats nearly two thirds of a minute. A pretty decent amount of time if you ask me. And thats just with one mod.

That's still shorter than I have to recast DH most of the time in its current state.

 

51 minutes ago, TheGodofWiFi said:

My issue is not just with the fact that you can’t send the daggers out all at once, its the fact that the daggers currently seek enemies/allies of their own accord when they come into range and you have no control over that.

Like I have been saying since the beginning; the daggers never seek out enemies randomly on their own anymore and stay with you. They should only seek enemies when the timer runs or you cast the ability before it does, whereupon all of the daggers will fly off at once. 

As I've been saying, the way the daggers are sent out one by one works exactly like a timer counting down, except it doesn't count down when there are no enemies it range. On top of that you steadily get the disarms, and even if the enemies that got disarmed were of no importance, you still lose some restraint. It's literally just the ability running out with bonuses attached to it. 

1 hour ago, TheGodofWiFi said:

Exactly. A stone-cold example of Baruuk’s Anti-synergy. You end up making the job harder so you can survive better.

Thing is, it really isn't necessary for him to have an easy time surviving. Like I said, my build is 145% range and my dagger management is fine - unless I turn on Elude and that turns it into 290% for Desolate Hands. That's the anti-synergy.

 

1 hour ago, TheGodofWiFi said:

The new Defy is pretty straightforward. Press a button and get extra armour that stays with you for a good while. Don’t see how that means its more clunky than Desolate Hands because that is just not true. You have full control over Defy, you do not have that with DH.

Defy is 100% reliant on enemy input. Sometimes you can stand in the middle of a group of enemies and they just aren't interested in attacking you because they'd rather stare at your kavat instead. That does make it rather clunky and unreliable. DH is just tap of a button and you're back to full protection near instantly.

1 hour ago, TheGodofWiFi said:

The purpose is to keep you alive. A timer has no effect on that concept. Desolate Hands being tweaked to make it duration based and have the daggers stay with you would be a massive benefit to his overall tankiness and reliability. You can already refresh it as well. 

While it's true that letting your dagger count drop below 9 reduces the effectiveness of your protection and a timer wouldn't have that effect, ultimately it's less punishing that way. If things get hectic and you get too distracted to keep track, you'll have a larger window to notice you're taking more damage than you should and be able to rectify. With a timer, the effect would just drop entirely and you'd most likely die. Plus, again, there's the added benefit of passively reducing a bit of restraint and staying completely intact when enemies aren't close enough.

1 hour ago, TheGodofWiFi said:

You’re saying Baruuk is designed poorly which I obviously agree with. But you don’t seem to recognise that Desolate Hands is also included in the reasons as to why people don’t play Baruuk. 

Yeah, I'm just not seeing it. It does its job well and other than the interaction with Elude, it has no notable drawbacks to speak of, at least not when there isn't that much good incentive to build for high range. If that were to change, then yeah, it'd be a huge limiting factor, but for now it definitely does its thing better than his other abilities. I suppose some people might be annoyed by the daggers flying off if they come from the assumption of 'but I should be able to control/keep them', but when you see that it's just an alternative way for the ability to run out naturally, it's not that bad imo.

[TheGodofWiFi]

23 hours ago, vFlitz said:

Even so, at this rate it will take years for that kind of environments to make up for the majority of the game where we tend to actually most of our missions.

Doesn’t matter. The newer frames are being made to work better in open worlds. 

23 hours ago, vFlitz said:

You can literally hop into simulacrum and check how much faster it crosses that 20m range, and how much more you can angle away from an enemy and still hit him.

The range is a cone unlike Exalted Blade which does give it a better spread, but the speed is basically the same. I took two clips of EB and DW side by side which I will be turning into a gif later.

Some major differences between them though are;

Exalted Blade does more damage and has more status.

Exalted Blade does not require a combo counter to be good.

23 hours ago, vFlitz said:

You're nitpicking, but okay. Tanking is a form of survivability, and it's exactly what I meant by that.

Its not being nitpicky, you said survivability, which is not synonymous with tankiness. In the umbrella term it falls under that label, but as demonstrated a tank might not necessarily be the best at surviving.

23 hours ago, vFlitz said:

Baruuk tanks better than Wukong because of his extreme amounts of damage reduction.

On paper, Baruuk tanks better than Wukong. In game, he does not due to his incredibly poor mechanics. And in game function is where the final judgement is made as to whether a frame is good or not.

Baruuk was judged to be inferior.

23 hours ago, vFlitz said:

And why would we be excluding that? Abilities don't work in a vacuum.

Because we’re going by how much an Exalted frame can handle and how much damage it can do on its own.

If the frame abilities are good, the weapons aren’t need. Excalibur and Wukong can handle endgame just fine with their abilities and Exalted weapons.

Baruuk can’t.

23 hours ago, vFlitz said:

fodder can be killed at that level with Desert Wind no problem. It's only the heavies with high armor that it's too slow against.

False. I took Baruuk into the simulacrum with 250% power strength and the level 150 Corrupted Lancers took far more time to kill than it would have done had I been using Excal or Wukong.

23 hours ago, vFlitz said:

Desolate Hands is a DR ability with a side bonus of minor CC. Comparing them by CC potential is silly. Apples and oranges.

And you have just pointed out why Desolate Hands has issues once again; its trying to be too many things at once and not dedicating itself towards one specific purpose, which is exactly why its a bad ability.

Loki’s Disarm focuses only on disarming and his invisibility keeps him alive. Gara’s Storm focuses on keeping her and others she chooses alive at the same time.

Baruuk is trying to do both of these frames jobs at once, with one ability and he really does not need too. Its way too much and it suffers for it. Its not silly to point out that CC is simply not need on that ability.

It’s not comparing apples to oranges, its pointing out that the orange is trying to be an apple and a strawberry alongside being an orange.

23 hours ago, vFlitz said:

I'm saying that in most cases it makes little difference for you if your CC is 20s or 30s long.

Bear in mind you are complaining that a 40 second timer is not enough for a reworked Desolate Hands.

It absolutely makes a difference if the ability is 20s or 30s. That ten seconds in a game as fast paced as this is a gift. He more duration your CC has the better it is. 

23 hours ago, vFlitz said:

Especially when in this particular case it's interrupted when enemies take any sort of damage.

Thats what happens with all sleep abilities apart from the fact that with Ivara and Equinox’s they wake up once 50% of their current health is depleted. 

It’s compensation for the ability having such a huge range. Although I do admit the slow effect is annoying it would be great if it was an instant sleep.

It’s still an amazing CC ability though as it puts enemies into sleep for a long time and it gives you time to have some free shots.

23 hours ago, vFlitz said:

That's still shorter than I have to recast DH most of the time in its current state.

Yea because its permanent. Obviously a timer is going to shorter compared to that.

By timing standards, its a pretty nice amount of time to have damage reduction and you can get by fine with that. 

23 hours ago, vFlitz said:

As I've been saying, the way the daggers are sent out one by one works exactly like a timer counting down,

And is another reason why it is terrible. It takes a full 15 seconds to disarm 15 enemies. That is straight up awful.

Having a real, good timer in which you can cast the ability before it runs out and all the daggers fly off at once, would be a lot better. 

23 hours ago, vFlitz said:

even if the enemies that got disarmed were of no importance, you still lose some restraint.

A pitiful amount compared to the amount of restraint you could loose if all the enemies where disarmed at once, which would be a decent chunk, therefore making it easier to work with his four.

You see how these changes would make his synergy better as opposed to worse?

23 hours ago, vFlitz said:

Thing is, it really isn't necessary for him to have an easy time surviving.

According to the rest of the player-base, thats not exactly true. 

People don’t want pre-rework Wukong, but they don’t want to have an anti-synergetic frame thats clunky to use either. There is a fine balance and Baruuk does not meet it.

23 hours ago, vFlitz said:

Defy is 100% reliant on enemy input.

So are a lot of popular tanks like Rhino, Nezha, Chroma and Inaros.

23 hours ago, vFlitz said:

Sometimes you can stand in the middle of a group of enemies and they just aren't interested in attacking you because they'd rather stare at your kavat instead.

Please post an example of this. One because it sounds hilarious as hel that enemies can be distracted by a cute kitty so much that they don’t shoot at the ancient bio-mechanical war-machine that is sitting in the middle of them.

Two, because it doesn’t happen.

This is pure hyperbole.

23 hours ago, vFlitz said:

That does make it rather clunky and unreliable.

No it doesn’t. If all the enemies prefer cooing at your cat than paying attention to you, despite you being in their faces then thats a problem with the AI, not the ability. This is probably one of the funniest attempts at making an ability seem bad I have ever seen haha.

23 hours ago, vFlitz said:

DH is just tap of a button and you're back to full protection near instantly.

Which you immediately start to loose due to enemies around you. Defy never looses its buff like that.

23 hours ago, vFlitz said:

If things get hectic and you get too distracted to keep track, you'll have a larger window to notice you're taking more damage

Dude, you’re using the concentration thing again. Thats not a real defence/argument as a players concentration has absolutely zero bearing on whether or not an ability is good. Just because you don’t like timers because it requires you to pay that little bit more attention to your abilities, doesn’t mean it is bad.

Stop putting this forward. Personal Concentration levels are utterly irrelevant in judging an abilities usefulness.

If I’m using Gara and I did not notice my Splinter timer run out due to me not paying attention and subsequently dying, that doesn’t mean the ability sucks. At all. No one would take you seriously if you used that as criticism.

23 hours ago, vFlitz said:

With a timer, the effect would just drop entirely and you'd most likely die.

Not if you actually concentrate and use his other abilities like Lull and then recast DH, therefore creating more synergy between abilities.

23 hours ago, vFlitz said:

Yeah, I'm just not seeing it. It does its job well and other than the interaction with Elude, it has no notable drawbacks to speak of

Apart from the ones that have been listed and you demonstrated.

Desolate Hands suffers from the same poor design as his other abilities in many ways. It tried to do too much all at once, its clunky and annoying to use and it could be so much better.

I honestly don’t know why you think this is good argument. You’re basically promoting less synergy when that is precisely Baruuk’s problem.

23 hours ago, vFlitz said:

but when you see that it's just an alternative way for the ability to run out naturally, it's not that bad imo.

Simply looking at it like that doesn’t mean everyone will think “Oh okay this ability is fine” because they evidently have not. Its poorly designed way of making the daggers run out and a true timer would suit the ability for better.

You haven’t provided any strong arguments as to why the ability has no issues and instead have only highlighted how good some changes would do it. I mean you used your own personal attention span and a non-existent situation in which enemies are more interested in your cat than you try and make enemy input tank abilities look bad, as your defence points.

Its not a convincing argument.

Edited September 4, 2019 by TheGodofWiFi