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Devstream 131 Overview


[DE]Taylor

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It’s been a while since our last Devstream, and we have a lot to cover this week, including the Kuva Lich System, Vauban and Ember reworks, and more! This is a beefy one, so we’re going to dive right into the overview.

As always, you can watch the full episode on our YouTube channel, but we’ve compiled a recap for you here: https://www.warframe.com/news/devstream-131

Have a great weekend, Tenno! 🙂

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Above all else, I think knowing which weapon mods are being made Exilus is at the top of my desire list.

Daikyu for example has two specific utility mods for it now, and I'm still holding out for it to be primed when Ivara Prime comes next year so it'd be a good move to have Broadhead or the Amalgam mod made exilus at least. I'd also hope that Syndicate weapon mods get the slot too.

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I loved the devstream but I would love to hear a bit more about Railjack. At least they could have told us that the first part will be dropping this month or not ... We are waiting for so long, I think we deserve this.

Beside that: Keep up the great work DE!

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I'm kind of worried by the idea of the main reward for the kuva lich-type system being... even more powercreeped versions of existing weapons, that also have inherent randomness to them.

weapon exilus slots might be nice, but I feel like it's gonna take a LOT of forma to make room for them.

vauban and ember/heat changes sound nice enough though. Mostly? Accelerant was actually an extremely strong/useful ability and it sounds like it's gotten axed completely.

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2 hours ago, OvisCaedo said:

I'm kind of worried by the idea of the main reward for the kuva lich-type system being... even more powercreeped versions of existing weapons, that also have inherent randomness to them.

weapon exilus slots might be nice, but I feel like it's gonna take a LOT of forma to make room for them.

vauban and ember/heat changes sound nice enough though. Mostly? Accelerant was actually an extremely strong/useful ability and it sounds like it's gotten axed completely.

hey, if they make that they can't use rivens, it would even the field

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Ember's rework looks interesting. I've taken a look and thought over the rework. And while I don't have any numbers to go on this is what I personally think.

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  • New Passive - Spicy: Gains ability strength based on the number of enemies on fire within a range around her. Numbers aren’t final and are pending testing.

This sounds very promising. While I sometimes use her current passive to quickly charge up energy, either with some self procing fire weapons or those lil patches of flaming soot, this sounds much nicer to have.

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  • First Ability - Fireball: This hasn’t changed too much. We fixed a lot of animation latency, should be able to spam it more easily.

This just sounds like a straight up buff if anything.

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  • Second Ability - Immolation (Replacing Accelerant): When cast, Ember Immolates herself with protective fire armor. Her current level of self-Immolation is indicated by a unique UI indicator; the higher the heat, the more damage resistance, and the more effective Ember’s other abilities become.
  • Your first and fourth abilities contribute to this meter, your third lessens it. Make sure to manage it carefully, because if you fill it completely, you will overheat and unleash a wave of fire, expending all your energy.

Before Update 11.5 we had Overheat which was replaced by Accelerant. Overheat was basically exactly the same thing as Immolation but without the overheating ui part of the ability and instead of boosting abilities it would boost damage. So Immolation is just Overheat 2.0.
While I like this one I also hate it. I love the idea of once again having damage resistance on Ember so she's not as squishy in high level areas, but I also do like to use Accelerant. Using it to stun dangerous targets to unload into their faces or to coat a large area and then spam fire blast to quickly evaporate enemies will be missed. It's replacing a stun/damage boost ability with damage reduction. IDK if it'll be duration based or channeled. It sounds like it'll be channeled, But we'll have to see.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

  • Third Ability - Fire Blast: This no longer uses duration, and instead is an AOE ability focused on armor stripping and CC. Knock back enemies upon cast, and melt their armor off! 

It looks like when they replaced Accelerant with Overheat 2.0 they combined Accelerant with Fireblast except they removed the fire damage boost it gave, and made it strip armor. Also instead of the enemies panicking (temp stunned) from being set on fire they just get knocked down which is basically the same thing. Sounds like it's a 2 in 1 spam move if it still deals damage. You can blast off armor and then it should deal more damage when you cast it again. But it probably won't deal as much damage as the old 1 2 of Accelerant then Fireblast currently does. So this could be a good buff or a nerf. (Stripping armor is always a plus tho so...)

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  • Fourth Ability - Inferno (replacing World on Fire): Upon casting Inferno, all enemies currently within sight are struck by a fiery comet, lighting each target ablaze. As they run around with their pants literally on fire (those liars), they can also catch other enemies alight, spreading the blaze.

Instead of a channeled ability that burns and temporarily stuns enemies near you, it's a single use cast that lights enemies around you on fire and from the wording it sounds like they will panic and run around bumping into each other (or not maybe they'll just still walk/run around normally) and they spread the fire to others (Like Saryns Spores but they spread based on contact instead of shooting them.) It does sound a bit like a downgrade to me cause it's no longer a controlled forced proc and is reliant on rng of enemies running into each other.
We'll have to wait until we can test it our selves but I'm not sure I like that her 4th is getting replaced. Even with the range nerf it previously got I think I'll still prefer World on Fire over Inferno.

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It seems like they're changing her from being a mostly passive/slightly active dps with the ability to stun to a more supportive and mostly active dps frame designed to strip armor.

Overall I have to say I'm not entirely sure I like it. With the theoretical merging of Accelerant and Fireblast that should mean that her 2 isn't necessarily replacing anything but is added to her set while Fireblast just got some stuff added to it. This on paper sounds pretty ok, but we'll have to see when she gets released if it's any good.

Now, I think the only 2 reasons people are saying to "rework" ember was mainly because of Update 11.5 when you replaced Overheat and then Update 22.12 where you changed World of Fire, so once you fully heated up the range was reduced by double while the damage increased by 100%, instead of just being the set damage being at the set range that it was. These are what really set off the whole "ember was nerfed into the ground" and "ember sucks now" debates.
I Imagine if you kept the current rework you have set up but instead of changing World on Fire to inferno you reversed the range penalty, so it starts at half the range and reaches full range one fully heated up, as well as probably increasing the heat up time and either removing or lowering the damage bonus, then people would be very happy with this rework. I'm sure there are people who are already happy with the current rework you have set but I'm not 100% on it.

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2 hours ago, (PS4)OmegaSlayer said:

In the devstream it wasn't mentioned if we will get more Loadout slots to purchase

For many it's more relevant than appearance slots

It was both mentioned and showcased. Both the extra loadout and appearance slots cost 20plat each.

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9 hours ago, [DE]Taylor said:

Kuva Lich System

I really, really, really hate this system. Knowing DE, these followers would be a huge bullet sponges, ignore procs and CC and, probaly, will one shot you.

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9 hours ago, OvisCaedo said:

I'm kind of worried by the idea of the main reward for the kuva lich-type system being... even more powercreeped versions of existing weapons, that also have inherent randomness to them.

weapon exilus slots might be nice, but I feel like it's gonna take a LOT of forma to make room for them.

vauban and ember/heat changes sound nice enough though. Mostly? Accelerant was actually an extremely strong/useful ability and it sounds like it's gotten axed completely.

Thank god someone shares my opinion. Fire buff too pls.

And from what I’ve seen I’d guess that the stats are only mildly boosted with innate elementals and since they’re mostly the “eh” weapons we’re good I think. (It’s impossible to be more broken than the Gram Prime)

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3 hours ago, GentlePuppet said:

Ember's rework looks interesting. I've taken a look and thought over the rework. And while I don't have any numbers to go on this is what I personally think.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

  • New Passive - Spicy: Gains ability strength based on the number of enemies on fire within a range around her. Numbers aren’t final and are pending testing.

This sounds very promising. While I sometimes use her current passive to quickly charge up energy, either with some self procing fire weapons or those lil patches of flaming soot, this sounds much nicer to have.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

  • First Ability - Fireball: This hasn’t changed too much. We fixed a lot of animation latency, should be able to spam it more easily.

This just sounds like a straight up buff if anything.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

  • Second Ability - Immolation (Replacing Accelerant): When cast, Ember Immolates herself with protective fire armor. Her current level of self-Immolation is indicated by a unique UI indicator; the higher the heat, the more damage resistance, and the more effective Ember’s other abilities become.
  • Your first and fourth abilities contribute to this meter, your third lessens it. Make sure to manage it carefully, because if you fill it completely, you will overheat and unleash a wave of fire, expending all your energy.

Before Update 11.5 we had Overheat which was replaced by Accelerant. Overheat was basically exactly the same thing as Immolation but without the overheating ui part of the ability and instead of boosting abilities it would boost damage. So Immolation is just Overheat 2.0.
While I like this one I also hate it. I love the idea of once again having damage resistance on Ember so she's not as squishy in high level areas, but I also do like to use Accelerant. Using it to stun dangerous targets to unload into their faces or to coat a large area and then spam fire blast to quickly evaporate enemies will be missed. It's replacing a stun/damage boost ability with damage reduction. IDK if it'll be duration based or channeled. It sounds like it'll be channeled, But we'll have to see.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

  • Third Ability - Fire Blast: This no longer uses duration, and instead is an AOE ability focused on armor stripping and CC. Knock back enemies upon cast, and melt their armor off! 

It looks like when they replaced Accelerant with Overheat 2.0 they combined Accelerant with Fireblast except they removed the fire damage boost it gave, and made it strip armor. Also instead of the enemies panicking (temp stunned) from being set on fire they just get knocked down which is basically the same thing. Sounds like it's a 2 in 1 spam move if it still deals damage. You can blast off armor and then it should deal more damage when you cast it again. But it probably won't deal as much damage as the old 1 2 of Accelerant then Fireblast currently does. So this could be a good buff or a nerf. (Stripping armor is always a plus tho so...)

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

  • Fourth Ability - Inferno (replacing World on Fire): Upon casting Inferno, all enemies currently within sight are struck by a fiery comet, lighting each target ablaze. As they run around with their pants literally on fire (those liars), they can also catch other enemies alight, spreading the blaze.

Instead of a channeled ability that burns and temporarily stuns enemies near you, it's a single use cast that lights enemies around you on fire and from the wording it sounds like they will panic and run around bumping into each other (or not maybe they'll just still walk/run around normally) and they spread the fire to others (Like Saryns Spores but they spread based on contact instead of shooting them.) It does sound a bit like a downgrade to me cause it's no longer a controlled forced proc and is reliant on rng of enemies running into each other.
We'll have to wait until we can test it our selves but I'm not sure I like that her 4th is getting replaced. Even with the range nerf it previously got I think I'll still prefer World on Fire over Inferno.

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It seems like they're changing her from being a mostly passive/slightly active dps with the ability to stun to a more supportive and mostly active dps frame designed to strip armor.

Overall I have to say I'm not entirely sure I like it. With the theoretical merging of Accelerant and Fireblast that should mean that her 2 isn't necessarily replacing anything but is added to her set while Fireblast just got some stuff added to it. This on paper sounds pretty ok, but we'll have to see when she gets released if it's any good.

Now, I think the only 2 reasons people are saying to "rework" ember was mainly because of Update 11.5 when you replaced Overheat and then Update 22.12 where you changed World of Fire, so once you fully heated up the range was reduced by double while the damage increased by 100%, instead of just being the set damage being at the set range that it was. These are what really set off the whole "ember was nerfed into the ground" and "ember sucks now" debates.
I Imagine if you kept the current rework you have set up but instead of changing World on Fire to inferno you reversed the range penalty, so it starts at half the range and reaches full range one fully heated up, as well as probably increasing the heat up time and either removing or lowering the damage bonus, then people would be very happy with this rework. I'm sure there are people who are already happy with the current rework you have set but I'm not 100% on it.

Stick this in a separate post or even better yet smack dab in the workshop. I doubt they’re looking for feedback here.

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Good Devstream.
Informative, some banter but not getting sidetracked by it.

Weapon Exilus - Between mandatory mods, Primed mods (esp on crit secondaries) as well as Umbral and rivens, many weapons are too tight a fit. You're either giving up on wanted mods to begin with, because mandatory mods outcompete them, or you're giving up on build flexibility to have the mod capacity for an exilus mod.
I don't really see a use-case for this outside of melees, since they have stances giving them a large extra bit of capacity.

Heat procs:
Stacking - this is good, will improve Heat as a DoT.
Spreading - neat.
Melting armor - Under the current Damage 2.0 paradigm, I'm not complaining about more ways to strip armor.
That said, I really feel like this is a band-aid/stopgap to work around enemy armor scaling, which will just leave you with more work to (un)do if-and-when you get around to actually dealing with armor scaling's outsized impact on eHP.

Bat Ephemera - Neat. :)

---

Ember:
You're not talking numbers, so I won't talk numbers - just mechanics.

How spammy is Ember intended to be?
Similarly, how many casts are intended to be needed to kill a given (say Sortie level) enemy?
This is an important question, and is pivotal for the proposed heat gauge (as well as Inferno).

Passive - Better than current, but honestly ignoreable. 10m is melee range.
I honestly forgot that Nekros has a similar passive until I came across a comparison on Reddit, which tells you how impactful that is.
That said, with only (maybe) one of her abilities being a duration/snapshot... Not sure how much that matters, as the delta oughtn't be too large between having and not having it for a given cast.

Fireball - Sure.
That said, what role is this intended to play? I have a barebones mouse, and a limited number of fingers. As such, I have a problem with abilities that want to be held-cast while I'm also moving.

Immolation - A lot to go over, here.
First, it's replacing Accelerant. I'm probably in a minority here, but I'm happy to see it go - it was her only effective ability, at this point, and it is very effective.
But its very effectiveness is a crutch - instant, large AoE stun, on top of (assuming you've dealt with armor) a huge damage increase.
(ofc, it's a short duration stun, which means spamming on the one hand, on the other, its augment is a significant damage boost.)
Conversely, without the crutch, her nukes will have to function on their own, and she's losing her only remaining survivability tool.

Now, onto Immolation itself:
* Why would I ever want this not-on? In other words: Why is this an ability? The only reason I'd ever (potentially) have to toggle it off, is as a panic measure to avoid overheat... And then I lose the %DR - which'll likely get me killed anyway.
* Immolation has a passive buildup. So it seems to me that when I'm 'in the sweet spot', I'm incentiized to stop casting and focus on using my weapons, with the occasional Fireblast to vent some heat as needed and lower the fill rate.
Especially with a penalty as big as losing all your energy on top of losing Immolation's %DR.

Personally, I'd probably make this her passive, change the overheat penalty to a self-DoT, and give her a different ability here.

Fire Blast - The ring was pretty ineffectual, so I don't mind seeing it gone.
That said, as her only CC, the propogation time hurts it. Immolation's %DR should cover the gap, but if it's effective enough, you won't actually need FB for survivability - and if it isn't, casting FB for the CC actively dumps heat from your gauge, reducing your %DR - lowering your survivability.

Inferno - It's very pretty. This is a complement.
It's very cinematic. This is not a complement.
How spammy is Ember intended to be? Because - even without getting into LoS restriction funkiness - unless a single (Accelerant-less) cast of Inferno will clear the board in up-to Sortie level content, you're gonna have to cast it repeatedly, and I can see that becoming visually wearying - as well as undercutting the fantasy.

---

Vauban:

Tesla - I'm conflicted.
On the one hand, turning it into latchers is pretty cool.
On the other, I dislike the thought of having to depend on AI for my CC. 'Unreliable' is not a word you want to describe your method of survivability.

Sticky Ripline - I really like the aesthetic.
That said, does it not directly compete with Vortex? Why would I use this over Vortex?
(Energy cost isn't a viable answer under the current energy economy, when +75% eff is basically mandatory for any spammy frame.)

Nail Turret - Suffers from the same issues as the Azima's altfire, without its benefit of being moddable - No active targetting means it's unreliable, doesn't actually lock down its area.
I mean, look at ~40:50 - it's cast into the middle of 8 stationary Butchers, and actually lands around 3 hits a second by the looks of it.

Speed Pad - Sure, why not. :P
Not sure how effective it'll be, but *shrug*.
Open world aren't flat, and it's out-competed by (upgraded) chained Void Dashes.
Indoors it'd work, but only in certain (primarily Corpus) tiles.

Damage Amp - Effective, boring. Eh, sure, I guess.

Orbital Strike - See Inferno.
Pro: It's very cool. Some kind of target-level based scaling?
Con: Slow (hopefully not stationary) cast animation, charge-up time, delayed stationary AoE. Cinematic.

Rule of thumb: The harder a thing to use, the more rewarding it should be.
Landing a blast on a non-CCed enemy wouldn't be easy. otoh, we're talking about Vauban - where, unless the targets are CC-immune (and that's a whole other can of worms), landing a blast becomes trivial.

So, will it clear the affected area? Too strong.
Won't? Needs recasts or spamming, which conflicts with the delivery method (read: delayed effect) and undermines the fantasy.

Bastille / Vortex - Oh hey, it got armor stripping. 😐   See Fire Procs Meling Armor.
On a max range build, Vortex currently ~40% the radius of Bastille, since it doesn't scale 1:1 with Range.
I'd have to play with the new implementation, but I see that causing issues if it's unchanged (which I expect it is).

Aside from that, I like it.

---

Titania

Deluxe - doesn't appeal to me, but that's subjective.

Razorflies pick up Tributes - This is great.
Tributes increase Razorfly cap - Likewise.
Thorns Tribute grants %DR - Given that Enemy Damage <-> Player Health asymmetry is in full effect, this is rather needed for damage reflection to work, yeah.
This set of changes looks like it'd actually get me to use Tribute. Well done.

 

Kuva Liches
Nothing to say here, too convoluted, insufficiently clear and not enough information.

 

Vampiric Kavat
Huh.
Unexpected, surprisingly cute.
Guess we'll wait and see what its abilities are.

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Ember rework does seems interesting. I always loved casting meteors when playing a mage in a MMO and that 4 is exactly the kind of thing I need. Overall her new kit seems to give a lot more synergy than previously and with DR+armor stripping she'll at least serves another purpose besides one-shooting Venus and Earth enemies.

 

Vauban seems... well, it's better than before for sure. It got some interesting points. Damage buff for the squad is always welcome, and I like the idea of Vortex/Bastille being merged into one ability. Orbital strikes feels like a complete badass. But the rest of the kit seems eh. If I need CC, it really feels like I should just cast Bastille/Vortex with a minimum range build. And it strips armor too. So armor strip + damage latcher + orbital strike seems to be basically all I need to use in his kit.

Still better (by far) than previous Vauban. I do hope the casting animation will be faster tho, or it will be very hard to use them effectively.

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