Baruuk feedback out of nowhere.

[GreyEnneract]

Everyone else seems to already be focused on the upcoming Ember and Vauban changes, so I'm here to scream into the wind as DE is probably just focused on their feedback as well.
This probably won't be read by DE this time, even though ironically this feedback is only addressed to them, but I have some free minutes to spare regardless.

Ever since his release, Baruuk has only received bug fixes. No buffs or fixes to his inherent problems, surprisingly.
It's been 10 months now and we're coming up on the usual "buff the frame a bit around year from now" point, so now's a good time to post this I feel.
My goal as a now ~7 year veteran is basically to place every frame around the same tier of viability as Saryn, Mesa, Inaros, Nova, Wisp, etc in their own ways.
I want to allow them to solo Arbitrations and Disruptions as best as they can, ignoring the inherent issues those game modes have with "no abilities allowed", causing Inaros to run rampant in them.
But I digress.

Passive:
This is good for the most part.
However it would be nice if Baruuk also received his own unique extended dodge similar to Limbo, allowing him to pass through enemies and be invulnerable while doing so.
It would fit his theme of avoiding conflict, and be another way to remove Restraint.

Elude:
To this day this ability has always felt like a poor man's Limbo Rift.
Elude requires energy constantly, prevents energy regen, requires Baruuk to not be attacking, and doesn't even evade AoEs with a maxed out range of 360 degrees.
Whereas Limbo's Rift is a passive on his dodge, actually gives him energy regen, and makes him immune to all damage outside of the Rift.

The way I would fix Elude would be to firstly allow it to evade all projectiles at all times, even while attacking. This would not include Melee attacks though, or AoEs still.
Melee attacks would still only be evaded while not attacking, just like how Elude works now.
Only with a much more lenient window than what it is currently, having no delay instead of the current 0.2s.
The issue of surviving AoEs will be addressed later as they are very common within the game now, and Baruuk isn't inherently, or reasonably tanky currently.
Leaving afterimages similar to Peacemaker would be a nice touch when evading too, just as an added bonus.

Lull:
I have nothing to add for this one, this has always been Baruuk's best ability. 

Desolate Hands:
This ability alone breaks Baruuk's entire intended synergy, so there will be quite a bit here. 
It spawns daggers that give you damage reduction, yet they fly off on their own towards allies and enemies alike, throwing your DR out the window.
Recasting the ability to refill your daggers even causes the new instances to target already disarmed enemies again, wasting Baruuk's energy as well.
Even if those two issues weren't there, disarming enemies with a 1:1 dagger ratio isn't worth trading his damage reduction for, or worth the energy cost.

Fortunately these issues are easy to fix now in the current day of Warframe. Here are my suggestions for this one.
Once cast Baruuk will receive his daggers as usual (in this case, 9 daggers), but every ally within affinity range would also receive 2/3 (6) of Baruuk's total daggers for themselves.
1/3 (3) of each ally's daggers would fly off on their own and disarm enemies as usual, with the remaining 3 permanently staying attached to his allies offering the 30% damage reduction to them.
This would allow for Desolate Hands to keep the supportive nature of Baruuk, while not gimping him at the same time.

For the daggers on Baruuk himself, they would never fly off of him automatically. Holding 3 would now refill his daggers, while pressing 3 would allow him to launch them on his own.
This would put control into the player's hands, while also making the disarm function of the ability worth using.
The suggested change fixes the energy sink problem and awful Elude synergy that sends away his DR at twice the range on its own currently as well.
Baruuk players would no longer be punished for building range to reach that mandatory 360 degrees of evasion.

The three meter AoE blast when a dagger hits an enemy would also need to disarm, not just the direct target hit, as the damage itself is pathetic and clearly not the intention of the ability.
Lastly, I would recommend each dagger's direct hit on an enemy deals a puncture proc just for the feel of his theme.

Implementing these changes on Desolate Hands are honestly the most important, as they would also solve Baruuk's problem of AoEs killing him instantly.
There's a reason why Baruuk has the potential to have the most DR, and it's because Elude isn't enough when one blast or one DoT ends it all on a squishy frame.

Serene Storm:
Since the melee rework is still on its way, I can't say anything here.
Ragdolled enemies possibly taking % health damage when striking a surface or another enemy would be nice, however that applies more to ragdolls in general and not just Serene Storm.

In closing, I just feel like I've lost my place in the game with no main frame to be attached to.
The closest to my ideal frame currently is Baruuk with all his evading, orbiting daggers (those could use a more unique orbit animation though) so I decided to try posting feedback for him to kill time.
I thought Gauss was close as well at first, however with the New War coming, I don't see Kinetic Plating doing anything against all that Tau damage. Being so thermal focused feels off to me as well.

Tl;dr: Make Elude evade things much, much more reliably (and viably), and give players complete control over what Desolate Hands does.

[(XBOX)GearsMatrix301]

Baruuk never even got an official feedback thread. He’s been pretty much neglected since day 1. 
 

All I want for him is for Serene Storm to actually be good.

[Bloomspark]

4 hours ago, GreyEnneract said:

Baruuk players would no longer be punished for building range to reach that mandatory 360 degrees of evasion.

This makes me wonder if there is any player out there who runs Baruuk with <200% range. Feels like it is the only OK build for Baruuk.

Anyway, nice suggestions!

[(XBOX)GearsMatrix301]

18 minutes ago, Bloomspark said:

This makes me wonder if there is any player out there who runs Baruuk with <200% range. Feels like it is the only OK build for Baruuk.

Anyway, nice suggestions!

I run only 100% range on my main Baruuk build. Lull is still useful, use elude for restraint draining, Desolate hands for tanking and Serene Storm for Damage if I’m not facing grineer.

[Aldain]

I never use Elude on Baruuk, it is a trap ability.

It is better to use strength for his 3 and 4 with a small amount of extra range for his 2 and ignore his 1 entirely to conserve energy.

Of all things wrong with him I feel it is just his 1, and I do agree with Gears that his 4 needs something, maybe not being an impact weapon or having natural anti-armor since DE is giving that out like tic-tacs lately.

[Leqesai]

8 hours ago, Bloomspark said:

This makes me wonder if there is any player out there who runs Baruuk with <200% range. Feels like it is the only OK build for Baruuk.

Anyway, nice suggestions!

I run a minimum range high strength build with baruuk, never using his 1 or 2 but focusing entirely on the 3 and occasional 4. This is pretty much the best build I've found for aggressive gameplay with him. The minimum range but high strength gives him much more reliable damage resistance with his 3.

Edited October 6, 2019 by Leqesai

[GreyEnneract]

8 hours ago, Aldain said:

I never use Elude on Baruuk, it is a trap ability.

2 hours ago, Leqesai said:

I run a minimum range high strength build with baruuk, never using his 1 or 2 but focusing entirely on the 3 and occasional 4.

This is basically what I see all Baruuk mains do, because yes, he's a great tank when you build entirely upon making sure your daggers don't fly off on their own.
Which means the way Elude is set up is so bad that people actually tunnel their build around avoiding using it, and I think that's bad design on DE's part.
It also hurts his 2 when built that way, causing even more damage to his kit. As for his 4, I run Shattering Impact on it. Although they could make that mod reward Impact weapons more.

 

 

[Ein0r]

Oh a feedback thread. Since I didn't find anything on that topic, and i am not sure if this is a new bug, or has always been the case, the following really bummed me out today:

While Serene Storm is active, you can't regenerate energy. I know that other exalted weapons cost energy per second, like Excalibur's or Mesa's weapons. But  since Baruuk uses his own resource for his exalted weapon I thought that it would be exempt to everything that is related to energy.

 

I ran an hour long infested survival arbitration earlier and it is imperative to always keep your daggers up. I don't mind  recasting the daggers, but doing damage, and keeping the daggers up while getting drained from infested is nearly impossible. No daggers means you need to disengage far away so you dont get drained and are safe, you have to end your ult, cast an energy pizza, cast daggers, and cast ult again. And after you killed the infested swarm that you disengaged from earlier, wich defintely had 1-2 energy leech eximus, you have to repeat the spiel I mentioned earlier, because you're once again low on daggers and out of energy.

 

Elude: Is barely useful for me. Maybe to build up your restraint quicker in the beginning, but that's about it. It can be useful if your whole team dies and somebody goes around and revives your mates while you stand about, looking gorgeous af and play a bullet sponge. I mean, you could just kill the enemies instead? Trash ability.

Lull: Only used to maybe calm down a location for a very brief moment, but I only really use it to build my restraint. With only 12% duration, this happens rather quick. Range is ok, but I only run 145%. gives enough range to lull the mob right in front of you.

Desolate Hands: I don't mind that they disappear. They can give a nice small buff to team mates. 10 - 30% damage reduction for a shot moment, plus a disarm for enemies that come closer to them is ok. Mesa will kiss you feet if she knows what's good for her. But the way it is designed, DH needs this drawback of the daggers disappearing. You run around with a 90% dmg reduction, what else could you possibly want?

Serene Storm: Is fine as it is. It isn't slash which is a massive bummer, but given the damage you can deal with it, I can live with it.

If it weren't for the denied energy reg.

90% damage reduction is nice, having to keep it up is ok too. I don't mind putting more effort into it, otherwise I could play Whiplash Khora. But as explained above, the length you have to go to keep it up in longer endurance is not only annoying but not fun. Please let us regenerate energy while having Serene Storm active.

.

To achieve the aforementioned you probably have to put about as many forma into him and his weapon as you have fingers on your hands though, which is harsh. Adding an additional polarity or maybe even two when you take his weapon into consideration, would be nice.

 

 

Edited October 6, 2019 by Ein0r

[GreyEnneract]

Also not sure why the base amount of daggers is 8, when the max DR caps at 9 anyway.
With it being that close, it might as well have 9 daggers be the base amount. Forgot to add that in originally.

[(PSN)CommanderC2121]

Ill just put in my 2 cents about baruuk:

his biggest issue is the multiple anti-synergies in his kit, coupled with a confusing build design. 

Baruuk has 4 instances of DR in his kit (his 3, passive, 4 activation and 4 blocking) AND a form of damage evasion. This leads to confusion because if you want to make use of elude, you question why he has so much DR if not to face tank, and if he’s designed to just face tank, why does he have elude. Furthermore, by having elude and his 3 (desolate hands) active his 3 range is doubled, more rapidly reducing his  DR values. This wouldnt be an issue if Elude didnt turn off when you attacked.

As far as his elude and lull work, they too are anti-synergistic. The whole point of elude is to have people shooting at you, as this is the fastest way to erode restraint, but lull puts them to sleep, meaning they no longer shoot you, meaning you no longer lose restraint. Likewise, with DH getting double range while elude is active, enemies are disarmed from further away yet again reducing elude’s effectiveness.  

Furthermore, elude works against one of the best forms of energy regen (rage) due to you avoiding damage, and since elude is a drain, you are forced to either use arcane energize or build tanky with DR values to use rage when elude is disabled due to attacking, but at that point why use elude?

Serene storm has good damage but horrible scaling. Make its waves either innately strip armor, or give it a higher status chance (30%). Id like for the waves to add combo too, but with the new upcoming melee 3.0 where they are removing combo counter, it would be a waste to put resources into adding a feature to an ability that will be removed shortly after.

I have two suggestions for Baruuk as far as Elude (and how his abilities work) should be handled.  

1) remove elude entirely. Most people play baruuk as a DR tank anyway, so this merely gives him another open ability slot we can place something into that better suits how he plays. He has DR, cc and damage, so many some form of reliable support (DH giving daggers isnt reliable) or a form of self sustain. Remove the doubled DH range when baruuk’s 1 is active, as this mechanic does nothing but purposely put the player in danger simply because they want to use an ability. 

2) My personal favorite, keep elude, but turn it into a duration based ability instead of drain.  Remove the DR from DH and replace it with something, and make Elude able to stay active even when fighting. In D&D monks play by wearing no armor but having a very high AC (armor check) score due to their AC scaling with bonus stats, making them very hard to hit. Give baruuk the ability to have Elude active 100% of the time he fights, and for each bullet/instance of damage dodged give him a percent of flat value of energy back, to make him a viable caster without rage.  You could still his 360% elude range with 200% power range; but to effectively do this you give up power elsewhere in the build. Even with 360% elude, baruuk is vulnerable to AoE attacks like explosions and gas clouds. 

[TheNasky]

Hello tennos, i have been Maining baruuk for a few weeks, mainly for endurance runs and high level stuff, and i gotta say, he is the absolute tankiest warframe there is in the game, his effective healthpool is around 8 times bigger than inaros's (who can already reach around 8k-9k) as long as he keeps his 3 at over 9 daggers. what i use to facilitate keeping the daggers is "Narrow Minded" i know duration is pretty pointless on barukk but the -66% range means his daggers wont seek enemies unless you are literally in their face, and even then, sometimes they wont seek them. 

so overall, thanks to his passive 50% dr + his 3's 90% dr, he becomes insanely tanky, the only problem is the rest of his kit is pretty terrible.

his 1 is absolute garbage, because it does not work while attacking, and i find myself attacking 99% of the time rendering it useless 

his 2 is pretty bad, it does put enemies to sleep, but it takes 3 seconds to do so, and with the negative range i run in my build, it is pretty hard to hit enemies since the area is so small.

his 3 is great altough as @GreyEnneract said, missing the Dr along with the daggers is pretty bad, it would be a lot better if they stayed on you, until you decide to channel them onto an enemy

his 4 is really bad too, i can't really think of a worse exalted weapon. excluding the fact that the damage scales really poorly mainly because it is impact, there is also the fact that it consumes restraint instead of energy, and getting restraint is actually pretty difficult.

so TL:DR: baruuk needs a rework. but his passive and 3's damage reduction make him an absolute beast when it comes to tankyness. if you want to compare, let's say inaros has around 8500 max health, well then baruuk has around 60000 health. and it could potentially be increased to 70000.

[TheNasky]

If DE was to rework elude, i think the absolute best thing they could give him is a 100% armor strip of some sort wich will help him a lot against high level enemies, because after doing a couple of endurance runs, i find myself rellying way too much on pox for armor shredding, unless im using new gauss's armor strip...  it would be cool if baruuk 1 was an AOE ability that strips all nearby enemies's armor, while making baruuk regain restraint.

Edited October 8, 2019 by TheNasky
grammar

[Morthal]

On 2019-10-05 at 9:10 PM, Ein0r said:

I ran an hour long infested survival arbitration earlier and it is imperative to always keep your daggers up. I don't mind  recasting the daggers, but doing damage, and keeping the daggers up while getting drained from infested is nearly impossible.

Would like this issue to be fixed, as a Baruuk main (mostly anyway). Infested don't have weapons to be disarmed, so Desolate Hands shouldn't be lost to Infested 😐 Should act like any other disarmed Grineer or Corpus unit and ignore them completely. The parasitic drains plus the fact that Infested are melee class, means they're especially annoying to me.