Baruuk Revisit Ideas

[Ikusi_Prime]

Baruuk could use some love. His kit is a lot of fun to play, but struggles to be effective in high-level missions. He has similar issues that Vauban does now (pre-rework): Redundant levels of CC and damage mitigation that make it so that it isn’t worthwhile to use his whole kit. Indeed, his kit seems to be at war with itself. His 3 demands that he build strength and minimize range so he can maximize his damage resistance for as long as possible, but his 1 and 2 need range to function.

Here are some changes that I’d love to see for Baruuk. The first section is QoL, changes to make his kit feel better and smoother to use. The next section is actual balance changes. Finally, some ideas for augment mods.

Quality of Life Changes

• Make his Desolate Hands an upper-body action. He’s casting this a lot, and it interrupts to flow of his gameplay to have to stop moving in order to cast it. It should still interrupt gunfire, just not movement.
• Let Baruuk recast his 2 while the zone is active, removing the previous zone when a new one is cast. This one seems like a no-brainer. Baruuk usually builds negative duration in order to make this ability spammable so he can farm Restraint with it. If he’s going for more of a CC-focused build, having a longer duration means you’re locked out of your primary CC tool for an extended duration as well. Allowing him to recast at any time would really make the ability feel better.
• Let the waves from Serene Storm proc effects like Healing Return and Life Strike. The waves from Excalibur’s exalted melee proc these effects, so Baruuk’s should, too.

Balance Changes

Overall, the intention of these changes is to make Baruuk’s kit more cohesive and scale better into high-level missions.

This is probably an unpopular opinion, but I truly believe that the damage resistance from holding daggers is unhealthy for Baruuk’s kit, and should be removed. Feeling the need to restrict your range and stay away from enemies in order to preserve that damage resistance is what prevents his kit from meshing together. He gets a ton of damage resistance from his passive and his 4 already, and Elude shouldn’t be a redundant and clunky level of damage mitigation.

Desolate Hands

• No longer provides damage resistance
• Daggers no longer explode, instead dealing 100 / 150 / 200 / 250 Puncture damage to the target with a guaranteed status proc. The dagger will then orbit that enemy, continuing to chain until it has disarmed an additional 0 / 1 / 2 / 3 enemies.
• Daggers will prioritize enemies who have not been disarmed.
• Restraint lost per disarm reduced to 1% (was 1.6%)

This version of Desolate Hands provides Baruuk with a powerful tool for subduing enemies that doesn’t require him to gimp his other abilities. The daggers now apply puncture procs and chain between enemies, making it effective even in Infested missions and spreading his influence over a wider area. He gets more Restraint eroded and more enemies who can’t deal effective damage.

To compensate for the loss in damage reduction, I would add survivability in other areas.

General

• Base armor increased to 200 (was 150)

A simple base armor buff to increase his survivability without the damage resistance from Desolate Hands.

Elude

• Energy drain reduced to 1 energy per second.
• Each attack avoided costs 1 energy.
• Now a one-handed action

These changes make the ability more flexible and manageable. If you’re actively fighting and shooting, it only costs 1 energy per second since you’re not avoiding anything. The cost then goes up when it’s actually doing something for you. This makes it more appealing to leave the ability active while fighting to cover you between shots or while reloading without needing to go through the cast animation every time. Having Elude be more accessible improves Baruuk’s survivability without the damage resistance from Desolate Hands, since it’s more realistic to have the ability up in a firefight. The changes here seem small, but they make it so that Baruuk takes less damage and erodes more Restraint by catching the little bits of damage he wouldn’t have bothered to have Elude up for before.

Serene Storm

• Wind wave damage now split evenly between Impact, Puncture, and Slash (melee attacks are still Impact-only)
• Wind waves no longer have damage falloff.
• No longer passes through terrain (still passes through all enemies)
• Damage resistance now scales with the melee combo counter.
• Wind waves now increase the melee combo counter by 1 whenever they hit at least one enemy, plus an additional 1 for every 2 enemies after that.
• While active, Baruuk gains an additional 5s combo duration.
• Finisher animation is now a single swift punch that ragdolls the target and any enemies they collide with, even if the target dies to the finisher.
• Additional synergy: When enemies with orbiting daggers are hit with the wind waves, the daggers are fired as homing projectiles in the direction of the wave and their number of disarms is refreshed. If they don’t hit anything, they return to Baruuk.
• Additional synergy: If the waves pass through an active Lull zone, they carry the Lull effect with them, applying it to all enemies hit with the wave.

The goal of the changes here is to make Serene Storm scale better and be a bit more active and dynamic. The main change is giving it a mixed spread of damage types. Impact is terrible, especially against armor. A mixture of damage types allows the ability to be effective against virtually all enemy types, and as Baruuk’s primary damage tool, this is critical to having him scale into higher-level missions.

Removing the damage falloff effectively increases the damage, but Baruuk still needs to be able to see his targets. He can’t just spam around and kill everything, but his damage at range is better. Additionally, the passive 25% damage resistance he gains while Serene Storm is active now scales with the combo counter and his wind waves increase the combo counter, so as he fights, he gets tankier. This set of changes is intended to make the wind waves feel like an extended melee attack rather than a projectile.

Since Baruuk will get many opportunities for finishers with Lull, cleaning up the finisher animation of his exalted melee makes his gameplay smoother and lets him take advantage of Lull more effectively. The other synergies let him apply his abilities to more enemies, eroding more Restraint so he can keep Serene Storm active.

With these changes, he loses the damage resistance from his 3, but gains additional base armor, can erode Restraint more efficiently, and gains increased damage resistance as he fights with his 4. He is free to build range to maximize the effectiveness of Elude and Lull while still letting his Desolate Hands be useful.

Augment Ideas

Empty Body (Exilus)

• While Elude is active, Baruuk gains 5/10/15/20% increased Bullet Jump, aim glide, and knockdown recovery, and immunity to heavy landings.

Rejuvenating Mist

• Baruuk and allies hit by Lull are healed for 5/10/15/20 health over 5 seconds and their shields start recharging. While they aren't attacking, this healing is tripled and shield recharge can't be interrupted by damage.

Bond of Desolation

• Enemies hit by Desolate Hands daggers are taunted for 3/6/9/12 seconds, prioritizing Baruuk over all other targets.

Solar Winds

• Serene Storm’s wind wave damage is converted to an even mixture of Blast, Radiation, and Magnetic damage. Increases Desert Wind status chance by 20/30/40/50%.

Edited October 8, 2019 by Ikusi_Prime

[(XBOX)GearsMatrix301]

This is very confusingly laid out.

The only thing I could make out was removing Desolate hands DR which is a huge no from me.

[Ikusi_Prime]

Just now, (XB1)GearsMatrix301 said:

This is very confusingly laid out.

The only thing I could make out was removing Desolate hands DR which is a huge no from me.

I have no idea why the formatting looks like this, it doesn't look like that when I edit the topic. I'm trying to fix it now.

I explain why I think it should be removed and compensate with other survivability changes in the post.

[(XBOX)GearsMatrix301]

Just now, Ikusi_Prime said:

I have no idea why the formatting looks like this, it doesn't look like that when I edit the topic. I'm trying to fix it now.

I explain why I think it should be removed and compensate with other survivability changes in the post.

And you’re explanation isn’t great. I’m not saying Baruuk is the best designed frame in the world but there’s 2 very clear builds that he can choose from. His strength or high range. Each has their pros and cons and different uses. Removing the DR so I HAVE to use the range build and only the range build mitigates choice.

The only things Baruuk absolutely needs are the “synergy” between his 1 and 3 removed and his 4 buffed.

[Ikusi_Prime]

8 minutes ago, (XB1)GearsMatrix301 said:

And you’re explanation isn’t great. I’m not saying Baruuk is the best designed frame in the world but there’s 2 very clear builds that he can choose from. His strength or high range. Each has their pros and cons and different uses. Removing the DR so I HAVE to use the range build and only the range build mitigates choice.

The only things Baruuk absolutely needs are the “synergy” between his 1 and 3 removed and his 4 buffed.

The formatting is fixed, now.

I think the justification is pretty good. You said it yourself, his kit is divided into two builds. His 3 doesn't synergize with the rest of his kit because he is encouraged to maintain the damage resistance. You either ignore his 1 and spam his 2 and 3 to build up Serene Storm, or you build heavy range and rely on the sleep and Elude to keep him alive since you can't hang onto your daggers.

Removing the damage resist means you're free to build either strength or range or both. You could build high strength for heavy damage and lots of daggers, or you could go for more range for better CC and Elude. You wouldn't need to build one or the other. This is the opposite of mitigating choice, it opens up his builds.

It's one thing to have different builds, but it's another to have those builds exclude parts of his kit. You could still absolutely go for a high range build, but you wouldn't be punished with losing your daggers. You could go for a strength-based build without needing to lower your range so you actually survive. These changes build the tankiness into using his kit rather than not-using it.

Edited October 8, 2019 by Ikusi_Prime

[(XBOX)GearsMatrix301]

44 minutes ago, Ikusi_Prime said:

The formatting is fixed, now.

I think the justification is pretty good. You said it yourself, his kit is divided into two builds. His 3 doesn't synergize with the rest of his kit because he is encouraged to maintain the damage resistance. You either ignore his 1 and spam his 2 and 3 to build up Serene Storm, or you build heavy range and rely on the sleep and Elude to keep him alive since you can't hang onto your daggers.

Removing the damage resist means you're free to build either strength or range or both. You could build high strength for heavy damage and lots of daggers, or you could go for more range for better CC and Elude. You wouldn't need to build one or the other. This is the opposite of mitigating choice, it opens up his builds.

It's one thing to have different builds, but it's another to have those builds exclude parts of his kit. You could still absolutely go for a high range build, but you wouldn't be punished with losing your daggers. You could go for a strength-based build without needing to lower your range so you actually survive. These changes build the tankiness into using his kit rather than not-using it.

My main build is 250% str and 100% range.

I use Elude to erode restraint when the opportunity arises. It’s “synergy” with Baruuks 3 makes that difficult because it removes the ranged weaponry of enemies making his kind of pointless for both damage evasion and restraint eroding because melee enemies don’t attack at as fast a rate as with a rifle and they can just be dodged around.

Even with only 100% range Lull still covers a respectable area.

I use Desolate hands for DR because combining that, Baruuks passive, and adaptation gives him amazing tankiness And having 20 daggers means that DR will last a while. I’m not even a massive fan of its disarm capabilities and your suggestion to give it guaranteed puncture procs and removing their DR is very unappealing.

Serene Storm would be better if it didn’t fall off at level 80 armored enemies. But it’s an incredible crowd clearer before that. I agree with a lot of the buffs you suggested.

you can still find a perfectly balanced build with a high strength build. Removing one of the reasons people build for it just puts more desire into going towards the max range build. Not every frame needs to have all their abilities at full effectiveness in one build. There’s a reason all of Baruuks abilities drain restraint. It’s so that no matter what abilities you prioritize you won’t have any major negative affects for it. I know that having frames that function like that are pretty much a thing of the past. But Baruuk honestly isn’t that bad despite being one of those frames. His 4 just really sucks.

[Ikusi_Prime]

1 hour ago, (XB1)GearsMatrix301 said:

My main build is 250% str and 100% range.

I use Elude to erode restraint when the opportunity arises. It’s “synergy” with Baruuks 3 makes that difficult because it removes the ranged weaponry of enemies making his kind of pointless for both damage evasion and restraint eroding because melee enemies don’t attack at as fast a rate as with a rifle and they can just be dodged around.

Even with only 100% range Lull still covers a respectable area.

I use Desolate hands for DR because combining that, Baruuks passive, and adaptation gives him amazing tankiness And having 20 daggers means that DR will last a while. I’m not even a massive fan of its disarm capabilities and your suggestion to give it guaranteed puncture procs and removing their DR is very unappealing.

Serene Storm would be better if it didn’t fall off at level 80 armored enemies. But it’s an incredible crowd clearer before that. I agree with a lot of the buffs you suggested.

you can still find a perfectly balanced build with a high strength build. Removing one of the reasons people build for it just puts more desire into going towards the max range build. Not every frame needs to have all their abilities at full effectiveness in one build. There’s a reason all of Baruuks abilities drain restraint. It’s so that no matter what abilities you prioritize you won’t have any major negative affects for it. I know that having frames that function like that are pretty much a thing of the past. But Baruuk honestly isn’t that bad despite being one of those frames. His 4 just really sucks.

For the record, it's not just puncture procs. I'm suggesting to remove the damage resist in exchange for:

• 50 extra armor, which is ~7% extra damage resistance baseline and armor mods get more value.
• Puncture damage and procs on targets, meaning the daggers actually do something to melee enemies (like most Infested) and deal significantly more damage to armored enemies.
• Daggers chaining to three additional enemies, giving you ~12% more Restraint erosion (~6% more damage resistance) per cast, while keeping more enemies from attacking you and your teammates.

I agree with you on the Elude and disarm interaction. Enemies who are attacking you at range need time to get into melee and attack much slower regardless. However, I do think the tug-of-war with trying to hold on to your daggers rather than use them needs to go.

How would you feel if the disarm component was removed completely, replaced with something like a super-Puncture proc, reducing enemy damage output significantly, like 80% damage reduction? Still no damage resistance on you, but the daggers would fly around reducing enemy damage without taking away their guns. They'd still shoot at you, letting you evade more bullets and erode Restraint, and giving survivability that isn't dependent on staying away from enemies and allies.

The old version without mods would give you 80% damage resistance. The new version would give you just as much effective damage resistance without preventing enemies from shooting into Elude, dishing out additional damage and eroding more Restraint since you're actually using the daggers.

Edited October 8, 2019 by Ikusi_Prime

[(XBOX)GearsMatrix301]

2 hours ago, Ikusi_Prime said:

For the record, it's not just puncture procs. I'm suggesting to remove the damage resist in exchange for:

• 50 extra armor, which is ~7% extra damage resistance baseline and armor mods get more value.
• Puncture damage and procs on targets, meaning the daggers actually do something to melee enemies (like most Infested) and deal significantly more damage to armored enemies.
• Daggers chaining to three additional enemies, giving you ~12% more Restraint erosion (~6% more damage resistance) per cast, while keeping more enemies from attacking you and your teammates.

I agree with you on the Elude and disarm interaction. Enemies who are attacking you at range need time to get into melee and attack much slower regardless. However, I do think the tug-of-war with trying to hold on to your daggers rather than use them needs to go.

How would you feel if the disarm component was removed completely, replaced with something like a super-Puncture proc, reducing enemy damage output significantly, like 80% damage reduction? Still no damage resistance on you, but the daggers would fly around reducing enemy damage without taking away their guns. They'd still shoot at you, letting you evade more bullets and erode Restraint, and giving survivability that isn't dependent on staying away from enemies and allies.

The old version without mods would give you 80% damage resistance. The new version would give you just as much effective damage resistance without preventing enemies from shooting into Elude, dishing out additional damage and eroding more Restraint since you're actually using the daggers.

The daggers aren’t meant to kill anything past level 5.

puncture procs suck.

90% DR > 7% DR

Baruuk can already erode restraint at a decent rate. He doesn’t need improvements to that.

Every tank ability has something to keep it balanced so it’s not this infinite lasting DR ability. It’s usually health (iron skin) or a timer (Shatter Storm). In Desolate hands case it’s the number of daggers sent out before it starts affecting DR. It’s not the best design in the world, but it’s not this terrible thing that makes Baruuk completely unplayable.

Again, puncture procs suck, replacing complete DR to everything with randomly selected targets dealing less damage to you is terrible. You are literally making Desolate hands worse.

[Ikusi_Prime]

42 minutes ago, (XB1)GearsMatrix301 said:

The daggers aren’t meant to kill anything past level 5.

puncture procs suck.

90% DR > 7% DR

Baruuk can already erode restraint at a decent rate. He doesn’t need improvements to that.

Every tank ability has something to keep it balanced so it’s not this infinite lasting DR ability. It’s usually health (iron skin) or a timer (Shatter Storm). In Desolate hands case it’s the number of daggers sent out before it starts affecting DR. It’s not the best design in the world, but it’s not this terrible thing that makes Baruuk completely unplayable.

Again, puncture procs suck, replacing complete DR to everything with randomly selected targets dealing less damage to you is terrible. You are literally making Desolate hands worse.

You keep pulling one thing out of the changelist and comparing it to the lost damage resistance, but I put in many small buffs to compensate for one big nerf. It's not just the 7% damage resistance from base armor he'd be getting, it's increased armor mod efficiency, a better Elude, increased damage resistance during Serene Storm, more Restraint erosion, all while receiving a comparable amount of damage from enemies due to the procs. That's the whole point of this changelist: the damage resistance is too good. It ties up too much potential power in his kit on something that encourages him to avoid using his other abilities.

With these changes, if you have eight daggers and each one hits four targets, the daggers would apply their effects to 32 enemies per cast, or more when you build strength. That effectively mitigating damage from every single enemy. Rarely, if ever, are there going to be more than 32 enemies on the map actively shooting you at any given time.

Puncture procs do kind of suck, but I'm talking about making it a more powerful version, in the realm of an 80% damage penalty to each enemy hit instead of disarming them. This is mathematically equivalent to what he has now, without the poor interaction with Elude that you described and having enemies deal less damage to your teammates, not just you.

[(XBOX)GearsMatrix301]

16 minutes ago, Ikusi_Prime said:

You keep pulling one thing out of the changelist and comparing it to the lost damage resistance, but I put in many small buffs to compensate for one big nerf. It's not just the 7% damage resistance from base armor he'd be getting, it's increased armor mod efficiency, a better Elude, increased damage resistance during Serene Storm, more Restraint erosion, all while receiving a comparable amount of damage from enemies due to the procs. That's the whole point of this changelist: the damage resistance is too good. It ties up too much potential power in his kit on something that encourages him to avoid using his other abilities.

With these changes, if you have eight daggers and each one hits four targets, the daggers would apply their effects to 32 enemies per cast, or more when you build strength. That effectively mitigating damage from every single enemy. Rarely, if ever, are there going to be more than 32 enemies on the map actively shooting you at any given time.

Puncture procs do kind of suck, but I'm talking about making it a more powerful version, in the realm of an 80% damage penalty to each enemy hit instead of disarming them. This is mathematically equivalent to what he has now, without the poor interaction with Elude that you described and having enemies deal less damage to your teammates, not just you.

So remove Desolate hands DR and provide less efficient and worse DR and other insignificant things that just aren’t worth using. How does this make him better? You’re just adding extra steps for Baruuk to do something similar but worse to what he already does.

Why does he need his daggers to provide some super puncture proc? His 2 literally puts enemies to sleep, making their damage output 0. All you’re doing is making him worse. Especially when you consider that I use Baruuk as a tank frame in Arbitrations. Requiring his daggers to hit enemies to reduce their damage to get a similar affect to the way Desolate hands works now will just be useless in Arbitrations because the drones will make them immune to it.

Your changes are literally just taking something that’s fine, take away what makes it fine, make it do what it used to do in a round about way, and giving it problems it didn’t have when it started.

Serene Storm buff and 1/3 “synergy” removed. That’s all Baruuk needs.

[Gurpgork]

I dunno about this. I feel like this is changing way more than it needs to and really only creates a sidegrade of current Baruuk in the process, if not making him worse. 

Like take the orbiting daggers from Desolate Hands, for example. It would be a good change to make it better at its job of disarming enemies, but letting it disarm everything it damages with the explosion would accomplish a similar thing, only with less waiting for daggers to chain around the room. I feel like this is making it more complex than it needs to be. 

I agree with the premise of why you're advocating for changing Elude, but I don't think that draining energy per hit is the buff you think it is. That may cut the base energy drain, but if you're getting attacked with automatic weapons, this would absolutely fry your energy pool. 

And the CC synergies from Serene Storm are interesting, but the ability already has quite a lot of CC. Also the devs could just bump the status chance to 20-30% instead, and then it would be way better at killing things and really wouldn't need any CC at all. 

Not to mention that trading his easiest access to reliable 90% DR for ~7% DR worth of armor is a terrible trade. Heck, trading 90% direct DR for the equivalent amount of DR in armor would be a bad trade, because armor takes more damage from various damage types in the game and doesn't protect shields. 

We're talking about completely overhauling a Warframe that only really needs minor buffs, and I just don't see the good that would do.