The HUGE Zenistar nerf

[Zelmen]

The Zenistar heavy throw was never about damage and more about CC and debuffing. Seems really pointless now with 2 secs throw (1.1 animation and .9 air time) and only 5-6 sec spinning. Going from 30+sec to 6 is extremely jarring change. 

Unless someone figured out how to make it last longer but I have played with most mods that would make sense. For anyone that hasn't figured it out yet, the duration is tied to combo stack. 2x is about 18 sec, 3x is about 20 something and so on.

Still feel the base to way to low. A slow swinging weapon and the high combo counts is rough to get for about 18 second of duration. Which depending on the attack speed in the build may not even hit that many times. When I played solo I like to use this as a CC tool so i can jump point in interception or hold a hallway in survival. Just not viable to do that anymore. Now its just a thing to do because it can. The damage is fine but miss the utility this weapon had...

DE please up the base duration as a compromise. Maybe higher base and less +time per combo point

Edited November 2, 2019 by Zelmen

[RobWasHere]

Increase the combo multiplier first and spinning will go to ridiculous levels.

Combo goes up very fast when hitting multiple enemies at once, here is the time when multiplier was at 6x, after about 2-3 full sets of neutral Tempo Royale combo.

[MvgTarget]

Why would you want to hit enemies (or worse, blocking) with the zenistar to grow the combo before deploying the disc? The entire point of the weapon was to deploy the disc then go back to not using melee.

[Aldain]

23 minutes ago, MvgTarget said:

Why would you want to hit enemies (or worse, blocking) with the zenistar to grow the combo before deploying the disc? The entire point of the weapon was to deploy the disc then go back to not using melee.

...At that point you should just not equip a melee weapon.

[ScarletRain105]

9 minutes ago, Aldain said:

...At that point you should just not equip a melee weapon.

That's what i'm going to do until they revert the changes. Zenistar is just a pointless weapon if you need to hit enemies to get more disc's uptime. 10s disc time and with the range nerf are just bs imo. At that point why don't i just use a gun to shoot everything that stand in front me or use a real melee weapon to chop everything down at that close range?

[Aldain]

1 minute ago, ScarletRain105 said:

That's what i'm going to do until they revert the changes. Zenistar is just a pointless weapon if you need to hit enemies to get more disc's uptime. 10s disc time and with the range nerf are just bs imo. At that point why don't i just use a gun to shoot everything that stand in front me or use a real melee weapon to chop everything down at that close range?

...That's...the entire point?

So you can't throw a disk and stop playing the game every few minutes.

[XaoGarrent]

39 minutes ago, Aldain said:

...At that point you should just not equip a melee weapon.

The fact you can even say this should tell you something about why this change is bad, but as I understand it people have trouble with lateral thinking around here.

The goal shouldn't have been to trash the Zenistar's area lockdown. The goal should have been to make using the melee worthwhile. Why use the Zenistar when there's infinitely better melee options? Forgetting about even guns at this point.

DE really lived up to the "it's nerf or nothing" meme with this patch. Why do we always have to rob peter to pay paul?

[Aldain]

1 minute ago, XaoGarrent said:

The fact you can even say this should tell you something about why this change is bad, but as I understand it people have trouble with lateral thinking around here.

The goal shouldn't have been to trash the Zenistar's area lockdown. The goal should have been to make using the melee worthwhile. Why use the Zenistar when there's infinitely better melee options? Forgetting about even guns at this point.

If the entire point of a melee weapon was to throw a disk and then not use it then it should have just been a gun instead.

There's nothing "lateral" in terms of thinking that throwing a disk that killed things with no other player input every few seconds was a good idea.

90% of higher end players already had the game on autopilot and were demanding more challenge but now that the AFK enablers are being removed or changed people are flipping their lids.

This isn't even about things being "worthwhile" anymore, this is about DE wanting players to have to exert some form of effort to actually accomplish anything and people demanding the things that made the game effortless back.

[XaoGarrent]

1 minute ago, Aldain said:

If the entire point of a melee weapon was to throw a disk and then not use it then it should have just been a gun instead.

There's nothing "lateral" in terms of thinking that throwing a disk that killed things with no other player input every few seconds was a good idea.

90% of higher end players already had the game on autopilot and were demanding more challenge but now that the AFK enablers are being removed or changed people are flipping their lids.

This isn't even about things being "worthwhile" anymore, this is about DE wanting players to have to exert some form of effort to actually accomplish anything and people demanding the things that made the game effortless back.

A playstyle is not invalid because you don't like it. The Zenistar gave a decent option to players who don't like melee and don't really want to be bothered with it. YOU shouldn't be trying to dictate how OTHER people play the game by cheering on bad balance decisions. It's utterly transparent that this is little more than moralistic finger wagging.

All DE is managing to do with changes like this is rearrange the meta, the Zenistar will start collecting dust, while something else replaces it, and at the end of the day nothing resembling balance has actually been achieved. Yes, balance requires lateral thinking, regardless of your personal grudge against a certain way of playing the game.

[Zelmen]

3 hours ago, RobWasHere said:

Increase the combo multiplier first and spinning will go to ridiculous levels.

Thanks! Still seems like a really short base but I can make this work.

[SayikVindal]

The Zenistar is a melee weapon with an deployable, "fire and forget" AoE disc.

Let me say that again...because some folks don't seem to understand that. The Zenistar is a melee weapon that carries a deployable AoE disc that was DESIGNED to sit in one spot and put out an AoE field. DESIGNED THAT WAY.

At a 10 second duration it is no longer an AoE mine. With a required charge it is no longer an AoE mine as designed. If the intention was to change it's role to a stopgap frame save to use in a pinch, or an AoE bonus after a combo build than so be it. If they wanted to change what the weapon was there's not much I can say to change that.

But I would want to hear that. Because when you nerf a deployable AoE disc into a bonus AoE discharge disc the change tends to be rather drastic.

Edited November 1, 2019 by SayikVindal

[J0kulhaup]

RIP Zenistar.

For around 30 days it's been my melee of choice, because i don't really like meleeing all the time and just recently got to de 100 day mark to get it. Now the disc is nerfed to the abyss. It was a really good weapon for non-melee heavy oriented frames, but now you are forced to go into melee mode for quite some time to get disc uptime close to what it was before. And even then, pretty much anything can make your combo counter drop (ancient/scorpion ropes, eximus fire area knockdown, etc) unless you build it exclusively for combo counter/duration. And by doing so you have to drop some damage mods, wich makes this weapon below average in terms of damage.

If DE wanted to nerf it, they just rather cut the disc timer down to maybe 30 secs so it requieres a bit more user input, or just tone down the overall damage but keep the timer as it was.

Maybe I'm too noob to understand the changes, but now i don't see any real reason to equip a melee weapon on non-melee frames. 

[SayikVindal]

Now, I would point out that perhaps they didn't like "fire and forget", and the "cut short if you stand still" mechanic may lend some credence to that theory.

So, instead, set the normal time back to 30, but have it return in 10 seconds if you don't move instead of what it is set at now. That to me makes far more sense. I can work with everything else, and it will discourage "cast and stand in place" tactics.

All the other changes they can keep in place...though I would like to see the "hold E" mechanic returned to heavy attack.

Edited November 1, 2019 by SayikVindal

[TheLexiConArtist]

Zenistar suffered when melee line-of-sight was introduced as a measure to reduce polearm/whip spin-to-win. That was an unfortunate casualty, but fine. We could work around it. Throw the disk into a better spot to look 'over' the smaller obstacles. It still did its job.

Now? It has no real job. Going from what, 45 second throw time to a base of 10 - so you need to hit 5x combo before you even break even and then have to build it again because whoops, there goes half your combo because you dared to throw it out. What's that? It bounced off an enemy or ally and got itself into a bad spot for line of sight? Tough. You'll have to recall it and throw it out again with half the duration gone.

 

It wasn't about AFKing with the Zenistar. It was a tool. A utility. A way to cover your back for those hallway fights so you don't get ambushed. A way to keep one point covered while you defend another (soloing interceptions, for instance - Zenistar covered the first point while you were capturing the rest at the start of the round).

Now you have to spend all your time swinging a weapon which, very likely, isn't even built to be wielded directly.  You had a range of about 100m before the disc was forcibly tethered back. That's a distance that doesn't say you should be stuck fighting where you're throwing it.

Let's be real here, the only reason that it got touched was because it's something that had a charge-attack function and DE couldn't de-couple throwing out the disc from the new heavy attacks, so they thought they had to give it some benefit since it's going to junk the combo counter as collateral.

But we don't want this. We'd be happier if it just inherited the damage multiplier on throw and remained flat in its duration. Maybe give it back the 45 base and code in +5 seconds per combo tier if you really feel like adding some incentive for disc duration. A minor benefit, not an insane penalty for not mindlessly meleeing all the damn time... You know, the thing that prompted this overhaul in the first place?

[vitreloy]

Whatever what people said it is better now, I'm not going to use it anymore. This weapon is not a good melee weapon, I use it because of the disc, if I want melee there is better melee weapon out there. I can kill everything with other melee weapon on the time needed to build up combo for longer duration with the disc.

[_maeos_]

Can anyone confirm if the dmg on disc got nerfed? I used to run around with zenistar on ivara doing 7k+ dmg when disc was deployed and now i can barely hit 1k on deploy.  Even with combo max the dmg still isn't close to what i had previously.

I used to kill 150 bombards in sim within 30 seconds but now with a 6x multiplier and 60 second duration, disc cant kill a 150 anymore.

[MvgTarget]

19 minutes ago, ptolimios said:

I used to kill 150 bombards in sim within 30 seconds but now with a 6x multiplier and 60 second duration, disc cant kill a 150 anymore.

Were you using Condition Overload? It has apparently been nerfed into the ground.

[SayikVindal]

12 hours ago, TheLexiConArtist said:

Zenistar suffered when melee line-of-sight was introduced as a measure to reduce polearm/whip spin-to-win. That was an unfortunate casualty, but fine. We could work around it. Throw the disk into a better spot to look 'over' the smaller obstacles. It still did its job.

Now? It has no real job. Going from what, 45 second throw time to a base of 10 - so you need to hit 5x combo before you even break even and then have to build it again because whoops, there goes half your combo because you dared to throw it out. What's that? It bounced off an enemy or ally and got itself into a bad spot for line of sight? Tough. You'll have to recall it and throw it out again with half the duration gone.

 

It wasn't about AFKing with the Zenistar. It was a tool. A utility. A way to cover your back for those hallway fights so you don't get ambushed. A way to keep one point covered while you defend another (soloing interceptions, for instance - Zenistar covered the first point while you were capturing the rest at the start of the round).

Now you have to spend all your time swinging a weapon which, very likely, isn't even built to be wielded directly.  You had a range of about 100m before the disc was forcibly tethered back. That's a distance that doesn't say you should be stuck fighting where you're throwing it.

Let's be real here, the only reason that it got touched was because it's something that had a charge-attack function and DE couldn't de-couple throwing out the disc from the new heavy attacks, so they thought they had to give it some benefit since it's going to junk the combo counter as collateral.

But we don't want this. We'd be happier if it just inherited the damage multiplier on throw and remained flat in its duration. Maybe give it back the 45 base and code in +5 seconds per combo tier if you really feel like adding some incentive for disc duration. A minor benefit, not an insane penalty for not mindlessly meleeing all the damn time... You know, the thing that prompted this overhaul in the first place?

If there is a solve, it would be to extend base time to 30 and just reduce the add time for combo multiplier.

They could simply create a third bind for melee launch/fire weapons that uses the hold E mechanic.

[Biotic_Prototype_6]

Pls DE revert the changes on Zenistar. No one wanted it, no asked for it, no one likes it, no one thinks its ok.

Nice job on everything else now give us back the real real Zenistar.

[DissentWomble]

I don't really mind the change but its annoying that you can't stack combo counter once the disc is deployed. You have to refarm those combo counters to actually get a decent duration on it every time you deploy it. Its a great weapon imo but doesn't feel like playing to its strengths. (just wanted to voice it out, didn't want to bother making a thread about it) 

 

Edit: I should add. Everytime you want to recall your Disc early the combo counter resets. This is annoying. 

Edited November 2, 2019 by DissentWomble

[Manzah]

I don't wanna feel like this post like a "Cry-baby" one but gotta express my feels.

I recently reached 300 days of connexion on Warframe, which is a lot of my life time when you think about it (even if i'm not considering myself as a "Veteran").

I joined the game, 1438 play time hours ago, mainly because this game offer synergies between frames and weapons and wasn't a competitive game (since we don't competitate between players, which is remarquable).

Last week finally got my dreamed weapon. Enjoyed it, and was pretty excited to check the melee 2.0. Was it gonna make me also enjoy the swing of the blade itself now?
It clearly didn't. Instead you can't even now use it at all. Since you nerfed an overpowered weapon like the Catchmoon (which totally deserved it) to make people us others secondary weapons I expected a nerf to zaws, i also expected a nerf to daggers like it happenned.

But not Zenithstar.

Even in it's better spot, there was PLENTY of better melee weapon right now in this game. WHY would you nerf a "viable but hmmkay weapon" instead of completely unbalanced one like zaws instead of help in another way than rivens weapons that aren't even USABLE ?! (Hi Machettees).

We never wanted this, we are expecting changes, we know we have to adapt to a brand new system, but not to denaturate entirely what we got.

Thank you for you consideration.

Edited November 2, 2019 by Manzah

[TsarWolf]

Prior to update 26.0, the Zenistar's disc used to stay out for 45 seconds, now it stays out for 10?
This a weapon us Veterans (I got mine at day 500) have been using forever and busted our ass to get, I have dropped countless forma on mine, plus a riven, so what is the reasoning behind emasculating one of the BEST Veteran log-in weapons? Please revert it, because right now its useless.

[(PSN)Ragology]

I've read that the disc gets higher duration if you build the combo meter before throwing it now. This ruins the stealth ivara builds that relied on the disk, or people who didn't really melee but appreciated the zenistar disks. I also read that  the disks effective range was cut in half, and that since recalling the disk to reposition it is also on the heavy attack button, it will empty your combo meter.

Edited November 3, 2019 by (PS4)Ragology

[Bz9a]

been using this weapon for 205 days it used to be great defensive weapon and yes this weapon is all about that disk now i have to do comobs with SUPER SLOW weapon for more seconds NO!

Edited November 3, 2019 by Bz9a

[H.Katsura_999]

Yeah, this one hurts a lot.

Less range and 8 secs hover time (2 secs is lost to disk spool up)

Tried using the combo multiplier gimmick to see it it was still viable.

Turns out it was too cumbersome to use when stuff is going down hard and my primary or secondary does a better job cleaning up.

i know DE wants us to use melee weapons more but dang Zenistar was whacked pretty dang hard.

Nerf Bat prime is so merciless sometimes. 

Today I lost my fav melee weapon.

Ugh.