Calling it now: Archwing will be nerfed and become useless in Empyrean

[Zahnrad]

Given how punishing Empyrean is for Archwing, and Amesha is the only strong pick (which means DE will nerf it rather than strengthen other archwings because it's easier) along with already nerfing all the archguns, I get a strong feeling Archwing is going to become useless just like DE made it with the Plains of Eidolon upon release. (which I made a thread recently addressing what's still wrong with it)

It'll be there so DE can say it exists as an option, but it'll be a highly discouraged option via gameplay gimping.

[RX-3DR]

Even if they wanted to buff up the other Archwings, there's no graceful way to do with with the current gameplay model they've gone with. Between Blink and noclip-tier movement, there's no way to develop gameplay to where evasion really works. They would have to dump out a skill to replace with some form of excessive damage reduction because that's the only thing that works against rapid homing weapons. The only other way is to nerf enemies so hard into the dirt that every Archwing can survive comfortably.

It's essentially Arbitrations all over again where the frames with extreme damage mitigation are used 90% of the time to combat poor damage balancing.

[Pizzarugi]

33 minutes ago, Zahnny said:

(which means DE will nerf it rather than strengthen other archwings to prevent powercreep)

FTFY. Just because Amesha can't go full godmode, it doesn't mean it'll suddenly become useless.

I'm glad Empyrean is challenging for archwings, challenging in general. This game is a cakewalk everywhere else, and it makes me happy that DE is going gloves off and spanking the players.

Edited December 16, 2019 by Pizzarugi

[Furebel]

Good. Canonically Railjack has the big guns while Archwings are infiltration tools to get where big ships can't fit.

[Zahnrad]

18 minutes ago, Furebel said:

Good. Canonically Railjack has the big guns while Archwings are infiltration tools to get where big ships can't fit.

Dang. And here I was thinking Warframes were meant to be tools of war that were insanely difficult to kill. Guess I'm wrong in that regard too.

Edited December 16, 2019 by Zahnny

[OvisCaedo]

I'm expecting it too, especially with how hard they pre-emptively nerfed the S#&$ out of archguns. Horrible flightspeed and dropoff/range on everything AND unlisted 50% plus damage nerfs across the board.

I was actually expecting amesha nerfs since the first preview trailer at tennocon from two years back, because the ship looked so awful to control I expected archwings to largely outperform it. sure enough the guns got kneecapped and even the starter area crewships just spam enough damage to one-shot them from full health. Which makes the rank 8 engineering bonus of 30% more archwing survivability hilarious.

Edited December 16, 2019 by OvisCaedo

[theRCB]

28 minutes ago, Pizzarugi said:

FTFY. Just because Amesha can't go full godmode, it doesn't mean it'll suddenly become useless.

I'm glad Empyrean is challenging for archwings, challenging in general. This game is a cakewalk everywhere else, and it makes me happy that DE is going gloves off and spanking the players.

ehhh i mean its not really a challenge if you get out of the ship and die instantly. (at least thats what I've been dealing with) I dont even think my archwing is modded poorly or anything... 😕

[AEP8FlyBoy]

With how damn fast a 100% Status Cyngas can down Crewships, Outriders and fighters alike (even in the Veil), along with Amesha possessing ways to avoid all damage, regen all health / energy with little to no risk at all depending how you play. It's pretty likely.

The poopie part of it is that 100% DR is something you need as an Archwing that far in Empyrean's current content, any other Archwing would get shredded like a toilet paper roll in a thunderstorm.

But. Yeah...
If it does happen... then so be it. Luckily I haven't invested any Forma into the Cyngas or the Amesha.

Edited December 16, 2019 by AEP8FlyBoy

[Fallen77]

I hope they indeed nerf archwing in general. For as much as I've played si far, there's no reason to crawl the railjack 12 km when one AW guy can just boost there and complete all objectivs before I even get close. You should want to stay in the safety of your railjack, using your heavy cannons go destroy radiators, and only use AW to catapult, board objectif and collecting ressources for forge.

Granted, I didn't got to try the third sector yet...

[AEP8FlyBoy]

9 minutes ago, Fallen77 said:

I hope they indeed nerf archwing in general. For as much as I've played si far, there's no reason to crawl the railjack 12 km when one AW guy can just boost there and complete all objectivs before I even get close. You should want to stay in the safety of your railjack, using your heavy cannons go destroy radiators, and only use AW to catapult, board objectif and collecting ressources for forge.

Granted, I didn't got to try the third sector yet...

In the 3rd sector, you would run out of resources trying to keep your ship alive if you have anything less than a full set of MK II items. _{Unless you used the big-brain pro-gamer move of hiding it 25Km back from spawn, or behind/inside an asteroid.}

An Amesha on the other hand can tangle with a ball of Fighters and Crewships and come out alive and completely untouched if you play right. Doesn't necessarily mean it should be nerfed however.

I think the Railjack's base stats need buffed, honestly. I mean it should pretty much be built like a Battleship with how many fighters you end up fighting sometimes. And right now it feels somewhat on par with a single enemy fighter, when you can fight 15+ of them at once.

Seems a bit unbalanced.

Edited December 16, 2019 by AEP8FlyBoy

[White_Matter]

1 hour ago, RX-3DR said:

Even if they wanted to buff up the other Archwings, there's no graceful way to do with with the current gameplay model they've gone with. Between Blink and noclip-tier movement, there's no way to develop gameplay to where evasion really works. They would have to dump out a skill to replace with some form of excessive damage reduction because that's the only thing that works against rapid homing weapons. The only other way is to nerf enemies so hard into the dirt that every Archwing can survive comfortably.

It's essentially Arbitrations all over again where the frames with extreme damage mitigation are used 90% of the time to combat poor damage balancing.

Sadly this.

But I don't t hink it is a problem with railjack, that is just the core gameplay of WF.

It is poorly thought out. Scaling is a mess.

They can slow down the homing missiles and give Archwing additional mods that boost speed so that people can outmanuver em, or just give flares or something to offset the homing missles. It can be done eventually, but yeah it will take some reworks and balance tweaks to get there.

[DrakeWurrum]

It already is useless. I can't really do any combat with the Archwing that I can't do better from the Railjack turrets. It's been downgraded to a taxi.

Edited December 16, 2019 by DrakeWurrum

[ShortCat]

37 minutes ago, Pizzarugi said:

Just because Amesha can't go full godmode, it doesn't mean it'll suddenly become useless.

I'm glad Empyrean is challenging for archwings, challenging in general. This game is a cakewalk everywhere else, and it makes me happy that DE is going gloves off and spanking the players.

I can agree on Amesha being broken since release, but calling those dog fights "challanging" is stretching it too far.

• The 3 other AW are almost useless, as their abilities do almost nothing: Itzael can still be target in his invis state and Odanata's shield cannot protect from frontal impacts. Elytron is the biggest joke of them all. Then, those fighters are faster than Itzael with max movement speed and will just fly away.
• Scaling is off
• Half of heavy weapons (Grattler, Ayanga etc) received a "certified trash" tag, since they function only at point blank range.
• Melee is completely useless

My point is, Empyrion was not designed with the rest of the game in mind. It feels like it was created in a vacuum and in an attempt to somehow fit it into the main game DE had to brute force their way around already established mechanics. The result is a wanna-be space arcade experience in a game, that is known for fast paced gun and magic action.

[DroopingPuppy]

Well, actually archwing is essential in railjack mission, for you need it to hijack the enemy vessel. Sure, archgun is useless, as you said.

 

I found that the best way to clear is abandon the railjack far behind, hijack the enemy crewship then obliterate the enemy with captured ship. Thanks to the brilliance of the forum users.

[Veridian]

3 minutes ago, ShortCat said:

• The 3 other AW are almost useless, as their abilities do almost nothing: Itzael can still be target in his invis state and Odanata's shield cannot protect from frontal impacts. Elytron is the biggest joke of them all. Then, those fighters are faster than Itzael with max movement speed and will just fly away.
• Scaling is off
• Half of heavy weapons (Grattler, Ayanga etc) received a "certified trash" tag, since they function only at point blank range.
• Melee is completely useless

To add to this:

• The Fluctus' projectile is slower than the enemies
• Connection problems make it impossible to hit enemies at times, since they simply jump places
• Enemy crew ships one shot every maxed AW I've tried, avoiding is temporary since they release guided missiles, which don't seem to ever drop off
• There are no new AW mods in Empyrean that I've encountered so far, to fix the issues with AWs surviving any minimal direct fire and dodging is mostly irrelevant, when exploding projectiles catch you from a few hundred meters away.

[ecwp1981]

Having played the railjack missions so far, I would say arch wing is pretty much very frustrating. Crewships are invincible one shot all archwings. I would suggest turning off homing for them if they are going to one shot all archwings. At least we are able dodge by strafing away. Also for dogfights, it would be useful if DE implemented a camera angle like how Ace Combat does theirs (over the shoulder view) to see if there are any enemies behind me.

What I think should happen is:

- use arch wing as a scout to look for enemy "fleets"
- reinvent a stun fighter class ship that gets deployed from the railjack (with ejecting options into an archwing mode to get back into the railjack) this should be able to do proper dog fights with those pesky cutters. build said fighter in the dojo before the mission. make use of guns and mods from the railjack but on a reduced quantity for balance. Provide mines (for enemies behind) and flares (for throwing off homing stuff)
- increase crew size (to eight players) would be nice but I can't see that happening lol or let us deploy warfame specters in ship who assist in repelling  boarders, manning guns and doing the odd repair job (which i can't see happening as well as i think DE would prefer the tense action of having to run around the ship doing everything ourselves.
- add a Tail section turret? you know so i dont have to run from the forge back to man the side guns? or give the guy in the forge something to shoot at while waiting for the resource in the forge? 😄

Just my thoughts and suggestions (i used to play a lot of flight sims so those might have influenced some of my ideas above)
 

[Zahnrad]

1 hour ago, ecwp1981 said:

- add a Tail section turret? you know so i dont have to run from the forge back to man the side guns? or give the guy in the forge something to shoot at while waiting for the resource in the forge? 😄

 

Hard agree on a Tail gunner.

[Aesthier]

2 hours ago, DroopingPuppy said:

Well, actually archwing is essential in railjack mission, for you need it to hijack the enemy vessel. Sure, archgun is useless, as you said.

 

I found that the best way to clear is abandon the railjack far behind, hijack the enemy crewship then obliterate the enemy with captured ship. Thanks to the brilliance of the forum users.

^This has been my solo strategy ever since my first mission.

Pop in, fly away, park RJ at edge of map, pop out in AW, take 1-2 deaths getting to enemy crew ship, hijack it, kill everything, blow up crew ship, loot everything, fly back to glorified taxi.

[Loza03]

I'd be good for some kind of Xenoblade X scale system for AW weapons.

So, like, AW weapons deal less damage against crewships passively, and then buff the AW weapons against fighters. If DE implement some kind of system like that, Archwings could still be useful against fighters but absolutely have to board or return to railjack to deal with the Crewships. Maybe also some passive damage resistance to enemy fighter weapons so they don't get shredded by fighters, only by crewships? It could make for an interesting dynamic overall.

[JackHargreav]

Archwing is already useless. The moment I drop out the airlock I'm dead. And don't even try to go close to a crewship either.

[DoomFruit]

3 hours ago, Furebel said:

Good. Canonically Railjack has the big guns while Archwings are infiltration tools to get where big ships can't fit.

And yet my Archwing gun does more damage than all 3 of my ship's guns put together. Plus it's far more survivable - and I'm using Odonata, not Amesha.

[0_The_F00l]

Amesha is the trinity of archwing, 

Obviously it will get nerfed. 

[zakaryx]

I had the fun idea of taking out my itzal into a low level earth mission to collect resources faster. Every time I hit cosmic crush I died. Even all the new intrinsics won't make the other archwings viable.

 

32 minutes ago, DoomFruit said:

And yet my Archwing gun does more damage than all 3 of my ship's guns put together.

Yeah, that changes once you get to late Saturn and veil proxima. Even meta cyngas builds don't beat out MKIII/II cryo cannons on the railjack.

Does the odonata shield protect you from crew ship missiles?

Edited December 16, 2019 by zakaryx

[DoomFruit]

6 minutes ago, zakaryx said:

Yeah, that changes once you get to late Saturn and veil proxima. Even meta cyngas builds don't beat out MKIII/II cryo cannons on the railjack.

Does the odonata shield protect you from crew ship missiles?

From shots which hit you directly in front (and I mean 100% directly - straight on the crosshair), yes. Kinda.

Of course, this almost never happens in reality. Flares seem to work, but I can't tell whether that's because I'm moving around and dodged the projectiles, or whether they actually do get the heatseeking napalm blobs (?!) off my back. It's not the easiest thing to test because I'm constantly getting shot in the back by other ships.

And yeah, while the later weapons would be better (or at least should be, I only have the starter gear), the starter guns are almost pointless and your ship is both incredibly fragile and handles like a fridge with the hitbox of a garbage truck. If I try to fight from inside it, I cannot complete the first mission. I can't dodge incoming fire, I can't tank it and I can only manage to kill a few of the enemy ships before getting swarmed.

Compare this to the very first mission with an unmodded Excal, Mk1 Braton, Lato and Skana, or an equally unmodded Odonata, Imperator and Veritux. Even new players with no experience can get through that.

This really is horrible design - where the starter equipment from a new game mode cannot get you through the very first mission, forcing you to resort to a completely different set of gear from a completely different game mode. Sure, having one aspect boost another is fine, but having one aspect completely fail to stand on its own?

[nslay]

4 hours ago, Furebel said:

Good. Canonically Railjack has the big guns while Archwings are infiltration tools to get where big ships can't fit.

You can just junk the Railjack and Cy and play Crewship the whole game too.