Amesha in Railjack has become the "Itzal of open worlds pre-blink-rework"

[(XBOX)Tucker D Dawg]

9 minutes ago, Lokidus_Prime said:

What about the possibility of option D) tweak the other archwings so they have some sort of survivability/counter measures that can be useful in Railjack missions as well as making adjustments to the crewships' gunfire to allow for those archwing tweaks - namely, being able to use certain archwing abilities to throw off locked on projectiles which doesn't presently work. Hell, maybe option E) even give the Railjack the a Battle/Tactical Avionic to give some sort of protection to players out in archwing, or a combination of the two.  Point being, there is more potential solutions than those that result in nerfs / lack of diversity. 

Those thoughts require - creativity. And after thinking of viable and better solutions than nerfing Amesha, it then requires work to more than just one frame. So no, the easy way out is Amesha Nerf.

They could even top their Itzal nerf by giving all frames a useless Amesha bubble (i.e. make it too small to mitigate anything), take away the useful Amesha one, and bind this new Universal bubble to a key binding that won't work on controllers.  Like itzal blink - they took it away from us on console and didn't even reach around and give us the cooldown version on the rest of the frames.

 

[Zandermanith222]

The Amesha was clearly released haphazardly in its near-invulnerable state because Archwing had already been going down the drain even in DE's eyes while they were developing it. They already promised the Amesha so they just threw it out there in the last Archwing-focused update.

It's been left untouched for years because Archwings as a combat utility have never been worth noting until just now. Sure you can use them in Open Worlds, but because of how clunky the flight model was and how every single enemy was given anti-air missiles with no cooldown, people only ever used them for mobility, so Itzal was king.

I feel like when the Amesha is inevitably nerfed, they'll buff all the other Archwings as well, but it won't be true reworks, it'll be minor buffs and quality of life changes that they just assume will make them magically viable. Seems to be the trend whenever DE does class reworks in bulk. Play it safe, accomplish nothing (In the way of making things more viable).

Edited December 17, 2019 by Zandermanith222

[(XBOX)GearsMatrix301]

Remember when everybody was hyped for Revenants mesmer Skin because it works like Ameshas 100% DR ability? Remember how it was a complete disappointment because charges based defenses don’t work in normal missions due to the enemy density.

Edited December 17, 2019 by (XB1)GearsMatrix301

[AegisSiege]

8 hours ago, punish_me said:

Crewship doesn't care. It hits invisible, oneshots bubble and ignores flares.

Fixing this would solve so many problems.
I was pretty upset when I got one shot after using Disarray (aka the Odonata's Flares) the second I saw the Missile Lock come up.
Even more upset the next mission I hit invisibility and blinking away, and STILL getting one shot.

[zakaryx]

On 2019-12-16 at 12:16 PM, Toppien said:

different tools for different jobs, is it really such a bad thing?

itzal can make itself invisible

 

 

 

Crew ship missiles still target itzal while cloaked.

At least they did when I tested it. Heard the same from other people on these forums.

 

*recent hotfix apparently fixed this

Edited December 19, 2019 by zakaryx

[(PSN)Aneres_Omega]

If they hadn't removed blink from Itzal then it would be able to dodge most damage and cloak as well then blink a bit closer to the crew ship and then hope you don't get blasted to hek when you get there.

But alas that tool was removed and replaced by a pos Valkyr ripline.

Point is don't go wanting a nerf for the only half decent tool we have left to deal with this broken RJ content.

[dirtysmile]

The real question is - do you think they will nerf Amesha down to match the rest of the archwings, or buff the archwings to match Amesha? I know which one I'm betting on 😂

[(PSN)Aneres_Omega]

1 minute ago, dirtysmile said:

The real question is - do you think they will nerf Amesha down to match the rest of the archwings, or buff the archwings to match Amesha? I know which one I'm betting on 😂

Odds are they will strip the 'offensive' skill and replace it with another ripline.

[Dreadwire]

De nerf mobility. Then suddenly amesha is a thing.

After amesha nerf what you guys wanna main.

Elytron??? Hahaha

sad so sad

[nslay]

On 2019-12-16 at 10:52 PM, (XB1)GearsMatrix301 said:

Remember when everybody was hyped for Revenants mesmer Skin because it works like Ameshas 100% DR ability? Remember how it was a complete disappointment because charges based defenses don’t work in normal missions due to the enemy density.

You always compare with Amesha. I've always took you word on this! Now that I've started playing with Amesha... You didn't really tell the full story did you? The similarities are only superficial. They're both a charge system-based defense mechanism. But that's about it. Let's really compare:

Watchful Swarm

• Consumes a charge per damage instance.
  • Does not time gate damage instances per enemy. Compare a Lancer Dreg's (or some kind of Dreg) beam of continuous damage on Watchful Swarm to Orokin Sentry/Osprey attacks on Mesmer Skin.
  • Does not stun enemies on hit.
• Is not recastable.
• UI deficiency: No obvious sound effect for loss of all stacks.
• Does not seem to give Amesha status immunity.
• Supporting skill is Benevolent Decoy (meaning, can help effectively increase longevity of Watchful Swarm).

Mesmer Skin

• Consumes a charge per damage instance.
  • Time gates damage instances per enemy (except for Profit Taker, Exploiter and Tusk Bolkor... boss-like enemies with high fire rate and status/ability immunities).
  • Stuns enemies on hit effectively removing an enemy from the fight. If you have 14 stacks and you're solo... you can probably stun every single spawn and have a few stacks left. Well, that is if they can all hit you! Normal Warframe enemies largely have really bad accuracy and low fire rate.
• Recastable.
• Obvious sound effect should you lose all stacks.
• Grants Revenant immunity to status effects,
• Supporting skill is Enthrall.

I don't know enough about Amesha yet, but Benevolent Decoy seems to keep Amesha mostly in one place should Amesha want to use it to help preserve Watchful Swarm stacks? A Revenant with Thralls can move more freely about a localized region of the map. A Revenant with team mates doesn't really need Thralls since team mates draw some of the fire away from Revenant in place of Thralls. However, owing to the scale of Archwing, this probably does not hold true for Amesha. Having multiple players over a large Archwing area probably does not help draw fire away from Amesha very effectively. Technically, Revenant can just move and avoid most fire without Thralls anyway (probably the same for Amesha). I was playing solo Interception where I had sit and catch towers. A passing Lancer Dreg (or some kind of Dreg) can strip all/many/most of Amesha's stack by itself in a very short amount of time... That's just a single enemy (this is not even possible for Mesmer Skin for normal enemies!).

From my vantage and limited experience, Watchful Swarm is a much poorer implementation of Mesmer Skin. I think you have no business comparing the two. They are not the same beyond being charge-based defense systems.

If anything, Watchful Swarm should be buffed to be more similar to Mesmer Skin. At the very least, it should make a sound when all stacks are lost.

EDIT: In case you missed my point, not only are the two different (in context, use, implementation, etc...), but Watchful Swarm is downright worse than Mesmer Skin despite your interpretation of Archwing consisting of a lesser density of enemies compared to normal Warframe gameplay.

Edited December 18, 2019 by nslay

[(XBOX)GearsMatrix301]

41 minutes ago, nslay said:

You always compare with Amesha. I've always took you word on this! Now that I've started playing with Amesha... You didn't really tell the full story did you? The similarities are only superficial. They're both a charge system-based defense mechanism. But that's about it. Let's really compare:

Watchful Swarm

• Consumes a charge per damage instance.
  • Does not time gate damage instances per enemy. Compare a Lancer Dreg's (or some kind of Dreg) beam of continuous damage on Watchful Swarm to Orokin Sentry/Osprey attacks on Mesmer Skin.
  • Does not stun enemies on hit.
• Is not recastable.
• UI deficiency: No obvious sound effect for loss of all stacks.
• Does not seem to give Amesha status immunity.
• Supporting skill is Benevolent Decoy (meaning, can help effectively increase longevity of Watchful Swarm).

Mesmer Skin

• Consumes a charge per damage instance.
  • Time gates damage instances per enemy (except for Profit Taker, Exploiter and Tusk Bolkor... boss-like enemies with high fire rate and status/ability immunities).
  • Stuns enemies on hit effectively removing an enemy from the fight. If you have 14 stacks and you're solo... you can probably stun every single spawn and have a few stacks left. Well, that is if they can all hit you! Normal Warframe enemies largely have really bad accuracy and low fire rate.
• Recastable.
• Obvious sound effect should you lose all stacks.
• Grants Revenant immunity to status effects,
• Supporting skill is Enthrall.

I don't know enough about Amesha yet, but Benevolent Decoy seems to keep Amesha mostly in one place should Amesha want to use it to help preserve Watchful Swarm stacks? A Revenant with Thralls can move more freely about a localized region of the map. A Revenant with team mates doesn't really need Thralls since team mates draw some of the fire away from Revenant in place of Thralls. However, owing to the scale of Archwing, this probably does not hold true for Amesha. Having multiple players over a large Archwing area probably does not help draw fire away from Amesha very effectively. Technically, Revenant can just move and avoid most fire without Thralls anyway (probably the same for Amesha). I was playing solo Interception where I had sit and catch towers. A passing Lancer Dreg (or some kind of Dreg) can strip all/many/most of Amesha's stack by itself in a very short amount of time... That's just a single enemy (this is not even possible for Mesmer Skin for normal enemies!).

From my vantage and limited experience, Watchful Swarm is a much poorer implementation of Mesmer Skin. I think you have no business comparing the two. They are not the same beyond being charge-based defense systems.

If anything, Watchful Swarm should be buffed to be more similar to Mesmer Skin. At the very least, it should make a sound when all stacks are lost.

EDIT: In case you missed my point, not only are the two different (in context, use, implementation, etc...), but Watchful Swarm is downright worse than Mesmer Skin despite your interpretation of Archwing consisting of a lesser density of enemies compared to normal Warframe gameplay.

Mesmer skin is still trash.

[(XBOX)COA Altair]

We've known about amesha since running JV where it was the go to archwing for that mission because it did everything perfectly while delivering arcane energize into your hands upon completion.  The only time it wasn't right was if you were speedrunning and wanted to blink to get to the nerves as fast as possible.  

Will something be done or just powercreep modular archwings.  No idea, but eh we'll see if they address it in a future devstream or not.  Until then we're in the dark.  

[Sylonus]

If they do just nerf Amesha and don't adjust the surrounding mechanics, (I personally hope they leave Amesha alone but adjust mechanics to make playing other Archwings not as punishing.) They will really murder this game mode for me, I fear it greatly.

[tzadquiel]

On 2019-12-16 at 8:25 PM, Jarriaga said:

Amesha has not received a single patch, update, or balance pass ever since it was introduced in 2016. If DE does something now, it would be the biggest prime example of DE introducing something into the game, leaving it completely broken but not concerned because it's not widely used or popular unless the game itself introduces something else that makes it extremely relevant without a single adjustment.

ok?? this is exactly what I would expect to happen in any company, when the product gets a new context, especially if company and products that have been around for 7 years or more,they often need to be readjusted to meet new conditions and keep the balance. look this up, it's called recontextualisation. with more archwing types of missions, you will get more nodes and more purposes. few archwings will shine where others don't, it's literally the whole point of them.

 

every other (normal I would say....?) person would call this is a solution to a problem, not the opposite, right? but not here. lmao

[vegetosayajin]

On 2019-12-16 at 9:16 PM, Toppien said:

different tools for different jobs, is it really such a bad thing

 

Well...now you can use only amesha for all the things in the archwing department, so I'm waiting for the nerf.
Enjoy it for 1-2 months more, because of the holidays.

[Jarriaga]

1 hour ago, tzadquiel said:

ok?? this is exactly what I would expect to happen in any company, when the product gets a new context, especially if company and products that have been around for 7 years or more,they often need to be readjusted to meet new conditions and keep the balance. look this up, it's called recontextualisation. with more archwing types of missions, you will get more nodes and more purposes. few archwings will shine where others don't, it's literally the whole point of them.

 

every other (normal I would say....?) person would call this is a solution to a problem, not the opposite, right? but not here. lmao

[Anduvriel]

Crewships missiles are now crazy and bugged. From what i observed they have infinite range and infinite lock and cannot be shot nor misguided. Their only weakness is they are not ultra fast. 

I tested a lot with odo prime and amesha and never was able to misguide them, couldnt even hide from them behind asteroids or ships.

You can outrun them for some time, but the lock is not dropped. Blinking through them gives you some time as they are slow on manouvers (no fast 180), but they are also bugged with lock capabilities and the way they deal damage. 

My friend as a host died in amesha multiple times with 15-17 charges left on first ability. He was dead and had charges. Casting 1 is also not instant for those missiles, if you drop your charges while being hit by one of them you will die even if you are fast enough to cast 1 before next hit. Your corpse will be floating with max charges. 

What is really funny you cant even hide on the crewship itself (i had that briliant idea that if it can target you everywhere lets see what happens if you are on the ship that shot at you). Its kinda funny how it works. I am 100% sure i had at least few hundred meters advantage (a blink through the missiles around 500+m from the crewship) before i pressed that x to enter the ship. I died instantly inside the ship on spawn. 

It was kinda hard to test what happens when you enter railjack while being the target. If anyone wants to check that be my guest. I think you will be dead inside the railjack. Same is with omni tool and a quick Q when you are a target. My friend uses that so someone on the rj crew can revive him easier. Maybe this with a reviving companion is a way to go around it, but if you leave the ship far away it still is not great as an option. 

They could change few abilities to make the rooster more broad. For it to be on pair with amesha it should all come to energy management. Flares from odo would have to become for example toggle based and instantly destroy all missiles that have a lock on you, but drain some energy for each missile destroyed. Itzals 2nd should work that if you have it on, you cant be a missile target but each lock dropped or tried on you uses an aditional portion of your energy. This way you could see when you are the target and reposition or even use omni to go out of harms way and let rj tank that things. 

I kinda like the gameplay and energy management on amesha as it is now and i think adding this to all of the others would make it a nice way to play with aw's in rj. Amesha is great, but you still die if not careful. Its 3rd ability is busted opie thou, it should be toned down a bit and others should receive some buffs. Odos 1 should be based on enemies not on range for allies (enemies take increased damage instead of allies deal more), Itzals 1 could be a turn off ability like a sleep (you hit a ship with it, it stops to do anything for a short time), elytron should receive a similar treatment, one toggle energy skill for damage resistance and 1 to be useful - i would call for his 4 to be an instagib for every small aircraft hit by it (you need to still hit it, rockets do not have lock), the explosion deals normal scaled damage. I really would love to see the use of all archwings in certain situations. Itzal good for sleeping and invading crewships, amesha and odo for dogfights, elytron for picking harder targets.. 

[PyrrhoOfElis]

I don't see the problem with Amesha being powerful. Amesha has always been nuts but people were too obsessed with Itzal blink to even try other AWs. 

The problem I see is that RJ guns are bad. Almost no one wants to sit on RJ guns as their main job. You have pilot, engineer & gunner/slingshotter. The 4th person is on Amesha duty because it's more useful than having another gunner just sitting in the RJ tickling enemies with mediocre guns & having nothing else to do.

Actually, you really only need 2 people on the RJ. Even the hardest missions don't offer enough difficulty to require everyone on the ship.

Nerfing Amesha is the wrong solution. It's a role on the team which is necessary because there just isn't enough for 4 people to do on the RJ. If they nerf Amesha, they must also make some major changes to RJ operations so that the 4th person isn't nearly useless.

[xxAutoxx]

Another example of the short-sighted nature of DEs design team.

[More-L]

I haven't bothered using any of the other archwings in Railjack because even as Amesha I sometimes find myself instantly dead without any ability to counter it. The damage dealt to archwings from fighters and crewships is stupidly high and you die way too fast even with maxed out defensive mods equipped.

I've always liked Amesha and put it on all my builds as soon as blink was made universal. I think that making railjack enemies deal way less damage to archwings (60-70% less) and making Amesha's 1 instead give a large amount of damage reduction with HP (like Nezha's halo but wayyyyyyyyyy more HP) instead of 'x' drones that give full damage immunity would be a good solution. Also making other archwing defensive abilities work and making their offensive abilities quite effective in Railjack would also be good.

Currently though, the reason archgun is so much more effective is because just like in the normal game, "removing" armour is the best way to kill things and you can freely mod an archgun that way easily instead of spending hours farming a blueprint, hours farming resources and having a 12 hour wait to do the same. Base, MK1 and MK2 weapons are a bit too weak. Though MK2 weapons need less of a buff

Edited December 18, 2019 by More-L

[taiiat]

On 2019-12-16 at 2:02 PM, Rasdan said:

Either nerf Amesha, or buff other archwings

i think the appropriate course of action there is quite clear. Elytron just like on Earth/Venus Landscape, is literally useless in Railjack. it doesn't matter what you do to the other Archwings, you could delete them from the game and Elytron would still be useless.

and Odonata would still be technically useful but irrelevant in the scope of what you actually do in Railjack.

 

 

and i don't just think 'buff' is the solution - some of the Archwing Abilities are simply mechanically deprived of having useful features.

[SneakyErvin]

1 hour ago, PyrrhoOfElis said:

I don't see the problem with Amesha being powerful. Amesha has always been nuts but people were too obsessed with Itzal blink to even try other AWs. 

The problem I see is that RJ guns are bad. Almost no one wants to sit on RJ guns as their main job. You have pilot, engineer & gunner/slingshotter. The 4th person is on Amesha duty because it's more useful than having another gunner just sitting in the RJ tickling enemies with mediocre guns & having nothing else to do.

Actually, you really only need 2 people on the RJ. Even the hardest missions don't offer enough difficulty to require everyone on the ship.

Nerfing Amesha is the wrong solution. It's a role on the team which is necessary because there just isn't enough for 4 people to do on the RJ. If they nerf Amesha, they must also make some major changes to RJ operations so that the 4th person isn't nearly useless.

The 4th person is already useful without an archwing.

Person 1 = Pilot

Person 2 = Gunner

Person 3 = Gunner+Engi

Person 4 = Slighshot occupant, the crewship hijacker/destroyer.

Once you actually get the good guns and right avionics/skills to support them they far outshine AW guns. Before that you are better off taking over crewships since they take alot of fire away from the RJ and they let you destroy fighters far quicker than an AW gun while also keeping you 100% safe. Just use them to move towards other crewships and blow them up as needed. If your captain hosts a good RJ, then you can just slingshot, blow up ractor and recall to be ready in the slighshot for the next crewship that pops.

[PyrrhoOfElis]

9 hours ago, SneakyErvin said:

The 4th person is already useful without an archwing.

Person 1 = Pilot

Person 2 = Gunner

Person 3 = Gunner+Engi

Person 4 = Slighshot occupant, the crewship hijacker/destroyer.

Once you actually get the good guns and right avionics/skills to support them they far outshine AW guns. Before that you are better off taking over crewships since they take alot of fire away from the RJ and they let you destroy fighters far quicker than an AW gun while also keeping you 100% safe. Just use them to move towards other crewships and blow them up as needed. If your captain hosts a good RJ, then you can just slingshot, blow up ractor and recall to be ready in the slighshot for the next crewship that pops.

That's a lot of people sitting around doing nothing. You really don't need  an entire person dedicated to gunning and nothing else, and you definitely don't need an entire person dedicated to AFK slingshot waiting for crewships to spawn. It takes maybe 10-15 seconds to down a crewship and warp back to the ship. I prefer the pilot or engineer just do it.

I'd even rather have 1 person just out collecting rss instead of sitting on the ship doing something that the engie/pilot can easily do in their spare time.

As for taking over crewships, that stops being useful after you get some intrinsics and leave earth. It's just a fun thing to do on the early missions & not a serious tactical option in the Veil. I do wish they would make intrinsics apply to crewships. Would make them pretty useful later on.

You really only need a pilot & engineer to finish Veil missions. Third person should go on Amesha duty. The 4th person should be gunner and crewship killer, and that's only because there isn't anything else for them to do, but they could actually just be a 2nd Amesha or go collect rss by themselves and let the engie/pilot take care of gunning & crewships.

Point being that nerfing Amesha is going to kill an entire role and make RJ extremely boring because there just isn't a need for 4 people on the ship unless there are also changes made to RJ operations. I prefer to prioritize fun in game that isn't serious or competitive anyway. Having people sitting around with fewer tasks to attend is not fun.

Edited December 18, 2019 by PyrrhoOfElis

[(PSN)Eluminary]

I assume nerfs will come that's typically their plan now when one thing is used overwhelmingly.  So I suggest you get all you need from railjack asap... The Nerf could come tomorrow or 2 years from tomorrow, they do have a track record of letting things linger for a long time then claim it was a bug and just say we fixed a bug.

 

And also yes once you get the right Avionics to support turret fire and the MK3 cryophones those do start to outperform even well-built status arch guns...  once you get to the veil everything else is trash in my experience.

[TARINunit9]

On 2019-12-16 at 11:02 AM, Rasdan said:

• Amesha 3 is an OP version of Slowva. 

Ah, nostalgia. When I forget started playing, this was true for every archwing. Odonata was a superior Volt/Rhino hybrid, Iztal was a superior Loki, Elytron was a superior Vauban/Saryn hybrid, and Amesha was a superior Frost/Trinity/Slowva hybrid. Top that off with the fact Archguns were disgustingly overpowered, and the few people who could actually stomach how barebones archwing was could become angels of annihilation. 

Then the power creep caught up with Warframe and we became stronger on the ground. Combine that with those thrice-damned EMP rockets and we had no reason to use Archwing for anything except travel

Then Railjack dropped and power creeped all the enemies too, so now even fast travel is risky