Please Nerf My Khora

[CopperBezel]

Khora's whip needs to make the transition that so many damage-with-a-weapon abilities modified by installed mods of that weapon type have in the past, and become a proper exalted weapon, similar to how Hildryn's Balefire works, where the ability simply summons the weapon and there's no ongoing drain except on attack. At the moment, it depends on melee mods for its damage and drains only on attack, so the gameplay change would be minimal. 

However, it presently has all of the numeric damage benefits of both exalted and normal weapons. Whipclaw gains damage with the combo counter, +25% per stack like any exalted weapon, but also benefits from Blood Rush, making damage an exponential build with combo count. It's also modified by rivens, at the disposition of the stat stick weapon employed. I presently have my Khora sporting a Kama for its 1.47 disposition.

It's entirely possible to deal over a million damage (in a 5-10m radius) without using Accumulating Whipclaw, and there's just rarely a good reason to use a weapon other than Whipclaw while playing as Khora. For a frame with immediate knockout hard CC, room-clearing and point-holding very-slightly-softer CC, and Oberon-tier healing as long as she's within range of her cat, it doesn't make sense for her to simultaneously be one of the biggest potential damage dealers.

Edited December 24, 2019 by CopperBezel

[-AoN-CanoLathra-]

Whipclaw is the only pseudo-exalted melee ability in the game that works with Blood Rush. Just getting rid of that interaction would likely be enough.

[(PSN)CommanderC2121]

1 minute ago, -AoN-CanoLathra- said:

Whipclaw is the only pseudo-exalted melee ability in the game that works with Blood Rush. Just getting rid of that interaction would likely be enough.

*looks at landside*

>_>

[-AoN-CanoLathra-]

9 minutes ago, (PS4)CommanderC2121 said:

*looks at landside*

>_>

Last I checked (and according to the Wiki), it is not supposed to work with Landslide. We can't tell if it now works with Shattered Lash, and Iron Jab doesn't exist anymore. So, if both Whipclaw and Landslide work with Blood Rush, that's a change that wasn't in any of the patchnotes.

[taiiat]

i'm very happy that Whipclaw and Landslide don't require Weapon Switching to use. that's how i'd prefer them to work. irregardless of their final Damage, it's just a lot more pleasant for them to work that way, due to their style. 

if you don't want Mods to affect these Abilities, well, compensate for the loss of normal+Riven Mods in... some way.... via the future performance of them without Mods. ofcourse, what'll probably happen is that Whipclaw just becomes really inconsistent feeling like a Daikyu without a Crit Riven - Stats that are basically purpose built to need special bonuses to make function reliably relative to their Attack Rate, but don't have the capabilities to actually bandaid such things.

or, do you mean these Abilities being separately Modded rather than pulling from Melee? so long as then there was Stat compensation to make up for what Rivens fix with these Abilities (since we do need Rivens to fix their Stats, just like most Weapons in this game) then i guess that would be okay.

 

ofcourse, it seems odd to make complaints of Khoras' Ability Weapon being the general tool of choice as a Weapon? it is an Ability after all, a part of that Warframe - that seems rather normal for Whipclaw then to generally have the highest performance of any of your Weapons?

[(PSN)CommanderC2121]

17 minutes ago, -AoN-CanoLathra- said:

Last I checked (and according to the Wiki), it is not supposed to work with Landslide. We can't tell if it now works with Shattered Lash, and Iron Jab doesn't exist anymore. So, if both Whipclaw and Landslide work with Blood Rush, that's a change that wasn't in any of the patchnotes.

Both it and the gladiator set work with landslide ive found

[CopperBezel]

2 hours ago, taiiat said:

if you don't want Mods to affect these Abilities, well, compensate for the loss of normal+Riven Mods in... some way.... via the future performance of them without Mods. ofcourse, what'll probably happen is that Whipclaw just becomes really inconsistent feeling like a Daikyu without a Crit Riven - Stats that are basically purpose built to need special bonuses to make function reliably relative to their Attack Rate, but don't have the capabilities to actually bandaid such things.

Yeah, that would be terrible and solve nothing. Direct damage abilities can either be OP at low levels and stop working with higher level enemies, or use wacky enemy-based formulae to keep performing the same way against tougher enemies without any effort on the player's part, and neither feels good. There's absolutely no reason to try and make Whipclaw not moddable. 

3 hours ago, taiiat said:

i'm very happy that Whipclaw and Landslide don't require Weapon Switching to use. that's how i'd prefer them to work. irregardless of their final Damage, it's just a lot more pleasant for them to work that way, due to their style. 

You'd press 1 once to summon it, and then be pressing melee instead of 1. Switching between guns and melee is something you do instantaneously when you attack with the corresponding button, and you already don't use normal melee attacks with Khora, because you've built and probably chosen her weapon for Whipclaw. So to Whipclaw, you'd already have cast her 1 at the start of the level, and then just melee attack. If you haven't played Hildryn, where you press 1 to replace her secondary with her exalted and there's no ongoing drain, I guess this might sound weird, but it's actually the same for all exalted melees, too, just on a different ability key and with an ongoing drain. You can always alternate between an exalted weapon and a normal weapon of the opposite category by attacking with the opposite button. 

3 hours ago, taiiat said:

of course, it seems odd to make complaints of Khoras' Ability Weapon being the general tool of choice as a Weapon? it is an Ability after all, a part of that Warframe - that seems rather normal for Whipclaw then to generally have the highest performance of any of your Weapons?

I expect it on a dedicated damage dealer like Mesa - who not coincidentally uses a proper exalted weapon. It doesn't seem to be what's intended for Khora, though. She's got an augment that can nearly quadruple Whipclaw's damage in very good circumstances, a synergy with her 2 to double its effect on one enemy and a synergy with her 4 to propagate it to a crowd. There should be some strategy and tradeoff there, but there isn't - you never need Accumulating Whipclaw and you can one-shot anything once your combo stack is high enough.

[taiiat]

2 hours ago, CopperBezel said:

You'd press 1 once to summon it, and then be pressing melee instead of 1. Switching between guns and melee is something you do instantaneously when you attack with the corresponding button, and you already don't use normal melee attacks with Khora, because you've built and probably chosen her weapon for Whipclaw.
You can always alternate between an exalted weapon and a normal weapon of the opposite category by attacking with the opposite button. 

I expect it on a dedicated damage dealer like Mesa - who not coincidentally uses a proper exalted weapon. It doesn't seem to be what's intended for Khora, though.
you never need Accumulating Whipclaw and you can one-shot anything once your combo stack is high enough.

but what is the benefit? i don't see any benefit. Landslide and Whipclaw very deliberately do not offer much for Animation because they are just not made to be like that. they're like a Melee version of a Grenade Ability - you don't Equip it because it's an instantaneous use thing.
even a stat stick Melee is still useful for different things, restricting me from being able to use my normal Melee Weapon is not really doing the Player any favors. no thanks.

Khora literally is though. Khora has an Ability Weapon that the two other Abilities directly interface with. Khora is all about dealing Damage and applying CC. that's what Khora is good at.
also it's more like there is never any reason to not use Accumulating Whipclaw, it's so good that Khora basically has 7 Mod Slots.

[Hexsing]

Can we not?   Khora already suffers from horrible identity issues.  Why take the things that make her great and screw them.

 

Leave her alone.  🙂

[CopperBezel]

3 hours ago, taiiat said:

but what is the benefit? i don't see any benefit. 

Consistency with everyone but Atlas? Seeing the stats of the attack in the arsenal and knowing what you're building for without checking the wiki? Being able to use a normal melee weapon with Khora too if you really want to? Not getting Blood Rush and the exalted weapon damage buff from the combo count at the same time, because that's clearly not intended to be a thing? Not being able to use riven mods to modify a weapon that isn't the one they correspond to? 

Building for Khora's whipclaw is like a hidden exploit that is reserved to those of us who read her wiki page, and the riven and Blood Rush aspects cannot have been intended. Now look, I get that some things that come out of warframe designs are trash and find a way to be useful in an unintended fashion, and I know that Khora already has a touch of that with the two modes of Venari that don't do anything. But there's at least potential for some self-consistency here. 

3 hours ago, taiiat said:

Landslide and Whipclaw very deliberately do not offer much for Animation because they are just not made to be like that. they're like a Melee version of a Grenade Ability - you don't Equip it because it's an instantaneous use thing.

I've already explained that "equipping" doesn't mean anything here, because you are pressing a key to use it and free to immediately use something else by hitting something else either way. But setting that aside, I don't see in what way an "instantaneous use thing" with a cooldown that can be chained together indefinitely is any different from using a melee strike in between shots. It definitely isn't when both the melee attack and the "instantaneous use melee grenade" benefit from the combo counter, and it can't possibly be when you're continuously attacking with it as fast as it'll permit the same as any other melee. 

3 hours ago, taiiat said:

Khora literally is though. Khora has an Ability Weapon that the two other Abilities directly interface with. Khora is all about dealing Damage and applying CC. that's what Khora is good at.

Losing Blood Rush wouldn't be nerfing her into Vaubanhood, but she has much better CC than your dedicated damage dealers like Mesa or Saryn and ... also most CC-oriented frames really. (To say nothing of all her weird bonuses like having companion mods in Index and the ability to heal excavators or whatnot.) She doesn't need this chain of semi-exploits to compete. You know, remove Blood Rush and she's still one of the frames I'd tend to pick to just walk through anything. Especially with the option of AW.

3 hours ago, taiiat said:

also it's more like there is never any reason to not use Accumulating Whipclaw, it's so good that Khora basically has 7 Mod Slots.

I mean c'mon, you're building for at least 200% range and full efficiency already, and she has enough armor to make use of Steel Fiber. There are a lot of good options competing for Khora's mod slots. 5x Whipclaw damage if you can keep up one stack while she's already getting 4x Whipclaw damage based on this other one on top of Blood Rush and criminy, do you really need 4M damage per hit? = /

Edited December 25, 2019 by CopperBezel

[selig_fay]

В 12/24/2019 в 11:06 PM, CopperBezel сказал:

similar to how Hildryn's Balefire works, where the ability simply summons the weapon and there's no ongoing drain except on attack.

If you want nerf, you need an energy drain. You just need it. You will just see your DPS or control ability or survival rate drop dramatically due to the fact that you will have to build for maximum energy efficiency or be permanently without power. Trust me, an energy drain is what you want. xD

 

[CopperBezel]

Channeled would indeed suck! I can't even fit Hunter Adrenaline into my typical build, so I'm depending entirely on Energizing Dash, which doesn't work for continuous channeling!

But yeah I'm talking very specifically about the damage Whipclaw is capable of as the thing needing a nerf, specifically by making it not interact with Blood Rush and ideally by making the change that would fix all these other weird inconsistencies about building for it.

[nooneyouknow13]

On 2019-12-24 at 12:41 PM, -AoN-CanoLathra- said:

Last I checked (and according to the Wiki), it is not supposed to work with Landslide. We can't tell if it now works with Shattered Lash, and Iron Jab doesn't exist anymore. So, if both Whipclaw and Landslide work with Blood Rush, that's a change that wasn't in any of the patchnotes.

Blood Rush and Weeping Wound began working with both Whipclaw and Landslide the moment they became additive base stat increases and not final stat multipliers. It's just in landslide's case the base crit and status are laughable.

[(PSN)RazorPhoenix970]

So is this an indirect plee for Exalted Whip?

[(PSN)RazorPhoenix970]

On 2019-12-24 at 10:06 PM, CopperBezel said:

it doesn't make sense for her to simultaneously be one of the biggest potential damage dealers

I'm really really struggling to get the sense of this argument. You don't like the fact that Khora has good damage alongside good CC and healing. According to your logic Trinity should also get nerfed because on top of being nigh on immortal and having inifinite energy she has the highest single target damage out of the entire roster of Warframes, Garuda should get nerfed because she has good healing and functionally infinite energy already. Maybe help me understand your viewpoint because I just don't get it

 

On 2019-12-25 at 8:19 AM, CopperBezel said:

Building for Khora's whipclaw is like a hidden exploit that is reserved to those of us who read her wiki page,

From my perspective Whipclaw rewards knowledge of how it functions, sure Blood Rush, Weeping Wounds and Condition Overload now working on it is most likely unintended (and probably get fixed) but to remove the stat stick thing is just dumbing down the frame imo. It also serves as the illustration of how melee should interact with exalted melee abilities, your combo is shared between ability and melee, they co-exist and bring each other up, making Whipclaw separately modable or making it no longer benefit from melee anymore would kill any hopes of there being a flowing co existence between melee and warframe abilities

On 2019-12-25 at 8:19 AM, CopperBezel said:

do you really need 4M damage per hit? =

No but I do like being rewarded for knowing and applying how a thing works

 

[George_PPS]

On 2019-12-24 at 12:06 PM, CopperBezel said:

....... total ****

Are you kidding me? What other game developer are you working for and trying to hop on the nerfing trend to sabotage Warframe even more? We are sick of nerfing and players are fleeing the game already.

Edited December 29, 2019 by George_PPS

[CopperBezel]

1 hour ago, (PS4)RazorPhoenix970 said:

So is this an indirect plee for Exalted Whip?

Yeah, although @-AoN-CanoLathra- is right that just taking Blood Rush back out of the picture would really suffice. I hadn't sufficiently appreciated just how very terrible exalted melee is, particularly that it doesn't benefit from the +25% per combo stack bonus damage that Whipclaw and Landslide do, or effectively benefit from the combo counter at all outside of heavy attacks and builds with the Gladiator set. Whipclaw is here doing like 10x the damage it ought to be at full stack, but that's also like 50x or more what it would get as an exalted melee, and now I really don't understand why none of these things can just be normal....

41 minutes ago, (PS4)RazorPhoenix970 said:

It also serves as the illustration of how melee should interact with exalted melee abilities, your combo is shared between ability and melee, they co-exist and bring each other up,

I don't like the combo counter resetting when you cast or dispel exalted melees, either. But the only time I use a normal melee attack as Khora is to avoid losing my combo stack when there's an energy drain eximus around I can't find. If I had a normal melee weapon that might not be the case, but I have a Kama with no speed, range, or conditional mods on and a godlike riven (with none of those attributes, either) that can't possibly bring it up to normal, because optimizing Khora's whip requires getting the worst melee you can find and building it suboptimally. 

It doesn't matter, obviously, because the whip does everything you could ask for in a melee, but it definitely entirely replaces her melee weapon and doesn't make friends with it like you're implying. Like when I built and forma'd up the Kama for her after unveiling a riven for one from a sortie, seeing the disposition, and rolling it up, I had to take the resulting stick to Cetus and just rename it Some Melee Mods.

33 minutes ago, (PS4)RazorPhoenix970 said:

I'm really really struggling to get the sense of this argument. You don't like the fact that Khora has good damage alongside good CC and healing. According to your logic Trinity should also get nerfed because on top of being nigh on immortal and having inifinite energy she has the highest single target damage out of the entire roster of Warframes, Garuda should get nerfed because she has good healing and functionally infinite energy already. Maybe help me understand your viewpoint because I just don't get it

Khora does so very many things well, from being one of the few frames to get companion mods like vacuum in Index and one of the few frames able to heal excavators, to making Vauban look even more terribly silly than he already does, to cruising through Onslaught (and especially Elite) as well as Mesa if still well behind Saryn. There are technically some mission types for which she isn't the single best choice, but yeah, a part of it really is thinking she ought to stay in her lane. Trinity and Garuda have limitations built in; most frames do. Technically Khora can't tank very well, I guess? I hit a point in her optimization that she could walk through nearly anything and I had to start using other frames again to feel there was some kind of challenge involved, and then she got Blood Rush. 

But yeah, when the idea is that some frames are better at a given situation than others, being the best or near-best choice in too many areas starts to be a problem.

34 minutes ago, (PS4)RazorPhoenix970 said:

No but I do like being rewarded for knowing and applying how a thing works

And this is the part I really don't agree with, because obscuring things in the UI and leaving them for players to find on the wiki is not a challenge, it's just a funky gap in design. I don't think it's intended that way, obviously - there's a part of it that's designed in and a part of it that's kind of an exploit, but the only reason it's "hidden" is that it happens to be something the Arsenal UI isn't set up to tell you about. But, you know, it's only hidden as far away as the wiki page. There's putting thought into your builds and figuring out what you need, what you can sacrifice, and what mods and equipment are going to make that happen, and that's satisfying and rewarding, but this isn't that.

[--Q--Animan8000]

Nerfing only your Khora? Just remove all mods and equip all dragon keys.

[Above]

I don't mind DE nerfing only your Khora tbh

[(PSN)RazorPhoenix970]

3 hours ago, CopperBezel said:

because optimizing Khora's whip requires getting the worst melee you can find and building it suboptimally.

True to an extent, I use Prisma Dual Cleavers instead since they have enough innate attack speed and general supporting stats to take the brunt of being turned into a stat stick allowing to switch between the two at will. Use Carving Mantis block combo to quickly build combo on ensnared enemies then start swinging the whip around is my loop in this case. Then again I never go all out optimising stuff maybe that's why

3 hours ago, CopperBezel said:

. Whipclaw is here doing like 10x the damage it ought to be at full stack, but that's also like 50x or more what it would get as an exalted melee, and now I really don't understand why none of these things can just be normal.

Well yeah😅 Whipclaw's damage is bonkers, it has been since she got her second after-release tweaks, it would be fine if we were regularly fighting enemies that need that amount of punishment but as of right now like a lot of damage abilities it easily becomes overkill with what we usually fight. Exalted melee abilities in spite of the gutting they received are more in line for fighting the level of enemies we regularly meet, is this a good thing? For balance yes but it has exposed the restrictions exalted melee has been forced to endure for far too long

3 hours ago, CopperBezel said:

but it definitely entirely replaces her melee weapon and doesn't make friends with it like you're implying

Like I said it really depends on you and the weapon you opt for. Full on optimisation well and truly turns your melee weapon into a stick, a powerful stick but still a stick. I opted to keep a bit of the blade on my stick🤷‍♂️

3 hours ago, CopperBezel said:

a part of it really is thinking she ought to stay in her lane

I get where you're coming from here but she is a JOT and JOTs don't normally care for boundaries like that

3 hours ago, CopperBezel said:

being the best or near-best choice in too many areas starts to be a problem.

I would argue you have to create more situations where this isn't the case first instead. I bear similar sentiments with Gauss's Kinetic Plating, it is stupid strong but instead of jumping on "nerf it to the ground" trip I realised all you have to do is diversify the damage types of enemies beyond the six "kinetic" damage types then boom Gauss has a threat. It will require an analysis of the frame's own limitations then exploit them, in Khora's case her healing is dependent on Venari either in Healing or Attack mode so have enemies murder Venari (reasonably of course😅), Ensnare and Whipclaw rely on enemies being fairly close to each other so space them out significantly, Whipclaw is weak-ish against tough single targets like Sentients and higher level bosses so have her fight more of them. Now we've brought her down without laying a hand on her, of course I created these hypothetical solutions with solo play in mind since its where we'd have the most control over player-enemy interaction.

 

3 hours ago, CopperBezel said:

There's putting thought into your builds and figuring out what you need, what you can sacrifice, and what mods and equipment are going to make that happen, and that's satisfying and rewarding, but this isn't that

I see, well this could be fixed by adding those stats to Whipclaw's ability screen/menu/tooltip(I dont know what it's called😅), also doing this for all such abilities. I'm guessing you feel like its an exploit because what you see on the Arsenal UI is far,far below what you get, however I'd say its good to an extent because it implores you to go and test it out on enemies instead. The reward in this instance would be on-the-ground results rather than UI eye candy stats...which I guess is also the general reward system of the mod system as a whole🤷‍♂️

[CopperBezel]

14 hours ago, (PS4)RazorPhoenix970 said:

Well yeah😅 Whipclaw's damage is bonkers, it has been since she got her second after-release tweaks, it would be fine if we were regularly fighting enemies that need that amount of punishment but as of right now like a lot of damage abilities it easily becomes overkill with what we usually fight. 

Before The Old Blood, the damage was viable but needed a solid build with Accumulating Whipclaw and some power strength to build for. The new combo counter means that you build to the cap of 4.75x damage faster than you ever got to 4x before, and Blood Rush is now adding about a factor of three to that by the time you get there. That's also exactly the kind of nutty exponential buildup that Old Blood was generally designed to avoid, the kind of curve that melee used to get with the old versions of Blood Rush and Condition Overload and doesn't now. I get that there's always power creep to keep up with, but this is significantly more bonkers than it ever was previously.

All of that means you don't have to prioritize damage dealing in Khora's own build for really any of the normal content of the game, right up to the level 110 or so enemies that show up in Rank 5 lich missions, to keep rolling out AoE one-shots on a full combo stack. 

14 hours ago, (PS4)RazorPhoenix970 said:

I'm guessing you feel like its an exploit because what you see on the Arsenal UI is far,far below what you get, however I'd say its good to an extent because it implores you to go and test it out on enemies instead.

Well, the interaction with Blood Rush specifically feels like an exploit because she got it overnight and no one noticed. I got curious and had to check, and found that the wiki actually hasn't updated to mention it since TOB. It's also how it one-shots level 100 heavies and things, or makes me forget whether I'm in Elite or not when doing Sanctuary. = P But that interaction just doesn't seem to have been very deliberate. It's also the only ability of this kind with enough base crit to make meaningful use of BR, 25% to Landslide's 5% - 38% vs. 190% at a full stack are very different things. 

The interaction with rivens is theoretically worse than the interaction with Blood Rush since it's not the intended function of the mods in question, but statstick rivens are just a well known and established thing in Warframe and they're not going anywhere until the abilities that can draw on them do. They are, of course, gradually becoming fewer. The invisible buildup of damage with combo counter stacks is a little more questionable since so few abilities work this way, and in theory I'd rather lose that and keep Blood Rush, for the same reasons I don't think even exalted weapons should be arbitrarily barred from using it, but there's really no precedent for that.

So the exploitiness is mostly about self-consistency in the system on one side and consistency with how everything else works on the other, pick one or the other.

But yeah, I don't think misleading information in the Arsenal is ever a good idea. I don't know why you'd want players to be paranoid about the game giving them wrong numbers, and that's kinda what you'd get if things like this were more common. 

14 hours ago, (PS4)RazorPhoenix970 said:

It will require an analysis of the frame's own limitations then exploit them, in Khora's case her healing is dependent on Venari either in Healing or Attack mode so have enemies murder Venari (reasonably of course😅), Ensnare and Whipclaw rely on enemies being fairly close to each other so space them out significantly, Whipclaw is weak-ish against tough single targets like Sentients and higher level bosses so have her fight more of them.

You can balance for a hypothetical game that doesn't exist all you want, but that doesn't help the one that does much. = / Enemies in Warframe aren't smart or strategic and they're not presently intended to be - they will happily walk into fire hazards or anything else that happens to be in the way, or stand at range and endlessly shoot invulnerable shields they could otherwise walk through. The game isn't trying to evade and circumvent your abilities - quite the opposite, and game design that deliberately made your tools a poor fit for the situation by adapting enemies to elude them would be profoundly unfun and exactly the opposite of how Warframe tries to work.

And, you know, a situation like you're describing would kill a lot of other things first. Ensnare and Whipclaw have very good range compared to comparable weapons and abilities, and what makes Ensnare a very good ability and Whipclaw a conditionally broken one is how they compare to other similar things that exist. 

You can always imagine a game where a given ability wouldn't be broken, and the point is where it sits in context of the content and the alternatives.

I also wouldn't say that Whipclaw is weak against single targets. I mean, these are meming strike Gram Prime kinds of numbers we're talking about here in the most extreme case. To lean all the way into a damage build for Khora for ~4-5M damage she's ultimately capable of would depend on Accumulating Whipclaw, which relies on having some smaller enemies around, and building for power strength and doing silly things with the Gladiator set and so on, but a million raw damage every three seconds or so without doing any of that, before considering armor strip, is still quite a bit more than most frames and weapons could bring to a boss fight. 

It's just not a sensible ability anymore, and wouldn't be for a pure nuke frame, never mind having it as the reigning CC goddess without even building for it. 

Edited December 30, 2019 by CopperBezel

[KaijuKraid]

7 hours ago, CopperBezel said:

Before The Old Blood, the damage was viable but needed a solid build with Accumulating Whipclaw and some power strength to build for.

While I don't really advocate for nerfing Khora's Whipclaw (Maybe just remove Blood Rush Interaction and that's it, but eh I don't think that's necessary either.), she was still easily able to do over a million damage with a negative power strength build + Accumulating Whipclaw. Ever since she got Accumulating Whipclaw, she was able to go on the same level of 'nuking' power as Saryn, Equinox, Mesa (and maybe Volt) Hell, in many instances she could do more but requires a lot more work to do than those four also. Hell, I would even argue she's ahead of Saryn in 'nuking power' in ESO at times also.

But here's the difference: Saryn really has a low bar to be able to destroy and nuke entire rooms, even in ESO. You use her 1, you smack an enemy an enemy with your 3 or use your 4 and you've now Corrosive'd/Viral'd everything in the room. Rinse and repeat every Wave or something. Hell, you don't even need to look or see the enemies you are killing. Since we also talk about healing, Saryn's do like running Regenerative Molt also.

Mesa: Though not ESO, she just goes in, puts up her damage reduction skill, press 4, hold down mouse button and just have her aimbot enemies to death essentially. 

We both agree that's the level of power those two essentially have yes? 

Now take Khora. Use 1. While on the move, make sure you're always in the right position to hit with 1 over and over. Better positioning means you hit more enemies for less energy essentially. Now you've got to continuously use your 1, espcially if you're on Accumulating Whipclaw. That's already more work than Saryn or Mesa combined. Also she has less range on her abilities than Saryn's 1 or Mesa in general as well. 

We can add in her other skills also. Her 2 is amazing CC. Takes a second for it to work, usually in groups I find my team has already killed the enemy unless it's a certain type of enemy. It's her 2 and 4 that allow Khora the chance to actually compete with killing things quickly like Saryn, Mesa, Equinox or Volt.

7 hours ago, CopperBezel said:

 It's also how it one-shots level 100 heavies and things, or makes me forget whether I'm in Elite or not when doing Sanctuary. = P

She was always able to do that. It's just now easier for people to be able to do that thanks to Blood Rush. 

[CopperBezel]

Maybe Onslaught was the wrong example. It's one that repeatedly struck me when I just, well, actually had that repeated experience of forgetting I was in Elite, because a difference of 40 or 60 in enemy level didn't really matter. 

A badly built and played Mesa will definitely outperform a badly built and played Khora in either Onslaught, no question. Bad Saryns don't meet that bar, aside from maybe by spamming 4 in regular Onslaught and ignoring 1. Either takes similar effort to Khora to play optimally, and using Mesa in Elite effectively is very difficult thanks to the ult timeout, while Khora doesn't feel the restriction at all and keeps performing more or less the same. With equal effort and skill, Mesa's going to outperform Khora in regular Sanctuary and fall behind in Elite, while Saryn rams them both into the pavement in both, doing this mostly by managing counters to make everyone in her affinity range disintegrate while hopping around and meleeing a few strategic enemies. Obviously, they all have different survival concerns with high enough level zones, for which Mesa has to work the least, unless they're using Adaptation, at which point the mass slaughter is plenty to keep enemy DPS down to manageable levels.

In total I've played more Mesa than Khora, and very little Saryn at all, and I'd pick Khora easily for either Onslaught. I don't expect it to be a killer example of Khora's problem - it's one very specific mode that doesn't work much like anything else in the game, one that Saryn demonstrably already dominates when built and played optimally, and the same one that serves as Khora's own farm, so it doesn't ultimately bother me if Khora is the ruling second-best choice there. 

And again, it doesn't bother me that Khora can be a great damage dealer when she's built for it, either. But thanks to the magnitude of this unintended buff, it's easy or automatic now, and she's less interesting for it.

[KaijuKraid]

I'm not talking about 'badly built' though. I'm talking about in general.

A Saryn or Mesa require far less work in actual game to actually get kills or damage than Khora. Can Khora get more kills/more damage than the Mesa/Saryn? Yes. Easily. But the amount of actual attention and actions in game are required far more for the Khora than Saryn. 

In ESO, I'd certainly pick Khora over Saryn because Khora has been more of my sort of playstyle than Saryn. This coming from someone who once mained Saryn (though far less since Saryn 3.X and even less so when Khora got Accumulating Whipclaw.) But I can tell you the times where I played more actively with Khora that, yes, I can outkill and outdamage Saryn pretty easily, that's fine. However I still have to work a lot harder for it than the Saryn.

This is my point though: Khora is FAR more rewarding to play, and should be. She is this because she requires a lot more to play in actual game than a Saryn or a Mesa. That's actually good game design. Khora has to have some reasonable amount of positioning: After all, where you are and what angle determines how many enemies you hit. Accumulating Whipclaw is great at this design. 

I decided to test some set ups that didn't involve a Stat Stick/+Melee. One with a Pure Blood Rush Build (I used my Dakra Prime but obviously Nikana Prime would be better) and one with the more 'Hybrid Reaper Prime' (Using, the Reaper Prime) build. Honestly, they felt up to par to being able to kill things also, which was a common complaint in the past with Khora: That she required a Stat Stick to actually work. Melee 3.0 is a REALLY good place for weapons in general right now, probably better than Primaries and Secondaries in quite a lot of regards also.

Blood Rush is allowing people to push away from the one complaint that many people had with Whipclaw: That it pigeonholed Khora into just a Stat Stick Melee weapon. That's actually a good thing. If Blood Rush interaction is removed, well it doesn't change the way I play Khora. But if it was removed, you'd have less options for Khora's Melee again and just be stuck with Mire/Skana/Dual Cleavers/Jaw Sword or Riven. 

And if you go with the idea that Khora's Whip should be moddable like Exalted Weapons/Balefire, then that would be another nerf to her also since she'd lose even the Stat Stick Mods or Rivens also. 

 

[CopperBezel]

Well, yeah, thus the thread title. I do think the nerf would be too harsh if Whipclaw was turned into a moddable weapon with no other changes to damage, because it'd mean losing the riven, the damage multiplier from the combo, and Blood Rush all at once, which would mean losing something like a multiple of thirty at full stack on my current build, and at best maybe getting double that result out of the two mod slots it'd open up. In a perfect world, I'd rather lose the stat stick riven and ability damage combo multiplier and keep Blood Rush, but just removing Blood Rush from the interaction gets to a roughly similar place with least complication, because I think where she was before that happened was a really good place.

As for non-stat-stick melee, I actually did the same thing, in the sense that I switched to a Destreza Prime with a build optimized for that weapon and no riven for yesterday's sortie, and found her significantly more fun to play that way, needing to build up a combo stack before expecting Whipclaw to kill anything and even then having a tradeoff between a weapon that will immediately kill a single target and one that might take a couple of hits for an Ensnared mob. There's certainly no advantage to it, and you're just choosing to make things more difficult for yourself if you go that route; it's not some kind of tradeoff. But that definitely is a more engaging style of play. If it was a question of whether or not to use AW instead, so that the mass nuker Khora costs something, I think it'd make a bit more gameplay sense. (And I do recognize that an optimal build for any top tier frame is going to walk through sorties regardless.) 

I'm not fully convinced that Khora takes more effort than Mesa in Onslaught context - "positioning" describes most of Mesa's deal as well, including all of those lovely bullet jump Peacemaker casts that are just heavenly when you stick the landing and terribly embarrassing when you don't, and she has to worry about more limited energy regen (I.e. deciding when and how to take damage) and all those maps that put enemies on the other side of walls Khora can AoE through. Still probably a bit easier in sum and without as sharp an "effort curve". Saryn I just really can't speak to - I see other folks' Saryns in Onslaught and know they can range from 10% to 85% of kills (sliding my Mesa from 60% to 10% in the process) depending on the player, but I can really chalk that up to Saryn having a very specific build and strategy that works in Onslaught that the majority of players aren't using, which doesn't speak to how active and engaged that play experience actually is once they've found it.

Edited December 31, 2019 by CopperBezel