How to do Garuda right.

[doominator10]

I want Garuda to not just be usable if you like her aesthetic, but actually good. Not just good in a vacuum, but good compared to the other frames with actual reasons to pick her. Right now there's little to no reason to pick her over other frames unless you just like the way she plays or looks. I like both. So here's what I would want out of Garuda:

 

Dread Mirror: 

            +Shield goes from a front facing == shield, to a front facing /\ shield (with Garuda in the center of the /\). It’s less versatile than the other invincible shield (Volt) and it can’t be spammed to completely cover you, so that should mean it has room to be stronger overall. Let it cover ‘almost’ all angles forward.

            --Lower the duration on the mirror just a tad from 20s to ~10s. The way I want to play, I want to be constantly using my abilities to reap their reward, not standing in a corner with my shield up because I’d just die otherwise without really tanky mods. This will make more sense with the other abilities.

 

Dread Mirror Augment: Dread Ward

            +Slight buff from 5 to 6 seconds un-killability (not invincibility) after a kill.

            +HEALING IS REDUCED BY 90% WHILE WARD IS UP. Idea is to stay at near 2hp to make use of the 100% dmg on her passive, but also constantly heal 'just' a bit so she can still 3.

            +Execute threshold is increased from 40% to 50%. Not sure if I should leave this on the augment or just have this as a base buff.

            +Amount of damage stored on execute increased to 20% of target’s max hp.

 

Blood Altar:

            +Healing radius is shortened, but the altar itself now shows on minimap. Instead of  tethered healing, allies who touch the altar’s radius get the blood offering buff. They get the same healing regen that it gives to Garuda (so 25% hp/s at base, scaling with strength). Think of a wisp vitality mote, but without the bonus hp.

            +The duration of the buff is increased by .2 second every time an enemy is killed. So each player, can in theory, have infinite regen so long as they keep killing stuff. So long as at least 1 player is killing stuff quickly (ideally Garuda), the team is healing ~35% hp/s at 140% power strength.

            ++If Garuda executes an enemy, the buff time is increased by 1 seconds and personal healing is increased by X% (whatever % you want)

            --The duration of the blood altar itself is shared between all players, and the base duration is reduced to 5 seconds. Meaning, EVERYONE contributes to the duration of the blood altar so long as the murder continues. The BONUS time scales with +Duration%, so +200% duration at 1 blood altar makes 1 kill give .4 seconds total time. The base time does not scale.

            ++Starting a new blood altar ADDS to the current duration, and ADDS to the buff increase. So at 3 blood altars on the map, 1 kill adds .6 seconds to the total duration.

           =Enemies still die at the end of the blood altar if they've taken enough damage. You can still stall out a defense to let the target regen if you leave the altar alive for a while after you kill everything.

 

Bloodletting:

            =Exactly the same.

 

Seeking Talons:

            +Can work on Kuva Liches and Demolysts, but with slightly reduced slash strength.

            +Charge up time decreased *slightly*. I’d just like it to be just a little bit faster with Natural Talent.

            +The animation speed of her 1 is increased by 1.25x on an enemy afflicted with the debuff.

 Overall:

            With this, Garuda fills 2 main role and 1 niche role. She's a teamwide healer, joining the ranks of Wisp, Oberon, and Trinity for actually useful healing. She's an AOE slash damage debuffer, which surprisingly isn't as useful for the most part as you'd like. It really shines at higher levels, where you and your team can actually make use of the millions of bonus damage, instead of level 40-80 where everything dies instantly to everything we do anyways. Now she can jump in, and not worry AS MUCH about being shot from literally every direction and dying. Lastly, she has another niche role as an endgame invincible solo-frame killer. At max %passive bonus, her 4 should bring high level enemies close to 50%, where you can constantly 1 enemies for the invincibility with her augment. Just think about instagibbing lvl 150 bombards and gunners at half hp, or veil exo enemies. Do that a bunch of times, then use charged 1 on a group to instagib a whole room. Repeat.

Thoughts?

 

 

 

 

[AzureTerra]

I have always held to the idea that the mirror should go and be replaced with a poncho effect originating from the blood ball and applying a Damage Reduction effect but not immunity. Not sure how to change the augment relating top that however.

[Benour]

I did 100 rounds arbi def duo (my friend was playing mesa) and trust me she is amazing, Seems like l2p issue or you dont know how to mod her.

And yes i was healing def.target with her without issues (just make few altars and you fine). Also melee + her 4 can scale very good.

Never cared about her shield tbh, but everytime i see Garuda topic some baddie will bring this "issue".

[doominator10]

1 hour ago, Benour said:

I did 100 rounds arbi def duo (my friend was playing mesa) and trust me she is amazing, Seems like l2p issue or you dont know how to mod her.

If you think going long in any game mode is an accomplishment that proves your point alone then you're wrong and need better arguments. "Trust me she's amazing," is not saying anything. I don't trust you. "l2p" just implies to me that you didn't read anything except maybe the title and the bold words and just decided my opinions were irrelevant.

1 hour ago, Benour said:

def.target

This definitely implies to me that you didn't actually read anything and just dropped in to say whatever hot-take came into your head like this was twitter or a youtube comment section or something.

 

1 hour ago, Benour said:

Never cared about her shield tbh

Everyone is free to their own opinions, and if you think I'm a baddie because I want my favorite frame to be more useful in more situations than just really long missions, like I've already talked about in the original post, then it's my opinion that you're either drunk or a child who doesn't want to or know how to read and can't make a reasonable statement if your life depended on it.

Have a nice night.

[selig_fay]

12 часов назад, doominator10 сказал:

Let it cover ‘almost’ all angles forward.

Garuda is fully hidden behind a shield when in the air. There are no places that mobs can shoot through. It seems to me that this is done specifically for players to use she as a harpy, which is why most of its abilities can improve control in the air.

[CopperBezel]

I haven't played Garuda ot any meaningful extent, but Bloodletting is the one ability I don't really understand. I guess with a full efficiency build it'd be a full energy restore, and I understand that like a lot of Rage tanks, she can heal pretty easily (though not as easily as Oberon or Wisp etc.) so having the ability to damage yourself without enemy help (which normally doesn't trigger Rage / Hunter Adrenaline) for energy is potentially handy. Plus, % gain in energy means (Primed) Flow increases the return too, so that's pretty neat. But the favorable comparisons to just using Hunter Adrenaline end there. Is it really all just about her passive? And if so, would it make more sense for Bloodletting to be a held ability that would drain health into energy at a particular rate, so you could control how much you're dropping? I don't know how it is in practice, but I feel like I'd always want to convert about 75% of my health and have to choose between 50% and 100% instead.

Edited February 5, 2020 by CopperBezel

[Hexsing]

I also think the shield needs to have more coverage.  It also needs to be more responsive to movement.  Sometimes when turning the shield has a slight delay in following the camera which results in damage being taken. 

 

 

I like all of your other suggestions.  In do feel the mirror duration should still be effected by duration mods.

 

[Hexsing]

I would also add an augment to blood alter. 

It would offer the same buff (I like your minimap idea.

What if it offered a group melee buff.  So if you have 3 alters out you would get 15% for each alter.  Hitting 30% damage increase for all inside.  This would offset my passive not working.  Or Oberons or Trinitys wanting to heal me.  Because thats what they like to do.

 

This could be an augment.

[doominator10]

3 hours ago, CopperBezel said:

Is it really all just about her passive?

For the most part her passive is kinda irrelevant, as you don't really want to stay at low hp for any real length of time. Its fun to go to 100% bonus damage and kill stuff with just 4 at around lvl 50 and under, but that's... ok i guess.

As to bloodletting, drain 50% hp to restore 35% energy. At 175% efficiency, you restore 140%? of your energy. So all of for half hp. Sometimes the simple things in life are the best.

 

6 hours ago, zhellon said:

Garuda is fully hidden behind a shield when in the air. There are no places that mobs can shoot through. It seems to me that this is done specifically for players to use she as a harpy, which is why most of its abilities can improve control in the air.

Hold up, I'ma need a source on that one. You telling me you're surrounded and you 1 someone, bullet jump into the air, and just aimglide down, you're invincible during that? That sounds suspect. I'm definitely going to try that soon™, though if true, that sounds more like a bug than a feature. One I'll happily use more often with yet another reason Zephyr isn't getting used in my arsenal XD

[GPrime96]

4 hours ago, CopperBezel said:

she can heal pretty easily (though not as easily as Oberon or Wisp etc.)

Garuda can out heal both of them but it’s less noticeable if the Ally have lower Health than higher Health ( she can heal the Defense Arbitration Operative faster than she would do to a Nova or Inaros). The Healing scales from a % of missing Health and if the current Health is high, then the Healing is high until it’s near full Health where it slows down. The Frame that can out heal her is Trinity. 

Edited February 5, 2020 by GPrime96

[CopperBezel]

Well, I was referring to her ability to self-heal to power either Bloodletting or Hunter Adrenaline / Rage. But that said, even in that case, she's several times faster than their regen rates, and being tied to the spot to do it makes sense in light of Bloodletting working in big chunks the way Rage doesn't.

[(PSN)Mr-Wookie_]

7 hours ago, doominator10 said:

For the most part her passive is kinda irrelevant, as you don't really want to stay at low hp for any real length of time.

Or you know, you could equip quick thinking with primed flow and some durability mods and suddenly you still have a lot of health at 2hp while benefitting from a 2x multiplier on all outgoing damage :O

Garuda’s entire kit is basically made so she can benefit from Quick Thinking, yet so many people refuse to use it and promptly call her passive ‘trash’. Her entire kit screams SYNERGY, but half that synergy is lost when you don’t equip quick thinking.

[Borg1611]

I like these suggestions, though it might be a bit odd to have a rapid healing buff stuck to you while you have a passive that depends on how much health you're missing. I think that mechanic needs to be adjusted though. 

If they don't want to change dread mirrors shape another alternative that might be easier to implement could be to say a % of all damage taken while the mirror is up is diverted to the mirror (adding to its damage collected and reducing the damage you take) so it also acts as an extra DR source from other directions in addition to blocking forward damage. 

I think they should also buff her passive maximum value to make it more worth trying to play around. There are several damage buffing sources in this game. Most of them are fairly braindead easy to maintain. The easier to maintain buffs are also often capable of being larger buffs or even dramatically larger than Death Gate. Since Death Gate is a mechanic that actually requires more effort (or at least risk) to fully utilize, it seems like it should be more rewarding to take advantage of. If they changed altar to have a wisp mote style system you also wouldn't be able to maintain low health as easily. 

Alternatively, change her passive to instead have a gore meter that fills up with blood based on using abilities + being around enemies with slash procs. The more blood in the meter the higher her damage buff. A full meter could be 2x damage just as her current passive, but it wouldn't work against blood altar anymore. It could start to drain after a couple seconds of no blood being spilled around her. 

 

[doominator10]

6 hours ago, (PS4)Mr-Wookie_ said:

Or you know, you could equip quick thinking with primed flow and some durability mods and suddenly you still have a lot of health at 2hp while benefitting from a 2x multiplier on all outgoing damage 😮

Garuda’s entire kit is basically made so she can benefit from Quick Thinking, yet so many people refuse to use it and promptly call her passive ‘trash’. Her entire kit screams SYNERGY, but half that synergy is lost when you don’t equip quick thinking.

I run Quick Thinking, Adaptation, Primed Flow, and Pain Threshold for tankiness. Sometimes Umbral Fiber too to pair with my Umbral Intensify.  At roughly > lvl 80 enemies, you're going to drop like a  fly if you're not actively dodging and healing  through it.

EDIT: Put simply, if you're staying at 2 hp then your energy is your healthbar and everytime you get looked at, you get staggered and dropped. PT is just to get back up quickly so you can operator or blood altar away to safety/healing. There's no good way or reason to safely stay at 2hp unless you're fighting enemies at starchart level.

 

3 hours ago, Borg1611 said:

though it might be a bit odd to have a rapid healing buff stuck to you while you have a passive that depends on how much health you're missing. I think that mechanic needs to be adjusted though. 

Yeah, that's why I wanted to stick the healing reduction on the augment, as the idea would be to let people go all in on the no-hp + instakill anything while invincible playstyle. Right now the augment says you can't be killed after a deathblow for a few seconds, but if you're healing fully, then you can't use her passive as much since you can't stay at or near 2 hp. Cut healing to 'almost' nothing, and you can maintain your passive. Or if people aren't interested in the high life, then they don't have to use the augment like the plebs they are.

Edited February 6, 2020 by doominator10

[Benour]

1 hour ago, doominator10 said:

 At roughly > lvl 80 enemies, you're going to drop like a  fly if you're not actively dodging and healing  through it.

Cool story bruh.

[(PSN)Mr-Wookie_]

5 hours ago, doominator10 said:

I run Quick Thinking, Adaptation, Primed Flow, and Pain Threshold for tankiness. Sometimes Umbral Fiber too to pair with my Umbral Intensify.  At roughly > lvl 80 enemies, you're going to drop like a  fly if you're not actively dodging and healing  through it.

EDIT: Put simply, if you're staying at 2 hp then your energy is your healthbar and everytime you get looked at, you get staggered and dropped. PT is just to get back up quickly so you can operator or blood altar away to safety/healing. There's no good way or reason to safely stay at 2hp unless you're fighting enemies at starchart level.

Yeah, sorry chief but if you’re having trouble staying alive at 2hp in sortie 3 level content with quick thinking, primed flow with full energy, adaptation and umbral fiber and while using her 1, you’re doing something wrong. You literally have more effective health than when you just build for health and armor.

And with all the damage reduction you have and her dread mirror, you should only ever get staggered by bombards/napalms or a heavy gunner that somehow flanked you and is shooting at you for like 3 full seconds.

Edited February 6, 2020 by (PS4)Mr-Wookie_

[Krenlik]

11 hours ago, (PS4)Mr-Wookie_ said:

Or you know, you could equip quick thinking with primed flow and some durability mods and suddenly you still have a lot of health at 2hp while benefitting from a 2x multiplier on all outgoing damage 😮

Garuda’s entire kit is basically made so she can benefit from Quick Thinking, yet so many people refuse to use it and promptly call her passive ‘trash’. Her entire kit screams SYNERGY, but half that synergy is lost when you don’t equip quick thinking.

I tried quick thinking initially, and wasn't thrilled... still felt too squishy for my tastes.  THEN I got Adaptation to add to it.   Game Changer.  I rarely have more than 2 health now.  Adaptation makes all the difference. I think some of these disagreements come down to assumptions on what players have available.

 

[Leyers_of_facade]

Tbh, I am just waiting for garuda prime before I really mod her up

A triple umbra build likely will go well on her, sadly that would mean using umbra formas... and I prefer to not use them on the normal version. 

[(PSN)Mr-Wookie_]

1 hour ago, Krenlik said:

I tried quick thinking initially, and wasn't thrilled... still felt too squishy for my tastes.  THEN I got Adaptation to add to it.   Game Changer.  I rarely have more than 2 health now.  Adaptation makes all the difference. I think some of these disagreements come down to assumptions on what players have available.

 

Honestly, you’re probably right. I guess people don’t like to have ‘mandatory’ mods, but if you want to make use of Garuda’s entire kit, there’s just some mods you simply can’t ignore.
I’ve got no problem with people who don’t like utilizing her passive with QT, but don’t call it trash, because it isn’t -_-

She’s such an amazing frame, useful for almost everything.

[CopperBezel]

2 hours ago, Leyers_of_facade said:

A triple umbra build likely will go well on her, sadly that would mean using umbra formas... and I prefer to not use them on the normal version. 

I feel this one. I put an umbral forma on my Khora to fit two of the three into a normal build and the full set if I stretch, but can't bring myself to add a second to make it work well knowing that she's eventually going to be replaced with the Prime. 

[Gailus]

I kind of feel like you're underselling Garuda's kit as it currently stands. She's absolutely not just good in a vacuum. Tankier enemies are being added ever since Railjack, and the ability to scale well is pretty fantastic. She's easily able to survive incoming damage from enemies above level 120-130, and can guarantee death on most any enemy for relatively little effort using her 4 and infinite scaling damage together.

This isn't even getting into how amazingly well Garuda interacts with guns. No one ever talks about how Garuda is holding a gun in the shooter game, and can kill things a lot faster by not waiting for 6 seconds to let slash ticks do it.

Did you know that Gas procs have the same base damage as the gun that makes them? Did you know that Gas procs can inflict Slash procs when an enemy has Seeking Talons on them? It's incredible how easy it is to gun down a hoard of level 150 Heavy Gunners when running a high status Gas gun with AOE capabilities. It's a lot safer and easier than leaping around charging the Dread Heart, costs less energy, doesn't drop the shield, and works just as well until close to level 200.

I will admit that the increasing prevalence of status immune enemies is throwing a big wet blanket on Garuda though. It's super frustrating to run into an enemy that just ignores everything she can do.

Edited February 6, 2020 by Gailus

[doominator10]

8 hours ago, (PS4)Mr-Wookie_ said:

Yeah, sorry chief but if you’re having trouble staying alive at 2hp in sortie 3 level content with quick thinking, primed flow with full energy, adaptation and umbral fiber and while using her 1, you’re doing something wrong. You literally have more effective health than when you just build for health and armor.

And with all the damage reduction you have and her dread mirror, you should only ever get staggered by bombards/napalms or a heavy gunner that somehow flanked you and is shooting at you for like 3 full seconds.

Maybe it is just me, because there's always a bombard or a napalm or some corpus with a shotgun i missed that shoots me in the booty and staggers me unless I'm huddling behind my mirror with a wall. Or I'm farming at alert lvl 4 in Fortuna, and there's just no cover whatsoever. And the most dangerous enemies there are of course immune to her 4. Point being here if I'm not healing then I'm dead, quick thinking is just so I live a little longer to operator or blood altar away. Her real tankiness comes from all the damage reduction and armor applied to both her healing AND her energy pool. I 'could' just constantly play it safe in a corner and stay at 2 hp with her shield, but that's not fun. 

4 hours ago, Gailus said:

I kind of feel like you're underselling Garuda's kit as it currently stands.

I don't think I am.

She's not as good at healing as any other healer who can heal from massively far away and on the move (Trin, Oberon, Wisp). Shes about equal at killing the enemies people normally fight already (any decent damage frame kills enemies at lvl 80-150 pretty easily). She's about as tanky as Oberon when she's healing herself (staying near her blood altars). She has a near unrivaled ability to match the scaling of normal enemies at an extreme level, like Octavia. The one thing she's extremely good at, is rarely useful because we don't fight enemies at that level on a regular basis.

I've never denied Garuda's efficiency in murdering high level enemies, but the highest level enemies we fight somewhat regularly come from veil, max alert fortuna, and arbitration. If you're fighting enemies above that level, then you're just doing an endurance run for pride and accomplishment (Hostile Mergers was great and I want more of that DE plz). My suggestion is to buff/change her 2 so she's as useful as the other healers, buff her 1 and augment so her playstyle is more fun and lets her keep healing while jumping around all over the place like she should, and for the love of all that is good;

4 hours ago, Gailus said:

I will admit that the increasing prevalence of status immune enemies is throwing a big wet blanket on Garuda though. It's super frustrating to run into an enemy that just ignores everything she can do.

please let her 4 actually work on the extremely high health enemies like liches and demolishers so her scaling damage is useful compared to other frames outside of endurance runs.

  

4 hours ago, Gailus said:

Did you know that Gas procs can inflict Slash procs when an enemy has Seeking Talons on them?

3 words: Gas. Akarius. Satisfaction.

Edited February 6, 2020 by doominator10

[doominator10]

7 hours ago, Leyers_of_facade said:

Tbh, I am just waiting for garuda prime before I really mod her up

A triple umbra build likely will go well on her, sadly that would mean using umbra formas... and I prefer to not use them on the normal version. 

I don't think Garuda prime comes for another several years at least, iirc. You might want to just go ahead. At the very least, she's the only frame I have with an umbral forma. Also, you don't need/want to build hp on Garuda since her 3 will cut it in half no matter what anyways. You get more ehp from armor, adaptation, quick thinking and primed flow because of your healing.

Then again, that's just nit-picking and optimizing, you do you.

[Leyers_of_facade]

Just now, doominator10 said:

I don't think Garuda prime comes for another several years at least, iirc. You might want to just go ahead. At the very least, she's the only frame I have with an umbral forma. Also, you don't need/want to build hp on Garuda since her 3 will cut it in half no matter what anyways. You get more ehp from armor, adaptation, quick thinking and primed flow because of your healing.

Then again, that's just nit-picking and optimizing, you do you.

The thing is, you can have umbral vitality on top of the ones you listed.
I am more or less looking at a build with triple umbra, quick thinking, adaptation, p flow, then 2 mods for whatever stats I want to focus on. Do consider that by slotting umbral vitality on top of the other 2 umbral, you are increasing power strength by 11%, armor by 55%, 770% health, I consider it a decent mod to slot in. 
 

Currently all my umbra formas (all 3) are on my mirage prime. There are still some primes I plan to umbra forma up, and they will take priority. In fact I do plan to reserve at least 1 umbra forma for gara prime which isn't released yet, and only afterwards will I reserve my umbra forma for garuda....

[GPrime96]

46 minutes ago, doominator10 said:

I've never denied Garuda's efficiency in murdering high level enemies, but the highest level enemies we fight somewhat regularly come from veil, max alert fortuna, and arbitration. If you're fighting enemies above that level, then you're just doing an endurance run for pride and accomplishment (Hostile Mergers was great and I want more of that DE plz).

Yeah about that, i don’t see Garuda being a everyday Casual Frame, more of a Frame for long Squad Survival runs (although she can scale just as well against Veil Proxima’s Grineer). Can’t really see how a Frame that can pretty much one hit bleed out enemies at lvl 300 - 600+ being a Frame that you would use in situations where you hardly do those kind of Runs unless she fits your Playstyle that well. Similar situation Nidus have.