Arcane Guardian Is Out Of The Meta But It's Replaced With Something Better

[8faiNt]

Alright, Arcane Guardian is obviously nerfed. You cant trigger it while it is already on, you need to wait for the duration to be over to get a %15 chance to trigger it on hit.

Now, the thing is Arcane Ultimatum has replaced Guardian with better stats and %100 chance of proccing, you also dont need to wait for the timer to run out like guardian after the nerf.

Quote

Arcane Guardian (it cannot be triggered while it is already active)

On Rank 5: On Damaged:

15% chance for +900 Armor for 20s 

 

Arcane Ultimatum - increased stats and duration

On Rank 5: On Finisher:

100% chance for +1200 Armor for 45s

You might be thinking it is ON FINISHER and you would be right. But there are weapons that you can force finisher with, Sigma & Octantis is one of them. (Frankly though, that's the only weapon I can think of with this gimmick)

 

I dont know if DE's just trying to force change meta but I still dont like what they are doing with arcanes. Nerfing Energize, while we already had literally spammable pizzas... on top of that they add 100x blueprints too. like, Woah. Stop.

On top of everything though, they are literally nerfing an arcane and expecting us to farm the barely better one with the change. Not cool.

Edited March 5, 2020 by 8faiNt

[LSG501]

18 minutes ago, 8faiNt said:

You might be thinking it is ON FINISHER and you would be right. But there are weapons that you can force finisher with, Sigma & Octantis is one of them. (Frankly though, that's the only weapon I can think of with this gimmick)

Not sure if it would trigger or not but ash with augment for 3rd ability 'should' work I would have thought...

[8faiNt]

Just now, LSG501 said:

Not sure if it would trigger or not but ash with augment for 3rd ability 'should' work I would have thought...

Ash works. ofc.

[DrivaMain]

It seems DE wants combat to feel more “Rewarding”, which is why Arcane Ultimatum is a better replacement.

[Fellas92]

36 minutes ago, 8faiNt said:

37 minutes ago, LSG501 said:

Not sure if it would trigger or not but ash with augment for 3rd ability 'should' work I would have thought...

Ash works. ofc.

Though building ash for armor, is like building a nekros for shields. Not really smart.
Inaros can benefit from this with his "1" ability, though does he really need more armor ?


Arcane Ultimatum would really benefit greatly if DE would have changed impact to how players wanted it to be. Impact proc = open enemy for finishers.

Edited March 5, 2020 by Fellas92

[Drachnyn]

Have you looked at arcane tanker?

[LSG501]

1 minute ago, Fellas92 said:

Though building ash for armor, is like building a nekros for shields. Not really smart.
Inaros can benefit from this with his "1" ability, though does he really need more armor ?

It could gives ash an alternative approach (most frames including ash did get a buff to armor after all) but like you say you could argue that the frames where this is most likely to be used don't actually suit the arcane so is it really going to end up being used...

[Fellas92]

27 minutes ago, LSG501 said:

It could gives ash an alternative approach (most frames including ash did get a buff to armor after all) but like you say you could argue that the frames where this is most likely to be used don't actually suit the arcane so is it really going to end up being used...

Just did a 20min Mot run to test out a semi tank ash build. Well, it's not the best, nor the worst setup. With steady healing from time to time, higher level content is doable. Though, already had several shots at me which took my hp to like 60-40%.

Then again, DE wants players to "Experience" 10-20min bursts of the game, so I guess this build acheives that.

[Gailus]

Banshee was able to use Ultimatum for tanking before already. Savage Silence and a good dagger was all she needed.

[Avienas]

So anyway short story: Ultimatum got a huge duration chonk but relies on finishers and Guardian lost about 5% proc chance, kept its duration the same at rank 5 and the buff spread despite D.E. saying rank 5 versions of arcanes should have a 1.5x increase in effectiveness.

I mean, from 20 to 45 seconds? From 600 to 1200 armor? Kind of honestly feels a tad unfair at what Guardian and Tanker had gotten with:

Tanker kept the same 1200 armor from 3 to 5, but its ridiculous boon is it went to 60 whole fking seconds from 16 seconds. So Honestly, long as you do not mind playing Hoovy weapons guy often, you get a much longer duration and pretty much on demand then requiring to do a finisher, when it comes to Tanker.

Not exactly a fan that Guardian got double shanked with 5% lost of proc chance AND its duration stayed at 20, but it still went from 600 to 900 armor. Which lets do some fun math:

1200/ (1200+300)= .8 or 80% D.R.

900/ (900+300)= .75 or 75% D.R.

Now whats the moral of the story? WHO THE FROCK CARES???? We are not even counting the innate 100 or more innate armor that every warframe now has and unlike Grace & Energize, Guardian is able to easily YEET with constant refresh procs while constantly under fire, The only time Guardian could get ruined is if your not being fired at constantly which usually is fighting a single boss which pretty much means you want TANKER for that since you cant do finishers on a boss type enemy.

Not to mention the 5% D.R. difference is going to be significantly less and this is again not even accounting for ADAPTATION. There is a good reason why i decided to use WISP for my exploiter orb farming over actual tank frames, since once Guardian is active and constantly refreshing, just having a health pool & regen going will pretty much yeet any damage you take unless you take the most absurdly ridiculously unfair level of damage such as a level 100+ bombard to the face or so. Which those guys are going to be a whole lot inaccurate and shields can gate a fatal blow while they are still up with the new changes.

 

Now here`s a fun math problem if anyone wants to crunch the numbers: Calculate the E-health difference between those 2 D.R.es with a Health value of your choosing, i mentioned and give a good idea on what can that minor difference actually save you from...Cause honestly your likely looking at a 50 or so value out of 1000.

Edited March 6, 2020 by Avienas

[Steel_Rook]

1 hour ago, Avienas said:

1200/ (1200+300)= .8 or 80% D.R.

900/ (900+300)= .75 or 75% D.R.

Now whats the moral of the story? WHO THE FROCK CARES????

Math cares. EHP is a rational function of damage resistance, so each point of resistance isn't created equal. The closer you get to 100% damage resistance, the more EHP each point is worth. Damage resistance is also a rational function of armour, so each point of armour isn't created equal. The two functions combined, however, give you EHP as a linear function of armour. Each point of armour gives you exactly 1/300th of your health in extra EHP, regardless of whether you go from 0 to 300 armour or from 1500 to 1800 armour. That's the whole reason the armour-to-resistance conversion works like it does.

 

1 hour ago, Avienas said:

Not to mention the 5% D.R. difference is going to be significantly less and this is again not even accounting for ADAPTATION.

Nor should you be accounting for adaptation. For one thing, Adaptation only provides resistance against one damage component per enemy attack type not against all of them. For another thing, Adaptation is calculated as a separate multiplier, so its contribution is always the same relative to EHP regardless of player armour. Obviously EHP is a rational function of adaptation, but the percentile difference is always going to be the same regardless of whether you have 0 armour or 2000 armour.

 

I'm not saying that Arcane Guardian didn't take a massive hit, but that hit was neither the duration nor the armour value. The hit was the inability to retrigger it, which makes armour inconsistent and prone to damage spikes. I've just seen people bring up half-way math like this a lot, and I feel compelled to correct it because it doesn't tell the full story.

[Avienas]

34 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

I'm not saying that Arcane Guardian didn't take a massive hit, but that hit was neither the duration nor the armour value. The hit was the inability to retrigger it, which makes armour inconsistent and prone to damage spikes. I've just seen people bring up half-way math like this a lot, and I feel compelled to correct it because it doesn't tell the full story.

Did you SEE a the text updated to where arcane guardian cannot be re-triggered while in effect? Very sure i did not unless thats something D.E. forgot to put in the notes and your pointing it out by testing it in-game.

[Steel_Rook]

10 minutes ago, Avienas said:

Did you SEE a the text updated to where arcane guardian cannot be re-triggered while in effect? Very sure i did not unless thats something D.E. forgot to put in the notes and your pointing it out by testing it in-game.

Fair point - the update notes do not list Guardian as having a cooldown. However, the update notes list Grace as having a cooldown and neither has that noted in-game. I thought my experience of Guardian was that it wasn't constantly active, but I've not paid close enough attention to say that with certainty. However, if Guardian did not get a cooldown, then I personally see the changes as a buff, for the reasons I outlined. Our Warframes eat so much damage that even a 15% proc per hit is going to retrigger before it expires, and the extra armour is not nothing.

[Skaleek]

3 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

However, if Guardian did not get a cooldown,

Guardian cannot refresh while active, leaving windows of vulnerability. Heavy nerf, imo.

 

[Amnon333]

4 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

Fair point - the update notes do not list Guardian as having a cooldown. However, the update notes list Grace as having a cooldown and neither has that noted in-game. I thought my experience of Guardian was that it wasn't constantly active, but I've not paid close enough attention to say that with certainty. However, if Guardian did not get a cooldown, then I personally see the changes as a buff, for the reasons I outlined. Our Warframes eat so much damage that even a 15% proc per hit is going to retrigger before it expires, and the extra armour is not nothing.

In game the arcanes that can refresh their duration have it listed at the top of their description. Arcane Guardian does not have this and does not refresh on hit until it expires which is unfortunate.

[Monolake]

9 hours ago, Drachnyn said:

Have you looked at arcane tanker?

yeah much easier to trigger than finisher for most frames, and easier to farm too (I have 40 already), but the downside is that archgun is server-side so could be troublesome to equip for clients

or even worse it bugs out and never works again

Edited March 6, 2020 by Monolake

[Steel_Rook]

7 hours ago, Amnon333 said:

In game the arcanes that can refresh their duration have it listed at the top of their description. Arcane Guardian does not have this and does not refresh on hit until it expires which is unfortunate.

Huh... OK, that's even weirder, then. Again - I checked the patch notes. They list "added cooldown" for Acrane Grace but NOT Arcane Guardian and the in-game text said nothing about a cooldown on either. I guess they introduced the notification backwards - a note on those that can retrigger and nothing on those that can't. Do you think maybe we need a note on BOTH types of Arcanes?

Anyway, if we've established that Guardian can't refresh while active, then my original criticism stands - it's the wrong way to nerf the Arcane.

[Avienas]

2 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

Huh... OK, that's even weirder, then. Again - I checked the patch notes. They list "added cooldown" for Acrane Grace but NOT Arcane Guardian and the in-game text said nothing about a cooldown on either. I guess they introduced the notification backwards - a note on those that can retrigger and nothing on those that can't. Do you think maybe we need a note on BOTH types of Arcanes?

Anyway, if we've established that Guardian can't refresh while active, then my original criticism stands - it's the wrong way to nerf the Arcane.

So yeah, they double nerfed then, If they are going to have it not proc again while its active...

Then the god damn thing should of been buffed to 25% or even 30% or had the armor value it gives up to 1200. Still, with Adaptation and the extra innate armor & shield gating plus shield D.R. that warframes now have, most of the damage is already gutted off, where i likely will half care in mobbing situations that do not have me dealing with b.s. like level 80+ enemies, Where i would likely just use Oberon or Wisp or Vauban if i need a frame with durability & C.C., Instead of a frame that is likely still fragile despite the changes.