Dev Workshop: Healing Defendable Targets

[Snake326]

The main problem with the percentage scaling is not that it exists, but that it's too high. Vazarin/Trinity healing a percentage of health is fine as is, alongside invilcibility/resistance, respectively, but in order to prevent it from being too strong, without being useless, the percentage and secondary abilties need to be toned down. Abilities that heal linerarly (Oberon's Renewal for example) are fine, abilities that can be exponential (Equinox's Mend), can also use a percentage, but capping out the amount of healing at a specific amount so it still remains useful in later waves, but not too strong. Percentage based and exponential should heal over time, as well as have a cooldown for the healing, so the healing and secondary effects won't be too broken, especially with Trinity being able to generate energy at will, and being able to Void Dash into a single target multiple times.

[HolySeraphin]

5 hours ago, Snake326 said:

The main problem with the percentage scaling is not that it exists, but that it's too high. Vazarin/Trinity healing a percentage of health is fine as is, alongside invilcibility/resistance, respectively, but in order to prevent it from being too strong, without being useless, the percentage and secondary abilties need to be toned down. Abilities that heal linerarly (Oberon's Renewal for example) are fine, abilities that can be exponential (Equinox's Mend), can also use a percentage, but capping out the amount of healing at a specific amount so it still remains useful in later waves, but not too strong. Percentage based and exponential should heal over time, as well as have a cooldown for the healing, so the healing and secondary effects won't be too broken, especially with Trinity being able to generate energy at will, and being able to Void Dash into a single target multiple times.

I would give you 10 likes if I could.

I think 50% damage reduction as proposed in the post is fine, but yeah, the healing should scale better, but it would need to be 5% per second AT MOST, As for cooldown it might not be necessary depending on the numbers.

[Sickerton]

500 hp over 5 seconds is effectively no healing when you reach the levels where healing objectives becomes something actually worth doing. I'm fairly sure those very same objectives at that point heal far more than 100 hp a second on their own.

So, essentially, the Vazarin changes proposed here going through would be crippling already non-meta support builds which took at least months and literally millions of affinity points (Because why wouldn't you want Waybounds to add to your go-to school) of grinding, to justify patching out ways to ease the soul numbing grind of a limited time event. An event sold on the ideas of lessening grind and promoting teamwork.

And Vazarin was never able to heal those bloody beacons in the first place.

[Indra163]

Goodbye doing any defense targets at all

[(PSN)TalesOfPunk]

Players: DE please we want to make warframe better please listen. DE: *ignores players* *insert death metal music* burn it down!!!!!!

[---.CCC.---TradeFrame]

3 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

That may have changed, then, or it could be something exclusive to the Sortie. I distinctly remember rendering entire Defenction missions trivial by constantly healing the Defectors. Never used any battery charge on the Healing station, never lost a Kavor. Even had to heal one multiple times when he was stuck at spawn. But again - I'm going off fairly old information.

Either way, Kavor Defectors need to be addressed if we're talking about healing defence objectives. They are a defence objective.

I put it down to a bug or some change and played on.
Was annoying though, because of having to vaz dash them to keep them healed.. when I was expecting my trin to bless protect and heal them to keep them alive.

[---.CCC.---TradeFrame]

4 hours ago, TheLexiConArtist said:

There's an unfortunate buggy interaction I recall with Kavor Defectors - if the Blessing DR buff is still active on them, then re-casting will not heal; it just updates the buff timer, making you have to wait all over again until you can toss out new healing.

oh. damn. It must be a new bug because I've not faced that before.

[Snowflow]

Oh, look, Mesa makes gameplay far too trivial! Nerf that sht out! Or remove that spoil skill from Nekros to make players scour levels in search of crates, cause spoil is just too trivial!
It looks like you want us to struggle or suffer rather than having fun, DE.

[DreadWarlock]

On 2020-04-03 at 6:43 PM, NekroArts said:

Maybe. What Scarlet Spear showed me is that Limbo has his own flaw where he has to recast Cataclysm thus leaving the defense open for a brief moment. That brief moment can result in the defense objective taking a good chunk of damage. If the wave last longer than that of a modded Limbo you have to leave the defense objective vulnerable.

Pretty much this. People underestimate both problems with Limbo's Cataclysm. Frost can keep casting his globe and the thing will never leave the objective but Limbo's ability keeps growing smaller this is a huge problem which people overlook because it will pose a great threat if enemies are too close to the objective when the duration ends, Cataclysm has a long casting animation, this is enough time for either the objective to be destroyed or for you to be killed while casting it. and there is also the fact that you need to refresh stasis from time to time, another window for the enemy to cause damage to the objectives.

Of course with good managing this can be avoided to some extent, but it can be taxing to keep this up  on endurance runs.

[rstripn]

I've been using Vazarin since Operators became a thing, and as sad as I am about healing dash being nerfed, I knew it had to happen eventually.

[(NSW)RATHURUE]

On 2020-04-03 at 10:36 PM, Orokin said:

Limbo still trivializes any kind of defense missions and with these changes he will be used even more

You don't need to heal if Limbo makes the defense objective invulnerable by freezing all the enemies.

 

Fun, challenging content cannot exist if you allow players to AFK with a broken ability. Some semblance of balance has to be there. Freezing enemies for a minute(and then recasting) is too far.

You don't need Limbo either if you can use Volt/Ember/Saryn/Equinox/Oberon/whatever frame that has AoE damage skill to nuke enemies into oblivion. Can't get defense target damaged if you kill them first with one button press, amirite? Did you forget that in Defense objective you also need to kill those enemies before the wave ends? There can't be a truly 'afk' players here in warframe: you still need to recast your abilities, pick up items, and kill enemies not to afflicted with the AFK penalty.

I think you don't even play Limbo. There's a noticeable span of time when you recast abilities, even with Natural Talent modded in when you recast your abilities. In that small span of time, when enemies could fire at both you and the defense target, Limbo was at his most vulnerable position. I've been in that position countless time, and most of the time I ended up dead even with Adaptation and Quick Thinking. If that happens the mission would be an autofail if I did it solo, and like 50% chance of failing when I ended up with non-competent group.

Some of you would say, 'well, that's his 3 was for?' I repeat, have you ever played Limbo before? He's one of some frames that will inevitably run into energy issues. With Primed Flow at max, and Efficiency mods stacked without hurting range or power, you only get one cast of Cataclysm+Stasis without picking any energy orbs (or basically, freshly spawned/revived). That's why he got passive energy regen in Rift: as a bandaid for this issue. Any players that wanted to perma-catasis their defense objective would also be limited to Zenurik or using energy pizzas in order to keep his energy at high as possible to renew those two abilities at drop at a hat, if a Nullifier came close. Does those gameplay looks close enough as AFK?

Limbo is not as invulnerable as people thought he was to be, and Scarlet Spear just highlighted his better side because he got paired with Mesa, and the mission was a MOBILE Defense mission, of which you can ignore the enemies completely. Will he be used even more? Maybe. But there's always (better) alternatives out there: Frost with his stacking globe which basically does the same, just with one button press. Khora with her Strangledome, which has bonus pickups in price of not having the anti-bullet properties, Slow Nova which turn enemies into mollases, Etc.

If they wanna balance Limbo, then let ALL frames get the same treatment. Don't just banish Limbo in his sad corners when you got a class full of problem children bashing about, because their parents (DE) cannot understand how to care for this childrens, only smacking them at home after teachers (us players) complains about them.

THERE'S LITERALLY NEVER BEEN ANY RESTRICTIONS OF WHAT WARFRAME OR FOCUS TREE YOU BROUGHT IN ANY MISSIONS, if you forget it. 'Oh this update will make me able to use frames other than the meta frames'! WHO SAID YOU NEED META FRAMES TO DO ANY MISSIONS?

'But...it's meta?'

Thus by picking meta frames/equipment/loadout you basically took your own freedom away. You have a chance. You didn't use it, because it would take more time to do whatever you wanted do. Was it any warframe's fault? No. It's your fault. But if, and a big IF, you can't do what you wanted without using that one warframe/equipment/loadout, then it's the content designer's, DE's fault.

It's (fully) their fault Scarlet Spear was a complete mess: we do know, from few updates back, that DE SEVERELY lacked hindsight, but this wave of nerfs and changes made me question: do DE really know, after piling updates after updates, what they used to create? Do they even remember how the things that they created in the past would interact in things they would create in the future? Do they, even base their future creations atop things they've done in the past?

From my understanding, they completely didn't. That's why we have content islands upon content islands; because they didn't base future updates based past updates. That's why things are prone to abrupt change, as opposed to having gradual progression over time. Changing A LOT OF THINGS for just one measly event is the worst thing a developer could do: basically you are spitting on your own hard work in the past to make your new work looks better.

Rant bottomline: players shouldn't be punished because an oversight the developer does. Players are players, they could only do so much with tools provided to them. If you provided a spade to a person and tells him to dig, would you be mad for him if he uses that shovel not only to dig, but also fry eggs and chop trees? You should be complimenting them to find new uses that you haven't figured yourself, and now you can tell them not only to dig, but fry eggs and chop trees with one tool without needing to give him an axe or frying pan!

[HolySeraphin]

5 hours ago, TheLexiConArtist said:

There's an unfortunate buggy interaction I recall with Kavor Defectors - if the Blessing DR buff is still active on them, then re-casting will not heal; it just updates the buff timer, making you have to wait all over again until you can toss out new healing.

I recall that you cannot refresh Trinity's blessing on Kavor defectors, although I didn't test it to see if the timer was refreshed. I think it is intended to prevent Trinity being too OP in defection. I mean, 75% damage reduction +100% heal? Come on, it makes it too trivial. 

So I usually use Trinity with low duration and high efficiency, so I can always heal them.

[Roble_Viejo]

En 3/4/2020 a las 18:05, [DE]Rebecca dijo:

Vazarin - Protective Dash

NOW
5 seconds invulnerability

60% Heal over 5 seconds

THEN
No invulnerability

Heal for 500 over 5 seconds, can’t stack

ARE YOU F* KIDDING ME? 100 HP per second is LAUGHABLE. 

And Vazarin Dash shouldn't be affected by these changes at all. Operator powers CAN'T BE MODDED and are meant to be stronger than Warframe powers. Vazarin Dash was my only way to prevent Kuva Liches and other high DPS enemies from one shotting the defense objectives in high level defense and mobile defense missions. 

DE, the haste at which you nerf stuff should be the same at which you balance the game. STOP NERFING STUFF if you're not going to BALANCE THE GAME. 

With 500HP per 5 seconds I won't be able to stop any objective from being one shotted. And Vazarin Dash wasnt healing OPLinks, I tested it. 

Jesus, all of this crap because people were using the absolute most effective way to do this braindead event. 

I'm #*!%ing done. The DE I knew when I started playing SEVEN YEARS AGO is long gone now. The Second Dream and Plains of Eidolon were the best updates and I thought that was the start of a new Warframe. Boy I was wrong... 

I'm just so sad.... This is a looter shooter with the mechanical prowess of Plants vs Zombies and the balancing of Rainbow Six Siege. You gotta pick one guys, make the game more mechanical compelling or stop "balancing" stuff aggressively. 

Partners are running away. Your biggest YouTubers are playing all kind of games except for Warframe, and the ones that remain are pissed and depressed af. 

Why don't you try to improve Railjack? I grinded the S#&$ out of it before the resource cost reverts and I cant play it because it's broken all around and the upgrading path for Railjacks are a #*!%ing drag in the mud. Even #*!%ing REPAIRING THE SHIP uses resources, jesus christ. You gotta lay down the RNG and the resource fiesta, seriously. Start playing your own game and mix/maxing stuff and count how many hours you need to do so. 

I will say his over and over again: Warframe has the best modelling, animation and graphics from ANY F2P game, the concept behind the designs, the Warframes, the skins, the lore, it's all incredible amazing. But it's just that, the gameplay doesn't back it up. This game is so #*!%ing close to be the absolute best F2P game out there and it's like DE doesn't realize, hell it's like they don't want it to be. 

[blue_green]

"Another dead Tenno!"

[EinsteinAndAGun]

Dear DE:

Your math in your game is broken from the foundation up. A base excavator has 2500 health and 500 shields. An arbitration defense objective has over 40,000 health. That is an ORDER OF MAGNITUDE difference. The difference in damage from an unmodded weapon to a fully modded weapon can be hundreds of times more damage. High level enemies have hundreds, if not thousands of times more health than low level enemies.

Your game scales by orders of magnitude. You cannot make a "balanced" game with this, and the more you try, the more you break things, the more you nerf things into uselessness or buff them into the stratosphere, because you haven't yet realized this simple fact. 

Your game is easy. I don't consider this a bad thing, because other more challenging games exist for when I want that, and they do a far, far better job than you at making a fun but fair challenge. You, on the other hand, don't seem to understand how to do that. So in my opinion, the best option for you is to let the game be easy, but allow multiple playstyles so people can have some variety in their slaughter.

The fact that you are making Vazarin a flat number heal shows just how little you understand the mathematical monster that is your game. Your kneejerk reaction to "exploits" like Venari's heal that are in fact features YOU put in the game AND stated they were to be used this way again demonstrates how lost you are in the complicated mess your game has become. The more you nerf something "overpowered", the more you just push players to use the other "overpowered" thing, and if you somehow, some way win this game of whack-a-mole and nerf everything "overpowered", you'll wind up with a game no one wants to play, because in the mathematically busted game that is warframe, the only alternative to "overpowered" is "useless".

So at this point, I feel you have 2 options: 1. Let everyone and everything be "overpowered" and let the game be the power fantasy it has become, or 2. Start over. Redo the math from the ground up into something more sensible, more balanced. You'll have a totally different game on your hands, but that's what it will take to become anything resembling a balanced, challenging game.

I love Warframe. I have thousands of hours on it. I've always championed you guys as the Heralds of The Fair Free-to-Play Business Model. The game has an awesome story, world, and aesthetic. The music is stunning. The voice acting (minus the operators, yes) is so far beyond what you would expect of any f2p game, and competes with the best of paid games. So what are you doing? Why have you made such poor decisions and released such broken content lately? Have you not learned from past mistakes? Where are your priorities right now?

I understand this rant has gone on long enough, but I feel compelled to say this one last thing, then I'll be done: I've stopped defending and praising your game to other players. And this is a big deal, since I've been doing that for years now. Please, for all that is holy, listen to the playerbase; they understand the game better than you do at this point.

[MescalineChef]

Yall are changing the entire defense game to fix a bug for a temporary event? Why not just fix the event bugs?  I have wanted these changes for a long time and I like the direction you are going in but the execution was horrendous. Don't place market breaking items in untested events. I believe this is why you have done silent "fixes" to save the arcane market from exploits in the Scarlet Spear. I love you guys and this game but if you want your players to be happy make us happy not the Corpus overlords and their Dow Jones.

Easy fix: Make the event twice as long

The first half containing brand new rewards. So you can sweep all the bugs and exploits away

Then have the second half of the event roll in with Acranes when all the exploits have been smoothed out 🙂 

anything but the recipe for market destruction we have now. 

[HolySeraphin]

8 minutes ago, MescalineChef said:

Yall are changing the entire defense game to fix a bug for a temporary event? Why not just fix the event bugs?  I have wanted these changes for a long time and I like the direction you are going in but the execution was horrendous. Don't place market breaking items in untested events. I believe this is why you have done silent "fixes" to save the arcane market from exploits in the Scarlet Spear. I love you guys and this game but if you want your players to be happy make us happy not the Corpus overlords and their Dow Jones.

Easy fix: Make the event twice as long

The first half containing brand new rewards. So you can sweep all the bugs and exploits away

Then have the second half of the event roll in with Acranes when all the exploits have been smoothed out 🙂 

anything but the recipe for market destruction we have now. 

But they did wait a week before adding rare and legendary arcanes to the reward list, and did that to prevent exploits which could further destroy the market (like getting duplicates at the cost of 1). As for bugs they did increase the event's duration by a week to compensate, and considering the event launched on March 24th, it is more or less the same time we had to endure the bugs.

[TANTO_17]

Any change that encourages build diversity is good right now! Vazerin is getting a good buff from this! I understand the flavor but mechanically I think Garuda should be able to heal defense targets. She is already tricky too play, so much ability juggling, might as well reward it. 

[Stokesy007]

What about Ancient Healer damage reduction and the Armor Increase from Oberon's Renewal and Hallowed Ground synnergy?

[EinsteinAndAGun]

1 hour ago, TANTO_17 said:

Any change that encourages build diversity is good right now! Vazerin is getting a good buff from this! I understand the flavor but mechanically I think Garuda should be able to heal defense targets. She is already tricky too play, so much ability juggling, might as well reward it. 

Please tell me you are being sarcastic. Vazarin is getting nerfed into the ground, and it will do the exact opposite of "encouraging build diversity", as it will remove the only reason someone might ever in a million years pick Vazarin over Zenurik or Naramon.

[minhzai]

I reroll my magicstar for the event and now it only heal for 500hp over 5 seconds if you consider doing so return my Kuva so I can dumb it we it not getting nerf to shreds 

[nslay]

I don't know. Maybe DE is considering the consequences of stacking. With 4 players applying 4 50% DR abilities to a defense target, you get 93.75% damage reduction.

Consider how ridiculous it would be if 4 Garas applied 4 Splinter Storm on a defense target (is that even possible)? That would be 99.99% DR (=1-(1-0.9)^4)... that's ludicrous! But 99.99% DR is still worse than Limbo's Cataclysm.

[mikakor]

5 minutes ago, nslay said:

I don't know. Maybe DE is considering the consequences of stacking. With 4 players applying 4 50% DR abilities to a defense target, you get 93.75% damage reduction.

Consider how ridiculous it would be if 4 Garas applied 4 Splinter Storm on a defense target (is that even possible)? That would be 99.99% DR (=1-(1-0.9)^4)... that's ludicrous! But 99.99% DR is still worse than Limbo's Cataclysm.

  then they should let it happens, period. if you got 4 players working together to achieve that, in a game where trying to "coop" with other players is not rewarding at all, making team player interactions matters more would be amazing. DE doesn't know their own game, doesn't know where it should go, and clearly, doens't understand that when you get powerful gears, you should be able to use said powerful gears. without any limits.

[0_The_F00l]

Not sure why Garuda is excluded ?

"for taste" is nonsense please give proper reason or have a cap on heal per second instead of % health missing just like vazarin.

You also missed the following:

Limbos Haven augment effect for healing ,

Frosts Icy avalanche augment that adds a skin that absorbs damage.

Revenants Mesmer skins damage denial instance,

Valkyrs bonus armor on war cry,

Oberons Armor bonus when paired with hallowed ground (also his effect of the phoenix augment),

Chromas bonus armor and health with elemental ward on ice or fire,

Mags magnetize giving shields/overshields,

Octavias bonus armor with metronome active,

Vaubans bastille granting bonus armor,

 

 

The following are also to be at least considered on interaction as they effectively improve the survivability

Ash with his smoke augment to make allies invisible

Wukongs cloud walker to make allies invisible ,

Ivara cloak arrow to make allies invisble and immune to status with the augment,

Any "cloak allies" ability basically.

 

Please do things right and dont miss these points - its ok if you say "Armor will not be granted" or such,

but please make sure its an active decision and not an oversight cause you forgot what half the abilities do.

You are finally trying to get consistent , please maintain this drive and don't lose focus.

Here's to hoping this is one of many more consistency changes to come.

[nslay]

Just now, mikakor said:

  then they should let it happens, period. if you got 4 players working together to achieve that, in a game where trying to "coop" with other players is not rewarding at all, making team player interactions matters more would be amazing. DE doesn't know their own game, doesn't know where it should go, and clearly, doens't understand that when you get powerful gears, you should be able to use said powerful gears. without any limits.

I still think the 50% DR caps for defense abilities is unnecessary... even harmful. As it is, if you pick Gara for a defense mission, you're already worse off than Limbo even though she can currently apply a 90% DR Splinter Storm to defense objectives. So how how does it make sense to cap this at 50%? I mean Gara can do some extra stuff that Limbo can't... like Splinter Storm allies. But is it really worth it to play Gara over Limbo if you cap her ability at 50% on defense targets? It's already questionable at 90%!

It's admirable that they are exploring defense ability interactions with defense targets for all the frames. But without more careful consideration of these numbers, the future of defense is Limbo. Heck, Limbo is already currently better than all of these other frames without 50% DR defense objective caps. No?