Add Disruption Mechanics to the Defense Phase of Scarlet Spear

[DrBorris]

1. Divide all kill codes by 3
   • Each Condrix gives one code, each Murax takes three codes to kill. Multiply all kill code credit rewards by 3.
2. Placing an OpLink no longer has a timed defense.
3. Placing an OpLink will spawn a Demolyst.
   • On Ground, killing the Demolyst will instantly send the kill code
   • In Space, killing the Demolyst allows you to receive a kill code. Once a kill code is received another Demolyst will spawn.
4. An OpLink will instantly die if blown up by a Demolyst.
5. Multiple OpLinks act as additional lives. In a party of four you can survive three failures to kill the Demolysts before the mission ends.

Having to just defend a timed objective with no need to kill anything is the reason why Limbo became a problem in the first place. This would cater to create a far more active mission especially for space team. It would also further reward skilled squads by being able to speed up the mission through killing Demolysts faster.

This might be a bit too much to add to ground team, but at the very least space would benefit greatly from being more than a glorified defense mission.

[SpicyDinosaur]

please, no.

[DrivaMain]

It will only enforce DPS Meta, which is something DE doesn’t seem to want in this event.

[DrBorris]

7 hours ago, DrivaMain said:

It will only enforce DPS Meta, which is something DE doesn’t seem to want in this event.

Have you played Disruption? Most DPS "meta" frames are basically useless at killing Demolysts. CC Warframes have a strong niche there, especially at higher levels (levels SS gets to). Some DPS abilities have a use, many CC abilities have a use, but both of them need each other in order to succeed in the mission. We need less missions where one type of Warframe rules all and more where we are asked to work with our allies.

[TheLexiConArtist]

3 hours ago, DrBorris said:

Have you played Disruption? Most DPS "meta" frames are basically useless at killing Demolysts. CC Warframes have a strong niche there, especially at higher levels (levels SS gets to). Some DPS abilities have a use, many CC abilities have a use, but both of them need each other in order to succeed in the mission. We need less missions where one type of Warframe rules all and more where we are asked to work with our allies.

It took a great deal of Simulacrum testing during the event to find out what CC even worked on the Demolysts at all, much less which ones were reliable in any reasonable way.

For the sake of fairness I'll ignore the DemoMoa which was the stupidest of the lot - let's give a DPS check enemy the ability to refill its health alarmingly fast and then get total blanket immunity to abilities from there on out, genius.

Demolysts exhibit the full force of Diminishing Returns, which caps at 90% duration reduction on ability effects.
Demolysts ignore or bypass many control abilities because they're tagged like (mini)bosses, which behave in similarly inconsistent manners.
Demolysts constantly pulse the Nope To Everything Field, so placed abilities, your buffs (if you're not sticking at range), and even those first-cast abilities at their intended duration are ganked early, forcing you down the diminished returns sooner than necessary.
Demolysts have a set time limit in which you have to kill them despite all these anti-strategic factors, making them a raw DPS race in 99% of cases.

As an added kick in the teeth, during the event (not sure if still accurate), Demolyst shields had a unique property that prevented any status damage and any direct-to-health damage. No Toxin, no Slash procs (when they still bypassed shields). Not even a Heat proc would do anything. Oh, and their regen delay on that shield was absurdly short. No wonder people used 100% Shield Disruption squads.

 

So tell me again, outside the few CCs that can be made cheap-yet-long enough to cover the time between Null pulses and be comfortably cast for each and every one, and disregarding the effects that circumvent those mechanics - Nova's Prime, Magus Lockdown - how is a CC frame more relevant than the DPS who can just win the race outright? Both of them handle the surrounding mooks as per usual, so we're left with only the Demos to consider.

 

Also, solo. It's a legitimate gameplay style. Unless a mission enforces a squad in the way Trials did, right down to being an instant abort if too few are ever present, solo must be plausible to attempt, there can be no directly or indirectly forced co-op.
Scarlet Spear is pushing that limit despite Ground being outright labelled as 'solo friendly' - it's not solo friendly when solo players are arbitrarily made to defend 4 times longer just because they're alone, it's not solo friendly to have a hard DPS requirement (beyond purely weapon modding) and demand a perfect-guard defense solution, because the solo player has only one loadout to bring and Vazarin Dash was disabled (and looks to be getting its usefulness for this anywhere else positively murdered in the near future). It's also very solo unfriendly to have an undisclosed single source DPS soft-cap on the Condrix, so that whatever strength that one player can bring in their output is throttled down, and the only way to get full scaling is to have multiple unique sources of damage - Mirage's clones being the main exception to this, as they are counted separate to the Mirage herself, and are controllable enough to actually point at the giant eyeball, not having AI distracted with everything else.

[DrBorris]

5 hours ago, TheLexiConArtist said:

-snip-

Okay, I agree. With the state of Demolysts this would be a bad change.

 

However, I do still think that the if Demolysts responded to CC more consistently, and if the Nullification field was made to be responsive instead of proactive, that it would serve to be a major improvement for everyone. If you give Demolysts the current diminishing returns that many enemies (notably Sentients) have then it would be a better experience overall. Maybe go so far as to copy-paste Sentient's ability interactions to Demolysts.

You make a note of solo play, and that the current mechanics of the event are pretty anti-solo in nature. You need a Warframe to either hard CC enemies or make the OpLinks immune to damage. And even then, solo players have to arbitrarily wait longer during the defense phases. Your options are quite limited if you want to solo. But with improved Demolysts, I would argue that solo play would be more fair/viable. You wouldn't be held back by an arbitrary timer, the only disadvantage playing solo would innately give is that you only have one "life". Not having to babysit the OpLinks would be a huge boon for solo in my opinion.

 

Maybe it is too much to expect DE to change Demolyst mechanics, but it is also probably too much to expect DE to make any major changes to the event to begin with. In the end all of this will end up being hypothetical anyway, so why not try to build the best hypothetical we can?

Edited April 5, 2020 by DrBorris

[Xiuillusion]

A disruption with sentient demolsyt sounds like a good plan but yea .. since demolsyt have that Nullify effect . They can nullify any cc from warframe ablitiy. And since it's a Sentient, they can adapt to our damage such as viral, slash, heat, cold, etc . Thus rendering them useless . And using paracesis may be a good counter but sometimes the sentient will be flying so it be hard to melee them. But definitely a good idea you have implement !