A fix for focus schools

[(XBOX)KayAitch]

I have maxed out all the focus schools, with millions of focus left over, and this isn't unusual for players with similar playtimes to me.

I run Zenurik 95% of the time, because it gives energy on dash, maxes energy from orbs, makes heavy attacks cheap, electrocutes enemies and slows them down (especially useful for Liches) for no extra energy cost.

I used to occasionally run Naramon, for melee affinity and extended combos, but mostly it isn't worth it now as Zenurik's cheap heavy attacks are more useful for any weapon where you'll ever use the heavy attacks.

Madurai is useful in a few very specific contexts, but mostly a little bit more damage just isn't worth being able to use your abilities less.

Unairu has that one wisp ability that's got a very specific use case. Rest of it is trash. It also has a bug where some operator cosmetics seem to glue you to the floor.

Vazarin should be healing/support, but generally there are arcanes that are just better for that. Most of the nodes eat all your operator energy in return for rubbish shields. It did have the dash to heal which was useful for healing objectives, but that's now been nerfed.

In addition to Zeniruk having the best passive, most useful side effect and some of the most useful nodes, it's also cheap. All the others (but especially Vazarin) are full of nodes that eat all your energy if you void blast or dash in return for very mediocre buffs. Does anyone want that radial blind Madurai node that eats all your energy on your way to the one useful damage buff one?

Zenurik is almost always the best focus school, its so much better than all the rest it's just rediculous. They nerfed the Catchmoon because 25% of players used it, but 90% of players use Zenurik and nothing.

I don't want them to nerf Zenurik, instead:

- Remove all operator energy costs from every node, if Zenurik can have electric stun and slow and regen for free it's a bit rediculous that other schools are burning half your operator energy for much less powerful buffs.

- If Vazarin is supposed to be the healing school it needs to outperform other heal mechanisms.

- Allow all nodes to be unbound once an entire focus school has been maxed. These should be much more expensive, say 5 million focus.

- Only allow these nodes to be applied in other maxed out schools for twice their usual cost

- Increase the focus pool cap to 200

This would allow players who've maxed multiple focus schools to build bespoke ones, or take the one or two nodes they really need from one school but run another. It would give all us 750 days-ish and above players something to work towards in focus.

[kapn655321]

Some good input. I might have a different take on a few things.. but, food for thought none the less.

[Althaline]

34 minutes ago, (XB1)KayAitch said:

I don't want them to nerf Zenurik, instead:

- Remove all operator energy costs from every node, if Zenurik can have electric stun and slow and regen for free it's a bit rediculous that other schools are burning half your operator energy for much less powerful buffs.

- If Vazarin is supposed to be the healing school it needs to outperform other heal mechanisms.

- Allow all nodes to be unbound once an entire focus school has been maxed. These should be much more expensive, say 5 million focus.

- Only allow these nodes to be applied in other maxed out schools for twice their usual cost

- Increase the focus pool cap to 200

All of these are good things. Yes. I like these things.

I'm always on board with Operator improvements.

[Magicfingers]

you mentioned nerf and zenurik in the same sentence, so now it's a sure thing it will get nerfed

[kapn655321]

1 hour ago, Magicfingers said:

you mentioned nerf and zenurik in the same sentence, so now it's a sure thing it will get nerfed

If it were to, I would sincerely hope they have the decency to put another simple, cheap, passive energy gain system in game. My thoughts so far is add a little bit of energy gains for shooting magnetic proc'd targets status lvl 4+.. Makes use of magnetic, and spreads energy gains across the game, rather than having a meta bottleneck that forces a focus school decision. That, and maybe a passive energy gain like e-siphon standard on everyone.

Edited April 7, 2020 by kapn655321

[CopperBezel]

Yeah, Energizing Dash is really the worst compromise between passive and active regen, because it doesn't require you to go out and grab an enemy or land a hit or whatnot, an "energy steal", and it's really just a passive regen like Energy Siphon, but it requires a dumb little periodic ritual to maintain. Energy regen isn't situational in the way that healing is, so where means of healing your frame using your operator can at least be a reaction to a situation, Energy Siphon never is, because ideally you'd want it running all the time. 

@Steel_Rook has suggested gaining energy on weapon kills etc. before, and I think it'd be too limiting if every frame needed to use their weapons enough to fill a given quota to use their abilities - but when you remove ED from the picture, the only fast energy regens in the game are Hunter Adrenaline / Rage and the unreliable Arcane Energize, both of which come from very specific conditions. I kinda think that alternatives to Energize and HA would be a very good option, since you're unlikely to spend more than one mod or arcane slot on an energy regen source and wouldn't get that much in return (after all, the difference between full cost and full efficiency is three mods, so quadrupling your effective energy intake by quadrupling your mod slot investment is literally already a thing you can do) so variations that give energy by straight kills or meters traveled or status effects inflicted and so on would all be viable alternatives for choosing an energy income source that suits a given frame and build. 

That's especially since regen tanks like Oberon, Trinity, and Wisp and the unique health pool that is Inaros already feel like they have infinite energy using HA. It's a form of energy regen that specifically benefits being able to soak large damage numbers without much mitigation through armor and DR. There really ought to be other similarly conditional ones that work best in a given situation. 

None of this solves focus schools obviously. I wouldn't know where to start with that, though. If you removed Energizing Dash, the remaining focus abilities would have some situational usefulness, but never be a blanket necessity, and there would be no immense incentive to choose Zenurik. Operator passives are all good, but Zenurik might be the best even there, followed closely by Naramon.

[(XBOX)KayAitch]

11 hours ago, Magicfingers said:

you mentioned nerf and zenurik in the same sentence, so now it's a sure thing it will get nerfed

It's not overpowered, given it's taken me about 2 years to max this stuff. The other schools are underpowered.

11 hours ago, kapn655321 said:

I would sincerely hope they have the decency to put another simple, cheap, passive energy gain system in game

I would probably have a node in every school that gives you energy, but with my idea you could unbind the node from Zenurik and use it everywhere anyway.

11 hours ago, kapn655321 said:

My thoughts so far is add a little bit of energy gains for shooting magnetic proc'd targets status lvl 4+.

It's a nice idea. And maybe Impact (the most useless and annoying proc) could give health orbs?

9 hours ago, CopperBezel said:

None of this solves focus schools obviously. I wouldn't know where to start with that, though. If you removed Energizing Dash, the remaining focus abilities would have some situational usefulness, but never be a blanket necessity, and there would be no immense incentive to choose Zenurik

If you remove Energising Dash it would suck, but Zenurik would still slow enemies, electrocute stun enemies and cheap heavy attacks. It would still be the best school. All the other schools pay a lot of operator energy for either minor damage, minor healing or a shield that's gone in a single hit. I'll take the slow+CC+spam heavy melee thanks.

Zenurik doesn't need a nerf. It's the only school anyone uses and it still feels way underpowered for the amount of effort put in to it.

Most of the schools feel balanced for level < 30 content. Oh, burn all my operator energy to do 500 damage? Seems worth it. Burn all that energy for 250 extra shields? Sure, that seems worthwhile 🤔🤦‍♂️

None of the abilities should cost operator energy, because none are as good as Zenurik's and Zenurik's are all free.

All the abilities need to scale off frames or mods or something, because doing less damage than my guns means I'll just use the guns, and so on.

[kapn655321]

1 hour ago, (XB1)KayAitch said:

And maybe Impact (the most useless and annoying proc) could give health orbs?

It can if you use the right Parazon mod(s). 😉 (Blood for Life/Energy)

Was thinking blast damage could also chip ammo and health orbs off of people, as well as a little armor now and then like shattering impact

Edited April 8, 2020 by kapn655321

[(XBOX)KayAitch]

22 minutes ago, kapn655321 said:

Was thinking blast damage could also chip ammo and health orbs off of people, as well as a little armor now and then like shattering impact

I mean, it works for new Doom.

[kapn655321]

1 hour ago, (XB1)KayAitch said:

I mean, it works for new Doom.

The idea originally came to me when remembering the game Iron Brigade, but both are fine examples. Chipping things off of enemies gives a nice sense of feedback.

[CopperBezel]

1 hour ago, (XB1)KayAitch said:

If you remove Energising Dash it would suck, but Zenurik would still slow enemies, electrocute stun enemies and cheap heavy attacks. It would still be the best school. All the other schools pay a lot of operator energy for either minor damage, minor healing or a shield that's gone in a single hit. I'll take the slow+CC+spam heavy melee thanks.

Zenurik doesn't need a nerf. It's the only school anyone uses and it still feels way underpowered for the amount of effort put in to it.

Most of the schools feel balanced for level < 30 content. Oh, burn all my operator energy to do 500 damage? Seems worth it. Burn all that energy for 250 extra shields? Sure, that seems worthwhile 🤔🤦‍♂️

None of the abilities should cost operator energy, because none are as good as Zenurik's and Zenurik's are all free.

All the abilities need to scale off frames or mods or something, because doing less damage than my guns means I'll just use the guns, and so on.

I don't completely disagree. I don't think Operators should be focused on dealing damage at all, but I think the focus trees are largely a mess, I agree that Zenurik would still be the best school even without the one thing everyone actually chooses it for, and I think the amount of grind involved in unlocking everything is impractical and feels like a poor return on investment no matter what the school. Like, once I had Energizing Dash ranked up, completed the two Zenurik operator passives, and worked through Naramon just far enough to get the operator passive for void dash range, I had the bulk of the functionality I've got from the focus system. I have one passive left to unbind in Madurai, but literally Magus Repair and a good amp have made more difference than all of the other passives together. Inner Might and Temporal Blast certainly felt okay for a permanent extra melee mod and a permanent extra 1 ability that follow me everywhere no matter the weapon or frame, respectively. 

I haven't even bothered to unlock anything with an operator energy cost. I fully agree that shouldn't be a thing, because I just would not be happy to trade quantity of void dash mobility for much of anything, though I also just don't think damage abilities make sense in general and that's what most of the -e abilities are. It's particularly crazy for me to imagine using the -e abilities without having Zenurik's operator passives unbound, which is another damning bit of absurd balance, because the other schools' operator passives don't directly benefit or limit any other school's active abilities, and here's Zenurik directly multiplying how much those other schools do for you.

But yeah, I just honestly don't think it's a matter of underpowered and overpowered, although the scale is definitely there, with Zenurik towering over the other options. It's a matter of having to choose between these things when they're completely different in kind with little or no overlap in function. I'd rather see every school include a way to regenerate energy, a way to heal, and a way to buff some aspect of damage output, but under different conditions designed to synergize well with different kinds of activities. Instead, you're choosing between energy, health, damage output, armormancy, and ... melee finishers I guess? That particular collection of items has things in it that don't make sense for an all-in investment to the exclusion of others, and no matter how powerful you make the worse options, they're still situational and limited to the contexts where those are factors you're concerned about.

1 hour ago, kapn655321 said:

It can if you use the right Parazon mod(s). 😉 (Blood for Life/Energy)

Okay, thing is, every parazon mod triggers on inserting the parazon into either an enemy or a console, and only the enemy finishers are optional, so if you're going to go for mercies, you have to go all in and get all three buffs for the effort, which is a big tradeoff. I also don't know what building for Impact looks like, or how frequently it'd give me the opportunity to receive a set of buffs in exchange for a long finisher animation and whether that's useful in practice when they're largely just a little extra of things that the enemies are already prone to drop. 

But wow I'm so very happy to ignore that that's a thing that exists, have automatic CC if enemies notice me at a console, get to skip the hack 30% of the time, and get a speed buff once I'm done with it.

Edited April 8, 2020 by CopperBezel

[Steel_Rook]

12 hours ago, CopperBezel said:

@Steel_Rook has suggested gaining energy on weapon kills etc. before, and I think it'd be too limiting if every frame needed to use their weapons enough to fill a given quota to use their abilities - but when you remove ED from the picture, the only fast energy regens in the game are Hunter Adrenaline / Rage and the unreliable Arcane Energize, both of which come from very specific conditions. I kinda think that alternatives to Energize and HA would be a very good option, since you're unlikely to spend more than one mod or arcane slot on an energy regen source and wouldn't get that much in return (after all, the difference between full cost and full efficiency is three mods, so quadrupling your effective energy intake by quadrupling your mod slot investment is literally already a thing you can do) so variations that give energy by straight kills or meters traveled or status effects inflicted and so on would all be viable alternatives for choosing an energy income source that suits a given frame and build. 

This is true, but I'd like to add a bit of context. Ideologically, I believe that Warframes should be relying predominantly on their weapons and mobility, with Warframe abilities serving as an occasional backup, rather than something spammable. When spamming an ability makes sense (Fireball, Landslide, Virulence, etc.) then I believe those should straight-up be Exalted Weapons. One of my recurring suggestions has been to give every Warframe their own Exalted Weapon somewhere in their skillset and move their spammable abilities there. It could be a number 4 ability that's really powerful but limited by some mechanic, it could be a number 1 ability that's mostly just an ammo-free gun, it could be a number 2 or 3 ability that's decent but exists mostly for some kind of skill synergy - there are options. I base this belief on my experience with the likes of Division 2, Overwatch and even Payday 2 - games which predominantly work on their gunplay where special abilities and items come to play only situationally. I know this is not entirely popular in Warframe, but that's where that suggestion come from.

The other thing I wanted to mention is that I'd personally like to see Energy removed from the game altogether. I've been playing MMOs for 15 years now, games in general for a lot longer and I've yet to see a single one with a generic "energy bar" where that didn't feel like an anti-fun mechanic. Whether it represents mana or endurance or magic power or what have you, it's just never fun to use and player habits reflect this. All of these games "get good" once you've found ways to render their energy system meaningless through enough cost reduction and sustain. Diablo 3, for all its faults, seemed to realise this, which is why it replaced Diablo 2's generic mana pool with class-specific gimmick resources. Wizards had a small but fast-recharging Arcane Power pool, Barbarians got a resource that starts empty but fills up with basic ability use, Demon Hunters got two resources that balance each other out, etc. The reason I proposed using guns to generate energy was similar. Rather than trying to build for infinite energy and always have enough for everything, that approach would allow players to gain energy through combat at their own pace and so self-budget their ability use in a similar fashion.

Basically, I'm fine with generous resource management as long as resource recovery revolved around being active in combat, rather than passively sitting out of combat waiting for bars to fill, especially in a game as fast as Warframe. If we find ourselves in a situation where our builds make energy infinite more often than not, then I think it's worth asking if energy as a system really adds anything meaningful to the experience.

[kapn655321]

7 hours ago, CopperBezel said:

Okay, thing is, every parazon mod triggers on inserting the parazon into either an enemy or a console, and only the enemy finishers are optional, so if you're going to go for mercies, you have to go all in and get all three buffs for the effort, which is a big tradeoff. I also don't know what building for Impact looks like, or how frequently it'd give me the opportunity to receive a set of buffs in exchange for a long finisher animation and whether that's useful in practice when they're largely just a little extra of things that the enemies are already prone to drop. 

But wow I'm so very happy to ignore that that's a thing that exists, have automatic CC if enemies notice me at a console, get to skip the hack 30% of the time, and get a speed buff once I'm done with it.

Something I'd like to see added to Impact is to reduce resistances by a % of remaining.. never to zero for elemental priority to still technically mean something, and only while the enemy is actively staggering. Once they get their footing, they'd be fine, but stagger them again, and the stored up -resistance value returns to active. (Negative resistances further accentuated, where as positive resistances diminish.)

Edited April 8, 2020 by kapn655321

[CopperBezel]

5 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

This is true, but I'd like to add a bit of context. Ideologically, I believe that Warframes should be relying predominantly on their weapons and mobility, with Warframe abilities serving as an occasional backup, rather than something spammable. When spamming an ability makes sense (Fireball, Landslide, Virulence, etc.) then I believe those should straight-up be Exalted Weapons.

Yeah, that definitely sounds like another different and wildly less interesting game than Warframe. If I wanted to play Destiny I'd do that. The word "spam" doesn't even apply to abilities that are just a move you can do, and the majority of the good ones aren't attacks - consider Mach Rush. 

I'd still like to extract out this one good idea that activities other than taking damage could restore energy, because I think that's actually consistent with things that the game does so long as there are a few good options, as opposed to just being an entirely different game that already exists and you could play instead if you wanted.

[Steel_Rook]

20 hours ago, CopperBezel said:

I'd still like to extract out this one good idea that activities other than taking damage could restore energy, because I think that's actually consistent with things that the game does so long as there are a few good options, as opposed to just being an entirely different game that already exists and you could play instead if you wanted.

And that's fair enough. Just wanted to add some context on where I'm coming from with the idea. Doesn't seem we'll agree on our preferences for what Warframe should be, and that's fine. For what it's worth, I do agree that there ought to be better ways to gain energy across the board than relying on Energy Orbs. Their drop rate is far too low as far as I'm concerned, and their method of acquisition far too unreliable. Even if you disregard everything else I hope to achieve, I think we can agree on that, at least.

[keikogi]

You can't fix the schools if you don't fix the energy economy itself. If zenurik is the school of energy people will flock to it because it gives them the most powerfull resource in the game. 

As per fixing focus itself the operators need their own 1 , 2 , 3 and 4 skill with a cool down so the focus schools can truly differentiate themselves. Each school would have a realiet chance of adding something to your gameplan.

[(XBOX)KayAitch]

On 2020-04-09 at 4:12 PM, keikogi said:

You can't fix the schools if you don't fix the energy economy itself. If zenurik is the school of energy people will flock to it because it gives them the most powerfull resource in the game

Even if they fix that Zenurik still has cheap heavy attacks, slowing down enemies and electrical CC for free. It's still the best school even one you remove that it's the one that gives you energy (at a trickle at best).

On 2020-04-09 at 4:12 PM, keikogi said:

As per fixing focus itself the operators need their own 1 , 2 , 3 and 4 skill with a cool down so the focus schools can truly differentiate themselves. Each school would have a realiet chance of adding something to your gameplan.

I like the idea, but it's a much more drastic redesign. Maybe in its own post? 20 new abilities is a lot of design and balance work.

On 2020-04-09 at 3:51 PM, Steel_Rook said:

Their drop rate is far too low as far as I'm concerned, and their method of acquisition far too unreliable

Yes, more energy orbs should drop from more enemies.