Railjack Revisited (Part 1): Healing Abilities on Objects Feedback Megathread

[Opyt]

One week has passed since the last post.
Steel Path has been released.
Stationary Objective Healing is, in general, in sorry shape for anything out of low-end star charts

Other options that could have been taken with Protective Dash:
Making it cost more operator energy while still having the same effect it had (5s invuln/60% hp over 5s) so that it would no longer be as readily "spammable"
Lowering it to 10% over 5s
Having it only give 5s of invulnerability
Letting the extremely low amounts that have been granted stack.

[zhunGamer]

They wanted to increase the number of viable frames in defense/excavation, so they made sure that the only viable frames are Frost and Limbo.

 

[Opyt]

8 hours ago, Zhuinden said:

They wanted to increase the number of viable frames in defense/excavation, so they made sure that the only viable frames are Frost and Limbo.

 

Yeah, which is why percentage based healing across the board would have done far more to assist that theory.  For some reason they chose static numbers in a game where everything scales higher and higher.  At this point I'm just posting to bump it so that they're aware at least one noisy person still wants changes.  Kinda feel bad for Bear, but it is what it is, and I'm sure they're able to mute & lock threads if they don't like it.

P.S. I still want this to be changed DE.

[captainHalide]

  

On 2020-05-01 at 11:28 AM, captainHalide said:

You really shouldn't just blanket-drop operator powers down to the levels of starter warframe abilities.  The time and resource costs alone are far higher, and the opportunity costs are astronomically different.  A clumy-to-use single-target heal for Vazarin falls pretty short of Madurai's limitless bonus damage, Zenurik's 150 free energy on command, or Naramon's enormous boost to melee combo stacks with mods like blood rush and weeping wounds.  I'd mention Unairu, but nothing in Unairu is any good if we're being honest. It also takes a lot more time to pick up the means to farm enough focus for protective dash than it does to get a sancti magistar or farm trinity.

This also robs late-game players of a means for healing objectives in sortie, kuva lich and some high-end nightmare missions, as 500 HP means nothing to health pools in the tens of thousands being gunned by enemies who individually deal hundreds of damage per second.  Limbo will now be a colossal component of the meta in these runs in order to make these objectives invincible and the enemies ignorable, and we saw how much you guys enjoyed that with scarlet spear.

Hey, now that Steel Path is out?

I was right.

DE, you haven't responded to three threads of a lot of people saying 'hold up this ain't good'.  Please.  Please give us a scaling heal.  This game has always put power behind things that scale, not flat numbers.

[Opyt]

p.s. I still want this fixed properly.  Flat numbers are a mistake, and always will be, in a game where objectives have scaling health.

[Flying_Scorpion]

It's weak on the Steel Path but there's a slippery slope when it comes to scaling things *for* the Steel Path. As soon as you start doing that, it becomes the dog chasing it's own tail in terms of powercreep.

[Lutesque]

On 2020-07-10 at 3:01 AM, NIkuno said:

 

1. I agree that the invuln on Protective Dash was entirely too strong. By sacrificing some of my damage depending on the build, I could keep an objective up indefinitely. Probably not the intent, but helpful as a support player.

If you have to make a sacrifice to your damage... then its not that strong is it ?

On 2020-07-10 at 6:52 PM, NIkuno said:

Quite some time, and, admittedly, I did not pay much attention to how it interacted with objectives specifically beforehand. It was not a good weapon and did not get much use from someone who actually liked it. Even after getting significantly buffed with the melee changes it does not get much use, at least while I am doing the Steel Path.

And yet DE Nerfed it anyway 😛

and they wonder why they keep getting flooded with more feedback they can handle.

On 2020-07-20 at 4:39 AM, Opyt said:

  At this point I'm just posting to bump it so that they're aware at least one noisy person still wants changes. 

il help this one time...

bump !!!

 

[Opyt]

On 2020-07-30 at 11:13 AM, Flying_Scorpion said:

It's weak on the Steel Path but there's a slippery slope when it comes to scaling things *for* the Steel Path. As soon as you start doing that, it becomes the dog chasing it's own tail in terms of powercreep.

It scales in the normal game too.

Easy example: Defense objective.

Sedna.  43k.  If you managed to keep it alive at 13k, to get back up to full it would take 300 seconds, assuming you found 5 minutes to prevent all damage from enemies.  Before this change when Protective Dash was "OP", it would heal 60% of 43k (4.3*6) or 25.8k over 5 seconds while making the objective invulnerable.  Originally it DID scale.  In my opinion the better solution would be percentages across the board, start with 1% on the lowest tier of healing, and then max it out somewhere between 10 and 20% of Trinity.

For Protective Dash my wishlist is a return to "OP", the full 60%hp over 5s with 5s of invuln, but a boosted operator energy cost.  This would be, by far, the more appropriate response.  By default a void dash is 25 energy.  Which means, out of the box, you're looking at 4 dashes and them waiting to fill the bar again.  If the cost of using Protective Dash were bumped up to 60 energy (as a wild example, +35 operator energy at max rank, make it +10/10/+10/+5) this means you'll be able to void dash less.  This would in theory, mean you are being more strategic with the uses.

DE can always go back through and readjust the numbers.  Ideally if they were actually serious about balancing out the stationary objective healing, they'd have looked at it while they were doing Riven changes leading into the Inaros Prime Access.  Not saying they need to do it every time, but some kind of update to it would have been nice.  Some token effort might have made me not want to take the month and a half hiatus I'm taking from the game.  Some token effort, no matter how paltry, might have actually tipped the scales in favor of me purchasing Inaros Prime.

A shame that DE has developed a reputation for ignoring their forums and having some poor intern skimming posts to give gists of posts, while things like Twitter and /r/Warframe get near instant attention and results.  I keep hoping that something will change.  That they'll give me a reason to want to play again.  The silence is deafening.

[selig_fay]

47 minutes ago, Opyt said:

For Protective Dash my wishlist is a return to "OP", the full 60%hp over 5s with 5s of invuln, but a boosted operator energy cost. This would be, by far, the more appropriate response. By default a void dash is 25 energy. Which means, out of the box, you're looking at 4 dashes and them waiting to fill the bar again. If the cost of using Protective Dash were bumped up to 60 energy (as a wild example, +35 operator energy at max rank, make it +10/10/+10/+5) this means you'll be able to void dash less. This would in theory, mean you are being more strategic with the uses.

It wasn't really necessary. Protective Dash could not heal a defense target when it took damage. So it would just take removing the invulnerability and that would be fine. On the other hand, your suggestion is harmful to me, because I use radius arcane and will lose energy even when I want to heal myself, but hit defense target.

[Flying_Scorpion]

60% heal over 5 seconds is busted over powered. That's why it got nerfed. It trivializes the game mode. There's practically no risk to the defense objective when you can pull a "no u" uno card every 5 seconds with no cooldown. While 50hp/s may be too weak for it to be noticable in high-level content, percentage based healing can lead to balance issues where you feel zero difference in difficulty from level 1 enemies all the way up to level 10,000. It has it's benefits, but maybe there's a sweet spot where there's a low % number with a flat number on top - kind of like Oberon's smite ability. 

[Lutesque]

5 hours ago, Flying_Scorpion said:

60% heal over 5 seconds is busted over powered. That's why it got nerfed. It trivializes the game mode. There's practically no risk to the defense objective when you can pull a "no u" uno card every 5 seconds with no cooldown. While 50hp/s may be too weak for it to be noticable in high-level content, percentage based healing can lead to balance issues where you feel zero difference in difficulty from level 1 enemies all the way up to level 10,000. It has it's benefits, but maybe there's a sweet spot where there's a low % number with a flat number on top - kind of like Oberon's smite ability. 

I disagree about it being overpowered for a number of reasons.

1) most defense type missions arent actually about defending anything... more often than not progress is made by killing than it is by actually protecting something. 

2) At some point Enemies are going to one shot the thing you are defending so the Healing Portion of the Ability became useless anyway. 

3) Any time spent Healing Objects is time not killing enemies. In other words. It doesnt matter if the defense objective is unkillable... Nuke Frames with Zenurik will make faster progress anyway.

Protective Dash was hardly broken... I think you and DE over valued how important it was to keep a defense objective at full health. Killing has always been the most valuable part of Warframe... 

 

[Mephane]

I stand by what I said: Vazarin's Protective Dash should a) heal a percentage and not a flat amount and b) apply the damage reduction that various other heals can do (e.g. Blessing).

[Opyt]

15 hours ago, Flying_Scorpion said:

60% heal over 5 seconds is busted over powered. That's why it got nerfed. It trivializes the game mode. There's practically no risk to the defense objective when you can pull a "no u" uno card every 5 seconds with no cooldown. While 50hp/s may be too weak for it to be noticable in high-level content, percentage based healing can lead to balance issues where you feel zero difference in difficulty from level 1 enemies all the way up to level 10,000. It has it's benefits, but maybe there's a sweet spot where there's a low % number with a flat number on top - kind of like Oberon's smite ability. 

Opposed to what?

Limbo's "No U" with Cataclysm/Stasis?
Frost's "No U" with Snow Globe?
Khora's "No U" with Strangledome?
Gara's "No U" with Mass Vitrify?

If they had just increased the energy cost with level, you can make it so that the "No U" isn't playable whenever.

And then there's another alternative: if it's "too OP" you, personally, could always just not use it.  I don't see why I should have to suffer because you don't like something having too much power in a game that is allegedly a power fantasy.  I guess everyone should just stick to one warframe.

P.S.  I can't wait to see how much of a disaster Limbo is for the new "modular powers" thing they just teased.

[Flying_Scorpion]

Let's try using data to back up our points. If something cannot be proven, it's not really worthy of debate. I'm one of the people who finds there to be a lack of difficulty in Warframe. From what I can tell, there's maybe 9x or 10x as many people who find the game lacking in difficulty, than those who find there is too much difficulty.

So I think it's fair to say that Warframe is currently too easy. One of the reasons it's too easy is because of all those abilities that you listed. Limbo in particular has been nerfed again and again over the years. He's quite strong. Are you suggesting that they nerf limbo again? I'm not. But if you would like to pitch the idea, go for it. I'm saying Vazarin dash was too op, and I agree with DE's decision to have nerfed it. Maybe they nerfed it too hard, but one thing I know for sure is that was too powerful before the nerf - and it's still an extremely powerful "no U" card in almost any combat engagement in the game - even after the nerf. It's fine guys. Vazarin is not dead, so no need to say "RIP". It has tons of other stuff going on for it.

So, as I said. And I'll say it again: perhaps a % based heal that's between 0% and 60% (it's old value), + a flat number base heal.

[Opyt]

1 hour ago, Flying_Scorpion said:

Let's try using data to back up our points. If something cannot be proven, it's not really worthy of debate. I'm one of the people who finds there to be a lack of difficulty in Warframe. From what I can tell, there's maybe 9x or 10x as many people who find the game lacking in difficulty, than those who find there is too much difficulty.

So I think it's fair to say that Warframe is currently too easy. One of the reasons it's too easy is because of all those abilities that you listed. Limbo in particular has been nerfed again and again over the years. He's quite strong. Are you suggesting that they nerf limbo again? I'm not. But if you would like to pitch the idea, go for it. I'm saying Vazarin dash was too op, and I agree with DE's decision to have nerfed it. Maybe they nerfed it too hard, but one thing I know for sure is that was too powerful before the nerf - and it's still an extremely powerful "no U" card in almost any combat engagement in the game - even after the nerf. It's fine guys. Vazarin is not dead, so no need to say "RIP". It has tons of other stuff going on for it.

So, as I said. And I'll say it again: perhaps a % based heal that's between 0% and 60% (it's old value), + a flat number base heal.

I think instead of opening more possibilities as was expressed as the intent, they thoroughly dismantled the potential.

This wave of "Lol fun is subjective, get over it dumbass" that I've seen expressed by DE Drones has driven me to be far too hostile towards people, that's on me, so I apologize for mistaking you as another one of those psychophants (sic).
I'm suggesting that Warframe, as a game has a massive identity issue.
I'm suggesting that a response of 28k where an overwhelming number of people say it's too repetitious don't want to sit at a stationary objective pressing 4 and 2 over and over as Limbo (42.2%).
I'm suggesting that variety is what makes the grind a little more tolerable.  Vazarin being ""OP"" allowed you to take whatever you wanted, instead of having a person locked into one of five viable frames for a mission they felt like running.

DE seems to believe their game is supposed to be a power fantasy.  Unfortunately for the 9.7%, that means that a game will be "too easy".  You can also presume that "lack of difficulty" meant more than just "numbers too high", as they don't break it down into what "we want more difficulty" means.

Does it mean lower numbers inflicted on the players?
Does it mean more aggressive AI?
Does it mean AI that is "smarter"?

There's a lot of things that general statement could mean.  If a game is too easy, but the people saying it's too easy were the ones that use things like Banshee to amp up their Stug to hit damage cap (yes, there are people that do this), maybe they were in the 90% of the playerbase above MR20 using the Catchmoon before it got a massive nerf in the form of falloff, people using Magus Lockdown (pre, or post-nerf) to freeze enemies in their places or people that only do the godawful boss fights because they one shot Eidolon limbs, are they really ever going to find "challenge" in a game that lets them do any of this?

Why was my fun-per-hour hampered on the basis that nearly 2,700 people of the 28,000 people taking the survey answered with such a nebulous expression?

My not having fun means I'm also not around to, as I put it, "harass" low MR people by giving them mods they might need, or helping them get started up again in the case of console transplants.  That repetitive grind, again, rears its ugly head, especially for anyone thinking they're going to be able to tolerate the grind a second time, and then burning out trying to get all their corrupted mods again.  Or their nightmare mods.  Or those godawful dual stat electric mods that only rarely come because RNG^3 is the only way DE knows how to do things.  You can say that 9-10x more people found the game "too easy" rather than "too hard", but by handing out mods the community is capable of alleviating that significantly larger percentage of 4-5x the people finding the game "too easy": people that find the game "too repetitive/grindy".

As an anecdote: being able to use Protective Dash at full potential is what made doing fissures with people that wanted to get the 100 points for Thermia Fractures tolerable.  Now it's just repetition of kill-kill-kill-kill-kill-kill-kill which will inevitably lead to more people saying the game is "too easy" in a never ending cycle of self-fulfilling prophecy.  This change didn't "make the game more challenging" as the people answering "game too easy" likely weren't using the Vazarin tree to begin with, all it did was make the game less fun for people that were using it.  Instead of their typical hamfisted approach where while proclaiming their good intentions, they thoroughly destroy it.  Instead of opening the doors as they claimed, DE slammed them shut regardless of fingers or feet in the doorway.  I want them to put it back to the full 60% over 5s + 5s of invuln because I enjoyed it, and I'm more than willing to eat a more appropriate nerf of increased void dash cost so that it isn't as readily available to spam.  I also keep hoping (and I know it's a fool's hope) that they'll read this topic, and then that someone with the decision making power will agree that percentage based (by far the easiest way to scale things) healing in a game with SCALING health is the solution for all of the frames who suddenly found themselves able to interact with an objective beyond standing in front of it to soak up some bullets.

The Protective Dash being 60/5/5 with an increased cost makes much more sense when you consider that there are effectively two states for an objective: being damaged, and not being damaged.  If the objective is being damaged, most people will always opt to shoot the thing damaging it, the person trying to get the refund on void dash are going to have to wait until it gets in line with the objective to get that.  With the objective not being damaged you would be using it at full energy cost anyways.  Bumping it up to a total cost of 60 per dash in operator energy would mean that even with the Zenurik passives you could only use it twice before you will have to wait for your bar to refill.  As a lot can happen in 10 seconds if you're not able to kill the enemies efficiently enough.

The post scriptum was because DE announced yesterday that they were adding modular Warframe abilities with Heart of Deimos.  This is yet another misstep on their part in my opinion, as they stated it would be "non-signature abilities".  What in Limbo's kit is "non-signature": you have Banish which will put enemies out of reach of most Warframes, Stasis which requires enemies be in the rift to be frozen, you have Rift Surge which makes enemies in the rift spread the rift when their in/out state changes, and you have Cataclysm which probably doesn't need to be explained.  Similarly you have Octavia, all of her abilities rely on the Mandrachord.  Are they going to install a Mandrachord on all Warframes, or are they just going to use a default song?  Nidus: you have his Virulence which builds up his mutation stacks, and his Larva which groups enemies together and refund energy when he uses Virulence on them.  In all 3 of these cases the abilities are linked to another function on the Warframe, so they deserve the headaches they have coming out of it.  And once again they'll inflict the update upon an unsuspecting playerbase, but at least this time it'll be on everyone instead of their favorite beta testers.

[Flying_Scorpion]

5 minutes ago, Opyt said:

I'm suggesting that variety is what makes the grind a little more tolerable.  Vazarin being ""OP"" allowed you to take whatever you wanted, instead of having a person locked into one of five viable frames for a mission they felt like running.

That's a good argument. It still leaves the question of difficulty up there though.

 

6 minutes ago, Opyt said:

Unfortunately for the 9.7%, that means that a game will be "too easy"

It's not the #1 issue for everyone, but it is for some. There's room for the scales to be tipped into that direction (more difficulty) further, maybe even to the point where there's an equal share of players that find it too difficult, alongside those who find it too easy. I would call that a happy medium. We're not there yet, but DE is getting closer.

 

8 minutes ago, Opyt said:

Does it mean lower numbers inflicted on the players?
Does it mean more aggressive AI?
Does it mean AI that is "smarter"?

These are all great ideas. I've also pitched the idea of improving AI in the past. Someone told me that my idea was impossible so I just let the thread die and moved on.

18 minutes ago, Opyt said:

What in Limbo's kit is "non-signature"

They're probably just going to put his 1st ability in there. There's no sense is only having his second or third without the first, so....banish is very likely to be it.

But yeah I am a little leery of this new Helminth Chrysalis system too. It's a step towards powercreep for sure, and the solution so far has been to just add bigger numbers onto the enemies, which in turn spreads the playerbase a little more thin. I'm not sure how sustainable this is without creating a huge gap between the newbie and the veteran player. One of the good things Warframe has had going for it for a long time was the way it mixes older and newer players. But the gap is widening and it creates a lot of boredom, tedium, repetition, and a lack of challenge for the older player in some situations.

 

Anyway, yeah man sorry but I don't agree with you. I still think completely invulnerability and 60% hp over 5 seconds is too much. Maybe a 1 second of invulnerability with a 25% heal over 5 seconds + a flat 50hp/s on top of that. I don't know. I can agree with people saying that 50hp/s is too low, but I cannot agree with reverting the nerf to what it was before. I'd rather see it go to a sweet spot in the middle.

[Opyt]

5 hours ago, Flying_Scorpion said:

Anyway, yeah man sorry but I don't agree with you. I still think completely invulnerability and 60% hp over 5 seconds is too much. Maybe a 1 second of invulnerability with a 25% heal over 5 seconds + a flat 50hp/s on top of that. I don't know. I can agree with people saying that 50hp/s is too low, but I cannot agree with reverting the nerf to what it was before. I'd rather see it go to a sweet spot in the middle.

It's 100hp/s (which, is still low, so I'll give you that one), I'm not saying exactly how it was (how it was is 25 operator energy to void dash and give 60/5/5), I'm saying go back to 60/5/5 but offer a different nerf: it now costs 60E instead of 25E.  That may not seem like much, but it's half as many available after unlocking the more energy in WB of Zenurik.  The 5 seconds of invulnerability also gives you time for the shields of an objective to start going back up.  At this point I want it back to how it was, because I believe that after 3 months they've had plenty of opportunity to undo this abomination of a change.  Or to fix it properly.  Instead this topic just sits here, with no indication that DE knows or cares what is thought of their changes.  I want it back to 60/5/5, with an increased energy cost, and I'd be willing to settle for less, though not quite THIS MUCH less.

[NIkuno]

On 2020-07-30 at 11:26 AM, Lutesque said:

If you have to make a sacrifice to your damage... then its not that strong is it ?

And there lies the problem, mainly with the mindset. In a game where its "DPSDPSDPS" all the time, it was an incredibly powerful tool for support players like myself to do something different. 

By following the more traditional RPG trinity of a healer, I could just sit there and dash the objectives the whole time and everything would be fine. In fact, I have (had?) a whole Umbra build just for this just so that I have SOME sort of damage output, otherwise I would just use the empty shell as shield.

The way I see it, the changes are more in line with their overall design, but it was way too severe. Now there really is no reason to choose this tree over energizing dash, or whatever it is.

[Lutesque]

4 minutes ago, NIkuno said:

And there lies the problem, mainly with the mindset. In a game where its "DPSDPSDPS" all the time

Thats not a Mindset... the Game Demands Damage...

5 minutes ago, NIkuno said:

fine. In fact, I have (had?) a whole Umbra build just for this just so that I have SOME sort of damage output,

See ?

6 minutes ago, NIkuno said:

The way I see it, the changes are more in line with their overall design, but it was way too severe. Now there really is no reason to choose this tree over energizing dash, or whatever it is.

On top of that... Does DE really think players are using Trinity or any Healer for Defense ? 

Hey who knows... maybe they are... i know Im not... infact Im buffing Enemies with Speed Nova because I dont want to be stuck baby sitting a cryopod all day...

[Opyt]

17 hours ago, Lutesque said:

Thats not a Mindset... the Game Demands Damage...

See ?

On top of that... Does DE really think players are using Trinity or any Healer for Defense ? 

Hey who knows... maybe they are... i know Im not... infact Im buffing Enemies with Speed Nova because I dont want to be stuck baby sitting a cryopod all day...

RE: DE thinking players are using healers for Defense

Definitely not with the healing in the shape it's in right now lmao.

-- but other than that, the game demands damage because any alternative to damage gets treatment similar to this.  DE has a nasty habit of mistaking what some find fun for "OP".  But hey, build your own Necralisk that totally isn't going to be another K-Drive that only gets used in Open Worlds, and only when the playerbase doesn't feel like NOT using their archwing was waaaaaay more important than something that would have kept me spending money on the game. 😝

[zhunGamer]

After all these months of this thread being ignored, I just caved in and now use Limbo for excavation as it is the only viable frame for Excavation.

With Zenurik.

Thanks for frame variety, DE!

[Lutesque]

38 minutes ago, Zhuinden said:

After all these months of this thread being ignored, I just caved in and now use Limbo for excavation as it is the only viable frame for Excavation.

With Zenurik.

Thanks for frame variety, DE!

Yeah I also dont give feedback anymore.... waste of time....

I will, however,  Complain until the cows come home... its not anymore Productive but it makes me feel alot better...

[selig_fay]

Just keep this theme up. We will stand! For the Emperor! **sits in a power suit**

[Flying_Scorpion]

*edit* never mind. I retract my statement.

[Opyt]

On 2020-08-05 at 7:55 AM, selig_fay said:

Just keep this theme up. We will stand! For the Emperor! **sits in a power suit**

At least it won't be a stationary objective so you can use Protective Dash to heal it.  It's gonna be awful and have very limited uses.  I feel bad for all the fanboy/fangirls that think it'll be a Terminator, when all it'll be is an overhyped Warframe that can only be used on 3 maps in the entire game.