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

[Flying_Scorpion]

11 hours ago, Flying_Scorpion said:

it doesn't make sense for Trinity to spend 100 energy to get the same amount of healing as someone spamming heavy attack or vazarin dash

I was wrong about this. Trinity rarely has energy problems because she has energy vampire, so there isn't so much reason to complain about her ability costing 100 energy. 

[SyBuhr]

12 hours ago, Flying_Scorpion said:

You guys have convinced me to change my mind. A % heal in combination with a flat value heal would make sense. Plus it doesn't make sense for Trinity to spend 100 energy to get the same amount of healing as someone spamming heavy attack or vazarin dash. Someone above said that we lost half the defense health in 1 minute but it's worth pointing out that we had gone for an 1 hour 40 minutes up till then and I had my healing turned off. So it's not *that* bad. But it could be better, so yeah I agree with you guys that a small % plus a flat value might be the best way to go about this. 

I can work out some reasonable numbers for that if I ever get the brain power to do so. Your run was pretty good though, and makes me wonder if Digital Extremes will ever implement an easy-to-access way of simulating High-Level/Tier Defense in the simulacrum (Doubtful, but it would help out in situations like this). 

Trinity and Vazarin got hit the hardest with this patch, to the point where it's clear that these are "shot-In-The-Dark" patches to see what sticks. Hildryn and Wisp will see a lot more combo team play in long endurance runs simply because they both heal the objective in two different ways (hildryn effecting the shields, Wisp having a perma-heal).

50 HP/s is nothing at that level, and you are semi fortunate that the units didn't seem to hit the objective too much. One bombard at that level could have been a disaster. Additionally, if anyone had that Corpus-Poor-Aim Aura, that could also influence the results you got as well (admittedly though, I haven't seen a single person use that aura so it is doubtful).The other thing to consider is that the Defense objective also has a certain amount of Shields that tank some of that damage (though I do not know if they Shield-Gate, nor do I know the exact number of shields your objective had in the video).

Obviously, in your video the shields were pretty much down the entire time, but it is something to consider when reviewing (I.E.: Harrow and Hildryn may become the new main healers?)

 

11 hours ago, Leuca said:

The issue is that % healing ends up scaling ridiculously as well, and with all the new ways we have to prevent damage besides just limbo/frost/etc, there is going to need to be a very strict cap on potential % health per second if you do that, or else it just nullifies the whole point of nerfing a blatantly overpowered use for an ability that was obviously intended to be used to the primary benefit of warframes and operators.

There are a lot of things that scale in this game. Enemies Scale, some WarFrame abilities scale. Healing is one of the few things in the game that had limited scalability (Trinity and Vazarin).

Then there are things that don't scale, these are your defense objectives ( Defectors, Defense Cryo-Pods, and Arbitration Defense). These are units that have a set health value at the start of the mission. The reason that Vazarin and Trinity were valued for these is due to the fact that the Scaling healing cancelled out (or mitigated) the scaling damage enemies put out when the enemies actually hit the objective (ignoring Limbo). This was a nice quality of life thing, as it allowed players to combat the scaling damage that the objective itself could not.

There needs to be more than just one solution to defense, that being Limbo Stasis Duration+Range, as that goes against what Digital Extremes wants in their design philosophy.

This doesn't mean Nerf Limbo, Nerf Khora, Nerf Frost, Nerf whatever other frame. This means that you need some viable alternatives to what they can offer. This means that you need healing that allows players to make the choice they didn't have previously.

Again, if Trinity could heal for %5 instead of 500 over 5 seconds, many players would be more okay with that change. I would even argue a point that the amount of healing received shouldn't be impacted by ability Strength. But what we have now is significantly worse and over-done, and was completely unnecessary.

From my understanding, a %10 heal over 5 seconds from Trinity and Vazarin would be a semi-decent spot given that starting at level 20 the objective has an insane health-pool. This would keep Vazarin in place as the De-facto School for healing, and Trinity would not be beaten down (again) for no reason. Even if this heal couldn't stack with other heals, this would be acceptable (meaning you couldn't heal for more than %10 at any given time).

In my opinion, at that point, Vazarin would not need the invulnerability on objectives. Even if Vazarin was healing at %5 over 5 seconds, I would still argue against invulnerability as you should heal it, then move back to handling the enemies.

 

What's the point of healing 500 for 100 energy, or millions of focus spent, when you can simply ignore the problem with Limbo or Frost or Vauban? Or even Saryn? The problem isn't that these WarFrames are strong (although they are), it is that other alternative options are too weak to even be considered in the equation.

I don't disagree that there should be no change to healing, but this is not the appropriate change needed, and many other players iterated that statement over the course of around 15 pages on the original post.

[ShadowTony]

Nezha's ability doesn't work. With augment i did three tests — on laying cryopods or standing cryopods or excavators. 
Without — one, just to prove a point in case of wording actually being important.

On 2020-05-02 at 12:07 AM, n.ull. said:

nezha which now got a nice way to reduce damage to teh cryopod by 50%

No. Still doesn't have a way to reduce damage.

[KiteForest_2035]

If there is no way to protect the target invincible, how can I deal with the ruthless teammates in the radiation disaster mission?

[katariya]

I think support frame's recovery rate and mitigation rate should be higher than support attack frame's.
Either way, I think the current recovery rate is too small.

Sorry for the Google translation.

[SyBuhr]

13 hours ago, Leuca said:

People really underestimate what having so many ways to decrease or altogether nullify damage does for your ability to keep a team alive. I think there are more interesting ways we could potentially allow abilities (both operator and warframe) to stack without just giving us ridiculously scaling healing on an objective that is *supposed* to become more difficult to defend as time goes on.

 

Trinity also can maintain constant 50% damage reduction, which absolutely stacks with direct damage nullification in the form of limbo/frost/other cc and blocking abilities.

My main issue with this whole line of argumentation is that you basically have this group of people who are borderline saying they shouldn't have to use defensive frames to play defense... at all. Which is fundamentally defeating the purpose of the mode. Are you trying to go past level 100-150 enemies? Perhaps organize a group where one or two people want to use those necessary defensive specs. If you have four people and nobody feels it is necessary (or should be necessary) to run a defensive frame, then why?

Why does healing need to be so noticeable? Why does your ability to prevent damage and kill enemies efficiently not take precedence in a mode called "defense"? We have pretty much unmitigated ability to keep ourselves alive, and the update did not really hinder our ability to reduce damage at all.

I think you have a valid suggestion in adding cooldowns, though I think that could be implemented more along the lines of void energy consumption while in operator mode. There are more interesting ways to make vazarin viable than simply giving it absurdly scaling healing ability on something we are supposed to be preventing damage on.

Trinity can maintain it, at a hundred energy each cast, which is not efficient nor a fun way to play. Pressing 4 every third second is not entertaining in the slightest.

With vazarin you were still mobile and it required actually playing the game somewhat more so (even if marginally).

No one is saying there should be no defense frames. People want the choice of viability. Right now, healing is no longer a viable alternative save for level 12-17 defense as my numbers show, which is hardly a reason to keep it this way.

 

[ReshyShira]

Does anyone even play trinity anymore?  I never see trinity in pubs.

[Opyt]

Suggestion:  Change to percentages instead of flat amounts.  Sure 50hp/s sounds sweet on an objective with 5000hp (it IS 1%/sec after all), but on an objective with 43k (or, maybe you're running around in a level 5 lich defense, where you can see 80k hp on the objective) the 50hp/s doesn't mean anything.  Make the lower ones a 1% heal, i.e. crazy cat lady heals 1% with her sidekick in heal mode, but a dedicated-to-healing ability like Trinity's Blessing, could do 10%, it's enough to feel like you're accomplishing something while not being so strong that you could rely on it to keep a mission going well past its expiration date, after all, the point at which that 10% is anything more than opening an umbrella to use as a parachute, you're going to be well past the point of it keeping you from hitting terminal velocity.

The biggest thing I used Vazarin's Protective Dash for was the invulnerability.  A stationary objective could heal up (or in the case of mobile defense, it would at least get some of its shields back).  I also noticed that in later patches after shield gating, that shield gating stopped being "a thing" on objectives, but that's not what this is about.

As a counterpoint to Vazarin Dash being too powerful:

The point at which you needed it, you're already going to be losing sooner rather than later.  Having it in the toolbox didn't make it "best in slot", it just made it a decent choice, so that you could at least do, and feel like you were doing, SOMETHING while running Vazarin for the bonus affinity share range.  While I agree that 60% over 5 seconds was a bit ridiculous, it was what made it handy when things were turning to S#&$ right before a reward cycle.  It gave you that umbrella so that you could decide "I'm getting in over my head, and getting tired, maybe it's time to get out of the pool instead of just treading water, although that typically happened at wave 16 instead of wave 20.

I understand that you wanted more choices for how people could heal the objective.  AFAIK no one was FORCED to take the Vazarin tree.  Rather they CHOSE to take it.  More choices aren't the problem.  The problem I have with it is how it was handled.  I had a feeling when Protective Dash wasn't working on the oplinks that you, as a company, were looking to counteract the easy mode that was Protective Dash, without understanding why someone invested in it.  Meanwhile in what I could only describe as a bold strategy, you also opted to not allow an operator using the Vazarin tree to utilize Guardian Blast to restore shields of stationary objectives.  If anything that could have helped mitigate some (not all mind you, but some) of my issues with it, provided shield gating on stationary objectives was a thing.  You wouldn't be buying a lot of time if an objective is in so desperate need of healing that you're actively engaging in healing it, but if you could put up shields that would then be gated, you would be buying some time for the healing to actually matter at least.

While you're changing the Vazarin tree's affect on the game, could you maybe change Vazarin's Mending Soul to be a flat 100% faster revive speed at max rank (similar to Trinity's passive) instead of 4-uses-and-done?  The rest of the focus trees have passives that don't get burned up on use, I don't understand why Vazarin should be any different in that regard.

For me, this felt like a punch in the gut, because it would be like taking Zenurik's Energizing Dash and making it only affect Operators.  Taking Unairu's Sundering Dash and making it only affect specifically Troopers, Crewmen and Chargers, or revisiting Naramon's Executing Dash and making it only affect enemies without shields or Madurai's Blazing Dash only affecting enemies when the enemy has been stripped of its extra defenses.

In Closing:

I hope you rethink this, in my opinion, abysmal misstep, consider using percentages for healing given how outlandish and radical this change was, as well as rethinking how you want the operators to interact with the environment.  More choices aren't bad, but nullifying a week (or potentially more) worth of focus grinding because it's "too powerful" wasn't the best choice in the world for the people that did the grind to get it.

[Sintag]

So you pretty much went and gutted Vazarin's second major use.  While, yes, the invuln and some of the healing needed to be stripped, it trivialized Defense otherwise, this nerf went way, WAY too far in the other direction and rendered it useless for Defense.

 

Again, static caps for healing on Defense objectives are useless simply due to how much HP they have.  I feel like Vazarin should restore 10% of HP over 5 seconds at max, for Defense objectives.  This would go down a lot better then '100/second'.

[Leuca]

9 hours ago, SyBuhr said:

Trinity can maintain it, at a hundred energy each cast, which is not efficient nor a fun way to play. Pressing 4 every third second is not entertaining in the slightest.

With vazarin you were still mobile and it required actually playing the game somewhat more so (even if marginally).

No one is saying there should be no defense frames. People want the choice of viability. Right now, healing is no longer a viable alternative save for level 12-17 defense as my numbers show, which is hardly a reason to keep it this way.

 

The healing lasts 5 seconds. The protection lasts as long as your ability normally would, which for my current build is about 15 seconds with modest duration investment. Not overly button intensive, and certainly not a problem energy-wise for the frame that can eliminate any problems for an entire squad.

[selig_fay]

36 minutes ago, Leuca said:

The healing lasts 5 seconds. The protection lasts as long as your ability normally would, which for my current build is about 15 seconds with modest duration investment. Not overly button intensive, and certainly not a problem energy-wise for the frame that can eliminate any problems for an entire squad.

Again, you can keep yourself in the animation loop: vampire -> kill enemy -> blessing, or you can kill/CC the entire map, or you can lazily look at the dome indicator.

After all, an ancient healer is worth 500 reputation and does the same thing as a blessing now.

[vanaukas]

This is a bug or is intended? Vazarin can't heal defense objectives on Fortuna. 

I hope it's bugged and not a "new mechanic".

[hyzmarca]

Recently did a solo run on Hydron to try out the new mechanics.       My perspective,   the healing isn't actually as bad as people say,  at least in the amount per second.  The real problem is that duration.  

 

100 healing per second is enough to keep the target's HP very high in a 1-20 run on hydron.  There's enough time when the cryopod isn't being shot that it actually gets a lot of healing.   The problem is the need to keep it up.    Trinity can do this with the vampire-blessing loop,  but that's boring.   Vazaran has a harder time due to the need to physically dash through the cryopod every 5 seconds.     

 

In general,  healingand DR currently aren't worth it in solo play compared to barriers,  CC,  and nukes.   It never really was.  

[SyBuhr]

2 hours ago, xHeretic said:

This is a bug or is intended? Vazarin can't heal defense objectives on Fortuna. 

I hope it's bugged and not a "new mechanic".

 

Looking like a bug, @[DE]Bear. Unless you all _really_ gutted vazarin.

11 hours ago, Leuca said:

The healing lasts 5 seconds. The protection lasts as long as your ability normally would, which for my current build is about 15 seconds with modest duration investment. Not overly button intensive, and certainly not a problem energy-wise for the frame that can eliminate any problems for an entire squad.

My understanding is that the damage reduction of %50 lasts for the duration of the heal, not 15 seconds. I can take a look sometime tonight with a max duration trinity, but I'll be frank on the matter: regardless of how you look at these changes, these changes are not in any way beneficial to players who invested time into a niche and underappreciated role.

People can say these are great changes all day, and that whiners (like myself) will "get used to it", but the fact of the matter is that this is the first of many on a chopping block spree that we've experienced in the past. Look at how this started: a decent frame with moderate play time use got nerfed. I for one don't really appreciate the changes despite not really playing a healer role, because I recognize that those people had to invest an insane amount of time to min-max their frames and Focus unlike Zenurik + Limbo players (myself in this case). 

When Digital Extremes talks about valuing our time, these nerfs are clear that they do NOT value our time. They value it in the sense that we keep them relevant and potentially give them capital to continue running. With 14+ pages of feedback, it should have been obvious that these changes needed to go back to the drawing board and taken another look from a fresh perspective. It isn't so much that healing is actually being looked at, it's that certain things were given no real thought process, while others will function as they do with warframes.

Vazarin is, obviously the biggest issue as it has the greatest time-commitment tied to it.

The new meta for healers will be One Hildryn + Wisp. The 100 HP needing to be recast is absolutely infuriating to me, and with the shield restoration and constant healing and CC from Wisp it will always be Hildryn, Wisp, Limbo/Frost, + DPS Nuker. That is the new current meta we face. Vazarin has no place in this game anymore, so those people who invested even a modicum of focus should be refunded the entire focus tree to place in whatever other tree they want (Madurai, Unairu, etc.).

[selig_fay]

3 minutes ago, SyBuhr said:

The new meta for healers will be One Hildryn + Wisp. The 100 HP needing to be recast is absolutely infuriating to me, and with the shield restoration and constant healing and CC from Wisp it will always be Hildryn, Wisp, Limbo/Frost, + DPS Nuker. That is the new current meta we face. Vazarin has no place in this game anymore, so those people who invested even a modicum of focus should be refunded the entire focus tree to place in whatever other tree they want (Madurai, Unairu, etc.).

Wisp can be used as CC/Buffs, but 100hps will not be its main purpose. Hildryn? ... I think shield ospray will handle this better.

[SyBuhr]

10 minutes ago, zhellon said:

Wisp can be used as CC/Buffs, but 100hps will not be its main purpose. Hildryn? ... I think shield ospray will handle this better.

Why do you think that? Max Range + Strength wisp will ensure that players and the point have the buff, without having the energy drain associated from recasting or having to break the flow by going into operator. In addition, it would be the same healing Trinity is capped to per second, making her significantly a better pick than Trinity.

Ospreys have a cost. I don't build them, even though I could build millions of them. In addition, Hildryn offers team-mates that sweet shield restore and CC via her 4 as well as being a decent tank with the right arcanes (Slash and toxin protection). With Shield gating now available to all Tenno, Hildryn makes the team much more durable even for the squishies.

 

Separately, I tested Trinity's blessing on Akkad and on the Defense on *Mercury. From what I observed, the cryopod only received the damage reduction for the 5 seconds. It is noticeable as the chargers did significantly less during (given the heal and the reduction), but proceeded to do their normal amount prior to healing. While not academic in any sense, it does not look like the damage reduction lasts 15 seconds.

Furthermore, this benefit seems to only effect Cryopods. The Artifact Defense missions (large verticle tube ones, seen in the Mars Defense) do not seem to receive the healing, although this could simply be a bug that I experienced.

[selig_fay]

4 minutes ago, SyBuhr said:

right arcanes (Slash and toxin protection)

You're scaring me. Slash no longer passes through shields, and arcane against toxin only protects against status, not direct damage. Antitoxin is better at this.

 

[SyBuhr]

1 minute ago, zhellon said:

You're scaring me. Slash no longer passes through shields, and arcane against toxin only protects against status, not direct damage. Antitoxin is better at this.

 

Yea I realized it while testing the Mercury mission again. I suppose it is the PTSD from how they used to work. Slash procs are still pretty devestating though so it's my personal favorite (Aegis/barrier are better on Hildryn)

Orokin Artifact Defenses do receive the heal so not entirely sure what happened in my first test (Strange Hit-boxes? Maybe it is positioned higher? No Clue).

 

[HolySeraphin]

4 hours ago, xHeretic said:

This is a bug or is intended? Vazarin can't heal defense objectives on Fortuna. 

I hope it's bugged and not a "new mechanic".

Probably because Fortuna's defense target is considered a mobile defense target and the update added healing to static defense targets. 

[selig_fay]

38 minutes ago, HolySeraphin said:

Probably because Fortuna's defense target is considered a mobile defense target and the update added healing to static defense targets.

But vazarin worked before, and now it doesn't. I think this is still a bug.

[Flying_Scorpion]

2 hours ago, hyzmarca said:

Recently did a solo run on Hydron to try out the new mechanics.       My perspective,   the healing isn't actually as bad as people say,  at least in the amount per second.  The real problem is that duration.  

 

100 healing per second is enough to keep the target's HP very high in a 1-20 run on hydron.  There's enough time when the cryopod isn't being shot that it actually gets a lot of healing.   The problem is the need to keep it up.    Trinity can do this with the vampire-blessing loop,  but that's boring.   Vazaran has a harder time due to the need to physically dash through the cryopod every 5 seconds.     

 

In general,  healingand DR currently aren't worth it in solo play compared to barriers,  CC,  and nukes.   It never really was.  

That's exactly what my experience with it has been as well. It's not as bad as people are making it out to be.

[selig_fay]

15 minutes ago, Flying_Scorpion said:

That's exactly what my experience with it has been as well. It's not as bad as people are making it out to be.

Just try to do it without the healer frame or vazarin and you will get the same result. Just trust me. In the current situation, healers can not do much for the object, as a result, the object can restore its hp on its own.

By the way, I really want DE to make a global nerf of all CC, nucking and walls then I go around topics and write "It's not that bad. You can still beat level 100 mobs in a hard meta in a group of 4 frames and with the right weapons."  Ye, i`m realy bad person. 

[SyBuhr]

1 hour ago, Flying_Scorpion said:

That's exactly what my experience with it has been as well. It's not as bad as people are making it out to be.

Just goes to show you how little healers mattered in the game, and this is just salt in the wound?

[Leuca]

10 hours ago, SyBuhr said:

 

Looking like a bug, @[DE]Bear. Unless you all _really_ gutted vazarin.

My understanding is that the damage reduction of %50 lasts for the duration of the heal, not 15 seconds. I can take a look sometime tonight with a max duration trinity, but I'll be frank on the matter: regardless of how you look at these changes, these changes are not in any way beneficial to players who invested time into a niche and underappreciated role.

People can say these are great changes all day, and that whiners (like myself) will "get used to it", but the fact of the matter is that this is the first of many on a chopping block spree that we've experienced in the past. Look at how this started: a decent frame with moderate play time use got nerfed. I for one don't really appreciate the changes despite not really playing a healer role, because I recognize that those people had to invest an insane amount of time to min-max their frames and Focus unlike Zenurik + Limbo players (myself in this case). 

When Digital Extremes talks about valuing our time, these nerfs are clear that they do NOT value our time. They value it in the sense that we keep them relevant and potentially give them capital to continue running. With 14+ pages of feedback, it should have been obvious that these changes needed to go back to the drawing board and taken another look from a fresh perspective. It isn't so much that healing is actually being looked at, it's that certain things were given no real thought process, while others will function as they do with warframes.

Vazarin is, obviously the biggest issue as it has the greatest time-commitment tied to it.

The new meta for healers will be One Hildryn + Wisp. The 100 HP needing to be recast is absolutely infuriating to me, and with the shield restoration and constant healing and CC from Wisp it will always be Hildryn, Wisp, Limbo/Frost, + DPS Nuker. That is the new current meta we face. Vazarin has no place in this game anymore, so those people who invested even a modicum of focus should be refunded the entire focus tree to place in whatever other tree they want (Madurai, Unairu, etc.).

I got different results than you when I tested. I was able to discern a clear difference in damage on both hydron and kala-azar using nothing but blessing with a 15 second duration. Did you only test on low level missions? I don't believe you'd be able to see much difference when the damage is negligible.

There is a grind regardless of what focus school you decide to max; dismissing other people's choice of investment as lesser doesn't lend any credence to your argument. The fact of the matter is that this "niche/underappreciated role" was being used as a crutch to invalidate scaling content, often enough to actually get the attention of the developers, which goes to show how it wasn't really niche at all, or else there wouldn't be such a collective pushback against these changes. Players have gotten accustomed to the game playing itself for them, and the old vazarin was a clear example of this. Even your own example of what you expect the new meta to be plays right into this mindset. Set it and forget, or only require re-casts that are few and far between. The only thing that would stop Wisp's regen would be a nullifier, and because of how the frame is designed they would have to rework other abilities to even start touching her first one, even though it's basically her strongest ability for the least energy/time investment.

I don't disagree that with significant changes to focus trees should come the ability to respec your points, neither do I think that these changes should not be subject to further review and balancing as necessary, but going off the rail to claim that DE as a whole doesn't value their playerbase for anything other than capital is demonstrably false, or else the entire rest of the patch notes list wouldn't have even existed. That is a reaction out of anger, not out of critical thinking and play testing. They aren't perfect as a team, but they're better at communicating than many developers, and personally I'm getting tired of being able to have a fool-proof "oh s**t" button for every situation.

[selig_fay]

2 hours ago, Leuca said:

There is a grind regardless of what focus school you decide to max; dismissing other people's choice of investment as lesser doesn't lend any credence to your argument. The fact of the matter is that this "niche/underappreciated role" was being used as a crutch to invalidate scaling content, often enough to actually get the attention of the developers, which goes to show how it wasn't really niche at all, or else there wouldn't be such a collective pushback against these changes. Players have gotten accustomed to the game playing itself for them, and the old vazarin was a clear example of this. Even your own example of what you expect the new meta to be plays right into this mindset. Set it and forget, or only require re-casts that are few and far between. The only thing that would stop Wisp's regen would be a nullifier, and because of how the frame is designed they would have to rework other abilities to even start touching her first one, even though it's basically her strongest ability for the least energy/time investment.

 

Fact 1: this came to the attention of the developers because Khora could heal Oplinks. Vazarin was not able to do this.

Fact 2: Vazarin in its original form could not heal objects. This ability came to us recently.

Fact 3: players didn't abuse oplinks healing on this event, because at high levels, oplinks were oneshoted for mobs. Now check what the players really abused.

Fact 4: limbo expected a nerf where he could only apply 50% DR to objects when an opponent fires outside of the rift, but this didn't happen. Although Limbo, this is exactly what the players were abusing when I didn't see any Khoras in my mission.

Fact 5: vazarin couldn't heal an object when it took damage. Yes, invulnerability made it possible to heal him, because he didn't actually take damage during invulnerability, but you had to do it 2 to 3 times to completely heal him. That is, vazarin could only heal an object during the object's natural regeneration. So, the usual removal of invulnerability and adding this effect to all strong healing abilities could solve this problem?

I don't think it was a problem before this event. And personally, like many players, I don't understand why healing has become a problem. Before vazarin, there was always an easier way to protect an object. Just look at this:

And now vazarin, trinity, garuda have become a problem? Why?