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Upcoming Protea Changes!


[DE]Megan
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5 hours ago, Ikusias said:

So far I'm getting the bad impression that De development team spent 90% of its time on Protea's rewind ability and than slapped whatever leftover ideas from other frames to fill her remaining power slots...

Her kit makes no sense:  her 1-3 powers are a worse vauban's kit, while her 4th power is from a completely different theme!

Maybe it would have been better if her entire kit was related to time control sheaningans considering the core of her questline?

As she is she lacks focus.

I believe Protea  is themed well enough, but in typical DE fashion they perhaps forgot to emphasize what that theme is.

Protea is not, per se, a time-themed frame. She is rather a dimension-themed frame. While her gadgets are ostensibly stowed in the various pockets and pouches about her waist, she deploys them in an extra-dimensional manner. She holds a practically limitless supply of both shrapnel grenades and shield enhancers from pouches at her thighs. Both the turret and the dispensary emerge nearly instantaneously from about her person, and they in turn produce flaming gun rounds and support supplies respectively, seemingly from the very ether. And her ultimate ability, to manipulate the very essence of time (which is yet another dimension as many view it) gives full expression to her iconography as the mistress of dimensional mastery. She suffers, it seems to me, not from a lack of coherent design but rather from a lack of proper public relations and advertising. In other words, she's  a victim of the developers not adequately conveying what her focus is and not from a lack of said focus.
 

Spoiler

Even in the game's narrative, her value to Parvos Granum was not in simply bending time to her will, but in rescuing (and some may interpret, imprisoning) the Corpus founder within a pocket dimension in the Void. It was in this rescue that Protea "splintered" herself across the Void dimension, becoming a virtual specter of her former self. This unthinking echo of the original Protea only acts on her last directive: protect Granum at all costs (which is why he is for all practicality a captive of Protea within this pocket realm.) It is only in crafting the Xoris and using it to charge the weapon on those specter particles that the Tenno is ultimately able to defeat this corrupted version of Protea. This explains Parvos Granum's rather perplexing message of gratitude at the conclusion of the chapter.


Enough of the lore, what can be done to tie up some loose ends and make her a bit more cohesive?

Grenade Fan: First off, either eliminate or greatly mitigate that hop animation. I've seen plenty of shrapnel grenades get stuck on geometry overhead because she's attempting to lay-up the grenades. Since the name of the skill is "Grenade Fan", have the animation depict her tossing the grenades in broad-cast fashion in front of her. I'd like to see their damage scale  a bit better, but since they appear to be more of a crowd control device than an actual damage dealer, I would appreciate any bump they gave to their performance. They should also address some of the brighter colors: once a Protea player spams their brightly-hued grenades in an area, it tends to get a bit "bloomy" and can start to blow-out the visuals. 

Speaking specifically to her shield grenades, there should be four grenades in the cluster she throws. Each player who passes over a grenade has the effect applied to him/her AND to their companion with the same single grenade and not collect multiples of it. The grenades on the ground should be a bit more obvious than they are currently in case someone is trying to actually avoid picking them up (i.e., frames who require a damaged state to effect their own abilities, such as Chroma or Garuda.)

Blaze Artillery: Ideally, I'd love to see this be an exalted weapon, capable of being modded. Regardless, the ability needs to be able to effectively scale with the content a warframe is engaging. Having them last long enough to be worthwhile, while avoiding a "fire-and-forget" playstyle, is the dilemma the developers face. Whether this comes from additional rounds, harder-hitting rounds, or tethering the turret(s) to Protea (or a combination of these), a conclusion that encourages active playstyle on the part of the player while also remaining relevant at higher levels is the point of balancing this ability.

Dispensary: I don't necessarily have a problem with this, although if I had my 'druthers, I'd like to see the "piñata candy" that comes out of this actually come in clusters of all three resources. In other words, one each of a red healing sphere, blue energy sphere and ammo cache at once. These triplets could continue to emerge periodically as they do now for players to consume, rather than waiting for the right resource a player needs at that moment to eventually "pop" in sequence. The result might be less burst relief but more sustainable support over the long haul while the Dispensary is out. One additional thing: the dispensary at casual glance looks similar to a three-lobed plant (upon closer inspection, it does tend to have a more technical appearance.) However, I say embrace the plant connection. Protea is actually a flowering plant, sometimes called a "sugarbush", which are noted by their pointed and often spiked foliage on the main flowers and are said to represent change and hope. Such a tie-in would perhaps explain her name.

Temporal Anchor: This is a toughy. I see the ability as a "holy crap" ability, more akin to the Prince of Persia's time rewind in "Sands of Time" than to Tracer's in Overwatch. If the Prince was trying a wall run and flubbed it, he could rewind to the point before he made the error, perhaps even cheating death itself in the process. Being able to engage this ability, perhaps even up to the point where he comes back from being downed, would make this a truly valuable skill and less likely to be squandered. It's not without precedent in the game; both Inaros and Nidus have limited forms of self-rez under certain conditions. Having the ability to use this skill to come back from a downed state, even if it meant the skill went on a reasonable cool-down or some other limiting factor to keep this from being abused would be incredibly cool and in keeping with Protea's dimension-bending aura.

Okay, sorry for the wall o' text. I'm sure whatever DE has in mind to bring the new frame's abilities into relevance will be undertaken soon.

*looks over at Nyx

Then again...? 🤨

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On 2020-06-19 at 1:51 AM, [DE]Megan said:

Blaze Artillery

  • Increased Duration of Blaze Artillery by 1 second, and doubled the Damage multiplier to compete against higher level enemies. Duration will now show in Arsenal stats instead of the maximum number of shots.
  • Protea’s Blaze Artillery will now shoot through Volt’s Shield, but won't benefit from its buffs.
  • Fixed Protea’s Blaze Artillery not targeting ragdolled enemies. 

Our goal here is to keep the spirit of the rapid fire Artillery alive, with just a bit more punch. We will monitor for feedback after this change as well. 

Can you add a mechanic to this ability? if it gets a kill duration of it increases slightly with a max cap and damage also amps up after each kill. ult is meh anyways. thanks

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@StarGeezerTim Interesting analysis of Protea's theme. I'd like to think that her gadgets are stored within a Void-time loop, that each device originates from the original ones on her belt, and Protea can manifest temporal duplicates into reality for temporary usage. That would explain why these gadgets cannot be destroyed by conventional attacks, how there are an unending supply of them, and that they fade out of existence.

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These Changes won't solve Protea's problems at all. Here the most changes were made on an ability (1) that wasn't even the greatest problem of Protea. You should have cared more about her 2 and 4. 

Blaze Artillery should finally get its high duration it deserves as a turret ability. You worry about having an ability that plays the game for you, but how is this possible when Nullifiers exist. And how can you worry in the first place when abilities like Wukong's Celestial Twin exist, which is basically a walking turret. No Vauban scaling, no scaling based on primary weapons, no exalted weapon, just a simple high duration increase will make this ability good and gives protea a unique position among other Warframes.

The Problem in Temporal Anchor is that it is, first, nearly unusable in many missions (Capture, Exterminate, Sabotage, Spy, Rescue) because you can't simply progress and second the ability forces you to rewind when the timer is up, which can sometimes be annoying. Both problems can be simply solved by making Temporal Anchor a channeled ability so that the player can decide when he wants to rewind.

Overall, I like the buff of Grenade Fan and the location marker of Dispensary is a necessary addition.

What also would be a good addition is a buff of Protea's Passive. Instead of just giving the Player 100% Strength. Why no give the player 100% Strength, 100% Range, 100% Duration, and (maybe also) 100% Efficiency. At the moment player do not really care what abilities get the Passive buff, this would give it a bit more significance.

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10 minutes ago, NekronisXV said:

The Problem in Temporal Anchor is that it is, first, nearly unusable in many missions (Capture, Exterminate, Sabotage, Spy, Rescue) because you can't simply progress and second the ability forces you to rewind when the timer is up, which can sometimes be annoying. Both problems can be simply solved by making Temporal Anchor a channeled ability so that the player can decide when he wants to rewind.

That would be an issue but you are able to cancel the ability, if u activate it and say don't need it just HOLD the key and it uncasts without rolling you back. This way it can act as a "second life".

11 minutes ago, NekronisXV said:

What also would be a good addition is a buff of Protea's Passive. Instead of just giving the Player 100% Strength. Why no give the player 100% Strength, 100% Range, 100% Duration, and (maybe also) 100% Efficiency. At the moment player do not really care what abilities get the Passive buff, this would give it a bit more significance.

Passives are supposed to aid in gameplay, giving 100% to everything will make Protea way to broken.

12 minutes ago, NekronisXV said:

Blaze Artillery should finally get its high duration it deserves as a turret ability. You worry about having an ability that plays the game for you, but how is this possible when Nullifiers exist. And how can you worry in the first place when abilities like Wukong's Celestial Twin exist, which is basically a walking turret. No Vauban scaling, no scaling based on primary weapons, no exalted weapon, just a simple high duration increase will make this ability good and gives protea a unique position among other Warframes.

Increasing the duration won't help this, I think scaling is more necessary. The aim of this ability is a short burst of good damage, not a long burst of mediocre.

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On 2020-06-20 at 2:04 PM, JackHargreav said:

Thing is, if you cast this ability and put down Dispensary you get back energy you spend during the ability and also once the ability rewinds back you get the energy from Dispensary.

Tho you kinda have to have some efficiency. Point is, energy isn't the biggest problem with this ability. It's the usage that can be really situational.

I know,
But, her ultimate works the other way too, if u gain energy in her ult, you will lose it when it finishes (and if u cancel it, you still lose the energy, what it shouldn't happen...) and energy is rly not the problem because of ur 3th, if u play like stationary (not) turret spammer...


The question is, idk about u guys, but, her 4th now is just to spam abilities, and this is kinda sad for such a cool concept. Btw, the changes i proposed dont kill at all that mechanic, only make her more dynamic... the necessity to press the skill to activate an anchor so u can back in time in that moment is kinda weird... (Take tracer from overwatch, or in this case, ekko from league of legends as exemples, if her ult works like ekko, should be perfect imo...)


Dispensary works fine, but a i fell making it more mobile (or buffing it a little) wont break the game, or at least, lower seconds that he takes to replenishes the last consumible that u used... 

Edited by Mendonza
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On 2020-06-18 at 9:00 PM, Ailia_Grimm said:

Her 4 should just rewind whenever, holding the ability rewinds further but drains more energy, instead of having to anchor

The tech for this kind of behavior with her 4 does not exist. The temporal anchor activates a start time for data to be stored for her rewind. What you're describing would require persistent data storage through the entire mission and would inevitably disrupt core game mechanics and/or framerate/latency (would need to be saved for each client independent of the host).

18 hours ago, NekronisXV said:

Blaze Artillery should finally get its high duration it deserves as a turret ability. You worry about having an ability that plays the game for you, but how is this possible when Nullifiers exist. And how can you worry in the first place when abilities like Wukong's Celestial Twin exist, which is basically a walking turret

Thank you very much for drawing this comparison.

Wukong's Celestial Twin is the closest we've gotten to any persistent helper abilities (Venari is a passive so I'm not including it). I am not sure why there is such a reluctance to introduce more persistent helpers.

Equinox has the augment that splits her forms and the duration on the ability is so low that it is near useless. Maggots from Pathocyst and strain mod set are useless as well. 

Unfortunately there is a sincere hesitation to add layers of complexity with extra entities in the missions. I am not sure if the developers are afraid of it affecting performance or what, but it is a real bummer.

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16 minutes ago, Leqesai said:

The tech for this kind of behavior with her 4 does not exist. The temporal anchor activates a start time for data to be stored for her rewind. What you're describing would require persistent data storage through the entire mission and would inevitably disrupt core game mechanics and/or framerate/latency (would need to be saved for each client independent of the host).

Read my other post, already replied to this same argument

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3 hours ago, Mendonza said:

and energy is rly not the problem because of ur 3th, if u play like stationary (not) turret spammer...

I don't feel like my 3th helps me (I heard it's nice for teammates) for gaining energy.

 

3 hours ago, Mendonza said:

The question is, idk about u guys, but, her 4th now is just to spam abilities, and this is kinda sad for such a cool concept.

You can spam only 2 abilities, 2nd seems to be ok. I cannot make 1st work.
She can spam other things like Azima's 2nd, or have "infinite" heavy attacks without destroying your combo.
On the other hands, you can check corridors using her 4th. I heard people used her for interception.

She still isn't the best for all mission types.

 

 

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15 hours ago, Ailia_Grimm said:

Read my other post, already replied to this same argument

Your other reply still didn't address the technical issue with your idea and why it would require different tech to function the way you describe/imagine.

On 2020-06-21 at 12:09 AM, SmokinDice said:

MOST people, dont even complain about her powerlevel, its about her playstyle, and this "ability spamming" is exactly the problem. its terrible.

 

This is the primary issue with Protea. She is too reliant on short-duration abilities and is intrinsically designed around the concept of spamming abilities (even her passive is built off of this concept, giving 1/5 of her abilities bonus power strength which emphasizes rapid-use).

 

Buffing the grenade duration by 3s is a huge improvement though. And upping Blaze Artillery by 1s with increased damage is also very good. 

 

The most unfortunate thing about her 4 is that they hyper-incentivise spamming abilities because all energy is refunded while it is active. 

The 4 isn't really useful as a survivability option, it isn't really useful in terms of forward momentum during a majority of mission types (IE rescue, spy, capture, exterminate, defection) and it really isn't more useful than just standing near her 3 and casting abilities normally. If there were like 90% damage reduction while active I could see much more use for it as a defensive ability but the penalty for going down while it is active is too significant for it to be that viable IMO. It has happened multiple times where I went down with the 4 active and immediately went down once I was forced back to the anchor point. 

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22 hours ago, Darkmatt3r said:

Can you add a mechanic to this ability? if it gets a kill duration of it increases slightly with a max cap and damage also amps up after each kill. ult is meh anyways. thanks

your asking for an augment, no? this is what normally happens, right? 

15 hours ago, Leqesai said:

Thank you very much for drawing this comparison.

Wukong's Celestial Twin is the closest we've gotten to any persistent helper abilities (Venari is a passive so I'm not including it). I am not sure why there is such a reluctance to introduce more persistent helpers.

Equinox has the augment that splits her forms and the duration on the ability is so low that it is near useless. Maggots from Pathocyst and strain mod set are useless as well. 

Unfortunately there is a sincere hesitation to add layers of complexity with extra entities in the missions. I am not sure if the developers are afraid of it affecting performance or what, but it is a real bummer.


Venari a passive ? when you can target an enemy directly, extra damage for ensure and you can mod for her. that's not a passive that's a Weapon you can use Passively

equinox augment is and augment lowered expectations of the rip , Celestial twin isn't an augment  so that's apples and oranges to me. and its not useless it has use. just  not useful to you 

it doesn't justify it but for the simple fact that you can rewind the ability and get free energy back the duration is gonna be low. it actually warrants low duration 

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So 1 key should have infinite range and duration and copies. Same with 2, and 3. 4 key should last until cancelled. 

On 2020-06-18 at 1:11 PM, Magus_Tahir said:

The amount of processing/memory power needed to be recording constantly to make this work whenever is kinda the reason this wont happen. At least not in the way one would expect.  Have a few ideas Id have to watch Doctor Who for a bit again to get it all down.

How would it require any more processing power than keeping her 4 key up all the time currently would? It'd just save up to a maximum time based on your duration. So for example 10 seconds. It'll rewind you 10 seconds ago. But that makes it a bit harder to keep track of. I like that you take a snapshot then keep going then go back there. That's really nice. But its garbage on any/all mobile missions. Great on defense, ok on survival and mobile defense. Garbage on most else. I think I'd prefer it if you'd rewind health, energy, ammo, etc without moving your location even if that would sacrifice a bit of the "cool" factor of her rewinding. Maybe if you hold it you dismiss it early but still rewind but at your current location? But then you have to remember to hold it rather than press it. I guess it could have 2 mods. Mobile and stationary anchor based on whether or not you held it when you pressed it initially. I think stationary should be the held version. 

3 key should either be infinite or follow you around. (I'd prefer the later to help make it a little more unique from Wisp).

2 key I think take away the ability to have more than 1 up (doesn't make sense anyways as its part of her body) and greatly increase the duration. It's almost an exalted weapons as it's part of her body so making it module would be awesome but doubt it'll happen. It needs to scale better.

1 key mostly needs to scale better and I think they need to be a little tighter so their isn't gaps in the aoe if you through it outside of under your feet. Like it should be more consistent in how far apart the orbs are instead of spreading so much but that's just me. Idk if that's shared with anyone.

Oh another thing about her 4 key! The nuke aspect. Radius needs to be bigger and with punch-through objects and such. And the damage scaling needs to be 100% all the time. Instead of starting at like what 25%? and going up based on strength. Strength should increase it ABOVE 100% damage absorption. 

Edited by Velaethia
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9 minutes ago, Velaethia said:

I guess it could have 2 mods

I suggested 2-way here.

12 minutes ago, Velaethia said:

How would it require any more processing power than keeping her 4 key up all the time currently would?

Keep in mind in current state you only keep, let's say, 20 seconds of your gameplay's states. It doesn't keep it all the time (you need to activate it).
Now imagine you have to keep it all the time. You play for 30 minutes. That's 1800 states (assuming 1 state per second). It's still possible but there should be some limitations (e.g you can only rewind up to few minutes in the past).

 

1 hour ago, Velaethia said:

 

3 key should either be infinite or follow you around. (I'd prefer the later to help make it a little more unique from Wisp).

If it follows you around you won't have energy after you end 4th.

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12 hours ago, Leqesai said:

Equinox has the augment that splits her forms and the duration on the ability is so low that it is near useless.

Up to about 30 seconds per cast (if fully modded for duration, the only stat that influences duality in any way) of triple weapon damage aimbot would make Equinox clones a strong contender for highest damage output in the game. The problem is the AI that makes Equinox/Wukong clones wander around randomly and lose line of fire/shoot at walls all the time, not the duration.

Blaze artillery turrets won't move away from optimal positioning and can easily shoot enemies for the entire duration. Having a walking turret in Warframe is arguably worse than having a stationary turret, and Protea's kit is entirely built for highly stationary play anyway.

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Would be nice if the 4 had the AoE explosion on both ends. Explosion draws enemies in, but I'm not near them unless I ran in circles. 

What if, while rewinding, Protea recast all her abilities? Or just reset the duration? 

What if the duration on her abilities didn't count down AT ALL during her 4? That might be TOO crazy.

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il y a 2 minutes, Melanholic7 a dit :

they announced this almost 5 days(!) ago....can we finaly have changes to freaking skill numbers?:O  You know, like change turret duration from 1.5 to 2.5 in ur code and etc. How is this can be a problem for so long time?

One can hope they are reviewing the pre-feedback of the incoming changes to make em better...

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9 минут назад, dwqrf сказал:

One can hope they are reviewing the pre-feedback of the incoming changes to make em better...

hm, didnt thought about it. Well, if this will be a real thing - im ashamed and wrong 😄 ty for the idea.

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1 час назад, (XB1)GearsMatrix301 сказал:

Looks promising. Definitely addresses the issues people had with her kit. Hope it’s enough.

well, she will be max tier sorties lvl frame.If we will speak about efficient kills/etc. BUT. But. She is kinda fun ALREADY, just cause her playstyle. Yes, low dmg. But even tho, i liked to play her after release. So, after buffs she wont be blablabla strong frame, but she will be even more fun to play 🙂 I dunno, she really feels like a breath of fresh air 😄 She is not one button=kill all, she isnt even "one button press" at all. :3 God praise Protea! 😮 

Edited by Melanholic7
typo
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