The Helminth: Dev Workshop

[(XBOX)RAG is NAROK]

This is nice and I am very excited. Still I do hope that we will receive augment mods for some of these abilities that are lacking some soon. Like Khora's Ensnare. I am still looking for an augment mod for this ability (preferable something that isn't a repeat and of the Rest & Rage and Lull augments). 

[(PSN)Lillekri]

Roar.. no way. Whoever made this list didn't consult with the higher-ups.

[Whiteraid]

13 minutes ago, (XB1)VAPELYN JENNER said:

realized that my post was invalid.  We can get quest duplicated from simaris.  However that is a lot of standing to pay.  Seems like a huge grind for minimal reward.  Anyone else praying for a standing cost reduction?

They already said they are cutting all frame with simaris by half

[(XBOX)VAPELYN JENNER]

Just now, Whiteraid said:

They already said they are cutting all frame with simaris by half

Thank you.  I will hold off on buying them.  I guess i missed that.  I was really worried.  I have one of every frame but i deleted the bases when i got the primes and didnt want to get rid of my only copy of others for the helminth system.  

[-CdG-Zilchy]

20 minutes ago, Lokime said:

Savage Silence on Loki 😄

Shooting gallery on savage silence banshee lol

[Lockhart77]

So for Buff abilities, its limitation only applies to damage functionality, while the buff skills affecting survival or QoL like mesa's shatter shield doesn't fall into these limitation right.

[Sasuda]

There's a lot of combos people don't realize the power of. Mind Control and Decoy are probably the only useless ones. Banish also has pretty minimal potential. There's a couple others that have relatively low potential compared to others Shuriken, Ice Wave, Tempest Barrage, and Xata's Whisper. Although all of those are at least decent still.
PERSPICACITY also seems useless for a MR15+ player, especially with the parazon mod.

[ICA-970326-47]

After reading the note carefully. The new system seems interesting but also concerning.

The core issue is----with some of the "iconic abilities" taken away from the original frame, some frame will have their unique role taken to be universal, THERE MAYBE LESS TO NONE REASON TO PLAY THESE FRAMES ANYMORE.

Frames like Equinox witch has a lot of different play styles will suffer less. While Equinox Rest&Rage for all frames means every frame can put entire map into sleep easily and quickly by just spamming her 2. Min-max this ability on Equinox is now rather less favorable since you can get better combination by put Rest&Rage on other frames. Equinox would be left for her other available play style such as AOE nuke or consistent tank/CC/Ability Strength buff from her 3.

However, frames like Valkyr will suffer a lot, definitely. War Cry is the ability which form her core play style. There is rather less variety to build Valkyr if you ignore the War Cry (Claws only, 3 for finisher, etc). Universalize the War Cry basically means a large proportion of Valkyr's role in team play and uniqueness of game play experience is taken away from her. Then why would you ever use her anymore if you are not a Claw fans?

Overall, I believe we should be more careful about what ability should become universal.

Below are some of my personal comments and questions regarding to the abilities chosen.

WARFRAME	ABILITY	AUGMENT	DEV NOTES
Ash	Shuriken	Seeking Shuriken	Nowadays, LV300 Grinner can be shred like papers in SOLO even without Ash. Now with complete armor removal on every frame, Grinner will become a bigger joke. Also, many people play ash for the Seeking Shuriken but not the Blade Storm since it's a much more efficient killing ability when combined with weapons. Make this universal will reduce people's reason to play Ash. I personally think his 3 is better to be given. The teleportation+finisher offers superb mobility and some unique techniques. While also been a less powerful ability in terms of overall sustain dps.
Atlas	Petrify	Ore Gaze	We will not create Rubble. Not sure if this work together with Nekros' Desecrate as ultimate farming ability.
Banshee	Silence	Savage Silence
Baruuk	Lull	Endless Lullaby	Can be easily overshadowed by Equinox's Rest&Rage for CC, except the ability to reset alarming status quickly. Consider Baruuk's other abilities are too unique with his theme. Recommend change what Equinox can give.
Chroma	Elemental Ward	Everlasting Ward
Ember	Fire Blast	Healing Flame
Equinox	Rest & Rage	Calm & Frenzy	We will use Rest or Rage depending on your Energy Colour. Rest is a superb CC that can make many other CC abilities completely not worth picking (Baruuk Lull, Excalibur Blind, etc). While eliminate the purpose of play Equinox to a certain extent (Adaro Focus Farming and any situation you need reliable CC).  Recommend change what Equinox can give to her 3rd ability since it fits tank/support role and emphasis team cooperation.
Excalibur	Radial Blind	Radiant Finish
Frost	Ice Wave	Ice Wave Impede
Gara	Spectrorage	Spectrosiphon
Garuda	Blood Altar	n/a
Gauss	Thermal Sunder	n/a
Grendel	Nourish	n/a	Keeps the heal and give Nourish Strike only.
Harrow	Condemn	Tribunal	CC+easy shield/overshield on every frame, can be overshadowed by  Hildryn's Pillage easily for survivability (if developers decide to keep the OP Pillage). The argument mod is meaningless too. His 2 is more unique as a buff ability for many other frames to use. However, either the fire rate buff or the healing should be removed. (Imagine more fire rate/self healing for Peacemaker)
Hildryn	Pillage	Blazing Pillage	Drains 50 Energy instead of 50 Shield. This is extremely overpowered and can make most of other survivability ability not worth picking (eg. Harrow Condemn).  Yes we do have efficient overshield-generate abilities such as MAG 4 / Volt 4 with argument. But those are ultimate abilities that cannot be given to other frames.  Pillage is an AOE shield/armor removal (even more busted with argument mod) and nearly instant max overshield with a fairly cheap cost. This is too OP especially since Hildryn herself cannot cast Pillage when her shield is depleted, requiring careful game play and movement. But other frames can since they are using energy instead of shield. In addition, Pillage function as a core component of Hildryn's game play. Take this universal makes Hildryn less unique in game play experience and team role. I believe her 3 should be the one to become universal. A supportive channeling ability for team survivabliity with a bit damage. Not overpowered, not making Hildryn less unique, and can solve Harrow's issue potentially (Condemn is way less efficient compare with Pillage, but Thurible is potentially OP on some frames.)
Hydroid	Tempest Barrage	Corroding Barrage
Inaros	Desiccation	Desiccation’s Curse
Ivara	Quiver	Empowered Quiver	Tap Cloak, Hold Noise. Augment only affects Cloak and Dashwire. Invisibility on every frame+mad damage from Dashwire argument.....are you sure about this? One recommendation, either universalize her 2, or pick some of the arrows from the Conclave Version of her 1. Slow enemies and shield removal are all pretty decent.
Khora	Ensnare	n/a
Limbo	Banish	Rift Haven	Base Ability Change: Add ‘Cancel ability on Hold’ to let enemies out of Rift. How would the hold function affect a teammate Limbo and his banished targets already in the rift?
Loki	Decoy	Savior Decoy
Mag	Pull	Greedy Pull
Mesa	Shooting Gallery	Muzzle Flash
Mirage	Eclipse	Total Eclipse	Same as Rhino Roar, 600%+damage and 95% damage reduction on every frame, ARE YOU SURE?
Nekros	Terrify	Creeping Terrify
Nezha	Fire Walker	Pyroclastic Flow
Nidus	Larva	Larva Burst
Nova	Null Star	Neutron Star
Nyx	Mind Control	Mind Freak
Oberon	Smite	Smite Infusion
Octavia	Resonator	Conductor
Protea	Dispensary	n/a	Unlimited energy, ammo, strong healing for every frame. Also this ability has some crazy synergies with Combat Disciplines+equilibrium+any arcane triggered by taking HP damage. Make one of the core reason why people like Protea universal. ARE YOU SURE? Would recommend her 1 to become universal. Could be a good addition for frames like Vauban. (But can be overshadowed by Hildryn's Pillage easily if developers decided to keep that.)
Revenant	Reave	Blinding Reave
Rhino	Roar	Piercing Roar	Same as Mirage Eclipse. Imaging a Saryn / Mesa / Equinox / Octavia with Roar........
Saryn	Molt	Regen Molt
Titania	Spellbind	Spellbound Harvest
Trinity	Well Of Life	Pool of Life	Base Ability Buffed - Now does small amount of heal over time over a large range. If you hit the enemy, a % of the damage dealt gets converted into AoE heal.
Valkyr	Warcry	Eternal War	Mentioned above. War Cry is one of the iconic abilities Valkyr has. It affect her general play style and building method a lot. Make this universal means much less reason to play Valkyr besides Claw only game play. Personally I believe her 3 should be the choice to become universal, but perhaps most players would be more happy with her 2.....
Vauban	Tesla Nervos	Tesla Bank
Volt	Shock	Shock Trooper
Wisp	Breach Surge	n/a
Wukong	Defy	n/a
Xaku	Xata’s Whisper	n/a
Zephyr	Airburst	n/a	Base Ability Buffed - now has a HOLD or TAP functionality. HOLD to receive original functionality. TAP to suck enemies in a wind Vortex.

[(XBOX)MetalxPhoenix]

3 minutes ago, ICA-970326-47 said:

some frame will have their unique role taken to be universal, THERE MAYBE LESS TO NONE REASON TO PLAY THESE FRAMES ANYMORE.

bUt mUH pOweR fAntASY

That's what I've been trying to say. Those abilities need to be switched asap.

[King_Flounder]

10 hours ago, [DE]Rebecca said:

What about Damage buffing Abilities?

As you can see, we have two Abilities that increase damage: Mirage’s Eclipse, and Rhino’s Roar. We are creating a special case for these Abilities when infused on Warframes with similar Abilities (i.e Chroma, Mirage, Rhino, Octavia). When you infuse these, you will receive a prompt that you can only have 1 Damage Buffing ability at a time, and thus you are limited to replacing said ability type. Which is to say - Damage Buffing abilities can only be swapped with Damage Buffing Abilities on Warframes that already have them. However, that limitation does not apply to the other 30+ Warframes. 

I am still worried this will break the game and create unintentional interactions. Lots of sleep and blinds here. As well as incredible buffs. We all know this is going to get finishers/sleep broken or reworked in a way that may make the game purely worse. 

[RWVY]

10 hours ago, ---Swaggi--- said:

Rhino Roar and Mirage Eclipse. Plz tell me you guys were drunk when finishing this list? THIS is gonna be game breaking let me tell u that...
YOU HAVE TO make changes here! You cant release it as it is! HOLY!!! Sure just let the player transfer a huge Dmg Buff Ability to every Warframe lul... Oh and the Tribunal Augment for Harrows make literally no sense since we dont have the ability 2 and 3...
This is getting out of control pretty quickly thats for sure!
I was not a fan of this system to begin with and now you guys are about to release transferrable Abilities that makes the whole PvE Content a complete mess. Think about Frames like Mesa, Khora or other huge DPS Frames. Now add Roar or Eclipse to it... Do you notice sth? I hope so...

Do you play warframe at all? roar is a team ability already shared by every frame in a squad with rhino.. and eclipse has an augment that also shares it with teammates. So roar, and eclipse is already possible on all frames, actually have been possible for years. But sure, it is going to break the game...

[ICA-970326-47]

5分钟前 , (XB1)MetalxPhoenix 说:

bUt mUH pOweR fAntASY

That's what I've been trying to say. Those abilities need to be switched asap.

Good point, I understand that balance does not means fun. What I am asking is to maintain the uniqueness of frames and try to point out some significant issue with certain abilities such as Hildryn's Pillage or Equinox's Rest&Rage.

From the perspective of the new system. We want to have more different ability available to use on different frames. Pillage is way too good that makes Condemn and many other survival abilities useless, while Rest&Rage too good that Lull and Radial Blind are less favorable. Hence there is an opportunity lost. We lost the opportunity to offer players other unique ability from these frames by create a very clear meta. Which I believe is against the reason why we want the ability swap system----more variety in game play.

Besides, for cases like Valkyr. I believe a 'Valkyr with better ability sets(swap her 1 / 3)' is better than "make another frame a better Valkyr".

[kwlingo]

10 hours ago, Gaikki said:

ya really gotta read the whole post. You can only activate one dmg buff ability at a time.

Well that is a waste than lol

[Larred]

1 hour ago, Shinzann said:

Oh yeah... forgot about that. 😕

not tencent, i think it is leyou (spelling?) tencent was looking at buying it though 

[(XBOX)MetalxPhoenix]

2 hours ago, MrFrog9 said:

I'm going to add to the list of people saying that Roar being transferable is absolutely not okay, for 3 reasons:

Roar is incongruent to how most frames's kits are designed and balanced, and having it be transferable violates how the ability itself is balanced. Roar allows any given frame to unconditionally double their damage output if built even somewhat properly. On Rhino, this is fine, because his other 3 abilities are all utility and not typically used for damage (except Stomp which has some application as a trash clear). Conversely, many frames are presumably balanced around the fact that they do NOT have access to an unconditional damage increase unless provided to them by a teammate. Assigning Roar arbitrarily, however, breaks this basic design principle.

Roar is heads, tails, leaps, and bounds better than pretty much any ability on this list. Except for the special cases (already a symptom of terrible design) where you can't transfer Roar, is there really any frame in the game that would choose some okay-but-not-astounding CC or utility over the ability to just flat-out deal more damage and presumably directly contribute to clearing a mission faster?

Making Roar transferable will more or less render Rhino himself irrelevant. Yes, Iron Skin and Stomp are nice, but I'm pretty sure Rhino's main utility and his contribution to any given mission objective is his ability to drastically boost the damage output of his entire team including himself, and that function can now be lifted from him and assigned to another frame which will then not only be able to do his job, but whatever job they already natively do.

Roar is literally a role-defining talent which has no place being transferable freely at all let alone being on the same list of options as things like Airburst or friggin' Shock.

(The above criticisms apply to the other damage boosters on the list (Eclipse, Nourish, etc.) to an extent but Roar gets my attention for being especially odious.)

Thank you. I've been trying to get this point across.

[JaddowTheKnight]

For Chroma's Elemental Ward, how would that work on other Warframes?

Will it follow the same rules (Emissive Color determines Element), or will it be defaulted to Fire or something?

 

If it does follow the same Rules as it does with Chroma, can you consider updating his passive, as it would be rather useless.

(I would prefer a general QoL update to him, but one step at a time, yeah?)

[z3us32610]

I just wanna see the animation of Ivara Roaring 😊

[MrFrog9]

Addendum, even though it's probably better not to engage in here, because this keeps coming up and it bugs me:

Receiving a buff from a Rhino and being able to apply the buff yourself are very much different.

Why?

Two words: Role Compression.

In order to receive Roar from a Rhino, you by definition need to have a Rhino on your team. The whole Rhino. The entire Rhino. Just for one ability to be used on you. This functionally consumes a team slot which is a limited resource (only 4 per mission).

If you have Roar yourself, you are now doing your frame's native job along with what would have been Rhino's job all in one team slot, meaning the slot on your team that would normally need to be occupied by Rhino is now freed. This means it can now be filled with a different frame, such as, say, another DPS with another wildly-inappropriate ability from the list (let's go with Nourished Strike, so we now have two multiplicative party damage buffs being thrown around).

Also receiving buffs from teammates is entirely immaterial when playing solo but I think the nuances of designing a single player game are probably outside the scope of this workshop so I'm not going to really touch that beyond this brief acknowledgement.

[Avadir]

12 hours ago, [DE]Rebecca said:

What is Subsuming? 
In addition to Helminth’s own Abilities, you can Subsume a Warframe to obtain 1 specific Ability permanently in Helminth’s memory (list below). We do not allow the Subsuming of any Prime Warframes, but you can Infuse Abilities on Prime Warframes! 

Why not prime? Im ready yo subsum any prime

[Univarous]

12 hours ago, --Q--Candy said:

This is incorrect. You have stuff like Volt - Shock there. With the Augment this is a crazy Ability to increase dmg. Can we get a limitation there too?

Shuriken + Seekign Shuriken = Remove Armor from all enemies... Now even grineer are a joke like all other factions.
Rest & Rage = Now you can bee your own Sleep Equinox to power level / fokus farm.
Nourish = Extremly strong toxin buff. The quote from above applies here.
Smite + Smite Infusion = Same thing as the Quote applies here and it even has scaling dmg...
Dispensary = Endless Energy for all Warframes.... This doesnt seem broken at all...

This system needs Heavy Nerfs and active maintenance.This has the potential to kill the balance in this game forever. If it will be relased like this and wont get balanced very often you can say goodbye to all sorts of Balance in this game.
I hope that you will do something about this, else we can say goodbye to ever have any challenge in this game.

 

(Shutout to the comment from --Q--FSK41 a few posts down. This System will kill everything)

On one hand, I'm salivating at all the combinations and covering what certain frames lack (Ash and widespread CC) and to enhance certain frames (Ash and breach surge).

 

On the other hand, I gotta agree with this post and any others. I've already said to my normal teammates that DE is too ignorant to balance these and we're about to get a lot of OP combinations. I don't want to see them snatch up the changes or nerf everything into the ground right when the update is less than two weeks away. I would advise reaching out to a few Warframe vets (10 or more) and get their opinion on it and average out their answers. The other option is to watch the subreddit on the day after release and for the next week after.

[DragonsRain]

A couple friends and I are wondering, do you need to still infect the sacrificial frame with a cyst?

we would like to know this before we commit to this extra layer of potential timegated grind.

[Xaero]

11 hours ago, (PS4)jockhotty said:

The workshop answered the question about rank of warframe to infuse. That detail didnt seem to bother anyone lse tho-

Well, Pablo answered this question in Twittet the day after Tennocon, so it's not a surprise.

[DalanorTheLlama]

There are a few abilities i would reconsider changing.  

Equinox: Way too strong AoE CC to give out. Large range and radius becomes a problem when it's easy to spam. Suggest to go for Pacify & provoke.
Ivara: Invisibility in any way shape or from is broken in this game. Period. Suggest to change it to Navigator.
Mirage: Considering how much bonus it can give when build for it makes it a huge no no. Overall a very wonky ability due to how lighting works which kinda balances it out but still strong. Suggest to change it to Sleight of hand.
Nyx: Mind control is very signature to her so it shouldn't be added to the list in the first place. Suggest to change it to Psychic bolts which would open up more builds. Sure it's cheaper and works without an augment compared to Shuriken but the target limit keeps it in check.
Octavia: Turning of AI around the player doesn't sound good so i suggest change this to Amp. As a stationary damage buff it's already limited.
Rhino: Giving out Roar narrows down the good abilities the player wants to choose from this system. As the only (?) multiplicative buff it throws everything else out of the water. Suggest to change this to Rhino charge.

[master_of_destiny]

I want to be excited here.  What I'm seeing though is raising a lot of red flags.  Let's cover them:

 

1) The Helminth section is buried deep in the syndicate rewards...How deep?  Bad word choice aside, are we looking at getting to full standing and then requiring another 100k standing just to purchase?  Remember, it takes about a week to unlock everything based upon the previous syndicates, so is this going to be another thing that will release but not be accessible for another week because of the grind?  Maybe defining this will be good.

2) Fully ranked means infinite slots for subsume.  How much?  Based upon what you are showing us this might be quite expensive, and you haven't shown us any gating mechanisms.  No daily limits, no material return decreases.  Not even actual costing.  I'm not looking forward to having to come back every day to sacrifice another frame, let alone a daily click festival to plow resources into a gigantic expensive pit.

 

3) Power balance.  I main Zephyr, and the air burst change is a joke.  It's got a slight pull, or a slight rag doll.  It's still largely only viable to enhance her tornados.  That's just a bad joke.  It's especially bad when you have Nidus waiting to be subsumed.  I don't think this system is really well thought out.  It's exemplified by the changes already cited, that you can't have more than a single power and you can't have multiple buffs.  I see a very near future where DE takes the nerf hammer to this, like they've done to the riven system.  They can't balance based upon the inputs, so they'll nerf based upon the outcomes.

4) You can undo everything with the press of a button.  Between this statement, and the already cited potential to screw with other systems, what is being sold to us is an incomplete mess.  No thoughts, potential feature breaks, and bizarro interactions.  That's not a new feature set, it's DE stating that they're releasing early alpha content and hiding it behind the veteran wall.  You have to be high enough mastery, which only means you've been grinding enough.  Alright, but that means you'll see veterans doing stupid and fun things.  Things that are broken, but will drive engagement because newer players will want access.  Fantastic, right?  Well, no.  Patch it out a few weeks after demonstration, and the new players who have been engaging will be frustrated.  Veterans move on to the next meta, and people will get frustrated that what they tried to earn was yanked away.  It's setting things up for failure, and claiming it's good because newer players won't have to be the balance testers.  

 

So, DE let's talk.  You pumped out a mainline two weeks before this stuff is to go live.  It required 3 hotfixes, and still isn't working.  You introduced new tiles, and didn't list them.  The new tiles broke access to the Granum Void.  The Granum Void itself broke spawns.  You reworked one of the worst frame's least useful powers, and it's now a bad version of another power that is set to be subsumed (I main Zephyr, and cannot find a use for air burst even after the change).  With all this on the line, why should I be excited about the Helminth system?  

 

What I'm looking forward to is plowing 14 million alloy plates, 14 million ferrite, 3 million circuits, and millions and millions of nano spores into something.  Why, well it's because they're sitting and gathering dust.  You haven't really given us a reason to smash crates in years, because just killing enemies often grants passive resource gains in excess of what we can use.  I fear that the Helminth will just be raid rare resource blue prints all over again, but hope you learned something about stupidly huge costs not benefiting the game.  We shall see though.  Frankly, I expect 2 weeks of grind to unlock the system.  I expect another three to plow resources in, with more than a month to eat all of the frames.  By that time, I don't expect to care anymore.  It'll long be established what builds matter, and after that the grind will be about completion rather than use.  At which point, it'll be Railjack all over again.  You only really need to unlock things to level 8 to get everything viable, and you'll need 4x the grind to go from level 0-8 to get from 8-10.  

No bueno.

[ShortCat]

12 hours ago, [DE]Rebecca said:

As you can see, we have two Abilities that increase damage: Mirage’s Eclipse, and Rhino’s Roar. We are creating a special case for these Abilities when infused on Warframes with similar Abilities (i.e Chroma, Mirage, Rhino, Octavia). When you infuse these, you will receive a prompt that you can only have 1 Damage Buffing ability at a time, and thus you are limited to replacing said ability type. Which is to say - Damage Buffing abilities can only be swapped with Damage Buffing Abilities on Warframes that already have them. However, that limitation does not apply to the other 30+ Warframes. 

What about durable Frames, who do not have access to potent damaging abilities, because their kit is primary focused on survivability? Inaros with Eclipse will light years better than Mirage, because Inaros was not designed as a glass cannon. Furthermore, Petrify also increases damage in addition to massive CC potential.
Then, we can also flip the above argument. What about a glass cannon like Banshee with access to defensive abilities like Wukong's Defy?
Then, there is the ultimate utility ability called Larva (or Ensnare). Piling enemies in front of you is a very convenient feature, if you have limited range in offensive capabilities.

You are about to erase defining aspect of every frame, erase roles, homogenize them all into a tasteless pile as well as create a balance nightmare. At this point you are better off selling skill modules and Frame suits/skinns separately and completely decouple abilities from appearance.