Subsumed abilities overarcing balance

[Xarteros]

Some of the changes to abilities upon subsumption render them too much weaker than other options. The goal is to give players more customization, and nerfing something substantially can just negate it as a choice (and some of the choices are downright taken away, like Eclipse on Octavia)

Instead, I propose the following:

1. Make all subsumed abilities scale off mods, but make Duration/Strength/Range mods only apply a certain percentage based off how strong the powers are
2. Make a Riven-style Disposition ranking, where each rank applies 20% of your mods total bonuses/penalties to the base ability values (so if you have +200 strength total a 1/5 gets 120%, a 3/5 gets 160%, and a 5/5 gets the full 200% etc)
3. Disposition would need to be adjusted automatically on a weekly/fortnightly basis. You could measure its 'popularity' by the percentage of usage the ability gets from its original frame vs its usage from other frames, weighted against the other subsumed abilities.
4. Remove the limitation for multiple damage buffs, but either impose a direct Disposition penalty (-1 or -2 disposition to a max of 0/5), or factor in a stronger weighting system separately for frames that have existing damage buffs (since the damage buff abilities aren't equal, some might not end up having a disposition change even with stronger weighting)

Why:

1. It allows players to have more customisation, which is the entire goal of the system.
2. Disposition-style ranking allows the powers to be balanced, to prevent excessive meta usage and promote diversity or picks based solely off preference rather than power.
3. Automatically adjusting them prevents abilities staying meta too long and prompting players to change their builds drastically to adhere to the new meta. Basing the adjustments on usage prevents the stats being biased from players infusing new abilities and then not using the ability or warframe for lengths of time. Measuring them against usage from Original vs Other removes the bias of abilities that are used more frequently (like Shock, Molt and other spammable abilities) versus less frequently used abilities (like long duration buffs, Eternal War for instance). Weighting them against the other subsumed abilities determines overall popularity and current metas.
4. Removing the limit of multiple damage buffs allows greater diversity, less confusion, and still allows for secondary effects (such as Mirage's Eclipse, which may be desired solely for its damage reduction rather than its damage boost). Having an additional Disposition penalty or a stronger weighting for frames with existing damage buffs allows these abilities to be used categorically, but further ensures that they aren't promoted as the meta.

Have better ideas for balancing them? Post below!

Please refrain from naysaying, and instead contribute to the discussion to help find a solution that is more appealing to the general playerbase.

[SpicyDinosaur]

28 minutes ago, Xarteros said:

Please refrain from naysaying, and instead contribute to the discussion to help find a solution that is more appealing to the general playerbase.

No.

[Leqesai]

1 hour ago, Xarteros said:

Some of the changes to abilities upon subsumption render them completely useless.

Which abilities are you referring to? because all of the ones I've used have worked fine even with reduced effectiveness.

[Quimoth]

I find the current system balanced.

Buffs and other more useful subsumed abilities should be nerfred because what would be the point of the helminth his own abilities or stupid weak abilities in general.

I bet we can name at least half a dozen abilities we can subsume which almost everybody agrees on to be useless even before subsuming.

To give a few examples: Airburst, Terrify, Breach Surge, Well of Life, Pull, Spectrorage. Those are all abilities that are no-brainers to replace on the frames themselves and not on my wish list for any other frame to obtain.

[Xarteros]

3 hours ago, Leqesai said:

Which abilities are you referring to? because all of the ones I've used have worked fine even with reduced effectiveness.

Well, a bit of hyperbole on my part, I edited the OP to be slightly less over the top. That said, Roar being stuck down at 30% hurts a lot, when we've got Shock and Smite that grant +100% damage at base with the augment, and scale happily over+300% with good power strength builds (or over 400% if you want to go insane). My Nidus isn't finished subsumption, but my friends have told me that the reduced Larva range is a big let down and more or less was a waste of time and resources to put on other frames. The halved Ivara quiver seems pointless, since they can't be too shy about granting sleep when both Baruuk and Equinox donate their sleep powers, and not having Dashwire just seems unnecessary to cut out. Plus, if they didn't want Ivara's donated ability to be clunky and have a selection wheel, perhaps they should have just given us Navigator.

3 hours ago, Quimoth said:

I find the current system balanced.

Buffs and other more useful subsumed abilities should be nerfred because what would be the point of the helminth his own abilities or stupid weak abilities in general.

I bet we can name at least half a dozen abilities we can subsume which almost everybody agrees on to be useless even before subsuming.

To give a few examples: Airburst, Terrify, Breach Surge, Well of Life, Pull, Spectrorage. Those are all abilities that are no-brainers to replace on the frames themselves and not on my wish list for any other frame to obtain.

Admittedly I've believed some wrong information here and there (was told that Roar, Larva and other stat-modified abilities were locked at base stats, rather than just having their base lowered), but I still don't think it's balanced overall. Too many abilities are either just too good or nowhere near good enough. I definitely agree that there are plenty of super useless abilities (although I've seen a pretty awesome Breach Surge build), and that most of Helminth's abilities suck too (although Marked for Death is seeing quite a few interesting applications), and I'd want to see those fixed as well.

Mainly I just dislike having choices arbitrarily taken away when you can just as easily provide the full suite of choices, but with knowable consequences. It's a bit crazy that I can get a Saryn with over +1000% bonus damage to weapons because Smite and Shock have no drawbacks, but you can't get full-range CC from Larva, and can't even use Quiver for dashwire shenanigans and mining. That's what says to me that it's not balanced.

Overall I just feel like having an auto-adjusting Disposition system would help keep things in balance more neatly. It'd also hopefully give DE the groundwork for making Rivens auto adjust on a more frequent basis, and based off more accurate stats.

[Tiltskillet]

Would this affect the ability on its native frame?

 

[CopperBezel]

6 hours ago, Xarteros said:

Well, a bit of hyperbole on my part, I edited the OP to be slightly less over the top. That said, Roar being stuck down at 30% hurts a lot, when we've got Shock and Smite that grant +100% damage at base with the augment, and scale happily over+300% with good power strength builds (or over 400% if you want to go insane).

They're percentages of different things. The buff that scales like Roar is Nourish Strike; the others are 100% of damage before elemental mods. In theory, Roar and NS also apply to abilities and the augment buffs do not, but there's inconsistency, because there are abilities Shock Trooper will buff and there are abilities that Nourish Strike won't. So the ability that's getting overlooked is NS, because that's 50% of real total damage like Rhino's own Roar. It's toxin damage, which is less good than a raw multiplier for modded weapons, but better than most elements in damage abilities, so the only thing really holding it back from being just better than Roar for ability damage is that it's inconsistent and doesn't work on all of them. 

Larva, on the other hand, was limited too harshly. The ability to compare it to is Ensnare, which has less range and more duration than Nidus's own Larva, but more range than the Helminth version of Larva. If Larva needed to be hit that hard, Ensnare needed a nerf too. 

But yeah, frames don't need ability dispositions. Having a system where every ability has different numbers for every frame is just not consistent with how Warframe logic works - ability mods don't have different values for different frames and abilities now, and they certainly shouldn't start. It sounds like a web of actuarial chaos. Once you know what a thing is and what it does, you should largely be able to rely on it to keep doing that thing without having to plug it in and see what the spreadsheets will give you. The exceptions, like the reduced effects of some abilities in the Helminth and the differing riven dispositions of weapon variants, are the minimal possible changes for balance concerns. (Minimal in the sense of hidden values to keep track of, not necessarily strength of effects.)

And the 30% Roar is godlike on Wisp. 

[(XBOX)TheWayOfWisdom]

7 minutes ago, CopperBezel said:

So the ability that's getting overlooked is NS, because that's 50% of real total damage like Rhino's own Roar. It's toxin damage, which is less good than a raw multiplier for modded weapons, but better than most elements in damage abilities, so the only thing really holding it back from being just better than Roar for ability damage is that it's inconsistent and doesn't work on all of them. 

NS is just a toxin mod basically, with the perk of being able to buff certain warframe abilities that are considered "weapons," usually projectiles. Shock Trooper/Smite Infusion/Elemental Buff augs in general used to be able to buff certain frame abilities too, though it seems that this has been fixed.

[CopperBezel]

Oh, huh. Well, I guess that explains why it didn't need to be nerfed. X / I should have known that from the numbers I was seeing when I tried it on my Nova. Now I'm going to have to mess around and see which abilities it does and doesn't buff.

[(PSN)thegarada]

22 hours ago, Xarteros said:

Some of the changes to abilities upon subsumption render them too much weaker than other options. The goal is to give players more customization, and nerfing something substantially can just negate it as a choice (and some of the choices are downright taken away, like Eclipse on Octavia)

Instead, I propose the following:

1. Make all subsumed abilities scale off mods, but make Duration/Strength/Range mods only apply a certain percentage based off how strong the powers are
2. Make a Riven-style Disposition ranking, where each rank applies 20% of your mods total bonuses/penalties to the base ability values (so if you have +200 strength total a 1/5 gets 120%, a 3/5 gets 160%, and a 5/5 gets the full 200% etc)
3. Disposition would need to be adjusted automatically on a weekly/fortnightly basis. You could measure its 'popularity' by the percentage of usage the ability gets from its original frame vs its usage from other frames, weighted against the other subsumed abilities.
4. Remove the limitation for multiple damage buffs, but either impose a direct Disposition penalty (-1 or -2 disposition to a max of 0/5), or factor in a stronger weighting system separately for frames that have existing damage buffs (since the damage buff abilities aren't equal, some might not end up having a disposition change even with stronger weighting)

Why:

1. It allows players to have more customisation, which is the entire goal of the system.
2. Disposition-style ranking allows the powers to be balanced, to prevent excessive meta usage and promote diversity or picks based solely off preference rather than power.
3. Automatically adjusting them prevents abilities staying meta too long and prompting players to change their builds drastically to adhere to the new meta. Basing the adjustments on usage prevents the stats being biased from players infusing new abilities and then not using the ability or warframe for lengths of time. Measuring them against usage from Original vs Other removes the bias of abilities that are used more frequently (like Shock, Molt and other spammable abilities) versus less frequently used abilities (like long duration buffs, Eternal War for instance). Weighting them against the other subsumed abilities determines overall popularity and current metas.
4. Removing the limit of multiple damage buffs allows greater diversity, less confusion, and still allows for secondary effects (such as Mirage's Eclipse, which may be desired solely for its damage reduction rather than its damage boost). Having an additional Disposition penalty or a stronger weighting for frames with existing damage buffs allows these abilities to be used categorically, but further ensures that they aren't promoted as the meta.

Have better ideas for balancing them? Post below!

Please refrain from naysaying, and instead contribute to the discussion to help find a solution that is more appealing to the general playerbase.

TL;DR no.

Why? Simple, if some skills suck they need to be fixed on their original frame to be worth using. If the original frame does not use a skill cuz it is terrible, why would I put it on another frame to being with. And the disposition system is a not a good system. Tiering weapon Rivens cuz some weapons are too strong is... acceptable... barely. Tiering skills cuz they suck is not. 

[Berzerkules]

Riven dispo does nothing to actually help weak weapons, applying dispo to the helminth system would not accomplish anything IMO. A stug with max dispo is still a useless weapon, just as a Spetrorage with max dispo would still be a worthless ability.

 

23 hours ago, Quimoth said:

I find the current system balanced.

Buffs and other more useful subsumed abilities should be nerfred because what would be the point of the helminth his own abilities or stupid weak abilities in general.

I bet we can name at least half a dozen abilities we can subsume which almost everybody agrees on to be useless even before subsuming.

To give a few examples: Airburst, Terrify, Breach Surge, Well of Life, Pull, Spectrorage. Those are all abilities that are no-brainers to replace on the frames themselves and not on my wish list for any other frame to obtain.

You put breach surge on list of useless abilities?!?!?

Do you have any idea what that ability does or how it works?