Marked For Death: Where We’ve Been, and Changes to Come

[BRZZAFK]

If Devs dont want players to nuke left and right then why put nuke in game the first place?

Same thing about roar. 

Edited September 26, 2020 by BRZZAFK

[(PSN)Vexx757]

M4D and the H system just shows that Ash needs a revisit. 

The 1st ability is only good with its augment. Augments should be used as an option and not coz the ability on its own is bad, the 2nd ability could benefit by having better cc and even through ppl say that his invisible is too short I have no issue with it, the 3rd ability has potential to be so much better just of the concept of teleportation alone and the 4th ability...

There is a long list of issues;

Spoiler

·       The two stages of the killing process make bs slow, because of this, other players can take his kills before you get a chance to kill them which makes him not helpful in the team, not fun to play and in a fast-pasted game this is bad.

 

·       Marking enemies for some players is sickening because of the motion of moving the cursor onto enemies, even though it`s easier (but still a problem) to do this using a mouse, doing this on a controller is not as easy, an ability should be able to be easy to use no matter what you use.

 

·       Because enemies are highlighted by your chosen energy colour, it will make enemies more visible to other players to go and kill them which in their minds is a top priority.

 

·       If you want the full damage of bs, you have to mark the enemies three times which will slow you down or  makes you stationary (if you want to do it quickly) to mark enemies with three marks. In low-level missions, your energy will be refunded back to you if you over mark and in high levels you obviously going to want the full damage of it so there is absolutely no point in having to choose the amount of damage you want to dish out. With the old bs, you had the full damage regardless.

 

·       Bodies disappearing makes it to where you can`t bring him in a desecrating team with a nekros. While bodies disappearing makes sense on paper for him being a ninja and I like the idea, unfortunately, this just makes him a problem in that team.

 

·       The indicator shows how many marks instead of how many enemies affected by bs. Because of this, you have no idea how many enemies are going to be killed. If it showed how many enemies affected by bs, it will let the play know when to use bs again.

 

·       Using your 2nd ability to use less energy is not synergy. Synergy is meant to be a choice that makes a difference in missions however, this so-called synergy is a must to use it consistently which makes it a bad gimmick.

 

·       Because of the synergy between his 2nd & 4th ability, you are forced to mod for duration to benefit from using less energy for bs since most people are not going to use bs while it`s taking more energy.

 

·       Using the 3rd ability to join the animation costs no energy but you need energy to be able to use it which makes no sense plus, in low-level missions, sometimes you`re not even going to get a chance use your 3rd ability because the apparitions have killed the enemies already. (depending on how many enemies you mark)

 

·       Apparitions (clones) appearance is not consistent. The visuals go from looking like you custom coloured Ash to a hologram version, to the original ash look with default colours. Also, this is a bug that the old bs had which means it has not been fixed.

 

·       When marking, you can`t mark enemies that are behind walls or objects which make you have to run around searching for enemies to kill and if you in a team, your marked enemies will be killed off by your teammates.

 

·       Even if Ash`s damage has increased to 2,000, (his damage now is still great) the damage is not as good compared to the old bs. The apparitions of the old bs was like Saryn`s 1st ability damage but slightly better, (and the terminator) the apparitions would not stop killing until the enemies were dead and even though attack speed mods can increase their killing speed, with the current bs, the apparitions only attack three times however the bleeding damage speed cannot.

 

·       Because of the way it works, it makes shuriken not favoured in use due to the amount of energy bs costs when modding and how much damage it does and how quick enemies will be killed when activated. This make some people use bs over shuriken.

 

·       The marking mechanic makes the ability ineffective in close-quarter, tight spaces which is what  the majority of the tilesets are, this makes the ability less effective and mostly useless even more so it a team.

 

·       You can`t pick and choose what enemies you want to kill; (which people claim you can do) on paper it makes sense however in practise the idea is not useful. For example, if you wanted to mark an energy eximus in-between two other enemies and you only have enough energy to mark one enemy, you are not able to.

 

Reasons;

· Enemies are running around to where you will either run out of energy or you simply can`t mark the eximus.

· You will have to stand there trying to mark that one enemy.

· You have a chance to get hit by a stray bullet or by an explosion whether you use your 2nd ability or not.

· If you’re playing in a team, someone WILL take the kill from you.

· Teleport can do it better and is faster at it. (this alone destroys the purpose of using it that way)

Overall Ash is a contradiction to what DE wants ppl to do in the game.... PLAY AS A TEAM, that's why he needs to be looked at again.

Here is a post presenting his issues and the ways to fix them.

https://forums.warframe.com/topic/1159102-ash-his-current-problems-and-the-solutions-to-fix-them/

Also instead of nerfing damage dealing warframes, the common sense thing to do is to make game-modes that don`t require you to deal damage, that way other frames will have a use and you are changing the meta. 

 

 

Edited September 26, 2020 by (PS4)Vexx757

[(XBOX)Church367A]

Glad these changes will be coming, but it still looks like I wasted resources on something supposed to be for veteran players that required a mountain of resources to obtain and in the end just does not justify the work in obtaining it and placing it on a warframe.  The initial nerf destroyed this ability and I can't even reason out why when you have other abilities on warframes that can kill as quickly and more efficiently.  The required line of sight alone is enough to keep this from being overpowered in most maps I've used it in.  Capping the damage to the enemy's health is what is keeping this ability from feeling like it was worth the work to obtain it in the first place.  Had this been given by default or one of the first unlocks it would still be a poor decision to nerf to this extent, but at least more understandable.  But that is not the case.  Until the health cap damage mitigation is removed or modified where it is over 100% of the enemy's health by default its just going to feel mediocre compared to what it originally was and an unjustified loss of resources and time wasted on something that was fun.

[Hierarch777]

This sounds fine and all, but I strongly encourage you to work with Pablo to rebalance the least popular abilities like Ballistic battery and Spectral Scream. Outdated as they are, they are in dire need of tweaks/changes to make them fit in the current state of the game. 

[Aisu9]

il y a une heure, Hierarch777 a dit :

This sounds fine and all, but I strongly encourage you to work with Pablo to rebalance the least popular abilities like Ballistic battery and Spectral Scream. Outdated as they are, they are in dire need of tweaks/changes to make them fit in the current state of the game. 

1000 time this, 10000 #*!%ing time what Hierarch777 say

[Catheryn]

so with 200 power strength the explosion will deal 150% "curent" hp of marked enemies?

also no mention for multishot curently doesnt work with mfd, shotgun is useless with mfd.

[Tsoe]

i hope they are talking about 75% max health and not current health

or it should do true damage DE cause you know (armor an stuff)

or maybe max health should take account of the armor?

Edited September 28, 2020 by Tsoe

[TheLexiConArtist]

16 hours ago, Hierarch777 said:

This sounds fine and all, but I strongly encourage you to work with Pablo to rebalance the least popular abilities like Ballistic battery and Spectral Scream. Outdated as they are, they are in dire need of tweaks/changes to make them fit in the current state of the game. 

If they buff Mesa in any way 'because ballistic battery is the most replaced ability' without also taking away some of the already ludicrous levels of power out of the rest of her kit to compensate, it's officially time to pack up and go home, the ship is sinking and the crew are just plugging holes with their fingers until the next one starts spewing water.

Or it's just proving utter blind favouritism for Mesa when other actually ailing frames are just getting kicked when they're down. Either way.

[Ogger]

On 2020-09-26 at 8:30 AM, BRZZAFK said:

If Devs dont want players to nuke left and right then why put nuke in game the first place?

Same thing about roar. 

product owners/game designers aka. "Devs" have no problem with nuking itself but if it's an overwhelmingly better choice than any other thing it should not exist in that way.

[Ogger]

13 minutes ago, TheLexiConArtist said:

If they buff Mesa in any way 'because ballistic battery is the most replaced ability' without also taking away some of the already ludicrous levels of power out of the rest of her kit to compensate, it's officially time to pack up and go home, the ship is sinking and the crew are just plugging holes with their fingers until the next one starts spewing water.

Mesa is great, cool and mostly simple to use but so are other frames like:

Ember, Octavia, Loki, Volt, Saryn, Ivara, Wisp, Khora, Rhino and probably a few more.

16 minutes ago, TheLexiConArtist said:

Or it's just proving utter blind favouritism for Mesa when other actually ailing frames are just getting kicked when they're down. Either way.

I get that on the other hand. I want frames like Garuda or Nezha to be good because I like them. They sadly aren't.

[Xepthrichros]

1 hour ago, TheLexiConArtist said:

If they buff Mesa in any way 'because ballistic battery is the most replaced ability' without also taking away some of the already ludicrous levels of power out of the rest of her kit to compensate, it's officially time to pack up and go home, the ship is sinking and the crew are just plugging holes with their fingers until the next one starts spewing water.

Or it's just proving utter blind favouritism for Mesa when other actually ailing frames are just getting kicked when they're down. Either way.

I don't even know why you are still here. Game has a plethora of other OP methods of cheese besides Mesa. Whatever ship you think you are on has sunk to the bottom of the ocean and is covered in corals, which have also died from rising sea temperatures. You are still floating, a skeleton on a lifeboat in the middle of the ocean, so it seems, screaming posthumously for the game to be nerfed back to the way it was when it launched..

 

And it is not favoritism. It is different frames being designed for different purpose. Some are designed to nuke. Some are designed for stealth. Some are designed to tank. Some are designed to be hybrids of various things and excel at none. And they are also designed with the grind in mind. The overwhelming kits that some have, is thanks to them requiring more grind to obtain. And after obtaining them, their kits offer ways to help players who want to get through the grind faster.

Edited September 28, 2020 by Xepthrichros

[(PSN)phelan_1988]

The real problem as I see it is that while Xept is correct that frames are designed with different jobs, the current meta is basically All You Need is Kill. So it devalues all the non-DPS frames. I don't think this is a huge issue and I don't see why people rage about the DPS frames, they're just doing the current One Job of a warframe well. Nerfing Mesa just boosts Saryn, nerfing them both just boosts Ember or whoever else, that's not going to make anyone happy. No amount of DPS nerfhammer is going to bring Loki and Frost back, they need work themselves.

I do wanna push back though on one thing - ease of farm has nothing to do with power, it correlates in a couple places (farming my second Mesa has been HELL) but plenty of powerful frames are simple boss farms, and some more middling frames have awful ones

Edited September 28, 2020 by (PS4)phelan_1988

[TheLexiConArtist]

3 hours ago, OggerAZ said:

Mesa is great, cool and mostly simple to use but so are other frames like:

Ember, Octavia, Loki, Volt, Saryn, Ivara, Wisp, Khora, Rhino and probably a few more.

I get that on the other hand. I want frames like Garuda or Nezha to be good because I like them. They sadly aren't.

That list... amazes me. I can't think of much more of a scattershot selection of fitting and unfitting comparisons to Mesa's power grade. 

Ember's in an abysmal state after the rework gave her such self-defeating design an Arbi buff isn't even enough to compensate, but Octavia is an eternal god-queen who just somehow always slips under the radar. Heck, she's even low on the infusion list even though Resonator is hilariously cheap and effective at turning off the brains of your opposition.

Saryn's still doing Saryn things so well that Pablo caused an outcry by casually commenting that his rework made her a bit too crazy, while on the other hand, a subject near and dear to me, Ivara's kit is still designed like whoever put it together thought they were making a competitive-balanced MOBA character who needs caveats at every turn, not a Warframe to excel at anything but "can AFK in stealth the longest".

2 hours ago, Xepthrichros said:

I don't even know why you are still here. Game has a plethora of other OP methods of cheese besides Mesa. Whatever ship you think you are on has sunk to the bottom of the ocean and is covered in corals, which have also died from rising sea temperatures. You are still floating, a skeleton on a lifeboat in the middle of the ocean, so it seems, screaming posthumously for the game to be nerfed back to the way it was when it launched..

 

And it is not favoritism. It is different frames being designed for different purpose. Some are designed to nuke. Some are designed for stealth. Some are designed to tank. Some are designed to be hybrids of various things and excel at none. And they are also designed with the grind in mind. The overwhelming kits that some have, is thanks to them requiring more grind to obtain. And after obtaining them, their kits offer ways to help players who want to get through the grind faster.

It's not simply having 'OP methods of cheese' that makes the contextual reasoning of that statement of mine. It's the clear and abject disconnect that would be represented by them choosing to blindly buff the baseline of a Warframe based on that one isolated datapoint without actually looking at the fact that said frame is, in fact, an OP method of cheese even without that entire ability slot. It's the most replaced ability not just because the ability is bad, but because the frame is already a lazy player's wet dream and through the wonders of Helminth they can make it even more apt to fit the "you're having problems? just use Mesa, lol" stereotype.

"Some are designed to nuke, some are designed to tank" - that's cute, meanwhile, have you noticed that the 'pure nuker' Mesa has the single strongest damage reduction ability by percentage at an upper limit of 95% with no conditional gate? (Next closest being Mirage's Eclipse, the only other ability which can cap 95% but only while in purest darkness. Others with and without conditionals reach 90% at best, which is of course.. half the effectiveness.) She has that and a persistent passive CC while also being an aimbot and BRRT-ing away everything with the compelling gameplay of "hold LMB and swing your mouse wildly". Hardly a 'glass cannon' justification there. Even Saryn's wildly more vulnerable than that.

'Grind burden' and acquisition gating is a pithy excuse when it comes to Warframes. We can somewhat accept that weapons, gated by acquisition, can be functionally direct upgrades enough to put the predecessor into complete obsolescence. This is not the case with Warframes.

Favouritism is inarguably present. You can't leave something in like a Saryn or Mesa, then turn around and kneecap Ember like they did as if those two weren't just as oppressive (and not just on Mercury) and getting just as many gripes from the playerbase for it..

[Tsoe]

maybe i missed something what are the changes beside damage cap at 75% ?

 

 

[(PSN)ironfist_94]

u guys have no idea what u are doing.

[Ogger]

15 hours ago, TheLexiConArtist said:

That list... amazes me. I can't think of much more of a scattershot selection of fitting and unfitting comparisons to Mesa's power grade. 

Every warframe in the list are warframes I see in the majority of missions. Ivara not only has quiver and her stealth toggle but artemis bow is amazing too. Octavia has gotten a lot worse through AI being dumber than ever(and her mallet not hitting through walls) and I don't see how people can see ember as weak at all. She is the strongest she has ever been. 

[kaboomerang]

Raise cap and add fall off so that it's fun but doesn't nuke an entire rooms.  Will make it viable for certain frames but won't break the entire meta.   

line of sight and the fact that allies can cancel the ability with their damage already kinda made this tricky to use on some maps and multiplayer. 

I appreciate the small back peddle, but for the requires to get access to MFD is steep and players who get to that should be rewarded. 

Boost it some more and make it rank 10 for helminth and it will be balanced. Expedite suffering should have been like rank 3-5 unless I am missing a tactic that makes it stronger than MFD

Edited September 29, 2020 by kaboomerang

[Canay]

Una gran sorpresa para todos! ^^

[Talinthis]

rip those who used the ability, then removed it after the nerf, who will now have to add it again after the buff. hope you guys have lots of resources to throw around!

[InfamousDerp]

I tested the new M4D and currently its doing alright now.

- It works on Hammers, Rapiers, Nikanas, and on Kronen Prime, tho you'll have to focus on damage now instead of Crits since it doesn't work.

- Arcane Trickery doesn't activate sadly.

- Finisher damages does do the job so might as well look for rivens that has that. 

- Using Heavy Attack Damage Stropha doesn't kill them like they used to.

- HP damage cap is still there, so better aim for the heavy gunners now.

Overall, its alright but it can do better with some changes i personally think would work.

- Remove the "Health cap damage"

- Bring back Crit damages

- Revert the changes on the interaction between Arcane trickery and M4D / or just buff Arcane Trickery, 15% is too low.

- Refund the energy if allies killed the marked enemy.

Since the value doesn't multiply and stack beyond like it used to before, the health cap and crits would really benefit M4D

Either way i hope they don't stop tweaking M4D again, there are still bugs specifically this one makes the M4D AOE explosion gone and would only apply to the marked enemy while nearby enemies didn't receive any damage at all.

[csaszar]

On 2020-09-28 at 2:23 PM, TheLexiConArtist said:

If they buff Mesa in any way 'because ballistic battery is the most replaced ability' without also taking away some of the already ludicrous levels of power out of the rest of her kit to compensate, it's officially time to pack up and go home, the ship is sinking and the crew are just plugging holes with their fingers until the next one starts spewing water.

Or it's just proving utter blind favouritism for Mesa when other actually ailing frames are just getting kicked when they're down. Either way.

 

On 2020-09-28 at 6:25 PM, TheLexiConArtist said:

That list... amazes me. I can't think of much more of a scattershot selection of fitting and unfitting comparisons to Mesa's power grade. 

Ember's in an abysmal state after the rework gave her such self-defeating design an Arbi buff isn't even enough to compensate, but Octavia is an eternal god-queen who just somehow always slips under the radar. Heck, she's even low on the infusion list even though Resonator is hilariously cheap and effective at turning off the brains of your opposition.

Saryn's still doing Saryn things so well that Pablo caused an outcry by casually commenting that his rework made her a bit too crazy, while on the other hand, a subject near and dear to me, Ivara's kit is still designed like whoever put it together thought they were making a competitive-balanced MOBA character who needs caveats at every turn, not a Warframe to excel at anything but "can AFK in stealth the longest".

It's not simply having 'OP methods of cheese' that makes the contextual reasoning of that statement of mine. It's the clear and abject disconnect that would be represented by them choosing to blindly buff the baseline of a Warframe based on that one isolated datapoint without actually looking at the fact that said frame is, in fact, an OP method of cheese even without that entire ability slot. It's the most replaced ability not just because the ability is bad, but because the frame is already a lazy player's wet dream and through the wonders of Helminth they can make it even more apt to fit the "you're having problems? just use Mesa, lol" stereotype.

"Some are designed to nuke, some are designed to tank" - that's cute, meanwhile, have you noticed that the 'pure nuker' Mesa has the single strongest damage reduction ability by percentage at an upper limit of 95% with no conditional gate? (Next closest being Mirage's Eclipse, the only other ability which can cap 95% but only while in purest darkness. Others with and without conditionals reach 90% at best, which is of course.. half the effectiveness.) She has that and a persistent passive CC while also being an aimbot and BRRT-ing away everything with the compelling gameplay of "hold LMB and swing your mouse wildly". Hardly a 'glass cannon' justification there. Even Saryn's wildly more vulnerable than that.

'Grind burden' and acquisition gating is a pithy excuse when it comes to Warframes. We can somewhat accept that weapons, gated by acquisition, can be functionally direct upgrades enough to put the predecessor into complete obsolescence. This is not the case with Warframes.

Favouritism is inarguably present. You can't leave something in like a Saryn or Mesa, then turn around and kneecap Ember like they did as if those two weren't just as oppressive (and not just on Mercury) and getting just as many gripes from the playerbase for it..

With all due respect it seems you arent playing Mesa to much or understand her way.

Secondly naming shatter shield  the "the single strongest damage reduction ability" is a joke. Sure its not bad, but unconditional? LOL. If you dont play Mesa at least try to read the ability description. Shatter shield gives damage reduction against bullets. No more no less. Any melee or AOE attack goes trough fully.

But whats even more important: forget the glorified casual levels and try steel path and tell after 30 min that Mesa is OP and needs nerfing. Mesa got the most painful nerfs and a huge one recently (the silent nerf with the status changes).

Any more nerf and she will be banished to the starter levels permanently.

 

 

[NonBiri0816]

tested. It's a good buff for umbra and banshee augment. 

[Scissorsmith]

On 2020-09-24 at 9:31 PM, [DE]Marcus said:

The spirit of Marked for Death was to only consider the effective damage on the targeted enemy. It was intended that if you took out a heavy unit, enough damage could be dealt to units with lower health around to kill them (or come very, very close). It was not intended to use finishers that overkilled a unit with lower health that had enough MFD power to kill much larger and heavier units around it. 

Yes, but why did you have to lie about it initially? You're saying it as it is now - that it was a nerf (even thought you retain the "not intended" when talking about overkill damage counting, which is still obviously a lie - these things are a choice you make in programming, not an unexpected side effect which would mean a bug). Previously, you pretended the whole change to Marked for Death was a "fix". This is why people don't believe you anymore, and why people read through the "fixes" section for actual nerfs, because that's where you put most of your nerfs (I'm not talking about actual fixes which decrease power - those are fair, but you put a lot of stuff that is obviously intended from a programming perspective and are nerfs into the fixes section as well). Everyone understands that Marked for Death was the way it was designed - the overkill damage counting, cause it makes sense, but then you saw the nuke was working too well and decided to nerf. Personally, I don't like your balance philosophy and frankly it's pretty terrible and I wish you would rethink it from ground up, but you don't seem to understand the problems with your balance philosophy, which keep haunting you throughout the development, but whatever. That's not what bothers me the most in cases like these. What bothers me the most is that your first instinct when you nerf almost anything popular is to pretend it's not a nerf, but a "bugfix", as if trying to wash yourselves of any blame "Yup, we didn't want to change this... BUUUUT we had no choice". Whether the lie is straightforward or the lie is by ommission (like in this case - I assume you meant the double trigger for some mods was the bug you fixed when you announced these changes - which is fair - but then you omitted that the max hp nerf was just an actual nerf and not a bugfix, thus a lie by omission). I'll never understand why your gut reaction is to lie about these things most of the time, like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Yeah, people will be angry when you announce a nerf that destroys an ability. But at least you'll retain your reputation for being honest. When you lie about it all being a "bugfix", people will still be angry, but also trust you less.

Edited September 30, 2020 by Scissorsmith