Upcoming Xaku Changes: Round 2!

[(PSN)ThanatosSloth]

6 hours ago, (PS4)Madurai-Prime said:

There are new and existing mods that add evasion on top of Xakus built in evasion....As well as mods and arcanes to add tankiness. The developers have also said that they "reward mobility". The movement system this game has is for a reason. 

Hate to fart on your French fries....but xakus "dodge" is different than evasion....xaku allows passthrough for bullets, while evasion makes enemies themselves shoot bad....tried this with as much evasion as I can get, still gets hit even though it should be 100% or more...

Edit: I would love for the dodge on vast untime to be modable within reason...like 100% dodge max for bullets, 90% max damage resist for melee and aoe?

[(PSN)Madurai-Prime]

12 minutes ago, (PS4)ThanatosSloth said:

Hate to fart on your French fries....but xakus "dodge" is different than evasion....xaku allows passthrough for bullets, while evasion makes enemies themselves shoot bad....tried this with as much evasion as I can get, still gets hit even though it should be 100% or more...

Edit: I would love for the dodge on vast untime to be modable within reason...like 100% dodge max for bullets, 90% max damage resist for melee and aoe?

Geez I had no idea...that actually sucks, then lol. 

[JackHargreav]

5 hours ago, (PS4)Shaun-T-Wilson said:

And if you put water in a freezer you make ice(Solid water). But it does not behave like water, even though its still water (H20). In that analagy the freezer is the warframe.

This makes about zero sense. Especially since the frames were used by the tenno because they could withstand their power. Not "freezing" it. The frames are more like pipes or channels and the tenno is a big lake.

Ultimatelly both of them has water in them. So that's that.

[Velitria]

Octavia's 1 and 3. Infinite damage because mallet is a battery of damage pulsing and not just a reflect, infinite invulnerability called "crouch simulator" (you can use a macro and afk because her passive just so happens to top it off by also giving energy regeneration and an aura called energy siphon). Octavia is THE MOST afk of frames, nerf it please. I know someone that had a macro play the game for them for hours to avoid all the anti afk measures and be permanently invulnerable/invisible, while killing everything forever. That right there is the pinnacle of lack of consideration. I don't think it's hypocrisy, I think they just don't care about things once they release them till they become popular for being "fun". Octavia's 7 hour resource farm cheese is not fun because it is afk farming, and because it is not fun, it is not popular, and doesn't get fixed because DE doesn't balance outside of the "meta". This is why people call Pablo a good dev, because even though he nerfs things, he actually knows the game and cares about balance. Perhaps he has even tried to get octavia nerfed, we the players wouldn't know. Why isn't there a position called the "director of balance" and their position is to have an increased say in what values become in relation to the balance of the game (stat-wise) buff or nerf, balance is a double edged sword and they would get a lot of the blame or praise. Everyone on the team has balanced to some extend, but this position would be a director specific spot on devstreams (I would suggest Pablo be that director), and so we get to see him more often.

On 2020-09-29 at 12:08 PM, TheEternalJester said:

As usual, you complain about not wanting to let people AFK when there is not only frames you've made/reworked that let them AFK, but you continue to use the same thin justification despite the counter-examples of you walking back those words. Stop being so hypocritical when the majority of the complaints you'll get will be in regard to Grasp's weapon range.

How this relates to Xaku... They currently care about Xaku and that's why they are not being hypocritical, you can't just say someone is a hypocrite for saying something that goes against what they said years ago and probably don't remember. They are trying to balance now, it is beneficial to just remind them of *cough octavia* of the things that contradict themselves instead of claiming hypocrisy. Yes it is frustrating that newer things are being restricted from buffs aka constant nerf while *cough octavia* other things far more powerful exist.

[(XBOX)AP TragOul]

Ok so far your making changes in the right direction however. Xaku severely needs a buff to survivability. The evasion on the vast untime is laughable at best and is the equivalent to tissue paper armor. The only time it even becomes usable is when someone has gone out of their way to cheese it and stack all of the evasion mods and such on in order to reach 100% evasion and even then it's laughable bc of the duration and cost to the rest of the kit.

So the vast runtime needs the survivability changed to something that is actually useful and not giving that "is it on?" Feeling unless you've cheesed it.

Below is my previous comment on things that could be done to improve xaku, mainly of which is the 4th ability and ways xaku could be changed to increase survivability.

I would love to use xaku more but unless their survivability is buffed I'm unlikely to choose anything that can't survive endgame content without using arcanes and the like.

Hi I have some ideas on how to rework xaku but first I'm wondering if some of my void frame suggestion did or did not make it into xakus kit or if its pure coincidence that I had some similar ideas :

but about the rework.

I am liking most of the changes you guys are making but I think it could be improved.

So xakus 4th and passive are extremely underwhelming and while looking good on paper it in practice gives me the feeling of "is it on?" Evasion does not seem to have a noticeable effect with xaku. So heres my suggestion.

Xaku is a void frame and I feel that should be a bigger part of his kit apart from just void damage. So I'm looking at the tenno/operators. Their abilities come from the void so I think xaku should share some traits from them.

Xakus passive should be they use void energy instead of normal energy. This energy should regenerate rapidly but the more abilities xaku has active the faster it drains this energy. Most of the abilities should maybe cause a drain on this. To turn off abilities just hold down the button for the ability.

To fix the 4th ability instead of it being an evasion ability make it like the operators void mode. So either it's a full invincibility at the cost of either the use of some abilities or an increased energy drain/stop energy regeneration when active amd any active abilities will cause the energy to drain. Or make it damage reduction. 

So theres some ideas there.

But if I were to do it I would go for a 2 meter approach like operators. 1st meter is the normal energy bar but with rapid regen. Xakus first 3 abilities use this bar. Xakus 4th ability will use the void energy meter and will make xaku invincible at the cost of the ability to cast the first 3 abilities it wont toggle them off but they will only be active till their duration/energy runs out. The void meter is effected by duration. Upon deactivation of void mode xaku explodes into his skeletal form with a short 3 seconds of invulnerability and the usual void explosion and with your reworked idea.

I know this isnt worked out or balanced or anything but its just a few ideas that popped into my head and really felt the need to share. Some may not be rework worthy but maybe augment worthy with some balancing?

Btw sorry if I called xaku a he at any point. I'm fully onboard for xaku not having a gender. Old habits die hard though.

Edit: maybe depending on how much of the void energy meter used during the 4th ability will determine the range/duration/strength of the explosion and also the energy cost reduction/unlimited use time of the vast untime.

Lower duration could mean less time immortal but more time for abilities to be active while too much duration could mean longer invulnerability but if you have to cancel the ability early to use abilities you wont get as much benefit.

[Genitive]

Eh, void status change doesn't sound that great. I guess it's better than what we currently have, but disappointing.

On 2020-09-29 at 5:00 PM, [DE]Danielle said:

How it will work: If you shoot at an enemy’s head with Xata’s Whisper enabled and proc, the bubble will redirect all projectiles to the head. If you shoot at the feet, it’ll be redirected to the feet, etc.! It is however possible that even if you proc on the head but then shoot at the lower part of the bubble it might hit the body on the way up to being redirected to the head.

But if it procs on feet and then I will shoot the head, I will still be prevented from landing headshots, no?

If you are so keen on keeping the bullet attractor, then make it so it redirects all the bullets inside the bubble to the head. 

Alternatively, make void status proc add headshot multiplier to any damage we deal to an enemy. That way it won't interfere with other abilities – like Banshee's sonar – and will always be beneficial to the player when it procs.

[(PSN)Madurai-Prime]

11 hours ago, (XB1)GearsMatrix301 said:

So you’re suggesting that people should reduce the effectiveness of their melee builds and only use the heavy attacks to give Xaku better survivability instead of doing the more reasonable thing and use a better frame that doesn’t require compromising our desired use of melee.

It's one method out of many, seeing as heavy attack builds are already used (gunblades, reaper prime etc). 

Another method requires actually using the other tools available to you and diversifying your arsenal. You have mods and arcanes to increase survivability, you have the movement system which the developers have stated is supposed to be used by rewarding us to be mobile, you have multiple forms of CC, The Vast Untime and Xakus passive etc. 

Were you expecting to face tank level 500 enemies or something? 

 

[(PSN)Madurai-Prime]

11 hours ago, (XB1)GearsMatrix301 said:

The amps don’t make operator void beams into a different state of matter. It just adjusts how the void beam behaves and it’s crit and status. They don’t change the void status effect. They don’t change how void damage interacts with enemies.

On operator amps it shows that they deal void damage. On Xakus ability screen it shows that they deals void damage. Not void minus, not diet void. Void damage. So to make they void damage not have to same properties as void damage makes no sense. Especially when Xatas Whisper is already perfectly balanced for Eidolons hunts.

"Especially when Xatas Whisper is already perfectly balanced for Eidolons hunts."

How is Xatas whisper, which is enhanced by Vast Untime....balanced for eidolons when it does a percentage of total weapon damage that is affected by base damage, critical, elemental, and faction damage mods? Are you unaware of how insane that damage would get?

[_Tormex_]

On 2020-09-29 at 11:41 AM, rachjumper said:

octavia is and has been in the game unchanged for years but sure ok
DE's fear of turrets is the dumbest thing I swear to god

Yeah Octavia encourages the least active gameplay rn.

[_Tormex_]

On 2020-09-29 at 11:50 AM, HunterDigi said:

If AFKness is the issue then how about adding encouragements to not AFK with that ability.

Make its range directly dependant on movement or even actions or something like that.

For example: if you stand still and do nothing, minimal range (maybe even smaller than is now), but if you bullet jump, sprint, attack, roll and I dunno what else, then range can get even larger than is now.

This is a fantastic idea! Would the multiplier be tied to speed? Because that would make for some really interesting sprint speed builds for Xaku.

[Krankbert]

vor 21 Stunden schrieb (XB1)GearsMatrix301:

Oh yes let’s approach the enemies with this frame that has a bad defense skill and is super squishy. What could possibly go wrong?

Grasp of Lohk forces Xaku into the ranges more suitable for tanky melee frames. Of which Xaku is not.

If you think Xaku is super squishy, you're playing and/or building him wrong.

[Electropuncher]

You know, I started typing out an argument for Grasp of Lohk had too low of a range, but then I started typing it out, and kinda proved DE's point, at least to me.

GoL has a near infinite duration with TVU. Xaku themselves with Carnis mod set has 100% evasion that's pretty much constantly active. Xaku's kit kind of lends itself to a melee playstyle anyway. With enough range, you basically have Radial Disarm always available, so you're going to be fighting melee enemies anyway.

That said, there are a lot of frames that can be played as an AFK frame (Nyx, Banshee, Wukong, Equinox, etc), and some frames can basically be used to spam a single ability to clear the map (Saryn, Volt, Ember, etc), so the wording of the argument informs either A) DE's testing is far more fragmented than it should be, and whoever's in charge of any specific frame at any given time may be completely different. Since there's clearly no central philosophy in play, each frame basically fits a different mindset, and we're running out of niches. Or, B) DE is (in theory) trying to do a shake-up of how the game is played, and possibly changing up how certain abilities are used to create a more active game. ...Or possibly C) I have no idea what I'm on about, and I don't have access to the inner workings of the game.

[Mademon]

5 hours ago, Krankbert said:

If you think Xaku is super squishy, you're playing and/or building him wrong.

whats your build?

[quxier]

On 2020-09-29 at 5:00 PM, [DE]Danielle said:

The Vast Untime: 

The changes we made to The Vast Untime in Round 1 have been very well received and we echo your sentiment that it is in a good spot in its current state. With that said, no further changes are planned for this round. Go forth and Untime Vastly!

I disagree.
So as for now The vast untime does a lot of things.
In one group is "frozen timer" which just gives more time. Not every ability needs it. And if they need, simple "+ X seconds" would be ok.
In the other group things that are there but invisible:
- there is no visible frame's speed bust (20% speed buff isn't huge)
- we almost cannot see difference between normal enemies and enemies affected by the Vast Untime (but we can clearly see, for example, Accused one). I've tried changing the Effect intensity option but it makes everything "shine too much" while "enemies affected by the Vast untime" doesn't change too much.
- you need a lot of Strength to see enemies being slowed down
- after killing enemies affected by the Vast untime it's just an ability that grants you "75%" which is still nothing
- void vulnerability buff
And it costs 100 energy.

There are suggestion to make it more fun & reliable (aura instead of pulse; less health/shield but immune to procs & 75% speed boost; enemies' slownes starts at 50%; 100% damage reduction while rolling and 75% while not rolling /-50% when not in the Vast Untime/ like with the Wisp invisibility) but sadly we get this.
 

On 2020-09-29 at 5:00 PM, [DE]Danielle said:

Re-casting will now steal weapons up to the max number of affected targets.

On 2020-09-29 at 5:00 PM, [DE]Danielle said:

• •  
• Stolen weapons will no longer target invulnerable enemies. 

On 2020-09-29 at 5:00 PM, [DE]Danielle said:

• •  
• Added HUD tracker for active "Accused" enemies

That's great!

On 2020-09-29 at 5:00 PM, [DE]Danielle said:

• Void damage’s Status Effect will now redirect projectiles to the body part it proc’d on. 

That's nice. I think it should be enough so it won't be just simple "more damage" buff.

 

[Emolition]

On 2020-09-29 at 5:56 PM, Duality52 said:

• The Lost: Gaze & Accuse

Targets affected should not block a wave in Defense from progressing, similar to Nyx's Mind Control/Revenant's Enthrall/Titania's Lanter.

Most of the time they don't block I had maybe 5% of them block a defense wave. So that seem more like a bug they need to fix. My biggest issue they fixed by making the "guns" not fire on gaze any more for annoying with that non stop firing in defense.

[Emolition]

*double post*

[quietcanary]

The short answer is that you really shouldn't have bothered making this post if you weren't willing to do a real change. The void status proc didn't need to be so complicated just make it always headshot. As is its not a benefit to anyone and you making it a 50/50 doesn't reward anybody. Good shots get headshots they already were getting which is fine but bad shots get punished with the same issue we already have now that they can't headshot if they messed up the first shot. Recasting on grasp of lohk doesn't need seperate duration timers, just let it refresh the duration of the whole thing. You reference nekros shadows of the dead but that ability heals all current shadows, aka it refreshes the duration of the whole group. Refusing to touch target range because you have a problem with ember style gameplay is again, a trash opinion to have, even if it was true which its not. Right now the guns do not have enough range to be useful, bite the bullet and give people something good rather than worry that it will be to good and giving them nothing. The accuse changes bring it into "barely useable" territory since it still feels like a waste to cc the targets when you have already stripped all their defenses and weapons before making them your ally. The minimum required changes to deny to feel good, now if only it did something worth doing.

All in all the bug changes are nice and the QoL will no longer be super horrible but nothing that changes the power level of this frame was added, and all the current changes feel like parts of things that should have been part of round 1 but got separated so we could have something to write about in round 2. Basically its the "hold back part of the game to sell it as DLC" thing or "making problems to sell you the solution".

 

[Hokibukisa]

Have you guys tested new void status on sentient’s destroyable limbs? Get a shotgun and see if you can get the status to proc on a limb that is destroyed.

sentients in particular are a big issue for void status proc since they have hollow cores AND you can destroy their limbs.

[Hokibukisa]

I think maybe the simplest fix for sentients like the battalyst is to just make them immune to void status proc.

we can’t shoot their centers, we have to shoot very specific body parts, and then those body parts get destroyed.

the bullet attractor proc just completely Fs the situation when fighting these types of sentients.

[realAprox]

On 2020-09-29 at 5:11 PM, Genoscythe said:

Very happy with the Grasp of Lohk change, however I think it could at least target exposed boss bodyparts with reduced accuracy and effectiveness.  Right now all bosses with weakspot-exclusive vulnerabilities are immune to 95% of our damage abilities and weapon buffs are still the meta. Also, how about giving grasp of Lohk the ability to target all enemies that are affected by Xaku's abilities at an indefinite range to add further synergy and make Xaku work better in the open worlds?

I also think Gaze is awkward to use as it requires an enemy to be cast on. Could we please be able to cast it on the ground with 50% effectiveness when there's no enemy around? It's really hard to find an enemy that is not getting immediately vaporized when playing in a group, and nullifiers and especially arbitration drones make this ability completely useless as they immediately deactivate it.

The Deny change seems good, but I found the buffed casting time still way too slow to even remotely compete with weapons. I have found no situation where it would have been more valuable to cast deny than simply firing my gun. To clarify, you need CC when you are overwhelmed by enemies, not when you have them standing in a line before you.

Last but not least, the Vast Untime has an incredible ability synergy but evasion is far inferior to damage resistance. Xaku can still not hold their ground under heavy fire, in the range of level 80-100 even a tankier build will get easily annihilated. Evasion is completely anti-synergetic with some mods and arcanes. Chances are that you will simply get your shields stripped by one shot and die with the next. It does not reduce status damage, a burn or electric proc will obliterate Xaku. Any arcane or adaptation that triggers with being hit does. not. work. Xaku is locked out of a whole lot of build variations due to this and their tankiness is purely based on RNG in the case of direct fire. Two lucky shots will still kill you.

First of all, Gaze by definition requires an enemy to be trapped in void tentacles for it to work and as much as I would love to be able to place Gaze at will, wherever I desire - I cannot agree with any efficiency decrease whatsoever for it would render ability useless in specialised builds. You have as well dramatically exaggerated how hard it is to find an enemy to trap. Never had a problem with that.

For the the Vast Untime - I agree with the point you've made about evasion being wonky and unreliable, since you can easily get obliterated even with shield gating, and synergies are basically non existent (at least reasonable ones) - I would opt for having more synergies to work with in terms of evasion for example having Survival Instinct not have a cooldown and allow it to be re-activated on every kill making it active for as long as you're killing enemies. Or Carnis mod set bonus get activated on something else that heavy attack kill's..
I do not find it very difficult to deal with hordes upon hordes of any level enemies as long as they have projectile weapons - however it is extremely annoying to get one-shot by a random pesky enemy (not even a hard hitting one).
Anyways, my point is - evasion should probably be fixed and stay on Xaku, but also a further AoE damage reduction is needed. To the point where AoE should not do any damage at all if the Vaast Untime is active.

[realAprox]

23 hours ago, _Tormex_ said:

This is a fantastic idea! Would the multiplier be tied to speed? Because that would make for some really interesting sprint speed builds for Xaku.

Bad idea. cannons don't have the fire rate for that...

[Hawker65]

These changes look very promising. It looks like it will bring a lot of quality of life and viability to Xaku. As a headshot enthusiast, I can't wait to test the new void status effect in combination with weapons like the Zymos or the Knell. I'm wondering though, couldn't you refactor this new change into the Scourge's alt fire? This could give the Scourge more viability as it will hit headshots (useful for arcanes) and proc Void (useful for Condition Overload if Void status counts towards it). Besides, refactoring is always good, right?

[edolus]

I think another great change would be to move "Deny" over to "Xaku's Whisper" as a "Press" and then have a special interaction with the void effect changes. Like when a void bubble is proc'd on an enemy, you can detonate it with "Deny" and the bubble's damage is amplified by a multiplier connected to power strength and your weapons similar to Mag's bubble. This change would also make "Xaku's Whisper" be a cool choice in the helminth system since right now its pretty much useless. And then make "Accuse" a press and "Gaze" a hold on the 3rd ability. I feel these changes would give Xaku a better flow during combat and more options. Having to stop what I'm doing to cycle through 3 abilities( accuse, deny, gaze) quickly gets annoying.  At that point the only ability I'd end up using on that slot is "Deny" and not even bother with the other two abilities because its too much of a hassle to keep switching. 

 

[DLOArceus]

Yeah no, i agree with some of the people here. To me the firing range on Grasp of Lohk is the only issue i have with Xaku. One of the users suggested to make the range higher like the steal one. "Turret" yes but like another one said make so that the range we have now is when you're standing in place and the augmented one is when you're shooting at stuff. The whole thing doesn't even make sense considering the frame released before it was the freaking Engineer frame with floating turrets.

[Lanaestra]

On 2020-09-29 at 3:01 PM, Azamagon said:

Related to Xaku, but is more encompassing:

Could we get a new and more modern way to cast "cycle"-abilities (such as The Lost on Xaku, Quiver on Ivara, Minelayer on Vauban etc)?

Right now, they are FAR too clunky to meddle with, often making - at least myself - just stick to the best ability among the "cycle" options (which is generally Gaze, in Xaku's case). What I propose is this:

TLDR; Activating the "cycle"-ability now opens a small menu close to the crosshair for about five seconds. For Xaku, that means press 3. Now press 1, 2 or 3 to cast Accuse, Gaze or Deny respectively. Press 5 or Escape to close the menu quickly.

So much this. Ability wheels need fixing across the board, they're too slow for the pace of this game.