Another Crack at Nidus

[BDMblue]

Last time I talked about Nidus it was to bring up how bad he was in team play. My idea was a stack when ever something died in infinity range. 

DE I know you tried this and it was not balanced the way you liked and would change the hero too much or be too OP. That’s why we got the larva change. Unfortunately that change did not work.

 

I am still of the opinion that kills around Nidus should give stacks. Thinking about it more a minor remake of the frame.

Going by enemy’s to kill 100 in an exterminate. The amount of full stacks that would be reasonable would be 15 imo. So a 50% chance to get a stack passively from kills may not be too broken.

Also I see your ok with new resource systems. Why not rework Nidus prime to be just that. A few ideas I have bouncing around are.

make him gain stacks on kills 50%

At 30 stacks his forum is fully changed

while Under 3 stacks he slowly gains stacks passively.

skills no longer cost mana they cost stacks.

his 1

can be cast 3 times for a stack on the 3ed cast it’s empowered and has a 3x crit. Also gains 50% chance for more stacks with each hit.

his 2 would also drain 1/3 of a stack and count towards the 1st ability’s crit bar. Crit increased range or stack counts per target grabbed.

3 the same

4 the same.

 

I think these changes would keep the core of his kit while making him an extremely unique frame and team player.

 

Cant wait to see what you have done with Nidus prime. 

:)

[(XBOX)GodMasterTP]

The only change I would do is that all the enemies stuck on Larvae will give a stack after death, and maybe increase the damage of his Virulence. Just that, he doesn't need more than this, he is already one of the top dogs of the game.

[(XBOX)Ampathetiic]

It's really strange to see a Nidus rework when most people consider Nidus to be one of the best designed frames. Doesn't look too bad, though I wouldn't want it in game, because Nidus is REALLY far down the list of frames that need work. Maybe if he gets power creeped this would be nice.

[Teridax68]

3 hours ago, (XBOX)GodMasterTP said:

The only change I would do is that all the enemies stuck on Larvae will give a stack after death

This I think would be more the change to implement. I find that the biggest problem with Nidus in multiplayer is that his 2 is absolutely perfect for setting up kills, yet if anyone but him attacks enemies in the larva ball, he gets screwed out of his stacks.

My main criticism of the OP's suggestion is that it doesn't actually encourage Nidus to participate, merely to stand around and soak in stats. I do, however, think there could be a compromise if Nidus gained stacks whenever enemies he affected die, whether it's him killing them or them getting killed by others while affected by Larva or the maggots on his 4. Additionally, I think Parasitic Link could also have the linked ally's kills contribute to Nidus's stacks even if he hasn't affected them yet, which should let him latch onto a Mesa or Saryn in a pub match and be able to stack, even if that teammate kills every enemy before he gets a chance to act.

[BiancaRoughfin]

3 hours ago, BDMblue said:

Last time I talked about Nidus it was to bring up how bad he was in team play. My idea was a stack when ever something died in infinity range. 

DE I know you tried this and it was not balanced the way you liked and would change the hero too much or be too OP. That’s why we got the larva change. Unfortunately that change did not work.

 

I am still of the opinion that kills around Nidus should give stacks. Thinking about it more a minor remake of the frame.

Going by enemy’s to kill 100 in an exterminate. The amount of full stacks that would be reasonable would be 15 imo. So a 50% chance to get a stack passively from kills may not be too broken.

Also I see your ok with new resource systems. Why not rework Nidus prime to be just that. A few ideas I have bouncing around are.

make him gain stacks on kills 50%

At 30 stacks his forum is fully changed

while Under 3 stacks he slowly gains stacks passively.

skills no longer cost mana they cost stacks.

his 1

can be cast 3 times for a stack on the 3ed cast it’s empowered and has a 3x crit. Also gains 50% chance for more stacks with each hit.

his 2 would also drain 1/3 of a stack and count towards the 1st ability’s crit bar. Crit increased range or stack counts per target grabbed.

3 the same

4 the same.

 

I think these changes would keep the core of his kit while making him an extremely unique frame and team player.

 

Cant wait to see what you have done with Nidus prime. 

:)

Nidus doesnt need more source of Stacks, he can already easily gain stacks by killing mobs with his skills. Giving him passive stack gains would only make him practically invulnerable in missions with high spawn rate and also promote more AFKing.

3 hours ago, (XBOX)GodMasterTP said:

The only change I would do is that all the enemies stuck on Larvae will give a stack after death, and maybe increase the damage of his Virulence. Just that, he doesn't need more than this, he is already one of the top dogs of the game.

Larva is Nidus's skill with the lowest Energy cost and has no Stack Cost, why should it give any stack on death? Enemies held by Larva have 50% chance of giving Stacks when they die, combine that with Virulence and you can get stacks incredibly fast.
Also, Virulence is a skill that refunds its cost and generates stack, its damage also increases per stack so why should it get any damage increase?

[Birdframe_Prime]

1 hour ago, BiancaRoughfin said:

Enemies held by Larva have 50% chance of giving Stacks when they die

Bianca's right (after several Zephyr threads, it feels weird to agree so readily...)

This, OP, is something I think you may have missed in the grand scheme of things.

Late last year, DE did actually update Nidus so that if you use Larva and somebody else kills the enemies in it, you have a 50% chance of gaining stacks from each enemy killed by another player.

Rather than just putting it in as 'enemies around Nidus', you still have to use an ability. Luckily it's his cheapest, easiest ability, and the one you should be using at each opportunity anyway in order to gain your Stacks.

What the change does is prevent your allies from being as much of a pain as they could be. Depending on your build, your team could even be an active benefit to you before you're up to full Stacks, because they could kill the enemies that you have in Larva to add to your stack count without you having to waste the Energy on an additional Virulence cast (with negative returns due to the low number of remaining enemies).

 

[TTraw]

Careful when asking for Nidus changes on these forums! Last time I did, I was called trash at the game with lots of profanity words because I called his lockout on his 1 when the previous one is still moving a "cooldown" because I listened to my google translator. Hah.

Anyway, I always found the fact that community perception of Nidus is that he is widely considered to be

On 2021-01-19 at 11:51 AM, (XBOX)GodMasterTP said:

one of the top dogs of the game.

kind of weird. His big shtick is that he is hard to kill, and that his Larva groups people around. But ever since release of Helminth system I feel like you can just throw him in to the garbage bin and stop worrying about these needs too much. Let me give an example.

Ash is considered to be a low tier warframe across almost every single player I've met, and yet the moment you replace one of his abilities with Ensnare he literally becomes better version of Nidus.

• his 2nd ability is invulnerability button, but unlike nidus':
  • he doesn't need to worry about stack management by using his clunky grounded 1st ability that deals pathetic dmg against armored targets,
  • he doesn't need to stay still in 1 place around linked target
  • it scalles infinitely with enemy lvl
  • you dont need to cry your lungs out when your teammate steals all of your kills. You just press and forget for next 10 or so seconds while Nidus works his butt off just so he can stay alive at high lvl content.
  • it can be applied in AoE with his augment to make his team and even rescue target immortal
• Same with Ensnare. It might pull a little slower than Larva, but unlike Larva:
  • it doesn't make enemies orbit around the ball like some sort of bugged black hole simulator
  • it goes through freaking walls,
  • it can be recast which means if enemy got stuck on wall you don't have your pull ability locked out for long duration. It feels great.
  • The base range might be lower, but Nidus can't really build for high range because of his 1 unlike Ash who doesn't care about ability strength unless he runs Bladestorm build (please don't).
• I literally listed and outdone all of Nidus' kit and his perks (unless you count the small cc and heal from maggots) and with Ash I will still have access to:
  • More than 50% bonus slash proc dmg. How powerful it is I don't feel the need to explain
  • 130m+ insta teleport to an ally
  • +10s combo duration augment to free melee mod slot

Yet Nidus is the great one while Ash sucks. Okay then. Either Nidus is too appreciated or Ash is not appreciated enough. Or both.

I understand that I had to use helminth to become "a better nidus" on a "throwpick" but helminth isnt difficult to acquire and Nidus doesn't have a lot of helminth choices either because all his abilities are necessary for him.

Anyway, I like your ideas, mostly because I could finally subsume Nidus' 1st ability which I hate a lot. But I feel like they also allow for an AFK playstyle which is big problem and you should take a second look at them to adress this. Also, it might change Nidus' a little bit too much. He is well designed, just clunkily programmed and thus unfun to play.

Or just as people here say, make his larva kill guarantee a stack instead of %chance. I find it weird how the ability that cannot be spammed as much and on rarer condition provides less stacks than the spammable one. Would help him with whole teamplay thing, and maybe even make his 1 subsumable which is all I ever wanted from Nidus.

[(XBOX)GodMasterTP]

5 hours ago, BiancaRoughfin said:

Nidus doesnt need more source of Stacks, he can already easily gain stacks by killing mobs with his skills. Giving him passive stack gains would only make him practically invulnerable in missions with high spawn rate and also promote more AFKing.

Larva is Nidus's skill with the lowest Energy cost and has no Stack Cost, why should it give any stack on death? Enemies held by Larva have 50% chance of giving Stacks when they die, combine that with Virulence and you can get stacks incredibly fast.
Also, Virulence is a skill that refunds its cost and generates stack, its damage also increases per stack so why should it get any damage increase?

I won't even bother answering the questions because they're extremely stupid, the post is LITERALLY the answer to that. Literally the first sentence of the post is the answer.

[BDMblue]

Some people are confused. I made this thread because the larva change failed. With Nidus prime coming out we have 1 chance to change him, or it’s just not going to happen.

The only problem being addressed in this thread is team play. Moving his kit to be just stack based and not a combination of 2 resources I think is just an improvement.

If you don’t play a lot of Nidus in teams you won’t understand this topic at all. The problems of the frame in groups is staggering. Its not that the frame does not function it’s that it’s core mechanic does not work.

When playing in teams the best way to get stacks is to split off from your group find 6-8 guys group them and grab 20-30 fast stacks. In a mission like survival sure, but any other mission?

The point is when I brought up this idea the 1st time DE addressed it with the larva change. The idea sounded like it could work, but in reality the small amount of extra stacks just does not work to help the frame.

In teams Nidus has 2 major problems 

Can’t get reasonable stacks and being around allies is frustrating.

His 1 costs a lot of mana and if you fail to hit 3 mobs you lose mana extremely fast. Casting 1 and an Allie killing everything before you hit them with it hurts.

 

Well also those people who go out of their way to deny Nidus stacks. Gloating for doing this is common for WF players.

[(XBOX)Ampathetiic]

28 minutes ago, BDMblue said:

With Nidus prime coming out we have 1 chance to change him, or it’s just not going to happen.

Let's not get too dramatic, since that's not really how that works. Sure frames like Zephyr, Titania, and Wukong got changes with their primes, but many frames get changes before their primes (Limbo, Nezha) or way after their prime (Vauban, Ember, Chroma). Prime brings some attention to that frame, but there will be plenty of chances for Nidus to be changed if DE feels that the change would be beneficial, and don't have other priorities, like buffing the more commonly complained about frames, like Valkyr/Hydroid/Nyx/Zephyr/Chroma.

[(XBOX)GodMasterTP]

3 minutes ago, (XBOX)Regxxh said:

Let's not get too dramatic, since that's not really how that works. Sure frames like Zephyr, Titania, and Wukong got changes with their primes, but many frames get changes before their primes (Limbo, Nezha) or way after their prime (Vauban, Ember). Prime brings some attention to that frame, but there will be plenty of chances for Nidus to be changed if DE feels that the change would be beneficial, and don't have other priorities, like buffing the more commonly complained about frames, like Valkyr/Hydroid/Nyx/Zephyr.

Include Chroma there.

[TTraw]

On 2021-01-19 at 9:25 PM, BDMblue said:

I made this thread because the larva change failed.

Well I wouldnt say it failed. I personally think it was a great idea and it improved teamplay fairly decently. I just feel like it simply was not enough of a push, numbers wise.

I totally understand what you meant with that Nidus feels terrible in team play because this is exactly what threw me away from him before I switched to Ash. Everyone killstealing around makes it very difficult to gain more than 10 full stacks in a quick mission.

That said, while without doubts your ideas would solve a lot of issues of his teamplay, I feel like it's too big of a rework of a kit that many people consider well designed and thus like it a lot.

Which is why I think the changes should be more of heavier number tweaks rather than full kit rework.

Some solutions are easy and already mentioned. Personally I would shift some power from stack generation of his 1 onto his other abilities.

Imagine if his 1 had only 75% chance to generate a stack (but not rng and more like every 4th hit doesnt generate stack) and instead we gave him things like turning Larva stack generation from small % to guaranteed and make his 3 give you like 15% chance to give you stack when you andyour linked target kill something.

In addition to his lack of teamplay, I would like to mention some technical issues I have with this frame.

His 1 cannot be reactivated until it hits a wall or ends fully, which means that it has very inconsistent timing on optimal reactivation of this ability which is very annoying especially since you can't tell when your linked Target's Virulence is ending most of the time.

His 2 has this weird tendency to make pulled enemies orbit around annoyingly and make them difficult to shoot. And since you can't reactivate larva you need to wait awkwardly until it ends. Same happens when something get stuck on their way of the pull or when Larva attaches to unpullable enemy. I am 99% sure Saxums can't be pulled so you need to wait before reactivating Larva unles you kill it.

Since we're complaining about Nidus, may I mention how his 3 ruins my fashion frame and how his 4  is a visual mess?

[(XBOX)Ampathetiic]

15 minutes ago, TTraw said:

Since we're complaining about Nidus, may I mention how his 3 ruins my fashion frame

Now this is the buff Nidus needs! Seriously, this is arguably worse than Gara's 2 and just looks goofy being covered in infested nonsense.

[Colyeses]

12 hours ago, TTraw said:

Imagine if his 1 had only 75% chance to generate a stack (but not rng and more like every 4th hit doesnt generate stack) and instead we gave him things like turning Larva stack generation from small % to guaranteed and make his 3 give you like 15% chance to give you stack when you andyour linked target kill something.

May I suggest that we steer clear of any RNG and instead increase the amount of points needed for a stack? 

Currently it's 5 points to a stack, right? And every Virulence hit grants a point. Why not change this to 25 points to a stack, with Virulence giving 5 points per hit?

Then Larva can give 2 points per killed target and Nidus' third ability can grant 1 point per enemy killed by his link target.

A larger point count per stack would allow finer tuning without relying on RNG.

[TTraw]

5 hours ago, Colyeses said:

May I suggest that we steer clear of any RNG and instead increase the amount of points needed for a stack? 

bbbut literally in the quote you took I wrote

18 hours ago, TTraw said:

(but not rng and more like every 4th hit doesnt generate stack)

which solved the issue already ;-;

[Birdframe_Prime]

1 hour ago, TTraw said:

which solved the issue already ;-;

I don't agree.

I think the suggestion from Colyeses there actually removes all kind of penalty at all without meaninglessly complicating the ability. Having the ability try and count the number of enemies it hits, discounting every 4th one, would take too much calculation and likely bug out due to DE's known problems with its own spaghetti coding.

The most simple way is just to say that each ability counts points towards Stacks, but counts more or less depending on what the actual result is.

If you use Larva, guaranteeing that every single enemy that dies grants a point towards a Stack means that you actually get more points for hitting them with Virulence if Virulence kills (which it does at lower levels where allied nukes are problematic). Meanwhile it removes all RNG and penalty for your allies actually killing your targets because the amount of enemies you can pull in can offset the loss of Virulence stacks if you need to.

And Virulence doing 5 points per hit means that, technically speaking, it takes exactly the same number of hits from Virulence to get a Stack as it does now, with the bonus of the points that the other abilities would add, increasing the Stack gain overall.

Heck, that would even allow the Augment for bonus point gains on his 4 to be tweaked so that every hit with Virulence, every enemy killed in Larva, and every kill with a Maggot attached, will grant 1 extra point, or even 2 extra points, to accelerate the process in a reliable and non-RNG way.

The more you can make abilities trigger off mechanically reliable functions (like all the enemies hit, rather than trying to say that some enemies don't count) the better.

[TTraw]

On 2021-01-21 at 7:35 PM, Birdframe_Prime said:

I don't agree.

I think the suggestion from Colyeses there actually removes all kind of penalty at all without meaninglessly complicating the ability. Having the ability try and count the number of enemies it hits, discounting every 4th one, would take too much calculation and likely bug out due to DE's known problems with its own spaghetti coding.

Counting to 4 and checking if it was 4th hit is literally 2 lines of code and isn't going to collapse entirety of warframe in no way or form.

Besides, I wouldnt call it overcomplicating when literally nothing changes about use of Virulence.

On 2021-01-21 at 7:35 PM, Birdframe_Prime said:

The most simple way is just to say that each ability counts points towards Stacks, but counts more or less depending on what the actual result is.

If you use Larva, guaranteeing that every single enemy that dies grants a point towards a Stack means that you actually get more points for hitting them with Virulence if Virulence kills (which it does at lower levels where allied nukes are problematic). Meanwhile it removes all RNG and penalty for your allies actually killing your targets because the amount of enemies you can pull in can offset the loss of Virulence stacks if you need to.

And Virulence doing 5 points per hit means that, technically speaking, it takes exactly the same number of hits from Virulence to get a Stack as it does now, with the bonus of the points that the other abilities would add, increasing the Stack gain overall.

Heck, that would even allow the Augment for bonus point gains on his 4 to be tweaked so that every hit with Virulence, every enemy killed in Larva, and every kill with a Maggot attached, will grant 1 extra point, or even 2 extra points, to accelerate the process in a reliable and non-RNG way.

The more you can make abilities trigger off mechanically reliable functions (like all the enemies hit, rather than trying to say that some enemies don't count) the better.

My main issue with the 25 stacks idea is how it would make the stack counter very hard to read because it would be divided in such tiny pieces.

 

Anyway. My idea still stands. I wish that we could shift the power generation from his 1 into his other abilities.

But I do agree that this idea is not too bad. It would be easier to balance stack generation too. For example:

• 3 stacks for each hit with Virulence
• 5 stacks for killing someone inside Larva
• 1 stack everytime you and your linked target kill sth
• 5 stacks for each enemy hit with Maggotsplosion

Yeah I could see that work. And even if those numbers are OP we can always reduce them. And as you said we could make his 4 augment not rng based because of this. I see this as an absolute win!

[Birdframe_Prime]

3 hours ago, TTraw said:

• 5 stacks for killing someone inside Larva

While I'm glad you're starting to see how the points would balance out better than RNG, I think you're not getting why there is RNG on it in the first place.

Larva has no limit to the things it can grab, as long as they're in line of sight.

Generating more points per enemy killed in Larva than you gain for hitting them with Virulence will never fly from a balance perspective.

That literally negates the use of Virulence, because Larva is the cheaper ability, will generate more Stacks when used than Virulence, and your Allies count directly towards it as well. Where is there any incentive to even cast Virulence at the thing when just killing them counts for more Stacks?

I'm not saying these are OP numbers. I'm saying that you need to adjust your balance for which abilities need priority in his kit based on what they are and what they do.

[Colyeses]

5 hours ago, TTraw said:

My main issue with the 25 stacks idea is how it would make the stack counter very hard to read because it would be divided in such tiny pieces.

Not necessarily. Just add a second ring, same segment sizes, and you've got a pretty readable UI, methinks.

[TTraw]

5 hours ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

Generating more points per enemy killed in Larva than you gain for hitting them with Virulence will never fly from a balance perspective.

That literally negates the use of Virulence, because Larva is the cheaper ability, will generate more Stacks when used than Virulence, and your Allies count directly towards it as well. Where is there any incentive to even cast Virulence at the thing when just killing them counts for more Stacks?

I mean, that was literally the point of the changes. I wanted it so that Virulence isn't the only reliable source of gaining stacks. This solves 2 issues:

1. This makes his 1 subsumable, enlarging build possibilities and even enabling weapon-focused playstyle
2. This makes him better in teamplay where killstealing would become less of a problem

I don't see a problem with Larva giving more stacks than Virulence, because conditions for these stacks are rarer. Getting kills from ability that cannot be spammed vs getting hits with ability usable over and over again has  a clear difference in frequency. In most (well designed) games, rarer, harder to happen condition is compensated by being more rewarding.

Virulence would still be his best way to gain stacks because simply hiting larvaed enemies 2 times already bypasses the value of Larva kill. Against high level content, Virulence doesn't deal as much damage until higher in stacks so it isn't uncommon for you to use Virulence on larvaed enemies multiple times, greatly overshadowing Larva stack generation.

And in low-lvl content, it was common complain that Nidus generated stacks way too slow for the mission pace so that change would benefit him greatly.

[Birdframe_Prime]

7 hours ago, TTraw said:

I mean, that was literally the point of the changes.

Yeah... that's kind of the problem.

That's specifically the problem that I, and others, will have with your goal here. It won't fly with the people who actually dictate the balance of this frame.

The change to give Nidus any point gain on Larva at all is because it stops other people from being a hindrance to Nidus. It is not to make his abilities more powerful and stack gain easier.

Wanting to put more stack gain per kill on Larva than there is on hit with Virulence, at base, is just lazy design and poor execution of his functions.

Forget the 'hitting twice' with Virulence, because hitting twice with Virulence takes twice as long and costs twice as much (before you gain the energy back on hit) as just hitting once with Larva and letting your team kill them.

The change that you want wouldn't make him a better Warframe, because it doesn't solve the problem he has, it switches the problem from 'team mates are a hindrance' to 'team mates are the optimal tool for near AFK play' and 'Stack gain in Solo is faster, but doesn't change anything about how I play or where my damage/survivability caps out'.

[TTraw]

35 minutes ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

Yeah... that's kind of the problem.

That's specifically the problem that I, and others, will have with your goal here. It won't fly with the people who actually dictate the balance of this frame.

The change to give Nidus any point gain on Larva at all is because it stops other people from being a hindrance to Nidus. It is not to make his abilities more powerful and stack gain easier.

Wanting to put more stack gain per kill on Larva than there is on hit with Virulence, at base, is just lazy design and poor execution of his functions.

I don't understand your concern at all.

In order Nidus to be at his best the use of his 1 is almost a must. You're forgetting the fact that his 1 is needed to detonate Maggots, and his double virulence synergy with his 3. And I think you're overestimating the power of the changes bring. In an exterminate mission, that averages at 100 kills/mission, using Larva only will generate him 20 stacks of mutation, and about ~23 if he used his link. And this assumes you larva every single enemy, and assumes that you and your linked target are the only ones scoring kills on these foes.

24 stacks of mutation is not every 1/4th of his max power. In order for nidus to get higher number of stacks he would need to use his 1. A lot.

Currently Virulence is easily about 90% of his stack gain. That includes the double virulence synergy and ability to detonate maggots. This suggestion brings it to 75%-60% of his max stack gain source at best, which is still more than what his other abilities would bring together if this ability didn't exist. 

 

35 minutes ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

Forget the 'hitting twice' with Virulence, because hitting twice with Virulence takes twice as long and costs twice as much (before you gain the energy back on hit) as just hitting once with Larva and letting your team kill them.

No, Virulence doesn't take "twice" as long. You cannot recast Larva unless you run that crap augment. The time it takes you to cast larva, let it get suck all the enemies in, hit all enemies with your weapon, and then recast it again and get sucked is no brainer way longer time investment than cast larva and spam virulence for stacks multiple times. Especially when you use Larva next to a wall, as all pointblank virulences will be able to be recast instantly.

Also, i dont understand why you DONT count the energy regain to the energy cost. It is instantenuous and it is impossible to avoid that energy regen unless you miss virulence completely. Simply touching 2 enemies with a single virulence already consumed less energy total than your larva. And if you have link, you only need to hit 1 person with that double virulence to make it cost less energy that larva...

35 minutes ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

The change that you want wouldn't make him a better Warframe, because it doesn't solve the problem he has, it switches the problem from 'team mates are a hindrance' to 'team mates are the optimal tool for near AFK play' and 'Stack gain in Solo is faster, but doesn't change anything about how I play or where my damage/survivability caps out'.

In order for your teammates to stack you to full with larva + link alone, your "carry" would need to kill 417 enemies themselves, all of enemies being in larva. That takes a lot of time and most missions don't even have such high killcount on the end scoreboard. How is that "optimal tool for near AFK play"? If you don't afk you will get full stacks within less than 20% of that kill count if you use Virulence. Even without my suggestions.

Also, I doubt it would increase his stack gain in solo either. 

[Birdframe_Prime]

4 hours ago, TTraw said:

In order for your teammates to stack you to full with larva + link alone, your "carry" would need to kill 417 enemies themselves, all of enemies being in larva.

That's less than the average kills necessary to complete a 10 Wave Defense at around level 30. It's easily possible, and far less than could be done in any form of higher spawn endless like Kuva Survival, Fissure missions and so on.

It doesn't increase his stack gain in solo, not by much, and that's also the problem. You're introducing the opposite problem right now, where the current issue is 'enemies are killed by team members before you can gain stacks, that's unfair' to the opposite of getting your optimal stacks in team play which incentivises letting your team do the work.

If you don't see it, then we're just going to have to leave it at that. I'm not going to change your mind if you don't think the base premise is a problem when I see it as one.

[TTraw]

39 minutes ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

That's less than the average kills necessary to complete a 10 Wave Defense at around level 30. It's easily possible, and far less than could be done in any form of higher spawn endless like Kuva Survival, Fissure missions and so on.

My point exactly. 10 waves, for getting max stacks, is increeeedibly slow and you can get max stacks within 2 waves easily with the full use of Nidus' kit. Which is why I don't see the problem with what I am suggesting. In teamplay, Nidus is almost useless, so it is better to be more dependent on team and it's is not going to hurt him because it's slow. But slow is still better than the turtle speed we have now.

Unless you have an idea on how to make Nidus kit be more usable with a killstealing team, while keeping the full control over his stack generation to himself, I will stick to it being a good idea.

[Birdframe_Prime]

1 minute ago, TTraw said:

Unless you have an idea on how to make Nidus kit be more usable with a killstealing team

Ahhhh, I see where you're misunderstanding.

You think I'm against making the changes overall, because of the team issue, when that's not the case.

You're not seeing the problem because you're not seeing how putting too much stack gain on his other abilities would remove the emphasis on using the primary combo.

What I'm against is having the Team be more effective than Nidus himself at gaining Nidus stacks, and I'm against unbalancing his abilities so that the wide-area, multi-enemy-affecting Crowd Control function is more effective at generating stacks from kills than his mono-directional combo with his more expensive 1 would be from basic hits.

Since you have a choice between a 25 energy ability that will gain you (from your earlier numbers) 5 stacks per enemy killed, which is really easy for a team to do with them all grouped up, why would you then additionally cast another 50 energy ability to gain only 3 stacks per enemy hit? Especially when the killing of the enemies instantly removes the Duration of Larva so you can re-cast it. That's counter-intuitive to the cost/benefit of the ability combo.

More than that, in a team, with kill-stealing enemies, you're not going to get off two casts of Virulence, the enemies will be dead before you cast the second one. You'll get the first, almost always, but not the second. So you have to make that single cast you do get something that's worth bothering with rather than just letting your team do it.

Because it's easier for a team to kill grouped up enemies than it is for Nidus to do so with just his abilities, what you need to do is put the emphasis on using his 1 regardless of how good only using his 2 would be.

Buffing his 1, for example, is all well and good. That's something that would get the point across. However in your earlier numbers, the one I quoted specifically, making the per-hit gain of stacks be lower than per-kill gain of stacks is dis-incentivising him to use it in a team setting. Or even, as a different example, in the current meta you can use Melee to gain stacks faster than Virulence could by just using Larva.

The point I'm making is that, in order to make Nidus stronger, you solve the problem of kill-stealing enemies by putting stack gain onto kills as well as hits, however you don't do it at the expense of his base function of gain per hit. You do it as a balanced, side note to them.

A better way to put stack gain on Parasitic Link would be that instead of just gaining additional stacks from enemies hit by the second spawn of Virulence, hitting the same enemy with both instances generates bonus stacks. So combining Parasitic Link with Larva to hit the same 5 enemies generates three times the stacks rather than two times.

This way you keep the emphasis on casting Virulence, just as they did with Ravenous (you can manually detonate the maggots to activate their Stack gain, but only by casting Virulence on them), but you get more out of it. Parasitic Link then becomes better not just in Solo play from your linked victim, but in team play with your linked ally.

That's the be-all and end-all of my argument with this idea of yours.

Putting some stack gain on Larva, absolutely fine.

Putting more stack gain on Larva than on Virulence, not fine.