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Theorem and Residual arcanes. The way they're interacted with in-mission really drains my enthusiasm.


Pfysicyst

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I had the intent to make a build to improve my dog as much as possible, so Theorem Infection was a big part of that for the damage bonus it gives to companions. Despite their dysfunctional AI and tendency to miss when they finally attempt to attack, I've got a soft spot for the pets. Now that I've got enough of the relevant arcanes, I've gone to use it in missions and I'm just immediately uninterested. I kill enemies, squint to see if they left a little cloud, and I go stand in it for a bit so the bonus can build up to a useful amount. Then I have to go find a time-out puddle again to keep the buff active before 20 seconds is up. I feel like a dope doing this.

Instead of visually hunting the scene to find small spots and stand in them, can the kitguns' Residual arcanes cause enemies to drop special pickup tokens instead for the benefit? Maybe something like the focus booster, or the gun could activate stacks of the bonus by getting X kills within Y seconds. Just something besides standing around. The little effect clouds on kill aren't valuable as they are since they're so tiny and ineffective, I don't see a reason to keep them. It'd make more sense if they were on zaws so we'd be likely to be in range of them when the enemies are killed, but it doesn't make much sense on kitguns.

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On 2021-02-12 at 4:16 PM, Scar.brother.help.me said:

Those arcanes are so bad that I feel sorry for the guys in DE who wasted time creating them.

I remember when they told us in forums how the new arcanes function, it didn't take 5 minute to see like 10-20 different posts explaining how bad of an idea the new arcanes are. so given that they didn't do anything when it wasn't even released, they will not do anything about it now!

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I learned recently that Theorem Demulcent can add elemental damage to some abilities, whether thats intended is up in the air. I dont find that Residuals are that difficult to activate and the Theorem stacks up pretty quickly. My builds generally dont need Arcanes for surviving so Ill take the easy method for buffing elementals.

These arcanes are also far less demanding to acquire than any other arcane outside of Scarlet Spear type events. So as a newbie arcane with potential niche applications late game they are fine. 

Now they do require you to put a bit of effort into gaining the maximum buff possible out of them. Contrary to popular belief they require you to constantly be on the move hunting for new targets. The RNG is maybe a little too much of a requirement. However, given that elemental damage is psuedo multiplicative in damage calculation a potential buff of 180% elemental damage should be a little tough to keep up. Never mind that if you are smart with your builds you can leave out, for example, Heat mods and go with extra status, Crit or multi shot, what ever suits the weapon really. 

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The basic idea for how the new arcanes work is solid, but it is the implementation that sucks. Forcing you to run around like an idiot and stand in places you don't even want to be to get a shortlived boost is simply dysfunctional. Having to run quickly to where a random enemy died even goes against how you actually should play some missions. 

Most of these problem could be fixed by spawning the area around the arcane that actually generates it, instead of where a random enemy dies. That would allow the player more control = to select where the area is spawned (= where you are when the enemy dies). At the same time it would remove the crazy yoyo-ing between diffuse spots.

I like the ideas, so I really tried using them. But it's just horrible, it breaks your flow and adds a couple of levels of stress, and for not all that much gain. Sadly.

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13 hours ago, Amoral_Support said:

These arcanes are also far less demanding to acquire than any other arcane outside of Scarlet Spear type events. So as a newbie arcane with potential niche applications late game they are fine. 

But are they really "newbie arcanes"? You can get them, as fair I can see, from lowest Arcane bounties. That's a lot less requirement than Eidelons. However is it still "for newbies"? Killing mechs require you to be "somehow" good with your gear.

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1 hour ago, quxier said:

But are they really "newbie arcanes"? You can get them, as fair I can see, from lowest Arcane bounties. That's a lot less requirement than Eidelons. However is it still "for newbies"? Killing mechs require you to be "somehow" good with your gear.

Given that Deimos is accessible from Mars and has a level range between 12-35 I can see low mr players gaining access to Residuals and Theorems.Pubs run Tier 1 Iso vaults and completing an Iso vault permanently unlocks the Arcana missions for that tier. The arcana missions arent that hard at all and reward arcanes quite frequently. 

Now would a completely fresh player have the knowledge or means to do this? Possibly not. But they would still be able to do it before beating Terry with a heckin Mote Amp. 

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What bothers me about those arcanes isn't simply that their balance is hilariously awful, but that their core gameplay has absolutely no business being in Warframe. There is strictly no reason to be made to stand still in a game whose greatest strength is its parkour and movement system. The fact that the Theorem arcanes are completely useless unless one also has a Residual arcane equipped is the icing on the cake. It feels to me like these arcanes were the result of some idle what-if concept that got thrown into the game half-baked, not even necessarily to test out a mechanic most would probably realize was a bad idea from the start, but just to dilute the Arcana bounty loot tables.

Personally, I think the first thing that would need to change would be for Theorem and Residual arcanes to be decoupled: requiring one arcane for another to work innately reduces build options, and the resulting interaction between the two would have to be very powerful to justify the mechanic. With this, I'd apply the OP's suggestion to the Theorem arcanes, rather than the Residual ones, and have them trigger their effects from quick kills or the like. Additionally, those effects could likely be moved to kitguns as a result. As for the Residual arcanes, either scrap them or fuse them into a single mod that creates a damaging area of effect based on the kitgun's main damage type. The damage itself would need to be buffed significantly, too, as it currently becomes useless very quickly.

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2 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

What bothers me about those arcanes isn't simply that their balance is hilariously awful, but that their core gameplay has absolutely no business being in Warframe. There is strictly no reason to be made to stand still in a game whose greatest strength is its parkour and movement system. The fact that the Theorem arcanes are completely useless unless one also has a Residual arcane equipped is the icing on the cake. It feels to me like these arcanes were the result of some idle what-if concept that got thrown into the game half-baked, not even necessarily to test out a mechanic most would probably realize was a bad idea from the start, but just to dilute the Arcana bounty loot tables.

Personally, I think the first thing that would need to change would be for Theorem and Residual arcanes to be decoupled: requiring one arcane for another to work innately reduces build options, and the resulting interaction between the two would have to be very powerful to justify the mechanic. With this, I'd apply the OP's suggestion to the Theorem arcanes, rather than the Residual ones, and have them trigger their effects from quick kills or the like. Additionally, those effects could likely be moved to kitguns as a result. As for the Residual arcanes, either scrap them or fuse them into a single mod that creates a damaging area of effect based on the kitgun's main damage type. The damage itself would need to be buffed significantly, too, as it currently becomes useless very quickly.

I disagree that the caveat of needing to stand in the residual zone is antithetical to warframe. I agree that warframe has a strong focus on movement. The residual-> theorem interaction introduces a risk reward consideration to that movement system. It asks the player to risk standing still in order to acquire the associated theorem buff. Thats not say that every player or frame has the capacity to accept that risk. Frames that are very good at tanking damage or crowd control worry less about the consequences of standing still than frames that arent as good at those things. Warframe is also a game that focuses on balancing your advantages over your disadvantages. This is generally evident in the way we mod our frames and gear and explicitly evident with things like corrupted mods. Limitations on what a player can do in Warframe is central to making the modding system interesting. I think that Theorems and Residuals are quite interesting and not throw away concepts like you are implying. 

That being said I do think that they could do with some buffs and changes. Heres what i would change: 

Residuals

The zone could be triggered by X number of kills instead of relying on RNG. Each rank of the arcane would decrease this value. This would make residuals far more reliable but still require player input to activate. 

Damage could be a max health % of the killed target. This would allow residuals to scale better into late game without breaking them. It could be as low as 15% and still be helpful. It would also introduce a little skill and require picking targets, but not be the defining feature of the arcane. 

Theorems 

Demulcent- keep the top end of its buff intact, but increase the value of each tick. This is merely to provide better benefit to the arcane at lower ranks. 

Contagion- Instead of spawning a projectile a radial wave of energy that expands while standing in the residual zone would be more consitent and have a better impact on the battlefield. Because its less discriminating i would dial the top end of its dr debuff down.

Infection - I would leave as is, its got a pretty high damage buff to pets and Im not sure what else it could be doing. Maybe make it apply its debuff to all sources of damage pets can employ? 

I would love to see DE actually take this concept further and apply it to things like Zaws and Operators as well. Ive come up with some ideas myself and would be happy to share over discord if you are interested Teri :)?

 

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31 minutes ago, Amoral_Support said:

I disagree that the caveat of needing to stand in the residual zone is antithetical to warframe. I agree that warframe has a strong focus on movement. The residual-> theorem interaction introduces a risk reward consideration to that movement system. It asks the player to risk standing still in order to acquire the associated theorem buff. Thats not say that every player or frame has the capacity to accept that risk. Frames that are very good at tanking damage or crowd control worry less about the consequences of standing still than frames that arent as good at those things. Warframe is also a game that focuses on balancing your advantages over your disadvantages. This is generally evident in the way we mod our frames and gear and explicitly evident with things like corrupted mods. Limitations on what a player can do in Warframe is central to making the modding system interesting. I think that Theorems and Residuals are quite interesting and not throw away concepts like you are implying. 

It's not that there is no mission types or frames that doesn't require too much action/movement. It's just you hear often "less AFK" things. Standing in one place is... not something VERY active.

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4 hours ago, Amoral_Support said:

I disagree that the caveat of needing to stand in the residual zone is antithetical to warframe. I agree that warframe has a strong focus on movement. The residual-> theorem interaction introduces a risk reward consideration to that movement system. It asks the player to risk standing still in order to acquire the associated theorem buff. Thats not say that every player or frame has the capacity to accept that risk. Frames that are very good at tanking damage or crowd control worry less about the consequences of standing still than frames that arent as good at those things. Warframe is also a game that focuses on balancing your advantages over your disadvantages. This is generally evident in the way we mod our frames and gear and explicitly evident with things like corrupted mods. Limitations on what a player can do in Warframe is central to making the modding system interesting. I think that Theorems and Residuals are quite interesting and not throw away concepts like you are implying. 

I can agree with this on principle and on an abstract level; there is definitely a high cost to standing still, and if done right it could be interesting to incentivize warframes to stand still for short, yet meaningful periods of time in order to access powerful bonuses. However, putting aside the weakness of the Residual arcanes, I think part of their problem is that they don't necessarily lend themselves well to that gameplay, as their charge-up takes too long and the area itself isn't consistent. If the arcane effect were something like "you gain this much power for [insert brief time window here] if you stand still for [insert brief time window here]", that could likely lend itself much more towards the above tradeoff.

4 hours ago, Amoral_Support said:

That being said I do think that they could do with some buffs and changes. Heres what i would change: 

Residuals

The zone could be triggered by X number of kills instead of relying on RNG. Each rank of the arcane would decrease this value. This would make residuals far more reliable but still require player input to activate. 

Damage could be a max health % of the killed target. This would allow residuals to scale better into late game without breaking them. It could be as low as 15% and still be helpful. It would also introduce a little skill and require picking targets, but not be the defining feature of the arcane. 

The trigger change I'd dispute for the above reasons, but would otherwise consider an improvement to the current effect. Max health I think would definitely be a good way of making the damage scale.

4 hours ago, Amoral_Support said:

Theorems 

Demulcent- keep the top end of its buff intact, but increase the value of each tick. This is merely to provide better benefit to the arcane at lower ranks. 

Contagion- Instead of spawning a projectile a radial wave of energy that expands while standing in the residual zone would be more consitent and have a better impact on the battlefield. Because its less discriminating i would dial the top end of its dr debuff down.

Infection - I would leave as is, its got a pretty high damage buff to pets and Im not sure what else it could be doing. Maybe make it apply its debuff to all sources of damage pets can employ? 

I generally agree with the suggested improvements, though if the arcanes are to still rely on Residuals, they wouldn't just have to be individually decent, they'd have to specifically be exceptionally good together. In the end, you're using at least one warframe arcane and a kitgun arcane for this, and the power you'd be getting ought to match that total.

4 hours ago, Amoral_Support said:

I would love to see DE actually take this concept further and apply it to things like Zaws and Operators as well. Ive come up with some ideas myself and would be happy to share over discord if you are interested Teri :)?

With great pleasure, yes please! I'm looking through the list you've sent, and will give more feedback there. If you make a thread with them, I'll post feedback there as well.

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I've read your ideas above and like some parts of those.

Here is my proposal 1:

Residuals should become ZAW arcanes and trigger on zaw kills. Melee makes the job done at high lvls- kill a lot of enemies and if those areas appear around corpses at melee range and can buff firearms and summons for a good amount of damage so that firearms can compete with melee - then we are talking. (Theorem Demulcent should only buff firearms, some scaling with enemy lvl or hp is welcome)

At the current state of the game I don't see a situation where I can kill lots of enemies with a kitgun and need a buff (why if I already kill enough to get that 20% proc on kill reliably? 😆) - they will just keep dying without any extra buffs.

Proposal 2: 

Change/add some effects on Theorem/Residual arcanes. Give us what we need the most in difficult situations: energy regen, status immunity, damage reduction, hp regen, shield regen, lots of armor, whatever makes us want to proc it and stand there. You can cut the crap like "40 toxic damage in the area".

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