Why nerf subsumed abilities instead of just giving us other abilities?

[TrepMaul]

I am disappointed that all of the damage buffing abilities have "Altered: Inferior" written on them. If the devs have deemed them too powerful to allow as is, why not give us access to other abilities that are fun? Just one example: If Roar is too powerful, why not give us Stomp instead?

I've heard a LOT of criticism from friends, randoms, and people in region about both the choices of subsumed abilities as well as nerfing the ones DE chose. Why did they choose them if they didn't want us to have them? I felt like the idea was to create interesting builds, but some of the subsumed abilities aren't good, and so NEVER get used by anyone. That's not very fun for the players.

Do y'all have any subsumed abilities that you would replace if given the choice?

[(XBOX)Godlike13]

To not make the original frames that have those abilities obsolete or lesser. 

[TrepMaul]

4 minutes ago, (XBOX)Godlike13 said:

To not make the original frames that have those abilities obsolete or lesser. 

Then why even add the function?

[Rawbeard]

1 minute ago, TrepMaul said:

Then why even add the function?

because it's useful. riddle me this: which is better, weaker Roar or no Roar?

[TrepMaul]

3 minutes ago, Rawbeard said:

because it's useful. riddle me this: which is better, weaker Roar or no Roar?

There's a third option: one of his other abilities.

How weak is the subsumed roar compared to having a friend bring rhino, and do they stack?

[xZeromusx]

17 minutes ago, TrepMaul said:

There's a third option: one of his other abilities.

How weak is the subsumed roar compared to having a friend bring rhino, and do they stack?

Which other ability? Stomp is an ult, which they said absolutely not. Iron Skin would literally become the only ability anyone wanted, which would again require them to balance it with a nerf, and the same thing with charge, as its augment can massively boost armor. Roar was pretty much the only viable option, but needed some toning down for balance too. 50% nerfed to 30% and a duration of 30 seconds isn't unreasonable, and works well with several excellent builds, particularly high strength ones. Certain frames also exploit it very well too, particularly ones that summon allies like Wukong and Atlas so that you're always buffing more than just yourself.

Also, yeah, Roars stack.

[16Bitman]

6 minutes ago, TrepMaul said:

There's a third option: one of his other abilities.

How weak is the subsumed roar compared to having a friend bring rhino, and do they stack?

Which one?

Iron Skin is "iconic" so it's disqualified.

Stomp is an ultimate ability, which DE also has also decided to not include.

Now we're left with Rhino Charge.

 

Would you really have wanted another ability on the "ice wave, tempest barrage, banish, decoy and desiccation." tier?

[TrepMaul]

1 minute ago, 16Bitman said:

Which one?

Iron Skin is "iconic" so it's disqualified.

Stomp is an ultimate ability, which DE also has also decided to not include.

Now we're left with Rhino Charge.

 

Would you really have wanted another ability on the "ice wave, tempest barrage, banish, decoy and desiccation." tier?

Charge with augment is really powerful

[TrepMaul]

2 minutes ago, xZeromusx said:

Which other ability? Stomp is an ult, which they said absolutely not. Iron Skin would literally become the only ability anyone wanted, which would again require them to balance it with a nerf, and the same thing with charge, as its augment can massively boost armor. Roar was pretty much the only viable option, but needed some toning down for balance too. 50% nerfed to 30% and a duration of 30 seconds isn't unreasonable, and works well with several excellent builds, particularly high strength ones. Certain frames also exploit it very well too, particularly ones that summon allies like Wukong and Atlas so that you're always buffing more than just yourself.

Also, yeah, Roars stack.

I forgot stomp was his ult. it's the ability I use the least.

[xZeromusx]

4 minutes ago, TrepMaul said:

I forgot stomp was his ult. it's the ability I use the least.

Well, it's not bad for CC and with its augment, it's pretty good for maintaining your defenses. Its base range doesn't need buffing either to be very effective. Using it for damage, ehh. Using it for CC and defense maintenance, it works pretty well. I actually subsume over his charge. I know you can combine his charge augment with Iron Skin to get a massive shield, but I would rather have a large shield I can maintain seamlessly without it ever dropping than scramble to try to replace a larger shield that will eventually drop no matter what I do.

[TrepMaul]

30 minutes ago, xZeromusx said:

Well, it's not bad for CC and with its augment, it's pretty good for maintaining your defenses. Its base range doesn't need buffing either to be very effective. Using it for damage, ehh. Using it for CC and defense maintenance, it works pretty well. I actually subsume over his charge. I know you can combine his charge augment with Iron Skin to get a massive shield, but I would rather have a large shield I can maintain seamlessly without it ever dropping than scramble to try to replace a larger shield that will eventually drop no matter what I do.

new idea: make iron skin Rhino's 4 and then subsume stomp. Ironskin is his iconic ability anyway.

[xZeromusx]

12 minutes ago, TrepMaul said:

new idea: make iron skin Rhino's 4 and then subsume stomp. Ironskin is his iconic ability anyway.

Likely, no one would use Stomp. You'd essentially just replace Roar to simply replace Roar with something you wouldn't have to nerf for balance. And the thing you'd replace it with would be mostly useless. There are better options in Helminth for enemy CC, the augment would be useless on any other frame, and its damage isn't significant enough or the right damage type to do much of anything. It could maybe be interesting on Lavos, built for heavy range, but that's about it. You'd piss a lot of people off.

[TrepMaul]

12 minutes ago, xZeromusx said:

Likely, no one would use Stomp. You'd essentially just replace Roar to simply replace Roar with something you wouldn't have to nerf for balance. And the thing you'd replace it with would be mostly useless. There are better options in Helminth for enemy CC, the augment would be useless on any other frame, and its damage isn't significant enough or the right damage type to do much of anything. It could maybe be interesting on Lavos, built for heavy range, but that's about it. You'd piss a lot of people off.

No matter what DE does it pisses people off. I'd use stomp on my duration frames probably.

[Tiltskillet]

I don't know; nearly all the nerfed subsumes--including Roar--seem pretty popular.  I think there's your answer.  DE figured we'd want them anyway, and they were dead right. 

As far as adding more choices, I suppose there's a few I'd like to see.  But I'm not crazy about the idea  of adding another choice from every single Frame.

So I'd rather see more Helminth-specific abilities.

 

[xZeromusx]

Yeah, even nerfed, these subsumed abilities are potent. Like Dispensary. I use Dispensary on at least one build on almost every single frame. It can easily refund itself, and then some, and allows players to infinitely use archguns.

[Graavarg]

You are looking at it the wrong way. You should look at it from a warframe perspective, and see that warframe as a whole. The Helminth is about combining abilities for a better "whole" build. It wasn't meant as a "I can put his ability on everything"-thing, and it is also not about buffing existing abilities by allowing double effects.

So, pick a warframe, then look at the approx 50 abilities you can now use to make that warframe better for you to play. That's the Helminth, in a nutshell. And "better" doesn't mean "youtube-better", but explicitly better for how you personally like to play the game.

[Zeddypanda]

Stomp is disqualified from the get go, as mentioned by others. Iron Skin is also obviously disqualified, as that is kind of Rhino's whole deal.

I would've liked to see Charge. It's more interesting, and it could work really well with for instance Frost or Atlas to build armor, synergizing with their other abilities.

Roar is good, I suppose, but it's also boring.

In the same vein I'm annoyed about Mirage's subsumed ability. She gives out her buff, but it could've been the much cooler item bomb ability. Imagine the Vauban interaction! Vacuuming up every ammo box in the room and then blowing them all up. But no. Damage buff go brrrr.

 

[Berzerkules]

Even with the reduced stats, the damage buffs from subsumed abilities are unnecessary and overkill in most scenarios. 

I wish we got Hall of Mirrors from Mirage and Stomp from Rhino. 

I understand why people are upset. I would have used larva instead of ensnare if subsume larva had the same stats instead of -33% base range. I don't care about any of the other altered abilities though. 

[xZeromusx]

3 hours ago, Graavarg said:

You are looking at it the wrong way. You should look at it from a warframe perspective, and see that warframe as a whole. The Helminth is about combining abilities for a better "whole" build. It wasn't meant as a "I can put his ability on everything"-thing, and it is also not about buffing existing abilities by allowing double effects.

So, pick a warframe, then look at the approx 50 abilities you can now use to make that warframe better for you to play. That's the Helminth, in a nutshell. And "better" doesn't mean "youtube-better", but explicitly better for how you personally like to play the game.

Pretty much this. However, I would like to mention for others that some Helminth abilities are just really that good that you can place them on a majority of frames and they will shine.

That's what Roar is. It doesn't need a ton of duration to be great. Its base duration is already pretty good. It has universal value, since it increases all damage, so it doesn't matter if you're gun or ability focused for your damage, it enhances it. Range is hardly important to the ability, but its base range is already pretty significant. But even if a frame has low range, like with Narrowminded, Roar is still a strong ability to go with. It starts at 30%, meaning that across the board, you're getting a 30% increase to all damage done, which is not insignificant. The only kind of build that would make Roar a bad choice is high efficiency and low duration, but duration isn't hard to remedy back to at least 100% with a Primed Continuity.

Another ability that just slips onto almost any frame is Dispensary. It just exploits so many systems in the game. Even if you have high efficiency and low duration, so long as you don't go below 50% duration, Dispensary will refund its energy cost. High strength, low efficiency? No problem either, as you'll likely get more than 1 energy orb each pulse, again likely refunding the cost, and practically guaranteeing it if you take Zenurik Energy Pulse. Even if you have low strength and high range, Energy Pulse will refund the cost if your efficiency and duration is okay. And that's before even taking into account Arcane Energize, which will refund the cost and then more. So, dispensary is like the ultimate energy generator, allowing for a lot of builds that can ignore efficiency pretty much entirely. Then there's the fact that it allows you to always have health orbs on standby just in case, and universal ammo pick-ups which allow you to use archguns infinitely, which I think is underrated. Archguns have the mod Resolute Focus, which is essentially Primed Sure Footed so long as you aim.

Them there's the recent addition of Gloom. While it's perhaps not as universally applicable as Dispensary or Roar, a ton of frames make for great candidates, particularly certain ones that were kind of squishy and lacking in powerful defensive and support capabilities. With just 200% ability strength, it can reach 70% slow, which is more than enough to be tactically effective. With an Umbral Intensify with full set bonus and Growing Power, that's an easy mark to reach. A single stretch mod makes Gloom's range also tactically effective as well. And with the changes to its energy consumption, it's not hard to maintain either. To be honest, I'm quite surprised that Gloom was Sevagoth's chosen helminth ability. I honestly thought it would be Sow. Visually, Sow is pretty generic, it's not an ult, it doesn't have massive base range, it has damage fall off with range, and it's not like it's a massive amount of true damage either. I'm not complaining about Gloom, only pointing out that we could have gotten A LOT worse from Sevagoth.

While I agree that each frame should be helminthed with consideration to its kit and how you build the frame, I still think certain abilities are just no brainers and useful on a majority of frames, if not every frame.

[Rawbeard]

8 hours ago, TrepMaul said:

There's a third option: one of his other abilities.

you want Charge? another one? because you ain't getting Stomp. and don't even pretend like you believe Iron Skin is an option

[xZeromusx]

13 minutes ago, Rawbeard said:

don't even pretend like you believe Iron Skin is an option

Could you imagine?

[Rawbeard]

37 minutes ago, xZeromusx said:

Could you imagine?

it would be hilarious.

[(XBOX)GearsMatrix301]

9 hours ago, (XBOX)Godlike13 said:

To not make the original frames that have those abilities obsolete or lesser. 

The abilities were nerfed because DE deemed them to be “The most appealing options to players” before the system was even released. It had nothing to do with making the original frame that has the ability Obsolete. 

[Teridax68]

12 hours ago, TrepMaul said:

I am disappointed that all of the damage buffing abilities have "Altered: Inferior" written on them. If the devs have deemed them too powerful to allow as is, why not give us access to other abilities that are fun? Just one example: If Roar is too powerful, why not give us Stomp instead?

Putting aside how Rhino Stomp is a 4 ability and thus was never on the cards for being included as a subsumable ability in the first place, damage buff abilities like Roar were included to give players access to that sort of ability, then nerfed because they're head and shoulders above every other option. Even with its nerf, Roar is still one of the most, if not the most infused ability in the system, so ultimately most people still decided it was worth picking over about fifty other options.

One of the inherent problems with the Helminth system is that it clashes with our warframes' tiering of abilities: abilities on our 2 are meant to be stronger than abilities on our 1, and weaker than abilities on our 3, which creates a baseline power imbalance when choosing which ability to infuse, and which ability to replace. Adding to that, the balance between different abilities is wildly off, which is why so many Helminth abilities aren't considered worth the trouble. Because of this, while I think it's essential to nerf some Helminth abilities for balance purposes, for that same reason I think it is also important to buff otherwise underwhelming abilities when infusing them, as they otherwise will never see play. In fact, this could be a good opportunity to do a pass on some existing warframes and buff some parts of their kit, so that they too can enjoy a more fully functional set of abilities.

[(PSN)HynvictSanngRa]

Love how the popular opinion is that Iron Skin can't be an option because it's "signature" of Rhino (which indeed is), yet things like Warcry somehow still made it in, and in some cases like Excal there's just no ability to pick that isn't "signature" because even Radial Straw uses the Exalted Blade to summon them.

And also love how DE put things like that in Helminth, but not Turbulence, Electric Shield, Vex Armor, etc, even if altered.

I agree with you that most of those abilities should have been others (most because idek what Mirage is supposed to give that's not signature to her f.e), but it's no use, the Helminth system must be "good" even if some warframes have to give some of their most redeeming / signature abilities.

Nerfing them was just to not fully please anyone I think, and also because lets be honest, DE wants people to invest time in the game, so now imagine if Helminth had Ripline, rhinocharge, etc. Only a very, very small percentage of the community would play and advance in that system, and the rest would just complain 24/7 to them for making a bad system, so in a way they had to do it. Still wonder why they only gave the best abilities of a few warframes instead of everyone giving their best tho.