With Gara Prime coming next week, can Spectrorage (3) please be made into a worthwhile ability?

[Pixxel_5]

The TLDR:

Gara has 3 worthwhile abilities. Spectrorage (3) is not one of them. Other abilities in her kit do what Spectrorage does better (CC, damage, and synergy). The augment build is best helminthed onto other Warframes with clear synergy (e.g. Warframes that can group up enemies to be inside the AoE. Gara herself prefers to have Protea's Dispenser instead. Under no circumstances is Spectrorage by itself worth using, and even with the augment it is heavily outclassed.

A quick overview of Gara's abilities

Shattered Lash (1) is used to blow up her 4 (and therefore boost the damage her 2 deals), is good for some quick CC, and is even capable of being used for some light DPS duties in star chart level content.

Splinter Storm (2) is her best ability by far. It gives up to 90% damage reduction to health and shields, can be cast on allies and objectives, and has damage that (when using the interaction with her 4 and 1) scales well enough into pretty high levels of Warframe content. As if that wasn't enough, it can also be cast on enemies to make them more vulnerable to taking damage.

Mass Vitrify (4) is fantastic hard CC. It freezes enemies in place, makes them take more damage, erects walls that absorb enemy fire while letting allies shoot through... oh, and it allows Gara's damage output to scale for a significant amount of levels. Casting Mass Vitrify refreshes the duration of any instances of Splinter Storm it touches. Blowing up the walls with her 1 while outside the AoE of her 4 results in the wall's health being added to Splinter Storm's damage. And to add to that, the health of the walls scales with the health and shield values of enemies.

And then we have Spectrorage (3)...

Spectrorage is (theoretically) a localized form of CC. It spawns a small carousel of spinning mirrors, causing enemies near the mirrors to wander inside the carousel, remain inside, and attack the mirrors until half the mirrors break or the ability expires. During this time the ability reflects back damage the mirrors take. Mirrors inside instances of Splinter Storm add 50% of their health as damage to that instance when they break. There are several key areas where this ability falls short that result in it not being worth using and in Gara essentially having a dud ability.

The problems with Spectrorage

Let's talk about the CC application of Spectrorage, since that's what I think the design intent behind this ability is.

There are 2 things that I think heavily work against this ability working well as a CC tool.

First, Gara already has 2 other active abilities that give CC (her 1 and 4), not to mention her passive that has a chance to blind enemies for no energy cost. Her 1 gives a comparable kind of CC to Spectrorage while dealing much more damage & costing 2/3 less energy. Her 4 only costs 1/3 MORE energy than Spectrorage, while having a much more consistent and longer lasting form of CC. This is in addition to scaling with enemy stats and making affected enemies take more damage as well. Compared to these other abilities, Gara doesn't gain meaningful CC utility from Spectrorage that she doesn't already have elsewhere in her kit.

Second, Gara has a limit on how much range she can effectively fit into her build. You already want to be running at least 1-2 duration mods, since maintaining consistent uptime on her 2 is important. If your 2 is allowed to expire, and not refreshed by casting your 4, the damage you have accumulated is lost. You also don't want to have too high range on your abilities, as it becomes increasingly difficult to not accidentally touch Nullifier bubbles, making you drastically more vulnerable. Gara's 4 also lets you have a great deal of control over how big you want to make the area of effect, without needing to mod for significant amounts of range. This means that unlike some other Warframes with CC abilities, Garuda doesn't really have a reason to mod for a lot of range to make use of her powerful abilities. This in turn means that the very low base range of Spectrorage isn't really going to increase with her builds, and it will struggle to consistently capture enemies in any meaningful amount.

Let's look at the other aspects of Spectrorage and why they don't succeed in making this a worthwhile ability.

Gara's kit is very synergy reliant. All of her abilities have direct interactions with at least 1 other ability. However, unlike with the remainder of her abilities, the synergy components of Spectrorage do not scale with enemies. The amount of damage added to Splinter Storm by a mirror is a static amount that doesn't scale off of the stats of enemies inside the ability AoE. This stands in stark contrast to Mass Vitrify, which only costs marginally more energy, scales off affected enemy shields and HP, is a more effective and longer lasting form of CC, and also has the function of adding damage to Splinter Storm (the amount added is based on the HP of the walls, which scales off of enemies).

Unlike something like Octavia's Mallet, the damage reflected back by Spectrorage is not multiplied. This is important to make such an ability useful, since enemies otherwise suck at killing each other. Incidentally, this is also why using mind control type abilities is mostly not something you see.

The amount of damage that can be reflected back is not just capped by the duration of the ability, but is further capped by the fact that the mirrors have a finite amount of HP and that the ability ends prematurely if too many of the mirrors die.

As for her augment, I already touched on it in the TLDR above. To briefly reiterate, Gara lacks the kind of kit that can reliably make use of the augment. Something like Brozime's Grendel Spectrobelch build, or other Warframes with similar abilities, such as Gauss, Zephyr, Khora, or Nidus, are better suited to having this augmented ability in their kit. Gara herself also wants you to use a lot of different mods already, so giving up a standard mod slot for an augment is a big ask. You're better off using Protea's Dispenser instead. This also gives you a source of healing, which is something that none of her abilities do.

What needs to change, and some ideas on how it can change

The following areas need to be addressed:

The stats of the mirrors and the damage that Spectrorage deals need to scale with enemy levels. Looking at other abilities, such as the aforementioned Mallet or even Gara's own Mass Vitrify, we see that 1) the reflected damage from enemies needs to be further amplified to be worthwhile and 2) having such scaling abilities is in no way game breaking.

It's worth highlighting that CC becomes MORE important as you increase in levels, not less. This means that Spectrorage's flat amount of damage reflection and damage dealing potential, along with its decreasing CC uptime due to mirrors breaking faster, all contribute to making it an increasingly bad ability as you increase the enemy levels.

This is an area where the problem and solution are directly tied together.

Whatever synergy interaction with Mass Vitrify or Splinter Storm it is supposed to have, it needs to significantly increase its actual usability. As it stands, you need to be close to a mirror when it breaks to have a pitiful amount of damage added to your Splinter Storm. Even if it scaled with the enemies trapped inside, it would not be sufficient to bolster Splinter Storm because of how ridiculous the positioning requirement is.

The range at which enemies are affected by Spectrorage is another vital component that needs to be addressed.

Possible solutions:

The following are additional thoughts on what can be done to address the shortcomings. They are by no means mutually exclusive with one another, nor are they necessarily the only solutions that could work to give Spectrorage a purpose.

Rather than requiring Gara to be closeby for damage to be added to Splinter Storm, Spectrorage could directly add the damage regardless of where Gara is. This would give a further source of damage scaling for Splinter Storm and reduce the overreliance on specific melee mods to help scale up Splinter Storm’s damage. All Warframes that rely on stat sticks are directly affected by buffs or nerfs to the melee weapons, combo system, melee arcanes, melee mods, or riven mods. I don’t think that’s a good state for the game to be in, because it 1) makes it harder to balance and 2) raises the barrier to entry for a particular Warframe that relies on these things.

Spectrorage could be given additional functionality or synergy, such as providing health orbs from enemies, reducing enemy armor, adding a large AoE blind, or providing some kind of buff to nearby Warframes when the ability expires.

The energy cost, even with it scaling with enemies, is too high. Reducing it by 25 or more energy would help reduce the opportunity cost of foregoing a Helminth transplant or the sacrificing a mod slot for the augment.

Spectrorage can be completely scrapped and replaced with something worthwhile. Even with all the aforementioned fixes, part of the problem is that it’s another kind of CC ability in a kit that already features a lot of CC functionality. Further requiring enemies to interact with the abitlity in a particular way results in slow, static gameplay that often isn’t fun or ideal for what the game is trying to accomplish.

[Pixxel_5]

The TLDR:

Gara has 3 worthwhile abilities. Spectrorage (3) is not one of them. Other abilities in her kit do what Spectrorage does better (CC, damage, and synergy). The augment build is best helminthed onto other Warframes with clear synergy (e.g. Warframes that can group up enemies to be inside the AoE. Gara herself prefers to have Protea's Dispenser instead. Under no circumstances is Spectrorage by itself worth using, and even with the augment it is heavily outclassed.

A quick overview of Gara's abilities

Shattered Lash (1) is used to blow up her 4 (and therefore boost the damage her 2 deals), is good for some quick CC, and is even capable of being used for some light DPS duties in star chart level content.

Splinter Storm (2) is her best ability by far. It gives up to 90% damage reduction to health and shields, can be cast on allies and objectives, and has damage that (when using the interaction with her 4 and 1) scales well enough into pretty high levels of Warframe content. As if that wasn't enough, it can also be cast on enemies to make them more vulnerable to taking damage.

Mass Vitrify (4) is fantastic hard CC. It freezes enemies in place, makes them take more damage, erects walls that absorb enemy fire while letting allies shoot through... oh, and it allows Gara's damage output to scale for a significant amount of levels. Casting Mass Vitrify refreshes the duration of any instances of Splinter Storm it touches. Blowing up the walls with her 1 while outside the AoE of her 4 results in the wall's health being added to Splinter Storm's damage. And to add to that, the health of the walls scales with the health and shield values of enemies.

And then we have Spectrorage (3)...

Spectrorage is (theoretically) a localized form of CC. It spawns a small carousel of spinning mirrors, causing enemies near the mirrors to wander inside the carousel, remain inside, and attack the mirrors until half the mirrors break or the ability expires. During this time the ability reflects back damage the mirrors take. Mirrors inside instances of Splinter Storm add 50% of their health as damage to that instance when they break. There are several key areas where this ability falls short that result in it not being worth using and in Gara essentially having a dud ability.

The problems with Spectrorage

Let's talk about the CC application of Spectrorage, since that's what I think the design intent behind this ability is.

There are 2 things that I think heavily work against this ability working well as a CC tool.

First, Gara already has 2 other active abilities that give CC (her 1 and 4), not to mention her passive that has a chance to blind enemies for no energy cost. Her 1 gives a comparable kind of CC to Spectrorage while dealing much more damage & costing 2/3 less energy. Her 4 only costs 1/3 MORE energy than Spectrorage, while having a much more consistent and longer lasting form of CC. This is in addition to scaling with enemy stats and making affected enemies take more damage as well. Compared to these other abilities, Gara doesn't gain meaningful CC utility from Spectrorage that she doesn't already have elsewhere in her kit.

Second, Gara has a limit on how much range she can effectively fit into her build. You already want to be running at least 1-2 duration mods, since maintaining consistent uptime on her 2 is important. If your 2 is allowed to expire, and not refreshed by casting your 4, the damage you have accumulated is lost. You also don't want to have too high range on your abilities, as it becomes increasingly difficult to not accidentally touch Nullifier bubbles, making you drastically more vulnerable. Gara's 4 also lets you have a great deal of control over how big you want to make the area of effect, without needing to mod for significant amounts of range. This means that unlike some other Warframes with CC abilities, Garuda doesn't really have a reason to mod for a lot of range to make use of her powerful abilities. This in turn means that the very low base range of Spectrorage isn't really going to increase with her builds, and it will struggle to consistently capture enemies in any meaningful amount.

Let's look at the other aspects of Spectrorage and why they don't succeed in making this a worthwhile ability.

Gara's kit is very synergy reliant. All of her abilities have direct interactions with at least 1 other ability. However, unlike with the remainder of her abilities, the synergy components of Spectrorage do not scale with enemies. The amount of damage added to Splinter Storm by a mirror is a static amount that doesn't scale off of the stats of enemies inside the ability AoE. This stands in stark contrast to Mass Vitrify, which only costs marginally more energy, scales off affected enemy shields and HP, is a more effective and longer lasting form of CC, and also has the function of adding damage to Splinter Storm (the amount added is based on the HP of the walls, which scales off of enemies).

Unlike something like Octavia's Mallet, the damage reflected back by Spectrorage is not multiplied. This is important to make such an ability useful, since enemies otherwise suck at killing each other. Incidentally, this is also why using mind control type abilities is mostly not something you see.

The amount of damage that can be reflected back is not just capped by the duration of the ability, but is further capped by the fact that the mirrors have a finite amount of HP and that the ability ends prematurely if too many of the mirrors die.

As for her augment, I already touched on it in the TLDR above. To briefly reiterate, Gara lacks the kind of kit that can reliably make use of the augment. Something like Brozime's Grendel Spectrobelch build, or other Warframes with similar abilities, such as Gauss, Zephyr, Khora, or Nidus, are better suited to having this augmented ability in their kit. Gara herself also wants you to use a lot of different mods already, so giving up a standard mod slot for an augment is a big ask. You're better off using Protea's Dispenser instead. This also gives you a source of healing, which is something that none of her abilities do.

What needs to change, and some ideas on how it can change

The following areas need to be addressed:

The stats of the mirrors and the damage that Spectrorage deals need to scale with enemy levels. Looking at other abilities, such as the aforementioned Mallet or even Gara's own Mass Vitrify, we see that 1) the reflected damage from enemies needs to be further amplified to be worthwhile and 2) having such scaling abilities is in no way game breaking.

It's worth highlighting that CC becomes MORE important as you increase in levels, not less. This means that Spectrorage's flat amount of damage reflection and damage dealing potential, along with its decreasing CC uptime due to mirrors breaking faster, all contribute to making it an increasingly bad ability as you increase the enemy levels.

This is an area where the problem and solution are directly tied together.

Whatever synergy interaction with Mass Vitrify or Splinter Storm it is supposed to have, it needs to significantly increase its actual usability. As it stands, you need to be close to a mirror when it breaks to have a pitiful amount of damage added to your Splinter Storm. Even if it scaled with the enemies trapped inside, it would not be sufficient to bolster Splinter Storm because of how ridiculous the positioning requirement is.

The range at which enemies are affected by Spectrorage is another vital component that needs to be addressed.

Possible solutions:

The following are additional thoughts on what can be done to address the shortcomings. They are by no means mutually exclusive with one another, nor are they necessarily the only solutions that could work to give Spectrorage a purpose.

Rather than requiring Gara to be closeby for damage to be added to Splinter Storm, Spectrorage could directly add the damage regardless of where Gara is. This would give a further source of damage scaling for Splinter Storm and reduce the overreliance on specific melee mods to help scale up Splinter Storm’s damage. All Warframes that rely on stat sticks are directly affected by buffs or nerfs to the melee weapons, combo system, melee arcanes, melee mods, or riven mods. I don’t think that’s a good state for the game to be in, because it 1) makes it harder to balance and 2) raises the barrier to entry for a particular Warframe that relies on these things.

Spectrorage could be given additional functionality or synergy, such as providing health orbs from enemies, reducing enemy armor, adding a large AoE blind, or providing some kind of buff to nearby Warframes when the ability expires.

The energy cost, even with it scaling with enemies, is too high. Reducing it by 25 or more energy would help reduce the opportunity cost of foregoing a Helminth transplant or the sacrificing a mod slot for the augment.

Spectrorage can be completely scrapped and replaced with something worthwhile. Even with all the aforementioned fixes, part of the problem is that it’s another kind of CC ability in a kit that already features a lot of CC functionality. Further requiring enemies to interact with the abitlity in a particular way results in slow, static gameplay that often isn’t fun or ideal for what the game is trying to accomplish.

[(NSW)DEADSHOT500]

Hey man, I like your post! I pretty much agree with some of the points you make, but man that was a long post. I started losing focus towards the end there.

I agree that spectrorage needs to be fixed. I think the CC it provides being an agro pull is a lot better than the quick knockdown that her 1 provides. The issue, like you mention, is that the health on the mirrors makes it not even worth it at higher levels because the mirrors disappear in a heartbeat. I think spectrorage should just last the duration of the ability rather than have a health pool. The other issue, that you also mentioned, is the lack of range on the agro pull and you don't want too much range on her 4 because of nullifiers. Therefore, the base range of this ability should be higher. 

I totally agree that there is a lot of potential synergy with her other abilities. I think what should happen is enemies trapped inside spectrorage should either reflect a good amount of damage back to the enemies through multiplicative damage like Octavia's mallet, like you mention, or all the damage the mirrors receive gets multiplied and added to the damage counter on splinter storm that you also mentioned regardless of how far away Gara is.

In addition to this, when the duration of spectrorage ends, I think all the mirrors should explode at once, and it should explode with the same damage as splinter storms damage counter. Similarly, I would like Gara's wall to explode with the same damage as splinter storms counter. Lastly, if you were able to explode spectrorage with Gara's 1 just like you do Gara's 4, that too could add to the damage counter.

Making these changes would help to make all Gara's abilities revolve around the damage potential of splinter storm and make every ability worth using. I know I repeated a lot of what you said, but I also had a few additions at the end there that I think help to fill out the synergy between all her abilities. What do you think?

[taiiat]

Shattered Lash is not CC. it's Damage.
Mass Vitrify also isn't CC, it's part Barrier, part Damage.

Gara benefits greatly from Range. the exact main counter point you make against that is exactly why. you can always make Mass Vitrify smaller, so you don't have to worry about high Range making it too big.

 

what Spectrorage primarily does, is CC Enemies away from what they would be normally doing, to attempt to Kill the Mirrors. you can use that to your advantage to group Enemies so that your 3 other Damage Abilities can Kill Enemies more quickly. the Damage it deals itself is ancillary because it's not going to compete against the other 3 Abilities ever anyways.
giving it a large Blind, well, maybe i guess. except that would also be counter intuitive to what the Ability is useful for or does, so idunno about that.

 

what you're really saying in way too many words is, you aren't using this CC Ability because our Damage Stats are high enough that we don't need to bother with CC thesedays, usually.

i don't know what you plan on fixing about that, because there's basically nothing Spectrorage could do that would change that.  Gara already has DR and Damage, that's basically the only thing we need in the game of this current time. 

[(XBOX)Ampathetiic]

46 minutes ago, Pixxel_5 said:

Second, Gara has a limit on how much range she can effectively fit into her build. You already want to be running at least 1-2 duration mods, since maintaining consistent uptime on her 2 is important. If your 2 is allowed to expire, and not refreshed by casting your 4, the damage you have accumulated is lost. You also don't want to have too high range on your abilities, as it becomes increasingly difficult to not accidentally touch Nullifier bubbles, making you drastically more vulnerable. Gara's 4 also lets you have a great deal of control over how big you want to make the area of effect, without needing to mod for significant amounts of range. This means that unlike some other Warframes with CC abilities, Garuda doesn't really have a reason to mod for a lot of range to make use of her powerful abilities. This in turn means that the very low base range of Spectrorage isn't really going to increase with her builds, and it will struggle to consistently capture enemies in any meaningful amount.

Which ability has a limit on range? Splinter Storm only dispels if Gara herself enters a nullifier bubble, and Mass Vitrify is still able to cast and maintain the parts of the ring that didn't touch the bubble. As for build space, you can pretty comfortably run 2 duration, strength, and range mods while still having 2 free mod slots for Spectrosiphon and anything else you want (I use Primed Flow there, but it's really a free slot). If you feel limited on range, you can use only Overextended, and make up for the loss in strength by utilizing the melee combo multiplier to charge Splinter Storm more per shattered Vitrify.

45 minutes ago, Pixxel_5 said:

Gara herself prefers to have Protea's Dispenser instead. Under no circumstances is Spectrorage by itself worth using, and even with the augment it is heavily outclassed.

You prefer to have Protea's Dispensary. I much rather would have Spectrosiphon, so nobody has to wait around for energy orbs. With Spectrosiphon, I can just cast the ability at a cluster of enemies, and run into them with my charged Splinter Storm to generate a lot of energy orbs without having to wait around for Dispensary to cycle through its drops.

Base Spectrorage is underwhelming, although I couldn't imagine it being good considering Gara's already great kit, but the augment makes the ability very powerful, and like it or not, augments are part of how abilities are balanced.

7 minutes ago, (NSW)DEADSHOT500 said:

Similarly, I would like Gara's wall to explode with the same damage as splinter storms counter.

Considering that Splinter Storm can pretty easily reach over one million damage, having this effect with the radius of Vitrify's explosion would be ridiculous.

[(NSW)DEADSHOT500]

5 minutes ago, (XBOX)Regxxh said:

Considering that Splinter Storm can pretty easily reach over one million damage, having this effect with the radius of Vitrify's explosion would be ridiculous.

I don't remember for certain, but I'm pretty sure I tested that in the Simulacrum and having 1 mil damaged on splinter storm still doesn't kill level 140 corrupted heavy gunners very quickly, so at higher levels, a 1 mil explosion from mass vitrify wouldn't be that crazy not to mention the shear amount of time and energy it takes to get to 1 mil is soul wrenching especially if you make a mistake and have to start that counter over from scratch again.

Like I said, I don't remember how high I tested splinter storm at, but I do recall it wasn't worth the time and effort I put into it.

[Leqesai]

Just hopping in here to say Spectrorage is absolutely not in need of any changes. It is very powerful CC and with the augment one of the best energy generating abilities. If you combine Spectrorage+Augment with Arcane Eruption you have an A-Tier CC setup.

 

As long as one mirror exists the Spectrorage remains an effective source of CC. Enemies will even try to shoot at mirrors while they are in walls... So in tight maps the ability is really strong.

The main issue is people slept on this ability for a long time because her other abilities don't necessariy benefit Spectrorage. But builds specifically focuses on the ability are extremely good. I admit to being one of the people who did not see the utility of Spectrorage until I doubled-down on a build focused on it. After doing so I came to the conclusion that Spectrorage is not only worthwhile but one of my (if not THE) favorite abilities Gara has access to. There is a reason why it is a very popular subsume ability.

[(XBOX)Ampathetiic]

1 minute ago, (NSW)DEADSHOT500 said:

I don't remember for certain, but I'm pretty sure I tested that in the Simulacrum and having 1 mil damaged on splinter storm still doesn't kill level 140 corrupted heavy gunners very quickly, so at higher levels, a 1 mil explosion from mass vitrify wouldn't be that crazy not to mention the shear amount of time and energy it takes to get to 1 mil is soul wrenching especially if you make a mistake and have to start that counter over from scratch again.

Like I said, I don't remember how high I tested splinter storm at, but I do recall it wasn't worth the time and effort I put into it.

The majority of content you actually do doesn't have enemies with the EHP values of a 140 corrupted heavy gunner. These enemies die to only 200k damage, which takes barely any time at all if you utilize combo multipliers. Once you charge that, you have a wide area nuke that only gets more powerful as you use it.

[(NSW)DEADSHOT500]

16 minutes ago, (XBOX)Regxxh said:

The majority of content you actually do doesn't have enemies with the EHP values of a 140 corrupted heavy gunner.

You might be right on the "majority" statement, but don't forget about steel path. That's pretty substantial.

[(XBOX)Big Roy 324]

I thought at one point spectrorage could be cast around mass vitrify.  I don't know what it supposedly did but if that was a feature or synergy that added damage reflect to the wall. 

Also I said in a similar thread.  As opposed to the healing augment.  A different augment that gives splinter storm a health amount that that scales with the damage or health of vitrify. But has infinite duration like iron skin and warding halo.  So it can be infinitely refreshed.

[(XBOX)Ampathetiic]

16 minutes ago, (NSW)DEADSHOT500 said:

You might be right on the "majority" statement, but don't forget about steel path. That's pretty substantial.

Sure, but don't forget literally everything else. Imagine being the team member that has to sit around doing nothing because Gara is nuking everything.

4 minutes ago, (XBOX)Big Roy 324 said:

As opposed to the healing augment.  A different augment that gives splinter storm a health amount that that scales with the damage or health of vitrify. But has infinite duration like iron skin and warding halo.  So it can be infinitely refreshed.

On top of doing Frost's job better than him, Gara should also have Frost's augment, but better.

[Pixxel_5]

1 hour ago, taiiat said:

Shattered Lash is not CC. it's Damage.
Mass Vitrify also isn't CC, it's part Barrier, part Damage.

Gara benefits greatly from Range. the exact main counter point you make against that is exactly why. you can always make Mass Vitrify smaller, so you don't have to worry about high Range making it too big.

 

what Spectrorage primarily does, is CC Enemies away from what they would be normally doing, to attempt to Kill the Mirrors. you can use that to your advantage to group Enemies so that your 3 other Damage Abilities can Kill Enemies more quickly. the Damage it deals itself is ancillary because it's not going to compete against the other 3 Abilities ever anyways.
giving it a large Blind, well, maybe i guess. except that would also be counter intuitive to what the Ability is useful for or does, so idunno about that.

 

what you're really saying in way too many words is, you aren't using this CC Ability because our Damage Stats are high enough that we don't need to bother with CC thesedays, usually.

i don't know what you plan on fixing about that, because there's basically nothing Spectrorage could do that would change that.  Gara already has DR and Damage, that's basically the only thing we need in the game of this current time. 

Shattered Lash staggers enemies in a wide arc or line when cast. That is CC.

Mass Vitrify encases enemies it passes over in a crystal shell, imobilizing them and making them take more damage. That is CC.

Mass Vitrify has a minimum range that is affected by ability range. You can't make it smaller, you can always make it larger, the exact opposite of what you're claiming.

If you need to protect an area, you should be deploying Mass Vitrify. It CCs enemies, makes them take more damage, refreshes the duration on Splinter Storm, and also boosts Splinter Storms damage when you detonate it with Shattered Lash. It only costs slightly more energy than Spectrorage to use and does everything Spectrorage does and more. Spectrorage just isn't worth using.

 

It's not that CC isn't worth using. Mass Vitrify is an incredibly potent form of CC that has plenty of applications in things like high level Railjack, Sorties, Arbitrations, and Steel Path.

But Spectrorage is outperformed by every other ability in her kit and doesn't do anything for Gara that other Helminth abilities wouldn't do better.

[Pixxel_5]

2 hours ago, (NSW)DEADSHOT500 said:

Hey man, I like your post! I pretty much agree with some of the points you make, but man that was a long post. I started losing focus towards the end there.

I agree that spectrorage needs to be fixed. I think the CC it provides being an agro pull is a lot better than the quick knockdown that her 1 provides. The issue, like you mention, is that the health on the mirrors makes it not even worth it at higher levels because the mirrors disappear in a heartbeat. I think spectrorage should just last the duration of the ability rather than have a health pool. The other issue, that you also mentioned, is the lack of range on the agro pull and you don't want too much range on her 4 because of nullifiers. Therefore, the base range of this ability should be higher. 

I totally agree that there is a lot of potential synergy with her other abilities. I think what should happen is enemies trapped inside spectrorage should either reflect a good amount of damage back to the enemies through multiplicative damage like Octavia's mallet, like you mention, or all the damage the mirrors receive gets multiplied and added to the damage counter on splinter storm that you also mentioned regardless of how far away Gara is.

In addition to this, when the duration of spectrorage ends, I think all the mirrors should explode at once, and it should explode with the same damage as splinter storms damage counter. Similarly, I would like Gara's wall to explode with the same damage as splinter storms counter. Lastly, if you were able to explode spectrorage with Gara's 1 just like you do Gara's 4, that too could add to the damage counter.

Making these changes would help to make all Gara's abilities revolve around the damage potential of splinter storm and make every ability worth using. I know I repeated a lot of what you said, but I also had a few additions at the end there that I think help to fill out the synergy between all her abilities. What do you think?

I think all of those changes are good for making Spectrorage a better ability.

Sorry if the post was too long. I specifically put a TLDR at the very top that covers all the core concepts I wanted to touch on. My main goal with the post is to highlight the problems that the ability has, specifically for being used on Gara. As I mentioned in the post itself, there are other Warframes who greatly benefit from having the augment & Helminth transplant put on them.

I don't think just having the mirror's scale with enemy level alone isn't a sufficient change to address the problems the ability has.

Octavia's Resonator becomes available through the Helminth, and gives comparable levels of immediate CC while having the advantage of repositioning on its own, a significantly lower energy cost, lasting just as long, and having a larger AoE. And that already IS invincible and therefore infinitely scalable.

It's the same kind of issue you have with Protea's Dispenser being straight up better for Gara than the Spectrosiphon augment build ever could be.

On Gara herself, you never want to use Spectrorage, with or without the augment.

 

[Pixxel_5]

2 hours ago, (XBOX)Regxxh said:

Which ability has a limit on range?

Splinter Storm and Mass Vitrify both want Gara to 1) limit the max range and 2) mod for a lot of duration. Mass Vitrify has an initial cast range that then further expands over time.

The initial cast range of Mass Vitrify is affected by ability range and the time that you can continue to cast it to expand it is affected by duration.

In effect, in situations where you have to deal with something like Nullifiers, you don't want to have either ability have an excessive amount of range, since that makes it next to impossible to control for Nullifiers when casting. It's the same reason why minimum range Limbo is a thing.

As for mod space: you don't want a build that only relies on abilities to survive. Sentients, Nullifiers, Acolytes, Demolysts, event bosses, and all sorts of other content have the ability to dispel Warframe abilities. If you're relying on perfect uptime on a single ability to protect you, then that's a single point of failure that you do not want. Also, dropping power strength to "neutral" (85-115%) means you are giving up damage reduction from Gara's Splinter Storm, since you need at least 129% ability strength to reach the 90% Damage Reduction cap.

Having an all ability build is fine for the star chart, but rapidly drops off in desirability.

2 hours ago, (XBOX)Regxxh said:

You prefer to have Protea's Dispensary. I much rather would have Spectrosiphon, so nobody has to wait around for energy orbs.

Have a pet with Synth Fiber to let you pick up health orbs regardless of your Warframe's health and run Equilibrium. Now all health orbs give you energy. Congrats, you now have a superior, near instant supply of energy, that doesn't rely on enemies being present to allow you to recharge. The marginal utility of Spectrosiphon's minutely faster return on investment is not worth that trade off. Not to mention, Dispenser gives Protea, her allies, and their companions a way to heal as well, which is not something that the base kit does.

2 hours ago, (XBOX)Regxxh said:

Base Spectrorage is underwhelming, although I couldn't imagine it being good considering Gara's already great kit

Octavia's Resonator becomes available through the Helminth, and gives comparable levels of immediate CC while having the advantage of repositioning on its own, a significantly lower energy cost, lasting just as long, and having a larger AoE. And that already IS invincible and therefore infinitely scalable. Incidentally, it's also worth using, unlike base Spectrorage.

Also, no ability should require an augment to be worthwhile.

2 hours ago, (XBOX)Regxxh said:

Considering that Splinter Storm can pretty easily reach over one million damage, having this effect with the radius of Vitrify's explosion would be ridiculous.

The amount of time required for Splinter Storm to reach that kind of damage value is ridiculous, especially when you take into consideration that a single knock-down or brush with a dispelling ability will reset you right back down to 0.

[Zeddypanda]

Ohey, that's the ability you put on acolytes to turn their AI off.

[Pixxel_5]

1 hour ago, (XBOX)Regxxh said:

Sure, but don't forget literally everything else. Imagine being the team member that has to sit around doing nothing because Gara is nuking everything.

That's already a thing for star chart with all nuke builds, including Gara.

1 hour ago, (XBOX)Regxxh said:

On top of doing Frost's job better than him, Gara should also have Frost's augment, but better.

Frost already needs a rework anyways. That's not a reason for why Gara shouldn't be better.

[Pixxel_5]

2 minutes ago, Zeddypanda said:

Ohey, that's the ability you put on acolytes to turn their AI off.

As soon as they or any non-star chart enemy attack, the mirrors are destroyed instantly due to their low non-scaling health values.

If you care about turning of AI, you're better off using Octavia's Resonator through the Helminth. It gives comparable levels of immediate CC while having the advantage of repositioning on its own, a significantly lower energy cost, lasting just as long, and having a larger AoE. And that already IS invincible and therefore infinitely scalable. Incidentally, it's also worth using, unlike base Spectrorage.

[taiiat]

30 minutes ago, Pixxel_5 said:

Shattered Lash staggers enemies in a wide arc or line when cast. That is CC.

Mass Vitrify encases enemies it passes over in a crystal shell, imobilizing them and making them take more damage. That is CC.

 

Mass Vitrify has a minimum range that is affected by ability range. You can't make it smaller, you can always make it larger, the exact opposite of what you're claiming.

It's not that CC isn't worth using. Mass Vitrify is an incredibly potent form of CC that has plenty of applications in things like high level Railjack, Sorties, Arbitrations, and Steel Path.

But Spectrorage is outperformed by every other ability in her kit and doesn't do anything for Gara that other Helminth abilities wouldn't do better.

unless you're literally spamming it, Shattered Lash isn't applying any appreciable amount of CC. and if you are spamming it, those Enemies aren't CC'd, they're dead.

similar situation - yes, you can CC a handful or two of Enemies. but we normally face Enemies at a rate of Dozens per Second, heh. so also similarly you'd have to be recasting it continuously to really be CC'ing the Enemies. but then just the same, they won't be CC'd, they'll be dead.
i'll give you that Mass Vitrify can be considered a CC against Minibosses or Bosses, as long as they aren't immune to it (which uh, most will be).

 

sure, the minimum Range goes up. whatever you're protecting is probably larger than a thumbtack anyways so a few extra Meters is inconsequential. max Range is only a 6 Meters minimum size. which is still not particularly large.

it very much is. we rarely have a use for anything other than Damage or EHP/DR with how our Stats have inflated in this game. our Stats are high enough that unless we have a Health based Objective, we prefer Enemies getting to us faster so that we can Kill them faster even, not slowing them down. and then when we do have a Health based Objective that is at risk of being destroyed, spamming Damage still does most of the work, and we place Snowglobe over the Objective just as a safety net because that's just what you do for that.

i think you'll find that similarly, almost every Ability that isn't lots of Damage or some sort of EHP buff, is greatly outperformed by the other Abilities available to you just the same. 
even some Abilities like Energy Vampire, only stay relevant now because you can turn it into a Damage Ability, if a pretty inefficient one and so we generally still don't bother because we have Dozens of Enemies per Second to Kill.

 

 

it's just how it is, because of our Stats. Enemies get Killed basically as soon as they come within eyesight, the only risks are their Level Scaling letting them deal a lot of Damage to either us or an Objective. so we protect ourselves, and that's pretty much everything that we actually have a use for. 
either that, or you're feeling lazy and while you wait for the Timer that's controlling your Mission, you place an invulnerable barrier over an Objective if you have one, or stack EHP so you can just wait out the Timer. ¯\_ (ツ)_/¯
if our Stats weren't as high? then we'd have more use for those types of Abilities. 

[(PSN)Vexx757]

I don`t like her 3 coz it`s a stationary ability. Imo this ability either needs to be improved drastically or be strait up removed.

I was going to improve the ability I would:

 

·       The mirrors will not shatter when enemies are shooting at it while inside it but instead will reflect damage back at them.

·       The mirrors will also absorb the damage from enemies.

·       When enemies outside the mirror ring shoot at it, it will reflect damage back at them and have a 60% chance to stagger enemies.

·       Holding the ability will deactivate the ability which will explode and shoot out shards of broken mirrors at enemies dealing damage to them based on the damage absorbed or when the duration is depleted.

·       You can cast up to a maximum of three.

·       Mirrors will not rotate.

·       Enemies inside it are not affected by gara`s passive.

·       (Synergy) if you cast your 1st ability on it, it will add slash damage to enemies when deactivated.

[-AncientWarrior-]

3 hours ago, Leqesai said:

Just hopping in here to say Spectrorage is absolutely not in need of any changes. It is very powerful CC and with the augment one of the best energy generating abilities. If you combine Spectrorage+Augment with Arcane Eruption you have an A-Tier CC setup.

Yep .. great energy creation and CC tool

[Pixxel_5]

9 minutes ago, taiiat said:

unless you're literally spamming it, Shattered Lash isn't applying any appreciable amount of CC.

Per the wiki:

Gara thrusts her glass longsword with 5 / 6 / 8 / 10 meters range toward the aiming reticle, dealing 500 / 600 / 700 / 800 Puncture damage and knocking back all enemies within 0.75 meters radius from the blade. Holding the ability key instead sweeps the glass longsword from left to right in a 225° arc in front of Gara, dealing 500 / 600 / 700 / 800 Slash damage to all enemies within reach and bashing them away in a ragdoll state in the direction of the sweep.

I'd call a ragdoll bash an appreciable form of CC for an ability with a high range, low energy cost, and quick cast animation.

Having CC is useful for a wide variety of circumstances, from being able to revive allies to allowing consistent headshots (which have added utility for things like Sharpshooter) and more.

13 minutes ago, taiiat said:

sure, the minimum Range goes up. whatever you're protecting is probably larger than a thumbtack anyways so a few extra Meters is inconsequential. max Range is only a 6 Meters minimum size. which is still not particularly large.

You're not really getting the point of why the range stat matters or how Mass Vitrify's variable range works, so I'll reiterate the reasons here.

Mass Vitrify has a minimum range when cast, and then continuously grows over a period of time up to a maximum size. The starting minimum size is affected by ability range. The period of time over which it can grow is affected by ability duration. At any given point, you can stop it from growing. This means that if you have low range and high duration, you have a lot of flexibility as to how big exactly you want Mass Vitrify's CC area and the walls to be.

Again, your original comment (posted again below for reference) is complete nonsense.

3 hours ago, taiiat said:

you can always make Mass Vitrify smaller, so you don't have to worry about high Range making it too big.

Depending on the situation, the damage output of Mass Vitrify is quite capable of dealing with enemies. That means having the walls expand out to cover as large an area as possible will result in more kills over time when you subsequently detonate the wall. Hydron is an excellent example of this. With a build that achieves a moderate amount of range (similar to modding for 140-160% ability range and not having the wall expand), Mass Vitrify is a near perfectly sized AoE nuke for quickly clearing waves.

And then there are situations like what you describe: where letting enemies close in is a desirable fact. So at that point you want a low range build, so that they can close in further.

This should show you that duration, not range, is the desired stat for Gara here.

I have no idea what the rest of your comment is referring to. It seems like you were trying to quote some other selection, but without the context there I can't say what it is you're trying to argue.

CC is strong and relevant in a wide range of Warframe content. Outside of the star chart and a limited selection of bosses, there is no content where having CC isn't a worthwhile asset.

 

[Pixxel_5]

Just now, -AncientWarrior- said:

Yep .. great energy creation and CC tool

I would advise you actually read the original post I made.

Spectrorage does not scale in terms of CC because it relies on mirrors remaining intact. Those mirrors have a finite amount of health that does not scale. It also affects a very small area of effect, which greatly limits its application.

As I've highlighted in numerous posts, Octavia's Resonator becomes available through the Helminth, and gives comparable levels of immediate CC while having the advantage of repositioning on its own, a significantly lower energy cost, lasting just as long, and having a larger AoE. And that ability is invincible and therefore infinitely scalable.

Similarly, Protea's Dispenser ends up being straight up better for Gara than the Spectrosiphon augment ever could be.

Spectrosiphon has applications, but they are on other Warframes that can reliably group up enemies. Not on Gara herself.

Spectrorage is not a good ability and it desperately needs some kind of change to be relevant.

[Tiltskillet]

Scrapping it sounds like a horrible idea.  It's one of the most interesting abilities in the game even if it needs some help.

I could definitely see increasing its base charm range  which would help a lot.  Scaling True damage in some form could be cool, giving it a damage niche  vs. big armor. Maybe as a synergy with one of her other abilities so that it doesn't become an even better subsume.

[Pixxel_5]

16 minutes ago, Tiltskillet said:

It's one of the most interesting abilities in the game even if it needs some help.

There are other abilities available through the Helminth that provide an equal or edit: great (forgot to write that word :P ) value.

Octavia's Mallet and Loki's Decoy come to mind, offering superior CC for a greatly reduced energy cost.

The Spectrosiphon build is useful on that small handful of Warframes with native cluster abilities, such as Zephyr, Nidus, Khora, Vauban, Grendel, Gauss, or Sevagoth. On all others, you get better performance from running the Synth Fiber + Equilibrium Dispenser setup.

And on those Warframes, you already have the CC capability you need, so Spectrosiphon is only there for the energy it provides, not the base CC component.

I don't see removing the base functionality as a great loss. The augment already has nothing to do with the base ability other than "enemies in an AoE have a high chance to drop an energy orb". That can be maintained just fine with any kind of AoE ability, deployable or centered on the player. The augment doesn't require that base Spectrorage remain anywhere close to its current form.

 

[Slayer-.]

 

4 hours ago, Leqesai said:

Just hopping in here to say Spectrorage is absolutely not in need of any changes. It is very powerful CC and with the augment one of the best energy generating abilities. If you combine Spectrorage+Augment with Arcane Eruption you have an A-Tier CC setup.

 

As long as one mirror exists the Spectrorage remains an effective source of CC. Enemies will even try to shoot at mirrors while they are in walls... So in tight maps the ability is really strong.

The main issue is people slept on this ability for a long time because her other abilities don't necessariy benefit Spectrorage. But builds specifically focuses on the ability are extremely good. I admit to being one of the people who did not see the utility of Spectrorage until I doubled-down on a build focused on it. After doing so I came to the conclusion that Spectrorage is not only worthwhile but one of my (if not THE) favorite abilities Gara has access to. There is a reason why it is a very popular subsume ability.

 

I like using Gara when I do pull her out, to be honest I don't really know how to use her to the max of her abilities, mainly used her 2nd and 4th skills and dabbled in the others.

 

Spectrorage on my Gara is smallish so when I use it I need to focus on where I put it, it can be useful if I had a better build for her but on my Gara (because of build) I find it meh most likely also of me not understanding Gare that much.

Though imo Spectrorage on other frames is really useful, I run Spectrorage on Mirage Prime, Mirage has a ranged build and I can easily stop a whole room while I kill them and in return I get energy to keep on going it works really well in Steel Path when I take Mirage in and I've never really had a problem that I've noticed with them smashing the mirrors really fast.

Spectrorage on my Mirage is way better imo than Protea's Dispenser or Octavia's Resonator which I have on some other frames, I like Spectrorage it gives me CC and energy on a larger scale than Dispensary while on the move.