Parazon Rework: 30.5 Update!

[[DE]Rebecca]

Parazon attacks were introduced in The Old Blood as a way to Mercy kill enemies. This stylish and universal blade has a clear role in all things Kuva Liches (and soon to be Sisters of Parvos), but their role in the game at large has been hard to play around.  There are problems in need of solving, and this workshop outlines our plans to do just that!

The problem with Mercy kills is they are hard to pull off, making engagement with the system far too low! Mercy kills only have a chance to trigger when an enemy’s health is 20% HP or less. In practice, you really never know if it’s going to happen. And if it does, it is often too late! You’ve riddled them with Status effects, a Squadmate casts an Ability, or your Kavat might be feeling extra bloodthirsty, and you cannot get in for the Mercy kill. 

We are changing their design, adding new Mods (thanks Design Council!), and refreshing the system. 

You can watch a video explanation as part of our Video Dev Workshop:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4wt-4Bx3Cg

 

The change is based on a core principle: We want to make them more reliable and more strategic so you can actively decide if you want to use a Mercy kill or not.

Our change is rooted in the following:

A Mercy Kill opportunity will be guaranteed when an enemy gets below 40% (60% for Corpus, but requires all Shields being stripped), but only on SPECIFIC units in each faction. 
 

• All Eximus

Grineer

• Heavy Gunners
• Bombards

Corpus

• Scrambus
• Nullifiers

Infested

• Ancients

 

And the logic is rooted in the following common scenario:
 

Imagine you see a heavy gunner in the distance. You have “Blood for Energy” on your Parazon.  You see you need some Energy, so you start shooting the heavy gunner knowing full well once she’s at 40%, she will be open for a Mercy kill and the Energy could be yours!

You can plan and decide! 

 

With this change also means the Impact Status Effect is changing:


Before: Impact Status Effects used to increase the chance that the random Mercy kill opportunity  would happen.

After: Impact Status Effects increases the Mercy Kill threshold range on eligible enemies. So instead of triggering at 40% on the list above, you can apply Impact Status to do a Mercy kill sooner (4% per Status)… up to 80%. Meaning applying a lot of Impact Status quickly makes an enemy VIP more quickly susceptible to a Mercy Kill. Impact would then be a build strategy for getting the VIPs out of the fight!
 

But what about really high levels you ask? Is it not dangerous to allow for essentially 1-hit kills in our scaling game? Mercy kills at high levels will have an extra consideration. They’ll be available when the respective enemy is at 40% Health, or 25K Health, whichever is lower. This only applies for really high enemies and units, but for a Heavy Gunner specifically for example purposes… for this to matter it doesn't kick until level 415. So generally speaking, 40% will be what you notice, but once you hit level 400+ content (generally), you’ll be using health thresholds. 

 

New Mods!

Your Parazon Mod slots will have some new options in Sisters of Parvos!

New Parazon Mods

 

5 New Parazon Mods are here! Find them all today to add new power and Utility to your Parazon! 

 

• Power Drain - 100% chance for next ability cast to gain +50% Ability Strength.

• Malicious Code - 50% chance for enemies within 15m to cower in fear for 8 seconds.

• Hard Reset - Execute 3 Mercy Kills within 40 seconds to revive a fallen Sentinel or Companion. 

 

Design Council Contributions: 

• Swift Mercy - Speed of Mercy kills increased by 50%.

• Firewall - Reduces damage by 75% during hacking. 

 

So there you have it - onward to planning the era of Mercy, Tenno! See you in Sisters of Parvos! 

[-RYFT-]

pog

[MasterControl]

If you want Parazon finishers to be more reliable, enemies *need* to enter a stagger state in which they are immune to damage for a short time when they die, similar to Thralls or Larvae. The time can even be shorter than Larvae, requiring quick action and for you to be paying attention. Otherwise, no matter how high you whack up the percentage for when an enemy is mercy eligible, it doesn't change that enemies at most reasonable levels will be dead in one to two hits and won't be able to be mercied by somebody who isn't fishing for it solo. I appreciate what you're trying to do, but overall I think this will be a fairly minor change for the majority of content.

[Lakyus]

Quote

After: Impact Status Effects increases the Mercy Kill threshold range on eligible enemies. So instead of triggering at 40% on the list above, you can apply Impact Status to do a Mercy kill sooner (4% per Status)… up to 80%. Meaning applying a lot of Impact Status quickly makes an enemy VIP more quickly susceptible to a Mercy Kill. Impact would then be a build strategy for getting the VIPs out of the fight!

This is awful, sorry. Impact status was already underwhelming, and now it's even more limited, to heavy units only. Why don't you go back to the idea of impact knocking down enemies? Impact already is the worst IPS damage-wise, plus it's the worst status as well.

Otherwise, I love the changes to Parazon. Thank you!

[Sohaya-]

This looks great.

[HolySeraphin]

1 hour ago, [DE]Rebecca said:

After: Impact Status Effects increases the Mercy Kill threshold range on eligible enemies. So instead of triggering at 40% on the list above, you can apply Impact Status to do a Mercy kill sooner (4% per Status)… up to 80%. Meaning applying a lot of Impact Status quickly makes an enemy VIP more quickly susceptible to a Mercy Kill. Impact would then be a build strategy for getting the VIPs out of the fight!

Considering the susceptible enemies are some of the tankies in their faction, I think it is good, way better than the last version. Impact Shotguns may shine really well in this regard. It may actually not be as strong as slash, but damn it has potential.

[SephirothWS]

1 hour ago, [DE]Rebecca said:

Hard Reset - Execute 3 Mercy Kills within 40 seconds to revive a fallen Sentinel

Nice to see an option to revive fallen Sentinels. ... Can it not be locked behind Mercy Kills though? I never did use the Mercy Kill system simply due to how quickly its possible to nuke an entire room at times...

[HolySeraphin]

1 hour ago, [DE]Rebecca said:

Corpus

• Scrambus
• Nullifiers

Please add the tech units, they are the Heavy Gunner equivalent of the Corpus and one of the deadliest.

[TheLexiConArtist]

This is pretty good overall, but still stands to suffer if we're specifically using strong/slow ROF weapons - Snipers being the natural example. It's still going to be quite easy to have the enemy die because you (quite rightly) exploded their face from above the threshold in one shot. Doubly apt if they have any reasonable chance of proccing a damage status on top of the direct damage as well.

[Exit717]

Quote

• Swift Mercy - Speed of Mercy kills increased by 50%.

This should be basic change, not a mod. Pre-animated takedowns break gameplay flow a _^tiny bit, the shorter the better.

[Tepes]

ty

[Sophtbean]

Doomframe, lesssgooo

[Loza03]

These definitely seem like a better system overall than before, thank you.

 

5 minutes ago, TheLexiConArtist said:

This is pretty good overall, but still stands to suffer if we're specifically using strong/slow ROF weapons - Snipers being the natural example. It's still going to be quite easy to have the enemy die because you (quite rightly) exploded their face from above the threshold in one shot. Doubly apt if they have any reasonable chance of proccing a damage status on top of the direct damage as well.

I think it's OK, since with weapons such as that, you're more encouraged to engage at longer ranges anyway - again, snipers being the natural example. So you're kind of discouraged from engaging with the Parazon for those weapons to begin with. Shotguns, they might have more issues since they fall into this category but are also close-range weapons, but they kind of have their own problems since they directly compete with melee anyway.

It's alright for some weapons to naturally get more value out of different systems

[Zedar451]

2 hours ago, [DE]Rebecca said:

 

Imagine you see a heavy gunner in the distance. You have “Blood for Energy” on your Parazon.  You see you need some Energy, so you start shooting the heavy gunner knowing full well once she’s at 40%, she will be open for a Mercy kill and the Energy could be yours!

 

But what about really high levels you ask? Is it not dangerous to allow for essentially 1-hit kills in our scaling game? 

 

 

• Malicious Code - 50% chance for enemies within 15m to cower in fear for 8 seconds.

• Hard Reset - Execute 3 Mercy Kills within 40 seconds to revive a fallen Sentinel or Companion. 

 

 

• Swift Mercy - Speed of Mercy kills increased by 50%.

 

Some comments on these items, in order:

1) sorry, but that heavy gunner is long dead by the time you'll be close enough to Mercy kill. Unless you're running solo, but maybe not even then.

2) We already have one hit kills with any decent weapon or ability. If anything the Mercy option is slower.

3) Regarding malicious code, isn't it basically the same as the parazon mod that stuns enemies on a Mercy kill, if not worse?

4) If anyone can pull off Hard Reset in a public game without asking the squad to allow it, I'll be supremely impressed. Even then, just run a vulpa (or any pet with a long revive timer) because most sentinels are just strictly worse due to their mortality. The single best thing any pet or sentinel provides is always gonna be vacuum, regardless of how good their unique ability is, and running a Sentinel means you're quite likely to lose it.

5) As already mentioned by others, QOL changes like swift Mercy should not be taking up our mod slots. Mods should be upgrades and customizations, not bandaids.

 

 

[God_is_a_Cat_Girl]

2 hours ago, [DE]Rebecca said:

Hard Reset - Execute 3 Mercy Kills within 40 seconds to revive a fallen Sentinel or Companion. 

This would be great, until you consider how multiplayer works and how selfish players can be.


Overall, this could be even more interesting if we had proper VIP targets and not "trash mobs, but slightly stronger". Meanwhile the best VIP in the game isn't included in the list (nor the Sentient, shame).

[UnidentifiedBody]

Do Power Drain and Malicious Code trigger on Mercy Kill or after Hacking successfully?

Will weapon finishers and Mercy Kills ever be linked in some way, such as to allow weapon finishers to trigger Parazon mod effects that rely on Mercy Kills.

16 minutes ago, Exit717 said:

Quote

• Swift Mercy - Speed of Mercy kills increased by 50%.

This should be basic change, not a mod. Pre-animated takedowns break gameplay flow a _^tiny bit, the shorter the better.

Also 100% this, you shouldn't have to equip a mod just to make these animations less cumbersome in such a mobile game. All Swift Mercy does it prove that the animations can be sped up just fine, so this should be the default rather than another band-aid mod.

[0_The_F00l]

a 5 second dying state (like larvlings have for nearly a minute) when their health hits 0 would be much easier and convenient to take advantage of.

This does seem to make parazons easier (for VIP targets) but i dont see it being a very significant change as those are already uncommon targets and the common targets would just die.

How does the impact change affect the non VIP enemies ? no change i assume.

i really don't think i will be using impact because of this , its still appears too awkward.

The new parazon mods are cool , but again , i doubt i will actually use em as often - maybe it will be different in practice but i am skeptical.

[(PSN)RWalls91]

Yeah, I don't mercy kill now, I won't mercy kill after this either. My parazon is a glorified hacking pokey stick nothing more

[Deminisis]

I don't believe the increased health threshold is going to work in most content aside from maybe SP.

Everything star chart level is likely to evaporate before you can react.

I would rather see mercy kills tied into melee finishers in some way. If an enemy were to take lethal damage from a finisher, treat it as a mercy kill with a cooldown so people can't stun and spam mercy finishers for unlimited energy.

[(PSN)Seratronix]

[Glitchesarecool]

2 hours ago, [DE]Rebecca said:

Swift Mercy - Speed of Mercy kills increased by 50%.

Maybe just have this built in? I don't feel like it needs a mod, the attacks are so slow as it is.

[(XBOX)Big Roy 324]

ok

[Zrimers]

The main problem is the huge damage that the enemies receive and the low health of the enemies.
At low levels, enemies will be killed before the player can finish them off.

Add invulnerability to the listed enemies when taking a single fatal damage.
To give players the use of finishing off.

If the player does not have time to finish off or makes another shot at the enemy at this moment, the enemy will die.

[Kanaima]

I like this for the most part but I'd like to mention something: making mercy kills matter too much runs the risk of increasing toxicity amongst players in co-op - I can already imagine people getting irate that their 3rd finisher was taken by someone else before their timer runs out for reviving their companion. Maybe make any buff effects from mercy kills apply to everyone in affinity range? It could make Vazarin slightly more attractive as a focus option.

[CephalonPotassium]

40 minutes ago, SephirothWS said:

Nice to see an option to revive fallen Sentinels. ... Can it not be locked behind Mercy Kills though? I never did use the Mercy Kill system simply due to how quickly its possible to nuke an entire room at times...

They're addressing the nuking problem, bruh