yareli mini-rework/viability buff idea

[ToonSquares]

Ok so yareli, yeah she's not that great, super cute but incredibly underwhelming, but worry not random tenno for I am not just here to be bitter and complain but instead have a solution.

MAKE YARELIS 3 STAT STICKABLE!! ... (also mods for merulina)

seems pretty random right for a frame that is themed around secondary's, however I believe its a potentially appropriate way to fix some of her kits... mismatched play style. For anyone that doesn't understand what I mean allow me to explain, firstly her 1 and 4 are pretty unique CC abilities and provide some great grouping and status utility FOR MELEE and not so much for guns (aside from a few exceptions ie; her kompressa), secondly her 2, merulina, for the first exalted vehicle (titania doesn't count) its kind of in a sad state, unmodable, most mission tile sets are clearly not designed for a fishy hoverboard to fly through them and the distinct inability to use your melee, which brings me to my final point, her 3, why would I, a super squishy ocean gun loli want to go anywhere near the enemies for just a few slash procs? Its not worth it, so my why not make it worth it.

 

TLDR: bad kit for melee noob like me, please copy paste khora whipclaw stats onto aquablades.

sorry if I'm bad at words I don't go outside I love this game too much

[PsiWarp]

Make it stat-stick your Secondary's mods. Let Critical Flow (her passive) affect the blades' critical chance. Add a critical damage multiplier for Aquablades. Watch them shred and use your secondary for status armor strip/viral (oh hi Kompressa).

[ToonSquares]

6 minutes ago, PsiWarp said:

Make it stat-stick your Secondary's mods. Let Critical Flow (her passive) affect the blades' critical chance. Add a critical damage multiplier for Aquablades. Watch them shred and use your secondary for status armor strip/viral (oh hi Kompressa).

that's actually really cool, this is better than my idea we need this.

[Lightning_Bloom]

Stat sticks are kinda insufferable, I wish it would just be moddable in and of itself, for all stat sticks actually. And yea, Merulina really needs to be moddable.

[(XBOX)Ampathetiic]

I'm convinced that stat sticks are not long for this world, once DE figures out how to buff these abilities that depend on them.

[Birdframe_Prime]

Nah mate, she just needs a functioning ability combo, like most of the other frames that have under-powered numbers on their kit do.

Something really simple like 'enemies in Sea Snares take additional damage from Aqua Blades based on their level' or 'enemies in Sea Snares that are hit by Riptide have their Defenses reduced by base 50%' (which gives her a standard build for 201% strength, like Xaku or similar. It wouldn't actually affect her Range too much, because Riptide has increased range specifically to grab enemies that are in Sea Snares).

The simple combo of giving her some mild form of scaling damage is all that's really needed there, and if TennoCon hadn't been in the way, I think that's what we might have got already.

[Andele3025]

14 hours ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

Something really simple like 'enemies in Sea Snares take additional damage from Aqua Blades based on their level

Why Seasnares as the scaling when she already has a "combo" that sadly doesnt do much already in her kit?
Let Merulina build tricks with secondary fire+ability interactions (e.g. hits give 5 score, headshots 10 score, headcrits 50 score, killing a lifted enemy with slash proc giving 0.25 trick multi, etc), be moddable and keep its trick value for x amount of time, score then giving the abilities extra 1m range per 1k while trick multi gives them damage multiplier.
This also gives a duration scaling thing to merulina in form of how long trick is retained and maybe even let efficiency influence how much multi or how much score is gained.

[Birdframe_Prime]

17 hours ago, Andele3025 said:

Why Seasnares as the scaling when she already has a "combo" that sadly doesnt do much already in her kit?

Well, the only thing I can say to that is that... She... doesn't have a combo?

Where is there any actual combo in her kit? She has some minor synergy in that casting while on Merulina doesn't prevent movement, but that's it.

As we can't mod Merulina (and yes, I agree that we should be able to do that), all that ability stands for is damage reduction and mobility. Both good things, but only if they work properly. (Since Merulina redirects damage away from Yareli, but if you equip damage reduction mods, like Adaptation, Merulina still takes the full damage and dies as quickly as if you hadn't put the mod on... That, to me, shows that DE hasn't got her working properly yet.)

But all frames need some kind of ability combo.

It can be a purely mechanical synergy like Nidus, who pulls enemies in, then hits them with damage, and the effects of that damage being done on more enemies at once are beneficial compared to only doing them one at a time. Both of those abilities work fine without the other, but the effects of casting both in order are more beneficial.

Or it can be functional synergy like Gauss, who gets bonuses to each ability when he uses the others. All of those abilities also function on their own, but when cast together, there are more than just mechanical benefits, there are functional ones. Having his 4 active is the most noticeable one, but if you have his 2 active, then his 1 changes damage type and if you cast his 3 in both cold and heat consecutively it strips armour, which it wouldn't do with a single cast.

Yareli needs something like that.

She currently doesn't have it, and that's what I mean by an Ability Combo.

[Andele3025]

3 hours ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

Well, the only thing I can say to that is that... She... doesn't have a combo?

You can press holster on merulina and she has the full moveset of regular kdrive including her trick score.
Thus because the trick score on her is effectively wasted, but a existing value with 2 addresses that simply arent using anything other than reputation, so why not link it up and give her a mid-combat way of generation+on ground purge delay for it to then let it scale her abilities.

You know, making the kdrive frame do kdrive things as part of her gameloop?

[Vahenir]

I have a feeling that those that suggest trick based buffs to her abilities etc haven't played her at all. Its pretty much impossible to do tricks on the vast majority of maps in the game, that is without taking into account how randomly stuff like grinds work. Sometimes it works fine as you'd expect and you can grind that railing, the next time the game decides that the railing doesn't exist and you grind that small ridge on the floor and fall out of the map. The next time after that you grind it and you get launched off to the side and into the blackout pit.

Trick combo based buffs will work on open worlds and that's basically it. 

 

In either case her third ability needs a /lot/ more damage to be worthwhile. Having it use the melee mods is one solution, but it'd probably make it OP when subsumed. It could be that it only takes those mods into account when you're on merulina, since you get locked out of your melee then anyway. Or just have a very large flat buff to its damage while riding merulina. 

Merulina needs to have better damage reduction, it should be increased by power strength up to 90%
Optionally it can be moved down in the chain so it applies last. Meaning armor, adaptation etc all apply their damage reduction first, and the final damage hits and gets split/reduced. This should massively increase merulinas survivability as it wont be wasting as much HP reducing the full damage from enemies.
It would also be very useful to have a mode on this where you get the DR without riding the board, for use in tight quarters etc.

[Birdframe_Prime]

On 2021-07-22 at 9:15 PM, Andele3025 said:

You can press holster on merulina and she has the full moveset of regular kdrive including her trick score.

That's not a combo, that's a feature of one of her abilities that doesn't interact with anything else she does.

Even being able to mod Merulina with K-drive mods would, at best, give Merulina some base damage, and give Yareli a source of energy renewal.

If it actually did something to the rest of her kit? If it in any way affected the things that her other abilities did, either mechanically or functionally, that would actually be an ability combo.

So my statement of actually giving her an ability combo still holds.

But as to 'why Sea Snares', the answer is that there are some things in Warframe that are what you could call 'triggers'. They are functions that put enemies into a different state, like Crowd Control, or 'priming'.

When the enemies are inflicted with certain types of CC, or a priming function, that is a really easy hook to cause other effects from.

So conditional effects, like the ones I mentioned, where Yareli can gain bonus damage, strip armour or apply some form of scaling, those can be actually triggered by these states that CC and Priming can put enemies into.

They're incredibly simple to program, since DE use them all the time, and they're incredibly simple to balance, patch and trouble-shoot after implementation.

On the other hand, trying to use a new feature, like K-drive in regular missions, to provide conditional buffs would require new functions. K-Drive currently doesn't provide buffs to a player while they're on it, only to specific K-drive functions that already exist (like shockwave damage, after-trail damage, having basic energy/ammo/resource pickup, and movement). And the second you're off the K-drive you lose all functionality of those buffs.

So the reason why it would be better to use Sea Snares, or Riptide to give an effective Ability Combo is because DE can add that in their sleep. It's simple. It's completely non-invasive into their code. They don't even have to worry about it being a thing that can affect other Warframes, by making it specific to Yareli's other abilities. Which means that while enemies in Sea Snares might be Primed for a combo, that trigger is only available to, say, Riptide or to Aqua Blades.

While I definitely agree that buffing Merulina, by both allowing it to use K-Drive mods, and by allowing Yareli's damage reduction functions to apply to Merulina as well... I don't think that trying to pack even more functions into Merulina and making it the sole enabling function of her kit is the way to go.

[Andele3025]

On 2021-07-25 at 10:00 PM, Birdframe_Prime said:

That's not a combo, that's a feature of one of her abilities that doesn't interact with anything else she does.

Let me repeat the point:
Use the trick+score mechanic of merulina as the multiplier for her other skills since its already a meter/combo score already in her kit with a expansion in form of the score not resetting while just on the ground for a while, thus making the kdrive frame rewarded for doing kdrive things as part of her core gameloop.

[Birdframe_Prime]

11 hours ago, Andele3025 said:

Let me repeat the point:

Repeating it doesn't change what it is, nor does it change any of what I actually said to counter that.

Giving her this interaction would be giving her an ability combo, a scaling function and interaction that she currently does not have. You are right that it would be an improvement of the frame.

The reason why I said use her other functions instead is because of the work needed to do that.

DE can program in a trigger function and a scaling function onto her other abilities quickly, simply and it will be easy to balance if it needs tweaking after implementation.

Having to create, completely create, a bridge between the combo counter of the K-Drive system and a Warframe power is something entirely new, that they have never used before. It would take time, testing, and it would also need limiting to just Merulina (because we have actual historical instances as examples that when other new functions are added into the game, they often bug to affect warframes or other systems they are connected to, but not intended to affect). It is not a solution that would be achievable without a lot of work on the frame.

It would also not be a function that many situations would allow to be used. She already has problems in the tile sets with not being able to go through doors while on Merulina, or vents, or plenty of the other smaller areas. Imagine if you were forced off Merulina by things that you cannot prevent, like needing to go into the tubes in the Grineer Asteroid tile, and all of her abilities reset to zero in the ten seconds it takes to get through and back on. Not a reliable interaction there. Outside of that, look at the basic rooms that you're in and how many of them actually allow for K-drive tricks. Warframe is literally built with line-of-sight blockers at all angles, and while there are many tiles that have room for tricks, there are just as many that do not.

Why limit her kit into only being usable when there's enough head-room? It's the same problem that Zephyr players had before the Hover function was brought in (I know, I'm one of those).

Using existing game functions and applying them to Yareli's abilities to create scaling functions is reliable, functional and most importantly involves no spaghetti coding or basic mobility limitations.

Would I be happy if DE went the extra mile and also buffed Merulina as an ability?

Absolutely yes.

However even then, if all it did was provide a number multiplier on her other abilities, that's not exactly a good combo.

Even with your proposed change, having a functional combo in her other abilities that creates either scaling damage or defense strip would still make her better able to deal with enemies as the levels progressed.

Heck, do you know what would work? Letting her cast Helminth abilities while on Merulina so that she can Sonic Fracture or Seeking Shuriken enemies. Allowing her to Gloom, or Pillage, or Fire Blast, or Thermal Sunder, or Eclipse, or even something really silly like Airburst for Airburst Rounds to buff her weapon damage further.

As it stands, though...

The best thing for Yareli that can be implemented immediately and with little-to-no testing or tweaking would be to give her abilities a way to make their base damage actually viable, while making Merulina inherit the Damage Reduction mods that you put on Yareli.

Longer term, the best things for Yareli would be:

1. Sea Snares no longer bursts on walls if its seeking in enemy.
2. Sea Snares primes enemies for a bonus effect if hit with her other abilities (such as bonus Damage).
3. Sea Snares no longer costs 75 base energy to hit its maximum effectiveness (three casts to cap out).
4. Merulina can be modded with K-Drive mods
5. Merulina inherits damage reduction mods from Yareli
6. Merulina's trick score can affect her other abilities, maybe boosting her Passive (that's your one, I like it, I'm keeping it).
7. Aqua Blades has no three-hit cooldown (you'll see that when you have a captured enemy, it goes hit-hit-hit, pause, hit-hit-hit, which is stupid...)
8. Aqua Blades has an Enemy Level Scaling function that keeps the damage relevant (but needs the priming from Sea Snares to actually kill reliably or quickly)
9. Rip Tide reduces enemy defenses (shields and armour) by a factor if they survive, and this factor can be increased to 100% by using her other abilities.
10. Helminth Abilities can be cast while on Merulina.

This means that a base, unmodded Yareli is powerful enough to reach level 30-40 (if a little expensive), while a well-modded Yareli can take on Steel Path with the same effectiveness as any of the other frames can.

But again.

Looking at the short term, at what will improve Yareli the most, is simple to put in by DE, and won't lose effectiveness as you go up the levels...

Putting a functional combo onto her Sea Snares, Aqua Blades or Rip Tide is what would work best.

[Andele3025]

11 hours ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

Repeating it doesn't change what it is, nor does it change any of what I actually said to counter that.

You didnt counter anything, you just missed the point that she has a thing that could scale up as part of the gameloop and could be tied to damage, range or both when it comes to her skills. Raw number buffing her to do even infinite gara or octavia damage wont change a lack of gameloop which is why people even play frames.

And no, it wouldnt be "having to difficultly bridge kdrives to abilities". Its just using the score offset instead of melee or recent use offset for the multiplier.
 

[Birdframe_Prime]

20 hours ago, Andele3025 said:

You didnt counter anything, you just missed the point that she has a thing that could scale up as part of the gameloop and could be tied to damage, range or both when it comes to her skills.

Did you... forget the thread of this conversation?

The topic of the thread is a Yareli 'mini rework/viability buff', right? And my original comment is that the better way to give her a quick buff was to use her Sea Snares or Riptide.

And you asked 'why Sea Snares or Riptide? Why not her existing combo?'

And my response has been 'Because she doesn't have a combo, and adding one like this would be the quickest, and it would be the easiest'.

Your idea is not quick, it's not a mini-rework, and it doesn't give her more viability without some very specific, and very situational, game play methods that are not possible in many of the Tiles of the game.

You absolutely do need to bridge the trick score multiplier and the Warframe abilities, because, while there are plenty of scaling things in Warframe that can improve an ability's damage, Trick Score is not one of them. It would need to be added to the functions, alongside the other methods like Melee Combo Multiplier and so on. It does not exist currently and would need to be added.

If you don't recognise that, then you're really not understanding how DE has coded the Evolution Engine's interactions.

Longer term, as in a non-quick and non-mini rework to buff Yareli's viability, yes, I would like to see your idea, I think it has potential.

Short term, and for the subject of this thread, no, I would genuinely rather see DE give her something that was not just a number buffer to her kit, I would like to see them give her an actual viability buff that is proven, quick to implement, and guarantees that the damage she already has would actually apply better.

[Andele3025]

4 hours ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

Did you... forget the thread of this conversation?

The topic of the thread is a Yareli 'mini rework/viability buff', right? And my original comment is that the better way to give her a quick buff was to use her Sea Snares or Riptide.

And you asked 'why Sea Snares or Riptide? Why not her existing combo?'

And my response has been 'Because she doesn't have a combo, and adding one like this would be the quickest, and it would be the easiest'.

Your idea is not quick, it's not a mini-rework, and it doesn't give her more viability without some very specific, and very situational, game play methods that are not possible in many of the Tiles of the game.

SHE HAS A BUILT IN COMBO METER WHOSE OFFSET CAN BE USED AND IT WOULD MAKE SENSE FOR THE FRAME SHE IS.

How do you not understand the simple idea of "let the k-drive frame do k-drive things as part of her gameloop"?

[Birdframe_Prime]

6 hours ago, Andele3025 said:

SHE HAS A BUILT IN COMBO METER WHOSE OFFSET CAN BE USED AND IT WOULD MAKE SENSE FOR THE FRAME SHE IS.

How do you not understand the simple idea of "let the k-drive frame do k-drive things as part of her gameloop"?

Right... so it's not that you missed it, it's that you have basic reading comprehension troubles?

11 hours ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

Longer term, as in a non-quick and non-mini rework to buff Yareli's viability, yes, I would like to see your idea, I think it has potential.

On 2021-07-27 at 3:24 PM, Birdframe_Prime said:

Would I be happy if DE went the extra mile and also buffed Merulina as an ability?

Absolutely yes.

On 2021-07-25 at 9:00 PM, Birdframe_Prime said:

While I definitely agree that buffing Merulina, by both allowing it to use K-Drive mods, and by allowing Yareli's damage reduction functions to apply to Merulina as well...

I like your idea.

I want to include your idea.

It is the right move for Yareli overall.

How many times, and how many ways, do I have to say that before you stop building a little defensive fort and shouting in all-caps before you realise you don't have to defend your idea?

You see, as I said, the point of this thread is: mini rework/viability buff.

The quickest, easiest, and 'mini'-est buff that Yareli can get is to use something that is already in the game as an ability interaction.

Your idea, using a K-drive Combo Counter, to affect Yareli's other abilities, is not quick, is not simple, and would require making a function that currently does not exist in the game.

The function, to be precise, of a K-Drive Combo Counter providing statistical buffs to damage numbers on Warframe Abilities, currently does not exist in the game. It would need to be added. The K-Drive Combo Counter currently only affects K-Drive functions. Yareli's other abilities are completely independent of K-Drive functions, and other frames can't even use their abilities on a K-Drive in the first place, so it's already a new function that needs to be accounted for.

It's not impossible, and I, to say it again, want to include it.

However.

That is not quick. That is not 'mini'. That is not in the spirit of this thread.

If we were on a 'How to fully fix Yareli' thread, like the other 1600 fix Yareli threads on the Forums right now, then we wouldn't even be having this conversation. It would have been 'yes, include that, move on'.

Now.

Do you want to sit in your little defensive mode and say 'but it's an idea to buff Yareli that would work' constantly, or do you want to recognise why, in a choice for a small, mini-rework, there would be an argument to make over why Option A is better than Option B?

Option A; take functions that exist in Warframe already, are tested, are balanced, and are simple to use and apply them to Yareli's kit.

Option B; create a function that allows a combo counter that currently has nothing to do with Warframe abilities, in a mode that (before Yareli) actually nullifies the use of Warframe abilities, and bridge that to provide statistical buffs to specifically Yareli's abilities. A process that would take time, effort, balancing and testing, and may come out completely buggy at first and need patching the same way all new functions do.

Between those two options, what speaks of a mini-rework?

What is applicable in the theme of the thread?

Do. You. Understand. The. Premise. Of. This. Discussion?

[Andele3025]

>copy pasting one out of 3 existing scripts that copy another equipments offset as multiplier or just the base repeat ability use one and already existing decay timer increase as ability effect

7 hours ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

That is not quick. That is not 'mini'.

Ah yes, clearly its a massive rework. Its 11~16 nodes instead of 8~9 nodes to add (probably less if DE at all has any streamlining, maybe that +6~8 each if the engine is insane spaghetti and each multiplied value has to be individually stored for next call). What horror.

[Birdframe_Prime]

1 hour ago, Andele3025 said:

>copy pasting

Hahahhahahahahhahah...

Oh, that explains a lot...

Discussion over, because I already have enough warnings on my account. I really didn't think you would say something quite that stupid.

[Andele3025]

5 hours ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

Hahahhahahahahhahah...

 I really didn't think

I guess, as you do know that when adding something you already have implemented when programming in pretty much every engine that uses nodes, you literally copy paste the existing node trees, right? (some even have a direct duplicate to or replicate as next sequence as to imply folks to not do the same error as the dude in the linked if they arent copy pasting for something else thus would rename for the sake of at least clean documentation)

[Birdframe_Prime]

12 hours ago, Andele3025 said:

you literally copy paste the existing node trees, right?

Wants to try and prove a point > Uses examples from completely different Engine.

A combo counter that boosts the numbers of certain abilities does exist. However it is not copy-paste-able because, if you haven't noticed, DE compartmentalises their 'modes' and then has to bridge the gaps so that functions can be used in those modes.

It's a literal fact of how they work, and why the different methods of movement, from running to K-drive to Archwing, function so differently from each other. When you get on a K-Drive, the Evolution Engine isn't just placing your Warframe onto a board and removing your abilities, primary, melee and so on. It's replacing the Warframe with a K-Drive that has your warframe's model on it. All movement, abilities, all functions are not a 'warframe' for the duration, they're a K-Drive. It's a separate mode, it might as well be a completely different character while you're on it as far as the actual Engine is concerned. Why else do you think it has a full animation when you mount or dismount? It's a transition, just like the Railjack loading screens are hidden behind the 'warping' between locations or entering and exiting the ships.

How long have K-drives existed? November 2018? When did we get the ability to go into Operator Mode while riding a K-drive? Last week.

We still don't have casting abilities that are not Yareli's while on K-drives, the closest we get is that some Duration/Drain based abilities will stay active if you get on a K-Drive. You'd think that something that simple would be already in there.

You'd think that something as simple as being able to go into Operator mode would be so easy to cross over that DE would have done it literally years ago. Except it took the release of an actual Warframe that uses K-Drive in regular missions before they actually updated that.

This follows the same pattern as Operator mode in Archwing, and it took DE from the release of Operator Transference in November 2016 all the way through to October 2019 before Titania could stay in Razorwing mode while going into Operator mode.

If it's so simple, why didn't they just copy-paste those things over?

We have eight whole years of watching DE's methods to back up the fact that nothing in this game is as simple as copy-pasting. If it was, then the most simple and obvious updates would have come out years ago. Literally years ago.

Hell, did you not see that DE changed Melee to Melee 3.0 last year, and yet somehow the Vastilock was released using Melee 2.0's combo counter? Did you not see that? How? It's supposed to be completely replaced, right? Right?!

It's not. It's damn spaghetti coded.

The Evolution Engine is a mess.

And so.

I'm not saying this in a vacuum. I'm not just presuming that this is the case.

I know. I know for a damn fact that just because the Melee Combo Counter exists and can make damage numbers go up on Abilities, does not mean that the K-Drive Combo Counter can do the same thing without work. Without bridging the functional divide between K-Drive and Warframe Abilities.

AND NOT A SINGLE PART OF THIS CHANGES THE DAMN POINT OF MY COMMENTS.

You are just sitting there trying to defend something you don't need to defend.

You don't have to defend the merits of your idea.

It's a good idea.

I want to include your idea.

You dense pitta bread.

What you have to recognise is that some things are simple and some things are not.

Your idea is not the simple and quick thing you think it is.

It's also impractical to use in about 50% of the game's tiles, and you'd need to refine it more before it would be consistent.

[Andele3025]

8 hours ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

Wants to try and prove a point > Uses examples from completely different Engine.

Dude, we saw in Steves stream for melee 2.998 and before that for liches that its the stock node.js (naturally with in house tweaks, but all in the end in C++ cross compatible as 95% of all even vaguely optimized games these days) that comes in with functional copy paste capacity baked in.

8 hours ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

A combo counter that boosts the numbers of certain abilities does exist. However it is not copy-paste-able because, if you haven't noticed, DE compartmentalises their 'modes' and then has to bridge the gaps so that functions can be used in those modes.

No. It literally is copy paste with changed actor and offset values. Hell its why Valkyr claws are still often detected as furax, why the kuva hek after copying the vhek was marked as SJ incompatible, why the grineer gunblade used the old combo, why terrify and chesacrate were causing script errors for a short while when the loot drop ability nerf attempt happened, why vulpa pets initially logged as iirc dethcube kills when in larva state, etc.