"Kill stealing", and the mechanics that suffer from it.

[Flannoit]

2 hours ago, ReddyDisco said:

It was November of 2020, don't quite remember the patch number, did a search of my discord and got the date atleast

Larva: Enemies killed while held have a chance of generating a Mutation stack for Nidus.

Wiki doesn't quite say the exact chance of getting a stack either " Enemies killed while held by  Larva also have a ?% chance to generate 1 Mutation stack."

So basically either the chance is stupidly low or it was never functioning to begin with. Thanks, DE!

[Soy77]

Fun fact:

If you play solo, nobody can steal your kills.

[Lutesque]

47 minutes ago, Soy77 said:

Fun fact:

If you play solo, nobody can steal your kills.

Pets and Robots could probably still do it... Also any Liches you've converted could show up and steal your Kills maybe 😱....

Obviously it's not the same thing as Saryn stealing kills but it's worth knowing 😁...

[Soy77]

11 minutes ago, Lutesque said:

Pets and Robots could probably still do it... Also any Liches you've converted could show up and steal your Kills maybe 😱....

Obviously it's not the same thing as Saryn stealing kills but it's worth knowing 😁...

Fair enough.

There are steps we can do to conveniently control them but yeah you're right they totally can.

[Lutesque]

21 hours ago, _R_o_g_u_e_ said:

None of your responses were substantive enough to engage with. To the point where your lack of substance was the only remarkable thing about your comment. Hence why I’m remarking on it. Maybe don’t spread yourself so thin, responding to so many people?

You're not one for conversation are you ? 🤔

 

[(PSN)JustJoshinEnt]

On 2021-09-02 at 10:08 PM, BDMblue said:

with Nidus I asked for kills in affinity range to give points for stacks. We got the larva change though a great step, not really that big of a help in any mission like exterminate or capture. You’ll still never be able to cast your 3-4 with out stopping or falling behind.

Not every mission is a great match for every frame/playstyle.  That doesn't mean there's anything "wrong" with the frame in question.

A hammer doesn't cease to be a valuable tool just because you're working with screws.  It just means you need to choose a better tool for the job.  A hammer is good at its own set of tasks.

[NecroPed]

I've always joked about kill stealing in games because it's a non-issue, but in Warframe it's kinda different because certain abilities require enemies to be used/continued. Though if kills are being 'stolen' to the point of impacting your Warframes usage you probably wont need it to win the mission anyway. 

[BDMblue]

37 minutes ago, (PSN)JustJoshinEnt said:

Not every mission is a great match for every frame/playstyle.  That doesn't mean there's anything "wrong" with the frame in question.

A hammer doesn't cease to be a valuable tool just because you're working with screws.  It just means you need to choose a better tool for the job.  A hammer is good at its own set of tasks.

Sure, but 1 stack point from kills in infinity range would not break the frame or make it op, but it would be a massive QOL improvement for faster missions. Also improves players enjoyment. 

[(PSN)JustJoshinEnt]

7 hours ago, BDMblue said:

Sure, but 1 stack point from kills in infinity range would not break the frame or make it op, but it would be a massive QOL improvement for faster missions. Also improves players enjoyment. 

Nidus becomes IMMORTAL with just 15 stacks.  With his augment and his 4, he gains stacks like mad... 

Just passively getting stacks from kills in his affinity range would make him AFK-GOD.  He'd literally sit there, healing in his 4, whilst allies get him ALL the stacks...  And he just.. *survives* with no effort.

No.  Just no.  

If your idea of "QoL" is "Make me OP with no effort and let the game play itself", then you really don't understand game design.

[[DE]Momaw]

On 2021-09-05 at 12:07 AM, LillyRaccune said:

@[DE]Momaw Can you tell us the exact chance of generating a Mutation stack for enemies held by Larva but killed by allies?

So there's two ways to answer this. One is explaining how you can check yourself, and the other is to just give you a number.  You can verify for yourself by getting another person in your party and head to the Simulacrum. Summon 10 enemies, gather them with Larva, then have the other player kill them.  Keep a record of how many stacks you gain each time and take an average.

The way you'll just have to trust me is to say: 50%

 

On 2021-09-04 at 6:18 PM, Flannoit said:

3 stacks (15 charges) to gain a charge if your maggot actually deals the final blow on an enemy (they won't)

This is not an accurate understanding of how the power works...  Maggots also give you a stack of Mutation any time they hit an enemy with their death explosion, and you can detonate Maggots by hitting them with Virulence.  If you hold down the casting button, you can see an icon that shows you the position of your Maggots so you can get a sense of where to aim to detonate a bunch at once. You can see the Maggot explosion radius in the arsenal, it starts at 4 meters and is affected by Power Range.

[LillyRaccune]

25 minutes ago, [DE]Momaw said:

The way you'll just have to trust me is to say: 50%

[...]  Maggots also give you a stack of Mutation any time they hit an enemy with their death explosion, and you can detonate Maggots by hitting them with Virulence.  If you hold down the casting button, you can see an icon that shows you the position of your Maggots so you can get a sense of where to aim to detonate a bunch at once. You can see the Maggot explosion radius in the arsenal, it starts at 4 meters and is affected by Power Range.

Thank you for explaining that to me! I didn't even know Nidus had so much synergy with the rest of his abilities. 😻 And 50% sounds very reasonable, much appreciated.

[(NSW)Gamer-Steve]

1 hour ago, [DE]Momaw said:

So there's two ways to answer this. One is explaining how you can check yourself, and the other is to just give you a number.  You can verify for yourself by getting another person in your party and head to the Simulacrum. Summon 10 enemies, gather them with Larva, then have the other player kill them.  Keep a record of how many stacks you gain each time and take an average.

The way you'll just have to trust me is to say: 50%

 

Maggots also give you a stack of Mutation any time they hit an enemy with their death explosion, and you can detonate Maggots by hitting them with Virulence.  If you hold down the casting button, you can see an icon that shows you the position of your Maggots so you can get a sense of where to aim to detonate a bunch at once. You can see the Maggot explosion radius in the arsenal, it starts at 4 meters and is affected by Power Range.

That's even better than I thought for Nidus as well! If it's not there already, I think that hold-to-check maggots action should be mentioned in Nidus's tool tips in his ability screen. Another reason to look forward to crafting his Prime in the near future :)

 

As far as the thread's topic goes with Kill stealing, there's another frame that comes to mind even in Solo play; Mirage. Her Hall of Mirrors can't trigger the Gun Arcanes (I tested this in the Simulacrum with R5 Merciless to make sure), and due to their close proximity to her it's likely they'll kill some enemies before her Arcane can build a stack or two. I heard that Wukong's twin & Equinox's other simultaneous form can't trigger nor benefit from the Arcanes either.

• In the interest of fairness, it makes sense that Hall of Mirrors can't either, but it's detrimental to use Hall of Mirrors while attempting to make use of them, since the doppelgangers won't benefit from or maintain the stacks, as they fall off.

 

I made a suggestion about a month ago on the Nora's Choice Switch thread where a frame's clones / other abilities could only receive up to 30-50% of the total damage buff from an Arcane (At max stacks), be it from their own stacks or the main Frame itself. I think that's not a bad idea, nor an overpowered one in the grand scheme of things. Perhaps this could also allow those abilities to help you maintain the stacks, if that's not unreasonable.

• That being said, maybe that would be a bit of powercreep, to be fair; Not that I'd intend for that persay. I just wanted to think of a way to incentivize using all of your Frame's abilities alongside the Arcanes for those who would like to, rather than handicapping / limiting yourself with the way it works currently.
  
  A Frame that doesn't have a clone-esque ability would be able to make full use of the Arcane and their abilities at least, but Frames such as Mirage, Wukong or Equinox may not without having to forgo using an ability.

 

It's some food for thought; The next-best thing I can think of would be allowing a clone-esque ability kill to refresh the duration of your gun Arcane's current stack, so it won't increase the damage, but just maintain it for a bit longer. That way the ability wouldn't be hindering you, for those purposes.

[Flannoit]

5 hours ago, [DE]Momaw said:

So there's two ways to answer this. One is explaining how you can check yourself, and the other is to just give you a number.  You can verify for yourself by getting another person in your party and head to the Simulacrum. Summon 10 enemies, gather them with Larva, then have the other player kill them.  Keep a record of how many stacks you gain each time and take an average.

The way you'll just have to trust me is to say: 50%

This is not an accurate understanding of how the power works...  Maggots also give you a stack of Mutation any time they hit an enemy with their death explosion, and you can detonate Maggots by hitting them with Virulence.  If you hold down the casting button, you can see an icon that shows you the position of your Maggots so you can get a sense of where to aim to detonate a bunch at once. You can see the Maggot explosion radius in the arsenal, it starts at 4 meters and is affected by Power Range.

I'm already aware that detonating his maggots contribute, but it can be difficult lining them up well enough at times. As for Larva stacks, I rarely see the stack counter going up outside of Simulacrum for party play, both in Survival, Defense, and Steel Path. Maybe there's a problem with other players killing Larva'd enemies with abilities?

I'd still like for a revamp to how Nidus's stack economy works, because right now he takes way too long to get powerful, and having a party generally makes that exponentially harder, even taking in account detonation charges.

Maybe a lowered charge-per stack (like 3 or 4 charges for a stack instead of 5) or making his stack charges more reliable. Or even making his 3 able to give him charges by the affected ally or enemy contributing to charges under certain criteria (ally kills, enemy damage intake for example) so that he can more reliably keep his stacks up. This would also help fix his struggles against enemies (in party play) that are immune to Larva.

As it stands:

Virulence - No stack cost, 1 charge per cast, refunds 1/4th of energy cost per hit. Best used with Larva since it makes grouping for the refund more reliable.

Larva - No stack cost, can give charges for enemies killed in Larva, requires augment to manually move (which imo should be inherent), can apparently contribute to stack charges but doesn't appear to work (with my experiences within the last update) correctly when party members kill with abilities, has no refund and can end up having very high energy cost as a result. Enemies that are immune to Larva's CC only give you a very brief window to kill them for a stack charge.

Parasitic Link - 1 stack cost, does not contribute to charges in the slightest, therefor has a 100% cost upkeep. Gives a strength buff to both Nidus and their target if allies, or splits damage if enemies. Also holds up rounds, forcing Nidus to pop his Link on any enemies before a Defense round can end.

Ravenous - 3 stack cost, conditional charge refund depending if enemies are either killed by the maggots directly (extremely rare) or if a maggot is detonated within range of an enemy (a bit more reliable). Due to the cost of 3 stacks (15 charges) vs 1 charge per maggot kill or detonation, you have to either get 15 maggot kills or detonate 15 maggots to refund the ability. Larva helps a little with this, but maggot AI sometimes has the tendency to abruptly run away from enemies. This leads to a maximum of 2 charges per enemy if enemy is also afflicted by Larva and dies under Larva, lowering it to 7.5 maggot kills/detonations to refund Ravenous.

Undying - A whopping 15 stacks to utilize, and no inherent refund. That is a whopping 75 charges to use, and a conditional 30 second cooldown if you use Abundant Mutation. While constantly refreshable if you can keep over 15 stacks (and survive for over 30 seconds longer with AM) it is extremely punishing to undie as Nidus, as that's also a direct loss of power to Virulence, which already scales not that hot with mutation stacks. (Difference between 250 and 300 stacks is only about 300-500 damage against lv.125 Knave Specters in Simulacrum)

So to summarize:

Nidus can hold 500 charges by default (100 stacks), 1500 charges with Abundant Mutation (300 stacks).

Virulence gives you 1 charge per enemy hit but can scale indefinitely with enemies in range. (1/500 or 1/1500 charges minimum per enemy hit)

Larva has a 50% chance to give you 1 charge if an enemy dies under its affects. Schrodinger's 1 charge, so we'll simplify it to 0.5 for now. (0.5/500 or 0.5/1500 charges per enemy killed under Larva, assuming no bugs occur. Alternatively  1/1000 or 1/3000 charges if adjusted for whole numbers)

Parasitic link costs 5 charges, and does not refund at all. Complete, unrefundable loss of 5 of your 500 or 1500 charges. Bright side? The affected target now casts a 100% identical Virulence aimed towards your own virulence! Downside? That does not guarantee in the slightest that anything will be hit by the 2nd Virulence. (-5/500 or -5/1500 charges per cast minimum)

Ravenous costs 15 charges, and has two different refund mechanics available to it. The first? You get a charge any time your little nasty children eat a guy! Nothing like recycle tubemen to keep your children trucking. Downside of that is that their damage output is actually VERY very bad and are more useful for their ridiculous ability to draw and keep aggro, which can help Nidus stay alive easier. The second? Kill your children! I was tired of Henry eating all the Infested Bagels in the morning anyway. This is a lot more reliable, since all you gotta do is whack your child with Virulence and they pop like a balloon. If their pop hits an enemy, you get a charge! Hooray! Not perfect by any means since this actually requires a bit of upkeep to keep going, but still a lot more reliable than the alternative or for Parasitic Link. (1/500 or 1/1500 charges per enemy consumed by a maggot with a maximum of 9/500 or 9/1500 charges per full set of maggots at a time. 1/500 or 1/1500 charges for every enemy a maggot explodes onto, which can scale indefinitely depending on how many enemies are in range on top of your Virulence range.)

Another issue with Ravenous I've noticed is that if your Virulence kills an enemy, your maggot just explodes and does nothing. No extra stack. Punishing!

Undying costs a whopping 75 charges. Absolutely no refunds by any means. Nothing will stop this, as it seems to take precedence over Quick Thinking or other death-defying mods and situations outside of Oberon's Iron Renewal. (Not even sure if Undying will take precedence over that, either!) That means that no matter what, you lose a huge chunk of your nasty boy powers for dying, while every single other frame in the game can come right back up with the same strength the moment they're down to the moment they get right back up. Kind of a hefty price for ignoring Bleedout, especially when Sevagoth gets to basically enter god mode... (-75/500 or -75/1500 charges no matter what)

So lets review. Assume you hit 4 enemies every time, since that's a lot more likely outside of Survival with his kit. "Alpha" refers to cast by Nidus, while "Beta" refers to cast by Parasitic Link's target.

Alpha Virulence: 4/500 or 4/1500 charges. No damage boost yet! Sorry kids. You are currently sitting at 0/100 or 0/300 stacks.

Larva: 0/500 or 0/1500 charges on cast, but you manage to suck up 5 enemies with your Larva! Still doesn't currently contrite to stacks, but lets continue.

Alpha Virulence (again): This time, you cast it twice in a row, which kills all 5 of the enemies. Woohoo, that's 10 charges (2 full stacks!) right there, assuming all 5 enemies survived the first hit! So lets assume. We're now sitting at 14/500 or 14/1500 charges, so we have 2 full stacks and are about to complete our 3rd! Now Larva has a 50% chance to give an extra charge to enemies that die in Larva. So lets assume it works every other enemy, assuming it triggers on the first enemy and then on. That's an extra 3 charges, for a total of 17/500 or 17/1500 charges. 3 stacks, here we come! We can officially use Parasitic Link now, or we can throw down a Ravenous. So lets use Ravenous, since it's a bit more reliable.

Ravenous: Come forth, my mighty nasty babies! Unfortunately, you're now down to 0 stacks, but you only need to get 3 more charges to get back to your first stack. Pretty simple, right?

Larva (again): This time, you catch 6 enemies! Talk about lucky! Your little babies are a little confused, but 7 of them start attacking the ball o' meat. The other two are judging you for being a bad bug-daddy because they know what's coming.

Alpha Virulence (Yet again!): This time, enemies are a little bit stronger. It takes 2 hits to kill 4 of them and a third to kill the last two. So that's 6 for the first Virulence, 6 for the second, and finally 4 for the third. That's 16 charges right there! Back to 3, living the good life with your cute little babies. Now assuming Larva was active for all the kills, we'll assume every other kill got charged, for an extra 3 stacks. Woohoo, 19 charges, so we ALMOST have 4 whole stacks! Since we blew up 7 of our kids, assuming 5 of them hit every enemy but 2 of them only hit two (bummer!), that's an extra 34 charges. That's 6 stacks, almost 7! Add that to our previous 19 charges and we have 53 charges, or 10 stacks and are halfway to 11.

I think you can already see the problem, here. Because Nidus's stack economy is so bad, if he utilizes Parasitic Link and Ravenous when he's able to cast them, he'll still struggle to actually utilize the damage boost to Virulence, on top of the extremely conditional manner for a lot of his stack charges, he can be left in the dirt.

He very badly needs a touch up to his economy. I've played Nidus for a long, long time and he's one of my absolute favorite frames ever since I got him, but nasty bug daddy could use some help raising his kids.

Current Nidus gameplay requires you to very heavily micromanage "when" it'd be a good time to use Ravenous or Parasitic Link. Generally, almost any time is fine for Ravenous if you're not moving a lot (defense, for example) but Parasitic Link ends up hardcore falling to the wayside. You could use it on an enemy, but since enemies don't usually approach other enemies, you are basically gambling for the extra charges in exchange for some more survivability.

On the flipside, you're also still gambling when using it on an ally. A nice ability strength boost for both of you, not to mention your ally will now also cast Virulence whenever you do. Except there's a very good chance that anything between you and your friend will probably already be dead since they're almost certainly going to be killing stuff on their own as well, especially since they have an ability strength boost to help them do it.

This means that Parasitic Link is almost ALWAYS a complete charge loss and almost always leads to Nidus struggling MORE to get stacks (since it also forces the ally to be within range to keep the buff, meaning they're more likely to be nuking everything around you), making it an absolute gamble.

Literally anything to help his stack economy would be greatly appreciated, even if it's just stacking on the 50% charge chance from Larva to his Link.

Also, if you were able to mass detonate the maggots by holding down his 4 with the punishment of there being a "cooldown" (of maybe 1-4 seconds) before more can spawn can help Nidus take more advantage of the maggot detonation to help his stack economy, as well as give him the ability to ramp himself up to more appropriately meet the damage of other frames without having to beg and scrape for 100-300 stacks and hoping enemies stand in a pretty little line for you if they can't be dragged by Larva. Maggots are almost always in the range of at least one enemy, so a mass-detonate feature would help Nidus more guarantee that he can upkeep his stack abilities without having to gamble nearly as much on it.

[(PSN)jockhotty]

1 hour ago, Flannoit said:

I'm already aware that detonating his maggots contribute, but it can be difficult lining them up well enough at times. As for Larva stacks, I rarely see the stack counter going up outside of Simulacrum for party play, both in Survival, Defense, and Steel Path. Maybe there's a problem with other players killing Larva'd enemies with abilities?

I'd still like for a revamp to how Nidus's stack economy works, because right now he takes way too long to get powerful, and having a party generally makes that exponentially harder, even taking in account detonation charges.

Maybe a lowered charge-per stack (like 3 or 4 charges for a stack instead of 5) or making his stack charges more reliable. Or even making his 3 able to give him charges by the affected ally or enemy contributing to charges under certain criteria (ally kills, enemy damage intake for example) so that he can more reliably keep his stacks up. This would also help fix his struggles against enemies (in party play) that are immune to Larva.

As it stands:

Virulence - No stack cost, 1 charge per cast, refunds 1/4th of energy cost per hit. Best used with Larva since it makes grouping for the refund more reliable.

Larva - No stack cost, can give charges for enemies killed in Larva, requires augment to manually move (which imo should be inherent), can apparently contribute to stack charges but doesn't appear to work (with my experiences within the last update) correctly when party members kill with abilities, has no refund and can end up having very high energy cost as a result. Enemies that are immune to Larva's CC only give you a very brief window to kill them for a stack charge.

Parasitic Link - 1 stack cost, does not contribute to charges in the slightest, therefor has a 100% cost upkeep. Gives a strength buff to both Nidus and their target if allies, or splits damage if enemies. Also holds up rounds, forcing Nidus to pop his Link on any enemies before a Defense round can end.

Ravenous - 3 stack cost, conditional charge refund depending if enemies are either killed by the maggots directly (extremely rare) or if a maggot is detonated within range of an enemy (a bit more reliable). Due to the cost of 3 stacks (15 charges) vs 1 charge per maggot kill or detonation, you have to either get 15 maggot kills or detonate 15 maggots to refund the ability. Larva helps a little with this, but maggot AI sometimes has the tendency to abruptly run away from enemies. This leads to a maximum of 2 charges per enemy if enemy is also afflicted by Larva and dies under Larva, lowering it to 7.5 maggot kills/detonations to refund Ravenous.

Undying - A whopping 15 stacks to utilize, and no inherent refund. That is a whopping 75 charges to use, and a conditional 30 second cooldown if you use Abundant Mutation. While constantly refreshable if you can keep over 15 stacks (and survive for over 30 seconds longer with AM) it is extremely punishing to undie as Nidus, as that's also a direct loss of power to Virulence, which already scales not that hot with mutation stacks. (Difference between 250 and 300 stacks is only about 300-500 damage against lv.125 Knave Specters in Simulacrum)

So to summarize:

Nidus can hold 500 charges by default (100 stacks), 1500 charges with Abundant Mutation (300 stacks).

Virulence gives you 1 charge per enemy hit but can scale indefinitely with enemies in range. (1/500 or 1/1500 charges minimum per enemy hit)

Larva has a 50% chance to give you 1 charge if an enemy dies under its affects. Schrodinger's 1 charge, so we'll simplify it to 0.5 for now. (0.5/500 or 0.5/1500 charges per enemy killed under Larva, assuming no bugs occur. Alternatively  1/1000 or 1/3000 charges if adjusted for whole numbers)

Parasitic link costs 5 charges, and does not refund at all. Complete, unrefundable loss of 5 of your 500 or 1500 charges. Bright side? The affected target now casts a 100% identical Virulence aimed towards your own virulence! Downside? That does not guarantee in the slightest that anything will be hit by the 2nd Virulence. (-5/500 or -5/1500 charges per cast minimum)

Ravenous costs 15 charges, and has two different refund mechanics available to it. The first? You get a charge any time your little nasty children eat a guy! Nothing like recycle tubemen to keep your children trucking. Downside of that is that their damage output is actually VERY very bad and are more useful for their ridiculous ability to draw and keep aggro, which can help Nidus stay alive easier. The second? Kill your children! I was tired of Henry eating all the Infested Bagels in the morning anyway. This is a lot more reliable, since all you gotta do is whack your child with Virulence and they pop like a balloon. If their pop hits an enemy, you get a charge! Hooray! Not perfect by any means since this actually requires a bit of upkeep to keep going, but still a lot more reliable than the alternative or for Parasitic Link. (1/500 or 1/1500 charges per enemy consumed by a maggot with a maximum of 9/500 or 9/1500 charges per full set of maggots at a time. 1/500 or 1/1500 charges for every enemy a maggot explodes onto, which can scale indefinitely depending on how many enemies are in range on top of your Virulence range.)

Another issue with Ravenous I've noticed is that if your Virulence kills an enemy, your maggot just explodes and does nothing. No extra stack. Punishing!

Undying costs a whopping 75 charges. Absolutely no refunds by any means. Nothing will stop this, as it seems to take precedence over Quick Thinking or other death-defying mods and situations outside of Oberon's Iron Renewal. (Not even sure if Undying will take precedence over that, either!) That means that no matter what, you lose a huge chunk of your nasty boy powers for dying, while every single other frame in the game can come right back up with the same strength the moment they're down to the moment they get right back up. Kind of a hefty price for ignoring Bleedout, especially when Sevagoth gets to basically enter god mode... (-75/500 or -75/1500 charges no matter what)

So lets review. Assume you hit 4 enemies every time, since that's a lot more likely outside of Survival with his kit. "Alpha" refers to cast by Nidus, while "Beta" refers to cast by Parasitic Link's target.

Alpha Virulence: 4/500 or 4/1500 charges. No damage boost yet! Sorry kids. You are currently sitting at 0/100 or 0/300 stacks.

Larva: 0/500 or 0/1500 charges on cast, but you manage to suck up 5 enemies with your Larva! Still doesn't currently contrite to stacks, but lets continue.

Alpha Virulence (again): This time, you cast it twice in a row, which kills all 5 of the enemies. Woohoo, that's 10 charges (2 full stacks!) right there, assuming all 5 enemies survived the first hit! So lets assume. We're now sitting at 14/500 or 14/1500 charges, so we have 2 full stacks and are about to complete our 3rd! Now Larva has a 50% chance to give an extra charge to enemies that die in Larva. So lets assume it works every other enemy, assuming it triggers on the first enemy and then on. That's an extra 3 charges, for a total of 17/500 or 17/1500 charges. 3 stacks, here we come! We can officially use Parasitic Link now, or we can throw down a Ravenous. So lets use Ravenous, since it's a bit more reliable.

Ravenous: Come forth, my mighty nasty babies! Unfortunately, you're now down to 0 stacks, but you only need to get 3 more charges to get back to your first stack. Pretty simple, right?

Larva (again): This time, you catch 6 enemies! Talk about lucky! Your little babies are a little confused, but 7 of them start attacking the ball o' meat. The other two are judging you for being a bad bug-daddy because they know what's coming.

Alpha Virulence (Yet again!): This time, enemies are a little bit stronger. It takes 2 hits to kill 4 of them and a third to kill the last two. So that's 6 for the first Virulence, 6 for the second, and finally 4 for the third. That's 16 charges right there! Back to 3, living the good life with your cute little babies. Now assuming Larva was active for all the kills, we'll assume every other kill got charged, for an extra 3 stacks. Woohoo, 19 charges, so we ALMOST have 4 whole stacks! Since we blew up 7 of our kids, assuming 5 of them hit every enemy but 2 of them only hit two (bummer!), that's an extra 34 charges. That's 6 stacks, almost 7! Add that to our previous 19 charges and we have 53 charges, or 10 stacks and are halfway to 11.

I think you can already see the problem, here. Because Nidus's stack economy is so bad, if he utilizes Parasitic Link and Ravenous when he's able to cast them, he'll still struggle to actually utilize the damage boost to Virulence, on top of the extremely conditional manner for a lot of his stack charges, he can be left in the dirt.

He very badly needs a touch up to his economy. I've played Nidus for a long, long time and he's one of my absolute favorite frames ever since I got him, but nasty bug daddy could use some help raising his kids.

Current Nidus gameplay requires you to very heavily micromanage "when" it'd be a good time to use Ravenous or Parasitic Link. Generally, almost any time is fine for Ravenous if you're not moving a lot (defense, for example) but Parasitic Link ends up hardcore falling to the wayside. You could use it on an enemy, but since enemies don't usually approach other enemies, you are basically gambling for the extra charges in exchange for some more survivability.

On the flipside, you're also still gambling when using it on an ally. A nice ability strength boost for both of you, not to mention your ally will now also cast Virulence whenever you do. Except there's a very good chance that anything between you and your friend will probably already be dead since they're almost certainly going to be killing stuff on their own as well, especially since they have an ability strength boost to help them do it.

This means that Parasitic Link is almost ALWAYS a complete charge loss and almost always leads to Nidus struggling MORE to get stacks (since it also forces the ally to be within range to keep the buff, meaning they're more likely to be nuking everything around you), making it an absolute gamble.

Literally anything to help his stack economy would be greatly appreciated, even if it's just stacking on the 50% charge chance from Larva to his Link.

Also, if you were able to mass detonate the maggots by holding down his 4 with the punishment of there being a "cooldown" (of maybe 1-4 seconds) before more can spawn can help Nidus take more advantage of the maggot detonation to help his stack economy, as well as give him the ability to ramp himself up to more appropriately meet the damage of other frames without having to beg and scrape for 100-300 stacks and hoping enemies stand in a pretty little line for you if they can't be dragged by Larva. Maggots are almost always in the range of at least one enemy, so a mass-detonate feature would help Nidus more guarantee that he can upkeep his stack abilities without having to gamble nearly as much on it.

This is a very dangerous slope to slide down. One I do not want to slide down. My recommendation is to run off solo to build your stack up privately. That is an essential skill if you are lower level. If you have a bunch of crybabies pop one of those nakak boosters to extend the range of affinity . If you are an advanced player  you should probably drop the link and replace w the many wonderful options there are now. If you still really struggle w Nidus I think the best way is settle on how the nullifiers work. Ultimately they are really the major solitary threat. There are several things I care not to discuss about Nidus abilities in different situations where starting to change any behavior changes a lot. As it has always been the nullifiers (What they do and how fast) control limiting nidus whether that has been intentional or not through the years I do not know. I was not so proactive in the old days.

[BDMblue]

On 2021-09-06 at 4:13 AM, (PSN)JustJoshinEnt said:

Nidus becomes IMMORTAL with just 15 stacks.  With his augment and his 4, he gains stacks like mad... 

Just passively getting stacks from kills in his affinity range would make him AFK-GOD.  He'd literally sit there, healing in his 4, whilst allies get him ALL the stacks...  And he just.. *survives* with no effort.

No.  Just no.  

If your idea of "QoL" is "Make me OP with no effort and let the game play itself", then you really don't understand game design.

If you play Nidus at all you would know you can go from 0 stacks to 100 full in 8 seconds with only 8 mobs in your 2.

So getting stacks from allies kills won’t make it op. Takes much longer to kill 600 enemies than the 8 seconds needed to stack full.

[(PSN)JustJoshinEnt]

10 hours ago, BDMblue said:

If you play Nidus at all you would know you can go from 0 stacks to 100 full in 8 seconds with only 8 mobs in your 2.

So getting stacks from allies kills won’t make it op. Takes much longer to kill 600 enemies than the 8 seconds needed to stack full.

I DO play Nidus, but... You're LITERALLY making my point FOR me.

If it is so simple to get max stats NOW, with the skills working as they already DO, why the everliving hell would DE want to, or indeed NEED to, BUFF it?

Make that make sense?

It's already OP, so you want it to be even more "hands-off" OP?

[(PSN)JustJoshinEnt]

On 2021-09-07 at 3:34 PM, Flannoit said:

so that he can more reliably keep his stacks up

But you're assuming the devs WANT you to "reliably keep his stacks up".  Nidus' stacks being 15+ means he can't be killed... 

Making that easier to obtain and maintain would just make him EZ-Mode immortal.  The game's got enough powercreep as-is.  Why would the devs intentionally do that, too?

[Flannoit]

24 minutes ago, (PSN)JustJoshinEnt said:

But you're assuming the devs WANT you to "reliably keep his stacks up".  Nidus' stacks being 15+ means he can't be killed... 

Making that easier to obtain and maintain would just make him EZ-Mode immortal.  The game's got enough powercreep as-is.  Why would the devs intentionally do that, too?

Then just give the cooldown from the augment to the base passive.

[BDMblue]

5 hours ago, (PSN)JustJoshinEnt said:

I DO play Nidus, but... You're LITERALLY making my point FOR me.

If it is so simple to get max stats NOW, with the skills working as they already DO, why the everliving hell would DE want to, or indeed NEED to, BUFF it?

Make that make sense?

It's already OP, so you want it to be even more "hands-off" OP?

I’m sorry but I’m lost. Nidus is not OP in the sense of damage or afk playing. If you just play him like Khora and spam abilities you’ll run out of life support.

His ability's are not good for damage or healing all he has is his passive for being op. His passive is only good at keeping him alive solo. Even with the changes I’m asking for.

 

Like an entire exterminate mission worth of kills would let you trigger your passive once. It just won’t break Nidus in the game.

[(PSN)Tactless_Ninja]

On 2021-09-05 at 5:30 AM, Soy77 said:

Fun fact:

If you play solo, nobody can steal your kills.

People are awfully adamant about singling people out and isolating them in a co-op game. Reminds me of that game Monopoly, where all your money goes to charity. Or Chess, where the kingdoms come to treaty before any awful wars breaks out. 

[Xionor]

In my opinion his abilities shouldn't cost stacks. They should just exist to gain more stacks. The cost of stacks just annoyingly slowes the gathering down at the start but isn't going to have an influence later in the mission. So I don't think it would make him stronger just a bit less annoying at the start of missions.

[(PSN)GingyGreen]

On 2021-09-02 at 11:40 AM, Tesseract7777 said:

Harrow has a pretty cool augment already: 

https://warframe.fandom.com/wiki/Tribunal

If your allies are killing so fast you can't even get some condemns in, chances are they have no need for the proc from your thurible or penance anyways.

If you really cannot get kills with your Nidus and Harrow in general, chances are, your ramp up abilities are not needed in this mission and you should adjust your strategy for that type of mission. 

In theory, I agree with the OP, but this is where theorycrafting falls apart when it meets practice.

We can talk about kill stealing affecting on kill abilities/mods and how it "unduly hampers Tenno", but the truth is that in practice, in a game with so much dang cannon fodder, if the team is really killing everything so fast that you cannot even get enough kills to keep your abilities or mods going, then you don't need them. 

And that's why gameplay is more important than theory. 

Oh, so in other words Nidus and Harrow are useless 100% of the time now is that it?

 

Because outside of raid bosses, nothing's not going to be wiped out in 0.3 seconds upon spawning

[(XBOX)McNersty]

As an avid Nidus player, I get quite frustrated when someone bombs my larva full of enemies because they're interfering with my survivability which consequently will inconvenience them if they end up having to revive me later on.

I find that politely explaining why I'd like them to stop usually fixes the issue. It's mostly from people who haven't played Nidus or don't understand how he works.

[DrivaMain]

On 2021-09-07 at 9:35 PM, [DE]Momaw said:

This is not an accurate understanding of how the power works...  Maggots also give you a stack of Mutation any time they hit an enemy with their death explosion, and you can detonate Maggots by hitting them with Virulence.  If you hold down the casting button, you can see an icon that shows you the position of your Maggots so you can get a sense of where to aim to detonate a bunch at once. You can see the Maggot explosion radius in the arsenal, it starts at 4 meters and is affected by Power Range.

A Maggot waypoint seems to be pretty useful. It would be nice if this is included as a QoL change. It's hard to keep track of those little things wandering around.

[DrivaMain]

On 2021-09-07 at 9:35 PM, [DE]Momaw said:

This is not an accurate understanding of how the power works...  Maggots also give you a stack of Mutation any time they hit an enemy with their death explosion, and you can detonate Maggots by hitting them with Virulence.  If you hold down the casting button, you can see an icon that shows you the position of your Maggots so you can get a sense of where to aim to detonate a bunch at once. You can see the Maggot explosion radius in the arsenal, it starts at 4 meters and is affected by Power Range.

A Maggot waypoint seems to be pretty useful. It would be nice if this is included as a QoL change. It's hard to keep track of those little things wandering around.