Excalibur Umbra Exalted Blade cancelled by operator mode

[Liv.Somik]

Right now if you go into operator mode and return, you have to recast exalted blade every time, it's extremely annoying and unavoidable. Please make it so that returning from operator mode auto recast exalted blade. 

[sunderthefirmament]

9 minutes ago, Liv.Somik said:

Right now if you go into operator mode and return, you have to recast exalted blade every time, it's extremely annoying and unavoidable. Please make it so that returning from operator mode auto recast exalted blade. 

It's been like this for as long as I can remember.  I do agree that it should be changed, though.

[(XBOX)Rez090]

23 minutes ago, Liv.Somik said:

Right now if you go into operator mode and return, you have to recast exalted blade every time, it's extremely annoying and unavoidable. Please make it so that returning from operator mode auto recast exalted blade. 

So you want Umbra to waste your energy? Because that would have to be a balancing factor, the blade would have to drain your energy.

[(NSW)warfare3376]

its not just exalted blade, any ability with a duration including the radial javelin aug gets reset when u go to operator mode forcing u to recast every  time to do so and honestly should be changed

[Birdframe_Prime]

Short answer: We know. It's likely never going to get fixed.

Long answer: It has to do with 'Spectre' AI control. This is a lot more clever than the basic AI in the game, and has a lot more decision making because of its added resources and so on.

Spectres have an Energy Pool like ours, but it's actually got a massive auto-regen function that allows them to cast abilities pretty much whenever their AI determines they should.

However there is a bias. The abilities scale on a priority, varying the Crowd Control and Damage, and a lot of the different frames will absolutely not use 'Drain' abilities as this interrupts their energy regen, which they need to recast other abilities that are higher priority. So Umbra, when on his own, will not prioritise Exalted Blade at all, he will prioritise Howl, Javelin and Slash Dash because they're quick-cast and have a definitive use that the AI can account for.

There is also the programming problem of how Umbra works: When you go into Operator mode, your Warframe model de-spawns and the new model spawns in. For all warframes, not just Umbra. It puts your normal model away into a null location, then brings in the invulnerable model that stands there waiting for you, then puts that away when you leave Operator mode and brings back your regular model. Umbra is a Spectre, it spawns in his AI version when you go into Operator mode instead of the stock, standing invulnerable one.

Now I don't know if you've noticed, but when you spawn in anywhere, like after a fall off a cliff, you don't have any abilities running either. So Umbra is not spawning the model you were using, which has EB running, it's spawning in a different model that has no abilities running. The animation of him 'turning off' EB is literally because they match the spectre model to your model before it spawns in for consistency. The ability isn't actually running, so it looks like it's turning EB off every time.

So, the tl;dr of that one is this:

The ability isn't running when you go into operator mode and summon the AI controlled version, it just looks like it is, and so looks like it turns it off. Then while the AI version is here, it prioritises casting the other abilities over casting the ability that drains energy and prevents regen.

That's going to take a while to overcome, and currently DE has much, much larger goals to achieve. Like bringing out the content they promised us they'd bring out.

[sunderthefirmament]

7 hours ago, (XBOX)Rez090 said:

So you want Umbra to waste your energy? Because that would have to be a balancing factor, the blade would have to drain your energy.

It is already wasting our energy.  Recasting Exalted Blade isn't free.

[Kaggelos]

Aaaaand that's why I removed his 4 and added Airburst! Most fun i've had in ages with Umbra.

[Birdframe_Prime]

4 hours ago, Kaggelos said:

Aaaaand that's why I removed his 4 and added Airburst! Most fun i've had in ages with Umbra.

As a Zephyr player, I'm proud of you... but I'm not so sure that you needed to, because he has Howl for CC anyway, and you could probably go for a better ability for increasing other functions, like Xata's Whisper for interesting damage, or Pillage for that defense-strip-plus-survivability function... Heck, even putting on Elemental Ward would be good for Excal.

There's an argument for Airburst Rounds, buuuuut... still... I do find that weird.

[Kaggelos]

17 minutes ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

As a Zephyr player, I'm proud of you... but I'm not so sure that you needed to, because he has Howl for CC anyway, and you could probably go for a better ability for increasing other functions, like Xata's Whisper for interesting damage, or Pillage for that defense-strip-plus-survivability function... Heck, even putting on Elemental Ward would be good for Excal.

There's an argument for Airburst Rounds, buuuuut... still... I do find that weird.

Haha yeah, true. my line of thinking was that i suk all enemies in a single point, radial javelin augment to increase melee dmg, and them with my skiajati boom! profit! His 1 is also an ability i despise, but oh well...

[AlbaneEdge]

So... I was doing some halako perimeter runs with umbra last night and he seems to not be turning off the exhalted blade anymore...

[Birdframe_Prime]

13 hours ago, AlbaneEdge said:

So... I was doing some halako perimeter runs with umbra last night and he seems to not be turning off the exhalted blade anymore...

Yes, this is correct ^^

However... it's still not great.

See, with Blade still running or without it, Excal will still go into lockdown mode because he draws aggro and gets shot, sitting there doing nothing with 1 HP. It's worse with the Blade running because, even though you don't have to recast it when you get back in, the damage he takes means that you're usually incredibly low on health, or about to get one shot because all his shields are gone.

[selig_fay]

On 10/2/2021 at 10:18 AM, Birdframe_Prime said:

Spectres have an Energy Pool like ours, but it's actually got a massive auto-regen function that allows them to cast abilities pretty much whenever their AI determines they should.

They use CD. Only the umbra has energy, but umbra's abilities have no cost in my tests. He spends energy only on quick thinking.

[Birdframe_Prime]

9 hours ago, selig_fay said:

They use CD.

I would agree with you, were it not for the way that they prioritise when and how to cast these abilities that entirely depends on their actual costs. For example, outside of Umbra now leaving Blade active, can you name very many Specters that actively use abilities that have an Energy Drain? They don't because that would interfere with their energy pool regen, rather than a cooldown.

The conclusion that most players came to during the updates and changes to Specters over time was that they have an energy pool with a rapid rate of refill that works similarly to basic regeneration. Since it's blocked by Drain abilities, almost none of the Specters will ever use them.

Plus, while some of their casts seem to be regularly spaced, they can fire them off quite fast depending on the specter and the ability used. All you have to do is fulfil the requirements that the specter needs to qualify for casting, such as surrounding them with multiple enemies to make them do a radial cast, or a defensive one.

[selig_fay]

6 minutes ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

I would agree with you, were it not for the way that they prioritise when and how to cast these abilities that entirely depends on their actual costs. For example, outside of Umbra now leaving Blade active, can you name very many Specters that actively use abilities that have an Energy Drain? They don't because that would interfere with their energy pool regen, rather than a cooldown.

The conclusion that most players came to during the updates and changes to Specters over time was that they have an energy pool with a rapid rate of refill that works similarly to basic regeneration. Since it's blocked by Drain abilities, almost none of the Specters will ever use them.

Plus, while some of their casts seem to be regularly spaced, they can fire them off quite fast depending on the specter and the ability used. All you have to do is fulfil the requirements that the specter needs to qualify for casting, such as surrounding them with multiple enemies to make them do a radial cast, or a defensive one.

Maybe. But I'm not the only one who thinks so. There is an article on the wiki that explains exactly how abilities work. And, for example, there is an oberon that uses its health regeneration when one of the team is low on hp. There is cd, there are triggers. And I think it works the same way in terms of usage as sentinels mods. Hyldrun depletes her shields with abilities, so yes, there might be energy in there, but I don't think it's a problem for them.

[Birdframe_Prime]

1 minute ago, selig_fay said:

but I don't think it's a problem for them

No, you're right, energy isn't a 'problem' for them, in terms of limiting them to casting abilities.

It's a 'problem' for the AI to determine which ability to cast and how. I mean, you listed one of the only frames that will cast a Drain ability, and only when the team is low on Health, and only because that ability has a quantifiable 'cast this, team will recover X health' and as far as I'm aware they will disable the ability once the duration of the 'wave' has ended.

I believe that the only reason DE has managed to make this change to Excal work is the bit I explained earlier: The 'sentient' Excal is spawned onto the map in the state you left your own Excal, and DE have managed to turn off the automatic 'disable' of a Drain ability specifically for that specter.

So in this case, it keeps the state you were in better than before. Which means that when you spawn in your controllable Excal, it can now honour the state that it was in when you left it, rather than being forced to have the Blade put away to match the Sentient Excal that you saw a moment before.

Still, doesn't stop this from being a not-very-good passive for the frame. Just less janky ^^

[selig_fay]

@Birdframe_Prime I think the problem is that DE decided to simply protect themselves from bugs and testing, therefore this was not realized before. Well, you know, all this mechanics of the change of weapons + trigger + time of work + Internet code so that the host migration does not make an endless blade. Well, the Umbra himself does not look like a frame, but like a specter, so when you activate it, you need to start the blade, because, you know, you will spawn a new specter every time.