"Why" - Questions I have about Warframe kits

[Grav_Starstrider]

I love this game! So no offense to DE and their devs, I know this looks like a very dauntingly long list of criticisms, but they're mostly just the 1 or 2 small perceived flaws in each mentioned Warframe's kit (and I skipped a fair few). When I think of these things and look at these specifics, these things just make me wonder "why?", let me know if you have your own extremely strong "why"s related to specific Warframes, or game-wide wide-spread-observable issues (since Warframes and their actual gameplay is this game's strongest strengths outside of art/music, imo).

Why's for All Frames and the game in general:

Spoiler

Why is Sprinting almost universally slower than bullet jumping is by default, and even moreso slower than bulletjump-roll chaining? When traveling across a straight line, sprinting should be the fastest, even if it takes some warming/ramping up time, shouldn't it? The "3D traversal tool" can be more potent at 3D traversal, but it sucks that without modding or using abilities specifically for sprinting, that bullet jumps tend to be faster (and they can be modded-for too!) almost universally, even on the straight-aways. Our poor fingers, lol.

Why is Bullet Jumping near-universally better than most other maneuvers? So many wall climbs and runs get caught and stuck a lot because not every vertical surface has been optimized or built around the mechanic, so I've often found it necessary to just jump away from the wall and then bullet jump over or around whatever blocked me.

Why are ammo-limited weapons often so much weaker than built-in transmutation or melee weapons?

Why are so many health-limited summons also duration-limited or channeled??? It's so annoying when you have to mod for inherited health/armor AND power strength AND duration or efficiency. Where's the player choice in saying "you need to mod for 2 or more stats JUST to make this ability last instead of immediately running out of either time OR health"?

Why are there so many abilities that primarily (claim to) do damage, suck at doing damage to even level 1-20 enemies, unless you burn a whole mod slot on an augment and several others on Power Strength? And on top of that, so many lack scaling as well!

Why do some Warframes have abilities that are near-duplicates or better versions of one or more of their other abilities (e.g. Frost's Freeze, IceWave, and Avalanche, or Ember's Fireball and Inferno, Ash's Teleport and Bladestorm)? I feel like a number of these could be reworked so that one of the abilities could be turned into the charged/held version of the other ability (as opposed to the tap ability)

Why are so many augments not just the default functionality of the abilities? So many abilities are practically useless or vastly overshadowed by another of that same Warframe's abilities, until you further differentiate them with an augment's effect.

Why are half of the Subsumed abilities so bad that they're often the Infused-Overwritten ability on that frame, while others selected were so strong they had to be nerfed? Please buff or re-select for the most minimally-used Subsumes, and consider reselecting for the most redundant and boring or so-OP-they-got-nerfed options like Roar.

Why is non-invisibility stealth so inferior and unrewarded both gameplay and reward-wise in 99% of the game, compared to non-stealthy invisibility-spam and genocide-runs? Why do enemies become heat-seeking missiles the moment invisibility drops or if you lacked it in the first place? Why doesn't the game distinguish between an enemy being "aware" and "alerted" by other player's presence, vs our own?

Why is damage reflection and enemy hijacking so pitiful and useless on account of enemy health vastly outstripping enemy damage by leagues? You reflect something that or take control of an enemy that would've killed you, but it only tickles your foes. (Notable victims: Gara, Inaros, Nyx, Revenant, Nekros, Oberon, Radiation, Unairu, etc)

Don't google or investigate this stuff until you're through the Second Dream:

Spoiler

Why do we lose the New War SpoilerMode2.0 abilities and lack school-specific abilities for Spoiler Mode, we have 4 ability buttons besides the Transference button, we could retain the 3 abilities and just have one school-specific unique ability per school, with each school only mildly augmenting the 3 New War abilities the same way they currently modify Blast, Dash, and Cloak.

 

Frame-Specific "Why"s
 

Spoiler

Ash - why is Shuriken without the augment useless against crowds of low level enemies(only killing 2-4 enemies at max per cast) and singular high level light enemies, compared to the far-cheaper-to-cast and scaling-with-melee-combo Blade Storm? Why isn't Shuriken or Teleport discounted by Invisibility like Bladestorm is? Why isn't Smoke Shadow the default functionality of Smokescreen?
Atlas - why are Rumblers and Petrify the only ways Atlas builds Rubble, why does his augment require him to be at 1400 out of his 1500 to gain any benefit whatsoever from the mod slot, and why doesn't Rubble give him back a little bit of energy or efficiency, if he's supposed to be spamming his 3 and 4 to gain Rubble or burning a slot on his 1's augment?
Banshee - why is SonicBoom at 260% Strength incapable of killing a level 1 Corrupted Butcher and possesses less one-directional range than the radial SoundQuake has that does more than 3x the damage per second/energy-costs?
Chroma - Why can't Chroma's aim glide gravity be lower on account of his passive dragon wings, why isn't his 4's augment's movement the default behavior or an interactible behavior (follow/stay), and why can't he combo-element with his 4's when-cast element and another element with his 1 to cause a radial explosion of that specific combo element?
Ember - why isn't Fireball more noticeably effective at single target damage compared to Inferno?
Equinox - Compared to Limbo's update to freely transition between INVINCIBILITY IN THE RIFT, why is Metamorphosis so expensive when it fails to innately preserve or confer any advantages of any of Equinox's other abilities, and gatekeeps Equinox's access to half of their kit?
Frost - Dear god why are his 1 and 2 worse versions of his 4, and why can't you remote detonate Snow Globes by targeting them and just pressing or holding your 3? Surely his Ice Wave could be the charged version of his 1, and his element, Cold, could get a favorable rework approaching the level of Heat's potency and utility?
Garuda - Why doesn't Dread Mirror do at least a pitiful amount of up-front damage prior to the %health kill calculation? If it can insta-gib a level 100 Nox the moment it hits 40% health, it should be able to insta-gib a level 30 butcher.
Grendel - Why can't Regurgitate be rolled into Feast's up-chuck functionality?
Harrow - Why isn't Tribunal or something similar just Harrow's default functionality? He has to compete with his more genocidal squadmates just to be able to contribute or be useful. Tribunal or 25% effectiveness should be the default, with Tribunal increasing the effectiveness by a flat 50% (to 75% or 100%)
Hydroid - Dear god my boy is in pain. Why does charging his 1 for the 3 extra seconds instead of tapping only add 5 seconds to his 5 second ability? Ash's Bladestorm got arbitrarily improved to be "maxed out" instead of requiring multiple targetings per target for the maximum output. Why is his 2 worse than just about every other movement ability in all of the ways that matter (the only thing going for it is speed and CC and i-frames, without ANY of the QoL movement ability tweaks that Mach Rush and Vial Rush have)? And it doesn't even protect him from laser-door magnetic procs despite making his health bar "invincible". Why is his 3 the absolute antithesis of Warframe, just making him nigh-stationary, any making anything, from movement to collecting out of reach enemies, cost additional energy, and not discounting cast costs for any of his other abilities? Why does Undertow only "collect" enemies instead of leaving them behind when it's used in tandem with Tidal Surge? Why is Undertow SO MONUMENTALLY UNDERWHELMING considering how boring and non-advantageous it is outside of its invulnerability? Why don't Tentacle Swarm's tentacles rove like Tornado? around the pathing-surface they spawn on? Why can't you cast Tidal Surge as a projectile-wave so that you don't out-of-bounds reset when stage-killing enemies as it appears to be intended to be capable of doing?
Inaros - Why is Sandstorm so underwhelming?
Limbo - Why does it seem like there's never any targets worth Limbo "dividing and conquering" across the rift?
Loki - Why is Decoy such a useless version of Celestial Twin?
Mesa - Why does Ballistic Battery still exist???
Mirage - If the average lighting conditions in warframe are "average", why doesn't Eclipse allow the player to take a "Snapshot" of Mirage's location's light/shadow level, wreathing her in light or shadows for the duration of the ability or until she re-casts it in different lighting?
Nekros - Why does his passive and 2 and 3 imply Nekros will be in the thick of the fighting in melee range, or encouraging melee range, while his 1 and 2 and arguably his 4 counteract that expectation?
Octavia - why are her songs so short, and why do her mechanics overwhelmingly reward spamming instead of making timing of rarer notes more strongly rewarded (providing options for fastpaced or decisive  styles of play depending on your song, where fewer notes give stronger buffs when accurately nailed). Allowing us to choose to add a few extra measures, and making the note allotment adjust based on the measures, would be nice for variety and lack of spammy-sounding repetition.
Protea - Why are there no non-stationary-friendly alt-cast or augments for Protea's Dispensary and Temporal Anchor (like holding to have a temporal clone repeat the journey you've made instead of undoing yours, abilities and weapon usage (including AI-retargeting instead of just your recorded aim) repeated at the cost of not redeeming your energy spent. Or for Dispensary, having the dispensary on Protea just immediately spit out something without fully deploying, alternating between Health and Ammo packs).
Rhino - Why is Rhino charge so underwhelming?
Saryn - Why is her kit so ludicrously over-the-top genocide-enabling and room-clearing-capable at the cost of 25 energy, killing that victim, and spending 75 energy on a Miasma??
Sevagoth - Why does it feel so substantially like Reap and Sow are so drastically crippled without having each other?
Titania - Why doesn't Lantern draw Spellbound-floating enemies into the Razorwing Swarm surrounding the lantern, and the Tributes (as long as it brings the affected enemies/buffs closer to Titania)?
Trinity - Especially with Link and Blessing and Energy Vampire keeping them both up at all times, what good is the super-redundant Health Vampire ability?
Valkyr - Why the heck aren't we able to spiderman-swing with Rip-Line, similar to Hammond from Overwatch or any Spiderman game?
Volt - Why can't we hold 1 to channel a force-lightning to add additional damage and chain links?
Yareli - Why do all of Yareli's abilities feel like one of the worst possible versions of other abilities? Her 1 feels like a worse condemn/spellbind with fewer targets-per-cast and pitiful damage without status procs. Merulina's mobility is almost universally regarded as a downgrade, or at most a *sidegrade*, to standard warframe mobility. Why does Merulina cost energy every time we want to mount her, when we'll constantly want to dismount her to regain 1) access to helminth abilities, 2) access to standard warframe mobility, 3) access to melee, 4) access to primary weapons? Why doesn't Merulina, with all of her health generated upon summoning, stay around and do Octavia's Resonator's general stuff. Why the HECK can't we MOD Merulina to at least make her K-Drive mobility more custom-tailored and give us access to some of the genuinely fun K-Drive mods??????? And why does Riptide feel like a worse Vortex/Larva? And why are all of these still concerns even though she initially released with something like half of the effective health pool and damage and mobility as she has now???
Zephyr - Whyyyyyy would you add a no-choice air-brake to the end of Zephyr's Tailwind instead of just allowing us to immediately cancel momentum with a backwards dodge-roll (that could be redeemed with each Tailwind cast, to provide us marginally more useful and fun amounts of mobility with barrel rolls following each cast)? It's so monumentally stupid to end up unable to move forward in midair because you had cast a mobility ability prior to your aim glide (which is supposed to be a momentum preserving maneuver, not a momentum cancelling maneuver)!

Just needed to get some of these annoyances off of my chest, and could only hope that DE sees my perspective with at least a few of these and rectifies them, especially while they're actively looking to rework and update some abilities and augments this year.

[Lutesque]

4 hours ago, Grav_Starstrider said:

Why do so many Warframes have abilities that are near-duplicates of one of their other abilities?

Okay this one feels like it's alil unfair...

After 48 Frames.... Not only should you expect some overlap....you should Expect some Identical Abilities or even near cloned Warframe's....

You better believe this is going to happen to the "Werewolf" frame everybody's Talking about.....

4 hours ago, Grav_Starstrider said:

Mirage's location's light/shadow level, wreathing her in light or shadows for the duration of the ability or until she re-casts it in different lighting?

While this would be nice.... I think she still deserves better...

Quite Frankly Eclipse Is her most boring ability....

4 hours ago, Grav_Starstrider said:

Octavia - why are her songs so short, and why do her mechanics overwhelmingly reward spamming instead of making timing of rarer notes more strongly rewarded

They actually are.... The problem here is there's a Bug that causes the Rythym to Desync.... Thus the only way to reliably get your Buffs is to use a Song with no Gaps in it.

5 hours ago, Grav_Starstrider said:

Why doesn't Merulina, with all of her health generated upon summoning, stay around and do Octavia's Resonator's general stuff.

Don't you think it's Abit of a #$&(% move to criticize DE for different Warframe's with similar Abilities and then Suggest making one Ability similar to an existing one.... 🤨

 

[AlendasNaro]

You probably should stop thinking: How much of advantage I get from this X warframe? And instead think. What kind of play style this warframe will have and how can I adapt to it but later make it better fit for me? Because that kind of is the general feeling I get when I looked at your warframe criticisms.

Sprinting being slower than combo movement. Sprint speed gets buffs far more easily than bullet jumping and rolls while they DO affect a bit. Once the sprint buffs do stack up you will notice a huge change. As it is, yeah sprinting is kind of ill adviced but it is not useless as there are parts of tile sets where you kinda have to sprint instead of a roll or bullet jump.

Is bullet jumping better than other moves? No. It is mostly up to you how you want to use it but better way is to just use it when you need to get to higher ground for some reason either because extraction is in that way or you are taking too much heat.

Are ammo limited weapons worse than ones with built in transmutation? Are you absolutely sure you know how the modding system works? There are cases where some melees are better than ranged weapons but also where they aren't. For example in crowd control matters there are several ranged weapons that do the job SO much better than melees and if you are cleaning out low health trash in low level missions *Looks at Ogris, Penta and Ignis*. Do I need to say more? Weapons can serve different roles. Also some of the warframe abilities will be just laughing at your melee. Think of using such weapons as an option or how you feel like you want to play the game. Not as THIS is the only way to play this game.

If you are asking about the Nekros shadows that is for balance reasons but you can work around it by having Trinity in your team to heal the shadows and give them damage resistance. Pretty sure you are just not paying attention how low your summon's health is and when it does get focus fired and killed by it. You probably started thinking that it has limited time of being with you. Oberon healing also works on Nekros' shadows but... *looks at the energy pool going to 0 in about 3 seconds* Yeah...

Is every ability supposed to be that good? No, there are going to be bad abilities but you have to be pretty certain what you call a bad ability. Because it might have more applications than you think it does and thus better than you think it is. It is something that can be fixed but usually you should focus on some abilities if you don't think it will fit your play style you can remove it. That is exactly what he did to Frost. He removed the ice wave and replaced it with parasitic armor. Making his Frost WHOLE lot tankier for period of time and making snowglobes STUPID beefy because the Frost also has more than 200% power strength. Armor what is that? *slaps an enemy with Avalanche* Now you don't have it anymore.

Duplicate ability is already answered.

So everything should be broken OP? (About the subsumed abilities). Yeah, no thanks. Heck these already more than tasty enough resources to play with and to experiment. You probably aren't as experienced as you are in the game. Veteran friend of mine started looking at the parasitic armor and Hydroid again though.

Don't recall anybody saying that is THE way to play this game if you want. Go for it but... It's not the only way to play this game also veteran friend of mine just got one of the most MEANEST grins on his face knowing EXACTLY what to do you in Steel Path, to get some of that good salt out of you.

You haven't played Steel path haven't you? Is what veteran friend of mine said what comes on damage resistance. About the enemy hijacking he is bit on the border about. Yeah, it isn't as useful as one might think but is not an option to be neglected constantly. Your team will appreciate having an ancient healer around providing damage resistance for the whole team and extra body on the field that soaks some fire is always appreciated. Heck this is something (the extra body soaking up fire for you) is something you can learn from Doom. FROM 1990s.

Now on to the frame specifics:

Ash: Your suggestion would make smoke bomb stupid good as it will allow some allied NPCs to disengage relatively safely and your player allies quite safely from fights and regroup at other place. So, no, THIS IS NOT going to happen.

Atlas: No comment.

Banshee: You are focusing on those two abilities (1st ability with Augment is pretty relevant even today though). That is so 2014 my man, why are you THIS late? When people say Banshee is REALLY good they PRETTY much only mean the Sonar because HOT DAMN, having an area of an enemy 11,4 times more vulnerable to damage is NOT AT ALL broken. Silence is almost fine but it is pretty difficult to make it balanced with the banshee's kit. 4th somewhat usable for CC when you want to keep enemies away from MD objective or excavator just don't use it all the time like that.

Chroma: No comment.

Ember: The what? Inferno? *Looks at you with empty eyes trying to figure out what you mean* It interacts with your 3rd ability. It was either increased heat generation or flat heat generated.

Equinox: Two entirely different things with two entirely different purposes not fair to compare. Also if you are having trouble with this ability, it might be better to ask whether you actually know when to use one of them.

Garuda: *facepalm* because different enemies have different attributes. Nox has A HUGE damage resistance to anything that is not slapping his face this also applies to all of the warframe abilities. Which is something you should take in to account.

Grendel: No comment.

Harrow: You are using Harrow to generate energy for your team? *Facepalm* YES, it is doable but FAR more viable to do with team you are communicating with. Just take Trinity as your energy charger and trust me. SHE DOES A LOT better than Harrow. Note: This doesn't make Harrow bad as his ability kit is pretty good but Thurible requires coordination AND DO NOT expect coordination to happen much in public matches.

Hydroid: For a long time he has been considered one of the worst warframes in this game. NOTE: not useless just one of the worst and he is IN DIRE need of rework just like Nyx and Banshee. So, complaining about this is pretty much waste of time. Just join the crowd good sir, so we can finally get him a rework.

Inaros: It is DECENT CC and it also gives you pretty hefty amount of damage resistance which is useful when you are trying to regain your health from the devour target.

Limbo: The spawns are randomized in all missions but I am not saying it can not be done. Do stay on the rift and pick enemies you actually want to kill with the first ability. So dividing and conquering is CERTAINLY plausible you are probably not playing it right to actually do what you are INTENDING to do. Also stop standing still.

Loki: It has to be as good as that? My man, are you sure you have learned everything about these? Yes, in general it is not a good ability BUT it is not useless pretty sure some augments are REALLY good and having an extra body THAT DISTRACTS enemies is NEVER unwelcome even for those 3 seconds.

Mesa: No comment.

Mirage: Hmm... NAH. I think a lot of players WHILE THEY DO HAVE issues with the light registration. Will far more prefer how it works now than how you are suggesting it should work. Because your energy is going to be gone PRETTY quick.

Nekros: *sigh* Are you ABSOLUTELY sure, you enough to make this criticism? Because veteran friend of mine is currently considering you a gold mine of the NOT so good type. Well... For you, for others... A different story I guess.

Octavia: No comment.

Protea: No comment.

Rhino: No comment.

Saryn: I mean... Is not kind of poison or venom type warframe to wipe the floor? 1st ability takes time to build up to the critical mass damage. This is not the only way to play Saryn though it is definitely something you can do though.

Sevagoth: No comment.

Titania: No comment.

Trinity: Inaros, Valkyr and to an extent Nidus will benefit of Trinity who has the Well of Life ability still as those three care most about their health (Even if all three have ways to get it back themselves. Having some sort of back up never hurts). Just subsume in an ability that is better this is mostly up to the player and what team needs. It is mostly redundant but it isn't really entirely useless either. Blessing costs 100 energy (MOST OF THE TIME. Depends greatly on your build) which is a lot of energy if you are not running flow or primed flow so there will be situations where using one over the other is better choice.

Valkyr: It PROBABLY could be done but considering how much stuff this game is already processing or ends up processing... It could break horribly and I can't really give more of thoughts on this.

Yareli: I do have something to say about the what you wrote at the end though. Because most people AREN'T as good as they think they are and don't know as much as they think they do. Yareli has notably different play style compared to others in this game. She is DEFINITELY capable to dealing pretty hefty amount of damage but you kinda have to plan for it, understand when you CAN fight the enemies and when you should just NOT be there. A skirmisher is best way to look at Yareli. Delay, kill if you can and just be a huge headache.

Trust me when enemies have a lot of viral in their systems (as most things tend to do what comes on Viral). OH my... Riptide REALLY shreds. Along with the Aqua Blades. Armor tends to be a HUGE pain in this game when you are fighting against Grineer so keep that in mind. She definitely CAN do the damage dealer's job but it requires a bit more effort, team work, knowledge and coordination. Overall thoughts of Yareli most of the time are from Veterans: Not good but not bad.

Zephyr: This is actually pretty good criticism. Just clean up some of the useless whining and it is something that actually should be discussed about. The back flip out of Tail Wind momentum thing would be quite welcome in my eyes.

[Grav_Starstrider]

12 hours ago, Lutesque said:

Okay this one feels like it's alil unfair...

After 48 Frames.... Not only should you expect some overlap....you should Expect some Identical Abilities or even near cloned Warframe's....

I meant in their own kit, sorry for the confusion! Like how Frost's 1, 2, and 4 feel like they're practically the same exact thing. To some extent, how Ash's 3 and 4 are practically the same thing. Grendel's up-chuck of Feast (1) also significantly resembles his 3. Lots of Warframes have rather *redundant* abilities in their kit, that could honestly be combined into one ability with a toggle or a hold-vs-tap cast alternative. Like, imagine if you could just cast Terrify by holding Soul Punch, as they could both be explained away as a manipulation of their souls? Then we could have an exalted Greatscythe ability on him, which would help cement him as an in-the-melee-fray-frame instead of the "sit back and keep enemies away (but within desecrate range) caster".

I totally get that there's only so many different ways you can arbitrarily make "does damage/debuff/cc/utility" unique across a wide roster of Warframes, it'd be like getting tired of guns shooting bullets.

12 hours ago, Lutesque said:

While this would be nice.... I think she still deserves better...

Quite Frankly Eclipse Is her most boring ability....

Oh, give me a frame, and I can probably come up with an imaginative (and no more OP than Saryn/Wukong) full kit rework. This whole thread is just "why"s. Not begging for buffs, but pointing out what actively feels S#&$ty or nonsensical.

 

13 hours ago, Lutesque said:

They actually are.... The problem here is there's a Bug that causes the Rythym to Desync.... Thus the only way to reliably get your Buffs is to use a Song with no Gaps in it.

Oof. And unfortunately it makes way more sense to keep it server-side because all 4 players are supposed to be able to benefit from it.... So yikes. Rough.

13 hours ago, Lutesque said:

Don't you think it's Abit of a #$&(% move to criticize DE for different Warframe's with similar Abilities and then Suggest making one Ability similar to an existing one.... 🤨

See above, didn't mean it like that 😅 honestly ideally it'd actually just function a bit closer to just being an actual companion, now that I've thought about it for the 80th time. Cuz drawing all aggro completely is definitely a bit more OP than just splitting aggro.

8 hours ago, AlendasNaro said:

What kind of play style this warframe will have and how can I adapt to it but later make it better fit for me?

I do like thinking of it that way! I prefer finding Helminth infusions that actually have neat synergies or mild alterations to their playstyle, rather than just slapping Roar or Larva on everything, for example (no offense to Roar/Larva users). Like barely-tweaking Ash's gameplay style by using Silence (either short duration or range) to force finisher openings and getting my invisibility from Arcane Trickery or Skiajati.

9 hours ago, AlendasNaro said:

How much of advantage I get from this X warframe?

It's not so much that I think that. These are "why"s that just glaringly point out to me as things that feel.... Explicitly and clearly dysfunctional from how I assume we're intended to perceive and utilize the frame overall. It's actually explicitly because of the other half of your comment here that I made this list, because the "why", to my perception, clashes with their design.

9 hours ago, AlendasNaro said:

Sprinting being slower than combo movement. Sprint speed gets buffs far more easily than bullet jumping and rolls while they DO affect a bit. Once the sprint buffs do stack up you will notice a huge change. As it is, yeah sprinting is kind of ill adviced but it is not useless as there are parts of tile sets where you kinda have to sprint instead of a roll or bullet jump.

I'm aware that specific Warframe abilities (and in Gauss's case, base sprint speed) and modding setups can make sprinting ludicrously fast, but so can certain setups for Bullet Jumping, or in Nezha's case, slide-and-roll spamming. I'm just perplexed at the fact that by default, what should be the skill-based thing (bullet jumping and rolling and gliding to specific strategic points in a 3D space) can just be spammed on the straight-away and is innately better than the literal thing that would be expected to be used on the straight-away, sprinting. Especially since there are many places where sprinting isn't even that viable in the first place (terrain with out of bounds, protrusions and obstacles, shield grineer that'll bash you onto your butt if you try to whizz past them, stages that simply expect you to bullet jump up or across something without any convenient sprint-path alternative). I wouldn't mind sprint speed mods/abilities/effects being nerfed slightly to compensate, I just think it makes more sense to have Sprinting by default (for the Warframes that aren't explicitly intended to be slower than the average Warframe) to be faster sprinting straight across the ground than bullet/roll-chaining is.

9 hours ago, AlendasNaro said:

Are ammo limited weapons worse than ones with built in transmutation? Are you absolutely sure you know how the modding system works? There are cases where some melees are better than ranged weapons but also where they aren't. For example in crowd control matters there are several ranged weapons that do the job SO much better than melees and if you are cleaning out low health trash in low level missions *Looks at Ogris, Penta and Ignis*. Do I need to say more? Weapons can serve different roles. Also some of the warframe abilities will be just laughing at your melee. Think of using such weapons as an option or how you feel like you want to play the game. Not as THIS is the only way to play this game.

A bunch of the weapons that have ammo mutation are BECAUSE they'd otherwise be too badly feast-or-famine with the lack of their ammo type's specific drops, and their significantly low ammo pools. And DE literally just a while back acknowledged "melee is king in Steel Path". I think it's pretty self-evident that there isn't a particularly strong focus on balance across different categories of things in the game.
I play how I want, I just wish there was less relative "punishment" for deviating from the stronger-than-necessary-metas, that other players use to get superior quantities/qualities of rewards by using. I want player choice to be rewarded, not for deviation to be punished.

9 hours ago, AlendasNaro said:

If you are asking about the Nekros shadows that is for balance reasons but you can work around it by having Trinity in your team to heal the shadows and give them damage resistance. Pretty sure you are just not paying attention how low your summon's health is and when it does get focus fired and killed by it. You probably started thinking that it has limited time of being with you. Oberon healing also works on Nekros' shadows but... *looks at the energy pool going to 0 in about 3 seconds* Yeah...

You're seeming to be making an awful lot of assumptions that you know what I'm thinking, how I play, and how much experience and understanding of this game I have. I'm more talking about things like Rumblers, Lethal Progeny, (not duration but energy-restricted) Effigy, (percent-health-lost per second effectively giving them a limited duration) ShadowsoftheDead, Decoy, Sand Shadows, Molt.... Seems like the vast majority of abilities that have health bars have a duration attached to them, with exceptions such as Celestial Twin, Merulina, Snowglobes, and Mass Vitrify. I'm sure I've missed more examples for both sides. It just hurts a bit when one Warframe's stuff feels arbitrarily limited compared to another's and not seemingly for any major gameplay balancing or gameplay-suggesting reasons, but just to make some Warframes arbitrarily more energy hungery, even if their kit isn't as potent or self-sustaining as the other's are. Getting the pinch from both energy consumption, and a limited duration of efficacy, AND the ability to have the thing be gunned down quite swiftly at later levels if the frame's kit doesn't encourage you to build for what'd give them more survivability, can make some of these abilities feel like pretty poor options to spend time and energy on using.

9 hours ago, AlendasNaro said:

Is every ability supposed to be that good? No, there are going to be bad abilities but you have to be pretty certain what you call a bad ability.

How on earth do you read what I wrote below this line, and respond with that ^ ??

19 hours ago, Grav_Starstrider said:

Why are so many abilities that primarily do damage, suck at doing damage to even level 1 or 20 enemies, unless you burn a whole mod slot on an augment?

I'm talking about when an ability is genuinely trash, or obscenely eclipsed by an available subsume-alternative. I've given examples in the Warframe-specific criticisms, such as explicitly-referred-to-as-damage-abilities that are just absolutely terrible at dealing any sort of damage, because they have zero scaling beyond modding power strength, but even 500% power strength can save some of these. You shouldn't have to use an augment to make Shuriken or Sonicboom capable of dealing damage or enabling you to deal damage against an armored foe, when using a weapon with Corrosive or Heat can do the same thing and bullets (in the early game) are cheaper to fire than energy, and melee weapons are even cheaper to swing. Yeah, Sonicboom is a successful ragdoll/begone-thot button like Nekros' Soul Punch. Nekros' Soul Punch is leagues more useful after their tweaks to it though.

Yeah, my philosophy is that the abilities should in general do what they say they do in most (applicable) circumstances, and in those circumstances, should often be considered energy-cost-efficient enough to justify their usage, or effective enough to justify the lack of cost-efficiency. You shouldn't need to bandage-augment abilities to turn them from useless to infinitely scaling powerhouses, that just makes them arguably "mandatory mods" for that Warframe unless you explicitly are going a different direction with their build and overwriting the ability with a Helminth.

Banshee's Sonicboom is ATROCIOUS at killing enemies despite the ability literally claiming that it's meant to kill them via the force, not via stage-killing them. Per energy-cost, Soundquake makes infinitely more sense to cast, considering its energy cost.

And in this horde shooter, Frost's Freeze and IceWave abilities kinda suffer the same problem of redundancy to Avalanche. Yeah they each have their niche, but Avalanche mostly brings the best of both Freeze and IceWave to the table, and then some. The abilities aren't useless, but I feel like steps could be taken to give the abilities a bit of a stronger niche and specialization.

I don't see the point in being resistant to refinement and improvement to the internal consistency and balance of abilities.

10 hours ago, AlendasNaro said:

So everything should be broken OP? (About the subsumed abilities). Yeah, no thanks. Heck these already more than tasty enough resources to play with and to experiment. You probably aren't as experienced as you are in the game. Veteran friend of mine started looking at the parasitic armor and Hydroid again though.

That is the opposite of my intent. For example, effective but low-key boring options are Warcry and Roar. I'd have much rather seen DE do as they did for Trinity and Zephyr, and taken one of the frame's weaker and less impressive abilities, like Ripline and Rhino-Charge, and buffed them, like allowing us to see a better spiderman-swinging mobility option for example, instead of the boring clunky grapple-gun effect. And a miscellany of possible tweaks (ability to hold, charge, super-jump-and-ground-slam if aiming up or straight down, armor reduction or shield breaking effects, etc) to Rhino Charge to make it more fun and useful (don't pretend it's not the most overwritten ability he has, and that it couldn't stand to have been improved). I don't want clearly DPS-additive things that literally needed to be nerfed to allow as Helminth Subsumes, I want all offerings to be approximately equally viable, assuming one's playstyle, or the Warframe's playstyle, can be complemented by them.

10 hours ago, AlendasNaro said:

Don't recall anybody saying that is THE way to play this game if you want. Go for it but... It's not the only way to play this game also veteran friend of mine just got one of the most MEANEST grins on his face knowing EXACTLY what to do you in Steel Path, to get some of that good salt out of you.

Nobody has to SAY that genocide runs are the way to play the game. It's pretty implicit with the reward structures for practically everything other than Rescue and Spy and melee stealth kill affinity/focus farming. You get more rewards and drops and affinity if you kill more enemies, than if you CC and/or avoid them. There's no innate bonuses for killing or being seen by fewer enemies, and outside of the rescue/spy missions, there's little to no reward for playing avoid-sight-lines stealth compared to just using invisibility. And even then, invisibility is just the easier way of performing the avoid-sight-lines gameplay. So it becomes a bit harder to justify the usage of Helminth abilities like Silence to avoid enemies being aware of you, when you could just infuse Radial Blind in conjunction with Arcane Trickery to force invisibility.

10 hours ago, AlendasNaro said:

You haven't played Steel path haven't you? Is what veteran friend of mine said what comes on damage resistance. About the enemy hijacking he is bit on the border about. Yeah, it isn't as useful as one might think but is not an option to be neglected constantly. Your team will appreciate having an ancient healer around providing damage resistance for the whole team and extra body on the field that soaks some fire is always appreciated. Heck this is something (the extra body soaking up fire for you) is something you can learn from Doom. FROM 1990s.

Agaaaaain with the assumptions! I have so played steel path, have earned several of the planetary displays and bought several umbral forma from. I don't know why you brought up resistance, I was just referring to how many Warframe's effective health pools are fractions of enemy health pools, so the weapons designed to whittle away our health at a decent pace in some matchups, means that the highjacked enemy is only tickling their former allies when we turn them on each other. Yes, that does count as CC and meatshielding. But damage reflection that *doesn't* reduce the actual damage taken, but instead just duplicates the damage to enemies, such as Unairu's passive (I know it's imminently updating and will be moot point), or barely improves the damage (Adarza's Reflect), these aren't doing any meaningful amount of damage to the enemy, and only a few of them actually actively improve your own survivability directly.

10 hours ago, AlendasNaro said:

Ash: Your suggestion would make smoke bomb stupid good as it will allow some allied NPCs to disengage relatively safely and your player allies quite safely from fights and regroup at other place. So, no, THIS IS NOT going to happen.

You mean like Octavia's T-Bagging or Ivara's invisibility arrows? Or like Smoke Bomb's existing augment?

10 hours ago, AlendasNaro said:

Banshee: You are focusing on those two abilities (1st ability with Augment is pretty relevant even today though). That is so 2014 my man, why are you THIS late? When people say Banshee is REALLY good they PRETTY much only mean the Sonar because HOT DAMN, having an area of an enemy 11,4 times more vulnerable to damage is NOT AT ALL broken. Silence is almost fine but it is pretty difficult to make it balanced with the banshee's kit. 4th somewhat usable for CC when you want to keep enemies away from MD objective or excavator just don't use it all the time like that.

I'll reiterate that I think every ability should be worth casting in one extremely niche circumstance, I'm not complaining about anything in her kit other than her SonicBoom literally saying it's used to kill foes, and fails to kill some of the easiest possible enemies, unless you use an augment (you shouldn't have to) and then use the ability twice so that the second one benefits from the armor strip (which you ideally wouldn't have to, and again, shouldn't need the augment to do so imo). If making that tweak means she had to be nerfed somewhere else like Sonar (not likely, considering what Saryn can do), I'd honestly accept that in exchange for actually having more than 3 useful abilities on her.

11 hours ago, AlendasNaro said:

Ember: The what? Inferno? *Looks at you with empty eyes trying to figure out what you mean* It interacts with your 3rd ability. It was either increased heat generation or flat heat generated.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Warframe/comments/dz0q3f/fireball_is_still_a_bad_inferno_and_other_ember/ (not my post, just put the numbers into easy reading)

11 hours ago, AlendasNaro said:

Equinox: Two entirely different things with two entirely different purposes not fair to compare. Also if you are having trouble with this ability, it might be better to ask whether you actually know when to use one of them.

Thank you for the condescension. My point stands. You HAVE to use one ability in order to gain access to your other 3 available abilities (a mechanic I honestly hate most of the times it appears on any given frame, such as Grendel, and Nidus when initially released), and your 3 and 4 aren't preserved when you do so. You have to recast your 3 and your 4 (unless you have the 4's augment). I know how to use and mod Equinox and have fun with them. It doesn't make it feel any less annoying of a thing.

11 hours ago, AlendasNaro said:

Garuda: *facepalm* because different enemies have different attributes. Nox has A HUGE damage resistance to anything that is not slapping his face this also applies to all of the warframe abilities. Which is something you should take in to account.

Pedantic and irrelevant. My same argument but with a Heavy Gunner or a Bombard holds true. Why does a lightweight enemy with full health get away scot-free from being *stabbed* and having blood removed from their body, when the heavies get instagibbed despite thousands or millions of EHP remaining, just because it's a specific percentage of their maximum total health? You *should* be able to farm blood from the lightweights that are dumb to approach a blood-harvesting Warframe, imo it *should* do an initial damage input equivalent to what a current melee strike from you would deal (up to the point where it'd kill the enemy).

11 hours ago, AlendasNaro said:

Harrow: You are using Harrow to generate energy for your team? *Facepalm* YES, it is doable but FAR more viable to do with team you are communicating with. Just take Trinity as your energy charger and trust me. SHE DOES A LOT better than Harrow. Note: This doesn't make Harrow bad as his ability kit is pretty good but Thurible requires coordination AND DO NOT expect coordination to happen much in public matches.

Energy AND Health. And yeah, Trinity arguably does that a lot more on-demand-conveniently. But Harrow should be able to be a potent force that doesn't rely on pre-coordinated group strategization in order to contribute to the team's output. You realize that as he currently stands, with some squads at a specific difficulty level in the game, that he's doomed to pretty much only be capable of healing or energy-restoring to allies once they've been taken down or have run out of energy and are no longer taking all of his potential kills and headshots, right? Like, objectively, he can't really compete with a Saryn/Mesa combo. He won't get the chance to gun them down to provide health and energy to them before THEY just AoE or machine-gun them down first. He's consistently going to be on the back foot compared to them.

It's my personal opinion that Warframes could be designed so that no singular one or two utterly invalidates other specific ones, and that either the overwhelming ones maybe need reworks that make them still fun and engaging but would probably be considered net "nerfs", or that ones like Harrow, who struggles to keep up in just about any offensive-focused squad, needs a buff, or a way to be more universally useful.

11 hours ago, AlendasNaro said:

Hydroid: For a long time he has been considered one of the worst warframes in this game. NOTE: not useless just one of the worst and he is IN DIRE need of rework just like Nyx and Banshee. So, complaining about this is pretty much waste of time. Just join the crowd good sir, so we can finally get him a rework.

Yeah lol, I've made entire rework-suggestion posts for him.

11 hours ago, AlendasNaro said:

Inaros: It is DECENT CC and it also gives you pretty hefty amount of damage resistance which is useful when you are trying to regain your health from the devour target.

I never considered Inaros to be in need of more things that prevent him from dying, haha, but fair, maybe it's fine.

11 hours ago, AlendasNaro said:

Limbo: The spawns are randomized in all missions but I am not saying it can not be done. Do stay on the rift and pick enemies you actually want to kill with the first ability. So dividing and conquering is CERTAINLY plausible you are probably not playing it right to actually do what you are INTENDING to do. Also stop standing still.

I literally indicated that I know he's theoretically meant to divide and conquer. It just always feels like, as this is a horde shooter game, that outside of a narrow band of enemy levels for your current loadout (assuming you're not doing something super infinitely-scaling-ly cheesy), that enemies all die like paper people regardless of whether they're heavies or lights, or suddenly all of the medium and heavy enemies feel almost equally tanky and therefore there's no consistently clearly high-priority target of opportunity that you actually feel like was worth taking out compared to simply cataclysming and stasis'ing the whole crowd. The eximi rework upcoming may help with that a bit, but idk. Feels like a fundamental "this frame's design" clashes with "this game's design" problem. A little bit like Harrow's problem, to some degree.

11 hours ago, AlendasNaro said:

Loki: It has to be as good as that? My man, are you sure you have learned everything about these? Yes, in general it is not a good ability BUT it is not useless pretty sure some augments are REALLY good and having an extra body THAT DISTRACTS enemies is NEVER unwelcome even for those 3 seconds.

25 energy for 3 seconds of distraction is maximum suck. It wouldn't have to literally be Celestial Twin, obviously, but dear lord does the contrast make it look even worse than it objectively is. Molt is better. Resonator is better, Mallet is better. Mind Control is better. I can't imagine anyone replacing anything other than Decoy on him, except to retain his ability to teleport to specific locations on demand. The above-linked devstream stats on the most-replaced ability would indicate that the majority of players agree, it's not worth the energy compared to his other abilities and other Helminth abilities.

11 hours ago, AlendasNaro said:

Mirage: Hmm... NAH. I think a lot of players WHILE THEY DO HAVE issues with the light registration. Will far more prefer how it works now than how you are suggesting it should work. Because your energy is going to be gone PRETTY quick.

Wouldn't have to cost the full cast cost just to re-snapshot and refresh the ability, it could subtract something like 80% of the energy cost of how much energy the remaining current cast amounts to. So if you just screwed up and got the wrong lighting and need to immediately re-cast, it's *almost* free, just a little re-cast tax added on top.

11 hours ago, AlendasNaro said:

Nekros: *sigh* Are you ABSOLUTELY sure, you enough to make this criticism? Because veteran friend of mine is currently considering you a gold mine of the NOT so good type. Well... For you, for others... A different story I guess.

Rude. You're just being consistently rude. His whole kit is self-contradictory. His passive implies he should be up close and personal and shotgunning or melee'ing everything to death, as it'd replenish his health. His 1 and 2 implies he wants to maintain his distance from enemies. You can argue that those are "oh heck" panic buttons and CC to supplement an up close combat style, but if you're too successful and you send too many enemies too far away, then you lose out on your passive's benefit and also his 3, if they die outside of their respective ranges. Technically his 4 could go either way, but he's definitely safer trying to keep his shadows between him and his enemies.

11 hours ago, AlendasNaro said:

Saryn: I mean... Is not kind of poison or venom type warframe to wipe the floor? 1st ability takes time to build up to the critical mass damage. This is not the only way to play Saryn though it is definitely something you can do though.

You have to *really* be dumping range or have enemies isolated far apart to not be able to keep spore going (and you can also just spore several distinct groups in case of one group dying all at once to a stray Bramma or Inferno, etc). My counterpoint would be "Would it not be reasonable for an antimatter/sword/blood-harvesting/slash-damage Warframe to wipe the floor?". No singular Warframe needs to be the undeniably most intelligent pick for ESO, or survival-adjacent missions with constant uninterrupted streams of enemies, and indiscriminate blind mass murder in general. She can be the best, but it doesn't need to be by a landslide to such an unbalanced degree. And just because she *can* be played less mass-murdery, doesn't mean she most often is.

11 hours ago, AlendasNaro said:

Trinity

In fairness yeah, if her whole primary shtick is Healing above all other things, I guess it doesn't hurt for her to have a cheap version and an expensive amazing version that does so, even if it ends up "redundant". And for those that commit to using Blessing instead of Well of Life, it does give you an obvious slot to overwrite.

11 hours ago, AlendasNaro said:

Yareli: I do have something to say about the what you wrote at the end though. Because most people AREN'T as good as they think they are and don't know as much as they think they do. Yareli has notably different play style compared to others in this game. She is DEFINITELY capable to dealing pretty hefty amount of damage but you kinda have to plan for it, understand when you CAN fight the enemies and when you should just NOT be there. A skirmisher is best way to look at Yareli. Delay, kill if you can and just be a huge headache.

I meant to explicitly exclude her Aquablades from the list of abilities that were "worse versions of other abilities", because they're actually pretty dope and potent, as indicated by my lack of any criticism of the ability, lol. I still stand by what I said though, because Seasnares feels like one of the worst 25-cost CC-centric abilities with lots of technical issues (self-destructing bubbles, not-mod-affected trap-mode duration and range, does cold damage but no cold procs), her Merulina being the K drive that doesn't even let you customize it like a K Drive and blocks you out of doing MOST of the things we play Warframe for, and a 4 that still definitely feels like a worse Larva or Vortex. For most Warframes we can complain about one ability, a few 2. Yareli has reasons to complain about all 3 of her non-Aquablade abilities, and these were complaints brought up immediately upon release, and DE just pumped, pumped, pumped her base stats and her Aquablades full of mostly numerical buffs instead of fixing how she overall feels to play. I know she can be fine and functional and even effective, but all of those downsides she has irks me severely.

And Viral isn't an argument to justify Yareli, Viral makes anything better, lol.

12 hours ago, AlendasNaro said:

Zephyr: This is actually pretty good criticism. Just clean up some of the useless whining and it is something that actually should be discussed about. The back flip out of Tail Wind momentum thing would be quite welcome in my eyes.

I dunno how often you use Tailwind in Open World maps as a mid-range traversal tool, or even in some of the larger game tiles, but maaaaaaaaan my whining feels justified when I'm literally wishing to preserve my Tailwind's momentum with an aim-glide and instead get stopped dead in midair. Like. It's the opposite of what you expect. I just want DE to not FORCE us to stop dead in the middle of the air, when they could literally just let people opt out of the forward momentum by allowing us a free hold-to-hover at the end/middle of the ability, or free backward-roll, to cancel the momentum. From my testing, the momentum-bleed literally gets worse after several successive casts too. So the airbrake accumulates and strengthens, when you literally are telling the game you want to fly farther, farther, and farther. OR, even more simply, DE could just have aim-gliding counteract/ignore the air-brake!

Mobility is honestly one of the things I may like most about Warframe, so I get really passionate about stupid things like how un-polished or un-friendly or inferior things like Tailwind, Ripline, Tidal Surge, default-sprinting, and some other things feel like, compared to other more compelling or easily used mobility options that feel much better overall. Please 'scuse my emotional input on the matter. People get emotional about what they care about, as silly of a hill this is to die on.

[Grav_Starstrider]

Oh this departs from my more gameplay-centric why's, but why the HECK does the rose-gold metallic Accent color in the front of my Orbiter turn into weird oranges and odd greens in the spoiler-mode back-rooms and the stencil????

And on a fashion note, why the heck are half of spoiler-mode's outfit's, and Warframe's attachment's metallics not on the Accent/Lining (and then Tertiary) channels? It just makes so many things clash horribly, since it seems like 9/10 times, striking-but-neat metallic colors look garbage on the flats that are sharing that channel, and striking but neat flats end up looking garish on the metallics.

And why on earth aren't our Ephemera's located in the (Formerly Regalia) Sigils menu, where there's plenty of room to allow us to custom-color it independently from the attachments (which can currently feel like a bloated menu, between the 5 attachment, 1 auxilary if applicable, and the Ephemera).

Some of these questions have me moaning at the lost fashion opportunities.

[Tiltskillet]

23 hours ago, Grav_Starstrider said:

Banshee - why is SonicBoom at 260% Strength incapable of killing a level 1 Corrupted Butcher

Hah, you are very precise.  I'm silly enough that I wanted to check, and yeah, they're left with just a sliver of health.

I guess my answer would be that Sonic Boom is decent just for utility.  But that still leaves the mystery, "Why'd they put damage on it at all?"  Even with double stacked Sonar, it's insignificant against really low level targets.

[Lutesque]

2 hours ago, Tiltskillet said:

 

I guess my answer would be that Sonic Boom is decent just for utility.  But that still leaves the mystery, "Why'd they put damage on it at all?"  Even with double stacked Sonar, it's insignificant against really low level targets.

Alot of Abilities are like that... Even Loki's Radial Disarm Deals Impact Damage....

 

[(XBOX)GearsMatrix301]

How do you manage to have issues with literally every frame expect Revenant, the Warframe with literally the most design issues.

[Tiltskillet]

12 hours ago, Lutesque said:

Alot of Abilities are like that... Even Loki's Radial Disarm Deals Impact Damage....

 

Radial Disarm does 10x the damage with far better AoE though.

_{^{Oh gawd, we're starting to argue about a dps showdown between Boom and Disarm. :P}}

[Grav_Starstrider]

5 hours ago, (XBOX)GearsMatrix301 said:

How do you manage to have issues with literally every frame expect Revenant, the Warframe with literally the most design issues.

Don't play him enough to have noticed an egregious issue with him.... I suppose aside from the fact that he's supposed to be able to benefit from Thralls in various ways but DE allows all players to kill them. Also I skipped a good few Warframes that don't have such egregiously obvious "why"-inspiring behavior.

17 hours ago, Tiltskillet said:

Hah, you are very precise.  I'm silly enough that I wanted to check, and yeah, they're left with just a sliver of health.

I guess my answer would be that Sonic Boom is decent just for utility.  But that still leaves the mystery, "Why'd they put damage on it at all?"  Even with double stacked Sonar, it's insignificant against really low level targets.

Ha, you actually checked XD. And yeah that's honestly my problem with a number of damage values in the game. A lot of damage values in specific abilities and mods are only useful or scales up to level 30 light enemies, or barely even tickle them. At that point, I'd rather lose the nigh-useless damage and have the other components of the ability be more impressively buffed. Or replace the damage with a guaranteed proc or few.

14 hours ago, Lutesque said:

Alot of Abilities are like that... Even Loki's Radial Disarm Deals Impact Damage....

 

Damage abilities should be good at doing damage (and not excessively reliant on an augment or other setups/priming), against either a group of light enemies, or against singular/clustered medium/heavy enemies, across a really wide range of levels, not just early star chart.

Like.... A pitiful amount of damage as a minor bonus to a non damage ability is fine, but with a low enough value, you can't consider it effectively a damage ability, therefore you can pretty much only really judge it based on its non-damage components. And like.... At least compare the damage to a fully modded gun or melee's damage. Only doing hundreds of damage, at the cost of energy, which in the early game is a rare resource, feels like a reaaaaally poor damage ability, compared to even just a fully modded, I dunno, a Dread or something. Bow ammo is about as common as energy drops, right?

[Turritopsis_Dohrnii]

On 2022-03-14 at 10:29 PM, Grav_Starstrider said:

Hydroid - Dear god my boy is in pain. Why does charging his 1 for the 3 extra seconds instead of tapping only add 5 seconds to his 5 second ability? Ash's Bladestorm got arbitrarily improved to be "maxed out" instead of requiring multiple targetings per target for the maximum output. Why is his 2 worse than just about every other movement ability in all of the ways that matter (the only thing going for it is speed and CC and i-frames, without ANY of the QoL movement ability tweaks that Mach Rush and Vial Rush have)? And it doesn't even protect him from laser-door magnetic procs despite making his health bar "invincible". Why is his 3 the absolute antithesis of Warframe, just making him nigh-stationary, any making anything, from movement to collecting out of reach enemies, cost additional energy, and not discounting cast costs for any of his other abilities? Why does Undertow only "collect" enemies instead of leaving them behind when it's used in tandem with Tidal Surge? Why is Undertow SO MONUMENTALLY UNDERWHELMING considering how boring and non-advantageous it is outside of its invulnerability? Why don't Tentacle Swarm's tentacles rove like Tornado? around the pathing-surface they spawn on? Why can't you cast Tidal Surge as a projectile-wave so that you don't out-of-bounds reset when stage-killing enemies as it appears to be intended to be capable of doing?

I don't know about effective, but it sure does feel great when you perfectly charge Hydriods 1 & 4 in the middle of the air and release before you hit the ground and roll on the right target area or when Undertowing to get a small charge up then getting out and moving about to get the perfect spot. It could be more rewarding but it feels good pulling it off.

As of today, his movement skill really feels great to surf around in. Jump canceling it or spamming it to get around feels a whole lot smoother after the recent patch. Having the augment at least makes you immune to magnetic procs but... *chuckles*

I actually really like his 3 for being what it is. It allows me to chat, mess around in settings, change my music, etc. It's a glorified pause button and that's amazing to me. Other than that invulnerability is still great since it allows you to think about what's around you and what you can do next. As for why in the first place, turning into water is a cool ninja thing to do.

I think the reason why the tentacles don't rove around like a tornado could be for aesthetic purposes. 

Well, at least in regard to Tidal Surge now you can jump cancel if you want to ledge kill enemies the moment you hit them. It's a nice work around.

All in all, I enjoy Hydriod like this because he brings me and maybe some others joy in what he can perform. Maybe that's why DE wanted to keep him like this for a while.

[Grav_Starstrider]

16 hours ago, Turritopsis_Dohrnii said:

All in all, I enjoy Hydriod like this because he brings me and maybe some others joy in what he can perform. Maybe that's why DE wanted to keep him like this for a while.

I'll need to try him after this patch, yeah, especially with his reworked augments. I like him too, he overall feels fun, he just feels both less fun and less effective at what he's supposed to be able to do, less than he could be. I can appreciate puddle prime being able to be an afk button against everything but nullifiers, but the ability's fundamental design and logic still feels like it needs some work in order to be the "cornerstone" ability that binds his kit together. I still just wish his tap cast 1 resulted in his charge cast's bonuses by default, and that the charge cast made a localized non offensive stealth/evasion-assisting rainstorm aura around Hydroid (like a Silence-lite/alternative), and that his undertow was faster, at least along the lines of Meatball, and didn't require Tidal Surge to collect enemies he sweeps through, instead just did it automatically.

[Berzerkules]

On 2022-03-14 at 9:29 PM, Grav_Starstrider said:

Saryn - Why is her kit so ludicrously over-the-top genocide-enabling and room-clearing-capable at the cost of 25 energy, killing that victim, and spending 75 energy on a Miasma??

This part is my favorite.

Every other frame is getting picked to pieces and the only complaint about Saryn is "Why she so good?" 

[(PSN)slightconfuzzled]

Disclaimer, my responses are a mixture of assumption, educated guessing, plain old guess guessing, opinion, or maybe something I heard in an interview, Devstream or article. Meaning I don't necessarily personally agree or advocate for such reasoning, or balance as far as game design, but I am also not DE.  I also don't address every point. 

Bullet jumping over sprinting, is decent game design. Bullet jumping wasn't always a thing, but its a selling point. Its fun, its relatively unique compared to sprinting, which many games have, so you need to encourage and incentivise it a bit more, especially since its more mechanically complex. New players need to get use to it, but once they do, it becomes second hand. Which is a basic way to show a player they are improving/becoming more skilled, and now they take those skills, and can get through levels faster, thus rewarding. Momentum, movement, etc rewarding process in many ways, important for Devs to work towards and something fans get big on. 

As far as ammo weapons, and melee, depends on the situation and personal priority, and maybe even personal design philosophy. A lot of weapons I used to clear star chart, falter in Steel Path, some weapons I use in Steel Path, don't clear as fast in weaker areas, than certain other "weaker" weapons. For myself, Acceltra vs Phantasma. The latter I find more useful in Steel Path, but the latter in star chart kills way more mobs, way faster. They also have very different sound designs, visual output, controller vibrations, aesthetics, and this is true of many weapons in the game. This can also include strength/weakness, but you could also view it as rewarding/less rewarding, or satisfying/less satisfying. Per your discretion. I personally use weapons I deem satisfying, sometimes they can be weaker, but I find the game generally easy, and so "weakness" usually doesn't mean much, to me. 

Health duration abilities? Probably balance. Offensive abilities usefulness against weak enemies? Possible a build issue or functionality issue, or an interaction issue. Some offensive abilities, may not be intended to kill outright, but may exist to inflict a status, prime an enemy/enemies, provide a debuff, or weaken an enemy, reduce their defence in some way. Or they may be intended to be used in combination with something else. Which can beg the question, whats the point? If you have to use two different abilities, to prime a weapon, only to then kill it with another weapon, when often another power or weapon, or even the weapon in question can just outright kill the enemy... but thats when context/situation matters. Might be scaling, might be specific enemies, might just be the game evolved to a point where such abilities are quaint, outdated, hard to balance for the modern game. Could also be familiarity or again, subjective standards of satisfaction/fun etc. Maybe a future update may make them meta in some way. I personally started using Nyx a lot more when Sisters of Parvis came out, because I realised she was actually really good against Sisters content. I use to think she was lame before that. 

Warframe near and basically duplicate abilities? Well, would you rather have similar abilities that feel fun? Or abilities that are arbitrarily unique, just for unique and originality sake? Personally I love abilities which suck in and CC enemies in a centre. So Mags bubble, Nidus Larvae, Vauban Vortex, Gauss with the Mach Rush Augment. One of the best feelings and experiences in the game to me, is that you can clump 15 enemies in one spot, then hit them with a Stropha or Redeemer Heavy attack, or Heavy Blade attack, or shoot them with the Arca Plasma, or Opticor, or Exergis or so many weapons and other powers. Its very satisfying. Personally I care more about the Warframe feeling fun and satisfying, than exceptionally unique. The two aren't mutually exclusive, I love Lavos for example, and he is quite unique... its also relative though too. How broad or specific are you being. So I do value uniqueness, but I usually assume a bit of overlap, because there are so many Warframes already, there is only so many forms of CC, grouping, spreading, movement etc abilities and combinations. 

Warframes and augments. Mostly balancing issues, and concerns, actual and theoretical. Along the lines of 'better to have niche augment usage and a lot of not used augments, than really powerful, OP Warframes, that might trivialise everything' because some Warframes would be that. Not all obviously, but balance. Also many augments are being looked at, but thats resources/effort. 

Okay, I have no energy now. I didn't get very far sorry lol. 

 

[STCJ]

Frankly this post is at best bantha fodder. If you wanted to be seen as more then a troll you should break this ridiculous post down into many smaller ones. Each one talking about a specific frame should be in that frames sub section. 

Anyone posting these kind of overly long singular posts are wasting other people's time. If you want to talk about any given frame go to their area of these forums.

If I was a dev I wouldn't give your post more then a glance before setting my account to ignore you entirely.

[(XBOX)ConfusingEel30]

On 2022-03-15 at 12:29 AM, Grav_Starstrider said:

Volt - Why can't we hold 1 to channel a force-lightning to add additional damage and chain links?

UNLIMITED POWAAAAAAA!

[(XBOX)ConfusingEel30]

6 minutes ago, STCJ said:

Frankly this post is at best bantha fodder. If you wanted to be seen as more then a troll you should break this ridiculous post down into many smaller ones. Each one talking about a specific frame should be in that frames sub section. 

Anyone posting these kind of overly long singular posts are wasting other people's time. If you want to talk about any given frame go to their area of these forums.

If I was a dev I wouldn't give your post more then a glance before setting my account to ignore you entirely.

It's a good thing you're not a dev then 

[Grav_Starstrider]

9 hours ago, (PSN)slightconfuzzled said:

but I usually assume a bit of overlap, because there are so many Warframes already, there is only so many forms of CC, grouping, spreading, movement etc abilities and combinations. 

Second or third person to misinterpret it that way, I clearly need to update my original post XD I meant redundant within the same Warframe's kit, like Avalanche basically being a better and combined Freeze and IceWave on Frost, in which case why keep ice wave and freeze?

16 hours ago, Berzerkules said:

This part is my favorite.

Every other frame is getting picked to pieces and the only complaint about Saryn is "Why she so good?" 

I've seen her 99% damage/kill-hog in WAAAAAY too many missions, not even exclusively ESO. She at least needs to be brought down to Mesa/Ember sorta levels of DPS so that they can be the upper baseline of DPS Warframes that DE can buff or design or rework frames up to. Imo

9 hours ago, (PSN)slightconfuzzled said:

Disclaimer, my responses are a mixture of assumption, educated guessing, plain old guess guessing, opinion, or maybe something I heard in an interview, Devstream or article. Meaning I don't necessarily personally agree or advocate for such reasoning, or balance as far as game design, but I am also not DE.  I also don't address every point. 

I appreciate the acknowledgement btw, I think it's important to know the opinions of both the hyper-knowledgeable and the more casual players who don't know every single detail.

I like your input on a lot of these. You're right, I might be being nitpicky on some things, or just valuing a certain design approach that DE just doesn't agree with. They're (and other players are) welcome to ask me to elaborate further on my thought process or emotional reaction to certain things I perceived as "wrong" or "why"-inducing, but at the end of the day I'm just one guy with an opinion. Mostly just curious who agrees, or what the explanations other people have are for why they disagree with me, and wanna get things out there in discussion in case anything becomes something we can universally rally behind and convince them to change for a better experience.

10 hours ago, (PSN)slightconfuzzled said:

Also many augments are being looked at, but thats resources/effort. 

I straight up posted this topic with the worst timing lol, they dropped a big patch of reworked augments XD I still think a lot of these augments are bandaids on abilities that should have just had buffs or reworks though, unfortunately.

4 hours ago, STCJ said:

Each one talking about a specific frame should be in that frames sub section. 

Anyone posting these kind of overly long singular posts are wasting other people's time. If you want to talk about any given frame go to their area of these forums.

 

4 hours ago, STCJ said:

If I was a dev I wouldn't give your post more then a glance before setting my account to ignore you entirely.

Do you think they'll pay more attention to the individual posts from people that obsess over and exclusively play a specific frame, that beg for their specific frame to be buffed and reworked and take a lot of work to change and improve, or do you think they might prefer to pick the low hanging fruit of "this specific thing is the biggest complaint(s) people have about this Warframe" from someone that clearly has a somewhat balanced and nuanced perspective, going by their ability to observe the too-consistently-and-easily-OP outliers (Saryn's Spore-Miasma combo compared to practically any other approach in the game)?

Also like, I realized and acknowledged in the original post that it could look like a long list, and hid them, what reasonable developer would permanently block/ignore someone who told them exactly what they'd see if they opened the spoiler window? XD

[Berzerkules]

2 minutes ago, Grav_Starstrider said:

I've seen her 99% damage/kill-hog in WAAAAAY too many missions, not even exclusively ESO. She at least needs to be brought down to Mesa/Ember sorta levels of DPS so that they can be the upper baseline of DPS Warframes that DE can buff or design or rework frames up to. Imo

Yesterday I was running ESO adding forma to Hyldrin using thermal sunder and was killing just as much as Saryns in every run I did. We have plenty of ways to speed clear. Saryn is fine.

[(PSN)adachi_2]

On 2022-03-16 at 7:00 AM, Grav_Starstrider said:

I meant in their own kit, sorry for the confusion! Like how Frost's 1, 2, and 4 feel like they're practically the same exact thing. To some extent, how Ash's 3 and 4 are practically the same thing. Grendel's up-chuck of Feast (1) also significantly resembles his 3. Lots of Warframes have rather *redundant* abilities in their kit, that could honestly be combined into one ability with a toggle or a hold-vs-tap cast alternative. Like, imagine if you could just cast Terrify by holding Soul Punch, as they could both be explained away as a manipulation of their souls? Then we could have an exalted Greatscythe ability on him, which would help cement him as an in-the-melee-fray-frame instead of the "sit back and keep enemies away (but within desecrate range) caster".

I totally get that there's only so many different ways you can arbitrarily make "does damage/debuff/cc/utility" unique across a wide roster of Warframes, it'd be like getting tired of guns shooting bullets.

Oh, give me a frame, and I can probably come up with an imaginative (and no more OP than Saryn/Wukong) full kit rework. This whole thread is just "why"s. Not begging for buffs, but pointing out what actively feels S#&$ty or nonsensical.

 

Oof. And unfortunately it makes way more sense to keep it server-side because all 4 players are supposed to be able to benefit from it.... So yikes. Rough.

See above, didn't mean it like that 😅 honestly ideally it'd actually just function a bit closer to just being an actual companion, now that I've thought about it for the 80th time. Cuz drawing all aggro completely is definitely a bit more OP than just splitting aggro.

I do like thinking of it that way! I prefer finding Helminth infusions that actually have neat synergies or mild alterations to their playstyle, rather than just slapping Roar or Larva on everything, for example (no offense to Roar/Larva users). Like barely-tweaking Ash's gameplay style by using Silence (either short duration or range) to force finisher openings and getting my invisibility from Arcane Trickery or Skiajati.

It's not so much that I think that. These are "why"s that just glaringly point out to me as things that feel.... Explicitly and clearly dysfunctional from how I assume we're intended to perceive and utilize the frame overall. It's actually explicitly because of the other half of your comment here that I made this list, because the "why", to my perception, clashes with their design.

I'm aware that specific Warframe abilities (and in Gauss's case, base sprint speed) and modding setups can make sprinting ludicrously fast, but so can certain setups for Bullet Jumping, or in Nezha's case, slide-and-roll spamming. I'm just perplexed at the fact that by default, what should be the skill-based thing (bullet jumping and rolling and gliding to specific strategic points in a 3D space) can just be spammed on the straight-away and is innately better than the literal thing that would be expected to be used on the straight-away, sprinting. Especially since there are many places where sprinting isn't even that viable in the first place (terrain with out of bounds, protrusions and obstacles, shield grineer that'll bash you onto your butt if you try to whizz past them, stages that simply expect you to bullet jump up or across something without any convenient sprint-path alternative). I wouldn't mind sprint speed mods/abilities/effects being nerfed slightly to compensate, I just think it makes more sense to have Sprinting by default (for the Warframes that aren't explicitly intended to be slower than the average Warframe) to be faster sprinting straight across the ground than bullet/roll-chaining is.

A bunch of the weapons that have ammo mutation are BECAUSE they'd otherwise be too badly feast-or-famine with the lack of their ammo type's specific drops, and their significantly low ammo pools. And DE literally just a while back acknowledged "melee is king in Steel Path". I think it's pretty self-evident that there isn't a particularly strong focus on balance across different categories of things in the game.
I play how I want, I just wish there was less relative "punishment" for deviating from the stronger-than-necessary-metas, that other players use to get superior quantities/qualities of rewards by using. I want player choice to be rewarded, not for deviation to be punished.

You're seeming to be making an awful lot of assumptions that you know what I'm thinking, how I play, and how much experience and understanding of this game I have. I'm more talking about things like Rumblers, Lethal Progeny, (not duration but energy-restricted) Effigy, (percent-health-lost per second effectively giving them a limited duration) ShadowsoftheDead, Decoy, Sand Shadows, Molt.... Seems like the vast majority of abilities that have health bars have a duration attached to them, with exceptions such as Celestial Twin, Merulina, Snowglobes, and Mass Vitrify. I'm sure I've missed more examples for both sides. It just hurts a bit when one Warframe's stuff feels arbitrarily limited compared to another's and not seemingly for any major gameplay balancing or gameplay-suggesting reasons, but just to make some Warframes arbitrarily more energy hungery, even if their kit isn't as potent or self-sustaining as the other's are. Getting the pinch from both energy consumption, and a limited duration of efficacy, AND the ability to have the thing be gunned down quite swiftly at later levels if the frame's kit doesn't encourage you to build for what'd give them more survivability, can make some of these abilities feel like pretty poor options to spend time and energy on using.

How on earth do you read what I wrote below this line, and respond with that ^ ??

I'm talking about when an ability is genuinely trash, or obscenely eclipsed by an available subsume-alternative. I've given examples in the Warframe-specific criticisms, such as explicitly-referred-to-as-damage-abilities that are just absolutely terrible at dealing any sort of damage, because they have zero scaling beyond modding power strength, but even 500% power strength can save some of these. You shouldn't have to use an augment to make Shuriken or Sonicboom capable of dealing damage or enabling you to deal damage against an armored foe, when using a weapon with Corrosive or Heat can do the same thing and bullets (in the early game) are cheaper to fire than energy, and melee weapons are even cheaper to swing. Yeah, Sonicboom is a successful ragdoll/begone-thot button like Nekros' Soul Punch. Nekros' Soul Punch is leagues more useful after their tweaks to it though.

Yeah, my philosophy is that the abilities should in general do what they say they do in most (applicable) circumstances, and in those circumstances, should often be considered energy-cost-efficient enough to justify their usage, or effective enough to justify the lack of cost-efficiency. You shouldn't need to bandage-augment abilities to turn them from useless to infinitely scaling powerhouses, that just makes them arguably "mandatory mods" for that Warframe unless you explicitly are going a different direction with their build and overwriting the ability with a Helminth.

Banshee's Sonicboom is ATROCIOUS at killing enemies despite the ability literally claiming that it's meant to kill them via the force, not via stage-killing them. Per energy-cost, Soundquake makes infinitely more sense to cast, considering its energy cost.

And in this horde shooter, Frost's Freeze and IceWave abilities kinda suffer the same problem of redundancy to Avalanche. Yeah they each have their niche, but Avalanche mostly brings the best of both Freeze and IceWave to the table, and then some. The abilities aren't useless, but I feel like steps could be taken to give the abilities a bit of a stronger niche and specialization.

I don't see the point in being resistant to refinement and improvement to the internal consistency and balance of abilities.

That is the opposite of my intent. For example, effective but low-key boring options are Warcry and Roar. I'd have much rather seen DE do as they did for Trinity and Zephyr, and taken one of the frame's weaker and less impressive abilities, like Ripline and Rhino-Charge, and buffed them, like allowing us to see a better spiderman-swinging mobility option for example, instead of the boring clunky grapple-gun effect. And a miscellany of possible tweaks (ability to hold, charge, super-jump-and-ground-slam if aiming up or straight down, armor reduction or shield breaking effects, etc) to Rhino Charge to make it more fun and useful (don't pretend it's not the most overwritten ability he has, and that it couldn't stand to have been improved). I don't want clearly DPS-additive things that literally needed to be nerfed to allow as Helminth Subsumes, I want all offerings to be approximately equally viable, assuming one's playstyle, or the Warframe's playstyle, can be complemented by them.

Nobody has to SAY that genocide runs are the way to play the game. It's pretty implicit with the reward structures for practically everything other than Rescue and Spy and melee stealth kill affinity/focus farming. You get more rewards and drops and affinity if you kill more enemies, than if you CC and/or avoid them. There's no innate bonuses for killing or being seen by fewer enemies, and outside of the rescue/spy missions, there's little to no reward for playing avoid-sight-lines stealth compared to just using invisibility. And even then, invisibility is just the easier way of performing the avoid-sight-lines gameplay. So it becomes a bit harder to justify the usage of Helminth abilities like Silence to avoid enemies being aware of you, when you could just infuse Radial Blind in conjunction with Arcane Trickery to force invisibility.

Agaaaaain with the assumptions! I have so played steel path, have earned several of the planetary displays and bought several umbral forma from. I don't know why you brought up resistance, I was just referring to how many Warframe's effective health pools are fractions of enemy health pools, so the weapons designed to whittle away our health at a decent pace in some matchups, means that the highjacked enemy is only tickling their former allies when we turn them on each other. Yes, that does count as CC and meatshielding. But damage reflection that *doesn't* reduce the actual damage taken, but instead just duplicates the damage to enemies, such as Unairu's passive (I know it's imminently updating and will be moot point), or barely improves the damage (Adarza's Reflect), these aren't doing any meaningful amount of damage to the enemy, and only a few of them actually actively improve your own survivability directly.

You mean like Octavia's T-Bagging or Ivara's invisibility arrows? Or like Smoke Bomb's existing augment?

I'll reiterate that I think every ability should be worth casting in one extremely niche circumstance, I'm not complaining about anything in her kit other than her SonicBoom literally saying it's used to kill foes, and fails to kill some of the easiest possible enemies, unless you use an augment (you shouldn't have to) and then use the ability twice so that the second one benefits from the armor strip (which you ideally wouldn't have to, and again, shouldn't need the augment to do so imo). If making that tweak means she had to be nerfed somewhere else like Sonar (not likely, considering what Saryn can do), I'd honestly accept that in exchange for actually having more than 3 useful abilities on her.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Warframe/comments/dz0q3f/fireball_is_still_a_bad_inferno_and_other_ember/ (not my post, just put the numbers into easy reading)

Thank you for the condescension. My point stands. You HAVE to use one ability in order to gain access to your other 3 available abilities (a mechanic I honestly hate most of the times it appears on any given frame, such as Grendel, and Nidus when initially released), and your 3 and 4 aren't preserved when you do so. You have to recast your 3 and your 4 (unless you have the 4's augment). I know how to use and mod Equinox and have fun with them. It doesn't make it feel any less annoying of a thing.

Pedantic and irrelevant. My same argument but with a Heavy Gunner or a Bombard holds true. Why does a lightweight enemy with full health get away scot-free from being *stabbed* and having blood removed from their body, when the heavies get instagibbed despite thousands or millions of EHP remaining, just because it's a specific percentage of their maximum total health? You *should* be able to farm blood from the lightweights that are dumb to approach a blood-harvesting Warframe, imo it *should* do an initial damage input equivalent to what a current melee strike from you would deal (up to the point where it'd kill the enemy).

Energy AND Health. And yeah, Trinity arguably does that a lot more on-demand-conveniently. But Harrow should be able to be a potent force that doesn't rely on pre-coordinated group strategization in order to contribute to the team's output. You realize that as he currently stands, with some squads at a specific difficulty level in the game, that he's doomed to pretty much only be capable of healing or energy-restoring to allies once they've been taken down or have run out of energy and are no longer taking all of his potential kills and headshots, right? Like, objectively, he can't really compete with a Saryn/Mesa combo. He won't get the chance to gun them down to provide health and energy to them before THEY just AoE or machine-gun them down first. He's consistently going to be on the back foot compared to them.

It's my personal opinion that Warframes could be designed so that no singular one or two utterly invalidates other specific ones, and that either the overwhelming ones maybe need reworks that make them still fun and engaging but would probably be considered net "nerfs", or that ones like Harrow, who struggles to keep up in just about any offensive-focused squad, needs a buff, or a way to be more universally useful.

Yeah lol, I've made entire rework-suggestion posts for him.

I never considered Inaros to be in need of more things that prevent him from dying, haha, but fair, maybe it's fine.

I literally indicated that I know he's theoretically meant to divide and conquer. It just always feels like, as this is a horde shooter game, that outside of a narrow band of enemy levels for your current loadout (assuming you're not doing something super infinitely-scaling-ly cheesy), that enemies all die like paper people regardless of whether they're heavies or lights, or suddenly all of the medium and heavy enemies feel almost equally tanky and therefore there's no consistently clearly high-priority target of opportunity that you actually feel like was worth taking out compared to simply cataclysming and stasis'ing the whole crowd. The eximi rework upcoming may help with that a bit, but idk. Feels like a fundamental "this frame's design" clashes with "this game's design" problem. A little bit like Harrow's problem, to some degree.

25 energy for 3 seconds of distraction is maximum suck. It wouldn't have to literally be Celestial Twin, obviously, but dear lord does the contrast make it look even worse than it objectively is. Molt is better. Resonator is better, Mallet is better. Mind Control is better. I can't imagine anyone replacing anything other than Decoy on him, except to retain his ability to teleport to specific locations on demand. The above-linked devstream stats on the most-replaced ability would indicate that the majority of players agree, it's not worth the energy compared to his other abilities and other Helminth abilities.

Wouldn't have to cost the full cast cost just to re-snapshot and refresh the ability, it could subtract something like 80% of the energy cost of how much energy the remaining current cast amounts to. So if you just screwed up and got the wrong lighting and need to immediately re-cast, it's *almost* free, just a little re-cast tax added on top.

Rude. You're just being consistently rude. His whole kit is self-contradictory. His passive implies he should be up close and personal and shotgunning or melee'ing everything to death, as it'd replenish his health. His 1 and 2 implies he wants to maintain his distance from enemies. You can argue that those are "oh heck" panic buttons and CC to supplement an up close combat style, but if you're too successful and you send too many enemies too far away, then you lose out on your passive's benefit and also his 3, if they die outside of their respective ranges. Technically his 4 could go either way, but he's definitely safer trying to keep his shadows between him and his enemies.

You have to *really* be dumping range or have enemies isolated far apart to not be able to keep spore going (and you can also just spore several distinct groups in case of one group dying all at once to a stray Bramma or Inferno, etc). My counterpoint would be "Would it not be reasonable for an antimatter/sword/blood-harvesting/slash-damage Warframe to wipe the floor?". No singular Warframe needs to be the undeniably most intelligent pick for ESO, or survival-adjacent missions with constant uninterrupted streams of enemies, and indiscriminate blind mass murder in general. She can be the best, but it doesn't need to be by a landslide to such an unbalanced degree. And just because she *can* be played less mass-murdery, doesn't mean she most often is.

In fairness yeah, if her whole primary shtick is Healing above all other things, I guess it doesn't hurt for her to have a cheap version and an expensive amazing version that does so, even if it ends up "redundant". And for those that commit to using Blessing instead of Well of Life, it does give you an obvious slot to overwrite.

I meant to explicitly exclude her Aquablades from the list of abilities that were "worse versions of other abilities", because they're actually pretty dope and potent, as indicated by my lack of any criticism of the ability, lol. I still stand by what I said though, because Seasnares feels like one of the worst 25-cost CC-centric abilities with lots of technical issues (self-destructing bubbles, not-mod-affected trap-mode duration and range, does cold damage but no cold procs), her Merulina being the K drive that doesn't even let you customize it like a K Drive and blocks you out of doing MOST of the things we play Warframe for, and a 4 that still definitely feels like a worse Larva or Vortex. For most Warframes we can complain about one ability, a few 2. Yareli has reasons to complain about all 3 of her non-Aquablade abilities, and these were complaints brought up immediately upon release, and DE just pumped, pumped, pumped her base stats and her Aquablades full of mostly numerical buffs instead of fixing how she overall feels to play. I know she can be fine and functional and even effective, but all of those downsides she has irks me severely.

And Viral isn't an argument to justify Yareli, Viral makes anything better, lol.

I dunno how often you use Tailwind in Open World maps as a mid-range traversal tool, or even in some of the larger game tiles, but maaaaaaaaan my whining feels justified when I'm literally wishing to preserve my Tailwind's momentum with an aim-glide and instead get stopped dead in midair. Like. It's the opposite of what you expect. I just want DE to not FORCE us to stop dead in the middle of the air, when they could literally just let people opt out of the forward momentum by allowing us a free hold-to-hover at the end/middle of the ability, or free backward-roll, to cancel the momentum. From my testing, the momentum-bleed literally gets worse after several successive casts too. So the airbrake accumulates and strengthens, when you literally are telling the game you want to fly farther, farther, and farther. OR, even more simply, DE could just have aim-gliding counteract/ignore the air-brake!

Mobility is honestly one of the things I may like most about Warframe, so I get really passionate about stupid things like how un-polished or un-friendly or inferior things like Tailwind, Ripline, Tidal Surge, default-sprinting, and some other things feel like, compared to other more compelling or easily used mobility options that feel much better overall. Please 'scuse my emotional input on the matter. People get emotional about what they care about, as silly of a hill this is to die on.

HOLY SHT DUDE THAT'S LITERALLY 2 COLLEGE ESSAYS COMBINED, how much free time do you have?

[(XBOX)TheWayOfWisdom]

On 2022-03-15 at 1:29 AM, Grav_Starstrider said:

Garuda - Why doesn't Dread Mirror do at least a pitiful amount of up-front damage prior to the %health kill calculation? If it can insta-gib a level 100 Nox the moment it hits 40% health, it should be able to insta-gib a level 30 butcher.

Well it does do 10% of enemy max health as slash damage, it's just that armor messes up everything for Grineer, and it only counts health for Corpus, who have a decent chunk of their EHP in shields instead.
Still, it would be nice if it got something like "10k true damage or 10% of enemy health, whichever is greater." Or just make the 10% it already deals be done as true damage/health drain instead of slash.
Another nice addition would be if the 40% execution counted as a parazon finisher on eligible targets (just pls don't use the parazon finisher animation, why is it so slow)

[cute_moth.npc]

In games like FFXIV, classes are made by a dedicated panel of designers that carefully curate each skill and test every class together in simulated raids. They start this process basically as soon as a new expansion comes out, and work on it over the course of 2 years so that all classes are current and pretty balanced - the next revision is ready by the time a new expansion is out.

In games like Warframe, they just GO GO GO NEXT PATCH IS IN A MONTH. Then stuff gets outdated, they don't have time, there's no going back, someone different can be doing each one each time, and you end up with your "why" list! ^^

There's probably no fixing that, although personally I think they could be taking more care with new releases to ensure that they're not D.O.A. wonky or dead shortly after, particularly with Warframes.

Just embrace the fact that you can beat the entire game with Yareli and a Lato anyways.

[shocker53]

On 2022-03-15 at 1:29 AM, Grav_Starstrider said:

Why isn't Smoke Shadow the default functionality of Smokescreen?

You're gonna be asking this for alot of augments tbh

[(PSN)slightconfuzzled]

10 hours ago, Grav_Starstrider said:

Second or third person to misinterpret it that way, I clearly need to update my original post XD I meant redundant within the same Warframe's kit, like Avalanche basically being a better and combined Freeze and IceWave on Frost, in which case why keep ice wave and freeze?

 

Thematic/aesthetics maybe? Different energy efficiency, different applications in different circumstance. A lot of games, have characters who have moves, where are some are way better, but have some sort of drawback, like more energy used, more risk on whiffing or missing. So the weaker powers are there for weaker enemies, or specific situations. 

Can/is it also redundant, especially if the penalties or drawbacks don't really seem to exist, energy difference isn't enough etc? In this case, yeah, I would generally agree with you, and on top of that, I personally don't really like Frosts powers and if the game was designed more for me, than say someone content and happy with Frost, I would rather see him reworked, improved. My answer above, is how I think someone designing the game and Frost, would justify such decisions. The PR answer. 

Oh and doesn't uh Frosts 1 shatter his Ice Globes? I don't remember it being very good, but the potential is there. Like Gara's 1 in a vacuum isn't that great either, and inferior to what else she can do, but it also has more functionality than just damage on its own (interactions with 4 and 2), and its also thematic to her aesthetic (but importantly compared to Frost, way more functional and useful to her overall kit). 

 

11 hours ago, Grav_Starstrider said:

I appreciate the acknowledgement btw, I think it's important to know the opinions of both the hyper-knowledgeable and the more casual players who don't know every single detail.

I like your input on a lot of these. You're right, I might be being nitpicky on some things, or just valuing a certain design approach that DE just doesn't agree with. They're (and other players are) welcome to ask me to elaborate further on my thought process or emotional reaction to certain things I perceived as "wrong" or "why"-inducing, but at the end of the day I'm just one guy with an opinion. Mostly just curious who agrees, or what the explanations other people have are for why they disagree with me, and wanna get things out there in discussion in case anything becomes something we can universally rally behind and convince them to change for a better experience.

 

All good. I myself have had a lot of questions about Warframe and decisions/design philosophy, in the past, present and likely future. Curiosity is great, and I learn new things all the time from forum replies etc but also even when its opinions, I think disagreement is fine too. There are chill and friendly ways to discuss differences of opinions too. Discussion basically. 

 

11 hours ago, Grav_Starstrider said:

I straight up posted this topic with the worst timing lol, they dropped a big patch of reworked augments XD I still think a lot of these augments are bandaids on abilities that should have just had buffs or reworks though, unfortunately.

 

Yeah I tend to agree as well. Granted I haven't played the game since they added those reworks, but on paper, I am only really interested in 3 of them. The Ash one, Atlas one, a few others. Some of them sound okay... just not worth the slot, and so not that practical/possibly better off on the ability inherently. Like Hydroid. Giving some of his abilities the Augments provide, won't break him, or see a surge of popularity (in my eyes) so it would be fine. 

I hope the other reworked augments are spicier! 

[Turritopsis_Dohrnii]

11 hours ago, Twin_Fawn said:

Just embrace the fact that you can beat the entire game with Yareli and a Lato anyways.

I always found Warframe awesome how you can clear so much with so many things despite it being less efficient.