Fix dissipate.

[(XBOX)Lord ChibiVR]

Emergence dissipate was an arcane that had so much potential, only to be given a stupidly long timer when people used it to max out energy in 5 seconds. The reasoning? People using dissipate in groups was too much especially since it competed with Zenurik (boy I can't think of any other operator related arcanes that compete with Zenurik), so de decided that adding a hard cooldown of 1.5 seconds was going to fix that. 

The problem? Not only did that make it overly clunky, but now dissipate literally relies on you using large groups of enemies to use it. 

I understand that there should probably be a nerf, but 10 energy every 1.5 seconds is way too slow for an arcane you get at the end of the game. 

So I have 3 suggestions, each one is standalone from the other two, but any of them would fix dissipate:

(1) halve the cooldown to around 10 energy every 0.75 seconds. That way it won't feel like a slog to use.

(2) double the energy from a mote to being 10 energy R0 and 20 energy at R5. This will make the ability feel like it's giving you a large amount of energy as compensation for being slow, making it feel "more effective."

(3) {and the one I would prefer the most} Remove the cooldown of 1.5 seconds. Emergence dissipate now causes an explosion where void sling will be, hitting up to 4 enemies and generating motes. (So basically, do exactly what de wanted to do except we actually accomplish it by making only 3-5 enemies targetable at once, keeping you from instantly maxing out your energy.)

If any of these were implemented, emergence dissipate might actually be useful again.

[Tyreaus]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the 1.5 second delay on the enemy, not the arcane / ability? So if you tag one group, you can immediately turn and tag another group and get energy from both. The motes last 10 seconds and are affected by vacuum so it's viable. And probably intended.

I'm also scratching my head over this "relying on large groups of enemies" and "10 energy per 1.5 seconds" thing. You're making it sound like you're only nailing a single target. Even solo mode, with Dissipate having a 10m radius, you ought to be hitting a couple at minimum, which should be around the equivalent of an energy orb. Realistically, you ought to be hitting more than that.

(As an aside, I don't think it should be balanced around spamming with no delay. Many semi-auto weapons already show the problems, from rebinding shooting to mouse wheel to macro usage to issues with players suffering from RSIs. It's an icky and awkward place to be. If it were like a tick-based continuous beam, that'd be better.)

The only part I think ought to be fixed is disabling Operators from collecting the motes. Current behaviour forces using the arcane at range, which makes it especially awkward if you're using a melee-focused frame like, say, Valkyr and trying to upkeep energy. Or if you fat-finger and dash into the motes you just made. It's an ability that uses the Operator's energy, so it doesn't make a ton of sense for it to refuel what you just used.

[(XBOX)Lord ChibiVR]

1 hour ago, Tyreaus said:

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the 1.5 second delay on the enemy, not the arcane / ability? So if you tag one group, you can immediately turn and tag another group and get energy from both. The motes last 10 seconds and are affected by vacuum so it's viable. And probably intended.

I'm also scratching my head over this "relying on large groups of enemies" and "10 energy per 1.5 seconds" thing. You're making it sound like you're only nailing a single target. Even solo mode, with Dissipate having a 10m radius, you ought to be hitting a couple at minimum, which should be around the equivalent of an energy orb. Realistically, you ought to be hitting more than that.

(As an aside, I don't think it should be balanced around spamming with no delay. Many semi-auto weapons already show the problems, from rebinding shooting to mouse wheel to macro usage to issues with players suffering from RSIs. It's an icky and awkward place to be. If it were like a tick-based continuous beam, that'd be better.)

The only part I think ought to be fixed is disabling Operators from collecting the motes. Current behaviour forces using the arcane at range, which makes it especially awkward if you're using a melee-focused frame like, say, Valkyr and trying to upkeep energy. Or if you fat-finger and dash into the motes you just made. It's an ability that uses the Operator's energy, so it doesn't make a ton of sense for it to refuel what you just used.

As already said, because the cooldown works off of enemies instead of a small internal timer or an enemy cap, you rely on grouping enemies to get the combined energy amount. This is the opposite of what de wanted to accomplish.

A hard cap on enemies would make the ability just as good in both a couple enemies or a crowd

[Tyreaus]

42 minutes ago, (XBOX)Upl0rdYT said:

As already said, because the cooldown works off of enemies instead of a small internal timer or an enemy cap, you rely on grouping enemies to get the combined energy amount. This is the opposite of what de wanted to accomplish.

A hard cap on enemies would make the ability just as good in both a couple enemies or a crowd

DE wanted to discourage grouping for Dissipate...? I was under the impression the change was to keep it from being too easy to get hoards of energy and overshadow something like Zenurik. Many changes seem able to do that, from an enemy cap to the change they implemented. The difference is just in what gameplay looks like.

I can see some reasoning behind flattening Dissipate's performance in terms of enemy numbers and grouping, but I've got a few questions:

1. Why the first two proposals? Mechanically, they seem to have the same traits as the current implementation, just with better returns. There's still encouragement to group enemies for better efficiency, with or without the ability to target a different group and get energy that way.

2. Why four enemies on the third proposal? If we want to flatten performance between group sizes so we aren't encouraging grouping, does it not make sense to lower the cap to one enemy and adjust mote value / density accordingly? After all, if you have two enemies instead of the cap at four, we're looking at the same issue, just smaller. Makes more sense to me to just follow the logic to its natural conclusion.

(Also, programming-wise, it might be more optimized: check for enemy within 10m of Dissipate point, if yes, generate mote. Don't need to check if there are at least four. Don't even need to check their exact position if you're okay dumping the mote at the Dissipate point, which might even be preferred since the player knows exactly where it is.)

[(XBOX)Lord ChibiVR]

12 minutes ago, Tyreaus said:

DE wanted to discourage grouping for Dissipate...? I was under the impression the change was to keep it from being too easy to get hoards of energy and overshadow something like Zenurik. Many changes seem able to do that, from an enemy cap to the change they implemented. The difference is just in what gameplay looks like.

I can see some reasoning behind flattening Dissipate's performance in terms of enemy numbers and grouping, but I've got a few questions:

1. Why the first two proposals? Mechanically, they seem to have the same traits as the current implementation, just with better returns. There's still encouragement to group enemies for better efficiency, with or without the ability to target a different group and get energy that way.

2. Why four enemies on the third proposal? If we want to flatten performance between group sizes so we aren't encouraging grouping, does it not make sense to lower the cap to one enemy and adjust mote value / density accordingly? After all, if you have two enemies instead of the cap at four, we're looking at the same issue, just smaller. Makes more sense to me to just follow the logic to its natural conclusion.

(Also, programming-wise, it might be more optimized: check for enemy within 10m of Dissipate point, if yes, generate mote. Don't need to check if there are at least four. Don't even need to check their exact position if you're okay dumping the mote at the Dissipate point, which might even be preferred since the player knows exactly where it is.)

For the first 2, I suggested a way to keep the current nerf but buff dissipate, since the nerf made it almost useless with a clunky feel for only a little amount of energy. The first suggestion would remove the clunky feel, while the second would increase the value making it feel slower but more impactful.

The third suggestion was to cap the enemies that generate motes, but you could still spam the arcane, meaning you would get a decent (but not excessive) amount of energy from both small and large amounts of enemies. 

Also yes de wanted Zenurik to be the energy tree, but it also stacks with dissipate; rn dissipate does almost nothing. It was nerfed because you maxed out your energy instantly assuming there was a group of enemies, which was way too much compared to Zenurik.

[Tyreaus]

3 minutes ago, (XBOX)Upl0rdYT said:

For the first 2, I suggested a way to keep the current nerf but buff dissipate, since the nerf made it almost useless with a clunky feel for only a little amount of energy. The first suggestion would remove the clunky feel, while the second would increase the value making it feel slower but more impactful.

Right, but they don't fix what you said is the issue:

2 hours ago, (XBOX)Upl0rdYT said:

you rely on grouping enemies to get the combined energy amount. This is the opposite of what de wanted to accomplish.

So I'm confused why you'd propose non-solutions to it.

5 minutes ago, (XBOX)Upl0rdYT said:

The third suggestion was to cap the enemies that generate motes, but you could still spam the arcane, meaning you would get a decent (but not excessive) amount of energy from both small and large amounts of enemies. 

At this point, I want to bring up what I said as an aside earlier and say that it probably shouldn't be a 0-delay thing. That could muck with balancing in a way that leaves non-macro users and RSI sufferers with a comparative disadvantage. _{Also SFX spam just feels messy...}

10 minutes ago, (XBOX)Upl0rdYT said:

Also yes de wanted Zenurik to be the energy tree, but it also stacks with dissipate; rn dissipate does almost nothing.

The bolded is also one of my concerns when it comes to flattening Dissipate's efficacy. The thing is: current Dissipate actually beats out Wellspring in the worst case (10 energy / 1.5 seconds versus 5 energy / 1 second). The reason it can go well beyond that right now is that Dissipate is conditional: you need enemies to get those big chunks of energy. If you take out conditions, you remove that rationale, meaning one can expect those numbers to trend downwards, not upwards.

Dissipate doesn't necessarily need the same conditions to justify doing notably better than Zenurik. Longer delays between generating motes, even having mote values scale based on time between Dissipate casts, also help justify that. But to keep it from trending downward, we'd need a counterbalance of some sort.

Of course, we could also do the smart thing in response to "Dissipate does nothing", stop the two from competing so much, and make Dissipate affect and be effected by Zenurik. Namely, making the motes trigger Energy Pulse and be increased in value by Wellspring.

[(XBOX)Lord ChibiVR]

32 minutes ago, Tyreaus said:

Right, but they don't fix what you said is the issue:

So I'm confused why you'd propose non-solutions to it.

At this point, I want to bring up what I said as an aside earlier and say that it probably shouldn't be a 0-delay thing. That could muck with balancing in a way that leaves non-macro users and RSI sufferers with a comparative disadvantage. _{Also SFX spam just feels messy...}

The bolded is also one of my concerns when it comes to flattening Dissipate's efficacy. The thing is: current Dissipate actually beats out Wellspring in the worst case (10 energy / 1.5 seconds versus 5 energy / 1 second). The reason it can go well beyond that right now is that Dissipate is conditional: you need enemies to get those big chunks of energy. If you take out conditions, you remove that rationale, meaning one can expect those numbers to trend downwards, not upwards.

Dissipate doesn't necessarily need the same conditions to justify doing notably better than Zenurik. Longer delays between generating motes, even having mote values scale based on time between Dissipate casts, also help justify that. But to keep it from trending downward, we'd need a counterbalance of some sort.

Of course, we could also do the smart thing in response to "Dissipate does nothing", stop the two from competing so much, and make Dissipate affect and be effected by Zenurik. Namely, making the motes trigger Energy Pulse and be increased in value by Wellspring.

Wellspring stacks with dissipate, but dissipate on it's own relies entirely on groups.

My first two solutions to dissipate were to balance out the current state while the third was an a suggestion on how to rebalance the arcane.

[Tyreaus]

3 minutes ago, (XBOX)Upl0rdYT said:

Wellspring stacks with dissipate, but dissipate on it's own relies entirely on groups.

Right - but I was suggesting to make Zenurik and Dissipate interact in some manner, not just stack. DE's worry is that, if Dissipate gets too strong, it might replace Zenurik. That doesn't happen if portions of that strength are tied into Zenurik itself.

[(XBOX)Lord ChibiVR]

13 minutes ago, Tyreaus said:

Right - but I was suggesting to make Zenurik and Dissipate interact in some manner, not just stack. DE's worry is that, if Dissipate gets too strong, it might replace Zenurik. That doesn't happen if portions of that strength are tied into Zenurik itself.

Meanwhile Arcane energize literally replaces Zenurik on any frame without inherit energy regen.

[Tyreaus]

1 hour ago, (XBOX)Upl0rdYT said:

Meanwhile Arcane energize literally replaces Zenurik on any frame without inherit energy regen.

Sorry, I thought the thread was discussing Emergence Dissipate, not the entirety of Warframe's energy economy.

[Birdframe_Prime]

14 hours ago, (XBOX)Upl0rdYT said:

This is the opposite of what de wanted to accomplish.

I don't think it is...

DE stated on the change that they wanted to make this an alternative source of Energy that's available for a basic grind, while keeping arcanes like Energise at the top because of how relatively difficult it is to get.

They don't want us getting better energy economy out of something that's easier to get hold of. But they do want it to be good. So any ability that can fully CC group an enemy will do so for a duration of more than 1.5 seconds (the initial CC and the recovery time, with a baseline being the CC grab from abilities like Gyre and Zephyr, who have some of the shortest CC Grouping functions in game), which means that for the number of enemies in that group, you can get a minimum of two shots off on them.

In areas of the game where that CC can actually get high groups of enemies, you're producing way more than Energise even in this cooldown state, because when I've tested on places like Steel Path survivals, it's easily possible to get eight to ten enemies, tag them twice in the single CC duration, and jump in for around 160 to 200 Energy.

With longer, wider CCs, like Larva or Ensnare, you can get more than that, and bring yourself reliably up to 300 energy over ten seconds. Which is less time than the innate cooldown on Energise anyway.

Outside of those conditions, it's not so easy. A lot of game modes present you the enemies in smaller groups, and it's not as good.

Here's the difference, though...

You can equip both if you're worried. Two Arcanes, one on Operator, one on Frame, and you'll have so much Energy that you can afford negative Strength builds without even Zenurik to back you up.

It's more Gear that frees up your build for more impressive things like Madurai, Unairu or even Naramon Focus so that you can do something different. Maybe go full-on damage, or build a full Strip setup with that CC you have, or run around with a pure Melee build again like old Naramon.

The nerf to Dissipate was not unwarranted, and it hasn't actually made the Arcane less than what it's supposed to be.

No amount of campaigning on the Forums will undo that decision.