More shield bad. Less shield good.

[(PSN)Unstar]

If shield-gating becomes a problem, sure, let's address it.  But if it's just that you don't like it, I don't think there's a reason to make a fuss.  And to be clear, I say this as someone who doesn't use the Decaying Dragon Key or lean on shield-gating as a strategy.  If other people want to min-max their shield gates the same way I min-max my shields, why not?  I have yet to see a reason why this is bad for players or bad for the game (though I'm certainly open to hearing reasons if people have them).  Conversely, the way I see it, shield-gating actually broadens the diversity of survival strategies in the game and encourages a wider variety of play styles.  Personally, I think that's a very good thing!

 

On 2022-10-13 at 4:51 PM, (XBOX)ECCHO SIERRA said:

It feels like such a blatany unintended exploit.

Unintended doesn't mean bad.  The entire reason that Warframe feels as good as it does today is because of unintended features (like coptering) that DE embraced.  That shield-gating has existed for years shows that DE still doesn't have a problem with features existing in the game just because they weren't intended, and that's a healthy attitude to have that benefits everyone.

 

On 2022-10-13 at 4:51 PM, (XBOX)ECCHO SIERRA said:

Name one other game where having more shield is objectively worse.

Having 10 base shield is literally better than 300 base shield. 

This simply isn't true.  There are plenty of situations where having more shields is better.  I main Mag and I can't get enough shields.  Feed me more shields all day long please.  Now, are there benefits to having lower shields?  Yes.  But there are also benefits to having higher shields.  It just depends on which set of benefits you prefer.  For me, I will be taking the high shields, thank you.

Furthermore, there's no reason that having less of something can't be advantageous.  This is pretty common when building a Warframe, here are some basic examples:

• Certain Garuda builds benefit from having lower health because a smaller health pool can be replenished faster, thus enabling the player to be able to use her 3 with greater frequency/ease.
• Lower Duration makes Hildryn's Pillage return to give you your Overshields faster. 
• Nova has an entire build based on negative Strength.
• Nova's Null Star with negative Range will help you maintain higher DR.

 

With all of my heart, this is all fine.

[(XBOX)TehChubbyDugan]

While I agree that having a meta that revolves around purposefully gimping what is supposed to be a defensive stat in order to...  gain better defense... is super dumb and almost guaranteed not what they intended when they put shield gating into the game, I also don't care.

I don't have to use it.  And I don't.  And it's still fine.  And it's still fully optional.  And because it's not this instant win like many of you keep painting it, and you actually have to pay attention and react in order to use it, it makes it one of the only "skill based" defensive counterplays in the game.  I've seen plenty of shield gaters die because they weren't paying attention or were too slow.  Just like I occasionally die because I'm not paying attention or react too slowly.  

I cannot even begin to comprehend why you people are crying about a defensive strat that other people are using that doesn't affect you in the slightest.  It doesn't affect you.  I don't know how else to convey that.  I can kind of, almost, barely see the tiniest sliver of an argument about "disruptive" things like AOE.  I mean, not actually, but that at least does have some super minor effect on what you're doing.  Someone else not dying doesn't change anything for you unless you're dying a bunch and just mad because you look silly for being the only one dying, and I'd like to remind you that it doesn't actually matter because we have like 6 revives.  I have a friend in my alliance that used to die repeatedly, on purpose, because that was the only way to summon their lich support, and they wanted their lich out for whatever reason.  Max rank player, dying repeatedly in pub matches just to get their lich out.  No consequences.

It not only baffles me that this is even a complaint someone could have, but I predicted this crappy behavior and I hate that I did.  The very second they nerfed AOE, and they aren't even done killing it yet, you people have moved on to crying about the next piece of meta on the list that you want nerfed.  What's next on the list of things for you people to whine about in a PVE game like any of this actually affects you?  My guess is AOE frames.  It's that or the slash meta.

If any one of you people framed this in a way that actually made sense, like providing a reasonable motive for wanting changes, I could engage with it.  Instead it's all "other people aren't dying and I'm mad about it."  There's no "I think this should be removed because enemy damage output needs to be tuned down and shield as a stat needs to be a stronger option and defensive options need to be improved and actual counterplay put into the game."  It's just "I don't like thing other player do."  And you're only calling for player nerfs which doesn't even begin to address why this is part of the meta to start with.  It's sad and predictable.

[(XBOX)TehChubbyDugan]

23 hours ago, (XBOX)ECCHO SIERRA said:

Name one other game where having more shield is objectively worse. 

There are plenty of games out there, like the Borderlands games, that have items or abilities that encourage a purposeful removal of defensive options in order to gain some other advantage, including alternate defensive advantages.  It's almost like video games use mechanics like these on purpose to encourage interesting and diverse builds.

[Ethorin]

2 hours ago, (PSN)Unstar said:

Nova even has an entire build based on having negative Duration.

ummmmmm... Really? What build would this be? I'm pretty sure every single one of Nova's skills except Antimatter Drop like maximizing Duration at least a little.

 

If you mean Speedva, that's Neg Str.

[DrBorris]

I really don't understand the hatred that shield gate builds get. It is a very unique build with significant impact on your moment-to-moment gameplay, I wish there were more unique builds like them. It is an extremely powerful way to build but requires a lot more attention than basically any other form of tanking. There are a few exploit-y things that can happen with shield-gate builds but the core build is perfectly acceptable, being unkillable in Warframe isn't special nor is it going to break anything.

 

High shields not being useful is a big problem that has been ignored, but it isn't a problem because shield-gate builds exist. Both low shield builds and high shields builds could co-exist just fine.

I've long been a proponent for shield hardening. Basically the more shields you currently have, the more damage reduction you shields currently have. It would encourage not only building for high shields but also encourage trying to maintain high shields. It would also make tanking with shields a completely different gameplay than tanking with health (burst damage tanking versus sustained damage tanking).

And back on the point of shield-gating, relying on a shield gate to make high shield capacity useful is counter-intuitive. High shields shouldn't only add value when you have no shields.

[ReverseKinetix]

Okay then give us ways to legitimately face-tank in endurance. Once enemies go over say level 500, you're EHP is 2 with shield being 1 and health being 1. Currently you can't stack enough survivability in the game to prevent either health or shields from being one shot at these higher levels. Since you only have 2 EHP, losing 1 HP means you are literally a stray bullet away from death. When things get like this, what matters most is how quickly you can regain that first hit point. If they remove the interaction with the decaying dragon key then no frame will be able to easily regain shields to max which is needed for shield gating to even have a noticeable difference. This "crutch" is legitimately the only thing that makes level cap possible with the vast majority of frames. Why? Because it's not like we're fighting one enemy and can just avoid damage through skill alone; there are so many enemies in a tile at any given time (the reason aoe was so prevalent was because of this, so you can't even deny this as fact) that the only reliable form of survivability is invulnerability. Rolling guard is good for this though the long cooldown makes it a supplement to the only reliable and consistent form of invulnerability all but two frames have access to: shield gating. When recovering shields to full, the shield gating timer is extended to a workable 1.3 seconds (if I remember correctly). When you recover shields but do not fill them, the invulnerability timer of shield gating is less than half a second (if I am remembering correctly. All that is important to know is that recovering shields for shield gating is pointless any time you don't instantly max out your shields).

All removing this interaction will accomplish is ruining the survivability of just about every frame in the game when doing endurance. If DE gives another option that works as well, if not better than the current method than I'm all for it, but there is no reason this interaction should be removed just because "But it supposed to be bad thing ☹️" By that logic, they should patch speedva. You see how stupid this argument is now? If a player chooses to "gimp" themselves to achieve a certain goal then they should be able to. I run negative duration on Baruuk to rapidly cast pillage (subsumed) and lull to keep shields up and quickly erode restraint respectively. Should I be punished for that because "But low duration is less which means it has to be worse ☹️". This is literally one of the worst takes I have ever seen made throughout my entire time playing Warframe which is impressive because I've seen a lot of bad takes - you take the cake for having the worst one though.

If it was possible to downvote posts on the forums, I would make multiple accounts just to push your likes into the negative.

One more thing: before someone inevitably says it: "But the game isn't balanced around Steel Path and Endurance 🤓"

Then why are you trying to police the methods people use to tackle the methods we use in steel path? If DE won't throw us a bone because they don't balance around endgame then why should they neuter endgame strategies? After all, they don't balance around such high-level content where the decaying dragon key sees any use. And it's not like you can deny this; you won't see anyone getting a benefit running the key in star chart and other low-level content. Lastly, if you do not run endurance then why do you even care what strategies people use to do so? If DE doesn't balance around endgame for the better then why do you want to suddenly force them into balancing around endgame for the worse?

Sorry for ranting, but I'm sick of hearing these sorts of arguments from people who genuinely do not understand why people do what they do in specific content. It's like hearing someone tell you to mod for magnetic against grineer or bring a high status weapon for eidos. Just bad take after bad take.

tl;dr The only thing that would make me okay with DE changing the decaying dragon key is if they provide us with ways to actually tank damage up to level cap, but that would require a complete restructuring of how enemies deal damage, damage reduction, enemy scaling, better tanking options, and a redesign of the game itself (AI, Enemy Numbers, etc.). Not to mention the decaying dragon key interaction with shield gating isn't even bad design. May be unintentional, but so was speedva. Cope, Seethe, Mald.

[Surbusken]

Best gameplay in warframe is ideas players came up with, unintended by the developers.

The developers are more like arty-gun, mining and the tauforged 65 year grind, lol.

[Ethorin]

There have been builds that could have made good use of decaying key to be stronger at least since Rage has existed.

 

That people didn't is more that Rage has never been the best possible energy option.

[Mover-NeRo]

I wonder , if Shield gating had inner cooldown for example 10 seconds. Would you use dragon key?
Answer is No, since it would no longer allow to bypass /abuse it.

[Helljack84]

5 hours ago, ReverseKinetix said:

Okay then give us ways to legitimately face-tank in endurance. Once enemies go over say level 500, you're EHP is 2 with shield being 1 and health being 1. Currently you can't stack enough survivability in the game to prevent either health or shields from being one shot at these higher levels. Since you only have 2 EHP, losing 1 HP means you are literally a stray bullet away from death. When things get like this, what matters most is how quickly you can regain that first hit point. If they remove the interaction with the decaying dragon key then no frame will be able to easily regain shields to max which is needed for shield gating to even have a noticeable difference. This "crutch" is legitimately the only thing that makes level cap possible with the vast majority of frames. Why? Because it's not like we're fighting one enemy and can just avoid damage through skill alone; there are so many enemies in a tile at any given time (the reason aoe was so prevalent was because of this, so you can't even deny this as fact) that the only reliable form of survivability is invulnerability. Rolling guard is good for this though the long cooldown makes it a supplement to the only reliable and consistent form of invulnerability all but two frames have access to: shield gating. When recovering shields to full, the shield gating timer is extended to a workable 1.3 seconds (if I remember correctly). When you recover shields but do not fill them, the invulnerability timer of shield gating is less than half a second (if I am remembering correctly. All that is important to know is that recovering shields for shield gating is pointless any time you don't instantly max out your shields).

All removing this interaction will accomplish is ruining the survivability of just about every frame in the game when doing endurance. If DE gives another option that works as well, if not better than the current method than I'm all for it, but there is no reason this interaction should be removed just because "But it supposed to be bad thing ☹️" By that logic, they should patch speedva. You see how stupid this argument is now? If a player chooses to "gimp" themselves to achieve a certain goal then they should be able to. I run negative duration on Baruuk to rapidly cast pillage (subsumed) and lull to keep shields up and quickly erode restraint respectively. Should I be punished for that because "But low duration is less which means it has to be worse ☹️". This is literally one of the worst takes I have ever seen made throughout my entire time playing Warframe which is impressive because I've seen a lot of bad takes - you take the cake for having the worst one though.

What you describe in your first paragraph is, in a nutshell, the game falling apart at high levels. If you steadily increase the numbers, 95% dr will become garbage, 90% slow will become garbage, 100k ehp will become garbage. It culls the pool of "working" Warframes, abilities, weapons and tactics. That's bad and probably why DE "doesn't like" people to go there, or in a way they turn a blind eye to what's happening there. Honestly, imho, it's not even that much fun. If you watch a video of that it's fun for 15 seconds until you realize that person is just running muscle memory/macros performing the exact same actions over and over to not instantly cease to exist while slowly killing (mostly motionless) bullet sponges that do the exact same thing like always (with bigger numbers, wohoo). Almost like your Baruuk example, not picking him out, you could also run blind, pocket sand...a dozen other abilities and achieve similar results, it works but it's pretty dull. 

It gets worse if we look at survival tactics, you're either invisible or invulnerable or dead. This leaves the shield gate as the only reliable defense because no amount of shield, health, or armor can withstand a grunt's sneeze. That's that, gameplay at (the limits of) "endgame".

The other thing is this tactic outperforming other options at way earlier levels of play, that's not even considering health or armor, it's way better than modding into shields with actual shield mods. Makes me remember this tank Banshee dude with, hey you only need like 3 umbra mods, adaption, an arcane, a good horoscope, a horse shoe... you get where this is going? Speccing into shield recharge or strength is mechanically worthless.

Shield gating is a good thing, reliable on demand invincibility whenever you feel like it isn't (and for the "but there's Vazarin dash"-crowd, how come pretty much nobody uses it?).

[(PSN)Unstar]

14 hours ago, Ethorin said:

If you mean Speedva, that's Neg Str.

Thanks for catching me on this, my brain did a whoopsie!  I've corrected it in my original post. ^^

[ReverseKinetix]

12 hours ago, Helljack84 said:

Shield gating is a good thing, reliable on demand invincibility whenever you feel like it isn't

This just in, Dark Souls is bad game design because of their i-frame dodge rolls.

[iHaku]

28 minutes ago, ReverseKinetix said:

This just in, Dark Souls is bad game design because of their i-frame dodge rolls.

one of them has the game build around it, the other one hasnt. i'm not on either side of this, but you're clearly trying to missinterprit what you quoted.

 

personally, i'd prefer if this wasnt in the game but only if they made shields actually good. there is a lot of DR% you cant apply to them which makes them very undesireable  lategame (and even before that tbh)

[CaptainShortbus]

Shields are actually useless for the vast majority of content. Toxin will one shot you through them, and there is a benefit to not stacking them (shown here). If they redo shields, I would like to see something like status effect immunity with overshields active, or a scaling shield gate / damage attenuation based on number of shields. If a harrow with 3000 shields gets one shot down to health, there is no reason the shield gate should be the same duration as a frame with 75 shields.

If they made it a base 0.5s + 1s per 500 shields destroyed by the hit, it would seriously gimp the shield gate meta and actually offer incentive to stack shields higher than normal. Protea and Hildryn already have this and it is a huge difference. Since this is already being used as a mechanic, some sort of visual indication would be nice too.

[Ace-Bounty-Hunter]

On 2022-10-14 at 11:49 PM, Silligoose said:

What a waste of time answer just to evade the question.

How about you stop wasting my time with your unrealistic expectations. If you truly think DE can implement your idea without completely breaking something or nerfing survivability into oblivion, then you really are a naive deluded fool.

[Silligoose]

1 hour ago, Ace-Bounty-Hunter said:

How about you stop wasting my time with your unrealistic expectations. If you truly think DE can implement your idea without completely breaking something or nerfing survivability into oblivion, then you really are a naive deluded fool.

I think they can, I don't know if they would even bother to ever attempt it, though at this stage it seems unlikely since they have the Drifter gameplay pivot to focus on.

I sometimes forget there are defeatist members in the Discussion threads more interested in inflating post numbers with nonsense answers, as opposed to actual discussion. I've even been so kind as to give you that little bit of validation you may so crave from receiving post likes. Carry on 👍

[ShogunGunshow]

Exploiting the Decaying key was a thing people pretty much picked up on immediately that DE, being DE, didn't even consider when making them. And then DE - again, being DE - didn't fix it immediately by slapping a 'disables shield gate' on it, and have now let it last long enough that people now feel entitled to it and they can't just remove it outright without massive backlash from people using it as a crutch.

Some day Decaying will probably get fixed, but it'll also probably come with a mod set that'll somehow be even more powerful than the current gate build. Because DE gonna DE, and that's how this always goes down.

[(XBOX)Rylor Threev]

Are you saying decaying key should remove shield gate instead?

(This is a joke btw, don't take it seriously pls)

[_Anise_]

On 2022-10-14 at 1:35 AM, CrownOfShadows said:

change decaying dragon key to not effect shields

maybe it should also reduce shield restore mechanics by 75% with a key active then it would be straight up no advantage to running a key outside rage builds

I am all for them disabling shield gate exploits but only if they put something super good in helminth that can be used as a replacement survival skill for all the squish frames.

[Yakhul]

A solution for this imo, would be to include all shield/shield regeneration related mods, into the exilus slot. That way we don't use valuable warframe mod slots for just shields.

One would argue that "modding for shields is useless" But hey, for those of us who do not rely on shield gating mechanic with Brief Respite, having our shields regenerate faster outside of the sentinel mod Guardian, would be much welcomed, and the Exilus slot is basically a utility slot. That or use arcane Aegis, or buff all warframe shields to the level of Hyldrin.

[SenorClipClop]

4 hours ago, Yakhul said:

A solution for this imo, would be to include all shield/shield regeneration related mods, into the exilus slot. That way we don't use valuable warframe mod slots for just shields.

One would argue that "modding for shields is useless" But hey, for those of us who do not rely on shield gating mechanic with Brief Respite, having our shields regenerate faster outside of the sentinel mod Guardian, would be much welcomed, and the Exilus slot is basically a utility slot. That or use arcane Aegis, or buff all warframe shields to the level of Hyldrin.

That fixes nothing of this problem. The meta is not using any shield mods (and actively decreasing your own max shields) because you want as little shield as possible to abuse the shield-gating mechanic, not because Shields Mods don't feel worth it. I feel like you don't get what OP is talking about.

When a Warframe's Shields are depleted, they have a brief moment of damage invulnerability. This invulnerability phase cannot be used again until Shields come back up to 100%. If you have a high amount of Shields, this is going to take some time. However, if you have an extremely low amount of Shields (thanks to a Dragon Key), you can restore your use of that invulnerability phase almost immediately, or immediately if you use abilities while Augur mods are equipped. The issue is that having fewer Shields is itself what's making Warframes more unkillable. With shield-gating rules the way are now, people relying on them wouldn't use Shield Mods if the devs added brand new slots just for Shields for free.

[(PSN)Cargan2016]

On 2022-10-13 at 6:51 PM, (XBOX)ECCHO SIERRA said:

something that was supposed to be a gimmick for corrupted mod farming, is now a meta endgame content crutch.

exactly its a gimmik and a crutch for the lazy its far from the only way to do level cap runs. despite what all those that swear its the only way.  De wouldnt of raised the end game level cap if using this gimmik was the only way to get there.  as they are very much anti putting in something with a one and only you do this or fail kind of mechanic into the game