Does anyone know why energy cannot regenerate continuously during the duration of channeled abilities?

[MzKsG]

I understand that this is not a bug but rather a deliberate game mechanic. I just want to understand why DE doesn't allow energy to regenerate continuously while channeled abilities are active. Is it based on considerations for optimizing game calculations or for game balance? Is there a possibility of future changes to allow continuous energy regeneration during the activation of channeled abilities?

[Traumtulpe]

I believe originally channeled abilities weren't supposed to be active permanently - you were supposed to use them until you're out of energy, refill, repeat. That's why even energy pads don't work while such abilities are active.

Now of course that's not how Warframe works in practice. If your frame has a channeled ability, chances are you want it active at all times. Or rather, you need it active at all times. Unfortunately DE is allergic to fixing bugs or reworking obsolete mechanics, it rarely happens even though it's probably the number 1 most requested and desired thing bar none.

Edited June 25, 2023 by Traumtulpe

[MaxTunnerX]

I have no idea myself. My guess is balance, but it doesnt really balance anything. as long as you have energy pickups and/or arcane energize, you have infinite energy no matter what. Im all for allowing the other types of energy regen.

[B2-Banger]

Energy Generation has long been disabled for channelled abilities, if they weren't many abilities could be kept active indefinitely.

Energy Generation has been available for channelled abilities in the past, this was changed to disable that possibility. I.E. back when ability efficiency could reach 90% and Excalibur could use his Exalted Blade for however long he wanted. Some variants utilized energy regeneration from energy siphon aura with the blind rage corrupted mod balancing efficiency for damage.

Now, Excalibur wasn't the only offender of using Energy Regeneration, but he was one of the most popular at the time.

 

Is it possible to keep a channelled ability active indefinitely as of current(?) to a degree yes, through helminth energy orb pickup bonuses or arcane energize, the ability to gain energy and outweigh energy loss is possible. However, Energy Regeneration as in forms such as energy siphon were deemed too powerful or too easy to manipulate to obtain effective energy income for channelled abilities.

This could become a topic for further review, but that is not likely in the near foreseeable future. (And, likely the topic would be in a rebalance of channelled abilities reducing their efficacy in turn for easier upkeep, making them even worse)

Edited June 25, 2023 by B2-Banger
Grammar

[Slayer-.]

What they said ^

It would mean Warframes would be overpowered if they didn't need to recharge energy, yes we have different ways now to keep channel abilities better equipped.

[quxier]

6 minutes ago, Traumtulpe said:

I believe originally channeled abilities weren't supposed to be active permanently - you were supposed to use them until you're out of energy, refill, repeat. That's why even energy pads don't work while such abilities are active.

Now of course that's not how Warframe works in practice. If your frame has a channeled ability, chances are you want it active at all times. Or rather, you need it active at all times. Unfortunately DE is allergic to fixing bugs or reworking obsolete mechanics, it rarely happens even though it's probably the number 1 most requested and desired thing bar none.

Same for "need to recast" abilities like Zephyr or Revenant Mesmer skin. What they do with Xaku? Put it into 4th, only for his own abilities, and call it "feature".

Although they introduced ability like Gloom where you can restore & not drain when there is no enemies around. There is "on kill" method to prolong Gyre's 3rd.

2 minutes ago, B2-Banger said:

Energy Generation has been available for channelled abilities in the past, this was changed to disable that possibility. I.E. back when ability efficiency could reach 90% and Excalibur could use his Exalted Blade for however long he wanted. Some variants utilized energy regeneration from energy siphon aura with the blind rage corrupted mod balancing efficiency for damage.

Now, Excalibur wasn't the only offender of using Energy Regeneration, but he was one of the most popular at the time.

Now excal can use Exalted blade for veeeery long time as well. There is so small drain that I've even used Helminth. I don't have any archon shards on it.

[Silligoose]

25 minutes ago, MzKsG said:

I understand that this is not a bug but rather a deliberate game mechanic. I just want to understand why DE doesn't allow energy to regenerate continuously while channeled abilities are active. Is it based on considerations for optimizing game calculations or for game balance? Is there a possibility of future changes to allow continuous energy regeneration during the activation of channeled abilities?

I agree with others. Balance seems to be the reason.

[Pizzarugi]

It's for balance reasons. Some channeled abilities are OP (Mesa's Peacemakers) so the balancing factor is deciding whether you install mods that increase ability duration and efficiency which significantly impacts the drain over time, or pump up the damage to instantly murder everything. Making it so regen and pizzas can apply to channeled abilities would mean having to dedicate less slots on optimizing energy drain.

Some channeled ability drains may be a little heavyhanded under current game balance. I'll give an example: Valkyr's Hysteria has a ramping drain that gets stronger the longer you use it, and all it really provides is invulnerability while locking you into melee, meanwhile we have Revenant that can be invulnerable indefinitely whilst spending nowhere near the same amount of energy.

Edited June 25, 2023 by Pizzarugi

[B2-Banger]

There is no doubt that a player can use a channelled ability for an extended period of time.

Whether Energy Siphon the aura or the focus school Zenurik's Well Spring ability should work with a channelled ability is a different topic.

Energy Siphon is arguably strong, however it does give fixed energy generation. How easy it is to access energy for a warframe and how they use their ability is different. What resources it takes to access or utilize various forms of energy generation such as Zenurik's Well Spring. Etc. etc. etc.

 

Abilities aren't free. At least, Digital Extremes does not believe they should be. This is a basic design philosophy that they would like to adopt.

And, coming forward, likely abilities will not be free. This topic isn't only in just whether a warframe's channelled ability should be able to use regeneration or if their costs should be decreased more in line with more modern or even more imbalanced but fun frames.

 

When will we debate whether Channelled abilities should be reworked? Likely when enough support in the game is available for channelled abilities that a serious rebalance would need to be considered. We are beginning to see new arcanes such as Arcane intention, at rank 5 able to give 250 max health per channelled ability. There is Braton Incarnon that gets 38 base damage with a channelled ability active or Kunai Incarnon with 100% multishot. These are small ripples as of right now, but likely they will come to form large waves.

Warframe's energy economy will likely become a future topic point, however in personal opinion, the topic of energy generation will likely be in the topic of a "nerf" and a overall restructuring of the abilities we call "Channelled" abilities, with greater energy drains and lesser effects, unless a creative solution is found.

[taiiat]

as mentioned, many Years ago these types of Abilities had the design thinking that you'd use them sometimes, and then turn them back off and go without for a while.
things have obviously changed since then, and you can potentially need to have your drain-based Abilities active at all times for your Warframe to work well, or for some to work at all.
and so some of them have inappropriate costs considering how they're designing the Content that they expect Players to play. we have a bunch of bandaid Mods/Arcanes/Mechanics that we can use instead, which one might argue shouldn't have existed to begin with and fixing 'the problem' instead, but now we have both and so whether anything might happen, who knows.

 

while some others this small limitation is fine to help add complexity to manage to get their benefits.

 

11 minutes ago, Pizzarugi said:

Some channeled ability drains may be a little heavyhanded under current game balance. I'll give an example: Valkyr's Hysteria has a ramping drain that gets stronger the longer you use it, and all it really provides is invulnerability while locking you into melee, meanwhile we have Revenant that can be invulnerable indefinitely whilst spending nowhere near the same amount of energy.

you do also get a 250 Base Damage (or often 500+ after Strength) with high Crits Melee Weapon that has a Spin attack with an 18x Multiplier, plus one of the best Ground Finishers in the game, and a 9x Multiplier Heavy with a 1000 base Damage AoE - it's pretty powerful...
however so are some other Abilities and they don't have restrictions such as that, so, i don't consider that as a justification for it, either.

[trst]

Balancing reasons. I don't know exactly when they were made to work like that but it is worth considering how dominant Trinity once was in the meta and that Energy Vampire is also blocked by such abilities. It also just makes sense from a design perspective that a potentially infinite duration ability shouldn't be able to be maintained 100% passively.

But even if it's something that's pretty irrelevant nowadays with how much energy generation we have it's still not something DE really has reason to change. As the restriction was always able to be bypassed via orbs and rage. So it's at least something that might help to keep builds diverse instead of everyone still using only Zenurik for energy.

[TARINunit9]

2 hours ago, B2-Banger said:

Energy Generation has been available for channelled abilities in the past, this was changed to disable that possibility. I.E. back when ability efficiency could reach 90% and Excalibur could use his Exalted Blade for however long he wanted. 

I was around when Exalted Blade was added, and Efficiency has ALWAYS been capped at 75%. It was never able to reach 90

And....nothing has really changed about Exalted Blade since then anyway. Excalibur in 2016 functioned pretty much the same as he did three days ago when I used him in the Circuit

[B2-Banger]

15 minutes ago, TARINunit9 said:

I was around when Exalted Blade was added, and Efficiency has ALWAYS been capped at 75%. It was never able to reach 90

That is not true, Ability Efficiency used to not be capped, the soft cap was 90% because Streamline gave 30% ability efficiency and Fleeting Expertise gave 60% ability efficiency, the two combined were 190% ability efficiency or a 90% reduction on energy costs. The cap was put in place when they reworked the channelled ability costs in which all abilities efficiency was capped to 175% and duration now factored into ability efficiency calculations.

[MutoManiac]

I believe Loki can stay invisible forever which makes him great. Well not forever, but you can quickly cast once it runs out and he’s invisible again while you regenerate energy with a pizza. Zenurik Well Spring also regenerates energy while invisible. If that is an oversight and they fix it, then he becomes a very weak frame.

Edited June 25, 2023 by m_a_r_c_h_

[stormy505]

It's a relic of balance for an older era of warframe where the intended use for channeled abilities was to only have them active for a short time. It did work but then, but now we have easy access to energize which kinda destroys energy economy even for channeled abilities.

[(XBOX)Lord ChibiVR]

Emergence dissipate is probably the closest you'll get to consistent energy generation that works on channeling abilities.

[(PSN)GEN-Son_17]

6 hours ago, Traumtulpe said:

I believe originally channeled abilities weren't supposed to be active permanently - you were supposed to use them until you're out of energy, refill, repeat. That's why even energy pads don't work while such abilities are active.

Now of course that's not how Warframe works in practice. If your frame has a channeled ability, chances are you want it active at all times. Or rather, you need it active at all times. Unfortunately DE is allergic to fixing bugs or reworking obsolete mechanics, it rarely happens even though it's probably the number 1 most requested and desired thing bar none.

Channeled abilities are are pretty potent though, and can be managed via efficiency and duration modding...at the sacrifice of reducing an all around optimal build. This is actually a really good thing because that potency can be catered to mission needs instead of set and forget. Not having an always replenishing energy pool also stop some of the stationary setups from being too powerful, like a perma-Gloom Frost or an endless Mesa. 

[ReddyDisco]

1 hour ago, (XBOX)Upl0rdYT said:

Emergence dissipate is probably the closest you'll get to consistent energy generation that works on channeling abilities.

energize works too

[SneakyErvin]

7 hours ago, taiiat said:

you do also get a 250 Base Damage (or often 500+ after Strength) with high Crits Melee Weapon that has a Spin attack with an 18x Multiplier, plus one of the best Ground Finishers in the game, and a 9x Multiplier Heavy with a 1000 base Damage AoE - it's pretty powerful...
however so are some other Abilities and they don't have restrictions such as that, so, i don't consider that as a justification for it, either.

Now you just gave me some good ideas on how to use Kullervo's subsume and get me back into Hysteria gameplay with Valkyr.

2 hours ago, (XBOX)Upl0rdYT said:

Emergence dissipate is probably the closest you'll get to consistent energy generation that works on channeling abilities.

Shards are insane if you also like maxed efficiency builds. You can practically never run out of energy. 1 Tauforged is enough on my gloom Frost with a baseline energy pool and maxed efficiency and if it works on such a low pool with the drain of gloom it will practically work on any other frame. It was even sustainable with a normal amber aswell until I got my first Tau. Then for frames like Oberon that can take damage well replacing a skill for Nourish and slotting hunter adrenaline or rage will keep you topped off at all times. Nourish can also be used like an amber shard if you dont wanna waste a shard slot.

[Tiltskillet]

9 hours ago, MzKsG said:

I understand that this is not a bug but rather a deliberate game mechanic. I just want to understand why DE doesn't allow energy to regenerate continuously while channeled abilities are active. Is it based on considerations for optimizing game calculations or for game balance? Is there a possibility of future changes to allow continuous energy regeneration during the activation of channeled abilities?

If players can't depend on passive forms of energy  replenishment, the more  they are compelled--in theory-- to depend on active means. 

Which is saying the obvious of course, but my point is is that whatever DE's original motives were, with their concerns about automation now, it seems very unlikely to change much without a drastic overhaul of the energy system. 

[TARINunit9]

7 hours ago, B2-Banger said:

That is not true, Ability Efficiency used to not be capped, the soft cap was 90% because Streamline gave 30% ability efficiency and Fleeting Expertise gave 60% ability efficiency, the two combined were 190% ability efficiency or a 90% reduction on energy costs. The cap was put in place when they reworked the channelled ability costs in which all abilities efficiency was capped to 175% and duration now factored into ability efficiency calculations.

I'm going to need a source on this claim because I've been playing since February 2015, a full year before the channeled ability rework, and even back then Efficiency was hard-capped at 175%

[Birdframe_Prime]

7 hours ago, B2-Banger said:

That is not true, Ability Efficiency used to not be capped, the soft cap was 90%

Same as the above, but I've been playing since 2014.

Energy Efficiency has always been capped to the point that no ability can cost less than 25% of its base casting cost or upkeep cost. The 90% (and higher) is from the negative Duration function.

Negative Duration can shorten the unit of time that is taken to drain energy (100% is 1 second, 125% is 1.25 seconds, 75% is 0.75 seconds and so on) which means that even at 175% Efficiency, the ability could still drain more than 25% per second. So you can use the upper amounts of Efficiency to counter-balance this point so that even with minimum Duration you can hit max Efficiency.

So in short, Efficiency has been capped at 175% since before I started playing.

[taiiat]

Efficiency was limited to 90% at one point, it was just indeed very early that this was changed. exactly when i couldn't remember anymore, but it should be circa mid 2013. 

[(XBOX)Lord ChibiVR]

2 hours ago, SneakyErvin said:

Now you just gave me some good ideas on how to use Kullervo's subsume and get me back into Hysteria gameplay with Valkyr.

Shards are insane if you also like maxed efficiency builds. You can practically never run out of energy. 1 Tauforged is enough on my gloom Frost with a baseline energy pool and maxed efficiency and if it works on such a low pool with the drain of gloom it will practically work on any other frame. It was even sustainable with a normal amber aswell until I got my first Tau. Then for frames like Oberon that can take damage well replacing a skill for Nourish and slotting hunter adrenaline or rage will keep you topped off at all times. Nourish can also be used like an amber shard if you dont wanna waste a shard slot.

My protea (formerly my Ash) runs 5 amber shards (one of which is tauforged) for 93 energy every orb.

3 hours ago, ReddyDisco said:

energize works too

I meant outside of orbs but yes, energize is a must for some channeling abilities (cough Equinox's entire kit cough).

[(PSN)jaggerwanderer]

Subsume Gloom + Rage = infinite energy.