Thermal Sunder Garuda...

[Seele]

Thermal Sunder Garuda has become rather popular, to the point that my most (only) reliable means of avoiding having one on my team is playing solo or friends only. And since I no longer live in the same time zone as my friends, that's almost always solo. Which I can do, but the community aspect of this game is good and fun and I shouldn't feel like I have to play solo to avoid certain people.

I have survived a fair few terrible Warframe metas, from Actual Invincibility Trinity and old World on Fire Ember to Ignis Wraith and Atterax Saryn. Thermal Sunder Garuda may be my least favorite yet, which is upsetting for a few reasons.

Reason number one is I normally adore combinations of otherwise unremarkable or sub-optimal game pieces to make something incredibly powerful. Absolutely my ethos when playing games. It's probably not meta anymore, but I still play Nekros with Despoil, Equilibrium, and Health Conversion. Two mods I thought could never find a home on any Warframe build combined to make an incredible engine of survivability and sustain. Love it! Garuda is... not the same. While it uses unconventional pieces, the end result is not fun, it's obnoxious.

If I have a tough Nekros on my team, I'm glad. It means we keep getting additional loot and I don't need to worry about them getting downed or dropping Desecrate. If I have a thermal sunder Garuda on my team, I have to mute the game to stop the horrible sound effect spam, or abandon the mission and switch to solo if I want to enjoy my time at all. Even if I mute, there are few or no enemies for me to fight, they all get vaporized out of LoS. This is a horde shooter. No enemies, no gameplay. Not fun.

To continue the analogy, Nekros is not an especially tough warframe. He benefits from the interaction of Despoil, Equilibrium, and Health Conversion to become significantly more tanky (but certainly not invincible). Garuda is a fine warframe! She is strong, tough, and can perform very well even in the hardest content the game has to offer. Her interaction with Thermal Sunder did not suddenly make a good warframe out of a bad one, it made a lazy and annoying one out of a good one.

Nekros has to play the game. The player has decisions to make on when to do what, what eximus to prioritize, monitor HP, conversion stacks, and energy, and the machine has to be maintained or it will fall apart. Garuda presses whatever button Thermal Sunder is on until the mission ends. Nekros allows their teammates to play the game and benefits from them doing so. Garuda does not care if their teammates exist at all, and does not rely on them for buffs, healing, or extra damage output.

I'd like to be able to go back to playing on public, so let's consider some possible solutions.

An ideal solution would not hurt Gauss or Garuda or even the arcane, because none of them are independently in need of any kind of adjustment. One consideration is much larger in scale, and that's Brief Respite / shield gating and our nigh necessary reliance on it in high level content. That's a big undertaking, though, and a system I don't expect to be touched so soon.

One option would be to diminish Thermal Sunder when subsumed (which I hope there is another pass at that, because Gloom and Thermal Sunder going at full strength on everything while some questionable choices were nerfed before they had a chance confuses me). Wouldn't fully solve the problem, though, unless subsumed Thermal Sunder's numbers went all the way into the garbage. That would hurt Titania as well, but again, I don't think she needs it any more than Garuda does, fine frame as she is.

A perhaps more contentious choice would be to change Gauss' Helminth ability to Mach Rush or Kinetic Plating. Mach Rush is iconic, and giving it away might erode Gauss' identity somewhat, but I also don't imagine it would be a popular choice for subsumption. Kinetic Plating, however, would probably become extremely popular for frames without in-kit mitigation, possibly to the point of problematic overuse, but that's still preferable. If my teammate has kinetic plating, I might still have some game to play. If my teammate is a thermal sunder Garuda, I do not.

Ultimately, I fully expect this to be addressed one way or another, as every other lazy, AFK kind of "play style" has been before, but I do hope it's soon. Even in Duviri I can't seem to get away from them. People will really make this game as boring as possible for themselves and then complain that it's boring.

[Traumtulpe]

Can you give me some context here, because I've literally never seen this kind of behaviour, also I play Garuda quite a bit and don't see the point in Thermal Sunder on her.

What kind of mission does this happen in? How is this any different from Garuda spamming her 4, or from Saryn spamming Miasma, or a Nekros with Equilibrium spamming Thermal Sunder?

I mean the fact is, Thermal Sunder spam is not going to do what you describe on the steel path - that is nuke enemies so fast the other players don't get to fight anything. It's just not. And people have used Thermal Sunder on Titania to speed clear fissures for a long time now, so what's the recent change?

[The_Royal_Elf_Mika]

why thermal sunder spam???
would be 100x better to spam Seeking Talons and Dread Mirror.

like her Seeking Talons is 1000x better than anything Thermal Sunder can do and her Dread mirror is a Defensive nuking ability.

[Seele]

 

3 minutes ago, Traumtulpe said:

Can you give me some context here, because I've literally never seen this kind of behaviour, also I play Garuda quite a bit and don't see the point in Thermal Sunder on her.

What kind of mission does this happen in? How is this any different from Garuda spamming her 4, or from Saryn spamming Miasma, or a Nekros with Equilibrium spamming Thermal Sunder?

I mean the fact is, Thermal Sunder spam is not going to do what you describe on the steel path - that is nuke enemies so fast the other players don't get to fight anything. It's just not. And people have used Thermal Sunder on Titania to speed clear fissures for a long time now, so what's the recent change?

I don't want to describe the whole build because I want fewer of them in the game. But essentially, through the use of certain other items in the game, Garuda becomes capable of pressing Thermal Sunder literally indefinitely, and the sheer number of casts is, in fact, if you can believe it, enough to overcome Steel Path enemies, even. Other Warframe spam requires some sort of energy economy, Garuda TS does not. We're talking several thousand abilities cast per mission. It never stops.

[Traumtulpe]

1 minute ago, Seele said:

[...]

You don't have to pretend there is some super secret thing going on here. I play Garuda, I have the relevant Arcanes to restore her health. You don't even need Arcanes in fact, try a Bleeding Dragon key with health regeneration.

Yes Garuda (and Harrow, and others for that matter) can nonstop spam Thermal Sunder, but the thing is I don't see the point.

[The_Royal_Elf_Mika]

Just now, Traumtulpe said:

You don't have to pretend there is some super secret thing going on here. I play Garuda, I have the relevant Arcanes to restore her health. You don't even need Arcanes in fact, try a Bleeding Dragon key with health regeneration.

Yes Garuda (and Harrow, and others for that matter) can nonstop spam Thermal Sunder, but the thing is I don't see the point.

^^^^ i dont see the point either, all her abilities are better than thermal sunder.

[Seele]

Just now, Traumtulpe said:

You don't have to pretend there is some super secret thing going on here. I play Garuda, I have the relevant Arcanes to restore her health. You don't even need Arcanes in fact, try a Bleeding Dragon key with health regeneration.

Yes Garuda (and Harrow, and others for that matter) can nonstop spam Thermal Sunder, but the thing is I don't see the point.

Casting a cold and a heat TS causes the remaining Heat damage procs to deal all their damage instantly, with a boost.
Archon Vitality doubles Heat procs, so two hot and a cold TS will typically kill any enemy in the game.
Max range makes the radius absurd and disregard cover / LoS.
Garuda's spam requires no thought whatsoever and is boosted by her passive.

[Traumtulpe]

2 minutes ago, Seele said:

Garuda's spam requires no thought whatsoever and is boosted by her passive.

This is not true, her passive will not buff Thermal Sunder.

The only possible reason why anybody would use a build like that is to either be funny, or because he's botting.

Edited July 5, 2023 by Traumtulpe

[Seele]

1 minute ago, Traumtulpe said:

This is not true, her passive will not buff Thermal Sunder.

The only possible reason why anybody would use a build like that is to either be funny, or because he's botting.

The more  Garuda kills the more vicious her attacks become; Garuda gains up to 100% additional damage bonus for her abilities and weapons for each kill or assisted kill.

• Damage bonus increases by 5% per kill.
• After not killing for 5 seconds, the damage bonus decays by 1% per 2 seconds.
  • If Garuda is inside an ability-nullifying field, such as those of the Nullifier Crewman, the decay will begin after 1 second between kills at a rate of 2% per 1 second.
• In Landscapes, killing enemies while in Archwing also raises the damage bonus. However, kills on K-Drive do not.
  • The buff doesn't work while on Archwing or K-Drive, however, only when Garuda dismounts and resumes fighting on foot (needs verification).
• Kills made by Garuda while manning a Railjack turret, whether via direct fire or with abilities such as  Seeker Volley, also contribute to raising the damage bonus.
• Damage bonus is displayed above the ability bars as a red Garuda's iconic symbol.
• Damage bonus is calculated independent of other damage sources.
• Damage bonus and decay rate are not affected by mods.
• Damage appears to stack multiplicatively, even with other multiplicative sources such as Roar and faction damage mods.
• Every 5% of the gauge filled causes crimson red blood to splatter onto Garuda's body, helmet, and claws.

While it's entirely possible they are botting, isn't that just worse? It's annoying. Seeking Talons spam isn't annoying, I also have literally never seen someone do it. Thermal Sunder spam is obnoxious, both in gameplay and in audio. This isn't one guy I saw, by the way, it's almost every time I play in public lobbies. Almost every. Like 99%+ of the time.

[Traumtulpe]

1 minute ago, Seele said:

This isn't one guy I saw, by the way, it's almost every time I play in public lobbies. Almost every. Like 99%+ of the time.

So can you go back to my first post and describe what kind of missions this happens in? Because, like I said, I've never seen it. Maybe we just play different kinds of missions?

Also if you see a player botting you should report them, that's obviously not okay.

Also also there's no point in quoting the Wiki. It increases the damage of her abilities, this does not include Thermal Sunder.

[Traumtulpe]

35 minutes ago, Seele said:

Archon Vitality doubles Heat procs, so two hot and a cold TS will typically kill any enemy in the game.

I thought I'd give it a try to see if maybe DE has bugged Thermal Sunder in the latest update, but this claim of yours couldn't be further from the truth. I cast Thermal Sunder (Heat) twice and (Cold) once, with these stats:

The result is... pretty much exactly zero damage against steel path enemies:

Edited July 5, 2023 by Traumtulpe

[Raarsi]

Am I the only one amazed that Garuda players still exist?  Seriously, I think the last time I saw one was when its prime came out.

As for TS on Garuda, I'm going with meme build as the most likely culprit.  Only other option I can think of was someone running on all eight brain cells just to read the ability tooltip.

[(XBOX)RaeOvSunshyn]

The clap nuke build. I think it started around Mirror Defenses but now has kinda spilled over into everything. Yes, it turns Steel Path into cottage cheese and, yes, it's annoying.

I figure, the more it shows up and the more people complain about it, DE will nerf the hell out of it eventually.

[Seele]

"meme build" or "troll" or whatever internet slang word you want to use for it, it's annoying.

1 hour ago, (XBOX)RaeOvSunshyn said:

I figure, the more it shows up and the more people complain about it, DE will nerf the hell out of it eventually.

That's a fair point. Look upon it, ye wicked, and despair.

[(PSN)Hikuro-93]

Honestly I do use Thermal Sunder a lot on pretty much all frames, but not as a main play element - just for my leveller builds in order to put formas faster and reach my desired main build. Because after playing this game for so many years playing efficiently and not wasting time when it's not needed is a must in order to avoid burnout. At least for me.

I do use thermal sunder as a sort of main element on some frames, though. Such as:

• Harrow: Obviously, due to how good it pairs with Thurible. My lazyest build, which I nowadays don't use much unless it's a boring grind. I'm usually more inclined to vary my frames and diversify my playstyles. Again, burnout.
• Inaros: Just another iteration of my lazy build, but because I truly find Inaros to be a rather boring frame. In order to play him a bit more I just shoehorned Thermal Sunder on it and it does work well. But it does not increase Inaros' appeal to me very much, sadly.
• Nekros: As a veteran who has tons of resources I don't really need to go all out and slash enemies for extra loot chances. I found it to be much better to just burn enemies to death (since both TS and Desecrate have high range). Pretty much it, and works for me.

I think that's it. No idea why I'd like it on Garuda, but then again I'm not really fond of her. However a player's definition of fun is not necessarily universal. I do use these builds not because I find the game to be boring, but because I want to skip the boring sections as much as I can and spend more time in the fun parts.

Edited July 5, 2023 by (PSN)Hikuro-93

[Traumtulpe]

So you can stand AFK in the middle of the map and spam Thermal Sunder, but you'd deal more damage as Saryn or Mesa.

For comparison, in that video Garuda had 0.6 kills per second. "Good" kills per second is 2 and higher. As I've said, the only reason you'd do this is if you're botting.

[(PSN)FunyFlyBoy]

3 hours ago, Seele said:

The more  Garuda kills the more vicious her attacks become; Garuda gains up to 100% additional damage bonus for her abilities and weapons for each kill or assisted kill.

What was the point in pasting this? To confirm the guy you were responding to is right?

[SneakyErvin]

56 minutes ago, Traumtulpe said:

So you can stand AFK in the middle of the map and spam Thermal Sunder, but you'd deal more damage as Saryn or Mesa.

For comparison, in that video Garuda had 0.6 kills per second. "Good" kills per second is 2 and higher. As I've said, the only reason you'd do this is if you're botting.

Just wanna point out that they arent running survival in the video, so KPM isnt really a metric. Even in survival it would be hard to get an accurate KPM since it is a full group with kill stealing involved.

[(PSN)IdoThea]

Guess I'll go and do this too since it sounds fun. 

I just need to farm another Gauss first.

I really hope they don't nerf this. Warframe should be about power fantasy.

Edited July 5, 2023 by (PSN)IdoThea

[(PSN)Pablogamer585]

I've encountered 0 cases of Thermal Sunder Garuda but it's both easy to explain & understand why it works and can get annoying.

To respond a bit to @Traumtulpe & @(NSW)Royal_Elf_Mika's doubts, there's a couple factors to take into account here, first and most important, energy economy and scalability.

As Traum' probably knows, you've mentioned owning plentiful of arcanes, Molt Reconstruct you suggested precisely, Garuda's energy pool is virtually limitless.
This is important because it allows to cast Thermal Sunder continuously, and this is important on its own because Thermal Sunder deals twice as much damage per cast, and also refreshes the AoE & DoT durations, with exponential infinite scaling, as you keep casting.

Paired with Archon Vitality and Garuda's passive, which does affect the damage of Thermal Sunder indeed, you get effectively 900 damage at 100% strength (since subsumed TS works like 50% Gauss' battery) doubled by Archon Vitality's double heath procs, and then those procs deal +100% damage with Garuda's passive, which is a final multiplier.

Now, adding a few mods here and there, lets say a maximized build for this purpose with Growing Power, P.Continuity, Overextended, Cunning Drift, Stretch, Augur Reach, Transient Fortitude, Archon Vitality, Primed Flow and Streamline, our strength would be at 139% by default, scaling until 224%, with 280% range, for a total of 1680 heat damage per cast, with 33 meters of radius.

In the end, per cast alone, you'd have (virtually) 896% strength with the aforementioned build, and since this goes through walls and covers and area of effect, it beats Saryn and Mesa to it by a mile, whether it is on scaling rate, multi-target capability, or scaling alone, almost undepending of tileset, but much more notoriously on closed ones or those with not much of an open space to cover with Peacemakers.

I imagine this is predominant on Defence missions, but could work on a lot of others, with few exceptions where ad clearing isn't as important, like Cascade.

Compared to Seeking Talons & Dread Mirror, sorry to say Mika as I too do enjoy a lot doing blood orb nukes, it's super fun, Thermal Sunder Garuda is brutally superior, as unlike slash or Miasma + Spores, which has its own room for inconsistency when spores start to decay and you need to find a new vessel to cast them, heat proc's timer is refreshed and amplified with each new application of it, hence why the heat inherit strategy works, and why Thermal Sunder is so potent.

While on lower levels it works because building for strength deals more than enough damage on the cast to wipe enemies, it isn't limited to it, as precisely, with higher duration and continuous upkeep of Thermal Sunder's areas, you raise a quite literal hell.

But again, I've never found a single Thermal Sunder Garuda!
What's more, it was only as of recently I found my first ever Thermal Sunder Titania on a pub match!
Even further, if you go to the Warframe Wiki page for Thermal Sunder, there are complaints about Thermal Sunder Garuda on the very first comment of the article!

[Drachnyn]

Does anyone do that outside of lvl 20 defense missions?

[Tiltskillet]

7 hours ago, Seele said:

This isn't one guy I saw, by the way, it's almost every time I play in public lobbies. Almost every. Like 99%+ of the time.

Haha, what?  It wouldn't surprise me if it's happening a lot in some content, but I don't seen any one frame 50% of the time, let alone one Garuda build 99% of the time.   I might see any Garuda at all one mission in 10...maybe, and that's leaving aside this very specific build.

Where are most of your random pub missions played?

_{^{(Apropos of nothing, but in the Archon showdown on Sunday I was matched up with 3 Inaros players.  I haven't seen 3 of a any specific frame in one mission since the days of Wukong Kzarr spammage.)}}

[(PSN)MegaSilk0]

I figured I would try this build out since it "is enough to overcome steel path enemies" and I'm a big fan of using every meta build I can make. The results were so disappointing on a steel path earth mission that I ended up just using my melee to run through it. If this is your idea of a gamebreaking meta build or whatever, I'm scared of what you think about any frame that's more than starter adjacent.

[(XBOX)RaeOvSunshyn]

2 hours ago, (PSN)MegaSilk0 said:

If this is your idea of a gamebreaking meta build or whatever, I'm scared of what you think about any frame that's more than starter adjacent.

I don't personally feel it's "gamebreaking meta" but if a player ain't able to wipe Steel Path with it, she's doing something wrong. My main complaint -- actually my ONLY complaint -- is, much like when Citrine first dropped, the repetitively obnoxious sound.

[Seele]

5 hours ago, Tiltskillet said:

Haha, what?  It wouldn't surprise me if it's happening a lot in some content, but I don't seen any one frame 50% of the time, let alone one Garuda build 99% of the time.   I might see any Garuda at all one mission in 10...maybe, and that's leaving aside this very specific build.

Where are most of your random pub missions played?

_{^{(Apropos of nothing, but in the Archon showdown on Sunday I was matched up with 3 Inaros players.  I haven't seen 3 of a any specific frame in one mission since the days of Wukong Kzarr spammage.)}}

I primarily play Steel Path Duviri/Circuit, Incursions, and Archon Hunts at this point. Alerts after devstreams.

4 hours ago, (PSN)MegaSilk0 said:

I figured I would try this build out since it "is enough to overcome steel path enemies" and I'm a big fan of using every meta build I can make. The results were so disappointing on a steel path earth mission that I ended up just using my melee to run through it. If this is your idea of a gamebreaking meta build or whatever, I'm scared of what you think about any frame that's more than starter adjacent.

Look at the videos and descriptions of the build above, you were clearly doing something terribly wrong.