Thoughts about Violet, Topaz, and Emerald Shards

[(PSN)Unstar]

When Shard Fusion was teased, I remember threads fretting over how much of an ask it would be to get so many shards and so much bile to get these new and improved fused shards for all of our frames.  And while I may not have been fretting, I was most certainly in the same boat in assuming that the new shards would be something that we would — generally speaking — want to put in our frames.  So now that I've actually looked over what these shards do, all I can do is chuckle.

Now to be clear, I don't think these new shards are trash; there are definitely builds you can use them in!  But I do think that they are niche, similar to the Archon Mods and certain Arcanes, in terms of how conditional their usefulness is.  Only, in the case of an Archon Mods and Arcanes, you can freely add or remove them from any of your 3 builds; but to make use of these new Shards, you have to make a bile-flavored commitment to every build on your frame.  In my opinion, that's a pretty steep ask.

And again, that ask will probably be worth it on a specific handful of frames that innately pair well with one of these shard abilities.  But for most frames, I wonder if there will be much use for these fused Shards.  Personally, I probably won't be making many, and while it's not a big deal in the long run, I minorly regret having purchased the segment right away since it has delayed my experiencing the rest of the Cavia story.

But that's just me.  What are your thoughts on these new shards?

Edited December 16, 2023 by (PSN)Unstar
typo

[sunderthefirmament]

9 minutes ago, (PSN)Unstar said:

Personally, I probably won't be making many, and while it's not a big deal in the long run, I minorly regret having purchased the segment right away since it has delayed my experiencing the rest of the Cavia story.

But that's just me.  What are your thoughts on these new shards?

I feel the same.  I looked over the benefits and decided to wait to even purchase the segment.  I'll probably sink two of the corrosive shards in my Saryn Prime at some point, but I'm in no hurry.  I like having something to Pillage with her, after all.

 

In a way, I'm kind of relieved that these shards are so niche.  It's like when DE introduces another massive batch of arcanes locked behind a hideous grind, and then I realize I don't even want any of them because they can't compete with the OG arcanes.  I may gather a few, but in general they seem safely skippable.

[Kaiga]

Two emeralds are enough to bring corrosive to full strip, I think orange has a better secondary crit bonus than red, but those are the only two straight upgrades I can think of. Everything else is QoL or situational.

The fact that corrosive now full strips is huge. Saryn becomes an ascendant goddess, and high status beam weapons become quite strong, this is a meta shift for sure, particularly in the new content where everything resists viral slash because lol

[Joezone619]

Personally, i think most of them are a waste of time. I am highly disliking the element specific buffs DE has been making lately, all of these new shards are full of them. The only one i would even consider is the violet shard effect that gives energy on health pickups and vise versa. Even then only on citrine, nekros, and oberon, all frames i do not play.

Edited December 16, 2023 by Joezone619

[Armadillidium_vulgare]

They're niche, certainly, but within those niches they are incredibly powerful.

I stuck 2 normal and one Tau emerald on my Citrine, and it absolutely slaps. Full armor strip at max stacks, with 45% extra toxin proc damage is huge. Pairing max strip with viral and toxin procs destroys ANYTHING very, very quickly. I'm considering the Tau Violet for the equilibrium effect, but that'd require dropping Casting Speed or Energy Max, both of which are crucial on her. Hopefully Citrine Prime will pick up some additional max energy.

That said, she's also able to use the +ability damage effects on electric and corrosive to great effect, so with an ability for stripping instead of shards she could pump out a metric ton and a half of toxin damage and slash damage.

But you can see the point, right? They're niche, but within their niches they allow for some very broad experimentation and build craft. And even then, not so niche in some cases, as two greens gives any frame in the game armor strip without having to swap out an ability and build for it with helminth. Instead you can build an AOE status weapon for corrosive and strip everything in a couple of shots. You could even use a Topaz shard to give shield gate while you're stripping armor, for something like Akarius that already has native blast status.

[Waeleto]

Nothing too special to make me actually sacrifice my shards to create them, might try them if we get another way of obtaining them but for now i'll watch from far 

[Zossie]

46 minutes ago, Armadillidium_vulgare said:

But you can see the point, right? They're niche, but within their niches they allow for some very broad experimentation and build craft. And even then, not so niche in some cases, as two greens gives any frame in the game armor strip without having to swap out an ability and build for it with helminth. Instead you can build an AOE status weapon for corrosive and strip everything in a couple of shots. You could even use a Topaz shard to give shield gate while you're stripping armor, for something like Akarius that already has native blast status.

This was what I thought at their initial reveal in the Devstream, but now it seems that some of the afforded benefits can be too broadly applied, rather than niche through specific buildcraft. It feels really strange that 2 Emerald on any Warframe essentially grants them Hydroid's newly reworked passive. Or even as you state, Topaz with Blast can provide to a much smaller degree, Shield Gating in the same vein as Styanax's Rally Point.

Furthermore, there are some reports going around regarding the equivalency of Violet and Topaz Archon Shards' Ability Damage, versus Crimson Shard's Ability Strength. Also, the linked topic is also seeing a discrepancy between the Crimson and Violet Shards' Melee Critical Damage. 

https://forums.warframe.com/topic/1375795-violet-archon-shards-melee-crit-damage-is-a-scam-crimson-archon-shards-melee-crit-damage-is-far-far-better/

For what it's worth, it seems to me that Violet Shard's Melee Crit Damage should have been equivalent to Crimson Shard's while under 500 Max Energy, and conditionally better, when over 500 Max Energy. It makes sense that at a baseline, it should perform as good as its component Crimson Shard, and situationally better as a result of Coalescent Fusing with an Azure Shard.

 

Edited December 16, 2023 by Zossie

[(PSN)Sentiel]

Considering how they are obtained (time gate) and what they cost (loss of the fused shards) they should provide better and stronger benefits or a straight combination of the existing benefits (choose one benefit from each used shard and combine them into one e.g.: +10 Ability Strength from Crimson and +25% Casting Speed from Amber), the latter which of could effectively double the amount of original benefits you can possibly stack.

As for the new benefits, I expected things like Sprint Speed, resistance to stagger and knockdown, ability range increase, energy regen, etc. Actually strong and desirable options.

Instead, they offer far less interesting benefits with limited or niche use, and furthermore, they only offer four options while the original shards each offer five options to choose from. The fused shards should have more not less!