Sad state of support frames

[Passman36]

I really just wanted to sad how its sad that support frames just really don't have a place in this game. Everything is solved by killing which can be done via warframes/weapons. I would love to see thoughtful content designed around having to bring frames such as trinity/oberon/harrow because of the their healing capabilities. Or content for frames like Vauban/frost/gara for there CC and protection. 

I think thoughtful content would be a great way to get frames that are rarely used some additional playtime. I know that it might be hard for DE to do, because of the current state the game is in. Especially with the power creep going up & up & up. I just remember a time where those frames were viable as well.  

[BiancaRoughfin]

Just now, Passman36 said:

trinity/oberon/harrow

Trinity i only see in Eidolon hunts and yet some times theres a Chroma player in the squad to complain about her heals and damage reduction affecting their Vex Armor.

Oberon is another i often only see in Eidolon hunts due to his Chernobyl grass giving teammates Stats Immunity.

As for Harrow, i see him often but people use him mostly for his Crit bonus. His Penance is amazing for Healing but people just prefer playing him for his damage instead so its players fault for not seeing him on a support role.

2 minutes ago, Passman36 said:

Vauban/frost/gara for there CC and protection. 

Vauban i see the whole time, filling the map with his spike grenades, vortex and orbital strike at times.

Frost iv seen more often tho mostly because people have been exploring his new augment for damage potential, his Snowglobe is just too weak for end-game defense missions so it should get a buff.

Gara is another i see the whole time but its just people spamming her Mass Vitrify and shattering it. Her walls are another skill in need of a buff. Perhaps DE could tone down its damage potential and increase its defense.

[AsffluffyZ]

Mostly because supports frame are just that. They support others and perform best in helping teammates through harder content and premade squads. 

Eidolon being an example.

[Passman36]

5 minutes ago, AsffluffyZ said:

Mostly because supports frame are just that. They support others and perform best in helping teammates through harder content and premade squads. 

Eidolon being an example.

I guess thats my point. Eidolons are the only content that has a support role. No other content has a need for them Thats why i think its more of a content design problem. Where meaningful content is not being thoughtout to take advantage of support frames. If thats the case and they wont design content for them to flourish why create them in the first place? 

And TBH how much longer will Eidolon hunts be relevant. Now that you can go roll for Arcanes on deimos? 

[AsffluffyZ]

I think DE are taking a step in the direction for improving the place for supports with the revive limiter in certain missions like arbi or archon hunts because having an Oberon with the the renewal augment can help act as a cushion if you get unlucky. While the addition to more ways to heal and get energy hurt supports, I wouldn't trade the current state of the game for needed supports mainly because of how it helps non-supports flourish more. So either content changes or supports get reworks to make them independent yet powerful supports like citrine or wisp.

[DarkSkysz]

2 hours ago, BiancaRoughfin said:

Perhaps DE could tone down its damage potential and increase its defense.

Why? Don't you think its better to shatter the wall and kill everything around?

 

Also, I think its good to point out DAMAGE support frames are in demand. Hp healing frames are bottom of the pit right now.

I rather have a wisp in my team than trinity. There is nothing trinity can do that I can't already do by myself using arcanes. While wisp have that huge fire rate buff, which boost dmg by a lot plus breach surge.

Edited January 6 by DarkSkysz

[(PSN)Sentiel]

Support frames are very useful yet they are indeed in a poor state not because we can easily kill everything with our weapons but because we all mod our frames to be self sufficient, with a lot of frames who don't need support at all, and also because you don't see the benefits you provide to the team. Furthermore, if there is a frame we cannot make self sufficient, we just don't play it at all instead of relying on support from our team.

 

You can't provide much support to frames like Wukong, Revenant, and other nearly immortal frames.

There are frames which don't work together at all, so they can't provide any support to each other. Imagine you take Hyldrin expecting to help your team by providing shields and your end up with Inaros, Nidus, and Kullervo. That said, Hyldrin won't have much use for the healing Nidus and Inaros provide either.

 

Even worse issue are cases where your support actually has a negative impact on your allies. Chroma might not appreciate damage reduction from Gara, Nezha, or Citrine. Wisp can easily ruin your ammo economy. Volt's Speed seems generally disliked, at least here, because it makes it difficult to navigate the maps. Styanax won't appreciate turning invisible by Ash, and so on.

 

Lastly, except for very vague and inaccurate stats like how much energy/health you recovered, which do not take into the account going over the limit of what a frame can receive and doesn't work for all abilities, you don't see anything else, like how many status effects have you prevented, how much damage have you reduced, how much shields have you provided, etc. So, even though you can be incredibly helpful, the game doesn't tell you about it in any way. This makes you feel redundant to your team.

[Famecans]

Great topic, I think things get complicated because Warframe needs to be played solo. The solution to this problem is to place reward multipliers on missions that actually require team activity, so the solo casual player can farm the same resource as team players but team player have more profit.

offtopic:
we need a support necramech, launching new mods or increasing necramech numbers is the worst way to improve them, the laboratory missions show us that necramechs are perfectly balanced in terms of health and damage. (some animations need to be smoothed out)

[KitMeHarder]

9 hours ago, Passman36 said:

I would love to see thoughtful content designed around having to bring frames such as trinity/oberon/harrow because of the their healing capabilities.

There are two problems with support frames.

• First is that they have no consequence in random matchmaking, unless they are near completely fool proof (Wisp). When I play with a Trinity for example, I expect them to play her about as well as I would. But most Trinity's do not have anywhere near 100% uptime on her Blessing DR, don't have enough range/cast EV frequently enough, etc... So I'm conditioned to just not care if a support frame is in the squad or not. If they support me a bit, then great. But mentally I'm prepared to be 100% self sufficient.
•  
• Secondly, support is at large not a fun role... and this is a PvE game. IMO it's a much better goal to have all/most supports also boost DPS/have damaging abilities themselves (Styanax, Wisp), then to force modes that require a Trinity (largely impossible anyway at in terms of all levels of play).

Quote

Or content for frames like Vauban/frost/gara for there CC and protection.

This just creates boring slog content more often than not IMO. Stuff like Mirror Defence and the Law of Retribution. CC is a good complement to killing, but on it's own it just makes the game a "timer refresh clicker" minigame.

Edited January 6 by KitMeHarder

[sunderthefirmament]

6 hours ago, DarkSkysz said:

Hp healing frames are bottom of the pit right now.

 

Agreed.

 

DE keeps pushing us into content where gating, invisibility, or excessive DR are the only valid survivability options.  My Oberon with decent armor got one-tapped by the Effervo bounty rank 4 or 5 boss, not even steel path or 60 eyes version, once my shields went down.  I've got 5 armor shards in him and he had the grass armor boost.  I'm no Oberon pro.  His build is umbral and kind of all over, so I could probably focus it more.  My point is that HP healing is kind of useless for most frames when we get to a certain point in level scaling or difficulty.  And that difficulty threshold is where DE keeps pushing us with new content.

 

I don't think I want game modes where I'm dependent upon others.  When people clamor for raids and the holy trinity archetypes (DPS, healer, tank), I shudder.  I don't want to depend on others in this game.  I don't want to have to maintain a clan or spend time in recruit chat.  It's just not for me.  So I like that support in this game kind of functions like support in Diablo.  All characters/frames are capable of DPS.

 

I do think DE should examine certain support frames and make changes as needed though.  Most don't need massive reworks.  Trinity would be fine with doubled base duration on her 3 and 4, along with animation changes for her casting so she's not constantly locked in place.  But that's just one example.

[rawr1254]

Kinda like how when Hildryn came out she was supposed to give everyone gating (I think just before a universal gating?), We need support frames to do the same sort of benefit but for health. Health gets decimated at higher lvls and any amount of DR you put on youre gonna go down at some point no matter what. So support frames should possibly change away from "damage reduction" abilities and instead to "damage capping" abilities.

And when I say damage cap I mean damage to health cant exceed what the ability reduces the damage to, but this also only applies to health damage. So say trinitys blessing turns into instead of 75% dmg reduction it would become say a max capping of 100 damage/hit to health but that also means for example the enemy does 5000 damage but you have a 90% damage reduction too, it still caps at that 100 damage regardless of damage reduction abilities. This in theory should make healing abilities matter too. And you might say "that sounds overpowered", but it gives a reason to see support frames outside of specific situations and should make health a bit more relevant. It also might make having vitality on frames more relevant too.

 

And all this is just cause I dont see damage scaling fixed any time soon.

Edited January 7 by rawr1254

[CrownOfShadows]

Well, this topic of supports gets complicated fast because it relates to a lot of other things like survivability, enemies, design philosophy, end game, cooperative play, etc.

It also kinda depends on how you define a support, and it kinda depends too on whether it's more of a problem with the meta or with a frame's design

1. Wisp & Citrine are top-of-the-line supports that are amazing for any team comp, but are they true supports or are they rather 'juicers' that just amp dmg?
2. Oberon and Trinity and Harrow no longer shine and struggle to find any meaning, but are much closer to classic supports where their kits don't actually do damage, but they are all deeply outdated too - if they were all modernized they might end up looking more like Wisp.
3. TONS of frames can actually help others. Anyone with pillage, anyone with nourish. Mirage can use her eclipse augment (or anyone who has it subsumed) to theoretically provide DR on par with Citrine (but not in actuality). Nezha can cast his halo on allies, Styanax is some kind of op overgaurd god that basically makes the team invulnerable. So you can have a frame that might not naturally be a 'support' coincidentally fulfilling that role, or they could even have a niche build that really is support focused. With helminth, any frame can fit into a support role really.

While WF doesn't fit the archetype of dps-tank-healer I think there is still potential for supports to shine more. I see this when level capping the Circuit - the danger becomes enough that people finally need to huddle near their protectors - unless they are so strong that they don't. I think creating content that starts to test the limits of frames is the first step towards bringing supports into the limelight more.... but unfortunately because everyone just goes from surviving pretty well to insta-death we would also need bigger health pools so that there's more room for healing before death, but unfortunately because of our DR stacking more health creates problems with making us unkillable and then we're back to not needing supports, so that means we have to change how our DR stacking works, so that means we have to refactor enemy scaling....

Sigh, idk it's a very complicated problem.

[Iedarus]

I do agree with the posts above, sadly. Though Harrow is still an amazing frame to have because of how powerful his offensive buffs are, I mean, who doesn't want their guns to hit the crit cap? Ironically, if we really want to play supports that are truly invaluable, we should play Hydroid or Nekros; extra drop chance in a looter shooter? Yes please.

[PlatypusWarriorX]

I know this post is a little older but just my two cents.

Support is my favorite role to play in any game. I can’t get enough of buffing and protecting my allies, to the point where I almost don’t even care if said allies do something stupid. But I agree that Warframe’s style and gameplay loop don’t suit the role all that well. Plus, with the powercreep it’s now possible to fight at higher levels than ever before, levels that I don’t believe some older frames were ever expected to touch. Support has its place in normal content, but these days the late-game meta is so extreme that armor, healing and flat DR just doesn’t hold up anymore.

Edited March 12 by PlatypusWarriorX

[Venefik]

 It doesn't help that the ones we have don't see a good polish in ages in order to keep up with the more modern frames.

 Not to mention what these frames are supposed to compete with: give Zephyr Silence and you have a support that makes enemy gunfire 99% non-existent, and that can skyrocket dps by grouping enemies up and increasing damage dealt by a lot, all the while ccing most enemies and blocking their active abilities, one of the few things that would ignore her shield.

 Either DE makes old frames smoother to play and give them a proper glow up, or they'll never be anything more than arcane farmers, with the ocasional exception (Oberon would be the vitus farmer lol).
 If I make a post saying "Trinity's WoL should be better at preventing CC and status and her Blessing DR cap should be 95%", I'm sure quite a few people would say its too much. But so is invisibility (aka invincibility) which most of the times also boosts melee damage; so is Turbulence existing in a beast of a DPS frame; so is Mesmer Skin; and these three things have linear scaling, whereas DR does not.

 Support and guardian frames will never leave their niche usages as long as DPS frames can support as well as if not better than them.