Some Polish for Kullervo's rough edges

[Raikh]

Kullervo is a Warframe that has really grown on me as a melee focussed player and is probably my favorite Warframe right now. I think he has a really well-rounded kit, so much so that subsuming any ability makes for a difficult decision and I consider him to be a very powerful Warframe.
So my feedback in this regard isn't aimed at making him more powerful. I think he has plenty of power. But I have encountered some rough edges and partly frustrating aspects of his abilities that I do not think need to be there and polishing some aspects of his abilities up would benefit how he plays out and make some parts of his kit more consistent.

TL;DR at the bottom since this turned out to be quite long.

Passive:
No complaints here. If one thing I wish his Passive was an Exilus Mod for Melees so I can enjoy a hybrid Light-Heavy Melee Playstyle on more Warframes and Tennokai isn't quite the same.
It single-handedly solves a long-standing issue where Hybrid Melee builds haven't been quite worth it because you have to make too many compromises in the modding department to make Heavy and Light attacks co-exist. That alone makes him enhance melee gameplay significantly before I even get to his abilities.

Wrathful Advance:

The envy of Ash players. Both an absolutely ludicrous Buff to Melee damage and great mobility tool at the same time. Amazing as this ability is, it is troubled by some functionality issues, which can make for a bit of jarring experience from time to time.

The free Teleport:
The free teleport (default input Hold) likes to get stuck on all kinds of things that are not actually obstacles in your way if your were to jsut bullet jump into the very same directzion. Railings, decorations on walls or ceilings, narrow pathways and basically any door with the ability to close, even if its currently open. Sometimes you do not even end up directly in front of whats "stopping" you and you merely teleport on the spot. I'd reckon these have to do with the detection of there being a path and destination your Warframe can move along and exist in but it might be a bit overzealous for a lack of a better word. Would love the requirements along which paths you can teleport to be loosened up a little so he isn't getting stuck on any little corner when just regularly bullet jumping along that way would be perfectly possible.
Another minor thing is that while I'm perfectly happy with doing the Heavy attack when free teleporting on top of an enemy its a bit frustrating when sometimes the teleport doesn't happen at all if the target can't be the target of Wrathful Assault, rather than atleast bringing me right in front of the target anyway since my input was the free teleport.

The Teleport Heavy:
(Default input Press) Subject to a few bugs, specific to some weapons or weapons with unique heavy attacks. Just at the top of my head Whip, Glaive and Syam Heavy Attacks triggered via Wrathful Advance like to violently spin your camera, which ranges anyhwere from a mild annoyance to being disorienting.
And while the free teleport version seemingly goes a bit overboard trying to protect you from going out of bounds, the targeted version had me falling through the floor a number of times. Particularly on uneven ground, likes stairs, when teleport on to a target with a Heavy Attack.
 

Recompense:

His main defense/means of survival. I consider Overguard to be a very powerful form of defense, and I'm overall quite happy with it, but there are some cases where he goes from being almost too convenient to having too much trouble to stay alive. Overguard isn't affected by dmg reductions of any kind. So even a 30-40k Overguard bar can be deceptively fragile. So when facing particularly damaging enemies his Overguard being limited to 10k x Power Strength quite quickly leads to a situation where its a fairly binary oneshot protection via the 0.5s gating mechanic. Especially since you need a minimum of ~3 Recompense Casts with enough enemies around to even reach his Overguard cap.

For one it eludes me how Warframe Augments like Icy Avalanche come with a higher Overguard cap than Kullervo who has an entire ability dedicated to it. While those Augments take longer to stack it up, they are also applying to your team mates and are at the end of a day not full abilities but extensions of an already functional ability.

Recompense "immune" Bosses
Secondly, there are bosses like The Fragemented One which cannot be hit by the daggers of Recompense and thus Kullervo can't generate any Overguard when its the only available enemy. This has been insanely frustrating as Kullervo doesn't even have any shields for some innate protection. So all you have for some fights is the Overguard you start with entering the fight w/o a chance to replenish w/o addtional enemies coming from somewhere. His Overguard generation is already severely diminished against single targets, so I don't see why it is needed that there are enemies where he literally can't generate his means of survival on.
And I can only laugh at the concept of "ability immune" Bosses when I see an Octavia Mallet shredding them to pieces anyway, so it can't be that hard to make an exception for an ability that isn't meant to do or help with doing damage.

The short 0.5s gate and the weird relation of Overguard with his high Health and Armor
As a Warframe w/o Shields, the 0.5s Overguard Gating is quite short, sometimes too short to react and save yourself. He has among the highest base Health and Armor but him being about Overguard heavily disincentivizes building on these Stats as they mean virtually nothing as long as Overguard is active. if one thing building for Health Tanking likely makes you end up with less Power Strength on a build and thus a weaker Overguard. And if you flip it and subsumed Recompense away you just gave away a oneshot protection, status and CC immunity and now need to commit more Mod slots to just surviability with no real benefits.
I'd honestly rather see him have some shields as a second layer of protection, since the Overguard gate is so very short. Or let him have a longer Overguard gate, possibly scaling with Health, or have some other interaction with it so his Base Stats actually mean something, rather than being a straight negative compared to just having any amount of shields.

Collective Curse:

Collective Curse is a really powerful AoE ability. As such it has its necessary restrictions. But sometimes this ability is too difficult to make work in an efficient manner. I do not mind the cone as it rewards positioning. But on some maps, especially older ones it just misses enemies so easily. In open spaces or corridors this ability works phenomenaly. Anything beyond that it starts to become sketchy fairly quickly. Any slight elevations or minimal obstacles like to block the ability from affecting enemies despite these enemies being both in the visual effect of the ability and in line of sight of the player. Funnily enough sometimes enemies that clearly weren't visible for me got affected but some I could see werent, so it feels pretty inconsistent and spending 75 energy on something where I don't really know if it does what I want it to do this time around just because its not empty space I'm fighting in is not a great experience.

Maybe this is more of an augment case, that may change how this abilitiy operates or gives it some spreading properties, but I'd like if this ability was a bit more lenient. I get that it just going through walls would be silly but small railings, boxes, and moderate elevations like balcony's and similar which I have cleary view on and the effect of the ability clearly travels through shouldn't stop this ability's effect so easily, so that it can actually be used effectively in a more complex environment if you position yourself appropriately.

Storm of Ukko:

Originally I thought this would a so-so ability. Turned out I was wrong. It does respectable damage, adds to the combo which is nice if you want to use Heavies more aggressively and also features neat synergy with his Collective Curse. But I only really got to appreciate this ability after building for a ton of range. 10 meters Base range for this kind fo ability is just a wee bit too small. It really feels like you have to get 200%+ Range to make this ability feel good and thats a little restrictive if you ask me. I don't need this to be 20 meters base range, but even something like 12m would already help make this ability feel good at more moderate levels of range.
I guess there is some worry that this ability with too large of radius trivializes lower level content too much, but at the the same time there are abilities that already do this with a lot more base range.

I'm looking forward to seeing how his upcoming Storm of Ukko augment works out for this and if this might already help with this minor issue, but I still wanted to include this point because I can't quite look into the future.

Conclusion

This turned out a lot longer than I initially thought it would. I hope it doesn't make a too negative impression because I really do like Kullerov and his kit. I merely wanted to take the space to properly explain these points that are ultimately not grave issues but rather rough edges that are about consistency and functionality and not about power or fundamentally changing or reworking an overall incredibly well designed Warframe.
He certainly isn't among the needy for changes, but at the same time I hope some polish and QoL could slip in along the way to make the experience just a little better.

TL;DR for what I'd like to see:

- Wrathful Advance Free Teleport should be more lenient to not get you stuck on map decorations like railings or wall/ceiling ornamentations, narrow corridors or open tile doors
- Fix camera spinning bug on Teleport Heavy Attacks on certain weapons (e.g. Whips, Glaives, Syam)
- Make Recompense Overguard generation work on all Bosses/enemies so he isn't left w/o any defense because a Boss is "immune" to being directly targeted by abilities.
- Either increase Overguard gate duration for him or create synergy between his Overguard and high Health/Armor Base Stats so they are not a downside over just having shields
- Make Collective Curse more consistent in complex terrain and elevations as long as its in line of sight/the effect visually travels through the environment
- Slightly increase the base radius of Storm of Ukko, so this ability feels more meaningful at moderate Range levels and doesn't require 200%+ Range builds to feel good (Might be remedied by the upcoming augment, to be seen)
 

 

Edited March 4 by Raikh

[(PSN)MYKK678]

As long as you're happy with adjustments being looked at no earlier than 2028 then yeah, cool. In the meantime there's at least a Top 10 right now of Warframes in dire need of updating/reworks and Kullervo wouldn't even come close to being on that list.

[Raikh]

10 minutes ago, (PSN)MYKK678 said:

As long as you're happy with adjustments being looked at no earlier than 2028 then yeah, cool. In the meantime there's at least a Top 10 right now of Warframes in dire need of updating/reworks and Kullervo wouldn't even come close to being on that list.

As I stated myself, he surely isn't a priority but this also isn't a rework. I'd hope that atleast eventually this game could reach a point where some minor tuning and QoL adjustments could find their way into the game regularly w/o needing some glacial speed revisit angle to get anything changed.

[Tiltskillet]

I'm all for Wrathful Advance's mobility and targeting being cleaned up.  I have mixed feelings at best about all the other proposed changes. 

2 hours ago, Raikh said:

Overguard isn't affected by dmg reductions of any kind.

This isn't exactly true, last I checked.  It's affected by dodge mitigation, by the friendly Ancient Healer aura, and indirectly by Puncture's weakness debuff on enemies.  Also by Rolling Guard and Protective Dash--I wouldn't consider invulns "damage reductions" exactly, but a lot of people would.

Since Ancient Healer worked, there may be similar things that do, but I know Eclipse does not.  Airborne DR and weapon blocking also didn't work.  There are a lot of things I haven't tested.

[Raikh]

1 minute ago, Tiltskillet said:

This isn't exactly true, last I checked.  It's affected by dodge mitigation, by the friendly Ancient Healer aura, and indirectly by Puncture's weakness debuff on enemies.  Also by Rolling Guard and Protective Dash--I wouldn't consider invulns "damage reductions" exactly, but a lot of people would.

Haven't checked Ancient Healers since I absolutely do not like the huddle up next to a Specter playstyle. Puncture is a debuff on an enemy, bit of a different story. And well immunity is just that, it doesn't make your Overguard more valuable.

Point is that you can't enhance Overguards value with building choices beyond Power Strength on Kullervo. Building for Armor or Health doesn't do anything, Adaptation doesn't do anything etc.
So how good Overguard is at keeping you alive is much more grounded in the amount you are allowed to have at base and eventually just in the gating. So up to a certain point his Overguard absolutely trivializes survivability and as you go up you eventually reach a point where its mostly a 0.5s gate. Rhino gets around this by having scaling based on dmg taken and also has a shield for shield gating beyond that, For Styanax and Frost its an Augment that just adds to what they already have, including shield gating. For Kullervo its all he has, he can't scale it like Rhino and he can't get a safety net in shield gating either. Meanwhile his High Base Health and Armor go unutilized because they do not mesh with Overguard.
 

[Tiltskillet]

1 minute ago, Raikh said:

Haven't checked Ancient Healers since I absolutely do not like the huddle up next to a Specter playstyle. Puncture is a debuff on an enemy, bit of a different story. And well immunity is just that, it doesn't make your Overguard more valuable.

Just adding some information in case you didn't know or somebody reading "...isn't affected by dmg reductions of any kind" was going to take that literally.

5 minutes ago, Raikh said:

So how good Overguard is at keeping you alive is much more grounded in the amount you are allowed to have at base and eventually just in the gating. So up to a certain point his Overguard absolutely trivializes survivability and as you go up you eventually reach a point where its mostly a 0.5s gate. Rhino gets around this by having scaling based on dmg taken and also has a shield for shield gating beyond that,

It's true, and I would enjoy it if Recompense points and cap did scale with armor, for instance.  I just think it and Kullervo  are quite strong already, and any buffs there would probably need to come with some rebalancing elsewhere.   I feel the same way about your other proposals, other than the WA mobility fixes.

And I don't mind some nerfs if the overall package is more interesting.  It just seems like a lot of effort to go to for a frame that's really good and a ton of fun already, when there are so many I wouldn't say that about.

[Raikh]

4 minutes ago, Tiltskillet said:

Just adding some information in case you didn't know or somebody reading "...isn't affected by dmg reductions of any kind" was going to take that literally.

Fair. Probably could've used a slightly better wording.

5 minutes ago, Tiltskillet said:

It's true, and I would enjoy it if Recompense points and cap did scale with armor, for instance.  I just think it and Kullervo  are quite strong already, and any buffs there would probably need to come with some rebalancing elsewhere.   I feel the same way about your other proposals, other than the WA mobility fixes.

Oh, I absolutely get that. There are plenty of Warframes that could use a much more significant fresh paint of coat and attention. I just find it sad to think that minor tweaks and some possible oversights can't be adressed timely just because a frame is already strong or that any minor attention needs to be shared with the big reworks. And I decided that I just wanted to put my feedback out and see how it goes.
I also don't think what I mentioned would require rebalancing. Collective Curse maybe? But particularly for the Recompense related points I'd merely like to see his survivability curve smoothed out because most Warframes do not have such a steep drop-off into trouble (mostly thanks to shield gating) and possibly use the untouched potenital of his Base Stats for that.

[ZantenZan]

I agree completely that Recompense not targeting bosses is a huge pain in the butt, especially because the ability already has a built-in limitation when too few enemies are in range, i.e. the time it takes from the daggers to leave Kullervo to the time any remaining return rather aggressively to him. Spamming Recompense isn't a problem when you have thick enough mobs to land all the daggers, but if there's just one or two aggressive ones I've had what Overguard I get blasted away almost immediately, at which point the remaining daggers stab me in the unguarded kidneys. Ironically my build's survivability and strength literally improve the more mobs I have to deal with. 

Now, I don't mind this in and of itself- it honestly makes Steel Path Mot runs really fun because I feel like I'm on a knife's edge half the time- but if you can't target certain enemies in the game at all, that leaves him pretty screwed.

I've mostly stopped trying to use Wrathful Advance for its teleport lately, (feels too finicky) and only use it for its teleporting heavy attack when launching the first strike against something like a Steel Path Rogue Voidrig or similarly meaty foe. Otherwise I just aim more towards the ground so I do a quick 'hop' and gain the Critical Chance buff on a high Ability Duration. Even the Heavy Attack component is hit or miss sometimes, as I'll get 'Enemy Obscured' error messages when targeting enemies directly in front of me on flat ground, which is part of why I've mostly stopped using that part. (Thank God we can reverse the tap/hold button effect for specific Warframes.) 

I did like using Collective Curse before I replaced it with something else, but I found that as you said the targeting can be a bit finicky. Being able to hold the button to see the cone of effect's coverage or highlight enemies in range would be a nice feature so we can make little adjustments to our positioning before letting it fly. When I used it, I got around the problem by running a high Efficiency build and spamming it three times in slightly different directions. :P

That being said, I've been using him nowadays for a Dual Ichor Incarnon build and I loooove it. :D

[TheCleverJoker]

The way the teleport seems to work right now is a projection of the character model towards the target and stops upon hitting something, if they changed it that could lead to other issues or be too complicated for the game to calculate. However they could code it so that it checks to see if a "player navigable" line is possible with the projection, how complicated that is to calculate idk but they cant really change the size of the character projection or just project a sphere with moderate dimensions. If they change the projection size that could lead to us being able to get out of bounds in places they never thought we'd be able to get to.

Edited March 1 by TheCleverJoker

[quxier]

On 2024-02-25 at 12:28 AM, (PSN)MYKK678 said:

As long as you're happy with adjustments being looked at no earlier than 2028 then yeah, cool. In the meantime there's at least a Top 10 right now of Warframes in dire need of updating/reworks and Kullervo wouldn't even come close to being on that list.

2-4 + passive is ok. Maybe it has some issues but I've not seen them.

However 1st is not great as OP mentioned.

On 2024-02-24 at 11:11 PM, Raikh said:

he free teleport (default input Hold) likes to get stuck on all kinds of things

Ash (with enemeis) can freely teleport. Kullervo for some reason cannot.

[Tiltskillet]

3 minutes ago, quxier said:

Ash (with enemeis) can freely teleport. Kullervo for some reason cannot.

Teleport and Switch Teleport get hung up too.  Definitely much more rarely than WA though,

[Raikh]

On 2024-02-25 at 3:25 AM, ZantenZan said:

Now, I don't mind this in and of itself- it honestly makes Steel Path Mot runs really fun because I feel like I'm on a knife's edge half the time- but if you can't target certain enemies in the game at all, that leaves him pretty screwed.

Surviving should eventually become a thrill. I just think that 0.5s is a tad too short soemtimes. Partially just because I've had it happen fairly frequently that the sound indicator for Overguard breaking is missing, which just makes it all the more difficult to react in-time. Its also just as you say with few enemies around you not only get less Overguard but you can't spam cast Recompense making you all the more vulnerable. In itself I think thats fine, just the extreme cases of it not working at all or sometimes it not allowing you to react timely is whats bothering me.

On 2024-02-25 at 3:25 AM, ZantenZan said:

I did like using Collective Curse before I replaced it with something else, but I found that as you said the targeting can be a bit finicky.

I originally toyed around with subsuming it, but lately I've been subsuming Storm of Ukko, primarily for trying to go deeper into Strength and dropping Overextended. Storm of Ukko just feels a little bit too small w/o committing to 200%+ Range and in the environments where more Strength heavy builds are useful Storm of Ukko's dmg tends to matter less. Having a bit less Range also makes Wrathful Assaults Teleport more wieldable. Gotta see if the upcoming augment makes me switch that around again.
Hasn't really changed though that I scarcely find Collective Curse rewarding enough to use.

On 2024-03-01 at 7:44 AM, TheCleverJoker said:

The way the teleport seems to work right now is a projection of the character model towards the target and stops upon hitting something, if they changed it that could lead to other issues or be too complicated for the game to calculate.

Thats certainly in-line with how I've been experiencing it and I've been wondering if its mostly due to trouble of getting stuck or falling through the map (which has happened to me a number of times anyway) if it doesn't account for the full standing model. I wonder if it could account for a position you could bullet jump to, like using a projectile of sorts in the shape and size of a bullet jumping or maybe coruching Kullervo to calculate it.

On 2024-03-02 at 2:00 AM, Tiltskillet said:

Teleport and Switch Teleport get hung up too.  Definitely much more rarely than WA though,

I definitely can't remember encountering issues like with Wrathful Assault with Ash's Teleport anywhere close to as often. I also remember a few cases where the Free Teleport of WA didn't work but then pointing it an enemy right next to my originally intended teleporting location for the Heavy Attack did work. My best guess is that its easier or more reliable to make teleports work if the target is an enemy.

[Tiltskillet]

15 minutes ago, Raikh said:

I definitely can't remember encountering issues like with Wrathful Assault with Ash's Teleport anywhere close to as often.

Oh definitely.  Although maybe it used to have more problems, especially with Fatal Tele.  I couldn't replicate this in the Sim yesterday though, so maybe it's cleaned up 

Switch Tele I use a lot, and it does still fizzle occasionally.

WA OTOH I hit 2 times just by habit, because I'm trained to expect the first one to fail.  It's not nearly that bad in reality, but it's bad enough.

[ZantenZan]

5 minutes ago, Raikh said:

Surviving should eventually become a thrill. I just think that 0.5s is a tad too short soemtimes. Partially just because I've had it happen fairly frequently that the sound indicator for Overguard breaking is missing, which just makes it all the more difficult to react in-time. Its also just as you say with few enemies around you not only get less Overguard but you can't spam cast Recompense making you all the more vulnerable. In itself I think thats fine, just the extreme cases of it not working at all or sometimes it not allowing you to react timely is whats bothering me.

I originally toyed around with subsuming it, but lately I've been subsuming Storm of Ukko, primarily for trying to go deeper into Strength and dropping Overextended. Storm of Ukko just feels a little bit too small w/o committing to 200%+ Range and in the environments where more Strength heavy builds are useful Storm of Ukko's dmg tends to matter less. Having a bit less Range also makes Wrathful Assaults Teleport more wieldable. Gotta see if the upcoming augment makes me switch that around again.
Hasn't really changed though that I scarcely find Collective Curse rewarding enough to use.

Thats certainly in-line with how I've been experiencing it and I've been wondering if its mostly due to trouble of getting stuck or falling through the map (which has happened to me a number of times anyway) if it doesn't account for the full standing model. I wonder if it could account for a position you could bullet jump to, like using a projectile of sorts in the shape and size of a bullet jumping or maybe coruching Kullervo to calculate it.

I definitely can't remember encountering issues like with Wrathful Assault with Ash's Teleport anywhere close to as often. I also remember a few cases where the Free Teleport of WA didn't work but then pointing it an enemy right next to my originally intended teleporting location for the Heavy Attack did work. My best guess is that its easier or more reliable to make teleports work if the target is an enemy.

Yeah, I was initially swapping out Storm of Ukko for awhile, the reason I changed my mind was because I realized that while that ability didn't offer much coverage without Range buffs, it did have some fringe use for maintaining a melee combo meter. I already use Primary and Secondary Dexterity Arcanes to buff my combo duration, but if I was running a mission that relied on changing locations- Mobile Defense, for example- dropping it in the midst of a crowd while in transit would give me some extra breathing room. Granted, emphasis on fringe usage, because I could also squeeze off a hastily aimed shot with Rauta to refresh the counter as well. If I'm in a narrow-corridor kinda map, it can be useful to plonk it down at a doorway to deal with some mobs while I focus elsewhere.

With Collective Curse, it wasn't just that my build lessened the range, but also that I was using a maxed Melee Influence arcane on my Dual Ichor Incarnon with a pretty reliable trigger rate. So I would regularly start dishing out all Status Effect damage from my melee strikes to all enemies within a 20-meter radius, omnidirectionally. A one-hit KO to ten enemies actually got in the way of that, because as far as I could tell Collective Curse only shares damage across ten enemies, rather than sharing status procs. It also wouldn't trigger Dual Ichor Incarnon's damaging fields on mobs killed by the Curse's damage sharing. Even though I could dish out much higher total damage numbers using a Crit-focused Collective Curse build, a lot of that damage would be ridiculous amounts of overkill to the tune of tens of millions or even hundreds of millions. My current build- which, between my Shards, my Warframe and my weapon relies both on high Status and high Crit- doesn't pump out the same amount of raw damage, but I find it burns through mobs much, much quicker.

[Raikh]

22 hours ago, Tiltskillet said:

Oh definitely.  Although maybe it used to have more problems, especially with Fatal Tele.  I couldn't replicate this in the Sim yesterday though, so maybe it's cleaned up 

Especially if its been improving over time it may also have had to do with the Finisher aspect of it for Ash, since Finishers have been their own can of worms for the longest time aswell. I have played Ash in the past but I wouldn't say to the extent where I'd be confident in knowing why Teleport sometimes didnt work as desired.

22 hours ago, ZantenZan said:

it did have some fringe use for maintaining a melee combo meter.

Thats definitely a pretty neat part of it. I tend to be on Naramon and in that case it only helps with the initial combo ramp as decay, especially with Dexterity Arcanes, isn't much of a concern. But if I went with a different Focus School it would become much more attractive just for the combo again. Its a shame that we can't subsume the same ability over 2 different ones on a Warframe. If that was possible I'd definitely keep a loadout for both Storm and Collective Curse around with the same general setup around it.

23 hours ago, ZantenZan said:

Collective Curse only shares damage across ten enemies, rather than sharing status procs.

Yup, Collective Curse shares the damage occurring but doesn't replicate the hits and any Statuses, Debuffs or other effects involved. It also counts as ability damage and is true damage, thus it doesn't apply Status and doesn't trigger any Melee related interactions. So any setups relying or benefitting from according interactions are not the best friends with Collective Curse. And with Melee Influence around thats definitely also something to consider.

23 hours ago, ZantenZan said:

Even though I could dish out much higher total damage numbers using a Crit-focused Collective Curse build, a lot of that damage would be ridiculous amounts of overkill to the tune of tens of millions or even hundreds of millions. My current build- which, between my Shards, my Warframe and my weapon relies both on high Status and high Crit- doesn't pump out the same amount of raw damage, but I find it burns through mobs much, much quicker.

I've gotten similar results. Sure, if its a larg eopen space and you just need to throw Collective Curse into a room, its super effective. But with how fidgety it is in more complex terrain you're often wasting your time and energy using it as you can just mow things down quicker just swinging your weapon. And given that its not exactly cheap at 75 energy, having to use it less also means you can be more aggressive with other things, which in turn never makes damage a concern.

The more I think about it, the more I just hope it eventually gets an augment that makes it more practical/convenient or lets it flow better into general Melee gameplay. Garuda's Blending Talons come to mind or maybe even a propagation effect like Sevagoths Shadow Haze or something similar to how Dagaths Doom spreads via Wyrd Scythes.

[ZantenZan]

2 hours ago, Raikh said:

Thats definitely a pretty neat part of it. I tend to be on Naramon and in that case it only helps with the initial combo ramp as decay, especially with Dexterity Arcanes, isn't much of a concern. But if I went with a different Focus School it would become much more attractive just for the combo again. Its a shame that we can't subsume the same ability over 2 different ones on a Warframe. If that was possible I'd definitely keep a loadout for both Storm and Collective Curse around with the same general setup around it.

 

I'm sure you've already looked over it, but just in case you haven't I would highly recommend trying Rauta specced for multishot, fire rate, magazine size, etc rather than damage in any build where the majority of your damage is going to come from Kullervo's melee anyway. I initially dismissed it, but I find it's one of the quickest ways to build combo count from nil to 12x, to say nothing of maintaining that combo count if even one of the shotgun pellets tags a distant enemy. I still used the Dexterity Arcanes to more easily maintain the combo, as I found it waaay too stressful without it, but the quick combo build-up would let me build to maximum damage output very quickly on the back of only a couple Steel Path enemies. Also found it very useful when I was relying more on the 'teleporting heavy attack' part of 1 a lot, as it would only take a couple of well-placed shots to restore the combo I'd spent on the heavy attack and keep my damage output at its peak.

2 hours ago, Raikh said:

Yup, Collective Curse shares the damage occurring but doesn't replicate the hits and any Statuses, Debuffs or other effects involved. It also counts as ability damage and is true damage, thus it doesn't apply Status and doesn't trigger any Melee related interactions. So any setups relying or benefitting from according interactions are not the best friends with Collective Curse. And with Melee Influence around thats definitely also something to consider.

I've gotten similar results. Sure, if its a larg eopen space and you just need to throw Collective Curse into a room, its super effective. But with how fidgety it is in more complex terrain you're often wasting your time and energy using it as you can just mow things down quicker just swinging your weapon. And given that its not exactly cheap at 75 energy, having to use it less also means you can be more aggressive with other things, which in turn never makes damage a concern.

The more I think about it, the more I just hope it eventually gets an augment that makes it more practical/convenient or lets it flow better into general Melee gameplay. Garuda's Blending Talons come to mind or maybe even a propagation effect like Sevagoths Shadow Haze or something similar to how Dagaths Doom spreads via Wyrd Scythes.

Yeah, agreed! Collective Curse is one of those things that can potentially be pretty bonkers on paper, but in execution the full payoff needs several things to go right each time. Curse, Curse, hit with 1, build combo, Curse, Curse, hit with 1, build combo, repeat. I got very accustomed to bullet jumping through a mob to get them between me and my teammates so I could aim for the guy furthest away from them, as trying to target anyone at the front of the pack usually meant my ability often landed a split second after a teammate already killed them. I've been able to mostly circumvent that now, as I still fling myself into the mob but now frantically swing my weapons the entire time, as is tradition! :P I've still got a Crit-focused build in the wings, because there are some things that it particularly excels at, like any enemy with a particularly strong immunity to Status Effects such as Juggernauts.

Personally, I find that one of my favorite parts about Kullervo is that with a Primed Flow, emphasis on Ability Strength and Duration, and however many Violet Shards you can put together, you can make him a crazy high and reliable Crit build without actually having to specifically spec for Crit Chance or Crit Damage. Both because of how his 1 is Additive rather than Multiplicative, and because of how much the Violet Shards can boost Crit Damage. Could I get even higher by adding Crit mods? Absolutely! (I actually have a Riven installed that bumped the Crit Damage from its initial 10.5x to 13x, along with a base damage boost,) but I decided to focus all of my remaining modding on Status Chance and damage. So I can operate at a 550% Crit chance, (with Molt Augmented running full steam,) 13.1x Crit Damage multiplier, 185% Status Chance plus a max combo Weeping Wounds Status boost, using Volt's Shock with Shock Trooper modded to add a further 200+% Electricity damage and regularly trigger a 20m area of effect that soaks all mobs in the vicinity with the damage I'm inflicting on any one enemy because every single hit does Status Damage at super critical levels. 

[Xzorn]

So we make his Overguard vanish when he falls off a cliff. Right? No?

Seriously though. Overguard aka Iron Skin has always had one major issue which is that blocking with melee does nothing. For a melee focused frame. You'd think they would have looked into this. I still need to test the mention of rolling working now. I swear it didn't back in the day with Rhino.

I like Kullervo the moment I picked him up but sadly I could see he has Valkyr syndrome. Not nearly as bad obviously but similar.
(Valkyr Syndrom: When frames not restricted to melee abilities can scale better aka survive better using melee weapons)

[Tiltskillet]

23 minutes ago, Xzorn said:

Seriously though. Overguard aka Iron Skin has always had one major issue which is that blocking with melee does nothing. For a melee focused frame. You'd think they would have looked into this.

Totally agree that blocking would be great, even if it's not the full effect.

 

24 minutes ago, Xzorn said:

I still need to test the mention of rolling working now. I swear it didn't back in the day with Rhino.

Probably me with Kullervo.  I can't recall if I've tested it with other sources of Overguard, so I just tested it with Iron Skin in the Sim.  Level 47 Butcher does 200 damage normally, 50 if he catches Rhino in a roll.

[Xzorn]

5 minutes ago, Tiltskillet said:

Probably me with Kullervo.  I can't recall if I've tested it with other sources of Overguard, so I just tested it with Iron Skin in the Sim.  Level 47 Butcher does 200 damage normally, 50 if he catches Rhino in a roll.

 

That's cool. Dodge was easily my favorite part about Movement 2.0. Everyone loves the bullet jumping but I loved the reward for timing dodges.

Also why SP Survival just makes me cringe with the number of enemy spawns. It's so silly and leaves little room for twitch interactions.

[Raikh]

8 hours ago, Xzorn said:

So we make his Overguard vanish when he falls off a cliff. Right? No?

I've always felt that it was silly that you lose Buffs from Abilities when you fall out of bounds. Especially because its such an uneven punishment. Some Frames practically do not care (like Kullervo), for some others it feels pretty frustrating (Gara, Gyre, potentially Chroma).

8 hours ago, Xzorn said:

Seriously though. Overguard aka Iron Skin has always had one major issue which is that blocking with melee does nothing. For a melee focused frame. You'd think they would have looked into this. I still need to test the mention of rolling working now. I swear it didn't back in the day with Rhino.

Blocking not reducing Overgaurd dmg taken is also just uninituitive. I can get behind the idea that its a coat of defense that doesnt get affected by things that you do to protect your Health and possibly Shields. But if you block something you stop it from hitting you or diminish how hard it is hitting you, so intuitively it absolutely should help Overgaurd.

But overall my largest issue with Overguard is simply that w/o shield gating behind it, 0.5s is just a really damn short window to save yourself. And its a very Kullervo specific issue because he is currently the only Warframe with Overguard but no Shields. And him being both about Overguard and a big Health Pool w/o them interacting in any way is at odds with each other.

8 hours ago, Xzorn said:

Also why SP Survival just makes me cringe with the number of enemy spawns. It's so silly and leaves little room for twitch interactions.

I personally enjoy SP a lot more because of the significantly higher enemy spawn rates because single enemies just don't mean anything. Everything just dies so quickly. But that ofc has the downside that interacting with indvidual enemy actions becomes nigh impossible. Its another outcome of how vastly out of sync Player Power and Player Survivability are at base.

16 hours ago, ZantenZan said:

and regularly trigger a 20m area of effect that soaks all mobs in the vicinity with the damage I'm inflicting on any one enemy because every single hit does Status Damage at super critical levels. 

Melee Influecne can be quite hilarious. But I gotta say that it can be difficult to utilize to its greatest effect with Kullervo since Influence doesn't spread Status on killing blows and Kullervo absolutely has a habit of just oneshotting things even with Light Attacks.

[ZantenZan]

3 hours ago, Raikh said:

Melee Influecne can be quite hilarious. But I gotta say that it can be difficult to utilize to its greatest effect with Kullervo since Influence doesn't spread Status on killing blows and Kullervo absolutely has a habit of just oneshotting things even with Light Attacks.

Yeah, it's ironically the kind of build that performs worse and worse relative to teammates the less beefy and/or numerous the enemies are. I only tend to bring it into Steel Path missions with frequent mob spawns now, like Survival, because if the enemies are too squishy, or too thinly spread out, its utility drops off a cliff and I'm likely better off just bringing in my Thrall Pact/Mesmer Shield Revenant with a Torid or straight up just using Mesa for her 4. 

It's a bit of a knife's edge, no pun intended. I think I have the damage output built up enough to kill Steel Path enemies very quickly without armor stripping outside that one Aura mod. But my damage isn't SO high that I can one-shot most Steel Path armored mobs using a single light attack, which means I can more reliably spread damage to everybody else in the area. If the average armored mob takes me 2-3 hits to drop, and I hit maybe 3-4 of those mobs in a 20m radius, the shared damage output will be enough to nuke everything short of an Eximus. And if I'm actually whacking an Eximus instead, it might take me as much as 5 Light Attacks to drop them, by which time everything else is pretty much dead.

Obviously this is only the case if Influence is active, but there's no cooldown to re-trigger Influence after its duration expires, it just comes down to the probability of both getting electric procs, and whether each proc will trigger the Arcane to activate. I will also activate on 'death blows,' even if it doesn't actually spread damage doing so. So I've been able to keep it running maybe 90% of the time I'm fighting, almost always when there are lots of mobs to hit, by bolstering my existing Electricity Proc chance with the Volt Trooper augment mod to Volt's Shock ability.

It's admittedly almost counterintuitive, as I'm killing enemies more slowly so I can kill mobs more quickly. xD