Nezha, Divine Spears, and Overguard

[Exarke]

When Divine Spears hits Overguard enemies right now, they deal their damage and pass through the enemies... and then the Overguard enemies move soon thereafter and the spears despawn.

It would be better if Divine Spears functioned like Fracturing Crush on Overguard enemies and rooted them in place (but without the armor strip of course).

Since the enemies moving is what causes the spear to despawn, it's a random amount of time the enemy is affected by the spear, which makes for an inconsistent and poor gaming experience for the player. It would still leave Nezha vulnerable to fire from the Overguard units, since it is not a true disable, which means Overguard units retain priority targeting. Additionally, this would also be a second instance of the otherwise unused CC from Fracturing Crush, giving Nezha a relatively unique interaction. Big wins all around.

[Tiltskillet]

1 hour ago, Exarke said:

When Divine Spears hits Overguard enemies right now, they deal their damage and pass through the enemies... and then the Overguard enemies move soon thereafter and the spears despawn.

The spears despawning before their duration ends shouldn't be happening normally.  It does happen in two cases that I'm aware of:  when there is nothing but Overguarded enemies left alive in its radius, or due to nullification.  Were you definitely seeing something other than those?  Where and what were you fighting?

1 hour ago, Exarke said:

It would be better if Divine Spears functioned like Fracturing Crush on Overguard enemies and rooted them in place (but without the armor strip of course).

If there is a bug where the spears are despawning when they shouldn't be, my opinion is the bug should be fixed.  And if anything the undocumented CCs like Fracturing Crush that work through Overguard should be  fixed to no longer do so.  Or DE needs to review the system entirely.

[Exarke]

10 hours ago, Tiltskillet said:

The spears despawning before their duration ends shouldn't be happening normally.  It does happen in two cases that I'm aware of:  when there is nothing but Overguarded enemies left alive in its radius, or due to nullification.  Were you definitely seeing something other than those?  Where and what were you fighting?

If there is a bug where the spears are despawning when they shouldn't be, my opinion is the bug should be fixed.  And if anything the undocumented CCs like Fracturing Crush that work through Overguard should be  fixed to no longer do so.  Or DE needs to review the system entirely.

This happens to any individual spear that affects an Overguard unit.
At the time, I was in the Simulacrum with only Eximus units, so Divine Spears as an ability was ending prematurely and not doing the slam end. With a mix of enemies, you will have individual spears on non-overguard enemies last the entire duration, but the individual spears on Overguard enemies will be temporary until the enemies move, despawning the individual spear prematurely. (I did just test this to verify.)

It makes sense to me from what I know of how Overguard usually works: typically, Overguard enemies still take damage associated with abilities, but do not take their CC effects. So Divine Spears damages them, but doesn't ragdoll them. However, since Overguard enemies are free to move, once they move (and that includes little body-twitch movements from the small testing I was doing, not necessarily walking/pacing) the affiliated-yet-static divine spear despawns, since it's no longer holding anything in place. So make Divine Spears hold them in place instead, so they're still affected by the spear, but still dangerous.

Also there's a list of CC abilities that work with Overguard on the wiki, so they are documented (at least as well as many other odd Warframe nuances). Also see the next short section after the following link. I see no problem with some abilities still working on Overguard (if none did, it'd be terrible for game balance). I did stumble across your megathread on this just now. https://warframe.fandom.com/wiki/Overguard#Crowd_Control_That_Overguard_Will_Not_Ignore

Edited March 1 by Exarke
changed wording in one sentence

[Vryheid]

You bring up a good point with the inconsistency regarding Fracturing Crush and due to the weirdly unique mechanics of Divine Spears there probably should be some form of exception to the traditional Overguard rules to at least make the ability functional against Eximus units. It seems reasonable to me that speared Eximus units could still fire and use abilities while their overguard is up but they should at the very least be "attached" to spears so that the damage chaining part of his new augment works properly. The spears augment is still very powerful even if it's useless against Overguard but it would completely kneecap his ability to take on the role of a mass crowd-control/nuking frame on maps like circuit defense where there's tons of Eximus units everywhere, which as a Nezha player makes me feel sad to see that kind of lost potential. Investing a bunch into ability range for Spears means being forced to lose out on some the other stats that makes Nezha such a powerful and easy to use weapon tank, so I don't think its unreasonable to make it really strong to compensate.

[Tiltskillet]

1 hour ago, Exarke said:

This happens to any individual spear that affects an Overguard unit.
At the time, I was in the Simulacrum with only Eximus units, so Divine Spears as an ability was ending prematurely and not doing the slam end.

Well of course, because there was nothing to slam, lol.  Enemies have to be CC'd by the spear for that to happen.  (And the second damage element requires reactivation of the ability before its duration ends for each individual target.)

1 hour ago, Exarke said:

With a mix of enemies, you will have individual spears on non-overguard enemies last the entire duration, but the individual spears on Overguard enemies will be temporary until the enemies move, despawning the individual spear prematurely. (I did just test this to verify.)

Yes, but I can't figure out what significance individual spears that aren't impaling a target would have to you.  (Speaking of the game right now, not after the change you propose.)  Unless you would just like having spears persist as a visual even if they aren't doing anything?  To me that seems like unnecessary clutter.

I feel like there is something basic I'm not understanding in what you're saying. 

1 hour ago, Exarke said:

Also there's a list of CC abilities that work with Overguard on the wiki, so they are documented

I should have said "officially documented" to be more clear.  As in, "acknowledged by DE" rather than "described by players."

As far as your proposal goes...

I acknowledge that Overguard's effect on most CC is frustrating and flawed.  But I think the system until it's completely revised should be consistent.  Even if DE someday acknowledges some exceptions as intended, Nezha is far, far down the list of frames I would think need special consideration.

[(XBOX)Big Roy 324]

This is working as intended. Divine spears always does this when an enemy can't be rooted. I've seen it happen with larger enemy units that can't be CC'd (deimos).

To memory this applies both initial and slam damage to the target at once.  But you loose the ability to multiply your halos with it. 

[Exarke]

1 hour ago, Tiltskillet said:

Yes, but I can't figure out what significance individual spears that aren't impaling a target would have to you.

I feel like there is something basic I'm not understanding in what you're saying. 

As far as your proposal goes...

I acknowledge that Overguard's effect on most CC is frustrating and flawed.  But I think the system until it's completely revised should be consistent.  Even if DE someday acknowledges some exceptions as intended, Nezha is far, far down the list of frames I would think need special consideration.

The question is whether the Overguard units are or are not affected by Divine Spears. Right now the answer seems to be Yes, but also No. This is bad. I would rather Divine Spears not affect Overguard enemies at all than the way it currently stands. It further matters for a Nezha gameplay perspective because of the way Blazing Chakram (is supposed to) propagate(s) through impaled enemies.

Nezha is not at the top of the list for me either, but DE has made it clear that when they're looking at augments for frames, they'll also look at the frame overall too. (E.g., Loki's Decoy actually getting some straight buffs that it's needed for 4ish years, and Yareli getting some animation tinkering too, both for Dante.) That's why to bring this up now. It also affects the upcoming augment usability on Overguard units. The top of the list should be reverting Banshee's stun on Silence not working on Overguard units and fixing the associated Thrax bug.

The buff Nezha needs more than anything regardless of what I have said before is to fix the inconsistency on Blazing Chakram's propagating through Divine Spear targets. It's supposed to chain to different targets on Divine Spears, but it doesn't chain to all of them, even in the Simulacrum. He's needed that for a while. Ironically, the upcoming augment functions similarly to how the Blazing Chakram/Divine Spears interaction should work.

1 minute ago, (XBOX)Big Roy 324 said:

This is working as intended. Divine spears always does this when an enemy can't be rooted. I've seen it happen with larger enemy units that can't be CC'd (deimos).

To memory this applies both initial and slam damage to the target at once.  But you loose the ability to multiply your halos with it. 

Good to know, should to change it to a root on large enemies too :)

[Tiltskillet]

10 minutes ago, Exarke said:

The question is whether the Overguard units are or are not affected by Divine Spears. Right now the answer seems to be Yes, but also No. This is bad.

To me it's not inherently bad, just a product of DE stated game logic.  And thus more logical than the exceptions to that logic on other abilities and effects.   Spears apply their damage, they don't apply their CC.  Because they don't apply their CC, they're not impaled targets for the purposes of Chakram propagation.  So for me, there's no dissonance there.  While for Fracturing Crush there is, and making that same illogic apply to Divine Spears would be a step backwards.

22 minutes ago, Exarke said:

The buff Nezha needs more than anything regardless of what I have said before is to fix the inconsistency on Blazing Chakram's propagating through Divine Spear targets. It's supposed to chain to different targets on Divine Spears, but it doesn't chain to all of them, even in the Simulacrum.

I don't know that it's supposed to chain to every target.  The ability description and the old dev workshop just say "spawn a second Chakram" and make no further promises that I can see.  You're right in that it would be fantastic to get better  targeting selection out of the extra Chakrams at least. 

Maybe the augment will also propagate the damage vulnerability.   It only said "status" on the augment card, but Melee Influence is an example of the word perhaps being more flexible.

41 minutes ago, (XBOX)Big Roy 324 said:

To memory this applies both initial and slam damage to the target at once. 

I don't think so.  Or at least I'm not seeing the slam damage happen in the Simulacrum without manually activating it, and it ignores the invalid targets I've looked at in that case.  This does match the described behavior in the ability tip.

[(XBOX)Big Roy 324]

3 hours ago, Tiltskillet said:

I don't think so.  Or at least I'm not seeing the slam damage happen in the Simulacrum without manually activating it, and it ignores the invalid targets I've looked at in that case.  This does match the described behavior in the ability tip.

You're probably right.  I just remember it doing damage and nothing else.

For enemies though which ones are you using just overguard? Because in my case I am specifically thinking of the deimos Saxum and jugulus.

 

[Tiltskillet]

15 minutes ago, (XBOX)Big Roy 324 said:

You're probably right.  I just remember it doing damage and nothing else.

For enemies though which ones are you using just overguard? Because in my case I am specifically thinking of the deimos Saxum and jugulus.

 

No, looking at it again you're right.  Against Overguard, Jugulus, and a Deimos Juggernaut, both damage instances happen without the ability being manually reactivated.  With the Juggernaut I stripped its armor and confirmed it was Impact damage happening rather than something odd like a second impale with its Puncture damage.

With non-immune targets it does require reactivation, and I would never have guessed that the game would go ahead and throw in the slam for free if the target is immune to the spear CC.  I think I just let my expectations overrule my eyes the first time.