Changes to arieal heavy attack causes Zaw with exodia contagion to not work

[Cheopz]

So after the update, i can no longer use my heavy attack on exodia contagion zaw. It does no longer fire a projectile and i dont know if this is expected or not. I have read the patch notes about the changes in how the damage on heavy melee attacks works, and i cant seem to figure out if you're still supposed to be able to do arieal heavy attacks with an exodia zaw or not. If this is a bug, then now you know, if it is working as intended now, then could you add that to the notes as im sure plenty of zaw players will encounter this issue and be confused about it :)


Much love and thanks for the new content <3

[cephalon_slay]

You aren’t suppose to be able to heavy attack in the air for the increase damage. That’s what the nerf is about. It’s all gone now 😭😭😭

[Cheopz]

30 minutes ago, cephalon_slay said:

You aren’t suppose to be able to heavy attack in the air for the increase damage. That’s what the nerf is about. It’s all gone now 😭😭😭

Thats great :) Making zaws unuseable compared to other melees, that you dont have to grind for hours to get is a "smart" move. Zaws couldn't be bought on the market and people actually had to put a lot of efforts into getting one, as well as getting exodia contagion arcane which is very rare to be able to farm as well, or you would have to spend a ton of plat on the market to buy it out.

Zaw will just be a meh weapon stashed away now, while all the easy bought weapons will vastly surpass it. so i guess either you spend a ton of plat to get a good melee now, or you dont. i really think being able to heavy attack with zaw was good, it didnt 1shot any bosses because of the way the damage calculations were, all you could do with it, was to clear small aoe areas, just like you can with any other gun or pistol. Rip the Zaw and rip people who spend time getting it, and rolling rivens for it :P

 

- Just did some testing in the simulacrum, and zaw with exodia contagion is NOT viable for steelpath anymore. I have a 1k plat riven and it does 1/3 the damage of my glaive without riven and without any arcane. and probably a weak glaive build too. this is So dumb.

i suggest everyone that uses zaws, go check out what damage you can push with it on SP enemies and compare it to Any other melee weapon out there :)


Disapointing update. Grafics took a hit too, for some reason almost everything in my ship is completely black (all the decorations i have placed) guessing its a lighting issue, tried to mess around with it to fix it but i cant.

 

Edited March 27 by Cheopz
Tested weapon damage

[cephalon_slay]

16 minutes ago, Cheopz said:

Thats great :) Making zaws unuseable compared to other melees, that you dont have to grind for hours to get is a "smart" move. Zaws couldn't be bought on the market and people actually had to put a lot of efforts into getting one, as well as getting exodia contagion arcane which is very rare to be able to farm as well, or you would have to spend a ton of plat on the market to buy it out.

Zaw will just be a meh weapon stashed away now, while all the easy bought weapons will vastly surpass it. so i guess either you spend a ton of plat to get a good melee now, or you dont. i really think being able to heavy attack with zaw was good, it didnt 1shot any bosses because of the way the damage calculations were, all you could do with it, was to clear small aoe areas, just like you can with any other gun or pistol. Rip the Zaw and rip people who spend time getting it, and rolling rivens for it :P

 

Yeah 😔 I agree. I guess more people used zaws than I thought. Tho i really never saw anyone besides me and a handful of other people use them in missions. 
 

With the eclipse nerf too, and now contagion being the way it is, there is no reason to use a zaw when thrown weapons do so much more damage.

 

it’s a shame I just got my wisp + zaw build down last week too. 

[Cheopz]

8 minutes ago, cephalon_slay said:

Yeah 😔 I agree. I guess more people used zaws than I thought. Tho i really never saw anyone besides me and a handful of other people use them in missions. 
 

With the eclipse nerf too, and now contagion being the way it is, there is no reason to use a zaw when thrown weapons do so much more damage.

 

it’s a shame I just got my wisp + zaw build down last week too. 

You are 100% right, it was a niche weapon for people who spend the time farming for it and building it. It took quite a bit of time to get it, and then getting the contagion too. Hours and hours spend getting a good melee weapon. You can just go buy the Glaive from the marketplace and it greatly surpass the damage of the zaw the way it is now. No time needed to farm anything. Rivenless glaive does 3x the damage of a zaw that is spend hours and hours farming. Guess Pay to win is certainly the way to go in this day and age, but i guess they'll have more plat circulating that way. It is a shame, the zaw really was a fun weapon :) Guess i'll sell off my zaw rivens on the marketplace and invest into a new glaive riven instead. Sadly there is a ton of people who has no idea if this was meant to happen or not as for me, atleast, it doesn't really specify it completely on the updates.

Edited March 27 by Cheopz

[Boopadin]

What's the point of removing it? It's not like it's the easiest combination to pull off or granting immediate gratification like with the Glaive prime anyway.

[Cheopz]

3 minutes ago, Boopadin said:

What's the point of removing it? It's not like it's the easiest combination to pull off or granting immediate gratification like with the Glaive prime anyway.

No idea. I havn't seen any justification for doing it either. And they didn't even make it obvious that it was happening in the patch notes, since it is such a specific thing they could've said "regarding exodia contagion and heavy attacks" and then given the explaination of why they wanted to remove it etc. but i guess it is what it is. I believe it was a bad move, but i guess, when you dont play the game like other players, having to farm everything for it, and then having to wait for a specific event to come around, to be able to make the zaw worth it, and then having to roll a decent riven, spending thousands of kuva to make it decent, then it is easy to just kill it off and let easy-to-get melees surpass it in useability. Like i said, Buy a glaive from a player for plat (if you dont already have it) and just use that with the heavy attack instead. It is way better now

 

[Bunstrous]

Wasn't the damage bonus for doing a heavy attack in air removed like half a year ago? The biggest contagion nerf here is the eclipse nerf, now they just made it so you cant do the heavy attack animation in air which doesn't matter because it didn't do anything anymore for a while.

Edit: 
So I did some looking and apparently it largely did still work but in my testing when it was still around I saw no noticeable damage boost, just made the numbers show they were criting higher. Not sure what the deal is but I've been living with this nerf for a while. Would be nice if they touched up contagion a bit though after the eclipse nerf to make it more competitive.

Edited March 28 by Bunstrous

[Cheopz]

1 hour ago, Bunstrous said:

Wasn't the damage bonus for doing a heavy attack in air removed like half a year ago? The biggest contagion nerf here is the eclipse nerf, now they just made it so you cant do the heavy attack animation in air which doesn't matter because it didn't do anything anymore for a while.

Edit: 
So I did some looking and apparently it largely did still work but in my testing when it was still around I saw no noticeable damage boost, just made the numbers show they were criting higher. Not sure what the deal is but I've been living with this nerf for a while. Would be nice if they touched up contagion a bit though after the eclipse nerf to make it more competitive.

I was able to use arieal heavy attacks on my zaw till the update came out, was using it right before the update hit and the server closed down so you were able to do it but after the update you no longer can't sadly, i guess it is what it is, i feel that its a shame, because the Zaw was actually a fun weapon to use and build for different things, im sure it is still viable in some configs, just not exodia contagion

[Bunstrous]

On 2024-03-28 at 1:49 AM, Cheopz said:

I was able to use arieal heavy attacks on my zaw till the update came out, was using it right before the update hit and the server closed down so you were able to do it but after the update you no longer can't sadly, i guess it is what it is, i feel that its a shame, because the Zaw was actually a fun weapon to use and build for different things, im sure it is still viable in some configs, just not exodia contagion

I've been playing around and while it's noticeably weaker and cant nuke higher armour enemies like it used to, I've been playing netracells and it still largely ohk everything. I'm now in the process of turning all my red archon shards to purple to get the extra double crit damage buff. 

[Tacticatz]

So you are Telling me that it isnt a bug that i can use my Glaives in Mid Air anymore?

[2463100]

In my opinion, it sucks. I invested time acquiring Zaw because I couldn't earn platinum quickly, and glaive is expensive. I believe a weapon holds more value when you invest time grinding for it, such as with acceltra, rather than spending platinum that you could essentially buy with real money...

[Shock_Wave_Gamer]

Under Top Fixes:
"Fixed being able to Heavy Attack mid-air. Now mid-air Heavy Attacks will perform a Heavy Ground Slam as intended."

I, too, got my hands on a Wisp and Zaw build. But a few months later, they came out with the update. If anyone at DE is looking at this issue, can they publicly respond to the reasons behind this change? If it was balancing, the Nerf hurt Zaws. As mentioned by others, the time and resource investment to get a Zaw to the power it once had does not reflect its new nerfs.

I will be honest. I had reached the point where my Zaw regularly broke the integer limit. But that was after I;

• Had built a zaw.
• Found and rolled a riven 74 times [Kronsh Crita-ignidra]
• Traded for a max Exodia Contagion. (I missed acquiring the arcanes during the most recent Plague Star event last year, so I had to trade with players starting to bring prices back up on the market.)
• Acquiring and building a Wisp Prime.
  • With a subsume of the eclipse over the 4th ability (Ik how original)
  • Collecting and ranking up various rare mods and arcane, including;
    • [Molt Augmented] r5, [Energy Conversion], [Transitient Fortitude], & [Blind Rage] for Eclipse.
    • [Arcane Arachne] r5, [Holster Amp], & [Vigorous Swap] for more multiplicative damage.
• Getting a Panzer Vulpaphyla with;
  • Survivability with full-graded Link mods
  • The Panzer-Specific Viral Mods
  • Tenacious Bond to push my zaw's Crit damage further. 
• As well as a bunch of primed mods like [Primed Fever Strike]

I min-maxed this build, and it hurts to see it all essentially broken by a fix. My point is that Everyone here poured their time and resources into making a build that was fun and (really) powerful. I get game balance, but balance should come with the understanding that time is important to players. I have around 3000 hours in this game, and it hurts when that time isn't rewarded. I took my knowledge of the game's systems and pushed them to their limits. Having that build, I spent so much time being taken away by a hot fix like this sucked for all of us. What stings is seeing easier weapons to acquire, like Glaives, now overtake Zaws in both the power output and the less time it takes to achieve said power. Do not misunderstand me. I DO NOT want to see Glaives receive a Nerf because they are now overpowering Zaws. I also agree that my zaw, from experience, is more than a bit much for this game. I don't know the correct solution to this issue. But my experience of this update was DE taking my zaw and turning it into a dumpster fire of what it once was. 

If anyone from DE is reading this. I love Warframe. I love what you guys do and the amount of work that goes into making Warframe the great game it has become. I am not writing this letter to call anyone out. I just wanted to put forward my position on the issue. And I feel like I speak for most people when I say. Yes. The Zaw needed a nerf. But this one went too far. It would mean a lot to me and many others following this issue if someone from DE would address this topic publicly. Even as just a reply in this forum. This is my first and probably only post here. I'm not all that active on this side of Warframe. I just wanted to say something. I hope anyone reading this has a good day. Sorry for the wall of text.<3

[Eponumon]

On 2024-04-20 at 6:18 PM, Shock_Wave_Gamer said:

Under Top Fixes:
"Fixed being able to Heavy Attack mid-air. Now mid-air Heavy Attacks will perform a Heavy Ground Slam as intended."
 

I love this phrasing: "fixed" and "as intended". As if to reassure you that heavies mid-air indeed weren't at some point very much intentional game mechanic, even if with limited application, and somehow needed a course-correction after all these years.

I feel for Zaw enjoyers, for I also lost something with this update - no heavies mid-air means no more Exalted Blade Eidolon runs, which was one of my favorite pastimes. It was tricky to execute, required a very specific build, and hitbox was all over the place, but it was cool, flashy and felt much more satisfying than regular "just shoot it with Rubico Prime".

[UlyssesTheDM]

On 2024-03-27 at 4:59 PM, Cheopz said:

Disapointing update. Grafics took a hit too, for some reason almost everything in my ship is completely black (all the decorations i have placed) guessing its a lighting issue, tried to mess around with it to fix it but i cant.

Yeah, poor decoration lighting is a serious issue in Orbiter.

[Berzerkules]

I agree the change is lame for the people that used heavy attack contagion zaw but it's not completely useless.

I still use contagion zaw on Mag since it goes through her bubble and it still one taps eximus units. Melee Crescendo is key if you want to min/max contagion zaw now. I use vazarin  void snare at the beginning of a mission to open enemies to ground finishers and get 12x combo contagion zaw for the rest of the mission.