Riding Merulina feels like a downgrade with the buffs to Yareli.

[Lancars]

The scales have been tipped in the favor of Loyal Merulina which with the changes to Yareli. Now riding on Merulina feels like a downgrade as i have a lot more movement and weapon options then before and the fact i still retain the benefits while having an autonomous companion tossing out sea snares rather quickly.

I thought Loyal Merulina would be balanced with being able to cast on the move but with the changes to Aqua Blade and Riptide there doesn't seem to be many benefits to using Merulina as a mount.

I'm not asking for a nerf. I want a buff to be given to Merulina when not using Loyal Merulina. Something to Balance the scales once again.

[BalBalPrime]

There are currently two options when putting an augment on merulina. They both have their pros and cons and they cannot be used together.

Merulina guardian:

+ ridiculous buffs on your secondary, no need to watch merulina's health or recast because of the constant healing. Can move freely while spamming surging blades.

- limited weapon options and mobility that's hard to get used to.

Loyal merulina:

+ More weapon options, easier mobility, free sea snares that fires faster with high ability efficiency.

- surging blades throw animation interrupts movement, and you lose access to the secondary buffs.

 

 

Because of this I believe the meeulina augments are pretty balanced right now.

[Lancars]

7 hours ago, BalBalPrime said:

There are currently two options when putting an augment on merulina. They both have their pros and cons and they cannot be used together.

Merulina guardian:

+ ridiculous buffs on your secondary, no need to watch merulina's health or recast because of the constant healing. Can move freely while spamming surging blades.

- limited weapon options and mobility that's hard to get used to.

Loyal merulina:

+ More weapon options, easier mobility, free sea snares that fires faster with high ability efficiency.

- surging blades throw animation interrupts movement, and you lose access to the secondary buffs.

 

 

Because of this I believe the meeulina augments are pretty balanced right now.

The secondary buff is her passive so you just have to keep moving in general. I've done it before when I wasn't on Merulina. Also Surging blade can be kind of finnicky at times as both host and not host i've seen the projectile sail through enemies and not do anything or barely do much so instead i just hover around between them, sea snare and riptide and dice them in riptide which i can do on and off Merulina.

Again they made Loyal feel far to powerful compared to riding on her. Needs a buff to not feel so imbalanced.

[Gaxxian]

Not using Loyal Merulina now feels bad, since it feels like a mandatory mod from a optimal perspective. Its just so good. It gives you EVERYTHING you have while you ride Merulina, PLUS free Sea Snares, PLUS being able to use all the weapons. So, not using it its just playing Yareli wrong now. Do you liked to ride Merulina? Too bad, you are stuck playing an absolute worst version of the frame in all senses if you want to ride Merulina.

Either remove the Damage resistance when you use Loyal Merulina (why you are getting it? you aren't riding it... it doesn't really have sense) or you add new buffs to the regular version of Merulina (that doesn't are usable into the Loyal Merulina version, ofc).

[WindShadow970]

5 hours ago, Lancars said:

The secondary buff is her passive so you just have to keep moving in general

The passive only buffs her secondary's crit chance, Merulina Guardian buffs fire rate and reload speed.

Otherwise the Yareli problem of there not being enough incentive to ride Merulina is rearing its ugly head again.

[Gaxxian]

Oh, right, i forgot... when you are riding Merulina, you cannot use Helminth abilities too. So another brick into the wall.

[Lancars]

3 hours ago, Gaxxian said:

Oh, right, i forgot... when you are riding Merulina, you cannot use Helminth abilities too. So another brick into the wall.

That and Merulina casts sea snares so you can replace her first without any issue since its covered.

[CanOfCraig]

As someone who's been a long time Yareli main, I would honestly argue that Loyal Merulina is a meme of a mod that does nothing but weaken Yareli's kit.
unless I was bugged or something merulina was only casting a single sea snare per 2 seconds and I wasn't getting damage increase out of them at all in testing. Merulina Guardian is an actual good mod that adds synergy to the kit while doubling down on what Yareli does best (Blasting fools with a secondary weapon)

I'm aware that my opinion comes from a position of "Most people need to just learn to K drive" but my hope with this mod was that it would actually make it worth playing yareli on controller where K drive controls while shooting are in my opinion "Yucky" but overall it just solidifies my opinion that if you can't K drive, just go play any other warframe.

[Debatra]

...Do Loyal Merulina's Sea Snares trigger Merulina Guardian?

[CanOfCraig]

4 minutes ago, Debatra said:

...Do Loyal Merulina's Sea Snares trigger Merulina Guardian?

you can't double dip with two augments for the same ability - the game won't let you equip both.

[Lancars]

3 minutes ago, CanOfCraig said:

As someone who's been a long time Yareli main, I would honestly argue that Loyal Merulina is a meme of a mod that does nothing but weaken Yareli's kit.
unless I was bugged or something merulina was only casting a single sea snare per 2 seconds and I wasn't getting damage increase out of them at all in testing. Merulina Guardian is an actual good mod that adds synergy to the kit while doubling down on what Yareli does best (Blasting fools with a secondary weapon)

I'm aware that my opinion comes from a position of "Most people need to just learn to K drive" but my hope with this mod was that it would actually make it worth playing yareli on controller where K drive controls while shooting are in my opinion "Yucky" but overall it just solidifies my opinion that if you can't K drive, just go play any other warframe.

I love Yareli. She has been nothing but fun to play and i don't have any issues riding on Merulina but I'm just pointing out that the augment drop would have been fine as is but they had to buff her more for off merulina combat that it really tipped the scales in favor of that augment. I still prefer riding on Merulina cause of fun but statistics wise i don't think i'd be playing at her maximum now cause of it.

Primary, Melee, Archgun. Open world you can use the other most of travel. You can use helminth abilities without needing to jump off and you get all the benefits of merulina. You also don't get the bug out problem if you switch to operator for specific moments when riding merulina. There is too many bonuses stacked against riding on her now. I'm saying Merulina needs a buff for using her.

Only Buffs, No Nerfs.

[CanOfCraig]

32 minutes ago, Lancars said:

I love Yareli. She has been nothing but fun to play and i don't have any issues riding on Merulina but I'm just pointing out that the augment drop would have been fine as is but they had to buff her more for off merulina combat that it really tipped the scales in favor of that augment. I still prefer riding on Merulina cause of fun but statistics wise i don't think i'd be playing at her maximum now cause of it.

Primary, Melee, Archgun. Open world you can use the other most of travel. You can use helminth abilities without needing to jump off and you get all the benefits of merulina. You also don't get the bug out problem if you switch to operator for specific moments when riding merulina. There is too many bonuses stacked against riding on her now. I'm saying Merulina needs a buff for using her.

Only Buffs, No Nerfs.

I see it as a nerf because it removes the ability to equip Merulina guardian, a powerhouse of an augment.
The mod actually makes me upset because we should just have the ability to dismount and re mount in mission. Now that the code is there to have Merulina follow you at heel, it feels like even more of a blatant oversight if not stubborn refusal to improve Yareli's K driving experience in game.

All of this could have just been added to the ability.

I will fully admit though between my issue with Loyal, and Onos not transforming while on Merulina (even though the weapon more or less NEEDS the fire rate that Yareli gets from Merulina guardian to work well) this whole update leaves me with nothing but a sour taste in terms of how Yareli has been treated. like Dante is good, so that's a positive, but the rest of the update hasn't given me much to celebrate.

Edited March 28 by CanOfCraig

[Mayonnaise3737]

3 hours ago, Lancars said:

Only Buffs, No Nerfs.

I don't think you guys realize what Yareli misses out on by using Loyal Merulina. Merulina Guardian is definitely the biggest part, since it essentially triples her dps, but she also loses important defensive potential--damage reduction isn't the only defensive aspect of Merulina:

 

1. Yareli can't get cc'd by enemies while riding Merulina, and she loses that immunity with the new augment. She still doesn't self-stagger from weapons, but enemy cc will now affect her.

2. When Yareli dismounts or Merulina dies, she receives 1.5 seconds of invincibility, allowing her to recast or do something else to survive, which gives her her own shield gate to play around. She does not get that invincibility when Merulina dies with Loyal Merulina, leaving her open to getting downed if she can't react quick enough.

3. Merulina Guardian also heals Merulina, so you don't need to recast and lose the HP increase from absorbing damage when you first activate Merulina.

 

You give up all of this and the fire rate increase to be able to use primaries and melees that you can't buff in any meaningful way without helminth, but if you helminth for dps, you can't helminth to fix the survivability you lost. Every mod you commit to make up for that is a mod slot you had for something else when Yareli didn't have to worry about those problems.

Sure, if you don't like k-drive and want to use those other weapons/helminth, you might consider it a worthwhile trade off, but it's disengenuous to say the augment is a straight buff when she literally loses some of the most important aspects of her kit and only gains quality of life improvements, no direct increase in power. Loyal Merulina may make the game easier for some, but it does not necessarily make Yareli stronger.

[UnstarPrime]

I do appreciate that this one change has both people who feel it's a buff and people who feel like it's a nerf.  The yin and yang of that suggests to me that it's balanced!

[McRibbles]

My cold take of the century is that Loyal Merulina is yet another augment that should just be made part of Yareli's baseline kit. Make it a Tap/Hold distinction. God knows I'd love it if they actually went and fixed Yareli's core issues, but that's the easiest and most obvious thing to do atm. Not like Yareli of all frames is pushing any power envelopes. 

[G0D5peed]

On 2024-03-28 at 4:57 AM, Gaxxian said:

Either remove the Damage resistance when you use Loyal Merulina

no, the damage resistance is her survivability, the mod would be useless if you took that away because the rest of her kit doesn't support removing such a large element  

[KoreZame]

Like other people i also believe Loyal Merulina is a straight up downgrade.

The stuff you lose from using it is too big (the cc immunity, increased mobility, merulina guardian, dismount gate) while the stuff you gain don't feel impactful enough. It's also very clunky as loyal merulina will only shoot sea snares if it's not moving, will often have trouble keeping up with yareli, the sea snares spam only feels decent at max efficiency but stacking efficiency on yareli feels quite bad and finally (while this might just be my imagination) it feels like loyal merulina dies so much faster than kdrive meru.

I really like the mod overall though, have found myself using it when i wanna play with certain weapons, on bad tilesets for kmeru or if i don't wanna deal with any gamebreaking bugs.

Overall i wish it was included as a tap/hold functionality for merulina, it would do so much for the frame in general.