Focus School Abilities and Spectral Thrax

[SabreWalrus]

This concerns primarily Void Cascade, as it's the main place where it matters:

Every Focus School has a way to buff its Amp damage, except for Vazarin. And this is pretty fair since Vazarin is the healing/support school and Guardian Shell and Void Snare are very strong abilities on their own.

Madurai: passively through Phoenix Talons and Power Transfer, actively through Contamination Wave and Void Strike

Unairu: Caustic Strike and Unairu Wisp

Naramon: Amp Spike

Zenurik: Temporal Drag and Temporal Shot

Temporal Drag is an 80% slow, and I understand in this update it has been removed from affecting enemies with Overguard, which is fair as it's consistent with their general CC immunity. Temporal Drag is one of the few slows that still affects the Corporeal-to-Spectral Thrax animation after the full Spectral status cleanse update. The issue is that since this update Temporal Drag cannot be applied to the Spectral form itself. But, Temporal Drag can still be applied to the Corporeal form once its Overguard is gone, and still slows down the Spectral animation. What this means is that Temporal Drag can still be annoying by slowing down the animation, but it cannot be applied where you actually want it - the Spectral form.

Zenurik can only access its headshot damage buff from Temporal Shot if the target is affected by Temporal Drag. So while I understand if Spectral forms have been made immune to this because they are status immune and the slow counts as a status, it's not exactly fair, as Spectral Thrax are the Operator/Drifter's enemy and therefore everything available in the Operator/Drifter's arsenal should be available and usable to them. Contamination Wave, Madurai's debuff ability that makes targets 50% more vulnerable to Operator damage, can still be applied to Spectral forms. Caustic Strike will still consider a Spectral form a target and will spawn an Unairu Wisp from it. Vazarin's Void Snare is an outlier as I'm not sure it's ever worked on Spectral forms, and maybe an argument could be made for it applying (though most players would opt not to use it since it makes Amp headshots difficult).

If it is entirely intended from a design perspective for the slow from Temporal Drag to not apply to the Spectral forms, is there any way to find a middle ground? Where the slow will not apply, but the ability will still apply its headshot bonus? Zenurik has lost its only way to buff its Amp damage with this update, in pretty much the only scenario where it matters. Void Cascade is unique for combining Warframe and Operator/Drifter gameplay, and there's lots of us that really love it for that.

 

Additional argument:

The reason for making this post to highlight this change and its issue, is because with each passing update, loadout variety in Void Cascade is being pressured and shrunk.

I know that many people will have the argument that high level content isn't necessary/doesn't matter, but the fact is that for 2 years Void Cascade has been the fastest scaling mission in the game, where enemies do reach high levels very quickly, and people are regularly and frequently level capping it. In this update it's just been given Omni fissures, which is another incentive for staying in the mission for a while, due to the stacking cracked relic buffs.

The full Spectral status cleanse, where we lost Viral inherit from the Corporeal form, was fair enough. We lost a damage buff, but anything that makes the game slightly harder and asks for a little more skill expression (Amp headshots rather than just spraying Klamora in a general direction, etc) is absolutely fine - the Focus Schools have their own damage buffs and it's nice to encourage players to look into those and actively use them.

The problem is that the Focus School damage buffs are not equal (Madurai is miles ahead of the others). So once Viral inherit was gone, players were already pressured into taking Madurai for a core and important aspect of the mission. They can choose to take another Focus School and accept a lower Amp damage output if there's something in that school they really want, but the Amp damage difference between Madurai and Vazarin is enormous. If this Temporal Drag change stays as it is, Zenurik has lost its damage buff and joins Vazarin in low desirability. Focus Schools can and should complement wider loadouts, so players should feel free to pick their preferred one and still feel like they can contribute.

I guess the tl;dr of this is please don't turn Void Cascade into a mission where "you have to take Madurai or you're doing it wrong". Please let loadout and Focus School variety be encouraged. If this change stays, we've essentially lost Zenurik's viability.

[Monolake]

Yeah it is exactly "you have to take Madurai or you're doing it wrong" since they removed viral procs from thrax ghosts and even unairu is not cutting it past lvl 500 or so now, so simply making the Temporal Shot work will not help zenurik either, being head-shot only.

All in all proc purge is a hit not only to focus variety but to frame/ability viability since you have to bring armorstrip and it cant be unairu anymore.
DE obviously cant care about vazarin being unused dead school and zen is still the most popular for general use.

 

[lxTOXICxI]

I’m hoping it’s just a bug, I always use it to slow them and headshot and when it didn’t work last night I figured I might as well switch to Madurai now 

 

edit: it was hard to tell, (because they move so fast I can’t hit their head much lol) but it seemed like I was getting the headshot buff when I used it

Edited March 28 by lxTOXICxI

[SabreWalrus]

8 hours ago, Monolake said:

Yeah it is exactly "you have to take Madurai or you're doing it wrong" since they removed viral procs from thrax ghosts and even unairu is not cutting it past lvl 500 or so now, so simply making the Temporal Shot work will not help zenurik either, being head-shot only.

All in all proc purge is a hit not only to focus variety but to frame/ability viability since you have to bring armorstrip and it cant be unairu anymore.
DE obviously cant care about vazarin being unused dead school and zen is still the most popular for general use.

 

Post Viral cleanse, all the focus schools other than Vazarin have been fine up to level cap with Eradicate, Onslaught, and headshots. Madurai obviously has the highest damage output, but Zenurik came in second, with Unairu and Naramon tied third. Zenurik losing access to its damage buff absolutely guts it though. While we can always wait for the extra damage buff when the Spectrals try to absorb a nearby unit, this is very random enemy behaviour and not something we always want to rely on

We're lucky that green shards came out just before the full Spectral form cleanse, so all frames can access corrosive armour stripping if they want to use their subsume on something else, and this was a huge positive for loadout variety. But Temporal Drag being shadow nerfed to no longer affect Spectrals feels wrong, and by this point I wouldn't be surprised if the debuff effect from Contamination Wave also gets removed. So we get left with Void Strike on a 40s CD. Great.

[SabreWalrus]

2 hours ago, lxTOXICxI said:

I’m hoping it’s just a bug, I always use it to slow them and headshot and when it didn’t work last night I figured I might as well switch to Madurai now 

 

edit: it was hard to tell, (because they move so fast I can’t hit their head much lol) but it seemed like I was getting the headshot buff when I used it

I know all the damage numbers of the most frequently used Amps vs Spectrals (nerd) so I can see that atm Temporal Drag is not slowing down Spectrals, nor are Zenurik headshots getting the damage buff they should be

[--END--Rikutatis]

I agree with OP, please don't gut Zenurik for fighting the spectral forms in Cascade. 

[MadreMango]

Yeah it’s super unfortunate if it was intended, it’s kind of Madurai or don’t go now. I cringe when you mention Madurai abilities still working because if this was intended I don’t want to se Madurai stripped of its usefulness next

[NotRellimkaz]

Atleast for high level cascade runs, running only madurai limits alot of variety in builds and setups. Please say this is a bug and fix it

[VibingCat]

Bring back viral procs on the spectral form, please!

~a Vazarin player

[ol_MISAKA_lo]

Since nobody has mentioned it yetn either not experiencing it or whatnot - the slow no longer affects void angels either, so i have a feeling this maybe a more widespread thing

[SabreWalrus]

So the recent patch notes have finally mentioned all the Overguard-affecting CCs which were removed last patch but not included in the patch notes, and Zenurik is included in this.

So is the immunity of Spectral forms to Temporal Drag an accidental side effect of this? Or was it a conscious choice and an intended nerf to Zenurik? Any clarity would be greatly appreciated, and if it is intended, I reiterate how much a middle ground where the slow does not apply but the headshot damage buff does apply, as outlined above, would also be greatly appreciated

[Palmy_]

Skillful application of zenurik slow is part of the cascade kit and it's a shame being shoehorned into maduri only for extended runs.  Build diversity takes a big hit in a gamemode where creativity is otherwise encouraged.  Hoping for zenurik changes to thrax to be reverted.

[UmbralHalo]

Oh, I didn't even know about this change. I was playing some SP today and kept wondering what I was doing wrong. Good to know. Oof.