Crowd Control And Support: A Funeral.

[That_One_Kuva_Lich]

I've been wanting to post this for some time, but I've been reluctant to. With this latest 'Tweak', I think it's time for me to state my dislike of the death of the ability type that is Crowd Control.

I may look like a standard Mr18 player, I've been playing since the update 'Shrine Of The Eidolon' back on the PS4. Back then, Crowd Control was great. Enemies were slowed, disarmed and/or frozen. The occasional nullifier was always a problem that was dealt with rather swiftly. There were still nuke frames, but they were rare and few between. Eventually, Angels of the Zariman came out, and the eximus rework alongside it. Overguard prevents CC from working against eximi. this was the nail in the decently chilly coffin that was CC. Nuke frames are the main crowd controllers nowadays. Saryn, Mesa, Octavia, Etc. The main problem with is is that nuke frames all do the same thing; they wipe out myriads of enemies in seconds. In modern day, warframes barely have any crowd control only abilities. The worst part is that eximi are not immune or even resistant to damaging abilities, which makes frames that wipe the screen meta. This practically demolishes the concept of crowd control.

Now, to the main event. DE is still nerfing CC. Riddle me this: Why did the halikar get nerfed? It got nerfed because it could disarm an eximus unit. It had this ability removed despite the halikar being a weapon that literally nobody utilises. it was removed because it was actually a slightly useful tactic. The same happened with more effects, like rhino's slow and the proboscis cernos' tentacle pull. Why is Crowd Control getting nerfed even further when it is currently dead in the meta. Does DE even care at this rate?

  I'm asking a possible errand here, but there are an ocean of ideas that can help fix this. Some of you may have heard of Triburos' video abut Loki and the topic of Crowd Control as a whole. I'd suggest watching it if you haven't heard of it. One of the ideas is to make enemies that effect and or aren't effected by crowd control abilities (eximus, nullifiers, etc) effected by crowd controlling abilities( as in being able to be slowed, disarmed and more), and making these problem enemies have ability damage resistance. This would allow crowd control to shine without nerfing damaging abilities entirely.

 

If DE is reading this (which is heavily improbable) I would advise checking out Triburos' video as it explains everything better then I could ever explain it.  Heed my words, If you continue to make nuke frames meta, and then nerf frames that nuke to the level that the game demands, then the game will become indifferent. The game will become a screen wipe simulator with no interesting frames left. Change this, before it's too late.

Edited April 5 by That_One_Kuva_Lich
added support as suggested

[Chewarette]

Yup, I remember the days when you could play a CC Warframe instead of a nuke or support (also dead nowadays) one. Those were cool times.

This garbage trend started in Orb Vallis, with some units being randomly immune to some abilities, I remember I struggled with Mag there sometimes because it was not clearly stated anywhere. Then they formalized it with Eximii, against whom your only option is to nuke them down, so naturally, nuke builds have a sharp edge.

What I'm sad about is that we lost options. We could play CC, Nuke, or Support back in the days. Nowadays, only two types exist in the Meta : Nuke and Punchbags (warframes with so much EHP you can ignore everything, but that need weapons to kill as they have sub-par abilities otherwise). I guess we can add a third type that we would call "Wisp", containing one Warframe, as she is one of the few remaining supports that's not totally useless. Even nowadays, I try to take a few Supports out of the closet here and there, but you feel so #*!%ing useless with the unlimited energy and most warframes having defensive buffs that it's a frustrating experience.

And now, DE has written themselves into a corner. Either they like their new approach and a good third of Warframes will forever be shelved. Or these Warframes will be reworked to be Nuke copies of existing Warframes. Or... they have to do a complete 180 and allow CC Warframes to exist, but I don't see that happening anytime soon.

Edited April 5 by Chewarette

[-FrutyX-]

[Harutomata]

1 hour ago, Chewarette said:

Yup, I remember the days when you could play a CC Warframe instead of a nuke or support (also dead nowadays) one. Those were cool times.

This garbage trend started in Orb Vallis, with some units being randomly immune to some abilities, I remember I struggled with Mag there sometimes because it was not clearly stated anywhere. Then they formalized it with Eximii, against whom your only option is to nuke them down, so naturally, nuke builds have a sharp edge.

What I'm sad about is that we lost options. We could play CC, Nuke, or Support back in the days. Nowadays, only two types exist in the Meta : Nuke and Punchbags (warframes with so much EHP you can ignore everything, but that need weapons to kill as they have sub-par abilities otherwise). I guess we can add a third type that we would call "Wisp", containing one Warframe, as she is one of the few remaining supports that's not totally useless. Even nowadays, I try to take a few Supports out of the closet here and there, but you feel so #*!%ing useless with the unlimited energy and most warframes having defensive buffs that it's a frustrating experience.

And now, DE has written themselves into a corner. Either they like their new approach and a good third of Warframes will forever be shelved. Or these Warframes will be reworked to be Nuke copies of existing Warframes. Or... they have to do a complete 180 and allow CC Warframes to exist, but I don't see that happening anytime soon.

Not sure if I could have word this any better.
OP could probably also add "support" to the title.

People were already not relying on surviving through HP a lot even before the shield rework, now with the shield rework in case of most frames it's a direct downgrade if not completely unviable after certain levels, especially in SP.
Enemies can get like 99.9% DR from armor but the armor formula for players is around 91% because armor values fall off after that. The way level scales with enemy damage and enemy accuracy also doesn't help with this.
HP and armor rework when? We could have so much more variety to choose from than Wisp, and having variety makes so much part of the fun in this game.
Obviously not saying enemies should miss all shots or do no damage, but the way it is currently, surviving through shield gating literally works on every warframe (that has shields), whereas surviving through HP works on very visibly less, and that is exactly what's making support warframes that heal HP obsolete.
Buff Oberon's Renewal DE, it takes more to maintain than vitality motes. The powercreep is way too obvious there to be just left ignored. You could even buff the armor gain to be multiply times what it is currently and Oberon would still not be OP.
I guess we could also mention the support value warframes which spawn health orbs provide nowadays. I guess Equilibrium is there for those who use it?
HP should be a sidegrade more often than a downgrade compared Shields. It's problematic for older support warframe design.

Speaking of CC, Nyx gets only slightly more playtime than Caliban, and the people who still play her probably do it for that very unfun (in my opinion) Absorb augment, which even without it the ability is more boring and clunky than Hydroid's puddle prerework ever was.
Yet another reminder to DE (if they do read this, but I doubt) that Chaos is a threat based CC therefore should directly work on Overguard like every other CC in the game working based on threat.
But even outside that she could use a buff. Hopefully it's the next one that was hinted at a previous devstream.
Shame for a warframe with such a cool design and cool cosmetics.

I tried making Limbo fun the other day. It didn't work. Yes I know Silence disables eximus abilities but he'd need other things from helminth also to have a complete set of abilities.
(Besides Cataclysm being clunky even outside how non eximi enemies interact with it. Either make the bubble not get gradually smaller, or add another smaller layer at the outer part of it that lets things be damaged from both sides, because currently you just waste ammo, and get annoyed if you use a bow whenever the enemy needs to take a step.)
Neither him or Nyx were designed at a time where CC immune eximi were in the game and it should be clear to see, so their survivability was designed with a dependency on CC.

People taking things to level cap shouldn't be a valid point of argument since any warframe that has shields can possibly do that. It doesn't mean their ability set is completely fine the way it is, nor that it is fun to use, and doesn't say much about the utility they provide. That is subjective and should be open for discussion how could it be improved.

[sh0shin]

Halikar nerf was #*!%ing hilarious 😆😂

[(PSN)AbBaNdOn_]

Demolysts, Acolytes, Shadow,  Bosses having immunity fine..    Eximus is just to much though.

Inaros just got reworked and holy crap they gave sandstorm a pull... except at high levels most enemies just ignore this which is like the whole mechanic of new Inaros.  Pull stuff in,  finisher them,  scarab swarm them., etc.   Except you cant pull nothing in.  Why did you waste the freaking time to mess with him ??? 

-----

But like was said above.   You killed crowd control because it was making things to easy for people.....but then everyone just turned to nuke frames/builds and now stuff dies just as fast so what exactly was accomplished besides gutting a style of play for no reason????

[RyllusPurple]

Are they going to nerf Primary Obstruct next?  It's already almost worthless niche, but it can disarm an eximus.

[Tiltskillet]

On 2024-04-05 at 6:12 AM, Harutomata said:

Yet another reminder to DE (if they do read this, but I doubt) that Chaos is a threat based CC therefore should directly work on Overguard like every other CC in the game working based on threat.

Calling it "threat-based" is factual but also kind of misleading as far as the game is concerned.  Absorb or Decoy are what I'd use that term for: i.e., creating something that enemies are more likely to attack than players.  In contrast, like rad status "Confusion", Chaos effectively removes the targets' affiliation, making them enemies of everything.  So they'll generally attack whatever is closest and in their FoV. 

Unlike Absorb, etc., these effects don't work through Overguard directly.  They can be impactful as very soft CCs anyway, as OGs will happily attack confused enemies that have attacked them.

Certainly though, Chaos also changing threat level is something that's often been proposed and would make the ability more useful.

4 hours ago, RyllusPurple said:

Are they going to nerf Primary Obstruct next?  It's already almost worthless niche, but it can disarm an eximus.

Technically it's a weapon jam, not a disarm...but anyway, it's fixed, and mentioned in the patch notes.

 

 

[Fred_Avant_2019]

Personally I don't see a valid reason as to why CC in general is so nerfed. It's already dead even if overguard and nullifiers weren't a thing because even just weapons are better than anything you can throw at any enemy. Doesn't matter if JohnnyMR1JustInstalledTheGame would freeze an enemy solid, because given he plays for about 100 hours, he can take on any enemy of any faction, should he be taught how to deal with them in a couple bullets of an easy to get strong well moded weapon.

I don't like this sort of balancing.

Warframes have CC abilities for a reason, but you give ever less reasons to use them in the first place. Frames whose entire kit revolves specifically around that are not popular in present day Warframe for a reason (probably saw only about ten Limbo players for the past three years, and I play an unreasonable amount of time daily, barely missing a day, the same is also true for Nyx and Loki).

 

Support as a whole isn't nearly as dead, but it's not really in a good spot either.

If you don't reliably give 90% Damage Reduction, you're not a damage reduction support frame, that's why Ember players don't exist, nor do they use Immolation's augment; Gara players only ever put the buff on themselves because it's annoying to refreshing on moving allies and Baruuk isn't going to hug you every half minute to give you some daggers.

Offensive support frames can be pretty much anyone if you're willing to put the right helminth, so it's not like it's an actual identity, you probably wouldn't guess there's a Yareli under that Grendel costume but she just plays pretend. Jokes aside offensive support would be extra damage for the team, extra energy to help cast more spells, or more weapon stat increases, except pretty much none of that is necessary. It helps, but no content requires anything but a metal suit that can ignore lethal damage and weapons that can dispose of any enemy. This much explains how Rev rose to popularity once Mesmer Skin was buffed to provide an immortality timer with no regards to game balance.

 

Seriously, where does CC even fit in the game anymore? I mean, I could totally CC an entire room with Banish, Rift Torrent and Stasis, even gain a huge damage increase to my guns with the augment but spend quite a hefty amount of energy to do so, or I could simply click on heads with my trusty kuva hek, with one good alt fire, reload and move on. If you can't tell the difference between which enemy is immune to CC and which isn't because they both get oneshot, why bother making them immune in the first place? High end players will always find a way to hard cheese any content with specialized builds and strategies, with damage or anything else, yet I feel the changes and nerfs completely miss the mark here.

[Harutomata]

22 hours ago, Tiltskillet said:

Calling it "threat-based" is factual but also kind of misleading as far as the game is concerned.  Absorb or Decoy are what I'd use that term for: i.e., creating something that enemies are more likely to attack than players.  In contrast, like rad status "Confusion", Chaos effectively removes the targets' affiliation, making them enemies of everything.  So they'll generally attack whatever is closest and in their FoV. 

Unlike Absorb, etc., these effects don't work through Overguard directly.  They can be impactful as very soft CCs anyway, as OGs will happily attack confused enemies that have attacked them.

Certainly though, Chaos also changing threat level is something that's often been proposed and would make the ability more useful.

I guess that might be more accurate wording.

Chaos was a "soft CC" even before eximus rework (even if all enemies were affected, they would still possibly attack allies), so the rules not favoring Nyx make it seem like an arbitrary rule against her when it'd be the only thing really going for her besides the low ability strength investment defense strip she has, which isn't exactly functionally perfect. I think letting it work on Overguard wouldn't be that much of a problem because Chaos is just "soft CC".
But CC needs a rework in general if DE wants to even partially walk away from the "DPS is the most valid role" design.

Edited April 8 by Harutomata