An Argument As To Why Dante's Tragedy Final Verse Having a Line of Sight Check Is Unnecessary, And A Potential Compromise.

[Calluna_V]

Many people on these forums (myself included) have already voiced their feedback that they want Dante's Tragedy LoS check removed and for the ability's functionality to be reverted to how it was before the Deep Archimedea patch, but few have taken the time to really break down why it feels so bad for this ability in particular, and why the change was really unnecessary to rein in Dante's power.

While I am pleased with Digital Extremes' promise to reinstate the DoT Damage Vulnerability that was previously applied by Pageflight, I am still unhappy with their seeming insistence on keeping Tragedy a Line of Sight only ability. Here's why.

1) The developers seem to be concerned that without a LoS check on Tragedy, players will be able to mindlessly nuke enemies through walls without ever even having to interact with them. However, this was never an issue in the context of Dante's kit specifically, since in order to do meaningful damage to enemies with Tragedy, they first need to be primed with DoT effects for Tragedy to detonate. The means to apply such effects within Dante's own kit, Dark Verse, already has a Line of Sight check. Thus, unless the level of the mission is low enough for Tragedy's base damage sans any DoT detonation to kill enemies, Dante could NOT ever mindlessly nuke enemies through walls without having to interact with them, making this concern moot except for extremely low level content. In the context of Dante's kit, the LoS check on Tragedy is almost wholly redundant.

2) The main purpose of Tragedy is to detonate the DoTs of enemies tagged with Dark Verse. Adding a Line of Sight check makes accomplishing this purpose with Tragedy finicky and inconsistent, especially in tilesets like the latest Entrati Labs, which have many decorations, pillars, archways, and mezzanines that can prevent Tragedy from striking enemies that players have intentionally spent energy and time marking. Dante no longer has as much freedom to remain mobile while casting Tragedy because he always has to keep in mind whether the enemies he has marked are still in LoS. He no longer has the ability to mark separate distinct enemy groups (say, one on a balcony, one on the ground below, and one in the corridor filtering into the room) before cashing in on all of them with Tragedy. Instead, Dante is often forced to cast Tragedy once per clump of enemies he encounters now, making him spend a lot more time and energy casting and making his gameplay a lot less fluid. It was extremely fun before the patch to build up to a huge Tragedy Final Verse by casting Dark Verse 4 or 5 times, marking enemies all around the tile, and then being able to confidently cast Tragedy in the centre to cash in on ALL of them. With the new Line of Sight requirement, this style of building up to a huge payoff is much less viable. It feels really bad to have spent energy and time marking enemies and for some of them to just DODGE the payoff because they wandered behind a pillar or something.

With this in mind, my thesis is that adding a Line of Sight check to Dante's Tragedy Final Verse was firstly UNNECESSARY as such a change seems aimed to solve a problem that did not exist in a meaningful capacity in Dante's kit, and secondly serves to make Dante's gameplay LESS FUN AND FLUID for no tangible benefit to the balance and health of the game.

Here is my idea for a solution/compromise that I hope Digital Extremes' developers would also be satisfied with: if Dante's Tragedy nuking low level missions through walls without having to interact with enemies is something that they want to address WITHOUT adding an unnecessary LoS requirement to the power, they can simply significantly reduce or even remove the base damage that Tragedy does to enemies not marked with DoT effects, while leaving the DoT detonation portion of the power unchanged. This way Dante's power to detonate the DoTs that enemies are taking from Dark Verse even through walls is preserved, but he no longer can kill enemies through walls with Tragedy without having to interact with them first. I would be pleased to see the DoT detonation multiplier be increased slightly to compensate, but that is not necessary if the developers do not see fit to do so.

Dante instantly became my favourite Warframe they've released in years, and I really hope the developers continue to listen to the feedback the community is giving them and work out a solution that everyone is happy with. It's clear that the vast majority of players want the LoS check on Tragedy to be entirely removed, and I hope they take the overwhelming player sentiment to heart and revert this change, with a few tweaks if need be.

Thank you for reading another of my very very long walls of text. Any comments and likes are welcome in order to boost the chances that a dev sees this. Cheers.

[Bizzo50]

Good thoughts! I don't know if I like removing the ability of his 4 to do damage without a primer though. My idea is simply that, since you need to hit them with dark verse to nuke anyway, make enemies affected by that forego the LoS check. I think that would be super fun, run around marking mobs for death and then nuke them. 

[NemiTheNem]

Well put! I myself have been lulled by the idea of compromise, reducing his multiplier, or range. But I should have remained firm.

I dislike the idea taking away the base damage, however, on the grounds that it is a great box breaker.

[Calluna_V]

2 hours ago, NemiTheNem said:

Well put! I myself have been lulled by the idea of compromise, reducing his multiplier, or range. But I should have remained firm.

I dislike the idea taking away the base damage, however, on the grounds that it is a great box breaker.

While yeah it's nice that Tragedy is a great box breaker, I would rather its functionality against enemies be restored than for it to keep that niche QoL feature, especially since Dark Verse already is a great box breaker as well and there are other frames (Limbo, Xaku) that can already do that job more conveniently than Dante.

It is something that I hope the devs keep in mind too though.

[Mayhem-Ivory]

vor 2 Stunden schrieb NemiTheNem:

Well put! I myself have been lulled by the idea of compromise, reducing his multiplier, or range. But I should have remained firm.

I dislike the idea taking away the base damage, however, on the grounds that it is a great box breaker.

Afaik most objects have very low health though, so reducing it from a frankly insane 6,500 (Oberon's Reckoning deals 1250) to something tame like 500 or even just 50 (according to the wiki, normal storage crates have 10 hp) would still allow for boxbreaking while making it unproblematic for "nuking".

[Digital_Malz]

On 2024-04-08 at 9:51 AM, Calluna_V said:

Many people on these forums (myself included) have already voiced their feedback that they want Dante's Tragedy LoS check removed and for the ability's functionality to be reverted to how it was before the Deep Archimedea patch, but few have taken the time to really break down why it feels so bad for this ability in particular, and why the change was really unnecessary to rein in Dante's power.

While I am pleased with Digital Extremes' promise to reinstate the DoT Damage Vulnerability that was previously applied by Pageflight, I am still unhappy with their seeming insistence on keeping Tragedy a Line of Sight only ability. Here's why.

1) The developers seem to be concerned that without a LoS check on Tragedy, players will be able to mindlessly nuke enemies through walls without ever even having to interact with them. However, this was never an issue in the context of Dante's kit specifically, since in order to do meaningful damage to enemies with Tragedy, they first need to be primed with DoT effects for Tragedy to detonate. The means to apply such effects within Dante's own kit, Dark Verse, already has a Line of Sight check. Thus, unless the level of the mission is low enough for Tragedy's base damage sans any DoT detonation to kill enemies, Dante could NOT ever mindlessly nuke enemies through walls without having to interact with them, making this concern moot except for extremely low level content. In the context of Dante's kit, the LoS check on Tragedy is almost wholly redundant.

2) The main purpose of Tragedy is to detonate the DoTs of enemies tagged with Dark Verse. Adding a Line of Sight check makes accomplishing this purpose with Tragedy finicky and inconsistent, especially in tilesets like the latest Entrati Labs, which have many decorations, pillars, archways, and mezzanines that can prevent Tragedy from striking enemies that players have intentionally spent energy and time marking. Dante no longer has as much freedom to remain mobile while casting Tragedy because he always has to keep in mind whether the enemies he has marked are still in LoS. He no longer has the ability to mark separate distinct enemy groups (say, one on a balcony, one on the ground below, and one in the corridor filtering into the room) before cashing in on all of them with Tragedy. Instead, Dante is often forced to cast Tragedy once per clump of enemies he encounters now, making him spend a lot more time and energy casting and making his gameplay a lot less fluid. It was extremely fun before the patch to build up to a huge Tragedy Final Verse by casting Dark Verse 4 or 5 times, marking enemies all around the tile, and then being able to confidently cast Tragedy in the centre to cash in on ALL of them. With the new Line of Sight requirement, this style of building up to a huge payoff is much less viable. It feels really bad to have spent energy and time marking enemies and for some of them to just DODGE the payoff because they wandered behind a pillar or something.

With this in mind, my thesis is that adding a Line of Sight check to Dante's Tragedy Final Verse was firstly UNNECESSARY as such a change seems aimed to solve a problem that did not exist in a meaningful capacity in Dante's kit, and secondly serves to make Dante's gameplay LESS FUN AND FLUID for no tangible benefit to the balance and health of the game.

Here is my idea for a solution/compromise that I hope Digital Extremes' developers would also be satisfied with: if Dante's Tragedy nuking low level missions through walls without having to interact with enemies is something that they want to address WITHOUT adding an unnecessary LoS requirement to the power, they can simply significantly reduce or even remove the base damage that Tragedy does to enemies not marked with DoT effects, while leaving the DoT detonation portion of the power unchanged. This way Dante's power to detonate the DoTs that enemies are taking from Dark Verse even through walls is preserved, but he no longer can kill enemies through walls with Tragedy without having to interact with them first. I would be pleased to see the DoT detonation multiplier be increased slightly to compensate, but that is not necessary if the developers do not see fit to do so.

Dante instantly became my favourite Warframe they've released in years, and I really hope the developers continue to listen to the feedback the community is giving them and work out a solution that everyone is happy with. It's clear that the vast majority of players want the LoS check on Tragedy to be entirely removed, and I hope they take the overwhelming player sentiment to heart and revert this change, with a few tweaks if need be.

Thank you for reading another of my very very long walls of text. Any comments and likes are welcome in order to boost the chances that a dev sees this. Cheers.

Perfect, just perfect. So, as I can't upvote it two times, I'm reposting it.

Edited April 9 by Digital_Malz

[NemiTheNem]

1 hour ago, Calluna_V said:

While yeah it's nice that Tragedy is a great box breaker, I would rather its functionality against enemies be restored than for it to keep that niche QoL feature, especially since Dark Verse already is a great box breaker as well and there are other frames (Limbo, Xaku) that can already do that job more conveniently than Dante.

It is something that I hope the devs keep in mind too though.

???

Me: I have been thinking about compromise but I shouldn't have.

Me: I don't like this compromise of taking away base damage of his ability 

You: It's nice that it's a good box breaker but I rather the nerfs be undone. PS, the other LoS ability is a good box breaker

1 hour ago, Mayhem-Ivory said:

Afaik most objects have very low health though, so reducing it from a frankly insane 6,500 (Oberon's Reckoning deals 1250) to something tame like 500 or even just 50 (according to the wiki, normal storage crates have 10 hp) would still allow for boxbreaking while making it unproblematic for "nuking".

Yeah, That could be nerfed, but I am disinclined to budge given how DE has been acting.

There is a LoS option I heard of and rather liked, basically giving abilities punchthrough and drop off when they fail the punch through check, I might be cool with that

[vFlitz]

4 hours ago, NemiTheNem said:

Well put! I myself have been lulled by the idea of compromise, reducing his multiplier, or range. But I should have remained firm.

I dislike the idea taking away the base damage, however, on the grounds that it is a great box breaker.

 

2 hours ago, Calluna_V said:

While yeah it's nice that Tragedy is a great box breaker, I would rather its functionality against enemies be restored than for it to keep that niche QoL feature, especially since Dark Verse already is a great box breaker as well and there are other frames (Limbo, Xaku) that can already do that job more conveniently than Dante.

It is something that I hope the devs keep in mind too though.

 

1 hour ago, Mayhem-Ivory said:

Afaik most objects have very low health though, so reducing it from a frankly insane 6,500 (Oberon's Reckoning deals 1250) to something tame like 500 or even just 50 (according to the wiki, normal storage crates have 10 hp) would still allow for boxbreaking while making it unproblematic for "nuking".

Well, sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but Tragedy does not and never has affected objects.

[Darth_Wryson]

Your idea isn't bad at all. I agree that we need some sort of compromise.

I personally believe that all untargeted player based AoE abilities (like tragedy) should have a LoS check. I think that it would give the devs another lever to use in balancing abilities. That said, I don't LIKE LoS checks, I just think they are a good way to add a skill-check to otherwise automatic abilities. To be clear, I think they should apply to damage focused abilities; all abilities that are primarily focused on supporting other tenno should be affinity range with no checks.

All that being said, the compromise I would like is a new mod. an Ability Punch-Through mod. With the new LoS check that Pablo built we essentially have a 5-meter punch through on all LoS checks already (once it's fully working). I would absolutely love to see an Exilus mod that increases the area of automatic success by 5 more meters. 10 meters would give me plenty of room to hit enemies who are stuck in nooks and cranny's etc. Without allowing me to be completely safe and never see them. The mod would essentially be an opportunity cost tax on players like me who aren't up to the skill level of the crazy good guys or otherwise can't be bothered. I'd be happy to sacrifice my primed sure-footed or power drift to extend the area I can automatically hit enemies.

[Digital_Malz]

You’re suggesting a bandaid over another bandaid? Amazing.

It goes like: “since LoS mechanics don’t work, let’s invent an Exilus mod to increase area of automatic success. So we can dedicate some 9/5 capacity in our builds to bandaid the mechanic that has already being proved that doesn’t work”.

I have another idea, we simply remove all damage from every damage based skill, and then we create an Exilus mod to allow dmg skills to cause dmg! We can do the same with range. (Just for those who can’t understand, this is an irony).

8 minutes ago, Darth_Wryson said:

Your idea isn't bad at all. I agree that we need some sort of compromise.

I personally believe that all untargeted player based AoE abilities (like tragedy) should have a LoS check. I think that it would give the devs another lever to use in balancing abilities. That said, I don't LIKE LoS checks, I just think they are a good way to add a skill-check to otherwise automatic abilities. To be clear, I think they should apply to damage focused abilities; all abilities that are primarily focused on supporting other tenno should be affinity range with no checks.

All that being said, the compromise I would like is a new mod. an Ability Punch-Through mod. With the new LoS check that Pablo built we essentially have a 5-meter punch through on all LoS checks already (once it's fully working). I would absolutely love to see an Exilus mod that increases the area of automatic success by 5 more meters. 10 meters would give me plenty of room to hit enemies who are stuck in nooks and cranny's etc. Without allowing me to be completely safe and never see them. The mod would essentially be an opportunity cost tax on players like me who aren't up to the skill level of the crazy good guys or otherwise can't be bothered. I'd be happy to sacrifice my primed sure-footed or power drift to extend the area I can automatically hit enemies.

You’re suggesting a bandaid over another bandaid? Amazing.

It goes like: “since LoS mechanics don’t work, let’s invent an Exilus mod to increase area of automatic success. So we can dedicate some 9/5 capacity in our builds to bandaid the mechanic that has already being proved that doesn’t work”.

I have another idea, we simply remove all damage from every damage based skill, and then we create an Exilus mod to allow dmg skills to cause dmg! We can do the same with range. (Just for those who can’t understand, this is an irony).

[Calluna_V]

2 hours ago, vFlitz said:

 

 

Well, sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but Tragedy does not and never has affected objects.

Opened my game to test this and yeah Tragedy doesn't affect objects and on further reflection i'm 99% sure it didn't before Deep Archimedea either, so I'm not sure what NemiTheNem is talking about. Thanks for the heads up.

[Gaxxian]

hace 1 hora, Digital_Malz dijo:

You’re suggesting a bandaid over another bandaid? Amazing.

It goes like: “since LoS mechanics don’t work, let’s invent an Exilus mod to increase area of automatic success. So we can dedicate some 9/5 capacity in our builds to bandaid the mechanic that has already being proved that doesn’t work”.

I have another idea, we simply remove all damage from every damage based skill, and then we create an Exilus mod to allow dmg skills to cause dmg! We can do the same with range. (Just for those who can’t understand, this is an irony).

I think that its a good idea, and in fact i proposed the same here: https://forums.warframe.com/topic/1392604-honest-real-balance-changes-for-dante/

The damage in high levels is completely negligible. I have a 449% Str build, and it does like 300 dmg by itself when you hit them. But in low levels its brutal, its 40k Slash dmg in AoE. Also, it doesnt have any Status chance, so it add nothing to the DoT dmg part. It just there to see BIG NUMBERS and to be the excuse to add LoS into that skill because "it clears room at low levels without effort".

So, we remove the damage, we lose nothing at high level play, and there is no more excuse to add LoS in first place.

[Digital_Malz]

56 minutes ago, Gaxxian said:

I think that its a good idea, and in fact i proposed the same here: https://forums.warframe.com/topic/1392604-honest-real-balance-changes-for-dante/

The damage in high levels is completely negligible. I have a 449% Str build, and it does like 300 dmg by itself when you hit them. But in low levels its brutal, its 40k Slash dmg in AoE. Also, it doesnt have any Status chance, so it add nothing to the DoT dmg part. It just there to see BIG NUMBERS and to be the excuse to add LoS into that skill because "it clears room at low levels without effort".

So, we remove the damage, we lose nothing at high level play, and there is no more excuse to add LoS in first place.

No no no! I read all your idea in that other topic, and I even upvoted it. Because you have suggested an interesting way of fixing things. You were very clear and repeated many times: REMOVE LOS. This guy is defending keeping LoS and suggesting a new mod to fix something that does not work. It's totally different.

[Gaxxian]

hace 17 minutos, Digital_Malz dijo:

This guy is defending keeping LoS and suggesting a new mod to fix something that does not work. It's totally different.

What? No!!! He says to remove LoS! D: At least i understood that...

[Digital_Malz]

3 hours ago, Darth_Wryson said:

All that being said, the compromise I would like is a new mod. an Ability Punch-Through mod. With the new LoS check that Pablo built we essentially have a 5-meter punch through on all LoS checks already (once it's fully working). I would absolutely love to see an Exilus mod that increases the area of automatic success by 5 more meters. 10 meters would give me plenty of room to hit enemies who are stuck in nooks and cranny's etc. Without allowing me to be completely safe and never see them. The mod would essentially be an opportunity cost tax on players like me who aren't up to the skill level of the crazy good guys or otherwise can't be bothered. I'd be happy to sacrifice my primed sure-footed or power drift to extend the area I can automatically hit enemies.

Read again, @Gaxxian. He wants an Exilus mod to bandaid the bandaid.

[Gaxxian]

hace 2 minutos, Digital_Malz dijo:

Read again, @Gaxxian. He wants an Exilus mod to bandaid the bandaid.

Ok, i was talking about OP. I missed completely that comment....

Yeah, thats bad and Digital_Malz should go to jail 😠

Edited April 9 by Gaxxian

[Calluna_V]

Rebb relayed that DE is planning on keeping Dante's Tragedy an LoS ability in today's Devshorts, saying that it always should've been that way and citing how it's the "largest range ability in the game that does damage in an area around the player at 30 metres." Their stance seems to be that it needs an LoS check to be balanced. I strongly disagree with this reasoning.

First, the elephant in the room: many many players are suggesting that they could lower the range of Final Verse slightly and remove the LoS check and they'd be happy, and this reasoning completely ignores all of the feedback in that vein. (later in the stream they do mention this as a option but seem hesitant to do it because they think it'd make other folks who prefer it this way unhappy, which I guess is fair?)

Secondly, Dante's Tragedy isn't some no set up blind nuke that instantly kills everything with no setup and with unprecedented range. Like many have said over and over, it NEEDS setup from other abilities or weapons to do ANY meaningful damage to enemies. They bring up Xaku's The Vast Untime with its 25 metre range as another ability that "deals damage to enemies in LoS in an area around the player", which is a completely unfair comparison in my eyes.

Unlike Tragedy, The Vast Untime's purpose is NOT to do damage (which is the ONLY thing Tragedy does). The Vast Untime also can be cast freely without having to cast two other abilities first, and all the effects it IS primarily meant to do (slow, Void damage vulnerability, pausing ability durations, buffing speed and evasion) are applied to enemies or to Xaku themselves with no setup or other conditions required.

Heck, you can pretty easily argue that even if Xaku COMPLETELY WHIFFS The Vast Untime and manages to hit ZERO enemies with it, they're still getting the majority of the utility the ability provides because it's primarily used to pause their ability timers and buff their speed and evasion. In comparison, if Tragedy misses its intended target enemies, it does LITERALLY NOTHING.

I'm extremely disappointed with the news that they're committing to this (almost universally disliked) change in the name of "balance" when the reasoning they claim to be using is this flimsy. I hope they continue to monitor the feedback in these forums, on Reddit, in the Discord server, everywhere and that something, somewhere changes their mind.

Once again, DE, a compromise I would be pleased with is the removal of the LoS requirement of Tragedy in exchange for a significantly lowered base damage (to prevent it from nuking low level content without any DoT setup) and perhaps a 5m reduction in range (to put it in line with other radial damaging abilities). Please listen to us.

Edited April 9 by Calluna_V
added context

[Vortoxxic]

Thanks for this, I had been debating making a post exactly like this, nearly point for point. I had even thought of the same solution of removing the base damage from Tragedy and maybe increasing the status damage multiplier. I did some back of the napkin math the other day to figure out what the status damage multiplier should be.

Because a normal rotation is 2 Dark Verses followed by a Tragedy, the math is assuming that you are casting both Dark Verses at the same enemy.

The base damage for Dark Verse is 1250 and a slash proc does 35% base damage per tick: 1250 * 0.35 = 437.5

A slash proc ticks 6 times: 437.5 * 6 = 2625

Dark Verse strikes twice and is casted twice: 2625 * 4 = 10500

The slash procs are detonated by Tragedy and multiplied by the base status damage multiplier: 10500 * 3 = 31500

Adding the base damage of Tragedy to the status damage for total damage: 6500 + 31500 = 38000

The proportion of the total damage that is from the base damage: 6500 / 38000 = 0.17 (rounded)

Multiplying the multiplier by that percentage to get more multiplier: 3 * 1.17 = 3.51

So if we removed the base damage of Tragedy and increased it's damage multiplier from 3x to 3.5x (because round numbers) we would have close to the same raw total damage that Tragedy had prior, and it wouldn't be able to kill enemies through walls without interacting with them first. I will point out though, that this ignores damage type and armor. Because slash procs do true damage, they ignore armor. This change would reduce the slash damage and increase the true damage, thus increasing damage against armored units.

This also ignores how the increased multiplier will interact with additional castings of Dark Verse and with mods. If DE doesn't want Dante to potentially deal significantly more damage, in particular to armored units, they might want to only increase Tragedy to 3.25x, or maybe leave it at 3x. Did I just do all this math to conclude that maybe DE shouldn't change the modifier at all? Yes, yes I did.

[NemiTheNem]

4 hours ago, Calluna_V said:

Opened my game to test this and yeah Tragedy doesn't affect objects and on further reflection i'm 99% sure it didn't before Deep Archimedea either, so I'm not sure what NemiTheNem is talking about. Thanks for the heads up.

Honestly I suspect it's the same thing with how people think Octavia doesn't have LoS.  And why people are stuck on Tragedy being bad.

To clarify, I go into netracells and cast tragedy, all the loot boxes break, obviously it was tragedy because there were no other attacks in my fov despite one could have gone off behind me, yay Tragedy breaks boxes. and that's stuck in my head because I observed it.

Someone else gets a really bad LoS check on Tragedy and goes Boo! It doesn't work. Then they never touch it again because they know that it won't work, because it's what they observed.

(Same thing happened with Kullevro, his pittiance of overguard had him quickly discarded and after the buff it took a while for people to pick him up again.)

This is why DE has to be careful about this stuff, first impressions are hard to get over, and wells are hard to un-poison.

Here's a half joking compromise: let us helminth over specific final verses.

[Zavenosk]

No-LoS Tragedy with zero damage, only damage conversion seems a good compromise to me. It'd also be nice if Tragedy converted slash procs to pure damage, instead of slash damage. (That might've already been changed?)

[Calluna_V]

15 minutes ago, Zavenosk said:

No-LoS Tragedy with zero damage, only damage conversion seems a good compromise to me. It'd also be nice if Tragedy converted slash procs to pure damage, instead of slash damage. (That might've already been changed?)

Slash procs already do "cinematic damage" which ignores armor and has no weaknesses, not Slash damage.