Historical Warframe Claim: The First True Mag Master

[Probably_Asleep]

9 hours ago, Dexaldem said:

Man this is straight 2013 Warframe energy and I love it. That is one impressive achievement, chief. Fantastic work, and the greatest of all kudos to a job VERY well done! xD

Thanks! That's an interesting way of putting it, but I can see what you're saying. Rather than trying to compete with the "meta," this style of gameplay is more expressive and experimental.

 

2 hours ago, Berzerkules said:

I love all animals and plant life but I do have a particular fondness for felines.

I just picked up a cat from the shelter a couple months ago after not living with one for about 5 years. After I had 3 cats and a dog that were 13-16 y/o pass in a 2 year period i wasn't ready for another furry companion until recently. I was actually still reluctant but my wife and daughter finally convinced me to go to the shelter. The shelter said they only had one cat but she was shy and wouldn't let anyone close. We walked into the room and she perked up, got super talkative and was trying to get us to pet her through the cage. She picked us. It finally felt like the right time and we found the right cat.

What a story! I'm sorry for your loss, too. I had a very similar situation, let me see if I can trim this down to a short story...
So my wife wanted a cat, my mother in law tagged along, and they both got cats (brothers). Mother in law couldn't take care of him, so we got two cats, but that second cat decided he and I would be best friends. Then after a few years he came down with a terminal illness and I lost my friend.

Shortly after that, my wife started helping out a terminally ill human, who had a small black cat. That human's condition got worse and she moved out of state to be with family. She didn't want her black cat because it was "antisocial and mean," so she was going to just abandon it. My wife and I couldn't stand the thought of that happening, so we took her and tried to find a home for her instead. However, the home we ended up finding for her was our own. She wasn't antisocial or mean; she just didn't feel safe and loved. Now she's a snuggly spaz.

I can relate to a lot of what you're saying. Loving and losing a cat, not feeling like you want another, having another get dropped into your life anyway, and loving the new cat while still remembering and mourning the old one.

[Xzorn]

I've played Mag here and there when I came back but after this post I was more seriously trying to figure out how to deal with Overguard without playing "Shield Gate The Game". As I mentioned before I used to Bubble Hop with her and rely entirely on her abilities to stay alive. I ran no Defense mods at all. 200% Duration, 235% Range, 200% Power, 45% Efficiency. Something like that which doesn't quite work anymore.

Been thinking of a good Helmith for her to help with Overguard. Rad Pillars worked out great for Volt so might try that.

 

Edited June 4 by Xzorn

[Probably_Asleep]

5 hours ago, Xzorn said:

I've played Mag here and there when I came back but after this post I was more seriously trying to figure out how to deal with Overguard without playing "Shield Gate The Game". As I mentioned before I used to Bubble Hop with her and rely entirely on her abilities to stay alive. I ran no Defense mods at all. 200% Duration, 235% Range, 200% Power, 45% Efficiency. Something like that which doesn't quite work anymore.

Been thinking of a good Helmith for her to help with Overguard. Rad Pillars worked out great for Volt so might try that.

*gasp* Are we talking Mag builds!?

The can of worms has opened!
^{(A fun Warframe connection here: Worms Armageddon was released in--wait for it--the year 1999)}

I'll share my favorite builds from each of my four separate Mag Prime team members...

Series: Hero - Model: ALL

Spoiler

• Purpose:
  Hero is designed as a Jack-of-All Trades / Master of None build. She can do all the content (except EDA because it disables abilities), but her weaknesses have to be made up for with player skill. The ALL model is has additional survivability and armor stripping so that all enemies can be killed quickly.
• Mods:
  Overframe Build
• Shards:
  • (TF) Azure - 7.5 Health Regen / Sec
  • (TF) Crimson - 15% Ability Duration
  • (TF) Crimson - 15% Ability Strength
  • (TF) Crimson - 15% Ability Duration
  • (TF) Amber - 37.5% Casting Speed
• Helminth:
  Flexible. I used to love Polarize because the Augment worked on Eximus, but DE hates CC these days. Right now I have Xata's Whisper on to help against Overguard enemies.
• School:
  Zenurik
• Playstyle:
  Hero-ALL ranges from 2,387 to 31,407 EHP. She can armor strip within a 30 meter radius while locking enemy movement for 14.35 seconds. Her Magnetize bubble is 17 meters in diameter and lasts for 30.75 seconds. Aim glide is zero gravity and lasts 9 seconds. She has health and energy regen without the need for pickups or gear. Finally, she gets a 60% discount on Ability costs.
  With all these perks, her play style is very versatile. Generally though she survives by killing the enemy before they kill her, and she uses her abilities without caring about the energy cost. I have a habit of activating Zenurik's energy regen every couple of breaths during the heat of battle. The float ability is her main mobility method, and I get Sprint/Parkour from her weapons. I don't have any knockdown protection, so I compensate by just paying attention.

Series: Mage - Model: KPM

Spoiler

• Purpose:
  Mage is set up to rely on her abilities more than the other members. She's got a lot of power boost shards and her builds capitalize on that. The KPM build is specifically used for ESO because I'm still trying to get the Vandal weapon components that come from the 8th zone.
• Mods:
  Overframe Build
• Shards:
  • (TF) Amber - 37.5% Casting Speed
  • (TF) Crimson - 15% Ability Strength
  • (TF) Crimson - 15% Ability Strength
  • (TF) Crimson - 15% Ability Strength
  • (TF) Crimson - 15% Ability Strength
• Helminth:
  Polarize > Breach Surge. ESO enemies don't need any armor strip because Breach Surge in the bubble with a Pasmor just vaporizes them. Putting it in slot 3 lets it be used frequently enough in ESO.
• School:
  Zenurik
• Playstyle:
  Mage-KPM only really gets taken out for ESO runs, but she's comfortable in that arena. Her final Ability Strength rests at 259% and her Range is 265%, so her death bubbles act very quickly. She uses Praedos for Parkour boost, and her companion for enemy radar. The strategy is to leap into the most concentrated enemy cluster, Breach Surge, Magnetize, shoot a shot or two, and repeat. The bubbles continue to kill enemies while you move on, and the faster you move the faster the oldest bubble explodes. There are enough Eximus units in ESO that her energy is taken care or through Equilibrium, and she starts each round at full energy from Preparation. The only enemies that give me trouble are the Neutralizer Crewman; I've got a Cycron on hand for popping their bubbles, but they break the flow. Apart from all that it's just a matter of getting good maps for the week. the LOS checks make things like the Kuva Fortress a huge pain at higher zones.

Series: Rogue - Model: SPY

Spoiler

• Purpose:
  Rogue is a stealth and infiltration specialist. She has added parkour velocity for leaping over or through security systems, and extra duration for putting enemies to sleep to get stealth affinity bonuses. The SPY model is for blitzing through Spy and Rescue missions as quickly as possible.
• Mods:
  Overframe Build
• Shards:
  • (TF) Amber - 22.5% Parkour Velocity
  • (TF) Amber - 37.5% Casting Speed
  • (TF) Crimson - 15% Ability Duration
  • (TF) Amber- 22.5% Parkour Velocity
  • (TF) Crimson - 15% Ability Duration
• Helminth:
  Pull > Perspicacity. I could keep building Ciphers, but Perspicacity is just so convenient that it's hard to justify spending the resources. I'm thinking of moving it to her 3rd ability instead though because of the recent nerfs to CC.
• School:
  Zenurik
• Playstyle:
  Rogue-SPY has a sprint speed of 2.42 and a Parkour Velocity of +60%. I used to have higher parkour, but it was unwieldy. She has basic Ability Boosts too for the minor skirmishes, but her main role is to to just run past enemies and clear the objective. Depending on the mission I might change out her Aura Mod for Aerodynamic. The Lua Spy Mission for example has a section where you can just fly right above the electrified floor but under the laser platforms. Rescue missions are also easy with this build. I use Innodem rather than Praedos for the slightly higher Sprint as well as the stealth finisher bonus for rescues.

Series: Tank - Model: EHP

Spoiler

• Purpose:
  Tank is destined to take the most abuse; her design is all about surviving without using abilities. The EHP model is mainly used for Archon Showdowns where I need to just stare down a single enemy and keep firing while everyone is shooting me.
• Mods:
  Overframe Build
• Shards:
  • (TF) Azure - 225 Armor
  • (TF) Azure - 225 Armor
  • (TF) Azure - 225 Health
  • (TF) Azure - 225 Armor
  • (TF) Azure - 75 Energy Max
• Helminth:
  Polarize > Dispensary. Something I love about Dispensary is that the first drop is always a Health Orb. So with Equilibrium, it's an immediately refunded ability.
• School:
  Zenurik
• Playstyle:
  Tank-EHP has 595 Health with 86% damage reduction from Armor, (variably) 90% damage reduction from Adaptation, 64% damage reduction while airborne, and an additional 58% damage reduction from Quick Thinking when applied to her 830 Energy. So it's (595 / 0.14 / 0.1 / 0.36) + (830 / 0.14 / 0.1 / 0.36 / 0.42) = ~510,156 EHP. So after Adaptation spins up, you get over half a million EHP, and with Energy Nexus / Zenurik you're able to have an EHP regen of about 3,779 per second. And the first health orb that drops from Dispensary gives you a net positive ~36,375 EHP, with each additional health orb granting even more due to the casting cost having already been paid. Long story short, This build let Mag take a LOT of hits. This is only my speculation, but it seems like Warframe has a minimum damage register of 1 HP. With that said, in practice it's more like thinking: "I can take 595 normal hits to my health and 830 normal hits to my energy." So it can still drain pretty rapidly when playing solo and every single enemy is shooting you at once, but it also regenerates rapidly as long as you're keeping Zenurik up and Dispensary going.
  The other thing that's tempting to ignore but vital to keep going is to make sure you're floating, which means this doesn't work well with melee. But the playstyle is easy enough to understand. Just be careful while Adaptation is spinning up, and then jump, aim, and fire. When the aim glide wear off, refresh Dispensary and Zenurik's Wellspring, then hop back up and start firing again. You basically turn yourself into Protea's 2nd ability; just an immortal floating turret.

As is evident by now, I'm quite enthusiastic about Mag builds. I'd be happy to hear about any or your setups as well!

[Berzerkules]

18 hours ago, Xzorn said:

I've played Mag here and there when I came back but after this post I was more seriously trying to figure out how to deal with Overguard without playing "Shield Gate The Game". As I mentioned before I used to Bubble Hop with her and rely entirely on her abilities to stay alive. I ran no Defense mods at all. 200% Duration, 235% Range, 200% Power, 45% Efficiency. Something like that which doesn't quite work anymore.

Been thinking of a good Helmith for her to help with Overguard. Rad Pillars worked out great for Volt so might try that.

 

Since Mag's 4 restore shields/overshields she is kind of built to shield gate. Not using shield gate mechanics is ignoring one of her main strengths.

I sometimes play her in a similar way that you describe with similar stats. I use several builds with stats around 145 duration, 45 efficiency, 235-265 range and 139 strength. I'll stand just inside her bubble so I don't get hit with stray shots while I have several shots from Nataruk are swirling around my bubble. I'll pull non eximus trash mobs into bubble and pick off eximus with exodia contagion zaw since it goes right through her bubble. 

If you don't want to pull enemies into bubble you can use well of life or blood alter to to keep your magnetized target alive and it will keep pulling enemies until duration expires or you detonate it. 

Nourish is great on almost everything, free viral and energy regen. This saves mod slots on main dps tool and allows mag full ability spam. Obvious choice but ill state it anyways, 

Breach surge in the bubble is just a stupid good subsume.

Gara spectrosiphon augment is underrated imo. Soft cc and infinite energy. It pairs really well with Mag's bubble since you generally run high range and who doesn't like a nice little pile of energy orbs? This might be close to what you were thinking with pillar since specrtosiphon acts like a rad proc they are both bamboozle abilities. 

There is also the smite build that is a decent disruption too. It's kind of like Wisp's breach surge build where the orbs are trapped in magnetize bubble but instead it's the orbs from smite that do 35% target's hp/shields as damage. Just like breach surge orbs the smite orbs are effected by weapon damage modifiers like vigorous swap and arcane arachne. Stack some viral and you have a scaling single target nuke. 

3xtau duration and 2x tau casting speed shards ftw

Anyways, Mag is a heck of a lot of fun. 

edit: oh yeah! Combat discipline + arcane avenger + molt reconstruct is a fun combo in those nourish/spectrosiphon builds where energy is never an issue. 

Edited June 5 by Berzerkules

[Xzorn]

@Probably_Asleep

My old build looked somewhat like this Old Mag Build except it used her Arcane Coil helm 25% Range and double Energize which you can't run anymore. Since enemies don't really scale like they used to the high duration to stack Magnetize ticks isn't as important. Her augments mostly did nothing for me back then. There was no range on Magnetize and while Armor Strip on crush was fine it was equally easy to strip enemies in Magnetize or stack it's damage so high it didn't matter.

This is my current toned down version: Sorta New Build

Crush obviously gained a lot of value since last I played giving Armor Strip, cast speed and shield gate. I changed the build when I came back. Thinking back I could have kept similar and just added Energy Orb Yellow Shards but I didn't have many at the time. Using 100 energy to shield gate is a bit expensive. The bubble hop doesn't feel as safe as it was either. I've gotten dropped a few times trying it again.

Shards are Cast Speed and Duration.

@Berzerkules

Yea I don't really need the energy since I dropped Blind Rage which I might put back. I dunno. By "Shield Gate Game" I mean the rotation of immortal nonsense not just gaining shields back. I'm fine with that. Players have mentioned Harrow having survival issues but I've not seen it thanks to Auger Reach giving 10 shields on cast enough time for Condemn to travel and if all else fails press 4. I don't mind bubble hoping. Magnetize, amp it up, pull enemies in, pick another target, hop over and repeat.

A lot of endurance runner friends used Rolling Guard to hop. I used the operator cuz I was super stingy with mod space. Both worked.

I was looking for Helmith options to keep Overguard enemies off her since that's become her biggest issue IMO.
Nyx, Volt, Mag, Frost, Banshee. All the old kings and queens get suckered by the mechanic one way or another.

[Probably_Asleep]

6 hours ago, Xzorn said:

My old build looked somewhat like this Old Mag Build except it used her Arcane Coil helm 25% Range and double Energize which you can't run anymore. Since enemies don't really scale like they used to the high duration to stack Magnetize ticks isn't as important. Her augments mostly did nothing for me back then. There was no range on Magnetize and while Armor Strip on crush was fine it was equally easy to strip enemies in Magnetize or stack it's damage so high it didn't matter.

This is my current toned down version: Sorta New Build

Crush obviously gained a lot of value since last I played giving Armor Strip, cast speed and shield gate. I changed the build when I came back. Thinking back I could have kept similar and just added Energy Orb Yellow Shards but I didn't have many at the time. Using 100 energy to shield gate is a bit expensive. The bubble hop doesn't feel as safe as it was either. I've gotten dropped a few times trying it again.

Shards are Cast Speed and Duration.

Your high-strength builds are much more humane than mine. A lot of my builds use 40% Strength because of Overextended. I tend to think along the lines of: "Meh, they're in the bubble so they'll die eventually..." and I just ignore them as the DoT/AoE takes care of them over time. But I've noticed when I go with more strength the enemies are put out of their misery much quicker.

Very envious you got an Arcane Coil helm.

When I bubble hop, I'm used to using it as an advancing technique like in Exterminate missions:

When I advance too quickly (entering the forwardmost bubble) then things don't work out well. But as long as I set the bubbles further ahead, I have a safe zone I can rely on.
The figure above is a rather extreme example because I wouldn't really be using it in such a nonaggressive manner. Instead of pushing through enemy forces, I'd be eliminating the laterally-positioned enemies, use the forward-positioned enemies to extend the bubble centipede, and then advance a bubble to repeat the process. This has the added benefit of extending the time Eximus units spend inside the bubbles; they have to travel an entire bubble's length before making it to me, which often drains their Overguard and "mob-ifies" them.

_{This is a bug, but I'm not sure if it's ever going to be fixed because I brought it up multiple times and it never got noticed...}
The Incarnon Kunai passes right through Mag's bubble, completely unaffected. It also tracks to headshots and can deal massive single-target damage. This makes it a perfect weapon to take down Overguarded enemies from the safety of your bubble. Modding for Magnetic Kunais might be a nice ace of your sleeve after they release the Jade Shadows update that promises to make Magnetic the anti-Overguard element. (Of course Mag's Bubbles also use Magnetic so maybe it won't be necessary then...)

Naturally this doesn't work as well when holding a static position because the enemies are coming from all sides. In that case I rely more on sealing off entry points, or using the 3rd dimension to lift projectiles over the defense target.

 

I'm impressed by your strategy though! I usually like having high efficiency because I have an instinctive distrust of relying on pickups for my energy economy. I'm impressed by anyone who routinely uses 100% or less efficiency.