Temporal Artillery highlights just how bad Temporal Anchor is

[IggySnow]

So first , I love Temporal artillery. I think its a really fun and worth while augment... That is if it wasn't for the fact that it requires you to use Temporal Anchor.

Temporal Anchor, in theory, is actually really interesting and powerful, but in practice is one of the most annoying powers in the game. In a game that's all about parkouring through missions as fast as possible, Temporal Anchor goes against that philosophy completely by dragging you back.

Now again, in theory, that's not that bad, as long as that's what you actually intend to do, even though its a very niche use case. But unfortunately when you are using her Temporal Artillery/ Temporal Erosion augments, because you want those buffs to be up at all times, 9 times out of 10 it gets triggered unintentionally and sends you back in time 20+ seconds. This essentially punishes you for using the ability, and it happens very often unless you are really on the ball when it comes to cancelling the ability before it ends. Didn't cancel Temporal Anchor before the timer ran out? Back 20 seconds. Tapped/ held the ability button to cancel when you meant to hold/tap? Back 20 seconds.

 

Now besides a full ability rework, I think there are 2 ways Temporal Anchor could be fixed.

The first, which would be my preferred change, is to make Temporal Anchor a channelled ability, where it constantly "records" your last 5 seconds of movement and damage, and only activates the rewind when you choose to activate it, or when you die to save you. Running out of energy would simply deactivate the ability without triggering it. This would stop the constant accidental rewinds, and at the same time would temper her ability spam since her energy requirements would be higher. Even if it had a high energy drain it would make Temporal Anchor WAY more enjoyable to use.

The second, which is way easier to do, but more boring imo, is to just make it so that when Temporal Anchors timer runs out it doesn't trigger the rewind. This would be a massive improvement because not only would it stop you from getting a low consequence but extremely annoying punishment for forgetting about its timer, but it would also make the rewind a strictly positive effect because it would either save you from death or activate only when you want it to. On top of that, because there would be no negatives to activating it, cancelling the ability could be replaced with a recast function that puts down a new anchor.

 

I really just think something needs to be done about Temporal Anchor, because currently its seen as a "do not use, free Helminth ability slot" by most of the community, and now 2 of her augments rely on using it. And quite frankly no matter how good those augments are, nothing is worth the annoyance of having to use Temporal Anchor.

[Mithost]

It's understandable that Temporal Erosion and Temporal Artillery are meant to encourage players to make use of Protea's fourth ability as opposed to subsuming it, but trading two mod slots on an already crowded build for a clunkier and less effective version of Xaku's Grasp of Lohk does not feel very good right now. The OP of this thread has already outlined Protea player's primary issues with Temporal Anchor as an ability on it's own, so I wanted to add a few bits of feedback I had from playing with the Temporal Artillery augment mod itself:

• When Temporal Anchor is activated while multiple turrets are already deployed, Temporal Artillery will always grab the turret that has been out the longest. This is fine if no turrets are currently deployed, but becomes a bit cumbersome when you need to remember which already-deployed turret is going to go away each time you activate Temporal Anchor.
• If the turret being taken by Temporal Artillery currently has a combo count higher than 20x, it will go back down to 20x. Combined with the previous point, it can be feel bad to ruin a big combo whenever you want to activate Temporal Anchor.
• To keep a 20x turret going with Temporal Artillery, you need to either wait out the entire rewind effect of Temporal Anchor a few times per minute or sacrifice all of the other benefits of using Temporal Anchor by canceling/reapplying it early. Canceling the rewind effect and reapplying it to preserve the turret requires an awkward set of inputs and strict timing to ensure that the turret's duration doesn't expire between deactivating and re-activating Temporal Anchor (Hold 4 -> wait for Temporal Anchor to deactivate -> immediately release and tap 4 ASAP to re-enter Temporal Anchor. With it's low base duration, even 250%+ duration leads to the Protea player having to babysit both Blaze Artillery and Temporal Anchor every 30 seconds or so.

With everything above, Temporal Artillery doesn't make me want to use Temporal Anchor more. There are a lot of hoops to jump through when using Temporal Anchor, and I struggle to figure out a playstyle that makes the ability shine even when using both this augment and Temporal Erosion. I never feel good canceling Temporal Anchor early, but with high duration the rewind effect usually takes several seconds and places me far away from whatever turrets/grenades/dispensers I placed during the ability. I could instead attempt to stay in Temporal Anchor as much as possible to always have a turret with me and keep getting the armor strip, but the low combo cap, mod slot investment, and high upkeep of ensuring I prevent being rewound back several tiles isn't worth the effort when I could rather be playing Xaku, or subsume Jade's Ophanim Eyes over Anchor and get a very similar ability as this augment without the hoops.

[sXeth]

Really all they need to do is have the “past” fast forward to you to revert the savestate rather then you warping back.

The go back to place mechanic, should only happen if you die (or maybe be the deliberately ending early effect, if desired to keep the niche traversal use)

Edited June 20 by sXeth

[(XBOX)K1jker]

Just make it 'can only place 1 turret, 10 second duration'.

No need to involve other abilities

[Solarsyphon]

I like temporal anchor and the ability to move back. My main gripe with it is that you can pick up stuff while rewinding so you waste health an energy orbs which is important because the main function of anchors rewind is to add energy efficiency by restoring your expended energy.  It would also be really neat if it also worked for Incarnon  weapons and other special weapon abilities because then you could maintain Incarnon permanently and other charges permanently.  It would make temporal anchor an ability well suited to missions like interception,  survival and defense where you don't need to cover much ground  but can really benefit from covering an area in damaging effects. 

I'm not sure if temporal anchor could work as a channeled ability for coding reasons. There could be an issue with the game needing to constantly record your stats and position. My alternative would be an augment for temporal anchor that instead of rewinding you creates a specter that rewinds in your place.  You'd basically trade the stat rewind for a specter and I  think its a neutral enough augment to go in the Exilus slot. 

[_4shes]

On 2024-06-22 at 2:41 AM, Solarsyphon said:

I like temporal anchor and the ability to move back. My main gripe with it is that you can pick up stuff while rewinding so you waste health an energy orbs which is important because the main function of anchors rewind is to add energy efficiency by restoring your expended energy.  It would also be really neat if it also worked for Incarnon  weapons and other special weapon abilities because then you could maintain Incarnon permanently and other charges permanently.  It would make temporal anchor an ability well suited to missions like interception,  survival and defense where you don't need to cover much ground  but can really benefit from covering an area in damaging effects. 

I'm not sure if temporal anchor could work as a channeled ability for coding reasons. There could be an issue with the game needing to constantly record your stats and position. My alternative would be an augment for temporal anchor that instead of rewinding you creates a specter that rewinds in your place.  You'd basically trade the stat rewind for a specter and I  think its a neutral enough augment to go in the Exilus slot. 

The energy you pick up can be retained if you cancel Rewind. If you gain more energy during rewind than you had before rewind it can be kept if you hold down 4 and cancel the ability.

[Solarsyphon]

17 minutes ago, _4shes said:

The energy you pick up can be retained if you cancel Rewind. If you gain more energy during rewind than you had before rewind it can be kept if you hold down 4 and cancel the ability.

What I mean is that a common tactic is to us temporal anchor to get rid of the costs of abilities by rewinding energy back to before you used them. .  You only get energy back  if you don't cancel but if you use dispensary in temporal anchor then you will rewind through dispensary and use up all the drops with no effect because you can still pick up items while rewinding.  Basically you can pick up items while rewinding if you don't cancel which will have no effect and this isn't synergistic with dispensary. Otherwise dispensary is the perfect ability to use with temporal anchor because  it requires time to build up drops and is one of Protea's most expensive abilities so would really benefit from that cost reduction. It would also improve the life saving function of temporal anchor because you could then rewind onto some health orbs instead of wasting them as part of the rewinding. 

[Famecans]

Temporal anchor is very powerful but returning back is not my objective in most missions, this is the best ability to be overridden by Helminth. This ability fits perfectly with Protea's theme, but it only works in stationary missions and I've never tested it in elevators or portals.

My suggestion is that after returning to point A on the anchor, the player has a window of time to advance again along the path taken to point B again, but this should penalize the player with some statistics or energy, having the option to stop halfway. I don't have many ideas to mention here, I'm surprised that Frost's new Globe can connect to moving objects, but Protea's Anchor is an ability really suitable for stationary missions.

Notes: I used to think that Limbo was the warframe of time because the first version of Cataclysm could paralyze enemies and weapon projectiles in space, it was a thematically cool but useless mechanic. Protea can only control the time of her own existence while Limbo could control the time around him.

Edited June 24 by Famecans

[RA1313ITS]

I agree with your points.  New augment is fun when temporal anchor is NOT fun.  It also makes me feel sick during the rewind, so I try to cancel the ability whenever possible and just use it for the long turret friend effect lol 

[Void2258]

Temporal anchor as an ability doesn't work in the game. There are almost no circumstances in which you want to rewind to an earlier location. No amount of augments will make this ability good to use until the fundamental issue with it is addressed.

[Sojufueled]

Temporal Anchor is an interesting case study in how something that is amazing in one game might not be in another.