Retune *all* The Frames! (11/19: Wildfire)

[taiiat]

14 minutes ago, RealPandemonium said:

Crush is already reliable CC 

Crush applies CC that's about equally as effective/lengthy as Pull.
i'll just use Pull.

Crush has no purpose, and if you suck up a Mod Slot, a single purpose of stripping Armor. the CC you get from the Augment is nice too ofcourse.

Edited June 22, 2016 by taiiat

[RealPandemonium]

2 hours ago, taiiat said:

Crush applies CC that's about equally as effective/lengthy as Pull.
i'll just use Pull.

Crush has no purpose, and if you suck up a Mod Slot, a single purpose of stripping Armor.

Crush is 360 degrees and unaffected by line of sight.  It's a suitable panic-CC and a situational lockdown tool (the damage is also not bad for thinning out crowds.)  Pull must be used proactively for absolute control and has limitations (LoS, not radial, can sometimes be overridden by animation states,) which is a good thing.  Crush does not have these limitations, with the primary limitations being range and cast time.

Edited June 22, 2016 by RealPandemonium

[taiiat]

15 minutes ago, RealPandemonium said:

It's suitable panic-CC and a situational lockdown tool

that's what the problem is though - without the Augment, the CC only lasts a couple seconds. sure, i could hide behind a corner from time to time to use Crush, but Pull also casts basically instantly so i don't need to hide.

in Mass Effect Crush could be great, but Warframe is an incredibly fast paced game. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[(PSN)sammyp03]

10 minutes ago, taiiat said:

that's what the problem is though - without the Augment, the CC only lasts a couple seconds. sure, i could hide behind a corner from time to time to use Crush, but Pull also casts basically instantly so i don't need to hide.

in Mass Effect Crush could be great, but Warframe is an incredibly fast paced game. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I agree here. I generally play long runs in missions and the animation for crush is just to long to be worth using as CC.

[RealPandemonium]

1 hour ago, taiiat said:

that's what the problem is though - without the Augment, the CC only lasts a couple seconds. sure, i could hide behind a corner from time to time to use Crush, but Pull also casts basically instantly so i don't need to hide.

in Mass Effect Crush could be great, but Warframe is an incredibly fast paced game. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

1 hour ago, (PS4)sammyp03 said:

I agree here. I generally play long runs in missions and the animation for crush is just to long to be worth using as CC.

Crush does leave enemies on the floor after it finishes, offering some selfish CC-time (more if you use NT.)  Fracturing Crush only roots enemies and does not stun them, so its lasting not effective [protective] against enemies with ranged attacks.  

How long CC lasts has nothing to do with the pace of gameplay; long-lasting protective CC arguably makes the game slow because once enemies are CCed you can just stand still and shoot them with impunity.

Long runs are currently unbalanced by design and require cheese/gimmicks to survive in.  We don't want Crush to become the next Prism/Stomp.  Crush's CC is sufficient to safely chain your other powers and as an emergency lockdown tool when chain-casted. 

[taiiat]

26 minutes ago, RealPandemonium said:

How long CC lasts has nothing to do with the pace of gameplay

it has a lot to do with it. avoiding attacks or whatever - is dependent on how well you can prevent that.
since Warframe throws 65 different kinds of everything constantly with little to no telegraphing - things need to lock down for longer than otherwise to make a difference. or, be easy and fast to apply.

need to last as long as Blind? certainly not - but the time it takes to stand back up also isn't much time in Warframe.

i don't, nor ever have, aimed my tuning of Warframe around 6hr play sessions. always within ~lv60 Enemies give or take. (or before the Level Range was adjusted, ~Lv110-120 Enemies)

[RealPandemonium]

16 minutes ago, taiiat said:

it has a lot to do with it. avoiding attacks or whatever - is dependent on how well you can prevent that.
since Warframe throws 65 different kinds of everything constantly with little to no telegraphing - things need to lock down for longer than otherwise to make a difference. or, be easy and fast to apply.

need to last as long as Blind? certainly not - but the time it takes to stand back up also isn't much time in Warframe.

i don't, nor ever have, aimed my tuning of Warframe around 6hr play sessions. always within ~lv60 Enemies give or take. (or before the Level Range was adjusted, ~Lv110-120 Enemies)

Outside of T4, it's not really necessary to lock down enemies radially for more than a few seconds.  If you do want to permaCC enemies Pull does that job well enough, but you have to set it up and mind enemies that are in a resistant animation state.  If you just want to neutralize the play field for a sec so that you can put up a protective Magnetize for a revive or w/e, then Crush does the job just fine.  If you need to lock down the area, chain-casting Crush burns through energy but will do the job (which is how locking down wide areas should work.)

[--Q--uaint]

8 hours ago, RealPandemonium said:

4: Crush is already reliable CC as long as there aren’t enemies outside its range shooting you; the moment you hit 4 all affected enemies will stop shooting and remain unable to attack you until they get up from the knockdown.  If you perform crush while standing in a Napalm fire or next to a Toxic Haunted, that’s your fault.  

Bombards think your “CC” is funny. I've been killed in the Simulacrum while switching out my gear for more testing… after killing the Bombard in question with melee and running all the way back across the place. (I had to restart the game lol…)

The fact that Crush locks you in place for nine-tenths of the time you CC the enemies is pretty lame. If the ability had any actual redeeming factors, I'd be fine with it. As it stands, It’s basically only worth using if it will actually kill the enemies in one cast.

[RunningTree3]

10 hours ago, RealPandemonium said:

4: Crush is already reliable CC as long as there aren't enemies outside its range shooting you;

Crush really does suffer from the immobile+vulnerable animation.

I wonder if Crush would be better off as a single tick of its current 3-tick effect. But I also like that enemies walking into range could still get picked up on the 2nd or 3rd tick.

Perhaps a "Hold to Crush" (ala Inaros's Scarab Armour) could be used, so a player could choose the length of the Crush, with each tick costing about one-third of its current cost, and damage-per-tick ramping up for each tick held. This might open up the options: do I use a quick radial CC, or a longer crush with higher damage but with greater vulnerability and risk?

Fracturing Crush might be triggered in proportion to crush duration, or at its full power after just one tick.

It would also be nice if Crush picked up any shrapnel then hurled them as high-velocity projectiles outwards as the ability ends (just like its animation seems to suggest).

[Aquasurge]

2 hours ago, RunningTree3 said:

Crush really does suffer from the immobile+vulnerable animation.

I wonder if Crush would be better off as a single tick of its current 3-tick effect. But I also like that enemies walking into range could still get picked up on the 2nd or 3rd tick.

Perhaps a "Hold to Crush" (ala Inaros's Scarab Armour) could be used, so a player could choose the length of the Crush, with each tick costing about one-third of its current cost, and damage-per-tick ramping up for each tick held. This might open up the options: do I use a quick radial CC, or a longer crush with higher damage but with greater vulnerability and risk?

Fracturing Crush might be triggered in proportion to crush duration, or at its full power after just one tick.

It would also be nice if Crush picked up any shrapnel then hurled them as high-velocity projectiles outwards as the ability ends (just like its animation seems to suggest).

yeah i agree. although, it would be better if mag created shards by attacking enemies and you could bullet jump and move enemies around with shards everywhere. and then dispel them like a shrapnel grenade...... (maybe an idea for polarise?)

Edited June 23, 2016 by Aquasurge

[taiiat]

in terms of Shrapnel, it bewilders me that Crush doesn't create a ton of it.
what the Ability is supposedly doing, just screams 'Armor Shrapnel'.

Edited June 23, 2016 by taiiat

[Aquasurge]

43 minutes ago, taiiat said:

in terms of Shrapnel, it bewilders me that Crush doesn't create a ton of it.
what the Ability is supposedly doing, just screams 'Armor Shrapnel'.

i know - the shrapnel IMO should be made part of mag's passive. and yes to a million tons of shrapnel please.

Edited June 23, 2016 by Aquasurge

[--Q--uaint]

On 6/23/2016 at 1:56 AM, Aquasurge said:

i know - the shrapnel IMO should be made part of mag’s passive. and yes to a million tons of shrapnel please.

On 6/22/2016 at 11:39 PM, RunningTree3 said:

Crush really does suffer from the immobile+vulnerable animation.

I wonder if Crush would be better off as a single tick of its current 3-tick effect. But I also like that enemies walking into range could still get picked up on the 2nd or 3rd tick.

Perhaps a “Hold to Crush” (ala Inaros’s Scarab Armour) could be used, so a player could choose the length of the Crush, with each tick costing about one-third of its current cost, and damage-per-tick ramping up for each tick held. This might open up the options: do I use a quick radial CC, or a longer crush with higher damage but with greater vulnerability and risk?

Fracturing Crush might be triggered in proportion to crush duration, or at its full power after just one tick.

It would also be nice if Crush picked up any shrapnel then hurled them as high-velocity projectiles outwards as the ability ends (just like its animation seems to suggest).

Hmmm.

Make each piece of shrapnel have the full value of Polarize’s armor-removal power (a base of 400, scaling with Strength). Polarize will spawn up to 3 pieces of shrapnel, which is roughly consistent with how the ability works now.
When used to damage foes, the armor value becomes a damage value. Optionally, the shrapnel should have some amount of punchthrough for maximum synergy with Magnetize and potential for re-use after Crush.

Mag’s bulletjumps now vacuum up available shrapnel and forces it to orbit her, giving her the same level of damage reduction that would be given by <shrapnel value>sqrt(# of shrapnel pieces)/10 armor. This DR works on her shields, potentially dramatically boosting her survivability.
Optionally, Pull would also collect shrapnel (and would certainly do it when augmented).

Crush is now hold-cast (initial cost of 35–40 energy?); the “charge meter” like what Quiver has is displayed during each tic’s progress. If you are holding the 4 button when the meter fills, Mag does another tic of Crush and charges another 30 energy.
Crush now strips some armor at base. Each tic takes 4+[number of consecutive tics]% of each enemy’s armor (this is moddable by Strength); this armor is dropped to the ground as shrapnel much like Polarize’s effect.
Crush gathers all shrapnel lying on the ground towards her at ~5m/s.
The last tic of Crush causes each piece of shrapnel within 5–7 meters of Mag to fling towards a Crush victim, if any are available. It also detonates Magnetize bubbles instantly.

Fracturing Crush now adds an unmoddable 50% bonus armor strip to each tic of Crush. (This doesn’t mean it strips armor in two tics - that will reduce them to 15–20% armor)
In addition to stripping more armor, Fracturing Crush launches all the shrapnel it generates as it is generated (again, if targets are available) - this means each enemy in range of Crush becomes a turret.
The final tic of Crush now violently ragdolls enemies away from Mag.

Edited June 29, 2016 by ChronoEclipse
clarification and changes due to feedback and reading what I wrote and seeing it was badly written

[RealPandemonium]

16 hours ago, ChronoEclipse said:

Bombards think your “CC” is funny. I've been killed in the Simulacrum while switching out my gear for more testing… after killing the Bombard in question with melee and running all the way back across the place. (I had to restart the game lol…)

The fact that Crush locks you in place for nine-tenths of the time you CC the enemies is pretty lame. If the ability had any actual redeeming factors, I'd be fine with it. As it stands, It’s basically only worth using if it will actually kill the enemies in one cast.

Slow-moving projectiles that are already en route can hit you while you're in Crush's animation, but that goes for any other action that holds you in place.

Crush's selfish-CC component is pretty small, but is there.  It allows you to bridge into casting your other abilities safely and can lock down an area if chain-cast.  It's not designed as a chronic lockdown tool, which is fine.  Maybe if Mag had 225 energy instead of 150 people would have less of a problem with using Crush as intended instead of wishing that it was a permaCC ability?

[--Q--uaint]

17 minutes ago, RealPandemonium said:

but that goes for any other action that holds you in place.

Shadows of the Dead (can) actually protect you and actually has a pretty long duration.

Soundquake… is also very ineffective at basically any role. (unless you use the augment and cheese defense or whatever)

Peacemaker actually kills things, and Shatter Shield is a thing.

Prism kills relatively low-level things, and has a pretty strong CC component as well.

I think that’s all the abilities with a comparable cast animation.

20 minutes ago, RealPandemonium said:

Crush’s selfish-CC component is pretty small, but is there.

That’s a fine design decision… in the context of an ability that actually does something else worth mentioning. My suggestion in the post above yours is a possibility for making that a thing. You could also just make it do a worthwhile amount of damage, but that doesn’t fix the ability’s blandness.

If the above was implemented, I'd probably suggest leaving Polarize as is but dropping its energy cost. She'd then have a quick, cheap debuff that’s strong at low levels and has good range… and an ult that can be built to debuff strongly and does decent damage at low levels.

[taiiat]

personally i don't want my Shrapnel going flying off in random directions, i want it to be where i want it to be :p
if i could take it with me, that would be neat.

15 minutes ago, RealPandemonium said:

Maybe if Mag had 225 energy instead of 150 people would have less of a problem with using Crush as intended instead of wishing that it was a permaCC ability?

if it lasted long enough to be used as a cool off for the affected Enemies so that a Player could Kill other Enemies before the affected Enemies recover, then it would be useful.

it's not unlikely for a Player to take several Seconds to Kill even a single Enemy.

[Aquasurge]

10 hours ago, ChronoEclipse said:

Hmmm.

Make each piece of shrapnel correspond to 1/3 of Polarize’s armor-removal power. Polarize can then spawn up to 3 pieces of shrapnel per enemy, and the shrapnel pieces do damage based on that armor number.

Mag’s passive flings available shrapnel if there’s enemies within 20m.

Crush is now hold-cast; the “charge meter” like what Quiver has is displayed during each tic’s progress. If you are holding the 4 button when the meter fills, Mag does another tic of Crush and charges another 30 energy.
Crush now strips some armor at base. Each tic takes 4+[number of consecutive tics]% of each enemy’s armor (this is moddable by Strength); this armor is flung to the ground as shrapnel much like Polarize’s effect.
Crush gathers all shrapnel lying on the ground towards her at ~5m/s.
The last tic of Crush causes each piece of shrapnel within 5–7 meters of Mag to fling towards a Crush victim, if one is available. It also detonates Magnetize bubbles instantly.

Fracturing Crush now adds an unmoddable 50% bonus armor strip to each tic of Crush. (This doesn’t mean it strips armor in two tics - that will reduce them to 15–20% armor)
In addition to stripping more armor, Fracturing Crush flings shrapnel from the enemies as it generates it (again, if targets are available) - this means each enemy in range of Crush becomes a turret.
The final tic of Crush now violently ragdolls enemies away from Mag.

love this!

[--Q--uaint]

9 hours ago, taiiat said:

personally i don’t want my Shrapnel going flying off in random directions, i want it to be where i want it to be :p
if i could take it with me, that would be neat.

Fair point. Thought:

Mag’s passive now vacuums up shrapnel, and anyone she hits with her bulletjump’s damage is targeted by any shrapnel she’s dragging along.
That would give her a precision-strike use for shrapnel, and make more sense with what the passive does.

[Aquasurge]

10 minutes ago, ChronoEclipse said:

Fair point. Thought:

Mag’s passive now vacuums up shrapnel, and anyone she hits with her bulletjump’s damage is targeted by any shrapnel she’s dragging along.
That would give her a precision-strike use for shrapnel, and make more sense with what the passive does.

agreed

[RunningTree3]

10 minutes ago, ChronoEclipse said:

Fair point. Thought:

Mag’s passive now vacuums up shrapnel, and anyone she hits with her bulletjump’s damage is targeted by any shrapnel she’s dragging along.
That would give her a precision-strike use for shrapnel, and make more sense with what the passive does.

I have been able to drag 'unusable' loot with Mag's passive, e.g. energy orbs and ammo, that at the time I could not pickup due to being at capacity, but was helpful that they were brought along for later! Even if shrapnel could just be brought along in this manner, with or without doing anything else, would be rather useful.

[Aquasurge]

10 hours ago, ChronoEclipse said:

Mag’s passive flings available shrapnel if there’s enemies within 20m.

 

maybe mag could use shrapnel as a temporary defensive shield? like null star or something? lets say mag picks up the shrapnel and gathers in a defensive shield. every time an enemy shot/ melee attack hits a shrapnel, it attacks the enemy who attacked mag.

Edited June 24, 2016 by Aquasurge

[--Q--uaint]

On 6/24/2016 at 1:13 AM, Aquasurge said:

maybe mag could use shrapnel as a temporary defensive shield? like null star or something? lets say mag picks up the shrapnel and gathers in a defensive shield. every time an enemy shot/ melee attack hits a shrapnel, it attacks the enemy who attacked mag.

A defensive shield and a counterattack mechanic are different things entirely. That said, I could see it being worth something.

If shrapnel is in range of Mag when she bulletjumps, it begins orbiting her. The shrapnel then stays until it times out (same amount of time for it to decay sitting on the ground) or it's used by Magnetize/Crush.
If Mag has shrapnel orbiting her when she is damaged, she gets damage reduction equal to <armor contained by each shrapnel piece>sqrt(# of shrapnel pieces)/10. This DR works on her shields, potentially dramatically boosting her survivability.

[taiiat]

20 minutes ago, ChronoEclipse said:

<armor contained by each shrapnel piece>sqrt(# of shrapnel pieces)/10. This DR works on her shields, potentially dramatically boosting her survivability.

so, is the 'armor contained' equal to how much Damage Polarize dealt to the Armor when creating the Shrapnel shard?
just trying to figure out what this Formula is. if so...

Polarize_Strength Sqrt * Shrapnel pieces / 10

5 pieces of Shrapnel on the ground is pretty easy to do. so base is: 400 Sqrt * 5 / 10 == 10% Damage Reduction.
but let's add Mods i guess. +85% Power Strength, and 10 pieces of Shrapnel.

740 Sqrt * 10 / 10 == 27% Damage Reduction.

*shrugs* it is a 'passive' feature i guess, so i don't expect a huge amount from it.

[--Q--uaint]

On 6/26/2016 at 8:21 PM, taiiat said:

so, is the 'armor contained' equal to how much Damage Polarize dealt to the Armor when creating the Shrapnel shard?
just trying to figure out what this Formula is. if so…

My thought was that it was gonna be like 1/3 of that or something, but looking at the wiki it seems the shards should all contain about that amount (at least at max rank), so that works for me. Maybe I'll update my post to clarify.

On 6/26/2016 at 8:21 PM, taiiat said:

5 pieces of Shrapnel on the ground is pretty easy to do. so base is: 400 Sqrt * 5 / 10 == 10% Damage Reduction.

That’s… not the kind of numbers I'm getting at all: 400 * sqrt(5)/10 ≈ 89 armor -> 89/(189) ≈ 47% DR

On 6/26/2016 at 8:21 PM, taiiat said:

740 Sqrt * 10 / 10 == 27% Damage Reduction.

740 * sqrt(10)/10 ≈ 234 armor -> 234/(334) ≈ 70% DR

Crush should also generate lots of shrapnel, particularly with high-level enemies since it does a % of armor. She won’t nearly scale endlessly, but her DR will get ridiculously high.

[taiiat]

1 hour ago, ChronoEclipse said:

Sqrt of the Shrapnel

Crush should also generate lots of shrapnel

oh, okay. the Less Than/Greater Than symbols confused me. 

though, now something else doesn't make sense, you want the Formula to create a magic Armor Bonus - but why not simplify and just create a Damage Reduction Percentage outright?
ex: (Sqrt(Polarize_Strength)) * (Sqrt(Shrapnel_pieces)) / 2 == Damage Reduction percentage.
sure, in extreme situations you could theoretically exceed 100% - just cap it. not practical to do anyways, feels like it would require more than one Mod Stat being maxed - good luck with that!

 

ofcourse, because it makes sense and more Shrapnel looks cool. kind've like how say, Doom 2016 chose the Ammo drop feature from Killing with the Chainsaw to be a bazillion Ammo Pickups rather than creating a 'high Tier' pickup that's worth like 10x as much.
because once in a while it's fun to have something go to the extreme visualls.

Edited June 29, 2016 by taiiat