Frames Balance: Lets Help Scott

[Monolake]

Personally I would like to see DE take the guilty gear approach to balance, which is:

 

-Observe how players are playing the characters. Watch for patterns, combos, whatever.

-Instead of trying to balance the character into what they wanted them to be originally, they would instead balance them to how the players are playing them. 

EXAMPLE: let's say ember was back in her original state [sorry DE, ember is an easy example to use, I'm not trying to call you out or anything] , you know with the defense buff and stuff. At the time, ember's kit leaned more towards in your face, up close and personal, sub-tank like game play. If they took the GG approach, they would buff her defenses, lower her burst, but buff her DoT. So while she wouldn't be a burst mage, she would instead be a tanky DoT caster.

 

-refine until "perfect"

I find this method doesn't really require as much discussion as people are now, as they are simply refining the frames to how the players are already playing them.

This cant work in WF with how imbalanced frames and abilities are and how some abilities are getting exploited while others are garbage and only get used at low levels if ever.

[nekrojiji]

Trinity: Energy Vampire is amazing with low duration, and can be combined with low duration WoL to nuke bosses and heavy units.  That said, WoL is pretty redundant in its intended use.

 

Frost: Freeze freezes the afflicted target for 10+ seconds. It is a powerful cc but is difficult to aim and only affects one enemy.  It is in need of changes but is not a weak CC if you land it (I would make it an ice version of Ember's Fireball but with AOE Freeze effect.)  Avalanche does the third-highest damage of all screen-clearing 4 abilities, not sure where you get lowered DPS from. 

 

Ash: Shuriken is weak, has no utility, and is not fun or satisfying to use.  Blade Storm is a powerful skill that can 1-shot or critically wound enemies until level 40.  Heavy units can be killed in two casts until the 50s. 

 

Valkyr: The stealth attack effect is a bug which will be fixed, also it is trivial to slam attack enemies who are paralyzed (which will take 4x the usual damage.)

 

Ember: Fire Blast is ok when stacked but is definitely the weakest link in her skillset.

 

Oberon: His heal is an awkward and weak ability but his survivability is already higher than average due to the extra health he gets and his Hallowed Ground and Smite abilities are useful.

Trinity: Cut down your duration and tell me how you survive. You have a nuke that deals 20% damage, before armor, in 3.6 seconds, but you have 6 sec link and 4 seconds blessing.

 

Frost: Fire Ball stuns for the full duration not caring about damage taken and is very easy to hit. Freeze is none of those.

 

Ash: In the time that Blade Storm is active I can deal at the very least two times more damage with my weapons.

 

Valkyr: I use slam attacks to cut the distance to my targets. The slam attack takes time ..... So you have to be in close range, cast paralysis, jump and than actualy attack with increased damage. In the same time you can kill them one by one with normal hysteria attacks. The first time I saw paralysis I thought of it as a tool for ravaging attacks in a small window of time on multiple grouped enemies. If you say that the stealth is a bug ...I'll wait for it to be fixed.

 

It was a nightmare leveling Oberon for mastery.... Usualy when the frame is good it's fun to level it. I haven't found yet a good build for Oberon to play solo. 

 

The fact is that at the moment, the powers that only deal damage are redundant if using the power means you can't shoot or cut. For example take Ember's World on Fire. It's admage is weak without accelerand, decent with accelerant but lower than what weapons do. The good thing about WoF is that you can use your weapons while it's active.

[nekrojiji]

He does nothing because 656.544 forum members can not agree with each other? Aaaaaalrighty then.

He didn't say that on the stream..... he said he's waiting for people to decide what they want.

 

I agree with that way of thinking. I like Frost's Globe as it is right now. Most people don't like that. Most people see only bad thing in any update. Most people think melee 8.0 will be bad even if they haven't even played with it. Everytime something is rushed it comes out bad. Let DE work in peace.... and enjoy the game. I adapted my playstyle with every major update and I saw all of them as good once I understood how to maximize my potential.

Edited March 25, 2014 by nekrojiji

[RealPandemonium]

Trinity: Cut down your duration and tell me how you survive. You have a nuke that deals 20% damage, before armor, in 3.6 seconds, but you have 6 sec link and 4 seconds blessing.

 

Frost: Fire Ball stuns for the full duration not caring about damage taken and is very easy to hit. Freeze is none of those.

 

Ash: In the time that Blade Storm is active I can deal at the very least two times more damage with my weapons.

 

Valkyr: I use slam attacks to cut the distance to my targets. The slam attack takes time ..... So you have to be in close range, cast paralysis, jump and than actualy attack with increased damage. In the same time you can kill them one by one with normal hysteria attacks. The first time I saw paralysis I thought of it as a tool for ravaging attacks in a small window of time on multiple grouped enemies. If you say that the stealth is a bug ...I'll wait for it to be fixed.

 

It was a nightmare leveling Oberon for mastery.... Usualy when the frame is good it's fun to level it. I haven't found yet a good build for Oberon to play solo. 

 

The fact is that at the moment, the powers that only deal damage are redundant if using the power means you can't shoot or cut. For example take Ember's World on Fire. It's admage is weak without accelerand, decent with accelerant but lower than what weapons do. The good thing about WoF is that you can use your weapons while it's active.

Trinity's WoL + EV combo deals percent health damage based on their 10x HP, so it's actually a lot more than that and can kill them, especially if a slash proc occurs.  I survive with low duration by using

 my instant heal and clutch damage reduction abilities instead of AFK godmode.  How do you survive when you aren't exploiting overpowered equipment?  Maybe your reliance on such is why you disliked Oberon so much.

 

Frost: Fireball doesn't stun for the full duration but I agree, it should behave like Fireball but have its 10+ second freeze effect on afflicted enemies.

 

Ash: The same could be said of every ability in the game.  The advantages of abilities is that you can cast them on enemies you cant see, at great distance, and affecting numerous enemies with a single cast.  Blade Storm also ignores armor entirely, giving you a useful weapon vs heavy Grineer. 

 

Most frames can rely entirely on abilities for normal content minus the higher end heavy Grineer.  The fact that your penta/soma/phage does way more damage doesn't matter since the enemies are dying either way. 

Edited March 25, 2014 by RealPandemonium

[Monolake]

Been there, done that.

Thats exactly what makes Scott sad, everyone trying to re-design everything the way they personally like. Doesnt work.

Instead we should establish general criteria for balance and determine what is weak and what is OP first. Objective test-proven analysis, instead of personal ideas and preferences.

 

 

Ya, I saw the last DevStream and I lol'ed when DE-Scott made it seem like no balancing of frames is occurring because there's no consensus on the forums.

 

Here's an idea Scott - HOW BOUT PLAYING THE GAME!?

 

Spend just a few missions running with an M Prime spamming Nova or a Toilet Bowl (Vortex) spamming Vauban in ODD or World on Fire spamming Ember to gain a little insight on what's broken.  And that's just for starters.

Don't need to be harsh, Scott is not a one-man testing department. In fact its our task (and privilege) to play the game and find what works and what breaks the game and report it. And then its obviously DE job to fix it and improve the game. 

 

He's waiting for 600.000 people to decide what they want, and you agree with that way of thinking?

I'm not sure how to respond to this.

Yeah thats exactly what Im getting at, players mass cant design a game, most people dont even know the game well and everyone wants different things mostly for their fave classes regardless of balance. There are some good ideas, some bad ones and almost never an agreement (some odd people even liked the broken lights duh).

But players are invaluable at finding the problems and imbalances, we can provide test-proven facts, not just opinions and ideas. And then its DE turn to fix, not relying on players.

[-SLX-J3tAc3]

Just a some issues I have in general - the armor values of the frames.

I understand Valkyr is a berserker, but Rhino is called the "tankiest" of the frames. It does not make sense to be called the most heavily armored of the frames, yet his armor is far less than that of Valkyr - not even 1/3 of hers. Something is quite amiss here - therefore, I would suggest:

A. Boost his armor to be at 625-650 base level while his shields are lowered to 25 or so.

B. There is a revision made to his description.

 

Two, I find Rhino's being knocked down like all the others leaving me with some degree of confusion. Due to his size and strength, I would suggest he have a degree of built-in knockdown resistance - he'll be knocked down if hit three times by an ancient or groundslam by one of the heavy grineer units.

Three,  it seems that as far as physical abilities go, it would be well for Ash to be able to swing blade weapons (fangs, fang primes, daggers) faster and harder since he is really designed for the ninja concept. Rhino should handle the biggest heavy weapons (Scindo, Galantine, Fragor and Magistar) with greater speed and striking force since, according to how he's built and his fighting style in "The Profit" trailer, it seems to be implied that he is the strongest of them all. ("HULK IS STRONGER STILL!" Yes, Hulk, I know.)

 

With an eye looking towards the endgame, I would strongly recommend that 65 armor be the lightest armor of any warframe. At armor values of 15, this leaves you nearly naked at the higher levels (35 and up) once your shields get taken down.

Edited March 25, 2014 by -SLX-J3tAc3

[RealPandemonium]

Just a some issues I have in general - the armor values of the frames.

I understand Valkyr is a berserker, but Rhino is called the "tankiest" of the frames. It does not make sense to be called the most heavily armored of the frames, yet his armor is far less than that of Valkyr - not even 1/3 of hers. Something is quite amiss here - therefore, I would suggest: A. Boost his armor to be at 625-650 base level while his shields are lowered to 25 or B. There is a revision made to his description.

Two, I find Rhino's being knocked down like all the others leaving me with some degree of confusion. Due to his size and strength, I would suggest he have a degree of built-in knockdown resistance - he'll be knocked down if hit three times by an ancient or groundslam by one of the heavy grineer units.

Three,  it seems that as far as physical abilities go, it would be well for Ash to be able to swing blade weapons (fangs, fang primes, daggers) faster and harder since he is really designed for the ninja concept. Rhino should handle the biggest heavy weapons (Scindo, Galantine, Fragor and Magistar) with greater speed and striking force since, according to how he's built and his fighting style in "The Profit" trailer, it seems to be implied that he is the strongest of them all. ("HULK IS STRONGER STILL!" Yes, Hulk, I know.)

 

With an eye looking towards the endgame, I would strongly recommend that 65 armor be the lightest armor of any warframe. At armor values of 15, this leaves you nearly naked at the higher levels (35 and up) once your shields get taken down.

Frost has high shield and Iron Skin as well as an amazing CC.  He's pretty damn survivable.

[nekrojiji]

Trinity's WoL + EV combo deals percent health damage based on their 10x HP, so it's actually a lot more than that and can kill them, especially if a slash proc occurs.  I survive with low duration by using

 my instant heal and clutch damage reduction abilities instead of AFK godmode.  How do you survive when you aren't exploiting overpowered equipment?  Maybe your reliance on such is why you disliked Oberon so much.

 

Frost: Fireball doesn't stun for the full duration but I agree, it should behave like Fireball but have its 10+ second freeze effect on afflicted enemies.

 

Ash: The same could be said of every ability in the game.  The advantages of abilities is that you can cast them on enemies you cant see, at great distance, and affecting numerous enemies with a single cast.  Blade Storm also ignores armor entirely, giving you a useful weapon vs heavy Grineer. 

 

Most frames can rely entirely on abilities for normal content minus the higher end heavy Grineer.  The fact that your penta/soma/phage does way more damage doesn't matter since the enemies are dying either way. 

To do what you say you are doing ... you need to wait for well of life to almost end and than use energy vampire, so you lose only one EV tick on a 10x HP target and deal the other 3 as 50% damage ticks before armor. Do you udnerstand the time window you need to do that, and you only kill ONE enemy?! .... Yes I hate that Trinity has invul mode .... and I hope they fix that ....but what you say about the WoL EV combo shows that you haven't used it, but read on wiki about it. More I don't play Trinity for my safety, I play Trinity for frames that deal damage but have no defense.

 

About Oberon ... have you played him solo at least one time in high level missions where they can actualy hurt you!? .... Your heal is nothign in front of a lvl 55 Tech. Don't tell me about how you "know" how to play and I hide behind invuls. I played this game solo for almost a year. When you play solo you see how fragile the warframes are.

 

For your information .... fireball has a 100% chance to proc fire. Do you know what fire proc does?!

 

And oh yes .... how long has it been since you last played Ash?  The Blade Storm damage is afected by armor now.

Edited March 26, 2014 by nekrojiji

[Orbister]

I think developers should think less about "the concept" and "the roles" of the frames and just try them out...

 

you can tell that oberon's hallowed ground is a very bland skill on the first time you cast it, i bet that one might find a way to make it useful but that is not how we naturally play, we use what is useful already not find a way to make something useful that it's not in the first place.

 

Hallowed ground is like if we could put ignis on the ground and make it shoot fire for a limited amount of time, it's that awkward and weird.

 

As many have said before, if hallowed ground caused confusion, disorientation, or a slowdown, it would become something useful and desirable, the opposite example is loki's disarm, no matter what level you are it will always be useful, hallowed ground is just a gimmick build around the idea of sanctified ground...

 

For the record Oberon is my favourite Frame, buy he clearly suffers from a biased concept development, its obvious that his skills are designed trying to force that concept of the holly warrior, paladin stuff...

 

Skills need to be designed with the concepts of mobility, crowd control, damage over time, status effects, etc etc, not things like "is he a paladin, or is he a druid, is she a berserker? is she maybe an assassin?" that kind of thinking does NOT work.

[RealPandemonium]

To do what you say you are doing ... you need to wait for well of life to almost end and than use energy vampire, so you lose only one EV tick on a 10x HP target and deal the other 3 as 50% damage ticks before armor. Do you udnerstand the time window you need to do that, and you only kill ONE enemy?! .... Yes I hate that Trinity has invul mode .... and I hope they fix that ....but what you say about the WoL EV combo shows that you haven't used it, but read on wiki about it. More I don't play Trinity for my safety, I play Trinity for frames that deal damage but have no defense.

 

About Oberon ... have you played him solo at least one time in high level missions where they can actualy hurt you!? .... Your heal is nothign in front of a lvl 55 Tech. Don't tell me about how you "know" how to play and I hide behind invuls. I played this game solo for almost a year. When you play solo you see how fragile the warframes are.

 

For your information .... fireball has a 100% chance to proc fire. Do you know what fire proc does?!

 

And oh yes .... how long has it been since you last played Ash?  The Blade Storm damage is afected by armor now.

Pretty much everything you said in this post is wrong in some way. 

 

WoL + EV combo is slow but effective at killing heavy units and bosses.

 

Fire proc will stagger an enemy for a few moments but not for the full duration of the burn.

 

Ash's Blade Storm ignores armor.

 

Don't say im playing theory warframe when you don't even have your facts right.

 

As for Oberon, he is currently building so I can evaluate his performance.

[BlueSilkMetallic]

balancing is easy.

Just buff the useless stuff and its fine.

 

Maybe double all HP and shields and I am fine :)

[Ttariel]

Nerf Volt, he is to fabulous.

[AuroraSonicBoom]

balancing is easy.

Just buff the useless stuff and its fine.

 

Maybe double all HP and shields and I am fine :)

 

 

Doesn't fix the problem of balance inssues between frames. Nerfs are needed and don't impact negatively as much as buffs(powercreep).

[Stefanovich]

Scott said that players can't reach any consensus on which frames need fixes or not...

 

...so who are all the players disagreeing with Ash needing a buff?!

 

I mean, is it not obvious? Not trying to bag on any developers or anything, but by simply comparing one frame to another, they could see the huge gap between their effectiveness.

[Orbister]

Scott said that players can't reach any consensus on which frames need fixes or not...

 

...so who are all the players disagreeing with Ash needing a buff?!

 

I mean, is it not obvious? Not trying to bag on any developers or anything, but by simply comparing one frame to another, they could see the huge gap between their effectiveness.

Wether players get to a consensus or not he IS the designer i think he should just design lol, im not saying that he fails right now, im saying that i will trust his judgement over what the frames need.

 

I do think Ash could use some tweaks though.

[Davoodoo]

Thats exactly what makes Scott sad, everyone trying to re-design everything the way they personally like. Doesnt work.

Instead we should establish general criteria for balance and determine what is weak and what is OP first. Objective test-proven analysis, instead of personal ideas and preferences.

Don't need to be harsh, Scott is not a one-man testing department. In fact its our task (and privilege) to play the game and find what works and what breaks the game and report it. And then its obviously DE job to fix it and improve the game.

Yeah thats exactly what Im getting at, players mass cant design a game, most people dont even know the game well and everyone wants different things mostly for their fave classes regardless of balance. There are some good ideas, some bad ones and almost never an agreement (some odd people even liked the broken lights duh).

But players are invaluable at finding the problems and imbalances, we can provide test-proven facts, not just opinions and ideas. And then its DE turn to fix, not relying on players.

Ppl try to redesign a game mainly due to fact that current system doesnt work for them, i cant say that i dont agree with such ppl, i cant see how anything could be balanced in current state of game. We give ideas and scott should be able to find interesting one and apply it.

Ive had only 1 idea which didnt redesign game but would make it challenging, but challenge it would offer in current state of game would be punishing to players.

We are testing and we are giving feedback.

600k ppl will never agree on 1 thing so why even bother trying, if Scott insists on waiting for community to agree on something then i will simply treat it as excuse to do nothing. Dont expect us to do whole work for de, we can give idea and maybe some numbers but its de job to implement this and adjust according to how game changes.

Edited March 27, 2014 by Davoodoo