Grineer Rollers

[Elhazzared]

AKboltos, while a decent rate of fire and innate penetration they have small clips, are slow to reload and still have low damage. They aren't exactly a sniper pistol, but they are far from being something like say AFuris which absolutly devastates anything that comes up close, heck even at medium ranges for that matter (I am only using this weapon as an example, there are other examples as well). Sorry but in any game your survivabillity should be directly linked to what you have. You don't bring a stick to beat a sniper and you don't bring a sniper to indoors fighting. This is a simple enough concept and it should be appliable in every game. It's not about having just good gear, it's about having the approrpiate gear for the appropriate time. If you have one good weapons for long range and one good weapon for short range you'll be ok no matter the mission. Even when i started to play this game I aimed for a weapon I'd like to use for sniping which was the paris and I aimed for the pistols which I liked that could deal in close quarters which was the AFuris. There are other options, hck you can have a lex for sniping and a rifle for close combat too. You have a lot to chose from, but again you shouldn't expect to bring 2 weapons which are disadvantagous in close quarters if there are lots of enemies and expect to win with just them. Again a game that allows you to use any weapons in any situation is just an easy game or all weapons just function in very similar fashions which is to say, variety is plain bad.

You cannot compare darksouls to this and you cannot for one main reason. It is a slow paced game which revolves mainly around mellee weapons. You can't be put into a challenging game based on mellee weapon and have hordes of enemies upon you. Plain and simple.

Stuns are not really that problematic, you just want to have freedom to do anything at any given time and let's be honest, Tennos are pretty damn awesome and one of their main advantages is mobillity. To make the game challenging you have to present threats that try to remove your main advantage. They don't always suceed and whenever these enemies are present, they are the first to go down. Does this annoys you? Well again, you can't just expect a game to be played at your own pace because dictating the pace of the game is basicly winning the game without opposition. I find the rollers and other staggering units fun because of the challenge they present me with.

Teleport can teleport you to other stuff like consoles and so on. don't telepor near, teleport far so you have your sweet time to take care of the rollers.

Smoke bomb always works. then enemy is mid air and interrupts your abillity, cast it after the staggering, they have a cooldown like I said and it's at least a very decent 3 seconds, probably more. I don't have much dificulty killing rollers with a lex even after being staggered and I'm definitly not the best person at FPS or TPS, If I can most people can too, especially with faster firing guns, heck add a freeze mod on to it and even if it doesn't dies in the first shot, it slows down considerably.

Blade storm can be kind of a gamble I am aware of that but hey, if needed after the stagger sprint a little bit away from enemies and use it, make sure you hit the roller, heck, even if it just gets the roller and no one else, you already killed what you really wanted to kill.

Also please don't say climbing on top of something is exploiting an AI's hole. That is pretty damn narrow minded of you. You have something that rolls on the ground, it's a ball for all purposes, it can jump but not very high. The fact there are boxes and stuff you can climb on are on the level specificly to give you advantages, such as better view to snipe, cover to hide and in case like balls. a relativelly safe place because even on logical terms they couldn't get to you. It is in the same as saying, if a boar comes at you it's bad sport to climb to a tree because the poor boar cant...

It isn't exploiting, it's knowing how to make due with what you have.

Railgun moa's can't shoot through cover. The second you're out of their line of sight they stop shooting and I should know since I've been down that road a few times. I never run at them. I either immediatly turn towards them and shoot them or I dive for cover. Also another way to actually dodge rollers and moas to prevent permastagger is rolling. Since during the animation you are invunerable to it (which is not an exploit, it's your dodge mechanic so a dodge has to dodge logicly speaking).

I also grew up with dificult games, to quote some. Master of magic (impossible dificulty), dune 2 (not using save and load each time a death hand was thrown at me), Xcom and Xcom terror from the deep. Even in these days I like to play rogue like games like sotS: the pit or FTL. They have a lot more frustation than this certainly has and you know what? They are still quite fun.

If you let something like that ruin your fun, sorry but I can't even see that as wanting a challange. I tell you again, you can't do anything without screwing balance to make the game challenging without staggers and quite frankly. I don't even want enemies to just either rush at me in combat or to just shoot at me. Giving them varied abillities that allow them to deal with me in many situations and me having to adapt to the situation is the best way possible to make a game challenging.

[Elhazzared]

I say keep them exactly as is. I find being swarmed by them to be incredibly exciting and endlessly hilarious when observing a player getting stunlocked to death. I personally have never had issue with them, as level 16 lightly modified Aklatos can take them out in 2 hits, and can outmaneuver them quite easily. The biggest problem they've ever caused was me getting taken out by that female boss that produces them, and my friend being unable to heal me because he was trapped in a corner with multiple Rollers taking turns with him. While I can easily find this situation to be very frustrating, I was very amused by it all, took our losses, and went back at it.

I can also see why people have issues with Shockwave MOAs, as I remember when our team first encountered them and the game ramped up in difficulty. But we kept at it, got mods, bought new weapons, and now they are easily overcome. The time it takes to initiate their shockwave spells their doom, and the actual attack is hilariously slow to achieve its apex. Even when we had trouble with them, we acknowledged it was our own faults, as we'd often crack jokes at the slowly expanding orb, asking ourselves how we could possibly get hit by that thing.

I say leave everything the way it is, in fact to add more Rollers to the Grineer. I've only seen a handful of them in the wild, and almost all of my experience with them comes from grinding out that one boss for Saryn parts. More challenge to the Grineer sounds like a good idea to me.

I did mention this before but I'll do it again just for the giggles. Kela isn't hard at all. Kill everything before going at her. Now there will be her and the rollers she spawns. One person kills rollers, everyone else kills her. I went in there with just a friend on a loki and I told him. You perma invisible and hit her with the gram since he can do charge under a second and has more damage mods in it than god has power. I was there with my AFuris, all attacks from her were obviously directed at me (No, there was no decoys in play). i took out the rollers as they came out, I took her missiles. I took her smoke screens and I still did most damage to her. Well, probably still around the 50% but did most of it cause AFuris are just that awesome for boss fights even if they eat ammo like crazy.

My conclusions, I could have solo-ed it without the slightest hint of dificulty and people complain about roller and even about this specific fight.

Good thing you are having fun out of it as it is. I don't think we need an increased number of rollers in a mission because entering a room and finding 6 or 7 might be a little overwelming at best. But as it is where you find at most 3. I'd say that's pretty fine.

[Tsukinoki]

If you let something like that ruin your fun, sorry but I can't even see that as wanting a challange. I tell you again, you can't do anything without screwing balance to make the game challenging without staggers and quite frankly. I don't even want enemies to just either rush at me in combat or to just shoot at me. Giving them varied abillities that allow them to deal with me in many situations and me having to adapt to the situation is the best way possible to make a game challenging.

There are a lot of things they can do to make the game fun and balance without permastagger. Give the grineer more unit types, such as a mortor unit or a stealth melee unit to flush the tennos out of cover. Increase the appearance of bombards and napalm to do the same because in my experiences they are too rare. Allow the balistas to have better mobility to reach areas where they can get at the tenno behind cover threfore making them somewhat of an actual enemy. Increase the AI to give them better flanking capabilities so that if you stay in cover you can get pinned in deadly crossfire. You dont have to have a permastagger or stunlock to make the game fun and challenging, and you dont have to including enemies that are almost purely frustrations.

Also while using an ability may work after your stagger animation is over that doesnt stop a second and third from staggering you again before you can roll or use your ability. That is where it gets unfair and unfun when all you can do is stand around and watch your character stagger and be ripped apart. That is where they get frustrating and can ruin a run when you have 3 to 5 of them just sunlocking you, and if you are playing solo you're pretty much screwed.

Also, when I can solo most missions with a paris and akbolto's no problem UNLESS there is a roller then that means one of two things:

1) Everything else is far to underpowered and needs to be balanced and buffed? (which to a *small* extent this is true)

or

2) That one single enemy needs to be reworked a bit?

[Elhazzared]

You only get permastagger if you let a lot of rollers close to you. Why is this so hard to compreend? If 3 rollers which is a rare occurence since normally you get one per room and 2 is already uncommon, are on top of you is because you let them get on top of you. You could have runned, you could have at least killed one of them before the whole 3 got up close and personal. You got no one to blame but yourself to be in a nearly permanent stagger situation. Also note that without the use of abillities I've managed to flee from 3 rollers on top of me and kill them though I know this isn't always a possibillity. It was still my fault for lettig them that close in the first place.

As for your sugestions... Better AI don't makes it harder to deal with, they still die dirty fast and they still don't deal nearly enough damage. More bombards? They are hardly a problem if they don't have rollers really since I kill a bombard in a second flat, let alone other weaker units. Balistas using better cover... Really? Are you really thinking you aren't just going to one shot one with a sniping gun or just run up to the cover and shred her to bits in less than nothing?

The only way to remove rollers and give grineer a fighting chance is by increasing their HP and increasing their damage. This results in in a slower pace game because you have to use cover a whole lot more and be very careful. Uber abillities don't just kill them anymore and some warframes like for example Loki will just become more op for their abillity to simply keep killing everything like it was nothing while others will have dificulties and thus screw up game balance.

When you can solo most mission with paris and akboltos no problem unless there is a roller it means that:

A.) Maybe your choice of weapons isn't actually the best (possibly, not for sure)

B.) Bad aim.

C.) Bad situational awareness.

D.) Inabillity from the player to adapt to a simple situation, because yes, it is simple to adapt to them.

All of those are player's faults, not a need for rebalance.

[Mr_Giggles]

How about, instead of just stunlocking you to death they roll around and shoot at you instead?

Or just make them slower.

ALL OF MY YES

[Allajh]

Rollers are fine, I'd actually like to see 'heavy' melee varients of the Grineer to force us out of cover as well.