Warframe Ability Changes

[Shaznaught]

As Trinity player, I'll say this.  I'm pretty happy about the change/nerf in theory.  Will have to try of course.

 

My comments revolve around "normal" game play, not the wave 24352345 missions.  They are going the way of  the dodo.  Mourn.  Move on.

 

I plan on using blessing around the 50/25% mark for lowest team member, probably more like 50%.  50% damage reduction for your team after a full heal to health and shields is huge.  No it's not invincibility, but it's very, very good.  After all, if it's really that bad, your team should be looking for cover, not continuing to Rambo about the room.     

 

If the crap is still hitting the fan, now what?.  I already used blessing!  

 

I ain't scared.  Know what I'm using?  You guessed it.  I now have a real reason to use well of life other than a panic CC on heavy unit.  Now, even if my team's shields are gone, (hey, has anyone seen Mag?) I still am granting that 50% damage reduction WHILE allowing for continued healing as my team and I  toss a few rounds on the well target in between kills.        

 

My team might need to purposefully shoot at the glowing green guy here and there, while the chaos swirls around us, keeping topped off during a crazy fight.  

 

I see some fun clutch moments coming from this.  I might use well first and save blessing for a harsher oh crap moment.  I might screw it up from time to time and someone might go down.

 

Possible failure is exciting.  The most engaging and fulfilling game play is where you're on that razor's edge between failure and success, your skill, timing, decisions dictating the outcome.  Old blessing = 4 = win = boring.  

 

I'm up for the challenge.  You're not?  Play another frame.  :D  

 

One note:  If they want us reactive, which is cool, I'd do something with the cast time.  Instant?

[Wargasm_v2.X]

OMG Blizz...err DE, I cant believe you are taking away our Invicibility! What a horrible decision! Last week I was going on EIGHT HOURS in Survival and it would have been longer if one of our players fingers hadn't cramped up!  And I was SO going to play another Survival until I hit the fabled KILL SCREEN just like in Donkey Kong no matter how long it took.  I know it exists and I was to be the one to find it, screenshot it, and get my own DOCUMENTARY!.  

 

How am I supposed to do that now!?!?!

[castem]

Trinity:

 

-Blessing:  Damage immunity is now based on the percentage of health healed (ie: healing 90% health will grant 90% immunity).  This should make the use of Blessing more reactive, greatly benefiting players that pay attention and monitor party health to maximize its effectiveness.

 

Trinity by design was never meant to have such an aggressive means of invincibility, and this fix should bring Blessing’s use back in line with our original intent.  Spamming it at full health will now have no benefit.

 

-Energy Vampire:  Will now pulse one last burst from the victim when it dies, releasing any remaining energy; this should make the power useful even when the enemy is killed prematurely.

 

-snip-

 

Ash - (coming around a few more corners, likely to follow the rest of the above changes at a later week):

 

-Shuriken: Added forced bleed proc to attacks, no change to base damage.  This should help buff the damage to Shuriken without making its direct damage over-the-top.

 

-Teleport: Enemies are now open to finishers when teleported to, giving it more aggressive utility in order to make Teleport more appealing for use in combat.

 

-Blade Storm: Now produces clones of Ash, enabling him to kill more targets quickly.  Ash will also re-attack targets if they survive the initial attack.  Added forced bleed procs to Blade Storm strikes.

 

The change to Blade Storm should also shorten the amount of time a player is stuck in Blade Storm dramatically, without a reduction in damage or looking cool.

 

I'll start off with Trinity:

- The new Blessing has a few issues that need looked at (see this post for more information:  https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/231115-trinitys-new-blessing-2-problems-some-potential-solutions/).  Other than that, though, it's looking pretty good.  I'll miss the full-team invulnerability, but if it had to go for the sake of balance, I'm alright with it.

- This change to Energy Vampire addresses my biggest annoyance with Energy Vampire and is a very, very, very welcome change.  Thank you DE!

 

Now, for Ash:

- I'm glad you guys took style into consideration for Blade Storm.  It might not mean much to some, but I personally loved the way his ultimate looked.  It's actually one of the few reasons I kept him around since I got a Loki.

- The buff to Teleport could be hit or miss....against smaller enemies or infested, it might not be that great, but against bigger targets like Heavy Gunners it could work out wonderfully.  I'm looking forward to testing it out.

- I glad you guys managed to add damage to Shuriken without going overboard.  I don't know if the bleed procs alone will be enough, but I'll be sure to test out this change as well when I get the chance.

 

Lastly:

- Although I didn't keep Hydroid's change up there, I do think it is a great idea.  I'm actually considering picking him up now because of it....

[Shaznaught]

Hrm wait,

 

Per my last post.  Does the damage immunity occur for the healing done on EACH frame or does the healing done on the lowest frame get turned into DR for all?  I think I misread how it works.  

 

I still look forward to using well of life more.  I hope people are paying attention!  :D

[Tveoh]

Changes look good, regardless of what some people say. Blessing sounds awesome now, and will let me retool me trintiy to max out well of life link and energy vamp rather then a really long blessing.

Glad to see banshees changes, was my first love in warframe. The locked down soundquake and the lack of use for silence made me move on from her. So I'll be revisiting her when the changes happen.

Ash is still awesome with the changes but I like how teleport will now play on the gets enemy into melee range for high damange Luke the power states. Bladestorm looks good too, keep the flash of the skill yet reduce the amount of time you are stuck out of combat if you hit a large group with the skill.

And the toggling of powers, to make them more about utility rather then an "I win" button is awesome.

[perfectStranger]

Blessing changes are quite bad, because they are going to make another of her powers not usable:

 

I can already tell, Trinity players will now be more selfish.

Pay attention ONLY to their health to get maximized effectiveness.

 

I'm saying it now, I prefer the current Blessing.

 

Whilst the majority of these look pretty awesome, the change to Blessing has an extremely hazardous side-effect. If you use it to save the life of a team member who's nearly dead whilst most of your group are at full health, you basically just wasted the cast and the energy it cost. This is going to create a Megalixir situation where Trinities don't want to use Blessing because the situation could always be worse than it currently is, and that's potentially going to wreck the skill's actual utility.

 

 

"-Blessing:  Damage immunity is now based on the percentage of health healed (ie: healing 90% health will grant 90% immunity).  This should make the use of Blessing more reactive, greatly benefiting players that pay attention and monitor party health to maximize its effectiveness."

 

This is a very, very poor nerf. Trinity won't work like this. No one uses Vitality, and Blessing doesn't cast fast enough to heal reactively. Trinity was useful for keeping people alive in high level content, we're talking 40min+ Survival. Now...She's useless. You can't use a power like this to heal in reaction to people getting 1 shot by every hitscan bullet tossed their way. This needs a complete rethinking. Why couldn't you just take the easy route and make it function as a full team Iron Skin, or like how Frost's bubble now works?

 

 

And like some else also wrote (but can't find the post atm):

 

how could this change make the gameplay more reactive if the player has to constantly keep the eyes on energy bars instead of focussing on what is happening in the enviroment?

 

So in the end people will only use Link ad nothing else.

 

This suggestion is not bad:

 

Here's my proposed changes to the current blessing changes.

 

Base 50% DR (damage reduction) at max rank plus additional DR based on half of the %health healed.

 

Examples:

- at 100% hp, blessing provides 50% DR.

 

- at 50% hp, blessing provides 50% DR + 25% DR (from half of 50% hp healed) for a total of 75% DR.

 

- at 10% hp, blessing provides 50% DR + 45% DR (from half of 90% hp healed) for a total of 95% DR.

 

This follows the idea of providing DR based on how much hp was healed while still benefiting players at full health. This allows more blessing spam than the current change but there are still some risks with spamming. It still encourages Trinity players to watch teammates' health and use blessing when health is lost. This is more of a middle point between the current blessing and the proposed blessing changes.

 

I propose similar but different mechanics

 

Blessing:

 

- revives squad members with full health and shields

- last for 3 / 5 / 7 / 10 s (affected by duration mods)

- gives base 50%DR (not affected by strength mods)

- gives additional 0.5%DR for each 1% of remaining health taken as damage while blessing is active (not affected by strength mods) 

- when active if

 - DR reaches 99% or health reach a minimum of 1%: player gets invulnerability for 1/3/5/7s (not affected by duration mods) and gets back 50% of health and shields, then Blessing ends.

 - duration expires and DR>1%: player instantly radiates 20/40/60/80% of her max energy, shields and health to squad members in 3/6/9/12m radius (affected by range and strength mods) and 10/20/30/40% to himself (not affected by strength mods).

 

So this would give more resiliency to team annihilation by high damage, it is pre-emptive and since the more damage a player takes the more it becomes resistant it can give time to react, move, kill or cast other abilities like WoL to keep the team alive.

If the damage is too much it gives some health and a short window of time for the player to flee.

If a player is good in avoiding damage and at the end of the ability it will reward the the teams who have chosen the path of cooperative game play and stay grouped together instead of going on their own.

 

May be not optimal yet but it works better for the purpose of support as opposite as the current future changes.

 

Also please if these are your measure for "balancing" i'm really afraid for Nova's Molecular Prime, ok it is very strong with lowish level enemies, especially infested, but its not that great later on in progression when enemies have much higher health/shield pools.

Edited May 13, 2014 by perfectStranger

[Shifty_Shuffler]

Toggle-able skills would be VERY cool... But at the same time it might render warframe ability duration mods obsolete for certain skills.

 

Maybe they could be changed to also reduce energy drain on relevant skills.

[AuroraSonicBoom]

How am I supposed to do that now!?!?!

 

You should've never been able to in the first place. That's the point of nerfing blessing, so one frame can't carry a team that would otherwise last maybe 50 minutes to 2-3, or 4+ hours.

 

 

how could this change make the gameplay more reactive if the player has to constantly keep the eyes on energy bars instead of focussing on what is happening in the enviroment?

 

One of the few valid criticisms I've read. This is indeed not conductive to making gameplay more engaging. I remember some blog post the GW2 devs made about why they removed ally targeted healing in favor of creating areas in the game world that players could move into to receive the buff, similar to how Energy Vampire works. Their reasoning was that they didn't want players to stare at a list of health bars going up an down all the time and concentrate on whats going on in front of their character - a reasonable argument.

 

Maybe DE should've converted Blessing into an stationary AoE well-ability. I can see their reasons for not doing that, though, as they were probably afraid of taking away from breaking the "always be on the move" paradigm the game exhibits. Nevertheless, this will be ab issue that needs improvement in coming patches.

 

Also, casting time is an issue. Even with Natural Talent the casting animation is too slow to react quick enough in high pressure situations. I hope Blessing's base casting time is also getting looked at.

Edited May 14, 2014 by AuroraSonicBoom

[Treebear2]

I think the biggest boon to take away from this update is the fact that they have implemented the ability to toggle powers.  That will be huge in balancing powers for future updates.

[Gurzil]

Do you think Excalibur's Slash Dash should scale with the melee weapon he is using?

That'd be nice.. make it akin to valkyrs hysteria. add the spin attack/status/crit to his slash dash.

 

Would be nice if you could air jump with excal, also allowing it to work with rolls/flips..

 

Slash dash should be able to go anywhere you point.. If you point straight up, well, up-up, and away..

[Groovylicious]

terrible re-balance. Only one healer warframe-trinity and its nerfed-rebalanced - badly.  

[(PSN)ogosito]

terrible re-balance. Only one healer warframe-trinity and its nerfed-rebalanced - badly.  

 

terrible re-balance. Only one healer warframe-trinity and its nerfed-rebalanced - badly.  

[sixmille]

One thing I'd like to see changed about Hydroid is the number of tentacles. Currently an increased strengh doesn't increase the number of tentacles, and we'll always have 12 of them. Why? It makes that warframe underperforming when it comes to crowd control, especially since it's hard for the tentacles to catch new NPCs. Having up to 20 tentacles would make it on par with the rest of the warframes in this game.

 

Smart changes on Trinity. Can't wait to test this out tomorrow.

Edited May 14, 2014 by sixmille

[Wynn]

We were told in the fall that we were going to get Mag's Pull brought back to version 2 what happen to that?

[ShinoHarvest]

Trinity:

 

-Blessing:  Damage immunity is now based on the percentage of health healed (ie: healing 90% health will grant 90% immunity).  This should make the use of Blessing more reactive, greatly benefiting players that pay attention and monitor party health to maximize its effectiveness.

 

this = no can figth enemy(no infested) over lv 100 because one hit  egual OS and healing totaly useless, probably can survive on lv 60 -100 with good crontrol skill but over is dead, this update kill all hith lv build and game.

first probleme of trinity is link this update kill blessing + link = put trinity in trash

option 1 : for balancing trinity, increse Blessing casting time X4 or make progressive invulnerabiliti exemple ( player take 10% absortion dommage per second and need 10sec for 100%)  and second you realy discrease link range exemple /4, maxed now = 57m / 4 = 14.25m with this trinity is suport no kill all enemy and is good suport for low and hight lv.

option 2 : use skill power on Blessing for give minimal absortion % exemple with max power blinding rage + intensifier you give 80% of absortion with this probably can survive on ennemy lv 150-200 after a large number of strategic factor is in equation. use link is more complex for warframe optimisation bene (time + power) link (range +time) vampire (power)

[Alex-4]

LOL Bold move DE

 

Trinity nerf = biggest mass RAGE QUIT this game has ever seen...

 

   everyone can forget long run survivals now

 

all the old players that had only long run survival/defense to enjoy, now will get bored and switch to casual play style

[FoxFX]

Should Ash's Smoke Screen also make nearby team members caught in Smoke Screen's blast invisible?

 

Would you guys like it if Ash's Smoke Screen was some sort of party skill?

[delephantz]

muh endgame. . .

[Althix]

i see these changes with trinity as deliberate hard cap on a gameplay for majority of player base.

 

thing is, that a decent team can hold on survival for 2h easy. they always could. so that change in trinity will only affect less prepared players, mostly the pugs. (because we know that player even with effective hp of 2500 will die instantly at some point.)

 

it's also fun to read the lines such as these: "never intended to work this way", ok so why it is that way for over a year by now?

 

i also fail to see why a developer is trying to cure symptoms of the decease but not decease itself. all latest changes with damage system, melee system and powers of the warframes can't change the fact that it's game mechanics that must change in the first place. game mechanics is the thing what is broken.

because in current state of the game, you need no skill, effort or knowledge to steamrolll scraps of content this game have.

 

seriously i laughed hard on these changes. but this laugh was bitter.

 

Dear Digital Extremes please understand one simple truth, the way your game is designed in its core, they only way for a team to survive enemies is not to take damage at all. You did this, this is how your game works. This is how players are playing your game. So as i see it, you have no intensions to change how your game works, but instead you are forcing players to lose.

You have no intensions to cultivate a skill play, you have no intensions to make players think what they are doing and learn how to play the game.

 

You already murdered Frost from a setup, now you do the same with Trinity. And who is next? Loki? Vauban? Mag? Nyx?

 

15 waves of ED and 20 minutes of survival? Is that how you want us to play this game? Well you see, once again, by how your game is designed i can solo stand survival for 1h.

 

It would be nice to see changes that have some sense behind them at last.

 

Anyway, i see you in the Drangleic.

[gam3addict]

Beautifully creative changes, DE.

[MinimumGTP]

That really kills Trinity's usefulness. Anything beyond 40 min in survival can kill you pretty quickly. At that point you can't be reactive. You have to be proactive.

 

I don't see survivals lasting past 40 min now unless you have an extremely well organized team that can constantly stun enemies. The likelihood of finding a team like that in recruiting is slim.

 

This also indirectly makes Nekros less valuable in survival. If the team can't last beyond 40 min because of damage then Nekros isn't as valuable as he once was.

 

[Wehe]

And here I was hoping Volt would be decent.

 

He is supposed to be a master of electricity. Yet he has no energy play, something that would benefit players much more than a dink shield that is stationary. (complete 180 from the forced fast volt play style from his fragility and speed boost skill). It simply doesn't fit. 

 

What he should have is his forced stationary ult reworked for any of the following.

 

 

1. It moves faster along with a long stun.

 

2. it can be casted without being forced to jump up in the air and stand still. He is one of the squishiest warframes and can't afford to do that, and it completely ruins the gotta go fast feeling he is supposed to have.

 

 

This combined with his  $&*&*#(%& stationary shield being reworked into an ability that regains energy over time. (A good example would be to regain 2/3/4 energy for every bullet or  damage proc taken, and make it scale  with power strength along with 10/20/30% damage reduction from the electric shield covering his body as a secondary effect,

 

A second idea would to give the shield along with the ability of another energy siphon, except affected by power strength. 

 

(He could afford a max blind range and wouldn't fall off as much, other warframes use their abilities on top of guns, volt is by design meant to be an alternative to guns, so it would make sense if he could afford a max blind rage and still have energy.)

 

It's sad because his about section blatantly says he is supposed to be a warframe that offers an alternative to guns.

 

Giving an electric warframe the ability to regenerate energy to better spam his abilities would allow just that.

Edited May 14, 2014 by Wehe

[Vaskadar]

Muh derp endgam.

/sarcasm

 

Endless modes shouldn't be endgame.

 

But really, since the trinity change will be going through, I say it should receive these 3 things.

 

1. Revive fallen teammates

 

2. Faster cast animation

 

3. Invulnerability during cast time only, or accelerated healing.

 

Trinity should receive

 

Increased armor - Bring it up to 65

Increased health - Bring its base up to 200

[K_Shiro]

Okay, I generally like this list. Trinity included... no, particularly Trinity in fact is the best point. Yes, it will cripple Survivals above 40 minutes. Yes, it will make harder to use Penta :D. But it's illogical to have such a power. It just outclasses every other defensive stuff.

But! And this is the important part, we will need other changes then.

 

Several things that drop from Survivals (void mostly) only drop on rather high times, like 40-60m (Rhinos parts, for most players, as far as I can tell dropped around there). Without Trinity it will be near impossible to reach such heights. So you will either need to lessen the strain somehow (fewer spawns hail a ton of other problems while plain weakening them does so too - maybe reducing the steepness of the curve which they gain power by as time passes) or change the drops. I would go for the latter version.

 

Practically make prime parts of certain rarity drop at certain times. Not like keys on 15m, but more like a prime part drops in the first 20 min. At the same time it would be adequate to somehow monitor what the players have, or gained in the mission thus no prime part can drop twice for example in a single survival. Of course it is still needed that prime parts do drop frequently.

[MuscleVictor]

Would it be possible to make Zephyr's Tail wind a hold-to-use ability? It would make controlling initial jump and glide much easier.