Trinity: Why She Can't Be Reactive

[Halofreakalex]

Hello Tenno of the Warframe forums,

 

With the most recent Dev stream, it seems like the devs still believe Trinity can be played in a reactive fashion. With Sheldon's comment of, "it`d be nice if I had more queues for teammates taking damage" (not exact quote), it is clear that they believe the current version of Blessing has no problems. 

 

As someone who has been playing Warframe for quite a while, I can agree that Trinity is overpowered. However, I believe that some of the complaints about her making the game too easy are unwarranted. 

 

I think we can all agree that Trinity is most useful in mid to end game content. Where mid game content is T3 void keys and end game is T4 defense or survival after 50 waves or 1 hour respectively. In the early game however, Trinity doesn't do much but give a clutch for newer players who are not as proficient at avoiding damage. 

 

So if anyone says Trinity makes the game too easy in the early game because of the damage invulnerbility then I can't help but retort that early game is easy regardless of whether or not Trinity is in the match. 

 

I digress. However, as Trinity was an end game frame, I will talk about her effectiveness now in the end game. 

 

In most end game content, your team will not have the tankiest frames on board. I can almost guarantee that their will be a Nekros, a Nova, or even a Loki. It's highly unlikely that these frames will build heavily in defense as they need to optimize in their utility or damage. I will generalize and say they will have an effective health of 1000, either with 720 shield and 300 health or vice versa. With the current Trinity or Quick Thinking, the former would probably be more efficient. 

 

With those assumptions aside, lets get to the main point. 

 

I think we can all agree that at some point, enemies will be able to deal 1000 damage in one hit. The most recent infested hive event only confirms this point for the community. With that in mind, how can anyone expect to react to enough damage to one shot frames? If you cast before the damage hits an ally, there will be no damage reduction and said ally will die. If you cast after your ally has taken damage, well said ally is already down. Meaning Trinity's Blessing falls off to uselessness after enemies can one shot players. 

 

Well, I don't think you need any more convincing that reactive Trinity won't work, therefore I would like to propose a quick fix for blessing until they can figure out a better method. 

 

Instead of Blessing being an ability being reactive, it should return to being preemptive. Therefore, tweaking it to be like Frost's Snow Globe would be the best alternative. Have it so that there is a brief invulnerbility period where damage is soaked, then an "Iron Skin" equal to the amount of damage soaked. That way, it should theoretically scale to endgame like Frost's Snow Globe does. 

 

Obviously this version of Blessing is not perfect, but it is a much better alternative than the Devs thinking that Trinity can be played in a reactive fashion. 

 

Thank you for taking the time to read this long post. Hope to hear your opinions on this matter.

 

 

Edit: If we assume that the teammate UI is getting fixed, making reactive Trinity easier. It still does not change the fact that there is nothing the Trinity can do if the player dies within .6 second (Blessing cast time) Regardless of if the reason is that that play is bad at avoiding damage or if a single bullet kills them, I think we can agree that no player can react to that type of instantaneous damage.

 

Which is why I think if Blessing were to stay reactive, Tarille's idea would help with Trinity's reactivity.

 

"If I was to make a change to Blessing, I'd just give it the possibility of reviving people and put them at low life. Meaning that when 1-shotting does occur, the skill doesn't become useless but also meaning that it's not ridiculous (Also, makes it a bit more forgiving on the timing)"

Edited July 7, 2014 by slivermasterz

[IrisDragoon]

what id change is that when blessing is casted it should over-charge the player's shield (+50% of max shield for duration of blessing) and also revives fallen player's but with only 35% health. should help allitle for end-game content...

Edited July 6, 2014 by McDuffMan

[Azawarau]

what id change is that when blessing is casted it should over-charge the player's shield (+50% of max shield for duration of blessing) and also revives fallen player's but with only 35% health. should help allitle for end-game content...

Then people would just spam it constantly again instead and she wouldnt be reactive

 

@OP

 

Theres nothing wrong with enemies being able to one hit you after an hour

 

It the signal to run away

 

Stop trying to run endless waves endlessly

 

If the game is balanced on that there will literally be no en to how broken everything is and any content that isnt an endless mission will be obsoleted entirely

[Tarille]

Trinity can help teams get further into endless modes.

 

Sure, eventually she'll drop off in the sense that her Blessing becomes useless because of 1-shotting, but then she has other utility such as Energy Vampire to help the team (Allowing CC to be spammed more freely to reduce the chance of being shot at and also allowing for 4x Corrosive Projection to be run instead of Energy Siphon allowing damage dealt to be high)

 

If Trinity could spam Blessing and get scaling damage block as well as invulnerability (Even if brief) then instead of extending the time a team can stay in an endless mode, she'd go back to being "Required" to reach long durations in endless modes. Just like how perma-invincibility made people think that in order to do high level endless you needed a Trinity.

 

Not to mention the amount of exploiting that it'd likely result in, with people spamming self damage to boost up their damage block (It doesn't happen with Snow Globe because Tenno cannot damage Frost's globe, but it's very possible for people to damage themselves and/or stand in Void Lasers, Napalm fire patches, in front of a spun up Heavy Gunner/Corpus Tech etc)

 

If I was to make a change to Blessing, I'd just give it the possibility of reviving people and put them at low life. Meaning that when 1-shotting does occur, the skill doesn't become useless but also meaning that it's not ridiculous (Also, makes it a bit more forgiving on the timing)

[Monolake]

Sheldon was spot on about the interface being useless at informing you about teammates getting hit. Iv made a topic about it in the UI forums, but only few people care. UI needs a change, you cant noice those tiny healthbars shrinking, even old team UI was better.

 

If I only mind my own health I can recast ult timely and tank till ~lvl70 mobs with 90% damage reduction no problem. Even tried the good-ol selfdamage+link exploit, but you dont get energy from selfdamage Rage.

 

Also cleared Alad ship alerts not using any weapons, just letting enemies kill themselves via link and tanking everything under Blessing.

Edited July 6, 2014 by Monolake

[RealPandemonium]

Trinity is adequately able to react to dropping health bars (an indicator to make it more apparent is a great idea btw) in normal play; she is now less exploitable in infinite content and that's why everyone is crying. 

[Worira]

Except Suspicious Shipments was a thing, and had enemies that killed you in well under a second. Personally, I think that mostly just means Suspicious Shipments were garbage, but if DE does intend to have more things with similarly overtuned damage, they need to be aware of the problems Trinity has there.

[Moderius]

The argument that enemies can do enough to one-shot you, and that trinity should be able to just prevent that, is a terrible, terrible argument. If you think that the ability to die is a flaw in the design, you have absolutely no grasp of what balance is.

[Moderius]

Except Suspicious Shipments was a thing, and had enemies that killed you in well under a second. Personally, I think that mostly just means Suspicious Shipments were garbage, but if DE does intend to have more things with similarly overtuned damage, they need to be aware of the problems Trinity has there.

 

See, this exactly is the problem. Thinking that Trinity should be able to just outright nullify damage.

 

So, in your mind, you think every mission with very high-damage enemies needs a Trinity? You can't even grasp the flaw in the concept you created in your head, the basis of your entire statement? The idea that not only should Trinity be able to negate high damage, but the idea that Trinity is somehow flawed because she can't do what you think she should?

 

"These enemies one-shot other Warframes, but they also kill Trinity: Trinity needs a buff."

[Azawarau]

Trinity is adequately able to react to dropping health bars (an indicator to make it more apparent is a great idea btw) in normal play; she is now less exploitable in infinite content and that's why everyone is crying. 

See, this exactly is the problem. Thinking that Trinity should be able to just outright nullify damage.

 

So, in your mind, you think every mission with very high-damage enemies needs a Trinity? You can't even grasp the flaw in the concept you created in your head, the basis of your entire statement? The idea that not only should Trinity be able to negate high damage, but the idea that Trinity is somehow flawed because she can't do what you think she should?

 

"These enemies one-shot other Warframes, but they also kill Trinity: Trinity needs a buff."

Id like to point out

 

If trinity never had invi in the first place there wouldnt be a single complaint about it

[RealPandemonium]

Id like to point out

 

If trinity never had invi in the first place there wouldnt be a single complaint about it

This pretty much sums up this whole issue. 

[Halofreakalex]

The argument that enemies can do enough to one-shot you, and that trinity should be able to just prevent that, is a terrible, terrible argument. If you think that the ability to die is a flaw in the design, you have absolutely no grasp of what balance is.

 

I think we can both agree that Trinity was completely OP before the nerf, and the nerf was deserved. However, I think that Blessing still requires some tweaking before we can consider this ability finalized. 

 

I avoided one of the biggest issues of playing reactively, and that is (quoted from u/warframenetwork)

 

"any team-reactive abilities will perform terribly in the presence of even minor lag.

If the "Reactive" teammate is not host, and the "Needy" teammate is not host, the network looks like this:

Needy <--(lag A)--> Host <--(lag B)--> Reactive"

 

However, that is inevitable in every game so I ignored it. 

 

 

Sheldon was spot on about the interface being useless at informing you about teammates getting hit. Iv made a topic about it in the UI forums, but only few people care. UI needs a change, you cant noice those tiny healthbars shrinking, even old team UI was better.

 

This is also the problem of playing a reactive Trinity. While not the fault of Trinity itself, it definitely doesn't help it out.

 

 

@Moderius I don't think that Trinity needs to prevent people from getting one-shot, but it would definitely help if she had something to react to people getting one shot.

 

If I was to make a change to Blessing, I'd just give it the possibility of reviving people and put them at low life. Meaning that when 1-shotting does occur, the skill doesn't become useless but also meaning that it's not ridiculous (Also, makes it a bit more forgiving on the timing)

[Moderius]

@Moderius I don't think that Trinity needs to prevent people from getting one-shot, but it would definitely help if she had something to react to people getting one shot.

 

Trinity is a preventative frame. She heals up, she provides energy, and she provides mitigation. When somebody goes down, her tools just aren't for that.

 

If she did have the tools to also safely revive somebody who went down, that would again make her far too necessary. Trinity is in a good place. She helps the team with steady energy and health, and provides mitigation. High utility. Other frames have the tools to really safely revive others; CC frames, Volt and Frost, stealth frames.

 

Trinity is not alone on the team. She shouldn't be providing all aspects of utility from one place. One frame shouldn't be a "necessity" to clear a certain level of difficulty.

[LukeAura]

DE has always made the statement they do not balance for infinite content. 
So do not suggest balances that are because of infinite content failing.

[Repligon]

The problem of old blessing was its spammability. Trinity was broken by corrupted mods. It wasn't such an OP skill before because of a short duration and hight cost. But no, DE decided to treat the symptoms rather than causes (because corrupted mods are so cool and totally not the scraping the bottom of the barrel).

Take old blessing, make it a "swithch" skill like absorb, give it a continuous power consumption that speeds up with time and a cooldown that scales with blessing duration and you will get an unspammable reactive skill that scales indefinetely with enemy level.

[ODDragon]

The problem of old blessing was its spammability. Trinity was broken by corrupted mods. It wasn't such an OP skill before because of a short duration and hight cost.

 

It was broken even before corrupted mods were introduced, but people did not pick up on it because with a 70 energy cost you had to have some way to regain that energy, and energy vampire wasn't as easy to use as it is now. With a balanced build you had Blessing with a cost of 70 energy with a 12 second invincibility duration. I'd hardly call that one balanced.

 

I think trinity is in a fine spot right now, only needing a small tweak to her well of life and she's good to go(Even if people don't take it into account, her WoL can still take out a unit from the field for 12 seconds without duration mods. It might not seem like much, but it is still a cheap single target CC for a mere 25 energy cost.) The changes made to her energy vampire made it even better(It was already pretty good however. I don't understand how people ran around with a trinity that did not have energy vampire equipped.)

 

In its current state Blessing is working as an emergency heal that helps fixing the mistakes of your teammates. It should have never worked the way it did before. People need to realise that the team too is responsible for minimizing the damage they get, and to what extend they can go where Blessing can still aid them. If you already get to a point where no amount of damage reduction or shields can save you from being one-shotted, then it is a clear indication that you should bail out from the mission.

 

EDIT:

I agree on the UI part though. Some form of indication when someone is taking heavy damage would make using Blessing for what it is meant for so much better.

Edited July 7, 2014 by ODDragon

[Azawarau]

The problem of old blessing was its spammability. Trinity was broken by corrupted mods. It wasn't such an OP skill before because of a short duration and hight cost. But no, DE decided to treat the symptoms rather than causes (because corrupted mods are so cool and totally not the scraping the bottom of the barrel).

Take old blessing, make it a "swithch" skill like absorb, give it a continuous power consumption that speeds up with time and a cooldown that scales with blessing duration and you will get an unspammable reactive skill that scales indefinetely with enemy level.

No...

 

I did 2 hours in T 3 survival spamming blessing without corrupted mods

[Methanoid]

trinity is simply failing hard because theres no way at all to actually play the game properly while your eyes are glued to those tiny badly placed team hp bars, quite often knowing this ive just taken an ignis as i dont have to aim and dont hurt yourself, blindly running with fire held using that weapon is all i can do while your eyes crust over checking hp bars.

 

the old hp bars were a bit better when they were larger and stuck to the left of your character model.

 

but yer her issue is you can either contribute to the game, killing stuff etc, or you can contribute by staring at hp bars, you cant do both.

[Repligon]

It was broken even before corrupted mods were introduced, but people did not pick up on it because with a 70 energy cost you had to have some way to regain that energy, and energy vampire wasn't as easy to use as it is now. With a balanced build you had Blessing with a cost of 70 energy with a 12 second invincibility duration. I'd hardly call that one balanced.

 

I did 2 hours in T 3 survival spamming blessing without corrupted mods

See? The problem is spammability. Corrupted mods just made it worse. Make it impossible to spam and it will be ok.

[Azawarau]

See? The problem is spammability. Corrupted mods just made it worse. Make it impossible to spam and it will be ok.

But they werent the problem in the first place like you said

 

And even if the duration were shortened one of two things would happen

 

Shed either have to have an invi time so short that even 4 trinity couldnt cycle effectively enough to stay invincible and itd be less useful than the current blessing or

 

Youd have to change the game mechanics so trinities cant receive heals from eachother and anything that involves limiting a frames power on another frame for the sake of balance is already bad work

[Moderius]

The problem of old blessing was its spammability. Trinity was broken by corrupted mods. It wasn't such an OP skill before because of a short duration and hight cost. But no, DE decided to treat the symptoms rather than causes (because corrupted mods are so cool and totally not the scraping the bottom of the barrel).

Take old blessing, make it a "swithch" skill like absorb, give it a continuous power consumption that speeds up with time and a cooldown that scales with blessing duration and you will get an unspammable reactive skill that scales indefinetely with enemy level.

 

Corrupted mods were not what made it spammable. But you say, specifically, that the cause of the issue was corrupted mods.

 

But when you're told otherwise, you just pretend the corrupted mods had nothing to do with it? You're just rationalizing as an afterthought. Form an argument that's coherent if you're going to make a claim as to why something needs to be fixed.

 

If your reasoning changes but your conclusion stays the same, you're obviously not basing your conclusion on reasoning.

[LasersGoPewPew]

blessing should apply an *Overshield* of X damage to allies that wears off when the damage absorb cap is reached on top of its' current affects, so it can give our allies TIME TO ESCAPE! -_-.

 

nothing bothers me more as a trinity than using blessing to heal an ally with 5 hp left just so he dies a second after i use blessing on him.

[Azawarau]

blessing should apply an *Overshield* of X damage to allies that wears off when the damage absorb cap is reached on top of its' current affects, so it can give our allies TIME TO ESCAPE! -_-.

 

nothing bothers me more as a trinity than using blessing to heal an ally with 5 hp left just so he dies a second after i use blessing on him.

Gotta go faster on that

 

On the bright side

 

Youre tanky AF

 

You can easily rev