Auras Still Need Work

[Vargras]

A while back, several auras were tweaked and buffed. While this was a step in the right direction, there's still work that needs to be done, as there's far too many auras that simply don't stack up compared to the others.

 

The Good

Auras on this list should not be a surprise to most players. Auras which are in a solid spot and likely see frequent use are:

-Energy Siphon

-Rejuvenation

-Rifle Amp

-Steel Charge

-Corrosive Projection

 

Energy Siphon is still the go-to aura in most situations, as energy regen will always be useful. Post-buff, Rejuvenation is now the single best D aura, and enjoys fairly frequent use. Rifle Amp and Steel Charge also remain viable, though one will often be used over the other depending on the player's playstyle. Corrosive Projection gets a special mention as it's very often used by high-level players in order to nullify the armor on Heavy Gunners and Ancients.

 

The Bad

Auras on this list are almost never used unless the player is new and simply has nothing else. There's very little reason to ever bring one of these over one of the "good" auras, and if there is, it's for very niche situations. These include:

-Dead Eye

-Infested Impedance

-Physique

-Enemy Radar

-Shield Disruption

-Loot Detector

-Scavenger (Rifle/Sniper/Shotgun/Pistol)

-Speed Holster

-Sprint Boost

 

Dead Eye functions identically to Rifle Amp, except it applies to fewer weapons. Infested Impedance, though potentially valuable because of the slow, is ultimately irrelevant due to Nova's Molecular Prime (both the positive and negative versions of it). Physique continues to be useless as it only applies to base health, resulting in laughably small health gains when used. Enemy Radar has very niche uses (I can only recall ever using this for Rescue 2.0 to aid with stealth runs) and otherwise has little use in non-stealth situations. Shield Disruption is also irrelevant as shields can easily be torn through, unlike armor. Loot Detector has no real use and is only wanted by players so they can complete their Codex (evidence of this can be seen in forum topics whenever it pops up on alerts). The Scavenger mods, due to both how often ammo drops, as well as Nekros and Sahasa kubrows, often isn't worth it. Lastly, both Speed Holster and Sprint Boost require the entire team to stack them to begin to see the benefits.

 

Some buffs are definitely needed for a good portion of the auras. Some of them are obvious (like Physique applying to total health and not base health), others will need some thinking.

[FrackingBiscuit]

Agreed on all counts.

 

Here's wot I think about each Aura:

 

For Dead Eye - what if it was made to match Steel Charge?  +60% damage to Sniper Rifles and +9 capacity?

 

Corrosive Projection/Shield Disruption/Infested Impedance are supposed to be a trio of faction-specific auras; unfortunately Corrosive Projection is useful against most factions at high levels because of armor scaling, and is particularly useful in the Void.  Shield Disruption and Infested Impedance simply aren't as useful in that they don't target a particularly valuable stat and they are only useful against one faction.  I think this "family" of auras need to be re-branded and work in a manner more like Corrosive Projection; weakening enemies in same way that is always valuable, or alternatively boosting the stats of the players in some way.  Shield Disruption could become a Shield Amp that increases shield recharge rate and/or reduces damage to shields?  Infested Impedance becomes Enemy Impedance and slowing every faction?

 

Scavengers (Rifle/Sniper/Shotgun/Pistol) could be changed to Resource Scavengers - Common, Uncommon, Credits, Ammo (all types).  Because as you said, ammo is already plentiful and there are so many better ways to get more - Nekros, Sahasa, Mutators. The idea of an Aura that increases the drop chance of something is a good one, but ammo is not the something we need.

 

Enemy Radar and Loot Detector have little to no application already, and share effects with Enemy Sense and Thief's Wit.  Speed Holster is also practically useless.  I don't think they can be made effective no matter how they're tweaked; they need to be completely replaced, likely with things unrelated to their current effects.  I don't know if that means retiring these mods and introducing new ones or just converting all existing versions to the new mods.  But they're just not useful things to have.

 

Physique and Sprint Boost might be saved with just straight buffs.  Physique scaling based on total health and not base and Sprint Boost just boosting sprint more.  Sprint Boost might also work as an all-around Stamina Boost - more stamina and faster recharge to go along with sprint speed.

[BizarreFetalChimpanzee]

I think what would help with some of the damage oriented auras is for them not so much to cater to specific weapons but playstyles.

 

Dead Eye is largely what I have in mind for this, and to make it more useful, rather than its damage boost to sniper rifles, why not have it reward accurate players by increasing headshot multiplier damage? I think that'd make it a far more desirable aura and would reward players who prefer to aim instead of spray and pray.

 

Physique could see a buff with either: Health buff based on total health, armor buff, or maybe a percentage of both.

 

Sprint boost: Increase sprint speed, add stamina.

Edited September 26, 2014 by BizarreFetalChimpanzee

[AnatharsWrath]

i actually use enemy radar on quite a few of my frames as they need the slots for other mods and have no room for enemy sense.

 

also if you are one of those folks who play with the same few friends alot. One person with enemy radar can cover the enemy sense need for everyone on your team allowing them to remove enemy sense for a different mod. 

 

the ammo scavenger mods can be useful if you are leveling/re-leveling ammo sucking weapons like amprex or furis style weapons or if you plan to use them alot in general and dont like waiting on ammo restores to fill you up.. 

Edited September 26, 2014 by AnatharsWrath

[Gizogin]

Enemy Radar is a funny aura, in that I always appreciate when somebody brings it along, but never use it myself.  I think part of the problem may be that only a few auras actually have noticeable effects.

 

Energy Siphon and Rejuvenation constantly restore energy/health, respectively, so you can see them working.  Enemy Radar flags all enemies on the minimap.  Physique, while underwhelming (I definitely agree that it should apply to total health, not base), changes your health.  None of the other auras is obvious, even if you're specifically looking for its effects, so I often have no idea what my teammates are bringing.

[Grulos]

More variety is always good.

[Paradoxbomb]

I agree with Anathars, I think Enemy Radar is actually pretty useful, being able to know where the enemy is really handy, especially during Defense-based missions/objectives. I actually see quite a bit of players using it as well. Anyway, a few suggestions for the other underwhelming Auras (off the top of my head) would be:

 

Physique- Combine this with Rejuvenation. It's a pretty underwhelming Aura on it's own, but together a small boost to health would be a pretty pleasant bonus on top of having it regenerate. Oh, and fix the scaling of course.

 

Sprint Boost- Combine this with Steel Charge, and throw in the additional bonus of +Stamina and/or -Stamina recharge delay. Really make one mean melee boosting machine out of both of them.

 

Speed Holster- For anyone who's played Sanctum 2, there was this one particular weapon bonus that made it so that switching weapons gave you a damage boost with said weapon for several seconds. I would be more than willing to use this Aura if they added a similar mechanic to this. Hell, possibly even throw in an auto reload mechanic where the other gun will be reloaded while you're using the other one (or at the very least reload times are radically reduced). Make it significantly change up the playstyle and make the idea of constantly switching your weapons fun and not dreadful.

 

Scavenger Auras- I say combine them, since having all of them be separate just seems needlessly superfluous, and sniper or shotgun mutation become selfish mods unless your whole team just happens to be using those particular weapons. Additionally, Make it so that it adds a percent increase to the amount of resources you get per pickup (maybe +50% per Aura?) so that it's a great mod for farming resources as well on top of managing ammunition.

 

Loot Detector- There's surprisingly a lack of mods in Warframe that increase your chance of finding rare items, why not add this element to Loot Detector? For example, those boring old locker and containers that never drop anything of value ever? Now they have 20% chance to drop an uncommon mod, and 5% to drop a rare one (per Aura). That one boss that never drops Orokin Cells. Look at that, Cells! I'd even go so far as to say they should add a "Desecrate" effect to it that scavenges corpses you pass nearby, and phase out Nekros as the farming "tool" (give him some other skill to run around with), but you know, pipe dreams...

 

Dead Eye- The one thing that always seemed strange with snipers is that they have the same x2 headshot damage multiplier as all other weapons. Sure, they have high crit-chances, but that just means sniping becomes a gamble against any enemy with reasonable health. Maybe instead of a bland +20% damage buff, Dead Eye can kick up this multiplier, making base headshot damage all the more reliable, and further increasing damage dealt with crits. Additional boosts such as -Recoil and +Fire rate could also help make snipers more fluid. (Of course I'd personally prefer if a higher headshot multipler was an innate feature of snipers, but this would be good enough to make this Aura at least worth using).

 

 

Not sure about Shield Disruption/Infested Impedance, but basically my belief is that they should condense the existing Auras a bit since there's so many "meh" ones, and make them into mods that really have a significant impact on your playstyle, or at least cover a few aspects of gameplay and not just one very tight and highly situational instance. My ideas may not be the best, but I would like to see more significant effects in a similar vein.

Edited September 26, 2014 by Paradoxbomb

[Vargras]

i actually use enemy radar on quite a few of my frames as they need the slots for other mods and have no room for enemy sense.

 

also if you are one of those folks who play with the same few friends alot. One person with enemy radar can cover the enemy sense need for everyone on your team allowing them to remove enemy sense for a different mod. 

 

the ammo scavenger mods can be useful if you are leveling/re-leveling ammo sucking weapons like amprex or furis style weapons or if you plan to use them alot in general and dont like waiting on ammo restores to fill you up.. 

Enemy Sense is never "needed" though. Same for Enemy Radar -- it's a luxury aura at best, and as such, there's no real point in using it when you have auras with actual use like Energy Siphon or Rejuvenation.

[H.Katsura_999]

I use Loot detector for my void valkyr and Enemy Radar for my Normal Valkyr build. Enemy radar helps in survivals to find where enemies are concentrated for someone to use a nuke ulti effectively. I would use steel charge but valkyr is already one hitting level 40 stuff so i though to myself why bother.

[H.Katsura_999]

Enemy Sense is never "needed" though. Same for Enemy Radar -- it's a luxury aura at best, and as such, there's no real point in using it when you have auras with actual use like Energy Siphon or Rejuvenation.

That is true but then again it all depends of your playstyle.

[TaylorsContraction]

I use loot detector and enemy sense, and think they're great. Perhaps you don't care for their utility but others do. Sprint boost is GOOD, that really doesn't need much changing. I equipped this for the Gate Crash event so we can explore faster, my Rhino Prime was running so fast, it was breaking his running animation and he was choppy. Infected Impedence is great if you aren't a super-man. I see an infested alert on a high level map while training low level gear. Slap this mod on, and I don't get swarmed, it makes it easy to kite them.

 

I do agree on many other points with respect to the the usefullness of the mods, many of them are very situational while the "viable" ones posted by OP are usefull IN ALL situations. We can't expect EVERYTHING to always be viable though, that's the point of customization, we gear up for the situation.

 

Don't get me wrong as I am not disagreeing with you, I just don't think we can make every aura useful all the time with the exception of the "viable" list.