Warframe Ability Mods: Coming Changes

[unmog]

to further punch holes in the whole one ability builds there are at max 6 mods that affect any given ability more then enough slots are there to max your ability choice.

Not if you want a rush, shield, and health. That leave three mods~ If we had 10 mod slots for frames and weapons that would give us more ability to customize our gear. Either that or we need an extra set of mods for all those "not as useful" utility mods for our frame. I dont know about you, but almost every warframe I run I put on shields and power effeciency. thats 2 gone right there~ If you want rush to actually feel like a ninja [like me] thats a third, thats half of em right there~

 

Throw into the mix the new corrupted mods to double down and maximize certain aspects, you run out of room quick.

Edited October 18, 2014 by unmog

[(PSN)vinster]

to further punch holes in the whole one ability builds there are at max 6 mods that affect any given ability more then enough slots are there to max your ability choice.

 

True, but I could always use the other slots to max out my warframe, eg. Vigor, Equilibrium, etc.

[SoulEchelon]

I wanted to make a response to this too. I figure the game is all about people doing their own playstyle regardless of what others think... thats the freedom of the games modding system. It was an option some people took. If DE really wants everyone to use all the abilities, there needs to be more effort put forward to making sure each warframe ability is not only balanced with other similar warframe abilities, but that there are no stupid ones. For instance, compare embers wall of fire [now called fireblast] with oberon's hallowed ground. Ember only hurts people as they walk through it, not when theyre inside. Thats dumb... especially when it costs "more". Not to mention that embers ability is smaller, and it isnt increased by range mods. *shakes head* Most embers I know only run world on fire. Accelerant might be useful if it still had any of its old defensive traits to it. It might also be useful if it effected other members on your team to increase THEIR fire damage too. But as it is, fire damage isn't particularly useful as its only really good against one faction in the first place and others have resistances to it. While we're on ember, lets compare her Fireball to Hydroid Tempest Barrage. Hydroid again comes out the clear victor here, even though theyre essentially a very similar ability, the damage Hydroid can do is leagues apart for using the same amount of mana. Throw into the fact it has very strong CC that makes enemies fall down Embers Fireball falls even further behind.

 

TLDR... if DE wants everyone to use all their abilities, the abilities should be more useful on a lot of the older frames. Hopefully theres a huge list of buffs upcoming to balance them.

 

I don't want to go off topic, but while I agree Fireblast -definitely- needs looking into, I actually main Ember and I specifically don't use world on fire that much. My build centers around Fireball and Accelerant, and while WoF is certainly nothing to sneeze at when fighting Infested, Accelerant+Fireball can decimate pretty damn well too. In fact, thanks to my particular build, I don't even have to use any guns on my Ember. (Though since Accelerant multiplies fire damage, I do bring Ignis as backup). Accelerant is one of those abilities that people seem to not realize just how powerful it truly is. Its large stun radius + the huge fire multipliers make Ember do immense damage.

 

But I digress. I see what you're saying. And luckily DE has been showing that they ARE looking through all the warframes and periodically rebalancing them. Oberon's latest rebalance was awesome. He's now pretty damn good. Excalibur's, with all the controversy, is more than likely also going to make him skyrocket in the tiers thanks to MUCH more utility. Hopefully Ember will get just a little bit more love, since she does need it.

Edited October 19, 2014 by (PS4)IIIDevoidIII
Cleaning

[MSD3000]

Sounds great for frames like Nekros, Vauban, and Zepher which make very good use of all 4 abilities. And on other frames it will finally give me the option to mess around with abilities I wrote off as not worth the mod slot.

 

Seems like DE is forcefully broadening our gameplay options by limiting our ability to NOT broaden our gameplay options. In a game like this, where a lot of the player base seems to do everything they can to "break" the game and not play how the dev's intended, its no surprise that DE now has to drag us all kicking and screaming back to playing the game as we're supposed to.

 

To me, the only thing this requires to be an absolutely GREAT change, is to finally get all 4 moves for each frame to feel totally viable. A tall order so far, but I have hope.

[413X]

 

And in each case-

The one ability slotted builds loose whatever that one combat option you got from that one extra mod slot was...

but gain whatever combat options from those 3 additional abilities.

If that one mod adds more use to your frame than 3 more abilities then there is an obvious flaw in the abilities.

 

 

While I'll agree that it's true that quite a number of abilities are really lacklustre, the practical considerations go beyond that. Some frames in particular have a great number of direct damage-dealing abilities which will never be used in weapons training runs (since straight out Ability kills allot all the experience to the Warframe, the weapon gets none).

 

This means that while you're trying to get your gun level up from 0 to some decent amount, you'll be trying to avoid killing with warframe abilities, but relying instead on the CC/non-direct damage dealing ability to keep you out of jams, or to negotiate a slot in an ODD or other XP grind session:

 

"Nekros here with a newly forma-ed gun. But since my responsibility is to spam desecrate to keep the team in mountains of health, energy and loot, that shouldn't be a problem right?"

 

So yeah, on weapons training runs I'd always remove the damage dealinng abilities (leaving a CC panic button) in favor of improved survivability. Of course, team exp you get from your teammates, on the other hand, is shared out normally, even if its from ability kills. So long as you make sure to keep close with them, which, if you're playing Nekros, you should be doing anyway.

[(PSN)Hiero_Glyph]

Regarding controllers, on PS4 there is a touch pad where any ability can be quick-cast.  Doing this requires a thumb (or finger) to be moved from an analog and gestured over the touch pad.  This means that a player can either not move (left hand) or aim (right hand) while activating powers in this fashion.  For radial/untargeted abilities this is not an issue but for targeted ones it would be like removing your hand from your mouse in order to activate an ability on the keyboard.  A workaround for this is to use the "cycle power left/right" and "activate power" commands.  Note:  this mat be the only available option for the XB1.

 

What this means is since controllers have a limited number of inputs, having both "cycle power left" and "cycle power right" is not possible if you also want to access things like markers, consumables, and switching the camera's shoulder position.  For example, I only use "cycle power right" so that I can switch my camera position and use cover more effectively.  By adding 1-3 abilities I am now forced to cycle the active power many, many times and in the heat of battle what was once a single button press may become tapping it 2-3 times.  As you can imagine this will lead to many input errors by players who are quickly trying to switch between abilities, especially if the game does not register a double-tap due to latency.

 

In the end this change may be beneficial for the vast majority of casual players but it will cause significant problems for the long-time veterans and all console players who are already strained by the limitations of a controller.  If DE thinks I am exaggerating then I challenge them to use a controller and play Trinity with all 4 abilities and spam Energy Vampire while maintaining Link and Blessing.  It shouldn't be too hard since only Well of Life and Energy Vampire require targeting.  Trust me when I say that having to "cycle power right" 2-3 times after every Link and Blessing cast is far from optimal.  Having to do it 1-2 times after each cast is already bad enough but due to targeting restrictions you are forced to use a bumper to "activate power" (or EV in this case) since you need to aim while casting it.  You will accidently cast Link or Blessing more than once and leave yourself short on energy when things get frantic all because having WoL makes it more complicated than it needs to be.

Edited October 19, 2014 by (PS4)Hiero_Glyph

[SquirmyBurrito]

Kinda upset about the removal of two of the slots as I have builds that use all of those slots for non-ability mods. This change is basically gimping some of my builds.

[SoulEchelon]

Sounds great for frames like Nekros, Vauban, and Zepher which make very good use of all 4 abilities. And on other frames it will finally give me the option to mess around with abilities I wrote off as not worth the mod slot.

 

Seems like DE is forcefully broadening our gameplay options by limiting our ability to NOT broaden our gameplay options. In a game like this, where a lot of the player base seems to do everything they can to "break" the game and not play how the dev's intended, its no surprise that DE now has to drag us all kicking and screaming back to playing the game as we're supposed to.

 

To me, the only thing this requires to be an absolutely GREAT change, is to finally get all 4 moves for each frame to feel totally viable. A tall order so far, but I have hope.

 

Interesting way to put it, and I agree. Warframe has a little too much freedom yet at the same time current warframe abilities have people focusing on particular ones. Players tend to gravitate toward the easiest solution, and buffing the hell out of a particular warframe's strongest ability is typically that solution. No matter how much rebalancing DE does, there will be certain players that do this regardless of whether or not it's even a good idea. If it's strong, has AOE, and some sort of utility, it will be gravitated towards.

 

And that's kinda sad, because many Warframe abilities, albeit situational or "weak", are really interesting and fun to use. Like Mirage's Sleight of Hand. Fun ability, but most people totally ignore it. A real shame.

[Ronyn]

While I'll agree that it's true that quite a number of abilities are really lacklustre, the practical considerations go beyond that. Some frames in particular have a great number of direct damage-dealing abilities which will never be used in weapons training runs (since straight out Ability kills allot all the experience to the Warframe, the weapon gets none).

 

This means that while you're trying to get your gun level up from 0 to some decent amount, you'll be trying to avoid killing with warframe abilities, but relying instead on the CC/non-direct damage dealing ability to keep you out of jams, or to negotiate a slot in an ODD or other XP grind session:

 

"Nekros here with a newly forma-ed gun. But since my responsibility is to spam desecrate to keep the team in mountains of health, energy and loot, that shouldn't be a problem right?"

 

So yeah, on weapons training runs I'd always remove the damage dealinng abilities (leaving a CC panic button) in favor of improved survivability. Of course, team exp you get from your teammates, on the other hand, is shared out normally, even if its from ability kills. So long as you make sure to keep close with them, which, if you're playing Nekros, you should be doing anyway.

I agree with what you're saying about practical considerations of what to use when.

Though For weapons training isn't it simple enough to just not use certain abilities in the new system?

[(PSN)brokedragon88]

To everyone complaining about Nekros, I feel your pain, but broaden your horizons. Yes, I play Nekros and forma'd him six times. I play a desecrate Build only for T4 survival or farming. Otherwise, I love playing a well thought out Shadows and Terrify. I agreed completely that my T4 build is going to take a beating by losing one mod slot that makes everything work so well, but isn't that what is fun about this game. Finding out ways to use the characters we love. I personally bought plat when I came back to this game just so I could play Nekros.

Now, I do agree with everyone that we should have 10 mod slots on everything. This being that with the normal six non ability mod slots, people have only found ways to really make use of two abilities at max, and the rare few actually get to use all of them, but they don't show anything strong against every other ability. The ten slots would let you actually make using all of the abilities as a viable option.

However, without more knowledge on how you can augment the abilities, all of this is pointless verbal garbage. The augmentation capabilities will most likely make all the difference. I say let's wait for more info before we speculate, and thank DE for making an unbelievable game that is free to play(and expensive you so choose, but none the less fun)!!!!!

[413X]

I agree with what you're saying about practical considerations of what to use when.

Though For weapons training isn't it simple enough to just not use certain abilities in the new system?

 

But it ties into available choice. A lot of players are saying that there is no downside to having 2 slots removed since you are actually "gaining" 2 free slots when everything is totalled up.

 

It's more a case of the player being able to make 10 choices before and now being restricted to 8 and having 4 abilities forced on.

 

In the past, with that extra one slot (if you are carefully with formaing for max efficency) you could swap in something like sure footed for instance to combine with fortitude in your basic setup for even better knockdown resistance. This might save your bacon if you get ambushed from off camera by a scorpion, giving you time to trigger your CC skill instead of being slammed into the ground and dragged into a meatgrinder mob.

 

You could even go with a no skill build (normal non-ability mods on all 10 slots) if the recruiting chat is particularly dead and no one in alliance wants to head off to ODD. Just head into one of the lower levelled survivals with a new melee weapon and go have some crazy fun with the Stamina enhancement and Reflection mods, along with health and shield boost support and knock down resistance mods.

[(PSN)Hiero_Glyph]

I think I would be willing to accept these changes if DE allows us to set the rank of each ability and remove abilities from the active list entirely.  Otherwise why offer different ability ranks?  As for the option to remove abilities from the active list, this has to do with the difficulty console players encounter when using a controller (as I outlined previously).

[Yorinar]

So does that mean the first two forma spent on changing ability slot polarities will be refunded and then any further will just stay the polarity that it was changed to?

 

Also what if the polarity of an "unremoved" slot was forma'd to be no polarity?  You're still losing a forma in that case.

[v3numb]

Still no word on whether or not abilities will reset ranks on a forma? Would like to know. :D 

 

 

it says somthing about that near the middle lol

[SoulEchelon]

So does that mean the first two forma spent on changing ability slot polarities will be refunded and then any further will just stay the polarity that it was changed to?

 

Also what if the polarity of an "unremoved" slot was forma'd to be no polarity?  You're still losing a forma in that case.

 

We really don't know yet exactly how it's going to work. Just gotta wait until DE tells us.

 

They might actually be working on some sort of one-time deal where we can move our polarities around the new setup, and then refunding what you manually choose to remove. That'd be cool; though that's just pure speculation.

[Ronyn]

But it ties into available choice. <->

It's more a case of the player being able to make 10 choices before and now being restricted to 8 and having 4 abilities forced on.

Its not entirely fair to present the situation like that. 

Before we had 10 choices in mods, Now we will 8 choices in mods AS WELL AS some other choices in how we augment the 4 abilities.

 

People saying there is no downside are only looking at it from one side, People trying to ignore what we gain are only looking at it from one side.

As I explained earlier, it is a trade off. Whether the end result will be overall good or bad is still unknown. 

[Ronyn]

What is funny to me is that if DE were to announce that we get to keep all 10 slots plus the abilities....

We would see a bunch of complaints about power creep and folks worried that the game is already too easy. lol

[Ryokuzaki]

Excelent, good to know about those Formas, most of my Frames have 6, leaving only one = left.

[jjpdn]

So, does that mean that forma-ing a Warframe reset the abilities too?

And "reimboursed" for the Forma means that we just get the forma back, and lose all the time we spend releveing the warframe up?

[Loswaith]

....

Also, pretty much this. The game has been out for quite a while now and a change as big as this should NOT be happening after being so long in action.

Lets face it that comment could of been used for stuff that has been changed already as well, like with melee, drop table handling, UI changes and many other additions both good or a mixed bag.  All I have to say is if you arent willing to accept change then dont play betas, as you are seeing the changes that usually happen in house that the consumer never sees in other games.

 

... what about the lengthy periods of suffering I had to go through in order to re-level my Vauban on each occasion? ...

If a game is causing you suffering you really shouldnt be playing it.

Edited October 19, 2014 by Loswaith

[Rexlars]

What is funny to me is that if DE were to announce that we get to keep all 10 slots plus the abilities....

We would see a bunch of complaints about power creep and folks worried that the game is already too easy. lol

 

This is 100% fact. 

[KorEllen]

How are Non-Maxed Warframes with Maxed skills going to be affected by this change? exp...I have a level 10 Ember with a Maxed World on Fire, if World on Fire is going to be locked on my Ember till she reaches level 15 or whatever the required level is to unlock World on Fire, will it automatically be maxed or will I have to level it up?

 

Also how will this affect Prime Warframes? exp..I have a level 10 Ember and a level 30 Ember Prime but only one maxed World on Fire Mod that they share. another exp..I have a level 30 Rhino and a level 30 Rhino Prime, but again, only one maxed Rhino Stomp they both share.

[(PSN)The_CIROC_Boy]

So basically what they are saying is that all of my 8 forma warframe builds like the ones on my Valkyr <3 are going to be useless? Oh man I'm really scared about this change. I feel like all the time I spent building my character to fit the mods I want to use will be days of my life wasted. 

 

 

If they remove the way my character plays, I might shoot myself...... No amount of platinum or fusion cores will reimburse me.

[(PSN)AceTheEmperor]

Seems like there not thinking about the time it takes to put alot of forma into warframes it takes farming for the blueprint and then 24 hours to build after finding the rarest resources I'm not really sure about this I think it will crush a lot of my builds that I worked so hard to get to where I wanted them

[(PSN)vinster]

The fact that this thread has ballooned should indicate to the DE Warframe team that they need to take a good hard look at these changes again.

 

I know that the team has to keep coming up with new stuff and changes to justify working on the same product for this long and keep it fresh, but please listen to your customers and ardent fans.  I hope it is not "It's my way or the highway" approach.

 

I have faith that they will do the right thing in the end.