All Powers Should Have Scale Ability Outright, Augments Should Add To/alter That Scale Ability

[Holeypaladin]

Augments should also be worth replacing a mod with.

 

The augment mods for most of the warframes do not currently exceed the opportunity cost to replace existing mods.

[Arunafeltz]

Take my +1. Just... just take it. 

[AlphaHorseman]

Augments should also be worth replacing a mod with.

 

The augment mods for most of the warframes do not currently exceed the opportunity cost to replace existing mods.

With the discussions within DE on adding augment specific mod slot(s) or not still pending, I would hold out on that argument. Though, I would say that having augments be comparable with QOL or build specific mods would be interesting, I am of the camp that vies for 4 augment slots (1 per ability). Thus allowing players to diversify their powers but also not hinder their builds, since we've only got 8 slots to work with since the powers change.

 

That discussion though, is for another topic.

[GideonG]

Any you would say specifically? I'm trying to see what other augments others within the community feel are lackluster and/or are traits that should be built into the powers.

 

Fireball Frenzy, Surging Dash, Freeze Force, Smite Infusion, Venom Dose, Pacifying Bolts, Shock Trooper, Greedy Pull, Pool of Life, Tesla Link, Fire Fright, Ballistic Bullseye, Ice Wave Impedance, and Hallowed Eruption.

 

All of these mods, IMO, should be part of the base-ability. None of these mods are truly worth giving up a mod slot in order to use them, and if they do, they do it to a skill that should already function that way (Ice Wave Impedance, Hallowed Eruption, Fire Fright). They mostly augment the 1 ability of frames, which can be the most under-used abilities. It offers an alternative use for the majority of them, giving the skills they augment scalability in some way.

 

The majority of other augment mods fundamentally change the way skills themselves work. Some adding additional scalability (Antimatter Absorb, Irradiating Disarm, etc) and others opening up new build options. I think these should be the mods that challenge you to use them differently.

Edited January 1, 2015 by GideonG

[AlphaHorseman]

Fireball Frenzy, Surging Dash, Freeze Force, Smite Infusion, Venom Dose, Pacifying Bolts, Shock Trooper, Greedy Pull, Pool of Life, Tesla Link, Fire Fright, Ballistic Bullseye, Ice Wave Impedance, and Hallowed Eruption.

 

All of these mods, IMO, should be part of the base-ability. None of these mods are truly worth giving up a mod slot in order to use them, and if they do, they do it to a skill that should already function that way (Ice Wave Impedance, Hallowed Eruption, Fire Fright). They mostly augment the 1 ability of frames, which can be the most under-used abilities. It offers an alternative use for the majority of them, giving the skills they augment scalability in some way.

 

The majority of other augment mods fundamentally change the way skills themselves work. Some adding additional scalability (Antimatter Absorb, Irradiating Disarm, etc) and others opening up new build options. I think these should be the mods that challenge you to use them differently.

Ah, I can see what you mean in some of the mods you've listed. For others, I haven't myself used them, so I couldn't say for sure. These augments offer the skill some sense of utility, cc, or scalability that the skill does not have a sense of otherwise.

 

On the part of new build options and the challenge of use, what would you be referring to?

[GideonG]

Ah, I can see what you mean in some of the mods you've listed. For others, I haven't myself used them, so I couldn't say for sure. These augments offer the skill some sense of utility, cc, or scalability that the skill does not have a sense of otherwise.

 

On the part of new build options and the challenge of use, what would you be referring to?

 

Things like Antimatter Absord and Iradiating Disarm. Both modify an existing ability, making it more versatile. Antimatter Absorb in particular ... You can easily make Nova invincible using this ability with +Range augments. It basically turns AMD into a mobile Nyx Absorb shield. It opens up a new possible way to play Nova.

 

I'm sure there are other augment mods that should be folded into their base abilities, but I haven't played with them all. Also sure theres more examples of play-altering mods that I've not mentioned or used.

Edited January 1, 2015 by GideonG

[AlphaHorseman]

Things like Antimatter Absord and Iradiating Disarm. Both modify an existing ability, making it more versatile. Antimatter Absorb in particular ... You can easily make Nova invincible using this ability with +Range augments. It basically turns AMD into a mobile Nyx Absorb shield. It opens up a new possible way to play Nova.

Ah, I see what you mean. You can hold AMD close enough for the absorb mod to work that well? Darn, haha, I like this augment. The skill has functionality on its own, scales through the damage you put into it, and now also has an added mechanic of functionality that, although is interesting to use and provides a new dynamic for the power, does not dictate the entirety of the powers scalability, cc, utility, or functionality.

 

The augment is useful, but it is not necessary for the powers function. I myself have not gotten this augment, but I like its functionality.

[TwiceDead]

I agree. Augments should not make the powers, the powers should already be able to cycle on their own without the augments serving as their training-wheels. 

Not all the augments are bad, some are quite interesting such as the healing puddle. On paper it looks like a good augment to an already good CC move, but majority of them are...

 

Meh. 

[GideonG]

Ah, I see what you mean. You can hold AMD close enough for the absorb mod to work that well? Darn, haha, I like this augment. The skill has functionality on its own, scales through the damage you put into it, and now also has an added mechanic of functionality that, although is interesting to use and provides a new dynamic for the power, does not dictate the entirety of the powers scalability, cc, utility, or functionality.

 

The augment is useful, but it is not necessary for the powers function. I myself have not gotten this augment, but I like its functionality.

 

It's a LOT of fun.

 

Shoot AMD towards a group, sprint ahead a short distance, and keep the bubble around yourself as your charge the group. It's a very large bubble with Stretch/Overextended and can easily absorb all the bullets you'd otherwise be catching.

 

Pair this with a punch-through continuous weapon (Quanta/Gammacor) and you have yourself a nasty combo. You can shoot the AMD with your weapon, dealing damage to the enemies with punch-through, charging AMD, and also blocking incoming fire. Once you've gotten close enough, let AMD fall ... BLAM! Lots of damage.

[AlphaHorseman]

I agree. Augments should not make the powers, the powers should already be able to cycle on their own without the augments serving as their training-wheels. 

Not all the augments are bad, some are quite interesting such as the healing puddle. On paper it looks like a good augment to an already good CC move, but majority of them are...

 

Meh. 

Agreed.

 

It's a LOT of fun.

 

Shoot AMD towards a group, sprint ahead a short distance, and keep the bubble around yourself as your charge the group. It's a very large bubble with Stretch/Overextended and can easily absorb all the bullets you'd otherwise be catching.

 

Pair this with a punch-through continuous weapon (Quanta/Gammacor) and you have yourself a nasty combo. You can shoot the AMD with your weapon, dealing damage to the enemies with punch-through, charging AMD, and also blocking incoming fire. Once you've gotten close enough, let AMD fall ... BLAM! Lots of damage.

Haha, oh I would bet. Not to mention I love the Syanoid Gammacor, having that attached to my nova will be loads of fun to use.

 

That's what I'm hoping the augments would do. Add interesting dynamics to powers, not make them viable. With the augment attached to AMD, it not only completes its function, but also does so with a new mechanic that adds some interesting moves to the already good power.

[AlphaHorseman]

I'm trying to run through other augments and seeing where they range on the scale of augments that need to be reconsidered/reworked/integrated into powers, and others that actually do serve their purpose of augmentation rather than necessity. Any other inputs?

[Hawk197]

While I agree some of the Augments are bandaids, not all of them are though. Jet Stream is an amazing Augment for a good ability. There was nothing inherently wrong with Turbulence, but it wasnt the best skill Zephyr has. Irradiating Disarm is an amazing Augment for an even more amazing ability, theres nothing wrong Disarm by itself, so Irradiating Disarm just makes it even MORE useful. Hall of Malevolence is an amazing Augment for yet another amazing ability.

 

But there are those weird Augments that people will rarely use, like Iron Shrapnel or Haven, which will can allow for interesting gameplay or unique strategies, arent as useful compared to other mods youd want to rather run, such as your final Power Strength mod or final Defensive mod, or even that Flow.

 

But then there are those Augments that even less people will use because they are just bad or the ability itself is bad, like the element adders (Venom Dose, Freeze Force, ect), Pool of Life or Hallowed Eruption. Now, Im not saying they WONT be used in some cases, but when it comes down to it, most people wont give Ice to an ally or would rather cause Hallowed Ground to explode over laying down multiples in a close area, and generally would rather have that mod slot for something else.

 

Also remember, Warframe is still fairly young, so new ideas and concepts will continuously be thought up and as such, we will continuously think "This shouldve been introduced with x or y", and while it is possible for DE to add that feature to the ability or weapon or mod or whatever, its often better to introduce the change in the form of an Augment or consumable. People dont like change (Need I mention Trinity?) so when change is introduced, it causes fear and/or confusion, it might even turn people away from a certain weapon, Warframe or item, because they know how it "should be " or "use to be" played and cannot/will not adapt to how it is now. Allowing these changes to be up to us to use is safer than DE implementing it completely.

 

Now, what I WOULD like to see, is of course some of these abilities buffed or Augments changed, since even WITH these new Augments, I rarely use Ballistic Battery or Banish(Unless Solo) or Rhino Charge or such, because the Warframes other three abilities still outshine it. Also, I would like to see an "Augment Slot" of sorts next to the Aura Slot. Most people will only use one Augment (With save for Excalibur, who may use all of theirs if they like Melee) and most people want all the mod slots they have for other stuff, since space now is VERY limited. Even if the "Augment Slot" took away mod capacity points like a normal mod, most of us have Warframes that are heavily Forma'd so we still have at least 5-10 capacity left, and we can still put on another Forma if we need to.

[AlphaHorseman]

While I agree some of the Augments are bandaids, not all of them are though. Jet Stream is an amazing Augment for a good ability. There was nothing inherently wrong with Turbulence, but it wasnt the best skill Zephyr has. Irradiating Disarm is an amazing Augment for an even more amazing ability, theres nothing wrong Disarm by itself, so Irradiating Disarm just makes it even MORE useful. Hall of Malevolence is an amazing Augment for yet another amazing ability.

 

But there are those weird Augments that people will rarely use, like Iron Shrapnel or Haven, which will can allow for interesting gameplay or unique strategies, arent as useful compared to other mods youd want to rather run, such as your final Power Strength mod or final Defensive mod, or even that Flow.

 

But then there are those Augments that even less people will use because they are just bad or the ability itself is bad, like the element adders (Venom Dose, Freeze Force, ect), Pool of Life or Hallowed Eruption. Now, Im not saying they WONT be used in some cases, but when it comes down to it, most people wont give Ice to an ally or would rather cause Hallowed Ground to explode over laying down multiples in a close area, and generally would rather have that mod slot for something else.

 

Also remember, Warframe is still fairly young, so new ideas and concepts will continuously be thought up and as such, we will continuously think "This shouldve been introduced with x or y", and while it is possible for DE to add that feature to the ability or weapon or mod or whatever, its often better to introduce the change in the form of an Augment or consumable. People dont like change (Need I mention Trinity?) so when change is introduced, it causes fear and/or confusion, it might even turn people away from a certain weapon, Warframe or item, because they know how it "should be " or "use to be" played and cannot/will not adapt to how it is now. Allowing these changes to be up to us to use is safer than DE implementing it completely.

 

Now, what I WOULD like to see, is of course some of these abilities buffed or Augments changed, since even WITH these new Augments, I rarely use Ballistic Battery or Banish(Unless Solo) or Rhino Charge or such, because the Warframes other three abilities still outshine it. Also, I would like to see an "Augment Slot" of sorts next to the Aura Slot. Most people will only use one Augment (With save for Excalibur, who may use all of theirs if they like Melee) and most people want all the mod slots they have for other stuff, since space now is VERY limited. Even if the "Augment Slot" took away mod capacity points like a normal mod, most of us have Warframes that are heavily Forma'd so we still have at least 5-10 capacity left, and we can still put on another Forma if we need to.

These augments you've listed as good, I would not doubt that they are good augments, my thread focuses on those that introduce traits that some among the community feel should already be built into these abilities, as they lack forms of CC, Utility, and Scalability that would give these powers the ability to continue to be useful.

 

Though, I believe that the bulk of your post is gearing towards the discussion of dedicated augment slot(s)? On that I would agree that we do need slots for augments. In actuality I would hope for 4 dedicated augment slots, each only applicable to one power, to allow for more diversity of powers when more augments come out for one power. And I too agree that these augment slots should cost players mod points to use, thus making these augments costly, but if a player truly wants to specialize their build, they would have to further work on that frame to do so. But that is for another discussion.

 

When it comes to these changes, to which many in the community had pleaded with DE to address for these powers, these changes were hoped to be added into our powers to help with their lacks and make what many saw as flawed power kits, solid foundations. That is what I believe powers should be, solid foundations. These augments, the ones I've listed, are ones that people have asked to be built into the powers (or some semblance of them), have been made into mods for us to slave to get, for something that shores up powers that are lackluster, and as you've admitted, still bad. Introducing them as augments was, in my opinion, a bad move because these changes were asked to be put into powers to help them along. 

 

Augments should not be used to fix up these powers, as the augment system has potential to expand upon builds, and should not be used to make up for the lacking traits powers should have innately. I would say introducing these changes were a bad move because it does not fix the issues of the powers, and worse, makes the fixes we requested for them optional and hard to obtain.

 

These changes were positive changes to frames, not nerfs, as was the case with Trinity time and time again. People do dislike change, I agree to that, but these were increases to frames' powers, not nerfs. I think we can agree that those who use these frames would have welcomed the fixes to these frames as built into them, not as mods to farm as we've slaved to do. These changes were what we had hoped, well, at least some of the augments, but we wanted them as built in traits, not things to try and slave to get when they make a WarFrames kit solid. Such solidity should be achieved already, and augments should be the complements and expansions of this.

[Tymerc]

Well said. +1

[AlphaHorseman]

Well said. +1

Why thank you. I've been looking through the post, and am trying to see how I can improve the format to make the ideas more clear and flow better. I hope that, as I continue to refine it with the communities help, DE may take notice of it.

[EelPlus]

I fully agree with the OP, but augments also run into the problem of being outright terrible.

 

Some augments are pretty useless (Greedy Pull and Savage Silence come to mind). They're "neat" or "certainly not a bad thing," but since they take up a mod slot, they are either too specific (Savage Silence, which suffers from being too specific to a gameplay type that is only marginally supported in the game at all) or simply useless (Greedy Pull). The tradeoff for adding something to a single skill needs to be worth changing something about your frame's baseline (losing the mod slot to the augment).

Edited January 5, 2015 by EelPlus

[_FrostPrime_]

I stand in between this. Mostly leaning towards disagreement due to how new this still is... here's why: For all we know Augments could be a closet test for potential "skill trees" in future gameplay. The idea has already been discussed before... augments are possibly the staffs way of testing it out without having to change much of the actual game (which is actually smarter than putting in a test "skill tree" just for the sake of seeing how it'd work). By which I mean.... augments are optional... it's your choice to even acknowledge they exist or not.

 

So Trinity could possibly become the legendary "Shadow Priest" of warframe, she kills the enemies, WITH HEALS! Ash might be something that isn't "spam 4 2 win." Rhino, Valkyr, and Hydroid could become the tanks they're supposed to be and not selfish try-hards.

Edited January 5, 2015 by littlewomba

[AlphaHorseman]

I stand in between this. Mostly leaning towards disagreement due to how new this still is... here's why: For all we know Augments could be a closet test for potential "skill trees" in future gameplay. The idea has already been discussed before... augments are possibly the staffs way of testing it out without having to change much of the actual game (which is actually smarter than putting in a test "skill tree" just for the sake of seeing how it'd work). By which I mean.... augments are optional... it's your choice to even acknowledge they exist or not.

 

So Trinity could possibly become the legendary "Shadow Priest" of warframe, she kills the enemies, WITH HEALS! Ash might be something that isn't "spam 4 2 win." Rhino, Valkyr, and Hydroid could become the tanks they're supposed to be and not selfish try-hards.

Astute assumption. Though I myself am judging them how they are now and how DE has implemented them, because rarely do they introduce a new system like this and then redact it. Most recent system change I can think of is the Abilities becoming innate. The Augments as they are now, however, feel as though its two steps back because not only have they not fixed powers that are in dire need of CC/Utility to be scale able, they also introduce said traits in mods that mirror pretty much what we had before, powers that shouldn't take up a slot.

 

Granted, some augments are good, as they add dynamics and functionality to powers that, although can scale, do not create the cc/utility that these powers need outright. I.e. Radial Disarm, Shield Transference.

 

On the topic of skill trees, we had a massive debate about that when the GreatZamboni made his thread, but, alas, that train of thought was shot down by DESteve severely during one of the DevStreams. Thus, I am scrutinizing these based on the fact that some represent traits that make these powers scale able when they shouldn't outright create these for the abilities, but add them on top of an already solid power.

[XToxinator]

+1

[AlphaHorseman]

+1

Thanks for the support. I hope DE finds these rules agreeable, or that others within the community can contribute to help and flesh this frame out. (haha, Frame, pun not intended, but welcomed)

[AlphaHorseman]

With the new patch coming tomorrow (bye bye t4 keys :() there may be more augments coming out. Let's hope they aren't patch augments.

[BansheePrime]

 

 

Some augments are pretty useless (Greedy Pull and Savage Silence come to mind).

Savage Silence gets crazy damage going if you're with an ash or hydroid. 

[AlphaHorseman]

Savage Silence gets crazy damage going if you're with an ash or hydroid. 

Ah, care to elaborate?

[geninrising]

Savage silence creates a damage amplification for finisher damage and both these frames have kits that work synergistically due to the fact that they can both create opportunities for finishers quite easily. 

 

Ash with his teleport allows you to instantly perform a finisher on enemies he TPs to and Hydroid has multiple skills that provide knock down allowing easy finishers.

Edited January 8, 2015 by geninrising

[zavienh5]

Completely 100% agreed, and also I want a Syndicate Reward balance too