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

[AlphaHorseman]

With the most recent changes to Excalibur, I'd say he's in line for some buffs not necessitated by augments, especially with the odd state that his ultimate ability is in at the moment.

 

Any ideas on how to rework Radial Javelin?

Edited March 26, 2015 by AlphaHorseman

[Azamagon]

With the most recent changes to Excalibur, I'd say he's in line for some buffs not necessitated by augments, especially with the odd state that his ultimate ability is in at the moment.

 

Any ideas on how to rework Radial Javelin?

Well, my thorough Excalibur thread has gotten nice reception, so please have a look there :)

 

If you don't wanna look, well, here's a TL;DR:

Besides some other (more minor) changes to his other abiltiies, Radial Javelin is reworked into Blade Barrier: When used, it summons blades spinning around you, dealing Slash damage to nearby enemies. These blades could potentially also give you some minor passive protection, and if you block with your melee weapon the blades will raise up and stop attacking, instead aiding you with blocking in a 360 degree fashion and with some damage reflection.

Then, when the duration expires (or if you end it early by activating it again midduration) the blades are launched a la Radial Javelin 1.0 (as bladed projectiles shot outwards), which deal damage (boosted by the melee combo multiplier) and ragdolls enemies away.

 

There are more fine details to it, but the point of the bigger rework of his ulti was that it at least synergizes WAY better with the rest of his kit. So yeah, that's my idea :)

[AlphaHorseman]

Well, my thorough Excalibur thread has gotten nice reception, so please have a look there :)

 

If you don't wanna look, well, here's a TL;DR:

Besides some other (more minor) changes to his other abiltiies, Radial Javelin is reworked into Blade Barrier: When used, it summons blades spinning around you, dealing Slash damage to nearby enemies. These blades could potentially also give you some minor passive protection, and if you block with your melee weapon the blades will raise up and stop attacking, instead aiding you with blocking in a 360 degree fashion and with some damage reflection.

Then, when the duration expires (or if you end it early by activating it again midduration) the blades are launched a la Radial Javelin 1.0 (as bladed projectiles shot outwards), which deal damage (boosted by the melee combo multiplier) and ragdolls enemies away.

 

There are more fine details to it, but the point of the bigger rework of his ulti was that it at least synergizes WAY better with the rest of his kit. So yeah, that's my idea :)

I like it!

 

It changes the ability to not just be an AoE ability, but something that synergizes with the rest of his kit and his theme as well. May I copy and paste it into this thread for others to see here as well?

Edited March 28, 2015 by AlphaHorseman

[Azamagon]

I like it!

 

It changes the ability to not just be an AoE ability, but something that synergizes with the rest of his kit and his theme as well. May I copy and paste it into this thread for others to see here as well?

Go ahead :)

[AlphaHorseman]

Go ahead :)

THANK YOU! Doing it now!

[AlphaHorseman]

It's been done, Azamagon! Thank you for letting me do so!

[AlphaHorseman]

Augments are incoming for three Frames, any have comments on their viability or nature?

[Autongnosis]

Well, to be honest the last trio was pretty disappointing except for the valkyr augment... Let's see what's up this time.

 

Guess we'll know in a couple of minutes.

Edited April 8, 2015 by Autongnosis

[AlphaHorseman]

Well, to be honest the last trio was pretty disappointing except for the valkyr augment... Let's see what's up this time.

 

Guess we'll know in a couple of minutes.

How has the other two performed?

 

Or a better question would be, why do you feel these two other augments are not up to par?

Edited April 8, 2015 by AlphaHorseman

[Autongnosis]

The speed boost on wormhole is basically overkill, and not worth the mod slot. Particularly considering just how much can you jump with one wormhole.

 

Capacitance would be decent by itself if not for the fact that there are a hell of a lot of things that completely bypass shields. Last night i was doing a DSD with a PUG and the two Volt Primes with Capacitance were alive only cause of quick thinking, exactly like my Nyx... Imho barely in competition with Redirection.

Moreover the slow execution of Overload definitely kills it. And also the pretty low %.

 

Of the new ones Trin's looks interesting, and so does Ember's, even if it's a patch up to give scale ability to a damage button. Still.

 

I am pretty confused at Mirage's. I mean, her 2 already does turn pickups into mines... so what exactly does the augment do? o.O

[Darkwings83]

The only thing that I disagree with (looking at the OP) is that some augment really don't do stuff that should ever be part of the main ability.

 

A good example (meaning that it's horrible) is Hallowed Eruption.

That augment is the complete opposite of what you want to do in every single way.

 

On paper it could work, but at low level you don't need nukes and at high level ability damage is pityful anyway.

At the expense of covering more area granting protection to your team you gain... basically nothing.

You could do more damage than Reckoning, sure, but you're not using Reckoning for damage at high levels anyway and the range sucks.

If you want more AOE, bring explosive weapons, period.

 

If the augment gave health regeneration and boosted armor instead then maybe it could be worth it, but you still need very good values to make it worth the sacrifice of another mod.

 

That was just an example but most augments are like that.

 

Augments should improve an aspect of the base ability, finely tuned by taking into account the current meta.

Not something created in a vacuum that's never worth the slot in practice.

[AlphaHorseman]

The only thing that I disagree with (looking at the OP) is that some augment really don't do stuff that should ever be part of the main ability.

 

A good example (meaning that it's horrible) is Hallowed Eruption.

That augment is the complete opposite of what you want to do in every single way.

 

On paper it could work, but at low level you don't need nukes and at high level ability damage is pityful anyway.

At the expense of covering more area granting protection to your team you gain... basically nothing.

You could do more damage than Reckoning, sure, but you're not using Reckoning for damage at high levels anyway and the range sucks.

If you want more AOE, bring explosive weapons, period.

 

If the augment gave health regeneration and boosted armor instead then maybe it could be worth it, but you still need very good values to make it worth the sacrifice of another mod.

 

That was just an example but most augments are like that.

 

Augments should improve an aspect of the base ability, finely tuned by taking into account the current meta.

Not something created in a vacuum that's never worth the slot in practice.

Haha, well those are really good points.

 

I never said that all augments should do so, I said that band aids shouldn't be there. And an augment should add characteristics, or be interesting, or help tailor to another play style, but they should not be the primary item that makes a power scale able.

[AlphaHorseman]

With the addition of the new augments, any who have tested them have comments to make?

Edited April 17, 2015 by AlphaHorseman

[Autongnosis]

Perpetual Vortex is really strong. Saw one in action, damn good augment.

 

Radiant Finish is decent - finishers are nice and the damage multiplier (affected by power strenght) makes it useful even late into endless T4s. The problem is that finisher animations are very slow unless you're using a one-handed sword (ie dakra prime). Still useful imho.

 

Funnel Clouds. Well. I have to understand first if it's only the 8 new smaller tornadoes that do not pick up enemies or all the tornadoes. Anyway:

- i never liked the fact that tornadoes picked up mobs, it usually getsin the way of the actual killing, and having more tornadoes is surely a good thing

- it's true though that if the sucking was removed from the 4 big tornadoes as well, this would take away the (although little) CC that ability had, making it a worthless damage button (albeit a good loocking damage button)

 

So, one very good, one good, one i don't know. I still have to get my Zephir using friend to let me see how it works, but he's been offline for days now.

[BloodForTheBloodGods]

I'd like to discuss, not outright disagree, with the fact that damage only abilities be given CC, Utility, etc. How would this apply to Mesa, for example?

 

I'd like to point out, this is majorly a team oriented game, with a solo-able acceptance. It's generally the best strategy to bring 1 of every role to a mission. 1 Support/buff/debuff, 1 Defense/tank, 1 Damage, 1 CC, etc. Some mission types don't support this, but are also not endless scaling (Cap, Ext, etc).  The fact that Damage frames don't necessarily scale by themselves, is well, as should probably be expected. 

 

Perhaps Mesa should be able to target Bombard rounds? Would be good, perhaps but a little too much.

[nekrojiji]

Aparently a lot of people want percentage damages ........ 

 

What is the point of wanting to deal extreme amounts of damage when, if not part of the dream squad, the level 100 enemies kill us almost instantly?!

 

 

Max Hit points .... that is the problem ...... take out the invulnerability skills and put in HP.

 

If HP's are larger (10x would be good) armor would finaly be relevant .... so the difference between 15 armor and 600 armor would be noticeable.

 

[Hypernaut1]

I'd like to discuss, not outright disagree, with the fact that damage only abilities be given CC, Utility, etc. How would this apply to Mesa, for example?

 

I'd like to point out, this is majorly a team oriented game, with a solo-able acceptance. It's generally the best strategy to bring 1 of every role to a mission. 1 Support/buff/debuff, 1 Defense/tank, 1 Damage, 1 CC, etc. Some mission types don't support this, but are also not endless scaling (Cap, Ext, etc).  The fact that Damage frames don't necessarily scale by themselves, is well, as should probably be expected. 

 

Perhaps Mesa should be able to target Bombard rounds? Would be good, perhaps but a little too much.

you make a good point. People want damage frames to CC, not taking into account that it should be different roles.

[AlphaHorseman]

Perpetual Vortex is really strong. Saw one in action, damn good augment.

 

Radiant Finish is decent - finishers are nice and the damage multiplier (affected by power strenght) makes it useful even late into endless T4s. The problem is that finisher animations are very slow unless you're using a one-handed sword (ie dakra prime). Still useful imho.

 

Funnel Clouds. Well. I have to understand first if it's only the 8 new smaller tornadoes that do not pick up enemies or all the tornadoes. Anyway:

- i never liked the fact that tornadoes picked up mobs, it usually getsin the way of the actual killing, and having more tornadoes is surely a good thing

- it's true though that if the sucking was removed from the 4 big tornadoes as well, this would take away the (although little) CC that ability had, making it a worthless damage button (albeit a good loocking damage button)

 

So, one very good, one good, one i don't know. I still have to get my Zephir using friend to let me see how it works, but he's been offline for days now.

Thanks for the input! The Radiant Finish mod had some interesting reviews, while I'm happy Vortex's bugs were ironed out.

 

I'd like to discuss, not outright disagree, with the fact that damage only abilities be given CC, Utility, etc. How would this apply to Mesa, for example?

 

I'd like to point out, this is majorly a team oriented game, with a solo-able acceptance. It's generally the best strategy to bring 1 of every role to a mission. 1 Support/buff/debuff, 1 Defense/tank, 1 Damage, 1 CC, etc. Some mission types don't support this, but are also not endless scaling (Cap, Ext, etc).  The fact that Damage frames don't necessarily scale by themselves, is well, as should probably be expected. 

 

Perhaps Mesa should be able to target Bombard rounds? Would be good, perhaps but a little too much.

We could have the damage abilities have scale ability through percentage damage points.

 

Aparently a lot of people want percentage damages ........ 

 

What is the point of wanting to deal extreme amounts of damage when, if not part of the dream squad, the level 100 enemies kill us almost instantly?!

 

 

Max Hit points .... that is the problem ...... take out the invulnerability skills and put in HP.

 

If HP's are larger (10x would be good) armor would finaly be relevant .... so the difference between 15 armor and 600 armor would be noticeable.

Could you clarify your point, I may be missing it.

[Autongnosis]

you make a good point. People want damage frames to CC, not taking into account that it should be different roles.

Actually people (talking about myself here) want damage frames not to be utterly worthless late in the game and utterly devastating early on. I mean, it's a Rhino Iron Skin problem. At lower levels nuke frames can empty whole tileset by nuking it once or twice, while at higher levels those same frames can barely scratch enemies. It's just not right imho. As of now as far as i know the only damage frame that can scale well is Ash since his damage ignores armour and shield for the most part (Shuriken deal 245% of their damage in unreduced bleed proc and Bladestorm does Finisher damage AND bleed proc so it ignores armour and shields altogether). Other damage frames though do not scale at all, and as such are barely used late into the game, which is a shame for the sake of variety.

I would be fine with % damage. It would be nice. But i think it wouldn't really solve the issue. It would just make power spammer mor toxic since you would be able to cast an ultimate repeatedly and clear a room at any level - imho not a good design.

Maybe giving some extra efect to damage frames would work. Like,a fraction of ultimate's damage might become Finisher or get amour ignoring properties in some way. Think of 50% unreduceable damage and 50% normal damage, so tat only half the damage would fall off and the other half would still be effective no matter what.

I think this problem is pretty hard to solve. I mean,if you gave CC effects enough to scale to damage frames you'd basically obsolete every CC frame, because who would want pure CC when you can have CC and damage?

Overload is already a borderline ability since it stunlocks targets for as long as 7 seconds on top of dealing damage to them, and its potential damage output is deceptively high since the more enemies there are the more Overload's arc effect will exponentially raise the damage dealt. It looks low only if you don't consider the arc effect and the fact that it scales up extremely steeply if the enemies are close to one another (think of the main rush in Void defense, a Volt casting Overload there will shred enemies to pieces even late into higher waves).

[DSpite]

So let me get this right, you want every Frame to be able to do what Mag does. Yes, that makes perfect sense.

 

If enemies gain 1 HP per level and an ability delivers 1 hp per enemy unit level, that means when they have 1 billion health you deliver 1 billion damage. Mag can insta-kill level <insert number here> already when they have shields, because shields scale up with enemy levels so she delivers that damage right back.

 

And no one has a problem with this?

 

We should NOT Be fighting level 500+ enemies EVER. No game on this planet that has "levels" as a benchmark of unit difficulty makes players fight enemies with levels TEN TIMES or more of the players.

 

We need diminishing returns on Mods, we need enemy variants and not "the same unit" with x10 the stats. What we don't need is another Dungeon Defender with guns that have 500 Upgrade Slots, and dropping abilities powered by 1000 points worth of upgrades.

 

Endless missions are NOT what anything should revolve around. Trying to power-creep Frames just makes DE create more weird Eximus type units, and everyone will be back here complaining exactly the same as they are now.

 

You need more killing power? For what? Farm an extra 5 minutes?

 

Is that ALL this game has become for people? Asking DE to keep adding more Frame creep just to farm MORE gear, and loop that process indefinitely? What is the point of an FPS Diablo exactly? So much for any Lore whatsoever if we are capable of just upgrading our tech like this.

[Autongnosis]

Actually, nope.

What i want, and i think everybody in this topic more or less agrees, is for damage frames not to be utterly useless whem enemies hit rank 50/60. And at the same time not having a nuker being able to obliterate everything at low-mid levels.

It's &#036;&amp;*&amp;*#(%&amp; that some frames can utterly annihilate entire tilesets with one key pressing at level 30- and then be completely useless at level 50. Let's balance things out.

[Jax_Cavalera]

So let me get this right, you want every Frame to be able to do what Mag does. Yes, that makes perfect sense.

 

If enemies gain 1 HP per level and an ability delivers 1 hp per enemy unit level, that means when they have 1 billion health you deliver 1 billion damage. Mag can insta-kill level <insert number here> already when they have shields, because shields scale up with enemy levels so she delivers that damage right back.

 

And no one has a problem with this?

 

We should NOT Be fighting level 500+ enemies EVER. No game on this planet that has "levels" as a benchmark of unit difficulty makes players fight enemies with levels TEN TIMES or more of the players.

 

We need diminishing returns on Mods, we need enemy variants and not "the same unit" with x10 the stats. What we don't need is another Dungeon Defender with guns that have 500 Upgrade Slots, and dropping abilities powered by 1000 points worth of upgrades.

 

Endless missions are NOT what anything should revolve around. Trying to power-creep Frames just makes DE create more weird Eximus type units, and everyone will be back here complaining exactly the same as they are now.

 

You need more killing power? For what? Farm an extra 5 minutes?

 

Is that ALL this game has become for people? Asking DE to keep adding more Frame creep just to farm MORE gear, and loop that process indefinitely? What is the point of an FPS Diablo exactly? So much for any Lore whatsoever if we are capable of just upgrading our tech like this.

I don't think you quite get what warframe is...  The entire game is built around a Kill to Win mechanic.. how have you not got this yet in all your time of playing.. seriously?  The more you kill the faster you "win"

 

No one is saying that's a good thing but it is what the dev team are going for and have created so in the face of reality designing mods to better suit that goal seems like a pretty good idea to me.

 

 

In other news.. it seems that Vauban has another useless augment mod to add to his collection for Vortex now.  Seems players weren't able to consider that if you throw 2 vortex in the same area.. you get 2 vortex and if you do it back to back the duration extends out anyway...

 

Only running the augment means that now you would't be able to block off a wide bottleneck or passage since any vortex in range of the existing one would be "absorbed".   Soooo that'll be a really must have handy augment mod to get /sarcasm

 

I'm quickly becoming done with this game it's just small things like an augment like that getting in or the augment for zephyr that didn't even come close to winning by council vote getting in still that spoil the meal..  We have devs talking about wanting to reduce the grind whilst they simultaneously find new ways to increase the grind walls and introduce new frames into the game that demand you farm not just the parts for that frame but a specific part drop for 4 other frames and build them all (basically you are building 2 warframes just to get 1) so how is that reducing the grind wall??  TL:DR  just over the hypocrisy.

 

 

The people behind this topic get what it means to have a game where frames scale indefinitely and that's ok because the rewards in Warframe don't get better the longer you play.. so there isn't a downside to frames who would scale with enemies.. it just means that there would be more balance and that you wouldn't get another E-Gate popping up every other day because players find a new way to combine abilities to commit genocide on low level mobs who are no match for their AoE Nukes...

 

not that there is technically anything wrong with that either when you consider that the best way to gain XP, Resources, Credits, Mastery and Mods (pretty much all the things critical to advancing in the game) come from killing and finding ways to kill more... faster.... it's a clear goal or should be for anyone interested in advancing in the game.  But if the game had better balance that scaled properly.. perhaps that would open the gates for DE to adjust the primary focus of the game from K2W  to idk Skill 2 Win (S2W)  Performance based reward structures.

Edited April 21, 2015 by Jax_Cavalera

[DSpite]

I don't think you quite get what warframe is...  The entire game is built around a Kill to Win mechanic.. how have you not got this yet in all your time of playing.. seriously?  The more you kill the faster you "win"

 

 

Pretty sure there is no such thing as "kill 2 win mechanics". Hold on, let me Google it. Nope. You just made that up because you thought it sounded cool in your head.

 

I'm playing a coop FPS game. When I start a mission, it states what the mission is and what I have to do.

 

Just because you have a fixation with loot drops, it does not mean Warframe needs to be nothing but a skinner box with one button and a pigeon.

 

These sound familiar? They should, you wrote them.

 

"Add in a Kill Meter"

"When you hit the target on the Kill Meter you get that "Waves' Reward"

"loving running raids, but it is not good enough that each time I go through all that effort I no longer get a raid reward.  This needs to be fixed up."

"There was nothing wrong with Draco or any other speed farm that pops up ... "

"Draco farming with Excalibur not once required an external hack, macro input or anything else to farm it up.. it worked using a clever and resourceful combination of warframe abilities to achieve a goal commensurate with the ones presented by the game they are used in.  Kill 2 Win."

 

You're not "winning" anything. It's a game. You don't get cash or prizes, and your parents and friends are not going to give a hoot that you are king of the virtual ninja space fairies.

 

What you have is an addiction to grinding loot - non stop apparently - unlike people that generally want to see a game evolve, and get more interesting then simply pressing a trigger all day long.

 

Not you it seems.

[DSpite]

Actually, nope.

What i want, and i think everybody in this topic more or less agrees, is for damage frames not to be utterly useless whem enemies hit rank 50/60. And at the same time not having a nuker being able to obliterate everything at low-mid levels.

It's $&*&*#(%& that some frames can utterly annihilate entire tilesets with one key pressing at level 30- and then be completely useless at level 50. Let's balance things out.

 

* If you just bump up abilities you have another point in space where they top out at.

* If they scale forever then it means you can run a mission for 24 hours straight and still kill stuff. That's basically called "farming".

 

What you end up with is that fighting the level 1000 enemies is identical to fighting the level 100 enemies. No change in tactics needed because your abilities "scale".

 

Yea, that sounds fun.

Edited April 21, 2015 by DSpite

[Autongnosis]

* If you just bump up abilities you have another point in space where they top out at.

* If they scale forever then it means you can run a mission for 24 hours straight and still kill stuff. That's basically called "farming".

What you end up with is that fighting the level 1000 enemies is identical to fighting the level 100 enemies. No change in tactics needed because your abilities "scale".

Yea, that sounds fun.

Yeeeeah.... No. Not what i said. Never said that the falloff should be zero. It shouldn't be so &#036;&amp;*&amp;*#(%&amp;ly steep though.