Trinity Overhaul (If I Were God-Emperor For A Day)

[Kolos1001]

i agree that DE is trying to make all skills on a frame useful and get rid of 1 trick ponies which i personally agree with (trin is far from a 1trick pony btw)  but at the same time realize it ruins other player's fun that want to specialize a frame for one ability. hopefully they can do it and please both camps like the have with past reworks.

 

my main point here is that if u don't enjoy having ev trin on the team nobody is forcing you to. however asking for a drastic rework that would break this ability will ruin many players idea of fun please keep that in mind and try to be fair.

Personal preference is irrelevant. I'm merely talking about game balance. I personally liked the old blessing where I could keep my entire team immortal forever.

 

Balancing a skill takes priority. 

[atom]

ok but balance is not absolute either in a game such as this and still falls under personal preference imho. your idea of balance may differ from mine and tbh for a PVE game fun is way more important than balance let's not forget that. sometimes the lack of balance is exactly what makes it fun. ill stop now because i don't have anything more to add on the subject at this time

Edited October 14, 2015 by ..atom..

[Kolos1001]

ok but balance is not absolute either in a game such as this and still falls under personal preference imho. your idea of balance may differ from mine and tbh for a PVE game fun is way more important than balance let's not forget that. sometimes the lack of balance is exactly what makes it fun. ill stop now because i don't have anything more to add on the subject at this time

That's all up to DE honestly

[Attel_Malagate]

Or you know...actually use your weapons for once? Unheard of right? 

 

While it's true that channeling powers do not receive energy. They can get about 5+ minutes from one EV the second their channel ends. There is no waiting like their would be from E.siphon or limbo. The only real drawback is you lose out on solo play. Seeing how this is a co-op game I don't find that to be a huge deal personally. 

 

In a team she is gamebreaking. 

Define "gamebreaking" because all the feature you consider "gamebreaking" are a legit part of the game, that's what you may have missed, invincibility, CC, mass damage, ALL PART OF THE GAME, removing them would literaly destroy all the fun poeple are having.

 

 

I really wish people would stop using consumables as an excuse for a skill being broken. Consumables have a cost...the cost being actual materials. Make EV cost 10k per use and I'll say it's balanced. 

Poeple don't have to give excuse to play and enjoy the potential of an ability

Edited October 14, 2015 by nononimous

[4G3NT_0R4NG3]

Define "gamebreaking" because all the feature you consider "gamebreaking" are a legit part of the game, that's what you may have missed, invincibility, CC, mass damage, ALL PART OF THE GAME

 

If every single thing that's A PART OF THE GAME is perfectly fine, then why do these feedback forums even exist?

 

removing them would literaly destroy all the fun poeple are having.

 

Is it fun to remove all possibility of failure from the vast majority a combat game's content?

 

I don't know, is it fun to win a rigged fighting tournament? Is it fun to read a murder mystery novel when you already know who the killer is?

 

I think it's a bit hypocritical to say that the first one is fun while the second two aren't.

Edited October 17, 2015 by 4G3NT_0R4NG3

[DSMatticus]

Let's talk about "optimum" ODD runs, because between the Ember vaulting and the Trinity release lots of people have been running ODD like crazy.

 

You grab an EV trin, an overextend saryn, a speed nova, and then the fourth frame is a free pick. The overextend saryn and the speed nova stand next to the pod the entire game (wiggling their feet occasionally to avoid the energy lockout) and press 4 a lot. The EV trin moves around a bit and presses 2 at enemies whenever the opportunity presents itself. This is essentially the most time-efficient way to run ODD and it would take actual effort to screw it up. This strategy is possible because Saryn has a radial nuke and because Trinity can endlessly provide energy to Saryn. Those are the two necessary elements of the strategy and those are the only two necessary elements of the strategy. The speed nova speeds things up a bit and having Nekros for your fourth increases drops (if you care). You can even substitute Saryn with Frost or Excalibur or Rhino or a couple other frames if you build them right, because they all have radial nukes of sufficient damage and range (though the damage obviously isn't AS crazy without Saryn; Saryn is a one-trick-pony and she is currently the best at that one trick).

 

Everyone I have ever met hates running ODD this way. No one enjoys it. The trinity's not having fun, the saryn's not having fun, the nova's not having fun, the fourth guy isn't having fun. And yet the optimum strategy for almost all end game content looks incredibly similar. The only game modes that are flexible with their optimum strategies are interception and survival, and that is because they are time-based; one minute of survival will always take exactly one minute, and nothing you can do will speed it up or slow it down, which means any frame that can survive the minute is exactly as optimal as any other frame that can survive the minute. But even then when people want to do ridiculously long survival runs they sewer camp with an EV trin, a CC-frame, a kill-frame, and probably a nekros because... that will let you go longer more reliably than any other strategy.

 

Saving the day by dropping a miasma or two when things are going to hell is fun. Spending the entire round pressing 4 for miasma is not fun. The existence of energy vampire encourages the latter, not the former, and that's bad.

 

If I were god-emperor for a day, I would replace energy vampire with another ability, give every frame passive energy regen, and buff energy siphon. People should be using their abilities more than they do without EV trin, especially once they get into high level content. But people should never be using their abilities as often as they do with EV trin, because that reduces the game to a boring radial spamfest. Unfortunately, DE has already started down the path that locks the game into needing EV trin. The raid and other high-level content has such insane health/armor/damage scaling that the One True Way is CC spam, and the only real way to fuel that CC spam is an EV trin. I actually want to see a group run the raid without a trinity or energy restores. I'm sure it could be done, but it seems like it would be difficult in an incredibly satisfying way.

Edited October 17, 2015 by DSMatticus

[Vitalis_Inamorta]

To be honest I don't care that reflected damage stops being useful at crazy high enemy levels. There's lots of things that don't work at crazy high enemy levels. You can't design and balance for infinity. What I care about is Trinity players walking around with Stugs or Castanas, looking at their feet the whole mission, killing everything on the map without engaging in any kind of combat. If you want to kill them with your weapons, then kill them with your weapons. Link is not "clearly designed" to be an auto-aiming terrain-penetrating win button.

 

Your #2 (reflected damage scales with power strength) and #3 (let abating link mitigate more kinds of defense than just armor) ideas are both very interesting though.

 

 

 

Except it wouldn't work like that anymore.  Because Blessing would consider shield damage as valid for damage reduction, you don't have to wait until allies are on their last sliver of life for the ability to be worth casting. Cast it as soon as anybody takes any damage, now they have full health and shields again but with a small damage reduction.  If they're still getting beat to death, their health and shields will go down again, more slowly, which means you can safely let them get a little lower on health/shields before hitting Blessing again, restoring them, giving them an even bigger damage reduction...   Right now Blessing is all about maximizing the performance of your single cast because it only becomes worth casting if your allies (or self) are near death. Revised Blessing rewards a more iterative, less risky style of casting.

 

And 99% damage reduction is absolutely stupid.  Trinity used to give the team literally outright invulnerability, and it was changed to not do that anymore. Supposedly. Then people discovered the self-explode meta.  The thing is, If you balance to make content with 99% damage reduction challenging then you make content that is completely impossible WITHOUT 99% reduction, which necessitates a specific frame with a specific loadout and a specific strategy, which... No.  Just no.  Trinity needs to be less meta, less godmode. Then we can look at balance with a new and more universal lens. If content cannot be completed without a 99% damage reduction from Trinity blowing herself up all the time, then that content is too difficult and should be adjusted.

 

Also I do not believe the oveshield charging on Blessing is gimmicky. It provides a reason to use Blessing before combat, or between engagements, which seems a perfectly reasonable thing for a dedicated support character.

 

#1:  Crowd control works at all levels.  Why do you think only CC and utility frames are played to all levels?  It's because they still work.

 

#2:  You very well can design and balance for infinity, and since you can, you should, especially seeing as the game's current lack of it is one of the major sore points with the player base.

 

#3:  It's not like EV doesn't already do percentile based finisher damage (which ignores armor), so what's the problem?  If you build power strength to make link strong, you've got to ditch a lot of efficiency, some duration, and a lot of range too.  You've also got to try to move around to not only keep the maximum number of links connected, but to keep yourself taking the maximum damage from enemies as well, so you can't complain that it's a win button, especially since all of the good CC abilities are... auto-aiming terrain penetrating win buttons.  Oh wait...

 

Blessing:

 

#1:  Okay, shields is a step in the right direction, but it's still scaling so that it's only the most effective when you have 2hp, so, yes, you DO have to wait until they are on the last sliver of HP... or carefully tune your self-damage weapons, to get maximum effect.  You took a step halfway to dividing by zero.  As far as iterative casting, you can already do that with Blessing, but, as you said, it's a bit more risky with shield-tanky type frames as compared to, say, Chroma or Valkyr.  Still has the same problems, and it's still got the same use style, albeit can be used to minimal effect more often.

 

#2:  It's almost as if you didn't notice that Mesa has a skill for 95% gun damage reduction and projectile reflection, and Mirage has a skill for 95% damage reduction flat while in dark areas.  Those 95% caps are totally arbitrary, and all but guaranteed to be power-creeped by new frames coming out, if not by reworks of already existing frames and abilities.  Let's just go ahead and cut that off at the pass, shall we?  Valkyr has complete immunity while having the downside of going melee, and Zephyr can become all but immune to gunfire, while possibly buffing her own move-speed and weaponry.  Loki becomes all but immune to damage by virtue of not being attacked, and Limbo can make his entire team full-on immune to damage while any frames that can deal good damage with abilities, or have abilities that modify their weaponry in some way can attack out of that full invulnerability.  Chroma can get his armor well in excess of 10k (with arcane usage ofc), thus taking about 93-94% damage reduction from all sources while buffing his own damage dealt ~5x from all sources.

 

....But they all have downsides.  Loki can't be close to allies because of splash damage and lines of incoming fire.  Limbo has to keep track of anyone he wants to keep invulnerable.  Valkyr becomes melee-only.  Zephyr has to recast occasionally, and is vulnerable while doing so.  Mesa has to recast and is vulnerable to melee and AoE explosions.  Mirage has to find a shady spot and chill there.  Chroma has to keep himself from getting hit so his shields can recharge every time he wants to recast vex armor.  Trinity has to recast AFTER bringing herself down to 2hp via a relatively small selection of self-damaging weapons, any of which has to be very carefully tuned to the correct amount of damage, which also leaves her open to being chain-staggered or outright gibbed if anything whatsoever damages her during the sequence (heck, she often staggers herself which, if she is using a throwing weapons, bugs it and makes it hit AGAIN for full self-damage to her energy pool.  This happens even with a perfectly tuned weapon).

 

Let's see, any of the other skills have one downside, one caveat.  Chroma's has two, but it also massively buffs his damage output.  Trinity's has:

     #1:  A Mod check.  Don't have QT?  Nope, can't do it at all.

     #2:  A weapon check.  Don't have a self-damager?  Nope, can't do it at all.

     #3:  Correctly fused mods to put on that weapon to tune it just right.

     #4:  A weapons slot that is useless for killing enemies, because you nerfed the crap out of that weapon by tuning it for self damage.

     #5:  A high risk of dying if you mess it up even slightly, and that's after...

     #6:  ....the chance of hitting yourself with self-damage twice by staggering yourself on a random %chance, which will take between 1/3 to 1/2 of your energy pool if you flub.

     #7:  To forsee people using Steel Charge if she uses a throwing melee for self-damage, and correctly tune her weapon to negate the extra damage that could otherwise end her instantly on stagger.  Alternatively, she has to convince that person to ditch the mod that gives them the most mod-energy while simultaneously probably buffing their melee-centric build........

 

In exchange for a slightly higher possible reduction that doesn't even last nearly as long (Blessing's base duration is 10 seconds, compared to most of these other skills that have a base duration of 20-35 seconds) for the whole team.

 

If that isn't a more than fair trade, I don't know what is.  The content hasn't been adjusted yet, so you can't reasonably expect people to give up their favourite tools for dealing with it.

 

The shield overcharging thing makes people completely invulnerable to lower level content, while doing the same thing Vampire Leech already does.  I get that you want to incentivize shield tanking, but please, stick to one ability per frame instead of adding gimmicks to many of them.

[Vitalis_Inamorta]

Correct. They changed Blessing because it effectively removed the idea of running out of life. EV removes the idea of running out of energy. You're removing aspects of the game in which it was balanced around(How powerful an ability is compared to its cost). Removing the cost of those directly breaks that.  

 

It's almost like the game was balanced around enemies moving around where they want to.

 

Oh right.  Crowd Control.

 

The game is balanced around two things here, both the ability to run out of energy (no trinity, no siphons, no restores, no efficiency, too much spamming, ran too far from the trinity, the trinity gives no shizzles, etc.) and the ability to not run out of energy (careful use of powers, siphons, restores, orbs, efficiency, followed the trinity around [yes I've seriously had players start to do this on longer non-camp survivals], the trinity followed you around [incentive to be a good carry/DD, amirite?].

 

In short, your entire premise is incorrect and fallacious.  Please, go back to your ridiculous spammed nerf trinity threads (which I noted began while you were trying to stop people who wanted to nerf valkyr... and then you expanded into them full time... scapegoating trini much?) and stop trying to state your opinions, that are totally unfounded, as fact.

 

     -This thing doesn't need changing, deal with it.

     -EV only removes energy management under certain specific conditions, which I mentioned above, and you try very hard to ignore.

     -Saying that you'll say EV is balance if it cost 10k per use is saying that you are ridiculously biased and think that one frame, with basically no CC abilities (name a single frame with less CC... Ash?  Yeah, that's the only one in the entire game, and he does true damage [finisher damage] while being invulnerable, on top of having an invisibility skill.) should be nerfed into the ground because you think her ability to change the game is broken.  CC isn't broken?  DPS isn't broken?  News flash, build a Volt for speed and run against the wall in T4S for three hours straight and watch as enemies are completely unable to hit you no matter what, since "moving fast" now reduces enemy accuracy.  Broken?  This game is ABOUT broken, in case you hadn't noticed.  Combining certain elements of broken with certain elements of reality is what makes it FUN.

 

Your statement that EV is getting pressed over and over is fallacious, only stupid trinities that built full EV, and hence are useless for anything else, do so.  Remind you of anything else?

 

Balancing a skill takes priority?  Nope.  Balancing core game mechanics takes priority, such as enemy scaling, and after that, energy efficiency, which, by the way, are the other two corners of that triangle.  After you've rebalanced those two, then, and only then, and only if it's ACTUALLY imbalanced, does balancing a skill take priority.

Edited October 17, 2015 by Vitalis_Inamorta

[DSMatticus]

Balance is a weird word to be using in this situation. This game is not competitive. This game is cooperative and goal-oriented; four people work together to spend X runs/minutes/waves/whatever looking for item Y. The only way to talk about balance is in the context of "how useful is a frame in helping you find item Y?" And even that is a difficult conversation to have, because this game embraces situational utility. If the Y you're looking for is neurodes, Nekros is suddenly the best frame in the game. If the Y you're looking for is Ash Prime BP's, Nekros is subpar CC.

 

But if the metric we use for balance is how often a particular frame is useful in helping a team get Y, whatever Y may be, Trinity is OP as hell. No matter what you're doing Trinity is a top tier addition to the team. Name a frame people want on their team more often than Trinity. You can't, because there isn't one. Trinity is the single most important frame in the game. That's not even up for debate, it's just true. If Trinity were a League champion she would have been nerfed to hell and back already.

 

But honestly? I don't really care if the frames are balanced as long as each frame has a legitimate purpose to exist. If Trinity is going to be amazingly useful in almost every mission while Nekros is only particularly useful when farming resources, I'm okay with that. What I really care about is "is the game fun?" And no, playing high-level content when you can spam radial CC and radial nukes at will and you need 0% engagement with the game to be successful is not really fun. I really don't think "radial spamfest = bad" is a contentious statement. And when talking about spamfests, energy vampire is the elephant in the room that no one seems to want to acknowledge.

Edited October 17, 2015 by DSMatticus

[Kolos1001]

 and stop trying to state your opinions, that are totally unfounded, as fact.

 

     -This thing doesn't need changing, deal with it.  

I can't be the only one who found this hilarious. 

[Vitalis_Inamorta]

I can't be the only one who found this hilarious. 

 

It's ironic, actually, and intentionally so, as an example.

 

What I'm getting out of your reply is that you have precisely zero counter arguments.

Edited October 17, 2015 by Vitalis_Inamorta

[Eipsonz]

SO just for S#&$s and giggle lets make EV cost health LOL synergy with blessing now ftw

 

You know what? i like this idea. You give x energy for yourself and your team - you loose the same amount of health (going through DR), or something like that. That would be much more interesting than glaiving yourself to death and would open up weapon slots for bless trin.

 

And just make WoL work like EV - healing pulses, but instead of targeting enemies you target yourself or ally (i think i've read this proposal somewhere on the forums) and to make it usefull - change blessing to only give dmg reduction based on health missing (ofc still global).

Edited October 17, 2015 by Eipsonz

[atom]

Let's talk about "optimum" ODD runs, because between the Ember vaulting and the Trinity release lots of people have been running ODD like crazy.

 

1st of all i'll tell you players run this setup because it's the most time efficient method.

 

You grab an EV trin, an overextend saryn, a speed nova, and then the fourth frame is a free pick. The overextend saryn and the speed nova stand next to the pod the entire game (wiggling their feet occasionally to avoid the energy lockout) and press 4 a lot. The EV trin moves around a bit and presses 2 at enemies whenever the opportunity presents itself. This is essentially the most time-efficient way to run ODD and it would take actual effort to screw it up. This strategy is possible because Saryn has a radial nuke and because Trinity can endlessly provide energy to Saryn. Those are the two necessary elements of the strategy and those are the only two necessary elements of the strategy. The speed nova speeds things up a bit and having Nekros for your fourth increases drops (if you care). You can even substitute Saryn with Frost or Excalibur or Rhino or a couple other frames if you build them right, because they all have radial nukes of sufficient damage and range (though the damage obviously isn't AS crazy without Saryn; Saryn is a one-trick-pony and she is currently the best at that one trick).

 

trinity is in now way needed for the setup if you use max efficiency on saryn and just run around picking energy orbs occasionally (personally tested multiple times)

saryn is not a 1trick pony but she is getting a rework that will make her better. i used the same saryn build for 40w of t4d and it was great fun essentially using her 1st and 4th skill and primary weapon to take down stunlocked mobs once damage from the 4th skill fell off and was basically used as a temporary stun.

for odd you only need speed nova and maxrange/efficiency saryn/frost/excal/equinox/ember/nukerframe to make it time efficient. 

 

Everyone I have ever met hates running ODD this way. No one enjoys it. The trinity's not having fun, the saryn's not having fun, the nova's not having fun, the fourth guy isn't having fun. And yet the optimum strategy for almost all end game content looks incredibly similar. The only game modes that are flexible with their optimum strategies are interception and survival, and that is because they are time-based; one minute of survival will always take exactly one minute, and nothing you can do will speed it up or slow it down, which means any frame that can survive the minute is exactly as optimal as any other frame that can survive the minute. But even then when people want to do ridiculously long survival runs they sewer camp with an EV trin, a CC-frame, a kill-frame, and probably a nekros because... that will let you go longer more reliably than any other strategy.

 

this is maybe your personal opinion. i ran this countless times and players hate defense in general (especially ones with crap rewards) because it's boring and want to speed it up which is why strategies like this are used. i never met anyone that hated speeding this up.

 

Saving the day by dropping a miasma or two when things are going to hell is fun. Spending the entire round pressing 4 for miasma is not fun. The existence of energy vampire encourages the latter, not the former, and that's bad.

 

like i said this has no relation to trin you can just as easily do it without (trin does make it so you don't have to run a circle around the pod every few rounds but you do that anyway to get the loot)

 

If I were god-emperor for a day, I would replace energy vampire with another ability, give every frame passive energy regen, and buff energy siphon. People should be using their abilities more than they do without EV trin, especially once they get into high level content. But people should never be using their abilities as often as they do with EV trin, because that reduces the game to a boring radial spamfest. Unfortunately, DE has already started down the path that locks the game into needing EV trin. The raid and other high-level content has such insane health/armor/damage scaling that the One True Way is CC spam, and the only real way to fuel that CC spam is an EV trin. I actually want to see a group run the raid without a trinity or energy restores. I'm sure it could be done, but it seems like it would be difficult in an incredibly satisfying way.

 

your "solution" contradicts the "problem" you present and would only amplify it lol

[Eipsonz]

I'm a Trinity who has fun this way ;_;

[DSMatticus]

1) The Saryn rework will not make her better. People use Saryn specifically because spamming miasma is the most time-efficient way to kill mobs in the game, and asking Saryn to perform extra skills in order to set up her nukes will make her less time-efficient. People will either ignore the synergy entirely by continuing to spam miasma or switch to different nukey frames (like Frost, Excalibro, or any other frame with a solid radial nuke, though Saryn's is currently best because it kills in less casts), depending on how hard they nerf miasma. Saryn is a one tricky pony, and that trick is "clears waves faster than anyone else in the game." If she stops being able to do that, she stops being relevant entirely. Synergy with her other abilities does not make her better at her one-trick; it makes her worse, because setups take time and saving time is the benefit Saryn offers.

 

2) If you run ODD without Trinity and just use energy orbs, you will cast miasma less often and kill mobs more slowly. With Trinity, you are consistently nuking the mobs as soon as they walk through the doors into the main room. Without Trinity, you are either letting mobs get closer to the pod so you can easily scoop up their orbs (they live longer, the run is slower) or hopping down to collect orbs on one side (you're no longer positioned to nuke the other side, mobs on that side will live longer, the run is slower). The assertion that people will have just as much energy without Trin because they can max efficiency and pick up orbs is crazy. With a Trinity, I can literally spam miasma so quickly that the cast animation prevents me from walking. If you are walking to pick up orbs, then I am already casting miasma several times more often than you in the same amount of time.

 

I'm a Trinity who has fun this way ;_;

Want to go farm some Trinity BP's? I promise you'll be bored by the end.

 

If grinding ODD doesn't bore you, you're not doing it as quickly as you could be. When you do it right, it can barely be classified as playing the game at all. There is little to no player engagement involved.

 

Don't get me wrong; there's nothing wrong with playing "inoptimally." This is a game. People play it for fun. The problem is that getting shiny new toys to play with (which is fun) takes time, and that time can be reduced by certain strategies, and in the game as it exists... those strategies are mind-numbingly boring (which is not fun).

[Eipsonz]

 

Want to go farm some Trinity BP's? I promise you'll be bored by the end.

 

If grinding ODD doesn't bore you, you're not doing it as quickly as you could be. When you do it right, it can barely be classified as playing the game at all. There is little to no player engagement involved.

 

Don't get me wrong; there's nothing wrong with playing "inoptimally." This is a game. People play it for fun. The problem is that getting shiny new toys to play with (which is fun) takes time, and that time can be reduced by certain strategies, and in the game as it exists... those strategies are mind-numbingly boring (which is not fun).

Don't act like you know me, i have no problem with that gameplay and trust me - i am doing it fast enough.