Vazarin [Spoilers] System

[Darkwings83]

Do we really still need to put spoiler tags everywhere? I think they know D:

 

Anyway, now that we have some informations on the skills tree I like the themes a lot but the implementation of some of those is... sadly disappointing.

 

I'll try to be as concise as possible:

 

The healing is good: 250/s for 10s. The range is decent: 10m.

 

Any extra ability seems to increase the cooldown of Mending Shower by variable amounts so take that into account when evaluating the effects.

 

-Protection Ward:

Seems useless honestly.

Zero casting time + free movement + default invulnerability while healing means that you don't need to expose yourself during Mending Tides.

 

This should simply grant a token that gets consumed to activate the barrier when you reach critical health.

 

-Guardian Presence:

I'm assuming it's exactly like Protection Ward but on all the team, so the downtime is again just too big and you are still shiedling people that is at full health. See Protection Ward change: grant a token to all team members.

 

-Commanding Words:

After you finish casting Mending Tides, for the next 5 seconds when enemies get in melee range (assuming the aura is as small as Ward) they get stunned.

The effect doesn't justify the entirety of a node. I'm assuming a max duration of 15s.

 

This is a worse version of a Carrier (10m range) with a status Sweeper (or even of quick melee, depending on the weapon).

 

Even enabling stealth finishers would go unnoticed with such a small range and huge downtime. I don't have any good ideas but it shouldn't be worse than a status Sweeper :|

 

 

-Strengthen Defenses:

Mending Tides restores 100 shields. What is this? I don't even...

Even if rank 3 is going to be 300 shields, you're still trading peanuts for a longer CD.

 

This could be changed to grant several tokens of Adaptation during the whole mission when affected by status ailments. The status is removed, a token is consumed and you become immune to the same status for 5 seconds.

If Vazarin "moves with the enemy to counter any offensive" it shouldn't just heal.

 

-New Moon:

Basically the only straight up ugrade, worth all the cd increase (45s). Team saver as long as you keep recasting.

 

-Retaliation:

2.5% damage reflection is extremely low.

If you look here http://warframe.wikia.com/wiki/Enemy_Level_Scaling and read under "Reflective Kill Rate" you can see that it's even worse.

In dangerous content you don't ever want to take damage.

Not worth the CD increase even if it worked on the whole team.

 

An easier to adjust alternative to higher reflection (since that could still break the game) could be a tiny damage multiplier. That way you can't cheese out engagement while having a scaling advantage valid for endgame.

 

A 10% damage boost lasting for 5 seconds against any enemy that hit you shouldn't break anything (I think?).

"You hit me, I counter harder" is cooler than "you hit yourself, but in a very delicate manner"

 

 

-Disciplined Approach:

At first rank +10m for Affinity sharing range. I fail to see why anyone should ever be concerned about sharing range.

Naramon at least increases the amount of Affinity, way better, and still pointless in the current* meta.

*(Focus gain mechanics are going to change "asap" ).

 

-Mending Shower:

You lose 30% healing power to increase the range by 2 meters at rank 1.

Nope. Even if there was a neat gain, the longer CD is enough of a deterrent.

 

-Polluted Waters:

Casting Mending Tides automatically revives allies. 95% base chance to give them Viral and Magnetic (higher ranks lower the chance). Being half dead is still better than being full dead.

Turns Mending Tides in a good panic button and good combo with New Moon.

 

 

In conclusion, I'd like to see the +Defenses part of the tree reworked, giving stuff more in line with the meta and with the theme of "countering the enemy offensive".

In particular, this school seems to lack the dynamic triggers lasting the whole mission the other schools have.

 

The only one here is Revive tokens. It's really good, but everything else isn't even remotely comparable (especially when nearing a 5 minutes cd as a tradeoff).

 

We now have enemies that can adapt themselves to our damage. It wouldn't be too far off if Vazarin did something similar to "counter".

[JinxedEye]

Do you by any chance know how well mending tides mastery scales at Max rank?

Also, I don't think you need to have every ability active... Just saying. Iv got more than one path unlocked, doesn't mean I run using all of them. I do agree that instantly reviving a teammate should be a staple, but after that, the choice is yours for what to run.

[Darkwings83]

I don't know how it scales but in one of the latest patch notes it was mentioned that the devs took care of scaling.

 

To be honest, 250 health per second is already a lot.

 

I know that you don't have to activate all abilities at the same time, and I doubt that it would even be possible.

That's why all the effects should be able to compete for the pick but in my opinion they are clearly on different leagues.

 

As you said, insta-revives are going to be a staple for sure and everything else is worse than that.

With the deterrent of an increased CD adding more effects, the others will likely be dumped.

 

The combo of New Moon+Polluted Waters+Hallowed Ground/Renewal/Link to remove Viral and Magnetic from the whole team is hard to beat in terms of healing and healing is almost all this school does.

(Link costs way more than the other 2 but it's still good because it offers damage reduction which both Vazarin and Oberon can't offer)

 

My suggestions aim to offer something different to be able to compete with that combo on a different field.

 

For example, if the essence of "countering" was expressed as a damage multiplier vs aggressors (one of the suggestions) a warframe that already has a damage multiplier could stack the bonus.

 

I think this should be the approach to increase build variety, for a change.

Edited December 9, 2015 by Darkwings83

[AandOE]

Perhaps a node could be called 'Riptide', to go with the wave theme. This node would allow for 1/2/3 (max, not stackable) chances to self revive upon killing an enemy while in the downed state. This way it helps solo players, and then it helps for high ranking team missions, by giving a pseudo tanking measure.

 

For more passive healing, Mending Tides could give a 5/10/20% boost to any and all healing for the duration of the mission.

 

Nearly all of the tree path could be affected by the current warframe mod setup, based solely around duration and range mods. No need to change the skills in this case, as even a level 0 Protection Ward can suddenly get 10 seconds with a good duration build. Having a range build could help Mending Tides' short range problem. If the Retaliation node could be affected by Power Strength, we'd be able to still keep the low initial benefit as such, while also giving better reflection rates. TL:DR, make Vazarin nodes be affected by various mods, and nothing further would be needed.

 

I'm sure that the other Paths could receive similar mod-affecting nodes, to fix their perceived troubles. :3

[Darkwings83]

Adding to the above:

 

It seems that Mastery passives are the same for every school and grant 60 seconds CD redution at MAX level.

This means that it can't even fullly counter the increased the CD from 2 passives, making the problem more evident.

 

We're gonna grab insta-revives and ignore everything else in the tree :|

[Flamingfighter]

Leveling up the basic mending tides really only benefits healing things like Cryopods. Most frames will be healed in two pulses after a little investment. I think you're underestimating Protection Aura, it activates after you have finished casting Mending Tides, so in a point where you are entirely vulnerable, and when you are no longer healing. Trinity used to have a similar effect on Blessing, and it was removed for being too powerful (granted, she could spam it). At max rank it should be about 20 seconds. I think the entire purpose of the ability is that you bring your team back with Mending Tides, and then they can begin a counter-assault with their period of invulnerability.

 

New Moon is a godsend.

 

First rank on Mending Tides Mastery decreases cooldown by 15 seconds. I'm not sure if it is 15 seconds per rank, or if the decrease was offset by enabling Mastery in the first place.

 

Commanding Words is mainly effective when paired with Protection Ward. The Ward only works with damage from the outside the field it generates. Commanding Words would theoretically give you a technical immunity to damage inside the field since all the enemies get stunned.

 

Strengthen Defenses does shields, which crumple like tin foil at higher levels. None of the people I play with put anything into shields because its more efficient to get more damage-reduced health. It doesn't seem worth it to me, but I'll reserve judgement for when I use it.

 

Disciplined Approach doesn't seem to have any useful application whatsoever. Affinity range is already pretty large, and is cheap anyways. It will in now way augment a player's ability to gain Focus either, at least in the Focus System's current state.

 

Retaliation seems like it might be kind of useful. It will last the entire mission once it activates, so it can't hurt not to have. Whether its worth the cooldown is questionable until I get to use it in action.

 

Mending Tides' biggest strength is that it is the only ability that can heal cryopods. Several minutes for a single heal is highly impractical and unreliable for missions, and most of the healing is a massive excess. Increasing your cooldown just to reduce the effectiveness of your ability to heal the pod doesn't seem worth it.

 

Polluted Waters, I don't even know what the purpose of this is. I don't know if it means that teammates will auto-revive with help from others, whether it's an instant revive in the same vein as New Moon, or if the pulses from Mending Tides' itself triggers the revive. New Moon already works fine in that you can revive a person without breaking sprint/parkour. Having another layer of that that will just make it more difficult for your allies to survive right after you revive them while at the same time destroying their ability to cast powers for CC or self-defense seems terrible.

[Darkwings83]

Masteries are 15/30/45/60 for all schools.

 

20s of invulnerability is indeed good, I underestimated the maximum duration. We are taking a +45s hit on CD however.

 

EDIT: It's 10 seconds actually.

 

Commanding Words is another +45s CD and does nothing that any other CC could do on demand.

 

For Retaliation go look at Reflected Kill Rate on the wiki. Enemy scaling makes reflected damage useless (same for confused enemies), especially when it's a tiny fraction of the total.

 

Polluted Waters is supposed to Revive downed allies instantly when using Mending Tides. This thing is huge for Defense.

 

Basically, taking only the really good stuff (New Moon, Protection Ward, Polluted Waters) and maxed Mastery, we would have a total of 180+45+45+45-75= 4m CD

 

Seems good, the problem about everything else being forgettable remains.

 

I've been talking about support frames, but if you apply all of the above to something already good at defending like Frost or Vauban... it seems this will get nerfed to outer space.

 

(edited since the wiki now has information for each rank)

Edited December 18, 2015 by Darkwings83