I Am Wood - Naramon Fan-Rework

[Kinperor]

Greetings,

 

After having spent a good period of time using the newly introduced Focus system in the game, we have made our mind on the usefulness of the system, its flaws, its advantages and its thematic. We will present here our impression on the system, but hide it in a spoiler tag because the focus of this thread will be on the rework of Naramon. You can consult our Zenurik thread here, which acted both as our official feedback thread and the presentation of a reworked Zenurik.

 

Our assessments on the system is inherently subjective and limited to the Paths we have used. Our first-hand experience is limited to Zenurik and Madurai. Despite this, we will submit proposals for all 5 Paths, based both on our interpretation of the Paths' perks and community feedback.

 

While the specific details will vary across all Paths, we will use the same framework for the individual reworks. This framework will be described in each threads, as both a reminder and an introduction to newer readers.

 

Please see the following link for the Madurai "I am Fire" rework thread.

Please see the following link for the Unairu "I am Rock" rework thread.

Please see the following link for the Vazarin "I am Tide" rework thread.

 

Assessment of Focus, (spoiler'd)

 

Spoiler

What holds Focus back,

 

Our analysis of the Focus system, as per its current alpha iteration, has brought up the following issues limiting its popularity:

 

 

• Passives are too timid with the stats granted, or have stats that are too niche.

   

   

• Unreliable pseudo-passive have little appeal.

   

   

• The active abilities are too dull, with limited use and/or poor return on usage.

   

   

• Scattered applications of some Paths (imbalance in offense and defense).

 

 

The Focus system currently has too many niche passives, and passives with effects that are too timid to avoid being overpowered. For instance, Naramon's Shadow Step is considered the main selling point of the tree. Similarly, the ideal build in Zenurik can be summarized by a single line with a 135 angle. Meanwhile, Unairu is left in the dust with an armor buff that is very under-tuned in how small the targeted crowd is (only tanks), and how little the boost is (12%). In comparison, Shadow Step can give a superior form of safety to a player, and Overflow allows the players to cast abilities at will. We submit that the Paths require more passives like Overflow and Shadow Steps, and less like Stone Shape.

 

On the subject of pseudo-passive, we have noticed an averse reactions to abilities that grant a short boost to their stats, in some case an exchange between two stats. The very description of the abilities causes scepticism, because the trigger of the perk is unknown. Players cannot (and will not) appreciate the value of a perk with this kind of unknown. The logical assumption is that the active ability triggers these perks; in these situations, the perks will be dismissed as too short-lived when compared to the added cooldown to the active. Note: We will not discuss the value of each individual perks in this thread. Our rework will try to keep the perks that presents good value to the player.

 

Regarding the actives, our current impression in general is that the actives are likened to Warframe abilities, and are judged in relation to those. Consequently, the majority of the actives are decent by themselves, but when compared to abilities, they appear less versatile and reliable. Indeed, we can build to spam Bastille to our heart content, while Zenurik's active is limited in mobility, range and cooldown. Our conclusions: actives needs to be more distinct and to be powerful enough that the players look forward to casting it, instead of just activating it for a specific passive, which seems to be the statu quo for some Paths.

 

It is our opinion that the practical application of some Paths are scattered. Unairu for example has more or less the same amount of defensive and offensive perks, while it comes with the expectation of being a defensive Paths. We believe the ratio should be brought back in line for some Paths. Of course, we have to allow enough creative freedom to offer variety within the same Path, which goes to explain the current imbalance, as well as some perks that at first sight aren't the best fit for a Path in our rework.

 

What Focus has done right,

 

 

 

• The delayed passives make an “Eleventh Hour” power spike.

   

   

• The acquisition and pool system for abilities has potential for versatility and expansion.

   

   

• A mix of duration-based perks with sustained passives supports different play style.

 

 

Considering the base firepower of Tenno, we find it appropriate to limit some passives in the matter it currently is limited. We acknowledge the irritability caused by delayed satisfaction. However, since its introduction in the Design Council long ago, Focus was always presented as a “Final Showdown” power-spike, a trump-card to overcome great challenges. What it wasn't presented as: a second layer of mods that are immediately active. We have opted for a compromise in our rework, with passives that are available early and a second tier whose activation is delayed.

 

Our impressions is that the current acquisition and activation of perks is appropriate since it lays down the foundation for a versatile system where a player can buy a bank of perks from which he can later pick and activate perks to his liking. We acknowledge that the tree's expansion is limited by a few perks being more desirable than others, which functionally turn some Paths into “One point wonders”.

 

Above, we addressed “pseudo-passive” that were too unreliable for widespread use. Here, we acknowledge that power spikes that are limited in duration can create interesting mechanics and add variability to game sessions. However, the trigger leaves to be desired for the majority and must then be replaced.

 

TL;DR:

 

See the bullets points to see what requires change and what is a valuable aspect of the system.

 

To summarize it, our position is that Focus requires passives that give a real feeling of empowerment that support a variety of roles and Warframes. Some aspects of the system support this visions, while others do not.

 

A few comments about the suggested rework,

 

We believe that balance is necessary for the long-term health of the plan. With that said, it is our opinion that for Focus to be successful, it needs a good deal more power to really catch the player's attention and become part of the post-end-game meta. It is why our suggestions might seem to verge on the "overpowered" at times, and it explains in equal measure why we added a endlessly scaling component to the Paths when we deemed it reasonable. 

 

Let us now dive in the thick of the rework.

 

New framework for the perks,

 

As we said above, the Focus system requires a slight tweak to it's structure to be more reliable, enjoyable and versatile. We suggest the following:

 

Perks are now spread in three categories:

 

 

• Passives: Stat or mechanic variations, conditional or not, that are active at all time, except if the conditions aren't present. Conditions are not the same as a timed buff.

   

  Keeping in line with the concept of Focus as a “Final Hour” system, we differentiate between tier 1 passives (up at all time) and tier 2 passives (up after casting the active).

  You can have as many passives as you want at once, as long as you have enough points or the requirement for it. (One tier 1 and one Simis are required for the tier 2 passives).

   

• Simis, for simili-actives : Abilities that can be used in-between casts of the main active by using the same trigger as the main ability (“5” by default).

   

  Only one Simis can be active at once. Many can be acquired to be equiped at different times.

  Requires one use of the main active to use.

   

• Active behavior: Passive perks that affects specifically the main active (ex: Chimera Breath with Phoenix Gaze). Their effects may apply during the use of the active, and in some cases have residual effects past that period.

 

 

The distinction of these perks will change the dynamics of the skills trees. Please refer to the info-graphic support to better understand their interactions.

 

 

The Focus Pool system remains as is. The cooldown system remains as is, with the following minor tweaks:

 

 

• All actives now have a 150 seconds cooldown.

   

   

• Perks now add only 15 seconds to the cooldown.

   

   

• No more cooldown mastery.

 

 

Maintained Thematic:

 

A conscious effort was made throughout the preparation of this rework to maintain the identity of each “Paths”. We have reduced the different Paths to certain core characteristics, based on the information already given in the game:

 

• Zenurik: Domination through Warframes.
• Targeted clientele: Casters, supports.

 

• Madurai: Reckless offense, area of effect.
• Targeted clientele: Casters, marksmen, swordsmen.

 

• Naramon: Martial prowess, tactical flexibility.
• Targeted clientele: Marksmen, swordsmen.

 

• Unairu: Unadulterated damage mitigation.
• Targeted clientele: Tanks, casters.

 

• Vazarin: Renewal and safeguard.
• Targeted clientele: Tanks, supports.

 

 

We elected to conserve the elemental identities of each paths, who were more or less implicit. In order, these elements would be Void, Fire, Wood, Rock, Tide.

 

Finally, we have thematically split each Paths into three “Tracks”. We will name and explore the Tracks in the thread relating to its specific Path. The Tracks serves as design direction for perks, and functionally will not limit the choice of the player to only one Track when deciding which perks he desires. The objective is for the players to sidetrack on any Path and forge his own way to the mastery of the Path.

 

 

-----

 

Naramon rework,

 

- "I am Wood"

 

Wood is an excessively interesting material when one stops to think about it. Our ancestors found countless uses for wood, from making tools to weapons, transportation to buildings and even paper. It is no exaggeration to say that wood is easily one of the most versatile resources we have to our disposition, even in this day and age where we encase great white trees in gold and other material, only to displace it into the Void. Warriors from Naramon shines when their wealth of knowledge is used in conjunction of their wood-like versatility to maximize their martial prowess.

 

These are the basis of Naramon: Varied specialization, knowledge and growth.

 

Naramon active,

 

As part of this rework, we aim to give every actives some bonuses to make them feel good to cast, not be a quick cast to get access to passives.

 

We submit the following change for Mind Spike:

 

 

• Release bursts of confusing energy.

   

   

• Every enemy hit by a burst will return to the caster a flat bonus to the bonus damage from using the right element against a type of health.

   

   

• For example, the Corrosive element does an extra 75% damage against Ferrite armor. Casting Mind Spike can grant anywhere between 0 and 25% more damage to this default value, potentially increasing it to 100% bonus damage until the next cast.

   

   

• This value is not specific to any health type or elemental damage, however you will have to choose the right elements to profit from this effect.

   

   

• This value is used by perks from the Challenger and Master track.

   

   

• The value is calculated from your total amount of Focus Points in your Focus pool, that is divided by three and then applied once per enemy hit by Mind Spike. The gain is capped to 5% extra damage per burst.

 

This change is made to offer Naramon the extra damage that is expected from an offensive Path, but not brute damage like Madurai receives with Phoenix Gaze (see Madurai thread). We believe that this sort of boost fits perfectly with the thematic of Naramon as a Path of Tacticians who play on the weakness of their enemies. 

 

 

The Path of Naramon branches into three tracks that cross, merge and split at will:

 

 

 

• Track of the Challenger: For the Challenger, life is felt at its fullest in the middle of battle. Nothing quite compares to overwhelming their opponent by sheer Martial Prowess. With every fights, they grow ever more dangerous and thirsty for more.

 

 

 

 

• Track of the Master: True masters of combat spent years learning not only about their enemy, but about themselves as well. They use forgotten techniques and their extensive knowledge to triumph over any enemy.

 

 

 

 

• Track of the Assassin: Fair fights are a myth. The less attention one brings to himself in the midst of combat, the better. It is why the Assassin strives to finish an opponent with one swift strikes and focus on a new target.

 

 

Edited February 23, 2016 by Kinperor

[-NR-Dabears]

(Not a native English speaker - Dont expect perfect English in this comment)

 

You got my vote. We really need some heavy changes in the current focus system and this system (not to mention the big effort you must have brought behind it) seems better to me.

The main problem I have with the active focus abilities is, that I can't use them without immobilizing myself. I am the kind of player who flies, jumps and runs while shooting without having any breaks inbetween (otherwise I would take too much damage, which would most likely kill me).

So when I activate the 5th ability, my Warframe stops running and else. Of course you are practically "invincible" during the 5th ability, but when it is over you have to wait until the animation of standing up is finished and you have to begin running, which also starts slow. During the time of standing up and the time of catching up your previous speed enemies are able to kill you.

 

I also remember reading "Speed and savagery characterized this school" when I picked Madurai. I thought "Oh nice! The description of this ability makes it seem like it is a great addition to my playstyle!". I picked Madurai. I regret it. When I found out that it is exactly the opposite of what was described there, I was pretty much disappointed with it. So I changed to Naramon and Zenurik. What came to my mind when I compared the passives of those three schools was, that Naramon and Zenurik are way more usefull than Madurai. With Naramon I can go 24/7 invis as long as there are enemies and do crits like hell. With Zenurik I can spam my abilities like they are nothing and I never run out of energy. What does Madurai give me? Some procentual damage improvements and an active ability which doesnt even make more damage than my weapons. So what I would recommend is that we should atleast be able to keep our movement and that the different schools should be re-balanced.

 

I would have an idea for the schools so we are able to maintain our speed and are still able to move freely. The example below would be something that is applicable for every school, but I took Madurai here as an example:

Currently it is just like this: We are just just lying there and an operator comes outta nowhere to deal damage (which is pretty low compared to many weapons) and does the stuff he has to do.

So instead of that, just imagine what it would be like to activate the 5th ability and instead of an operator coming out, there will appear a drone to the right or to the left of you (about the size of a sentinel, maybe bigger). With that drone you are still able to run, shoot, jump, glide and else while the drone shoots that laser at the point where you are aiming to. Eventually the drone will give you an actual damage support, since it is improving your DPS and helps you to deal damage to the enemies. It is pretty much pointless to use the active ability if you make less damage with it than with a weapon and you only use it as a trigger for the passives.

 

With the current focus system it might be good for new players, but for the high "tier" players it is mostly just a trigger for the passives and the short-time invulnerability which allows you to regenerate during the ability. The immobilization also ruins the most gameplays for agile players who really like to maintain their movement.

 

TL;DR:

-We need a re-balance between the schools

-We need a way of being able to maintain movement (that includes jumping, wall running, wall latching, etc.)

-We could also need a optical rework for this (Operator popping out, just clenching his fists together while screaming and some beams come out of his chest while he then just hovers in a static animation??)

-We need more suitable descriptions of the different schools, as the current ones are heavily misleading for most players who didnt read about the focus system somewhere

-Splitting up the focus system into a talent tree would be even better.

Edited February 10, 2016 by Dabears1337

[Kinperor]

TL;DR:

-We need a re-balance between the schools

-We need a way of being able to maintain movement (that includes jumping, wall running, wall latching, etc.)

-We could also need a optical rework for this (Operator popping out, just clenching his fists together while screaming and some beams come out of his chest while he then just hovers in a static animation??)

-We need more suitable descriptions of the different schools, as the current ones are heavily misleading for most players who didnt read about the focus system somewhere

-Splitting up the focus system into a talent tree would be even better.

I agree with most of your points.

I did not however stop to think about mobility with the powers. I'm not averse to change of pace like what we have, but I can also understand if some find it frustrating. My opinion is that the reasoning, behind the "why" of the current visuals, is solid, but said visuals do not appeal to me.

I think the descriptions only need a minimal amount of change, but they should be reworded with a rework of the skill tree so that the descriptions and reality are in congruence.

I'm not sure what you mean by splitting into talent tree? You mean doing as I did with "Tracks"? Because I personally do not envision the Tracks being implemented in the game; they are design directions for the Path, no more. Once the design is done, they can be discarded.

[-NR-Dabears]

With the talent tree I mean a way of choosing which way you want to go in the school. This of course needs some more perks and passives and a heavy rework, but this might work out better for the individuality of this. So it isnt just "max every perk", instead you can actually choose which way you want to go and which one you prefer over the other one.

For example I could take Madurai again, since it is a damage-dealing based school.

 

Lets say there are 3 aspects (3 ways to go in Madurai). All 3 aspects are able to give you some kind of advantage in damage dealing and else, BUT in different ways (e.g. one way for more ability damage, one way for more weapon damage, etc. <--- But that is just an example, this should be a more complex thing and not just specialized on a single category like this).

And lets say that you can only max out 1 (or maximally 2) aspects at the same time - You cant have a third one. This way you wouldnt just go and farm focus for the completion of ALL focus perks, instead you would actually farm for the completion of exactly the aspects you want to be finished. As in most other games which have talent trees, you could also add an item or a possibility of unlearning the aspects. This way you would get back your focus points and you would be able to spend them into something else then. I would mostly recommend a mix of the Skyrim talent system and the World of Warcraft talent system here.

[Kinperor]

Talking points,

 

Want to partake into the thread but not sure what to address? Consider the following:

 

• 
  

  Do you favor swordsmanship? Do you see yourself mastering the path of Naramon or only bothering with a few perks?

  
  

   

  
  
  
• 
  

  Do you feel that Naramon gives perks worth building load outs around?

  
  

   

  
  
  
• 
  

  What is the worth of “duelling” to you in the context of Warframe?

  
  
  

 

• 
  

  Would you rather see more Simis options or Passives?

  
  

   

  
  
  
• 
  

  Would you rather see a flat cooldown that is reasonably short or you would rather have a long cooldowns that can be very short on the condition you get a mastery perk?

  
  
  

 

 

Design comment,

 

The Path of Naramon was an interesting experience to us. We would even go as far as calling it an emotional roller coaster. As we mentioned in the introduction, we do not happen to have a hands-on experience with Naramon, but we still wanted to take a crack at writing a new list of perks for it. While all of our reworks were subject to changes even as we wrote down their associated pictures, Naramon probably changed the most from it's original iteration.

 

Originally, we came up with 3 tracks per Paths to give direction to our mulling and associate a visual with the very abstract exercise of thinking about new perks. Zenurik featured some very straightforward Tracks and Madurai had one Track (Salamander) that was relatively challenging. Naramon's tracks suffered of what I call a “statistical shortage”, which limited the depth of each tree and their distinction from each other. Melee and critical strikes were originally the big focus of the Path, that was obvious. However, which track would get which specialization? To what degree? That was the “statisical shortage”, we only had a limited amount of stats to work with in the Path, and we had to avoid making duplicate perks as much as possible.

 

There are only so many time we can make a perk give extra critical chance or extra melee combo uptime (which was the original tier one perk of Challenger before the release of Body Count).

 

The eventual result of this logical dead-end was the idea of working directly with stats that usually aren't modified: The vulnerabilities and resistances to elements. This break-through concept brought a lot to the table, in term of design. For starter, we finally had a useful mechanic to go with the “knowledge” aspect of Naramon; knowing and using the enemy's weakness is rewarded with more damage. This new concept also allowed the introduction of a very specific kind of defense buff (Self-awareness) to the Naramon Path, a luxury that wasn't granted to the other offensive Path of Madurai. Furthermore, this new breed of statistical buff allowed much more liberties in the design of the Path, by replacing redundant perks with new perks that rewarded players for doing their homework.

 

This new “buff” concept wasn't the only change that rocked the Path of Naramon.

 

The Track of the Challenger was meant from its inception to support head-on combat in melee, which is how we came up with the concept of buffing the uptime on melee combo. Which was a great idea, so great even it was immediately introduced as a new mod (no, we didn't give the idea to DE, we both came up separately with the concept). The introduction of Body Count was awkward, because we suddenly had to design a new perk that competed with a common mod that gave a near-constant 4,5+ multiplier to melee damage. We toyed with a couple of ideas, including one that would functionally reduce elemental resistance based on melee combo, or another one that would increase critical stats in combat, but ultimately we settled with Edge's dance. We believed that the fantasy of walking up to an opponent and butchering him with an exponential damage gain was enough to compete with the greatness that is Body Count.

 

The Gauntlet Simis is one ability we have a soft spot for. The one thing that comes to our mind when we think of a duellist is the archetypical scene where a protagonist walks up to an enemy and challenge him to a one-on-one combat for a test of mettle. On top of this fantasy, we believe this Simis also brings great value to non-crit players that wish to practice swordmanship without the cover of Shadow step, or even gunmen that just want to feel a little bit safer.

 

Thirst isn't an overly complicated Simis, but we have spent a great deal of time considering how to implement the mechanic. We didn't want to force the player to spam “5” to constantly execute small fries (without mentioning the inconvenience of using a melee with low damage but fast attack), neither did we want a constant uptime on the ability to self-buff melee damage. We settled for a toggle ability that drained health. We are certain the Simis will be broken with Life Strike, but we think the loss of utility and added health drain might compensate. If it isn't the case, we believe an easy balance pass would be to deactivate regen during the toggle. One has to keep in mind, the intent isn't to give constant infinite scaling, it is to give windows of opportunity to increase damage.

 

The Track of the Master was originally drafted up as something quite simple: an adept Tenno that used all his weapons for maximum effect. While the concept is definitely interesting, we aren't blind to the reality of how impractical it is to swap weapons just for more damage. We shifted the paradigm ever slightly to that of a Tenno that struck once and true. At first, we had designed a tier one passive that gave a huge amount of damage on the initial hit of an enemy, which we later revised because the passive lacked any real interest other than its free upfront damage. This is how we eventually designed Sunder, to reward players that modded their weapon dutily. This new passive was all the more interesting, because it allowed the player to “double-dip” on the new passive of Mind Spike, making the Master all the more terrifying for enemies. We concluded by making it so that Sunder's bonus is applied once per weapon, partly as a nod to the original design and partly to avoid crippling the Master after a shot wasted by using the wrong weapon (with the wrong elements). We decided that, for balance reasons, Sunder should also boost the enemy's resistance to inappropriate elements. The intent of this perk is to reward mindful selection of element, not grant a free one-hit-kill perk.

 

Forbidden technique is a Simis we made for two reasons: Onse, we wanted to keep the Traumatic Redirection perk, and two, we wanted to throw a bone to “caster” Warframes. The thing to note about Forbidden technique is that it was originally used to boost melee attacks in exchange for health, but coexisted with Thirst, a similar Simis with (at the time) no health cost. Upon reviewing the reworked Path, we have found that Naramon was very exclusionary to “casters”, and that Thirst and Forbidden technique shared an all too similar niche together. Keeping both lowered the variety of Simis in the Path, which was the opposite of our intent with the rework. Since that time, we have made two changes that would make caster slightly more welcome in the Path: First, the new concept of increasing enemy elemental vulnerabilities made the Path slightly more welcoming to Warframes with elemental damage, and second, we changed Forbidden technique to its current version which give critical stats to abilities. We thought it was important to keep a clear distinction between Zenurik and Naramon, which is why the later only has damage increase for abilities, whereas Zenurik has a perk to increase Power Strength (with very different scaling). Another distinction between the two is that Zenurik supports power spamming to a much greater extent than Naramon with Forbidden technique, which is limited by the caster's health as well as energy.

 

For the Track of the Assassin, we wanted to play with the Bleed status effect without giving it as much importance as the status synergy found in Madurai. The reasoning was that the Assassin delivers accurate attacks that slice right through the target's main blood vessels, condemning them to death per hemorrhage while the Assassin is long gone. We thought the concept of a sudden attack with delayed death had a good appeal for a different playstyle, and so we established this original concept: Bleed procs would be forced for the Assassin, and the damage over time would be buffed whenever the victim lost sight of the Assassin. This concept felt good for a ranged Assassin that had the comfort of hiding after 2 or 3 hits, but after reflexion we thought it did not bring as much value to a melee assassin, who would need to guesstimate on the spot how many hits were needed to finish a target with the buffed damage over time. Additionally, we felt melee assassin might feel pigeon holed into acquiring Shadow Step or Feint (one of the Assassin Simis). Another issue we considered was that damage over time is rarely something we can truly appreciate, even if we know the total damage is huge. Finally, after the addition of the new perks affecting enemy elemental resistance, we felt that we had more room to work critical stats into the Path without redundancy. Keeping all these factors in mind, we modified Cruelty to the current version: Bleed is still forced, damage over time is now applied faster and synergizes with critical builds. Our hope is that lone snipers or assassins still find have the capacity of bleeding a target to death from the shadow with added synergy to crit builds, while more advanced players still find value in Cruelty as a third (or more) passive.

 

 

As a closing note,

 

We apologize for the delayed post, we usually post this information immediately after the main post, but we were tight on time.

 

Thank you for reading, and see you again for the “I am Rock” rework of Unairu. We hope you enjoyed this enough to look forward to the next thread.

Edited February 11, 2016 by Kinperor

[Kinperor]

With the talent tree I mean a way of choosing which way you want to go in the school. This of course needs some more perks and passives and a heavy rework, but this might work out better for the individuality of this. So it isnt just "max every perk", instead you can actually choose which way you want to go and which one you prefer over the other one.

For example I could take Madurai again, since it is a damage-dealing based school.

 

Lets say there are 3 aspects (3 ways to go in Madurai). All 3 aspects are able to give you some kind of advantage in damage dealing and else, BUT in different ways (e.g. one way for more ability damage, one way for more weapon damage, etc. <--- But that is just an example, this should be a more complex thing and not just specialized on a single category like this).

And lets say that you can only max out 1 (or maximally 2) aspects at the same time - You cant have a third one. This way you wouldnt just go and farm focus for the completion of ALL focus perks, instead you would actually farm for the completion of exactly the aspects you want to be finished. As in most other games which have talent trees, you could also add an item or a possibility of unlearning the aspects. This way you would get back your focus points and you would be able to spend them into something else then. I would mostly recommend a mix of the Skyrim talent system and the World of Warcraft talent system here.

 

Ah I see. Well for my part, I designed these new concepts with 100% unlock in mind, except for the Simis which are limited. To me it feels like Focus gains are slow enough that the player will be called to make priorities when choosing his new perks. Simis are also presented as an agent of variety where players going in the same missions do not assuredly have the same Simis active (as well as every other perks at once).

[66Bones]

im sorry dont take this the wrong way but i like the trees as they are the system is simple enough that any player can work it out your new system seems needlessly complicated for players just starting into the focus schools i would rather see it go the way of a spend and refund system where you level it up via focus levels and that gives you points to spen based on your level in any one school points that can be spect and respcet to fit a players roll it would also be nice if the trees got bigger with advanced levels in a school more perks for people that put in the work

[Kinperor]

im sorry dont take this the wrong way but i like the trees as they are the system is simple enough that any player can work it out your new system seems needlessly complicated for players just starting into the focus schools i would rather see it go the way of a spend and refund system where you level it up via focus levels and that gives you points to spen based on your level in any one school points that can be spect and respcet to fit a players roll it would also be nice if the trees got bigger with advanced levels in a school more perks for people that put in the work

I'm not offended by feedback.

What do you find complicated in this?

There are tiers of perks, and unlocking new tiers is systematic.

[mishli]

ok first, wanna give my kudos for taking the time to flesh out a list like this. i have at least passing familliarity with 4/5 of the schools, and have also done... way too much research on it.

 

I'm not offended by feedback.

What do you find complicated in this?

There are tiers of perks, and unlocking new tiers is systematic.

i think the big issue is the way you presented it, i would simplify it to 'passive, passive with a trigger, buff from using the focus ability, alternate use for 5 button, and effect of using the ability' i understand your use of simis and other things, but though it's a lot easier internally when you're designing to give names like that, i think it'd be easier if you just broke it down like that

[Kinperor]

ok first, wanna give my kudos for taking the time to flesh out a list like this. i have at least passing familliarity with 4/5 of the schools, and have also done... way too much research on it.

 

i think the big issue is the way you presented it, i would simplify it to 'passive, passive with a trigger, buff from using the focus ability, alternate use for 5 button, and effect of using the ability' i understand your use of simis and other things, but though it's a lot easier internally when you're designing to give names like that, i think it'd be easier if you just broke it down like that

Thanks!

And I understand your point. However I coined "Simis" to avoid repeating "mini active" or some synonymes. I'll try to work in an extra super simple sentence, but I really was under the impression that the framework section and the infographic broke down the progression clearly enough.

[mishli]

ok, first i wanna give you kudos for spending this much time thinking through a system this in depth and varied. personally i have at least passing familliarity with 4/5 schools, and wanted to give you my input.

 

first, i wanna clarify, you said it's (eventually possible) to have every single ability in the trees, except only 1 simi at a time

second. and that the focus abilities should be equated to a warframe ability (i don't agree with this, but will be commenting based on that understanding), even though your comment about it being a 'final hour'/last ditch ability kind of refutes this, along with your statement that some of your changes 'may seem to verged on the 'overpowered' at times'

 

Also i'm going to be using numbers assuming the traits have been maxed out**

 

i agree with a good amount of what you said,  

 

1. unreliable conditional passives don't feel very good

2. some of the actives don't feel very useful

3. the cc based abilities do feel kind of niche, since someone like vaubahn can do it for free.

4. the idea of basic automatic passives is a nice idea, letting the stronger ones still remain active only after the ability has been used

 

disagree with

 

1. at least 1-2 of the abilities are really nice to use, the madurai laser is very satisfying to destroy an entire room with

2. though some of the abilities are kinda bad, it is still worth mentioning that these abilities let you break standard frame based stereotypes, such as giving trinity aoe clear or giving nova healing utility. they may not be amazing abilities, but the option for a volt to aoe cc like a vaubahn is really useful in the right circumstances. in reguards to the focus abilities, you've got 2 big options, either chose one to increase your strengths (more armor/energy/cc) or cover your weaknessess (ability to heal yourself, grant a damage frame cc)

3. i don't think that the focus abilities should really be equated to warframe abilities. they are different and (potentially) valuable enough that i think they should be a bit more valuable than warframe abilities. this suits the "final hour" comment you made much better if they were less spammable and had more weight to their use. no warframe ability really has a cooldown except to reapply their effect, and with these having roughly 2-3 minute cooldowns, that should be weighted in much more valuably

4. though some passive stats are kind of meh, the madurai ability to give +30% of (basically) all physical damage is not to be made light of. that's basically 2 additional levels in serration for non elements permanently for all weapons.

5. i honestly don't think we should be able to maintain free movement during the focus ability animation, the idea is that they are powerful enough you need to stop to use them, i do agree not being a sitting duck after using one would be nice, even the ward of protection takes 1-3 seconds to show up and you can actually go down before it starts protecting you

 

As to the general question, i would much rather have the higher cooldown that you can work down on your own, potentially getting it lower with more effort.

 

one thing to consider, i'm sure you know this, but want to throw it out there, there has to be a compromise between power and availability. if you intend it to be possible for players to get every passive ability listed, then they either need to not be very strong, or cost such a large amount of focus that only no life endgame players will be able to get all of them. the cooldown increases are at least somewhat useful for this, but with the ability of a 'simi' to be used when your ability is on cooldown, that severely mitigates some of the impact from the higher cooldown.

 

Overall want to comment on the Simi idea... this is honestly really interesting.. it really grants all focus users another option when choosing their focus, and more utility/options/cohesion with the root idea of the focus tree during missions. One thing you didn't comment on, casting time? Some of these abilities would be straight up annoying if they broke your game flow to use a 1 second casting time. What about the toggles? do they just happen, or have animations like equinox? also, what about their costs? some of the options you have are far too powerful to not have any energy/resource cost at all, like blossom. the only reason the focus abilities don't cost anything is because they have a very long cooldown, but you don't comment on cooldown or cost for them

 

ok, first to the naramon changes: just want to question, i'm not a swordsman myself, but most melee weapon users i see build mostly for crit or one specific element. the added elemental weakness is a cool idea, but it feels like it doesn't benefit most melee users as much, and with this being one of the abilities that doesn't CC/kill targets. I feel like that doesn't help  melee users much.

 

Equalizer: this is interesting, does at least give melee users a chance to survive better when wading into a hoard of confused enemies

 

Edge's dance: this feels flat out broken, ESPECIALLY as a teir 1 passive. up to 25 combo per hit? with bonus damage ontop of that? if this was at the end of the tree, I might not think it so bad, but so early. I think it would be more balanced if it gave combo counter + melee strike. so if you have a counter of 5, a single hit grants 1 for the hit +5. then bonus damage = to 3% of the combo counter. so a combo counter of 100 would give you 3% bonus damage. This doesn't sound like that much, but don't forget, now that we can extend combo counter to 15 seconds, the higher you get the counter, the more damage you deal. This would leave low level/easy fights without seeing much difference, but endgame when you're seeing a combo counter of > 1000, you'd be doing 30% bonus damage or more when combined with other abilities. 
edit: For some reason I fail at reading and didn't realize this ability reduced the duration on the combo bonus, which makes it quite a bit more balanced, but you can still get close to an 8 second duration with the new body count mod, so I think it's still too powerful.

Gauntlet: I think this is straight up gold. Gives a nice idea of 'dueling' to the melee-er. Cast it once, kill the target, then hunt for your next dueling target.

 

Thirst: It's hard for me to comment on this one, but compared to what you did about edge's dance. it feels rather weak in comparison. max of 10% of your hp per second (killing you in 10 seconds) for 5% bonus damage, when you could just get a 100 combo stack in 2 hits while channeling   and get 80% bonus damage feels rather weak in comparison. If this is designed to be used with life strike to stay alive, you're then just burning energy for hp, and it feels like it's just requiring an extra mod slot to work.

 

Self awareness: It took me a while to  figure this one out, It's hard to comment exactly on the balance of the numbers. It's a cool idea, but feels kind of sub par for a final reward for a melee focused tree. Though i do like the idea of getting around 30% extra elemental resists without burning mods. But that would also require you to hit a target with it, for example, hit armor and get corrosive resistance, but how often would this actually be useful, because you'd have to hit a target weak to fire and then be hit by fire? OR does this increase all resists by a base amount?

 

MASTER TREE:

Insidious: this is beautiful, at least in concept. It's a way to reward players for codex entries without being super broken, but if i'm reading this correctly, wouldn't that make them do bonus damage to tenno? also if you're going to confuse an entire room, why would they NOT do bonus damage to other confused enemies?

 

Sunder: this is one of those ones that think the math is confusing people. It's a cool idea and i like that the first hit on a target multiplies elemental damage, but how long does the defensive part last?  and does it affect the target or tenno? cool idea for teir 1

 

Forbidden technique: no... please God almighty no... again, this is a really cool idea, with the ability for spells to crit, but if you combined the new mod that stacks crit chance with combo counter, then added together all the crit chance on your weapons? you're easily looking at a 500+ crit chance on your abilities, this would either kill any aoe caster instantly, or make any and all healers want to kill themselves. Even with the /2 at the end, that's still pushing almost a 300% crit chance for casters. Again, great idea to let abilities crit, but either so powerful that you'd never have a reason to even use the focus ability itself, or so dangerous it's not even worth using. This is so powerful you should just replace the focus active with this and not have a simi, so you have a 3 minute ~ cooldown between ABSOLUTE DESTRUCTION OF EVERYTHING AS WE KNOW IT. i feel like this would go better in madurai just for sheer damage stuff. The idea that this would be available only when your focus WASNT is simply too powerful to even think about, you'd never want to use the focus at all.

side note- how exactly would crits work? only on damage? or would it multiply intensity?

 

Blossom: I'm pretty sure i'm reading this wrong, but as long as a new enemy is within 14 meters, he's drawn in and then becomes another luring trap? it's not clear if the works only on a living or dead enemy (you say 'his corpse') and though it only lures unalerted enemies, it snares every nearby enemy (which would alert them) and then they also turn into snares? that's just too much cc for free. 

 

Reposition: this is a cool idea, and it's obviously supposed to combo with forbidden technique, but on it's own i think it's a fun idea that you 'store up' some crit percentage the more you move around, promotes the tactical movement bit

 

MASTER tree

 

opportunist: not quite clear, does it grant bonus crit for allies while you're channeling? or bonus crit on targets that have been confused?

 

cruelty: you've got a collective crit thing going with a little bit of help from each tree, cool idea, just curious how well it 'is affected by with crit stats'

 

Feint: this one i think would be really fun to play around with and offers interesting utility, not much else to say, i super would have fun with it.

 

Prophecy: Are the marks random? overall i think this would be modestly balanced if it was

 

shadow step: this is actually toned down, which suprises me, but 10s is a really long time for free invis when you can guarantee crits

 

obviously my opinion isn't completely right, and i give you kudos for the amount of work you put into this, i'd be interested to help/see what you've got planned for the other ones

Edited February 13, 2016 by mishli

[Kinperor]

ok, first i wanna give you kudos for spending this much time thinking through a system this in depth and varied. personally i have at least passing familliarity with 4/5 schools, and wanted to give you my input.

 

first, i wanna clarify, you said it's (eventually possible) to have every single ability in the trees, except only 1 simi at a time

second. and that the focus abilities should be equated to a warframe ability (i don't agree with this, but will be commenting based on that understanding), even though your comment about it being a 'final hour'/last ditch ability kind of refutes this, along with your statement that some of your changes 'may seem to verged on the 'overpowered' at times'

 

1) This is correct, I designed most trees while thinking about how everything would work together. Which, really, is functionally the same as what we have now but the perks are new.

2) What I understand of your statement: "[You think I said] Focus abilities should be brought in line with warframe abilities". That is not my stance, to the contrary I kept the current powers and added bonus stat for using the powers. My stance was that the Focus powers were being compared with Warframe abilities, and they couldn't compete in term of convenience. The bonus stats are meant to dig a dredge between the two.

 

 

 

Also i'm going to be using numbers assuming the traits have been maxed out**

 

i agree with a good amount of what you said,  

 

1. unreliable conditional passives don't feel very good

2. some of the actives don't feel very useful

3. the cc based abilities do feel kind of niche, since someone like vaubahn can do it for free.

4. the idea of basic automatic passives is a nice idea, letting the stronger ones still remain active only after the ability has been used

 

 So far so good.

 

 

disagree with

 

1. at least 1-2 of the abilities are really nice to use, the madurai laser is very satisfying to destroy an entire room with

2. though some of the abilities are kinda bad, it is still worth mentioning that these abilities let you break standard frame based stereotypes, such as giving trinity aoe clear or giving nova healing utility. they may not be amazing abilities, but the option for a volt to aoe cc like a vaubahn is really useful in the right circumstances. in reguards to the focus abilities, you've got 2 big options, either chose one to increase your strengths (more armor/energy/cc) or cover your weaknessess (ability to heal yourself, grant a damage frame cc)

3. i don't think that the focus abilities should really be equated to warframe abilities. they are different and (potentially) valuable enough that i think they should be a bit more valuable than warframe abilities. this suits the "final hour" comment you made much better if they were less spammable and had more weight to their use. no warframe ability really has a cooldown except to reapply their effect, and with these having roughly 2-3 minute cooldowns, that should be weighted in much more valuably

4. though some passive stats are kind of meh, the madurai ability to give +30% of (basically) all physical damage is not to be made light of. that's basically 2 additional levels in serration for non elements permanently for all weapons.

5. i honestly don't think we should be able to maintain free movement during the focus ability animation, the idea is that they are powerful enough you need to stop to use them, i do agree not being a sitting duck after using one would be nice, even the ward of protection takes 1-3 seconds to show up and you can actually go down before it starts protecting you

 

You lose me here.

 

1) I didn't take a hard stance on Madurai's active or most other actives. Conceptually I think they're fine for the most part but need a little bit of help.

2) Again I don't take a hard stance against actives in general, I don't see what you're disagreeing over.

3) I'm not sure what you're disagreeing with. I mentioned above I think they need to be differentiated from Warframe abilities, because comparisons with those isn't to the advantage of Focus.

4) What of it? For one thing it actually isn't like Serration mechanically, and for another I specifically didn't want to write a detailed review of each perks that currently exist. With that said, the passives you speak of has been introduced in the "I am Fire" rework as a passive effect to Phoenix Gaze.

5) I'm not sure who you're talking to at this point, I haven't really taken a hard stance on mobility.

 

 

one thing to consider, i'm sure you know this, but want to throw it out there, there has to be a compromise between power and availability. if you intend it to be possible for players to get every passive ability listed, then they either need to not be very strong, or cost such a large amount of focus that only no life endgame players will be able to get all of them. the cooldown increases are at least somewhat useful for this, but with the ability of a 'simi' to be used when your ability is on cooldown, that severely mitigates some of the impact from the higher cooldown.

 

Overall want to comment on the Simi idea... this is honestly really interesting.. it really grants all focus users another option when choosing their focus, and more utility/options/cohesion with the root idea of the focus tree during missions. One thing you didn't comment on, casting time? Some of these abilities would be straight up annoying if they broke your game flow to use a 1 second casting time. What about the toggles? do they just happen, or have animations like equinox? also, what about their costs? some of the options you have are far too powerful to not have any energy/resource cost at all, like blossom. the only reason the focus abilities don't cost anything is because they have a very long cooldown, but you don't comment on cooldown or cost for them

 

I worked off the assumption that a few factors would gate the 100% completion of the trees behind a soft limit and players would prioritize what he prefers and eventually crawl his way toward 100% without getting really close. Said factors would be: Focus point cost, Focus pool tax, disinterest for a few perks (which is fine) and escalating cooldown on the main ability. All of these can be adjusted to make it ever harder to actually hit 100% of a path (which is impossible because of the Simis anyway).

 

You have to understand that I didn't want to write a Balance Thesaurus for an hypothetical concept. Yes, Simis require a proper balance, but as it happens, I have found that adding intricate balance details was really pushing my dedication to this project. On the Zenurik thread, I made the following comment about Cooldowns in the "I am Path" reworks:

 

Cooldowns really had my hamsters spinning for quite a while. I feel that if the Focus actives are to have scaling abilities, they shouldn't be spamable. In theory, it's great for letting the player get stronger, but I didn't want the game to revolve around spamming ONE ability all the time as much as possible. Focus is a complement, not a replacement.

 

I had some wacky early drafts that toyed with cooldowns. For instance the Simis originally accelerated the cooldown of the main active, which is to say you could spam Simis and use your main active earlier. I thought the idea sounded great and revolutionary until I realized this turned Focus into a Skinner's Box with Simis as a button and main actives as reward. I thought about doing the opposite (Simis slowing the cooldown of the main active), but didn't include it ultimately because I felt it was punishing the player for using the Simis by making it even harder to use the main ability (which is the opposite of my objective here).

 

I thought about making Madurai refresh it's cooldown with every kills using Phoenix Gaze too. While I can't really test it, I came to the conclusion that players would just spend as much time as possible in Phoenix Gaze. Don't get me wrong, some people would enjoy that, but again, Focus should be a complement to the playstyle, not a replacement.

 

 

 

ok, first to the naramon changes: just want to question, i'm not a swordsman myself, but most melee weapon users i see build mostly for crit or one specific element. the added elemental weakness is a cool idea, but it feels like it doesn't benefit most melee users as much, and with this being one of the abilities that doesn't CC/kill targets. I feel like that doesn't help  melee users much.

 

Equalizer: this is interesting, does at least give melee users a chance to survive better when wading into a hoard of confused enemies

 

Edge's dance: this feels flat out broken, ESPECIALLY as a teir 1 passive. up to 25 combo per hit? with bonus damage ontop of that? if this was at the end of the tree, I might not think it so bad, but so early. I think it would be more balanced if it gave combo counter + melee strike. so if you have a counter of 5, a single hit grants 1 for the hit +5. then bonus damage = to 3% of the combo counter. so a combo counter of 100 would give you 3% bonus damage. This doesn't sound like that much, but don't forget, now that we can extend combo counter to 15 seconds, the higher you get the counter, the more damage you deal. This would leave low level/easy fights without seeing much difference, but endgame when you're seeing a combo counter of > 1000, you'd be doing 30% bonus damage or more when combined with other abilities. 

edit: For some reason I fail at reading and didn't realize this ability reduced the duration on the combo bonus, which makes it quite a bit more balanced, but you can still get close to an 8 second duration with the new body count mod, so I think it's still too powerful.

Gauntlet: I think this is straight up gold. Gives a nice idea of 'dueling' to the melee-er. Cast it once, kill the target, then hunt for your next dueling target.

 

Thirst: It's hard for me to comment on this one, but compared to what you did about edge's dance. it feels rather weak in comparison. max of 10% of your hp per second (killing you in 10 seconds) for 5% bonus damage, when you could just get a 100 combo stack in 2 hits while channeling   and get 80% bonus damage feels rather weak in comparison. If this is designed to be used with life strike to stay alive, you're then just burning energy for hp, and it feels like it's just requiring an extra mod slot to work.

 

Self awareness: It took me a while to  figure this one out, It's hard to comment exactly on the balance of the numbers. It's a cool idea, but feels kind of sub par for a final reward for a melee focused tree. Though i do like the idea of getting around 30% extra elemental resists without burning mods. But that would also require you to hit a target with it, for example, hit armor and get corrosive resistance, but how often would this actually be useful, because you'd have to hit a target weak to fire and then be hit by fire? OR does this increase all resists by a base amount?

 

The elemental debuff is purposefully made to support a player spreading his elements across his weapons, swapping them if it is relevant. It also isn't targeted ONLY at melee users, we felt a tree purely focused on melee crit'ing wasn't particularly interesting, especially when Madurai also supports melee (albeit a lot less). I'd also like to point out that IPS is counted as an element, and as such any enemy weak to an IPS stat will feel the buff of Mind Spike.

 

Funny thing about equalizer is I originally meant to have it lower the enemy's damage to that of the caster. Then I remembered that our damage output is actually crazy high...

 

The only balancing component to the broken mess that is Edge's Dance is the combo debuff. I didn't have the space to write it, but numbers are tentative for this ability, it's really easy to be stupid broken, but I didn't want to alienate slower weapons, so I tried to keep the duration debuff reasonable enough that you can use a hammer combo or some such without losing all your progress.

 

Gauntlet is honestly one of my favorite concept in general, not much to add.

 

Thirst's damage boost is a bonus given every time you kill an enemy when the toggle is active (and you are losing health). The idea is you trade the safety from Gauntlet for the potential damage of Thirst. See what I wrote in my design comment in this very thread for more information:

 

Thirst isn't an overly complicated Simis, but we have spent a great deal of time considering how to implement the mechanic. We didn't want to force the player to spam “5” to constantly execute small fries (without mentioning the inconvenience of using a melee with low damage but fast attack), neither did we want a constant uptime on the ability to self-buff melee damage. We settled for a toggle ability that drained health. We are certain the Simis will be broken with Life Strike, but we think the loss of utility and added health drain might compensate. If it isn't the case, we believe an easy balance pass would be to deactivate regen during the toggle. One has to keep in mind, the intent isn't to give constant infinite scaling, it is to give windows of opportunity to increase damage.

 

Self-awareness is a mess to explain, honestly. To be frank, the elemental damage buff concept is a pain to describe, so I understand how you might struggle to understand. How Self-awareness work is that your elemental resistances are enhanced with a percentage of your Mind Spike passive, and your vulnerabilities are decreased. For example, if Mind Spike's bonus is 10%, it will increase your resistance to slash damage by 10% and reduce your radiation vulnerabilities by 10%, making you a little bit more resistant. This is a fancy defense perk carefully crafted to not compete too much with Unairu.

 

 

MASTER TREE:

Insidious: this is beautiful, at least in concept. It's a way to reward players for codex entries without being super broken, but if i'm reading this correctly, wouldn't that make them do bonus damage to tenno? also if you're going to confuse an entire room, why would they NOT do bonus damage to other confused enemies?

 

Sunder: this is one of those ones that think the math is confusing people. It's a cool idea and i like that the first hit on a target multiplies elemental damage, but how long does the defensive part last?  and does it affect the target or tenno? cool idea for teir 1

 

Forbidden technique: no... please God almighty no... again, this is a really cool idea, with the ability for spells to crit, but if you combined the new mod that stacks crit chance with combo counter, then added together all the crit chance on your weapons? you're easily looking at a 500+ crit chance on your abilities, this would either kill any aoe caster instantly, or make any and all healers want to kill themselves. Even with the /2 at the end, that's still pushing almost a 300% crit chance for casters. Again, great idea to let abilities crit, but either so powerful that you'd never have a reason to even use the focus ability itself, or so dangerous it's not even worth using. This is so powerful you should just replace the focus active with this and not have a simi, so you have a 3 minute ~ cooldown between ABSOLUTE DESTRUCTION OF EVERYTHING AS WE KNOW IT. i feel like this would go better in madurai just for sheer damage stuff. The idea that this would be available only when your focus WASNT is simply too powerful to even think about, you'd never want to use the focus at all.

side note- how exactly would crits work? only on damage? or would it multiply intensity?

 

Blossom: I'm pretty sure i'm reading this wrong, but as long as a new enemy is within 14 meters, he's drawn in and then becomes another luring trap? it's not clear if the works only on a living or dead enemy (you say 'his corpse') and though it only lures unalerted enemies, it snares every nearby enemy (which would alert them) and then they also turn into snares? that's just too much cc for free. 

 

Reposition: this is a cool idea, and it's obviously supposed to combo with forbidden technique, but on it's own i think it's a fun idea that you 'store up' some crit percentage the more you move around, promotes the tactical movement bit

 

MASTER tree

 

opportunist: not quite clear, does it grant bonus crit for allies while you're channeling? or bonus crit on targets that have been confused?

 

cruelty: you've got a collective crit thing going with a little bit of help from each tree, cool idea, just curious how well it 'is affected by with crit stats'

 

Feint: this one i think would be really fun to play around with and offers interesting utility, not much else to say, i super would have fun with it.

 

Prophecy: Are the marks random? overall i think this would be modestly balanced if it was

 

shadow step: this is actually toned down, which suprises me, but 10s is a really long time for free invis when you can guarantee crits

 

obviously my opinion isn't completely right, and i give you kudos for the amount of work you put into this, i'd be interested to help/see what you've got planned for the other ones

 

The wording could be misleading, but it's only meant to target enemy unit. Toward the final edit to Naramon, I started playing with the idea that the Tactician Path would want to turn the enemies against each other, and keep the chaos of Mind Spike up as long as possible, which means no killing of the confused units. If these kills each other, the chaos is gone and Naramon cannot thrive in the infighting.

 

Sunder was a pain to break down in words, like Self-awareness. Basically the enemies get ALL the modified value for the FIRST shot on them. This is meant to be a sniper that encourages swapping weapons for maximal elemental efficiency. Or shoot again after the first shot I guess.

 

Forbidden technique: I fail to see the issue. The abilities would get a second resource requirement (health) and would require a specific build. Hypothetically speaking, this can be balanced by increasing the health cost, energy cost or the stat divider. To answer your question, it would only affect damage.

 

Honestly really not sure what to do with Blossom. It's meant to be a trap that lures enemies in and immobilize them. In my mind, the single biggest balancing factor is that you are choosing Blossom instead of another Simis. Again, numbers can be changed to balance, they aren't set in stone.

 

Reposition: Funny you mention forbidden technique, it really didn't cross my mind when iterating this perk.

 

Opportunist: Only buff the caster with critical strike chance when any enemies are under the effect of Mind Spike. Goes great with the concept of "continuous chaos" I mentioned.

 

Cruelty: Crit was a overarching theme yes. Critical stats are applied to bleed DOT as if they were bullets fired by the same gun (or melee hit).

 

Prophecy: Yes, they're random within the Simis' range.

 

Shadow Step: This perk bothers me. It really needs to be short enough that you need constant aggression to keep up, but long enough that you can reach other target. It is a balance act.

 

 

Glad you liked it enough to actually post. I'm not really looking for help since Unairu and Vazarin are the last Paths for me to post, and their concepts are almost finalized. I just need to adjust stuff here and there.

Edited February 13, 2016 by Kinperor

[mishli]

Thanks!

And I understand your point. However I coined "Simis" to avoid repeating "mini active" or some synonymes. I'll try to work in an extra super simple sentence, but I really was under the impression that the framework section and the infographic broke down the progression clearly enough.

one other thing, which isn't bad, but when some abilities are "take xxx percent of this other thing, and then do xx percent of this thing combined with that thing" even when the end result isn't that complicated, people are scared of math like that, lol. took me a decent bit of going back and forth to understand exactly how some of the abilities work, and even then i only kinda get the general idea. most of the abilities in warframe, and the focus trees, are simply "+30% of this" or "ten seconds of that" you've got "this move gives percent of this" and then another move  "which does more percent of that, and also does this percent with another part of that other thing"

again, even if the end result isn't that complicated, really hard to read that sometimes

[Kinperor]

one other thing, which isn't bad, but when some abilities are "take xxx percent of this other thing, and then do xx percent of this thing combined with that thing" even when the end result isn't that complicated, people are scared of math like that, lol. took me a decent bit of going back and forth to understand exactly how some of the abilities work, and even then i only kinda get the general idea. most of the abilities in warframe, and the focus trees, are simply "+30% of this" or "ten seconds of that" you've got "this move gives percent of this" and then another move  "which does more percent of that, and also does this percent with another part of that other thing"

again, even if the end result isn't that complicated, really hard to read that sometimes

 

By design these definitions are dense in information, which understandably can be hard to absorb.

 

With this in mind I am considering a wrap-up thread with all the Paths that features a different presentation format. This will have to wait a week at the very minimum.

[-NR-Dabears]

There should really be some more people paying attention to this post.

[Kinperor]

There should really be some more people paying attention to this post.

 

There's only so much that can come from bumps.

[Maugre]

I don't care what happens, as long as my precious bonus affinity on melee kills doesn't leave me.

[Kinperor]

7 hours ago, Maugre said:

I don't care what happens, as long as my precious bonus affinity on melee kills doesn't leave me.

Mhh, is this perk so important to you? Assuming you read the Tracks, would you be ready to trade any of those passives I suggest for more affinity? 

Edited February 23, 2016 by Kinperor

[Feuershark]

Between "My name is Groot" or a joke on morning wood, I can't decide ...

[Maugre]

5 hours ago, Kinperor said:

Mhh, is this perk so important to you? Assuming you read the Tracks, would you be ready to trade any of those passives I suggest for more affinity? 

Affinity is love, affinity is life.

Though I do enjoy the invisibility on crit quite a bit.