Bursa Poll

[SnuggleBuckets]

Made a simple poll asking about how your playing habits have changed since the addition of Bursas, just curious how the general impressions of various players from veterans to novices and casuals are.
http://strawpoll.me/6894342

[RafaelFuchs]

More of a long term player here and I find them refreshing. The only one that may need some tweaking would be the isolators, but that's just nitpicking. I am not a fan of the prolonged knockdown, but it's not game-breaking or annoying enough to bother me. 

[Jukantos]

I don't know man. I hate nullifiers to a degree that i had almost stopped playing Corpus missions completely. Not because i think everything should be mowed down with abilities all the time, but because i like this game's gunplay and being utterly unable to kill them with non-explosive weapons (ESPECIALLY with bows) is just repelling to me.

 

Most of the time, i now play vs Corrupted for obvious reasons, or vs Infested (because of their reward pools in Dragon Key missions and in the keyfarm on Pluto Dark Sector Excavation).

 

I might go after some bursas to grab some of those rare stances. I see people buying them for ~130p each, i want a piece of that

[Herosupport]

the Bursa's abilities need a cool down of at least 3 seconds to remove the annoying factor from them and a restriction of no more then one of each out at a time for 2 reasons 1# has they are now they can spawn so fast the mission becomes unplayable. 2# to save players computer resources and to play the game at a decent FPS.

[SnuggleBuckets]

Thanks for the constructive comments!

My own opinion is that they should be more closely modelled after the Manics & juggernauts; limited amount spawning per mission, limited to higher ranked planets and/or sectors. Although I've spent hundreds of hours now in the game, I'm still a rather casual novice player with limited gear, and I don't currently own any silver bullets in my arsenal against Bursas.

But people who like a challenge should still be possible to seek those out, though I doubt veterans seek out challenges on low-to-mid-level corpus planets like Venus, Mars or Jupiter (not counting Events, Sorties and Alerts), so I think it would be a win-win for novices and veterans alike if those planets wouldn't have Bursas, or at the very least scaled down versions of them.

[Hellmaker2004]

Il rather have Maniacs and Juggernauts be reconfigured so they can spawn more often. They are a threat that put pressure on the player. Don't want to spawn the Juggernaut. Stop killing for a while, don't want Bursa's don't trigger the alarm. If anything i feel sad after two Juggernaut screams have appeared as i know it will not happen again. Same with maniac.

 

Both Maniac and Bursa should trigger when a alarm has been on for too long, and keep spawning at a decent speed to add pressure to the Tenno to shut the alarm off. Doing so in combat may be hard, but it is not impossible. Changing this will both add a easier way to get the drops that Maniac and Bursa have, and add a pressure when fighting the infested as well. But there should definitely be a minimum time for Juggernaut screams for instance. Or a maximum Maniac / Bursa's active at one given time and a short timer before the respawn. But as long as the Alarm sounds. The pressure from Maniac and Bursa's should keep coming.

 

Now for low levels, yes they may need something to make them easier to new players. Facing a Bursa for the first time is as i understand quite hard. Not sure how new players are about Maniac tough. But changing there damage values and health on lower levels so new players will learn and understand that sounding the alarm and keeping it going will have consequences.

[-CdG-Zilchy]

^ Agreed with all of this. They're great to have in game and make a player actually think about what they're doing during mission, rather than roflstomping their way through it without consequence. Their threat will make new and old players, into smarter, more aware players.

[Alicornus]

I'm more on the casual side of things. What I've observed: When I started playing some time ago, I actually liked fighting Corpus because they encouraged a more tactical approach unless you have the equipment to nuke everything out of existence no matter what. Later on with better equipment they became less and less of an issue, but seeing new enemy types as I progressed kept things interesting enough to continue fighting them.

The Bursas changed things entirely. Try the Kiliken defense mission on Venus, a beginner planet, and see what happens to your average pick up group when the Bursas appear at wave 15. What happens then is neither funny nor ok and you'll be alone after wave 15. Pugs have simply stopped playing beyond that wave on this mission, rendering one of the most accessible farming spots for Oxium almost useless unless you have gear that makes much better farming spots more attractive anyway.

Bursas as they are now are not a challenge, they are simply out of touch with the usual difficulty curve of normal Corpus missions and that's a balance problem that has yet to be adressed by the developer.

[DelialFallen]

Bursas are fun. 

[Tukka]

As a new player, bursas have basically killed my will to try to continue progressing through the star chart. I just aborted a Europa defend mission (for something like the fourth time in a row) where the sole remaining enemy was a denial bursa that has full health. I had no ammo left on either of my weapons. The problem was that it turned too fast to make getting sustained clear shots at its backside possible, particularly when combined with its stomping, blinding and slowing effect. It seems that if I wanted to have a prayer of killing one of these I'd have to 1. clear out all other enemies, 2. try to lure it to a relatively unobstructed spot, 3. have excellent timing with my jumps and strafing while aiming well with my gun, and perform at that level for a solid two minutes.

This is simply far too onerous of a process for a standard mission. I mean, why should a normal Defend or Exterminate mission involve killing enemies that can be significantly more challenging than bosses? It makes no sense to me.

Note that I was able to kill an Isolator Bursa without too much difficulty after watching a video on fighting bursas. They did force me to abort a few missions before that, though.

I imagine that if I were a veteran/well-geared player these enemies might provide a fun change of pace and something cool to farm. For me they're mainly just a source of massive frustration. I'd like to see some adjustment made. Either make killing them optional in standard missions, or debuff their health a bit combined with preventing them from spawning when one is already on the map. Some dialogue from Lotus with clues on how to fight them would not go amiss either. It's one thing to need to refer to a wiki to know what to craft between missions, it's another thing to get completely crushed in a mission because you have no information on how to fight a challenging enemy.

Edited February 24, 2016 by Tukka

[IggySnow]

They NEED to have spawn restrictions. maybe based on enemy level.

I was in a sortie the other day, exterminate mission, alarms weren't going off but there were still 4-5 spawning almost every 30 seconds. Made the mission literally impossible because in the time it took to kill the bursa's more had spawned which made the enemy counter continue to go up and up.

[Cradicias]

1 hour ago, HerpDerpy said:

They NEED to have spawn restrictions. maybe based on enemy level.

I was in a sortie the other day, exterminate mission, alarms weren't going off but there were still 4-5 spawning almost every 30 seconds. Made the mission literally impossible because in the time it took to kill the bursa's more had spawned which made the enemy counter continue to go up and up.

^This. They need to be limited in their spawning and spawn times. It's ridiculous trying to clear a room of upwards of 10 Bursa. It's just a constant stream knockdowns and team wipes from excess damage coming in from far too many sources on a Sortie.

[Ikusias]

Bursas were interesting in their original event, and were actually minibosses, their use as regular units is definitely wrong: we have more than enough ability stopping units: corpus have 12-20 different variants of units that can shut down all or most of a warframe abilities, focus powers included.

Let's see: nullifiers, nullifier eximus, the 3 different types of "modular" units, (at least stop only a pair of abilities at a time and have no jely shield), the new units introduced in the last tactical alert, one of the bursa types with a bad habit of spamming abilities continuously...

A bit too many NERF units, seriously, especially considering that most of them can spawn together at the same time or how broken are nullifierswith scaling:

have you ever found yourself trying to use any ability with 2 or more nullifiers in a medium tile covering a blob of other units? how much fun did you have? not much i believe.

And they keep adding more nullifier units to the game...

Returning to bursa and "single spawn" miniboss units: they need balancing, both in numbers and in frequency of spawn, why? let me explain:

- Grineer Manic: challenging at low levels, nicely designed and is now more or less balanced, but it's total invulnerability when invisible needs to go: Loki, Ash and Ivara don't become invulnerable while invisible, so makes no sense that an inferior copy made by grineer hack job scientists is.

Only problems with the manic? He's damn shy, you don't meet him most of the time and has a drop table worse than that of the stalker: 23 encounters and takedowns and the nuisance didn't drop anything - considering the psicopath is now the only source for ash parts, we currently have a prime that is easier to obtain than it's regular counterpart!

Manics could very well spawn in groups proportionally to the level of the mission, but they need to lose any invulnerability, it's a cheap trick DE developers are using a bit too much to add "challenge" to enemies.

- Juggernauth: pathetic - damage reduction and status invulnerabilityes plus phases of total damage invulnerability and damage cap per shot, are we missing anything else? - the epitome of lazy programming and design.

The juggernauth behemoth was epic as an event boss, it's chinese copies are insulting, small, stupid and a cheap shot to the players: you are killing too many infested? take this all units in the map gain a pair of levels in bloodthirstiness just for you, boring and cheap. just flush the poor abortion of an infested down the drain and give us back the behemoth as an end of mission event, an optional miniboss or a sabotage objective, anything else is better than this pint sized runt of an abomination.

So: give us back the behemoth and make the beast spawn in appropriate tiles, the currently available pokemon is ridiculous: you had to resize it how many times to make it viable?? it's not a challenge, it's a ball of numbers glued together by an excess of plot armor

- Bursa: damn interesting and in theme with corpus love for proxies - do something interesting with them!

It's allready been seen with the Divine Will tactical alert that we hate when more of them spawn at the same time and that their excessive abuse of abilities is quite grating on nerves, they have simpli too good a synergy with the rest of the pack and if nullifiers enter the equation the result is utterly broken.

The units themselves, taken individually are a nice challenge but need balancing, in particular if they are totally invulnerable from the front (urgh again this s::::t) they mustn't be able to turn instantly in place to protect their back or the entire gimnick becames a trolling towards the players, again i state my loathe tovards invulnerability - it shouldn't be a thing, period, nothing is more irritating than emptiing a magazine in a unit and seeing only 0es.

Considering what was done with the fusion moas, it would be cool if bursas become "single spawn" units akin to minibossse with multiple destroyable body sections, so that we can decide to dismantle them tactically: a leg, the bursa can't run or turn fastly, the shield supports? bye bye frontal barricade, the weapon? bye bye powers or attack and so on.

Also, even considered letting the other regular corpus units use the bursa as actual cover or as a mobile barricade/riot shield? just the image of a double row of crewmen huddled behind an advancing bursa waiting for the moment the enemies are reloading to rush out and overwhelm  them is epic (pretty much like the first tanks were used to offer protection to the advance of infantry during the wars)

Edited February 24, 2016 by Ikusias
fixed typos

[KnightCole]

I have all but quit playing against Corpus.  I occasionally do it when im not paying attention to an alert, but otherwise....ive stopped.

 

Bursas need to be slower to turn when they are in shield mode.  Its goddamn annoying fighting those Isolator Bursas the most.  They drain all your power, they shield, they KD, they stun, they are just general bullS#&$. 

 

I am ok with their abilities, but they have 0 cool down on them and dont seem to have any energy pool, which honestly, they should have an energy pool just like us.  Ofc, they do eventually just seem to stop and sit there.....ofc this was after I ran around a corpus ship for like 30 minutes kiting one, then 2 more show up.....

 

Yeah, Bursas do to much atm...

[-CdG-Zilchy]

7 hours ago, Tukka said:

As a new player, bursas have basically killed my will to try to continue progressing through the star chart. I just aborted a Europa defend mission (for something like the fourth time in a row) where the sole remaining enemy is an denial bursa that has full health. I had no ammo left on either of my weapons. The problem is that it turns too fast to make getting sustained clear shots at its backside possible, particularly when combined with its stomping, blinding and slowing energy bars. It seems that if I wanted to have a prayer of killing one of these I'd have to 1. clear out all other enemies, 2. try to lure it to a relatively unobstructed spot, 3. have excellent timing with my jumps and strafing while aiming well with my gun, and perform at that level for a solid two minutes.

This is simply far too onerous a process for a standard mission. I mean, why should a normal Defend or Exterminate mission involve killing enemies that can be significantly more challenging than bosses? It makes no sense to me.

Out of curiosity, what frame and weapon were you using? If you're playing Europa you should be capable at that point both weapon and frame-wise.

[Neo3602]

Honestly the main thing that annoys me about them is that their knockdown isn't affected by handspring which makes you get up from knockdowns faster

[Tukka]

6 hours ago, Zilchy said:

Out of curiosity, what frame and weapon were you using? If you're playing Europa you should be capable at that point both weapon and frame-wise.

Rhino, Sobek, Bolto, Galatine -- all of which are high-ranked and modded to near capacity, though I am using a lot filler mods and haven't applied any forma or orokin reactors.

None of the other enemies encountered give me any serious problems, just the bursas and mainly just the denial bursa.

It may be the case that if I did some research I could get some better stuff and refine the build substantially, but right now I don't feel like diving into the wiki for hours and crunching numbers, or committing all of my resources to a specific build. My plan was to put that off until I hit a wall with regard to star chart progression -- which has happened, but only because of the bursas.

[-CdG-Zilchy]

7 hours ago, Tukka said:

Rhino, Sobek, Bolto, Galatine -- all of which are high-ranked and modded to near capacity, though I am using a lot filler mods and haven't applied any forma or orokin reactors.

None of the other enemies encountered give me any serious problems, just the bursas and mainly just the denial bursa.

It may be the case that if I did some research I could get some better stuff and refine the build substantially, but right now I don't feel like diving into the wiki for hours and crunching numbers, or committing all of my resources to a specific build. My plan was to put that off until I hit a wall with regard to star chart progression -- which has happened, but only because of the bursas.

Nevermind the research, have you tried using your frame's abilities? Just for kicks I equipped my Rhino, a Galatine(zero forma) and some low level weapons. I went to Europa Sabotage, triggered 3 Bursa's, waited till they were all together and killed them 3 v 1. Denial Bursa included. My suggestion is play more with your frame and learn what it can do before progressing too deep into the Starchart, the only annoying attack was the Isolator Bursa firing the nullifier blob at me, which I dodged. Iron Skin activated naturally(only had 100% Power Strength) plus it prevents the knockdowns, then use Stomp to incapacitate them. It doesn't last long on a Bursa(I was only using 150% Duration) but it knocks it down long enough to melee it to death with the Galatine. Ideally you want to be attacking the rear console to kill it quick but slashing away with the Galatine seemed to put them down nice and quickly. Have fun. Honestly though, to be playing on Europa, you should by now have added potatoes and reactors to your gear, perhaps you're charging through a bit too quick.

And for anyone else struggling, the following frames abilities work on Bursas. And this is only the frames I play.

Ash - Bladestorm, Teleport.

Loki - Invisibility, get behind and kill.

Mag - Pull, Bullet Attractor.

Rhino - Stomp.

Nova - MP. 

Frost - Freeze, Avalanche.

Excalibur - Radial Blind.

Valkyr - Paralysis.

I'm sure there's plenty more eg Ivara Sleep Arrow etc. They aren't hard, they just require tactics.

 

Edited February 24, 2016 by Zilchy

[EvilChaosKnight]

2 hours ago, Zilchy said:

Ash - Bladestorm, Teleport. //Have fun farming Manics to drop it. Ash Prime? Urgh, don't remind me.

Loki - Invisibility, get behind and kill. //Drops from Neptune, requires you to beat Europa. Tough luck. You could get a prime, but isn't T3 Void supposed to be harder than lvl 21-28 Europa?

Mag - Pull, Bullet Attractor. //Could work. Probably. Prime Vaulted tho.

Rhino - Stomp. //Could also work. *Giggles* talk about forcing people into casual mode XD Prime Vaulted tho.

Nova - MP. //Drops from Europa boss. Tough luck. Prime drops... are funny for this one. ODS anyone? Then again, isn't ODS supposed to be harder than Europa?

Frost - Freeze, Avalanche. //Drops from Ceres boss. Which requires Neptune. Which requires Europa. Ahem. Also are you seriously saying that Ceres (up to lvl 38) is supposed to easier and more accesible than Europa (up to lvl 28)? Are you for real?

Excalibur - Radial Blind. //Drops from Pluto which requires Neptune which requires Europa. Could pick it at the start if you are feeling classic. If you picked Volt? Welp.

Valkyr - Paralysis. //Yay Godmode frame can beat an enemy. Surprise?

I'm sure there's plenty more eg Ivara Sleep Arrow etc. //Pffft, GLHF with high-lvl spy missions Ivara drops, they drove ME mad and I had nothing better to do.

 

So out of your entire list there are 3 frames which you can get and 1 which you can only pick at the start without meeting Bursas and/or insane amounts of grind (Ash/Ivara). Not this many options, eh?

Then there's Mirage but she's behind a quest. Which requires Eris and OD vault runs. Eris requires Uranus which requires Archwing AFAIK.

My Nyx can handle them kinda. But that was totally not fun, and without QT, Handspring or Bursa's AI bugging out I don't think it's really doable by a non-vet.

AND all that trouble to counter ONE enemy type. Yep, totally fine game design.

Edited February 24, 2016 by EvilChaosKnight

[-CdG-Zilchy]

Mate you're Mr Negativity, you've got nothing useful to say, just sarcasm, don't waste my time. Since you can't read I'll point out that I said "these are just the frames I use". You do of course realise that most frames have to be farmed at some point? I could mention almost every frame but it'd still have to be farmed so your point is completely moot. 2/3 of the starting frames can easily destroy Bursa's, both are mentioned in my list. Now I'm trying to help other players here, ones that are actually looking for advice. I'd appreciate you not derailing that.

[EvilChaosKnight]

2 minutes ago, Zilchy said:

Mate you're Mr Negativity, you've got nothing useful to say, just sarcasm, don't waste my time. Since you can't read I'll point out that I said "these are just the frames I use". You do of course realise that most frames have to be farmed at some point? I could mention almost every frame but it'd still have to be farmed so your point is completely moot. 2/3 of the starting frames can easily destroy Bursa's, both are mentioned in my list. Now I'm trying to help other players here, ones that are actually looking for advice. I'd appreciate you not derailing that.

If you don't have any counter-arguments, that's fine too. I am talking from the perspective of a player who might run into them and who doesn't have the full starchart unlocked. Something you obviously didn't think about. 

I have to deal with beginner players quite a lot because of our clan policy of mutual help and respect. NONE of them like Bursa, most of them stopped doing Corpus missions. Those are facts.

All in all. Sure enough you can piss in the kitchen sink but I'd rather unclog the toilet.

Also forums are not your personal soapbox so people WILL disagree, accept it. And going "Ad hominem" is a pretty dangerous path.

[-CdG-Zilchy]

Mate if they don't have Venus unlocked it's unlikely they've run into big problems yet. Rhino easily deals with these things, so does Mag, so does Excalibur, without requiring great mods too. Most new players have easy access to at least two of these frames. Btw it's one thing to disagree and another to remain respectful while doing so. 

Edited February 24, 2016 by Zilchy

[sekushiiandee]

I personally like bursas....but they seriously need to be balanced

 

i find myself playing loki more often in corpus missions in order to avoid alarms and detection now.......and whats wrong with roflstomping through S#&$? thats why people loved diablo....and thats why i loved this game back in the old days.....

but anyway.....it drastically affected my play style....because I felt like I was limited to certain frames for corpus missions while playing solo....and then scared to play with teams because a lot of pugs dont know how to handle bursas

[felixsylvaris]

Maybe i am new here, but what are the reasons to do Corpus missions anyway? Isnt the game all about void void void until fed up?

However, Bursas are generally much toughter than anything that spawns on that level. Which undermines the idea of picking correct level, if i picked level 20 content i brought loadout suitable for that.

The most problematic is Excavetion. You cant just avoid setting alarm there. I recenlty have 2 situacions:

Limbo farming, this thing takes like 10 extractors to drop, it is hard enought solo, and then bursas are nighmare.

Sortie. It was all ok till 800, but then Bursas attacked, and all strategy was obsolete, just run around and trigger extractors. Hope for best.

Edited February 24, 2016 by felixsylvaris

[EvilChaosKnight]

2 minutes ago, Zilchy said:

Mate if they don't have Venus unlocked it's unlikely they've run into big problems yet. Rhino easily deals with these things, so does Mag, so does Excalibur. Most new players have easy access to at least two of these frames. Btw it's one thing to disagree and another to remain respectful while doing so. 

We didn't drink together for you to call me "Mate" that's a 1st. We are not in Eastern London either (which is a silly place, don't go there unless you like shanks).

Now with that cleared up. More and more people report same base problem. Bursas drastically limit the choice of frames for the mission unless you are min-maxed and is NOT fine. You continue to act as if it is totally fine. That enemy who is a walking armored speedy Swiss army knife with 20x the durability of a heavy of the same level is fine. The enemy whose very designer wrote here that Bursas are flawed badly:

Are totally and absolutely FINE! Just get tactical, right?

And no. "Git gud" is not a valid balance suggestion.