Information regarding EBlade and Naramon Shadow Step

[bubbabenali]

So, whats your point?

Just to show us a video where you went to a T3/4 Survival for over 100 minutes - SOLO I might add, doing nothing but whoosh, whoosh.

And EB stops oneshooting enemies accompanied by Ancients at high level? Well what a worthless combo, I guess.

For the benfit of the doubt, I consider that you had at least a decent build - you had to make it to 5 rotations to show us the weakness of these abilities after all.

 

Btw. I prefer Eternal War, Nikana Prime, Shadow Step Valkyr at the moment.

[Epsik-kun]

1 minute ago, bubbabenali said:

So, whats your point?

10 hours ago, Epsik-kun said:

What I am trying to do here, is not to prove any points myself

Some people just can't into readings.

 

[bubbabenali]

3 minutes ago, Epsik-kun said:

Some people just can't into readings.

 

So you just showed off your awesome skill in mashing e, sometimes 2 and 5 once?

Nice work, I'm very impressed. Here have a cracker.

[Scytze]

*Hides behind the corner with his Slash dash Excal build* Who needs stealth?

[Inmemoratus]

7 hours ago, Magneu said:

Yet another can of worms, that personally is even more annoying and game balance disrupting. Slap in a Mirage and the tile clear/perma stun goes through the roof. Only thing I consider more broken is the Tonkor, but we have so many people with 99% weapon time on that weapon that I think DE is hesitant to re-balance it (and yes, it is absurdly broken. It destroys every other weapon in damage potential, AOE damage, ease of crafting, with only minor ease of use issues (and it doesn't even self damage!). However, that's besides the point; please don't red herring the conversation.

 

Is Excal OP? Some say yes, while I say that he's too brain-dead to use with EB. The skill encourages mindless spam through doors to get results. I don't mind the kill stealing, as half the badly-built Excals I ever meet are either getting downed at 40 minutes or stop doing damage because they built pure physical damage; the flashy waves are what grinds my gears.

 

If someone wants to build full Naramon/Excal assassin, all power to em. Waves should be toned down a tad in both range and punchthrough to stop the unhealthy swing fest we have going on right now. Overall, it's an amazingly powerful combination that just needs minor tweaks to be within the realm of balance the game needs. 

Well see, I can always come up with yet another powerful frame or weapon for you and you'd probably say the same thing. Maybe you should step back and look at the big picture. When there are so many powerful things for players to choose from, where is the imbalance?

[Epsik-kun]

52 minutes ago, tisdfogg said:

IMHO, the "I lasted X in T4, it's fine/OP/UP" was never a very convincing argument.

But you do agree it works both ways, right? Solo melee T4S is the single most affected by Naramon Shadow Step mission in the game. In every other mission effectiveness of Shadow Step will be considerably lesser. And as I stated already, I don't find effect of Shadow Step being too strong even in the very mission Shadow Step is on its best.

Same goes for EBlade, to be honest. I think anyone with considerable experience of actually playing Excalibur knows how easily can he be outperformed by other frames in vast majority of situations. Because while they do not have his damage output, they have other convenient methods of dealing this damage, and they won't need to deal his level of damage until you hit some later stages of a high level endless.

It's pretty much the same reason why Valkyr players rarely consider Valkyr OP, despite her having almost complete invulnerability. The reason's being - you almost never actually need this invulnerability, save for few extremely rare cases. And same goes for her damage as a compensation - yeah, she will kill lvl 100 enemies much faster than other frames, however you will not face enemies higher than level 50 in 95% of the game content, and against enemies of this level she can be outperformed by a good load of weapons. 

In a similar way, Excal can be outperformed with the likes of Ignis and Simulor in over 80% of the game content, without other frames making a trade-off of having an ultimate exclusively dedicated to direct damage dealing. So, why should he be nerfed to their level and below for the other 20% of the game content too?

Shadow Step has a major trade-off, which I don't get why are you ignoring - it is using Naramon. Madurai provides raw damage. Zenurik Provides raw energy regeneration. Vazarin gives an actually useful active skill and instant revives. Unairu is... Well. You are choosing Naramon over one of these trees, and you can't say that they aren't on pair, because they are. Majority of builds will be much better off with another tree, not Naramon. Saying it has no trade-off is like saying "Vitality has no trade-off" which isn't true, because it has, as a mod slot is a major trade-off.

And convenient Ivara example is too convenient - what about Loki? Also, you are comparing a Focus power to a Frame power - it isn't correct thing to do. And in my personal opinion, adding any actual drawback to Focus skills is the most garbage idea ever, with Polluted Waters being here to prove my point. 

[StonedMakak]

1 hour ago, Epsik-kun said:

But you do agree it works both ways, right? Solo melee T4S is the single most affected by Naramon Shadow Step mission in the game. In every other mission effectiveness of Shadow Step will be considerably lesser. And as I stated already, I don't find effect of Shadow Step being too strong even in the very mission Shadow Step is on its best.

Same goes for EBlade, to be honest. I think anyone with considerable experience of actually playing Excalibur knows how easily can he be outperformed by other frames in vast majority of situations. Because while they do not have his damage output, they have other convenient methods of dealing this damage, and they won't need to deal his level of damage until you hit some later stages of a high level endless.

It's pretty much the same reason why Valkyr players rarely consider Valkyr OP, despite her having almost complete invulnerability. The reason's being - you almost never actually need this invulnerability, save for few extremely rare cases. And same goes for her damage as a compensation - yeah, she will kill lvl 100 enemies much faster than other frames, however you will not face enemies higher than level 50 in 95% of the game content, and against enemies of this level she can be outperformed by a good load of weapons. 

In a similar way, Excal can be outperformed with the likes of Ignis and Simulor in over 80% of the game content, without other frames making a trade-off of having an ultimate exclusively dedicated to direct damage dealing. So, why should he be nerfed to their level and below for the other 20% of the game content too?

Shadow Step has a major trade-off, which I don't get why are you ignoring - it is using Naramon. Madurai provides raw damage. Zenurik Provides raw energy regeneration. Vazarin gives an actually useful active skill and instant revives. Unairu is... Well. You are choosing Naramon over one of these trees, and you can't say that they aren't on pair, because they are. Majority of builds will be much better off with another tree, not Naramon. Saying it has no trade-off is like saying "Vitality has no trade-off" which isn't true, because it has, as a mod slot is a major trade-off.

And convenient Ivara example is too convenient - what about Loki? Also, you are comparing a Focus power to a Frame power - it isn't correct thing to do. And in my personal opinion, adding any actual drawback to Focus skills is the most garbage idea ever, with Polluted Waters being here to prove my point. 

Oh I do agree, argument like that works both ways. Going solo is were Naramon truly shines, though not only in T4, Sortie Def/MD/Int/Surv also become a lot easier when you hit that 5. But you are pretty much right that in group content a lot of things outshine EB/SS combo/Valk. That's why I assumed a different perspective, talking about mechanics instead of numerical advantages. It's still a lazy combo of dull design. You are not actually fighting enemies when using it, you are just making them unable to fight back, by removing the AI's ability to target you, by removing the necessity to expose yourself to attack (the punch through), by keeping them under spammable, hard CC. And all of that happens pretty much automatically; if you had to perform well in the mission to access such powerful effects then it would be a different conversation. To be fair, Saryn rework seems to employ that philosophy, though not flawlessly. 

In my opinion such design leads to shallow gameplay - abilities remove form the fundamentals of the game instead of adding to them. It's not a matter of pure viability, and I stress this so there is no misunderstanding: I don't want a nerf to damage potential/viability, I want a change to mechanics. Does that make any sense to you? I've got a feeling I'm explaining it in a convoluted way. 

Hmm, I guess you could say that choosing a focus tree is a trade off. But then again, I was not talking about a trade off for focus passive, I was talking about trade-offs for active abilities like EB. I used the convenient Ivara because hers is a well-designed ability with pros and cons. As for Loki, his skillset is ancient, and whenever someone suggests tweaks the master race goes apeS#&$. Either the AI needs to handle invisible units better, or it needs drawbacks like Ivara. And before someone says "Loki needs his invisibility to survive!", I say, well, he shouldn't. Why not buff Switch Teleport with smoother visual effects, chaining discount a la Atlas, and stacking buff to defenses? Add an alternative, encourage a new playstyle.

As for focus skill perhaps I didn't make myself clear on that, perhaps you assumed. But yeah, I agree, giving a what is supposed to be a minor passive a drawback would be nonsensical (with the exception of internal cooldowns for more powerful passives, like Shadow Step).

Edited February 23, 2016 by tisdfogg
Typos.

[Epsik-kun]

43 minutes ago, tisdfogg said:

In my opinion such design leads to shallow gameplay

While I don't completely disagree on this point, it really depends, in my opinion. For example for frames like Excal or Valkyr Shadow Step indeed serves as a simple direct boost to their power, without affecting their actual gameplay too much.

However for other frames, like Nova or Nyx I used as an example previously, Shadow Step unlocks a whole new way of playing them. An effective and strong way on top of that. You basically can't run an effective melee Nova without using Shadow Step against relatively high level opponents. Shadow Step makes it not only doable, but also viable. While I can live without Shadow Step on my Excal (ok, I can't do over 80m T4S now. Let's stick to a hour), it would be other, normally non-melee frames that'll be hit hardest by any Shadow Step nerfs.

Edited February 23, 2016 by Epsik-kun

[Shnooob]

Personally feel there is nothing wrong with having a great reward for hours and hours of grinding.

Done plenty of survivals etc without shadow step but now that I have unlocked it I gotta say I'm having (literally) endless fun in surv now. Can farm all day and focus grind all day :)

I find it really FUN.  I quite like having fun. However I generally get the feeling, that there are players that just want to sap all the enjoyment out of this game for others, I really don't get it. This seems to be the case with the Shadow Step argument as there is literally no argument based around anything else other than the simple fact that it's 'easy mode' or somehow promotes lazy play. Remember how long it took to unlock these? Players should have a solid grasp on fundamentals waaaay before they unlock these passives and be at a stage to play however they feel. Personally: I spent 600+ hrs grinding to be able to enjoy this 'easy mode'. Kinda boils down to the usual : dont like it or think its broken then dont use it. Therefore I dont use it all the time. 

Also all the suggestions about enemy mechanics and stealth are extremely short sighted and shallow. You change the way enemies interact with a cloaked or stealth char but then why have stealth at all? You are invisible and the enemy should act accordingly. Noone will invest time/effort/plat into the focus grind for lackluster rewards.

[StonedMakak]

28 minutes ago, Epsik-kun said:

While I don't completely disagree on this point, it really depends, in my opinion. For example for frames like Excal or Valkyr Shadow Step indeed serves as a simple direct boost to their power, without affecting their actual gameplay too much.

However for other frames, like Nova or Nyx I used as an example previously, Shadow Step unlocks a whole new way of playing them. An effective and strong way on top of that. You basically can't run an effective melee Nova without using Shadow Step against relatively high level opponents. Shadow Step makes it not only doable, but also viable. While I can live without Shadow Step on my Excal (ok, I can't do over 80m T4S now. Let's stick to a hour), it would be other, normaly non-melee frames that'll be hit hardest by any Shadow Step nerfs.

I believe we've reached the issue of melee not being self-sustaining enough. In my opinion, every single frame should have the option to just go sword alone into any content. Sure, melee frames would still have an edge in that department, but it should be possible for all. If one passive, from a secondary skill-tree (with the modding system being the primary source of power progression) is needed to make Nova/Nyx melee viable then it just highlights the melee system's shortcomings. My suggestion was always to buff survivability in melee. After that, passives like Shadow Step could be adjusted accordingly. There is really no point in taking off the band-aid if they don't plan to treat the wound so to speak. 

 

25 minutes ago, Shnooob said:

Also all the suggestions about enemy mechanics and stealth are extremely short sighted and shallow. You change the way enemies interact with a cloaked or stealth char but then why have stealth at all? You are invisible and the enemy should act accordingly. Noone will invest time/effort/plat into the focus grind for lackluster rewards.

  The point is that as long as you have a silent weapon, they don't interact at all. They are incapable of interacting. You can literally start peeling their skin off, and they will stand there like it's no biggy. How would you react if an invisible being started peeling your skin off?

Edited February 23, 2016 by tisdfogg