An Objective Look at Trinity

[hukurokuju5]

power is relative. 

"top tier" weapons that were hugely popular, like the boltor prime, feel less powerful when stronger weapons have been released. 

 

Trinity has a monopoly on energy restore and instant burst healing+huge damage reduction.  No other warframe comes close in these two skill categories, and because of this, trinity feels super op. ( although her skill numbers are really strong, paired with mechanics that are very effective)

[torint_man]

21 minutes ago, ShardsSuperior said:

The point is there's still a cap at how much you can spam because 4 energy/second means you still need ~7 seconds to cast a 25 energy skill. Besides, it's also deactivated during almost all channeled abilities. Besides, You could reach 2.4 energy/second from nearly the very beginning of the game with 4x Energy Siphon and DE still created frames with powerful abilities. The point is that there is still a limit to the spam. You have a 300 energy pool without Primed Flow with most frames, which is still a limited number of casts, even with an in-trickle of energy.

I actually do no understand what you are arguing Just because there are other methods of slowly regaining energy makes a method where you instantly fill up your reserves not OP? Zenurik is only a trickle, with a guaranteed pause between hard spamming, and pizzas (theoretically) can run out.

That's just like saying that because the cops can look the other way for speeding 5 miles above the speed limit, it's okay to commit hit and run. It just doesn't work out.

If zenurik did not exist, or wasn't the best focus for team situations, EV would, IMO, be OP. However, because it does, I do not consider EV to be inherently OP. I will concede EV to be OP if it allows the spamming of abilities that are "OP" as well, that couldn't be spammed with zenurik's energy economy.(I put OP in quotes there because there is the potential for a not OP ability to be OP if it is able to be spammed ad infinitum)

In order for an ability to outspend zenurik(and by extension require an EV trin) and the occasional energy orbs that drop, it has to be one that benefits from high strength(i.e. builds around it use blind rage and by extension have low efficiency), and be able to be spammed while still being worthwhile(i.e. an ability you typically use repeatedly, like excal's RJ on draco).

IMO, only three meta abilities met this criteria (If you have disagreements with this list, feel free to voice them). Excal's RJ, vauban's bastille, and banshee's sonar. RJ is only included because it's used in draco and nowhere else, as it's just flat damage. Bastille and sonar are the only abilities usable into endgame, and need an EV to use to their highest potential. Bastille, however is arguably not going to be used in serious high level play, because prisim is much more effective. So that, IMO, leaves sonar. Sonar does not break the game, as it does not have CC attached to it, but does allow insta kills to incredibly high levels. I have yet to hear anyone say "Sonar OP", so sonar is probably not OP by itself.

Being able to use sonar repeatedly might or might not be OP, but even if it was, EV still wouldn't be OP because(As far as I can tell), it only enables one ability to dominate one niche (damage augmentation in the case of sonar). The rest of the other niche dominating abilities do not outstrip zenurik. 

The only meta channeled ability is maim, which is not a very expensive ability. Most of the other channeled abilities are not very expensive, except for peacemaker and effigy, and those aren't currently meta abilities.

The moral of the story is EV does indeed break the energy economy meta, but not by much, as it was already pretty broken to begin with because of zenurik. If zenurik did not exist, I would consider EV to be OP.

[Ada_Wong_SG]

For don't know how many times... Trinity has no attack abilities... even the WOL + EV is improvisation
and it kills 1 target at a time.

She make everyone OP, so instead of nerfing Trinity we should nerf every other frames from receiving energy from EV ?
So Trinity keep all the energy to herself and can be used for healing... link... well of life...

That would prevent other frames from spamming abilities... which I guess is the main issue that make Trinity OP ?

Also, keep her blessing to herself only, so the teammates don't get healed ?

I mean what do you have against players ?

THIS IS A COOP GAME... a Healer is there for a reason.

[Ada_Wong_SG]

6 hours ago, hukurokuju5 said:

power is relative. 

"top tier" weapons that were hugely popular, like the boltor prime, feel less powerful when stronger weapons have been released. 

 

Trinity has a monopoly on energy restore and instant burst healing+huge damage reduction.  No other warframe comes close in these two skill categories, and because of this, trinity feels super op. ( although her skill numbers are really strong, paired with mechanics that are very effective)

 We need an alternative energy provider which can snatch the job of EV from Trinity. 100 energy/second passive effect

And another healer which heals way better, like passive 100hp/second regeneration....

[NezuHimeSama]

Trinity is basically 3 totally different and totally viable frames in one, depending on how you mod her out. Blessing is OP, but it takes a lot to get any decent duration on it, and doing anything else at the same time makes it very unreliable, as does health orbs in general. EV would be OP, but unless you're spamming out constant high-drain attacks, it's not necessary.

Link, on the other hand... Past a certain point, enemies will suicide on you. Why is nobody crying that link is OP?!

[Hellmaker2004]

Quote

Trinity is basically 3 totally different and totally viable frames in one, depending on how you mod her out. Blessing is OP, but it takes a lot to get any decent duration on it, and doing anything else at the same time makes it very unreliable, as does health orbs in general. EV would be OP, but unless you're spamming out constant high-drain attacks, it's not necessary.

Link, on the other hand... Past a certain point, enemies will suicide on you. Why is nobody crying that link is OP?!

 

Enemy Scaling

 

To summarize, foes can not kill themselves on link since there damage scale slower than there damage resistance and health, so although the damage that is reflected back is higher, thanks to enemy damage resistance the damage reflected gets lower and lower the higher level the foes are.

Edited March 24, 2016 by Hellmaker2004
Quoted wrong post, my bad.

[BlackCoMerc]

Completely agree with the OP. Trinity is not the only problem - see also: Fleeting Expertise - but she is a big one. So big that yes, EV as it exists cannot be balanced around. At all.

This is the reason for all the cheap enemy tactics we see of late. Camera shake, screen fuzz, knockdown spam, etc. DE has reached a point where leaving us in control of our frames means leaving us with zero challenge.

Warframe has reached an unreasonable state because of EV, Expertise, Disarm, Mirage Disco Dodge Ball and Chaos. One shot deaths intended to threaten us in those scant seconds between CC spam; camera shake; absurd VISUAL Overload; knockdown spam; the list goes on. And the game is on its way to an unplayable state if this arms race continues.

The OP frames, much as I love Loki and NYX, need dialing back. For the sake of good game design.

[Hellmaker2004]

30 minutes ago, BlackCoMerc said:

Completely agree with the OP. Trinity is not the only problem - see also: Fleeting Expertise - but she is a big one. So big that yes, EV as it exists cannot be balanced around. At all.

This is the reason for all the cheap enemy tactics we see of late. Camera shake, screen fuzz, knockdown spam, etc. DE has reached a point where leaving us in control of our frames means leaving us with zero challenge.

Warframe has reached an unreasonable state because of EV, Expertise, Disarm, Mirage Disco Dodge Ball and Chaos. One shot deaths intended to threaten us in those scant seconds between CC spam; camera shake; absurd VISUAL Overload; knockdown spam; the list goes on. And the game is on its way to an unplayable state if this arms race continues.

The OP frames, much as I love Loki and NYX, need dialing back. For the sake of good game design.

 

There is no dispute that she is part of the Energy problem, and should Zenurik, Energy Efficiency, energy pizza's and perhaps even syndicate procs receive a huge rework that limits there potential i will not dispute that she would indeed need a Energy Vampire update to go with it.

 

This is however not the current case, we can currently reach a really high energy efficiency, we can get a decent energy per second as a passive and we are lacking restriction on energy pizza's (200x) per mission that we can use at our disposal. Add in that enemies drop energy orbs, Necro can loot manipulate and that potentially Mag if her changes go through will also increase energy drop from hostile as well.

 

Energy is in such a abundant and compared with how strong powers are for most frames it is clear that the Frame system needs a overhaul if we are to ever reach something we could consider "difficult" content.

[BlackCoMerc]

20 minutes ago, Hellmaker2004 said:

 

There is no dispute that she is part of the Energy problem, and should Zenurik, Energy Efficiency, energy pizza's and perhaps even syndicate procs receive a huge rework that limits there potential i will not dispute that she would indeed need a Energy Vampire update to go with it.

 

This is however not the current case, we can currently reach a really high energy efficiency, we can get a decent energy per second as a passive and we are lacking restriction on energy pizza's (200x) per mission that we can use at our disposal. Add in that enemies drop energy orbs, Necro can loot manipulate and that potentially Mag if her changes go through will also increase energy drop from hostile as well.

 

Energy is in such a abundant and compared with how strong powers are for most frames it is clear that the Frame system needs a overhaul if we are to ever reach something we could consider "difficult" content.

I agree completely. All of these things need to change. Not just Trinity.

[ShardsSuperior]

9 hours ago, torint_man said:

If zenurik did not exist, or wasn't the best focus for team situations, EV would, IMO, be OP. However, because it does, I do not consider EV to be inherently OP. I will concede EV to be OP if it allows the spamming of abilities that are "OP" as well, that couldn't be spammed with zenurik's energy economy.(I put OP in quotes there because there is the potential for a not OP ability to be OP if it is able to be spammed ad infinitum)

In order for an ability to outspend zenurik(and by extension require an EV trin) and the occasional energy orbs that drop, it has to be one that benefits from high strength(i.e. builds around it use blind rage and by extension have low efficiency), and be able to be spammed while still being worthwhile(i.e. an ability you typically use repeatedly, like excal's RJ on draco).

IMO, only three meta abilities met this criteria (If you have disagreements with this list, feel free to voice them). Excal's RJ, vauban's bastille, and banshee's sonar. RJ is only included because it's used in draco and nowhere else, as it's just flat damage. Bastille and sonar are the only abilities usable into endgame, and need an EV to use to their highest potential. Bastille, however is arguably not going to be used in serious high level play, because prisim is much more effective. So that, IMO, leaves sonar. Sonar does not break the game, as it does not have CC attached to it, but does allow insta kills to incredibly high levels. I have yet to hear anyone say "Sonar OP", so sonar is probably not OP by itself.

Being able to use sonar repeatedly might or might not be OP, but even if it was, EV still wouldn't be OP because(As far as I can tell), it only enables one ability to dominate one niche (damage augmentation in the case of sonar). The rest of the other niche dominating abilities do not outstrip zenurik. 

The only meta channeled ability is maim, which is not a very expensive ability. Most of the other channeled abilities are not very expensive, except for peacemaker and effigy, and those aren't currently meta abilities.

The moral of the story is EV does indeed break the energy economy meta, but not by much, as it was already pretty broken to begin with because of zenurik. If zenurik did not exist, I would consider EV to be OP.

Try spamming Bastille/Sonar/Radial Blind/whatever-skill-that-works-with-EV with just Zenurik. There will always be a point where you have to stop, because energy consumption is faster than your 4/s energy regen. There is no such limit with EV because it literally refills your pool between every cast.

Besides, your conclusion is faulty from empirical evidence. Before update 18, EV still had this problem. It has had this problem since it was changed to its current form in Update 13, as evidenced by the newer frame designs. Zenurik is not the issue.

3 hours ago, Ada_Wong_SG said:

 We need an alternative energy provider which can snatch the job of EV from Trinity. 100 energy/second passive effect

And another healer which heals way better, like passive 100hp/second regeneration....

I think you're joking about both parts. Otherwise, I don't know what you're saying.

The 100/s energy provider is obviously absurd, having the exact same problems of designing around as EV... the problem isn't that Trinity herself having EV is bad. It's that EV exists at all.
The 100/s HP/s is useless. In high levels, you're either 100% healthy or dead.

29 minutes ago, Hellmaker2004 said:

There is no dispute that she is part of the Energy problem, and should Zenurik, Energy Efficiency, energy pizza's and perhaps even syndicate procs receive a huge rework that limits there potential i will not dispute that she would indeed need a Energy Vampire update to go with it.

This is however not the current case, we can currently reach a really high energy efficiency, we can get a decent energy per second as a passive and we are lacking restriction on energy pizza's (200x) per mission that we can use at our disposal. Add in that enemies drop energy orbs, Necro can loot manipulate and that potentially Mag if her changes go through will also increase energy drop from hostile as well

Why would you hit less potent energy providers when EV is the biggest problem? Besides, energy efficiency doesn't matter when you have your entire energy pool between each cast due to a few pulses of EV.

29 minutes ago, Hellmaker2004 said:

Energy is in such a abundant and compared with how strong powers are for most frames it is clear that the Frame system needs a overhaul if we are to ever reach something we could consider "difficult" content.

There is nothing wrong with energy being somewhat abundant. Warframe is, after all, a scifi-fantasy escapism ninja shooting game, and as such, should have the abundance of power compared to the enemies. But the problem occurs when this is not possible because of a frame that makes any powerful skill overpowered because one ability makes it very much costless.

Basically, EV is a problem because there is no way the Devs can implement any type of actual limitation on powerful skills (without resorting to weird cooldowns stuffs), so they've been designing skills with less effect, or skills that don't work with EV.

[Hellmaker2004]

9 minutes ago, ShardsSuperior said:

There is nothing wrong with energy being somewhat abundant. Warframe is, after all, a scifi-fantasy escapism ninja shooting game, and as such, should have the abundance of power compared to the enemies. But the problem occurs when this is not possible because of a frame that makes any powerful skill overpowered because one ability makes it very much costless.

Basically, EV is a problem because there is no way the Devs can implement any type of actual limitation on powerful skills (without resorting to weird cooldowns stuffs), so they've been designing skills with less effect, or skills that don't work with EV.

 

what did i just read?

 

So Energy abundant is not a problem, only when Trinity is the one providing it?

 

This is not my picture only one i stumbled upon while reading on Reddit, and this is of course not optimal but stating that EV is the only problem is something i would consider wrong.

 

[torint_man]

3 minutes ago, ShardsSuperior said:

Try spamming Bastille/Sonar/Radial Blind/whatever-skill-that-works-with-EV with just Zenurik. There will always be a point where you have to stop, because energy consumption is faster than your 4/s energy regen. There is no such limit with EV because it literally refills your pool between every cast.

Besides, your conclusion is faulty from empirical evidence. Before update 18, EV still had this problem. It has had this problem since it was changed to its current form in Update 13, as evidenced by the newer frame designs. Zenurik is not the issue.

In order to objectively as possible(The title of the topic is "an objective look at Trinity", so objectivity is the goal) determine if something is OP, you must compare it to the other things in the niche it fits in. EV fits in the energy economy niche.

Before update 18, EV was OP, because the energy economy relied purely on orbs and pizzas, neither of which truly allow the optimal use of 95% of abilities in the game. EV was so high above that meta, that it was OP. Now, however, the energy economy meta has zenurik, allowing the optimal use of the large majority of abilities. Keep in mind I say "optimal". That means using abilities in realistic ways. You can outspend zenurik with basically any ability if you spam it enough, but, there are few abilities that benefit greatly from or necessitate endless spamming. Also, even if an ability does require spamming for optimal use, you aren't going to do it endlessly, and if you have max efficiency (which the majority of spam builds have), as long as you're killing things at a good pace, orbs should make up any deficit. 

If you actually understood the third paragraph of my post you quoted, there are few abilities in the meta that necessitate EV, with EV only being "OP" in the damage augmentation niche, because it enables sonar spam.

I know it's incredibly counter intuitive, but the difference between 4 energy per second and 200 energy a pop is a lot smaller than one would think, due to how energy is optimally spent.

EV hurts the game about as much zenurik hurts the game. If you think zenurik is OP, then EV is OP. If you don't think zenurik is OP, than EV is very unlikely to be OP by the objective qualifications of "OP" you have set up to not have zenurik to be OP.

[ShardsSuperior]

25 minutes ago, Hellmaker2004 said:

 

what did i just read?

 

So Energy abundant is not a problem, only when Trinity is the one providing it?

 

This is not my picture only one i stumbled upon while reading on Reddit, and this is of course not optimal but stating that EV is the only problem is something i would consider wrong.

-picture-

"This is of course not optimal"
Whereas it is the sole job of EV Trin to optimally make a situation like that.

Energy Pads need to be limited to a set number per mission, yes, but outside of that, Trinity is the only way you can instantly refill your energy, over and over again.

 

9 minutes ago, torint_man said:

In order to objectively as possible(The title of the topic is "an objective look at Trinity", so objectivity is the goal) determine if something is OP, you must compare it to the other things in the niche it fits in. EV fits in the energy economy niche.

Before update 18, EV was OP, because the energy economy relied purely on orbs and pizzas, neither of which truly allow the optimal use of 95% of abilities in the game. EV was so high above that meta, that it was OP. Now, however, the energy economy meta has zenurik, allowing the optimal use of the large majority of abilities. Keep in mind I say "optimal". That means using abilities in realistic ways. You can outspend zenurik with basically any ability if you spam it enough, but, there are few abilities that benefit greatly from or necessitate endless spamming. Also, even if an ability does require spamming for optimal use, you aren't going to do it endlessly, and if you have max efficiency (which the majority of spam builds have), as long as you're killing things at a good pace, orbs should make up any deficit. 

If you actually understood the third paragraph of my post you quoted, there are few abilities in the meta that necessitate EV, with EV only being "OP" in the damage augmentation niche, because it enables sonar spam.

I know it's incredibly counter intuitive, but the difference between 4 energy per second and 200 energy a pop is a lot smaller than one would think, due to how energy is optimally spent.

EV hurts the game about as much zenurik hurts the game. If you think zenurik is OP, then EV is OP. If you don't think zenurik is OP, than EV is very unlikely to be OP by the objective qualifications of "OP" you have set up to not have zenurik to be OP.

Your last sentence doesn't make sense. If there are "objective qualifications" of being overpowered, then they don't change with the addition of new content.

Besides, Zenurik is only slightly more powerful than a few Energy Siphons, and Energy Siphon hasn't limited ability design because it was part of the original vision for Warframe, being there since at least closed beta. The only way ES/Zenurik can refill your energy is by using your abilities at least slightly sparingly, and energy will regenerate between the lulls in combat.

An optional slow trickle of incoming energy has been core to the game since its inception. In fact, I conjecture the only reason Zenurik has such a high bonus is that EV Trin exists. In order to compete with the raw energy giving capabilities, Zenurik HAS to have this larger value (somewhat too large).

And this is, by definition, what an unhealthy feature does. The same way EV has influenced frame designs, it must have influenced the way DE balanced Zenurik. And this is where your argument stems, I think, but it is faulty to say the wall itself is fine if it needs supports to prop it up - it is obviously better to actually fix the wall itself. But to fix energy economy in Warframe, we have to fix the biggest offenders first - the ones that can refill your energy bar between every cast, and that is EV (and energy pads), not Zenurik.

If Zenurik becomes a problem afterwards, then, yes, it should also be looked at, but not until.

[Hellmaker2004]

10 minutes ago, ShardsSuperior said:

Besides, Zenurik is only slightly more powerful than a few Energy Siphons, and Energy Siphon hasn't limited ability design because it was part of the original vision for Warframe, being there since at least closed beta. The only way ES/Zenurik can refill your energy is by using your abilities at least slightly sparingly, and energy will regenerate between the lulls in combat.

 

That is not a fair comparison, Energy Siphon requires 4x teammates to be @ 60% of the effect of Zenurik. And Energy Siphon competes with aura slots such as Corrosive Projection, while Zenurik competes with suboptimal schools or of course Naramon of witch we need not talk about "Balance" anymore

 

[BlackCoMerc]

Either we need to greatly limit the power level of frames, or we need to limit energy economy. Maybe both.

[ShardsSuperior]

2 hours ago, Hellmaker2004 said:

That is not a fair comparison, Energy Siphon requires 4x teammates to be @ 60% of the effect of Zenurik. And Energy Siphon competes with aura slots such as Corrosive Projection, while Zenurik competes with suboptimal schools or of course Naramon of witch we need not talk about "Balance" anymore

No, it's fair because they're both a trickle way to get energy. Zenurik only looks so OP because it was designed to compete with EV in mind (released in update 13.3), while Energy Siphon the aura was released in Update 9, and Energy Siphon the artifact since Update 5.

EV encourages bad design, a la Zenurik, and is thus unhealthy.