Dev Workshop Part 2: ...& more Warframe Changes.

[Nitresco]

I really, REALLY hope the damage falloff on Exalted Blade isn't too bad. While Excalibur did get an armor buff with his rework, he's still rather vulnerable in high-level missions since his situational automatic frontal damage mitigation was severely lessened. Being able to maintain distance and eliminate crowds by preemptively cleaving them through walls is pretty much a required strategy in many cases, and this change can potentially make Excalibur even more vulnerable.

Keep in mind that Excalibur is not Valkyr. He trades away complete invulnerability for increased range on his attacks. The only reason Valkyr is able to exist close to enemies for extended periods of time is because she's invulnerable. Excalibur does not have that luxury, and must therefore rely heavily on the range of his energy waves to stay alive.

I'm not saying that Exalted Blade shouldn't be nerfed. It should be nerfed, but it should be nerfed carefully. Rather than give it heavy damage falloff at longer ranges, why not give it a smaller damage decrease across the board?

If you absolutely insist on heavily nerfing the damage at longer ranges, then please consider giving Exalted Blade a higher block value of 90% or something similar to compensate. Also, I really don't think the slide attack of Exalted Blade should get an energy cost. The range already forces Excalibur to get in close and the duration is laughable. If it gets an energy cost, you might as well turn it into an actual Radial Blind.

Edit: I'm surprised Excalibur's getting his funbutton nerfed before Ash, by the way. Last I checked, the latter was much more annoying to deal with.

Edited May 27, 2016 by Nitresco

[Kevyne_Kicklighter]

4 minutes ago, RazrOutlaw said:

Min-Maxing has nothing to do with afk players though

If you can't understand the English language, or it's many inferences, study, don't argue usage. It's also seriously off-topic on a dev thread.

[RazrOutlaw]

2 minutes ago, Kevyne_Kicklighter said:

If you can't understand the English language, or it's many inferences, study, don't argue usage. It's also seriously off-topic on a dev thread.

An off-topic you started by putting different words in my mouth, like one person remarked above, as well as the whole AFK theme, which you started aswell, plus everytime I tried to talk about the subject (these balance game changes, and how they should not be made upon what you said: Anyone only needs 20min in a mission, 20 minutes in a T4 survival should NEVER be DE balance focus). Now, I'm done with the off-topic, If you wan't to discuss why (as you stated earlier)  the only thing we need is just to play a mission for 20 mins and how the game should be balanced around it, I'd be glad to keep the conversation.

[h41pa]

wow nice;)

[Nudelsupp3]

Finally some aknowledgement that some abilities break the game....please nerf Ash's bladestorm already!! Its the single most irritating ability in the game. No more enemy-invincibility while Ash humps them and way smaller attack radius/duration or increasing energy cost with subsequent enemies. Its ridiculously overpowered.

[Senoinya]

Just now, Maxis_55 said:

Why don't you just delete this ability? It doesn't even work. I don't think there is any mental person in this game that consider this ability useful, or it should still be there since no one will complain "Oh, I hate when people kill enemy with Sleight of Hand and I can't kill them with my braton, Pls nerf."?

To be fair, there's a lot of abilities that are just useless. Such as:

Ash's Shuriken - A damage ability that only hits two enemies and deals less damage than a gun while simultaneously offering nothing other than damage... Who uses this?

Ember's Fireball - Basically the same as Shuriken.

Hydroid's entire kit except his 4th.

Ivara's Noise arrows - An ability so conditional that there's almost no reason to ever use this over one of Ivara's other powers or arrows.

Mesa's Ballistic Battery - I don't think I even need to explain this.

Mirage's already-mentioned Sleight of Hand.

Nekros's Soul Punch - Same as Shuriken.

Nova's Null Star - Same as Shuriken.

Nyx's Psychic Bolts - Because an ability that hits random targets with a chance to inflict radiation is somehow still a viable option when you have an ability that makes any enemy of your choice into a servant, and another that turns every enemy around you in a huge radius against one another in an instant with a 100% chance for it to work. Also, because a direct-damage ability makes perfect sense for a manipulator.

Oberon

Rhino Charge - The more suicidal version of Shuriken.

Trinity's Well of Life - Because an ability that suspends a single enemy, buffs his HP by 10x, and requires allies to hit that enemy to regenerate HP makes perfect sense when you can regenerate your own energy and have an ability that heals everyone instantly regardless of distance and gives them damage reductions on top of it.

Valkyr's Ripline - For when you're too lazy to jump and slash while in Hysteria, and don't know how to parkour properly.

Vauban's Tesla - For sticking your balls on people and absolutely nothing else.

And lastly...

Everything in Zephyr's loadout except Turbulence - Tail Wind should allow you to fly, but instead it's a useless thrust ability, Dive Bomb should be part of Tail Wind's functionality but instead it's a costly sub-par second ability, and Tornado is too unpredictable to be of any reliable use, and even when it does work it tends to cause more issues than it helps.

 

And there you have it, every useless power in Warframe!

[Chroia]

Posting this before reading past the OP, will update (if needed) as I go.

 

8 hours ago, [DE]Rebecca said:

Mirage:

Sleight of Hand: We have increased the damage and detonation range of all objects that can be booby trapped.

Maybe it's just me, but I really don't see this making any difference (between low detonation range and low, flat damage). SoH's use is its utility (hijacking Corpus doors, various turrets and - most importantly - consoles).

Prism: Prism’s Blind effect is now affected by the enemy's Line-of-Sight (LoS) to the Prism. Prism’s damage has been buffed slightly

Given the LoS restriction to Radial Blind (what, 15 months ago?) this one was only a matter of time. You realise, though, that it'll still lock down areas just fine, it'll just be a bit less safe while doing it (because you can't blind stuff in spawn (i.e. behind walls) anymore).

Valkyr:

Firstly, the longer you stay in Hysteria, the more Energy it'll cost you and (but the energy drain ramp up is capped).

Yeah, alright.

Secondly, ...The longer you stay in Hysteria, the less effective the mitigation of incoming damage is on the 'End Hysteria' phase. Ending your Hysteria session should be done with care - ensuring no enemies are in the range of Valkyrs Hysteria Aura (20 meters max, they have to be able to see you), or you will take the damage. How you choose to dispose of these enemies is up to you - either kill them, or get a safe distance away to deactivate Hysteria. what game-mode you're playing. hf playing Hide and Seek in anything with constant spawns.

Excalibur:

Exalted Blade’s damage will now diminish according to distance traveled and enemies punctured,  not what I would have done (if separating 'unit' and 'terrain' punchthrough isn't possibly, then just limit the punchthrough or apply Artemis Bow per-attack costs or projectiles slow down the farther they travel), but alright and Exalted Blade’s built-in Radial Blind on spin will now cost ½ the Energy of a regular Radial Blind. Correct me if I'm mistaken, but last I checked the EB slide attack had a range of ~6m unaffected by range, compared with RB's 25m at base on top of not opening enemies to finishers. Why on earth would I ever choose to use it over RB?

Responses inline in red.

Edit: On reflection, I think I'd fundamentally change Hysteria by repurposing the 'damage stored' counter.

It's a 'rage mode', yes?

• Give it a hefty activation cost drain.
• Both the cost and the drain are reduced by some factor of the 'damage stored'.
• The 'damage stored' counter decays or resets after X time not taking damage.
• Do away with 'damage taken on deactivation'.

This lets it both function as a board-wipe while not being perma-invulnerability or a RNG suicide if unlucky on deactivation (or falling into a pit).

ofc, still made completely irrelevant by enemies scaling into oneshot damage.

 

-----

8 hours ago, EDYinnit said:

I have to express concern about Trinity's Blessing being under scrutiny - that issue is as much thanks to the incoming damage and missing-health scaling as anything else.

If Blessing is changed, it must be made more user-friendly. With enemy damage at such outrageous levels and no gating to give the Trinity player any time to react in the intended manner, there's no wonder that players felt the need to find a proactive way of accessing the main draw of the skill.

^ +1 and quoting for support (see what I did there?).

-----

TIL: Apparently there's a limit of 100 upvotes per day.

Edited May 27, 2016 by Chroia

[DuskLegendary]

Yes, yes... we all acknowledge that there are some broken abilities in the game. But why isn't anyone acknowledging that we use these broken abilities to counter even more broken enemies? Armor that scales with the enemy? Enemies that can literally infinitely scale and one shot basically any frame once they start getting into even the lv. 80s? What part of this is fair or balanced? 

The majority of this "broken" stuff is being used in either end game content like Sorties and Raids,or doing endurance runs in endless missions. Sorry, maybe I'm just dense, but what is this hurting exactly, who is this hurting? This is not a PVP game at it's core (Conclave doesn't count, we can't even use our real loadouts) and I just don't think nerfing all of the meta frames is the solution to the problem.

I've said it already, and I'll say it once more: the enemies need to be reworked before nerfing all the meta frames into the dirt. I'm sorry, I'm so salty, I am, because a lot of my builds that I poured time and Forma into will now need to be scrapped and revised all together. Yeah yeah, play me the smallest violin in the world, I get it.

But at the same time, this is to be expected. A lot of MMOs rework classes from time to time, and as such, you end up having to revise your character's skills a bit. Some of these abilities do trivialize the game, but honestly, the enemies in higher tier content trivialize us.

Edited May 27, 2016 by DuskLegendary

[Kevyne_Kicklighter]

16 minutes ago, RazrOutlaw said:

An off-topic you started by putting different words in my mouth

Note: Doesn't understand the English language/usage/inferences and still arguing what he doesn't understand even. NINE posts, too.

:plonk:

Edited May 27, 2016 by Kevyne_Kicklighter

[-CM-Machete]

Blessing's 99% damage reduction makes little sense, as much as enemies able to one-shot you.

[ivalec]

more nerf again... like Mesa, spoil the frame; no more use for ability 4. now is Valkyr and Excalibur. and planning to nerf Trinity and Ash too! should remove all the abilities from all the frames and just play a f***ing generic shooter and done! thank very much for the stupid nerf again...

[Geraion]

6 hours ago, Evanescent said:

I can understand the EB wave balancing but I also feel that the energy cost on the spin blind is uncalled for. It's range and duration are already short enough as a balance feature.

This. I have -never- blinded anything with the free blind on slide/spin, seriously. Padding energy usage on it is just silly...

[Geraion]

1 minute ago, ivalec said:

more nerf again... like Mesa, spoil the frame; no more use for ability 4. now is Valkyr and Excalibur. and planning to nerf Trinity and Ash too! should remove all the abilities from all the frames and just play a f***ing generic shooter and done! thank very much for the stupid nerf again...

They didn't say nerfing, they just said they were looking at them. Ash's 4 seriously needs a look, it's the most boring-&#! skill in the game atm. Press 4 and afk. Then press 4 again and afk, lol win at damage 4 free.

 

Besides, there's no fun on dominating everything with no effort, ability or weapon.

[Raistlinamon]

2 minutes ago, Archwizard said:

... Present company included?

Perhaps you got banned and made a new account, or this is your alt, but your account appears to only be a year old my friend. So, that's not saying much.

I get it. Nobody likes getting nerfed. But it's a part of game design, it has to happen sometimes and it happens to everyone. Yesterday it was someone else's favorite, today it's yours. Doesn't make your complaints any more valid than theirs, especially when all you offer is denial.

ok so how is my account only a year old and i have 2 dex furis? hm answer me that? forum account is not the same buddy.. i played this account in the beta.

[Demogarose]

23 minutes ago, DuskLegendary said:

 

Yes, yes... we all acknowledge that there are some broken abilities in the game. But why isn't anyone acknowledging that we use these broken abilities to counter even more broken enemies? Armor that scales with the enemy? Enemies that can literally infinitely scale and one shot basically any frame once they start getting into even the lv. 80s? What part of this is fair or balanced? 

The majority of this "broken" stuff is being used in either end game content like Sorties and Raids,or doing endurance runs in endless missions. Sorry, maybe I'm just dense, but what is this hurting exactly, who is this hurting? This is not a PVP game at it's core (Conclave doesn't count, we can't even use our real loadouts) and I just don't think nerfing all of the meta frames is the solution to the problem.

 

Quoted for truth.

Fix broken scaling first.

[Raistlinamon]

1 minute ago, Archwizard said:

... It's literally still beta, and Dex Furis is an anniversary gift. The anniversary was only a couple months ago. So unless you're trying to "get me" on account of implying 12 months as opposed to 14, my point still stands when the open beta alone is more than 3 years old.

lol that must be a display bug.. i have played since warframe abilities were mods.. my second frame was nekros and my first ability mod for it was desecrate.. i dont need to justify my vet status to someone who looks up details purely to troll. im mr 21.. i just never post in forums because IM PLAYING THE GAME.. imagine that.. i just heard about this and after  the egate scandal of exploits and nerfs i had to see for myself and say my piece..

Edited May 27, 2016 by Raistlinamon
more detail

[Cezza]

If these mirage changes go though as is, her blind will be useless as there are very few tilesets that would actually accomodate a "line-of-sight" blind. Maybe have 2 overlapping blinds, one that is LOS which has the current blind range or higher, and a second that has reduced (half) range and operates like the current prism. Prisms damage is irrelevent when there are already so many other high damage aoe abilities that arn't LOS in the game so i dont understand how trading a blind for a buff to an ability no one uses for damage is a good change.

And if you want to buff sleight of hand, currently mirage's most useless ability, maybe have it affect more than containers and corpus doors, so it can be used in different tilesets.

Also, if you are going to add an energy cost to excal's slide blind, atleast buff it to the point where it is half as effective as the ability.

Edited May 27, 2016 by Cezza

[keen211]

 I'm usually welcoming of balance changes and and even nerfs, anything to shake up the status quo, but some of these changes leave me deeply concerned. This may never be noticed but I feel I need to voice my opinion on some of the issues those changes mean for excalibur.

 1 - Please don't put an energy cost on the slide blind, I'd rather it be removed altogether. What purpose does it serve for excal to have two skills that do basically the same thing only with lesser range, while at the cost of having his slide attack cost energy? The only advantage for the slide attack blind was it being free since you are already spending energy to maintain exalted blade. This change makes no sense and I've never once seen this ability be abused by anyone ever.

 2 - If exalted blade is going to be more of a close quarters ability then it should benefit from body count and blood rush as any other melee weapon does. I'm honestly worried that this change may make it so that its actually better to just use your regular melee weapon instead of exalted blade with excalibur. EB not only is a warframe ultimate but there's also several downsides to having it on (Not being able to change weapons without an energy cost / not being able to regenerate energy), it should be the ultimate melee weapon otherwise theres really no point to it.

[Raistlinamon]

1 minute ago, Cezza said:

If these mirage changes go though as is, her blind will be useless as there are very few tilesets that would actually accomodate a "line-of-sight" blind. Maybe have 2 overlapping blinds, one that is LOS which has the current blind range or higher, and a second that has reduced (half) range and operates like the current prism. Prisms damage is irrelevent when there are already so many other high damage aoe abilities in the game so i dont understand how trading a blind for a buff to an ability no one uses for damage is a good change.

And if you want to buff sleight of hand, currently mirages most useless ability, maybe have it affect more than containers and corpus doors. 

amen and hallelujah for logical reasonable solutions.. +1 sir

[--RV--arm4geddon-117]

Since there's a dmg buff on mirage ability pls consider adding also a % buff based on something ( enemies health/armor etc, something like you did with the acid shells mod, and possibly consider that option for those other abilities that have a set number, for better scalability, acid shells is really a supreme addition cus the dmg bonus alwas scales no matter the lvl of the enemy )

Edited May 27, 2016 by arm4geddon-117
grammar

[Maxis_55]

11 minutes ago, Valsako said:

To be fair, there's a lot of abilities that are just useless. Such as:

 

I Agree on Ash, but his ability actually can deal damage, and, well, it works.
Ember's Fireball not that useless, we even have Augment and it becomes even good.
You can use Hydroid's third ability to last infinite time on Interception, his second is just copy-pasta of a bad ability from Excalibur and Rhino so it's a result of bad design. But yeah, his first ability is just as bad.
Ivara's noise arrow allow you to do finishers. Since this is forum, we can assume that people that do stealth actually exist and so this ability is not useless.
Mesa's Ballistic Battery,  Nova's Null Star, Nyx's Psychic Bolts,  Vauban's Tesla - agree.
Nekros's Soul Punch is more of a control ability and can know off enemy that you don't want to die to at 60 min of survival, but it's more of an excuse, so still agree.
Trinity's Well of Life is just a joke, but even ability this bad is better then Mirage's because you can buff Equinox's ult with it.
Valkyr's Ripline - it help's your movement.
Oberon and Nezha are just bad warframes, I don't think they were even supposed to have good abilities.
And Mesa with Zephyr was just overnerfed, they had useful abilities early.
Even with all this list Mirage's ability is the worst of them all, you can even use augment to vanish all ammo from the map and make it even worst.
What surprises me the most is the people, that can read and see this list, but they are complaining about "one-trick pony" warframes.

[-BM-Mitz]

I know it's not a popular opinion, but I'm voicing it either way: I'm all for these changes. 

Mirage had it coming since radial blind got LoS.

Valkyr's still strong but at a higher risk like we all wanted.

Excal damage falloff maybe like shotguns which is capped at 50% which is still great. Blinded enemies take extra damage anyway so it's compensatable and now you have a reason not to be a stationary spammer.

I don't know about Ash, but if his first 3 powers get some strong synergy and buffs in stealth play, maybe bladestorm can be left in some way as a damage dealer and ash will gain an alternative infiltration playstyle. Variety is always nice, but I'll hold judgement till we get something more solid.

The real problem is Trin. She's a dedicated support and is the only frame like that. If you nerf her support ability without any rework, you're overall reducing the whole frame's quality and encouraging EV spammers as a only build... If she's gonna get her support aspect changed, she needs a full rework cause currently she's so support-focused, changing only blessing is nearsighted at best.

 

[I-JUST-EAT-YOU]

43 minutes ago, Valsako said:

To be fair, there's a lot of abilities that are just useless. Such as:

Ash's Shuriken - A damage ability that only hits two enemies and deals less damage than a gun while simultaneously offering nothing other than damage... Who uses this?

Ember's Fireball - Basically the same as Shuriken.

Hydroid's entire kit except his 4th.

Ivara's Noise arrows - An ability so conditional that there's almost no reason to ever use this over one of Ivara's other powers or arrows.

Mesa's Ballistic Battery - I don't think I even need to explain this.

Mirage's already-mentioned Sleight of Hand.

Nekros's Soul Punch - Same as Shuriken.

Nova's Null Star - Same as Shuriken.

Nyx's Psychic Bolts - Because an ability that hits random targets with a chance to inflict radiation is somehow still a viable option when you have an ability that makes any enemy of your choice into a servant, and another that turns every enemy around you in a huge radius against one another in an instant with a 100% chance for it to work. Also, because a direct-damage ability makes perfect sense for a manipulator.

Oberon

Rhino Charge - The more suicidal version of Shuriken.

Trinity's Well of Life - Because an ability that suspends a single enemy, buffs his HP by 10x, and requires allies to hit that enemy to regenerate HP makes perfect sense when you can regenerate your own energy and have an ability that heals everyone instantly regardless of distance and gives them damage reductions on top of it.

Valkyr's Ripline - For when you're too lazy to jump and slash while in Hysteria, and don't know how to parkour properly.

Vauban's Tesla - For sticking your balls on people and absolutely nothing else.

And lastly...

Everything in Zephyr's loadout except Turbulence - Tail Wind should allow you to fly, but instead it's a useless thrust ability, Dive Bomb should be part of Tail Wind's functionality but instead it's a costly sub-par second ability, and Tornado is too unpredictable to be of any reliable use, and even when it does work it tends to cause more issues than it helps.

 

And there you have it, every useless power in Warframe!

Quoted for truth, you forgot Slash Dash though :P

[Tsoe]

7 hours ago, PsychedelicSnake said:

If not boosting the range and duration, I'd personally vote for having the EB Radial Blind open up enemies to finishers (if it does not do so already).

 

seriously why not just remoove radial blind from  EB slide

change  it for a radial slash with 10m range with 100% bleed proc

 

and plz ... radial javelin need to scale with mele

Edited May 27, 2016 by Tsoe

[-N7-Leonhart]

GOOD! Oh, that feels so good~ 

No more content trivialized (for the most part). GG DE.