Mag Rework Feedback [Post Update 18.13]

[BiancaRoughfin]

I pulled my Mag out to test the rework and as far as i can tell, she is much more efficient than she was before.

Pull is still very useful, not ment to be a damage skill but mostly a crowd control , very efficient in knocking enemies down, bringing them closer to make them easy targets or tugging them from hacking panels wile trying to activate the alarms or capture a base in interception missions.

Her Magnetize is an outstanding skill for taking down strong mobs or bosses in Sorties, casting it on a Bursa causes it to be dead in 5 seconds top from self inflicted damage, friendly fire and/or Tenno weapons. I went on the Vay Hek assassination Sortie the other day and we finished the mission in less than 10 minutes, every step of the boss fight took us a few seconds as every attack done to the Magnetize sphere went directly to his weak point and on his last confront even his missile barrage wasnt able to hit us. On the Kela Assassination sortie was equally easy, her health would drop very fast no matter how much she jumped from wall to wall trying to evade us.

Even after the target has died, the Magnetize Sphere still functions as a temporary shield , absorbing damage and redirecting to any passing or standing mob within it.

Her Shield Polarize shreds low lvl mobs with ease, in Draco for example my skill can take down mobs on every four corners of the map. I used it in Sorties today with a Trinity next to me using Energy Vampire and i kept using the skill every 10 seconds and completely drained enemy armors completely to the point their health bars turned red and made them an easy kill.

Her Crush so far was the only weak link in her chain, i havent seen it doing much damage and on Draco it was unable to kill any mobs.

Edited June 5, 2016 by BiancaRoughfin

[RealPandemonium]

13 minutes ago, 3goats said:

Banshee increases damage by a significant margin and can stun, Ember can increase her damage against all targets in range as well as stun them while doing a large amount of straight up damage on her own.

Sonar's damage is 2+x stronger (arguable; a magnetize bubble's damage amplification % increases as it absorbs more damage and ticks more times) but Magnetize does not require marksmanship and deals AOE DoT and an even more powerful explosion at the end.  Crush's radial CC is roughly equivalent to Sound Quake's, and Pull can keep a whole tile on its &#! for the duration of the mission when spammed.  

Accelerant only buffs heat damage and is only 25% stronger at base (before Magnetize accumulates/ticks damage, which can make it effectively stronger than Accelerant.)  Mag and Ember's unbuffed direct damage powers are in the same league.  

[Kevyne_Kicklighter]

17 minutes ago, RealPandemonium said:

Sonar's damage is 2+x stronger (arguable; a magnetize bubble's damage amplification % increases as it absorbs more damage and ticks more times) but Magnetize does not require marksmanship and deals AOE DoT and an even more powerful explosion at the end.  Crush's radial CC is roughly equivalent to Sound Quake's, and Pull can keep a whole tile on its &#! for the duration of the mission when spammed.  

Seriously, DE needs to get out of bubbles. I play a Paladin in WoW and I'd never thought I'd state that, but WF has simply too many bubbles. Bubble DoT. Bubble Nullifiers. Bubbles even for the EMPs!

The best thing about Shield Polarize and Crush before this change was -- no blinding animations -- associated with them. You can just hear those blasts go off, and left a clear view afterwards.

Magnetize and the new Shield Polarize are visual candy revamps, and the shards and other FX gets lost in a sea of particle effects. No amount of extra damage is worth blocking the view of the map itself!

[JohnMorte]

1 hour ago, RealPandemonium said:

Sonar's damage is 2+x stronger (arguable; a magnetize bubble's damage amplification % increases as it absorbs more damage and ticks more times) but Magnetize does not require marksmanship and deals AOE DoT and an even more powerful explosion at the end.  Crush's radial CC is roughly equivalent to Sound Quake's, and Pull can keep a whole tile on its &#! for the duration of the mission when spammed.  

Accelerant only buffs heat damage and is only 25% stronger at base (before Magnetize accumulates/ticks damage, which can make it effectively stronger than Accelerant.)  Mag and Ember's unbuffed direct damage powers are in the same league.  

Magnetize bubble increases damage towards only one target and anything unlucky enough to walk into the bubble. The bubble also absorbs all fire so if you're trying to shoot at something past the bubble you'll have to reposition (which can be dangerous). The DoT of magnetize is not really worth mentioning. There's also the fact that Sonar doesn't block off entire areas to shoot at, while also enabling a large amount of damage to be dealt (it really isn't difficult to hit those giant weak spots). Crush CC is pathetic and it leaves Mag exposed.

57 minutes ago, Kevyne_Kicklighter said:

Seriously, DE needs to get out of bubbles. I play a Paladin in WoW and I'd never thought I'd state that, but WF has simply too many bubbles. Bubble DoT. Bubble Nullifiers. Bubbles even for the EMPs!

The best thing about Shield Polarize and Crush before this change was -- no blinding animations -- associated with them. You can just hear those blasts go off, and left a clear view afterwards.

Magnetize and the new Shield Polarize are visual candy revamps, and the shards and other FX gets lost in a sea of particle effects. No amount of extra damage is worth blocking the view of the map itself!

There's also the fact that magnetize not only blocks the view of the map but also absorbs damage if you ever wanted to attack someone past the bubble.

Edited June 5, 2016 by 3goats

[Oishii]

Well at least she is good at getting top damage because she prevents teammates from dealing any damage at all with magnetize.

My thoughts on her abilities:

Pull- still don't know why they haven't reverted Pull back to update 8 pull. She wasn't considered strong back then either but she was very useful for rounding up mobs for aoe as her pull pulled everything to her feet instead of to random locations. Miss this pull so much I don't know why DE changed it =/.

Magnetize- Well it's sort of good but when its cast in the right situation but it can easily hinder your team. There should be some way to instantly explode your magnetize. Maybe if you cast magnetize on an area that has already magnetized it explodes dealing the amount of damage put into it.

Polarize, doesn't scale not very useful.

Crush doesn't scale only useful at low levels.

Edited June 5, 2016 by Oishii

[Gaskevindy]

19 hours ago, SenorClipClop said:

On 6/4/2016 at 1:17 AM, 3goats said:

Magnetize griefs your team. You can't shoot through it, and it makes attempting to shoot through to unaffected enemies impossible.

Frost has the same problem. The workaround is in trying to lure/Pull enemies into the zone, since it deals a portion of the total damage poured into it, and the core of the zone doubles all weapon damage on the target at max rank and 100% power strength. Here's where they moved the scaling damage people are missing from the old Polarize. Alternatively, you could just stand in the bubble defensively and be protected from all gunfire. Magnetize can work like Snowglobe, only it can also be used a little like Nyx's Absorb and furthermore gives the whole squad double weapon damage on that zone. Magnetize can grief, but a Mag who is conscious abut where she puts her zones will do much more good than harm.

Magnetize induces rage for Mag's teammates.  It needs to be able to be shutdown, like the snowglobe.  

More Frost players need to learn to kill their snowglobes too...

[Rhaenxys]

Quick video with a friend laptop but you can see how the bonus damage only applies to the main target affected by magnetize, the bonus damage to pull and crush should affect every enemy inside magnetize bubble.

http://sendvid.com/0zz8n52o

[(PSN)KinslayersDawn]

Here is my main problem with this rework, and something that I really hope gets changed between now and when I get my hands on her: abilities that deal set amounts of damage to shields and armor do not scale. What this means is that while Polarize can strip low level armor and shielding alright, it is impossible to mod it effectively at high levels. The more armor or shields, the more times you have to cast. You can see this well in AGayGuyPlays testing on YouTube. 10 casts with very high power strength to completely strip high level armor? That is not only bordering on useless, but tottally unrealistic. When are you going to have the opportunity to hold an enemy in place with one ability and cast another 10 abilities to deal with their armor? This is literally the only armor/shield debuff in the entire game that does not work off of a percentage, and there is a reason that all the others do. Ash, Banshee, Frost, Nekros, and Vauban all have abilities that are based on percentage, and thus scale. The same thing with Corrosive Projection. In addition, with the exception of Nekros, all of those abilities can be modded to fully strip armor, because, as players of high level content can point out, there is very little benefit to stripping some armor; it's really all or nothing. Why was it decided to build it this way?

Granted, before,  Mag was really only effective at fighting Corpus (or at least much better at it) and I was really looking forward to using her against the Grinneer when I heard about her new rework. Now though, knowing that Polarize is based on set damage, instead of scaling percentages, it looks like there isn't a lot to look forward to.

I should point out that I love the rest of her rework,  but so much depends on this ability that with it unbalanced like this, I still don't have much of a reason to use her, and that is such a shame.

Edited June 5, 2016 by (PS4)KinslayersDawn
Grammar

[BiancaRoughfin]

Prime Continuity (+55% Duration) + Constitution (+28% Duration) led to this huge range for Shield Polarize.

Where are the people complaining about its range again?

[motorfirebox]

9 hours ago, 3goats said:

Magnetize bubble increases damage towards only one target and anything unlucky enough to walk into the bubble. The bubble also absorbs all fire so if you're trying to shoot at something past the bubble you'll have to reposition (which can be dangerous). The DoT of magnetize is not really worth mentioning.

I've been topping damage and kills since the rework. Magnetize is an incredibly powerful ability.

 

Edited June 5, 2016 by motorfirebox

[SenorClipClop]

6 hours ago, Gaskevindy said:

Magnetize induces rage for Mag's teammates.  It needs to be able to be shutdown, like the snowglobe.  

More Frost players need to learn to kill their snowglobes too...

Not a bad idea, but Magnetize only lasts 15 seconds at max rank before mods.

A Mag who struggles with proper point control may end up Magnetizing enemies in frustrating places, but an observant one shouldn't be an issue. If in narrow hallways, Magnetize can be cast on enemies at valuable choke points to focus the team's fire on the right spot. In wide open spaces, Tenno can simply reposition to shoot the enemies they want, but Mag should still be conscious about what effects her abilities have on the battlefield. Like a handful of other Warframes (Frost, Limbo, Ash), Mag has abilities that can potentially interfere with other players, and so we all gotta watch.

[malekas]

My biggest problem with her rework has nothing to do with Polarize, it's Crush. It was a bad ability before the rework, and it's still a bad ability. It's weak, the CC isn't that good, and the casting time is terrible. That little bit of extra damage they added to enemies in the Magnetize bubble does nothing for it. It needs to be changed to something completely different from just a bad version of Oberon's Reckoning.

 

What I would like to see is for Crush to pull every enemy in range to one spot in front of Mag. That's not only extremely strategic but it synergizes with Magnetize and Polarize. It wouldn't even have to do damage if they could make Crush do that.

[Duduminador]

2 hours ago, malekas said:

What I would like to see is for Crush to PULL every enemy in range to one spot in front of Mag. That's not only extremely strategic but it synergizes with Magnetize and Polarize. It wouldn't even have to do damage if they could make Crush do that.

And I have to disagree on Crush, often It seens to kill as much as any other of her abilities depending on faction and debuffs already applied, specially if tagged with the augment mod which seens to apply the armor reduction even before it applies its own damage.

[Archwizard]

2 hours ago, malekas said:

My biggest problem with her rework has nothing to do with Polarize, it's Crush. It was a bad ability before the rework, and it's still a bad ability. It's weak, the CC isn't that good, and the casting time is terrible. That little bit of extra damage they added to enemies in the Magnetize bubble does nothing for it. It needs to be changed to something completely different from just a bad version of Oberon's Reckoning.

Absolute agreement. Avalanche deals damage, freezes enemies, removes their armor and deals additional damage for each enemy that dies under its effects. Reckoning deals damage, knocks down enemies, applies Radiation procs, turns survivors into Radial Blind beacons and has a chance to spawn health orbs. Crush just deals damage and ragdolls; it's hopelessly outclassed in regards to most other ultimates today.

However, there are worries that if Crush just throws everyone within a twenty meter radius together, it may trump Pull in terms of gathering. It could still have a mini-Pull to it, slamming enemies within a small range together while possibly dealing damage for each, so long as the real Pull remains more efficient in regards to positioning and CC.

I'd like to see Pull become a much better gathering tool, piling up enemies in one point in front of you like it used to rather than flinging them wildly, and then have Crush at least detonate Magnetize bubbles within range to cause instant damage. That way you could Pull a group together, Magnetize someone, Polarize their defenses into the bubble's damage, and then Crush them for a final nuke - a combo that costs most of her energy pool, but gives her a lot of mileage for it.
Mag's philosophy has always been about removing and turning an opponent's main advantages against them - their weaponry, their defenses, their higher ground - so it makes sense for her to weaponize their numbers as well (especially as this is not new to her philosophy, hi Polarize).

Edited June 5, 2016 by Archwizard

[SenorClipClop]

So I've been experimenting, I'm finding that building for 100% Range is ideal for me in most situations, making Magnetize not so small as to hold few enemies, but not so large as to wall off other enemies. Low range does affect her other abilities, but I like to play in the mid-range and don't feel the need to Pull from too far away or use Crush much except to freeze a big group. Polarize doesn't take much of a hit from low range since it also stacks on Duration and doesn't really need to cast that far. This results in a slower pulse outward too, hitting more (advancing) enemies per cast and giving plenty of notice to allies. Perhaps not optimizing, but it's a ratio that feels nice to play. I'm starting to think the bubble should be reflective of the size of the rooms you'll be in during each mission.

Will test more.

[RealPandemonium]

20 hours ago, 3goats said:

Magnetize bubble increases damage towards only one target and anything unlucky enough to walk into the bubble. The bubble also absorbs all fire so if you're trying to shoot at something past the bubble you'll have to reposition (which can be dangerous). The DoT of magnetize is not really worth mentioning. There's also the fact that Sonar doesn't block off entire areas to shoot at, while also enabling a large amount of damage to be dealt (it really isn't difficult to hit those giant weak spots). Crush CC is pathetic and it leaves Mag exposed.

There's also the fact that magnetize not only blocks the view of the map but also absorbs damage if you ever wanted to attack someone past the bubble.

Magnetize's DOT spreads 50 (+powerstr bonus) % of the damage you put in as a dot every second to everything in the bubble; that's not worth mentioning?

Crush reliably CCs enemies in its radius and makes Mag's other abilities seamlessly safe to use as long as you're willing to pay some extra energy and have enough range to reach the relevant threats (max range 42-45m depending on Cunning Drift.)  

Magnetize's obstruction downside can be reduced by using less range or duration.  A means of manual detonation could also help in this regard, but is not essential in my eyes given how useful it is to have bubbles around.  

As an aside, Sonar is rarely used as intended; instead it is stacked (often with EV bandaiding the cost of spam) and further stacked with Resonance until a given enemy's whole body is covered with one or more sonar spots (to the point that even AOE damage powers are boosted by it.)  Exploitability resulting from corrupted mods and augments have ruined the spirit of Sonar (and most of the commonly abused frame powers.)  

[Kevyne_Kicklighter]

12 hours ago, BiancaRoughfin said:

Prime Continuity (+55% Duration) + Constitution (+28% Duration) led to this huge range for Shield Polarize.

Where are the people complaining about its range again?

:thunk:

Before this patch, with Stretch and Arcane helm, her Power Range was 289%. Mag was Shield Polarizing w-a-y away, already.

Duration mods was a cheap way to alter Mag's stats by forcing to use dump stats instead ... when she already had the range for all her spells.

Only Bullet Attractor then needed duration, and it was rarely used. Why she went full +Power Strength and -Duration with corrupted mods.

Ooohing and aaaahing for increased range she already had WITHOUT the stat cheese, IS the epitome of dev stat cheese.

 

[kleerr2]

Something needs to be done to Magnetize's bubble shrink phase, ASAP... I'm running a range build and it takes about 4 seconds for the explosion to occur, in which time, absolutely all sources of dmg can and will pass trough the bubble and into you... I dont wanna have to CC or run and hide when the explosion dmg Magnetize has acumulated will obliterate the enemies...

[45neo]

On 5/27/2016 at 5:14 PM, Kevyne_Kicklighter said:

Again, that's not it.

If her prime nuke can't even kill level 12 outright ... who would call that a DPS frame?

Imagine all the other DPS frames having the same problem.

Then, what's the point of gearing out even???

I know this is a bit late, I did not mean try against higher level enemies as in 100+ I meant that due to how polarize now works it's more efficient against level 30-40 enemies rather than level 12 enemies... Don't ask me why but it seems to perform better vs mid level enemies than low level enemies and high level enemies (I personally think it's because your getting the max benefit from shields/armor removed but who know). Another note is it seems to do best against a TON of enemies closely packed together (perhaps since enemies can be damaged by nearby AoEs created by polerize multiple times now?)

[SenorClipClop]

On 6/5/2016 at 10:29 AM, (PS4)KinslayersDawn said:

This is literally the only armor/shield debuff in the entire game that does not work off of a percentage, and there is a reason that all the others do. Ash, Banshee, Frost, Nekros, and Vauban all have abilities that are based on percentage, and thus scale. The same thing with Corrosive Projection. In addition, with the exception of Nekros, all of those abilities can be modded to fully strip armor, because, as players of high level content can point out, there is very little benefit to stripping some armor; it's really all or nothing. Why was it decided to build it this way?

I didn't realize this was the only power that stripped a flat amount of shields/armor. Huh.

This is probably in the interest of retooling Mag to find a decent balance of power, and this figure may be changed in future patches. Given the overpowered nature of old Polarize and the added shrapnel effects of new Polarize (contributing to Magnetize's DoT), it would make sense if DE wanted to scale the ability really low and see how effective it is in the hands of players, and also ensure players wouldn't find exploits in the ability and have it be broken again. Recall that while DE does thoroughly test new content, there are so many players pouring so many collective hours into this game that exploits can be found out pretty quickly by the community. (Within a day of 18.13, for example, players found out that Mag's new kit would wreck absolutely everything in the game when paired with Lanka, and DE had to hotfix this to be not quite game-breaking.) Mag's new kit has damage coming from a variety of sources to stack atop each other, and I can imagine the devs cutting down on Polarize (since it's best used to start Mag's combos) and lessen the risk of players potentially breaking the game with her stacking (and multiplying) damage. And if, after the players experiment with it and it needs a boost, it's better for the player base if Mag gets a nerf and then a buff back up than it is if she gets nerfed twice in a row. Despite what all the whiners say.

But does the decrease in Polarize's power mean that Mag is less powerful? It depends. We as Tenno are still working out the new (quite different) roles Mag can play in a squad. Many in this thread claim that Mag is unusable now because she's no longer the press-2-to-win Corpus nuke she was previously, but with the right play style Mag can do significantly more damage than she used to, and on top of this has a deeper level of engagement and control. Back to Polarize, I've been playing it as a way to soften up the enemy rather than strip armor completely (if I know I'll be up against armor, I'll usually bring a couple different defense-shredding tools anyway) in prep for Magnetize. I have yet to push her to her limits and I do see the potential limitations of flat damage and debuffing, but so far I'm not really finding Polarize to be that bad. It's better against shields still (with the magnetic damage and explosions), and the armor debuff is likely more secondary and meant to make her viable against armored units, not optimal. Remember that it does do three things at once, and DE reworked this frame in the first place to have more than one trick. It's certainly less of a show than the old version of the power, but Mag's strengths have been moved to other places.

TL;DR: I believe that Polarize was given flat armor/shield reduction in order to discourage players spamming it like they did old Polarize, and to make sure the ability (and Mag as a whole) wouldn't be overpowered straight out of her rework. Mag is still finding her place in the squad, and we must figure out if the minor stats of Polarize need to be any higher to make Mag useful and balanced in most situations. She works best against shielded units and, while still not the pick against armored enemies, her changes make her at least playable against Infested and Grineer. I hope that if Mag is left underpowered because of Polarize, the devs will change its stats to make the power more significant within her kit, if necessary.

[aerosoul1337]

Seriously...still no fix for Polarize? Fixed damage (which is very low) is almost useless.

I think even giving Mag ability to inflict magnetic proc is still useless.

Magnetic proc itself is useless against enemies.

 

Yesterday's sortie3 is augmented shield...

(I really miss old Mag now...)

I tried sortie with my magnetic status weapons.

After magnetic proc happened, target still has tons of over-shield.

From what I saw magnetic proc doesn't really reduce target's "current" shield, their Health/Shield bar ratio remains the same.

I kept shooting but their shields are way too high, and they died by toxic damage with huge shields remained...

So it is completely pointless for magnetic proc, it is a special threat just to drain our energy.

 

[TheLexiConArtist]

40 minutes ago, aerosoul1337 said:

Yesterday's sortie3 is augmented shield...

(I really miss old Mag now...)

I tried sortie with my magnetic status weapons.

After magnetic proc happened, target still has tons of over-shield.

From what I saw magnetic proc doesn't really reduce target's "current" shield, their Health/Shield bar ratio remains the same.

I kept shooting but their shields are way too high, and they died by toxic damage with huge shields remained...

So it is completely pointless for magnetic proc, it is a special threat just to drain our energy.

 

I ran that Sortie 3 with Mag too.

Handily outperformed the Saryn (señor 20% damage dealt) whose AOE spore spreading still doesn't care about LOS or anything and covers a hugely increased radius over my Magnetise bubbles.

 

Not shown: Dropping only once (and safely in a bubble where I could be revived) myself, while 15 revives were generously bestowed unto the team from the safety of Magnetising the nearest enemy. Yes, even though I took a significant proportion of the damage, I didn't drop. My Warframes always fit their shield and health mods.

 

I couldn't push 2 and clear the map repeatedly, no. But I was able to move around the points and easily handle the mission despite that inordinately large shield boost. Oh no, they survived a tick or two before falling over. So much ineffectiveness.

[45neo]

Honestly now knowing it is straight damage rather than a scaling percent... In some niche cases it seems to do something but I think it needs to be made to scale again.

Understandable in its old state it was fairly op vs corpus... If made to scale like it did mag would be way to OP.

 

I think if made to scale by a much smaller percentage of the enemies health plus some flat amount, I.E. 100 damage + 20% of shields/armor at max level, It would help at least add diversity to mag builds and make it somewhat useful again.

[Tenno29543]

DE, i get what you're trying to do here but if mag's 3 is weak than it can really effect new player experience negatively. It's cool dat you want to get rid of spamming only 1 abilty to do damage but i disagree with nerfing the ability into the ground and making it  useless against any enemies of high lvls.. the starter frames are supposed to be easy to use, and effective. Like Excalibur. Please look at mag again and make some changes to her 3rd ability..

 

Edited June 6, 2016 by BigBlackCook

[achromos]

1 hour ago, BigBlackCook said:

DE, i get what you're trying to do here but if mag's 3 is weak than it can really effect new player experience negatively. It's cool dat you want to get rid of spamming only 1 abilty to do damage but i disagree with nerfing the ability into the ground and making it  useless against any enemies of high lvls.. the starter frames are supposed to be easy to use, and effective. Like Excalibur. Please look at mag again and make some changes to her 3rd ability..

 

Just... gonna point out that for the 'new player' experience...  Most things on the star-chart STILL die to polarize relatively easily...  Just not High End void/Sortie missions.  Polarize tickles enemies on those.