Volt Rework Feedback [Post Update 18.13]

[Cytobel]

2 hours ago, Aquasurge said:

well, i am happy to let you now that i am working on a rework to status soon. if anyone has any good ideas to rework electric status please message me.

As much fun as the damage aspect to electric procs isn't, I'd drop all damage from electric procs period.  Instead, we get a chaining stun with a ~50% chance to knock enemies down.  I like to think of it as the taser effect.

Mind you, that's 50% knockdown AND stun.  150 electrical damage is interesting, but enemies that fall over and lay there for 2 seconds...  yeah, they're gonna die, 150 damage not required.

EDIT:  This knockdown is what I wanted on Shock to begin with, but I see no reason electrical damage in general wouldn't benefit.  It'd both help give purpose and identity to a base damage type, AND make Volt more of a tactical 'Frame simultaneously.

EDIT THE SECOND:  Okay, so I wasn't considering how most of the potential from electrical procs comes from overlapping proc radii.  Honestly, I'm not so sure I care either, if only because of the relative rarity of enemy piles and electrical proc atomic chain reactions.

How about this: electrical procs gain a 50% knockdown chance at the cost of 50 damage.  The proc does 100 damage, can still do what it does now, but has better scaling potential.  That's a worthy trade, right?  I hope that's not a game-breaking OP idea...

Edited July 16, 2016 by Cytobel
I think, therefore I edit

[Dr.Evergreen]

I wish I can move around slowly while I casting Discharge, like focus abilities.

other abilities are not bad.

[Aquasurge]

45 minutes ago, Chantepleur said:

I wish I can move around slowly while I casting Discharge, like focus abilities.

other abilities are not bad.

huh - not a bad idea to say the least.

[Wolfnrun]

On 7/16/2016 at 5:45 AM, Chantepleur said:

I wish I can move around slowly while I casting Discharge, like focus abilities.

Sounds pretty neat! 

Edited July 17, 2016 by Wolfnrun

[(PSN)HELLHOUND_ROCKO]

i'm happy to say that i discovered that my issues with Discharge not affecting a huge portion of the enemies it hits are near entirely gone on PS4 with the latest patch - despite patchnotes not saying anything regarding it. having quite some fun with Volt again. however: 

 

i cannot reload guns less than a felt mile away from my shield now - this should be addressed IMO since there is no way to not have reload on the interaction button on a gamepad since we already have more important keybindings than keys (including touchpad's 2. D-Pad simulation) on a DS4 controller. simply tweaking "pick up shield" to "hold interact" instead of "tap interact" should fix that perfectly fine. 

 

and then there is of course also still what was said a million times before and after the rework: the result of Shock-Shield interaction should briefly stun targets passing the Shield instead of (/ just) providing outside of irrelevantly tow level conditions irrelevantly low damage. currently most people probably do it like me and don't even waste the time with it now in the appropriate situations despite having the energy for it - because of the near irrelevant result of it ATM. 

[Wolfnrun]

Lets ask a few questions when the dev stream questions thread appears, I'm waiting for that to throw in a flurry of questions regarding volt, the who,what,when,were,why and how???

Edited July 17, 2016 by Wolfnrun

[(PSN)Silverback73]

On July 16, 2016 at 5:45 AM, Chantepleur said:

I wish I can move around slowly while I casting Discharge, like focus abilities.

other abilities are not bad.

This still seems like it hamstrings the kit synergy we keep looking for.

It's why I really want his passive to be "speed casting" on the run with speed active...basically carpet bombing/strafing with no slow down.

He's really the only frame with enough energy to pull it off in bursts with a power like discharge , which makes it seem even more logical.

It would also be so much more fun with shock and shield as it would really test hand-eye coordination as you "timed up" your casts while blazing through the map.

 

 

[EnderDDT]

I think it needs to be pointed out that the stat interactions on Discharge are just plain weird, non-intuitive, frequently misunderstood, and often just plain bad. Anyone who cares should read through this post before talking about how to make Discharge work well.

First, increasing power strength does not increase the duration. The damage and the cap increase at the exact same rate: so doubling one doubles the other, or halving one halves the other, etc. The duration lasts exactly the same. Against armored targets, while it might seem like it would "do more damage and so hit the cap faster", the truth is that armor reduces the damage by a percentage. This means that the ratios remain exactly the same and changing power strength again fails to affect the duration in any way. 

BTW, the wiki says something about power strength affecting the duration between damage pulses, but this has been shown by testing to be incorrect. All damage is done in half second intervals.

Only against highly armored targets will increasing the duration have any affect on the ability, since for all other targets the damage cap ends the ability before the duration has been reached. To be clear the ability has a base duration of 12 seconds but it takes about 9 seconds of damage to hit the cap with about 1 second of travel time on the ability's activation wave, and that assumes only one enemy is being shocked. If more than one enemy is in range than the cap gets hit much more quickly. Decreasing the duration, assuming that damage cap from clumped enemies doesn't end it first, absolutely will reduce the abilities power. So you end up getting the worst of both worlds. Against non-armored enemies you get nothing for increasing duration, and you loose something for decreasing it.

Technically, though, there is an edge case where if you hit only one enemy, the stun may last longer than the base duration. It takes about 9 seconds for a lone enemy to damage cap (without armor) after 4 seconds delay plus travel time of around 1 second. So if you hit only one target that is not close enough to shock anything else the duration can be increased... by about 2 seconds. If single enemies run in and out of the area the duration may last even longer, since it has to wait 4 seconds to self-harm after each.  If you were to try that they I would have to ask if you really are happy to have used the duration mod so that you could spend 100 energy to stun 1 enemy and possibly have them slow down one or two more?!? BTW, Nyx's first ability does the same, but lasts 2.5X as long and cost 1/4 as much energy and causes them to actively seek out enemies to attack and has other benefits depending on what is mind controlled.

Range affects both the range of the initial pulse and the shock range. Shock range is in an AoE around the affected enemies, and all damage dealt contributes to the damage cap. High range in an area with a lot of enemies can cause the cap to be reached in absurdly short periods of time. I gave an example before of how to reliably have enemies breaking the stun before the cast animation was finished. Because of the cap, however, total damage is unaffected. Decreasing range reduces enemies hit but, because of the cap, increasing range reduces the duration.

Sadly the duration does not end reliably or at any common time, enemies near the center (ie: you) will pop out of it first and reusing the ability will not restart the CC of those still affected. The power is simply not enough to make up for the unreliability of the ability.

Against high armored enemies, though, it can last and last because it deals almost no damage. So it is only good for CC against Grineer... except that Volt has trouble getting in the midst of them to attack without getting killed due to his low defenses...

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As for damage, a power strength of 299% equals a 11,960 damage cap per enemy hit, and that is assuming the use of all power strength mods with all the associated negatives. This would require at least 6 slots being used just to increase power strength or undo the damage caused by trying to increase the power strength (4 for power strength, 2 since reducing either duration or efficiency will hamper the use of Discharge itself). Even including the exelus slot only gives 3 more slots for defense, energy, range, duration, efficiency, augments, and/or anything else. A more balanced approach would be to simply use Power Drift and Intensify for 5,800 damage cap per enemy without as many downsides. Neither number is really very good considering what Volt's #4 actually does: not super good damage, unrelable CC, and makes you vulnerable to use it. Perhaps the fact that it deals that damage per enemy hit over the duration will pull it ahead?

To give an example my late game (but not end-game) Dragoon deals about 15,000 dps plus 48% status chance with a 4.1 meter punch-through and ricocheting bullets. There is also no need to be anywhere near enemies for the weapon, headshots are common, damage types can be customized and are far more beneficial, enemy death is instant, and ammo is far more common then the energy that would be required to use the ability.  The comparison comes down to this: The gun is just plain better despite it not being end-game viable. And, to make things worse in this example, the weapon's strength has no trade-offs or limitations in any area other than potential DPS.

Simply put, it takes a lot more danger to do what results in a lot less damage if focusing on the ability instead of the weapon. Elemental and slash procs will either ignore armor/shields completely or make everything else stronger by getting rid of them, while the electric does nothing more to the already stunned enemies and does not significantly help them die.. Hitting 3 or sometimes more enemies, thanks to the punch-through, is fairly common. High priority targets can be focused, and headshots straight double the damage even without a crit. Meanwhile the ability only deals flat damage up to the cap no matter what expertise is put into the use.

While other damage abilities either deal end-game damage or make more damage possible with the use of weapons, this ability simply is not effective for that goal.

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That said, the augment is good. It will quickly fill your overshields and keep them up for a few seconds. It requires a mod-slot and forces you to get into danger to use the ability in the first place. Mainly it suffers from being attached to the ability.

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TL/DR: As far as Discharge goes. It is only good for CC against Grineer because it deals no damage to them. Strength, duration, and range are all either non-factors or actively detrimental to mess with in most cases. The damage is not "good" no matter what you do. The only downside of the augment is that you have to use Discharge to activate it.

[Wolfnrun]

2 hours ago, EnderDDT said:

TL/DR: As far as Discharge goes. It is only good for CC against Grineer because it deals no damage to them. Strength, duration, and range are all either non-factors or actively detrimental to mess with in most cases. The damage is not "good" no matter what you do. The only downside of the augment is that you have to use Discharge to activate it.

Awesome, accurate, everything

Edited July 18, 2016 by Wolfnrun

[(PSN)Silverback73]

1 hour ago, EnderDDT said:

I think it needs to be pointed out that the stat interactions on Discharge are just plain weird, non-intuitive, frequently misunderstood, and often just plain bad. Anyone who cares should read through this post before talking about how to make Discharge work well.

First, increasing power strength does not increase the duration. The damage and the cap increase at the exact same rate: so doubling one doubles the other, or halving one halves the other, etc. The duration lasts exactly the same. Against armored targets, while it might seem like it would "do more damage and so hit the cap faster", the truth is that armor reduces the damage by a percentage. This means that the ratios remain exactly the same and changing power strength again fails to affect the duration in any way. 

BTW, the wiki says something about power strength affecting the duration between damage pulses, but this has been shown by testing to be incorrect. All damage is done in half second intervals.

Only against highly armored targets will increasing the duration have any affect on the ability, since for all other targets the damage cap ends the ability before the duration has been reached. To be clear the ability has a base duration of 12 seconds but it takes about 9 seconds of damage to hit the cap with about 1 second of travel time on the ability's activation wave, and that assumes only one enemy is being shocked. If more than one enemy is in range than the cap gets hit much more quickly. Decreasing the duration, assuming that damage cap from clumped enemies doesn't end it first, absolutely will reduce the abilities power. So you end up getting the worst of both worlds. Against non-armored enemies you get nothing for increasing duration, and you loose something for decreasing it.

Technically, though, there is an edge case where if you hit only one enemy, the stun may last longer than the base duration. It takes about 9 seconds for a lone enemy to damage cap (without armor) after 4 seconds delay plus travel time of around 1 second. So if you hit only one target that is not close enough to shock anything else the duration can be increased... by about 2 seconds. If single enemies run in and out of the area the duration may last even longer, since it has to wait 4 seconds to self-harm after each.  If you were to try that they I would have to ask if you really are happy to have used the duration mod so that you could spend 100 energy to stun 1 enemy and possibly have them slow down one or two more?!? BTW, Nyx's first ability does the same, but lasts 2.5X as long and cost 1/4 as much energy and causes them to actively seek out enemies to attack and has other benefits depending on what is mind controlled.

Range affects both the range of the initial pulse and the shock range. Shock range is in an AoE around the affected enemies, and all damage dealt contributes to the damage cap. High range in an area with a lot of enemies can cause the cap to be reached in absurdly short periods of time. I gave an example before of how to reliably have enemies breaking the stun before the cast animation was finished. Because of the cap, however, total damage is unaffected. Decreasing range reduces enemies hit but, because of the cap, increasing range reduces the duration.

Sadly the duration does not end reliably or at any common time, enemies near the center (ie: you) will pop out of it first and reusing the ability will not restart the CC of those still affected. The power is simply not enough to make up for the unreliability of the ability.

Against high armored enemies, though, it can last and last because it deals almost no damage. So it is only good for CC against Grineer... except that Volt has trouble getting in the midst of them to attack without getting killed due to his low defenses...

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

As for damage, a power strength of 299% equals a 11,960 damage cap per enemy hit, and that is assuming the use of all power strength mods with all the associated negatives. This would require at least 6 slots being used just to increase power strength or undo the damage caused by trying to increase the power strength (4 for power strength, 2 since reducing either duration or efficiency will hamper the use of Discharge itself). Even including the exelus slot only gives 3 more slots for defense, energy, range, duration, efficiency, augments, and/or anything else. A more balanced approach would be to simply use Power Drift and Intensify for 5,800 damage cap per enemy without as many downsides. Neither number is really very good considering what Volt's #4 actually does: not super good damage, unrelable CC, and makes you vulnerable to use it. Perhaps the fact that it deals that damage per enemy hit over the duration will pull it ahead?

To give an example my late game (but not end-game) Dragoon deals about 15,000 dps plus 48% status chance with a 4.1 meter punch-through and ricocheting bullets. There is also no need to be anywhere near enemies for the weapon, headshots are common, damage types can be customized and are far more beneficial, enemy death is instant, and ammo is far more common then the energy that would be required to use the ability.  The comparison comes down to this: The gun is just plain better despite it not being end-game viable. 

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TL/DR: As far as Discharge goes. It is only good for CC against Grineer because it deals no damage to them. Strength, duration, and range are all either non-factors or actively detrimental to mess with in most cases. The damage is not "good" no matter what you do. The only downside of the augment is that you have to use Discharge to activate it.

Good post.  With shields he is a complement and not alternative to gunplay.

Warframe powers' damage will never be greater than weapons' damage based on the business model/game design so it baffles me why they are seemingly obstinant about not changing the description.

And yes, I find it ironically sad that Discharge has become the slow-acting version of Mag's former shield polarize.

Locking down Grineer on Draco and turning KDT into "Dance! Dance! Superstar!" (High-armored boss lockdown has merit) during Rathuum is/was amusing, but not quite the viability we are looking for...

 

[SylvenStar]

Just putting this out there, we are looooong past the point of having proven how unviable Volt is. I think what we should be doing is putting in our own rework ideas, including energy costs, damage values and percentages, etc. because just giving the concepts themselves might not be enough to get them implemented any time soon.

[Wolfnrun]

37 minutes ago, SylvenStar said:

Just putting this out there, we are looooong past the point of having proven how unviable Volt is. I think what we should be doing is putting in our own rework ideas, including energy costs, damage values and percentages, etc. because just giving the concepts themselves might not be enough to get them implemented any time soon.

So it isn't to late for rework stuffs? I agree with you, i'm sure us volts out there do, but I'm not sure what we can do and or look forward to...looking for a sign...lotus say something!!! ack! this isn't fun! 

Edited July 18, 2016 by Wolfnrun

[Kotsender_Quasimir]

1 hour ago, SylvenStar said:

Just putting this out there, we are looooong past the point of having proven how unviable Volt is.

how so?

1 hour ago, SylvenStar said:

I think what we should be doing is putting in our own rework ideas, including energy costs, damage values and percentages, etc. because just giving the concepts themselves might not be enough to get them implemented any time soon.

https://forums.warframe.com/forum/89-fan-concepts/

Edited July 18, 2016 by Kotsender_Quasimir

[Aquasurge]

as for electric procs, i have finally finished my status rework thread. - hope you like the ideas for electric.

 

[Cytobel]

First off, @EnderDDT:  good breakdown there.

Next, @Kotsender_Quasimir:  this is the rework megathread, so they ASKED for feedback here.  That does include potential "fixes" to seriously borked mechanics from the people who actually play the 'Frame in question.  Just sayin'.  Honestly, no offense meant, it's just what we do in megathreads.

---------------------------------------------------------

Okay, so lets look at something here.  What Volt does is...  ...what, precisely?  He isn't ever going to provide an alternative to ANYTHING in this game (hell, at the moment he isn't even a serious alternative to other 'Frames), his ability to be complement to anything at all is just as shakey and debatable.  Heck, all he does right is build Speed and melee like an idiot on fast-forward.

What we as a player base need to take Volt as an actual option is this: first, a solid moveset that fits a singular theme.  Second, a series of potent interactions and tactical options in game that enable us to serve a purpose both solo and as part of a cell.  Third, Volt needs base stats that support his role rather than hindering it.  Finally, Volt needs to be able to be the "badass space ninja", whatever that is, that all 'Frames are supposed to be.

Consider this: some 'Frames have the ability to ignore death.  Some can fly, or go invisible whenever the mood strikes them.  Some 'Frames can step outside the bounds of reality and bring people along for the ride.  Some Warframes can devastate entire maps (still), calling on amplified forces of nature to end their foes.

We're just asking for a Volt that has a few basic considerations covered, so that we can have fun playing too.

[Wolfnrun]

13 hours ago, Kotsender_Quasimir said:

https://forums.warframe.com/forum/89-fan-concepts/

At this point it's better to keep going and talk about feedback here instead of making a whole new thread to relocate since this is a megathread that's been up for quite a while for the sole purpose of providing feedback, though it's been what? 2 months now?

Edited July 19, 2016 by Wolfnrun

[Kotsender_Quasimir]

3 hours ago, Cytobel said:

Next, @Kotsender_Quasimir:  this is the rework megathread, so they ASKED for feedback here.  That does include potential "fixes" to seriously borked mechanics from the people who actually play the 'Frame in question.  Just sayin'.  Honestly, no offense meant, it's just what we do in megathreads.

sure, sure... he just made it sound like it was some kind of scientific and universally agreed upon fact that volt is lacklustre as he is now... which is far from truth imho.

i won't blame you guys for coming up with new dps-frame designs considering they introduced the rework as finally being the alternative to yadda yadda... it's obviously not, he's in the same (rock solid imo) spot as before, just better. still some stuff is so radically straying away from the (re-)work at hand it might just as well be for a whole new frame really, that's all i wanted to hint at ;) ...

anyway, go on.

agreeing with much of the qol issues ender recapped. discharge being hopelessly unreliable and riot shield outright unusable i can't really agree to, tho. i occasionally used the latter when soloing to run to the exit after a rescue (ramming down everything in my path... good fun :) ), so quite a distance, and it held up just fine... well, with volt prime and primed flow that is.

Edited July 19, 2016 by Kotsender_Quasimir

[(PSN)WINDMILEYNO]

On 7/15/2016 at 11:55 PM, Aquasurge said:

well, i am happy to let you now that i am working on a rework to status soon. if anyone has any good ideas to rework electric status please message me.

Amperage. Consecutive electrical attacks have a chance to increase damage, stacking like puncture damage. 

But.

You electricities chaining effect becomes smaller the higher the damage.

This does not apply to discharge.

This is for the amprex, just so DE is aware of the problem just in case they actually listened to this idea, to try to keep them from feel the answer would be to nerf the gun.

[BlackCoMerc]

On 5/31/2016 at 11:27 AM, RealPandemonium said:

Shock is a better damage ability than Discharge.  Overload's damage potential increased without limit when many enemies were clustered together, while Discharge's bonus damage from grouped-up enemies is artificially capped by a coded-in limit to the power.  It's also currently being abused to permaCC whole tiles of high level Grineer, while against the other factions both its damage and CC are artificially limited by the health cap.  

Good point. I can lock down maps with Volt right now, against Orokin and Grineer. It's not Old Mirage or Vauban...but it's not far off, and these dudes take damage while CC us active, to boot.

[Azamagon]

Quickly chiming in to say what I would like to see changed:

Shock
* It would be very neat if Power Duration affected how many targets Shock could chain to.
* Shock (maybe even Warframe projectile-powers in general?) would be nice if it was empowered if it is cast through an Electric Shield.

Speed
* Adding some kind of visual effect upon casting/recasting it would be nice, as very often I don't notice if I have actually recasted the ability or not (there is NO visual effect whatsoever right now, which is really dull imo).

Electric Shield
* The electric damage bonus would be nice if it was modifiable with power strength.
* Riot Shield should pause the picked up shield's duration. There are already other downsides to using it as a Riot Shield, thus the increased energycost should count for SOMETHING (in this case, for extending its lifetime). An alternative would be to scrap the extra added energycost instead, but that doesn't remove the clunkiness of constantly having to cast and pick up the shield every time you want a new Riot Shield, thus I rather promote the timer pause. That said, the extra energycost, even if it paused the shield's remaining duration, is VERY costly. Reducing the energycost in half as well would be very nice.
* Riot Shield shouldn't limit you to secondaries. It's just boring and pointless (as secondaries are geneally more powerful anyway). All it does is limit your choices, thus, simply makes it less fun to use. However, I find the slowdown just fine (Because it balances the upsides vs downsides: Mobile and ragdoll-contact vs high energycost and slowdown)

Discharge
* Remove the health cap entirely, at the cost of reducing its duration a tiny bit. As @EnderDDT very thoroughly explains, the cap just messes up the power's potential.

[Duduminador]

Disrcharge feels like another frame's ability forced into Volt's kit ...

Is it useful? Hell, yeah. Is it powerfull? To an extent, definitly. Is it worth dedicating a build to it? A relutanct yes.

But so would be if Volt had Prism instead of Discharge, Rhino's Stomp or whatever area cc ability the game already has.

Not saying that Volt should have another weapon or melee 4th ability (like in everybody's wet dream), but if the reason to not give other frames weapon-ults is so that it doesn't turn into a copy paste without variety... then how is giving Volt another massive cc ability any different? I agree that the stun range of Mirage Prism was overpowered, but it feels like the main reason to do it, was so you could give someone elase (Volt) another area cc focused ability.

Not meant to be taken seriously but if by any chance... My own fandom born 4th ability for Volt would be an epic lightning spear, that wouldn't realy be a melee, but a sort of unic 1 shot weapon. Maybe it could split on hit, or cause a mid range shock, or maybe fire through everything in line of sight, guaranteed lightning proc and open mobs to finishers and it could be modded as either a str ability like a Glass cannon to fire through shields, or instead a low str to build to take advantage of the stagger from "open to finishers".
Press 4 to form weapon, left mouse click to fire, right mouse to zoom... Could have a charge firing time. Could synergise with electric shields on damage and speed on fire time? An Augment to instead of gain damage from Shields, bounce off on them. A synergy with shock to ragdoll staggered enemies (in case you realise you won't reach them in time for finishers). And it could benefit from the passive, but for god's sake, apply the damage to all hits, not just the first one.
And the most important side of it: the animation, hand up to the skies to form weapon, down on side while holding it, ONLY enter throw stance on charging or zooming.

I just wanted the 4th ability to be anything besides a buffed overload.

[[DE]Danielle]

Volt's changes have been generally well received! Thank you for all of your feedback, we appreciate you testing Volt and sharing your thoughts with the devs. 
 

[Wolfnrun]

58 minutes ago, [DE]Danielle said:

Volt's changes have been generally well received! Thank you for all of your feedback, we appreciate you testing Volt and sharing your thoughts with the devs. 
 

YIPPEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE Something diffrent is aproaching!!! I better not just be getting excited now...

@Dante123pl Even with high duration and efficency it's still not all that great, the concept was nice, but not in practice, I kinda want it gone...but I can go either way...We will have our storm monster one day. Also @[DE]Danielle Is this thread going to stay up any longer? or get a lock soon? I'm only asking

Edited July 19, 2016 by Wolfnrun

[Wolfnrun]

Yay! Lets see what happens guys!

[Wolfnrun]

Spoiler

One day, has to be 

 

Edited July 19, 2016 by Wolfnrun