After ranking up Vauban Prime, while at the same time, trying to use ALL of his Vaubanades, here's my feedback about his new kit

[faustias]

What irks me is I have to tap so much keys in order to spread his nades to be effective, and the way we are able to scroll for his Minelayer makes the setup kinda bad.

The thing is I can't use all of it. It still feels like I can only effectively use Bastille and Vortex.

Tesla's spam could really be useful if we can put out as much as we can in a burst. How about passively, it generate a stack, minimum of one, that we can unleash if button/hotkey is held? Be it the energy cost maybe 25 +10en per ball, or let it be 25en each ball unleashed in a burst cast. The maximum number of stacks may scale with its rank: 2/4/6/8, and why 8? I've always imagined he gets his nades from those 8 pouches on his warframe-engineer jacket or sleeve, so I guess I must suggest while sticking to his theme.

For the Minelayer, this may sound silly but what about let us use our mousewheel for choosing the mine? Or let use use a combination, choose two and throw a 2-in-1 mine that has both effects. Trip Laser + Bounce can send them flying away, may deal ragdoll damage in the process if you will; Shred + Concuss is a great anti-mob with combined reduced armor and deafness; Shred + Bounce is a great debuff for Corpus because of reduced armor + Magnetic proc; there's so many things his Minelayer may do but can't do it all because of a rather, let's say clunky control to its wheel.

E1: Another suggest for a new Minelayer control scheme is having to press [2] to bring-up Minelayer menu, then use keys 1~4 to choose, or combine if you'll take the combo suggestion, to throw a mineball. I think it's console-friendly if that's what makes the wall between you and making the ability usable via change of control for all platforms.

Edited June 30, 2016 by faustias

[Artekkor]

Can confirm.

Tried to play Vauban without using 3 or 4.
Got nothing. Absolutely nothing. 1 and 2 suck. I mean: they can be effective with certain specific builds, but by default - it takes too much time to set up any form of usable trap or whatever, not to mention that most effects such damage and debuffs are so weak that you should not even bother.

"Tap to use, hold to swap" needs to take place.
Also: buffs. Lots of them.
And some synergy would be nice.

[Varacal]

holding 2+mouse scroll would be nice when switching between minelayer

[DeMonkey]

I made a feedback thread suggesting pressing 2>1 for Bounce. 2>2 for Trip and so on. Effectively 2 button presses and you get whichever nade you want. No scrolling through options required.

[MuscleVictor]

I dislike the 'new' multi-purpose ability roulette for this very reason. It would be much better if it was tap to fire, and selecting other abilities required you to hold the ability button down and flick your mouse/analog stick up/down/left/right to select the properties of Ivara's Quiver and Vauban's Minelayer.

[Camelslayer]

The variety of grenades is fine. The method of toggling and using isn't.

[Drufo]

I find that his 1° and 2° abilities are totally overshadowed by Bastille and Vortex, since the latters, with the press of one button, make better CC and damage than a full spam of the the others. Since I don't like to spam abilities, I end up using only his 3° and 4°

[faustias]

36 minutes ago, Camelslayer said:

The variety of grenades is fine. The method of toggling and using isn't.

oh I'm not suggesting a total change, just combined effect so the player can deploy traps more often.

[Inarticulate]

34 minutes ago, MuscleVictor said:

I dislike the 'new' multi-purpose ability roulette for this very reason. It would be much better if it was tap to fire, and selecting other abilities required you to hold the ability button down and flick your mouse/analog stick up/down/left/right to select the properties of Ivara's Quiver and Vauban's Minelayer.

Tying your camera movement to your ability selection is a big no. Preventing camera movement during ability selection is also a big no.

Leave Quiver as is. Literally no one complained about the mechanic before Minelayer came into being, and people only mention it in the same sentence as Minelayer. Clearly, the issue is with Minelayer and not Quiver.

[Lyravain]

1 hour ago, Artek94 said:

Can confirm.

Tried to play Vauban without using 3 or 4.
Got nothing. Absolutely nothing. 1 and 2 suck. I mean: they can be effective with certain specific builds, but by default - it takes too much time to set up any form of usable trap or whatever, not to mention that most effects such damage and debuffs are so weak that you should not even bother.

"Tap to use, hold to swap" needs to take place.
Also: buffs. Lots of them.
And some synergy would be nice.

Made a thread about tap to use, hold to swap. Very few replies on that, though it's something I'd have preferred. Hold to use MIGHT have been ok for Ivara, considering she's got stealth that helps slow the game's tempo, but Vauban needs to be able to deploy instantly, not fiddle around.

Tesla needs a buff, stat. Horribly, horribly needs it. Minelayer can be  handy in certain situations, but they should get more oomph as well.

[MuscleVictor]

49 minutes ago, Inarticulate said:

Tying your camera movement to your ability selection is a big no. Preventing camera movement during ability selection is also a big no.

Leave Quiver as is. Literally no one complained about the mechanic before Minelayer came into being, and people only mention it in the same sentence as Minelayer. Clearly, the issue is with Minelayer and not Quiver.

Chain abilty selection for those abilities to WASD, D-pad, whatever; I'm still of the opinion that absolute values are far better than relative values when you need to select the right tool for the situation, especially when you need to do the action in as little time as possible.

Just to clairify, when I said that flicking the mouse/analog in a direction should select that ability, I meant that it should select the ability without having to release the ability button. Not only do you not have to think about what ability you're currently on, but performing the action could take less than half a second with significantly reduced chance of selecting the wrong ability, or accidentally overshooting the one you want, meaning you'd then have to press it another 3 times to get the one you want.

[Inarticulate]

8 minutes ago, MuscleVictor said:

Chain abilty selection for those abilities to WASD, D-pad, whatever; I'm still of the opinion that absolute values are far better than relative values when you need to select the right tool for the situation, especially when you need to do the action in as little time as possible.

Just to clairify, when I said that flicking the mouse/analog in a direction should select that ability, I meant that it should select the ability without having to release the ability button. Not only do you not have to think about what ability you're currently on, but performing the action could take less than half a second with significantly reduced chance of selecting the wrong ability, or accidentally overshooting the one you want, meaning you'd then have to press it another 3 times to get the one you want.

You'd have to stop moving your camera (or your character in the case of WASD) in order to flick your mouse in a direction or else risk accidentally selecting the wrong ability. This is not terribly viable in the middle of an engagement.

While it offers some improvements over the currently selection method, it also has some disadvantages that cannot be ignored. I'm just trying to point that out.

[MuscleVictor]

You can literally flick your mouse in a fraction of a second, and you can select abilities this way mindlessly; the current method requires you to actually look at the corner of your HUD to see what ability is selected and count how many times you need to press to get the ability desired. Any loss of control of the camera would only be for a very brief moment of time and does not require you to divert your focus, while the current setup forces you to know where you are and where you want to go, taking attention away from the center of the screen in the process. My suggestion may have disadvantages, but I feel that the benefit of absolute instead of relative ability selection far outweighs not being able to move your camera/character for a half second.

One example I can think of where this system is already in place is Killing floor by Tripwire Interactive. To select weapons and equipment, you can either use the mouse wheel to scroll through the list relative to where you already are, or use the number keys 1-4 to select primary, secondary, melee or welder/medgun respectively. I've found that I can select the weapon I want far more consistently with the number keys than the mouse wheel, simply because I don't need to worry about what weapon is in my hand when I want to change, because pressing 1 will always bring out my rifle, or pressing 2 twice will always bring out my second-best pistol. Killing floor has your current weapon model right in the middle of the screen where it's hard to miss, but since Quiver and Minelayer have no visual indicator, it's even harder to tell at a glance without looking at your HUD.

[OzoneSlayer]

Shred needs to be buffed to 70% to be practical at all. A max blind rage and transient fortitude just for stripping armor is outrageous. 

[Camelslayer]

21 hours ago, faustias said:

oh I'm not suggesting a total change, just combined effect so the player can deploy traps more often.

I know, but they need to figure out a better system than what they have.

[RunningTree3]

I also found Vauban's revision to be in the right direction but not quite there.

Tesla actually seems to outperform the new mines in that Tesla has a longer persistence. Concuss and Shred in particular I would have expected to have at least 4 activations like Bounce, for their energy cost.

The hold-to-cast mechanic does seem uncharacteristic (unlike Ivara who can patiently setup her effects).

In another thread, I made a wild proposition to: 1) devolve/partiton Bounce into the other mines, 2) merge these mines into ability #1, 3) then make ability #2 "mine loader" to switch, with potential to 'overload' [thanks Volt] and cast more ballz in one go.

Edited July 2, 2016 by RunningTree3

[LuckyCharm]

Why not make holding the button down turn into a wheel picker like the gear system? It would be much simpler and let me spam trip wires everywhere instead of holding to cast them slowly