BLADESTORM: Does it really NEED to Change?

[MindHoney]

20 minutes ago, Defion said:

I know he is getting a rework and thats not only because Devs dont like him as he is now.

And my argument boils down to, if you dont like players spamming 1 ability there are ways to avoid then rather then shouting nerf every freaking time.

If you want the nerf just cause random Ash players, then why the heck you keep around those? Instead of wanting a nerf for that why not say buff the frame i like the most? I barely see just Ash players, their all pretty mixed in frames, I say let DE show a % of frames used so we can see if Ash is really used as much as people claim to be cause i dont think so.

The resion ash isn't use much is because of people like me, if I see a random ash I leave it kick him aways. Simply become of blade storm spam. I like so many others have had so many bad Ash's that we won't play with him any more. So yes I do want him nerfed because of random. 

It use to be the same with Excalibur for me, I would not play with him. Then he got his range nurf and now he doesn't spend the hole mission running to random room abusing his ultimate.

[Deidaku]

I like this game . I like playing it.

 

The problem is that teaming up with Ashes sucks all the fun out of it. THey kill everything instantly, almost 0 delay  . 

Teaming up with ash players isn't fun at all. 

I do use ash from time to time but the problem is that with bladestorm ,doing anything else is pointless

 

[MindHoney]

1 minute ago, kitsu said:

Blocking people is not a valid way to "avoid" such things.

The very bottom line is, ash bladestorm leave him invulnerable, carrier still picks things up, bypasses armor, AND does stealth multiplier damage. If that isn't over the top powerful than I don't know what is.

Currently, DE is about balance, to make things fun, yet challenging. Trinity got her nerf, mag got her nerf, sayrn got her nerf, even mirage got her nerf. They all had 1 thing in common, an overly powerful ability with hardly any setup or negatives.

They are reworking ash to be more team friendly, since he is currently more of a solo frame than coop frame.

Don't forget Excalibur nurf or the volt rework, both adding to that same thing.

[gluih]

Ash already has 3 good abilities without his 4.
I actually prefer ash 2 over loki invis, becaue it is less spammable.

Ash is really annoying for other players, which needs to change.

There is a lot of potential to make his 4 interact with the rest of his abilities, which would be great.
There is also potential to give him some teamplay with a bladestorm rework, which would be great.

[Hayabusa97]

17 minutes ago, MindHoney said:

Don't forget Excalibur nurf or the volt rework, both adding to that same thing.

And after Ash gets his nerf hammer, let's check out what other abilities that completely trivialize content need nerfing. So far, the only one I know of is Banshee's Soundquake (or at least the augment) since it basically stunlocks enemies to death in their spawn and will never run out if you have an EV Trinity on the team. I actually ran into this in today's sortie.

Edited August 9, 2016 by Hayabusa97

[Defion]

8 minutes ago, MindHoney said:

Don't forget Excalibur nurf or the volt rework, both adding to that same thing.

Volt.... Volt was/is my starter frame and I adore Volt but my god its passive is pretty much usless  (i get it to 1k extra dmg, hitted a random S#&$ty enemy instead of the bigger treat one, and gone is my dmg buff.... wasted, it goes better with speed....) and his shield.... its nicer to look at then the old one but my god, the energy drain to actualy get it proper is a B...... I wish they would change the way energy works, melee channel drains it alot, abilitys drain it alot (if you dont focus on efficient, which leaves you with 2 slots less to use for strenght to get more out of it). There are so many things wrong yet the "nerf this ability" topics gets on my nerves. Awell his rework will be like the others and there goes another frame made usless. May they rest in dust, Mesa, Rhino (purely for me for its plastic condom looking iron skin that doesnt even goes over his entire body), Saryn, Trinity, Vauban and soon Ash and futher Titania (oooh the OP shouts in dev live stream boats well).

[Xaero]

The answer to your question - yes, it does.

About that nuker part - guess why DE changes such abilities. No, not to make Ash the only nuker.

Edited August 9, 2016 by Ksaero

[BlackCoMerc]

28 minutes ago, gluih said:

Ash already has 3 good abilities without his 4.
I actually prefer ash 2 over loki invis, becaue it is less spammable.

Ash is really annoying for other players, which needs to change.

There is a lot of potential to make his 4 interact with the rest of his abilities, which would be great.
There is also potential to give him some teamplay with a bladestorm rework, which would be great.

No. It wouldn't be great.

I'm sorry, but worrying about team play and support is the LAST thing devs handling Ash need to do.

It's a high damage, Assassin frame. We have support frames. Frankly, I'm sick of seeing team support shoehorned onto frames. It's how we ended up with a Gunslinger with ONE ability related to Gun-slinging.

Let Ash be a damage dealer. We don't need more support abilities. 

[xSterbukz]

I feel like BS (Blade storm... but the other acronym applies) should be somewhat similar to fatal teleport, but with the ability to jump to other enemies seamlessly(and killing them), like the current one, but doing that MANUALLY, and removing the clones which kill people. That would be better because it won't just be a slide show and will require "skill" or minimal attention. His Shurikens and Smoke storm could use a buff, since modding for strength ruins all the other abilities (except teleport)

[Death_Master_]

To me it does not need to change - it is good as it is, maybe bit stronger damage for high-level mobs would be good but nothing more to change in it!

P.S. I do not often use Ash but i like bladestorm ability.

[BAY35]

On 8/7/2016 at 9:33 PM, (XB1)Woofsie said:

I just thought of something. What if we changed Bladestorm to be an AOE that stays for a set duration on a specific area. Any enemy that enters is targeted by the clones and attacked. Like an actual storm.

But then you won't be (technically) taking part in the ability, so you can't see the cool animations.

That sounds kinda like an Ash version of World On Fire, which is similar to what the devs had tested and they said it was way too powerful so they scrapped it. So that probably won't happen.

[MindHoney]

54 minutes ago, Defion said:

Volt.... Volt was/is my starter frame and I adore Volt but my god its passive is pretty much usless  (i get it to 1k extra dmg, hitted a random S#&$ty enemy instead of the bigger treat one, and gone is my dmg buff.... wasted, it goes better with speed....) and his shield.... its nicer to look at then the old one but my god, the energy drain to actualy get it proper is a B...... I wish they would change the way energy works, melee channel drains it alot, abilitys drain it alot (if you dont focus on efficient, which leaves you with 2 slots less to use for strenght to get more out of it). There are so many things wrong yet the "nerf this ability" topics gets on my nerves. Awell his rework will be like the others and there goes another frame made usless. May they rest in dust, Mesa, Rhino (purely for me for its plastic condom looking iron skin that doesnt even goes over his entire body), Saryn, Trinity, Vauban and soon Ash and futher Titania (oooh the OP shouts in dev live stream boats well).

First I want to say, Mesa, rhino, Saryn, Trinity, and Vauban are far from dead. Mesa is extremely tanky with a truck load of dmg. Rhino dose his job quite well, I see alot of rhinos. Largely because he has alot of team value.

Secondly, picking up his shield and his passive are not supposed to be end game permanent thing. His shield scales insanely well.

His passive doesn't have alot of damage but I quite cool and one of the better passives.

[Rakosta_Kai]

7 hours ago, Thaylien said:

Hi! I'm the one throwing around numbers and also a true perpetrator of cognitive dissonance!

Well...I'd say you are certainly the one throwing around numbers and loaded arguments but not the only victim to cognitive dissonance in this thread by any means.

7 hours ago, Thaylien said:

That said guys, this is actually a fair point.

Most of what I have to say amounts to "a fair point" whether folks like it or not. I don't advocate for or against any position to benefit myself at someone else's expense.

I'm a big believer in Karma and don't put on others what I won't take on myself... It's why I do so little nerf herding as a general rule.

  

7 hours ago, Thaylien said:

We're walking in different directions on this because we're missing the real point here. Not whether Bladestorm should be changed, but how Ash is going to be changed.

That's the discussion.

...That's on target.

7 hours ago, Thaylien said:

I threw numbers and comparisons out there because of two things: First I wanted to show that Bladestorm is, in fact, overpowered. The damage numbers it can reach for the low cost of 25 Energy and a few seconds of watching a slideshow is frankly way too far in advance of any other ability that costs the same in time, effort and energy.

Believe it or not... Your numbers didn't actually prove that.

They proved that you think that..

You numbers left out aspects like: 

• #3's that are actually #4's
• Damage mitigation from skills (affects ttl)
• Total cast time (affects ttk)
• Lingering effects (affects successive abilities and helps teams and impacts team ttk and ttl...You counted BS's slash but not Avalanche's armor reduction for example)
• Damage per faction (affects both ttk and ttl)

In your opinion, Ash does so much damage with Bladestorm that it should be nerfed because of this while discounting every other thing aside from raw dps.

DPS is just one part of a rather large whole... Vacuum analysis doesn't work unilaterally.

It's hard for me to take your numbers seriously when I can see that you didn't account for these things... No disrespect intended.

Spoiler

Truth told, if you think Ash is the highest outlier even in just raw dps... You didn't look that closely.

But... It's also not the issue (as you basically noted above).

The issue in question is one of a pain point caused by abuse.

How they go about addressing it is what should be of concern.

DE could nerf the damage tomorrow (or a month ago) and it wouldn't impact the pain point or the pattern of abuse.

 

But that is what this community does and does most.

...Contrive specious,outright false, or generally wrong-headed arguments/assertions to see stuff nerfed/changed because they feel it's inconvenient (or feel... something). All the while, getting worked up on one thing when much larger issues stare them in the face.

How many mentions of how bad an un-augmented Shuriken actually is got mentioned in this thread? Probably not many.

How many times has it been mentioned that Hydroid has to be P4TW due to his abilities (I don't see the P4TW crowd harping on that) setup?

Synoid Simulor chain spamming a frame's #4 even better than the frame (not even touching the damage, just the mechanic itself)?

Zephyr being locked to 2 skills on most maps (where's my "skills should be interactive" crowd at?) ?

...That's not to say that there aren't outliers or that Ash may (or may not) be one. Everyone is entitled to an opinion.

It would just be helpful if folks looked at the actual issues objectively instead of marching around with the "torches and pitchforks".

 

- Regards

[TentownsRaid]

My arguments against bladestorm are: 1 if you do nothing during a ability you aren't really doing anything interactive. For example Ember can still use weapons while Valk has to melee to deal damage. 2 It makes teleport pointless

Edited August 9, 2016 by TentownsRaid

[(PSN)GR13V4NC3]

Having not read any of the above comments... I still say, yes. Simply, for the game breaking-ness of the ability and how singular he is in his mod setups. Also, for how unique he is amongst his fellow frames, he is kind of bland (compared to Genji from Overwatch. I also think Ash should have part of his passive as being able to parry/deflect any type of attack and directly back at his attackers, also like Genji. To continue on the Genji path, the way he climbs surfaces, is how I alway thought Tenno should do it).

I say all this as a giant Ash fan. (My Icon, hello) Ash was derived from Shinobi & Ninja Gaiden (to name a few), so I think it's only right that he do his heritage & his Shidoshi (s) proud.

[Eldritchsqueaker]

8 minutes ago, Padre_Akais said:

Well...I'd say you are certainly the one throwing around numbers and loaded arguments but not the only victim to cognitive dissonance in this thread by any means.

Most of what I have to say amounts to "a fair point" whether folks like it or not. I don't advocate for or against any position to benefit myself at someone else's expense.

I'm a big believer in Karma and don't put on others what I won't take on myself... It's why I do so little nerf herding as a general rule.

  

...That's on target.

Believe it or not... Your numbers didn't actually prove that.

They proved that you think that..

You numbers left out aspects like: 

• #3's that are actually #4's
• Damage mitigation from skills (affects ttl)
• Total cast time (affects ttk)
• Lingering effects (affects successive abilities and helps teams and impacts team ttk and ttl...You counted BS's slash but not Avalanche's armor reduction for example)
• Damage per faction (affects both ttk and ttl)

In your opinion, Ash does so much damage with Bladestorm that it should be nerfed because of this while discounting every other thing aside from raw dps.

DPS is just one part of a rather large whole... Vacuum analysis doesn't work unilaterally.

It's hard for me to take your numbers seriously when I can see that you didn't account for these things... No disrespect intended.

  Reveal hidden contents

Truth told, if you think Ash is the highest outlier even in just raw dps... You didn't look that closely.

But... It's also not the issue (as you basically noted above).

The issue in question is one of a pain point caused by abuse.

How they go about addressing it is what should be of concern.

DE could nerf the damage tomorrow (or a month ago) and it wouldn't impact the pain point or the pattern of abuse.

 

But that is what this community does and does most.

...Contrive specious,outright false, or generally wrong-headed arguments/assertions to see stuff nerfed/changed because they feel it's inconvenient (or feel... something). All the while, getting worked up on one thing when much larger issues stare them in the face.

How many mentions of how bad an un-augmented Shuriken actually is got mentioned in this thread? Probably not many.

How many times has it been mentioned that Hydroid has to be P4TW due to his abilities (I don't see the P4TW crowd harping on that) setup?

Synoid Simulor chain spamming a frame's #4 even better than the frame (not even touching the damage, just the mechanic itself)?

Zephyr being locked to 2 skills on most maps (where's my "skills should be interactive" crowd at?) ?

...That's not to say that there aren't outliers or that Ash may (or may not) be one. Everyone is entitled to an opinion.

It would just be helpful if folks looked at the actual issues objectively instead of marching around with the "torches and pitchforks".

 

- Regards

Something something "high horse", you make some good points but at the same time I feel like you disregard others. One of Ash's problems is that his kit encourages spamming bladestorm, gives high reward for little effort and the rest of his kit except for teleport is underwhelming to say the least. His invis is too short, his shuriken is essentially useless without the augment, etc.. 

As for hydroid.. his 4 scales terribly, it's unreliable and the only way to get decent damage/CC (at least in my experience of using him) out of it is to cast it repeatedly as the tentacles too often end up flopping uselessly, I feel like that's a discussion for another place though, many people consider Hydroid underpowered.

[(XBOX)Drvnzer]

1 hour ago, xSterbukz said:

I feel like BS (Blade storm... but the other acronym applies) should be somewhat similar to fatal teleport, but with the ability to jump to other enemies seamlessly(and killing them), like the current one, but doing that MANUALLY, and removing the clones which kill people. That would be better because it won't just be a slide show and will require "skill" or minimal attention. His Shurikens and Smoke storm could use a buff, since modding for strength ruins all the other abilities (except teleport)

Ummm this would be redundant...

[gluih]

2 hours ago, BlackCoMerc said:

No. It wouldn't be great.

I'm sorry, but worrying about team play and support is the LAST thing devs handling Ash need to do.

It's a high damage, Assassin frame. We have support frames. Frankly, I'm sick of seeing team support shoehorned onto frames. It's how we ended up with a Gunslinger with ONE ability related to Gun-slinging.

Let Ash be a damage dealer. We don't need more support abilities. 

My idea would be that bladestorm would affect enemies in an area. Damaging enemies in this area would always cause a bleed proc. This would significantly increase damage for the whole squad and would fit ash quite well.
Ash himself would also have the advantage of being able to teleport between those enemies for free and with a quick animation.

I would simply like to be happy to have an ash in my team, especially because he is so popular. Right now it's really annoying to see ash players, who don't care about the mission they are in and just want to kill stuff. In a lot of situations this simply doesn't help your team to complete the mission and can even be a problem in radiation hazard sorties.

[Birdframe_Prime]

43 minutes ago, Padre_Akais said:

Believe it or not... Your numbers didn't actually prove that.

They proved that you think that..

You numbers left out aspects like: 

• #3's that are actually #4's
• Damage mitigation from skills (affects ttl)
• Total cast time (affects ttk)
• Lingering effects (affects successive abilities and helps teams and impacts team ttk and ttl...You counted BS's slash but not Avalanche's armor reduction for example)
• Damage per faction (affects both ttk and ttl)

In your opinion, Ash does so much damage with Bladestorm that it should be nerfed because of this while discounting every other thing aside from raw dps.

Thanks for the clear, analytical answer on this thread that's very much full of... well, not that.

But I think you've misunderstood the point I was trying to prove with the numbers: it's not dps, it's not even that he does so much damage that it needs to be nerfed because, much like Zephyr actually having a weirdly high outlier on her 4 for possible amount of damage dealth, it doesn't actually matter.

(If you want talk about Zephyr, stop in on any of the threads about her, I'm there on pretty much all of them.)

The point with throwing around numbers was to prove that, for 25 energy, it does higher damage than every other 4th ability in its class and has no damage mitigation, like other abilities do. Even Frost doesn't strip the armour before he deals damage, he does it after, as a function that opens up survivors to be killed by his team and as part of the CC that his ability grants. I did point out that nothing in game does DPS like Nova's 2, but that requires far more interaction, and even some luck if you have a poor connection, to pull off. And as for 3's being 4's... no, I wasn't going into those. If I went to all the time it took to compare every single 'press button and watch animation deal damage in a radius' ability in game, I'd be here for days. I stuck to those frames that have an ability in the same classification on the 4 button.

So for a specific trial, it does hold up, since given the same circumstances and number of buttons to press no frame can dish out the single target damage that Ash can, nor can they do it with the same self immunity and comparative damage mitigation during the cast.

With a proportionally high amount of unmitigated damage dealt, for a pure energy cost, where every other frame that can do even close has to combo abilities, or has to get lucky with sustained contact, and so on, it's not a balanced ability.

But further than that I think you've misunderstood the point I was trying to make in the post replying to yours:

The real reason for an Ash rework isn't the numbers, it isn't the imbalance of his ability compared to other frames.

It isn't because Bladestorm is too strong as an ability in a vacuum.

It's because it overshadows the rest of his kit and encourages players to ignore buttons 1, 2 and 3, in order to exploit 4. Very few frames still encourage this function of exploiting one ability and discarding others, and the ones that do still have very good reasons to include the other abilities in between the exploiting. Mag, for example, has replaced one high-powered 2 cast for a different form of high-powered 2 cast, but the self-shield-restore function of Shield Polarise and the damage boost to Magnetise still mean people cast that ability regularly. The CC and 'oh crap!' covering nature of Pull and Crush still let people cast them regularly. In fact there are still cases on Sorties and other content where a spam-Pull mag is better CC than an Irradiating Disarm Loki.

And that's just one example, there are others.

So that's the thing. Very few frames are left that have one ability so greatly overshadow the rest of their kit, with little to no reason left to cast those other abilities, and that's something that makes DE very, very intent on re-working a frame.

In which case, I say please, if you're going to quote me so in-depth on the first half of my argument, the part I immediately say isn't important, make sure you highlight the rest of it that I say is actually important.

DE want us to use the entire warframe for best results, they want abilities to be used in tandem, to synergise.

Sometimes, like with Saryn, they go too far and have several great abilities that force synergy to the point of requiring it to play the frame to full potential. On others they don't go far enough and produce a frame like Limbo that has a great theme with synergy between his abilities, but the abilities themselves aren't effective enough to warrant the amount of synergy.

But that's the balance, that's the trial and error, and the change they want to make; Ash has an ability that's so powerful compared to his other three, that it's more effective on him to build purely for that single ability and ignore the rest.

This means they will change how he behaves in game so that two things happen; the other abilities count for more on him, and that his powerful ability is brought back down to balance out with his other three.

Now if this will be done right, or done wrong, we can only wait to find out.

But it will be done. DE do not encourage abilities that completely eclipse the others on that frame.

Thus why I said, and you agreed: it's not how Bladestorm is going to be changed, it's how Ash is going to be changed.

[motorfirebox]

6 hours ago, Defion said:

Can someone for the love of dear my god explain to me what someone is benefiting from a nerfed (yes nerfed cause thats what will happen to Ash) frame in your squad? Why people want to nerf anything in a freaking CO-OP game? The way I see it is if you have a Bladestorm spamming Ash in your squad killing things how does that freaking effect your game play experiance? Does it get less cause 1 player gets more kills and therefor more affinity? You just cant sit idle by when someone is doing your job and you benifit from it?

How does having everything die before I can attack it affect my gameplay experience? Let's sit down and think about that for a while, and see if we can come up with an answer.

[(XBOX)Prime Pedestal]

21 hours ago, Nox_Terminus said:

The main issue with Bladestorm is that unlike every other Ult it auto-kills entire rooms and scales near infinitely if you use Covert Lethality.

Covert Lethality has no effect on Bladestorm, the reason people like to run it with Ash is for the teleport finisher. Only Steel Charge, Body Count, Fury and Quickening affect Bladestorm. It scales near infinitely because it directly damages the targets HP with its finisher damage, and Body Count enables you to do 8000 damage per hit at 100% strength if you build the combo up. (Use Steel charge and its 12'800) That's a lvl 100 bombard dead in 7 or 8 hits, and less with a higher strength build.

[(XBOX)Prime Pedestal]

3 hours ago, BAY35 said:

That sounds kinda like an Ash version of World On Fire, which is similar to what the devs had tested and they said it was way too powerful so they scrapped it. So that probably won't happen.

Lol I don't know who thought it would be a sensible idea to allow Ash to run around (presumably invisible with Trickery) and shoot things whilst still being able to bladestorm. He'd be virtually invincible.

[xPerplexing]

21 minutes ago, motorfirebox said:

How does having everything die before I can attack it affect my gameplay experience? Let's sit down and think about that for a while, and see if we can come up with an answer.

Simple, it doesn't lol. How does a person enjoy a game when everything is dead? You look at a new player's perceptive and see if that's any type of fun. 

 

1 minute ago, (XB1)AnnoyedHaddock said:

Covert Lethality has no effect on Bladestorm, the reason people like to run it with Ash is for the teleport finisher. Only Steel Charge, Body Count, Fury and Quickening affect Bladestorm. It scales near infinitely because it directly damages the targets HP with its finisher damage, and Body Count enables you to do 8000 damage per hit at 100% strength if you build the combo up. (Use Steel charge and its 12'800) That's a lvl 100 bombard dead in 7 or 8 hits, and less with a higher strength build.

Quickening doesnt work on ash but you're right about the other mods. With those mods, it makes end game easy for them. 

[(XBOX)Prime Pedestal]

Just now, SIFTXIX said:

Quickening doesnt work on ash but you're right about the other mods. With those mods, it makes end game easy for them. 

If you equip your melee and channel before you activate bladestorm (easiest setting it to toggle) then you get the speed increase from it. Strange I know cos you can't actually channel the ability but it does work.

[xPerplexing]

3 minutes ago, (XB1)AnnoyedHaddock said:

If you equip your melee and channel before you activate bladestorm (easiest setting it to toggle) then you get the speed increase from it. Strange I know cos you can't actually channel the ability but it does work.

You know...i would try that out, but I've stop using Ash about 6 months ago, he's getting the rework/nerf pretty soon, and most people are tired of ash's bladestorm