Melee Break(Blocking) and Channeling Mechanics

[BBYipho]

The current blocking mechanics in Warframe does not feel rewarding to use for its players. Since the removal of Stamina from Parkour 2.0 melee weapons had a change in how they mitigate damage. These damage mitigation values are 35% 60% and 85% which makes some weapons very horrible at it. Based on feedback, taking damage while blocking in general just feels more like a punishment for using it even at reduced damages. So I wish to create a new blocking mechanic to fix this.

Another problem we have is the game's current Channeling Mechanics. As of right now if we block we lose 5 energy/per attack, draining heavily against rapid or continious fire enemies. Even channeling while using melee strikes doesn't feel very rewarding at costing a base of 5 energy/per target hit just for that 2x damage. Weapons with a large striking range will find themselves draining chunks of energy from hitting them all. Right now because of these functions players find themselves mainly using channeling for the mod Life Strike, which has become a staple for most melee builds.

I, we, want to design a new mechanic that will entice players to use these features more effectively while also touching on Chenneling.

________________________________________

The Break Bar Mechanic

• Introduce a Break Bar that appears under your reticule, at the center of the screen.
• The Break system will determine how long in seconds the weapon can mitigate damage at 100% before returning to its natural lower damage mitigation.The standard this should be at should be 4 seconds, while weapons such as the sword and shield having 6 seconds of effective Break Bar.
• Blocking attacks while the Break Bar is still present, will increase your melee combo counter. This will allow building up combo counter quickly and while traveling to your next target. I feel this will be a great addition and will help even new players to keep their combo counter up without the need of the Body Count mod.
• When the Break Bar is depleted, or has used up values, it should take up to 4 seconds without blocking to naturally recharge. This, however, can be bypassed by activating channeling while blocking, and only once the Break Bar is fully depleted, in which will drain a base energy cost of 10 to refill your Break Bar completely.
• Hard hitting explosive attacks, like a bombard's rocket or rapid mini rockets, should immidiately break the Break Bar. Though in the case of lots of rapid explosions it should not force the channeling 10 base energy recharge until after a second after the first rocket hits.
• Blocking directly next to an enemy will bash them, opening them up to finisher attacks at the cost of part of your Break Bar. This should allow any Warframe that lacks the ability to open up enemies to these counter attack finishers to do them. I find this more reliable then holding block and hitting your channel at the perfect time to open only melee attackers for these same finishers.

Improved Channeling Mechanic

• Change Channeling to drain energy/per second. While channeling it should drain 3 energy/per second for lighter weapons and 6 energy per second for heavier weapons, more surface area the energy has to cover. Also gives lighter weapons more of a chance in our heavy melee weapon dominated game. Weapons like the Redeemer may need more energy drain during charge attacks.
• Refilling the whole Break Bar at the base cost of 10 energy only if the Break Bar is fully depleted.
• Channeling while blocking should always reflect back 100% of the damage increased by our channeling bonuses, combo multiplier, and possibly damage mods. This seems fair since enemy health scales far higher then enemy damage output. If already holding channeling while blocking a bombard rocket, it should deflect it away and possibly upwards. No damage is reflected back to melee attackers, keep it hit scan and projectiles.

Additional Suggestions

• Allow blocking while drawing our melee weapon out. Like the loading screen tip_{(bottom of the list)} suggests we can do. ~Ivan_Rid
• Allow blocking while holding our primary or secondary weapons. The break bar should be very short_{(2 seconds)} and take longer to recharge._{(Sounds like something we did before the Sword Alone update).} ~Azamagon
• Update our blocking animations for different attacks. ~Xriah
• If the channeling suggestion gets implimented change our "toggle channeling" option to only do so while attacking or blocking.
• Change natural block mitigation on the weapons with 35% to at least 60%.
• Display more information on our melee arsenal UI, About natural block mitigation and other features.
• Please give us more reasons to use channeling mods other then Life Strike on weapons by changing Channeling Damage and Cost/Energy Drain. This includes changing the heavy negatives on channeling mods. Why do they all have negatives?

Mod Additions and Changes Suggested

• The channeling mod "Parry" should most likely be used without channeling. Since the mod is rarely used in its current state with players losing massive amounts of energy from range attackers while trying to use this mod for melee attackers. As it seems, since update 17, good perfect timing already naturally does this mod's function.
• The channeling mod "Focused Defense" should instead give us flat armor value instead of giving us an armor percentage. ~Azamagon_{(Summed up)}
• Reintroduce the removed "Second Wind" mod. Have this mod increase your combo counter more for kills. Ideal for defense missions where the combo counter easily empties between rounds.
• Change "Reflection" from a Warframe mod to a melee mod. Have this mod only work while you channel. Increase the value of this mod by making reflected damage go up by 100% more. Basically Pressure Point for blocking. With enemy scaling health I don't find this overkill.
• Change "Reflex Guard". Make it so when it procs it causes fast "after images" of you (graphicswise think the agents in the Matrix), which blocks for you, free of Break-cost, and always with 100% DR and which doesn't disrupt your actions at all. It should be proccable even while actively blocking (thus being a "chance to freeblock" even for active blockers!). But, reduce its chance to 33% at max rank or something. Effectively; Make it a cool-looking, non-disruptive, evasion-esque mod. ~Azamagon_{(Directly copied line)}
• Introduce new mod "Focus Target". Allow copying a percentage of all reflected damage at the target you are aiming at.
• Introduce new mod "Turtling" Increase Break Bar duration/amount and prevents explosions from destroying the Break Bar at the cost of more energy to refil Break Bar.

________________________________________

Special Thanks

• Azamagon _{(His input in this post about channeling changes).}

Spoiler

I can't figure out how to remove this spoiler.

 

 

Edited October 17, 2016 by BBYipho
More details. Added Feedback.

[Xriborg]

Maybe not all of these changes in particular, but I would definitely like to see block revamped into something more tactically useful.

[BBYipho]

Just now, Xriah said:

Maybe not all of these changes in particular, but I would definitely like to see block revamped into something more tactically useful.

Anything specific? Feedback can polish ideas.

[Kainosh]

Parry should be baseline mechanic that allows you to apply various effects to self/enemy depending on mods.

For example you installed "reflect" pary mod in your melee. Now you can reflect rockets and projectiles back at attacker if block timed properly.

 

Such stuff.

[BBYipho]

4 minutes ago, Kainosh said:

Parry should be baseline mechanic that allows you to apply various effects to self/enemy depending on mods.

For example you installed "reflect" pary mod in your melee. Now you can reflect rockets and projectiles back at attacker if block timed properly.

 

Such stuff.

We technically already reflect damage when we parry, however, the damage is so little it's painful. I can see the point if Reflection is turned into a melee mod to make it easier to deflect rockets.

Edit: Or we can introduce a mod that makes the parry window longer for such reasons.

Edited October 12, 2016 by BBYipho
Because things.

[Xriborg]

Well, here's what I would do with blocking:

-I don't think the break stuff is necessary. 100% damage mitigation all the time. As a defensive action, blocking should be worth the time that you could be spending attacking. Considering you have a melee weapon out as well, I don't see a reason it couldn't be done.

-In fact, a lot of your suggestions with mods I would just outright do for blocking. Blocking is so useless now. I think it needs major buffs in multiple areas to become something worthwhile.

-I like the idea of a perfect reflect, but instead of worrying about damage, I think it would be more useful if it was a guaranteed stagger, bullet or melee. Maybe even setting up for a special finisher as an additional reward for pulling it off.

-My suggestion above is because I'm not fond of the bash idea. Why? Simply because at that point it's an offensive move rather than a defensive counter move. It ceases to be a block in my mind and just turns into another attack. We have plenty of attacks.

 

-My final and biggest suggestion is to redo the block animations. Right now, they look really dumb. Make it look like a speedy reflexive block rather than waggling your melee weapon in front of you. Even in it's current state, I'd use blocking a lot more if it looked cooler.

 

[BBYipho]

5 hours ago, Xriah said:

Well, here's what I would do with blocking:

-I don't think the break stuff is necessary. 100% damage mitigation all the time. As a defensive action, blocking should be worth the time that you could be spending attacking. Considering you have a melee weapon out as well, I don't see a reason it couldn't be done.

-In fact, a lot of your suggestions with mods I would just outright do for blocking. Blocking is so useless now. I think it needs major buffs in multiple areas to become something worthwhile.

-I like the idea of a perfect reflect, but instead of worrying about damage, I think it would be more useful if it was a guaranteed stagger, bullet or melee. Maybe even setting up for a special finisher as an additional reward for pulling it off.

-My suggestion above is because I'm not fond of the bash idea. Why? Simply because at that point it's an offensive move rather than a defensive counter move. It ceases to be a block in my mind and just turns into another attack. We have plenty of attacks.

 

-My final and biggest suggestion is to redo the block animations. Right now, they look really dumb. Make it look like a speedy reflexive block rather than waggling your melee weapon in front of you. Even in it's current state, I'd use blocking a lot more if it looked cooler.

 

• That would be powerful enough to survive situations that you should never be able to. This is probably why when the stamina was removed they made blocking a percent based on weapon type. I do agree blocking should be worth it but this would be far more powerful then the old blocking when we had stamina.
• It's better if they stay mods. Since most of the mods I suggested would decrease channeling efficiency. There has to be some negatives with all the positives.
• So having the parry reflect window stagger even the gunners? I dunno. Sounds like some people would just block and unblock when getting heavily gunned down.
• Yes and No. I don't see it as too much of an offensive just as a tool to make using blocks slightly more useful. If every weapon had the ability to bash it will allow defensive players to stop a specific enemy for the time. If it opens up to finishers it's because currently it's impossible to use blocking as a means to stagger heavy units such as the Heavy Gunner, Bombard, Corpus Tech, etc. Perfect timing to reflect bullets I believe shouldn't stagger for finishers since we're not able to do that with most of our own bullets anyway.
• I agree, blocking does look a tad bit silly in its current state. Though at the time it was created it was pretty cool. It just need variations based on what it's blocking I think.

Anyway the break mechanic I feel is necessary. It gives balance and it gives cost. A lot of players when they want something especially dead, before their combo multiplier goes up, they would hit with a channeled strike or two, mainly while sliding or in a specific damage increasing melee combo. Some weapons should always be more effective at blocking then others which is why I think the sword and shield should have a large break while daggers do not.

Edited October 12, 2016 by BBYipho

[Xriborg]

The animations need to look like the Warframe is reacting to the shots. No animation is going to look good unless they make it react to each individual stric rather than be a generic waggle.

 

Blocking needs to be way more than it is for it to be considered a good move. The system you describe doesn't make me go "ok, I need to start blocking". I think your changes would still make for a very lukewarm reaction and most people not bothering to use it at all. Obviously, it needs to be tested before it can go live but I would start with too strong rather than too weak.

A new blocking system needs to have a clear answer to "Why would I block when I can be killing?"

[BBYipho]

38 minutes ago, Xriah said:

The animations need to look like the Warframe is reacting to the shots. No animation is going to look good unless they make it react to each individual stric rather than be a generic waggle.

 

Blocking needs to be way more than it is for it to be considered a good move. The system you describe doesn't make me go "ok, I need to start blocking". I think your changes would still make for a very lukewarm reaction and most people not bothering to use it at all. Obviously, it needs to be tested before it can go live but I would start with too strong rather than too weak.

A new blocking system needs to have a clear answer to "Why would I block when I can be killing?"

I'll try saying some selling points then.

• Blocking with the break system will make blocking good at all difficulty levels while preventing the player from taking too extreme damages.
• The change to channeled blocks will solve the issue of trying to block enemies like heavy gunners without draining about 5 energy per bullet draining about 100+ energy over 2-3 seconds and channeling efficiency mods do not effect it.
• You will gain combo multiplier while the break isn't depleted. This should ramp up melee damage faster.
• These changes should allow more defensive playstyles to compliment builds right now. You do not need to use any of the mod suggestions it will allow all builds to have a protective time window while blocking and running between targets, We have lots of stances that requires holding block to do so. Though it may not be as beneficial as modding for defense.
• The mods I listed will allow melee to have a way to attack/reflect while blocking. As I said reflected damage should be effected by combo multiplier, channeling, and potentially damage mods. Will the damage be high? Only if you mod it mainly for such a thing, like any other mod setup.

And to answer, "Why would I block when I can be killing."

• You will still be killing either through an increased combo multiplier while rushing down a target while blocking or by setting it so your weapon can deflect attacks enhanced by your energy. Basically you don't lose anything. You can be doing the same thing you've always been doing but now getting a benefit because blocking bonuses now.

[Xriborg]

Saying them again doesn't make the ideas more appealing. It's too complicated and not beneficial enough to consider over just bullet jumping in, ccing, and killing enemies.

[Ivan_Rid]

On 12.10.2016 at 10:03 PM, BBYipho said:

Anything specific? Feedback can polish ideas.

I would love block to be active during weapon swap animation. And since parry animations are way cooler that holstering ones I think no one would complain about former overriding the latter.

At long last that loading screen tip about "Under a heavy fire? Swap weapons to block" would hold meaning.

[BBYipho]

1 hour ago, Ivan_Rid said:

I would love block to be active during weapon swap animation. And since parry animations are way cooler that holstering ones I think no one would complain about former overriding the latter.

At long last that loading screen tip about "Under a heavy fire? Swap weapons to block" would hold meaning.

I haven't payed attention to loading screens to notice that was a text. But being able to block while drawing the weapon out would make swapping to the melee weapon more reliable.

[BBYipho]

On 10/13/2016 at 3:49 PM, Xriah said:

Saying them again doesn't make the ideas more appealing. It's too complicated and not beneficial enough to consider over just bullet jumping in, ccing, and killing enemies.

 

So bullet jump, use a possibly long animation to CC enemies and start killing... Wow it's like someone missed the entire point of this topic to begin with. What if a bombard rocket curved and hit the ground next to you since your CC wouldn't do anything to projectiles already in the air? What about that ancient grapple? People who use melee weapons already hold block to stop a lot of these things from getting you killed. Look, this isn't a topic about being able to kill the enemy faster. It's a topic about making a mechanic of the game more usable. The damage mitigation percentages do not stop us from taking large amounts of damages unless we're willing to use up much of our energy to do so currently. Benefits like increased combo multiplier per block makes sense. Gating how much energy we waste while channeling and blocking is something I think we need.

The point of this entire topic is blocking is considered kind of useless in most cases since the removal of stamina. Having it 100% damage mitigation like you suggested earlier would just allow some people to sit there block and spam powers with no negatives. It'll create something I would call "turtling." What's the point in that?

I do not want to suggest another power creep method to people. I just want a function of a button to actually do something others players will find useful.

Also this would be nice with the new melee mechanic introduced in the Vaykor Sydon and said they were implementing it into older weapons. Like the sword and shield weapons.

Also too complicated? Really? It's detailed for a reason. Allow me to dumb the entire post down for you then.

Spoiler

• Blocking good. Blocking give combos. Blocking allows time to think.
• A little touch up on parrying and reflect mechanics already in game.

 

Edited October 15, 2016 by BBYipho
Strikethrough some negativity. Left there though.

[Xriborg]

Your post needs no dumbing down. It was plenty dumb as it is.

This game doesn't need any more overly complex systems. Everything you suggest makes blocking no more appealing than it already is. Blocking needs to be useful enough to make it more appealing than having your gun out and just killing everything. Nothing you suggest changes that.

Edited October 15, 2016 by Xriah
Strikethrough some witty retaliation if I do say so myself...

[Chipputer]

1 hour ago, Xriah said:

This game doesn't need any more overly complex systems. Everything you suggest makes blocking no more appealing than it already is. Blocking needs to be useful enough to make it more appealing than having your gun out and just killing everything. Nothing you suggest changes that.

Pretty much this.

While I'm looking forward to the new Sword and Board changes they've mentioned (ack and brunt is my top melee weapon), blocking is far inferior choice to just shooting the thing from a distance. Barring that, it's almost always better, in my personal case, to just drop a quick Reckoning and then mash the E key. This is a fundamental issue with how the game is designed, as a whole.

I'm at the point, now, that I don't even know why having block as a separate function is even a thing, instead of it just always happening if you have your melee weapon out and enemies are hitting the front of you.

Edited October 14, 2016 by Chipputer
Removed the first line of the quoted post.

[BBYipho]

4 hours ago, Xriah said:

Your post needs no dumbing down. It was plenty dumb as it is.

This game doesn't need any more overly complex systems. Everything you suggest makes blocking no more appealing than it already is. Blocking needs to be useful enough to make it more appealing than having your gun out and just killing everything. Nothing you suggest changes that.

Oh my wow ok. Just underlining that part. Sorry if I made my earlier reply sound insulting with having to dumb it down for you? Apologies. I was feeling frustrated.

The current blocking system is complex in a way that doesn't benefit the player. Anyway the point of the whole post is for those who like playing in such a way that they mainly go at everything with their melee. I have many friends that do this so I suggested the change after talking over them with it. Does it need to kill things for you? No.

3 hours ago, Chipputer said:

Pretty much this.

While I'm looking forward to the new Sword and Board changes they've mentioned (ack and brunt is my top melee weapon), blocking is far inferior choice to just shooting the thing from a distance. Barring that, it's almost always better, in my personal case, to just drop a quick Reckoning and then mash the E key. This is a fundamental issue with how the game is designed, as a whole.

I'm at the point, now, that I don't even know why having block as a separate function is even a thing, instead of it just always happening if you have your melee weapon out and enemies are hitting the front of you.

Playstyle choice is important and I'm just trying to fix a crippled part of a specific playstyle.

 

Either way I guess I'm sorry this doesn't interest you both. I can see a reason why this would be nice if implemented, especially against certain fights. Then again it's just a few people looking at it as, "why would I do X when X and X are still superior?" Maybe that's why I think the function of blocking should have more benefits then just an animation? Hmm...

Anyway I would love feedback specifically towards trying to make the mechanic appealing for others to use. I just don't want to hear something equivalent to a god mode with no negatives or just saying the idea has no place. I'm pretty sure we're all in the same boat on the fact current blocking is just useless with way too many negatives.

[Xriborg]

Blocking interests me. However it needs to be more of a dramatic change to be helpful.

I don't understand why you think straight up blocking 100% would be a godmode. You can't really use any offense during it. You're forced to have your melee out. Once you try and do anything else, the damage mitigation stops. You can only block damage from one direction. I say if you want to turtle for some reason, more power to you. All you're doing is making sure missions take you a LOT longer than they normally would.

Just make blocking block damage in full and make it look less dumb. If you want to go the extra mile, maybe add some cc features like bullet deflection stagger. CC is the ultimate defense, after all.

[BBYipho]

Still have to agree with the animations are kind of dated. If we have different blocks for different things. Keep the current for bullet like projectiles, give us a new continuous(beam) block, a light swing for explosives(like those ridiculous games/cartoons), more impactful looking block against melee weapons, better long block animation from attacks like the arson/caustic fire blast aoe, etc.

I'm not fully against 100% blocking mitigation. I just don't want that to be limitless. So before posting this I just asked the friends I play with what they'll do if they always 100% mitigation while blocking.

In very high level content, where almost nothing is balanced, you would survive situations that shouldn't be possible at all if we always have 100% mitigation. If we did use that for example here's how I would see my friends trying to abuse it. We would find a section of hallway or tunnel and have either 1 or 2 people stand infront blocking. I would then have one or two players with punch through or weapons we can easily shoot pass the teammates. With the right setup this would most likely trivialize any survival type endless mission. For Mobile Defense missions, if none of us care about resources or experience, we would just body block the console(s). Some boss fights would just be whenever we know the boss is about to attack us we would just block while the others do damage, even if the attack is continuous. In most other cases all I got from my friends is that they would spam powers and block playing solo in sorties that aren't endless based.

Anyway what I get from that is most people would just be human Volt Electric Shield. Less activeness on their part. While talking about how I would like a few seconds of it instead of always they wouldn't do it unless they get a bonus from it. This is coming from people who rarely change and would rather be Ash, Frost, and Valkyr.

[Xriborg]

Volt's electric shield is a good example of why 100% mitigation wouldn't be that big of a deal. Volt's shield is 100% percent damage mitigation that's easy to spam. Every scenario you offer there, volt's shield can do better, as you're not locked into blocking the whole time.

You said yourself nothing is balanced in high level content. DE seems to be content on doing what's cool rather than balancing. They went on a balancing kick that I was very excited, but in classic DE fashion, they half assed it, half finished it, and then got distracted by the next shiny thing they wanted to work on.

Edited October 15, 2016 by Xriah
clarity

[Azamagon]

Interesting ideas. I too feel blocking (and channeling) need lots of improvements, and your ideas are great!
My thoughts on your ideas:

• Break amount - If there was some kind of "Break" gauge, I would rather place it where the reload circle is, for easier viewing.
  Break timers - Please, no more bloody heavy weapon bias (except for Shield weapons, those lasting longer make sense), after all, you already have the weapon-varied DR after Break depletes which seperates their blocking powers already. The "small" weapons have enough disadvantages as it is. I'd say: Keep it as 4 seconds for all weapons, but maybe let it go up to as much as 6 seconds for the sword+shield weapons.
• Break gone = Regular DR - Sounds fair, but the lowest values still need buffing (35% vs 85% is a MASSIVE difference when you speak about Damage Reduction. 35% is barely noticeable, while 85% actually helps a bit. It should range from 65% to 85% imo). Also, the DR (and Break-values) need to be displayed in the Arsenal UI (among LOTS of other stuff...)
• Break recharge - Also sounds fair to need to recover, but the regen needs to be quicker I think (like 3 seconds to fully recharge?). Also, the break shouldn't have to be depleted to be recovered (I guess that is a miswriting?). Just make it a gauge which is drained when blocking incoming attacks, paused when blocking but not getting attacked, and which gradually recovers when not holding up your block.
• Channel to refill Break - I like this mechanic, and it sounds like a reasonable cost too.
• Channel to block heavy attacks - No thanks. Keep it simple. Just make it so heavier attacks deplete a bigger flat amount of the Break gauge, nothing else.
• Channelblock energycost reduced by channel efficiency - Sounds ok.
• Timed parry = Deflect - Why not just keep it simple and let attacks be fully deflected when channelblocking? (Speaking of channeling, it really ought to be energy/sec, that way you have more options while blocking: Either keep channelblocking on all the time for powerful deflections, or only use it with some timing to refill the break gauge. Not to mention, making channeling cost energy/sec would help channeling in general for all weaponry, reducing heavyhitting bias and all that)
• Channelblock reflection scaling - Sounds good, then channelblocks offer an offense-through-defense. (This also further would be better balanced if channeling was energy/sec).
• Bash - Oooh, I like this. Also allows you to not need to tank to cause the finisher-stuns, and sounds like a fun thiing to do with sneakier Warframes (wether amidst a chaotic battle or not). Necessitating Break to be non-depleted also serves a good balance to this mechanic. Good mechanic, very good.
• Block attacks = Combo counter booster - Very nice idea! Further gives you reason to engage enemies with block up, but still with the need to be used somewhat tactically (since it only works with blocks that has Break left).

Overall, I really like these ideas, I can see you put a lot of thought into this!
To those saying it should be 100% DR at all times; I used to think the same. But remember that one-handed cast abilities can be cast while blocking, so you are not entirely offenseless while blocking. And crazy cheese tactics WILL pop up if non-stop 100% DR happened, trust me on that.
Not to mention, with the OP's proposed ideas like the better reflection scaling, the melee combo counter being boosted through blocking and the ability to finisher-stun enemies with a block-bash, there would certainly be enough incentive to wanna use the blocking button, a lot. And the ability to restore "Break", the 100% DR period, via channeling, gives you the possibility to have 100% DR for long times anyway (which also helps to give channeling further use).

Something else I'd like to mention: I'd also like to have blocking available from gunmode, but then the "Break"-gauge depletes MUCH faster (like, twice as fast?) and recover more slowly. Just so we can use block reflexively like the awesome warriors Warframes are supposed to be. It would also help weapons like Vaykor Sydon and its passive to be a bit less crappy.

As for your mod changes in the spoiler:

• Parry - I'd just change it to be the mod which increases the Break duration.
• Focused Defense - Dramatically buff its armor boost (and make it a FLAT armorboost), and greatly reduce its penalty (or even remove the penalty, which should happen on most channelmods anyway). As I proposed before, making channeling cost a mild energy/sec would help to also strike a perfect balance for this kind of mod.
• Second Wind - Sounds ... very niched. I doubt that would be all too useful. But why not? *shrugs* Imo, this is the kind of mod that would need something else on it too so people would actually use it. Like, maybe it could also grant you a small, flat amount of health or energy whenever you kill an enemy with your melee weapon (even through channel-reflection kills)?
• Reflection - Warframe or melee mod, doesn't matter to me. It already got changed into channeling only. Buffing it though, yes please.
• Relfex Guard - Imo, I think it needs a better change: Make it so when it procs it causes fast "after images" of you (graphicswise think the agents in the Matrix), which blocks for you, free of Break-cost, and always with 100% DR and which doesn't disrupt your actions at all. It should be proccable even while actively blocking (thus being a "chance to freeblock" even for active blockers!). But, reduce its chance to 33% at max rank or something. Effectively; Make it a cool-looking, non-disruptive, evasion-esque mod.
• Focus Target - *shrugs* Why not? I'd make it so it redirects to your aimed-at-target if you aim at an enemy, and while not aiming at an enemy the reflection works as normal. That way it's purely a beneficial (albeit niched) mod. Maybe the reflection-damage could be boosted when you aim at an enemy, by this mod too (so it has a reason to have multiple ranks)?
  You know, this aim-reflect is something that could be added to the Reflection mod. Niche mods like that need all the love they can get anyway :)

Edited October 16, 2016 by Azamagon

[BBYipho]

Interesting. I'll be updating my post with most of the feedback. In a couple hours from this post though.

• Break timers were suggested by friends but I think having the standard being 3-4 seconds makes the most sense. For heavy weapons I was thinking more of surface area to judge the timer though I would imagine moving a heavy thing around per bullet would make the duration slightly less.
• I kind of feel the natural recharge needs to be about 5 seconds. If the recharge is shorter I think the overall duration of the break should be a second or two lower.
• The normal damage reductions of weapons are painfully low on most weapons. Would be great if it gets buffed to make the minimum possibly 50-60% instead of 35% at the lowest.
• The channeling change you suggested would possibly be better all around. Though I would imagine it'll still be probably 5 energy/sec by default unless we finally get channeling damage and efficiency base stat changes. This, however, will prevent wide swings from draining most of your energy. I'm assuming it will still cost 10 energy on top of that to refill the break bar/timer. I feel I should change the title of the topic if I emphasize more on it.
• Understandable on the deflect. I was trying to make that part only towards rocket like attacks. Reflection is suppose to be happening all the time while blocking.

Most of my mod suggestions were just trying to increase their use.

• Parry: Makes sense.
• Focused Defense: If we use the channeling suggestion you mentioned earlier this would be a really decent mod.
• Second Wind: As long it isn't energy. Maybe my chance suggestion wasn't interesting enough. Perhaps on kills it should increase combo counter by 5-10 since if it was just health it would be competing with Life Strike.
• Reflex Guard: Oh my I like this idea. So more like a inner Specter doing it for you.
• Focus Target: It was more of a thrown in suggestion at the time. The suggestion you made makes more sense then just saying it's able to focus one target down.

I feel I'm going to have to find a better way to give credit for the mechanic corrections.

Edited October 16, 2016 by BBYipho
Grammer = bad