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Some general thoughts on mag and idea for ability


gluih
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I haven't played a lot of mag, because I couldn't really find a good use for her abilities. There might be a really good way to use them, but it wouldn't be very obvious. This is very relevant because mag is one of the starter frames. Her abilities might be better at lower levels, because there the damage could still be relevant, but I feel like abilities with a very obvious effect like Rhino has fit a starter frame better. If you don't want to read all my general thoughts about her you can just skip to the last 3 paragraphs which are about the changes I would make.

The first thing you would realize when looking at mag is that she only has 150 energy at level 30. For frame without great tanking stats and abilities I would consider 150 energy very low. Volt has a similar problem, but at least his prime version has a very high energy pool.
Sidenote: Caster frames in general should have a - in the aura slot and not a V. Growing power is kind of useful for some of them, but a - is better overall.

1. Pull is an ok ability when compared to other 1st abilities. There are some better 1st abilities but there are also a lot of less useful 1st abilities. Pulling in enemies isn't great in most situations, but it has some CC and sometimes pulling in enemies is actually wanted.

2. Magnitize is sort of useful. It can be a lot of fun when used on a Grineer behind his turret or on something like a bombard. It is also a nice protection against high priority targets.
A big downside however is that it is going to stop your own shots from going through, so in a lot of situations you wouldn't actually want to use it.

3. Polarize isn't great at the moment. The shields that allies get don't help a lot at higher levels. The shield and armor reduction is not enough at any level where weapons struggle with the scaling. In theory you could of course use this in combination with other armor/shield reducing effects, but again at that point the additional reduction isn't really relevant anymore.

4. Crush is very similar to some other 4s, but overall it feels worse. It has a very long animation and the effect isn't really that much better or just worse.

Overall I feel like I have to spam her abilities a lot. Her 3 has to be spammed a lot to be useful. Her 2 is only used on single enemies. When more enemies are around that's kind of nice, but overall abilities like rest & rage(equinox2), that simply CC enemies in an area, are just as good in most situations and don't have a downside. The armor reduction on the augment for her 4 is nice, but it requires spamming her 4 and I generally like to avoid that on most warframes.
The big problem with having to spam on mag specifically is her small energy pool.
With transient fortitude for strength, max efficiency and fracturing crush I am able to use the 2 and 4 once and then spend the rest of my energy on the 3 to reduce a lvl 125 corrupted heavy gunners armor to 0 at which point she killed herself. On one hand this shows a lot of potential (a lot of other warframes can't do something like this only using abilities), but on the other it's kind of sad that I had to use almost all of my abilties and spam one until I completely ran out of energy to achieve this.

So what I would to see is her 2 changed, so it doesn't block my own shots even when the enemy is already dead.
Her 3 needs a major change, because right now it actually doesn't really do anything on its own. I could also see it being combined with her 4 to make room for a new ability. It would then have the animation for polarize with wave and still restore shields to allies, but it would also CC. The augments could also be combined, so armor would be reduced and shields would be transferred.

And then the final thing is that I would love a warframe ability that turns single target attack into AoE damage. Pretty much the opposite of what her 2 is doing right now.
This would be great for players who like to use sniper rifles, but who aren't doing that right now because enemies can be killed so fast with other weapons.

If you have any comments on my general thoughts on her, you have a good way to make her abilities work or you have some thoughts on the changes feel free to comment.

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14 minutes ago, Flareux said:

I made a youtube video just to proove you wrong xD She's good tho. Play her some more :)

That video only shows you using 2 of her abilities (and only the second one at the very end), only utilizing one of the few weapons that can exploit the projectile mechanics of magnetize, and the test is only against Corpus units.

That doesn't tell us much about Mag's kit aside from making us (the viewers) ask this little question: why aren't you using her 3 and 4? Is it because they suck? Spoilers: I think it's because they suck.

Her 3 doesn't scale, and so is practically useless past lvl 50 unless you spam it, and her 4 has a suicidally long casting time, uses far too much energy, and the augment for it doesn't even make it worth using.

So in short, I'd rephrase that statement about how "she's good tho:" Her 1 is a relatively decent ability and her 2 is a brokenly OP ability (but only if you use specific, non-hitscan weapons to exploit the mechanics of the projectiles, and only on certain terrain, on certain, open tile sets so the projectiles don't hit walls or the floor). Her 3 and 4 are garbage and need to be fixed to be worth using.

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5 minutes ago, Jackviator said:

That video only shows you using 2 of her abilities (and only the second one at the very end), only utilizing one of the few weapons that can exploit the projectile mechanics of magnetize, and the test is only against Corpus units.

That doesn't tell us much about Mag's kit aside from making us (the viewers) ask this little question: why aren't you using her 3 and 4? Is it because they suck? Spoilers: I think it's because they suck.

Her 3 doesn't scale, and so is practically useless past lvl 50 unless you spam it, and her 4 has a suicidally long casting time, uses far too much energy, and the augment for it doesn't even make it worth using.

So in short, I'd rephrase that statement about how "she's good tho:" Her 1 is a relatively decent ability and her 2 is a brokenly OP ability (but only if you use specific, non-hitscan weapons to exploit the mechanics of the projectiles, and only on certain terrain, on certain, open tile sets so the projectiles don't hit walls or the floor). Her 3 and 4 are garbage and need to be fixed to be worth using.

Her 2nd works great in small areas too. It's great for almost everywhere. It doesn't require specific weapon... but yea her 3rd and 4th aren't much worth in higher level stuff.

Edited by Flareux
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On 9.11.2016 at 3:10 AM, Noamuth said:

Why is everyone trying to "fix" Mag all of the sudden?

The reason is actually fashionframe. Went through all of them and since I was very pleased with the way she looked I decided to play her. It's really unfortunate that she is still not that great after her rework.

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21 hours ago, RealPandemonium said:

Your problems with Mag sound like "I have to think about using her powers, so she's bad."  Having powerful tools that nonetheless have drawbacks and require strategic choice on the part of the user is a good thing; design working as intended.  

The thing is that I can't figure out a good way to use her. I think I am better than the average player, so if I can't figure out a good way to play her, chances are high that a large part of the player base also can't figure out a good way to play her. This is even more important because she is a starter frame. Starter frames should imo be pretty straight forward to use.
The best example would be rhino. It's not only that rhino is fairly easy to play because of his durability, but he also depends less on mods.

Now to talk about her having powerful tools with drawbacks- Her 4 is basially a weaker version of other 4s. No real strategic choice there. Her 3 is basically useless and there are very few abilities that would fit into this category. I don't call it useless because it doesn't fit into a half afk farming meta, but because removing small amounts of armor and shields is something that weapons can do way better.
So the only ability where you can actually talk about powerful with drawbacks is her 2. Now you can use it to kill everything in that bubble fairly easy, but I would argue that CC the enemies with something like equinox or ivaras sleep abilities work just as well. Then there is the fact that some of that synergy might simply be unintended/ a bug.
And when we talk about drawbacks we actually need the ability to do something exceptionally powerful and that's just not the case. Instead there are a lot of other abilities that do the same thing maybe even better and the drawback is mostly the major annoyance of not being able to shoot through it. I don't think that's the design working as intended.

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35 minutes ago, gluih said:

The reason is actually fashionframe. Went through all of them and since I was very pleased with the way she looked I decided to play her. It's really unfortunate that she is still not that great after her rework.

Fashionframe...?

Good grief.  I'm out.

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15 minutes ago, gluih said:

The thing is that I can't figure out a good way to use her. I think I am better than the average player, so if I can't figure out a good way to play her, chances are high that a large part of the player base also can't figure out a good way to play her.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect

 

If you are a savvy WF player and understand how Mag's powers work (read the wiki,) you should have no problem putting them to use and clearing Sortie-level content (which is already unreasonably overtuned) with her.  

Pull can keep a whole tile on its collective &#! indefinitely.

Magnetize is the best damage steroid in the game, can be used for offense and defense, and deals huge amounts of AOE damage based on your weapon damage.

Polarize can be used to strip Grineer armor effectively on its own into the 70s  and can soften up Corpus until around the same range.  Multiple casts can combine with the Crush augment to fully strip Grineer into the XXX levels.  

Crush allows you to quickly CC everything in a radius so that you can transition into casting another power, can provide cover for allies who are reviving teammates, and strips armor effectively (based on a percentage, so infinitely scaling even) with the Fracturing Crush augment.  It can also nuke fairly effectively against Corpus due to its bonus against shields, and even moreseo against armor-stripped Grineer due to their low durability without armor (especially after casting Polarize.)  Short-duration CC is perfectly viable; just because it doesn't allow you to afk in the game doesn't mean that it's useless; it's actually how CC powers should be: low investment for moderate impact and large investement (both energy and time for recasts) for wide-range lockdown.  

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3 minutes ago, RealPandemonium said:

If you are a savvy WF player and understand how Mag's powers work (read the wiki,) you should have no problem putting them to use and clearing Sortie-level content (which is already unreasonably overtuned) with her.  

Pull can keep a whole tile on its collective &#! indefinitely.

Magnetize is the best damage steroid in the game, can be used for offense and defense, and deals huge amounts of AOE damage based on your weapon damage.

Polarize can be used to strip Grineer armor effectively on its own into the 70s  and can soften up Corpus until around the same range.  Multiple casts can combine with the Crush augment to fully strip Grineer into the XXX levels.  

Crush allows you to quickly CC everything in a radius so that you can transition into casting another power, can provide cover for allies who are reviving teammates, and strips armor effectively (based on a percentage, so infinitely scaling even) with the Fracturing Crush augment.  It can also nuke fairly effectively against Corpus due to its bonus against shields, and even moreseo against armor-stripped Grineer due to their low durability without armor (especially after casting Polarize.)  Short-duration CC is perfectly viable; just because it doesn't allow you to afk in the game doesn't mean that it's useless; it's actually how CC powers should be: low investment for moderate impact and large investement (both energy and time for recasts) for wide-range lockdown.  

Any warframe can clear sortie-level content. You can actually complete most sorties without using warframe powers.

Whenever magnetize actually results in huge amounts of damage it seems very much like an unintentional interaction to me. If it was intentional surely it would work with all wepaons. Being able to deal huge amounts of damage with weapons also has nothing to do with mag. Any warframe can pick up a weapon and shoot at enemies.

As mentioned earlier, polarize is very bad at removing armor and shields. The damage to shields simply doesn't compare very well to what weapons can do.
When it comes to armor, either the armor is so low that it doesn't really matter or the armor is high enough that polarize does not actually make a difference.
The crush augment is what actually removes a lot of the armor and not polarize.

You avoid comparing crush to other 4s with similar effects. Most importantly it does not actually CC quickly. It has a very long cast animation which can easily kill you when using it.

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2 minutes ago, gluih said:

Any warframe can clear sortie-level content. You can actually complete most sorties without using warframe powers.

Whenever magnetize actually results in huge amounts of damage it seems very much like an unintentional interaction to me. If it was intentional surely it would work with all wepaons. Being able to deal huge amounts of damage with weapons also has nothing to do with mag. Any warframe can pick up a weapon and shoot at enemies.

As mentioned earlier, polarize is very bad at removing armor and shields. The damage to shields simply doesn't compare very well to what weapons can do.
When it comes to armor, either the armor is so low that it doesn't really matter or the armor is high enough that polarize does not actually make a difference.
The crush augment is what actually removes a lot of the armor and not polarize.

You avoid comparing crush to other 4s with similar effects. Most importantly it does not actually CC quickly. It has a very long cast animation which can easily kill you when using it.

The implication is that Sortie-level content is easy to clear with the use of Mag's powers.  Being able to strip Grineer armor and deal huge damage to many enemies at once with Magnetize, while keeping them on the floor with Pull and covering yourself with Crush, etc.

Magnetize's damage multiplier doubles damage to the main target at base power strength.  25% of the total inflicted damage is dealt per second to enemies in the field.  If the main target dies, 200% of the total inflicted damage (before power strength) is dealt in a large explosion (though it is limited by line of sight.)  Player weapons are usually sufficient to kill single targets in less than a second, but with this you can bring low even the mightiest of heavy units and utterly nuke everything in the area along with it.  Magnetize's power is eminently obvious to anyone who reads the power's description.  There are a couple of bugs that affect its explosion/DoT damage: 1)Beam weapons contribute only 4% of inflicted damage to the Dot/Explosion, and 2)damage instances produced by multishot (both from shotguns and mods) do not contribute to the Dot/explosion at all.  Neither of these bug affect damage dealt to the main target, but they do hamper the effectiveness of the AOE/DoT (relatively; top-end shotguns, for example, deal so much damage just with one pellet that the AOE/DoT will be formidable regardless.)

Against Corpus, Polarize is effectively a 1400 damage nuke (before power strength; with 200% pwrstr the damage increases to 4000, and multiply this by 1.75 against Shields for a total of 7000 maxcase,) which is not bad for an ability that can cover a whole map tile in seconds.  Against Grineer,  Polarize both strips armor and deals damage, which allows it to plow through light and medium units and significantly weaken heavies.  Two Fracturing Crush casts and one Polarize will fully strip level  XXX Grineer heavies permanently, for what that's worth.

Crush's CC is active for the duration of its cast time and for an amount of time shortly after as they get up from the knockdown.  You will only be killed during the Crush animation by enemies beyond its radius, since everything within is unable to shoot you while it's active.  Of course, I'm not going to compare Crush to game-trivializing powers like Stomp, Bastillespam, radial blinds, etc.  A power doesn't need to be AFK-worthy to do its job, and it's time DE cracked down on the win-buttons in this game.  

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1 hour ago, RealPandemonium said:

The implication is that Sortie-level content is easy to clear with the use of Mag's powers.  Being able to strip Grineer armor and deal huge damage to many enemies at once with Magnetize, while keeping them on the floor with Pull and covering yourself with Crush, etc.

Magnetize's damage multiplier doubles damage to the main target at base power strength.  25% of the total inflicted damage is dealt per second to enemies in the field.  If the main target dies, 200% of the total inflicted damage (before power strength) is dealt in a large explosion (though it is limited by line of sight.)  Player weapons are usually sufficient to kill single targets in less than a second, but with this you can bring low even the mightiest of heavy units and utterly nuke everything in the area along with it.  Magnetize's power is eminently obvious to anyone who reads the power's description.  There are a couple of bugs that affect its explosion/DoT damage: 1)Beam weapons contribute only 4% of inflicted damage to the Dot/Explosion, and 2)damage instances produced by multishot (both from shotguns and mods) do not contribute to the Dot/explosion at all.  Neither of these bug affect damage dealt to the main target, but they do hamper the effectiveness of the AOE/DoT (relatively; top-end shotguns, for example, deal so much damage just with one pellet that the AOE/DoT will be formidable regardless.)

Against Corpus, Polarize is effectively a 1400 damage nuke (before power strength; with 200% pwrstr the damage increases to 4000, and multiply this by 1.75 against Shields for a total of 7000 maxcase,) which is not bad for an ability that can cover a whole map tile in seconds.  Against Grineer,  Polarize both strips armor and deals damage, which allows it to plow through light and medium units and significantly weaken heavies.  Two Fracturing Crush casts and one Polarize will fully strip level  XXX Grineer heavies permanently, for what that's worth.

Crush's CC is active for the duration of its cast time and for an amount of time shortly after as they get up from the knockdown.  You will only be killed during the Crush animation by enemies beyond its radius, since everything within is unable to shoot you while it's active.  Of course, I'm not going to compare Crush to game-trivializing powers like Stomp, Bastillespam, radial blinds, etc.  A power doesn't need to be AFK-worthy to do its job, and it's time DE cracked down on the win-buttons in this game.  

I played her some more and did some testing. Apparently the extra damage you can get out of magnetize is pretty insane. However having the bubbles stay around beause you want to use it a lot is still very annoying and the effects on enemies that are not directly targeted are inconsistent. Sometimes enemies inside the bubble don't take damage from the projectiles and if that happens you pretty much can't kill them until the bubble is gone.
You can argue that this is a very powerful ability and therefor all the downsides and inconsistencies are ok. I would prefer the ability to have a simpler effect without downsides, which looks more like this:
The target is CCed in the center of the bubble. Other enemies are slowly pulled towards the center. Either when the duration ends or when the target dies the bubble explodes and deals the same damage to all enemies in the range. This way there are no annoying bubbles after the target is dead and the damage dealt by the explosion is actually relevant.

Being able to remove 50% of the armor is very nice, so that's a huge upside compared to other 4s. Still it doesn't have the CC that the others bring. It does leave you very vulnerable, not only to enemies outside of range but also to nullifiers and enemies inside their bubble.
As mentioned I like to avoid spamming my 4, but when dealing with high armor enemies effects that remove that armor are required to apply to all of them. So overall I prefer something like rhino stomp or radial blind.

Overall there are still some problems. Her 3 remains pretty useless. I honestly just don't care about the damage to shields and the armor removed is simply not enough.
Her energy pool is extremely small for a caster frame.
The way she works simply doesn't fit a starter frame. You can argue about more complicated powers being interesting for a frame that players get later. I still wouldn't agree with you, because having interesting interactions and synergies doesn't require the ability to be complicated. For a starter frame all the abilities should have some effect on their own and they should not have downsides.

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8 hours ago, gluih said:

I played her some more and did some testing. Apparently the extra damage you can get out of magnetize is pretty insane. However having the bubbles stay around beause you want to use it a lot is still very annoying and the effects on enemies that are not directly targeted are inconsistent. Sometimes enemies inside the bubble don't take damage from the projectiles and if that happens you pretty much can't kill them until the bubble is gone.
You can argue that this is a very powerful ability and therefor all the downsides and inconsistencies are ok. I would prefer the ability to have a simpler effect without downsides, which looks more like this:
The target is CCed in the center of the bubble. Other enemies are slowly pulled towards the center. Either when the duration ends or when the target dies the bubble explodes and deals the same damage to all enemies in the range. This way there are no annoying bubbles after the target is dead and the damage dealt by the explosion is actually relevant.

Being able to remove 50% of the armor is very nice, so that's a huge upside compared to other 4s. Still it doesn't have the CC that the others bring. It does leave you very vulnerable, not only to enemies outside of range but also to nullifiers and enemies inside their bubble.
As mentioned I like to avoid spamming my 4, but when dealing with high armor enemies effects that remove that armor are required to apply to all of them. So overall I prefer something like rhino stomp or radial blind.

Overall there are still some problems. Her 3 remains pretty useless. I honestly just don't care about the damage to shields and the armor removed is simply not enough.
Her energy pool is extremely small for a caster frame.
The way she works simply doesn't fit a starter frame. You can argue about more complicated powers being interesting for a frame that players get later. I still wouldn't agree with you, because having interesting interactions and synergies doesn't require the ability to be complicated. For a starter frame all the abilities should have some effect on their own and they should not have downsides.

Note about Fracturing Crush: overlapping durations stack multiplicatively and then Polarize can "finish off" their armor, permanently stripping it to zero. 

You're entitled to your opinion in the rest of your post, I guess.  

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1 hour ago, (PS4)DesecratedFlame said:

If you are in any mission where that actually mattered, you would be using 4xCP anyway, making it effectively worthless.

Not all of us live in a bubble where we hand-pick our teammates and enforce our style of play on everyone we play with.  Sorties present situations where you fight level 80+ Grineer, stupid as it is.  Mag can put some good work in, solo, there.  Not everything needs to fit into a perfectly min-maxed world in order to be fun and/or functional.  

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