Don't Buff Ash

[FractalMind]

I've been playing for a couple of weeks and the frame that I really wanted and had to grind for was Ash. The idea of being a true ninja with mainly fast melee weapons really appealed to me... However, after grinding out this frame for over 40 boss runs I was a bit underwhelmed at his performance.

 

I'm currently at level 20 and completely enjoy Ash with the Kogate as primary melee weapon... But only solo...

 

Ash/Kogate is a fantastic combination of speed of motion and speed of performance. Shuriken for ranged kills, smoke bomb/melee combos are awesome, jump/stun/finish kills are beautiful to perform correctly with a fitting sense of achievement at the skill and timing involved.

 

However, I have started to become underwhelmed by the Ash playstyle as I realise that my kills rate is truly appalling compared to even lower ranked frames and weapons when playing in a squad.

 

It's a case of "set up loads of kills, get in position to make the kills, watch the kills be taken out by the huge number of ranged aoe powers or ranged weapons of others" or "take a single kill alone while others mop the floor with the enemies".

 

I'll admit that I'm pretty new to Ash and the game in general, but I have rank 30 Ember, Trinity and Excalibur, and I can kill faster in the heat of combat with all of them than I would believe possible with Ash, given my current progression.

 

I'm not asking for a buff for Ash or a nerf for any of the other frames, however melee-centred characters such as Ash require a more dynamic playstyle in order to get into the action quickly and then to leave the action when they are overwhelmed, especially given the lack of aoe (smoke bomb is ok, but does little to aid escape when stun locked by a surrounding horde of infested).

 

In order to facilitate movement around the environment, I'd like to suggest a tuning of the more elaborate dynamics such as wall-running and jumping. Many times, I've jumped at a wall and fell to my death sliding down the wall instead of running along it (edit: not really falling to my death, I fall and then respawn at the place I was trying to escape from, at which point it is even more overwhelmed than when I first jumped), also I've had difficulty with running directly up a wall when trying to run along it . My camera will be pointing along the wall, my direction of motion will be almost parallel to the wall, but Ash will run directly up the wall and then eloquently backflip right into the middle of the trouble that I was trying to avoid.

 

Are there any plans to refine this mechanic? There is a lot of talk on the livestreams about many things, but no mention of refining the underlying dynamics of motion. I think that melee-based Warframes could be made more viable by a tuning of the motion mechanics getting players into and out of fights. Tuning melee and ranged weapons against each other is a simple but not optimal approach that caters only for the lowest denominator of button-masher melee players.

 

Melee-Ninja is a very user-skilled playstyle and I accept that I have room for improvement in this area, however I feel that the playstyle would be well served with motion optimisation.

 

This has kinda become a wall of text, but thanks for reading. :)

Edited July 3, 2013 by FractalMind

[BIossome]

Yeah, if only we had more controls or key combos in melee.

[fatpig84]

Dude use a loki then, I am way less durable and have no damaging spells lol.

[McVolker]

I was an Ash user, forma'd him 3 times, and have him sitting with Vauban in one of my slots, waiting to see light while I roll beloved Rhino for the time being. As an Ash, I topped the damage of whatever squad I was in, even going to beat the occasional tank frame that was in the squad. I would say it isn't the frame or environment, or even the players that are making Ash seem bad. I don't know how you play, so I will not assume it to be any of these. I am just stating that Ash is an extremely damaging frame, if played a certain way. He can and will likely top the damage dealt area of the bar, if played a certain way.

 

But I get what you are stating, that the game environment should maybe be refined to allow for more dynamic stealth/melee-ing. Melee abilities is really Excalibur's deal, while Ash is an offensive/stealth based combatant.

[CheeseHasLeafs]

getting into the action is what Teleport was meant to do. Unfortunately the slight delay wherein Ash does his backflip basically allows the enemy a free shot at you.

[FractalMind]

getting into the action is what Teleport was meant to do. Unfortunately the slight delay wherein Ash does his backflip basically allows the enemy a free shot at you.

Maybe a 0.75 second invisibility or stun (in shock!) for the enemies would make the teleport more useful. I've noticed this and the vulnerability discourages me from using it.

 

@McVolter: Totally get what you're saying when you say Ash is a high damage frame. Maybe I'm looking at the kill stats too much and not the damage stats enough.He's very much one-on-one. For taking out those ancients, heavy gunners or red corpus (what were they called?) as well as bosses then he kicks &#!. For groups though, not so much.

 

@fatpig84: I think the decoy makes up for the lack of direct damaging abilities. Only just got loki though so will have to get back to you. Looking forward to him. ;)

Edited July 3, 2013 by FractalMind

[fatpig84]

Maybe a 0.75 second invisibility or stun (in shock!) for the enemies would make the teleport more useful. I've noticed this and the vulnerability discourages me from using it.

 

@McVolter: Totally get what you're saying when you say Ash is a high damage frame. Maybe I'm looking at the kill stats too much and not the damage stats enough.He's very much one-on-one. For taking out those ancients, heavy gunners or red corpus (what were they called?) as well as bosses then he kicks &#!. For groups though, not so much.

 

@fatpig84: I think the decoy makes up for the lack of direct damaging abilities. Only just got loki though so will have to get back to you. Looking forward to him. ;)

 

Decoy doesn't even last 3 seconds against level 83 enemies. They sneeze a few shots at his direction and he poofs as fast as I can cast him. :p

 

But loki does have a longer invisibility timer, that turns his melee damage into whoop &#!. 

Edited July 3, 2013 by fatpig84

[FractalMind]

Decoy doesn't even last 3 seconds against level 83 enemies. They sneeze a few shots at his direction and he poofs as fast as I can cast him. :p

 

But loki does have a longer invisibility timer, that turns his melee damage into whoop &#!. 

Smoke bomb lasts 6 seconds maxed out without the mod buff. How many kills can you get with melee in 6 seconds? Not enough to compared to an aoe, I'd guess.

[Venarge]

Smoke bomb lasts 6 seconds maxed out without the mod buff. How many kills can you get with melee in 6 seconds? Not enough to compared to an aoe, I'd guess.

10-15 in this time. Since my time is way longer, i wipe a room without being toched....

[FractalMind]

10-15 in this time. Since my time is way longer, i wipe a room without being toched....

I need a better melee weapon... Do you use Orthos or one of the scythes or something for multiple hits? None of the crit stuff seems to allow more than about 8 hits in this time and those would need to be all one hit kill hits to get even close. Range is a big problem for me too, if it takes 0.5 seconds to get to the next victim then my hit count estimate goes down even further.

[Venarge]

I need a better melee weapon... Do you use Orthos or one of the scythes or something for multiple hits? None of the crit stuff seems to allow more than about 8 hits in this time and those would need to be all one hit kill hits to get even close. Range is a big problem for me too, if it takes 0.5 seconds to get to the next victim then my hit count estimate goes down even further.

yep orthos is currently my weapon. Other than that, I use my fangs. Armor ignore and high crit rate, combined with the awesome speed and double attack make them an awesome grineer killer. Add lightning and corpus fall as well. The only thing they are useless against are infested ^^

[-Kittens-]

Maybe a 0.75 second invisibility or stun (in shock!) for the enemies would make the teleport more useful. I've noticed this and the vulnerability discourages me from using it.

 

@McVolter: Totally get what you're saying when you say Ash is a high damage frame. Maybe I'm looking at the kill stats too much and not the damage stats enough.He's very much one-on-one. For taking out those ancients, heavy gunners or red corpus (what were they called?) as well as bosses then he kicks &#!. For groups though, not so much.

 

@fatpig84: I think the decoy makes up for the lack of direct damaging abilities. Only just got loki though so will have to get back to you. Looking forward to him. ;)

 

This issue is pretty much the same as MEMP's problem with Melee; it's just not very well designed or implemented and the pre OB nerf was way too hard. Simply put, melee is not a viable high level option even with stuff like smokebomb and contagion. All the parts for melee to be awesome are there, but they have yet to gel'd the same way that other games have done. Blocking isn't really great either, except against a single projectile-armed enemy, which pretty much never happens in this game.

 

That said, Ash does amazing damage against single targets. This game isn't about single targets at all, and the whole boss farming thing doesn't really work into that either, at least not at this point in the game's development. There are other methods to boss farm that are simply much MUCH safer and only slightly slower.

 

At the current paradigm, bosses and squad leaders are simply damage sponges with either high burst DPS or KD effects, and as such, staying away from then and hurting at the same time is far more efficient and safer in dealing with them.

 

Melee needs to do things that shooting can't, and right now, there's no framework for that to happen. It certainly CAN happen, but right now basically melee is a bunch of state blobs interacting with a bunch of positional blobs, and it's going to take quite a bit of work and time and man-hours to get to a ninja gaiden style state for melee.

 

In the meantime, what you CAN do is start working on solo-stomping things, which will help integrate smoothly with players who do give a sh!t about having a melee specialist on their team. As for the rest, as the sage Mr. Ron White pointed out; "You can't fix stupid; ugly can get surgery or exercise, stupid is forever." Find a team that will ehlp you do your thing and enjoy what content for Ash that they do currently have.

[ZWarhammer]

I've been playing for a couple of weeks and the frame that I really wanted and had to grind for was Ash. The idea of being a true ninja with mainly fast melee weapons really appealed to me... However, after grinding out this frame for over 40 boss runs I was a bit underwhelmed at his performance.

 

I'm currently at level 20 and completely enjoy Ash with the Kogate as primary melee weapon... But only solo...

 

Ash/Kogate is a fantastic combination of speed of motion and speed of performance. Shuriken for ranged kills, smoke bomb/melee combos are awesome, jump/stun/finish kills are beautiful to perform correctly with a fitting sense of achievement at the skill and timing involved.

 

However, I have started to become underwhelmed by the Ash playstyle as I realise that my kills rate is truly appalling compared to even lower ranked frames and weapons when playing in a squad.

 

It's a case of "set up loads of kills, get in position to make the kills, watch the kills be taken out by the huge number of ranged aoe powers or ranged weapons of others" or "take a single kill alone while others mop the floor with the enemies".

 

I'll admit that I'm pretty new to Ash and the game in general, but I have rank 30 Ember, Trinity and Excalibur, and I can kill faster in the heat of combat with all of them than I would believe possible with Ash, given my current progression.

 

I'm not asking for a buff for Ash or a nerf for any of the other frames, however melee-centred characters such as Ash require a more dynamic playstyle in order to get into the action quickly and then to leave the action when they are overwhelmed, especially given the lack of aoe (smoke bomb is ok, but does little to aid escape when stun locked by a surrounding horde of infested).

 

In order to facilitate movement around the environment, I'd like to suggest a tuning of the more elaborate dynamics such as wall-running and jumping. Many times, I've jumped at a wall and fell to my death sliding down the wall instead of running along it (edit: not really falling to my death, I fall and then respawn at the place I was trying to escape from, at which point it is even more overwhelmed than when I first jumped), also I've had difficulty with running directly up a wall when trying to run along it . My camera will be pointing along the wall, my direction of motion will be almost parallel to the wall, but Ash will run directly up the wall and then eloquently backflip right into the middle of the trouble that I was trying to avoid.

 

Are there any plans to refine this mechanic? There is a lot of talk on the livestreams about many things, but no mention of refining the underlying dynamics of motion. I think that melee-based Warframes could be made more viable by a tuning of the motion mechanics getting players into and out of fights. Tuning melee and ranged weapons against each other is a simple but not optimal approach that caters only for the lowest denominator of button-masher melee players.

 

Melee-Ninja is a very user-skilled playstyle and I accept that I have room for improvement in this area, however I feel that the playstyle would be well served with motion optimisation.

 

This has kinda become a wall of text, but thanks for reading. :)

I got an idea for you, go play for a couple of months and use every frame in game then you'll understand why he needs some buffs/tweaks mainly to his third and 4th skills