Ash Revisited Feedback Megathread

[AKKILLA]

5 hours ago, (PS4)Vexx757 said:

I say make put bladestorm back the way it was but with two changes; one enemies that are marked red can be killed by other players and two if you don`t want to see the animation press four again and you run around while the clones kill things and it is possible to do this because if you mark one enemy three times the other two marks you don’t do the clones do the two so the animation is still there but you have a choice whether you want to watch the animation or not. That`s just common sense.

Thats still the same unengaging uninteractive abilty that we dont want or need.

If I wanna watch a Ninja Combo animation I can play Ninja Gaiden Sigma and do Ryu Hayabusa's Ultimate Technique!

It works in a Triple A One Player Game, not Warframe imo. Pressing 1 button to watch it happen is boring, and making Ash send out clones to do the work isnt quiet engaging either that imo just takes Ash away from Blade Storm's action, I know plenty folks dont want another Exalted Stance Ulti but lets be real.

Exalted Stances are Completly engaging, and interactive. You dont press 4 to watch Exalted Blade/Hysteria/Primal Fury happen on its own You press 4 to activate this Power and You choose how You kill enemies, with Your kit available while in Your Exalted Stance mode.

Thats what Blade Storm should be, with its style and identity implemented. Makes alot of sense for Ash since He was the First Warframe with an innate Melee Weapon innate to his ability, meaning he is a perfect candidate for this type of Rework.

http://warframe.wikia.com/wiki/Ash

Trivia

• Ash was the first Warframe that had innate physical weapons associated with his frame, in this case his hidden blades he uses in his Blade Storm ability. The second frame with this innate physical weapon was Mesa and her Regulator pistols she uses in her Peacemaker ability.                                                                  
• I didnt make this up its in Warframe wikias Ash Trivia, it fits his Play style being a Melee Ninja Assassin, utilizing his whole kit while in Blade Storm will synergize best out of All the Exalted abilities, People say they dont want more Exalted Stances yet DE will keep releasing these type of abilities for newer frames
• Hence: Titania's Razorwing is practically an Exalted Archwing, may not have a Melee stance implemented but its basically a Exalted ability unofficially with a melee and a secondary weapon, and allows her to utilize her other abilities while in Razorwing synergizing with her Ulti. Thats engaging and interactive You dont press 4 to watch no Exalted Stance soo al the no more stance ulti remarks is obsolete for Blade Storms hands free slide show

[rafacasper]

On 14/06/2016 at 7:04 PM, [DE]Danielle said:

We decided to rework Blade Storm after almost a full year of the same themed feedback showing up. We often heard and experienced a power that doesn't allow for player participation beyond pressing 4 once and waiting. We have been increasingly committed to participatory powers (especially ultimates) and focused on emphasizing that for Blade Storm.

Blade Storm Changes:

• Blade Storm now has a new 'Mark Enemy' mode that is activated when you hit 4. Ash enters target mode, which you can freely target enemies with your reticule up to 3 times each for attack. Once you're satisfied, press 4 again, Blade Storm begins and all targeted enemies are attacked!
• Each mark costs Energy (15) which is affected by Mods. If a marked enemy is killed by a squad mate, you will get the energy back. 
• Marks made while invisible by any source will have a cheaper base cost (10). 
• Enemies killed by Blade Storm will dissolve, leaving no corpse behind to detect!

 

 

- The devs said in a devstream, the basic enemies have such a low average lifespan, sometimes seconds. There is no able time to use bladestorm on enemies, unless you are on high level content, and on that kind of content, you have to be mobile to avoid damage.

- You could use smokescreen than bladestorm, but that would mean Bladestorm depends on smokescreen on high content damage. Even so, smokescreen has a too short time to be really fun and useful.

- Besides the smokescreen + bladestorm,  the enemy marking mechanic is more unfun than the older way, less pratical also. I understand it is not anymore "watch things happen" But it is not pratical or fun the way it is when compared to Excal´s 4th, or Ember, or Valkyr, etc.

- It is way more pratical to press 4-4 and kill a single enemy quickly, than to mark enemies in an area to execute bladestorm.

 

 

Edited February 1, 2017 by rafacasper

[AKKILLA]

1 hour ago, rafacasper said:

 

- The devs said in a devstream, the basic enemies have such a low average lifespan, sometimes seconds. There is no able time to use bladestorm on enemies, unless you are on high level content, and on that kind of content, you have to be mobile to avoid damage.

- You could use smokescreen than bladestorm, but that would mean Bladestorm depends on smokescreen on high content damage. Even so, smokescreen has a too short time to be really fun and useful.

- Besides the smokescreen + bladestorm,  the enemy marking mechanic is more unfun than the older way, less pratical also. I understand it is not anymore "watch things happen" But it is not pratical or fun the way it is when compared to Excal´s 4th, or Ember, or Valkyr, etc.

- It is way more pratical to press 4-4 and kill a single enemy quickly, than to mark enemies in an area to execute bladestorm.

 

 

THANK YOU!

CAN WE GET AN EXALTED BLADE STORM PLEASE DE? 

I swear its that simple and solves the problem with this unsatisfactory Blade Storm we have now. Yes im very patriotic too about the original Warframe Trailer of Ash doing his cool Blade Storm animations, BUT!!!

The actual in game animations were cheaped out! Look at the Pop Up animation per instance! In game its not exactly like in the trailer.

Why is this in such an advanced game were we fly everywhere and cast crazy abilities but our Ninja Assassin cant recieve a Great Animated Finisher Assassinations?

Some of the actual animations in game look terrible and nothing like the trailer, theres one where it happens on flying enemies (Ospreys, etc) He just slaps them with no effort or style at all.

Im sure they can over haul it and make it more visually appealing as a Stance, stil maintain his indentity, add more synergy to all his abilities while in Blade Storm by marking enemies as we do now with Shuriken, or any attack done on an enemy may leave a Mark indicating they have a Slash Bleed Proc currently active.

We may still use the current ideas like Ash turning smokey is nice, He can have a Nice Cast animation where he does some Ninja Hand Seal summoning his clones in a flicker of smoke then they disappear in a quick *POOF* of smoke. They can appear when Ash executes an attack and each combo will summon his 2 clones.

His attacks will offer a damage reduction, his Stealth Finisher animation will not take Damage, this indicating its Finisher Damage. 

His regular attack combos will be Slash Bleed Procs to not Over Kill because I gave some thought into it being all Finisher Damage would be SUPER OP!

To balance it out there can be a Damage Reduc on basic Combos and Invincibility on Finisher Kills, this is where Smoke Screen helps in the Thick of a Battle!

Smoke Screen plays a Huge role in Ashs entire kit + Blade Storm Stance as well!

Casting it leaves a Cloud Choking enemies opening them to Finisher kills keeps Ash Immune to any Damage in or out of Blade Storm! 

Ash being an Assassin I see his Archtype being the Finisher Slash King!

Ash is meant for really every mission type but mainly Exterminate/Assassinations, and spy for players who know how to actually play Spy.

Not a Negative Duration Ash player. That mentality is counter productive to Ash, I get great duration on all My Smoke Screen builds and implement Smoke Shadow in it. It works Great on Sortie Defence Operatives and Rescue Hostages, even reviving an Ally its perfect cause in that moment usually You catch more then one player reviving him sometimes Cloaking an entire Squad, which Smoke Screen is greater then Ivara's Cloak Arrow in respects of it not being Nullified by any enemies just Ashs actual smoke screen may be canceled but this is vital and should be taken into account for reworking Smoke Screen and implementing the AoE Cloud. Ofcoarse we dont want to lose Ashs iinvisibility in or out of Smoke Screen for mobility and allies may enter at any moment your cloud if the Augment is equipped it will show on the Map

ENERGY

[(PSN)Vexx757]

6 hours ago, AKKILLA said:

Thats still the same unengaging uninteractive abilty that we dont want or need.

 

I idea makes sense plane and simp.

[Nazrethim]

2 hours ago, AKKILLA said:

-snip-

Actually, the current marking could easily be integrated into a Stance Ultimate:

When Ash is in Blade Storm Stance, aimgliding or blocking marks enemies. casting Shuriken would throw one (at no cost, cost being the 15 per mark) to each marked enemy. Similarly, casting teleport when enemies are marked would cause current mark bladestorm.

[Nazrethim]

2 minutes ago, (PS4)Vexx757 said:

I idea makes sense plane and simp.

It doesn't make it a good one though. And it solves exactly none of the issues old or current Bladestorm had/has.

A Stance ultimate on the other hand, if implemented properly (being skill based instead of spam based) would solve most if not all the issues both past and present and make Ash one of the most sucessful Warframes without relying on cheese.

[askaninja]

DE hit the nail on the head which is that they want more people interacting instead of just pressing a single button every couple of seconds. It is highlighted here pretty clearly from the screen capture below. Unfortunately just because you see a problem doesn't mean there is a great solution. It is pretty clear that the reaction here, effectively making the ability so un-usable was a bad approach to which the 91 pages of posts can attest to.

Quote

We often heard and experienced a power that doesn't allow for player participation beyond pressing 4 once and waiting.

By nerfing this power so badly, you think the problem is solved, but it is not because people are just using the next most effective ability. People always search for the easiest way to accomplish a goal with the least work.. it is just being human. They will move to the next Warframe and utilize that ability until lots of people complain and cry for a nerf. Following this pattern we will end up in an endless nerf cycle until players get pissed and stop playing or all the characters are identical to each other and the game becomes very very boring since there is no advantage or penalty for any decisions players make.

The nerf was attacking the symptom of the problem and not the root cause. Looking a little deeper, we see people are spamming this ability. And a better way to deal with the problem is understand why they are doing so. A simple exploration yields that it is very effective with the current mechanics of how all the enemies are. Making a new class of enemies that introduces a new mechanic can shift people away from this power. Something as easy as a hard slow target with excessive hp that cant be targeted by AOE abilities would possibly accomplish this. Add to our hypothetical they take double damage from status effects and have fewer mass mob enemies and you may even make the sniper a viable weapon to boot.

Bottom line, the Ash nerf was a solution to the symptom. I recommend you restore it to what it use to be and instead work on new enemy mechanics that would favor the type of game play you are after. This is the best approach to a problem since frankly nerf's to abilities just piss off everyone except for trolls or those that don't have the ability to get the highly sought after item, gear, etc..

 

[Xaentrick]

20 hours ago, rafacasper said:

 

- The devs said in a devstream, the basic enemies have such a low average lifespan, sometimes seconds. There is no able time to use bladestorm on enemies, unless you are on high level content, and on that kind of content, you have to be mobile to avoid damage.

- You could use smokescreen than bladestorm, but that would mean Bladestorm depends on smokescreen on high content damage. Even so, smokescreen has a too short time to be really fun and useful.

- Besides the smokescreen + bladestorm,  the enemy marking mechanic is more unfun than the older way, less pratical also. I understand it is not anymore "watch things happen" But it is not pratical or fun the way it is when compared to Excal´s 4th, or Ember, or Valkyr, etc.

- It is way more pratical to press 4-4 and kill a single enemy quickly, than to mark enemies in an area to execute bladestorm.

 

 

Which stream did they say this in? I need to go watch it.

[Tesseract7777]

I am one who wanted Bladestorm to be changed. I wanted it to be a bit more interactive, and get rid of all the shaky cam/cutscene stuff. I wanted to be more involved, and not get motion sickness while playing, or just sit and watch/do other things while the game played the game for me. 

I really thought that Ash's rework was going to address that, but if anything it fixed one problem while actually making another problem even worse. Bladestorm is now interactive (perhaps TOO interactive for such a fast paced game as Warframe, but that's another thing to discuss), but the cutscene prime problem is even worse. 

With invis to take your time and mark and enough energy/pads/trin you can mark and mark over and over before you finally activate Bladestorm. You can get way more enemies targeted than before in a single Bladestorm. What this means is that the ability has been made more interactive, but for every bit of interactivity you take, it increases the amount of time that the game plays the game for you while you sit there watching. The more you interact and mark enemies, the longer your Bladestorm is going to last while you just sit there and watch. 

I am not sure what the best solution is to this, but it really shows that one problem has been fixed at the expense of making another worse. What good is increased interactivity if the more time you spend interacting, the more time you have to spend NOT interacting and just watching the game play for you? Why can't we have some version of the ability where we are not locked into watching animations during it? 

[NeithanDiniem]

Probably a good solution is make Ash not physically go to each enemy and attack them, rather just make him pop invisible + invulnerable, stick him in a cast animation so he cant move, then make his clones do the attacking instead of the Warframe itself. That would completely remove the long delay while preventing the slideshow. If people want to keep that "I'm teleporting and attacking things" thing they can incorporate those animations into his teleport skill instead.

Edited February 8, 2017 by NeithanDiniem

[WynterRain]

For a while, I was thinking maybe like a quick-time event for each attack on the bladestorm skill, such as pressing 1, 2, 3, 4, or melee as the attack lands to deal bonus damage or pressing the wrong button might make the animation slower, and removing the shadow clones to make it more interactive, as you said. Just an idea though, what do you guys think?

[Soketsu]

22 minutes ago, Tesseract7777 said:

I am one who wanted Bladestorm to be changed. I wanted it to be a bit more interactive, and get rid of all the shaky cam/cutscene stuff. I wanted to be more involved, and not get motion sickness while playing, or just sit and watch/do other things while the game played the game for me. 

I really thought that Ash's rework was going to address that, but if anything it fixed one problem while actually making another problem even worse. Bladestorm is now interactive (perhaps TOO interactive for such a fast paced game as Warframe, but that's another thing to discuss), but the cutscene prime problem is even worse. 

With invis to take your time and mark and enough energy/pads/trin you can mark and mark over and over before you finally activate Bladestorm. You can get way more enemies targeted than before in a single Bladestorm. What this means is that the ability has been made more interactive, but for every bit of interactivity you take, it increases the amount of time that the game plays the game for you while you sit there watching. The more you interact and mark enemies, the longer your Bladestorm is going to last while you just sit there and watch. 

I am not sure what the best solution is to this, but it really shows that one problem has been fixed at the expense of making another worse. What good is increased interactivity if the more time you spend interacting, the more time you have to spend NOT interacting and just watching the game play for you? Why can't we have some version of the ability where we are not locked into watching animations during it? 

And you see now where nerf thread may lead ?

You understand why many people hate nerf / " rework " ?

At least you have the courage to admit it, unlike some other people.

[(PSN)abbacephas]

6 minutes ago, NeithanDiniem said:

Probably a good solution is make Ash not physically go to each enemy and attack them, rather just make him pop invisible + invulnerable, stick him in a cast animation so he cant move, then make his clones do the attacking instead of the Warframe itself. That would completely remove the long delay while preventing the slideshow. If people want to keep that "I'm teleporting and attacking things" thing they can incorporate those animations into his teleport skill instead.

I like this idea, except for the bolded part. If we freeze him in position, he still remains noninteractive. How about we just let him move about freely while his clones take care of the marked targets. So as to not make him ridiculously OP, the number of tick marks over the enemy corresponds to how long a clone will attack for (eg. 1 sec per tick or something along those lines). I'm picturing something similar to Nekros' shadows.

[taiiat]

yes, like Peacemaker, Bladestorm didn't get changed. using it abusively is done basically just the same as in the past. Development Time spent to.... not change the Ability at all.
if it takes more Development Time to actually fundamentally change an Ability, i'll gladly take it over spending less time but actually ending up with the exact same thing once it's done.

[NeithanDiniem]

17 minutes ago, (PS4)abbacephas said:

I like this idea, except for the bolded part. If we freeze him in position, he still remains noninteractive. How about we just let him move about freely while his clones take care of the marked targets. So as to not make him ridiculously OP, the number of tick marks over the enemy corresponds to how long a clone will attack for (eg. 1 sec per tick or something along those lines). I'm picturing something similar to Nekros' shadows.

Because this pretty much is a direct buff to his skill by letting his DPS also increase because he can go around shooting while also murdering large chunks of the map with the skill. Locking him in place is the exact same thing the skill already does, essentially, and thus would have no impact at all on the damage output and so DE would not need to do any other readjustments.

[Nazrethim]

12 hours ago, Tesseract7777 said:

I am not sure what the best solution is to this, but it really shows that one problem has been fixed at the expense of making another worse. What good is increased interactivity if the more time you spend interacting, the more time you have to spend NOT interacting and just watching the game play for you? Why can't we have some version of the ability where we are not locked into watching animations during it? 

The best solution was and is a Stance Ultimate, like Exalted Blade Hysteria or Primal Fury, but not like them. A special stance ultimate that allows players to play and still be as effective as Blade Storm.

 

11 hours ago, NeithanDiniem said:

Probably a good solution is make Ash not physically go to each enemy and attack them, rather just make him pop invisible + invulnerable, stick him in a cast animation so he cant move, then make his clones do the attacking instead of the Warframe itself. That would completely remove the long delay while preventing the slideshow. If people want to keep that "I'm teleporting and attacking things" thing they can incorporate those animations into his teleport skill instead.

And would be:

A)Boring

B)Mesa's Knockoff

C)It's even less interactive than what we have now.

11 hours ago, Soketsu said:

And you see now where nerf thread may lead ?

You understand why many people hate nerf / " rework " ?

At least you have the courage to admit it, unlike some other people.

Yes, the "nerf it" crowd rarely if ever gets one right. DE should have listened to what actual Ash players suggested, and threads with workable ideas were abundant.

I think DE could still give him a second pass and make Blade Storm a stance ultimate and keep the targeting mechanic as an addition.

[Soketsu]

1 hour ago, Nazrethim said:

Yes, the "nerf it" crowd rarely if ever gets one right. DE should have listened to what actual Ash players suggested, and threads with workable ideas were abundant.

I think DE could still give him a second pass and make Blade Storm a stance ultimate and keep the targeting mechanic as an addition.

Yes could work, at least the "killcam cinematic" we be finally removed (more free time in order to do something else), the only thing I do not like with the target mechanic, is if an ally kill the marked foes, you don't recover your energy, in addition to be more expensive than the old ulti.

But perhaps, I did not fully understand what  you meant, and the suggested ulti is good enought in order to not worry about the energy cost for marking foe.

[Daftermath]

I don't think there is an energy refund mechanic on Bladestorm, just a reduced cost for marking if you're in invisible or casted 2 first. Refund is only for the Fatal TP augment.

It'd be cool if we only got the cinematic on the first target then clones do the rest while you're back to gunning.

[Tesseract7777]

59 minutes ago, Enbekay said:

I don't think there is an energy refund mechanic on Bladestorm, just a reduced cost for marking if you're in invisible or casted 2 first. Refund is only for the Fatal TP augment.

It'd be cool if we only got the cinematic on the first target then clones do the rest while you're back to gunning.

There is a refund if you manually mark a target with bs and an ally kills it first it was added with rework if i recall.

[Daftermath]

I did not realize that, thanks for the info. I know, should have checked the wikia first, shameful 

[Autongnosis]

I was actualy thinking about this the other day. Imho the best way to go about it would be to severely speed up the animation that Ash himself does while at the same time slowing the ones the clones do.

That would allow you to go through killcam quick and have the clones keep doing their thing. On top of that, you could also make it so that enemies are only invulnerable during the animations performed by Ash himself and not during the animations of the clones, thus also cutting down the invulnerability frames that so trigger some people (do mind that it definitely is a problem sometimes).

Another solution i'd like would be to remove Ash's part entirely, and leave only the clones to do the work. To balance it out Ash should probably either be restricted to only abilities until the clones finish (with maybe his 3 doing a single 3-mark bladestorm attack), or be slowed sort of like Nyx during Assimilate. Part of this stems from the fact that i also found Bladestorm much cooler to look at from the perspective of the ones not doing it.

[NeithanDiniem]

12 hours ago, Nazrethim said:

And would be:

A)Boring

B)Mesa's Knockoff

C)It's even less interactive than what we have now.

Yes, because watching a slideshow where you have zero input to change the resulting slideshow is "interactive" and "exciting." The main problem with the skill is it is ALREADY boring. Most people I see commenting about bladestorm mention how it is boring to watch the same small set of animations a hundred times over in a mission. My suggestion would remove the wait for the damage output and the repetitive slideshow you are forced to watch on every cast.

Had you said less interesting I would have agreed, but many warframes have simple casts for their skills and ults. Also considering Mesa can move around or sit there indefinitely and kill without having to mark her targets beforehand, its not the same as mesa's ult. Ash marks while moving, then you slowly go through to each individual target and slap their face at the end of the skill rather than during the skill use, wherein you can do nothing but watch.

[Nazrethim]

19 hours ago, Soketsu said:

Yes could work, at least the "killcam cinematic" we be finally removed (more free time in order to do something else), the only thing I do not like with the target mechanic, is if an ally kill the marked foes, you don't recover your energy, in addition to be more expensive than the old ulti.

But perhaps, I did not fully understand what  you meant, and the suggested ulti is good enought in order to not worry about the energy cost for marking foe.

I was thinking a new aproach to energy use. Instead of "X cost + set duration" or "small cost + drain over time" I was thinking Ash spends about 100 energy to enter Blade Storm mode, you can deactivate it by recasting any time. The channeled stance doesn't drain energy at all, only when you cast it. When you Aimglide Wall Latch or Block with it you start markin targets, each mark costing 10 energy (5 if invi) for the initial mark and 5 for the 2nd and 3rd. If you attempt to cast Shuriken while marks are active Ash throws one shuriken to each target at 10 cost each, if you attempt to cast Teleport while there are marks active the current Blade Storm plays out. Using a Finisher (be teleport, combat finisher or stealth finisher) while in Blade Storm causes that enemies in about 3-5m be attacked by Ash clones once then dissapear. Rising Storm would be changed into +12s Combo counter while in Blade Storm (since Body Count and Drifting Contact don't work on Stance Ultimates).

As for the combos, there would be 3 short combos:

E>E>E (basic combo, doesn't do anything special, just deal damage)

E>E>pause>E>E (hit>hit>radial attack+bleed>hit+stun finisher opening)

E>RMB+E>E (Hit>forward dash attack>3xhit multistab+bleed)

So you use the RMB to cover ground and pause combo to deal damage, and basic combo does jack to discourage the mindless Espam of Excalibur and the other stance ultimates, Ash stance would be more about finesse than brute force.

[Soketsu]

10 hours ago, Nazrethim said:

I was thinking a new aproach to energy use. Instead of "X cost + set duration" or "small cost + drain over time" I was thinking Ash spends about 100 energy to enter Blade Storm mode, you can deactivate it by recasting any time. The channeled stance doesn't drain energy at all, only when you cast it. When you Aimglide Wall Latch or Block with it you start markin targets, each mark costing 10 energy (5 if invi) for the initial mark and 5 for the 2nd and 3rd. If you attempt to cast Shuriken while marks are active Ash throws one shuriken to each target at 10 cost each, if you attempt to cast Teleport while there are marks active the current Blade Storm plays out. Using a Finisher (be teleport, combat finisher or stealth finisher) while in Blade Storm causes that enemies in about 3-5m be attacked by Ash clones once then dissapear. Rising Storm would be changed into +12s Combo counter while in Blade Storm (since Body Count and Drifting Contact don't work on Stance Ultimates).

As for the combos, there would be 3 short combos:

E>E>E (basic combo, doesn't do anything special, just deal damage)

E>E>pause>E>E (hit>hit>radial attack+bleed>hit+stun finisher opening)

E>RMB+E>E (Hit>forward dash attack>3xhit multistab+bleed)

So you use the RMB to cover ground and pause combo to deal damage, and basic combo does jack to discourage the mindless Espam of Excalibur and the other stance ultimates, Ash stance would be more about finesse than brute force.

On the paper, it's sound good, want to see in test field , unfortunatly, will be some time before DE ever retouch the poor Ash :/

Edited February 10, 2017 by Soketsu

[Nazrethim]

2 hours ago, Soketsu said:

On the paper, it's sound good, want to see in test field , unfortunatly, will be some time before DE ever retouch the poor Ash :/

To give you a close idea, I recommend you to use all 3 Claw stances (or watch them in action) with a bit of Sparring's Grim Fury/Vicious Aproach and Dual Dagger's Sinkin Talon, it features the kind of mobility I envision on the stance. The "clones showing up" would be in practice what old Blade Storm was, except the clones would only attack once and the radius would be small, and the trigger would be a Finisher attack instead of an ability cast.

But yeah, sadly DE didn't dedicate more development to Ash (mostly because they were busy with Nidus and other content)