Nidus really needs to get reworked

[Birdframe_Prime]

16 hours ago, phoenixfeather132 said:

Her name was Mag. No one uses her anymore. On a similar note: Saryn. And Ash.

[Place wry, knowing chuckle here] My friend, you're missing out. Mag and Saryn perform better now than they did before, and I see more of them facing off against level 100+ in public runs than I do Nidus or even Inaros (but he's more of a solo frame, so that the spawns are more predictable). Saryn is a viable choice for multi-hour runs now (not that these are needed, they're just for fun now) because her damage takes longer to cap out, and her debuffs on enemies are applicable to let other frames take advantage for longer. Mag can now just as easily run against Infested and Grineer as she could before against Corpus, and her main ability can be modded more than one way, the armour stripping is more and more applicable at high level and her Pull is still one of the best quick CC casts in game. I can, and do, take these frames as far and further than I've taken Nidus, and so can others.

And Ash, while he's not the spamStorm he was before, now performs better overall since his teleport was buffed and his Smoke Screen is now a one-hand mobile cast that's just a tiny bit more useful in crowds than Loki's invis cast due to the radial stun. Plus hitting 4 now doesn't instantly make you hit 18 enemies in range, you can choose to hit just one or two enemies and save your energy for other things. For Blade Storm spam builds, Ash change was a nerf, for everything else that Ash does, change was a buff.

9 hours ago, (Xbox One)CFE Angry said:

Wow, console doesn't even have nidus and he gets nerfed. Atleast I don't have to worry about farming him as fast as possible for an hour, like some PC players did.

At this rate, DE will discourage players to even use other warframes for anything but mastery.

They always do this, it's not limited to Nidus. I've said it before, I'll say it again: DE have limited play testers, and no PTR, they have only the broadest and most general way to know how overpowered frames are going to be when released, even with as much testing as they can do, and we, the live players, are the testers for new content.

By the time every single build has reached Console, there have always been patches, bug fixes and balance passes. Every single frame, every single weapon. Something has changed on it within the first four weeks of release.

The argument was never a case of 'is Nidus OP, does he need a nerf?', of course he was OP, DE want to reward players for accessing him earlier, for paying plat for him, for sitting there and waiting for the content to drop and then jumping onto the farming runs. So they tested him and made sure he was game viable, and when it came to balance they were biased on the side of making him a little more powerful rather than making him too weak and not worth the time it took to farm him. In short; they would rather release a slightly OP frame and then balance him back down, than release an under-powered frame and buff him up, because they don't want the fans who farm him fast, or buy him, to complain and whine that he's not worth their money or time.

Whether he was OP wasn't in question at all, because he was always going to be at least slightly over, not under. The question we were (or should have been) asking was always 'What will DE change when they get the data back and see how the players used him?'.

[Tizodd]

Other frames with casted/toggled buffs could also have a slow decay from nullifier bubbles instead of instant destruction/cancellation.  In cases where the buff isn't % based, the ability could have a certain amount of nullifier bubble interaction time before the ability is canceled.

Some suggestions are (frames in alphabetical order):

• Ash: 3 seconds in bubble before Smoke Screen cancels.
• Chroma: 3 seconds in bubble before Elemental Ward/Vex Armor cancels.
• Frost: Snow Globe decays 10% per second while in contact with a nullifier bubble.
• Inaros: Scarab Armor decays 10% per second while inside bubble.
• Ivara: 4 seconds in bubble before Prowl cancels (added a second to compensate for Prowl's movement speed reduction).
• Loki: 3 seconds in bubble before Invisibility cancels.
• Mesa: 3 seconds in bubble before Shooting Gallery/Shatter Shield cancel.
• Mirage: 3 seconds in bubble before Hall of Mirrors cancels.
• Nezha: Warding Halo decays 5% per second while inside nullifier bubble (lower decay % because Warding Halo has the lowest eHP of "shield" abilities).
• Rhino: Iron Skin decays 10% per second while inside bubble.
• Trinity: 3 seconds in bubble before Link/Blessing buff cancels.
• Valkyr: 3 seconds in bubble before Hysteria cancels.
• Wukong: 3 seconds in bubble before Defy cancels.

Some toggled abilities I didn't mention because they are AoE damaging abilities and are easily re-toggled (World on Fire, Maim).  Also, they don't directly affect the frame's survivability.

Overall I feel these changes would make nullifiers a lot less annoying for a lot of frames...especially frames that depend heavily on defensive abilities for survival.  We'd be able to jump into the bubble and deal with nullifiers quickly without immediately losing all our defenses.

Thoughts?

[Wolfdoggie]

13 minutes ago, (PS4)forChristsake said:

Uhh, hit the bubble with your melee? Never had much issue doing that. If that was sarcasm,  sorry, I just woke up

I don't want to.

[-N7-Leonhart]

Just now, Tizodd said:

Overall I feel these changes would make nullifiers a lot less annoying for a lot of frames...especially frames that depend heavily on defensive abilities for survival.  We'd be able to jump into the bubble and deal with nullifiers quickly without immediately losing all our defenses.

Thoughts?

Silly you, some people actually want nullifiers to be annoying (like yours truly) 

[Smilomaniac]

Nidus is obviously not crippled from this nerf, but it does highlight a general issue - People hate nullifiers and this is just another thing on top of that.

It's not that they're impossible to deal with and it's certainly an issue of mind-over-matter with these guys, but apart from a mechanics perspective they just don't make sense. Unlike an ancient healer which presents a very real threat that you should prioritize, nullifiers make you feel powerless. Their bubbles are OP as all hell just in terms of soaking damage and if 2-3 of them stack then it's a source of exasperation, as in it's not at all fun to deal with - It abruptly grinds the flow of the game down to a halt and Corpus already have a slew of annoying enemies.

I mean, if I slide attack with a two-hander in to kill those nullifiers, then overlapping bubbles should not prevent the melee damage. The blade is literally slicing through them, but because of game logic that damage was soaked? Come on...
I really dislike that they shrink too, as it's incredibly annoying when you're trying to melee them and someone else shrinks the bubble by shooting it, thereby limiting your effective melee range against even a single one of them.

Then there's the stealth aspect - While it's great that their bubbles are now off by default when unalerted, they still turn it on when you go in to use a finisher on them, removing your stealth. I don't know if this is an oversight, but it's really frustrating.

So... you can't overpower them, you can't stealth kill them unless everything nearby is looking away from them, you can't always melee them and they switch off/block your powers. That's not a tactical element of gameplay, that's what we call an overdesigned enemy that nearly everyone hates.

With Nidus, the thing is that his powers are all of a physical origin. He "collects" material and unleashes it by various means, so nullifiers having any effect on that is just weird. I totally get why, but I also don't see it as necessary when the nullifier itself is the problem, or at least that's the way I see it.

 

[(PSN)forChristsake]

Just now, Wolfdoggie said:

I don't want to.

Fair enough I guess. 

[Richtor2415]

Yesss...

[(PSN)zXx_Fly_Guy_xXz]

On January 6, 2017 at 2:03 PM, Knight_Ex said:

I can't be the only person getting sick of seeing 2-3 nidus warframes running in every mission, lets break it down, Nidus is pretty much unkillable, he has insane amounts of damage, even if by some miracle he goes down so long as the person has 10 stacks they are auto revived, he can CC an entire room easily, gain insane amounts of damage reduction with his link, oh are those 10 bombards giving you trouble? just let me link to that corrupted ancient....there we go all better,  Fact of the matter being why run anything else since Nidus does most jobs perfectly, Tanking....check.....Damage....Check (With 100stacks his one can do up to 40k damage per hit and it hits multiple times), Buffing....Check.....Healing......sorta...his 4 can heal but not as effective as a trin, still if the people stay in range its unlikely they will go down.   So please someone come in here and tell me he doesn't need a rework and explain your logic behind it, because its obvious the QA team did barely any work on this one or he was purposely released as an OP frame,  FYI to get 100 stacks takes all but 3 minutes in some missions, his second ability followed with his first.....Id love to know the developers take on this, did rushing him involve throwing all the playtesting out the window for an end of year release?

 

On January 6, 2017 at 2:03 PM, Knight_Ex said:

I can't be the only person getting sick of seeing 2-3 nidus warframes running in every mission, lets break it down, Nidus is pretty much unkillable, he has insane amounts of damage, even if by some miracle he goes down so long as the person has 10 stacks they are auto revived, he can CC an entire room easily, gain insane amounts of damage reduction with his link, oh are those 10 bombards giving you trouble? just let me link to that corrupted ancient....there we go all better,  Fact of the matter being why run anything else since Nidus does most jobs perfectly, Tanking....check.....Damage....Check (With 100stacks his one can do up to 40k damage per hit and it hits multiple times), Buffing....Check.....Healing......sorta...his 4 can heal but not as effective as a trin, still if the people stay in range its unlikely they will go down.   So please someone come in here and tell me he doesn't need a rework and explain your logic behind it, because its obvious the QA team did barely any work on this one or he was purposely released as an OP frame,  FYI to get 100 stacks takes all but 3 minutes in some missions, his second ability followed with his first.....Id love to know the developers take on this, did rushing him involve throwing all the playtesting out the window for an end of year release?

He's a noobframe, he only specializes in defense and survival but then again hes very broken but DE had the nerver to super nerf Saryn and Ash lmao

[NinjaZeku]

1 minute ago, Tizodd said:

Frost: Snow Globe decays 10% per second while in contact with a nullifier bubble.

All of those are good, but (something like) this one seriously needs to happen.

Also, add Augment'd Pacify to the list, as that one is literally painful to build up.

[Tyrian3k]

It's not like people haven't brought this kind of mechanic up before, but DE has made no comment on changing anything, so I'd not expect any changes.

[Ikusias]

So basically Nidus "ultimate" is now a very resource intensive hallowed ground that can't even be recast without moving somewere else?

The maggots were pretty ineffective before and now seem to be even disruptive to Nidus gameplay

[Ikusias]

You can actually ddie with 3 active due to DE  blunders: occasionally enemies kill you out of the blue without killing your victim

[Wyrmius_Prime]

8 hours ago, JSharpie said:

Isn't that what nerfing is supposed to do? Make things that are too strong worse?

Besides, I still get to 50 stacks no problem, and have no problem keeping those stacks.

Ask yourself whether you prefer the post-patch Nidus players spamming 10x more Virulence or the pre-patch Nidus players spamming less Virulence and gaining stacks passively through Ravenous. I'd prefer the foremost for the sake of being able to see my enemies and not getting all enemy kills stolen by Nidus players. It's like Mirage + Simulor all over again.

[crimson-warborn]

22 minutes ago, Separius said:

The energy loss and stack loss isn't what's important. What's important is both of them losing the damage reduction and getting butchered by sapping ospreys, moas and corpus, nullies included.

The energy on Nidus don't matter most of the time, it's the stacks that matter, no point in you going into this.

Happened a couple of times, idk? Nullifier bubble cleansed the link and I lost 10 stacks or got shot dead because no damage reduction. Anyway this is trivial, doesn't justify the nerfs.

Yeah, no. Other frames should be brought up to his level, not the other way around.

Let me ask you this. Why are you trying to justify this nerf so hard? Why are you so emotionally invested in this? I did say I don't care about the nullifier buff all that much and I gave enough hints that I do not wish to discuss this further. But since you insist, why are you so adamant on this? Does it really hurt you, in a co-op horde shooter game that one character has better survivability than an other frame? Is it really that annoying? It doesn't affect your enjoyment of the game unless you are annoyed by not having the orange numbers on the score screen.

We could have had a situation where people just accept Nidus, and noone would have had their experience made less fun, because Nidus being bulky did not affect anyone else's enjoyment of the game, unless ofc because of the previously mentioned orange numbers or is it just envy? 

Was that it? That your frame doesn't have the cool survivability features that Nidus still has just worse? This is how all the youtubers and forumers who complained sounded like and that's pathetic.

Now what we have is Nidus players having a worse experience while others are like "well at least they got it worse now, hah!", while their experience of the GAME ITSELF didn't change at all, they can just feel better about themselves. What a mess.

Why does this matter to you this much? Why? How is one person in your party of 4 or 8 or inbetween, having a relatively easy and fun time, how is it affecting your enjoyment of the game other than the aforementioned pathetic reasons?

Yes, I was making that point, so don't twist it like you are making it just now. No warframes were corpus sortie friendly, neither was Nidus, he was fine before the nerf, it wasn't needed.

."It doesn't affect me, it's not an issue" Stop this.

 

You are contradicting yourself. You know pretty well what I meant.

Surely insulting is a great way to convince anyone that you are right. And I'm not upset because of the nerfs, I'm upset because of the attitude that they happened, this "oh no he has better orange numbers, he has invulnerability, he's OP, so OP!!! Somehow him being able to carry is ruining my experience in a co-op multiplayer horde shooter!" coming from the forumers and some youtubers and DE caving in. Him being the way he was literally had no effect on anyone else's hordeshooting.

I'm also upset because of the glass-half-full people trying to defend this whole trend or that they jump to DE's defense in general, no matter what. Always just happily accepting what DE gives you and trying to look on the bright side doesn't help improve the game. It's the half empty attitude that does. They are the ones who find mistakes and errors, they are the ones who give criticism, and without feedback like that we'd have a much much worse experience, because everyone would just happily accept everything, because "it could be worse!". 

When/where did I ever tell you that you said to "deal with it"? Deal with what even?

DE caving in to youtuber and forum people crying that Nidus is OP is everything but justified.

Why is that important even? Sure we shouldn't have demigods, but Nidus was nowhere near unbalanced. And even then why was it him that's the priority? How about buffing Oberon? Mag? Nerfing ember's early game and improving her for lategame? Anything else? Why nidus? Because people bloody complained on the forums that it's OP, that's why.

And why does that annoy you? How does that affect your gameplay?

I have no idea what point you're trying to make with all of the rambling at the end there. They got praise for vanilla nidus. The feedback forum is mostly constructive criticism. Don't generalize because of a few bad apples.

i understand your passion about nidus, but a real fact of him is that he needed a little nerf (be thankful that the nullies didn´t outright delete all the stacks), now a nidus user will have to use him a little more smartly and in a active way (the pre-nerf let him play like the older ash, autoplay style)

also, like ash, the "nerf" makes him a little fun to play with, and not just a "100 ways to see everyone die without your intervention" frame, and it will change the variety of frames used for advanced missions

one of the examples that you gave is a good way to see the need of the nerf, ember is OP in early, and nearly average in late game, that´s a healty power curve, because you can use her to cheese the early, saving the late frames that the other players bring the "effort" to reach their peak moments

[Dizzle22]

Off topic at this point, but Nullifiers have never been a major problem to me. I don't understand the hate at all, I think they are a clever enemy unit design.

In fact, I greatly prefer them over the scrambus units, because the nullifiers have a very obvious telegraph as to where their effect is and what it will do. A scrambus, that I might not even see yet, can lock out a random power from a vague distance and is much more difficult to kill at high level on top of that.

If they get rid of nullifiers, all we are going to see are more of the scrambus, and that would be terrible.

[Ikusias]

Simulor isn't the problem, it's the excessive spam that mirage can bring to the mission due to a very good interaction between hall of Mirrors and the Simulor mechanics.

Nidus needs quite a lot of hits on enemies before powering up and ofthen it's frustated by frequent killsteal by other players with higher DPS, try to keep up with anione with a tonkor and the wits to use it right: you gain 0 stacks while they clear entire rooms.

I can concede that 15 stacks is a good point for not diing, but all the other changes are unnecessary and badly tested (as in not tested at all!) by DE, in particular losing stacks to nullifier bubbles makes absolutely no sense, while the same mecanic would have been good for rhino's iron skin or Inaros scarab armor that don't require any staking and actuali use void energy to function...

[Cyndocrit]

Honestly, before the patch, I still avoided nullifiers and deal with them in ways I normally do.

[Littlerift]

3 minutes ago, Dizzle22 said:

Off topic at this point, but Nullifiers have never been a major problem to me. I don't understand the hate at all, I think they are a clever enemy unit design.

In fact, I greatly prefer them over the scrambus units, because the nullifiers have a very obvious telegraph as to where their effect is and what it will do. A scrambus, that I might not even see yet, can lock out a random power from a vague distance and is much more difficult to kill at high level on top of that.

If they get rid of nullifiers, all we are going to see are more of the scrambus, and that would be terrible.

 

I pretty much agree with this in its entirety. I think to some degree that Nullifiers would be more fun if they just debuffed your powers, or prevented casting and cancelled the effect while in the bubble (but the effect would be restored upon exit/killing the nullie), but the concept itself is solid and frankly I think necessary for Warframe, which otherwise requires almost no tactics whatsoever once you have some well-built weapons and 'frames. Nullifiers provides some much needed variety to a game that otherwise just consists of mooks that, while differently shaped, all die in exactly the same way.

[Ethandavid141]

I mean, this would be great, but what about the special abilities, or exalted ones, or whatever they fall under, like Artemis Bow for Ivara, and Wukong's staff. I feel like they should be able to deal with Nullys better, they are annoying, and I get they are supposed to be, now this may be irrelevant due to the new rework of Nullys with the weakpoint on the top, but we won't know how well this will help or work.

[kaliazane]

I was expecting some kind of nerfs and here they are. I'm surprised they didn't touch never ending energy with negative effi to be honest.

 

[Gweredith]

I've already had a nulliphobia, now I'm even more scared of being touched by them. Cooties.

[Arcanolath]

Or maybe the nerfs were justified as he was a little TOO good at what he did?

 

yeesh its the "frost is useless" nerf-threadapalooza all over again

[UncaIroh]

My primary is usually either a Braton Prime or Supra. If people are still complaining about nullies, bring more dakka. Not like there are at least 3-4 ways players can deal with nullies.

[Roachester]

Looks to me like plenty of people are happy with these changes.

Don't see what the problem here is.

[Dizzle22]

5 minutes ago, ZombieLorde91 said:

Maybe next time THINK before you post something.

Like perhaps thinking to post this in one of the many existing Nidus threads, instead of creating another?