Poor Wyrm...

[Xylia]

So ever since the Dethcube was released, I made one ASAP and I've enjoyed it. It shoots things from much further away than Wyrm did, it has a hitscan weapon (which Wyrm doesn't seem to have), and Vaporize is a ridiculously awesome tool in the toolbox (it can sometimes save you on bugged Exterminate maps!).

 

Yesterday, I decided I would also level a Shade. I bought it for Platinum because A). It was only 75 plat, B). I didn't feel like wasting a Control Module on it, C). It saved me 100,000 credits, D). It comes with 2 potatoes which is a 40 plat value alone.

 

Didn't take me long to get it high enough that I could stick a maxed Ghost mod on it and...

 

OMG.

 

Ghost is ridiculously awesome! Can't count the number of times it'd randomly pop Cloaking on me and mobs would be looking around going "huh?? where'd he go?"

 

I've seen Moas run past me and then slide to a stop and just slowly turn around confused. I've seen Corpus crewmen do the same.

 

I've seen Infested Chargers run towards me, slide to a stop and then start chasing its own tail (looks like it was chasing its tail like a dog does). That one cracked me up laughing. All the while, this was setting me up for awesome sneak attacks, or let me run a nice distance away before it wore off.

 

And then I got to thinking about Wyrm....

 

1). His weapon is not hitscan, fires a lot slower, and is a bit weaker IIRC. The only good thing is that it does not have a spin up like Dethcube's does.

 

2). Crowd Dispersion... I'm still hearing many players saying it is lack-luster. During the Drone event, I watched my friend's Wyrm ruin at least 5 drone kills when he was trying to get his 20. Wyrm didn't attack the drone directly, but the drone counted as a mob and as soon as shield lancer, or a sawman or something ran up to him, Wyrm would use Crowd Dispersion.......and poof goes the Drone. It doesn't really seem to.....do..... anything all that useful.

 

IMO, we should just get rid of Crowd Dispersion. It really doesn't do all that much (a Tenno could do the same with a jump attack with various weapons). Replace it with, I dunno...

 

1). A Group Damage Buff (a small one, maybe +10%) that the sentinel casts whenever it sees at least 3 mobs in its line of sight? Maybe it lasts like 5-6 seconds or something?

 

2). An Ammo Dispenser? Maybe there's a 10% chance per Mod Rank that when the user fires the last shot in their clip, Wyrm will spawn an ammo box (like the small ones you pick up during missions that give 20/10 ammo) of the master's weapon type? Maybe divide this by five for Bows since Bows only have 1 shot clips? Or something similar to this?

 

3). A Mini Single-Target Shield Polarize? If an Ally (not the Master; that's what Guardian is for) runs out of shields, Wyrm can zap him to restore shields, OR, if the master damages an enemy that has shields, it can steal the enemy's shields?

Edited July 12, 2013 by Xylia

[Brosagi]

Personally, I find Crowd Dispersion to be awesome. The AoE is pretty big and does a bit of damage, and the stun affects even heavy enemies.

[Xylia]

Personally, I find Crowd Dispersion to be awesome. The AoE is pretty big and does a bit of damage, and the stun affects even heavy enemies.

 

My problem with Crowd Dispersion... even if it actually did damage, and even if it does stun larger enemies.... is that you have to be in melee, or near melee and the number of times that actually happen... don't really warrant even using it in the first place.

 

You shouldn't be allowing larger enemies in melee range, doing so is not only incredibly dangerous (most if not all large enemies knock you to the ground and have deadly attacks), but also a bad strategy to begin with, especially since most of them (except ancients) move slow, you've no reason to get up in its face in the first place.

 

Packs of small mobs? Meh. Maybe for infested, but then you got so many other options, especially Warframe Powers, for those. Who needs Crowd Dispersion when you have Slash Dash, Fireblast, Rhino Charge, Shock, etc?

[Brosagi]

Since I'm pretty much just maxing out all of the melee weapons for mastery right now, it helps a lot.

[Fox-Meat]

What if I told you that Crowd Dispersion works like magic if you put it in the first precept slot in its mod config(I didn't believe it till I tried it)? And that Wyrm's ridiculous range and tendency to hit multiple targets make him an excellent slave for spreading freeze/fire panic/electrocution/thunderclap stun?

[DiabolusUrsus]

The game really needs to spread more information about the fact that the order in which you place precepts on your sentinel affect the priority it places on them.

Top Left = First Priority, Top Right = Second Priority, Bottom Right = Lowest Priority.

Throw Regen on first, Guardian on second, Vaporize/Ghost/Crowd Dispersion on third, and Swift Deth/Revenge/Warrior on lowest priority.

It's like magic. Your sentinel gets better survivability, actually buffs your shields reliably when you need it to, uses its utility function when appropriate, and still fires its weapon normally. Why? because it's less frequent that your sentinel needs to regenerate health or buff shields, but it will place higher priority on doing so when it needs to. By placing its utility precept before its weapon precept, it will actually stop firing its weapon to use its utility precept when appropriate.

That aside, Crowd Dispersion seems fine to me.

[stivoknis]

I personally like Wyrm ... for its looks.  Crowd dispersion is pretty cool.  It can hit multiple enemies cause stun and do a little damage. Wyrm is a great addition to any melee-oriented play style and helps out a lot in infested missions.  But the main reason I use Wyrm is because I want to use a sentinal that doesn't completely break the game.

 

The cloak ability for shade can render a warframe invisible indefinately.  Cloak never wears off unless the enemy moves to far away or you attack (melee or shooting a gun, but abilities do not cancel the cloak).  I haven't tried the Dethcube, but it seems really powerful.  While sentinals should not be useless, none of their abilities should make the game easy-mode.