Oberon Revisited: Prime Time Surprise and Next Steps!

[Rhaken]

After four days of nothing but playing Oberon through sorties, fissures and anything else I could find, I bring to you my thoughts on the subject. This here wall of text isn't about giving us a different Oberon, it's about taking the Oberon we have and making him better.

tl;dr: Smite can become absurdly good if each projectile does a fixed % instead. Hallowed Ground should stay a semi-circle with linear increase in radius. Renewal's range should increase to affinity range to make support Oberon more viable, and toggle energy drain can go, thus decreasing energy issues. Reckoning should pop health orbs when enemies die, regardless of whether Reckoning killed them. Codependence can become synergy if we decouple Hallowed Ground from the rest of the kit and make synergy come from rad procs, thus leading to more flexible power combos. Iron Renewal can still be caused by Hallowed Ground, or automatically passed to Renewal. If the latter occurs, the energy drain has to stay, otherwise it's an absurd armor buff for absolutely free. We must reach a compromise. Iron Renewal could use a bit of a buff. Passive is fine, not every frame should have an absolutely badass passive anyway.

 

 

Our friend Oberon is approaching a good place. Given a few tweaks and numerical adjusments, Oberon will finally have his place in the meta - even if he doesn't quite supplant any other frame. From my testing across various mission types, it feels as though an Oberon built for support shines in endless missions with static objectives. One zone of Hallowed Ground, stand on it while your mates are nearby (because it's a Defense mission, they usually cluster around the objective) to give them health regeneration and an armor buff. This is far less likely to work in Interceptions due to the clustering. A CC Oberon shines in many of the places CC frames shine, but is less valuable in general in those circumstances because the CC is limited (rad procs and knockdowns).

Prepare yourselves, there will be many comparisons to other powers as we go. The point of this is to illustrate not only the nature of a meta (everything in the meta must measure up to everything else, nothing is in a vacuum except our loot) but Oberon's own nature as a Jack of All Trades (and possibly Pretty Damn Good at Some by the end of this).

There are two main issues with the rework: energy consumption and wonkyness. We'll be addressing each as it comes up.

 

Smite: Now that it does base damage like before, Smite's primary function remains unchanged: knockdown and irradiate a single target. Where the scaling comes into its own is against bosses/minibosses. Spamming Smite against a level 120 Juggernaut or level 100 Tyl Regor is rather effective, though getting the job done still takes many casts while firing your weapons. The only thing about it that's wonky is the inverse scaling with power strength. 

One thing that came to mind would be to switch things around. Picture this: instead of all orbs doing 35% of the target's health in total, each orb does 5% instead. The number of orbs would still scale with power strength. Now, at base values, this is a nerf to what we currently have. As power strength rises, however, Smite becomes stronger and stronger both against many targets and against one target.

Before, at 200% power strength, you'd get 12 Smite orbs. Each orb would deal 0.35/12 = 2.917% of the original target's health in damage. If the original target is alone, the damage is exactly the same. If the target is surrounded by allies, each gets a scratch. With the adjustment proposed above, at 200% power strength, each of the 12 orbs would deal 5%. That's 0.05 * 12 = 60% of the target's health. Each surrounding enemy takes more damage than before, and a lone target gets absolutely deleted.

If we lower the fixed percentage from 5% to 3%, Smite can still be quite effective (36% of total enemy health at 200% power strength) without becoming a nuke at max power strength. It's really a matter of how much we want to push Smite as a damage tool as opposed to a quick whack upside the noggin.

 

Hallowed Ground: This is the power that made Oberon everyone's best friend during Defense/Mobile Defense sorties with any kind of status proc. And yet, you'd never actually see an Oberon in your squad during these. With the rework, Hallowed Ground received a number of changes, and we're starting with the easy one.

At base range, Hallowed Ground covers more area than before the rework. It scales strangely with range, however. because the angle increases quickly while radius barely moves. One way around this would be to leave the angle at 180 degrees, keeping the shape as a semicircle. This presents an immediate advantage over what we had pre-rework: Oberon can cover a choke point in sweet, sweet radiation without having to run to one side of the door and aim at the other before casting. Just stand in front of the door and cast. This would also allow the radius to scale more linearly with power range. At 250%, you would have a 37.5m semicircle in front of you, which is still half the area covered by an equivalent circle (such as Reckoning). If the rework's synergies are to be maintained (which I believe is a mistake, as I will soon explain), pulling the area of effect back a few inches so that it's already under Oberon at casting time would be a nice improvement as well.

Now, I've seen one particular video floating around of an Oberon build that works off of Hallowed Eruption and high duration. You plop down a carpet, wait for enemies to stand on it, then detonate. According to the video, this melts enemies up to level 80 but still has energy issues, which were mitigated by Red Veil weapons and their innate proc. This isn't quite acceptable. It's one thing for a loadout to rely on any of a broad spectrum of weapons to bolster the frame's kit (like Saryn and any toxin/gas weapon), it's another to rely on an absurdly specific tool to get the job done.

Lastly for Hallowed Ground: visuals could be a bit better. The ground doesn't feel very hallowed when I cover it in goop.

 

Renewal: I can understand the reasoning behind the range nerf. Renewal is a true heal-over-time now that rewards your teammates for sticking together, even if just for a little while. Thanks to Phoenix Renewal, not only are your allies harder to kill, they can be made nigh-impossible to kill. Now for numbers!

The base range on Renewal is frankly insufficient. Though it's unfair to compare Renewal to Blessing (one is a third ability and a heal over time, the other is an instant heal with damage reduction and is an ultimate), there are a few basis for comparison: namely the range. Standing within affinity range is an instant reward due to affinity gain, and it gives Trinity an instant visual queue that helps with timing Blessing. Now, Renewal can fall off for a number of reasons, and reapplying it can be a pain. Unless we use the exact same visual queue, but in a different way. If Renewal's base range is increased 50m, Oberon can quickly figure out when to hit 3 and fairly safely reapply his regen buff. If range increases from there, then at maximum range we'll be approaching something that feels like the infinite range on old Renewal. This is a good thing.

Now the actual healing value. I'm going to bring up an interesting basis for comparison: Saryn's Regenerative Molt. I know the duration on that is fixed and it applies in ticks, but please hear me out. At base values for everything, Regenerative Molt gives Saryn 500 health over 10 seconds for 50 energy. With some simple math, that amounts to 5 energy per second to regain 500 health. Now for Renewal: 2 energy drained while active, plus 3 per active healing target, at 40 health per second. Over 10 seconds of constant healing, Renewal is giving Oberon 400 health at a cost of 5 energy per second. Now, Renewal can heal your entire squad and give them an armor buff as well, so why is Regenerative Molt actually better? One tiny reason. Regenerative Molt doesn't stop energy gain. Saryn presses 2 to take the heat off of her for a moment, heal up, and by the time the heal has expired she can have regained 40 energy due to Zenurik alone. Meanwhile, Oberon is losing energy and has to pray for an orb or take damage while running with Rage.

Furthermore, Saryn can use her Regenerative Molt and keep right on casting. Oberon pops Renewal, and doesn't touch his powers for the rest of the day because he just doesn't have the energy for them. Some Oberon builds can deal with this (high efficiency CC), others can't, ever (power strength support/tank, or as I like to call it, The Iron Goat). We can make both builds deal with the problem just as easily with one tweak: make Renewal drain energy only when healing, thus making it similar to Desecrate (which, technically, is also a source of constant healing for everyone, and is technically free for most Nekros players due to Despoil). With this, Oberon can use Renewal in conjunction with his other powers, leading to more satisfying gameplay in general (if we fix his power-hunger, as proposed below). The actual drain from healing becomes acceptable, purely because you're no longer paying for it all day.

One thing that bothers me immensely: Iron Renewal requires teammates to be standing on Hallowed Ground, and actually applies before the Renewal wave hits the ally. We'll get into the particulars of this by the end of the post. There are also some absolutely absurd interactions, possibly due to oversight, and they've probably got a fix in the pipeline anway: draining energy to heal Nyx Mind Control targets and Nekros Shadows (holy Space Mom, the shadows).

 

Reckoning: SLAM DUNK. This is the power that made me fall in love with Oberon in the first place. The animation, the spheres of light, the motes of light that disperse slowly after the enemy is slammed. I'm very excited now. Tiny visual tidbit: I'd like to see those spheres get swapped out for columns for added visual glory, if at all possible. (C'mon, Geoff, don't make me beg!)

Ahem. Numbers. Yes.

Let's start with the range. Reckoning's base range is 15m, much like many other radial ultimates (World on Fire an Avalanche, to name but a few). Curiously, both of those other ultimate abilities do so much more (even if they feel a hell of a lot less RIGHTEOUS). Avalanche is hard CC, World on Fire melts many enemies, provides knockdown with the augment and follows Ember. We'll actually take the comparison further and bring up the almighty Equinox. Brozime makes a lot of good points in his now famous video, but I do believe one was overlooked. Maim, at base range, covers 18 meters. Maim, at base range, deletes absolutely everything within 18 meters. Reckoning, by comparison to both Avalanche and Maim? Subpar everywhere. The damage is meaningless (much like Avalanche), the CC is unreliable (rad proc versus total freeze), armor strip that relies on Hallowed Ground (and is still less than Avalanche), and a health orb spawning condition that never actually does anything at even sortie 1 level because Reckoning doesn't kill.

It can be argued that Reckoning has two other things going for it: bonus damage to irradiated targets, and a radial blind. Counter-argument: the bonus damage isn't as significant as we'd like it to be (but it's still excellent to have, make no mistake), and the radial blind is unreliable. It needs like of sight and only applies to enemies outside of Reckoning's slam dunk range. In general, Oberon is paying more for less. How do we make him pay the same for roughly the same? One way that has been brought up many times recently is to have Reckoning "prime" enemies so they have a chance to drop a health orb when they die, regardless of what killed them. This opens up a new avenue of gameplay for Oberon in Health Conversion, to create the true Iron Goat. Buffing range would also be quite helpful. At 20m base range, it can go up to 50m of slam dunk. At 18 meters we're at a nice midpoint of 45m.

 

Now for the real can of worms: the synergies. Tying Renewal and Reckoning to Hallowed Ground causes a degree of codependence that makes Oberon suffer. Oberon has to take the time to cast Hallowed Ground to get anything done most of the time, which amounts to more energy being burned up on a frame with a small energy pool. If you want the sweet, sweet armor buff from Renewal to mean anything, you have to beg your teammates to stand in the goop or get lucky with positioning (more on this later). Giving Reckoning armor strip but only against enemies on Hallowed Ground would be neat, if it actually meant much of anything. We rarely have control over what stands on Hallowed Ground. The range on Hallowed Ground is completely different from the range on Reckoning (far inferior, in fact). And the percentage of armor strip is rather unsatisfying (more on this later as well). As many have said before me, this isn't synergy (a cool bonus for using more tools), it's codependence (requiring more of specific tools to get the job done). An example of synergy is Reckoning's damage bonus to irradiated targets. That's synergy because it doesn't care where the procs came from, could have been another Reckoning for all we know. Sadly, as mentioned above, the damage is pretty meaningless. Another example of synergy? Reckoning applies to all enemies standing on a Hallowed Ground, regardless of where they are.

Why do I like that last one? First of all, it's a new, unique tool limited to Oberon. It allows him to zone-control like absolutely none other. Why am I confident that it will never happen? Because it smells overpowered from a mile away. You plop down three Hallowed Grounds, run to an innacessible corner and press 4 to CC everything on the map. Taking high duration, efficiency and range would turn Oberon into a CC machine. Should this happen? Maybe. But I don't think it should. Now for reasonable suggestions.

 

Regarding Renewal: This power's ties to Hallowed Ground can be severed. Iron Renewal would be passed as a straight buff to Renewal. This leaves us at odds with something previously mentioned: the constant drain has got to go. If the armor buff comes with the regen buff and the drain is removed, you're giving everyone a solid amount of armor for free. This is a bad thing. We can compromise between one or the other, or meet in the middle. One way to do that: Oberon has to stand on Hallowed Ground while casting Renewal to apply Iron Renewal. And only Oberon. Iron Renewal would touch everyone within Renewal's range. This way, the ability gets streamlined, Oberon is still paying the cost of the armor buff, and the constant drain on Renewal can go away, thus allowing Oberon to use his powers more often, thus improving his gameplay. This even opens up a new avenue for a support build: Buffberon. Phoenix Renewal, Smite Infusion. Oberon gives his allies both damage and survivability, all with different powers, all of which are a lot less burdensome to cast because you're not losing 2 energy per second all the time and your energy gains aren't blocked. It's win/win for everyone!

 

Regarding Reckoning: Reckoning already does less than may other radial ultimates, and getting the full package requires paying the cost of a Hallowed Ground. If we decouple these two powers, we can open up the way for actual synergy. Synergy for the entire squad, in fact. It's devilishly simple: Reckoning removes armor from enemies already suffering from a radiation proc. It doesn't matter where the procs come from. Could be Smite, could be Hallowed Ground (this way, it actually would synergize with Hallowed Ground instead of depending on it), could be a previous Reckoning. Could be that Staticor your squadmate is holding. Could be that status weapon you've buffed with Smite Infusion. With this change, Reckoning rewards Oberon for being Oberon. The armor strip can be increased and put on a timer, or it can stay as is. In my own opinion, it should be increased and put on a timer. Finally, as mentioned above, a buff to base range would do wonders.

 

I hope this wall of text has been enlightening. I, like many others, simply want to see Oberon become truly awesome, and with the recent rework he is well and truly on his way. I have provided plenty of suggestions, all of which can be accomplished without majorly changing the function of his kit, and all of which (I believe) make him better.

Cheers to everyone at DE!

[Sebith]

20 hours ago, Rhaken said:

Reckoning: SLAM DUNK. This is the power that made me fall in love with Oberon in the first place. The animation, the spheres of light, the motes of light that disperse slowly after the enemy is slammed. I'm very excited now.

That moment when i watch Oberon's profile video and saw Reckoning for the first time... For like a year he was shown as my favorite warframe in the stats... I think DE didn't expected how strong are emotions and love behind that (quoting Sheldon) "The Forest One" warframe.

Anyway, the synergy should be with radiation status rather than Hallowed Ground itself. Right now we are forced to use Hallowed Grounds all the time to make something work. It's too restrictive and tedious with time.

 

 

Edited May 3, 2017 by Sebith

[Shining_Darkness]

So I guess they'll leave him in his worthless state for 3 more years, untill we get yet another "rework", which would fail again because game has evolved past oberons abilities kit viability long ago...

Edited May 5, 2017 by Shining_Darkness

[Minaeus]

Hello Megan,

Let me start off by saying that I appreciate the developers trying to fix Oberon. When I started to play Warframe I knew I wanted something special. I wanted to play a warframe that could support the team and deal some damage. I saw Oberon, and read his description, and felt that this was the warframe for me. I loved playing him until I started to play higher level content. I was getting crushed, and was of little help to my team. I began to see that my favorite frame had some SERIOUS problems.

Issues that need to be addressed:

1) Range of Reckoning and Hallowed Ground: Please make them match. I don't see why you would want to make those two abilities that are supposed to synergize, different in size. If you do so, please don't make them shorter range. They both need a range boost.

2) Hallowed ground: Please consider making it into a 360 circle. I don't get the arc.

3) Reckoning needs a serious rework, PLEASE. Damage is lacking and the CC from radiation is intermittent at best. Also, consider increasing the armor stripping.

4) Please increase the base damage and scaling if it supposed to a nuke. I would prefer a single target strong nuke over a multiple target tickle fight. If it is a CC ability and not a nuke, please make it into a good CC IE: a root, snare, stun with a few seconds duration, anything would do at this point.

Overall, I am asking for the developers to make it so that a warframe I loved to play is actually playable in high level content. Currently he isn't.

 

[-FrutyX-]

On 5. 5. 2017 at 1:49 PM, Shining_Darkness said:

So I guess they'll leave him in his worthless state for 3 more years, untill we get yet another "rework", which would fail again because game has evolved past oberons abilities kit viability long ago...

:D :D

Man,my words,i am not even writing mine opinion,just letting another frame dead in my inventory (:

[Doomsknightmare]

I appreciate DE's rework for Oberon coz they didn't make him a complete different frame but indeed make him more viable in high level, yet there're still

Two issues about Oberon right now:

 

1.The combo of Hallowed Ground + Renewal/Reckoning rocks but sucks as well :

Armor buff for the whole team & scaling armor debuff for enemies sounds great but it's kinda lackluster in practical usage because of the limited range of HG; to make the combo works, it needs your teammates(including you, for armor buff) and enemies to stand EXACTLY on HG which means even if the object is only slightly above or below the platform covered by HG(Let's say u just stand on a cache on the platform) the combo hardly works. Remember, Warframe is not a 2D platform game so you dont expect you, your teammates and enemies to stand on the exact same place. As a result, your teammates are running and bullet jumping around and enemies are coming from everywhere, so u need to text your teammates everytime "come here, stand exactly on the platform I'm standing so I can give u a buff" but you can't tell enemies to stand where you are, right ? 

 

Solution:

Either make the range of HG much larger(maybe a full circle with larger radius) or change how the combo works(it only requires Oberon himself rather than teammates/enemies standing on HG)

 

2.Health orb drop from enemies killed by Reckoning won't do him anything at all :

In low level, Reckoning can sure one shot every enemy so they drop health orbs(with a 50% chance unaffected by mod), but how on earth does Oberon need a health orb in low level? Especially with his recent buff, "Armor Renewal", I'm sure Oberon won't need a single health orb at all in low level(actually nobody needs a health orb in low level)

In high level, Reckoning just can not make a kill, even with it's recent damage buff(50% more damage on enemies affected by radiation proc). Reckoning's damage = 50% impact dmg + 50% radiation dmg so it works best against Corpus, however, an Oberon with high power strength still needs to cast Reckoing multiple times to make a kill in Sortie 1 Corpus missions, not to mention that Reckoning barely deals any damage on high level Grineer/Infested(sure your can use the combo with HG to reduce enemies armor but since your cant completely remove their armor... and the base damage of Reckoning is too low to wipe out their health)

 

Solution:

A. Add damage scaling to Reckoning, make it similar to reworked Smite(damge of which is also 50% impact + 50% radiation)

Reckoning now does base damge + 45% max health+shield of the victim(this 45% won't be increased by base dmg buff on radiated enemies) which makes sure most enemies(especially Corpus and Infested) got hit twice by Reckoning will be DEAD.

 

B.Health orb drops from enemies got hit (rather than killed) by Reckoning, but each enemy can only drop one health orb no matter how many times they got hit by Reckoning.

 

Thanks for reading !

[KnightCole]

On 4/24/2017 at 7:32 PM, JesterTheNight said:

Good, now we just need Hallowed Ground to follow you and Renewal to go back to visible orbs instad of a wave.

I like the Healing as it is, being a HoT thing that follows us around.  I just wish the armor aura was a group wide thing instead of having to ensure im near each member in the group, then uncast 3, recast 2, then recast 3 to make sure the armor buff will be on them, when I hit 3...it just feels clunky as hell to use with the whole 'order" it has to be cast in.

I wish Magic Carpet was a static buff/debuff for those on the carpet, and that it was more clearly defined in it's area of coverage.  The vague splotches on the ground are a bit...all over the place.  Then I wish the #3 was a HOT/Buff that did the Armor+Regen in 1 cast/spell, that then was the energy drain with it.  The being near allies isnt that big a deal I guess once you put range mods on.  I took my stretch off to make room for my 239% pwr str and 30% streamline so my eff wasnt 7 energy per second..2-3 is bad enough, but with rage it helps....

[The_Grimmrock]

Figure Ill drop this here just in case anyone is paying any attention: 

 

 My takes

Oberon: Much better place now than he was, increasing his max energy helped his EHP by a ton, making him much more capable of feeding himself with rage in upper content, the ability to avoid being staggered by quick thinking unless you take a big hit helps avoid that "Stagger until death" making him much more capable of stacking up some energy and then double slamming reckoning to take the heat off long enough to regen your health back up.

Hallowed ground still feels off, and a large part of that is how badly its range syncs up with reckoning if you add any sort of range, making it VERY difficult to make use of the armor strip because HG simply doesnt keep up on the range.

Renewal needs some tweaks to be more team friendly, but is overall in a much better, more sustainable place with his energy increase

Reckoning still suffers from the "Power Budget Unused" Issues because health orb spawns are few and far between and usually on accident, giving him the ability to generate those health orbs more constantly at higher level content would really help him out, making him capable of consistent health conversion and equilibrium use, which fixes up some of this other issues with energy economy and durability. making that one change drastically improves Oberons functionality in raids, kuva floods, and sorties.

Complaints:

Reckoning doesn't kill many things mid to end game so the health orb part of the skill feels like wasted power budget.

Hallowed Ground still feels super lackluster, would be nice to get a little more for this skill.

Renewal, with his now much larger energy pool feels sustainable for the most part.

Tweaks!

increase the Reckoning and HG base range to 18 and then pair the scaling, saves a lot of trouble when it comes to keeping those two skills working together for the armor strip.

Give HG something extra, like 25% DR scaling up to 50% with power strength. gives people a reason to be on it and improves Oberon's overall durability so that he can use Rage to fuel his powers with a tad more safety, or a bit longer on them mot runs. This also helps Oberon get people in place to cast Iron Renewal instead of just renewal, supporting his team.

Renewal: please make this a fixed drain, instead of scaling with people healed, I feel punished for team support.

reckoning: Please, please, please, put the health orb spawn onto an on hit, or on kills during the blind, so we have a reasonable way to spawn them by lv 80-100.

I think these are the last changes needed to get oberon into a place of his own, instead of a discount trinity/inaros/nezha/ thing.

[[DE]Megan]

Dearest Tenno,

A big thank you for continuing to play test and provide constructive feedback about Oberon. The original purpose to inform you of Oberon changes being made due to Prime Time feedback has been met, and we are now closing this thread.

If you wish to continue this topic elsewhere, please direct your comments here:  https://forums.warframe.com/forum/34-warframes-abilities/