My thoughts on where to swing the sledgehammers

[Thesiobhan]

Welp, today was an interesting day for youtube videos. There was a rant, and then A reply to said rant! I love when developers reply to criticism in an open way. One of the questions Rebecca asked was, where to swing the sledgehammers at focus, here is my answer.

 

Firstly, Zenarik feels absolutely vital in the current state of the game if you want to maintain a power heavy play style, we don't all have pocket trinities following us around. For the most part energy orbs are too infrequent to meet demand in such a play style even with very high efficiency builds. If you plan to nerf the value on zenarik's energy restoration, that is fine, however I would like to see some accounting for that in either orb drops or power costs, because simply removing it at this point would be very damaging to how I like to play. That said, it is essentially the only useful ability in that tree, perhaps you could make zenarik truly the energy mastery tree. Reduce the pure energy back, and maybe add some passives which increase the amount of energy orbs dropped by enemies, or things that increase power efficiency for either the mission or a significant amount of uptime after the ability. Maybe something along the lines of Octavia's passive, where you restore energy on power usage.

Unairu, This looked SO AWESOME when I saw it in 2nd dream. I was playing frost at the time, I was like OH MAN this will be so good, I'll be able to make my bubbles more durable, and it'll be awesome... It does nothing sadly. The armor bonus is so little it just doesn't matter, even on valkyr it's 180 armor. which Is a lot if you have no armor, but 30% more just isn't enough to matter with how armor and damage work in warframe. Armor stripping is also not useful, 5% armor reduction seems pretty nice, excepts it doesn't stack, and corrosive procs exist, hell the armor stripping on impact damage mod is more effective, since it strips base armor.

Naramon, I don't use this set, so I don't really have much of an opinion on it, however given all of the other abilities currently in the focus, being perma-invis a la bladeghost, is probably obscenely strong comparatively. I wouldn't nerf this without really overhauling the system however.

General

Let's talk about uptime, as a concept. Uptime is simply the % of time which an effect can be active. It is a method of balancing abilities. In some games, you do not get to change uptime at all, in some games you can build to adjust for different uptimes. In one of my Favorite games of all time, City of Heroes, there were several ways to improve how quickly your powers recharged, which would allow you to have significantly higher uptimes on powerful effects, at the cost of say having those effects be somewhat less impactful than one with less uptime that went for more power. Focus abilities currently last for either 5/10/15 seconds, or an entire mission. On a recharge, of a minimum of 120 seconds which goes up to 600 seconds. 15/600 is 2.5% uptime. To only have 2.5% uptime, that ability should turn you into a GOD. I can't think of a single focus ability that has so much impact that it would warrant a 2.5% uptime, Firstly, I would cap the focus ability recharge at 2 minutes, and allow us to get that down with the mastery node to say 90 seconds. 15/120 is over 10% uptime, that's a lot more significant, but still relatively low. and 15/90 is 37.5% now we're getting somewhere. 30-50% uptime feels like a good place for buffs to be at if they're useful but not obscene.

 

Abilities should feel powerful, and they should also feel worth using. Like a certain ranting streamer said, 100,000 damage over 10 seconds is not worthwhile given how damage in the game currently works. I can unload that much damage in a single arrow from a rakta cernos, or a shot from a dex sybaris, let alone a tigris prime. Given that damage is not really needed, I would recommend that perhaps each different focus school be given a theme, and perhaps a power attribute that it could focus on, and they could be interesting supplemental abilities. Does a giant room clearing wave feel powerful and impactful? Absolutely, very few warframes can clear a room with the push of a button. Being able to do so every 90-120 seconds is something I would want to be able to use. As it currently stands, I use my focus ability at most once per mission, to get energy to use my powers that actually do something. You may say, but clearing a room every 90 seconds, that sounds too op. And maybe it is, maybe that's insane, however the longer the cooldown, the less likely to use the ability I am, even if it isn't even all that useful. The longer the cooldown is, the more important it feels, and the more likely you are to "Save it for when the S#&$ really hits the fan" even if that point never comes. To that point, shorter cooldowns are preferable because they don't encourage hoarding of abilities.

 

Ideally however I would like to see most focus abilities not contribute direct damage, I would prefer they do interesting utility benefits, buffs to group power range, reload speed, power efficiency, health drops, loot drops, energy drops, power strength. Give each focus school an identity. Unairu is the Defense tree, maybe one passive gives all of your allies 100 more base armor, for a minute. Maybe one gives passive health regen for the mission. How about a buff to melee weapon attack speed, or ranged weapon base status chance, since it currently strips armor, maybe it could add 120% corrosive damage to team weapons for 30 seconds?

Zenurik is the Energy school, instead of simply passive energy for the rest of the mission, how about a large boost to efficiency, with over 50% uptime? or an energy restoration after ability use like octavia. Killing enemies with powers has a 50% chance to spawn an energy orb? Using a power on a team mate, causes that team mate to gain 50% of the unmodded energy cost of the ability you used?

 

Also things that buff weapon stats for short durations, like fire rate, reload speed, crit rate, multi shot, crit damage, various elemental types (one for each school) would all be cool.

 

Anyways I'm talking in circles now, but these are some ideas for where I think DE should swing their sledgehammer.

[1tsyB1tsyN1nj4]

You forgot Madurai... The sad forgotten child ;^; You would think firing a giant laser would be cool, but apparently in this game you'd be wrong to think that.

[(PSN)vamp6x6x6x]

I feel like Naramon would get "nerfed" before Zenurik would.

With that said, I would enjoy a change into like ultimate mode or something...I mean, I play Zenurik and honestly I only pop out for energy gain or invincible mode while I get shields back. I would try something like activating all the Zenurik nodes at once to make my operator into ultimate mode as it were, but the charge time would be too longer then any normal mission lol...

 

Maybe make it so nodes make our operator stronger in operator mode and pressing 5 makes our operator transform slightly each time based on our alignment? 

 

I don't know...I'm just spit balling ideas...

[MudShadow]

If they nerf Naramon then everyone would just use Zenurik (and vise versa).

If they nerf both Naramon and Zenurik then nobody cares about focus anymore.

IMO the entire system needs an overhaul.

If I was designing the focus system then...

1. There would be no time restriction on when the focus schools would activite. This is a poorly designed mechanic which leads players into..

    A: playing passively/loitering at the start of the mission waiting for their focus buff to come into play.

    B: Not investing all of their focus into a focus school because taking too many abilities increases the timer.

Solution, just make the passive buffs start at the beginning of the mission.

 

2. Obviously if there's no timer then every player would just max everything in a school and there would be no customization. And it would just be a matter of taking every node available.

The Solution to this is to just limit how many nodes a player can take in any given school.

                      A.Change the look of the focus system to accommodate. Give the focus schools "skill" trees instead (IE just copy DIablo2/world of warcraft).

                      B:And at level 30 a player should be able to max one entire tree and maybe dump some points into the  other/s trees.

                      C: Give each tree in a focus school a theme. Ie if there's two trees in Naramon, then one tree could concentrate on increasing the invisibility duration, the other tree could focus on increasing the damage whilst invisible. This would give players a choice, increased invisibility or more damage. GIve the Naramon passive a cooldown instead of just letting players to be perma invisible by stacking crits. Maybe five seconds at default, and then by concentrating on the duration side of the focus tree a player can reduce that cooldown to 1-2 seconds.

 

 

3.Make the active abilities such as "Void" Pulse, "mending Tides" and "Mind Spike" Work with the operator in-game instead of being on a timer 2 minute+ timer. At the moment players only use the operator in the game to catch Kuva. If you give operators the ability to use their focus schools, this would give a real reason to use the operator. Obviously it would be overpowered being able to mind spike or void pulse at any given moment. So just give the abilities a cooldown. For example if a player takes Zenurik then Void Blast and Void Dash  will cause the effects of void pulse every 30 seconds. Some abilities such as Phoenix gaze could give a passive perma buff to abilities such as Void beam with a flat increase in dmg.

 

[SonicSonedit]

Link to critisism/reply?

[Jackviator]

8 hours ago, SonicSonedit said:

Link to critisism/reply?

^^^The initial criticism

^^^Rebecca's reply to the video

^^^Brozime's follow-up video after seeing Rebecca's reply

[(PSN)krumlin]

I think the arguments against the focus system are flawed. People say that a lot of the abilities are trash, when they are definitely NOT trash. Further more, they are intended to be passives, and in that sense they seem perfectly fine.

When people write these huge rants against stuff, DE thinks they need to go nerfing things to appease their most critical players. The problem is, very few people are going to take the time to write rants explaining why they like things.

Take Zenurik for example. Gaining energy through Zenurik is great. The other passives are good, but not amazing. So you have the option to either move on and build up Naramon, OR focus entirely on Zenurik to get it even stronger (which takes forever, but that's okay because you already built up the best skill). This is a good thing, because if every passive in Zenurik was amazing, people would NEED to level the whole thing overnight. Focus is intended to be something that you passively add XP to, for small perks. If you could just build the whole thing up immediately, you would be frustrated that 1. you have no further use for your lenses 2. focus schools would be no different than just adding more mod slots, as opposed to adding more passives.

That's why it would suck if they nerf the best focus abilities and/or make the other skills stronger.

To adress a few of your points:

"100,000 damage over 10 seconds is not worthwhile" -Yes it is. This void energy spreads in all directions, even behind you. You can shoot at one target while passively shooting all the other targets around you. I'm not sure Brozime even TRIED this skill, before deciding that it's trash.

"focus should buff weapon stats." -Naramon already buffs crit chance though.

"instead of simply passive energy for the rest of the mission, how about a large boost to efficiency" -Zenurik already has a 15% passive boost to efficiency. I  think a 50% efficiency passive is excessive.

[Thesiobhan]

56 minutes ago, (PS4)krumlin said:

I think the arguments against the focus system are flawed. People say that a lot of the abilities are trash, when they are definitely NOT trash. Further more, they are intended to be passives, and in that sense they seem perfectly fine.

When people write these huge rants against stuff, DE thinks they need to go nerfing things to appease their most critical players. The problem is, very few people are going to take the time to write rants explaining why they like things.

Take Zenurik for example. Gaining energy through Zenurik is great. The other passives are good, but not amazing. So you have the option to either move on and build up Naramon, OR focus entirely on Zenurik to get it even stronger (which takes forever, but that's okay because you already built up the best skill). This is a good thing, because if every passive in Zenurik was amazing, people would NEED to level the whole thing overnight. Focus is intended to be something that you passively add XP to, for small perks. If you could just build the whole thing up immediately, you would be frustrated that 1. you have no further use for your lenses 2. focus schools would be no different than just adding more mod slots, as opposed to adding more passives.

That's why it would suck if they nerf the best focus abilities and/or make the other skills stronger.

To adress a few of your points:

"100,000 damage over 10 seconds is not worthwhile" -Yes it is. This void energy spreads in all directions, even behind you. You can shoot at one target while passively shooting all the other targets around you. I'm not sure Brozime even TRIED this skill, before deciding that it's trash.

"focus should buff weapon stats." -Naramon already buffs crit chance though.

"instead of simply passive energy for the rest of the mission, how about a large boost to efficiency" -Zenurik already has a 15% passive boost to efficiency. I  think a 50% efficiency passive is excessive.

literally none of your points are valid I'm sorry. Once again no one is asking for them to solely nerf the op things, which are only op because the rest of the system are completely worthless. 30% armor in unairu is 100% worthless. 5% armor reduction on hit is worthless. Zenurik's 20% efficiency lasts 30 seconds. that is at worst a 5% uptime (if you actually upgrade the ability fully) and at absolute best, 30/180 or 12.5% uptime. It's 100% worthless. The idea was suggesting a LARGE efficiency boost instead of giving 4 energy a second, since that is so hugely out of line with the rest of what's in the focus tree.

Naramon buffing crit is NOT an argument for other buffs not being included in other schools.

and yes 100,000 damage over 10 seconds is 100% worthless, that's 10,000 dps. which is FAR less than most weapons, S#&$, an atterax will do 100,000 damage in a huge radial aoe PER swing.

There are basically 7 out of 55 nodes which are worth using.

[Xzorn]

Zenurik is fine. It counters the numerous cheese energy drain effects we have to deal with, esp higher levels and this is coming from someone with an Energize set. The rest of the tree isn't helpful at all though. See through walls? What game are we playing?

Naramon is dumb and OP as hell. That being said. It's impossible for many frames to melee higher levels because of enemy damage scaling. Fix that, then change it. Traumatic Redirection has found quirky value outside it's purpose and the crit is nice but the other effects simply aren't good.

Madurai IPS is good, it's actives however suck bad. It should do scaling true damage. For a nearly 9 min CD that ability should wipe the floor with X level enemies.

Vazarin is actually one of the better designs in the Focus system. It doesn't quite fit the game but most of the nodes are worth getting and synergize well.

Unaru Is pretty useless. We're talking defensive abilities and non-scaling damage in a game of eventual one-shots and 99.84% damage reduction. I dunno what was going on with this but just wipe it clean and start over. This is yet another situation where enemy damage scaling will ruin the idea of any defensive properties functioning.

[Thesiobhan]

16 hours ago, Xzorn said:

Zenurik is fine. It counters the numerous cheese energy drain effects we have to deal with, esp higher levels and this is coming from someone with an Energize set. The rest of the tree isn't helpful at all though. See through walls? What game are we playing?

Naramon is dumb and OP as hell. That being said. It's impossible for many frames to melee higher levels because of enemy damage scaling. Fix that, then change it. Traumatic Redirection has found quirky value outside it's purpose and the crit is nice but the other effects simply aren't good.

Madurai IPS is good, it's actives however suck bad. It should do scaling true damage. For a nearly 9 min CD that ability should wipe the floor with X level enemies.

Vazarin is actually one of the better designs in the Focus system. It doesn't quite fit the game but most of the nodes are worth getting and synergize well.

Unaru Is pretty useless. We're talking defensive abilities and non-scaling damage in a game of eventual one-shots and 99.84% damage reduction. I dunno what was going on with this but just wipe it clean and start over. This is yet another situation where enemy damage scaling will ruin the idea of any defensive properties functioning.

I would say that Zenurik is Not fine, but it's acceptable because of some of the terrible systems in place. 4 energy a second is ridiculously powerful compared to any other effect in the game short of EV trin. The fact is, you shouldn't need zen to sustain a power heavy playstyle, but because of how the game works. I never said fixing focus would be easy, there are a lot of interconnected systems that would have to be adjusted. I honestly think energy drain should pretty much be removed from the game, it's up there with invincibility periods with horribly designed mechanics. "Stop that fun thing you were doing for X amount of time" is not fun or compelling gameplay. ESPECIALLY in things like eximus strongholds where there can be so many energy leech eximi that you cannot avoid them or kill them before you get drained.

[Xzorn]

8 hours ago, Thesiobhan said:

I would say that Zenurik is Not fine, but it's acceptable because of some of the terrible systems in place.

 

Basically this.

Energy management went out the window a long time ago. It started with Fleeting Expertise and ended with scaling Ancient Disruptor's able to one-shot 800 energy with their hooks. At this point Zenurik doesn't make much of a difference. It really only serves to counter all the cheesey mechanics this game has adopted over the years. I find Arcane Energize far more powerful than the energy Zenurik gives me and unlike Trinity I can put that on every frame. It's what allows me to still run a perma Hysteria Valkyr.

I was mostly just giving a bridged direct experience with the different schools. Unlike youtubers who read about them and come to a conclusion. I actually own most of the nodes in every single school and have used each of them. Polluted Waters in Vazarin for instance synergizes with Guardian Presence and other nodes. It's 25% chance to Viral/Magnetic proc lasts for 9 seconds and the Ward which grants Immortality lasts 10 seconds. Hence you have a 25% chance to have 0 energy but have full HP and Overshields regardless for the remaining 20 seconds. Of course you have 3 insta revives after that. So it's mostly good when multiple team mates are down or you're out of charges.

Again, I actually have a fully upgraded Madurai Phoenix Gaze and have tested it. While it does little damage to armored enemies (~50% of a lvl 80 Heavies total HP). One could argue it's not "useless" because it also 100% chain stunlocks every single enemy in the area. I wouldn't use it for that obv but that's something which is overlooked by someone who doesn't actually have the ability to review.

Spoiler

 

It's true a lot of Focus nodes are comically bad but the only node not worth getting in Vazarin is Commanding Words. Even then however. Vazarin as a school doesn't really fit the game. Defensive things in general don't fit because of enemy scaling damage.  It's safe to assume that if I didn't mention a node, it's not worth getting. Which is many of them.