Oberon Feedback 20.3.1 and beyond

[n_0x]

14 minutes ago, Chipputer said:

You didn't want anything but a new meta frame. The people who actually main Oberon are perfectly fine with this rework because it's Oberon 2: Better Oberon and it didn't completely ruin him.

All of you armchair developers and Noberons who are suddenly coming out of the woodwork are really driving me up the wall.

Or maybe I do main Oberon. And maybe perhaps as much as I love him, as much as I try until I am weak to make him not the 4th act in a 3 act show I can be mature and admit "Oberon maybe my favorite frame but his kit really needs a redo because the guy is stuck in state of constant flux on what he wants to be". I wanted nothing but a new meta frame? Oh lotus forbid I want Oberon to be the forest king that I know he is and can be played in squad without being compared to someone like Trinity or Equinox or (funnily) Titania or (and this is one that stung a little) Hydroid. Hydroid, the guy that offers less than Oberon and they'd rather pick him.

And where do you come off saying " the people who actually main Oberon"? How do you know I don't main Oberon? Because it's funny you sound like you don't main Oberon. Hell even play Oberon beside getting the free mastery on him and then sell him because he's taking up space. Seriously Oberon mains have been *@##$ing for his rework for ages because real Oberon mains know : as ok as his kit is and as ok as we can make him, he needed a lot of love.

So yeah I did want a new meta frame, because we Oberon mains are owed an Oberon meta.

[Zeclem]

2 minutes ago, cookieknife said:

Smite. i like it, could have synergy (like radiation cloud hazards) but eh

Hallowed Ground. give it an actual use of it's own besides radiation (which other powers he has can do) and status immunity. like an armor strip per second or a buff to allies

Renewal. award us for healing allies, I've gotten an energy drain up to 7x the base drain. with no reward. give us more armor or health or something.

Reckoning. armor reducer is decent? my opinion atleast. other than that, good cc , god awful damage, and the orb spawn is forgettable make it something that can actually kill.

smite does have synergy.

hallowed ground does have its uses of providing synergy, aoe cc AND status cleanse which is really underrated in this game.

award for healing allies is having a teammate that isnt dead. and you get armor for it.

so an ult thats good cc, has support potential and you want it to kill at the same time? noty.

[RottedApples]

1 hour ago, Heliopata said:

Dont worry, its actually a UI bug  on the extra drain while healing. It is correctly aplying efficiency. 

*We are aware of a UI bug where the Arsenal stats for Renewal show that Energy per target is not affected by Efficiency/Duration Mods. A fix will come at a later date- we wanted to get this out ASAP! 

ahh thanks for that. I admit i was mostly responding on arsenal stats before but i did try a survival game and the energy drain wasn't that bad, with the energy orb drops i was able to keep the spell up most of the time I need to see about min maxing it a bit more though and i want to create another config that's focused more on being a support tank.

 

Also i do know about the whole negative duration @(*()$ up the energy drain. Before the rework my duration was bad because it didn't matter, i focused on pressing 4 and used renewal for the burst heals rather than keeping it turned on. After the rework i swapped out my streamline mod for primed cont and it's much better. streamlined was low rank because i ran fleeting and didn't want to waste mod capacity over capping on cdr. formad him again to fit primed cont in place of the low rank streamline. i take a tiny hit on the efficiency but now i have 63% duration which is enough to lower the energy drain by a decent margin on his renewal and gives me plenty of time to start up an iron renewal.

[(PSN)Oreic-Reynier]

45 minutes ago, NeonNemesis said:

It ruined his savior of teammates role to the point that the bleedout extension could be removed. There's no reason for a bleedout extension when the target needs to be close to you, in the time you cast it you might as well go there and revive him.

But onto the smite what people wanted was a nuke on his 1 that you could last several times that bombardier and everything around him dies, sorry guys not gonna happen Limbo the nuke frame 2.0 isn't here. Quite frankly Oberon would benefit far more from making the secondary orbs taunt enemies into attacking smite's the main target.

That taunt sounds amazing. DE, do et!

[KX297]

Honestly, I feel like he is so close to being where he needs to be.

Now, with the latest fixes, I have three issues.

1) Hallowed Ground STILL feels odd in this game. I still think it should be a duration based (now that Renewal is channeling based) aura that is centered on Oberon and moves with him. No strings attached. Just that. Wouldn't make it overpowered in ANY way, but would make it feel way better in a game with this much dam movement.

2) Now that Renewal is channeling based and with the way the rest of his kit works together, he is a MASSIVE energy hog. If you have Renewal on your teammates and they start taking damage, it becomes very hard to keep it up while casting your other abilities without maxed effeciency. He needs some way to get energy back, or he needs to have the cost of the drain for Renewal being on allies cut down a little. Having it on each player in a survival can lead to some pretty hefty draining, and really cut down on his ability to cast his powers.

3) Base stats STILL haven't been changed. He really should have either more health or armor and FOR SURE more energy with the way he works now.

These are just my opinions on what I'd like to see. Add something along these lines, and I feel like he would be in a great spot. What do you guys think?

(My six forma Oberon would appreciate just a few more changes to feel finished and complete!)

 

P.S

What do you guys thin of the new Hallowed Ground? Personally, I REALLY don't like it. It's still hard to tell where it begins and ends on some poorly lit maps. Maybe it's just me? I think I like the old one more lol.

Edited April 28, 2017 by KX297

[Hrodgrim]

You've listed pretty much everything I listed in the patch notes thread.

The reason I don't like Hallowed Ground is because it doesn't really do its own thing. It doesn't amount to much unless you use other powers on top of it, which just means you're needlessly chugging energy down.

[OxideNation]

I LOVE THE RENEWAL! it's so amazing if built right!

[RBL3D]

This rework/revision is like a cheap synergy demanding buff.

1. More damage

2. More control / dmg reduction

3. Instant heal at least for oberon

4. Stacking dmg every time you cast it on same enemy.

[Soup2504]

I really, really don't like the idea of hallowed ground just being an aura that follows oberon. This would make it harder for teammates to benefit from it, as they'd have to follow oberon around. I like placing stationary carpets and "holding the fort" I guess you could say. The aura would certainly be nice for an oberon that wants to run around a bunch, but again, that would make it harder for teammates to benefit from it if oberon is just flying around the place and moving as erratically as possible

That being said, looking at what they did to volt's electric shield ability, I think it's possible to get the best of both worlds with hallowed ground. You could place stationary carpets, and pick one of them up and have it follow you around (with a smaller range probably). That way you can lay some out for your teammates at a defense point, and still be allowed to run off and do your own thing with the buffs on you.

Edited April 28, 2017 by Soup2504

[-Onyx-Phalian]

3 minutes ago, OxideNation said:

I LOVE THE RENEWAL! it's so amazing if built right!

We're not really critisizing Remewal. It's probably the best of his abilities now. What we don't like is the lowered damage of Smite with so little scaling that it's a joke, the lack of visibility for Hallowed Ground, and the backwards thought process for why DE thought Reckoning + Hallowed Ground should shred current armor and not total armor. 

[Hrodgrim]

Don't be an apologist, Zeclem. We're just trying to make Oberon the archetype he should have been from the beginning.

Currently the ultimate is a lesser version of Avalanche in pretty much every way. All these powers are dependent on Hallowed Ground, which does practically nothing outside of being a pre-requisite to get the full effect out of the other powers. Hallowed Ground and Renewal ought to be combined into a single ability. This would essentially turn it into a channeled HoT version of something like Iron Skin. As for an ability to fill the empty spot, how about some kind of power to take advantage of all the radiation procs? Maybe some sort of energy regen power based on the nearby radiation effects.

[-Onyx-Phalian]

26 minutes ago, Reefermun said:

You've listed pretty much everything I listed in the patch notes thread.

The reason I don't like Hallowed Ground is because it doesn't really do its own thing. It doesn't amount to much unless you use other powers on top of it, which just means you're needlessly chugging energy down.

I agree. Hallowed Ground has turned from an interesting AoE carpet of "Come at me Bro!" to something you need to cast to make your other abilities viable. 

[Hrodgrim]

I'm doing a big write-up of all of this stuff right now. If you want, I'll link it here when I'm finished. It contains most of these suggestions along with a few others.

[-Onyx-Phalian]

1 minute ago, Reefermun said:

I'm doing a big write-up of all of this stuff right now. If you want, I'll link it here when I'm finished. It contains most of these suggestions along with a few others.

Has anyone suggested giving Hallowed Ground the bonus armor back? This could be half of what Hallowed Ground + Renewal currently gives. When you use both abilities together, they would work as they are now. The bonus armor (whine not the most) is meant to be an intensive for players who are even at high health to get onto the carpet so when you do cast Renewal, the bonus would be given to everyone. Either that or just Oberon has to be on Hallowed Ground for Renewal's armor buff to be given out. 

[Hrodgrim]

I posted most of this in the patch notes thread here: 

I'll do it a little more professionally here.

 

Oberon Rework (Revisit?)

This most recent rendition was a great step in the right direction. The toggle-ability of Renewal was the greatest thing to ever happen to Oberon. Below I have listed all of the suggestions I have found commonly throughout the forums, and a few I thought up myself. I have always been the team paladin everywhere I've gone, and that's why I'm going to be so vocal about Oberon.

 

Stats

Oberon's newly revamped powers seemingly put him closer to the paladin archetype than before. He's a lot more durable now, but the way to get there isn't very intuitive (more on that below). In order to better reflect this role, he needs to have greater armor and health, especially for higher level content. My suggestion is to give him Excalibur's armor value and Ash's health value. As for his energy problems, I have another solution listed below.

 

Powers

Smite

Smite is really fun now, but its damage is negligible still. Even if you're lucky enough for all projectiles to hit a single target, you still won't kill it unless it's below level 10-15. If you want Smite to scale with enemy difficulty, it needs to do so with a curve that is just barely below the enemy's growth curve. This would cause it to scale up with the enemies but eventually fall off somewhat. The initial hit needs this scaling, the projectiles do not. The projectiles should each do a percentage of the initial hit's damage, and their damage type should be Finisher damage. If the first hit scales on the enemy, then the projectiles will scale off of that automatically. This gives great incentive to use this power to target the biggest guy in the room since he will have the most health.

Hallowed Ground

As it currently sits, Hallowed Ground is useless outside of occasionally preventing a status effect and causing (the unreliable) Radiation proc. Hallowed Ground is only used as a pre-requisite for other powers now, else you won't get their full effects. My solution for this power extends to the next power as well. Roll them into one really good power. If Hallowed Ground were a mobile AoE centered on Oberon with the effects of Renewal it would get rid of the wonky "synergy" (dependence) between the two, and help alleviate his energy chugging tendencies. This would effectively turn this new combined power into a team-centric heal-based Iron Skin type deal, preventing status procs and knockdowns in the same manner as the aforementioned power, while also boosting everyone's armor by that excellent flat amount. In the patch notes thread, I mentioned Equinox's Maim power's graphics mechanics. This little overlay thing could work well to add that haze above the ground for a mobile Hallowed Ground. This would also help reinforce the whole druid aspect of Oberon, by giving him that misty forest feel.

Renewal

As I mentioned before, my suggestion chucks Renewal's effects (and energy cost method) into Hallowed Ground. In its place, Renewal would become the solution to Oberon's energy crisis. This new Renewal would vacuum in any still-travelling Smite projectiles and all nearby Radiation procs to restore Oberon's (and possibly even the whole team's) energy. This could also function as an AoE stagger while Oberon casts it. Perhaps enemies affected by this new power could take increased radiation damage?

Reckoning

Oh boy. Reckoning. This power seems decent at a glance, but it is effectively a lesser version of Frost's Avalanche (which has access to Icy Avalanche, I might add). It deals arguably less damage than Avalanche, and is only at its full potential when being propped up by the mostly defunct Hallowed Ground. The changes I suggest to this power are simple. Just give it the armor shredding capability without the need of Hallowed Ground, and increase the percentile it shreds armor by. It also needs a range boost, and some small boosts to its crowd control side effects, otherwise it's mostly fine. One very, very important thing is to cause the health orbs to drop on hit instead of on kill. The damage is too low to warrant the health orbs dropping on kill, because you'd never kill anything with this power. You can certainly hit a lot of things with it though. 

 

Passive

The new passive isn't really that grand, but it's a nice little touch. I wouldn't say it quite fits Oberon's perceived theme (is he a paladin or a druid?) but I guess it's nice. I would take this opportunity to expand on the use of Radiation procs, perhaps causing Radiation affected enemies to buff Oberon somehow. For instance, being attacked by a radiated enemy would juice up Oberon's defense even further.

 

TL;DR

Boost Oberon's armor and health stats.

Juice up Smite's initial hit's scaling, and cause the extra projectiles to deal a decent portion of that damage as Finisher damage.

Combine Hallowed Ground and Renewal into a single power, essentially adding Hallowed Ground's effects to Renewal. 

Change Renewal into the aforementioned energy recovery/stun power. Suck in radiation procs and Smite orbs to regain energy.

Boost Reckoning all around, and get rid of the dependence on Hallowed Ground. Health orbs ON HIT.

Change the passive to some kind of boost based on nearby radiation procs.

 

 

I guess that's about all. I really want Oberon to be done perfectly, especially since he's one of my favorite frames. I won't let this die until he gets the treatment he deserves after such long neglect.

Edited April 28, 2017 by Reefermun

[Voltage]

I might be alone on this, but I think DE should honestly keep the same theme but completely make new abilities for all or most of the abilities. Unless they completely make new stuff the abilities would need heavy QoL additions and lots of buffs.

[Hrodgrim]

Merged double post :^)

Edited April 28, 2017 by Reefermun

[KX297]

40 minutes ago, Soup2504 said:

I really, really don't like the idea of hallowed ground just being an aura that follows oberon. This would make it harder for teammates to benefit from it, as they'd have to follow oberon around. I like placing stationary carpets and "holding the fort" I guess you could say. The aura would certainly be nice for an oberon that wants to run around a bunch, but again, that would make it harder for teammates to benefit from it if oberon is just flying around the place and moving as erratically as possible

That being said, looking at what they did to volt's electric shield ability, I think it's possible to get the best of both worlds with hallowed ground. You could place stationary carpets, and pick one of them up and have it follow you around (with a smaller range probably). That way you can lay some out for your teammates at a defense point, and still be allowed to run off and do your own thing with the buffs on you.

Well, from my personal experience, the only time players currently benefit from it is on defenses when I pace it right on top of the pod. Otherwise, they don't stand on it anyways. I have to chase them down, cast it on top of them, and hope to get a renewal off before they run away again. 

As it stands, at least for me, the ability in general is just bad for supporting allies. 

They need to do something with it.

Maybe do the tap to drop a hollowed ground and hold for aura idea? That could work alright I suppose. 

Previously, I rarely used hallowed ground because of how bad it was. Now that I can get some decent effects from it, I'm using it way more. 

My issues come now that I have to cast it over and over as I move through the map. 

And players don't want to stand on it. Like, at all. 

I just hope they don't leave it as it currently is. It's still just not that great. Really a clumsy ability.

[(PSN)destroyerchris1]

43 minutes ago, Phalian said:

We're not really critisizing Remewal. It's probably the best of his abilities now. What we don't like is the lowered damage of Smite with so little scaling that it's a joke, the lack of visibility for Hallowed Ground, and the backwards thought process for why DE thought Reckoning + Hallowed Ground should shred current armor and not total armor. 

Well according to Megan smite got adjusted a bit, Hallowed ground's visual effects are being worked on by the team to be better/more visible. So that's 2 out of 3. The armor shred ain't that big of a deal for me it's 30% armor debuff at base I believe. With some decent power strength that goes up and you can strip most armor in 3-4 reckonings. Which is easy with Zenurik and power efficiency. The new renewal helps generate energy from rage very well too.

[AdunSaveMe]

Don't forget that it isn't just his abilities that need changes. He needs more base armour, and more energy, or a way to regain energy. Even Saryn has this. He's supposed to be more of a caster frame, and requires multiple ability casts, but we have to deal with a very small energy pool.

[KX297]

This could be pretty cool!
+1

Oberon is much better, but still a little awkward. I don't know if I fully agree with rolling renewal and hallowed ground into one power, but something definitely needs to be done. Casting hallowed ground over and over to receive full benefits is lame, costly in terms of energy, and just seems super clunky. Plus, as mentioned, the power is still just not very good. 

[Music4Therapy]

Alright everyone, I've read through all the top threads, watched rework videos, and read through the posts of all these and have gathered all the most well received suggestions and requests for Oberon. I'll update as more threads/popular suggestions are made.

First off, with Limbo being released overtuned I can understand why DE would be cautious with Oberon considering the backlash they received from the Limbo rework. I am of the belief DE either knew already or knows now that Oberon is undertuned and is looking for feedback from us to make further changes and in what direction these changes should be in. That is why this thread exists. That said, let's get started!

Reckoning: The most well received ability in his kit and the one I will start with.

1) The one thing Oberon players, including myself, seem to unanimously agree with is that Health Orbs should have a chance to drop from enemies hit by Reckoning when they die rather than having to land the killing blow with it.

2) A common complaint is the short range. A popular suggestion was raising the blind radius and duration, which seems to be an afterthought in its current iteration.

3) There has been some talk about the size of the armor debuff itself, though the community seems to be split on it with opinions ranging from "its impractical because it takes 10 casts to remove armor from a heavy gunner" to people that are just happy to have the ability to strip armor. Maybe this can be a topic if discussion?

Renewal: Oberon mains were delighted to see that the heal over time effect didn't drop once their health was full. This was an awesome QoL change, though there have been complaints about the lost range, it's nice that we have the persistent heal now. I'll speak about Iron Renewal with Hallowed Ground.

1) The one major complaint is its inverse relationship with duration. Change that and you'll make a lot of players happy. My personal recommendation? Remove the heal cap after the initial heal and make it a flat heal per second afterwards that lasts longer with duration. <---- A similar concept made it to the patch! No more inverse relationship with duration!

Hallowed Ground: The most highly debated ability, the one which all his synergies are based. Cutting out the total armor % in favor of a flat armor buff was a popular request from the community, that said here are some popular requests:

1) A topic of conversation has been changing the flat armor buff to a flat damage reduction buff. A popular thread made by @MarrikBroom suggested that all enemies on Hallowed Ground have their damage reduced rather than raising our damage reduction, and another popular thread made by @Rekkou suggested the % of flat DR we receive scales with power strength starting at 30%. I personally am of the belief that if Oberon is going to be able to compete with other frames such as Trinity or Mirage that can provide 75/95% DR to their squadmates, this change is necessary. Leave the flat armor buffs to Cold Chroma, his Vex Armor makes it work.

2) The community is split as to whether or not Hallowed Ground should be an aura, so I will mention it here.

3) It's been a very popular suggestion to have Hallowed Ground work as a circle around Oberon, always at 360 degrees, and having range effect the size of the circle, rather than having a cone and having range effect the angle.

4) Due to how energy hungry Oberon is and his low energy pool for a caster, a popular suggestion has been making kills on Hallowed Ground grant Oberon some energy.

Smite: The community is largely split on this ability. Many, not all, aren't happy about the damage output but at the same time many players were concerned about Oberon being capable of spamming his 1 to clear full rooms of enemies with ease. That said, here are the most popular suggestions thus far:

1) @Rekkou Suggested that the orbs increased the damage enemies took instead of dealing damage. If no enemies were range of an orb, it would return and refund energy back to you.

2) The 20% health taken from the first enemy should be dealt to all enemies instead of being split. <--- I personally am of the belief this would be too power vs the infested and Corpus due to their lack of armor.

3) The 20% health should continue to be split, but all enemies should also take the same flat damage the first enemy took. <---- This suggestion made it to patch, woo!

 

Passive: The community is split on this, but I'm a fan. Its a nice boost for those that it applies to and it fits his theme. There are definitely frames with worse passives (I'm looking at you, Ember) That said there was a popular thread in which the OP that suggested a passive.

1) Enemies killed by Oberon have a higher chance of dropping health orbs, or some variation of this.

EDIT: I'm kinda PO'd that after taking the time to gather these all together the thread just got thrown in the middle of that nerf thread. That thread is convuluted. I plan on keeping this updated.

[Music4Therapy]

I gathered all the most liked suggestions here and threw together a thread. This thread is very convuluted and I wanted to have a clear list of changes of players want.

[FearTheTrooper]

I think one of the most important changes really has to do with Reckoning. Like you said, get the health orbs on hit instead of death. But it suffers lack of damage like smite once the enemies are a higher level. I think the change with Hallowed Ground is a little complicated, but it's definitely something that should be looked at in depth. Regardless, Oberon doesn't do enough damage. He needs more. 

[OxideNation]

1 hour ago, Phalian said:

We're not really critisizing Remewal. It's probably the best of his abilities now. What we don't like is the lowered damage of Smite with so little scaling that it's a joke, the lack of visibility for Hallowed Ground, and the backwards thought process for why DE thought Reckoning + Hallowed Ground should shred current armor and not total armor. 

 

I never said you were lol? I just have been playing with him and decided to post that I like the renewal change. Mind you it's super energy hungry but hey It feels nice now. But then again I guess i posted in the wrong thread. lol

Edited April 28, 2017 by OxideNation