Let's talk Channeling.

[mrecentric]

[Aenris]

8 hours ago, TheBrsrkr said:

You're already sacrificing a mod slot for it, no need to make us suffer while we're at it. In fact, some of these mods could be merged, since the energy being sacrificed for them is what should make them more powerful. I wouldn't mind giving up a mod slot for increasing both status and crit in one mod by channeling. Channeling mods have to be more powerful than the regular mods to compete with powers for usage. 

 

There is where you got me. I support your idea 100%. If i'm playing a squishy high energy warframe, i might want to build for channeling mods. I could use my energy to compensate my "Squishiness" and play more melee, even if it's a last resource thing, bursting out all of my energy to do so.

I'd love to see developers listen to what you had to say and try to make channeling melee an awesome thing (and heck, i'd even want to see melee enemy units doing things like that too!)

[BLI7Z]

I mostly go channeling against high level enemies, bacause of: Rage + Quick Mind + Life Strike. I keep myself alive while regenerating energy with damage taken, and channeling gives 100% proc chance to the hits. I just wish they made some of the channeling mods a bit more useful so I could use them.

 

EDIT (add): BTW: I'm ALWAYS channeling melee. With Orthos Prime + Ash, with that combo of mods I said before, and a full build for combo multiplier on the Orthos. I can fight against lvl 100+ enemies with no problem. 200+ need Naramon. And I also use Dispatch Overdrive; that 60% movement boost is sweet.

Edited May 24, 2017 by BLI7Z

[TheBrsrkr]

5 hours ago, Azamagon said:

2) Considiering point #1, it makes WAY more sense that channeling drains energy over time INSTEAD of energy per hit. It's also been suggested in the past, and it's still a good suggestion.

However, if there would be different energydrains, doesn't that come across as a little unfair in regards to the #1 suggestion? If all weapons gain the same passives, why should the energydrain differ? (Unless they also get different passives that is)
They could have different damagemultipliers (to make some weapons more about channeling damage than others, of course), but I think the energydrain and passive benefits should remain the same across the board. Sure, there could be some small differences, but it should make sense (like reserved for "special prime bonus" weap

5 hours ago, Azamagon said:

 

on buffs and such).
 

The reason it's different is because of both the damage multiplier and the style of the weapon. For example, the Scindo could get a 3x multiplier from boosts. 3 times damage on something like the Scindo is nothing to sneeze at, and would kind of need an energy increase to compensate. And it would work well with it. You wouldn't need to channel all the time, because the Scindo is a generally hard hitting weapon with a relatively wide sweep,and when you do, you wreck things. Contrast that to something like the Kogake or Ankyros that spend a considerable amount of time targeting a single enemy with not that much base damage to speak of. A lower cost would suit them more.  

 

5 hours ago, Azamagon said:

3) No, remove the efficiency penalties from ALL channeling mods AND buff them to be better than their basic counterparts. After all, they take up a precious modslot AND consumes energy AND requires you to equip your melee weapon to be of any benefit (in contrast to the basic counterpart mods, which only take up a modslot).

Combining a few channeling mods sounds like an awesome idea too, btw.

Well, things like Corrupt charge and Life Strike are expected to have at least a little downside, but generally most of them would be removed or merged together. Since you're giving up an entire slot that doesn't benefit you when not channeling, it better be worth it. 

 

5 hours ago, Azamagon said:

) Sounds good. But imo, it should only drain quicker during the moments you are actively blocking something (and the draincost should linger for like half a sec or so).

Well, I thought that was a given. Why would it drain more if you're not blocking anything? 

[AandOE]

Channeling was pretty cool when I first learned of it, but the moment I took a look at the differences between the regular mods and the channeling mods, my mind was made up. The most I did prior to the 'Body Count, Blood Rush' meta was to stack Reflex Coil and Focus Energy together, and never any other channeling mods. (I used Trinity's Blessing instead of Life Strike) Putting some of the current Channeling mods together (and nixing a lot of the channel cost) would help, as well as the oft suggestion of differing channeling stats on weapons would indeed help. Even boosting regular mods like True Steel by simply adding on True Punishment (with less channel cost) to it into 1 mod card would help. Consider them the 'Nightmare mode' upgrades~ :3

When melee Rivens arrive, we can hope that there'll be full Channeling versions that can be added on to the melee weapon, in addition to a regular melee Riven. (2 types of Rivens at once!)

[Azamagon]

11 hours ago, TheBrsrkr said:

1) The reason it's different is because of both the damage multiplier and the style of the weapon. For example, the Scindo could get a 3x multiplier from boosts. 3 times damage on something like the Scindo is nothing to sneeze at, and would kind of need an energy increase to compensate. And it would work well with it. You wouldn't need to channel all the time, because the Scindo is a generally hard hitting weapon with a relatively wide sweep,and when you do, you wreck things. Contrast that to something like the Kogake or Ankyros that spend a considerable amount of time targeting a single enemy with not that much base damage to speak of. A lower cost would suit them more.  

 

2) Well, things like Corrupt charge and Life Strike are expected to have at least a little downside, but generally most of them would be removed or merged together. Since you're giving up an entire slot that doesn't benefit you when not channeling, it better be worth it. 

 

3) Well, I thought that was a given. Why would it drain more if you're not blocking anything? 

1) I understand your reasoning in regards to the "different drain + different damage bonus". (Sidenote: Why do the already powerful weapons (like Scindo) need more of a boost than the weakling weapons (like Kogake) though? Shouldn't it be the other way around?)

But remember this suggestion of yours: " Give the frame using  it a good sized boost to everything. Movement speed, bullet jump distance, attack speed, jump and double jump  height and distance, wall latch time, slam radius,  the works. "

So, if all weapons would have different energydrain, then some weapons would be more efficient for people who are (undoubtably) gonna use it for speedrunning, giving us another version of the zorencopter issues, where some melee weapons are better for speedrunning than others (in this case, they'd be more EFFICIENT, rather than faster, so the issue is much lesser of course). I have a very strong gutfeeling that there is gonna be complaints about that.

That said, I don't fully disagreed with your ideas either of having different channeling benefits, after all, the small weapons (like daggers and sparring etc) could need all the love they could get. If that means having a lesser energydrain for channeling, making them the most efficient Warframe-boosting melee weapons, then I guess that could be fine.
But imo, my suggestion would still be that the Channeling was handled like this:
* All melee weapons have the same energydrain on channeling
* All melee weapons give the same Warframe boosting (speed etc) on channeling
* All melee weapons give different damagebonuses on channeling, minimum staying at 1,5x. Smaller weapons could get bigger bonuses (since they need it more)

That way, all weapons are equalized in terms of efficiency and speed (in regards to Warframe boosting), but they have varying effectiveness in regards to how much the help weapon is empowered. You could even have additional offensive channeling bonuses for different weapons, like, Silva & Aegis gets extended reach etc.
But drain and Warframe boosting should (imo) be exactly the same across the board.

2) Corrupt Charge makes sense yes, since it is actually a Corrupt mod.

Life Strike imo could instead have its penalty removed, but also have its bonus heavily reduced (i mean, unranked is more than powerful enough anyway. So I'd suggest to reduce the lifesteal to 1/2/3/4% (for each rank respectively) and toss the channeling penalty in the garbage bin where it belongs)

3) Believe me, this needs to be pointed out. Developers can do all kinds of "cool and flashy" stuff they want, but that doesn't mean they are also good mechanical/mathematical designers (look at the current state of channeling *hint hint*)

[Azamagon]

17 hours ago, Trichouette said:

Like... a lot of things in this game ?

"Wow chroma can breath fire electricity ice and poison, that's useless but damn cool"

"Wow I can charge my melee attack for a super powerful swing... or deal more damage by smashing E like crazy"

While this is generally true, let's be a little fair here:
* Chroma's ability only needs buffs, not necessarily a total revamp (but it needs big buffs)
* Yeah, chargeattacks aren't that great either, but only some small changes / QoL changes would be needed to make them generally useable (Higher damage + useable in quickmelee for all melee weapons + scaling with attackspeed mods + Seperate button (reloadbutton?) for chargeattacks when in meleemode. I think that'd be enough to make them useable). Some chargeattacks are even worthwhile to use as they are right now (Glaives, Gunblades, Sancti Magistar and Caustacyst, for example, and some chargeattacks have decent utility, like the sparring ones opening enemies up to finishers).

Channeling however, is a mechanic ALL melee can use, but suffers from multiple big issues:
* It brings meager benefits for what it costs (only adds damage and body disappearance if unmodded)
* Due to the energymechanics it becomes very biased towards the heavyhitting melee.
* Using mods for it (with a couple of exceptions) is generally the worst path you can go to buff your melee, despite channeling requiring more effort and cost for your combat than any other melee build (Basic mods: Powerful, works in quickmelee. Channeling mods: Weak, ONLY works in equipped melee mode, very often brings penalties, costs energy to even work)
* Blocking + channeling, while helping you a brief moment, is more likely to get you killed in the end (since you can't use abilities, which are better at saving your hide)

Channeling (along with blocking, channeling or not, imo) is in a far worse state than almost anything else that needs polishing in Warframe.

[Azamagon]

Oops, somehow I doubleposted my latest reply! Sorry!

Edited May 24, 2017 by Azamagon

[TheBrsrkr]

59 minutes ago, Azamagon said:

1) I understand your reasoning in regards to the "different drain + different damage bonus". (Sidenote: Why do the already powerful weapons (like Scindo) need more of a boost than the weakling weapons (like Kogake) though? Shouldn't it be the other way around?)

Well, I mean, yeah, but it's a heavy blade. It's..... you know, heavy. Intuitively (to me at least) pouring energy into a giant battleaxe is going to make it extremely powerful. But I do see your point. Seems like I'll have to rethink a few things. What my line of reasoning was is that they're multi hit weapons, so a big boost would kind of detract from that aspect of the weapon. Like if the Kogake got the 3x boost instead, it would do 105 damage, more than  the Gram , with each hit. That's not really the spirit of the Kogake, is it?  I was trying to preserve or emphasize the quirks of each weapon and weapon type with it. 

 

59 minutes ago, Azamagon said:

But remember this suggestion of yours: " Give the frame using  it a good sized boost to everything. Movement speed, bullet jump distance, attack speed, jump and double jump  height and distance, wall latch time, slam radius,  the works. "

So, if all weapons would have different energydrain, then some weapons would be more efficient for people who are (undoubtably) gonna use it for speedrunning, giving us another version of the zorencopter issues, where some melee weapons are better for speedrunning than others (in this case, they'd be more EFFICIENT, rather than faster, so the issue is much lesser of course). I have a very strong gutfeeling that there is gonna be complaints about that.

Well, I hadn't really thought about it that way, but something has to be done. Every single weapon having the same baseline regardless is just a bit to unrealistic for me {he says, talking about space magic pouring into space weapons in a game filled with space ninjas, mummies and magicians}. How about we separate the cost of keeping up the channeling state and the cost of actually using the weapon? Something like having a 1.5 energy/sec drain for just having it up, and adding more drain depending on the weapon for actually using it? I'll have to rewrite most of the numbers to account for this, but that a ay we can keep both different costs and bonuses. 

 

1 hour ago, Azamagon said:

2) Corrupt Charge makes sense yes, since it is actually a Corrupt mod.

Life Strike imo could instead have its penalty removed, but also have its bonus heavily reduced (i mean, unranked is more than powerful enough anyway. So I'd suggest to reduce the lifesteal to 1/2/3/4% (for each rank respectively) and toss the channeling penalty in the garbage bin where it belongs)

Well if you reduce the effectiveness of life strike I wouldn't have a problem with it, I think that other one that restores health (don't know what it's called) needs it to compete anyway. But throwing away the entire penalty concept? Far from it,  I want mods that would make me want to actually consider that penalty. Of course, I wouldn't touch any of the current kids with a 50 foot pole held by someone else,  but with some buffs here and there and some new additions.... Imagine a 120% crit mod with a -30% channeling penalty, maybe as a corrupted mod of necessary.  You wouldn't even have to fully rank it to see a noticeable difference in both your energy drain and your effectiveness. But I probably shouldn't be too hasty, it might seem like I'm endorsing the current system. 

 

1 hour ago, Azamagon said:

3) Believe me, this needs to be pointed out. Developers can do all kinds of "cool and flashy" stuff they want, but that doesn't mean they are also good mechanical/mathematical designers (look at the current state of channeling *hint hint*)

Well, you do have a point there,but come on. Draining while not blocking anything? Have a little faith, man. DE isn't that bad. 

[Azamagon]

1 hour ago, TheBrsrkr said:

1) Well, I mean, yeah, but it's a heavy blade. It's..... you know, heavy. Intuitively (to me at least) pouring energy into a giant battleaxe is going to make it extremely powerful. But I do see your point. Seems like I'll have to rethink a few things. What my line of reasoning was is that they're multi hit weapons, so a big boost would kind of detract from that aspect of the weapon. Like if the Kogake got the 3x boost instead, it would do 105 damage, more than  the Gram , with each hit. That's not really the spirit of the Kogake, is it?  I was trying to preserve or emphasize the quirks of each weapon and weapon type with it. 

2) Well, I hadn't really thought about it that way, but something has to be done. Every single weapon having the same baseline regardless is just a bit to unrealistic for me {he says, talking about space magic pouring into space weapons in a game filled with space ninjas, mummies and magicians}. How about we separate the cost of keeping up the channeling state and the cost of actually using the weapon? Something like having a 1.5 energy/sec drain for just having it up, and adding more drain depending on the weapon for actually using it? I'll have to rewrite most of the numbers to account for this, but that a ay we can keep both different costs and bonuses. 

 

3) Well if you reduce the effectiveness of life strike I wouldn't have a problem with it, I think that other one that restores health (don't know what it's called) needs it to compete anyway. But throwing away the entire penalty concept? Far from it,  I want mods that would make me want to actually consider that penalty. Of course, I wouldn't touch any of the current kids with a 50 foot pole held by someone else,  but with some buffs here and there and some new additions.... Imagine a 120% crit mod with a -30% channeling penalty, maybe as a corrupted mod of necessary.  You wouldn't even have to fully rank it to see a noticeable difference in both your energy drain and your effectiveness. But I probably shouldn't be too hasty, it might seem like I'm endorsing the current system. 

 

Well, you do have a point there,but come on. Draining while not blocking anything? Have a little faith, man. DE isn't that bad. 

1) Well, I was thinking more along the lines that the multipliers would be around 1,5x up to 2x (maybe even 2,5x in rare cases) or so.

2) That's a good compromise. I like that one.

3) You're thinking of Healing Return? Yeah, changing Life Strike like that would help both of those mods.

If the penalties are mild (as in your suggestion for the critboosting one), I guess they'd be ok. But then they have to grant multiple and powerful boosts, otherwise they won't be worth it. Merge that suggested critboost one with the statusboost one, and then give it a mild penalty. So, 120% crit chance and 120% status chance bonus while channeling, and with the 30% channeling penalty. That sounds great (and I bet people would actually use that one, for sure), but I can tell you this: Even with those numbers, I'd still personally hesitate to use it anyway (I'm a quick melee guy myself). But it'd be a mod worthy of existing at least.

Edited May 24, 2017 by Azamagon

[Trichouette]

4 hours ago, Azamagon said:

While this is generally true, let's be a little fair here:
* Chroma's ability only needs buffs, not necessarily a total revamp (but it needs big buffs)

His first ability need a total revamp.

It's total garbage and everybody know that, but "it looks neat" so it's in the game.

4 hours ago, Azamagon said:

* Yeah, chargeattacks aren't that great either, but only some small changes / QoL changes would be needed to make them generally useable (Higher damage + useable in quickmelee for all melee weapons + scaling with attackspeed mods + Seperate button (reloadbutton?) for chargeattacks when in meleemode. I think that'd be enough to make them useable). Some chargeattacks are even worthwhile to use as they are right now (Glaives, Gunblades, Sancti Magistar and Caustacyst, for example, and some chargeattacks have decent utility, like the sparring ones opening enemies up to finishers).

With the current state of melee, mindlessly spamming E is way more efficient because we mainly play on status/crit

As long as they don't buff that mechanic AND introduce some mods for it, it'll keep being ignored.

(and since it feels like our propositions/feedback are ignored, I don't even feel like suggesting anything)

[theMongoose]

I had in interesting thought on my morning commute. 

If the idea of making  channeling into an uber mode is the direction then what if we used the focus energy? They are talking about reworking the focus system now. I personally never use mine after the first time I pop zenurik. I think of it as channeling void energy to enhance attacks as opposed to our warframes energy pool. So there is this meter that gets no attention except once.

I'd like to see a toggle that either slowly drains the meter over time or on hit that doesn't require a full charge to activate. It will just run through whatever energy you've built up. This will free up the energy use we usually run into, especially if your using another toggled ability like exalted weapons or effigy. 

As far as mods go it could be as simple as just changing it from regular energy consumption to void energy. Or work it into focus 2.0 and open up the mod slots we would be using. Instead of all these random abilities we have and don't use in the focus trees we have the channeling boosts. Of course to make them equal they should all have a lifestrike equivalent. But each school could focus (no pun intended) on a different aspect. Naramon can grant invis and possibly movement speed, Zenurik could regen energy and slow enemies in a X meter radius, etc. Armor boosts, crit chance/ damage boosts, sprint speed, any aspect you could think of. 

Who knows, maybe even boost warframe powers. In uber mode you might be able to spec for boosting power strength, range, efficiency, or slowing down duration counters.

TL;DR: If we could tie this into Focus 2.0 I believe it would kill two birds with one stone. An awesome super Saiyan mode for your warframe and a reason to work on unlocking focus schools besides the OP ones. We never use focus after popping it the first time so tying it to this instead of our energy pool will reduce the weight on our other abilities.

[Djego27]

On 23.5.2017 at 5:12 PM, TheBrsrkr said:

Channeling is one of those things in Warframe that gets immediately overlooked by everyone who isn't a new player that doesn't know any better. If you ask anyone about channeling, they'd just be like "yeah, Life Strike is good", which is really what it amounts to for nearly everyone. That can't be good. Even Melee only players, when you can find them, never even consider channeling at any point. So what's the deal?

Well if we go to fully fledged out melee only runs, there are reasons to use channelling on frames that do not have what DE considers as melee ability(what is for the most part mostly universal game breaking powerful). It can be utilized on frames like Mag, Ember or Saryn in melee only runs at the right point of the combo that has a higher multiplier or ground finishers at L100+ ish stuff where it starts to get a bit more resistant to maintain high kill speed. However that was more of a thing before stuff like the event mods or conditional overload.

There is actually a use for stuff like killing blow or corrupt charge on throwing weapons in combination with high damage buffing frames like Ember for full HP life strikes at range. Unfortunately it is bugged and ranged life strike does not work currently. Also channelling does not work on the AOE explosion, given that they use the same button and cancel each other, what would be another interesting use of it(assuming the AOE explosion gets a rework in the status department).

Last but not least it can be used for stealth melee XP/focus farming(since it removes the body on kill, what prevents other units to get into the alarmed state by spotting a dead body) or to do some of the riven challenges.

The main problems I see with channelling:

- it is to expensive, given that it is only useful at higher levels that are also full of energy leech and where we use our energy as HP via QT and that melee builds in general dump power efficiency as well so it does not really work well, on top of that multiple hit units will consume multiple times the energy(like with big spin attacks) and there is no balance in energy use between quick low damage weapons(like daggers) or slower high damage weapons(like heavy blade or hammers)

 -> this could be a lot better if we had something like the old stamina system used for channelling, that does normally refill slowly but gets bonus points on melee hits and combos, so it builds up reasonable quick in melee combat and rebalancing channelling energy use and damage bonuses with the attack speed and base damage of a weapon

- it only is useful for damage, what is not that satisfying with status weapons

 -> DE should add a mod that gives 30% status on channelled strike and let that stack 4 times with a 6s window, that high attack rate status weapons can benefit from channelling as well, giving them quick and powerful status buffs for a few seconds when needed(like for CC or punching through high level armor with dots or corrosive procs)

- melee weapons have like no mod space on them, given the mandatory mods take all the space already

 -> the 5% life strike should be base line and the mod can add more and should also offer a new benefit(like a 5 times stackable 30 base armor for 20s) what helps mostly normal frames but can also be utilized on more tanky frames to bolster survivability and increase HP gains

-> there should be 1 or even 2 new mod slots just for channelling mods(that should be shared with throwing mods on throwing weapons) and mods should mostly act as customization what your weapon does during channelling, like improving your survivability, raw damage, status, changing IPS to elemental damage on channelled hits or even new things like hammer only small AOE knock-down on channelled hits, armor ignore for channelled attacks with daggers or dual daggers, small AOE stagger with channelled spin attacks on the single and dual swords etc.

In the end channelling as it is in the game is unfortunately just a concept, it is a bare bone mechanic that could be a very interesting if it would be properly integrated into melee and be something that you want to use often and effective as melee player.