[U21 Megathread] New Weapons: Scourge and Knell

[[DE]Danielle]

Scourge

Harrow’s signature Primary weapon, the Scourge is a Corrosive spear gun that shoots wave projectiles with high Punch Through and guaranteed Status Effects. Thrown spears attach a bullet attractor to the heads of all enemies within 14 meters, and continues to pulse every 7 seconds and attaches bullet attractors for 3 seconds wherever it has landed.

 

Knell

Harrow’s signature Secondary weapon, the Knell, has the utility of a sniper with the sight and zoom with the convenience of a pistol. This single round magazine sidearm grants 100% ammo efficiency for 3 seconds (that can be refreshed when active) and 0.5x Critical Damage added per headshot with a maximum of 3 stacks.

 

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Please note that we will be closely monitoring your practical feedback - feel free to share videos and discussions after playing with the Scourge and the Knell. Non-constructive feedback, dev-bashing, and any other content that violates the Guidelines will be removed.

 

If you have any bugs to report please post them here: 

 

[Michael]

I hope we get that grineer weapon that Nox was using

 

Edited June 29, 2017 by Michael

[SenorClipClop]

The advent of Harrow and his new weapons make me very happy that this exists:

[WolfTitan]

I look at the requirements for Scourge and see the required Oxium: 135,000 Oxium for Mountain clans.

Did DE make another Hema mistake?

[AerinSol]

14 minutes ago, WolfTitan said:

I look at the requirements for Scourge and see the required Oxium: 135,000 Oxium for Mountain clans.

Did DE make another Hema mistake?

That's rather manageable. Most can make 5k in a single month. For a mountain clan that would be nothing.

[KazeUindo]

11 hours ago, WolfTitan said:

I look at the requirements for Scourge and see the required Oxium: 135,000 Oxium for Mountain clans.

Did DE make another Hema mistake?

If you have played long enough and farmed with nekros for any time, you should have at least 1/4 of that. I have more than that saved for the Shadow Clan I'm in.

[NoLazyShadow]

On 29.06.2017 at 0:01 PM, WolfTitan said:

I look at the requirements for Scourge and see the required Oxium: 135,000 Oxium for Mountain clans.

Did DE make another Hema mistake?

Oxium is WAY easyer to get plus you can use necros/hudroid/atlas/resoure boster to farm more

[ExpGui]

Both seem like great additions to the game.

The Scourge, while perhaps weaker than the Ferrox, feels unique in that it's an AoE auto gun-staff, with a sizable magazine (a problem the other gunstaffs have).

The Knell seems a bit buggy or misunderstood on the infinite ammo, but it definitely is comparable to the Pandero.

Now the thing I really want to see due to the Knell's special headshot buff is the Dual Toxocyst's buff timer to be refreshable. It would be a good QoL and would be consistent across  the two weapons.

[DarthBieber27]

Anyone know what is takes to build Scourge? I know the clan research but can't find anything on what it takes to build.

[Guest]

Scourge feedback:

Overall great feel and effects on the primary fire.  The sound is awesome.  The base fire rate sucks, but with mods, it's great.  The projectile speed and aoe is great, along with the graphics for the projectile.  There are a few problems in regards to modding potential and mechanics, though.  Aesthetically, I think it'd look pretty sick if the secondary color channel was made metallic.

Modding potential - It's a status gun, dealing aoe status procs, with corrosive as the base damage type.  It works alright, but you have to keep the elemental damage types relatively balanced or else you lose out on a lot of procs.  It kinda limits what can be done.  The included - polarity is mostly useless in this regard, as the only mod worth putting there is Tactical Reload (which works great on it, actually).

Mechanical issues:

Regarding precision:  It's almost impossible to score a headshot with this thing.  I can be above a grineer, shooting down on their head and I will not get a head shot.  The collision box for the projectile is a little funny in this regards.  In addition, Heavy Caliber has very little, if any effect on the primary accuracy.  I'm not really complaining though, because the gun needs all the damage it can get, since it doesn't have too much to offer there.

Regarding punch through: Punch through has incredibly inconsistent effects on the weapon.  The primary fire will not punch through enemies at all.  The slightest amount of punch through will go through doors.  It will also punch through nullifier bubbles and hit the nullifier directly.  In fact, nullifier bubbles will never deflect scourge projectiles.  They will either punch through or explode on the bubble itself.  Meanwhile nullifier drones are nearly impossible to hit directly (see headshot problem).  A lot more punch through is needed before it will go through small objects.  The secondary spear throw is punching through level geometry, and losing the spear to the ether.  When this happens, you lose your gun, and you don't get the effects of the throw for your secondary, since the spear is 20m below you, floating in space.

Overall, it's fun, but even though it's high status, it doesn't scale all that well..

Edited June 30, 2017 by Guest

[Chipputer]

I take issue with you guys stating that the Knell gets 3 seconds of infinite ammo per headshot, stacking 3 times, or whatever.

It doesn't. Quite frankly, it seems to get a random amount of time. Sometimes it's only 3 seconds and sometimes I can sit there, land a single headshot, and fire into space, infinitely, for what feels like an entire minute. The weapon's rules are incredibly inconsistent to the point of it being more annoying to use than anything else.

[Duskfeather]

These are just my thoughts but, as it stands the Knell doesn't fit into Warframe, it falls into the same hole snipers do after the hotfix. You stop to take a moment and line up a headshot just for some NPC or teammate to swoop in and steal all of your kills, forcibly resetting you back to a proc-less Knell state.

Enemies still have terrible hitboxes when it comes to headshots, bullets were literally passing through a crawler on the ground like it was nothing more than a hologram, had to stand in front of it for the headshot (it was chained up with Condemn).

The 3 second timer is a nightmare. Sure, the Knell was powerful before the hotfix because of endless firing/never reloading, but after the hotfix this gun is awful. As mentioned above, team play makes it nigh-impossible to keep the buff going and in solo mode, enemies are so scarce most of the time.

It also sports the two weakest/least ideal damage types from the IPS table, so it loses "endgame" potential there.

I LOVE that we're seeing more and more weapons with perks or traits, it feels like it's not always up to that Ember Prime to do the work for your team when the gunplay gets improved, but things such as, enemy density, team play, and "endgame" need to be considered more closely when releasing new things.

Releasing something new and shiny that feels great to use at level 5-10 and then ceases to kill enemies or be effective beyond a certain level range feels tasteless and not very well thought out. I haven't gotten my hands on the Scourge yet (waiting on Dojo research), but I hope it isn't counterintuitive when it comes to the game's core.

(It was REALLY painful trying to use the Knell [5 Forma'd] for the lv 100 Sortie today post-hotfix.)

As far as a possible fix, I strongly believe that raising the duration of the Knell's proc to 10-12 seconds would eradicate this issue almost entirely, without giving players an infinite ammo handheld minigun. It's just long enough to take aim, land a few headshots, re-position yourself if needed, and continue to proc those necessary headshots for Harrow's kit.

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So after playing with the Knell for several more hours after the hotfix I've decided to list various reasons the 3 second buff is nigh-unusable in most situations. The following are listed in no particular order:

1. Scorpions

2. Ancients

3. Kill stealing "Team mates" (Ex. Embers, Banshees, Equinox, Any other Warframe that happens to be in the same room as you more or less...)

4. Bombards

5. Nullifier bubbles

6. Arctic Eximus globes

7. A void fissure opens

8. Relocating to the next objective (ex. Uranus Defense)

9. Host has poor connection/Lag

10. You trip over a laser rigged door that your oblivious team mate set off via the hundreds of surveillance cameras watching him dance in the next room.

Essentially, anything and everything in Warframe makes this gun a royal pain in the *** to use in any given situation. At this point, I'm wondering why the Knell didn't just go the path of becoming the MOST powerful pistol in the game, still managing 1-round magazines but boasting the greatest base damage amongst the secondaries, something akin to a Scoped .44 Magnum but with an increased reload speed to make up for the one-in-the-chamber gameplay style. 05.-07 reload speed is more much reasonable than a full 1.0 reload at this point.

Edited July 1, 2017 by Dusk_Revenant

[hukurokuju5]

up the  magazine and bit and larger ammo pool and its pretty great

[Aergarda]

The scourge Does not do what it says as a weapon its status weapon but does regular white damage and it Says its a charge weapon but fires auto when you hold the Left mouse button. Does no where near the damage it says it does with mods. Will update with more when I forma it.

Edited July 2, 2017 by Aergarda

[UnkleG]

I feel like some may be missing a key dynamic here. The relationship between the scourge and the knell. Throw the Scourge to 'magnetize the brains', then let loose with the knell...

 

--G

"shoe and shoelace, one is useless without the other."

 

Edited July 3, 2017 by UnkleG

[Rekkou]

Knell has some annoying issue with its buff. Basically, because knell only has 1 bullet, it will force you to reload at the end of the buff. This can be very annoying when the buff ended just before you're about to shoot. Because it will cancel and delay your shot

Edited July 3, 2017 by Rekkou

[HalidarSilvercloud]

12 hours ago, UnkleG said:

I feel like some may be missing a key dynamic here. The relationship between the scourge and the knell. Throw the Scourge to 'magnetize the brains', then let loose with the knell...

I feel like you might be missing the fact that it doesn't actually work in practice. At least it didn't for me when I tested in Simulacrum. I toss the Scourge, I shoot with the Knell at the "magnetic clouds", it doesn't register as a headshot unless it was already a perfect headshot with no cloud. If the enemy has pauldrons/back armor and it's turned away at any angle, it won't activate the buff.

Even if it actually worked reliably, I don't see the point of a secondary that is only good with one specific primary or one specific frame. I could use the Scourge and Lex Prime for example, and I wouldn't have to deal with missed/not registered headshots, 1 round mag and 1 second reload, 10 max ammo... The buff duration is also laughably short, if your enemies decide to move a few steps away or behind a corner you won't have enough time to shoot them again before the buff expires. And that's assuming your teammates haven't already massacred them all while you where tossing the Scourge, aiming with Knell and scoring a headshot. I guess it's a solo only, stealth only secondary?

At least the Scourge is nice to use, it has a primary fire with no charge time (hurray!), innate corrosive damage with a small AoE, and a useful secondary fire, with other weapons it doesn't mean much if the headshots aren't registered properly.

Edit: I forgot...host/client lag in a real mission surely won't help with registering headshots or moving enemies...or should I say shaking enemies, since most of the time they seem to be having epileptic seizures instead of clear moving patterns XD

Edited July 3, 2017 by HalidarSilvercloud

[Myscho]

Could you change how Firestorm mod work on Scourge, because improved blast radius is barely noticeable, alot worse than on Javlok

[Duskfeather]

14 hours ago, UnkleG said:

I feel like some may be missing a key dynamic here. The relationship between the scourge and the knell. Throw the Scourge to 'magnetize the brains', then let loose with the knell...

 

--G

"shoe and shoelace, one is useless without the other."

This here is likely the very root of the problem, they went a made another unusable addition to our arsenals and the only way around it is the "band aid fix". Can't use Scourge/Knell without the other? Sounds exactly like some Warframe powers/weapons with their augments/syndicate mods!

If something is utterly underwhelming until you use another weapon/mod slot to accommodate for it's overbearing weaknesses then that is just obscenely poor judgment in the development stage. Why would anyone intentionally make something undesirable? Why build hype with PrimeTime/DevSteams showing off the upcoming new shiny things if they're just going to be dull and unimpressive when they finally wind up in our hands?

I can't possibly be the only one who feels it'd be a better idea for the future of Warframe to continue giving us new, fun, intuitive toys to play with to keep our interests piqued in what may come next? Keep us playing, keep us pumped for the next big thing, or the next little thing. No better way to kill hype than by throwing forgettable mastery fodder at us time after time.

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In regards to what has actually happened with the Scourge/Knell and even Harrow himself, I'm confident there was a miscalculation in the original values and the proceeding adjustments to those values during the days surrounding their recent release. With most, if not ALL of DE, preparing for this coming Saturday's big event, I'm sure there is a ton of things going on in the office. Give them sufficient time and keep your feedback constructive and hopefully we can see some love for all 3 of the newly released additions to Warframe sooner rather later.

[LSG501]

Scourge - at the moment I don't have any particular problem with the scourge mechanics, if anything it's the best of all the staff weapons due to no self damage or overly long charge time.. although I still keep wanting it to turn into a pole arm/staff when I press melee, like the jaffa staff weapon from stargate... please make this happen, you've done dual wielding so why not do staff weapons as melee too if no melee equipped :)

But I'm not a fan of the way the mods combine with built in elemental damage, but that's system wide rather than just scourge so not expecting any change here, and it does seem to have low damage output on the primary fire mechanism, especially when compared with it's secondary damage which is pretty high if it hits a target.   I'd like to see that primary damage buffed a bit.

edit: having played scourge a bit more now I'm starting to feel that it needs a small buff to flight speed on the projectiles....adjusting for a distant running target is fine but adjusting for the 'dodging' or lagging enemy close up it's flight time can cause issues.  It's even more noticeable that the projectile speed is fairly slow when you throw the spear because that travels really fast.

 

Knell - Now I never used it prior to the fix in the patch but having just tried it I was like.... 10 shots.. that is all I get without needing ammo because of the incredibly small ammo pool... some of the 'shotgun' pistols have more ammo.   Then I was like where's the buff gone... by the time I'd found another enemy, lined them up for a shot the buff was gone which basically makes the bonus crit non existent. 

I'm likely going to level it and then just stick it in the mr fodder pile of weapons which tbh is pretty bad for a new weapon that's just come out..... I can understand old weapons ending up in the mr fodder pile but the least DE can do is make new weapons viable alternatives to what we have already. 

Edited July 6, 2017 by LSG501

[Toran]

Knell Feedback:
Rather useless in its current form. Dusk_Revenant listed enough reasons. My 100+% Crit Aklex Prime is more reliable.
Suggestions to make Knell more utilarian without spoiling its unique feeling:

• Initialize the Death Knell buff on any hit, headshot or not. Consecutive buff refreshs must be headshots. This way the weapon is useful in close range too and 3 secs are fair enough to deal another headshot
• When the Death Knell timer ends keep the last bullet in the chamber. Only when you miss the next shot, you should have to reload. This would help alot with frustrating moments where teammates or pets block the line of fire.
• Maybe add 10 more bullets to ammo total

Even with these additions the Knell wouldn't be too overpowered as you still had to deliver headshots to be efficient while straining from the semi-auto fire. It would be a good compromise between the overpowered endless fire of the prepatch Knell and its current, more frustrating version.

Scourge Feedback:
Having a blast with that weapon and Harrow. I can't tell if it's any good on 40+ but for keep enemies down, maybe with a Riven Mod. It's great fun though with anything below, especially when using Speedtrigger and Terminal Velocity. At high firerate and Forma-powered it synergizes great with Harrow's Thurible.

I don't use the second fire function at all, it's far too cumbersome. I like LSG501's idea:
 

2 hours ago, LSG501 said:

although I still keep wanting it to turn into a pole arm/staff when I press melee, like the jaffa staff weapon from stargate... please make this happen, you've done dual wielding so why not do staff weapons as melee too if no melee equipped

 

[Vaygrim]

I can confirm that the "Bullet Attractor" debuff of the Scourge is extremely unreliable for getting headshots. Yes I can see the visual of the debuff on the hostiles, but the success of that bullet effect varies WILDLY with tested weapons. Using it in combination with the new Knell, I've run out of ammo before getting a headshot to register. Tested with the Euphona Prime, I get headshots about 35-40% of the time. Employed with something like the Kulstar, the effect works less than 5% of the time.

At present, the Scourge's primary functionality works fine for me. Alt-Fire? Unreliable, making it useless to me.

[--RV--arm4geddon-117]

Punch through doesn't seem to affect the plasma bolts IF they hit an enemy but with either shred or metal auger the bolts can hit behind closed doors fine, but i rather have them go through the 1st enemy hit as well, as for the rest the gun is fun i have no probs taking it with me in long missions and when the dmg drops, the utility it offers is great

[PsychoSunshine]

Scourge feels great! The attractor mechanic doesn't seem to work well with knell, though. Maybe it does, but I was under the impression that the attractors made for guaranteed headshots. Either way, Scourge is now my favorite Gunspear. Beautiful design as well!

Onto Knell.... This gun is the manifestation of everything I didn't like about Dual Toxocyst amplified. Low mag capacity is one nail in the coffin for me. It'd be one thing if it hit about as hard as Vectis, but it's rather weak in that regard. The penalty for missing is about two seconds without lead going down range for reloading. The headshot bonus timer is inconsistent at best, especially considering that Scourge's alt does nothing noticeable to help with headshots. Another thing is that many enemies (mostly infested) don't have clearly defined heads to hit. this problem is also present with Grineer troops, where, in my experience, they have to be facing the player in order for the player to land a headshot. Knell's design, however, is spot-on. It's a good-looking pistol that sounds really good! Its mechanics are all that need work. When it comes to my weapons, I want function over form!

[EchoesOfRain]

Knell is sadly underwhelming to use. It's nice the have it's buff but getting it and keeping are too difficult. Combined with the VERY low ammo pool, it's just a bad time. 

 

Honestly, I get more headshots just running around with Euphona Prime than I do aiming with the Knell. Why? Because I'm not sitting there, lining up my shots carefully.  I'd get more headshots if I just used the rapid fire mode. The first, singular shot is way too important, and the player can't afford to miss it. Knell just has way too much risk and not enough reward.