[U21 Megathread] New Warframe: Harrow

[LSG501]

1 hour ago, Evanescent said:

In squads, Harrow is often repressed by team-mates especially if they are playing with high-damage aoe setups such as a nuke Saryn or Peacemaker Mesa. The suggestions provided should at least ensure that Harrow does not have to compete for kills to remain effective but rather benefit from his team's dps potential.

Yeah I've been doing things like IO and the like after relics and I've literally just plonked myself into the sitting position with certain frames doing all the kills before I can even get to them....then get moaned at because 'I'm not giving them energy'.... well that's because I can't if there's no enemies. 

I don't expect anything to be done though because we've had the same issue with nidus and there's a lot more people complaining over wof and the likes killing everything before other's get a chance and the dev's seem to be 'ignoring' the issue.

[Bobtm]

Some of these proposed buffs seem to be way overboard.  Though I can understand the intent behind the various buffs, I can't entirely agree with them.

1 hour ago, Evanescent said:

Condemn: 

Great skill, no problems here. Allies should receive shields from condemn as well.

That seems a bit much for a stock ability given that it's a rather decent-range CC that is a one-handed animation.  Could be an interesting augment idea or something though.  But given the sheer volume of overshielding it can grant the player in such a short time, it just seems over the top to be part of the base ability.

1 hour ago, Evanescent said:

Penance: 

1)Energy cost should be removed. or lowered as it already eats your entire shield-pool. 

2)All allies need to able to participate in the healing phase. RIght now only Harrow can trigger the healing, make it so that allies can heal each other too. This will have some excellent team synergy in higher levels.

3)Duration cap should be increased or removed. 

4)Harrow should be able to keep moving while casting. Keeping it two handed is fine, but make it upper body animation only please.

I'm not overly fond of the idea of removing the energy cost on Penance, seeing as the raw lack of energy cost on abilities has been shown to be way too easily abused/powerful through Nidus' kit.  Making the ability function off of everyone's kills is also a bit much, given that even by yourself you can dish out enough damage to heal thousands of HP per second.  Having a cap on the ability's duration is important to prevent how easy it is to abuse it to the point of having infinite lifesteal, but a slight increase to the cap wouldn't be overdone.

I again do understand why many folks want Penance to work off of allied kills, but having it function like that pushes the ability well past "OP" territory.  It's an idea that's easy to understand where it comes from, but it's also just way, way too much.  Though I do agree with point 4.

1 hour ago, Evanescent said:

Thurible:

1)All allies should be able to replenish energy for the whole team by shooting enemies, not just harrow.

2)Charging speed should be increased

I disagree with point one for the same reason I disagree with Penance working off of allied kills.  Given the sheer volume of foes we face in Warframe, Thurible would grant easily accessable infinite energy to everyone forever even with a buildup of 5 energy if it worked from every allied kill.  I do agree that the base charge speed could use an increase a little however.

To reiterate something that I feel that I'll need to;  I can completely understand why a lot of players want Thurible (and Penance) to work when allies kill things.  However, that is way, way too powerful.  If those changes both did occur, Harrow would be jumping to the front of the line for a heavy-handed nerf right away.  Since both changes would equate to thousands of thousands of HP per second healing, and permanent infinite energy for the entire squad without end.

1 hour ago, Evanescent said:

Covenant:

1)Animation feels too long-you lose most of the protection phase's duration recovering from the cast animation. Begin damage absorption after animation has ended please.

2)I would like a way to skew the duration towards buff or protection phase.

I agree with point 1, but disagree with point 2.  The entire point of the duration skew between the absorb phase and crit phase is to full-stop prevent the ability from being used as an easy access to invincibility.  Letting players have the option to skew it one way or the other goes counter to the entire reason it's designed like it is.

________________________________________________

I agree with most of the rest of things not covered above.  Head hitboxes are better than they used to be by a bit, but they are still indeed quite broken as you've noted.  Shielding is also a very poor survival mechanic as it stands, which is something that needs looked at across all frames in general.  Being a bigger deal to Harrow of course since he's based rather directly upon them.

As a closing point to all this, repeating myself a tad bit since this part is the one that so many folks are asking for;

Penance and Thurible cannot be made to work off of allied kills while retaining their other current traits.  The entire reason that Trinity is almost perpetually in the crosshairs for potentially being nerfed is because she provides such easy and automatic access to endless healing and endless energy without any appropriate downside, drawback, or prerequisite.  Harrow has the potential to provide endless healing and endless energy, but has various caveats upon both things to ensure that it's not a literal easy-mode button in one go.

People have been too spoiled by Trinity's outlandishly bad design, and keep trying to use her as a benchmark for support type roles.

[SenorClipClop]

1 hour ago, Bobtm said:

To reiterate something that I feel that I'll need to;  I can completely understand why a lot of players want Thurible (and Penance) to work when allies kill things.  However, that is way, way too powerful.  If those changes both did occur, Harrow would be jumping to the front of the line for a heavy-handed nerf right away.  Since both changes would equate to thousands of thousands of HP per second healing, and permanent infinite energy for the entire squad without end.

Penance and Thurible cannot be made to work off of allied kills while retaining their other current traits.  The entire reason that Trinity is almost perpetually in the crosshairs for potentially being nerfed is because she provides such easy and automatic access to endless healing and endless energy without any appropriate downside, drawback, or prerequisite.  Harrow has the potential to provide endless healing and endless energy, but has various caveats upon both things to ensure that it's not a literal easy-mode button in one go.

People have been too spoiled by Trinity's outlandishly bad design, and keep trying to use her as a benchmark for support type roles.

Well said. I wouldn't myself call Trin's design bad (maybe simple and very generous), but I totally agree that granting team contribution into Thurible and Penance would be much too much.

1 hour ago, LSG501 said:

Yeah I've been doing things like IO and the like after relics and I've literally just plonked myself into the sitting position with certain frames doing all the kills before I can even get to them....then get moaned at because 'I'm not giving them energy'.... well that's because I can't if there's no enemies.

I've had the same situation in Public on a few occasions. And I find if I explain the situation, most of the time the team will oblige me some kills. And so if they see the chains go down on a few enemies, now they almost always treat those as mine. They want the energy more than they want to be insta-nuking everything all the time. Harrow's specific requirements are a learning opportunity for Tenno everywhere: "if you want help from your supports, pay attention to your supports".

In most games that have these types of roles (tank, damage, support), supports provide aid but need to be supplied resources and protection by the team to be optimally effective. Trinity is a noted exception, but Harrow follows this trend. It's really helpful to be protecting him (or the objective) when he has no overshields, or when he's channeling Thurible. Giving him at least few kills (or just letting him be responsible for a chokepoint) benefits everyone and lets the support have more fun. Similar to Oberon's Renewal, Thurible incentivizes allies staying close to the support to both defend him and allow him to empower you. You can go off to another room and nuke everything, but in that case you clearly don't need help from the support so help is not going to be given you. This seems to be the direction that DE is taking supports in, and I am very happy about it.

Edited July 3, 2017 by SenorClipClop

[Rakosta_Kai]

@Evanescent,

You hit the nail on the head...

I wonder if some of the things you mentioned will make their way in as augments?

Harrow's use in groups seems like it will be predicated on the group's make-up and their level of restraint or Harrow will have to compete just to contribute.

That said, he's looking like a great soloist offering an engaging weapon based playstyle.

My only real gripe deal with the Knell... The unveiling footage and art made it look like a much heftier weapon. But it hit the game looking like a rubberband gun that's so tiny it clips in Harrow's hand. 

[InquisitorMaximus]

On 2/7/2017 at 4:28 AM, SenorClipClop said:

... Yesterday I took him into a Void survival for 40 minutes before running into issues. He was only level 15, no Forma and only half a build, but he held his own for a good long time...

He was also missing a leg and 3 fingers on "the thurible hand" at the moment, so he is awesome 

[SenorClipClop]

4 minutes ago, RubenRosas said:

He was also missing a leg and 3 fingers on "the thurible hand" at the moment, so he is awesome 

I don't understand what you're saying. Are you saying he was visually bugged for you?

[InquisitorMaximus]

Just now, SenorClipClop said:

I don't understand what you're saying. Are you saying he was visually bugged for you?

The frame was not visually bugged for me; I understand you don't understand me.

[SenorClipClop]

Just now, RubenRosas said:

The frame was not visually bugged for me; I understand you don't understand me.

I mean, if you're saying he did all that on one leg and with 3 fingers missing, at half level and half build, then yes, he did do that! I also took him on a Sortie today and he forgot his Thurible in the ship, but still managed to provide Energy.

[InquisitorMaximus]

1 minute ago, SenorClipClop said:

I mean, if you're saying he did all that on one leg and with 3 fingers missing, at half level and half build, then yes, he did do that! I also took him on a Sortie today and he forgot his Thurible in the ship, but still managed to provide Energy.

Now we're understanding each other 

[Evanescent]

1 hour ago, Bobtm said:

Some of these proposed buffs seem to be way overboard.  Though I can understand the intent behind the various buffs, I can't entirely agree with them.

That seems a bit much for a stock ability given that it's a rather decent-range CC that is a one-handed animation.  Could be an interesting augment idea or something though.  But given the sheer volume of overshielding it can grant the player in such a short time, it just seems over the top to be part of the base ability.

Ah, but for all other frames the max amount of shields has a lower cap. Yes, you'd be able to generate shields to mitigate some damage for your allies but that's entirely the point.

Not everyone will be walking around with 3k+shields, don't worry.

1 hour ago, Bobtm said:

I'm not overly fond of the idea of removing the energy cost on Penance, seeing as the raw lack of energy cost on abilities has been shown to be way too easily abused/powerful through Nidus' kit. 

How is it 'abused' in Nidus' kit?

The only things that only use stacks are his Parasitic Link and his Ravenous. Spamming either is going to eat your stacks quickly and reduce the dps of your Virulence. Yes, you can spam them, but to what end? You want to have your link going for a long time to tank, and the same is true for your 4. The intrinsic design of the abilities encourage them to stick around as long as possible.

1 hour ago, Bobtm said:

Making the ability function off of everyone's kills is also a bit much, given that even by yourself you can dish out enough damage to heal thousands of HP per second.  Having a cap on the ability's duration is important to prevent how easy it is to abuse it to the point of having infinite lifesteal, but a slight increase to the cap wouldn't be overdone.

I fail to see hoe it prevents 'abuse' by having 'infinite lifesteal', when that is already the case. You already have infinite lifesteal because you can refresh the duration. What the cap does is make it more cumbersome and clunky because of how the animation works and how it consumes your shields. 

1 hour ago, Bobtm said:

I again do understand why many folks want Penance to work off of allied kills, but having it function like that pushes the ability well past "OP" territory.  It's an idea that's easy to understand where it comes from, but it's also just way, way too much.  Though I do agree with point 4.

Your point about having it be OP with teammates pitching in is valid. Capping the amount of health allies can regen per shot is an easy solution, same goes for thurible.  If needed, balance it per weapon and power.

1 hour ago, Bobtm said:

I disagree with point one for the same reason I disagree with Penance working off of allied kills.  Given the sheer volume of foes we face in Warframe, Thurible would grant easily accessable infinite energy to everyone forever even with a buildup of 5 energy if it worked from every allied kill.  I do agree that the base charge speed could use an increase a little however.

See above! Capping is the answer.

1 hour ago, Bobtm said:

To reiterate something that I feel that I'll need to;  I can completely understand why a lot of players want Thurible (and Penance) to work when allies kill things.  However, that is way, way too powerful.  If those changes both did occur, Harrow would be jumping to the front of the line for a heavy-handed nerf right away.  Since both changes would equate to thousands of thousands of HP per second healing, and permanent infinite energy for the entire squad without end.

^^

1 hour ago, Bobtm said:

I agree with point 1, but disagree with point 2.  The entire point of the duration skew between the absorb phase and crit phase is to full-stop prevent the ability from being used as an easy access to invincibility.  Letting players have the option to skew it one way or the other goes counter to the entire reason it's designed like it is.

Interesting point of view. I was interested in having the buff last for longer...maybe you can have a minimum and maximum margin to work with? In that case DE would be able to control how much you are able to swing things in your favor.

1 hour ago, Bobtm said:

________________________________________________

I agree with most of the rest of things not covered above.  Head hitboxes are better than they used to be by a bit, but they are still indeed quite broken as you've noted.  Shielding is also a very poor survival mechanic as it stands, which is something that needs looked at across all frames in general.  Being a bigger deal to Harrow of course since he's based rather directly upon them.

As a closing point to all this, repeating myself a tad bit since this part is the one that so many folks are asking for;

Penance and Thurible cannot be made to work off of allied kills while retaining their other current traits.  The entire reason that Trinity is almost perpetually in the crosshairs for potentially being nerfed is because she provides such easy and automatic access to endless healing and endless energy without any appropriate downside, drawback, or prerequisite.  Harrow has the potential to provide endless healing and endless energy, but has various caveats upon both things to ensure that it's not a literal easy-mode button in one go.

People have been too spoiled by Trinity's outlandishly bad design, and keep trying to use her as a benchmark for support type roles.

I do wish to make a point here, which is to bring to attention how Thurible's energy gain works.

You get a set amount per kill, and a set x4 amount per headshot. So dealing thousands of damage and even killing a whole bunch of enemies will simply not have the impact that Trinity has. She just has to cast it and gain huge bursts of health and energy, while Harrow needs to go for headshots to maximise his healing and energy gain.

So really, nothing will ever come close to Trin, unless you have a team of crackshots that always land headshots. In which case, with that much finesse, I'd say you deserve it!

Enjoyed coming up with counterpoints, and looking forward to your answers.

[Bobtm]

1 hour ago, Evanescent said:

Ah, but for all other frames the max amount of shields has a lower cap. Yes, you'd be able to generate shields to mitigate some damage for your allies but that's entirely the point.

Not everyone will be walking around with 3k+shields, don't worry.

My issue there more is due to the fact that it's just Harrow's 1st ability.  A fairly sizable ranged CC that's one handed and restores personal shielding is potent enough for its current slot.  So having the ability to also bolster allied shields all in one just seems over the top for a stock 1 to me.

Having 3k shields isn't the issue precisely, I just think that it would give too much utility to just a single 1 ability.

1 hour ago, Evanescent said:

How is it 'abused' in Nidus' kit?

The only things that only use stacks are his Parasitic Link and his Ravenous. Spamming either is going to eat your stacks quickly and reduce the dps of your Virulence. Yes, you can spam them, but to what end? You want to have your link going for a long time to tank, and the same is true for your 4. The intrinsic design of the abilities encourage them to stick around as long as possible.

I'll have to go slightly off-tangent to explain this part about Nidus.  I'll throw it in spoiler tags just to cut down on the vertical post lengthy a little bit.  The TLDR version is that Nidus can infinite loop his abilities too easily due to having no cost on 2 out of 4 of them.

 

Part of Nidus' issue is that he can full on dump-stat Efficiency into nothingness without

any drawback at all.  His kit is far, far too self-sustaining for how powerful it is.  While you don't precisely spam his 3 and his 4, you can easily keep them up forever a little before you reach 10 stacks without any problem.  Their stack generation potential drastically exceeds their cost.  The same fairing for his 1 and 2, which end up allowing for easy sustain loops.  Basically Nidus' ability uptime is outright 99.9% (downtime being recast animation) on his 3 and 3, with his 1 and 2 being infinitely repeatable casts.  If Nidus' 3 and 4 had energy costs of 75 and 100 respectively like the standard energy costs of those ability slots, that loop would be more rough for him to keep going.  Since unlike his 1 (and by proxy his 2) he wouldn't gain energy from the cast directly.

While testing a few things as him, I purposefully took an unranked Nidus into a Kuva Flood purely to see if his stack generation/sustain could exceed things even at a handicap setting.  Since his kit embraces spamming to a T, you end up being able to rank up during said run through 2/1 spam, then can immediately startup your 3 usually upon reaching the Siphon or during it, and subsequently his 4 will be going before that Siphon ends.  All with essentially 0 deaths guaranteed due to his combined passive trait and 3.

For all intents and purposes, Nidus' abilities might as well not even have ability costs, and there's no real forethought, planning, or setup required to make it work.

How that relates into Harrow is that you cannot easily spam-cast his 2 due to the combined energy and shield cost it has.  The energy cost forces an extra drain to make using his 1 to restock shields harder, without the player stopping and landing shots to get their 3 working.  Basically the energy cost acts as a buffer to forestall easy looping of Penance.  Harrow's current design directly forces the player to act in order to retain their ability looping.[/spoiler]

1 hour ago, Evanescent said:

I fail to see hoe it prevents 'abuse' by having 'infinite lifesteal', when that is already the case. You already have infinite lifesteal because you can refresh the duration. What the cap does is make it more cumbersome and clunky because of how the animation works and how it consumes your shields.

The cap forces you to make those recasts during a 60 second or less window.  I do agree that the casting animation should merely be two-handed but not one that locks the frame's legs to make it not feel unnecessarily clunky.  However, without the cap it's obscenely easy to pin down a small cluster of enemies, then seclude yourself to a whipping session while you use your 1 to force some enemies to stay as an audience.  With a bit of Thurible storing you can get far more than the casting cost from one headshotted foe.  Allowing for only a small bit of diminishing returns over time unless more enemies purchase a ticket to the show.

Without the cap, it would be easy to pre-stock Penance to last for 5/10 minutes in a very small period of time.  With a little more time you could wrack up even more absurd durations.  Having a cap means that this is impossible, forcing the Harrow to actually stay in the fray and timing out their use of Penance if they want to keep it going.

Also, if your other changes to Thurible/Penance were paired in alongside the removed cap.  It would make the sustain loop even easier since you would never need to worry about healing yourself or shooting anything to repeatedly loop the two abilities.  Assuming even a minimal investment on Thurible to gain 5 energy per kill (non-headshot), it would only require 5 enemies to be killed by allies to fuel another cast of Condemn which would then feedback into a 0 casting cost of his Penance, and that's if the build being used has no Efficiency mods.  With them, the loop becomes even easier to maintain.

All of the changes you suggest when put together in tandem are too self-sustain loop inducing, while also allowing Harrow to basically do nothing but be a totem to buff allies without directly acting much at all.

1 hour ago, Evanescent said:

Your point about having it be OP with teammates pitching in is valid. Capping the amount of health allies can regen per shot is an easy solution, same goes for thurible.  If needed, balance it per weapon and power.

This would be a fair idea actually, and I could agree with that if we could trust the balance to be done correctly to not let things get drastically out of hand.

But would that actually happen?  Weapon balance has been one of the biggest thorns around these parts, so I don't think this is a realistic suggestion.  If the caps were handled correctly I do agree that this would work, but I don't believe that such caps would actually be done right.

1 hour ago, Evanescent said:

So really, nothing will ever come close to Trin, unless you have a team of crackshots that always land headshots. In which case, with that much finesse, I'd say you deserve it!

Enjoyed coming up with counterpoints, and looking forward to your answers.

If it were capped correctly then yes, you'd be right.  If Thurible gains were open to allies as-is now though without a per-weapon balance, getting to 20 per kill isn't too hard to do.  So having a guaranteed 20 energy per kill across the board, with 80 per headshot, would be more than enough to sustain even the craziest of energy guzzlers due to the sheer volume of enemies we fight during missions.  Trinity is a whole other problem of course, but that's another topic entirely for a different thread.

Nevertheless I also enjoyed your counterpoints as well.  While we're not exactly on the same page with regards to Harrow's mechanical focus, it's an interesting discussion to have.

 

Edited July 3, 2017 by Bobtm
Okay, so apparently spoiler tags don't work like I had thought they did.

[S0V3REiGN]

So I farmed Harrow and rushed him, so far I have put 4 forma into him and played him extensively in Void, Sorties but mostly Kuva and Kuva Floods. First few things I want to mention is that a lot his abilities or stats got the "short end of the stick." By that I mean that the range of his abilities feel low like the cone of Condemned and the range of Thurible. The casting speeds are abysmal like Covenant, Penance but worst of all Thurible. For a caster frame I am also quite surprised he got the lowest base energy pool possible of all warframes. Finally the base duration of all of his abilities are on he low side which is further exacerbated by the fact that all of his abilities are duration based and you to keep and eye on their timers at all times unless you slam every duration mod you have.

When I started out playing Harrow I felt a little clunky at my job (being a support frame) and was not good at supporting because the base stats (duration and range) or because of how they function. For the most part I go into any mission with Zenurik and 200 power plates but I refuse to use them as I like to think that my warframes can be self sufficient. A lot of the times Thurible doesn't accomplish much because either your allies nuke the enemies you are going to kill or they are just outside of your aura range which isn't all too uncommon. What I found really worked well for me was using syndicate procs and enemy radar. I would charge my Thurible just in time to cash it in with the Truth effect from my telos Boltos in the middle of a crowd.

I wish I had more control over covenant as a lot of the times what I really want is just the damage invulnerability to pick up an ally in the middle of level 100 Kuva Guardians or the damage boost. I would like to see a way to speed up the energy build up Thurible and increase the cone of Condemned. I also never really noticed a massive boost from Penance even when I consumed 3700 shields.

Either way, I do like Harrow, I think he is fun and engaging if only because you have constantly manage his abilities. I think he is a balanced support frame which at times feels a little clunky like on late game where kills significantly slow down. I think he could use some quality of life improvements for sure and they could make at least one ability a toggle-able. 

[LascarCapable]

6 hours ago, Prinny13 said:

Ok, I did buy Harrow and began to use him (planning to throw a forma or 2 on him) and here are my thoughts.

Condemn, not bad in any way but can be better.

This ability when faced in general direction, the chains will go there but when Harrow aim down (at his feet) the chains will become an AoE in 360 degree ability that chains anything around him.

Penance, replace healing/ lifesteal with over-shielding to anything within x range, once the shield is in over-shield stat the player will get electricity discharge surrounding them shocking anything that tries to get close to them.  

 Thurible,  I would like to change it to a level up type of ability.

You cast the ability then score 100 energy by using it once the par is full you press 3 again to level it up, once you done leveling it up its duration can be restored!

Level 1 : Body shot grants 3 energy and head shots grants 6 energy, this ability last 30 seconds.

Level 2 : Body shots grants 12 energy and head shots grants 24 energy, this ability last 60 seconds.

Ok I lowered the amount of energy we can get in favored of duration restoration, head shots grants 10 seconds to the ability every 5 seconds once and multiple head shots don't count, 60 seconds is the cap and can not be exceeded but can be restored with head shots.

Covernant, add lifesteal to it.

Passive, like I suggested before!

Well, what ya think?

I think that what you suggested would probably be too much for just early balancing purposes. Reworking the whole 3rd power and the mechanics added on Penance is kind of something better fitting for a rework. It goes a bit too far.

Not sure if Penance should replace lifesteal with shields. It would made Harrow less versatile. We already have a very good skill to regenerate shields : Condemn.

Adding lifesteal to covenant makes sense in your own change suggestion since you are removing the lifesteal from Penance, but I think Covenant is already strong enough so far.

[Echorion]

7 hours ago, Evanescent said:

That's not true! His Penance and Thurible supply allies with health and energy while his Covenant gives them short godmode plus a nice crit buff. That's a good support right there.

Like I say in team situations he has to compete for kills, which is easily fixed by letting ally kills and shots also generate health and energy.

Not much health, god mode for like a few short seconds, and a fair bit of energy- but you could just take Trinity and give way more energy (and easier) way more healing, way more overshields that go to EVERYONE...

I dunno, I am just not sold on Harrow. I don't think he is bad necessarily though.

[Chipputer]

6 hours ago, Bobtm said:

People have been too spoiled by Trinity's outlandishly bad design, and keep trying to use her as a benchmark for support type roles.

The other problem is that DE is so scared of making Trinity 2.0 that they made Trinity 0.3, instead. They can't seem to find a good middle ground and, instead of over-powering and then reducing, they decided to just make it nigh of useless. Forcing players to babysit their support isn't conducive to this game.

[EinheriarJudith]

6 hours ago, Bobtm said:

Some of these proposed buffs seem to be way overboard.  Though I can understand the intent behind the various buffs, I can't entirely agree with them.

That seems a bit much for a stock ability given that it's a rather decent-range CC that is a one-handed animation.  Could be an interesting augment idea or something though.  But given the sheer volume of overshielding it can grant the player in such a short time, it just seems over the top to be part of the base ability.

I'm not overly fond of the idea of removing the energy cost on Penance, seeing as the raw lack of energy cost on abilities has been shown to be way too easily abused/powerful through Nidus' kit.  Making the ability function off of everyone's kills is also a bit much, given that even by yourself you can dish out enough damage to heal thousands of HP per second.  Having a cap on the ability's duration is important to prevent how easy it is to abuse it to the point of having infinite lifesteal, but a slight increase to the cap wouldn't be overdone.

I again do understand why many folks want Penance to work off of allied kills, but having it function like that pushes the ability well past "OP" territory.  It's an idea that's easy to understand where it comes from, but it's also just way, way too much.  Though I do agree with point 4.

I disagree with point one for the same reason I disagree with Penance working off of allied kills.  Given the sheer volume of foes we face in Warframe, Thurible would grant easily accessable infinite energy to everyone forever even with a buildup of 5 energy if it worked from every allied kill.  I do agree that the base charge speed could use an increase a little however.

To reiterate something that I feel that I'll need to;  I can completely understand why a lot of players want Thurible (and Penance) to work when allies kill things.  However, that is way, way too powerful.  If those changes both did occur, Harrow would be jumping to the front of the line for a heavy-handed nerf right away.  Since both changes would equate to thousands of thousands of HP per second healing, and permanent infinite energy for the entire squad without end.

I agree with point 1, but disagree with point 2.  The entire point of the duration skew between the absorb phase and crit phase is to full-stop prevent the ability from being used as an easy access to invincibility.  Letting players have the option to skew it one way or the other goes counter to the entire reason it's designed like it is.

________________________________________________

I agree with most of the rest of things not covered above.  Head hitboxes are better than they used to be by a bit, but they are still indeed quite broken as you've noted.  Shielding is also a very poor survival mechanic as it stands, which is something that needs looked at across all frames in general.  Being a bigger deal to Harrow of course since he's based rather directly upon them.

As a closing point to all this, repeating myself a tad bit since this part is the one that so many folks are asking for;

Penance and Thurible cannot be made to work off of allied kills while retaining their other current traits.  The entire reason that Trinity is almost perpetually in the crosshairs for potentially being nerfed is because she provides such easy and automatic access to endless healing and endless energy without any appropriate downside, drawback, or prerequisite.  Harrow has the potential to provide endless healing and endless energy, but has various caveats upon both things to ensure that it's not a literal easy-mode button in one go.

People have been too spoiled by Trinity's outlandishly bad design, and keep trying to use her as a benchmark for support type roles.

you continue to be a grand source of usefull information. agree with everything here. some are forgetting frames like chroma who will lose the ability to use vex armor due to overshield. it would be a nightmare. and i see it to often in this thread people asking for infinite (not outright saying it) but in what they suggest will lead to infinite.

[EinheriarJudith]

2 hours ago, S0V3REiGN said:

~snip~

toggle will destroy thurible because you cant gain energy except from orbs when you have a toggle on. affinity range is 50m that isnt small (2 of his powers are affinity range). given the nature of condemn being able to go through objects its range works just fine for it (anymore and you will have sniping CC). thurible could get something extra while its building up that goes away when it stops building up (like small damage reduction or immunity to status). honestly they could just make thurible affinity range. people need to learn how to stick close to their support. but in warframe everyone likes running off to a dark corner and when they die they complain. 

[Xyhon]

To every man complaining about "giving shields" to others. Well, here, take a Volt. See what he does for overshields in party. Cheers ;)

[Rakosta_Kai]

After reading all of the different points of view put forward in this thread I am inclined to think the best path for Harrow is for DE to wait on doing anything to his base abilities for a few months.

Giving Overshields to the team sounded like a good idea initially but it would prove ruinous to different frames and playstyles

Some folks are describing him as basically lackluster and compare him to Trinity... Something that shouldn't be being done at all imo.

Giving Health/Energy to the team without having to compete with Nukers to do so sounds like a good idea too... But it would eventually turn Harrow into another HP/NRG Battery long term.

Perhaps the best course is to give him a few months to see how he fits into the "grand scheme of things" before any additional tuning gets made.

He's appears to be strong solo, duo and also appears to be impactful in tougher content (to me so far).

Long story short... Harrow could use some small things but I don't think we know exactly what they are yet. 

[Buzkyl]

8 hours ago, Bobtm said:

I disagree with point one for the same reason I disagree with Penance working off of allied kills.  Given the sheer volume of foes we face in Warframe, Thurible would grant easily accessable infinite energy to everyone forever even with a buildup of 5 energy if it worked from every allied kill.  I do agree that the base charge speed could use an increase a little however.

To reiterate something that I feel that I'll need to;  I can completely understand why a lot of players want Thurible (and Penance) to work when allies kill things.  However, that is way, way too powerful.  If those changes both did occur, Harrow would be jumping to the front of the line for a heavy-handed nerf right away.  Since both changes would equate to thousands of thousands of HP per second healing, and permanent infinite energy for the entire squad without end.

I agree with point 1, but disagree with point 2.  The entire point of the duration skew between the absorb phase and crit phase is to full-stop prevent the a

At best Thurible restoring energy off ally kill should have the restored value reduced by 50% and rounded down. Meaning at 10e charge Thurible will cause harrow to regenerate 10 energy per kill and 40 on HS but ally kills will regenerate 5 energy per kill and only 20 on headshots.

Right now Harrow fits more as  DPS frame than a support frame, he's a support frame that must compete with other frames in order to support them, completely going against his role.

[Eyeless]

4 hours ago, Bobtm said:

 

I'll have to go slightly off-tangent to explain this part about Nidus.  I'll throw it in spoiler tags just to cut down on the vertical post lengthy a little bit.  The TLDR version is that Nidus can infinite loop his abilities too easily due to having no cost on 2 out of 4 of them.

  Reveal hidden contents

Part of Nidus' issue is that he can full on dump-stat Efficiency into nothingness without

any drawback at all.  His kit is far, far too self-sustaining for how powerful it is.  While you don't precisely spam his 3 and his 4, you can easily keep them up forever a little before you reach 10 stacks without any problem.  Their stack generation potential drastically exceeds their cost.  The same fairing for his 1 and 2, which end up allowing for easy sustain loops.  Basically Nidus' ability uptime is outright 99.9% (downtime being recast animation) on his 3 and 3, with his 1 and 2 being infinitely repeatable casts.  If Nidus' 3 and 4 had energy costs of 75 and 100 respectively like the standard energy costs of those ability slots, that loop would be more rough for him to keep going.  Since unlike his 1 (and by proxy his 2) he wouldn't gain energy from the cast directly.

While testing a few things as him, I purposefully took an unranked Nidus into a Kuva Flood purely to see if his stack generation/sustain could exceed things even at a handicap setting.  Since his kit embraces spamming to a T, you end up being able to rank up during said run through 2/1 spam, then can immediately startup your 3 usually upon reaching the Siphon or during it, and subsequently his 4 will be going before that Siphon ends.  All with essentially 0 deaths guaranteed due to his combined passive trait and 3.

For all intents and purposes, Nidus' abilities might as well not even have ability costs, and there's no real forethought, planning, or setup required to make it work.

How that relates into Harrow is that you cannot easily spam-cast his 2 due to the combined energy and shield cost it has.  The energy cost forces an extra drain to make using his 1 to restock shields harder, without the player stopping and landing shots to get their 3 working.  Basically the energy cost acts as a buffer to forestall easy looping of Penance.  Harrow's current design directly forces the player to act in order to retain their ability looping.[/spoiler]

The cap forces you to make those recasts during a 60 second or less window.  I do agree that the casting animation should merely be two-handed but not one that locks the frame's legs to make it not feel unnecessarily clunky.  However, without the cap it's obscenely easy to pin down a small cluster of enemies, then seclude yourself to a whipping session while you use your 1 to force some enemies to stay as an audience.  With a bit of Thurible storing you can get far more than the casting cost from one headshotted foe.  Allowing for only a small bit of diminishing returns over time unless more enemies purchase a ticket to the show.

Without the cap, it would be easy to pre-stock Penance to last for 5/10 minutes in a very small period of time.  With a little more time you could wrack up even more absurd durations.  Having a cap means that this is impossible, forcing the Harrow to actually stay in the fray and timing out their use of Penance if they want to keep it going.

Also, if your other changes to Thurible/Penance were paired in alongside the removed cap.  It would make the sustain loop even easier since you would never need to worry about healing yourself or shooting anything to repeatedly loop the two abilities.  Assuming even a minimal investment on Thurible to gain 5 energy per kill (non-headshot), it would only require 5 enemies to be killed by allies to fuel another cast of Condemn which would then feedback into a 0 casting cost of his Penance, and that's if the build being used has no Efficiency mods.  With them, the loop becomes even easier to maintain.

All of the changes you suggest when put together in tandem are too self-sustain loop inducing, while also allowing Harrow to basically do nothing but be a totem to buff allies without directly acting much at all.

This would be a fair idea actually, and I could agree with that if we could trust the balance to be done correctly to not let things get drastically out of hand.

But would that actually happen?  Weapon balance has been one of the biggest thorns around these parts, so I don't think this is a realistic suggestion.  If the caps were handled correctly I do agree that this would work, but I don't believe that such caps would actually be done right.

If it were capped correctly then yes, you'd be right.  If Thurible gains were open to allies as-is now though without a per-weapon balance, getting to 20 per kill isn't too hard to do.  So having a guaranteed 20 energy per kill across the board, with 80 per headshot, would be more than enough to sustain even the craziest of energy guzzlers due to the sheer volume of enemies we fight during missions.  Trinity is a whole other problem of course, but that's another topic entirely for a different thread.

Nevertheless I also enjoyed your counterpoints as well.  While we're not exactly on the same page with regards to Harrow's mechanical focus, it's an interesting discussion to have.

 

 

This is an issue with Nidus, we shouldn't further gimp a frame's utility because Nidus himself is ridiculously overpowered. If other frames have a similar problem then it is them that need addressed, rather than harming any potential buffs Harrow will/should receive. As it stands all Harrow provides very little for how much work the player must put in to help the team. Most of which is counteracted by your squad playing the game. 

He needs friendlies to be able to trigger his buffs, as well as some QoL tweaks. It's easy enough to put a cap on how much his team can benefit from his abilities, as another poster has suggested. Keeping him away from such tweaks may seem nice on paper but in practice with even just one AoE frame or weapon Harrow is woefully equipped to do much of anything until spawns are hitting an overwhelming density. 

At the very least, I think making his 1 give shields to everyone in range of the kills is fair. Making Thurible a one-handed action should be taken into consideration- and if made team-wide then again- you can easily cap how much people receive. 

 

Edited July 3, 2017 by Hastur609

[Grimmstyler]

On 7/1/2017 at 9:27 AM, Genjinaro said:

This ability double dips in costs to cast. Given it drops ALL of his shields, shields primarily funded by the casting of his 1st ability.

agree with that

Cast.. then get shot by high lvl enemy.. get killed or energy drained with quick thinking.. then you cant cast condemn (power 1) to restore shields

Solution: (Equp mod Rage).. Intense skills (not casual), casting Covenant (power 4).. Cast Penance (power 2).. Cast Condemn (power 1).. Kill enemys

Edited July 3, 2017 by Grimmstyler

[Pizzarugi]

I finished building Harrow today. If played right, he's a remarkably tanky frame. The biggest issue I have with him is the lack of quality of life for his thurible. Leaving him to score kills to recharge teammates and himself is a very bad idea, especially if you get efficient teammates who can nuke enemies, meaning he wasted 100+ energy for just about nothing. My riven augmented amprex is powerful, but it can't outperform a high stacked Nidus or a resonating quake Banshee.

I propose teammate kills also provide energy to allies, but at 25% of the efficiency and only if they're standing in the radius of Harrow's thurible. If he generates 10 energy on kill and 40 on headshot, teammates generate 2.5 and 10 on headshot. This allows Harrow to still generate the most energy for his team and encourages him to stay close to allies.

Edited July 3, 2017 by Pizzarugi

[Abekrie]

Harrow will never be a support frame so long as he needs to compete for kills for everyone to benefit from it.

Too often have I, eventually, drained over 250 energy into a Thurible only for no payoff because of my team getting all of the kills (And then run into an elevator or two).

 

His first ability needs to be spammed a bit more due to the narrow AoE it has. Could use small tweaks to the width of it.

Second ability sacrifices all shields while rooting you in place... for a small fire rate/reload buff... that only applies to yourself. The lifesteal only applies to Harrow's damage which could be a team-wide effect at a reasonable level considering how much he pays just to get this skill going.

Third one has a relatively small area of effect for allies to be near Harrow to benefit, and Harrow needs to be the one making the kills. Again, not a very support oriented role if he needs to compete against his team just for any payoff or reward.

Never had too much to complain about his fourth ability with perhaps some tweaks to the cast time. Going to try natural talent on it to see how that goes, but it's not a big deal compared to the other parts of his kit that could use some loving.

[EinheriarJudith]

32 minutes ago, Pizzarugi said:

I finished building Harrow today. If played right, he's a remarkably tanky frame. The biggest issue I have with him is the lack of quality of life for his thurible. Leaving him to score kills to recharge teammates and himself is a very bad idea, especially if you get efficient teammates who can nuke enemies, meaning he wasted 100+ energy for just about nothing. My riven augmented amprex is powerful, but it can't outperform a high stacked Nidus or a resonating quake Banshee.

I propose teammate kills also provide energy to allies, but at 25% of the efficiency and only if they're standing in the radius of Harrow's thurible. If he generates 10 energy on kill and 40 on headshot, teammates generate 2.5 and 10 on headshot. This allows Harrow to still generate the most energy for his team and encourages him to stay close to allies.

disagree. even if the energy you get back is 1. it turns into infinite energy because all harrow has to do is toggle the power once and then keep repeating. now what they could do is allow partial kill credit so he doesnt have to kill them himself but still has to land hits on them. no hit, no energy back. penance doesn't require killing and neither should thurible

Edited July 3, 2017 by EinheriarJudith