[U21 Megathread] New Warframe: Harrow

[UvBenServed]

5 minutes ago, D20 said:

Maybe shield gating won't act like that though. We can't really count on an upcoming feature that we have no info about yet. :/

Yeah, that bit was just wishful thinking on my part. But shield gating or not, some sort of temporary damage mitigation would help with Penance's vulnerability. I also saw another thread earlier suggesting that, since you sacrifice shields to use Penance, it shouldn't have an energy cost. This would make sense since Nidus has abilities that cost stacks, but not energy. And removing the energy cost on Penance would allow that energy to go towards some other ability (1 or 4) that Harrow can use to defend himself.

3 minutes ago, TheKingofChaos said:

i do see your point and agree that this frame should never be cornered. but forcing him to kill things to keep his team mates alive can be... problomatic. fast killers can really put a damper on your ability to support, both for energy and for health. overzelious teams can really cripple you sometimes, mostly higher levels where someone needs healing right now but the mesa has decreed death to all things not tenno. but maybe im thinking too specific. ether way penance stil needs something too it. that 'edge' it gives really isn't all that much from what iv seen :/

I agree that this can be annoying. But this problem isn't exclusive to Harrow. Allies stealing Nidus' kills prevents him from being able to build stacks, which can make him feel pretty useless (aside from Larva's CC).

Even if you're not playing as a warframe whose abilities rely on damaging/killing enemies, it can be a bummer to play with someone who's killing all the enemies before you even have a chance to see them. WoF Ember, Spore Saryn, SQ Banshee, etc.

[LascarCapable]

Just now, UvBenServed said:

Yeah, that bit was just wishful thinking on my part. But shield gating or not, some sort of temporary damage mitigation would help with Penance's vulnerability. I also saw another thread earlier suggesting that, since you sacrifice shields to use Penance, it shouldn't have an energy cost. This would make sense since Nidus has abilities that cost stacks, but not energy. And removing the energy cost on Penance would allow that energy to go towards some other ability (1 or 4) that Harrow can use to defend himself.

Now that's something I can agree with. It seems more understandable that Penance only costs shields for such a dangerous self buff. I would still prefer if Penance got turned into a team wide buff though, but that kind of change could be decent as well.

[Nyddedaallan]

I agree 99% with you.. the 1% is for Thurible.. Why? Because you are Completely defenseless when it is active; besides bullet jumping and rolling around you cannot do much to make sure you don't get hit. I feel like thurible needs to have the ability of either allowing the use of your pistol or using the Thurible itself as a weapon to at least give you some defensive capabilities...

EDIT: Also the amount of times I have died to penance draining my shields is well... lets say I've lost count

Edited July 1, 2017 by Firehead331

[LascarCapable]

45 minutes ago, Firehead331 said:

I agree 99% with you.. the 1% is for Thurible.. Why? Because you are Completely defenseless when it is active; besides bullet jumping and rolling around you cannot do much to make sure you don't get hit. I feel like thurible needs to have the ability of either allowing the use of your pistol or using the Thurible itself as a weapon to at least give you some defensive capabilities...

EDIT: Also the amount of times I have died to penance draining my shields is well... lets say I've lost count

Being able to use weapons while using Thurible could definitely be something nice to have.

[DBugII]

20 hours ago, Ocerkin said:

im curious who in DE thought "OMG HARROW IS TO OP WITH A LONGER THAN 60 SECOND BUFF!!!!!  NERF HIM!!!!!!" when basically the entirety of the forums are saying he is underpowered and underwhelming, its like no one is listening. a long timer on penance is the LEAST of harrows problems

This. Harrow has a number of problems.

The fact they immediately started rebalancing him by nerfing something that did not need to be changed as it had no major effect on gameplay is merely pouring more salt on a bleeding wound (hah).
Penace is already a very costly ability draining ALL SHIELDS, ROOTS YOU IN PLACE AND LEAVING YOUR VULNERABLE WHILE IT CASTS, and USING 50 ENERGY. It is the most costly ability in the game and it ONLY AFFECTS HARROW (short of the healing which is only given when Harrow does damage). I'd rather be flogging my enemies for all the disadvantages that comes from using this ability. If they really wanted to fix it, they could have just removed its ability to stack because no other buff in the game can be stacked like that. Or better yet, have it drain shields over time to provide the buff and then cancel once shields are depleted. How it is right now is almost a mirror of same problems Frost had with his Snowglobe prior to his rework: They put on more limitations than the reward for using the ability warrants and it makes the ability either borderline useless or substandard.
His 4th ability is the most lazily thrown together garbage since Iron Skin and Blessing pre-nerf. Seconds of invincibility, except now you also get rewarded more for taking damage during it, and any damage you do while Penace is active heals teammates.

Great balancing job, DE. You literally recreated Oberon before his rework. Granted to be fair, Oberon was at least still more useful to the squad back then than Harrow is now.

tl;dr - Fix Penance to not be trash. Give him an Ult that isn't effortless garbage.

Edited July 1, 2017 by DBugII

[Domaik]

Overall he is quite disappointing...he needs a buff but I have only seen nerfs so far. This is not the right way to tackle things. Octavia and Nidus are in a much better position than Harrow...

[jinxeverything]

I still don't have Harrow yet but it seems these ideas may help him.

His passive, why not make it not only gives him double shields but faster shield recharge rate? also energy orbs = small shield recharge boost or instant 1/3 shield!

His second ability, give it the ability to refresh by recasting without losing all the remaining time (he always retain 25% of its duration), also should its duration be based on how much shield was sacrificed?

His third ability, inverse the duration so more duration means less time to charge up or make this ability into types :

Type 1 : press the button, get buff then kill to get energy.

Type 2 : hold the button to concentrate the buff then damage enemies to get energy, killing them gives double energy, killing headshots give triple!

I am speaking without experiencing him yet sooo I may speak out of my arse, my apology in advance :'( 

[LSG501]

You know I can't even believe I'm saying this but I think harrow chassis might need it's drop rate reducing a little.... I don't want to make life harder for people to get the chassis but if you can get 2 in a lith exterminate mission or even a lith spy mission I think it's maybe a little too easy and it's feels even more common than oberon parts and we all know what sort of joke his drop rates gets.

[Kezriak]

2 hours ago, D20 said:

Either way, the cost puts you in a situation that is too uncomfortable for a self buff of RoF/reload speed and a lifesteal effect. If you're going to sacrifice all of your shields and put yourself in a bad situation, the RoF and reload speed buff should at least be awarded to allies as well.

Yea it is weird how little interaction a support frame has with his team, his ult and his 3, but his 3 hinges on being the player that gets the killing blow in order to restore energy..Idk everything about this frame seems either half done or just plain rushed.

[hukurokuju5]

1, Condemn. 

// PROBLEM: strong survivability vs low level enemies, but  paper vs 30+.  also too narrow OR slow ( hard to land / sluggish , respectively)

>> FIX : add # of SHIELD GATES based on SHIELDS GAINED per SINGLECAST.  

this helps harrow with survivability outside of 4 timer. helps against scaling enemies,

• every 400 overshields per single cast, gain a *gate
• max 4 *gates
• each gate has (0.5 - 1  depends on how gate # cap) second invuln after popping

>> QOL: width /travel speed increase

 

2, Penance

// PROBLEM: long cast time + no additional effect while casting. wasted opportunity to add to kit

>> FIX : add CONDEMN EFFECT in SHORT RANGED AOE, CENTERED AROUND HARROW on CAST

allows shield regain and gate gain opportunity= survivability while casting.

• limit shield gain per cast
• limit # of gates gained per cast to ( 1 or 2 depeding on gate invuln length )

 

3, Thurible

// PROBLEM: no additional effect while charging your spirit bomb

>> FIX : add CONDEMN EFFECT with DYNAMIC MELEE HITBOX

allows shield regain and gate gain opportunity= survivability while casting.

• limit shield gain per cast
• limit # of gates gained per cast to ( 1 or 2 depeding on gate invuln length )
• please make range of melee condemn usable....

 

4, Covenant

// no PROBLEM: if above changes are implemented, harrow will have some survivability outside of covenants short timer

 

[hukurokuju5]

multipost delete plz

Edited July 1, 2017 by hukurokuju5
multipost

[Tesseract7777]

After putting a forma on Harrow and spending more time testing him, I have some more, succinct thoughts: 

Passive: 

Withholding judgment here really. It's a good idea, and I think it works for a shield frame like Harrow, but he seems a little extra squishy now because shield gating didn't come with the update as originally planned. We can't really know how effective this will be for defense overall once shield gating comes. For example, will shield gating innately, or at least offer a mod with said update, that allows us to turn proc damage into shield damage instead of health? Cause if not, shields are still going to suffer greatly, but time will tell. It would also be nice if Fast Deflection could also decrease shield recharge delay, something no mod does, but isn't strong enough an effect imo for its own mod. 

For now, making Brief Respite work while overshields are active would be a nice buff for Harrow's shield survivability, while actually giving the aura a place in the game and a chance to shine. It would hardly be OP at all, as the amounts of shields gained are very small when you consider how much shields you will get. For example, to get roughly 100 shields you will need three casts of Condemn at regular efficiency, so it would hardly be gamebreaking. 

Condemn:

Needs verticality

Needs to be a bit wider, although not necessarily a cone.

Base duration is just too short, bumping it up to 8s base from 6 would be enough. 

Penance:

Right now the biggest issue with penance is that the timer now invalidates a lot of the shield sacrifice mechanic -- what's the point of using shields to increase the duration anymore when we are capped? Now if we use Penance with max shields and have a duration build, we are wasting shields. Simple fix here:

Shields sacrificed that overflow past the timer cap increase the fire rate/reload speed/life steal buff. 

He is vulnerable for too long while casting, becoming increasingly weaker as he removes his shields. To have less time as a sitting duck, have him remove all the shields in one chunk, instead of first overshields and then regular shields, and smooth out the final part of the animation a bit. 

Thurible:

Increase the speed that we drain our energy for Thurible by at least x2. Right now it takes way too long to channel our energy into thurible, and while we can move around and flip and such, despite the animation really being one handed (other hand is on our chest) we cannot shoot or melee or use any one handed abilities. We are very vulnerable and even just to get it up to 5-10 takes longer than it should. 

Allies kills and headshots should count for thurible energy for all in range, but at reduced effectiveness, maybe 50%? This would help keep it balanced, while making him more of a team player and better for actual support. It wouldn't be OP as it would still take way more setup than using EV Trin, to get even close to the same amounts, but at least it would be team viable now. 

To help protect Harrow while he is channeling, make the thurible do a small amount of impact damage and stagger enemies within say, 3m (similar to the warding halo aura), while Harrow is channeling Thurible. Apart from movement he is very helpless while using it so this would really help him a lot, without being any kind of OP whatsoever. 

Covenant: Decrease the initial casting time down to about 1/3 or less if possible of how long it takes now. The animation time is simply too long. Even with a duration build, with how much of my invuln is taken up by casting time, I can hardly safely revive a teammate, or really take advantage of that time at all. Apart from that I am actually of the mind that Covenant is perfectly fine, but that casting time is a huge issue. 

Thank you for reading! 

[EinheriarJudith]

please for gods sake fix his outfit clipping issues.

[Phyrak]

3 hours ago, DBugII said:

This. Harrow has a number of problems.

The fact they immediately started rebalancing him by nerfing something that did not need to be changed as it had no major effect on gameplay is merely pouring more salt on a bleeding wound (hah).
Penace is already a very costly ability draining ALL SHIELDS, ROOTS YOU IN PLACE AND LEAVING YOUR VULNERABLE WHILE IT CASTS, and USING 50 ENERGY. It is the most costly ability in the game and it ONLY AFFECTS HARROW (short of the healing which is only given when Harrow does damage). I'd rather be flogging my enemies for all the disadvantages that comes from using this ability. If they really wanted to fix it, they could have just removed its ability to stack because no other buff in the game can be stacked like that. Or better yet, have it drain shields over time to provide the buff and then cancel once shields are depleted. How it is right now is almost a mirror of same problems Frost had with his Snowglobe prior to his rework: They put on more limitations than the reward for using the ability warrants and it makes the ability either borderline useless or substandard.
His 4th ability is the most lazily thrown together garbage since Iron Skin and Blessing pre-nerf. Seconds of invincibility, except now you also get rewarded more for taking damage during it, and any damage you do while Penace is active heals teammates.

Great balancing job, DE. You literally recreated Oberon before his rework. Granted to be fair, Oberon was at least still more useful to the squad back then than Harrow is now.

tl;dr - Fix Penance to not be trash. Give him an Ult that isn't effortless garbage.

An idea for tweaking the ult

Due to the cc of his 1, it makes little sense for damage to come through and scale up the crits when the foes are cc'd and cannot attack you.

A possible solution.

Upon triggering ult, gain/give baseline crit chance to self and allies. This crit chance scales with power strength x power efficiency - this power efficiency scaling allows for synergy between 3 and 4 due to % of max energy taken.

Eg. (theoretical base crit + intensify + streamline)

5% crit + 30% str + 30% efficiency akin to 3 = greater crit chance given out to allies and foes without the need for cc'd foes to attack you

Compensate the need to be attacked by increasing the base duration to 7 - allowing for Harrow to put out some reasonable damage and gain those red crits as he was designed to be

Also, half the animation time whilst we're at it please!

Any thoughts on this potential and it working with the rest of his kit?

[Phyrak]

Copied over from another thread:

An idea for tweaking the ult

Due to the cc of his 1, it makes little sense for damage to come through and scale up the crits when the foes are cc'd and cannot attack you.

A possible solution.

Upon triggering ult, gain/give baseline crit chance to self and allies. This crit chance scales with power strength x power efficiency - this power efficiency scaling allows for synergy between 3 and 4 due to % of max energy taken.

Eg. (theoretical base crit + intensify + streamline)

5% crit + 30% str + 30% efficiency akin to 3 = greater crit chance given out to allies and foes without the need for cc'd foes to attack you

Compensate the need to be attacked by increasing the base duration to 7 - allowing for Harrow to put out some reasonable damage and gain those red crits as he was designed to be

Also, half the animation time whilst we're at it please!

Any thoughts on this potential and it working with the rest of his kit?

[Eyeless]

My proposed changes:

1. Teamates that get headshots on chained targets also replenish shields and build overshields. Within a set radius maybe anyone getting a headshot on these enemies gives everyone shields.

2. Increase that !@#$ duration cap / Allow ally kills to restore health as well. It takes so long to cast and leaves you so vulnerable- and to build it up again takes way longer. It's a complete hassle. 

3. For the love of god speed up the process. Friendly kills in his radius restore energy as well.

4. Instead of nerfing the lower ranks- revert that change and buff the Rank 30'd skill. 

 

Bam, now we have a potent crit monster with some actual team synergy. 

 

Edited July 1, 2017 by Hastur609

[Wyndeigo]

Visually, Harrow is a great looking frame, but there is no satisfying experience in his gameplay. I put 1 Forma in him leveled him back up to 30 and haven't touched him since release day. I do not consider him to be a worthwhile investment of my Plat at this time.

Edited July 1, 2017 by Wyndeigo

[ikkabotz]

22 hours ago, Evanescent said:

Allow us to at least use Condemn while charging Thurible: let us have some way to retaliate and not be passive while swinging.

Doing a little slide dash and then canceling it works great. Get creative evading, rolling, slide jumping. You can also dance a little bit to evade hitting "w a s d" in combinations doing small spins. Another great move is to boost into the air and then change the trajectory you are moving by rolling mid-air in a different direction. The parkour has a ton of great ways to integrate evasion, just takes a tiny bit of APM ability and sense of when to evade. I don't mind it the way it is as thurible tends to be a pretty huge game changer, would prefer it's not dispensed too easily. In contrast you can cast condemn before using Thurible.  

I've been playing Harrow on MOT giving teammates huge returns on energy and really a lot of energy to use his abilities at will. We went 60 minutes on this last one. I think having a sense of when to time his abilities is a critical factor in playing him and you really have to consider your weapon loadout. I have not had issues playing him at all. Extremely powerful to the team. You have to be active when playing with him depending on the group you're with and how they play with you. He's not a passive frame whatsoever, coordinating with teammates is a must. Get in a good group and you won't even have to explain and they just get it.

I think in order to really play Harrow you need highly modded weapons and some of the stronger mods for a frame. He's not a newer player friendly frame. I love him. The action on him feels good. Proposing to have teammates return energy on kills from thurible is a terrible idea. You'd literally have energy all the time. Players should be more aware of the benefits to letting you get kills instead. Saying he's mediocre right now is hilarious. Mediocre in the hands of a mediocre player maybe. Sorry, my own opinion. Make sure to maximize Thurible's energy gain each time you choose to use it faced with the situation and make sure you have a weapon that has some great dmg output. Makes a big difference. Volt compliments him really well and can help with Thurible's charging speed.  

Edited July 2, 2017 by komoriblues

[SenorClipClop]

On 6/29/2017 at 11:26 AM, SSI_Seraph said:

How are you supposed to kill stuff to provide your team with energy when an equinox/ember or any aoe is nuking everything you are aiming at

Well, even with any other support that restores energy, all toggled abilities prevent Energy regeneration of any kind, so your point is pretty moot. Aside, this Warframe (like most other supports except Trinity) requires at least a bit of attention from teammates to be maximally effective. It's not a problem with Harrow, it's just that when a team is undisputedly rolling a mission without even trying, supportive abilities don't really matter.

[DrBorris]

9 hours ago, D20 said:

Either way, the cost puts you in a situation that is too uncomfortable for a self buff of RoF/reload speed and a lifesteal effect. If you're going to sacrifice all of your shields and put yourself in a bad situation, the RoF and reload speed buff should at least be awarded to allies as well.

I would bet the reason RoF is not given to allies is because I can see a lot of people not wanting their auto weapons turning into mag-dumps (I can agree here, not sure I want someone changing how my weapons feel). 

Lifesteal is probably DE thinking "it'll be OP" (I disagree here, but not the end of the world)

Volt already has a reload speed buff, so I can't think of any good reason besides consistency (The other two effects don't affect allies, why would the third?... stupid reason IMO). 

 

From what I have heard about Penance (not played Harrow yet, still in the oven) it sounds like his clunkiest ability. It has good bonuses on the surface but it does not do a lot for his "support" classification when compared to Equinox's, Trinity's, and Oberon's support abilities. 

Sacrificing your shields is a great concept, but how the affects of the ability are dished out is where the issue seems to be. 

 

On topic, Harrow effectively has infinite energy, so I don't see any harm either way, but for the sake of fitting the description I will agree that it should not cost energy. 

Edited July 2, 2017 by DrBorris

[Evanescent]

20 hours ago, Fallen_Echo said:

Reading all the changes made to harrow im starting to think its not worth to farm him.

He is very much worth it. It isn't a huge blow to him, contrary to what everyone seems to be saying, just an unneeded one.

[Chipputer]

3 hours ago, SenorClipClop said:

Aside, this Warframe (like most other supports except Trinity) requires at least a bit of attention from teammates to be maximally effective. It's not a problem with Harrow,

He doesn't require a bit of attention. He requires everyone else backing off. In order to maximally use Harrow you have to actively slow down your gameplay to the point that you may as well have not even bothered bringing him in the first place. I don't mean slow down like, "we were barreling through the level and now we're just jogging," I mean slow down your gameplay like, "there's a group of 10 enemies there that I could kill with one shot from this gun but I have to wait for this Harrow to do their job and kill them so that way we can all get energy."

That's not good design. That's not fluid. That's not going to help your team much when, as the enemies continue to get tougher, killing quickly becomes more and more of an issue.

Even at the point that you're taking him into a Sortie 3 you're already seeing where his falloff range is and that, in and of itself, is a problem. Utility shouldn't ever be outscaled and half of Harrow's utility gets outscaled far too quickly. Your team paying, "at least a bit of attention," isn't going to fix that.

[SenorClipClop]

1 minute ago, Chipputer said:

He doesn't require a bit of attention. He requires everyone else backing off. In order to maximally use Harrow you have to actively slow down your gameplay to the point that you may as well have not even bothered bringing him in the first place.

I don't know about you, but for me it has worked so far. I show up in pugs as the incense-swinging Harrow, and my teammates give me space, because they know exactly the benefits they can get by leaving me souls to condemn. And again I mention, if the team is easily rolling the mission, they clearly don't need a support, so I can go off to another tile and play on my own until the next rotation, then check back in.

4 minutes ago, Chipputer said:

That's not going to help your team much when, as the enemies continue to get tougher, killing quickly becomes more and more of an issue.

Again, just drawing from my own experience, but I've stood in corridors and face-tanked Heavy Gunners to turn regular bullets into triple-crit bullets, and that has killed things pretty quickly. If there's a level where that hasn't had some kind of meaningful effect, I haven't played him at it yet. Granted, I haven't taken him into a Sortie yet, but I'll let you know how it goes. All I can say is that I took him into a Void Survival yesterday at Level 14 with half a build, until at 40 minutes in I realized the rest of my team was struggling.

[RainzoneG]

In a game where max range Atterax and other mass-killing weps and warframes exist all over the place, how is a support frame that works by killing enemies can do it's job properly? Especially in public games my teammates barely cares about the Harrow lol.

[SenorClipClop]

Wait, so apart from the the 20% buff to his ultimate, Harrow is ruined because he needs to spend 50 energy per minute to get lifesteal instead of every 80 seconds, when he has an invincibility skill, a hard-CC skillshot, built-in Energy return and access to a Sentinel mod that restores like 800 shields immediately after using this skill? After casting Penance, I get almost full shileds right away and an offensive buff, and if 3 is active (~60 second duration) I get back the energy after killing a single basic grunt unit. How close are you to failing as a Harrow that this minor change has you foundering? I am not having this issue.

Edited July 2, 2017 by SenorClipClop