Are Nidus and Octavia overpowered or is everyone else under powered and not as well designed?

[AugmentedJustice]

I just finished leveling them both up. UN-potatoed and they are both phenomenal frames. Very impressed with both of them and how sustained their dmg is even at higher levels un potated with decent modset up at best. I kept thinking to myself, are they both overpowered, or are they both so well designed that it gives the illusion of them being OP and it's just that I wish a lot of other frames were designed as well as them.

 

Thoughts?

[BornWithTeeth]

They're both powerful frames, but they have kind of a gameplay cost. Octavia's power set is basically just a cooldown management mini game where you hammer buttons to reactivate each ability as it wears off, and Nidus has to continuously spam his first ability, all the time, forever.

 

As far as frames with scaling damage output go, I much prefer Equinox. Her power set is much more interactive and tactical than Octavia's, and doesn't require the kind of spam build up that Nidus' does, plus she's a member of Club Covert Lethality.

Edited July 7, 2017 by BornWithTeeth

[Dromeos-Prime]

No matter how "OP" a Damage frame is it still has a limit.

Nidus is useless in a team, because it'll virtually be impossible to build stacks.

Octavia is a snorefest-cooldown minigame frame who's popularity lasted a whole month.

Eventually CC becomes king and that's where frames like Loki, Frost, Vauban, Nyx, etc... Because at that point all you have to rely on are your weapons, and with the addition of rivens, weapons will always be stronger than frames.

[-AoN-CanoLathra-]

In short: Yes.

The biggest difference between Nidus and Octavia and all other warframes is the rate at which their powers scale and the ease of the scaling process. With nidus, you simply press 1 while looking at a line/group of enemies, and you immediately start scaling in power strength and health regen. With Octavia, simply go invisible and throw down your 1; the more powerful the nearby enemies the faster they will fall.

The only other warframe with any sort of scaling on the same scale as Nidus and Octavia is a Day Equinox, and that requires a lot of work and, while Maim does scale infinitely, it does not last indefinitely like Nidus, nor does it scale as quickly as Octavia.

So yes, Nidus and Octavia are very powerful, and yes, some other frames need to be brought up to their level.

[Chipputer]

I see a disturbing trend between ease of killing and how quickly people say something is well designed. Apply this same logic to weapons and it just doesn't stick. A frame being powerful doesn't hold up as a better designed frame simply due to feeling better, either.

I would argue that, aside from clunky Hallowed Ground synergies, Oberon is probably the best designed frame in the game due to the balance of how powerful he is and what he can do. Others would argue that he isn't for the exact same reasons because they feel that he isn't very powerful or doesn't fill the niche they would like him to.

Likewise, I would argue that Nidus is one of the poorest designed frames in the game. His 2, 3, and 4 are fine. His 1 is his fatal flaw. All you do, as Nidus, is spam his 1. You use the other 3 powers when necessary (generally you use 2 to control a group so you can press 1 on them), though his 4 is basically a, "lay this down at a highly trafficked area when it's off cooldown," sort of thing and his 3 is, "decide if you want to be nigh immortal or you want to buff yourself and a party member." He's good but his gameplay devolves into spamming his first power nearly endlessly and, as a result, I cannot view him as anything more than a powerful distraction.

Octavia, on the other hand, is basically, "press your power buttons when they're off cool down. Maybe don't hit 2 depending on the situation," and not much else. She has a lot of situational buffs but we all know the only one anybody cares about is the stealth buff and her 1 does so much damage to unarmored enemies (and destroys bombard rockets and destroys nullifier bubbles) that I can't call her anything but overpowered as a result. There are end game survival team comps that basically have nothing but loot frames and Octavia sitting at a dead end while she just refreshes her 1 over and over, presses 3 when they need life support, and they all stealth and run out to loot.

You might be having fun killing things quickly but that's not what decides a frame is good or well designed. If it were we'd see far more people running Equinox than we actually do.

[blackheartstar_pc]

Not sure about overpowered as I don't believe in that concept, but I'd say they were the opposite of well designed because they are both boring to play as imo.

Edited July 7, 2017 by blackheartstar_pc

[redeyedtreefrog]

I would argue that octavia is one of the worst designed frames in the game. Is she powerful? Sure. Is she useful? Definitely.

But here is gameplay as octavia:

press 1 near a place where enemies are likely to pass through.

Press 4 to amplify damage.

Press 3, crouch a bunch of times, maybe give yourself some other buffs if you play her enough to know what her soundboard full of buff icons all mean.

Repeat when any of those abilities run out of duration

 

Seriously, her 2 isn't even useful if you want to deal damage; half the time enemies won't shoot at the mallet if it's being carried by a roller.

 

Coupled with her 1st ability having 0 base damage, and having as little direct interaction with the game's enemies as possible, turn her into a rhythm game at best, and a fancy bobblehead at worst.

 

Even TRINITY is a better designed frame than octavia(despite being such a stupidly overpowered frame that the entire game is balanced around her by now), because at least gameplay with trinity has the potential for depth, using her first 2 abilities strategically to provide limited CC(yeah, I know it doesn't work that way in-game but the framework is there). Octavia is a frame built entirely around having to do nothing to do anything, which is one of the worst designs DE could have come up with.

[(PSN)robotwars7]

I think it's a case of older frames just not scaling as well as newer ones. Nidus scales well, Octavia scales well, and from what I've seen, Harrow can scale pretty well too. these frames have been designed with the "endgame" in mind, provided that endgame is defined as fighting extremely high levelled enemies. given that Sorties and long Survival runs are where most people go for endgame, I'd say that qualifies. frames designed long ago were likely never really meant to go beyond level 50, but now you can simply hit up the Void or the first Sortie to reach those levels. some older frames have had reworks that help address the issue, but they still don't scale as well as those two.

that said, I still wouldn't call Nidus or Octavia overpowered, since there are downsides to using them; Nidus requires constant micro-management, endless spamming of his 1 in order to gain stacks. think of him as a Freight train: he needs a little time to gather momentum, but once he's going at full speed, he can destroy anything in his path with ease. Octavia has power too, but she has little interactivity as all her powers are single cast with Duration. all you have to do is use all 4 powers in quick succession, and you can basically do nothing for at least 30 secs, longer with high duration. she can end up being pretty boring, and no matter how well you designed your song, it'll pi$$ you off when you've been listening to it for an hour straight on an endless run.

I'd say Nidus is the closest we've gotten to a "perfect" frame thus far: capable of easily fulfilling multiple roles within the team (Tank, CC, damage and healer), but still requiring some effort on the players part. he rewards players who make frequent use of their powers, which makes sense in a game where we are supposed to use our space magic as much as possible.

 

[Semune]

Nidus is most certainly overpowered because he simply cannot die and has scaling damage on an amazing ability.

Octavia giving as big of a damage buff, and stealth, is overpowered as well.

But you can't say that this is new, Nova has been in the game for a very long time and no matter how many times they nerf her, she's still pretty much a "press 4 and make everything within 70 meters utterly useless".

Loki is also permastealth that just needs energy siphon to never lose energy, not even Zenurik is needed. 

Mesa is an unstoppable killing machine, do you have a fully modded out Mesa or have you seen one? Makes ALL content laughable, period.

[Heatnix.]

A lot of Warframes are showing their age. As the game went on, they got better at coding and designing and their focus shifted from a stealthy, gritty game into a colorful, explode all the things like michael bay game. Even by giving reworks to some frames (which they sort of slowed down to a crawl (as usual. they always start something and drop it or slow down to a crawl)) a lot of the original and middle frames are just completely showing their age. Some have held strong because of the ONE skill that was unique and still powerful such as Nova, but others like Ember and Hydroid? Yawn.

It doesn't matter, though. People just Atterax/Lecta-dash their way. Not like a Warframe's powers matter anymore anyway.

[theGlassAlice]

Nah. They're boring. I prefer the older frame.

[theGlassAlice]

8 hours ago, redeyedtreefrog said:

I would argue that octavia is one of the worst designed frames in the game. Is she powerful? Sure. Is she useful? Definitely.

But here is gameplay as octavia:

press 1 near a place where enemies are likely to pass through.

Press 4 to amplify damage.

Press 3, crouch a bunch of times, maybe give yourself some other buffs if you play her enough to know what her soundboard full of buff icons all mean.

Repeat when any of those abilities run out of duration

 

Seriously, her 2 isn't even useful if you want to deal damage; half the time enemies won't shoot at the mallet if it's being carried by a roller.

 

Coupled with her 1st ability having 0 base damage, and having as little direct interaction with the game's enemies as possible, turn her into a rhythm game at best, and a fancy bobblehead at worst.

 

Even TRINITY is a better designed frame than octavia(despite being such a stupidly overpowered frame that the entire game is balanced around her by now), because at least gameplay with trinity has the potential for depth, using her first 2 abilities strategically to provide limited CC(yeah, I know it doesn't work that way in-game but the framework is there). Octavia is a frame built entirely around having to do nothing to do anything, which is one of the worst designs DE could have come up with.

Exactly what I thought. I'm even more pissed that she is a MUSIC frame, a frame that is suppose to be fun to play. I really wish they had another music frame in mind or reworked this one right now.

[Atekron]

Not at all, they both are good but not OP.

Nidus has good sustainability and damage, but his source of damage and sustained, first ability, discourage you from using any other weapon, and he not better in surviving then Wukong, Valkyr, Chroma, Rhino, Inaros, and bunch of others.

Octavia is yet another stealth frame with all benefits associated with it, although she not as good in stealth as Ivara or Loki, and she is amazing damage dealer on par with Saryn, Mirage and Mesa.

Edited July 7, 2017 by Atekron

[GrimDelta]

For me Nidus is really easy to play.Press 2 , press 1 repeat.And the power u get at around 70 stacks...pulverizing enemy's.I was trying to level up in the beginning only equiped with basic mods like Steel charge etc.In my first survival on IO jupiter managed to get to 40th wave alone.Was baffled to say at least 

[Evanescent]

I'd say they are well designed rather than OP. They do one thing and do it very well, and scale with their enemies. Most other frames were not designed with scaling enemies in mind and so either have a crutch to use in end-game or have to use a combination of gear items to game the game engine. We've seen some remedy with the way the frame reworks have been coming out, so the devs are slowly going through with updating the roster.

Example:Limbo, Excalibur, Frost, Rhino, etc.

I would also say that Harrow also scales really well. His main downside-and this extends to all new frames and some reworks if you think about it-is that he is not designed for random compositions you run into in PUGs. Without premade, co-ordinated teams or communication they all tend to struggle.

[Nazrethim]

To me, a well designed frame is the one that can complete all the starchart and sorties without requiring any power stat whatsoever or specific Focus tree or arcane. If it can operate on defaul 100% values with no problem then it is well designed, because it allows for build flexibility and customization.

For instantce, Pre-Nerfvisit Ash was clunky, but well designed by it's standards. You could build for any power stat and do fine or focus entirely on utility and EHP/Mobility and still do fine. Now, Post-Nerf Ash is solid as long as he NEVER uses his ultimate, because it's so energy hungry and overlaps with Teleport and Shuriken, while requiring Smoke Screen just to be less of an energy sink, without losing that sink in any noticeale way, the cutscene time was also increased by a whooping 300% too. That is, unless you run with Zenurik or maxed Efficiency, so anyone who didn't build for those in the past was scr*wed out of the Warframe's Ultimate because DE refused to actually rework it in a way that adressed most of the problems. That's a bad design.

Now, I know Old BS was broken, but only when Max Effi was involved, otherwise the ability was in a good spot when used for it's purpose instead of being mindlessly spammed.

Nidus is on a good spot because he can operate with default power values and still do fine. Octavia is on the same boat. No, they are not overpowered.

[-Krism-]

13 hours ago, reptillicus said:

Nidus is useless in a team, because it'll virtually be impossible to build stacks.

I don't know how you play him but I don't have any problem with him, I still can build stacks while letting some enemies to my teammates.

[(PSN)supersocc11]

My one punch atlas may be a one trick rock, but he is definitely not underpowered....lvl 100 bombards and heavy gunners?  I kill them faster with Atlas than I could with NIdus or Octavia.

[LordAsmolicious]

Tell me how Octavia is overpowered? oi stopped bothering with leveling her because shes squishy af and doeals little to no damage even on lower levels. and i even amped range up power str to 200% 

[aligatorno]

5 minutes ago, Marabunta5 said:

Tell me how Octavia is overpowered? oi stopped bothering with leveling her because shes squishy af and doeals little to no damage even on lower levels. and i even amped range up power str to 200% 

1. She can stay invisible indefinitely by constantly refreshing her buff, and has the longest duration of the stealth bunch. 

2. Her Mallet, #1 skill, is an indefinitely scaling ability that shoots back the damage it receives at the enemies. Meaning that no matter the enemy's levels, he'll get damaged a lot. Go and put a Mallet in the middle of a mob and see how easy they all go down.  Amp basically doubles its already high range and up to sextuple its damage.

Edited July 7, 2017 by aligatorno

[LordAsmolicious]

Mhm aight and that invisible thing ,i tried that ability. its WORTHLESS for me as i have 0 sense of rythm xD i cant even get 1 buff to activate so that gives her 3 powers for me to use. doesnt feel right imho but eh, ill give her another shot 

[Maizaeku]

13 hours ago, Chipputer said:

I would argue that, aside from clunky Hallowed Ground synergies, Oberon is probably the best designed frame in the game due to the balance of how powerful he is and what he can do. Others would argue that he isn't for the exact same reasons because they feel that he isn't very powerful or doesn't fill the niche they would like him to.

I played Oberon for the recent sortie assassination against General Sargas Ruk, and it made me appreciate hallowed ground so much more. Not being affected by a boss' frequent knockdown effects is a phenomenally useful thing that made the entire mission more enjoyable. I'm not sure what you mean by clunky synergies though.

[-Temp0-]

Quote

I would argue that, aside from clunky Hallowed Ground synergies, Oberon is probably the best designed frame in the game due to the balance of how powerful he is and what he can do.

As in - nothing. He still can do nothing. Because no one cares about armor stripping, low aoe damage or costy aoe healing.

Quote

Likewise, I would argue that Nidus is one of the poorest designed frames in the game. His 2, 3, and 4 are fine. His 1 is his fatal flaw. All you do, as Nidus, is spam his 1. You use the other 3 powers when necessary (generally you use 2 to control a group so you can press 1 on them), though his 4 is basically a, "lay this down at a highly trafficked area when it's off cooldown," sort of thing and his 3 is, "decide if you want to be nigh immortal or you want to buff yourself and a party member." He's good but his gameplay devolves into spamming his first power nearly endlessly and, as a result, I cannot view him as anything more than a powerful distraction.

You got it bacwards (because while 1 you just have to use, his 3 and 4 are actually awesome and you can't really live long enough without those), but also - this is what you got because of all the people who whined about 'press one button to win' frames. Now you simply can't have a frame that can get by by only using some of his abilities, you need to mash all the buttons in existence. Playing Octavia or Harrow feels like just masing 1-2-3-4 in specific order and not much else, same thing to an extent goes for Nidus.  

And in the long run they're all pretty boring. I kind of enjoyed Nidus for some time and Harrow as well when I leveled him but that's about it. You can as well just set a macro and go afk watching them and it will just as 'entertaining'. Hate to think that all future frames will be like this.

[SamareRein]

They aren't, no. They only really do one thing each, but they do it very well. Other frames do what they do and more with more to add to a team.

[Lokidus_Prime]

8 hours ago, (PS4)supersocc11 said:

My one punch atlas may be a one trick rock, but he is definitely not underpowered....

He can also be fairly fun to play lol.   One of most amusing things i've done with atlas (along with some friends who were also running atlas) is pummel stalker to death using nothing but atlas' fists.  It's also hilarious when ppl get rad proc'd and get petrified by running into an atlas' landslide who uses path of statues.

More on topic, Nidus is pretty strong - between his passives and what his abilities do.  Yeah, his dmg may fall off a bit against heavily armored things like bombards or heavy gunners, but that is a whole other issue on its own with how armor scales.  I play nidus a fair bit, and i typically use pox modded for corrosive, toss a couple at a group of larva'd enemies, and they typically get shredded by virulence after that.

He isn't without vulnerabilities though as some people like to think - High lvl grineer can be pretty dangerous for him and he can get absolutely wrecked by high lvl corpus if yer not careful - you *NEED* to build stacks and link to an enemy asap if yer going to survive, which depending on what yer squad comp is and how much everyone goes on a murderous killing spree, can make it difficult for stack building.  It's important to be building stacks.. *ALL of the time*, because ultimately if you want to survive you have be building stacks faster than enemies can put you into undying, so in other words, lots of maintenance. Enemies can and will get to a point where they will deal significant amounts of dmg - enough to kill you even while linked to an enemy while standing on yer grass.  At this point the CC that the Larva (the to a lesser extent, the maggots from Ravenous) provides become fairly important to survival too. 

He can regen energy via Virulence hitting enemies, but if you're going to need to hit at the very least 4 enemies to fully refund virulence's energy cost, which isnt accounting for the cost of larva if that was used beforehand.  In a full squad, sometimes being able to hit that many things at once is a little bit of a challenge with things constantly dying around you.  I know some ppl dont use rage, zenurik, streamline, flow/primed flow on nidus because of that energy regen, but failure to properly manage his 1st n 2nd abilities can leave you with no energy *veerry* quickly if you're reckless with it.  I dunno bout everyone else here, but i prefer not to use energy restores unless i *absolutely* have to, nor do I frequently run things where a trinity is present, so for me that's not something i can rely on.

I never played in a group where I was unable to get enough stacks needed for survival, but I have seen it happen to other people. I ran an axi fissure with a friend and 2 randoms joined in who also happened to both be nidus (so we had 3 in the squad).  I didn't have any trouble with stacks, but one of them struggled with gaining stacks so much that he was constantly on the floor bleeding out.  He tried to go off on his own to build them, but by that time the enemies had scaled too high for him to be able to handle on his own and he ended up burning through all 4 of his revives because he was too far away for anyone to reach him.

So yeah, while he is strong and not the most difficult frame to play, he still has vulnerabilities that offset those strengths, and therefore I do not think he is OP. 

I DO however, think that some of his abilities need a few QoL tweaks, like being able to cancel a Larva for situations like when the last guy stuck in it is glued on the other side of a wall, under the floor, etc, or removing eximus / ancient aura buffs when they are linked to (it would be really nice if they were instead applied to Nidus and his allies, but i would just be happy with those auras being negated), moas being able to stomp while larva'd, ancients / scorpions being able to hook you while they are larva'd, to name a few....