Warframe reworks: Why synergies are toxic

[dan.io.wal]

I'll preface this by saying I love the frames I'm going to mention.. Their looks, their powers, themes, abilities. However, it's hard to love frames that are HORRENDOUSLY underpowered when compared to their counterparts. I'll be addressing Volt and Saryn, two damage/cc frames. After I level up Mag (CC) and play with her more I'll probably update either this thread or make a new one. I will also preface this by saying that I played none of these frames pre-rework, however, there is a rather annoying tendency that DE has when it comes to reworks. It shows in all three of these, and more recently, Oberon. I'm hoping and praying they don't repeat mistakes with Hydroid with his prime inbound, and also, with future reworks. 

 

1: Saryn has gone from being a one trick pony to another one trick pony. Before, it was miasma spam. Just run into a room, press four, there you go. Now it's a press 1 spam... and a press three spam... and a press four spam... Saryn's energy efficiency is terrible. Even with her MASSIVE energy pool I find myself running out of energy so much. It's borderline ridiculous. I'd put her rework in the same range as Mag's in term of how TERRIBLE it truly is past lv. 40. Spores is a good ability, however, to really get it going, you also need to use a certain kind of weapon (aoe) and you have to cast molt, and cast spores on molt before you do anything else. Also, she has no survivability beyond Regenrative Molt, making it absolutely necessary for her to work. The fact that you need to use all of her abilities AT THE SAME TIME in order to get somewhat decent damage out of her makes no sense. 

2: Volt has three main issues. The energy drain and movement speed nerf on his shield, as well as being constricted to just secondary weapons while carrying it. The other being the damage cap on Discharge, as well as his passive having a cap. His shield really doesn't fit in with his other abilities. Also, in my opinion, his ultimate needs to change dramatically. It relies so much on that puny 1000 damage to do anything it's ridiculous. I will say that I love the capacitance augment, but it takes too much energy to cc effectively in ways that are done much more easily and at a lesser cost than what he does. 

I compare these frames to Ember, Equinox, Limbo, Mesa, Nova, and Harrow. All these frames have some sort of CC ability along with massive damage potential all around.

 

With every rework DE has done recently, they've made it such a priority to make every frame have synergy. However, it's left those frames horrendously underpowered and stumbling in the wake. The only frames that have had good reworks as of late have been Limbo and Frost. Limbo is actually playable now, and in a lot better place. Frost is still amazing, just more so after his rework. DE, please stop pushing synergy unless it really does work. If a frame can't handle it solo, please take it back and fix it again. I will say that I manage to make it work with the aforementioned frames (Volt and Saryn) and have some ideas for how they could be reworked, but I just feel that they need to be buffed, and sooner than later. 

Edited July 10, 2017 by danthedapper

[artemisfortune]

My Saryn Build is crazy,

My Mag Build is crazy.

My Oberon Build is crazy.

I think you're building wrong.

[Ceryk]

Sounds more like you aren't playing Saryn efficiently than any problem with Saryn. I rarely have energy problem with Saryn and part of that probably has to do with the fact that I don't sit around spamming Miasma since it's an ability is rarely needed and I've never even seen a point to using it on anything below about level 70.

As for Volt, his primary function is CC, not damage. His passive is merely a boost. As far as I am concerned he's one of the better frames. His abilities are powerful without being stupidly OP.

Edited July 10, 2017 by Ceryk

[Sablesword]

I can bring Volt or Saryn to sorties and do the most damage without ever running out of energy. It's not really that hard. I've seen a number of truly excellent Mags as well. I'm kind of wondering why you're complaining about Volt's movable shield's downsides, when it used to not be movable at all. That is not a problem with his rework, his rework added that functionality. Without the rework, you would probably be complaining about how it can't be moved at all. 

I'm a bit curious to know what you think of the Excalibur rework, since you didn't mention it at all.

[Vafthrudnir]

4 minutes ago, Ceryk said:

Sounds more like you aren't playing Saryn efficiently than any problem with Saryn. I rarely have energy problem with Saryn and part of that probably has to do with the fact that I don't sit around spamming Miasma since it's an ability is rarely needed and I've never even seen a point to using it on anything below about level 70.

As for Volt, his primary function is CC, not damage. His passive is merely a boost.

Volt's CC sucks.

Edited July 10, 2017 by giovanniluca

[Ceryk]

Just now, giovanniluca said:

His CC sucks.

You aren't playing him right then.

[Vafthrudnir]

3 minutes ago, Ceryk said:

You aren't playing him right then.

You don't know how Volt works, go read the posts in the feedback section and go read his abilities.

[Omega-Shadowblade]

5 minutes ago, giovanniluca said:

You don't know how Volt works, go read the posts in the feedback section and go read his abilities.

How rude. They found a playstyle that works, don't be a jerk and say they don't know how to play him, ask what their strategy is and at least consider it before shooting it down.

[YUNoJump]

Ember as an amazing frame? She has a basic stun and a signature ability that maxes out at ~1200 damage per hit with an element that completely fails against armour and shields. Her other two abilities are a basic knockback with an irrelevant fire wall, and literally a fire ball, known to many as the most generic ability ever. World on Fire hits lots of stuff, but once it stops one-shotting it's completely unreliable at keeping you alive. Ember has a lot of auto-aim area damage, but the reason that she doesn't get serious calls for nerfs (like Tonkor, Simulor strats) is because she doesn't deal enough damage, and doesn't do it in a way that will really keep you alive.

[Airwolfen]

1 minute ago, YUNoJump said:

Ember as an amazing frame? She has a basic stun and a signature ability that maxes out at ~1200 damage per hit with an element that completely fails against armour and shields. Her other two abilities are a basic knockback with an irrelevant fire wall, and literally a fire ball, known to many as the most generic ability ever. World on Fire hits lots of stuff, but once it stops one-shotting it's completely unreliable at keeping you alive. Ember has a lot of auto-aim area damage, but the reason that she doesn't get serious calls for nerfs (like Tonkor, Simulor strats) is because she doesn't deal enough damage, and doesn't do it in a way that will really keep you alive.

The falloff in lategame is too real.

[Vafthrudnir]

20 minutes ago, Omega-Shadowblade said:

How rude. They found a playstyle that works, don't be a jerk and say they don't know how to play him, ask what their strategy is and at least consider it before shooting it down.

I didn't say anything about his builds, even if I realized how he plays him, I'm just referring to his CC mechanics.

His CCs on 1, 3 and 4 are unreliable and subpar.

Edited July 11, 2017 by giovanniluca

[(XBOX)Knight Raime]

I suggest that you actually look into every rework they've done.  And find videos explaining how they work post update.  and then look at how the frames used to be pre rework. You're drastically over simplifying things.

1) saryn pre rework.  Molt was marginally used.  spore/toxic lash did nothing beneficial.  Literally miasma only.  Post rework you can have 3 seperate playstyles with her.  And her kit flows a lot better.  There is the cheap and easy spore build.  Which You DO NOT need molt for.  Molt just increases damage if the enemies shoot it with spores on it.  You can still spread spores and pop them super easily without molt.  You have the melee saryn.  Which runs around and pops spores with her toxic lash.  and then you have the setup build.  where you can sit back and drop spores on molt and toxic lash them and then miasma the field.

You don't need to spam her miasma.  Honestly it's really used most of the time just for the temp stun so you get out of harms way.  There is an augment for saryn that lets you put toxic on your allies weapons.  which massively increases your teams DPS if you're all popping spores with toxin.  She can melt level 100+ enemies easily if you have the right build.  The only current issue that exists is her energy consumption. But barring that they could also stand to give her molt a snow globe treatment.  and give corrosive ticks on her miasma. All in all you really do need to look into her better.  as it sounds like you're not getting her at all.  (also she doesn't need an aoe weapon.  it just "helps."  did you know you actually NEED a bow equipped to use ivara's quiver?)

 

2) Volt's shield was not movable pre rework.  I can agree the energy drain on moving with it is not really needed. It being slow though and limited to secondaries are not bad things at all.  Discharge is an AOE stun.  damage isn't the point.  Pre rework it did bad damage.  and was functionally difficult to use since it required electronics near by.  which burned out after use.  His passive is meh.  but it's alright.

3) None of DE's reworks have left frames underpowered.  Volt was already considered decent.  and his "rework" added some extra utility.  Saryn was only considered good because of her nuke capability.  she was basically trash though compared to other meta frames at the time.  The rework even if it made her worse off (which it didn't) still gave her great utility (status proccing) and gave each ability a viable use.  That's objectively better compared to her pre rework state.  You're also forgetting what they did to rhino.  Mag's rework just shifted where the scaling damage went.  and added some minor synergy.

all in all I think you're jumping the gun.  Saryn of all the frames that got reworked IMO is the one that changed the most.  You really need to understand how her spores work in order to get the best out of her. Oberon is great now.  And is only given shade because he doesn't rival trinity.  (no one ever will till she gets massively changed.)  And mag is just plain hated on because she's not meta anymore.  All kits including the reworked ones can improve.  But basically stating these reworks were harmful and shouldn't have been done is just wrong.

[Vafthrudnir]

13 minutes ago, (Xbox One)Knight Raime said:

It being slow though

Speed frame being slow it's ok?

13 minutes ago, (Xbox One)Knight Raime said:

Discharge is an AOE stun.

Troll ability can end before you know it and last 1 second.

Volt was already considered decent.  and his "rework" added some extra utility.

Also unusable utility or pointless and nerfs.

Edited July 11, 2017 by giovanniluca

[Aeon94]

25 minutes ago, giovanniluca said:

Speed frame being slow it's ok?

Troll ability can end before you know it and last 1 second.

Also unusable utility or pointless and nerfs.

1- You don't need to pick up shield and get slowed , you can just cast another shield.

2- It doesn't last 1 sec but however I've heard that enemies break free b4 its duration ends , possibly a bug.

3- Unusable for you , other ppl like me enjoys with him. Volt does his job well , I see no issue here.

[-AoN-CanoLathra-]

1 hour ago, (Xbox One)Knight Raime said:

did you know you actually NEED a bow equipped to use ivara's quiver?

No you don't. I use a silenced Vectis Prime with Ivara and her Quiver and Prowl work just fine. You do need a projectile weapon to use Navigator, and a bow when modding for Artemis Bow, but Quiver has no requirements on it.

[Nazrethim]

3 hours ago, JSharpie said:

My Saryn Build is crazy,

My Mag Build is crazy.

My Oberon Build is crazy.

I think you're building wrong.

I personally think that frames should be able to operate just fine at default power values or with the standard +30% mods. If a Warframe absolutely requires corrupted mods to work, then it's badly designed.

[YUNoJump]

1 hour ago, -AoN-CanoLathra- said:

No you don't. I use a silenced Vectis Prime with Ivara and her Quiver and Prowl work just fine. You do need a projectile weapon to use Navigator, and a bow when modding for Artemis Bow, but Quiver has no requirements on it.

You don't even need a bow for Artemis, any primary will work but Artemis will also pick up bow-specific mods like Thunderbolt. 

[SenorClipClop]

5 hours ago, danthedapper said:

Saryn has gone from being a one trick pony to another one trick pony. Before, it was miasma spam. Just run into a room, press four, there you go. Now it's a press 1 spam... and a press three spam... and a press four spam... Saryn's energy efficiency is terrible. Even with her MASSIVE energy pool I find myself running out of energy so much.

You can expect that to happen when you ignore her built-in Energy regen skill, and also when you spam 1 instead of hitting the spawned Spores to spread them for free. The rework let players who want to play Saryn lazily continue to play her lazily, it's just that now that strategy is more expensive.

5 hours ago, danthedapper said:

I'd put her rework in the same range as Mag's in term of how TERRIBLE it truly is past lv. 40. [Earlier in this very same post: "After I level up Mag (CC) and play with her more I'll probably update either this thread or make a new one."]

Why exactly are you comparing a Warframe's rework to another Warframe's rework when you've only played one of them? If you haven't actually played Mag in any real sense, how do you justify assessing her quality?

5 hours ago, danthedapper said:

Volt has three main issues.

This honestly just sounds to me like you don't know how to use Volt effectively. If it helps:

• His massive Energy pool and the usefulness of Duration on him certainly help with running around with his Electric Shield, but it's clearly a sometimes food. Yes, it could cost less energy and that would be great. More efficiently this effect is good for repositioning shields so you can continue to get use out of them.
• Volt can deal damage, but he's not quite a damage frame. His specialty is the rapid enforcement of hard CC, and then his utility lets him deal damage. I should also be noted that any enemy with Alloy Armor (Bombards, Gunners) heavily resist Electric damage.
• His 1000-damage passive is anything but puny if you use it right. Run 200 metres without attacking (or just wait 1/4 second with Transistor Shield) and you have the passive at full. It's very important to note that the added damage is applied before all other modifiers, adding directly to the base damage of the attack. For example, at a full passive stack, Shock will spend 25 energy to deal not 200, but 1200 damage, and that's before Strength mods. Adding Shock damage to a Crit-heavy weapon will add a thousand damage before the Crit multiplier, resulting insane single-shot damage. This also stacks effectively with the crit damage bonus from firing through Electric Shield. If you want Volt to feel really effective, try running Transistor and a full-Crit Dread. Camp near an objective or in an open hallway and surround yourself with Shields. Hit enemies with Dread shots through the Electric shield and watch them melt. Opt for the Paris P if you're against Armored targets.

5 hours ago, danthedapper said:

With every rework DE has done recently, they've made it such a priority to make every frame have synergy. However, it's left those frames horrendously underpowered and stumbling in the wake.

It's funny you say that, because some of the frames you're comparing with (Harrow, Mesa, Ember) are all pretty synergistic Warframes. Synergy means to combine elements and abilities to make those combinations greater than the sum of their parts. For example, Harrow's long invuln phase gives time to cast his 2 and/or 3, which under normal circumstances render him vulnerable. His 1 pairs with his 3 and 4, and his 2 lets him keep up damage via 4 and support via 2 and 3. Mag's 4, 3 and 1 all add damage to 2; her 1 brings enemies to 2's damage. Saryn's 3 gives a DR to rush in and pop 1, spreading it; 2 and 3 keep her alive while spreading 1, building to a good cast of 4. Mesa's 1 and 2 empower her 4 while 3 keeps her alive during 4. Ember's synergy is simple (it's basically all just geared toward lighting everything on fire more effectively), but she's got some useful combos in there.

In many cases, synergy-based reworks have brought their respective Warframes out of obscurity (or out of pigeon-holed gameplay) and into greater relevance. More importantly, it's allowed players to develop their gameplay of that frame into different ability combos to fit different situations, as well as allowing different builds to become viable instead of the "one true build"s of yesteryear. If these Warframes are horrendously underpowered, it might just mean that the Tenno controlling them either doesn't understand how to make the slightly-more-complicated Warframes work, doesn't understand what the Warframe is designed to do, or that Tenno has been too coddled by effortless nuke damage to be comfortable with exerting effort to earn their success.

Edited July 11, 2017 by SenorClipClop

[motorfirebox]

5 hours ago, JSharpie said:

My Saryn Build is crazy,

My Mag Build is crazy.

My Oberon Build is crazy.

Pretty much this. Those are three of my go-to frames for high-level content.

[(XBOX)Knight Raime]

4 hours ago, giovanniluca said:

Speed frame being slow it's ok?

Troll ability can end before you know it and last 1 second.

Also unusable utility or pointless and nerfs.

Nice nitpick.  I don't see why on earth you should be able to fly at the speed of sound AND carry a shield up front that makes you immune to damagge.

Far as I understand his ultimate will persist for the whole duration so long as you don't reach the damage cap by then.  So.  It should be lasting as long as you set it for unless you're building for a damage volt.

 

[(XBOX)Knight Raime]

3 hours ago, -AoN-CanoLathra- said:

No you don't. I use a silenced Vectis Prime with Ivara and her Quiver and Prowl work just fine. You do need a projectile weapon to use Navigator, and a bow when modding for Artemis Bow, but Quiver has no requirements on it.

My bad then.  I remember a time when it wasn't letting me use her quiver without a bow.  Granted that was a LONG time ago.

[Airwolfen]

3 hours ago, -AoN-CanoLathra- said:

No you don't. I use a silenced Vectis Prime with Ivara and her Quiver and Prowl work just fine. You do need a projectile weapon to use Navigator, and a bow when modding for Artemis Bow, but Quiver has no requirements on it.

The reason why a bow works well with artimis is because they use the exact same mods. Any weapon with rifle mods will work however.

[Borg1611]

Compared to top tier frames I don't think the above mentioned frames can be considered "crazy." They're average. No reason not to use them if you really like them and they're capable of doing whatever mission you take them to, but lets not exaggerate. None of the above mentioned frames have durability to rival a Nidus or an invulnerable frame. None of them are the ultimate damage power houses that scale into high level content better than the others. It wasn't until maybe Nidus and later that they seemed to start to care about giving frames damage that scales well into high level content (sometimes overdoing it like per-nerf Limbo mass AoE nuking when his re-work first came out). Survival wise most frames in the game just need a buff, so a frame like Oberon can sit at above average survival without that really saying much. 

I don't think that "synergy" is the problem necessarily. The concept of having an interaction between abilities is fine, it's the implementation that's lacking in some cases. A great example would be how they messed up the synergy between resonator and mallet when they made Octavia, but she's still strong despite having an ability that's detrimental to the effectiveness of another of her own abilities. They also could have done a dozen different things that would have made it work better IE: making resonator generate some slow passive damage for the mallet, or making mallet absorb some % of damage you do while it's riding a resonator, or making mallet have a much longer duration so that you could throw it out, build up decent damage then use resonator without the mallet having barely any uptime before needing to be re-cast (and then having resonator instantly re-pick up the new one and prevent it from generating any damage...). The last suggestion would also work better if you could somehow disable resonator without having to wait for it to expire (perhaps simply adding the ability to blow up a resonator by re-casting?). 

There's definitely plenty of room for improvements in all the frames mentioned in this thread. There are some great mag ideas in the mag specific thread still on the first page of this forum. Plenty of debate/suggestions in various threads for all of them. 

27 minutes ago, (Xbox One)Knight Raime said:

hould be able to fly at the speed of sound AND carry a shield up front that makes you immune to damagge.

Just wanted to point out that he's not even close to being "immune to damage" while running with a shield. It only protects you from damage from one direction. I suppose in some situations that might effectively be damage immunity, but there are plenty of other situations where it would not be. They could completely remove the channeling/movement cost and his shield wouldn't be remotely overpowered. 

1 hour ago, motorfirebox said:

Pretty much this. Those are three of my go-to frames for high-level content.

I wouldn't take any of them into high level content unless I was bored of stronger frames and wanted to try something different (which occasionally I do). Nothing wrong with taking them if you really like them, but they're certainly not the most amazing frames in the game. None of those frames are top tier at surviving high level content. Mag has decent damage potential, but her durability and CC or other utility isn't particularly impressive. Saryn's damage isn't especially impressive at higher levels and she doesn't offer much of anything special at all. Most of them would probably get one shot in a Sortie Assassination: Raptor (assuming they haven't nerfed it, I take long breaks from Warframe so I could have missed it). 

I would think go to frames for high level content would be ones like Nidus or Trinity. Wukong can cheese the really insanely overtuned content (like Raptor sorties). Mesa + Limbo are an actual "crazy" combo for some content. Ash vs. Kela sortie is strong (unless they nerfed fatal teleport working on her). Octavia's mallet is hilarious for soloing certain things (assuming they didn't nerf it), especially when combined with the easiest way to remain permanently invisible. Her resonator with high range is also a contender for one of the stronger CCs in the game. Any frame that can open mobs up to finishers scales better in high level content than anything those 3 frames can do. They (Saryn/Mag/Oberon) don't have the best damage survival or CC and don't provide any really unique utility. Mag probably would have been the ultimate boss killer, but her bubble only lasts a split second on bosses regardless of duration (unless they changed it). 

I really don't see anything remotely "crazy" or even particularly impressive about any of the frames being discussed in this thread (not to say that people shouldn't play them if they enjoy them, just saying people are drastically overstating how useful they are)... /shrug

[Fallen_Echo]

7 hours ago, Ceryk said:

You aren't playing him right then.

Volts CC is useless.

At the moment you reach the Discharge damage cap enemies just run throught the effect like its nothing.

[Fallen_Echo]

5 hours ago, Aeon94 said:

 

2- It doesn't last 1 sec but however I've heard that enemies break free b4 its duration ends , possibly a bug.

 

They break free becuase it reached its damage cap.

At max without mods the discharge deals 225 damage per enemy and stays active till the total damage the enemies received reaches 4000. Thats total 17 enemies hit before the skill turns off.

Max power strenght increases the damage to 1390/enemy and stays active till the total damage reaches 12360. Increasing powr strenght worsens it to 8 enemies hit.

In both cases the targets stay CC'd for 4 seconds only till the first damage ticks start, it also worth saying that discharge can affect loot crates what also contribute to the damage cap.

 

Im pretty sure this is one of the worstly designed  CC ability in the whole game and the fact that this is an ult just adds insult to injury.