New Focus, Numbers, And Mechanics

[Epsik-kun]

I might be a tad bit too slow, but I've recently caught up on the upcoming changes as the neverending "oh no, how will we possibly play the game without the very most bestest passive ever to provide us with the same exact effect our dirt cheap gear already did but over 25 seconds by the end of a regular mission as opposed to instantly and anytime?" cries made it kinda difficult for me to take the forums seriously.

Anyway, I personally like the general direction where the new Focus is heading especially regarding the Operator Mode seemingly becoming genuinely useful - great stuff.

However, there's a very important moment regarding the viability of few concepts that were already present in the game and weren't working because of, well, being "balanced".
I would like to address the following:

1) Zenurik and melee channel efficiency.
    Alright, I get it - you want to make Channeling viable. It's an interesting concept, it can work - more power to you. However, how exactly is this supposed to happen?
    Will the mechanics finally change from energy per enemy to energy per swing/time? It isn't necessary, per say, but it's a widely requested feature.
    Will the channeled blocking finally stop scale energy cost with the received damage making the whole idea of blocking while channeling suicidal against the only content where it could've made sense?
    But energy sustainability for channeling is a minor problem compared to the inherently flawed Channeling "balance" weapons and mods have.
    To put it simply, Channeling is terribly weak. There's a single mod in the whole game that makes channeling viable and it does so by throwing away all the intended channeling ideas and replacing it with its own style of play.
    The "balance" of channeling is so flawed that boosting the power of channeling mods by an order of magnitude (literally) will only make channeling viable in scarce niche scenarios. I've made a thread once regarding the possible way of solving channeling problems with pure numbers.

    Because, honestly, I don't see us suddenly getting a huge Channeling overhaul on top of the already huge update. And the current channeling not only has counter-synergy with stealth and crits - its mods are so pathetic, using them is always a terrible idea mathematically - even if you want to actively use channeling.

2) Unairu and damage reflection.
    A long time ago, I've made a thread regarding Vazarin focus tree and its design flaws. I specifically pointed out something that can't and won't work in the game even on the conceptual level. And that's damage reflection.
    So, there's a very important moment here. Will Unairu get mechanically the same passive as Vazarin used to have? Because if that's the intention, I heavily suggest to not make yet another useless passive.
    Damage reflect doesn't work in horde-based games with inflated player damage and enemy HP. It simply does not. Vazarin used to have 10% damage reflect, I believe. If Unairu gets that - it's a waste of time. If Unairu gets 50%, it's still a waste of time as it won't have any effect on the gameplay anywhere except for levels 1~10. If Unairu gets 300% - it's still useless against enemy level 30+ but with an added bonus of breaking levels 1~10.
    The concept can work, however, if the reflected damage is subtracted from the damage the frame receives. So, if it's, say, 40% damage reflection - frame will only receive 60% damage from all sources. This is viable, This is worth farming for. This is something that will work. Of course, the "reflection" part will still be as useless as ever - all it will provide is flavor, but it's already better than nothing.

    Of course, damage reflection can work perfectly fine, if we are supposed to get the game balance changed to a tactical shooter with enemy and player having roughly the same damage output and HP pools. I guess we are getting this overhaul on top of the Channeling changes.

I do have my concerns regarding the other schools, especially Madurai which seems like it's going to lose its build-enabling trait of adding I/P/S (selectively) damage to a pure elemental-oriented weapon. If it's indeed the case - it's a bad, bad idea but compared to the possibility of some schools effectively not getting a passive at all - it's a minor issue.

I also want to stress one thing about the focus - don't make it weak. Don't be afraid of breaking the game. Multiplicative 50% melee damage increase sounds awesome - I would love to grind the hell out of the game to get that. But the good old "balanced" additive 50% equals to about 15% effective damage increase when the node is maxed. Which, honestly, is nothing. Literally nothing. It affects nothing, provides nothing, achieves nothing - why would anyone work for that? Old "Harness your true power, Tenno" Focus used to have pathetic abilities tied to absurdly huge cooldowns - this isn't good. This isn't even "balanced" - that's plain bad and useless. It would be painful to see the same exact mistake to be repeated with the new Focus. The problem didn't lie within Naramon or "omg it's the best just the best" Zenurik. The problem was - and I hope it's indeed "was" - the complete and utter uselessness of other schools.

Edited October 8, 2017 by Epsik-kun

[Darkuhn]

I hope Unairu works the way you suggested, otherwise its Vazarin or Zenutik for me.

But Vazarin would have the strongest/most useful Passives in the Game, with increased affinityrange and instant revives.

[Epsik-kun]

On 10/6/2017 at 9:20 PM, Darkuhn said:

But Vazarin would have the strongest/most useful Passives in the Game, with increased affinityrange and instant revives.

Vazarin looks like its passives will remain essentially the same and QoL/niche tier. Which isn't a terrible thing, honestly, if the rest of the tree will make up for that with some genuine effectiveness.

Insta-revives are highly situational and are far from being game-changing but they are sure nice to have when they are being useful. I initially considered the affinity sharing range increase passive to be utter garbage, however with the introduction of abilities tied to the affinity sharing range (specifically, Bless) it is no longer completely useless, yet still very limited.

Edited October 8, 2017 by Epsik-kun

[Fallen_Echo]

On 2017. 10. 05. at 4:39 PM, Epsik-kun said:

1) Zenurik and melee channel efficiency.

You touched the main problems with channelling. 

Energy hungry, doesnt deal enough damage, scarce amount of mods to personalize it.

What needs to be done are mainly these:

1. Changing the energy use to per swing or drastically decrease it so its not only viable on power battery frames.
2. More mods and by more i mean we need atleast 30 new mods, chanelling is an alternative way to deal damage it should have a wide variety on modding.
3. Damage increase, chanelling should get increased damage as you are sacraficing an important source of survivability

On 2017. 10. 05. at 4:39 PM, Epsik-kun said:

2) Unairu and damage reflection.

The damage reflection could work bot not the way its currently implemented.

Just as you said if it would grant that 50% damage reflected to never affect you it would be a worthwhile change. Furthermore if the way it reflect this damage could be changed to get 100% proc chance using the enemies damage it could be a good addition.

 

On overall i agree these changes should be applied, focus shouldnt be weak. I seen it too many times when a great weapon or skill what could be easily sortie viable gets downgraded because it might be "too good".

 

DE seriously, just add in the changes and let them simmer in. Wait for a weak or even more and only apply hotfixes to actual bugs. Let the community experience and if something is truely broken take it to a test run and ask yourselves was this the original plan? Does it truely breaks the game or working as intented? Can we change it in a less drastic way?

Theres no need to go full sledgehammer on stuff and there is no need to create things what no one uses.

[Azamagon]

Those are not the only numbers that are wonky. The fact that they STILL insist on having negative effects on some upgrades (i.e. increased energycosts, among other stuff) makes the grind feel like, as @BornWithTeeth put it, a "zero sum game". More powerful, but more punishing to use too.

For example: Naramon's Void Hunter. So, I get this neat little utility of seeing enemies through walls, perfect for stealth and such. But wait, I can't STAY in stealth for as long, because now the stealth ability will drain more energy. What stupid kind of design is that?? Especially for such a weak upgrade (considering we have the Scanners, you know?).

Just. Get. Rid. Of. Cost-penalties!
It's not a good design. At least not the way DE does it (i.e. putting it arbitrarily on random stuff, even weak things).

At least those things you mention come with no downsides to them (even if I agreed that they shouldn't be as weaksauce as they seem to be, moreso the damage reflection one)

EDIT: But hey, stuff like Energizing Dash (and a few other things), which is actually a good upgrade, comes at no cost (not saying that it should, mind you), even though it is obviously miles and miles better than a weak utility skill like Void Hunter. /DElogic.

All I want to add, don't expect anything to change, really. DE has a history of being ... not particularly good, to put it mildly, when it comes to math and mechanics. Add to it their stubborn nature and things are likely to remain as is.
So, my advice is, try to have fun with what you have and ignore their constant balancing mistakes, while giving feedback on the forums (which they'll likely ignore though, unless you're a famous youtuber. Maybe).

Edited October 8, 2017 by Azamagon

[Azamagon]

Sorry for the doublepost.

But hey, look at what I just saw: Unairu's Crippling Dash. Upgrades your Void Dash so that if you dash through enemies you reduce their damage output... by 25%

Yeeeaah, that's not very good. It's worse than a punctureproc. Regardless if it's permanent or not (dunno, actually), it's still REALLY low. If it made enemies stay down for longer, or reduced their damage output by at least 75% or so for 20-ish seconds at least, then it'd MAYBE be good here and there (such as when facing tough tanky enemies, moreso bossfights, like Eidolons etc. Maybe).

But no. 25%. Yuck.

 

[Epsik-kun]

45 minutes ago, Azamagon said:

But hey, look at what I just saw: Unairu's Crippling Dash. Upgrades your Void Dash so that if you dash through enemies you reduce their damage output... by 25%

That's precisely what I mean when I say "numbers". Sure, crippling enemy's damage is a viable mechanics conceptually, however in a game where the enemy can deal ten times the damage required to down a frame in a span of a single second, lowering it to seven times the damage required achieves nothing. Literally.

What baffles me is how DE even comes up with these "balance" ideas? They are the people who made new "tank" frames. We have Nidus. Nidus has a 90% DR ability. So, the team is fully aware that for a damage reduction buff ability to even work it should scale at least to 90%.

So why another yet similar mechanics - reducing damage coming from enemies - somehow doesn't follow the same logic? It looks like they are effectively saying "yes, we are fully aware what's required for an ability in question to work and yes, we are intentionally making an ability which will never work".

Percentage damage reduction is a mechanics with increasing returns. Going from 25% DR to 50% is an effective 50% increase in damage reduction (compared to what it was on 25). Going from 50% to 75% means doubling the damage resistance (yet again, compared to what 50% DR offer). 75% to 90% means two and a half increase. So, 90% DR is 7.5 times more effective than 25% DR and if 90% DR is what considered to be a requirement for a frame to tank the damage - what's the point in the worse options even existing, to begin with? Hell, 75% DR starts to look questionable, let alone 25%.

[Fallen_Echo]

55 minutes ago, Epsik-kun said:

That's precisely what I mean when I say "numbers". Sure, crippling enemy's damage is a viable mechanics conceptually, however in a game where the enemy can deal ten times the damage required to down a frame in a span of a single second, lowering it to seven times the damage required achieves nothing. Literally.

What baffles me is how DE even comes up with these "balance" ideas? They are the people who made new "tank" frames. We have Nidus. Nidus has a 90% DR ability. So, the team is fully aware that for a damage reduction buff ability to even work it should scale at least to 90%.

So why another yet similar mechanics - reducing damage coming from enemies - somehow doesn't follow the same logic? It looks like they are effectively saying "yes, we are fully aware what's required for an ability in question to work and yes, we are intentionally making an ability which will never work".

Percentage damage reduction is a mechanics with increasing returns. Going from 25% DR to 50% is an effective 50% increase in damage reduction (compared to what it was on 25). Going from 50% to 75% means doubling the damage resistance (yet again, compared to what 50% DR offer). 75% to 90% means two and a half increase. So, 90% DR is 7.5 times more effective than 25% DR and if 90% DR is what considered to be a requirement for a frame to tank the damage - what's the point in the worse options even existing, to begin with? Hell, 75% DR starts to look questionable, let alone 25%.

Why not add in a damage reduction based at your hp?

Nidus with 90% dr and with max armor will die in one shot once we hit X enemy levels, why not change it to forced damage reduction?

Lets say unairu would only let you max take 25% health damage from a single shot? That would mean that whatever tries to attack you, it needs to hit 4 times. We can even add in a bonus system what adds more damage gates the less hp you have (total hp).

[(XBOX)INe Saninus]

On 10/5/2017 at 10:39 AM, Epsik-kun said:

2) Unairu and damage reflection.
    A long time ago, I've made a thread regarding Vazarin focus tree and its design flaws. I specifically pointed out something that can't and won't work in the game even on the conceptual level. And that's damage reflection.
    So, there's a very important moment here. Will Unairu get mechanically the same passive as Vazarin used to have? Because if that's the intention, I heavily suggest to not make yet another useless passive.
    Damage reflect doesn't work in horde-based games with inflated player damage and enemy HP. It simply does not. Vazarin used to have 10% damage reflect, I believe. If Unairu gets that - it's a waste of time. If Unairu gets 50%, it's still a waste of time as it won't have any effect on the gameplay anywhere except for levels 1~10. If Unairu gets 300% - it's still useless against enemy level 30+ but with an added bonus of breaking levels 1~10.
    The concept can work, however, if the reflected damage is subtracted from the damage the frame receives. So, if it's, say, 40% damage reflection - frame will only receive 60% damage from all sources. This is viable, This is worth farming for. This is something that will work. Of course, the "reflection" part will still be as useless as ever - all it will provide is flavor, but it's already better than nothing.

Unairu has very few champions to campaign on its behalf.

Most of the attention has been placed on Zenurik. (I know mine has been focused there)

You have some solid points.

I hope someone is paying attention. As it stands right now, Unairu will be at the bottom of everyone's list once again.

-Percentage based armor bonuses do not work. We learned that with the Oberon rework. A flat armor bonus works much better.

-Damage reflection without out a damage reduction for ourselves or a massive (like... ridiculous) multiplier for the damage reflected back (or preferably both) is not worth investing in.

I can't help but feel our Unairu brothers and sisters are getting left out in the cold again.