Gara Impressions

[Hannah-Eliz]

I'm finding her incredible, been taking her into Sorties, if you shatter the wall you get some incredible damage...

[Hotsebats]

Uhh, her 1st ability deals 11k damage for me with just a simple Intensify. Just saying. 

[Xyhon]

6 minutes ago, Hotsebats said:

Uhh, her 1st ability deals 11k damage for me with just a simple Intensify. Just saying. 

And falls of when enemies have armour. Which in Plains, every Grineer has ;)

[Neptlude]

the glass wall height and depth should at least grow abit the longer you cast it. Not 1:1 tho

[Hotsebats]

22 minutes ago, Xyhon said:

And falls of when enemies have armour. Which in Plains, every Grineer has ;)

I'm still not having any trouple one-shotting anything that isn't a Lvl 75+ special unit with her first ability and even on them I deal 2k damage with only her 1 ability (Bombards, napalms, heavy gunners).

Besidses, the knockdown is nice.. 

 

Edit: This is still with only a maxed Intensify.

Edited October 15, 2017 by Hotsebats

[Xyhon]

4 hours ago, Hotsebats said:

I'm still not having any trouple one-shotting anything that isn't a Lvl 75+ special unit with her first ability and even on them I deal 2k damage with only her 1 ability (Bombards, napalms, heavy gunners).

Besidses, the knockdown is nice.. 

 

Edit: This is still with only a maxed Intensify.

I don't bite that dmg, because doing Bounty on 60+ lvl Grineer shows numbers reduced. Very, very reduced.

[Qloshae]

Might as well add my impression of her as well.

1 - I think it does lovely damage, low range, but otherwise nice. It's really useful as a knockback as well as it seems to send some enemies flying back home.

2 - Universally agreed among people I have talked to in-game - amazing ability, love it, the only thing that I'd like to see changed is the current block when trying to recast it. Should be able to reapply it.

3 - Tbh. I don't really know why I should use this ability, it doesn't help. If it was reversed and the circle was bigger it would be really useful as a shield together with 4, that way you could make the enemies kill themselves when trying to shoot you and their bullets are blocked from hitting you, but you can hit them.

4 - C'mon, you had to see this coming, you have a ton of hills and valleys on PoE and for that map, you release a warframe with an ability that expands in a 2D plane. I get that you don't want 1 min impenetrable and invulnerable wall, but the ability does not really work anywhere. Not even outside PoE does it work well. If you cast it on Akkad for example, infested will just jump over it like it's not there and since it doesn't debuff them once it is set, it does nothing and that's not even mentioning flying enemies that are too high up to be affected because they fly above it. She's not an open world warframe, she's a hiding in the end of a hallway warframe, all her abilities support that. 1st seems to attack in a cone, 2nd has that spread in immediate area thing, 3rd has a small area of effect, but perfect for a hallway and 4th can easily block a standard (specifically corpus) hallway.

[Cervontez]

I agree with everything everyone has said. The only thing id like to add is it seems like holding her 1 uses terrain level as well. If you are slightly higher than what you want to hit, it wont hit them at all. I cant image this was an oversight especially with this frame coming with Plains.

[Aeryes]

On 10/15/2017 at 2:42 AM, Darkmoone1 said:

How is that they got damage scaling so right with Nidus and floundered so badly with Gara?

I wish it was just the scaling. When ALL of the previous frames feel great out on the plains, even the ones you wouldn't expect to, despite the fact that none of them were designed for it... Well... It just makes you wonder how Gara went so horribly wrong because she just doesn't feel good on the plains which is ridiculous considering she released with it. Unfortunately she doesn't feel much better in regular missions either, for me its still just her 2 making her tolerable but in that case I keep asking myself why I'm not just playing Mesa instead.

Maybe they had to rush this one I dunno but its a real shame because its such a cool concept, I was really looking forward to this frame.

On 10/15/2017 at 12:33 PM, Hotsebats said:

I'm still not having any trouple one-shotting anything that isn't a Lvl 75+ special unit with her first ability and even on them I deal 2k damage with only her 1 ability (Bombards, napalms, heavy gunners).

Not sure what your point is here. Heavily armored threats at level 75+ is what scaling exists to deal with. She was advertised as a high damage caster and yet she can't deal with these enemies, she can only survive them which makes her a tank, the polar opposite of what she was meant to be. Yeah she has no problem 1 shotting insignificant enemies but that's nothing to brag about.

The scaling she has currently is not good enough for endgame with the exception of her damage reduction. It's also in the wrong place. Her 3 and 4 are the ones which should have meaningful scaling, if they did then the damage her 1 does right now would be fine, but since they dont and your 1 is the only thing you can use for damage its quite weak, you start feeling the falloff at level 60, by 80 it'll take multiple casts against heavily armored enemies.

Mesa has Gara's two and peacemaker which has amazing scaling, she also has way more reliable CC than Gara. Chroma is just as tanky as Gara and does waaay more damage. In fact if you look at the kit of any other frame it makes her look lacking. Even Oberon and Hydroid who had a terrible repuatation pre-rework are in a way better position than she is in almost every way.

Edited October 16, 2017 by Aeryes

[(PSN)Ozymandias-13-]

On 10/14/2017 at 7:50 PM, Svygor said:

2) 3-d skill should be much more powerfull - deal more damage, have more health, be invulnerable or I don't know what else  but something that makes it usefull (or someone tell me pls how to use it as it is now);
 

I think the Mirrors should be invulnerable, so as to hold aggro for it's full duration no matter what and reflect damage from enemies back to all enemies within the circle as the projectiles ricochet around which would give it scaling no matter the enemy level, and would naturally decrease as enemies in the area are killed off by it, then automatically damage enemies as shatters upon ending. Whether that shatter also causes bleed or % of damage reflected or something would depend on balance I suppose.

[Monolake]

funny but Passive (blind) is her best ability 

1 is ok for some quick damage/knockdown, but badly needs more range and to be cast on the run/in the air (it scales with melee damage mods btw but not from combo so its weak compared to melee)

2 is good, 90% dr with just Intesify,  could have more range to be cast on allies and for the damage aura (which has joke damage but breaks containers)

3 is fail, high cost, no range, of course aggro works poorly and enemies can ignore it, only 1 instance is allowed,  reflected damage is nothing (only t4 mobs do high enough damage relative to their hp anyway).  - this needs redesign or massive improvements, at this state its not worth using

4 is interesting skill. alright utility if only too slow to cast,  and 'glass'-freezing seems to have the same never-fixed bug as Fosts' Freeze/Avalanche - enemies become immune to procs, again only one instance :(

shattering 4 should be a better nuke than it is now and glass wall should stop enemies more reliably

 

 

Edited October 17, 2017 by Monolake

[Leqesai]

4 hours ago, Monolake said:

funny but Passive (blind) is her best ability 

1 is ok for some quick damage/knockdown, but badly needs more range and to be cast on the run/in the air (it scales with melee damage mods btw but not from combo so its weak compared to melee)

2 is good, 90% dr with just Intesify,  could have more range to be cast on allies and for the damage aura (which has joke damage but breaks containers)

3 is fail, high cost, no range, of course aggro works poorly and enemies can ignore it, only 1 instance is allowed,  reflected damage is nothing (only t4 mobs do high enough damage relative to their hp anyway).  - this needs redesign or massive improvements, at this state its not worth using

4 is interesting skill. alright utility if only too slow to cast,  and 'glass'-freezing seems to have the same never-fixed bug as Fosts' Freeze/Avalanche - enemies become immune to procs, again only one instance :(

shattering 4 should be a better nuke than it is now and glass wall should stop enemies more reliably

 

 

I don't really find the first ability to be weak compared to melee. For starters you can build gara for max range, power strength, efficiency and melee dmv boosters which results in a 25m death swipe that Insta knockdowns. It is pretty dang good. 

[Qloshae]

While Gara is now really useful and can even outperform Frost in some ways, the 3rd ability is still useless and doesn't do what it is meant to.

[Monolake]

4 hours ago, Leqesai said:

I don't really find the first ability to be weak compared to melee. For starters you can build gara for max range, power strength, efficiency and melee dmv boosters which results in a 25m death swipe that Insta knockdowns. It is pretty dang good. 

with blood rush and combo melee has better damage that scales and then there is whip with maiming and most of all melee doesn't make you stop or spend energy

but anyway it's a fine ability, just needs more innate range because wasting 2 slots on overextended + strength mod is unacceptable (cause you better of modding for lankiness and just go melee)

Edited October 18, 2017 by Monolake

[Otaiken]

I think that one rather simple way to solve both the damage and scaling problem with Gara's abilities would be to make her the queen of slash procs. It makes sense thematically, it would provide synergy with finisher openers (and her passive) and it would partially bypass the armor problem.

Just her 3 would be a much better ability if instead of shattering for a badly scaling nuke it would provide a hefty slash proc, maybe even convert the outgoing enemy damage into slash procs. Simply slapping a guaranteed slash proc or two on all her abilities would be a significant boost to Gara though it would make for a rather lazy "overhaul".

I honestly kinda expected Gara to work like this. Why does her 2nd ability create just a flat damage aura around her when it could easily just provide a radial slash proc ever x seconds to reach the same damage effect which would also acummulate and scale much better.

[Leqesai]

3 hours ago, Monolake said:

with blood rush and combo melee has better damage that scales and then there is whip with maiming and most of all melee doesn't make you stop or spend energy

but anyway it's a fine ability, just needs more innate range because wasting 2 slots on overextended + strength mod is unacceptable (cause you better of modding for lankiness and just go melee)

From playing her a bunch over the weekend and trying extreme builds for damage and defense gara seems almost intrinsically designed to work very well either as tank or damage but not super well as a hybrid. Sure you can put more than 130 into power strength on defensive builds but it caps the defense boost from 2 and doesn't really benefit 4 a whole lot since it is primarily cc. 

By going full duration, vitality, and moderate efficiency you can get her duration and ability cost low enough that you should never run out of time with the second ability. Especially since the 4 refreshes it's timer so effectively costs nothing to maintain past the initial cast if you are using a medium range setup for 4 (I go with 94 range and it is perfect for covering defense points and blocking most rooms). 

 

On the other side of things going full damage setup like I described means no survivability but amazing damage and cc with the first ability. You just park yourself next to a wall by a doorway and spam 1 until the room or whatever is clear enough for you to position yourself for more kills.  The only major downside to the sweep is its angle. It is a little awkward at times. 

 

I believe there is a decent third build that goes full range and duration without narrow minded. You can possibly get it to 130 strength without major losses to other mods but basically you would be building for the 2 and 3 to work together. Big range on the 3 and cast 2 to the distracted enemies inside. I believe the largest circle of mirrors is very close to the max range of shards surrounding enemies. This might work well as a stealth type build or something. I need to play with this build more but if you go max range then the 4 diameter seems to start too far away to catch nearby enemies which works against the second two abilities.

 

Tldr it seems gara can be pretty effectively built for two abilities at once but not so much three or all 4. The exception to this is the pure damage build which sucks for duration since you need all the mod slots to make it feel like a glass cannon.

[Cibyllae]

On 10/13/2017 at 7:01 AM, Aeryes said:

So I've been testing Gara out in the sim, these are my impressions. Its early days so I may be missing something, if so my apologies in advance.

So... She not only feels weak, but I also can't think of a situation where she provides any form of niche or any role she fits into and can match other frames in effectiveness.

I was quite worried about her the more we got shown as mechanically her abilities seemed like a bit of a mess. Unfortunately that impression has only gotten worse now that I've tried her out. I don't want this to be a big essay so I'm going to try and just make note of a few points which I feel are very problematic. Again I may be missing something here.

 

• She doesn't seem to have any meaningful damage scaling. I know her 1 scales with melee mods and the freeze on her 4 gives a damage bonus but neither feels like enough to make her competitive with other frames.
• Her 1 hits hard in the early game and against flesh which is nice but she has big problems at high levels (60-80 onward).
• Crowd control is overall very awkward in design and just ineffective compared to a lot of other frames.
• Her 1 + 4 combo feels very underwhelming and unrewarding for setting it up.
• Mass Vitrify - Unless you're on a totally flat surface which isn't always the case even on normal tilesets, the ability just feels useless most of the time as the freeze part of it is its most useful effect and it hits very few enemies on uneven surfaces.
• The damage on her 2 and 3 is so insignificant it might as well not be there.
• Her Spectrorage feels like a really bad version of Bastille in terms of CC and the damage is extremely low even against unarmored enemies. This ability is probably the one which should have endgame scaling of some kind.

 

So what I'd like to see to fix some of this: (assuming I'm right here and haven't misunderstood something important)

• Her 3 should probably scale in a similar way to Octavia's Mallet, or perhaps just have the explosion as the scaling part similar to Magnetize's explosion.
• It would be nice if her 1 scaled better with her melee mods, currently it seems to fall off very quick once you get to about level 60 onward even against some fleshy units.
• Detonating her 4 should also scale with her melee, currently the combo feels very underwhelming, detonating an already awkward to use ultimate should be powerful.
• Her 4 just doesn't make sense as a ring it either needs to be far bigger in height or made something more practical like a dome or sphere. Imagine how bad molecular prime would be if it worked as a ring like this does.

 

Those are my initial thoughts and ideas. She looks and sounds great plus her passive is good. So good that it sometimes feels more reliable than a lot of her kit. Hoping for some improvements here as her design is extremely jumbled.

Yo like, 90% DR. Just seems like everyone is brushing this aside like its not a big deal. Seems like everyone wants her to do the big deeps, but I don't understand why. Every caster that was ever made has just fallen off in the end game. It's pretty janky of them to say she's going to be one thing and give us another but

Spoiler

 

Stop trying to fit a square peg into a circular hole. She increases the survivability of team, quite literally, tenfold as the 90% dr equates to a 10x health and shield increase. For 40 seconds! That alone should be reason enough to take her into any mission. I know these points were made before the hotfix, but I think the observations and analyses of her abilities are in comparing her to what was expected, which was a scaling cc damage frame, and not in light she basks in which is survivability. Some were mentions of mesa, which confuses me because mesa can't put her DR on her teammates. Some of Frost, which I don't understand because you can shoot through gara's wall, and chip damage coming of the top doesn't matter when each team member has 90% DR on them. Her 3 is a single target cc, and her 1 is a panic button with infinite knockdown. Her 4 stuns enemies and prevents others from coming in. She's impenetrable glass

I don't know why people are asking for more Damage on this frame when Killing things with your warframe is the lowest priority in Normal LoRs,NM LoRs, and Eidolon Hunting. All that matters is survivability, for now. Until DE makes a mission where damage matters and the mission is worth doing.

This is Gara, the Unbreakable Warrior

It's in her title guys c'mon.

Even if Gara was a dps frame with all of the ability changes put forth in this thread, when would you pick her over Ember, Sayrn, Banshe, Mesa, Mirage, Chroma, or Nidus? Making her into a damage frame would just throw her in the heap of already Oberon Tier characters. Don't make her into another Oberon.

 

[Crousere]

First impressions:

I honestly don't understand what is her niche. A new player could (and should) get Rhino and/or Frost, which are much easier to acquire considering the abysmal drop chance of her parts. There doesn't seem to be any fun new mechanic that comes with her, I feel like I have seen all her skills already with other frames.

Gara reminds me of PoE in general, unpolished and perhaps even rushed. Even her standard glass armour pieces are clipping trough the character model and these glass parts themselves look more like rubber than glass, strange detail that's hard to ignore.

I have to play some more, perhaps I have missed something.

[(PSN)Ozymandias-13-]

10 hours ago, LocoWithGun said:

I think that one rather simple way to solve both the damage and scaling problem with Gara's abilities would be to make her the queen of slash procs. It makes sense thematically, it would provide synergy with finisher openers (and her passive) and it would partially bypass the armor problem.

Just her 3 would be a much better ability if instead of shattering for a badly scaling nuke it would provide a hefty slash proc, maybe even convert the outgoing enemy damage into slash procs. Simply slapping a guaranteed slash proc or two on all her abilities would be a significant boost to Gara though it would make for a rather lazy "overhaul".

I honestly kinda expected Gara to work like this. Why does her 2nd ability create just a flat damage aura around her when it could easily just provide a radial slash proc ever x seconds to reach the same damage effect which would also acummulate and scale much better.

Ash and Equinox already hold a nice regal position of dishing out slash procs, but I do think it makes perfect sense for Gara. My main concern with that, like you said, is that it's just a lazy way to add scaling to this game where scaling is the root of so many problems. I think it would be worth it to have guaranteed slash proc on her 4 when it's detonated though.

[Aeryes]

3 hours ago, Cibyllae said:

Yo like, 90% DR. Just seems like everyone is brushing this aside like its not a big deal. Seems like everyone wants her to do the big deeps, but I don't understand why. Every caster that was ever made has just fallen off in the end game. It's pretty janky of them to say she's going to be one thing and give us another but

If you read through the whole thread both I and a lot of other people have often said her 2 is the only thing making her decent. However "unbreakable warrior" or not she was advertised to us as a caster and her kit does feel like a caster, just a bad one. She should do comparable damage to caster frames. She doesn't. And no caster frames dont fall off, I'd call Mag and Mesa casters and they do the highest damage in the game. Saryn and Nova might fall off at a point but Saryn is still deleting half of an enemies HP and Nova can still do much more damage than Gara.

You can't just say she's good because of the damage reduction. Her 2 is the same as Mesa's 3. However. Mesa also has peacemaker and a great group buff and extremely reliable CC. In fact I'd say she's probably overall the strongest frame in the game in terms of how powerful she is and how easy it is to make use of the kit.

If you're going to fixate on the one decent thing she has going for her in order to defend this frame please don't bother because that isn't constructive at all. Incase you haven't noticed we aren't here mindlessly hating, I made very clear points in the OP and funnily enough almost all of the replies agreed with the majority of them.

Her 4 has been improved (though visually it looks really dumb) so that's one step in the right direction.

Edited October 18, 2017 by Aeryes

[(PSN)Ozymandias-13-]

21 minutes ago, Aeryes said:

 

I think the point he's making is that she's more of a defense/support frame based on her powers. She may have been badly advertised as an offensive caster frame, but her powers themselves can still be good for defense once they're balanced.

[Aeryes]

1 minute ago, (PS4)Riko_113 said:

I think the point he's making is that she's more of a defense/support frame based on her powers. She may have been badly advertised as an offensive caster frame, but her powers themselves can still be good for defense once they're balanced.

Some supportive aspects perhaps, like most casters. But she definitely doesn't feel like a defense frame. Her 4 is the only thing which gives people that idea and it was pretty poor as far as defensive abilities go until the newest hotfix so that shows how badly she was thought out as far as being a defense frame.

I think the issue a lot of people have is they have no idea what she's supposed to be and that's a pretty fair way to see it due to just how jumbled her kit is. Even with Oberon who literally has a bit of everything, its still immediately clear that he's intended as a support. That's not the case with Gara,

[(PSN)Ozymandias-13-]

12 minutes ago, Aeryes said:

Some supportive aspects perhaps, like most casters. But she definitely doesn't feel like a defense frame. Her 4 is the only thing which gives people that idea and it was pretty poor as far as defensive abilities go until the newest hotfix so that shows how badly she was thought out as far as being a defense frame.

I think the issue a lot of people have is they have no idea what she's supposed to be and that's a pretty fair way to see it due to just how jumbled her kit is. Even with Oberon who literally has a bit of everything, its still immediately clear that he's intended as a support. That's not the case with Gara,

90% damage resistance for allies and herself, Area Taunt ability, and Area denial ability sounds pretty clearly defensive to me. 75% of her powers lessen damage to her and her allies. The problem could be the Taunt ability being inadequate, which very possibly messes up the flow of the whole kit. 

Edited October 18, 2017 by (PS4)Riko_113

[Aeryes]

I'd call her 2 a support tool since it helps in any situation defensive or not. The 3 is definitely the thing which needs the most love.

[Cibyllae]

8 hours ago, Aeryes said:

Incase you haven't noticed we aren't here mindlessly hating, I made very clear points in the OP and funnily enough almost all of the replies agreed with the majority of them.

Just because 10 people agree with you, it doesn't mean you are correct, its not even an indication that you might be correct, please base the validity of your statements on their own merits, not upon how many people agree with you. I never said you were mindlessly hating, nor did I think you were. I'm claiming that your "very clear points in  the OP" to use your direct words, were made at the wrong level of analysis. I expressed this already.

11 hours ago, Cibyllae said:

I think the observations and analyses of her abilities are in comparing her to what was expected, which was a scaling cc damage frame, and not in light she basks in which is survivability.

To make it clear, you're comparing Gara to the Gara you have in your head. And the Gara you have in your head is a scaling damage caster frame. Shes not a scaling damage caster frame, and she doesn't need to be one just because they advertised her as such. Like I said before,

11 hours ago, Cibyllae said:

Stop trying to fit a square peg into a circular hole.

 

 

7 hours ago, Aeryes said:

If you're going to fixate on the one decent thing she has going for her in order to defend this frame please don't bother because that isn't constructive at all.

6 hours ago, (PS4)Riko_113 said:

I think the point he's making is that she's more of a defense/support frame based on her powers. She may have been badly advertised as an offensive caster frame, but her powers themselves can still be good for defense once they're balanced.

7 hours ago, (PS4)Riko_113 said:

90% damage resistance for allies and herself, Area Taunt ability, and Area denial ability sounds pretty clearly defensive to me. 75% of her powers lessen damage to her and her allies.

Fixating, explaining, whatever word fits, I think stating clearly how valuable her 2nd ability is, is constructive. Like you said, and as I believe, most people were writing off her 2nd ability as

8 hours ago, Aeryes said:

the one decent thing she has going for her

 

7 hours ago, Aeryes said:

If you read through the whole thread both I and a lot of other people have often said her 2 is the only thing making her decent.

I'm making the point that it makes her more than decent. 10x health and shields, or if there is anyone out there that likes to think of DR in terms of armor, 2700 armor. Except its better than armor, because it affects shields which regenerate. 2700 armor for 40 seconds, with 75% efficiency and 100%+ range. As I stated above, I highlighted her 2 because most people were brushing it off as decent. Its not decent, its phenomenal.

 

7 hours ago, Aeryes said:

You can't just say she's good because of the damage reduction.

Why not? Rhino is good because he can give the whole team damage multipliers, nova is good because she can constantly slow the enemy. Why can't Gara "be good" because she gives the team 10x health and shields, or in other terms 2700 armor that affects both shields and health. A team could win on her 4 alone in any defense or survival mission by virtue of it's zoning capabilities, but it also stuns and gives a damage multiplier as added bonuses. If we're talking Bere interception, 90% dmg reduction that doesn't constrict you to a certain area is pretty damn good. Shes not a room clearer, and she doesn't need to be, even if she was her ranges in comparison to others are bad and range is needed to clear a room.

 

Being a defensive/support frame fits her theme as

Spoiler

when it is revealed that Saya had kept Konzu's iron flower it signified that some bonds are never broken and can't be broken. Gara's ability to keep your team whole and unbroken represents this well.

 

You want her to be something that she isn't. Which is a Nidus. You haven't said this directly, but a scaling damage caster is exactly what Nidus is. If I were to be critical, I would say that tacking on health% dmg or 100% slash procs is a real lazy way to go about making her a scaling damage caster frame. There is no interaction there, it's just numbers.

At least give her cool interactions man, make it so that she can put glass stacks on an enemy which increases the status chance for all damage sources on that enemy.

Or every time  she ends a melee finisher animation she becomes Blessed by the Sun, giving her X multiplier in all damage sources for 7 seconds and allow the duration to stack per animation finished and the multiplier to be affected by ability strength.

OR! Give her 3 a multi shot bonus when you shoot through it with your weapons.

OR give her 4 a multi shot bonus when you shoot through it with your weapons!

Or have some type of stacking mechanism that gives energy regain for the team based on how many enemies have glass stacks on them. Turn her 2 into a single target damage enhancer instead of a reducer that ramps up to its maximum multiplier and energy consumption. Give the the glass stacks damage reduction, like 1.3 percent per stack, so that you can still get keep her defensive capabilities.

Don't just tack on damage, make the interactions between her abilities be fun. Base it around resource management, not maximization of mods.

I'm going to restate the same question because it still wasn't answered.

12 hours ago, Cibyllae said:

Even if Gara was a dps frame with all of the ability changes put forth in this thread, when would you pick her over Ember, Sayrn, Banshe, Mesa, Mirage, Chroma, or Nidus?