Excalibur and Naramon

[Flyghter]

Hello guys I want to start this topic to talk about Exalted blade and the naramon changes i don't know how much of you guys played whit the invisibility but it was pretty strong at high levels but now we lose that so my suggestion is to make combo duration stack whit waves and whit mods(exception Blood Rush this will make him to op i think raw dmg is enough) this way we can use the new naramon Power Spike .

 

[Entharias]

Look, my Excalibur melts lv 145 bombards with few hits, so i'm 100% sure, he doesn't need any damage increase.

Edited October 15, 2017 by Nakrast

[WhiteMarker]

27 minutes ago, Flyghter said:

it was pretty strong at high levels

It was way too strong. It was OP.
That's one reason why it got removed.
And Excal deson't need more buffs. He is in a good place. (Aside from his 3)

[Flyghter]

Don't understand  me wrong even if they nerf the waves whit 50% even 75% a scale whit the focus will be nice...

[WhiteMarker]

Just now, Flyghter said:

Don't understand  me wrong even if they nerf the waves whit 50% even 75% a scale whit the focus will be nice...

And why would we do such a stupid thing?
Why would we totally nerf an ability, so we have to use one specific Focus-School? Why not leave the ability as it is. So we can use whatever School we want.

Just get over the change to the schools. Everyone with just a bit of common sense knew they would change these OP Focus-Schools.

[MayssonFairbanks]

1 hour ago, WhiteMarker said:

Why would we totally nerf an ability, so we have to use one specific Focus-School? Why not leave the ability as it is. So we can use whatever School we want.

The exact same thing can be said about Naramon and invisibility. If anything, none of these schools were required in order to beat the game, They gave us options, they gave the player access to different optional playstyles. Completely removing invisibility and destroying the Naramon tree was not a reasonable decision. DE could at least have tried to balance it.

Again, Naramon was not "OP", such an opinion is quite shortsighted; I fail to see in what way does a person turning invisible for a few seconds could qualify as "OP". This does not hold water in a game where there are TON of stuff that can be deemed even more "OP" than merely being able to turn invisible. There are combinations in this game which are unstoppable, which allow the player to "cheese" the entire game. Yet these never get touched or nerfed?

One of the first things I did when I started playing this game was buy Ivara so that I could bypass the entire Spy gameplay. By ya'll logic this is completely broken and should be removed from the game. Also I got myself a nice punchthrough mod which allowed me to literally shoot enemies through walls. If that's not broken, then I don't know what is.

"OP", you say, maybe we can ask that 40 year old dad who always plays solo 1 hour per day, who was having a blast doing coop runs with his son, maybe we should ask him whether Naramon was 'OP' and whether he wanted DE to balance it  completely remove it.

On a more serious tone, Naramon was not inherently powerful right off the bat. It required A LOT of time and effort in order to actually get to that power level, be able to unlock and max these abilities, Players got to these power levels because they worked for it. It is only logical that their characters would become more powerful. I'm saying "powerful" as opposed to OP, because If something is SUPPOSED to be powerful, then it is not by definition Overpowered.

"it is powerful therefore it is overpowered." This is flawed. You can't really say that a 10 forma Tigris Prime with Primed Mods and a godly Riven is OP, can you?

In any case, what if that Naramon was actually OP? Let's say Naramon players realized that wow, this thing is actually good and gives me lots of survivability. But they were not enjoying it, they thought it was too powerful. Well, they had some options, they could either:

A. disable the ability by clicking on its icon in the tree.

B. use another focus school.

C. Play content that's actually challenging.

Some of these players did exactly that, some realized that Naramon was not fun for them, so they switched to another school. Whatever they did, these people easily found a way to make it work, without any input from DE, and without any impact on the rest of the game or even online experience. They did not feel the need to go on the forums, complain about it and go out of their way to ruin the fun of other players.

 

1 hour ago, Nakrast said:

Look, my Excalibur melts lv 145 bombards with few hits, so i'm 100% sure, he doesn't need any damage increase.

Well in my opinion, if you do that kind of damage that means you know what you're doing, and you've played a lot, you've invested a lot of time and effort, so I say Kudos to you Sir, you're a badass and deservedly so. I've yet to meet lvl 145 bombards and I don't want to, these things must be a nightmare. Watch out though, there are some people out there who would think that what you're describing is borderline broken and should be removed from the game.

Edited October 15, 2017 by MayssonFairbanks

[Flyghter]

3 hours ago, WhiteMarker said:

And why would we do such a stupid thing?
Why would we totally nerf an ability, so we have to use one specific Focus-School? Why not leave the ability as it is. So we can use whatever School we want.

Just get over the change to the schools. Everyone with just a bit of common sense knew they would change these OP Focus-Schools.

I understand that you see it this as a nerf -50 % on waves corect let say the dmg is 3000  and -50% on waves is 1500 now let add x3 dmgmult and the dmg duration from the mod and you have a 4500 but for this you will have to mod it the naramon will help whit  maintaining it to x3 it will be a nerf and a buff in the same context and pls dont say i say stupid things we can speak normal here  no need for insults you dont agree whit my suggestion its perfectly ok.

[(PSN)RenovaKunumaru]

3 hours ago, MayssonFairbanks said:

Again, Naramon was not "OP",

How can you seriously say that?

[Nazrethim]

3 hours ago, MayssonFairbanks said:

The exact same thing can be said about Naramon and invisibility. If anything, none of these schools were required in order to beat the game, They gave us options, they gave the player access to different optional playstyles. Completely removing invisibility and destroying the Naramon tree was not a reasonable decision. DE could at least have tried to balance it.

The only way to properly balance Shadowstep was to add a cooldown (like 30s), change the action required to trigger it (say, use a Finisher attack and kill as opposed to get it on every single hit) AND make it dispelable by the usual suspects.

3 hours ago, MayssonFairbanks said:

Again, Naramon was not "OP", such an opinion is quite shortsighted; I fail to see in what way does a person turning invisible for a few seconds could qualify as "OP". This does not hold water in a game where there are TON of stuff that can be deemed even more "OP" than merely being able to turn invisible. There are combinations in this game which are unstoppable, which allow the player to "cheese" the entire game. Yet these never get touched or nerfed?

It was OP because you could be invisible, therefore untargetable, forever so long as you kept hitting enemies, and it was not dispelable like the other invisibilities.

3 hours ago, MayssonFairbanks said:

One of the first things I did when I started playing this game was buy Ivara so that I could bypass the entire Spy gameplay. By ya'll logic this is completely broken and should be removed from the game. Also I got myself a nice punchthrough mod which allowed me to literally shoot enemies through walls. If that's not broken, then I don't know what is.

Ivara is designed around that, and in fact you need to beat Spy to get Ivara. And her invisibilities only last so long and have cost. Shadowstep allowed players to facetank anything in the game because enemies wouldn't intentionally attack them.

3 hours ago, MayssonFairbanks said:

"OP", you say, maybe we can ask that 40 year old dad who always plays solo 1 hour per day, who was having a blast doing coop runs with his son, maybe we should ask him whether Naramon was 'OP' and whether he wanted DE to balance it  completely remove it.

How much time you play bears no relevance regarding game balance.

3 hours ago, MayssonFairbanks said:

On a more serious tone, Naramon was not inherently powerful right off the bat. It required A LOT of time and effort in order to actually get to that power level, be able to unlock and max these abilities, Players got to these power levels because they worked for it. It is only logical that their characters would become more powerful. I'm saying "powerful" as opposed to OP, because If something is SUPPOSED to be powerful, then it is not by definition Overpowered.

It took me a week to get shadowstep with single minor lens and I wasn't even trying to farm focus. "Powerful" in game terminology means it is good against most content. "Overpowered" is when something is so much more powerful than the other options available that they seem useless by comparison, this was the position Shadowstep held.

3 hours ago, MayssonFairbanks said:

"it is powerful therefore it is overpowered." This is flawed. You can't really say that a 10 forma Tigris Prime with Primed Mods and a godly Riven is OP, can you?

Tigris Prime has to reload after every shot, as a shotgun requires ammo conversion due to the lower dropchance of said ammo type, Riven for a specific weapon is hard to get and hard to get right, 10 forma require the player to get the bps, craft them (which takes 10 days) an re-level the weapon all over.

Getting to Shadowstep required about a week or less and yielded obcene results by granting a huge damage multiplier and providing an undispelable variant of the second best protection below full invulnerability this game has.

3 hours ago, MayssonFairbanks said:

A. disable the ability by clicking on its icon in the tree.

I did that because I got sick of the cheese (and because being 100% invisible messed up Solo spawn rates in survivals) and the game actually got more Fun (note: I play Dwarf Fortress, so my definition of Fun and !!Fun!! may be different to yours)

3 hours ago, MayssonFairbanks said:

C. Play content that's actually challenging.

The only legit challenging content in this game are the Operator-only experiences (because they are out of our Warframe's OP build's reach) and Conclave (where you actually need skill) and some Bosses (that flat out ignore some of our major cheese options).

Broken level scaling isn't challenge, it's a treadmill.

3 hours ago, MayssonFairbanks said:

Some of these players did exactly that, some realized that Naramon was not fun for them, so they switched to another school. Whatever they did, these people easily found a way to make it work, without any input from DE, and without any impact on the rest of the game or even online experience. They did not feel the need to go on the forums, complain about it and go out of their way to ruin the fun of other players.

Naramon's Shadowstep abuse was the antithesis of "Challenge" as it removed it almost entirely from the whole game.

3 hours ago, MayssonFairbanks said:

Well in my opinion, if you do that kind of damage that means you know what you're doing, and you've played a lot, you've invested a lot of time and effort, so I say Kudos to you Sir, you're a badass and deservedly so. I've yet to meet lvl 145 bombards and I don't want to, these things must be a nightmare. Watch out though, there are some people out there who would think that what you're describing is borderline broken and should be removed from the game.

A true challenge tests players skill and knowledge of the encounter's mechanics, not how much they been grinding. Any enemy above lvl 95 is actually broken due to broken scaling that it's there to kick players out of missions. If you want to make a build to take on lvl 9999 enemeis, go ahead, but remember that you are well past the balanced portion of the game, which means nerfs to stuff that works at that level means jack regarding the actual game balance.

[Epsik-kun]

15 hours ago, Flyghter said:

Hello guys I want to start this topic to talk about Exalted blade and the naramon changes i don't know how much of you guys played whit the invisibility but it was pretty strong at high levels but now we lose that so my suggestion is to make combo duration stack whit waves and whit mods(exception Blood Rush this will make him to op i think raw dmg is enough) this way we can use the new naramon Power Spike .

 

Meme answers in a style of "Oh golly! My Excal sure can kill stuff!" aside, I don't quite get what you're asking for.

Combo multiplier already affects waves. Power Spike (and other Naramon semi/passives) also work for EBlade, waves included. Shadow Debt mods still don't work for it, but were they to - they don't really have a good synergy with EBlade stat-line, so no - getting Blood Rush on would not make it much stronger.

Waves don't increase combo counter on their own, but it isn't really a problem if you're fighting stuff up-close and said stuff can take more than one hit from you, which is the only situation where you'll need more damage.

[nickelshark]

I am personally glad shadow step is six feet under. It was most certainly op. Giving any frame the ability to be invisible the entire mission? How can that not be op. I can't personally speak as to what it was like to use excal with shadow step as I avoided it like the plague.

As a long time excal player one thing has always been true of Excalibur Imo. That Radial Blind is his bread and butter. You can get the same amount of damage by using it in junction with his ultimate. Just adapt. Now you just gotta do more parkour and use radial blind for big damage with some slash dash to avoid the big hits. I know for sure excal can still destroy high level enemies. The difference now is that you can't totally cheese them.

[Nazrethim]

1 hour ago, nickelshark said:

I am personally glad shadow step is six feet under. It was most certainly op. Giving any frame the ability to be invisible the entire mission? How can that not be op. I can't personally speak as to what it was like to use excal with shadow step as I avoided it like the plague.

As a long time excal player one thing has always been true of Excalibur Imo. That Radial Blind is his bread and butter. You can get the same amount of damage by using it in junction with his ultimate. Just adapt. Now you just gotta do more parkour and use radial blind for big damage with some slash dash to avoid the big hits. I know for sure excal can still destroy high level enemies. The difference now is that you can't totally cheese them.

If anything, at most we could ask Radial Javelin to be scale with melee mods and/or combo counter and/or be more powerful while Exalted Blade is active. I would also like if the RB no EB's slide attack be axed, as it's entirely redundant and inferior to the regular RB.

Also the EB combos should be given special perks, like waves that travel faster and longer, or increased damage or something to make them worth using to discourage a bit the mindless E-spam or Slide-spam macros.

[MayssonFairbanks]

21 hours ago, Nazrethim said:

The only way to properly balance Shadowstep was to add a cooldown (like 30s), change the action required to trigger it (say, use a Finisher attack and kill as opposed to get it on every single hit) AND make it dispelable by the usual suspects.

It was OP because you could be invisible, therefore untargetable, forever so long as you kept hitting enemies, and it was not dispelable like the other invisibilities.

Interesting suggestions, speaking of which I was thinking about ways to balance it without even touching it, such as making disruptor aura actually disrupt invsibility, or give some kind of x-ray goggles to heavy units grinner & corpus so that they could spot players as if they were not invisible... That would have added a layer of involvment and awareness. Anyway, if anyting its one issue was its complete immunity to dispels.

 

1 hour ago, nickelshark said:

I am personally glad shadow step is six feet under. It was most certainly op. Giving any frame the ability to be invisible the entire mission? How can that not be op. I can't personally speak as to what it was like to use excal with shadow step as I avoided it like the plague.

How can you say it was OP, and that you're glad it's gone? If you didn't even use it then how did its existence affect you in any way shape or form. Unlike some other abilities & powers in this game, this one didn't even harm or ruin the squad experience in any way that I'm aware of. If there is a dude in your squad who turns invisible and kills monsters with his axe, is that harmful in any way?

Also  all these OP talks make we wonder whether there is some kind of competitive side of Warframe that I'm not aware of? Is this a hardcore pvp game, or is it a free-to-play casual pve game? You did the right thing though, instead of relying on invisibility and then *@##$ing about it, you came to realize that this was an optional playstyle, that it was not necessary in any way in order to beat the game or to have fun, and that you had the choice to simply ignore it. 

[nickelshark]

7 minutes ago, Nazrethim said:

If anything, at most we could ask Radial Javelin to be scale with melee mods and/or combo counter and/or be more powerful while Exalted Blade is active. I would also like if the RB no EB's slide attack be axed, as it's entirely redundant and inferior to the regular RB.

Also the EB combos should be given special perks, like waves that travel faster and longer, or increased damage or something to make them worth using to discourage a bit the mindless E-spam or Slide-spam macros.

I totally agree that RJ needs something. It's the only damage ability of his that doesn't scale with melee mods. In all my guides I've wrote for excal since his rework, I have always noted that RJ is okay in low to mid levels but beyond that, RB is just better. I said it when they gave him his rework and I'll say it again now, radial javelin needs something to give players a reason to use it in high levels.

[Nazrethim]

21 minutes ago, MayssonFairbanks said:

Interesting suggestions, speaking of which I was thinking about ways to balance it without even touching it, such as making disruptor aura actually disrupt invsibility, or give some kind of x-ray goggles to heavy units grinner & corpus so that they could spot players as if they were not invisible... That would have added a layer of involvment and awareness. Anyway, if anyting its one issue was its complete immunity to dispels.

I've suggested in the past that we need units that counter Invisibility for both Infested and Grineer.

For Grineer I threw 2 ideas:

Elite Seeker: replaces Seekers at about lvl35. Armed with an Acrid and special googles. It can see trough invisibility and the Acrid shots "paint" the target visible for other grineer without actually dispelling the invisibility buff.

Huntress: Elite melee enemies found only on high level spy (40 and above) and a mission concept I posted called "Infiltration" (a bit like spy, but multiphased and actual fails if you trigger a single alarm). It's equiped with the same visual technology of the elite seeker, but also has a "radar" that detects active Void energy (here meaning "Warframe buffs like Invisibility, Iron skin, exalted weapons"). Highly resistant to most damage types (we are talking Simaris Target levels of resistance) but vulnerable to Finisher damage (the idea is that you have to sneak on them, not facetank them).

 

For Infested I think making the spores that attach to us and reduce visibility also make us visible would be enough, however I would like new infested units, or "advanced" versions of the current ones showing up at higher level (like armorless chargers that can climb on walls or ceiling, crawlers fused into some sort of centipedes, infested Ballistas with arms that spread like fans to serve as shield for other infested and attack by using it's mutated spinal cord and head as a flail, etc)

28 minutes ago, nickelshark said:

I totally agree that RJ needs something. It's the only damage ability of his that doesn't scale with melee mods. In all my guides I've wrote for excal since his rework, I have always noted that RJ is okay in low to mid levels but beyond that, RB is just better. I said it when they gave him his rework and I'll say it again now, radial javelin needs something to give players a reason to use it in high levels.

Well, you gotta be more specific here. To me the game should be balanced around mid-to-high levels, that is about lvl40-50. Beyond that it's all diminished and beyond 100 no longer accounted for as the enemy scaling by that point is there to kicks us out of missions. For similar reasons I've suggested in the past to make mass CC abilities have a target cap or a chance to "miss" based on Power Strength, stat which currently serves little to no purpose to most mass CCs (with exceptions like Nova's MP)

[Hypernaut1]

58 minutes ago, Nazrethim said:

If anything, at most we could ask Radial Javelin to be scale with melee mods and/or combo counter and/or be more powerful while Exalted Blade is active. I would also like if the RB no EB's slide attack be axed, as it's entirely redundant and inferior to the regular RB.

Also the EB combos should be given special perks, like waves that travel faster and longer, or increased damage or something to make them worth using to discourage a bit the mindless E-spam or Slide-spam macros.

I like this idea. They should at least be as strong as his waves. In fact, it would make more sense that instead of a bunch of swords it we just a huge radial wave

[(PSN)lhbuch]

Excal had so many reworks on his ult that at this point I dont even know where DE wants it to be. 

It first worked with augments and even covert lethality which was a bug. Then dmg fall off was added. 

When things were too quiet, chromatic blade comes in and makes it regains the old glory. 

 

 

[(PSN)Radehx]

I'm glad they changed Naramon. The old version removed all challenge from the game and turned it into a boring button masher of a game. 

At least existing stealth frames require tactics and have drawbacks, the old Naramon only made people happy who hate any kind of challenge.

And no, the last thing Excal needs is a damage boost...

[(PSN)CoolD2108]

On 15.10.2017 at 10:46 AM, Flyghter said:

-snip-

Some things worth noting:

The invisibility multiplier you got is the same you get from blindet enemys, meaning that blinding enemys from time to time bears the same results.

Using a shade or preferably huras kubrow and then continously slash dashing not only keeps you invisible but also generates waves which in addition scale off your combo counter, what makes a combination of surging dash, drifting contact (works on exalted abilitys) and the new naramon (kinda combo/melee focused after all) awfully effective, much more so then a chromatic blade build ever could for the price of an addtional energy factor (been using that strategy before focus or chromatic were even in the game, the 3s were plenty to build x1,5-x2,5 multipliers in survivals back then)

Blindet enemys can be stealth finished, what makes arcane trickery a option for a 10/18% chance for 20s invisbility each.

 

So no need to fret over it. You can still go for zenurik and blind more or go for naramon to use slash dash more often..no real loss for him. There's others, even among the exalted ability users that got it worse....

 

Edited October 21, 2017 by (PS4)CoolD2108

[OoKeNnEtHoO]

What Excal needs is for Radial Javelin to become a defensive/evasive buff instead of something barely anyone uses.

If it ends up too strong, can even make it mutually exclusive with Exalted Blade so it's either Excal in evasion mode or Excal in Exalted Blade attack mode at any point of time.