Nezha's Blazing Chakram & Misc.

[MayssonFairbanks]

Hi there some feedback on Nezha's 2, Blazing Chakram based on relatively low playtime, divided in 3 parts, healing, damage, and gameplay. Then a bit later some general feedback.

 

Blazing Chakram "Hurl a flaming ring that burns enemies and causes them to emit a healing blast on death. Reactivate to instantly travel to the ring's location."

Healing component:

a lot of issues with this part of the ability, I could make a list but all these issues kinda mesh together in such a way that you'd need to experience the whole thing in order to really understand what it is all about. So here's story time:

I'm in a squad, and there's a lot of activity, the game is very busy, there are infested everywhere and I realize my buddy is about to die. Needless to say, there is a high probability that this dude is not even aware of the fact that Nezha can heal... 

Anyway, it just so happens that Charkram's heal effect has a very short range, so the first thing I have to do is try to get close to that dude (let's call him Mike). Now here are the conditions:

-Hope Mike is near an enemy, and not running away
-Make sure I am not too close to the enemy (because the chakram doesn't work at point blank)

Now here is the tricky part: throwing the chakram

-make sure nothing stands in your way, not even allies
-Make sure there is a large enough space around you so that the chakram goes off in a straight trajectory
-Hope the enemy does not move, or die before the chakram reaches him

Now if by chance you manage to hit an enemy, things actually get tricky:

-Hope the blast effect did not send the enemy flying away
-Hope the chakram actually did set the enemy on fire
-Hope Mike is still near the enemy when it dies.

In my experience, the best thing to do is to get close to low hp allies, walk right into the chaos along with them and spam this thing, until you see your allies's health go back up. Basically pressing 2 is equivalent to crossing your fingers and hoping the stars literally align. It requires good coordination and execution from yourself, but also requires allies, enemies, as well as the environment itself to be in sync, in perfect harmony with each other in order to get the most out of this ability. Blazing Chakram's healing component is hard to use, for all intents and purposes very mana intensive and extremely frustrating, compared to most other healing abilities in the game.

I swear I sometimes try my best in order to heal Mike. This dude has 10hp left, he's running and jumping around like a headless chicken, and I have to forgo everything else, and start chasing Mike around, throwing my chakram at potential targets, and praying the stars align. Sometimes I feel like I'm wasting literally minutes as well as my whole mana pool simply trying to do one simple thing, but the game just won't let me. This ability is too unreliable and makes me feel powerless. However when things go right, it's a very cool ability, and it is satisfying to use especially when the healing goes off (I love the SFX).

 

Damage component:

I appreciate the synergy with Firewalker, but after playing with other frames, I suggest a buff to damage, one way or another. I was levelling up a freshly bought Gara (she was rank 12 at the time of the incident) and was messing around with her 1st ability called Shattered Lash. I was hitting lvl 40 grineers for 20k. Hit ten of them with the horizontal move, that's 200k instant damage for 25 mana, at rank 12 mind you.

Now you're going to say that this is not really comparable because Nezha is a lot about control and less about damage, and I agree with you but for the sake of it, shall we compare in terms of damage, Gara's 1 compared to Nezha's abilities: 

-Firewalker: does some DoT damage but it's only a DoT, it's not instant damage. And if you play with Pyroclastic Flow you'll realize that doing 200k of damage requires a lot of time, A LOT OF MANA, as well as optimized conditions and constant involvment. Costs 25 mana + 5 / second.

-Chakram: does what, 4362.5 heat damage with maxed strength and energy conversion? (not 20000), and damage diminishes with distance. Firewalker is a prerequisite so total cost is 50 mana, not counting Firewalker's energy drain (5/s)

-Divine Spears; well this is an aoe cc spell, but it hits for 4k with maximized ability strength and Energy Conversion. not to mention there is a cast delay of 2 seconds as well as a deactivation animation of 1 second. Costs 100 mana

So where is my instant 200k damage? Joking aside, in my opinion Blazing Chakram requires a damage buff. At least please make it worth the mana cost, the casting time, as well as the execution. At the moment Id rather sprint or slide into a group of enemies and slash them all, this is much quicker, easier, much more damaging and does not cost energy.

 

Behavior:

Just play with it for ten minutes, and see how fun it is, but how random it is. Its flight time as well as its overall movement makes it very difficult to use it to its fullest. 

Sometimes it will come back one second after you throw it. 
Sometimes you won't see it for 4, 5 seconds at a time. 
Sometimes you try to teleport to it but it does not work: pressing the button does nothing. 
Sometimes you end up being teleported 50 meters in the air, or 100 meters below the map, or in a corridor far away from the action
Sometimes the heat proc does not seem to be properly applied.

The only time you can rely on it is if:

-you're in a large unobstructed room 
-you're aiming straight at a group of enemies, right in front of you, preferably no more than 20 meters away, 
-you teleport as soon as possible, before the chakram starts bouncing and flying away, basically before it even hits the enemies.

Also, because of its randomness, and because of its speed, as well as the busy nature of the game, its position is difficult to track even with the minimap indicator, which becomes buried among tons of red triangles and white rectangles.

TLDR:

1. Cannot throw the chakram at point blank 

2. Cannot throw the Chakram if there is a teammmate in the vicinity. God forbid a teammate is fighting the same enemies you were targeting, or walks in front of you while you're throwing the chakram; you just lost 25 energy.

3. Inconsistent and unpredictable behavior

4. Its healing component needs a range buff

5. Its damage needs scaling

Overall the Charkram is a fun ability and it is extremely versatile, but its shortcomings render it extremely situational and extremely dependent on a lot of factors which are outside of player's control unless there is constant communication and coordination between squadmates (not going to happen in pubs).

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More Nezha-specific issues, but nothing important:

• casting times seem a bit on the high side, also there is a lack of one-handed abilities
• Warding Halo cannot be deactivated or recast, it requires players to actually fall into a bottomless pit in order to be get rid of the buff and be able to cast it again.

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A couple of unrelated general feedback (I did not feel the need to create individual threads for these specific issues, either DE read these forums in which case they will see this, or they don't)

• Sprint speed.

Issue: Some warframes have such low sprint multipliers that the difference between normal running and sprinting is barely noticeable. 
Suggestion: improve sprint speed across the board by at least 15 or 20%

 

• Aerial Attack: also known as a "Jump Attack".

Issue: Idk if this happens to other players too, but after performing an aerial attack, there is a short delay during which the player cannot attack. Player can only attack after about 1 second. In some situations this breaks the flow of melee and makes the player vulnerable, since he's just standing there, spamming F and wondering why are enemies not dying.
Suggestion: Unless it is somehow working as intended, best course of action is to remove the inactivity delay.

 

• Naramon's Void Stalker.

Issue: it seems to be broken, Captain:

1. First, I'm currently rank 2/3 and I have to stop playing for 5 seconds every 30 seconds, that's 10 seconds every minute, that's 10 minutes every hour???? No way, sorry guys I'm not good at math, these numbers must be off? In any case,  Sitting invisible without the ability to do anything (if you leave and reenter the void, do anything other than move, then the buff resets to 0%... oh and this ability consumes additional void energy per second, so you can't void dash around, and you cannot jump either because you're in void mode) is mindboggling in the context of Warframe and obviously broken.
2. This buff is impossible to maintain for more than half a second. This decay mechanic has no reason to be, and is extremely annoying. I get 30% crit, then 5 seconds later it's only a 20% crit. 5 seconds later it's only a 15% crit, and so on. 
3. The icon is buggy, sometimes i can see two of them, only one being real. Also it sometimes freezes and stays on the screen despite the actual buff not being active anymore:

Spoiler

Suggestions:

1. Untie it from Void mode, tie it to something else.
2. Give us the whole buff for the entire duration, or keep the decay but increase the duration of the buff. In fact, you should scratch this whole gimmicky semi-passive buffs system you got going. Make VS a passive, and tie it to tenno affinity (get X% crit per Tenno in a X meter radius), or tie it to number of enemies around (X% crit per enemy in a X meter radius), or heck, here is something totally out of the blue: tie it to the combo counter. Anyway, make the crit or the decay relative to something relevant and dynamic; tying it to a boring void mode or to an arbitrary 30s duration turned out to be a bad idea imo.
3. please fix the UI.

 

ps. I love the game

pps. When's Nezha Prime

Edited October 17, 2017 by MayssonFairbanks