Problems with Operator only Missions

[mkefs]

I've been trying out some missions as Tenno only to come up with a fun little quest for my clan, but there are some serious roadblocks to being able to do this. They MIGHT work if the Unairu armor and Vazarin health waybounds are unlocked, or the Naramon and Zenurik ones were, but otherwise it's more or less impossible to play fully as the operator in most missions. The problem is that once you do a certain something in the mission, the whole map goes on alert, as if the alarms were hit, or in some cases the map is on full alert the entire time upon starting.

 

This is a big problem since Operators are being added onto every big update. I get it, they are interesting, and CAN be fun. It's just that right now, they are just incredibly frustrating to play as in almost every mission type, if not impossible. They essentially start out vastly worse than even the first few missions as a Warframe due to the inability to recover health or evade damage and run away, and only after a LONG time of intense focus grinding are they as good as maybe 1 forma 1 reactor frame, albeit with no powers to speak of except those coming from incidental void dashes and void blasts (melee), and bad energy efficiency (think 150 power with 75% efficiency)

 

Missions that are OK for an Operator as is :

• Exterminate (because you can stealth it)
• Spy (because you can stealth it)
• Possibly a few Boss Fights (because of the lack of enemy Hordes in the fight)
  • Jackal
  • Tyl Regor
  • Lephantis

Map Alert on Action :

• Capture - Once you capture a target, the whole map is on alert, and some enemies will spawn behind you and rush at you. If you've stealthed the whole thing, why do they suddenly go on alert? It really doesn't make sense for any kind of stealth gameplay. If you stealth "disintegrate" the capture target, no one should be the wiser
• Rescue - Once you stealth rescue the target, the whole map is on alert. But why? No one should be the wiser
• Deception (Ceres-Sabotage) - same issue, but again, why?

Map Alert on Start :

• Hive - the whole map is on alert at the start of the mission, so no go
• Defense, Mobile Defense, Excavation, Salvage, Defection, Hijack - A bit obvious that there would be hordes of enemies
  • I doubt anything can be done about Defense/Defection/Salvage
  • Mobile Defense and Excavation could work for Operator, if they were reworked a bit
    • allow stealth Mobile Defense
    • different power source for extractors, allowing for stealth
    • Hijack won't work at all, because it needs shields and Operators don't have any (currently)

Survivability Problems - Operator Needs (i'm talking level 15 missions here)

• Tankiness - Unairu (Armor) + Vazarin (Health and HP Regen)
• Mobility - Naramon (Speed and Distance) + Zenurik (Energy to Void Dash enough to be mobile and evade fire)
• Most Boss Fights (because of the goon Hordes that storm into the boss fight and lack of survivability options)
  • Vor (Mercury)
  • Vay Hek (Earth)
  • Lech Kril (Mars)
  • Sergeant (Phobos)
  • Lech Kril and Vor (Ceres)
  • Alad V (Jupiter)
  • Raptor (Europa?)
  • Sargas Ruk (Saturn)
  • Hyena Pack (Neptune)
  • Ambulas (Pluto)
  • Kela de Thayme (Sedna)

Right now, the base operator has no tankiness, no mobility, and no ability to heal aside from health pads, which is why people generally don't like playing the operator. The Amps are capable of killing level 50ish grineer while feeling OK, but the operator can't survive enough hits (either via tankiness or mobility) to make playing as an operator worth anything. That's pretty unfortunate, given how much work has gone into the Operators with War Within, Second Dream, Chains of Harrow, and Plains of Eidolon.

 

If the intent is to keep Operators more or less in this niche where they aren't used for much except occassional quest parts and Eidolon related objectives, that's fine, but less work should be put into Operators (probably no more at this point, honestly). But if the intent (and it appears this way) is make Operator only play viable and interesting and worth anything, they probably just need the base things that Warframes themselves have :

• Health Regen, even if only half as good as Rejuvenation (or Shields that regen)
• Tankiness (Health and Armor/Shields) or Evasion (Speed and Energy Efficiency) : one of these is required
• Powers that don't rely on Void Dash or Void Blast to work. Mixing your evasion energy pool with your power energy pool is showing some problems
  • for example, Naramon Void Blast can confuse enemies. that's great! But I can't Void Dash to get close, Void Blast to confuse, Void Dash out. there's barely enough energy to make it work at all, but there's not enough operator energy regen or tankiness to survive ANY attacks after that last Void Dash.
    • this relegates Operators to stealth only missions, for any practical use (Spy, Exterminate)

From there you could work on eventually phasing out warframes and letting the Operators themselves handle weapons (in a very far down the road update, or Warframe 2.0)

[Xaero]

I recommend getting an Arcane that restores health on Void Dash. The last level gives you 20% HP with 100% chance. Basically, when I take serious hits, I just blink a couple times and I'm back at full HP. Not even using Zenurik passives yet.

[Klavinmour]

With my Vazarin passive and a level 2 arcane I now have 875 health with my Operator.
Under Vazarin you have massive health regen per second and can increase it further with void mode, I can even dash through allies to give them invulnerability and restore 75% of their health.

 

That being said I had roughly 7mil Focus returned to me for Vazarin alone, and I'm currently farming Focus for Zenurik for the 200% energy increase and energy regen for my Operator.

Focus farm is my only issue with Focus 2.0 we need too much Focus Points to do anything, and it really should maybe be halved for every rank of every passive.

[Xaero]

21 minutes ago, Klavinmour said:

Focus farm is my only issue with Focus 2.0 we need too much Focus Points to do anything, and it really should maybe be halved for every rank of every passive.

Or at least rebalanced. For example, all way-bounds could be accessible from the start at any tree, and the shard + 1 million points would be used to upgrade the node to the last level.

[mkefs]

I'll look at getting the arcanes for sure. That doesn't really address the base operator though, this requires a ton of work just to be reasonable, where the same is not true of warframes in general. Once you hit level 30 with a warframe, even without a blue reactor you can still do reasonably well in terms of survivability and damage.

Pretty much all of my focus is in Naramon at the moment. I am working on the amp energy stuff in madurai, and once I get that unlocked, Vazarin is next for the HP and healing, followed by Unairu for the armor, then Zenurik for the final bit of operator energy. So right now, I'm essentially playing as the most basic operator + a little bit of speed at best

More or less, my point is just that the base operators are worse than your first level 30 warframe (no potato, no forma), and that DE should very heavily reconsider operator balance if they plan to do anything at all with it further.

[VoxGray]

On 11/3/2017 at 9:35 PM, mkefs said:

Pretty much all of my focus is in Naramon at the moment. I am working on the amp energy stuff in madurai, and once I get that unlocked, Vazarin is next for the HP and healing, followed by Unairu for the armor, then Zenurik for the final bit of operator energy. So right now, I'm essentially playing as the most basic operator + a little bit of speed at best

Probably the worst order to do it in, if you're focusing solely on Waybounds. You should aim for Zenurik first, since literally everything your Operator does hinges on that energy pool. Your survivability skyrockets when you have a smoother energy economy, as does your mobility. Next, work on Vazarin, as the passives there can give you a massive amount of health, and solve the issue of lack of regen quite handily. Unairu should come after, as armor is useless without the health to back it up, but getting those passives can make your Operator seriously tanky. Next comes Madurai, as the improvements to Amps round out your combat capabilities, but aren't explicitly necessary (my gilded Granmu prism can take out lvl80 Grineer in two volleys). Finally comes Naramon, as the speed boosts are largely a QoL feature, but can be useful (max rank allowing your Void Dash to overtake Skywing in short bursts). While the rest of the Focus trees are up to player tastes, I find this to be the most optimal order to unlock everything for average gameplay. I plan to go for Madurai before Vazarin solely for the sake of Teralyst hunting, though, so some flexibility exists.