Volt Changes

[Mudfam]

Volt Changes:

Since Volt has a new cosmetic entry, we've reviewed some long-requested QoL tweaks to his abilities to go along with it!
We will be monitoring this very closely to make sure we haven't introduced exploitative power behaviour. Please leave your feedback in the appropriate subforum.

• Added a minimum Duration for enemies affected by Discharge under the 'coil' CC effect. This could allow for possible modding diversity knowing minimum Duration for the 'coil' CC effect won't fall below 4 seconds.
• Removed the passive 5 Energy per second drain from Volt’s Electric Shield when moving with it. The 1 Energy per meter drain remains.
• Increased the base DPS of Discharge (from 450 at max rank to 750).
• Discharge is now castable in the air.

 

After all the massive amount of feedback that's been given on Volt and how unanimous it was, I am actually just furious at what we got instead.

Did you really not understand a single one of the 50 million or so posts saying the same exact thing?

Discharge doesn't need a buff, it needs a fix.

The complete bullS#&$ broken damage cap mechanic needs to go. Did you really understand that we want to do more damage?! We want the ability to not be mechanically broken. You can reduce damage and the duration to 1/10th, I don't care, as long as you remove the utterly broken and nonsesical cap that makes the ability utterly dysfunctional and impossible to mod.

Also, you removed the worng part of the energy drain from shields, and you didn't remove the pointless speed penalty.

And you ignored the other glaring issues with volt:

• Shock chains to completely random enemies instead of ones near target / point of impact
• Shock (electric proc?) stun doesn't always work or gets instantly cancelled
• Shock and Shield synergy needs to stun at least once to be of any use at all
• Spamming Speed due to tiny duration is very annoying for Volt and his whole squad
• Kuva Hyekka Masters still completely ignore shield (other Ignis units don't)
• Reload buff is insignificant until matched with annoyingly high movement speeds

 

I was really excited that we'd finally been heard, that Volt was at long last getting some much needed fixes, but this is just a slap in the face.

[(PSN)Croewe]

It's a step in the right direction but I agree that he needs more work.

[Omega-Shadowblade]

Having used him myself, there are some subtleties that are easy to miss. For example, while holding his shield, since there is no energy drain over time, He can recover energy now. As such having a trin or zenurik regen, you can maintain easy shield movement. 

The discharge is also nice since it now is a far more effective lockdown of an area. Having only primed continuity on, I could easily hold an area in a stunlock for a nice amount of time.

Overall, it is a nice step forward, not a slap to the face.

[GinKenshin]

the more glaring problem is that they knew these issues existed but they wait for the deluxe skin to do something about them....I mean I get it, it'll make the skin more appealing by freshening up the abilities of the frame, thus more money, but still.....not changing or fixing stuff that you know you need to take a second look at is just annoying and a bad design as a whole 


being a small studio has a lot of upsides to it, which really shows in warframe. but sometimes I just wish that DE were bigger, you know? most of the issues in the game aren't fixed or looked at is because of them having no time which sucks

 

 

 

[(PSN)WINDMILEYNO]

They seem so begrudging...i understand they are doing us a favor, and i understand they may see him differently because he is their creation and they have a vision of how he is supposed to be played, but to just pick and choose over what people suggest, and say that they will monitor the changes....its been a year and a half since the last rework...this is it, this was the big chance we had and everything we were waiting for...its not bad, but like op said, no one needed extra damage. Volts powers need finetuning, and in my personal opinion, every synergy he has is worthless aside from shocking the sheild.

[Vafthrudnir]

2 minutes ago, (PS4)WINDMILEYNO said:

shocking the sheild.

That's useless too since shocking the shield does not proc electricity.

[(PSN)WINDMILEYNO]

Just now, giovanniluca said:

That's useless too since shocking the shield does not proc electricity.

Welp. I mean, i thought it added crits or something, wasnt it supposed to?

[Vafthrudnir]

8 minutes ago, (PS4)WINDMILEYNO said:

Welp. I mean, i thought it added crits or something, wasnt it supposed to?

It does it by default, shocking it has no effect on crits.

Shots that pass through get a +50% crit damage bonus that does not stack and a +50% bonus electricity damage that stacks, regardless of shocking it.

If you carry a shocked shield it gets the damage from shock on bashing and the damage from the passive, should be sort of 1000+500.

Edited November 30, 2017 by giovanniluca

[Mudfam]

5 minutes ago, Omega-Shadowblade said:

while holding his shield, since there is no energy drain over time, He can recover energy now. As such having a trin or zenurik regen, you can maintain easy shield movement.

I don't understand DE's obsession with trying to force us to play defensively. This game is fun because of its fast paced movement, campy abilities and objectives kill it.

 

6 minutes ago, Omega-Shadowblade said:

The discharge is also nice since it now is a far more effective lockdown of an area. Having only primed continuity on, I could easily hold an area in a stunlock for a nice amount of time.

Duration mods have no effect on Discharge. The duration is just damage cap / damage per sec, with densely packed enemies decreasing it to nothing. Now we have a minimum duration, but that's just another tack-on mechanic that still can't be modded instead of a fix to the basic broken cap mechanic. It also prevents damage from scaling with crowd density and generally defeats all of the ability's mechanics.

[Vafthrudnir]

Guys refer to the feedback megathread, already deployed a rant here.

 

Edited November 30, 2017 by giovanniluca

[Emulad0or]

DE didn't fix the main problem: Volt forces anyone who want to not have their parkour (one of, if not the most important thing in the game) messed up because he decided to press 2 to stop everything they are doing, aim, press S, press Shift twice just to "opt out" of a so called "buff"... One can only backflip so many times every 10 seconds before hating the warframe responsible

[Mudfam]

To clarify, in case somone missed the whole Discharge debacle..

Discharge is a damage / CC ability that functions by enemies becoming shocked and damaging eachother. Clearly this design was thought to be possibiy overpowered, so they decided to slap a cap on it.

What did this do?

1. Duration no longer matters or has any effect. When the damage cap is reached the CC ends.
2. Enemies shocking eachother reach the cap faster, further reducing the duration.
3. Enemies shocking eachother don't increase the damage, because it's capped anyway.

So, by adding this cap they completely broke the abiities mechanics and features, effectively turning them into a detriment rather than an advantage.

In practice this turns Discharge into excellent CC against heavily armoured targets, because they don't reach the cap easily due to damage reduction, but In general the ability is a broken mess that does not do what it claims to do.

The damage cap should be removed, the values for duration and damage should be scaled down to something that's considered balanced. Then the ability will actually work as advertised, it will behave consistently and have some circumstantial tactical nuances to it.

[DirePresent]

I agree, though I liked some of this fixes, they are still quite lack lusting compared to the generated hype, and I'm quite sure Current shield still mantains itself as a pretty useless skill. 

[Mudfam]

I din't even realise at the time of posting this that they increased the damage per second but not the cap

So the damage increase is 100% fake, and Discharge now has a minimum duration of 4 seconds and max duration of 5.3 seconds. This is actually a nerf. Meanwhile it's still reporting a duration of like 20 seconds. Just why..?

Seriously, 96 pages of feedback that has been on page 1 for the past year and a half, all saying the same thing. It's not even a up for the debate, the ability is clearly just broken. Everything got ignored or misinterpreted too.

[KiroTheTraveler]

I completely agree and I really like damage! Whether or not there is a damage buff to his four doesn't fix anything. 

Also for players like me that invest in a lot of power strength, I propose his Shock at 200% power strength does more than stun. This still keeps the element of CC for those who like it and it also satisfies people who like to do damage. So it is like win win for both worlds. 

[Insizer]

I wish he had a useful/practical passive.

[Vafthrudnir]

Just now, Insizer said:

I wish he had a useful/practical passive.

An energy return maybe, since they like him to burn energy that much.

[Insizer]

1 minute ago, giovanniluca said:

An energy return maybe, since they like him to burn energy that much.

I would certainly like that, but I think that his energy economy is in a far greater place than where it was, thanks to this new update.  Granted, I haven't had time to test this/ see it for myself yet.

His current passive would be decent if it charged faster and had more way to charge it (possibly passively or roll E. shield's aug mod into the base ability).

[Vafthrudnir]

4 minutes ago, Insizer said:

I would certainly like that, but I think that his energy economy is in a far greater place than where it was, thanks to this new update.  Granted, I haven't had time to test this/ see it for myself yet.

His current passive would be decent if it charged faster and had more way to charge it (possibly passively or roll E. shield's aug mod into the base ability).

The real drain is in the energy/metre part, and if you gotta stay stationary why even bother picking it.

[Insizer]

8 minutes ago, giovanniluca said:

The real drain is in the energy/metre part, and if you gotta stay stationary why even bother picking it.

Again, I haven't had time to confirm my opinion yet.

[(PSN)Cyotis]

His CC potential would be awesome without a damage cap. And they could tone down the DPS if they are worried about it. Or as the duration goes on, the enemy is still locked down but the DPS gets lower and lower every shock.

[--RV--arm4geddon-117]

i still prefer and think that DE should have stuck with the original plan, when discharge dmg was supposed to deal scaling damage based on a % of the highest health/armor/shield unit in the crowd catch in the wave, ( for the damage part ) without that cap expiring the sooner the more units shared the dmg and with a separate instance of duration ( for the CC part  ) regardless of anything else, ( as it was shown in a devstream when they previewed Volt rework ) which they scrapped completely giving all those nonsense duration/dmg caps, useful only with low strenght vs grineer so the cap wouldn't skyrocket and could grant some longer cc, but with almost absent dmg to be relevant....

I'm still perplexed at these QoL's, save for the option to cast his 4th while in the air, and most of all at those so called sinergies which aren't really there, but if they have Volt under their radar again for a short time , maybe it's the time they gonna listen to some valid points in the various threads all around the forum....

We'll see...

Edited December 1, 2017 by arm4geddon-117

[Vafthrudnir]

1 hour ago, arm4geddon-117 said:

i still prefer and think that DE should have stuck with the original plan, when discharge dmg was supposed to deal scaling damage based on a % of the highest health/armor/shield unit in the crowd catch in the wave, ( for the damage part ) without that cap expiring the sooner the more units shared the dmg and with a separate instance of duration ( for the CC part  ) regardless of anything else, ( as it was shown in a devstream when they previewed Volt rework ) which they scrapped completely giving all those nonsense duration/dmg caps, useful only with low strenght vs grineer so the cap wouldn't skyrocket and could grant some longer cc, but with almost absent dmg to be relevant....

I'm still perplexed at these QoL's, save for the option to cast his 4th while in the air, and most of all at those so called sinergies which aren't really there, but if they have Volt under their radar again for a short time , maybe it's the time they gonna listen to some valid points in the various threads all around the forum....

We'll see...

Aircast is useless, the skill has no Y range.

[JennieJD]

I've noticed that with the chances, enemies have to be on the same level as Volt. When they are one stair step down or up, his 4th wont do anything... So annoying..

[Archwizard]

To be honest, I found Volt's changes not only underwhelming, but completely tone-deaf to his issues.

Discharge got a minimum CC timer (which I could have sworn it was supposed to have before?) and a 66% damage buff. EXCEPT, the damage cap on the ability went unchanged, so the damage buff causes you to reach the cap faster without affecting the ability's maximum output.
(4000/450) = 8.89 sec of CC, (4000/750) = 5.33 sec, meaning a net loss of 3.56 sec.
The added minimum 4 sec CC timer comes down to a net neutral at best - and if you include the increased damage chained from nearby targets (which also contributes to the same cap), a net nerf at worst.

Electric Shield no longer costs 5 energy per second while being carried. Sounds great - except like most toggled abilities, that cost was affected by Power Duration as well as Efficiency (and most of us were already stacking Duration for the shield's upkeep anyway), allowing it to be quite easily reduced by up to 75% - to an easily managed 1.25 energy per second. 
Meanwhile, the 1 energy per-meter cost remains, which actually was the harsher of the two; it's only reduced by Power Efficiency (to a cap of 4 meters per-energy), and by nature of its distance scaling, means it actually grows with your movement speed (effectively meaning Power Strength increases its cost when using Speed). Add to this the fact that the ability still has a maximum Duration while being carried, and it actually comes out to Duration being an effective cost-pusher too.
From my testing with a Speed build, you can easily drain several ultimate casts' worth of energy by the time the shield fades.
While I appreciate any cost reduction, to say he's less energy hungry now would be overselling a nominal "buff" of 1 energy per second.

The continued existence of the cost-per-meter is just poor design for Volt. To wit, he has: a passive that charges by moving; a buff that increases movement speed; and as of today's buff, two AoE stun attacks he can cast while moving, one of which charges his last two abilities with his passive's damage. And then a shield that's either immobile or costs him more when he moves. 
Being able to use one ability to game/maximize another is the entire point of "synergy" - it's why we asked to be able to pick up the shield in the first place. To design one ability to penalize another in the same kit (particularly the backbone of the kit) is not "balanced", it's counterproductive and just makes people avoid picking up the shield entirely.

To sum up what I'd like to see changed:

• Electric Shield should have the cost per-meter removed, to improve synergy with Speed and his passive. Go ahead and have a (reduced) cost per-second reinstated, but have the Duration timer be suspended while the shield is in-hand, allowing it to be wielded indefinitely.
• Rework Discharge entirely in order to depose the cap. I understand that the cap was instituted in order to prevent it from being abused as a complete crowd control skill (owing to its ability to bypass walls), but a simpler fix would've been to not scale the stun with Duration in the first place; besides, we have several superior CC tools - like Avalanche, Molecular Prime and Vitrify, which even buff damage in the process.
  • There have been plenty of suggestions to have Discharge's wave spread similarly to Molecular Prime in order to retain Duration scaling.
• Add some scaling ability damage to his kit for crying out loud; literally half of his kit is direct damage that is more useful for inflicting the same stun on different scales. If his description is going to say that he's an alternative to gunplay, follow through on that. Perhaps have some interaction between Shock and Discharge that directly drains a percentage of target HP, or perhaps buff his Shocks at the same time he charges the Shield.
• Let him charge up his passive more quickly. Even with Shock it takes a solid 20 seconds of running around doing nothing in order to cap it before my next cast.
  • Or even better, change how it scales into being a multiplier rather than a flat increase.
• And for a real QoL fix: increase Speed's timer so he doesn't have to hit it literally every 10 seconds, since that's annoying to maintain at best and requires the team to huddle constantly (for a movement buff) at worst. Doubling the cost to double the timer would be entirely fair.