PSA: [PC] Upcoming Changes to Gara's "Mass Vitrify" (Bonus Volt Info)

[(PSN)Silverback73]

It's simply a case where the DE's gaming/revenue philosophy of "kit and weapon inclusivity" isn't helped by weakening a link in the chain for what they see as kit and Warframe-to-Warframe Balance that mandates CC and weapon use.

I think DE sees it as so powerful as to be exclusionary...i.e.  I'll just use this Gara power and nothing else...and Gara and no other frame.

I don't really see this as a power outlier, though.  It just seems like a uniquely strong signature ability for given situations.

Am I wrong?

What I find strange is them changing this and then I'm side-eyeing Octavia's anthem of WAAAY OP powers, lol.

[Sebith]

In this situation I think the game have problems to calculate the ground point. Basic cast on ground made the wall ridiculously small. Also I think the wall should stick to the upper surface instead of clipping through it. As for the changes i knew it will be nerfed, but i'm not sure if this is the good direction as wall invincibility was unique feature of Gara. Now after this change it's all about the numbers, but I'm happy that Volt's Discharge cap will be removed.

[Echon21]

@[DE]Aidan @[DE]Rebecca

I understand if you wish to change an ability in order to reduce its spam or overuse but i'm still confused as to why you chose this one, the limbo 4 after the rework is a good example, this was a clearly overpowered ability that encouraged static game play and reduced team involvement and engagement thus making the game less fun. However the point that you bring up that you don't feel it is appropriate for her to lock down large sections of the map is null and void as there is a large variety of frames already listed by others on this thread. If you change it to be infinite duration and only health based then you are removing the synergy that you have been introducing with all your new reworks and frames (nidus, harrow gara) as before your 2 and your 4 were on the same timer making them work together to encourage dynamic game play and moment (running outside the wall to try and absorb damage) and turning it into a 1 trick where she casts her 4 and stands there killing until she needs to cast it again.

So my question to you is what are you reasons for continuing with this change after all the logical and calm augments that have been presented by the community?

I am not opposed to the concept of changing gara, as a studio you have done many successful reworks in the past, and some not so good ones, but i feel like this in an eject reaction and may not be needed, another thing you are doing is continuing to trivialise low end content where the health values and the damage will mean that it is essentially and invulnerable frost globe +ember WOF but make it useless on higher end content where the health and damage will be negligible.

I'm interested in what the community thinks about making it an ability that is entirely instance based and while immune to gun fire it will take say 6 melee strikes to break it allowing for the removal of its invulnerability but still giving it scaling and some counter play on the tennos part.

I would say that a new direction for the studio and something to allow you to test the effectiveness of tanking via instances of damage (shield gating anyone) look at making it the first instance based ability with clear "cracks" that would indicate how many more melee hits it can take, this means that it is not an instant win button at low levels and also not a useless button at high levels, allowing it the ability to scale without being broken in low levels. If such a change is implemented i feel like it would allow gara to still be based around defending a location utterly for a limited amount of time and would make some enemy types (traditionally weaker enemies that people may ignore) just as threatening to her as others.

[Emberglow3412]

The infinite scaling of her 2, 4, 1 combo is where she really needs attention - you could tone that down some... perhaps increase low end scaling, and tone down high end scaling. Being able to continually stack the buff to insta-kill anything in all scenarios is a bit much, even if it does require a half hour of setup.

90% DR falls off completely around level 60-90 or so, you still get one shot fairly easily. The point at which it would really start helping is the point at which it no longer matters, which pretty much negates the ability's usefulness in all scenarios where it could really shine.

My point? Its not unique, it doesn't bring anything to the table, you can get superior durability in other buff-based durability frames (Chroma, Rhino as examples.) Gara's sole benefit is that her 4 was quite good, and the base functionality was limited by duration and energy cost.

We already have an HP-limited barrier frame, Frost - and his is vastly superior, cheaper to cast, and can be used in all defensive scenarios with full-bubble coverage, as opposed to Gara's cylinder.

Additionally, frost can have multiple bubbles up at the same time in different areas with near-instant cast time, and full invulnerability for 3-4 seconds (in which incoming fire is added to bubble-HP) - AND we can re-cast inside the same bubble to add to its' HP pool even after that.

Gara had advantages, but those were highly limited compared to Frost, who was before, and is even moreso now - superior in every potential way as a defensive measure.

Gara had a defensive niche, which will now be gone - Frost overshadows her completely with the potential exception of her 1... which requires that a weapon be built specifically to cater to it's potency. For the effort that goes into putting together a weapon to support her 1, I can just build a good weapon that does the same damage but requires no energy to use - its a fun toy, but again, brings nothing to the table that you can't find a better version of elsewhere at a lesser cost, with superior functionality.

 

You're concerned about lockdown? Well, Gara isn't alone in this - Currently, Rhino (4), Limbo (Pick one), Vauban (3, 4), Banshee (4) and Frost can ALL lock down a level.  Gara is not alone in this.  What WAS Gara Alone in?  Being a niche, barrier-based frame.  How many barrier based frames do we have? TWO, Frost and Gara, and after this, Frost will be the only frame capable of casting a good barrier for defensive purposes. 

If you allow sections of wall to be taken down at once, you have just compromised the wall, and you have to recast it, the rest is useless.   Frost's 3 will be better in every possible way for less energy, less cast time, and you will be able to deploy multiple of them at once.  By changing Gara's 4 in this manner, you remove the one thing she does well to the point of bringing something to the table.  If the proposed changes are implemented, she will be a terrible Frost-clone with a different skin.  Her 3 is lackluster, her 2 falls off in usefulness just as it could become amazing (There are better buff-survivability frames), and while her 1 is nice, its not good enough to justify customizing a stat-stick of a melee weapon when you can just build a good melee weapon.  

 

Please do not do this.  We have TWO barrier-based frames, and this ruins one, while making the other one the only viable option for high end play.  I am TIRED of Frost after 3-4 years of having him as the exclusive option for a barrier, Gara is brand new, please wait a while before taking a sledgehammer to her kit and shoving her into the closet, which is what the proposed change will do. 

 

This will cause the vast majority of Gara players i've spoken with to return to Frost, which is a sentiment i've seen in this discussion as well.  Please reconsider.  I would like some variety in my Frame use, but as I typically end up going group support / tank, this will just force me back onto Frost.

[Polhsenn]

i'd love to see an extra interaction with the damage buff inside the walls. let's say i want to build my gara so that she makes an Arena, in which she can refrain damage from outside sources and also take greater advantage over the enemies inside. i'd love to see a tweak in the "freezing time" of the enemies, as well as the damage percentage scaling; or another interaction, such as also dealing damage to the enemies inside the wall when shattering it with the 1, increasing chance of bleed procs on vitrified enemies, idk.

[--Mini--]

hmmm not sure about this overall personaly if this is the case I think it should possibly synergize with her 3 in future, as in her 3 wraps around the inside of her 4 and attracts enemies to shoot it, and reflect bullets back at it... so it can't be broken from the inside only from outside and also please make her 4 downwards scaling forever and make the wall go up 4 meters... but you can only cast it from the ground.

[-Temp0-]

3 часа назад, ShadowExodus сказал:

Well she isn't utterly useless. Before she would be a viable alternative to limbo/frost for defense in either protecting her allies or defending an objective but now all she is gonna be is there for her ability to tank and dish damage. 

She can't do either.

Not to mention how **** many tanks and dps this game has already and they keep making more and more. We don't need another one. Stahp this already.

[Kriss941]

So I guess I'm going back to limbo then... It was fun, having a frame that could compete with limbo's defensive abilities without having your teammates constantly *@##$ing and/or trolling you by intentionally breaking stasis... but with this I guess we're back to where we were...

[Chipputer]

9 hours ago, (PS4)BigEffinDud said:

This.... is absolutely not the truth. Stop. 

I'll be sure to take your counter arguments into consideration. Thanks for your thoughtful input.

[Blacque]

Whelp this should be interesting.  I'll wait and see what the changes are before losing my mind.  And by losing my mind, I mean shrugging my shoulders and either adapting or working around it.  Let's not kid ourselves ladies and gentleman, this was a long time coming.  Gara's #4 makes Mot easy.  Let's think about that for a moment.  MOT, Tier 4 survival becomes a very boring, very easy camp-a-thon with Gara.  Now part of me kind of thinks that's great and hilarious.  Another part of me that is old and cranky realizes that I go to Mot for the challenge and not the camp.

Here is my suggestion though, I hope if DE does pay attention to this that maybe, just maybe they'll go "neat!" and.. then promptly not add it into the game.

But here it is anyway

Glass Pole #1 Ugh it's fine I suppose.

Glass Shield #2 No changes, but I'll be adding a post in the ideas and suggestions page regarding team aid that might benefit this and other abilities.

Glass distraction #3: Okay I'm a fan of the synergizing, even if it does kind of limit how a frame can play.  Since the wall will have health now, and can be damaged in specific areas I would recommend tying in some function to #3.  If the wall is damaged in an area, you cast your #3 and pull enemies away from the damaged area.  Now the #3 will heal damaged wall parts for a small flat base rate, BUT for every enemy attack done it speeds up the heal, enemies still battering on the spot take damage as the hole is closing up around them (Visual awesoe effects ftw!).  When the #3 Ability finally explodes all damage it absorbed goes to the wall over all, strengthening it!  Seeing the wall have stages of ruin would be great too, with Cracked, Fractured, Broken, indicating the tiers of time, power, delay that would be taken to repair.  In some cases letting certain portions get ruined to increase over all wall health could be a fun management game of risk and reward.

#4 Wall.. so... Gara is still invincible during cast ya? So does damage she take during this long cast face increase wall health?  Just curious!

[wizardeiges]

Just increase energy consumed per wall. There we go,i've solved this for you without having to make gara a low tier frost.

Garas wall gets used even less while she also stays separate from frost. You get what you want and we get what we want. It's clear that almost no one here wants a destructible poor mans frost bubble...as a ultimate for gara.

There are several changes you could do to her ultimate and you choose the one that makes it useless compared to frosts bubble. lol please don't nerf frost too just to make gara appealing.

If we're going to even talk about gara we should be talking about how completely worthless her 3 is. It can lock a enemy down temporarily but there are several other identical skills from other warframes that do the exact same thing.

Edit:

Or change her wall to drain energy over time like banshees ultimate or valkyrs with a  slow and steady increase in energy consumed per second while the wall is up. Like valkyrs INVINCIBILITY ultimate,the drain is slow but the longer you have it active the faster energy is drained. I'd also like to repeat it - valkyrs ultimate makes her 100% INVINCIBLE and that's perfectly fine because the increase energy drain while active prevents anyone from using it for very long but it's still useful in pinches like garas wall would be if it worked the same way.   It'd still be useful but it couldn't be spammed like the way it is now.

get a energy pickup during the wall? good for that person but energy doesn't drop constantly like garas usefulness will if you nerf her wall into the poor mans frost globe ground.   
It works with valkyr and I imagine it'd work for gara just the same if you just made it a energy drain based skill that increases over time like valkyrs.

[(PSN)Crixus044]

A lot of counter-arguments I'm hearing is that "Gara prevents enemies from running in, so she's still better.", or "This change was needed, invulnerability is overpowered." To this I say to you:

Frost is one of the best CC frames in the game. With Ice Wave Impedance, he can slow enemies down by up to 75% if a cold proc is active. Snowglobe slows enemies down by 67%, combined, this is 91.75% speed reduction, making him the strongest speed reduction frame in the game, beating out nova, equinox, nekros, and even valkyr, who are stuck at 75%, with equinox at 80%. With this amount of CC, no enemy is getting in the bubble period. He also has Chilling Globe, which also causes 50% of the enemies who enter to be frozen solid. On top of that, he has Avalanche, which freezes everybody in his vicinity, while stripping them of armor and dealing 1500 cold damage. With this in mind, changing gara to a health-based shield would make her a direct downgrade from frost since he has complete 3-D protection, AoE protection, more cc, and more team support.

About her invulnerability. You may not know, but frost snowglobe can stack as many time as you want, and if you keep casting it every 4-5 seconds, you can reach the 1 million health cap. easy. It also has 4 seconds of invulnerability that absorb all the damage dealt to it, which means that it is essentially invulnerable forever, all you need to do is keep recasting it. Now you might be saying "Crixus044, you can't compare that because you're recasting snowglobe over and over so of course it will get stronger." But isn't that essentially the same thing you do with Gara now? It has a duration, and as such, needs to be recast it over and over. When you really think about it, both need to be recast over and over, but while one scales on health stacking, the other scales on duration.

Now here's the kicker. While gara and frost share similarities, they shouldn't function the same because they are thematically different. Gara is a mobile frame. Her protection goes with her, as does her damage. Frost is a defender, who holds his ground and simply keeps stacking his power to over-match the enemy. Frost provides complete 100% protection with a "hold your ground" mentality, while gara grants protection as a carry-on. She doesn't have much CC per say, with Spectrophage being only for small groups and Mass vitrify only able to hold back grounded targets. Her defense has to move with her. Having her ability be based on health means that she will not be able to move that much since she will have to hide behind her wall and continually recast her ability just to stay alive. Having it break off piece by piece furthers this issue, because warframe is a thick "horde mode" feel, and enemy population is high, ranging from 10-12 on average, thus one opening means complete danger, that in high levels means certain death.

[wizardeiges]

2 minutes ago, (PS4)Crixus044 said:

A lot of counter-arguments I'm hearing is that "Gara prevents enemies from running in, so she's still better.", or "This change was needed, invulnerability is overpowered." To this I say to you:

Frost is one of the best CC frames in the game. With Ice Wave Impedance, he can slow enemies down by up to 75% if a cold proc is active. Snowglobe slows enemies down by 67%, combined, this is 91.75% speed reduction, making him the strongest speed reduction frame in the game, beating out nova, equinox, nekros, and even valkyr, who are stuck at 75%, with equinox at 80%. With this amount of CC, no enemy is getting in the bubble period. He also has Chilling Globe, which also causes 50% of the enemies who enter to be frozen solid. On top of that, he has Avalanche, which freezes everybody in his vicinity, while stripping them of armor and dealing 1500 cold damage. With this in mind, changing gara to a health-based shield would make her a direct downgrade from frost since he has complete 3-D protection, AoE protection, more cc, and more team support.

About her invulnerability. You may not know, but frost snowglobe can stack as many time as you want, and if you keep casting it every 4-5 seconds, you can reach the 1 million health cap. easy. It also has 4 seconds of invulnerability that absorb all the damage dealt to it, which means that it is essentially invulnerable forever, all you need to do is keep recasting it. Now you might be saying "Crixus044, you can't compare that because you're recasting snowglobe over and over so of course it will get stronger." But isn't that essentially the same thing you do with Gara now? It has a duration, and as such, needs to be recast it over and over. When you really think about it, both need to be recast over and over, but while one scales on health stacking, the other scales on duration.

Now here's the kicker. While gara and frost share similarities, they shouldn't function the same because they are thematically different. Gara is a mobile frame. Her protection goes with her, as does her damage. Frost is a defender, who holds his ground and simply keeps stacking his power to over-match the enemy. Frost provides complete 100% protection with a "hold your ground" mentality, while gara grants protection as a carry-on. She doesn't have much CC per say, with Spectrophage being only for small groups and Mass vitrify only able to hold back grounded targets. Her defense has to move with her. Having her ability be based on health means that she will not be able to move that much since she will have to hide behind her wall and continually recast her ability just to stay alive. Having it break off piece by piece furthers this issue, because warframe is a thick "horde mode" feel, and enemy population is high, ranging from 10-12 on average, thus one opening means complete danger, that in high levels means certain death.

Lol if you keep this up they might nerf frost just to make these changes to gara appealing.

[Kyronz]

Hopefully when the remove her ult from being useful, they will buff one of her other skills, because her 2 is just not enough to make her playable.

[JuicyPop]

I really think that DE could benefit from a design clinic with Riot or the small Valve team responsible for Dota [namely Icefrog]. 

You cannot just tack negatives onto an kit-defining ability and expect that the resultant power level and usage will have a direct correlation with the degree of the changes - there are critical thresholds that can absolutely make or break an ability/character. If you're going to change Gara's ultimate, then you need to consider if any of that power should be shunted into her other abilities. 

[(PSN)Boomstickman98]

11 minutes ago, wizardeiges said:

Lol if you keep this up they might nerf frost just to make these changes to gara appealing.

Then so be it. That is on them tbh

[Darkvramp]

On 12/4/2017 at 12:53 PM, [DE]Aidan said:

First, the ability will no longer be affected by Duration. Its longevity will be determined solely by its health, or whether or not the player decides to break it with Shattered Lash. We are also reviewing the wall health values in case further changes are needed. Second, when each section of the wall breaks, it will deal AoE damage that will scale with ability Strength Mods

 

can it also leave a temporary aoe on the ground of broken glass where slash procs can be applied to enemies that cross it when it breaks? also with the change to a pure hp system, the hp needs to be HIGH. higher than frosts globe becasue she cannot reinforce her wall, and because it is open in the top.

[Emberglow3412]

8 minutes ago, (PS4)Boomstickman98 said:

Then so be it. That is on them tbh

They will have to nerf basically every currently powerful frame by an extremely significant degree to make Gara 'good' by comparison if the planned nerf goes through.  If they want to meet the standard they describe, pretty much everything is on the chopping block.  They would have to castrate most of the game to bring things 'in line' - and I doubt they'll trash their game over it.  There's just too many other frames that replicate the rest of her kit, but much better (including her current 4 if you count CC 'lockdown' which is their complaint)

 

They need to just not spork up Gara.  She's a well designed frame, with clearly defined advantages and disadvantages - this is just "LOL She's too powerful, hold my beer and watch this" with a nerf sledgehammer into what is already pretty dang well balanced. 

 

The proposed nerf is like Poutine without cheese, its just wrong. 

[(PSN)Boomstickman98]

4 minutes ago, Emberglow3412 said:

They will have to nerf basically every currently powerful frame by an extremely significant degree to make Gara 'good' by comparison if the planned nerf goes through.  If they want to meet the standard they describe, pretty much everything is on the chopping block.  They would have to castrate most of the game to bring things 'in line' - and I doubt they'll trash their game over it.  There's just too many other frames that replicate the rest of her kit, but much better (including her current 4 if you count CC 'lockdown' which is their complaint)

 

They need to just not spork up Gara.  She's a well designed frame, with clearly defined advantages and disadvantages - this is just "LOL She's too powerful, hold my beer and watch this" with a nerf sledgehammer into what is already pretty dang well balanced. 

 

The proposed nerf is like Poutine without cheese, its just wrong. 

exactly.

[Howl4Me]

8 hours ago, -Temp0- said:

All of that is "crazy good" only in Mercury. Stton of frames have damage reduction on-self abilities and only 3 are capable of stopping the enemy firing down on objective with one of them currently being godawful to play in the team with because he also stops you from firing as well.

So you guessed right., it's gonna be only Frost forever now till the end of the universe. 

Uhh... huh. It's only 'crazy good' on Mercury if you're not building it correctly, but it scales with melee damage mods and can be given blast damage to hurl enemies across the map. It's still good CC regardless of the damage; it's quick, cheap, and sweeps a whole group of enemies to the ground in front of you. I don't know how it could be construed as bad. 

I was vaporizing level 50+ enemies with it built only partially correctly. It may not kill Sortie level enemies, but it's plenty good for damage throughout most of the game's content, and good for control through the rest. 

 

If you'd like to see the build I used to maximize this ability, I'd be glad to provide. 

[(XBOX)Tucker D Dawg]

The biggest issues with gara is the low height of the wall and That it is doesn't follow the terrain - means its completely useless on the the hills of eidolon unless you jump, stand on boxes etc.  Even then, since the drop ships and spawning troops generally drop on your head (ie inside the wall), the open nature of her "defense" just doesn't hold up.

 

for all starmap stuff even a damage based wall is more than sufficient.

any endless missions and this change just means she's off the contenders list.

 

[mr.Tequilas]

please dont make another frost, we dont need that, if u want to make her 4th last longer just buff a bit its duration so it wont be so spamable

[Adniwhack]

On 12/5/2017 at 12:23 AM, [DE]Aidan said:

Bonus Info: We also have some exciting adjustments to our recent Volt changes. As you may recall, we were still actively reviewing the Damage aspect since the day we made the change (Prime Time with Steve explained this!)We have decided to remove the damage cap and raise the damage per second of Discharge, improve its synergy with Shock and we are also halving the energy costs of carrying around Electric Shields. Volt should now be given a bit more protected movement (albeit it with some energy cost), as well as just simply deal more damage overall! 

1

 

I started using volt again, and these changes will simply (Hopefully) help remove some of the weaknesses Volt has currently.

[(PSN)EddySins]

then rework 2, 3 and 4 on gara, give it a new synergy. 

example/idea:

go ahead with the idea of wall being broken in different sections, but every section broken adds a % of that sections HP to the damage buff of 2. in addition every time a section is destroyed by enemy damage, 2 gets a 5 second duration buff (% of damage buff to 2 scales with power strength)

casting 3 while inside the wall adds effect of 3 to the wall, when a section is destroyed it damages the enemy by the amount of HP in that section and knocks down enemies (3 is not duration based when cast inside 4, the effect remains until the wall is destroyed, casting 3 again while outside of 4 negates the effect on the wall)

[(PSN)Crixus044]

3 hours ago, wizardeiges said:

Lol if you keep this up they might nerf frost just to make these changes to gara appealing.

Please, put the nerf bat down and go home. We went through this mess earlier this year, and throughout 2016, which  was probably one of the worst years in warframe history, because of the Wait Within, Buggers of the Rail, content drought, and DE's Rebalancing campaign, which proved to be a HUGE failure. What did they learn from this? Nerfs don't stop anything, all they do is piss off the players and create burn out. Why get something good if it'll eventually get nerfed? If something gets's nerfed, something else will take its place, nothing will change.