Gara Mass Vitrify feedback

[L3thargy]

Hey there, just tested Garas "new" 4 in the daily sortie and gotta say it was weak.

I used a strength/armor build and optimised for a strong defense. 

In Sortie 3 the parts last for about 2 seconds until some bombard or heavy gunner collects glass shards as souvenirs. The explosion dmg was not good at sortie 1 - 3.

Either we think of Garas 4 as a pure CC ability now which immobilizes foes around u or we need to look at numbers again. As of now her 4 doesnt stand a chance as a defensive tool in higher tier content.

Im not motivated to build around strentgh & armor since for me the results are underwhelming.. would rather use a balanced build that utilizes mass vitrify as CC.

 

 

[Neo3602]

Maybe DE should change it so that whenever a section of the wall is broken nearby section expand to fill the gap continuing to do so until all the sections are destroyed. The individual section health could be slightly deceased to compensate for in overall increase in strength. That way the wall get a defense increase but still be destructible. 

[IronKhagan]

Following the update, my first destination was the simulacrum to see just how much Mass Vitrify was nerfed.

It's bad. Very bad.

My build for Gara has 253% power strength and 262 armour, sacrificing a lot of duration and efficiency. All enemies were level 70 corrupted units, not uncommon to fight against those (let's be real, enemies below level 50 are trivial).

Five corrupted butchers attacked the same section and tore through it in ten seconds. A single heavy gunner did the same even quicker. Lancers scattered and attacked different segments for about 30 seconds until they broke through.

Then I headed to Belenus to test it in practice. The first round of level 30 corrupted mixed units (mostly lancers, crewmen and butchers) broke a segment in half a minute.

Hieracon yielded similar results. Around the 12th extractor, enemies of level 50 easily broke through the wall before the extractor was halfway done.

 

Balancing Mass Vitrify wasn't uncalled for, but at the current state, it becomes almost useless as soon as enemies get the slightest bit difficult. Keep in mind that I was using a build optimized for maximum durability, sacrificing a lot in terms of maximum radius and energy management, which should never be a requirement for an ability to be useful beyond low-to-mid levels. The update to Mass Vitrify is simply bad.

What could be done is either buff the wall's health significantly1, or giving us a way to repair segments of the wall, like regeneration that triggers after the last hit (like shield regeneration) that would also give us a reason to use Spectrorage.

 

DE, please reconsider your decision.

 

Update with some results from sorties 1 and 3: (tl;dr: like wet tissue paper)

Sortie 1 was operative defense. I always used Gara to protect the operative with Splinter Storm and keep it in place and further protect it with MV. However, giving MV any kind of durability required me to severely cripple all other abilities - but I digress. Casting MV was tough since I had such low efficiency (from Blind Rage, and the eximi didn't make it any easier), and when I did, a segment was broken almost immediately.

Same with sortie 3. The wall lasted a bit longer, but as soon as the enemy caught up with the squad, they almost instantly broke a segment and exposed the console.

All in all, MV in its current state is almost useless in normal star chart missions and completely useless in sorties.

Edited December 8, 2017 by IronKhagan
Added sortie experience

[zethfoxster]

if you all are building her for the wall and not splinter storm, you are playing her SOOOOOOO wrong...

shes a walking blender...be thankful it was the wall that got nerfed.

heres how you play gara.

1) make wall

2) cast splinter storm on yourself

3) walk outside wall and shatter it with your 1

4) make wall, walk outside and shatter it, make wall, walk outside and shatter, repeat as many time as you feel/can...

5) literally just walk through lvl 100s dealing 40k damage per sec. you can also opt to slide, backflip, or crawl

6) refresh your splinter storm by casting your wall and break that wall to add even more damage to the splinter storm every time you refresh.

 

she is a walking blender. period.

[Cpl_Facehugger]

14 minutes ago, zethfoxster said:

if you all are building her for the wall and not splinter storm, you are playing her SOOOOOOO wrong...

shes a walking blender...be thankful it was the wall that got nerfed.

heres how you play gara.

1) make wall

2) cast splinter storm on yourself

3) walk outside wall and shatter it with your 1

4) make wall, walk outside and shatter it, make wall, walk outside and shatter, repeat as many time as you feel/can...

5) literally just walk through lvl 100s dealing 40k damage per sec. you can also opt to slide, backflip, or crawl

6) refresh your splinter storm by casting your wall and break that wall to add even more damage to the splinter storm every time you refresh.

 

she is a walking blender. period.

But I don't want a walking blender. I want a wall that I can use to defend objectives. I already have tons of DPS frames, I wanted a defense frame so I could do something other than just rely on Frost entirely any time there's a sortie mobile def/excav/etc. And with mass vitrify's ability to corral sortie defense targets, I was having a tremendous amount of fun even in sortie def. Gara prior to this change was almost perfect for me, like a blend of the parts of rhino and frost that I like the most. I dumped three forma and an exilus into her and had dreams of making her my main because she fit my preferred playstyle perfectly.

Then the nerf kingdom attacked.

[zethfoxster]

but shes still great, if they break the wall just recast it...whats the big deal? personally it seems just fine to me, the Ai wants to funnel mobs through the first section that gets broken...you know what i do? if im not in blender mode that is...I hit 1....the spear hits everything in a line that bottle necked in...it really is not that serious of a nerf.

[Sea_Wall]

Why does her wall have less than half the HP of Snow globe in addition to having less armor than Frost, not being able to stack, and costing double energy? 

 

[Cirayu]

I find the change horrible.  breaking in sections is a nice idea.. but they did a terirbe job with the  look of it, it's bent and stretched glass instead of.. you know... shattered glass. Plus going on with glass, I've always found the texture ot be weird, it looks really bad and you can't see out of the glass.

[Tsardova]

22 hours ago, zethfoxster said:

but shes still great, if they break the wall just recast it...whats the big deal? personally it seems just fine to me, the Ai wants to funnel mobs through the first section that gets broken...you know what i do? if im not in blender mode that is...I hit 1....the spear hits everything in a line that bottle necked in...it really is not that serious of a nerf.

Lets see, sortie 3 mobs and above can chew thru the defense targets in the few seconds of you having to recast it? Frost's bubble is INSTANT, and it pushes mobs away.

Gara's 4 now is as redundant as a condom with a huge hole on it. Play her other skills? So you're saying to fix an objectively broken skill that's janked up to unusable state past starchart missions, we have to resort to her other skills instead? That's not a fix/ solution to a problem.... That's feigning ignorance at an overly done nerf/ poorly planned/ thought/ actualized rebalance.

 

 

 

 

Frost's Bubble in comparison doesn't get janked by melee units and some ranged enemies even tend to straight up walk into bubbles only to get slowed down, costs less to cast, is stackable, scales well with the intended stats, has a 3 second iframe period on cast, pushes mobs away for minor cc, etc.

 

Either they buff the walls' stats slightly to be fit for later mission sorties environment or her 4 is effectively janked on "endgame/ post-endgame" content. Just cause her 1 to 3 skills are still viable, it doesn't mean making us have fewer option to play her as is "good design".

 

Edited December 9, 2017 by Tsardova

[RedDirtTrooper]

Yeah, it needs either a massive increase in health, easily four times the base health of snowglobe or more to make up for its singular and un-stackable nature, or a massive increase to the amount of damage done when a section goes down. Fragility would be tolerable if it went off like a cone of death decimating everything in an arc in front of the section that shatters, like a claymore stuffed full of glass shards, but to make that viable it needs to do a hell of a lot more damage. Enough to reliably kill at a minimum all common, non-heavy units up to level 100.

[Cpl_Facehugger]

1 minute ago, zethfoxster said:

but shes still great, if they break the wall just recast it...whats the big deal? personally it seems just fine to me, the Ai wants to funnel mobs through the first section that gets broken...you know what i do? if im not in blender mode that is...I hit 1....the spear hits everything in a line that bottle necked in...it really is not that serious of a nerf.

The big deal is that I went from having to cast mass vitrify once every thirty seconds to once every three seconds in a bounty 5 mission (ie level 40-60, so we're not talking super high level play here) since that's about the rate an enemy can get through now and once one gets through, they'll all path through the hole. While I can afford that with zenurik and rage, it's extremely tedious and unfun to have to keep on recasting mass vitrify just to keep a defense target safe. Now granted I haven't maxed out power strength or armor on my build, but it sounds like that's not adding too much based on what others say and frankly, Gara doesn't have the space to fit stuff like that while retaining general effectiveness.

And that's not even talking about sorties. Sorties... The best place to use old Gara precisely because unlike Frost (where you end up relying primarily on the 4 sec invulnerability phase anyway), her wall at least couldn't be taken down in three seconds. Now I might as well go back to my old standby of Rhino for all non-defending sorties, frost for all "defend an immobile target" sorties, because Gara's wall melts more like wax under enemy fire than glass.

I knew this change would be horrible the second I heard about it, but I gave DE the benefit of the doubt that they'd have learned the lessons from Frost, but apparently not. It's good that they listened to feedback about getting rid of the duration, but they didn't listen to the feedback about how much this change would suck and now we're all paying for it.

The only good thing I can say about this change is that it looks kind of cool visual FX wise. If DE really felt the ability was too good, the first thing they should've done was meganerf blender mode's massive damage output, not get rid of the most fun part of her kit by turning her  4 into a worse snowglobe.

[Ocerkin]

Gara's 4 is now worthless, thanks for ruining an enjoyable frame DE, you always know exactly how to S#&$ all over my fun in this game, i bought gara, i wont make that mistake again, you wont get a cent for another frame from me,because you will inevitably stomp it into the ground and expect us to thank you for it

[Adrest1a]

AAANNNDD, Mass vitrify is completely useless vs even lvl 30 mobs. GG.  Not to mention the ultra high energy cost, and no horizontal blocking like snowglobe.  It was nice to have a frame with a shield other than frost while it lasted.

[(PSN)CoolD2108]

Y'all realise that even frost's bubble lasts but a few seconds in those level ranges right?

His defense strategy is max efficiency, recasting that s**t to stack invulverability phases and thus health.

His main defense is Cc, no damage whatsoever.

Gara is a mix and compared to existing frames, it was too strong so you guys may wanna step back a bit and try using all of her abilitys, how it's allways been. That kind of minmaxing and the resulting playstyles are the exact reason de's been nerfing stuff for years. And even now, she's hella strong.

[Adrest1a]

1 minute ago, (PS4)CoolD2108 said:

Y'all realise that even frost's bubble lasts but a few seconds in those level ranges right?

His defense strategy is max efficiency, recasting that s**t to stack invulverability phases and thus health.

His main defense is Cc, no damage whatsoever.

Gara is a mix and compared to existing frames, it was too strong so you guys may wanna step back a bit and try using all of her abilitys, how it's allways been. That kind of minmaxing and the resulting playstyles are the exact reason de's been nerfing stuff for years. And even now, she's hella strong.

In any normal build(unless you can afford primed mods) garas shield only lasts 5 seconds on a lvl 30 defense, sometimes less.  At this point they could just remove the wall component and make it a huge aoe brittle.

[Cpl_Facehugger]

Just now, (PS4)CoolD2108 said:

Y'all realise that even frost's bubble lasts but a few seconds in those level ranges right?

His defense strategy is max efficiency, recasting that s**t to stack invulverability phases and thus health.

His main defense is Cc, no damage whatsoever.

Gara is a mix and compared to existing frames, it was too strong so you guys may wanna step back a bit and try using all of her abilitys, how it's allways been. That kind of minmaxing and the resulting playstyles are the exact reason de's been nerfing stuff for years. And even now, she's hella strong.

Right. But that's just it - Frost's bubble stacks and has that invulnerability phase. Gara's mass vitrify doesn't. Cant stack it, doesn't have invulnerability phases. As in, Gara's 4 lacks what it needs to be a viable defensive tool in mid-high level play. It's basically just a charger for her 2's blender mode now.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but this change hasn't hit PS4 yet so you haven't seen how terrible it really is in practice.

[(PSN)CoolD2108]

Gerade eben schrieb Adrest1a:

In any normal build(unless you can afford primed mods) garas shield only lasts 5 seconds on a lvl 30 defense, sometimes less.  At this point they could just remove the wall component and make it a huge aoe brittle.

That's exactly where frost's bubble is set too. Without the whole splinter, 40k/s aoe pushback, strong damage reduction thing tho.

Y'all just mad that they nerfed the O.P. version of frost.

[Tsardova]

4 hours ago, (PS4)CoolD2108 said:

Y'all realise that even frost's bubble lasts but a few seconds in those level ranges right?

His defense strategy is max efficiency, recasting that s**t to stack invulverability phases and thus health.

His main defense is Cc, no damage whatsoever.

Gara is a mix and compared to existing frames, it was too strong so you guys may wanna step back a bit and try using all of her abilitys, how it's allways been. That kind of minmaxing and the resulting playstyles are the exact reason de's been nerfing stuff for years. And even now, she's hella strong.

That's the thing though, even if frost has to recast it, it still cost less to (recast), is stackable, have minor cc that pushes enemies away and slows down mobs that gets in, is instant, doesn't get affected by melee mobs, and is generally just downright more useful than gara's 4 as is in every single way. I.e. Gara's 4 is redundant as is that it might as well be replaced by an entirely new skill really.

Edited December 8, 2017 by Tsardova

[Adrest1a]

1 minute ago, (PS4)CoolD2108 said:

That's exactly where frost's bubble is set too. Without the whole splinter, 40k/s aoe pushback, strong damage reduction thing tho.

Y'all just mad that they nerfed the O.P. version of frost.

With regular mods, and without even stacking bubbles, frost can drop a bubble in a lvl 50 defense and just refresh every couple waves.

[akira_him]

Comparing MV with globe the globe wins in most situation, the CC of it is strong but not as consistent as slowing effect of the globe because even one section is broken the CC is gone

At least they didn't nerf other things but if I want a tanky damage dealer I would take Mesa with more range, more energy efficient and more consistent CC

[(PSN)CoolD2108]

vor 4 Minuten schrieb Cpl_Facehugger:

Right. But that's just it - Frost's bubble stacks and has that invulnerability phase. Gara's mass vitrify doesn't. Cant stack it, doesn't have invulnerability phases. As in, Gara's 4 lacks what it needs to be a viable defensive tool in mid-high level play. It's basically just a charger for her 2's blender mode now.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but this change hasn't hit PS4 yet so you haven't seen how terrible it really is in practice.

It does, but at the end of the day that means nothing to it. You spam it or it dies. Period. In seconds equivalent to the seconds it recieved fire.

Her kit has other things going for her, damage and Cc, even frickin refreshs... that's something frost doesn't.

Edited December 8, 2017 by (PS4)CoolD2108

[Cincirion]

299 Power Strenght and maxed Fiber only got me five seconds against a gunner. This nerf practically killed Gara for anything but her 2, which is only to assume will follow in the nerf train.

Never forget it Warframe players, don't grow fond of anything new.

[(PSN)CoolD2108]

vor 1 Minute schrieb Adrest1a:

With regular mods, and without even stacking bubbles, frost can drop a bubble in a lvl 50 defense and just refresh every couple waves.

With some monster Cc maybe. Not if it actually recieves fire, what's definitly the thing for debate here.

[Adrest1a]

2 minutes ago, (PS4)CoolD2108 said:

With some monster Cc maybe. Not if it actually recieves fire, what's definitly the thing for debate here.

ofcourse it wont last if your afk and let them shoot the bubble.  If you're actually kill though without any cc, it will be fine.

[Slifar]

Just now, (PS4)CoolD2108 said:

With some monster Cc maybe. Not if it actually recieves fire, what's definitly the thing for debate here.

With all due respect, I have literally never seen a Frost have any problems keeping a bubble on a spot that he really wanted to keep a bubble on, even in my extended-run Void endless missions (30+ minute survivals, etc.)

Heck I actually find Frosts a bit annoying sometimes because they have a habit of putting up TOO MANY bubbles and then I find myself having a hard time actually shooting the dudes.