Upcoming Gara nerf worth it?

[(XBOX)NnH Kairyu]

Firstly, I encourage other long-time players to comment as well. I don't care about the opinions of children or anyone who hasn't put in over 1,500 hours of gameplay.

 

As a veteran of Warframe, I must express my concern/outrage at hearing about the upcoming Gara nerf. I have watched YouTuber's videos on how Gara's Mass Vitrify works after PC's update, and I will cover my thoughts. For once we finally get a useful ability for a wide range of tasks and now half of the frame's kit is useless? I have been using my Gara extensively since I got her. I will explain how I use her, but let me just say that ~11,000 Health on any section of her Mass Vitrify is only enough to make it useful on missions BELOW Level 50, and with great cost to Health, Shields, Duration, Range, Energy, and Energy Consumption. The reason is because to get that much you have to sacrifice everything for Armor and Power Strength. It's bad enough that Mass Vitrify is a bad knock-off of Frost's Snow Globe since Mass Vitrify doesn't cover the top, nor is it capable of stacking it's health up to 4x the amount. 

 

Now, the way I built my Gara is to be an Objective Defender and Team Buffer. I would upload an image, but since I only use my cellphone I don't know how. So I will type it. 

 

Aura: Stand United

Exilus: Cunning Drift

Top-left to Bottom-right: Intensify, R8 Narrow Minded (currently), Primed Flow, Vitality, Primed Continuity, Hunter Adrenaline, Stretch, Streamline.

 

This gives me

125 Armor

638 Energy

740 Health

300 Shield

1.15 Sprint Speed

236% Duration

130% Efficiency 

106% Range

130% Strength

 

Now with my build, at the start of a mission I throw down 2 Large Energy Restores and 1 Large Shield Restore followed by casting Splinter Storm on every Warframe and Sentinel/Pet involved. Then another 2 Large Energy Restores if we have an objective like Defense, Mobile Defense, etc. Casting Mass Vitrify every 30-40 seconds requires another Large Energy Restore every 30-40 seconds either to refresh Splinter Storm buffs or just to keep the objective safe. Why do I need to use the energy restores? Because, let's say I'm doing a Defense with my clan. I have to use Spectorage many times throughout the fight just as a distraction so enemies aren't killing anyone who ran out of Splinter Storm. They can lose the buff because of a few reasons. Being too far from Mass Vitrify, dying, I didn't have the energy at that moment, etc. The point is, Mass Vitrify being invulnerable to damage is a 40 second wall of defense, except for the few seconds it takes to recast. It is quite expensive, too.

If it stays with PC's changes, it will become MANY TIMES more expensive to upkeep, because you then have to recast it EVERY TIME a piece of it breaks and the enemy can shoot at you or the objective, and most people would wonder why the cryopod is almost dead as we're killing stuff on the other side of the wall that ISN'T broken. So instead of spending 100-300 Energy every 40 seconds, we would be spending even more energy every 10-20 seconds to refresh the entire wall to replace 1 spot. With a Max Power Strength and Armor build, we're looking at 45% Efficiency and 73% Duration. Factor in that Spectorage can no longer be used for Crowd Control, Splinter Storm will have to be recast every 15 seconds OR Mass Vitrify has to be recast every 10 seconds for 116 base energy  followed by a 5.25 drain per second. Yes, you could put on a Max Rank Narrow Minded as well, but then your Mass Vitrify's cover range is only ~6 meters. "Ok, so put on Overextended!" Then your wall is even WEAKER by a decrease of 60% Power Strength. In this situation, at this point in your build, you'd have to choose between Vitality, Hunter Adrenaline (Rage), or Primed Flow. Most likely just to not spend 200 energy pads on a 20 minute / wave mission, you pick Flow. This means you have possibly the single most f****d build possible, JUST for TRYING to defend an objective and your allies. 

 

Two more pieces of information on the usefulness of Mass Vitrify.

1: If cast correctly, it can stop Capture targets from running away if you have weak weapons, giving you a chance to catch them.

2: On the Plains, you can combo with Frost's Snow Globe. Frost defends from ships and Dargyns, while Gara defends from the sides to make Snow Globe last longer.

 

I understand that DE listens to their playerbase, but it isn't the zealous newbies who want to feel better about themselves that DE needs to listen to. It's the veterans that have spent the time to understand how all the cogs in the machine work together that DE needs to listen to. I strongly feel, as a Warframe Veteran for 4 years, and as a Gamer who has played a lot of games and seen thousands of strategies succeed and fail based on developers changing things with the wrong idea in mind, that Gara fits perfectly into our gameplay before her nerf. 

 

If someone from DE reads this, I understand it may seem "overpowered" at first glance, but as talked about above; please acknowledge the impact on her other abilities and other warframe synergies that you are messing up before deciding to go down this road.

 

I play on Xbox One so luckily we don't have this nerf just yet, but I wanted to make a voice before it's too late.

Once again, I encourage fellow veterans of all platforms to express their opinions. 

[(XBOX)ultimategamerjr]

Personally I don't like the changes at all. I would even be fine with them letting it stay duration based, but allowing them to pass through and turned into glass with time. Just the fact that it can block bullets would have been enough for me.

[(PSN)haseo_the_adept]

I too use gara ectensively and i have to say this nerf would cause her to become another frame in my inventory i will never use again, shes my main frame atm and i really really really do not want to lose the ability to actually have a useful frame in my meager arsenal, especially since i have her range to 148% so my team mates and me have a little more breathing room and splinter storm restore range, if i cant see my wall at all times ill never know if a piece has broken, why in the hell would you nerf her wall when limbos aoe does essentially the same thing but to greater effect, i even went so far as to post gara augment mod suggestions on the forums giving her wall health will remove that posts point in its entirety because ill never play her again

[(PSN)Unstar]

7 hours ago, (Xbox One)Yasashi Okami said:

...I don't care about the opinions of children or anyone who hasn't put in over 1,500 hours of gameplay.

As a veteran of Warframe, I...

If there are any up-and-coming writers in the audience, take note of this.  It took less than 3 sentences for this character to lose the reader's sympathy.  It's not as trite and over-the-top as having the character punch a baby, yet not as lackluster as simply describing the character's viewpoints.  That is extremely efficient story-telling, and I commend it.

Jokes aside, I won't say Gara's new redesign is perfect, but I hope we can all see that it's much better than it was previously.  Her invincible wall was game-breaking, even by Warframe standards.  It had to be changed, and this is at least a step in the right direction.  It was really fun to play with an invincible wall for awhile, and now it's disappointing to lose that toy.  I get it, there are feels there.  But it's all for the greater good.  We have to accept that and let it go.

Is there room for improvement?  Always.  But that improvement should be within the realm of a wall that can be destroyed by enemies.

What I think a lot of the community for some reason fails to see is that just because you can't use Gara's kit the way you used to doesn't make it useless...it just makes it different.  Maybe we won't be able to treat Gara like a Frost alternative after these changes.  Okay, cool.  Let's use her for something else.

I really like Gara, and I'll still be playing her after the next update.  Personally, I expect it to be a fun new adventure.

 

 

[(XBOX)NnH Kairyu]

3 hours ago, (PS4)Unstar said:

If there are any up-and-coming writers in the audience, take note of this.  It took less than 3 sentences for this character to lose the reader's sympathy.  It's not as trite and over-the-top as having the character punch a baby, yet not as lackluster as simply describing the character's viewpoints.  That is extremely efficient story-telling, and I commend it.

It took me a minute to figure out if this was a compliment or an insult. I thank you for your opinion, both on me and on Gara. I agree from a technical aspect having it invincible as-is could be changed, however I feel they could have chosen a smarter way to change it than to make it impractical for Sorties and up. I guess if they did like BaseHPxArmor(PowerStrength), and they chose a decent Base HP for it then it would be a practical health-based wall. Thinking a little more, they probably attempted something like this formula, but chose a super low Base HP. A little jokingly,  does DE even know what kind of damage their average level 100 enemy pumps out per second multiplied by the average number of enemies spawned? XD

Edited December 12, 2017 by (XB1)Yasashi Okami

[(PSN)haseo_the_adept]

Personally i hate that they are basing it on armor, i cannot sacrifice my current mod slots on armor slots because i need every last slot for range duration amd the 130% power needed for splinter storm to be effective, i think yeah sure the invinci wall is op but is that such a huge problem? Limbo can freeze enemies harrow can freeze enemies frost can throw up his bubble, theres mechanics that already exist for that and sometimes that mechanic is what you need to survive, i think it should stay as is