The Headache of PoE: Tusk Bolkor Gunships

[Paradoxbomb]

Honestly Bolkors have never really caused me too much trouble; they're telegraphed well enough, and worse case scenario you can just hide behind something or roll like a madman for a few seconds and come out unscathed. That said, my one complaint is that they're should be a spawn limit on them during certain bounties; avoiding one while trying to hold a location is manageable, but I once burned through 2 revives on a single objective thanks to three Bolkors simultaneously spawning on all sides, effectively removing any sort of cover (admittedly even rolling frantically won't save you at that point).

[Unagi604]

10 hours ago, Raspberri said:

If an Opticor has a passive auto-aim, auto-shoot ability, then it is a solution. But last I looked, you had to be ready to manually shoot dropships, not being busy with out-of-combat tasks, to use an Opticor.

This right here? This is aggressively defensive. If you can but won't, this is just a QQ thread.

I'm sorry that a game about you having to aim at and shoot things, requires you to aim and shoot to resolve your issue.

[Teksorbkyva]

Never had any issues with Bolkor unless I'm unprepared. Their gunfire is more of a nuissance to my ears than anything else. Easy enough to dodge with sprinting or bullet jumping. So long as you have a decent powerful, long ranged weapon, you can easily sniper the turrets and remove it. It -does- have pauses in its firing cycle.

Also, you're doing 30-60 bounties expecting a cake walk? The Bolkor are just an occupational hazard then. Warframe gives you plenty of tools to counter the odds. If you don't want to bring specialized equipment or warframes, then substitute it with some skill. Or group with someone else who has either of those.

[Helaton]

31 minutes ago, mac10smg-ToaOfGreen said:

Well, if that’s the case, then why not have the Lotus inform us of an incoming Bolkor?

”Tenno, I am detecting a Grineer Bolkor heading to your position. Exercize caution.”

This is a good idea in general regardless of anything else.  

[Chipputer]

6 hours ago, Snib said:

You decided you'd rather keep slowly hacking that drone when you heard the loud shockwave of that gunship spawning (where exactly it spawned hardly matters) despite not having any of your defensive abilities active and now are salty that it did the job it came to do.

4 hours ago, Raspberri said:

The enemy that spawned overhead was a Tusk Bolkor, not any of the three you mentioned. As for slowly hacking, the entire process (entering the console, hacking, exiting the console) took 4-5 seconds. I'm sorry I "underperformed".

The crux of this entire topic seems to be focused on this.

It's also a bunch of outside perspectives looking back on the actions of the OP, after the fact, forgetting that hindsight is 20/20.

Let's get some perspective:
OP realizes no enemies are around. To conserve energy they turn off their Renewal and approach their target drone. They begin to hack. This has a short duration where they can't move while the screen comes up.
Suddenly a Bolkor spawns.
What people are now expecting the OP to do is immediately realize what sound it was, back out of the hack (which would still cause them to be stuck sitting still for a short moment), and either immediately get away, turn on their Renewal, or turn and fire at the ship's guns.

This, "I've never turned off my survival powers when enemies weren't around in order to conserve energy so you shouldn't have either, scrub," mentality that is being displayed by people responding to this topic is actually toxic. Stop it.

To respond to the original point of the OP, however: Bolkors are strong, yeah. I run a 200% strength Oberon with Phoenix Renewal and I can't stand in the direct fire for more than a few seconds, myself. Sometimes the only warning I have that one is even around, during some defense bounties, is that my health just suddenly evaporated and I've got the invulnerability from Phoenix Renewal popping.

That being said, I like that there's an actual threat out on the plains and I like that it takes a concerted effort to actually take one down before it can cause any harm.
Not sure how I feel about it spawning when there's no actual threat to alert it to your location but, at the same time, taking it away might serve to make the experience feel less dynamic.

Perhaps an appropriate solution would be to have the ship take a few seconds to deploy its guns, fully?

[Almighty_Jado]

To be honest I've never found myself getting destroyed by these ships. I have bigger problems with the Ogma than the Bolkor

[Sean.bdfc]

I'm in the same camp as other posters in that Bolkors have never been a problem, but I think OP has been hammered enough and should be steered towards a more constructive response.

Bolkors tend to retreat if you disable the minigun. If you have difficulty doing that or the Bolkor does not retreat, then you can exploit its weakness to radiation damage, or strip its armor using corrosion status procs to set up a faster kill. 

As other people have alluded, hard-hitting weapons including (but not limited to) Opticor, Lanka, and Rubico can effectively kill a Bolkor.

[Raspberry]

12 hours ago, Chipputer said:

The crux of this entire topic seems to be focused on this.

It's also a bunch of outside perspectives looking back on the actions of the OP, after the fact, forgetting that hindsight is 20/20.

Let's get some perspective:
OP realizes no enemies are around. To conserve energy they turn off their Renewal and approach their target drone. They begin to hack. This has a short duration where they can't move while the screen comes up.
Suddenly a Bolkor spawns.
What people are now expecting the OP to do is immediately realize what sound it was, back out of the hack (which would still cause them to be stuck sitting still for a short moment), and either immediately get away, turn on their Renewal, or turn and fire at the ship's guns.

This, "I've never turned off my survival powers when enemies weren't around in order to conserve energy so you shouldn't have either, scrub," mentality that is being displayed by people responding to this topic is actually toxic. Stop it.

To respond to the original point of the OP, however: Bolkors are strong, yeah. I run a 200% strength Oberon with Phoenix Renewal and I can't stand in the direct fire for more than a few seconds, myself. Sometimes the only warning I have that one is even around, during some defense bounties, is that my health just suddenly evaporated and I've got the invulnerability from Phoenix Renewal popping.

That being said, I like that there's an actual threat out on the plains and I like that it takes a concerted effort to actually take one down before it can cause any harm.
Not sure how I feel about it spawning when there's no actual threat to alert it to your location but, at the same time, taking it away might serve to make the experience feel less dynamic.

Perhaps an appropriate solution would be to have the ship take a few seconds to deploy its guns, fully?

Thank you for helping convey my situation as well as contributing to possible solutions for this. I'm okay with Bolkors being deadly, I'm just not okay with their suddenness. They can certainly be prohibited from attacking anyone for the first few seconds, simply not be allowed to spawn near players when there is no active bounty/incursion, or have reduced high accuracy range. That's all I'm really asking for, so that I don't get killed by dumb luck.

[Raspberry]

13 hours ago, Unagi604 said:

This right here? This is aggressively defensive. If you can but won't, this is just a QQ thread.

I'm sorry that a game about you having to aim at and shoot things, requires you to aim and shoot to resolve your issue.

Looking back, you're right, it was an aggressively defensive comment because I was frustrated with my experience. I don't mind that killing has to be manual; in fact, I want it to stay that way. What I'm not fond of is when people aren't even trying to comprehend the type of situation I was in, and bringing in non-solutions to a problem I didn't have. I always bring weapons that can disable the turrets or even just kill the Bolkors outright. However, people shouldn't expect me to appreciate "advice" that tells me to bring an Opticor when the issue was, I was in a situation where I can't use any weapon for a mere 5 seconds.

[(PSN)Spider_Enigma]

2 minutes ago, Raspberri said:

Looking back, you're right, it was an aggressively defensive comment because I was frustrated with my experience. I don't mind that killing has to be manual; in fact, I want it to stay that way. What I'm not fond of is when people aren't even trying to comprehend the type of situation I was in, and bringing in non-solutions to a problem I didn't have. I always bring weapons that can disable the turrets or even just kill the Bolkors outright. However, people shouldn't expect me to appreciate "advice" that tells me to bring an Opticor when the issue was, I was in a situation where I can't use any weapon for a mere 5 seconds.

if u died in 5 secs atleast post ur build.... because even with hydroid, and not being in a puddle i can kill them.... and it takes me more then 5 secs to kill a level 80

[Raspberry]

11 minutes ago, (PS4)Spider_Enigma said:

if u died in 5 secs atleast post ur build.... because even with hydroid, and not being in a puddle i can kill them.... and it takes me more then 5 secs to kill a level 80

My problem has NOTHING to do with lack of ability to kill or disable Bolkors, explained many times already! My problem is dying faster than I can hack a 5/8 node Grineer console to a Bolkor that suddenly spawns out of nowhere like a jack-in-the-box.

[Badgriuel]

1 hour ago, (PS4)Spider_Enigma said:

if u died in 5 secs atleast post ur build.... because even with hydroid, and not being in a puddle i can kill them.... and it takes me more then 5 secs to kill a level 80

If you're gonna make a post about something at least read up on the topic and the posts that came before it. Because your response clearly shows you didn't do that and are just posting to post. You're not helping at this point and just being toxic like the others that are doing the same thing.

Show me how you'll kill an enemy that can chew through your health quickly while you're bringing up a hacking prompt on the screen and then having to back out of said prompt to try and engage said target before it kills you, all the while you have 0 defensive abilities active. OP has a valid point, dying to something in a game because the game has prompts you have to do which take X amount of time to get in and out of suck and it's dumb that it can even happen in games. 

Edited January 30, 2018 by Badgriuel

[krc473]

29 minutes ago, Badgriuel said:

Show me how you'll kill an enemy that can chew through your health quickly while you're bringing up a hacking prompt on the screen and then having to back out of said prompt to try and engage said target before it kills you, all the while you have 0 defensive abilities active.

Just ignore me:

This seems like an utterly unnecessary statement. I have zero issues with the Bolkors personally. I never bother to hack anything. Your entire response is around hacking a panel: you do not have to hack the panel. The person you quoted sounds like they did not hack the panel. From what I could tell, it has been said many times that you can just kill the bolkor.

 

Yes, hacking a panel while being barraged by rockets is a bad idea. But why must you hack the panel to completion? 

 

Edit: Surely our all-seeing Lotus could alert us to an incoming ship though.

Edited January 30, 2018 by krc473

[Badgriuel]

1 minute ago, krc473 said:

This seems like an utterly unnecessary statement.

I have zero issues with the Bolkors personally. I never bother to hack anything. Your entire response is around hacking a panel: you do not have to hack the panel. The person you quoted sounds like they did not hack the panel. From what I could tell, it has been said many times that you can just kill the bolkor.

 

Yes, hacking a panel while being barraged by rockets is a bad idea. But why must you hack the panel? (Unless there is some recent change making it compulsory that I missed?)

What part did you miss about op saying that he was in the middle of hacking a target drone, while in the middle of said hack the Bolkor came up on him and started firing. He didn't begin hacking while under fire. He even stated there were 0 enemies around him, so he was starting the hack while he was safe and nothing was around him even remotely close. 

[(PSN)Spider_Enigma]

5 minutes ago, krc473 said:

Yes, hacking a panel while being barraged by rockets is a bad idea. But why must you hack the panel? (Unless there is some recent change making it compulsory that I missed?)

he was doing a bounty with a drone, and had to hack the drone...

the issue is i said, and il say it again, it takes me 15-20 secs to kill a gunship, if u die in 5 secs, and im still firing with a squish as hell hydroid, then u need to attest show us the frigin build insted of saying im ignoring how strong they are

only time i died when fighting them was when i was ember with all power mods because i was being dumb!

Edited January 30, 2018 by (PS4)Spider_Enigma

[krc473]

4 minutes ago, Badgriuel said:

What part did you miss about op saying that he was in the middle of hacking a target drone, while in the middle of said hack the Bolkor came up on him and started firing.

I could not see where it stated “I was hacking a drone at the time with no enemies around” in the OP at all. No, I did not read every post before commenting. But the OP is where you put crucial information like that, not buried in a random comment. Lacking this, I was assuming there was a hack panel that would do something to “scare off” the bolkor. I will cross that out.

 

Honestly, I have to agree with this statement:

9 minutes ago, (PS4)Spider_Enigma said:

the issue is i said, and il say it again, it takes me 15-20 secs to kill a gunship, if u die in 5 secs, and im still firing with a squish as hell hydroid, then u need to attest show us the frigin build insted of saying im ignoring how strong they are

As someone that usually either kills them, or just ignores them, I struggle to see how you die in just five seconds. (Note: having at least one team member may help with this - often no one kills them though).

[TheLexiConArtist]

I do wonder sometimes if people have even been out on the plains without their heaviest gear, with some of the simple responses.

"React to the spawning sound/visuals!" (In situations where you're being deafened and blinded by everything else because that's par for the course on the Plains?)

"Just shoot the turret!" (And very possibly die while you line up enough shots on that small hitbox while the endless barrage of bulllets tears you in half vertically?)

God help you if you brought no accurate long-range nonprojectile weaponry. Loadout Randomiser is a fickle mistress on the plains.

 

Really, the OP's drone-hack scenario is far from the most unreasonable situation. Having to cover a static defendable point while being orbitally bombarded with troops constantly (with all the intrusive screenshake and blinding effects that entails) and then being beset by a pack of 3-5 Bolkors one after the other, with an overlapping pair covering each other while you try to poke the turrets out... That's more like it.

 

Honestly I'm never sure myself sometimes whether a single Bolkor circles around and just respawns its turret. I could swear sometimes I half-health the ship itself while taking down its turret, then look up later and see that same half-dead boat shooting me again. Which, if true, really puts a questionmark on that whole 'just snipe the turrets and they'll go' argument.

 

I can usually deal with it personally but I'm not dense enough to think that my experience defines the outcomes that every other player and their different loadouts should expect. There's a lot of room for no-win scenarios in the thick of it all, when you look at the sum of all the contributing parts.

[Sean.bdfc]

36 minutes ago, Badgriuel said:

If you're gonna make a post about something at least read up on the topic and the posts that came before it. Because your response clearly shows you didn't do that and are just posting to post. You're not helping at this point and just being toxic like the others that are doing the same thing.

Show me how you'll kill an enemy that can chew through your health quickly while you're bringing up a hacking prompt on the screen and then having to back out of said prompt to try and engage said target before it kills you, all the while you have 0 defensive abilities active. OP has a valid point, dying to something in a game because the game has prompts you have to do which take X amount of time to get in and out of suck and it's dumb that it can even happen in games. 

With all due respect, OP's issue is born from a fundamental breakdown of adapting to challenges. If OP thinks lv 60 Bolkors are broken, I'd like to see the reaction when facing lv 100 Grineer with enhanced slash damage in sorties. We have to adapt to these sucky situations on the Plains where ships teleport in and out and orbital drop pods rain down grineer constantly, especially on defense objectives. These are learning curves for the player to think how the Grineer are aggressive and could drop hell on us at any time. Basically, it's foolish to not bring a backup strategy or to not deal with immediate threats on the Plains whether you're hacking, fishing, mining or even stretching your arms as OP alludes.

You can bring a stealth frame to secure a hack without attention. You can beef up your survivability to buy time to react to a sudden Bolkor threat. You can leave a defensive/utility channel on while you're hacking and vulnerable. There are so many things in this game that you can use to great effect that would solve your issue. You just have to explore them instead of calling on DE to change something that I and many other players here have historically not had much of a problem with. 

[Kayll]

Of course it's always a bit frustrating to get gun downed randomly while peacefully fishing,but I like the strength of the Bolkor's pretty much the only thing in the Plains to fear.
Honestly Warframe could use more actually dangerous enemies,but I guess i'm in the minority there.

[Toran]

Honestly, I see a lot of folks bringing rather fragile warframes to the highest bounty mission... no vitality, no defense, questionable offense.

Don't bring cutlery to a gun fight. If you do, wear a kevlar vest at least.

Some Survival Tips:

• at least add a vitality mod to your build
• don't forget your operator: void mode gives you sweet protection
• always ress others in void mode
• crowd control is King: Nyx and Nidus can make a run smooth as butter for the whole group
• you can use buildings as cover if  hits the fan
• use void dash to exit a danger zone. Objective achieved? Why stay and take more hits?
• Hirudo can be a real life saver in the plains: life leech and extra health? Anytime baby!
• Prefer raw power? Mesa and Chroma do excellent jobs there.
• Chroma extra fun: try a near 100% status Hema (riven mod). Any ship down in three volleys with alot of ammo left for ground troops, plus heal on headshots.

 

[Raspberry]

51 minutes ago, Kayll said:

Of course it's always a bit frustrating to get gun downed randomly while peacefully fishing,but I like the strength of the Bolkor's pretty much the only thing in the Plains to fear.
Honestly Warframe could use more actually dangerous enemies,but I guess i'm in the minority there.

As long as our defensive stats (health, shields, armor) still matter, I'm all for actually dangerous enemies. Also, anything that doesn't involve cheap stunlocks (i.e. Scorpions can grapple players behind them due to their broken aimbot).

[Raspberry]

44 minutes ago, Toran said:

Honestly, I see a lot of folks bringing rather fragile warframes to the highest bounty mission... no vitality, no defense, questionable offense.

Don't bring cutlery to a gun fight. If you do, wear a kevlar vest at least.

Some Survival Tips:

• at least add a vitality mod to your build
• don't forget your operator: void mode gives you sweet protection
• always ress others in void mode
• crowd control is King: Nyx and Nidus can make a run smooth as butter for the whole group
• you can use buildings as cover if  hits the fan
• use void dash to exit a danger zone. Objective achieved? Why stay and take more hits?
• Hirudo can be a real life saver in the plains: life leech and extra health? Anytime baby!
• Prefer raw power? Mesa and Chroma do excellent jobs there.
• Chroma extra fun: try a near 100% status Hema (riven mod). Any ship down in three volleys with alot of ammo left for ground troops, plus heal on headshots.

 

It seems you didn't get the memo: most frames in the game are fragile. Most frames have some form of defense, yes, but most of them also have quirks that make them unreliable. Reliable damage tank frames, therefore, end up being very few in number, which is normal in any RPG-esque game; however, every non-tank suffering 1-2 shot deaths from common enemies is abnormal. Even many MR 24s and 25s have suffered instant deaths right before my eyes because they picked the "wrong" frame to go to Plains with. Apparently, we're not supposed to enjoy playing Nova or Titania. Hell, even Mesa is fragile since her Shatter Shield does not reduce damage from explosives.

Life steal, in that regard, is often useless for fragile frames at high levels because they make you live a few seconds longer, only to still be near guaranteed to die. Delaying the inevitable, one would say. Some of the enemy weapons that have the potential to kill you in 1 or 2 shots are even hitscan. Hitscan cannot be dodged in any game, you can only hope that the enemy's accuracy is bad enough to miss, which they usually do since Warframe is a mob game. But "usually" can be overcome the longer the mission is, and to nobody's surprise, 5-stage bounties are somewhat long.

Also, Plains of Eidolon, not City of Eidolon. Very few buildings, and only 12 caves.

I think you should get off your high horse. Pride in giving low- to mid-level advice as if you're "one of the few that know how to play the game", only to have mistakes in them.

Edited January 30, 2018 by Raspberri

[PatternistSlave]

18 hours ago, Chipputer said:

I like that there's an actual threat out on the plains

This.  Should they have designed the plains around newer players?  Proly.  Did they?  No.

[Toran]

vor einer Stunde schrieb Raspberri:

It seems you didn't get the memo: most frames in the game are fragile. Most frames have some form of defense, yes, but most of them also have quirks that make them unreliable. Reliable damage tank frames, therefore, end up being very few in number, which is normal in any RPG-esque game; however, every non-tank suffering 1-2 shot deaths from common enemies is abnormal. Even many MR 24s and 25s have suffered instant deaths right before my eyes because they picked the "wrong" frame to go to Plains with. Apparently, we're not supposed to enjoy playing Nova or Titania. Hell, even Mesa is fragile since her Shatter Shield does not reduce damage from explosives.

No, I didn't get the memo, sorry. Or I did and remembered I got mods... which allow me to turn any warframe into a survivalist. Regarding warframes as tools helps a lot (you can consider that a base-level advice...), why bring the wrong tool for a job?

MR doesn't make you bullet proof. You either make sound decisions or you don't. At high MR you're just expected to have more choices and resources at hand. If you go for squishy, you better kill fast. That's why my Mesa has enemy radar. Or you could focus on crowd control. My Nyx isn't exactly tanky but she's my favourite frame for sortie rescue missions. You can bring Nova or Titania but maybe consider a different build (if you enjoy it is a different thing). I saw a few guys who brought (a tanky) Nova for her portal only to quickly initialize new objective zones.

vor einer Stunde schrieb Raspberri:

Life steal, in that regard, is often useless for fragile frames at high levels because they make you live a few seconds longer, only to still be near guaranteed to die. Delaying the inevitable, one would say. Some of the enemy weapons that have the potential to kill you in 1 or 2 shots are even hitscan. Hitscan cannot be dodged in any game, you can only hope that the enemy's accuracy is bad enough to miss, which they usually do since Warframe is a mob game. But "usually" can be overcome the longer the mission is, and to nobody's surprise, 5-stage bounties are somewhat long.

Life steal doesn't help much with a low hp pool. But it does a lot with a high one. Inevitable is a strong word. I "usually" don't die on a bounty hunt but that's because I'm a high-horse-riding badass (or maybe I just brought the right tool...). I can't tell or confirm if "normal" enemies can one- or two-shot all and everything because I play it safe by overkill, survivability or crowd control. Sure, sh*t happens but seldom four times in a row and never for the whole team.

vor einer Stunde schrieb Raspberri:

Also, Plains of Eidolon, not City of Eidolon. Very few buildings, and only 12 caves.

I think you should get off your high horse. Pride in giving low- to mid-level advice as if you're "one of the few that know how to play the game", only to have mistakes in them.

Plains, city - I don't get that point. 

Better to give low- to mid-level advice than none at all and moaning around. Thanks, but I prefer to stay in the saddle, riding off to sunset (and preparing for Eidolon cap).

 

 

 

[Raspberry]

8 minutes ago, Toran said:

 Thanks, but I prefer to stay in the saddle, riding off to sunset (and preparing for Eidolon cap).

 

 

 

Don't fall off, then, if you're so proud of your "perfect playstyle"  that leads to "nonexistent downs/deaths".