Dev Workshop: Warframes Revisited

[PsiWarp]

I think Reb mentioned the animations aren't all in yet, she said sorry to somebody for showing this without them.

[(PSN)sinner_bh]

I dont like this nerf. I use ember to do my syndicate missions, casual farming, relic farming and cc. In syndicate missions in particular WoF with firequake allows me to focus on finding the medallions without worrying much about the enemies, since doing medallion farming in public can be annoying as some ppl ignore when you announce that you are there for the medallions and just extract when the objective is done. With the upcoming unvaulting farming the syndicate missions for medallions to buy relic packs becomes more important. I can kind of swallow the power drain being doubled or something like that after a certain threshold, I can kind of accept if her WoF range decreases to something akin to the unmodded values, the two together feel like too much but still somewhat acceptable, however shrinking her range by half of the modded value alongside the energy cost to get a 2x power boost in a set value is too much.

Pair this with the banshee nerf that is two avenues of quick solo farming removed. I like the current WoF mechanics, sure taking Ember to higher level content would be nice, but I can do sortie 1 missions with Ember as cc and rely on my weapons for raw damage. Unless she gets armor buffs and her other skills reworked or buffed this nerf just kills Ember's utility, doing 2 rotations for farming relics up to meso will become much harder and keeping up to rotation c for axi ones will become even worse in terms of energy management when you don't want to use a more complex frame, solo or not.

With Ember I know that I can reliably do a lot of the daily grinding without having to stress out too much. I tried using other frames for my syndicate dailies that always spawn medallions and they don't produce the same results. With Ivara the ignis breaks her stealth, Ash and Loki's stealth runs out too fast to be useful. Excalibur is an ok one for changing the pace but still not as good as Ember, same as Mirage prime. I don't like Equinox, Saryn doesn't fit my farming style, Nekros is more for resource farming than medallion farming.

This bit is just my personal opinion, I will admit that I never saw Ember as a high level content frame, in the star chart she does pretty well on regular missions. Lore wise I can see where Ember would fit in a combat team in a war, she is there to kill the grunts in droves, possibly cc quality units so her better fighter colleagues can deal with the better units and stronger ones. No frame will match every scenario and trying to do so removes the uniqueness of the frame, each frame is supposed to be a specialist on something, Ember was meant for killing large groups of enemies on low to mid levels.

On my eyes these changes just remove Ember's value as a everyday use frame on the star chart, I can only hope that it isn't as bad as it sounds as I was planning on purchasing the loki/ember prime pack because I use and like Ember so much, if the nerf is so bad I might not do so.

[LSG501]

8 minutes ago, mkoo33 said:

The one thing i know  for sure :

February 6, they will open the prime vault .. selling Ember (nerfed) .. who will want to buy it ?

The problem is that a high percentage of (new) players don't know about these nerfs, sorry I mean reworks, and odds are they'll be released after the initial rush of people buying ember prime (same as with the nerf to MV on gara). 

[Nez-Kal]

Looking forward to being able to step into Fissures now, and if I see an Ember NOT immediately forfeiting the idea of doing melee or getting any kills at all through-out the whole mission (Assuming I even get to see an Enemy that's not a cindered corpse yet). Her World-on-Fire is now "Think before you Press" 4 gameplay, instead of "4 and 4get", so I'm sure that alone will drive a good portion of her "Mains" away from her, much like with Ash's Target System rework and his "Mains". Still, it's not like she's Over, Worthless, Back on the Shelf or anything. She's the same ol' Hallway and Next Room Over killer, players will just have to turn things off for a moment before turning them right back on again and resuming their "98% Mission Kills" runs.

[Darkvramp]

Gara

why so roundabout?

 it seems really cluncky in writing.

 

Edited February 3, 2018 by Darkvramp

[Nez-Kal]

Just now, Darkvramp said:

Gara

why so roundabout?

 

Seems pretty "Solid" to me, and "Crystal Clear" too.

Edited February 3, 2018 by Tangent-Valley
No Sarcasm, Just Puns~

[Yuuhl]

Amazing work DE.

It would be nice to have a DownVote button.

[RetKhan]

If you're still looking for people to test these, I'd love to test Banshee, Mag, Zephyr, and/or Atlas.

[Roikan]

Quote

Ember is the original damage caster frame, offering low survivability in exchange for high offense.

Sooooo nerf her offense and her survivability at the same time by reducing the range and increasing the energy cost of Firequake World on Fire? Sounds legit.

[SordidDreams]

1 hour ago, Spell said:

It's interesting to see how people consider their success not as a result of extreme luck of being in the right place with the right solution which should be preserved - but as an outcome of *every* and *all* their decisions. DE should check history of CCP's/EVE downfall when on the peak of Incarna "walking in stations" hype their CEO has turned this hype into ultimate failure by increasing virtual item prices literally tenfold against values offered by the team - because he didn't care about others' opinions and thought all his decisions are good because the game was so successful under his management. That's how you kill a company and a game - by disappointing people and creating expectations of failure.

This cannot be overstated. The sense of "we can do no wrong" is strong with even moderately successful people. What I'm about to say is going to sound incredibly arrogant, but that doesn't make it any less true. The devs say things like "we think this is boring", "we don't find this fun", etc., as justifications for the nerfs. Yeah, well, you know what? That doesn't matter. No-one cares. The only people whose opinion on what is or isn't fun is of any value are the players. The devs need to eat their humble pie and realize that their job is to entertain us, not themselves. When the players and the devs disagree on what is fun, the players' opinion should prevail.

Ember's 4 is fun, that's why so many people use it. Banshee's 4 could do with a change, but if and only if the unfun issue that it's being used as a bandaid to is resolved first, namely the absolutely ludicrous focus farming grind.

Warframe does a ton of things great or at least decently but also a lot of things very, very badly. The various ill-conceived and poorly-thought-out nerfs are definitely in the latter category. Mag, Saryn, Naramon, Zenurik, Gara, Arca Plasmor, Tonkor, and that's just off the top of my head. Now some of those did need a bit of a tweak, what they didn't need is nerfing into the f*cking ground. DE doesn't seem to understand the concept of a light touch.

Edited February 3, 2018 by SordidDreams

[Lorechill]

So this are the changes to Ember(Implies that it's awesome and groundbreaking). Goes to MOT to test said awesomeness. Dies within 5-10 mins. Retcons dodging info as a salve to said demise. In higher levels, Volt is 'obviously'  a CC. Well, there have been some instances where people survive direct lightning strikes. Chroma, they now just understood the line, "A downed dragon is a dead dragon.". Actually they should just make Chroma fly. Besides iron skin and elemental breathing, flying is what dragons are feared for. Well we have butterflies and birds so, meh. Mag, luv her to death so whatever. Zephyr will shine on plains and new open maps. Can't see me using her on cramped ship tile sets. Atlas, should just have the ability to grab and throw... stuff-enemies, things... other players. All in all, great stuff. Can't wait to use them for free.

[Sorise]

As players(in other missions) are more than happy to leave all the enemies for other players cause their behind is already at extraction :)

Edited February 3, 2018 by Sorise

[Archwizard]

ASH

Ash changes are convenient, although they only address one of his many issues (particularly including the limited scalability of his ultimate, being that it only deals a flat amount of Finisher damage outranked by Teleport). That said, the new "fire and forget" method may leave it with some borderline P4TW functionality. Still, the ability to opt into the invulnerability period (at what is not listed in the post as zero additional cost, according to today's stream), or choose to continue striking amidst the chaos, at least makes for some bonus utility from the ability.  
I am half-tempted to say the clones should be used as a Decoy in such case. It would have been pointless to do so back when Ash was attached to it (given the invulnerability, and aggro draw) but the fact that he can stick to invisibility, start the cast and keep wailing on enemies would at least give it strategic value if not meaningful damage. Of course, then you're just going back to Loki...

I'd probably prefer to see it just replaced with an Exalted weapon, using the clones as part of the gimmick.

EDIT - Let me be clear here: this Bladestorm adjustment is just a quality of life change. While the change is appreciated, Ash's kit is far from "fixed." 
Shuriken and Bladestorm each deal a flat amount of direct damage - Finisher damage to be sure, but even Bladestorm will be overshadowed at high levels by Teleport. His kit lacks cohesion, since Shuriken has no practical place in it (nor situational use where Bladestorm can't overshadow it), and the cutscene nature of Bladestorm means it can only tangentially interact with his other skills (ie affecting its cost and uptime).
He's supposed to offer the best offensive kit of the Invisible frames, but Ivara is ultimately more suited for that distinction (between her Exalted weapon, damage boosts, and shared ability to induce melee Finishers... to multiple enemies per cast). I'd be willing to say the sheer simplicity of his kit (in terms of the near lack of interaction between his skills, and only real ceiling to using his ultimate) would make him an ideal Starter frame.

ATLAS

Solid start <Is that a pun? I will attempt to bypass this fault>, although I am concerned that his ultimate offers little more than being a means to deliver the effects of Petrify, better than Petrify - with the Rumblers themselves being sort of a byproduct of that.

There are a lot of opportunities presently missed by the Rumblers, such as:

• Boosting Atlas' combo count when they attack,
• Cloning his abilities while active (at least his 1 and 3),
• Building up their death-explosions over their duration,
• Splitting Atlas' damage taken while active (which puts more value on Petrify),
• Or even with Rubble now, consuming Rubble on the ground to empower them to the level of fallen enemies.

Right now Rumblers just charge into the fray head-first and tend to get themselves destroyed by Nullifier bubbles. It would be nice if their AI was improved to ignore enemies within Nullifier fields, or even if they simply lost health over time within a bubble rather than dying outright. If you can give them a value and a reason for us to keep them up, people will consider using Petrify on its own rather than just toggling Rumblers for the snap CC and healing.

For the record, I am in favor of allowing the Rumbled augment into PVE, just with the slight tweak that it scale like Iron Skin. There's some nice synergy with Landslide and his passive in it, and the ability to bypass AI entirely is a buff unto itself. 

Also something of a missed opportunity not to have Petrify heal the Bulwarks, especially since the synergy with Tectonics is completely removed by using the augment. At the very least, the Bulwark's health pool should contribute to its launch damage.

BANSHEE

I like the concept of the new augment. Banshee's kit exists to be a Marksman - Sonic Boom to keep some distance, Sonar to amplify shots, Silence as a stealth-based defense - but Sound Quake itself is out of place. The idea of the augment allowing her to set a trap for enemies to linger in while she snipes them down would finally give an element of completeness to her kit.

If I might suggest a couple improvements, however, perhaps the augment could also -

• give a projectile element to the Quake, allowing her to set up a spot to root enemies from her sniping roost? The fact that she has to stand near enemies to set it up makes it inconvenient to her Sniper lifestyle; while she can perform other actions, the limited range and duration mean she's tethered to the enemy, which really works against Sonic Boom.
• continue to allow enemies to stand clutching their heads, rather than knocking them down, to better set up for marked shots?
• increase the base cost of the Quake as well in exchange for a slightly longer duration? Right now 3-5 seconds is barely enough for a few pot shots or a brief distraction as you run away, not really a meaningful CC or ultimate-worthy effect.
• turn it into a proximity mine effect, allowing her to delay a quake until enemies are within the area?

CHROMA

All excellent changes. Only three things left for him now:

1. For Effigy to act as a totem for his Elemental Ward and, now, Vex Armor, to complete its description of "strengthening nearby allies."
2. A purpose for Spectral Scream beyond simple damage, which falls off over time. (Preferably some synergy with Effigy...)
3. The ability to swap elements on the fly (ie Khora), and a new passive. (Since he can jump with Scream, why not let him fly like a true dragon?)

EMBER

This is the change I'm least hopeful for. I've long been one of the vocal detractors for World on Fire's ability to melt down crowds at low levels while being useless at high levels, but unfortunately this change will not actually meaningfully change this position for one simple reason:

Players can just turn it off and on again.

The fact that damage would be reduced by such doesn't matter, when its base damage has already proven sufficient for low level content! The damage itself is the least impactful part of the ability as level increases - doubling the damage will only add maybe 5-10 levels to its falloff curve against armored targets. Ultimately we're going to see exactly the same results with World on Fire: with the exception that players will cast it more often (to keep the low-penalty period as long as possible), it will still have disproportionately high up-time, as it did when it was purely affected by Duration. This change is just a soft penalty for not keeping the intended Duration.
I'm already seeing people complaining on Reddit that it's just a step towards turning World on Fire into pre-channeling Desecrate.

Increasing an ability's damage by a flat, predetermined amount is not scalability. Scalability is the rate at which your kit adapts to the increase in levels.
If it consistently reduces TTK, if it consistently plays to the enemy's strengths or weaknesses, if it lets you stop to breathe for more than 2 seconds on a Sortie, it probably scales. If it's more costly and less effective on a target than pick any gun, you can bet your bottom dollar it doesn't scale.
This is exactly the same issue we saw with Miasma "scaling" for 200% more damage or Reckoning "scaling" for 50% more damage on proc'd targets. Ultimately the cost-efficiency of killing the target with these abilities doesn't have much upward movement.

Doubling the damage isn't enough to make it an end-game damage tool. Until the day enemy armor gets reworked, it will never be enough.

All of this, and the rest of her kit goes unchanged!

• Three out of four of her abilities are delivery vehicles for a Heat proc which does not stack. When World on Fire is active, there is no reason to use Fireball, particularly now that World on Fire can inflict an even stronger proc (with greater cost-efficiency).
  • Personally I would suggest turning Fireball into some type of scaling damage tool, like a %-based Heat proc effect (to play into her focus on low-armor enemies), and then basing her ultimate on amplifying or even spreading those procs somehow. If Damage 2.5 is coming, let her Heat procs stack, since it seems like her kit means to spam them.
• Fire Blast's ring serves little purpose, given that its damage has no baseline CC, it provides no benefit to Ember or her allies, and enemies will actively attempt to path around it if they can (a behavior they don't even have for actual fire hazards in mission tiles). The only effective part of the ability is the radial knockback.
  Even with the augment, enemies with sufficiently high speed can often charge through between ticks (where the middle is a safe area to them as well), before it can stun them. Considering its intended niche is dealing with exactly the low-armored melee enemies who can bypass it, this seems like a problem.
  • Give Ember a survival bonus for placing the rings, like healing while within, or even using the smoke to block line of sight so enemies have to charge in. Let Fire Blast cause damage within the circle of flames, or at least make it a bonus to Fire Fright.
• Ember's passive is virtually useless. Corpus enemies do not regularly have the means to set players on fire, nor do Infested until Arson Eximi (Exima? Eximuses?) walk onto the scene; your most reliable options are Grineer enemies (where their armor will overpower the bonus anyway and the damage would more than likely kill you), damage from mission tiles that deliver Heat procs like Sabotages, or self-damage (ie Castanas). Also consider that the number of frames available who can purify or provide immunity to proc effects has rapidly gone up in recent years, including one of her own Conclave augments.

GARA

The wall change is accepted, though I'd like to see a few more changes, like...

• Making the Puncture side of Shattered Lash a projectile with Punch Through, so that its range is comparable to the Slash swing.
• Giving Spectrorage more scalability.

And while I don't see it being a popular suggestion, you might want to look at _{^{nerfing Splinter Storm...}}

MAG

I'm curious what the phrasing of Polarize's "as well as the percentage of damage done to that specific enemy" means, given that DE has a historical tendency to play more to the letter of their announcements than to the way by which they would be interpreted (ie "Freeze is going to be more like Ember's Fireball, we're internally calling it Arctic Blast, HUGE CHANGE"... being literally a damage increase equal to Fireball's, and a nerf to the CC component, in a time when we were begging for splash CC).
Rebecca swears this means some type of scalability, but... see the bold under "Ember" for my caution there.

Meanwhile... for the first time in ages, Crush actually has a purpose! Although, I will say it does seem disappointing that said purpose seems to be covering the original intent of Shield Polarize - and I don't just mean the augment either, which as stated on the stream, is now in desperate need for re-evaluation.

VOLT

Discharge no longer has a damage cap! Lovely!

Really just leaves removing the movement penalty from carrying Electric Shields. Increasing the carry cost relative to the player's movement speed completely defeats the point of allowing you to move with it, since it flips the synergy with Speed on its head into a penalty.

And might I also suggest, doubling the base cost and duration of Speed so that players don't need to cast it as often?

ZEPHYR

All good, exciting changes. The additional control over her Tornadoes, streamlining of her kit, and new ability to hover during Tail Wind means a lot of exciting opportunity for aerial dominance and a unique niche post-Parkour 2.0.

The effects of her Air Burst seem a little uninspired (if you give it a T name, you can make her kit alliterate!), but more ranged options are always welcome in her kit, and I'm willing to hold judgement until we see it. Giving it the Divebomb augment could at least provide some opportunity for additional synergy with Tornado.

Edited February 7, 2018 by Archwizard
Added to Ash.

[SnuggleBuckets]

6 hours ago, [DE]Connor said:

EMBER

World On Fire - 5 seconds after casting, a percentage will begin counting up on the ability icon. As this percentage scales from 0% to 100% over 10 seconds, the ability’s energy cost and damage dealt both grow to double, while the ability radius shrinks to half.
 

Ember is the original damage caster frame, offering low survivability in exchange for high offense. Her ultimate, World on Fire, is unmatched in terms of widespread lethality - while many Warframes specialize in certain mission types, Ember’s specialty is “anything under level 30”. By simply bullet jumping through levels with World on Fire active, enemies become a non-factor, making Ember a ubiquitous pick across most of the Star Chart. Like a mobile Resonating Quake, this monopoly on kills can leave squadmates struggling to keep up, in an attempt to see the enemy before they melt. These changes increase lethality at higher levels, while addressing the ability’s huge range.

World on Fire will continue working similarly to how it does now, but with changing effects over time. The gradually increasing energy cost should encourage most players to toggle the ability when needed, instead of the current “set and forget” approach. Players who can afford to run the ability at max charge may need to get more up close and personal, but the increased damage should help Ember out against higher level enemies.  World on Fire is still very capable of clearing rooms and sweeping hallways, but should now be applied more deliberately!

I think Ember should instead always have had a Fire Proc priority and armor stripping with every new explosion, with a fire DoT effect being reliable but not immediately lethal (scaling with the more explosions stripping more armor over time).
This would allow utility in making enemies weaker to yourself and allies, having lots of enemies suffer fire procs in a wide radius to help you and allies in picking them off, and over time perhaps killing them if no one has gotten around to it yet.
No increasing energy cost, no increase in damage, no reduction in radius, just pure CC utility.

All the other changes sound great though! Thanks for all the hard work!

[Darkvramp]

Zephyr

why does it only get taller(apparently)? why not wider?

can her new ability be supportive in any way?

[Zhyzak]

Woo, Zephyr rework. I have been waiting a long time for this. The hover with Tail Wind sounds fun, love the multiple uses depending on looking in a direction.

Don't have enough info on Air Burst to really form an opinion, but any offensive ability would be good to round out her kit. Not too sure about the ragdolling enemies, don't you recall the kneejerk reaction people had to the IPS change involving ragdolling? Nobody really wants their enemies tossed all around and harder to aim at. That's also the same reason the original Tornado was so disliked, inconveniently moving enemies and tossing them around.

Tiny bit disappointed Tornado managed to stay, but I guess you guys didn't want to stray too far from the original. Nobody really wants to micromanage aiming tornados either, however. I'm hoping there's enough "fire and forget" involved there, and that managing placement/pathing of the tornados is optional if you really need to get one out of a particular location.

[SordidDreams]

9 minutes ago, Tangent-Valley said:

Looking forward to being able to step into Fissures now, and if I see an Ember NOT immediately forfeiting the idea of doing melee or getting any kills at all through-out the whole mission (Assuming I even get to see an Enemy that's not a cindered corpse yet). Her World-on-Fire is now "Think before you Press" 4 gameplay, instead of "4 and 4get", so I'm sure that alone will drive a good portion of her "Mains" away from her, much like with Ash's Target System rework and his "Mains". Still, it's not like she's Over, Worthless, Back on the Shelf or anything. She's the same ol' Hallway and Next Room Over killer, players will just have to turn things off for a moment before turning them right back on again and resuming their "98% Mission Kills" runs.

So what you're saying is the rework is going to fail to achieve its goal, which is to make her less effective, and it's just going to make her more annoying to play instead. Now I'm not a professional game dev, so what do I know, but that sounds like a bad move to me, making the game less fun to play instead of more...

[SkylosEquinox]

are we gonna get anything for titania soon?

 

[ShadowFel]

This all sounds really, really good.  I'm very excited to see what comes of it.  Especially excited about Zephyr and Atlas, since all of those changes sound great, and will help me enjoy these frames even more!

[MirageKnight]

And yet one in every 4 missions I run on Hydron, there's an Ember either sitting on the objective or bullet-jumping to every single spawn point to get the most kills possible.

 

[xXHobbitXx]

2 minutes ago, SkylosEquinox said:

are we gonna get anything for titania soon?

 

your a little slow, she already got an augment

[Darkvramp]

4 minutes ago, Archwizard said:

CHROMA

All excellent changes. Only three things left for him now:

1. For Effigy to act as a totem for his Elemental Ward and, now, Vex Armor, to complete its description of "strengthening nearby allies."
2. A purpose for Spectral Scream beyond simple damage, which falls off over time.
3. The ability to swap elements on the fly (ie Khora), and a new passive.

 

chroma also has that augment for his 4 and his 2 that are not augments, they are natural parts of his abilities thought up after the fact, then added into he game as the augment. they need to just be added as a base ability and then a new augment, that actually changes HOW he plays, instead of being a buff  to the power that the power either requires to work right or can use to just be more functional like other frames.

[CableRun]

Zephyr is and was my favourite Warframe since I get her back in the days. Right now she is my most played and most formaed Frame. 
Here are my thoughts on the chances

Tailwind/Divebomb becoming one.  I am fully on board, but in Clem's name please give her hoovering a good animation. And speaking of animation maybe tailwind can get a more dynamic pose, right now Zephyr looks relay stupid while using Tailwind.

Her new 2. At the moment I am really indifferent to this idea. Personel I would like a more bird themed ability. For example, she could summon a swarm of bird that stuns a group of enemies or deals damage or does whatever. 

Turbulence: Now chances planed. Nothing to add for me.

Tornado.  I think Tornado stands and falls with the right scaling. Even with the possibility to somewhat direct the single twisters this ability is very chaotic in nature, which is a downside which gives room for Damage or CC to compensate. Keep in mind Ivara and Excalibur can deal high damage very precise while Equinox and Mesa deliver high damage to a large area. Or Nyx and Rhino which both have very powerful AOE CC. While Tornado deals bad Damage and is at best a mediocre CC ability that is very chaotic on top. Would be nice if Tornados becomes good CC and Damage or really good in one of this fields. 

Fazit: I really like the direction of Zephyrs rework and I think her first 3 Abilities will turn out fine, but Tornado keeps me a little bit awake at night.  

[MirageKnight]

32 minutes ago, (PS4)xX-GunHound-Xx said:

Not only that, but if you are going to go down the route of nerfing the range for close range play, maybe give her some form of damage reduction. She's kind of squishy.

Yeah - that's fair.

With regard to Grineer and all, what about a cycled ability that allows her to modify her other abilities so that they perform better vs armor or shields?

 

[LSG501]

4 minutes ago, MirageKnight said:

 or bullet-jumping to every single spawn point to get the most kills possible.

 

You do realise that's likely to kill things as fast as possible right.....