Update 22.12.0: Warframe Changes Feedback Megathread

[Foefaller]

12 hours ago, Cornelius.EE said:

@[DE]Danielle Please consider further feedback on Ember. Here is what I have after one week of testing the changes. I also posted a detailed evaluation of the WoF change earlier in this thread.

1) Fireball:

• The fact that the residual flames can proc Heat is nice and can give some extra CC, but the duration is a little too short to be used effectively for area denial. Making the duration modifiable by mods would make this much more useful.
• The charge effect is fun, but the damage is too weak to be useful. Fireball requires direct aiming, and I can usually deal way more damage with my gun in the same amount of time. Fireball's primary function is emergency single-target CC while reloading or moving. Ember is an energy-hungry frame (now even more so), and using Fireball to directly supplement weapon damage is very inefficient. The charge mechanic could be made useful if:
• Charging extends the duration of the residual flames
  AND/OR
• Charging increases the buff from Fireball Frenzy (given that it's already hard to hit teammates that are moving like Roborovski hamsters who've had too much caffeine, I think this would be fair in terms of difficulty/reward)

One minor annoyance voiced by teammates was that the Napalm-like flames hindered their vision whenever they received the Fireball Frenzy buff. Perhaps the flames can be made more transparent? I think that'd be useful, especially for players who don't want to give up using brighter energy colors - Fashionframe and all that

2) Accelerant:

- This is by far Ember's best and most unique ability (when the augment is used). No complaints here.

3) Fire Blast:

• The damage buff is very welcome, but still not enough to make the ability useful. With a 244% strength build, Flash Accelerant provides +122% heat damage to the whole team and Fireball Frenzy provides an additional +244% to everyone other than Ember. An extra 50% is not worth it given Fire Blast's high energy cost and the restriction of shooting through the ring. Restricted mobility means death at high levels, and the ring's unmoddable radius does not help. Please remember that heat damage already needs special circumstances (e.g. 4xCP when dealing with Grineer and Corrupted) to be useful compared to other elements.
• Fire Blast has the following problems _{(keep Snow Globe in mind for comparison, since it is conceptually similar)}:

1. Does not knock back targets that are on fire (unlike Snow Globe)
2. Range is not moddable (unlike Snow Globe)
3. Damage buff in not moddable (to be fair, slow % is not moddable on Snow Globe either, but see below)
4. The flames create no barrier without the augment since the ring damage is negligible at higher levels (Snow Globe slows everything in its range while active without needing an augment; also, Snow Globe can deal finisher damage that scales with enemy health)

• Please consider implementing at least some of the following to give players a reason to build for and use this ability:

1. Make the damage buff scale with power strength (from a QoL perspective, an icon with buff strength would also be appreciated)
2. Make ability and ring radius scale with power range (modding for range would not make this OP because the blast is already line-of-sight-limited, and sacrificing strength for range hurts Ember's other abilities)
3. Transfer the augment's function to the base ability, but make status chance scale with ability strength
4. Change knock-back mechanic so it works on enemies that are animation-locked (e.g. on fire)

4) World on Fire:

I've already discussed this at length in previous posts, but here goes:

• I mostly agree with the motivation behind the change: WoF was OP below lvl 50 or so, required little effort to use at those levels, and made other players feel irrelevant
• However, I have a serious problem with how this was addressed, because the change hurts Ember's high-level viability, especially with high-strength builds

Energy drain is now excessive. Even running WoF episodically leaves much less energy to refresh buffs on teammates. This is a problem because:

1.  Even though relatively few people used such builds, Ember's most effective builds for sorties involved high strength, Flash Accelerant (optionally also Fireball Frenzy) for team DPS buff, and CC from WoF (without Firequake)
2. So under some circumstances (e.g. 4xCP, viral + heat weapon builds), Ember could give a better DPS buff than Nova or a Rhino of comparable power strength, while with the same build also providing decent CC from WoF heat procs (not Firequake)
3. Now Ember can either be a good but very finicky DPS buffer (much weaker than Banshee or even Octavia under most circumstances) OR a sub-par CC provider (with low strength, high efficiency, Overextended, and Firequake). She cannot do both good DPS and CC at the same time anymore, and that was the only thing that previously made her even remotely worth using above lvl 80 (of course I'm just talking in terms of effectiveness; there are other reasons to use a frame such as fun, aesthetics, etc.)

The energy drain would have been restrictive but manageable on its own, but combined with the reduced range, it really kills Ember:

1. The reduced range is not enough for reliable CC anymore while the increased damage, which was supposed to compensate for this, is still predictably irrelevant at the levels where CC becomes useful
2. Using Overextended works, but kills Ember's strength, which her other abilities require to be usable. This also necessitates the use of Firequake because of the reduced WoF status chance. Firequake usually reduces team DPS (see my previous posts) as is therefor sub-optimal
3. Without Overextended, toggling WoF on an off to preserve range still allows for good CC. However, the activation cost means that Ember does not have enough energy to keep buffing allies, which again means she has to choose between CC and buffs

Please consider implementing at least some of the following changes. These still keep WoF from killing everything at low-levels, while keeping it viable in sorties and beyond:

• Revert range and energy drain changes. Make damage fall off with range
    OR
• Revert range and energy drain changes. Make WoF always do zero damage beyond half-range
• Keep the range and energy drain changes, but reward players who play actively but making weapon kills slow or reverse the counter
• If insistent on keeping the new mechanics, please at least dial back the numbers a bit. Making the energy and range penalties start at 15s (or even making the initial timer affected by mods) or capping the range penalty at 33% instead of 50% would go a long way.

Please, there are ways of correcting WoF without making Ember (as much as I hate to say this) objectively one of the worst frames in the game. Also (and this is specifically addressed to the members of the Dev team who came up with these changes), what is the deal with making so many of Ember's ability mechanics unaffected by mods? One of the main attractions of this game is customization in terms of both playing style and cosmetics. Good design = balanced game without artificial/arbitrary restrictions. There are ways of making something not OP without putting it in shackles!

 

On top of all this wonderful input, I think her passive needs to change as well.

It's easily one of the worst in the game; trying to deliberately inflict heat procs on yourself is going to get you killed more often than not on such a fragile frame, and waiting for it to happen normally makes it about as rare as the number of times people were able to take advantage of Oberon's old "tame the woodland creatures" passive.

I think the trigger should either be you inflicting heat procs, or casting an ability (might also be the # of active effects, since with Fireball's change, all of her abilities have something that persists after casting, augment or no) And in light of the new WoF, one of the buffs could be changed to Damage Reduction.

[Sev1107]

On 2/9/2018 at 6:12 PM, TheDefenestrater said:

Chroma's Fury buff is not working at all.  It shows numbers in the UI, but it's not increasing attack damage.

Chroma's Scorn buff appears to have been given the same pre-mod calculation treatment as Fury, but I'm not certain.  He seems really squishy compared to before.  He can't even stand up to lvl 100 enemies.  If it is calculating the Scorn buff before mods, that makes it completely redundant with ice elemental ward and a massive nerf to his EHP.  No one ever said his armor buffs were broken.  it was his poorly designed damage buff.  So why the hell has his armor been nerfed into the ground?

Chroma's 1 is still worthless, as it does less damage than all of my guns without a functional vex buff.

^This. I have had so many issues with Chroma actually dealing appropriate damage. I've seen 13 damage from a gun thats supposed to do 1281 damage without the buffs, so something is really off.

[GGbroman]

Ember's updates are pretty cool but they do require some tweaks (which i'm sure Cornelius.EE mentioned in great detail). 

I do have one suggestion. I was wondering if it was possible for ember's energy color to add it's element to ember's damage type, just like chroma does?

ex. ember's base damage is fire and her abilities will always pertain to increasing her fire damage and all that but maybe if ember's energy color was green(or any green type of color) maybe all her abilities could deal gas damage. Of course her abilities like accelerant  would increase her fire damage and all that stuff.

The reason i'm suggesting this is just so that ember can be another warframe with an ability to deal other types of damage to handle different enemies within missions, especially survival. The green energy color and ember doing gas damage on abilities as a result would definitely aid in handling different types of enemies (in this example i think infested hate gas damage or something like that). And then if you need some other type of damage you could change the energy color to fit the mission. :)

Edited February 19, 2018 by GGbroman
clarification

[GGbroman]

(reposting suggestion i made from smaller thread in this megathread)

@[DE]Danielle

This is in regards to Vauban and his secondability 

 

BOUNCE SUGGESTION! :D

I was wondering if it was possible for Vauban's bounce trap to be affected by range where the bouncing pad would get bigger and bigger depending on how much range you put into Vauban?

It would be great placing a big bounce of 4 or so uses next to a defense pod or around an interception point and having different ways of handling enemies other than bastille + repelling bastille combo.

Now this brings the problem of having a big bounce pad that affects allies. To this I want to suggest getting rid of the bounce pad's ability to affect the player. I was never really sure how the bounce pad benefits us (but if you know I'd like to understand).

 

 

TRIP LASER SUGGESTION! :D

I feel like trip laser could do with either increased range (and ofc it remains unaffected by range mods) or it stays the same base range but it then becomes affected by power range. Less casts made for same trippin coverage and less energy as a result is always nice, plus you get another way of CC other than the vortex and bastille playstyle.

 

Shred and Concuss :D

Seeing as how vauban is a CC frame. I am not sure why these two traps are even viable in the game (again if you know why please let me know. i wanna understand XD)

range on both is pretty small and in regular missions it's so much easier for me to just shoot the enemy than to throw that shred mine or concuss mine and try to combo it with weaponry and stuff.

I suggest removing them and replacing them with something else vauban can create that can interrupt the enemies. (i am unfortunately unable to think of their replacements at this moment)

[TimFlint]

Here's an idea for Ember that would nerf AFK farmers (as in: the guys standing on top of the cryopod, dancing) while leaving her potential for everyone else alone:

Tie WoF's range to mobility.

Stand still and it shrinks to the current "max charge" range. Sprint / bulletjump and have normal range, decays after 5s of not sprinting / bulletjumping. BAM, this now achieves the very same things the "rework" to Ember did - it reduces her range for lazy people. However, it doesn't ALSO nerf her viability for end game content. It doesn't fix people blazing through nub-exterminates, but then neither did the "rework".

The damage increase from WoF doesn't matter, with WoF she wont kill anything but trashmobs at high levels anyway. Add it or don't, whatever.

As for the changes to her other abilities:

• Fireball - Gimmicky. Takes WAY too long to charge, clumsy to use while moving or bulletjumping. Area denial sounds neat, but is damn near useless in practise since enemies can shoot through it and will just walk around it. Obscures your vision if you actually land it on the group of enemies you want to. If this absolutely, posititively HAS to be in the game then please make it a ground effect like burning/icy floors.
• Accelerant - Didn't get changed, but if you now compensate for the reduced range of WoF by bringing more range mods you probably sacrifice power strength. Lowering your Accelerant's multiplier, lowering the damage output of all your abilities and probably your weapons as well.
• Fire Blast - Gimmicky. Confining a squishy warframe that needs to get close to enemies to a small, static circle for some minor additional damage and no defensive benefits is ... super dumb. Easily her worst ability even before the "rework", low damage, high cost, useless ring unless vs infested, and even then you can probably just shoot them before they get too close. Extremely situational at best. Scratch it entirely, give her something else.

The buffs aren't worth a damn compared to the loss of range. The 200% damage doesn't matter, either. She kills low level mobs and trash mobs at high level, yay, but you could give her a 300% or 500% multiplier and STILL not make a dent in the dangerous heavy units. At best you'd buy her like 5-10 levels of effectiveness before she falls off again. She needs SOMETHING that scales with the enemies or is effective at all lvl ranges at least to lvl100 / Sortie 3 level. Whether it's seriously overwhelming raw damage, CC, armor ignoring/stripping, DR or any kind of actual utility (not those silly gimmicks that don't make a damn difference and don't even fit the way she plays and moves). The only bits of her kit actually doing that now are Accelerant's stagger and Fire Blast's knockdown.

And looking at the rest of the kit and her overall damage and utility: That's not a good kit.

Please think long and hard about what you want her to do and then give her a kit that can do it. The only thing she (still) excells at is clearing low level stuff quickly. That's it. As she is at the moment she's the worst pick for any high level content, by a long shot.

Edited February 19, 2018 by TimFlint
speeling, clarified some stuff

[Sasuda]

Playtested to get a closer look at Ember's World On Fire. It's really terrible now. It wasn't really that good before, although it was usable and helpful in some situations. It's range is trash unless you put tons into it. It's damage is worth nothing in almost every situation. If you have a mid/long range melee use it instead, or any gun will also do better. Or almost every offensive Warframe ability. Maybe for very early Embers they'll use the first 3 seconds to clear enemies, and maybe for Embers with all of the range mods. Otherwise her 4th is a waste of time and energy for everyone. Use Accelerant alone and you'll be far better off than touching WOF. It's very slow to do much.

It could have used an improvement sure, this change doesn't make it more interesting or fair to play with which were the reasons it was changed.

As I and others have suggested across various forums, WOF should become more powerful with mobility. There's a variety of ways it can work I'll toss some commentary from other forum posts in the spoiler as an example.

Spoiler

The more mobility and parkour toolkit you consistently use, the more damage and range you get. If you press 4 and then sit with no input range and damage dwindles to (numbers are placeholder) 10%. Heavy use of various rolls, direction changes, slides, wallruns, sprints, flips etc. happening in succession brings the damage and range back up. Because those Embers aren't lazy. They never were. (btw if you use the same high mobility functions you always could out gun Ember's WOF with almost anything due to targets caps.)  This doesn't  change playstyle for active Embers, but it does change lazy ones. The out-damaging problem also isn't an Ember symptom as the OP pointed out. It's a matchmaking one, which has been the cause of a large continual number divisive nerf threads.  From:

Spoiler

 

Cont':

I should clarify what I mean by movement, it's not a distance/time like just sprinting it's primarily acceleration and agile movement. The only scenarios this isn't guaranteed going to be beneficial is when a external survival defensive utility is employed ex. Snow Globe, Mass Vitrify and sniping, but even then you can be executing rolls, and are changing direction to face new enemies with your weapons (and you likely do already if you're good with Ember). If you are executing melee combos it would also gain damage/area benefits.
The key is that the greater the variation, the greater the effectiveness. This also promotes having a tactical frame to leave the globe of safety for greater damage (or at least CC potential) at least. I think it would really liven gameplay tactics up a bit. In any case it's definitely not useless (because in general you really are almost never actually stationary with Ember, especially in long survival where you're definitely required to move that much).
Potentially Fire Blast and Fireball should be the boosted and buffed abilities rather than World on Fire for these scenarios as well, since they're actually already far more oriented to lower movement play, especially Fire Blast. This would really add to using Ember's while kit in varying scenarios and playstyles. Rather than the WOF should always be constantly on all the time focus, which is already a thing with Accelerant. It's all around a reduction in redundancy in Ember's kit in that scenario.

We can also add a simple 2-3 second cooldown before its damage potential drops at all much like how the Knell or Sniper combo operates. So long as you have made some sort of movement you maintain reasonable damage/area basically. I wouldn't limit its max to old WOF either. You could maintain old WOF damage/area numbers with half decent movement but then actually scale it up above that when Ember chains combos of varied movements, ex. a melee combo, roll, bullet jump, aim glide, backflip, strafe, ability cast, transference, whatever could be chained in succession to be 2x damage/area or more. Doesn't have to be that specifically its just an example. I think it could be expanded on, longer or shorter combos, higher or lower damage/area, different movements causing different gains, whatever really, I think you get the idea. Tinker to find the sweet spot.

And while it's also totally fair many things in general do what WOF does more efficiently I think the changes I'm suggesting are still an improvement in general for playing as Ember. Again this can actually be a real buff while being a healthy nerf to WOF if the movement combos scale her up well. And yes it is just a matter of time unless, we fix matchmaking. And yes this nerf does need to be fixed. But reverting it isn't where I'd personally like to stop. Rather I'd like some real improvement to her kit.

More:

 

Fireblast and Fireball also need work, particularly how they scale with range mods, and how damage is applied.

Fireball could use inverse duration for Fireball Chargetime or something as well. stealing some thoughts from this thread: https://forums.warframe.com/topic/917129-ember-changes-increases-scaling-while-reducing-passive-killing/?tab=comments#comment-9463509
Fireball could use a little health % cut of total health in addition to regular damage with Enemies struck by the initial blast and for those that stand in the flames. Not much, less than the 10% the poster suggested for sure, but just a small chunk (4-5% at high power strengths or as a flat unchanging number seems decent) to finish weak enemies and scale to higher levels a bit. Along with that I'd swap the original suggestion's % of current health damage to Fireblast's persistent ring (also in addition to the original flat damage) as well to make it an actual defensive ability that works through offensively dealing damage (being Ember) in conjunction to Fireball especially charging it for the lasting flames. Then it becomes usable as to alternate between mobile quick casts of Fireball and WOF parkour high speed and backing out and laying out safe(r) zones with Fireblast and held casts of Fireball. Accelerant remaining as the core reliable quick CC and damage maintaining ability to use among both styles. Percentages not being affected by Accelerant's boosts to the full multiplier also needs to be done. Bonus to the flat damages is fine since it's fire damage

Fireblast also needs to damage enemies in the ring and consistently panic enemies who first enter it.

If you're considering Ember, I'd say probably just use Banshee instead. Does almost everything Ember does better. Better 1st stuns & CC, 2nd does more damage, and lets you see more (except for some Condition overload setups maybe, but in that case see Saryn), 3rd doesn;t stun quite as nice as Accelerant, 4th does more damage and CC faster.

[iNew_Vexx]

Gara 4 still useless on high level content.

[(PSN)alpha_redlion]

I thinks its funny how out all the frame ember always get hit with some kind of nerf. Its like they dont the real op frames some frames abilities are so good it makes warframe boring to play. And i bet everyone that always complaining about ember use one of those op frames. When have u every in chat seen someone ask for a ember on top level mission 

[ScytodiDaedalus]

The changes on Zephyr fell very flat and to me they ruined her flight, the changes on abilities first came out whack, but soon made to work a fair bit more, but here's the big problem I noticed in concern of her flight:

Tail wind is a disgusting Momentum Mess. Sure, the speed on PoE feels fantastic and the Energy cost reduction is great, you also get some free Aim glide seconds after every cast! But since the update it's IMPOSSIBLE to maneuver. Whenever you cast it a lot of momentum will go to a straight line and you'll be bound to go where you chose to cast it, this gets you stuck against walls in even the most spacious indoor tiles, you'll usually be flung against a ceiling or against a wall.

Back then, you could prevent Tail wind from shoving you against everything, while it had less speed, it had a slower acceleration, faster deceleration, but that is not why I'd rather have that back.
Holding Right click for the Aim glide(or wall latch) would actually HALT for the most part the momentum of Tail wind, to be able to prevent yourself from going too far to then cast another Tail wind, however the issue in this was that you would strangely keep the angle of your previous cast in a strange way, requiring you to calculate the cast, also after having had your Aim glide run out(had you not wall latched or landed) Tail wind would quickly take you up and then take you down even quicker. This was fixed with the change, now you go where your Tail wind is pointed at, no previous momentum or strange angle added, but now you can't stop the Tail wind at all, the moment you cast it you are doomed to go way too far from where you really wanted.

With all of this I see that the only thing that is needed is... have Aim Glide stop Tail wind, that added to the fact that casting Tail wind now gives you free Aim glide seconds means that Zephyr would be allowed to hover as much as she wants where she desires at any point of the whole trail of Tail wind.

Other than that, Airburst with the newly added speed and reduced cost now feels as useful as a few 1's of the other Warframes, Turbulence got a slightly lengthier cast time but that's no matter and the Tornado reticle aim move got very fast compared to when it first got shown. Thank you for taking your time to read this(if you did).

P.S.: The Tail wind charge into the Static Hover proves no use whatsoever, and haven't been able to leave from that with anything recently.

TL;DR: Please make Aim Glide/Wall latch stop Tail Wind.

Edited February 19, 2018 by ScytodiDaedalus
Added TL;DR

[Edzhang]

I just played with ash on today’s sortie 3 (assassination on ambulas), with squad consist of ash (me), volt, trinity, and nova.. i killed most of the mobs with bladestorm without problem and without dying even once.. for me, ash is fine right now, but there is something that bugged me :

1. His 1st is trash without augment, but with seeking shuriken, it becomes one of the best 1st power imo (being able to shred ambulas’s armor is really good).. please consider to make the augment an innate ability and rework its augment, cause it’s weird to have power that rely on augment

2. Bladestorm is great as it is right now (it’s true on low level the mobs already dead while you wiggling your reticle, but on sortie level it’s different story, especially with aforementioned squad), but please make it to have some kind of AoE around our reticle, like being able to mark several enemies in a 4m radius.. it would really help..

3. Like so many people mentioned, please buff smoke screen’s duration.. i dont realt have any problem right now, but it’s nice to get some upgrade on already good power..

 

all in all, ash is great for me right now, just some minor buff would made him even better.. thx for reading

[GA-Bulletproof]

So these reworks still have me on edge, why?

1. The range of Volt's Discharge is not duration based. I still don't understand why this isn't the norm for expanding abilities. It would also help maintaining speed builds. The previous worry of him locking down entire maps for too long can be solved the same way Banshee Resonating Quake was solved. Just apply less stun time to enemies further away from Volt and have his ability range effect the enemies coil range.

2. Zephyr has become a PoE only frame. I don't think i have to itterate why that is. Her 1 smashes your face in every second wall, her 2 is meh, 3 animation added (yay survivability), 4 useless CC. While her 4 can be augmented into one huge tornado that sucks in all enemies and moves twice as fast where you aim.

3. Oberon: "Last time in fissures"...jokes aside but receiving the double power strength buff just showed how awesome he would be if his armor buff at base would be 400 and increase with time. What i mean by that is that his 3 should work like Ember's 4 works now without the energy consumption increase but that his heal and armor buff that he gives to allies is increased with time that the ability is actually being used. So he would have a flat 400 buff but it would double over time to 800 (this would be very nice in survival) and give him a cooldown for when he has to recast it. His heal at 200% power strength would increase from 80 to 160. If max is reached after 20min i would consider him a solid support frame.

4. The rubble that Atlas creates HAS to be picked up by vacuum. In high levels the fact that you need to search out the rubble kills. Please make his minions health based and not duration. Keep their armor value just cut the health in half.

 

[Roadle32111]

Could chroma get some cc and a tad more range on his buffs

[(PSN)BlackGuyver82]

Proposed Ember Changes:

I think fire quake should give damage reduction from incoming fire from enemies.  The visual fire wall should be taller with this implemented changed. As the duration decreases on the ability the fire wall would get shorter meaning you take increased damage.  You would still take melee damage even though that should be rare because most enemies would be stunned from the cc of the ability. The visually taller wall would help players who like to shoot through it for the extra fire damage also.

[ganjou234]

Ember changes are fine, she just needs an additional 25 armor for a little bit QoL.

[Lead_Codpiece]

Can we get a change from ferrite armour type to alloy for Chroma?

[Keltik0ne]

Given that after some testing it's become apparent that ember can still bullet jump massacre low level content just fine, while has had her high and mid level survival chance slashed, is it safe to say the WoF changes were:

1: Poorly conceived

2: Poorly implimented

3: Poorly tested

4: All of the above  

Ember needs a rework, and not by the team that thought her new and improved toolset was a good idea.

Edited February 23, 2018 by Keltik0ne

[Leodegrance]

On 2/21/2018 at 3:36 AM, Lead_Codpiece said:

Can we get a change from ferrite armour type to alloy for Chroma?

I thought all frame were alloy armor?  Is this a bug?  

[Lead_Codpiece]

 All Warframes have Ferrite armor and Flesh health

[Air-mage]

Zephyr update was good, but she still lacks damage, and 2nd spell hitbox is a bit sloppy, actual aoe or explode on contact would be nicer

[-dicht.nomoreraiding-]

Ash's Bladestorm rework is a masterpiece.

1) The old bladestorm used to generate 3 clones. Now we only have 2 - I suppose one of them lost his way in Conclave.

2) We were promised increased damage to compensate for the change to line of sight. 2 years on - not only that the damage is still sitting at a 2000, the finisher damage is now changed to slash without being documented in the patch notes. How to rework a ninja frame? Stealth-nerf it.

3) Ash is unable to tag new enemies while his clones are stabbing away. We cant even move away to locate new enemies as bladestorm tags get removed once a player moves beyond the ability range.

If I could clear enemies faster using my weapons, I would be using my weapons, not bladestorm. You might as well skip the rework so players wouldn't actually have to waste energy on teleport after casting bladestorm to get that 50% increase in clear speed.

A round of applause for a truly wonderful rework not falling short of expectations - Ash players can now enjoy the stabbing actions by his 2 clones from a third person's perspective. Looking forward to the next joke, I mean, rework 2 years later.

Edited February 25, 2018 by -dicht.nomoreraiding-

[MechaKnight]

On 2/24/2018 at 2:16 PM, Lead_Codpiece said:

 All Warframes have Ferrite armor and Flesh health

I just checked, wiki states this is the case.

http://warframe.wikia.com/wiki/Damage_2.0#Tenno

Stalker is alloy. I thought Tenno were too but I can't recall a source for that.

[MechaKnight]

On 2/23/2018 at 4:21 AM, Keltik0ne said:

Given that after some testing it's become apparent that ember can still bullet jump massacre low level content just fine, while has had her high and mid level survival chance slashed, is it safe to say the WoF changes were:

1: Poorly conceived

2: Poorly implimented

3: Poorly tested

4: All of the above

Ember needs a rework, and not by the team that thought her new and improved toolset was a good idea.

At the very least, it was jarring to see World on Fire is penalized in both efficiency and range at the magnitude of half for each over time. It should have been range only since that was the developer's primary concern. Alternatively, a penalty downwards to 70% of the ability's original efficiency and range would be appropriate as the magnitudes aren't too severe, and it would balance out with the 200% buff in damage dealt.

Simple expression:

Current penalties: 200% damage x 50% range x 50% efficiency = 50% total effectiveness.

Range only penalty: 200% damage x 50% range = 100% effectiveness.

Reduced magnitude penalties: 200% damage x 70% range x 70% efficiency = 98% effectiveness.

I understand the developers did not want Ember to incinerate everything in a large distance through all walls without much attention spent or action taken, but the currently implemented penalties are too extreme. Using one of these alternative penalty sets gives a balance of reducing Ember's automatic nuke effect while still allowing the ability to be close to original performance for an actively moving player.

I recall a reddit post which mentioned 2 glaring issues in Ember's kit: Fireball and Fire Blast do not scale with the range stat. This causes many Ember players to overspecialize in range stat without meaningful contribution to half her kit. I've been a strong advocate against limited kits which prioritizes only a fraction of a frame's potential. Some great progress can be made if all of Ember's abilities scaled with range--it would make the nerf feel less awkward.

Edited February 26, 2018 by MechaKnight
Added suggestion to expand Ember's use of range stat.

[Prof_Blocks_007]

This feedback will likely sound harsh.

For that I am sorry.

I have played Zephyr for a long time, and have played with the Rework for a while, testing different builds and trying to adapt, but too much control and reliability has been lost from the pre-rework form.

Some before & after gameplay:

Spoiler

Before:

After:

 

Both clips were using builds with 200% power strength. The before rework build had 195% duration. The after rework build had 116% duration (to compensate for the increased Tail Wind speed).

(Also worth noting - I didn’t realise pre-recording that looking directly downwards causes Tail Wind to fly upwards, like Bullet Jump does.)

Overview

Pre-rework, Zephyr’s aerial combat had a smooth flow to it, with plenty of control. There wasn’t much momentum on Tail Wind, so it could be used to move around, without flinging Zephyr too far.

Post-rework, it feels awkward and clunky. Having to look upwards (or directly downwards) to launch into the air, and sharply downwards for Dive Bomb is inconvenient, especially compared to the pre-rework behavior. The increased speed and momentum of Tail Wind has made it really awkward to use in combat, even with a lowered power duration to compensate for it. To make things worse, any use of aimglide or jump (for a short duration after Tail Wind ends) causes Zephyr’s height to increase even further, based on how high Tail Wind’s angle was.

Keeping control of Zephyr while aiming at enemies is now, unfortunately, rather cumbersome. She has become great for traversing the Plains of Eidolon, but combat and regular tileset movement has suffered.

The halved cost of Tail Wind while airborne is great, and it can now fully change Zephyr’s direction (pre-rework, Zephyr’s movement would sometimes shift back to its previous direction after a Tail Wind), although I have a feeling this may only be due to the new mechanics/handling.

The changes to Tornado have been excellent. They had some issues keeping hold of enemies when the rework launched, but that appears to have been improved substantially since then. Transferring damage (now including crits and status) and recastability makes them a hell of a lot nicer for Zephyr and her squad to use.

Air Burst is useful for a quick ragdoll/knockdown, especially after the flight speed buff. Nothing outstanding, but still worth using.

Moving onto the suggestions! For the most part, this will be an attempt to merge the reworked Zephyr with the pre-rework Zephyr, with some additions.

Tail Wind

• Return the original mechanics and speed/momentum (cast on ground to launch, cast in air to dash)
• Hold cast on ground to launch into hover (tap cast on ground would do the same launch as pre-rework - no hover)
• Allow some movement during the hover
• Hold cast in air to increase speed and extend dash length (this could be implemented as: dash immediately on tap, continue holding for a longer, faster dash)
• Fix air-dash Tail Wind breaking Zephyr’s passive slow-fall (current workaround is jump to reset it)
• Change Target Fixation (Augment) to no longer reset on touching the ground - this one is near impossible to keep up and use effectively, if at all. Have the counter reset on Dive Bomb instead, consuming it for a (relatively) big burst of damage.

Dive Bomb

• Back to power slot 2
• Reintroduce Divebomb Vortex (Augment)
• Possibly scale with melee mods?

Air Burst

• Merge with Turbulence (casting 3 while Turbulence is active throws an Air Burst)
• Alternatively, merge with Dive Bomb - tap to throw, hold to dive (hold input would only need to be short, something like the difference between cycling/casting Vauban’s Minelayer/Ivara’s Quiver)

Turbulence

• (Possibly) shorten cast animation
• Fade VFX when aiming

Tornado

• I can’t think of anything to change for Tornado - it really is great now

Other

• (Possibly) add a third jump (triple jump) and extended aim glide duration to Zephyr’s passive, to really solidify her aerial combat capabilities

This would return the control and combat flow that pre-rework Zephyr had, while keeping her newfound speed for PoE and other large tiles/future open zones.

Thank you for reading!

 

Edit: Now with a table!

Edited March 8, 2018 by Prof_Blocks_007

[Cytobel]

23 hours ago, MechaKnight said:

I recall a reddit post which mentioned 2 glaring issues in Ember's kit: Fireball and Fire Blast do not scale with the range stat. This causes many Ember players to overspecialize in range stat without meaningful contribution to half her kit. I've been a strong advocate against limited kits which prioritizes only a fraction of a frame's potential. Some great progress can be made if all of Ember's abilities scaled with range--it would make the nerf feel less awkward.

So, I've got to point out that the range is the important aspect of WoF as far as Firequake builds were concerned.  As such, cutting into the range of the skill for the sake of making new players feel relevant is inappropriate on several points.

First, focusing on new player experience directly at the cost of veteran's experience is blatantly stupid, as it offends both parties (particularly when extremely salty vets start attacking new players for decisions DE has outright blamed them for).  Either reconstructing matchmaking in order to prevent brand new players from being thrown in with MR20+ players day 1 could help OR creating areas for high-level farming would.  I recommend both measures, as any player who doesn't understand the movement system simply doesn't have a CHANCE of killing anything, should a veteran choose to slaughter.

Second, cutting into Ember's range utterly failed to promote any form of shift from the previous meta, aside from harming her mid/high-level utility.  In fact, boosting range in place of an Augment (or 2 in my build) simply makes Ember FAR AND AWAY THE BEST LOW-LEVEL CLEAR IN GAME.  Worse, the power buff over time actually rewards this behavior, and just replacing my 2 Augments with another Range mod and Primed Flow would leave Ember capable of EXACTLY THE SAME BEHAVIOR AS BEFORE.  Simply, the nerf failed utterly to accomplish any benefit to the game.

Finally, this change sends a crystal-clear message to players: investing time into Warframe leads nowhere.  When something takes this sort of hit, when a character suddenly loses this much playability in the endgame, and when a dev team is this disconnected from the mechanics of the game they made, then perhaps it's much better to just go somewhere else; play something else.  In many ways I'm protesting this strongly because no part of this change to Ember is healthy to Warframe.  Options to fix what's not working correctly abound.  Make WoF line of sight if clearing through walls is a problem (it's not like I would've complained about that, the enemies that hurt are the ones that can see and shoot you).  If low-level farming is hurting the game, then giving advanced players somewhere more efficient to farm would be a good plan.  If new player inexperience is so harmful, then expanded starter content focused on movement and fast targeting would be helpful.

To be honest, I'm disgusted with this alteration, first for it's utter failure to achieve it's stated goals, and second for the reaction players of all experience levels are having to this.  The most telling moment I've had since the Ember nerf was watching a MR6 (if I recall correctly) calling out a MR23 for running Ember in a Mobile Defense alert, asking something to the effect of "why run a 'Frame that's just objectively bad?”  When that's how the NEW PLAYERS view a 'Frame (a 'Frame that they'd get EXCELLENT use out of in their mission range, I might add) then something went VERY wrong.

TL;DR:  The rework of Ember either utterly failed in it's objectives or was never intended to do other than kill an endgame build.  I object to both options, and cannot stress enough how much I hate seeing Ember mains shafted this harshly.  As a Volt main, I REMEMBER how this feels...

Edited February 27, 2018 by Cytobel

[Sasuda]

On 2018-02-26 at 12:09 AM, MechaKnight said:

it would balance out with the 200% buff in damage dealt.

Simple expression:

Current penalties: 200% damage x 50% range x 50% efficiency = 50% total effectiveness.

Range only penalty: 200% damage x 50% range = 100% effectiveness.

Reduced magnitude penalties: 200% damage x 70% range x 70% efficiency = 98% effectiveness.

50% range 200% damage is not 100% effectiveness. Currently the range nerf is 75% area loss the radius nerf is 50%.

A 50% range nerf isn't 50% area. A 50% radius nerf is translated through 3.14*r² .
a raduis of 50m = 7853m2
a radius of 25m (-50%) = 1963m²(-75%)
a radius of 12.5m(-75%) = 490m² (-94%)

This is a heavy nerf. Your damage/m² is dropping a lot. Doubling the damage doesn't make up for the losses for lots of reasons. Doubling the cost makes it pretty crappy.

Edited June 8, 2018 by Sasuda