Feedback: The Mag!

[Kobalt]

The Mag was my second frame and I have spent a lot of time with it, enough I think to voice my opinion of it as a whole. I have to say that it is by far my favorite of the frames I have played, it does though suffer from some considerable problems. It provides great utility in a coop situation given that you are playing with a coordinated team, it's potential would probably shine more if there were situations that required these setups. In a solo environment, it feels very much that most of your abilities provide too much utility over damage and that your frame boils down to crush. The situational nature of her abilities leaves you feeling that a couple of your skills are always useless... I'll do my best to give a solid rundown on all of her abilities.

Pull

Pros:

- Couples really well with a solid heavy charge build melee.

- Can be used to save a team mates bacon!

Cons:

- Aiming this in an active situation feels horrible!

- Animation is too slow, allowing some targets to get behind cover after you cast and wasting your energy.

- The stun is fairly short and the animation doesn't have an obvious cut of point, so early on before you spec into charge speed it can be hard to tell when you can start charginf for your kill.

Bugs:

- Increasing the range of the ability via mods does not equally increase the distance the target is pulled.

- Pulls often stop short of how far they should go, even without obstruction.

To be honest, I like pull! It's not half as good as a lot of the other 1 abilities, but it has a niche and pulling into a fully charged melee feels very gratifying. Since, your melee damage can scale easily into late game...It can do a lot better than several other 1 abilities come that time. Though by the time you get there, you will probably be saving that energy for crush. It generally doesn't feel worth the 25, unless you are using it to save someone, since it doesn't really deal any damage and often doesn't work out. The time you spend aiminging it will cost you in health and shield later on in solo situations.

If I could make any realistic changes to this skill I would make it's animation faster, reduce the cost, make it ALWAYS bring the target into melee range and make the aim use a 10-20 degree cone instead of having to have your crosshairs directly over your target. If I could have the complete wishlist I would also make it pull an additional target per level of the skill to make it have better synergy with the charge multi-hit oriented weapons and I would have it weaken the pulled enemy to melee attacks.

Shield Polarize

Pros:

- Can drop the shield on a target.

- Can restore the shields of an ally.

Cons:

- Uses a flat value. [from what I can tell]

- Can't be self targetted.

- Has no use against any Infestation units anlonge with other specific enemies.

- Has no added utility.

- Does not feel cost effective compaired to simply shooting your enemies.

- Hard to aim at an ally who is probably running for their life!

This skill is by far the one that fits the mag the least thematically or functionally. I've used it maybe a total of four times, one of which was against a boss who promptly regenerated my 50 energy worth of skill 2 seconds later. You can do more with a lot of the weapons in a few bullets for no energy. Most importantly, it seems like you can never use it to save yourself when you want to. I get the connection to polarity in the binary sense...On/off and +/-, but this simply doesn't fit. To be worth using it would be better have it simply drain all the shields in an area and redistribute it to allies evenly. Even then it would be situational at best and have almost no effect on bosses. It could be ok for non infestation bosses if it simply prevented their shield regen for a period of time instead. At the very least this ability needs to work on a % based restore/removal and needs to be self targetable [whether via a hotkey or looking at your feet when you cast]. This skill needs to be reworked entirely in my opinion. If I could design a skill to go here, it would be...

Push

A PBAoE that launched nearby enemies away from you, enemies that collide with walls or other enemies are dealt damage based on how far they traveled and are knocked down.

Something like that, where the closer the enemy was to what they hit the more damage it would do...Maybe 500ish if they were right ontop of the wall and 100ish at the furthest didtance. It would make up for the frames lack of damage outside of crush and lack of good anti-infestation skills...Also magnetizing their bones is a running theme in the kit and makes more sense than does their shields.

Bullet Attractor

Pros:

- Can shut down certain bosses for the duration.

- Good synergy for Snipetron, especially with enemies hiding behind cover.

Cons:

- Doesn't feel half as effective as the one the boss casts on you.

- Doesn't attract all bullets as described. [seems to only work on yours and theirs as of the moment]

- Almost never worth using on anything other than a boss.

- Compensates for bad aim which you may not have!

- Useless versus melee damage dealers and other specific units.

Bugs:

- Behaviors are spotty at best, so much so that i'm not sure as to how it was intended to work from the start!

- Post 6 and before the last patch it was actually protecting whatever you used it on from you and reducing the damage it did to itself.

- The effect remains after death and redirects enemy bullets to the target's corpse.

I think this skill gets a kind of bad rap, though partially deserving of it. I see a lot of potential in it with a few small changes. I've gotten serious gratification out of it by tagging a running enemy before they got to cover and procceding to nick the top of the bubble with my snipetron for an automatic headshot. On the other hand...It has been acting up since I got to the server though. At times it seemed to help my allies and others only seems to help me, once the effected until dies it seems to attract enemy bullets but not while they are alive. When the boss tagged me with this and I shot my snipetron, I instagibbed myself! When I use this on a boss that tears through my 400+ shields in 2 seconds...It seems like they only deal a couple hundred damage to themselves over the entire duration. Nothing in fact seems to damage itself near as much as it damages me for, which makes no sense since shields shouldn't get reduction scaling from armor. It will never work on melee/infestation or Napalm Gunners, which I understand, but why doesn't it work on the Bombardment Gunner who shoots a rocket at you? Also, if you are a good shot it's other utility seems wasted as well...

To make this worth the 75 energy we spend on it, I would...Increase the size of the bubble a little more, Make it last slightly longer, make it so that all bullets passing through are attracted PERIOD and lastly...Make all of the bullets attracted move directly to that unit's weak spot! This one is fairly awesome and important. This would make the 75 energy worth spending especially on a boss. More impotantly though, it seems that the attract tries to draw the bullet to the closest part of the model [why shooting the top of the bubble on the grineer results in a headshot]. This can direct the bullets away from these points with good aim in cetain situations, though rarely from my experience.

Crush

Pros:

- Feels fantastic in lower level situations, bordering on overpowered!

Cons:

- Does painfully low damage to well armored units late game, as low as 100 each to high level grineer.

Bugs:

- Treats all untis it lands on as though they were dead, removing them from radar even when they live.

- Bugs out most of the infestation units, leaving their corpses behind which absorb bullets.

- In the case it doesn't kill a unit [leave a little bit of health] they are sometimes bugged into their surrent animation when killed.

- Can make infestation extermination missions uncompletable when used to take outthe last standing units.

Crush is the mag's greatest asset as well as it's greatest curse! Towards lategame the balancing of her kit makes you feel as if this is the only skill you have, which makes your gameplay stale as you can drop the skill in practically every room with good planning/luck. Once you cross the gap to level 35-40 enemies though, you see a stark drop off in it's damage. This makes you feel very much useless as, most of your other skills are situational/overpriced at best and your crush now does no damage. Inversely, dropping half the map at a button press feels overpowered and in a coop situation spoils the map for your allies. It vastly skews the damage dealt/kills at the end of the mission towards you as well.

I think this skill should be an execute based on it's description, seeing a 100 after you "magnetize the bones of your enemies and crush" them is flat out painful. I understand the power of this skill, especially since it is her only consistent direct damage dealing ability. If I could remake this skill I would have it keep it's range and lifting everything off the ground but with a twist! It would make it deal armor ignoring damage from a pool total damage. Basically, the mag would have x potential damage it could do in any one crush and prioritize low health targets. So if this potential damage was say 5,000 [please not this low actually], you were in a room with 4 trash mobs with 250 health each and 3 heavier mobs with 2,000 HP each...It would lift all the mobs suspending them for your allies and after the lift effect kill the 4 trash mobs and 2 of the heavier mobs leaving one untouched. In the case of late game where the monsters HP would scale, you would kill less monsters, but that ones that you did get would still be dead! Of course, crush would be greatly reduced vs. bosses and partially so against rare mobs.

Well, that is my two sense on the subject as mag stands now!

[Cawkslapjones]

The Mag is such a broken frame IMO. You have a frame that literally can do nothing against Infested if it's not super charged (don't tell me you're actually gonna PULL anything closer to you when it's just gonna KD/stagger you) and is very limited in every other situation. I love support in games, to the point of mental illness. That being said, Pull is so highly situational that it's actually more fun and useful to troll your own team with.

Douchbag A stands over you as you're dying, but instead of reviving, takes the time to reload, and backpedals. Use a revive, then follow him around the map pulling him away from extraction. Yeah, it can be good for revives, but there's often just a rock in your way, or you're under fire yourself anyway. Bullet Attractor... well, if it stops allied bullets, in most cases it's a weak CC rather than an actual buff to the team. The number 2 skill removes shields, but often that's what your team is doing anyway. The shield restore can be good, but you can't see their status without holding Z anyway.

So finally the ulti (number 4) that can be great for clearing rooms, is high energy, and is affected by armor. Just gotta ask yourself, what is the Mag really bringing to the team? I was so full of hope before I got it, now it's on my "to sell" list since I'm cramped for warframe slots.

[Asbyn]

I wouldn't be so hasty. I imagine the devs are fully aware of the Mag's "flaws", so it's likely to be "fixed" before launch.

[AngryNarwhal]

love this post, love mag to and want to see her work.

I basicaly just use crush and thats it, and even then its only realy usefull in infested missions.

[Yg-Dosst]

From my analysis, all bullet attractor does is increase the "Hit Box" of an enemy

As is now, without bullet attractor people can still head shot grineer with a shot that would completely miss them through the gap between the paulrons and above the head. You can also hit them for regular damage by aiming through the gap to the left or right of the waist.

But this seems to be entirely based on what way their facing.

Bullet attractor only seems to increasing the size of the hit boxes, which is glitchy because they litterally are in the shape of Boxes, as far as I can tell, So the glitchiness in magnetim radius is because of the box's corners being further from centre-mass than the faces of the box.

- - -

I don't really like the idea for the "Pull" ability because it seems to take away from the "Magnetism" effect of her and tends to shift her theme to a "Telekinesis" style. And we already have another Psychic Female character, Nyx. Having a "Polarity" effect kind of balances the fact, and diversifies her roles.

- - -

IMO the Best way to fix Mag is to change the effects of "Ability Range" for each of Her abilities.

Pull - Increases the Distance a Target is pulled, in addition to the range in which they are targetable.

Bullet Attractor - increases the radius (not hitboxes) In which a bullet is pulled torwards an enemy to hit it. Radius extends from center mass of the target and scales in proportion with the targets size.

Crush - Range radus works as is. Because this is the only classic AOE that Mag has.

Also Sheild Polarize needs a small tweak, So that as the amount of sheilds gained/depleted scales with ranks

And in addition, Holding the button used for sheild polarize casts it on herself after a small channeling.

This way it's effective doesn't go down the further in the game you are and the channel animation encourages you to use the sheild on other rather than yourself, but you are still able to do so if you wish.