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This Dev Workshop is an early Update Note preview specifically for what we have changed that is relevant to the build on the Public Test Weekend #3! Each section will have details that match the thread breakout we created for the Public Test Weekend - if you weren't one of the thousand or so people who participated, you may still want to know what changed!
Public Test Weekend #3 Notes:
Kitgun + Weapon + Arcane Changes:
Generally speaking, the major focus this week was split between Weapon tweaks and major Arcane buffs to give another chance at usability. The Arcane readability, numbers, and more have been significantly reviewed and changed for Deimos: Arcana!
Weapon changes:
Bubonico
- Increased accuracy of primary fire
- Increased speed of ammo regen delay from .9 to .5 secs
- Increased ammo regen rate from 6.75 to 16.875
- Increased status chance of alt fire from 53% to 57%
- Decreased primary fire rate from 4.16 to 3.83
Sporothrix
- Increased damage from 363 to 371
- Reduced embed time from 3 to .9 secs
- Increased flight speed from 190 to 270
Proboscis Cernos
- Increased pull strength of the tentacles
- Increased ammo pool from 7 to 9
Catabolyst
- Added base punch through dept of 0.9
- Increased clip size from 19 to 27
- Increased ammo pool from 95 to 135
Pulmonars
- Increased attack speed
Arum Spinosa
- Increased spine damage from 60 to 70
- Increased spine flight speed from 33 to 49
- Increased accuracy of spine throw
Arcanes: Theorem and Residual
The Theorem and Residual Arcanes were the most contested items on the Test Cluster over the weekend (well, second most next to Bonewidow but it was close)! We have made a concerted effort to reset how they work in context (mainly where the AoE spawns) and rebalance. The next steps for us are receiving feedback on the newer flow and newer stats for these upon release!
Notable changes include:
- Residual Arcanes will now leave their AoE at the position of the enemy at the time of death. You will see a ring on the ground (with upgraded FX) that you can enter to begin your Residual/Theorem buffing process. This means you will not need to search for corpses that may have been blown off in the distance -- instead, you should have an easier and faster means of finding these AOE rings.
- Significantly increased the active Duration of your stacks after leaving the AoE (from 5 to 20 seconds).
- Theorem Arcanes now go up to 5 Ranks with Stats to reflect this.
THEOREM INFECTION
Before: Standing in a zone created by a Residual Arcane increases damage of companions and summoned allies within 60m by 4%/s stacking up to 15x. Effect persists for 20s upon leaving the zone.
After: Standing in a zone created by a Residual Arcane increases damage of companions and summoned allies within 90m by 24%/s stacking up to 15x. Effect persists for 20s upon leaving the zone.
THEOREM CONTAGION
Before: Standing in a zone created by a Residual Arcane creates a globe that orbits the player every 2s. The globes will strike the nearest enemy within 5m dealing 100 damage and applying a Status Effect. Globes will persist for 8s upon leaving the zone.
After: Standing in a zone created by a Residual Arcane creates a globe that orbits the player every 2s. The globes will strike the nearest enemy within 15m dealing 150 damage and increasing their vulnerability to the globe’s damage type by 200% for 6s. Globes will persist for 30s upon leaving the zone.
THEOREM DEMULCENT
Before: Standing in a zone created by a Residual Arcane increases weapon damage by 4%/s stacking up to 15x. Effect persists for 5s upon leaving the zone.
After: Standing in a zone created by a Residual Arcane increases weapon damage by 12%/s stacking up to 15x. Effect persists for 20s upon leaving the zone.
OTHER ARCANE CHANGES:
- Theorem Infection increased from +90% to +360% Companion damage at max rank and stacks
- Residual Boils spawns cysts on the ground inside the trigger instead of on the enemy corpse.
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Residual Shock now fires Lighting from a spike instead of the enemy corpse.
Warframe Abilities and Augment Changes:
We focused on the most consistently critiqued Warframes for this week, with some explanations on what’s to come (outside of this week). Generally speaking, we felt Zephyr needed the most attention, and while people appreciated aspects of Atlas and Nekros, there was more work to be done on their kits as well.
Chroma:
- In addition to Chroma being able to select elements in mission real-time (the biggest change), Chroma’s selectable element HUD now uses colour coding in addition to icon coding.
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Increased Spectral Scream damage from 200 to 400 Damage Per Second at Max Rank. This, combined with 100% Status Chance and Chaining should lead to some more deadly or useful scenarios, especially since you can use all 4 elements now!
Nekros:
- Nekros’ Soul Punch now has a new mechanic: Marked for Harvest. Enemies that are hit by Soul Punch but don’t die have a Duration wherein they’ll be eligible to become a Shadow if killed while Marked!
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This is in addition to the 25% lethality change and Shadow healing.
Zephyr:
The focus for this week was all about Airburst. Making the explosion valid for damage scaling changes the stakes when hitting groups with this ability which was a detail a few feedback posts requested or tried to make sense of.
- Airburst now deals 35% Additional Damage per enemy hit either with the projectile OR the explosion damage.
- Airbust now has a 50% chance of dealing a Physical status effect hit by this slice of air or it’s explosion radius, heavily skewing towards Slash.
Atlas:
Overall, we still intend to look more at Atlas’s Tectonics, but due to some AI complications and ‘gotchas’, we had to reset a timeline to revisit this with a future batch of abilities. For now, those who saw a slight utility boost in the AOE Damage / Stagger we added to Tectonics’ Bulwarks will benefit from what was observed on the Public Test Cluster.
Garuda Bleeding Talons Augment:
Generally speaking the action we felt necessary to take for launch surrounded Garuda’s Augment. All other augments performed as expected either in general or within their niches, there was consistent feedback about Garuda’s having a ‘feel’ issue.
- We have trimmed the animation time if released early and increased the range up to 9 meters for this Augment!
Steel Path + Acolyte Changes
In addition to written feedback and the poll results, we did a full statistical review of the amount of Steel Essence earned this weekend on both Test and Live, and we are moving forward with the values provided on the Test Cluster: 3 per Steel Essence Incursion Alert, and 2 per Acolyte (eligible for Resource Amount Boosting).
We settled on these values because of what happens when they're broken down by different acquisition methods: people gain Steel Essence at better rates when playing normally (i.e no AFK Macro detected)! In practice, the actual dependency on RNG and Eximus spawning is gone. You will have a stable, matchmaking friendly way to reliably earn Steel Essence in shorter intervals across more content.
In our view, it’s better to reward broader diverse play than hyper reward idle strategies, and the stats confirm this to be the case. On paper the absolute Top 1% of missions will see less Steel Essence per hour (i.e the single strategy AFK-Macro-run), every other mission strategy will see more.
- The Steel Path Acolytes now have received the same Status Effect eligibility treatment that Liches received in Update 27.3 earlier this year. This means we have slightly increased their health (scaled by squad size) as the Status Effect eligibility makes them easier to kill.
- Reduced the Melee attack damage on both Misery and Malice to avoid the more reported 1HKOs
- Created more regular spawn windows for Acolytes and fixed issues with them not spawning after 30 minute missions. They are guaranteed in each mission, and endlessly guaranteed in Endless missions!
Bounty Changes:
Pacing and bugs for the new bounty types have been reviewed, with some specifics to call out:
Codename: Polyp Juggernaut Bounty:
- Decreased frequency of random Juggernaut sniffing by over 50% to improve pacing.
- The Juggernaut moves faster.
- Increased the likeliness of a ‘truffle’ being closer to improve pacing
- General pacing improvements.
- Enemies now spawn on your Polyp Juggernaut’s position, making battle phase more engaging
Codename: Purifier Bounty:
- Purify Cell Carrier spawn rates increased to improve pacing.
Codename: Fluid Sac Encounter:
- Reduced ranged enemy presence, increased enemy density and reduced delay between reinforcements. Increase sac explosion radius from 10 to 13 meters.
Bonewidow Necramech Changes:
General Necramech Changes
- Necramechs (Bonewidow and Voidrig) now have a built in vacuum!
- Enemy Necramechs now have the ‘Lich’ treatment with vulnerability to Status Effects!
- Increased Shared Affinity Range in Landscape missions to 250 meters from 50 to assist with all things levelling on Landscapes (when Necramechs in non-Landscape missions come, this will of course change the levelling dynamic).
Bonewidow Changes
The Bonewidow was flagged as the item needing the most review, and we took a look at each Ability and made changes to its power, energy economy, and scalability.
Meathook
- Made the Meathook ability more responsive for targeting based on camera direction.
- Added a damage buff to melee attacks while holding an enemy on Meathook.
- Meathook now only costs energy on successful hit. It no longer costs energy to throw an enemy that is already held.
Shield Maiden
- Added ‘Ironskin’ style scaling to Shield Maiden, meaning all incoming damage right after the cast period scales the health of the Shield Maiden.
- Made the angle of Shield Maiden’s blocking angle more sensible for the front area of the Necramech.
- Blocking with both Ironbride and Shield Maiden will increase blocking angle.
Firing Line
- Energy cost reduced from 75 to 50
Exalted Ironbride
- Increased the damage overall for Exalted Ironbride since its attack speed is slower by design.
- Less energy is now required to sustain Exalted Ironbride.
- Slam attacks are better performing and more intuitive.
Not listed are the dozens and dozens of fixes included for launch on the more specific bugs and issues! A huge thanks goes out to the participants on the Public Test Cluster for giving us so much to work with. We spent the week with our heads down banging out as many meaningful changes that aligned with both the feedback received and our development goals. As is the way, things will still receive iteration and changes once our community-at-large is involved on PC and Consoles!