Retvik’s Thoughts on the Roar Pre-Nerf
As part of some desperate attempt to not break Warframe completely, some subsumed abilities will be nerfed. What does this mean? This means that, when the Helminth system comes out, some abilities won’t be identical. For example, Roar won’t have the same strength on other frames as it does Rhino. It’s only a handful of abilities, but it’s caused an uproar (no pun intended) in the Warframe community.
Why? I don’t really know.
But honestly, as a person with a blog, I really don’t know what the big deal is.
Seriously, take a moment to stop and think about this. Roar is being to be available to put on literally every Warframe in the game. Roar is a very strong ability. Rather than releasing Roar as it is and having to nerf it later, when everyone has tried it and likes it, we’re getting a weaker version right off the bat. That’s still going to be pretty strong. Because it’s Roar.
This means we don’t get what happened to the Kuva Bramma. The Kuva Bramma on release was staggeringly overpowered. It could clear rooms as fast as a Saryn. It was so strong that it was viable in Sanctuary Onslaught. And it was also easily accessible for mid-tier players, despite an MR15 requirement, since it came from Liches. It was clear as day that the Bramma would get nerfed, and it did, greatly.
Nerfing Roar from the start (and tweaking it later) means that we don’t get months of Roar taking over everything, the same way every mission ended up being filled with at least one Wukong with the Kuva Bramma. Because if Roar got nerfed when everyone already had it and abused it, there would be far, far more uproar than there is now.
“I wasted time and energy on getting an extra Rhino!”
You’ll subsume it anyway. Heck, even if they changed subsumed Roar to be a quarter as strong as normal Rhino’s Roar, you’d still probably sacrifice a Rhino anyway. Rhino isn’t even that damn hard to get.
As for the question of “why is Rhino even giving Roar anyway?” that’s even easier to explain. Rhino has an INSANELY STRONG kit. You have HUGE amounts of armour with the Charge augment, invulnerability with Iron Skin and Stomp is a signature move. Rhino’s kit is very strong on its own, so giving any of that to another frame is going to cause issues. Roar, despite being a damage buff, is probably the safest move they could have given him.
“But Retvik, they should buff all those other shit abilities people won’t subsume and put on their Warframes!”
Yeah sure, but you’re conflating the two points. Of course, mediocre abilities should be buffed. But at the same time, we can’t just have everyone with a massive Rhino Roar buff. The big difference between nerfing abilities and buffing abilities is how many people they affect. The fact that people don’t use Nyx’s Mind Control is a far smaller issue than everyone and their mum running around with Roar on their Warframes. A stupidly strong ability has a massive knock-on effect where all the popular people use it, which then makes their followers use it, and then more and more people switch to the new OP thing.
And just because they’re nerfing Roar, doesn’t guarantee that abilities like Mind Control won’t ever be buffed ever. Buffs do tend to take a long time, but it’s not like it’ll never happen.
“But what about the MR8 thing?”
Honestly, I don’t have much of an opinion on that. The other requirements are rank 3 with a syndicate and most likely a quest as well, which will hold people back in general. And MR8 players at least have the basics of the game down, it’s not like a MR5 player being stuck with a level 5 Lich they can’t kill. The bigger issue here is that other systems with or without MR requirements need fixing first, like the accessibility of Liches and Eidolons.
We don’t have the system out yet, so everything is theory-crafting.
This is my biggest issue here. We don’t have any numbers. We don’t have ANYTHING concrete, apart from a list of abilities and things that will be slightly less strong before release. So maybe it’s worth waiting until release until we get all angry about everything.
And maybe it’s also worth not immediately going for the most powerful things possible. I know Warframe is all about efficiency and going fast, but jeez, we’re really rushing into all of this.