Talk:Garuda/@comment-151.32.47.184-20181219034238/@comment-151.32.202.202-20181220175137

I'm the Original Poster.

I really like Garuda and I'm not saying Garuda isn't solid, but she lacks impactful Team Utility.

Let's analyze/discuss this:

■ As a Healer, the Healing from Blood Altar isn't impactful enough, since looking at high level mission, it's a matter of getting oneshotted or not. Trinity in this case gives istant damage reduction in addiction to full healing and shields. By granting a Quick Thinking effect, it would bring something other Warframes don't have and would give a chances at surviving oneshots. Also it would reinforce and synergyze with a potential Bloodletting giving energy to teammates, as I suggested.

■ Tankyness is a selfish survival tool. And even so, it suffers in high level missions when you risk getting oneshotted everywhere unless you have a 90% flat damage reduction. The only utility for team in tankyness is ressing your teammates, but it's made useless by Operator's Void Mode Ress. On Garuda the only thing saving you from Oneshots is the Duration of Dread Mirror and having the back pointed to a wall. Aka static gameplay. Doesn't fit with Warframes' mobility. I understand the need to give a weakspot, a window of weakness and avoiding the Total Invulnerability issue Valkyr suffered, but still in my opinion, it's not addressed in the right way. If that window should be the player's Energy management, well there's space to make it better. In conclusion, Tankyness as it's been made on Garuda isn't something of big value to point as an important feature. It's a necessity developed later in the gameplay design to support the Bloodletting + Passive + Quick Thinking combo. It's trivially clear to understand.

■ Team Damage Buffer does work, it's solid, it's OK. Through Seeking Talons that's essentially the main utility she brings to a team. A "Nuke Support" let's say. "Heavy Debuyff" kind. But still it's circumstancial and only tied to the need of dispatching quickly of status-vulnerable heavy armored targets. You won't bring her at Eidolons, most bossfights, most missions, cause there are better Nuker Supports doing the job better; Nova in this case, that built properly for Slow gives also an hard crowd control, quicker and easier to deploy.

Don't let yourself be limited by exhistent Warframes or the Gameplay Design. Since the Gameplay Balance has always been (bad), imprecise and skewed, nowdays the Warframe who wins the job is the one who brings the Strongest Utility, or most of them all together.

Garuda ATM is more directed toward a "Selfish-Melee-Brawler"/"Nuker-Support"/"Extremely-Circumstancial-Healer" than having the right cards to be a staple role in any Gameplay Content.

I like her, It's viable, it can work, but it's not been made to work for the majority of content or even specialized content.

And I think this is one of the biggest flaws in Gameplay Design. Warframes' Kits aren't studied and made around Gameplay, but just to suit some Abstract Imagery the Designer wants to adapt to the game. In doing so, we can see what kind of balance problems or subpar Warframes the game produced all along. Like... "let's make a Dwarf WF, it's not tall, he digs holes, he brandishes an axe..." and they work on that instead than developing a kit basing on a gameplay style or a potentially entertaining or nice mechanic ingame.

In this case, the Designer worked following these lines: Aesthetically cruel, Bloodshed, Violent, Masochistic Warframe. Without giving precedence to the Gameplay impact (that literally has beed addressed after the release, if you remember how they tweaked the casting mechanics of #1 and #4), which ended up with a solid Warframe, but which can't fulfill any peculiar role in the best interest of the Multiplayer.

I'm not saying Garuda is a bad Warframe, (no, she is even better than 80% of other released or bad reworked Warframes and left to rot) but there's a flaw into the pipeline of production which hasn't been addressed.