Mastery 7 Warframe Concept: Mantis, The Survivor [Concept Art Needed]

[bejuizb]

Hey everyone,

Now I'm extremely new to the whole Warframe concept scene so pardon me if my ideas sound a bit immature or are downright OP. The reason I wanted to share this with the community is to discuss abilities and stats and polish this concept out.

Be warned that there is a lot of text in this post, and I'll try my very best to segment it out and divide it into relevant paragraphs for ease of reading.

I'm currently swamped with exams, so I won't be able to show off my sketches yet. You can try to make your own concept sketches as well if you want to. I'd be glad to have a look.


So let's begin with probably the very first question. Why Mastery 7?

Well, I personally use the Mastery system as a measuring tool and can gauge how much experience a player has with the game and its mechanics. I've put this frame at a Mastery 7 lock not because he is extremely powerful, but because I believe that to use him to your absolute potential, you need to know how most of the game's nuances work.

Let's take Loki for example. He is an extremely capable Warframe, but his skill shines at endgame, where players have the adequate and necessary mods to get the most out of him. Mastery 7 will essentially mean that players have acquired most, if not all the mods necessary to maximise Mantis and use his skills to maximum potential.

People might argue that this is unfair and enforces grind. I beg to differ. By ensuring that skilled and dedicated players get their hands on him, the sheer amount of nerf/buff threads regarding this frame can be mitigated. Constructive advice can be obtained and provided from players who know what they're talking about.

Now, lets jump to some background information about Mantis:

Mantis was a frame designed from the get go to be able to survive in hostile or dangerous situations. He was built for creating situations that ensure tactical advantages and allow easy hit and run attacks with minimal risk to him.

His job on the battlefield is to scout and distract, not with flashy moves, but with bursts of speed, which coupled with a few weapons, can make him an extremely deadly and annoying target to kill.

All of Mantis's abilities focus on ensuring his survivability before all else. This Warframe is intended for solo players and lone wolfs, but he does work well in team situations if used correctly.

His stats:

Health: 100 when unranked. 300 at rank 30
Shields: 100 when unranked. 300 at rank 30
Energy:150 when unranked. 225 at rank 30
Armour: 30
Sprint Speed: 1.15
Stamina: 120

Explaining his stats:

Mantis, as a frame advertised for survival, needs to have stats that ensure that he is neither squishy nor tanky. That's why I stuck to the tried and tested 300 health and shields. He has a bit above average power since he relies on them for survival. Speed on the other hand, is somewhere he is meant to excel in. The third highest sprint speed coupled with the second highest stamina ensures that he can keep moving.

Design [TO BE IMPLEMENTED SOON]

As the name says, Mantis is inspired from the Praying Mantis, an insect I find to be quite amazing (don't ask me why. It's been like that since my childhood). Now he's not a glorified stick insect, but has insect like features which should become prominent once I or someone else gets to sketching him. Like Rhino, he has a chitinous carapace, serving as medium armour. Otherwise, his armour looks like cloth, like Excalibur or Nyx.


Now, let's jump to his abilities. I'll put each of them in spoilers for the sake of compartmentalizing data. Just as an FYI: All of his abilities are multi-layered and I've designed them to be used in tandem with each other, allowing players to combine skills to use them to their advantage, depending upon the scenario.

Ability 1: Snare

Description: Using traps made from potent paralyzing agents, Mantis can snare enemies in an area, stunning them and leaving them vulnerable to attack or allowing Mantis to escape.

Cost: 50 Energy

Duration of Stun: 4/6/8 seconds per rank.

Range of Snare: 8/10/12 metre radius from point of impact.

Important: Mantis can only use two snares every 20 seconds. This has been placed to ensure that players do not spam Snares everywhere and essentially make mobs unable to attack. This limit has been placed so that players still need to use their own effort to fight mobs instead of straight up CC'ing them for eternity.

Mantis's only source of true crowd control, Snares serve as a tool for him to either attack incapacitated targets or use their inability to move and attack to escape and gain another tactical point of attack.

The Snares are thrown in an arc, similar to the grenades of the Penta. This means that throwing Snares requires some aim to it, which is compensated with the AoE effect of the stun. On landing, the Snare leaves a circular marker which denotes the radius of the stun.

If the lobbed Snare hits an enemy instead of the ground, it will activate in 5 seconds, following which the stun affects all enemies in a radius, suing the hit target as the centre. The Snare itself does 100 impact damage on hitting a target.

On activation of the Snare, Mantis's visor blips for an instant, letting him know that its safe to make a move.

The Snare stuns enemies in a radius, leaving them unable to move or fire their weapons. This does not negate the toxic effect of Toxic Ancients.

Snares cannot be placed right next to each other. If thrown close to each other, the second snare will be placed at a distance of 12 metres from the first Snare. This ensures that you can't just keep alternating Snares and shut down an entire lane for yourself.

If Mantis is caught in the snare when it activates, he will also be stunned for 5 seconds. He is free to move into the stun zone once the Snare has been activated though.

The purpose of this ability is for Mantis to be able to control small sectors of the battlefield while ensuring that enemies cannot pass. This ability can be useful in Defence missions where if used correctly, can be used to control entire corridors, leaving your allies to dispose of their enemies safely.

Maximization:

Duration: Increasing duration increases the duration of the stun. The opposite applies as well.

Range: Increasing range increases the range of the Snare's AoE effect as well as the range of the throw. The opposite applies as well.

Strength: Strength mods do not affect his abilities.

Efficiency: Efficiency mods increase the efficiency of the Snare, thereby lowering the cost of the ability.

Ability 2: Primal Instinct

Description (Needs work): Mantis attunes himself with his inner instincts and his surroundings, dramatically increasing his mobility.

Cost: 50 Energy

Duration: 30 seconds

Range: N/A

This ability is the primary ability for Mantis to link his skills with. All of Mantis's abilities, save from Deathgrip (explained later) can be used while Primal Instinct is active.

When this ability is active, Mantis can scale vertically for a technically infinite amount (as long as the ability lasts, you can keep climbing) at a high speed. Once he's reached a desired height, Mantis can perch himself there for as long as the ability lasts, which allows him to have a tactical advantage over the battlefield, as well as a means of defence if enemies get too close.

When jumping from medium heights, Mantis can slow down his fall dramatically by gliding, which can be controlled with the WASD keys. While he his gliding, Mantis can still air dash (Shift+Jump+crouch). When gliding Mantis can fire all his weapons as he lands except for melee weapons.

This allows him to stay in the fight while allowing him to dynamically alter his path.

The final benefit of Primal Instinct is that he is able to camouflage himself when near enemies. Note that this isn't Invisibility like Loki's ability, but rather a close approximation of the ability. Praying Mantis are pretty well camouflaged in nature, and likewise, Mantis can camouflage himself when near enemies. Enemies will detect him slower and when he is fired upon, enemies will hit him less frequently.

This ability is intended to enhance his mobility in all aspects while adding a bit of a stealth buff as well.

Maximization:

Duration: Increasing duration increases the duration of the ability, which thereby increases the duration of vertical scaling and air dashes.

Range: Increasing range increases the range of the camouflage ability, allowing Mantis to change appearance further away from enemies.

Strength: Increasing strength increases the speed of the vertical runs and the strength of the air dashes as well.

Power Efficiency: Power efficiency mods decrease the cost of this ability.

Ability 3: Deathgrip

Description: Mantis grabs hold of a nearby enemy, and rapidly leeches health,shields and stamina from the target.

Cost: 75 Energy

Duration: N/A. The ability lasts till 75% of Mantis's health is restored.

Range: 2 metres

Mantis cannot shoot or use other abilities while Deathgrip is active, but he retains the ability to wallrun and slide, ensuring that he is mobile enough to survive.

If the enemy has lesser health than Mantis, then Mantis will kill the enemy with his claws. If the enemy has substantially more health than Mantis then he will deal 200 puncture and slash damage to the target before dropping them. Once dropped, the target will be able to get up and keeping attacking him.

The health, shields and stamina being leeched are based on the enemy's level. Higher level enemies will allow mantis to leech more health from them, but also pose the risk of dealing a lot of damage to him as he approaches to activate Deathgrip.

Mantis can continue to take damage while Deathgrip is active, ensuring that he needs to run away/take cover while he is leeching.

Maximization:

Duration: Duration mods do not affect this ability.

Strength: Strength mods increase the amount of health and shields being leeched. Stamina amounts stay the same nonetheless. They also boost the amount of damage being dealt to the target if not killed from the ability itself.

Range: Range mods do not affect this ability.

Efficiency: Efficiency mods increase the efficiency of this ability.

Ability 4: Shroud

Description: In times of need, Mantis releases a swarm of cybernetic insects to form his ultimate defense.

Cost: 100 Energy

Duration: 30 seconds

This is Mantis's ultimate ability, and consequently, his most defensive one as well. His swarm of insects from a shroud ( imagine the Ultimate Sand Defense ability of Gaara in the Naruto series). The insects will surround him and attempt to reduce the damage dealt to him as well as viciously attack anyone who gets too close to Mantis.

The swarm will follow Mantis as he moves, while reducing the amount of damage he takes by 25%. It is possible for the swarm to get obliterated by extreme amounts of damage, so this ensures that players don't use this ability to tank. The swarm has a life of 1000 health or 30 seconds if the health of the swarm hasn't been dropped.

Any enemies who try to get too close to Mantis will have their health chipped progressively.

The deeper into the Shroud the enemies are, the more frequent and substantial the damage dealt will be. The Shroud has a base range of 8 metres. The swarms will deal 15/30/35/60 damage every 1s/0.75s/0.5s/0.25s for every 2 metres into the Shroud.

Mantis retains all his mobility and this ability can be used with Primal Instinct. Snares can be thrown while this ability is active. Shroud is deactivated if Deathgrip is activated.

Maximization:

Duration: Duration mods increase the duration of this ability.

Strength: Strength mods increase the damage dealt as well as the frequency of the damage dealt inside it.

Range: Range mods will increase the range of the Shroud.

Efficiency: Efficiency mods will increase the efficiency of this ability.

And that's all I have for now folks. I will add more to this concept as I come up with more ideas.

I hope to get some good feedback from the community regarding his abilities. I tried to make it so that players want to use all four of his abilities instead of option to polarize on slot away from some other mod.

Thanks for reading all of that,
bejuizb

EDIT #1: Grammar.

 

EDIT #2: Changed Base Energy from 125 to 135. Technically it should be 133.5, but I just rounded up.

 

EDIT #3: Changed the Energy once again from 135 to 150. At max rank, Mantis should now have 225 maximum energy.

Edited February 3, 2014 by bejuizb

[BestFarmerNA]

I really like how he has no 25 energy ability, and he comes with 200 energy. Clever.

[KittyShark]

not bad actually. Primal instinct does need work yes but otherwise i like it :D

[gnat6]

It looks cool the only problem I see is that snare seems like a weaker version of radial blind, shroud looks like a weaker version of embers old overheat and deathgrip looks like a weaker but faster version of using well of life and energy vampire on a target.

I really like primal instinct though.

[SilentSleep]

I love the idea. +1

[Verryn]

He is extremely powerful. Well that screams balance and we should totally implement that.

[bejuizb]

I really like how he has no 25 energy ability, and he comes with 200 energy. Clever.

Thanks

 

not bad actually. Primal instinct does need work yes but otherwise i like it :D

Yep, it still needs work. Once I get some sketches going, I can explain it better. My words didn't do the ability justice by any means.

 

It looks cool the only problem I see is that snare seems like a weaker version of radial blind, shroud looks like a weaker version of embers old overheat and deathgrip looks like a weaker but faster version of using well of life and energy vampire on a target.

I really like primal instinct though.

Valid points on both Snare and Shroud. I intentionally started off with smaller numbers so that I can garner the opinions of the community and raise them accordingly. Deathgrip is meant as a high risk, high reward ability in comparison to Well of Life and Energy Vampire. Restoring so much health and shields so quickly needs some form of balance.

 

I love the idea. +1

Thanks!

 

He is extremely powerful. Well that screams balance and we should totally implement that.

Yes, he is supposed to be a powerhouse but not a nuker. Smart players will love him, people who spam 4 the whole time will hate him. I find him to be a more Loki-esque Warframe. I'm not able to understand what you mean by your last statement. Care to explain?

[Siubijeni]

I like the idea, but one quick flaw: energy at rank 30 should be 1.5x energy when unranked. 125 base energy will not do, nor is it really possible to end up with 200 max energy since the base would have to be 133.33.

 

Other than that, interesting concept.

[bejuizb]

I like the idea, but one quick flaw: energy at rank 30 should be 1.5x energy when unranked. 125 base energy will not do, nor is it really possible to end up with 200 max energy since the base would have to be 133.33.

 

Other than that, interesting concept.

I'll fix it now. 135 Base Energy sound pretty decent.

[Siubijeni]

I'll fix it now. 135 Base Energy sound pretty decent.

That's still a problem. You can't take half of an odd number and add it to itself without decimals. If DE's code works in a logical class-fashion, then it works with integers, not floats. In other words, it probably can't handle that decimal point--and even if it could (which admittedly, it would be extremely easy to make it so the code could, but entirely superfluous, so why bother?), it would handle it by rounding and you'd end up with 203 max energy.

 

That's not exactly a desirable outcome. People already dislike it when their frame is partially leveled and they have that extra 5 energy when it's at like 105 or something like that. They would hate a frame that has a permanent 3 energy randomly slapped onto its total.

 

And there isn't any way around this fact, because stats and players are written as general classes, which the individual frames would then inherit from. It's a simplistic system that makes things run smoother, and if they were to accommodate all the fan frames with arbitrary increases (rather than increase based on the formulas already in the system), they would have to rewrite all of these classes to accept start, and increment/final values. That means more work and number crunching for DE, as well as raising problems anywhere the current system is referenced. With the current system, the code only needs to know what level your frame is, and what the base stat for that frame is--it can sort out everything else on its own. Any system that could handle arbitrary increases is by necessity more complicated and less elegantly simple.

[bejuizb]

That's still a problem. You can't take half of an odd number and add it to itself without decimals. If DE's code works in a logical class-fashion, then it works with integers, not floats. In other words, it probably can't handle that decimal point--and even if it could (which admittedly, it would be extremely easy to make it so the code could, but entirely superfluous, so why bother?), it would handle it by rounding and you'd end up with 203 max energy.

 

That's not exactly a desirable outcome. People already dislike it when their frame is partially leveled and they have that extra 5 energy when it's at like 105 or something like that. They would hate a frame that has a permanent 3 energy randomly slapped onto its total.

 

And there isn't any way around this fact, because stats and players are written as general classes, which the individual frames would then inherit from. It's a simplistic system that makes things run smoother, and if they were to accommodate all the fan frames with arbitrary increases (rather than increase based on the formulas already in the system), they would have to rewrite all of these classes to accept start, and increment/final values. That means more work and number crunching for DE, as well as raising problems anywhere the current system is referenced. With the current system, the code only needs to know what level your frame is, and what the base stat for that frame is--it can sort out everything else on its own. Any system that could handle arbitrary increases is by necessity more complicated and less elegantly simple.

Hmm...well then, I guess I'll have to go the high energy route and stick to 150 Base energy, that should bring the max energy to 225.

[Siubijeni]

Hmm...well then, I guess I'll have to go the high energy route and stick to 150 Base energy, that should bring the max energy to 225.

Yeah, that might be your best solution. DE has stuck to those two energy archetypes presumably because they're really the only ones that work very well. 100 is a nice base number that gets you up to 150. You can't increment by 25, so the next really "round" number is 150, which brings you up to 225--a decent increase for caster frames.

 

120 wouldn't be too bad, though. It would result in 180, which is about halfway between the two normal numbers, but then I guess you have the problem of the extra 5 energy (180/25 has remainder 5). However, I don't think an extra 5 is quite as bad as the extra 3 you had, because once you add streamline you start getting inexact multiples, anyway--and 5 is a much rounder number than 3 when the increments are generally multiples of it.

Edited January 11, 2014 by Siubijeni

[bejuizb]

Yeah, that might be your best solution. DE has stuck to those two energy archetypes presumably because they're really the only ones that work very well. 100 is a nice base number that gets you up to 150. You can't increment by 25, so the next really "round" number is 150, which brings you up to 225--a decent increase for caster frames.

 

120 wouldn't be too bad, though. It would result in 180, which is about halfway between the two normal numbers, but then I guess you have the problem of the extra 5 energy (180/25 has remainder 5). However, I don't think an extra 5 is quite as bad as the extra 3 you had, because once you add streamline you start getting inexact multiples, anyway--and 5 is a much rounder number than 3 when the increments are generally multiples of it.

I was hoping to get Mantis into a middle ground between an average frame and a caster frame, but considering the limitations of the system, I guess I have to pick between the attributes of one or the other. Thanks for the help.

[bejuizb]

I'm hoping someone could provide some concept art for Mantis. I've been working on a few sketches on my own, but would deeply appreciate someone taking the time to doodle something XD