Warframe Concept: Widow, The Broodmother

[bejuizb]

Hey everyone,

 

This is a post serving as the release for a Warframe concept I had in mind. Read further to know more! I spoilered everything into small categories to maintain cleanliness. Let me know if its too much and I'll make amends ASAP.

 

Lore (To be expanded):

Built during dire times of war, the Widow Warframe was unleashed with the sole intent of using the forces of the enemy against themselves, sowing panic within their midst. She heralded carnage and bloodlust wherever she went, and played a crucial role in the war.

 

Description: Widow is meant to be a solo style Warframe, with a mix of lifesteal, CC and indirect damage mitigation abilities. Despite this fundamental solo preference, Widow can perform in team based scenarios, able to use the overwhelming number of enemies against themselves.  

 

Stats:

 

Health (Base): 100 → 300 (lvl 30)

Shields (Base): 100 → 300 (lvl 30)

Armour (Base): 25

Energy (Base): 75 → 225 (lvl 30)

 

 

Concept Art (To be expanded):

Helmet

 

Armour Idea #1

 

Abilities:

 

Web Lash

Cost: 25 Energy

Cast Duration: 1.5 seconds

Bleed Duration: 9 seconds (1 tick/s)

Bleed Damage (per tick): 25

Widow uses her tendril whips to slash all the enemies in a cone in front of her. The attack has a 100% chance to proc bleed damage. If enemies are below 33% health, she gains lifesteal based on a percentage of the amount of bleed damage dealt to the enemy. For the sake of an example, let's say that it is 5% of the damage dealt per enemy. Enemy movement speed is reduced by 30% as well.

 

Ensnare

Cost: 50 Energy

Range: 25m

Thrall Duration: N/A (Thrall duration is dependent on how long they survive in combat)

Widow dashes forward, culminating in a vicious uppercut, dealing damage to enemies and propelling her ahead for a short distance. She is immune to knockdowns during the dash. If the enemy is killed with the dash, their corpse is converted to a biomass thrall that will obey Widow. The health and armour of the thrall is dependent on strength mods and the health and armour level of the enemy killed. Widow can possess a maximum of four thralls at a time. On creating the fifth thrall, the first will perish, granting her a health orb.   

 

Thrall Geas

Cost: 25 Energy + 1 Energy/s

Cast Duration: 1.5 seconds

Widow commands her thralls to defend her as she fights. On activating this ability, the thralls will stay in close formation to Widow, trying their best to defend their queen, while gaining an armour buff and a reduction in damage. Deactivating this ability will make the thralls much more aggressive, and grant them a movement speed buff. On creating a thrall using Ensnare, they are automatically in the aggressive state, and will wander off slightly.

 

Broodmother

Cost: 100 Energy

Casting Duration: 4 seconds

Stun Duration: 8 seconds

Spiderling Duration: 10 seconds

Armour Buff Duration: 15 seconds

Spiderling Damage: 10/s

Spiderling Quantity: 12/thrall

Range: 45m

Widow unleashes tendrils that absorb her thralls and covers her in a biomass gown, granting her a significant armour buff. After 1 second of absorbing the thralls, Widow unleashes a terrifying scream that stuns enemies around her for several seconds. During the stun, the biomass forms several dozen spiderlings that attack all enemies inside the stun radius, granting Widow 5% health regeneration every two seconds. Because of the gained mass from the assimilated thralls, Widow gets a movement speed reduction during the duration of the ability. The armour buff and amount of spiderlings spawned are dependent on the number of thralls she has.

 

Analysis of the Warframe and abilities:

From her abilities, it can be seen that Widow is designed to be stronger against a large amount of adversaries, as per her description and intended purposes. She has a lot of survivability with the aid of her abilities, seeing that her base stats favour a low armour caster style frame. She is different from other caster frames because she becomes effective against weakened enemies, forcing her to deal damage using her weapons, or waiting in the back lines while her teammates whittle down enemy defenses, before moving in for the kill. Her abilities face a high risk, high reward principle as well, since they scale based on enemy levels. The stronger the enemies are, the greater her lifesteal, the stronger her thralls, and the stronger her ultimate ability.

 

Her 1 can be used as a minor strength CC ability, and can help her slow enemies and heal herself in a pinch if necessary. Her 2 can be used as a dodge/escape, seeing that she's immune to knockdowns during it. Her 3 can be used to allow her to pseudo tank during critical moments, for example, while reviving a team mate or pushing a densely populated room. Her ultimate can be combo'd with her 3 and 2 in that order to force herself into the middle of a large crowd and stun and damage them all.

 

Pros and Cons

Widow is an extremely viable solo Warframe, with the ability to mitigate damage, and heal herself almost constantly. As such, every game needs some form of balance, a sort of pros and cons with each Warframe, and in the case of Widow, it is her casting time for her attacks. Extremely precise placement is required for players to pull off her abilities without getting shredded by enemies. The pros of using her in combat is that the rewards of pulling off those abilities are enormous. Once again, high risk, high reward.

 

I'd really appreciate feedback with regards to Widow, and I'll also make sure that I constantly update the OP with feedback I receive as well as progress in her design, which is going to be slow going, seeing as how I'm not that good an artist. Please know that the stats are just placeholder values, and can be altered accordingly.  

 

EDIT #1: Added power duration values and range values for her abilities.

Edited July 6, 2014 by bejuizb

[Senketsu_]

hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm... Maybe, (-_____-  )

[vaugahn]

You might want to put duration on her abilities, otherwise there would be no downside to blind rage + fleeting expertise

[bejuizb]

You might want to put duration on her abilities, otherwise there would be no downside to blind rage + fleeting expertise

A good point. I forgot to do that. I'll add them tomorrow. I've been up for 26 hours :)

[DarthRevan84]

inb4 all the whiners about being afraid of spiders!

 

::On Topic::

Looks pretty good duration is needed though for sure.

[Nalo1993]

I like the idea a lot, my only gripe is that the name "broodmother" is giving me bad flash backs of Dragon Age.

 

Joking aside though, I think the concept is solid, it fits with the game, abilities seemed fairly well balanced, and would provided another good warframe for solo players (AKA me 80% of the time). However, if Thrall Geas is intended to be a sustainable ability (ex. Absorb or Sound Quake), I would recommend turning the energy count from 50 to 25.

 

 

EDIT: Also after reading over the abilities again (and comments), you might want to consider a way on how to watch the duration of Widows thralls (like nekros). Then again it could work like volts shield were it doesn't show the timer, but that's just me suggestion.

Edited July 2, 2014 by Nalo1993

[bejuizb]

Thanks for the positive feedback everyone, I honestly wasn't expecting anything more than a "meh" to be completely honest. I have updated the OP with ability durations and ranges. Please let me know if the numbers are too wonky. I have added a pros and cons section as well.

[Nalo1993]

Thanks for the positive feedback everyone, I honestly wasn't expecting anything more than a "meh" to be completely honest. I have updated the OP with ability durations and ranges. Please let me know if the numbers are too wonky. I have added a pros and cons section as well.

Much more improved. I like the changes made, and the numbers seem fine to me.

[bejuizb]

Much more improved. I like the changes made, and the numbers seem fine to me.

That's good. Thanks!

[Chaosnamed]

This is an original and interesting idea. I don't actually have any comments or criticism other than that, but I wanted to say that you've been very polite and responsive, which is not the case with some posters I've seen so far. Anyway, her is some lore because I want to contribute something other than just a bump. I don't know what you have planned, so take it or leave it.

The young crewman could not help but notice that, even in the heat of battle, the Grineer were disgusting creatures. The Tenno were cryptic in both appearance and culture yes, but they were predictable. The stoic warriors were not allies of the Corpus by any means, but for the right price, they could be the brawn behind the merchants' brains. This was one such occasion.

The crewman heard the unmistakable yet unfamiliar whirr of Orokin tech as the Warframe flew past him and cut down the Grineer that had been the object of his disgust. Wary of Tenno's strength, but satisfied that he might survive this encounter, he looked down at his fallen foe. His content turned to surprise and then quickly to horror as the cloned soldier's body began to change. From it's disfigured corpse rose up something else, something equally unnatural. The crewman readied his rifle in anticipation of an attack for the abomination moved erratically and viciously. But it did not approach him or his fellow crew. Instead, it moved towards the Warframe that had been his savior moments earlier. It followed her, awaiting her orders. This... thing was neither infested nor Grineer; it was something different altogether. Something new to fear.
 

[Rarius]

The thought of her birthing pets makes me so incredibly uncomfortable.

[bejuizb]

This is an original and interesting idea. I don't actually have any comments or criticism other than that, but I wanted to say that you've been very polite and responsive, which is not the case with some posters I've seen so far. Anyway, her is some lore because I want to contribute something other than just a bump. I don't know what you have planned, so take it or leave it.

-snipped because it was too awesome to repeat again-

Thanks a lot! It really means a lot to me. 

 

That little snippet was fantastic. I love it!

 

The thought of her birthing pets makes me so incredibly uncomfortable.

Yeah, its creepy. Now imagine the enemies she faces. Imagine their fear. :)

[Rarius]

Stil, as uncomfortable as it makes me, it's a great concept.

[bejuizb]

Stil, as uncomfortable as it makes me, it's a great concept.

Thanks!

[Nalo1993]

I just now noticed this, and it's just a minor detail....what would be this frames speed?

[bejuizb]

I just now noticed this, and it's just a minor detail....what would be this frames speed?

As fast as a Nyx, I suppose. She needs the speed to compensate for low defences. 

[bejuizb]

An update to the concept art: Using my less than mediocre drawing skills, I sketched out an idea I had for her armour. I started colouring the bits and pieces to get an idea for her colour scheme, but I stopped immediately because I didn't know what was appropriate. The green eggs are energy colour dependent and in this scenario, Widow has green energy. Let me know what you think.

[Cobalt313]

When I saw the name I was going to point out that I had a spider Frame idea too (https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/113774-warframe-idea-arachne/) until I noticed that yours was nothing like mine and actually had some interesting ideas to it.

 

Still, minor complaint I have is that the third and fourth abilities all depend on her successfully making thralls/having thralls still alive at the time of casting. Perhaps if there are none alive they behave differently, e.g. the defend command is just a deafening shriek and the Broodmother tendrils just bore into surrounding enemies, dealing Finisher damage and turning them into Thralls if they die of it?

[Nalo1993]

An update to the concept art: Using my less than mediocre drawing skills, I sketched out an idea I had for her armour. I started colouring the bits and pieces to get an idea for her colour scheme, but I stopped immediately because I didn't know what was appropriate. The green eggs are energy colour dependent and in this scenario, Widow has green energy. Let me know what you think.

I like the armor, it fits the dark/creepy factor for this concept. Kind of reminds of something from Dark Souls 2, I don't know what it is though.

[bejuizb]

When I saw the name I was going to point out that I had a spider Frame idea too (https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/113774-warframe-idea-arachne/) until I noticed that yours was nothing like mine and actually had some interesting ideas to it.

 

Still, minor complaint I have is that the third and fourth abilities all depend on her successfully making thralls/having thralls still alive at the time of casting. Perhaps if there are none alive they behave differently, e.g. the defend command is just a deafening shriek and the Broodmother tendrils just bore into surrounding enemies, dealing Finisher damage and turning them into Thralls if they die of it?

Your complaints might be valid, but it is part of her nature to rely heavily on her thralls. I want Widow to be a skill based frame. Spamming abilities is not part of my agenda, and imposing that limitation seems to be a good solution to that issue.

 

I like the armor, it fits the dark/creepy factor for this concept. Kind of reminds of something from Dark Souls 2, I don't know what it is though.

Thanks a lot. I wasn't expecting people to like it honestly. Good to know I was wrong.

[Cobalt313]

Your complaints might be valid, but it is part of her nature to rely heavily on her thralls. I want Widow to be a skill based frame. Spamming abilities is not part of my agenda, and imposing that limitation seems to be a good solution to that issue.

I see where you're coming from, but it looks to me like the Thralls system takes a lot out of your control (allies killing enemies before you can enthrall them, thralls dying before orders or abilities can take effect, etc) and would be as much a luck thing as it would be skill. I just think the third and fourth abilities should have some lesser fall-back function in case you run out of thralls- e.g. making more Thralls so a recasting can use them to its fullest potential.

[Nalo1993]

I see where you're coming from, but it looks to me like the Thralls system takes a lot out of your control (allies killing enemies before you can enthrall them, thralls dying before orders or abilities can take effect, etc) and would be as much a luck thing as it would be skill. I just think the third and fourth abilities should have some lesser fall-back function in case you run out of thralls- e.g. making more Thralls so a recasting can use them to its fullest potential.

I have a possible solution for what he saying. Why not have it so ensnare marks enemies like Nova's Molecular Prime? When enemy dies, they become a thrall. That  also solves the problem of allies killing enemies.

Edited July 6, 2014 by Nalo1993

[Prod_Crewman]

thats one cool concept!

[bejuizb]

I have a possible solution for what he saying. Why not have it so ensnare marks enemies like Nova's Molecular Prime? When enemy dies, they become a thrall. That  also solves the problem of allies killing enemies.

While this could work, I'd probably modify it so that if the enemy is killed by someone else, the thrall that spawns from it is only half as powerful as the thralls that would form if slain by Widow. That would ensure that you don't rely on your team and simply cast 2 and profit. Once again, high risk. high reward is my goal with her. 

 

thats one cool concept!

Thank you!

[Cobalt313]

While this could work, I'd probably modify it so that if the enemy is killed by someone else, the thrall that spawns from it is only half as powerful as the thralls that would form if slain by Widow. That would ensure that you don't rely on your team and simply cast 2 and profit. Once again, high risk. high reward is my goal with her. 

Better, but what about stuff like Orokin Void Tower IV where you find yourself swamped by large groups of hard-to-kill enemies that can make short work of your Thralls?

 

...or would something like that be better since Thralls are supposed to be at least somewhat as powerful as the base enemy?