[Surprise, I'm still complaining about Zephyr!]

Forward-  I'm a Zephyr diehard which is difficult when it feels like every change, while good, kind of forgot to ask Zephyr if she was okay with it first. Zephyr being forgotten has become part joke (where I am the victim of my own comedy) and part legitimate grievance so I end up mixing my 'exaggeration for comedy' and my legitimate emotions to such a degree that it becomes impossible to tell which I am drawing from when I talk about this whole situation. So I'm not trying to come off as ornery or whatever this is just the only way I know how to talk about Zephyr at this point.

 

 

Parkour 2.0? Great! But now coptering's gone, so Zephyr can't literally fly like she used to. She can still glide good, I guess that's okay.

Excal rework? Fantastic! But now his blade dash is just a better version of her dash. Well, at least she's still the only frame who has powers about being in the air.

Titania!
oh she can literally fly in all directions as her ult that's okay

Zephyr rework!? Awesome! Is she gonna get some easier way of staying in the air, maybe an actual benefit to staying in the air? Tornado could help her stay up, maybe- oh she has an air ball projectile now and divebomb and dash got merged...? Ok. Well, the new cost reduction passive is neat, I guess. She... still doesn't really have much of a reason, to be in the air, since none of her abilities are strengthened by it, or designed around being used in the air, but, it's slightly easier TO be in the air now... so... that's... technically better. Still not as easy as it was with coptering, and... she's still not really been pushed back to when she was that strong... and I'm not really sure what... the air ball is supposed to be... for...

Open world maps!? Oh, her moment to shine! OH right she has a maximum glide distance before she drops like a rock, like everyone else. Well, maybe she's still the fastest way to travel over big open worlds because of her movement abilities? Oh, hold on, people have rocket hoverboards now which she definitely can't outpace. I mean, I can't even be mad about that, they're rocket hoverboards.

Melee rework? Awesome! Oh, weapon slams can be aimed now? That's neat. What about divebomb? Oh. We can't aim divebomb? Oh. So weapon slam is just better most of the time then? Cool.

Hildryn can fly too!? How many other people can fly that I don't know about? Wisp gets an actual tangible benefit from being in the air and also she hovers around all cool!!?

 

Here's the thing. Zephyr's whole deal from step 1 is supposed to be that she spends as much time as possible in the air. That was how she was sold in the original trailer spotlight thing, that's what people, or at least me, have wanted from her. But. Literally the only part of her kit that has anything to do with being in the air is tail wind/divebomb. And tailwind doesn't get STRONGER for being in the air, it just gets cheaper to cast. So, it's easier to be IN the air, but what does Zephyr GET for being in the air?... Her divebomb is stronger if she's higher up, maybe!... the move which makes her stop being in the air... alright...

Air blast doesn't help her be in the air, or get any help from her being in the air. Infact, the animation makes it a little harder to stay in the air. Same with Tornado, which literally doesn't affect anything aerial at all and in fact is (situationally) stronger in tight places where you can't fly good. Turbulence is a radical ability and nothing should ever change about it, but it'd work exactly the same on a warframe who has nothing to do with air at all.

 

So how do we actually like, fix this. What part of her kit should be changed to make her actually WANT to be in the air instead of merely BEING CAPABLE of being in the air. One thing might be giving her options to knock ENEMIES up in the air, where she is inevitably going to be, and then giving her an option to do something to enemies in the air.

So far my strongest proposal for that is changing airburst from pushing enemies AWAY to pushing enemies UPWARDS specifically, and then giving tailwind one simple change- it deals more damage to enemies in the air.Suddenly Zephyr goes from someone who just kind of glides around a bit while not doing anything aerial themed to a high-flying bird of prey who wants both herself AND her enemies to be in the air- it adds another aspect to Tornadoes, since they already lift enemies, it gives purpose to all her mobility options which normally are kind of wasted in the tight levels (or wasted in the open areas, where her glide distance will eventually run out and she'll just drop like a rock like any other warframe) because now she's using it as a combat option against enemies instead of A Thing She Can Do that doesn't really actually help her moment-to-moment aside from getting to those moments faster, which, plenty of other frames are much better at doing already.

[Another Zephyr Thread]

Merging her 1 and 2 sounds like a great idea, like how Super Jump got merged into Blade Dash for Excal!

 

...Also, immediately after making that initial post I had an additional idea for a replacement for her 2, or at least, the beginnings of a concept- she needs something she can fire from range.

Zephyr's primary gimmick, in theory, is being above the battlefield, but her 2 is about flying in close, her 1 only deals damage if you hit people with your face, her tornadoes spawn in a radius around her, etc.

Admittedly, I don't have an idea for what that could be besides what I've already mentioned, but if her ability can be used from range like that it gives a lot more reason for a Zephyr player to actually be far away in the sky like her passive enables her to be.

[Another Zephyr Thread]

I was so excited for Zephyr when she first became a thing, and I don't play Warframe often enough to really grind out resources regularly, AND I didn't have any good mods or weapons thanks to said problem, so unlocking her was a REAL tough time, to the point that one of my friends just handed me the last 500 resources I needed after a month of working to this one goal. I am the underdog in every Warframe story, so I finally got her and had tons of fun gliding around shooting enemies from above- then Parkour 2.0 came out and her wide range of movement options became... kinda not that special.

 

But it's fine, she still has the slow glide, and when she aims, she's practically moving horizontally! So, I'm still having fun- then Excalibur gets reworked, and his Blade Dash can aim upwards. Oh cool, like!... Like how Zephyr's first power... can do that...

Well... she still has the air maneuverability thing handled! Nobody else can- Titania can fly.

...

Alrighty then we need a rework! In theory, Zephyr's deal is defensive capability (between her 3 and her high shields), mobility (between her passive and her 1) and crowd control (between her 2 and her ult) so how do we change these abilities in their current form to reflect those ideas a little more? There's been a couple of good ideas on this forum, I wanted to throw my hat in, because Zephyr is my favorite frame and Titania being able to literally fly drove me mad. That's MY thing, Titania!

 

Anyway- her 1 instead of being blade dash in a single direction becomes something she can aim mid-dash. It's still a burst of speed straight forward, but now 'straight forward' is where the camera is facing as you use it, not where it was facing when you press the button initially. Now she can say, use it to turn around in the air without touching the ground, or 'fly' around a corner, or even zip back and forth to hit a crowd or single target multiple times. Duration or Range could increase the length of time she's moving in this state, giving her a valid mobility option no other frame can replicate, as well as chance for crowd control options. Maybe it could also cause minor knockback or knockdown? Might be too much, but, that'll be a thing to figure out in testing, not a forum post.

 

Her 2, as is, is almost completely useless. 'Fall down very quickly followed by a shockwave'- most weapons do something similar without costing energy. There's no reason for her to have this power. She does, however, need a crowd control option since that's a third of her entire deal, so I had a few ideas.

A- Give the ability wider range and maybe higher damage, or some other status effect besides knockdown, which is inconsistent at best.

B- Replace it entirely with a new ability. Two ideas came to mind for this, a blast of air to knock enemies back (dispersing a crowd and dividing enemies to be picked off) but that might fall into similar pit traps as the abilities she already has... or, a blast of air that acts like a semi-solid object that moves forwards- a form of cover for allies and a way to push enemies away from eachother, again, to disperse crowds to pick off more easily, or knock enemies into environmental hazards or other frame abilities, etc.

 

Her 3 is probably fine as it is, I wouldn't mind leaving it alone... But her ult is really weird. In theory the tornadoes scatter groups by sending them upwards and dealing elemental damage but in practice it kind of just doesn't go where you wanted it to and crumples enemies into the ceiling. It's way weaker than other crowd control options (Rhino Stomp comes to mind) and has less utility, it just kinda looks cool.

Instead of knocking enemies upwards, maybe it sucks them in, making an easy target out of a crowd for other Frames or Zephyr herself to unload into and making it more of a valid crowd control option by disabling multiple enemies at once (while making them easy, harmless targets) instead of mildly inconveniencing them until they fall out and get back up again. Additionally, the elemental thing is cool in theory but in practice just makes shooting enemies trapped in the tornado kind of awkward, and doesn't fit her themes or really add much to the actual ability? So I'd recommend getting rid of it to incentive just unloading all your ammo into this convenient ball of enemies inside the vortexes-that-pull-guys-in-now. They can still spawn randomly but maybe the specific places they appear are more consistent so you actually have some way to control or aim it. For larger enemies and bosses, maybe it still sucks them in, but without ragdolling them, just sliding them along the floor a teeny bit. Not enough to hold them in place, but enough to maybe slow them down and deal some minor damage instead of doing basically nothing in the boss fight at all.

 

Stats-wise I wouldn't mind a LITTLE bit more health or armor for those situations where the damage bypasses your shields, but, not sure if that would be necessary in a world where her powers are a little more useful.

Regardless of the specific way her powers are changed the important part is that they really need a change. Her passive is fun, but it doesn't justify how much weaker her abilities are than every other frame I've ever seen, and every time a new frame comes out and all their powers are awesome, it makes me a little bit jealous and sad that my favorite bird's powers are so mediocre-at-best, for the most part. (Turbulence is still pretty good though.)