Motivation
Recently there has been a lot of rework topics both on reddit and on the forum and it is no surprise that limbo have been mentioned just a tad more than normally recently with many of the discussions and even rework proposals. One thing that at least has become rather clear as I've read over many of these is that there just is no unified idea of just what the problem with limbo with the narrative swinging from a flawed god to TRASH never use!.
This in turn has meant that many a rework proposal are also all over the place and it means that feedback is similarly not very useful at best and at worst detrimental to the point of making the problem even worse. Now this is what i wish to attempt to rectify with this rework proposal, to highlight just what the issue is design wise and in turn provide a few potential avenues that one could take to address them.
Limbo currently suffers from a mixture of 3 issues.
Poor team synergy:
Any player picking up limbo for the first time is bound to make a mess. Banished enemies left strewn about, Banished allies by random, Cataclysm + stasis + long range = Slowdown.
He is also currently clunky with some of his more powerful moves which means that for all practical purpose's the banish + mesa peacemaker(immortal mesa) combo is limited to premade levelcap squads and not general usage.
Old bugs/Old Nerfs and Inconsistency.
Limbo is an old warframe and one notorious for breaking the game in one form or another and so weather by Patchwork intervention or just entropy he has accumulated bug.
One of limbo's main jobs to give an example is to defend targets. Be it NPC or objective. Coil drives in Fortuna cant be affected by abilities and so not even cataclysm can defend them from incoming fire. In the Deimos arcana bounties Juggernauts cant be banished more than once because of ability resistance. If cataclysm is up and a void angel disables your warframe you have to now wait for cataclysm to expire before you can shoot your self free. Same issue with the last gasp ability from Unairu. Enemies/ Environmental effects piercing the rift the rift when they shouldn't, So on.
Poor visual Language
The rift is terrible at communicating what it does to the player upfront. You got to do rather extensive research and not fall into one of the myriad noobtraps and bugs along the way at the same time. Fx long range limbo builds being the first thing people turn to or suddenly getting deleted when you thought your self safe. The result is a rather terrible experience and combine that with limbo being an advanced warframe with abilities that demand the player to be able to read the battlefield to make the most use off it and you got a recipe for a lot of players simply writing the frame off. Regardless of how powerful it is.
My personal solution to limbo.
1. Address the team synergy issue by streamlining and ironing out some of the kinks.
The frame already works more or less with exception of CC slowing missions down which is a can of worms that DE will have to address separately I'm afraid but what can be done is ensure the rift at least does not get in the way of allies, regardless of how much mess an unskilled limbo player makes. Ive got two potential options here each with its own upsides and downsides.
Option 1
My Suggestion here is to hand out limbo's passive to people via a relatively easily attainable method similar to either wisp's motes or by entering the rift. By handing out Limbo's passive while limbo is in the squad we essentially remove the main issue of players not being able to shoot rifted targets there and then! On top of that we create a scenario in wich the players hold the keys to when THEY want to the rift if at all NOT LIMBO. Fx a Mesa can now decide for her self when she wishes to be in immortal peacemaker mode not having to wait for limbo to find and banish her once every minute.
Trolling potential removed: Players can now control the rift, its not a limbo monopoly which is why the trolling was possible
Players now have a way to deal with even the messiest of Limbo players. No longer will you be without the tools to deal with that random banished target a limbo failed to kill.
Limbo is buffed to be a much less clunky support frame as you will no longer need to stalk your alias every minute to banish them. Something that in a fast paced game like warfare is not viable players need to be independent of limbo to an extent they now get to decide when they use the rift if THEY WANT TO.
This option does not interfere with either rolling guard or other mechanisms relying on rolling.
Downsides and potential issues with this.
Potentially an extremely powerful buff and may require balancing.
The rifts current visual language is currently insufficient to effectively communicate to players weather something is rifted or not be it you or an enemy. this needs to change to make this be more intuitive.
Option 2.
This one can potentially be combined with option 1 but they do interplay a little clunkily. Allowing limbo to effectively make stuff he banishes almost invisible if you are in reality.
That way your eyes wont be drawn to banished targets and you wont waste time shooting on something you cant hit. its a very simple change though one where one needs to ask, what's the difference between invisibility and the rift then?
2. SPRING CLEANING.
A look through limbo and updating his ruleset to reach more consistent results by removing old nerfs old bugs and potentially even making cataclysm able to drag ability immune enemies into it( Some issues may arise from this and will need its own separate adjustments) Operator Rift interactions fix. So on. Basically limbo has a job allow him to do it! not all of this arbitrary suddenly something cant be put in cataclysm or targets one needs to protect having ability resistance making limbo unable to do his job. Operators to be able to shoot across the rift so you can unstuck your self from a void angel snare or use last gasp if there's a cataclysm around.
3. Getting limbo To teach himself better.
This is where the improved visual language comes in but i admittedly am no expert here. What i would personally do however is ensure that the rift visuals are clearly distinguishing between shoot able and non shoot able targets WITHOUT falling into the trap of the pre rework limbo of visual clutter. This visual upgrade should also aim to communicate clearly weather or not an aly got a target available to shoot at.