Zaghyr

I should clarify, I didn't stop playing it because the grinding was done, its not even close to done, I stopped playing because the grinding soured my experience with Fortuna so much that I have no desire to go back because it will make me miserable, unless its something quick for Nightwave. People can say all the crap they want about this game being about the grind, but in cases like this, the grind completely kills the joy in the game, which is why I avoid Fortuna.

Finishing Fortuna standing was one of the most miserable experiences I've had with the game. I never play Orb Vallis anymore unless its for Nightwave. Sadly, this game still has a massive problem with disrespecting its players' time.

I've had similar ideas for a Status overhaul. At 5 or more stacks the Status Effect would get a new effect, like Magnetic slowly pulling in nearby enemies. A way for full status builds to differentiate themselves from crit and hybrid builds, Could lead to Status builds following more utility and teamplay oriented strategy. Weapon modding suffers from the illusion of choice. The system tells you that you can put whatever mods you want, the world is yours, but the game's actual design intention tells you something different, which is why every single build is the same like 10 mods mixed and matched. Why put interesting options that really make my build 'mine' when I could just copy paste the same mods from the last 6 guns and it works better anyway. Limitations lead to ingenuity because there are problems to solve which lead to room for personal flair. This game struggles with that a lot. What I like about Brozime's proposed system is that it had just enough limitations added that you had to make choices you normally never would, which lead to some mods being used that would often get looked over.

Shimmering Blight.......1 combo copied 3 times.....

I definitely agree. I'm not sure how they could make combos meaningful though without some small overhaul to stances. Perhaps they could do something like giving each combo unique bonuses listed on the Stances Combo page? Something like 'landing all hits on combo 3 grants X% AS for a 10 seconds', or 'Hits from combo 2 deal increased damage to Overguard'? Something to give players a reason to use different combos other can a whim or the occasional mobility. I do still think Heavy Attacks could be heavily improved with better mods. Slash being king is just a sign of poor late game design. Poor balancing has made Slash+Viral into a crutch. The elements need rebalanced for sure, and funny you should mention making a post reworking the elements, I've been doing the same one of my many personal projects to occupy my time. Rebalancing and reworking the damage types is one of them, reworking and making new mods for IPS and elementals is another. Either all weapons by default should have some Heavy Efficiency, or some classes should have it build in as a class bonus. Some melee classes already have this to an extent, like daggers and dual daggers giving movement speed and tonfa giving parkour velocity/duration. In this sense, Heavy Efficiency could be made a default class bonus on like Scythes (maybe 25%) and Heavy Scythes (maybe 50%) for example. My idea for Heavy attacks is similar but goes a bit further. One normal Heavy with a recast like we have now, and another that is used while blocking. My other idea is Technique Mods for Melee weapons. These are inspired by the Archon melee weapons and how they each have a unique combo that overrides the stance, and the Coufell that has a unique Heavy Attack. These mods would work similarly, and would modify/replace one of your combos or modify/replace one of your heavy attacks. As examples something like 1) Your heavy attack generates a barrier at your location for X seconds (scaling on Combo Multiplier) that blocks projectiles 2) For Nikanas and Heavy Nikanas it replaces your standard Heavy Attack with essentially a giant Getsuga Tensho that would hit almost the entire room, but it has a much longer wind up. or 3) Your Aerial attacks launch launch waves of Radiation damage (like innodem).

Even if we didn't need Heavy Attacks in the game, I still think they should be here and be more customizable and flashy. They would be a massive, fancy, omae wa mou shindeiru button for the cool factor to murder everything in style.

Warframe's approach to countering Armor compared to other games has always baffled me. Like normally games would be like 'Reduce armor by 15%' or 'Gain 25% armor pen for 4 seconds'. But no. Warframe is just 'REMOVE ALL ARMOR'. Not 'Remove 99.99% Armor' cause then they still won't die, it's 'REMOVE ALL ARMOR OR ELSE'. It is insane. When removing 50% Armor only results in like a damage reduction decrease of like 2%, then you know there's a problem.

IPS and Elements need to be rebalanced again. As much as the community hates 'Nerfs' it needs to happen for game health. Viral/Slash/Heat is too mandatory, and even then some status effects just feel useless anyway (cough *blast* cough). What would help is redoing IPS mods. Instead of them just increasing the their own damage type, it would work with the full base damage like Elemental mods, and then add/rework IPS mods to give better and more unique effects. Like a Puncture Mod for Primaries that increases damage to enemy weakpoints. Something, to give players a reason to build for IPS and care about it.

Definitely need a way to 'Favorite' weapons.

For sure need more. There are some interesting things they could do with it. Like a Weapon changing properties on when the 'Perfect Reload' was done, with like 3-4 different 'Perfect Reload' states.

We need new Heavy Attack Mods, which could solve several of these issues. That or reworking Killing Blow to bypass armor instead of increse Heavy Attack Wind-up Speed. But for sure we need new mods. A way to customize the Heavy Attacks would be nice too, whether as a brand new Mod Type or introducing Arcane to all melee weapons. Would be cool to give the 2-handed Nikanas a Mod/Arcane that changes your Heavy Attack to a giant downward slash that launches an energy wave, adding Mugetsu to current list of committable warcrimes.

At the moment yes, it would replace the current Hold Cast. The reason for that is because I don't think Zephyr should even have the hold cast that she has. Nobody ever uses it and is a detriment to her gameplay rather than a benefit. Realistically her Airburst would only have 1 cast type (the vacuum). It could work on Turbulence, but the reason I chose Airburst is keep it in theme with similar Augments (like Freeze Force and Smite Infusion) that give an alternate cast to spammable projectile/targeted abilities. The issue with it being attached to Turbulence is that you have no control over recasting it because Turbulence cannot be recast while its active to refresh the duration. Like Freeze and Smite, Airburst can be cast at any time to ensure that nearby allies can get the buff on demand. But also because I didn't what Turbulence to have 2 heavily melee focused augments, I would rather it be spread to each ability. Like I mentioned above, I don't think that Airburst should have its current Hold Cast (the explosion). And if Airburst only had the single cast type, then that opens up 2 immediate Augments. The one we're currently discussing, as a Hold Cast. But also bringing the explosion back as an Augment, and then feeding it a ton of steroids. One of the Augments I'm working on (non-melee of course) is just this. The idea being the Hold Cast would actually let Zephyr charge the Airburst in hand while draining energy similar to Garuda. The AOE size and damage would increases with energy drained, and the per-enemy-hit multiplier would be higher as well. The explosion, rather than ragdolling enemies away, would Lift them into the air where they are (like with vacuum) and then deal a S#&$ TON of damage to them over time, like each enemy get hit with a Judgement Slash. This would be for Zephyr's who wanna play more of a Spellcaster type build, focusing on Zephyr's ability damage and would encourage building Strength.

So I haven't worked on this frame in a while but I've been reiterating on it and touching things up during down time at work, and will do more tonight since I have some more ideas.

One that I've been working on is a moon based warframe, with inspirations from samurai and the 3 sacred japanese treasures. Just ripping the text straight from my Drive doc for it, I'm still iteration on things and do not have actual numbers for things yet, but here's what I have so far for Tsukiyomi. Lunar Warframe Appearance: Has hair down the right side as a large band and down the back of the head that is basically the silver looking tree fibers on Lua, other side of face a crescent moon mask. Would come with a Signature melee and primary, and several new moon themed weapon skins. Signature Weapons: 2-handed Nikana that grants an alternate forward-block combo, that does an overhead vertical crescent slash that slams the ground and causes a vacuum. While wielded by Tsuki, it gains additional Heavy Range and Heavy Attacks launch a wave of Radiation damage that deals the same damage as the attack. When wielded by Lunar, it grows stronger when Frame abilities are used. Dual Wield Lever-Action Rifles that gain a bonus effect based on Lunar's current Moon Phase. Primary could be a Bow Melee could be a 2-Handed Nikana, Glaive, Tonfa Passive Emboldened with the Phases of the Moon, Tsuki fills herself with its power as she deals damage to enemies. When the Moon is fully powered, her next ability is empowered, gaining +50% Strength, Range, Duration, and Efficiency, and a bonus effect, and drains the Moon. Tsuki increases her lowest POWER stat by 3-36% based on her combo multiplier, defaulting to Strength if they are all the same. Lunarium Blades Launch a blade of Lunar Energy, dealing Heavy Radiation damage to enemies hit and stripping their armor. Each enemy hit increases your Melee Combo Counter. Additional casts of Lunarium Blades within 6 seconds of each cast deal increased damage, stacking up to 3 times, Your melee attacks are followed by an afterimage that performs the same attack, dealing 15% of its damage and having a 50% chance to grant Combo and apply Status effects. You gain 1 afterimage per stack. Lunarium Blades will pause your current Melee Combo animations and will not interrupt the combo. While Empowered, Lunarium Blade will strip 100% Armor indefinitely. Meteor Shower Summon a Vengeful Moon in the air above you that buffs nearby allies with your current Passive Power Bonus and launches bolts of celestial energy at up to 3 random enemies every second, dealing moderate Radiation Damage and marking them. Marked enemies who are killed restore energy to Tsuki and her allies. -Tap-Cast to have the moon follow you, Hold-cast to leave the Moon in place. Recast to disperse the moon. Drains energy per second While Empowered, each time an enemy is damaged by Starfall if heals Tsuki. Darkside Tap - Conjure a stationary Celestial Mirror in front of you that draws aggro and reflects projectiles while stealthing Tsuki. Hold - Conjure a Celestial Mirror, growing in size and cost with Charge time. Release to capture the reflection of all enemies inside, summoning copies of up to 8 of those enemies and placing the mirror. The mirror draws aggro for a few seconds and will reflect projectiles. The summoned units’ stats are increased by Tsuki’s Strength and deal a base 300% increased damage, and will prioritize targets marked by Starfall. A % of the damage Tsuki would take is transferred between all of her specters instead. Reactivation will kill and replace all currently alive specters. While empowered, summoned units will retain Eximus effects. Trinary Crescent Tsuki lifts all enemies into the air and then pierces them with 3 crescent energy blades Ult is unfinished, couldn't come to a version I like so its just kind of empty right now.

Ya the IPS mods should be working the same as elemental mods. It's silly that they don't.

Well part of the problem is that this game is not really designed to account for difference in power levels. The fact that a L3 can go into a Level20 missions with newbs and blow stuff up is an example of that. Each time the knew powerful thing is added to increase power, nothing in the game is adjusted to compensate for that. What used to be somewhat of a challenging gear check is a cake walk now. Because DE doesn't have any system that can adjust power curves or scale enemies to your power level on a per mission basis. It's almost a conditioning problem. Players have actually spent so long being overpowered that they no longer know how to play with something that can bite back. I'm almost thinking we need a Gear power level system implemented, or at least for another star chart type that uses one. Nightmare could be reworked into a 3rd start chart similar to Steel Path. Enemies are (probably) appropriately scaled to your level, tile set and mission mechanics are harder and more involved. Rather than a gear check it would be a knowledge and tactics check. A star chart that takes actual skill and effort would be most players' worst NIGHTMARE!

It's purely a quality of life and satisfaction change. And there would not be a cap on the amount of Forma you can apply to a weapon. If its the Forma bonuses you're talking about then I like I said in the post, those are a completely separate change idea and are not part of the core changes. I would rather just have Universal Polarity Formas that we can form for, sinking that many forma into only 1 slot would be a miserable experience for anyone not mastery 30 or above. Except new players aren't getting things easier or even faster for that matter, the only thing really changing for newer players is that their builds will feel less awful to progress. It would be, but most players probably wouldn't be willing to even attempt it, and DE would have to adjust the rate at which we get forma. And even then this is likely only something MR27+ would be doing because their capacity would be nearly unaffected each time to reset the level.

Just to preface the content of the post. I think Polarities and Forma overall are a fantastic system for the game as a whole and should not be removed. However, what you do after using Forma is consistently a very miserable experience. To get straight into it. Polarity as a system is really good for optimization and personalization of builds, but it has its problems. The innate Polarities your equipment have may not fit any mods that you have access to at the time, or may not match any mods in your full build. This leads to that polarity being a detriment to your build, and you will often replace it with Forma. This becomes unfortunate if down the line you get a mod you like with that now-removed polarity. Every mod configuration uses the same polarities and polarity locations, which puts unnecessary limitations on builds. If at some point you want to largely alter your build, you will have to continue to Forma your weapon to keep replacing unwanted polarities and will sometimes need to record your builds if moving a polarity adversely affects other configurations. Aura and Stance mods having a default polarity tells the player, especially new players, that you must use a specific mod to be effective and stifles experimentation, especially if the player feels like they are nerfing themselves to try something fun. This is also a problem for a player's early perception of the game. Different weapons and frames having their polarities in different slots is distracting information for new players, because having them on different slots has no functional purpose outside of 'making them feel distinct from each other'. Forma is also a good system for progressing the power of the frames and weapons that you like, however, it is also one of the most actively miserable experiences in the game. Your weapon becoming unranked again is just you taking 2-3 steps back to take 1 step forward. Unless you are a VERY high mastery rank where it no longer matters, actively nerfing yourself for a time for a small upgrade is not a fun or exciting gameplay experience. Being essentially told that you can no longer use this gear at your level until it is maxed out again, and that you have to go back and play lower level content, piggyback XP from something else, or go to Hydron, is demotivating. Using forma on multiple pieces of gear feels REALLY bad early. Unranking your gear nukes all of its configurations by removing mods to fulfill capacity requirements. This feels especially bad for people with a lot of specialized configurations. I could fit another Forma on my Zephyr for example, but I'm never going to, simply because I don't want to have to go through releveling and modding all of those configurations again while feeling like I'm playing a 1/4 of a frame in the higher level content that I enjoy. This is where I have some proposed changes to Forma and Polarity. The end result will not change compared to the current system, but how you get there is going to be a bit different. POLARITY Polarities are no longer bound to slots by default. They are instead Polarity Nodes stored within a Polarity Pool. Polarity Nodes - Function exactly the same as current Polarities, the difference is that they are installed onto a slot just like a mod. They can be freely added, removed, and moved around at any time. They can be used on any mod slot, including Aura, Stance, and Exilus. Moving a Polarity from a slot to another another occupied slot will swap the polarities. Adding a Polarity from the pool to an occupied slot will move the former Polarity to the pool. Polarity Pool - Where all usable Polarity Nodes are stored. This will be visible in the configuration screen. Nodes can will be dragged and dropped on PC, selected from a menu for console. New Polarities added through Forma are added to the pool. Polarities are applied on a per-configuration basis just like mods. What do these changes accomplish? You will no longer be forced to use a default Polarity incompatible with your build. You have more freedom between configurations by no longer being constrained to make each build fit the same Polarity setup. You can freely change and use any Aura or Stance mod you want by swapping its polarity if you have a matching one. You no longer 'lose' any default polarities because you felt the need to replace it. Umbra polarity is less of a trap. Universal Polarity can have a lot of value for configurations that do a lot of mod hot-swapping based on preference. FORMA No longer resets your gear rank to Unranked. The Forma is attached to the gear, and takes in the Affinity it would have gained just like from leveling. When the Forma is full and the mission's completed, it will be consumed. Polarities are no longer applied instantly, they are instead added to the pool AFTER the Forma is consumed when it gains enough Affinity. Only 1 Forma can be attached to a piece of Gear at a time. Attached Forma and their progress are visible the configuration screen, gear selection, and any HUD element that displays the weapon. What do these changes accomplish? Your gear no longer being Unranked means you can still use it in all the same content you were using it previously. This also means you don't have to constantly recheck your gear during gear selection to make sure it was still maxed out for whatever mission you were doing. You no longer jeopardize your other configurations because of the capacity decrease. Hydron would hopefully be less of a sad reality. Frames no longer feel useless right after applying a Forma, and retain their level up bonuses. ADDTIONAL (Optional) FORMA CHANGES Some people will not like the affinity change. Each completed Forma grants a permanent bonus to the weapon. Bonuses are unique to each frame/weapon, and are similar within weapon classes. Up to 5 bonuses are gained, capping out at the 5th Forma. As an example, I use the Hespar a lot, here are some theoretical Forma bonuses for it: 1st Forma - +20% Damage (additive with other sources like Pressure Point) 2nd Forma - +15% Heavy Attack Efficiency 3rd Forma - +20% Status Chance 4th Forma - +40% Damage 5th Forma - Void's Gift - Warframe abilities cast while wielding the Hespar gain 15% Duration and Range. Each Forma completed grants Mastery points equal to half of those gained from leveling the weapon initially. Each Forma gained only grants Mastery once, you cannot Forma different copies of the same weapon for example for mastery, the same has leveling different copies of the same weapon currently. The Affinity required to complete a Forma is increased for each Forma completed. For example: 1st Forma - 50% extra Affinity required 2nd Forma - 100% extra Affinity required 3rd Forma - 150% extra Affinity required 4th Forma - 200% extra Affinity required 5th Forma - 250% extra Affinity required 6th Forma onwards - The same as 5th Forma at 250%. Why these changes? This would be another way for DE to allow higher level players use lower level gear at higher content, similar to Incarnon Adapters. Players can put more investment into their favorite weapons. Partially for some placebo 'feels good' moment when you open up your weapons and see those 5+ Forma weapons, thinking "Ya, those are MY weapons of choice" This gives players more of an incentive to apply Forma to their gear, and actively rewards them with something besides more Polarities, especially when you may not even need to Forma something more than twice per se because of capacity not being an issue. Account Mastery is a complete lie, and rather than reflecting how someone has mastered everything in the game and has good knowledge, it instead reflects how much time the player has spent playing Hydron, wasting their life, and dumping the maxed out gear because its trash. You should get rewarded for REALLY taking the time to use and master certain weapons and frames. You should not be forced to use EVERYTHING in the game to level your account. It allows for unique effects to be added to weapons to reward a much longer time investment. The affinity change would be a necessary evil. For one you are never losing Polarities. You no longer have a sense of extreme urgency to get the gear back to max level, it can gain affinity at the pace you play the game. When power leveling gear you are already completely overkilling the affinity gain anyway in some cases. The Forma bonuses are added power. The additional Mastery points should be the obvious reason. And obviously the extra Affinity amounts are arbitrary and can be whatever they need to be. Ultimately, the changes are to make Polarity and Forma feel less constrained, allowing more freedom of use, and make lower mastery rank players not feel like they are blowing out their knee cap each time they want to make their gear a little stronger.

This is exactly right. This game has a tremendous amount of potential for extremely satisfying content and missions but its never going to happen because the community at large does not what meaningful content or gameplay. They want the shiny thing and something to keep their minds and hands busy for while. Why should I have to do actual objectives to capture a target like, be stealthy so he doesn't escape, hack terminals to unlock parts of the map and give vision of different parts of the map, fight field bosses on my way when I'm getting close, then capture the target? When I could just load into game, see a marker on the map that says "he's right here, ignore enemies and just go here, then mission over", then go to marker, and end the mission. These are not missions, they are chores, and they are chores that are designed to hold the player's hand. And like you said about DE actually adding challenges. "The game's not challenging", "DE adds challenging thing", "community cries because space mom can't hold their hand through the mission anymore", "DE nerfs the S#&$ out of challenging thing", "The game's not challenging". This cycle is endless. There will never be any depth, strategy, or mechanical knowledge to any missions in this game because the community only want's to be babied so they can grind grind grind that new shiny thing. Its what turns me off the most about this game, and why can only play it in spurts now. There is too much stuff to do with nothing to do in it. It's just boring. Circuit is the most fun I've had in a while because it is chaos and can actually be difficult because you don't get to just cheese it from gear selection. As much I wish there was a circuit mode that lets us pick out gear just to see how far we could go.

Glad you liked both of these augments. These were 2 of the ones I pitched to Empty on one of his reddit threads for the subject. Both are intended to be Melee focused Augments. Right now Zephyr works a weapons enhancement platform which is fine and these lean into that, because like with Airburst Rounds and Jet Stream, empowering your weaponry with the power of wind and storm is awesome. It's been months since these were pitched and I've gone through several revisions of both of these, along with another dozen or so augments for Zephyr specifically, some of which are other Melee focused ones. Harpy's Descent's main purpose is to quickly dash from group of targets to group of targets and wreck havoc. The armor strip is limited in area of effect which is on purpose. My current iteration also makes enemies more likely to drop Health Orbs while their armor is stripped. The other change is that this alternate cast also works while blocking with your melee weapon, allowing you to do short dashes in the air as well as long as you are Aim Gliding (blocking) with your melee weapon. Eye of the Storm is intended to complement Melee gameplay and this is partially enforced by the reduced shield range. While the damage over time is good, and the crit damage amp is great, the other main strength comes with its continual application of IPS effects, namely Impact for its CC and Puncture for damage reduction, both being vital for Melee Zephyr to not get obliterated,, and because they help with CO. My current variation is nearly unchanged with the exception that the Crit Damage amp is for melee weapons only. Like I said, I have about a dozen different Augments that I'm iteration on, but I'm mostly focusing on melee since that's my preferred playstyle and is Zephyr currently least supported playstyle. Some of my other melee augments: Avianic Prerogative (this is just her passive btw, I think its silly that warframe passives aren't named) Atmospheric Sovereign - While in Focus Melee, you are always considered Airborne. For lack of a better term, Focus Melee is just when you are using melee and able to block. This Augment allows for several things but tied only to full melee, or Focus Melee. You get her passive crit bonus while on the ground, you gain reduced energy cost for Tailwind and Airburst while on the ground, you gain the effects of airborne mods at all times while on the ground, like Motus (chance to resist knockdown) and Boreal (reduced damage). Both of which are fantastic for a melee focused build. Airburst Stormedge - Host-cast Airburst to buff the melee weapons of Zephyr and nearby allies for X seconds, increasing their Follow-through to 90% and granting 50% chance to inflict Slash Status. I'm still iterating on this one a lot, including the name. I'm still deciding whether I want this to give Slash chance to Electric chance, or whether I want it to proc Airburst on Slam attacks or not as well. I'm still working on this, but the core is that it is a buff akin to Oberon and Frost's buff augments that gives Follow-through and something else. Something that is in theme since Wind isn't a status in this game and is mostly tied to IPS thematically. Tornados Last Breath - Killing Eximus units with a Mercy Kill or Heavy Attack spawns 3 Funnel Cloud Tornadoes for 30 seconds. A simpler one, but in the right situation, extremely effective. Would love to here your thoughts as a fellow Zephyr connoisseur.