[May 17Th Hot Topic: Constructive Feedback Vs Hyperbole]

Oh well, I don't normally make posts but I feel inclined to respond, I am a lowly non-cash spending player but I hope that my words might at least reach the eyes of someone with power. I intend to respond with as much balance and even-handedness as possible hopefully imparting some advice., regarding both adjustments to Rhino and Banshee. 

I'll start by saying that I have vested interests. Having no money or plat, I have two warframe slots- one with a Rhino, the other with a Banshee. It has taken my entire playtime to build these two characters up and as such, I believe to posses both experience and an emotional attachment to both characters which the developers do not have.

 

So I'll begin with Banshee

Regarding her existing abilities, sonic boom suited fine (balanced by lack of damage), sonar was fine (dependent on you or your teammates being able to shoot straight) and silence... Well silence is useless in combat situations and very situational anywhere else. Also it didn't really make sense when Banshee's marketed companion weapon was a silent bow anyway. And then there was soundquake. It excelled in cleaning rooms and annihilating the enemy from far off with the highest range in the game. Quite a few times I've had various people comment in game of how far reaching the range was since enemies seemed to drop dead without any sign of damage done to them. Despite absolutely loving this ability I am inclined to believe some sort of nerf was in order.

As I understand Soundquake now has a decreased range (to around 10m), improved damage (which was almost unnoticeable to me), no longer has invincibility nor knockback (bug?). Regarding the range, cutting it in half seems rather heavy handed nor does it make much sense,  in terms of range wouldn't sound have one of the most far reaching affects, bouncing and redoubling off walls in tight spaces? The attack started off as being pretty much the sound of doom to low level infested, and various corpus whilst being almost unnoticeable with grineer since their armor at high levels lapped it all up. On that note how is sound so heavily affected by armor? I suppose one way to bring Soundquake more in line would be to add an armor ignore but I could see balancing issue. Then there is the fact that invincibility was taken away (treating no knockback as a bug). Logically, this makes sense, I mean what good would a few soundwaves do against incoming fire, I'm also inclined to agree that people who would use it as an ability to remove yourself from being swarmed didn't seem entirely fair (just don't get swarmed or use Sonic boom then fight your way out). But this coupled with the fact that it is the longest lasting animated move in the game doesn't make a fair or adjusted move. Since the overall survive-ability of Banshee is almost nothing, she's going to get mowed down in an instant. As someone pointed out it's basically a ''100 energy suicide button''. At best you end up half dead surrounded by angry ancients and promptly ripped apart. As such it's only ability could exist in it being a long ranged move, clearing out the little guys so you can focus on the ones who are going going to do the real damage. In a sense this would fit in with the general class feel of Banshee which is a long ranged support/tactial assassin class. In it's current state it exists as being totally useless.

 

My proposal would be to undo the changes to it's range whilst fixing the knockback. Maybe that 3 second animation that occurs when someone Miasma's ancients could be appropriate to far off targets (clutching their ears) whilst a 360 sonic boom could be used instead of the invincibility. It'd look cool whilst making sense, deepening immersive factors whilst balancing out the fact tactical decision has to be taken into account. Assuming you did it in a room of close quater ancients, you couldn't expect to survive considering the ancients could get back up (after the 360 sonic boom) and promptly proceed to rape you. 

 

Next I'll move onto the Rhino, the marketed tank of warframe.

Why would you take that away from him?

His current abilites stand as such. Rhino Charge, a much weaker slash dash with inability to transverse obstacles nor do any actual damage, mostly just knocking them down on the ground. Being a 25 I can kinda understand it (also Rhino's heavy so he shouldn't be zipping all over the place). Radial Blast. Literally useless, 50 energy for a negligible amount of damage and a small AOE (with reach). If only it did the amount of damage in the trailer. Rhino Stomp (Seriously hold a competition to change the name of this, it must have taken at least 3 seconds for that to be though up), it looked cool but has now be rendered useless compared to Vauban's much cheaper skill (which looks even cooler). The AOE was cool but in terms of practical effects it wasn't much (hang time not being that long, no damage). In essence Rhino was reduced to being a one trick pony since all of his other skills had little application.

Hit 2 to win

The problem with iron skin was that it was cheap . It was frequently referred to as a noob frame since you basically hit 2 and murder everything. Shields would regenerate and in a team of 4 with energy siphon's, it was basically constant god mode. As it stands iron skin has been reduced to 80% dmg reduction and no knockback (NB). I think most people can kind of understand the dmg reduction. The fact shields could regenerate made it immensely easy to overpower and outlast anything. One problem with the 80% mark is that Ember already has a higher dmg reduction (and lets face it nerfing ember would be like scindo-ing a dead horse). That makes the light armored fire class STRONGER than the giant which was Rhino. Oh but iron skin has NB! Completely irrelevant when handling a scindo with reflex coil. What make even less sense is that iron skin no longer defends against poison or disruption meaning if you try to go toe to toe against a Toxic since you die in around ten seconds anyway. Go up against a Disrupter and you end up like all the other classes. In a recent post I noticed someone say that ''They should just deal with Ancients like the rest of us''. WHY? Is not the point of class diversity to have specialization and usefulness for all classes?!? If everything should be done 'just like the rest of us' than different classes might as well be glorified skins; and Rhino's iron skin was that diversity that he needed. What's the point of a tank who can't tank! This isn't balancing so much as it's the redundancy of Rhino to Frost in every shape and form. Previously it was argued which of the two was better and each side had a point. THIS SHOULD HAVE BEEN A SIGN OF FAIRNESS. Rhino WAS balanced. He had a playstyle that was different to all of the other classes, yet he had to brought into line with the rest.

And yet taking into consideration that the DE have sought to change Rhino, I can do nothing but accept that something must be changed, the obvious solution would be all of Iron Skin's original abilities brought back with a change to the way his shields recharge whilst in this state. The only actual problem was that shields could regen whilst in this state, meaning you could go from the brink of death > Iron Skin > 840 shields. I agree that this should be changed but what I am unable to see is the reason for an 80% dmg reduction and poison/disruption weakness. Since you marketed it as the tank class of warframe it should be your responsibility to keep it as such, not reduce its usefulness to nothing.

And thus I end my spiel, I dearly hope that a developer might get the chance to read this but at the very lease I might hope to propose some fair ideas despite my attachment to both characters.