Birdframe_Prime
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Posts posted by Birdframe_Prime
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1 hour ago, Bizzaro21 said:
1- chroma was a mistake, why reproduce it? and in case u haven`t noticed they both look ugly as f***, so I think color coordination is not supposed to be a thing especially with these two
2- dude, galleon map has only like 2 rooms that are well lit, and any infested map will be dark, OD is dark as well, that leaves corpus (including infested on eris) and void maps, where she is totally useless because of nullifiers (eris aside)
Actually, this indicates you have a problem in your lighting settings there. Have you looked at the game's basic settings for shadows, lighting effects and your own monitor settings? I ask because there have been cases in the past where turning off a setting like 'dynamic lighting' can cause some areas to be completely black, especially the ones in the old Mastery Rank tiles.
In any event, I'm a little surprised that you can't tell the difference between forms, there is clearly a 'left' vs 'right' in the most obvious place, the head, where they switch to opposite side 'horns' for the helmet between forms. They're also different in both silhouette, stance, amount of fabric and usually the opposites in colour (unless you set that differently). I would say that it's easier to say left or right than look for a little word in the bottom corner of the screen to read 'day'.
AND! Why is spawning in Night form so bad? Transforming to Day then gains bonuses for a duration, so if you simply time that transformation better (I like to use parkour to get high in the air and transform on the way down), you can rip through a few enemies way faster. You should be using parkour way more often anyway at low rank, more than you need to when your gear is better.
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12 hours ago, Esorono said:
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Hi, Esorono, you didn't reply to my last post when we were discussing this weeks ago, so I thought you'd either given up in a huff or accepted, so here we go again, here's hoping we can do better than last time!
1. The 'what in the blazes are you running' question.
Sorry, but you can't push that on me, you can't just claim a lack of experimentation or a lack of knowledge, mud-slinging is not an argument.
I'm not ignorant to what she can do. I'm disappointed that it's all she can do. Her survival is limited to levels before weapon damage drops off, because the mission then fails her, she doesn't die off, she runs out of damage, even running a dive-bomb/heavy impact/covert lethality build doesn't last. Her damage protection is fine if you want to stand in one place, but that's not how either of us wants to play Zephyr, neither you nor I wants to stand on a pod all day instead of jetting around the room hunting for enemies.
2. Divebomb Vortex is good, better with Heavy Impact. At the cost of mod slots that many builds have better uses for, but that's a conscious choice. I've run several long-run survivals with the combo, and it helps right up until, you guessed it, your weapon damage drops off and you can't keep the life support going anymore since every time you go for a pod a melee unit takes a swing or a grenade hits you. Something flying wouldn't help, if you notice.
Again, though, this whole ability, even if you're flying when you cast it, puts you in harms way. Oh no! Melee range? Whatever do we do? Run? What if you're trying to actually do something where you are, like pick up a cell, hack a terminal, res a team-mate? Shoot them? Melee back? What if you're up to level 60-100 (and above) and that doesn't do enough to stop them anymore? What if you want to level by playing instead of at Draco, so you have low-rank gear? You're still going to get staggered, you're still going to get knocked down by bombards, gunners and ancients, and you're still going to invite damage from anything that's far enough to not get dropped by a divebomb. With a stagger ability you can cast with one hand at close range enemies, you can buy time. Time it right, it could be the difference between surviving long enough to drop a gunner, and getting knocked down by a their ground slam as easy pickings for a melee unit. Even if you survive that, you have to flee rather than do what you came there to do.
I'll note that the 'bad aim' part is a nice sting you tried, but admit it, it happens to everyone. Even if you're flying, and I guess all the more because you're flying, it happens because (unless my suggestion for a small charge time is implemented) you press the button and just go, no cancel, no 'oh S#&$, I'm over the rail, not on the edge!' just gone, and you now have to recast turbulence.
3. Melee range. See above. You may be fine against some enemies, but those with ground slams to knock you down (mid-air knock-down? I'm not sure how that would work...), which you can build against if you want to sacrifice more useful mods, those with cold shields to slow your swing speed down, those with fire aura blasts to knock you over when you're trying to melee through a group and can't find cover... they'll get you. You still have to evade. And if you fly, yes you'll evade the melee units, but you still have to go down there and get them some time.
Beyond that, what about inside ships, with all those twisting, winding corridors? The grineer asteroids are a good one, with the vents, and the corpus ships with only about four tiles with any height (not just four, but you get my point)? You're in melee range all the time. You're in range of the sapping orbs, the bursa fields, the arc traps, the ground slams, the flipper hits, the leaper jumps, the infested osprey clouds, the nullifier bubbles or nul comba... you're not helped by flying in any of those. It would be better to sprint and parkour.
Something to note about enemy AI in survival too, have you noticed that if you go and stand up on somewhere out of melee range, most of the melee units will actually hang back and not approach, meaning that they can stay far enough back that weapons with damage drop-off, or limited beam range, won't get them once you hit higher levels. Flying will do the same to them, meaning you have to actually go and seek them out, meaning that life support drops are slower, you don't last as long. On the other hand in defense, they then ignore you, charge the pod and you have to either have something that deals extreme damage from range, limiting your choices, or get in there and kill them before they do their job. Again, you're either limited in weapon choices, or you're flying back to near enough ground level again.
4. Jetstream is my favourite mod, adds travel speed and sprint speed. And? So you're saying just because I can use my Boltor Prime or Dread with her in that case that she can fly to the ceiling and do the same job as she could on the ground (are you saying we should all just use the Penta, Kulstar and Tonkor)? But what's the point if, again, you have to stand in front of a pod to provide any support? You either stand there, or you hover there if you can fly. She does the same thing whether flying or not, my point if you remember. The mobile shelter is, again, a nice touch, except that you need to make your team stay in it. You could mod it for range, if you'd rather use that build than one of the others we've mentioned, but again you lose all your mobility because you're tied to your team and unable to exploit that vaunted flying you would want to have.
5. What would she gain from having a ranged attack rather than a Dive bomb? She wouldn't even lose Dive bomb, it's still there, my changes I always suggest still include it, in fact easier as an extension of Tailwind, because they'd be the same ability, or a charge mechanic of the same ability, one that increases mobility too. I'm opting to *add* versatility, range and CC to a frame, not take away an existing ability. Your argument against it because 'why would you fly up in the air to cast it instead of using dive bomb' is frankly silly because that's like saying 'why would you fly up in the air to gain more damage on dive bomb?' Why would you waste time using tailwind to reach a team-mate about to be killed and then casting dive bomb when you could do something similar by tapping 2 from the other side of the room? And if you didn't save him in time, or a proc gets him, you can still tailwind over and dive bomb as you would usually, but if you did save him, then you saved him, from range. Likewise, why would you tailwind over a bombard that's heaving rockets at the defense pod, leaving it vulnerable while your turbulence isn't on it, and then dive bomb when hitting 2 could ragdoll it at range and allow you breathing room to get there without it firing constantly?
But since you asked, what we would gain is something to use while at range. Yes it's that simple. She would have a ragdoll CC ability at range, and a stagger or knockdown ability at close/medium range. A one-handed animation that doesn't interrupt reload, doesn't make you hop and slam, can be built without an augment to be viable, and the bonus of a strength build for your Tonkor would mean a larger CC not more damage. If she were to fly with that button instead, I see no improvement to her skills like that.
6. You've told me time and again the 'advantages' of flight. You see them as advantages, I see them as this: Zephyr in the air longer with her energy draining. It doesn't change her, more than that I can do all the things you can do flying in the air with parkour. I'm opting to make her have *more* than what she is right now, because I don't see anything that she does now, anything she could then do with a toggle flight ability, as enough for the way the game currently plays.
Now. Let's conclude, because I'm not fighting you on whether or not she can fly, I haven't been since weeks ago when we last talked.
I'm not saying that her flying is ridiculous, just highly, astronomically unlikely, and I actually turned around and said 'let's try and make this work' to you, we went back and forth and I said simply that they can. I agreed with you. But you didn't reply to that comment, and instead have opted to reply to this.
I also agree with you on the fact that Wukong can 'fly'... if you think that a basic 'Limbo in mid-air' ability is flying (worse because he can't even bring something up there to kill or bring an ally up there to revive the way Limbo can in the rift). I do think that's ridiculous, he's a monkey, but funnily enough that's because he's based on an existing character. The Monkey King, who could, as the story says, ride on clouds. Like how Loki can create holograms and turn invisible and steal weapons and teleport. Zephyr is an original, she doesn't have a background, she doesn't have an existing character that you can argue makes her a flying frame vs an air caster, even her codex and intro video doesn't say she flies, just that she's an aerial attacker, dominating from above, who rarely keeps her feet on the ground, you and I literally can't argue it either way from any of those.
What I said to you before, the comment you never replied to, is about convincing DE to put in the work to make it happen. You want to fly, but still use all the guns and melee the game has to offer? Fine, watch them spend months re-animating and re-working the entire frame for that ability alone. Because the only other warframe that can exploit that ability has not been released, and will almost certainly use something other than the basic kit while doing it. All the work they did and are doing to release the new frame, all over again for just one ability on Zephyr? It won't happen. And if it does, not only will I publically apologise, I'll even owe you 1000 plat.
My rework doesn't just cover this new second, it re-works her fourth as well. It affects three out of four of her abilities, changes that would not take all that much effort to do, because they're just a mechanics based merger of the two existing abilities, a variation on a basic attack and an AI overhaul to her independent-minded fourth ability. That's the sum total, and almost minimal amount of work to bring her into the current game.
You asked what niche I'd have her fill, unique to her? I think she already fills one. She already *is* a niche. So niche that she's almost nothing else, she's pure evasion and mobility forcing you to rely on weapons for damage (not unusual), on specific builds to exploit augments (again, not unusual), and on an uncontrollable fourth skill that doesn't measure up to anything else in the game (C-c-c-combo! It's all three together!), a cumulative pigeon-hole. I want her to be able to ATTEMPT to fill other roles. I want her to be able to ATTEMPT to be a CC frame, ATTEMPT to be zone denial, ATTEMPT to be a caster, ATTEMPT to be something more than she is now, because as she is now she doesn't measure up to other frames. For some players (not me) even Hydroid is a better tactical choice.
So here we are. I've even put aside your poor taste insulting my skill to explain my views once more. Because I'm not going to give up, you can believe what you want, but here's the thing I've been saying all along:
My question to you, and to others was not 'why the hell should she fly', it's not even 'can she fly', it's not even 'what are the advantages of flying', I saw your points, I saw that she can, it's not up to me if she should, and you believe your points would be advantages, even though she can do anything with basic parkour except static hover that she could do with flying.
It was 'how would it make her better'. Because all you've managed to show me in all of this is how she can stay the same.
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10 hours ago, Kaiayi said:
Valkyr, Oberon, Mesa. While not extremely new, not that old either. But they need/needed reworks. I agree 100% people should try out different frames, however, there are some people that either don't have the time, or don't want to get a new frame. Which is relatively understandable, since why put your time into something to barely even use it. Based on this logic, people would only put forma and effort into frames that can run all mission times. At the same time as encouraging players to test out new frames, they are also discouraging, due to Excalibur being able to fight against all factions, and Mag only Corpus.
Quite right on that. Those three do need a work over. Guess when they came out? Valkyr: September 2013, Oberon: December 2013, Mesa: September 2014. Two warframes from the same year as the others, and one from more than a year ago. And how much has the game changed in a year, so far, let alone two? And that's not even counting the fact that Valkyr and Mesa have already received work to them, Valkyr having her 4 turn into a toggle ability instead of a duration one and Mesa having hers turn into a manual aim to prevent spam and abuse. And hotfix 14.5 already changed the base state of Oberon, forcing the procs, knockdowns and making the targeting of his abilities actively seek enemies, he's been tweaked and changed a little ever since.
Apologies if I'm coming off curt or dismissive, I'm hoping that you'll understand the points I'm trying to make.
Are those three perfect? No, not really, but they've already changed with the times. But some warframes do need the rework, like Mag having the least used ability in the game in Bullet Attractor, and Volt having a 4 that was supposed to get stronger with electrical equipment in the rooms, which became increasingly difficult to rig, and impossible to do twice, so they switched it to radial damage instead and it still didn't work right and in the end they had to re-work it rather than just buff it. They're old frames, on old code, on old game play settings, bringing them up to 2016 is only fair to them.
I'm not saying that the other frames won't get buffs, nerfs or re-works. I'm saying that they're all having to change with the times, the game is changing constantly and the values that DE had at the beginning for creating warframes don't necessarily match the ones they have now.
The difference is that one, humongous patch would, plausibly, fix everything at once, although might also introduce hundreds of new bugs, exploits and potentials for loot-caving, while having a rolling update of existing frames to meet the new standards, whether those are re-works, buffs, tweaks or even nerfs, means they can test and take the time for each one in turn.
They can listen to player feedback on each frame in turn and continue to tune things, all the while releasing more and more updates for the main game.
But a massive programming patch all at once would mean stopping production on hundreds of other aspects to dedicate all their staff to it, leaving us with a stagnant game, no updates, no new content, just pure fixes to existing content that we may not even like their ideas for.
If you want your feedback here on the forums to mean something, then let's look at the positives of having rolling updates, having constant attention from the staff and having a huge, diverse cast of frames to work with. Mag and Volt are getting a re-work, good, they'll now be up to spec with the rest of the game. After that, maybe they'll look at Valkyr, Oberon and Zephyr, after that the frames from 2014.
Let's talk about what they *can* do to the best of their ability while keeping the game going at the same or better quality than it is now. Everybody with me here?
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13 hours ago, Inarticulate said:
Know what, I'll just quote my response from one of the other Nitain threads.
Thank you, that does clear things up for any that didn't know this before. I did know this, which is why I'm a little salty with the system.
Now, I'm not taking a dig at you, I really think that the Nitain alerts are fairly balanced and the averages of those alerts is as good as it's going to get. I protest to the idea of alerts being the only source of resources because of practical experience. And that I'm one of those that can't log in and log out daily, I am literally not able to do what many people think is a normal thing to do on a game like this. More to that point, knowing that I *should* have seen this many, knowing that I *should* have garnered this many, is only making the actual results worse for me.
The practical experience I have of this, you see, is that in a period of four weeks (my testing cycle for drops) of logging in a maximum of four-to-five times a week, almost exclusively between the hours of 8:30-10:30 for around an hour to two hours, and picking up every nitain alert I've seen barring one (that I was in a long-run survival with my clan for and missed) I have gained a grand total of? 4 Nitain. 1 per week.
There's predictive number averages, and there's practical experience of beating the odds in the most unfavourable way. Maybe I'm just unlucky, maybe RNGesus has it out for me, but I should be able to do more than that. That's why alertium is a bad thing in my opinion, although in your opinion it may be different, feel free.
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Unfortunately there's the other side to this story, what about those of us with jobs and school, who can only play for around an hour or two a day and that ever-illusive alertium resource Nitain?
I'm lucky if I can find even one alert per day with my play schedule, I maybe could get 5 a week if I push, with Vauban taking 20 total it'll be weeks before I can get him. Compare that to Oxium where I can get both the drop and pickup boosters for three days each and go over a weekend with two or three hours a day, I can pick up thousands of Oxium if I want. I actually have a stockpile of around 5.5k just from playing without ever needing to spend it since I built the Grattler.
DE has really set me back with this Prime release... quite a ways.
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19 hours ago, Esorono said:
An offensive CC power for her second ability sounds kinda meh. What she needs is more mobility, we have plenty of frames already who have CC and damage, and next to none that have any notable mobility. Zephyr being a mobility frame should have more powers based around getting to point A to point B, yes, this doesn't make her the best frame for endless T4 missions, but that is an absurdly small part of the game. And she is never described as an air elemental frame, ever. Even her first two abilities aren't even considered 'wind' and just described as 'energy.' A flight ability would be perfect, also can you please stop saying that archwing is the only flight in this game? Or are we ignoring a monkey can fly, and that Ivara's navigator arrow also has its own type of flight control? Flight really isn't that complicated of a concept or they wouldn't even have Archwings, Cloudwalker, Navigator, or that Fairy. You cannot see a flying Zephyr work because you only want her to be another press 4, or in this case 2, frame to wipe out a room and are trying to make flight sound a lot more complicated than it really is to prove your point. There are dozens of ways DE can bring Zephyr into the game flying, and I can absolutely guarantee that Navigator is far more complicated than almost anything DE can implement for a flying Zephyr.
Well excuse me for having discussed this and debated it clearly and logically for the last month with other people and actually having come to conclusions with them and hoping that I wouldn't have to do it all over again.
Let's start then.
1. People keep saying that archwing is the only flying mechanic in game because, unfortunately, it is. Navigator is an on-rails guided projectile, it moves forward constantly and is a basic bit of code that is brought in from existing stock (as in the ability existed in another, much mentioned, game that DE produced and several other games out there) it cannot be adapted to work with a player avatar unless you wish to limit that player avatar to those same rules (as in, surprise surprise, an aimed version of Tailwind). Cloudwalker, whether you realise it or not, uses cut-down archwing coding, with the lateral controls, momentum and speed either disabled or greatly reduced. And fairy frame is on camera by DE on a convention panel during her introduction said to exploit the Archwing mechanics.
2. As it is, no, I have never, and will never, supported press-X-to-win mentality. Her codex says 'Specialising in air attacks and mobility, Zephyr dominates from above', that's where it mentions air attacks, her abilities are called Tailwind (a term used for when the prevailing wind is adding to the accelleration of an aircraft, pushing it through the air), Turbulence (another term in aviation meaning choppy and uneven air pressure and cross-winds) and Tornado (where she literally creates an attack out of wind). She already has mobility, she already has the air superiority (if you have a long ranged weapon), what is so wrong with actually giving her an ability that can actually attack?
Now, let me explain. Because I don't want Zephyr's main gameplay to change, just have an added aspect of flexibility.
Zephyr is fun to play because of her passive low grav and her already extreme mobility, with high sprint and parkour, Tailwind, and an augment for Turbulence that makes her sprint even faster. I can easily outrun Volt and Loki players with her and she's my go-to frame for missions like Sabotage because she can survive and evade better than all of them.
What she lacks is two key things: The first is a way to interact with the game world or the enemies around her. Every other frame has one. Whether that's a cheap 1 attack for low damage or a CC/offense move, a diversionary tactic, a zone denial, or a damaging 4, every frame has something. Except Zephyr. Not because they didn't try to give her one, they did, Dive Bomb is an offensive CC ability, for all that it's very limited, and Tornado is supposed to be a Zone Denial CC. Neither of these work very well because the one puts you right into harms way when you want to be at range, or plunges you into pits, or doesn't actually get height enough to do full damage, and the other has such poor AI that it annoys the player and any team you run with more than the enemies.
The second thing she lacks is a way to interact with her team. If she can't do anything to the enemies, then she's a pure evasion solo frame, which is un-interactive and lacks any form of use outside of the sprint-to-finish game modes, but if she had some way to benefit her team outside of standing on the pod deflecting bullets, that would be a good compensation.
She has neither. Neither a benefit to team play, nor a way to do anything without a gun to enemies in solo. She is a weapon-reliant frame, and that's something almost none of the other frames are, and those frames that do rely on weapons for damage have some form of CC, like Limbo's Banish, or a more expensive area CC like Banshee's Silence.
I admit, yes it's fun to run around with Turbulence on, walk up to a Bombard and shotgun it in the face because its rockets bounce off, but what of melee units? What of high priority targets shooting a defense objective? What of needing to save a downed team-member surrounded by chargers? The most you can do right now is stand in the way, run away, or cast Tornado which has no off-button, wanders vaguely around the room, scatters loot and enemies and finally climbs a wall and out of the cell.
How would flying help any of that? So she can fly, what then? Can she use anything apart from a hit-scan rifle/sniper to protect an objective? Can she actually do anything up there? Not unless you want to dive head-first at something, or throw some vaguely wandering, annoying Tornados.
Zephyr is already one of the, if not the, most mobile of mobility frames. She can stay off the ground with parkour, wall latch, aim glide and Tailwind almost indefinitely and she can scour a T4 Sabotage for caches as fast as it takes the other three players to activate the portal, then race them to the boss, steal the key and get back and be at the extract before they're half way there. Giving her another mobility ability does not improve her, it pigeon-holes her into a role that doesn't actually benefit gameplay on any other mode. She struggles with defense, she struggles with survival once her weapon damage starts to drop off because she has no abilities for team play, she struggles with infested missions on almost every mode since they're nearly all melee units and they like enclosed spaces, she struggles with point defense like excavation and mobile defense...
But why?
It's because she can't do anything to enemies but shoot them. That's why I think she needs an offensive ability, not a press-2-to-win, but a CC ability at range. It's something to encourage players to Tailwind up in the air, get that max range and ragdoll a heavy gunner or bombard, maybe stagger or knock-down whatever is grouped around it, if she's lucky. A single-target stagger at close range that can give you a few instants to re-cast Turbulence or parkour away. Something that, when she's heading through a map at top speed, she can use to clear a doorway and let her sprint through a small corridor while they're recovering. She can stagger melee units and evade them, but spamming the ability doesn't help because only a knock-down or a ragdoll can trigger a finisher, forcing her to stay at range if she wants to do that, but still buying her time if she wants to use melee of her own.
A CC based 2, with a built-in mechanic to encourage range and precision, would also benefit her team, putting the squishy frame at height, tactically CC'ing the heavy units and allowing her team members to clean them up, or letting her protect another player from across a room. This plays into the fix to Tornado's AI, making that ability a true area-denial ability that can let her CC a space, like a doorway or a pod, and concentrate on attack knowing that, for thirty seconds or so, she doesn't have to worry about what's behind her.
In short, it keeps her role as a sprinter, a mobility frame, and an evasion specialist. But it gives her an interaction, an ability that has a specific use and you have to tactically think how to apply it, not a press-this-to-win, never. An actual, balanced ability that gives something to the frame and to a team.
This is my logic, and the logic of dozens of others that have been working on these threads over time.
So tell me then, how does flying make her a better solo frame, or a better team frame, or a better frame in general? Name one thing that she could do with flying that she could do without it apart from hover in mid-air and manuever without using parkour. If you can think of it being able to do any of the things I've listed, helping her with the things she's bad at right now, then please, tell me. Like several others here I've been playing Zephyr since her release back when I joined in 2014 I have hundreds of hours of gameplay on her, she counts for a quarter of my game time, and if you think that flying will make anything she does better than she can already do without flying then please, enlighten us all.
Because I really want to know.
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27 minutes ago, BeardyKyle said:
Not sure I understand what you mean by the forma of warframes. I think his abilities are focus but not executed properly, the mechanics need work and they definitely don't scale well.
The Forma of Warframes; drops from missions at random, gets in the way of more desirable loot on the drop tables, is largely seen as mastery fodder, but well liked for some strange reason.
And currently, no, his abilities aren't actually all that focussed. They're themed well, but the effect in game is too spread out. He's got healing abilities, delayed ones that come nowhere near the healing abilities that Trin has. He has an anti-status ability that's supposed to deal a bit of damage and buff a little armour, but has a small, awkward range that not many players can legitimately stay within and hope to keep the game flowing. He has a direct-damage ability that procs confusion, but the AI largely ignores that confusion proc and attack their original target regardless. And he has a part-CC, part-Damage ability that also has a chance of dropping health orbs, but it takes either a heavy damage build to make it deal heavy damage, or a high efficiency build to make it a decent CC, in either case if a subject survives the ability, there's no chance they drop a health orb, even if you kill them shortly after.
That's what makes him a jack-of-all-trades (what people forget from that phrase is the second part that goes 'master of none'). That's what we'd like to see fixed by making one or two of his abilities focus to one side or the other of their 'balance'. Or by changing the one part of his kit that is, we feel, the most detrimental (hallowed ground) which forces players to huddle up and stay immobile to exploit the good parts of it (which you need to spam the ability over and over to truly benefit from).
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13 hours ago, Xekrin said:
Thoughts? Flames? Suggestions? Insults? Cookies?
Yes. No, no, no. Yes please.
Now, I'd also like to see this, and I can see it making some weapons very interesting in the same way that some under-played weapons we also improved with the Syndicate system.
I have one thought, though, which is a stick in my mental mud. When we had biased weapon stats in plenty, it meant that only a few weapons did get played at all. My example is back before Parkour 2.0 when coptering was a thing we did.
Weapons with high swing speed and with long animation movements were played almost exclusively for movement. The Tipedo was one of the best weapons around, not just because of its rather good stats, but because the copter and, later, the air-lunge system gave us some stupid mobility speed. Likewise the Dual Ichors and Dual Zoren.
DE brought in parkour 2.0 and re-adjusted the travel on spin and air attacks to balance them specifically to encourage you to use the weapons that you couldn't before.
Having specific weapons that boosted specific warframe abilities would either limit some builds to a set play style, or they would negate some of the other abilities. A weapon, for example, that pops Saryn spores, would negate the use of Toxic Lash for most casual players. That's not necessarily what would happen, and many players wouldn't use it in favour of Lash's energy renewal on melee, but it's an example of it being handled poorly.
Like I say, I do want this, the syndicate mods and weapons were a great addition to the game, able to buff stats, deal damage and turn older, sub-par weapons into something a little more valid. The health regen mod for the furis fully enabled the Despoil/Soul Survivor build for Nekros, and the Scattered Justice mod was perfect for turning the Hek into a demon gun. I may prefer the Vaykor Hek now that it's out, but that's a personal preference, not really a gameplay thing.
I just don't think it would work out long term, too much room for enforced limits/exploitation.
But maybe XD If DE thinks it will work.
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Zenurik and going ham with a Nikana Prime? I think an all Vazarin build could be exceptionally survivable on many frames, but there's something special about doing this to Uncle Oberon. Will have to try it XD
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4 hours ago, alergiclaprosti said:
yeah ... you really think DE will care about any of the things you guys say here!?
The concepts for several entire warframes (Zephyr was the original), plus all the existing re-works all came from feedback here. So, yes.
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35 minutes ago, Aquasurge said:
well, there is fairy frame coming soon..............
I thought I said that... the part about 'a whole entire new frame to do the flying thing' refers to that convention panel reveal of the prospective fairy-themed frame where mention was made that she'll 'shrink down, fly around and unleash hell', which, they said, is possible because the original archwing tests were done in the regular tile-sets by shrinking the frames to 0.1 ratio and flying around there. So the coding exists, it's just not applicable to making Zephyr fly due to all the additional work needed to allow the frame to fly at full size and use regular weapons XD
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1 hour ago, (PS4)The_Eristic said:
I'd kinda like her 2 to be something as simple as toggle flight.
I'm going to stop you right there, and please believe me when I tell you that I don't mean any derision or insult by that, but 'simple' is not a word for a flying Zephyr.
Believe me, I tried. I spent weeks talking with a guy who was absolutely convinced that Zephyr could, and should, fly. The answer we came to was this; it can be done, but would involve re-working the base code of how Zephyr plays, putting in the only system they have for flight, the archwing system, adjusting the balance of all weapons that people would use while in flight to allow players to still play the weapons they enjoy (shotgun and beam weapon fall-off or range limits would prevent people from using some of the highest dps types in the game), and most importantly re-animating every melee weapon, and its stance mods, to ensure that they were still viable while in flight. There's also systems like finishers, ground finishers and assassinations that are built into ground-based combat that would need to be included into flying combat too.
It's why they're bringing in a whole entire new frame to do the flying thing, instead of giving it to an existing one. By making it an ability that does fly but under DE's rules, they can control the weaponry or melee or even switch entirely to an ability attack like the Exalted Blade strikes... I don't pretend to know how they'll do it, but it certainly will be different to the way a regular warframe would need to act.
What we worked out between us is that even with flight, Zephyr would still need a basic 'attack' that cc'd opponents at long range to exploit flying fully, and the slow-down of control in the air (since you can't simply walk around a pillar out of line-of-sight) means a lot more enemies can draw a bead on you at range. That's the main reason I proposed an air caster re-work rather than a flight type, because it's been over, it's been processed, and there's no way that DE would put in the amount of effort needed to make Zephyr fly, it simply doesn't fit mechanically.
So... offensive cc power for 2? I support it, really think it would make her a more viable frame to play at a lot of levels, and an AI rework to her Tornado is long, long overdue. Flight... while I'd like it, I just don't think it will ever be done.
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On 5/17/2016 at 7:25 AM, Kaiayi said:
I honestly don't know how DE decides if a new Warframe is good enough to release or not, but I feel like some Warframes can't compete with others. With Mag, I feel like she's only suited for Corpus. Which, in my opinion, should not be the case.
[...]
Now, everyone is like, "Let's fix these frames with reworks!" When in reality, if DE had equalized and made them all more balanced in the first place, they wouldn't have to waste their time to make Volt's shield holdable (although, it does look awesome).
Well here's the thing, young tenno: DE created some of these frames THREE YEARS AGO and other frames got released within the last twelve months.
The game has changed since then, the gameplay has changed, the mechanics have changed, the enemies have changed, the damage types have changed, everything in the game has changed since frames like Mag and Volt were created.
That is why they're getting re-works and the newer frames seem better. New frames are created with the new content in mind, balanced across their own abilities, with at least one ability that affects multiple factions. All frames, however, are themed. Not designed to compete with each other, but to be unique and play differently.
Nerfs happen as band-aids, and a few changes are made to stop abuse and spam [cough-Mesa-cough], but re-works happen because the frame, usually an old frame, has a kit that is actually now out-dated from the constant updates to game content.
Mag is old, her frame was literally designed to take on the Corpus, the same way that Ember was originally designed to take on the Infested. They were released as part of the original 8 warframes and to encourage people to play all of them they made some deliberately imbalanced. Even now warframes are being produced biased to one style of gameplay or another instead of as fully independant, take-on-everything warframes, but more care is being taken to make each frame at least able to attempt every mission.
It's literally to encourage you to take other frames, to go out and look for a different warframe because the one you have can't handle some particular part of the game as well as others.
So when you see that a frame now suffers because two entire thirds of the enemies you face are immune to at least half of the frame's abilities, when there isn't really a reason for them to be... that's when you rework them. Or, more specifically, when you see that a warframe's third ability is literally the least used ability in game, even though she's one of the base starter frames? That's when it needs a re-work.
There are nearly 40 warframes out there, including Primes, this is a game that encourages you to go out and farm them all, level them all, use them all. There will always be some that are more useful than others, but then again there will always be some that are more fun than others.
I can't get on with Rhino, because he's a big, slow tank, while I can play Nezha, because he's a fast, nimble tank, but I'll pick Rhino over him because Rhino works better in a team. Valkyr can go invulnerable, Rhino puts on Iron Skin, Nezha has a Warding Halo, Limbo can phase out of this dimension, Zephyr can dodge bullets with air barriers, all of these are different takes on the same idea, but each frame plays completely differently and fits in with different parts of the game.
If the cost of that much diversity is that some frames are not as practically perfect as others, then so be it. If the cost of a game running for three years and still being playable and interesting to me is that some frames get a rework and others get a nerf? So be it. In fact, all the better, because re-worked frames then play better, play differently and take time to get used to again, need different builds from the ones I haven't changed in 10 months... It makes the game still interesting over time.
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True, the press-4-to-win is a problem, but I think you're looking at it wrong.
Before this rework to Excal, he genuinely was a 4-to-win frame, Radial Javeline as his 4 was an instant-kill and was used on an incredible amount of farming runs to simply kill wave after wave and be topped up by Trinity's Energy Vamp.
Now you press 4 and you have a powerful melee/range mix that you have to actively kill things with. Yes people say it's a little too powerful, with buffs from your melee and a ranged slash that can take down air units or kill from long range, but it's no longer a 'nuke' like it used to be. 'Nuke' abilities aren't fun, not unless you have to build up a combo to pull them off.
Saryn got re-worked because her 4 was a nuke, and Ash is likely to be re-worked the same way. Other frames, though, can't do that, luckily. You mentioned Valkyr, but look at what that does; you can't use any of your own weapons, you're forced to use the claws, you also build up a stock of damage that, if there's any enemy nearby when you run out of energy, can kill you outright. It's quite a risky ability if you don't play it correctly.
The idea that DE is working for is that nukes are not fun, but powerful 4s that have to be balanced in some way (whether that's forcing you to use melee instead of guns, or making you build up a combo of procs like Saryn), those are more fun to play for the most amount of people.
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8 hours ago, RealPandemonium said:
Shields + Guardian worked well enough for most frames before DE jacked up the standard of endgame from level 40 to level 70+. Now nothing works for defense at high levels outside of gimmicks and edge cases. DE needs to get rid of cheesy level 70+ regular content and take another look at resource economy in-mission.
DE upped the level difficulty of end-game because of player feedback stating that, because of the damage output of a large portion of weapons and frames, the combos that frames can create and the current state of enemy scaling, level 40 is simply too easy.
It's expected among most players I've spoken to since I joined that a high-end player can solo an hour of void survival (any level) with the correct build and tactics, and that a squad of 4 can hit level 200-500 enemies before they lose traction. One specific gentleman of my acquaintance says that the first change he'd make to the game, if he could, would be a difficulty slider allowing him to start the missions against level 100 and carry on from there. I'll note that I count myself as upper-end, not high-end, simply because I haven't got the time needed to do that anymore, but I have been on teams and completed 'clan challenges' to those ends in the past.
If you want to get rid of that level of play, then you're going to have to look at a vast, over-arching level of gameplay economy, and gameplay difficulty, because there's a huge, vocal portion of the players that really, really enjoy the challenge of the end-tier gameplay.
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17 minutes ago, OzoneSlayer said:
Did you post this thread 4 times?
Yes, but angry fan is angry ^^
12 hours ago, DarkMutant said:If you have played bird person (aka. Zephyr) in this state you should automatically know why people don't play her anymore.
BECAUSE SHE IS S#&$.
Her kit is a joke and definately needs some changes. (This is my opinion so this might be a S#&$ty post).
You know, you're right? Zephyr hasn't aged well in the last two years. Update 12 back in 2014 was great, but Zephyr's kit hasn't progressed well with the times.
So how's this, fellow Zephyr fan? I've been on about a dozen Zephyr re-work threads over the last couple of months, argued back and forth with all of them to find what ideas people most want versus what is the most logical for DE to implement. I'm fairly convinced of my findings, so I'll put them down here (there's also a re-work thread I posted, I'll link you if you're interested):
Passive. Why does Loki get the longer Latch time on him when Zephyr is really lightweight and has low-gravity anyway? I say make Zephyr's light weight apply to parkour as well, making her latch longer, fall slower in Aim Glide and so on.
Stats. The reason she has such high health and shields is because she's got a measly 15 armour. The trade-off is logical; no heavy armour, much faster frame, has more health to balance out the lack of armour. Wouldn't mind losing 50 max health and shields each to gain a little more energy... having only 150 on a frame that I want to be a caster is terrible. Balancing her off with a rank 30 max of 400 Health/Shields and 200 Energy would be a wonderful trade for me. (For reference, Frost is the only other elemental caster frame that has 150 at max, even Hydroid has 225 energy at max, and my plan is to make Zephyr far more viable as a defensive CC caster.)
1. Tailwind and Divebomb together; tap 1 for jet, hold for bomb. Holding makes you hang for a second while it charges, even if you're tailwinding alread, allows you to release to not bomb if you're over a hole, also to recast tailwind or just land safely somewhere else, great for movement changes.
2. 'Wind Lance'/whatever you want to call it. A single-target CC attack. Low damage, staggers at short range, knocks down at medium and ragdolls at super-long. Also staggers enemies in a small radius from the target, or knocks them down at the same length that ragdoll happens.
3. Turbulence, love it, don't change it. Maybe add some synergy with other abilities, like a casting speed buff to 2 when active.
4. Tornado AI rework! Target cast marks a 'storm zone' where Tornado funnels patrol. Movement speed on funnels is increased, loot is ignored/held in funnels instead of flung everywhere, enemies are launched upwards after being sucked up instead of flung everywhere (really annoying when you're on a survival or exterminate and actually want to kill them, this makes it more fun, they pop up, you shoot them! Or they pop up and fall back into the 'zone' so they can still get sucked up again.), and funnels actively seek out enemies inside the storm zone. Makes the ability an 'area denial' type similar to Tentacle Swarm, Vortex and so on meaning that you can cast it on one place and enemies have to go around, or get thrown about like toys.
Add an active dispel to Tornado, keeping it duration based, but able to be cancelled and re-cast for better CC. Make it synergise with Turbulence by giving it a knock-down on enemies within two meters of Zephyr as long as she's standing in the 'zone', and with her new 2, making it able to 'burst' funnels for wide area knock-down (really useful with the Funnel Clouds augment, which could stagger enemies instead of lifting.)
Zephyr, Air Caster, Defensive CC and Graceful Evasion frame. Do you think that would work for you?
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6 hours ago, 57AV3 said:
My issue with this idea is that a frame with 100 shields would be better than one with 1000 shields because it would take less time to regenerate 100. Idealy in this system you would want to set your system to reach max quick then pop away for invulnerability. Kind of like the Rhino's Iron Skin where at high level you just use it for a 6 second invulnerable buff instead of the ideal shielding it is supposed to be.
6 hours ago, 57AV3 said:I think a better system would be when your shields are actually hit then you have a moment of invulnerability. Then it slows the speed that your shields disperse. The idea being that then your shield can hold up to the kinds of numbers you see in end game. As well it keeps the value in large shields because the "invulnerability" doesn't benefit those that use less shields and actually means something when the game spawns a crowd of bombards.
Remember history has been nothing if not an arms race. The better the weapons the better the armor.
Ah, I really wish I could find that old post because they covered this too.
The idea would be that for frames that can reach high shields, like Mag and Zephyr, there would be shield 'layers'. That a shield technically reaches a max saturation, and you're then applying another shield over the top after that.
This would show up in the UI as shield segments, which could be balanced for more or less actual value of shield, so that up to X value it's one segment and beyond that you've added a second shield and a third. Each segment then has a gate before you take damage to the next, but each shield segment has a gate cooldown in addition to the others.
The balance would be a little more difficult on this because, in theory, you could balance a Redirection mod that bumps you just over into a new segment to provide instant-gating from even lower levels and exploit that. Again, the balance would be a cooldown. While that cooldown is in effect, the next segment to get destroyed won't trigger a gate. This way continuous fire can still steadily strip your shields and it requires three or even four segments to actually exploit multiple gate triggers. The one caveat to that is that the gate still triggers again if the final shield segment is stripped without the gate triggering on the previous two/three segments.
So in practice it would work like this: Player has 400 shields, shield segment splits so the outer shield is 100, inner 300. A sniper shot gates the first section and puts it on cooldown. Continuous fire further damages shield and prevents the outer shield from restoring fully. Cooldown ends and another sniper shot removes the rest of the shields, but this triggers the gate on the inner shield. At least the inner shield must restore fully, or the cooldown end, for another gate to trigger again. If cooldown has ended and outer shield has begun restoring, repeat this process.
Alternatively, sniper shot strips outer shield, gate triggers. Continuous fire strips inner shield before cooldown ends, player then takes health damage.
But! Player has 1110 shields (max with Zephyr and Mag), creates four segments, outermost at 200, inner three at 300 each. Sniper takes shield 1, gate triggers, continuous fire then strips shield 2, 3 and 4 because gate cooldown hasn't ended, gate triggers again regardless of cooldown due to amount of shield segments lost, benefiting high shield modding.
In this scenario, being able to avoid the majority of continuous fire, but being unable to restore shields fully before the cooldown would trigger the gate at the current shield. For example, following the previous numbers, shield 1 triggers gate, fire strips shields 2 and 3. Cooldown ends while restoring shield 3, shield three would then gate under the sniper shot. The disadvantage is that, if it was then shield 3 that gated, continuous fire would then be able to strip shield 4 and move on to health without triggering a second gate if the cooldown didn't end before then.
Again, balance comes by giving the player the chance for two gates, but the cooldown will stop players from just running in Leroy Jenkins style. The additional segments would then give players leeway to escape fire and restore their shields by resisting continuous fire and the random flak from other units.
Fair?
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8 hours ago, (XB1)EntropysAcolyte said:
This is a well articulated rebuttal; generation and immunity need not coincide. However, a rationale compromise does occur to me. I am interested in knowing if you are opposed to passive resistences to said correlated element in relation to the theme of a warframe.
Ergo damage and effect reduction of fire against ember, reduced movement penalties on frost when in contact with ice, ect. Ect. While it may be true that dealing in an element does not make you immune to it entirely, it can grant you experince and expertise in how to cope with its consequences.
Actually I'm against anything in the game that allows a bonus to base resistances without cost. The imbalance of frames, too, would be one of those mitigating factors. Nearly all of the elemental using Grineer use fire and blast damage a couple frost and only one electric (I think), the rest of the units are IPS. While on the other side I know that most Corpus don't use fire and prefer their nullifiers, frost and guardian eximus units. Then there's the Infested with lots of slash damage, but with toxic, corrosive, fire and magnetic proc units.
There's practically none that use radiation, and even those that use magnetic don't proc it unless a melee hit connects... Think of that, Ember would get a huge bonus to resistance while Nova and Oberon would miss out. Meanwhile frames like Mag, which is fairly squishy, would only see their time shine against very specific units where they're out of their element anyway.
But. I'm not against gaining offensive or movement or CC buffs from receiving and dealing damage. That's a legitimate risk/reward strategy and could well be inplemented instead.
Thus I'm fully in on a frame like Ember receiving bonus damage, or cost reductions, if she's actually on fire. Likewise I think she should be able to deal even more damage to enemies while they're on fire. A secondary cast of accellerant should provide an extra burst of damage to on-fire enemies, for example.
Frost should be able to run into a Frost Nullifier bubble and gain something from the drop in temperature too, like an armour bonus for as long as he's slowed, or a cost reduction to his abilities because he just has to make a cold place a little colder instead of freeze a room-temperature area.
Mag being able to receive magnetic damage and add that to her next shot, or ability use, that would be an example.
None of these are my fully-formed, definite, 'I-must-see-these-implemented' ideas, just off the top of my head examples of taking a risk, taking damage, and being able to then return fire.
This, or variants of, would be a gameplay choice for players, a little compensation for taking damage and for matching up your frame to your mission, but not something that would take the actual results of taking that damage away.
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6 minutes ago, hazerddex said:
cooldowns HAVE BEEN tried before but it DID NOT WORK it ruined the fluidity of the game
See? This is exactly it. If there is anything to be done about energy, I believe it's a step backwards. Unless DE can come up with a system that can remove energy as a factor without making cooldowns or regen, then I have no objections to keeping the current system.
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1 hour ago, Evanescent said:
you could just have a mod that increases the time before the shield collapses, kind of like slowing the rate at which the nullifier bubbles collapse. Paired with shield recharge you have a nice alternative for armor for shield heavy frames.
Hmm, yes, while that would do the job, in theory... I mean you take the damage but turn shield damage into a very slight DoT effect where a large impact drains the shields rather than pops them immediately... But that wouldn't stop you taking the damage to health at high level, just extend the time it took for it you kill you, and even with shield recharge you still have the chance that a large-scale proc can still one-shot you.
Sadly, though, it would cost you a mod slot, and at that would either make it useless for some builds, or essential at high level, which is where you can't afford to sacrifice too many slots for certain builds.
As far as I know, DE is looking to move away from 'essential' mods like Serration and Hornet Strike which do a base damage increase and are essential in building a weapon at every level. This could actually reflect onto warframes themselves, finding a way to remove Vitality and Redirection too... so introducing yet another 'essential' mod is something we should probably avoid.
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55 minutes ago, BlackCoMerc said:
One other suggestion: No Bleed Procs while Shields are intact. It makes ZERO sense, that a projectile can cause a bleeding wound THROUGH shields. None.
Fear of bleed procs could be a reason to run some shielding, since wounds can occur due to the slightest gap in armor, but not through intact shielding.
Unfortunately this is something I can't agree with, for one simple reason; all other procs can occur through shields while some damage can bypass them. If you can suffer an impact or blast proc, a fire, cold, toxin or electric one, why should any of the other damage types be blocked?
What I'm getting at is simply this; if no slash proc can get through, then why should an impact or puncture? Which then simply means that IPS damage is all prevented entirely by shields and only elemental procs (and of those only Toxin can deal direct damage) can affect you as long as the shield gate is in place. This becomes a problem for a very simple reason: that kind of immunity can't come without a price.
If you're going to put something sensible, but legitimately basic-survival-chance enhancing and balanced, like gating, into the game that would be good. But if you're going to put in proc immunity, that's got to cost something. You'd have to make something else take effect to counter that immunity, like having a class of enemy in every faction dedicated to removing your shields for other enemies to attack your health. An enemy, for example, that has a high-proc magnetic damage weapon to counter the fact that your shields are now way more powerful at base than they were before.
Balance fixing is good, which is why I support shield gating to prevent the arbitrary one-shot mechanic, but a solid immunity buff with nothing to balance it is bad game design.
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An even crazier idea has been circulating more recently, but one that with the right balance could help with exactly what you're worried about: Shield Gating.
Basically the final damage to a shield pops it, and there is a tiny sliver of time where you're actually invulnerable. The animation for your shield going down colours your warframe red already, the duration of that effect would be enough.
Why? Because of exactly what you've said; take a thousand damage to your shield of only five hundred, you're immediately taking the rest as health damage. Shields should not be a rechargable 'topper' to your health pool.
How can that be balanced? It goes on a cool-down, so your shield must either fully recharge normally, or wait for a certain amount of seconds before the gate function is triggered again (a shield restore pad or a mag SP should not keep you invulnerable, just harder to kill). The idea is to prevent one-shots, not to negate continuous damage like a heavy gunner attack.
This should make shield recharge mods and knock-down recovery mods far more viable choices as a bombard rocket would blitz your shield, knock you down, but if you can be up on your feet again in that one-second window you can escape with parkour, meaning that your shield recharge mod can bring you back to full shield and reset your gate again faster.
On the downside, continuous damage from beam weapons, infested auras and hitscan machine guns is still just as dangerous, triggering your gate and, if you don't evade fast enough, you start taking regular health damage as normal.
Of course, for fairness on some frames, the time limit can over-ride the full recharge, if you survive with just your health for ten seconds or so, the next sliver of shield you restore will allow you to activate the shield gate again.
That is, as best I can recall, the gist of it. A system to prevent scaled-up enemies at high level one-shotting you instantly, but still being a threat if you don't make use of the mechanic.
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44 minutes ago, Ibro156 said:
Great piece of art. How long did it take?
Thanks! It took me a couple of hours per drawing over the last few days, I usually sketch and finalise the lineart quite fast and colour slow, but I took a little more time because I didn't have a fixed 'this is what Zephyr looks like' in my head until near the end.
Most of the work was figuring out how to translate the mechanical parts into cloth for her outfit XD
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Well, apart from me?
I have huge amounts of fun playing my bird-frame, and I think she needs a little more love, so... here:
Spoiler
But this is my head, what about everybody else?! The more love for the bird-frame, the better!
Post up any of your own Zephyr art here, with special admiration going out to human versions, I know you have it!
PLS BUFF BIRD PERSON!!
in Warframes
Posted
Thank you for agreeing with me, I tried to point this out too, but obviously I wasn't clear.
I feel I have to ask though, since I'm not sure from your comments, if you like or dislike the other parts of my ideas? I really like your point about the momentum/distance build up, it sounds a lot like the Volt static build up for his new passive, and I think it could really add something of a scaling ability in those sprint-to-finish missions like Capture. But the actual button mechanic I'd use is actually very similar, just a little different; tap like normal to tailwind, but a held (with a small charge) would stop you in mid-air for a bomb at the max. This, I think, would be really intuitive for newer players, and would play into the charge-up function you mentioned by factoring both your height and the amount of air-time you've had before it as a bonus.
Yes, I can see Esorono's point about it not being exactly instant anymore, but you'd be able to re-cast tailwind with the tap as normal or cancel out of momentum at any time with a fractionally longer press and re-aim for a tailwind or a parkour move at will. All you'd have to do is add in a wall recovery function to stop Tailwind from fire-working against a wall, as added mobility, and you've got an improved version of the original abilities without losing anything more than a half-second on the deploy.
As for the guided Tailwind ability... somebody did, in fact, suggest a very slight degree of control would be helpful. If they don't put in a wall-recovery, being able to angle Tailwind with the cross-hairs, angle, not steer, would allow people to not hit the edge of doorways and instead actually go through them.
Okay, I'll take that one on the chin, let's see what we can do with two minds.
The reason I put it as a CC ability is to not make it over-powered and, more importantly, to not give her an ability that does a fixed amount of damage that will drop off once you hit higher levels. I always dislike abilities that have a fixed damage if that's all they do. A fixed damage ability will easily run out of traction, while ones that proc or cc will not. The original version I talked about with others had a forced puncture proc, or slash. The next was a unique-animation cc, where it leaves enemies spinning in place, dizzy, and forces a and confusion proc for standard duration once the animation ends, unlike Oberon's rad proc on Smite, this would force a re-target too so it would be a little more useful at single-target CC.
Any ideas on those? Moving on, because I agree with you on some other points.
Unlike many I do play Banshee, and I love the close-range CC of Sonic Boom, considering that her 4th fixes her in place it's a welcome addition. In case there's no pits available I run a Covert Lethality mod when I'm not levelling something, which is basically the same thing, instant death to any knock-downs. But as you can see I didn't want to impinge on her by making Zephyr do the same thing, and that's why I did the scaling of stagger to knock-down to ragdoll over the range. A stagger at close range, with a one-hand cast so it doesn't interrupt reloads, is useful in all kinds of situations, not the least of which when running something like the Sancti Tigris, where the reload being interrupted costs you quite a bit of time, but giving it the easy potential for a knock-down at mid-range can allow assassination of larger enemies, and ragdoll at long range can be
You do make a very good point about Inaros, though. Considering he's approaching a Zephyr ability from the other side, throwing sand into the form of a whirlwind rather than the wind moving the sand, this should work both ways: Adding some physical damage into the knock-down and ragdoll stage would be a solid addition, especially for lower level runs where having an ability that can just eliminate a target is actually more useful than firing your gun. Also giving it finisher damage for the third stage is definitely something that would make it worth casting for more than the CC and encourage people to keep an enemy at range. Or at least give her that single viable alternative to gun-play.
My original point, though, was that Zephyr doesn't really need damage. A lot of people agreed with that too; they and I believe that putting damage onto a frame that's all about mobility and evasion would be breaking the theme too much, while on the other hand, if she can summon wind strong enough to deflect a bullet, why can't she knock away an enemy?
But either way, what about my idea for the AI rework on Tornado? Did you like it?
You agreed with my reasons for changing it, but how about this:
By making it a zone limited ability, rather than a free-roaming one, you can then make the funnels actually useful, adjust the AI for better performance. They can free-roam within confines, pick up enemies, collect loot (not spray it around) and actively seek out mobs at a faster speed than they move now. Having them free-roam across the map is what made DE limit how much they could do, making it a chaos-causing ability that flings things everywhere rather than a concentrated CC ability.
And instead of the random flings, or even holding them, launching them straight up a little way so the funnel then moves out from under them, letting them ragdoll, recover and then be picked up by another funnel, would be outright hilarious. I can see a whole team just lined up taking pot-shots at them as they launch, it was fun enough when we tried it with the existing Tornado set-up, even if we had to keep running off to find the enemies we missed, so just think of the fun we could have with it under the pop-up version XD That and a lower-range cast would provide point-defense on an area, like an Interception node, preventing it from being taken while you're busy doing something else. More importantly, having a release function would stop enemies from being pinned to the ceiling in confined spaces, the way they are now. It would ensure they actually fell and got picked up again rather then jiggling in the roof.
The other thing would be to give it an active dispel. Keep it a duration-based ability, keeping the cost consistent, but have us be able to cancel it and re-deploy it if we made a mistake, or if we needed to switch target areas for emergency.
The reason I like this is the new options for synergy with other abilities, like removing the lowest range limit from lance, so it always knocks down or ragdolls enemies as long as you're casting from inside the 'zone', and even making Turbulence do more, reflecting rather than just blocking damage.
I really like the idea of the Funnel Clouds augment having an additional interaction with Lance, allowing you to detonate the funnels you target to have them do explosive ragdolls on enemies close to them, rather than just damage, opening them up to finishers or launching them off cliffs. That and leaving one, tiny-nado wandering around for the rest of the duration would be adorable...
What do you think?