Dev Workshop: Nezha Revisited

[AuroraSonicBoom]

Brings a tear to my eye. The admiral would be proud. RIP

[xcenic]

1 minute ago, AuroraSonicBoom said:

Brings a tear to my eye. The admiral would be proud. RIP

They put him a BIG PEN in the new skin now.

[Duality52]

2 hours ago, Voltage said:

This change makes absolutely no sense and feels like forced synergy much like Atlas. Reducing the damage reduction from the Halo will be quite awful for Sortie rescue missions. This change does not open modding and/or Arcane avenues. Arcane Pulse will not see any real use as Guardian and Energize are already being used. While I understand more options are nice, Equilibrium will most definitely be worthless here. Health orbs are a niche that really only function for Nekros. Oberon and Well of Life Trinity cannot even use health orbs effectively.

If you want to achieve synergy between abilities, do not force it on the player. Atlas is a clunky mess because of this trend. I would rather see Halo have 100% damage reduction. Nezha is a fast caster, not a healer. He is also not a tank. Halo was already worse than Iron Skin, and now it is further lowered in effectiveness.

Gara has a similar mechanic (Splinter Storm), and she's fine with it. Nezha should be no different. 

1 hour ago, Voltage said:

The Arcane Guardian plus Arcane Energize combo is the superior choice. I don't see any reason to slot something like Arcane Pulse on a Warframe who is designed as a fast caster, not a healer/tank. If I want to heal players and myself, I will choose Trinity or Oberon. Given Firewalker is becoming duration based, there is no need to slot mods like Rage/Hunter Adrenaline.

I feel Nezha is being given the Atlas treatment: Forced synergy and clunky mechanics. I am still hopeful that feedback is discussed between developers and Nezha comes out better. As these changes stand, I only see an improved Firewalker, a mediocre Chakram, nerfed Halos, and the same Divine Spears.

You shouldn't expect everyone to have these two Arcanes, fully ranked especially. Chakram is likely to be used more often with the Energy Orbs spawning, and who says no to that? If you call the revisit "mediocre", "nerfed", or even the same, then you continue to compare Nezha to Rhino.

Point of this revisit is to not only improve Nezha's kit, but add more of a differentiation between Rhino and Nezha, who is claimed to be a "worse" Rhino.

 

[Firetrucksrule]

I've got some concerns about the mechanics of warding halo. You get to end game, you hit 3, it's down in one shot easy. That was fine when it offered 100% damage resistance. If you're going to nerf it to 90% (because let's be real, on that specific ability you proposed a nerf) then you should change it to a duration based ability. Still apply the health bar you're proposing to Rhino's Iron Skin because that's a seriously great idea.

I think a lot of people are going to exaggerate how helpful health orb spawns will be. Just because Nezha can spawn health orbs doesn't mean health conversion will work on him. Trinity and Oberon don't work well with health conversion because they don't have a safe and easy way to lose health without spending charges. Nekros isn't good with Health Conversion because of his Desecrate, he's good because of the augment Despoil safely draining his health. Nezha isn't going to have a safe way to apply self damage that won't affect the charges so HC won't work well on him even with this change.

Love the suggested synergy because Spears and Chakram but that brings up an issue. When you're in the void, ancients basically just destroy your spears. In my experience most hard CCs aren't so overtly blocked by ancients, assuming this hasn't changed since the last time I played Nezha any chance of looking into that?

Either way I think there's some changes that should be made but I really like what I see so far. Sue me but Nezha is the worst Warframe in the game, I think that statement might need to be changed to past tense soon though. Looking forward to seeing what comes of this. Trust in Pablo!

[(PSN)Jedi_Arts_]

It's pretty good, but he really needs a fix to his Divine Spears as they relate to Ancient Healers. When they are around buffing other enemies, only the healers will take the CC leaving all other enemies unaffected. The CC should apply consistently.

[Dvvolf]

New changes look great. My only problem is that his role as a support/protector seems a bit weaker. His heal wasn't needed since we could just shield the whole party. What I wanted to see is an ability to sustain his shields. Instead of healing give us an ability to heal his rings. Imagine shielding whole party and lures against eidolons and throwing your blazing chakram at eidolon parts to keep shields alive. I thought it would be a good alternative to Trinity. If his heal is limited to killing small mobs he isn't going to be that useful in eidolon fights and making his shields block only 90% of damage makes him even less useful then he is now. Sorry I might be focusing on eidolons too much but these fights are kind of fun to do.

[Volkovyi]

Thank you for taking our words of consideration! I think it means a lot to smooth out his animations and allow Nezha to be constantly moving, after all that is his design and having several abilities that constantly break his movement is frustrating! Do go forward!

[Guest]

Read the first two skills rework/buff, they sound good, almost too good. Then I read Warding Halo nerf...

Overall, these changes are very good. Trap boi won't be one of the forgotten frames with no role anymore.

[Szaeravar]

How will the Safeguard augment works? If the "50% effectiveness" means the Halo only absorbs 45% of damage for the player, that'll be a HUGE nerf (90% absorb lets the player take 10x as many hits; 45% absorb lets the player take almost 2x as many hits). 

Please either make it 90% absorption with half the health pool on the Halo for allies, or 80% Absorption with full health pool on the Halo. Either will be 50% effectiveness.

[PoisonHD]

As a Nezha main since release, I can't wait for these. I use Gara a ton as well, and that 90% damage reduction is extremely powerful, and will open up many more arcane options and builds for him.

[xRufus7x]

49 minutes ago, Voltage said:

The Arcane Guardian plus Arcane Energize combo is the superior choice.

Nezha doesn't channel anymore meaning he can easily get by off of Zenurick's passive for orb pickups or just run Rag freeing up an arcane slot. His energy demands don't really require the most expensive arcane in the game.

52 minutes ago, Voltage said:

 I don't see any reason to slot something like Arcane Pulse on a Warframe who is designed as a fast caster, not a healer/tank.

He has always had a healing mechanic in his kit, just that before now it generally wasn't worth using. Also because now he can be a healer/tank/fast caster which is decidedly better than just being a fast caster. And if you don't want to run Pulse there are certainly a lot of other good options available that can take advantage of these changes.

1 hour ago, Voltage said:

 Given Firewalker is becoming duration based, there is no need to slot mods like Rage/Hunter Adrenaline. 

 

There are a lot of combos that start with Rage/Hunter Adrenaline that any frame that can achieve high levels of damage resistance can use. It is certainly better to have the option than not.

1 hour ago, Voltage said:

I feel Nezha is being given the Atlas treatment: Forced synergy and clunky mechanics.

All of these abilities stand on their own. None of them require each other to be useful. The synergies that are here just give minor bonuses.That is the opposite of forced and these changes will make him considerably less clunky to play and all of these mechanics look pretty straight forward. Only real question is will Chakram actually hit stuff now. From the video, seems like a yes.

 

 

[Syasob]

Been a big Nezha fan myself some time ago and all this changes really sound great compared to his previous kit. May be I'll get him back from the shelve.

Still a bit worried about new Halo. Raising his health to, for example, 150 base (450 at lvl30) and making Halo recastable when it reaches 25% of base value should make him a bit more reliable tank and support.

[NaharaEriclea]

I'm very excited for these changes and they seem like they'd be something that would absolutely encourage me to play Nezha more.

I also hope that some of the changes to Warding Halo get applied to Rhino's Iron Skin as well, as Rhino (though fun) is starting to look and feel a bit old compared to something like this. The invulnerability phases at cast and after expiration is incredible, and if you could probably incorporate the damage and puncture proc from Iron Shrapnel into it like the fire proc of the new Warding Halo.

[(PSN)CrysJaL]

I love all of these changes. But there is one I would definitely like to see. Nezha's ultimate is still very much akin to a rhino stomp. It's a great ability but hampered significantly by the low range and superior build options available. Nezha previously was designed with maneueverability in mind and to an extent still is. I'd like to see the blazing spears appear as a channelled or duration based ability with spears being produced at intervals not unlike how World on fire does now. As an ability it makes a great deal more sense in my mind for it to operate that way, encouraging Nezha to move around to proc the ability on a large number of enemies, as opposed to jumping amongst them then casting. Nezha should be all about movement and darting in and out of combat. 

[Isis_ChanTM]

2 minutes ago, Dvvolf said:

New changes look great. My only problem is that his role as a support/protector seems a bit weaker. His heal wasn't needed since we could just shield the whole party. What I wanted to see is an ability to sustain his shields. Instead of healing give us an ability to heal his rings. Imagine shielding whole party and lures against eidolons and throwing your blazing chakram at eidolon parts to keep shields alive. I thought it would be a good alternative to Trinity. If his heal is limited to killing small mobs he isn't going to be that useful in eidolon fights and making his shields block only 90% of damage makes him even less useful then he is now. Sorry I might be focusing on eidolons too much but these fights are kind of fun to do.

Even outside of editions being able to keep up ring HP would be something I would love to see, and it seems almost necessary in this iteration of the rework.

[bbwb]

I was all getting excited to post my idea about reintroducing Nezha's sash (Armillary Sash from lore*) but not sure I even care to post a thread on it now, these changes all sound great and solve all the concerns I had with him. SO I guess I'm actually sure, I'm satisfied lol.

Small question on Pyroclastic Flow (fire walker Augment), because fire walker is now a duration based spell (and one could boost that duration with mods) will there be a way to end fire walker prematurely if one desired to trigger the flow now rather than perhaps much (lol) later? I guess similarly (augment issues) I assume the chakram augment will drop more orbs rather than heal more or something like that. 

Not really in the cards of a rework but for divine spears an augment that may be interesting is for each enemy that dies a new spear is called forth (using remaining duration of the ability itself for spear life).

Anyway, enjoyed reading 😄

Finally an aside, please send Wukong love ... ❤️.

 

*Could still make a Syndana inspired from Nezha's Sash though~!

[JeyciKon]

it actually looks amazing, but with all these reworks there is one think i would like to be implemented: the ability to set key bindings for each warframe ability individually, i usually use scroll-down to cast quick abilities wich are usually the 1º hability of each warframe, but in many warframes i would love to swap some around, in this case use scroll-down to cast BLAZING CHAKRAM instead of FIRE WALKER.

[adelante1981]

Extremely disappointed by the healing changes on Blazing Chakram.  Instead of increasing the range and reducing the healing slightly to compensate, you've made it so it heals far, far less (unless it drops a butt-load of health orbs).   

[Jamez-san]

Woah, my fiance will be thrilled, she was just expecting a skin. This new Nezha actually looks like a blast and very fun. (Psst, Pablo, since you're going over frames and making them better, see if you can get me my Dragon back, i dont need the dmg, just the tankiness back)

[Omega-Shadowblade]

1 minute ago, adelante1981 said:

Extremely disappointed by the healing changes on Blazing Chakram.  Instead of increasing the range and reducing the healing slightly to compensate, you've made it so it heals far, far less (unless it drops a butt-load of health orbs).   

They can make it so that while using the same prefab the value is different. Like 25 vs 50 energy orbs. I too hope they make a special value one to keep the ability up. 

[LULAWS]

It all looks pretty good in paper, except for his Chakram. Albeit invisible and awkwardly small, the healing pulse was much bulkier than a simple health orb (225, affected by Ability Strength). Whenever I needed healing, for any reason, I'd just tag an enemy, get close and finish them off.
Why not just take a look at the total healing per target and buff the range (200 healing and 12m sounds fair)? Considering he's going to be buffing damage dealt to enemies, he could get value out of it in a much more practical manner, with no need to sniff on his enemies' behinds waiting for a healing pulse or running over their corpses to get health orbs.
The benefits to getting health orbs would be limited to very specific builds, with Equilibrium and/or Health Conversion, while making actually keeping his health up a lot harder than most frames with healing. The way it is described, it's just a nerfed version of Trinity's Pool of Life augment, which is really not that practical outside of very specific situations.

Maybe even making his chakram being affected by melee mods to streamline him a bit more with other warframes that have dedicated non-exalted weapons (Atlas' fists, Khora's whipclaw, Gara's Shattered Lash etc.), which could also give him more potential to dish out damage which also adds to his own survivability, considering how it works.
I can see this becoming a good and reliable way to damage groups, heal teammates and prime stronger targets, especially with his Reaping Chakram augment.

[Lior55]

Can Ne Zha get an exalted Polearm as an augment possibly as well? The same way Ivara has an augment mod that puts all of her arrows into 1. He could do the same to create his Divine Spear from lore?

When he uses his 2 with his Divine Spear, he throws his spear with immense force. He can press 2 again to teleport to the location of the spear. He would get his own unique stance that allows him to attack rapidly while fading in and out between slashes. Idk.

This way you'd have the choice to have his ult for CC or damage. It's always good to enable more diversity! It's not an impossible idea DE!

It's odd that his ult's damage is so poor (less than Reckoning). I get that it's suppose to be CC focused which is why having another option for it would be nice.

[Wolfdoggie]

Thank you for giving him some love. He is my favorite Warframe. 🙂

Spoiler

I been waiting so long. c.c

The changes look nice so far till I try them myself. I was actually frustrated he couldn't make use of the Quick Thinking build with how Halo worked (and couldnt be recasted easily in battle to be fully reliable) to make perma-firewalker easier. Considering that, the 90% reduction change + increased health and reduced shield sound great to me. 

Does throwing his Chakram lock-on and seek enemies like Ash's Shurikens? It looks more reliable now as it bounced off nearby surfaces and missed often for me.

Fire Walker channeling change is absolutely fantastic, and so are the healing and energy orbs. 😄

I did want some type of damage scaling on him for high level enemies though but I guess you're still aiming for support frame only? ;o

As others mentioned it'd be amazing if his 2 scaled off melee weapon.

 

[Msiah]

I am pleased with your performance 👍🏽👌🏽

[Isis_ChanTM]

1 hour ago, Brink314 said:

That's not true. If you use Nezha just for his 3 then sure, it's a nerf. All together however, his kit has become much stronger, and his 2 augment is definitely worth looking at with the targeting changes on it to make it less clunky, and it's overall effectiveness as an ability skyrocketing with the buffs. Also, the shield giving you an invuln phase when it breaks down is incredibly good for nezha. His new 3 is definitely better than his current one.

Yes, his 3 is the only decent ability in his kit, And I will say this as he is my most played frame by a good 100 hours

The 2 heal would be amazing if it hadn't gotten nerfed by 10x (1 health orb vs 225 HP) 

His 3 would be good if they hadn't nerfed it so it still had HP, making it effectively worthless for tanking anything 

His 4 still retains all the weaknesses of being unusable if there are any ancients within radius of the initial cast.

You cannot heal objectives anymore

How exactly does this constitute a buff, even if the QOL if using the nerfed abilities has gotten better?