Vauban, The Forgotten and Forlorn (Rework)

[(PSN)thefallenloser]

Yo-ho, Tenno!

Oh Vauban, once our king of CC and now many's king of dust collecting. Vauban is in dire need for a rework though DE has said that it won't be for a while (even though a true rework should've came with his deluxe skin). So, while DE's working on the other Frame's I'll give my suggestions on Vauban.

I had two goals when thinking up this rework suggestion: 

• make his abilities less redundant
• give his abilities more synergies
• give him a more dynamic playstyle
• give him better augments so they don't work against each other
• give him a jack-of-all-trades feel

Now that we've established intentions, let's jump in.

______

Attribute Changes:

• increase Vauban's max rank shields to 300
• increase Vauban Prime's max rank shields to 350
• increase Vauban Prime's sprint speed to 1.10
• increase Vauban Prime's energy capacity to 250

Why the changes? Vauban's average sprint speed didn't seem to fit a Frame who's always on his feet in higher levels. The extra shields boost was to ensure Vauban isn't too frail. Since Vauban is also really ability-reliant, I figured adding extra capacity to his energy would be good.

Vauban's current Passive is fine, but has no personality. He's an engineer, let's make it engineer-like.

Passive - Consolidation

For each active grenade that is on the field, the duration of them will all increase by 3%.

1ST - Ingen

Woah, different first ability. Well, this ability is what'll give Vauban more of a supportive role.

Ingen is gonna' work somewhat like Khora's Venari, except it's a Sentinel.

Ingen's Attributes:

• 150 Health
• 300 Shields
• 100 Armor
• 100 Power

Ingen will also be equipped with the Influx weapon; a grenade shooter that deals magnetic and radiation damage.

Influx Attributes:

• Noise - Alarming
• Fire Rate - 5.0
• Accuracy - 25.0
• Magazine - 20
• Recharge Time - 2.0
• Total Damage - 100
  • 50 Radiation, 50 Magnetic
• Critical Chance - 1%
• Critical Multiplier - 1.5x
• Status Chance - 29%

Ingen has two functions, boosting shields and boosting armor.

• INVIGORATE -
  • On cast, Ingen releases an invigorating pulse of energy, expanding 25 meters (affected by range) over 2 seconds. When allies come into contact with the pulse, they will receive 150 armor (affected by strength) for 25 seconds (affected by duration). When the duration ends, armor will decay by 5% per second.
  • Additionally, Ingen will give 50% damage to all allies' weapons.
• MAINTENANCE -
  • On cast, Ingen releases a fortifying pulse of energy, expanding 25 meters (affected by range) over 2 seconds. When allies come into contact with the pulse, they will receive 300 (over)shields (affected by strength).
  • Additionally, Ingen will restore ammo to all allies' weapons.

I hope that this could turn Vauban into more of a team player, trading in some of his (overused) CC in exchange for support and damage.

2ND - Minelayer

I removed Trip Laser, Bounce, and Concuss and replaced them with altered versions of Tesla and Vortex.

• TESLA -
  • removed...
    • charge feature
    • duration
  • reduced...
    • range to 10 meters
    • charge delay to 1.5 seconds
    • amount of charges to 5 (affected by power strength)
  • when initially thrown, any enemies within 5 meters of the Tesla grenade will take 100 Blast damage and be knocked down
  • Tesla now shocks all enemies within 10 meters (affected by power range)
  • increased damage to 200 Electricity (affected by power strength)
  • 75% status chance (affected by power strength)
  • can only deploy 3 at a time
• CONCUSS -
  • removed
    • duration
  • when initially thrown, any enemies within 5 meters of the Concuss grenade will take 250 Blast damage and be knocked down
  • Concuss now has 4 charges that will send out a pulse of Magnetic and Radiation, which will stun enemies within 10 meters for 10 seconds every 5 seconds
  • increased status chance to 100%
  • can deploy 3 at a time 
• SHRED -
  • reduced...
    • range to 5 meters
  • when initially thrown, any enemies within 5 meters of the Shred grenade will take 500 Blast damage (affected by power strength) and be knocked down
    • additionally, enemies will have their armor permanently reduced by 50%
  • all enemies within 5 meters of the grenade will have their armor reduced by 5% per second (affected by power strength)
    • the armor will be reduced for 5 seconds (affected by power duration)
  • can only deploy 3 at a time

Synergies - 

• CONCUSS - stores 5% of shields drained by enemies for additional armor in 1st ability
• SHRED - stores 2% of armor drained by enemies for additional armor in 1st ability

I know this is one ability less than the original Minelayer, but I hope that the increased usefulness of these abilities can make up for having one less ability.

3RD - Bastille

I had some internal conflict on whether or not Bastille should stay, but I stuck to yes. Adding some team support capabilities should be a good addition.

• can only deploy 1 Bastille field at a time
• increased base range to 20 meters (affected by range)
• Bastille works as it currently does, with the addition of any allies standing inside the Bastille field gaining additional Radiation damage
• Bastille also has a chance to redirect gunfire
• Bastille's enemy limit has been increased to 20
  • enemies that contact Bastille after the enemy limit has been reached will be slowed by 50% and be afflicted with Radiation

Now Vauban's Bastille has some team support capabilities while maintaining the crowd control. Raising the limit and allowing enemies to be slowed down should also mostly solve the problem with Bastille not affecting enough enemies without making it too powerful.

4TH - eXAlTEd TurReT

4TH - Vortex

Instead of removing Vortex and replacing it with a turret, how about making Vortex more versatile, while also giving it synergy with Bastille.

• Vauban throws 3 grenades straight up into the air. When they fall back down, they open up and become three Vortexes. These can now move, and will also bounce off of surfaces (similar to Mirage's Prism).
  • increased base duration to 20 seconds
  • movement speed = 5 meters per second
  • increased damage per tick to 175
  • When the ability ends, each Vortex will explode, dealing 30% of its total damage in a 12 meter radius.

Synergies -

• When cast inside Bastille's radius, the Bastille will gain 50% of the attraction range of Vortex and 50% of its damage.

Vortex now has much more versatility, being able to move to pull in more potential enemies, and also gaining a bit of damage. The synergies with Bastille should also resolve the problem of the abilities conflicting with each other in concept.

With such changes to Vauban's abilities, he should have some changes to a few of his Augments.

Augment Changes -

Ingen - Since Ingen is a new ability, I won't discuss an Augment for it.

Minelayer - Minelayer currently does not have an Augment, however, since Tesla was added to Minelayer and does have an Augment, we'll take a look at it, Tesla actively works against Tesla Link, shocking enemies before they could even pass through the link, not to mention that the Augment isn't worth it to begin with seeing as the damage is so low. For a change, how about allowing Tesla to use all of its charges at once? This could be good for quick high damage to a lightly armored crowd. For Shred, how about removing the temporary armor drain for an extra 15% permanent drain, and allowing Vauban to deal 2x damage to all enemies affected by Shred. Since Vauban has more sources for damage in this rework, this could be great for dispatching targets who were previously highly armored after you use Shred on them. For Concuss, something like enemies dealing double damage to others when under the effects of Radiation would be pretty nice.

Bastille - Since there is no real need for Repelling Bastille anymore (not that it was reliable anyways), an Augment change will work here. Something like each enemy held restoring shields for allies inside the Bastille field would be pretty cool.

Vortex - The Augment makes fundamentally zero sense. Why would you ever waste a mod slot on something that allows you to waste energy by being able to cast an ability into another of the same ability to increase the duration by a fraction of the base duration for 100% of the energy cost?! Hello...? Just cast the same ability next to it and you don't get ripped off. Vortex also works differently now so there's no need for it. How about something like allowing Ingen to pick up a Vortex, which would really help because the Sentinel would already be tracking enemies and can move much faster than Vortex.

TL;DR -

• Increased Attributes for Vauban and Vauban Prime
• Gave Vauban a new first ability. Personal Sentinel similar to Khora's Venari that supports and shoots grenades.
• Assimilated Tesla to Minelayer. Buffed Tesla, Concuss, and Shred. Removed Trip Laser and Bounce. Added synergy with 1st ability.
• Bastille can only have one active at a time. Gives additional Radiation damage. Bastille has a chance to reflect gunfire. Range and enemy limit increased. Can slow enemies after limit is reached.
• Deploys 3 Vortexes at a time. Damage increased and Vortexes move similarly to MIrage's Prism. Increased duration. Vortex explodes when it ends.
• Gave better Augments for Tesla, Bastille, and Vortex.

_____

But what do you think of these changes? Would these make Vauban much better? Are these enough for giving him more than one role? Leave you thoughts below...

Edited October 18, 2018 by (PS4)ArtPrince17
(Reverted 4th Ability to Vortex, Added Concuss Back To Minelayer, Changed Proposed Augments // 10.17.2018)

[Aetrion]

Replacing a warframe with a completely different warframe isn't a rework.

[Littlemike137]

But can you think of any way to bring Vauban back into use without giving him a total overhaul, at least of the memes that are his first two abilities?  If not then maybe don't criticize others who try to help.

[Aetrion]

There have been tons of threads on it. 

Tesla: Make it briefly hold/stun enemies it hits. Maybe add the 50% Armor reduction to Tesla, and make it permanent, so funneling enemies through a Tesla Trap genuinely makes them easier to kill. Damage from abilities scaling poorly and always either being a one shot kill or not even worth mentioning is a general problem in Warframe, so that's not something that can be adressed in a Vauban rework, it has to be a game wide initiative to make ability damage more reasonable across the board.

Minelayer:  If I had free reign to design a mine that was actually useful for this slot it would be a small bubble/pillar of electricity that absorbs fire akin to a snowglobe (but has a life span instead of a hit bar), and when an enemy enters this area it collapses in on them, crushing them for a percentage of the damage it absorbed (including damage piled on it by players). That way you'd have a very powerful mine, combined with a good defense against ranged enemies which Vauban lacks, as well as a strong synergistic ability that your other team members can work off by either hiding inside or firing on it to boost its collapse damage. You wouldn't need any other mines, and jump pads are also really not a great use of energy now that we have bullet jumps. 

Bastille: Generally agreed upon to be a rock solid ability that needs no changes, maybe remove the enemy limit because it seems unnecessary given that this has a discrete area instead of practically shutting down the whole level like some other frames.

Vortex: Make it move forward in the direction you cast it in at a walking pace instead of just falling on the ground, if it hits a wall it sticks there, augment to make it rebound. It immediately changes from a redundant area denial tool into a powerful long range attack that you can use to breach heavy enemy formations, bombard locations in open world play, clear hallways etc. 

 

You don't need to change the entire frame into something completely different to make it a great warframe. The only ability I think needs to be scrapped and replaced with something different is Minelayer because that's just a stupid ability to begin with that was only added precisely because during the first rework nobody could agree on what it should be so they just made it a grab bag of ideas except none of it is useful. Tesla is already a kind of mine, we don't need a bunch of other mines as well, and jump pads are totally worthless anyways ever since bullet jumps and glides are a thing. What Vauban really lacks is a useful ability create a defense against ranged enemies, so that's why I'd create the crush-bubble mine that is a combination of a shield and a mine.

[nokinoks]

If they made booben so that his skills worked with Ancients then I'm fine. But his 4 not working with Ancients is just immensely S#&$ty. He has one job, defense, and he can't even do that properly.

[(PSN)thefallenloser]

Hey @Aetrion. I see where you're coming from. But I felt as though conceptually, Minelayer had some potential, so I opted to keep Minelayer and throw in Tesla to make way for a new first. Maybe two new abilities was pushing it, so I added back Vortex as a stand alone ability with a take on what you said while also adding some synergy with Bastille, which has been a problem for quite a few people. Excalibur and Limbo both got new abilities with their reworks so I felt as though this was okay. I've revised the original post, so check it out!

Also yeah, as @Littlemike137 said, first post you made wasn't really helpful.

[Aetrion]

Vauban is my favorite frame despite it's current lackluster state and I find it annoying when people make "reworks" that are basically just a completely different frame. So, sorry, but it's threads like this that aren't helpful. This simply isn't a discussion about the problems with the frame and how they can be fixed, it's just using the broken state of something as a vehicle for something completely different. I have nothing against your ideas, they just shouldn't be put forth as a replacement to a Warframe that has distinct and identifiable problems that can be fixed without changing everything about it.

There is simply a rule about all abilities in Warframe: In order for an ability to be useful it needs to either increase the speed at which you can kill enemies, or extend the time you can survive against them. Every single ability has to pass this test to be useful. The issue with Tesla and Minelayer is that they just flat out don't pass this test. They don't deal enough damage to be faster than just shooting the enemies when you consider the time it takes to plant the traps and wait for enemies to walk into them, and their defensive power is not only low, but also totally irrelevant on this frame since both Bastille and Vortex have huge defensive power. The only thing Bastille and Vortex are bad at defending against is enemies attacking you at long range, and neither Tesla nor Minelayer provides an answer to that.

So can those abilities be improved to pass the test without changing them completely?

The Bastille/Vortex thing is also not quite as cut and dry as people make it out to be where they are just redundant, because there are genuinely builds where Vortex is better. Like if you're using a weapon with a lot of pierce or splash gathering a lot of enemies into a tiny ball suddenly becomes a lot more useful than just having them float around all over the place, so you end up using Vortex instead of Bastille. I think these could be a little further distinguished in their deployment method, but generally they do both have a use, just rarely on the same build.