Loki and his totally useless Decoy

[Katze127]

So I saw the hourly arbitration. It said +300% damage Loki.
I was wondering what if I give it a lot of strenght mod. Will it do something?
But... no. Of course, I would knew this will happen since Decoy doesn't have a damage in PvE, but really... why?
It just shoot around with a Lato, why don't you give him some damage dealing? Even Mirage's Hall of Mirrors deal damage, so it wouldn't be too OP.
Decoy should get some buff or rework, because its just pathetic.

[kaldewej]

Loki got basically useless as more and more frames came to the game. There is no real reason to play him since other warframes have basically the same functionality. 

This is kinda sad because Loki was my starter. I miss the old times when he was something special 😥

[Katze127]

He was my starter too! To be honest, Loki Prime is my main, that's why I got excited when I saw this alert.

I love him, he isn't the strongest, but I always can solo most of the sorties with him.
I think that makes him even more special, he need tactic and swiftness to play, not just press 4 to win.
But its still frustrating, like he is completly forgotten. I don't want a full rework, because I think all of his abilities is useful,
but you know, its kinda frustrating that his 1st ability is completly useless.

[Naftal]

Loki is fine. If you can't find uses for him anymore, there are plenty of other frames to choose from.

Decoy isn't supposed to deal damage, it's supposed to control enemy positioning and works great for that.

[Handstamp]

23 minutes ago, kaldewej said:

basically useless

Loki can induce stealth melee multipliers and disarm literally everyone. Thanks to disarm's range, disarm can boosted into a silly map wiping nuke with the proper team composition. And thanks to his teleport, he's absurdly quick. He might be incredibly simple, but he's still a fantastic frame.

I don't think Decoy is ever going to do more than status procs, since Loki doing direct damage (without a team built around him) goes against the very concept of the frame itself. Decoy also works really well as a both a health gate and an AI magnet.

Edited October 27, 2018 by Handstamp

[Naftal]

There's a better argument that the RNG str and damage bonuses for Arbitration should not exist.

First of all there's only a handful of frames where it really helps and the mode is supposed to be hard. It doesn't make sense that if you're lucky, it'll be easier for you and your squad. DE should remove this feature from arbitrations completely.

[Handstamp]

To add insult to injury, not only do we get these 300% strength buffs, we get them in a mission type that scales slower than literally any other mission type in the game.

[Katze127]

4 minutes ago, Handstamp said:

Loki can induce stealth melee multipliers and disarm literally everyone. Thanks to disarm's range, disarm can boosted into a silly map wiping nuke with the proper team composition. And thanks to his teleport, he's absurdly quick. He might be incredibly simple, but he's still a fantastic frame.

I agree with you. Btw, I didn't mean it like the Decoy should instakill the enemies. 😄 So yeah, I know what are you talking about, but still, its laughable if you think about Mirage.
 

 

3 minutes ago, Naftal said:

There's a better argument that the RNG str and damage bonuses for Arbitration should not exist.

First of all there's only a handful of frames where it really helps and the mode is supposed to be hard. It doesn't make sense that if you're lucky, it'll be easier for you and your squad. DE should remove this feature from arbitrations completely.

You got a point, but at least it "force" you to use warframes and weapons that you almost never play, it makes you more adaptable. So I think its not a completly bad feature.

[Naftal]

1 minute ago, Katze127 said:

I agree with you. Btw, I didn't mean it like the Decoy should instakill the enemies. 😄 So yeah, I know what are you talking about, but still, its laughable if you think about Mirage.
 

 

You got a point, but at least it "force" you to use warframes and weapons that you almost never play, it makes you more adaptable. So I think its not a completly bad feature.

It doesn't force you to do anything. Unless they make it +300% str for one frame and -300% str for every other frame. Unless everything else become unusably bad, it's not forcing anything.

[Katze127]

1 minute ago, Naftal said:

It doesn't force you to do anything. Unless they make it +300% str for one frame and -300% str for every other frame. Unless everything else become unusably bad, it's not forcing anything.

True. That's why I used quotation marks. It would be exciting if the arbitration worked like this, in that case, they would add one primary, one secondnary and one meele +300 not just one single weapon. Well, I guess this will be change over time, its quite flawed yet. I wonder when the Trials will come back.

[Naftal]

1 minute ago, Katze127 said:

True. That's why I used quotation marks. It would be exciting if the arbitration worked like this, in that case, they would add one primary, one secondnary and one meele +300 not just one single weapon. Well, I guess this will be change over time, its quite flawed yet. I wonder when the Trials will come back.

It wouldn't be exciting because RNG would dictate how easy the mission will be for you.

[LuckyCharm]

Loki is and will always be my most used frame. Hes better at most things than people think,  you just cant pair him with trash weapons like other frames can get away with.  

That said i would rather decoy act like titania lantern by gathering enemies towards it rather than alerting everything by shooting at them

[Xarteros]

2 hours ago, kaldewej said:

Loki got basically useless as more and more frames came to the game. There is no real reason to play him since other warframes have basically the same functionality. 

This is kinda sad because Loki was my starter. I miss the old times when he was something special 😥

Funny you say that when he completely replaced Nyx for crowd control and scaling enemy conflict.

I still use him to solo all the sorties, Irradiating Disarm is just invaluable for stuff like Interception, Mobile Defense etc, or sortie Rescues that spawn billions of troops as soon as you get the hostage out.

On topic, I feel like Decoy should just be invulnerable, but perhaps the threat level of Decoy be boosted, but decay over time at a rate based on strength (high strength, slow decay) over the duration. Then make Radial Disarm scale off strength by not just disarming weapons, but making them misfire and explode or something. Switch Teleport on enemies could have a stun effect, or a radial knockdown effect that scales off strength. A few ideas to put more strength in his kit.

I mean, it's nice to not have to depend on high strength for once, but it'd also be nice if high strength was an option.

[thesyndrome]

Loki's decoy can be useful for certain situations, for instance in spy missions where there is an obstacle to avoid (laser fences, alarm scanners, etc) you can just throw down a decoy past all of the traps and then switch teleport to swap positions with it

also now that you can equip all dragon keys for solo derelict runs, I've had situations where the decoy helps attract attention away from me (due to my lowered stats from the keys) after I got the corrupted mod and just had to then finish the mission

 

admittedly I don't have any other proper stealth frames (I've got an ash prime but building him for duration on his 2 just feels wrong), so I've had to figure out the few tricks I can do

[Spectre-8]

17 hours ago, Katze127 said:

So I saw the hourly arbitration. It said +300% damage Loki.
I was wondering what if I give it a lot of strenght mod. Will it do something?
But... no. Of course, I would knew this will happen since Decoy doesn't have a damage in PvE, but really... why?
It just shoot around with a Lato, why don't you give him some damage dealing? Even Mirage's Hall of Mirrors deal damage, so it wouldn't be too OP.
Decoy should get some buff or rework, because its just pathetic.

If you think that decoy is useless , you're not quite Loki yet.

[(PSN)teacup775]

4 hours ago, thesyndrome said:

Loki's decoy can be useful for certain situations, for instance in spy missions where there is an obstacle to avoid (laser fences, alarm scanners, etc) you can just throw down a decoy past all of the traps and then switch teleport to swap positions with it

also now that you can equip all dragon keys for solo derelict runs, I've had situations where the decoy helps attract attention away from me (due to my lowered stats from the keys) after I got the corrupted mod and just had to then finish the mission

 

admittedly I don't have any other proper stealth frames (I've got an ash prime but building him for duration on his 2 just feels wrong), so I've had to figure out the few tricks I can do

Ash really has two builds (and a farming one if you want). One built around fatal teleport and covert lethality (duration, efficiency, str is useless, range can be compromised because you can sneak up and stealth is the ultimate survival tool), and another around blade storm (duration, efficiency, str). Ash can get a good 20+ seconds of stealth. That’s good enough in most circumstances. I use him or Loki for most sorties depending.

That and tenno devilry really has stealth covered for most missions. 

[XenMaster]

Make decoy immune to dmg though. I mean no need the decoy to be destroyed.

[Ratentaisou]

Rather than comparing Loki's Decoy with Mirage's Hall of Mirrors, it would be better to compare it with Saryn's Molt.

Saryn's Molt (which is basically Saryn's version of Decoy) has 3 seconds invulnerability phase where the Molt scales with the damage that the enemies dealt to it and absorbs it as its own health. Meanwhile Loki's Decoy doesn't have that feature.

My suggestion is to also give Loki's Decoy the invulnerability phase of Saryn's Molt for consistency.

Edited October 28, 2018 by Ratentaisou
Typo and unnecessary repeating words.

[Solarsyphon]

7 hours ago, XenMaster said:

Make decoy immune to dmg though. I mean no need the decoy to be destroyed.

Way too powerful. Lokis decoy has an aura of enemy brain melting, half the AI turns off. When hes in play they basically loose their ability to see anything but him.

Edited October 28, 2018 by Solarsyphon

[Birdframe_Prime]

The simplest buff to Decoy is to let it have the same charge time as Molt.

Guarantees that at any level the ability will last a minimum of 6 seconds (three seconds of charge time, plus three seconds for the enemies to burn it down again if they're still firing at it) giving you all that time to go invisible again and escape, or cast 4 or anything you feel like.

Also gives you a real reason to throw it into a crowd, have all the enemies turn on it to charge it, and then disarm them so that your Decoy then lasts even longer and all the enemies are easy for you to kill and also likely killing each other from the Augment.

[-SAS-LiangSheng]

If 1 skill is changed to:
Pressing 1 for the first time will generate a phantom
Pressing 1 for the second time will ignore any distance [within 300 meters] and directly swap the position with the phantom
Is this change good?

[Birdframe_Prime]

2 hours ago, Sin_upon_Sin said:

Is this change good?

Not... really, but good try. Loki can already swap with his decoy within line of sight and nobody really uses that because the decoy is usually drawing all the enemies to it. 

And the massive drawback of a second press swapping you with the decoy regardless of distance is this: what happens when you actually want a new decoy, but instead you warp yourself back half across the entire mission and the enemy then destroy your Objective?

[(XBOX)VIOLATER X]

I completely agree with this change it from decoy to spector, and maybe change the augment (whatever it is because i haven't played loki for a year +) to make it follow you. Speaking of buffs id like to see his invisibility buffed with duration cuz ivara and Octavia are makin him look bad. I also would like his finals aug to be buffed just little bit.

[Azamagon]

On 2018-10-28 at 1:36 PM, Thaylien said:

The simplest buff to Decoy is to let it have the same charge time as Molt.

Guarantees that at any level the ability will last a minimum of 6 seconds (three seconds of charge time, plus three seconds for the enemies to burn it down again if they're still firing at it) giving you all that time to go invisible again and escape, or cast 4 or anything you feel like.

Also gives you a real reason to throw it into a crowd, have all the enemies turn on it to charge it, and then disarm them so that your Decoy then lasts even longer and all the enemies are easy for you to kill and also likely killing each other from the Augment.

^That's good! Would very much like that change

But this still doesn't help with the issue of Strength basicly being entirely useless on him. Because building / balancing your Strength/Duration/Range should, imo, be a (semi)tough decision on all Warframes, so you can modify according to playstyle rather than just for a stale and stiff meta.

So, some more ideas for Loki, in accordance with his trickster nature:

Decoy - On top of initial invulnerability, I'd also like to unsummon them at will by recasting (or holdcasting?) it, so one can cancel it in case you wanna go back to stealthier approaches. The unsummon would be animationless, ofc.
Would also like if the Decoy's death/unsummoning did something extra... like, impact-proc all nearby enemies (as an effect to display a brief "surprise" in the enemies attacking it, no knowing it was a Decoy)? Would give Ability Range more use for it.
Further, let Ability Strength (along with health+shield+armor mods) affect the Decoy's base durability, maybe also its shield regeneration? Maybe also make Ability Strength affect the Decoy's chance to inflict its statusprocs? (It can actually proc impact/puncture/slash, if you didn't know)

Invisiblity - In a rather small radius, enemies around you are highlighted (similar profile-highlighting that the Argonak uses) while Invisiblity is active. This is to aid you in dark areas (since you don't have a flashlight while invisible) and to make Ability Range at least provide SOME minor utility. I dunno what Strength could do for Invisibliity though.

Switch Teleport - How about allowing us to, by holdcasting this ability, swap with your Decoy if it's within line of sight + within range, but without the need to target it (meaning, awesome QoL)? I think such a simple change would increase your world of trickery possibilities to a whole new level! I also feel switching with a target could place buffs or debuffs on it. Like;
* Switch with an ally / decoy = Increase the ally's / Decoy's evasion by X% (boosted by your Ability Strength) for Y seconds (boosted by your Ability Duration). On a decoy, this buff isn't active during its invincibility-phase.
* Switch with an enemy = Proc Radiation on it + increase its damage taken by X% (boosted by your Ability Strength) for Y seconds (both effects boosted by your Ability Duration)
* Regardless of who is switched = Loki gains a buff to evasion too (same as the one granted to ally's)

Radial Disarm - Disarming process changed; Instead of their weapons just completely disappearing out of existence, they instead do the jamming animation (as seen on Mesa's Shooting Gallery) with their weapons glowing brightly (with your energy colour), then they sheathe their weapons on their backs and pull out their melee weapon. The disarming is now DURATION-based (but can be rather lengthy, and is affected by Ability Duration). However, what the enemies don't realize is that they have also been set up with a trap on them, for the same duration; Any damage they deal is dealt right back at them (X%, boosted by Ability Strength). This "self-damage" effect also works on non-disarmable enemies (like already melee ones and bosses).

Voilá! Strength now has some useage, even if it arguably still remains as his weakest stat, while also enhancing his trickery side of things. Pretty neat, no?

 

[Birdframe_Prime]

3 hours ago, Azamagon said:

Voilá! Strength now has some useage, even if it arguably still remains as his weakest stat, while also enhancing his trickery side of things. Pretty neat, no?

Yeah, see, it all reads as perfectly logical when you take the standpoint of believing that there shouldn't be 'dump' stats.

However, if you look at what you're creating, especially with Radial Disarm, it's basically forcing Strength into the mix.

If Loki had come with these things built in before, there would be a fairly good balance of things we could change and talk about and a great way to bring up discussions about him. But as of right now, moves like making Disarm a Duration and not total (as a trade-off for another function, I know), like trying to put buffs into Switch Teleport that are affected by Strength (instead of a mechanical effect that's effective at every level), will actually only be change for change's sake.

There are ways to work Strength into Loki, ones that may produce a different animal entirely, but.

I don't agree with you. I do think that some frames should have dump stats, just not have all builds use the same dump stat. Loki's issue is that all of his builds prefer the same dump stat. But there are several frames that benefit from specific builds (not general ones) that can dump an entire stat in order to function better in that specific use. Everything from Speed/Slow Nova (either strength or range) to Turbulence Zephyr (strength) to Solo Chroma (range or efficiency) to Savage Melee Banshee (range again) to Spaghetti Nidus (duration). Drop a Stat to gain a specific boost. It's what min-maxing is all about, and I think it has a solid place in the game.