Teeny tiny Zephyr changes

[BlachWolf]

Right now Zephyr is an okey frame, her 3 is great, while her 4 is good enough, this two abilities dont really need further tweaking, but her 1 and 2 do, or at least should be taken a second look at.

Zephyrs 1 is only really being used for movement in POE and orb vallis, in tilesets though this ability is worthless with more than 150% duration and is a hassle to use. Her 2 is basically worhtless, the only reason to use it is to increase the size of your tornadoes and even that is questionable.

 I would like make this two abilitie have a better and broader use case, with some simple changes:

Her one:

• Her Hover: Make her hover scale with duration, this would synergies well with her 3 and actually be usefull while doing stuff like mining or endless runs.
• On collision: The biggest issue her one has, is that when you hit something and cant keep flying, you'll be stuck there for the rest of the ability duration, this alone will most likely get you killed when used in tilesets. In order mitigate this, I would suggest that when ever Zephyr hits something with her tail wind, that she creates a dive bomb instead, this will allow for an immediate stop, while giving her a bit more of cc, solving the issue.

Her Two:

• Scaling: Make it scale from melee mods, or atleast take the moded elements with a 50% status chance, this will actually synergies well with her 4, allowing her to change the elemental setup of her tornadoes, while also being usefull for condition overload, giving us player a real incentive to use air burst.

This are the small changes I think would actually make Zephyr into a fantastic frame and increase her use outside of just POE or orb vallis.

Edited November 22, 2018 by BlachWolf
added list format

[(NSW)Aila]

Her 2 is the best piece of her kit.

Note that it does not disrupt other actions, allowing you to lob it willy-nilly when reloading. It's effective CC, something her kit lacks when you aren't spamming Tornado and which is much, much more reliable than Tornado, does decent damage against swarming threats like Infested maggots, makes it pretty easy to target the enemies CCed with weaponry afterwards, costs almost no energy so can be fired a lot, etc.

Scaling from melee mods is a bad idea because it breaks at least three precedents of the game. Firstly, abilities don't scale from mods unless they're exalted weapons. Second, exalted weapons don't even scale from mods like that any more, because it caused a ton of problems. Thirdly, condition overload wouldn't be a mod that would pass to an exalted weapon under the old system.

 

As a bonus, adding 120% damage to Air Burst won't actually make the damage scale much, melee weapons get 100% of their scaling from the combo counter, meaning that Air Burst will just have the same problems offset by +20 enemy levels.

 

You're absolutely right about Tail Wind.

[den2k]

Tail wind should in my opinion either ditch Hover completely and make it a "press to accelerate / depress to stop" ability or, as you said, make it scalable on duration so it becomes easier to provide air support with an air themed frame.

Her 2 is usable, it arches over obstacles and can help in a pinch while reloading... though I would put hover at the 2nd as it was in the old days and ditch airburst. Unless Airburst could be used to renew active tornadoes or to provide some buff to allies.

[BlachWolf]

14 minutes ago, Oetpay said:

Her 2 is the best piece of her kit.

Note that it does not disrupt other actions, allowing you to lob it willy-nilly when reloading. It's effective CC, something her kit lacks when you aren't spamming Tornado and which is much, much more reliable than Tornado, does decent damage against swarming threats like Infested maggots, makes it pretty easy to target the enemies CCed with weaponry afterwards, costs almost no energy so can be fired a lot, etc.

Scaling from melee mods is a bad idea because it breaks at least three precedents of the game. Firstly, abilities don't scale from mods unless they're exalted weapons. Second, exalted weapons don't even scale from mods like that any more, because it caused a ton of problems. Thirdly, condition overload wouldn't be a mod that would pass to an exalted weapon under the old system.

 

As a bonus, adding 120% damage to Air Burst won't actually make the damage scale much, melee weapons get 100% of their scaling from the combo counter, meaning that Air Burst will just have the same problems offset by +20 enemy levels.

 

You're absolutely right about Tail Wind.

True (for me though her 3 is the best part of her kit), I wanted it to act like atlas and khoras one, but that might be to much, though it wold be a lot more fuctional if it would atleast take the moded elements on your melee, to either proc it in a aoe form or feed your tornadoes.

[BlachWolf]

17 minutes ago, den2k said:

Tail wind should in my opinion either ditch Hover completely and make it a "press to accelerate / depress to stop" ability or, as you said, make it scalable on duration so it becomes easier to provide air support with an air themed frame.

Her 2 is usable, it arches over obstacles and can help in a pinch while reloading... though I would put hover at the 2nd as it was in the old days and ditch airburst. Unless Airburst could be used to renew active tornadoes or to provide some buff to allies.

Well maybe its just me that doesnt find a usecase on her 2, but I fully agree with tail wind, though I would rather have the hover stay, because it has great potential.

[den2k]

16 minutes ago, BlachWolf said:

Well maybe its just me that doesnt find a usecase on her 2

I used it 4 times in all the time I used Zephyr, it's really not that useful. That's why I'd move back hover on the 2nd or increase the utilty of Airburst. Hover and a controllable 1st would make close range flight doable without necessarily using Titania - who is still targeted by AA turrets, stifling her best uses. She would shine on PoE and Orb Vallis.

[(PSN)RenovaKunumaru]

4 hours ago, Oetpay said:

Her 2 is the best piece of her kit.

Really? 😦

[TalonRayner]

9 hours ago, BlachWolf said:

Her 2 is the best piece of her kit.

Note that it does not disrupt other actions, allowing you to lob it willy-nilly when reloading. It's effective CC, something her kit lacks when you aren't spamming Tornado and which is much, much more reliable than Tornado, does decent damage against swarming threats like Infested maggots, makes it pretty easy to target the enemies CCed with weaponry afterwards, costs almost no energy so can be fired a lot, etc.

I can agree that Zephyr's second ability (2 - Airburst) is useful for CC.  I've found it's pretty good at knocking enemies down around distant downed/bleeding-out teammates.  I tend to use it during revives in combination with her third ability (3 - Turbulence).  Ideally, not having anyone go down is the best case scenario.  I'll also launch her tornadoes (4 - Tornado) if I have enough energy before starting a revive.  I also habitually increase the pickup radius of the tornadoes with 2 if I have enough energy (I like using warframe powers so I build for energy and efficiency).

If I remember correctly, I think Zephyr gets a 50% energy discount on 2 when using it from the air (like during 1-Tail Wind).  I don't know if it applies to jumps/bullet jumps though. I'll have to check it out.

I'll also use Airburst to knock down enemies before plowing into them with a spin-slash from my Kronen (bladed tonfas), but this is more of a personal preference thing.

11 hours ago, BlachWolf said:

On collision: The biggest issue her one has, is that when you hit something and cant keep flying, you'll be stuck there for the rest of the ability duration, this alone will most likely get you killed when used in tilesets.

As for Zephyr's first ability (1 - Tail Wind) I totally agree that it has issues indoors.  It becomes very situational and being "stuck there for the rest of the ability duration" does get annoying when bumping into walls.  I love using 1 during defense mission's, but it doesn't work too well indoors unless you use it as a hover or dive-bomb.

11 hours ago, BlachWolf said:

In order mitigate this, I would suggest that when ever Zephyr hits something with her tail wind, that she creates a dive bomb instead, this will allow for an immediate stop, while giving her a bit more of cc, solving the issue.

I kinda like this idea, but I've got one question: Would the dive bomb subtract from the energy pool if it was started by colliding with terrain?

You've got me thinking and I want to test and see if a wall-latch will stop Zephyr from flying at a wall for the duration of 1.

I'll end my post here because it's getting too long. I like what the developer did to change up Zephyr's abilities (particularly combining Dive-bomb with Tail-wind).  Zephyr just needs a few tweaks to solve the wall collisions.

[BlachWolf]

40 minutes ago, TalonRayner said:

I kinda like this idea, but I've got one question: Would the dive bomb subtract from the energy pool if it was started by colliding with terrain?

You've got me thinking and I want to test and see if a wall-latch will stop Zephyr from flying at a wall for the duration of 1.

I'll end my post here because it's getting too long. I like what the developer did to change up Zephyr's abilities (particularly combining Dive-bomb with Tail-wind).  Zephyr just needs a few tweaks to solve the wall collisions.

The only energy cost that would arise is that of tail wind itself, the collision will not use any energy, which is logical, a truck at full speed wont use more potential energy when it crashes but transfer its already existing kinetic energy into the impact. 

[(NSW)Aila]

yeah the energy discount on airburst is key bc it ignores the efficiency cap - air burst wouldn't be a good piece of kit if you were paying 25 energy for it but at 6 it's pretty sweet