Yet Another Vauban Rework - A First Draft

[Kellervo]

It's no real secret that Vauban is perhaps one of the weakest frames in the game. He's a very specialized frame focused all in on crowd control at the expense of virtually every other area, but he utterly fails at being the king of CC. He has no survivability, no damage output barring his passive, and his premiere abilities are often buggy and unreliable unlike the other CC-focused Warframes.

How to fix this? Well, there really isn't a way to just buff his current toolset into viability, not without making them outlandishly broken. Much like Wukong he needs an extensive overhaul to fix his problems and make him a more viable choice for defense-centered missions. I've been brainstorming a few ideas, but ended up settling on a concept that tries to maintain some facets and traits of his original design and abilities, while pushing some synergy to give his entire toolkit a reason to be used.

Passive

• Killzone: Enemies afflicted by Vauban's abilities take 2x damage from Vauban
• Engineer: Vauban's abilities can be combined together to alter their effects. Deployed abilities appear on Vauban's minimap.

Vauban's new passive allows his abilities to interact with one another, allowing him to augment them or alter their behavior through strategic use. It also allows him to keep track of which traps or chokepoints are in need of reinforcement.

Ability 1: Tesla | Elemental Selector

• Tesla maintains its current form, but his 'quiver' is shifted into this ability.
• Tesla is guaranteed to proc the currently selected element when firing.
• Elemental Selector allows Vauban to cycle through Electric-based elements which will be applied to the Tesla, and in turn any other abilities the Tesla grenade combines with.

Vauban is one of the few frames with a damaging "1" ability that is not guaranteed to proc without charging. The charging mechanic prevents him from utilizing his full tool set and makes it awkward and difficult to lay a decent quantity of Tesla mines, rendering them more or less useless in even midgame content.

Another issue is his relative lack of contribution in terms of damage or support, limiting his usefulness in high level areas. Giving him the ability to customize his grenades by adding debilitating status procs will allow him to contribute even in higher tier content by stripping some EHP from higher level enemies.

Ability 2: Minelayer

• Minelayer throws out pads that, on their own, behave similarly to Para's Anti-Grav Grenade. The enemy that triggers it is levitated into the air, temporarily taking additional damage from all sources.
• w/ Tesla: Combining Tesla with an active pad will 'accelerate' it, turning it into a damaging mine, losing the levitation effect and instead replacing it with an AOE explosion that inflicts the currently selected element's damage, with a high (but not guaranteed) status chance.
• A single Tesla can charge multiple Mines, based on the duration / total number of charges.

Para's Anti-Grav precept might have been the gravest insult to Vauban in his entire existence. It's a Bounce Mine that does the job far more effectively. The interaction with Tesla and moving his 'Quiver' to his 1 also removes the 'clunkiness' from the current implementation, allowing him to rapidly lay out an anti-grav minefield and rapidly convert it into an EHP-stripping hazard zone in case the enemy brings out more heavily armored or shielded units.

Ability 3: Bastille

• Deploying Bastille (in the form of a small structure, not a grenade) will 'fortify' a cylindrical area, applying an additive Armor buff to all friendly units within range - defense objectives and excavators included. Allies are immune to Knockdown procs while in the field.
• Vauban himself receives a larger armor buff, as well as having his damage buff apply to any invaders within his Bastille's fortification field.
• Enemies killed by Tenno firing from within the field have a slightly increased chance to drop energy orbs.
• Vauban may only have one active Bastille at a time. Deploying another Bastille will either refresh duration (if used inside the field) or deactivate the original (if thrown outside).
• w/ Tesla: Combining Bastille with Tesla charges the perimeter of the Bastille field. Enemies breaching the field are proc'd by the Tesla's current element.
• w/ Minelayer: Combining Bastille with a Mine turns it into the classic Bastille. A limited number of enemies entering the perimeter are levitated into the air and are unable to attack or move until Bastille expires.
• w/ Tesla + Minelayer: A fully charged Bastille will levitate a limited number of enemies that attempt to enter it, and inflict a guaranteed proc on them.

This form of Bastille allows Vauban to live up to his namesake by turning an area into a fortified position, granting his team additional survivability, while giving him the ability to tank significant damage from within the safety of his personal fortress. The interactions with his other abilities allow the 'classic' Bastille to continue, while also giving him the option of lowering the EHP of enemies attempting to assault his location, or inflicting additional CC by inflicting Radiation procs to confuse enemies wandering into his domain.

The added survivability also doesn't step on the toes of other 'emplacement' based frames. Unlike Frost and Gara, he can not completely block damage from external forces, only reduce it. Unlike Oberon, he does not grant passive HP regen, only an armor increase.

Ability 4: Fortify

• Fortify replaces Vortex as Vauban's ultimate ability. Unlike his other abilities, it does nothing on its own, but instead augments any active abilities within range.
• Fortify is a Channeling ability, and drains increased energy based upon the number of abilities Vauban is fortifying.
• Tesla: Tesla charges have their refire rate reduced, allowing them to fire and inflict additional procs faster. Their total number of charges are also increased so that they have the same effective duration.
• Minelayer: A fortified standard Mine levitates into the air, becoming a Vortex. Vortexes behave similarly to Anti-Grav Grenades, but will actively pull nearby enemies into range, allowing it to affect multiple enemies for its remaining duration. Tossing a Tesla into an active Vortex detonates it immediately, dispersing enemies with an explosion.
• Tesla + Minelayer: An explosive mine violently destabilizes upon contact with an enemy, detonating with 100% status chance and also a guaranteed ragdoll effect, throwing enemies away at high velocity.
• Bastille: Bastille's central structure unfolds, unveiling a Turret. The turret engages enemies with a withering, fully automatic barrage of fire so long as Vauban is within range of the Bastille. While active, the Turret will prioritize any enemies within the field first.
  • The Turret could either be an Exalted weapon, or use his Primary as a statstick.

Fortify simply cranks Vauban's abilities up to 11, granting him the ability to - for brief periods - turn his defenses into a nightmarish quagmire that burdens the enemy with even more status effects, and augments his firepower by giving his Bastille an offensive component to help him defend his territory.

The drawbacks are two-fold: Vortex is not the enemy munching monster it was before, and is instead a longer duration, multi-target Anti-Grav. The other is that this ability can be extremely energy-hungry, and due to it being Channelled means Vauban must either use it sparingly, or keep up a continuous stream of kills, making trips from the safety of his Bastille to grab energy orbs from the fallen.

Augment: Tesla Link

• Tesla Link behaves similarly to its current implementation.

This allows a Vauban to lay down tripwires that can inflict Slash procs to grant him some damage in addition to his CC, in case approaching his territory wasn't hazardous enough already.

Augment: Repelling Bastille

• An uncharged Bastille simply pushes enemies with radial pulses, staggering them but not blocking them from entering the Bastille field between pulses.
• w/ Tesla: Each pulse has a chance to deal a status proc based upon the Tesla used to charge the Bastille.
• w/ Minelayer: Enemies attempting to enter are repelled.
• w/ Tesla  + Minelayer: Enemies attempting to enter are repelled, and inflicted with Status procs if in contact with the perimeter 'fence'.

This more or less emulates the current Repelling Bastille, but adds in his proc-inflicting Status effects to keep it consistent with his other abilities.

Augment: Focused Fire

• Replacing Perpetual Vortex, Focused Fire instead removes the Turret's independent behavior. It will instead focus fire on the target being attacked by Vauban, receiving an additional damage buff.

With Vortex being relegated to his Minelayer, his ultimate augment would need retooling. This would allow Vauban to really deal damage, turning his Bastille defense into a targeted siege emplacement.

Conclusion

I know I am probably not the first and definitely won't be the last to suggest a Vauban rework, but most of the ones I have seen have somewhat neglected his original concept. While I definitely need to make some flashy images to go with it (and perhaps some hard numbers, but I am a bit iffy on that), I hope this is a decent start, and that folks might give some feedback before I go any further with this.

[Aldain]

I can see what you're going for since Vauban is an engineer, but this is....way too complex, and I mean WAY too much interactivity between abilities. 

I don't think making his entire kit interlock to the point where you need to play a Mozart piano composition with your ability keys is a good way to improve him, I think they need to take a simple but effective approach with his abilities.

I'd honestly swing more to a grengineer (or grenades flowing in tandem with his skill set which is shuffled and adjusted to accommodate it) approach to give him damage to supplement his control abilities.

For example the abilities could be changed to be like this (Disclaimer: I am not a design expert and nobody should assume I am)

1. Fragmentation:

• A simple 2-in-1 skill which is either an impact grenade (if it hits an enemy directly or a wall) or a small traditional mine (if it hits a surface that isn't a wall).
• This would allow lower levels of Vauban to feel more direct feedback to their early game and get them hooked on the tactical side with the ability to place mines or just throw explosives depending on the situation.
• Modifiable with the augment Cluster Frag, which releases 3-5 (depending on rank) smaller grenades that explode after the initial explosion.

2. Remains Minelayer, but with these changes

• Bounce is trashed and replaced with Tesla (I know some people like this skill or are attached to it since it has been around forever and its good for anti shields)
• Trip laser remains, but gains a bit of damage, (I'd say give it heat damage since it is a laser, this would keep area denial on this skill while making it contribute to the need for damage today's meta demands)
• Shred now deploys a small turret that covers a certain area and draws enemy fire (can last for a certain duration and deploy 2-3 total turrets). The reason for this change is because old shred is now half built into ability 1 and it also gives more damage and defensive utility
• Concuss remains the same (I find this ability serves as a good straightforward hard crowd control for smaller numbers)
• Tesla Link Augment placed onto this ability.

3. Remains Bastille, with some adjustments

• Bastille now grants allies a small amount of shielding once per deployment when they pass through (can grant overshields)
• Bastille now deflects bullets and conventional ammo (note that ammo without weight like lasers or fire or with high velocity like rail-gun moas are unaffected by this. Bullets deflected by this reduce the remaining duration of Bastille.) This may be a bit too close to Frost's snow globe, but honestly a bit of directly defensive utility is needed imo, but I could agree to this being removed.
• Levitation of enemies remains as-is.

4. Vortex remains similar, but with a change to the augment

• Tactical Fission: At the end of Vortex's duration, deal 125%-200% of total damage possible to enemies trapped within in a Radiation explosion.
• This would give a bit of impact as a mod option, it also serves as a reference to the infamous TACTICAL NUKE that some may be familiar with

I feel that this outline would be a good starting point to work from, as it trades some of the less effective CC (effing bounce) for a bit more instant impact and damage, while also allowing  Vauban to remain tactical and defensive depending on the situation.

I of course know that not everyone will like this idea, but I would like to see feedback on it nonetheless.

Edited December 17, 2018 by Aldain
Forgot 1's augment notes.