Analysis and thoughts on Titania

[SPplayer76]

With the recent changes to Titania I decided to play her again and make her work, this ended up illustrating to me her issues and problems.

I will lead off by saying that in the starchart Titania does just fine, this is solely because enemies are too low level for their damage to be meaningful enough,
and the situations encountered in starchart missions arn't intense enough to push Titania to her limits. That being said all of this is with level 60+ enemies in mind

Let's go through the abilities.

-Spellbind-
Targeted AoE CC that also can grant status immunity short to mid amount of time:
This ability sounds really cool on paper however, its radius is very small, and it has a cast time that stops all other actions, in addition to the status immunity buff
only being granted to those inside the radius at the time of cast. Let's not forget to mention that durable enemies will float off into space obnoxiously. All these things
added together make for an incredibly clunky ability that does not feel good to use. The cast time alone makes it that much harder to use in a panic situation to save yourself,
and casting repeatedly to maintain status immunity for your party is a chore.

Suggestions for Spellbind:
-Change this to a 1 handed cast to allow actions and movement to players.
-In addition to the initial cast being able to grand the status buff, make killing effected enemies grant/refresh the status buff as well
-effected enemies float and are locked in place like Vauban's Bastille so that they can't float away to nowhere land

These changes would make this ability a lot better to use while bringing more utility to the team through easier access to cc and status immunity

-Tribute-
Single target attack that causes a damage debuff for enemies while creating a pickup that grants 1 of 4 buffs to the the player when collected:
This ability sounds complicated, useful, and cool on paper but falls on its face. Like Spellbind, this ability stops movement and actions making it clunky out of the gate,
however this ability also has the pleasure of making you run over to the target and touch their soul in order to get the buff. Running over to get the buff after already
having had to stand still is dangerous and can get you killed or maimed, all this being for buffs that are quite simply not good.

Tribute Buffs:
Dust: enemy accuracy debuff
probably most useful ability, but accuracy is weird and often times enemies will just hit you anyway, but avoiding damage is still useful

Thorns: enemy damage reflect within a range
the most useless ability, the disconnect between enemy damage and enemy health alone makes all reflects useless. You still die, it's not like damage is being mitigated or anything

Entangle: enemy slow
The slow is so weak it's almost meaningless, ranged enemies will still just shoot you.

Fullmoon: companion attack buff
Companion damage isn't strong or meaningful enough for this buff to change anything

Suggestions for Tribute:
-Make the enemy soul get pulled directly into you, eliminating the need to run over and collect it
-Make collecting a soul refresh all present buffs, as well as grant a buff you don't have if you already have that one
-Make collecting a soul restore a % of your max life
-Increase the enemy damage debuff to a 90% reduction
-Change Thorns to increase melee range and damage
-Change Entangle to make your attacks inflict a slow
-Change Fullmoon to a general damage buff instead of being just companion damage

These changes would make the buffs much stronger, make it easier for players to maintain their buffs while also addressing the problem of having to "hunt and peck" to cast on a
specific enemy. The health restore also gives Titania some sustainability.

-Lantern-
AoE CC/Damage ability:
This ability, like the others, has a cast time that stops all actions and requires a target. I should point out that this doesn't just automatically
mean that I think it's bad, but let's look at what this ability gets us. The damaging field from the lantern deals negligible damage, even when modded for power, even with multiple lanterns overlapping. The CC aspect would be very useful if it wasn't for the very low attract target limit, because of this the ability is almost useless for any defensive objective because most enemies will ignore the lantern and carry normally. Even without the limit, because the lantern floats around from any sort of contact, the affected area becomes unreliable because it keeps moving.

Suggestions for Lantern:
-increase the effected enemies limit to have numbers closer to bastille's enemy limit
-lock the lantern in place
-cause effected enemies to grant energy on kill

These changes cause the ability to become much more reliable as well as acting like a battery for you and your team.

-Razorwing-
Archwing Damage ability:
This ability is very strong, it provides a fair amount of CC, as well as dealing high damage. The only issue with this ability is that you have no way to sustain yourself in it.
You don't get access to your sentinel, so medi-ray is off limits, and it can't restore your shield. Archwing melee also puts you directly in the mob, so you will unavoidably take hits amidst the chaos,
which can be fine but combined with being unable to sustain yourself means that you will eventually wear down and die.

Suggestions for Razorwing:
I think this ability is fine by itself, and doesn't really need to change

-Survivability and Analysis-
Razorwing is Titania's best option for survivability because of how much harder you are to shoot, and how much damage you can deal, so being in Razorwing as much as possible is the dream.
After building to maximize your time in Razorwing the next issues you face are enemy damage, and energy drain. Energy drain eximus are a nightmare as they can jeopardize your survivability
just by existing, because getting kicked to your normal state means quickly learning what 65 armor means against higher level enemies. Even ignoring the energy issue, enemies still hit you enough that you will be worn down eventually. I don't think this problem is because of Razorwing, I think this is a problem because her other abilities don't do nearly enough to support her. I think changes like these would do wonders for Titania and put her in a much better place.

I would love to hear other peoples thoughts and justifications on Titania so feel free to chime in.

[WhisperBiscuit]

I agree with most of what you've said. I think lanterns biggest flaw is that enemies slowly walk towards it. Unless it's cast in a spawn point, your suggestions still don't help it out much. Enemies need to run towards the lantern. The slow walk does make them easy to kill 1 at a time. But, if they ran all enemies would be under the lantern and die faster and easier. And if the radius of the ability, damage and attract, was increased it would become legitimately viable. 

 

Finally the Diwata is atrocious. I've tried building for it and making it useful, but even with beguiling lantern, the Dex pixia kill faster. The damage for the Diwata needs to be double or triple what it currently is to start competing with the mk-1 skana. 

Edited December 24, 2018 by WhisperBiscuit

[SPplayer76]

30 minutes ago, WhisperBiscuit said:

I agree with most of what you've said. I think lanterns biggest flaw is that enemies slowly walk towards it. Unless it's cast in a spawn point, your suggestions still don't help it out much. Enemies need to run towards the lantern. The slow walk does make them easy to kill 1 at a time. But, if they ran all enemies would be under the lantern and die faster and easier. And if the radius of the ability, damage and attract, was increased it would become legitimately viable. 

 

Finally the Diwata is atrocious. I've tried building for it and making it useful, but even with beguiling lantern, the Dex pixia kill faster. The damage for the Diwata needs to be double or triple what it currently is to start competing with the mk-1 skana. 

What would you think about lantern not requiring a target? Being able to place it exactly where you want it could dramatically change its usefulness.

 

[WhimsicalPacifist]

7 minutes ago, SPplayer76 said:

What would you think about lantern not requiring a target? Being able to place it exactly where you want it could dramatically change its usefulness.

 

Being able to place it would be fantastic (a Titania 1-3 ability that doesn't require an bodily target?  Sacre bleu!).  But it also needs to be effective in its CC.

If Mr. Level 110 Bombard ignores Lantern like he currently does for a split second, you are going down and Beguling Lantern doesn't matter at all.  A Lantern-based foot build would be very viable but for the schizophrenic/spastic nature of its CC.  I swear someone is just flicking my Lantern's attraction on/off like a lightswitch just to mess with me.

[WhisperBiscuit]

2 hours ago, SPplayer76 said:

What would you think about lantern not requiring a target? Being able to place it exactly where you want it could dramatically change its usefulness.

 

Yeah it would. Would help with pulling people off of targets, which could give it real utility. But since they seem to lose the mesmerization off any single source of damage, the slow movement means you'd have to not shoot anything for the lantern to actually do it's job of cc.

[ljmadruga]

How about making lantern into a deployable that stays in its exact cast location luring targets and clumping spellbind targets closer together?

Combine this with giving Tribute he Desecrate treatment (toggle that only drains energy when an enemy is killed, granting the buff) and boom; Titania is fixed.

[SPplayer76]

2 hours ago, ljmadruga said:

How about making lantern into a deployable that stays in its exact cast location luring targets and clumping spellbind targets closer together?

Combine this with giving Tribute he Desecrate treatment (toggle that only drains energy when an enemy is killed, granting the buff) and boom; Titania is fixed.

I don't think that would be enough alone because she still wouldn't have any way to stay alive 

[ljmadruga]

1 hour ago, SPplayer76 said:

I don't think that would be enough alone because she still wouldn't have any way to stay alive 

Titania’s archmelee may not have good stats, but it does have a decent enough status chance to reliably use healing return.

[Femuru]

titania cc would be better if they made it so enemies stop flying all over as if enemies thinking theyre fairies themselves.

[WhimsicalPacifist]

18 hours ago, ljmadruga said:

Titania’s archmelee may not have good stats, but it does have a decent enough status chance to reliably use healing return.

https://warframe.fandom.com/wiki/Accuracy#Enemy_Accuracy

Going towards the enemy on a banzai charge to hit them with my sword several times is not especially high on my list of survival tactics.  While getting close there's a 20-25% chance of getting hit while having 65 armor and being low on life (assuming Razorwing+Dust).

Also, try it vs their newest iterations of content, Arbitrations, Eidolon and Profit Taker.

Edited December 25, 2018 by WhimsicalPacifist

[SPplayer76]

12 minutes ago, WhimsicalPacifist said:

https://warframe.fandom.com/wiki/Accuracy#Enemy_Accuracy

Going towards the enemy on a banzai charge to hit them with my sword several times is not especially high on my list of survival tactics.  While getting close there's a 20-25% chance of getting hit while having 65 armor and being low on life (assuming Razorwing+Dust).

Also, try it vs their newest iterations of content, Arbitrations, Eidolon and Profit Taker.

I agree, while healing return is really neat, the heal isn't significant enough to overcome how brittle Titania is.