Zephyr tweaks

[JackHargreav]

Making TailWinds' hover to be a draining ability would be pretty good I think. Instead of just falling down all of a sudden we could control when we want to end the hover.

Airburst: I think it would be nice if we could control this ability like nova's null star and if it would be more visible. Maybe make it modeable so it would be more powerful.

Tornado: Maybe make them stationary and let them hold on the enemy forever. And improve their hitbox so it's easier to shoot them.

Or replace the ability with a Wind Wall that would push back enemies and enemy projectiles like a bigger version of Turbulence.

 

(Edit: Maybe give her dash instead of rolling. Pushing herself with wind would make sense. And dash just makes combat more fluid in general. And I'm not suggesting flight to be added because that's only useful for open world maps.)

Edited March 23, 2019 by JackHargreav

[Birdframe_Prime]

My friend, thank you for wanting Zephyr to be better. However... these aren't so good. Hear me out, let me explain.

Hover as a drain would be a nerf (point of order: adding Drain to any frame that does not have it already is a nerf, please avoid doing that). Hover as a useful mobility tool, though, is a buff. Allow Hover to be cast anywhere for a half-second charge and give it a duration we can mod for. It then can cancel our momentum out of Tailwind, giving us a decent duration of time (that actually has a countdown) to make our next choice, such as recast Tailwind, use Dive Bomb, shoot or just roll out of the hover to land. It also means that we're not using an anti-mobility cast by sitting on the ground, squatting for three seconds, fully vulnerable while we fart out whatever lifting gas is needed for Hover. A half-second hold and it gets a Duration that isn't based on the charging time.

Airburst needs to travel faster and do better at what it's supposed to do. Zephyr doesn't do direct damage without build-up, but she does have CC and Airburst could be great at it. A good form of CC would be temporary suspension (like we get with functions like Exodia Epidemic), popping enemies up and hanging them in a state where other, mechanical effects can be applied. Why not give suspended enemies a debuff that lets us deal more damage to them? That's an interaction that everyone can use, rather than just trying to buff Zephyr's damage and let it cap out very slightly later. (For reference, I have a Jet Stream build that gives her 170% Strength, which currently gives Airburst 850 damage on hit, and a further 850 damage on the blast, this stops being able to kill the weakest enemies in the game before level 50, and the strongest before level 20, it's genuinely not supposed to be able to deal decent damage. Even if you doubled the base damage on her 2 to 1000, that would still only give you around 3600 total damage with a decent Strength build, which wouldn't kill a level 20 Bombard without help. Damage is not the way to go.)

As a side note, Nova's AMD is controllable because it's actually a limitation on the ability. If we were able to just throw an orb that dealt 200,000 damage in a 17m radius (and also had an ability that gave all our damage 2x multipliers for 400,000 damage), it would be considered too powerful. The slow travel speed, requirement to charge it up, and the steering are all to distract us from the fact that we've got a massively damaging cast for very, very little energy cost.

Tornado can be, if given the right help, incredible. You're right about the enemy hold, but the issue with giving it complete hold is that it would be Vauban's 4, but x4 and mobile. What I would propose is to improve the ability as a whole, rather than try to make it into somebody else's cast. Remove the 'spawn on enemies in range' function, because with a range build for Turbulence defense that can mean that the funnels spawn up to 50m away from the point you cast them, if an enemy is in that range. Group them at the cast location, and have them move faster to track down enemies up to a limited distance away from the casting point. So cap that at 50m away and ensure that any enemy that enters that 50m range is targeted by at least one funnel, tracked and captured.

Buff it with her Airburst, the current 'synergy' is that you get taller funnels. Wow... superb. We're feeding a full ability into another full ability, Oberon gets Iron Renewal when he does that, Atlas gets double damage when he does that, Gara gets infinitely scaling damage on her 2 when she does that, give Zephyr something. In this case, buffed Tornado funnels have faster travel speed and hold enemies for a base of 5 seconds (affected by Duration, which means any decent Zephyr build will give them 10).

That way, without over-buffing the base abilities, we get what you, the OP, wants and we don't lose the mechanics that DE has already given her in order to do so.

I could write you a dissertation on Tailwind while I'm at this ^^

[JackHargreav]

1 hour ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

My friend, thank you for wanting Zephyr to be better. However... these aren't so good. Hear me out, let me explain.

Hover as a drain would be a nerf (point of order: adding Drain to any frame that does not have it already is a nerf, please avoid doing that). Hover as a useful mobility tool, though, is a buff. Allow Hover to be cast anywhere for a half-second charge and give it a duration we can mod for. It then can cancel our momentum out of Tailwind, giving us a decent duration of time (that actually has a countdown) to make our next choice, such as recast Tailwind, use Dive Bomb, shoot or just roll out of the hover to land. It also means that we're not using an anti-mobility cast by sitting on the ground, squatting for three seconds, fully vulnerable while we fart out whatever lifting gas is needed for Hover. A half-second hold and it gets a Duration that isn't based on the charging time.

Airburst needs to travel faster and do better at what it's supposed to do. Zephyr doesn't do direct damage without build-up, but she does have CC and Airburst could be great at it. A good form of CC would be temporary suspension (like we get with functions like Exodia Epidemic), popping enemies up and hanging them in a state where other, mechanical effects can be applied. Why not give suspended enemies a debuff that lets us deal more damage to them? That's an interaction that everyone can use, rather than just trying to buff Zephyr's damage and let it cap out very slightly later. (For reference, I have a Jet Stream build that gives her 170% Strength, which currently gives Airburst 850 damage on hit, and a further 850 damage on the blast, this stops being able to kill the weakest enemies in the game before level 50, and the strongest before level 20, it's genuinely not supposed to be able to deal decent damage. Even if you doubled the base damage on her 2 to 1000, that would still only give you around 3600 total damage with a decent Strength build, which wouldn't kill a level 20 Bombard without help. Damage is not the way to go.)

As a side note, Nova's AMD is controllable because it's actually a limitation on the ability. If we were able to just throw an orb that dealt 200,000 damage in a 17m radius (and also had an ability that gave all our damage 2x multipliers for 400,000 damage), it would be considered too powerful. The slow travel speed, requirement to charge it up, and the steering are all to distract us from the fact that we've got a massively damaging cast for very, very little energy cost.

Tornado can be, if given the right help, incredible. You're right about the enemy hold, but the issue with giving it complete hold is that it would be Vauban's 4, but x4 and mobile. What I would propose is to improve the ability as a whole, rather than try to make it into somebody else's cast. Remove the 'spawn on enemies in range' function, because with a range build for Turbulence defense that can mean that the funnels spawn up to 50m away from the point you cast them, if an enemy is in that range. Group them at the cast location, and have them move faster to track down enemies up to a limited distance away from the casting point. So cap that at 50m away and ensure that any enemy that enters that 50m range is targeted by at least one funnel, tracked and captured.

Buff it with her Airburst, the current 'synergy' is that you get taller funnels. Wow... superb. We're feeding a full ability into another full ability, Oberon gets Iron Renewal when he does that, Atlas gets double damage when he does that, Gara gets infinitely scaling damage on her 2 when she does that, give Zephyr something. In this case, buffed Tornado funnels have faster travel speed and hold enemies for a base of 5 seconds (affected by Duration, which means any decent Zephyr build will give them 10).

That way, without over-buffing the base abilities, we get what you, the OP, wants and we don't lose the mechanics that DE has already given her in order to do so.

I could write you a dissertation on Tailwind while I'm at this ^^

These would be nice changes too. But I have a big problem with duration based abilities. The HUD. I have to constantly scan the right bottom corner even after the HUD margin changes and font resize. After a while it hurts my eyes to constantly scan that one corner. With Hildryn it's a different story since you have one single bar with huge numbers to show how much shields you have left. If the Hud would show duration numbers right next to my frame's body I wouldn't have a problem with this.

But the changes you're saying are fine by me tbh. Just improve Zephyr finally. She's so looked down and could be so much better than what she is now.

[--DSP--Jetstream]

Hover duration is too short, and currently we can't mod it and to get more duration you must fully charge it which is not viable in normal missions,

I suggest make it based on the duration of the 3rd ability (turbulence), so when the player use hover, activating 3 will make the player stay in hover mode in the duration of the turbulence.

This way it will be more flexible in many situation and map type also add synergy between the two abilities and of course you can roll to exit hover if you want to exit early.

[JackHargreav]

1 hour ago, --DSP--Jetstream said:

Hover duration is too short, and currently we can't mod it and to get more duration you must fully charge it which is not viable in normal missions,

I suggest make it based on the duration of the 3rd ability (turbulence), so when the player use hover, activating 3 will make the player stay in hover mode in the duration of the turbulence.

This way it will be more flexible in many situation and map type also add synergy between the two abilities and of course you can roll to exit hover if you want to exit early.

This one is also a good idea.

[Suska]

Don't make it complicated. She's not and should not be a high concept tricky frame. The problem she has is with mobility. Tailwind was rendered redundant with infinite archwing and the new melee slam makes nosedive redundant now too - but this is her story for years, mobility being added to all frames (Titania gets real flight!?) which once only Zephyr could do. I don't have a problem with her other abilities - her thing is mobility - only now it doesn't compare well. I don't see why tailwind can't be continuous. But yeah - if you love Zephyr you suffer.

I keep thinking what would be nice is a way to dump momentum using a melee swipe, sometimes the hover is too much or momentum is too high indoors, i habitually try to copter out of it and it kind of works but it should be more decisive for real mobility control. Also, as floaty as she is you would think she would never land so hard she has to go into a crouch. I get that's Valkyr's passive, but Zephyr's passive the way it is - that's a negative for almost everyone. Personally I don't mind it so much, but she's an outdoor birb.

Edited March 26, 2019 by Suska