Valkyr Rework

[Nukesnipe]

So I've been a Valkyr main for the last five years or so.  I love her aesthetic, I love her playstyle, I love her Prime, I love her to bits.  I will also be the first to tell you that she's pretty awful and has some remnants of 2013 design philosophy that the game has LONG since flown by, and needs to be updated.  She's not hurting as badly as, say, Vauban (she's still actually viable), but she's outperformed by a bunch of other Warframes in various situations.  Excalibur can do more melee damage than her, Nidus and Inaros are tankier, etc.  Valkyr's only real saving grace is Warcry, which is an absolutely amazing ability.

And yes, I know there's another thread about Valkyr rework, but I want to go really in depth about Valkyr's problems first, and I have some other ideas for how to adjust her.

So first, let's go over the Good:

Armor:  Highest base armor in the game, you can easily hit around 90% damage reduction without minmaxing, and she starts at 70% damage reduction.  Regular Valkyr's base armor is 33% higher than the next runners-up, Atlas and Nidus, and Prime adds an additional 100 armor to that.  Works amazing with Hunter Adrenaline and Rage.

Warcry:  AoE buff to herself and teammates for increased armor and attack speed, and a significant movement debuff to enemies.  Great range, great ability in general.

Eternal Warcry:  Warcry but you never run out of time as long as you keep punching stuff to death.  Great augment, even if it's difficult to fit into some builds.

Hysteria:  Invulnerability plus lifesteal plus a powerful, fast exalted melee weapon.  This right here gives her much of her survivability, ensuring that she's never more than a quick 4-press away from full health.  Even after its nerf, it's still good.

The Bad:

Paralysis (and by extension, her shields):  This ability is just... bad.  It functions similarly to Radial Blind/Howl, but slows Valkyr for a brief period and relies on her having some shields up in order to do decent damage.  Using one of her defensive abilities to deal damage fits with Valkyr's berserker image, but her miniscule base shields (150 at rank 30) actively discourages building for shields, and by extension, building for Paralysis.  Furthermore, using Paralysis for damage makes no sense... when you can just walk over and gib them with a Hysteria slide attack.  The only use I've found for this is for leaving Bombards and Heavy Gunners open for finishers.

Hysteria's Range:  Hysteria has a downright abysmal range, which isn't balanced by the fact that other short-ranged melee weapons, like Venka Prime, have stances that give them some mobility or range.  The only way to use Hysteria for anything beyond arm's reach is to do slide attacks, and smashing E over and over is just... boring if you ask me.  Especially when some of the best stances in the game offer combos for various situations.

And the Ugly:

Ripline:  Oof, where do I begin?  First, some context for newer Tenno out there.  Valkyr came out in U11, and Parkour 2.0 came out in U17.  As such, Ripline was designed as a movement option back when air attacks with Tipedo were the best option for aerial movement, and when Zephyr was viable.  Unlike Zephyr, Ripline was always the +1 to Valkyr's kit, and she wasn't made irrelevant when Bullet Jumping does the same thing as her 1.  I still find some use for Ripline, usually in big rooms where I can't jump across the whole thing.  It does decent damage against enemies, and the combo mechanic is nice (increasing the damage and reducing the energy cost for rapid Riplines), it just... fails at what it wants to do.  This ties into something else I'll talk about a bit further down.  The ability is also incredibly finicky to use, a single pixel is the difference between hauling a Corrupted Bombard over for a beatdown and launching yourself past him... and the beatdown is only if the ripline doesn't yeet him past you at sixty miles per hour.

Her other Augments:  There's few frames out there that really benefit from having multiple Augments equipped at once, Excalibur or maybe tanky loot Nekros for Toroids are really the only ones that come to mind.  And that's fine, Augments should exist to offer alternate playstyles... which is negated by the fact that most are terrible, but still.  Look at Ivara, you can build her for being sneaky sneaky with Infiltrate, or you can build her for destroying entire rooms with Empowered Quiver and Concentrated Arrow.  But for Valkyr?  Well, Swing Line gives you 4 free Riplines after casting one as long as you're midair, which counters half the combo and... really, what rooms are big enough to justify five Riplines in a row?  Prolonged Paralysis increases stun time (eh) and... drags enemies closer to you, when it's not like you're far away from them to begin with.  And last, Hysterical Assault launches you at someone at range during Hysteria, which might be nice, but it scales off Range.  Which brings us to...

Range is her dump stat:  Range affects Ripline, Warcry, Paralysis and Hysterical Assault.  Ripline is, as previously stated, outdated as a movement option and too finicky to reliably use in combat, Warcry is a good buff/debuff AoE but you're rarely going to be standing next to your team with Valkyr, especially not if y'all're using melee, so using it as a reliable buff is also difficult.  Paralysis is... see above, I won't reiterate this.  And finally, for Hysterical Assault, Hysteria by itself isn't affected by range, so if you're building for Hysteria, you're probably going to throw Narrow Minded on, which makes Hysterical Assault almost useless.  Range being a dump stat isn't exactly bad, but three of her four augments either implicitly or explicitly rely on it, so I wanted to put it here.

 

In summary, her 1 is outdated and finicky, her 2 is great, her 3 is almost useless and extremely situational and her 4 is also good, but weakened by her range, as well as an outdated stance.  She has excellent armor and can become extremely tanky with little effort.

So how to rework her?  Well, first off:

Give her a Rage effect as part of her passive:  Half of her passive is actually useful (50% faster knockdown recovery is a godsend in some situations), and the other half is nice, but not really that great (since you can double jump or go into a slide to eliminate heavy landings).  So I propose giving her a 30-40% Rage effect as part of her passive, stacking additively with Rage and Hunter Adrenaline.  Those mods are already fantastic on her, bordering on mandatory, so the effect should be on her by default.  Throw Rage on there if you want to get a LOT of energy from being hit.

Make Ripline more intuitive and better for use in combat:  If Valkyr has an enemy in a circle around her reticle when she hits 1, it should target that enemy, even if her reticle isn't centered directly on them.  This makes it less aim-intensive, especially against distant enemies.  Additionally, Ripline should be faster, and I'd suggest giving her one on each arm to allow this.

Eternal War should give a reduced buff to allies, and benefit Valkyr if buffed allies get kills:  The other thread touched on this, and it's a good idea!  Valkyr's allies buffed with Eternal Warcry should be able to add 1/4-1/3 Eternal Warcry's time extension when they get melee kills, and also add that time to Valkyr's own duration.  Also, you should be able to recast Warcry whenever you want.

Rework Paralysis, remove her shields:  She doesn't use her shields for anything but Paralysis, so why does she need them?  Her ridiculously bloated armor stat and tied-for-worst shield stat (barring Inaros and Nidus, who don't have shields) actively discourages building for shields.  Change it into a cast-from-hitpoints effect, peeling off 10-20% of her health for the same effect.  Additionally, let it pop nullifier bubbles if she's close enough to them, but if she does so, it doubles the health cost.  This shouldn't matter that much, since nullifiers only really mess her up while in Hysteria, and you could then walk up and backhand the nullifier and get all your health back.

Completely rework Hysteria's combos:  First off, no pause combos for Hysteria.  You attack too quickly to reliably use them.  Instead, integrate Ripline into some of her moves, hitting 1 while in Hysteria lets you grab an enemy, and hitting E lets you swing them around, do other such Spiderman things.  Also, put Hysterical Assault into Valkyr's kit by default, don't make it a clunky augment.

Now that she has four abilities that pull off Range and a slot freed up from Rage, you can throw in Stretch if you want to add a bit of range, or at least temper the loss from Narrow Minded.

 

These are the ideas I've been slowly cooking up over the last year or so of playing Valkyr, any feedback would be nice.

 

[peterc3]

22 minutes ago, Nukesnipe said:

Nidus and Inaros are tankier

She can become literally invulnerable.

23 minutes ago, Nukesnipe said:

Additionally, let it pop nullifier bubbles if she's close enough to them

This makes no sense whatsoever.

[Nukesnipe]

4 minutes ago, peterc3 said:

She can become literally invulnerable.

This makes no sense whatsoever.

For a period of time that consumes ever increasing quantities of energy and is removed entirely if a nullifier touches her pinky toe.  And if it pops while enemies are around and she's been hit a lot, all the stored damage hits her at once and she can go down immediately.  Nidus and Inaros are more reliably tanky.

And why not?  Say it interferes with that little drone that floats above the Nullifier bubble and that brings the whole thing down.

[peterc3]

Just now, Nukesnipe said:

And why not?  Say it interferes with that little drone that floats above the Nullifier bubble and that brings the whole thing down.

It's a frame ability. No.

1 minute ago, Nukesnipe said:

For a period of time that consumes ever increasing quantities of energy and is removed entirely if a nullifier touches her pinky toe.  And if it pops while enemies are around and she's been hit a lot, all the stored damage hits her at once and she can go down immediately.  Nidus and Inaros are more reliably tanky.

You have range beyond the physical model of the claws, utilize it. If it pops while there are enemies around, you aren't playing her right. The way it now works, you don't even have to stay in melee, just switch to your guns and then switch back once the bubble is gone.

[Nukesnipe]

Just now, peterc3 said:

It's a frame ability. No.

You have range beyond the physical model of the claws, utilize it. If it pops while there are enemies around, you aren't playing her right. The way it now works, you don't even have to stay in melee, just switch to your guns and then switch back once the bubble is gone.

Because we all know that those rules are hard and fast, like how there's some lasers that Infiltrate doesn't make you immune to.  Exceptions can lead to interesting gameplay and give certain Warframes more versatility.

Yes, because standing at the exact distance next to a moving target to hit the bubble without going through it is fun.  And switching to your gun removes Hysteria's invulnerability, which defeats the whole point of staying in Hysteria.  I think it should lock you in like it used to.

[peterc3]

13 minutes ago, Nukesnipe said:

Exceptions can lead to interesting gameplay and give certain Warframes more versatility.

Not when it eliminates the entire reason the Nullifiers are in the game for.

[Azamagon]

1 hour ago, Nukesnipe said:

Give her a Rage effect as part of her passive:  Half of her passive is actually useful (50% faster knockdown recovery is a godsend in some situations), and the other half is nice, but not really that great (since you can double jump or go into a slide to eliminate heavy landings).  So I propose giving her a 30-40% Rage effect as part of her passive, stacking additively with Rage and Hunter Adrenaline.  Those mods are already fantastic on her, bordering on mandatory, so the effect should be on her by default.  Throw Rage on there if you want to get a LOT of energy from being hit.

Make Ripline more intuitive and better for use in combat:  If Valkyr has an enemy in a circle around her reticle when she hits 1, it should target that enemy, even if her reticle isn't centered directly on them.  This makes it less aim-intensive, especially against distant enemies.  Additionally, Ripline should be faster, and I'd suggest giving her one on each arm to allow this.

Eternal War should give a reduced buff to allies, and benefit Valkyr if buffed allies get kills:  The other thread touched on this, and it's a good idea!  Valkyr's allies buffed with Eternal Warcry should be able to add 1/4-1/3 Eternal Warcry's time extension when they get melee kills, and also add that time to Valkyr's own duration.  Also, you should be able to recast Warcry whenever you want.

Rework Paralysis, remove her shields:  She doesn't use her shields for anything but Paralysis, so why does she need them?  Her ridiculously bloated armor stat and tied-for-worst shield stat (barring Inaros and Nidus, who don't have shields) actively discourages building for shields.  Change it into a cast-from-hitpoints effect, peeling off 10-20% of her health for the same effect.  Additionally, let it pop nullifier bubbles if she's close enough to them, but if she does so, it doubles the health cost.  This shouldn't matter that much, since nullifiers only really mess her up while in Hysteria, and you could then walk up and backhand the nullifier and get all your health back.

Completely rework Hysteria's combos:  First off, no pause combos for Hysteria.  You attack too quickly to reliably use them.  Instead, integrate Ripline into some of her moves, hitting 1 while in Hysteria lets you grab an enemy, and hitting E lets you swing them around, do other such Spiderman things.  Also, put Hysterical Assault into Valkyr's kit by default, don't make it a clunky augment.

Now that she has four abilities that pull off Range and a slot freed up from Rage, you can throw in Stretch if you want to add a bit of range, or at least temper the loss from Narrow Minded.

Rage Passive - Could work. I do, however, think that belongs in the Unairu Focus school (as a bonus on Void Spines). But it'd fit as her passive too.

Ripline - You know what I think could be a cooler and simpler tweak to Ripline? ALWAYS make it go where she aims, wether that is towards the environment, or the enemy. If it's towards an enemy, make her knock down the target as she arrives. That way, Ripline is ALWAYS a mobility/gapcloser ability. That, with some better momentum and/or speed on her travel, would be nice. This, in a way, also makes Ripline into Hysterical Assault by default, if you think about it.

Eternal War - I'm neither for or against this. But I would like for War Cry (augmented or not) to be recastable, so you can buff allies / debuff enemies who were outside of the area on cast.

Paralysis - Removing her shields could work, maybe? Paralysis needs to do something more interesting in the first place. Opening up enemies for finishers is fine, keep that. But what if the damage was actually powerful, and related to melee (i.e. scaling of her exalted claws and melee combo etc)? Like, make the effect a moderately small spherical energy effect around her, with tons of "raging claw slashes" in the sphere, kind of like a manifestation of her clawing fury in the form of an energyball around her. Could be a good close range nuke and/or superrapid combo point builder, if nothing else. With that, it would even make more sense for it to be able to hurt Nullifier bubbles, I guess (since it's technically a melee attack)? Quickening up its casttime (make it a legfree cast at least?) would do nicely as well.

Hysteria - Yes, its combos need huge improvements. Implementing the ripline cord, with adding AoE or forward-cone whipslashes if nothing else, could be a cool way to natually give her range to its attacks. I don't mean for Ripline (the ability) to be part of the combo, more like the cord just becomes part of her natural comboing rampage. Further, her holdattack (the kick that opens enemies to finishers), is it really necessary when Paralysis could fill the "open to finishers" role already? Why not give her chargeattack something unique? Like, a ripline slash forward which pulls in all enemies it catches? Just something different, at least.

But I also feel that its energydrain and "damage storage" mechanics are completely off in terms of trying to give that berserkery feel. Imo, Hysteria should drain HEALTH over time (its initial cast could still cost energy though), rather than drain energy over time, but not immediately. It could be "health costfree" for some duration at first, then a small steady drain kicks in after that. WIth more damage taken, however, the healthdrain ramps up over time. But if you heal away (and overheal, even), easily done with her lifestealing claws, you reduce the health drain again! This gives her a much more berserkery vibe, imo. Also, with not costing energy, she'd be more prone to use her other abilities with less risk of interfering on her rampage - more like the contrary - especially if you let Paralysis get lifesteal on its attacks during Hysteria too!

EDIT: To make range also useful on Hysteria, give her a small aura. But a beneficial one this time. If an enemy dies in this aura, she gets healed X% of her max health. This counteracts allies killstealing enemies near her (so she can still mitigate some of the healthdrain, even if they killsteal), while also generally supplmenting her need to steal health on a regular basis to keep Hysteria up. It'd pair particularly well with Paralysis, if its damage was potent too!

Range would still be optional (as it does minimal stuff on each ability; Distance for Ripline, AoE for War Cry and Paralysis, aura for Hysteria), but it'd still be a better stat than it is at the moment.

EDIT 2: And yes, all her augments except Eternal War needs changing, I agreed. Got no ideas for them yet though.

Edited April 15, 2019 by Azamagon

[Nukesnipe]

Just now, peterc3 said:

Not when it eliminates the entire reason the Nullifiers are in the game for.

So are you going to give any reasoning for your feedback beyond "your idea is dumb"?  Because you could absolutely make a single 'frame that can counter nullifiers at the cost of half your health.

 

4 minutes ago, Azamagon said:

Rage Passive - Could work. I do, however, think that belongs in the Unairu Focus school (as a bonus on Void Spines). But it'd fit as her passive too.

Ripline - You know what I think could be a cooler and simpler tweak to Ripline? ALWAYS make it go where she aims, wether that is towards the environment, or the enemy. If it's towards and enemy, make her knock down the target as she arrives. That way, Ripline is ALWAYS a mobility/gapcloser ability. That, with some better momentum on her travel, would be nice. This, in a way, also makes Ripline into Hysterical Assault by default, if you think about it.

Eternal War - I'm neither for or against this. But I would like for War Cry (augmented or not) to be recastable, so you can buff allies / debuff enemies who were outside of the area on cast.

Paralysis - Removing her shields could work, maybe? Paralysis needs to do something more interesting in the first place. Opening up enemies for finishers is fine, keep that. But what if the damage was actually powerful, and related to melee (i.e. scaling of her exalted claws and melee combo etc)? Like, make the effect a moderately small spherical energy effect around her, with tons of "raging claw slashes" in the sphere, kind of like a manifestation of her clawing fury in the form of an energyball around her. Could be a good close range nuke and/or superrapid combo point builder, if nothing else.With that, it would even make more sense for it to be able to hurt Nullifier bubbles, I guess? Quickening up its casttime (make it a legfree cast at least?) would do nicely as well.

Hysteria - Yes, its combos need huge improvements. Implementing the ripline cord, with adding AoE or forward-cone whipslashes if nothing else, could be a cool way to natually give her range to its attacks. I don't mean for Ripline (the ability) to be part of the combo, more like the cord just becomes part of her natural comboing rampage. Further, her holdattack (the kick that opens enemies to finishers), is it really necessary when Paralysis could fill the "open to finishers" role already? Why not give her chargeattack something unique? Like, a ripline slash forward which pulls in all enemies it catches? Just something different, at least.

But I also feel that its energydrain and "damage storage" mechanics are completely off in terms of trying to give that berserkery feel. Imo, Hysteria should drain HEALTH over time (its initial cast could still cost energy though), rather than drain energy over time, but not immediately. It could be "health costfree" for some duration at first, then a small steady drain kicks in after that. WIth more damage taken, however, the healthdrain ramps up over time. But if you heal away (and overheal, even), easily done with her lifestealing claws, you reduce the health drain again! This gives her a much more berserkery vibe, imo. Also, with not costing energy, she'd be more prone to use her other abilities with less risk of interfering on her rampage - more like the contrary - especially if you let Paralysis get lifesteal on its attacks during Hysteria too!

Tying Paralysis to Hysteria is a neat idea, like how I think Slash Dash should work (always felt weird that it pulls from your equipped melee mods, but not mods on Exalted Blade).

And as for making Hysteria drain health... what about making Valkyr another no-energy Frame, but instead of using shields like Hildryn, drains her health for all her attacks?  Just an idea.  Make her the sort of cast-from-hitpoints berserker that doesn't care how much she hurts herself as long as things die faster.

[Azamagon]

9 minutes ago, Nukesnipe said:

So are you going to give any reasoning for your feedback beyond "your idea is dumb"?  Because you could absolutely make a single 'frame that can counter nullifiers at the cost of half your health.

 

Tying Paralysis to Hysteria is a neat idea, like how I think Slash Dash should work (always felt weird that it pulls from your equipped melee mods, but not mods on Exalted Blade).

And as for making Hysteria drain health... what about making Valkyr another no-energy Frame, but instead of using shields like Hildryn, drains her health for all her attacks?  Just an idea.  Make her the sort of cast-from-hitpoints berserker that doesn't care how much she hurts herself as long as things die faster.

I don't think making her a no-energy frame is good. It's better to keep her Baruuk-ish: Use your 1- 3 with energy (yes, I think Paralysis should be an energy heavy cast instead - since it could be a potent close range nuke) to supplement your 4 (which, instead of a unique resource, uses health - which in itself is kinda unique though).

If you look at it like this:

Hysteria is your main mainstay to keep going like a berserker with great offensive power. War Cry buffs you up further / hampers enemies (especially if you can recast it midduration). Ripline gets you quickly in to battle to start the mayhem quickly. Paralysis helps in AoE-needing situations (something she suffers with, imo), where the regular claws alone are not enough, or when you need to use a finisher on a paritcularly tough enemy. It works perfectly!
(And another thought: If that energysphere of Paralysis lasted a couple of seconds and followed Valkyr around, it could be paired with Ripline's quick movement for a rather "meatblender" kind of attack!)

I think a simple rework like that would be best, really.

The only thing remaining to think about is her other 3 augments...

Edited April 15, 2019 by Azamagon

[Nukesnipe]

2 minutes ago, Azamagon said:

I don't think making her a no-energy frame is good. It's better to keep her Baruuk-ish: Use your 1- 3 with energy (yes, I think Paralysis should be an energy heavy cast instead - since it could be a potent close range nuke) to supplement your 4 (which, instead of a unique resource, uses health - which in itself is kinda unique though).

If you look at it like this:

Hysteria is your main mainstay to keep going like a berserker with great offensive power. War Cry buffs you up further / hampers enemies (especially if you can recast it midduration). Ripline gets you quickly in to battle to start the mayhem quickly. Paralysis helps in AoE-needing situations (something she suffers with, imo), where the regular claws alone are not enough, or when you need to use a finisher on a paritcularly tough enemy. It works perfectly!
(And another thought: If that energysphere of Paralysis lasted a couple of seconds and followed Valkyr around, it could be paired with Ripline's quick movement for a rather "meatblender" kind of attack!)

I think a simple rework like that would be best, really.

The only thing remaining to think about is her other 3 augments...

Fair enough.  What about instead of pulling enemies to her with Ripline, using it while in Hysteria has her strike out at anyone nearby when she travels past them?  So you can shoot yourself through a group of enemies and mulch them at high speeds.