Warframe Concept: Commander Frame

[Violet_Xe]

Alright i wanna try to dip into the forums a bit more, as warframe is a bit dry in content atm. So i'll be making a new idea every now and then, see how people like it.

Commander Warframe Concept: Aubrey Commander Warframe / Army Warframe

Aubrey
200 Armor
145 Energy
120 Health
100 Shields

{Passive} Strength In Numbers- Armor increases by 30 for every ally she's near, specters and minions included*

*Exilus Meridian Augment* Armor is cut from 30 to 20 but provides the passive like an aura for her whole team rather than just her.

Naval Blade- Increases Channeling damage by 40%-80%-120%-160% Increases Channeling efficiency by 20%-40%-60%-80% kills from Naval blade have a 70% chance to drop energy orbs.
(Channeling Damage is increased by power strength)
(Channeling Efficiency is increased by power efficiency)

*Meridian Augment* Specter's Blade
Channeling kills give specters and reinforcements 10% extra damage for every enemy killed, stacks up to 500%. If no enemies are killed within 10 seconds, damage will decay by 50% every 5 seconds. Enemies killed by Specter's Blade also turn into specters for 10 seconds.

Tactical Retreat- Teleport backwards several meters while creating a specters of team mates. lvl 0 makes 1 spec // lvl 1 makes 2 specters // lvl 2 makes 3 specters // lvl 3 makes whole team
(Specter ability % stats are the same as Aubrey)
(Specter lvl follows normal specter foruma)
(Specter duration is permanent until death or recast of ability)
(Commander specter cannot use tactical retreat as to prevent an endless specter loop)

Reinforcements- Summons your faction's kill squad to assist you in combat *or random operatives if not affiliated*
(Specter damage is affected by power strength)
(Amount of specters is affected by power duration 10 max)
(Reinforcements duration in permanent until death or or cast of ability)
(Faction can be selected in arsenal since people have multiple)

*Simaris Augment* Champion of Sanctuary
Champion of Sanctuary allows you to summon in specters that you select. Rather than picking a specific faction, you can pick what people spawn if you have them fully scanned. This allows Aubrey to be versatile and requires planning. Enemies must be of the same faction.
(No sentient allies)

Underhanded Tactics- Copy an allies fourth ability and use it as your own
(Power range increases copy range)
(Baruuk would not be copied as he has his restraint meter)
(Power % stats are based on Commander's mods, not the original)
(There will be an exalted weapon slot due to the weapon needing mods to work properly if Aubrey takes on an exalted item.

*Suda Augment* First, Second, Third
Unusually, Aubrey has 3 augments rather than a 1. First sacrifices the fourth ability to copy first, Second sacrifices fourth ability to copy second, Third sacrifices fourth ability to copy third.

Aubrey is meant to be a team based warframe that excells with planning ahead of time before missions start. She also works better with other war frames than others and opens ineristing possibilities such as if she were to copy a limbo cataclysm, you wouldn't need limbo himself to cast it. She can't do much herself and needs her team. She's also survivable with tons of specters guarding her. DE has been searching for a way to make minions viable, and I think this would be one way to do so as she works amazingly with people like nekros and inaros who make tons of minions to boost her armor.
I dont believe we have a frame like this within the game yet and while she's similar to someone like nekros, she doesn't directly reflect damage from them. She also doesn't have a press 4 to win mentality as many other frames do per say as while she can be a press 4, she also can use it to copy say a trinities blessing, limbo cataclysm, ivara's bow, chroma's effigy, or god forbid tentacles. Even with her augment, you can work with a friend to have an incredible fusion of warframe powers.
Her design would also be the ONLY warframe in game that uses pregame planning by picking factions, specters, team comps, and gear for extra allies as well as the only frame that's encouraged to use channeling. anyways this is my idea, what do you guys think? IMO name and maybe some stat tweaks but other than that i think she'd be fun. 

 

Edited April 17, 2019 by Violet_Xe

[Trenggiling]

Having an ability that's tied to your choice of syndicate seems abit off to me. 

Similarly, I don't like the idea of someone being able to choose the exact enemy types they spawn. (Hello full team of Griner Noxs)

 

What I think you be better is an ivara style quiver of preplanned out team of different factions.

This the strength of the included enemy types increasing with every rank up.

 

Also one more thing. 

A full team of these guys would make it really hard to move around a tight space with all the bodies that they'd be able to summon.

 

Though I  do like the idea of a minion themed warframe.

 

Finally the ability to copy other warframe's abilities sounds cool, but it's full of practicality issues that I just don't see getting addressed very easily. 

Case and point, you don't get an ultimate when playing solo.

[xZeromusx]

The faction specter ability isn't so bad, if you make it channeled or give it a duration instead of cast and forget. DE hates making abilities that simply last forever, particularly in ones that summon pets. Look at Revenant and Nekros. Revenant's pets only last for a duration, and Nekros' pets actively decay. Atlas' golems have a set duration. Even Saryn's molt has a duration. As for the player specters, that's a bit over the top, maybe fitting for a fourth ability if you again give it either a channel or a set duration. The fourth ability is where I feel like you ran out of ideas. Give her something a bit more interesting than simply copy cat. The 4th ability is your chance to really make the frame itself shine and display a coup de gras that embodies a lot of the frame's theme. Unless you're making the frame's theme just "copy cat" which seems a little boring to me to be honest. Ditto was honestly my least favorite pokemon for the same reason.

Edited April 17, 2019 by xZeromusx

[Violet_Xe]

8 hours ago, Trenggiling said:

Having an ability that's tied to your choice of syndicate seems abit off to me. 

Similarly, I don't like the idea of someone being able to choose the exact enemy types they spawn. (Hello full team of Griner Noxs)

 

What I think you be better is an ivara style quiver of preplanned out team of different factions.

This the strength of the included enemy types increasing with every rank up.

 

Also one more thing. 

A full team of these guys would make it really hard to move around a tight space with all the bodies that they'd be able to summon.

 

Though I  do like the idea of a minion themed warframe.

 

Finally the ability to copy other warframe's abilities sounds cool, but it's full of practicality issues that I just don't see getting addressed very easily. 

Case and point, you don't get an ultimate when playing solo.

I quiver system is actually a really good idea 🙂 though the reason why I said syndicates is mostly because the theme was commander, so you would be commanding a squad of syndicate members and a minor army behind it. plus even if you aren't tied to syndicates it would still spawn at least tenno operatives, at least that's the idea.

To counter the issue with the amount of bodies, lets say that tactical retreat won't spawn in the commander frame. Also if were talking that it would be an issue, we can 100% already do that 😄 have a squad of 4 throw out every possible specter in the game and you've got a miniature army. And nekros has about 7 shadows, it wouldn't be much different than having 4 nekros in a single squad. Lets cut the max spawns of the reinforcements to 6. 

Also in proper play it's unlikely you would run into a party of more than 1 of them unless they intend it that way. Reason being, coping the ultimate of an ally is cool, but it works better if you have more abilities to steal, 2 of this frame in a single mission means only 2 different possible ults. It's meant to be flexible, but hampering.

As for the practical use of the ult in solo, it was kind of intended, it sounds dumb at first but at the end of the day this is a massivly team oriented frame that's aimed towards team play. Besides, most warframes usually have at least 1 ability in missions that are never used anyways aka fireball, *wukong*, soul punch, pull, and a few others. Granted you can still use them but they're pretty close to useless without an augment. I do see the issue about it but at least for me it doesn't feel like much of an issue, but that's just my opinion could be wrong. If you really need it then lets say you can steal abilities from eximus too. That way you still have some unique twist to it for single players.

[Violet_Xe]

8 minutes ago, xZeromusx said:

The faction specter ability isn't so bad, if you make it channeled or give it a duration instead of cast and forget. DE hates making abilities that simply last forever, particularly in ones that summon pets. Look at Revenant and Nekros. Revenant's pets only last for a duration, and Nekros' pets actively decay. Atlas' golems have a set duration. Even Saryn's molt has a duration. As for the player specters, that's a bit over the top, maybe fitting for a fourth ability if you again give it either a channel or a set duration. The fourth ability is where I feel like you ran out of ideas. Give her something a bit more interesting than simply copy cat. The 4th ability is your chance to really make the frame itself shine and display a coup de gras that embodies a lot of the frame's theme. Unless you're making the frame's theme just "copy cat" which seems a little boring to me to be honest. Ditto was honestly my least favorite pokemon for the same reason.

The reasoning for the ultimate sounds kinda random at first until the idea of commander came into my head. Again, if you're planning ahead of time with a team, you can make the most out of an ability setup. It's a bit confusing but imagine this, i'll break these scenarios up for you by frame. 

For stealing abilities it takes your modded stats rather than the originals. This means that you can have a limbo with max duration and strength, while you focus on taking cataclysm and building range. Since all limbos share the same rift, you can place the cataclysm while the limbo activates stasis, he wont have to waste energy on cataclysm. Or with augments, you control stasis, or a banish, or the rift surge. If used correctly with the limbo, you become more efficent as you max out stats for abilities, but ONLY if you work with the team to divise a strategy beforehand. 

Another example would be Saryn, Saryn builds her damage off of spores but she also gives more damage to miasma to enemies effected by spores. This means if you take miasma, you have 2 miasma's going off, or saryn wouldn't even need to focus on miasma, as you would take over for her allowing her to purely focus on spores.

Next we have Vauban, yes Vauban the frame who needs that rework badly. You can take Equinox in her night form and take her heal, while the actual equinox uses the main version. You then have a healer, and a damage dealer, both with insane potential. Or vice versa. 

We have also Nekros, where Aubrey will copy nekros shadows of the dead to summon even more allies into the field giving her more armor and targets for enemies to focus on. This directly benefits Aubrey more and in this specific case will work with her kit more.

Additionally it does make sense as the idea of copying can be seen as dirty, hence the name Underhanded tactics. People also use the same tactic, (ability in this case) becuase it would be effective, even if morally it doesn't fit. That was one of my reasoning behind the name and the ability choice. It doesn't jive with the rest of the kit for most frames, but it also asks the player to team with frames with ults that the character can use more. For example she already uses channeling, so a melee exalted like Excalibur's blade won't work *I assume*, Nidus and baruuk both require stacks so you can't copy those ults, she also lacks the shields to use hildy's abilities. This means that you would want to plan to not have these frames in the party, where as it would work better with other warframes like the ones mentioned above.

Again it sounds random at first but with a more in depth look at how it would interact if you intelligently use it, it makes a lot more sense, for me at least dunno about you. But that was my thought process for adding it in.

[Violet_Xe]

Also the reason behind the infinite duration of the specters was because originally they are meant to be syndicate armies, which never despawn. Just a nice reference to that, but yeah it could totally be changed to a time based ability for reinforcements. the same goes for the tactical retreat ability as specters are permanent until they despawn.

[xZeromusx]

21 minutes ago, Violet_Xe said:

Also the reason behind the infinite duration of the specters was because originally they are meant to be syndicate armies, which never despawn. Just a nice reference to that, but yeah it could totally be changed to a time based ability for reinforcements. the same goes for the tactical retreat ability as specters are permanent until they despawn.

Adjusting that would alleviate most of the glaring issues that are likely to arise with such a concept. Copying abilities isn't all that strong to be honest, considering you'd be using your own ability stats with them, so you're like to get a mixed bag of crap in 90% of the game play. It makes the ability, in my book at least, too weak to be worthy of the 4th slot. Randomness lends it a hefty amount of gimpiness. It honestly seems more of a hindrance than anything, and almost requires the frame to be played with a planned party for that to be of any use. That's kind of why I hated ditto.