Wolf Assassin, some suggestions before the next one

[squirrel_killer-]

I like having more assassins, I like the flavour they add and I would love to have more of them who can be a threat, but there are some problems with the implementation of (Shadow) Stalker, Zenuka Hunter, Grustrag Three, and the most recent addition of the Wolf of Saturn Six. Not to mention the hit squads from the factions are comically weak.

These all need some very specific buffs and nerfs, each in individual ways, but let's focus on the Wolf, especially since it has been heavily hinted that he isn't going anywhere once this season of Nightwave is done.

Wolf's assassin mechanics are simple:

1. He has a lot of EHP.
2. He's immune to all status effects.
3. He is immune to all Warframe abilities.
4. He has moderate damage.
5. He has Ferrite Armour for Health and Armour types.
6. He has one truly dangerous ability where he spins around sucking in nearby players.
7. He spawns with 3 minions which do a fair amount of DoT AoE damage that leave dangerous burning pits around the battle field that tend to be the real threat.
8. His minions are completely invulnerable until the Wolf is dead.
9. His drop table is polluted with just bad mods for what he is.

The problem here are points 2, 3, 8 and 9. The rest is perfectly fine, and frankly I feel certain nerfs, if applied to the right places, along with a "make up buff" would fix his entire fight.

Fixing Points 2 and 3

Replace the complete immunity with half immunity. Damaging Warframe abilities only do half as much damage, armour stripping abilities only strip half as much armour, CC abilities only last half as long, with a short CC immunity period afterwards to keep him being a threat. As for status effects, just make them do half as much, half as much duration, damage, slow, CC, damage reduction etc. Literally just cut the numbers in half. Puncture procs? Only reduce his damage by half as much. Corrosive procs? Only strip half as much armour. Heat proc? Half as much DoT per tick for half as long and cut the panic CC in half as well. Continue this policy through every status effect, every ability, and we'd be set. Would this be a massive nerf to the usual effectiveness of these effects? Yes. That is the point, but it allow status weapons to still be useful, and still let's us enjoy our Warframe abilities, even if they are nerfed. This would allow the Wolf to still be scary, but not just completely frustrating cutting out the majority of our tool kit at random.

Doing this means that those repeated tanky-ness nerfs would be less necessary, so maybe buff his EHP a tiny bit again, we'll have proper tools to deal with him now so it isn't like it will be any where near as painful as it has been.

Fixing Point 8

Cut out the invulnerability. Let us kill them early on, but have them stand back up after 10 seconds of being downed so long as the wolf lives and allow him to share his partial immunities with his minions. This would make them a threat that keeps coming back, something that draws your fire from the Wolf just often enough that you need to handle them before they do the devastating AoE damage they are capable of when you weren't paying attention.

Fixing Point 9

Currently he always drops one mod from his rather poor list of mod drops, as well as he has a 2% chance to drop a cosmetic and a 35% chance to drop a Hammer Part. He also has a 5% chance to drop a resource, with a small chance of said resource being Nitain.

Personally I would move his cosmetic drop chance up to 10% now that NW1 is going to be over and add in the cosmetics from this season into that table. It is the mod drop table however that really needs fixing.

Let's look at what it really is. It has a dual daggers, sword and shield, and heavy weapon stance in it. No hammer stance at all, why not? It also has a sniper specific mod in it, more questioning of why is this mod here? These mods don't really make sense for him, but they aren't hurting the tables that badly and more places to get stances or rare weapon subclass specific mods is always fine by me. After that it has the completely useless-for-the-level-you-need-to-be-to-successfully-kill-him mods which are the pure elemental damage mods. These are pure clutter. Instead let's make some tidy ups since NW1 is ending, as well as add some useful toys to this list.

Firstly, add the hammer stances to him. Both of them, but if only one is happening, make it Crushing Ruin, a stance that does, in fact, match the polarity of the Wolf Sledge. Next let's replace the entirety of those elemental mods with the elemental damage+status chance versions. Swap them all out, or, if we aren't swapping them completely at least add the dual stat versions. Finally the augments from NW1. Add them as rare drops to his table.

Ideally his new table would read something like this, assuming the suggested mods get removed:

100% chance for one of the following mods:

Uncommon Mods:

• Spinning Needle
• Eleventh Storm
• Shattering Storm

Rare Mods:

• Tempo Royal
• Target Acquired
• Voltaic Strike
• Virulent Scourge
• Volcanic Edge
• Vicious Frost
• Wild Frenzy
• Bursting Mass
• Napalm Grenades
• Crushing Ruin

35% chance for one of the following weapon parts:

Common:

• Wolf Sledge Handle
• Wolf Sledge Head

Uncommon:

• Wolf Sledge Blueprint
• Wolf Sledge Motor

10% Chance for one for the following cosmetics:

Common:

• Saturn Six Sigil
• Nightwave Sigil
• Wolf Salute

Uncommon:

• Wolf Howl
• Saturn Six Emblem
• Nightwave Emblem
• Saturn Six Captura Scene
• Saturn Six Arms
• Saturn Six Chest
• Saturn Six Legs
• Saturn Six Syandana

Rare:

• Saturn Six Mask
• Wolf Noggle

5% Chance at a resource drop:

Common:

• Regional Resource

Rare:

• Nitain Extract

Would this make his drop table absolutely massive? Yes, but it would make him a way to grant, through quite the grind I may add, a way to get all those rewards from this season of Nightwave. Steve has said it was planning for them to be a difficult thing to acquire in the future, well let's be fair, this is a viable way for such things to be kept around. It would also make sure that his mod drops have a possibility of being somewhat useful of occasion. Let's also point out something that needs to be said in all of this: assuming you have the best luck possible it would still take 13 kills minimum to acquire all of his unique drops. This means every kill you got a cosmetic you didn't already have, within those 13 kills you also got his 3 unique mods, and within those same 13 kills you also managed to get all 4 Wolf Sledge parts. This is extremely unlikely. The chances of this happening are next to nonexistent. So it isn't like this would make all this missed stuff easier to get.

All of these combined would, IMO, fix the horrendous state of the Wolf going forward, he will still be a post NW1 threat, but he will no longer encourage people to want to leave the mission to save time, as well as make him feel rewarding to fight, unless of course you already have all his drops, but to be fair all assassin's turn into annoyances once you have their drops, at least with these he might be a fun surprise challenge rather than just a "Hi, bye" or the current "Welp I got a 5 minute bullet sponge to grind down."

Edited May 16, 2019 by squirrel_killer-
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