(The Jovian Concord: Update 25) Wisp Feedback

[Xavori]

tll;dr She's awesome.  She's very flexible.  She does take a bit more thought to play than many frames, but that's actually a good thing.  She has a useless ultimate ability, tho.

Yes.  I finally stuck my Umbra Forma on a warframe, and I picked her because she's actually amazing, albeit with a few flaws.

Let's start with her base stats.  She has 300 health, 225 shields, and 150 armor.  Those are solid survivability stats and flexible enough that you can build them up however you'd like.  She also has 300 energy which is tied for highest of any warframe.  Finally, she's fairly quick with a 1.2 sprint speed.  You can easily build her beyond 1000 health and 500 armor/shields, so she's got the starting point of being a pretty durable frame.

Her passive is excellent.  When she goes airborne, she goes invisible and stay that way until she attacks or a moment after she hits that ground.  Because of that tiny moment, you can actually move through maps rapidly bullet jumping and staying invisible the whole time.  It's also a sort of get out of the frying pan and hope you don't land in the fire ability if you find yourself getting overwhelmed.  

Given the whole variety of new and existing mods that make it possible to remain in the air for extended periods of time as well as providing damage reduction and evasion in the air, it's totally plausible to build an aerial Wisp.

Moving on to her powers, you'll see they're a very mixed back.  

1. Reservoirs.  This is what she does best.  It's what makes her a valuable teammate in moderation.  Her buffs are solid even if none of them are the best at what they are doing.  The Vitality Mote can add over 900 health and 90hp/s at 300% ability strength (and more as you go higher).  Haste mote gives both a move speed buff and attack speed buff.  Shock mote, well, it's there.  I guess.  Sure. Whatever.  Now, none of these are the best buffs.  There are multiple frames better at improving survivability, speed, and definitely CC/weak damage.  But she can do them all, and perhaps best of all, she can create a point where her teammates can go refresh their buffs themselves.

---Negatives.  Reservoirs are fixed point and cannot be directly cast on allies.  They cannot affect non-players.  They cannot override each other so if you have 2 Wisps, whichever buff you get first is the level it will stay at until you let it wear off completely.  This means that while 1 Wisp on a map where you're not running constantly is a good thing, that's it.  She's not a good choice for capture, extermination, rescue, etc. where you want to stay on the move.  And you never need 2 Wisp's unless you're stuck on that stupid Corpus map where you have to run 10000 km between the 4 points.

2. Wil-O-Wisp.  This is the power that separates the noobs from the pros.  It does so very, very much, and very little of it is obvious.  It's actually bad at what it obviously does.  It's a hard to control teleport.  It's too fast moving to provide a real distraction to enemies for more than a moment.  If you stop there, it's a terrible ability.

So don't stop there.  It's instant, on-demand, invisibility that doesn't break when she fights.  Think Loki but with a fraction of the duration.  It's a 3 second invulnerability that requires a bit of fast clicking to get.  Pretend for a moment there was a mod that also gave a short burst of invulnerability if, I don't know, you dodge.  But that mod had a cooldown.  If you took this mod and Wisp and played carefully, you could be invulnerable for 6 out of 7 seconds, and invisible for that 1 second, and there you go.  We have yet another effectively immortal warframe.

p.s.  Don't actually bother with the invulnerability mod thing.  3 seconds on a warframe that has easily accessed permastealth is fine.  Just pointing out that you can get silly with it.

Wil-O-Wisp also synergizes with 2 of the other 3 powers she has.  If you cast her 3, the decoy casts it as well.  If you cast her 3 on a reservoir, her decoy casts that using the bonus range.

3. Breach Surge.  This is another brain-required ability.  At first glance, it kinda looks like Saryn's spores in a lower damage and slightly RNG'd form.  Hell, it synergizes amazingly well with Saryn as Saryn's spore damage will proc Surge sparks which will proc Saryn's spores which will proc sparks, and you see where this is going, right?  Same thing with Garuda's bleeds which is how I accidentally discovered this synergy when I ran into a Garuda on a defense map and we kept killing all the things.  Heck, you can multiproc yourself using the shiny new Cyanex.  So far so good.

But then you run into the problem with Warframe as a game.  For whatever reason, DE keeps forgetting that this game is Warframe and not Generic 3rd Person Shooter Game, and so they either wreck or make useless purely offensive abilities (as opposed to hybrid abilities like Titania's Razorwing or Mesa's Peacekeeper, or self-buffing offensive capable abilities like Mirage's Mirrors or that dragon-ish OP thing with all the colors).  If you try to proc Surge sparks using normal damage weapons against high level advanced enemies, you're utterly wasting your time.  Your pathetic sparks are not even an annoyance to a level 100 Grineer Bombard.  So don't do that.

Where this ability is good, other than synergizing with Saryn or Garuda who don't worry about armor so much, is in using those big tough guys as an AoE to kill everything else via a hard hitting not-normally-AoE weapon.  Do you know what happens when you start proc'ing even 20k Rubico Prime shots?  You start spitting out sparcs that do 120k radiation damage (at 300 ability strength).  This is especially fun with things like her signature Fulmin which has a wide enough beam in semi-auto to hit multiple targets to spit out multiple sparcs.  Room cleared other than prolly the advanced critters.

Oh, ya, this also blinds enemies giving you the stealth damage bonus, but not finishers.  So there is that too.

4. Sol Gate.  BURN THINGS WITH THE POWER OF THE SUN!!!  Provided that by 'sun' what you really mean is a small LED nightlight.  This ability has all the problems inherent in pure offensive abilities, and then just for good measure, adds in a few more because why not.  It's slow procc'ing.  It's single target with no punch through.  It's high energy drain.  It's terrible even without factoring in the bosses that are immune to it or the lack of damage scaling against higher level enemies.  If I'm using this power, it's because I'm popping Lith relics against low enemies, and I just feel like doing something different for a few moments.  This is my nominee for worst ultimate warframe ability EVARRRRR!  Especially since the description and animation are supposed to POWERED BY THE SUN!

With that out of the way, there are 3 builds I like for her, and definitely more are possible since she's very much a jack-of-all-trades master-of-none warframe.

Aerial - Grab all the new and old stay airborne and buff defense mods.  Grab your health and armor and adaptation.  Enjoy silly amounts of survivability at the cost of most of your potential offense.

Umbral Teammate - My fav build.  Push ability strength to ~300 and duration so that your buffs last ~60 seconds.  At that point, you're teammates are getting a bunch of extra health, survivability, movement speed, DPS, and sure, a weaksauce CC/damage thing.  You also will have 8 seconds of invisibility with your 2, and a 6x multiplier on sparc damage.  You'll also have a BURN THINGS WITH THE POWER OF A WEAK LED NIGHTLIGHT, but you aren't going to use that.  If you use the 3 Umbra mods, you'll even have around 1k health and 400 armor give or take a bit.

Range - AKA Saryn, Garuda, and Wisp are sitting in a tree...K-I-S-S-I-N-G.  First comes love.  Then comes marriage.  Then comes things we cannot talk about on a forum where children are present.  You push range while keeping ability strength over 100.  I'm running at 235% range and 115 strength.  That means my buffs cover huge areas making them harder to not pick up than to pick u;.  I'm down to 6 seconds of invis, but that's usually enough to pull my very, very nice backside out of whatever mess it's in.  But the real bonus here is the 35m radius on sparcs.  Sure, they can't get through walls like Saryn's, but I've watched them go bouncing down halls and around corners, and since it's all about proc'ing Saryn's spores or expanding the damage range of Garuda's Seeking Talons and increasing the DPS hitting the critters that are actually bleeding.

[(XBOX)zThulsaDoomz]

TL;DR

OP thinks Wisp is good

[Morticoccus]

21 minutes ago, Lobosandia said:

1. Targeting motes for teleporting with Breach is difficult. Sometimes the crosshair won't show up for a good 10 seconds. Also, the range doesnt display appropriately when you cast breach on its own, but it seems to display appropriately when you teleport (this is just a visual bug imo) 

2. Will-o-whisp should go faster than running speed to make the teleport viable, though i can see how it might be a good thing in tactical situations as-is.

1. I agree 100%, especially when teleporting through windows or while jumping, it's really twitchy.

2. If you hold the button down it moves faster than running speed, and teleports you instantly when you release the button. I like to use this to rapidly cross the large gaps in the gas city when going for the conduits.

Also, a lot of people keeps mentioning the HP buff as 800+, I don't have a fully maxxed umbral intensify yet but I can get it up to 927 HP and a 92% fire rate increase. I pray that this will not be nerfed since I find it amusing to see Novas with 1k+ health.

Edited May 27, 2019 by Morticoccus

[Xavori]

5 minutes ago, (XB1)Thy Divinity said:

TL;DR

OP thinks Wisp is good

OP knows Wisp is good.

[Werew0lfie101]

If I can add my 2 cents on Wisp in a fashion frame mind set, I think Wisps Material on the back needs to be made auxiliary so you can remove it but then people have to add a syandana in place of it. Or maybe make the Material into a syandana but have it as a none removable feature but a changeable option. I and a lot of other people have trouble with our Fashionframing because her material keeps clipping with the syandana. 

[Morticoccus]

1 minute ago, Werew0lfie101 said:

If I can add my 2 cents on Wisp in a fashion frame mind set, I think Wisps Material on the back needs to be made auxiliary so you can remove it but then people have to add a syandana in place of it. Or maybe make the Material into a syandana but have it as a none removable feature but a changeable option. I and a lot of other people have trouble with our Fashionframing because her material keeps clipping with the syandana. 

I use the Disconnect Syandana, it's not perfect but it kind of fits.

[TheGuyver]

First of all, this belongs in feedback. Second, putting umbral mods on a frame doesn't turn it into "Umbral X" and that drives me up a wall seeing it literally everywhere. 

Edited May 27, 2019 by TheGuyver

[Alkarnus]

Nice review and gameplay tips, thanks 🙂

[Ephemiel]

I love how you say Wil-o-Wisp does a ton, yet say nothing and just mention a hypothetical.

[WeeMadHamish]

Had a lot of fun levelling Wisp, I think she feels very fun overall. Particularly gliding along with Aero Vantage and a big old sword. But I gotta throw in my two centicredits.
Suggestions spoilered to save screen real estate

Spoiler

 

Passive - allows air melee w/out breaking, but silenced firearms do break it. On a positive note, skill based situational invisibility really works for me as a concept and I generally really like this passive.

suggestion: Allowing it work like Ivara's prowl in regard to silenced/non-silenced firearms would open up a mobile stealth playstyle that seems likely to be interesting.
It would also make some sense in regards to her signature weapon having a silenced mode. Invisible bombing runs!

suggestion 2: Could be a bit clearer than a glow, something like Mirage's Eclipse dark effect would be nice, or a low light emission cloud/fog effect

Reservoirs - Pain to keep up while mobile, and the aforementioned order-sensitive stacking and Volt-like forced speed buff¹ issues

suggestion: Make picking up the mote require actually touching the plant, and last plant touched determines whose mote you're using. There's still some annoyance potential, but it would be lessened and could be alleviated almost entirely by good placement. Mote duration refresh within the radius would be unchanged.

suggestion 2: Allow any reservoir to refresh *all* mote timers. This puts refresh while doing mobile missions on the same footing as other refreshable buffs - one button tap and run through the radius.

 

Breach Surge - No finisher opening, unlike every other blind effect in game. The requirement for a wisp to touch a target to inflict the effect results in very limited vertical volume of effect. Line of sight requirement makes sense to me, but makes the skill feel a little poor to use.

suggestion: Apply seeker debuff to anything a wisp hits, but check line of sight for blind. Prevents the issue of things behind cover getting stunned in situations where that's an issue, but still feels like you did something in a nice wide area (and makes AoE a more attractive frame mod).

suggestion 2: Let blind open for finishers and disable activity like radial blind, but keep it a fairly short duration separate from the seeker emission debuff. Gets you some breathing room / punishment potential without being focus of the skill.

suggestion 3: Throw some wiggle into the wisp paths, for increased vertical coverage. Maybe have the paths get more chaotic as they get farther from the centerpoint, mimics range falloff of effectiveness and provides some visual interest. did some testing, more vert coverage than i thought. Earlier issues were probably line of sight related

 

¹I am firmly in the camp of wishing I could choose not to end up wedged in a corner because I got too close to a Volt. It's on the same order of obnoxious as white energy weapons.

 

 

Edited May 27, 2019 by WeeMadHamish
correction on a mechanic

[Xhobract]

vor einer Stunde schrieb Lobosandia:

1. Targeting motes for teleporting with Breach is difficult. Sometimes the crosshair won't show up for a good 10 seconds

Have never experienced this myself. But I can say it's easier to teleport to it when not ADS and targeting the mote rather from above than below. The circle that allows you to teleport shows up easier this way if that makes any sense (propably made so you can still target it when it's behind some low obstructions). After a bit of practice I have no problems with this interaction anymore, hope it helps.

EDIT: Btw DE, what's up with Wisp not having her pretty particles anymore when she goes invisible. I currently have a coating in her energy color instead.

Edited May 27, 2019 by Xhobract

[(XBOX)GearsMatrix301]

49 minutes ago, Xavori said:

OP knows Wisp is good.

OP implies that Wisp is good.

[GA-Bulletproof]

Please just please 2 minor changes:

1. add a very short linger to her 3

2. Convert the damage type pf her 4 to true damage

If you leave her like you left Hildryn... well go figure!

[Ham_Grenabe]

2 minutes ago, (XB1)GearsMatrix301 said:

OP implies that Wisp is good.

I'm pretty sure (check's OP) it's not just implied; it's explicitly stated. 

Edited May 27, 2019 by Ham_Grenabe

[Legion-Shields]

I laugh when people make durability one of the first things they consider when trying to determine how good a frame is. Pathetic.

[(XBOX)YoungGunn82]

44 minutes ago, TheGuyver said:

putting umbral mods on a frame doesn't turn it into "Umbral X"

But muh head cannon?!

[Xavori]

23 minutes ago, Ephemiel said:

I love how you say Wil-o-Wisp does a ton, yet say nothing and just mention a hypothetical.

I'm pretty sure I laid it out.  I'll try again in bullet points:

• So-so teleportation/travel
• Poor distraction
• Instant invisibility that does not break from attacks
• 3 seconds of invulnerability (and that hypothetical is called Rolling Guard...so not really all that hypothetical)
• Synergy with both her Breaching Surge and Reservoirs as her decoy will create a second surge.

And to the salty, I say unto thee...PPPPBBBBBTTTTTTT!!!!

[Samhel]

Wisp's ultimate surely could use some buffs in the future and im not specifically talking about a damage buff. Sol Gate should have a higher rate of fire or atleast the same as any other beams in the game right now and it should have an inner bigger punch through too... because you know... it's the actual Sun we are talking about, it should be more powerful. Visually amazing, no doubt, but on higher level its damage and usefulness is unreliable. The Sun burns and radiates on 6-7k °C it should melt down anything easily when it's focused in a beam like that. Or just give it more dmg and procs when we have all the 3 reservoirs or something... but this ability just goes into forgiveness on higher levels. Even an ability like Danse Macabre is more reliable on 100+ levels too and it uses sentient eidolon energy? This ability should do the same or even more... or as i said atleast with 3 buffs it should be more reliable.

[Xavori]

2 minutes ago, Legion-Shields said:

I laugh when people make durability one of the first things they consider when trying to determine how good a frame is. Pathetic.

You pretty much have to given how the game plays once you get past star-chart and even sortie level stuff.  It doesn't matter how amazing Saryn's DPS is if she's dead.  On the other hand, as long as you give him a top-tier weapon, Rhino can handle most content in the game for quite a while.

[seprent]

10 minutes ago, Legion-Shields said:

I laugh when people make durability one of the first things they consider when trying to determine how good a frame is. Pathetic.

limbo is squishy has very little armor but has alot of energy so QT works marvelously that runs low well just pop into the rift 

while im happy to have casters that can take a punch durability is something i dont really look for in a frame its weather or not it has a kit i would actually enjoy with a build idea that gets me off my arse to go farm the frame wisp looks fun i farmed wisp and am enjoying myself 

still wish sol would calm down how ever in blinding me and allies if there to close to wisp or the foe unlucky enough to be pointed at with the green eye of the fecking sun or if there is a setting in the option menu i can change to make it stop doing a dark souls and putting everything into darkness 

Edited May 27, 2019 by seprent
i forgot a whole word good job brain

[Xavori]

53 minutes ago, TheGuyver said:

First of all, this belongs in feedback. Second, putting umbral mods on a frame doesn't turn it into "Umbral X" and that drives me up a wall seeing it literally everywhere. 

This isn't feedback.  It's not direct at DE at all.  If it was, I'd have focused on just how bad her 4 power is and made suggestions for improving it.  Of course, since one of those suggestions is "Completely rework the damage model" I'm pretty sure it'd be a bad idea to hold my breath waiting for that.

Second, my Umbral Chroma doesn't care what you think about "Umbral X," and my Umbral Inaros laughs in your direction.  My Umbral Frost just rolled his eyes.  My Excalibur Umbra, on the other hand, was in total agreement with you.  But he's still salty about the whole being betrayed, murdered, and forced resurrection thing, so nobody takes him that seriously.

In other words, there is a difference between Umbral X and X Umbra.  Maybe you should pay attention?

[seprent]

4 minutes ago, Xavori said:

My Excalibur Umbra, on the other hand, was in total agreement with you.  But he's still salty about the whole being betrayed, murdered, and forced resurrection thing, so nobody takes him that seriously.

have you tried tea and turning the radio on in your quarters? mine is also pretty content being a laser light show turret with a fire rate built supra vandal 

still waiting for playable komi boards and hoping i can play against umbra also surprised a lot of his stuff isn't ship decorations like his little guitar thing  

Edited May 27, 2019 by seprent
spelling

[TeneKay]

Agreed - needs to have its damage application to whatever the beam weapons are at right now as opposed to once per second. Some other buffs would be nice but damage application needs to be tuned ASAP.

[Ikyr0]

Really happy with what Will o Wisp does. truly makes her solid for high levels. So she seems to be a stealth support type of frame, with very good dps capabilities. kind of like Octavia.

I think she'll be very solid when or if Sol is significantly buff. but even without it, she works well.

Edited May 27, 2019 by Ikyr0

[(XBOX)GearsMatrix301]

1 hour ago, Ham_Grenabe said:

I'm pretty sure (check's OP) it's not just implied; it's explicitly stated. 

and you ruined the chain. Thanks a lot.