Ability concept: Garuda, the frame to dethrone Nidus

[Tythbalt]

Outrageous title! I know, so lets first introduce a little bit of context. After many hours played on this Warframe everything seemed to click, all her abilities felt right, her synergies felt good, her kit played so well in general with some very niche mods and builds that see very rare use, she felt fantastic, and yet, still fell just short of perfect. That’s right, she could have dethroned Nidus as the king of well-designed kits. The one glaring issue amongst her abilities is they feel very disjointed, almost as if they belong on two different frames.

Her 1 puts her up close and personal with enemies, but her charged orb is best used at a safe range due to consuming her shield. Her 2 will once again put her in melee range of enemies, but her 4 is best used from the far safety of a long sightline where your shield can block all the shots to charge the orb you are about to throw to take advantage of the bleed procs of her 4, so what gives? Half her kit is designed to throw her in melee, half her kit is designed to be used from afar, this was the primary issue I noticed after putting many hours into playing her, and in my honest opinion, is the one thing keeping her from being the new queen of design.

So, I took it upon myself to conceptualize a fix for this issue by reworking her 3, Bloodletting! (both as a way of venting my frustration at such a near perfect frame and as a creative outlet)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Bloodletting

Garuda sacrifices her health to generate energy and elegantly twirls once, lashing out with her bloodied talons inflicting damage and knockback to all enemies around her.

Drain 50%

Energy 25%

Damage: scaling off her claws base damage and any mods applied to them. (makes the talons moddable even if a melee weapon is equipped.)

 

For reference on how this would feel/look/play think of Gara's 1 when used as a sweeping sword slash, Garuda would perform a similar move around her. This is honestly all it would take to make her kit cohesive, a simple change that would immediately bring her melee options up while also providing some interesting ways of dealing damage, that said, I’m a student of game design, so I could not just leave this issue well enough alone! I’ve compiled a list of additional "modular" synergies that could be used Individually or added onto this ability together in different combinations, so here we go!

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Synergy 1: Blood orb

A small portion (scaling with efficiency) of the damage dealt by this ability is absorbed by your blood orb if active.

This is probabbly the synergy I would advocate for the most as a very powerful quality of life improvement for her kit. Currently, the way to charge your blood orb is through your mirror, however, there are some big issues with this, namely, your teammates/objectives. If your team is CCing, tanking, drawing aggro ect away from you, it becomes somewhat difficult to efficiently charge your blood orb... the result? Garuda turns into sonic the hedgehog and begins summersaulting onto enemies with her shield like mad to get her blood orb to charge faster. Although this is frankly hilarious, it is very far from ideal.

Synergy 2: Dread mirror

Enemies struck by blood letting feed your dread mirror, increasing its effective circumference.

The idea here is to reward Garuda for getting multiple enemies in her striking range of her 3 all at once, the more enemies the better. How that benefit is expressed I am purposefully leaving somewhat open ended. Does it give her multiple shields around her? extend the coverage of her current shield to fold around her? does it grow in size instead to cover teammates? Any of these is viable, the point is to reward proper use of the new 3 and increase her survivability in melee range.

Synergy 3: Blood altar

Garuda's strike feeds any blood altars in her range, causing them to erupt, granting aditional energy for her squadmates scaling with enemies hit and determined by affinity range.

Simmilar to the previous idea, this one takes it into a more supportive oriented synergy by giving her allies around her energy, fairly straight forward, but runs the risk of being meaningless in solo play.

Synergy 4: Seeking talons

Striking enemies marked by seeking talons with bloodletting causes them to release a small burst of seeking talons that prioritize enemies not previously affected, the ammount of enemies these new talons can seek scales with power strength.

Garuda's 4 in many ways feels like a very big powerful casted ability with all its buildup, however, more often than not it will be something you end up spamming which completely nullifies that feeling of weight to it. This synergy is one way of circimventing it while also adding in some intresting gameplay with maintaining her bleed debuff rolling (simmilar to what saryn does with her spores.) This is possibly my favorite synergy due to the massive impact it would have on her playstyle although it is rather superfluous.

This concludes the list of synergies. A small reminder that these were all designed to be modular, and not thought of as all working in conjunction all at once, think of them as a list of possible additions to the base changes I made to bloodletting previously rather than part of the base rework I proposed.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

That concludes the deep dive into Garuda's 3, I would appriciate feedback on these concepts as well as your own opinions thrown in the comments on possible changes! if you feel anything is amiss, point it out so I can address it properly.

Edited May 29, 2019 by Tythbalt

[Rohor]

I really like your ideas.

II think that she could have some augments. To enhance that play style.

 

For example, an augment for her 1 that would shield around her, and when it took x dmg, the orb exploded.

An exilus augment, for when she does her tumble with her shield up, she would open up her arms (claws out) and stop and damage the enemies she hits in a AoE.

Just some ideas.

[Tythbalt]

En 30/5/2019 a las 2:55, Rohor dijo:

I really like your ideas.

II think that she could have some augments. To enhance that play style.

 

For example, an augment for her 1 that would shield around her, and when it took x dmg, the orb exploded.

An exilus augment, for when she does her tumble with her shield up, she would open up her arms (claws out) and stop and damage the enemies she hits in a AoE.

Just some ideas.

More augments would definitively be welcome, but I feel there needs to be a bit more put into her kit before we consider augments themselves.

[Yanlei.]

On 2019-05-29 at 5:23 AM, Tythbalt said:

Outrageous title! I know, so lets first introduce a little bit of context. After many hours played on this Warframe everything seemed to click, all her abilities felt right, her synergies felt good, her kit played so well in general with some very niche mods and builds that see very rare use, she felt fantastic, and yet, still fell just short of perfect. That’s right, she could have dethroned Nidus as the king of well-designed kits. The one glaring issue amongst her abilities is they feel very disjointed, almost as if they belong on two different frames.

Her 1 puts her up close and personal with enemies, but her charged orb is best used at a safe range due to consuming her shield. Her 2 will once again put her in melee range of enemies, but her 4 is best used from the far safety of a long sightline where your shield can block all the shots to charge the orb you are about to throw to take advantage of the bleed procs of her 4, so what gives? Half her kit is designed to throw her in melee, half her kit is designed to be used from afar, this was the primary issue I noticed after putting many hours into playing her, and in my honest opinion, is the one thing keeping her from being the new queen of design.

So, I took it upon myself to conceptualize a fix for this issue by reworking her 3, Bloodletting! (both as a way of venting my frustration at such a near perfect frame and as a creative outlet)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Bloodletting

Garuda sacrifices her health to generate energy and elegantly twirls once, lashing out with her bloodied talons inflicting damage and knockback to all enemies around her.

Drain 50%

Energy 25%

Damage: scaling off her claws base damage and any mods applied to them. (makes the talons moddable even if a melee weapon is equipped.)

 

For reference on how this would feel/look/play think of Gara's 1 when used as a sweeping sword slash, Garuda would perform a similar move around her. This is honestly all it would take to make her kit cohesive, a simple change that would immediately bring her melee options up while also providing some interesting ways of dealing damage, that said, I’m a student of game design, so I could not just leave this issue well enough alone! I’ve compiled a list of additional "modular" synergies that could be used Individually or added onto this ability together in different combinations, so here we go!

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Synergy 1: Blood orb

A small portion (scaling with efficiency) of the damage dealt by this ability is absorbed by your blood orb if active.

This is probabbly the synergy I would advocate for the most as a very powerful quality of life improvement for her kit. Currently, the way to charge your blood orb is through your mirror, however, there are some big issues with this, namely, your teammates/objectives. If your team is CCing, tanking, drawing aggro ect away from you, it becomes somewhat difficult to efficiently charge your blood orb... the result? Garuda turns into sonic the hedgehog and begins summersaulting onto enemies with her shield like mad to get her blood orb to charge faster. Although this is frankly hilarious, it is very far from ideal.

Synergy 2: Dread mirror

Enemies struck by blood letting feed your dread mirror, increasing its effective circumference.

The idea here is to reward Garuda for getting multiple enemies in her striking range of her 3 all at once, the more enemies the better. How that benefit is expressed I am purposefully leaving somewhat open ended. Does it give her multiple shields around her? extend the coverage of her current shield to fold around her? does it grow in size instead to cover teammates? Any of these is viable, the point is to reward proper use of the new 3 and increase her survivability in melee range.

Synergy 3: Blood altar

Garuda's strike feeds any blood altars in her range, causing them to erupt, granting aditional energy for her squadmates scaling with enemies hit and determined by affinity range.

Simmilar to the previous idea, this one takes it into a more supportive oriented synergy by giving her allies around her energy, fairly straight forward, but runs the risk of being meaningless in solo play.

Synergy 4: Seeking talons

Striking enemies marked by seeking talons with bloodletting causes them to release a small burst of seeking talons that prioritize enemies not previously affected, the ammount of enemies these new talons can seek scales with power strength.

Garuda's 4 in many ways feels like a very big powerful casted ability with all its buildup, however, more often than not it will be something you end up spamming which completely nullifies that feeling of weight to it. This synergy is one way of circimventing it while also adding in some intresting gameplay with maintaining her bleed debuff rolling (simmilar to what saryn does with her spores.) This is possibly my favorite synergy due to the massive impact it would have on her playstyle although it is rather superfluous.

This concludes the list of synergies. A small reminder that these were all designed to be modular, and not thought of as all working in conjunction all at once, think of them as a list of possible additions to the base changes I made to bloodletting previously rather than part of the base rework I proposed.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

That concludes the deep dive into Garuda's 3, I would appriciate feedback on these concepts as well as your own opinions thrown in the comments on possible changes! if you feel anything is amiss, point it out so I can address it properly.

I liek

[(PSN)Vahlon_Valiant]

This is honestly beautiful, the title caught me but you had me dead hooked when you suggested blood letting fill the meatball with some of her own blood thats so badass and seems to make so much sense its weird its not in the game. The blood altar synergy is awesome as well it fits that it would give energy since she is using an ability that grants it to herself and would stop people from hating on altar so much for no reason. Dread mirror is a hard one though cause honestly the augment kinda does exactly what ur synergy list would likely benefit from. That talons buff is actually insane i can only imagine how gorey it'd be. Youve made me a happy garuda main and I hope DE considers these changes or if they wouldnt change the base kit maybe make a bloodletting augment that enhances abilities this way.

[xZeromusx]

On 2019-05-28 at 10:23 PM, Tythbalt said:

Outrageous title! I know, so lets first introduce a little bit of context. After many hours played on this Warframe everything seemed to click, all her abilities felt right, her synergies felt good, her kit played so well in general with some very niche mods and builds that see very rare use, she felt fantastic, and yet, still fell just short of perfect. That’s right, she could have dethroned Nidus as the king of well-designed kits. The one glaring issue amongst her abilities is they feel very disjointed, almost as if they belong on two different frames.

Her 1 puts her up close and personal with enemies, but her charged orb is best used at a safe range due to consuming her shield. Her 2 will once again put her in melee range of enemies, but her 4 is best used from the far safety of a long sightline where your shield can block all the shots to charge the orb you are about to throw to take advantage of the bleed procs of her 4, so what gives? Half her kit is designed to throw her in melee, half her kit is designed to be used from afar, this was the primary issue I noticed after putting many hours into playing her, and in my honest opinion, is the one thing keeping her from being the new queen of design.

So, I took it upon myself to conceptualize a fix for this issue by reworking her 3, Bloodletting! (both as a way of venting my frustration at such a near perfect frame and as a creative outlet)

This is pretty much the only part I disagree with. Her kits is pretty damn cohesive. Her 1 puts her up close to enemies, but also has an auto-kill feature that is % based, meaning it scales EXTREMELY well. Using the orb bomb also shouldn't be what you immediately jump to right after you get the shield up. 1. The orb bomb generates more damage when the shield absorbs enemy fire. 2. The orb bomb also absorbs damage from subsequent castings of the ability as well as from damage done to subsequent shields, allowing you to charge it without having to expend the 50/second energy. 3. The higher the amount of damage you've done with the ability to create shields as well as the higher the amount of damage you've absorbed with the shield, the faster the bomb generates additional damage when you go to charge it. The damage generation from charging is % based and uses the amount that has been absorbed to calculate how much you add to the bomb's damage. So, it's in your best interest to use the shield to its fullest extent, and to use subsequent shields to their fullest extent as well, to charge up the base damage of the orb before ever considering using the bomb.

As for the remainder of her kit, having abilities that shine at different ranges is an excellent thing. Further, two of her skills are percentage based, meaning they will always be excellent abilities regardless of the level of enemies you're going up against, and are excellent right out of the gate. Nidus, on the other hand has to generate stacks in order to make his abilities stronger, and even then, there is a cap to the number of stacks he can generate, so in a long mission, eventually, the scaling enemies are going to outstrip his stacks.

 

Your changes are good ideas. However, I feel they are unnecessary on a frame that is honestly already going to perform excellently in any situation at any level.

Edited June 27, 2019 by xZeromusx

[Tythbalt]

En 26/6/2019 a las 19:21, (PS4)Lord_Vahlon dijo:

This is honestly beautiful, the title caught me but you had me dead hooked when you suggested blood letting fill the meatball with some of her own blood thats so badass and seems to make so much sense its weird its not in the game. The blood altar synergy is awesome as well it fits that it would give energy since she is using an ability that grants it to herself and would stop people from hating on altar so much for no reason. Dread mirror is a hard one though cause honestly the augment kinda does exactly what ur synergy list would likely benefit from. That talons buff is actually insane i can only imagine how gorey it'd be. Youve made me a happy garuda main and I hope DE considers these changes or if they wouldnt change the base kit maybe make a bloodletting augment that enhances abilities this way.

Itd certainly be a dream come true, I was infatuated by Garuda since she was teased and her kit definitively delivered. I just felt it needed a last bit of glue and flair to tie it all together neatly

[Tythbalt]

En 27/6/2019 a las 14:02, xZeromusx dijo:

This is pretty much the only part I disagree with. Her kits is pretty damn cohesive. Her 1 puts her up close to enemies, but also has an auto-kill feature that is % based, meaning it scales EXTREMELY well. Using the orb bomb also shouldn't be what you immediately jump to right after you get the shield up. 1. The orb bomb generates more damage when the shield absorbs enemy fire. 2. The orb bomb also absorbs damage from subsequent castings of the ability as well as from damage done to subsequent shields, allowing you to charge it without having to expend the 50/second energy. 3. The higher the amount of damage you've done with the ability to create shields as well as the higher the amount of damage you've absorbed with the shield, the faster the bomb generates additional damage when you go to charge it. The damage generation from charging is % based and uses the amount that has been absorbed to calculate how much you add to the bomb's damage. So, it's in your best interest to use the shield to its fullest extent, and to use subsequent shields to their fullest extent as well, to charge up the base damage of the orb before ever considering using the bomb.

As for the remainder of her kit, having abilities that shine at different ranges is an excellent thing. Further, two of her skills are percentage based, meaning they will always be excellent abilities regardless of the level of enemies you're going up against, and are excellent right out of the gate. Nidus, on the other hand has to generate stacks in order to make his abilities stronger, and even then, there is a cap to the number of stacks he can generate, so in a long mission, eventually, the scaling enemies are going to outstrip his stacks.

 

Your changes are good ideas. However, I feel they are unnecessary on a frame that is honestly already going to perform excellently in any situation at any level.

The reason why it is not cohesive is BECAUSE to pull up your shield you have to by necesity jump in the middle of a group of enemies. Yes, you want to charge your orb before you release it (and even that has problems with team/objective aggro that I went into later) but the fact that a monodirectional facing shield is what you get to defend yourself after easily jumping right in the middle of a pack of enemies is not cohesive in any way. Yes the main target is likely to be killed, but youl be surrounded and have to very quickly reposition out of where you just jumped to with your 1. All of this is fixed if your 3 allowed you to follow up on your 1. Your 1 lands you in the middle of a group of enemies then you use your 3 to sweep them all around you, effectively defending yourself, this little interaction is where most of my issues with the kit lie.

This is not even going into another problem with her 4, simmilar to her 1 it is only effective on what you can see facing a single direction, yet your 2 and 1 BOTH land you in very inconvenient places to aim it from. So ill emphasize it again, Half her kit wants you to play up close, half her kit wants you to aim from the corners of big rooms.

Edited July 7, 2019 by Tythbalt