Zephyr tweak suggestion

[BlachWolf]

Now that we’ve seen zephyrs deluxe skin and most importantly how gauss 1 works, can we pls revisit her, she really doesn’t require much to be a good frame. These are some of the few tweaks I would suggest:

Her one: Tail Wind

Ability problem: The biggest problem with this ability is how unusable it is in tile sets. It basically forces you to kiss a wall for several seconds thanks to the momentum it generates. It’s especially bad in higher levels since it can lead to your death.

Fix: Let zephyr trigger a Divebomb whenever she hits the ground / Wall. Dive bomb already completely fixes this issue, which really leaves me to question why DE didn’t implement this right away. In addition, as shown in the latest dev stream gauss doesn’t have this problem with his 1.

Her two: Airburst

Ability Problem: The main issue with this ability is how useless it is, it really only serves to increase the size of the tornados and even then, it’s just a minor buff.

Fix: Make the ability create a 20m zone which attracts tornados and lasts for 15s. This at least will make it useful by allowing us to control her tornados. In addition, it would allow us to better take advantage of funnel cloud, greatly increasing her dps potential. Though only one zone may be active at a time.

Her three: Turbulence

Ability problem: Turbulence is a great ability, but the lack of an audio cue when it runs out, combined with its slow animation can easily lead to players forgetting to recast this ability.

Fix: Introduce an audio cue when it runs out like chromas vex armor or garas splinter storm.

These few tweaks in my opinion would easily fix her kit and thus open her up to more players. I really hope that DE at least fixes her 1 when her deluxe skin releases, since it's her biggest issue right now.

[Ascarith]

11 minutes ago, BlachWolf said:

Her three: Turbulence

Ability problem: Turbulence is a great ability, but the lack of an audio cue when it runs out, combined with its slow animation can easily lead to players forgetting to recast this ability.

Fix: Introduce an audio cue when it runs out like chromas vex armor or garas splinter storm.

 

That one time they "broke" her animations and let us cast Turbulence one-handed/while moving was amazing. 

[BlachWolf]

2 minutes ago, Ascarith said:

That one time they "broke" her animations and let us cast Turbulence one-handed/while moving was amazing. 

Making it one handed like vex armor would also be a nice tweak.

[Caelward]

@BlachWolf

On her Tail Wind. How often do you accidentally tap a random piece of environment? How often do we really want to do an impact strike on that random pillar up in the roof in order to hit nothing but instead get shot by all the enemies unbothered by us staying still? A decent compromise would be a wall latch. Let us hit the wall and just automatically wall latch if we are holding or tap the relevant button. From that wall latch we can immediately refocus, readjust and launch ourselves again to enjoy Zephyr's #1promise. Freedom of Mobility.

Now if only they would readjust the way Tailwind was impacted by various mods. @Birdframe_Prime could explain that much better than me. An animation unlock would put more control in the hands of the player, but I suspect this is one of DE's purposeful drawbacks that prevent the ability from 'being too good.'

As for her old #2 ability, personally I would much rather see divebomb combined with Zephyr's ground slam as a passive ability. Think about that. Divebomb as a Zephyr unique ground slam that maybe doesn't even need a weapon equipped, but acts to slightly buff whatever ground slam her weapon is capable of.

Last time I checked Airburst only served to make her tornado taller, not much use at all. But having it attract tornadoes is a really interesting idea though. Using Airburst to attract nearby tornadoes would put an energy cost on a fire and forget movement order for your tornado. Neat.

Turbulence. An audio cue might be interesting as a QoL upgrade. And it is her most patched ability. I'd like to see that happen. I suspect DE is wary of buffing this extremely strong ability any further though.

Edited July 27, 2019 by Caelward

[BlachWolf]

18 minutes ago, Caelward said:

On her Tail Wind. How often do you accidentally tap a random piece of environment? How often do we really want to do an impact strike on that random pillar up in the roof in order to hit nothing but instead get shot by all the enemies unbothered by us staying still? A decent compromise would be a wall latch. Let us hit the wall and just automatically wall latch if we are holding or tap the relevant button. From that wall latch we can immediately refocus, readjust and launch ourselves again to enjoy Zephyr's #1promise. Freedom of Mobility.

Now if only they would readjust the way Tailwind was impacted by various mods. @Birdframe_Prime could explain that much better than me. An animation unlock would put more control in the hands of the player, but I suspect this is one of DE's purposeful drawbacks that prevent the ability from 'being too good.'

I'd rather dive bomb be triggered when ever she hits something with her one, the dmg could scale based on dmg mods. Though the most important thing is that dive bomb already fixes the wall kissing issue. I wanted to suggest a minimal effort solution so DE might feel compelled to actually implement it.

 

20 minutes ago, Caelward said:

Last time I checked Airburst only served to make her tornado taller, not much use at all. But having it attract tornadoes is a really interesting idea though. Using Airburst to attract nearby tornadoes would put an energy cost on a fire and forget movement order for your tornado. Neat.

Yeah, its a rather useless ability, I just wanted to give it more use and also fix the uncontrollable nature of her 4. With such an implementation it basically fixes both issues, since having control over tornados especially with funnel cloud could give her a huge dps potential, somewhat like mags bobble.

22 minutes ago, Caelward said:

Turbulence. An audio cue might be interesting as a QoL upgrade. And it is her most patched ability. I'd like to see that happen. I suspect DE is wary of buffing this extremely strong ability any further though.

In my opinion this minor QoL change wont change much in terms of effectiveness, you'll just have it on more frequently. In addition if more powerful abilities that fulfill a similar roll to it like vex armor and splinter storm both have audio cues, I really don't see how this small change could be that game braking.

[AlouetteSK]

Have you seen the last DevStream?  I want Zephyr's 1 to work similarly to Gauss's 1, Tap for a quick air dash, and hold to just fly.  Tap towards the ground to do divebomb, and let go of hold in the air to float for a bit.

[Caelward]

5 minutes ago, BlachWolf said:

I'd rather dive bomb be triggered when ever she hits something with her one, the dmg could scale based on dmg mods. Though the most important thing is that dive bomb already fixes the wall kissing issue. I wanted to suggest a minimal effort solution so DE might feel compelled to actually implement it.

The only problem with this is that my biggest irritation with impacting say, door frames and getting stuck, is that I wanted to be moving.
Getting stuck on a divebomb instead only puts a new face on it. I'd rather have a simple wall latch to let me move on with my life.

As for divebomb scaling with mods, DE seems fundamentally unable to do anything interesting with divebomb modding. A few years of watching paint dry while Zephyr players shouted at DE has given me a very firm impression of this issue. That's why I said just slap it on her groundslam, you don't even have to boost the weapon, I just want the air dive and the sound and to be on the ground, think of it as putting a blink effect on groundslam and being done with it.

2 minutes ago, AlouetteSK said:

Have you seen the last DevStream?  I want Zephyr's 1 to work similarly to Gauss's 1, Tap for a quick air dash, and hold to just fly.  Tap towards the ground to do divebomb, and let go of hold in the air to float for a bit.

The only problem with this is that now Gauss has that ability. Ability overlap is anathema. DE won't do it. The more mobility frames DE creates, the more they eliminate potential ways to alter Zephyr. This suggestion was made a very long time ago for Zephyr. As you can see, she doesn't have the ability. I think the opportunity for this has been discarded by DE.

Edited July 27, 2019 by Caelward

[BlachWolf]

6 minutes ago, AlouetteSK said:

Have you seen the last DevStream?  I want Zephyr's 1 to work similarly to Gauss's 1, Tap for a quick air dash, and hold to just fly.  Tap towards the ground to do divebomb, and let go of hold in the air to float for a bit.

Yeah that would be awesome. Lets see what they do when her deluxe comes out.

[BlachWolf]

5 minutes ago, Caelward said:

The only problem with this is that my biggest irritation with impacting say, door frames and getting stuck, is that I wanted to be moving.
Getting stuck on a divebomb instead only puts a new face on it. I'd rather have a simple wall latch to let me move on with my life.

Well maybe I was a bit to unclear, I meant the explosion when ever you hit the ground, it completely negates momentum and thus removes the issue. It woulds also have the advantage of basically CC the enemy, which could be a further advantage.

7 minutes ago, Caelward said:

As for divebomb scaling with mods, DE seems fundamentally unable to do anything interesting with divebomb modding. A few years of watching paint dry while Zephyr players shouted at DE has given me a very firm impression of this issue. That's why I said just slap it on her groundslam, you don't even have to boost the weapon, I just want the air dive and the sound and to be on the ground, think of it as putting a blink effect on groundslam and being done with it.

Well I mean if they can pull it off with garas, atlases and khora, I dont see why they couldnt do the same with divebomb. But thats really a minor problem, I really only wanted to concentrate on her bigger issues, which was the wall kissing and the other things.

10 minutes ago, Caelward said:

The only problem with this is that now Gauss has that ability. Ability overlap is anathema. DE won't do it. The more mobility frames DE creates, the more they eliminate potential ways to alter Zephyr. This suggestion was made a very long time ago for Zephyr. As you can see, she doesn't have the ability. I think the opportunity for this has been discarded by DE.

Thats indeed sadly true, though I anleast expect them to fix the wall kissing issue. That alone would at least make this ability useful in tiles sets.

[Caelward]

10 minutes ago, BlachWolf said:

Well maybe I was a bit to unclear, I meant the explosion when ever you hit the ground, it completely negates momentum and thus removes the issue. It woulds also have the advantage of basically CC the enemy, which could be a further advantage.

Well I mean if they can pull it off with garas, atlases and khora, I dont see why they couldnt do the same with divebomb. But thats really a minor problem, I really only wanted to concentrate on her bigger issues, which was the wall kissing and the other things.

Thats indeed sadly true, though I anleast expect them to fix the wall kissing issue. That alone would at least make this ability useful in tiles sets.

Divebombs CC was always unreliable. It wouldn't cancel ongoing animations from elite enemies, which means with divebomb you'd occasionally plant yourself directly in the line of fire of an elite while simultaneously ensuring you'd be there to suffer the consequences.
 

Anyways, I need to warn you, expect absolutely nothing from DE for patching Zephyr. She's gone literal years without DE's attention.

I'm even less optimistic since conversations on Zephyr have become even more rare since the 'rework' put Zephyr back in essentially the same place she started. A #1 that'll momentum lock her and is hard to mod without conflicting results. A nearly useless #2 that seems like it should be better, but underperforms in various ways. A #3 that is fantastic for her personal protection which means it eats up her power budget. A #4 that is useful in a random manner. It may do a great job, or it may just wander off to lands unseen while you wander around doing whatever it is you must. And a passive that is very good at outing newbies vs veterans who have mastered the initially awkward altered controls.

Edited July 27, 2019 by Caelward

[BlachWolf]

5 minutes ago, Caelward said:

Divebombs CC was always unreliable. It wouldn't cancel ongoing animations from elite enemies, which means with divebomb you'd occasionally plant yourself directly in the line of fire of an elite while simultaneously ensuring you'd be there to suffer the consequences.
 

Anyways, I need to warn you, expect absolutely nothing from DE for patching Zephyr. She's gone literal years without DE's attention.

I'm even less optimistic since conversations on Zephyr have become even more rare since the 'rework' put Zephyr back in essentially the same place she started. A #1 that'll momentum lock her and is hard to mod without conflicting results. A nearly useless #2 that seems like it should be better, but underperforms in various ways. A #3 that is fantastic for her personal protection which means it eats up her power budget. A #4 that is useful in a random manner. It may do a great job, or it may just wander off to lands unseen while you wander around doing whatever it is you must. And a passive that is very good at outing newbies vs veterans who have mastered the initially awkward altered controls.

Well then lets just hope for the best. Till something happens she'll be collecting dust in my arsenal only seeing the light of day every now and then, especially since I've now started to use titania a lot more in open worlds.

[Naneel]

vor 5 Stunden schrieb Caelward:

On her Tail Wind. How often do you accidentally tap a random piece of environment? How often do we really want to do an impact strike on that random pillar up in the roof in order to hit nothing but instead get shot by all the enemies unbothered by us staying still? A decent compromise would be a wall latch. Let us hit the wall and just automatically wall latch if we are holding or tap the relevant button. From that wall latch we can immediately refocus, readjust and launch ourselves again to enjoy Zephyr's #1promise. Freedom of Mobility.

I really like this idea. In addition I would give her a CC on landing (since the momentum has to go somewhere). Make it like Pull in the direction you were moving knocking down enemies (maybe depending on the rest duration from Tailwind). This would give you more time to refocus.

vor 7 Stunden schrieb BlachWolf:

Her three: Turbulence

Ability problem: Turbulence is a great ability, but the lack of an audio cue when it runs out, combined with its slow animation can easily lead to players forgetting to recast this ability.

Fix: Introduce an audio cue when it runs out like chromas vex armor or garas splinter storm.

I would like this as I find myself often dead because i missed the end of it.

[Birdframe_Prime]

Tailwind needs a much more in-depth look

Spoiler

1. Tailwind is definitely difficult to use in the tile sets.

2. You have little to no way to stop.

3. Aim differentiation for Tailwind and Dive Bomb was already called to be a janky mechanic, years before the update, and DE still put it in despite arguments to the counter.

4. As DE have seen fit to shuffle Dive Bomb off into a little-used niched, it's time to let it actually die and be moved elsewhere.

5. The Hover is functionally barren, it serves no purpose and is actively counter-intuitive to how Zephyr is played. You sit still, on the ground, and charge up an ability that offers no benefits other than sitting still again in the air this time where enemies technically can't melee you. Except it doesn't have a timer, it's just an arbitrary duration based on how long you charge up and there is no cue as to how long this lasts or when it's ending.

How do we go about fixing all of these?

Step 1. Remove the Animation from Tailwind. Make it a simple jet-propel in any direction in pretty much the same way just debuted on Gauss. Removing the animation allows Zephyr to use her existing in-air steering to make adjustments to her direction, it also allows reloads and re-casts of other abilities.

Step 2. Switch the Modding. Currently Tailwind is a Duration cast, just like Turbulence and Tornado. To get the most out of the latter two abilities you cannot get the most usability out of the former. It helps for Open Worlds, but that's literally it. If we took the existing functions, the distance we travel and the momentum afterwards and switch those to Range and Strength, we have a customisable ability for use anywhere.

For reference, Range is something people like a lot of on Zephyr, although more niche builds use Neutral range, it's a variable stat. Strength is something we can leave on Zephyr unless we're using her Augments for Funnel Clouds or Jet Stream, so again, variable. By having Tailwind's initial travel distance based on Range, and the Momentum we preserve after it based on Strength (where Neutral is 50% conservation and getting to 201% Strength is 100% conservation).

What this means is that you can have a Tailwind that's long-range, but slows you down afterwards for time to do other things, or a Tailwind that's short range, but you carry on for longer afterwards. You can even go for Negative strength and have a Tailwind that functions like an Operator Dash.

Step 3. Move Dive Bomb into her Passive. It doesn't deal enough damage, it doesn't reliably CC, it could have been a great stand-alone ability if they'd just buffed it, but since they put in Air Burst, let Dive Bomb pass. Simply make it add a small amount of damage to the base damage of any Heavy Ground Slam attack, so that with the Melee modding, it actually makes every hit better. And keep the custom animation too, so Zephyr has that unique part of her still.

Step 4. The Hover needs to become a tool for better Mobility, not anti-mobility. With Dive Bomb now not on the ability, change the Hover to a half-second hold (like the other tap/hold casts in game) and give it a base Duration that we can mod for. Then let us cast it while moving. Yes make it interrupt things like reload or other functions, but let us run around charging it instead of squatting like we're going to fart out the lifting gas. Allow us to cast it in-air where it locks us in place as an air brake. It then lets us make almost tactical movements in the air, using Tailwind to go a distance and Hover to actually hover at the destination. We also get a timer and an audio cue for it ending.

Step 5. Target Fixation needs to be changed to affect something else other than the Damage part of Tailwind. Even with an Umbral Jet Stream build on Zephyr, giving me nearly 1000 damage on the cast when you actually hit somebody, even the band-aid of letting us have a 2 second grace period before the buff resets (as in the planned DevWorkshop thread) will not make this augment do any real damage. It just won't. With 2 seconds grace I'm fairly sure that I could make the buff on Target Fixation last an entire Exterminate mission, but at no point would that damage scale enough to actually kill an enemy.

Make it function as a timed buff; hit an enemy with Tailwind and you gain X seconds of damage buff. This buff is increased by the amount of enemies you hit in a single Tailwind. Although the Duration isn't affected by the number of enemies hit, or Modding, so it stays consistent for how often you have to hit enemies with the ability.

Air Burst needs more functionality

Spoiler

Currently it's just a knock-down and rag doll. This is not a better ability than Dive Bomb was, and it travels incredibly slowly for a projectile attack.

Speed up the projectile, and give the AoE an actual effect, such as a short duration Lift (like the Zaw Arcane that lifts enemies in a line after you bullet/double jump).

The 'synergy' with Tornado doesn't actually do anything. Taller funnels do not actually have a better function, they're exactly the same as they were before. The only place this is in any way useful is if you're using Funnel Clouds and you return the funnels to normal size so you can feed damage into them over the heads of enemies for the AoE damage spread.

Casting one ability into another should actually produce something with an effect that's functionally worth the extra cost, and whether that's something like a base movement speed boost, or a larger area of capture, or even a fixed minimum duration on captured enemies (holding them in the air for a minimum time to give better chance of killing them).

Turbulence does need that cue at the end of Duration.

Tornado needs some tweaks too.

Spoiler

It needs to not pick up dead bodies, specifically drop ones that were living and are now dead.

The funnels still have the base problem they always did of wandering off. Just because we have a function to aim and send them where we want doesn't actually fix this, because it only affects the closest funnel to the point of our aim. I spent a long time trying to shepherd the funnels around and it just doesn't work better than simply shooting the enemies.

Funnels need to spawn at the location we cast them, not on enemies up to the full Range away, meaning that funnels can easily spawn 50m apart and around corners or up stairs.

Then we limit the range that funnels can wander away from the casting location. We already have the re-cast, make it actually function for something by giving us an area that the funnels patrol in and can't leave, giving us area denial and CC we can almost rely on instead of the current 'now where did they go?' situation.

This way, we cast Tornado where we want it, can change the element of all four funnels, then it moves outwards to target enemies in range of the casting point, never going more than your actual Range away from the starting point. If you give it a minimum base range (where modding can't make it lower, similar to Volt's minimum stun duration on his 4) you can't exploit it by using negative range to make a little stationary crowd of funnels for true area denial.

But that's all just kind of stuff that I've had knocking around for a while now. My old threads are actually archived it's been so long.

[(PSN)RenovaKunumaru]

Tailwind:

Let Zephyr inflict self damage every time she collides with a wall.

Airburst:

Increase the ragdoll and make the enemies suspend in air like Titania.

Turbulence:

Make Uncastable in the air

Tornado:

Make tornadoes bigger. Don't increase pickup radius. 

I think this would make Zephyr the best she can be.

[Birdframe_Prime]

As always, love ya @(PS4)RenovaKunumaru

[Caelward]

9 hours ago, (PS4)RenovaKunumaru said:

Tailwind:

Let Zephyr inflict self damage every time she collides with a wall.

Airburst:

Increase the ragdoll and make the enemies suspend in air like Titania.

Turbulence:

Make Uncastable in the air

Tornado:

Make tornadoes bigger. Don't increase pickup radius. 

I think this would make Zephyr the best she can be.

Careful man, Zephyr's power budget is already strained to the absolute limited of believably. We don't want to try and push DE too far here.

[Naneel]

Here are some nice ideas aswell, getting rid of Airburst and shuffle up her kit a bit