Nyx Mind Control, why it can work well, but derpiness, and design, holds it back

[Vanilla_nuka]

     Nyx is my favorite frame, and accounts for more then 40% of my 1000 hours of playtime. while shes not the best by any means, she can handle pretty much all of the content this game has to offer currently. But lets face it, she needs some love. Im making this thread specifically about Mind Control, and its augment, Mind Freak, and how its both good, and bad.

    Mind control by itself, isnt a bad ability, since it had some QoL changes, its gotten significantly better. While better, its incredibly derpy. Sometimes the enemy you mind control just sits there, and does nothing, other times the enemy wonders off to another part of the map aggrod on enemies not even within its view. Other times, the enemy you mind control ends up getting stun locked by status effects, which really holds back the enemy potential. For example. down below I have a video of a level 120 heavy gunner fighting other corrupted enemies. At one point, another heavy gunner impact procs them, she gets fire proc'd by a moa, then gets impact proc'd again. Thats probably a solid 5 + seconds of my mind control duration wasted.

     Another issue with the enemy AI is that, if its surrounded by multiple enemies, which happens alot in a horde shooter like warframe, the Mind Controlled enemy has no idea who to target, it will attack whos closest initially, but then seems to just pick at random who to target next, I have a video of that aswell.

     Mind Controls augment, Mind Freak, actually isnt completely terrible, when combined with a weapon that does alot of damage like a shotgun, I can have an enemy dealing close to 2000% extra damage. Corpus benefit from this especially, Corpus techs can slaughter there comrades with little resistance. Grineer however are different since enemy armor scaling gos nuts at a certain point. Grineer Heavy gunners are actually really good targets, to enemies with less armor, heavy gunners can take them out with no problem, but when faced up against another heavy gunner, or bombard, they struggle, but can deal some damage. Nyxs 2 can erase that problem all together.

     The problem with the augment is, assimilate is basically required because absorb is a terrible ability without it, and on my build, I  have no room for 2 augments. I would love if Mind Freak or Assimilate were exilus augments (Cough cough like Mesa Walts, cough cough)

     My final issue is the casting animation, boy oh boy does this animation make it difficult to stack damage on the enemy. The enemy bends over and hides it head, which wouldnt you know it, makes it hard to stack damage. Body shots give significantly less damage output then headshots, this animations makes a huge difference. If Im lucky, I can get up to 2000% damage, but in most cases Im lucky to break a 1000%.  Another thing, as seen below, is the enemy can actually act out of the mind control animation, while the damage phase is still going.

 

 

The main things I would change about Mind Control is:

1) Make the mind controlled enemy immune to status effects when Mind Control is active

2) Give mind control a new animation, one that I find interesting would be, instead of the enemy bending over to grab there head, they stand there, grab there head with there hand (without bending and hiding there head) look at there hands confused, shake there head, then attack there team mates

3) Increase the mind control damage point from 4 seconds to 6 seconds, the cast animation is long, and you can sometimes lose a second or two before you can actually shoot the enemy, this would make up for it

4) During the damage point, give the headshot multiplier to the body aswell. Shooting the body during the cast gives significantly less damage output then a headshot, which I can understand, but when the enemy bends over during the animation, its damn near impossible to land headshots

5) Along with increasing enemy damage output, it would be nice if it also increased enemy reload speed aswell, its definitely noticeable on corpus techs and heavy gunners, since there gorgons and supras have slow reloads. If they dont have weapons, maybe make them swing, or attack faster. She is controlling there mind, she should be able to make them do what she wants

6) Make Mind Freak, or Assimilate, an exilus augment

The build and weapons I use are in the first video, I am using the Mind Freak Augment aswell.

 

 

Edited July 31, 2019 by Vanilla_nuka

[TaylorsContraction]

someone made an amazing suggestion for all player controlled enemies to gain a speed bonus the way a negative power strength nova does with molecular priming.

i think this would help a lot with all the dumb unnecessary movement enemy ai carries out allowing then to spend more time fighting.

[Vanilla_nuka]

An overall speed buff would be pretty nice, it wouldnt completely fix the problem but would be a decent bandaid