Being Revenant is Frustrating - an Elegant Solution

[Pfysicyst]

Enthralling enemies is fun, but there's no room for that in a squad. A neat halo of sentient bits doesn't prevent your teammates from killing your thralls, and they shouldn't have to hold back just to be polite. With the Vomvalysts for inspiration, I'm hoping thralls could get similar treatment; when thralls "die," they become voided. Mechanically the thrall does die like normal, with loot drops and creating thrall damage pillars, but they are immediately replaced with an allied copy so it looks like a transition, similar to Inaros creating sand shadows with his 2. Voided thralls no longer take damage and remain until Enthrall's initial duration ends naturally, at which point they fade away with the same effect as a melee channeling kill. They appear the same as Vomvalysts do when they lose their first health bar, transparent but with an energy color matching Revenant's.

This solves the issue of teammates deciding for you that you can't use thralls as allied units without sacrificing their on-death effects being on-demand. It also adds some welcome effectiveness to his underwhelming flagship powers. If we want to really do justice to Revenant's potential, that would involve voided thralls being exempt from the maximum cap on the thrall count. Living thralls would remain capped at 7, but voided thralls would have no cap. Strategic power management would allow Revenant to potentially cover an area in his control (and a useful amount of pillars) rather than just coerce a small cluster at a time for negligible benefit. The pillars aren't necessarily useful as-is because they can't be intelligently placed, but if you can have enough of them in a predetermined area, at least a few should be located in useful spots for catching pathing lines & feeding into Danse Macabre. All in all, enthralling enemies becomes justifiably useful for all of its intended purposes, and Revenant doesn't have to resign himself to only recasting Mesmer Skin and Danse Macabre occasionally. This also vaccinates against the lingering problem of enemies often becoming glitchy and unkillable when enthralled, since their corporeal body dies normally and is replaced with a voided copy.

Is this a major buff? Definitely, and no need to hide the fact. All Revenant has going for him currently is excellent protection with Mesmer Skin, which very much falls short of the design theme of "Void Vampire." No sense waiting for a rework if tweaking one power lifts the whole into being satisfactory.

Edited August 1, 2019 by Pfysicyst

[Tovon]

"Major buff?" Nah that's pretty weak, even with no cap. Make voided thralls have boosted damage then it'd be mildly decent. What's the point in having a legion of thralls if all they do is tickle the enemy? Otherwise a fine idea.

[Krion112]

I'm in favor of this. Even if DE felt like they had to make this an augment, I want this specific mechanic with Revenant.
(as well as with the guy above me, give Thralls buffs for when they become phantoms)

Edited August 1, 2019 by Krion112

[Pfysicyst]

4 minutes ago, Tovon said:

"Major buff?" Nah that's pretty weak, even with no cap. Make voided thralls have boosted damage then it'd be mildly decent. What's the point in having a legion of thralls if all they do is tickle the enemy? Otherwise a fine idea.

Pretty much the same as every other enemy-to-ally power: distraction as a form of crowd control and using buffs that only enemy units can give. I'd love it if turned allies actually did usable damage but we've not seen that in the game yet. Even overbuffing the single Nyx ally is just okay at best.

Edited August 1, 2019 by Pfysicyst

[nslay]

If they gave Thralls the same damage mitigation as Simaris Synthesis Targets, your squad would notice them more (on account of not being able to one-shot them!). But you do want them to die for the pillars they produce on death.

The problem is that you don't need CC for most things. And you don't need the pillars either... Just use your weapon or the lame 4. You can use Enthrall to help allies kill annoying units (like Nox), nullify a powerful boss attack, revive downed allies or even recast Mesmer Skin ... if you didn't want to recast it while flying through the air. These Thralls don't last very long which is fine... And you can use Enthrall when the squad is having trouble keeping up in a mission. But you'd be either playing with new players or in a very long survival for Enthrall to be valuable.

EDIT: If we want to do justice for Nyx or Revenant, we need DE to make CC more valuable. Revenant is really amazing when you start relying on his 1, 3 to kill ridiculously high level enemies in long survivals.

Edited August 2, 2019 by nslay

[BlachWolf]

The solution would be far simpler, just make revs thralls immune to ally dmg and thus only rev will be able to kill them.

[Xepthrichros]

8 hours ago, Pfysicyst said:

Pretty much the same as every other enemy-to-ally power: distraction as a form of crowd control and using buffs that only enemy units can give. I'd love it if turned allies actually did usable damage but we've not seen that in the game yet. Even overbuffing the single Nyx ally is just okay at best.

Reason this is slow to happen is because the anti-afk-to-win crowd will scream at the devs and call for nerfs. And they are a finicky crowd. One moment you can see them saying "X ability too strong and allows AFK nerf it to hell", the next they say "buff AI so they do actual work", and there's a fine line between AI that can carry you to victory and competent AI that gets some work done but not too much, and it will be a pain to get that exact level of balance correct - more so than say rebalancing AOE damage abilities, which can be "balanced" by a tweak of the numbers in terms of damage and range and energy cost (though I personally feel ALL the AOE nukers in this game are fine, they are fulfilling the purpose they were created and should be kept that way; some frames are DPS nukers, some are extremely good at stealth and enable cheesing of all spy missions, different frames have different roles). Making good AI that deals good damage requires coding AI behavior, changing their pathfinding, the way they prioritize targets etc. And supposing the devs finally nail it and produce that good AI companion that gets good amount of damage but also not a complete carry, the player reception will be divided because some people will appreciate its good whereas others just are out to prove the point that this is AFK to win and they will figure out a way to exploit the AI so they can show that they can stand perfectly still or do minimal button inputs while the AI buddy does the work, and then scream for nerfs thereafter. Then the devs will look at all the coding they did to improve the AI and wonder if it was even worth it, as now the feedback they're hearing is to make the AI dumber again.

Edited August 2, 2019 by Xepthrichros

[(XBOX)GearsMatrix301]

Replace Enthrall completely. That’s the only way to make it and Revenant better.

[(PSN)Ozymandias-13-]

13 hours ago, Pfysicyst said:

I'd love it if turned allies actually did usable damage but we've not seen that in the game yet. Even overbuffing the single Nyx ally is just okay at best.

Nyx is my second most used frame in my total 2,000 hours of game time so I've thought a lot about this over the years.

Our best bet for enemy-become-ally damage (Nyx, Revenant, Inaros clones), and reflected/redirected damage (Nyx, Unairu, Titania, etc), is for it to simply be all converted to true damage. Enemies aren't designed to deal with their own scaling amounts of health, but having it ignore armor and shields will at least let it be viable assisted damage at all levels. In the case of Nyx's Psychic Bolts, since it already does that, make targets affected by her abilities always prioritize Psychic Bolt afflicted targets.

[(PSN)Gorecatto]

I really think he should get an entire rework , except his 4 , which makes sense in his design , and its useful 

My idea would be , first of all , change his passive (not the eidolon part) , he is a sentient based , but an adaptation based passive would be kind of op even with low cap , so i would suggest , 'each enemy killed within 10 meters by revenant or his abilities gave him 15 armor for 10 sec , each enemy killed reset the timer" with an 1500 armor max

His 1 "makes a Flame wall in front of him , with damage X for X sec for every enemy that steps on it" the damage could be the one that the enemy is the weakest , making it a lesser Danse Macabre

His 2 "pushes enemy in 30 (15 in each direction) meters towards revenant, holding the ability makes them knockdown" it would have great synergy with his passive and with range mods would be a great crowd control

His 3 "Summons a eidolon vomvalyst per cast, when it dies , it gives revenant and his allies health and shield based on the damage it did to enemies" simple enough , the vomvalyst would work like normal variants ,with level scaling , and cap of four of them

His 4 would be the same i think , only with you could aim the club lights

[(XBOX)KayAitch]

16 hours ago, Pfysicyst said:

Enthralling enemies is fun, but there's no room for that in a squad. A neat halo of sentient bits doesn't prevent your teammates from killing your thralls, and they shouldn't have to hold back just to be polite

You're missing the point of thralls - enemies in Warframe scale health/armour much quicker than they do damage. By level 30 an enemy is basically unable to hurt their side.

This is why Nyx is useless and why Inaros's Sand Shadow is useless, and why Revenant's thralls are not minions to kill for you, they're just radiation++ confusion.

With Revenant:

Pop his 2 and renew it whenever it runs low (it won't often).

Whenever anything hits you they're stunned hit them with your 1 for a free thrall.

Use your 3 to ghost through them, repeat 3 times and even the hardest enemy in endless survival is dead. This also renews your 2.

 

Basically your thralls are not your army your teammates are killing, they're confused fodder you're about to kill but haven't got round to yet. 

In 100+ level content this combo is super effective, while his 4 rapidly becomes mop-up for fodder enemies.

Sorry, but making his thralls better is a waste of time. Nobody needs a army of 6 enemies that can't hurt their former teammates. You should be killing them as fast as you can spread them.

Think Saryn's spores or Loki's irradiated disarm, not Nyx's mind control.

 

[000l000]

Thralls are meant to be killed, they aren't minions - that's basically how Revenant has been designed as a whole.

Thralls are killed, then they're dealing damage to surrounding enemies and creating other thralls, what's wrong with that ? His whole thrall mechanics works like a charm - it's spreading quite easily so why complaining and especially why being frustrated by such a thing ?

[PsiWarp]

2 hours ago, 000l000 said:

Thralls are meant to be killed, they aren't minions - that's basically how Revenant has been designed as a whole.

Thralls are killed, then they're dealing damage to surrounding enemies and creating other thralls, what's wrong with that ? His whole thrall mechanics works like a charm - it's spreading quite easily so why complaining and especially why being frustrated by such a thing ?

You can't use any of his thrall synergies when they are reduced to pillars. Thralls die in split seconds unless they have insane amounts of Armor and damage reduction, meaning those synergies are rarely available.

[Pfysicyst]

18 hours ago, (XB1)KayAitch said:

Sorry, but making his thralls better is a waste of time. Nobody needs a army of 6 enemies that can't hurt their former teammates. You should be killing them as fast as you can spread them.

I think you didn't read or misunderstood my post. The idea is that if Revenant is doing a good job, he gets far more than 7 (not 6) soldiers. If the skill was only ever meant to kill them for benefit, there would have been no control aspect to it or any point to picking-and-choosing single enemies at a time. The change is meant to give the control aspect an effective purpose.
 

18 hours ago, (XB1)KayAitch said:

You're missing the point of thralls - enemies in Warframe scale health/armour much quicker than they do damage. By level 30 an enemy is basically unable to hurt their side.

This is why Nyx is useless and why Inaros's Sand Shadow is useless, and why Revenant's thralls are not minions to kill for you, they're just radiation++ confusion.

Think Saryn's spores or Loki's irradiated disarm, not Nyx's mind control.

The point of the changes are to have thralls provide effective CC like Nyx's Chaos and use their buffs (Eximus, Ancients, Ospreys), not to ape her Mind Control or have them kill for you. If DE wanted allied enemies to have effective damage, they wouldn't have designed them with pitiful damage a dozen times over. That's the reason I didn't discuss damage buffs for the thralls. It hasn't been done/done well before throughout the whole game, so that seems like a bridge too far when discussing a change to one skill on one frame.

[selig_fay]

Il y a 19 heures, (XB1)KayAitch a dit :

why Revenant's thralls are not minions to kill for you, they're just radiation++ confusion.

And of course you all forget that the enemies will ignore you and attack your thralls. Scaling is a problem for Nyx but not a problem for revenant. Revenant thralls is like a Loki lure that scales with the level.

Edited August 3, 2019 by zhellon

[(XBOX)KayAitch]

3 hours ago, Pfysicyst said:

I think you didn't read or misunderstood my post. The idea is that if Revenant is doing a good job, he gets far more than 7 (not 6) soldiers

However many, more would be nice, but as they're kill fodder it just doesn't matter much.

3 hours ago, Pfysicyst said:

If the skill was only ever meant to kill them for benefit, there would have been no control aspect to it or any point to picking-and-choosing single enemies at a time. The change is meant to give the control aspect an effective purpose

Sure, but you still have the enemy scaling - your minions can't hurt enemies, so why bother?

I think the directing them thing is a red herring. Like Gara's Vitrify - the ability has what appears to be a primary use, but really it's used for synergy with their whole kit.

I think some designs (mostly Pablo's?) tend to do this on purpose, so you get a eureka moment when you suddenly realise the frame is so much more powerful than it first appeared.

3 hours ago, Pfysicyst said:

The point of the changes are to have thralls provide effective CC like Nyx's Chaos

They already do, like...

3 hours ago, zhellon said:

And of course you all forget that the enemies will ignore you and attack your thralls. Scaling is a problem for Nyx but not a problem for revenant. Revenant thralls is like a Loki lure that scales with the level.

So what does that leave Nyx with?

4 hours ago, Pfysicyst said:

use their buffs (Eximus, Ancients, Ospreys

Yeah, she can mind control healing ancients and the like, which is basically the only use for the ability.

Folks moan about Revenant because they don't realise that he can do damage that scales with enemies, an ability that puts him in the very top tier of frames. Add an ability that can block any damage, and a nuke for the low-tier mobs, and he's S rank.

Revenant doesn't need a rework, he's good.

Nyx, on the other hand...

[NuclearCoffeePot]

On 2019-08-01 at 7:36 PM, Tovon said:

"Major buff?" Nah that's pretty weak, even with no cap. Make voided thralls have boosted damage then it'd be mildly decent. What's the point in having a legion of thralls if all they do is tickle the enemy? Otherwise a fine idea.

I think the point of the thralls isn't necessarily to do damage but rather draw aggro- Dmg can be done by rev himself

[Pfysicyst]

4 hours ago, (XB1)KayAitch said:

However many, more would be nice, but as they're kill fodder it just doesn't matter much. Sure, but you still have the enemy scaling - your minions can't hurt enemies, so why bother?

I think the directing them thing is a red herring. Like Gara's Vitrify - the ability has what appears to be a primary use, but really it's used for synergy with their whole kit.

I'm repeating myself even more now, but again, the fact that they don't cause much damage is accepted in this whole proposition. It is recognized for what it is, and the situation considered isn't designed in a way that requires them to start causing respectable damage because no other form of allied enemy in the game causes good damage. The idea is that the control aspect can become useful. You mentioned Gara's 4 as having expanded use, and that's what this is meant to be. Having a usably tough wall and a way to feed her splinter storm is great, I want enthrallment to be similarly effective.

4 hours ago, (XB1)KayAitch said:

So what does that leave Nyx with?

Nyx is pretty commonly regarded as a one-trick pony even after her rework. Loki already aped her great ability. We don't need to hold other frames under the water so Nyx can keep up in her floaties.

4 hours ago, (XB1)KayAitch said:

Folks moan about Revenant because they don't realise that he can do damage that scales with enemies, an ability that puts him in the very top tier of frames. Add an ability that can block any damage, and a nuke for the low-tier mobs, and he's S rank.

Yes, we ALL know how Revenant currently works. You're not opening anyone's eyes, you're getting redundant and irritating about it when you keep assuming that you're blessing us peasants with hidden l337 gamer knowledge. Most frames have some sort of scaling ability, even if it's just one that works equally well regardless of the rising level and becomes more important the later it gets for that reason. Vauban can CC equally well at every level, and he's still on the slate for an update.

4 hours ago, (XB1)KayAitch said:

Nyx, on the other hand...

This isn't a thread about Nyx, is it? We ought to shut up about everything else until Grineer Sabotage drilling machines are buffed then, if we're going in order of pity. Those things fall apart if the dust gets too heavy.

Edited August 3, 2019 by Pfysicyst
Formatting

[JohnLemon123]

Another solution would be to have them scale off of power strength to an ungodly extent, but only for their health and armor, so they become ridiculously hard to kill ''by accident''.

That was, allies are no longer able to instantly massacre them with simple aoe's, but revenant still doesn't care thanks to his 3rd ability, which would still be able to one shot them.

ghosts would also be cool, but that feels like augment material more than anything else.

[(XBOX)KayAitch]

40 minutes ago, Pfysicyst said:

Yes, we ALL know how Revenant currently works. You're not opening anyone's eyes, you're getting redundant and irritating about it when you keep assuming that you're blessing us peasants with hidden l337 gamer knowledge

It really isn't elite knowledge of any kind. It's easy to miss, but it's not exactly hard to pick up.

However, there's always someone on here asking for his 1 to be buffed because their teammates killed their thralls. It does seem to be something folks are confused about.

45 minutes ago, Pfysicyst said:

Most frames have some sort of scaling ability, even if it's just one that works equally well regardless of the rising level and becomes more important the later it gets for that reason

Not really. A few have abilities that scale on enemy health, like Equinox and Revenant. A few more have damage abilities that can keep scaling directly, like Saryn, Nidus and Gara. More again can work with certain weapons that scale either combo or tricks like Covert Lethality finishers.

Only a few have scaling DPS abilities.

51 minutes ago, Pfysicyst said:

Vauban can CC equally well at every level

And that's why he used to be much more meta. When damage was more linear CC was as important as DPS, now it's just why stall something when you could kill it.

58 minutes ago, Pfysicyst said:

This isn't a thread about Nyx, is it?

No, that's why I tailed off - I don't really want to get in to Nyx.

I really don't think Revenant needs this change, but OK, let's get into it...

On 2019-08-02 at 12:19 AM, Pfysicyst said:

Living thralls would remain capped at 7, but voided thralls would have no cap

As DE want Warframe to run on old machines that were minimum spec back when it launched there are severe caps on the number of enemies the game will allow on a single tile at once.

This can already be an issue with Nekros' 4, as his shadows use up spawn slots, resulting in not enough relic reactant enemies and the like (though he can usually offset that with Desecrate). I've seen Nekros break kill X enemies in time limit incursions.

I think you would rapidly enthrall/copy every enemy on the map. Even with the initial ones disappearing after 30s that's going to be an issue. 

That's fixable, so maybe a cap of 12. 7 thralls and 12 ghosts for 19 overall, which also happens to be Necros' shadows' cap.

It sounds like this will be a lot like Necros' shadows, but viral (enemies they damage convert) and much cheaper. I mean, it's awesome, but also it's a 1st ability that can be quickly cast with 1 hand, while Nekros' is his 4th that is slow to cast with both. Then add that as your 7 thralls become ghosts they'll still drop overshields/pillars which is a perk Shadows lack.

It's not that your idea wouldn't be awesome, it would, it's that it would be overpowered.

And Revenant already has an amazing kit, his 1 feels balanced to me. We can agree to disagree if you really feel it needs a buff.

[Fenrir121]

I don't know I mean usually if I tell the team to leave them be they will. If they don't I stand somewhere tall and dance macabre all the kills away so they can just sit there in time out.

[Pfysicyst]

14 hours ago, (XB1)KayAitch said:

It really isn't elite knowledge of any kind. It's easy to miss, but it's not exactly hard to pick up.

From the first response I could immediately see that you didn't understand my points, I'd just be copying everything I already said, again, and hoping you understood it this time. I don't have to keep responding to you if you keep dropping the ball, so I'm not going to any longer. You haven't put in the effort so far, so you probably won't, but you could re-read it again and look for context clues as to why you keep whooshing it. Sorry for being rude but it's been really unpleasant to talk so much and still lack an actual conversation. It's my fault really, I've re-worded it several times and you keep gleaning the wrong info about it; I should've stopped the first time it showed to be of no use.

The bit about Nekros taking up spawn slots has been disproven, by the way. That's old info that, while widely accepted for a long time, was never true.

Edited August 4, 2019 by Pfysicyst
ugh

[(XBOX)KayAitch]

1 hour ago, Pfysicyst said:

The bit about Nekros taking up spawn slots has been disproven, by the way. That's old info that, while widely accepted for a long time, was never true

Fair enough, I'll take your word for that. It doesn't change the fact that you're asking for Revenant's 1 to be made more powerful, cheeper, and easier to cast than Nekros' 4.

On the whole DE try to avoid doing that, but good luck anyway.

1 hour ago, Pfysicyst said:

From the first response I could immediately see that you didn't understand my points, I'd just be copying everything I already said, again, and hoping you understood it this time. 

Nah mate, I got them. You find Revenant "frustrating" because your teammates kill the thralls, you want the thralls to last, and to have loads of them at once. I get it.

1 hour ago, Pfysicyst said:

You haven't put in the effort so far, so you probably won't, but you could re-read it again and look for context clues as to why you keep whooshing it.

Look, I'm sorry that I'm dismissing your idea. I read all your points, but I get that didn't come across in my initial response. Sorry for that.

However, Revenant is an excellent frame with both 4 consistently useful abilities (rare) and infinite scaling (also rare). He doesn't need a massive buff to his 1.

If my teammates can kill my thralls before I do they're welcome to. I don't find Revenant frustrating at all, and particularly don't expect my teammates to "hold back to be polite" (chances are they're just missing out on overshields).

So there's a difference where you find him frustrating and want a change to his kit, and I don't. I wanted to try and explain why, and what play-style might ease your frustration.

Sorry that came across as patronising or condescending, that was not my intention but it's my fault it came across like that and I apologise.

 

Edited August 4, 2019 by (XB1)KayAitch

[Fenrir121]

They just really need to make it so other players can't kill your Thralls. It wouldn't be fun if other players could shoot exalted weapons out of your hands.

[000l000]

Le 03/08/2019 à 11:33, PsiWarp a dit :

You can't use any of his thrall synergies when they are reduced to pillars. Thralls die in split seconds unless they have insane amounts of Armor and damage reduction, meaning those synergies are rarely available.

They're dying because you're not playing alone, not because Revenant sucks. 🙄

Each time i play along with any revenant, they are thralls everywhere, as i said it's spreading quite easily. and FyI the best revenant's synergy is to insta-kill thralls with his 3rd so you shouldn't care if they're already dead, it'll save you time.

And if you really need that small amount of overshield that his 4th provides at low level (since this is the only place where thralls will have such a short life span) you have other issues than Revenant's. No one cares about 50 overshield anyway, that would have been a way better thread but tbh with or without this feature Revenant still rocks.

Edited August 6, 2019 by 000l000