With Vauban & Wukong reworked, I think it's time we address the next "most useless" Warframe... Loki. (Loki Rework Concept & Suggestion)

[Valkyrie9001]

This hurts me the most as someone with Loki as his most used Warframe, but let's face it. Loki has little to no place... anywhere. I've tried everything to make him somewhat viable or at least fun in the current climate of the game, but I've had no luck. He's frail, weak, and incompetent. Invisibility is boring, and if you're not constructing yourself to be the sole survivor you're probably focusing on disarming everything in a mile-wide radius, which is nice, but also Loki's only other viable tactic... against Grineer and sometimes Corpus.

Let's fix that.

Loki, the trickster, the deceiver.

1. Decoy

Loki deploys a holographic copy of himself for a limited duration, drawing enemy fire. It will no longer take damage in its holographic state and will equip itself with whatever weapon Loki was using while casting it. Though it will draw high priority aggro, each individual enemy that attacks it will quickly learn to ignore it after attacking it for some time. For an additional energy cost, Loki can hold the cast button to turn Decoy into a Specter or "Deception" that will use whatever weapon it was deployed with, actively draining energy instead of running off of duration until it either dies, Loki runs out of energy, or Loki deploys another Decoy. Loki can also hold to cast before dropping the hologram to spawn the Deception outright.

Health is affected by Strength. Hologram duration by Duration. Deception drain by Efficiency/Duration. Weapon effectiveness is determined by Loki's equipped Mods. Unlike Wukong's Celestial Twin, whose AI is "designed to aggressively attack nearby enemies while also staying close to Wukong's proximity," Loki's Deception will act on its own, purposefully distancing itself from Loki and aggressively seeking out enemies until there is nothing left, at which point it will return to him or teleport if it is at a great enough distance. Loki's Deception has a flat rate of 1,600 rechargeable Shields.

2. Invisibility

Meters! Loki's Invisibility will revolve around a meter that drains exponentially (from 50% to 0%) and increases based on you and your Deception's kills. Duration slows the drain of the gauge and Strength affects how easily your killing fills it. Casting it again will allow Loki to exit Invisibility whenever he pleases, however, there will be a grace period where Loki cannot cast it again based on what percentage the meter was at when he chose to become visible again. The lower the percentage, the longer the grace period. If the meter reaches 0%, Loki will be forced out of Invisibility. If the meter reaches 100%, it will be "saturated" for several seconds before draining again. This will be known as Transparency. If you do not take advantage of Transparency, you will not be able to use it at 100% effectiveness unless you let the ability run out or recast it. However, you keep the effects of Transparency for the duration of Invisibility so long as you reach 100% the first time. Once you reach Transparency, Loki's weapons will be silent and will become less silent as the meter falls. When either Switch Teleport or Radial Disarm are used, Invisibility will end so long as Transparency has been achieved. It can only be immediately recast if Transparency was used while it was "saturated."

I strongly believe the interactivity with Invisibility will make it a much more enjoyable and less "cheap" ability to use.

3. Switch Teleport

Switch Teleport, like Wisp with her Reservoirs, will more easily be able to target enemies and allies without the need to aim directly at them. This allows him to more easily pull it off on the fly. They will also be highlighted Loki's energy color. If Loki is targeting an enemy, Switch Teleport will stagger them and apply Radiation. If Loki is targeting an ally, he will imbue them with a slight amount of armor for a limited amount of time. If Loki holds to cast Switch Teleport while his Decoy is active, he will Switch Teleport with it no matter where it is and reset its aggro. If Loki holds to cast Switch Teleport while his Deception is active, he will Switch Teleport with it and it will instead use whatever weapon Loki was holding when he cast Switch Teleport.

Now, if Invisibility has achieved Transparency, additionally the enemy will be knocked down instead of staggered and killing that enemy will grant a Radiation buff to your weapons that you can use to irradiate others. Status Chance will be based on Invisibility's percentage. Allies receive triple the armor for triple the duration during Transparency, otherwise, it will double at 100% as soon as it starts declining. Decoy will Radial Blind its last known position for Loki, with Invisibility's percentage dictating the radius, and Switch Teleporting with your Deception will siphon a percentage of its remaining Shields.

4. Radial Disarm

Not a whole lot to change here. Invisibility's percentage will determine the radius with Transparency inflicting all affected enemies with Radiation. Comba/Scrambus will lose their helmets along with their weapons. Nullifiers will lose their bubble projectors, and will only lose their weapons if they're Radial Disarmed twice. The same goes for Radiation. Infested will lose limbs and receive the same effect as Infested Impedance. I also think, though it is extra work, it would pay off for different environmental hazards to suffer different effects. (Radial Disarm detonates Arc Traps and defuses Land Mines. Grineer Turrets on the Kuva Fortress and Plains of Eidolon droop and shoot orange sparks. Corpus Security Cameras and Senta Turrets jitter and shoot blue sparks. Orokin Sentries jitter and shoot yellow sparks. Each attacks their own faction if they're irradiated.)

 

Now for the nitty-gritty.

Passive

2x parkour effectiveness? (2x double jump strength. 2x bullet jump strength. 2x aim glide duration. 2x wall latch duration. 2x aim glide/wall latch recovery.) Alternatively, a 100% chance of auto-completing Hacking.

Savior Decoy

Behaves the exact same, and works with Loki's Deception, only Decoy will explode wherever Loki was when he took fatal damage.

Hushed Invisibility

Increases the "saturation" period of Transparency and does not allow Loki's weapons to be any less than completely silent once achieving Transparency.

Safeguard Switch

Rather than giving allies armor, they are made completely invincible for however long Invisibility and its meter after Transparency allows.

Irradiating Disarm

Radial Disarm will no longer require Transparency to irradiate enemies, and it will no longer disrupt Loki's Invisibility even if he does have it.

[Melanholic7]

inb4 "Loki Is NoT UsElEsS" =/  

but yeah,this guy needs a  rework super hard.

[Teridax68]

Loki is perhaps the clearest example of why the old philosophy of hyper-specialized frames just doesn't work for a game in constant evolution like Warframe: for the longest time, Loki was one of the most dominant frames in the roster, and it felt like it was impossible to bring him in line, because his invisibility was godlike at a time when stealth was valued, and his Radial Disarm + augment build offered some of the best crowd control around. It didn't matter that his 1 and 3 had little to no use, because the rest of his kit was just that good. Nowadays, stealth is no longer as valuable for a host of reasons (tons of AoE damage, invisibility-detecting enemies, stealth gameplay just no longer really being a thing in higher-level missions), and neither is crowd control: while I wouldn't say Loki is in the absolute worst spot among all warframes, he's certainly fallen from grace, and has gone from being S-tier to fairly mediocre, particularly since he's also been powercreeped by Octavia, who has even better CC and, worse still, far better invisibility. This isn't all his fault (I don't think Octavia should have invisibility, personally), but Loki definitely needs an update.

With this in mind, I like the proposed changes overall, particularly those to Decoy and Invincibility: letting Loki actually kill enemies with his clone I think would be fine given the game's current state, and I would very much like for his Invisibility to have some actual gameplay put in place, so that it feels like a fun ability to use, rather than a button one presses just to avoid interacting with the game at all. I completely agree that the passive needs to change to something else (auto-completing hacks may not be it, but would certainly be more useful than the current iteration), and while I'd perhaps change the augments a little more (the 2 and 4 augments mostly buff what exists now, instead of offering totally new bonuses, as their core mechanics have been partially moved to the base abilities), I like that his kit now offers at least slightly more of a spread of utility and damage, alongside stealth and crowd control: it's the right balance of making Loki just versatile enough to be useful even in an environment where his core strengths aren't valued, without making him so all-purpose that he ceases to have an identity. It takes a great deal of both self-control and critical examination to pull that off, and so kudos to the OP for proposing those changes. 

[Valkyrie9001]

6 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

It takes a great deal of both self-control and critical examination to pull that off, and so kudos to the OP for proposing those changes. 

I appreciate this a bunch. The idea did not go over so well on Reddit because people think that just because he has two useful abilities that they can set and forget, he's perfectly fine. It's infuriating that people are okay with two useless abilities, one of which has never had a place other than to troll or gain some distance which is now obsolete, mindless cheese, and a very simple Disarm with nothing else to it that has no unique application to the stealth they're thinking he's perfect at. It's appalling.

[Teridax68]

23 minutes ago, Valkyrie9001 said:

I appreciate this a bunch. The idea did not go over so well on Reddit because people think that just because he has two useful abilities that they can set and forget, he's perfectly fine. It's infuriating that people are okay with two useless abilities, one of which has never had a place other than to troll or gain some distance which is now obsolete, mindless cheese, and a very simple Disarm with nothing else to it that has no unique application to the stealth they're thinking he's perfect at. It's appalling.

People on Reddit I feel tend to be more hostile to rework suggestions overall; the place in general is better-suited for funny screenshots or pictures of Lego than in-depth design discussion, as well. In any case, though, it's a depressingly low bar to set if we're calling a champion "fine" just because two of their four/five abilities are usable, to say nothing of their overall in-game performance. I also feel the "Loki Master Race" meme has ended up aging rather poorly, because it looks like some people are still buying so hard into it that they can't wrap their heads around the idea that Loki may not actually be in a good spot right now. It's a strange state of affairs where everyone knows about Loki, and about Loki's glory days as the master of stealth, yet far fewer people actually play Loki, even fewer still enough to get a good feel of how he performs in the game's current state.

[keikogi]

28 minutes ago, Teridax68 said:

People on Reddit I feel tend to be more hostile to rework suggestions overall; the place in general is better-suited for funny screenshots or pictures of Lego than in-depth design discussion, as well. In any case, though, it's a depressingly low bar to set if we're calling a champion "fine" just because two of their four/five abilities are usable, to say nothing of their overall in-game performance. I also feel the "Loki Master Race" meme has ended up aging rather poorly, because it looks like some people are still buying so hard into it that they can't wrap their heads around the idea that Loki may not actually be in a good spot right now. It's a strange state of affairs where everyone knows about Loki, and about Loki's glory days as the master of stealth, yet far fewer people actually play Loki, even fewer still enough to get a good feel of how he performs in the game's current state.

Reddit is a place for memes and pictures , discussions don't work there because of the very nature of the platform ( downvotes exits so you can sort of silence anything you don't like). Because of that all subreddits end up becoming a sort of ecochamber ( look at r/politics and r/the_donald , I'm not American but I can garantee you that these reddits don't live in the same world). If something is unpopular regardless of having a point or meriting discussion , it will never reach the light of the day. 

Back to the actual topic of the threads the rework seen reasonable but the 4 suggestions seens a bit excessive. Too much utility shoved in a single skill , it is even good agaist the anti skill enemies on the game.

Edited November 21, 2019 by keikogi

[(XBOX)GearsMatrix301]

Wukongs not a great call out. Melee phase 2 has kind of ruined his exalted weapon. Pretty much just making him a tanky spy frame now.

[(PSN)RazorPhoenix970]

In my opinion Loki's does what he does and does it well, no one who plays this game can deny that but that's two abilities carrying him, let's hear from a Loki

13 hours ago, Valkyrie9001 said:

will become less silent as the meter falls

I don't believe we have proper levels of gauging noise (in terms of how enemies perceive noise it's either loud or silent no in between, Octavia's Amp though does prove there are varying noise levels in game though). Enemy rework needed?

Radial Disarm is overtuned, almost feels like you're updating it's cheese😅 everything else I like, I've never considered active invisibility nice thought👌