Zephyr Rework Idea

[Captain_Freedom]

Zephyr needs better maneuverability for her 1, utility for her 2, abit more for her 3, and better control and damage on her 4. My proposed fixes to these problems are listed below.

Passive: Her passive is fine, it's the most unique part of her kit and no other warframe can replicate it well. If anything is to change with her passive, some additional parkour velocity or increased duration of aim-glide would be nice but unnecessary.
    

1st ability: Her 1 is difficult to control and building it is unintuitive. Trying to balance duration so that her 1 is usable in most tilesets and so she can better use out of her 3 and 4 is annoying and limits her potential. It principly needs better maneuverability.
    Remove Hover Jump. Change holding the ability to give you Gauss like flying dashes. Keep Dive bomb the same. 
    Fix maneuverability by slowing player as they exit the ability. Currently casting the ability into a wall keeps you locked into the wall because of momentum.
    Augment: Keep target fixation the same as it is, but fix it resetting on wall latches and during revives/hacking consoles. Also let 2s grace period be affected by duration.
    Base Range- 2m contact, 7m bomb. Base Damage- 500 slash dash, 500 impact bomb. 25 energy cast with 50% discount if airborne is fine. Might need to change how airspeed is calculated for maneuverability sake. 

2nd ability: Her 2 is not useful in almost any circumstance. The only time it can be useful is knocking enemies out of bounds or increasing the size of her tornadoes. The ability needs more utility to be worth the base 50 energy cost (25 if airborne).
    New Ability: Draft- Create a zone at a target location of either an updraft or a downdraft
    Updraft: tap key to launch enemies into the air, granting them the lifted status for the duration.
    Downdraft: hold key to knock enemies to the ground and slow them for the duration.
    Enemies hit with downdraft after being lifted take damage and have their defenses stripped. 1000 base damage and 35% base reduction in armor and shields
    Base range at 10m, base duration at 5s for updraft lift and 10s for downdraft slow. Stripped defenses don't return. Damage and armor/shield reduction affected by power strength. Base energy to cast at 50 with 50% discount if airborne

3rd ability: Her 3 is fine. Could benefit from some QOL changes to it and its augment.
    Add a Knockdown burst around her when the ability duration ends so she can safely recast it
    Augment: Jet Stream 40% movement speed buff and 100% projectile speed buff. Let buff stick to allies in range during cast, rather than just within the shield, and give allies a simple way to opt out of the buff.
    Base range at 6m, base duration at 20s. 75 base energy cost

4th ability: Her 4 is unreliable. She has very little control over where the tornadoes spawn and where they wander to. It's too unreliable for CC and it's damage is too low for damage.
    Cast 1 Tornado with a base pull radius of 15m affected by mods. Tap to cast it at a targetted location. Hold to cast it as a moving version that follows your aim reticle. Change FX to make it easier to see past the larger tornado.
    Change Damage ticks to increase by 5% of damage dealt to the tornado. Base Status chance is 50% and damage proc chances are based on same formula as weapons. Enemies in the tornado still take damage from the shots and 200% critical damage.
    Casting Updraft on the tornado increases its intensity, increasing base range to 20m and base status chance per tick to 75%.
    Casting Downdraft on the tornado causes it to deal all remaining damage in one burst.
    Augment: Recasting Tornadoes causes tornado to split into 4, then 12 smaller segments that work more like current tornadoes. First 2 recasts cost no energy and split the tornadoes into 4, and then 12 tornadoes. Recasting at 12 mini-tornadoes works the same as recasting normally would allowing you to reposition the tornado. Smaller tornadoes have smaller range, and stop gaining additional damage per tick. Tornadoes move at a base speed of 5m/s.
    Base Pull Range 15m, Base Duration 20s, Base tick damage 100, Damage Converted to tick damage 5% (not affected by mods), Base energy to cast 100

Feedback is welcome. Changes have been made to this post to represent integration of feedback. Thanks to LordPantaloonsthe3rd for the especially helpful feedback.
    
TL:DR
    Passive: Same

    1st: Mostly the same, remove hover jump, replace held key to a gauss like charge in the air, and increase maneuverability generally. Fix bugs with augment and allow duration mods to affect grace period.

    2nd: Projectiles spawn Updrafts and Downdrafts. Updrafts apply new lifted status to enemies and downdrafts knock enemies over. Hitting lifted enemies with downdraft deals some damage and strips defenses

    3rd: Mostly the same, add small CC effect as ability expires for safer recasting. Make Jet Stream buffs stick to allies on cast, but give them an easy to execute opt out.

    4th: 1 Big Tornado, better control over its area of effect, damage ticks scale with damage done to tornado. Updrafts increase range and duration. Downdrafts deal remaining damage at once. Augment allows you to split tornado retaining already built damage ticks.

Edited November 25, 2019 by Captain_Freedom
Applying requested feedback into initial post.

[LordPantaloonsthe3rd]

Passive, yea i wouldnt touch it, maybe a bit of bullet jump velocity would be nice but yea its fine as is and i would hate for it to be changed.

1, building up with duration works fine though, youre already building for duration for 3/4. you dont need to be able to use tailwind in 97% of tiles anyways cause her passive enhances parkour nicely, especially if you add in Lightning dash or a similar mod for the boost to aim glide and bullet jump.

Ive used hover jump like a dozen times since it was put in and i main zephyr and those times were for mining, pretty useless ability overall since its free to just bullet jump and aimglide. Personally dont see the need to air dash like that given the space restrictions in a majority of the game. Jumping from wall to wall and using her enhanced air time is free. As for the augment changes i dont really have a comment on it as I dont use divebomb due to its occasionally jankyness and the fact that melee groundslams are also free.

Will agree with control difficulty though, the recent change to halt tailwind if you hit something did help to negate wall hugging but you still maintain momentum so it can still get you stuck on stuff, simple solution is to know your range and where you can use it as messing with the momentum could affect her speed in open world areas.

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2, ability cost may be 50 base but if you cast it in air its 25 which is much more in line with its usefulness, imo if youre not casting it in air youre doing it wrong. I personally think its fine, its good for quickly making room for you or teammates or objectives and is a one hand cast so you can use it to keep enemies off you while reloading without interrupting. A good side use of it is making a range build to blap massive areas for really cheap, its a good targeted cc imo not great but useful especially in an eff build.

As for your changes: 20m is way too big for base range, making it that large would pretty much invalidate 4 because it would cc and strip defenses for 50 energy with no extra input whereas 4 needs to be shot/melee'd to strip defenses from held enemies. Adding to that the half cost cast if airborne and the base 50% strip its just broken as hek, if anything this would be a replacement for nados but even then a lower base range and higher base duration sounds better in that case.

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3, its not any less generic than say iron skin, and a defensive ability doesnt need to be "interactive" it just needs to be effective. As someone who hates betting speed boosted giving turbulence innate jetstream would be akin to my worst vision of hell. The way the game handles increased movement speed is bad and i personally cant stand it. The airburst on end does sound nice and is similar to the flame burst that warding halo got when it was tweaked. Being able to cast it on targets would be nice but theres no room in any of my builds though for an augment so maybe an innate ability to cast on targets would be better. It doesnt provide direct DR or protect from melee so i dont think innate target casting would be overpowered, at least by comparison to gara's splinter storm which gives DR, dmg boost and area dmg without an augment.

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 4, it is somewhat unreliable though if you have targets in visual range they will be cast on them when you aim and cast so it is actually pretty easy to control where they start. I dont often use the aim control but when i do it works well enough i think, though if the nados could hold on to the enemies theyre holding better when being moved that would be nice. I like the idea of grab range being affected by mods but it would have to be limited, nados having a 20+m grab range would be broken.

As for its damage being low well yea but the primary source of damage in them should be from yours or your teams weapons, dmg copy and crit boost is already powerful as hek and if you actually cast them on enemies and take the time to hit the nados you can spit out loads of damage and strip armor really well. being able to load up the nado with dmg and let it run free to murder feels too much like mesa's turret peacemakers. With how powerful weapons can be you could blap a nado a few times and let it massacre everything in sight for its duration while you make some tea, Not an idea im fond of.

As for casting updraft on the nado to increase its range, seems kinda useless given that skipping nados and casting downdraft would be more effective since it would strip them and CC for less energy.

as for the augment, honestly dont know what to think about it really, i wouldnt use it though because of the way I play zephyr would really mesh with that.

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I personally think that Zephyr is in a good place right now. The tweaks she got awhile ago were pretty good overall and shes a solid frame with utility, defense and damage. Theres still some hiccups with tailwind but the recent tweak did a small bit to help with that. Divebombing needs to be fixed so that it detects the angle properly and actually makes you dive instead of yeeting you face first into the ground but really thats a non issue due to targeted melee groundslams being more useful than a straight down slam that costs energy especially if you were to make use of the Arca titron's slam capacitor.

[Miyabi-sama]

12 минут назад, LordPantaloonsthe3rd сказал:

I personally think that Zephyr is in a good place right now. The tweaks she got awhile ago were pretty good overall and shes a solid frame with utility, defense and damage. Theres still some hiccups with tailwind but the recent tweak did a small bit to help with that. Divebombing needs to be fixed so that it detects the angle properly and actually makes you dive instead of yeeting you face first into the ground but really thats a non issue due to targeted melee groundslams being more useful than a straight down slam that costs energy especially if you were to make use of the Arca titron's slam capacitor.

Maybe most of folk's concern is damn Tail Wind since other abilities are damn good by themselves. Her 2 may be underwhelming but again, if we remember it was the dive bomb before...

I think if DE somehow can pull off Tail Wind to be amazing, people will forget any mentioned hiccups here and there.

I dunno where does critique of Turbulence comes from. A great and fun ability. Definitely better than generic "immortality".

[LordPantaloonsthe3rd]

29 minutes ago, Miyabi-sama said:

Maybe most of folk's concern is damn Tail Wind since other abilities are damn good by themselves. Her 2 may be underwhelming but again, if we remember it was the dive bomb before...

I think if DE somehow can pull off Tail Wind to be amazing, people will forget any mentioned hiccups here and there.

I dunno where does critique of Turbulence comes from. A great and fun ability. Definitely better than generic "immortality".

yea, tailwind has some kinks but overall it works, and airburst is a hek of a lot better than having divebomb as 2. though divebomb at that time didnt have the ground face yeet problem it has now but idk it seems like a non issue given targeted ground slams being a thing.

I also very much agree with the generic immortality comment, pressing a button to become immune to all damage period is boring sure it has its time and place but it turns me off of playing a frame more than it makes me want to play one. Turbulence offers a projectile exclusion zone while also retaining the need for the player to pay attention, especially given the fragile nature of zephyr. You cant just cast turbulence and turn your brain off, there are some threats that you need to watch out for and manage. some ranged enemies ignore turbulence, positioning against bombards for example can be important in corridors due to the rockets being redirected into the walls and floor, flamethrower enemies are another threat you need to remain vigilant of and then theres the ever-present threat of melee enemies which turbulence doesnt protect against.

Staying mobile, being aware of your surroundings and utilizing all of Zephyrs traits is, to me, a very rewarding and varied gameplay loop. Theres no one button solves all problems nonsense with Zephyr and I really really enjoy it. Even after all the time Ive spent playing shes the one thing Ive never gotten tired of. When I was still going through MR Zephyr was the last warframe I played because everyone kept telling me shes literally the worst frame(pre rework) and that playing her is like brushing your teeth with a steel wire brush on an angle grinder(actual comparison i was given). I was shocked to find that she was by far the most enjoyable out of all that I had played. I cringe a little whenever i see/hear a rework idea where someone tries to turn her into another boring dps frame or give her some invulnerable easy button or auto targeting play-the-game-for-me crap.

I think shes perfectly fine as is, the few actual problems she does have are easy to work around so that they arent problems. If there is an area she doesnt really have any kit to deal with it would be eidolons and orbs but plenty of other frames also dont really have the kit for it so thats hardly something worth criticizing.

 

[Miyabi-sama]

30 минут назад, LordPantaloonsthe3rd сказал:

I cringe a little whenever i see/hear a rework idea where someone tries to turn her into another boring dps frame or give her some invulnerable easy button or auto targeting play-the-game-for-me crap.

I give OP a credit for his suggestions are the ones of least radical I've seen maybe, following Z's theme and make sense. I've seen some people suggested to scrap her signature passive...

31 минуту назад, LordPantaloonsthe3rd сказал:

I think shes perfectly fine as is, the few actual problems she does have are easy to work around so that they arent problems. If there is an area she doesnt really have any kit to deal with it would be eidolons and orbs but plenty of other frames also dont really have the kit for it so thats hardly something worth criticizing.

Look at them. They come to this place...

It mostly boils down to topics like "hey, I play Saryn she's cool and I also like Nyx cuz she has a great body but she sucks can we plz make her nuke", or "hey Mesa is very best she blows up stuff and resists bullets, make Banshee have something like that".

[LordPantaloonsthe3rd]

10 minutes ago, Miyabi-sama said:

I give OP a credit for his suggestions are the ones of least radical I've seen maybe, following Z's theme and make sense. I've seen some people suggested to scrap her signature passive...

Look at them. They come to this place...

It mostly boils down to topics like "hey, I play Saryn she's cool and I also like Nyx cuz she has a great body but she sucks can we plz make her nuke", or "hey Mesa is very best she blows up stuff and resists bullets, make Banshee have something like that".

I wasnt specifically referring to OP, this rework idea stuck to Zephyr's existing theme pretty well i just didnt like most of it, and i think the airburst replacement is hekkin OP. I to have seen some people want her floatyness that i love gone, but theyre fine with nezha's slipperyness which i hate. One dude couldnt understand how I could like the floaty passive and hate the slippery passive when he was the exact opposite and loved the slippery one and hated the floaty one.

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I get it, but if we go along those lines then it basically wont matter what frame you play when they all to the same thing with just different visual effects.

[Captain_Freedom]

Thanks for the feedback so far.

The idea with her 1 was to provide better maneuverability in tighter tilesets. It's function as a damaging dash ability is very similar to what gauss has and could seriously benefit from some of the QOL changes that ability has. Her augment turns this ability into a great way to output serious damage. It's fairly easy to scale the damage up to a hundred times initial damage, and divebomb's range is high enough to be usable. Her 1 needs mostly just QOL changes and fixes to her augment.

Smaller range on the proposed 2 is a good improvement. I thought that it might be abit too high. The lifting status effect gives effectively the same room that airburst can currently while providing similar utility in conjunction with her 4. Having to cast an updraft, then a downdraft to do get an effect makes the ability more useful. Armor stripping is becoming more common in warframe kits so spending 100 energy or 50 if you are playing the way you probably should to strip armor and shields isn't a bad suggestion. Her 2 needs additional utility than just a open up space button, slams do that already. Adding defense stripping helps with that utility.

Turbulence is the ability that needs the least amount of changes, if any. As long as you are in the air, you're invincible with turbulence, that you have to stay in the air does make it rather unique though. I think that the best suggestion I put in for the ability is a small CC as it expires to let you cast it again. I've never had any problems with speed buffs myself when playing her, and always welcome them. I'm interested in why some people consider that a problem. I could understand on gauss, but not exactly with Zephyr.

Her 4 needs the most work. It's CC, Damage, and support potential are all under par. It does have access to all 3 of those which is somewhat rare. Most damage to creatures caught in real life tornadoes comes from getting shredded by shrapnel (where increasing damage ticks with damage done comes from) and getting shoved into the ground at 300+mph. Since warframe can't really handle damage from how hard we ragdoll an enemy into a wall, the shrapnel damage will have to suffice. Consolidating her tornadoes into one gave me the 20m pull radius, might need to be lowered intially. The proposed augment would allow for a positive feedback loop of weapon damage being added to tick damage back to weapon damage allowing for even more intense shrapnel scaling. It also sounded fun.

 

23 minutes ago, Miyabi-sama said:

I give OP a credit for his suggestions are the ones of least radical I've seen maybe, following Z's theme and make sense. I've seen some people suggested to scrap her signature passive...

I'm a meteorologist IRL, if there is anything I understand really well, it's wind. That's one of the reasons I like her so much. Also dense air making tornadoes bigger is not something that happens in weather. Updrafts do however.

Edited November 24, 2019 by Captain_Freedom

[Miyabi-sama]

29 минут назад, LordPantaloonsthe3rd сказал:

I get it, but if we go along those lines then it basically wont matter what frame you play when they all to the same thing with just different visual effects.

And yet here we are, having U26 Ember aka Slowpoke Gauss.

28 минут назад, Captain_Freedom сказал:

Thanks for the feedback so far.

No problem mate.

I started playing WF when Zephyr update first came. And I can assure you what we have now is WAAAAY better than before.

Back then she had both problems with her abilities and lack of playground to use her on.

- nadoes sucked up loot and were spinning enemies violently pinning them to the ceiling

- turbulence was lowering enemies' accuracy for hitscan and not reflecting bullets

- dive bomb was her 2

Now she has both useful abilities even in cramped environment, and she has huge open areas to play on. People are whining about Itzal blink nerf? I don't care, I have my Z!!!

So I kinda see where people come from when they want adjustments for her skillset, they never saw that "flappy zephyr" in action. Ever wondered where that meme came from?

[LordPantaloonsthe3rd]

8 minutes ago, Captain_Freedom said:

Thanks for the feedback so far.

The idea with her 1 was to provide better maneuverability in tighter tilesets. It's function as a damaging dash ability is very similar to what gauss has and could seriously benefit from some of the QOL changes that ability has. Her augment turns this ability into a great way to output serious damage. It's fairly easy to scale the damage up to a hundred times initial damage, and divebomb's range is high enough to be usable. Her 1 needs mostly just QOL changes and fixes to her augment.

Smaller range on the proposed 2 is a good improvement. I thought that it might be abit too high. The lifting status effect gives effectively the same room that airburst can currently while providing similar utility in conjunction with her 4. Having to cast an updraft, then a downdraft to do get an effect makes the ability more useful. Armor stripping is becoming more common in warframe kits so spending 100 energy or 50 if you are playing the way you probably should to strip armor and shields isn't a bad suggestion. Her 2 needs additional utility than just a open up space button, slams do that already. Adding defense stripping helps with that utility.

Turbulence is the ability that needs the least amount of changes, if any. As long as you are in the air, you're invincible with turbulence, that you have to stay in the air does make it rather unique though. I think that the best suggestion I put in for the ability is a small CC as it expires to let you cast it again. I've never had any problems with speed buffs myself when playing her, and always welcome them. I'm interested in why some people consider that a problem. I could understand on gauss, but not exactly with Zephyr.

Her 4 needs the most work. It's CC, Damage, and support potential are all under par. It does have access to all 3 of those which is somewhat rare. Most damage to creatures caught in real life tornadoes comes from getting shredded by shrapnel (where increasing damage ticks with damage done comes from) and getting shoved into the ground at 300+mph. Since warframe can't really handle damage from how hard we ragdoll an enemy into a wall, the shrapnel damage will have to suffice. Consolidating her tornadoes into one gave me the 20m pull radius, might need to be lowered intially. The proposed augment would allow for a positive feedback loop of weapon damage being added to tick damage back to weapon damage allowing for even more intense shrapnel scaling. It also sounded fun.

 

I'm a meteorologist IRL, if there is anything I understand really well, it's wind. That's one of the reasons I like her so much. Also dense air making tornadoes bigger is not something that happens in weather. Updrafts do however.

1, i get what youre going for but i dont like the idea of just copy pasting one an ability from one frame to another, I also only use tailwind as transport, I dont build zephyr for str and even if you do the dmg you get for the energy expended is underwhelming and clunky when you can just drop some nados and blap them. I also dont have problems covering ground with parkour and zephyrs passive + lightning dash/melee slams so i treat tailwind as a long range transport ability on the occasional tile that i can use it on or on open worlds. I agree some tweaking is needed though to help deal with wall hugging.

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2. stripping isnt a bad suggestion, the energy argument isnt too relevant to me personally as i use a 175 eff build so nados only cost 25 energy. So stripping armor is cheap and easy. I just had a problem with the low cost vs the high range and base armor strip. Hildryn for example starts at 25% base, Vauban post rework strips 10% armor per second base, Nyx strips 80% at base but can only target 6 enemies at a time and its more random and the effect is canceled on current targets when you recast. 50% base strip for 50/25 energy that's also permanent seems extreme to me. I dont dislike the idea of the ability, it would certainly be more interesting than a big old air blap, I was simply questioning the base stats you had in mind. Airburst is functional but is by no means irreplaceable, its easily the most boring part of her kit.

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3, my problem is the speed boosts is that it does make zephyr harder to control imo, whereas im quite happy with her movement as is. being unable to opt out of the speed boost detailed in your changes would pretty much ruin her for me. The primary gripe i have with speed boosts in general is that I want to move as fast as I want to move, teammate buffs like volt and wisp and the quite rare jetstream zephyr are disruptive to my gameplay. Volts for example constantly casting speed forcing me to backflip out of it sometimes multiple times in a minute are a never ending frustration, wisp haste buffs and jetstream zephyrs dont even have an opt out so those can be even more annoying. Getting them at random times can mess with my movement through a level, get me stuck on things I wouldnt have gotten stuck on and are generally a pita.  As for the other gripe as to why i dont like the speed boosts, the movement animations are just sped up and it looks stupid, its the same thing with melee speed buffs. A niche reason to be sure but it is what it is. Jetstream movement being worked into turbulence would literally stop me from playing her entirely, which would basically make me stop playing warframe entirely.

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4, It does need work, personally ive had an augment idea rattling around in my head for a few years now. it would basically replace the default nados with a large hurricane centered on zephyr, base range TBD, enemies within would be slowed by 50% and become more vulnerable to damage, something like 5-10% per second maybe, the longer they're within its area of effect, projectiles fired inside or into it would be cloned and would fly around inside it damaging all enemies within. The projectile cloning would be so that someone using a projectile weapon would still be able to shoot at targets without being affected by the ability, no one wants a repeat of old limbo nonsense. The one thing i couldnt decide on for it would be how hitscan weapons would behave in it though. The ability area would be extended by range mods and would shrink rapidly if zephyr stopped moving so as to reduce the afk viability. No idea about real numbers beyond that tho, just a thought.

As for base range for your idea 15-ish meters seems more reasonable, my problem with the idea is the possibility of afk'ing. i would hate to see zephyr become a goto frame for people who dont want to bother playing the game. Being able to load a nado up in a couple of seconds with ridiculous damage then being able to leave it to slaughter everything just feels like an invitation for laziness. Again the augment doesnt sound bad, just not for me.

[Doraz_]

i love this, as i like zephyr as well and would appreciate a rework. In short:

1st ability

Holding the ability allowing her to grow wings of void energy and fly around is what Zephir should already have! Wings have double the range of standard tail wind, cause bleed procs to enemies, and she flies in the camera orientation, just like gauss, slowly turning if changed.

Tapping is for small places and changing direction, holding is for big spaces.

2nd ability

Cool idea, to implement statuses on the second ability. It incentivizes the use of those new combo and damage mods on lifted enemies, and help with Cond. Over. ... for which she has slash and impact as well. Amazing.

Just jeep her ability as it is when tapping it, hold to lift them. It one of the best CC on game.

3 ability

It already works like that, You just have to be close to the thing you want to protect.

But i agree that changing it to a volt-like buff, giving it to allies for a duration even if they go far away it would be more effective. On objectives seems too much, gara kinda has this but it's only a damage reduction. A damage negation on a 40s cooldown? Seems broken, but i wouldn't complain ... also that grineer butcher in the back would disagree i guess 🙂

4th ability

No, i want my tornadoes affecting different part of the map going on their own ... and NO to that inaros smelling tuff xD i don't like it.

If the problem is the tornados being slow make them disappear and reappear from above on the closest enemy if no enemy is closer than 5 to 10  meters from it, like a storm growing tornados from the sky to the grownd.

They are amazing Damage Sources, just have to be more effective.

 

[Captain_Freedom]

6 hours ago, LordPantaloonsthe3rd said:

1, i get what youre going for but i dont like the idea of just copy pasting one an ability from one frame to another, I also only use tailwind as transport, I dont build zephyr for str and even if you do the dmg you get for the energy expended is underwhelming and clunky when you can just drop some nados and blap them. I also dont have problems covering ground with parkour and zephyrs passive + lightning dash/melee slams so i treat tailwind as a long range transport ability on the occasional tile that i can use it on or on open worlds. I agree some tweaking is needed though to help deal with wall hugging.

My thoughts were that her 1 would have the same type of utility it already has, while making it so that in longer stretches you can just hold the ability rather than continually recast it. This is merely a QOL change and should have no impact on how the ability already functions. My largest gripe with the ability is the wall hugging and her augment being her best source of damage, but discouraging team play. Pausing the grace period while hacking and reviving is sufficient. Also I can't recommend trying a Target Fixation build out enough. Damage scaling is theoretically infinite and with decent range is easy enough to build for, high duration makes using such a build more difficult though and is the source of my gripe on maneuverability.

 

6 hours ago, LordPantaloonsthe3rd said:

2. stripping isnt a bad suggestion, the energy argument isnt too relevant to me personally as i use a 175 eff build so nados only cost 25 energy. So stripping armor is cheap and easy. I just had a problem with the low cost vs the high range and base armor strip. Hildryn for example starts at 25% base, Vauban post rework strips 10% armor per second base, Nyx strips 80% at base but can only target 6 enemies at a time and its more random and the effect is canceled on current targets when you recast. 50% base strip for 50/25 energy that's also permanent seems extreme to me. I dont dislike the idea of the ability, it would certainly be more interesting than a big old air blap, I was simply questioning the base stats you had in mind. Airburst is functional but is by no means irreplaceable, its easily the most boring part of her kit.

I agree that the stripping percentage might be abit too high, I was basing it off of what I saw with Vauban and Ember as both can strip alot of armor with very little power strength. Several other frames have great armor stripping potential as well, guass can strip up to 100% of armor with no power strength investment as long as redline is maxed. The balancing that I was thinking of was in building her as her proposed 1, 3, and 4 like duration and range, but don't need as much power strength. A large power strength investment is needed to get full functionality from the armor strip which leaves less focus on the other 2 abilities. A smaller range at around 8-10m base would be more appropriate.

 

6 hours ago, LordPantaloonsthe3rd said:

3, my problem is the speed boosts is that it does make zephyr harder to control imo, whereas im quite happy with her movement as is. being unable to opt out of the speed boost detailed in your changes would pretty much ruin her for me. The primary gripe i have with speed boosts in general is that I want to move as fast as I want to move, teammate buffs like volt and wisp and the quite rare jetstream zephyr are disruptive to my gameplay. Volts for example constantly casting speed forcing me to backflip out of it sometimes multiple times in a minute are a never ending frustration, wisp haste buffs and jetstream zephyrs dont even have an opt out so those can be even more annoying. Getting them at random times can mess with my movement through a level, get me stuck on things I wouldnt have gotten stuck on and are generally a pita.  As for the other gripe as to why i dont like the speed boosts, the movement animations are just sped up and it looks stupid, its the same thing with melee speed buffs. A niche reason to be sure but it is what it is. Jetstream movement being worked into turbulence would literally stop me from playing her entirely, which would basically make me stop playing warframe entirely.

I can kind of understand that myself. My Zephyr playstyle involves flying very fast and using a very powerful sniper rifle to rend harder targets while using target fixation to deal with most trash mobs so I'm used to dealing with very high speeds. Most people aren't though. Instead of a wind shield on allies, perhaps make use of the evasion tool? I'd like to see her 3 get more value out of team play, currently the most you can really get is by standing still on an objective. Keeping jetstream as an augment is fine as is.

6 hours ago, LordPantaloonsthe3rd said:

4, It does need work, personally ive had an augment idea rattling around in my head for a few years now. it would basically replace the default nados with a large hurricane centered on zephyr, base range TBD, enemies within would be slowed by 50% and become more vulnerable to damage, something like 5-10% per second maybe, the longer they're within its area of effect, projectiles fired inside or into it would be cloned and would fly around inside it damaging all enemies within. The projectile cloning would be so that someone using a projectile weapon would still be able to shoot at targets without being affected by the ability, no one wants a repeat of old limbo nonsense. The one thing i couldnt decide on for it would be how hitscan weapons would behave in it though. The ability area would be extended by range mods and would shrink rapidly if zephyr stopped moving so as to reduce the afk viability. No idea about real numbers beyond that tho, just a thought.

As for base range for your idea 15-ish meters seems more reasonable, my problem with the idea is the possibility of afk'ing. i would hate to see zephyr become a goto frame for people who dont want to bother playing the game. Being able to load a nado up in a couple of seconds with ridiculous damage then being able to leave it to slaughter everything just feels like an invitation for laziness. Again the augment doesnt sound bad, just not for me.

That can't really be an augment just because it's too long, but it's almost what I was going for with the damage tick increase in the base ability. Zephyr still wouldn't be able to just AFK with the ability because of a kinda low base duration, which if the damage output is decent enough, might need to be lowered further. It's the type of ability that controls a decent sized area and gives you more say over where that area is. I got the 20m range by just adding up the 5m pull range of the 4 normal tornadoes, lowering it to 15m is fine so long as the pull radius is affected by range mods, which it isn't in the current tornadoes. Augment in case for your idea could be the tornadoes we have currently with the ability to split them into the funnel cloud tornadoes.

[alseltas]

For passive, I would like to have 100% reduced gravity during aim glide. The current passive is just nuisance as it is one of bad effect in Nightmare missions.

[Caelward]

Her Passive is divisive for sure. Thing is, not only does it slow Zephyr's fall, but it also allows her to steer with surprising agility in mid-air during that fall. A suggestion I've made before and I still wish for, is that they'd just put Zephyr's divebomb on her melee smash. Take this neglected and really unnecessarily hard to use ability hidden in her tailwind and make it a secondary small passive. Let her use it even if she doesn't have a melee, but perhaps it applies a small boost to her melee slam itself.

Her low gravity passive would be much better if she had a cost free 'get down now' complement.