Zephyr Tweaks: Make Tail Wind similar to Gauss' Mach Rush and new passive.

[Xerenova]

Firstly, please get rid of the horrendous momentum after each Tail Wind Cast. Let it be an abrupt stop like the new Archwing movement.

 

Tail Wind still launches Zephyr to the direction she faces. Holding 1 will let her fly continuously with exchange of energy drain per second. All momentum is removed so she'll stop immediately after each cast. Works like the new Archwing movement.

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Her passive needs to go. She's almost unplayable because of how slow she becomes on air.

New Passive: Airburst -> Every 10 seconds, a 30% chance for Zephyr to lash out a burst of air that cut enemy within 5m dealing slash damage.

 

[Captain_Freedom]

Her passive is her best feature. It's feel is what most people who play Zephyr regularly like best about her. Her fall is the only part of it that is slowed and divebomb/melee slams can easily compensate should you need to fall faster.

I don't mind your proposed changes as currently to have decent maneuverability with tailwind requires a build with lower power duration, hurting turbulence and tornadoes. If duration is to be how her tailwind air speed is calculated in the future, then the base duration of turbulence and tornadoes should be buffed to compensate. That would be unnecessary with Air brakes on her tailwind, but the implementation of such an idea would be difficult. Her momentum allows her to travel much further per cast of tailwind than she otherwise should, allowing a hold to cast would alleviate this issue so long as the energy drain remains similar to chaining tailwinds currently.

[BlachWolf]

On 2019-12-06 at 10:25 PM, Xerenova said:

Firstly, please get rid of the horrendous momentum after each Tail Wind Cast. Let it be an abrupt stop like the new Archwing movement.

For the love of god pls. Or let at least all momentum dissipate instantly, so she doesnt spend the rest of the mission kissing a wall.

On 2019-12-06 at 10:25 PM, Xerenova said:

Tail Wind still launches Zephyr to the direction she faces. Holding 1 will let her fly continuously with exchange of energy drain per second. All momentum is removed so she'll stop immediately after each cast. Works like the new Archwing movement.

Sounds good. Though how will it worked with the hover, I would like if you could also hover, I would like to keep that part of the ability with the change so it scales with duration.

On 2019-12-06 at 10:25 PM, Xerenova said:

Her passive needs to go. She's almost unplayable because of how slow she becomes on air.

New Passive: Airburst -> Every 10 seconds, a 30% chance for Zephyr to lash out a burst of air that cut enemy within 5m dealing slash damage.

I dissagree with the passive, if you learn how to take advantage of it, you can move pretty fast.

[Birdframe_Prime]

Hi, I'm Birdframe_Prime, I've been here on the Forums and participated on almost a thousand Zephyr threads since 2016. Well... I lost track past 600 at the end of 2017, so I think I'll have got close to the thousand mark in the two years since...

Okay, so there seem to be a couple of assumptions here, and I do want to address those. The first; Zephyr's passive is "slow". Zephyr loses absolutely no speed in the air, and can even speed up thanks to the momentum gained from slide-gliding (where you use the slide and then Aim Glide in order to increase and preserve that forward momentum). She can steer in the air, meaning she can go as fast around corners in the air as a frame can go around them while running on the ground. The additional hang time means she can take routes over obstacles that many frames simply can't, cutting many irritating speed-runs shorter just by taking a smooth line instead of having to run around things.

But. What you're right about? One thing that does slow her down overall, and that's the fact that getting back down from the air is irritating and requires a completely different function (either ability or melee). Get into a corner or over a doorway and you have the exact same problem as the rest of the frames, but worse, which is that you're stuck on geometry and have to backtrack a little before you can continue. It happens to her more often than others because of her passive.

That's the balance currently.

Second; that the momentum on her Tailwind needs to go. It needs reworking, but doesn't need to go. I'll explain a little further on, but it doesn't, because we can use it if the ability is done better.

What you're right about? Definitely that she needs the ability to cancel her momentum and stop in the air. More on that in the explanation below!

Third; DE will not give Zephyr, of all frames, a passive that deals damage without it being a specific kind of passive. An AoE that just does damage as a ping every few seconds? Nope. And I genuinely wish that people would stop over-estimating Slash damage. Slash is not a good damage type, but Bleed is a good Status type. With no status chance on Slash you get very little return except against the Infested or enemies entirely stripped of armour/shields, which Zephyr currently can't do with her abilities.

What you're right about? Zephyr needs an addition to her passive to help her out.

Anyway, I hear your points, but how about we try this instead, a full update of her worst functions in a handy Spoiler tag below:

(Be warned, it's a long one, from a thread that's old enough to be archived.)

Spoiler

Passive: Light Weight, Big Impact.

First change is here. Zephyr has always been a floaty frame and one of the biggest complaints is ‘get me down from here’. Well, guess what? I want to make her even more floaty, but give her that important aspect the other players demand, the quick landing.

Light Weight makes Zephyr jump higher, fall slower and allows her to steer in the air (as it does right now). It extends her aim glide duration, her Wall Latch and improves her Bullet Jump velocity, that’s new.

Big Impact is Dive Bomb, cut out of Tailwind for simplification and is a passive augment to the Melee Ground Slam. With a Melee equipped, Zephyr has a custom animation and adds a small amount of damage (after mods to ensure it’s not too powerful), to the ground slam based on her height. If Zephyr does not have a melee equipped, she simply performs the animation with a very small amount of damage.

Simple, direct, to the point. You get your ‘get me down from here’ button anywhere and everywhere, even on Primary Only Sorties, it follows existing rules and gives her a bit of uniqueness back after every frame got access to her mobility and every frame got her Dive Bomb in their Melee.

This frees up Tailwind for some changes.

1. Tailwind.

First, remove the animation completely. In a recent change DE patched this ability so that hitting an object cancelled the animation and allowed Zephyr the freedom to use the Wall Latch or Wall Run function to cancel her Momentum. This is a good change, but not enough. Why? Because unless you practice this Wall Latch cancelling, you still skitter across a wall and end up where you don’t want to be because of Momentum, and if you don’t hit a wall you’re stuck in the animation and then at the mercy of the Momentum afterwards anyway and have no way to stop save for Dive Bomb or the melee slam.

Removing the animation allows her existing passive of in-air steering to take effect from the moment the ability is active, adjusting her direction in a similar fashion to Gauss and allowing her to curve through the air instead of just hurtle forwards. Everyone likes curves, and curves allow her to pass through gaps that would normally have had her impact the edge and expend her momentum up against the wall instead.

The next fix is simple, but can seem complex because of how it changes Zephyr’s base modding… or rather… how it expands it.

Change the stats that affect Tailwind. Currently the ability is based solely on Duration for its travel. This affects how long you jet forwards, and therefore how fast you travel that distance, with 100% conservation of Momentum that, in many cases, actively punishes you for using high Duration. That momentum is a real headache anywhere that isn't the open landscapes.

Since Duration is also what keeps you alive with Turbulence and what keeps your CC/Damage up with Tornado, this is not the ideal situation.

Switch the modding to Range and Strength. A default, unmodded Tailwind will travel a set range at a fast pace and then slow down at the end with approximately 50% of the Momentum conserved. This allows hang-time, but doesn’t punch you into the scenery.

A high Range build makes the base ability push you further and faster, but lowering the Strength makes you slow down more at the end in proportion. Meanwhile a higher Strength will allow you more momentum and a lower range will give you a shorter and proportionally slower distance, thus the mad dash becomes a more graceful bound through the air.

Range and Strength are variable on Zephyr. While you never want to go into negative Range, you can go quite close to it without trouble (something I plan on fixing), or you can go right up to max Range to make the most of Turbulence’s defense. While Strength on Zephyr can go right down to minimum with a high range build, and up to past 200% if you’re building for a super Jet Stream or a Funnel Clouds setup.

So combinations could include a max-range, min-strength Tailwind that acts like the Operator Dash with low-gravity hang-time at the end, while a neutral-range and 200% Strength will arc you over the Plains of Eidolon or Orb Vallis like a pole-vaulter on the moon, with ample time to do whatever you want up there.

It’s a simple change to fix a simple problem. You can now mod Zephyr to where you want to take her. Want to go into the Grineer Asteroid? The open Landscapes? Tiles with a mix of both narrow and wider spaces? You have the builds for that. It’s all possible, and Tailwind becomes usable everywhere, and not just when you have enough room for it.

1 (Again). Hover.

This ability is slow. This ability is grounded. This ability makes you sit vulnerable for up to 3 seconds for an end goal of sitting still in the air for… no real purpose. It doesn’t do anything. You’re hovering, great. Melee enemies can’t hit you, also great. Why are we sitting still in the air on the most mobile frame in the game? No reason. Just because we can. And if the reason is ‘just because we can’, why is it better than just Bullet Jumping into the air and using her passive and Aim Glide? Why is this better than just using the Aero Vantage mod? Or the precept for Moas? It’s… an odd-duck of the birdframe’s abilities.

Hover should be a tool to get the most out of Tailwind.

To all of those who doubt the changes I’ve made to Tailwind itself; this is the balance, the answer. Make it a mobility tool, not one that’s counter to mobility.

Instead of sitting on the ground, charging it up, simply be a half-second press. Tap is Tailwind, longer press is Hover. Hover is given a true Duration that we can mod for, so that we see a timer and so that we can benefit from our normal modding. You press 1 for a half second, anywhere, in air or on ground, and it casts.

On the ground, you launch in the air, the same mechanic. If you're in a low ceiling space, then the use of Aim Glide to fix yourself a little lower still works. You hover for a given Duration and you can move on at any time.

In the air, you simply stop. All momentum is cancelled. All of it. So what do you have? An Air Brake. Tailwind over a location, hit Hover, Tailwind in another direction, hit Hover. You can re-position yourself in the air for as long as you have Energy. (Note, I’m not asking to have it reset in-air jumps or rolls, or even reset the Operator transfer-in-air, just to have this freedom to move fast and stop when you want.)

Hover also needs to have a function that makes it better to use it than forget it; nothing huge is necessary, just a self buff. When in Hover, Airburst’s flight speed is increased. It’s not a huge buff, but it’s a buff to your ability for using one of your lesser-needed functions. It also means that it’s not faster to actually go down to the ground and hit them with a stick than to stay up there and cast as currently is the case.

Now that doesn’t seem like much, but I’m getting there.

2. Airburst.

Ragdoll is a terrible CC function. It is. Well, if it’s all you have, then it’s good, but Warframe has multiple other types of CC that are so far-and-away better that they should genuinely be used as preference instead of Ragdoll.

Simple fix? Instead of Ragdoll, use the Lift function from the new melee. It bumps the enemy into the air, controlled, in a pose that allows you to get clean shots. This is similar to Rhino Stomp and the Celestial Stomp augment for Wukong with the smaller base range and the shorter CC duration.

While that in itself is a significant improvement to the ability, along with the increased travel speed while Hovering, I believe we should genuinely go further.

This is to replace the function of ‘Airburst makes Tornado funnels bigger’: Enemies hit with Airburst are marked and take increased damage from all sources, in addition if Tornado is active, the nearest funnel will track to the point of Airburst’s impact.

What does this do? It covers a known gap in Zephyr’s 4, the fact that the Tornado funnels auto target the enemies that are in range and can easily ignore places where they should be. It also means that after the CC from Airburst is done, a Tornado funnel can/will move in, capture enemies and use its own unique damage and status spreading function to ensure groups of enemies are still controlled and will spread damage to the marked enemies (that take the bonus damage from all sources).

3. Turbulence.

You would think there’s not much to say here. Turbulence, depending on the faction, can be considered one of the most powerful defense abilities in the game. The balance is that, depending on the faction and specific enemies you’re facing, it can be one of the worst defense abilities in the game. This is actually not a bad place to be in, for now, and provides unique benefits that other frames don’t get.

And it works at every level of play, there is no scaling, it’s just a flat ‘no, your bullets mean nothing for the next 30-50 seconds’.

What’s not fun about it? No signal to show it’s ending, a slow casting time that locks you in place unless you’re in the air already, and the things it doesn’t cover like the ’penetration’ distance which scales with your range.

If you don’t know about that last one, projectiles that enter Turbulence can actually keep going a certain distance before getting redirected. With a high range build that’s almost unnoticeable, it’s negligible. But when the enemy is really close, like a Corpus Tech with a high-damage, high-rate-of-fire projectile weapon… you can still get shot.

What I would do to improve this is make sure that even with negative range, there’s a point where projectiles are completely unable to penetrate. Zephyr could have her head against the barrel of their gun and it doesn’t hurt. Why? Isn’t this over-powered? Does this make sense in physics? Nope. What this does is remove the penalty for building in negative range. It then makes her incredibly vulnerable to explosives, but it means that projectiles in general have the same redirection as hit-scan as long as the ability is active. You still wouldn’t want to build negative range, but the effect of the ability isn’t suddenly negated on a huge swathe of enemy weapons just because you slapped on a Narrow Minded.

Aside from that, Flame Throwers are not covered by Turbulence (like not getting Dental with your Health coverage). Why are Flame Throwers still not being diverted by Turbulence? They’re not even bullets, they’re particles, which is why they scale so much against us, Zephyr should be able to push those away if she can push bullets away.

Quality of Life is the ending cue and the mobile casting, buffs are for protecting against Flame Throwers and Projectiles (non-penalty for using negative range).

4. Tornado.

This one… hoo… this one is considered so divisive. People want to make it just one big Tornado, people want to replace it entirely…

Simple. Simple fixes to buff the ability.

Limit the range that the funnels can travel away from the point of cast. Remove the function that causes it to randomly spawn on an enemy in range. We know where we want to spawn our Tornado, we want to defend specific locations.

Cast and all four funnels spawn around the point of cast and then move outwards, but cannot go further than a fixed range away. This means they don’t wander off, this means they’re not in the next room when you want them to be where the most enemies are. Fixed range also means that they can’t be too close, can’t be limited to just around a single point like a Defense target, and completely deny access to it.

Allow Range to increase the funnel draw range (which is a subtle way to increase the actual range, because they can draw enemies from outside of their roving range when they’re at the edge of it).

With funnels moving in a guaranteed area of control, able to be sent to a specific location by Airburst and having them deal bonus damage for capturing enemies marked by Airburst means there’s no need for the aim-to-steer function. We can cast Airburst and get a great synergy with that instead, but if people want to keep that aimed function then leave it in.

What these changes achieve is then a full area-of-effect ability that persists, providing more reliable and applicable CC. Shooting funnels becomes a far more legitimate function to spread damage because they’re actively seeking enemies that you’ve targeted and marked for them, and they get there more directly to do that job. Also the spawning means that changing the damage type of the funnels is a simple matter of shooting them, not having to hunt them down when they spawn on an enemy 50m away from where you were aiming.

This would be a massive buff to the ability overall without changing what it is or what it really does, just how it does it.

Augments:

Jet Stream: Perfect, don’t change a thing, one of the only Flight Speed enhancing functions in the game, which allows for more reliable play with bows, thrown weapons and shotguns (it extends damage fall-off distance).

Funnel Clouds: incorporate the new changes to Tornado into it, make nearest 3 funnels target the point of impact from Airburst (as 12 funnels spawn, so 3 per regular funnel).

Target Fixation: I’ve seen niche fun out of this with the update that allows for 2 seconds on the ground… but it still needs more. I would gladly accept this function applying to Tailwind if it was a charge and discharge function with the new 'Dive Bomb is Ground Slam' where you build up your bonus with Tailwinds through enemies, and then apply that bonus to the next Dive Bomb slam meaning you can get better results thanks to melee modding.

New Augment:

Air Inversion. Airburst no longer Lifts enemies, but temporarily tethers them to the point of impact. The damage bonus to marked enemies is doubled.

Much like Tornado’s Augment, sacrificing her most of the CC function for a damage function gives her more of a choice to the augment itself, so players that actually want to play a damage-based Zephyr do actually have the option on two counts, while players that prefer to have weapon damage and more control have that choice as well.

- - -

In short… what Zephyr does is not really changed all that much. She still floats around and dive-bombs the ground, she still throws Airburst at enemies for CC and light damage, she still has four roving Tornado funnels for CC and damage, she still deflects bullets with a shield of air, and she still has the best air-dash in the game (screw you Gauss, I'm glad your in-air dash function got nerfed!)

It all just works better together. It works better in terms of affecting enemies. It even, in the case of Airburst, works better in a team because of the damage boost.

So that... long... long ramble there, is the labour of years of playing Zephyr and discussing Zephyr with hundreds of other players.

Your points, I think, are covered by it. You can mod Zephyr for that Operator Dash style of play just by building for a Turbulence Zephyr. But at the same time you don't lose the function for other players that want it. You get the 'get me down from here' function built into her kit rather than having it cost energy or even require a melee weapon to function. You get the mid-air stop, but better, and with the potential to be better for survivability and mobility than Tailwind is on its own. And you get damage. You wanted damage? Airburst will give you damage now. Far more damage than that passive would have, that's for certain.

Players that want Synergy(tm) get a sample of that, and players that want unforced synergy now get that as well.

All in all, a better Zephyr. Maybe still not the best frame in the game, but better. Bring her up to B+ instead of the C- she's sitting at.

Edited December 9, 2019 by Birdframe_Prime

[Captain_Freedom]

Birdframe_Prime's suggestions are very similar to my suggestions from a few weeks ago. 

I've updated my notes for my Zephyr rework idea based on the feedback from there and have changed a few parts of the abilities to better fit in with other warframes. My notes now read.

Passive: Her passive is fine, it's the most unique part of her kit and no other warframe can replicate it well. Only change that should be considered is maybe adding additional Aim-Glide duration.
    

Tailwind: 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 limits her potential and reduces ability synergy. It principly needs better maneuverability.
    Change Hover Jump into a channeled fly with 1/2th the movement speed of Tailwind, add synergy to other abilities while in this mode. Cast Divebomb or melee slam to leave this mode. Base Energy per second cost 2. Channeled this way causes no damage to enemies.
    Fix maneuverability by allowing players to stop their mid-air momentum. Giving players an easy way to maintain or lose the momentum from Tailwind is all that is needed for added agility with the ability. I'd suggest having forward movement maintain your momentum and backwards movement slow your momentum, similar to how it currently works in aimglide, but much more quickly.
    Keep Divebomb as is. It's range and power for it's casting cost of 12.5 energy at base is sufficient for CC or damage with its augment.
    Augment: Target Fixation is fine, only change it needs is for the buff timer to pause while reviving allies and hacking consoles. Currently helping teammates can easily lose you the buff, discouraging team play.
    Range, Strength, and Duration are appropriate currently. 25 energy cast with 50% discount if airborne is fine. Might need to change airspeed calculation to encourage better build synergy with her other abilities.

Airburst: Her 2 provides a knockdown CC in a good range and can increase the height of her tornadoes. It provides little utility outside of giving Zephyr some breathing room when cornered. My suggestions are to maintain and improve current functionality by adding more utility to the ability.
    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. 250 base damage, knockdown, and 25% base slow.
    Enemies hit with downdraft after being lifted take damage and have their defenses stripped. 1500 base damage and enemies gain 75% damage vulnerability.
    Base range at 10m, base duration at 5s for updraft lift and 15s for downdraft slow. Damage, slow, and vulnerability affected by power strength. Base energy to cast at 50 with 50% discount if airborne
    Potential Augment: Vortex- Updraft pulls enemies towards the cast point and downdraft pushes enemies away from the cast point. Can be used for grouping enemies and then launching them. More of a meme augment than anything.

Turbulence: Ability is fine, some QOL changes would be appreciated. 
    Add a Knockdown burst around her when the ability duration ends so she can more safely recast it.
    Range and duration are fine, Jet Stream buffs can be affected by strength. 75 base energy cast
    Augment: Jet Stream- base 40% movement speed and 100% projectile velocity bonus affected by power strength. If allies are in radius of turbulence when cast, then they will retain Jet Stream Buffs for duration, can backflip to remove speed buffs. Allies entering turbulence's radius no longer gain Jet Stream buffs.

Tornadoes: 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. It can be useful for spreading damage and status from your weapons, but that functionality can be maintained while increasing the utility and reliability of the tornadoes.
    Cast 1 Tornado with a base pull radius of 10m. Let pull range be affected by mods. Upon Casting it spawns at your position from which it moves towards your reticle position at 10m/s. Once it reaches its destination, it stays for the duration
    Change Damage ticks to increase with a portion of damage dealt to the tornado. Base damage is slash with 50% base status chance. Status Proc variety is dependent upon the damage done to the tornado. If you deal 500 corrosive damage then the available damage pool for determining status procs in the tornado is 100 slash and 500 corrosive.
    Enemies in the tornado take damage done to the tornado plus 200% critical damage.
    Casting Updraft on the tornado increases its range and duration (range only applied once) Pull Radius increases by 50%. (affects smaller tornadoes created by Funnel Clouds augment)
    Casting Downdraft on the tornado causes it to deal all remaining damage in one burst.
    Base Pull Range 10m, Base Duration 15s, Base tick damage 100, Damage Converted to tick damage 1%, base energy to cast 100
    Augment: Funnel Clouds- Allows recasting to split tornado up to 2 times at no energy cost. 1st split turns into 4 tornadoes, 2nd into 12. The 4 tornadoes have a base pull radius of 6m and a movement speed of 5m/s. The 12 tornadoes no longer pick up enemies but pull them, have a base damage radius of 4m, and move at 7m/s. Split tornadoes retain the damage ticks of the original tornado, but stop building more damage and travel around the map pathing towards the nearest enemy not in its grasp.

Hover Jump Synergy Suggestion- change hover jump to be a way to channel into a flight mode using the same control scheme as Wukong's Cloudwalker and animations of aimglide.
    While in this mode, casting Tornado forms it around Zephyr, allowing her to control its movement. (Ability FX would need to be updated to make this feasible)
    While in this mode, turbulence gains 50% increased range. Jet Stream's movement buff applies to movement speed in this mode.
    No Change to Draft.
    Casting tailwind in this mode adds the airspeed of tailwind to the 50% base movement speed, allowing for a faster dash. (Plains movement)
    

[Captain_Freedom]

I prefer 1 large tornado tethered to a specific area over 4 smaller tornadoes tethered to an area for the sole reason that Tornadoes are very large and incredibly dangerous. With the suggestions above for Tornado, the tracking speed would need to be greatly increased, but otherwise seems fine. The hope I had in the ability's utility is an ability that can be used in more mobile missions as well. By making Tornado a directional power that then stops at a point both CC for missions like interception and mobile defense can be utilized with a use for missions such as capture and exterminate.

[master_of_destiny]

Anyone actually remember when the frame was introduced, then forgotten about until the prime was incoming?  About how the only change was to decrease the armor for the birb, and that only after years did they add the damage pass-through to tornados, which were Limbo levels of hated because they actively made killing more difficult?  What about movement 1.0 where Excal and Zephyr were prime (excusing the pun, as it is not intended) choices because one of their powers made movement less horrendous?

Yeah, to this day Zephyr (not prime) is my most used frame at 26.8%.  To be clear, 5 year in and I also still have the Boltor Prime high on my usage list too.  Make of that what you will.

 

As such, let me offer an alternative rework and why.

Stats

It's time to decide on whether Oxium is awesome or garbage.  As it makes Oxium Ospreys amazing, it's time to rework the whole shield-health-armor balance.  Triple the base armor for Zephyr (45), decrease shields by slightly under half (85), don't mess with the health.  Your base frame is now more durable, but not a flying tank.  Prime should show moderate improvements, A (95) - S (120) - H (150).  The goal here is to reflect the value of the included oxium, and to make the frame less painfully glass before the prime is vaulted.

Passive

Low gravity itself seems to work most of the time, but too often everything is designed to allow you to fall into a doorway threshold because the drop is too far for a floaty frame.  They integrated dive-bomb into her first power, I'd suggest something similar here.  Jump higher, fall faster, such that total air time is the same as a normal frame.  The extra hang time of "low gravity" would only activate when aim gliding.  Now you have the best of both worlds and a skill based mobility change that isn't prone to spamming.  Call it something like aerofoil to denote the complexity of the passive in action. 

Powers 

1) Keep this.  Do not cancel momentum.  The momentum cancel is a good idea inside buildings and corridors, but why are you taking a mobility frame into a building?  The momentum makes running the open world insanely better.  Moreover, If you build for mobility you can increase the range of a single activation immensely by focusing on duration.  It takes about 10 hits of the power to get across PoE, and at this point is faster than an archwing with the 3 second delay and locked range (not to mention energy efficient with a build focused on it).  

2) On paper this is a direct damage source, that increases tornado size.  In practice, this is having to use 2-5 powers to make tornado work.  Scrap it.  Zephyr has some CC possibility, a shield, and mobility as its assets.  It's tempting to add a buff, but I think we shouldn't add more to a package that is good.  Airburst can get renamed Pressure Wave.  The effect would be to create an angular projectile like Excal's Exalted Blade.  The projectile would strip a percentage of armor, and have infinite punch-through, without any damage.  Zephyr now has a reason to build for power strength (greater armor strip %), duration (projectile flight distance), or range (width of projectile beam).  Right now you either build for duration/efficiency for turbulence and CC tornado, or strength for damaging tornado.  Everything else isn't viable, which is a shame.

3) Turbulence needs very little.  I'd suggest removing the idiotic casting animation, but somebody there probably loves it.  The old one where Zephyr waved a hand and had the shield was not broken, and the new dance and hand wave is an invitation to get curb stomped.  The modification to stats would help this, but K.I.S.S.  Keep it simple stupid.

4) Tornado is a mess.  I say this because it's at best mediocre, and it's an ultimate power.  The community is divided on whether to embrace it or change it because it doesn't do anything well, and this is hidden by air burst making the default size large enough to act as crowd control.  Ironically, I'd suggest not to change this power fundamentally.  Without air burst you need to increase base size by 20%.  You'll also need to increase the speed from a painful meander, or about 30% from my experience.  This makes the power CC, decent, and opens the possibility for mods to make it better with a trade-off that is clear.

Nothing in the new kit is insanely useful, but you've now got two possible Zephyr builds; power and duration.  The former allows for a CC and armor/slash monster, while the later offers something that can be everywhere on the battlefield and support the team as a very durable source of revives.  

Augments

1)  Air Brake.  Momentum cancelling, as requested.  It isn't provided as a default for the power, but the trade-off influencing game play is clear.  I think this would be a great augment, even if I personally think it's a waste.

2) Pressure Wave get Capillary Burst.  Instead of removing armor the attack creates a slash proc based off of enemy level and power strength.  This will maintain the scaling that the new Zephyr has, and the trade-off is that the slash alone cannot kill.  Do you act as a hit and run monster who spreads slash conditions like the plague to kill hordes, or focus on the big ugly enemies who could use a good softening up? 

3)  Jet Stream is a net positive, which isn't an augment so much as a power-up.  Instead of augmenting projectile speed you change this to increasing projectile speed for everyone, but decreasing their accuracy.  The net effect here is that you stop encroaching on Volt's territory without a trade, and you have to balance out an impact on accuracy versus the increased range you get.  Think of this as a spray and pray or precision firing decision.

4) Keep Funnel Clouds.  The increased base size will transfer over at 10% larger, and the speed will be but otherwise nutty.  This will be a chaotic mess of tornados rolling through enemies, and causing status.  It's a great opportunity to truly augment a power.  It's also fundamentally reworking how you use it.

4) Introduce Category Five.  The augment is a cast on location, generates a tornado at 200% default tornado size, but stays in place.  This can act as a point defense power, and it will throw out pressure waves every certain amount of seconds.  This turns the CC ability to a functional turret, but isn't a sit and forget because the slash is not going to kill enemies.

These augments are all structured such that there is a trade off for power, and not so that you feel like it's a straight upgrade.  I feel that this is the goal of augments, but acknowledge without hard numbers in some of the categories these could be either stupidly useless or over powered.  It will take work to get armor stripping and slash balanced, and to make sure tornados are powerful without being game breaking.  

 

I think that with Zephyr Prime being vaulted this is the last time we'll see changes for a long time.  I don't think DE cares, because Zephyr is a solid C student.  Nothing glaringly horrible (turbulence covers that), and nothing brokenly good (the armor nerf makes sure of that).  I agree with everyone else that there is much potential to bring Zephyr from meh to good, but without something like a deluxe skin DE has no reason to do it.

[Miyabi-sama]

Her passive is good. Leave it be please.