Revenant has no purpose outside solo play.

[Olematon.Mies]

You see that title. Allow me to elaborate.

Revenant brings absolutely nothing to the table outside of solo play. Yes, he can press 4 and effectively kill a group of enemies - but guess what? There are frames that can #1 do it better than Revenant can and #2 are less of a 1-trick-pony than Revenant is by bringing either CC or buffs with them - Saryn (buff with augment,) Excalibur, Baruuk, Volt, Garuda just to name a few. Why is this?

His thralls can be killed by everyone, thus making them worthless in public squads (and often even pre-made groups) because the players are hardwired to shoot and kill anything that moves, with the exception of other players. This includes Revenants thralls because despite them being friendly towards Tenno they still take full damage from all sources unlike those mind-controlled by Nyx or the shadows summoned by Nekros, thus making the thralls quite literally useless even as a distraction which is what they were clearly intended to be since the thralls do no damage on their own. Not to mention that the thralls are hard to recognize without stopping for a second to see if they have a vomvalyst skull above them or not.

His third ability is only good for moving around without canceling his fourth ability. That's it. It does not serve as a valid movement option either because Revenant is glued to the ground while using it. The lack of flight for the very short dash make it next to useless, especially considering that it is only barely faster than by moving normally.

 

My suggestions on how to fix him and make him a viable option to play online in two simple steps -

• First off, make his thralls immune or at least highly resistant to damage from his allies, and only let Revenant himself and other hostiles be able to kill them. This would actually allow the thralls to do what they are supposed to do - be a distraction.
• Allow his dash to let him fly, and keep the momentum when the dash ends. This will allow him to relocate himself better with his 4th ability active, and in general will give him a much bigger range of mobility. And before you think it, no, this will not threaten Zephyr/Titania in any way since Reveneant would need to touch the ground after the dash ends in order to use it again.

[jnuh]

you can share his 2 by using his 3 to pass through teammates.

his 3 gives immunity and heals, its not just a mobility skill.

his 1 can sorta interrupt/pause damage being taken.

not all frames are built to be interactive with <other frames> in coop, but he definitly has a place in coop.

[nslay]

22 minutes ago, jnuh said:

you can share his 2 by using his 3 to pass through teammates.

It's only 1 stack. Very niche. You can use it to protect team mates from Profit Taker or Exploiter Orb explosions. Otherwise? Not very useful.

22 minutes ago, jnuh said:

his 3 gives immunity and heals, its not just a mobility skill.

His 3 is more notable for dealing scaling damage (drains 100% of target's max health at 250% ability strength!). The heal is nice for when environmental damage bypasses Mesmer Skin though!

The mobility aspect is bad. Reave is a bad/expensive mobility skill. IMO, you should never use it for mobility.

24 minutes ago, jnuh said:

his 1 can sorta interrupt/pause damage being taken.

That's exactly a good use of 1 in a team setting. You can strategically negate dangerous attacks on bosses (noting that bosses have a special resistance to Enthrall... significantly reduced duration). You can also use it to pacify annoying enemies like Nox while everyone guns the annoying enemies down unharmed.

26 minutes ago, jnuh said:

not all frames are built to be interactive with <other frames> in coop, but he definitly has a place in coop.

He has a very limited place in co-op. His mostly meaningless health/shields and resistance to death means that he can reliably resurrect allies in Arbitrations. Revenant is good for Arbitrations! His Enthrall can be used when allies start dying a lot (e.g. happens a lot in T4 Void... like Mot where everything does 3x damage!). Enthralled enemies draw aggro and consequently reduces damage taken by allies. His 3 can prevent well-telegraphed 1 shots by giving allies 1 Mesmer Skin stack (all I can think of is Profit Taker/Exploiter self-destruct explosion)... Very niche.

 

Thralls being immune/resistant to allies is a bad idea IMO. They do not deal very much damage and are otherwise not useful aside of drawing aggro. But they are useful for effectively disabling an enemy for you/allies to gun down. But most of Warframe is too easy for this to be valuable (like most CC effects!). If your allies can kill your Thralls so easily, that should tell you that you're wasting your time using Enthrall (or any CC ability for that matter)... just kill the enemies around you! If Warframe had a bunch of Gokstadt Officers running around all the time, CC effects like Enthrall would be more useful!

[(XBOX)GearsMatrix301]

1 hour ago, jnuh said:

you can share his 2 by using his 3 to pass through teammates.

his 3 gives immunity and heals, its not just a mobility skill.

his 1 can sorta interrupt/pause damage being taken.

not all frames are built to be interactive with <other frames> in coop, but he definitly has a place in coop.

1 Mesmer charge is completely useless. And the way to apply it to squad mates is extremely restrictive since it’s a ground locked dash.

healings irrelevant since his “tank ability” doesn’t require heath.

You know what else pauses damage being taken? Killing the enemy.

He has literally zero place in Coop.

Edited January 3, 2020 by (XB1)GearsMatrix301

[(XBOX)GearsMatrix301]

Better idea. Rework Revenant completely. It doesn’t matter how many tweaks they make to his abilities. They are terrible base abilities and no amount of synergies and extra mechanics are gonna save them.

[nerfinator6]

2 hours ago, LewdInspector said:

First off, make his thralls immune or at least highly resistant to damage from his allies, and only let Revenant himself and other hostiles be able to kill them. This would actually allow the thralls to do what they are supposed to do - be a distraction.

This.

THIS.

FIX THIS DE.

I failed a thermia fracture because some idiot joined and decided "hurr durr lets shoot everything even though they're all busy shooting eachother", causing unthralled enemies to drop in right on top of the fracture and kill it in about 0.5s.

[Olematon.Mies]

1 hour ago, nslay said:

Thralls being immune/resistant to allies is a bad idea IMO. They do not deal very much damage and are otherwise not useful aside of drawing aggro.

The entire point of the thralls is to draw aggro and be a distraction. They are never meant to be anything more than that. Their sole purpose to exist is for Revenant to enthrall one or two enemies out of a group, thus making said group turn on eachother and thus become a non-threat so the player can focus their attention elsewhere while the thrall group draws fire away from the players. That is literally the entire point of thralls, so why would it be a good thing for the team to swoop in and wipe out a friendly squad?

What you are saying is literally the same as saying AI bots in all shooter games are worthless and just get in the way of things and the player is always be better off without them.

Edited January 3, 2020 by LewdInspector

[nslay]

1 minute ago, LewdInspector said:

That is literally the entire point of thralls, so why would it be a good thing for the team to swoop in and wipe out a friendly squad?

 

2 hours ago, LewdInspector said:

First off, make his thralls immune or at least highly resistant to damage from his allies, and only let Revenant himself and other hostiles be able to kill them. This would actually allow the thralls to do what they are supposed to do - be a distraction.

This is what you're requesting. You're requesting Thralls to be immune/resistant to damage from team mates when you don't need Thralls in the first place (because everything is already easy to kill).

 

3 minutes ago, LewdInspector said:

thus making said group turn on eachother and thus become a non-threat so the player can focus their attention elsewhere while the thrall group draws fire away from the players.

This makes no sense. "I want easy-to-kill enemies to be a distraction for my team mates to kill other easy-to-kill enemies."

[nslay]

16 minutes ago, nerfinator6 said:

I failed a thermia fracture because some idiot joined and decided "hurr durr lets shoot everything even though they're all busy shooting eachother", causing unthralled enemies to drop in right on top of the fracture and kill it in about 0.5s.

This can happen even with Thralls. Try using Revenant in a Neptune Excavation and see how it works out. While Revenant is a marvelous generalist, he's not the best for defending low HP targets.

EDIT: P.S. Kill the Comba and Scrambus promptly because they can trigger a bug where enemies become immune to abilities! It's super dangerous for Revenant when, for example, enemies no longer are stunned by Mesmer Skin (or can be Enthralled!).

Edited January 3, 2020 by nslay

[Olematon.Mies]

1 minute ago, nslay said:

This makes no sense. "I want easy-to-kill enemies to be a distraction for my team mates to kill other easy-to-kill enemies."

You probably do not understand how it helpful it can be to literally walk through a horde of enemies mixed with thralls and not have to worry about being shot at. I understand that damage is the current meta, and I want to shift that meta around a bit. You would be surprised how effective certain frames are when you can play through a mission without ever needing to kill anyone, or at least an extremely low amount.

Obviously at low levels thralls do not matter at all since enemies die when you so much at fart in their general direction. The current damage system is powercreeped beyond stupidity anyway, and that is precisely why Revenant is so completely useless outside solo play.

[nslay]

Just now, LewdInspector said:

You probably do not understand how it helpful it can be to literally walk through a horde of enemies mixed with thralls and not have to worry about being shot at. I understand that damage is the current meta, and I want to shift that meta around a bit. You would be surprised how effective certain frames are when you can play through a mission without ever needing to kill anyone, or at least an extremely low amount.

Obviously at low levels thralls do not matter at all since enemies die when you so much at fart in their general direction. The current damage system is powercreeped beyond stupidity anyway, and that is precisely why Revenant is so completely useless outside solo play.

Revenant is my favorite frame and I do understand the value of Enthrall very well... just to reiterate my observation/experience/perspective:

1) If your team mates can kill Thralls/Enemies easily (and your team mates can reliably survive!), you don't really need Enthrall. You have little reason to use it. If Enemies were tougher (e.g. Gokstad Officers!), Thralls would have higher longevity and would survive long enough to spread their effects if team mates happen to kill Thralls.
2) Enthrall is useful for effectively disabling enemies/bosses for team mates to kill. This aspect especially becomes more valuable for harder-to-kill enemies where a feature to make Thralls immune/resistant to ally damage loses its appeal. I mean, imagine that you can use this on a level 5 Lich in a random pug (though you could also just Enthrall+Reave the Lich... more efficient). In Nightwave series 1, the initially invincible and dangerous Saturn Six Prisoners were effectively disabled by Enthrall, and for a short time, Wolf himself could be Enthralled.
3) Lastly, if you have team mates, they already draw aggro in place of your Thralls. I can't emphasize this part enough.

That second point is why I think making Thralls outright immune/resistant to ally damage is not a good idea. I do use Enthrall on beefy dangerous/annoying dudes like high level Nox and then my team mates can just gun the friendly down... This would not be possible if team mates cannot damage/kill Thralls.

And you're right, the current damage system is powercreeped like nuts that frames like Revenant get a bad rap. Revenant is pretty good at almost anything... he just doesn't shine in easy 10 minute mission co-op gameplay. And sadly, that's the benchmark for a lot of players.

Depending on what they do with the Kosma, Gyre, Exo Grineer units, you may see CC frames being valued again in Railjack. The ridiculous Gokstad Officer can take 3-4 red crit headshots from a Kuva Chakkhurr! You only ever encounter 1 at a time though... I think DE should make them as common as Corrupted Heavy Gunners in Void.

[(XBOX)Knight Raime]

57 minutes ago, LewdInspector said:

The entire point of the thralls is to draw aggro and be a distraction. They are never meant to be anything more than that. Their sole purpose to exist is for Revenant to enthrall one or two enemies out of a group, thus making said group turn on eachother and thus become a non-threat so the player can focus their attention elsewhere while the thrall group draws fire away from the players. That is literally the entire point of thralls, so why would it be a good thing for the team to swoop in and wipe out a friendly squad?

What you are saying is literally the same as saying AI bots in all shooter games are worthless and just get in the way of things and the player is always be better off without them.

If thralls were meant to be aggro tanks for enemies then they would have been built to take damage like we've seen with Nidus and Nyx.  Thralls exist to be killed and this is very easily seen by what happens when they're killed.  The only time killing thralls outright isn't a beneficial thing is when you're doing specific niche things that involve abusing the game's systems (making most of the enemies as thralls when soloing the thermia fracture event is a good example.)  It's only sucky for allies to kill thralls because Revenant has no way to create a group of thralls quickly and easily with his 1.

Also Revenant is hardly the only frame that doesn't consistently and meaningfully benefit his team.  I'd rather DE focus on polishing up the few issues in his kit rather than forcing a team oriented style out of him just to satisfy your "coop" namesake addiction when the base game itself doesn't fully support actual cooperative play.  

[ArcKnight9202]

12 hours ago, (XB1)GearsMatrix301 said:

Better idea. Rework Revenant completely. It doesn’t matter how many tweaks they make to his abilities. They are terrible base abilities and no amount of synergies and extra mechanics are gonna save them.

While I don't entirely agree with your conclusions, I wouldn't mind a rework. The synergies are things I forget about because they feel like afterthoughts. I actually hate the idea of synergies in general, though, since it feels like you're never getting the full effect unless you're spamming everything.

This can only be done after they fix Nyx, of course. Revenant is at least entirely functional at present.

Edited January 4, 2020 by ArcKnight9202

[(XBOX)GearsMatrix301]

10 hours ago, ArcKnight9202 said:

While I don't entirely agree with your conclusions, I wouldn't mind a rework. The synergies are things I forget about because they feel like afterthoughts. I actually hate the idea of synergies in general, though, since it feels like you're never getting the full effect unless you're spamming everything.

This can only be done after they fix Nyx, of course. Revenant is at least entirely functional at present.

The synergies feel like an afterthought because they literally were and afterthought. They weren’t put on Revenant until a week after his release. His abilities were clearly never designed with synergies in mind.

Also, synergies have a place in abilities. It gives the frame more function. It’s just when the synergies are the only way for the ability to be useful is when it becomes a problem.

Nyx can wait. She actually has a consistent theme. Revenant is 3/4 vampire despite looking like an Eidolon and none of his lore having anything to do with any kind of vampires. That needs to be fixed.

Edited January 4, 2020 by (XB1)GearsMatrix301

[CopperBezel]

Yeah, there are definitely synergy bonuses that work well. I really like Nezha's 4-2 synergy bonus, where enemies affected by his 4 multiply his 2. The 2 is a flame proc and +100% damage debuff that already bounces and affects a few enemies but has no stacking effect if it hits them twice, and the 4 is a radial CC. So you can throw the 2 at a single heavy, or throw it at a whole crowd you've 4'd. It's not an immense bonus, but still allows you to pipe an already useful ability through another. It somehow balances out that there are situations for using either ability separately as well as both together.

Edited January 4, 2020 by CopperBezel

[Olematon.Mies]

On 2020-01-03 at 8:20 PM, (XB1)Knight Raime said:

If thralls were meant to be aggro tanks for enemies then they would have been built to take damage like we've seen with Nidus and Nyx.  Thralls exist to be killed and this is very easily seen by what happens when they're killed.  The only time killing thralls outright isn't a beneficial thing is when you're doing specific niche things that involve abusing the game's systems (making most of the enemies as thralls when soloing the thermia fracture event is a good example.)  It's only sucky for allies to kill thralls because Revenant has no way to create a group of thralls quickly and easily with his 1.

Also Revenant is hardly the only frame that doesn't consistently and meaningfully benefit his team.  I'd rather DE focus on polishing up the few issues in his kit rather than forcing a team oriented style out of him just to satisfy your "coop" namesake addiction when the base game itself doesn't fully support actual cooperative play.  

Correct me if I'm wrong, but this game was never intended to be a single-player game. Just because it -can- be played solo does not mean that it was intended to be that way from the start, take Railjack as the latest example - it was clearly not intended for solo play, but guess what? We found a way to do it. I believe that "selfish" or "solo-efficient" frames can exist, but they must have a reason that would make them useful as a part of a team as well. Take Loki as an example. His kit is more useful to himself and himself alone, but his 4th ability is hugely beneficial not only to himself but the rest of the team he is a part of and is something only he can do effectively, thus making him a valid pick in any non-infested mission. Revenant on the other hand only brings some room-clearing potential which is something that other frames can do far more effectively than he ever could.

You are correct in saying that Revenant is not the only one who does not bring much benefit to his team - Harrow is another one if we exclude eidolon hunts due to the simple fact that in order to support his team Harrow has to compete against them to get the kills so his abilities do anything. This is also very, very bad because he was clearly intended to be a support frame with a little CC but the way his kit was made completely contradicts that because, again, he has to compete with his team for kills in order for his abilities to work in the first place. This wouldn't be much of an issue if frames like Saryn were not the meta, but that is largely due to the damage system being flawed anyway, which is an entirely different topic.

Edited January 5, 2020 by LewdInspector

[Dreamforger]

And how is this different from wukong?

Donkt get me wrong, I like wukongs rework, but its also mostly beneficial for solo.

What benefits the group? No dying, being able to tank, well and a kinda taunt ability (which could be translated into thrall when talking about group utility)

[Dreamforger]

On 2020-01-03 at 5:08 PM, nslay said:

It's only 1 stack. Very niche. You can use it to protect team mates from Profit Taker or Exploiter Orb explosions. Otherwise? Not very useful.

His 3 is more notable for dealing scaling damage (drains 100% of target's max health at 250% ability strength!). The heal is nice for when environmental damage bypasses Mesmer Skin though!

The mobility aspect is bad. Reave is a bad/expensive mobility skill. IMO, you should never use it for mobility.

That's exactly a good use of 1 in a team setting. You can strategically negate dangerous attacks on bosses (noting that bosses have a special resistance to Enthrall... significantly reduced duration). You can also use it to pacify annoying enemies like Nox while everyone guns the annoying enemies down unharmed.

He has a very limited place in co-op. His mostly meaningless health/shields and resistance to death means that he can reliably resurrect allies in Arbitrations. Revenant is good for Arbitrations! His Enthrall can be used when allies start dying a lot (e.g. happens a lot in T4 Void... like Mot where everything does 3x damage!). Enthralled enemies draw aggro and consequently reduces damage taken by allies. His 3 can prevent well-telegraphed 1 shots by giving allies 1 Mesmer Skin stack (all I can think of is Profit Taker/Exploiter self-destruct explosion)... Very niche.

 

Thralls being immune/resistant to allies is a bad idea IMO. They do not deal very much damage and are otherwise not useful aside of drawing aggro. But they are useful for effectively disabling an enemy for you/allies to gun down. But most of Warframe is too easy for this to be valuable (like most CC effects!). If your allies can kill your Thralls so easily, that should tell you that you're wasting your time using Enthrall (or any CC ability for that matter)... just kill the enemies around you! If Warframe had a bunch of Gokstadt Officers running around all the time, CC effects like Enthrall would be more useful!

you might find it a niche.. but it does share.

So it is an excellent counter argument.

 

if you still find him bad in co-op, that’s fair since it is your opinion.

But I still think people underestimate his usefulness... not all frames needs to be Wisp or the like.

[Dreamforger]

On 2020-01-04 at 7:10 AM, (XB1)GearsMatrix301 said:

The synergies feel like an afterthought because they literally were and afterthought. They weren’t put on Revenant until a week after his release. His abilities were clearly never designed with synergies in mind.

Also, synergies have a place in abilities. It gives the frame more function. It’s just when the synergies are the only way for the ability to be useful is when it becomes a problem.

Nyx can wait. She actually has a consistent theme. Revenant is 3/4 vampire despite looking like an Eidolon and none of his lore having anything to do with any kind of vampires. That needs to be fixed.

You are so biased Gears xD like a politician just nearly elected with one single goal:)

Take a step back and you might see he isn*t in such a bad spot as you paint him in.

[(XBOX)GearsMatrix301]

3 hours ago, Dreamforger said:

You are so biased Gears xD like a politician just nearly elected with one single goal:)

Take a step back and you might see he isn*t in such a bad spot as you paint him in.

Well considering the fact that I main Gauss and Nidus. I literally cannot look at Revenant from any further away.

[nslay]

3 hours ago, Dreamforger said:

you might find it a niche.. but it does share.

So it is an excellent counter argument.

It's not that I find it niche... it is niche! You only share 1 instance of blocked damage with allies. That's not very useful no matter how you look at it.

3 hours ago, Dreamforger said:

if you still find him bad in co-op, that’s fair since it is your opinion.

But I still think people underestimate his usefulness... not all frames needs to be Wisp or the like.

He is not a co-op frame. I say this as a Revenant main! He's my favorite frame! I argue with Gears for Void's sake... I am not slamming Revenant because he's bad at co-op. He is just bad at co-op. He does not bring anything to the table for team mates for typical content. But I did explain scenarios where Revenant can help in co-op (namely Arbitrations!) and I even did highlight a niche use of Reave sharing 1 instance of blocked damage. Why is it niche? Because we're not fighting Profit Taker/Exploiter everyday and, most of the time, allies do not stick around for their self-destruct explosions either.

[CopperBezel]

Yeah, I love my Nezha, but he's the same way - he's got a CC and a debuff, but he's mostly a tank, and he needs an augment to cast a short-lived DR buff on an explicitly targeted ally (longer lasting with very careful timing). He's got an incidental status cleanse built into his fire trail, but that's pretty token. Not everyone can be Trinity or Wisp and automatically benefit the entire squad with every cast.

Edited January 5, 2020 by CopperBezel

[(XBOX)Knight Raime]

13 hours ago, LewdInspector said:

Correct me if I'm wrong, but this game was never intended to be a single-player game. Just because it -can- be played solo does not mean that it was intended to be that way from the start, take Railjack as the latest example - it was clearly not intended for solo play, but guess what? We found a way to do it. I believe that "selfish" or "solo-efficient" frames can exist, but they must have a reason that would make them useful as a part of a team as well. Take Loki as an example. His kit is more useful to himself and himself alone, but his 4th ability is hugely beneficial not only to himself but the rest of the team he is a part of and is something only he can do effectively, thus making him a valid pick in any non-infested mission. Revenant on the other hand only brings some room-clearing potential which is something that other frames can do far more effectively than he ever could.

I have a very "non conventional" way of looking at coop.  But in short I don't believe WF to be a true coop game because mission structure and game mechanics do not really encourage/require it.  If WF abilities actually interacted with each other in synergistic ways beyond generic buffs that would at least be something to indicate coop play.  But many frames are capable of soloing content because frame design has been pushed to be self sufficient.  It's not like in the old void days when you had a support and a cc person that the game was a coop game either.  As mission structures were largely the same.  But out power was drastically less.

In my mind for WF to be a true coop frame we need frames to actually have interplay with each other.  Roles need to exist.  Mission structure needs to change so people have jobs to do besides making enemies irrelevant.  etc.  Railjack is the only piece of content that has anything close to what i'm looking for.  And even it still needs a lot of work.

13 hours ago, LewdInspector said:

You are correct in saying that Revenant is not the only one who does not bring much benefit to his team - Harrow is another one if we exclude eidolon hunts due to the simple fact that in order to support his team Harrow has to compete against them to get the kills so his abilities do anything. This is also very, very bad because he was clearly intended to be a support frame with a little CC but the way his kit was made completely contradicts that because, again, he has to compete with his team for kills in order for his abilities to work in the first place. This wouldn't be much of an issue if frames like Saryn were not the meta, but that is largely due to the damage system being flawed anyway, which is an entirely different topic.

Harrow has a consistent benefit of his 4 giving a dps increase and survivability.  So his design isn't a problem.  If we WERE to improve Revenant's team coop benefits i'd again point to looking at benefits of thralls being killed.  For the most part that's his gameplay loop.  creation and destruction of thralls.  If he was capable of making a group of thralls at once and thralls being killed providing more benefits beyond occasional damage/cc then this loop would work even better.  I don't think making thralls more survivable is the way to go.  It simply doesn't fit with his current mechanics.

[Olematon.Mies]

24 minutes ago, (XB1)Knight Raime said:

If he was capable of making a group of thralls at once and thralls being killed providing more benefits beyond occasional damage/cc then this loop would work even better.  I don't think making thralls more survivable is the way to go.  It simply doesn't fit with his current mechanics.

I could settle for a mass-enthrall ability where Revenant could instantly enthrall all enemies (up to the cap) in a certain radius of the initial target. That would greatly speed up the process of constantly keeping them alive. The reason why I would like to keep the thralls alive for as long as possible is that the longer they are alive, the longer they will draw aggro off of the players and thus allow the players to survive better. That on it's own is far more beneficial than the current mini geysers that the thralls spawn when they die, since the damage of the geysers is next to nothing and the area is so small that over the course of 15 minutes they only hit something maybe 5 times total at best, maybe more if you somehow manage to get all of them into a choke point like a doorway which is highly unlikely.

 

[(XBOX)Knight Raime]

50 minutes ago, LewdInspector said:

I could settle for a mass-enthrall ability where Revenant could instantly enthrall all enemies (up to the cap) in a certain radius of the initial target. That would greatly speed up the process of constantly keeping them alive. The reason why I would like to keep the thralls alive for as long as possible is that the longer they are alive, the longer they will draw aggro off of the players and thus allow the players to survive better. That on it's own is far more beneficial than the current mini geysers that the thralls spawn when they die, since the damage of the geysers is next to nothing and the area is so small that over the course of 15 minutes they only hit something maybe 5 times total at best, maybe more if you somehow manage to get all of them into a choke point like a doorway which is highly unlikely.

 

I could potentially accept making some sort of augment to fulfill that kind of niche.  But I wouldn't want his main gameplay loop to be "create a handful of unkillable enemies" and that be it.  Maaaaaaybe if enemy AI were better.  But at this point creation of minions at this point in time outside of Nidus's case is just knock off cc.  And it's not very intuitive or fleshed out to really be focused on as a gameplay element at this point in time (imo.)