Hildryn Rework (Theme / Skills / Balance / Teamplay)

[Damaein]

*PLEASE ACTUALLY LOOK AT THIS RE-BALANCE BEFORE COMMENTING*

If you are assuming I don't know how Hildryn works, what she can do, how strong she can be, etc. please don't.

Hildryn is underplayed (perhaps due to accessibility), her design often doesn't coalesce, and her theme feels weak at best.

This IS NOT just QQ buff me thread. It is a serious attempt at balance and design.

 

*NEW* After Feedback: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1uFq62yHRcL9VvOKmvM518X3B9OKURZmokWcFxUly3LI/edit#gid=2096445414

 

OLD Version: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1EWt4uvrPLlNjfn-59qSMDrX2rIXmsUlfqrugE1kvlig/edit#gid=2075689574

 

In any case, thoughts?

 

Edited January 16, 2020 by Damaein
Removed edgy edit reason

[(XBOX)GearsMatrix301]

She just needs a major buff to her 3 and a doubling of fire rate to her 1 while in her 4. Also an increase to her 4s uncasting speed. Also for her 2 to drain a small portion of enemy health for Shields when they don’t have armor or shields so she can actually do infested missions.

 

[(XBOX)Santonik 15]

Hildryn, she is very good support\tank. 175% range, 150% str whit maximum shield capasity.  

I using secura dual cestra to get free shield ups.  Adaptation and aviator mods making this god,giving huge damage reductions(cap 90%). 

Damage is ok. i using sentinel to hildryn to purpose. Give hildryn full shield when hildryn lose all  shield. Very good synergy.

If you can get arcane barriers. That making hildryn to extreme tanky.

3 skill is very good. Use it to support your team.  It give shields constatly to allies. 

4 skill is enemy stopper. Super good skill too. 

Usually i using 3 and 4 skills same time. Damage is quite high. Dont use exalted weapon when you flying. 

You wanna to use secura dual cestra. Free shield up giving sometimes endless flying time. 

Play for team. Hildryn is very good group fighter. 

 

 

[selig_fay]

Hildryn's current mechanics are fine. Her abilities aren't as strong as the players want them to be, but Hildryn itself is a strong frame thanks to the passive ability. Everything else can be resolved using rework shields. The third ability is the weakest, but at the same time, it is the ability that you can use constantly, if you are well aware of what equipment to use for shields. Pillage - This is a utility ability that works well with slow weapons or weapons with charging mechanics like the Balefire, which is an emergency tool because, really, just use melee or Ogris. Aegis storm is a powerful control and powerful support that you can exercise endlessly over a long distance. And it works very well with your operator, because your operator will have infinite energy, which gives you better protection and damage. The only problem is the restriction on using only Balefire. And I wouldn't give up on augment, which would remove the height limit and make the speed higher. But the ability is already strong enough.

Everything rests on the mechanics of shields, Hildryn herself is already fine.

[NuclearCoffeePot]

Im cool with whatever you want, I don't really care much about Hildryn, she works, thats enough for me. But dear god, don't give her a piraty theme, that just, totally undermines sad boy hydroid, he is literally crying his own puddles, and they are DEEP- Hildryn is a new take on the norse Valkyrie theme, from the root of her name Hildr meaning battle, to the orikin script on her helmet that reads Shield Maden(aka what a valkyrie even is) and all her abilities have some naming or literal thematic relevance to that 1-balefire, a funeral pyre, ring any norse bells 2- Pillage- Ring any norse bells 3- Haven, shares your shields, protects your allies, any shield maiden theme you notice 4- aegis storm- aegis being the breastplate of a sky god, albeit a greek one, aside from that she flies, valkyrie, she still uses all her abilities, and she uses two balefires 

[CopperBezel]

The trouble, zhellon, is that shields are very unlikely to get an overall rework anytime soon, so she ends up scaling against enemy damage a lot worse than other marginally tanky frames.

I do find her awkward faction matchup with Infested right now to be really interesting. Pillage no longer does its main job, and now it's needed to kill toxin procs, which will very quickly drop Hildryn without it, but she's also immune to Parasitic Eximuses, which are just about the most powerful unit the Infested faction has to offer....

[Damaein]

38 minutes ago, NuclearCoffeePot said:

Im cool with whatever you want, I don't really care much about Hildryn, she works, thats enough for me. But dear god, don't give her a piraty theme, that just, totally undermines sad boy hydroid, he is literally crying his own puddles, and they are DEEP- Hildryn is a new take on the norse Valkyrie theme, from the root of her name Hildr meaning battle, to the orikin script on her helmet that reads Shield Maden(aka what a valkyrie even is) and all her abilities have some naming or literal thematic relevance to that 1-balefire, a funeral pyre, ring any norse bells 2- Pillage- Ring any norse bells 3- Haven, shares your shields, protects your allies, any shield maiden theme you notice 4- aegis storm- aegis being the breastplate of a sky god, albeit a greek one, aside from that she flies, valkyrie, she still uses all her abilities, and she uses two balefires 

Thanks for actually reading through it.

Those are some good points on the thematics. I mainly pulled the theme from Haven (Pirate Havens were ports safe for pirates to unload stolen goods etc.) and Pillage which is somewhat self-explanatory. I was also trying to capitalize on the Railjack stuff.

You are right about her current theme being Valkyrie / shield maiden though.

[selig_fay]

1 час назад, CopperBezel сказал:

The trouble, zhellon, is that shields are very unlikely to get an overall rework anytime soon, so she ends up scaling against enemy damage a lot worse than other marginally tanky frames.

I do find her awkward faction matchup with Infested right now to be really interesting. Pillage no longer does its main job, and now it's needed to kill toxin procs, which will very quickly drop Hildryn without it, but she's also immune to Parasitic Eximuses, which are just about the most powerful unit the Infested faction has to offer....

Hildryn doesn't have this problem because we can abuse shieldgate, dragon keys, or Aviator. Plus, arcanes do a lot of work. Hildryn is strong, rework is more needed by other frames so that we can use this 3 ability more effectively.

And about toxins, use antitoxin + adaptation + antitoxin aura. This will give full immunity to the toxin. The only problem is slash, but I don't feel it now, maybe adapted to it.

Edited January 12, 2020 by zhellon

[CopperBezel]

That's fair, and I generally avoid Adaptation and don't have any serious warframe arcanes. About the most abuse I do is that synergy with Guardian.

1 hour ago, Damaein said:

Thanks for actually reading through it.

Sorry if I seemed to be ignoring your writeup there. I did read through it, but it feels like a really harsh nerf to a lot of her strengths. Like, if Pillage restores shields per hit, it's kinda just augmented Crush, and Hildryn is already thicc Mag. I do like the idea of merging Balefire into Aegis Storm and giving her a first ability that isn't just a requisite part of her fourth, but taking away the CC removes the only unique thing it has going for it and just makes it a movement nerf with a mandatory weapon that is, itself, a weak Staticor, and now with no status, Armor mitigating shields in her 3 would have been nice - but not 100 armor (25% damage reduction) and not at the cost of reducing her base to 300 armor and getting ganked by those slash procs. It's kind of a gutting IMO. = /

And I get the reasoning - like, if you gave Hildryn the ability to cast Pillage in Aegis Storm now, she'd be a CC bubble with theoretically unlimited energy and health. You can do that with Khora now, but not while AFK. = o But I think the cuts are deeper than the buffs and I just don't see the playstyle you have in mind coming out of this.

[Damaein]

6 minutes ago, CopperBezel said:

That's fair, and I generally avoid Adaptation and don't have any serious warframe arcanes. About the most abuse I do is that synergy with Guardian.

Sorry if I seemed to be ignoring your writeup there. I did read through it, but it feels like a really harsh nerf to a lot of her strengths. Like, if Pillage restores shields per hit, it's kinda just augmented Crush, and Hildryn is already thicc Mag. I do like the idea of merging Balefire into Aegis Storm and giving her a first ability that isn't just a requisite part of her fourth, but taking away the CC removes the only unique thing it has going for it and just makes it a movement nerf with a mandatory weapon that is, itself, a weak Staticor, and now with no status, Armor mitigating shields in her 3 would have been nice - but not 100 armor (25% damage reduction) and not at the cost of reducing her base to 300 armor and getting ganked by those slash procs. It's kind of a gutting IMO. = /

And I get the reasoning - like, if you gave Hildryn the ability to cast Pillage in Aegis Storm now, she'd be a CC bubble with theoretically unlimited energy and health. You can do that with Khora now, but not while AFK. = o But I think the cuts are deeper than the buffs and I just don't see the playstyle you have in mind coming out of this.

Please allow to explain a few of these points. A lot of my rewrite is nuanced and may not be evident with how I wrote it.

- Pillage per hit(Plunder in rewrite): Pillage stops stealing meaningful amounts pretty quickly and is front loaded in the current Hildryn. This would basically remove its curve where its really good and then useless (maybe some numbers could use adjusting). This version is pretty good almost all the time. It also picks up ammo and mods. Not huge but can save you a companion slot or for when you don't have a companion.

- Balefire: It's augment will allow it to have very strong status builds and Parley spam allows you to auto (even orange) crit if you have an Arcane Aegis Decaying dragon low shield build. Also while airborn (in the writeup) you gain double the aoe size. It ends up being at least as good (likely better) than a staticor in both of these variants by my estimation.

- Aegis Storm Mobility: I somewhat agree here. I debated making sprint speed scale flying speed and friction change your in-air dash. Wasn't sure and didn't want it to feel too power creepy.

- Armor Reduction: I believe 100 armor is a 50% damage reduction (x/(x+100). 300 would be 75% damage reduction. It is quite a bit lower but shield will be twice as strong with augment.

- Slash Procs: Please correct me if I'm wrong here but all Slash procs are considered true damage and ignore armor. Slash base damage would still be applied to the shields directly (which are twice as strong). For toxin, I believe this sentiment would be correct. Though toxin has many workarounds to my knowledge.

Playstyles:

- Plunder (w/ credit farm augment). Increase credits on the go (for people who hate the index)

- Low Shield Decaying Parley spam: 100-200% base critical chance add. Glass cannon build. Eidolon hunter maybe.

- Parley Balefire on the ground: Big crit damage Balefire. Easier to maintain without other skills draining.

- Flying Balefire w/ Augment: Napalm Heat status builds (much better after they changed heat to stack)

- Haven (w/ armor augment): REALLY strong buff to really everyone buff very strong for shield frames. So your making many support frames even better.

This got long. Sorry

 

[waterboytkd]

I like the idea of the projections (especially your idea for 2 and 3). But removing the invuln on her passive? That makes me raise my eyebrows.

But, going back to your ideas for 2 and 3. Being able to have 2 just go off repeatedly without repeated inputs would be a massive QoL buff. I really like that idea.

And I've also been thinking that her 3 needs some kind of self-buff aspect to it. And making it so DoTs that normally bypass her shields now apply to her shields is the way to do it, I think.

I also think your rework of her 4 is pretty clean.

Using your ideas of projections, here's how I might tune up Hildryn:

Passive: leave it as is, but also put in the explanation of projections (it's an alternate cast for each ability; only 1 projection active at a time; changes the duration of the ability to infinite, but adds a channeling cost).

1 Balefire: Hildryn charges her weapons with balefire, adding X% element* damage to her weapons for Y seconds. Projection: the same benefit is also applied to allies within Z range.
*electric/fire/radiation--whichever makes the most thematic sense

2 Pillage: no longer cleanses of status effects, no longer reduces shields by X%. now deals X element damage and permanently reduces armor by Y%. on the return pulse, Hidryn gains shields equal to some multiplier A of damage dealt and B of armor stripped. Projection: the pillage will be automatically recast after the return pulse (maybe this one doesn't use a channeling cost, but instead you just pay the pillage cost on each cast).

3 Haven: damage that normally bypasses shields is now dealt to Hildryn's shields instead, and damage dealt to her shields is reduced by her armor rating (i really like this idea, think hildryn should have access to it without having to use an augment mod). Lasts X seconds. Projection: allies within Y range gain the same benefits, as well as 500 bonus shields and +Z shield recharge rate.

4: Weapon Platform: Hildryn summons her balefire launchers (use current stats/whatever stats are necessary for balance). Projection: hildryn also goes into full flight mode (make this more like Archwing movement, like Titiania gets).

 

[selig_fay]

16 минут назад, waterboytkd сказал:

(make this more like Archwing movement, like Titiania gets).

lol, then there's no point in me playing on Titania. 

Edited January 12, 2020 by zhellon

[Mephane]

18 hours ago, Damaein said:

Hildryn is underplayed

She is gated behind farming Exploiter Orb, of course she is going to be underplayed. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Damaein]

5 hours ago, Mephane said:

She is gated behind farming Exploiter Orb, of course she is going to be underplayed. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Fair enough I suppose. My personal opinion is that if she was great and clean and people really liked her, everyone would figure out a way to get her. You are certainly correct to some degree though.

6 hours ago, waterboytkd said:

I like the idea of the projections (especially your idea for 2 and 3). But removing the invuln on her passive? That makes me raise my eyebrows.

It is certainly a hit to her tankiness. I didn't want this to be a straight "buff me in every way thing" so I took some defense out of that and spread it around. In this version you can immune on demand but it costs something (not attacking + massive shields).

6 hours ago, waterboytkd said:

4: Weapon Platform: Hildryn summons her balefire launchers (use current stats/whatever stats are necessary for balance). Projection: hildryn also goes into full flight mode (make this more like Archwing movement, like Titiania gets).

Yah. I was a little worried about giving her more mobility. I replied to a comment in a similar fashion earlier in the thread.

[CopperBezel]

Yeah, that's the thing, I get what you're going for now, but making her more of a glass cannon and less of a tank in Aegis Storm is (a very good reason to change the name as you have, but) encroaching on Titania's territory already, and archwing movement would make it entirely so. I still think it needs some CC, even a softer CC like a slowly expanding and contracting ring of stun. I still have mixed feelings on Balefire as a weapon.

Oh, and you're right about slash procs ignoring armor, my bad. I have no idea how I forgot the most important thing about slash procs. The magic number for armor is 300 rather than 100, though. I don't know why that's the armor rating system, but it is. So I'd leave her armor as is even with the ability to extend it to her shields since it's only 50% mitigation. Honestly, Haven having damage mitigation and not draining your shields by ineffectually zapping nearby enemies would make it a much better ability.

I'm not convinced on Pillage / Plunder being frontloaded now - the fact that it steals a percentage and returns that number in regen means that it gives back more shields at the higher levels where its armor strip becomes so useful. I do like the idea of stealing a smaller percentage but of total armor, by the way, like how Vauban's Bastille works - slower at the start, but will always completely strip armor by the same number of pulses / casts. It's nice when there are slightly different ways for armor strip to work that are still effective (as opposed to, say, Mag's Polarize and its flat armor strip that just stops working around level 60.)

[Damaein]

I agree the flat steal doesn't scale very well, especially outside of survival / defense. I honestly didn't want to seem like I was just proposing a bunch of power creep. But I may actually change it back to steal the direct amount it pillages.

36 minutes ago, CopperBezel said:

I'm not convinced on Pillage / Plunder being frontloaded now

So, current Pillage works very much like a corrosive proc works. Meaning your stealing X% of current. If I have lets say Growing Power (Aura), Power Drift (Exilus), Umbral Intensity (Normal Mod) that would give 84% Ability Strength. Base Pillage is 25%. The table below should demonstrate the front loading of the current vs my proposed system (if you used the actual stripped amount). You can see by the 3rd proc it would already overwhelm the current way it works and be way more effective in subsequent pulses until armor is completely removed. It would take until Pulse 4 to even out if you had absolutely 0% ability strength.

CUR vs MAX	25%	10%
ABI STRENGTH	84%	84%
TOTAL STEAL	46%	18%
STARTING ARM	10,000	10,000
PULSE STEAL 1	4,600	1,840
PULSE STEAL 2	2,484	1,840
PULSE STEAL 3	1,341	1,840
PULSE STEAL 4	724	1,840
PULSE STEAL 5	391	1,840
PULSE STEAL 6	211	800
PULSE STEAL 7	114	0
PULSE STEAL 8	62	0
PULSE STEAL 9	33	0
PULSE STEAL 10	18	0

Interestingly Vauban's Bastille works very weird. If you mod it to remove say 50% armor over its TOTAL DURATION. You could hit an enemy with like 14 Bastilles without removing all their armor. Each Bastille is considered "1 Proc". So it is % of total removed while they are in one instance. After that instance is removed, the next bastille will use the new current armor amount not the original max amount. But I digress.

[selig_fay]

7 часов назад, CopperBezel сказал:

Yeah, that's the thing, I get what you're going for now, but making her more of a glass cannon and less of a tank in Aegis Storm is (a very good reason to change the name as you have, but) encroaching on Titania's territory already, and archwing movement would make it entirely so

Titania is not a glass cannon. She's a Jack-of-all-trades. Her first and second abilities do not deal with damage at all, unlike real damage dealers, where all abilities somehow contribute to damage. Her third ability has damage, but it feels like it was done for nothing. Her fourth ability provides damage only from exalted weapons, but this ability is not a damage ability, because at the same time it is a CC and mobility ability.

The fact that the most popular build on Titania is glass canon does not make Titania a glass canon. 

I'm sorry, but I'm hurt by this opinion.

[SASoHBoss]

I think hildrin is all around a frame that seems lazily designed, fixed by what are essentially accidents by DE through arcanes and adaptation. Hildrin needs a real rework as much as she needed work put into her. Her 1. It's her helmet, her 2? Mag, her 3? Obberon, and her 4, oh god. Shes actually quite a bit strong, just like inaros afk tanking is strong. Hildrin needs a face lift and a touch up like wukong got.

[selig_fay]

1 час назад, Conquest375 сказал:

think hildrin is all around a frame that seems lazily designed, fixed by what are essentially accidents by DE through arcanes and adaptation. Hildrin needs a real rework as much as she needed work put into her. Her 1. It's her helmet, her 2? Mag, her 3? Obberon, and her 4, oh god. Shes actually quite a bit strong, just like inaros afk tanking is strong. Hildrin needs a face lift and a touch up like wukong got.

Unlike Inaros, Hildryn has all the skills that are useful.

[Damaein]

Made an updated version after thinking through all of the feedback. It is listed in the OP but I'll include it here for convenience.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1uFq62yHRcL9VvOKmvM518X3B9OKURZmokWcFxUly3LI/edit#gid=2096445414

[selig_fay]

Цитата

SHIELD WALL: Hildryn becomes invulnerable to all damage for 3 seconds upon her shields being depleted. This effect can only occur once every 15 seconds.

I don't like it. This is actually a useless nerf. Now this encourages shield management (and Yes, I know about the dragon key build, but it's so stupid that I've never used it. In fact, DE just need the arcane aegis nerf to stop this build from working). What you do is just close the gameplay that is there now, behind the normal timer. It's not fun.

I don't know how experienced you are as a player on Hildryn, but you stripped Hildryn of armor and excellent passive ability by giving an aggression system that redirects all enemy attention to Hildryn and a system that redirects all statuses from allies to shields. You know what I say? You will be dead all the time because of these mechanics. 5K shields are destroyed by level 60 enemies instantly. These are good mechanics, I don't argue, but how the hell do I use them if I can't protect myself?

 

Edited January 15, 2020 by zhellon

[Damaein]

2 hours ago, zhellon said:

I don't like it. This is actually a useless nerf. Now this encourages shield management (and Yes, I know about the dragon key build, but it's so stupid that I've never used it. In fact, DE just need the arcane aegis nerf to stop this build from working). What you do is just close the gameplay that is there now, behind the normal timer. It's not fun.

I agree the dragon key build is stupid. Which is why I nerfed it. It isn't fun. I also agree that some Arcanes are quite a bit power creepy in many circumstances. However, Aegis is in no way overpowered compared to many other arcanes (really only the useless ones). It's actually pretty ok with how it's designed.

2 hours ago, zhellon said:

I don't know how experienced you are as a player on Hildryn, but you stripped Hildryn of armor and excellent passive ability.

I consider myself fairly well versed. This may get a little math heavy to illuminate my position. The following should help.

ARMOR

Hildryn's armor is fairly irrelevant in the current build of the game. She doesn't have energy so she can't go Quick thinking and Armor does NOT effect shields. In any way. One of the only things that bypasses shields (Slash) is also considered TRUE damage and ignores armor to begin with. So Toxin is pretty much the only thing you can actually interact with. To calculate out Toxin damage, we would use the armor formula for mitigation (x/(x+100). This means the original amount of Toxin mitigation is (300/(300+100)) = (300/400) = 75%. The new Toxin mitigation would be (100/(100+100) = (100/200) = 50%. This would mean taking 100% increased toxin damage ***IF*** warframe didn't work the way that it does. We would actually only take around 30% increased damage. 

SEE BELOW FOR ACTUAL TRUE DAMAGE CALCS

1. Impact damage

Shield killer damage. Having the potential to actually apply armor to shields with my augment (not the way it works in game currently) we would be twice as strong against every thing that doesn't outright ignore our shields. Impact's damage wouldn't be effected by the armor regardless due to armor penetration mechanics.

2. Slash

True damage. Nothing can really be done about this. It's true damage. Except under Haven's projection in my build we would reroute the slash damage to shields. As an aside, slash damage never hits really hard. It just seems that way because it ignores armor and shields. So effectively we have a massive tool against slash.

3. Toxin

Ignores Shields. If we ignore Haven's status rerouting, toxin resistance mods, toxin resistance arcanes, armor arcanes, and anything else we can think of, this armor change is outright not a big deal. The first thing we need to understand is that Tenno (the player) has a 50% weakness to Toxin damage. This means whatever armor bonus we get is actually ignored by this amount. With my 100 armor a 100 damage toxin hit would deal 150 damage. My 50% armor bonus is removed entirely by my weakness and then the 50% is multiplied. In hildryn's current build with 300 armor she would take 112.5 damage from the same hit. The 75% reduction is lowered by 50%. So now you have 25% armor so the 100 goes down to 75. Then it is multiplied by the 50% bonus ending in 112.5. 150/112.5 = 1.333 repeating. So 33% extra damage.

 

3 hours ago, zhellon said:

5K shields are destroyed by level 60 enemies instantly. These are good mechanics, I don't argue, but how the hell do I use them if I can't protect myself?

I made a small video of a variety of grineer L60 as I afk. Most people playing Hildryn aren't having a problem with normal enemies. Especially at this level. Also, I would never be standing here and taking damage like this, and I could get a LOT more survivability if I wanted.

 

[CopperBezel]

27 minutes ago, Damaein said:

To calculate out Toxin damage, we would use the armor formula for mitigation (x/(x+100). This means the original amount of Toxin mitigation is (300/(300+100)) = (300/400) = 75%. The new Toxin mitigation would be (100/(100+100) = (100/200) = 50%. This would mean taking 100% increased toxin damage ***IF*** warframe didn't work the way that it does. We would actually only take around 30% increased damage. 

Okay, nothing else you said is wrong, but the magic number is still 300, not 100. See the wiki entry. 300 armor is 50% mitigation, not 75%. You're getting deep into the damage type calculation, so I'm really confused how you can have very correct numbers about the effects of damage type and how that affects the armor calculation, but not this basic first level. = /

[Damaein]

18 minutes ago, CopperBezel said:

Okay, nothing else you said is wrong, but the magic number is still 300, not 100. See the wiki entry. 300 armor is 50% mitigation, not 75%. You're getting deep into the damage type calculation, so I'm really confused how you can have very correct numbers about the effects of damage type and how that affects the armor calculation, but not this basic first level. = /

My Goodness!

I apologize!

You are correct about the 300. For whatever reason, since I came back to warframe recently, I conflated armor damage reduction in League of Legends which is x / (x + 100) and not warframes' which is x / (x + 300). You are correct. In warframe, it should be 300. I really shouldn't play League.....bad for the brain apparently. Thank you for that.

In correction of the Above Toxin Damage calculations

With 100 Armor: You would take 150 damage

With 300 Armor: You would take 150 damage. (no difference)

It actually makes the nerf from 300 to 100 damage even less of a big deal. But it would hurt the armor augment on Haven.

Edited January 16, 2020 by Damaein

[CopperBezel]

Ah, gotcha, makes sense. Thanks!