Revenant suggestions

[(XBOX)KayAitch]

I've recently been playing a lot of Revenant (lots of explosives Kuva weapons to level and he's the only frame that can use them) and it's very clear that his kit just doesn't quite work.

His 2 is amazing tanking, but it's also the only ability I regularly use.

His 4 is fine. It clears mobs, feels underpowered by higher levels, but then...

His 3 is scaling damage that can kill insane levelled enemies in 3 swipes, but it's also a massive PitA to use. Being able to kill a level 2000 heavy gunner is good, but doesn't come up that often, and taking the same steps (2, 1 on stun, 3 x3 times) to kill level 100 enemies, or even level 50 enemies? It just doesn't get used.

Also, most players don't seem to realise his 3 does damage, I think because the enemies are level with you when they take it, and only Thralls are effected.

Finally, his 1 is great CC and damage-prep. So many people on here complain that you can't build a thrall army, which it doesn't (and shouldn't) do, but even as a damage prepper and CC it has some issues:

- Only 7 thralls can be made, which means the ability may not be available when you need it.

- On traversal maps (especially Jupiter Capture) this tends to mean your 7 thralls are 3 tilesets back and now you just have to wait for them to expire.

- The drops from thralls kind of suck, which means you can feel cheated when a teammate kills them.

- His 3 doesn't do anything to enemies who haven't been thralled.

Sometimes, Revenant feels godlike - you have your Mesmer skin up, scaled enemy shoots you (which would be a 1-shot) and gets stunned, you Enthrall them and they convert a whole group near them, and you Reave through to annihilate them all and get your Mesmer back up.

However, mostly, one of those steps goes wrong, you don't have thralls left, or they don't convert the enemies next to them, or you miss with Reave (as it's a pain to steer), and on anything below about 120 this feels like a lot of steps.

Instead you just pick up a Kuva Bramma, slap on Mesmer Skin, and that's it.

So, on to the rework.

- Leave 2 (Mesmer Skin) and 4 (Danse Macabre) as is.

- Allow up to 10 thralls at once

- Thralls should follow you about, and teleport to your location if you move too far, similar to Wukong's clone.

- If you have max thralls and you try to use Enthrall your oldest living thrall should be released (rather than it not working).

- When you kill thralls they should drop a Mesmer Skin charge anyone can pick up. Other players are capped at picking up 3 charges.

- A new Pilfered Thralls augment replaces this with an 80% second loot drop (it needs to be higher than Khora/Hydroid due to the extra steps and giving up Mesmer drops).

- Reave should be slower, much wider and easier to steer, it's not a mobility ability, it's a damaging one.

- Better visual/audio feedback should show players the damage done by Reave, with damage numbers appearing in front and crunchy damage sounds as you pass through each enemy. Maybe enemies killed by Reave could be carried along the front of the wave, so you end up with a load of ragdolled corpses.

- Reave should do it's current ⅓ total health damage, but to Mesmer stunned targets

- Reave should do ½ total health damage to enthralled targets.

- Reave should some fixed damage amount (affected by power strength) to all targets - this shouldn't be particularly effective against any much tougher than lvl 20 mobs, it's really there to make Reave feel like it's about damage rather than mobility.

The purpose of this is to make it much clearer to players how Revenant works, and make his kit flow much better. He has amazing synergies, they just need flow better.

[(XBOX)GearsMatrix301]

If you have enough strength for Reave to one shot you should have enough strength for Danse Macabre to scale to higher levels. It would scale even higher but Mesmer Skin gets in the way of that.

other than that your suggestions don’t really fix Revenant. As the issue isn’t the synergy mechanics, but instead the abilities they’re tied to (seriously he makes one shotting enemies impractical. It takes effort to make something that should be OP completely useless). The only way to actually improve Revenant is by completely reworking his 1-3 into different abilities.

[(XBOX)KayAitch]

32 minutes ago, (XB1)GearsMatrix301 said:

If you have enough strength for Reave to one shot

Reave scales with the enemies' health, not your power, and ignores armour. Maxed out Danse Macabre does about 8000 damage (affected by armour), which is a lot, but that won't scratch endless enemies that Reave can still kill.

41 minutes ago, (XB1)GearsMatrix301 said:

seriously he makes one shotting enemies impractical. It takes effort to make something that should be OP completely useless

I don't think he should be about one-shotting enemies. He's CC+scaling damage.

His 4 is is most meh ability - it works, but past the light show is fairly boring to actually use. It's OK, doesn't need reworking, but isn't the defining ability I'd keep if I could only save 1.

That would be his 2, which is one of the best tank abilities in the game and the only one that can consistently stand up to Warframe's horribly broken self-damage mechanics.

46 minutes ago, (XB1)GearsMatrix301 said:

The only way to actually improve Revenant is by completely reworking his 1-3 into different abilities

And at this point you're talking about a different frame, not a rework.

[(XBOX)GearsMatrix301]

4 hours ago, (XB1)KayAitch said:

Reave scales with the enemies' health, not your power, and ignores armour. Maxed out Danse Macabre does about 8000 damage (affected by armour), which is a lot, but that won't scratch endless enemies that Reave can still kill.

I don't think he should be about one-shotting enemies. He's CC+scaling damage.

His 4 is is most meh ability - it works, but past the light show is fairly boring to actually use. It's OK, doesn't need reworking, but isn't the defining ability I'd keep if I could only save 1.

That would be his 2, which is one of the best tank abilities in the game and the only one that can consistently stand up to Warframe's horribly broken self-damage mechanics.

And at this point you're talking about a different frame, not a rework.

No, Reaves % health drain scales with power strength. 200% power strength = 100% health drain.

It’s honestly debatable about what Revenant is even supposed to do as a role as he’s subpar in all of them except for Danse Macabre which remains a consistent source of AOE damage up into the early 100s.
 

Memser Skin is actually one of the worst tank abilities. You’re never going to regularly reach levels that require 100% DR to survive. So passing up all the duration based and resource based tank abilities for Mesmer is asinine. Because it’s charges mechanic sucks.

Yeah, turning Revenant into a completely different frame is kind of the idea. Because his first 3 abilities aren’t Eidolon themed abilities, they’re vampire themed abilities with Eidolon colors plastered over them. And they’re also the abilities holding him back.

[(XBOX)KayAitch]

1 hour ago, (XB1)GearsMatrix301 said:

No, Reaves % health drain scales with power strength. 200% power strength = 100% health drain.

It doesn't, my build is 240something power and I'm on about 85% health damage.

My point is that is 85% total health, whether the enemy has 100EHP or 1000000EHP.

1 hour ago, (XB1)GearsMatrix301 said:

It’s honestly debatable about what Revenant is even supposed to do as a role as he’s subpar in all of them except for Danse Macabre which remains a consistent source of AOE damage up into the early 100s

See Danse Macabre will reliably kill mobs near you, but it won't kill Noxes or Liches or enemies too far away. It's a good ultimate, but it's basically a burst of local AoE.

And it does fall off past 80ish, and by 100 it will still work, but the kind of weapons you're taking in at that level will work quicker.

Reave does a lot more damage, but it's harder to apply. Danse Macabre is so easy to apply it's kind of boring to use, but doesn't scale.

1 hour ago, (XB1)GearsMatrix301 said:

Memser Skin is actually one of the worst tank abilities. You’re never going to regularly reach levels that require 100% DR to survive. So passing up all the duration based and resource based tank abilities for Mesmer is asinine. Because it’s charges mechanic sucks.

Only, Revenant can survive dumb jump-in-front teammates while welding the Kuva Bramma, or Ogris, or Tonkor, all of which are instant death to Iron Skin Rhino, or Inaros, and Wukong might come back but that's one of his 3 strikes while Revenant can renew his.

And it's not just 100% DR, it stuns the enemy. This makes Revenant a tank with built in CC, as to attack him is to get stunned.

For instance, I've found Revenant to consistently be the best Crewship buster, because even though the enemies do crazy damage he can get straight to hacking the reactor.

1 hour ago, (XB1)GearsMatrix301 said:

Yeah, turning Revenant into a completely different frame is kind of the idea. Because his first 3 abilities aren’t Eidolon themed abilities, they’re vampire themed abilities with Eidolon colors plastered over them. And they’re also the abilities holding him back.

I dunno, invulnerability seems very Eidolon, and the Vampire thing was said on a Devstream but never seems to have been very him (it does seem Garuda, so maybe they got mixed up?)

In any case, happy to disagree. I want a rework, you want him replaced, there's plenty more frames for both of us to be getting on with.

[(XBOX)GearsMatrix301]

1 hour ago, (XB1)KayAitch said:

It doesn't, my build is 240something power and I'm on about 85% health damage.

My point is that is 85% total health, whether the enemy has 100EHP or 1000000EHP.

See Danse Macabre will reliably kill mobs near you, but it won't kill Noxes or Liches or enemies too far away. It's a good ultimate, but it's basically a burst of local AoE.

And it does fall off past 80ish, and by 100 it will still work, but the kind of weapons you're taking in at that level will work quicker.

Reave does a lot more damage, but it's harder to apply. Danse Macabre is so easy to apply it's kind of boring to use, but doesn't scale.

Only, Revenant can survive dumb jump-in-front teammates while welding the Kuva Bramma, or Ogris, or Tonkor, all of which are instant death to Iron Skin Rhino, or Inaros, and Wukong might come back but that's one of his 3 strikes while Revenant can renew his.

And it's not just 100% DR, it stuns the enemy. This makes Revenant a tank with built in CC, as to attack him is to get stunned.

For instance, I've found Revenant to consistently be the best Crewship buster, because even though the enemies do crazy damage he can get straight to hacking the reactor.

I dunno, invulnerability seems very Eidolon, and the Vampire thing was said on a Devstream but never seems to have been very him (it does seem Garuda, so maybe they got mixed up?)

In any case, happy to disagree. I want a rework, you want him replaced, there's plenty more frames for both of us to be getting on with.

That doesn’t sound right. Something must be wrong with your build. Probably using power donation or something. Tho if DE did stealth nerf the Reave/Enthrall synergy that would be nice.

No power can reliably kill a Nox or a Lich. I don’t know why that’s suddenly a point against the ability that it can’t kill enemies specifically designed to not be easily dispatched by abilities. It’s like complaining about a power because nullifiers can deactivate it. That’s literally every abilities problem. Also, Danse has pretty decent range, nothing on Mesas level but still far larger than Reaves puny size. Also, you can press the fire button to boosts its damage.

 And that’s the problem with Reave, it takes forever to set up and can only be used on 7 specially marked enemies. It’s literally more efficient to just spray and pray Acceltra to get kills.

If you’re struggling with self damage weapons I recommend you learn to use them properly instead of spamming them mindlessly like their soma prime. And Revenant honestly isn’t worth using if the only beneficial thing he’s going to provide to you is something that can be eliminated through learning how to play the game.

Oh wow a stun, that’s so useful, oh wait it’s not because Revenant requires enemies to constantly shoot him to make use of Danse Macabres scaling mechanic. So disabling enemies is the last thing he would want.

Grendel makes Revenant irrelevant.

I’m getting tired of explaining this to people.

Enthrall: Eidolons do not Mind Control you or anybody. That is an ability that vampires have, so having an “Eidolon frame” have the ability to enthrall enemies makes zero sense.

Mesmer Skin: no sentient unit has a charges based defense ability. Their either have damage adaptation or in the Eidolons case a shield that’s only vulnerable to void damage. And mesmer puts enemies to sleep. No sentient does that. Do you know what does do that? Vampires.

Reave: it was a wall of mist before they changed it to a Vomby dash. But it still drains enemy heath, much like a vampire drains blood.

The reason Revenant was called a vampire in the devstream is because that’s what he was decided to be because for some god forsaken reason somebody let Rebecca lead his ability design, and nobody told her that the “Eidolon frame” needs to actually be an Eidolon themed Warframe and that making it a vampire is one of the stupidest and worst wastes of a frame possible.

Garuda is a Blood mage not a vampire.

DE can make Revenant properly Eidolon themed and then make a completely separate vampire frame that Revenants garbage abilities can go be a part of.

[(XBOX)KayAitch]

13 hours ago, (XB1)GearsMatrix301 said:

That doesn’t sound right. Something must be wrong with your build. Probably using power donation or something. Tho if DE did stealth nerf the Reave/Enthrall synergy that would be nice

I did some testing with an empty build: Reave reaches 100% at 250% power strength.

I think they tweaked his abilities a bit, as most build guides talk about max power strength for Mesmer Skin, but that's only affected by duration.

13 hours ago, (XB1)GearsMatrix301 said:

And that’s the problem with Reave, it takes forever to set up and can only be used on 7 specially marked enemies. It’s literally more efficient to just spray and pray Acceltra to get kills

Yes, that's exactly my point. Reave scales into crazy endurance, so it's only worth those steps at those levels. 

It's great having an ability that scales hours into survival, but it's too clunky to use the rest of the time.

13 hours ago, (XB1)GearsMatrix301 said:

Garuda is a Blood mage not a vampire.

I don't think either of those things is consistently defined enough to be a distinction worth arguing about.

13 hours ago, (XB1)GearsMatrix301 said:

DE can make Revenant properly Eidolon themed and then make a completely separate vampire frame that Revenants garbage abilities can go be a part of.

So you want a new frame with abilities you've decided are worthless? I'd rather have a new frame with cool new abilities.

I don't think the idea of viral CC, or tank abilities that don't just add loads of health/armour, or even a mobility ability that steals health is fundamentally bad.

But OK, what would Eidolon themed mean exactly? For instance:

13 hours ago, (XB1)GearsMatrix301 said:

Their either have damage adaptation or in the Eidolons case a shield that’s only vulnerable to void damage.

That was because Eidolons were designed as post War Within bosses and they needed a use for the new void damage type.

Every frame can use the Adaptation mod, if they have enough EHP to survive long enough for it to kick in.

However, a shield for a frame that was only vulnerable to void damage would be impenetrable, as no enemies do void damage.

Outside of their operator boss fight mechanics there isn't much to Eidolons that you could actually use. I guess you could summon vomvalysts, but they suck as fighting other enemies (they can't even kill the fairly low level grineer wandering the plains). He already has a light show AoE as his 4, what would his other abilities be?

[(XBOX)GearsMatrix301]

15 minutes ago, (XB1)KayAitch said:

I did some testing with an empty build: Reave reaches 100% at 250% power strength.

I think they tweaked his abilities a bit, as most build guides talk about max power strength for Mesmer Skin, but that's only affected by duration.

Yes, that's exactly my point. Reave scales into crazy endurance, so it's only worth those steps at those levels. 

It's great having an ability that scales hours into survival, but it's too clunky to use the rest of the time.

I don't think either of those things is consistently defined enough to be a distinction worth arguing about.

So you want a new frame with abilities you've decided are worthless? I'd rather have a new frame with cool new abilities.

I don't think the idea of viral CC, or tank abilities that don't just add loads of health/armour, or even a mobility ability that steals health is fundamentally bad.

But OK, what would Eidolon themed mean exactly? For instance:

That was because Eidolons were designed as post War Within bosses and they needed a use for the new void damage type.

Every frame can use the Adaptation mod, if they have enough EHP to survive long enough for it to kick in.

However, a shield for a frame that was only vulnerable to void damage would be impenetrable, as no enemies do void damage.

Outside of their operator boss fight mechanics there isn't much to Eidolons that you could actually use. I guess you could summon vomvalysts, but they suck as fighting other enemies (they can't even kill the fairly low level grineer wandering the plains). He already has a light show AoE as his 4, what would his other abilities be?

Hm, weird.

Is it really that useful to have an ability that you have to wait for the rest of your squadmates to stop being able to deal damage for it to be useful. You’re literally just waiting hours for Reave to serve it’s purpose. And I don’t feel like a player should have to wait in a mission for 5 hours for their frames abilities to become effective.

DE called Garuda a Blood Mage on stream.

Yes, because I can then completely ignore that frame while having fun being a mini Eidolon.

Enthrall isn’t that good of a CC ability. Imagine if teammates could shoot and kill Vaubans bastille grenade. People would be far less interested in using him. The problem is Mesmer is the fact that it doesn’t do that, instead you get 15 charges that just tell you “We drop at the same rate to a lancer as we would a bombard” while frames like Nidus and Inaros can literally stand in a group of lancers (and even bombards), never cast an ability, and never die. Because different enemies have different damage rates so those Heath/armor tank abilities drop at rates appropriate to that enemy. Reave is far too slow to cast to ever be considered a good mobility ability, and it’s health drain is pretty redundant if Mesmer skin is supposed to be his primary defense ability and it doesn’t require health.

He should summon Vombys, but their focus doesn’t have to be killing. They can provide synergies and utility, like commanding one to revive a downed team mate like how they get absorbed into the Teralyst to revive it. And Mesmer skin can be replaced with the Eidolons shield but give it something like adaptation because yeah having a tank ability immune to everything but the one damage type enemies don’t deal would be OP. His 3rd ability can become some other ability the Sentients have. I won’t be super picky an be like “No, he must on be based on the 3 Eidolons” he just shouldn’t have this stupid vampire theme.

[(XBOX)Knight Raime]

17 hours ago, (XB1)GearsMatrix301 said:

If you’re struggling with self damage weapons I recommend you learn to use them properly instead of spamming them mindlessly like their soma prime. And Revenant honestly isn’t worth using if the only beneficial thing he’s going to provide to you is something that can be eliminated through learning how to play the game.

Your responses to any Revenant thread are borderline trolling behavior.  But I have to call this out specifically.  It doesn't at all counter the point OP made about Skin's ability to tank.  Nor does it even refute the fact that this is something Revenant is capable of doing that no other tank based frame could even do (sans maybe Hyldrin passive abuse.)  A far better approach would have been to explain the value in other tanking methods.  And then compare and contrast from there.  And honestly The Bruma would absolutely compete with the best weapon when it comes to be efficient at killing if it didn't do self damage.  So running Revenant specifically for that is actually a viable and worth while thing to do.

What's more hilarious here is you some how asserting that "playing the game" somehow completely removes the threat of random enemy AI behavior, map designs, Random player behavior, and the accuracy stat in regards to map hitboxes.  Like I said, you're basically trolling.  But this is probably your worst yet.

[(XBOX)Knight Raime]

Anyway, in regards to OP:

I've always considered Revenant's 2 biggest issues to be his thralls and his Reave.  You pretty much nailed most of the issues for thralls, Hard to have them keep up with you, hard to keep them around for usefulness on death, their questionable use on death.  etc.  You missed one imo though.  The fact that he can't create thralls in group form.  This means that even if there was strong value from their death you don't consistently get it because other players will often kill enemies before you get to thrall them.

For Reave I just find it to be a poor ability in general.  It feels like it's a mix of survival via movement and health draining to heal.  But also a damage ability (though this can be debated since you need over 200% power strength to one shot any enemy.)  If any ability in his kit should be replaced I think it should be this one.  If we made it more of a survival tool it becomes even more redundant due to mesmer skin's existence.  If we made it more of a damage tool it would step on the toes of his Danse.  Truth be told even if we made it more of an improved version of what it currently is I still likely wouldn't use it.  I like Revenant because of the things I can do without setting up.  Making thralls and then pillars existing are nice passive benefits.  Mesmer skin is a set it and forget it.  And his Danse is nice to pop on occasion.  It just doesn't fit the loop that I think his kit is trying to have.

Suggested changes:

• Mesmer skin casts faster
• Allow hold to cast to create a group of thralls
• Casting Enthrall on a mesmer skin stunned enemy creates thralls of enemies next to said stunned target
• Thrall cap increased from 7 to 12
• Thralls can't be effected by Radiation procs
• Pillar DoT changed from puncture to radiation
• Pillar width increased from 2m to 5m can be effected by range stat
• Targets Enthralled by pillars will leave pillars on death
• Pillars when detonated by Danse do radiation proc in AoE of pillar
• Thralls killed by Danse emit a radial wave of overshields at both Revenant's location and thrall's location. Effect increased via power strength. Each thrall killed gives a charge of Mesmer skin back to Revenant.

I wouldn't know what to replace Reave with to be honest.  Maybe some sort of team buff for him and allies.  I find the synergy for giving allies skin charges isn't really beneficial.  As it only removes one instance of damage.

Edited February 23, 2020 by (XB1)Knight Raime

[(XBOX)KayAitch]

3 hours ago, (XB1)Knight Raime said:

You pretty much nailed most of the issues for thralls, Hard to have them keep up with you, hard to keep them around for usefulness on death, their questionable use on death.  etc.

Cheers 🙂

3 hours ago, (XB1)Knight Raime said:

You missed one imo though.  The fact that he can't create thralls in group form

Yeah, the thralls viral propagation is an issue - your teammates can kill them putting you in that same weird place as Harrow where you're sort of support but stronger playing solo.

Thing is: viral propagation really works elsewhere - for instance Saryn's spores, which got me thinking...

What if a thrall being killed has a chance to enthrall nearby enemies? Increased if killed by either Reave or Danse Macabre? Maybe 60% by a teammate, 80% by your guns, 100% if from your abilities?

3 hours ago, (XB1)Knight Raime said:

I wouldn't know what to replace Reave with to be honest

I like the idea, it's just really clunky because they need to be enthralled first, and getting a clump of enthralled enemies like that is messy.

Yeah, making it more damaging and easier to use overlaps with Danse Macabre, but I think that's ok - one is very directional and scaling, the other is AoE but struggles to crack tougher targets.

3 hours ago, (XB1)Knight Raime said:

  Maybe some sort of team buff for him and allies

Yeah, that's why I think killed thralls need to drop mesmer charges for your team. Make their death worthwhile for your kit.

3 hours ago, (XB1)Knight Raime said:

I find the synergy for giving allies skin charges isn't really beneficial

I disagree here, just look at how many players use Nehza or Gara or even Wisp - a defence ability you can give to squishier teammates is really useful.

I help out quite a lot of folks, I quite like the idea of taking Revenant along to help them level their Tokor or Ogris or Bramma.

3 hours ago, (XB1)Knight Raime said:

Allow hold to cast to create a group of thralls

I'm in two minds about this because I feel it's kind of either/or: either you have viral Saryn's Spores propagation or you have AoE propagation - both feels a little overpowered.

I'd rather make the propagation still work on death (like spores), but I totally wouldn't have thought of that if you hadn't suggested this 🙂

[Madway7]

4 hours ago, (XB1)Knight Raime said:

Suggested changes:

• Mesmer skin cast speed decreased
• Allow hold to cast to create a group of thralls
• Casting Enthrall on a mesmer skin stunned enemy creates thralls of enemies next to said stunned target
• Thrall cap increased from 7 to 12
• Thralls can't be effected by Radiation procs
• Pillar DoT changed from puncture to radiation
• Pillar width increased from 2m to 5m can be effected by range stat
• Targets Enthralled by pillars will leave pillars on death
• Pillars when detonated by Danse do radiation proc in AoE of pillar
• Thralls killed by Danse emit a radial wave of overshields at both Revenant's location and thrall's location. Effect increased via power strength. Each thrall killed gives a charge of Mesmer skin back to Revenant.

Those sound pretty good

 

I would like to add a couple more to your suggestions:

• Passive changed to increased power strength based on shield capacity, overshields increase the value further (the bonus is not based on shield number value, but rather the amount of shields going based on a % of the max values)
• Pillar DoT scales with enemy level (not to an insane degree, but just enough to maintain a consistent killtime)
• Dance Macabre status chance is now affected by strength mods
• Only the boosted Dance Macabre can detonate pillars
• Dance Macabre damage absorption decay reduced significantly (right now its about 3 seconds I think)
• Enemies killed by Dance Macabre or the pillar detonation have a 10% chance to drop an energy orb

 

 

5 hours ago, (XB1)Knight Raime said:

I wouldn't know what to replace Reave with to be honest.  Maybe some sort of team buff for him and allies.  I find the synergy for giving allies skin charges isn't really beneficial.  As it only removes one instance of damage.

I think just making Reave the overshield ability would be best. So I'd replace the last suggestion you had with that.

 

[(XBOX)KayAitch]

46 minutes ago, Madway7 said:

Only the boosted Dance Macabre can detonate pillars

This is a great idea! Give the player control over whether to burst those pillars, especially in defence where keeping them is more useful than killing the current nearby wave.

[DeMonkey]

16 hours ago, (XB1)Knight Raime said:

Mesmer skin cast speed decreased

Do you mean to nerf it? Or did you mean increased? 

[(XBOX)KayAitch]

2 hours ago, DeMonkey said:

Do you mean to nerf it? Or did you mean increased? 

Decreased, as is taking less time than it does now so that you don't need Natural Talent or Rolling Guard on every build.

[DeMonkey]

1 minute ago, (XB1)KayAitch said:

Decreased, as is taking less time than it does now so that you don't need Natural Talent or Rolling Guard on every build.

Then that's the cast time to be decreased. Decreasing the cast speed would increase the time taken to cast. Hence my request for clarification.

[(XBOX)Knight Raime]

18 hours ago, (XB1)KayAitch said:

Cheers 🙂

Yeah, the thralls viral propagation is an issue - your teammates can kill them putting you in that same weird place as Harrow where you're sort of support but stronger playing solo.

Thing is: viral propagation really works elsewhere - for instance Saryn's spores, which got me thinking...

What if a thrall being killed has a chance to enthrall nearby enemies? Increased if killed by either Reave or Danse Macabre? Maybe 60% by a teammate, 80% by your guns, 100% if from your abilities?

Well I'm not particularly fond of the "spread" idea.  Part of the reason I enjoy Revenant's thrall ability is specifically because I get to choose which targets are no longer a problem for me to worry about.  The spread idea works with Saryn's spores because she's not capped on how many enemies it effects.  Nor do you really care about HvT hunting.  With Revenant it's kind of the opposite.  The reason I upped his thrall count even is so I can potentially avoid the instances when my pillars prevent me from thralling something I wish to thrall because i've hit the cap.

18 hours ago, (XB1)KayAitch said:

I like the idea, it's just really clunky because they need to be enthralled first, and getting a clump of enthralled enemies like that is messy.

Yeah, making it more damaging and easier to use overlaps with Danse Macabre, but I think that's ok - one is very directional and scaling, the other is AoE but struggles to crack tougher targets.

Even with your proposed suggestions cutting down on the setup time and making it feel better to control I feel like it still falls outside his kit's loop.  To be fair so would my team buff.  I'm not inherently against keeping Reave and buffing it.  I would just prefer if there was something else.

18 hours ago, (XB1)KayAitch said:

Yeah, that's why I think killed thralls need to drop mesmer charges for your team. Make their death worthwhile for your kit.

I disagree here, just look at how many players use Nehza or Gara or even Wisp - a defence ability you can give to squishier teammates is really useful.

I help out quite a lot of folks, I quite like the idea of taking Revenant along to help them level their Tokor or Ogris or Bramma.

All three of those ally buffs linger on the effected teammate.  The only "buff" we have similar to Mesmer skin charges is Baruuk's daggers.  And the only reason he can get away with a one time instance thing is because his perma disarms the enemy.  Versus skin charge for an ally with a minor stun.  Sure, having allies carry more skin charges might allievate this some.  But i'd still never think it to be a good ally benefit.  There's really only two ways I could see skin charges being helpful for allies.  (1) the skin charge given to allies AoE stuns and we globally increase the stun time on charges.  Or (2) Skin charges shurk off lethal damage for allies once.  They'd obviously need to only be able to carry one charge to balance this.  Personally I just think we should find some other team benefit that's not reliant on giving charges to allies.

18 hours ago, (XB1)KayAitch said:

I'm in two minds about this because I feel it's kind of either/or: either you have viral Saryn's Spores propagation or you have AoE propagation - both feels a little overpowered.

I'd rather make the propagation still work on death (like spores), but I totally wouldn't have thought of that if you hadn't suggested this 🙂

I would prefer AoE creation of my own will than primarily making thralls through spreading.

17 hours ago, Madway7 said:

Those sound pretty good

 

I would like to add a couple more to your suggestions:

• Passive changed to increased power strength based on shield capacity, overshields increase the value further (the bonus is not based on shield number value, but rather the amount of shields going based on a % of the max values)
• Pillar DoT scales with enemy level (not to an insane degree, but just enough to maintain a consistent killtime)
• Dance Macabre status chance is now affected by strength mods
• Only the boosted Dance Macabre can detonate pillars
• Dance Macabre damage absorption decay reduced significantly (right now its about 3 seconds I think)
• Enemies killed by Dance Macabre or the pillar detonation have a 10% chance to drop an energy orb

 

 

I think just making Reave the overshield ability would be best. So I'd replace the last suggestion you had with that.

 

I didn't specifically touch on the passive because In most cases passives do not have an integral part for moment to moment gameplay.  But i'm neither for or against that suggestion.  You'd need the pillars to ignore armor in some fashion for that to work.  As with Vauban's orbital strike level scale isn't enough to overcome current armor.  I really like the idea of the boosted Danse being the only one to detonate pillars.  Gives a lot more control over how you setup your maze of pillars.  An interesting proposal for making Reave my last effect.  I'll think on that for sure.

6 hours ago, DeMonkey said:

Do you mean to nerf it? Or did you mean increased? 

I wanted Mesmer skin to take less time to cast than current.  I originally had it say "increased" instead of decreased.  Then I remembered a prior situation when I wanted the opposite situation to mean a buff.  So I default smooth brain changed the wording in this instance.  I swear I know how to English.

[p_silveira]

On 2020-02-21 at 10:33 AM, (XB1)KayAitch said:

- If you have max thralls and you try to use Enthrall your oldest living thrall should be released (rather than it not working).

 

For the love of Satan, YES!!
It's frustrating when you want to enthrall enemies, but can't because you have achieved maximum Thralls because you enthralled some random enemy 5 tiles back, he started converting everyone, and now they are all there, occupying your "thrall slots". This tends to happen a lot in Capture / Rescue / Mobile Defense missions. Only way to avoid it is no not use your 1 on enemies on these types of missions, or to kill them all before going further into the tileset. How fun, I can NOT use an ability or I have to kill random enemies that I otherwise would totally ignore just so that I can use the ability again 3 tiles ahead.
Since I run with a lot of duration (to decrease Danse Macabre's energy cost/second) I end up with 70-80s Enthrall duration, so those old Thralls 5 tiles back take a really long time to deactivate and reset the ability.

Not to count the fact that Enthrall has zero crowd control if you are running in any mode outside solo. All it takes is an Atterax-spinning or a happy trigger AoE player to wipe out any kind of crowd control you try to build over an area, since Thralls die to basically any kind of damage from other players. This tend to happen a lot on Interception, for example. Revenant creates some Thralls around his antenna, they could help keep the enemies busy and outside his perimeter / terminal, but he can't because every 15 seconds someone comes around guns blazing and wiping them out, making new enemies spawn in the proccess.

[rawr1254]

In terms of Revenant as a whole he does need work on most of his abilities like Gears said. 

His 1 is only useful in a solo aspect and even then it's an oh wait dont kill that one situation even if soloing. It needs to be given a reason to exist/be used in the first place. So maybe for one the pillars they drop shouldnt be able to be destroyed by Danse Macabre. I know this gives him overshields or anyone else that happens to pick it up but it makes the ability feel like a waste in the end. I think the pillars should remain for a duration with the range of them not being affected by mods maybe 15m range for the shot 5m damage pool. Those ranges since pathing for enemies isnt always great. 

His 2 is really, REALLY bad with huge amounts of enemies. Even with high str they can disappear in a mere second and then you're dead. The only spot I found his ability extremely helpful is on Railjack where you run into maybe 10-15 enemies at a time. This needs to work with most likely his first ability. Where it's something like every 5-10 enemies hit with entralled enemies will gain 1 charge and through this method you can go 5 charges over your cast amount(similar to overshields but instead the over capped charges will stun in an AoE instead of a single enemy) So if you are granted 10 stacks if on cast through the synergy of the two abilities you can exceed the cast amount. 

His 3 tbh Ive only ever used for movement. Using it to kill or anything else hasnt really appealed to me(considering how that 100% health drain is ONLY for entralled enemies not regular). But now if instead of stealing huge amounts of health from entralled enemies it made a pulse for the thrall spread then that would be nice since sometimes Id cast entrall and itd take about a minute to reach the cap from that one entralled enemy(cause AI). Or maybe after casting it the "fog" would linger behind you for a certain duration either at reduced health drain or reducing enemy accuracy through the fog. Those ideas are honestly not great but it's all I could think of without completely changing the ability as a whole. 

And his 4 I feel is fine, any QOL/tweaks would be nice but it isnt an utterly terrible ability.

[(XBOX)KayAitch]

4 hours ago, p_silveira said:

It's frustrating when you want to enthrall enemies, but can't because you have achieved maximum Thralls because you enthralled some random enemy 5 tiles back

Yes. He feels broken in Capture and the like.

4 hours ago, p_silveira said:

All it takes is an Atterax-spinning or a happy trigger AoE player to wipe out any kind of crowd control you try to build over an area, since Thralls die to basically any kind of damage from other players. This tend to happen a lot on Interception, for example

Yeah, you want them dead, but you also want them to spread. I think thralls should spread on death, or maybe their pillars should create new thralls (instead of damage).

1 hour ago, rawr1254 said:

His 2 is really, REALLY bad with huge amounts of enemies. Even with high str they can disappear in a mere second and then you're dead

Yeah, you need his 1 at this point, then 3 through to get the charges back. When it all works it's great, but too many things can go wrong.

If thralls were easier (and didn't stall because of old ones lost across the map) and reave easier to steer, it would be easier to recover miasma while also having enough chaos-CC to not burn through charges.

[nslay]

3 hours ago, rawr1254 said:

His 2 is really, REALLY bad with huge amounts of enemies. Even with high str they can disappear in a mere second and then you're dead. The only spot I found his ability extremely helpful is on Railjack where you run into maybe 10-15 enemies at a time. This needs to work with most likely his first ability. Where it's something like every 5-10 enemies hit with entralled enemies will gain 1 charge and through this method you can go 5 charges over your cast amount(similar to overshields but instead the over capped charges will stun in an AoE instead of a single enemy) So if you are granted 10 stacks if on cast through the synergy of the two abilities you can exceed the cast amount. 

 

1 hour ago, (XB1)KayAitch said:

Yeah, you need his 1 at this point, then 3 through to get the charges back. When it all works it's great, but too many things can go wrong.

If thralls were easier (and didn't stall because of old ones lost across the map) and reave easier to steer, it would be easier to recover miasma while also having enough chaos-CC to not burn through charges.

I mean, I'm a super experienced Revenant player and all... but I do really feel you're exaggerating these situations.

So to address "huge amounts" of enemies, I've been farming Blood for Energy on Hades, Pluto (Ambulas boss mission) with Revenant. And there are lots of Moas there... and I'm easily taking 0% damage the entire mission on the score screen most of the time. I'm never losing huge amounts of stacks amidst all those nasty Corpus units. I'm relying on Enthrall to keep enemies to distracted which works very effectively. Granted, the drop ships can be a serious problem for Revenant! So you have to really make sure you take out those turrets while waiting for the hacked Ambulases to be hauled away. If you don't, the drop ship really will strip Revenant's charges fast (because drop ship turrets are not time-gated like other status-immune enemies - Ospreys - and are immune to Mesmer Skin's stun). I do this solo mostly...

In team missions on Hades... well, the team mates serve the purpose of Thralls and it's the same result. No Thralls needed.

To address thralls "lost across the map," there is some truth to this. I do run PoE bounties solo with Revenant and I do experience this sometimes in the drone escort phase (where you hack and escort a drone to a target destination 500m away). So while following the drone, I will Enthrall some enemies that spawn and then sometimes I find that new Enemies cannot be Enthralled because I left 7 of them behind while following this drone! So that's a little annoying! Maybe this could be improved if the game automatically "de-Enthralled" the oldest Enthralled unit when you have 7 already?

I will say, you should not push for super high duration builds for Revenant. The 100% duration is already something like a whopping 30 seconds (a millennia in Warframe). That's plenty of time for distraction and Reave-to-kill. Keeping him at around 100% ability duration will at least make this 7 cap issue less noticeable (only really happens to me on PoE escort drone phase?).