Nova Passive Rework Suggestion

[FollowTheFaceless]

Hi.

I'm playing on Nova almost all the time and she is perfect (IMHO) almost at everything exept her passive. I'll be honest - it's ugly garbage. I'll explain why:

1. Radius is too small and when she falls on her butt - in most cases there are no enemies around. How's that? Well... Scorpions, Ancients, Bombards, new Elite Shield Grineer dudes and so on.

2. After self damage rework now you must MANUALLY get her up. Nova is a pretty fragile frame to be honest and laying on the ground under the rain of bullets for her is not an option even for a split second. So, it's obvious that Primed Sure Footed is essential for her (especially now).

3...which brings us back to her passive: PSF literally turning it off. As useless it was - it becomes completely unavailable with it. And even without PSF - it's still garbage (read 1).

 

My proposition on that case is to rework her passive this way:

To add her a small global (melee, runing, casting, ect.) speed bonus (5-10%) after any ability cast for 3-4 sec.

Alternatively add 1% of global speed bonus for every molecular primed enemy with cap of 5-10 for duration of their existense.

 

P.S. If anyone have a suggestion of his/her own - I'll be glad to read it.

Edited March 29, 2020 by FollowTheFaceless

[CopperBezel]

I think you're overselling the knockdown changes. If you hold a direction while knocked down, you'll stand up as quick as you can same as always. 

Small quibble though. The passive is pretty bad, and needs a bigger radius if it's going to be useful, while I would love your suggestion of a 10% speed boost after casting on any frame and especially Nova. I don't think it's her biggest problem, which is still the fact that Null Star's decay and inability to decast is self-defeating without one or both of its augments, but it'd be worth addressing.

[FollowTheFaceless]

4 minutes ago, CopperBezel said:

I think you're overselling the knockdown changes.

Knockdown itself is pretty buggy. For example - I got knockdown right in a moment of parazoning the thrall. In result I got softlock on firing, melee attacks and jumping. Swapping to secondary solved the problem, but it was my luck there is no one around. Otherwise, my Nova would be ra*ed hard ._.

[Lone_Dude]

I like the idea. Never used Nova seriously(only picked her to speed up the exp farming and to help out my team back when she was just released) because I didn't like her model, but now that she has received her amazing delxue skin I've been playing as her non-stop. I think Nova is like Mag in a way - you're using her abilities pretty much constantly, so having a passive that works from that would feel great.

As for the feedback:

• I don't think the Molecular Prime variant should be a thing - because at this point it won't be a passive, it will just be another quality of MP.
• Maybe her passive shouldn't give a speed boost for a limited time after cast, but instead should have stacks.
  • Each stack provides 5% speed increase.
  • 1 stack is always active, so you're always 5% faster.
  • You can receive additional stacks by having her abilities active.
    • For example, when you use Null Star - its active, you have a constant 5%(10%) speed buff as long as at least 1 star is present. Then, when you cast Antimatter Drop, speed buff receives another stack, pushing it to 10%(15%), allowing you to put more damage into AD faster. You end up with a 25% boost if you have all of your abilities active at the same time, or average of 20% boost which is rather easy since NS, WH and MP are duration based.
    • Maybe there should be a window of 3-4 seconds, as you proposed, that keeps the speed stacks active for a short duration even after the corresponding ability is over.

I hope DE will go back to the "warframe revised" style of updates after the quarantine is over and tweak passives of all frames. While they're at it, they should also give us a way to control Null Stars instead of them having a mind of their own lmao

[FollowTheFaceless]

45 minutes ago, Lone_Dude said:

way to control Null Stars instead of them having a mind of their own lmao

That's the catch - otherwise you will have a permanent damage reduction... but maybe make them act like a shield with no offensive function at all... kinda. So they will reduce ranged damage as they do now, but melee damage should be negated completely (maybe?) and destroying a particle per hit.

 

About passive - 25% pretty cheaty. But general timer about 9 sec for all stacks (I think 4 would be enough) will do. So it starts from a first stack and never refreshes till it's end. And maybe a 1-2 sec cooldown, cause it feels really OP.

Yet, I still think 10% speed bonus per cast would be enough and feels pretty balanced... maybe bind bonus to energy spent? 1% = 10 energy. So 25 energy from null star will give 2.5%

Edited March 29, 2020 by FollowTheFaceless

[Lone_Dude]

8 minutes ago, FollowTheFaceless said:

That's the catch - otherwise you will have a permanent damage reduction... but maybe make them act like a shield with no offensive function at all... kinda. So they will reduce ranged damage as they do now, but melee damage should be negated completely (maybe?) and destroying a particle per hit.

Thing is, with a build centered around Null Stars, you already have permanent DR unless you go melee or build for range(causing your Null Stars to snipe enemies for no reason).

I use the MP augment that restores stars on kill, so its even easier to manage than by using the NS augment, but still remains annoying. Being unable to control stars directly just limits you for basically no reason. The damage that you get out of them is low as well. It would be cool if the damage you receive while NS is active was stored and distributed per each star and used to boost their damage when the stars are expended. Something akin to Garudas 1 basically. Without all the crazy multipliers though(MP does that already). Would give you a reason to use stars offensively.

Neutron Star augment would still do its work due to its AoE nature. And because you don't have to limit the range anymore it would work even better, since explosions scale with range mods. By the way, I think this augment needs some tweaks because blast proc was changed, but I guess DE forgot about it, the same way they forgot Amalgam Furax Body Count lmao.

24 minutes ago, FollowTheFaceless said:

About passive - 25% pretty cheaty. But general timer about 9 sec for all stacks (I think 4 would be enough) will do. So it starts from a first stack and never refreshes till it's end. And maybe a 1-2 sec cooldown, cause it feels really OP.

25% is achievable only if you have all abilities active - meaning that you have to use Null Stars, send out an Antimatter Drop, have an active Worm Hole and also an outgoing wave of Molecular Prime. So on average it will fluctuate between 15% and 25%.

Also, its my personal opinion, but passives shouldn't be weak, they should make a difference. We have Wisp with her crazy infinite invisibility, Hildryn with invulnerability shield-gate, Nidus with his mutation stacks and instant respawn and so on. Other frames with S#&$ty passives only have those because no one bothered to rework them and there are 2104219310 IQ big-brains crawling around the forums, screeching that Rhino/Loki has a cool passive lmao. Having a speed buff scaling from ability usage doesn't seem all that overpowered to me, especially because other frames do more with timer-based abilities.

[FollowTheFaceless]

5 minutes ago, Lone_Dude said:

Thing is, with a build centered around Null Stars, you already have permanent DR unless you go melee or build for range(causing your Null Stars to snipe enemies for no reason).

I use the MP augment that restores stars on kill, so its even easier to manage than by using the NS augment, but still remains annoying. Being unable to control stars directly just limits you for basically no reason. The damage that you get out of them is low as well. It would be cool if the damage you receive while NS is active was stored and distributed per each star and used to boost their damage when the stars are expended. Something akin to Garudas 1 basically. Without all the crazy multipliers though(MP does that already). Would give you a reason to use stars offensively.

Neutron Star augment would still do its work due to its AoE nature. And because you don't have to limit the range anymore it would work even better, since explosions scale with range mods. By the way, I think this augment needs some tweaks because blast proc was changed, but I guess DE forgot about it, the same way they forgot Amalgam Furax Body Count lmao.

I think, combining my "shield only" idea + your damage accumulation idea + making Neutron Star like a seeker volley with small rad explosion on contact = ??? PROFIT

Just to bind damage accumulation to augment mod and to MP - every mob died while primed grants 50 dp per particle with cap at 400-500 multiplied by their count.

18 minutes ago, Lone_Dude said:

25% is achievable only if you have all abilities active - meaning that you have to use Null Stars, send out an Antimatter Drop, have an active Worm Hole and also an outgoing wave of Molecular Prime. So on average it will fluctuate between 15% and 25%.

Also, its my personal opinion, but passives shouldn't be weak, they should make a difference. We have Wisp with her crazy infinite invisibility, Hildryn with invulnerability shield-gate, Nidus with his mutation stacks and instant respawn and so on. Other frames with S#&$ty passives only have those because no one bothered to rework them and there are 2104219310 IQ big-brains crawling around the forums, screeching that Rhino/Loki has a cool passive lmao. Having a speed buff scaling from ability usage doesn't seem all that overpowered to me, especially because other frames do more with timer-based abilities.

Maybe bind passive's strenght and duration to mods?10-15% and 4 sec as default. For example - 2 Umbra mods and 2 duration (primed and corrupred) mods and you have around 15-23.5% global speed bonus for 8-9 sec per cast. But with no stacks

[Lone_Dude]

1 minute ago, FollowTheFaceless said:

I think, combining my "shield only" idea + your damage accumulation idea + making Neutron Star like a seeker volley with small rad explosion on contact = ??? PROFIT

Just to bind damage accumulation to augment mod and to MP - every mob died while primed grants 50 dp per particle with cap at 400-500 multiplied by their count.

Yeah, making the kit and even augments more interconnected is something I certainly agree with.

4 minutes ago, FollowTheFaceless said:

Maybe bind passive's strenght and duration to mods?10-15% and 4 sec as default. For example - 2 Umbra mods and 2 duration (primed and corrupred) mods and you have around 15-23.5% global speed bonus for 8-9 sec per cast. But with no stacks

Speedva would lose the buff then and it would make it so that players have way less incentive to use ALL of the abilities constantly to keep up the stacks.

[FollowTheFaceless]

25 minutes ago, Lone_Dude said:

Speedva would lose the buff then and it would make it so that players have way less incentive to use ALL of the abilities constantly to keep up the stacks.

The problem is - Im not using 2 and 3 very often. Plus, wasting energy for abilities I actually don't need at current moment is questionable. Especially for Quick Thinking builds like mine. The direction is right, but good implementation of idea is yet to come.

[Lone_Dude]

11 minutes ago, FollowTheFaceless said:

The problem is - Im not using 2 and 3 very often.

I use 2 from time to time, and with my idea in place, getting a stack from 3 would be easy, since all you have to do is cast it and forget about it. You'd only need 2 stacks to reach the numbers you originally proposed(10% increase) - and since you get 1 stack for free and 1 stack from NS I don't thnk that its too problematic.

11 minutes ago, FollowTheFaceless said:

Plus, wasting energy for abilities I actually don't need at current moment is questionable. Especially for Quick Thinking builds like mine. The direction is right, but good implementation of idea is yet to come.

Thats why my proposal is not overpowered - you'd have to spend a lot of energy to get all stacks. As I said, you'd basically average at around 15%(3 stacks) - and only receive the rest if you're actively trying to get the buff or in a cast-heavy situation where said buff will benefit you greatly.

Edited March 29, 2020 by Lone_Dude

[FollowTheFaceless]

I just thought of the idea of passive bonus be bound to Nova's energy pool: every 20% grants 5% speed bonus up to 25%

Gives you motivation to keep it at full, lol

Just like Null Stars.

[CopperBezel]

7 hours ago, Lone_Dude said:

I like the idea. Never used Nova seriously(only picked her to speed up the exp farming and to help out my team back when she was just released) because I didn't like her model, but now that she has received her amazing delxue skin I've been playing as her non-stop. I think Nova is like Mag in a way - you're using her abilities pretty much constantly, so having a passive that works from that would feel great.

As someone who's had Nova in my top four for ... pretty much since I got her a year ago or so, I'm going to say that this depends completely on her build. You can build completely for Null Star and Molecular Prime and depend on the latter's augment to maintain the former, and cast MP once every thirty seconds or so and nothing else. In a lot of ways, this is her strongest build, with the greatest DR and MP range and duration combined with the full slow and really only sacrificing the efficiency that makes her 2 and 3 work and the range of her 3, so focusing on her most necessary abilities.

I don't use her this way now, but it's very viable. In fact, my present build is a high efficiency one that plays like Ember or Mag, and in which I actually can use my 2 for damage and my 3 for the speed boost augment, but I'm making up for her survivability with Arcane Guardian and generally not playing to her strengths using it. She's still better at it than Mag, but.

7 hours ago, FollowTheFaceless said:

That's the catch - otherwise you will have a permanent damage reduction... but maybe make them act like a shield with no offensive function at all... kinda. So they will reduce ranged damage as they do now, but melee damage should be negated completely (maybe?) and destroying a particle per hit.

It'd be interesting to have it behave somewhat differently from other DRs, but right now the design is something that worked itself backward from being really about the defensive slaps (which really, really need to always have guaranteed knockdown) and not the DR. And I don't really like the idea of a Mesmer Skin / Watchful Swarm take personally. 

As it is, Null Star is weird and self-defeating without Narrow Minded and Neutron Star. Narrow Minded because it's impossible to maintain as DR if it has any range, so Nova can't herself, and Neutron Star because Nova's is the only DR that decays with use but can't be recast. She's the one case where I think the old saw about augments that should be part of the base ability is correct, again because I think it's a uniquely self-defeating ability otherwise (and it wouldn't in any way get you out of using Molecular Fission anyway). Give it built-in recastability and I think I'd be fine with it in gameplay terms. 

5 hours ago, Lone_Dude said:

Speedva

I wish this bug hadn't been preserved as a feature. It doesn't behave like anything someone designed deliberately, as a result of the fact they didn't. 

[FollowTheFaceless]

I don't see a problem with Molecular Fission build at all. The only thing it nerfs is her 3's range. With Hunter Adrenaline + Quick Thinking you will always have energy to cast her 4, so NS count will always be high without any need of recasting. And about healing Nova - Magus Repair and nuff said. She won't die anyway sa long as she have some spare energy.

[(PSN)CommanderC2121]

I like rhe stacking movespeed buff based on abilities cast. Maybe even something like “while nova has an ability active (since all her abilities have some form of a duration) she gains a X% movespeed buff”

[FollowTheFaceless]

31 minutes ago, (PS4)CommanderC2121 said:

I like rhe stacking movespeed buff

Not just movespeed, but all kinds of speed (that's why I still prefer 10% cap, cause it's feels more balanced in my opinion). I mean ALL kinds - running, shooting, casting, reloading and melee swinging.

[(PSN)CommanderC2121]

11 minutes ago, FollowTheFaceless said:

Not just movespeed, but all kinds of speed (that's why I still prefer 10% cap, cause it's feels more balanced in my opinion). I mean ALL kinds - running, shooting, casting, reloading and melee swinging.

I feel like that type of buff would be too much. Half of those are already parts of passives as singular effects (excal gets bonus attack speed on single swords, mesa gets fire rate or reload based on dual or single secondaries), whereas just a speed buff, maybe that and casting together, would not only fit nova’s theme as a caster, but also be applicable to her gameplay style. Raise the value as a compensation, something like 15-20% 

[FollowTheFaceless]

1 minute ago, (PS4)CommanderC2121 said:

I feel like that type of buff would be too much. Half of those are already parts of passives as singular effects (excal gets bonus attack speed on single swords, mesa gets fire rate or reload based on dual or single secondaries), whereas just a speed buff, maybe that and casting together, would not only fit nova’s theme as a caster, but also be applicable to her gameplay style. Raise the value as a compensation, something like 15-20% 

If it still utilizes the "cast-based-time-limited" mechanic, even with 20% it will be underpowered in comparison with those you named on other frames, cause theirs are permanent.

[(PSN)CommanderC2121]

21 minutes ago, FollowTheFaceless said:

If it still utilizes the "cast-based-time-limited" mechanic, even with 20% it will be underpowered in comparison with those you named on other frames, cause theirs are permanent.

Not entirely. Since you normally build nova for duration, she can easily have her passive active the entire mission, especially when considering abilities like her 1, which can be permanent (either through good positioning, or  use of 2 of her augments)

[FollowTheFaceless]

50 minutes ago, (PS4)CommanderC2121 said:

Not entirely. Since you normally build nova for duration, she can easily have her passive active the entire mission, especially when considering abilities like her 1, which can be permanent (either through good positioning, or  use of 2 of her augments)

Exactly because of 1 I'm against "while ability active" mechanic. I think it should be like a short busts of speed acceleration: you cast 2 - use bonus to shooting speed, casting 3 and using it constantly - moving and casting speed bonus. Nova is powerful by herself and in her case passive should be more like a QoL addition rather than additional pet like in Khora's case.

Thou I'll be glad with any change of her passive from current useless state. Just saying what is the best version for me personally... frames really need one more mod slot exclusively to swap passives, lol. Just like you can swap sentinel guns once you craft them.

Edited March 30, 2020 by FollowTheFaceless

[CopperBezel]

9 hours ago, FollowTheFaceless said:

I don't see a problem with Molecular Fission build at all. The only thing it nerfs is her 3's range. With Hunter Adrenaline + Quick Thinking you will always have energy to cast her 4, so NS count will always be high without any need of recasting. And about healing Nova - Magus Repair and nuff said. She won't die anyway sa long as she have some spare energy.

Well, the point there was just that if you're using a full duration build for Null Star and Molecular Prime, you're going to use Molecular Fission, and you're going to be casting rarely, because you have one ability with a duration of forever, one that is self-restoring, and one that doesn't work with reduced range. So you would not make the assumption that you're going to be casting constantly as @Lone_Dude said, and getting back each time a flat buff that can refresh would be better than a small bonus that stacks.

On the rest, there isn't anything wrong with Molecular Fission as an augment. There's just something wrong with Null Star that Neutron Star is a bandaid for, and Molecular fusion also somewhat covers for. You can still get caught with a few stars left and no way to quickly restore them, but again, not the fault of Molecular Fission, it's a fine augment. With neither augment the ability is self-defeating and Null Star is the one it'd be appropriate to roll into the base ability, if for no other reason than that it's weaker.

And yeah, as it stands, you have to choose between Null Star and Wormhole, since NS needs reduced range to keep its decay as slow as possible and Wormhole needs at least 100%. Just no way around it, can't have both. So that's also independent of Molecular Fission or your efficiency or whatever else is in your build. 

Edited March 30, 2020 by CopperBezel

[TamePingu]

Hmm... How 'bout this?

Null star: Cast to.. well. cast. You get max stacks on cast. Works same as it does now. If you lose a stack, you can recast to get the lost stacks back. While you have at least 1 stack hold to detonate each stack into an AOE centered on you. Blinds. Blind scales with duration. AOE scales with range. DMG Scales with strength and number of stacks.

This would hopefully fix things. I added the hold to cast thing for flavour, could easily be ignored but it frees up the augment to do something more interesting since you have to trade in a mod slot for it.

On topic: current passive is awful. Nova is the antimatter frame, no idea what would fit into that theme gameplaywise sice antimater annihilates any other "standard" matter. Your take is as good as any, a small speed bost while her abilities are active with a slight "lag" so they remain active for a couple of seconds afterwards souds good. But I feel there's a better solution somewhere out there, one that fits her theme/lore better.

Edited April 3, 2020 by TamePingu
On topic section

[CopperBezel]

Yeah, I'd love that change for Null Star. It'd actually gain back some if its usefulness that the Neutron Star augment lost in the status changes - it still procs Blast, so instead of a knockdown multiplied by Molecular Prime slow, it's just an accuracy debuff. Blind would be fantastic.

[Chainsaga]

For me, the passive should play a little bit with her theme as a "antimatter" or "priming" frame. Example: every weapon she wields is primed with fusion energy and will explode upon impact with enemies (like innate mini blast procs, but no effects of the blast proc itself). The explosion radius is about the size of maybe the Tombfinger and the damage is a percentage of the weapon damage. Nova also have natural reduction to self-stagger explosions. IMO speed boost doesn't really reflect with her theme and it's too generic for my tastes.

Edited April 15, 2020 by Chainsaga

[CopperBezel]

She has a high sprint speed and a mobility ability that also has a sprint buff augment, and her most useful ability is an enemy speed debuff. A speed boost would be entirely on brand for her. "Antimatter" (but really just plasma, but called "antimatter"*) is her aesthetic theme, but it doesn't really have much to do with what she does in game mechanics terms. You'd expect her to be DPS rather than a debuffer, to start with.... 

Anyway, I see exactly zero chance of a frame getting a damage buff to weapons in any form as a passive. An AoEifier of some kind could be a good replacement for her clunky and mostly impractical 2, since turning damage into an AoE attack is what her 2 is intended to do, but then you have the problem of creating blast cones or raytrace spheres or whatever else for individual projectiles from a Supra or something and melting all the PCs.

 

* Or rather, the plasma part seems to be the "antimatter" part. I'd say her aesthetic overall is more like "classic space", rocketships and nebulae and space suits.

Edited April 15, 2020 by CopperBezel