Titania Rework Suggestion

[Audbot]

Okay, so! First of all, I'm putting this in a new thread instead of the Titania Revisited Feedback thread because I don't want to muddy the waters there more, and because this isn't feedback about the existing change as much as it is an idea for further changes.

The goals of this concept are to solve the following problems:

1. People don't like the Tribute buffs. Dust and Thorns are good defensive boosts, but even Dust is pretty subtle and Entangle and Full Moon don't have much of an effect.
2. People don't like Tribute buffs depending on enemy types. I didn't actually mind this! But I get why people didn't like it: it means that you can't actually do the thing you want unless the game happens to throw the right kind of enemy at you.
3. Tribute Toggle feels really fiddly to use. I just really really really hate how this feels to use right now on my fingers. It's bad in kind of a sensory way that makes me hate it, and leads to the "correct" use being an unfun kind of play pattern.
4. Spellbind and Lantern are too similar. They're both 'hard' crowd control options, it's just that one is quicker and cheaper and the other is more expensive and area-based.
5. Titania should be different than Wisp. I've seen a bunch of suggestions to tie Tribute buffs into the Lantern zone somehow, but want a way to distinguish that from the Wisp style of "drop beacons that give nearby warframes buffs."

Anyways, here's the concept:

Passive: Razorflies
A number of Titania's abilities will create razorflies, which attack enemies and draw fire. Titania can have a maximum of 12 razorflies active.

Unless Titania is in razorwing mode, razorflies lose 2 Health per second, giving them a natural duration of 120 seconds.

Each active razorfly helps buoy Titania, granting a 5% bonus to bullet jump and aim glide duration. In Razorwing mode, each razorfly grants +5% maneuver and sprint speed instead.

Spellbind (25+5 Energy)
Tap to suspend enemies within a 5 meter zone up to 50 meters away in the air for 16 seconds. Affected enemies are held in place, as per the current effect of Lantern.

Holding the ability key costs 5 energy per second, and increases the radius of the zone by 2 meters per second. (Energy cost should probably ramp up the longer the ability key is held.)

Lantern Synergy: Casting Spellbind on a Lantern doubles its range.

Tribute (15 Energy)
Tap to select a Tribute type. When Titania casts Spellbind, the selected Tribute applies an additional effect.

Additionally, enemies killed while under the effect of Spellbind will leave behind a soul of that type, which players can pick up to receive a buff that can stack up to three times. All buffs have a duration of one minute, and when the duration runs out one stack is lost and the duration resets. Picking up an additional soul of a type will reset its duration, even at maximum stacks. Souls are duplicated for each player, and last 16 seconds before vanishing if not picked up.

Holding the ability key will consume a soul from the selected Tribute type to create a razorfly and release a pulse that restores 50 Health or Shields to Titania and allies within 35 meters, including razorflies. This will consume one soul every 0.5 seconds, or cycle the Tribute selector if the selected type has no souls remaining. 

Tribute Types:

• Dust (Yellow) Spellbound enemies are surrounded by a dust cloud that blocks enemy line of sight. A Dust Soul reduces the movement speed and accuracy of enemies within 35 meters by 20%.
• Entangle (Green) Allies affected by Spellbind are immune to status effects for the duration. An Entangle Soul increases Status Duration and slam attack radius (including the bullet jump launch) by 20%.
• Full Moon (Blue) Spellbound enemies release a razorfly when they die. A Full Moon Soul increases the move, attack, and reload speed of the player's companions by 20%, and gives them 10% lifesteal.
• Thorns (Red) Each attack that hits a Spellbound enemy has a 50% chance to inflict Slash status. A Thorns Soul grants 20% Damage reduction and has a 10% chance of staggering an enemy that hits the player, opening them to melee finishers.

Razorwing Synergy: While in Razorwing mode, the range of the healing pulse is doubled, and always affects Titania's razorflies regardless of range.

Lantern (75 Energy)
Tap to create a Lantern up to 25 meters away, a growing ball that hovers above the ground and lasts for 25 seconds. Enemies that come within 20 meters of the Lantern will be pacified and slowly walk towards it. Titania can have up to 4 Lanterns active at once.

Enemies killed within the Lantern's area of effect will release a cloud spectral razorflies that swarm around the Lantern, dealing damage every second to enemies within 8 meters of its center. Each enemy killed this way adds 10% of their max Health and Shields as Heat damage.

When a Lantern expires it explodes, dealing 3,000 Heat damage plus 500% of its stored damage to all enemies within 8 meters.

Spellbind Synergy: Lantern is cast on a Spellbound enemy, the cost is reduced to 25 Energy and the targeted enemy becomes the Lantern, immediately contributing 30% of their max Health and Shields to its damage. The target is invulnerable for the duration, but takes any received damage when the duration expires.

Razorwing (25+5 Energy)
Titania turns into a tiny fairy and flies around. The basics of this are unchanged!

While in Razorwing mode, razorfly health does not decay.

If Titania has less than 4 razorflies active, entering Razorwing mode will create enough for her to have 4 razorflies. These razorflies persist even when Razorwing mode ends.

 

Quote

Commentary
Obviously this would need playtesting to see if it actually works, but I think it keeps the basic elements of what makes Titania fun, while shoring up some of her weaker areas!

Combining Tribute and Spellbind gives a reason to Spellbind groups of enemies and to hoover up souls even if you don't need the crowd control, and provides some fun secondary effects, including More Razorflies from Full Moon and a way to help whittle down high-HP enemies with Thorns. And having them be on different keys (and Spellbind grabbing multiple enemies at once) means that you're not doing as much tap/hold dancing... and having Tributes be presents your squad can pick up means they'll appreciate it more!

For the Tribute effects themselves:

• Dust is still pretty subtle, but it combines the slow from Old Tangle to give a general sort of slowing field.
• Entangle might need a name change, but I figure that status effects are a big source of crowd control anyways, and letting you increase your ability to stun large groups of enemies by slamming and bullet-jumping around kind of made more sense than just a zone.
• Full Moon being a speed boost instead of a damage boost should hopefully magnify your companions' secondary effects (such as status application and crowd control) as well, even if they aren't doing much damage, and life steal helps them stay alive and offsets razorfly health decay while it's active.
• Thorns keeps its damage reduction, but reflection stagger (a la Revenant) seemed like it would be a much bigger benefit than damage reflection while keeping the same theme -- just given they way damage and health scaling works, damage reflection is pretty useless, but getting enemies to stop shooting at you for a bit is pretty good.

People have been asking for Lantern to be a deployable for a while, and I don't think that's a bad idea! But I think that having the "classic" Lantern be a synergy with Spellbind is a good compromise, and helps tie the abilities closer together. Having its damage over time be related to the enemies you kill around it feels like it's a good solution to help that scale, too: once you feed a Lantern enough, it can start eating on its own for the rest of its duration.

I didn't change Razorwing that much, other than adapt it to razorflies not being Razorwing-exclusive. I think there's still some weird stuff around it, but that -- like Diwata being kind of useless -- feels more like it depends on the upcoming Archwing rework rather than being Titania-specific.

Having razorflies be something Titania creates all the time instead of just in Razorwing mode feels like it helps tie into both her aesthetic theme and her crowd-controlly playstyle, and having the presence of tons of razorflies be what boosts her maneuverability just seems kind of fun. Razorfly health decay seems like it's something that would need to be tuned, though, since it feels necessary but I'm not sure what kind of values to give it.

 

Edited March 31, 2020 by Audbot

[budderchew]

2 hours ago, Audbot said:

Tribute Toggle feels really fiddly to use

this is an issue with any cycled ability, and DE really needs to address this

2 hours ago, Audbot said:

Spellbind and Lantern are too similar.

I don't think anyone would be upset with just combining (though if tribute had the synergy with spellbind that is talked about in the post, Lantern and spell bind would have to be seperate), the amount of enemies caught in the first cast would increase the range and damage of the lantern, allowing the first ability to be freed up for razorflies, as...

2 hours ago, Audbot said:

Passive: Razorflies

personally, I love this passive, bringing razorflies out of razorwing and bringing more them use. However, an issue may arise with how the razorflies can alert enemies when you don't want them to. But, this definitely a better passive than anything she has, so I like it.

2 hours ago, Audbot said:

Dust 

I don't know if you intended it to mean this, and it's even weird that we have to specify this for DE, but this buff needs to affect enemy action speed, not just walking or sprinting speed. Otherwise this buff would have the same issue as entangle does now.

2 hours ago, Audbot said:

Entangle

this is a strange buff, I feel like it could use something else, but I have no idea what that would be. the status immunity is useful, and almost every cycled ability has the one oddball ability, so I don't mind it.

2 hours ago, Audbot said:

Full Moon

the biggest issue found with full moon is how it affects only companions, and companions are not known for their damage, or damage consistency. There isn't much reason to not allow this to effect players. I do like the added lifesteal, it could really increase companion survivability.

Overall, I love the rework and hope that they take either the entire rework, or just ideas from the rework. Oh yeah, also obligatory buff Diwata pls.