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Rework ALL the Frames v2.0 (Nov 28 Update: Deimos Arcana)


Archwizard

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Howdy again, folks. Did you miss me?

2020 is shaping up to be the fabled "Year of Quality", and in a recent podcast on Quiette Shy's channel, Pablo mentioned one of the recent goals is bumping up older frames to a level that would match today's standard for frame releases. In the interests of aiding a game I love and wish to see continue its growth, I'm beginning this thread as a clean slate for rework suggestions. (That and the old thread was archived, and somehow within nearly 3 years, half that thread became outdated anyway.) ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The goals with each rework in this thread are as follows:

  • Reach "the happy medium": Updates where players get maximum satisfaction out of using a frame, while limiting the amount of work required from the Design or Art & Animation teams to update them.
  • Increase the cohesion of skills within existing toolkits.
    • This also means limiting the mechanical redundancy within each frame's toolkit, so that each ability has a distinct purpose and an opportunity to stand out rather than "competing" for use on a limited energy pool.
    • Likewise, this means attempting to avoid forcing "synergy" by means of making another a requirement for the majority of its potential. Keyword "attempting."
  • Maintain the visual fidelity of the Warframes, in keeping with the Leverian lore and DE's promise that "anything you can see in a trailer, you can do in game," so long as maintaining an aesthetic isn't actively detrimental to the player.

Changes within each list are listed from "most extreme and impactful" to "most conservative, or quality of life" — in other words, the juiciest bits will float to the top.

ASH

Spoiler

As every Warframe is technically billed as a "ninja", I consider Ash to be the Assassin Warframe, with classical Shinobi themes. Presently his greatest flaw is that his kit bears several redundant skills — Shuriken and Blade Storm both compete for the position of "Induced Bleed Procs at long range," both Teleport and Blade Storm compete for "Induce finishers on enemies." As a result, there's a very forced level of "synergy" in his kit (Smoke Bomb reducing the cost of Teleport, or Teleport giving him invulnerability for Blade Storm), and even then not all abilities are affected by it — Shuriken specifically, the only skill in his toolbox that doesn't ignore armor while its augment gives an armor debuff. This essentially results in Ash being a one-trick pony depending on his build, either focusing on Blade Storm or on Fatal Teleport, without offering anything else.

Suggested changes:

  • Additional passive: Like Garuda, Ash can equip his unique punching daggers as a melee weapon if no other melee weapon is equipped.
  • Blade Storm: Completely replaced.
    • New ultimate skill, "Heartseeker: Ash hunts down targets for assassination, calling on Shadow Clones to finish the job. Each enemy slain fuels Ash for the slaughter." 
    • Ash enters a state of focus while toggled active, locking him into melee and allowing him to see all enemies and allies through walls, a la Void Hunter; Ash may Teleport to targets seen through walls with this effect. During this time, landing melee attacks and Shuriken throws will cause Shadow Clones to appear that replicate Ash's attack aimed at nearby targets (limit 3 Shadow Clones active at once), allowing him to perform coordinated stealth assaults against groups of enemies. Whenever an enemy is killed by Ash or his Shadow Clones, he regains some health and gains a stacking bonus to armor and attack speed for a duration.
      • Finishers dealt by Shadow Clones count as Finishers dealt by Ash for the purposes of Arcanes.
  • Shuriken: Hold-casting will increase the number of Shuriken thrown as well as the cone of effect, allowing Ash to throw a fan of knives to hit multiple enemies.
  • Teleport: No longer has its cost reduced by invisibility; now has a 5 sec Combo timer, which reduces the cost on subsequent targets. Target enemies are stunned and opened to the Finisher before Ash teleports.
  • Smoke Bomb: Can be recast while active. No longer has a stun effect on unalerted enemies; alerted enemies suffer reduced accuracy for the remainder of Smoke Bomb's duration.

Ash is a Warframe focused largely slaying enemies from stealth, so the ability to perform finisher attacks at all times is an absolute requirement. The idea with Heartseeker and the combo timer on Teleport is that it enables Teleport to fulfill the job of Blade Storm, both from a mechanical and visual perspective. Ash is a damage-oriented Warframe with high stealth benefits, whose group play elements are intentionally limited; thus his kit should prioritize enhancing his damage output, rather than simply substituting it.

CHROMA

Spoiler

Both the Dragon and the Slayer. While some players are probably a little too annoyed that he's no longer the go-to for one-shotting Eidolons, my bigger concern is the lack of synergy between his skills.

Suggested changes:

  • Spectral Scream: Base range and ticking speed are doubled. When Effigy is active, Spectral Scream transforms into -
    • "Dragoon": Chroma teleports aboard the Effigy from any distance, using it as a Rampart. During this time Chroma's firearm is replaced with the Effigy's breath, and melee attacks perform a radial knockback roar. The Effigy's health is added to Chroma's own and it inherits the effects of Vex Armor, but he is rendered immobile. Ending Dragoon will cause Chroma to teleport back to his destination, dealing radial damage based on the total damage dealt during Dragoon; ending Effigy will also end Dragoon and cause radial damage at its location, but Chroma will not teleport.
      • Guided Effigy can be used to move while Dragoon is active and adds its damage to Dragoon's own.
    • Afterburn: Can also be triggered by the Effigy. Damage cap removed outside of Conclave.
  • Effigy: Now acts as a secondary beacon for Chroma's Elemental Ward and Vex Armor effects while active regardless of his distance (without stacking with Chroma's own), while allowing damage it receives to charge Vex Armor.
  • Vex Armor: Also grants Chroma himself stagger immunity, even when uncharged.
  • Elemental Ward: Toxin Ward now grants a bonus to Maneuver Speed, instead of (the now defunct) bonus holster speed.

Effigy's description specifically calls it "a massive sentry that strengthens nearby allies", yet the only effect it gives to allies is a bonus to credits received. It's only natural then that a buff provider like Chroma should not only be able to use it to strengthen allies, but himself, using it to deal substantial damage. It never really made sense to me why Chroma was able to continue to use Spectral Scream while his Effigy is active, and has notably annoyed some players that Spectral Scream must remain un-Helminthed to use his Elemental Wheel. This may not make him a killer of Eidolons again, but he doesn't need to be; even if Spectral Scream can't outdo a fully modded weapon, it's a start towards making him a substantial support tank.

FROST

Spoiler

The Ice Elemental. And sort of a two-trick pony in that regard — Frost's major contributions are Snow Globe and Avalanche. Freeze has niche uses but is largely pointless on its own merits because Avalanche provides a superior effect, able to freeze a greater number of enemies with no damage cap and an innate armor reduction effect; likewise, Ice Wave's damage falls behind Avalanche's icy explosions, as well as Snow Globe's True damage effect. Each one needs an update to maintain their place in his kit.

Suggested changes:

  • Ice Wave: Reworked - tentatively called "Tundra": The ice spikes formed on cast no longer fade after activation and remain for a period based on Power Duration. Enemies who attempt to pass through this Tundra suffer a random assortment of Impact, Puncture and Slash procs every half-sec they remain in the field.
    • Ice Wave Impedance: Reworked - Frozen enemies within the field on formation have a chance to be thrown, and will receive True damage upon striking a surface based on their maximum health.
  • Freeze: Reworked - tentatively called "Icicles": CC damage cap removed. The projectile from this effect has now Punch Through, and hold-casting will fire a fan of three projectiles. If the projectile hits a Frozen target, it will extend the freeze effect by 4 sec and attempt to Shatter the ice, dealing bonus damage based on the target's level and compelling Avalanche's radial damage effect.
    • Freeze Force overwrites the Icicles charge effect.
  • New passive: Frost gains increased Armor for every enemy afflicted with a Cold proc within 50 meters.
  • Snow Globe: When shattered by Freeze/Icicles, damage dealt to enemies within is increased by the health of the Snow Globe, split evenly.

This is a shift towards making Frost about reshaping the battlefield to his needs by using his icy formations. In addition to using Snow Globe as a form of defense, Ice Wave/Tundra creates an impediment for enemies marching towards the sphere, forming a bulwark of spikes for them to break against; Frost can utilize Avalanche or Freeze/Icicles to hold enemies within the field to compel additional procs (dealing more Bleed damage and inflicting Weakness to strengthen the Globe) until the field ends, while the augment can trade this synergy for the ability to deal instantaneous damage in the same manner as Snow Globe. In narrow spaces, Freeze/Icicles forms a feedback loop with Avalanche, compelling additional damage and extending its effects without subjecting it to a damage cap. And of course, the new passive (rather fittingly an opposed clone of Ember's own) allows both of these skills to synergize with Snow Globe, increasing his armor to affect its health.

HYDROID

Spoiler

The Pirate, Master of the Seas. Arguably a frame with one of the biggest requirements for an update; since the beginning, Hydroid's kit has been panned as gimmicky and ineffectual, often acting as a hindrance to his team. Part of the issue is that despite the potential of a Water-elemental, Pirates themselves don't really have any iconic abilities as an RPG archetype, mostly acting as an aesthetic to reskin skills. As such, Hydroid has ended up with a kit of largely redundant abilities, whose main contributions are different forms of CC with varying potency, and the augment to his fourth ability.

Suggested changes:

  • Tentacle Swarm: Reworked - Hydroid now stands atop the head of the Kraken, using it as a mount that moves in place of him.
    • The head will follow under Hydroid from the ground, lifting him up and diving through terrain to follow him if he moves above a disconnected platform. Instead of walking or running, the Kraken will rush forward for Hydroid.
    • Now has a fixed number of tentacles in formation around Hydroid, affected by Rank; Range affects the distance with which the Kraken can grab enemies and pull them to Hydroid. Grabbed enemies are suspended in formation to be used as meat shields for Hydroid as their health ticks down from suffocation. Only tentacles that have not grabbed enemies will flail around on their own, allowing suspended targets to be more easily hit. Atempting to pass through small gaps may drop lifted enemies, unless affected by Undertow or Tidal Surge.
    • Bullet-jumping will command the Kraken to spray a geyser to lift Hydroid, dealing Magnetic damage to nearby and suspended enemies. Ground-slamming onto the Kraken will command it to slam the ground with each of its tentacles, including the ones holding enemies, dealing Impact damage to nearby enemies.
    • During Undertow, tentacles will plunge any enemies grabbed into the pool, and seek out new enemies around the pool to drag inside. Enemies will attempt to shoot the Kraken, contributing to the damage.
  • Tempest Barrage: Now Hydroid's 2 skill, position traded with Tidal Surge. Now inherits mods on Hydroid's Primary weapon, including Launcher mods. No longer ragdolls enemies, but continues to inflict Stagger.
  • New passive: Hydroid has innate health regeneration while he's standing still, and increased Evasion while moving. (Moving while standing on the Kraken's head grants both benefits.)
  • Undertow: Casting while airborne causes Hydroid to instantly cannonball into the ground, dealing slam damage over Undertow's area. (This counts as a ground-slam on the Kraken if Tentacle Swarm is active, even if a melee weapon is not equipped.)
  • Tidal Surge: Now Hydroid's 1 skill, position traded with Tempest Barrage. Cost reduced. Can now pass through spaces Hydroid could slide under or jump-kick over.

The main focus of this rework is centered around distinguishing Tentacle Swarm and Tempest Barrage. Tentacle Swarm becomes Hydroid's primary form of self-sustain, grabbing enemies to use as shields for Hydroid. Conversely, Tempest Barrage becomes his primary form of damage output, because calling down a missile barrage from a ship ought to do some pretty hardy damage.

INAROS

Spoiler

The Undying Pharaoh. When first released, Inaros was praised for having the (somewhat dubious) honor of being the second-greatest healer in the game, and remains to this day the frame with the highest health pool. Unfortunately he has always been one-note in that regard; every skill in his toolkit either relies on or facilitates health-leeching (sort of like Ember's Heat procs), which leaves a lot of overlap between the purposes of his abilities, some of which even directly defy one another. While his Dessicate is notable for inducing Finishers (synergizing with his passive), most of the rest of his skills are considered memetic at best, and do very little for him that isn't outdone by simply playing another frame; even Dessicate itself is considered an inferior means to induce Finishers, as the damage-over-time it inflicts can often negate the target from receiving one, and the rest of his kit doesn't have the output to compensate for that loss, with many of the DoT effects inflicting single-digit damage. It's curious that Inaros wasn't fated to have a rework when his Prime dropped, when feedback about him has largely been consistent towards his failings.

Suggested changes:

  • Scarab Swarm: Armor bonus now multiplies Inaros' base armor, before mods, instead of adding with them. Charging Scarab Swarm (including overcharging) taunts nearby enemies to attack Inaros; damage received while charging Scarab Swarm accelerates the charge speed up to its maximum amount. Casting Scarab Swarm on an enemy affected by Desiccate or Devour will spread those effects to enemies within Scarab Swarm's range.
  • Sandstorm: Initial cost reduced to 35 energy. Enemies pulled into the Sandstorm are carried alongside Inaros for the entire duration rather than ragdolled away, and have all DoT effects inflicted by Inaros' other abilities accelerated. Sandstorm also has a chance to inflict Bleed procs, affected by Power Strength. Movement and tick speed are increased when holding Fire (a la Danse Macabre and Sol Gate).
  • Devour: No longer summons Sand Shadows. Damage dealt while tethering, consuming, or Sandstorming a victim of Devour is mirrored onto the affected target.
    • Augment: Completely Devouring an enemy (including with Sandstorm) allows Inaros to temporarily inherit its health and armor for the remaining duration of Devour.
  • Sarcophagus damage now inherits mods on Inaros' Secondary weapon, including Beam-type Pistol mods, and has its damage increased for each ability applied to the target that was inflicted by the attacking Inaros.

The idea here is that while Dessicate is a powerful standalone tool for damage, his other abilities make up for his survivability, group utility, and most importantly his reaction to a crowd of enemies. (Over)Charge your Scarabs to draw aggro, Devour a target, Swarm the effect onto the entire crowd, then Sandstorm them all, reflecting any further damage you receive onto your menagerie or just mercilessly bleeding them all. Altogether Inaros becomes something of a self-sacrificing tank, baiting enemies into attacking a force of nature; while he still won't be clearing a crowd with a single button, his ability to stack and spread effects can allow him to reach a comfortable level of potency in the mid-levels while holding utility in endgame.

LOKI

Spoiler

Amongst stealth-oriented Warframes, if Ash is the Assassin and Ivara is the Thief, then Loki is the Saboteur: the spy who moves behind enemy lines, soaks their gunpowder, cuts holes in their parachutes, incriminates or misleads their officers, and so on. While for years regarded as one of the most overpowered Warframes due to his kit's virtual independence from damage effects, the advent of frames like Ivara, Wukong, Wisp and even Limbo have not only displaced Loki from his stealth throne by virtue of his relative tedium, but offered such versatility in non-stealth missions that he's considered overspecialized and gimmicky by comparison. His update should focus not only on his position in a gunfight, but his role in stealth play.

Suggested changes:

  • New passive: Loki Rolls farther and becomes briefly intangible for the duration of a Roll maneuver, allowing him to bypass security lasers without triggering them, pass through enemies without alerting them, or evade enemy fire through continuous dodging.
  • Decoy: Hold-cast to kill an active Decoy. When the Decoy dies, it will release a wave causing amnesia in nearby enemies, briefly mesmerizing them and resetting their alert level, a la Silence or Lull. If Loki is invisible or out of line of sight when the Decoy dies, all enemies that attacked it will assume Loki himself is dead. Decoys cannot be made Invisible.
  • Switch Teleport: If an alerted enemy is selected, they will receive a Radiation proc and all of Loki's threat will transfer to them, causing enemies to continue shooting whoever he switched with. Can still switch positions with allied NPCs and Decoys, but no longer switches with Tenno allies, instead Teleporting to them.
  • Radial Disarm: Also inflicts an armor debuff on affected enemies, affected by Power Strength; this effect can stack. Any active enemy grenades thrown within the affected area will also deactivate. If Decoy is active, Radial Disarm will emit from the Decoy instead.
  • Invisibility: Now "Invisibility Cloak", it forms a small bubble of continuous invisibility around Loki that affects nearby allies, similar to Ivara's Cloak Arrow or Itzal's Penumbra. Enemy corpses within the bubble will be hidden. Recasting will extend the remaining duration by a full cast, similarly to Amesha's Benevolent Decoy.
    • Hushed Invisibility: Now applies to all allies within the bubble.

Most of the changes for Loki listed here are arguably quality of life, increasing the ease of use for his kit while reducing the hassle on his team. Loki himself is not a damage-oriented Warframe, and should not ever be. His role is highly utilitarian, setting the board for the pieces to be inevitably knocked down, even if by others; adding an armor debuff to Radial Disarm is a prime example of this, quite literally exposing "the gap in the armor."

MAG

Spoiler

Queen of Fundamental Forces. At this point, "Better Nerf Mag" has become a meme amongst the community, ever since a rework she received in Update 9.8 that made her insanely powerful against Corpus; since Damage 2.0, Scott's been working to make her more balanced against all factions to pretty mixed reviews, making her one of the most reworked frames besides Ember — and still one of the least popular.

Suggested changes:

  • Polarize: Guaranteed Magnetic status on every target hit before damage is inflicted. Number of shards released is affected by the damage dealt by Polarize. No longer restores a fixed amount of shields to affected allies; instead, affected allies have their natural shield regeneration instantly kickstarted, and are marked to gain shields each time an enemy is touched by the wave for the remainder of its duration (even if the enemy is not damaged), going into Overshields.
  • Pull: Velocity is no longer affected by Power Strength, only distance from Mag, so that affected enemies are deposited in front of Mag. Casting on Magnetize bubbles supercharges their innate pull, dragging enemies into the bubble and knocking them down instead of pulling them toward Mag. Can also drag shards from Polarize to Mag, if they aren't already in a Magnetize bubble.
  • Crush: No longer restores shields to allies. Damage of each pulse increases relative to the level of each enemy, and the final pulse deals a radial explosion around each affected target.
  • New passive: Increased Flight Speed, Accuracy and Punch Through on all weapons.

To my mind, Pull makes Mag the specialist in grouping enemies up, but she otherwise lacks the tools to really take advantage of that setup (besides Magnetize as a defensive tool), particularly since Polarize's detonation damage was weakened. Since Crush itself otherwise lacks punch as an ultimate, the adjustment to increase in damage based on the number of enemies grouped up allows her to finally have a means to capitalize on Pull and Magnetize. The combination of Polarize and Pull also plays into Magnetize: collect shards, line up enemies in front of you, then fire all of the shards at once. Finally, the change to her passive is simply overdue, especially amongst talks for Universal Vacuum; this new passive not only plays on the concept of magnetic rail guns, but allows her to capitalize on Magnetize's field, multihitting captured enemies with just about any bullet.

TRINITY

Spoiler

The Medic. Trinity has had a long and sordid history of mostly nerfs, as a result of her toolkit making the party effectively unkillable and negating the limitations of health and energy. Her problem is that in terms of balance, her kit isn't sustainable: Blessing completely overshadows Well of Life in any situation where her role as a healer is necessary, and Energy Vampire makes the cost distinction between the two irrelevant. By comparison to all other healers available, Trinity is the least demanding of the player, and the most rewarding to the party.

Nobody wants to reduce her overall potency as a healer or support frame. The trick is to make her kit more demanding in order to achieve a similar (or even better) effect.

Suggested changes:

  • Blessing: Reworked - No longer heals the party. Instead, Trinity makes every ally within affinity range of her immune to damage and stagger for a short duration, and purges them of status effects. When the immunity period ends, all damage negated is then converted into a buff to Armor which gradually diminishes over a period affected by Duration, as well as extending allies' bleedout time. Blessing cannot be recast during the immunity period.
    • New augment, "Salvation": Blessing restores all downed or damaged allies to a minimum of (25/50/75/100)% health/shields and adds the total healed to the armor bonus, but now consumes all of Trinity's energy on activation.
  • Well of Life: Reworked - No longer gives health to Tenno attacking the target. Instead, the victim of Well of Life is suspended in the air and loses a fraction of its health every half-second as True damage, pulsing healing to Tenno over a massive radius based on the damage siphoned. Healing is reduced by distance to the target (up to 50% at maximum distance), and overhealing will restore shields (but not Overshields).
    • Well of Life can also be hold-cast to pulse a percentage of healing to allies near Trinity, but less efficiently.
  • Energy Vampire: Reworked - The victim of Energy Vampire no longer pulses energy over a radius, instead pulsing Electric status from the target every second that stuns nearby enemies. Damage dealt to the victim of Energy Vampire by Tenno feeds energy directly to the attacking player, up to a cap per player per cast. Energy Vampire can be recast while active, but still only affects one target at a time.
    • Casting Energy Vampire on a victim of Well of Life allows attackers to siphon energy immediately from their attacks, even while the damage is suspended.
  • Link: Additional tethers fire from Link to victims of Trinity's Well of Life and Energy Vampire, regardless of distance. Can be recast while active to refresh the duration.
  • Passive: Trinity revives allies twice as quickly, up from 25% more quickly.

The goal here was to offload Blessing's healing ability onto Well of Life, and focus on Blessing as an "Oh Sh!t" button for Trinity. I know a handful of players will ask why — if having Well of Life and Blessing as two different heals in the same kit is a problem — I didn't consider removing Well of Life instead, or shifting its purpose as a heal onto Blessing. The answer here is twofold: the first is the age old aesthetic reason, that Well of Life was featured in a trailer so preserving the visual aspect was of middling priority. More importantly though, as Trinity is a healer-class Warframe, it seemed pertinent that the very first ability available to her would be one that would heal.
"But my Energy Vampire!", some will also say. The reason for that is... well, compare Trinity to Harrow or Nekros, who also provide an unlimited amount of energy to the party, but require a high demand in order to do so. Energy Vampire is something of a cheat skill; while several frames have methods to gain infinite energy, the fact of the matter is that that is part of how those specific frames are balanced, while other frames are powerful energy hogs who do not have any such native ability without something like Arcane Energize. Energy Vampire has long been an easy button for the team in this regard, particularly given how little demand it has on each player who benefits from it, as well as the low energy demand from Trinity herself. That one frame can top off the entire team's energy supply through one button press with no other action on the part of the players is a failing of her design that impacts the overall balance of the game. Honestly, this arrangement of asking you to actually hit the target (while still giving a means to ensure everyone can, and not even locking you out of abilities!) is the bare-minimum form of increasing that effort.

VOLT

Spoiler

Lord of the Storm. While advertised as a "high-damage Warframe perfect for players looking for a potent alternative to gunplay," he's never quite lived up to that description, with his most potent damage skills being the enhancement of weapon damage. Scott himself has said that Volt is "not a CC frame," but one of his current best use cases is as a means to inflict continuous stuns. I would guess that Volt's passive was intended to be a means to bridge that, but because of the slow manner in which it builds up, he never quite reaches that point. Additionally, the "per meter" cost of lifting an Electric Shield serves as an odd penalty to a frame who specializes in increasing his movement speed and turning it into damage, and would be unheard of on a frame with similar speed effects like Gauss or Wisp; what weirdly comes about as a result of this, is a frame with an almost flat output-per-energy value, who shifts the rate at which energy is expended as the output increases.

Suggested changes:

  • Shock: Now has an innate critical chance, affected by Power Strength. Hold-cast to create a chaining beam that inflicts continuous damage while held while draining additional energy until released; critical chance increases each time an enemy receives damage from this effect.
    • Casting Shock through Electric Shield adds the value of any damage already stored within the shield back to Shock.
    • Casting on a victim of Discharge causes the overcharge to inherit the damage of Shock (including critical and passive damage), while increasing its critical chance for each target hit by the overcharge.
  • Passive: In addition to the generation per meter traveled, Static Discharge passively builds up by a low amount over time, accelerated by movement.
  • Electric Shield: Lifting the shield now incurs a cost per second on Volt, instead of a cost per meter traveled. Damage stored by Shock within Electric Shield stacks.
  • Discharge: Refreshes the duration of any Electric Shield effects within range of the initial pulse.

Remember how Electric Shield increases the critical damage of projectiles tossed through it? It has always been odd to me that the only interaction it has with Shock is storing damage within Electric Shield that can only be used to trap enemies. Add its innate critical effect to the base damage increase provided by Volt's passive, and Volt has a lot of setup to be a powerful critical-oriented frame; the problem in his current iteration is that none of his abilities have a critical chance to take advantage of these. With this setup above, Electric Shield becomes a "battery" to store the damage increase built from Volt's passive, while Discharge allows it to extend throughout a mission similarly to Splinter Storm and Mass Vitrify — provided Volt has the energy to keep Electric Shield up.

ZEPHYR

Spoiler

Sovereign of the Sky. Zephyr is a frame that focuses on aerial mobility, rising above the enemy to carpet bomb the battlefield from a safe distance. Unfortunately, she doesn't have a lot of tools to truly capitalize on her time in the sky; her one projectile attack is little more than a redundant stun, or a magic wand to empower Tornadoes. Her bonuses to aerial mobility are still regarded as little improved over Parkour 2.0, and even secondary to Titania.

Suggested changes:

  • Tail Wind: Contact radius of dashes doubled. Passing through a Tornado during the dash will grant Zephyr a temporary hover effect at the end of the dash. Hover Jump and Dive Bomb inflict Lifted status to nearby enemies, based on how long Zephyr was charging the jump or airborne prior to the dive, respectively.
  • Airburst: Projectiles that damage flying or airborne enemies (including those under Lifted status or caught in Tornadoes) inflict True damage. Also refreshes the duration of Lifted status effects.
    • Airburst will inflict additional damage to all enemies caught within any Tornadoes struck, based on the total level of enemies caught within each Tornado.
    • Jet Stream will enhance both the flight speed and maximum distance of Airburst projectiles.
  • Tornado: Holding the cast will command all active Tornadoes to converge at the target location, and remain there until released. Large Tornadoes will collect loot for Zephyr (similar to Vortex), and pass it onto her when she passes through them, or deposit it in a pile where they expire.

The solution is quite simple: Airburst becomes a tool that allows Zephyr to deal more damage to enemies in the air so she's undisputed in her element, and the rest of her tools focus on setting up enemies for Airburst to capitalize on this, forcing them into her domain so she can pick them apart.

Other Frames

Spoiler

ATLAS

  • Tectonics: Can now summon up to 3 Bulwarks baseline, collapsing all active Bulwarks into boulders with hold-cast. Bulwarks have twice the width but form a 60-degree arc in front of Atlas. Boulder damage is affected by each Bulwark's max health.
    • Tectonic Fracture replaced with "Tectonic Shift": Bulwarks can be summoned up to 50m away from Atlas, and instead are rapidly dragged towards him with hold-cast, pulling enemies all the way.
  • Rumblers: Attacks will add to Atlas' melee combo; can Landslide dash to enemies.
    • Rumbled attacks scale with melee mods, just like Landslide.
  • Petrify: Also heals Bulwarks.
  • Landslide: Combo duration doubled.

BANSHEE

  • Sonic Boom: Force of the push is affected by Power Strength; enemies that impact walls will receive True damage up to 50% of their maximum health, based on their distance pushed. Can also push enemy grenades and deflect hostile projectiles in the radius.
  • Sound Quake: Damage increases the further enemies are from Banshee. Targets any active Sonar hotspots on affected enemies.

EMBER

  • Fireball: Base damage now increases based on a small percentage of target health. Combo duration doubled; charge effect now doubles the blast radius.
  • Fire Blast: Energy cost is reduced relative to the Immolation level.
  • Immolate: Also provides status immunity to Ember when at Maximum Heat.

GARUDA

  • Like any Exalted Weapon, Garuda's Claws can be wielded in weapon-restricted Sorties.

GRENDEL

  • Feast: Each additional enemy consumed adds a lower cost multiplier, creating a soft cap on drain. No longer increases in damage for the total level of all enemies stored, only increasing damage based on the level of each individual target.
  • Regurgitate: Now has damage multiplied based on the sum of levels of all enemies currently stored in Grendel's belly, and knocks down all targets hit by the impact.

LIMBO

  • Players inside the Rift Plane can pass through enemies outside of it, and vice versa; this does not alert the enemy. Exiting the Rift Plane within an enemy's hitbox will stagger the enemy.
  • Cataclysm: Enemies Banished to the Rift while active will be teleported into the bubble while it is active; enemies Banished from the bubble will be ragdolled out at speed.

MESA

  • Ballistic Battery: Also adds Punch Through, Projectile Speed and Accuracy to the shot, based on charge percentage. Can now be activated during Peacemaker; when discharged during Peacemaker, it instantly fires a non-homing shot with pin-point accuracy.
  • Shooting Gallery: Affected allies also have holstered weapon magazines automatically replenished by a percentage every second.

NEKROS

  • Soul Punch: Enemies killed by Soul Punch or while Marked for Harvest are always dismembered (gore kill) instead of disintegrated.
    • Soul Survivor: Now consumes half of Nekros' remaining energy when activated, down from all.
  • Terrify: Target cap is removed, but base Duration and Range are reduced by 30% each to compensate. Creeping Terrify effects integrated. Shadows will prioritize fire upon victims of Terrify.
    • New augment, "Terror Totem": Nekros leaves a shadow of himself at his location, that continuously casts brief Terrify effects and increases Evasion for allies and NPCs within range of it.

NOVA

  • Null Star: Can be cast on Antimatter Drop to surround it with Null Stars, which will seek out enemies as the Drop travels. Each Star guarantees an Impact proc on affected enemies.

OBERON

  • New passive: Deals additional weapon damage to victims of Radiation procs; this effect stacks for each proc on the target.
  • Reckoning: Health orbs also have a chance to drop from blinded foes.

RHINO

  • Roar: Also instantly taunts enemies in range to attack Rhino; threat generated by this effect does not take priority over effects like Absorb.

SARYN

  • Molt: Explosion damage increases based on its max health; once again can be used as a carrier for Spores.

Note that the list is neither comprehensive nor final. Suggestions and civil discussion are welcome.

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I REALLY like Nekros' rework, the only change to it I think would suit him is if you can cast Obliterate on corpses and perhaps transform them into mines waiting for enemies to step over.

Some great QOL life changes like Snow Globe dealing it's health as damage and Chroma's effigy giving the Ward bonus. The frame most in need of a rework is Hydroid who's the most left behind. Puddle and Sandstorm both should get the speedboost Cloudwalker got.

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Equinox suggestions:

1. Allow her to switch between forms without losing 3 or 4. We have no incentive to swap once any significant stacks have been built up, and the frame was advertised as being a frame that you want to switch on the fly depending on what your team needs. There is no direct increase to power here since you still need to accumulate the same amount in either form to get the maximum effect. The bandaid augment for 4 is simply unacceptable when that functionality should already be on the frame.

2. Permanent stat differences between frames. Keep her first ability as Metamorphosis, adjust values/ratios as needed. Equinox has little incentive to run power strength still and this would increase build diversity. Forms lack any differentiation at base line, which makes Metamorphosis ultimately irrelevant as an ability at high level unless you are using a niche augment.

3. Give her a real passive. There are lots of things that could be done. Example: Equinox radiates x% of her current form's bonuses (doesn't scale with power strength so as not to stack too much with the bonuses from Metamorphosis) to allies within x range, scaling with power range. She's already an aura frame; why not double down on it and add to her utility as a support frame? A half-assed Equilibrium that you don't even notice once the frame would really have any need of it is basically nonexistent.

4. Normalize her aura ranges on 3 and 4 so that they're consistent with each other and more intuitive from a visual perspective.

5. Normalize energy cost on 3 to be more consistent between forms. Night form is too much of an energy hog to be that bad at preventing damage on anybody but yourself. Remove the discrepancy between enemy ranges within the auras. Either change it to be a flat damage reduction to all enemies within range, and make the energy consumption cap out/change how it drains per enemy (example: each enemy entering the aura makes it consume x energy once time, and it has permanently reduced damage output as long as it stays in the aura), or make it affect allies in range instead.

Lots of QoL changes that would require little in the way of graphical updates or fundamental changes to how she plays/feels.

 

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Garuda:

Increase VFX of Dread Heart Explosion

Blood Forge is an Exilus Mod, and Creates ammo like the name suggests. (maybe it also buffs status chance briefly)

 

Wukong:

Defy Augment - Vacuums enemies in during cast, knocks prone when hit (instead of rag-dolling) Also, applies a debuff to affected enemies that makes Iron Staff deal bonus damage.

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Ok all tentacle swarm NEEDS is grendels damage scaling mechanic.

If the tentacles did 200×(enemylevel÷10) base.. 

Well a level 200 enemy held by the tentacles would take 4000 damage per second true damage.

Plenty of a buff imo. And its balanced for every level.

 

I like swarm.. damage is the only thing holding it back.

 

 

 

Btw for referance i have gendel build that can do 20000 damage to every level 201 enemy in a 43m radius. Per second.

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1 hour ago, (PS4)ForNoPurpose said:

Ok all tentacle swarm NEEDS is grendels damage scaling mechanic.

If the tentacles did 200×(enemylevel÷10) base.. 

Well a level 200 enemy held by the tentacles would take 4000 damage per second true damage.

Plenty of a buff imo. And its balanced for every level.

I like swarm.. damage is the only thing holding it back.

I thought about something like that, but then I also had to consider that Tentacle Swarm and Tempest Barrage both have significant overlap in their purposes, and between the two of them, Tentacle Swarm is more effective as a durational CC while Tempest Barrage is quite literally a cannon being continuously fired in one area and can affect enemies inside Undertow.

The point of the change isn't "just updating the damage of the kit", it's to mechanically refresh his toolkit to be more engaging.

I might revisit Hydroid in the OP of course, as none of the suggestions listed are necessarily static.

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1 hour ago, Archwizard said:

I thought about something like that, but then I also had to consider that Tentacle Swarm and Tempest Barrage both have significant overlap in their purposes, and between the two of them, Tentacle Swarm is more effective as a durational CC while Tempest Barrage is quite literally a cannon being continuously fired in one area and can affect enemies inside Undertow.

The point of the change isn't "just updating the damage of the kit", it's to mechanically refresh his toolkit to be more engaging.

I might revisit Hydroid in the OP of course, as none of the suggestions listed are necessarily static.

Not to menton you'll have to choose between CC or scaling damage. Not both. Otherwise DE will have another Magus Lockdown on their hands and they'll nerf it back.

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On 2020-05-27 at 6:11 PM, Snowpoint-Prime said:

Garuda:

Blood Forge is an Exilus Mod, and Creates ammo like the name suggests. (maybe it also buffs status chance briefly)

 

Wukong:

Defy Augment - Vacuums enemies in during cast, knocks prone when hit (instead of rag-dolling) Also, applies a debuff to affected enemies that makes Iron Staff deal bonus damage.

Blood Forge, I disagree with making it an Exilus Mod since it doesn't really do anything current Exilus Mods do - it doesn't aid mobility/visibility or count as a "niche" defensive benefit, and it even has a direct combat benefit since it bypasses the reload animation on a lot of weapons. Having it create ammo could maybe be argued, however.

I could definitely see Defy getting an augment to vacuum enemies in at a certain range, though I expect that would be where it stops since that would be a pretty powerful benefit for a melee-oriented frame on its own.

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Other than making Sonic Boom a one-handed cast, personally i don't see a reason why the Sonic Fracture augment couldn't also be built into the base ability as it's one of those abilities that don't really have much use without the augment past corner-clearing at high levels.

Sonar, we have open worlds now, so why not increase its base range, nothing else needs changing about this ability, maybe adding an option for charging this ability could be used to align the weakspots with head hitboxes to amplify the damage in return for an increased cast time, could also be made an one handed cast, but that's not so necessary.

Silence, just adding a precise slider for its range would fix all the issues about this ability.

Quake, i would rather go with either making this into a 'point on the minimap for high damage in a smaller AoE' type of ability or changing it entirely into either an Exalted sniper/railgun that triggers invis on headshots/weakspots (similarly to Arcane Trickery, but for more effort, with less duration, diminishing returns after a while-like 9-8-7-6...seconds and no rng involved, slight energy drain on each shot)or an ability that gives better crit chance-damage to your equipped weapons and does the same, but imo. the latter would be too exploitable with easy to use weapons and would only water down the way Banshee is played closer to a pre-Resonating Quake nerf press 4 to win state, so i rather wouldn't consider this as a viable alternative even though some people seem to have liked this idea in other threads, where i suggested similar changes, so i would rather go with the Exalted sniper approach, which would also fit the ghost/spirit theme with the invisibility and would synergize well with Sonar.

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The simplest change that will help a lot of the older frames is to include enemy level damage scaling formula. It seems like Grendel is a test frame for this Formula. To create an ability that will not get outscaled past level 30 like the older frames. It’s a huge success that allows Grendel to be viable without making him Too META.

Some abilities that will get a lot benefits from this change : Tempest Barage, Tentacle Swarm, Spectral Scream, Rumblers, Tectonic Wall, Freeze, Ice Wave, and many more.

 

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8 hours ago, DrivaMain said:

The simplest change that will help a lot of the older frames is to include enemy level damage scaling formula. It seems like Grendel is a test frame for this Formula. To create an ability that will not get outscaled past level 30 like the older frames. It’s a huge success that allows Grendel to be viable without making him Too META.

Some abilities that will get a lot benefits from this change : Tempest Barage, Tentacle Swarm, Spectral Scream, Rumblers, Tectonic Wall, Freeze, Ice Wave, and many more.

 

Great idea!

Btw Vauban was the first frame to feature the level scaling calculation, grendel perfected it.

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On 2020-05-28 at 10:30 PM, DrivaMain said:

The simplest change that will help a lot of the older frames is to include enemy level damage scaling formula. It seems like Grendel is a test frame for this Formula. To create an ability that will not get outscaled past level 30 like the older frames. It’s a huge success that allows Grendel to be viable without making him Too META.

Some abilities that will get a lot benefits from this change : Tempest Barage, Tentacle Swarm, Spectral Scream, Rumblers, Tectonic Wall, Freeze, Ice Wave, and many more.

So on the one hand, I concur that a lot of abilities can benefit from receiving the enemy level damage scaling formula.

On the other: 

  • If you have multiple damage-oriented abilities within one kit that receive an enhanced damage scaling, then one ability will be the default choice in all situations and potentially erase another. Consider frames like Ember, who for many years distilled their entire playstyle to spamming 4. Part of the intent with the reworks in the OP is to separate the purposes of abilities; a skill like Fireball would retain a purpose at high levels with a scaling effect, while a skill like Inferno already has one without it thanks to its massive AoE and the stacking of her passive, and would continue to erase Fireball with it. This already holds true for Grendel himself, who has damage scaling on the expulsion effect of his 1 that diminishes the value of his 3. The solution I've posed for many of the above reworks, then, is focusing on the purposes of one core "damage" ability per frame, and the others as either enhancements to it or sources of alternate effects.
  • Simply repeating the same enemy damage scaling formula will not necessarily enhance a frame's playstyle, as in many cases it is a 1-button effect. Certain frames benefit more from synergistic damage enhancements that are tailored to the mechanics inherent to their playstyle, such as Melee Comboing for Atlas. In the example of Vauban, the area affected by Photon Strike is small enough that it encourages synergy with his grouping skills like Vortex and Tether Grenades, allowing its damage to be used as a sort of finisher, or a reward for using his other mechanics.
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On 2020-05-27 at 4:36 PM, Archwizard said:

The Medic. Trinity has had a long and sordid history of mostly nerfs, as a result of her toolkit making the party effectively unkillable and negating the limitations of health and energy. Her problem is that in terms of balance, her kit isn't sustainable: Blessing completely overshadows Well of Life in any situation where her role as a healer is necessary, and Energy Vampire makes the cost distinction between the two irrelevant. By comparison to all other healers available, Trinity is the least demanding of the player, and the most rewarding to the party.

Nobody wants to reduce her overall potency as a healer or support frame. The trick is to make her kit more demanding in order to achieve a similar (or even better) effect.

Suggested changes:

  • Blessing: Reworked - No longer heals the party. Instead, Trinity makes every ally within affinity range of her immune to damage and stagger for a short duration, and purges them of status effects. When the immunity period ends, all damage negated is then converted into a buff to Armor which gradually diminishes over a period affected by Duration, as well as extending allies' bleedout time. Blessing cannot be recast during the immunity period.
    • New augment, "Salvation": Blessing restores all downed or damaged allies to a minimum of (25/50/75/100)% health/shields and adds the total healed to the armor bonus, but now consumes all of Trinity's energy on activation.
  • Well of Life: Reworked - No longer multiplies target health or gives health to Tenno attacking the target. Instead, the victim of Well of Life is suspended in the air and loses a fraction of its health every half-second as True damage, pulsing healing to Tenno over a massive radius based on the damage siphoned. Healing is reduced by distance to the target (up to 50% at maximum distance), and overhealing will restore shields (but not Overshields). Damage dealt to the victim of Well of Life by Tenno is negated and stored while the target is incapacitated, and inflicted when the effect ends; recasting Well of Life ends the effect prematurely.
    • Well of Life can also be hold-cast to pulse a percentage of healing to allies near Trinity, but less efficiently.
  • Energy Vampire: Reworked - The victim of Energy Vampire no longer pulses energy over a radius, instead pulsing Electric status from the target every second that stuns nearby enemies. Damage dealt to the victim of Energy Vampire by Tenno feeds energy directly to the attacking player, up to a cap per player per cast. Energy Vampire can be recast while active, but still only affects one target at a time.
    • Casting Energy Vampire on a victim of Well of Life allows attackers to siphon energy immediately from their attacks, even while the damage is suspended.
  • Link: Additional tethers fire from Link to victims of Trinity's Well of Life and Energy Vampire, regardless of distance. Can be recast while active to refresh the duration.
  • Passive: Trinity revives allies twice as quickly, up from 25% more quickly.

The goal here was to offload Blessing's healing ability onto Well of Life, and focus on Blessing as an "Oh Sh!t" button for Trinity. I know a handful of players will ask why — if having Well of Life and Blessing as two different heals in the same kit is a problem — I didn't consider removing Well of Life instead, or shifting its purpose as a heal onto Blessing. The answer here is twofold: the first is the age old aesthetic reason, that Well of Life was featured in a trailer so preserving the visual aspect was of middling priority. More importantly though, as Trinity is a healer-class Warframe, it seemed pertinent that the very first ability available to her would be one that would heal.
"But my Energy Vampire!", some will also say. The reason for that is... well, compare Trinity to Harrow or Nekros, who also provide an unlimited amount of energy to the party, but require a high demand in order to do so. Energy Vampire is something of a cheat skill; while several frames have methods to gain infinite energy, the fact of the matter is that that is part of how those specific frames are balanced, while other frames are powerful energy hogs who do not have any such native ability without something like Arcane Energize. Energy Vampire has long been an easy button for the team in this regard, particularly given how little demand it has on each player who benefits from it, as well as the low energy demand from Trinity herself. That one frame can top off the entire team's energy supply through one button press with no other action on the part of the players is a failing of her design that impacts the overall balance of the game. Honestly, this arrangement of asking you to actually hit the target (while still giving a means to ensure everyone can, and not even locking you out of abilities!) is the bare-minimum form of increasing that effort.

As a former Trinity main (now a Rhino main for very vain reasons - shiny, eternal and chrome) who still plays her, I am not a fan of this rework. I very much enjoy the straightforward way Blessing works - an AoE direct heal (I don't mod for duration and the damage reducation is just a nice bonus). I think the very concept of well of life needs to be changed. Like, get rid of the whole "mark an enemy and then you have to hit them", that's generally not how the game is played, or how you effectively heal a group. I am not sure what I would want in its stead, but imo the ability needs to be replaced entirely.

Otherwise, I have but two wishes for her kit:

1. Link should become a toggle, but allow energy gain from Energy Vampire (actually, I think all toggles should allow all forms of energy restoration to work through them, the only reason this was formerly nerfed was the Nyx #4 meta, which is dead for other reasons anyway).

2. Energy Vampire should not pulse energy as an arau around the target, but around Trinity.

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On 2020-06-02 at 10:30 AM, Mephane said:

As a former Trinity main (now a Rhino main for very vain reasons - shiny, eternal and chrome) who still plays her, I am not a fan of this rework. I very much enjoy the straightforward way Blessing works - an AoE direct heal (I don't mod for duration and the damage reducation is just a nice bonus). I think the very concept of well of life needs to be changed. Like, get rid of the whole "mark an enemy and then you have to hit them", that's generally not how the game is played, or how you effectively heal a group. I am not sure what I would want in its stead, but imo the ability needs to be replaced entirely.

Otherwise, I have but two wishes for her kit:

1. Link should become a toggle, but allow energy gain from Energy Vampire (actually, I think all toggles should allow all forms of energy restoration to work through them, the only reason this was formerly nerfed was the Nyx #4 meta, which is dead for other reasons anyway).

2. Energy Vampire should not pulse energy as an arau around the target, but around Trinity.

I might consider that, if you can tell me how that actually adds anything to Trinity's gameplay.

Because at the moment, she doesn't have much in that regard. She mindlessly plays whack-a-mole with health and energy. 

On the one-hand I could foresee a charitable argument that these suggestions are quality-of-life. However, I'm also well aware that your suggestions are asking to have your cake and eat it too, distilling her gameplay even further into fewer buttons and less specialized builds. Tap Link at the start of a mission to be virtually unkillable, occasionally tap EV to keep it up, and Blessing to be overkill. With the ability to center EV on herself and not have to recast Link (paired with Blessing already based on Affinity Range), she wouldn't need Duration or significant Range, in addition to Blessing not needing any more Strength than a regular Intensify gives and erasing the Efficiency needs of the entire party.
She would be, in effect, almost entirely stat independent, at minimal effort.

I can, do, and will continue to argue that your suggestions take away more from her gameplay than they add.

... And no, EV wasn't "only" nerfed because of Absorb, but also because of Sound Quake, World on Fire, and a number of Exalted weapons like Peacemaker, which could be kept up indefinitely as a result of EV, resulting in several mission types turning into loot-caves while everyone stood on top of a box and continously AoE'd the entire map down. The point of most toggled abilities is that they shouldn't be easy to keep up indefinitely, or will penalize you to a degree for attempting to (such as reduced mobility or defense), so that you aren't obligated to have them active at all times or at least have a reason to consider turning them back off. Sure there are exceptions, but those are frequently from frames who can generate their own energy through a specific gameplay loop.
Perhaps these metas are dead now, but that's largely as a result of changes like removing their ability to benefit from an infinite energy generator.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Been playing around with Protea. The kit is solid, though I have a few nagging concerns about the design still:

  1. Thematically, Temporal Anchor is... out of place. I get that it's a huge part of her story and an immutable facet of her kit now, but we have a Time-based power on a frame with no other Time-based skills; since "Time Elemental" has been pretty high on a lot of checklists for fan designs since basically the beginning of the game, it's somewhat disheartening to see such a power flipped onto a completely unrelated kit that will inevitably be pointed to as an example of "fulfillment", like how Oberon was "kinda Earth-y" in Scott's view for nearly two years before Atlas dropped.
  2. Because of Temporal Anchor resetting her energy, health and ammo anyway, Dispensary is extraneous within the kit. It fuels her up until she can activate the Anchor, but after that it doesn't do much for her -- it's just there for raw team support, and her shield satellites already do that...
  3. Blaze Artillery's AoE on each target has a fixed range and she has no grouping tools to exploit that.

At a certain point you gotta wonder if maybe she and Vauban should have considered swapping a few abilities between them, like giving her the Tether Grenade and Vauban the Dispensary...

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vor 8 Minuten schrieb Archwizard:

Been playing around with Protea. The kit is solid, though I have a few nagging concerns about the design still:

  1. Thematically, Temporal Anchor is... out of place. I get that it's a huge part of her story and an immutable facet of her kit now, but we have a Time-based power on a frame with no other Time-based skills; since "Time Elemental" has been pretty high on a lot of checklists for fan designs since basically the beginning of the game, it's somewhat disheartening to see such a power flipped onto a completely unrelated kit that will inevitably be pointed to as an example of "fulfillment", like how Oberon was "kinda Earth-y" in Scott's view for nearly two years before Atlas dropped.
  2. Because of Temporal Anchor resetting her energy, health and ammo anyway, Dispensary is extraneous within the kit. It fuels her up until she can activate the Anchor, but after that it doesn't do much for her -- it's just there for raw team support, and her shield satellites already do that...
  3. Blaze Artillery's AoE on each target has a fixed range and she has no grouping tools to exploit that.

At a certain point you gotta wonder if maybe she and Vauban should have considered swapping a few abilities between them, like giving her the Tether Grenade and Vauban the Dispensary...

On top of the "time" frame was Limbo kinda already also. I mean i love concepts but its way to much by now especially frames without Lore and context like Hildryn and Baruuk as latest example. It hurts the world building and connections to all on top of the content islands.

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3 minutes ago, Marine027 said:

On top of the "time" frame was Limbo kinda already also. I mean i love concepts but its way to much by now especially frames without Lore and context like Hildryn and Baruuk as latest example. It hurts the world building and connections to all on top of the content islands.

Eh. Limbo only became so after Stasis was added, and that has more to do with the Rift Plane having flexible dimensional properties in Limbo's hands than him actively warping Time within native reality. To that effect, Stasis makes him as much a Time frame as Baelfire makes Hildryn an Electric elemental; the actual 'time' part is incidental compared to its CC purpose within the kit.

Temporal Anchor is, meanwhile, a massive part of both Protea's lore and gameplay, and can't really have its effect be substituted or explained away with another phenomenon.

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  • 3 weeks later...

With the Steel Path finally released, I think it's a good time to start re-examining the least solid frames, and incorporate the lessons from the topmost competitors.

Zephyr seems to be one of the weakest ones, while frames who can strip or bypass armor are once again on top, despite years of revisions to balance armor out.

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5 hours ago, Archwizard said:

With the Steel Path finally released, I think it's a good time to start re-examining the least solid frames, and incorporate the lessons from the topmost competitors.

Zephyr seems to be one of the weakest ones, while frames who can strip or bypass armor are once again on top, despite years of revisions to balance armor out.

I think we have regressed since Damage 1.0.

Back then, there was simply an "Armor Piercing" element that you could put on any weapon that just straight up ignored armor.

Now we have Viral/Slash/Hunter Munitions which does the same thing with extra steps, prayers to RNGesus and takes up more mod space.

I'm just wondering, how this:

latest?cb=20130411221234Got nerfed into this:latest?cb=20171007150504

DE needs to take a second pass at the Damage Reduction Formula. Armor was a problem in Damage 1.0 and 2.0, still remains a problem today.

Armor 2.0.

From:

Damage Reduction = Net Armor / (Net Armor +300)

To something like:

Damage Reduction = Net Armor / (Net Armor + 300 + *Base Puncture of Weapon)

The flat +50% damage and 50% armor ignore Puncture has against Ferrite right now doesn't scale very well. My proposal is to allow Puncture Damage itself to scale with armor mitigation. It would allow slow firing precision weapons that can't stack status to scale better. 

I wished the Opticor was actually good against armor without Hunter Munitions RNGesus.

IUTu3bK.png

Slash>>>Puncture against armor for years, yet the UI still says Puncture is "most effective against armor". Puncture loses to Slash against Heavy Gunners as early as level 40s and in the Steel Path, Puncture Damage just tickles the Grineer.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Decided to take the time to update our dear Inaros' listing, since his Prime access has increased the urgency of a rework to him.

More pressing of course is the Helminth update coming in Heart of Deimos, but until the list of transferable abilities is officially released, there's not much to speak to yet. I know generally the consensus is that each frame's "worst" ability is likely to be the only transfer candidates (largely meaning "Damage + Status" tools like Fireball, Ice Wave and Shock), but there are several cases where I can see it being considered borderline broken depending on execution.

For instance, as I said with Protea above, her kit fundamentally lacks a grouping tool to fully exploit her abilities and her Dispensary is slightly extraneous, even replaceable. We've already had confirmation that Zephyr's Air Burst will create a mini-Vortex when charged, which puts at least one grouping tool on the table; given the unique composition of his kit, I fully expect Nidus' Larva to be a candidate as well.
Also of note is Nekros, a frame who similarly has two tools that scatter enemies despite his Desecrate banking on corpses being grouped up. Larva would be substantial for a Desecrate build as a largely Range-dependent and Duration-independent tool. Conversely, his Soul Survivor augment being transferred to Trinity over Well of Life would make her indisputable as the top healer bar none.

If even one high-damage ability like Photon Strike or Blaze Artillery was put into the mix, I would be amazed to see how that would affect Limbo builds.
Not to mention the potential of any of Nezha's first 3 abilities on Ember over Fireball, or Protea's Shield Grenades on Hildryn. A speed buff on Ivara (Saryn's Molt, perhaps?) or Cloudwalker on Loki, any kind of damage buff on Exalted frames or additional mitigation onto any tank... something powerful will slip through the cracks.

I only hope it doesn't lead to knee-jerk nerfs, or DE washing their hands of balancing the frames as they were.

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I like this thread, and may update with more input as i read through more. Do you know approximately what point in that podcast that Pablo mentioned the goal? I tried skimming through it, but it's too long lol.

-I love the Hydroid changes. It seems much more fluid (hehe) than his current setup. I would like them to get rid of the charge mechanic of his Tempest Barrage though.

-Loki is one of the only frames in the game I actually hate. These changes actually make him seem fun to play.  My one issue is with invisibility. He already makes the game easy mode with it as it is. Giving him the ability to stack the duration and apply it to his allies nearby seems way too powerful. That would be better suited as a toggle if people want endless invisibility, and costs more per second per player in it. Invisibility is one of the most powerful mechanics in the game so if people want more of it, they gotta pay for it somehow, it can't come for free.

-Mag

On 2020-05-27 at 10:36 AM, Archwizard said:

Pull: Velocity is no longer affected by Power Strength, only distance from Mag. Casting on Magnetize bubbles supercharges their innate pull, dragging enemies into the bubble and knocking them down instead of pulling them toward Mag. Can also drag shards from Polarize to Mag, if they aren't already in a Magnetize bubble.

Yes, please.

-The Trinity rework is fantastic. She is a slow, lazy frame in a fast paced game. I never had an issue with her being powerful. I had an issue with the fact that she does it effortlessly and selfishly. This rework looks like it took some good advice from Harrow, which is a far more popular frame in the post-raid, post-void endurance run days.

- No changes suggested for Atlas's worst ability? Tectonics definitely needs to be reworked or replaced. 

  • To improve it, make the size scale with range. Add an aura to it that allows a chance for enemies to drop rubble when killed in range of it. When reaching various health thresholds, or any time it takes melee damage it creates a shockwave that ragdolls all enemies out of it's radius.
    • Remove the boulder effect. Instead, when destroyed, recast or hold-cast it detonates outward dealing damage to all enemies around it, petrifying them. With the augment equipped, hold-cast will detonate all active walls.

-Limbo - I like the Rift change suggestion, but the Rift needs more inherent changes to be gameplay friendly to himself and allies.

  • Allies should automatically enter or leave the Rift whenever attacking an enemies on a different plane than them. They can still dodge roll to manually leave the Rift, and only stay in the Rift for a short duration after they stop attacking Rifted targets.
  • Allies (but not Limbo) can still pick up items in the Rift, and all players automatically leave the Rift when interacting with doors, consoles, objectives, etc.
  • Limbo loses his Rift portal effect since it's no longer needed, but he can still dodge in and out of the Rift at will for unlimited duration (since that is his defensive skill) which is why he does not naturally pick up items while Rifted like "unstably" rifted allies.

- The Rhino Roar addition is great! It never made sense when they removed his threat generation from Iron Skin since he is the original tank of the game yet doesn't actually try to protect his allies naturally. All "tank" frames in this game need to have higher threat generation associated with their abilities.

 

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On 2020-05-27 at 9:09 PM, Leuca said:

and make the energy consumption cap out

I've said for a long time that DE could be doing a lot better balancing over all using an idea like this. Individual abilities that are especially troublesome to balance within a kit, with too much risk to be weak or overpowered, should have built in caps or minimum stats. Purely for example, giving Vex Armor a minimum range possible regardless of mods with the trade off possibly being a lower cap on damage output than currently possible with power strength mods.

I don't suggest it be the norm for every ability, but definitely a possibility for specific ones that stand out as difficult to balance. This way they don't have to instantly decide something like lower base damage when things don't go their way. This way those abilities can just have a smaller moddable value range than others.

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On 2020-05-28 at 12:34 AM, (PS4)ForNoPurpose said:

Ok all tentacle swarm NEEDS is grendels damage scaling mechanic.

If the tentacles did 200×(enemylevel÷10) base.. 

Well a level 200 enemy held by the tentacles would take 4000 damage per second true damage.

Plenty of a buff imo. And its balanced for every level.

Almost every damage ability in the game should scale based on enemy level.

You're right, this alone would solve most of its issue. Currently people hate that it flails too much since they can't shoot it, but that's only because the dang things can't kill the enemies themselves.

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On 2020-08-05 at 2:08 PM, (PS4)Ozymandias-13- said:

I've said for a long time that DE could be doing a lot better balancing over all using an idea like this. Individual abilities that are especially troublesome to balance within a kit, with too much risk to be weak or overpowered, should have built in caps or minimum stats. Purely for example, giving Vex Armor a minimum range possible regardless of mods with the trade off possibly being a lower cap on damage output than currently possible with power strength mods.

I don't suggest it be the norm for every ability, but definitely a possibility for specific ones that stand out as difficult to balance. This way they don't have to instantly decide something like lower base damage when things don't go their way. This way those abilities can just have a smaller moddable value range than others.

I honestly still think my original idea for Equinox's Pacify would be a healthy implementation. If every enemy simply consumed x energy once upon entering the aura's range, and had to consume the energy again if it left and then re-entered your aura, this would still be more energy intensive than Provoke while still not being completely unwieldy. It also still desperately needs a rework to how it goes about reducing damage.

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