Possible Chroma rework, any thoughts from DE staff and players?

[(NSW)Gamer-Steve]

I thought of this a few days ago, and after reading up on his abilities and seeing what a lot of people have said I hope this is a viable consideration. There aren't specific numbers to go with this, but it addresses some key things I've seen noted on the forums about him. It's important to note I'm not demanding for a rework, but if one did happen this is the best I can think of, in the hopes that it'd help improve him in some way.

Existing passive / preface to rework:

Passive: A frame's passive is often the cornerstone of what they're about, and most of the time offers good utility and / or synergizes with their abilities. Chroma's however, impacts Fashion-frame by using his emissive color tones (It is a cool incorporation, but can be implemented in another way, like in this post) which has made some (Not all of course) players feel that he doesn't have a "real passive", to put it one way.

Chroma Rework:

New Passive: After a double jump or bullet jump, hold the jump button to bring out his effigy's wings. This can add some new gameplay & variety in his maneuverability by allowing him to hover in place temporarily (Up to DE staff on how long!) and use his 1 (Playing as his effigy in a way) to breath a given element a certain distance (Matching his 1's stats) wherever Chroma looks, leaving a trail of destruction in it's wake. This allows you to basically carpet bomb groups of enemies by flying over them as a dragon of sorts!

New passive's control scheme:

Tapping jump in order to gain more height (Not infinite height probably), moving forward allows you to glide, moving back brings you to the ground early. You can strafe quickly to the side by tapping left or right while tapping jump. When he lands on the ground, his wings would fold back in / disappear, etc. (However that works).

• Primary & secondary weapons can still be used normally while in the air. Certain melee weapon types can be used to swoop in and lance at enemies in theory (You'd arc down into them to attack, and the momentum / wing flapping would bring you back up to a certain height above the ground).
   
• Important change!  Chroma should be able to make use of energy restores while his abilities are in use, like essentially all other frames (Unless there's another I haven't thought of).

Proposed changes with Chroma's abilities:
 

1st ability, Spectral Scream: In accordance with other frames (Wisp, Vauban, and others) with cycling capability, Chroma should be able to decide what element he wants to breath out on the go (Like Spyro), so tap to select an element (Heat, Electric, Toxin, Cold), and hold to breath out. Still uses energy only while in use.

(Elements can now be selected mid-mission as of Deimos Arcana!)

• The Afterburn ( https://warframe.fandom.com/wiki/Afterburn ) augment should be baked into the ability, or only while carpet bombing during the new passive, adding to the elemental trail of devastation.

2nd ability, Elemental Ward: From what I gather, I think his existing Ward's ability is good as is, but if DE feels it necesary, certain buffs (Nothing huge) may be implemented for certain elements, & of course fixing the HP bug with the Heat element.

• The Everlasting Ward ( https://warframe.fandom.com/wiki/Everlasting_Ward ) augment is perfect as is :]
   
• For those who haven't heard about it, the HP bug involves a Heat-based Elemental Ward. It causes allies that enter it's radius (Gaining the buff), who then leave and re-enter that Chroma's radius (Not sure if it matters if it's from the same player's Chroma) not re-gaining the buff. It leaves an empty space where the bonus HP would be, and any attempts to heal the player (Including Medi-ray) won't work to fill that missing HP.
   
• New addition as of Update 29.5, since Elemental Ward is also a Subsume ability for other Warframes, they should be able to select elements mid-mission too, it would only be fair to them I think. Tap to select and element, and hold to cast your selected elemental effect! If possible for Chroma, I'm wondering if you could simply tap his 1 & 2 one after the other to tap and cycle your elements that way, going beyond the original suggestion I had for Spectral Scream above.
   

3rd ability, Vex Armor: The ability itself is good as-is, I don't believe it needs to be merged with his 2; But (Unless it already does, I haven't seen if it does) maybe it should be able to stack with the armor buff from Elemental Ward, perhaps having both abilities work in tandem based on the chosen element (I'm leaving that up to DE staff and player insight, his 2 & 3 are different types of abilities, so I think they can cover specific selected bases depending on the player's situation, compared to completely merging them. Though if DE staff / players have a good idea for that, I'm all ears!).

• The Vexing Retaliation ( https://warframe.fandom.com/wiki/Vexing_Retaliation ) augment should provide different status procs based on the chosen element, instead of only a puncture or blast proc (Whether shields or HP are damaged). It's up to DE staff and player insight as to what element status effects should proc when Shields / HP get damaged. This way each element can proc two kinds of things!

4th ability, Effigy: Can't take flight with his passive while his sentry is deployed of course. BUT, while it is, Chroma can command it to stay still to guard a defense objective like a regular spectre, and the energy drain should be about half of what it currently is, unless it should be gone after being killed. If killed, there should be a period of time for the scars of battle to wear off before Chroma can re-deploy it. Rejuvenation or other HP recovery methods can speed this up (Makes sense if it can recover HP by rejuvenation already).

• The sentry's attack range (At least this if not the next parts on this point), radial, and knockback radius should be at least somewhat affected by ability range. Chroma's speed bonus and armor reduction are most likely safe as they are.
   
• The Guided Effigy ( https://warframe.fandom.com/wiki/Guided_Effigy ) augment needs to be baked in, possibly changed to have the sentry follow Chroma wherever he goes as backup.
   
• I'm not sure if this is the case, but the sentry should perhaps gain the amount of armor Chroma has at the time of casting, wearing down as it takes damage in battle, depending on which part of it's body is shot at too much (A little similar to boss enemies). (This part is optional)
   
• You could still cancel the ability normally, or jump into the effigy to start off in the air again, just like normal during his new passive; Also ending the ability's energy drain! If the sentry can recover HP as is, it should heal in the same way while not in use.
   

With all this in mind, I've made a personal Umbral Chroma build for general purposes: http://warframe-builder.com/s/cf67dae27efac753 

• I plan to use the Everlasting Ward augment, though the Warframe builder website doesn't have that augment listed yet. If anyone wants to try this build, feel free to! I hope it'd help.
   
• Here's an Umbral Eidolon Hunter build using the same polarities, for those who have that in mind: http://warframe-builder.com/s/dd2fe4efe6d54859 (It should prove useful in and of itself)
   
• Personally I would want to use Rejuvenation, but balancing aura capacity isn't the main topic here (DE staff: As far as that goes my Umbral E. Hunter build for example would work at exactly 76 mod capacity, which can be achieved with an aura that provides 8 capacity (Assuming a matching slot polarity!), so it could be possible to make all auras have 8 capacity, if it's not considered ideal to bring them all up to Steel Charge's 9 capacity) (Again this isn't the main thing, just one thought I had while working on this)

I can certainly understand that other frames may need reworks as well, and DE may want to work on them in the future before Chroma, and that's alright. When / if the time comes for Chroma to be looked at by Staff, I'll recommend this to that thread. I've also heard of other Chroma rework concepts, so maybe DE can gather all these ideas to brainstorm something new for him in that case.

This is how I may look him over, so if anyone has some thoughts on the matter, by all means let me know. I'm looking forward to seeing what we can come up with.

[elevate]

People don't use chroma as the eidolon dps role any more. Volt replaced him because volt provides a nice speed buff and you aren't forced into using a secondary like the stug to get ur buff reliably

[(PSN)Tomplexthis]

theres 1 issue with chroma. 1 flaw.

1 thing i dont like.. and its uh 1

its his 1 -_-

[(NSW)Gamer-Steve]

Oh gotcha, that makes sense. The most significant change involving his 1 is the elemental cycling capability, as for what the ability is, we'll have to figure that out over time I suppose.

As for the buffs / credit increase from his effigy, those are still in place, I just didn't feel that that had to be changed; Why would a dragon not want or try to get more credits :]

[(NSW)Gamer-Steve]

I've listed this thread on the most recent home Devstream thread (For November 6th, 2020). 

I noticed that after using some other energy-draining abilities, I can see why energy restores may not be usable while said abilities are in use (Such as Titania's Razorwing!). It would really extend how long they last.

Although the drain speed of Chroma's Effigy is still a tad too much at times. Perhaps it could be a viable option to have it be shown off on the bottom corner of your screen like Wukong's Twin? That way you can see how much health / shields it has left.

[(NSW)Gamer-Steve]

I saw something very interesting, so I thought I should list it here:

From Update 29.5, Deimos Arcana:

WARFRAME ABILITY CHANGES:

The first group in our “touch all Warframes” list! We aim to give each Warframe a little quality of life touch up and not laser focus on one Warframe at a time.

(Other Warframes were listed besides Chroma here)

Chroma:

• Spectral Scream: Removed Status Chance stat, now always 100%. Enemies hit by the breath will chain the damage to one other enemy outside the breath. You can now swap between Elementals on the fly with Spectral Scream - no longer dependent on your primary emissive color! 

• *Increased Spectral Scream damage from 200 to 400 Damage Per Second at Max Rank!

• Quote

  New Passive: The Design Council suggested ‘Dragon’s Flight’ - a Passive that allows Chroma to perform an additional jump / bullet jump while sprouting his Dragon Wings to give him that extra aerial dominance! 

  And here's what I've written in my rework above:

 

On 2020-07-30 at 12:45 AM, (NSW)Gamer-Steve said:

Chroma Rework:

New Passive: After a double jump or bullet jump, hold the jump button to bring out his effigy's wings. This can add some new gameplay & variety in his maneuverability by allowing him to hover in place temporarily (Up to DE staff on how long!) and use his 1 (Playing as his effigy in a way) to breath a given element a certain distance (Matching his 1's stats) wherever Chroma looks, leaving a trail of destruction in it's wake. This allows you to basically carpet bomb groups of enemies by flying over them as a dragon of sorts!

I'm happy to see this change, and I would've mentioned this on that update thread if I could instead, but I'm just very surprised! Was this a partial inspiration @[DE]Megan, by any chance? I'm not sure if an idea similar to what's on my thread had been mentioned anywhere else. But either way, I'm looking forward to giving that a try when it arrives on consoles :)

 

That being said, I wanted to update my rework thread as well briefly:   (Now done as of 3:05am on 11-20-2020)

On 2020-07-30 at 12:45 AM, (NSW)Gamer-Steve said:

Proposed changes with Chroma's abilities:
 

1st ability, Spectral Scream: In accordance with other frames (Wisp, Vauban, and others) with cycling capability, Chroma should be able to decide what element he wants to breath out on the go (Like Spyro), so tap to select an element (Heat, Electric, Toxin, Cold), and hold to breath out. Still uses energy only while in use. 

(Elements can now be selected mid-mission as of Deimos Arcana!)

• The Afterburn ( https://warframe.fandom.com/wiki/Afterburn ) augment should be baked into the ability, or only while carpet bombing during the new passive, adding to the elemental trail of devastation.

2nd ability, Elemental Ward: From what I gather, I think his existing Ward's ability is good as is, but if DE feels it necesary, certain buffs (Nothing huge) may be implemented for certain elements, & of course fixing the HP bug with the Heat element.

• The Everlasting Ward ( https://warframe.fandom.com/wiki/Everlasting_Ward ) augment is perfect as is :]
   
• For those who haven't heard about it, the HP bug involves a Heat-based Elemental Ward. It causes allies that enter it's radius (Gaining the buff), who then leave and re-enter that Chroma's radius (Not sure if it matters if it's from the same player's Chroma) not re-gaining the buff. It leaves an empty space where the bonus HP would be, and any attempts to heal the player (Including Medi-ray) won't work to fill that missing HP.
  
  (I'll add this to the original post)
• "New addition as of Update 29.5, since Elemental Ward is also a Subsume ability for other Warframes, they should be able to select elements mid-mission too, it would only be fair to them I think. Tap to select and element, and hold to cast your selected elemental effect! If possible for Chroma, I'm wondering if you could simply tap his 1 & 2 one after the other to tap and cycle your elements that way, going beyond the original suggestion I had for Spectral Scream above."

I noticed a few other players here & there also suggested about giving the elemental cycle capability to Elemental Ward as well, so I think it would make sense in the long run. It would give other Warframes the same fair shot at using his Ward to the fullest extent, as opposed to how Chroma needed to rely on his emissive color for so long. I still feel that it was an interesting passive, but functionally it's far more useful for a Warframe to be able to adapt during a mission, not just for Chroma, but for any frame with his Elemental Ward.

 

Thank you for hearing me out on all that!