In Too Much Detail: Valkyr

[(PSN)digitalgabeg]

Background

I love Valkyr. I love her story and her style - where else but Warframe would you find this former experiment gone berserk who is also kind of a cat maybe. I love the way she plays - like a frantic axe-murdering vampire, desperate to stab all the things as fast as possible. Valkyr was the first frame I paid platinum for, and remains my most-used warframe. She chewed up the star chart, and she carried me out of the Second Dream. She's my partner - when I go into new content, I always bring Valkyr.

Given the pending Helminth update, which is currently slated to make Valkyr's War Cry ability available to all frames, I would like to discuss the state of Valkyr. As much as I love her, I would be the first to admit that her kit has gotten a bit crusty with age and would benefit from an update.

This post ended up being a lot longer than intended; sorry about the volume, I hope it's all useful and interesting.

Statistics

Valkyr has low shields, low energy, average health, and the most armor of any warframe. This fits her berserker theme, but leaves her in an odd place overall.

In terms of raw survivability, a max-rank Valkyr has an effective HP of 900 without mods, and 3,848 with max-rank Vitality and Steel Fiber. This is nowhere near Inaros (3,850 unmodded / 11,920 with maxed mods) or Grendel (2,279 unmodded / 8,936 with maxed mods) but is pretty good alongside other titans of armor and health. (Atlas: 750 / 3,071; Ash: 600 / 1,887; Chroma: 651 / 2,553; Nidus: 1,125 / 4,606; Wukong: 824 / 3,053)

Apart from survivability, Valkyr's stats don't do much to help her. Her low energy in particular is problematic, since War Cry is expensive and Hysteria ramps up to a very high energy cost. Situations with limited energy, such as energy-drain eximus units or an energy reduction sortie modifier, usually mean that Valkyr just doesn't get to use her abilities at all.

Passive

Valkyr's passive is lackluster: 50% faster recovery from knockdown and immunity to hard landings. Personally, I hate (hate hate hate hate) being knocked down, so I feel that this bonus is more valuable than it appears at first glance. However, other warframes have passives which provide a flavor that guides your tactics. (e.g. Gauss, Limbo, Wisp, Wukong) In comparsion, Valkyr's passive is little more than a small statistical bonus. Also, Valkyr's passive is strictly reactive; it doesn't enable the player to do interesting things, it just mitigates some things enemies can do. It's not bad, it's not great, it's just kind of mediocre.

Suggestions

• Keep Valkyr's current passive bonuses, and also give her the effect of the Rage mod. Atlas gets something like Sure-Footed in his passive, Ivara gets something like Enemy Radar, Titania gets something like Mobilize, so this seems fair to me. Rage feels like an obviously essential mod for Valkyr, and implies that she wants to be up front blocking bullets with her face, so let's just bake it in.

Rip Line

Valkyr's first ability, Rip Line, fires a grappling hook which can pull other creatures toward the player, or pull the player toward terrain. In practice, it is far more useful for mobility than it is for combat.

As a mobility tool, Rip Line is fantastic. It has great range, and the acceleration it gives you persists after the ability ends, so you can sustain it into an aim glide. It's a little expensive for what it does, especially given Valkyr's limited energy pool, but it's still very good.

Pulling in enemies (or allies) with Rip Line sounds great in theory, but has several practical difficulties.

1. The only way to choose what Rip Line will do is by aiming precisely. Rip Line pulls things toward you only if you are aiming directly at them; otherwise, it pulls you to terrain.
2. It is difficult to get the reticle directly onto a target quickly and precisely, given how fast-paced Warframe usually is. This difficulty increases as the things you're aiming at get farther away (especially on console) which is unfortunate since things that are farther away are more desirable targets.
3. The benefit for hitting something with Rip Line is small, since your target is pulled toward you with an inconsistent amount of force. Ideally, you could use this ability to yank enemies into melee range, so that you can engage them without moving, but that's rarely the result. Most often, the target flies past you with significant velocity. That has niche uses, but is usually purely inconvenient; the enemy not only doesn't land in melee range, but also flies off-screen, requiring you to turn around and visually locate them again.
4. The cost for "missing" with Rip Line is significant. Usually when you want to pull something toward you, it's because you very much do not want to go to that thing, but that's exactly what happens when you "miss".

Rip Line's Augment mod (Swing Line) lets you use Rip Line a few times for free, after you've used it one time at full cost, while you're airborne. This is not especially interesting or notable; there are very few situations where you'll want to (or be able to) use Rip Line more than once, in midair, without touching the ground.

Suggestions

1. Change Rip Line so that when you tap the ability button, you pull your target towards yourself, and when you hold the ability button, you pull yourself toward your target.
   This will eliminate the penalty for "missing".
2. Give Rip Line a little bit of auto-aim, so that you don't need to be aiming directly at a creature to pull them in.
   This will make it easier to use this ability quickly and against more distant targets, especially for console players.
3. Give Rip Line an indicator (like what Wisp has when aiming at a reservoir) to show who Rip Line is currently targeting.
   This will make it easy to know who you're about to grab even when there's a lot going on or a lot of visual noise on the screen.
4. Adjust the effect of pulling in a target, so that they always stop moving and land directly in front of Valkyr.
   This will make the effect of pulling a creature in far more useful. Nidus' Larva and Vauban's Vortex already do this to many enemies at once, so it feels fair for Valkyr to get a similar effect. Add an animation too, so that Valkyr smacks the target as they come in, to justify the sudden stop.
5. Change Swing Line so that instead of giving you free uses of Rip Line after using it once, it just reduces the cost of using Rip Line to pull yourself to terrain by 80%.
   This would provide the same effective benefit, but would be far more useful overall.

War Cry

Valkyr's second ability, War Cry, is far and away her most popular ability, and for good reason. It greatly increases attack speed and armor for allies, and slows enemies, within a large area for a short time. This is excellent, but I do have a few comments.

• Given that it only lasts 15 seconds, the fact that you spend the first two of those seconds locked in the casting animation, unable to even move, is very irritating. (Two-ish seconds - not exact numbers - it feels slow, is what I'm saying)
• The fact that you can't recast it while it's active is inconvenient - since War Cry slows enemies down, I often want to recast it before it expires, to expose new enemies to the slow effect. The delay is also unnecessary - War Cry doesn't provide any kind of stacking or repeatable bonus, and it's very expensive to cast, so there's no reason to make us wait for it to expire before recasting it.
• A 50% increase in armor sounds large, but because it is a percent increase and doesn't multiply other armor increases, it doesn't provide much benefit.
  • Warframes with small amounts of base armor will get proportionately small (and therefore unhelpful) bonuses.
    For example: Nyx has average health (300) and is tied with several other warframes for having the lowest amount of armor. She has 100 armor, which provides 25% damage reduction. Assuming that Nyx has a max-rank Vitality mod equipped (for 740 hp) she has an effective HP of 986.6. War Cry grants a 50% bonus, increasing her armor to 150. This increases her damage reduction to 33.3%, and increases her effective HP to 1110, an increase of about 123 HP - not much help.
  • Conversely, warframes with large amounts of armor get large bonuses, but since the damage reduction from armor falls off geometrically, they also get little benefit from this.
    Valkyr herself has 600 armor. Assuming she equips max-rank Vitality and Steel Fiber, she has 1260 armor, 80.77% damage reduction, and 3848 effective HP. With War Cry active, her armor goes up to 1560, her damage reduction goes up to 83.87%, and her effective HP goes up to 4588, an increase of 740 HP - much more than Nyx, but still only about half of Grendel and less than 40% of Inaros with maxed mods and no buffs at all.

War Cry's Augment (Eternal War) is also excellent. It extends the duration of War Cry's effect a little bit every time Valkyr kills an enemy with a melee attack. Given that Valkyr's main niche is as a melee murderer, this works out very well. It does have the slight inconvenience that, since you can't recast it until it expires, you will quickly kill the enemies slowed by your initial cast of War Cry, and will be unable to slow other enemies, possibly for quite some time.

Suggestions

As I mentioned, War Cry is excellent. It doesn't need changes, but if someone is inclined to give it a look, here's what I would recommend.

• Speed up the casting animation a bit.
• Allow Valkyr to recast this ability before it expires.
• Change the armor bonus from a percent increase to a flat increase. (like the bonus from Wukong's Defy) This will provide much more benefit to Valkyr's allies, especially the fragile ones who need it most. I think a flat increase of 500 would be good - that would take the most fragile frames up to 600 armor (the place that Valkyr starts at) and would still provide a significant increase for Valkyr herself. I think this amount is reasonable, since Wukong's Defy can grant 1500 flat armor and lasts 10 seconds longer.
• Change the bonuses to allies and the slowing effect on enemies to be an aura around Valkyr. (like Chroma's Elemental Ward) This will allow allies who missed the initial cast to gain its benefits by being near Valkyr, will allow Valkyr to enjoy the benefit of slower enemies for the entire length of the ability, and will prevent these bonuses from falling off when players use Eternal War.

Paralysis

Valkyr's third ability, Paralysis, is a bit weird. It knocks off 33% of Valkyr's shields, inflicts damage on nearby enemies in proportion to what your shields were at before you used the ability, and opens those enemies to melee finishers.

In theory, the damage this ability deals could be huge; with a max-rank Redirection and maximum overshields (total 2010 shields) plus an Intensify mod to crank up the multiplier, it should do a little over 9000 damage, and it has a 10 meter range. However, it has numerous drawbacks.

• That "over 9000" damage number is with maximum Overshields, which Valkyr doesn't have a built-in way to get. Without overshields, with just a max-rank redirection, the damage is a little less than 3700 points instead.
• This damage is 100% impact damage - great on shields, not great on anything else, and the status effect from Impact overlaps with the stun that the Paralysis causes automatically.
• The damage inflicted diminishes with distance - you only get that 3.7k damage at point blank range. I don't know exactly how big the falloff is, what the precise damage is at extreme range, but my experience using the ability leads me to say "much less".
• You can only use it a maximum of three times in a row, and it deals less damage each time.
• If someone is shooting at you, each shot you take reduces the damage that this ability will do. If you're under heavy fire and your shields are down, this ability does no damage at all.
• It costs 5 energy each time, which is very small but also is not nothing, especially given Valkyr's small energy pool.

I've tried to build a nuking Valkyr several times; each time, I was disappointed with the results. So I would consider the damage from Paralysis to be inconsequential.

The other effects of Paralysis, stunning victims and opening them up for finishers, are of limited use. Warframe as a whole is mainly about killing lots of things very quickly, and Valkyr doubles down on that theme. In the time it takes to do one finisher, I can usually kill 5 to 10 people just by swinging my weapon around. So those effects aren't much use either.

One of the most interesting uses for Paralysis is a very niche case: breaking boxes. Paralysis breaks containers and ignores obstacles, so you can give Valkyr a max-range build and a vacuum-equipped sentinel and then shout your way through any level, scooping up all the loot and easily finding the Ayatan Treasures and Syndicate Medallions that are left behind.

The augment for Paralysis, Prolonged Paralysis, is surprisingly good. On paper, it increases the time enemies are stunned by Paralysis; in practice, this is implemented as a slowing effect, which is great short-term crowd control. Even better, it causes enemies within 50% of the ability's max range to be knocked prone and pulled toward you, setting them up for ground finishers, area attacks, or just plain old rapid hacking and slashing.

Suggestions

Paralysis feels like it needs a significant rework. I feel like it might make more sense if Paralysis was connected to the melee combo meter rather than Valkyr's shields, so here's an idea for a rework based on that.

• Increase Paralysis' energy cost to 50, and remove its shield drain.
• Change Paralysis to deal flat damage instead of damage based on Valkyr's shields. Without mods, Paralysis currently deals 300 / 375 / 450 / 525 damage, so let's use that for our pattern.
• Change Paralysis so that it resets the melee combo counter and multiplies its damage by the current melee multiplier. The player's combo efficiency should affect this combo counter reset.
• The damage dealt by Paralysis should be Impact damage by default, but if Valkyr has a melee weapon equipped, then the damage dealt by Paralysis should match the types and proportions of damage that the player's melee weapon has. So for example, if Valkyr is wielding a  Venka equipped with max rank Pressure Point, Fever Strike, and Vicious Frost, so that it deals 15.4 impact damage (1%) 77 puncture damage (8%) 215.6 slash damage (20%) and 770 viral damage (71%) then Paralysis should deal 1% impact damage, 8% puncture damage, 20% slash damage, and 71% viral damage.
• Paralysis should retain its current stun effect. In addition, it should inflict status effects in keeping with the damage types it uses. It should have a base status chance of 25%, which increases with power strength and which is also multiplied by the melee combo multiplier.
• Rename Paralysis to something more fitting, perhaps "Shockwave".
• Prolonged Paralysis doesn't need to be changed, but probably needs to be renamed. Perhaps "Implosive Shockwave".

These changes would tie Paralysis more closely to Valkyr's berserk melee attacking theme, would allow players to amplify its damage by doing what Valkyr already does - building the combo meter - and would give players the ability to adjust the involved damage types.

Hysteria

Valkyr's fourth ability, Hysteria, is her signature press-button-to-go-nuts-and-not-die ability. It's really good, and really fun to use; it makes you invincible and status immune, gives you badass energy claws with a unique stance, and even makes you do rolling flips when you jump, like you're Samus Aran or something. However, for all that it still has some severe limitations.

First, the limits on exalted weapons. Exalted weapons (like Valkyr's Talons) cannot equip most Combo Counter Mods, Acolyte Mods, or Amalgam Mods. In particular: Blood Rush. There are two main paths to increasing a weapon's damage to deal with end-game content: either you go for high status chance with Condition Overload, or for high critical chance with Blood Rush. Valkyr's Talons have 50 % critical chance and 10% status chance, which sounds ideal for a Blood Rush build, but Blood Rush doesn't work on them, because Reasons. Condition Overload does work, but with just 10% status chance, even equipping all four dual-stat mods only gets you to 34%, at which point you have to hit each enemy an average of 8.8 times to get your damage all the way to maximum. That's not practical, and you can't supplement this with Weeping Wounds, again because Reasons. So right out of the gate, Valkyr's Talons have serious top-end damage limitations. To mitigate this somewhat, their damage is increased by power strength, and increased multiplicatively to boot. But that can't compete with the stacking super-multiplication you get from orange and red critical hits via Blood Rush.

This doesn't matter for most of the game. Throughout the star chart, Valkyr's Talons just melt everything. But for end-game content - in sorties, on the Steel Path, and against the (god-damned overarmored don't-think-I-forgot-about-you-bastard) Wolf of Saturn Six - I've found that if I give Valkyr a well-built Blood Rush crit weapon, it will always out-damage her claws, which is a bit disappointing.

Next, the energy cost. Hysteria costs 25 energy just to activate, starts draining energy at 2.5 points per second, and ramps up to 15 energy per second over 40 seconds. Valkyr doesn't have much energy to begin with; at base, without mods and without picking up any energy, she can't even get Hysteria up to maximum energy use, because that would cost 375 energy and she only has 150. As discussed previously, any kind of energy limitation makes this ability nearly unusable, especially energy drain eximus units.

Next: aiming weapons. Originally, while Valkyr had her claws out, you couldn't use any other weapons. The recent improvements to the melee system have changed that; by pressing the aim button, you can whip your gun back out and shoot things, then go back to ripping and tearing by pressing the melee button. However, when you do this while Hysteria is active, your invulnerability immediately shuts off, and the energy drain stops increasing but continues at its current rate. Going back to melee attacks switches everything back on, but in high-danger environments, those few seconds can be enough to kill you, which feels unfair, and losing that energy for no benefit feels like robbery, given Valkyr's limited reserves.

Next, Hysteria actually remembers the amount of damage you have avoided by using it, and gives some of that damage back if any enemies are within a certain range when it ends. Specifically, it saves 30% of the damage you take, but then only hits you with 25% of that saved damage; that multiplies out to 7.5% of damage taken which might be returned to you. Also, the distance within which it looks for enemies when it's deciding if you take damage varies; it starts at 5 meters, grows slowly with time, and reduces when you kill something. This feels overcomplicated and petty; I don't understand why there's any need to slap you with damage when Hysteria ends.

Lastly, given the level of damage we heave out in Warframe, the life leech on Valkyr's Talons is massive overkill. Every time I'm near death, and I pop out the claws to heal, I hit one thing one time and I'm full again. This isn't a problem really, but feels like a missed opportunity.

Hysteria actually has two augments, and they are both interesting.

Hysterical Assault allows you to pounce on people up to 50 meters away by melee attacking while aiming, and lets your invulnerability last for a brief moment when you switch to aiming your gun. This is very fun, and really plays into the frantic murderer aspect of her gameplay. However, the "oh yeah, you can be invulnerable for a little bit longer" part feels unfair - that should be in the base ability. If Hysteria is still draining energy, it should still be making me invulnerable, regardless of what I'm doing; I shouldn't need to equip an augment to get that bonus.

Enraged changes Hysteria extensively. Instead of pressing the ability button to toggle it on and off, it just lasts 15 seconds, and then has a 15 second cooldown. Instead of having a continuous, increasing energy cost, it just costs 50 energy. And, the damage and critical chance both increase by 200%. I would like to say I've tried it, but I have not; I'm not currently aligned with either faction that offers it, and I've been having weird technical issues with trading recently. Just by looking at its stats, I would expect that the changes to duration and cost could stand by themselves. The fact that this augment also amplifies damage this much feels like an implicit admission that Hysteria doesn't do enough damage.

Suggestions

I recognize that with Hysteria, DE is trying to give us short-term invulnerability, without enabling us to just run around invulnerable all the time. To that end, I propose a substantial Hysteria rework.

• Change Hysteria's energy costs. It should cost 25 energy to activate plus 2.5 energy per second it remains on, with no ramp-up. This is the same cost as Excalibur's Exalted Blade.
• Drop Hysteria's current damage storage mechanic entirely. It's complicated, confusing, and unnecessary.
• Change Hysteria's protection to incorporate an effect like Quick Thinking. Valkyr would still be immune while Hysteria is active, but would lose energy in proportion to the damage she avoids. Like Quick Thinking, each point of energy spent this way would negate around 20 points of damage, and her armor would reduce these costs. Ability efficiency should also reduce these costs. Unlike Quick Thinking, she would not be staggered when this effect is triggered.
• A visual effect should be added to Hysteria when Valkyr is below 50 energy, to signal to the player that it is about to end.
• When Hysteria ends because Valkyr runs out of energy or is nullified, Valkyr should be staggered and get a three-second window of invulnerability, to signal to the player that they were knocked out of Hysteria and give the player a chance to get out of danger before they are killed. This effect should not happen when Hysteria ends because the player deactivated it.

These changes allow Hysteria to still grant full invulnerability, but put severe limits on the amount of damage that it can prevent. Dropping the energy cost to match Exalted Blade prevents Hysteria from depleting Valkyr's reserves too greatly, since those reserves are also depleted when she avoids damage.

Additional tweaks to support this new pattern:

• Allow Valkyr's Talons to equip all the same mods that normal melee weapons can equip. The Talons should be strictly superior to every other non-exalted crit melee weapon, and this is necessary for them to achieve that.
• Alter Valkyr's Talons to not allow you to use your guns while it is active, like when the player holds the weapon switch button to equip only their melee weapon. If you want to shoot your gun, you need to put the claws away.
• Change Hysteria's healing so that it heals by a flat amount (let's say 10) on each hit (per enemy) instead of a percentage of damage dealt. (like Healing Return, but on any attack regardless of status effects) Ability strength should affect this healing. This ensures that Valkyr needs to hit people a bunch of times to get fully healed.
• Alter Hysteria so that Valkyr becomes immune as soon as she starts to activate the ability, instead of as soon as she finishes the activation animation. I've gone down quite a few times during the Hysteria activation animation, and I don't think that should ever happen.

Bonus augment ideas:

• Hysteria augment: Shared Fury. While War Cry is active, whenever Valkyr uses Hysteria and injures an enemy with her Talons, all allies (including pets) within War Cry's radius are healed by half the amount that Valkyr would recover. Downed allies and pets within War Cry's radius will be revived after receiving ten pulses of this healing.
• Hysteria augment: Reflexive Fury. When Valkyr would go down, and has more than 50 energy, the hit that would kill her is negated and Hysteria activates automatically.

Phew! That was a lot longer than I wanted it to be, but I wanted to be thorough. Thank you for reading.

[Lemon]

just triple the range on her claws and add some fancy FX to match the range and she is fixed

Wukong, Excal, Baruuk all outrange her, thats the primary reason her 4 is bad

think about excal's abilities 1,2,3 only 2 is decent CC and valk has that with the added bonus of her buff she really is not that bad its just the range dragging her down

[taiiat]

1 hour ago, (PS4)digitalgabeg said:

Change Swing Line so that instead of giving you free uses of Rip Line after using it once, it just reduces the cost of using Rip Line to pull yourself to terrain by 80%.
This would provide the same effective benefit, but would be far more useful overall.

Conversely, warframes with large amounts of armor get large bonuses, but since the damage reduction from armor falls off geometrically, they also get little benefit from this.

i don't see a world where Swing Line in any form will ever be useful. it's not an expensive Ability, and an Augment to make it cost less means that you're hurting your other Abilities that cost more to do so. doesn't make sense, never made sense.

that's not how Armor works - the opportunity cost is the limiting factor, and is why we don't use every Armor Mod in the game at all times - because the Mods cost us a Slot, making most of them not worth it.
but an Ability doesn't cost us anything. increasing Armor doesn't get progressively weaker the more of it you have. it's on the opportunity cost that limits Armor.
unmodded Warcry on top of Steel Fiber on Valkyr, offers a 20% increase in EHP. with the sort of Strength that Players commonly use with Valkyr(fairly high), that's more in the area of 48%.
while some other Warframe that has say, 125 Armor and no Armor Mods, at the same Strength level, Warcry offers a 37% increase in EHP.

1 hour ago, (PS4)digitalgabeg said:

Change the armor bonus from a percent increase to a flat increase. (like the bonus from Wukong's Defy) This will provide much more benefit to Valkyr's allies, especially the fragile ones who need it most. I think a flat increase of 500 would be good - that would take the most fragile frames up to 600 armor (the place that Valkyr starts at) and would still provide a significant increase for Valkyr herself. I think this amount is reasonable, since Wukong's Defy can grant 1500 flat armor and lasts 10 seconds longer.

i'm not against adjusting the Armor Bonus from Warcry, but i would do so in such a way as that it say, increased by 50% and also added 100 Armor. which for the same Strength scenario as i mentioned earlier on a Warframe with 125 Armor that would be.... just shy of double EHP as it is.
remember, increasing Armor is not the main feature of the Ability. it's something extra that's nice to have that you get along with it. 500 is not really reasonable for the type of Ability that it is. Defy does two things, one of those things is give Wukong Armor. that's all the Ability exists for. and you go wading into Enemies to get the benefit in the first place, Warcry has no such requirement.

your suggested numbers, would more than quadruple that 125 Armor Warframes' EHP - that's not that reasonable.

1 hour ago, (PS4)digitalgabeg said:

and the status effect from Impact overlaps with the stun that the Paralysis causes automatically.

You can only use it a maximum of three times in a row, and it deals less damage each time.

Even better, it causes enemies within 50% of the ability's max range to be knocked prone and pulled toward you

Paralysis has a 0% Status Chance.

you can use Paralysis as many times in a row as you want. once you deplete your Shields you only stop dealing Damage with Paralysis, which since that is not the main feature of the Ability, is not of major consequence.

just for posterity, it's 100% of the Range.

1 hour ago, (PS4)digitalgabeg said:

Increase Paralysis' energy cost to 50, and remove its shield drain.

 

Change Paralysis to deal flat damage and multiplies its damage by the current melee multiplier. 

The damage dealt by Paralysis should be Impact damage by default, but if Valkyr has a melee weapon equipped, then the damage dealt by Paralysis should match the types and proportions of damage that the player's melee weapon has. So for example, if Valkyr is wielding a  Venka equipped with max rank Pressure Point, Fever Strike, and Vicious Frost, so that it deals 15.4 impact damage (1%) 77 puncture damage (8%) 215.6 slash damage (20%) and 770 viral damage (71%) then Paralysis should deal 1% impact damage, 8% puncture damage, 20% slash damage, and 71% viral damage.
it should inflict status effects

stop trying to ruin Paralysis. the low Energy Cost is a major component of what makes it good. 

 

why are you trying to turn Paralysis into Slash Dash but without the Dash.

- - - - - 

 

Hysteria doesn't need Blood Rush to deal a lot of Damage. it's more than capable of dealing enormous Damage that deletes Enemies. it's even one of the high Level Boss deleting Abilities that Players sometimes choose.
160% Crit Chance is plenty for Hysteria. 

a Melee Weapon can outperform Hysteria at extreme Levels because of making use of Blood Rush, Condition Overload, and Stances. all of them together is the reasoning for that.
especially since Hysteria has always had a pretty crummy Stance, most of the Animations are just a scratching swing from a slightly different angle than the last one. on the upside Hysteria can fairly easily open Enemies for Finishers now, instead of having to go through a 7-8 part sequence to do so. and the Slide Attack is as good as it's ever been.

i fail to see anything that's not great about Hysteria having Lifesteal. you can use it to Heal, and in the way it currently works you'll always come out of the Ability at full Health. seems just fine to me. i find it odd that you think that this Lifesteal is some sort of 'too good to be true' situation when Players can easily Heal themselves with all sorts of Equipment. having Lifesteal is a nice convenience, but it's not anything revolutionary.

Enraged is not the game saying "this is weak" - it's offering a different playstyle for the Ability. cheap and stronger, but has a Cooldown. or use it as much as you want, but the Energy Cost.

• if you make Hysteria Drain Energy from incoming Damage, that means that in the times that you'd want that sort of Ability to protect you, it will be unable to do so.
  i'm really not keen on designing Abilities to necessitate Players use Energize and Flow in order to bandaid it so that they can use an Ability.
• letting Hysteria use all Melee Mods won't change anything. it'll still get outperformed by other Melee Weapons since Hysteria will still have a pretty terrible Stance aside from the Heavy and Slide attack.

 

on a side note, personally, i find it quite amusing that you basically complain Hysteria is bad because it doesn't deal enough Damage
and then also say the Lifesteal of Hysteria needs to be nerfed because Hysteria deals too much Damage.
:)

[NoLazyShadow]

Intresting ideas. Some of them are good, while others won't work well in my opinion. To comparison here's my vision of rework(I showed it before)

Enduring torture and experiments broke frame's systems, forsing her to harness the power of her rage. 

Energy: N/A

Shields: N/A

Health: 450

Armor: 600/700(prime)

New passive mechanic: wrath counter.

- Fill the counter by taking damage and killing enemies in melee

- The counter have 3 stages. Reaching nerw stage grants valkyr health regen(5/10/15 hp/s), armor(200/400/600) and small movement speed increase(5/10/15%)

- Wrath counter slowly decays overtime.

- All Valkyr's abilities use wrath counter instead of energy

Ripline ideas:

- Change behavior on enemies to something similar to Ash teleport, but in reverse - Valk pull the enemy toward sherself and punch them away

- Make it affect multiple enemies at once, steal their armor for Valk's benefits

OR

- Completly replace with new ability - pounching slash: Valk dashes towards enemy and ponche it on the ground with one handed slash of her claw. Could be used to close the gap between mobs or as a cc tool.

Warcry should emmit aura that spread buffs on allies and slow down enemies, the closer they get to you the slower they become. Ability is now toggle

Paralisys should be replaced with something diffrent(Still struggle to came up with something original that isn't some taunt, buff or stun)

Hysterya should get a new stance with wide and aggresive attacks, remove god mode and integrage hysterycal assault by default; lower crazy energy drain(since she got no energy) and broken 'stored damage' mechanic.

 

[Odik]

Used to be a dedicated Valkyr player... but sadly the frame is just useless. :)

[(PSN)Eos_Char]

Pray god to D.E see this masterpiece of rework.Its not perfect but its better. 

I should focus more on the screams habilities,its the most interesting point of valkyr.

[gabuchan]

Great ideas all around. This just made me remember how good the Paralysis augment actually is. I just wish it were part of her kit by default instead of being an augment.

 

edit: the more I think about it the more I'm digging your idea for Paralysis. It makes way more sense to have it draw power from your melee weapon instead of shields. It's thematically and functionally more exciting.

[NoLazyShadow]

В 20.08.2020 в 14:04, (PS4)digitalgabeg сказал:

 Hysteria actually remembers the amount of damage you have avoided by using it, and gives some of that damage back if any enemies are within a certain range when it ends. Specifically, it saves 30% of the damage you take, but then only hits you with 25% of that saved damage; that multiplies out to 7.5% of damage taken which might be returned to you. Also, the distance within which it looks for enemies when it's deciding if you take damage varies; it starts at 5 meters, grows slowly with time, and reduces when you kill something. This feels overcomplicated and petty; I don't understand why there's any need to slap you with damage when Hysteria ends.

Btw, you've completly forgot to mention that this mechanic is litteraly broken after shield gate implementation.

[Andele3025]

3 hours ago, NoLazyShadow said:

Btw, you've completly forgot to mention that this mechanic is litteraly broken after shield gate implementation.

It was broken from the moment LOS could be used to avoid the damage, was broken further by letting her weapon swap in it for the gun-n-bladers and shield gate finished it.
Have been advocating for invul version of A2 where the hp drain (and damage boost) escalates with damage stored and gets reduced with kills and reset on finishers (also making use of valkitty claws having lifesteal).

[(XBOX)Knight Raime]

I like some of what I saw here but i'll just hop in and give my suggestions after reading the feedback:

Passive: I don't think they'ed add rage.  Yes other frames have some mods built into their passive but they don't hugely impact combat performance.  Rage absolutely would.  If you want to add onto the passive you need to come up with something that wouldn't drastically improve her performance in combat.

Ripline:  I don't particularly like tap/hold to cast things being slapped on frames just as much as quiver style abilities get recommended.  Enemies being pulled towards Valkyr really has no benefit outside attempting ground finishers.  I think it should just pull her to enemies by default just as it pulls her towards the environment.  Pulling to an enemy does a quick "dunk" on an enemy when you touch them.  Think teleport but slower.  I would like to see the physics changed for ripline so you can actually like.  Swing around with it and let you change directions with it.  Momentum would absolutely be apart of it.

Ripline augment:  Just change the function here.  Instead of letting you cast it more often just let it pull x number of enemies that has a moddable chance to disarm the enemies it effects.

Warcry:  I suppose having a slowing Aura is fine.  But I don't see the appeal if we're giving her more mobility and the like.  I'd rather just the aura make said enemies do less damage to Valkyr via messing with their accuracy stat.  Having a faster cast animation is something I absolutely agree with.  Beyond that I don't think it really needs to be touched.

Paralysis:  I don't think we need to find ways to increase the damage it does.  Frankly I think that should just be dropped.  If we want to keep the shield removal apart of the theme maybe just make it so if she has any shields when she uses it it forces a status proc on effected enemies.  Beyond that I would like the AoE to be around her.  It would be nice to not have to equip her augment just for that.  I think that hitting enemies with the ability should boost up her combo counter by a fixed amount.  And performing a finisher on an enemy effected by said stun should temporarily make her melee combo counter drain slower.  Also for a fixed amount.

Hysteria:  I disagree about removing the stored damage aspect.  Instead we could just simplify it.  Using a finisher on an enemy resets the circle to whatever it's base was (since it is effected by range,) and turns that damage to be purely against enemies.  I disagree about removing the extra ramp up on energy drain.  If you want to play without that extra drain you can use the enraged augment and deal with a cooldown instead.  Hopefully it's been fixed.  Don't really think hysteria needs any changes outside of that.  I'd suggest buffing the invulnerability from the assault augment from .5 seconds to 1 second.

 

 

[(XBOX)Knight Raime]

2 minutes ago, Andele3025 said:

It was broken from the moment LOS could be used to avoid the damage, was broken further by letting her weapon swap in it for the gun-n-bladers and shield gate finished it.
Have been advocating for invul version of A2 where the hp drain (and damage boost) escalates with damage stored and gets reduced with kills and reset on finishers (also making use of valkitty claws having lifesteal).

The problem with having HP drain for her move instead of energy (if i'm understanding your intent) is that enemies still do insane amounts of damage to us.  The only way I could see reworking invulnerability for the game outside of it's binary y/n function would be to give someone stupid levels of damage reduction on top of armor and have it decay over time.  Also finishers would have to be drastically sped up in order for them to be viable choices to constantly go for in the middle of combat.  If we were going to go this route i'd want to make massive changes to how her kit functions overall to the point that she wouldn't really be Valkyr anymore.

At best we could attempt making this idea the augment effect of enraged.  But risk overloading the augment with mechanics.  And at worst and what likely would be more appropriate would be creating a different frame that focuses on this idea and simply tweaking Valkyr to be more of a cqc debuffing powerhouse than a psudeo zerker style frame.  As a long time Valkyr lover I wouldn't mind redesigning her kind of like how ember did to suit this idea.  But the odds of DE doing that again are slim I feel.

[NoLazyShadow]

Только что, (XB1)Knight Raime сказал:

The problem with having HP drain for her move instead of energy (if i'm understanding your intent) is that enemies still do insane amounts of damage to us.  The only way I could see reworking invulnerability for the game outside of it's binary y/n function would be to give someone stupid levels of damage reduction on top of armor and have it decay over time.

Or remove invulnerability all together. Lock her in melee with auto blocking and no gap closing attacks; blocking angle should be above 90 degrees. Hysterical assault replace 'gap closer' attack(RMB + V by default). High risk and consant danger with a pure joy of damage and body count going up at alarming rate.

[(XBOX)Knight Raime]

9 minutes ago, NoLazyShadow said:

Or remove invulnerability all together. Lock her in melee with auto blocking and no gap closing attacks; blocking angle should be above 90 degrees. Hysterical assault replace 'gap closer' attack(RMB + V by default). High risk and consant danger with a pure joy of damage and body count going up at alarming rate.

I don't particularly wish to go down the rabbit hole of invuln versus not invuln again sorry.  Did that discussion once and that's enough for a life time.

[NoLazyShadow]

Только что, (XB1)Knight Raime сказал:

I don't particularly wish to go down the rabbit hole of invuln versus not invuln again sorry.  Did that discussion once and that's enough for a life time.

Then lest dicsuss her other abilties and ideas. Like my suggestion of wrath counter and complete replacement of her energy economy with constant race for melee kills and tanking damage.

[Andele3025]

2 hours ago, (XB1)Knight Raime said:

The problem with having HP drain for her move instead of energy (if i'm understanding your intent) is that enemies still do insane amounts of damage to us. 

Or just dont remove the invul. HP drain behind invul gives reason for claws to have lifesteal in the first place and punishes you not using the berserker as a berserker.

Lose tiny base hp % (so some 3, 4 or 5 hp a second drain or hell even up to 10 if its influenced by mods), with either extra % hp loss added to per second each time a 2 or 3x multi of your modded hp would be stored with the drain extra reduced each kill and fully reset on finisher OR making the damage stored "leak" into the upkeep if you didnt damage a enemy in last 3-5s, a drain pause for 5-10s each kill and a 10-25% stored damage wipe on finisher (same effect essentially, just a question of implementation and subtle gameloop influence, also if youd wanna add a base/non augment damage boost on it it changes off what it could scale).

Augment meanwhile is perfect for those that want it in old duration form/as a augment, but exalted shouldnt be duration buffs, or at least not ones that aint recastable (but even that way it would just mean you're locked into duration build).
 

 

[Tiltskillet]

On 2020-08-20 at 12:04 AM, (PS4)digitalgabeg said:

The other effects of Paralysis, stunning victims and opening them up for finishers, are of limited use. Warframe as a whole is mainly about killing lots of things very quickly, and Valkyr doubles down on that theme. In the time it takes to do one finisher, I can usually kill 5 to 10 people just by swinging my weapon around. So those effects aren't much use either.

For completeness' sake, it also enables the "stealth" melee damage bonus on stunned targets.  Which is huge, in theory, as you can hit a lot of targets at once limited only by your weapon range. 

The problem is that it's not an aura--like Silence--and there's no auto-cast option--like Calm & Frenzy.   So she has to recast constantly in order to get the benefit.  Fortunately it doesn't cost much.  Unfortunately it's a lot of animation time. 

[(XBOX)Knight Raime]

3 hours ago, NoLazyShadow said:

Then lest dicsuss her other abilties and ideas. Like my suggestion of wrath counter and complete replacement of her energy economy with constant race for melee kills and tanking damage.

I don't believe i've seen your rework suggestions.

1 hour ago, Andele3025 said:

Or just dont remove the invul. HP drain behind invul gives reason for claws to have lifesteal in the first place and punishes you not using the berserker as a berserker.

Lose tiny base hp % (so some 3, 4 or 5 hp a second drain or hell even up to 10 if its influenced by mods), with either extra % hp loss added to per second each time a 2 or 3x multi of your modded hp would be stored with the drain extra reduced each kill and fully reset on finisher OR making the damage stored "leak" into the upkeep if you didnt damage a enemy in last 3-5s, a drain pause for 5-10s each kill and a 10-25% stored damage wipe on finisher (same effect essentially, just a question of implementation and subtle gameloop influence, also if youd wanna add a base/non augment damage boost on it it changes off what it could scale).

Augment meanwhile is perfect for those that want it in old duration form/as a augment, but exalted shouldnt be duration buffs, or at least not ones that aint recastable (but even that way it would just mean you're locked into duration build).
 

 

Interesting.  What would happen if they ran out of HP.  just die?

[Andele3025]

Just now, (XB1)Knight Raime said:

I don't believe i've seen your rework suggestions.

Interesting.  What would happen if they ran out of HP.  just die?

Ability ends at 2hp (like nekros and inaros hp costs) or you die, depending on how DE wants it (or possibly depending on if you emptied the stored damage vs if you didnt).

[(PSN)Ozymandias-13-]

With this rework i could sincerely enjoy playing her for once. 

[NoLazyShadow]

8 часов назад, (XB1)Knight Raime сказал:

I don't believe i've seen your rework suggestions.

Спойлер

 

Enduring torture and experiments broke frame's systems, forsing her to harness the power of her rage. 

Energy: N/A

Shields: N/A

Health: 450

Armor: 600/700(prime)

New passive mechanic: wrath counter.

- Fill the counter by taking damage and killing enemies in melee

- The counter have 3 stages. Reaching nerw stage grants valkyr health regen(5/10/15 hp/s), armor(200/400/600) and small movement speed increase(5/10/15%)

- Wrath counter slowly decays overtime.

- All Valkyr's abilities use wrath counter instead of energy

Ripline ideas:

- Change behavior on enemies to something similar to Ash teleport, but in reverse - Valk pull the enemy toward sherself and punch them away

- Make it affect multiple enemies at once, steal their armor for Valk's benefits

OR

- Completly replace with new ability - pounching slash: Valk dashes towards enemy and ponche it on the ground with one handed slash of her claw. Could be used to close the gap between mobs or as a cc tool.

Warcry should emmit aura that spread buffs on allies and slow down enemies, the closer they get to you the slower they become. Ability is now toggle

Paralisys should be replaced with something diffrent(Still struggle to came up with something original that isn't some taunt, buff or stun)

Hysterya should get a new stance with wide and aggresive attacks, remove god mode and integrage hysterycal assault by default; lower crazy energy drain(since she got no energy) and broken 'stored damage' mechanic.

 

 

[(XBOX)Knight Raime]

On 2020-08-21 at 1:01 PM, Andele3025 said:

Ability ends at 2hp (like nekros and inaros hp costs) or you die, depending on how DE wants it (or possibly depending on if you emptied the stored damage vs if you didnt).

Fair enough.  Think I might tackle doing a Valkyr refresh sometime this week if i'm still feeling up to it using your idea to some capacity.

15 hours ago, NoLazyShadow said:

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Enduring torture and experiments broke frame's systems, forsing her to harness the power of her rage. 

Energy: N/A

Shields: N/A

Health: 450

Armor: 600/700(prime)

New passive mechanic: wrath counter.

- Fill the counter by taking damage and killing enemies in melee

- The counter have 3 stages. Reaching nerw stage grants valkyr health regen(5/10/15 hp/s), armor(200/400/600) and small movement speed increase(5/10/15%)

- Wrath counter slowly decays overtime.

- All Valkyr's abilities use wrath counter instead of energy

Ripline ideas:

- Change behavior on enemies to something similar to Ash teleport, but in reverse - Valk pull the enemy toward sherself and punch them away

- Make it affect multiple enemies at once, steal their armor for Valk's benefits

OR

- Completly replace with new ability - pounching slash: Valk dashes towards enemy and ponche it on the ground with one handed slash of her claw. Could be used to close the gap between mobs or as a cc tool.

Warcry should emmit aura that spread buffs on allies and slow down enemies, the closer they get to you the slower they become. Ability is now toggle

Paralisys should be replaced with something diffrent(Still struggle to came up with something original that isn't some taunt, buff or stun)

Hysterya should get a new stance with wide and aggresive attacks, remove god mode and integrage hysterycal assault by default; lower crazy energy drain(since she got no energy) and broken 'stored damage' mechanic.

 

 

Can't say I agree with most of that tbh.

[NoLazyShadow]

7 часов назад, (XB1)Knight Raime сказал:

Can't say I agree with most of that tbh.

I wonder why

[taiiat]

On 2020-08-20 at 6:14 AM, NoLazyShadow said:

Energy: N/A
Shields: N/A
Health: 450

Armor: 600/700(prime)

while the prospect of making Valkyr "Inaros but with good Abilities" seems quite the excessive powercreep ask....

that gives me an idea. yes indeed what if Valkyr didn't use Energy but instead all Abilities drained Health. i'd be willing to give Valkyr 150 or maybe 175 Health in trade, but more than that would be really asking for a free lunch.
if you were super low on Health and couldn't use the Ability you're trying to Cast, i'd even let you still Cast it, but with heavily, heavily reduced effectiveness. even some features being disabled.

bonus points if the Health is drained in a.... more Eastern style, if you will. by that i mean that instead of just losing say, 50 Health on pressing the button, 50 of your Health gets removed, but only temporarily. if you don't get attacked for a bit you'll Regen it. i'd want the Player to even be able to get that Health back in some way. the easiest option is by getting a few Kills but that's not very interesting. what's a.... very 'Berserker' way to be able to recover your Ability Cost that doesn't lock you into one playstyle too hard, hmm.

since Hysteria has a Drain, i don't think that would be compatible with this optional recovery stuff, so this would only be for the upfront Costs of Abilities.

On 2020-08-21 at 5:54 AM, NoLazyShadow said:

Btw, you've completly forgot to mention that this mechanic is litteraly broken after shield gate implementation.

 

On 2020-08-21 at 9:16 AM, Andele3025 said:

It was broken from the moment LOS could be used to avoid the damage

it was also broken from the start since even if you racked up an amount of Damage that should Kill you (hundreds of thousands on the counter), you still basically only got punched in the face and that was that. something has always been really funky about the math of that aspect, even accounting for that you only take 8% of the incoming Damage.

 

On 2020-08-21 at 10:01 AM, NoLazyShadow said:

Lock her in melee with auto blocking

why do you hate everybody and everything. :(

 

[Andele3025]

1 minute ago, taiiat said:

it was also broken from the start since even if you racked up an amount of Damage that should Kill you (hundreds of thousands on the counter), you still basically only got punched in the face and that was that. something has always been really funky about the math of that aspect, even accounting for that you only take 8% of the incoming Damage

Kinda, but why im suggesting what should have been implemented, a loop around damage dealt and kills not "we will punish you if you're x too long in hysteria and you can/its optimal to coward your way out".

[NoLazyShadow]

Только что, taiiat сказал:

while the prospect of making Valkyr "Inaros but with good Abilities" seems quite the excessive powercreep ask....

Well, Hyldrin is already 'inaros but with good abilities'

 

Только что, taiiat сказал:

that gives me an idea. yes indeed what if Valkyr didn't use Energy but instead all Abilities drained Health. i'd be willing to give Valkyr 150 or maybe 175 Health in trade, but more than that would be really asking for a free lunch.
if you were super low on Health and couldn't use the Ability you're trying to Cast, i'd even let you still Cast it, but with heavily, heavily reduced effectiveness. even some features being disabled.

bonus points if the Health is drained in a.... more Eastern style, if you will. by that i mean that instead of just losing say, 50 Health on pressing the button, 50 of your Health gets removed, but only temporarily. if you don't get attacked for a bit you'll Regen it. i'd want the Player to even be able to get that Health back in some way. the easiest option is by getting a few Kills but that's not very interesting. what's a.... very 'Berserker' way to be able to recover your Ability Cost that doesn't lock you into one playstyle too hard, hmm.

Why not toss in passive health regen similar to Nidus.