An armchair quarterback's frame revisions

[Sojufueled]

It's fun to think about this stuff. Here are my takes on how to refresh some of the older frames in the game. Comment with your own takes if you've got 'em.

 

Loki:

First, he gets a new passive and all wall latch simply becomes infinite for all frames. It's not a limitation that really improves gameplay to begin with. A riven challenge becomes easy, I'm aware. Loki's new passive will make bodies disappear like the old channeling effect. The next change will be to decoy. Firstly, decoy gets damage reduction based on ability strength so there is some incentive and pressure not to dump it as a stat. When Loki casts radiant disarm it also casts from the location of his decoy. Switch teleport will refresh the duration of his invisibility to take some pressure off of duration as a stat for Loki. Holding down switch teleport will automatically switch with the decoy wherever it is without targeting it.

Chroma:

Spectral Scream becomes an exalted weapon and gets a more dramatic animation. If you're going to make it like a beam weapon let it ramp up visually and even deflect off walls and spill around corners. This applies to the breath attack when used by effigy as well. His passive is just part of his abilities. He should have a real passive --- maybe an elemental proc based on his energy color added to melee finishers?

Valkyr:

Valkyr is a tough nut to crack. How are you supposed to play her? Ripline seems like her signature ability and it even does one of the best proc effects in the game, yet it gets utterly outshined by Warcry. It also makes you a little vulnerable. It seems like the intended gameplay loop is to slowly lose health with high armor then use Hysteria for a brief invulnerability window while you top off. The issue is that I can't think of a level window where health is any concern at all, but her armor gets that job done. I would decouple energy from Hysteria entirely and go for a cooldown system. It shouldn't be an always-on ability. That should free up your energy for rip-lining. Ripline in the meanwhile will add some sort of additional layer of tankiness that doesn't relate to health or armor. I recommend stealing shields from enemies. That way it both interacts with paralysis and amplifies the danger of that slash proc. As is, paralysis wants you to spend your shields that you likely don't have because you are face-tanking enemies and trying to top back off with lifesteal. Thematically, it also makes her a good Corpus killer, which she will certainly want to do.

Excal:

Excal is basically just hard to keep alive these days. You'd like to play him as a melee frame, but you're going to get picked up a lot off the ground. Slashdash could use a little more speed and reach and maybe top off the animation with some of the Gauss tech to make it a little more aggressive. This ability should be a strong engagement ability, but too often it literally comes up short and you end up getting shot. It was pretty useful with the old lifestrike because I could use it to top off health, but it doesn't do that for me anymore. Radial Javelins is just a nuke ability on a frame that isn't about nuking. It's virtually always a waste of energy. You could use it for the damage buff with the augment, but Exalted Blade already melts enemies if you can stay alive to swing it. Any ability that needs its augment is a bad ability. As a crowd control, it's made obsolete by Excal's other better crowd control ability. I would redesign this ability entirely. Now it's one javelin or a small direction fan of them you lug at enemies. It pins them to the wall dead or alive and drains health from them. It benefits from the damage multiplier against blinded enemies.

 

[Dhrekr]

45 minutes ago, Sojufueled said:

First, he gets a new passive and all wall latch simply becomes infinite for all frames. It's not a limitation that really improves gameplay to begin with. A riven challenge becomes easy, I'm aware. Loki's new passive will make bodies disappear like the old channeling effect. The next change will be to decoy. Firstly, decoy gets damage reduction based on ability strength so there is some incentive and pressure not to dump it as a stat. When Loki casts radiant disarm it also casts from the location of his decoy. Switch teleport will refresh the duration of his invisibility to take some pressure off of duration as a stat for Loki. Holding down switch teleport will automatically switch with the decoy wherever it is without targeting it.

I really like these suggestions for Loki 🙂