Warframe Concept: Alaxara, the Chi Fighter

[(XBOX)AD Symmetry]

This is Alaxara, the martial warframe. Driven by her Martial prowess and Powerful Chi energy, this warframe can trade blows with and defeat even the most notorious and fiendish enemies. She likes her action up close and personal, hardly preferring to rely on long ranged weapons...or weapons at all, but rather her chi. Showing preferrence to her fists and feet, this warframe vanquishes foes by beating them senseless, mercilessly with a variety of chi fueled attacks... and different abilities to match. This warframe also can use chi as an energy source... Also the chi would look great with a white main color, with pulses favoring blues and purples. And it should be less like a fire or flame, and more of like a really thick, colorful mist that moves in waves, rather than spikes, like fire. Abilities are as follows:

Health: 265
Shield: 200
Armor: 150
Energy: 400
Sprint Speed: 1.25

Passive- Stand Strong: All melee weapons held by Alaxara will have their damage block set to 100% and her guard covers a 360 degree A.O.E. Blocking melee attacks generates Clarity, which, when full allows her to enter Flow State. When in this state, attack speed and damage increase by 45%, locking the use of other weapons for the duration (Governed by Power Strength).  When in close combat mode, damage block is set to 100% and a damage reflect ability is also instituted which multiplies enemy damage by 400% and reflects it back at them, ignoring all defenses (shield, proto-shield, armor, etc.)
-Has the option to fight bare handed with a specific sparring stance made specifically for her

Ability #1 - Spirit Flash: Fires forward a large sphere of chi energy that grows in size mid flight, gaining damage at the expense of stored chi energy then explodes with an explosion radius of 30m. Explosion will apply very strong ragdoll effect to the resulting blast proc. Can be fired without stored chi energy at the cost of missed damage opportunity. If the sphere hits an enemy before it grows to maximum size, it will continue to travel and carry enemies until it does and explodes.

Ability #2- Chi Flare: Alaxara violently releases chi to bolster her defenses, manifesting as a 90% damage reduction.  Its duration is a little shorter than average but gets refreshed every time an enemy gets caught in Kiai. Enemies that try to melee attack her while this ability is active will be knocked off balance and briefly open to finishers in the same manner as Valkyr's Paralysis. 

Ability #3- Kiai: Sound out an aggressive taunt that temporarily intimidates all enemies that hear it, reducing their defenses and throwing them off guard. This manifests itself as a sharp 55% decrease in enemy accuracy as well as an additive 26% decrease in armor for grineer and a magnetic proc for corpus.

Ability #4- Close Combat: Don Archfang, a set of exalted sparring weapons that can be used to devastate foes (and maybe some different combat armor...please?)
- Constant, but slow energy drain (7 energy /sec)
   - Stored Chi is Maxed out for the duration of this ability.
         - When Kiai is used, the range of effectiveness is 2x larger.

While active, press and hold: *Dreadnaught: Begin aggressively walking forward at a brisk pace. For every enemy encountered during this time, they are automatically barraged with a quick flurry of blows that do 100% remaining hp as finisher damage.
- While walking, energy drain stops, but every finisher costs a base 35 energy.
- If activated while stored chi energy is maxed out, finishers will cost 25 more energy, but Alaxara will be invulnerable for the duration of this ability.

 

 

*= Intentionally misspelled Dreadnought for creative licensing purposes. 
Stats and ability numbers to come once I receive feedback about the reception of the warframes kit on a fundamental level.

[(PSN)OmegAmorbis]

So I want to put some feedback in on this. First of all, how exactly is chi acquired? Is it a naturally regenerating resource, or is it actively generated by using abilities? Since it's so integral to your frame, this is something that should be made clear from the outset. It is a nice idea though. Now as far as the frame's stats are concerned, assuming they're unmodded and at level 30, the only thing I would say is 400 energy is a bit overkill. This does seem to be a fairly active frame in terms of ability usage, but 300 would probably be just fine. Now for the kit itself.

On 2020-08-26 at 9:49 PM, (XB1)AD Sapience said:

Passive- Stand Strong: All melee weapons held by Alaxara will have their damage block set to 100% and her guard covers a 360 degree A.O.E.

I like this bit, though I don't know about it being a full 360 degrees. It is only while blocking, but it's still pretty damn powerful for a passive. Maybe it could be attacks from the front that are blocked? That would force you to consider your positioning a little more carefully at least. Alternatively, you could also keep the full aoe but reduce the damage blocked to 80-90% or something along those lines.

On 2020-08-26 at 9:49 PM, (XB1)AD Sapience said:

Blocking melee attacks generates Clarity, which, when full allows her to enter Flow State. When in this state, attack speed and damage increase by 45%, locking the use of other weapons for the duration (Governed by Power Strength).  When in close combat mode, damage block is set to 100% and a damage reflect ability is also instituted which multiplies enemy damage by 400% and reflects it back at them, ignoring all defenses (shield, proto-shield, armor, etc.)
-Has the option to fight bare handed with a specific sparring stance made specifically for her

I don't like this so much as a part of the passive. Firstly, that last sentence makes it sound like it can be triggered manually, but nothing in the description says how it's done. It locking the use of other weapons for a set duration is unnecessary imo; the option should always be there to use something else if the need arises. Lastly, having a 100% damage block in a 360 radius AND a magnified damage reflect that bypasses all defenses is much too strong, even if it's just while blocking.

I do think maybe Flow State could be incorporated into Alaxara's ult. I would take out the weapon restriction and keep the defense bypass but reduce the reflected damage down by a fair bit, maybe to 100%? I think, combined with the changes I mentioned above, that might be more balanced. Also, perhaps Flow State could be activated using the heavy attack button and it could either use a set amount of chi or drain it over time.

On 2020-08-26 at 9:49 PM, (XB1)AD Sapience said:

Ability #1 - Spirit Flash: Fires forward a large sphere of chi energy that grows in size mid flight, gaining damage at the expense of stored chi energy then explodes with an explosion radius of 30m. Explosion will apply very strong ragdoll effect to the resulting blast proc. Can be fired without stored chi energy at the cost of missed damage opportunity. If the sphere hits an enemy before it grows to maximum size, it will continue to travel and carry enemies until it does and explodes.

Hard to tell how good this would be without stats, but a 30 meter range (I'm assuming base) is far too high, particularly if the added damage from chi is even remotely significant. I think 10-12 meters at base would work well enough. Also, being able to manually detonate the sphere by recasting would be a nice addition.

On 2020-08-26 at 9:49 PM, (XB1)AD Sapience said:

While active, press and hold: *Dreadnaught: Begin aggressively walking forward at a brisk pace. For every enemy encountered during this time, they are automatically barraged with a quick flurry of blows that do 100% remaining hp as finisher damage.
- While walking, energy drain stops, but every finisher costs a base 35 energy.
- If activated while stored chi energy is maxed out, finishers will cost 25 more energy, but Alaxara will be invulnerable for the duration of this ability.

This sounds kinda cool, but are the finishers triggered by physically making contact with the enemy? If there's no control over that then you could end up using more energy than intended when facing multiple enemies in close quarters. I'd add the ability to manually trigger finishers, since it gives you better control over energy usage and makes it more engaging overall. Also, perhaps invulnerability could be replaced with 90-95% damage reduction?

Anyway that's all I've got, hopefully some of it helps.

[(XBOX)AD Symmetry]

7 hours ago, (PS4)OmegAmorbis said:

First of all, how exactly is chi acquired?

Thanks for leaving such detailed feedback. Chi would be acquired through the use of her 2. Will edit the post to clarify. 

7 hours ago, (PS4)OmegAmorbis said:

It is a nice idea though. Now as far as the frame's stats are concerned, assuming they're unmodded and at level 30, the only thing I would say is 400 energy is a bit overkill.

Well, depending on the kind of player you are, you could potentially be doing finishers that cost 50 energy a pop, having a base 400 energy at rank 30 felt fair to me, but I could definitely compromise at 350.

7 hours ago, (PS4)OmegAmorbis said:

I like this bit, though I don't know about it being a full 360 degrees. It is only while blocking, but it's still pretty damn powerful for a passive. Maybe it could be attacks from the front that are blocked? That would force you to consider your positioning a little more carefully at least. Alternatively, you could also keep the full aoe but reduce the damage blocked to 80-90% or something along those lines.

You see, 80-90% might seem like a lot, but if you hit anything around level 130 like I usually do, 10% damage dealt to you, could kill you in 2 seconds or less. Besides, the average player is not going to spend too much time blocking anyway, since nothing gets done if you're blocking. I could add a stipulation that the invulnerability has a set duration that gets reset if you spend a certain amount of time not blocking or something. Would that be a little better?

22 hours ago, (PS4)OmegAmorbis said:

This sounds kinda cool, but are the finishers triggered by physically making contact with the enemy?

Ideally, it would be triggered the same way parazon finishers are triggered, by interacting with enemies when you get close enough. 

 

22 hours ago, (PS4)OmegAmorbis said:

Hard to tell how good this would be without stats, but a 30 meter range (I'm assuming base) is far too high, particularly if the added damage from chi is even remotely significant.

Holy crap, this should be Travel distance NOT explosion radius. The explosion radius should be around 18m base. Still big, but much more tame.

[(PSN)OmegAmorbis]

4 hours ago, (XB1)AD Sapience said:

You see, 80-90% might seem like a lot, but if you hit anything around level 130 like I usually do, 10% damage dealt to you, could kill you in 2 seconds or less. Besides, the average player is not going to spend too much time blocking anyway, since nothing gets done if you're blocking. I could add a stipulation that the invulnerability has a set duration that gets reset if you spend a certain amount of time not blocking or something. Would that be a little better?

You're right about damage resistance doing less work at higher levels, but the invulnerability while blocking combined with Flow State's damage reflect being active means you could potentially just keep your block up while it's active and have enemies kill themselves, at least up to a point. Now I don't know if the damage block from your passive also covers aoe damage or status effects, but that seems like a potential problem nonetheless.

 

4 hours ago, (XB1)AD Sapience said:

Holy crap, this should be Travel distance NOT explosion radius. The explosion radius should be around 18m base. Still big, but much more tame.

Ok, that makes more sense. An 18m explosion radius still seems just a bit large to me, but I take a very particular stance on high range damage abilities so take that for what it's worth. In the end, it's up to you.