Thread on the most anticipated skill of the update: Air Burst!

[(PSN)DidacoJack]

Yes, the title is sarcastic.

Pretty useless to specify that even after the added mechanic this skill is still underwhelming, especially considering that the helminth does provide much more attractive solutions, far outclassing poor Zephyr's 2nd ability.

This thread aims at giving Air Burst at least a glimpse of uniqueness, without straying too much from the original concept (I hope).

1- Cost

This skill has a whooping cost of 50 for what it does, whereas Larva is MUCH more reliable and costs half!

My suggestion is to lower the cost to at least 25, but imho the sweet spot would be at 15, making it a spammable solution and thus giving the skill a more defined identity when compared to its direct rivals (Larva and Ensnare).

 

2- Range

Base range is 8m, which is the base range of Helminth's nerfed Larva!

Bring to at least 10-12 meters, not much else to say here. Giving it just the range of a nerfed skill feels like a troll move.

 

3- Pull

The skill works pretty well to group up enemies that are already relatively close to each other, but should you want to bring in a farther enemy, you'll feel the need to spam it back to back.

Point one can alleviate this, but another problem shows up: the pull doesn't affect ragdolled enemies, forcing you to wait for them to gain control of their movements in order to use the skill again to pull them further.

To be fair, it's a rather small window to wait for, but in a game like Warframe these little things tend to make the experience feel sluggish.

The solution would be to make the pull affect ragdolled enemies.

 

4- Ragdoll

We all know that ragdolling doesn't have a great reputation with its ability to be almost completely random (or at least very difficult to predict), preventing you from scoring head shots, making enemies harder to melee if you're using a weapon with finicky hitboxes, put them out of AoE effects etc, thus making the enemies take longer to kill.

In Air Burst specific case, this happens when you shoot the projectile too close to (or directly at) the enemy, making them fly around.

Imho, the solution would be to apply a very brief (talking about fractions of a second) effect similar or identical to Vauban's Vortex on the projectile impact: this would make the ragdoll effect to behave more controllably, rather than flinging the enemy wherever they happen to.

 

That's it. Of course this post is only about the pull part of the skill, the hold button effect would retain the current values/effects. 

[Marine027]

Maybe instead of knockign it could create a mini vortex on its impact spot. The ones you can have with the Vortex augment with increased status procs instead or so.

Speaking of, how does the "suck in" mechanic btw work now with the augment? Those not ragdoll after all, do they stilll pull in? Not tried that yet.

[Xylena_Lazarow]

Ragdoll effects in general should only apply to enemies that are already dead. The point blank AoE vacuum effect is otherwise really cool.

[NinjaZeku]

2 hours ago, (PS4)DidacoJack said:

My suggestion is to lower the cost to at least 25

Jump.

There you go, it now costs 25 Energy.

[Miyabi-sama]

2 часа назад, (PS4)DidacoJack сказал:

Larva is MUCH more reliable

There is a thread literally stating Larva is useless after nerf with its lowered range.

Oh well...

[(PSN)DidacoJack]

54 minutes ago, NinjaZeku said:

Jump.

There you go, it now costs 25 Energy.

With the change it would cost 8. There you go, literally spammable. EDIT: for Zephyr. The reduced cost doesn't apply to other frames.

16 minutes ago, Miyabi-sama said:

There is a thread literally stating Larva is useless after nerf with its lowered range.

Oh well...

Doesn't change the fact that it's more reliable than Air Burst.

[Miyabi-sama]

12 минут назад, (PS4)DidacoJack сказал:

Doesn't change the fact that it's more reliable than Air Burst.

Can't argue. Barely use it when playing Zephyr a lot.

[(PSN)Ozymandias-13-]

I dunno. Between the press and hold function plus dealing damage (pitiful as it may be), I intend to replace Mind Control with it on my Nyx.

If DE going to force her towards weapon damage instead of fixing her ability to redirect enemy damage then i might as well have a way to group enemies up, along with the option to disperse enemies in my way. I'll just pretend it's telekinesis since the ability that was suggested for the Nyx rework dev council thread was literally given to Xaku instead.😑

[BiancaRoughfin]

I use Airburst the whole time, specially after the change as it works great with my Ferrox since i can throw it then suck a group of mobs into its AoE effect causing them to slowly stack Viral procs wile zapping each other with Shock procs. Its also great when using a Sentinel with the Helstrum weapon because you can instantly get 10+ stacks of Viral and some other proc on groups of enemies.

Its also usefull when you want to get rid of some annoying enemies as you can use the dispersing attack to push mobs off platforms/catwalks into pits where they die or the suction one depending on obstructions that there might be in the way.

1 hour ago, (PS4)Ozymandias-13- said:

I dunno. Between the press and hold function plus dealing damage (pitiful as it may be), I intend to replace Mind Control with it on my Nyx.

Zephyr's damage factors are mostly on her 3rd and 4th abilities. Her 3rd with the Augment increases substantially the effective range/damage falloff of any weapon, some which you wouldnt rely on for Long Range kills can become snipers if built for Power Strength and something which isnt mentioned in-game about her 4th is that enemies caught in her Tornado take full damage from shots fired on them instead of having the damage split, that and the fact it doubles your weapon's Crit multiplier so if you are hitting the Tornados with a weapon like the Kuva Nukor for example that easily passes 10x, you can get over 20x crits on it, if your weapon has PunchThrough it will deal damage to the enemies twice if you aim directly at them as it will deal damage from both hitting the mob and the tornado at the same time.