Valkyr Skill Improvements

[(PSN)thegarada]

I was thinking of improvements to Valkyr skills that do not fundamentally change her skills, create synergy and open up various options.

Ripline:

Base current functionality is moved to holding the skill. Pressing the skill once leaps to target. Upon landing in an area, using either functions of the skill, applies slow to all targets in 10 meter range, subject to skill range.

Augment, remove current functionality, enemies effected by slow receive 10/20/30/40% damage from all melee sources. The effect is doubled for Hysteria. Percentage increases by intensity.

This makes Ripline more useful by distributing enemies. At cost of a slot, opens enemies to more melee damage and provides an opening for Hysteria to function better. Segway to Hysteria:

Hysteria, Hysterical Assault Augment:

Instead of the current functionality, while Hysteria is active Ripline leap has no energy cost. 

Warcry:

Since the slow is moved to Ripline, energy cost is reduced from 75 to 50.

Paralysis:

Remove the damage and opening to finisher. Beside the CC, saps enemy armor reducing enemy armor by 100 + 10% of Valkyr total armor and adds the same amount of armor to Valkyr and allies in skill range (base 10 meters) for 8 secs. Does not stack, but refreshes duration. Base armor sap of 100 is fixed. Percentage increases by intensity. Duration is increased by duration mods. If enemy has no armor the armor increase effect works, but no reduction to enemy armor. This provides Valkyr the ability to buff allies armor in a scaling fashion, where it is not super strong early game (160 on Valkyr none prime with no armor mods), which increases by few hundred armor with higher armor and intensity. This also creates synergy with Warcry. If cast with no enemies in range, it has no effect.

Augment, changes functionality. Still saps armor but, no longer CC enemies, instead taunt all enemies forcing them to attack Valkyr. In addition, increases the skill range from 10 to 20 meter. This gives Valkyr the ability to protect allies and defense targets. With mods that increase ability range, the skill range can be increased to over 50 meters to ensure all enemies attack Valkyr. 

 

Combined, this creates synergy between most skills and opens multiple viable options for Valkyr:

1. The current existing melee/warcry build. Option to use Primed Continuity over Narrow Minded for easier usage of both Ripline and Paralysis. Or use Narrow Minded and mostly ignore Ripline and Paralysis.
2. Using augment for Ripline, additional melee damage for self and allies, at the cost of mod slot.
3. Using the augment for Ripline, opens up Hysteria as main damage build. Combined with Hysterical assault, for constantly applying of slow.
4. Paralysis provides support for allies. By combining warcry and Paralysis can add 600-1,000 armor to close by allies.
5. By using Paralysis augment, Valkyr draws fire defending allies and objectives. With increased ranged (primarily Over Reach) can extend the taunt area.

[(PSN)Twitchh13]

I first off would like to thank you for caring about my favourite frame and coming up with these ideas. Now I personally will agree with you if the idea here from what Im reading is making Valkyr's main build and strength to revolve around Hysteria and killing enemies with her claws. To me that will be very enjoyable to play.

So lets start with Hysteria. From my understanding the typical Hysteria focused build at the moment involves Fleeting+Streamline+ Flow + Primed Continuity or Narrow Minded or both and then the required Eternal War Augment. Which usually power strength is used in those slots to empower the base damage of both Hysteria Claws and the strength of Warcry. If that is correct is seem Valkyr is left to be quite squishy outside of Hysteria thru having lower armour than the Eternal Warcry build. So with that being said than the armour buff from Paralysis idea would be very low.

This buff to melee is a bit toward making Valkyr completely broken, being constantly invincible and having enemies have an 80% vulnerability to her damage makes a lot of the content irrelevant that she is already good at and doesn't make her more of a choice for content she isn't a choice for. If you want to buff the damage of Hysteria you would have to give up a bit of the survivability, making it a 50-90% DR instead of invincible. Also to make Valkyr more of an option she needs a way to increase the damage of her primary and secondary. Frames that are the current meta from what I understand for Profit taker and Eidolons are frames that increase gun damage since you don't really melee them. If you make the melee source to all sources of Valkyr then you get a bit more flexibility in your kit allowing you to be an option for that content. Although I feel a buff that increased her damage like Roar might be more useful still.

3 hours ago, (PS4)thegarada said:

Paralysis:

Remove the damage and opening to finisher. Beside the CC, saps enemy armor reducing enemy armor by 100 + 10% of Valkyr total armor and adds the same amount of armor to Valkyr and allies in skill range (base 10 meters) for 8 secs. Does not stack, but refreshes duration. Base armor sap of 100 is fixed. Percentage increases by intensity. Duration is increased by duration mods. If enemy has no armor the armor increase effect works, but no reduction to enemy armor. This provides Valkyr the ability to buff allies armor in a scaling fashion, where it is not super strong early game (160 on Valkyr none prime with no armor mods), which increases by few hundred armor with higher armor and intensity. This also creates synergy with Warcry. If cast with no enemies in range, it has no effect.

Augment, changes functionality. Still saps armor but, no longer CC enemies, instead taunt all enemies forcing them to attack Valkyr. In addition, increases the skill range from 10 to 20 meter and decreases all damage received by 10%. Every 10% points of ability intensity increases damage reduction by 5% to a maximum of 35%. Also, reducing ability intensity will increase damage received by 5% for every 10% ability intensity reduction, to maximum of 25%. This gives Valkyr the ability to protect allies and defense targets. With mods that increase ability range, the skill range can be increased to over 50 meters to ensure all enemies attack Valkyr. 

 

Even though this is a very interesting idea, Why do you need DR and all this extra armor when you are invincible? Being invincible makes this replaced by Roar or Spellbind for energy.

 

3 hours ago, (PS4)thegarada said:

Augment, changes functionality. Still saps armor but, no longer CC enemies, instead taunt all enemies forcing them to attack Valkyr. In addition, increases the skill range from 10 to 20 meter and decreases all damage received by 10%. Every 10% points of ability intensity increases damage reduction by 5% to a maximum of 35%. Also, reducing ability intensity will increase damage received by 5% for every 10% ability intensity reduction, to maximum of 25%. This gives Valkyr the ability to protect allies and defense targets. With mods that increase ability range, the skill range can be increased to over 50 meters to ensure all enemies attack Valkyr. 

Or you could just increase the range of base Paralysis to 20m because other frames have better abilities like Excal and Radial Blind having 25m range and 15 secs of blind that increases damage through stealth multipliers. Make base range 20m and then you can pull all enemies to you and you kill them. If you taunt them it is super inefficient as being a melee focus frame you still have to run around to kill all those enemies. I would still rather current augment to this as it brings the enemies to me instead of me running around to all of them and opens enemies to ground finishers ( big damage ) and with range on your melee you can hit multiple enemies with one ground finisher.  

Making the range 20m and the current augment into the base ability, then slightly increase the pull speed would make her better for defensive missions as you don't have to run everywhere.

Your taunt idea would be good if you had enemies disarmed or had their range reduced for the duration. But without that it honestly would make little difference except in SP defense and even then any frame with range attacks and CC is still better.  

3 hours ago, (PS4)thegarada said:

Combined, this creates synergy between most skills and opens multiple viable options for Valkyr:

1. The current existing melee/warcry build. Option to use Primed Continuity over Narrow Minded for easier usage of both Ripline and Paralysis. Or use Narrow Minded and mostly ignore Ripline and Paralysis.
2. Using augment for Ripline, additional melee damage for self and allies, at the cost of mod slot.
3. Using the augment for Ripline, opens up Hysteria as main damage build. Combined with Hysterical assault, for constantly applying of slow.
4. Paralysis provides support for allies. By combining warcry and Paralysis can add 600-1,000 armor to close by allies.
5. By using Paralysis augment, Valkyr draws fire defending allies and objectives. With increased ranged (primarily Over Reach) can extend the taunt area at the cost of extra damage to Valkyr, which can be nullified by Hysteria at the cost of energy. 

It feels like you are trying to change her identity of a Berserker, to be more of a subpar support frame that just buffs allies. Which I really don't like to be honest. If I want to buff allies I would play Wisp who would still have much better buffs or even Trinity. I want a self buffing ball of anger and claws that destroys everything in front of her. 

4 hours ago, (PS4)thegarada said:

Warcry:

Since the slow is moved to Ripline, energy cost is reduced from 75 to 50.

This ability needs a buff on its armour buff , Element ward gives you the same armour buff at base that warcry give you at 300% Power strength.  So making the armour buff on warcry 100% instead of 50% would help her keep up in armour because when I see she has the highest base armour but there at frames that can easily have far more armour than her. I would like her to continue having the most through Warcry buff. I do agree with reducing the cost to 50 from 75 and it should be recastable to apply the debuff to new enemies. The duration being 15 seconds is incredibly low, Roar being arguably stronger has 30 seconds and Vex armour and Elemental ward are both 25 seconds, Eternal Ward should not be required if you want to use the ability. It should be a choice and with 15 second duration on Warcry at 75 energy and then long animation make it not much of a choice.

 

[(PSN)thegarada]

Couple of clarifications, as it currently stands, claws do not deal much damage. The damage increase with ripline augment requires a mod slot, and it does not made enemies more vulnerable to attacks. You are still subject to full enemy armor. This just adds a bit of damage. I am debating if the percentages  are a bit over tuned on the augment, but Hysteria’s damage is far from being too strong.

Hysteria cost is reduced by both duration and efficiency and is capped at 175%. With Narrow minded and streamline you can get to like 170%. You would never need fleeting expertise. And Hysteria builds... do not exist. They do, but there is no point in using it beside the invulnerability and maybe the healing, of you do not have other sources. The only time I would ever consider Hysteria for damage is if the enemy is immune to status. Otherwise melee weapons can deal 10 times the damage much easier. The max you can do to extend hysteria is use primed flow and arcane energies, but you already wasted a mod slot and arcane for a skill that is completely outclassed by melee damage. 

Also, one more thing, you are not going to use paralysis while hysteria is active. That is a waste. Actually, as it stands on live, there is no reason to use paralysis, at all.

Back to finishers, they are useless. Even when enemies are open to finishers, why would I waste my time with that? I can clear everything in front of me in 1-2 secs. 3-4 seconds of melee damage can deal hundreds of thousands of damage in bleeds, if not million+. Even level 200 enemies can be cut down like hot knife in butter. The current iteration of paralysis does absolutely nothing. Many frames already have a pull functionality, so have it provide armor to allies gives it a differentiation and gives some level of support to allies, something Valkyr has a bit of, but not enough for her to be used in a squad.

Also, the augment for paralysis changes the skill to a taunt. It works similar to taunts in MMOs used by tanks. Again, a unique functionality not present in the game. Again, I think the armor values and the damage reduction are a bit over tuned. But the damage increase is an intentional drawback for using over extend. And no, you would not be using hysteria most of the time, cuz you do not have the energy for it.

Btw, none of the changes I suggested make her less of a berserker. However, the berserker does not use hysteria, paralysis or finishers. Just Warcry and a melee weapon. If you play Valkyr correctly you are using Warcry and not much else, beside whatever you pull from Helminth. The setup used for survival uses blind rage and has 266% ability strength (possibly more). No frame, beside chroma, can get even remotely close to Valkyr armor levels. And I use elemental ward on Valkyr anyway. And Valkyr has base armor 250 higher than chroma. I do think chroma gets more out of using Warcry than Valkyr using Elemental ward, but overall, neither frame is lacking in survivability. Having Warcry adding 100% armor means you can add close to 2K armor. This is overkill. And most definitely would have to be nerfed for the Helminth.

 

[(PSN)Twitchh13]

17 minutes ago, (PS4)thegarada said:

I use elemental ward on Valkyr anyway

 

17 minutes ago, (PS4)thegarada said:

Having Warcry adding 100% armor means you can add close to 2K armor. This is overkill.

Make up your mind, you make zero sense here. At 300% power strength you would only be adding 1050 more armour than you already are. Your ability would add 1000 armour and then you want to add 35% DR and my suggestion to just add the armour thing to an existing ability with armour buff on it already is overkill. Are you joking? I feel like you  just have to be right and you want to argue with me. 

19 minutes ago, (PS4)thegarada said:

Couple of clarifications, as it currently stands, claws do not deal much damage. The damage increase with ripline augment requires a mod slot, and it does not made enemies more vulnerable to attacks. You are still subject to full enemy armor. This just adds a bit of damage. I am debating if the percentages  are a bit over tuned on the augment, but Hysteria’s damage is far from being too strong.

Hysteria cost is reduced by both duration and efficiency and is capped at 175%. With Narrow minded and streamline you can get to like 170%. You would never need fleeting expertise. And Hysteria builds... do not exist. They do, but there is no point in using it beside the invulnerability and maybe the healing, of you do not have other sources. The only time I would ever consider Hysteria for damage is if the enemy is immune to status. Otherwise melee weapons can deal 10 times the damage much easier. The max you can do to extend hysteria is use primed flow and arcane energies, but you already wasted a mod slot and arcane for a skill that is completely outclassed by melee damage. 

I did not disagree that the current damage of the claws is low in any way. I just feel that the downside of the invincibility that DE has atm is the fact you don't deal much damage. If you tuned up the damage and made it very competitive then it would probably become quite meta as most people don't fight enemies lvl 200+ and as it is right now Valkyr can deal with anything under that quite easily in Hysteria since the Heavy Attack does some silly amount of damage for some reason. Im just saying that increasing her damage with Talons would be awesome and Im I am all aboard that train, just if we don't trade back something I can't see DE making being permanently invincible with that high damage. Even the Enraged Augment that boosts damage a considerable amount comes with a CD so you can't always be in Hysteria. 

 

38 minutes ago, (PS4)thegarada said:

However, the berserker does not use hysteria, paralysis or finishers. Just Warcry and a melee weapon

Hysteria pretty much is the whole " she has gone berserk " theme. She shrugs off damage while in a Hysterical state and slashes enemies with her claws. The only thing is for balance reasons it would seem DE has left the damage lower. Which could be traded for making Hysteria have DR instead like it does in conclave. Since it is already in the game the transition wouldn't be much and could open more builds including the rage mod and her base armour would come into play more. 

So I tried to tell you how your ideas could work but it seems you only read negatives. Taunt in inferior Prolong Paralysis unless you disarm enemies  or reduce range. if you do that it could be interesting as enemies would move to you faster than the Prolong Paralysis pulling would. So add an effect that makes enemies melee you then it will work well. 

I'm trying to work with you, if you could do the same and we could bounce ideas off each other that would help our cause.    

[(PSN)Spider_Enigma]

am i the only player that likes ripline as a movement tool that works without enemies being around?

[(PSN)thegarada]

@Twitchh13 I agree, regarding the damage reduction on paralysis. I do not think it is needed. I just did not think it through.

For hysteria, I do not think it would or could work above level 100. It lacks the damage. No matter what, it will not be able to compete with a top melee weapon with a riven. I still think it could benefit from a bit more damage. 

As for paralysis, without some additional functionality, it won’t work. Yes, CC is stronger than taunt, but that was a trade off for doubling the range. If it can pull enemies, it would be useful, since it costs only 5 energy. The problem is going to be the range.

[(PSN)thegarada]

14 minutes ago, (PS4)Spider_Enigma said:

am i the only player that likes ripline as a movement tool that works without enemies being around?

That would still be available.