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Summoner frame ideas


(PSN)CoolTRG

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On 2021-01-25 at 6:24 AM, (PSN)IIFrost_GhostII said:

Really, a summoner wf can be built for anything...

My reqs tho

1.) No small summons. Nidus maggot summon is not exciting by much, another warframe doing it would just be depressing...

2.) Variety. Dont summon just 1 type, do multiple. And preferably make 1 of the summons rather large

3.)  Some summons should deal Damage. I would go for a dps based off the player type of mechanic. Most other summons in warframe are cc and agro, not dmg.

4.) I think the warframe should recieve the most benefit from not being alone. Else why be a summoner wf if your summons cant actually help you well enough

All i got for rn, i just realized i need sleep, gn

i think small summons are fine due to the rule of quantity and quality, when there are say 35 small summons that like latch on to enemies and explode, it would still be a really powerfull ability, it would also be a powerfull cc and dps.

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A proper Summoner Warframe would certainly be welcome.
I actually designed my own fan concept for one along time ago, called 'Theraph', which had an arachnid/conductor theme, but I think had I done it now, I would've gone for an 'Army Ant/Legionary Ant' theme, and named him 'Marabunta', after real life Army Ants, given the way players go through missions would be more akin to an Army Ant Raid.

In general though, I've thought a Summoner Warframe should have the following mechanics:

Cycling Summon Ability

  • Only one ability should function as the Summoning, but I think it should have the toggle/cycle ability, like Vauban's Minelayer or Wisp's Reservoirs
  • The 4 Minion Classes should be: Light Melee (Ratel), Medium Direct-Combat Ranged (Moa), Flying Indirect-Combat Ranged (Osprey), and Heavy Artillery (Bursa)
  • Augments could be added that switch out current Minions for alternate ones.

Energy Occupancy

  • For the actual Summoning Ability, I've thought it'd make more sense to have it so that minions 'occupy' energy, instead of draining it, when summoned.
  • This means, the Warframe could only summon as many minions as it would take to add up in energy cost to the amount of energy you have.
    (ie, with 100 Energy Capacity, you could have 4 minions that cost 25, 2 minions that cost 50, or 2 minions that cost 25 and one that costs 50, etc)
  • Consequently, the higher Energy Capacity & Efficiency you mod for, the more minions you could summon.
  • Energy would only be Drained once the minion occupying it dies, even protecting against Magnetic Status. (However, Magnetic Status could cause some other effect, like weakening all your minions or something)

Possible Minion-Focused Passive

  • Orb Sharing - Picking up Health Orbs or Energy Orbs would heal this Warframe's Minions

Possible Minion-Focused Abilities

  • Recycling - To prevent getting locked in, one ability should handle destroying your own minions, recycling half of their energy occupancy. This would be handled on a tap to target an individual minion, or hold to recycle all your minions. This ability could be a secondary effect on another ability
  • Melding - Splice two minions together, taking one and using its Energy to upgrade another. This would not increase the Energy Occupancy of the receiving Unit however, meaning it's advantageous to summon a bunch of minions, meld them, and then summon more

Possible Minion Mechanics

  • Damage that Minions Inflict on Enemies would heal them; killing an enemy could have them absorb a defensive trait from them, like Armor from Grineer, Shields from Corpus, or Sentient Adaptation from Sentients, etc.
  • Certain Minions could store excess health siphoning, and convert it into Health Orbs, for this Warframe or their Squadmates to heal from.

Possible Ultimate Abilities

  • Swarm - The Warframe would enter a state where smaller, flying minions, would be summoned freely and swarm around the Warframe, while the rest of the minions enter a frenzy state, giving them increased damage and aggression.
  • Combine - The Warframe would gather all of its minions into a greater minion, which it would use like a mount, putting it into a state similar to the Necramechs, or like that augment for Atlas that turns him into a Rumbler.

 

So, based on all that, the kit I'd probably do for a Summoner Warframe now would be:

MARABUNTA
The Legion, the Swarm

Passive - The Orb Sharing from Above

Ability 1 - Cooldown instead of Energy Cost; Unleashes a small group of Buzzers, tiny flying minions, to attack a targeted enemy, with a guaranteed energy orb drop on kill. If targeting a minion, the Buzzers would recycle that minion for Energy. When held, all active minions will be recycled.

Ability 2 - Cycling Summon Ability. Energy Cost determined by selected Minion Type, and Minions have Energy Occupancy instead of Drain. Minions would heal themselves from dealing damage, overhealing on themselves would generate Health Orbs, and when a Minion gets a kill, they could absorb defensive traits from their target, such as armor, cloak, shields, etc.
Augments could change out available Minion Types for alternatives, and there could also be an augment to increase the chance an enemy will drop loot when killed by a Minion
Possible Minions:

  • Worker - 25 Energy, Small Size, Ratel-like in function, cheap but not very effective individually
  • Soldier - 50 Energy, Medium Size, Moa-like in function, a little more expensive, but more durable and has a corrosive spray ranged attack
  • Vespid - 75 Energy, Small-to-Medium Size, Osprey-like in function, hovers, keeps its distance to attack at range with a corrosive spike attack
  • Mutilid - 100 Energy, Large Size, Bursa-like in function, has a powerful melee attack and can lob explosive, corrosive mortars

Ability 3 - Melding; sacrifices one Minion to improve another; might have its own UI to do, so you don't have to manually aim at any of your minions. It could also transfer any traits from the first minion to the second, and could meld their abilities, like giving Vespid's spike attack to a Soldier, etc.

Ability 4 - Either the Swarm ability or the Combine ability from above.

 

Anywho though, just my thoughts on how I'd do a Summoner Frame. I hope it's worth the read xD

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9 hours ago, (PSN)CoolTRG said:

id like to say that's not the only reason for stacks on nidus, it increases his abilities strength by a massive amount depending on the amount of stacks he has and isn't only a resource, along with Grendel using eaten enemies as ammo he also gains a massive armor buff by having enemies consumed, i think the problem with him stems from his abilities not being very useful in general, since 2 of them do the same thing pretty much. but also, discussing how you said a summoner shouldn't revolve around his summons  i don't agree with, a summoner has summons to rely on, that's why they are so strong is because they have to be to protect them, in my concept i even added a passive to where the lower your maximum health is, the stronger your summons become. because when you think about a frame you need to think of weaknesses to balance out the frame. of course i do understand what you mean when you said "It's an easy pitfall too when speaking about a summoner frame, to create a cool, bad ass summon, only to feel like you have to centralize everything around that summon, and forget to make the frame's abilities work without the summon present." but also i think that a certain reliance to your summons is necessary to making good synergy. the best way to do what you are explaining is a support ability that would affect your summons and your teammates but i don't think that it is a good idea to just simply add radial buffs like rhinos roar since then people will forget that he is indeed a summoning frame, that's why i would suggest that the ability is weak but multiplies by the amount of summons are out or something like that. if that makes since.

I get that you want to have balance in mind when making a frame, but I don't think this game in particular cares about balance all that much. Just look at favorite frames like Wisp, Mesa, Mirage, Saryn, Nidus, and so many more. I don't really see much for weaknesses on any of them. They, for the most part, have ways to heal, deal massive damage, and absorb damage effectively through even the hardest content. So, I wouldn't spend too much effort in trying to balance your frame or give it weaknesses, because the hallmark of this game is sort of the feeling of being gods among mere mortals. That's why I suggest not making them entirely dependent on their summon. Synergy is great, and that's what I think should be strived for in a summoner frame. But when you're talking about having to rely on AI of the summon to not do stupid things, making the player reliant on that summon is likely to result in justified frustration. The summon should be a partner, and partners are suppose to be able to pull their own weight on their own, but become more together than the sum of their parts.

P.S. Grendel's armor buff passive is 50 per enemy. Considering his base armor, that's not that significant of an increase when you consider armor has diminishing returns.

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Good afternoon,
I would like to ask how or with whom I can express the idea of a warframe? I'm not good at designing much less drawing, so I only have the basic ideas of how it could be. That is why I would like to know with whom I can advise to achieve this task.

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  • 1 month later...
On 2021-01-29 at 8:42 PM, xZeromusx said:

I get that you want to have balance in mind when making a frame, but I don't think this game in particular cares about balance all that much. Just look at favorite frames like Wisp, Mesa, Mirage, Saryn, Nidus, and so many more. I don't really see much for weaknesses on any of them. They, for the most part, have ways to heal, deal massive damage, and absorb damage effectively through even the hardest content. So, I wouldn't spend too much effort in trying to balance your frame or give it weaknesses, because the hallmark of this game is sort of the feeling of being gods among mere mortals. That's why I suggest not making them entirely dependent on their summon. Synergy is great, and that's what I think should be strived for in a summoner frame. But when you're talking about having to rely on AI of the summon to not do stupid things, making the player reliant on that summon is likely to result in justified frustration. The summon should be a partner, and partners are suppose to be able to pull their own weight on their own, but become more together than the sum of their parts.

P.S. Grendel's armor buff passive is 50 per enemy. Considering his base armor, that's not that significant of an increase when you consider armor has diminishing returns.

as you said, there are op frames in the game this is a power fantasy game after all but frames still do have certain "faults" if you will. wisp is a support/ caster frame, even with her motes being easily manageable since they are infinite and cost little, she still has other abilities that cost lots of energy, yet she has no way to recover energy, which is important for most caster frames, saryn also has this problem, mirage is really squishy, and mesa is just well made but also does suffer the energy problem as well, my boi nidus also has problems, but also, is really well made, because of his demanding playstyle of using abilities, it makes it hard to ever use weapons. but yeah, nidus is really good he's my favorite frame. but why am i saying this? every problem i listed can be easily fixed,  thats my point. faults in a warframe are the chains that hold builds back. they are made so players still have to recognize and fix these problems. can you imagine if mirage had good health? or if saryn had an ability to gain energy? or even, if wisp could get energy back? im pretty sure if saryn had this at her disposal the game would crash  because people would nuke spam. or if wisp could use her 4th infinitely. holes are put in characters with the thought that the players will fill them in.

 

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On 2021-03-16 at 11:19 AM, (PSN)CoolTRG said:

as you said, there are op frames in the game this is a power fantasy game after all but frames still do have certain "faults" if you will. wisp is a support/ caster frame, even with her motes being easily manageable since they are infinite and cost little, she still has other abilities that cost lots of energy, yet she has no way to recover energy, which is important for most caster frames, saryn also has this problem, mirage is really squishy, and mesa is just well made but also does suffer the energy problem as well, my boi nidus also has problems, but also, is really well made, because of his demanding playstyle of using abilities, it makes it hard to ever use weapons. but yeah, nidus is really good he's my favorite frame. but why am i saying this? every problem i listed can be easily fixed,  thats my point. faults in a warframe are the chains that hold builds back. they are made so players still have to recognize and fix these problems. can you imagine if mirage had good health? or if saryn had an ability to gain energy? or even, if wisp could get energy back? im pretty sure if saryn had this at her disposal the game would crash  because people would nuke spam. or if wisp could use her 4th infinitely. holes are put in characters with the thought that the players will fill them in.

 

As you said, every issue you've mentioned is easily remedied with a trip to the helminth or a look at one's build. Throwing Dispensary over an ability that doesn't benefit from your build will solve like 99% of all energy and health recovery issues. That's why I wouldn't put too much time or effort into giving the frame any glaring weakness. Even if you just give it average health, that's really enough. Or just not give it an energy generating ability like so many other frames. Or just average armor then slap a DR ability on it like Mesa. Even Mirage has two abilities that technically constitute DR, one through avoidance and distraction, the other through flat reduction. All the frames are already like gods among mortals. As long as you're not going into arch-deity territory like giving it more HP than Inaros, then it should be fine.

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10 hours ago, xZeromusx said:

As you said, every issue you've mentioned is easily remedied with a trip to the helminth or a look at one's build. Throwing Dispensary over an ability that doesn't benefit from your build will solve like 99% of all energy and health recovery issues. That's why I wouldn't put too much time or effort into giving the frame any glaring weakness. Even if you just give it average health, that's really enough. Or just not give it an energy generating ability like so many other frames. Or just average armor then slap a DR ability on it like Mesa. Even Mirage has two abilities that technically constitute DR, one through avoidance and distraction, the other through flat reduction. All the frames are already like gods among mortals. As long as you're not going into arch-deity territory like giving it more HP than Inaros, then it should be fine.

well specifically the reason i use low health on my summoner frame is because it benefits from it as it has a passive that the lower your max health is you gain extra ability strength. 

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