Deimos: Arcana - Bonewidow Necramech Megathread

[Shadedraxe]

On 2020-11-20 at 6:48 AM, (XBOX)HollowCube987 said:

I'm on Xbox so I just wanted to ask the PC Chads a question

Upon building the Voidrig Necramech, you are rewarded with a free Mausolon. What are you given upon building the Bonewidow?

A second Mausolon

[BahamutKaiser]

Finally got Bonewidow and ranked it up, along with Ironbride, with full mods. I'm glad I didn't have access to it right away, because I don't even want to know how bad it was before it's bug fixes and early revisions.

First of all, I'd like to mention that Meathook doesn't exist. Thankfully the meager vacuum has made Necramechs slightly more survivable, and sustainable, but players are always going to deploy the defensive option, which obstructs this ability from being used... This is a terrible design. but I'll save suggestions for the end.

Secondly, Shield Maiden is offensive to it's namesake. Why is it that any Warframes shield weapon can block damage passively, even other weapons can block damage passively, they actually reflect damage when raised... but a Necramechs Shield has an HP limit that let's it get destroyed... I get that this is also an enemy which shouldn't have unlimited frontal immunity, but that doesn't mean the ability has to be tied to the physical shield.

Thankfully, Firing Line isn't terrible, it could use a QoL improvement that prevents it from animation locking the Necramech, but that's something this Bonewidow would like a lot of overall.

Finally, Ironbride is thankfully functional, it seems to kill most Deimos foes in 1 to 3 hits. That's still inadequate. Any melee oriented Warframe build can get in about 10 hits in the time of those three hits, with way better mobility, as much power, or more power. For a Necramech using an exalted 4th ability, this needs to be improved.

So possible fixes. First one, Give Bonewidow a retractable third arm. Ideally, we'd get archmelee weapons on all Necramechs, and they could dual wield an archgun and archmelee which would be in the left hand. If this was the case, Bonewidow could benefit from 2 extra arms. But anyway, with at least one extra arm, the Bonewidow could Meat Hook a foes without figuring in the shield, she could mech melee with the same arm, or her shield, and it could be nothing but a spike on the arm, which retracts and folds on her back when not in use. Kind of like a Blue Gender Shrike.

For extra flair, Meathook could hang the foe over the shield and allow all frontal damage received to hit the foe that's being grappled. It could also hang over the gun arm and automatically get hit by any shots while having no projectile obstruction, so the rounds would continue through it like punch through, but only for that foe. And the animation and force move should be replaced with a nigh instantaneous impale that doesn't move the mech, so often you get right up on the foe and hook past them and hit nothing, this is silly.

Shield Maiden could simply be an energy field which envelops the shield. Kind of like a small volt shield that extends around Bonewidow 180 or so degrees, and blocks all damage that hits it. Otherwise, it should have a passive effect that reduces frontal damage by a small amount, at a lower angle, and would always be in hand, so the ability can be recast freely. I know players hate the damage reflection when fighting one too... but really, it's a directional shield with less offense than Storm Shroud. If anything, Storm Shroud should do a flat amount of damage to foes that hit it, and Shield Maiden should reflect damage, increasing with power strength. The degree of passive and active angle could also improve with a range mod.

Aside from less animation locking on Firing Line, the ability could benefit from some quality damage. Really, the ability works... it's just not eventful enough to bother putting it in your action rotation.

Now Ironbride, this one is so disapointing, Excalibur and and Baruuks Exalted weapons simply truck across an entire map, killing everything throughtlessly as they wade through them without slowing at all, Valkyrs Exalted weapon makes her invulnerable. And the huge Necramech, Bonewidow, it chunks enemies barely in front of it, veeeeery, slooooooowly. I tried this out on Steel Path Bounty, and beside the fact that Bonewidow couldn't handle the heat, it wasn't killing stuff... I don't know how the blast and heat attached to the ability apply to Ironbride, I don't know if it is additive to the damage, scales with mods, or is even working... but perhaps it could work as a wave extention that sweeps further than the reach of the blade and procs lots of status. Beyond that, the attack variety is terrible. All I could discover is a 3 hit swing, and the horrendously animation locked slam... could we at least get a stationary combo and a forward movement combo?, perhaps even a regular forward movment combo and a sprinting combo, because currently, the combo doesn't seem to move forward any more with sprint activated, but it keeps draining engine/stamina... Also, when the Ironbride is active, while Bonewidow is sliding, it should have Ironbride in front of it giving a single hit to everything it's slides through. Beside the combo variety, the ground slam shouldn't be so slugish, I'd expect Voidrig to have terrible melee recovery, not the Exalted weapon of Bonewidow. But even if it isn't improved, the slam could use repeated procs of blast and heat damage per second while diving and while the blade is being withdrawn. Or, Bonewidow could withdraw the sword and stab again dealing two attacks when slamming, just so it's not sitting their fantasizing about the Sword in the Stone while battle is happening around it.

Furthermore, some actual playtesting of the damage parity should be done. if Ironbride isn't doing as much damage (without a combo counter because I don't think archmelees should copy that aspect) as a frame Exalted weapon, with 12xcombo, condition overload X 3 status procs, Blood Rush and Weeping Wounds, and actual attack speed (WTF Furor, if you don't want attack speed mods on archwings than exclude them), than it's too weak. Archmelees don't need all the super powerful mod synergy and combo build up that regular melees do, they should have that amount of trucking force natively, with a smaller multiplier when properly modded. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to take a properly modded Excalibur and start up a Deimos bounty, on tier one, tier five, and Steel Path. It's a Necramech Exalted weapon, it should truck SP as easily as a good Excal build. Even than, it will probably be inferior because of mobility, so at least do that much, so it's not worthless. In fact, I would bet money that my Excalibur can wildly outperform Bonewidow, if Excalibur was doing Steel Path, while Bonewidow was doing a tier one bounty... That's unacceptable. If it's going to be slow, each swing should instantly kill ANY foe withing 20 meters, if your going to give it a little more reponsive control, than it should at least kill ANY foe in one full combo.

Some finishing notes, Bonewidow should have more responsiveness in general than Voidrig, less delay on a landing animation, less delay on it's mech attack, less delay on everything. If you want the Exalted weapon to attack slowly, each attack should hit twice, once with the weapon, than again with a delayed blade shockwave following the attack, just to make it feel like your not idling nonsensically. Or the blade could radiate the blast and heat damage each second whether your attacking or not. Furor should also be fixed, it doesn't have to be attack speed, it could work more like multishot, for archwings and Necramechs, so the attacks don't have to speed up, but the damage can multiply by another factor, it could be like a weapon vibration or something.

The Bonewidow should have more sustain too, the extra health and armor are nice, but changing  Meathook to deal true damage with damage absorption per second while the foe is hooked would be better, finishing moves have true damage, Meathook can have true damage. The throw damage should be impact... cause immersion, maybe a guaranteed impact proc.

And if you finally give archmelee to Necramechs, Bonewidows archmelee could be dual wielded with Ironbride, while also holding the shield and using Meathook, if you give her two retractable arms on her back. The archmelee could do swift jabs between Ironbride swings, Or, other Necramechs could use normal archmelees, and Bonewidow could be restricted to using it's shield as it's regular melee, and Ironbride could have combos which incorporate sword and shield. The simple benefit of having two weapons with separate mod builds, and separate elemental statuses could help her stand out, from everything.

Oh yeah, a cool crouch attack that does a flying uppercut with Ironbride would be good as well, it could launch up to the height of it's jump. Oh, and if you give Bonewidow 4 arms, it could pass the archgun to the right shoulder arm, so it can switch between archgun attacks and Ironbride attacks without changing weapons, like glaive dual wielding.

Well, there were a ton of other ideas, but hey, everyone has ideas, there's a hundred ways to fix Bonewidow, the important thing is that it's broken, not just the bugs, but the parity. It doesn't matter how you fix Bonewidow, so long as it's worth utilizing, because currently, it's MR fodder, and that's sad. It doesn't need to be as good as Voidrig, it just has to be worth equipping. Otherwise, ya know, I'm just going to pull out a plague zaw on any frame and reflect on the foolishness of equipping Bonewidow... and the community will have one more complaint about the content feed of DE because they spend time making stuff that's easily forgotten.

[Bailywolf]

Two Meks in, and now I want modular meks.  Kitmeks.  

 

"Hey sparky, we took a look at that... Thing you brought in from Deimos. It got us thinking..."

 

For BW, I've been playing her and trying to get her ranked up and I never touch 1 or 3.  I run 2 constantly, as you must, and 4 until I'm down to a safe minimum energy threshold.  For a larf I threw a forma on there for an r polarity and am now ranking it back up.  

It is...  Ok.  I see great potential there.  But right now the gun I put away to use the sword is always better than the sword. 

I agree with what others are saying - best fix here is to give Bonewidow the sword all the time as her melee attack, and make 4 a big enhancement on it.  Much faster, more explosive, armor stripping, etc.  Perhaps when 4 is running the mek moves much faster allowing rapid closing of distances and recovers from slams at Warframe speed.  Throw in some synergy got the shield so defense ark increase and it adds damage inflicted to the shield's hit points - or perhaps more simply, makes the shield invulnerable while the ult is running.   

 

Sword in basic melee, ult boosts the sword in powerful interesting (but not hard to code) ways 

 

[Bailywolf]

To add - I really love these Meks.  DE nailed the *feel* of them.  The look, sound, animations.  They're a pleasure to play with.  The mechanics on the widow just need to be brought in line with the feeling of playing her.  

[PhoenixElite]

Bonewidow definitely still needs some work. I've got a couple ideas that might help.

• Bonewidow's 1st ability; Meathook. An absolute joke, this ability might as well not exist, exactly just like Vauban's Vector Pad (or bounce pad). Absolutely no realistic use outside of "haha, grab monkee, then yeet." An idea I have would hit two birds with one stone (meathook being a boring, bad gimmick, and bonewidow's survivability being far worse than voidrig's), is simply to give it the Entrati weapon life suction thing. While an enemy is held, deal a percentage of true damage to it each second, and heal Bonewidow a flat amount (or percentage, and scale it off strength) each second.
• Bonewidow's 2, Shield Maiden, in it's current state, shouldn't have a health bar. It's a big-a** necramech shield for crying out loud. A normal, basic shield weapon doesn't have that, or even cost energy for that matter. So, first, remove the shield health bar, make it duration-based (with a toggle-off), have it cover a tiny bit more than 180 degrees, slow the mech slightly, shorten the shield recharge delay, and significantly reduce the recoil of the archgun. Additionally, while shield maiden is active, if you stand still, it buffs the archgun's fire-rate, and either shortens the reload delay, or adds ammo efficiency. Also, if you crouch with this, the shield should expand to block from a wider angle

[Tienxia]

Rewrote my previous ideas, after some feedback from others.

Non-Ability Changes

• Add Heavy Attack for Ironbride
  • Seamlessly chains into melee combo, substituting as a swing in the combo.
    • Examples 
      • Heavy attack -> 2nd Swing of melee -> 3rd swing melee 
      • 1st swing melee -> Heavy Attack -> 3rd swing melee 
      • 1st swing melee -> 2nd swing melee -> Heavy attack
      • 1st Swing melee -> 2nd swing melee -> 3rd swing melee -> Heavy Attack
  • Aerial Slam chains into heavy attack.
    • Cancels slam recovery.
      • Example
        • Jump -> melee slam enemy -> Heavy attack (immediately cancels recovery frames).
• Add Dash attack for Ironbride
  • Seamlessly chains into melee combo, same as heavy attack.
  • Has both heavy and normal variations.

Ability Changes

Fleshforged Sword replaces Meathook. Bonewidow skewers enemies onto the Ironbride. Increases damage and adds bonus effects to both passive and active modes.

• Add +400 impact damage to melee per enemy skewered (max 5)
• At 4+ skewered enemies, add knockdown effect to sword swings.
• Skewered enemies immune to damage from outside sources, but bleed out over [X*Ability Duration] seconds.
  • Bleedout applies Heal Over Time for Bonewidow equal to [Bleedout damage*Ability Strength].
• Enemies skewered can be hurled as projectiles with charged heavy attack [Damage based on Ironbride Heavy attack+15% per enemy skewered].
  • After throwing enemies, receive "Butcher's Iron" buff.
    • Provides [+350*Ability Strength] slash and pierce damage (350 to each).
    • Lasts for [X*Ability Duration] seconds.
    • Butcher's Iron canceled upon skewering another enemy.
• Can be activated during boost/dash.
  • Points sword out over shield.
  • Skewers any enemy run over.

Shieldmaiden adjusted to block damage from front, reduce damage from back.

• Increased base HP to 8000, scales with [Ability Strength*HP].
• Has damage reduction based 50%, scaled up with [Armor*Ability Strength].
• Recovers [3500*Ability Strength] Shield HP upon using Pounding Vortex.
• Provides energy field to reduce damage from sides and back (anything shield does not block).
• Upon having Shieldmaiden's HP fully depleted, releases a radial blind that lasts [4 seconds*Ability Duration].
• Alt-fire while blocking initiates shield-bash.
  • Knocks down enemies struck (max 5 in 1 bash).
  • Guarantees [50%*Ability Strength] Armor Strip.

Pounding Vortex replaces Firing Line. Bonewidow punches the ground, radially sucking in all enemies within 35 meters.

• Range is scaled by [35m*Ability Range].
• Inflicts knockdown to all enemies.
• If used while Shieldmaiden is active, additional effects.
  • Shield recovers [3500*Ability Strength] HP.
  • Blinds affected enemies for [3.5*Ability Duration] seconds.
• Chains immediately into Heavy Attack.
  • Heals for 25% total damage done by Heavy Attack.

Exalted Ironbride is separated into passive (default melee) and active (activated ability) portions.

• Passive mode (Ironbride) is default melee (unless Active mode is toggled).
  • Bonewidow default melee uses Ironbride instead of bare hands.
  • Can swap between Gun<-->Sword instantly.
  • Does 70% of Active mode's total damage.
• Active Mode (Exalted Ironbride) is toggled by using Exalted Ironbride. Enhances passive Ironbride mode with more features.
  • Firing line auto-activates after 2nd swing in basic combo, lining up enemies for vertical slash.
  • Increased base damage to [10000*Ability Strength].
  • Increased swing speed by [35%*Ability Strength].
  • Increased base Critical Chance to [75%*Ability Strength]
  • Enhances Heavy Attack.
    • Does AOE explosion on strike.
    • AOE damage scales with ability strength.
    • AOE Range scales with ability range.
    • Deals finisher damage.
  • Is still swappable between gun/melee.
    • Energy Drain only in effect when sword is out.

QoL Changes

• Change Bonewidow shield holster position to left shoulder (e.g. same as how Tallgeese from GW has it's shield).
• Omnidirectional boosting (Maybe make it only possible during Exalted Ironbride active mode?)
• Remappable keybinds 

[DukeCatfishJr]

В 27.11.2020 в 01:18, FeJoToRe сказал:

1st needs a replacement cuz no one liked that,

people are suggesting this ability to heal the necramech, which would make it tremendously useful in the current state of necramechs.

btw, what do you think about impaled enemies also buffing the mech offensively?

[Bailywolf]

17 minutes ago, DukeCatfishJr said:

people are suggesting this ability to heal the necramech, which would make it tremendously useful in the current state of necramechs.

btw, what do you think about impaled enemies also buffing the mech offensively?

Hmm.  Impale for a slow heal, hold to execute for a larger heal, tap to throw for explosive damage that also heals allies.  So yeeting dudes at friends becomes a strategy.   

[sitfesz]

On Bonewidow:

- 1st ability needs to do either huge damage in a big radius, or a previously mentioned support ability like heal, however there is already ability 2 for defensive skill.
Both grabbing animation and throwing animation is clunky and unsatisfying, it needs to be worthy of use.

- 2nd ability, the shield could use more visuals on the effective block window.
1st ability should do a shield bash while 2nd is active to deal damage in a cone instead of a radius, because now the 1st ability is just not available while 2nd is active.

- 3rd ability animation makes the ability more annoying to the user than to the enemy. It should not restrict movement in any way, the ability should have the one-handed animation treatment allowing the player to move, shoot, reload and jump while casting it.

- 4th ability too places the necramech in weird animation locks, where the strikes are also hard to hit, because it often reaches behind the target that is standing in front of us.
Necramechs with archguns have the feeling of stomping through hordes while bombarding them with heavy weapons, while the exalted blade is the complete opposite of this. Highly restricts movement, slow, implies that the necramech tries to hit really hard, but that's not the case. Melee against hordes needs mobility and fast reaction to input or the slow and heavy attacks needs to hit in a large area to be satisfying. Either way the current clunky animations make me not want to use ironbride and the fact that archguns are not even usable (like primaries on warframe exalted weapons) makes me want to subsume decoy on it.

On necramechs in general:

- I miss enemy radar too. Not some half range of primed animal instinct kind of enemy radar, but the one we use at least.

- Vacuum range is not ok, should match at least the companion mod ranges. Ok so to be sure I write it down: vacuum range should be bigger.

- Operators and necramechs are still not sentinel friendly, because the sentinels die easily pinned to our motionless warframes while we are out. It would be great if this was addressed somehow in a positive outcome way.

- Tapping jump should do mini-jump, while holding it should do regular big jump.
Currently the jump is either too small in many cases, or with the jump mod we stuck into ceiling and stuff for a few seconds even if we want to jump over a brick.

- Hover was best on holding the jump button, I suggest to revert the zoom hover.

- Landing animation is unnecessary in my opinion and another source of creating mobility restriction especially when it's this hard to slow down the falling speed with hover jet.
I would either suggest making hover jet more powerful or to decrease animation lock window speed on landing.

- I still don't understand the whole screen reticle and would like to have a regular one to reduce visual clutter.

[Alex_Astarte]

So, my opinion after update 29.5.5.1, three formas on BoneWidow and 4 on IronBride:

General:

    + Bonewidow is good looking, you can feel it was designed to be more maneuverable (and as such as a faster movement speed),

    - The one second stun-lock after dashing, charging, landing or recoverving from tripping over a 10cm step absolutely kill the flow this necramech should have. Since you have to move around a lot more (because close quarter sword fight) this one second of immobility become something really painful that you encounter often.

=> recovery delay after maneuverable should be reduced/halved.

    + The idea of a melee-oriented necramech is very good, and also very fun in practice,

    + The charge's damages are consistent enough to kill the less armored ennemies, that's really good, and very brutal !

    - Not a threat when guarding a vault. Once it's right arm is down (in 2-3secs most of the time) it has no mean to deal damage. So it bully you with Firing Line and then it die in less than 10 sec ...

 

Skills:

1) Meathook:

    + Funnny,

    - hard to hook anything,

    - cc for one ennemi only, and not the more dangerous,

    - laughable damage,

and the best one,

    - locked when another skill is active, and not just any skill, THE survivability skill, active ALL the time usually.

So I never use it honestly. 

=> make it a grappling hook, so we can pull to us faraway foes, like a therid that's about to spread it's web.

=> remove the lock for having shield maiden active, please.

 

2) Shield maiden:

    + Cool looking,

    + Cool looking,

    - Unreliable,

    - Has a cooldown for recast, because when you are in the thick of the fight it's obviously the best moment to spend 5-10 sec vulnerable,

    - Lock another ability,

Also, protect only the front (it's a shield after all).

=> make it a two-positions shield, when unequiped, provide a passive damage reduction, like 20% at least. And when equiped block all incoming damage from the front (like now, but more reliable). This way we can choose our survival tactics depending on which situation we are in.

=> It doesn't lock the first ability.

 

3) Firing line:

    + Quite cool,

    - When it work,

    - Feel a bit tedious for a third ability, not really exiting.

I never use it, most of the time I play on Deimos and infested are already coming at me or packed in corridor sooo I don't use it.

=> Make it a tether mine (like magnus lockdown for operator or Vauban mine) that can grab and hold 5-8 enemies and last for 5-15 sec (unmodded). I feel it would be more effective, more tactic and more beneficial for the team too.

 

4) Iron Bride:

    + Again, really cool,

    + Once properly modded, it works, the job is done, it's not incredible, but it's done,

    + The only combo is good,

    - Only one combo. It though it would have standing combo and a forward combo ...

    + The feeling of wielding a giant cleaver is really nice and powerfull, the last vertical blow is sooo violent,

    - It sooo slow, 0.8 at base with only one ridiculous mod at +10% so you reach 0.9 swing speed... it's slow,

    + The energy drain isn't too violent, it allows prolonged sessions of chop chop, that's nice,

    + The sword itbox is good, most of the time I can hit what I want, the range is good to, not incredibly good, but sufficient,

    - The slam attack 1) deal very little damage 2) has a recovery time so long we have to cancel it with a dash. The basic slam attack, without ironbride equiped has the same amount of recovery time, Voidrig is much faster ... once again action that lead to a punishing immobility aren't good for the flow.

 

 other:

• When you consult the "exalted ironbide" skill, there is a value of fire and blast damage, fairly high ... Where is it used ? Because it's not the base damage of the iron bride, like other exalted weapons.
• Ironbride has stats for heavy attack ... so far I don't know how to perform them it with iron bride, the usual key and others doesn't work. That's a bit sad, mostly because it would solve a lot of "the iron bride doesn't deal enough damages" problems.

 

Overall, I like it, but it lacks a little "woaw effect":

=> A bit a damage increase would be welcome,

=> Add some effect to the final vertical cleave, an explosion, a pull effect, lasers, something to enforce the idea that you're not just bashing a club at the infested face,

=> Wielding speed increase, if at least we could reach 1.0 with mod, that would nice, thank you,

=> Enable heavy attack, for heavy foes.

=> Add combo counter, could be nice and another solution for the lack of gargantuesque damages like Arquebex.

 

 

In the end it feel like an ok mech. I have more fun with it than with voidrig, but it's mitigated by it's clankyness ... that's a bit sad, it could be greater. I hope it will become greater.

I solved the health problem with a vizir predacist, because the survivability of the mech alone isn't enough and should be adressed.

I understand the change of the overing key for consol, but why did it affect PC player ? It felt much better when it was binded on the jump key.

Also, when you know that the product isn't properly finished (I mean, every hability got patched, and it's still clanky) please tell us, like Xaku, "it's just a first shot to see how it works, we will come back on it". Because here it was sold as fully finished (so we all knew there was some fine-tuinng to be done) but it's a bit far from just fine tuning here. I don't mind being a beta-tester for consol, but please state it, to temper the overall de-hype. Thank you.

 

 

Thank you, Warframe is a marvellous game, one of a kind, and I love it. I wish you the best.

[thurmack]

The necramech movement delays after jumping and sliding make meleeing with them extremely arduous. This is particularly evident when trying to approach distant foes quickly.

If it's not a critical component of balancing, please consider:

1. reducing these delays, and/or

2. allowing us to end a charge with a melee attack.

[Alpha_Tango]

On 2020-11-28 at 8:18 AM, sunderthefirmament said:

Bonewidow is garbage.  She is inferior to Voidrig even as a melee mech, as his Arquebex is perfectly functional in melee combat.  Indeed, that's how I use it to kill hostile mechs.  Bonewidow struggles in this arena, which is basically the only arena mechs have.  Why else would you use them?  What other content is there where they can outperform a properly kitted out Warframe? 

Where did I say Voidrig is inferior to Bone Widow? 

Bone Widow is getting flak because most feedback I saw here did not even attempt to max out theirs and somehow magically concluded it needs more HP, lacking in damage and let it move like a lightweight WF when we all know it is a lumbering mech. It is not suppose to outperform anything including your beloved kitted WF. It is a back up with almost 6K HP, 950 Armor, 1.2 Shield and 5k+HP Shield Maiden that in the future can be summoned to any mission. 

Quote

There shouldn't even be a melee mech, as melee in this game is heavily dependent upon mobility, and mechs, by their nature, are going to be a lot less mobile than Warframes or operators.

How about just don't use yours and let the rest of us players have fun with it?

My feedback is for the devs, I really don't care about what you think at all so waste your time on someone else. BTW, I just like to repeat what  I said in my original post

Quote

performance of this mech is heavily mod based. Judging it with miniscule investment is an affront to what it can do in the field

 

[TheLordOmega2]

Okay, feedback now that i got my Bonewidow to level 30.

 Bonewidow as a whole:

the stats are ok, but i really feel like (as the melee mech) she should be able to equip archmelee weapons instead of primary weapon. 

Bonewidow lacks fluidity in her movments. I know, it's a mech, it's supposed to feel heavy, but it should feel heavy and dexterous, not clunky.

Abilities:

in their current state, not only does Bonewidow lack synergies, she has two abilities that block eachother. this shouldn't happen. the shield kind of sucks as it can be destroyed or bypassed, her 3 is plain useless and ironbride is alright but lacks fluidity due to its low speed and lack of a full moveset. on top of that it locks you out of your archgun, undoing the melee 2.99 changes to every other exalted weapon.

REWORK CONCEPT:

(we're going to assume that Bonewidow can only equip archmelees here)

1) meathook(meatshield)//ironshield:

IRONSHIELD : If your offhand is free the Shieldmaiden is ON by default, giving you 25%DR (scales on power strength) in an 80ish degrees angle in front of you when you hold RMB (and slightly less of both DR and angle if you don't)

MEATHOOK : (cost 25energy to cast) Shoots a hook at the target you're vaguely pointing at and holds it in your offhand, deactivating ironshield and activating meatshield

MEATSHIELD : Drains a small % of the enemy's HP that you are currently holding and heals you by this same percentage as long as you are holding said meatshield. Damage taken is at 25% redirected to the held enemy (this does not heal you). The drain (and healing) rate is increased for eximus units, these units are considered allied to you for the effect of their aura. 

If the meatshield's health reaches 0, it falls off dead and frees your off hand, you can also throw it to do a good amount of damage to whatever you threw but most importantly a guaranteed AoE knockdown at the point of impact.

2) helper drone

A new ability that summons some kind of sentinel that offers passive benefits such as increased vacuum and a loot/enemy radar range but is mostly here to shoot at wherever you point and/or in a small range around you. this should be bonewidow's meager replacement for an archgun. (maybe make it moddable?). 50 energy to cast, has its own health/shield to limit it.

4) exalted ironbride:

Pretty much what it currently is, with slightly better stats (move speed, 1.0 follow trough...) and a full range of movement with a devastating heavy attack.

and now, the thing that ties everything together:

3) OVERDRIVE

Buff ability that improves Bonewidow and her powers, at the cost of draining Engine energy. 75energy to cast, limited by your engine. this is your big move.

Ironshield gets extended by energy and provides (shortly after activation) full damage nullification in about 160 degrees in front of you.

Meatshield now gets charged when it takes damage (including from your drain) and can be thrown to cause heavy damage in an AoE with a guaranteed electric proc. The meatshield can be thrown anytime and only explodes (defensive AoE as if thrown, but centered on you) at -100% HP, the damage and size of the AoE depend on the charge.

The drone gets increased damage, armor, hostility and now charges enemies that get too close, giving them the lifted statut.

All archmelee weapons get a bonus to their attack speed, range and extra elemental damage (scaling on power strength).

Bonewidow gets improved speed, jump height and recovery speed and some engine efficacy.

 

This should bring some synergy in Bonewidow's kit and make it stand on its own, on top of making you think about how you use your abilities ("should i keep the DR or grab an enemy to recover" "should i activate my overdrive NOW?"...) instead of making you question what's going on ("oh right, i can't use my shield if i hold an enemy, or grab a new one if i have the shield up" "why would i ever use firing line?" "why can't meathook grab anything?" "why isn't my ironbride out? oh right, it deactivate when you transferance out of the mech" "why can't i recast the shield?"...).

[Almxce]

 

Can Meathook be scrapped and instead replaced with a cast ability like Nova's that knocks enemies within a certain distance back and marks them with a debuff of sorts? Maybe one that reduces armour.

Using Ironbride alone should be one stance that also gives a speed/mobility buff and comes with a reduced energy cost while active. I think using sword and shield in unison should be considered the "exalted weapon" or a unique "exalted" stance with it's own moves and effect that gives a boost in armour.

Firing Line could be changed, an ability that grants some kind of buff to self/allies would be preferable.

Essentially I see Bonewidow as more of a Support/Defensive specialist and Voidrig being more offence oriented.

 

[TARINunit9]

Bonewidow is terrible and needs huge buffs. Not only is Voidrig much stronger, but Voidrig would still be fun to use even if it was weaker than my Warframes. Bonewidow is slow and clunky and has no reward for slogging through its terrible points

Meathook is a useless gimmick that accomplishes nothing. Why would we want to use this power? Even the worst powers in the game (the old versions of Soul Punch and Spectral Scream) had theoretical uses (knocking someone over for a ground finisher; applying status effects). What does Meathook do for me? What were you trying to accomplish?

Shield Maiden is just a downgrade of Storm Shroud. Blocks the same amount of damage, but only from the front and doesn't stagger enemies who shoot me

Likewise, Firing Line is a worse and less useful version of Valkyr's Paralysis. Whereas Paralysis is cheap and lets you do finisher attacks, Firing Line is expensive and does almost nothing for a Necramech

Exalted Ironbride has very bad Sundering Weave Syndrome. In case you don't remember, Sundering Weave was THE worst stance in the game, being slow, clunky, unable to cancel out of its attacks, and often sending you too far forward when you didn't want it to. And Exalted Ironbride is all that but taken up to eleven. And to top it all off, it's very weak -- at least the Arquebex has the good grace to do a literal million damage per shot in exchange for taking forever to unholster. But Exalted Ironbride isn't any stronger than the Archgun I was already using!

[TorchFlame6]

Bonewidow have awesome design, i really like to move this mech, but her skills are weak. They not bad, they need just a buff|functional.

Just make her 1 - MEATHOOK a healing ability. When you get enemy with meathook, your mech starting drain life from enemy and heal themself. If you thrown it to the enemy, they will be marked by energy and gain you heal upon they death.

While SHIELD MAIDEN is active, dont block meathook,instead of this, pressing 1 make your mecha strike with her shield, like when you press LMB on ult. This move marked enemy the same effect like you thrown it, but instead of heal, you get they health in your shield. Like you start with 6000 hp Shield Maiden, if you mark than kills 150 level enemy with 100 000 hp, your shield become 16000 hp as example.

All health that Shield Maiden have, going into the slide attack damage.

With this stuff, Bonewidow will be no have problem with scalling her protection, she still be vulnerable from behind, but her shield in front will be a not easy to destroy.

Now FIRING LINE. Just buff range to 40m and it will be alredy good stuff, but for more epic you can make that FIRING LINE gives FIRE stack to each enemy around 40m.

That will be not just laser wall, it will be epic flame laser wall. Because flame stack get cc to enemy and small damage upon them and he can be stack for fun staff.

EXALTED IRONBRIDE just need a damage buff. 1 sword swing equal to one grenade of arqebex, And it will be more fun with heavy attack and combo meter. On heavy you sword launch wave of energy foward, the more combo meter have, the more damage wave gets to the enemy.

I think if Bonewidow get cool stuff like this in her abilities, she be more effective and gets more love from community.

DE, you did really great work on this, i really like, how mecha feels, but for now, Bonewidow need some changes to be more cooler in gameplay.

[BahamutKaiser]

It's nice to see some good ideas from other players, I didn't even realize Ironbride was adding weapon damage to slide since there's little indication, and giving Meathook alternate functionality when Shield Maiden is up is cool. 

I was thinking, if Firing Line gathered foes twice in a row, it might keep foes in place a little better. Fire damage is also very fitting. 

[sunderthefirmament]

On 2020-11-29 at 9:23 PM, Alpha_Tango said:

Where did I say Voidrig is inferior to Bone Widow? 

BTW, I just like to repeat what  I said in my original post

 

Where did I say that I hadn't invested heavily in Bonewidow?  She'd have 5 formas in her already if not for the persistent host migration affinity loss bug.  I've seen what she can do in the highest tier of Isolation Vaults and 4 canister Thermia missions, in addition to sortie level bounties on the plains.  She brings absolutely nothing valuable or novel to the table.  This really stings, as I imagine that a lot of coding and developer time/work/energy went into her.

[Kefirno]

Awful mech. You can't have a melee-focused mech with that janky sluggish movement and long recovery animations after every action.

Bonewidow's kit is alright on paper but just doesn't work because meathook and exalted sword are too sluggish to use, 3 that is supposed to group enemies together for 1 and 4 sucks due to 1 and 4 being trash, and shield doesn't matter because you're better off just hovering and shooting enemies with archgun.

Mechs' movement needs fixing. Mechs' melee animations need fixing. Slam attack takes two whole seconds of standing still to recover from. You can skip it with dash, but then you have to skip dash with jump, and then turn back to where you were supposed to go or shoot. It's awful.

[Rambit23Z]

I can't shield bash with Ironbride out as I have the toggle where primary fire acts as melee when melee is equipped.

4 minutes ago, Kefirno said:

Awful mech. You can't have a melee-focused mech with that janky sluggish movement and long recovery animations after every action.

Bonewidow's kit is alright on paper but just doesn't work because meathook and exalted sword are too sluggish to use, 3 that is supposed to group enemies together for 1 and 4 sucks due to 1 and 4 being trash, and shield doesn't matter because you're better off just hovering and shooting enemies with archgun.

Mechs' movement needs fixing. Mechs' melee animations need fixing. Slam attack takes two whole seconds of standing still to recover from. You can skip it with dash, but then you have to skip dash with jump, and then turn back to where you were supposed to go or shoot. It's awful.

You can cancel nearly every animation by blocking/aiming with Shield Maiden active, and animations that can't be canceled with Shield Maiden can be canceled with Slide which can then be canceled by Shield Maiden.

[Duality52]

Update since Deimos Arcana Hotfix 29.5.6:

• Shield Maiden (2)

As noted before, AoE attacks will still damage both the shield and Bonewidow. The shield should protect AoE, otherwise the Juno Elite Crewmen are going to cut through Bonewidow like butter if Necramechs are going to be made available in normal missions soon.

The ability shouldn't be anti-synergetic with Meathook. Meathook should be still useable with the shield out. It makes no sense with the shield bash consuming energy. I would suggest removing the energy cost of the basic shield bash when the shield is out whether the Ironbride is out or not.

This ties in with how to make the two abilities synergize off of each other: using Meathook while Shield Maiden is active will create a more forceful shield bash. Enemies hit will restore the shield's health and Bonewidow's health, while stunning the victim (Equinox's Rest, Ivara's Sleep Arrow). This should be the only time the shield bash should cost energy to use, using Meathook as the synergy.

• Firing Line (3)

Make sure Firing Line does not affect friendly entities. Companions, Garv, and poor Latrox Une will get disrupted due to the ability, which can potentially kill allied NPC's due to the ragdolling.

• Exalted Ironbride (4)

Now is a good time to improve Archmelee mods:

1. Cutting Edge (110% Damage, Rank 16) to (165% Damage, Rank 16)
2. Furor (10% Melee Speed, Rank 7) to (40-50% Melee Speed, Rank 7)
3. Galvanizing Blade (120% Electric, Rank 11) to (120% Electric, Rank 9)

Allow the Ironbride's swinging animations to be upper body restricted, which means Bonewidow will still retain full movement while swinging the Ironbride.

Increase the combo counter on the Ironbride to 10 seconds, while allowing the Ironbride to benefit off of it. Each combo tier will increase the Ironbride's crit chance and damage by 20% per tier.

In addition, I would suggest adding the "life-siphon" effect to the Ironbride to give it more character than just a big stick to carry around: killing 5 enemies with the Ironbride will fully charge its Alt-Fire meter, which will fire a wide sword beam similar to the Fluctus. The beam's stats are twice the final stats of the Ironbride, including mods.

Bonewidow is similar to Xaku, still needs another rounds of fixes before being called the mobile and close range counterpart to Voidrig..

 

[notHunky]

On 2020-11-29 at 10:23 PM, Alpha_Tango said:

Where did I say Voidrig is inferior to Bone Widow? 

Bone Widow is getting flak because most feedback I saw here did not even attempt to max out theirs and somehow magically concluded it needs more HP, lacking in damage and let it move like a lightweight WF when we all know it is a lumbering mech. It is not suppose to outperform anything including your beloved kitted WF. It is a back up with almost 6K HP, 950 Armor, 1.2 Shield and 5k+HP Shield Maiden that in the future can be summoned to any mission. 

How about just don't use yours and let the rest of us players have fun with it?

My feedback is for the devs, I really don't care about what you think at all so waste your time on someone else. BTW, I just like to repeat what  I said in my original post

 

The comparison between Voidrig and Bonewidow kind of falls apart if we have to invest 5 forma into Bonewidow to make her viable compared to a Voidrig with 0 forma.

I'm still in the middle of using formas to get Bonewidow to level 40 and having more mods equipped definitely improves survivability, but the problem isn't with her effective HP or being slower than a warframe. The problem is her kit isn't balanced, has several points of failure, and straight up doesn't function half the time due to bugs. For example:

• Bonewidow's kit has no way to deal with distant enemies. Excalibur has sword projectiles, Ash and grineer flameblades have teleport, Valkyr, tera shockwave moas, and grineer scorpions have a grappling hook, Kuva liches, Garuda, and the G3 can instantly jump across an entire room to punch you in the face, etc...
• Despite being a melee focused class, Bonewidow's exalted melee is easily outperformed by normal melee weapons used by warframes simply due to how garbage archwing melee mods are. Also Ironbride didn't even work correctly half the time until about a week ago.
• Bonewidow's defensive ability (Shield Maiden) is way less reliable than Garuda's dread mirror and can break.
• Bonewidow's gimmick ability (Meathook) usually does nothing because it misses most of the time.
• Bonewidow's crowd control ability (firing line) works very poorly in open spaces, AKA the majority of places where necramechs will fit.
• Bonewidow is designed to be a health/armor tank, yet cannot be healed with conventional means outside of 1 warframe ability, 1 operator ability, or 1 aura mod. I have no idea why necramechs cannot pick up health orbs.

Bonewidow's lack of offensive capabilities is simply not acceptable as a class/weapon locked behind mastery rank 15. From a balancing standpoint, items with this high of a rank are supposed to be Steel Path viable. From a rule of cool/fun perspective, it's a mech... It's supposed to feel powerful! For the amount of work any newer players have to put into the game to even get this far (which could probably be measured in years), necramechs should be like the stupid powerful gear you get at the end of Metroid or something. A necramech with proper mods and weapons should make anything below level 100 a cakewalk.

Edit: Although another round of changes to Bonewidow just updated a few hours ago. Going to try seeing how it is now. I definitely see an improvement in the last couple patches compared to how it was on release, but simply adding survivability to a mastery rank 15 class is not quite enough. It needs to serve some kind of function as well. Before this latest patch at least she wasn't really a viable alternative to just using warframe powers, compared to Voidrig who at least fills the role/function as a mobile artillery piece for when you want to do BIG damage against tanky enemies.

[Ausenas]

Just wanted to start by saying thanks for the recent hotfix! Anyways here's what I wanted to say about the Bonewidow Necramech. I really like the changes and I love clapping infested together on Deimos with Firing Line. I feel like adding Lifted as a status effect really breathed new utility into it as an ability. The pushing the ability is supposed to do is really hit or miss but I'm glad it will still feel like it's doing something now as long as it touches enemies. I absolutely love the new life leeching effect Meathook has but it brings the viability of Bonewidow's 2 up. We know we can't use her 1 and 2 at the same time which brings up a conflict: Healing or protection? I think it's good that we can choose but the issue lies in how much of a better choice (imo) Meathook is now. Before the hotfix, Meathook was a fun gimmick, but largely worthless. Shield Maiden was also meh, but better than nothing. And even if it didn't always block damage, it wasn't that hard to just press 2 and let it hang by your side to block the occasional attack. Now, Meathook removes an enemy from the fight, does constant damage to them without an energy drain, (never had one anyways) heals for a good amount—and a constant heal at that—and I find that there's almost never a time I want to not be using it. Most of the time I am just limited by the enemy types that I can't grab and it slightly annoys me. I'd like to suggest an idea, and this is largely inspired by someone else's post I saw somewhere on the forum. I forgot where the post was and the poster, but if anyone wants to credit them, please do. Add a synergy between Bonewidow's 1 and 2 abilities. I think to make Bonewidow shine when compared to Voidrig is to flaunt more of its specialized kit, and I think Bonewidow's main draw was the promise of that in the first place. It's supposed to have more health, armor and be a tankier melee-oriented Necramech. It checks most of those boxes except for the melee part. I think a lot of people can agree that Bonewidow's 4 is underwhelming and needs more attention. I think we are getting there though.  For now, I still love the rest of Bonewidow's kit and I think it would be great to focus on those abilities to support and backup the eventual usage of her 4. Meathook gives Bonewidow great sustain now, and she can jump in the thick of it without fear of losing all her health, but her 2 needs more relevance. First off, please remove the energy drain from her shield bash. I was going smash-happy with her shield when I realized all of my energy reserves were empty and it made me slightly confused. I don't think making her (arguably) worst ability have a detriment to the rest of her kit is a good idea. The bash doesn't offer much utility anyways other than giving breathing space, (and smacking some enemies) but it is still enjoyable and feels useful. It is most useful when being spammed to push aside enemies, and it shouldn't come at an energy cost. It feels absolutely epic to be charging towards a group of infested while swatting them side to side. Another criticism is that the animation feels a little weird, especially because spamming melee just loops the overhand bash. I think making it have two different animations, the overhand swing, then a backhanded bash would make it look better, especially when inputted after each other. Now, finally going back to the synergy part (sorry): What if we could activate Bonewidow's 2 after impaling an enemy to "subsume" them in a sort of way and add to the shield's health/fortify it? Heck, what if having an impaled enemy just empowered the next usage of all her other abilities (just wishful thinking). Even then, I still think most players would choose to keep an enemy impaled on their arm just for the healing so maybe instead make the next activation of her 2 have health added to it based off of total health healed? Anyways, I think those two abilities have great potential to work off each other, and I think no matter what direction the team will pursue with Bonewidow, it will be a great result. Thanks for reading!

[DawnoftheWhiteFury]

Just tested Bonewidow out on Steel Path Plains with these new changes. What baffles me is that the new healing mechanic on Meathook seems to be health regen per second based on a percentage of the damage dealt to the enemy. Damage that doesn't scale with enemy health, just like how the damage dealt via throwing affected enemies still doesn't scale with enemy health as it should. For Pete's sake, Grendel set the standard for this over a year ago as Meathook, other than the new healing, basically does in concept the exact same thing as Grendel but objectively worse. The decision to make the damage Impact rather than True/Finisher or Toxin damage is equally baffling as using Meathook on armored targets basically gives almost nonexistent healing. This honestly feels like a rushed addition, just like how Bonewidow in general feels rushed. The other additions are fine, but much more is needed.

Buff the Furor Arch-Melee mod, make the Necramech melee mods (Necramech Pressure Point for example) affect Ironbride, drastically increase the base damage of Ironbride or so as it still needs to compete with the damage output of the Arquebex in some form (rather than inevitably nerfing Arquebex instead as Necramechs should feel very powerful), increase Ironbride's status chance so it can reach 100% status like the Arquebex, make Meathook usable with Shield Maiden active somehow (such as when using both Shield Maiden AND Exalted Ironbride), provide information as to how much of a damage increase Meathook provides to Ironbride as it isn't clear in game, make the damage of Meathook's thrown explosion and DPS on held enemies scale with enemy health, make the DPS damage type on Meathook either Finisher/True damage or Toxin damage for better scaling so the healing and damage are more reliable, make Shield Maiden's base health scale with Necramech Fiber to be consistent with other similar powers (do the same for Storm Shroud as well for the Voidrig), remove the energy cost for the Shield Bash attack (honestly why was this ever a requirement?), and improve upon Bonewidow's ability descriptions so they actually give proper information as to what they do. These changes are what are needed to make Bonewidow feel and perform better during play, especially when compared to the Voidrig. Another suggestion would be for Firing Line to remove a percentage of shields and armor as well from affected enemies based on Strength.

[DawnoftheWhiteFury]

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