Panzer | Ranged Defense Warframe

[-Bluhman-]

Note: I used some 3rd party character-posing software to make these images, so a lot of these assets aren't exactly mine or fit into the warframe world. Consider it a very light visual aid/suggestion rather than what the thing should actually even look like.

EDITS:

• Changed name after remembering whoops Pangolin's the name of a sword already.
• Improved speed and tweaked passive to kick in faster, for more applicability to different situations.
• Detonator effects altered.

The Artillery

Health	175
Shields	175
Energy	100
Armor	325
Sprint Speed	1.05

This is Panzer, a veritable mobile fortress.

Armed with weapon systems that augment performance at a distance, she can strike down her targets with a versatile barrage and weather any counterattacks by keeping them at optimal range, lest they suffer catastrophic retribution.

Standing her ground, Panzer is an immovable object and stalwart guardian. Those who face her will be met with extermination.

Abilities

Panzer serves as a tanky, ranged role that encourages highly defensive combat, with abilities that have long distances and force her opponents into her optimal reach.

Passive – For every 0.5 seconds spent not moving, Panzer's damage output and armor increase:

• Damage output rises by 10%
• Armor increases by 20 points
• The effect can stack up to 10 times. All stacks drop off if she moves.
  • Reaching 3 stacks (after 1.5 seconds) will end any active status effects.
  • Reaching 6 stacks conveys immunity to status effects.
  • Having 10 stacks will automatically reload her weapons by 10% of their clip size per second, even while in use.
• Having any stacks also conveys immunity to knock effects.

Panzer also is always immune to knockback and stun effects from explosions of her own weapons or abilities.

Deflector Aegis – Panzer projects an arced barrier of energy in front of her that wards off incoming attacks.

• Toggled power that costs 25 energy to activate, and 1 energy/s to maintain.
• Initial activation deals moderate blast damage and knocks targets within 5m of her away.
• Projects an arced shield 10m in front of her.
  • Shield is attached to her and blocks all incoming damage.
  • Enemies close enough to her bypass the shield entirely
  • Allies can benefit by staying within the radius of the shield.
• Panzer moves at a reduced speed while Deflector Array is deployed.
  • Moving while the shield is deployed can inflict impact damage and knockback to enemies between Panzer and the Shield, pushing them out of this area.
• Shield lingers for up to 3 seconds for every 5 seconds the shield is maintained, upon deactivation or energy depletion.
• Rank Improvements: Shield’s arc covers a wider angle around her.
• Scalings:
  • The distance of the shield from her is affected by ability range. Increase distance to provide more coverage to allies, and reduce distance for more precise protection to one’s self at close ranges.
  • Efficiency and Duration contribute to reducing or increasing the rate at which energy is drained while maintaining it.

Calamity Mine – Panzer deploys mines around her that can be utilized for personal mobility or area denial.

• Costs 25 energy to activate.
• Activate Calamity Mine with a tap to place a mine directly in front of Panzer’s reticle, a short distance:
  • The mine detonates within 1 second if Panzer moves into this mine, which propels her upwards, restores her second jump if she is in midair, and provides her damage immunity for 2 seconds.
  • If Panzer moves away from this mine, it instead will detonate when an enemy nears it and deal high blast damage, paired with a strong knockback.
• Holding the ability button will cause Panzer to twirl and throw out 6-8 mines in a ring around her.
  • These mines will not detonate if Panzer moves near them. They otherwise work the same way as the tapped mine.
• Other mine properties:
  • They do not have gravity and will stay in midair if placed so.
  • A maximum of 12 mines can be deployed normally. Placing more will immediately detonate earlier ones.
  • Mines can remain for a maximum of 45 seconds before they automatically detonate.
• Rank Improvements: Improved damage, knockback, and blast radius. Also improving the mine jump’s distance.
• Scalings:
  • Ability Strength alters the mine’s damage.
  • Ability Duration will influence the number of mines that can be laid.
  • Blast Radius is constant, it does NOT scale with Ability Range.

Detonation – Panzer deploys an explosive projectile with her built-in weapons systems, providing decisive damage and threat.

• Costs 50 energy to activate.
• Activate Detonation with a tap to launch an accelerating rocket that travels in a straight line.
  • Deals extreme blast damage to all targets within 20m of it.
  • Enemies hit have their defenses reduced by 25% for 6 seconds. If a target is hit directly, their defenses are reduced by 50% instead.
    • Acts separate from Armor reduction from Fire and Corrosion, and influences all types of health (including shields)
  • Enemies are knocked backwards, away from Panzer, in a cone pattern.
  • Rocket detonates upon contact with an enemy or terrain.
• Holding down Detonation has Panzer deploy a Mortar cannon on her back, enabling an interface that lets her fire an arcing explosive shot.
  • Aiming reticle shows a circle projected onto the ground that shows the area that will be affected by the mortar.
  • Shot is launched when power button is released.
  • Deals extreme blast damage within its radius.
    • Enemies at the center of the blast are knocked down and temporarily immobilized.
    • Enemies at the edge of the blast are knocked away.
  • Within its blast radius, the mortar leaves a burning patch that deals continuous fire damage with a high status chance.
  • The patch lasts for 15 seconds.
• Rank Improvements: Damage increase.
  • Rocket travels faster and defense debuff duration is extended.
  • Mortar’s patch lasts longer and covers a wider area.
• Scalings:
  • This ability is an exalted weapon that accepts rifle mods.
  • The duration of the mortar activation's flame patch is increased with Ability Duration.

Bunker Stance – Engaging her capabilities to her fullest, Panzer morphs into a stationary turret that augments her weapon’s capabilities.

• Costs 50 energy to activate, no energy to maintain.
• Bunker Stance has the following passive effects while enabled:
  • Panzer is immobilized, and has no gravity while the stance is active.
    • Activate the Bunker Stance after a high jump to maintain a high vantage point.
  • Panzer automatically gains maximum stacks of her Passive ability.
  • Panzer begins to generate 2 energy/second. This energy generation pauses for 1 second after using any ability.
  • Recoil and damage falloff of her ranged weapons are drastically reduced
  • Has a melee-styled deflect in a 20 degree area in front of her while using ranged weapons.
• Augments her other abilities:
  • Deflector Aegis: The shield is projected to the point her reticle is aiming at, rather than around her. She can use this to protect other targets from afar.
    • The facing of the Aegis will still track to the current direction Panzer is facing.
  • Calamity Mine: Tap activation acts similarly to the default held activation. Held activation instead launches the area-deployment effect to the location you are aiming instead of around you.
  • Detonation: Can combo itself 3 times in a row for the cost of 1 activation, if done within 1 second of last activation.
• Has a cooldown of 5 seconds after disabling.
• Rank Improvements: Faster transition into and out of Bunker Stance, and armor increases while in use.

[keikogi]

There is a fundamental problem with the desing. The passive tries it's best to make the awsd keys useless. Literally railroading the player into  completely stationary play style on game about mobility. Personally I would make the ultimate the passive ( if you crouch it activate) but make it so the bunker down mod goes a cooldown as long as it was in use ( if you bunker down for 5 seconds it goes on cooldown for 5 seconds ). So there a reason to be mobile and redeploy often instead of sitting on a single spot the entire mission 

[(XBOX)Ampathetiic]

This seems less like a new concept and more of just a Voidrig rework. Abilities that lock the player in place are a relic of bad frame design, and Guard Mode only works because the weapon it allows you to use is beyond our understanding of broken, so we find the super big damage entertaining. It seems like Bunker Mode just copies Guard Mode, without being as powerful as Arquebex (how could it be?)

I really like the idea of Calamity Mine. Sending a lot of mines from the air seems fun, but I'm not sure how practical it is compared to a normal bullet jump. It also doesn't make sense for a frame designed around staying in one spot to have a mobility tool, but I'd keep the mobility and ditch the passive personally. I'd change Calamity Mines to always function as the hold cast (remove the tap cast function), while allowing Pangolin to detonate a mine for a blast of mobility by bullet jumping from it. And for the sake of being really cool, maybe add a way to detonate all active landmines by melee slamming.

Deflector Aegis seems really similar to Volt's Electric Shield, and to make the two abilities more different, I'd suggest a heavy slow on Pangolin while this is active (something like the Ivara Prowl slow). This ability can be toggled on and off as needed since it's pretty cheap, and the slow can be subverted by bullet jumping off a Calamity Mine for a burst of speed, maybe even some kind of knockback if you launch into enemies.

As for Detonation, I think the tap cast is very generic and boring, while the hold cast seems really cool. Mortars are awesome, and while I do not approve of locking the player in place, I can get behind something like that if it's only for a brief moment, and it also has obvious synergy with Deflector Aegis. Only issue is that you have both a knockback and a an AoE DOT, which don't mesh well at all. I think the knockback should go, although it would look a little weird for a giant explosion to not move enemies.

I can't think of any suggestions for the passive or 4th ability, but thinking of those 3 abilities on a frame sounds REALLY fun.

[-Bluhman-]

1 hour ago, (XBOX)Regxxh said:

This seems less like a new concept and more of just a Voidrig rework. Abilities that lock the player in place are a relic of bad frame design, and Guard Mode only works because the weapon it allows you to use is beyond our understanding of broken, so we find the super big damage entertaining. It seems like Bunker Mode just copies Guard Mode, without being as powerful as Arquebex (how could it be?)

A couple of key things:

1. You can't take a Necramech into several mission types. Otherwise you'd be seeing Voidrig all over the place in the Defense game mode because only a select few instances of that map type require the player to move from one spot. If that were the case, any time a void fissure opens on a Defense node or an arbitration happens on one, you'd basically just have a quartet of Voidrigs showing up and gunning things down around them with overwhelming blast damage as they try and fail to approach the objective. In a word, that would be OP, so reasonably, we probably wouldn't see a Necramech show up in a standard mission type. That's where Pangolin could have some room to shine.

2. Pangolin can activate Bunker Stance in midair and hover in place. This means you can get vantage points that would be completely impossible with Guard Mode (not to mention the difficulty of getting a Voidrig into a high spot to begin with, even if it wasn't just in midair).

1 hour ago, (XBOX)Regxxh said:

I really like the idea of Calamity Mine. Sending a lot of mines from the air seems fun, but I'm not sure how practical it is compared to a normal bullet jump. It also doesn't make sense for a frame designed around staying in one spot to have a mobility tool, but I'd keep the mobility and ditch the passive personally. I'd change Calamity Mines to always function as the hold cast (remove the tap cast function), while allowing Pangolin to detonate a mine for a blast of mobility by bullet jumping from it. And for the sake of being really cool, maybe add a way to detonate all active landmines by melee slamming.

The mobility aspect of the ability's mainly to support defensive positioning and vertical reach (again to make the most of midair positioning for Bunker Stance). The mobility aspects are also to avoid having the frame just be pigeonholed entirely into their singular stationary role. This way Pangolin can launch herself quickly out of the way if there isn't enough time or energy to set up a lasting barrier.

Versatility is a key element to most good frames, though, so some tweaking of the passive definitely is a consideration.

1 hour ago, (XBOX)Regxxh said:

Deflector Aegis seems really similar to Volt's Electric Shield, and to make the two abilities more different, I'd suggest a heavy slow on Pangolin while this is active (something like the Ivara Prowl slow). This ability can be toggled on and off as needed since it's pretty cheap, and the slow can be subverted by bullet jumping off a Calamity Mine for a burst of speed, maybe even some kind of knockback if you launch into enemies.

The slow's already included:

3 hours ago, -Bluhman- said:

Pangolin moves at a reduced speed while Deflector Array is deployed.

Basically it's acting as Volt's Shield except always picked up, and at full size. Giving it a bit of contact properties might be a good idea to increase Pangolin's flexibility.

1 hour ago, (XBOX)Regxxh said:

As for Detonation, I think the tap cast is very generic and boring, while the hold cast seems really cool. Mortars are awesome, and while I do not approve of locking the player in place, I can get behind something like that if it's only for a brief moment, and it also has obvious synergy with Deflector Aegis. Only issue is that you have both a knockback and a an AoE DOT, which don't mesh well at all. I think the knockback should go, although it would look a little weird for a giant explosion to not move enemies.

An older draft of Pangolin had her tap/rocket cast do a radial knockback (instead of aiming away from her), and the hold/mortar cast only knock enemies down inside the patch, rather than out. The idea though is that the two variants are both meant to specifically force enemies into specific positions around her in different ways - Pangolin benefits from targets being further from her, so the tap cast is meant as a means by which to force then back (usually back behind her shield), and the mortar is for more deliberate positioning once targets aren't directly nearby her.

Should also be noted, the tap activation of Detonation is meant to come out fast and serve basically as a bridge between reload periods. Double that with a defense debuff on it and it adds up to hopefully make Pangolin very deadly at a distance - versus the fairly up-close approaches enforced by other tanky frames like Rhino, Nezha, or Valkyr.

The flame patch really is more for a chokepoint bonus in this case, and especially if you're aiming to force enemies in a specific direction, you'd be aiming to hit a cluster of foes on the edge of the blast instead of directly on it, so as to avoid scattering them and pushing them in the same direction.