Zephyr : a review.

[LascarCapable]

INTRO :

As far as I can recall, Zephyr was never a very popular warframe. I was there when she was introduced in U12. Back then, CC and utility were the dominating factors for a good warframe, and what Zephyr brought on the table back then was not nearly enough. Worse : abilities just flat out didn't work well. Tornadoes couldn't hold anything inside them, tail wind and dive bomb dealt pityful damage... The only redeeming factor was probably Turbulence which pretty much guaranteed several seconds of godmode (tho some players were complaining about inconsistancies) and the fact that, well, you can basically fly with her. That feature made her popular only among a very niche set of players who absolutely wanted an aerial playstyle, until Titania was released, sealing Zephyr's fate to rot inside your armory never to be seen again.

Over the next years, several attempts at correcting Zephyrs overwhelming flaws were made, but always with no meaningful results, mostly due to the fact that there was always something better elsewhere. First, Tail Wind and Divebomb got merged together to free a new ability to Zephyr which had the peculiar effect of doing absolutely nothing useful (I'm talking about Airburst here). Then some synergies with barely any effect whatsoever on ability consistencies where brough up by using Airburst on Tornado, something that doesn't matter when your tornado can't keep enemies inside of itself anyway. Then Airburst got additional utility with the ability to suck enemies in rather than pushing them away, which hardly mattered considering how painfully weak the ragdoll effect was...

Zephyr seemed doomed to an eternity of absolutely underwhelming changes that wouldn't change anything whatsoever. All hope was lost. And then U29.10 came, with Zephyr's new deluxe skin and the rework that comes with it. And pardon my french, but holy bloody crap that was something !

CHANGES REVIEW :

The rework seems aimed towards reinforcing Zephyr's current identity while also adding her a new one. The new Zephyr is designed as a brand new gunplay enhancer, with the unique gimmick of rewarding you for staying airborne. Zephyr's new passive effect is already a very convincing proof of that newfound identity, as it grants you a whopping 150% crit chance bonus as long as you're playing "the floor is lava". For reference, this is like being able to equip Point Strike twice, except that second Point Strike comes absolutely free ! We're off to a good start. Now add this to the fact that Tornado boost your critical damage by 200% (a feature that was present from the start by the way !), and you get an absolutely devastating result. Just imagine having Electric Shield's critical damage buff paired with harrow critical rate buff inside a single package : that's basically Zephyr right now.

Of course, it wouldn't be fun if DE didn't gave you tools to exploit that outrageous critical rate buff. This is where Tail Wind's new hover feature comes into play, allowing you to remain airborne for as you as you have energy to spare for its small cost over time effect. Bad mouths will say this feature is subpar to Titania's Razorwing since it doesn't allow you for as much speed and control, but let's not forget that contrary to Titania, you get access to as much weapons as you arsenal will allow you, while Titania will be remain locked with Dex Pixia and Diwata. It all boils down if you prefer absolute freeform flight or wide range of weaponry in the end. Dive bomb also deals much more damage now, but if you're playing a range build you won't feel it. There's probably some builds out there to exploit it greatly.

Zephyr's identity as a CC frame also got strongly reinforced. First of all : Airburst now has absolutely insane sucking capabilities. A simple press of your button 2 will usually be enough to bunch up enemies into a great ball of ragdolls that you will be happy to anihilate with the weaponry of your choice afterwards. While the suction effect isn't as reliable as what the absolute king of CC can do (I'm talking about Larva here), the effect still remains strong enough to guarantee a lot of value from these 50 energy you're going to spend. It also provides invaluable utility for putting enemies inside your tornadoes, as Airburst's radius outshines Tornado's pick-up radius by double.

One undocumented change about airburst though : it seems that held airburst gains an additional projectile instead of the usual three, thus allowing you to ragdoll enemies strongly if you directly hit them from high up. While held airburst has virtually no good use scenarios, that small addition is still very fun if you enjoy yeeting stuff around.

EDIT : my opinion actually changed about Airburst. It felt good at 265% strength, but then I tried some helminth options and it just feels much better. Don't get fooled : Airburst is still extremely disappointing for its main utility. The base range of 8m is abysmal, and the dragging effect doesn't work well enough without an absolutely big range radius as it makes enemies feel like they're being dragged on sandpaper. I redirect to you this post for the actual Airburst review : 

 

Now let's talk about the Tornadoes : it's surprising to see how actually useful these little spinny things can be once you allow them to actually keep stuff inside of them. Tornado didn't just evolve into a semi-reliable CC ability. It also evolved into a potent area denial tool and an absolutely devastating offensive asset. Remember what I said earlier : Tornado improves your critical damage by +200% ! But now, it will also absolutely keep everything it captures inside of itself, and you will also get a way to position them in a fixed pattern by holding your ability button. Add to this the fact that you're guraranteed to hit every single enemies inside the tornado, and you get an ability that is very worth that 100 energy investment.

MY PLAYSTYLE :

Because Zephyr's guneplay enhancing abilities aren't affected by power strength, we can focus solely on your CC abilities. With Zephyr, I chose a 265% range build, with a maxxed redirection and as much "damage reduction while airborne" mods as possible. My current build has the following mods :

I run Vazarin for my operator to heal myself when needed.

Not everyone can afford a maxxed out Arcane Energize, so if you don't have one, run Zenurik and replace Primed Flow with Fleeting Expertize. Second arcane is mostly there as a filler so feel free to put any arcane you want there. Primed Continuity isn't really mandatory either if you don't run Fleeting Expertize so feel free to switch this one for whatever you fancy too.

The playstyle is fairly straightforward. Go airborne, spread havoc. If you need to land for whatever reason, dive bomb, cast turbulence and travel until you can takeoff again. In teams, you can fill both a DPS and a support role by CCing, bunching up enemies and providing critical damage enhancement.

For your weapon choice, I would recommend anything with good range, large AoE radius and high crit rate. Kuva Tonkor, Lenz and Kuva Bramma are all three great weapon choices for Zephyr in your primary slot. In your secondary slot, consider something to spread status to support your primary. Bonus point if the weapon also has a good base crit rate.

Because Zephyr requires you to play mostly airborne, you won't really use melee much, so just pick whatever you want here.

Obviously, you don't have to follow that build for your Zephyr to work. More outlandish builds remains for you to discover.

CONCLUSION :

The curse as been broken. Not only that new Zephyr is absolutely viable to play with insane damage potential, but she's also really fun in my opinion. That newfound gunplay enhancer identity fits the warframe very well without conflicting with her previous traits, and as someone who is a great fan of gunplay enhancing warframes such as Harrow or Gauss, Zephyr now became my favourite warframe in the game. If you enjoy an airborne playstyle but grew tired of Titania or if you're simply looking for a warframe able to improve your arsenal tenfolds, give her a try, it's worth it.

IMPROVEMENT SUGGESTIONS :

EDIT : Tornado is in a perfect state, and Tail Wind is close from perfect, but Airburst desperately needs to be reviewed and cleaned up from all of its unnecessary effects to concentrate on what shoud be its actual purpose : displacing group of enemies. This is why I'm gonna suggest the following changes for Airburst :

• Remove the Parazon on low hp effect and the "better damage depending of how much enemies you hit" effect.
  • EXPLANATION 1 - Target Fixation already fills the DPS niche of Zephyr, and does it good enough to the point of actually being good at killing steel path enemies. That niche is not needed anymore on Airburst.
  • EXPLANATION 2 - Parazon on kill is already a very niche effect, but it also just doesn't suit Zephyr, who would rather focus on staying airborne and killing stuff from above as much as possible.
• Increase the base radius of airburst from 8m to 11m.
  • EXPLANATION - Currently, you need 265% power range in order to reach the symbolic bar of 20m airburst radius, which represents twice the suction radius of Tornado. Doing so costs three mod slots and a heavy blow to your power strength stat. An 11m Airburst would allow you to reach 20m pull radius by simply using overextended, freeing up two mod slots. More info here : 
• Increase the drag force of "pull" airburst, and raise its center point a bit more above the ground.
  • EXPLANATION - Doing this should make airburst more reliable at pulling enemies and prevent "sandpaper" effects.
• Rework held version of airburst : instead of making a projectile that push enemies upon exploding, make it a shockwave that capture enemies on its path but doesn't explode.
  • EXPLANATION - This could allow you to combo tap and held airburst brilliantly : tap to suck enemies to a desired location, then hold airburst to push everything in the direction you fancy.
• Make the base cost 25 instead of 50 and remove the "half cost mid-air" effect.
  • EXPLANATION - Being mid-air as a requirement for halved airburst cost is already literally free of charge, so why bothering with that after all ? Let's just fix the cost to 25 energy outright, for the sake of keeping things simple.
• As a final sanity check, perhaps it could be a good idea to alter helminth version so the base cost is still 50, and maybe some more stuff...
  • EXPLANATION - We don't want that option to be too good to the point of absolutely outshining Larva, Ensnare and Pull when it comes about Helminth powers. Buffed airburst would already bring a lot more to the table so let's keep things sane.

CREDIT TO TERIDAX68 : being able to steer Tail Wind would also be an excellent change for overall flight experience since it still feels very stiff. This could improve the pleasure of playing Zephyr tenfolds, and overall feels like a very well deserved QoL change, especially now that Lavos is able to steer while using Vial Rush

I hope you guys enjoyed the read. Thank you DE for that rework : it was really great !

[Birdframe_Prime]

It's interesting, this works for her base playstyle and is pretty fun.

However, Zephyr's unique in the way that her Augments actually want more Strength, and that's where the frame can really shine in really odd ways (compared to before).

On seeing the changes I immediately went back to basics, I built for juuuust enough Duration, Range, Efficiency and Strength, with no negatives, and a dedicated slot for the Augments and...

Holy mother of buffs, Batman...

Just 155% Strength (yes, double Umbral for the Health)., with occasional boosts from Growing Power, means that the average Jet Stream build is smooth and fast, extending the range on Shotguns and anything Projectile. This one's unchanged, with the simple exception that the Hover is now very viable because you can off-set the greater range for your weapons with the increased distance before damage fall-off happens. It just makes sitting in the air that much more universally good for your weapons.

The next one is Target Fixation. I'm really against DE only buffing raw damage numbers on an ability without giving it any kind of meaningful effects, but since Target Fixation is a meaningful effect, the results are startling. Steel Path Grineer start actually being killed, where they never would before. The damage multiplier quickly scales up when the spawns are that dense, I think five or six casts got me to 10,800% damage, which is over 750,000 damage per hit with this build, adjusted for height of around 15m multiplies that by 3x up to 2.25 Million damage in a radius... If you maintain that for any length of time in mission, you're one-shotting Steel Path enemies with what was one of the weakest abilities in the game only a month ago...

And then there's Funnel Clouds. Just... The new hold-to-spawn version keeping them grouped up? I just... there was the meme build for Nuke Zephyr using a pure Electric weapon like the Fulmin, modded for pure Electric damage and so on. This build was set up to Helminth on an ability like Ensnare to group enemies up, because she didn't have the function alone, and then use the Tornado 'spawn on enemies' function to spawn multiple tiny-nados in the same spot. Hitting them with the Electric weapon, modded for pure Electric, would then cause a Status Feedback Loop, where the Electrical damage dealt to the enemies would cause the Status that dealt more damage than the original damage, this would bounce from enemies back to the funnels, back to the enemies, and they would explode in less than a second due to instant numbers overload. New Airburst and the new spawning of Tornado does this innately now, no Helminth needed. Nuke Zephyr is now a base function of the frame.

I suggest that anyone looking to try Zephyr does not skip these options.

Give them a try, because I've been playing the meme builds on Zephyr for years now, and I'm genuinely shocked that they're now just... builds.

Oh, Lascar, one thing for you,:

1 hour ago, LascarCapable said:

The only redeeming factor was probably Turbulence which pretty much guaranteed several seconds of godmode (tho some players were complaining about inconsistancies)

Turbulence was one of the most-patched abilities in the game, and for a good reason, allow me to explain.

This is because it was originally a radial screen that caused an accuracy debuff. Anything outside of it had lower accuracy and couldn't hit her, supposedly, but anything inside could. The base problem with the ability is that Accuracy is a scaling stat, and at that point in Warframe history, long run Survival and Defense was a very rewarding thing, so players frequently found that enemies just scaled up their Accuracy to the point that Zephyr's flat debuff meant nothing.

After it was changed to a radial 'redirection' function, where any enemies shooting at her with hitscan simply aimed at a different point, while any enemies aiming at her with projectiles had them pushed away. The fault with this version was what were called 'tunnels' in the ability. Hitscan enemies actually aimed for a point above or to the side of Zephyr, and while moving fast, this just meant that you could easily move into the line of fire before the game caught up and shifted the enemy's aim.

It was the 2018 patch, after four years, that finally fixed this, making the ability act like an actual 'object' for hitscan. If you turn your energy colours down now (like a dark blue or black), and stand far enough away from a hitscan enemy like a Heavy Gunner, you'll notice the little 'sparks' of the bullets impacting on the outside of Turbulence, exactly as if it were a Volt Shield.

It's been a bit of a saga for the Zephyr players there...

But all in all?

I'm now almost completely happy with where the frame sits. I'm glad we got here at long last.

[Teridax68]

It's good to see you again on here! I can also agree with many of the points: making Airburst pull in enemies was a significant improvement to the ability, and synergizes a lot better with a kit that generally wants enemies to land in certain spots. Zephyr is a frame that needed a lot of quality-of-life improvements, and making her Dive Bomb easier to land I think was very helpful in that respect as well. Beyond that, big numeric buffs to the rest of her kit was bound to make her better. Time will tell whether this will change her viability in the long run, but it's looking good.

If there's one aspect of Zephyr I think still needs a touch-up, it's the base functionality to Tail Wind: the ability's this very stiff dash that has very little in the way of maneuverability and poor interaction with closed environments, causing her to donk repeatedly into level geometry as she tries to maneuver around. Ideally, the dash component should be Zephyr's bread and butter for moving around in the air, like a bullet jump if it weren't tied to the ground, but the effect is still too clunky to do that outside of open-air tilesets and the Plains/Vallis/Cambion. More experienced Zephyr players have spoken much more eloquently on the subject, but my two cents is that the ability ought to be altered so that Zephyr can adjust her course while dashing around, and should probably let her latch onto terrain if diving directly towards a surface.

[LascarCapable]

1 hour ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

It's interesting, this works for her base playstyle and is pretty fun.

However, Zephyr's unique in the way that her Augments actually want more Strength, and that's where the frame can really shine in really odd ways (compared to before).

On seeing the changes I immediately went back to basics, I built for juuuust enough Duration, Range, Efficiency and Strength, with no negatives, and a dedicated slot for the Augments and...

Holy mother of buffs, Batman...

Just 155% Strength (yes, double Umbral for the Health)., with occasional boosts from Growing Power, means that the average Jet Stream build is smooth and fast, extending the range on Shotguns and anything Projectile. This one's unchanged, with the simple exception that the Hover is now very viable because you can off-set the greater range for your weapons with the increased distance before damage fall-off happens. It just makes sitting in the air that much more universally good for your weapons.

The next one is Target Fixation. I'm really against DE only buffing raw damage numbers on an ability without giving it any kind of meaningful effects, but since Target Fixation is a meaningful effect, the results are startling. Steel Path Grineer start actually being killed, where they never would before. The damage multiplier quickly scales up when the spawns are that dense, I think five or six casts got me to 10,800% damage, which is over 750,000 damage per hit with this build, adjusted for height of around 15m multiplies that by 3x up to 2.25 Million damage in a radius... If you maintain that for any length of time in mission, you're one-shotting Steel Path enemies with what was one of the weakest abilities in the game only a month ago...

And then there's Funnel Clouds. Just... The new hold-to-spawn version keeping them grouped up? I just... there was the meme build for Nuke Zephyr using a pure Electric weapon like the Fulmin, modded for pure Electric damage and so on. This build was set up to Helminth on an ability like Ensnare to group enemies up, because she didn't have the function alone, and then use the Tornado 'spawn on enemies' function to spawn multiple tiny-nados in the same spot. Hitting them with the Electric weapon, modded for pure Electric, would then cause a Status Feedback Loop, where the Electrical damage dealt to the enemies would cause the Status that dealt more damage than the original damage, this would bounce from enemies back to the funnels, back to the enemies, and they would explode in less than a second due to instant numbers overload. New Airburst and the new spawning of Tornado does this innately now, no Helminth needed. Nuke Zephyr is now a base function of the frame.

I suggest that anyone looking to try Zephyr does not skip these options.

Give them a try, because I've been playing the meme builds on Zephyr for years now, and I'm genuinely shocked that they're now just... builds.

Very solid analysis for augment based playstyles (which is something I am totally not up to date with). If anything, it looks like either very high range or high-ish strength are going to be two very viable Zephyr builds, with the first focusing on utility and gunplay enhancing, and the second focusing more around powers.

12 minutes ago, Teridax68 said:

It's good to see you again on here! I can also agree with many of the points: making Airburst pull in enemies was a significant improvement to the ability, and synergizes a lot better with a kit that generally wants enemies to land in certain spots. Zephyr is a frame that needed a lot of quality-of-life improvements, and making her Dive Bomb easier to land I think was very helpful in that respect as well. Beyond that, big numeric buffs to the rest of her kit was bound to make her better. Time will tell whether this will change her viability in the long run, but it's looking good.

If there's one aspect of Zephyr I think still needs a touch-up, it's the base functionality to Tail Wind: the ability's this very stiff dash that has very little in the way of maneuverability and poor interaction with closed environments, causing her to donk repeatedly into level geometry as she tries to maneuver around. Ideally, the dash component should be Zephyr's bread and butter for moving around in the air, like a bullet jump if it weren't tied to the ground, but the effect is still too clunky to do that outside of open-air tilesets and the Plains/Vallis/Cambion. More experienced Zephyr players have spoken much more eloquently on the subject, but my two cents is that the ability ought to be altered so that Zephyr can adjust her course while dashing around, and should probably let her latch onto terrain if diving directly towards a surface.

If being able to manoeuver through the map with Tail Wind is still a major problem, being able to steer Tail Wind as suggested could bring a lot of good. I can't see any good reason to not implement that actually, especially considering the fact that Lavos is now able to steer during Vial Rush. I'm gonna add this to the OP.

A small point to raise though : IIRC DE made sure that dashing into a wall would cancel Tail Wind automatically. I suppose holding RMB while doing so would also automatically make you wall latch on the surface ? This is something I'll have to try since I didn't think about it.

[Teridax68]

38 minutes ago, LascarCapable said:

A small point to raise though : IIRC DE made sure that dashing into a wall would cancel Tail Wind automatically. I suppose holding RMB while doing so would also automatically make you wall latch on the surface ? This is something I'll have to try since I didn't think about it.

Indeed, dashing directly into a wall cancels Tail Wind. However, while the ability is in effect, there is no way to change direction or cancel the ability while in the air, so if you try to wall latch, you get smeared across a wall instead. Because of this, if you aim before the dash ends, including while dashing directly into a wall, you may not end up latching. If you want to have a quick feel of it, try it in the Ballroom Simulacrum, it'll give an idea of how rigid the base effect is.

[LascarCapable]

23 minutes ago, Teridax68 said:

Indeed, dashing directly into a wall cancels Tail Wind. However, while the ability is in effect, there is no way to change direction or cancel the ability, so if you try to wall latch, you get smeared across a wall instead. Because of this, if you aim before the dash ends, including while dashing directly into a wall, you may not end up latching. If you want to have a quick feel of it, try it in the Ballroom Simulacrum, it'll give an idea of how rigid the base effect is.

It's indeed a bit unresponsive. I have to double tap the aimglide button most of the time. A bit of work here would be welcome.

[(XBOX)GearsMatrix301]

Have you tried using her with her 1 augment?

[LascarCapable]

33 minutes ago, (XBOX)GearsMatrix301 said:

Have you tried using her with her 1 augment?

Birdframe did and witnessed ridiculous amounts of damage after 5-6 hits. Looks very viable.

 

Quote

The next one is Target Fixation. I'm really against DE only buffing raw damage numbers on an ability without giving it any kind of meaningful effects, but since Target Fixation is a meaningful effect, the results are startling. Steel Path Grineer start actually being killed, where they never would before. The damage multiplier quickly scales up when the spawns are that dense, I think five or six casts got me to 10,800% damage, which is over 750,000 damage per hit with this build, adjusted for height of around 15m multiplies that by 3x up to 2.25 Million damage in a radius... If you maintain that for any length of time in mission, you're one-shotting Steel Path enemies with what was one of the weakest abilities in the game only a month ago...

 

[MrFrog9]

Too lazy to make my own thread (especially when there's already like 5) so I'll just piggyback here with some thoughts:

Rework good. As you say they managed to settle on a direction for Zephyr instead of being a weird (but fun!) gimmick that doesn't amount to much practical. She's a speedy aerial gunslinger who's good at grouping foes together and mowing them down while keeping herself and her teammates shielded.

+150% critical rate just for being airborne seems a bit excessive to me but I don't think it'll be game-breaking since it's just for weapons. It might be fun/dumb to combine it with Eclipse or something similar from the Helminth if you want to mow things down even harder, since this will bypass the Helminth's ban on dual damage buffs.

Tailwind still rockets me off into space sometimes but overall it's much more responsive when it comes to detecting when it should stop and actually stopping you when it does. I'm personally fine with it mostly being for hopping from wall to wall but more ways to steer or stop it would be nice.

I miss the 4th tornado a bit, on larger maps (Corpus Ship Defense oh god) it feels like they're too spread out to be super useful. They don't spread out foes as much, true, but that's mostly because they end up accomplishing less in general.

I'm sure there's some horrifying degenerate strat with Target Fixation since divebomb ignores LoS but the range is very limited so it is, by all accounts, just a very good augment now that enables a different playstyle for Zephyr at the cost of a mod slot. Revolutionary!

Airburst is very good and I kind of hope they apply the way it works to similar abilities such as Pull. Gently tugging foes towards their destination seems to work much better than a single violent ragdoll that sends them everywhere.

DE done did good. Birb queen is vindicated at last and is still fun to play. I've mostly hated their reworks of recent years so I was nervous for this one but they successfully freshened her up while keeping her identity intact.

[Birdframe_Prime]

6 hours ago, MrFrog9 said:

I miss the 4th tornado a bit, on larger maps (Corpus Ship Defense oh god) it feels like they're too spread out to be super useful. They don't spread out foes as much, true, but that's mostly because they end up accomplishing less in general.

Hold 4 while looking at the defense pod. Activate Turbulence and stand on pod.

You are now invincible for 30-55 seconds depending on mods.

[(PSN)Hopper_Orouk]

@Birdframe_Prime have you tried making a mixed build between funnel clouds and target fixation with ensnare?

the strategy is to ensnare enemies, cast tornado with funnel clouds, infect them with viral for extra viral procs, then dive bomb them to death.

i can already imagine the numbers, and i'm on console 

[Birdframe_Prime]

2 hours ago, (PSN)Hopper_Orouk said:

@Birdframe_Prime have you tried making a mixed build between funnel clouds and target fixation with ensnare?

No need. Zephyr's update is just... effective. It works. You definitely no longer need Ensnare on her.

Just went for a walk in Steel Path Void Survival:

Spoiler

It was only an hour, but it was just a balanced Jet Stream build. (That's 179% Duration, 130% Efficiency, 160% Range, 155% Strength with Growing Power to get to 180%)

Tornado's new spawning pattern doesn't even need Funnel Clouds if you use something like a Gas build on a weapon like the Kuva Chakkhur, to make sure you hit high-crit Status procs. It just nukes now. I could have thrown in pretty much anything with this build, another mod for range, another for duration, or some more utility. This can be done with just her abilities, passive and the right elements.

From testing, the Funnel Clouds augment makes the procs from things like Gas or Electric faster and more reliable, meaning you can use a lesser weapon to get the same results. Enemies are dead before you even need to use Dive Bomb on them.

Target Fixation, on the other hand, is great for the people that like playing in teams. Since the main nuke of Tornado and grouping with anything (I honestly have switched back to Air Burst because it's faster, cheaper and has a surprisingly usable range), relies on the Status types not being over-written, you can just bimble around letting the team do things like picking up life support, unlocking doors, and so on. Meanwhile you're happily bouncing around, Hovering, Bombing, and even if you're having a slow-spawning day with the enemies, you can group-and-bomb them to build up your multiplier surprisingly quickly. Playing pub, with others killing things, it took longer, but I was genuinely one-shotting Steel Path enemies by a couple of minutes in.

You never need to try over-powering the situation by combining the augments, they've got different uses and different styles of play, and each is now powerful enough on its own that you don't need the other.

::Edit::

As a note, if you want to watch the most embarrassing appearances of the Acolytes? Do the Funnel Clouds build, use a Gas weapon, make them walk through the funnel-ring. They melt. They literally just melt.

[MrFrog9]

14 hours ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

Hold 4 while looking at the defense pod. Activate Turbulence and stand on pod.

You are now invincible for 30-55 seconds depending on mods.

oh i know all about the Magical Birb Wind Shield lol, I cheese mobile defense with her all the time

i just want more spinny cloud to grab enemies

E: OH OOF my eyes glazed over the stationary tornadoes bit

that's pretty phat, ty for the pointer :D

[Voka1]

This rework has kinda brought me back from a medium-ish hiatus (I haven't played much since around December due to life). I think this frame was the first one I built when I started; joined my friend's Dojo and thought she looked cool before I really knew what the hell I was doing gameplay wise. Due to that I've always been wanting to somehow make this frame work. I haven't used it much in the last few years though except briefly when her Prime version came out, but this update might change that again.

I've still got lots of Steel Path nodes left to complete. I come back to it now and again, doing a few at a time. Naturally I'm looking at using Zephyr there, but I'm having survivability issues that's turning the game mode into the Wheel of Fortune whilst using her. There's something that gets through reliably enough to drop me pretty quickly whilst Turbulence is active. I don't know what it is, but so far I've ruled out Eximus auras and melee. Stray grenade blasts were a possibility, but I did some tests just standing still in front of enemies watching for any grenades and I still see shield pops without them (With the occasional insta-down after the invuln period expires). I recall one time hovering above the ground where grenades shouldn’t get me and I was still dropped. One thing I didn't know about was the Drahk Master's Halikar throw being able to go through, but I haven’t lost my weapon before dying during actual gameplay so I’m reasonably confident it wasn't that. It happens with both Corpus and Grineer (I’ve found the Corpus ship tileset particularly brutal for some reason).

I don’t know if this is always how the latest iteration of Turbulence has worked and I’ve just not noticed due to not ever really using Zephyr in game modes like Steel Path where it mattered, with a particular attack I'm not aware of getting through. If I know what it is then I can either pick out that enemy or avoid them depending on the circumstances.

[Birdframe_Prime]

14 hours ago, Voka1 said:

I don’t know if this is always how the latest iteration of Turbulence has worked and I’ve just not noticed due to not ever really using Zephyr in game modes like Steel Path where it mattered, with a particular attack I'm not aware of getting through.

Confirmed the problem, reporting it at the moment.

Turbulence seems to lose its effectiveness if enemies shoot at you from beyond a Tornado hitbox. You can test for yourself in the Simulacrum; Cast Tornado off to the side, spawn a bunch of enemies when you're not invincible, then use Turbulence. As long as they have a clear line of sight on you it's fine, but if you walk behind Tornado, it's like the effectiveness drops to about 75% (like Xaku's 4) instead of full redirection. Walk out from behind the funnels, you get the full effects back.

Tested with both projectile weapons and hitscan weapons, in air, on ground, hovering, etc. Definitely a bug.

[Voka1]

17 minutes ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

Confirmed the problem, reporting it at the moment.

Turbulence seems to lose its effectiveness if enemies shoot at you from beyond a Tornado hitbox. You can test for yourself in the Simulacrum; Cast Tornado off to the side, spawn a bunch of enemies when you're not invincible, then use Turbulence. As long as they have a clear line of sight on you it's fine, but if you walk behind Tornado, it's like the effectiveness drops to about 75% (like Xaku's 4) instead of full redirection. Walk out from behind the funnels, you get the full effects back.

Tested with both projectile weapons and hitscan weapons, in air, on ground, hovering, etc. Definitely a bug.

Ah, I see. That's strange, but now that I think about it I'm sure I had Tornadoes active in mostly all the mystery deaths. I was doing Mobile defense and using them to CC around the objective, and was dying. Well, hopefully there's a fix soon.

[Birdframe_Prime]

47 minutes ago, Voka1 said:

Ah, I see. That's strange, but now that I think about it I'm sure I had Tornadoes active in mostly all the mystery deaths. I was doing Mobile defense and using them to CC around the objective, and was dying. Well, hopefully there's a fix soon.

Got a reply from Pablo on Twitter, shouldn't be long.

[quxier]

On 2021-03-20 at 10:58 AM, LascarCapable said:

If you need to land for whatever reason, dive bomb, cast turbulence and travel until you can takeoff again.

You can use (heavy) slam attack. When you have a zaw you can use Exodia Epidemic for lifting effect (if that's "your thing").

On 2021-03-20 at 10:58 AM, LascarCapable said:

Because Zephyr requires you to play mostly airborne, you won't really use melee much, so just pick whatever you want here.

As melee fan it sadden me a lot. Most moves break Hover. At least you can block.

That being said there are few weapons or arcanes that take some advantage of being in the air:

- Exodia Epidemic - slam attack

- Exodia Contagion - shoots projectile

- Vitrica - glass enemies

And probably few more.

I've tried it with Contagion and.. while far from perfect it's still "something".

On 2021-03-20 at 10:58 AM, LascarCapable said:

CREDIT TO TERIDAX68 : being able to steer Tail Wind would also be an excellent change for overall flight experience since it still feels very stiff. This could improve the pleasure of playing Zephyr tenfolds, and overall feels like a very well deserved QoL change, especially now that Lavos is able to steer while using Vial Rush.

As I like Lavos, "Steerable" addition is... bit of lacking. If you could use mouse instead of WSAD/arrows then it would be a lot better.

And for Tail wind steerable? I don't think it's necessary. First she should be able to fly for much longer. With short duration of fly it's just nod very needed, in my opinion.

 

EDIT:

On 2021-03-20 at 10:58 AM, LascarCapable said:

For your weapon choice, I would recommend anything with good range, large AoE radius and high crit rate. Kuva Tonkor, Lenz and Kuva Bramma are all three great weapon choices for Zephyr in your primary slot. In your secondary slot, consider something to spread status to support your primary. Bonus point if the weapon also has a good base crit rate.

How about Cedo? It spreads status with 2nd'ary attack and his normal attack has 20% crit.

[LascarCapable]

1 hour ago, quxier said:

How about Cedo? It spreads status with 2nd'ary attack and his normal attack has 20% crit.

Could work fine. The best weapon in the end is what you enjoy playing the most with. Birdframe reported that gas and electric procs can trigger feedback loop in tornadoes, making them deal tremendous amounts of damage : this can probably benefit from Cedo's alt fire a lot, especially if you use funnel clouds.

[LascarCapable]

I'm gonna edit the OP and add another suggestion : increase airburst's base radius from 8 to 11m.

Yesterday, I found out multiple complaints about Airburst, which was surprising to me because the ability felt good to use. Turns out I was quite biased since I was running a 265% range build. Let's face it, 8m base radius is extremely underwhelming, especially when you consider that the base pick-up radius of Tornadoes is 10m. However, once you mod for range, Airburst starts showing some insane amount of utility, only surpassed by Larva. Yet, it's not enough to convince most players, prefering Ensnare over Airburst, mostly thank to its bigger area of effect. A net positive in most build, since it allows you to spare one or even two mod slots.

The thing is, if you want to reach a 20m threshold on Airburst (so basically twice Tornado's pull radius), you need 265% range. That's basically three range mods : Overextended, Augur Reach and Stretch. On top of it, Overextended slaps you with a harsh power strength reduction. As a result, modding feels very tight when it comes about modding Zephyr for the sole purpose of making Airburst an actual playstyle.

This is why I got the idea of increasing the base radius from 8m to 11m.

Why 11 ?

Because it's a wonderful sweet spot ! With 11m, you can reach 20m (which is twice Tornado's pull radius) just by slotting Overextended in, freeing you two mod slots for anything you want. But what if you don't want to deal with a massive power strength downgrade ? Well, you can still slot Cunning Drift, Augur Reach and Stretch for the same 190% power range grand total, at cost of three mod slots. However, an 11m base radius also means it would be possible to reach 30m airburst radius which would seem too much to some people, but let's remind that it's at cost of 4 mod slots and a heavy reduction to your power range.

[quxier]

14 minutes ago, LascarCapable said:

Yet, it's not enough to convince most players, prefering Ensnare over Airburst, mostly thank to its bigger area of effect. A net positive in most build, since it allows you to spare one or even two mod slots.

11 minutes ago, LascarCapable said:

The thing is, if you want to reach a 20m threshold on Airburst (so basically twice Tornado's pull radius), you need 265% range. That's basically three range mods : Overextended, Augur Reach and Stretch. On top of it, Overextended slaps you with a harsh power strength reduction. As a result, modding feels very tight when it comes about modding Zephyr for the sole purpose of making Airburst an actual playstyle.

Isn't duration main problem of Airburst? I've been not played Khora for a long time but by description she has few advantages over Airburst:

- 15 second duration vs 2s of Airburst

- "Ensnared enemies stand upright and will not move while debuffed, making this ability great for performing consistent headshots." vs ragdolled enemies

You can say that energy cost is divided by 2 when a frame is in the air... but I think it might not work with other frames (I've not tested it too much).

 

And do you really need 2x range for Airburst? I mean... you have tornadoes for this. Maybe for Helminth's usage you would want more, but not for Zephyr.

[LascarCapable]

50 minutes ago, quxier said:

Isn't duration main problem of Airburst? I've been not played Khora for a long time but by description she has few advantages over Airburst:

- 15 second duration vs 2s of Airburst

- "Ensnared enemies stand upright and will not move while debuffed, making this ability great for performing consistent headshots." vs ragdolled enemies

You can say that energy cost is divided by 2 when a frame is in the air... but I think it might not work with other frames (I've not tested it too much).

The goal of Airburst isn't hard CC to begin with. It's main role is to bunch up stuff so you can kill them all at once. It does that job a bit better than Ensnare and doesn't require a precise target, but suffers from lower base range.

The point of Ensnare being hard CC is actually a very good point to bring up, because it points even more the reason why Ensnare just feels so much better than Airburst for most players. After all, why using a soft CC ability with 20% less range when you can just use the hard CC ability that does a good enough job at packing up enemies in your tornadoes anyway ?

The only two positive points of Airburst over Ensnare as of today is simply the fact that it can actually displace enemies where you want, instead of just bunching up enemies where an enemy is already present, and that it costs only 25 energy mid air. However, the positives from Ensnare seems to outweight a lot the positives of Airburst.

Quote

And do you really need 2x range for Airburst? I mean... you have tornadoes for this. Maybe for Helminth's usage you would want more, but not for Zephyr.

The goal of airburst is actually to displace stuff right inside in your Tornadoes. A key point of Tornado is that its pull range is a fixed 10m. That pull range unaffected by mods. However, unlike Tornado, Airburst's pull range does increase with power range. If you mod for 265% power range, you will be able to pass the symbolic range of 20m on Airburst, which is basically twice the pull range of a Tornado. The sole goal of that is to be able pull enemies inside your tornados from much further away : you don't want to wait for stuff to go inside your tornadoes or wait till your tornado catch enough people, you just want to force as much things as possible inside the tornadoes with Airburst.

Of course, Airburst is probably not worth being used if you don't run a high range build. In this case, it's probably wiser to opt for Ensnare, or even Pull (I heard that Tornadoes are very good at catching targets flung at high speed).

[Borg1611]

I don't know if this is possible, but one thing I would add to her is a QoL change for maps with low skyboxes. If she tailwinds up into a skybox, instead of doing a typical out of bounds port, she should automatically stop just below the edge of the skybox and possibly automatically enter hover mode. 

[quxier]

3 hours ago, LascarCapable said:

The goal of Airburst isn't hard CC to begin with.

For soft CC (low duration), Airburst isn't the best option either.

• Harrow Condemn -> restores shields, good for headshots
• Desication -> finishers, good for headshot, augment creates clones
• Volt shock -> electric status, stunned, good for headshot, augment gives electric damage

Sure, if you want grouping effect then above abilities are not good fit. However Mag's Pull might be better (25 base range)

4 hours ago, LascarCapable said:

The goal of airburst is actually to displace stuff right inside in your Tornadoes. A key point of Tornado is that its pull range is a fixed 10m. That pull range unaffected by mods. However, unlike Tornado, Airburst's pull range does increase with power range. If you mod for 265% power range, you will be able to pass the symbolic range of 20m on Airburst, which is basically twice the pull range of a Tornado. The sole goal of that is to be able pull enemies inside your tornados from much further away : you don't want to wait for stuff to go inside your tornadoes or wait till your tornado catch enough people, you just want to force as much things as possible inside the tornadoes with Airburst.

Make sense. I've not played too much with Tornadoes (as they were almost useless) so I don't know a lot about it. I have to test it because as for now with 100% range I'm pretty ok with Tornadoes (spawn radius). Thank you.

[Tiltskillet]

4 hours ago, Borg1611 said:

I don't know if this is possible, but one thing I would add to her is a QoL change for maps with low skyboxes. If she tailwinds up into a skybox, instead of doing a typical out of bounds port, she should automatically stop just below the edge of the skybox and possibly automatically enter hover mode. 

That would be nice.  Although if they're doing that, an invisible ceiling in those spots for everybody would be a big general improvement.