Inaros Rework Concept

[Dar.Karon]

At the behest of a certain @0_The_F00l, I bring to you a concept I have been sitting on for about a week now:

Inaros- The Rework: The Pre-Sequel.

 

Passive: When Inaros dies, he enters his sarcophagus, and any enemies currently afflicted with Scarabs(To be explained in his ability kit) flock to his location in haste. Enemies that are siphoned take the current amount of damage from this, but enemies afflicted by Scarabs take 20% of their maximum HP as True damage, and pause Inaros' bleedout timer while being siphoned.

 

Ability 1- Swarm Surge: Inaros unleashes a surge of Scarabs in front of him, which attach to enemies and deal continuous, negligible damage and debilitate them, slowing them down by 20%. Enemies afflicted by scarabs remain afflicted until death, and may spread Scarabs to other enemies who get within close proximity.

Ability 2- Scarab Armor: Inaros channels the Scarabs to form a protective shell around him, granting him a secondary health reserve that functions as shields for the purposes of shield gating, equal to 100% of his maximum HP. If Swarm Surge is cast while Scarab Armor is active, Scarabs swarm around Inaros, dealing damage to enemies with 100% lifesteal.

Ability 3- Puppeteer: Inaros enters his sarcophagus to channel his energy into an enemy afflicted by Scarabs, allowing him to take manual control of the enemy in question so long as he has energy to spare. This enemy deals scaling damage based on its level, with 50% of its damage being True damage, affected by Power Strength. The enemy may only run and walk, but abilities may be cast from them as if Inaros was standing in their position, with an additional 100% Power Strength.

Ability 4- Scarab Titan: Inaros calls the Scarabs to his side, removing all Scarabs from any afflicted enemies, transforming into a towering titan of sand and Scarabs whose maximum health and damage is based on the number of enemies afflicted by Scarabs when this ability is cast. Additionally, if Scarab Armor is active when this ability is cast, Inaros' Scarab Titan gains an additional 100% of its maximum health. Casting Swarm Surge releases a large swarm of Scarabs around him, dealing 20% of the enemy's maximum health as True damage per cast.

 

And that's the concept! Obviously, it could use tweaks or what have you, but hopefully the idea here is good.

[Voltage]

Inaros will never have a meaningful rework without a massive nerf to his health pool and requirement to play actively with his kit to keep survivability up. This rework doesn't attack the root problem where Inaros encourages AFK gameplay. Even in your rework, people will only touch Scarab Armor and ignore the rest of his abilities as they do now with Scarab Swarm.

[Dar.Karon]

4 minutes ago, Voltage said:

Inaros will never have a meaningful rework without a massive nerf to his health pool and requirement to play actively with his kit to keep survivability up. This rework doesn't attack the root problem where Inaros encourages AFK gameplay. Even in your rework, people will only touch Scarab Armor and ignore the rest of his abilities as they do now with Scarab Swarm.

But why?

If his entire kit encourages players to utilize all of his abilities to get the maximum effect, then how does his kit encourage the passive immunity problem?

I haven't even discussed his stats, simply because I'm not entirely sure what to do, there.

I have ideas, of course.

[Voltage]

Just now, Dar.Karon said:

But why?

If his entire kit encourages players to utilize all of his abilities to get the maximum effect, then how does his kit encourage the passive immunity problem?

I haven't even discussed his stats, simply because I'm not entirely sure what to do, there.

I have ideas, of course.

The proposed ideas here are gamebreaking, especially Scarab Armor. None of this addresses the elephant in the room that his entire theme is lazy gameplay.

[ReddyDisco]

11 minutes ago, Dar.Karon said:

But why?

If his entire kit encourages players to utilize all of his abilities to get the maximum effect, then how does his kit encourage the passive immunity problem?

I haven't even discussed his stats, simply because I'm not entirely sure what to do, there.

I have ideas, of course.

Why because there is no risk, even with the proposed rework changes he can simply be a no button press meat sack with arcane grace and adaptation.

The abilities have to be NEEDED and not just flair, his stats need to be reworked for that to happen

[0_The_F00l]

Inaros being the "couldnt be bothered" frame whose kit is rarely used , does need a touch up.

however , what you have suggested is only changes to his kit ,

i am skeptical about the 3 , it does not really feel something thematic to Inaros, and taking away frame mobility for questionable damage might make it worse than nyx 1.

and the 4 feels kinda redundant with the 2 , both adding some sort of armor / health pool,

you can rework his kit , but unless he needs to actively maintain some resource i do not think players will use it much. Nidus is a good example of a working kit that synergizes despite lack of shields (though relatively less tanky)

Ever since Hildryns release, i have wondered if it would be reasonable for Inaros to use his excessive health pool as a resource,

Like most other frames have overshields , inaros would have overhealth (grace and other healing mechanics would only heal up to base health max and not go into over health) which he gains by using his abilities/health drops and consuming the life force of his enemies (if anyone played the mummy returns , you would know what i mean).

something like a reasonable 1K to 1.5K health pool at base (modded) , which could be expanded to current levels with the use of abilities.

if Inaros is no longer the "i have 10K health at all times passively" frame then there would be sense to any kit rework.

[maycne.sonahoz]

Passive : Considering the current Scarab Swarm barely lasts in co-op because of teammates too eager to kill the affected enemies, it's very likely the same issue will occur. So the probability to benefit from enemies affected by Swarm Surge is negligible.

Ability 1 : Same objection as passive. Also, as a crowd-control ability, it is still less interesting than the current Scarab Swarm, as affected enemies hardly live longer than the ability duration, and the current Scarab Swarm make them completely harmless while affected.

Ability 2 : Inaros' health pool is his main forte, yet many people consider that already makes him OP. Giving him the ability to double his health pool and providing "health gating" sounds overkill.

Ability 3 : The ability to possess an enemy may sound fun, but i see many downsides : no maneuvers, use enemy (usually weaker) weapon instead of your custom modded one...

Ability 4 : So basically a sand golem rather than Atlas' rock golems. I'm not fond of removing the effect of Swarm Surge from the affected enemies, since this will also remove the potential bonus you would have gained for the passive.

I'll add to that that your suggestion removes several useful current abilities : opening enemies to finisher, self-healing from finisher, and healing teammates.

Sorry, not for me.

[stormy505]

ability 1 : Perfectly fine as is. One of the best cc abilities in the game, opening enemies to finishers and also gives you stealth bonus from melee attacks. It increases his damage a lot.

ability 2 : Needs to deal more damage so it can scale better at higher levels. Would also be nice if it healed at a much faster rate. It's niche in its use but inaros is unkillable while he's doing it so as a last resort heal you can do it.

ability 3 : Sandstorm is the only ability that I think straight up needs to be replaced. Self cc that does no damage, just bad.

ability 4 : Only thing I would change about his 4 is making his augment, Negation Swarm, just apart of the ability. Would be used more if it just blocked staggers and knock downs without needing to take an extra mod slot.

He's honestly not that bad, both in design and usefulness, just needs some slight tweaks to 2, 4 and have his 3 replaced completely.

[(XBOX)Ampathetiic]

1 hour ago, 0_The_F00l said:

Ever since Hildryns release, i have wondered if it would be reasonable for Inaros to use his excessive health pool as a resource,

Like most other frames have overshields , inaros would have overhealth (grace and other healing mechanics would only heal up to base health max and not go into over health) which he gains by using his abilities/health drops and consuming the life force of his enemies (if anyone played the mummy returns , you would know what i mean).

something like a reasonable 1K to 1.5K health pool at base (modded) , which could be expanded to current levels with the use of abilities.

The idea of a health-resource Inaros also gave me the idea of a casting queue along with it, meaning that instead of taking a chunk out of your health to cast an ability right then, you could hold cast to add it to a queue (only saves one ability at a time, and casting that ability clears it from the queue). Once you lose enough health to pay for that ability, you can cast that ability for free (which removes it from the queue).

Originally, I wanted it to auto-cast, but that causes too many problems and requires very precise ability design. I think it'd be nice to be able to passively charge your expensive abilities by taking damage or by using your cheaper abilities in between heals. However, if you find yourself with tons of incoming healing, you can simply use your expensive abilities to your heart's content.

Although that leads to the main issue with a health-resource Inaros: healing is way too plentiful and fast, and you can find yourself gaining health faster than you can spend it. You can't make a health-resource Inaros without limiting his ability to heal absurd amounts of health without using his abilities. I think your overhealth pool could actually fix this. Instead of Inaros having the overhealth pool as an addition to his already massive health pool, you could make Inaros' base stats reasonable (maybe something like Lavos' health), and make the overhealth pool way larger, reaching the health of the Inaros we have currently.

This makes certain aspects of a frame's kit more desirable, which solves the issue Inaros has with not caring about his abilities. Crowd control abilities could become valuable, since an Inaros may want to conserve the huge health pool they've built up. Abilities could take large percentages of your health, including your overhealth, which would allow for the introduction of health scaling mechanics that inherently prevent ability spam. A lot of interesting design choices open up with this.

We're talking about an entire redesign of Inaros though, so it's not likely that anything will appear in-game, and we'll have to deal with current Inaros for another 5 years. That said, I'll probably work on this kit in my own time, because even just the overhealth pool can lead to very interesting design. If I complete it, I'll probably post it, and see what people think. 

[Tesseract7777]

2 hours ago, Voltage said:

Inaros will never have a meaningful rework without a massive nerf to his health pool and requirement to play actively with his kit to keep survivability up. This rework doesn't attack the root problem where Inaros encourages AFK gameplay. Even in your rework, people will only touch Scarab Armor and ignore the rest of his abilities as they do now with Scarab Swarm.

How about passively nerfing his health without actually nerfing it, and nerf the infinite energy + stat stick with rage/hunter adrenaline mechanic at the same time. 

Make all his abilities use health instead of energy (scale the numbers up/down if necessary for balance), and because of this, rage wouldn't benefit him anymore as he wouldn't even have energy anymore like Hildryn. Just like her but using health instead of shields for energy. 

Then go behind the scenes and make everything scale decently, including the passive, and make Scarab Swarm a bit less clunky, so a quick hold down drops like 25% of your health at once instead of taking ages while you hold the button down. 

It would be a start, at least, and wouldn't require much if any of Geoff's department. 

[(PSN)Hopper_Orouk]

Honestly, i've given up on inaros completely and i'm just praying for all the ancient egyptian gods to bless us with a new Egyptian themed Warframe.

[TARINunit9]

3 hours ago, Dar.Karon said:

Scarabs Scarabs Scarabs Scarabs Scarab Scarabs Scarab Scarabs Scarabs Scarab Scarabs Scarabs Scarabs Scarabs Scarab Scarab Scarabs

I know Scarab Swarm is the only ability Inaros players ever touch, but they DID intend for him to have more to his "desert king" theme than just the scarabs

[fo3nixz]

rework no prob , even if they half his hp, wont be an issue

[Dar.Karon]

Alright, judging from your responses, I see a lot of controversy over the direction I chose to take this rework, so allow me to explain my choices a bit:

 

Passive: While yes, his passive does still struggle in multiplayer, most of the time, allies will pick you up within seconds out of courtesy anyway, or you auto-rez, making it a non-issue.

1: Swarm Surge- While I acknowledge that Dessicate as it stands is incredibly potent, I wanted to take this version of Inaros on a different direction. Something similar to the inverse of Saryn's kit.

2: Scarab Armor- Something I had heavily considered was dropping the maximum HP of Inaros greatly, leaving him with the same 10-12k HP if you minmax for health after Scarab Armor is put up. The primary reason for its existence was the shield gating functionality anyhow, as well as the synergy with the rest of his kit. One could tweak it so Scarab Armor cannot be regenerated via Arcanes or something, if we needed to balance it that way.

3: Puppeteer- I know minion powers are generally seen in a poor light, but something I did was scale the damage based on the enemy's level, and grant 50% True damage to compensate for their relatively bupkis speed. Additionally, Inaros gains an extra 100% Ability Strength while Puppeteering, which synergizes even better with his 4. It also allows a relatively easy bonus for his 4 if Saryn so much as exists in the squad.

4: Scarab Titan- This ability was intended to be an alternate form of sorts, sort of similar to Sevagoth's Shadow, although lacking in the modding department and unique abilities aside from tweaking the function of the other abilities. Additionally, it would drain Energy while active, as most abilities do.

5: Stats- I know that if his stats were left as-is, this rework would make him absolutely overpowered to the maximum, but ideally, his stats would be tweaked to facilitate this kit.

 

My idea was to see how far I could push Inaros' ability to withstand just about anything without giving him passive immunity as he has now. With this kit, he needs to be actively doing something to be immortal, not just standing in one spot forever.