Lets fix Tailwind once and for all

[ObviousLee]

     Let me start off by saying how pleased I am that we're almost at a truly sufficient tailwind mechanic, but not quite.

The rest of Zephyr's kit and passive I've no issue with anymore so I won't be going into detail on them. I will instead be focusing on Tailwind, its mechanics and its' augment Target Fixation.

 

Where the ability fails: The ability fails in being cohesive, and reduction of strain on play hands. How does it fail in cohesion? Let me explain. In order to go zooomy super speed you need only tap the ability on the ground or in the air. Neat. Works just as it always has save for the divebomb effect being triggered by zippy zoom down instead of press 2 lul. The issue is the hover mechanics function, its' look (sweet merciful God why is she flying in fetal position?!) and its speed. Having to hold one while trying to engage in movement although not precisely difficult, it does eventually strain the hand, even on smaller keyboards. The speed of the hover is honestly a tad slow as well, leading to sluggish movement as one wades through bodies from above.

Target Fixation as it stands within tailwinds current implementation does not work even remotely effectively. TF adds 100% damage to tailwind per enemy hit with tailwind, with a grace period of two seconds. This sounds quite wonderful on paper. It gives the impression that one will be able to literally rip through enemies if one connects with enough enemies.

This does not actually work. Yes, damage is in fact increased. The problem is the fact that you have to actually be zipping through enough enemies to build a sufficient charge. And when level 110 corrupted bombards are taking minute ticks of damage with a 17000% bonus damage that takes monumental effort to get to I feel less than rewarded for my work.

Where the ability succeeds: Lol Zephyr go brrrrrrrrt swish swish.

 

How do we fix this with minimal work and maximum benefit: We simply re-align some mechanics to separate functions. First, we change pressing 1 to activate the hover, and we tie the actual tailwind animation and effects, divebomb included, to the sprint function. This leaves you tapping the ability one time, and pressing your sprint to go zoom zoom, which I imagine every player has their sprint function mapped to shift. Next, we unlock the Y axis for the hover mode. This lets you course correct should you have accidentally jumped too high before trying to engage your hover, which can be an issue for beam weapons. Finally, we take divebombs effects and make them trigger on enemy collision, ending with a hard stop only on hard surface collision.

So how divebomb would now work is instead of slamming Zephyr directly into the ground, the impact force would carry in the direction of travel prior to impact. Essentially, if you're cruising through a crowded hallway, you're doing to "divebomb" every enemy in your way. You won't stop flying in the direciton you're aiming, but the enemies will still take the full effect of divebomb as if you had used the ability as currently functions with a vertical slam. Damage for divebomb iirc is scaled off of altitude and flight speed, so I'm not sure it that would need to be changed or not.

 

What this change would bring about gameplay wise: Namely target fixation wouldn't be a wasted mod slot, The warframe would have greater opportunity or asserting air superiority and divebomb would function much better at and for crowd control or damage application.

 

I do apologize for the haphazard post, I just recovered from food poisoning and haven't slept in about 18 hours but this needed to be posted before I forgot entirely.

 

Please post your critiques agreements or disagreements, but please do so in a respectful manner as to avoid your posts being deleted. I honestly want the feedback and I can't read it if it gets ninja'd.

 

 

Thanks for your time and consideration.

 

~Lee

[Traumtulpe]

35 minutes ago, ObviousLee said:

And when level 110 corrupted bombards are taking minute ticks of damage with a 17000% bonus damage that takes monumental effort to get to I feel less than rewarded for my work.

That's how armor works in this game; Bring a counter or go home. In your case I'd suggest adding Fire Blast to Zephyr. Get's rid of almost all armor in a very large area.

[Andele3025]

No. Target Fixation already isnt a wasted slot (tho bunnyhop zephyr as a whole is a meme build because you are building for massive overkill as after you reach the ehp point of enemies their level scaling cant keep up AND it provides a skill floor for performance as you can lose it all).
Also im not sure where you're getting the idea that level 110 bombards will be tickled by TF 17000%+ divebombs when even on neutral strength it 2-3 shots level 180s (or 10 shot Steel path 110s which with your 4 turn still into a 1 shot due to damage spread if you didnt ramp by then) AND ALL THIS assuming you are just doing ground/half jump bunnyhops instead of using the divebomb property of multiplying with height Fair if you wanna argue that its wasted on a build that maxes out range with no mods to compensate 40% str, but thats the point of modding, not getting every single stat to max.
 

And why would you ever want to make the ability worse at stopping by making you keep sliding on divebomb when the main complaint most people have is that it already takes a 0.2s to lower momentum on wall or ground impact when using it for regular tailwind dash unless you maneuver manipulate (use wall latch, hop and rolls) or recast it?

[Birdframe_Prime]

1 hour ago, ObviousLee said:

Target Fixation as it stands within tailwinds current implementation does not work even remotely effectively. TF adds 100% damage to tailwind per enemy hit with tailwind, with a grace period of two seconds. This sounds quite wonderful on paper. It gives the impression that one will be able to literally rip through enemies if one connects with enough enemies.

This does not actually work.

Counterpoint;

Target Fixation works with Dive Bomb, charges from Dive Bomb, and is a direct scaling mechanic for Dive Bomb. The grace period is enough time to get back off the ground after the animation ends, meaning that using any grouping mechanic (even Air Burst) is sufficient for getting enemies into range of the attack.

I have even used it in confined corridors in the Kuva Fortress (with a friend to activate life support) to quickly scale up to kill Steel Path Grineer with it and not ever really felt the need to use Tailwind itself to attack the enemies.

With the 9x base damage boost to the ability in the re-touch plus the innate height multiplier that lets you get double or triple damage in anywhere that's not a narrow corridor, the multiplier for Target Fixation doesn't really ever stop buffing that damage higher and higher.

I could cut some Strength in favour of an Overextended on my current neutral build and wind up with a wide-range Dive Bomb/Air Burst combo (with Tornado as backup with weapons), that I could literally scale to infinity on maps with higher spawns. In the shorter, only an hour or so, runs that I've tested it on with the lesser range build I use for Jet Stream, it's as effective over time as scaling Gara's Splinter Storm.

That said...

I do agree that Tailwind itself needs some more tweaking. The Hover is a good air-brake for the speed of Tailwind, as a Dash it has no mobility, only speed, and needs the more counter-mobility aspects removing (like the fixed animation and lack of ability to curve a little around objects). 

So, Zephyr still has some quality-of-life stuff to go for.

Glad that people aren't hating the rest of her kit so much these days ^^

[Grimm]

1 hour ago, ObviousLee said:

Having to hold one while trying to engage in movement although not precisely difficult, it does eventually strain the hand

Logitech g502 to move common cast skills to as well as control is kind of a requirement hardware wise for most high cast frames when moving, the hold can be swapped in settings and myself i played inverted hold tap on all frames and it saves a lot of time and hand strain in most cases, its great on larvos, as well as it only being a push to initiate zephyr tends to not be to bad, i find my main issue with it is more when trying to use it for movement rather then a consistent slam, unless your in an open world your hitting walls more then gauss

[ObviousLee]

4 hours ago, Grimm said:

Logitech g502 to move common cast skills to as well as control is kind of a requirement hardware wise for most high cast frames when moving, the hold can be swapped in settings and myself i played inverted hold tap on all frames and it saves a lot of time and hand strain in most cases, its great on larvos, as well as it only being a push to initiate zephyr tends to not be to bad, i find my main issue with it is more when trying to use it for movement rather then a consistent slam, unless your in an open world your hitting walls more then gauss

"Just use this mouse" is not a solution to a mechanic that could be made much better with slight alterations. My suggestion would actually increase mobility and control

6 hours ago, Traumtulpe said:

That's how armor works in this game; Bring a counter or go home. In your case I'd suggest adding Fire Blast to Zephyr. Get's rid of almost all armor in a very large area.

I am aware of how armor works. How armor works is not the point of this post. It's to highlight how tailwind could be immensely improved.

6 hours ago, Andele3025 said:

No. Target Fixation already isnt a wasted slot (tho bunnyhop zephyr as a whole is a meme build because you are building for massive overkill as after you reach the ehp point of enemies their level scaling cant keep up AND it provides a skill floor for performance as you can lose it all).
Also im not sure where you're getting the idea that level 110 bombards will be tickled by TF 17000%+ divebombs when even on neutral strength it 2-3 shots level 180s (or 10 shot Steel path 110s which with your 4 turn still into a 1 shot due to damage spread if you didnt ramp by then) AND ALL THIS assuming you are just doing ground/half jump bunnyhops instead of using the divebomb property of multiplying with height Fair if you wanna argue that its wasted on a build that maxes out range with no mods to compensate 40% str, but thats the point of modding, not getting every single stat to max.
 

And why would you ever want to make the ability worse at stopping by making you keep sliding on divebomb when the main complaint most people have is that it already takes a 0.2s to lower momentum on wall or ground impact when using it for regular tailwind dash unless you maneuver manipulate (use wall latch, hop and rolls) or recast it?

please xplain precisely in what way you feel that this alteration would not be a benefit. Or are you arguing that hopping around the entire mission is a viable game play method?

5 hours ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

Counterpoint;

Target Fixation works with Dive Bomb, charges from Dive Bomb, and is a direct scaling mechanic for Dive Bomb. The grace period is enough time to get back off the ground after the animation ends, meaning that using any grouping mechanic (even Air Burst) is sufficient for getting enemies into range of the attack.

I have even used it in confined corridors in the Kuva Fortress (with a friend to activate life support) to quickly scale up to kill Steel Path Grineer with it and not ever really felt the need to use Tailwind itself to attack the enemies.

With the 9x base damage boost to the ability in the re-touch plus the innate height multiplier that lets you get double or triple damage in anywhere that's not a narrow corridor, the multiplier for Target Fixation doesn't really ever stop buffing that damage higher and higher.

I could cut some Strength in favour of an Overextended on my current neutral build and wind up with a wide-range Dive Bomb/Air Burst combo (with Tornado as backup with weapons), that I could literally scale to infinity on maps with higher spawns. In the shorter, only an hour or so, runs that I've tested it on with the lesser range build I use for Jet Stream, it's as effective over time as scaling Gara's Splinter Storm.

That said...

I do agree that Tailwind itself needs some more tweaking. The Hover is a good air-brake for the speed of Tailwind, as a Dash it has no mobility, only speed, and needs the more counter-mobility aspects removing (like the fixed animation and lack of ability to curve a little around objects). 

So, Zephyr still has some quality-of-life stuff to go for.

Glad that people aren't hating the rest of her kit so much these days ^^

the issue I have on the matter is that the ability could be much better and much more controllable than it presently is. I just faile to understand how anyone can think more control and better responses are a bad thing.

[quxier]

3 hours ago, Grimm said:

your hitting walls more then gauss

I'm not sure how you pronounce Gauss but for my for me walls & Gauss rhyme. It's kind of hing that Ordis (or maybe Darvo) could tell as a joke. Nice!

[Birdframe_Prime]

19 hours ago, ObviousLee said:

the issue I have on the matter is that the ability could be much better and much more controllable than it presently is. I just faile to understand how anyone can think more control and better responses are a bad thing.

Oh, we don't.

It's that you're using a point of something specific, like Target Fixation, and by doing so pretty much showing that you're mis-understanding the current use of the function before then proceeding to the next point on that basis.

Your arguments in favour of the clunkiness are, to me at least, kind of irrelevant to the context of making her more mobile.

And the only really relevant point you've made towards changing the physical process of casting is that the tap/hold mechanic is a little hand straining.

Do I agree that Tailwind itself, the dash, needs to be adjusted for more mobility to go with all that speed? Sure.

Do I think that what's going to make Zephyr better is switching up her actual casting methods? Not really. I would focus on the actual functions, rather than the casting, because by doing that you make each one's use more distinct.

I also completely disagree that you should be able to Dive Bomb a whole corridor. Unless you have enough range to do so with a radial impact.