A Large Assortment of Various Rework Ideas.

[Lilinith]

Warning: I am not a game developer. Balance in the art of numbers is not my strong suit. These numbers are just for basic framing, and definitely shouldn’t be considered balanced or final. This is mostly about mechanical concepts.

This is just general stuff I was thinking about while playing, and realizing how much more robust newer kits are (not objectively better, but more interlinked, robust, and unique per gameplay loop). Most of this stuff isn't going to be a total teardown of the existing kit, but just thinking about small/medium adjustments to shift the respective Warframes toward modern parity in depth, without necessarily always making them overly synergistic and reliant on their own kits.

I'm mainly targeting underperforming aspects (passives, commonly subsumed abilities, the likes), because I think passives should be relatively equal to one another, in thematic and potency, and a Warframe should never feel pressured to subsume anything, but only subsume when choosing to specialize and lean into an aspect of their kit.

In the end, this is word vomit of my thoughts I had at random. I don't expect any of this to ever be used, but it's fun to think about, and healthy to put forth constructive conversations about things we believe need updating.

ASH:

Ash is largely a fine kit. 2 interacts with 4, 3 interacts with 4, well rounded, focused on lethality and bleeds as an identity. But you’re also not forced to use anything, which is good for subsumption diversity. These changes are to encourage more internal casting and add satisfaction to the kit, without compromising existing well-built synergies.

Spoiler

Passive: Keep the current portion, but add a fun little bit.

Spoiler

Lethality: Slash procs deal 25% more damage and last 50% longer.

NEW: Combination Blow: Using an ability on a bleeding target will summon a single shadow clone on the target.

This is just to encourage more ability play. It would also feel cooler to combo with yourself, outside of Blade Storm.

Shuriken: Already a solid ability, but just giving it more oomph to reward using it for damage more often, not just as an armor strip with augment or a bleed device.

Spoiler

UPDATED: Change from 1/1/2/2 shurikens to 1/2/3/4 shurikens. Shurikens, when lacking targets, will strike the same target more aggressively.

 Encourage more internal skill casting, and less reliance on weapons. Augment aside, this allows for shuriken to utterly dunk on one medium target if you have them isolated. If not, it splits and continues to be AoE. More shurikens also looks cool as heck.

With augment, this would mean Shuriken becomes a decent big-game hunter ability, provided you have them isolated. First shuriken strips armor, the following three finish the job. If you didn’t isolate your priority target correctly, it just does AoE  damage.

Does Shuriken really need a buff? Debatable. Does this make Ash more of a caster? Yeah, maybe.

 

BANSHEE:

Banshee does show her age, but I don’t think the kit is completely out of the question. Sonar is good, Silence is good, but Sonic Boom and Sound Quake are rather dated. Her passive runs directly counter to Silence, making it redundant.

Spoiler

Passive: Expand use case to be more consistent, add functions to define Banshee better.

Spoiler

UPDATED: Deafen: Banshee’s entire fireteam, including companions, are silent.

NEW: Echolocation: Banshee’s stealth takedowns and finishers cast an instance of Sonar at 50% duration. (Sonar Augment applies).

Currently, passive is redundant with Silence. This gives the whole team stealth benefit, even when not in Banshee’s Silence Radius.

The new addition is to encourage stealth play, locating targets without need to cast Sonar, or use enemy radar. The queen of sound should have echolocation passively, wouldn’t you say? Also notice how this works really, really well with a Savage Silence build?

Sonic Boom: An underwhelming first ability that does poor damage, decent crowd control, but otherwise has no identity outside of its augment.

Spoiler

UPDATED: Damage increased from 25/35/40/50 Impact damage to 250/350/400/500 Impact damage. If the ragdoll collides with an enemy, the second enemy is also ragdolled and takes equal damage to Sonic Boom.

NEW: If a ragdoll collides with vertical terrain, deals True damage to the ragdoll equal to five times Sonic Boom’s base damage (1250/1750/2000/2500).

If you were hit with a sonic boom, it would not tickle as much as it does now. Pretty sure that straight up breaks bones, pride, and other unmentionables. So, let’s make it match.

Wall splat is fun (Frost has it), with a bonus is that bowling a crowd into a wall hard enough gives you bonus damage.

Augment is unchanged, and will still work.

Sound Quake: Same functions, but add a two more details:

Spoiler

NEW: Sound Quake will slightly pull enemies toward the center.

NEW: Sound Quake’s stagger now opens up targets to finishers.

Synergy with the proposed passive and (Savage) Silence. The gentle pull will prevent enemies from getting staggered outside of Sound Quake, but not meant to replace a solid vacuum ability. The finishers allows for both a solo Banshee running Resonating Quake to benefit from the finisher playstyle, but allows for a party Banshee to suppress and enable finishers for everyone. Bonus is if the enemies walk into Savage Silence, you still get to have finishers even after the 2 seconds pass, so more diversity to large range builds.

 

CHROMA:

Chroma’s current passive isn’t dragon enough, never mind the questionable role of Spectral Scream and Effigy. The goal is to restore purpose and potency to these three areas, without compromising the potency of Elemental Ward and Vex Armor.

Spoiler

Passive: Be the dragon. Feel the dragon.

Spoiler

UPDATED: Dragon’s Flight: Chroma possesses an extra mid-air jump, and infinite bullet jumps.

Just let the dragon fly. Would also encourage aerial mods, like Zephyr is encouraged to.

Spectral Scream: For a two-handed full lock in action, it does really, really poorly. With things like Balefire Charger running around now, it's high time to allow older lads to compete.

Spoiler

NEW: Spectral Scream now inherits damage, multishot, status chance, critical values, and fire rate from primary weapon mods. Chroma’s Breath is now a moddable equipment that takes Rifle mods. (Effigy will also use Chroma’s Breath) Element is still determined by Elemental Cycling, and cannot be modded. Still scales off of Strength, Duration, Range, and Efficiency.

NEW: Exalted Breath: Primary rifle-class exalted, with a base damage of 1000, fire rate of 5, critical chance of 50%, critical multiplier of 3.0x, and 100% status chance. Exalted Breath also has a forced Impact proc.

Playing with the idea of an exalted on Chroma. We have them for melees, so why not primaries? For a two-handed channeled action, I want Spectral Scream to actually mean something, to be able to be the terrible, fear-inspiring dragon Chroma was meant to be. Like Hildryn’s Balefire Charger, this allows Chroma’s first ability to be used as a core mechanic of his, instead of being a walking weapon vehicle.

I did mention I do not number good, but the numbers are actually supposed to be that high. Reminder that Chroma’s Breath will not accept elemental mods.

Effigy: It's not a terrible ability, but it could be far better for a living dragon skin flayed off an unknown creature full of mystic powers. Gone are the days of absurd credit farms, so we may as well make it a area denial powerhouse.

Spoiler

NEW: Effigy uses Chroma’s Exalted Breath as a weapon.

NEW: Effigy fires off a massive laser that deals 50,000 base damage of the selected element type. Has a 15 second cooldown.

NEW: Effigy will ramp up Vex Armor while Chroma stands in its range.

The first part is to make Effigy an actual valuable damage dealer, and to give meaning to Chroma’s breath.

The second part is because I want to see a huge dragon laser that deletes things once in a while.

The third is to give Chroma a second way to ramp up Vex without intentionally taking damage from various sources, deviating from the degenerate (not insult, technical term) self-damage playstyle to gain benefit from Chroma’s Vex Armor.

 

EQUINOX:

I’m not well versed enough on Equinox to pretend that I can give in-depth input, but as far as I know, she’ in a thematically solid and mechanically functional state. I’m mainly picking a bone with the passive. Be bold with this, it’s thematically already there. Let it compete with the mod.

Spoiler

Passive: Increase potency to make it competitive with the mod, saving a mod slot, or allowing people to double down.

UPDATED: Equilibrium: When collecting orbs, 110% of the restored amount is converted to the opposite. Stacks with the mod, for a total of 220%.

EXCALIBUR:

Excalibur is okay, but could definitely have more leaning in to make him the premier sword Warframe. Be the blade, something something Teshin says something here.

Spoiler

Passive: Increase potency to double-down on the aspect of being a swordsman.

Spoiler

UPDATED: Swordsmanship: 30% attack speed (from 10%), 100% heavy attack speed,  and 20% final multiplicative damage bonus (from 10% additive)

NEW: Fervor: Weapons boosted by Swordsmanship will restore 1 energy on hit per target. Does not apply in Exalted Blade.

The first passive is to encourage a heavy bonus for using swords, instead of an ignorable and unnoticeable bonus for flavor. Keep the flavor, but properly reward people for it. Final multiplier to make it meaningful, and an overall speed boost that will be felt. Yeah, this is also a direct buff to Exalted Blade. Oops.

The second portion of Swordsmanship is to encourage a melee-oriented play-style that further cycles between Exalted Blade and normal melee. Could also entertain on-kill, and shift around energy gain up to 5.

Slash Dash: Slash Dash is one of many outdated damage + mobility tools that could use some loving.

Spoiler

UPDATED: Dramatically increase the animation speed and impulse of Slash Dash.

UPDATED: Adds a flat 10 melee combo per target hit.

This is to improve Slash Dash both as a mobility tool, but to make it compete with our parkour, as offensive mobility. It should be a borderline blink to the target, for that extra-cool ninja samurai draw-sword feel. The bonus combo is to encourage use while melee-ing, but also to Exalted Blade, as Exalted Blade’s energy waves don’t build combo. This will help. All the previous effects (modding, health shielding, etc) will remain.

Radial Javelin: A nuke ability that was once an ultimate, but then got adjusted down to a third ability. Struggles in raw damage in later points of armor, so may as well breathe life into it from a utility perspective.

Spoiler

NEW: Radial Javelin inherits modded melee damage along with power strength.

NEW: Radial Javelin gives 5 melee combo counter per target hit.

A damage boost to compete as a nuke, but more importantly, even more melee combo building for Exalted Blade, or general melee ramping.

 

FROST:

Frost needs a lot of help as a caster. A lot. He’s fallen to the wayside as a CC machine and Globe Bot, without much in the ways of being tanky outside of his bubble. I wish to change that a bit, and make him a behemoth of a caster-tank, crowd controlling and destroying enemies in his path.

Spoiler

Passive: Make it a real passive, please.

Spoiler

UPDATED: Winter’s Reproach: Any melee assailant that strikes Frost has a 100% chance to be frozen for 20 seconds on impact. Chance is affected by strength, freeze affected by duration.

NEW: Unrelenting Winter: Frost has a unique resource of Frostclad. Casting abilities (20), freezing targets (3), shattering frozen targets (3) , and inflicting cold procs (1) all grant stacks of Frostclad. Frost can hold up to 100 stacks of Frostclad. While Frostclad persists, Frost is immune to crowd control (knock down, knock back, pull, etc), and is immune to damage. Each instance of damage taken removes 1 stack of Frostclad. Frostclad decays at 3 stacks per second. (30 seconds of inactivity to zero out). Frostclad additionally gives 1% power strength per stack. In air, Frostclad decays at 5 stacks per second (20 seconds of air time).

NEW: Frozen Path: Frost slides 50% farther with 30% less friction, inflicting a cold proc to enemies in contact and behind him for 1.5 seconds.

I know I said I wouldn’t heavily rework things. Oops? For starters, making his existing passive more consistent, and a means of working into his Frostclad mechanic. The slide is both for mobility, but also to build Frostclad neutrally.

For the meat and bones: Frostclad would allow Frost to (literally) snowball, by freezing large crowds, gaining temporary damage immunity (that is easily shed by fast hits, like Gunners, or floor DoTs), CC immunity, and a ramping damage bonus that feeds into the rest of his kit. If fighting against large crowds and doing his job, Frost will become the avalanche incarnate, freezing enemies, shattering them, and becoming clad in ice. A slow build into an unstoppable force, so long as you maintain momentum. The air penalty is to encourage staying grounded, but not so much that you should be totally disallowed from the parkour system.

While the drain looks brutal, there’s a mechanic coming on that soon, but also remember that cold procs from weapons (not just abilities) will also sustain Frostclad. Cold status weapon time? Glaxion? Maybe.

Freeze: Simple ping ability without bells and whistles. Add some synergy functions to aid the new passive.

Spoiler

UPDATED: Impact radius is a 5 meter radius, up from 3.

NEW: Freeze will now shatter frozen targets, dealing triple True damage instead of cold, and granting 3 Frostclad.

Static range improved to encourage freezing crowds, but left static to benefit negative range builds. Shatter mechanic allows True damage access to dispose of single armored targets where Avalanche is overkill, but mostly to build Frostclad in small groups for lower energy, instead of encouraging “just spam Avalanche”. Now, you can freeze with Avalanche or Snow Globe, and shatter them with Freeze.

Ice Wave: Improve its ability to inflict damage without relying on an unconditional damage bump.

Spoiler

NEW: Ice Wave does double damage to unarmored targets.

Providing a way for Ice Wave to deal damage without a straight damage bump. This works with armor strip on Avalanche, but also makes it lore accurate to “a wave of razor sharp, crystallized ice”. If it’s sharp, deal big damage to squishy stuff.

Snow Globe: Integrate it into new systems.

Spoiler

NEW: Snow Globe gains additional health based on Frostclad, up to 100% more (2x) at max Frostclad.

NEW: Frostclad decay is paused when standing in Snow Globe.

NEW: Collapsing a Snowglobe manually with Freeze grants 10 Frostclad.

NEW: Collapsing a Snowglobe manually with Freeze will function as a Freeze extension, inflicting triple True damage and shattering when appropriate.

The brutal 3/5 drain per second makes a lot more sense now, doesn’t it? Frostclad being stopped inside Snow Globe will be the primary management of Frostclad, dipping in and out as needed, or creating a new one and collapsing the old one. A lot of my inspiration came from Destiny’s Ward of Dawn, with the overshield inside it. Titan bubbles, Frost bubbles, same thing, right?

The bubble will reap benefits from good Frostclad management, and will be another great way to build Frostclad on the way out, detonating it for the flat 10, and an additional stack per shatter. This doesn’t include the 20 gained from a skill cast, either.

Avalanche:

Spoiler

NEW: Avalanche gives 3 Frostclad per target shattered.

While I did specify shattering in the earlier description, the Freeze shatter and Avalanche shatter aren’t the same. They both count for Frostclad, though.

 

GARA:

Gara technically has a passive, listed throughout her abilities as her Splinter Storm glass mechanic, but her written passive is terribly, terribly underwhelming.

Spoiler

Passive: Add interactivity.

UPDATE: Standing in light or shattering glass (through Spectrorage or Mass Vitrify) has a chance to blind enemies, exposing them to melee finishers.

Same chance as before, but with more occurrences by adding shattering to the mechanics of activation. This way you actually interact with the passive itself.

HYDROID:

Oh god. Hydroid is weirdly punished as a kit, without a good means of scaling up to larger numbered content, yet having terrible restrictions on effect, in that he cannot target that many things at once. I’d aim to increase his potency through True damage (how do you defend against drowning?), as that seems fair given his targeting limits.

Spoiler

Passive: Give consistency, integrate core identities into a pirate.

Spoiler

UPDATED: Call of the Deep: Hydroid’s melee slam attacks have a 100% chance to spawn a tentacle that lasts for 15 seconds. The tentacles grabs enemies within 5 meters, thrashing them for 200 True damage per second. Up to 10 tentacles spawned by this passive may exist at once. Passive values are affected by mods (damage by strength, grab distance by reach, and lifespan by duration).

NEW: Scoundrel of the Sea: Hydroid’s tentacles guarantee a double loot chance when a target dies in their avaricious grasp.

Please allow Hydroid to scale. The passive has no reason doing a fixed 200 damage. 50% chance isn’t actually balancing, it just makes it frustrating to spawn the tentacles. Lastly, 3 is very conservative as a limit. Go wild, let tentacles be the core of his kit. On that note, I’m advocating to just internalize the double loot as part of his kit, as it already fits with his motif, but isn’t as easy to access as Desecrate on Nekros.

Tempest Barrage: Needs help in damage department. Has utility as is, with or without augment.

Spoiler

UPDATED: Charged cost reduced from 50 to 25 (same as uncharged).

NEW: Tempest Barrage does True damage to targets submerged in Undertow.

The increased energy cost for charging is needlessly punishing, given that charge times in itself are the tradeoff already (potency vs uptime). The True damage change allows it to actually contribute real damage to Undertow kill traps, instead of tickling with physical damage.

Tidal Surge: Improve damage aspect in synergy.

Spoiler

NEW: Enemies dragged into Undertow from Tidal Surge take 50% of their maximum health as True damage.

Speeds up the drowning process when you proactively drag people under with a second ability, instead of yanking them.

Undertow: Big puddle hours. Improve the ability to indiscriminately drown anything. I don't care how much armor you have, your lungs don't have Ferrite Armor.

Spoiler

UPDATE: Undertow now does True damage instead of Impact damage.

UPDATE: Grabbing a target with primary attack is free, down from 5 energy per target.

The puddle is already punished by movement (fair, given that it’s invulnerable), but the energy consuming option to eat enemies is with Tidal Surge. Make tendril free to encourage an active consumption playstyle. The Impact damage is also conservative, given that one: drowning isn’t guardable, and two: Undertow’s total enemies caught isn’t going to be that high or fast, compared to other options. Allow for aggressive tankbusting.

Tentacle Swarm: Stop punishing Hydroid for charging his abilities, it gives a false agency.

Spoiler

UPDATE: Charge cost reduced from 100 to 50 (same as uncharged)

The extra time spent to charge the ability is already payment, no need to double-tax people for it.

AUGMENT: Turbulent Swarm: Tentacle Swarm Augment: Tentacle Swarm deals 25/50/75/100% of its entrance magnetic damage per second, but lasts 50% as long.

This augment replaces Pilfering Swarm, which is integrated into Hydroid for thematic pirate reasons. This provides Hydroid with a nuke ultimate, similar to Banshee’s augment. Both the entrance and exit will always fire off, regardless of duration, but every second in between will pulse the same magnetic damage.

 

INAROS:

Inaros is constantly pointed out to be a walking meat pile, with a kit that doesn’t scale well or inspire gameplay compared to other heavy-weight tank-archetype Warframes. I think the ability concepts are good, but they desperately need more potency and scaling for how many targets they apply to.

Spoiler

Passive: Keep the melee finisher heal, but make Undying reach parity with others in is class, like Nidus and Sevagoth.

Spoiler

UPDATED: Undying: Inaros can no longer target allies with siphon, and the Sandstorm does not damage allies.

 Inaros’ sarcophagus constantly emits Sandstorm at zero energy cost, violently pulling enemies within and dealing 5% of any enemy’s maximum health as True damage when in range. Primary attack will pull them toward Inaros, dealing 1% of the enemy’s maximum health per second as True damage. Inaros fills his revive meter by 0.5% for every 1% of an enemy’s combined health and shields removed. Ally kills within the Sandstorm contribute to the revive meter. Range and strength do not scale with mods outside of Provoked.

Desert’s Tithe: Melee finishers heal Inaros for 20% of his maximum health.

The potency of this is meant to compete with Sevagoth’s revive passive (100% max hp damage on targets as a standard). This change gives Inaros a large area to work with, while still being able to drag foes outside of range into his passive’s sandstorm. The storm holds targets to ease the process. Having 2 targets in his range for 20 seconds is a revive, 4 targets in range for 10 seconds, etc. The scaling damage ensures that the passive is relevant at all levels, and the sandstorm is to make it more practical against swarms, but allowing code recycle for an existing ability. Also, it would look dope to see a sarcophagus surrounded by a violent storm.

Desiccation: Improve the healing return from the ability.

Spoiler

UPDATED: 100% (from 25%) of any damage dealt by the DoT is conferred back to Inaros as Health.

The ability works as a spammable finisher enabler, but I feel like the heal can be more potent, instead of being forced to rely on Devour for internal healing.

Devour: Scale the damage better appropriately for a slow, single target ability.

Spoiler

UPDATED: Damage scales from 50/100/150/250 to 200/400/600/1000 (from 100/200/300/500) damage per second over 4 seconds (from 2 seconds).

NEW: Sand Shadows heal Inaros for 20% maximum health on death/expiration.

The ability is already an invulnerable lock-in, so at least allow you to speed run eating a man and move on with your life. Damage scales twice as hard, 4x from 2x, but still ramps at the same rate. Allows Inaros to chew through beefier targets as a tank-busting tool that also offers respite.

The sand shadow interaction actually gives meaning to the shadows beyond being a worse Nekros shadow, but also creates a real reason to use the Dessication’s Curse augment.

Sandstorm: Apply damage bonus to targets under Devour to encourage synergy.

Spoiler

UPDATED: Targets in Devour take double damage as True damage.

Sandstorm is already expensive, may as well reward people with comparable damage to single-target eating while spinning.

I don’t know if tweaking these abilities would be enough, but at the very least Inaros would have more tank-busting ability and a real passive, encouraging more interesting gameplay.

IVARA:

Kit feels overall fine, once again picking a bone with the passive.

Spoiler

Passive: Adding depth to the passive beyond just the universal radar (which is a great passive still, mind you.)

Scout: Ivara has 40 (from 20) meters innate radar.

NEW: Dead-eye Huntress: 10% final multiplicative damage, 25% faster draw speed, 100% more reserves, and 300% faster projectile speed for all bow-type weapons (includes Artemis Bow)

Ivara really is the bow-touting huntress, thematically. I think it would be good to encourage the usage of bows, all while getting to buff Artemis Bow as well. Allowing her to have borderline hitscan bows is not only a nice mechanical buff, but thematically it means she can draw a bow really damn hard, which is cool. How many pounds of draw strength do you need to hitscan an arrow? Who knows? I don't, but it's cool to me.

LOKI:

Loki’s actually pretty fine for what he does, but I want him to feel more elusive and resourceful, compared to the other stealth options we have on offer.

Spoiler

Passive: Simple, could use more tie-in to how he behaves as a character.

UPDATED: Elusive: Loki’s wall latch lasts 10 times longer, up to 60 seconds. Loki is invisible during Wall Latch, and restores 1 energy per second while latched.

NEW: Trickster: Loki gains evasion while casting abilities. Functionally identical to invincibility, but produces an after-image effect when hit. 5 second cooldown.

The first change is to help with energy upkeep, but also to give Loki a true reason to wall latch. Remember how in various story cinematics, you latch around invisible? Loki should do that more often.

The second change is to help fragility with well-timed ability usage, but not in a spammable way. Also, it looks dope.

MAG:

Mag is pretty good in thematic and synergy, despite her usage rates. Mostly a passive looking-at for completeness.

Spoiler

Passive: Adding functionalities that tie the thematic together.

Attraction: Mag pulls nearby pickups toward her when bullet jumping.

NEW: Reverse Polarity: Mag is immune to Magnetic procs, instead fully recovering energy and shields when afflicted.

No real adjustments need to be made to Mag’s kit (maybe Polarize working better on some factions), and she doesn’t really need a governing mechanic or passive. If self-proccing Magnetic is possible, this passive could be an interesting means of resource management.

MESA:

Crazy to see her on the list, right? But no, while Mesa may be strong, she has one ability in particular that’s incredibly undertuned. Yep, Ballistic Battery.

Spoiler

NEW: Ballistic Battery is now a toggle that activates an empowered bullet every 9/8/7/6 shots from a weapon (including Regulators). Empowered shots boost damage multiplicatively by 10/15/20/25%, additive with Roar and Faction damage. Each empowered bullet costs 25 energy.

NEW: Correctly applies to all pellets of a pellet weapon, but only one pellet per shot will charge Ballistic Battery.

Ballistic Battery is a cool concept, but suffers from its cast time and terrible scaling. Multiplicative scaling fixes the latter problem, and the auto-fire toggle fixes the former. It adds up to be a multiplicative increase of 4% damage at 100% Strength. Regulators will apply it, but beware of eating through your energy.

MIRAGE:

Mirage has a solid kit, but would benefit a lot from being able to control environmental light.

Spoiler

Passive: Adding light manipulation according to thematic.

Jester’s Agility: Mirage has 85% longer slides, and 50% faster maneuver speed.

NEW: Followspot: Rolling on Mirage summons a spotlight on herself, increasing local environmental light around herself in a 5 meter area. Disabled by Exit Stage, or by side-stepping.

NEW: Exit Stage: Backflipping on Mirage dampens the lighting around herself. Disabled by Followspot, or by sidestepping.

Thematics of this aside, the whole idea is to ensure Mirage can control her Prism and Eclipse output through simple, but meaningful maneuvers. Roll forward for light, roll backward for dark, roll to the side to return to natural environmental light. Should give her power in a player agency way, while keeping it fun and interesting.

NEKROS:

Nekros works right now, but is weirdly clumsy, has a relatively undervalued Soul Punch, and a super garbage scaling passive.

Spoiler

Passive: Good concept, but doesn’t help his kit enough with its current values.

Spoiler

UPDATED: Harvest: Regenerates 10 points of health within 20 meters. Now scales with Strength and Range mods. Harvest will heal Shadows.

This change means at 280% range and 40 strength, you heal 4 health per kill, but in a 56 meter range. Alternatively, at 214% strength, you get 21 health per kill. Respectable, and a meaningful way to sustain your Shadows.

Soul Punch: Just let it scale, it’s a single target ping for Shadows. If a Nekros wants to build 400% Strength, they earned it.

Spoiler

UPDATED: Execute threshold now scales with Strength mods.

Breathes life back into the ability, really. It now excels as capturing high value targets as Shadows, where you can weaken them, and at 300% power strength, convert them at 75% HP, for a big unga bunga Shadow.

Desecrate: The augment is nearly standard due to how Nekros’ kit works, and I think it would genuinely benefit for build interest to integrate it into the ability.

Spoiler

NEW: Despoil is now standard to Desecrate, where Desecrate costs 10 HP per cast, effected by Efficiency.

AUGMENT: Defile: Desecrate now consumes 10 energy per target, and targets explode, dealing damage based on their maximum health.

In short, a reversal of the ability and augment, with an offensive twist. A classic corpse explosion, but it costs energy to access, instead of eating free meals from health orbs and getting free damage. Scaling of that HP damage, damage type,  and radius are out of my tiny brain to decide fully on.

Shadows of the Dead: Ability is fine, but animation cast time is not hip and fresh.

Spoiler

UPDATE: Shadows of the Dead initial cast speed increased slightly, and healing re-cast increased dramatically (to speed closer to Terror’s cast).

In a lot of content, animation locks like these are too risky. Dial it back to give the ability more breathing room.

 

NOVA:

Another Warframe with an already solid kit but needs some interest in the passive.

Spoiler

Passive: Adding small functionality boost to the passive.

UPDATED: Unstable: When Nova is knocked down, she emits a neutron burst which knocks down, damages, and Molecular Primes enemies in a 6 meter radius, at 250 Blast damage.

Gives real lethality to her uh-oh button when it pops, including a slow (or speed up if you play dangerously), but also synergizes with Molecular Fission to recover Null Stars when you’ve been knocked down and lost a few.

NYX:

Nyx actually has good concepts, but still needs tweaks for how she applies them.

Spoiler

Passive: Current passive is interesting, but too bare bones to be a good defensive option.

Spoiler

Confound: Enemies are 20% less accurate when targeting Nyx (except while Absorbing).

NEW: Suggestion: Mind Control and Chaos targets will prioritize Nyx’s current reticle target.

NEW: Psychosis: Melee attacks against Nyx will afflict the enemy with Chaos at modded power.

Largely tailored to give Nyx more agency of her Mind Control target, but also provide additional defense when the accuracy penalty isn’t cutting it (melee).

Mind Control: Concept is good, but needs help with consistency. Augment should be rolled in and instead look to give Mind Control different utilities, depending on if people want to build for Absorb tanking or this.

Spoiler

NEW: Mind Freak’s additive damage boost is rolled into base values, still adding with target charge damage.

AUGMENT: Mind Accomplice: Mind Control target takes 50% of Nyx’s damage, charging in the first 4 seconds, and adding to the final damage package on expiration. Moddable with strength, capping at 90% with 180% Strength.

Instead of offering a poorly scaling redundant damage boost, offer a defensive option worth its mod slot.

Psychic Bolts: Increase target count to allow for more wide-spread application.

Spoiler

UPDATED: Nyx launches 4/6/8/10 (from 3/4/5/6) bolts.

Psychic Bolts are potent enough when you look at what they do, but they suffer from being small-scale in the context of a horde shooter.

 

OBERON:

Another case of a good kit in thematic and synergy, but has a weak passive that feels bad.

Spoiler

Passive: Cute idea for a tree-hugger, but it's laughably pointless. Stat-type passives need to be more aggressive if they want them to matter. I want them to matter.

Forest Guardian: All allied creatures gain 100% health, shield, and armor links (from 25%), and all allied creatures gain 1 instant revive per mission. All allied creatures now revive on a 30 second timer.

If you’re going to dedicate a passive to animal friend-ness, go all in. Additive, this allows Oberon to produce a legion of tanky friends who are all immortal, allowing critters that aren’t Vulpaphylas to actually be allowed in higher content.

REVENANT:

Another weirdly conservative passive. Tie in functionality to make people care about it.

Spoiler

Passive: Thematically sound, just needs a little more oomph to tie it to the kit instead of being some afterthought.

Eidolon’s Sorrow: Revenant is immune to Magnetic night waters on the Plains.

UPDATED: Sentient Howl: On shield depletion, emits a radial blast that knocks down enemies within 7.5 meters. The radial blast Enthralls targets hit at no energy cost. Cannot exceed thrall limit, and will not apply if limit is reached.

This allows a risk-reward for allowing Revenant’s passive to activate, which ties into the rest of his Thrall mechanics.

VALKYR:

Don't ask why this isn't in alphabetical order. Formatting issues led me to weird results.

Valkyr has definitely fallen behind compared to other melee-type Warframes in terms of utility and quality of life (certainly not damage though). Warcry and Paralysis are great, but Rip Line needs a look, and Hysteria needs some quality of life.

Spoiler

Passive:                                

Spoiler

UPDATED: Lithe:  Valkyr is able to recover from knockdown 200% faster and is immune to Hard Landings, ignoring touchdown delay.

NEW: Fury: Valkyr’s health damage is converted to energy at a 50% rate.

Stat passives do not need to be conservative. Allow Valkyr to save her Exilus from Handspring and a Rage/Hunter Adrenaline Slot.

Rip Line: A mobility tool? A damage tool? Rip Line isn’t sure either. Either way, lean into that mobility functionality.

Spoiler

NEW: Rip Line costs 0 energy while in Hysteria, and deals triple damage.

Weird ranged damage and mobility while in Hysteria. That’s all.

Hysteria: Suffers from mobility due to it not having projectiles like Excalibur or Baruuk, but still being a melee. I’m not always for the argument of “just integrate the augment” but Hysterical Assault really should have been part of Hysteria by default. Making Rip Line better isn’t really going to fix the flow issue here. While you can spam slide attack, that might feel  clumsy for some people.

Spoiler

NEW: Hysterical Assault functionalities added to Hysteria.

AUGMENT: Hysteric Tantrum: Hysteria gains 125/150/175/200% final multiplicative damage based on missing health on cast.

Add mobility into Hysteria by consuming the augment, and give Valkyr a second, different risk-reward option for Hysteria. You can have the 50% locked in uptime, or you can play on the knife’s edge with her innate tankiness to get a huge Hysteria out.

 

VOLT:

A solid interlaced kit, but the passive needs some work. It would be hip to apply gameplay flow-deciding passives on older Warframes.

Spoiler

Passive: Good thematic, but lackluster numbers.

UPDATED: Surge: Traveling along the ground builds up static energy, adding bonus Electricity damage to the next weapon attack or ability cast. For every 1 meter traveled, 5% bonus Electricity damage is stored, to a maximum of 100% bonus damage. Not affected by ability strength. Applies to weapons as an bonus elemental damage (equivalent to an 100% electric mod), applies to abilities as a final 100% additional damage (functionally 2x damage). Applies to all chains of an ability.

Making the building and spend of the passive a core part of accessing more damage on Volt. You’d be rewarded for moving, keeping conscious count of your charge, and spending it every 20 meters on skill casts. Flat damage is sadly ultra poor in a game with runaway math, making it have flavor without substance. I’d like to have the flavor and substance.

RHINO:

Classic beefy boy suffers from having an overly simplistic kit that is divorced from itself, leading to his augments being the actual feature creep for him. Not going to use the classic argument of “make his augments innate”, because I think we can do more. Ever since I saw Rhino in that old Warframe cinematic for Open Beta back in 2013, I wanted Rhino to feel like that.

Spoiler

Passive: "Iron" out (Ha. Ha.) his existing passive to make it useful, and expand on it thematically a lot.

Spoiler

UPDATED: Behemoth: Rhino’s innate Heavy Impact has a base damage of 1000, and scales with his Strength, armor, health, and Iron Skin health as Impact damage. Behemoth’s damage is also multiplied by downward velocity vector. Base area of effect is 6 meters wide. Behemoth Slam’s range scales with Range. Behemoth Slam visually looks like Rhino Stomp, instead of Heavy Impact.

Formula is as: (1000 + ARMOR + HEALTH + IRON SKIN) * STRENGTH

NEW: Stampede: Rhino deals damage in a 2 meter radius while sprinting, knocking down enemies in his path. Stampede deals 50 collision damage as Impact damage, scaling additively with armor and health. As Rhino sprints, his movement speed ramps up, enlarging the radius up to 5 meters and increasing his movement speed value to 300%, and reducing turn speed (Similar to Mach Rush). At maximum Stampede, ending movement will unleash a Behemoth impact at Rhino’s location.

This is a lot of words and a funky gimmick, but I want Rhino to feel heavy, and also be able to dunk himself like the righteous cannonball of iron and flesh that he is. Now if only we still had Excalibur’s Super Jump as a randomly subsumable ability. Behemoth Slam will not count toward Ironclad Charge.

Rhino Charge: Integrating Stampede functions into Rhino Charge.

Spoiler

NEW: Using Rhino Charge during Stampede will apply Stampede’s ramping value to Rhino Charge (from 100% multiplier up to 300% multiplier). Rhino Charge’s damage and radius are multiplied. At 300% Stampede, Rhino will leap slightly in the air, generating a Behemoth Slam at the target destination.

Iron Skin: Give a HUD indicator above abilities and energy.

Spoiler

UPDATED: Instead of a buff in the top right, Iron Skin gains its own meter in the bottom right, similar to Warding Halo (and others).

Mostly a clarity thing. Iron Skin is a loaded ability as is, and the rest of the kit is getting synergy to Iron Skin, nevermind the augments that exist.

Rhino Stomp: Adding more scaling, and synergies with Behemoth, Stampede, and Iron Skin.

Spoiler

NEW: Rhino Stomp also scales off of health, armor, and Iron Skin health. These values are additive to the base damage before Strength mods.

NEW: Using Rhino Stomp during Stampede will apply Stampede’s ramping value to Rhino Stomp (from 100% multiplier up to 300% multiplier). Rhino Stomp’s damage is multiplied. At 300%, Rhino will leap very high into the air, slamming down at the target destination with both Rhino Stomp and a high velocity Behemoth Slam.

A thematic means of buffing up Rhino’s damage, tied directly to his beef. The huge slam dunk is to make him feel more powerful, but also to add a direct way to access a max velocity Behemoth Slam without a super specific map geometry.

 

 

[blackdragon3030]

I like the changes to chroma but I also feel that they could do a thing like Sevagoth and give chroma two forms, a Dragon slayer form and a (the clearly better) Dragon form where the two forms share elemental ward and vex armor, : the dragon slayer form would be normal chroma but his one could be a elemental infusion empowering his current weapons with a small damage buff of the selected element and his four could switch into his dragon form where he gets your idea of infinite bullet jumps, his primary weapon is spectral scream, the one in dragon form could be the big laser you were talking about and elemental ward could also a tiny amount of elemental damage in a radius around chroma.
 

this is my opinion of what would be nice changes to my favorite warframe but i also realize that some of these changes might encroach on other warframe and might be bad ideas

[AegidiusF]

Very interesting, but as a Banshee main, I don't like the changes you propose to her. Her passive is awesome (Silece is not for her, but for others, enemy or ally). Sonic boom is great the way it is, but Sound quanke could be better, but it was nerfed a long time ago, when Banshee was a nuker frame, to prevent players from cleaning a whole bunch of rooms with Sound quake. Today, it is one of the most effective abilities for Mobiles Defense (even solo on Steel Path). A huge crowd control that really helps if you're on a squad.

Hydroid could really get rid of the obligation to charge his abilities. I like to play Hydroid, but we lose a lot of precious time trying to stay alive while charging an ability. They made some changes on Ash 4th, so the enemies take all three marks at once, so I think they would accept with no problem the proposition to stop making Hydroid charge his abilities.

Again, I think you have done a good job and it's a very interesting and very complete proposition, even though I do not agree with everything.

Thank you very much for sharing this with us.

[Squippit]

While I do think Oberon needs his passive looked over, this still isolates him from people who want to use sentinels/robotics. I'd be content just throwing them into the current passive if it meant they could get health/armor/shield-links. It's also odd that his passive helps everyone else instead of just him. Not complaining, but if that's the tradeoff that needs to be made, I'm more than happy to make it.