Volt - Misunderstood, Mislabeled, Or Miserable

[Rajko]

Edit for the Holidays - this thread was originally posted to gather feedback on Volt pre-update 11, when he saw numerous adjustments.  If you read this and have any feedback or commentary on Volt as the frame is now, please add your thoughts!

 

 

 

 

 

Firstly, I'm not attempting to troll by posting this, I've just been wondering.  Please don't flame, troll, etc.  

 

Volt has been the subject of countless threads, and I've never been too clear why exactly he's considered broken.  I've always had the feeling I was catching the last half of a shouting match.

 

So this thread is seeking to understand precisely what different individuals feel is broken or lacking about Volt.  

 

Note that I don't care about How you want Volt to be fixed.  There are plenty of those threads out there.  I want to hear the first half, the part describing the specific issues with Volt as he currently is.  With that feedback, I'm hoping that Volt players will collectively have some consistency regarding what ought to change, vs what that one guy who wrote a ton of posts wants (make volt as fast as this frame, etc).  For the very simple reason that the devs who read these forums will look at a couple hundred posts on how to fix volt and have a very difficult time doing anything to improve him, and will look at a the problems players collectively have with Volt and the solutions should more or less become obvious.

 

 

Some quick background: Volt is my 'main' frame, I obtained him first after starting off with Excalibur around March.  I've put in around 450 hours on Warframe, and about 40% of that with Volt.  I switch between a version with stretch and focus, and a version with duration and speed boosts mostly, and my third slot is for experimenting with Volt and new, goofy mods.  Mine has been forma'd once.  I almost always play solo or with one team-mate.

 

For my few pennies, the first thing that occurs to me is that Volt is mislabeled.  He's not a "potent alternative to gunplay" at all.  He's more of an offensive support frame that depends on his ability to boost gunplay through his shield.  As is, though, it's not very easy to use, and almost impossible to use in conjunction with a team.

 

Apart from the contents being wildly different from the labeling, he isn't as dedicated to offensive support as he should be if that's what he's going to be doing, and he doesn't need to be as fragile as he is given that he isn't a canon or super utility frame.

 

Thanks for reading, viva la Volt.

 

Edit:  Moved some things around in the top post.  I'm re-reading everyone's feedback, and will put up a simple bullet point with the major things players identify.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited December 10, 2013 by Rajko

[TheMalachai]

Gameplay-wise, I think the issue is that electricity is really only useful against Corpus. Everyone else takes reduced damage from it. Now, MY only real gripe with Volt is the fact that people keep spamming Speed. But that's a people issue. Can't really fix that. I actually enjoy Volt, for the most part. I think the risk of being killed while hitting Overload (just floating there, no way to stop, eating everyone's bullets) outweighs the reward the higher you go in level, though.

[Anatolius]

i am REALLY hoping that electricity will be much better in the future with armor/damage 2.0

I love his look, his powers.. but you cant really do much unless you are fighting corpus

[castem]

Note that I don't care about How you want Volt to be fixed. There are plenty of those threads out there. I want to hear the first half, the part describing the specific issues with Volt as he currently is.

My 3 biggest issues with Volt:

- his two best powers - Speed and Electric Shield - are at odds with each other. One promotes mobility and melee weapons, while the other one keeps you stationary behind a shield and promotes gunplay.

- his ultimate is terrible. It doesn't have the killing or stunning power it should, and coupled with its cast time/animation, the result is that using it is often a death sentence.

- as someone pointed out earlier, Volt is only decent against Corpus; against all other factions, electric damage doesn't have the damage or stunning power it should.

There are other issues with Volt (Sprint Speed too low for an electricity frame, armor too low, etc) that people might have, but I think the ones I listed are the main ones.

Admittedly, I haven't played Volt nearly as much as you have, so maybe I'm lacking some insight about Volt. (If you've played Volt for a long time without issues, then maybe you might consider making a guide to playing Volt effectively. It'd probably help a lot of Volt players out there.)

Edited November 6, 2013 by castem

[nintega]

He scales badly, he's too weak. Just look at his first power, it only does 200 damage. Let's compare that to other direct damage first abilities:

 

Shuriken does 500 times 2 Serrated Blade damage, meaning that even against Corpus, he'll do more damage with just one of those two shurikens thanks to the armor ignore. And I'm fairly certain is staggers, but I don't own Ash.

Sonic Boom only does 50 damage, however, it also straight up knocks down all enemies in a fairly large area of effect, and crowd control always scales really well if it starts off well, unlike the dinky stun from Shock.

Fireball deals 200 Fire Damage, so it is pretty specialized, but more useful all around due to multipliers than Electric Damage. Not to mention, that it ticks four times, once per second, after hitting, deal the original damage each time, leading to five times the base damage of Shock.

Slash Dash deals 500 Serrated Blade damage in a 2x10 meter area, so it has the potential to hit a large number of enemies with armor-ignoring damage, not to mention its travel utility.

Freeze deals 125 Ice Damage, and freezes the target solid for over 11 seconds, and can freeze the target indefinitely if cast upon it again, offering incredible single target CC.

Pull deals 300 armor ignoring damage in a potentially huge radius, passes through walls, and ragdolls the enemy. At the moment, I think this power is pretty unbalanced, but it stands as it is, very powerful.

Soul Punch deals 500 armor ignoring damage, and sends the enemy flying far, and spawns a projectile which deals additional damage, though quite unpredictably.

Null Star spawns 6 particles that each seek out targets and deal 150 Serrated Blade Damage, and not only that, can headshot.Though it's clear that most of Nova's powers are too strong and need balancing.

Rhino Charge deals 650 armor ignoring damage in an area similar to Slash Dash, and knocks down everything it hits. The knock down and the travel utility make it very useful in general.

Venom tags a target with six spores that ticks 10 Poison Damage, ignoring armor, every second for 15 seconds, which totals up to about 900 armor ignoring damage, though at a slow rate. That's not counting the damage dealt when it spreads, either.

Tesla holds 10 charges that do 150 Electric Damage each, so they're not very powerful, but their stun is quite reliable, and still, even with the same damage type as Shock, you get more damage for your energy.

 

While direct damaging abilities in this game are a bit on the weak side in general, not scaling very much into higher levels, you can see with this comparison that Shock is on the bottom wrung of the ladder. And when it comes to his Ult, you know how bad that can be. Only dealing a little more damage than Ember's Fireball, all the while making you a sitting duck. Not to mention how bad Electric Damage is compared to others.

 

Speed is, of course, useful, no one else has anything quite like it, and it can turn slow melee weapons into formidable things, and turn fast melee weapons into storms of hits, and Electric Shield is also useful, but the bonus damage it allows doesn't help much, especially taking into account how small it is, and how it makes you totally immobile if you wanna keep using it to your advantage. Though I do quite love how the Shield interacts with the Synapse.

 

And when it comes to base stats, all he can really claim to is to have good shields. Average health, average energy, average speed, and well below average armor. And as I've noticed in several games recently, including this game, the "average" isn't at all ideal for going into higher level content. Once his shield's gone, which isn't that hard, he can't take a lot of hits, and he'll have to pop Speed to dodge or get hit.

 

So sure, he has good utility, but hardly ideal to take him into tougher places. Even while you moving fast or swinging like a tornado, you can still get hit, and Electric Shield only protects you from a certain angle. While it is a problem other frames share, a frame shouldn't rely on just 1 or 2 powers, all of them should be potentially viable, or at least useful.

 

So while he is definitely misunderstood by the people who wanted him to be an awesome, lightning bolt flinging monster, in reality, he's pretty miserable for those who understand him and how the game is as a whole. He needs work, but at least he isn't the only one.

[Volthorne]

In direct relation to the thread title, he's all three.

 

Misunderstood - No one can decide what they want him to be. His two utility skills are directly at odds with each other, and neither help his two offensive abilities. Is he a Caster? Gunslinger? Swordnado? Not even DE can figure it out. Ideally, I think he should be a Guncaster (or Gunmage). This leads into...

 

Mislabeled - DE's naturally faulty descriptor of him misleads people into thinking Volt is something he's not. This creates a lot of confusion, feeding directly back into the "misunderstood" category. Unfortunately, all of this negative feedback also results in....

 

Miserable - Because no one can decide what they want him to do, or even agree about what should be changed to make him more useful. There doesn't seem to be any headway made in any direction (especially since armor 2.0 is coming "soon™" but that's not going to fix anything outside of enemy scaling - everyone is hoping for WAY too much), so he's not getting any balancing changes in the foreseeable future. This makes Volt miserable and sad. No, seriously, he's in the corner over there crying.

[webkilla]

I think that Volt is - more or less - ok as is

 

Yesterday I ran an alert spy mission which turned out to feature lvl 130-ish Grineer.

 

With my Rhino, they would chew through his Iron Skin in seconds - but there was a Volt along for the ride... and thanks to the shield he could throw up, we could fire back without getting bullet-mongled too often. Add to that, when we finally got the 4 oversized USB drives, we were able to use Speed to zip past crowds of grineer, saving us a lot of grief since we were all quite low on ammo towards the end

 

so I think its quite handy

 

 - yes, its offensive powers suck. It doesn't deal that much damage, and Overload leaves you really really vulnerable... I wouldn't mind seeing those fixed

[suraklin]

Volt really should be what he's labelled as, Warframe's mage with potent alternatives to gunplay.  His #1 should be just as viable -- if not moreso -- as a Rhino's or Mag's #1.

[Flackenstien]

Volt shouldn't just be turned into an electric Ember, right now he has a diverse set of tactical skills, that, with a few fixes, could be awesome.

 

Edited version of what I post in every Volt thread:

 

SHOCK:

● Damage is too low, it's only devastating against low-level Corpus.

It needs to be on par with Slash Dash VS Infested, only its for Corpus instead.

● Doesn't stun well enough. An electrical ability should be a reliable taser, against all factions, especially when its damage falls off in higher level content.

 

SPEED:

● Perfectly fine as is. 

 

ELECTRIC SHIELD:

● Shield isn't very compatible with mods. 
Allow it to be affected by +Power Range, and +Power Strength.

 

OVERLOAD:

● For what it does, the animation is just too long to be effective.
● Volt can't make use of the stun it causes. (Provided electrical abilities are changes to stun more reliably.)

Edited November 6, 2013 by Flackenstien

[TheArkhangel]

Agreed with just about all of the posts already made. His utility skills are great: if you pick one, not both. His uber is great if you're playing a Corpus match; but at higher levels, all you do is just piss off the entire room and crucify yourself. 

 

My problem with electricity, though. I understand the Infested not being affected as much by it; however, why are the Grineer? They say because of their armour.... well, then why isn't it amplified? Metal should conduct, unless for some reason they made their armour to be resistant to conductivity, which seems like more work than it would be worth on their part. 

[Tevye]

I'm not sure that the fact that speed and shield serve different functions is a drawback. It simply makes him more versatile in his utility. Most frames have non complimentary utility skills, or at least skills that aren't used together. Loki is an obvious exception. I frequently use Ash and Mag, and only rarely do I even use teleport or bullet attractor. They aren't broadly applicable enough. But volt has skills for every season. Getting out of Phobos sabotage missions is a hell of a lot easier with speed. And shield sees use everywhere from corridor sniping to boss fights to shielding you while raising a fallen ally. I think the fact that half his skills are utility makes the in game description misleading, But I don't feel that it makes him a broken frame.

[Flackenstien]

Thank you, Remitevji.
Volt doesn't need to be Electro-Ember..

..he's fine having a varied skillset. (It just needs some fixes, and buffs in order to work effectively.)

[suraklin]

I'm not sure that the fact that speed and shield serve different functions is a drawback. It simply makes him more versatile in his utility. Most frames have non complimentary utility skills, or at least skills that aren't used together. Loki is an obvious exception. I frequently use Ash and Mag, and only rarely do I even use teleport or bullet attractor. They aren't broadly applicable enough. But volt has skills for every season. Getting out of Phobos sabotage missions is a hell of a lot easier with speed. And shield sees use everywhere from corridor sniping to boss fights to shielding you while raising a fallen ally. I think the fact that half his skills are utility makes the in game description misleading, But I don't feel that it makes him a broken frame.

Perhaps you can't consider him broken but he's very situational, and in all those situations something else would work better.  Speed is just fluff, like Bounce or Wormhole. Volt is mediocre at best, and he's certainly one of the 3 least useful frames in the game. All of his abilities are trumped by another frame's abilties.  I used to understand his mediocrity, considering he was one of the 3 starter frames (and the one I started with). For him to become harder to obtain and Mag to replace him is replacing mediocrity with greatness (granted, Mag was pretty mediocre when that change happened). When Volt got moved off the free-frame starting line, the only increase in strength I saw was having his Shock bounce to a few targets.  This edged Shock just past Freeze for "most useless #1 skill".

[LukeAura]

Volt is all three really. 
He doesn't really fit into any category, he can be kind of tanky, kind of offensive, kind of fast, kind of crowd controlly, but not very good at any of them. 
He's supposed to be offensive, but that's his weakest attribute, and he is certainly not an alternative to weapons.
And while he isn't quite miserable, he is usually a little down. 

The problems as some others have stated before me is that his abilities don't synergize well with each other. 
He can't Roar-Stomp for massive damage.
He can't Super Jump and Slash dash for massive mobility. 
He can't combine Overheat and WoF for lethal close range offense. 
If he throws up a shield, he can shoot through it. But Overloading will make him float well above the shield. Speed will require he run out from behind it. Shock won't do anything because having a shield doesn't require CC.
Speed does not synergize well with his other abilities because they require him to stop moving briefly(shock) or be stationary(Shield Overload).
Really, it' be okay if he was still on the weak side, but if he had abilities that were useful with each other he might feel better.
A lot of people have suggested shield move with him, which would help protect him during overload, and let him keep moving with speed. 
it'd be a massive world of difference for him, even by only adjusting one power.  
  

[Tevye]

I would say that it would be nice to see his shield benefit from more mods, and now that the animations for overload have been changed (improved I think) I think limiting Volts vulnerability to to the pre discharge animations might be nice compromise. Shock doesn't do a ton of damage, but throwing out a barrage of them still seems fairly effective, and I want to wait till armor 2.0 to start throwing out too many tweak and nerf suggestions. At least it's clear and fair to say Volt is a frame lots of people like and enjoy playing.

[Flackenstien]

Volt is all three really. 

He doesn't really fit into any category, he can be kind of tanky, kind of offensive, kind of fast, kind of crowd controlly, but not very good at any of them. 

>Not very good at any of them.

Have..

Have you... ever used Speed?

[Antonie_Van_Leeuwenhoek]

I knew your feeling but let me add something.

I used to hate volt, like all of you. He's weak, his skills feel awkward, etc.

Then one day, I have an extra potato.

And the fleeting expertise.

I put both on him.

He's now one of my favorite frame. Shock's damage is not that low when you can spam it into crowd. It became a mass stun. Speed actually feel better with less duration, since it's much more controllable. And electric shield can be more strategically useful. Putting 4 of them to block the whole doorway now feel like cheating against corpus and grineer.

But I still won't bring him to infested mission. He still feel awkward there

[Reaver_X]

Omg lol, its a volt thread and people are complaining about nova's powers, her 1 ability is op now too?  she's fine lmao, go play terraria bruh

[Blazer-X]

Well, the point about his lack of synergy seems to be the main one everyone has been saying, and it is also mine as well.

 

Most other frames in the game at least have some level of ability synergy. Just to prove my point by going down the list:

 

Ash's Smokescreen protect him for Shuriken spam and Teleport

Banshee's Sonic Boom and Sonar sets up easy targets

Ember's Overheat + Wof

Excalibur's Super Jump + Slash Dash

Frost's Snow Globe protects him while using other abilities

Loki's Decoy + Switch Teleport

Nekros's SoTD + Desecrate

Nova's MPrime + Null Star to set them off

Rhino's Roar buffs everything else

Trinity's Blessing + Link

Vauban's Vortex/Bastille + Tesla.

 

The only frames I didn't mention are Nyx, which has an OP Chaos, Mag, whose Pull used to be very good with Shield Polarize and Bullet Attract before the ragdoll change, and Saryn, which has 2 powerful non-synergistic abilities (Venom and Miasma)

 

Which puts Volt sorta at the place as the only frame where not only his abilities actually CONFLICT each other, but also none of them are good enough to be "one-size fits all" unlike Nyx's Chaos. It'd be different if he has one very good ability like Chaos that makes it somewhat alright to ignore his other abilities. Instead, the closest he has to that is Speed, which doesn't work well with any of his other abilities and isn't good enough on its own to help you when running away isn't an option. Electric Shield, the next most useful in the list, doesn't properly protect him in Overload and offers no bonus/synergy with Shock, other than offering him frontal defense.

 

Hence why everyone calls Volt a mess of a frame: he doesn't have any defining powers or power combos. Speed is the closest thing he has to a signature power and it has horrible synergy with everything else in his arsenal, right down to his low armor making him too squishy to be a melee-centric fighter.

Edited November 7, 2013 by Blazer-X

[Rajko]

Omg lol, its a volt thread and people are complaining about nova's powers, her 1 ability is op now too?  she's fine lmao, go play terraria bruh

You plainly didn't read, or didn't care, since you didn't offer any feedback on the topic, and just trolled.  How you plucked that one nugget out of Nintega's post is beyond me.  So, thanks I guess?

 

Other than that, the feedback has been really great, it sounds to me like there is a consensus on a few things:

 

*Skills don't synergize well

*Vulnerability issue w/ Overload

*Doesn't conform to his labeling

*Shock isn't good aoe, cc, or direct damage

 

I'm still curious if there are any other major categories that Volt players feel is broken.  Thanks again to everyone who's put their time into such thoughtful replies!

[Flackenstien]

Right down to his low armor making him too squishy to be a melee-centric fighter.

Not saying Volt is, or should be, a melee-centric frame.. but..

With SPEED, he becomes a hit & run melee beast, especially with nasty melee weapons like Orthos Prime, Fang Prime, and Ichors.

[Blazer-X]

Not saying Volt is, or should be, a melee-centric frame.. but..

With SPEED, he becomes a hit & run melee beast, especially with nasty melee weapons like Orthos Prime, Fang Prime, and Ichors.

At low-mid level, I agree, he'll do fine there. Throw him at anything decent level (50+), and you can pretty much expect him to be ripped to shreds as long as there are multiple enemies around. Especially if they are Grineer, who have hitscan.

[ssh83]

His "issue" is that he doesn't do as much damage as Nova.  lol

 

Though I think his shield and speed boost are good enough to warrant his existence, even if his damage abilities don't hold up well at lvl 100.

[secret_character]

A good place to start describing the problems with Volt is his 4th skill, Overload. Now, it has a gimmick that not everyone realizes: it feeds off the destruction of electronics. When you use it appropriately, i.e. around a bunch of electronics, it can be kind of a powerhouse. The destruction aspect, however, is a serious drawback. Once you've used it and broken all the nearby electronics, subsequent casts of Overload are exceptionally sub-par, and even hazardous to attempt.

 

So, to use Overload effectively, you need to be continually finding new areas full of electronics to exploit. How do you get to those areas? This is where you can start to see the intended synergy; you can rush to new areas using Speed, you can stun enemies that are in your way with Shock (when it works), and you can use Electric Shields to either cover your escape from one area, or to safely focus fire and take out the biggest threat as you enter another area.

 

If there's any common theme to Volt, I would say that it's constant forward momentum. This would be fine, except that the greatest rewards are given in missions where you cannot play to Volt's advantage. These are consequently the most-played modes; Defense, Mobile Defense, Survival, and (to a lesser extent) Assassination. All of these require players to curb their momentum, to stay in a smaller space for a longer time, retracing their steps instead of pushing outward into new territory.

 

It's lucky that Electric Shield has some utility for the aforementioned modes, and the Synapse combo is a nice consolation prize, but ultimately he will be outclassed there because he's simply out of his element. And if those are the modes that come to define Warframe as a game, as seems to be the case more and more, Volt as he is currently designed will always be an outlier.

[Blazer-X]

A good place to start describing the problems with Volt is his 4th skill, Overload. Now, it has a gimmick that not everyone realizes: it feeds off the destruction of electronics. When you use it appropriately, i.e. around a bunch of electronics, it can be kind of a powerhouse. The destruction aspect, however, is a serious drawback. Once you've used it and broken all the nearby electronics, subsequent casts of Overload are exceptionally sub-par, and even hazardous to attempt.

 

So, to use Overload effectively, you need to be continually finding new areas full of electronics to exploit. How do you get to those areas? This is where you can start to see the intended synergy; you can rush to new areas using Speed, you can stun enemies that are in your way with Shock (when it works), and you can use Electric Shields to either cover your escape from one area, or to safely focus fire and take out the biggest threat as you enter another area.

 

If there's any common theme to Volt, I would say that it's constant forward momentum. This would be fine, except that the greatest rewards are given in missions where you cannot play to Volt's advantage. These are consequently the most-played modes; Defense, Mobile Defense, Survival, and (to a lesser extent) Assassination. All of these require players to curb their momentum, to stay in a smaller space for a longer time, retracing their steps instead of pushing outward into new territory.

 

It's lucky that Electric Shield has some utility for the aforementioned modes, and the Synapse combo is a nice consolation prize, but ultimately he will be outclassed there because he's simply out of his element. And if those are the modes that come to define Warframe as a game, as seems to be the case more and more, Volt as he is currently designed will always be an outlier.

Good points all in all, especially with the reminder on Overload.

 

But like you said, its gimmicky at best in the current playstyle. Even with momentum, it highly depends on the map type you're playing in, with open areas and Grineer areas having far less electronics (don't even get me started with Phobos). Which goes back to Volt's problem. He lacks synergy and most of his abilities are gimmicky at best. The only time there's any synergy is in VERY narrow situation like you've mentioned, and even that depends on the map you're on.

 

Gimmicky abilities can be good if they can be synergistic. Take a look at Loki, for example. Decoy has become mostly subpar with enemies no longer trying to reach it regardless of whether or not its out of reach and they can take it down in literally seconds as long as they're at a decent level. Switch Teleport is just outright gimmicky and could leave you at a worse place than where you started off at. But put these two together, and you got one of the best mobility combos in the entire game, giving you teleportation to almost anywhere in the map.

 

The problem with Volt is that he doesn't have anything like this. He can't even properly shield himself while using Overload, without essentially leaving a shield in the middle of the air, making it useless for shielding afterwards. That lack of synergy and making gimmicky things more powerful is what I feel is the main problem with Volt.