Nidus Virulence Improvement or New Augment Mod Idea

[Caelum-Warblade]

First off, I am aware that there are many more frames hurting far worse than Nidus and I definitely think they need improvements first, but I'm here today to talk about small adjustments/improvements that would help add some diversity to how a player can use his kit specifically.

 

I have at this point probably several hundreds of hours on him and despite how much I love him, one of my biggest gripes is the feedback loop of having to constantly spam his 1 Virulence (stomp) to replenish his mutation stacks the further along you get, which at times feels like it takes away from the enjoyment of playing him. Again,  Nidus doesn't really have any major drawbacks however, it can just feel very repetitive and somewhat jarring to spam Virulence to reaccumulate stacks over and over and over.

 

The idea draws from Saryn's Toxic lash ability and Nekros's Desecrate ability (with the Despoil augment) where, upon casting your Virulence by holding down the 1 rather than pressing it, it begins draining your energy for each enemy killed and in return giving mutation stacks.

 

"Nidus coats his weapon in infested spores to infect the enemy, upon killing that enemy you accumulate their genetic code and gain mutation stacks."
 

I think ideally not taking away his stomp completely would be best and that the ability itself was simply improved:

Hold down 1 activates Ferocious Virulence 

Pressing 1 allows Nidus to still use stomp

 

If not implemented into his base ability, I recommend it as an Augment mod:

Ferocious Virulence: Allows Nidus to coat his melee weapon with spores of the infestation, drains energy upon activation. Upon killing an enemy gain one mutation stack, Gain double stacks if enemy is killed inside Ravenous zone and quadruple stacks if parasitic link is active and inside zone.

[(XBOX)DarkForceLegend]

I like this idea, but what if it where an augment for his Parasitic Link, a link weapon(s). I don't know about double stack gain if killed within his Ravenous zone, there is already an augment that kind of does that. Being able to gain stacks with any weapon would be powerful enough I'd feel.

[2wentyThre3]

I'm pretty much a Nidus main ... I say pretty much because in WF I think its a little wasteful to have so much equipment and not use it. But as a preference if I could only use one WF from now on it'd probably be my Nidus Prime. I have thousands of hours in game, probably well over a thousand on my Nidus before he got primed.

Virulence works. Nidus' toolkit works. The general consensus and feeling about Nidus is normally the same things that you've made issue against - but I think its generally accepted that Nidus is this way because it works. He's a little boring because his kit requires a repetitive loop. But that repetition is rewarded heavily with high damage output and effective immortality. Stacks can be built super fast as it is and form a gameplay loop no other frame has. In short he is unique and in a game like this, thats good design.All 4 of his abilities work together well enough to the point where Helminth switching them isn't really necessary and if its done it's normally something minor like Larva for similar abilities like Airburst (shorter CD on grouping) or Ensnare (longer duration and collective positioning for headshots).

Your proposed augment - IMHO - isn't an augment as much as it would be an entirely new ability. You're effectively turning Virulence into something like Xatas whisper - only it's pretty much set and forget if using Rage or Hunter Adrenaline. In theory, it seems a nice idea but with the former in consideration and the fact it would scale to an unreasonable level if using something like Kronen (the multi-hit nature of the weapon would accumulate stacks at a rate that would trivialize death) it just seems like it would be exploitable and ultimately end up being less interesting.

Sorry to be "that" guy ...

TLDR: Virulence stack management is the sole focus for Nidus' gameplay loop and changing it changes Nidus. Nidus is fantastic and needs no changes in the games current state. Playing well is rewarded with insane damage and tanking ability, failing to manage stacks is punished with death. Its a good balance. Ofc that's my opinion.