Chroma Rework Idea

[John411]

Ok so this is more of a Discussion of "wouldn't it be cool if" than feedback, unless you consider it a plea for change. It's no secret that our Draconic friend has been solely carried by 1 1/2 abilities since his launch, those being Vex armor and Elemental ward or in some unique circumstances effigy when you need credits. I honestly feel that plenty of warframes can use some love since many kind of feel left behind and Chroma isn't even the first or fifth on this list, in my personal opinion, but I have some ideas on how to rework him and wanted to share.

Passive Ability: Ok so going from "your element is your color" to "You like pogo sticks?" was not the best decision DE has made. We have passives ranging from you're fat when you land all the way to sentient resistance, more than one instances of cheating death (seriously wukong, nidus, Sevagoth, and inaros so yeah), boosting ability strength by 100%, and more so w have a lot of room on this front. My Idea is to move Vex armor to being his passive, this is controversial since it is the thing that is making him useful at current but I feel that it could work out. Maybe the values are limited to unmoded (350% armor and 350% damage [I personally would bump the base damage up]) but it returns to being multiplicative rather than additive. It would only work on himself and it would require damage throughout the mission. it can either stay stacked up for 10-20 seconds or the bonus slowly decays over time. 

First Ability: Ok so I saw an idea for this that was so cool (making it a non exaulted weapon like Garuda's talons) but in making this post actually I realized that this is the perfect first level ability in paper for a dragon warframe, a dragon spews out some element that is just what they do. With this understood we need to make it better which can be done in 1 of two ways. first is the simply and easy way, make it scale of percent health damage. The other is make it an exaulted weapon much like Balefire, it would be a high status chance weapon (maybe 100% base but it has low damage and above average fire rate. This would make it a good primer at the very least since a quick scroll through the elements would allow you to have a lot of element on enemies.

Second Ability: ok so since His third ability became his passive this ability is gonna have to cover some ground if we want him to remain a tank. I feel that the buffs I'm going to give it justify it being moved to his third slot and it's cost being increased to 75 as compared to 50. So that makes this the new ability slot (well the only entirely new one since I've got a lot planned for the 4th ability) and since it's a new ability I'll give a few Ideas.

The First idea I have would play into a Dragon's greed and help further with his tankiness (dragons are castle sized lizards that require the utmost effort to take down so he should be up there as far as a tank goes). It would be an aura that would increase the drop rate of credits by like 25% (unmoddable) and for every 1,000 credits he picks up he gains 1% armor. There would be no cap or the cap would be something huge like 2,500% which would be insane but the balance would be that every hit removes 1% of the armor. Maybe the cap is increased by power strength but the amount gained/lost also scales as well.

The Second idea would be something like Nidus' Ravenous by playing into a dragon's lair. He would set up an area as his lair where It would pause the pick up of resources (not things like life support or any item needed to be picked up for a mission/bounty) and any drops from Chroma's kills would pull/teleport to the center of this area. While in this area Chroma and his allies would gain buff(s) based on how many resources are in the zone. I have no idea the numbers but let's say after 1000 of the resources you cap out the buff(s). There is a reason for the "(s)" behind Buff and that is it could be as simple as a % damage reduction up to 75% or you could utilize the Helminth system's division of resources to have 6 different buffs but with elemental ward that would be a whole lotta buffs to keep track of.

The Third and final idea would play into Dragons having minions which is a cool aspect that isn't really explored much. Chroma would summon like 5-10 little minions that draw aggro away from him and his allies. these little guys would "run" from enemies (not attack and be slow while running) and their entire purpose is to just die. The only question would be by either Chroma, his allies, or the enemies. If Chroma kills them he gains a small amount of armor or some damage reduction for each one killed, if an enemy kills them then he receives a small damage boost for each one killed, and if an ally kills them it either increases your damage and their damage by half the amount that it would have if you did or it does the same but with damage reduction/armor. 



Third Ability: Now we get to elemental ward and sorry to say but it's gonna stay mostly the same, just bump up the numbers; the Health/Shield numbers become the same and go to 500% at base or their calculations apply differently, the armor value goes up to 300% or applies differently, the fire rate/holster speed goes to 200% base each or applies differently (for each of the applies it would become multiplicative instead of additive). The reasoning for this change is that it's his subsumable ability and tbh I'd argue for it gaining a reduced effectiveness when transferred over to other frames (300% shields/health, 200% armor, and 150% fire rate and holster speed) to avoid it being to strong.


Fourth Ability: I say screw the Effigy and screw his false attempt at flight with his passive and make the boy fly. it would be a drain ability and he would sprout his spectral wings and fly a limited distance above the ground. in this form he would be immune to knock downs and status effects. He also fears 10-20 enemies in a 30m radius every 10 seconds. feared enemies curl  up rather than run away and when they die they give Chroma 25 energy and provide 5% towards his passive (not an energy orb so it doesn't proc Energize). Also while in this form his Exalted breath deals 2-5x damage. The Downside of this ability would be that bullet jump and aim glide are disables and you move slower (think Titania flight with a hobbled dragon key somewhere in-between her sprinting and normal flying). This may not sound like a lot but with the perviously mentioned things the removal of status effects makes him essentially have DR rather than armor and the knockdown is great in higher level content. The fear also keeps enemies from shooting you and allows for him to stack up his new passive in a more active sense.


Augments: Ok so needless to say with these changes his augments will need changed.

First Augment: It stays the same for the most part, now working off of moding from the breath weapon or it could change the weapon to fire a big ball of energy rather than a flamethrower esque effect.
Second Ability: tbh I'm unsure on how I would augment any of the 2nd abilities but it would have to happen since Vex armor has an augment. Maybe you guys have suggestions.
Third Ability: It was not changed enough to warrant a redefined augment
Fourth Ability: ok have a general Idea of how it would work and this would keep the pelt design of Chroma. His pelt would hover over your shoulder as a sentinel would (surrounding your sentinel if you have one) and it would shoot your First Ability off every 60 second for 10 seconds at enemies (the interval is unaffected by mods although the length in time it fires is affected by mods). The model for the effigy would be reduced to be like 2x the size of a sentinel rather than how big it normally is. With this augment as well you will no longer be flying and your exaulted breath weapon will not gain a damage buff from the ability but the rest of the abilities effects, your passive, and other abilities still apply. Since it is essentially a new ability I'd like to know what you all would do as far as passives for this ability.

Overview: Ok so This rework Idea changes his passive, buffs his breath weapon and elemental ward, then gives him a new 2nd and 4th ability (swapping the 2nd and 3rd abilities). This all serves to try and reinforce the vision of a Dragon that I have in my head, with that said this is subjective and is only and Idea for a rework. I would love to see this in the game, obviously since I did come up with it this would be the changes I would make, but I'd honestly just love to see any change to Chroma less to make him better but more to make him fun because currently he's supposed to be the dragon of warframe and I'm not sure what he is. If by some microscopic chance my little idea caught the eye of anyone at DE and they like what they saw I honestly don't care if you take inspiration or just straight up take the whole concept without as much as a credit in the patch notes. The only thing would be if I used someone else's work without knowing. You don't know how long I have been sitting here trying to make that bit not sound like I'm advertising to DE because it isn't the point I see thousands of Community rework Ideas and they seem so cool and interesting but every time I know deep down that just means it won't come true, that isn't to say that any of the reworks aren't good, look at Wukong as an example of something done thematically and amazingly. Well I'm done with this pretty long post and would love to know what everyone else thinks and see if I maybe missed some epic ideas on Chroma.

[Sc1nderS]

On 2022-01-11 at 12:06 AM, John411 said:

Chroma would summon like 5-10 little minions that draw aggro away from him and his allies.

I like everything except for this bit. I've never really heard of this aspect of dragons, but either way it feels out of place.

All in all though, I don't think DE is likely to put this much effort into redesigning him. The most I would hope for is for scream to be made an exaulted weapon that could be used by effigy plus a redo of some of the buffs of elemental ward.

[(XBOX)GodMasterTP]

I like Vex Armor being a passive buff.

[John411]

On 2022-01-14 at 10:50 PM, Sc1nderS said:

I like everything except for this bit. I've never really heard of this aspect of dragons, but either way it feels out of place.

All in all though, I don't think DE is likely to put this much effort into redesigning him. The most I would hope for is for scream to be made an exaulted weapon that could be used by effigy plus a redo of some of the buffs of elemental ward.

The Idea was how dragons have minions that would collect gold for the dragons, usually kobolds. This might just be a Dungeons and dragons thing though. 

[(PSN)Sarkhon]

In my honest opinion one of his largest issues is that, unlike Rhino, additional armor buffs from the likes of Umbral Steel Fiber and so on do not affect his armor buff abilities. A lot of his issues (minus 2 craptastic abilities) would be resolved if we could have that additional armor account for his buffs. 

Another thing I can also say, combine his 1 and 4 and give us the ability to move the effigy similar to how Sevagoth’s ability works. If you want a meter I can take your avarice idea and X amount of credits is taken to max the meter for each credit pickup. This balances out, he takes a percent of the credits for fuel and you get a little less. I’d prefer his one be replaced entirely. I do like the idea of Vex moving to Passive but this can also work with Ward (I feel it would work better) as it’s flat bonuses. Less hassle on DE’s part and still viable. This leaves the 1st and 2nd ability available for ideas.  I’m a Chroma main and having to use Gloom just to survive is well… hurtful 😂

[(XBOX)GodMasterTP]

23 hours ago, (PSN)Sarkhon said:

In my honest opinion one of his largest issues is that, unlike Rhino, additional armor buffs from the likes of Umbral Steel Fiber and so on do not affect his armor buff abilities. A lot of his issues (minus 2 craptastic abilities) would be resolved if we could have that additional armor account for his buffs. 

Tl;dr = Vex armor is additive, therefore Chroma doesn't scale really well, unlike Rhino (which is a better Chroma btw)

[(PSN)Sarkhon]

18 hours ago, (XBOX)GodMasterTP said:

Tl;dr = Vex armor is additive, therefore Chroma doesn't scale really well, unlike Rhino (which is a better Chroma btw)

Multiplicative > Additive (Additive is barely noticeable/not game changing)

That’s been on my mind since his nerf and then “buff” from ages ago. It’d be nice if, during the time between updates, they had a separate team working on old Warframes to liven them up and bring them back into relevance. Frost, Chroma, and so many others (definitely Yareli but not an older frame) need a lot of work.

[(XBOX)GodMasterTP]

11 hours ago, (PSN)Sarkhon said:

Multiplicative > Additive (Additive is barely noticeable/not game changing)

That’s been on my mind since his nerf and then “buff” from ages ago. It’d be nice if, during the time between updates, they had a separate team working on old Warframes to liven them up and bring them back into relevance. Frost, Chroma, and so many others (definitely Yareli but not an older frame) need a lot of work.

No matter how much I explain, people will always think he is fine because HUD shows big numbers anyways.

This is just the tip of the iceberg tho, considering half his kit is useless.

[(PSN)Sarkhon]

On 2022-01-31 at 12:40 AM, (XBOX)GodMasterTP said:

No matter how much I explain, people will always think he is fine because HUD shows big numbers anyways.

This is just the tip of the iceberg tho, considering half his kit is useless.

Exactly my issue. As I've said before, if additional armor bonuses were included in the buffs like Rhino then he'd absolutely scale better. Maybe not so much as others but definitely a lot closer to his original self before Eidolons. Another note of topic is Valkyr as well. Her scaling is abysmal lol