New Frame Idea: Bettor, the Lord of Luck

[ReverseKinetix]

Let me preface this with saying that this was originally a Loki rework based on some depictions I had seen of the character in the media. I feel as though that thematically my rework doesn't fit with Loki as a character, and some of the comments agreed. So I decided to change some things and repost it as a new frame. This is also why each ability has listed augments since Loki has augments for each of his abilities.

The theme for Bettor is Luck.

 

Passive: Poker Face - Bettor has four lies that he tells when in certain circumstances. When facing misfortune, when he gets lucky, when under pressure, and when he's on a roll. Each lie has its own affect.

Lie One: Pact - Any damage Bettor receives has a 10% chance to be negated and reflected for 3 seconds to any enemy who attacks Blackjack during this time. Reflected damage staggers the target. (only works against fodder enemies - i.e. not archons/angels/liches/sisters/eximus/eidolons/orb mothers)

Lie Two: Bullseye - On hit, 10% chance to reduce 50% of incoming damage for 3 seconds (50% damage reduction when active)

Lie Three: Deal - 10% chance for all enemy damage to be converted into health and shields for 3 seconds

Lie Four: Hot Streak - On hit, 10% chance to for Bettor to do double damage for 3 seconds

All Lies have unique icons/symbols above his ability bar (Titania and Chroma style). These symbols are dull when inactive, but light up when the respective lie is activated. 

Every time a "Lie" activates, Bettor goes invisible until his next action (i.e. attacking or using abilities)

- Each 10% chance has its own separate roll meaning for every instance of damage, four rolls at 1/10 odds happen for every perk of the passive. This means it is possible to have all 4 activate at once (1/10^4 = 1/10000 odds or 0.0001% of this happening) or none activate (roughly a 65% chance). Yes, the passive is strong, but it has too much rng involved in it to be anything more than a nice bonus. My intentions here are to make it fit thematically while still being useful.

 

First Ability: Aces - Headshots done while this ability is active while guarantee one of four outcomes depending on the weapon used. Base 25 second duration, scales with duration mods. It is recastable. Each ability proc will have their respective buff symbol show (hearts, diamonds, spades, clubs) next to the health bar where other buffs are shown.

Rifles, the ace of hearts, ramp-up damage on continual headshots up to 100% more damage (final damage multiplier, modified with power strength), not landing a headshot within 5 seconds (modifiable with power duration) will reset the bonus damage to 10%.

- Now that AoE can't headshot, this will give single-target rifles an edge when used by Bettor who will be able to increase the damage to similar, possibly even higher levels than eclipse/roar/xata's while needing more work and upkeep as a trade-off. 

Snipers, the ace of diamonds, every headshot increases the damage done by 25% up to a max of 150% damage (final damage multiplier, modified with power strength). This decays by the same amount for every missed shot but stays active even if the ability expires (shooting when the ability is inactive will cause the buff to be lost. This is only here to prevent losing the buff during down time when you might not need it since snipers are so niche). 

- Snipers are criminally underutilized at the moment. This is simply because snipers, while doing a lot of damage, can only target one enemy at a time. The thinking here is to make a snipers a pocket "screw that enemy specifically" weapon that can be used to delete demolysts, eximus, or whatever else without feeling penalized for taking such a weapon into general play.

Shotguns, the ace of spades, every headshot (only one pellet/damage done to the head needed to proc) will increase both fire rate and reload speed for shotguns up to double (modifiable by strength) the final, modded fire rate and reload speed.

- Shotguns do enough damage already, so more would just be overkill. What a lot of shotguns struggle with is mod capacity because of the general need to slot reload and fire rate into most builds. This ability gives you the option to forgo those mods should you so choose, or to take fire rate and reload speed to another level by stacking the ability buff with those mods.

Secondaries, the ace of clubs, headshots with secondaries will increase flat/additive critical chance and status chance by 5% up to a max of 50% (modifiable by strength). The bonus is not affected by equipped mods.

- A simple buff here. It gives the option for DPS secondary builds or to take different primers if you wish. In general pistols are hard to make work for DPS without armor stripping since the most reliable form of scaling comes from Hemorrhage or innate slash weighting with high status. By giving a built-in critical and status buff, you now have the option to drop those related mods for things to fix slash weighting or add utility mods or more elements.

Augment One: Lucky Ace - When casting the ability, Bettor has a 100% chance to instantly max any of the four buffs. A buff maxed this way cannot be lost until recasting upon which the buffs are chosen again.

- The augment speaks for itself in efficacy. Only downside is that the chosen buff would be random and not always the one you need/want. Still, not needing to get the headshots for upkeep will be attractive enough for people to use this augment without being mandatory.

Augment Two: Snake Eyes - Bettor gains 100% multishot (modifiable by power strength) with any active Aces buff.

- More damage, who can complain about that?

 

Second Ability: Devil's Luck - When this ability is active, enemies become confused and fail to accurately target Bettor. All damage inflicted to Bettor is halved (50% damage reduction, modifiable with power strength up to a max of 90%) This is a drain ability, but only consumes energy when damage is inflicted to Bettor since he will also be invisible periodically thanks to his passive making him unlikely to be targeted. This is his new helminth, capped at 75% damage reduction when subsumed.

- So why damage reduction? Well, Bettor relies on being hit to proc his passive, so it makes sense to give him a way to survive those hits outside of just shield gating. I understand that damage reduction falls off in endurance, but hold your horses and pitchforks until you see his ultimate ability please. As to why this is the subsume? Well, we have a shockingly low number of good defensive options for helminth. Defy, Elemental Ward, and Null Star are all meh for survivability since it only works for health, and Eclipse is too inconsistent. To me it makes sense to give a capped 75% damage reduction to frames who want it since, once again, damage reduction falls off at later levels anyway.

Augment: Lucky Dog - When Trickster is active, you are immune to status effects. Exilus mod slot.

- A nice bonus to go along with the damage reduction. Also works as a replacement for Primed Sure Footed since it will prevent knockdowns and staggers while also being an exilus mod.

 

Third Ability: High Roller - Enemies periodically stagger and trip when within 20m (modified with range) of Bettor. 

- This is passive CC which will help him stay alive without relying on invisibility, evasion, shield gating, and damage reduction.

Augment: Play-In - Enemies that are killed when tripped or staggered have a 25% chance to drop double loot.

- It makes sense to give a luck-based frame some sort of looting ability. However making it always activate under certain conditions would be against this luck theme. At the same time, making it too hard/not worth using will make it seem like a worthless augment. So the compromise is RNG. You can always "roll" for a chance to get the double loot by only killing tripped enemies, but you won't always get the double loot. Still it would be worth using this augment, especially with a smeeta for occasional crazy loot drops. Obviously this augment needs to be balanced like other looting abilities to not gives extra voidplumes, steel essence, etc which should be done just by making them trip immune, but that could hurt his survivability against accolytes.

 

Fourth Ability: Jackpot - All "Lies" from Bettor's passive have their proc chances increased to 25%, modifiable by power strength. Every lie told while this ability is active grants Bettor 20% evasion stacking to a max of 80%. Lies have their base duration increased from 3 seconds to 10 seconds and are also affected by power duration. Also, Bettor gains unbreakable invisibility for 5 seconds (modifiable by duration) whenever a lie is told. Base 30 second duration.

- How is this ability supposed to work? Essentially, even though the lies have their proc chances increased and duration increased, it should still not be something you can consistently have up which is why every lie grants evasion and invisibility. Originally I kept the duration of each lie at 3 seconds like it is with his passive, but realized that it would be too hard to proc them since you'd be invisible longer than you'd have a lie active. So I simply made the lie duration double that of the invisibility duration to give Bettor the possibility of adding to his lies while one is active. The general idea here is to give Bettor better chances to generate the lie buffs while also not making them have constant uptime. This is done by reducing the likelihood of Bettor actually being hit during this time through invisibility, evasion, and crowd control while also making each hit worth more in terms of proccing a lie. It is important to note that you only gain the anti-hit functionality of his fourth ability (evasion and invisibility) after getting one of the four lie buffs. This is important because it negates the possibility of becoming harder to hit without generating a buff alongside it.

Augment: All In - Every lie increases the duration of Jackpot by 7 seconds (affected by duration).

 

Overall, my intention is to make a frame that is very hard to kill, can dish out damage through skillful play, and most importantly: fun to play. I don't think this would make him too strong since Aces needs headshots and only works with single-target weapons due to the need to proc headshots. Devil's Luck is good survivability for general play, but will likely be subsumed off because of his 4 granting invisibility and evasion with added CC from High Roller. And Jackpot would be fun and engaging since you will always be on your toes about what lie is active to maximize gameplay efficiency.

Anyway, please give me your thoughts on this idea.

If anyone from DE happens to see this, feel free to use any of the ideas presented here in future reworks and/or new frames!