How to use Lavos on a Controller?

[(PSN)haphazardlynamed]

Lavos requires Hold-casting to Prime Elements for the next ability cast.

Problem is, on a Controller, I don't have separate buttons for each ability.

which means, in order to do a Hold, I have to first hold down the 'ability select' button to bring up a mini-menu, then simultaneously hold a second button to pick the ability to prime.

This is far too cumbersome to quickly Combo Prime elements.

 

Any solutions?

I have heard some people stop using the 'ability select' menu, and instead map each of the 4 abilities to separate D-Pad buttons

However If I do that, I won't have any buttons left for things like Open Map, Mark Waypoint, ETC.

What do people using that method do for their Utility Functions now that there's no buttons left???

[chaotea]

On PC you can scroll highlight of 'next' and 'previous' abilities. Could you remap 2 DPad to that?

[(PSN)haphazardlynamed]

37 minutes ago, Rebuilding... said:

Should you rebind abilities to D-Pad, you might be able to move some of the functionality over to the touchpad either via Warframe controller settings or system assignments (e.g. press touchpad left to open the map).

 

That's the thing

the touchpad won't let me remap any functionality to it

it won't let me assign stuff like Map and Waypoint, etc to the touchpad.

[(PSN)Agent_CHAR]

On 2023-07-03 at 10:42 PM, (PSN)haphazardlynamed said:

which means, in order to do a Hold, I have to first hold down the 'ability select' button to bring up a mini-menu, then simultaneously hold a second button to pick the ability to prime.

I find that a controller with back buttons helps tremendously with this.  You don't get more buttons with the backs but you can copy one of the others there.  So my ability menu is on the D-pad but the controller software also copies that to the back button.  Sucks buying a new controller but I burn threw them often enough because of stick drift that I was going to buy another one regardless.

 

On 2023-07-04 at 1:29 AM, chaotea said:

On PC you can scroll highlight of 'next' and 'previous' abilities. Could you remap 2 DPad to that?

There simply are not enough buttons on a controller to do all of the things that you'd want to do if you weren't limited.  The game has evolved to need more and more buttons.  I used to map next and previous like you suggest many years ago.  The first add that conflicted with that was alt-fire/heavy attacks.  The second was operator transference. 

Tap/hold abilities was another innovation that is good for the game but bad for controllers.

[(PSN)haphazardlynamed]

1 hour ago, (PSN)Agent_CHAR said:

I find that a controller with back buttons helps tremendously with this.  You don't get more buttons with the backs but you can copy one of the others there.  So my ability menu is on the D-pad but the controller software also copies that to the back button.  Sucks buying a new controller but I burn threw them often enough because of stick drift that I was going to buy another one regardless.

I already have those.

I use them for Jump and Alt-fire. so I can perform those actions while aiming/moving on the thumbsticks. (critical for effective parkour and weapon usage)

The problem is that Ability is on a Menu in the first place. It's just too Slow, and input registration too Unstable (especially when the game starts to chug as lately DE is overreaching the capabilities of consoles) that I can't enjoy playing a frame like Lavos designed around rapid ability selections.

I'd love to just ditch the Menu and remap the 4 abilities to 4 distinct buttons, but button real estate becomes a bottleneck then. and the touchpad cannot be reassigned to cover the losses (because arbitrary DE logic)-if only they'd fix that....

 

Firmly believe that if statistics are observed, Lavos has significantly less usage on Consoles than PC....

 

[(PSN)Unstar]

I play Lavos on a PS4/PS5 controller and in my personal experience he feels good to play.  In my opinion, the most helpful thing to change is to go into the menu and swap Lavos' Tap/Hold settings; this will make it so that casting his actual powers requires holding the button, but simply adding the element is just a tap.  So you can get into a pretty good rhythm of tapping to "add ingredients" to the cast, and then hold when you're ready to unleash it.  I'm sure it's subjective, but it works well for me.

While it's probably not for everyone, it might be worth mentioning that I use "Cycle Power" controls, meaning I don't use the Power Menu and instead have bindings for "Cycle Power Left", "Cycle Power Right", and "Activate Selected Power".  This is the way I've been playing Warframe since I started, and for me it has always made casting powers "feel" better, even before I developed arthritis.  It might be something worth trying if you're looking for new solutions.

Edited July 5, 2023 by (PSN)Unstar
mistyped Tap/Hold

[(PSN)Agent_CHAR]

8 minutes ago, (PSN)haphazardlynamed said:

Firmly believe that if statistics are observed, Lavos has significantly less usage on Consoles than PC....

I think that's a fair statement that can be applied to any frame with a tap/hold.  Wisp is a clunky POS with a controller only made tolerable by the fused motes augment bandaid for another example.  Really just any power that cycles (Ivara, Xaku, etc).

[chaotea]

16 hours ago, (PSN)Agent_CHAR said:

The second was operator transference. 

Isnt this just 'ability 5'? I use the mouse wheel to select abilities, and just cycle to operator. That shouldnt be an issue.

Other than convenience hotkeys (like mapping gear slots) Id say I use 21 keyboard keys. 4 of thes are for movements, which controller has mapped to stick movement, so ill remove them and sticks from the equasion.

so 17 keys. Controller has 16, not including track pad (though on PS one of those is home key i think. I base my controller knowledge off xbox controllers). Commands you should need are:

Menu

Quick melee

Reload

Swap weapon

Sprint

crouch

jump

Interact

toggle fire mode / secondary / heavy

primary fire

aim

use power

select next power

select previous power

Text chat

Map

Radial menu (gear and emots via swap power buttons)

While this might put you at a 1 key defisit, there is an option in the settings that lets the context action button also reload if no action is available. Not ideal, but you could map everything listed if you used that.

Otherwise you could get rid of quick melee, and use the hold swap weapon to switch. Not the best choice but its a viable option. Otherwise you could drop the text chat.

 

15 hours ago, (PSN)Unstar said:

While it's probably not for everyone, it might be worth mentioning that I use "Cycle Power" controls

Im on PC and i use that. Its a good system.

[(PSN)Agent_CHAR]

6 hours ago, chaotea said:

Isnt this just 'ability 5'? I use the mouse wheel to select abilities, and just cycle to operator. That shouldnt be an issue.

Yes, it's a 5th ability which is an addition from the original four that work with swiping on the touch pad (up, down, left, right).  As such it needs a button mapping that the original game did not.

In your list of bindings you missed the gear wheel (but we don't need chat so that's a wash), mark / way point, and the ability menu is simply better for transference and hold abilities than cycle left/right + activate power.  The menu accomplishes the same thing with one button that you need three buttons for. 

And cycling with button pushes is extremely tedious... I'm sure a scroll button works better.  It's OK on frames where you primarily cast one power and only occasionally swap to other powers.  Like I'd have no problem with using that setup on Inaros: cast gloom at mission start, swap to scarab armor for the remainder of the mission.  Octavia on the other end would be nightmare.  I constantly cast every ability she has. 

In the end button and key bindings are all very personal.  What works for me might not work for you and vice versa.  The only constant is the upper bound limitation of how many bindings you can make and that is lacking on a controller compared to a keyboard.

[chaotea]

15 hours ago, (PSN)Agent_CHAR said:

In your list of bindings you missed the gear wheel

22 hours ago, chaotea said:

Radial menu (gear and emots via swap power buttons)

If you use the 'next power' or 'previous power' buttons with the emote or gear wheel, it switches to the other, so you only need 1 binding for this.

15 hours ago, (PSN)Agent_CHAR said:

Yes, it's a 5th ability which is an addition from the original four that work with swiping on the touch pad (up, down, left, right).  As such it needs a button mapping that the original game did not.

I was refering to it in terms of using the scrolling power selection method, whick only needs 2 buttons, 1 if your content to cycle the long way. Done like this it picks up oporator mode as well.

15 hours ago, (PSN)Agent_CHAR said:

mark / way point

Yep, fair i did forget that one.

15 hours ago, (PSN)Agent_CHAR said:

the ability menu is simply better for transference and hold abilities than cycle left/right + activate power

Ive not used the ability menu, as its not a feature on PC, but considering I have abilities mapped to keys 1-5, so i can one click any ability, I still say that the cycle and activate is a better method as its more intuitive. In you dont use it, its worth a try at least. Especially that it slims your current need for 5 powers buttons down to 3.

15 hours ago, (PSN)Agent_CHAR said:

And cycling with button pushes is extremely tedious... I'm sure a scroll button works better.  It's OK on frames where you primarily cast one power and only occasionally swap to other powers.  Like I'd have no problem with using that setup on Inaros: cast gloom at mission start, swap to scarab armor for the remainder of the mission.  Octavia on the other end would be nightmare.  I constantly cast every ability she has. 

I mean thats fair, a mouse wheel does make it easy. Though its not like Im championing this method to you for no reason. The original issue was not having enough buttons to map every power, and instead using a radial menu. So selecting powers this way my be a solution, but IDK. When I used a controller there wasnt as many things that needed mapped.

15 hours ago, (PSN)Agent_CHAR said:

In the end button and key bindings are all very personal.  What works for me might not work for you and vice versa.

Suuuure, but the OP didnt say 'tell me about your keybindings just because', they asked specifically for solutions to an issue. This is one. It may not be the best one for them, but it wasnt presented as the only one.

[(PSN)Agent_CHAR]

8 hours ago, chaotea said:

Suuuure, but the OP didnt say 'tell me about your keybindings just because', they asked specifically for solutions to an issue. This is one. It may not be the best one for them, but it wasnt presented as the only one.

The whole point of that simple concluding statement was to stop you from replying with a wall of text trying to convince me that cycle powers is good.  Obvious failure.

I've tried both methods and play with the one I like better.  You've only tried one and are happy with it.  Sounds like we are both (mostly) happy.

[chaotea]

On 2023-07-07 at 6:10 PM, (PSN)Agent_CHAR said:

The whole point of that simple concluding statement was to stop you from replying with a wall of text trying to convince me that cycle powers is good.  Obvious failure.

Well you cant post your own wall of text then not expect it back. Best way to not get a text wall is to not post one, like this time. And my replies werent much different in size to your own, it just looks like more because I split the quotations for clarity, so you know what part im specifically replying to.

On 2023-07-07 at 6:10 PM, (PSN)Agent_CHAR said:

I've tried both methods and play with the one I like better.  You've only tried one and are happy with it. 

I used to play on controller so ive tried that, And i do play games on Xbox, so its not like im ignorant of how controller keybindings work.

On 2023-07-07 at 6:10 PM, (PSN)Agent_CHAR said:

Sounds like we are both (mostly) happy.

Sure, but how happy you or I are doesnt matter, because we didnt post a topic asking for controller layout advice.

Also, to be clear, i was never trying to sell you on the idea, but was simply discussing it as a merits / cons. It doesnt matter to me at all if you do it another way that works, just trying to dicuss for those who dont have a way that works.

[(XBOX)Rez090]

On 2023-07-06 at 5:41 AM, chaotea said:

Isnt this just 'ability 5'? I use the mouse wheel to select abilities, and just cycle to operator. That shouldnt be an issue.

Other than convenience hotkeys (like mapping gear slots) Id say I use 21 keyboard keys. 4 of thes are for movements, which controller has mapped to stick movement, so ill remove them and sticks from the equasion.

so 17 keys. Controller has 16, not including track pad (though on PS one of those is home key i think. I base my controller knowledge off xbox controllers). Commands you should need are:

Menu

Quick melee

Reload

Swap weapon

Sprint

crouch

jump

Interact

toggle fire mode / secondary / heavy

primary fire

aim

use power

select next power

select previous power

Text chat

Map

Radial menu (gear and emots via swap power buttons)

While this might put you at a 1 key defisit, there is an option in the settings that lets the context action button also reload if no action is available. Not ideal, but you could map everything listed if you used that.

Otherwise you could get rid of quick melee, and use the hold swap weapon to switch. Not the best choice but its a viable option. Otherwise you could drop the text chat.

 

Im on PC and i use that. Its a good system.

Ignore me fully quoting here, just pointing out 1 thing. For chatting in-game, that actually requires the use of 2 keys, whatever the ole start button is called now to bring up what I think is the esc menu on PC, and then hitting X to type into chat.

[chaotea]

6 hours ago, (XBOX)Rez090 said:

Ignore me fully quoting here, just pointing out 1 thing.

If you highlight the text you want to quote you can just quote that part.

6 hours ago, (XBOX)Rez090 said:

For chatting in-game, that actually requires the use of 2 keys, whatever the ole start button is called now to bring up what I think is the esc menu on PC, and then hitting X to type into chat.

Shouldnt matter as I didnt count the menu button as a programable key. So should still only need to be counted as 1, though if its within the escape menu you may be able to overlap they key binding on console.