Equinox Could Use a Heavy Touchup

[(XBOX)TheWayOfWisdom]

Equinox suffers from having a mechanic that makes her work tied to an ability (hello old Limbo with Riftwalk) and her abilities having poor numbers/mechanics. The switching mechanic is neat in theory, but in practice it means you build for one form alone, instead of using her more dynamically to cycle between offense and defense. 

Keep in mind that all values suggested here are (mostly) for example. Easy to make number go up or down.

With all that said, this is what I'd like to see.

• Universal Change: Rest & Rage, Pacify & Provoke, and Mend & Maim now all use a tap/hold functionality. Tap to use the current form's version, hold to use the opposite form's version. Pacify and Provoke cannot be active at the same time. Mend & Maim cannot be active at the same time.
   

1. Passive: Increase the Health Orb to Energy conversion to 50%, and the Energy Orb to Health conversion rate to 100%. This means picking up a Health Orb restores 25 Energy, and picking up an Energy Orb restores 25 Health.

2. Metamorphosis: Make the buffs permanent while in given form. The previous form's buffs now decay over 10 sec after switching to the other form. Transforming should not decast your other abilities. Cannot stack one form's buffs.

   1. In Night Form: Increase Max Health, Shield and Armor by +300.

   2. In Day Form: Increase movement speed and damage by 25%. Damage increase should be it's own modifier (like Garuda's Passive).

3. Rest & Rage:

   1. Rest is unchanged

   2. Rage has its radius increased to 10m. Enemy speedup is now inversely affected by strength. So higher strength = less enemy speed up, low strength = higher enemy speed up.
      Example: At 200% Ability Strength, enemies will be sped up by 20%/200% = +10%. At 40% Ability Strength, enemies will be sped up by 20%/40% = +50%

4. Pacify & Provoke:

   1. Pacify now grants damage reduction to allies instead of reducing enemy damage. The abilities falloff is removed. DR starts at 45% and scales linearly with Ability Strength, up to 90% DR. Now drains 5 energy/sec.

   2. Provoke now gives +30% Ability Strength, capped at +75% Ability Strength.

5. Mend & Maim: Damage to done to Overguard is now stored.

   1. While active, Mend heals the user and allies in range by a base rate of 10 Health + 0.5% of the stored damage per second. Healing capped at +100 Health/sec. Kills still restore 25 shield. When Mend is decast, it converts 2% of the stored damage to +max health for all allies in range for 20 sec. Capped at +500 Max Health.

   2. Maim is unchanged.
       

• Augments

1. Duality now lasts 20 sec, dealing 150% of your weapon's damage.

2. Calm & Frenzy now has the Rage portion spread in 10m. Rest spread range is unchanged.

3. Peaceful Provocation: Pacify portion is unchanged. Provoke part now grants up to +10% Ability Strength and up to +75% weapon damage to allies. Bonus is still built up by damaging enemies.

4. Power Transfer: Now allows you to decast in desired form. Example: You cast Mend, then hold on decast to trigger Maim's decast effect instead.

   1. Mend additionally converts 10% of stored damage to Overguard for you and allies in range on decast. Overguard is capped at 15,000.

   2. Maim additionally converts 1% of stored damage to a % weapon damage for 25 sec on decast. Bonus capped at +400%.

[taiiat]

2 hours ago, (XBOX)TheWayOfWisdom said:

• Universal Change: Rest & Rage, Pacify & Provoke, and Mend & Maim now all use a tap/hold functionality. Tap to use the current form's version, hold to use the opposite form's version. Pacify and Provoke cannot be active at the same time. Mend & Maim cannot be active at the same time.

that would be wonderful.

2 hours ago, (XBOX)TheWayOfWisdom said:

1. Metamorphosis: Make the buffs permanent while in given form. The previous form's buffs now decay over 10 sec after switching to the other form. Transforming should not decast your other abilities. Cannot stack one form's buffs.

   1. In Night Form: Increase Max Health, Shield and Armor by +300.

   2. In Day Form: Increase movement speed and damage by 25%. Damage increase should be it's own modifier (like Garuda's Passive).

that sounds nice, and would make the buffs more relevant too, anyways. having both sides temporarily after switching, and always getting something.

also it sounds like you're thinking that rather than Abilities getting disabled, they'd get suspended, while you're in the other form? that would indeed be neat. 

 

 

i'm gonna be honest, Rage being risk/reward is interesting, it's out of the ordinary for Abilities to be interesting to use this game, but i don't think that's a reason for it to not remain being so. you could increase the buff side to compensate if one feels like it isn't worth the risk.

similarly i'm also gonna be honest, Pacify reducing Enemy Damage is interesting. as long as Enemies aren't immune to it, then it's interesting. 
however i'm cool with reducing the stepping of Pacify, so that the farther distances are more useful.

Mend increasing Max Health is neat.

[Venefik]

pretty good stuff

[CharMomone]

Good quality of life suggestions and they would help with build variety, I hope DE considers these changes.

Equinox as she is right now can be pretty frustrating and clunky.

[CrownOfShadows]

Another Equinox post.

Another great round of suggestions. Maybe one day :(

[(PSN)Frost_Nephilim]

On 2023-09-15 at 10:57 PM, (XBOX)TheWayOfWisdom said:

Pacify now grants damage reduction to allies instead of reducing enemy damage

Nah leave this how it was imo, its unique in a way that could be useful in a way. Not having to rely on allies positioning for DR rather enemy position. Like an enemy firing rockets at an ally causing them to panick, much easier keeping in range of the enemy than a bullet jumping ally

On 2023-09-16 at 1:37 AM, taiiat said:

i'm gonna be honest, Rage being risk/reward is interesting, it's out of the ordinary for Abilities to be interesting to use this game, but i don't think that's a reason for it to not remain being so. you could increase the buff side to compensate if one feels like it isn't worth the risk

Also this

 

Rest of the changes i like. Just a few gripes with keeping unique features. I love finding surprises with the way they can work especially when new content pops up so id leave them alone if they arent massively breaking anything

 

16 hours ago, CrownOfShadows said:

Another Equinox post.

Another great round of suggestions. Maybe one day :(

Hydroid and Inaros go first. Especially Inaros, ive lost all intrest in all of his abilities and that has never happened to me before with any warframe EVER over this decade. Maybe 1 like Loki's disarm ability, but thats it, its never the entire kit. 

Hes also one of the only frames where his abilities have near 0 reaction to color customization which hurts me deep in my soul. Fashion frame is end game and he lacks customizable abilities. Its blasphemy!

[(XBOX)TheWayOfWisdom]

On 2023-09-15 at 8:37 PM, taiiat said:

also it sounds like you're thinking that rather than Abilities getting disabled, they'd get suspended, while you're in the other form? that would indeed be neat. 

The idea was that you'd continue to have the ability active. Example: You're in Day Form and have Provoke active. Switching to Night Form would still keep Provoke active. In order to cast Pacify, you'd need to manually deactivate Provoke, then cast Pacify.

However, now that I think about it, a better functionality might be to just have the active Aura-type abilities (3 and 4) automatically switch to the opposite version when switching form. I subconsciously stayed away from that to not step on Power Transfer's toes, but Power Transfer really deserves to just be baked in.

On 2023-09-15 at 8:37 PM, taiiat said:

i'm gonna be honest, Rage being risk/reward is interesting, it's out of the ordinary for Abilities to be interesting to use this game, but i don't think that's a reason for it to not remain being so. you could increase the buff side to compensate if one feels like it isn't worth the risk.

To me, it's not interesting so much as feeling like I'm being punished for trying to debuff enemies. I know that there is niche application in using it as "We have Speedva at home" which I tried to preserve by changing the enemy speed buff to inversely scale with Ability Strength. If you want to speed up enemies, you probably don't care as much about the damage vulnerability, and if you care about the damage vulnerability, you probably don't care/don't want the speed up.

Simply upping the vulnerability doesn't feel like it fixes the ability.

On 2023-09-15 at 8:37 PM, taiiat said:

Pacify reducing Enemy Damage is interesting. as long as Enemies aren't immune to it, then it's interesting. 

Enemies being immune to it was a concern (Overguard is a plague). A reason for the change was that multiplying enemy damage is pretty much the same as giving allies DR, but with potential downsides. Keeping track of allies is just easier than trying to position yourself to cover each enemy. I don't feel that the difference between the two is enough of a flavor difference to justify the downsides of being an enemy debuff instead of an ally buff.

The real issue with the ability is the atrocious scaling on the current version. While technically uncapped, you need 500% strength to reach the "normal" 90% DR cap that other abilities have, which is extremely unreasonable. Keeping it as a enemy damage multiplier would be okay as long as the strength requirements were reduced dramatically.

Edited September 17, 2023 by (XBOX)TheWayOfWisdom

[taiiat]

8 hours ago, (XBOX)TheWayOfWisdom said:

The idea was that you'd continue to have the ability active. Example: You're in Day Form and have Provoke active. Switching to Night Form would still keep Provoke active. In order to cast Pacify, you'd need to manually deactivate Provoke, then cast Pacify.

However, now that I think about it, a better functionality might be to just have the active Aura-type abilities (3 and 4) automatically switch to the opposite version when switching form. I subconsciously stayed away from that to not step on Power Transfer's toes, but Power Transfer really deserves to just be baked in.

oh, hmmm.
uhhh.... baking in Power Transfer sounds like a good solution as long as nothing will be lost. i'm thinking of Peaceful Provocation mainly. Night/Day versions of the Ability are nothing alike, but not losing the Ability when switching would still be important.

8 hours ago, (XBOX)TheWayOfWisdom said:

To me, it's not interesting so much as feeling like I'm being punished for trying to debuff enemies. I know that there is niche application in using it as "We have Speedva at home" which I tried to preserve by changing the enemy speed buff to inversely scale with Ability Strength. If you want to speed up enemies, you probably don't care as much about the damage vulnerability, and if you care about the damage vulnerability, you probably don't care/don't want the speed up.

Simply upping the vulnerability doesn't feel like it fixes the ability.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

i can appreciate that when considering the Augment, that speeding up Enemies could end up being very problematic. since you're spreading it to lots of Enemies, rather than the normal functionality which would be Casting it on select Enemies which you'd really like to be dead very soon, and so you're focusing on them.
but i don't have any other comments or opinions.

 

 

8 hours ago, (XBOX)TheWayOfWisdom said:

Enemies being immune to it was a concern (Overguard is a plague). A reason for the change was that multiplying enemy damage is pretty much the same as giving allies DR, but with potential downsides. Keeping track of allies is just easier than trying to position yourself to cover each enemy. I don't feel that the difference between the two is enough of a flavor difference to justify the downsides of being an enemy debuff instead of an ally buff.

The real issue with the ability is the atrocious scaling on the current version. While technically uncapped, you need 500% strength to reach the "normal" 90% DR cap that other abilities have, which is extremely unreasonable. Keeping it as a enemy damage multiplier would be okay as long as the strength requirements were reduced dramatically.

it depends on the Gamemode i suppose. with how it works now, i think of the Ability when the Gamemode will be more defensive in nature, where you want to prevent Enemies from going or reaching somewhere. so you make yourself an obstacle between the Enemies and the thing or place you don't want them going, chokepointing them and so they enter "your territory".

both the base function and Augment follow this course, since that's Slow and DR, and both are Auras. anything in this bubble around you gets the effects. the Player picks the area where Enemies shall not pass.
it has weaknesses, but what makes it interesting vs most Abilities in my Eyes is that it makes you consider the location of the Enemies. it's not something you just turn on an forget about, you're thinking about the Enemies and either moving the Enemies or moving yourself in order to get the results that you want. compared to most Abilities that you Cast it and can just go make a Sandwich. if anything i think more Abilities should lean this way. Abilities being imperfect makes them more interesting.
_{(and yes it's kind've close to me as Peaceful Provocation creates quite the """pacifist""" theme all at once - Slow+DR, the Healing and Overshields from Mend, plus having Sleep to Cast onto specific Enemies)}

Enemies that are immune to it, the problem is that they're immune, if you ask me. if we have to remake Abilities to make them not useless because Enemies are immune to Abilities, sounds like Overguard is a pile of garbage and it's hurting the game more than it's helping. (which, yes, i would and do say that)

Edited September 18, 2023 by taiiat

[0Midas0]

Equinox definitely needs help. There's lots of ways it could be done, but overall her abilities cost too much for too little, and there's too little incentive to use her whole kit. Most disappointing warframe by far, for how much fun she could be, and how hamstrung she is by her design. 

[Venefik]

 I'd just like to comment that although I do agree with her night abilities being more interesting the way they are, in the form of debuffs or feeding off of kill count, I do believe its worth mentioning how considerably less reliable abilities like this are in Warframe.

 An example is super enemies. Things like Eidolons use metas that involve placing defence (and dmg) buffs on allies and lures specifically because then it cannot be "resisted", unlike debuff counterparts which will have no effect at the Eidolons at all and will leave allies, but more important, the lures completely helpless.

 The same thing applies to things like Overguard and Nullification. Debuff side of survivability tool always suffer a downtime when dealing with Nullies, Arbi drones and OG, while Damage Reduction and other defence buffs will not be affected unless you're hugging a nullifier, while not suffering downtimes at all when dealing with Arbies and OG as these don't affect tenno but only the enemies themselves.

 Not necessarily a deal breaker of course, just something worth mentioning and discussing. I just find it to be pretty lame to have one side of the support roster be globaly viable for being lucky enough to work with buffs, while the less fortunate can only do A, B and C (reliably) because they need to apply abilities to enemies which often times are resistant or immune, sometimes not permanently but long enough to place some hitscan into a frame.