Nidus revitalisation for Modern Warframe

[SylvaPsycho]

I recently decided to give Nidus a try again, because it has been a long time since I last played him, and now I remember why:

Nidus is INCREDIBLY dated.

Now, I understand Nidus has the potential for immortality due to his Undying passive, but it is incredibly difficult to maintain due to the need for Mutation stacks.

For anyone who hasn't used Nidus before, if Nidus has 15 or more Mutation stacks and takes lethal damage, he instead consumes 15 stacks to gain 5 seconds of invulnerability and heal himself to 50% health. The problem with that, is that the primary method of gaining Mutations is via Virulence, which gives 0.2 stacks per enemy hit. His Larva also grants a 50% chance for any enemy killed while held to grant 0.2 stacks, and the Maggots spawned by Ravenous generate 0.2 upon exploding. This means that you need 75 procs of any of these conditions to reach an Undying state.

My issue with this is not the Mutation stacks themselves, but how easily Nidus dies while trying to build those stacks (and the fact that if you die ALL stacks are lost without benefit).

Upon inspection, it turns out Nidus only has a mere 455 base health (550 for the Prime). This means Nidus has less health than Dagath (566) and Grendel (1,095) while also having no shields, meaning he is easily susceptible to being one-shot at high levels due to the lack of Shield-Gating.

Now, part of Nidus' kit is that he innately regenerates health, at 15hp/sec, however this is simply not enough to compensate especially when he has no shield gate. For comparison, I offer Atlas Prime:

Atlas Prime has identical Health stats to Nidus Prime, at 550 base, while also having 455 shields, higher armour at 500 (vs Nidus Prime's 425) and even a higher energy pool (215 vs Nidus' 140). Atlas ALSO has the ability to regenerate his own health, albeit more actively, as any enemies petrified by Atlas' abilities drop rubble on death which heals 50 hp (75 if killed by landslide).

Nidus also suffers from the fact that his abilities are catered to a very stationary playstyle. Parasitic Link can help with his surviviability issues but in a highly mobile game such as Warframe, having a stationary enemy as a damage redirection tool is not sufficient, as simply moving out of range breaks the link and leaves Nidus as vulnerable as ever which shoehorns him into only being survivable on stationary missions such as Defense, Interception, or room-camping in Survival at anything beyond basic Star-chart level missions.

All this is to say, Nidus needs more survivability and mobility with his abilities. Virulence and Larva can retain their functionality as it is now, but his base stats, Parasitic Link, and Ravenous need some changes in my opinion.

Now I'm not a game designer, so I have no idea how viable my suggestions will be, but here they are anyway:

Base Stats: Increase Nidus' base Health to somewhere inbetween Kullervo and Inaros. Due to Kullervo's ability to generate Overguard, he is significantly more tanky than at first glance, therefore Nidus should be somewhere between the two. My personal recommendation would be 1,200 (1,000 for base Nidus) however I have no way of testing this so my selection is mostly arbitary. Also I would suggest increasing his Health regeneration passive from a fixed 15hp/s, to a percentage of max health. If the above changes are made, a max rank full Umbral set would give Nidus 3,360 health, meaning a simple 2% regen would increase his regen to 67.2hp/s (20hp/sec for a base Nidus with no Health investment). Therefore I would suggest a 2% regen. By the time players have access to Nidus (Eris), groups of enemies are capable of outputting more damage per second than that regen would allow, meaning it would increase his surviviability at higher levels, while not allowing him to simply ignore damage at lower levels. (For context on the range, a max rank Nidus Prime with a full Umbral Set would be regenerating 396.48 Effective Health per second when factoring in Armour damage reduction. A Max rank base Nidus with no health or armour mods would be regenerating 50 EHP per second). Nidus no longer loses all stacks on death, instead implementing a capped percantage decay system, meaning he loses 25% of his current stacks on death, down to a minimum of 5 stacks. This still means death is a hinderance to his Stacks, without completely invalidating any progress he had made (For example, a Nidus has built 14 stacks and is therefore 1 away from triggering his Undying passive, but gets downed with no allies to revive him. He would then lose 25% of that 14 (3.5) rounded (4) leaving him with 10 stacks, hindering him but allowing him to more easily recover and activate Undying should he need it)

Parasitic Link: Instead of casting on an enemy directly, it is now a "self-cast" buff, that causes Nidus to automatically Link to the first enemy in range (akin to Trinity's Link ability) with it's current functionality of damage redirection. Normal enemies will be stunned as they are now, and Crowd Control immune enemies such as enemies with Overguard will not be stunned, but still receive the damage redirection (until their Overguard is broken, when they will be stunned as normal). At the same time, it also links to all nearby allies (Think Hildryn's Haven) granting it's ability strength benefits for them as long as they remain within range. The ability strength and damage bonus granted this way would be reduced compared to it's current value, thanks to it's new widespread effect, in order to maintain a balance (for example, 15% base instead of 25%, modifiable by strength). If no allies are within range, both allies and Nidus himself do not receive the strength/damage buff. Parasitic Link now also has a Tap/Hold functionality whilst active. While the ability is active, Nidus can Tap PL to target a specific enemy for the link without breaking it, to allow strategic play with Damage Redirection and Stun, and Holding the ability deactivates it.

Ravenous: Nidus now also spawns the maggots from himself, spread equally between the Infested patch and Nidus (max maggots active at base decreased from 9 to 8 for a cleaner split. Read on for more info on why it is reduced), similar to the Strain Set for Helminth Chargers, allowing them to more closely follow Nidus in mobile missions. Ravenous also now scales to 2% of max health (effectively doubling Nidus' innate regeneration) and grants all allies within affinity range of Nidus, including Nidus himself, 50% of the health regen of the Infested patch at all times. Standing on the patch itself increases the regen rate to 100% for allies, and enemies stood directly on the patch take Toxin damage over time, scaling with Mutation stacks at the time of casting (including the stacks spent on the ability itself) similar to the Maggot's damage. Base Toxin damage of the patch is 25 × (1 + Mutation stacks) with a 15% status chance. (Similar to Oberon's Hallowed Ground, albeit with slightly reduced base damage, since Ravenous will only be castable with 3 stacks, meaning the minimum damage is 100). Ravenous can now be recast up to a maximum of 3 zones, although strength of each patch is determined by the Mutation stacks on cast, meaning subsequent casts will be weaker each time, incentivising build stacks between casts. Health regen both on and off the patches does not stack, however Maggot spawn cap increases by 4 for each new zone after the first, allowing it to spawn it's own maggots (hence the decrease to the base spawn cap mentioned at the start) meaning a maximum of 16 maggots can be active at once. 4 from Nidus, and 4 from each active Ravenous patch. Any enemy killed with an active Maggot attached to them has a 50% chance to generate a mutation stack similar to Larva, potentially stacking with multiple maggots on a single target, regardless of damage source (Alongside the current stack generation on Maggot explosion, helping to mitigate the loss of potential stacks by teammates killing an enemy before Maggot's explode if no other living enemies are nearby to be hit by the Maggot explosion)

Edited February 8 by SylvaPsycho
Addition of missed information

[Jadous]

Cool idea. 

I personally think the problem with nidus is that gaining mutation stacks makes you deal more ability damage. 

 

In my opinion we should be able to choose what mutation stacks do for us similar to how chromas elemental ward works (energy color) 

 

For example gaining more survivability per stack, more utility, more mobility, and more damage (the current default) 

 

Because right now I don't care about his ability damage. I only care about weapon damage. So it would be nice if gaining mutation stacks increased his tank stats (or something else) instead of ability damage

[Sloth45]

I tried putting a full armor strip on my Nidus to see how much damage he did in steel path to unarmored, high level grineer, with the augment that lets him get 300 mutation stacks instead of 100. Answer: Too little. What's the point of taking that much time and effort to snowball to max when you still need 3-4 casts to kill anything?

 

Nidus is very good at Not Dying, but a whole lot of frames are great at Not Dying. It's not really enough these days to define why you should take one frame over another.

Edited February 11 by Sloth45

[Redrigoth]

You should have 100 stacks by the time you get to the point of getting one shot so you don't have to worry about building stacks being getting killed. Also you probably want to use the terrain as a choke point to group enemies and use larva and link to easily get stacks without getting hit assuming an eximus isn't in the group. The linked enemy also casts nidus 1 at the reticle direction. So if larva has 7 enemies in it and you link one and spam 1 then you will get 14 stacks per cast.

Also with a full umbral set, Nidus has like 1400 armor which gives 83% damage reduction. His parasitic link gives 90% damage reduction, adaptation can stack up to 90% damage reduction. So in total he has 98% damage reduction up front if you link an enemy and then adaptation builds up further damage reduction till 99.8%.  You can also use Arcane grace for passive healing. You will have about 1400 hp with the full umbral set, also nidus has good cc with his larva and maggots so with all this you really shouldn't be dying. And on the off chance you do, you have your stacks to revive you which are easy to build up when maggots, larva, and linked virulence are up and running in proper positioning with enemy density, plus you have 5 seconds of invincibility to regain the lost 15 stacks if you have a good setup going. You also have Unairu's Last gasp after all your stacks run out, but at that point what are you even doing? Nidus should be fine if you play properly. Inaros only has armor at 80% reduction and then has to eat hits to stack adaptation which he can't afford to do at very high levels since he gets one shot if adaptation goes down.

I wouldn't mind a health gating mechanic that applies to all frames and makes it so you can't lose more than 1500hp in 1 second. That would let a few frames gate 1 hit with health tanking, and inaros can gate multiple times depending on how much hp you have on him and you have to constantly be life stealing to stay alive, also gives adaptation an opportunity to stack up.