Caliban is amazing but...Razor Gyre!!!?

[Scarletboy267]

I love Caliban he is really incredible in so many ways with his sheild and armor stripping, the constant shield regen. The AI on his 3 could use some work for sure. The stomp that lifts enemies and makes them vulnerable to damage all great... However... his first ability is completely throw away. Razor Gyre is just a free slot to subsume another ability. It does hardly anything even to unarmored enemies. The energy drain is really bad and he can't regain any energy to even build up damage. Though I don't think it would be worth it to waste all the energy to get mid numbers. Since Caliban is sentient why not give him more laser blasting abilities like a laser shot that can be charged that can disrupt weapons in a certain blast radius and do damage. If not that give the glorified beyblade Caliban the ability to disarm who he hits or jam thier weapons.

Try launching a beyblade at anything it wont do much damage. I say that it should have a disabling or disarming effect because the sentients were able to disable Orokin technology which was why the Orokin developed biological weaponry. So why not give his first ability more utility. You can travel towards an enemy cool but you can't fire guns or use melee or even jump or collect item drops. So it's not really good for anything. Pablo I know you can do this all your reworks are awesome. Caliban is a great frame but good god is that first ability the worst I've ever seen it's just completely unusable.

[sunderthefirmament]

1 hour ago, Scarletboy267 said:

I love Caliban he is really incredible in so many ways with his sheild and armor stripping, the constant shield regen. The AI on his 3 could use some work for sure. The stomp that lifts enemies and makes them vulnerable to damage all great... However... his first ability is completely throw away. Razor Gyre is just a free slot to subsume another ability. It does hardly anything even to unarmored enemies. The energy drain is really bad and he can't regain any energy to even build up damage. Though I don't think it would be worth it to waste all the energy to get mid numbers. Since Caliban is sentient why not give him more laser blasting abilities like a laser shot that can be charged that can disrupt weapons in a certain blast radius and do damage. If not that give the glorified beyblade Caliban the ability to disarm who he hits or jam thier weapons.

Try launching a beyblade at anything it wont do much damage. I say that it should have a disabling or disarming effect because the sentients were able to disable Orokin technology which was why the Orokin developed biological weaponry. So why not give his first ability more utility. You can travel towards an enemy cool but you can't fire guns or use melee or even jump or collect item drops. So it's not really good for anything. Pablo I know you can do this all your reworks are awesome. Caliban is a great frame but good god is that first ability the worst I've ever seen it's just completely unusable.

Razor Gyre is truly terrible.  I'm convinced that it could restore energy instead of costing it, and it still wouldn't be worth casting.  It's just mystifying how DE thought the ability would see any play at all.  Caliban is locked behind some truly late game content, so unless you pay for him in plat, you're not very likely to get any use out of his 1st ability at all.  The healing is tempting I guess, but there are so many different and better sources of healing out there that it's basically not even worth considering.

 

I typically lump Razor Gyre in with Merulina in terms of how much it takes away from the player and how little it gives in return.

 

I'm glad you're enjoying Caliban over all though.  He does have some strengths, but Razor Gyre is far from his only issue.  His summons still bodyblock players, which belies an extreme lack of testing and QA on DE's part.  If Caliban had been released a few months after TNW instead of bundled with it, I think he might be in a better state.  As it stands, he has earned meme status for just how forgotten and neglected he is.  I think his only hope for dev attention now is when he gets his prime.

[Birdframe_Prime]

The most typical buff that people suggest is that it should deal both an effect and substantial damage when you cast it with your Lethal Progeny active.

In combo with these, casting should pause the Duration of Progeny, and it should multiply the damage based on how many you have active.

So 2x with one, 4x with two, and 8x with all three. And the Status chance of the Bleed goes up too, so you have an 80% chance of Bleed per hit too.

That, at the very least, would maintain a little of the 'balance' DE have put in for a bad 1st ability, so that you'll need casts of his 3 in order to get any real damage out of it.

Combine that with his Defense Strip on his 4, and you have some decent damage.

[Scarletboy267]

Yeah it is a shame that his first ability is in that state. A lot of frames in the past were also like this. I'm sure eventually Caliban will be fixed. I atleast hope so anyways.

I really e joy Caliban for what he has to offer I just wish I didn't have to subsume an ability on him to get rid of a useless ability.

1 other little gripe lol when changing Calibans colors the color of the lethal progeny assists are so ridiculously saturated compared to Caliban. You could put the brightest red on Calibans secondary color and he would look light pink. His assists however look like a radioactive cherry lol.

[quxier]

On 2024-03-09 at 3:24 PM, Scarletboy267 said:

Razor Gyre is just a free slot to subsume another ability. It does hardly anything even to unarmored enemies.

1,2 + 3 (before) does something (damage wise) but it's hardly worth the effort. IMHO damage is not the biggest problem but drain, not being able to cast 4th and damage reset. More here:

 

On 2024-03-09 at 3:24 PM, Scarletboy267 said:

 

Try launching a beyblade at anything it wont do much damage. I say that it should have a disabling or disarming effect because the sentients were able to disable Orokin technology which was why the Orokin developed biological weaponry.

What kind of disabling? It already can do it with 1 (attack enemy) or 2nd (lift status).

Disarming would be nice but with eximus it would be useless.

On 2024-03-09 at 5:28 PM, sunderthefirmament said:

Razor Gyre is truly terrible.  I'm convinced that it could restore energy instead of costing it, and it still wouldn't be worth casting.  It's just mystifying how DE thought the ability would see any play at all.  Caliban is locked behind some truly late game content, so unless you pay for him in plat, you're not very likely to get any use out of his 1st ability at all. 

Regnerating energy would be interesting. However Caliban isn't spammy frame so it would be pretty useless.

On 2024-03-09 at 5:28 PM, sunderthefirmament said:

 

I typically lump Razor Gyre in with Merulina in terms of how much it takes away from the player and how little it gives in return.

+1

Damage wise Merulina at least lets you use 2nd-aries.

Utility wise Razor gyre give you little bit CC (and healing, it's good that I read it now).

They are still bad, unless you like them for some reasons (subjectivity).

On 2024-03-09 at 5:57 PM, Birdframe_Prime said:

The most typical buff that people suggest is that it should deal both an effect and substantial damage when you cast it with your Lethal Progeny active.

In combo with these, casting should pause the Duration of Progeny, and it should multiply the damage based on how many you have active.

So 2x with one, 4x with two, and 8x with all three. And the Status chance of the Bleed goes up too, so you have an 80% chance of Bleed per hit too.

That, at the very least, would maintain a little of the 'balance' DE have put in for a bad 1st ability, so that you'll need casts of his 3 in order to get any real damage out of it.

Combine that with his Defense Strip on his 4, and you have some decent damage.

It would be still not very useful. You need 3x75 e + 100 + 25 energy for have (not) decent damage. And huge drain on top of that.

Just slap status + some damage on 1st. Depending on 2 more abilities is not great solution.

[Birdframe_Prime]

14 minutes ago, quxier said:

It would be still not very useful. You need 3x75 e + 100 + 25 energy for have (not) decent damage. And huge drain on top of that.

First: You are going to be spending that energy anyway to upkeep the abilities. In point of order, because the activation of his 1 would (under the proposed change) pause the Duration on his 3, you are then extending the up-time on the 3 cast for the cost of the drain on top of the added benefits for what you get as a combo, meaning you need to cast his 3 less frequently. We've seen that duration pausing works on frames, courtesy of Xaku, even if you have to burst-cast to achieve that. Adding drain for a direct damage function is kind of the logical next step.

Second: DE almost never do what you've just suggested instead. Slapping on some extra damage is incredibly rare, as a change, even if some extra Status is more common. The last time they just did a +Damage option was the change to Zephyr's Dive Bomb three or four years ago, where they not only upped the base damage from 500 to 3500, they also improved Target Fixation to make it more functional and allow Zephyr to scale that damage infinitely.

However, something DE have done, quite a few times, is make abilities have those things conditionally. So the base functions are weak. The combo functions are strong.

For example, one of the not-so-explored functions of Razor Gyre is that it charges up. With the only limit being your energy cost per second going up by 2 energy for every 100 damage charge into the ability. 

If this function is multiplied by 8x as well without affecting the cost, you're looking at a few seconds charge creating an ability that deals Bleed ticks an average of 1.6 times per second, that tick for 10k each.

On top of that you add Sentient Wrath for the base damage multiplier, and you can even have pre-cast his 4 to create an area of defense removal that enemies funnel into and then take the full damage from the base without damage reduction. The average un-armoured Steel Path Heavy Gunner (average being around level 128) would die in seconds from just the base damage hits at that point, if you add the Bleeds to that you reduce the time even further.

Look at something like Gara.

Terrible first ability, a mild damage-dealing and good damage-reducing 3, and a defensive 4 that can get torn apart easily. Combine their casts, though, and you have infinite damage. You literally have infinite damage if you maintain the cast. It's definitely slower to build up than the proposed changes to Caliban's 1 to combo it with his 3, but...

Yeah, it's the kind of thing DE likes to do. The kind of thing they've done in the past.

So...

With that in mind, the combo idea seems to have a lot more desirability and build potential.

Imagine using the new Companions to spread Viral for you, instantly increasing the damage taken by 100%, up to 350% on top of the damage multiplier from Sentient Wrath, giving you near instant death of the average Steel Path enemies, and reasonable scaling up into the multi-hundred level range.

And an energy drain of 14-20 per second is harsh, but considering that's before you add Efficiency to reduce the cost? And before you add functions that force-drop Orbs for playing with Equilibrium and all the other options on top... it's just negligible.

I don't see DE just doing a slap-damage-on-it fix.

I can see them doing a combo.

[quxier]

53 minutes ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

However, something DE have done, quite a few times, is make abilities have those things conditionally. So the base functions are weak. The combo functions are strong.

We have seen that on either scale. Some have synergies - which is fine or good. Some are depended. Like Dagath that needs 2nd for her 4th to do something else. That's horrible design.

Make each abilities do something (different) on their own and then add synergies (not dependencies). There has to be reason to cast e.g. 1 and 1+2. If only reason to cast 1 is to cast 2 then it's dependency - aka wrong.

1 hour ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

For example, one of the not-so-explored functions of Razor Gyre is that it charges up. With the only limit being your energy cost per second going up by 2 energy for every 100 damage charge into the ability. 

If this function is multiplied by 8x as well without affecting the cost, you're looking at a few seconds charge creating an ability that deals Bleed ticks an average of 1.6 times per second, that tick for 10k each.

On top of that you add Sentient Wrath for the base damage multiplier, and you can even have pre-cast his 4 to create an area of defense removal that enemies funnel into and then take the full damage from the base without damage reduction. The average un-armoured Steel Path Heavy Gunner (average being around level 128) would die in seconds from just the base damage hits at that point, if you add the Bleeds to that you reduce the time even further.

Then look at Yareli/Aquablades. 750 damage 1-3 times per second. 75 energy, slash status + you can use all your frame's gear.

1 hour ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

And an energy drain of 14-20 per second is harsh, but considering that's before you add Efficiency to reduce the cost? And before you add functions that force-drop Orbs for playing with Equilibrium and all the other options on top... it's just negligible.

You cannot pick energy so you would have to turn on/off. If they "fix" that then we can talk. Without any speed up I could just spam 4th to armor strip.

1 hour ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

Imagine using the new Companions to spread Viral for you, instantly increasing the damage taken by 100%, up to 350% on top of the damage multiplier from Sentient Wrath, giving you near instant death of the average Steel Path enemies, and reasonable scaling up into the multi-hundred level range.

Imagine Xaku, grab 16 guns, armor strip of your choice. Use any weapons. 100% damage is not great. Armor striping removes 90+% of some stronger units ehp.

Then you have eximus, infested, nullies not affected via status. With stuff like Aquablades I can at least deal some other damage. With RAzor I cannot.

Imagine Grendel. 2 abilities strips armor. Pulverize costs almost nothing. You can turn on/off quickly. You can jump.

1 hour ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

On top of that you add Sentient Wrath for the base damage multiplier,

Yes, because another dependency where you have slap lot of STrength for ability to be useful where you can use Armor strip is great. That's the tip of iceberg - there are other issues with that ability.

1 hour ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

and you can even have pre-cast his 4 to create an area of defense removal that enemies funnel into and then take the full damage from the base without damage reduction.

It's not you can but rather you should. I can cast his 2nd but with 4th I've to actively think BEFORE if I want to cast or not.

 

[Scarletboy267]

17 hours ago, quxier said:

1,2 + 3 (before) does something (damage wise) but it's hardly worth the effort. IMHO damage is not the biggest problem but drain, not being able to cast 4th and damage reset. More here:

 

What kind of disabling? It already can do it with 1 (attack enemy) or 2nd (lift status).

Disarming would be nice but with eximus it would be useless.

Regnerating energy would be interesting. However Caliban isn't spammy frame so it would be pretty useless.

+1

Damage wise Merulina at least lets you use 2nd-aries.

Utility wise Razor gyre give you little bit CC (and healing, it's good that I read it now).

They are still bad, unless you like them for some reasons (subjectivity).

It would be still not very useful. You need 3x75 e + 100 + 25 energy for have (not) decent damage. And huge drain on top of that.

Just slap status + some damage on 1st. Depending on 2 more abilities is not great solution.

When I say disable I mean guns won't work so they drop their weapons.

So its a disarm for any enemy within range of Razor Gyre. This idea is only because of the sentients abilities to disable tech in lore. Also Razor Gyre doesn't currently do much to disable.

Only the enemy hit with the dash is knocked away. The enemies in the abilities radius just get a low damage slash proc. Caliban needs more survivability.

The other sentient themed warframe Revenant uses one ability and can be hit 12 times before taking any damage and anyone who hits mesmer skin is put to sleep.

Caliban seems more of the traditional sentient warframe. There for I think he should have some kind of effect from the radius of Razor Gyre to disarm enemies.

If he was able to permanently disarm those in range that would be nice. As for eximus targets that always going to be a skill issue. Take out the eximus disable the rest from firing their weapons. All eximus when they have overguard are not affected by abilities anyway.

As an augment: Caliban can now jump during Razor Gyre. Eximus targets hit by Razor Gyres aerial dash will have 20%/30%/50%/100% overguard removed based on power strength. Air time after jump while holding aim glide is determined by aim glide mods

Revenant can remove 100% overguard with reave in one cast in 3 seconds while also mostly outright killing an enemy. Just circle around the group of eximus while casting reave. It's not asking a lot to have Razor Gyre remove overgaurd while doing it.

Razor Gyre being energy overtime is fine as long as it doesn't rack up for damage. 1 engery per second is reasonable when duration is 100% and efficiency is 175%.

Side note for his 3rd: This will also synergizes well with lethal progeny making them also spin when you do and attack the same enemy. Lethal Progeny should also have already scaled with enemy level.

Another cool idea is having dual melee equiped while doing Razor Gyre will apply the melee damage of your melee just faster.

Edited March 11 by Scarletboy267
Cool idea