A Limbo Main's Definitive Limbo Changes List

[BoredFinno]

*Sigh* Oh dear, another boring limbo post, how exciting. Like we don't have enough of those. I'd argue this one is a bit of contrarian post tho, since most of them are crying for a complete overhaul and rework. I don't think that's needed. Not at all. In fact, there are frames in a more dire state that need a bit more extreme changes than Limbo. I say this cause I actually play A LOT of Limbo. And he is fine, he is functional. Even very good if you are aware of the battlefield. It would be such a shame to rework such a unique kit. This is not to say that there are no problems and valid concerns with his kit, which some of the changes here try to address. I don't want to get into the argument of that he needs skill or whatever. He takes getting used to and a bit more active thinking than some other options, but he is definitely not a geniuses frame. He has a learning curve that you choose to engage with or not. If you don't feel like engaging with it, that's completely valid, there are so many other options for you. 

So, why do I think I know what I'm talking about? Well, let me tell you a bit about myself. I have over 4k on this game out of which 18.7% is Limbo and Limbo Prime combined. You could say I could be considered part of a rare disgusting Limbo main breed. I've been playing this game since Chains of Harrow update. I started with Volt and immediately swapped to Limbo once his quest was available. I basically completed every node with Limbo, finding ways to cheese every mission type with him. It was some of the most fun I had in any videogame.

This thread is more to polish some daily Limbo annoyances, both for Limbo players and squad mates and perhaps bring him a bit Up to Date.

I will divide this list into following sections: 

1. Mandatory
2. Would be nice
3. Uncooked ideas
4. Augment changes and ideas

1. Mandatory

• The Banished/Rifted and Rift visual effects need to be updated: 
  Banished effect was never noticeable enough and with the amount of enemies on SP and new ever changing lighting systems, its even harder to quickly spot. The effect should be seen over the whole enemy, not just at their feet. If they appeared smudged, glitching like old displays, cel shaded or noticeable rippling like under heat wave, it would clarify way easier and quicker that enemy is in fact in the rift. It should also work both ways: If you are in the normal plane, rifted enemies should appear the way described, and if you are in the rift, enemies in normal plane should appear this way. When it comes to the rift itself, even I as someone who plays limbo a lot can't always tell if I'm in or out. This game is fcking grindy and more enjoyable if I blast my music over it at times, listening for the sound effect is not the best way and having such different lighting in every tile set makes it hard sometimes to immediately tell if you are in the rift. I'd say go full Borderlands cel shaded style in rift. This is already a direction Rift takes and I think it should be cranked all they way there. The graphics would be so different there would be no mistake if one is in or outside of the Rift.
   
• Make enemy radar of banished/rifted enemies appear in different color, similar to revealing spores: 
  You can see a group of enemies over yonder and you cant tell how many of them are rifted from that far? Well, just look at the mini-map. There has been so many instances where I wanted this to be a thing. A good example is if surge banishes an enemy decently far and behind a wall: having this would give us an information that this enemy is slowing down the mission and that we should get it out of the rift asap, instead of guessing. It generally helps us to quickly see where we should focus our gun's attention.
   
• Changing the passive:
  Biggest gripe people have with this frame is how unfriendly he is for a squad play. This fact is what makes most of people cry out for his rework. I always considered that 2 planes itself is not the problem, but the availability to a non-limbo frame. So the change I've been thinking of for a while has been this:
  Allow players within Limbo's affinity range to dash in and out of the rift. Unlike Limbo tho, they cant stay in the rift indefinitely this way. I'd say they can do it for like 4 seconds. This gives them enough time to kill that rouge rifted enemy and move to the next wave of defense. This way they still need to rely on Limbo for longer invitations to his domain. It also gives Limbo another layer of utility, a tiny "budget" rolling guard, as dash itself doesn't clear status effects and doesn't make you invincible. If this is too broken, one can always add a cooldown between dashes, just like on rolling guard. His passive already functions in a similar way, but its way too annoying for anyone to seek out his tears in reality. I thought of removing those since this change makes them a bit redundant, but there are some things I'm playing with right now that show some good use of their existence.
  
  After some discussion with another Limbo enjoyer, i think  i came to an even better idea, that seems fun to me. It is an alternative idea to the dash solution which might make it redundant. The idea is:
  
  Surge's radial banish has a chance to leave a tear in reality similar to current ones limbo leaves when he dashes. Allies and only allies can use these to enter the rift for a limited time, either by walking into them as they currently are, or by using interaction button on them. Doing this could give allies maybe 30% of torrent's current buff if the augment is present. The chance of the tear spawning would be based on enemies around the radial banish, meaning, if there is like 2 enemies, it has a greater chance to spawn a single tear, to avoid removing accessibility of those enemies to squadmates. There should also be a reasonable amount of tears present, maybe 1 every 5m radius (1 occupies an area of 10m). They should also last for a decent amount of time, maybe even until surge's banish is retriggered and they should keep allies within for again a reasonable amount of time. This is to remove the griefing on both ends: it doesn't disable Limbo from doing his gameloop for the sake of the allies and its not disabling game loop of allies to the point they can't play the mission. There might be some work on their end, but it should be made in a way its basically painless, which the above numbers on paper sound like they achieve. They could also get their mini-map icon, to make it even less so and would probably be a preferred addition.
   
• Operator amps should hit cross-rift or banish hold function needs to function while incapacitated:
  There is currently a major issue in interaction between Last Gasp and Limbo's general plan: if you are downed (and you will be), there is no point in Last Gasp, as you can't damage anything in the rift. And if you are playing limbo properly, most of the time, everything will be in the rift. Having this node disabled for Inaros and Sevagoth is completely valid as their passives already have the same function, but having this not function on a frame with paper thin defenses is just stupid. Because of this, operator amps should be able to hit enemies cross rift, as having limbo in a squad potentially nerfs anyone's ability to self revive, which just adds to a big list of what limbo can do to troll his m8s. Alternatively, Banish hold function should be allowed during incapacitation, just like disabling cataclysm is.
   
• Surge's affecting range should have a fixed range:
  Rift surge has 2 range stats attached to itself. There is the radial banish range and a range at which enemies are affected (around Limbo) by rift surge once you press the ability. This other range needs to be made fixed or at least have a minimum cap at how much its range can be affected. I think this ability does need to have range and not only apply to any rifted enemy as that could prove problematic for enemy flow in survival. The way it currently works completely makes this ability useless on low range limbo. Thus, as i said, either make it affinity range, or add a cap to how small it can be. Perhaps making its minimum possible range affinity range is a better choice, cause the other could potentially nerf how it work with high range limbo setups. This change mostly expands build flexibility.
   
• Allow interactions with objects that are in Cataclysm:
  Objects like hacking consoles, or putting data masses into terminals. I don't know why this hasn't been a thing from the start. If you want to make players vulnerable while hacking, hate to break it to you, you already removed that possibility with existence of Void Mode. It's one more way Limbo can potentially troll his m8s.
   
• A "boss" arena:
  A lot of newer bosses, field bosses and mini-bosses (Necramechs) are completely immune to the existence of rift. This again I think is a stupid concept since this frame's whole survivability is tied to him being in a different dimension and manipulating that to further his goals. I'm not saying that bosses should be affected by stasis, that would be plain stupid as well. What I'm talking about is, let's say you want to fight archon. You can't cast cataclysm on it and be able to damage it, he is still treated like "outside" of the rift. This point kinda ties in with the one right above it. If a boss is in cataclysm, it should be treated like its in the rift. Only exception imo should be eidolons. Bosses should stay immune to banish, stasis and rift surge, I feel like this is a given. Why I'm talking about this is, that a lot of bosses usually have ads around them, and being able to make a "private" arena with you and the boss, freezing adds around it should be a valid strategy, specifically for a frame with paper thin defenses.
   
• Slinky and Illuminati:
  If there was ever an enemy I'd call a bane of limbo, I'd consider it this guy. The Hollow Vein can be banished ONLY ONCE for DRASTICALLY REDUCED banishment time. It's stupidly tanky and if all of this wasn't enough, its magnetic proc goes cross rift. I generally think this guy needs a look at in general, not just considering purely Limbo. The Severed Warden is in similar boat, but its far far far less annoying by itself: unlike slinky, it doesn't gain immunity to being banished, but still has banish duration on itself drastically reduced. If it was half, it would be problematic but manageable. I also heard someone complain that Tharx units in Duviri work similarly (I can't test personally, as I don't have them scanned) and I would really consider removing this trait. We are not talking about halved duration, we are talking like 95% of the duration removed. If not removed, make it halved pls? And don't make them immune to it afterwards.
  Edit: At some point, it seems DE changed how slinky interacts with banish, thus, now interacts with rift like most enemies do. Unfortunately, its laser and massive magnetic AoE still dont care about what plane you are on. The rouge arcocanid's magnetic pulse also works this way, which is quite annoying and makes no sense to me. I don't think these attacks should be treated like abilities, but like any other weapon attack.
   
• Casting Speed:
  Tho, this is fixable with yellow shards, base limbo animations still feel a bit too slow. Speeding them up by 20 - 30 % should be considered, as installing amber shards/casting speed mods feels like a band-aid.
   
• On Stasis:
  I'm gonna leave this as a final "mandatory" change as it can be a bit debatable, tho i am on the side of it being implemented: with every update we get more enemies that completely ignore this ability. While it completely freezing all enemies all the time is obviously broken and can make the game unengaging, there should be some effect. Make enemies immune to stasis be slowed for somewhere between 30 - 50%. You can make it a flat unchanging value or you can make it scale with strength, I don't care which route is chosen (tho it should have a fixed minimum in other case). My argument for this is that overguard is more and more prevalent in each update which impacts Stasis' usability. And I'm not talking purely on survivability part, im talking on Stasis remaining active in general. For people that don't know, stasis has a maximum amount of projectiles it can freeze before it collapses, and having 10 overguarded enemies constantly shooting breaks this thing in 3 or 4 seconds. Slowing their rate of fire this way would make this less of an issue. Biggest offender for this is duviri defense. It spawns an obscene amount of eximus units, making stasis and by proxy, limbos main tool for defense obsolete. It also impacts limbo's survivability, but argument for shield gating can be made, even tho, id argue that his whole rift mechanic should be a replacement for him in that aspect and maybe even enforced over shield gating, for the sake of diversity. We already have some abilities having nerfed cc on overguard instead of plainly ignoring it (example: Rhino's Stomp). If anything, this change should be considered for overguard purely.
  
  So, since DE decided to nerf all cc that affected overguard for some kind of lame consistency (while some more problematic ones are left unchecked for years), there is now no mechanic to justify this function. Clearly, this is now considered unintentional behavior and there is no hope left for such change. I will put some more thoughts about this towards the end of the post. 

2. Would be nice:

• Revert Stasis nerf:
  The Stasis nerf was made back in the day when overguard didn't exist, purely cause it made debatably monotone and boring event even less engaging. It's time to remove Sentient's ability to "adapt" to it as it makes no sense logically either. Considering there are already enemies that resist 95% of Banish's duration, this aspect is just a big #*!% YOU for no reason. There are so many other ways to battle Stasis now days anyway, having this is redundant.
   
• Banish Hold-function on any button:
  This one is mostly to add to build flexibility with helminth system. Holding any of his abilities would preform hold function of Banish.
   
• Incorporating Rift Torrent into Rift Surge:
  Some other mains would disagree with this, but my reasoning for this change is that most ability oriented DPS frame also have a weapon boosting ability. Even most supporting frames do as well, which Limbo is lacking. I also consider this augment mandatory on any build utilizing Rift Surge.
   
• Rift Torrent Buff snapshot:
  It would be nice if the weapon buff didn't diminish with every kill immediately, but if instead it worked a bit like cascadia flare, meaning the maximum damage of that cast would linger for some time. By no means is this change necessary, it would just give a bit of consistency.
   
• Rift Surge now jumps to the closest enemy outside the rift:
  I was wrong on this one. I assumed this was they way jumps worked, but they don't. Surge in fact jumps to a random enemy outside the rift in a certain range. No matter how I think about it, I cant find a good reason why it was made this way and it seem no one else could either. No matter how one thinks about it, it jumping to the nearest one is in every scenario more useful. And its such a little thing. It's a nice consistency change, yet not one that would drastically change him to the point he is broken.
   

3. Uncooked ideas:

• Surge banish on allies:
  This one is I think an interesting idea, but seems to be a bit of a boon and bane scenario. It goes back to considering how to fix rift's limited availability to allies. The idea is that ally could wait next to the surged enemy in the rift and wait for its radial banish to proc to enter the rift. This could tie in very nicely with larger range limbos in squads that wouldn't disrupt either player's goals. The problem here with this is that some players wouldn't want to be randomly dragged into the rift, even more often than from purely walking into Banish by accident. It could also get very visually overwhelming.
  I think this idea is now developed better under the "Changing the passive" point under mandatory changes.
   
• Adding more to Rift
  Over the years, the rifts primary function has been eroded thanks to eximus rework, prevalence of overguard and general design of enemies. A lot of things now hit cross-rift. The whole gimmick of the rift was that Limbo, a paper thin warframe is absolutely safe in his realm. The rift got nerfed, but Limbo wasn't compensated stats wise. To be fair, that would be a lazy fix if he was. I like the idea of a paper thin warframe, but within his realm, he is invincible. Now, the counter point to this is that this godhood becomes boring and stale as it removes engagement and challenge from the game. With that in mind, i am fine with things staying the way they are. But I'd like some compensation for this. I recently decided to try Rapid Resilience on my Limbo while thinking about this. And it felt really comfy. From this experience, i'd like to propose Limbo gaining more little survivability additions to his rift. Things like reduced status duration on Limbo while in rift, increased shield recharge, decreased recharge delay, something little like that, just to make it a bit more comfortable to play. The one id really like to see added is knockdown immunity in the rift. This wasn't a problem before eximus rework, but now it can get very annoying at certain missions. Installing Primed Meme Footed is an option, but having it as part of the rift would be really appealing. I'd like to be able to install other exiluses on a frame very flexible with his builds. This relatively small changes restores some of the Rift's original intent, yet it doesn't go as far as its old version of potentially making it unengaging with the game.

4. Augment changes and ideas

• Cataclysm Augment:
  The current version of this augment is absolutely and completely pointless. I have never heard anyone justifying the whole mod slot for this effect, when recasting the ability itself is so much better already. I'd rather see something along these lines:
  
  Hold Cataclysm to create a zone with half the range that doesn't shrink over time.
  
  This one would tie in nicely when creating a generalist build for Limbo. You can both have a massive area for enemies themselves or a small bubble focused on defending the objective. This one would be extremely useful in something like Circuit.
   
• On-kill radial banish trigger:
  I can see this one conditionally very useful in some helminth builds, especially ones choosing to change Banish. As much as this isn't recommended, this would still open doors for more build variety. It would also snugly tie in with if holding any ability preformed the hold function of banish. This also shouldn't work on every kill, as I'm pretty sure that is a fast way to crash your game. Wording should be something along the lines of : "killing every X-th surged enemy triggers surge's radial banish" or "killing a surged enemy has a chance to trigger its radial banish". As for which ability would this augment be? It could be a 2nd augment for Rift Surge, it could be the only augment for Rift Surge if the original is implemented into the ability, it could be a stasis augment if you word it something along the lines of "Every X-th enemy under stasis affected by rift surge preforms its radial banish" or again "has a chance to preform", whichever way its chosen to work.
   
• Stasis bank:
  This idea is courtesy of Sci-Fi_Freak_YT and Darkumineru
  The concept is similar to Tesla bank. When an enemy enters the rift, there is x% chance that they will be primed. When killing the primed enemy that is under stasis, it would explode dealing void damage in Y range equal to enemy's HP at the moment they entered rift. Explosion would go cross rift and would deal double damage to enemies inside the rift.
   
• Plane Fusion:
  Cataclysm augment. This one takes inspiration from Fred_Avant_2019's proposal to Cataclysm changes. Cataclysm will store damage dealt to the enemies. When it ends or is manually detonated, it will release that damage. This is the base premise. There are couple of direction this augment could be taken to after this. The range could be fixed to maybe 5m further than its smallest range (at its end), it could be equal to max range, but with some heavy fall-off damage, it could be a few meters bigger than the range at which it was detonated with again some fall-off, or exact range at which it was detonated... Absorbed damage could be % of damage dealt, it could be distributed evenly to all enemies in the range...there are many ways this one could be balanced. I think the general idea sounds pretty fun and could be cool augment which would change his playstyle a bit.

One of the most popular change people ask for is the interaction between Cataclysm and Nullifier bubble. It suggests that nullifier would simply nullify the rift on itself and enemies inside its bubble instead of popping the bubble itself. I am not very bothered by how this works personally and i think is quite manageable as it is. It wouldn't really make sense in cases of consistency in interaction nor logically. Frost's Globe is also completely deleted when it touches the nully bubble. Thematically it wouldn't make sense since cataclysm is an unstable tear in reality, constantly collapsing. Having something disruptive touch it would in fact immediately collapse it. In my opinion, as annoying as it can be, its fine as it is. Simply play with less range in corpus missions and you should be golden.

On overguard:
Sadly, it seems that DE considers overguard a great and fun "difficulty" increasing mechanic and is treating it as such. But it really isn't. It does make things more challenging, sure, but in a very unfun way. We are literally having our tools for dealing with a problematic enemy/group yanked right out of our hands, out of which some frames extremely rely on to survive and play the actual game. Overguard wasn't so problematic when it was exclusively an eximus mechanic, at that time, it fulfilled its function. But now, it's destroying the experience for a big number of warframes. This is not exclusively limbo problem sadly, its generally a problem without which the game would be far more fun. For as far as i can remember, DE generally doesnt have a great track record when it comes to making difficulty mechanics: most of them fulfil the idea of making things harder, but in a very unfun and annoying way. A lot of times, even to the point some frames are very unrewardingly hard to play. I really want DE to tackle this problem. A simple solution of overguard being exclusively eximus mechanic fixes a major flaw that game is currently facing. Please DE, do something about overguard, its literally killing important parts of your game!

Would these changes make Limbo meta? I dun kno, probably not. But I'm not writing this with this as a goal. I don't think every frame should be meta, they should be fun and functional in the 1st place. If you want your meta room killer to grind 0.2% power increase, be my guest, but don't try to turn every frame into this kind of tool. To me, Warframe is firstly and foremost a sandbox game. You have so much freedom in creating a unique build that can work, that is far more fun to me than reaching max possible grind efficiency. And even if you enjoy the hard on most efficient grind, taking a step back and picking the frame for purely having fun is very nice once in a while.

This is everything I can think of so far. I will ask people who want to comment on this thread to leave any Limbo hate bias out of their arguments as they tend to not be very helpful in resolving his core issues. Also, please avoid talking about major ability changes, as the point of this thread is to refine his current kit, not change it. I'd also like to encourage any Limbo enjoyer and main to add some of their ideas, gripes, critique etc... A lot of this text is purely my opinion, but after going through couple of threads talking about him and considering my experience with the frame, I consider this one to be most relevant so far(of the ones I actually saw). I won't take credit for coming up with all the ideas mentioned here, as i have seen other people's opinions and had discussions about them before, I am simply compiling some that I feel are most relevant and adding my own too. I will update this thread with more stuff if I remember anything else and if I see good ideas that I think would tie in well with his current state. I want this thread to be something developers can look at and have sound information on what should be looked at and considered and perhaps a bit of a push for implementation. I will also ask developers if they see this to take these into major consideration. I understand some of these changes would take quite some time and already stretched resources, but their implementation would I feel refresh not just the frame but game as well.

I thank anyone who decided to read this massive wall of text and took the time of their day to do so.

Edited April 29 by BoredFinno
Updating post

[Joezone619]

As a fellow limbo main, no arguments here. All pretty solid ideas.

My one grip is this:

On 2024-03-21 at 8:09 PM, BoredFinno said:

Changing the passive:
Biggest gripe people have with this frame is how unfriendly he is for a squad play. This fact is what makes most of people cry out for his rework. I always considered that 2 planes itself is not the problem, but the availability to a non-limbo frame. So the change I've been thinking of for a while has been this:
Allow players within Limbo's affinity range to dash in and out of the rift. Unlike Limbo tho, they cant stay in the rift indefinitely this way. I'd say they can do it for like 4 seconds. This gives them enough time to kill that rouge rifted enemy and move to the next wave of defense. This way they still need to rely on Limbo for longer invitations to his domain. It also gives Limbo another layer of utility, a tiny "budget" rolling guard, as dash itself doesn't clear status effects and doesn't make you invincible. If this is too broken, one can always add a cooldown between dashes, just like on rolling guard. His passive already functions in a similar way, but its way too annoying for anyone to seek out his tears in reality. I thought of removing those since this change makes them a bit redundant, but there are some things I'm playing with right now that show some good use of their existence.

While i agree this or something similar should be in place, i believe we need a rework to the quest that teaches players how the rift actually works. Otherwise players will just end up more confused then before.

 

These are all good points, but limbo needs more then this, a full blown rework.

Edited April 6 by Joezone619

[BoredFinno]

3 minutes ago, Joezone619 said:

While i agree this or something similar should be in place, i believe we need a rework to the quest that teaches players how the rift actually works. Otherwise players will just end up more confused then before.

While I completely agree with you on this, the clarity (or rather lack of) of limbo's or any other frame's abilities is a topic on its own and limbo is not the only offender in this aspect. He perhaps might be the most confusing one.

[Joezone619]

12 minutes ago, BoredFinno said:

While I completely agree with you on this, the clarity (or rather lack of) of limbo's or any other frame's abilities is a topic on its own and limbo is not the only offender in this aspect. He perhaps might be the most confusing one.

I'm just saying we need some sort of scene like the sevagoth one in the "call of the tempestarii" quest. A section of the quest where we control limbo and are taught directly how to use him, and what the rift is.

I'd recommend the sections in the limbo theorem quest where ordis is reading the theorem/math to us. Ordis is telling the story to give us context, DE could just add a fade to black, where we directly control limbo and take him through a mission for each part. These missions would be designed around teaching the player how to use limbo, requiring us to use specific abilities at specific moments, such as requiring us to cast cataclysm on a group of enemies too far to each, and trapping them in stasis to give us time to go up to them.

[KONYR]

I think limbo just needs a different augmentation for the cataclysm... An augmentation that makes the bubble move along with limbo with a reduced size. This would completely change the possibilities of limbo.

[CrownOfShadows]

I'll bump you too.

[BoredFinno]

8 hours ago, CrownOfShadows said:

I'll bump you too.

Appreciated bud. I will update the main post in an hour or so too, so that helps a ton.

[BoredFinno]

Main post updated. For those who have already read it and don't want to go over it again:

On 2024-03-22 at 1:09 AM, BoredFinno said:

 

• Stasis bank:
  This idea is courtesy of Sci-Fi_Freak_YT and Darkumineru
  The concept is similar to Tesla bank. When an enemy enters the rift, there is X% chance that they will be primed. When killing the primed enemy that is under stasis, it would explode dealing void damage in Y range equal to enemy's HP at the moment they entered rift. Explosion would go cross rift and would deal double damage to enemies inside the rift.

[sXeth]

Succinctly the biggest thing Limbo needs is a benefit to fighting in the Rift. 80% of  his kit is about getting his targets into the Rift, but he has nothing to do once they’re there other then stall with stasis (not bad, but it doesn’t help him clear or assist in objective and forvever stalling is a bad concept for many reasons). And an augment fir a damage buff tgat sort of neuters itself unless you keep a “jar” of surged enemies isolated.

Surge itself also is kind of random. Like you can somewhat coordinate it but never entirely. And Limbo wants extreme and precise control.

But yeah, I’d be looking either for him to have substantial advanatages in actual combat (not stasis execution style) in the Rift. And/Or some means to group or redirect enemies through the rift to desired locations (lore wise,he is a teleported and all)

[BoredFinno]

15 hours ago, sXeth said:

Succinctly the biggest thing Limbo needs is a benefit to fighting in the Rift. 80% of  his kit is about getting his targets into the Rift, but he has nothing to do once they’re there other then stall with stasis (not bad, but it doesn’t help him clear or assist in objective and forvever stalling is a bad concept for many reasons). And an augment fir a damage buff tgat sort of neuters itself unless you keep a “jar” of surged enemies isolated.

Surge itself also is kind of random. Like you can somewhat coordinate it but never entirely. And Limbo wants extreme and precise control.

But yeah, I’d be looking either for him to have substantial advanatages in actual combat (not stasis execution style) in the Rift. And/Or some means to group or redirect enemies through the rift to desired locations (lore wise,he is a teleported and all)

His biggest benefit for fighting in the rift is his survivability. I do think a weapon steroid should be part of his base kit, which I addressed in those surge changes propositions. The randomness of surge would be managed with changes to radar as it gives you information that someone is not where they should be and you have to do something about it. That said, having a damage bonus within Rift's passive is definitely a valid direction as well.

Mentioning the randomness of surge, u made me start thinking why does it jump to a random enemy outside the rift and not the closest one? I'm struggling to find a good reason even tho I'm sure its intentional, as everything in his kit is. Thinking about it, it seems to me at the moment that jumping to closest enemy outside of the rift has more benefits than its current state.

[Fred_Avant_2019]

If I'm completely honest with you, Limbo is one of those frames that has such a fantastic theme that's unique and original, but the execution ends up being everything you don't want to see in actual gameplay.

If you want enemies to not move whatsoever, the same way stasis does, you can literally subsume off any frame's spell for Condemn. It lasts an obnoxiously long time, it affects a huge range, it's spammable and it's risk-free. And that's exactly what current day Limbo's entire kit is. We really cannot have that. Not anymore. Not in what Warframe has become.

I'm not saying the good ol' Cataclysm + Stasis combo shouldn't remain a thing, I'm saying it shouldn't be his entire thing (since as I just said, you can achieve the same end result for less energy and higher overall efficiency). Being JUST a weapons platform is NOT an identity, I can assure you that you could very well just run 306% duration and Energized Munitions on any frame you find pretty. And the worst part is it's not even a bad strategy if you have very strong weapons that are held back only by their ammo limitations, it's just that it's time wasted on designing lore and abilities, just for you to not use it because it's not thought out well enough to outdo "click on enemy cranium with four barreled shotgun".

 

Here's what I'd go with :

 

• I'd say Banish and Rift Surge should be outright fused. Banishing a target that's marked by the surge does a Radial banish instead of a directional one.
  • The goal on this one is to save up an ability slot, as using one without the other is already kind of eh. The two go too well together to the point where you have to use the other in order to use the one to its full potential and this is typically where Tap & Hold abilities can come in to help with that.
• Stasis should be reworked in two different spell : Accelerate and Decelerate :
  • Accelerate increases the speed of whatever that doesn't belong to your team inside of the rift, enemies, their bullet and pretty much everything (like a speed Nova)
  • Decelerate decreases the speed of enemies inside the rift and their bullet as well, players, squadmembers, allies and their guns are immune to that effect.
  • With an augment, Accelerate increases Limbo and squadmembers' movement speed, fire rate, casting speed reload speed, and pretty much anything speed, whereas Decelerate slow is turned into present-day Stasis (complete freeze).
    • Basically the goal is to allow some support role but different enough from how it's done on other frames. Should have its own UI with a clear symbol to show wether you're accelerating time in the rift or if you're slowing it down.
• Cataclysm now stockpiles damage inflicted in the rift (damage done to enemies only) and releases it upon ending as Void type damage (probably not the entire load, maybe just a percentage of it but still a decent chunk, we don't wanna overnerf it either). Moved from 4 to 3. No longer interacts at all / breaks with nullifier fields. The explosion is about 20% wider than Cataclysm's size when it exploded so as to let it hit enemies rifted outside of it.
  • It has to specifically explode as Void type damage so as to bully overguard.
    • Took inspiration from Mag's bubble, as I see these two abilities to have vague similarities : if you're inside of it, you're the caster's plaything and when they're done playing around, they are done playing around and they will make sure you get the memo.
• Then that leaves room for a new ability, which by all means should be a dps one, so as to make Limbo an actual caster and not JUST an awful weapon platform. My idea is as follows :
  • Entropy : Fires a beam in a straight line or a wave in a tight cone for some type of damage, hopefully Void.
  • When used inside the Rift and it hits Cataclysm then, Cataclysm loses 10% of its duration (and shrinks accordingly) but gains 10% stockpiled damage.
  • When used outside the Rift and it hits Cataclysm then, Cataclysm's duration is restored by 10% (+10% of what the max duration is will be added to the timer; Cataclysm's size will grow back to the matching duration) but 10% of the stockpiled damage is removed.
    • The goal is to have a synergy between it and Cataclysm where the payoff is a good nuking potential at the cost of a decent chunk of your energy, which you regenerate if you kill stuff that's rifted. Not only that, but it also allows the (now fused) Rift Surge to proc more dynamically.

 

With this sort of freshened up kit, Limbo goes from just CC to checking support and dps quotas, but not without consequences to his energy economy so it's not as broken stupid as something like, say, ~312% strength Revenant using a Roar and Reave build only needing to go forward and back once into any enemy to deal exactly 100% of their max shield and health as true damage while being completely immune to damage by not having a physical body when doing so and having Mesmer Skin as the single strongest safety net possible. It's not perfect by any means, but I kind of tried to keep the complexity of the frame mostly intact and staying in the theme of how manipulating the rift is some dangerous crap that can tear apart reality or your limbs if you don't master it.

Any thoughts? Or have I gone completely insane?

[BoredFinno]

14 hours ago, Fred_Avant_2019 said:

If I'm completely honest with you, Limbo is one of those frames that has such a fantastic theme that's unique and original, but the execution ends up being everything you don't want to see in actual gameplay.

If you want enemies to not move whatsoever, the same way stasis does, you can literally subsume off any frame's spell for Condemn. It lasts an obnoxiously long time, it affects a huge range, it's spammable and it's risk-free. And that's exactly what current day Limbo's entire kit is. We really cannot have that. Not anymore. Not in what Warframe has become.

I'm not saying the good ol' Cataclysm + Stasis combo shouldn't remain a thing, I'm saying it shouldn't be his entire thing (since as I just said, you can achieve the same end result for less energy and higher overall efficiency). Being JUST a weapons platform is NOT an identity, I can assure you that you could very well just run 306% duration and Energized Munitions on any frame you find pretty. And the worst part is it's not even a bad strategy if you have very strong weapons that are held back only by their ammo limitations, it's just that it's time wasted on designing lore and abilities, just for you to not use it because it's not thought out well enough to outdo "click on enemy cranium with four barreled shotgun".

 

Here's what I'd go with :

 

• I'd say Banish and Rift Surge should be outright fused. Banishing a target that's marked by the surge does a Radial banish instead of a directional one.
  • The goal on this one is to save up an ability slot, as using one without the other is already kind of eh. The two go too well together to the point where you have to use the other in order to use the one to its full potential and this is typically where Tap & Hold abilities can come in to help with that.
• Stasis should be reworked in two different spell : Accelerate and Decelerate :
  • Accelerate increases the speed of whatever that doesn't belong to your team inside of the rift, enemies, their bullet and pretty much everything (like a speed Nova)
  • Decelerate decreases the speed of enemies inside the rift and their bullet as well, players, squadmembers, allies and their guns are immune to that effect.
  • With an augment, Accelerate increases Limbo and squadmembers' movement speed, fire rate, casting speed reload speed, and pretty much anything speed, whereas Decelerate slow is turned into present-day Stasis (complete freeze).
    • Basically the goal is to allow some support role but different enough from how it's done on other frames. Should have its own UI with a clear symbol to show wether you're accelerating time in the rift or if you're slowing it down.
• Cataclysm now stockpiles damage inflicted in the rift (damage done to enemies only) and releases it upon ending as Void type damage (probably not the entire load, maybe just a percentage of it but still a decent chunk, we don't wanna overnerf it either). Moved from 4 to 3. No longer interacts at all / breaks with nullifier fields. The explosion is about 20% wider than Cataclysm's size when it exploded so as to let it hit enemies rifted outside of it.
  • It has to specifically explode as Void type damage so as to bully overguard.
    • Took inspiration from Mag's bubble, as I see these two abilities to have vague similarities : if you're inside of it, you're the caster's plaything and when they're done playing around, they are done playing around and they will make sure you get the memo.
• Then that leaves room for a new ability, which by all means should be a dps one, so as to make Limbo an actual caster and not JUST an awful weapon platform. My idea is as follows :
  • Entropy : Fires a beam in a straight line or a wave in a tight cone for some type of damage, hopefully Void.
  • When used inside the Rift and it hits Cataclysm then, Cataclysm loses 10% of its duration (and shrinks accordingly) but gains 10% stockpiled damage.
  • When used outside the Rift and it hits Cataclysm then, Cataclysm's duration is restored by 10% (+10% of what the max duration is will be added to the timer; Cataclysm's size will grow back to the matching duration) but 10% of the stockpiled damage is removed.
    • The goal is to have a synergy between it and Cataclysm where the payoff is a good nuking potential at the cost of a decent chunk of your energy, which you regenerate if you kill stuff that's rifted. Not only that, but it also allows the (now fused) Rift Surge to proc more dynamically.

 

With this sort of freshened up kit, Limbo goes from just CC to checking support and dps quotas, but not without consequences to his energy economy so it's not as broken stupid as something like, say, ~312% strength Revenant using a Roar and Reave build only needing to go forward and back once into any enemy to deal exactly 100% of their max shield and health as true damage while being completely immune to damage by not having a physical body when doing so and having Mesmer Skin as the single strongest safety net possible. It's not perfect by any means, but I kind of tried to keep the complexity of the frame mostly intact and staying in the theme of how manipulating the rift is some dangerous crap that can tear apart reality or your limbs if you don't master it.

Any thoughts? Or have I gone completely insane?

No offense, but i think this falls more under "gone completely insane".

Lemme break it down why i think so:

For one, this falls under "full blown rework" category, which in the 1st place isn't needed, it does change Limbo farther from his identity and is something i asked to be avoided in the original post. He really doesn't need anything more than as u said "Stasis and Cataclysm" being his entire thing which already isn't true. The example with condemn u mention is not a good example, as:

1. Condem is directional
2. Condem doesnt keep you save in the same way Rift + Stasis do, you can still be shot at by new enemies

He also doesnt need more to as u said "his entire thing" cause rift is his ultimate survivability tool and this is something that should if anything be enforced even more. Its an unique way of tanking, not present on any other frame, and its fun and cool.
This also flows into proposition of ur new ability: making everything sped up defeats the safety of the rift, it in facts makes it more dangerous, as there is little benefit for limbo to be outside of the rift in the 1st place. And if you want to argue that you can be in material plane while speeding enemies in the rift, you still have to shoot sped up enemies, for which, you need to be in the rift! Entropy also has the same problem, as it forces you to exit the safety zone as a paper thin warframe to cast an ability and be vulnerable for that time, which, again, we already have many ways limbo is vulnerable even in his current state, so absolute safety of the rift is not an issue at all.
 

On saving an ability slot, limbo is already pretty active in his casting, if one uses his whole kit and not just stasis + cataclysm. Having more abilities to manage is just going to be a massive pain. I think banish and surge are completely fine as separate abilities and should remain that way.

Weapon platform caster is in fact quite an unique identity, not very present on other frames. Most weapon platform frames have either a duration based weapon buff, or a channel, for it to be set and forget. Limbo can't be that passive as he has to constantly move his cataclysm or redo the banish surge combo for his loop to function. Stasis might be the only set and forget and again, you might not always want to keep it for its full duration. 

The interesting idea you had and I like is the cataclysm storing damage done to the enemies, this would be fun to see, but I'm still reluctant on if it should be a thing, i will definitely give it some more thought.

Edited April 6 by BoredFinno

[Vazumongr]

I don't play much Limbo but, one common thing I've seen on almost every rework post regarding a Warframe who's main tool is CC, is that they have just been royally #*!%ed by the Eximus Reborn change with the introduction of Overguard. I hope DE revisits that mechanic sooner than later, and at the absolute least remove the CC immunity from it. Personally, I think it's a bad system and should be removed entirely from the game in it's current state but that's a discussion to be had else where :P

I don't have any problems with your suggested changes, they do seem to address the issues you pointed out. And I'm all for having the older Warframe kits be updated to be relevant and fun in the current state of the game.

[BoredFinno]

21 minutes ago, Vazumongr said:

I don't play much Limbo but, one common thing I've seen on almost every rework post regarding a Warframe who's main tool is CC, is that they have just been royally #*!%ed by the Eximus Reborn change with the introduction of Overguard. I hope DE revisits that mechanic sooner than later, and at the absolute least remove the CC immunity from it. Personally, I think it's a bad system and should be removed entirely from the game in it's current state but that's a discussion to be had else where :P

I don't have any problems with your suggested changes, they do seem to address the issues you pointed out. And I'm all for having the older Warframe kits be updated to be relevant and fun in the current state of the game.

The changes themselves would make, even at the current state of the eximus, Limbo way more comfy to play. That said, I completely agree with you that overguard isn't healthy for the game and needs revisiting. Its a completely different discussion tho, but how prevalent its becoming and how little tools are left to deal with it, im not liking its current direction at all (looking at out challenge that gives every enemy overguard). I will leave my stance below on it from another thread if you have any interest in reading it (or anyone else), as i think the tragedy 35.5.3 made this discussion a priority one:

On 2024-04-05 at 6:20 PM, BoredFinno said:

Overguard, Disruptor-type Enemies and Slow Decline of Usefulness of Crowd Control:

I am a disgusting Limbo main. And no, I don't want to cry how eximus rework killed my frame and how overguard made him obsolete. When eximus rework was 1st introduced, I can't say I was thrilled about their approach, but as time has shown, that was manageable. I could accept that having some danger introduced to a frame like Limbo is healthy and engaging. The problem is that it made an even greater disparity between burst/dps focused frames and cc focused ones. Factor in the fact that many new gamemodes are focused on killing stuff as fast as you possibly can, cc definitely has been put on back burner, but not useless, at all. The point of eximus enemies as far as I'm aware is to force someone to stop what they are doing and immediately swap their focus onto the eximus, as they pose a major threat to the loop. Problem is, they don't. They will die as easily to a saryn spore on the other side of the map as any other enemy, they aren't a threat at all... as long as we talk about dps and nuke frames, or tanks.
When this system was still young, you'd have maybe at max 3 eximuses/overguarded enemies at single time in proximity of you. Each update introduced more enemies that have overguard, or give it. The main issue itself isn't eximuses, its overguard. See, CC is also a form of survivability, as much as DR based abilities. And thx to overguard, if you don't have a DR ability or insane nuke, you are in far more danger than most other frames. Some frames rely purely on this cc to keep themselves alive - and I think that's good. It plays into the power fantasy and gives variety to gameplay. Shield gate made that even better, as you'd have a second to cast your cc and recuperate yourself in time enemies are cc-ed. And not every warframe should rely on purely shieldgate or DR abilities. Limbo has one of the most unique survivability tools that is being cucked with each major update more and more. To me, final nail in the coffin was yesterday and I'd assume its the same for a lot of people too. Yesterday, we got Deep Archemidia. One of the conditionals in it were that EVERY enemy gains overguard. And considering that in the same update, most of the abilities that went through it got nerfed in this aspect, this just makes this fact even worse. At one point, we might get a combination of overguarded enemies with energy drain per enemy in 10m from you and them being immune to damage as long as they are outside of 15m of you. This isn't challenge, this is absurd. You could argue "well, just pick an appropriate frame then", but this kinda alienates quite a substantial amount of possible frames, pray to Void you don't draw all 3 from this group. 

To me, I saw a potential revitalization of cc with Deep Archemidia: a dangerous place that uses combination of cc and dps to fight deadly conditions presented to us. Instead, we got a bigger middle finger than ever in cc department. We instead got a band-aid to consistency at the detriment of already under preforming aspect of the game. For #*!%'s sake, Tips themselves say its best done with organized squad and friends. I'm not saying cc is completely useless, it is not, but its not as useful as it should be and a decent amount of frames suffer cause of it, putting them in a "rework" basket when they don't need one, or leaving them to rot away and be a rare pick for anyone.

So, what can we do about this?
Thinking about it, flipping overguard would just bring us back to the olden days, where you could basically avoid any danger and turn most missions into a snooze fest, which is also not a good solution. At its current state of the game, I think a compromise has to be made to make cc a desirable tool while preserving some of the danger aspects the current iteration tried to achieve:

Overguard now has a 95% damage reduction versus ability damage and is resistant to cc, instead of immune. What do I mean resistant? Let's take an ability like Stasis as an example: currently, it either does something, or does almost nothing(still freezes the bullets, very useful), depending on the overguard. One of the ways this would work is that overguarded enemies actively resist its effect, being slowed instead of frozen. Knockdowns, instead of knocking down would put an enemy in the animation similar to when they are hit with Sound Quake. Knockbacks could make an enemy walk backwards a few steps in a similar animation to shooting gallery. Stuns and blinds could have reduced duration, slows halved effectiveness, so on...

This would probably be a massive coding undertaking as it would probably have to be considered for every cc ability we have and with every frame in mind, but once its done, it would be easy to upkeep with new frame releases. It would also shake up the game, revitalize some frames and "bring balance to the force" between DPS and CC. They would finally live in a symbiotic relationship, as they always should have.

 

[Vazumongr]

2 minutes ago, BoredFinno said:

On 2024-04-05 at 12:20 PM, BoredFinno said:

Overguard, Disruptor-type Enemies and Slow Decline of Usefulness of Crowd Control:

I am a disgusting Limbo main. And no, I don't want to cry how eximus rework killed my frame and how overguard made him obsolete. When eximus rework was 1st introduced, I can't say I was thrilled about their approach, but as time has shown, that was manageable. I could accept that having some danger introduced to a frame like Limbo is healthy and engaging. The problem is that it made an even greater disparity between burst/dps focused frames and cc focused ones. Factor in the fact that many new gamemodes are focused on killing stuff as fast as you possibly can, cc definitely has been put on back burner, but not useless, at all. The point of eximus enemies as far as I'm aware is to force someone to stop what they are doing and immediately swap their focus onto the eximus, as they pose a major threat to the loop. Problem is, they don't. They will die as easily to a saryn spore on the other side of the map as any other enemy, they aren't a threat at all... as long as we talk about dps and nuke frames, or tanks.
When this system was still young, you'd have maybe at max 3 eximuses/overguarded enemies at single time in proximity of you. Each update introduced more enemies that have overguard, or give it. The main issue itself isn't eximuses, its overguard. See, CC is also a form of survivability, as much as DR based abilities. And thx to overguard, if you don't have a DR ability or insane nuke, you are in far more danger than most other frames. Some frames rely purely on this cc to keep themselves alive - and I think that's good. It plays into the power fantasy and gives variety to gameplay. Shield gate made that even better, as you'd have a second to cast your cc and recuperate yourself in time enemies are cc-ed. And not every warframe should rely on purely shieldgate or DR abilities. Limbo has one of the most unique survivability tools that is being cucked with each major update more and more. To me, final nail in the coffin was yesterday and I'd assume its the same for a lot of people too. Yesterday, we got Deep Archemidia. One of the conditionals in it were that EVERY enemy gains overguard. And considering that in the same update, most of the abilities that went through it got nerfed in this aspect, this just makes this fact even worse. At one point, we might get a combination of overguarded enemies with energy drain per enemy in 10m from you and them being immune to damage as long as they are outside of 15m of you. This isn't challenge, this is absurd. You could argue "well, just pick an appropriate frame then", but this kinda alienates quite a substantial amount of possible frames, pray to Void you don't draw all 3 from this group. 

To me, I saw a potential revitalization of cc with Deep Archemidia: a dangerous place that uses combination of cc and dps to fight deadly conditions presented to us. Instead, we got a bigger middle finger than ever in cc department. We instead got a band-aid to consistency at the detriment of already under preforming aspect of the game. For #*!%'s sake, Tips themselves say its best done with organized squad and friends. I'm not saying cc is completely useless, it is not, but its not as useful as it should be and a decent amount of frames suffer cause of it, putting them in a "rework" basket when they don't need one, or leaving them to rot away and be a rare pick for anyone.

So, what can we do about this?
Thinking about it, flipping overguard would just bring us back to the olden days, where you could basically avoid any danger and turn most missions into a snooze fest, which is also not a good solution. At its current state of the game, I think a compromise has to be made to make cc a desirable tool while preserving some of the danger aspects the current iteration tried to achieve:

Overguard now has a 95% damage reduction versus ability damage and is resistant to cc, instead of immune. What do I mean resistant? Let's take an ability like Stasis as an example: currently, it either does something, or does almost nothing(still freezes the bullets, very useful), depending on the overguard. One of the ways this would work is that overguarded enemies actively resist its effect, being slowed instead of frozen. Knockdowns, instead of knocking down would put an enemy in the animation similar to when they are hit with Sound Quake. Knockbacks could make an enemy walk backwards a few steps in a similar animation to shooting gallery. Stuns and blinds could have reduced duration, slows halved effectiveness, so on...

This would probably be a massive coding undertaking as it would probably have to be considered for every cc ability we have and with every frame in mind, but once its done, it would be easy to upkeep with new frame releases. It would also shake up the game, revitalize some frames and "bring balance to the force" between DPS and CC. They would finally live in a symbiotic relationship, as they always should have.

Bah, you beat me to it! I've been putting together a write-up on my analysis of the Overguard mechanic and its impact on the rest of the games systems. I'll definitely be giving that a read!

[BoredFinno]

Main post updated. For those who have already read it and don't want to go over entire thing again:

On 2024-03-22 at 1:09 AM, BoredFinno said:

1. Mandatory

• Changing the passive:
  
  After some discussion with another Limbo enjoyer, i think  i came to an even better idea, that seems fun to me. It is an alternative idea to the dash solution which might make it redundant. The idea is:
  
  Surge's radial banish has a chance to leave a tear in reality similar to current ones limbo leaves when he dashes. Allies and only allies can use these to enter the rift for a limited time, either by walking into them as they currently are, or by using interaction button on them. Doing this could give allies maybe 30% of torrent's current buff if the augment is present. The chance of the tear spawning would be based on enemies around the radial banish, meaning, if there is like 2 enemies, it has a greater chance to spawn a single tear, to avoid removing accessibility of those enemies to squadmates. There should also be a reasonable amount of tears present, maybe 1 every 5m radius (1 occupies an area of 10m). They should also last for a decent amount of time, maybe even until surge's banish is retriggered and they should keep allies within for again a reasonable amount of time. This is to remove the griefing on both ends: it doesn't disable Limbo from doing his gameloop for the sake of the allies and its not disabling game loop of allies to the point they can't play the mission. There might be some work on their end, but it should be made in a way its basically painless, which the above numbers on paper sound like they achieve. They could also get their mini-map icon, to make it even less so and would probably be a preferred addition.

2. Would be nice:

• Rift Surge now jumps to the closest enemy outside the rift:
  I was wrong on this one. I assumed this was they way jumps worked, but they don't. Surge in fact jumps to a random enemy outside the rift in a certain range. No matter how I think about it, I cant find a good reason why it was made this way and it seem no one else could either. No matter how one thinks about it, it jumping to the nearest one is in every scenario more useful. And its such a little thing. It's a nice consistency change, yet not one that would drastically change him to the point he is broken.
   

3. Uncooked ideas:

• Surge banish on allies:
  This one is I think an interesting idea, but seems to be a bit of a boon and bane scenario. It goes back to considering how to fix rift's limited availability to allies. The idea is that ally could wait next to the surged enemy in the rift and wait for its radial banish to proc to enter the rift. This could tie in very nicely with larger range limbos in squads that wouldn't disrupt either player's goals. The problem here with this is that some players wouldn't want to be randomly dragged into the rift, even more often than from purely walking into Banish by accident. It could also get very visually overwhelming.
  I think this idea is now developed better under the "Changing the passive" point under mandatory changes.
   
• Adding more to Rift
  Over the years, the rifts primary function has been eroded thanks to eximus rework, prevalence of overguard and general design to enemies. A lot of things now hit cross-rift. The whole gimmick of the rift was that Limbo, a paper thin warframe is absolutely safe in his realm. The rift got nerfed, but Limbo wasn't compensated stats wise. To be fair, that would be a lazy fix if he was. I like the idea of a paper thin warframe, but within his realm, he is invincible. Now, the counter point to this is that this godhood becomes boring and stale as it removes engagement and challenge from the game. With that in mind, i am fine with things staying the way they are. But I'd like some compensation for this. I recently decided to try Rapid Resilience on my Limbo while thinking about this. And it felt really comfy. From this experience, i'd like to propose Limbo gaining more little survivability additions to his rift. Things like reduced status duration on Limbo while in rift, increased shield recharge, decreased recharge delay, something little like that, just to make it a bit more comfortable to play. The one id really like to see added is knockdown immunity in the rift. This wasn't a problem before eximus rework, but now it can get very annoying at certain missions. Installing Primed Meme Footed is an option, but having it as part of the rift would be really appealing. I'd like to be able to install other exiluses on a frame very flexible with his builds. This relatively small changes restores some of the Rift's original intent, yet it doesn't go as far as its old version of potentially making it unengaging with the game.

4. Augment changes and ideas

• Plane Fusion:
  Cataclysm augment. This one takes inspiration from Fred_Avant_2019's proposal to Cataclysm changes. Cataclysm will store damage dealt to the enemies. When it ends or is manually detonated, it will release that damage. This is the base premise. There are couple of direction this augment could be taken to after this. The range could be fixed to maybe 5m further than its smallest range (at its end), it could be equal to max range, but with some heavy fall-off damage, it could be a few meters bigger than the range at which it was detonated with again some fall-off, or exact range at which it was detonated... Absorbed damage could be % of damage dealt, it could be distributed evenly to all enemies in the range...there are many ways this one could be balanced. I think the general idea sounds pretty fun and could be cool augment which would change his playstyle a bit.

 

[BoredFinno]

Main post updated. This one irons out some of the points outdated since the thread was created. The following changes have been made:

On 2024-03-22 at 1:09 AM, BoredFinno said:

1. Mandatory
 

• Slinky and Illuminati:
  If there was ever an enemy I'd call a bane of limbo, I'd consider it this guy. The Hollow Vein can be banished ONLY ONCE for DRASTICALLY REDUCED banishment time. It's stupidly tanky and if all of this wasn't enough, its magnetic proc goes cross rift. I generally think this guy needs a look at in general, not just considering purely Limbo. The Severed Warden is in similar boat, but its far far far less annoying by itself: unlike slinky, it doesn't gain immunity to being banished, but still has banish duration on itself drastically reduced. If it was half, it would be problematic but manageable. I also heard someone complain that Tharx units in Duviri work similarly (I can't test personally, as I don't have them scanned) and I would really consider removing this trait. We are not talking about halved duration, we are talking like 95% of the duration removed. If not removed, make it halved pls? And don't make them immune to it afterwards.
  Edit: At some point, it seems DE changed how slinky interacts with banish, thus, now interacts with rift like most enemies do. Unfortunately, its laser and massive magnetic AoE still dont care about what plane you are on. The rouge arcocanid's magnetic pulse also works this way, which is quite annoying and makes no sense to me. I don't think these attacks should be treated like abilities, but like any other weapon attack.
   
• On Stasis:
  I'm gonna leave this as a final "mandatory" change as it can be a bit debatable, tho i am on the side of it being implemented: with every update we get more enemies that completely ignore this ability. While it completely freezing all enemies all the time is obviously broken and can make the game unengaging, there should be some effect. Make enemies immune to stasis be slowed for somewhere between 30 - 50%. You can make it a flat unchanging value or you can make it scale with strength, I don't care which route is chosen (tho it should have a fixed minimum in other case). My argument for this is that overguard is more and more prevalent in each update which impacts Stasis' usability. And I'm not talking purely on survivability part, im talking on Stasis remaining active in general. For people that don't know, stasis has a maximum amount of projectiles it can freeze before it collapses, and having 10 overguarded enemies constantly shooting breaks this thing in 3 or 4 seconds. Slowing their rate of fire this way would make this less of an issue. Biggest offender for this is duviri defense. It spawns an obscene amount of eximus units, making stasis and by proxy, limbos main tool for defense obsolete. It also impacts limbo's survivability, but argument for shield gating can be made, even tho, id argue that his whole rift mechanic should be a replacement for him in that aspect and maybe even enforced over shield gating, for the sake of diversity. We already have some abilities having nerfed cc on overguard instead of plainly ignoring it (example: Rhino's Stomp). If anything, this change should be considered for overguard purely.
  
  So, since DE decided to nerf all cc that affected overguard for some kind of lame consistency (while some more problematic ones are left unchecked for years), there is now no mechanic to justify this function. It's very unfortunate, as it removes any real possible fix for the problem this proposition tries to address.  Clearly, this is now considered unintentional behavior and there is no hope left for such change. It makes a difficult case where either overguard in general has to change(for the love of the void, please) or missions like Circuit Defense have to. I will put some more thoughts about this towards the end of the post. 

 

On overguard:
Sadly, it seems that DE considers overguard a great and fun "difficulty" increasing mechanic and is treating it as such. But it really isn't. It does make things more challenging, sure, but in a very unfun way. We are literally having our tools for dealing with problematic enemy/group yanked right out of our hands, out of which some frames extremely rely on to survive and play the actual game. Overguard wasn't so problematic when it was exclusively an eximus mechanic, at that time, it fulfilled its function. But now, it's destroying the experience for a big number of warframes. This is not exclusively limbo problem sadly, its generally a problem without which the game would be far more fun. For as far as i can remember, DE generally doesnt have a great track record when it comes to making difficulty mechanics: most of them fulfil the idea of making things harder, but in a very unfun and annoying way. A lot of times, even to the point some frames are very unrewardingly hard to play. I really want DE to tackle this problem. A simple solution of overguard being exclusively eximus mechanic fixes a major flaw that game is currently facing. Please DE, do something about overguard, its literally killing important parts of your game!

 

[LeonardBlyx]

DE either plans to rework Limbo entirely or wants to ignore the existence of Limbo.

Source: All the updates in the game. You can see they only touch Limbo's abilities when they become visible. Exodia Contagion bug existed long before, but it has become visible with Scarlet Spear. Sentient adaptation towards abilities, also came out after Limbo's stasis spam claiming "It made the game too trivial". Then came the Vitrica, and guess what did the first hotfix do? Yes, they removed Vitrica's ability to ignore Rift mechanics. But do you know what still exists? Mutalist Cernos' alternate fire. For years now, you have been able to damage enemies through Rift with alt-fire orb detonation. Do you know why it still exists? Because it does laughable damage. And it is not some obscure information, it is there written on the wiki, and it was there even before Vitrica's or Scarlet Spear's release (As a Limbo main I kept a keen eye on what works between planes throughout the years.) If DE is claiming to do changes for consistency, all they need to do is spend 30 seconds reading the wiki page on Rift Plane, find out what interactions are working and apply fixes. 

Regarding consistency, here are a few fails that can happen while you are in the Rift:

• Coolant floors (during sabotage missions) do not affect you, but your sentient's coolant leak does affect your enemies.
• Arc traps do not damage you but shrapnel mines do
• Fire patches from Napalms do not damage you, but Hyekka Masters' firebombs do.
• Toxic Ancient's aura does not damage you, but Venomous Ancient's aura does 
• Grineer bombard rockets do not damage you, but anti-air rockets they launch can one-shot your Archwing in the open world. 
• Projectiles of Anatomizer do not damage you but the laser beam of The Hollow One does. 

You see, there are a lot (A LOT) of inconsistencies when it comes to Limbo and Rift plane. So DE is either not touching those because they have a major rework in mind that obsoletes all of the bugs mentioned above, or they are just burying their heads in the sand 

 

[Sephylon086918]

1 hour ago, LeonardBlyx said:

• Coolant floors (during sabotage missions) do not affect you, but your sentient's coolant leak does affect your enemies.
• Arc traps do not damage you but shrapnel mines do
• Fire patches from Napalms do not damage you, but Hyekka Masters' firebombs do.
• Toxic Ancient's aura does not damage you, but Venomous Ancient's aura does 
• Grineer bombard rockets do not damage you, but anti-air rockets they launch can one-shot your Archwing in the open world. 
• Projectiles of Anatomizer do not damage you but the laser beam of The Hollow One does. 

Coolant leak counts as a skill, same as  arc coil. Rule of the rift is skills ignore rifted status. Can say that about the rest of the ones there, exceptions are the auras and the traps. Not sure about arc traps vs shrapnel, but if 1 counts as a skill and the other doesn't, then it's following the rules of the status, and I've never not been killed by toxic eximuses while in the rift. And don't know why you bring up arcwings, from my experience you get kicked out of the rift once you use it.

[LeonardBlyx]

OK, let me go one by one.

Quote

Coolant leak counts as a skill, same as arc coil. Rule of the rift is skills ignore rifted status.

Well, I was going on similarities (cold effect, heat effect, traps etc.) because not every player has a wiki whipped up in front of themselves, listing what is a "skill" and what is not, especially since not everyone would expect one of the two traps (shrapnel mine) is somehow a skill (?) that damages you through the rift. 

But since you want to go down the skills road so badly, sure why not? I even have two skills on the same companion for you!

• Proboscis does not affect enemies while Trample does while you are in rift. (tested in simulacrum, against grineer butcher, AI not paused, no invulnerability)

Quote

I've never not been killed by toxic eximuses while in the rift

Then you never played this game before the Eximus Reborn update. There is literally a segment titled "Limbo's Lift & Eximus" and it specifically states "Limbo can still send Eximus to the Rift plane where their damage will be avoided, but Eximus Abilities will now ignore the Rift plane." So before the update, their abilities were not working across the rift. I don't know what was killing you before, but certainly, it wasn't a toxic (venomous) eximus. 

If you are trying to say toxic auras were killing you, then you are contradicting yourself by saying auras are an exception and are expected not to harm you.

Quote

And don't know why you bring up arcwings, from my experience you get kicked out of the rift once you use it.

I just have tested it, and it still works. Please deploy yourself to any open world as Limbo, use shift (or whatever key you use for dodge/riftwalk) midair, deploy archwing, and fly through your rift portal again, and you'll land in rift plane, without any time limit. 

 

I'm all in for a productive debate, but please test in-game what you claim. Or some proof. 

Edited May 29 by LeonardBlyx

[Sephylon086918]

1 hour ago, LeonardBlyx said:

OK, let me go one by one.

Well, I was going on similarities (cold effect, heat effect, traps etc.) because not every player has a wiki whipped up in front of themselves, listing what is a "skill" and what is not, especially since not everyone would expect one of the two traps (shrapnel mine) is somehow a skill (?) that damages you through the rift. 

But since you want to go down the skills road so badly, sure why not? I even have two skills on the same companion for you!

• Proboscis does not affect enemies while Trample does while you are in rift. (tested in simulacrum, against grineer butcher, AI not paused, no invulnerability)

Then you never played this game before the Eximus Reborn update. There is literally a segment titled "Limbo's Lift & Eximus" and it specifically states "Limbo can still send Eximus to the Rift plane where their damage will be avoided, but Eximus Abilities will now ignore the Rift plane." So before the update, their abilities were not working across the rift. I don't know what was killing you before, but certainly, it wasn't a toxic (venomous) eximus. 

If you are trying to say toxic auras were killing you, then you are contradicting yourself by saying auras are an exception and are expected not to harm you.

I just have tested it, and it still works. Please deploy yourself to any open world as Limbo, use shift (or whatever key you use for dodge/riftwalk) midair, deploy archwing, and fly through your rift portal again, and you'll land in rift plane, without any time limit. 

 

I'm all in for a productive debate, but please test in-game what you claim. Or some proof. 

Coming out swinging there.

 

You seemed to have missed the parts where I said I wasn't sure about the traps. I only know about the 2 pet skills and some of the npc skills.

You've also missed the "not" part when I said

"I've never **not** been killed by toxic eximuses"

Auras count as skills, as far as I've seen, count as skills for all intents and purposes. I am also getting a vibe that we may not be talking about thesame thing?

 

Entering the rift in arcwing via the portals never occured to me, wasn't even sure that was possible, sounds like an unintended interaction, might be a good idea to post a bug report on it

 

Edited May 30 by Sephylon086918

[LeonardBlyx]

I'm confused. Are you trying to say you have never been killed by toxic eximus? Or are you trying to say you have been killed by one before?

If you are killed by one, that was not a thing before the Eximus Reborn update. Eximus abilities were not working across the rift before. 

If you were not killed by an Eximus before, in the rift, well you will be now. Eximus Reborn update enabled Eximus abilities to hit you in the rift. 

There is also a thing called "Toxic Ancient" that is not an Eximus and has toxin aura and it does not damage you in the Rift. The eximus with toxin aura is called Venomous Eximus. That one hits you in the Rift. Such consistency! (You can test both in simulacrum. That is what I meant by "please test your claims")

Edit: Actually, I did more tests today and for the Toxic Ancient, it seems to be a skill that has a cooldown because toxic clouds are not always present and will never damage you in the rift. In Venomous Eximus' case, it is always active and can damage you in the rift

 

Regarding traps, you totally said you were unsure about this, and that is precisely what I'm trying to underline as well. Nobody has a Wiki page open in front of them all the time to tell if something is a trap or skill. You were unsure of it as a limbo main. Think of any other limbo player who is not accustomed to it as you are. They will be even more unsure, and more confused. Because it is unclear what works across the rift, and what is not. You are saying "Well it is easy, if it is a skill then it works" but you are also claiming that you are unsure what is a skill and what is not. 

I don't think archwing thing is a bug, but let's say it is. You are still allowed to banish other players into the rift while they are in archwing to maybe protect them from damage let's say. Those AA rockets will still hit them and drop them. 

Edit: Fixed spelling issues

Edited May 30 by LeonardBlyx

[Sephylon086918]

13 hours ago, LeonardBlyx said:

I'm confused. Are you trying to say you have never been killed by toxic eximus? Or are you trying to say you have been killed by one before?

Have been. Multiple times. Once had an arbys group wipe to one.

 

13 hours ago, LeonardBlyx said:

There is also a thing called "Toxic Ancient" that is not an Eximus and has toxin aura and it does not damage you in the Rift. The eximus with toxin aura is called Venomous Eximus. That one hits you in the Rift. Such consistency! (You can test both in simulacrum. That is what I meant by "please test your claims")

Edit: Actually, I did more tests today and for the Toxic Ancient, it seems to be a skill that has a cooldown because toxic clouds are not always present and will never damage you in the rift. In Venomous Eximus' case, it is always active and can damage you in the rift

AAAh. My mistake then, I misunderstood what you originally said, my apologies.