The hold mechanic on Sevagoth's Reap is utterly useless… unless!

[Yulfan]

9 months ago, i wrote a long post "The absolute state of Sevagoth" about the frustrating facts with this warframe, which can be a difficult pass for many and would be worth looking into. Some of them were in fact solved thank to the QoL changes brought with the previous update, but many still remain.

With this post, i want to look into one of them: the hold mechanic of Reap. First, a recap:

• If you tap cast, the Shadow will fly at 10 meters per second, and 15 meters per second when aiming.
• If you hold cast, the Shadow will fly at 20 meters per second, and 30 meters per second when aiming.

And that's it. That's all there is to this mechanic. That's why i previously said this about it:

Le 12/11/2023 à 11:59, Yulfan a dit :

[...] the hold mechanic is useless. It's not like the effects are stronger or last longer, with an altered energy cost or whatever, or the Shadow has a better steering or anything. There is literally no strategic use to be made of it. Not holding it is just straight up worst, period. The only reason this mechanic exist is because when Sevagoth was released, we complained about the sluggish movement speed, and this bandaid was added when it should have been by default. Reap’s Shadow NEED to be fast, since the whole point of this ability is to be ahead of the players so we can debuff enemies facing us.

As i said, there is no point to this mechanic and the easiest solution would be to remove it and keep the flight speed at 20/30 meters per second by default. It would also be in line with DE's intent who removed several hold mechanics over the past months/year, the last one being Ember's Fireball.

BUT, if DE want to keep it nonetheless, it need to be more enticing and meaningful. It need a purpose. That's why what i would suggest is that, as long as the enemy stay in the area of effect of the Shadow (currently 8 meters radius by default), the debuff duration keep refreshing for the whole lifetime of the Shadow (currently 6 seconds by default). Only when the enemy exit the range of the Shadow (or if the Shadow despawn), the debuff start to count down (currently 10 seconds by default).

The durations may need some tweaking, but it would kind of adress another critic i had about the discrepancy between the Shadow's lifetime and the Death Harvest's duration as well as the very restrictive conditions for reappying the effect, leading to uncontrollable downtimes:

Le 12/11/2023 à 11:59, Yulfan a dit :

[...] the Death's Harvest (DH) debuff don't refresh. Whether we keep Shadow in one place or recast Reap, if enemies are already under DH effect, it cannot be refreshed and need to run out first. But it cannot be directly reapplied either, since an enemy whose DH effect is running out will not get a new one if the Shadow is already over him. The enemy need to be outside of the Shadow range to be eligible for a new DH application. And we must add that the DH effect lasts longer than the Shadow's lifetime. It is therefore even more complicated to track the effects lifespan. There is a visual effect meant to do that (the black tendrils rotating around affected enemies), but it's way too tame to be properly noticeable during real gameplay.

It makes Reap inconsistent and counterintuitive and once again, we can get bamboozled since DH effect can disappear without able to control anything. And with the new augment, it's even more frustrating to see the effect suddenly vanishing.

We would still need to spam it to produce the detonation combo with Sow, but at least the vulnerability debuff (as well as the critical chance increase with the augment) would not dissapear without warning and it would give us a new incentive to guide the Shadow where we want and keeping it there. And on top of that, the difference between tap/hold finally become relevant: while a fast Shadow allow to detonate more enemies faster during its lifetime, a slower Shadow is easier to maintain on a specific spot to keep debuffing the group of enemies we are shooting at.

With this suggestion, it would make the Death Harvest debuff more consistent and would give back some control to the players by making it easier and more intuitive to track and maintain.

Edited August 23 by Yulfan
Typo

[Nobodys-Perfect]

With his prime release I finally bothered to make a proper build for Sevagoth, (Two warframe mod pages AND an exalted is extremely high build cost in forma for what looked like low reward made me just ignore him until his prime) and I've got to say his shadow is extremely clunky and not that satisfying to use, particularly as a revival mechanic. I find I'd rather just use the operator focus school revive I'm used to and consider to be more effective than be forced to use the shadow. Passive is a therefore a complete net negative in my book.

To boil it down, the movement feels way worse and slower than just playing a warframe, and this is not good at all for the enjoyment factor of something melee focused. As a direct melee option you want to be strong, the movement NEEDS to be effective. It's half of the equation of getting melee to work. Obviously the intent is to use shadow's ability to drag enemies to you and use your rush as a gap closer, but both of these abilities seem extremely middling. If I could subsume airburst or larva onto the shadow I probably would, and find it much more effective than what it has right now.  

I could maybe fix shadows unenjoyable movement somewhat with parkour speed shards, but that seems like a terrible band aid. The main reason it doesn't work for me is the melee stance the shadow uses, it's animations, feel decidedly not fluid. Needless flourishes that lock you in place for seconds at a time and don't actually make for an effective fighting style when compared to actual melee choices. Emphasis on form over function in the stance.

The forward lunge ability being ineffective is a huge detriment, I would strongly consider just making the shadow faster and more mobile and giving it a completely different ability in this slot. It's fickle to the point of being frustrating when trying to revive with it especially, and fixed distance forward rushes are probably my least favored type of ability in Warframe generally, this is one of the worst offenders.

Right now I'm just helminthing over Sevagoth's 4, which is frankly wild and not what I expected to be doing. His augs make him powerful enough that using the shadow is unnecessary to excel with him, which is nice, because the shadow unfortunately feels like a gimmick that's fine for maybe one or two missions before you realize it's neither fun or effective. Needs a rework and some thorough changes, because just using my conventional melee choices on Sevagoth himself seems better, easier, and more enjoyable than bothering to shift into the sluggish shadow mode with a terrible melee stance. 

Would you believe I fused some purple melee shards to boost the shadow up, and then decided to remove them and just.. not bother using the damn thing at all? I play a lot of melee in WF and I enjoy it as a playstyle. Sevagoth's shadow really just feels like it failed to grasp anything it needed to be an enjoyable melee option outside of just "it has high damage potential." Which for an exalted option, on a resource timer, is definitely bare minimum.

Edited August 24 by Nobodys-Perfect