Ash. Ninja. Assassin. Fear Personafied?

[Shuuro]

For those of you who don't enjoy reading a long wall of text, I'll grant you the courtesy and put the TL;DR at the top.

TL;DR: I feel like Ash should have a bit more utility to his abilities, and have more flexibility to his persona, being the proclaimed "Ninja Frame" In a space Ninja shooter.


Shuriken: Make the Shuriken's stagger/stun. Add a 25%(ish) damage increase/armor decrease (one or the other). The debuff will not stack on the tartget. This will ensure that skill will somewhat scale.


Smoke Screen: The only thing I would add to this is the possibility of a group stealth in a rather small AoE area around the caster, smaller than Warcry or Rhino's Roar. Other skills do this better unintentionally anyways.


Teleport: Let this become free aim, Nova can already perform a 'spamable' free aim teleport that EVERYONE in the team can use, I don't see why Ash, shouldn't be able to. Add in a small AoE area stun at the target location, as well as giving Ash a 3 second (NOT effeted by mods) increase in melee damage.


Blade Storm: Two ways I can suggest improving this skill:

1) Keep it's long durration but in turn, increase it's damage, as well as giving each target a worthy debuff because of said long durration. Example. Bleed+Viral debuff.

2) Take a page from Valkyr, equip the unique Assassin blades and go toe to toe with the enimies with unique attacks, the blades will be razor sharp with toxic venom, ensure chances of Bleed and Viral procs, this will let the skill scale well due to proc chances deminishing enemy health in higher leveled encounters.



For those of you willing to read, first off, thank you. Second, my mindset on the whole.. Ninja frame thing.


Ash. The 'Ninja Frame' or "Stealth Frame" of the more recent(?) Space Ninja shooter genre. Now, to be quite frank, I may be somewhat spoiled, but, when I hear the word "Ninja", or "Stealth", what comes to mind are things like.. Highly mobile, extreme acrobatics, stealth, assassinations, trickery/deception, as well as other titles like, the obvious; Assassins Creed, Ninja Gaiden, Mark of the Ninja, hell, I'm even pretty confident in saying Metal Gear Rising did pretty good with the whole Ninja Cyborg concept. These are to name some when I think of Ninja's and/or Stealth. All in all; A Ninja is a deadly force to be reckoned with.

If we nitpick at these, most of this is already here. Highly mobile? Acrobatics? Ash is already a fast frame, and parkour is an in-game element. Great. Stealth? Smoke Screen provides that, not in the way 'most' of us would like though. Assassinations? Sure, if you'd like anything above level 10 to turn around and ***** slap the white out of your eyes.


Ash is, by far, not a "bad" frame. We can all agree to this, but he just doesn't seem to have much going for him. He has his stealth, which is shared by Loki, as well as these endless Ash Vs. Loki war debates which get increasingly annoying. (and by all means, leave him out of this discussion as 'much' as possible, please). As for his skills, well, let's nitpick at those as well.


Shuriken; At best, it can kill, what? Level 15-, or maybe even Level 10- enemies? Beyond that, it's only use I see is using it to resist a knock down (which Smoke Screen already performs, so there goes that benefit).

 

Smoke Screen; Honestly, there isn't much I can say bad about this. It has a decent AoE stun upon cast, resists knockdown upon casting, and gives stealth. Stealth time given does feel rather short at times, but hey, it's stealth, let's just pray your party members don't follow behind you like they do for me, and let those napalms and bombers hit you ANYWAYS. Good times.

 

Teleport; This may have been fixed to have that flip animation to become much faster, as well as stunning the target, which is by all means, great, but if you so much as use teleport with another heavy around, shockwave moa, or everyone's personal favorite, the shield lancers. The only thing that's going to get screwed, is your Ash, on the ground, by a hail of bullets.

 

Blade Storm; Yes yes, let's argue about how this skill does a solid 2000 damage to anything. Let's also argue that enemies in the higher area's have about 20x this much health. Go ahead, use 20 bladestorms, thats if your team doesn't kill everything, your team doesn't die, the objective doesn't die, or if your energy pool doesn't run out. As much as we LOVE to see this skill, it's just.. bad. I'll admit, I love using this in Apollodorus or other really low leveled areas. It just feels nice to pull off, but thats it, it feels nice, it's a cosmetic skill, nothing more. You could probably give a warframe the ability to do Thriller or something and have an AoE kill streak, and people would love it, because it'd be visually amuzing. None the less, it'd be pretty stupid, and thats kind of what my feelings are leaning towards with this skill. What is the point? In what point in time, would you rather use this, instead of a well timed, AoE stun Smoke Screen, and just get the hell out? In a situation where you're swarmed by heavies? Go ahead, if they're low level, maybe it'll work, but then again, anything works at low level, my unranked Lato does. Now let's say this is higher level, 30, or even 40's. Not only will the swarm of heavies you're Blade Storming be tickled by your attack, but as soon as your done, the most likely outcome is an instant knock down, and bullet hail. G'night Ash, see you next respawn.


In Ash's current state, he just doesn't feel like the proclaimed Ninja/Stealth frame. The words of the Lotus herself:

(found here:

); Ash is "lethal and elusive", "an unseen and deadly force", "his effects on the battlefield are felt by all". The only part here that seems to be slightly true, is the unseen and deadly force, and thats only if your using stealth melee on enemies that can be downed easily via said measures. Although I do say this before witnessing Melee 2.0, so I do have great expectations that this will make the statement "an unseen and deadly force" true. Lethal and Elusive? Not quite. Does he have a great effect on the battlfield? Blade Stor--- Oh. M.Prime, Stomp, other generic&famous AoE CC's have been used, everythings dead or will be taken care of before that happens.


Ash has, what feels to be, a great potential. His style is saught after by a large group of players, it's just that right now, it feels like he can't repay his audience in kind. A lot of other frames can unintentionally do what he already has, and succeeds in doing it on a 'much' larger scale. So, this will be the proposed improvements that will be suggested, feedback (constructive feedback, if you could?) would be appritiated.



Shuriken: First and foremost; at least make Shuriken have the innate ability to stun/heavy stagger. This would give it some scaling ability as it would help slightly in mobs, or for those times when a heavy is just really raining down the bullets on you. Secondly; let's add a target debuff to the skill. This only targets 2 enemies at max, so it's not like an AoE chain deal like Volts shock. Let's call this debuff, armor crack (Just.. bare with me here). As you debuff the target with armor crack, the target will now be sustainable to say, either an aditional 25%(or less?) more damage, or even an armor reducing effect (the target debuff will NOT stack if used continously). This will ensure that the Shuriken used will be able to scale well, even if it's initial damage output becomes unnoticable as the levels start scaling higher. This is supposed to be a "spinning blade of death", let's try and make it that way?


Smoke Screen: Well, what could we possibly do to make smoke screen more viable? Honestly, it's great the way it is currently, if there could be only ONE extra thing added, it would be a small AoE stealth around the area of the cast, the cast would be smaller in range of Warcry and even Roar. Would this be overpowered you ask? No, no not really. This is already done by other frames on a much larger scale, not in the exact same way, but extremely similar. We're looking at you, pro Excalibur users, and your ability to cast Radial Blind in length of a full room, and litteritly having everything in a CC lock. The same could be said by Rhino's Stomp. A huge range, everything is CC'd, nearly all incomming damage is stopped. Now what do these have in common? They don't have be anywhere near their teammate to be used efficiently. Smoke Screen, on the other hand, will have us only cloaking the ones around us. This will give Ash a slight team utility, and would scale even more for those who have great co-ordinating skills with their teammates. Initially, those who mic to their teammates or clan members will surely find a great use of this, hopefully giving Ash a welcoming hand in team play.


Teleport: A lot of suggestions have been made for this, and it might sound like it's being repeated, but let's face it, some of these suggestions are good. There are three things (possibly only the first two being used) that would make this skill better. First; make this a free aim teleport, the mechanics for this are already in place are they not? Nova is capable of spamming and summoning a free aim teleporting portal for the ENTIRE team to use, it wouldn't be unfair to give Ash the same would it? Secondly; upon teleport let there be a small AoE Smoke Screen effect, without the stealth, this will stun enemies around the teleport location, ensuring that Ash will not immedietly be knocked down or killed upon teleporting. Thirdly, upon teleport, give Ash a three second melee damage buff (durration and power NOT effected by mods), Ash is supposed to be "lethal and elusive". Lethaly, can be figuritive but thats being saved for the Blade Storm change. Elusive? Being able to teleport and have a CC effect attatched to it sounds as if it would fit pretty well with that line.


Blade Storm: Our Cosmetic skill, the eye candy ability, that skill that will dominate low levels and nothing else. There are two ways this could probably be fixed.

1) We could keep it's cosmetic look, although faster because it would still take too long, but add in a debuff to the targets that survive, perhaps a heavy bleeding and viral debuff to eat away at the health of the targets, base damage would also probably need a boost in damage.

2) The second suggestion, and the one I would personally prefer, would be taking a page out of Valkyr's abilities. Let Blade Storm, for a set durration, allow you to use Ash's personal hidden blades. These blades would be leathaly sharp, and tainted by a toxic venom, ensuring that bleeding and viral procs would be easily atained via using the blades. This will help chip at the health of higher leveled enemies as the bleed and viral procs would having a sustained health drop. The great part about this ability, is it would mix in with the others. As these would be a custom melee weapon, and Ash, being the Ninja/Stealth frame, Assassination using these would also provide benifit to the player. Using these would allow Assassinations of MUCH higher damage output to be done on unalerted enemies (even if the alarm has been triggered, so long as they aren't alert to anyone else, doing their routine AI walking around, etc). This would mean combinations of Teleport and/or Smoke Screen would highly increase the damage of both the melee aspect and Assassination aspect of this Ult. As a team utility, this would mean that Ash could directly target high threat enemies, and either Assassinate them, and/or melee them procing bleeds/virals to decrease at their health. After all, Ash's effects are supposed to be felt on the battlefield by all? Right Tenno?


To close up on this. Ash's theme has a great potential. It could be so much more than it is right now. As someone who got into Warframe and decided to main Ash, well, I just hope in the future he gains some saught after attention.

 

 

I appritiate any and all feedback, I'm not really one to post forums, but these were one of those moments that I really felt that I needed to express my aspect on a certain issue.

 

 

Edit: Thank you everyone for your feedback so far. For those that have much love for the Animations of BladeStorm, I didn't exactly have in mind to have them completely scrapped. In fact, I had in my mind that these animations could even be used as the new Assassinations of the Dual Assassin blade Ult I have suggested. In my mind. I have an Image of Ash Rushing through a door, seeing enemies down below him, free target teleporting down to them 'causing an AoE stun effect, and quickly dispatching them through melee or Ult Assassination/Melee.

 

I can understand that people might have a really bad impression of how the Ult would work if it was designed after Valkyrs, but just think for a moment. What if it was done, 'right'? An Ash that moves around the field with Lethal Blades at his wrists, able to combo/counter effectively thanks to melee 2.0? Getting into melee range wouldn't be difficult thanks to the aided abilities of Stealth and Teleport. Ash should be able to really take in the role of High Risk High Reward pay off, being in constant danger, but in turn have his damage output and maneuverability high enough to keep him in and out of combat.

 

Some might think stealth would negate this high risk aspect, but stealth is not damage invulnerability, it helps us avoid detection. There are many instances where, if stealth runs out and we're still in the midst of battle surrounded by enemies, things wont go well for us if we get knocked down or crowed controlled by a heavy, lancer or anything else with the ability to stun us. I've had similar instances happen when I used Valkyrs ult, and she has invulnerability during her ult, Ash, will not. Ash will need the aid of teleport and stealth to keep him going.

Edited March 5, 2014 by Shuuro

[ROSING]

I dig most of these changes, though I believe they've worked far too hard on those blade storm animations to give up on them now, and plus they're really freaking cool. I like your idea for increasing the damage and having some bleed/viral proc on them, it balances it out because it targets less people and this would give it more utility for endgame.

 

In addition to your shuriken buffs I think they should also do punch through as well to add just a bit more CC to it. If stealth ever becomes a viable option this ability should be silent too.

 

Love all three teleport ideas and the team smoke screen buff, I find them both creative and sensible.

 

Ash is my favorite character, and I too believe there is a higher potential that he can obtain, though he is a fairly good and reliable warframe as it stands.

[OptimumBow0]

There's really nothing to add on or criticize; it's pretty much perfect.

 

*Video for added corroboration*

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Edited January 27, 2014 by OptimumBow0

[asiveni]

To me ash will always look like a bug with assassins creed hidden blades.

[KijaJouteh]

Yes, all of this, but honestly, there is A LOT other frames that need to be reworked, Ash is probably near the bottom of that list. These changes are gold, nice first post, and a +1 from me.

[(PSN)friedricetheman]

Maybe they can fix Blade Storm to scale with the amount of damage you can do with your melee weapon.

 

For example, Blade Storm deals X damage (where X is the critical damage of your melee weapon) to each target.

 

This way, it would actually scale to higher level use and makes Smoke Screen (gives melee bonus) + Blade Storm combo deadly (uses melee as base damage).

[MegaSnail]

Amazingly thought through.

[Kyphe]

NO to the bladestorm idea, that is bad enough with valkyr, all bladestorm needs is to be faster!

 

Bladestorm is the sniper of the ults, no one else can target units from so far away, on a mobile defense I just stand up high and can target any group anywhere in the room rinse and repeat and end the mission with well over 60% of the total team damage done.

 

Teleport needs a fix as it is a waste, I would prefer it to cycle to each of my teammates each time you hit the button you instantly go to the next teammate on the list no matter where they are on the map, no one could run ahead of you, and you could revive anyone.

 

Then get rid of shuriken all together and replace it with bladeslash, a single target bladestorm type attack.

 

Smoke bomb should not make you invisible but make all enemies in a good radius blind and confused for good CC

Edited January 30, 2014 by Kyphe

[Deicul]

OP, I agree with most of your ideas, but I'd like to add one little suggestion. Red/Black should be made the default colour scheme for ash, since not all of us can afford colour packs.

Edited January 30, 2014 by Deicul

[Amistyrja]

Blade Storm inflicting Slash's Bleeding procs to help it scale against higher levels? Take my +1

[ASH_PRIME]

Wow a huge post that's actually worth reading!

Nice ideas ninja

Shuriken: I really like the 'armor cracking' idea, I'd also like for its damage to be an equal 33% Slash/Puncture/Impact so it would be useful on different enemy types, also makes sense, getting hit with a Shuriken WOULD do all three types

Teleport: ANY change would be a good change for this sad ability, it COULD be so awesome but its currently pretty broken especially the bad targeting, a 'quick fix' would be to DOUBLE its range instantly,

Personally my idea [that I have put forward many times] is to keep it as a targeted move but make it have LONG range,
make it a true teleport so it can target and go thru boxes/barriers/walls [especially when targeting team mates on other levels/other rooms]
and give it the ability to do a jumping style melee attack during the 'flip' animation IF you want to [by pushing E to do so during the 'flip' animation],
these changes would make Teleport useful and flexible in many situations without being OP

Smoke Bomb : A team AOE [for those CLOSE] to Ash makes sense and would make Ash more 'team friendly' a great idea

Bladestorm : I think too much effort has gone into this ability for it to be majorly changed, also a lot of us hardcore Ash fans Love it..
So..debuff is a great idea, and make it scale! 
Currently its a great low level ability but only useful at higher levels to 'take a breather' and recharge ya shields [still pretty useful]

thx!




 

[madhatter10]

Your Idea of changing the ultimate to make it similar to valkyrs sounds cool.

Let's take it a bit further:
 

I liked the concept in league of legends of toggle ultimates and I think with it, Ash could become more deadly and at the same time, keep his stealthiness. It would require a bit more work than your suggested changes, but well. It's only an idea^^

 

His ult. would basically toggle between stealth and a bruiser kind of gameplay:

Toggle: Seek/Destroy

Seek would be Ash like we know him now. It focuses more on stealth play. His teleport blinks him to the maximum range and requires no target. His Shurikens apply a dot. His smoke screen remains unchanged.

 

Destroy:

In this mode, Ash abandons his stealth abilities and instead focuses more on quickly killing his targets. He gains a bit more move speed and more stamina. Since Ash is a bit squishy I don't really know how we could increase his survivabillity without stealth. Invicibility is out of the question as it doesn't fit ash. Suggestions are appreciated.

 

His first ability "shuriken" is replaced with "death mark". They nearly function the same but death mark has a bit lower dmg and instead of a dot, it marks the target which now does x % less dmg. Originally thought of making death mark a dmg amplifier but we already have sonar, roar and m.prime. So this can be used to cripple heavy targets instead.

 

Smoke Screen is replaced with "stun bomb". Instead of his stealth he now has the ability to aoe stun enemies in a big radius for x seconds. Without stealth Ash is in far greater danger than before. This skill should function to buy Ash more time. It also gives him a bit more utility.

 

Teleport is replaced with backstab. I like Bladestorms animations and they can be recycled for this skill. Backstab is basically a single target bladestorm. Ash blinks behind the target and inflicts high dmg on it. Optional they could recieve bonus dmg if the target is affected by death mark. The target is ragdolled for a short time, so they don't directly punch ash in the face after he backstabbed. During the animation he is invincible. The animations are short but still pretty long in a heated fight. Enemies who focus Ash could kill him quickly during backstab.

 

To make the best use of his skills, they need to have low energy cost as switching between the modes is essential and switching alone shouldn't completely drain his energy.

The original skills already have fairly low costs, so they could stay that way. The ult should be around 50. Not to high but also not to low so you have to decide when it's best to switch.

For his alternate skills:

Death Mark: 25

Backstab: 50/75

Stun Bomb: 35/50

 

That's my rough suggestion of a rework. Now you can tear it apart xD

[bodyshk]

the only thing i believe ash should get is the free target teleport. Other than that, it looks fine to me. Blade storm might be slow, but 2k serrated blade damage unmodded is not that little

[BlueSabre]

What if whenever Ash teleported to an enemy, he stealth attacked said enemy, I feel like this change would be enough to balance out teleport plus the synergy with the smoke screen damage multiplier, yes please. 

[(PSN)GR13V4NC3]

I, basically, had some of these same ideas in another post. So you get a +1 for that. Check it out and let me know. Read the replies as well. Thanks!

 

P.S. I feel exactly the same. Ash is such a great frame and concept and he has been completely overlooked/left out when it comes to the love/buff hammer of the DEvs. He has such great potential and it is a shame to not keep the most ninja of space ninjas up to date and useful. I struggle with the idea of Forma-ing 2 of his precepts slots cause they are utterly useless (and, in truth, shuriken is following suit). For lack of a better reference, Ash should be the Warframe equivalent of Shinobi/Ninja Gaiden and could even benefit from paraphrasing some of their moves. I am also none too happy that the next prime frame will be Loki or Rhino, as if there aren't enough of them running around already!

 

https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/154509-ash-frame-update-ideas/

Edited February 4, 2014 by (PS4)GR13V4NC3

[Zephyric_Reaper]

I very much like these ideas. Except shuriken would -still- be horrible. 

 

As for blade storm, I figured it would be ebtter if instead of being a delayed, radial, kill stuff within radius, (like all other ultimates) could be more of a choose 5 random targets, mark them, and jump to them to deal damage to units around that target. 

Much more interestin to play with and certainlly cuts down the endless animation. 

[(PSN)CrazyDeadPerson]

I'm on ps4 and I do t know if any thing has changed butt ash no lo ger gets the melle damage buff will in smoke screen I would ha e to disagree with him not being a bad frame tho he is currently in the bottom 3 along with valkyr and oberon all of them have the exact same problem no endgame playability. I'm srry guys my phone isn't txtin well these days

Edited February 4, 2014 by (PS4)CrazyDeadPerson

[tatcher]

Yes, we Ash players need this. :(

[mcKentucky]

This is my suggestion.

 

ASH

 

1st: Shuriken Teleport - 25 energy - Ash throws a fast moving shuriken. When it hits surface, Ash will instantly teleport to it. Deals 25/50/75/100 slash damage when it hits enemy. - Affected by power strength and range.

 

2nd: Intuition - 50 energy - Enemies within 20/25/30/35 meters will be added to Ash's mini-map for 10/12/16/18 seconds. Affected by power range and duration.

 

3rd: Blade Strike - 25 energy - Ash teleports towards the target, and strikes with his hidden blade. Deals 750/1000/1500/2000 slash damage. Affected by power strength and range.

 

4th: Smoke Screen - 100 energy - Drops a smoke bomb that lingers smoke, obscures area, and forcing enemies away. Ash's special armor absorbs the smoke rendering him invisible. 5 meters wide for 8/10/12/15 seconds. Affected by power range and duration.

[cloudyDev]

I feel the same way about Ash. And what was DE expecting? A ninja frame that everyone wants to play, but they limit him to solo play because of a slow moving alt, and no utility/ team building skills. DE you should have seen it coming. Since Warframe is a co-op game all frames should have at least one team oriented ability to make them remotely useful because nobody solo's all the time.

[(PSN)GR13V4NC3]

Your Idea of changing the ultimate to make it similar to valkyrs sounds cool.

Let's take it a bit further:

 

I liked the concept in league of legends of toggle ultimates and I think with it, Ash could become more deadly and at the same time, keep his stealthiness. It would require a bit more work than your suggested changes, but well. It's only an idea^^

 

His ult. would basically toggle between stealth and a bruiser kind of gameplay:

Toggle: Seek/Destroy

Seek would be Ash like we know him now. It focuses more on stealth play. His teleport blinks him to the maximum range and requires no target. His Shurikens apply a dot. His smoke screen remains unchanged.

 

Destroy:

In this mode, Ash abandons his stealth abilities and instead focuses more on quickly killing his targets. He gains a bit more move speed and more stamina. Since Ash is a bit squishy I don't really know how we could increase his survivabillity without stealth. Invicibility is out of the question as it doesn't fit ash. Suggestions are appreciated.

 

His first ability "shuriken" is replaced with "death mark". They nearly function the same but death mark has a bit lower dmg and instead of a dot, it marks the target which now does x % less dmg. Originally thought of making death mark a dmg amplifier but we already have sonar, roar and m.prime. So this can be used to cripple heavy targets instead.

 

Smoke Screen is replaced with "stun bomb". Instead of his stealth he now has the ability to aoe stun enemies in a big radius for x seconds. Without stealth Ash is in far greater danger than before. This skill should function to buy Ash more time. It also gives him a bit more utility.

 

Teleport is replaced with backstab. I like Bladestorms animations and they can be recycled for this skill. Backstab is basically a single target bladestorm. Ash blinks behind the target and inflicts high dmg on it. Optional they could recieve bonus dmg if the target is affected by death mark. The target is ragdolled for a short time, so they don't directly punch ash in the face after he backstabbed. During the animation he is invincible. The animations are short but still pretty long in a heated fight. Enemies who focus Ash could kill him quickly during backstab.

 

To make the best use of his skills, they need to have low energy cost as switching between the modes is essential and switching alone shouldn't completely drain his energy.

The original skills already have fairly low costs, so they could stay that way. The ult should be around 50. Not to high but also not to low so you have to decide when it's best to switch.

For his alternate skills:

Death Mark: 25

Backstab: 50/75

Stun Bomb: 35/50

 

That's my rough suggestion of a rework. Now you can tear it apart xD

That is an interesting idea. It's kinda like fighting games where the character will change stances and have a completely different set of skills. I don't know how they would implement such a move, but that's what the DEvs do. I was trying to keep it as simple changes using already built-in game mechanics, which is why I use Valkyr's Hysteria as an example, cause with some tweaking it's exactly what Ash needs and a completely new move from the original. I also updated my own separate post with this and more. Thanks for the kudos :)

[Hrodgrim]

Instead of plain bleeding, why not have it percentage based?

Maybe 1/16th of the enemy's max health every tick?

[Zakmonster]

Instead of having Bladestorm be limited by targets, have it do a set number of attacks during it's long animation. For instance, maxed out Bladestorm attacks 15 targets, doing 2000 damage (unmodded) to each enemy hit. New Bladestorm will make 15 attacks to any number of targets in a specific area (15 targets max, obviously). This means that when enemies are low level and get killed with 1 Bladestorm attack, the skill becomes multi-target. But at higher levels, when enemies have upwards of 10k HP, then Bladestorm can be a more focused attack on a few targets.

 

To prevent Bladestorm from just one-shotting bosses, limit the number of attacks that a single target can be hit by (5 attacks, for a total of 10k unmodded damage, or something).

[Draco208]

Ash's teleport should be changed into a free aim ability 

[LukeAura]

NO to the bladestorm idea, that is bad enough with valkyr, all bladestorm needs is to be faster!

 

Bladestorm is the sniper of the ults, no one else can target units from so far away, on a mobile defense I just stand up high and can target any group anywhere in the room rinse and repeat and end the mission with well over 60% of the total team damage done.

But does it make sense for it to be the sniper of ults? not really. ash's ult should be quick, close, and dirty. Give the sniper ult to someone who should be sniping, or providing ranged offense/defense.  

Valkyr's hysteria is flawed for a bunch of other reasons beyond design. Done right, it would be excellent. It's just not done right.