Pangea, The Earth 'frame Concept [With Art Concept]

[Kinperor]

Hey there,

 

I've had this concept for a earth 'frame for a while now, and I thought I may as well make a post about it. 

 

Name: Pangea. He is named after the original supercontinent, if you didn't know what "Pangea" referred to. I like that name because it has heft to it and refers to the biggest landmass our planet theoritically had. 

 

Appearance: Finally got around to making art for Pangea. See below.See this thread for extensive discussion (read, wall of text) about the art design. Note: The green thing covering the brownish area are meant to be energy stitch, I am not certain about that feature. Will probably try other stuff at some other point in time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Role: Tank with damage and CC. I'm not re-inventing the wheel here, the Earth element has a strong connotation with hardiness and tanks are the class archetypes with the most resistance. It's a trope I'm personally fond of. 

 

Stats: Stats wise, he will be similar to the other tanks in Warframe, unlike outlier Valkyr which solely depends on armor;

 

• Shield: 150 (450)

• Health: 100 (300)

• Armor: 155

• Speed: 0.95 (same as Saryn)

• Stamina: 80

• Polarity: 4 abilities, 1 tactic, 1 defense. 

• Aura: Defense.

 

Nothing surprising here, just your garden variety tanky-stats. I've put emphasis on shields because he will need that a lot with how he is played:

 

Abilities: As I said, he's a tank. My directing line of thought for him was  to give him CC and damage to lay down some rules, with the drawback that to deal damage he needs to take damage. 

 

• Boulder: You will agree with me, it's a basic skill. The mechanic of it is that Pangea will create a projectile before throwing it where he is aiming, and the projectile will fly to there with an arc, just like a grenade. And, again, just like a grenade it will explode on impact. The center of the explosion will proc blast 100% of the time on the enemies that happen to be caught, while the enemy at the periphery will be dealt less damage and be staggered by an Impact proc 100% of the time. Size and damage of the explosion is determined by the bonus armor that Pangea receives with it's 2 (see second ability), it consumes a % of the current bonus armor. Leveling the ability makes the used % go up (so higher level makes you consume more armor but deal more damage). Flavor text: Pangea forms a large and volatile projectile in his hand before hurling it, dealing damage and stunning enemies in a large area.

• Blotting (really not inspired for this one's name): Straight forward skill: Upon activating the skill, Pangea will absorb incoming projectiles and convert the damage into bonus armor to protect him or to use in his other abilities. The bonus armor only apply to health, but damage to shields do convert to bonus armor. It would work on Infested and laser weapon for consistency. Pangea's aggro priority increases when this ability is active. No cap on the bonus armor, the amount earned from damage scale directly with the damage taken. Leveling the mod increases the damage to armor conversion rate. Pangea still takes damage in this state. Pangea will suffer a slow debuff upon accumulating large quantities of armor (capped). Flavor text: Pangea taunts nearby enemies into attacking him, and for the duration of the skill, will converts damage into bonus armor that can be used in his other abilities.

• Landslide: Pangea brings up his arms before generating a lot of dense material (IE earth, armor, metal, whatever) on his forearms, he then smash the floor in front of him with both hands. Enemies hit directly by Pangea takes enormous damage from the attack. Enemies around the impact in a large-ish area will be blasted off their feet (think Rhino's previous 3) and enemies in a larger area will not take damage but will be staggered. Just like the first ability, this one scales off the bonus armor of Pangea, and leveling the ability will increase the armor consuption rate. Flavor text: PANGEA SMASH.

• Sandstorm: Consumes a large amount of bonus armor to kick off a sandstorm. The ability first deal one big chunk of damage (the first gust) and staggers the enemies hit by it. Then, the storm remains active for a period that scales off the bonus armor consumed to cast it. Enemies trapped in the storm will have their range severely shortened and will take damage over time. Duration and range have a cap, but damage doesn't. I'm debating whether to give a buff to allies within the storm or a debuff to the armor of the enemy inside the storm. Flavor text: Pangea cloaks himself and his allies in a protective sandstorm, which furiously damages and suppress the enemy caught within.

 

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That about cover up my concept. I'm somewhat second-guessing the 4 and 3. 3 is awfully similar to boulder, but I guess a significant range difference and activation mechanic would justify the presence of both. 4 I feel is in line for an ultimate and an earth frame, but it feels like I could find something more thematically strong. I definitely don't want to do an earthquake move since, well, Banshee already have one and it's kinda cliche regardless. I feel the 3 fullfill the 'earthquake' fantasy a bit already, without being a flat out copy or being dull. The slow self-debuff on 2 sounds un-fun to me, but part of me feels it's needed to balance a scaling potentially-infinite amount of armor. 

 

For clarification: Pangea still uses energy and has base damage for his skills. However, the bonus armor mechanic makes this frame a good candidate for a tank frame that doesn't rely on Blind Rage, kind of like Nova's AMD, whose damage potential is far greater than it's base damage implies. 

 

What I like about the mechanic based around bonus armor is that, through it, Pangea can choose to either deal lots of damage or be really resistant. Also, with the damage scaling directly from the damage he suffered, he can be relevant at any level. It feels to me that he could probably be on the OP-side with that kit, but his limitation in range (his 3 is CQC, his 1 is a lobbed projectile, 4 is an ult and thus somewhat excused) and dependency on taking damage will keep him in check. 

 

Thanks for reading, I don't know you personally but I can tell you're a pretty cool dude/dudess/person.  

Edited April 2, 2014 by Kinperor

[Irorone]

I like the use of "bonus armor" as a secondary resource for the skills since it means this frame wouldn't be a spam 4 type like nova or basically any other "caster" in the game.  One thing I'd like to point out though the bonus armor from blotting does it have a duration limit or max bonus armor cap?  If it doesn't it could be an overpowered skill in a defense or survival because (according to the wiki) if you get enough armor you become immune to damage.  Even though this is an earth tank he strikes me as more of a berserker since he gets in close, takes damage, and then uses armor gained from the damage to massacre a group of enemies.

Edited February 10, 2014 by Irorone

[Kinperor]

I like the use of "bonus armor" as a secondary resource for the skills since it means this frame wouldn't be a spam 4 type like nova or basically any other "caster" in the game.  One thing I'd like to point out though the bonus armor from blotting does it have a duration limit or max bonus armor cap?  If it doesn't it could be an overpowered skill in a defense or survival because (according to the wiki) if you get enough armor you become immune to damage.  Even though this is an earth tank he strikes me as more of a berserker since he gets in close, takes damage, and then uses armor gained from the damage to massacre a group of enemies.

 

Fair concerns.

 

First, as far as I envision it, there wouldn't be a duration limit to the bonus armor, but there would be a limit to the time where he can absorb more armor, and it wouldn't  have a quantity cap. The reason for the former is, I don't want every cast of Blotting to become a race against the clock to use as much abilities as possible, it should be stockpiled resources to be used at the best moment possible, or simply used to stay alive better. The reason for the latter (the no quantity limit), is that even with no limit, it would be very difficult to collect a large amount of armor. Basically, you would need to make sure you only take damage during the window of time where you can absorb damage, which cannot be kept up forever (unless you're abusing some energy restore pads) and at the same time protect either your air supply or the defense item. And really, even if you amassed an enormous amount of armor before dying and were able to use it, you would still use a % of it, so eventually you would bring it back down really quickly. Additionally, the speed debuff would (ideally) discourage people from using the armor solely for it's defensive purpose without ever getting rid of it. 

 

Second, I don't really think it has the tools of a Berserker frames: while his 2 and 3 are really strong and ensure his survival even at close range, he isn't fast, swordplay is only encouraged in the measure that one of his ability has a short range for maximum damage (can still be used from further away for CC). I mean, certainly it could be used like a Berserker frame, but I don't find it's kit to excel for that purpose. 

Edited February 10, 2014 by Kinperor

[Kinperor]

Bump for new image. 

 

Feel free to comment on the design if you'd like. I'll make a new thread to talk about the design further at some point.