[Ash] Revamping Suggestions

[MoonZapdos]

I've been playing Warframe for nearly a year now. I've collected every Warframe in the game (except for Excalibur Prime) and of all the Warframes, the one I've least played is Ash. I am part of a large Moon clan, and from everyone I've played with, this seems to be the case as well. Now let's see what is it that makes Ash a bad Warframe.

 

GRIPES

 

* Whatever Ash does, another Warframe does better;

* Ash has absolutely no team utility;

* Even if the developers' initial intentions were to make him a stealthy frame, there is no place for stealth in current teamplay.

 

Now this is the Feedback forum, and I'm not just here to rant on how poor of a frame Ash is. I'm here to suggest on how to improve the Warframe, and polish it so it may finally have a place in group content. To meet that goal, I'll be reviewing each of Ash's abilities, and what could be done to address them.

 

SHURIKEN

 

* Costs 25 Power to use;

* Fires two 500 Slash damage projectiles that automatically seek out targets.

 

Problems

 

* Most of the time you find yourself wanting to take out one target rather than two, and it takes the same amount of energy to target one than targetting two;

* The automatic target tracking system results in inconsistency with headshots and sometimes the projectiles getting blocked by walls and other environmental objects.

 

Proposed Solution

 

* Power cost remains the same;

* Fires a single shuriken, dealing 1000 Slash damage;

* The trajectory is controlled by the crosshair (no auto-targetting), allowing for consistency with headshots.

 

SMOKE SCREEN

 

* Costs 35 Power to use;

* Ash is rendered invisible for a 8 second period.

 

Problems

 

* Loki's Invisibility has a longer duration and shorter cast animation.

 

Proposed Solution

 

Here's where it gets interesting. As I've mentioned at the start of the post, Ash has absolutely no team utility. With my revision of Smoke Screen, I hope to somehow change this. For this purpose, I offer two alternatives.

 

Alternative A

 

* Costs 50 Power to use;

* Ash and all nearby allies are invisible for a 8 second period.

 

Alternative B

 

* Costs 50 Power to use;

* Ash is rendered invisible for a 8 second period, creating a stationary smoke cloud. Allies standing within the stationary smoke cloud are rendered untargettable by gunfire.

 

TELEPORT

 

* Costs 25 Power to use;

* Teleports Ash in front of the selected target.

 

Problems

 

* Ash is teleported to the target's front, leaving him vulnerable;

* Pretty much a Switch Teleport without the swap component (lack of uniqueness).

 

Solution

 

* Costs 25 Power to use;

* Ash teleports to the target's back, instead of front;

* If used on an enemy, now stuns it for a brief moment, allowing Ash to perform a stealth attack.

 

BLADE STORM

 

* Costs 100 Power to use;

* Fifteen targets are selected within the initial target's area and dealt 2000 damage each.

 

Problems

 

* Blade Storm takes an obscenely long time to complete;

* Target selection being based on proximity to initial target makes for wasted Blade Storm usage on several occasions;

* Ash is unable to act while the skill is in progress.

 

Solution

 

* Costs 100 Power to use;

* Ash creates 3 Shadow Clones of himself, who spread out within an area around his current position and inflict 2000 damage up to 15 targets.

 

CONCLUSION

 

I know that my post is long-winded, but I honestly hope that one day all Warframes can be viable in high-level play. With this, I hope that Ash too, can be considered when playing in a team. Criticism is welcome, so feel free to reply to this post.

Edited March 18, 2014 by MoonZapdos

[(PSN)PD_33]

Teleport needs to be changed to teleport behind the target and use both of his weapons in a melee attack.

[cloudyDev]

I agree that Ash needs work, but he was made to be a viable warframe for Solo. Smoke screen should remain in a similar state, but all his other abilities would not be hurt from an overhaul.

 

:D

 

Glad to see the community doing something about Ash (besides the other 50,000 Ash revamp threads).

[kaboomonme]

 

Proposed Solution

 

* Power cost remains the same;

* Fires a single shuriken, dealing 1000 Slash damage;

* The trajectory is controlled by the crosshair (no auto-targetting), allowing for consistency with headshots.

 

I'm guessing you started playing later, but this is practically the same as pre-rework Ash (though it wasn't much of a rework to begin with).

The problem people had with this skill is that the projectile-based crosshair aiming was terribad and 25 energy wasn't worth that 1000 damage. It was pure damage back then, so 1000 slash damage will be even MORE lackluster than it was before, even with 2.5k headshot damage.

As it stands now though, Ash's Shuriken is still a strange and out-of-place skill, that much I agree with. It looks cool though.

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The rest of the changes I'm okay with. They are not so much as a HUGE rework, but they are some changes that can only do more good than harm. (That is, not accounting for the huge amount of glitches they will probably bring along with them.)

Edited March 18, 2014 by kaboomonme

[Cwierz]

Teleport needs free aiming.

Shuriken should act sort of like the smart pistol from titanfall, where it can target a high amount of grunts with a charge time, and upon release can execute them.

Edited March 18, 2014 by Cwierz

[LukeAura]

The Problem with the 'Assassin' archetype being applied to Warframe is that it just doesn't really work with the more horde oriented gameplay.

Turning Shuriken into single target makes it worse. The only thing it has going for it over the likes of Fireball and Freeze is that it can reliable hit two targets as opposed to fairly reliably hitting one. 

To apply the idea of an Assassin to Warframe you need to tweak Ash so that he becomes incredibly effective at moving between and dispatching small clusters of enemies at a time, as opposed to just one. 

His Shurikens need to be a high damage burst form of Null Star. 500 damage amongst 4-5 Shurikens, power strength affected perhaps with Bleed procc or another form of debilitation. 

Teleport already has a stun, but it needs a range increase to hit multiple targets, perhaps slowing them as well and giving Ash an aggro reset. 

Smokescreen just needs some team utility. What you suggest works pretty well.

Bladestorm I would prefer to see becoming a player controlled series of chained strikes. 



 

[Cwierz]

The Problem with the 'Assassin' archetype being applied to Warframe is that it just doesn't really work with the more horde oriented gameplay.

Turning Shuriken into single target makes it worse. The only thing it has going for it over the likes of Fireball and Freeze is that it can reliable hit two targets as opposed to fairly reliably hitting one. 

To apply the idea of an Assassin to Warframe you need to tweak Ash so that he becomes incredibly effective at moving between and dispatching small clusters of enemies at a time, as opposed to just one. 

I agree with this.

His Shurikens need to be a high damage burst form of Null Star. 500 damage amongst 4-5 Shurikens, power strength affected perhaps with Bleed procc or another form of debilitation. 

I agree with this. In order to fit in, it needs to be an effective way to deal with small squads.

 

Teleport already has a stun, but it needs a range increase to hit multiple targets, perhaps slowing them as well and giving Ash an aggro reset. 

It needs free-aiming more then anything. Free aiming is what can allow ash to fuffil a unique niche, and allows for the "assassin" playstyle in this game to function at baseline

Just giving it that ability does nothing, besides put ash in danger. You could accomplish the same thing by simply using smokescreen. Not many tiles are big enough to warrant you going through a teleport that is so clunky

 

To add on to this, its animations needs to barely exist. As in, the shortest animations in the entire game. 

Smokescreen just needs some team utility. What you suggest works pretty well.

As a side note, it could do with enemies not being able to target through the smoke until they have passed through, but I don't know if that could be game-breaking in certain scenarios.

Bladestorm I would prefer to see becoming a player controlled series of chained strikes. 

Provided they become significantly faster, I wouldn't mind.

 

Replies in body

Edited March 18, 2014 by Cwierz

[LukeAura]

Replies in body

Thanks for the feedback. Free aiming is a pretty good idea, but it's not going to bring the direct/intended usage of Teleport out so I prefer to leave it out of my recommendations for him. I have nothing against it though and it would give him a lot more flexibility. 

And yeah Blade Storm would also need a speed increase. But I think that might be doable from more streamlined animations. 

Putting control of it in with the player helps it negate that slow feeling by keeping the player doing something, and since enemies tend to come in consistent droves, another nuke doesn't necessarily have to immediately invalidate Bladestorm in this fashion.

[sewens]

I main ash because this game is easy.

 

But here is what I think.

Edited March 18, 2014 by sewens

[seren77]

As someone who is just leveling Ash , think his 20 now, I can't see much use for any of his spells accept stealth, I almost have all the warframes now and poor Ash is in most need of love .

 

To the OP I like idea for revamping no 4, and the ability to stealth team mates would be nice too, though can you imagine how much damage an invisible hysteric Valkyr would be doing.

[Apochron]

There's an interesting glitch with Ash's Blade Storm that's been around for a while and could be expanded upon; when used under high lag the Blade Storm animation will skip, but Ash still walk around with his blades out. If you get close to an enemy in this state, the Stealth Attack prompt pops up- do so and instead of the Stealth Attack, Ash uses one of his Blade Storm attacks,

 

Some old pictures from the last time it happened to me.

 

 

 

So why not make it intentional? Blade Storm becomes a duration-based buff. When active, Ash goes into "assassinate mode" or some such when his blades come out, his movement speed increases, and he loses use of his weapons. Whenever he gets close to an enemy, attacking will trigger a Blade Storm finisher dealing X damage, based on skill level/Intensify/Blind Rage. This would allow someone to disperse their Blade Storm over a large group of enemies or focus their attacks on a single heavy target.