Retune *all* The Frames! (11/19: Wildfire)

[theammostore]

I had an epiphany about Ash, but it would require dropping the Shuriken aspect entirely for something else and moving Teleport into its place.

 

Any debuff ideas?

 

Edit: Scratch that, it's a bit bizarre and would probably remove the "teleport anywhere" effect people want so much.

The problem with any sort of 'teleport anywhere' in this game is there's no indication of where you would end up. Unlike games that have this mechanic, there's no HUD element in place (and I doubt one would be created) to show you where you would go and whether or not you would actually get there. That's why, so far, every teleport in the game has some form of indicator. Ash has targettable entities, as does Loki, while Nova has her Wormhole tail. If we give Ash a free teleport, we'd need a permanent indicator to show us where we would go, so as to not slow it down and to keep it fast paced for the game. Way too much effort I'd say, when we have a team-based free aim teleport in the realm of Nova.

[Rakosta_Kai]

I've read your OP.

It's impressive.

I don't entirely agree with all of it, but it is sensible. If the devs take notice and implement I'm sure it would all get tuned for balance.

 

I actually posted some suggested changes to Ash, but it got very little traction on the forums...

He needs to offer utility badly and I like the "crit boost" idea you put forward.

I don't see Teleport being useful on the bar at all. Making it a secondary effect of Smokescreen and/or Shuriken was where I went with it.

[Oizen]

Excal is the only frame where I find all the abilities generally useful.

 

There are a lot of One Trick Ponies in this game that need desperate love.

Edited March 30, 2014 by Oizen

[Annon5150]

Yo should rename Acuostic Mine to Echo Chamber.

[Foxxar]

"You would end Hysteria with no shields and 1 HP" if you just mindlessly spam her super-mode, sure. If Warcry heals based on the amount of damage she deals AND her damage increases based on damage taken, however, the feedback loop will heal her for a substantial amount and work in tandem with Paralysis' CC to keep her alive. Higher risk (skill ceiling), higher reward (power ceiling).

 

I edited the OP for clarity on the Warcry healing though - her attacks don't heal the whole group, she merely gives everyone a buff to do that for themselves. Her rallying cry is intended to encourage players to use their melee attacks, and works in tandem with other melee damage buffs like Contagion and Speed.

I still would say no thanks. Its not really a skill ceiling, Its nerfing her into the ground and using 2 other abilities to counter for her nerf. Thats not hard to counter. Also healing outright and allowing teammates to heal themselves makes little difference. It just means she is less Oberon and more Trinity.

 

Now maybe if she took constant health damage in Hysteria when she isn't attacking that could work. That would mean she couldn't just pop her ult and become invincible. She attacks to heal herself, but if she isn't attacking then she is taking passive health damage. That would say berserker to me more than AOE heals, and ability spamming. If you use the ability with no one around you could knock yourself down because of the passive damage.

Edited March 30, 2014 by Foxxar

[LukeAura]

Now maybe if she took constant health damage in Hysteria when she isn't attacking that could work. That would mean she couldn't just pop her ult and become invincible. She attacks to heal herself, but if she isn't attacking then she is taking passive health damage. That would say berserker to me more than AOE heals, and ability spamming. If you use the ability with no one around you could knock yourself down because of the passive damage.

That sounds more like a dark knight from my experience. Mixes of self healing and self damaging skills?

Which would be pretty cool actually.

 

[Archwizard]

That sounds more like a dark knight from my experience. Mixes of self healing and self damaging skills?

Which would be pretty cool actually.

 

Or some kind of witch or warlock. Damage yourself to improve your damage or regain energy, that sort.

[Ttariel]

The ideas are not bad, but like you see. The better option to go for a self balance like Zephyr has.

 

I have some ideas for Volt 

 

Shock can stay this way

Speed and Electric shiled will be the core Skills as they turn the frame into what he is

Jesus mode will stay this way

 

So my idea is that using electric shield and speed in combos will give you special effects. 

 

Shooting shock trough shield will remove the max counter at the cost that the shield will be gone

Using jesus mode next to a shield will turn it into a bigger globe, close to snowglobe only it gets damage instead of the stun and a  way smaller size.

Using speed next to a shield will pick it up infront of you, following you for the rest of speeds time

Using shock after speed and you can spam it without limits, energy cost is the same

Using Jesus mode after speed will lock the stun effect around you in a aoe while you can still move.

 

TL;DR Its very early here and i am a little drunk, best idea not to read this.

[Rakosta_Kai]

I had an epiphany about Ash, but it would require dropping the Shuriken aspect entirely for something else and moving Teleport into its place.

 

Any debuff ideas?

 

Edit: Scratch that, it's a bit bizarre and would probably remove the "teleport anywhere" effect people want so much.

stray thought...

Leave Shuriken but make it do no damage. (gimme a minute to explain)

 

Instead of Damage, make the shurikens be Sleep Darts (or some such.. Stun, etc) Let it fire up to 3 darts at a time.

 

I'd thought of a way to incorporate teleport and the darts, but it's convoluted and energy expensive.

[Archwizard]

The ideas are not bad, but like you see. The better option to go for a self balance like Zephyr has.

 

I have some ideas for Volt 

 

Shock can stay this way

Speed and Electric shiled will be the core Skills as they turn the frame into what he is

Jesus mode will stay this way

 

So my idea is that using electric shield and speed in combos will give you special effects. 

 

Shooting shock trough shield will remove the max counter at the cost that the shield will be gone

Using jesus mode next to a shield will turn it into a bigger globe, close to snowglobe only it gets damage instead of the stun and a  way smaller size.

Using speed next to a shield will pick it up infront of you, following you for the rest of speeds time

Using shock after speed and you can spam it without limits, energy cost is the same

Using Jesus mode after speed will lock the stun effect around you in a aoe while you can still move.

 

TL;DR Its very early here and i am a little drunk, best idea not to read this.

 

The thing about Warframe's design thus far, is that no frame has abilities with hidden addendums combined with another ability.

 

Like, as a Loki, you can place a Decoy and Switch Teleport with it, and you'll still be using each ability at face-value. On the other hand, you don't have some bizarre technique like casting Radial Disarm to blow up your Decoy or whathaveyou.

 

Your proposal just adds way too many of these hidden effects. It could be neat, but it'd be unnecessarily complex.

[(PSN)OniWarrior]

Ember

Again some very nice ideas.

I would say that having Accelerant increase status chance for all elemental types may be a little overkill, but I could certainly agree with it affecting the status chance of heat and heat combo elements. Maybe slightly improve the stun as well.

Your changes to Fire Blast sound really cool (pardon the oxymoron). I had a similar idea that might work well with your idea for Accelerant. Initially it would work the same way as it does now, but once the ring of fire is up enemies that touch the flame take the same damage that they do now and those within the ring take half the damage with maybe a 10-15%chance of a status proc. Any toxic, gas or corrosive weapons fired into the ring would change the damage within to that elemental type, the flames themselves still remaining as heat damage. I realise that may be a little overpowered, but it would allow for a little more versatility for Ember players.

[Archwizard]

I would say that having Accelerant increase status chance for all elemental types may be a little overkill, but I could certainly agree with it affecting the status chance of heat and heat combo elements. Maybe slightly improve the stun as well.

 

I said "status chance" simply because it gives Accelerant much more utility towards non-Ember teammates, given the rarity of lone Heat elemental attacks. I suppose I could have changed it to affect status and damage of a much smaller pool of elements, but this creates more synergy with... well, everyone who isn't Loki really, by opening up the door to affect status chance of most Warframe abilities as well.

[(PSN)OniWarrior]

I said "status chance" simply because it gives Accelerant much more utility towards non-Ember teammates, given the rarity of lone Heat elemental attacks. I suppose I could have changed it to affect status and damage of a much smaller pool of elements, but this creates more synergy with... well, everyone who isn't Loki really, by opening up the door to affect status chance of most Warframe abilities as well.

The problem is Accelerant already does a lot for it's energy cost. Adding a status chance increase for a select few elements linked to heat (i.e. blast, radiation and gas) would provide good team synergy with skills from other warframes but more importantly with their weapons, without having to do anything else to Accelerant. If you were to add status chance to everything the skill would need rebalancing by either increasing it's casting cost, reducing it's range, reducing it's heat damage multiplier or removing it's stun. From what I have seen whilst playing it would be mostly weapons that would benefit from a status boost anyway. A lot of skills seem to have a very high or guaranteed status proc chance or designed to have no status proc at all (yes Oberon, I'm looking at you). These skills would gain little to no benefit from Accelerant.

I could be way of here, but it seems to me that this is the view the devs might take if they were to consider it. That much gain would require some kind of drawback.

[Noble_Cactus]

Something I was tossing around in my head earlier: with Melee 2.0 right around the corner, perhaps in addition to your Avalanche's freeze, enemies that are frozen could also take bonus melee damage?

[kaboomonme]

You know what we need? In a ninja hotfix, Ash's bladestorm turns into this :




I will laugh about it, then proceed to dice up all the enemies in the room.

[Noble_Cactus]

You know what we need? In a ninja hotfix, Ash's bladestorm turns into this :

I will laugh about it, then proceed to dice up all the enemies in the room.

 

Bad memories... bad memories.

 

 

Also that's pretty much what the Jat Kittag became. We'll likely see more more melee weapons get similar charge attacks so we can have all sorts of players Bladestorming their way through exterm.

Edited April 1, 2014 by Noble_Cactus

[HansJurgen]

Op forgot to mention how M Prime needs to be nerfed badly in every category, damage, debuff, slow.

 

Yes, yes, I get the part where he does not want to upset anyone's feelings, but that does not change the fact that M prime, in its current form, is a lazy win button, and his suggested change is just the same rear end with a different top hat.

[ThePresident777]

Molecular Prime is my favorite ability in the game so I don't wish to see it nerfed.  I consider all across the board nerfs to be lazy, and a failiure, because they ignore the rest of the game and are not customer centric.  Nerfing the player will not make the misisons, environments, enemies, etc. interesting.  It will also not address the fact that you can not compromise between mutually exclusives opinions.  It is very obvious that large portions of the player base hold mutually exclusive opinions.  So the search for that magic nerf that alienates the fewest number of players and makes everything just right is quixotic.

[Archwizard]

Op forgot to mention how M Prime needs to be nerfed badly in every category, damage, debuff, slow.

 

Yes, yes, I get the part where he does not want to upset anyone's feelings, but that does not change the fact that M prime, in its current form, is a lazy win button, and his suggested change is just the same rear end with a different top hat.

 

It's not that I don't want to upset anyone - if that were true, I wouldn't be calling for Desecrate's removal.

 

There are two major factors for why I've done little to "nerf" Molecular Prime:

- First, the controversy. There's no absolute certainty about how much it should be nerfed since Damage 2.0 made Blast a really niche damage-type. Yes, you can say it should be nerfed entirely and make some very strong points, but someone else can come along and say that it's her best utility in a plea for mitigation. It's a back-and-forth on this forum and until a consensus is reached, it's hard to say.

- Second, I'm indifferent either way. Not in the "I'm too lazy to write it" sense, but more that most of the solutions in the OP involve frames I'm very passionate about seeing improved.

Edited April 2, 2014 by Archwizard

[MushrooMars]

I figure I'll poke around, I agree with the OP at almost every turn.

 

Volt's Electric Shield could really use any buff, though the ability to pick it up could be a bit... Not necessarily OP, but not really fitting of the ability. You sacrifice mobility for a tactical advantage, it kinda nullifies that disadvantage if you can just sling the thing over you shoulder and become an instant directional tank. Though I will agree with the reduction of the distortions. Volt's jesuspower also... Kinda needs a rework. Honestly, the frying lights thing can just be injected into Shock and the ability might be replaced with say, an electrostatic minefield or something. Shock and Overload are just too similar.

 

I'll agree with the changes to Loki, additionally, his Switch Teleport could use looser targeting.

 

The changes to Ember would be nice - small suggestion, Fireball renews the Power Duration of Fire Blast and Accelerant within its impact radius, and causes Accelerant to spread.

 

I concur with all the changes to Ash... Except Bladestorm. I'm a proponent for just replacing it with another ability, the animations are cool and all but it's a really boring ability both to use and to witness. The player needs more agency while the ability is active... Maybe, reduce the energy cost, and make it so that while the ability is active each melee attack teleports the player to either the enemy they're aiming at, or where they are aiming, with a limited amount of teleportations directly affected by Power Duration. As for Teleport, I think Ash could benefit from something akin to a monofilament piano-wire.

 

For Vauban - Another frame I would like to see a small, but pretty effective change to. Instead of having Power Duration affect... Well, trap duration, have it affect the maximum number of traps (of each type) the player can have out at once. This would reduce spam and put a more easily definable cap on Vauban's power. And I heavily agree with the Bounce change, even though I am one of THOSE Vaubans.

 

For Banshee - I like the changes. Two suggested changes - Echo Chamber can be cast at cursor location, and Sonar works through shields. Additionally, Silence locks enemies out from control panels within its range. If it's going to be a utility ability geared towards stealth, it might as well be on par with Loki, Ash and Excalibro.

[ThePresident777]

You can't reach a consensus among mutually exclusive opinions.  The only thing that can be done about mutually exclusive opinions is to provide each with it's own sandbox, as was done with PvP.  DE should identify other customer constituencies and make sandboxes for them.  In Warframe, that could be done efficiently through missions since DE has already invested in them and it is a flexible mechanism.  Nightmare Modes would be useful for this if they weren't locked behind RNG, for no good reason.

 

The one size fits all approach this thread is attempting is doomed to fail as such approaches always fail.  The more consensus, the smaller the accepting group.  To have broad appeal, mutually exclusive opinions needs to be catered too.  This is the reason why every store that each one of us visits in RL has a variety of products.  The video gaming industry oddly ignores this tried and true business strategy in favor of a magical consensus it never finds no matter how long the nerf/buff boondoggle goes on.

[Archwizard]

Gave Radial Javelin a rather significant boost in the OP.

 

 

I concur with all the changes to Ash... Except Bladestorm. I'm a proponent for just replacing it with another ability, the animations are cool and all but it's a really boring ability both to use and to witness. The player needs more agency while the ability is active... Maybe, reduce the energy cost, and make it so that while the ability is active each melee attack teleports the player to either the enemy they're aiming at, or where they are aiming, with a limited amount of teleportations directly affected by Power Duration. 

 

It's an idea I've been experimenting with in my head for a while, although I initially thought it would be a bit similar to Hysteria... but then again, half of the abilities in the game have similarities, so I suppose it's not a major issue. It would mean removing Teleport itself though - although I could replace that with a more substantial Marked for Death skill, and give the Shuriken some kind of stunning poison (as a placeholder, since everyone and their dog has a stun attack).

 

Edit: You know what? Just make Shuriken a legit ranged-stealth attack.

Edited April 2, 2014 by Archwizard

[Annon5150]

Something I was tossing around in my head earlier: with Melee 2.0 right around the corner, perhaps in addition to your Avalanche's freeze, enemies that are frozen could also take bonus melee damage?

 

Isn't that already blinds gimmick? Maybe the frozen enemies could take more damage but I don't think it needs to be exclusively melee.

[Noble_Cactus]

Isn't that already blinds gimmick? Maybe the frozen enemies could take more damage but I don't think it needs to be exclusively melee.

 

Yeah, that would infringe on Blind, wouldn't it? I hadn't considered that, thanks. Hmm.

 

That Mag and Oberon thread got me thinking about Crush. I do like Azmagon's idea of splitting its damage between Puncture and Magnetic, and while I love the idea of being able to control the mass of enemies, I thought it was a little beyond WF's scope at the moment. Maybe we could see changes to moves like that down the line somewhere to make them more dynamic.

 

This is what I thought about Crush:

 

 

If Crush had to function similarly to how it does now, it would fit its name and functionality more if, upon the move's conclusion, it slammed all the affected enemies together at an invisible locus in front of Mag. Afterward, they'd all fall to the ground and be ragdolled. It would make Crush more satisfying to use, if anything. The best way to imagine it would be that Crush would create a "pileup" of enemies smashing into each other at high speeds.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9C4ucDJ06o

 

As for 'grabbing' enemies behind walls or in other rooms, maybe they would still take the full damage but hit the wall and ragdoll anyway?

Edited April 2, 2014 by Noble_Cactus

[Archwizard]

 

Yeah, that would infringe on Blind, wouldn't it? I hadn't considered that, thanks. Hmm.

 

That Mag and Oberon thread got me thinking about Crush. I do like Azmagon's idea of splitting its damage between Puncture and Magnetic, and while I love the idea of being able to control the mass of enemies, I thought it was a little beyond WF's scope at the moment. Maybe we could see changes to moves like that down the line somewhere to make them more dynamic.

 

This is what I thought about Crush:

 

 

If Crush had to function similarly to how it does now, it would fit its name and functionality more if, upon the move's conclusion, it slammed all the affected enemies together at an invisible locus in front of Mag. Afterward, they'd all fall to the ground and be ragdolled. It would make Crush more satisfying to use, if anything. The best way to imagine it would be that Crush would create a "pileup" of enemies smashing into each other at high speeds.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9C4ucDJ06o

 

As for 'grabbing' enemies behind walls or in other rooms, maybe they would still take the full damage but hit the wall and ragdoll anyway?

 

If it did extra damage based on the number of enemies pulled into the locus (Puncture? Impact?), it would actually be incredibly useful with the ragdoll.

 

Edit: I will admit, I've been struggling with reworking Mag for a little while. I've been thinking that the best thing that could happen to make her synergize would be to remove Crush and give her some kind of railgun attack instead that could benefit more from Bullet Attractor, but in the end I'm just reminded that she only gets one Magnetic attack out of the deal in spite of her theme.

Edited April 3, 2014 by Archwizard