Suggested Volt Changes

[MegatechBody]

e: Fixed some typos

Feel free to chime in other volts and players who team up with volts. I'm speaking as a rank 30 volt player who is tired of the warframe's most boring abilities being the most go-to abilities.

1.) Nerf or possibly replace overload

Explanation: Currently overload is an extremely powerful AoE that just kills everything within range of its power. That's not a fun or interesting ability. It's more or less the "bomb" button in a shoot em up. I'd like to see a power that possibly fires a cone of voltage across the front 70 or so degrees of where the player is aiming and zaps only those enemies. Range upgrades would increase how far the branches of electricity reach. Another option could be a chain lightning that can skip from nearby enemy to enemy, giving a far more situational and creative option than just "blow everything up".

2.) Switch Shock with Speed

Explanation: Volt's signature skill is speed. The ability to move fast on the fly and get to cover, avoid danger, or come to your allies need for either a revive or some quick cover fire is what volt is all about. Shock is an extremely good (but boring) "one-hit kill" style move that would be better occupied in the 50 energy slot rather than the 20 energy slot. The time speed is active could be reduced accordingly but I wouldn't suggest reducing it to a 2/5ths level if the overload nerf is implemented.

3.) Increase electric shield time or size

Explanation: Currently volt's shield is rarely if ever used as it covers a very small angle and costs a 75 energy to deploy. I've rarely if ever seen a player implement it and it's one of the most potentially unique, useful abilities in the game. The shield is plenty tall but it doesn't cover as wide an angle as it could. Alternatively reducing the energy cost could make shields more commonly used.

So in short I'd suggest nerfing the super overpowered super ability that isn't as fun or creative to use. A slight buff to the two powers that have far more utility and fun to use ratio would be great.

Volt is currently used only for their overload in groups instead of their far more skill based, complex to master and use abilities like Electric Shield and Speed. A fun and interesting class with high replayability is one that makes frequent use of their more complex and situational abilities, not their "kill everything" abilities.

Below is my ideal layout but as I've outlined there are many options to achieving the same goal of giving volt more utility while keeping gameplay fresh.

25 - Speed (Reduced duration)

50 - Electric Shield (Identical size/duration, or reduced duration if Volt is seen as overpowered due to these changes)

75 - Chain Shock (Shock up to 3 targets for 75% of the current shock damage) or Shock (One target for 2.5x the damage of the current shock)

100 - Overload (Shock all targets in a 70 degree cone of the player's aiming reticule)

Edited January 9, 2013 by MegatechBody

[Ayahuasca]

cone attacks are allways lame overload skill is just fine just need a dmg nerf is all

[MegatechBody]

cone attacks are allways lame overload skill is just fine just need a dmg nerf is all

Could you expand upon what is wrong or undesirable about a cone or angle style attack that hits enemies in a certain area in front of the character instead of just everything within 30+ yards? Also do you have any thoughts on a "chain" type attack that branches out to nearby enemies? It could be used situationally when you see a group of enemies where each enemy is close to another but not all of them are in a close grouping.

Edited January 9, 2013 by MegatechBody

[Fiaryn]

Honestly, this game seems to stick entirely too rigidly to the 25/50/75/100 energy cost paradigm (I mean just for starters the Excalibur and Volt 25 energy skill is vastly more worthwhile than half of the Loki's entire loadout), to its detriment. I don't think any amount of switching abilities around within that framework is going to produce a satisfying outcome. There's already a sort of existent problem wherein you don't get to use the defining features of your warframe nearly enough.

I'd suggest scrapping Energy altogether and moving to cooldowns, and nerfing powers like Overload. Less of a rat race for energy between team mates that way, and your various abilities would no longer be in direct competition with each other for useage. As long as abilities are in direct competition with each other like this, people are going to find the most useful one or two powers and never use anything else. Numerical energy costs make the player ask "Will I need this ever?" whereas cooldowns make the player ask "Do I need this right now?". The latter I think would be far more fun.

Edited January 9, 2013 by Fiaryn

[Aggh]

Shield is actually kind of useful vs bosses if you have a puuncture mod on your weapon :|

[Vahnkiljoy]

Honestly, his skill set does NOT match his frame description, speed is the only one that really does, he is supposed to be a NOT VERY gunplay oriented frame going by his description yes? So the devs give him a ranged shot skill for his 1, a speed skill for 2 that sadly doesn't even increase attack speeds, a shield on his 3 which seems to scream, GUNPLAY, to me, and well I can't comment on his 4 since because of the pro mechanic crap i dont think ill ever see but going by other posters is a ranged i win bomb?

His kit seems confused with his playstyle description.

[MegatechBody]

going by other posters is a ranged i win bomb?

Yeah you literally press the 4 key and everything in sight dies. It's really boring. Designated "OH S#&$!" button. Bombs are only good in shoot 'em ups because it usually has a part in the complex scoring systems in shoot em ups. Warframe has no complex scoring system.

Shield is actually kind of useful vs bosses if you have a puuncture mod on your weapon :|

What happens if the boss moves to the left or right of the shield slightly? Where are you going to get another 75 to plant a new shield? I agree it has a use but it doesn't have enough utility.

Edited January 9, 2013 by MegatechBody

[Aggh]

Yeah you literally press the 4 key and everything in sight dies. It's really boring. Designated "OH S#&$!" button. Bombs are only good in shoot 'em ups because it usually has a part in the complex scoring systems in shoot em ups. Warframe has no complex scoring system.

What happens if the boss moves to the left or right of the shield slightly? Where are you going to get another 75 to plant a new shield? I agree it has a use but it doesn't have enough utility.

Set it up at a choke point. The bosses tend to not move much anyways so putting it down and spraying down the boss isn't much of a challenge.

Power efficiency mods. It only costs me 33 energy :|

Imo shock is his most useless ability atm. Doesn't do much damage (even with a power strength mod), and it doesn't even consistently stun, especially vs bosses.

Edited January 9, 2013 by Aggh

[MegatechBody]

Power efficiency mods. It only costs me 33 energy :|

What the crap does your speed cost? I need to find me some of these power efficiency mods.

Edited January 9, 2013 by MegatechBody

[Jondos]

with the power effiency mod and the energy siphon artifact for continual energy replenishment (i don't have yet but i paired up with someone who did), volt is just OP with overload. It recharges quite quickly, and when you have a 40% cheaper overload, you can spam it in every second or third room (if you're not using other abilities)

i found the shield ability quite useful against bosses, but you just sit behind it with a gun/

[MegatechBody]

with the power effiency mod and the energy siphon artifact for continual energy replenishment (i don't have yet but i paired up with someone who did), volt is just OP with overload. It recharges quite quickly, and when you have a 40% cheaper overload, you can spam it in every second or third room (if you're not using other abilities)

i found the shield ability quite useful against bosses, but you just sit behind it with a gun/

The only thing I've noticed with overload is you don't get any loot off of normal monsters which is important when you hit cap and want to get more mods.

Edited January 9, 2013 by MegatechBody

[Arzachel]

I'd suggest scrapping Energy altogether and moving to cooldowns, and nerfing powers like Overload. Less of a rat race for energy between team mates that way, and your various abilities would no longer be in direct competition with each other for useage. As long as abilities are in direct competition with each other like this, people are going to find the most useful one or two powers and never use anything else. Numerical energy costs make the player ask "Will I need this ever?" whereas cooldowns make the player ask "Do I need this right now?". The latter I think would be far more fun.

I agree that currently the energy mechanic works very poorly, pure cooldowns wouldn't work that well either. The idea behind energy and energy drops is that it rewards playing the game instead of tedious optimization by waiting out the timers. That said, the current implementation severely limits and disuades usage of most skills due to how the skill costs are balanced and the low drop rate of energy refills.

My suggestion is to provide a split resource for each of the skills (lets say energy orbs) with the energy refill drops being a bit more scarce but refilling all the energy orbs for the whole team. That should allow skills to be used more often and make using the whole skillset far more appealing.

(Also, energy drop rate should be pseido-random, increasing over time)

[Fiaryn]

What about that is a "split resource", could you elaborate? Because that sounds like the same resource system but with energy orbs rationed differently.

Do you mean that there would be an energy bar specific to each skill?

Also I think the issue of people trying to game cooldowns by idling around would be solved simply by introducing a bonus for completing levels in a timely and efficient manner. Hell, I think they'd benefit from adding style bonuses for killing dudes via rolling/jumping/powersliding slashes and the like while they're at it.

Edited January 9, 2013 by Fiaryn