Adding Utility To Damage Abilities

[Spacetimer]

It's no big secret that most damage abilities scale badly. Late-game, most of them will be outclassed by your weapons, and any ability that doesn't provide some sort of utility quickly becomes useless.

 

This thread is to look at all the Warframes' damage abilities, and rework some to provide better scaling into the late-game. In general, all abilities should remain useful one their damage falls off.

 

Ash

*Shuriken - Bleed procs makes this a solid ability for most of the game. Its main limitation is the two-target restriction; an interesting change would be to have one Shuriken that no longer autotargets, but has 5m Punch Through at max rank. Killing crowds or enemies through doors adds a nice aspect of utility and skill to Shuriken.

 

Blade Storm - Arguably the best pure damaging ability in the game, and provides invulnerability for a few seconds. No change.

 

Banshee

Sonic Boom - The minor damage is irrelevant as this is meant for CC, and is fairly good at it. No change.

 

Sound Quake - Rhino Stomp's bigger sister. God-tier CC. Needs no change.

 

Ember

*Fireball - The damage is significant, but also provides a brief stun, making it one of the better 1 abilities at all levels. If any change is needed, it would be a 100% Heat proc on all surrounding targets to make it more reliable.

 

*Fireblast - Not reliable enough to be truly useful. Either needs a 100% Heat proc during its entire duration, or have the targets stagger outwards like a tiny Sound Quake.

 

*World on Fire - The damage isn't quite enough to provide utility at higher levels, and it doesn't do much beyond that. A 100% Blast proc would let it provide some half-decent CC. This could lead to interesting builds, where close-range WoF explosions lead to finishers.

 

Excalibur

*Slash Dash - Invulnerability frames and mobility is a good start, but the damage isn't quite there. A popular idea (and one I happen to agree with) is to replace the damage with a melee hit at a, say, x2 multiplier (so it scales off mods, hit multiplier, channeling etc.) Mobility, invul. frames, and Life Strike together would make for some sweet utility at all levels.

 

*Radial Javelin - Severe damage falloff, a dragged-out animation and zero utility makes this one of the, if not the worst ultimate. A good start would be incapacitating the surrounding targets; each Javelin impales its target, whether alive or dead. After being pinned, living targets fall down to the ground.

 - Other reasonable buffs would be switching to Finisher damage to help it scale better into the late-game, and/or having it proc Bleed, Impact and Slash.

 - On a side note, one of the nice things about Radial Javelin was the ability to have several javelins impale the same target, something that was lost with the removal of fixed javelin numbers.

 

Frost

*Freeze - Freeze's biggest falling is the lack of crowd control. Cold proccing any enemy within 4m of the initial target would alleviate this somewhat without displacing other abilities out of their niche. This also makes missed shots less punishing.

 

Ice Wave - Cold procs are sweet, enough to make the ability worth it over the mediocre damage. No change.

 

*Avalanche - The freezing is cool, but doesn't provide enough breathing room. A more interesting approach would be to freeze all enemies in the radius for 5 seconds. During this time, enemies can be damaged, each hit doing an additional 100% Cold damage (after 1500 damage, the freeze ends). At the end of the duration, each target still frozen takes 1500 Cold damage and is unfrozen. Balancing the stasis/cast damage with the damage bonus could have interesting consequences; in particular, a single high-damage hit can take the effective damage of Avalanche well beyond its normal capacities.

 

Hydroid

*Tempest Barrage - Continuous knockdowns are already very useful; the radius of the impacts needs to be increased, however. It's currently very dicy in terms of when a knockdown happens. Have the impacts home similarly to World on Fire to increase its reliability.

 

Tidal Wave - Slash Dash with heavy focus on utility. It's fine, even if the damage isn't super useful. No change.

 

*Tentacle Swarm - Fairly high Finisher damage paired with limited CC makes this a decent ability. If its reliability could be improved slightly (perhaps having tentacles reach for enemies rather than flail aimlessly), this would be amazing.

 

Mag

Pull - Damage high enough to be relevant over a huge area. Provides massive CC for its cost. No change.

 

*Crush - The CC isn't enough to matter, and the damage is mediocre (to the point of being inferior to Pull and Shield Polarize). My suggestion is to make Crush a channeled ability - while active, Mag holds the targets in the air, dealing 200 Magnetic damage a second for 8 energy a second. One released, the one-off 1500 damage is dealt, and the targets are ragdolled to the ground. This makes it an interesting middle ground between the a generic AoE ultimate and Bastile.

 

Mirage

Prism - High damage with a powerful blind. No change.

 

Nekros

*Soul Punch - Compared to other knockdown 1 abilities, Soul Punch is very lackluster. It's one of few abilities I'd consider for scaling damage. Soul Punch will deal 20% of the target's current health as Impact damage, and half of that to all enemies it collides with. Note that while this will take huge chunks of health off heavy targets, it will never get the killing blow (although it may do so on on smaller units that get in the way).

 

Nova

*Null Star - The main appeal of Null Star was that it staggered enemies, providing a point defense against melee units. Reintroducing the 100% Impact proc would make it useful again.

 

Antimatter Drop - Scales well, due to being a force multiplier. No change.

 

Molecular Prime - Slows, force multiplier, good damage that scales with mob density. No change.

 

Nyx

*Psychic Bolts - Generic damage ability that has very limited targets and has no scaling or utility. Change the damage to dealing 10% of the target's maximum health per bolt as Radiation damage, and it becomes an extremely powerful single-target ability, potentially killing any unit regardless of level in a few activations. Note that armor and shields still apply.

 

Absorb - Scales well, due to being a force multiplier. No change.

 

 

Oberon

Smite - High damage, knockdown, useful procs. No change.

 

*Hallowed Ground - After the buff, this ability has become somewhat schizophrenic. Its defensive utility is fairly minor, considering it forces you to stay in a small area. Reducing enemy armor by a symmetric 20% while on the carpet would not only add powerful offensive utility, but help the ability scale well into endgame.

 

Reckoning - High damage, knockdown, useful procs, heals. No change.

 

Rhino

*Rhino Charge - Slash Dash with a knockdown. The damage is not high, but mobility with a knockdown is useful. The trouble is that the target area is narrow; giving some control to the user, like having Charge last ~4 seconds, slightly slower, and steerable, and it's a great utility ability.

 

Rhino Stomp - A weaker, more instantaneous version of Sound Quake. Allows you to act for the duration of the stun though. No change.

 

Saryn

Venom - Each activation is 900 Viral damage on the initial target and very likely to proc; the damage is comparatively low, but propagating Viral procs helps against the health scaling at high levels. No change.

 

*Miasma - Powerful damage and a crowd stun; however, the way it works with Duration is irritating, putting Miasma at odds with her other abilites. Changing the ticks to once a second rather than a fixed 4 over the duration helps make Saryn more coherent, as well as add more utility to Miasma by extending the stun.

 

Valkyr

Ripline - Amazing mobility ability that can also act as a single-target, high-damage pull. No change.

 

Hysteria - Whether or not this is a damage ability is debatable - at any rate, it's hard to argue it doesn't already have enough utility. Balancing Hysteria is a topic for another thread.

 

Vauban

*Tesla - Extreme duration and status chance cancels out the fairly low damage. Bumping its status chance to ~25% to get more reliable stuns in would make it a lot more viable in high-level missions.

 

Vortex - One of the best CC abilities in the game. The damage is minor but Magnetic procs can shred shields. No change.

 

Volt

Shock - 100% status chance makes this a very powerful utility stun. The damage is low, but increases dramatically if the targets are clustered close together. No change.

 

*Overload - Mediocre damage aside, Overload has all the pieces of a good ability. The issue is that the stuns take too long to happen (enemies are gunning you down while casting), and doesn't go on for long enough. These issues can be fixed with having the initial stun cover the entire radius (instead of just units in around melee range), and the amount of ticks being affected by power duration.

 

Zephyr

Tail Wind - The knockdown is nice, and the damage is minor, but really this is just a (fantastic) mobility ability. No change.

 

*Dive Bomb - Mediocre damage with a knockdown. It's fairly minor as far as mobility goes, and the radius is pretty small, but still decent for a 25-energy ability. The only improvement here would be to make the setup a little less painless - zooming in on the ground would direct the Dive Bomb in that direction, up to a maximum angle determined by power range.

 

*Tornado - Ragdolls for a long duration, does a fair bit of damage, and procs status moderately well. The only change I'd like to see (and this is just personal preference) is to have enemies trapped in Tornado and not flung out until the duration ends.

Edited October 13, 2014 by Spacetimer

[Sunfaiz]

agreed with everything +1

[Evanescent]

+1

[lordhalo]

Very nice, I have to say I liked DE's take on the berserker warframe. So I had this idea for a long time, make her hysteria have an armor multiplier per level. This way its not complete invulnerability, just with high EHP!

[Spacetimer]

Very nice, I have to say I liked DE's take on the berserker warframe. So I had this idea for a long time, make her hysteria have an armor multiplier per level. This way its not complete invulnerability, just with high EHP!

 

Hysteria is a whole other can of worms. My take was a middle ground between your idea and the current iteration:

 

 - Hysteria grants 80% damage reduction while active. During this time, Valkyr's health cannot drop below 2. This replaces the marked enemy mechanic.

 - Instead of a duration, Hysteria becomes a channeled ability, draining 8 energy a second.

   -- Hits halve the drain for 2 seconds, and set a regenerate timer of 5h/s for 5 seconds (hits refresh these durations, but don't stack).

   -- Kills pause the drain for 4 seconds (both affected by duration). This replaces the life steal mechanic.

 - Hysteria increases movement speed by 20% while active. (affected by power strength).

 - Hit multipliers don't reset during the duration.

 

The idea is to shift it from a semi-passive invulnerability skill to one that forces you into melee.

Edited October 6, 2014 by Spacetimer

[Magnar21]

Excellent start, and I would highly recommend this to anyone in DE headquarters, if I actually knew any of them personally.

 

+1, would rate again.

 

 

Hysteria is a whole other can of worms. My take was a middle ground between your idea and the current iteration:

 

 - Hysteria grants 80% damage reduction while active. During this time, Valkyr's health cannot drop below 2. This replaces the marked enemy mechanic.

 - Instead of a duration, Hysteria becomes a channeled ability, draining 8 energy a second.

   -- Hits halve the drain for 2 seconds, and set a regenerate timer of 5h/s for 5 seconds (hits refresh these durations, but don't stack).

   -- Kills pause the drain for 4 seconds (both affected by duration). This replaces the life steal mechanic.

 - Hysteria increases movement speed by 20% while active. (affected by power strength).

 - Hit multipliers don't reset during the duration.

 

The idea is to shift it from a semi-passive invulnerability skill to one that forces you into melee.

 

Good start. Would want mods such as Rage to synergize with Hysteria though, at least in part. I do like using Hysteria as a panic button though, so something that has high cost, but pretty much prevents her from dying would be a good idea.

Edited October 13, 2014 by Magnar21

[akira_him]

+1

[Spacetimer]

Excellent start, and I would highly recommend this to anyone in DE headquarters, if I actually knew any of them personally.

 

+1, would rate again.

 

 

 

Good start. Would want mods such as Rage to synergize with Hysteria though, at least in part. I do like using Hysteria as a panic button though, so something that has high cost, but pretty much prevents her from dying would be a good idea.

 

My main concern with having Rage synergize with Hysteria is permanent invincibility mode - in its current iteration it's a channeled invincibility ability that replenishes health while still allowing Rage to trigger. If Rage was allowed, the health regen would need a serious reduction or harder conditions, making non-Rage builds less viable. 

[Magnar21]

My main concern with having Rage synergize with Hysteria is permanent invincibility mode - in its current iteration it's a channeled invincibility ability that replenishes health while still allowing Rage to trigger. If Rage was allowed, the health regen would need a serious reduction or harder conditions, making non-Rage builds less viable.

Hrm, good point. Guess I'll just stick with my rage for now.

[SuperTechmarine]

This is actually rather well done, and would make a lot of Warframes much more viable for late-game.

[rouch3200]

hmm with the fire storm on ember i think the fire proc stack up to 3 times 1 time each seconds and makes 3x in damage in it.

Edited October 14, 2014 by rouch3200