On Limbo And Further Exemplifying The Title Of Void Sorcerer

[Aeriax]

I've been playing him quite a bit so far, and I've discovered some things. The essence of Limbo as far as I can tell is that he decides who can damage who on the battlefield. This can be interpreted in many ways. But there is a problem.

+Can cast banish on low health Tenno in emergency situation to save the life of fellow Tenno who are about to go down

+Can cast banish on downed Tenno and Riftwalk, leading to a very valuable 'extract from hot zone' role

+Can isolate targets of great and minor importance so they can be dealt with in a reasonable fashion

+Own powers also do damage

-Can negate allies from doing any damage to anything if the Limbo player is a dumb butt

-Can prevent allies from picking up health/ammo/energy

-If played poorly may be seen as a hindering factor to teamwork

-Own powers deal damage very unreliably, and interfere with eachother as a result

 

So we see generally what Limbo kind of does. Hold on a second. What's that last point?

 

Limbo's powers... Interfering with eachother? Why might this be? The primary culprit is Banish. Arguably the CORE of his arsenal (next to Riftwalk, which I consider inseparable from Banish for obvious reasons).

 

As it stands, Banish at max rank deals 500 damage before power strength mods. This is a lot. Yes, it's single target. But still. It is a lot of damage. There's hardly any reason to riftwalk, and even less to use Rift Surge, because Banish will just kill most targets that aren't in high level towers or anything  else. So essentially what this means is that some of Limbo's functionality is utterly LOST until you hit 'endgame'.

 

What? That doesn't make any sense.

 

So here's what I propose as a chance to Limbo's skillset.

1. Vastly lessen the amount of damage that Banish does.

     +Functions as advertised, displacing enemies into the Rift Plane instead of immediately killing them.

     +Opens up more tactical gameplay, which seems to be a big part of Limbo's overall theme.

     +There's no longer the issue of his 'main damage ability' only being castable once on an enemy in a reasonable

       period of time, because this isn't his main damage ability.

2. Fundamentally rework Rift Surge.

 

Let's begin with the name. "Rift Surge". This is evocative of a destabilizing spike in energy in a location. Currently, it is a (rather anemic and incredibly niche) Roar clone that only functions in the Rift Plane. This isn't very useful. So, to make Limbo more evocative of the 'Void Sorcerer' title, here is my proposal for the rework of Rift Surge.

 

Limbo swiftly removes his hat with one hand, and swipes it in the direction of wherever you are aiming. From this comes a projectile. It is a relatively quick one, with an AoE impact, making it somewhat like Fireball more than Freeze (thankfully- seriously, please look at Freeze again, it's very hard to use!) This projectile deals roughly the amount of damage that was taken away from Banish, with the AoE at the end having falloff to it.

 

How does this synergize with his other powers? To start, it will interact differently with the target depending on the relationship between the plane Limbo is on, and the one that the enemy is. It can be simplified to three cases:

 

I) Limbo and Enemy are on the Material Plane

-In this case, Rift Surge deals damage as usual.

 

II) Limbo and Enemy are on the Rift Plane

-Now, thanks to void harmonics or something, Rift Surge's damage experiences acquires another term to it's modifier, which will further increase the amount of damage it does based on your power strength.

 

III) Limbo and Enemy are on mismatched planes

-Oh, it's void harmonics again. And this time, you're not happy about what they have to say. It looks like due to [technobabble], Rift Surge experiences a 0.15x damage multiplier. Obviously, this is to prevent being completely untouchable, while still being able to rain death and destruction on enemies, which forces choice. It guarantees that in order for Limbo to be an actual threat, he and his target must be on the same plane (even if Limbo does have an advantage in the Rift Plane).

 

Ideally, Rift Surge will cost 35-40 energy to use. Given that Banish at max rank with no mods does 500 damage, it might be sensible to have new Rift Surge deal between 350 and 450 (perhaps 400) before power strength mods. Given the fact that skills now unlock at different levels of your warframe, Rift Surge should switch from being a 3rd skill to a 1st skill, with Banish and Rift Walk coming as a package perhaps, and Cataclysm not coming until somewhat later to make up for it. I can see this being a valuable alteration to Limbo's arsenal while still very much keeping with the 'void sorcerer' theme, as well as making his other powers much more harmonious with eachother- and the greatest victory? He has no 'niche' skills.

 

As a closing note, I welcome well thought out criticism and am more than willing to listen to anyone else's suggestions as they arrive.