All Powers Should Have Scale Ability Outright, Augments Should Add To/alter That Scale Ability

[geninrising]

Haha, I love the idea of Frosts Freeze that you've made.

 

It synergizes with the rest of his kit very well, while also giving it functionality outside of just being a single target Hard CC but not being OP.

 

Not to mention the rehashed augment actually does synergize with Ice Wave Impedance, but the functionality given with your rework of Freeze doesn't mean this augment necessitates it, rather complements Impedance's function.

 

These are awesome Genin! They strengthen the powers to make them not annoying damage functions, but work also as utility items that can complement one another, but function individually. Synergy but also stand alone power. I tip my hat to you.

Weirdly enough, I would expect this thread to have more views. Anyway more rework thoughts otw soon. Also discussing these with clan Via Raid call trying to theory craft some more combinations than I can think up on my own

[AlphaHorseman]

Weirdly enough, I would expect this thread to have more views. Anyway more rework thoughts otw soon. Also discussing these with clan Via Raid call trying to theory craft some more combinations than I can think up on my own

Haha, I'm hoping it does, as time goes on. Ultimately I do hope DE does take notice, and sees this as a useful tool for them when they look at powers and augments overall. Any suggestions and discussions here on the improvements of our powers and their synergy is welcomed.

[geninrising]

Vauban 

Tesla 2.0

 

Tesla orbs now chain to three targets near the primary struck target doing equal damage to all targets and stunning for 3 seconds. Vauban's primary schtick is CC on all of his abilities whether it be bouncing enemies around, lifting them up, or sucking them into his very own black hole.

Currently his #1 completely ignores his overall thematic and should be brought into line. The reason for the arcing to other targets is, the effect is a guaranteed electric proc and universally an electric proc leaps to other targets. I stated the same damage to all targets because it is a small enough amount of damage no matter how he is modded as to have no chance at being OP or broken.

 

Tesla Link 2.0

 

Tesla links produce a damaging line of energy that also cannot be bypassed without destroying it first to proceed. It's destruction should require a minimum of 2 hits to ensure that enemies do not just swipe it once and ignore it. Basically just a QoL mechanic.

[AlphaHorseman]

Haha, I'm liking the ideas Genin, they flesh out the one area of his kit that isn't fully synergetic to his style, and allow for some interesting situations. Not to mention the new Augment you propose doesn't necessitate it's effectiveness, but also makes for the AoE denial theme being prominent throughout his kit. I'll start adding these into the OP as soon as I have the time.

[AlphaHorseman]

Augment Ideas and Power Reworks added into the OP. Thanks go Geninrising for contributing. All are welcome to contribute their thoughts on what we have here and to give suggestions of their own! We may discuss and see the benefits of said works!

[Harrycan]

DE should noticed about this thread. A very well said and well analysis. 
 

I only play around 5 or 7 frames at most, the other just sit there as collected items in my inventory. Mainly because I cant find them useful in late game where everything can 1 hit you. And more importantly, there is NOTHING they CAN do to avoid being 1 hit. 

This concept need to be applied to the game, It can creates much unique side for each frame that is currently lacking.

[geninrising]

Augment Ideas and Power Reworks added into the OP. Thanks go Geninrising for contributing. All are welcome to contribute their thoughts on what we have here and to give suggestions of their own! We may discuss and see the benefits of said works!

LOL you forgot to put Ember's 1 rework in OP too.

[AlphaHorseman]

LOL you forgot to put Ember's 1 rework in OP too.

Doing it now! haha, sorry!

 

As a side not, I'm going to fuse your augment idea with the ability, as I notice percentage damage becomes problematic at the moment with enemy scaling and the skill quickly becoming the only thing people use if it's the only thing that constantly deals damage. We can try and see how to work this out later on.

 

Edit: Oh nevermind, I reread the rest of our conversation on that one.

Edited January 23, 2015 by AlphaHorseman

[AlphaHorseman]

DE should noticed about this thread. A very well said and well analysis. 

 

I only play around 5 or 7 frames at most, the other just sit there as collected items in my inventory. Mainly because I cant find them useful in late game where everything can 1 hit you. And more importantly, there is NOTHING they CAN do to avoid being 1 hit. 

This concept need to be applied to the game, It can creates much unique side for each frame that is currently lacking.

I hope they do take notice, and that the community continues to contribute and critique, so that we may grow and strengthen the topic.

[AlphaHorseman]

Changes made to the OP! Additions to include the Ember and Trinity augment Ideas.

[geninrising]

Excalibur: Named for a legendary sword, this warrior should remain the pinnacle of melee excellence.

 

The first change that I would suggest be implemented is that all of Excalibur's strikes through power use be counted as melee strikes(and thus obtain the damage bonus from melee multiplier). We already know this is a mechanic in game as illustrated by Ash's Blade Storm and I feel this should definitely be an integral part of Excalibur's kit as he is essentially the melee frame. 

 

Slash Dash 2.0

Excalibur Rushes forward damaging all targets in a 8m wide path adding to his combo counter based on the number of enemies struck(damaging range width is not affected by power range to prevent OP slash dash builds that are immortal, in addition only slash dash has this mechanic, RJ does not). Melee combo counter would increase the damage dealt. This would incentivize players to utilize this ability often and cement Excal's role as the melee frame.

 

Surging Dash 2.0

At the end of Slash Dash Excalibur produces a pulse of energy knocking all targets back from him to a range of 10 meters. Enemies knocked away will deal a small amount of physics damage to other enemies also pushing them back to the maximum range(range of the pulse is not affected by power range). Considering the damage dealt would be minimal I see no issue with providing the combo counter damage bonus here as well.

 

 

I feel Super Jump should be removed from Excal's kit entirely and be implemented as a sort of charged jump to every frames kit. Allow players to expend X amount of stamina in order to charge a jump that will increase it's height and speed.

 

Excal's new 3.

Empowered strikes

for 50 energy Excalibur gains double scaling on all additions to his melee combo counter for 20 seconds(affected by duration)in addition Excalibur gains a bonus 20% damage to all melee hits. I thought about adding power str scaling to this as well but thought that with the combined 2x combo multiplier it would be insanely strong, as it stands it would be more than worthwhile addition to his kit whereas Super Jump is continually criticized as one of the most useless skills in game.

 

Augment: Stunning Strikes

While Empowered strikes is active Excalibur's attacks will stun a target for 2 second thus allowing him to allow melee in extremely dangerous situations if tactically applied to high threat targets.

 

Furious Javelin 2.0

Excalibur's RJ ability now provides him with a short duration spherical shielding made of blades, equal to the damage a RJ does(a single javelin not the total damage of all hits) with feature the shield can be further scaled with a larger combo multiplier and in addition teammate buffs such as Roar can increase this further since Roar will increase RJ's damage. This ability behaves akin to IS(scales from melee combo multiplier not pwr str) except it provides no immunity to cc or procs. Through careful use of his combo multiplier Excal gains a significant source of shielding that allows him to close ranks  with even the most dangerous targets.

 

Through careful synergetic use of these abilities Excalibur is able to always ensure that his entire kit is viable and truly impactful throughout the entire game.

 

 

Credit for this work goes to geninrising, haku360, and mrhawk1000

edited for clarity of statements.

edited for addition of Furious Javelin 2.0

Edited January 29, 2015 by geninrising

[Natsusane]

I agree to everything stated in the OP. +1

[Soul.Fire]

Completely agreed OP, I have even talked about this before.

 

The thing is, Augment mods have TREMENDOUS potential (like all things in Warframe, heh). Take an ability, and make it worthwhile baseline. Now add at least 2 different augment mods for said skill (only one is equippable per ability). Example:

 

Crush. Absolutely lackluster. Make it good baseline, like this:

* 50/50 of damage is now Magnetic and Puncture (makes way more sense)

* Once reaching the end of the ability, all enemies are slammed together in front of Mag. For each unit lifted, all targets suffer an additional 40 Impact damage (corpses also contribute!). That further emphasizes Mag's role as a "Reverser", using the power of the enemies to her advantage, here taking advantage of their numbers, their horde-powers.

* Once all enemies are slammed together, they lay on the ground for up to 4 seconds, still crushed together (think: Ragdolled). Affected by Power Duration.

 

Now you have a very solid Ultimate! What could the Augments do then? Some random ideas:

 

Augment 1) Railgun Crush - After enemies are slammed together, they are then launched in the direction Mag is aiming and anything colliding suffers X Impact damage (corpses also count).

Augment 2) Sadistic Crush - After enemies are slammed together, enemies are still held together in the air, suffering constant Magnetic damage, but Mag now also starts draining energy over time. Let's go by casting it again, or if all enemies die.

Augment 3) Forcefield Crush - While the animation lasts, Mag also projects a magnetic forcefield. This forcefield stops all gunfire from hitting Mag (maybe even launch the projectiles back?) and greatly slows down any unit that enters, which wasn't lifted.

 

See? A viable ability now can be augmented to further awesomeness. How do you want to augment it? Launching CC and added damage? Use Augment 1. Lasting CC and added damage? Then use Augment 2. More defense? Then use Augment 3.

 

Augments... it could be so much fun. But like all things in Warframe, they fail in their execution and due to their extreme lack of polish...

I so wish this was a thing x.x I love Mag, but she isn't all that viable at higher levels, even as Mag Prime :(

[geninrising]

I so wish this was a thing x.x I love Mag, but she isn't all that viable at higher levels, even as Mag Prime :(

Agreed. Alpha please add Azamagon's post in a section for Mag if you would be so kind.

[AlphaHorseman]

On it! Just busy lately, but I'll have some free time later on today so I'll add it in!

[AlphaHorseman]

Added Mag's boosts to the OP!

 

Genin I'll be getting to you and your compatriots Excal ideas later today. If possible, could you please list their names as well so that I can also give them credit for all of your ideas.

[geninrising]

Added Mag's boosts to the OP!

 

Genin I'll be getting to you and your compatriots Excal ideas later today. If possible, could you please list their names as well so that I can also give them credit for all of your ideas.

kk Credit added to my OP on Excal.

[AlphaHorseman]

Added in you and your friends Excal rework!

[AlphaHorseman]

If any have any critiques, ideas to give, or augments to add, please feel free to contribute and we can discuss them here.

[(PSN)theelix]

Can't... +1... Hard enough... 

Excalibur

 

Excalibur: Named for a legendary sword, this warrior should remain the pinnacle of melee excellence.

 

The first change that I would suggest be implemented is that all of Excalibur's strikes through power use be counted as melee strikes(and thus obtain the damage bonus from melee multiplier). We already know this is a mechanic in game as illustrated by Ash's Blade Storm and I feel this should definitely be an integral part of Excalibur's kit as he is essentially the melee frame. 

 

Slash Dash 2.0

Excalibur Rushes forward damaging all targets in a 8m wide path adding to his combo counter based on the number of enemies struck(damaging range width is not affected by power range to prevent OP slash dash builds that are immortal, in addition only slash dash has this mechanic, RJ does not). Melee combo counter would increase the damage dealt. This would incentivize players to utilize this ability often and cement Excal's role as the melee frame.

 

Surging Dash 2.0

At the end of Slash Dash Excalibur produces a pulse of energy knocking all targets back from him to a range of 10 meters. Enemies knocked away will deal a small amount of physics damage to other enemies also pushing them back to the maximum range(range of the pulse is not affected by power range). Considering the damage dealt would be minimal I see no issue with providing the combo counter damage bonus here as well.

 

 

I feel Super Jump should be removed from Excal's kit entirely and be implemented as a sort of charged jump to every frames kit. Allow players to expend X amount of stamina in order to charge a jump that will increase it's height and speed.

 

Excal's new 3.

Empowered strikes

for 50 energy Excalibur gains double scaling on all additions to his melee combo counter for 20 seconds(affected by duration)in addition Excalibur gains a bonus 20% damage to all melee hits. I thought about adding power str scaling to this as well but thought that with the combined 2x combo multiplier it would be insanely strong, as it stands it would be more than worthwhile addition to his kit whereas Super Jump is continually criticized as one of the most useless skills in game.

 

Augment: Stunning Strikes

While Empowered strikes is active Excalibur's attacks will stun a target for 2 second thus allowing him to allow melee in extremely dangerous situations if tactically applied to high threat targets.

 

Furious Javelin 2.0

Excalibur's RJ ability now provides him with a short duration spherical shielding made of blades, equal to the damage a RJ does(a single javelin not the total damage of all hits) with feature the shield can be further scaled with a larger combo multiplier and in addition teammate buffs such as Roar can increase this further since Roar will increase RJ's damage. This ability behaves akin to IS(scales from melee combo multiplier not pwr str) except it provides no immunity to cc or procs. Through careful use of his combo multiplier Excal gains a significant source of shielding that allows him to close ranks  with even the most dangerous targets.

 

Through careful synergetic use of these abilities Excalibur is able to always ensure that his entire kit is viable and truly impactful throughout the entire game.

 

 

Credit for this work goes to Geninrising, haku360, and mrhawk1000

 

[geninrising]

Can't... +1... Hard enough... 

Thank you ^^

[AlphaHorseman]

Can't... +1... Hard enough... 

Haha, you can thank Genin and Company for that.

[Jax_Cavalera]

Sup Alpha,

Not sure if you are preview to the Design Council area on the forum where a lot of these augments that we now see in game were first being conjured up.

 

Working off the basis that you were not able to view the proceedings, it may help to know that a large quantity of the Design Council Members did EXACTLY what the objective of this post speaks of.  We produced pages.. and pages... of ideas about augments that add something to a skill as well as expressed our absolute confusion about why certain abilities were asking for augment ideas when the baseline functionality needed a re-work.

 

It was interesting to see based on this, what transpired.  DE would go through the list and without provide maybe 3/5 options at best that were just a direct Buff or simple alteration of the code somehow not a all related to the synergy of the frame stats, other abilities and ability dependencies. It became clear that whilst they have been asking us for ideas regarding augments that are not direct buffs or that borrow another frames' abilities...look at what we end up with.

 

This isn't from a lack of players trying, it's simply the result of those in charge of deciding which ideas are added to the poll, selecting ones that are counter productive.

 

To this end, I really hope that they take notice of this thread and see that it isn't just a minority of players representing the bulk in the Design Council that feel this way but it is something shared by a majority of all players.

 

 

 

If you were preview to see the sad array of choices we have for Vaubans' Vortex it would really make you wonder.. how did they arrive at these augment choices from the selections they were provided?  The answer is likely a combination of easiest to determine all possible uses and scenarios so as to not have players finding any Over Powered applications for it and easier to just change a few lines of code so that when a 2nd vortex grenade is thrown into an existing vortex it extends the duration of the existing vortex *simple addition to a variable*  instead of more unique options.  I mean duration extension .. really? why not just throw a second vortex down when the first one is nearing the end of its timer?

 

Two more unique options that display proper synergy off the top of my head were -  Increases to Crit Chance based on the number of enemies currently residing inside the vortex (with possibility to take enemy hp/armor/shield stats into consideration as part of the calculation to the increases) or Linked Vortexes where enemies sucked into 1 vortex would teleport to the 2nd vortex location (wormhole).  I mean those kind of ideas are things that could be a huge game-changer for the ability.

 

The first has great synergy with the utility that Vortex is typically used for and would be well used helping add a little more to scalability.  The second would allow Vauban to really excel with the way that he manipulates the flow of mobs for some very unique results.  It also has great synergy possibilities with his other abilities such as bounce or bastille depending on where each vortex were cast.

 

I forget who came up with each of these initially but it gives a brief idea of what I mean by feeling that DE are just taking the Easy Road.  This is purely subjective and may not be true though based on what I have seen so far it is compelling.

 

 

TL:DR

 

Keep up the great work here man, we're all wanting a better game and this is one aspect that needs to demand more attention so that great ideas like those listed by the council as well as the ones here in this topic are all being noted by DE and considered.

 

It isn't a valid enough reason to write an idea off just because there could be some remote chance it could lead to that augment making a power OP.  It would be better whilst in Beta to explore these options now so that adjustments can still be made and ensure that players get more variety and a stronger Unique Identity between each frames skill set and abilities.

Edited February 1, 2015 by Jax_Cavalera

[AlphaHorseman]

Sup Alpha,

Not sure if you are preview to the Design Council area on the forum where a lot of these augments that we now see in game were first being conjured up.

 

Working off the basis that you were not able to view the proceedings, it may help to know that a large quantity of the Design Council Members did EXACTLY what the objective of this post speaks of.  We produced pages.. and pages... of ideas about augments that add something to a skill as well as expressed our absolute confusion about why certain abilities were asking for augment ideas when the baseline functionality needed a re-work.

 

It was interesting to see based on this, what transpired.  DE would go through the list and without provide maybe 3/5 options at best that were just a direct Buff or simple alteration of the code somehow not a all related to the synergy of the frame stats, other abilities and ability dependencies. It became clear that whilst they have been asking us for ideas regarding augments that are not direct buffs or that borrow another frames' abilities...look at what we end up with.

 

This isn't from a lack of players trying, it's simply the result of those in charge of deciding which ideas are added to the poll, selecting ones that are counter productive.

 

To this end, I really hope that they take notice of this thread and see that it isn't just a minority of players representing the bulk in the Design Council that feel this way but it is something shared by a majority of all players.

 

 

 

If you were preview to see the sad array of choices we have for Vaubans' Vortex it would really make you wonder.. how did they arrive at these augment choices from the selections they were provided?  The answer is likely a combination of easiest to determine all possible uses and scenarios so as to not have players finding any Over Powered applications for it and easier to just change a few lines of code so that when a 2nd vortex grenade is thrown into an existing vortex it extends the duration of the existing vortex *simple addition to a variable*  instead of more unique options.  I mean duration extension .. really? why not just throw a second vortex down when the first one is nearing the end of its timer?

 

Two more unique options that display proper synergy off the top of my head were -  Increases to Crit Chance based on the number of enemies currently residing inside the vortex (with possibility to take enemy hp/armor/shield stats into consideration as part of the calculation to the increases) or Linked Vortexes where enemies sucked into 1 vortex would teleport to the 2nd vortex location (wormhole).  I mean those kind of ideas are things that could be a huge game-changer for the ability.

 

The first has great synergy with the utility that Vortex is typically used for and would be well used helping add a little more to scalability.  The second would allow Vauban to really excel with the way that he manipulates the flow of mobs for some very unique results.  It also has great synergy possibilities with his other abilities such as bounce or bastille depending on where each vortex were cast.

 

I forget who came up with each of these initially but it gives a brief idea of what I mean by feeling that DE are just taking the Easy Road.  This is purely subjective and may not be true though based on what I have seen so far it is compelling.

 

 

TL:DR

 

Keep up the great work here man, we're all wanting a better game and this is one aspect that needs to demand more attention so that great ideas like those listed by the council as well as the ones here in this topic are all being noted by DE and considered.

 

It isn't a valid enough reason to write an idea off just because there could be some remote chance it could lead to that augment making a power OP.  It would be better whilst in Beta to explore these options now so that adjustments can still be made and ensure that players get more variety and a stronger Unique Identity between each frames skill set and abilities.

Jax, those Vauban augment ideas sound wonderful! What ever happened to them?!

 

And no, I did not see anything from the Design Council on augments before, is there a forum area that I am missing?

 

I hope to make sure that DE sees this thread and realizes our pleas, because lackluster powers should not be made good through the necessity of an augment. They should be good powers outright, and then be diversified or interestingly tweaked by an augment.

[geninrising]

Umm am at a loss as to who needs a look next. Any thoughts or ideas?

 

I mean I know lots of frames have crappy skills I'm just unsure which to touch on now.

Edited February 2, 2015 by geninrising