Archwizard's Warframe Concept Compilation - (Update 07/19/17) New Dust Ability Stats

[Archwizard]

Some of you may know me from my previous concept, Tremor the Terraformer, which I previously retired because of the release of the Atlas Warframe. In the meantime, I have not been idle, working silently for months with talented artists on a series of concepts to be released to you. I promised when I began work on these concepts that I would not reveal them until I was satisfied they were at least as developed as Tremor was, and now I can fulfill that promise. As it just so happens, March 26^th is the one-year anniversary of Tremor being released to these forums, and I wanted to do something special in celebration. Without further ado:

Dust (The Temporal Duelist)

Spoiler

Concept art by @arch111

Warframe Profile

This is Dust – the seer, the duelist.
Quick and calculating, her first blow is also the last.

Dust rends the barrier of time itself to strike down her foes at the best opportunity:

Rewind ensures Dust always fights less experienced foes. Enemies afflicted by the Rewind will suffer a drop in levels until the duration ends, while younger foes will blink out of existence.

Continuum allows Dust to make preemptive strikes and slay yet unseen foes. Once activated, Dust's next weapon attack will continue to cycle in the air, continuously dealing its full damage over the affected area.

Time Warp will slow the flow of time in a radius around Dust. Allies within the field will gain the benefit of increased duration to their abilities and status effects, while enemy attacks become easier to dodge.

When the time is right, use Magic Hour to create a perfect snapshot of enemy formations at the present moment. Damage or status effects dealt to these Snapshots will retroactively be reflected onto her victims, and slaying these targets will create a paradox. Rewinding targets connected to a Snapshot will bring them back to the location of the Snapshot.

Dust also infuses her weapons with the ability to stop the clock, allowing her channeled melee strikes to bring enemies to a standstill.

Dust can amplify her powers through the application of mods. A Duration mod will increase the benefit of all of her abilities, while a Range mod can increase the reach of Rewind and affected area of Time Warp and Magic Hour. Finally, adding a Strength mod will empower her Rewind and Magic Hour.

Enemies of Dust beware: she has seen the future, and she will be the victor.

Stats, Abilities and Augments

Theme: Time Manipulation/Timing, Duelist
Roles: Allied Buffer, Enemy Debuffer, Sustained Damage

Health: 100 (300 at rank 30)
Shields: 150 (450 at rank 30)
Armor: 65
Power: 100 (150 at rank 30)
Speed: 1.15
Aura Polarity: Naramon () – The limited targeting of Dust's abilities requires her to cast often, making Energy Siphon ideal.
Polarities: 1x Vazarin (), 1x Madurai ()

Passive – Temps d'Escrime: Channeled attacks with a melee weapon will put the target into temporal Stasis for up to 2 seconds. Innate Rift Strike when wielding Rapiers.

Rewind: Dust sends her foe back along their timeline to a weaker state, reducing its level. Cast on a target affected by Magic Hour to return them to their Snapshot.

Spoiler

-          25 energy cost, affected by Power Efficiency.

-          Dust debuffs an enemy target up to 20 / 30 / 40 / 50 meters away, and any enemies within 0 / 1 / 2 / 3 meters of her target. Affected enemies are staggered, and temporarily lose 3 / 5 / 7 / 10 levels for 7 / 8 / 10 / 12 seconds. If the target's level cannot be further reduced, they receive 50 Puncture damage for each excess level instead.

• Dropping in level can affect the target’s maximum health, maximum shields, total armor and attack damage. However, Rewind cannot affect Affinity gained from killing the target.
• Cast range and splash radius are affected by Power Range.
• Duration is affected by Power Duration.
• Level drop is affected by Power Strength, but base Puncture damage is not. Level drop may not reduce targets below level 1.
• Puncture damage can proc Weaken, and does not activate Continuum.
• Enemies slain by this effect will vanish in a flash, but will still drop loot and have invisible corpses available for the purposes of abilities, a la Channeling damage or Desecrate.

-          Any damage dealt to the target before and after the level drop is retained in its entirety, rather than scaling up or down. If a target has less maximum health after activation than the damage they received before activation, they will be killed instantly.

-          If cast on a target with an active Snapshot (see Magic Hour), they will be teleported back to their Snapshot.

• This effect may occur regardless of if the target was struck by Rewind directly or via the Snapshot.
• Targets whose Snapshots were taken when they were unalerted will be returned to an unalerted state until they next witness hostile activity, regardless of damage dealt by Rewind.
• While Rewind is active, health and shields lost due to the maximum health drop are counted as damage dealt for the purposes of paradox detonations.

-          Recasting Rewind on an affected target will not stack or cancel the effect, but will deal damage, refresh the duration and attempt to teleport them to a connected Snapshot.

-          Direct-aimed, like Mind Control or Energy Vampire. 

-          One-handed cast, can be cast while airborne.

-          If cast in Conclave, Rewind has no splash radius, cannot remain active on more than one target at a time, and will temporarily simulate a level drop by reducing the target's maximum health, maximum shields, weapon damage and energy capacity by up to 20%, and downranking all of their abilities by 1 rank. Any abilities reduced below Unranked are unusable until Rewind ends. Any health, shields or energy lost will be replenished the instant Rewind ends.

Augment: Psychometry – Killing a victim of Rewind temporarily confers their lost lifetime to you for 15 / 20 / 25 / 30 seconds.

-          Killing a target affected by Rewind will grant Dust a temporary bonus to health, armor and shields based on the amount the target lost via Rewind's level drop.

-          Effect duration is not affected by Power Duration.

-          Limit 1 instance; killing a new target affected by Rewind will replace the active instance.

Conclave Augment: Backfire – The target's next 8 / 10 / 12 / 15 outgoing attacks within 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 seconds are reversed.

-          Upon casting Rewind, the target will be debuffed for a limited duration to have a limited number of their next outgoing attacks be reversed in time. Effect will end automatically if the duration ends (in spite of the remaining number of charges) or the charges run out (in spite of the remaining duration), but is independent of Rewind's level drop.

-          Projectiles and firearms that have been reversed will have inverted trajectories and deal friendly fire, immediately attacking their user; if the weapon has Punch Through, the attack will continue beyond its user.

-          Melee attacks that have been reversed will instead heal their target for the damage they would have inflicted.

-          Effect duration and maximum number of charges are affected by mod rank.

Continuum: Dust’s next weapon attack snapshots her present state and reaches into the future, continuously cycling in the air.

Spoiler

-          35 energy cost, affected by Power Efficiency.

-          Activating Continuum causes its effects to remain dormant until Dust’s next weapon attack, similarly to the second cast of Ballistic Battery. Upon initiating an attack with any melee weapon or firearm, Dust creates an Afterimage of herself for 10 / 15 / 20 / 25 seconds that repeats the attack in the air, continuously dealing the full damage of the strike over the affected area.

• Afterimage uptime is affected by Power Duration.
• This attack does not need to strike a target to consume the effect, and only needs to be capable of dealing damage.

-          The Afterimage will attack at the same rate as the fire rate (snapshotted at the moment of creation) of the weapon used to initiate the attack. Likewise, the Afterimage will share the same status chance, critical chance, critical multiplier, trajectory, flight speed and affected area as the weapon used to initiate the attack.

• Any damage buffs or status effects (including channeling, combo multipliers or debuffs) which applied to Dust upon creation of the Afterimage will be retained by the Afterimage for its entire duration. Any such effects applied to Dust after the Afterimage's creation will not be accounted for.
• The Afterimage cannot turn or perform any action other than the attack that created it, and can only move within the boundaries of a melee attack animation. Melee attacks will cause the Afterimage to cycle the same animation from the same starting and ending points for that keystroke.
• Similarly to Hall of Mirrors, the Afterimage is intangible, immune to attacks, semi-transparent when attacking and allows allies to aim through it. However, it draws no threat and is invisible to enemies.
• The Afterimage cannot copy Syndicate activation effects, or ability damage caused by Rewind or Magic Hour.
• The Afterimage will strike the exact same point with all successive strikes, regardless of recoil or accuracy.
• Weapons with player-activated delayed blasts (Penta, Castanas) will only create Afterimages upon detonation. 
• Weapons with over-time environmental effects (Tonkor, Torid) will only clone any damage that would be dealt on-contact with enemies, and will not stack the environmental effect.

-          Afterimages created via melee attacks can apply the time freeze from Dust's passive, and will contribute to her active combo count.

-          Hitscan and projectile attacks fired by the Afterimage will have Punch Through up to the maximum distance traveled by the initiating attack.

-          Maximum of one Afterimage active per Dust; recasting Continuum will consume the active Afterimage upon creation of a new one.

-          Can be cast while airborne and without interrupting any animations, a la Speed. The Afterimage can similarly be triggered from the air.

Augment: Reversal – Hold-casting Continuum with an Afterimage active will send Dust back in time to the moment of its activation, restoring up to 55% / 70% / 85% / 100% of her previous health and ammunition.

-          Hold-casting will teleport Dust to the location of the active Afterimage, consuming it in the process. The player will regain a percentage of the health and ammo they had at the moment the Afterimage was created (not when Continuum was first activated). This effect will automatically swap the player back to whatever weapon the Afterimage activated from, without a holstering animation.

-          Percentage of health and ammo restored are not affected by Power Strength.

-          Dust will automatically drop any datamasses or batteries she's carrying upon initiating the teleport from this effect.

-          Reversal may be activated while airborne, stunned, knocked down or otherwise incapacitated, and will clear any status ailments from Dust, including Disarm, upon concluding the teleport.

-          This augment is also usable in the Conclave.

Time Warp: Dust slows down time in an area, extending allies' Power and Status Duration, and allowing her to dodge incoming attacks within the field.

Spoiler

-         Channeled: Initially costs 15 energy, and consumes an additional 5 energy every second.

• Upkeep cost is affected by Power Duration.
• Initial and upkeep costs are both affected by Power Efficiency. 

-          Upon activation, Dust creates a 5 / 7 / 10 / 12 meter wide stationary spherical field of ever-falling sand centered on her current location, with a radius affected by Power Range. Dust may continue moving independently of the sphere while Continuum is active.

• Radius is affected by Power Range.

-          While standing within the field, allies gain the benefit of 5% / 10% / 15% / 20% increased Power Duration and Status Duration for any viable attacks, abilities and effects initiated from within the field.

• Increases to Power and Status Duration are affected by Power Duration.
• While standing within the field, colors will desaturate, ambient sounds drop in pitch and volume, and a slow, faraway mechanical ticking can be heard by the player.

-          Hostile bullets and projectiles that strike the outer edge of the field have their flight speed reduced by 80% / 85% / 90% / 95% until they exit the field. Affected hitscan bullets will be converted into projectiles with a base speed of 200.0 m/s.

• Projectile slow and speed are not affected by Power Strength.
• Projectile slow can affect hostile powers.
• Affected projectiles may also inflict friendly fire damage, or even slow down to allow enemies to run into their own bullets.
• Affected projectiles will increase to their original speed upon exiting the field.

-          Two-handed cast, cannot be used while airborne.

Augment: Time Dilation – Time Warp also increases allies' fire rate and attack speed by 5% / 7% / 8% / 10% for each enemy caught within the field.

-          For each enemy within the field, allies within the field will receive a stacking increase to Primary/Secondary fire rate and Melee attack speed until Time Warp ends or the player exits the field. Whenever an enemy exits the field, a stack of the fire rate increase is lost.

-          Fire rate conversion is not affected by Power Strength.

Magic Hour: Dust creates a snapshot of the present moment, creating frozen images of her enemies and opening them to retroactive attacks. Fallen foes erupt in a paradox.

Spoiler

-          14.3 / 12.5 / 10 / 8.3 energy cost per target, affected by Power Efficiency.

-          Enemies within a 120-degree cone in front of Dust, up to 15 / 20 / 25 / 30 meters away, leave behind stationary, intangible clones of themselves for up to 10 / 15 / 20 / 25 seconds. These Snapshots share health with the target they are cloned from, as well as any buffs, debuffs or exposed vulnerable spots (such as the Juggernaut’s underbelly or tendrils) that the target possessed upon creation of the Snapshot. Damage and debuffs dealt to the Snapshot will be dealt to the connected target, regardless of distance, and vice versa. Area-effect attacks can strike both simultaneously for additional damage toward the connected target. Snapshots last until the Duration ends, or until their connected target dies.

• Cone length is affected by Power Range, but arc radius is not.
• Snapshot uptime is affected by Power Duration.
• Magic Hour has its duration halved on bosses.
• As with Terrify, targets nearest Dust within the selected area who are unaffected by Magic Hour will be prioritized.
• An energy tether (similar to Link) is drawn between the Snapshot with its connected target if the two are within a limited range of each other. This is purely a visual indicator for reference to the player; lack of a tether does not dictate lack of a connection.
• Snapshots are invisible to AI, but still show health bars when moused over.
• Snapshots are fully permeable to both allies and enemies, a la Snow Globes, and are semi-transparent to improve visibility.

-         Whenever a target is slain while affected by Magic Hour, they cause a paradox. The energy invested in killing the target explodes outward from their corpse, dealing 125% / 150% / 175% / 200% of health lost during Magic Hour as Blast damage to surrounding enemies in a 6 / 7 / 8 / 10 meter radius.

• Damage percentage is affected by Power Strength.
• Explosion radius is affected by Power Range.
• This damage will not activate Continuum.

-          In order to minimize clutter and performance issues, a single Dust may affect no more than 7 / 8 / 10 / 12 targets with Magic Hour at a time.

• Maximum number of targets is not affected by Power Strength.
• Recasting Magic Hour will attempt to create new Snapshots from unaffected targets up to the remaining cap.

-          Casting Magic Hour will not alert affected enemies. Snapshots of unalerted targets are vulnerable to a single Finisher attack. Surviving enemies will be alerted by damage dealt to their Snapshots.

-          Two-handed cast, cannot be used while airborne. 

-          Snapshots are created at the beginning of Magic Hour's cast animation.

Augment: Critical Moment – Allies have their critical strike chance increased by 50% / 100% / 150% / 200% on attacks dealt to Snapshots.

-          Critical strike chance increase is not affected by Power Strength.

-          Bonus applies to weapons in the same manner as Argon Scope, etc.

Additional Notes

Quest: The Paradox Engine – With the return of Earth's moon, a series of old beacons have sparked to life on Lua; the Lotus wishes you to deactivate them to prevent calling more Sentient fighters. Upon investigating each, you relive memories of the Old War, controlling a forgotten Warframe. Over the course of the investigation, it becomes increasingly clear these memories are not your own – and that the signal's disruption will have darker consequences.

Author Commentary

Spoiler

Dust: Dust to dust. Dust in the hourglass. Dust on the mantle. The passage of time itself is best signified by the presence of dust.

Time Warframes are probably the most highly requested concept since Atlas claimed the spot of the Earth Warframe, so the top challenge of Dust was getting her to stand out.

Originally I had Dust designed as a male Warframe focused entirely on your standard time-based gimmickry: speed stuff up, slow stuff down, maybe stop them entirely. The flaw with that design is that it was exactly the same approach as everyone else – make someone who can stop time and call it a day. Of course, a lot of these concepts fall flat because they add nothing new to the table; everyone and their dog (literally; see Raksas) can fire off some form of crowd control. Volt, Nezha and Valkyr can all "speed up"; Frost and Nova can each "slow down"; Harrow and Limbo each "stop". Hell, Rhino of all frames can virtually stop time on his own!

The standard gimmicks could come later, but for the central power kit, it all came down to one question: What can a Time wielder do, that nobody else can?

Right off the bat, I wanted Dust to enhance the team’s Duration. I’ve been working on the concept for around a year and a half – before Equinox nabbed Provoke – and the big open niche at the time was to have frames who can buff allies’ abilities. This became especially prominent after the release of frames like Mesa who can buff the team’s weapon damage, leaving many abilities in the dust (pun not intended). In fact, this came to inspire the creation of Fathom and completion of Revenant just to complete the set (more on that later).

The addition of an effect to slow down bullets was, as I'm sure was completely transparent, inspired by a number of sources – things like the Matrix and Bayonetta, increasing your reaction time by slowing everything else down, granting yourself an aid to avoidance as long as you remember to use her speed and mobility.
This addition then inspired the main rule for any powers in Dust's toolkit moving forward: A Time-based opponent should have a unique relationship with the passage of time; someone to whom timing would be both more relevant and more forgiving. At the perfect vantage point for a split second while falling through the air? Continuum, it’s like you never left, without the danger of staying. You want to be able to extend that brief moment Juggernaut is open to get shot? Snapshot it with Magic Hour, and double your nuke damage while you’re at it; the danger remains because he hasn't stopped. You can even combine Continuum and Magic Hour, allowing you to retroactively murder a target by attacking it in the future – exactly the kind of paradox a Time attacker should exploit! With that idea of seeking out and exploiting the "perfect opening", while deftly avoiding enemy blows, it almost seemed like nothing but a duelist would do as an additional theme. This also caused her de-leveling ability to fall into place, giving her a one-on-one advantage against foes; with the use of Freeze as a "magic wand" in Frost's kit, directly interacting with his Snow Globe, it created additional opportunities for one of Dust's powers to do the same with her other abilities.

Originally I wanted her to have a little bit more of a sand theme (name and all), although Inaros nabbed that before I got her polished. Still, as long as she’s not actively making sand golems or throwing sand in anyone’s eyes, I see no harm in having it as a fun little aesthetic element to her powers, much as Nezha uses fire or Octavia uses sound.

Her passives were probably some of the trickier things to iron out, having had multiple iterations. Once I decided on making her a duelist, I knew right off the bat that her passive should be maximized by using quick weapons like Destreza.  Initially I started with a CC effect (in case of a lack of controller allies) that her melee weapon had to stack, forcing you to increase your attack speed as much as possible to maximize it; however, it was quickly pointed out that this could also be used in conjunction with Time Warp and long weapons like Orthos to make her virtually invincible by chain-smacking the entire wave. I reworked the CC aspect so that it had a more "random" nature to it (relying on crits instead), while still being more reliable on weapons like Rapiers (running under the assumption that future rapiers will remain light with high crit values), but this ran afoul when the Endura rapier was released. Eventually, I decided it should activate off of Channeling – it's an underused function of melee, the energy cost balances the advantage it provides, and the quick nature of Rapiers would still lend well to maintaining it when used in conjunction with Continuum.
I'd been having a lot of dreams about Dust as a nimble fighter, tricking out time to strike at the enemy from multiple points along both her and their timelines. This prompted the idea to have Dust also teleport at will... somehow. Eventually, I realized it could be made part of her passive so long as it was limited; in a post-Inaros world, the bar for "seemingly overpowered" passives has shifted drastically, so I felt no shame in allowing her a pair as well.

Signature Weapon: Destreza, or Corpus Radiation Laser-Rapier. Her passive is specifically designed with fast weapons in mind, so that equipping Berserker would allow her to speed up as her enemies slow down.
For a non-melee, she would likely wield a strong single-shot flintlock pistol with a faster fire rate than its reload; though potentially useless in most circumstances, it would get mileage with Continuum. There aren't really a lot of decent Primary weapons that fit a Duelist theme, but something with some area damage (like a quick launcher, or an energy sniper with punch through) could benefit Magic Hour.

Syndicates: The Arbiters of Hexis revere her gift of foresight as a key to Tenno ascension, while the Perrin Sequence simply appreciates her finery and elegance.

Fathom (The Spatial Horror) _{(Formerly "Aether")}

Spoiler

Concept art by @MrPigman

Warframe Profile

This is Fathom – a waking nightmare.
After eons of slumber, he returns to drag his enemies to the edge of reality.

Fathom’s abilities twist empty space, infinitely expanding his reach:

Fracture creates a crack in reality at the target location. When multiple Fractures are present, attacks fired into one will be refracted out all others active. In the presence of some Warframe powers, Fractures can act as beacons to extend their range.

Event Horizon creates a field of intense gravity at Fathom’s feet. Enemies who enter the field will be pulled to the ground while it remains active, while allies will be harder for enemies to knock down or move.

Twisted Path creates a projectile that reshapes space to Fathom's will. Hostile attacks fired through the trail it creates will be redirected, while enemies who cross the trail will be torn apart and forcefully turned away.

Is the room shrinking, Tenno? Inevitable Maw turns Fathom into a singularity, dragging all enemies toward himself. As enemies come closer to Fathom, or one of his Fractures, they will receive increasing damage and their attacks will be slowed to a halt.

Fathom’s very presence alters the space around himself, reducing the distance between his weapons and his enemies.

Fathom’s influence can be extended with the use of mods. Duration and Range mods will positively benefit all of his abilities, while adding a Strength mod will increase the damage of Twisted Path and Inevitable Maw.

The stars are right, Tenno – will you heed the call of Fathom?

Stats, Abilities and Augments

Theme: Space and Gravity Manipulation, Lovecraftian Horror
Roles: Area Denial/Crowd Control, Offensive Support

Health: 125 (375 at rank 30)
Shields: 125 (375 at rank 30)
Armor: 100
Power: 150 (225 at rank 30)
Speed: 0.95
Aura Polarity: Vazarin () – Fathom's abilities are ideal for standing still in the open, so shoring up his defenses is a massive boon.
Polarities: 2x Naramon ()

Passive – Endless Reach: Range and flight speed for all weapons is increased by 20%.

Fracture: Fathom creates a portal to absorb allied attacks. Attacking the Fracture will copy and fire attacks through all other active Fractures.

Spoiler

-          Fathom creates a flat circle of translucent, thin, broken glass-like material at a target location. This tear is maintained for a period affected by Power Duration, and placed at a distance affected by Power Range.

-          Fractures are invisible and intangible to enemies. Enemies will not attempt to avoid Fractures, and Fractures will have no innate effects against enemies.

-          A single Fracture remains inert to Tenno until at least one more forms. When two or more Fractures are active, they all become connected. 

-          Shooting into the side of a Fracture that was facing the caster upon activation will fire an identical attack from the away-facing side of all other active Fractures created by the same Fathom.

-          Any projectiles or bullets that strike the side of a Fracture will be consumed, copied, and fired out of the opposite side of all other active Fractures at the same angle. Attacks with Punch Through will still be consumed, but the projectiles will bear a corresponding amount of Punch Through instead. Guided projectiles copied by Fracture (ie Antimatter Drop) will attempt to converge with the original projectile. Enemies can receive multiple instances of damage from one attack fired through multiple Fractures.

-          Beam, shotgun or melee attacks that strike the side of a Fracture will be copied, consumed and fired out the opposite side of all active Fractures at the same angle. However, the maximum length or falloff of the copied attack is equal to the length of the original attack minus the attacker's distance from the initiating Fracture. Enemies can receive multiple instances of damage from one attack fired through multiple Fractures.

-          Warframe powers cast within range of a Fracture will use all other active Fractures as relay stations, applying their effects as if the Fracture was the origin of the cast with identical Power Strength, for as long as the effect remains active. The radius of effect around each Fracture is based on the attack or aura's initial radius, multiplied by an amount affected by Fathom's Power Range. Targets standing in overlapping radii, including the original cast, will only receive damage or status effects as if standing in a singular cast.

-          One-handed cast, may be used while airborne.

Augment: Breach – Fractures will lash out at nearby enemies.

-          Whenever an enemy comes within a limited range of a Fracture, a tentacle will reveal itself from inside the Fracture and strike the target. This effect remains active even if only 1 Fracture is present on the battlefield.

-          Only 1 tentacle may be active per Fracture. Fracture's own effects will not duplicate the damage of a tentacle to other active Fractures.

-          Tentacle reach is affected by rank and Power Range.

-          Tentacle damage is affected by rank and Power Strength.

Event Horizon: Fathom creates an inescapable field of gravity, immobilizing any foes who enter and preventing flight. Allies will resist hostile push effects.

Spoiler

-          Fathom creates a large spherical field at his current location. Enemies who pass through the field will be pulled to the ground, rooting them in place. Rooting field is affected by Power Range and Power Duration.

-          Enemies within the field upon activation are knocked down and alerted. Enemies who enter the field after activation will receive stagger once the root sets in, but will not be alerted to Fathom’s presence, a la Radial Disarm.

-          Immobilized enemies can still attack, but have a limited turning radius; Tenno directly behind them are functionally invisible. Immobilized enemies also take twice as long to recover from knockdown effects.

-          Ragdolling or movement effects inflicted upon immobilized targets will be reduced to knockdown. If the target attempts to perform an attack with directional momentum, they will be immediately knocked down and their attack will be interrupted.

-          An unlimited number of enemies may be immobilized within a single field; however, recasting Event Horizon will remove and replace the active field, freeing any enemies not within the new field.

-          Flying or airborne enemies who pass through the rooting field are pulled to the ground and will receive up to 50% of their health as Finisher damage upon impact. As part of the rooting effect, affected enemies may not attempt to take flight again until the field's duration ends.

-          Allies standing within the field have knockdown and knockback immunity, a la Atlas' passive, and cannot be rendered airborne by enemy attacks. Friction within the field is increased, preventing players from being thrown by any means.

-          Within the Conclave, Event Horizon will not root enemies, but will stagger enemies on entry and pull them to the ground. Enemy players within the field may not jump, aim glide, or parkour until exiting.

-          Two-handed cast, cannot be cast while airborne.

Augment: Gravity Lapse – Tap to switch Event Horizon to Low Gravity mode.

-          Attaching the augment will convert Event Horizon to a hold-cast effect, and tap-casting will swap options between Event Horizon and Gravity Lapse modes, a la Quiver or Minelayer. (This can be inverted with the Tap to Cast setting in the Options menu.)

-          Activating Gravity Lapse will propel all surrounding enemies in contact with the ground into the air instead of knockdown, a la Bounce or Rhino Stomp, and create a slowing field. Size and duration of the slowing field are equal to those of Event Horizon's rooting field.

-          Allies within the slowing field will also have increased airtime and maneuverability, a la Zephyr’s passive, for as long as they remain within the field.

-          Slow effects are affected by augment rank only. Enemy slow will not surpass 40%, to add incentive to the rooting field.

-          Enemies launched into the air by Gravity Lapse are considered to be airborne for the purposes of Event Horizon’s Impact damage.

-          The Gravity Lapse field counts towards the 1 instance limit of Event Horizon; casting either Event Horizon or Gravity Lapse will clear the active field.

Twisted Path: Fathom warps the fabric of space into a barrier, misdirecting hostile projectiles and enemy movements along the path he shapes.

Spoiler

-          Channeled; Fathom produces a haze-emitting projectile from his hands, which follows his cursor a la Antimatter Drop. This projectile will not "detonate" on impact with surfaces. Upkeep cost is scaled to distance traveled, and the speed of the projectile can be adjusted with the Zoom function.

-          While Twisted Path is toggled active, the summoned projectile's movements leave behind a translucent 'wake', the thickness of which is affected by Power Range. When Twisted Path is toggled off, the projectile diminishes but the wake continues to remain active for a period affected by Power Duration. The wake has no maximum length.

-          Projectiles and bullets fired by enemies into or through the wake (whether the effect is toggled active or not) will be displaced in a random direction, a la Turbulence. Any homing properties are lost, and all affected bullets and projectiles have friendly fire enabled, allowing them to harm the attacker's allies.

-          Enemies that pass through the wake (whether the effect is toggled active or not) will receive Slash damage and be teleported back to the side they attempted to cross from, but be turned around. Affected enemies are confused for a brief duration, a la Switch Teleport. Damage is affected by Power Strength.

-          Immobilized enemies will not be moved by Twisted Path, but will continue to receive periodic damage from contact with the wake.

-          Recasting Twisted Path will clear any active haze before creating a new projectile.

-          One-handed cast, may be used while airborne.

Augment: True Path – Allies may instantly travel between the endpoints of the Twisted Path.

-          When Twisted Path is deactivated, two-way portals form at its origin and terminus. Players who come into contact with one of these portals will be sent to the opposite.

-          Portals are invisible to enemies, and enemies who come into contact with these portals will be ignored by True Path and instantly affected by Twisted Path.

-          Number of charges is affected by mod rank only.

-          This mod fits an Exilus slot.

Conclave Augment: Mirrored Path – Enemies who pass through the wake have their controls reversed for a duration.

Inevitable Maw: Fathom extends his grasp to draw enemies toward himself. Enemies dragged close will be frozen and suffer increasing damage over time.

Spoiler

-          Channeled; Fathom is unable to move or perform other actions (except for guiding projectiles) while channeling Inevitable Maw.

-          Upon activation, Fathom reaches out toward all enemies within range with shadowy tendrils, and slowly drags them toward himself. Enemies will be knocked down upon being ensnared by the effect. Energy drain increases with the number of enemies ensnared.

-          Ensnared enemies receive continuous Impact damage and reduced attack speed, each of which increases in effect the closer they get to Fathom. Maximum damage is affected by Power Strength.

-          Enemies who come within 3 meters of Fathom are dragged no closer and are completely frozen in a ring around himself. If an enemy cannot enter that ring (either by outside impedance, or lack of openings within the ring), they remain slowed rather than frozen, until room opens to drag them closer.

-          Travel speed is affected by Power Duration.

-          Deactivating the effect will stagger all ensnared enemies.

-          Casting Inevitable Maw in range of a Fracture will drag enemies toward the Fractures instead, as if each is an Fathom with reduced Power Range.

-          Two-handed cast, cannot be cast while airborne.

Augment: Maw of Madness – Frozen enemies will serve Fathom for a brief duration.

-          Enemies who have been drawn within 3 meters of Fathom will become Mind Controlled for a brief duration. While Inevitable Maw remains toggled active, the Mind Control effect will automatically refresh each time Inevitable Maw deals damage to the frozen target, allowing affected targets to shield Fathom from damage. When Inevitable Maw ends or is canceled, affected targets are free to attack their former allies.

-          Affected targets will receive damage normally from Fathom's allies, rather than storing it until the Mind Control ends. Unlike Confusion, affected targets will not target Tenno or other controlled units, and are treated as allies for the purposes of abilities.

-          Maximum duration and number of affected targets are affected by mod rank only.

Conclave Augment: Vertigo – Targets released from Inevitable Maw are flung back to their original location, dealing damage to enemies at their impact point based on their total damage received.

-          Damage and radius are effected by mod rank.

Additional Notes

Quest: The Sunken Prison – A civilian scientist would like to study what it was within the Tau system that provoked the Sentients, and requests that you locate and search some flooded Orokin research stations on Uranus to reactivate old observation equipment. A "miscalculation" releases an untamed Orokin prototype within the facility, which corrupts anything it touches; to prevent its escape into the Origin system, you must awaken the Warframe keeping it trapped.

Author Commentary

Spoiler

Fathom: A unit of measurement for water depth, from the Old English for "outstretched arms". Also used to mean "to get to the bottom of, or to understand".

Also the root for the word "unfathomable". And what better name for a creature from the sunken city of R'lyeh?

Fathom has probably been the most difficult concept in this list to complete. He’s been through about a half dozen different iterations – each with different names even, from Syzygy to Quasar to Typhon, most recently to Aether and then Fathom. It just goes to show the evils of trying to make a concept for the sake of completing a set, rather than for something you’d want to play in the game: you have no driving influence or set ideas. Luckily, we’re at a stage where I can say the extra effort was well worth it!

As I said in the Dust commentary, Fathom came about when I thought of creating a Warframe who could enhance his allies’ Power Range. If you have someone who can manipulate Time, it’s only natural that they have a companion who can manipulate Space too – in this case, the Beast to Dust's Beauty, or the chaos to Dust's order.

Fathom spent a lot of time in limbo (not that one) until my old Tremor project was retired by the release of Atlas; from that jumping-off point, I considered borrowing a few elements of Tremor that didn’t make it to the release of Atlas – though not one-for-one, of course. Doors the led to nowhere instead of walls, gravity missiles instead of rooting trenches, that sort. The one rule I made for Tremor, which I passed down to Fathom, was that all of his powers should alter the shape or landscape of the battlefield in some way, giving him a load of environmental objects to throw around. After all, nothing less would be fitting for a frame whose powers govern empty space. 

Around the time Dust’s “duelist” theme finally clicked, I started to consider exactly what I wanted Fathom to be, beyond simply a collection of abilities on the battlefield. While the basis of his abstract abilities – things like gravity and dimensions – all fit into the folio of "space-y" abilities, and could even synergize together well, they felt out of place together within one kit, rather than for frames of separate themes... who likely wouldn't get more than 1-2 unique abilities each, since Warframe has several dozen different kits.
In short, think of the differences between Frost and Hydroid: you easily could make an argument that both are essentially water-elementals, but they and their abilities represent completely different aspects of water (one cold, one wet). If I was going to run with a general theme of "space", he would need some work to fuse his folios together, to be aesthetically cohesive.
Initially, I thought of Fathom as having a very dream-like quality to him, to match some of the more abstract qualities of his powers. He could expand and contort space, or even make trick doors that led back into the room you were exiting; very Wonderland-esque. I didn’t quite make the jump to “eldritch abomination” until I started to consider exactly what he should look like: if he twists space then he himself should look twisted, grotesque, not quite malevolent but not “right” either, something you would not imagine to find in any reality and would still run from if it was seen looking your way. From there, I scrapped every ability I had written for him and started from scratch with that goal in mind. The abilities presented here are barely a month old as of this thread's birth!

Where I once considered having Fathom simply warp reality in small ways, I came around to a more extreme approach: shattering it entirely, fraying it as he walks, making holes he could poke his fingers into to exert his influence at long distance. Someone who doesn’t simply make speed bumps, but tidal waves. 

Fathom is much more the "controller" of the set presented here, giving freedom for the others in this list to focus on combat. That being said, I've always believed that a space manipulator could be one of the most dangerous attackers out in the world. After all, Warframe is a sci-fi game, a genre that isn't averse to the dangers of portal-cutting, telefragging into solid objects, or simply scattering your atoms in transit and forgetting to put them back together (qualities that influenced the addition of direct damage to Fathom's third ability). Add in any powers related to quantum mechanics and you have a veritable reality warper. If anything, the fact that Fathom is a controller merely serves to keep him balanced rather than a god-mode, invincible instant-killer who could end the war by choosing to.

As a Lovecraftian Horror, I wanted him to be a very slow frame – "In his house at R'lyeh, dead Cthulhu lies dreaming." In terms of personality, he's a very restful frame, which reflects on his abilities; he doesn't worry about getting anywhere with expedience because he's always feet away from the enemy, between his portals, projectiles and ability to draw foes closer.

Signature Weapon: Elemental Cephalon Glaive. Functions nicely with his passive and Fracture, and creates this idea of him really reaching out to attack. (A Whip would make a decent alternative melee weapon, just for that extra 'tentacle'.)
His other weapons should be equally weird; Simulor is up his alley, although he might be happy with some type of bouncing-beam weapon if the Glaive doesn't work out to play on Fractures. And of course, some time of continuous area-damage weapon like Torid would complement his battlefield control.

Syndicates: Cephalon Suda is fascinated by his reality-warping powers and unafraid to dig into his mysteries, while Steel Meridian identifies with his ability to entrap foes to protect his allies.

Revenant (The Entropic Mage)

Spoiler

Design by @tnccs215, Final art by @arch111

Ability icons designed in conjunction with @tnccs215

Warframe Profile

This is Revenant – the heretic, the destroyer.
Ruthless and dispassionate, he is an unpredictable assailant.

Revenant draws on entropy to tear his enemies – and himself – asunder:

Torment allows Revenant to lay a curse on his enemies, tethering them together. Any damage inflicted to cursed targets will be copied to all other victims.

Sacrifice will drain some of Revenant’s health to restore energy to his allies. Using Sacrifice will also stun and damage Tormented enemies.

Unravel causes Revenant to come apart at the seams to get around obstacles. While he reassembles, he is momentarily more difficult for enemies to strike.

When absolutely everything must die, accept no substitutes: Obliterate can channel a beam of Void energy that will cut through barriers to atomize Revenant’s enemies, restoring his lost health as they perish. Revenant may continue to Unravel himself to evade attacks while channeling Obliterate.

Revenant becomes stronger as he comes closer to oblivion. As his health decreases, his Power Strength will grow, amplifying the effects of his abilities.

Revenant can better exterminate foes via the use of mods. Adding Duration and Range mods will extend the effectiveness of all of his abilities. Finally, Power Strength will increase the effectiveness of Torment, Sacrifice and Obliterate.

The closer things come together, the easier they come apart. Will you break under pressure, Tenno?

Stats, Abilities and Augments

Theme: Entropy/Void, Black Magic/Sorcery, Malevolent Spirit
Roles: Caster Damage (Glass Cannon), Energy Replenishment, Air Support

Health: 150 (450 at rank 30)
Shields: 75 (225 at rank 30)
Armor: 15
Power: 175 (262.5 at rank 30)
Speed: 1.10
Aura Polarity: None – Revenant's kit offers him a degree of versatility in terms of auras, receiving benefits from Physique, Growing Power, and stealth-related mods.
Polarities: 2x Madurai ()

Passive – Spite: Power Strength increases by 1% for every 3 health missing.

Torment: Revenant marks and curses his foes, causing any pain they receive to spread to one another.

Spoiler

-          Similar to Ash's Blade Storm, Torment uses an enemy-marking system: The first press tags enemies that Revenant highlights, while the second activates the effect. Each affected enemy consumes additional energy, reduced by Power Range.

-          Revenant points at an enemy and snaps his fingers (or more likely, breaks one), briefly creating a web effect that chains between targets before fading. All enemies caught in the chain are then debuffed for a period affected by Power Duration.

-          Whenever any target affected by Torment receives damage, all enemies afflicted by the debuff (even those afflicted from other instances of the cast) will instantly be dealt a portion of that damage inflicted, affected by Power Strength. The initiating damage can be caused by status effects, and is affected by multipliers such as critical hits, headshots, and debuffs against the original target.

-          Revenant will also share any damage he receives from casting Sacrifice. Damage dealt by Sacrifice guarantees stagger against all targets presently afflicted by Torment.

-          Enemies can be marked by Torment multiple times, refreshing the duration of the effect.

-          Damage dealt by Torment matches the original damage types that initiated the Torment effect.

-          Affected enemies will not be damaged, staggered or alerted by the initial cast of Torment. However, any damage dealt by Torment will alert affected targets.

-          Area-effect attacks that damage multiple targets of Torment can cause multiple instances of damage from Torment.

-          Similarly to Molecular Prime, enemies slain by damage that was chained through Torment will be credited to the person who initiated the damage chain, and treated as damage dealt by means of the damage source used to begin the chain.

-          One-handed cast, may be cast while airborne.

-          Direct-aimed effect, like Mind Control or Energy Vampire. 

-          In Conclave, any target slain while afflicted is removed from the chain.

Augment: Schadenfreude – Whenever an enemy affected by Torment is slain, the curse jumps to their nearby allies.

-          Similar in effect to Rift Surge. Additional instances of Torment caused by this mod will not consume any additional energy, and will refresh the duration of Torment on any targets.

-          Jump distance is affected by augment rank and Power Range.

Conclave Augment: Discord – Enemies afflicted by Torment will receive periodic damage when in range of other afflicted targets.

-          When Discord begins to deal its damage, the targets afflicted will be tethered to each other by an effect similar to Link until they get out of range.

-          If multiple targets afflicted by Torment are within range of each other, Discord’s damage is multiplied.

-          Base damage per second and linking range are affected by augment rank.

-          Damage dealt by Discord will not activate Torment.

Sacrifice: Revenant drains his own health to restore nearby allies’ energy. Tormented targets will share this cost.

Spoiler

-          Revenant pushes his hand into his own chest and removes what appears to be an energy-colored heart, before crushing it in his hand to release a pulse of energy. This pulse is affected by Power Range.

-          The caster instantly regains an amount of energy, while allies struck by the pulse gain a buff to energy generation for a brief period. Both instant and periodic energy gain are affected by Power Strength, while the allied buff is affected by Power Duration.

-          Activating this effect costs Revenant’s health instead of energy, affected by Power Efficiency. This health cost bypasses any mitigation, and can activate Torment's chaining effect.

-          Allied buff provides no benefit to players channeling abilities such as Sound Quake, Absorb, Exalted Blade, etc. a la Energy Siphon. Recasting Sacrifice will overwrite the previous application of the buff.

-          One-handed cast, cannot be cast while airborne.

Augment: Offering – Casting Sacrifice also instantly restores nearby allies' health.

-          Health regained is affected by mod rank and Power Strength.

-          This effect does not apply to Revenant.

Conclave Augment: Jinx – Enemies within range of Sacrifice will receive energy drain instead.

-          Effect is similar to a Parasite Eximus.

-          Energy consumption rate is affected by rank.

Unravel: Revenant disassembles himself, and reassembles at the target location. While reassembling, Revenant is harder to hit.

Spoiler

-          Revenant breaks apart into an amorphous cloud of wrappings and parts, then instantly surges in the direction of his crosshairs and begins to reassemble at his destination. Distance traveled is affected by Power Range.

-          When Revenant exits the teleport, attacks against him have up to a 100% chance to pass through him completely without causing him any damage for a static 2 seconds, unaffected by mods. This intangibility chance then diminishes over time as he reassembles, a la Metamorphosis, over a period affected by Power Duration.

-          Revenant may continue to move, attack, or interact with objects as normal while reassembling.

-          Unlike Blink, Unravel travels as far as Power Range and the boundaries of the map allow toward his destination; Revenant will “punch through” enemies and some environmental objects, such as handrails and fire walls. Revenant is also immune to damage and status effects during the surge, and will not trip any alarms he passes through.

-          Revenant is considered invisible during the surge; enemies will not be alerted if he passes through them or their line of sight until he begins to reassemble. However, enemies he passes through may be moved to investigate his location.

-          Can be used while airborne, and does not interrupt other actions.

Augment: Unsettle – Enemies near Revenant's arrival point fall into a state of shock, exposing them to finishers.

-          Finisher damage deal to targets is increased by Power Strength and rank.

-          Effect radius is affected by Power Range and rank.

-          Affected targets are staggered, and alerted to Revenant's presence when the stun wears off.

Obliterate: Revenant rips enemies apart with a beam of untempered Void energy. Fallen enemies will restore Revenant's health.

Spoiler

-          Channeled skill; Revenant is unable to move or use items while active, but can turn freely to follow his crosshairs. Additionally, Revenant's weapons are replaced for the duration, a la Spectral Scream.

-          Revenant's energy "sash" slides off to form a circle in the air in front of him, and once he puts his hand in the middle of the circle, a massive beam of energy (about 2 meters wide) erupts forward toward his crosshairs. The beam deals continuous Finisher damage to enemies caught in the blast, and enemies who remain within the blast will receive a multiplier on damage received from the next tick of Obliterate; this effect stacks, but only lasts 2 seconds if not refreshed by another tick. Length of the beam is affected by Power Range, while its base damage is affected by Power Strength.

-          Each time an enemy is slain by Revenant while Obliterate is active (but not necessarily by Obliterate itself), Revenant will automatically regain a percentage of his maximum health, affected by Power Strength.

-          The beam has Punch Through up to its maximum length.

-          The beam can deal damage to environmental objects, including Antimatter Drop and Nullifier bubbles. The beam will not be deflected by Nullifier bubbles, but will not damage enemies within or beyond the bubble as long as it remains active.

-          The beam will attempt to follow Revenant's crosshairs, but has a fixed turning speed, causing it to be "dragged" by Revenant. The beam can be freely aimed in any direction, including the vertical axis, similarly to original Archwing movement.

-          Can be used while airborne; Revenant will cancel all momentum and hover in place while channeling, immune to gravity.

-          Two-handed cast, but Revenant may cast Unravel without interrupting Obliterate. The effect of Obliterate will pause and consume no additional energy while Revenant is in transit via Unravel, then resume firing from Revenant's new position towards wherever his crosshairs point once he reaches his destination.

Augment: Oblivion – Heavy and Eximus units struck by the beam lose access to abilities and auras for a limited duration.

-          Affected by rank and Power Duration.

-          Enemies that receive damage from Obliterate will be instantly debuffed. This effect will refresh every time they receive damage from Obliterate.

-          Until duration ends, this effect will prevent Grineer Heavy units from activating their slam attacks, prevent Corpus units from releasing Ospreys, and dispel Eximus and Ancient aura effects while active. If it hits the unit directly, this effect will prevent Nullifier units from reactivating their protection spheres until duration ends.

-          This effect will not prevent affected enemies from using their weapons.

Additional Notes

Quest: To Catch a Falling Star – Prometheus-class Warframes were powerful prototypes intended to amplify the Tenno's innate power, rather than simply focusing it. Originally thought lost to time, a functional model has recently been found on the surface of the Infested planet Eris, apparently stranded since the Old War but still operational. Your objective is to track it down and extract it so it can be repaired and reverse-engineered... but it doesn't seem keen on leaving with you alive. 

Author Commentary

Spoiler

Revenant: From the French “revenir”, meaning “To come back.” Fitting for one who returned, however barely, from the Void.

Revenant may technically be the oldest concept here, at least until I needed to dust him off. Paradoxically, he was also probably the easiest one to nail down, as he’s the one I’ve been the most excited for.

Not too worried about him sharing the name with a mod, since half the elementals can say the same, and Oberon/Nyx share names with nodes. I swear he’s not named after the movie.

Something I’ve wanted in this game since the release of toggled powers, before an Earth frame or a Time frame, is probably the most anime-esque power we still have yet to see: a massive disintegration beam cannon attack. Before Limbo and Mirage, I wrote a concept named Bessel, someone who connected Radiation damage with its seemingly arbitrary status effect: a stage magician-themed illusionist who could create prisms to refract attacks, and fired a beam that would be redirected through the prisms (the execution of these prisms would go on to influence Fathom’s kit). The concept fell apart when Mirage came out.

When I heard on Reddit that the DC was working on a Void Sorcerer, I privately wrote my own concept that included the beam attack and what would become Unravel. When Limbo was unveiled, I put the concept on the backburner since it was… a different interpretation of the given theme. Maybe I’m just biased by the use of the word “Sorcerer” as an old D&D nerd, but I expected something a bit more high fantasy.

Once I had started on a Time and a Space frame, a Void frame seemed to be the perfect avenue to increase allies’ Power Strength (after all, where do we get our powers?), so I revived the old concept. When Equinox took that role, it was a simple shift to allow him to provide an alternative route towards energy a la Trinity, especially as he was intended to be a damage caster. Naturally, once Focus came out, the use of the term “Void frame” seemed a little redundant, so I tweaked him into an Entropy theme instead.

The initial idea was simple: anything he did was to fire the beam. Eat health to charge the beam (which inspired his passive), avoid damage to preserve health. Originally, Sacrifice was a projectile attack that would generate energy orbs from damaged units at the cost of health; however, this seemed easy to finagle into a free-cost effect with Equilibrium and Efficiency, so the energy orb was scrapped. I didn’t actually intend for Revenant to be able to heal the effect at all; as long as he didn’t have a feedback loop, it couldn’t be abused like Energy Vampire. However, since players can just use Life Strike anyway, I came to a compromise by allowing kills with his ultimate to refund health lost, and slowing the energy restoration to allies. Given what we’ve seen with Mesa, since he can only point it in one direction at a time, he’s unlikely to be the top choice in the next lootcave.

Perhaps what will come off as the most “problematic” effect of his ultimate is that it deals a continuous stream of Finisher damage. Part of the problem with most Warframe abilities as-is is that they lose scalability as enemy levels increase, and without scalability the beam would just be a gimmick plastered on a free energy source. Finisher damage provides the ultimate in scaling damage, as it provides a hard counter to the armor and shielding that cause effective health to increase exponentially. Combine it with a benefit for keeping the effect active for extended periods, and it will remain potent at all levels.

The hardest power to come up with for Revenant was a sufficient 1, as I didn't have one in mind to add on to the synergy of the initial idea. I went back to a summation of Entropy that I heard from Tom Baker while rewatching old Doctor Who episodes: "The closer things come together, the easier they fall apart," a quote I used as part of Revenant's Profile. For a while I was running (and even released the thread) with an ability called "Invisible Edge", which would cause Revenant's attacks to 'pulse' to nearby enemies – so that the closer they were in space, the easier they could be slaughtered. However, to me this always felt like an add-on to Obliterate that you had to pay extra for, and simply accentuated his one flaw in combat: the lack of any grouping mechanism. If enemies weren't lined up perfectly to start with, you'd spend half the time Invisible Edge was active simply spending energy with zero effect. I wanted Revenant to be a comparable destroyer to the original, pre-nerfs Nova (only a lot squishier, with more effort to get there), and Invisible Edge wasn't going to make the cut. Instead, I ended up repurposing an effect that had originally been an augment for Fathom, allowing Revenant to essentially ignore how far apart in space his enemies were (aside from being more efficient the closer they are together). Torment allows Fathom to instead destroy enemies through their alliances toward one another – drawing them together so that they will come apart.

Signature Weapon: Dark Dagger, or a salvaged/improvised Tenno athamé. The latter seems more fitting, for the degraded Warframe to have a broken weapon. Bonus points if it gains an effect from channeled attacks.
His other weapons should either be Mutalist weapons, or have some other rust punk feel to them, while being distinctly volatile. For instance, a Mutalist Opticor that charges up a spray of seeking projectiles rather than an explosive beam, or a Broken Amprex with a less stable attack range.

Syndicates: The Red Veil see his ability to move as a ghost and disintegrate foes in wide swaths as an asset in the Great Purge, while the Arbiters of Hexis sympathize with his internal struggle for control and see it as a metaphor for all Tenno.

Scathach (The Kinetic Warrior) _{(Pronounced SKAH-thik)}

Spoiler

Concept art by @MrPigman

Warframe Profile

This is Scathach – the proud, the champion.
Rumored to be immortal, she is an unstoppable warrior.

Scathach absorbs and discharges kinetic energy to amplify devastating blows:

Shattering Blow strikes the air with enough force to create an explosive gust. Armored enemies caught in the blast suffer reduced armor, while unprotected victims will be blown away. Scathach may also charge her fist with energy to increase the force of the blow.

Salmon’s Leap creates a small explosion at Scathach's heels, allowing her to rocket forward at high speed. Upon deactivation or impact, she will release a shockwave that becomes more powerful with her distance traveled.

Catch & Release emits a field that draws incoming attacks toward Scathach, draining energy from their impacts to multiply the damage of Scathach’s subsequent Physical strikes. Dealing a Shattering Blow while Catch & Release is active will convert it into a radial blast.

When all else fails, Scathach can equip the legendary Bellows Spear to cut down her enemies. Combo attacks with the spear will rapidly generate momentum to increase Scathach's attack speed, while charged attacks will throw the spear for unblockable damage.

Though her armor weighs heavily, Scathach is strong enough to increase the velocity of her parkour maneuvers and charged attacks.

Scathach will become far stronger through the installation of mods. Strength and Duration mods will benefit all of her abilities, while a Range mod can extend the reach of Shattering Blow, Salmon’s Leap, and Catch & Release.

Scathach offers a lesson in punishment – come greet your teacher.

Stats, Abilities and Augments

Theme: Kinetic Energy, Celtic Mythology, Grineer Augmentation
Roles: Tank, Melee Damage, Enemy Debuffer/Crowd Control

Health: 150 (450 at rank 30)
Shields: 150 (450 at rank 30)
Armor: 350
Power: 100 (150 at rank 30)
Speed: 0.90
Aura Polarity: Madurai () – Ideal for Steel Charge.
Polarities: 2x Vazarin ()

Passive – Momentum: Parkour Velocity and Charged Melee damage are increased by 20%.

Shattering Blow: Scathach strikes the air with force enough to shatter bone and armor. Hold-cast to charge the punch with increased damage.

Spoiler

-          Scathach punches the air with her armored hand, dealing Impact damage to all enemies in a short cone in front of herself. This damage is affected by Power Strength and Range, and decreases with distance. If used while Bellows Spear is active, the damage of Shattering Blow will also be affected by mods affecting the user’s equipped melee weapon, including Steel Charge.

-          Enemies struck will also be debuffed for a duration to lose a flat amount of Base Armor, affected by Power Strength and Duration. If this effect reduces a target below 0 Armor on application, that target is ragdolled. This Armor debuff stacks.

-          Hold-casting Shattering Blow will charge it up, a la Scarab Swarm, increasing its base damage and armor peel by up to 100%, as well as the force of the throw; the punch is automatically discharged upon releasing the activation key. Maximum charge percentage is affected by Power Strength, while charge speed is affected by Power Duration and Bellow's Spear's combo count. Scathach is immobilized while charging Shattering Blow in this way.

-          If used within Catch & Release, Shattering Blow will deal its full damage throughout the affected radius of Catch & Release, and will not decrease with distance.

-          All enemies struck by Shattering Blow will contribute to the Melee Combo Counter, whether or not Bellows Spear is active.

-          Uncharged punch is a one-handed cast, but charging is a two-handed cast as Scathach rears up; may be used while airborne.

Augment: Shattering Blast – Thrown enemies will become missiles, dealing additional Blast damage to nearby targets at their destination.

-          Blast damage is based on a percentage of the excess armor reduction, and decreases with distance from the impact point, a la explosive weapons .

-          Blast radius is affected by mod rank and Power Range.

Conclave Augment: Concussive Blow – Enemies struck with a charged punch will lose all active ability buffs, with a chance to receive a Magnetic proc.

-          Functions similarly to a Nullifier bubble.

-          Status chance is affected by mod rank.

Salmon’s Leap: Scathach propels herself at ballistic speed. Striking a surface releases a shockwave.

Spoiler

-          Channeled; Scathach rockets towards her crosshairs at high speed, a la Tail Wind. Scathach will continue traveling in a straight line until deactivated, unaffected by gravity. Scathach is unable to perform any other actions while traveling via Salmon’s Leap. Travel speed and cost over time are affected by Power Duration.

-          Upon striking a surface or enemy, or toggling the effect off, a shockwave of Blast damage is instantly released from Scathach’s current location, with its damage and radius increased based on the distance traveled. Base damage and radius are affected by Power Strength and Power Range. Damage is split evenly amongst all targets struck and affected by line of sight.

-          Upon colliding with an enemy directly, Scathach mirrors the full damage of the shockwave as Impact damage against the target, in addition to the Blast damage.

-          Targets caught in the shockwave will all receive knockdown.

-          May be used while airborne.

Augment: Collateral Damage – The shockwave will kick up a cloud of dust and debris to mask allies.

-          The dust cloud only exists within the shockwave’s base radius.

-          Enemies within the dust cloud are considered blind until leaving.

-          Allies within the dust cloud are considered invisible until leaving.

-          Cloud duration affected by mod rank and Power Duration.

Catch & Release: Scathach robs the force from incoming Physical attacks and adds it to her own. Shattering Blows will echo through the field.

Spoiler

-          Scathach creates a mobile field centered on herself that draws all hostile bullets and projectiles toward her, a la Bullet Attractor. This field is affected by Power Range and Duration.

-          While this field is active, Scathach gains mitigation against all Physical (Slash, Puncture, Impact or Finisher) damage types and immunity to all status effects. This mitigation is affected by Power Strength, up to 95%. Elemental damage is unmitigated by this effect.

-          Each time Scathach receives Physical damage during Catch & Release, she gains a buff that multiplies the Physical (Slash, Puncture, Impact or Finisher) damage of her next attack (a la Ballistic Battery or Volt's passive) based on the original damage of the incoming attack. This buff stacks until Scathach discharges it or until the field is disabled, and is affected by Power Strength.

-          The damage multiplier is only cleared when Scathach deals Physical damage; for example, Blast damage from an Ogris rocket cannot benefit from the damage multiplier, but will not clear it either. Likewise, the damage multiplier will not be cleared on missed shots, or swings at empty air.

-          Allied bullets are unaffected by Catch & Release. Allies attempting to shoot at Scathach while Catch & Release is active will yield no result, unlike Absorb.

-          Catch & Release may be disabled at any time by recasting the effect, a la Stasis or Cataclysm. Doing so costs no additional energy, and energy generation proceeds as normal while Catch & Release is active.

-          Two-handed cast, may be used while airborne.

Augment: Immortal's Secret – Upon taking fatal damage, the remaining damage bonus is instantly consumed to restore some of Scathach's health.

-          Base healing is affected by mod rank, and increased by the value of the multiplier when consumed.

-          Overhealing will contribute to shields and overshields.

-          This effect has an internal cooldown, similar to Phoenix Renewal.

Bellows Spear: Scathach wields a javelin of legend, which gains momentum on each combo. Charged attacks will throw the spear for heavy damage.

Spoiler

-          Channeled, Exalted Weapon; Scathach loses energy every second she wields the Bellows Spear, and cannot use her other equipped weapons until she disables the effect. Cost over time is affected by Power Duration.

-          Bellows Spear deals Blast damage as the base damage type on all attacks except for Finishers and charged attacks. As with Exalted Blade and the like, Bellows Spear’s base damage is affected by Power Strength and its stats are affected by whatever mods are equipped to your current melee weapon.

-          Unlike other polearms, the Bellows Spear has its own unique stance:

• Hound’s Bite (EEEE): Scathach performs a series of circular two-handed slashes, striking a cone in front of herself, ending with narrower and more forceful strikes. 
• Seven Barbs (E Pause+E EEE): Scathach follows up a slash with an upward kick that propels her target into the air, vaults up after them, rapidly stabs them several times and finishes with a vertical spin, directing them to the ground with a downward slap with the end of the spear.
• The Shadow (E RMB+E EEE): Scathach uses the momentum of a slash to revolve the spear around her neck to strike surrounding foes, stopping the spear with her offhand, then firing it from her fingertips with a kinetic blast (catching it before the end of the shaft) and striking with a downward slam as she returns it to her main hand.
• Twin Leviathans (EE Forward+E EE): Scathach walks forward, revolving the spear around herself at blinding speed to form a sphere of cuts, ending with a sweeping horizontal slash held from the end of the shaft for maximum reach.
• Mortal Pain (Aim downward in-air+E): While airborne, Scathach ceases all forward momentum and casts the spear downward, which detonates on impact with the ground and re-forms in her hand.
• Gae Bulg (Hold E): If used on the ground, Scathach dips back into a one-handed handstand while putting the Bellows Spear between the toes of one of her feet, then spins on one hand to face her enemy, throwing the spear from her toes with the momentum of the spin. If used in the air, Scathach tosses the spear up, dips back and kicks the spear toward her target before landing on her feet. Targets impaled by either version of this strike will receive Finisher damage and Bleed, but only one target can be struck per throw before the spear reconstitutes in Scathach’s hand. If no enemies are struck, the spear will bounce until one is struck or the player performs a melee attack to summon it back; this is not affected by Glaive mods.

-          While Bellows Spear is active, each Combo multiplier upgrade achieved will increase the speed of her melee attacks, travel speed of Gae Bulg, and charging speed with both Shattering Blow and Gae Bulg. This increase persists until the combo ends or Bellows Spear is canceled.

-          Two-handed cast, may be used while airborne.

Augment: Accelerating Spear – The speed increase from comboing will affect Scathach's movement speed.

-          Speed increase per multiplier upgrade is affected by mod rank.

Conclave Augment: Hamstring – Scathach strikes for vital points, hindering enemy parkour maneuvers with her spear.

-          Afflicted enemies will instantly be staggered and receive Bleed damage each time they jump, parkour, aim-glide or attempt to leave the ground.

-          Debuff is applied by both quick melee and charged attacks dealt by the spear, but not by ability damage.

-          Duration is affected by mod rank.

Additional Notes

Quest: The Art of Leaping – It appears that the main attraction within the arenas on Sedna has been a gladiatorial Warframe, one protected from Regor's knife by Kela's own interest in the spectacle. Though you have been tasked with freeing it, it appears to be more interested in testing your worth, to be measured in Grineer skulls.

Author Commentary

Spoiler

Scathach’s just designed to be a badass. That’s really all there is to say on the matter.

Originally, I didn’t plan to release a Kinetic Warframe with this list at all. However, a friend of mine asked me to make one (it’s a superpower I’ve made him dream about for a few years now), and I felt like I’d been leaning too much on making male casters after Revenant and Fathom. If Fathom was designed to be the natural opposite to Dust, then it was only right to have a positive Energy-based opposite to an Entropy Warframe as well.

And of course, it would be an excellent opening for a Grineer-based Warframe. Said friend’s a big fan of Jat Kittag.

Coming up with the first three powers was easy: break stuff, and don’t break yourself. It was the ultimate – and the name – that was tricky, as I’d been using the generic production name “Rocket”.

Once we got to the naming process, I was initially set on making a warrior woman from mythology, such as Hippolyta or Atalanta. Of course, I sickened quickly of Greek mythology due to its overuse already (Atlas, Nyx, Zephyr, several weapons... it's most peoples' go-to). Given the vague Grineer elements, it seemed only right to turn to Celtic mythology instead, as it gave the namesake to their most terrible weapons: the Fomorians.

And then I found her.

Scáthach. The teacher of all of the heroes of Ireland and Scotland, who demanded that those who sought to be her pupils first jump from the mainland to her island in a single bound without touching the water to be worthy, and was able to best all of them in combat. She taught Cú Chulainn (the man who would become the greatest hero of Irish mythology) in both magic and martial arts, and she created the spear Gáe Bulg, which was guaranteed to kill a target when thrown from the user’s toes, filling their entire circulatory system with metal barbs that could only be removed by cutting the spear out of their corpse. Oh, and she gave Cú Chulainn said spear in the hopes that he could use it to kill her, because nothing less would suffice (and he lost the spear and died before he could).
In short, a badass. And it would only do her justice for her Warframe to be no less.

Initially I had this idea (as I’m sure many others had) of the Grineer-themed Warframe being experimented on by the Grineer in an attempt to recreate the Warframes for their own purposes. Of course, since it was a matter of splitting hairs to claim this wasn’t the origin of Valkyr, it never completely sat right with me. Once she was named, I leaned more towards the idea of her instead looting the armor from fallen foes, as trophies from all of the battles from which she returned undefeated.
The way I described the difference to MrPigman, was that Valkyr's strength comes from her brutality, while Scathach's brutality comes from her strength. Valkyr rips and tears people apart with her hands and empowers herself with terrifying screams; Scathach can flick a man to break every bone in his body.

For one last important note: as I was essentially writing a frame who could crush diamonds with her bare hands, I realized she would be the perfect concept to begin a venture in exploring more diverse female body-stylings in Warframe. When you compare male 'frame body types, you have the range of bulky frames like Rhino and Chroma, sickly-thin frames like Nekros and Inaros, tall like Limbo or short like Loki; most of the female frames vary primarily by height, running within the same body types as far as width with extreme outliers like the supernaturally petite Titania. Scathach was intended to point in the opposite direction, a frame who could be both plus-size and retain the required athleticism to qualify as "ninja" - more of a body-builder, comparable to Zarya from Overwatch.
Understandably this intention can be hard to jump to from the concept art above, however, and there wasn't much I could do to increase the visibility of her "gains" while still preserving the integrity of MrPigman's original work. You'll just have to take me at my word that that was the plan. (Since this can be a sensitive issue, I should probably stop typing about it before I say something egregiously offensive on this matter...)

Signature Weapon: Jat Kittag, or perhaps a slow, powerful Grineer Sparring weapon. Catch & Release was specifically designed with slow, powerful hits in mind.
That being said, a Spear-Gun weapon might be an excellent complement to her aesthetic, and some kind of wrist-mounted sidearm would even out the visual weight of her arms.

Syndicates: Steel Meridian have the utmost respect for her willingness to sacrifice herself for her allies – albeit being a little disturbed by her "souvenirs" – while New Loka revere her as a Grineer-slaying saint.

Enkidu (The Beast Tamer) _{(Pronounced en-KEE-doo) - Added Nov. 23, 16}

Spoiler

Concept art by @arch111

Warframe Profile

This is Enkidu – the master of hounds.

One with the savagery of nature, his ferocity demands respect from all of nature's allies.

Enkidu's strengths amplify and mirror the presence of his feral companions:

Wild Call summons wolves to Enkidu's side. Enkidu can issue commands to the wolves to defend objectives or seek prey. These commands can also affect the behavior of his other animal companions.

Feeding Frenzy issues a kill command, briefly enraging all companions, pets and minions within Enkidu's cell. Affected allies will also devour any corpses within range, restoring health.

Pack Mentality cements a pact between Enkidu and his companions, allowing each to contribute health to reach equilibrium. Should Enkidu or his favored companion fall, all others will sacrifice health to revive and protect them.

There's a bad moon on the rise, Tenno. Hunter's Moon unleashes the beast within, increasing Enkidu's speed and damage, and allowing him to sniff out foes. While Enkidu is in this form, allies can mount Enkidu or his wolves to benefit from his speed, and Feeding Frenzy will amplify Enkidu himself.

Enkidu's commanding presence also increases the fortitude of his pets, while granting them instantaneous revival once per mission.

Enkidu and his companions will be strengthened by the installation of mods. Adding a Duration mod will extend the effects of Pack Mentality, Feeding Frenzy and Hunter's Moon. Finally, adding a Strength or Range mod will empower the wolves called by Wild Call and Hunter's Moon, as well as the effects of Feeding Frenzy.

Enkidu lives for the chase, Tenno, but none can outrun the ultimate predator.

Stats, Abilities and Augments

Theme: Beastmaster, Wildman, Werewolf
Roles: Melee Damage, Minion Master, Companion/Support Buffer

Health: 125 (375 at rank 30)
Shields: 80 (240 at rank 30)
Armor: 175
Power: 100 (150 at rank 30)
Speed: 1.15
Aura Polarity: Madurai () – Ideal for Steel Charge.
Polarities: 1x Madurai (), 1x Naramon ()

Passive – Command Presence: (Enkidu inherits Oberon's passive; Oberon's should be replaced.)

Wild Call: Enkidu whistles to summon his wolves. Whistle again to issue commands to the wolves, altering their behavior.

Spoiler

-          On first cast, or when no wolves are active, Enkidu will summon two wolf minions with the Kubrow AI. Wolves summoned in this manner have an unlimited duration, but limited health and a shared health pool. Wolf attack damage is affected by Power Strength, movement speed is affected by Power Range, and maximum health is affected by Enkidu’s health, shield and armor mods.

-          While any of Enkidu’s wolves are active, Wild Call instead becomes a hold-cast effect, a la Quiver or Minelayer. Tap-casting Wild Call will swap between multiple command whistles for the active minions, while hold-casting will issue the selected command. (This can be inverted with the Tap to Cast setting in the Options menu.)

-          Command whistles will alter the AI of Enkidu’s minions and pets, unaffected by distance:

• Guard: Enkidu calls his minions back and commands them to follow him within close proximity. Minions will attack nearby alerted enemies, prioritizing enemies attacking Enkidu. (This is the default state for summoned wolves.)
• Watch: Enkidu orders his minions to stay. Minions will move to and limit themselves to proximity of a targeted location, and attack any enemies who approach. Minions will prioritize enemies nearest the targeted point, regardless of their alertness level.
• Prowl: Enkidu loosens his leash, causing his minions to free-roam and attack all enemies in sight. Minions will attack any alerted enemies in sight, prioritizing enemies Enkidu attacks.
• Hunt: Enkidu orders his minions to strike as one against a targeted enemy. Minions will chase the target down and ignore any other enemies until it dies. When the target dies, minions will automatically return to their previous duties.

-          Command whistles will alter the AI of unhindered wolves under Enkidu’s control, as well as Enkidu’s non-Sentinel companion and any minions Mind Controlled by Pack Initiation. Command whistles will not affect Sentinels, Specters, Rescue/Defense targets, Syndicate allies, or the companions of other Tenno.

-          Summoning wolves costs full energy, but issuing a command has a quarter of the cost. State reversion at the end of the Hunt command will not consume additional energy.

-          Each whistle (both summoning and commanding) is a one-handed cast, and can be cast while airborne.

-          Wolves summoned in this manner will not be destroyed by Nullifier bubbles, but Enkidu may not issue command whistles to companions within Nullifier bubbles, or from within Nullification effects.

Augment: Negative Reinforcement – Wolves will be summoned wearing shock collars, dealing bursts of Electric damage in a radius on each melee attack.

-          Electric shocks deal low damage, but have a 100% status chance.

-          Damage and range are affected by mod rank only.

Conclave Augment: Scent of Blood – Wolves will highlight their targets for your allies whenever they attack.

-          Enemies attacked by the wolves are afflicted with a debuff. Debuffed enemies will be marked on the minimap to all members of Enkidu's squad regardless of range, and will be highlighted through walls in Enkidu's energy color, similarly to a Codex Scanner.

-          This debuff is unaffected by stealth effects, and will cause the enemy to continue glowing while stealth effects are active.

-          Debuff duration is affected by mod rank.

Feeding Frenzy: Enkidu issues a kill command. All minions within range have empowered attacks, and will devour fresh corpses to restore health.

Spoiler

-          Activating Feeding Frenzy will apply a buff for a short duration to all companions, Specters, and summoned or Mind Controlled minions within range of himself, including those under his allies’ control. However, it will not affect allied Tenno, Rescue/Defense targets, Syndicate allies, or constructs that lack health pools. This buff is affected by Power Duration, and application radius is affected by Power Range.

-          While this buff is active, affected units will gain increased attack damage and attack speed, affected by Enkidu’s Power Strength.

-          Additionally, all buffed units will automatically consume corpses of enemies they kill or corpses they pass within melee range of, instantly restoring a percentage of their health. Health restored per corpse is affected by Power Strength.

-          Like with Desecrate and channeled attacks, corpses consumed in this manner will visibly “vanish” but can still be targeted for the purposes of ability effects until the end of the corpses’ duration.

-          Each corpse may be consumed by multiple units in this manner, but only once per unit. However, chopped bodies are treated as multiple corpses.

-          Two-handed cast, may be cast while airborne.

-          Feeding Frenzy may be recast while active, refreshing its duration on affected targets or applying its effects to new qualifying targets within range.

-          Multiple Tenno may cast Feeding Frenzy to stack the effect.

-          In the Conclave, Feeding Frenzy will also affect nearby Tenno.

Augment: Bloodlust – Casting Feeding Frenzy causes each affected target to perform a coordinated attack, instantly inflicting Bleed on nearby enemies.

-          Upon activation of Feeding Frenzy, all affected units will pulse high, Bleed-inducing damage in a circular area around themselves. This effect may pulse from units who cannot otherwise attack, such as Shield Osprey Specters or unarmed Sentinels.

-          Enemies may be damaged by and receive Bleed procs from multiple pulses of Bloodlust at once.

-          Enemies slain by the effect of Bloodlust are counted as kills by all companions that inflicted the bleed on that target for the purposes of Feeding Frenzy.

-          Damage radius is affected by mod rank and Enkidu's Power Range, but not the targets' own attack reach.

-          Base damage is affected by mod rank and Enkidu's Power Strength, but not the targets' own attack damage or mods.

Pack Mentality: Enkidu marks his pack. Members of the pack can trade health to restore or revive one another.

Spoiler

-          Tap-casting Pack Mentality will apply marks to Enkidu and his summoned wolves and live companion (including Sentinels). These marks are affected by Power Duration.

-          While the mark is active, Enkidu may hold-cast Pack Mentality to periodically drain health from all marked units (a la Scarab Swarm), and redistribute it until all marked units have the same health percentage. Overhealing to any marked unit will also be distributed amongst the rest of the pack.

-          Additionally, while the mark is active, if Enkidu or his marked companion is killed, all other friendly entities marked by Enkidu will instantly contribute an amount of health to instantly revive them; this amount per pack member is equal to the maximum health of the downed target divided by all survivors with the mark. This effect consumes the mark, but grants temporary damage immunity to all targets who originally had the mark, as if all members of the pack had just been revived. This period of immunity is not affected by Power Duration.

-          If a summoned or controlled minion is slain, Pack Mentality will not consume the mark or minion health to revive them. Enkidu is the alpha, his companion is the beta.

-          If there is not enough total health in the pack to fully heal the fallen target, affected members of the pack may be killed by this effect, and will only revive Enkidu or his companion with up to the total amount of health that was remaining.

-          If Pack Mentality’s duration ends without consuming the mark, no member of the pack gains damage immunity. Damage immunity is only granted when marks are consumed in the process of revival.

-          If the mind control effect of Enkidu's passive wears off of an enemy unit, that unit loses the Pack Mentality buff as well and can no longer contribute health to the pack.

-          Activating Pack Mentality has a one-time energy cost; hold-casting will not consume additional energy, only health.

-          Two-handed cast to activate, but may be used while airborne. Enkidu may not perform any other actions while hold-casting Pack Mentality.

-          Attempting to apply new marks while Pack Mentality is active will return "Power in Use".

-          In the Conclave, Pack Mentality will also affect nearby Tenno.

Augment: Pack Initiation – Wildlife and summoned units within range of Enkidu will be commanded to join his pack.

-          Select nearby enemy units will be Mind Controlled by Enkidu for the duration of Pack Mentality. Damage dealt by Tenno to Mind Controlled units will be retained and dealt to affected units when the effect ends, as with Nyx's own.

-          Units controlled by this effect are included in Pack Mentality's effects, and treated in a similar manner to wolves summoned by Wild Call for the duration.

-          Affected units include, but are not limited to: Desert Skates, Wild Kubrows and Kavats, domesticated Hyekkas and Drahks, Maggots, Nemes and Ratels.

-          Effect radius is affected by mod rank and Power Range.

-          This augment is also usable in the Conclave, and will affect any and all units summoned by enemy Tenno abilities.

Hunter’s Moon: Enkidu shapeshifts into a wolf for increased damage. Allies can mount Enkidu or his wolves for a movement speed increase.

Spoiler

-          Channeled, Exalted Weapon; Enkidu drops down on all fours, extends his claws, and reveals his wolf face. Enkidu spends energy every second he remains in wolf form, and cannot use his other equipped weapons until he disables the effect. Cost over time is affected by both Power Duration and Power Efficiency.

-          While toggled active, Enkidu can only attack using melee attacks, during which he will charge, swipe, and bite at enemies much like a Wild Kubrow. As with Exalted Blade and the like, Enkidu’s melee attacks are affected by Power Strength and whatever mods are equipped to your current melee weapon.

-           In wolf form, Enkidu’s movement speed and enemy radar are increased based on his Power Range. Enkidu may continue to use his abilities or perform parkour maneuvers, using the Kubrow and Zanuka parkour animations. Enkidu also becomes a viable target of Feeding Frenzy.

-          Enkidu may not pick up datamasses or batteries while in wolf form, and will drop any he is carrying upon activation of Hunter's Moon. Enkidu also cannot interact with consoles or other world objects in wolf form.

-          While Hunter’s Moon is toggled active, allied Tenno may interact with Enkidu or his wolves by pressing X, allowing them to mount Enkidu or his wolves. Mounted Tenno may dismount at any time by rolling or backflipping. Allies will also be dismounted when Hunter’s Moon ends or is deactivated, or if the rider or wolf receives lethal damage, but will not be dismounted by Nullification effects.

-          Mounting a wolf counts as a one-handed action for as long as the Tenno is mounted. Mounted Tenno may continue to use one-handed abilities, items and firearms, but may not carry datamasses or perform melee attacks or two-handed abilities until dismounted.

-          Summoned wolves that have been mounted will retain health pools separate from their rider, but will not attack or be affected by Wild Call’s commands until dismounted. Allies who have mounted these wolves will transfer movement controls to the wolves, taking advantage of their increased mobility. Allies who mount Enkidu in his wolf form will not have control over Enkidu's movement, and will be carried away by Enkidu.

-          Two-handed cast, may not be cast while airborne.

Augment: Pack Alpha – Alt-fire in wolf form will copy and cast a precept from Enkidu’s animal companion.

-          Augment rank determines the energy cost of the alt-fire mechanism. Energy is not spent if the ability cannot be activated.

-          The ability Enkidu casts does not need to have its precept equipped to his animal companion.

-          The abilities chosen are affected by the non-Sentinel companion Enkidu has equipped:

• Adarza Kavat: Reflect – Enkidu will negate and reflect damage dealt to him within a brief duration.
• Chesa Kubrow: Neutralize – Enkidu’s attacks within a brief duration will disarm enemies.
• Huras Kubrow: Stalk – Enkidu will turn himself, his Kubrow and his summoned wolves invisible until his next attack or until no enemies are in range. Affected minions will be pacified until the cloak ends.
• Raksa Kubrow: Howl – Enkidu will howl, Terrifying all nearby enemies.
• Sahasa Kubrow: Dig – Enkidu will dig up useful orbs and ammo.
• Smeeta Kavat: Mischief – Enkidu will place a decoy and turn invisible until his next attack or the decoy's destruction. This cloak does not affect his Kavat or summoned wolves.
• Sunika Kubrow: Unleashed – Enkidu charges to an enemy within range and grapples them, stunning them and dealing continuous melee damage until he releases alt-fire (a la Devour).
• Helminth Charger: Trample – Enkidu surges forward at high speed, damaging and knocking down all enemies along his path (a la Rhino Charge).
• Pack Alpha will not copy abilities from Sentinels, and produces no effect without a companion equipped.

-          Copied precepts function like the max rank version of their mod, but lingering effects will automatically end if Enkidu deactivates his wolf form.

Additional Notes

Quest: The Wild Hunt – During the course of a routine Sabotage on Earth, you draw the ire of a mysterious watcher. Now its hounds have caught your scent and seem intent on chasing you across the galaxy – and will relentlessly tear through any foe or obstacle to get to you. With no safe haven, can you out-fox the ultimate hunter?

Author Commentary

Spoiler

A couple months ago, my roommate and I were discussing the fact that we didn't yet have any companion-based Warframes. We have frames who amplify weapons, I've written two frames who amplify powers, but the only frame so far who amplifies pets is Titania (who wasn't out during our discussion). We started throwing ideas out there for a type of Beastmaster frame, not really expecting them to go anywhere. I can't remember the exact conversation, but eventually we got to a point where we were joking, "It would be neat if he could summon wolves." "Yeah, and then the party could ride them!" "Oh no, he'd have to summon like 4 pets for that... unless..."

That was the exact moment it set in: A frame who not only summons companions, but becomes one. After all, you cut down on two wolves if you become the last...

Initially I didn't want to get into making a full concept for him since I was already working on four others at the time, but it began to pick away at the back of my brain for days after.
Eventually, I started writing a concept inspired by the "Raised by Wolves" trope – after all, who better to have command of the forests and jungles than someone born and raised there? When I searched mythology for similar cases of the trope for a proper name for the concept, I didn't want to have to choose between Romulus and Remus, so I chose another feral figure from a mythos mostly untapped by Warframe: Mesopotamian. 

To abridge the relevant portion of the Epic of Gilgamesh: 
Enkidu was a being crafted by the gods to serve as a challenge and distraction for the cruel demi-god king Gilgamesh. He lived in the wilds for years as a primitive man causing trouble for hunters, before being lured to civilization, where he and Gilgamesh fought in the streets for days. When they both collapsed from exhaustion, they came to respect one another as equals. Enkidu became mythology's first sidekick – the first fighting companion. Together they went on to capture or slay many great beasts, before Enkidu was sacrificed to save Gilgamesh from the wrath of the gods.

What followed was... perhaps a looser interpretation of his abilities than Nezha or Wukong, but no moreso than Nyx or Atlas.

As discussed above, the first two abilities I completed for Enkidu were, of course, Hunter's Moon and Wild Call: solve the problem of AI-controlled companions by giving commands for them to you, become a wolf as a prompt to ride them. What I especially loved about this design was that Hunter's Moon essentially was a perfect transformation tool, because it offers a trade-off: the user gets more power, but loses an aspect of control over their toolkit, which is exactly what you want for a werewolf-style character.
Wild Call was, of course, completely necessary for more reasons than one. I'm frankly annoyed by Toxic Lash, because it innately presumes that you will always be using a melee weapon, and partially cripples your kit if you don't have one equipped. Likewise, Sleight of Hand's base effectiveness is based on the availability of environment objects, limiting its effectiveness in most tiles. I didn't want to reiterate that issue by making a frame who relies on companions even if you didn't decide to bring one today, or on wildlife if you didn't go to Earth or the Derelict.

Feeding Frenzy was a fairly simple follow-up to the other two abilities. If I had a Warframe whose whole shtick surrounded companions, he should be able to maximize the value of those companions. I initially wrote an effect that turned every companion in the party into a beacon of instant radial damage (as they all performed an attack at once) and then received a damage boost. When I was asking a friend some hypothetical questions looking for inspiration towards a fourth ability for Enkidu, it was suggested to me that affected companions should be able to eat corpses for health to improve their effective health; I didn't see a reason to make that a separate ability, especially if an "on-kill only" effect would taper off at high levels, so I molded it into the buff effect. It's also this effect that really cements Hunter's Moon as turning him into a companion, by including him within its parameters.

It took a much longer time to actually come up with Pack Mentality. Eventually I considered that Enkidu was supposed to be in a symbiotic relationship with his companions, and while they certainly benefit from his presence, he has no such benefit from theirs. While Feeding Frenzy allows his companions to heal themselves, Enkidu himself cannot. Pack Mentality allows Enkidu to leech off of the healing his companions receive while amplifying their damage – which he would also need if he was supposed to be a melee frame, based on his ultimate. And of course, if your companion dies prematurely, you get an opportunity to revive it!

Signature Weapon: Tenno dual throwing hatchets – even the Dual Zoren would do. It fits the forest-living image of Enkidu to have a small weapon that could fell a tree, no?
As a hunter, Enkidu also favors longbows and silent sidearms. (Of course, throwing hatchets could be said sidearm, and he could have a hunting spear for melee instead, but that might tread on Scathach's toes...)

Syndicates: Enkidu's reverence of nature has earned him the respect of New Loka, while the Red Veil look up to his predatory traits and ability to track foes.

Fortuna (The Fate Gambler) _{- Added Jun. 10, 17}

Spoiler

Concept art by @Hayabusa7

Warframe Profile

This is Fortuna – the wild card, the death dealer.

Fortuna channels her abilities through the deck of cards she collects. Each card has an associated suit and damage type, which can dictate their effects:

Deal allows Fortuna to throw an explosive card, or to slice foes amidst a silo of cards. Cards thrown in this manner deal damage of their respective type, and permanently jam the weapons of enemies they strike directly.

Ante Up holds back a card instead, granting Fortuna bonus elemental damage and her choice of increased movement speed, fire rate, defense or recovery. Matching like cards will amplify the effect, but Fortuna loses it all if her run ends.

High Roller throws a pair of magnetized dice that always land on sevens. Allies near their landing point will receive increased critical strike chance and status chance for all attacks and abilities.

Try your luck, Tenno: Jackpot summons a slot machine, which protects Fortuna as she plays. Matching reels can reward Fortuna's allies or punish nearby enemies, but be warned: some outcomes are better avoided.

Fortuna is in her element among treasure seekers. Collecting credits will increase her energy, while collecting energy will restore cards to her deck.

Every trick up Fortuna's sleeve can be enhanced by mods. Power Strength will positively influence all of Fortuna's abilities. Adding a Duration mod will empower the benefits of Ante Up, High Roller and Jackpot. Finally, adding a Power Range mod will increase the reach of Deal, High Roller and Jackpot.

Luck be a lady, Tenno. Is Fortuna on your side tonight?

Stats, Abilities and Augments

Theme: Gambler, Probability Manipulation, Saloon Dancer
Roles: Allied Buffer, Enemy Debuffer

Health: 80 (240 at rank 30)
Shields: 100 (300 at rank 30)
Armor: 50
Power: 150 (225 at rank 30)
Speed: 1.2
Aura Polarity: Naramon () – Energy Siphon can steadily regenerate her card supply.
Polarities: 2x Naramon ()

Passive – Stacking the Deck: Gain 1 energy for every 10 credits collected.
Fortuna begins missions with a full deck of 52 cards, and can always see the top 2 cards of the deck. Each card has one of thirteen "ranks" corresponding to a damage type (elemental or physical), and one of four "suits" (see Ante Up). Fortuna adds 1 card to the bottom of the deck for every 10 energy collected, randomly selected from the pool of missing cards.

Deal: Fortuna throws the top card of the deck, disarming the target and dealing damage. Hold-cast to fire a barrage.

Spoiler

-          Fortuna charges the top card of the deck with energy and throws it at the target. The card explodes to deal damage of a type based on its "rank" at the point of impact. Base damage and status chance are affected by Power Strength, while explosion radius is affected by Power Range.

-          Holding down the cast button, a la Scarab Swarm or Devour, will cause Fortuna to fire cards from the deck in rapid succession until released, in a similar manner as an automatic rifle. Cards fired in this manner deal full damage and only consume partial energy per throw, but will not detonate on impact.

-          Whenever a card impacts with an enemy prior to detonation, it will also jam their weapon, permanently disarming that target a la Radial Disarm. This does not affect targets that were only caught in the detonation.

-          Free-aimed effect, a la Fireball.

-          One-handed cast, may be used while airborne.

-          Deal consumes both cards and energy.

Augment: Poker Face – Fortuna gains brief invisibility each time she strikes a target with a card.

-          Fortuna gains a brief period of personal invisibility per target struck by each card. Subsequent attacks will add to the duration.

-          Invisibility duration cannot exceed a maximum limit of three times the duration per hit at any given moment.

-          Invisibility per strike and maximum uptime are affected by mod rank only.

Ante Up: Fortuna adds the top card of the deck to her run. Stacking like cards will enhance shared benefits, while breaking the run will reset it.

Spoiler

-          Fortuna consumes the top card of the deck, gaining two buffs from it.  These buffs are affected by Power Duration and Power Strength.

-          From the suit, she gains a bonus to either:

• Fire Rate (clubs)
• Regeneration (hearts) 
• Movement Speed (spades)
• Mitigation (diamonds)

-          From the rank, she gains a percentage of bonus damage to all of her damaging attacks in the damage type of the corresponding rank. The effect is dealt as a separate instance of damage on each hit, and is capable of inflicting status procs based on the attack that activated it. Unlike damage type mods, this effect will not combine elements, and will add bonus physical damage to purely elemental effects.

-          Recasting this effect will consume the present top card. If the top card's suit matches the suit of the previous card consumed, then the suit effect will stack and the duration will reset; if not, the previous suit effect is overwritten. The same is true for the card's rank.

-          Fire Rate bonus will increase the rate of card consumption from Deal, as well as melee attack speed. 

-          Regeneration bonus restores both health and shields over time, and can generate Overshields.

-          One-handed cast, may be used while airborne.

-          Ante Up consumes both cards and energy.

Augment: Full House – Fortuna extends the benefits of Ante Up to nearby allies.

-          Functionally similar to Mirage's Total Eclipse.

High Roller: Fortuna throws loaded dice, increasing allies’ critical strike and status chances.

Spoiler

-          Fortuna tosses her dice in a similar manner to one of Vauban's grenades. The dice will tumble a short ways on impact, then instantly apply a buff to all allies within range of their landing point, affected by Power Range, before dissipating. Buff duration on players is affected by Power Duration; the dice themselves are not.

-          Affected allies gain a flat, additive increase to the base critical strike chance and status chance of all damaging effects they apply, including abilities or attacks that lack critical or status chances. This percentage increase is affected by Power Strength.

-          Abilities and effects that cannot critically strike otherwise are treated as having a 2.0x critical strike multiplier. This is not affected by mods.

-          Can be re-cast to refresh the duration.

-          One-handed cast, may be used while airborne.

Augment: Improbability Sphere – The dice will emit a sphere that reduces enemy accuracy, with a chance to instantly stagger attackers.

-          The dice will remain on the field for the duration of High Roller, deploying a stationary Turbulence-like field.

-          Whenever an ally within the field receives damage by any means, including melee, status or ability damage, their attacker has a chance to be instantly staggered without any damage attachment.

-          Field radius and stagger chance are affected by mod rank only.

-          Only one Improbability Sphere may be active at a time; recasting High Roller will remove an active field before deploying a new one.

-          This augment is also usable in Conclave.

Jackpot: Fortuna summons a reusable slot machine, granting temporary invulnerability while she plays. Match reels to maximize their effects.

Spoiler

-          Fortuna places a slot machine at the target location that lasts for a period affected by Duration. By interacting with it like a Rampart, she gains temporary invulnerability as long as she is at the machine. Only the summoner may interact with the slot machine.

-          Fortuna is presented with a set of 3 cycling reels as long as she is at the machine, with initial control over the left-most reel. Similarly to a Grineer cipher, she may stop a reel's cycling by pressing the spacebar; however, the result from this reel cannot be changed once chosen, and will cause control to move to the next slot to the right. Effects activate when all 3 reels are stopped.

-          Each individual reel selection will provide a benefit, even if all 3 reels are mismatched or one is outnumbered. However, the potency of effects provided (including radius, uptime and effectiveness) will increase based on the number of slots of the shared type. Base effects are affected by Power Range, Power Duration and Power Strength. 

-          Slot effects include:

• Zenurik (): Increased Power Strength for all nearby allies for a duration, with increased damage for aligning three
• Madurai (): Slash damage to nearby enemies throughout a radius, dealing percentage health damage for aligning three
• Unairu (): Fortuna gains one card for one reel, four cards for two reels and ten for three reels
• Naramon (): Nearby enemies are blinded for a duration, opening them to finishers for aligning three
• Vazarin (): Health orb drops, with bonus ammo for aligning two and bonus energy orbs for aligning three
• Skull (): One Skull will inflict a Viral proc on Fortuna. Two Skulls in one roll will cause her to receive a Magnetic proc as well. Landing all three Skulls will detonate the machine, destroying it prematurely and killing Fortuna outright.

-          If Fortuna successfully stops all 3 reels before Duration ends, she is "dismounted" from the machine, but may interact with it as many times as possible before Duration ends, unless it is prematurely destroyed.

-          Each time an outcome on a reel is selected, it is replaced with a Skull before the next use of the slot machine, until a new outcome is selected; a maximum of two Skulls may exist on a single reel at any time.

-          If the machine is in-use and Duration ends before all 3 reels are selected, any remaining slots will have their final results automatically chosen before the slot machine expires.

-          Returns Power-in-Use if a slot machine is already active.

-          Two-handed cast, may not be used while moving.

Augment: Winning Streak – The slot machine gains an increased duration for each matched beneficial reel.

-          Matching all 3 reels of the same type will extend the duration of the slot machine by the maximum amount; matching only 2 will only grant half of the maximum extension.

-          This effect does not apply to Skull reels.

-          Bonus duration is affected by mod rank only.

Conclave Augment: Payout – The slot machine instead stores all of its effects for up to a period, or until detonated.

-          The effects of all reels - positive or negative - are delayed for up to a period affected by mod rank.

-          Recasting Jackpot while a slot machine is active will cause the active slot machine to detonate prematurely, dealing all of its stored effects at once. This does not cost Fortuna additional energy.

-          Stored effects from separate uses of Jackpot will remain as separate instances, i.e. storing two Madurai effects from separate uses of the slot machine will deal two instances of damage for a single Madurai, without gaining the benefits of two Madurai rolls in a single use.

-          Jackpot will automatically detonate when its duration ends.

Additional Notes

Quest: The Venutian Affair – Maroo is planning a heist to steal a priceless Orokin artifact from a Corpus executive, rumored to be related to the origins of the trade conglomerate itself. She doesn't need your help, obviously - she just wants you close to be sure you won't get in her way. She may change her mind when a rival thief encroaches on her prize...

Author Commentary

Spoiler

In a weird way, Fortuna is sort of the oldest concept I designed. I initially came up with the idea of a Gambler Warframe in response to Nekros' release.

I was one of the many players who was initially disappointed to hear that Nekros' third power was going to be "Search the Dead", or what we now call Desecrate. At the time, the main complaint about Desecrate was that it wasn't actually the first choice – a slip of the tongue during the announcement of his powers revealed that the slot was originally a Life Drain ability, although its intended effects remain unclear to this day. Fans of the Necromancer archetype complained bitterly that they were essentially being turned into grave-robbers, and even that the ability wasn't thematic by comparison to a life drain. Most important here was a rising, early concern that the ability would be abused due to the impact it could have on loot.

When he was finally released, the playerbase was essentially split over the ability. While many players were happy that Nekros had a unique position in the team by being able to increase drop rates for rare mods, others were less than pleased to actually play him. He became a dedicated loot piñata Warframe whose kit was functionally broken; Desecrate was a two-handed cast skill that, by virtue of its random nature, required Nekros to stand still and mash the button in order to have a chance to affect a given target within its limited window as a corpse. It functioned on layers of RNG, rolling for health orbs before rolling for bonus loot before rolling for specific drops. It required Range mods that completely gutted Nekros' other abilities, and had zero positive interaction with the rest of his kit — in fact, Soul Punch and Terrify scattered corpses to make Desecrate less efficient, while Desecrate impeded building Shadows and Soul Punch impeded corpses cut for Desecration!

There were gifs on Reddit of a single corpse requiring as many as 8 casts of Desecrate just to compel a single health orb drop, and data collected by both players and DE alike blatantly showed that Desecrate was the most-cast ability in the game due to this flaw. It left Nekros players spending entire missions getting minimal action while they ran from corpse pile to corpse pile and spammed a button that regularly had no effect.

And they still did it, because of the tiniest extra chance at rare drops.

In short, RNG is bad. Relying on it too heavily takes control out of the player's hands, and nobody enjoys feeling like they have no control over the outcome of an ability when they cast it.

Which is why I began work on Fortuna. If I could design a class with what is classically the most RNG-reliant archetype, such that no ability relies on RNG or loot in order to maximize its effectiveness, while still being compelling and effective? Someone to whom "risk and reward" isn't entirely based on an arbitrary dice roll that players will never see? Then there would be no excuse for such abilities to exist while alternatives did.

Naturally, this could only mean one thing: a gambler who cheats at cards, with wild abandon. Not only does she blatantly ignore RNG, she actively counters it. While her deck involves some random elements, she is always in control of how to use the cards she receives, and has outcomes she can force; if she doesn't get what she wants, she can just discard and draw.

It took me a while – many of Nekros' flaws have been addressed (although not eliminated) since – but finally, here she is.

I'm really not sure which of her powers I developed first. The slot machine was a constant through every one of her iterations, but the throwing cards and crit buff also bounced around, albeit in different forms with fewer specifics attached to them. What really helped was that Damage 2.0 added the Status system, meaning that she could not only influence crit chance, but also build a playstyle around stacking status effects on targets; combining it with her card throw to simply hammer enemies with dozens of status effects at once could be a powerful strategy, especially today with the addition of mods like Condition Overload. The absolute hardest power to nail out was her second ability, probably because I didn't have her passive nailed down until relatively recently.

Of course, even if Fortuna was adapted wholesale, I have zero reasonable expectation that she'll lack the ability to influence drops so long as Desecrate, Pilfering Swarm, Ore Gaze, Effigy and Prowl have the ability to. (Probably as either a passive, or a bonus from Jackpot.) This is more just a proof of concept, that she doesn't need them to be appealing.

Signature Weapon: A pair of Tessen (steel-bladed fans). Lady Luck prefers something to hide her poker face behind.
She would also likely favor fast firearms with massive critical damage multipliers, but abysmal crit and/or status chances. Perhaps even an un-Primed Euphona to utilize both?

Syndicates: The Perrin Sequence admires the risks she takes for her allies, while Cephalon Suda finds her ability to defy probability to be statistically fascinating.

Feel free to leave feedback and constructive criticism, and be sure to check back for art updates and additional commentary!

Edited August 18, 2017 by Archwizard
Wiki-fied Dust's entry.

[Krislen]

Idea for Scathach modwise, either on Salmon Leap or Bellows, when you hit someone with the Gae Bolg maneuver from Bellows stance you should immediately Salmon Leap to the target.

[Annon5150]

Scathach is best frame. Rocket punchs and Jat Kitty is my jam.

The collar on Dust kinda reminds me of Saryn, but if all the white material ends up being cloth instead like Ivaras, it could be really neat.

[arch111]

28 minutes ago, Annon5150 said:

Scathach is best frame. Rocket punchs and Jat Kitty is my jam.

The collar on Dust kinda reminds me of Saryn, but if all the white material ends up being cloth instead like Ivaras, it could be really neat.

Yeah, that is the idea. There is too few collars in this game.

[Archwizard]

5 hours ago, Krislen said:

Idea for Scathach modwise, either on Salmon Leap or Bellows, when you hit someone with the Gae Bolg maneuver from Bellows stance you should immediately Salmon Leap to the target.

Honestly, I feel like that would be a waste of an augment, just to activate another ability within the same kit at no added benefit.

[Hunter126]

I like Scathach and like Dust but the other two Just to me seems a bit meh

[Archwizard]

I'm considering renaming the thread so that it will show the themes instead of their names, but presently there's an issue with the forums where Spoiler tags may break completely and be little better than boxes around text. This could take some time.

[arch111]

32 minutes ago, Archwizard said:

I'm considering renaming the thread so that it will show the themes instead of their names, but presently there's an issue with the forums where Spoiler tags may break completely and be little better than boxes around text. This could take some time.

Just add a Header with a Title for the Theme and the short bio above each spoiler-tag.

 

[Archwizard]

12 hours ago, arch111 said:

Just add a Header with a Title for the Theme and the short bio above each spoiler-tag.

Well like I was saying - I can't change anything until the Spoiler Tag issue gets fixed, otherwise I'll risk breaking the formatting again.

[Annon5150]

How do you plan for each of them to be obtained? You said Tremor was gonna have a quest and all that

[Archwizard]

Since I have no idea when the paragraph issue will be fixed, some things I want to add once it's safe to edit again:

• Should have more clarification in the descriptions of each power, so people don't have to look within the spoiler boxes for whatever X means, just how X is executed or how Y affects X.
• Rewind Addition: If the target would be reduced below level 1, they receive Puncture damage based on the excess level drop. This does not activate Continuum.
• Continuum Clarification: Afterimages created via melee attacks will apply stacks of Dust's passive.
• Continuum Clarification: Weapons with player-activated delayed blasts (Penta, Castanas, Talons) will only create Afterimages upon detonation.
• [Tentative] Continuum Clarification: Weapons with over-time environmental effects (Torid, Azima) will only fire an additional blast once the first is depleted.
• Invisible Edge Conclave Augment: Bloodied Blade - When Invisible Edge is deactivated, Revenant fires energy blades based on the number of enemies slain while Invisible Edge was active.
• Obliterate Addition: Enemies who remain within the blast will receive a multiplier on damage received from the next tick of Obliterate; this effect stacks, but only lasts 1 second.
• Shattering Blast Revision: Only the blast radius is affected by mod rank. Damage will be based on excess armor drop alone, but decreases with distance from the impact point, a la explosive weapons.

Edited March 27, 2016 by Archwizard

[Krislen]

With Dust you have a time theme set up but (in my eyes at least it looks to be missing something), you have the slowdown portion of the kit down, but where's the speed up outside of mods. If she had some sort of blink or maybe a movement speed "leech" ability I think it would work out well.

[arch111]

2 hours ago, Krislen said:

With Dust you have a time theme set up but (in my eyes at least it looks to be missing something), you have the slowdown portion of the kit down, but where's the speed up outside of mods. If she had some sort of blink or maybe a movement speed "leech" ability I think it would work out well.

But Mirage and Volt have that. I think its a good thing that Dust avoids the standard powers that all other timeframes share; namely speedups and slowdowns.

[tnccs215]

Mh, I trully enjoy Dust's first ability. It is of an unexploitable meta...

Also, can you give some directions on the concept for Revenant? I might want to dust off my drawing skills... Dont expect something very "professional", my line is incredibly broken and dirty.

Mh, It might fit your Frame's theme, actually

[-CM-Raven]

On 3/26/2016 at 2:34 AM, Annon5150 said:

How do you plan for each of them to be obtained? You said Tremor was gonna have a quest and all that

Otherwise interesting concepts. 

[arch111]

2 hours ago, tnccs215 said:

Mh, I trully enjoy Dust's first ability. It is of an unexploitable meta...

Also, can you give some directions on the concept for Revenant? I might want to dust off my drawing skills... Dont expect something very "professional", my line is incredibly broken and dirty.

Mh, It might fit your Frame's theme, actually

Really? Would be awesome to get your take on it. I am currently thinking about how it could look myself.

[Archwizard]

6 hours ago, tnccs215 said:

Mh, I trully enjoy Dust's first ability. It is of an unexploitable meta...

Also, can you give some directions on the concept for Revenant? I might want to dust off my drawing skills... Dont expect something very "professional", my line is incredibly broken and dirty.

Mh, It might fit your Frame's theme, actually

I can PM you what I've sent so far to arch111 and MrPigman about it. Don't want to have too many public spoilers.

On 3/27/2016 at 6:34 PM, Annon5150 said:

How do you plan for each of them to be obtained? You said Tremor was gonna have a quest and all that

Sorry I missed this one! Good question, I hadn't considered that too deeply yet, though I suppose they could have thematically-linked quests as well.

• Dust probably should have a quest involving the Orokin Moon, perhaps delving into the mystery of why the time periods change in Spy vaults.
• Aether probably will have an Archwing quest, perhaps tied to the Tau system - thematically tied to him being something from "beyond the stars".
• Revenant probably should have a quest on the Orokin Derelicts, both showing his "unique" connection to the void and his worn-down condition.
• Scathach... maybe from a Grineer boss, I think.

I mean in Atlas' case, as arch111 and I came up with more details for him, I started giving him lore to address things like why his hands had that odd shape (overuse of Burrow causing him to meld into terrain), and so on. I don't have that so much for these frames, so I'm not necessarily attached to any of these guys having quests (although now that I've thought about it, those are some pretty good places for them...).

Edited March 28, 2016 by Archwizard

[Archwizard]

Alrighty, looks like the issues with broken spoiler tags have been dealt with. I guess it only affected posts created within a limited period, so my panic was unfounded.
Now the only problem we have is that some of them seem to be centered. Haven't been able to fix that.

Updates to the OP include:

On 3/27/2016 at 0:03 PM, Archwizard said:

• More clarification in the descriptions of each power, so people don't have to look within the spoiler boxes for whatever X means, just how X is executed or how Y affects X.
• Rewind Addition: If the target would be reduced below level 1, they receive Puncture damage based on the excess level drop. This does not activate Continuum.
• Continuum Clarification: Afterimages created via melee attacks will apply stacks of Dust's passive.
• Continuum Clarification: Weapons with player-activated delayed blasts (Penta, Castanas, Talons) will only create Afterimages upon detonation.
• [Tentative] Continuum Clarification: Weapons with over-time environmental effects (Torid, Azima) will only fire an additional blast once the first is depleted.
• Invisible Edge Conclave Augment: Bloodied Blade - When Invisible Edge is deactivated, Revenant fires energy blades based on the number of enemies slain while Invisible Edge was active.
• Obliterate Addition: Enemies who remain within the blast will receive a multiplier on damage received from the next tick of Obliterate; this effect stacks, but only lasts 1 second.
• Shattering Blast Revision: Only the blast radius is affected by mod rank. Damage will be based on excess armor drop alone, but decreases with distance from the impact point, a la explosive weapons.

... and a slight tweak to the title, so people know what all these strange words mean.

Edited March 29, 2016 by Archwizard

[Pyro15232]

Great appropriate title :)

[Annon5150]

On 3/28/2016 at 9:57 PM, Krislen said:

where's the speed up outside of mods. If she had some sort of blink or maybe a movement speed "leech" ability

The time warp augment lets you leech speed from enemies it looks like.

[Archwizard]

On 3/28/2016 at 9:57 PM, Krislen said:

With Dust you have a time theme set up but (in my eyes at least it looks to be missing something), you have the slowdown portion of the kit down, but where's the speed up outside of mods. If she had some sort of blink or maybe a movement speed "leech" ability I think it would work out well.

6 hours ago, Annon5150 said:

The time warp augment lets you leech speed from enemies it looks like.

On 3/28/2016 at 0:06 AM, arch111 said:

But Mirage and Volt have that. I think its a good thing that Dust avoids the standard powers that all other timeframes share; namely speedups and slowdowns.

_{^{(Methinks you meant Valkyr, ie Warcry, rather than Mirage.)}}

Pretty much what arch111 and Annon5150 said. You can get enough of a "speed up" effect from several other effects already available to players, particularly Berserker - which you might note, is a mod that most of her abilities can accommodate, particularly her passive (which encourages using fast weapons) and the Critical Moment augment for Magic Hour (which increases the chance for Berserker to proc). 

I wanted her to only offer utilities that we haven't seen represented so far, and in doing so, also nudge her subtly towards fast-hitting weapons.

Edited March 30, 2016 by Archwizard

[Annon5150]

On 3/28/2016 at 10:53 AM, Archwizard said:

Sorry I missed this one! Good question, I hadn't considered that too deeply yet, though I suppose they could have thematically-linked quests as well.

• Dust probably should have a quest involving the Orokin Moon, perhaps delving into the mystery of why the time periods change in Spy vaults.
• Aether probably will have an Archwing quest, perhaps tied to the Tau system - thematically tied to him being something from "beyond the stars".
• Revenant probably should have a quest on the Orokin Derelicts, both showing his "unique" connection to the void and his worn-down condition.
• Scathach... maybe from a Grineer boss, I think.

Could be neat if Scathach had a quest to help her tear apart Grineer until she deems you worthy of her bps.

[Archwizard]

On 3/30/2016 at 11:02 AM, Annon5150 said:

Could be neat if Scathach had a quest to help her tear apart Grineer until she deems you worthy of her bps.

That... almost fits with the mythology, now that I think about it.

"How did she last between the Orokin era and now?"
"She's g*dd*mn immortal, that's how."
"Where's she been then?"
"Waiting in the shadows." ^{_{(Her island home in the myth was known as the Land of Shadows.)}}

Just worried that it would be too on-the-nose, since we don't have any other mythology-based frames obtained from quests. Having a frame named after a trainer of heroes be obtained by a quest in which she trains you to be a hero... there's honoring the mythology, and then there's ripping it off.

Besides, half the point of the quests is to give the game its own lore, beyond just the one frame. "Collect 10 Grineer arses" doesn't quite fit that bill.

Meanwhile, we have nothing so far about a certain Doctor Tengus...

[Annon5150]

14 hours ago, Archwizard said:

Meanwhile, we have nothing so far about a certain Doctor Tengus...

Yeah but if we just have her be a Grineer experiment, wont that just copy Valkyr?

[Hunter126]

44 minutes ago, Annon5150 said:

Yeah but if we just have her be a Grineer experiment, wont that just copy Valkyr?

are Grineer Experiments and Corpus Experiments not different?