Suggestions: Warframe Powers (New And Old)

[Paradox_Box]

I'm just going to list some suggestions I think could improve some warframe powers.

 

Rhino definitely needs work...

 

I agree with Scott that rhino's last two abilities do the same thing. Instead, I suggest a new ultimate. I don't know what you'd call it ("stampede" maybe?), but basically for 100 energy (or maybe even more, no reason why it couldn't be 150) you become invulnerable (completely invulnerable that is), have slowed (half?) movement speed, but each step you take is like rhino's current third ability (radial blast), that being each step knocks enemies down and damages them. I think this is much more befitting of rhino's destructive appearance. I think it's important not to slow his movespeed to a crawl, but it's up to the devs to find a nice balance between movespeed and knockdown radius. (Obviously, the smaller the radius, the more important movespeed is.) I would think the rate of stomps would be somewhere around 2 per second or slightly less, with the max duration of this ability being 8 seconds. Upgrading this ability should also improve the damage of each stomp (on top of power duration) but not the radius or speed or anything else. The damage should never reach a point close to abilities that are solely for damage (at max rank, 8 seconds would be 12-16 stomps with the total damage for all stomps adding to 800 damage that can be reduced by enemy armour - this ability is primarily for stuns and invulnerability.) 

 

Obviously, this makes iron skin redundant. I think that, considering iron skin's low energy cost, it could be reworked to be damage reduction (keep the name though). At max rank, it would have 50% damage mitigation, but also it reflects projectiles and draws enemy fire. This would help rhino fulfil a tank role for those that want that from him. I don't think the projectiles should be reflected directly back the the source but simply in random directions, because otherwise it would be too overpowered vs bosses or heavy gunners and it does only cost 50 energy. The duration should also be about 8 seconds at max rank. I also think you should be immune to stumble (like from rollers) but not knockdown (like from shockwave moas) which should instead just make you stumble.

 

For his third ability, I think rhino should go into a rage and just start punching things. The punch damage should ignore armour and be proportional to (if not exactly equal to) the damage and speed of your equipped melee weapon but it shouldn't add any bonus damage. Duration for this should be longer than the other two abilities at max rank(12-15 seconds perhaps?) and it should increase your base movespeed just a bit. I think players should be able to use iron skin during this ability (obviously it can't be maintained for the entire duration) to help draw attention and make the punching easier. I don't think you should be able to charge your punches, but you should still be able to ground slam and slide attack etc. You're probably thinking this doesn't sound very good for 75 energy considering it doesn't even add bonus damage, but here's the good part: rhino punches with force sufficient to disrupt time. That includes the ground slam attack, but obviously it won't have the range of the current ground stomp ability. I think that regardless of equipped melee weapon,  the ground slam should have the same radius and same time-disruption-duration across the board. Animations could be borrowed from the fist weapons although I'm currently using the furax and the third or fourth hit in the combo where you spin around looks silly and doesn't make sense. Why would you do a spin when punching people? I think time-disruption-duration for attacks other than ground slam should be proportional to melee attack speed only, so that high damage builds can't just punch a guy and have him in stasis for a minute. 

 

Also, rhino charge should ragdoll (like the kestrel) lightly armoured units just for fun. And how come rhino doesn't have a helmet that actually makes him look like a rhino? Seems like all tenno have some weird horn thing of some kind except rhino - the only warframe that you would expect to have a big horn thing. I mean really guys...

 

 

Also I have some ideas for the new antimatter warframe, but I figure the design council will probably be choosing those. Still, I think it should have an ability that makes melee attacks explosive. It's a pretty obvious fit if you read the first few sentences on the antimatter wikipedia page. And it damn well better be called "annihilation" once again for obvious reasons.

 

 

Loki also needs work...

 

The first two abilities are fine, but switch teleport and radial disarm are useless. I propose a minor change to switch teleport: bring the energy cost up 75 and keep it exactly the same except that you actually switch places with the selected enemy. I don't just mean locations, I mean you switch places in enemies' minds as well. So that when you switch with an enemy, all other enemies think the switched enemy is actually tenno and start attacking them, and they think you're friendly and stop attacking you. It doesn't necessarily mean they have to draw any bonus attention, but they will get attacked. Obviously can't be used on bosses, and it think the effects on the switched enemy should be until they die. However, the effect on you should last for a fixed duration that increases with the rank of the mod (8-10 seconds at max rank?) or until you attack anyone other than the switched enemy. This means the ability can be used either as an escape or as a way to damage a tough enemy. The switched enemy should attack the nearest Tenno, but not other enemies, and not you if your teammate is nearer. Also, your pet must only target the switched enemy or be silenced for the duration of the effect to prevent it from blowing your cover immediately.

 

As for radial disarm, just scrap it, it sucks. As a replacement, how about a decoy army? For 100 energy, you summon several decoys for a fairly long duration (30 seconds at max rank?), but not stationary ones, moving, shooting decoys like the friendly AI from the rescue missions. You could use normal AI, but you really want the decoy army to follow you around quite closely so they can act like decoys and draw enemy fire. If you used normal AI, they'd probably run away or something silly. The decoys should do decent damage, but nothing too amazing. Upgrading the ability should improve the number of decoys (thinking it could start at 3 and upgrade 2 at a time to 9 decoys in total at max rank) or their health (or both). I definitely want the number of decoys to increase just for the awesome factor. Once again, this fits Loki's theme of trickery and would just be super badass.

 

 

I have some minor suggestions for Mag too, although bare in mind I haven't played her (yet!) but a close friend of mine has, so...

 

I believe it was mentioned in the livestream that Mag's pull ability had already been changed and made better so whatever. Shield polarise should transfer shield capacity from enemies to Mag but when restoring friendly shields, it should not drain yours. Bullet attractor should draw bullets to weak points on enemies. So it should draw bullets to enemy heads and boss weak points like Jackal's legs or Kril's cryo-pack because otherwise this ability is more of an annoyance than anything.

 

 

Ember is a tricky situation...

Overheat and fire blast are actually really good and unique, which is nice. Fireball is pretty bad though. I think this ability should be more like Banshee's sonic boom, in that its a reasonably wide cone of fire. The cone should be slightly longer but narrower than Banshee's sonic boom so that the effects could make it look like fire breath (more like a fire burp really because it isn't channelled - we have the flamethrower for that). I think this ability should be more about strong damage over time rather than immediate damage to prevent it from being similar in result to slash dash or rhino charge. Also, the damage over time should stack a few times (3 is a good number). To keep it balanced, I think the animation should last just under a second or so and force you to be stationary, it should only stagger light units, and obviously there is no damage mitigation during the animation. This will stop people spamming it over and over really quickly despite the low energy cost.

 

 

Also, channelled abilities. How cool would those be? You could channel stampede, or fire burp or decoy army; so many possibilities! But I'm sure that's already been suggested a thousand times... 

 

 

AND THATS IT! A mere 1500 words worth of improvements. I look forward to any feedback and I apologise if any of these idea have already been suggested by anybody else (I don't spend too much time on the forums).

 

 

 

 

 

TL;DR Read it you lazy &#!; I put a lot of thought, effort, and 2 and a half hours of my time into writing this and I'm not about to discount it all with one sentence!

Edited June 23, 2013 by Paradox_Box

[Tai-Gethan]

Don't know if this is the right place for this, or if it is suggested elsewhere, but here is my suggestion: We are basically highly trained, skilled and dedicated space ninjas. At the end of a intense wave on defense missions or before I wade into a pile of bad peoples I need my best abilities at my disposal i.e. my special abilities. So this highly skilled space ninja runs around like a spaz looking for glowing blue orbs. As an alternative why not give us a "meditate" ability on all the frames. An actual toggle that puts us in a lotus seat (ya know legs crossed and what not, like nyx ulti) and makes us inactive until we leave said state that recharges our energy. Just had an intense battle right? Four Warframes drop into a meditative state to recooperate this special energy that allows them to be BAMF's!

 

TL/DR  Give Warframes a toggle stance/action that allows them to meditate to regain energy/power

Edited June 23, 2013 by Kosall