A Few Quality of Life Additions/Fixes I'd Love To See Zephyr Receive

[HalfDarkShadow]

Hey guys!~
I'm usually giving feedback in Zephyr Feedback threads and always mention "for how much I play her, I could honestly write a book", well to some extent, I think I'll try to put my money where my mouth is!

Anyway, as someone who's most played Warframe is Zephyr as long as I can remember, I noticed alot of "rework" threads tend to miss the point on a few marks. Especially doesn't help when you see Topics and/or replies that you can tell from a mile away they likely had very little to no exposure to playing her. It's rather disheartening really.
But with that being said, by no means my opinions and thoughts have some sort of higher authority. Not by a long shot. I do feel though I should at least share some thoughts from my perspective.
The last two things to preface is that what I'm about to propose has a lot to do with talking to other fellow birb players as well, having thought-out discussions and trying to understand where would you and/or I would like to see her be. So some of my ideas might have been influenced a bit hearing from other perspectives lol. Secondly I wanted to keep intact the Warframe's design philosophies (and overall choices) in mind without heavily alternating her core fundamentals. This is so it still respects the fanbase that have grown to learn and adapt to her strengths and nuances, but simultaneously increasing the functionality of these said abilities. Hopefully by achieving this, this will optimize her existing role(s) and maybe more so.

So without further ado, here are some of my ideas, none of which will be focused on her abilities so mainly will be passive(ly) changes.

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Lets start of off with her stats:

1. I feel for the most part she's in a fine place in that regard, but her ^{might as well be nonexistent} Armor Rating. This is more of an outdated issue with many older Warframes (specifically Banshee and the like), but still something I'd like to see addressed. Something I've been quoting for a while that I saw someone mention on the wikia which still rings very true:

On 4/16/2016 at 1:50 PM, HalfDarkShadow said:

"I love how DE purposed her as a direct-combat frame, but giving her the stats of a gimped caster-type frame."

          I get it, it did make complete sense way back when, but this isn't Update 9 anymore. I don't even believe they think a baseline of 15 works either since just about every Warframe since (released or reworked) have the minimum of 65, which believe me would go such a long way.

Energy:

1. This one I feel should be very slightly increased, if they want to continue to have her as a "gimped caster-type frame". I mean if they are, you might as well give her the energy to support that, no? Either way having it increased from 100 to 125 - 150 would be ideal.

Next up is her existent passive via Gravity:

1. One of her defining features that I and many others still believe works beautifully with her. Another fantastic quote from a user, which I heavily believe as well (in regards to her Gravity passive):

On 7/1/2016 at 1:13 PM, (PS4)Darth-Escar said:

That's not all Zephyr can do, and I don't think it's the best she can do. That's a really good thing she has, but it's mostly good becuase it's easy. Understandably, it's difficult to aim while flying, so people resort to hitscan explosives. I've always been a player to focus on parkour gameplay, and I've found that mid-air accuracy is heavily rewarded with Zephyr. If being practically unkillable with potentially the best LOS in the game (dependent on tileset) good, I don't know what is. (With max range her Turbulence can relaibly protect her sentinel.)

           But unfortunately sometime around The Silver Grove Update, it hasn't been working [fully] properly and hasn't been addressed thus yet. I have made the time to create a Topic about it during the summer, so if you'd like to read more about the specifics, here's the thread:

Now some additional thoughts. Not all needs to be applied, really any order of these would I think help her along immensely:

1. Aim Glide / Latch Time: 
   • This one sort of perplexes me, but when seeing Loki get the extended Latch Time passive, I felt there was a great missed opportunity to give Zephyr either this, extended Aim Glide, or hell, both of them. I mean she has god-dang talons for crying out loud! For a Warframe with a large emphasis on verticality, this would immensely support this unique playstyle, especially on those large open [for example] Corpus snowy maps when you want to be clinging around cliff edges and sides of towers without needing to land back on the ground or forcefully using your jump, bullet jump, Tailwind, or any combination of the three.
     • And with the aforementioned bug with using Tailwind in midair, you can't rely on being able to stay up for too long for what you would expect her to have already intuitively.
2. Burn Procs:
   • This one I hear from time to time, and I think it's worth mentioning here. Nothing imperative mind you, but still. Let's say you get burned from Hyekka Master and you don't currently have Turbulence active, would you think it would be neat to be able to clear it when activating Turbulence?
     • Even though in the real world setting, the wind can create small fires into massive ones, but I will agree with some others in this regard that regardless of that, being able to clean yourself from it would be a nice little touch.
3. Unique bullet types (flamethrowers, grenades, etc):
   • Many of us fellow birbs rejoiced for after all the trouble we had to endure for just about years now (or at least since Limbo's Update when they decided to do all the Accuracy changes), Turbulence as of now works wonderfully. I think though if they ever choose to look at her again, they could definitely expand this a bit more on what she can deflect. Particularly in the flamethrower / lobbing grenade departments. Now I'm not expecting an enemies grenade to fly all the way back to them, but I would personally like to see at least have some affect from Turbulence, and not fly right through it.
   • Same applies to fire. Again, I'm not expecting to be all of the sudden completely immune to Hyekka's Ignis, but seeing it get pushed away and not pretend there's no wind via Turbulence would be honestly fantastic. Sure I might still get hurt a bit from the fire, but I'd rather it make sense then to be scorched in the face, rendering her only defensive skill useless. This is not to even adding the fact of her "Armor Rating" ^{does she even have one?} not in the slightest bit supporting or helping her endure some of the damage if they happen to catch you off guard behind a thin wall, before you can even properly asses the situation and react accordingly.

 

Well, that's basically everything I can remember. Feel free to take it all apart and create something that you think would help her as a whole! I'd love to have a discussion about all this / about Zephyr in general if anyone would like to humor me c':
All feedback is more than encouraged!
Again to mention, this is out of realm of her abilities, as I think that's a different beast entirely. Since I believe before they can address anything else, I think they should consider her role in Warframe and how they can utilize that said role to it's fully capacity, where I think needs to start on her overall functioning in general. But still, feel free to bring up her abilities as well if relevant to the conversation!

Cheers guys!~

Edited October 18, 2016 by HalfDarkShadow

[(PSN)Darth-Escar]

I had a feeling my air time with Zephyr was changed somehow.

[El_Chino]

I think other frames should also do that thing with fire procs/other procs... Like frost extinguishing any fires in the vicinity when casting his ult, or ember getting rid of cold procs on cast, stuff that will make some sense like that.

And generally speaking, yeah... This is not update 9 anymore, when powers had a somewhat bigger impact on enemies... Now the enemies can have their life/shields/armor scaled so much that powers barely do anything (unless they have CC), and you just rely on gunplay + corrosive aura / status builds for that. Not even gonna talk about enemy damage scaling and most warframes ehp...

Nevertheless, I think DE is secretly working on a massive damage and ehp, types and scaling, rework. That along a massive weapon rebalance, with some reworks.
Or at least I hope so... Can't imagine why the hell else this update would be taking so long for em.

A complete balance will make everything in the game enjoyable again, and players wont return just to try the new stuff, but also the old and reworked one.

[(PSN)RenovaKunumaru]

I think they're planning on waiting for Zephyr Prime to correct some things like her energy pool and such which is why i haven't been too concerned. Zenurik and a single streamline work wonders with Zephyr. Arcane energize of course is overkill.

Armor rating doesn't matter much when you focus most of your combat at range but I'm sure that will improve slightly as well. 

My major concern with Zephyr is her abilities functionality. The ones I addressed in my prior thread. I have a free new ideas to contribute to it but, tailwind deserves additional functionality, dive bomb needs scaling and Tornado needs a buff. 

And yeah I always wished turbulence could clear status effects..

Edited October 18, 2016 by (PS4)RenovaKunumaru

[HalfDarkShadow]

Sorry for the delayed reponse!

On 10/17/2016 at 9:36 PM, El_Chino said:

I think other frames should also do that thing with fire procs/other procs... Like frost extinguishing any fires in the vicinity when casting his ult, or ember getting rid of cold procs on cast, stuff that will make some sense like that.

And generally speaking, yeah... This is not update 9 anymore, when powers had a somewhat bigger impact on enemies... Now the enemies can have their life/shields/armor scaled so much that powers barely do anything (unless they have CC), and you just rely on gunplay + corrosive aura / status builds for that. Not even gonna talk about enemy damage scaling and most warframes ehp...

Regarding the first bit, honestly you're definitely right that some Warframes could benefit off that idea as well.
Where credit is due though, I do really like for example how they made Frosty quite literally 'cold to the touch' via can freeze proc enemies if they melee attack you.

With the second half, I think it's my biggest pet peeve really that we still have Warframes with what I'd argue still having outdated stats. Particularly in the Armor Rating department lol.
With enemy scaling, the only thing I don't find enjoyable is when difficulty starts to pick up around the level 35-45 mark, but instead of a smoother curve like one would expect, right around the 50 to 60+ level enemies there's just this noticeable spike which becomes a "either they one-shot us, or we one-shot them" kind of scenario lol. At least that how it always feels lol.

But still I'm pretty much on the same boat as you in general xD

Edited October 20, 2016 by HalfDarkShadow