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Limbo Feedback: Abilities, Passive, and Idle Thoughts


Telluric
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Hello, greetings from your friendly neighborhood Limbo Lord. I've come to you today with a thread that I've been too nervous to post for a very very long time. Hopefully this will be more constructive than not.

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Limbo is not without his faults. I do not deny that there are indeed some major flaws with Limbo. 

First off, I'll start out by saying that even though I love his design and aesthetic, it feels very detached from the traditional Warframe style and it honestly makes very little sense. If you wanted to have a "void magician" appearance, then at least give him some proper abilities to convey this as well.

Passive-wise, I feel that his "passive" should be something that should be a part of the Rift mechanics as it is. A Passive is something that is supposed to benefit a Warframe in small ways, i.e. Loki's infinite Wall Latch, Banshee's eternal weapon silence, etc. Limbo's passive, however, is locked into his abilities. He gains no bonuses whatsoever unless he's using Rift Walk or Cataclysm. A Passive SHOULD NOT be tied into an ability. If you are a Limbo and do not use a duration-based build, you do not benefit from the Passive at all. That's kind of upsetting.

Anyway. Limbo was tricky to use upon release, especially since Cataclysm and Banish were originally duration-based abilities. Rude players would go into pub matches just to banish their allies, and there was nothing that they could do to get out of the rift. Rolling wasn’t an option back then. If this Limbo was build solely on duration, you could very well have been stuck in the rift for almost a full minute. Better get away, because some people would Banish you right back once your time ended. A lot of players spent their missions avoiding the Limbo players rather than killing the enemies. It was pretty terrible.

Cataclysm was equally terrible. People would make a range + duration build and just drop one. Cataclysm can cover entire rooms if big enough, and since the original Cataclysm couldn’t be switched off, you had to wait. And wait. And wait. 

And since you can’t pick up items in the Rift, it caused a lot of problems. Limbo became the most-hated frame the day he released, thanks to some poor ability mechanics and also thanks to generally rude players.

Even with his slow-but-sure tweaks, he’s still an iffy frame for most people. I can understand the inability to pick up items while in the Rift; it would open the door for people to be completely lazy in missions and not assist their teammates while just being completely untouchable and picking up the spoils from the rest of the team’s hard efforts. However, not everyone likes this idea.

Banishing allies is something that is probably going to happen regardless of tweaking. It’s not that hard to roll. If you get stuck in a pub with a Limbo who is also a jerk and keeps banishing teammates, then leave or switch teleport him off a cliff. I’ve made good use of his Haven augment, which, upon banishing an ally, restores some of their max health. Other than that, I don’t banish allies unless asked, but not everyone plays as I do.

Banish in general would be severely useful if it was easier to banish enemies, but since you can only banish one at a time, and half the time you banish the wrong enemy because they’re always moving around, it can get really old, really fast. It would be nice if Banish had a DPS effect, so that Banishing enemies would help to kill them, instead of just getting rid of them. Sadly, banishing high-level enemies is pretty useless unless you’re already in the Rift, or if you just want that Corrupted Bombard to leave you alone for a minute. If you're running with a duration build, Banishing an enemy isn't going to do much damage to them, but since you're probably already in the Rift, you'll be fine.

The other problem with Banishing is that if you want to have an effective Banish build, you're probably using Transient Fortitude and Fleeting Expertise; both of these remove duration. Of course, you could just use Blind Rage, but the casting cost remains high, and with a shorter duration, it costs more to get into a Rift Walk to regain energy than the energy that you'd gain while in there. His ability mechanics make for frustrating builds, and it shouldn't be that hard. Despite me having 9 builds and counting, it's not exactly a cakeriftwalk.

But as far as Rift Walk goes, it’s easier to Banish while already in the Rift, because they can’t harm you until you drag them into the plane with you. A duration build is pretty much the easist way to do this, which is very limiting as to what else you might want to do. Aside from that, use the cheap passive and immunity to lasers for fast spy vault runs.

Rift surge is kind of a key element for one or two of my builds, but it’s an ability that doesn’t really matter, and that no one really utilizes. Think about Excalibur’s old Super Jump ability, if you want something to go off of. It’s a good concept, but what is it really for? You can do just fine without it, really. Rift Surge is only useful for being inside large Cataclysms, because simply Banishing enemies knocks them down, so just shoot them while they’re on the floor. 

Cataclysm is neat, because while inside it, you can’t take damage from the outside. However, once enemies walk in, it’s open season. Sure, Rift Surge can help here in terms of dealing with enemies, and the energy gain rate bonus is pretty nice, but as far as a reliable defense mechanism goes, Cataclysm doesn’t do a while lot for the team. As I mentioned before, if the Rift were to have a DPS mechanism to it, it would make Limbo so much more desirable and useful to the team, but it does not. It’s a flat ability and the inability to interact with items, i.e. ammo, mods, and orbs, prevents a lot of players from being able to progress without having to drop restores, if the Limbo player is rude. There are good Cataclysm nuke builds; I have one myself. But if you're in the middle of a bubble, and surrounded by Bombards and Scorch units, the only thing that's helping you is how fast you can run. Don't even get me started on the Cataclysm augment; those fractions of a second are not helpful at all and simply waste a mod slot in your build.

I like the energy gain inside the Rift, but it becomes a novelty when two of your abilities do this, because those same two abilities do the exact same thing. Only difference is the latter has a larger range. So if you don't want to Banish just one enemy, then use Cataclysm to Banish a lot of enemies. Cataclysm is basically a larger version of Banish, in essence. It's almost kind of a cheap ability when you think about it this way.

I’ve been playing as Equinox recently, in day forme. Their 4th ability, which defaults to Maim, is a super useful ability. It’s not a ‘press 4 to win’ but it does help with large crowds by dwindling their health down. It would be nice if Limbo’s Banish/Cataclysm would have a similar effect on enemies.

Even with all of these mechanical downfalls, Limbo still remains my favourite frame to play as. Despite his desperately-needed reworks, I’ve won 14 FaitKO challenges using him. He's not bad, but he could be a lot better.

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I appreciate your efforts, thread like this should appear more often (sadly people prefere yell for nerf), perhaps one day every frame will be good^^

So if I understood foe in the rift should loose some hp over time ? If yes I suggest a %, and not a fixed value

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I agree with you, he has his problems and also his good side. I just hope that the rework doesnt turn him in a press 4 buttons in order to make something, caugh caugh saryn, caugh. The rift mechanics need to be change, i think its his major flaw, not being about to pick up stuff nor interaction with objects as datamasses. His haven mod needs to make clear to the ally that he has been heal cause many people think that you are trolling them when you are just spamming cause there a lot of health loss to heal. His energy regen is another problem, its the only way next to EV to give energy but EV just destroys and burns and pisses, lol, over limbo regen, maybe his rift surge should bump that energy regen or grant more effiency to himself and allies so he could compete for that niche and boy that could make him more accepted in the comunity. In general I would say buff or perfect what he already has to offer: defense, energy regen and especific target damage dealing.

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1 hour ago, erny0507 said:

I agree with you, he has his problems and also his good side. I just hope that the rework doesnt turn him in a press 4 buttons in order to make something, caugh caugh saryn, caugh. The rift mechanics need to be change, i think its his major flaw, not being about to pick up stuff nor interaction with objects as datamasses. His haven mod needs to make clear to the ally that he has been heal cause many people think that you are trolling them when you are just spamming cause there a lot of health loss to heal. His energy regen is another problem, its the only way next to EV to give energy but EV just destroys and burns and pisses, lol, over limbo regen, maybe his rift surge should bump that energy regen or grant more effiency to himself and allies so he could compete for that niche and boy that could make him more accepted in the comunity. In general I would say buff or perfect what he already has to offer: defense, energy regen and especific target damage dealing.

I can get not being able to pick up stuff, I really do. But yeah, stuff like datamasses is annoying, and having power cores drop the moment you step into a Cataclysm that you've placed around an Excavator is seriously annoying.

And while I get that Limbo's energy regen in the Rift isn't supposed to be Energy Vampire level, at least give it another tick or so per second.

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1 hour ago, Telluric said:

And while I get that Limbo's energy regen in the Rift isn't supposed to be Energy Vampire level, at least give it another tick or so per second.

Thats the wrong part of the comunity, thinking just as jack of all trades sort of thing to justify mediocrity. Sorry if Im aggresive but I believe that he should be able to compete with EV, I dont think that win over but at least be a reasonable alternative.

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Yeah limbo is great he just lack utility. He has the one trick, its a great trick but hes so squishy hes obliged to use it and it has negatives. Also when it runs out he has a couple of seconds with no trick where hes screwed. Most of the time the complicated stuff is kind of pointless my cataclysm kills most enemies before I can use my epic rift surge buff and I cant banish allies easily enough when I need to and do it more by accident than when I need too. I think it would work better if rift surge changed limbos abilities to work with the damage buff in mind when activated. Some thinks like, when rift surge is active, banish looses its damage but affects a small aoe banishing groups ( can do a little mini cataclysm like a rift surge...), cataclysm could additionally banish whole party so everyone can shoot whats in the bubble but again cataclysms looses some of its nuke damage and finally rift walk you could do an aoe knock down when a frame enters or leaves the rift, have it drag other enemies into the rift with you or allies bring party into the rift but this final one would be more trolly than the others. For rift surge you could have it do an aoe in the rift, bring the party into the rift or if you wanted something more novel maybe have an option to some how create something like how volts shield used to work in rift, a door way for people to shoot through to hit either dimension with a damage boost. I'm actually cool with not being able to interact with stuff because you can flip cataclysm on and off and every sentinel has vacuum so its more delayed pick up than no pick up. So basically I think any combination of those particularly ones that give  more control about how many allies and enemies are in the rift would really help limbo especially since that's his whole shtick. His concept is so good you could do so many things that would make him awesome like an augment that makes rift walk affect the whole party but they leave the rift briefly when they shoot or something brain trippy like letting and limbo enter or exit the rift in the area of effect of cataclysm, without banishing cataclysm ( cataclysm can act as like a cover you set up, pop out and shoot then pop back in to be safe).

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45 minutes ago, Solarsyphon said:

Yeah limbo is great he just lack utility. He has the one trick, its a great trick but hes so squishy hes obliged to use it and it has negatives. Also when it runs out he has a couple of seconds with no trick where hes screwed. Most of the time the complicated stuff is kind of pointless my cataclysm kills most enemies before I can use my epic rift surge buff and I cant banish allies easily enough when I need to and do it more by accident than when I need too. I think it would work better if rift surge changed limbos abilities to work with the damage buff in mind when activated. Some thinks like, when rift surge is active, banish looses its damage but affects a small aoe banishing groups ( can do a little mini cataclysm like a rift surge...), cataclysm could additionally banish whole party so everyone can shoot whats in the bubble but again cataclysms looses some of its nuke damage and finally rift walk you could do an aoe knock down when a frame enters or leaves the rift, have it drag other enemies into the rift with you or allies bring party into the rift but this final one would be more trolly than the others. For rift surge you could have it do an aoe in the rift, bring the party into the rift or if you wanted something more novel maybe have an option to some how create something like how volts shield used to work in rift, a door way for people to shoot through to hit either dimension with a damage boost. I'm actually cool with not being able to interact with stuff because you can flip cataclysm on and off and every sentinel has vacuum so its more delayed pick up than no pick up. So basically I think any combination of those particularly ones that give  more control about how many allies and enemies are in the rift would really help limbo especially since that's his whole shtick. His concept is so good you could do so many things that would make him awesome like an augment that makes rift walk affect the whole party but they leave the rift briefly when they shoot or something brain trippy like letting and limbo enter or exit the rift in the area of effect of cataclysm, without banishing cataclysm ( cataclysm can act as like a cover you set up, pop out and shoot then pop back in to be safe).

Mhm, I understand exactly what you mean.

He's got the reputation of being the Warframe to take on spy missions and to banish rescue hostages and maybe sometimes do defense missions.

Outside of that, it's just complaints upon complaints, and a thousand and one rework ideas instead of trying to directly address what can be fixed, instead of adding new ability mechanics or new abilities altogether. His kit CAN be great; it just needs some dev love.

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