Nidus discussion Post Devstream 84

[Domesticon]

Just as the title says, we've seen the Infested Frame, Nidus, on the Devstream. So now the big question, what do people think of it?

 

In terms of design, I love it, looks solid and has good ability appearance. Should be fun to mess around with the colors and see what you can do with it, hopefully that will apply to the Maggots and maybe even the Infestation creep itself.

 

So what about the actual abilities and balance of it? I'm a fan of it not having shields, that's very fitting for it, should be interesting to see how it stands up in terms of energy and durability. I'm not sure about the abilities themselves though. The first ability seems good, it is basically just an ice wave, but the stack building and energy refund makes it quite interesting. The second ability looks like a lot of fun, like a mix of Hydroid and Vauban. I can already imagine tossing it over a pit and then using it to drop enemies to their death. I'm not sure about the third ability in all honesty, could be useful but I'm wondering if it can still be used on allies, I certainly hope that's the case. I have to say I'm dissapointed in the fourth ability, I was really hoping we'd be able to create permanent nests that regularly spawn Maggots until destroyed, that would have even gone with Nidus' stack system very well, being able to create one per stack and such. But what I've seen seems honestly quite dissapointing and I question how useful it will really be.

 

So what do you guys think? Are you excited? Dissapointed? Indifferent?

[Rawbeard]

haven't we seen it before? did anything change?

[KisaPrime]

His name makes me think of Tidus from final fantasy 10. 

The whole concept for the frame is amazing and I'm excited about when we can go get him. 

[Larcerus]

Spread the Infestation...we are One...we are your Flesh...a new Plague will come...and his name is Nidus... 

 

i just have to say im totally in love with him...the Design is awesome he just looks like he crawl out of a disturbing nightmare of infestation and Warframes...and the Abilities...i love how the 1 and 2 work together and how the 3 could help stay alive...but yeah its the 4 that made me like "ohh yeah its real" i mean...you can infest an Area and it will puke Maggots on enemys...spam a Parasite and a healer Phantom and you are totally like the Messiah of Infestation...i rly hope they will bring him out next week or at least still this Year...just my opinion but yeah i Love Nidus <3

[AerinSol]

Another Ice Wave but with energy vampire addition.

Equinox+Booben

Trinity+Mesa survivability

It was struggling with lvl 40 enemies. But at least it can go up to 50s in duration. CC looks gud. CC b lyfe. CC be all.

Edited December 10, 2016 by AerinSol

[LSG501]

pretty sure it was missing its 'armor' or thats how it sounded in devstream...

I really hope that it has decent health pool (I didn't get to see any mods) because even passive health regen (pretty sure this is what they said it will have) won't do much if it's got a tiny health pool at higher levels.

In regards to the abilities... I was watching and basically thinking these were just taken from other frames in most cases...

1.. yeah seems ok, just an extending ice wave but I can really see it being useful in survival in corridors....

2.. another version of vortex, seemingly without damage, but sticks them to the ground instead of floating in the air

3.. trinity damage link but with just one target... honestly I'd rather have seen the ability to infest an enemy and use it like a nekros shadow

4.. kind of a variation of nekros shadows - really didn't like the fact you need to get so many stacks before launching (not a good direction for any reworks either) though and I hope those maggots can increase their damage as they seemed pretty weak in the demo.

 

edit: just seen the ability stats 145,145, 130, 130 with the mods applied... seriously hope it's going to get a bit of a buff before release then as it was struggling in some cases. 

Edited December 9, 2016 by LSG501

[--Sokol]

Doesn't seem like it will deal a ton of damage and will provide CC instead, which I'm happy about. 2nd skill looks super fun, as well as his ultimate.

The design is also pretty cool.

[Darkneblade_TR]

Can anyone give me short version of devstream? i havent been watched

[RoninJed]

I said this on another thread and I will say it again here. I like how everything looks except his feet..kinda looks like he's wearing high heels.

[TheGrimCorsair]

Posted from another thread:

Nidus 1's usefulness seems mostly predicated on just how much reach (and probably duration) you can get out of his 2. Speaking of Nidus' 2, it seems like it'll be ridiculously good with a Nova on the team since it'll concentrate all enemies it grabs in a small area (similar to vortex, but the enemies are grounded and there's much less VFX spam). The 3 seems pretty decent w/ its 100% damage transfer/reduction to you, but in a group you'll probably just end up with whatever you're linked to dying so fast it probably won't matter. The 4 seems, well, cute but useless. It'd have to spawn a *lot* of maggots very, very fast for its CC to be worthwhile... and it doesn't seem like it'll deal damage in that AoE all that effectively or do anything to make Nidus want to hang out on his creep patches.

[Rolunde]

I'm actually pretty excited, I think he looks cool and can hardly wait to get my hands on him and start coloring him up and get to waging biological warfare on the Grineer et all.

As to how effective he may or may not be, well we'll see in the weeks after he drops. ;-)

[METAL_BAWKSES]

I'm excited and I'm looking forward to messing around with a all infested weapon load out that will play to the frames strengths and abilities. 

[Mak_Gohae]

I thought he was going to be more Infesty. They only gave him one Infested power, the forth.

They should've given him ALL infested powers. Like, fit as many as they can in 4 slots. Like, so the switching thing Vauban has with the bomb

1- Leaper/Volatile

Press 1 and Nidus leaps forward. When he lands he does a small AOE knockdown.

Hold 1 and he charges up and explodes. Loses half health.

2- Ancient healer

Press 2 to harpon and enemy bring them closer. You can buff it to bring than one enemy.

Hold 2 with bring in the enemy slower while sucking it's health. The health sucked will pulse out healing and giving a bit of an armor bonus to teammates.

3 Tar/Swarn MOA

Press 3 to launch the CC tar

Hold 3 to launch spores that lower the accuracy of enemy units.

4 Keep it. It's fine.

 

 

 

7 minutes ago, RoninJed said:

I said this on another thread and I will say it again here. I like how everything looks except his feet..kinda looks like he's wearing high heels.

i've seen those feet before, but i cant put it where. Does one of the Infested Units have those feet? Oh Volt has high heels, right?

He has Volt feet.

 

 

 

[Helel.ben.Shalem]

im really dissapointed in it tbh hope they give me hype on the bard frame because if they F*** that up to damnit im done for awhile lol

[PsiWarp]

Compiled details on the wiki based on the footage on Devstream 84 (all info tentative & based on interpretation): http://warframe.wikia.com/wiki/Nidus

At first glance, he is an interesting addition. Like Inaros, he has health only but can regenerate it constantly, so that means while he's fighting with Rage he will always have access to his abilities bar 4. Tendrils is his primary CC power that is meant to combo with Rupture to get a lot of Adaptation points quickly. I wonder if it has a target cap? Unlike what the devs said in general about his powers, only 1 and 4 actually help fill the gauge because the other two (Tendrils and Symbiotic Link) don't seem to damage enemies.

His Symbiotic Link upon closer inspection is a channeled ability with energy drain per second (no duration timer on the icon). It gives him more survivability in exchange for Rage not working (due to Nidus being seemingly immune to damage while he is transferring it all to his best friend, but that could be a percentage modified by Power Strength who knows).

His 4, Infest, is strong. Doesn't cost energy to cast, only empties the Adaptation Stacks. Appears to have a base duration of 40-45 seconds (Rebecca had 130% Power Duration I believe, making it around 52 seconds duration). It appears the maggots scale in level with the enemies, so despite being fragile little things they can be good distractions. 2 might probably also combo well with his 4, for the maggots to close the distance quickly and safely on enemies to chew and explode off of. When maggots explode they add Adaptation points, and Nidus himself can heal very very quickly when standing on his infested turf.

He seems to have a big energy pool with Primed Flow on so that's good too. I'm worried about him not being able to get enough stacks during boss fights, but that'll probably be sorted out before/after release.

Edited December 10, 2016 by PsiWarp

[OniDax]

Idk, I think it's abilities are a bit too tame. Kinda wish one of the abilities could turn an enemy into it's corresponding infested version ( e.g. Grineer turn into Chargers; Corpus turn into Runners, Leapers, or Crawlers; MOAs turn into Mutalist MOAs; and Ospreys turn into Mutalist Ospreys).

Also, it should be called Typhus.

[UrielColtan]

Not much. More ninjas please. Getting tired of repugnant abstract automaton designs and boring kit frames. The likes of Inaros in particular looked very unappealing and more like some already ugly repurposed Grineer Guardsman, with dog nipples. Would at the very least have preferred more of a Anakaris look. His kit is also very boring in spite his useful nigh immortality.

Never really liked the idea of a literally infested frame in the first place either, but I expected that if they bothered then they must have had some gnarly ideas for it  at least and would have it do something appealing. It didn't impress though. Too slow and boring.

Edited December 10, 2016 by UrielColtan

[HalfDarkShadow]

2 hours ago, AerinSol said:

It was struggling with lvl 40 enemies. But at least it can go up to 50s in duration.

2 hours ago, --Sokol said:

Doesn't seem like it will deal a ton of damage and will provide CC instead, which I'm happy about. 2nd skill looks super fun, as well as his ultimate.

Just to preface, it's all place-holders as they said.

We wont really know how he will perform until they lock down his stats, or in other words, officially release him lol.

---

Anyways on topic, he looks neat. Not my cup of tea. I'm a music tech major, so I'm more intrigued by the lovely musical Warframe. Can't wait for her.

Also since we didn't really see everything of the Infested Warframe aesthetically speaking, I am curious on how he'll look as you stack up his kill-meter thingy lol.

Edited December 10, 2016 by HalfDarkShadow

[Obviousclone]

the vortex on 2 looks incredibly powerful

 

it's not just the fact that it pulls enemies exactly into the center, it's also the speed of it.

[Smilomaniac]

(I don't remember the ability names, so bear with me. Also, I was playing Warframe at the time so I might've missed some details, feel free to let me know.)

He's way more appealing than Titania from a "what am I actually going to use this guy for" in the form of his tentacles and cree... I mean infestation circle, which both have good crowd control possibilities. His symbiotic link will likely also be important for taking down priority targets, so that's great, especially if we'll see syndicate mods for it. He looks fun to play in those regards.

I do not like the combo-ability-counter mechanic for a few reasons:

1. It's reminiscent of DOTA/LoL/MOBA's where you pace back and forth getting stacks for something, to unleash it at the right time. Warframe gameplay is much quicker and practically requires on demand skills.
    
2. When you actually play Warframe, people run through missions in a blur. How often are you going to get a chance to actually stack something before a synoid simulor/tonkor/world on fire has already cleared everything? Obviously this isn't always the case, but it's where a lot of your gameplay time goes, leaving little room to use any non-instant effect abilities. I feel there might be a conflict of intended gameplay vs. actual gameplay if you play with randoms (as much as I do anyway, which is every single alert and most invasions).
    
3. The requirement of this ability is in stark contrast to other ones, such as avalanche, chaos or molecular prime which are capable of having huge reach and are instant crowd controls on demand. While these particular abilities might be borderline gamebreaking in terms of battle field control, Nidus' 4 is hard to justify having this requirement. Additionally, I don't believe this infestation circle will have a particularly large reach, possibly not even larger than what we saw, but that's just speculation based on the thought that it might be performance impacting. Basically I don't think the ability will be so good that it requires a build up, but we'll see.
   Even if it's so amazing as to warrant a build up, it's still in contrast to the rest of the game in that it's so rarely available, so you'll effectively be playing a 3-ability frame.
    
4. All of this is assuming there isn't any drop-off on that counter, so that it'll tick downwards at some point, making the usage of it even rarer. Also, while I assume he uses energy like everyone else (otherwise lol tentacles), does his 4 also use energy? If so, that's another thing that might make this ability hard to use when you need it. Unfortunately some doofus decided that the "development build" bar was more important than actually showing this. 

His tentacle ability is visually odd - I didn't notice any arms grabbing anyone as much as enemies just being flung into the pod, as if it was a black hole. It might just be the stream, but the feel of it seems way off. *shrug*

All in all, if I don't have to scan plants for hours I'll be happy to get this guy and mess around with him a bit.

One more thing... if the infested door was just to signal his coming and doesn't have anything to do with Nidus and it just gets swept up/removed, I'm going to be slightly perturbed. I want to see what's actually behind there.

---

Did they say when he'd be released by the way?

Edited December 10, 2016 by Smilomaniac
fixed formatting

[METAL_BAWKSES]

I want to do a 2 Nidus and 2 Hydroid party for...reasons 

[zNightWolfz]

my god people its not even out yet give it a dam chance what you dont like someone else will...

[Kaokasalis]

1 hour ago, AntoineFlemming said:

Also, it should be called Typhus.

I disagree. Nidus and Typhus have little in common in relation to abilities and theme. The infested can be viewed as a disease that attacks any and everyone indiscriminately. Typhus however is a parasite and would differentiate between his targets based on what he needs.

[PsiWarp]

IMO for his 4th, it shouldn't require 4 stacks to be able to use at all (that's 40 hits required, imagine in a boss fight without fodder around). Instead, with the gauge mechanic in mind, Infest (4) can be used once Nidus has at least 1 stack stored.

• Each stack spawns 1 more Infestation Pod on the infestation, allowing more Maggots to spawn at a time.
• Each stack removes 25% of the ability's energy cost until at 4 stacks the ability costs 0 energy to use (it doesn't cost energy to use in their development build right now, but you need 4 stacks to activate the ability).

Sounds a lot more accessible with some reasonable build-up to make the ability more powerful with time and effort.

[EmptyDevil]

I wish the abilities made a lot of wet and nasty sounds. I want it to sound like the audible version of soggy bread sticking to the roof of your mouth.