[Warframe] Minerva - Null Bubble Mage

[PCPMD]

Originally I was considering using the name Helios, or Erebus, or Athena, but people have already created concept warframes with those names. I decided on Minerva because she was a god of magic and that seems like the best explaination for this concept (better than a sun bubble or darkness bubble). I started with the idea of a nullifier boss enemy, then got to thinking that it would work incredibly well as a warframe. The idea is, you use a nullifier bubble instead of shields and all your abilities would be centered around using the bubble tactically. The bubble could be attached to an owl sprite because of Minerva's association with the owl. Minerva herself would be styled much like the way Athena is portrayed in Greek mythology, except less like a warrior, and more like a battlemage. An Athena skin would be quite fitting however.

Lore: The Minerva frame was created by a prodigy after her parents were killed by Sentients. Designed to be the ultimate defense against the sentients, but lost when its creator is lured into a trap and killed by infested. Blueprints sent out to multiple locations, while the last one doesnt have a chance to transfer.

Quest would take the player to each location learning more about Minerva's creator and eventually recovering her last words and the final blueprint from the computer she used.

Abilities:

Passive - Void Shell: Minerva uses a bubble shield instead of conventional shields. No normal shields at all. Enemies inside the bubble can't use abilities. Damage to the bubble causes it to shrink. If the shield is destroyed, when it regenerates or when Minerva uses her 3, the bubble returns at her location. The bubble would have a very high shield value, but being a big target it would take a lot of damage and wouldn't protect against melee. *Upon contact with an enemy nullifier's bubble, I would be inclined to make it create a neutral zone where they cancel eachother out. **Having normal shields as well would make her TOO tanky and OP. ***I am unsure whether the bubble should scale off of shield mods or power mods, or some combination of both, but I definitely think the bubble should scale with range, so I would lean towards having all attributes of it scale off of power mods.

1 - Entropic Pulse: 25 energy - Enemies inside the bubble take X finisher damage over (2-4) seconds and are staggered with each tick. (fast cast time, and does not interrupt movement, reloading, or melee attacks. Reduced duration causes the damage to be applied faster.)

2 - Orb Toss: 25 energy - Launches bubble knocking enemies down as it flies. Activate to recall bubble. 
^{Augment - Gravity Orb: As the bubble shield flies and upon impact with a solid object, enemies are pulled from a radius of X, into the center of the bubble (and ragdolled).}

3 - Blink: 50 energy - Minerva teleports to the center of the bubble if she's not carrying the bubble (reattaching it to her) and X% of its total shield value is restored.

4 - Conversion Shell: 75 energy - for X seconds Y% of damage dealt to the bubble is restored as health to allies inside the bubble and to Minerva.    ^{Augment - Energy Absorption: Z% of damage dealt to the bubble is restored as energy to allies inside the bubble and to Minerva.}

Stats: This would depend greatly on how her abilities and shield mechanics are balanced, however she would need to have medium to high health and armor because of how vulnerable she would be to enemies inside her bubble. She would very much be a mage warframe, so a high energy pool would be important. Balancing her would be quite difficult, and would require playtesting to get right, which is why I'm choosing not to list exact values for health, shield, damage, etc...

 

Builds and playstyles:

• A balanced build would be a very versatile fighter, probably best as a tanky defensive support frame.
• High strength, range and efficiency with minimized duration (like an EV would build) would play as a DPS frame, tossing around a big bubble and dealing lots of damage with pain field, at the cost of sacrificing her healing/tank potential by making absorb mostly useless. Would be ideal as DPS in a team with CC and an EV.
• High duration and strength with low range would make her extremely tanky at the cost of being able to protect teammates and having less damage per second to fewer targets with her 1. Would be ideal in survival against non-infested enemies.
• High efficiency and range with low strength and duration, combined with the Gravity Orb augment, would make her an effective CC frame, letting her spam Orb Toss picking up tons of enemies and balling them up for quick and easy disposal. Would be ideal for fighting infested and best to use with an explosive weapon (especially Tonkor because minimal self damage)
• High range and strength with low duration would favour an Energy Absorption support frame. Possibly a viable alternative to an EV trin.

 

I think this would make for a very fun to play and very useful frame. Let me know what you think of my idea.

[edit 1:] Added Lore. Renamed 1st and 4th. Named Passive. Removed passive bubble slow (would be OP and too much like Snow Globe). Minor wording changes.

Edited December 21, 2016 by PCPMD
Rough copy for this concept