Let's break Zephyr - Rework with intent to OP

[Birdframe_Prime]

Happy [insert something here] Day to you all!

::Updated May 10th::

Now, a comment from my fellow fan @(PS4)RenovaKunumaru got me thinking.

Compare the last two reworks, what do you see? Limbo became a fiery god of CC and Explosions, while Oberon became... well... just the same but with more spam and still no way to balance that.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not celebrating or bashing either one of these, they both have their good points and bad points. Oberon, for example, now has a better shape for Hallowed Ground, his armour buff is a flat value which makes squishy frames 'fawn' on him (... because he's got deer antlers... nevermind) and he has even more CC than before in the form of Rad procs on every third enemy. On the other hand, his synergy is forced, making you recast and recast and clump your allies and enemies together in order to get the full benefit of each... but with a small energy pool and no ability to regen that power because his heal is a toggle-drain instead of, say, a pulse-drain like the new Desecrate. Ah well, fine.

So Oberon is starting low and being steadily balanced higher to get him to a better place than before. Limbo, on the other hand, started on Shiny God Tier and is being nerfed back to just 'great' with his CC not being limited, but his damage having to be earned with the duration of the cast, not just spam-pop everything.

Which, out of the box, do you prefer guys and gals and non-binary pals? I know that when I think about it, I'd rather have to nerf an OP frame that used to be crap, than continuously buff a bad frame until it's 'good enough'.

Thus! This is the rework to try and make an acceptable over-powered frame out of Zephyr. One that we can find all the exploits with at first, and then DE can nerf until she's simply 'on par'.

Spoiler alert! This thread will not include the following: 1. Flying, in any form, it's a bad skill that prevents gameplay and it should feel bad. 2. Toggle drain abilities, as we've seen with Oberon, they're bad for frames with low energy pools and should feel bad. 3. Combining Tailwind and Dive Bomb, this is a cheap way to try and get a fifth ability, and ends up in a worse version of both casts, almost every time I've seen it suggested (it is bad and should feel bad).

So, with that, let us begin!

Problem the first: How to Over Power Tailwind. Discuss. 

::Updated May 10th:: (With thanks to Nazrethim)

Spoiler

We all know what Tailwind is currently, what people say it is currently, and what it was supposed to be -> A movement cast with some light damage and a neat little difference between on-ground cast and in-air cast.

Well currently people call it a Bullet Jump for Energy. Some people even call it a worse one. So there are ways to fix this, and I've gone through them in another thread, so here's the short version of that.

Unlock the animation so that you can reload or cast during the Tailwind, it also allows players to hit a wall and wall-run or wall-cling to continue instead of just banging their head against it until the momentum stops. Use the in-air cast from anywhere when just tapping 1, and the vertical launch from anywhere (even in the air already) by holding 1 for a second, making it a deliberate thing to go vertically instead of horizontally, where currently it's usually an accident in low places. Finally, give it a ragdoll to enable Zephyr to pass through enemies that she aims at, rather than hitting into them like a wall.

This turns the base ability into something better than it was, that much is true, because you can all see the advantage of being able to cast Tailwind for escape in confined spaces, not having to hop-tap just to go forwards instead of upwards, and an actual buff function for her other ability/ies .

But how do you over-power it? Well, here's some ideas.

Utility:  Synergy with Dive Bomb (and maybe her other abilities) by making the vertical launch button (which is now the hold-for-a-second cast from anywhere) apply a buff that lasts a short duration. Depending on abilities you have active, or cast while buff is active, effects differ.

::New:: Utility: With the new ragdoll on enemies, apply a slow or confusion to enemies scaling on duration and strength, duration for length of effect, strength on chance to proc (encourage build diversity).

::New:: Utility: With the vertical launch affected enemies are dragged upwards, affected enemies take fall damage similar to Frost's Snowglobe 'thrown enemies take damage', bonus damage is applied by Dive Bomb if cast within Tailwind's buff duration.

Energy efficiency; make successive casts in the air cost less, encouraging players to travel further with the ability. Make the vertical buff for Dive Bomb return energy, so when you cast Dive Bomb and hit enemies, you are rewarded in the same way Nidus is for hitting enemies with 1, put on the inverse-efficiency scaling too so that more efficiency returns less energy to balance.

Power: Buff the base damage so that modding for Strength and casting at enemies is rewarded with better damage as well as the ragdoll, meaning that a well-modded Tailwind can take care of trash mobs while you're applying a CC to the heavy units. A good addition would be to give it Finisher damage, so it has that armour-ignore function we love so much, and when you add in the Bleed from the status it can proc, this would be a pretty good ability even later in the game.

Range: Buff the range of the vertical launch damage, 10m instead of 7m, this means that range mods without Overextended would affect pretty much the same area as her current max-range would now (I've done the maths, it works). Apply the effect of Dive Bomb Vortex to vertical launch dragging enemies into the centre to set up for Dive Bomb itself.

And there you have a fairly OP Tailwind, with damage, CC, a buff to Dive Bomb (and potentially more) and a neat little separation of the ability into a movement cast and a self-buff cast. Interesting, right?

Solved, for now, I'm sure others here can make this ability even more OP than this, let's hear suggestions, remember, we're trying to make the ability better, not put in a new one, think in the box friends.

Problem the second: What about her next ability? How do we convince all the Dive Bomb haters that this cast is both worth it, and over-power it so that we can get Zephyr to a way higher tier than she's supposed to be?

How to Over Power Dive Bomb. Discuss.

::Updated May 10th:: (With thanks to Endless_Destruction)

Spoiler

Dive Bomb is underwhelming at best, unreliable and ineffective at worst.

First, the quick rundown of how I'd fix it from my previous thread: Buff the base range a bit so mods affect it better, add Melee Mod scaling to the damage, make the knock down an animation-based one so it interrupts all enemies even if they're performing their own animations (like ground slams or using a terminal... seriously, we want to be able to knock down enemies that are hacking Interception nodes for once...) that look just like regular knock downs, but can't be ignored.

But how can we make it OP?

Range: Buff the base range to 10m. That's all. Modding makes the max range of this ability now 25m instead of 17m. Even without Overextended, range is 16m, so nearly the same coverage for no loss in Strength.

Utility:Synergy buff mechanic from Tailwind's launch, makes Dive Bomb return energy for enemies hit, inverse scaling of return based on efficiency (like Nidus). The buffed base range of 10m would allow a max-range to hit a 25m radius, lots of energy return.

::New:: Utility: Enemies launched with Tailwind's vertical launch are dragged down at increased speed taking increased fall damage. Damage is similar to Frost's Snowglobe effect and scales with height lifted.

::New:: Augment: Dive Bomb Vortex draws enemies into the center, 'fall' damage is applied to enemies captured this way as if they were launched, scaling depending on how close to center of impact they are.

::Updated:: Power: Buff base damage again! With melee mod scaling and the Tailwind launch synergy, all that's needed is a reason to cast it without the synergy. Buffing the base damage from 250 to 400 allows strength mods and melee mods, plus height scaling, to power this ability up to deal decent damage throughout the basic star chart levels. Bonus damage from Fall Damage to enemies launched with Tailwind will allow a fixed percentage of health dealt with Finisher damage, and the base damage of Dive Bomb will now be enough to finish the rest of the damage necessary to tough enemies at much, much higher levels.

Over powering success.

Now we have an OP 1 and 2, let's look at 3.

Turbulence is already considered by some to be too good, it completely negates ranged damage, especially if you build for max range since it deflects AoE weapons far enough out that their explosions can't damage you either. It is, however, not perfect defense.

Do we need to OP this? No. With the guaranteed CC from Dive Bomb, Turbulence will take care of everything that's too far away to be CC'd, and with the mobility and CC of Tailwind we can escape anything that's too close instantly too.

Will I OP this? Sure. Let's do it XD

How to Over Power Turbulence. Discuss.

::Updated May 10th::

Spoiler

First, there is a consistent bug with Turbulence so far, and this is simply that weapons that use unique targeting are not affected the same way as others are. To explain: Flame Throwers are not seen as beams or projectiles, so they don't get redirected, while there is also a client/host-side glitch with Grineer Hellion rockets which use a 'carpet bomb' pattern to target the area around the player and so aren't caught and redirected either, finally another variable client/host style glitch the less common Swarmer Detrons used by Scrambus and Comba units use an animated spiral-pattern seeking which is also ignored by Turbulence. Fixing these is a basic bug-fix and needs to be done.

Since there are few weaknesses that haven't been covered by the improvements to Tailwind and Dive Bomb, let's look at those:

Aura damage/procs, and placed hazards like Napalm fire, toxin clouds and sapper orbs.

Nothing can be done about Auras, they're non-directional AoE fields that aren't possible to 'deflect' so that's a bust. Hazards, though, let's see:

Sapper orbs themselves currently bounce off Turbulence, but the already-placed ones still trigger and affect Zephyr, this I can understand, since Corpus tech already has the ability to overcome some warframe powers, and we already have the ability to remove them by shooting them, but toxin clouds and napalm fire?

Utility: If the rockets of napalm fire can be redirected, then so can the fire hazards. Zephyr should either push them away with Turbulence or cut their duration by 'over catalysing' them, making them burn quicker and die quicker. Same with toxin clouds, pushed away or dispersed.

::New:: Utility: Synergy with Tailwind buff means for a limited duration Power Strength now triggers slow on movement speed of enemies up to a fixed cap.

So Turbulence, to become OP, needs to put out napalm fire and clear toxin clouds, along with the usual negating of ranged damage, adding a slow to units in range mitigates Melee, meaning only aura damage gets through. Pure and simple, even better than now.

Fair? Fair. That's OP, and if it doesn't get changed, will anyone really complain? Probably not.

Now on to Tornado. Ability voted Most Asked For Rework out of her kit. And wow do people have some over-powered ideas.

How to Over Power Tornado. Discuss.

::Updated May 10th:: (With acknowledgement to Azamagon, clearing up a buff that was here, but not obvious)

Spoiler

If I truly wanted to make this OP, there's a really, really simple solution (or fifteen) and that's have the Tornado funnels, whether all four or a single large one, in some way follow Zephyr, turning her into a bowling ball of CC and chaos. Basically something that prevents enemies from physically approaching a location and will combine with Turbulence to make her completely untouchable.

Man, simple, right? How about we go a little more refined than that? But let's definitely make it OP.

In my previous thread I went through how to fix the base Tornado and make it work as a Defense CC cast, here's the full explanation in a spoiler-spoiler, that's the base of this.

Spoiler

Use all the same assets, all the same functions, but curtail this free-roaming into an actual defense ability.

Limit the range from the point of cast, like Tentacle Swarm or Vortex, so when the funnels spawn, they spawn on enemies in range, run around capturing all the other enemies inside that range, and then don't leave that range and free roam around inside that circular area.

Why does this help? It allows for all the other fixes this ability needs.

Speed increase, for one, and following the navigation mesh for another, so funnels follow enemies on the same routes they walk on at a fast enough speed to actually catch the ones that run away. Capture reliability for another, make every enemy captured be suspended for the same duration, unaffected by mods, and then released upwards (not outwards) so that the ones that survive fall back into range of the cast and, only once they land, can be picked up again. This way enemies are actually released when they are launched, meaning no more enemies stuck to the ceiling. These two combined mean that every enemy in range will be picked up, CC'd for a reliable time, dealt the same number of damage ticks, have the same chance of being proc'd with a status of your choice, and then thrown in the air for target practice, before being caught all over again.

In addition, allow Zephyr and Zephyr only to change the elemental type of the funnels, allowing her to make use of carrying multiple damage type weapons (as any sensible player already does) to deal more damage to the chosen enemies inside, so switching to fire for unarmoured, but to corrosive for armoured, and so on. This way there's no more interference from the enemy or your team, and similarly you aren't stuck with corrosive tornado funnels if you happen to have wanted something else later.

Add in an off-switch, where pressing 4 again will cancel the ability and allow us to cast it again somewhere else.

Annnd that's really it. It turns Tornado from a fully free-roaming cast that's forced to be limited and thoroughly nerfed to prevent it from being over powered, into a mid-point between Vortex and Tentacle Swarm.

Once cast it will CC the entire area of the cast, funnels will always spawn on an enemy within range, and will always quickly capture anything else inside the range, the usual 5m range of pickup means that funnels can also 'accidentally' capture enemies from outside it too. It can be turned off to prevent team annoyance, and here's the real kicker:

When you cast it, you can leave the area and come back to see something glorious... the ability is still there doing its job, it hasn't migrated to the other side of the map. Reliability.

So, what you have is a base-reliable Tornado cast, that does what it should have been doing all along. How do we Over Power that?

With large area persistent CC and Elemental Status, that leaves a couple of options.

Damage: Funnels absorb weapons fire and scale damage as the selected Elemental type each funnel already has. Thus we add to Zephyr's ability to tailor the elemental for each funnel to the specific enemies she's facing by only allowing the caster to affect the elemental type (while allowing it to change to any different type depending on equipped mods) and by ramping up the damage in each funnel with follow up fire from weapons and outside sources.

::New:: Utility: Tailwind's vertical launch causes all funnels in range to move away within the area of effect and gain a 2x multiplier on damage absorb from all sources (stops Tornado funnels from 'stealing' your launched targets before you can deal full damage). A buffed Dive Bomb into Tornado's area of effect causes all funnels in range to converge and capture any surviving targets.

A reliable, defense based, hard CC ability with ramping damage from weapon scaling. Again, over-powered, but even nerfed back a bit on damage the base is then good enough to work overall.

You've basically got four fast-moving, enemy-seeking Vortex casts, that are also Mallets (or small Magnetise bubbles) that proc elemental status and are only technically confined by being held within a 30-50m radius, depending on your range mods.

And what do you think tenno?

You have a range-damage-immune frame with high mobility, amazing CC, the potential for really high damage over a short area, and able to hold any room on lock down with her 4, which also becomes a damage cast if you feed it. Considering her current augments alone, with Dive Bomb Vortex pulling enemies together for more damage and CC, Jet Stream buffing her mobility and turning bows into snipers or fixing thrown weapons gravity drop over longer range, and even Funnel Clouds turning the CC cast into an even more damaging damage cast? Jeez, this would be fun, I'm not even kidding when I say I drooled a little over the potential.

tl;dr

Make her OP first, then knock her back to more acceptable levels.

Sounds like a plan, right?

Many thanks to the suggestions from several of you, they really do add to the Power ^

Edited May 10, 2017 by Thaylien

[p3z1]

Tailwind: Make ground cast FREE. Succeeding air casts increase efficiency by up to 75%. Initial cast staggers affected enemies, while succeeding casts turn it into knockdowns/ragdolls. Succeeding casts also increase flight speed (consequently, distance). Remove damage entirely because damage is a joke IMO. As suggested by you, make it not cancel reloads.

Divebomb: No opinion on this. Currently running a max range zephyr and it can CC pretty okay, and is cheap to boot.

Turbulence: Good enough as it is. Minor range buff maybe?

Tornado: Should just lock enemies in tornadoes. No more flying bodies around.

Augments section:

Divebomb Vortex: Okay as it is.
Turbulence augment: Okay as it is.
Funnel Clouds: Increase damage. Allow shots to go through. 

[(XBOX)CarpeNoctem365]

34 minutes ago, Thaylien said:

Spoiler alert! This thread will not include the following: 1. Flying, in any form, it's a bad skill that prevents gameplay and it should feel bad. 2. Toggle drain abilities, as we've seen with Oberon, they're bad for frames with low energy pools and should feel bad. 3. Combining Tailwind and Dive Bomb, this is a cheap way to try and get a fifth ability, and ends up in a worse version of both casts, almost every time I've seen it suggested (it is bad and should feel bad)

How is combining her 1 & 2 cheap? How is it worse? It would be a seemingly common sense thing to do. Just make it directional. And if she collides with a wall or the ground it replicates her dive bomb

Edited April 30, 2017 by (XB1)CarpeNoctem365

[Nazrethim]

I'm no expert on Zephyr, in fact I just leveled her for mastery fodder. But I want to dabble into this too for Fun :3

 

Tailwind:

Enemies hit fly upwards along with Zephyr and take additional damage when they hit the ground.

 

Dive Bomb:

Enemies near zephyr are pulled down along with her, taking massive damage. (combo with Tailwind)

 

Turbulence:

Yeah, make it blow away fire and orbs too. Also make "light" enemies unable to pass trough it, while slowing "heavy" enemies to a crawl.

 

Tornado:

Instead of 3 small tornadoes, Zephyr should create a massive tornado that causes enemies to fly into the air, taking Slash damage over time (razorwind anyone?) and taking additional (and massive) Impact damage every time they slam into a wall, ceiling, ground or other enemies caught in it.

Enemies rendered airborne by Tornado could be slammed into the ground by Divebomb too.

 

Tornado Augment: Tornado now empowers Zephyr while she's inside it:

-Her gravity reduction, jump height are doubled

-Tailwind and Dive bomb get 25% extra Power Range

-Casting Turbulence would make the whole tornado deflect projectiles, but Turbulence cost increased.

 

Edited April 30, 2017 by Nazrethim

[(PSN)RenovaKunumaru]

Give me a few minutes and I'm going to increase the OP. You're being too modest.

Also, spoiler yeah the longer parts of your explanation that isn't the actual buff so more people will read it. Only Hardcore fans will go through the full text.

Tailwind:

• Through enemies causes a knockdown and confusion.
• Pressing 1 again while Tailwinding causes Zephyr to immediately stop but the force of wind continues and ragdolls enemies with the force of an Atlas punch as an AoE Wind Blast. No energy cost for canceling into this move.

DiveBomb:

• Animation resembles as arc of lightening as Zephyr crashes to the ground.
• Aimable. Does more damage the more enemies within its range.
• Causes guaranteed knockdown.
• No Landing Recovery Time
• Scales with melee mods

Im thinking too small too though. I'm going to return to this when I get stronger ideas, but we should definitely fit some scaling into this so she doesn't fall off.

Finisher Damage or something.

Edited April 30, 2017 by (PS4)RenovaKunumaru

[Birdframe_Prime]

7 hours ago, (Xbox One)CarpeNoctem365 said:

How is combining her 1 & 2 cheap? How is it worse? It would be a seemingly common sense thing to do. Just make it directional. And if she collides with a wall or the ground it replicates her dive bomb

Woah there, specifics and wording are key, my young friend. First, it's not common sense unless you're creating a new ability, second, if you're creating a new ability then combining 1 and 2 is a cheap way to do that. That's the phrasing, 'a cheap way to get a new ability'. As for making a worse cast, I've yet to see one iteration that doesn't simply say exactly what yours does; colliding with a wall replicates Dive Bomb.

What if you wanted to, as I pointed out, unlock the animation so that you could use movement, re-cast, or do anything else instead of make an explosion? What if you didn't want to stop and make an explosion every single time you grazed a wall? How would you use angle detection to make the difference between a simple glance-off movement and an explosion? What if, horror of horrors, you aimed down to get all the height scaling and... you didn't reach the ground because Tailwind ended?

Pardon me for coming off like a sarcastic pile of butts, I do that...

So I mean sure, if we sat and brainstormed for a few days we could find a mechanical way to make this whole thing both compatible and intuitive on the controls, but why would we do that when we can make her existing abilities do amazing things already? Her abilities should work already, but they don't, they should be versatile and able to handle more than the levels she currently can because, by description, they should have pretty much a constant effect on enemies regardless of level.

Tailwind for movement, Dive Bomb for quick radial CC, Turbulence for defense and Tornado for the big, chaotic heavy CC and point defense. The fact that they don't reliably do these at the moment is why she needs that rework to her, but this thread is to Over Power her, and we can definitely do that without creating new abilities from scratch.

Thanks for stopping in though!

On to this:

8 hours ago, p3z1 said:

Divebomb: No opinion on this. Currently running a max range zephyr and it can CC pretty okay, and is cheap to boot.

That's just it, friend, 'pretty good' isn't good enough, especially not when we're trying to Over Power Zephyr, this is high-octane!!

8 hours ago, p3z1 said:

Tornado: Should just lock enemies in tornadoes. No more flying bodies around.

Quite right. but please go here if you want my in-depth analysis of what Tornado is, does, and how it could be fixed without breaking it and without becoming OP:

Then there's this:

7 hours ago, Nazrethim said:

I'm no expert on Zephyr, in fact I just leveled her for mastery fodder. But I want to dabble into this too for Fun :3

Yes, good, feeeeeed the over powering...

7 hours ago, Nazrethim said:

Tailwind:

Enemies hit fly upwards along with Zephyr and take additional damage when they hit the ground.

Dive Bomb:

Enemies near zephyr are pulled down along with her, taking massive damage. (combo with Tailwind)

This is exactly the kind of thing I mean! Let the improvements flow...

7 hours ago, Nazrethim said:

Turbulence:

Yeah, make it blow away fire and orbs too. Also make "light" enemies unable to pass trough it, while slowing "heavy" enemies to a crawl.

Deliciously over powered.

7 hours ago, Nazrethim said:

Tornado:

Instead of 3 small tornadoes, Zephyr should create a massive tornado that causes enemies to fly into the air, taking Slash damage over time (razorwind anyone?) and taking additional (and massive) Impact damage every time they slam into a wall, ceiling, ground or other enemies caught in it.

Enemies rendered airborne by Tornado could be slammed into the ground by Divebomb too.

Hmm... One I've seen before, but work-able. Problem with this is that it's not very oriented towards being playable on any tile. You'd get no benefit from the additional damage on out-door maps, while you'd get complete chaos on the indoor ones, to the point of unpredictable locations of enemies, which is one of the down-sides of Tornado at the moment.

The Dive Bomb synergy is pretty good though, I like that.

And then there's this hooligan!

7 hours ago, (PS4)RenovaKunumaru said:

Im thinking too small too though. I'm going to return to this when I get stronger ideas, but we should definitely fit some scaling into this so she doesn't fall off.

Finisher Damage or something.

I'm looking forward to it XD

Thanks for all the feedback so far gang, this is great!

[Azamagon]

I have more stuff I wanna post, but I'm soon off to bed, so just wanna post something real quick here:

This is a "limbo-esque" idea here (don't kill me!):

Passive 1) Her floatability, that can stay

Passive 2) Endless aimglide. Good by itself, but combined with something special, such as her next passive...

"Passive" 3) Tail Wind. Yup. The way I was thinking of it was like this:
Hold your jump button to constantly fly forward in the direction you are aiming (so FLYING, not hovering like Titania). This only has a "superman animation" when you are not doing anything else in the air, ie it doesn't animation lock you in any way. You can shoot, reload, whatever. It can also be used in a double jump or bullet jump (so crouch + hold space = bullet jump and then continue flying with that speed). The speed of your previous "into the air" action affects its speed, so a regular jump's flight is moderately fast, while a bullet jump's flight retains the speed of the bullet jump retains that speed throughout the entire flight. It would also be changeable midair (so if you jump and fly, but then wanna accelerate, you bulletjump-fly in midair).

Now for what I'd consider really cool about this: This flight can also combine straight INTO and OUT OF all parkouring, like fly into a wall at an angle -> auto engage wall-run -> aim outwards to continue flying again. All by just holding space down the whole time and simply adjusting your aim! Now how's THAT for an agile bird-ninja?! >:)

So her added passives makes her truly become unmatched with agile flight. Combine that with your "OP" height-scaling Dive Bomb (so you can easily gain height with her passive) and you can get some pretty easy setups with that.
Also, Dive Bomb on the ground = The current vertical leap, for easy height-starters (which you can "fly into" with her passive as well)

So, Thaylien, this is not merging Dive Bomb and Tail Wind (so I dodged that bullet :P), but it still does open her up for another ability, something I think you wanted to avoid. Sorry for that :P

Edited May 2, 2017 by Azamagon

[Endless_Destruction]

If you're thinking of ways to make zephyr OP, you missed a massive opportunity on Tornado and Divebomb: Frost snowglobe-style collision damage.

From the wiki, bolding what I'm talking about:

"Upon activation, Snow Globe freezes enemies within its radius over a duration of ? / ? / ? / 3 seconds while violently pushing them outwards. If the enemies hit obstacles, they can be dealt as much as 50% of their maximum health as Finisher damage."

Making tornado/divebomb fling enemies everywhere, and creating collisions a la snowglobe pumps her damage output all the way up to stupid OP levels (especially if picked up enemies can be picked up multiple times), WITH SCALING, and yet that amount of sheer power is already in game! No one complains about Frost's uber high, infinitely scaling damage output with a range+efficiency build, so not only will Zephyr be freakishly strong, an existing example draws no complaint or nerfs. You don't have to make it 50% per collision, but hey, the goal is Overlord tier.

Aside from that, you could make turbulence apply confuse, like Naramon's mind spike, to enemies that are within melee strike range. Dizziness, and all that.

Now that I'm on a roll, Tornado could also take nearby crates/explosive barrels and smash them into enemies in the storm cell, creating yet more endlessly scaling collision damage, more loot in a localized area, and status effects from barrels.

Note: I'm not a zephyr player, I just saw the title and decided to have some fun.

[Birdframe_Prime]

20 hours ago, Azamagon said:

So, Thaylien, this is not merging Dive Bomb and Tail Wind (so I dodged that bullet :P), but it still does open her up for another ability, something I think you wanted to avoid. Sorry for that :P

Heh, nice to see you back Azamagon. And while I think you did do a successful 'passive shift' and then 'ability shift' to make a new ability there, I don't think you've succeeded in making either ability over-powered. Aside from the 'continuous' Tailwind not needing energy... but come on, you have to have ideas for making these abilities genuinely powerful, compared to other warframe abilities at least, I know you do! ^^

5 hours ago, Endless_Destruction said:

Frost snowglobe-style collision damage.

Oooooooooh... YES! That's an awesome idea for Dive Bomb, so you get the guaranteed short range CC, but with a fling that has collision damage, I like it. Again with the combination of Slow CC abilities from other frames, this could make for a long, slow flight for any poor mobs caught in it. On Tornado though... we need more impact and less chaos, she's got the long-duration CC potential with it, so rather than throwing enemies out of it, we want her to keep them in it for longer. Which is why I really like the idea of it absorbing explosive/cryo barrels to deal damage to anything that's currently captured, that would definitely give it something to do if there were no new enemies to grab.

5 hours ago, Endless_Destruction said:

Aside from that, you could make turbulence apply confuse, like Naramon's mind spike, to enemies that are within melee strike range. Dizziness, and all that.

Turbulence applying a confuse? Also ooh! I like it because on its own it wouldn't be all that OP because we've seen how Oberon's new HG confuses enemies and they don't always re-target, thus if you keep the range limited (about the same distance as her hit-scan shield instead of her outer projectile shield) then it's actually fairly useless against most melee units or heavies when they ground slam you. But!! When you combine it with the new Tailwind? Yes! You would have a chance to proc confusion on all enemies that you ragdolled with Tailwind just for having Turbulence active at the same time!

Keep it coming Tenno, I'll be updating the OP after I get some more suggestions!

[Azamagon]

40 minutes ago, Thaylien said:

Heh, nice to see you back Azamagon. And while I think you did do a successful 'passive shift' and then 'ability shift' to make a new ability there, I don't think you've succeeded in making either ability over-powered. Aside from the 'continuous' Tailwind not needing energy... but come on, you have to have ideas for making these abilities genuinely powerful, compared to other warframe abilities at least, I know you do! ^^

Well, as I said, I didn't have much time, so just wanted to toss out an (imo, very funsounding) idea that leaves room for a new ability too.

Now though, now I have a little more time *cracks knuckles* >:)

Passives - As described in my first post here, giving her supreme air agility and flight, and opens up the kit for a new ability.

Dive Bomb (Still ability #2 - Increased to 50 energy) - Multiple stuff:
* Speed of the dive bomb = WAY FASTER! Like, "zip through the air in a flash of light" kind of fast.
* Melee mods affects everything: Damage, its newfound 10% crit (with a 2x multiplier) and 10% status chance. This includes scaling with mods like Blood Rush and such.
* Damage and AoE can further increase with distance travelled. Quickly reaches its cap, which is doubled AoE size and damage.
* Damage FURTHER increases with melee combo damage.
* Tapcast = Straight down dive bomb
* Holdcast = Hold for a short while, then release to do an aimed dive bomb. This dive bomb can go ANYWHERE, forwards, downwards, even upwards. This aimed dive bomb also shows an indicator where its gonna hit. With this aimed dive bomb, Zephyr will still go straight in the aimed direction, until she hits environment.
* The actual "bomb", i.e. the shockwave, would only occur when you hit environment. Passing through enemies first will instead slash right through them, dealing full (melee modded and all) current distancebased damage, with slash damage as its base damage. This STACKS with the shockwave's impact damage.
No wait, not slash damage as the passthrough type, why not make that into finisher damage instead?

New ability #1 - Suggested name something like "Wind Talons" or "Clawing Winds" (to go with the bird and wind themes) - 25 energy, simple cast.
When used, it launches 3/4/5/6 fierce windbolts in a very similar manner to Psychic Bolts: They seek out nearby targets but travel faster than P.Bolts, however they do NOT go through walls.
When they strike a target, they deals initial collision damage, some damage over time and several debuffs, for like 8/10/12/15 seconds.
* Collision damage - Moderate slash damage (like 100), but damage also scales with melee mods! Note, they don't scale with the melee combo counter though.
* Damage over time - Mediocre slash damage (like 50) every second, not necessarily scaling with melee mods, but would be awesome if it did (fitting the "overpowered" theme of the thread and all).
However, each collision damage instance INCREASES YOUR MELEE COMBO METER(!) You want overpowered Dive Bomb damage? Toss away some of these windbolts first, then and you'll see stupid high damage numbers in no time!
* Debuff #1 - Enemies struck by the bolts will also, for the duration, have "mini-magnetize"-esque winds on them (like, just 2 meter radius or so). This means that while you might be soaring in the sky, this debuff will greatly help you to "lazily" aim with your weaponry from up there! For some more overpoweredness: Enemies will harm themselves if they shoot while this debuff is active (as they'll have their own shots redirected to themselves)
* Debuff #2 - Enemies struck by the bolts will also, for the duration, be slowed down by the turbulent winds by a moderate amount. No? Not overpowered enough? How about the enemies will be stunned, being opened for finishers and all? I guess that's more like it.

Spammable, seeking, melee-mod-scaling damaging bolts which eases up aiming (if the target even survives from the attack itself) and hinders the affected targets from doing much + boosts your already crazy powerful Dive Bomb damage. Sounds overpowered enough, methinks :)

Turbulence
Tired of Frost being the dominant pod defender? Well, how about these things?
* While a Turbulence effect is active, holdcast the ability to deattach Turbulence from Zephyr, placing it at her current position (So Zephyr loses the Turbulence on herself by doing this)! With this, you can put one Turbulence on, say, the defense pod, and reuse the ability to place another Turbulence on Zephyr herself again.
* Pure overpowering effect: Enemies are slowly pushed outwards from Turbulence, with more force the the closer to the centre of Turbulence they are. Enemies CAN overcome it by constantly running up to it, but it will be very difficult for them (And they are meleers, they'll likely swipe once, then be pushed back out a bit again)
* If enemies are debuffed by her new #1 (Wind Talons or whatever name it gets), shots deflected by Turbulence will deflect those shots, with enemy shots being "friendly fire"-able, to the #1-debuffed targets, if any are within X range of the deflected shot.

Tornado
Take some of your QoL changes, then add one simple change, and this ability would most likely skyrocket in overpoweredness:
* Each tornado also absorbs enemy and ally gunfire alike, adding a fraction of the firepower to its DPS (a lá Magnetize).
That would not only be superstrong, it'd also make the tornadoes big easy-to-shoot targets while you're flying around without a care in the world (Wind Talons would be able to fuel her Tornado's DPS too, if they attempt to seek out targets inside the tornadoes / if cast while Zephyr is inside or very close to a Tornado)

 

Dunno if these ideas are still too modest though, haha :D

[Birdframe_Prime]

Updated the original post thanks to the feedback, thanks for the feedback so far!

[(PSN)P209-XL]

Just get rid of her tailwind and divebomb give her two new skills

Gale: which knocks down and ragdolls a group of enemies inflicting blast dmg on all of them.

Tempest: clouds form over an area raining down a barrage of hail and lightening inflicting magnetic dmg

Or 

Tempest version #2: zephyr fly's into the air and rains down lightening inflicting electric. Enemies affected with blast dmg drop energy orbs when killed

Op enough?? Nah

Turbulence: now reflects enemies fire and boost accuracy and reload time also...

Tornado +2k initial dmg

 

[Birdframe_Prime]

41 minutes ago, (PS4)NoVaPH1R3 said:

Op enough?? Nah

Actually, little weak there friend.

Your big plan seems to be give her an ability that Dive Bomb is already supposed to do (knock down and ragdoll a radius of enemies inflicting blast damage on them) and... well... it's Hydroid's 1. With different elements. That's kind of it.

And Tornado just having a buff to initial base damage, which is always mitigated by armour, with no other changes? For shame.

Thanks for stopping by, but you need to think bigger ^^

[Endless_Destruction]

Hello @Thaylien, I read your "Zephyr should be good; a fix thread" close to when it was first posted, read this thread a little more recently, and got really curious as to what Zephyr was like. Having maxed her just today, I have an (ever so slightly) better understanding of Zephyr's shortcomings. Thanks for introducing me to the frame, the only thing I don't like about her is poor fashionframe potential!

To me, Zephyr is a frame bent on mobility and CC, with a side of near-invincibility with Turbulence. Keeping that in mind, here we go:

Passive:

Just as the Master of the Rift can't be forced to leave if he doesn't want to, the Mistress of the Air shouldn't have to leave her domain and bow to something as low as gravity. Infinite aim glide, without any drop whatsoever would be a welcome addition to her passive.

Her weapons shouldn't miss out on the fun-NO PROJECTILE DROP. For any weapon.

Tailwind:

"Sonic boom" is what comes to mind when using this. Creating a small zone where the enemies have their eardrums popped, Zephyr's Tailwind causes affected enemies to act as if they were under Savage Silence, in some circular zone around her stopping and starting points.

Already talked about Dive Bomb in my earlier post, moving on to

Turbulence:

Does it seem right that Zephyr's turbulence deflects bolts of pure energy and bullets traveling so fast that the game doesn't bother calculating flight speed, but can't affect anything else? No it does not. Turbulence should act almost as if Zephyr was inside one of her summoned tornadoes - in addition to throwing away bullets, enemy units in close proximity should be disarmed permanently and constantly staggered, buffeted by winds so long as Zephyr is near. Also, crates are automatically broken when Zephyr approaches. Actually, if any frame deserves some sort of innate vacuum, it's Zephyr, at least when Turbulence is active.

Tornado:

With intent to OP, let tornadoes absorb and reflect physical type damage as well, and having repeatedly embedded modified bullets into the flesh of enemies, status effects become permanent. Slash, toxin, and gas just keep ticking, blast keeps enemies on the floor for good, impact causes periodic staggers, puncture, viral, magnetic, radiation, cold, heat, electric just stay, and the only status that doesn't benefit, corrosive, doesn't benefit because it is already permanent. The tornado should rip weapons away from the enemies, disarming them permanently, leaving them even more helpless.

Edited May 10, 2017 by Endless_Destruction

[jarthur]

welp here goes, (i took a ~2 year break, but zephyr was the first frame I actually researched and built, so i'm not too familiar with a lot of stuff anymore).

tail wind: in addition to what you already have, tailwind now picks up and carries (ragdoll) enemies with you. they would follow roughly a 1-2 meters behind zephyr. this would not pick up anything tornado can't currently.

divebomb: drags any enemy caught in the air along the flight path of zephyr into the ground, creating secondary dive bombs ripples. so essentially any enemy that tailwind draged up, dive bomb would now smash into the ground. any enemy that divebomb slams into the ground creates a mini divebomb (roughly half the radius and damage).

tornado: increase the base number of tornadoes to 8 or have the number of tornadoes scale with efficiency up to 8, increase the range at which the drag enemies in, increase the innate homing towards enemies by a lot (seriously didn't think they had any). make each tornado into a mini turbulence that takes any projectile with a flight time and sends it flying skywards.

[Birdframe_Prime]

On 2017-5-10 at 10:48 PM, Endless_Destruction said:

Thanks for introducing me to the frame, the only thing I don't like about her is poor fashionframe potential!

Glad you like her, sadly the only option we have right now is the Tennogen Hagoromo skin (which is beautiful, but you have to buy...) and I can't wait for DE's Deluxe skin, should be an awesome bit of fresh life.

On 2017-5-10 at 10:48 PM, Endless_Destruction said:

Infinite aim glide, without any drop whatsoever would be a welcome addition to her passive.

Her weapons shouldn't miss out on the fun-NO PROJECTILE DROP. For any weapon.

Great ideas!

On 2017-5-10 at 10:48 PM, Endless_Destruction said:

Does it seem right that Zephyr's turbulence deflects bolts of pure energy and bullets traveling so fast that the game doesn't bother calculating flight speed, but can't affect anything else? No it does not.

Added an enemy slow to it in the last update, like the crate breaking, disarm is Loki's 4 as fun as that would be it's direct stealing from another frame, and as useful as innate vacuum would be since Vacuum itself has been recently updated it's not likely to happen (besides, Turbulence repels things, doesn't suck them in ^^)

On 2017-5-10 at 10:48 PM, Endless_Destruction said:

Tailwind

Good idea, but ultimately not very useful when you're already ragdolling the enemies.

On 2017-5-10 at 10:48 PM, Endless_Destruction said:

let tornadoes absorb and reflect physical type damage as well

See, I know what you're trying to do, but the problem is it doesn't work the way you think it will work. Tornado applies tick damage over time, with chance to proc. Meaning that for whatever damage type you choose, it will deal low instances of damage, but over a longer duration to total up to the final amount. On top of that, it lifts and ragdolls enemies, so any effects that are to do with CC do not actually have any use, such as Blast or impact procs, which do no damage themselves, but do CC.

The simplest and cleanest solution to making Tornado deal more damage is definitely scaling damage, but overall the elemental damage types, when you use them based on which enemy you're fighting, deal more damage than these, and the elemental procs are far more useful when the base damage of the ability is lower. If you wanted to do this, the only one that would apply would be Slash damage to up the overall total damage, but since enemies have resistances to Slash, through armour or shields, your procs will generically be lower than, say, a Gas proc, and you would need to ramp the damage up considerably in order to compensate.

This is the logic that got me to both include scaling damage in the OP, but also to make sure that only the caster can change the elemental type, and to keep it as elemental damage instead of having base IPS included.

As a side, I do like the permanent proc idea, but the permanent disarm is, again, Loki's thing.

Thanks for contributing, and I'm really glad I got you to play the frame, she's a lot of fun.

Now, on to our next guest!

On 2017-5-11 at 0:09 AM, jarthur said:

tail wind: in addition to what you already have, tailwind now picks up and carries (ragdoll) enemies with you. they would follow roughly a 1-2 meters behind zephyr. this would not pick up anything tornado can't currently.

Sounds useful initially, but when you aren't modding Zephyr for a longer duration a ragdoll in the direction of travel would have the same effect as this, because Tailwind can get quite short ^^

If you check the updated part of the ability though, I've included a function that drags them up into the air if you launch vertically, ready for the next bit:

On 2017-5-11 at 0:09 AM, jarthur said:

divebomb: drags any enemy caught in the air along the flight path of zephyr into the ground

Yeah, this was an idea, the problem is doing it reliably, and that's why I made it part of Tailwind's Vertical launch, so you jump in to an area, launch upwards to drag them with you, and smash back down again with a synergised Dive Bomb. Also, a partial excuse would be that Tailwind is also a bit of an escape ability, so you can leave, recast Turbulence, and come back, you don't want to chance pulling enemies with you that could get up and be right there again when your Turbulence finishes...

On 2017-5-11 at 0:09 AM, jarthur said:

tornado: increase the base number of tornadoes to 8

Actually... You know, with the base changes to Tornado in this rework, even before the Over Powering aspect, this would actually be possible... How about this; it scales with Strength, so it produces a minimum of half the total number (so it never drops below 1 if you're not fully ranked up) and up to 8 funnels max. The more you have, the slower they move (because they're in the same area now) and the less you have the faster they are to compensate, so you never have less CC, just less damage potential.

If you look at the bit in the spoiler-spoiler for Tornado, I've covered a large chunk of improvements to the base Tornado, allowing it to be faster, more contained, and far, far more reliable as an ability. With those in place, I think idea might work...

On 2017-5-11 at 0:09 AM, jarthur said:

make each tornado into a mini turbulence

Hmm, like a base radius of 7m around each funnel that acts just like regular Turbulence, but for allied use when you aren't standing there. Useful.

Annd... I think that's it on things to reply to!

Thanks again guys for helping with the Over Powering! I appreciate all the feedback.

[BenThePoofle]

Lots of great suggestions from everyone! I would love it if DE looked at this forum for the rework.

[AlphaTheFinalBalance]

2 minutes ago, TheDerpAndMusicBrony said:

Lots of great suggestions from everyone! I would love it if DE looked at this forum for the rework.

They probably will, people have put a lot of thought and detail to a lot of things and zephyr has had the privilege of staying how she is since her original release which means that there are years worth of ideas that had time to be cultivated and become detailed..

Edited May 15, 2017 by AlphaTheFinalBalance