A Short Proposal for a Lech Kril Rework

[Drkitteh]

This is a crosspost of my initial reddit thread, found here

 

It's no secret that most here hate Lech Kril. His fight consists of waiting for RNG to make him freeze himself, and then killing the chump in 2 seconds when his armor is gone. It's boring, poorly designed, frustrating, bug-prone, and it's difficult to tell that it's bugged until you've been waiting an unreasonable amount of time for him to freeze himself.

The concept of a boss with heat an cold attacks whose generator backpack thing has to be destroyed to make him vulnerable is an interesting one. I aim to preserve that concept while making the fight more interactive, more transparent, and above all, more fun.

The important changes:

-While he's still invulnerable until his backpack is destroyed, and his backpack is only vulnerable at certain times, when it will become vulnerable is more transparent, and much less RNG dependent. Kril now has a heat meter that builds with his attacks. Once it reaches 100%, Kril must vent his pack that now acts as a heat sink for his armor. With his armor's fragile internals now exposed by his open vent, his pack can be attacked. Once the heat sink is destroyed, Kril sheds his armor, making a last stand with his melee weapon, which leads me to my next change

-The Brokk is gone, replaced with a Jat Kittag, modded specially for Kril's use with his ice abilities. As cool as a jet powered hammer is, we never get the true fantasy of a jet powered hammer while using it in the same way as other hammers. Kril uses the Jat's engines to their full potential, delivering quick, devestating blows with the Jat, and using its propulsion to augment his attacks, which are the next changes I want to bring up.

-Kril's moveset. It's pretty simplistic as is. He'll get some new moves to accompany his *@##$in' new hammer.

The first new move is a charging attack, doing a spin attack across the arena. He jumps to one end, and locks in his destination. He points his Jat straight back, its handle pointing at his destination. After a brief charging period, he pushes the Jat's thrusters to their max, quickly sliding across the arena and spinning, dealing heavy damage to anything he hits, giving the Tenno a bit of empathy for those that they slide attack with the Jat on a regular basis. This builds a large amount of heat.

-A slam attack. Kril leaps in the air and demonstrates the Jat's infamous slam attack ^{I swear this isn't a dark souls boss} building a moderate amount of heat. Has a large AoE that can be jumped to avoid it.

-A freeze and shatter. He always threatens to do this, but never does. He encases his hammer in ice for 20 seconds. His hammer attacks during this time cold proc anyone it hits, and freezes anyone it hits that has a cold proc. Upon freezing someone, he starts a special attack, attempting to shatter his victim. One shots all but the tankiest frames. You can, however, be saved by gitting gud timely intervention from your team mates. Enough shots to his pack forces him to give up on you and protect it. The ability builds a large amount of heat over its duration.

These are some cool melee moves, but it makes Lech Kril's gorgon seem boring in comparison. What gives?

I'm glad you asked other Drkitteh, because our favorite lieutenant is getting a new gun!

-The Tartarus. This gun is a Gorgon modded specifically for Lech Kril. It has the same base damage as his regular Gorgon, but a third of its base damage is now heat damage. It has a higher rate of fire than a standard Gorgon and spools up faster as well. Most can't wield this weapon because it's @(*()$ hot. Kril's armor, however, lets him wield it to devastating effect. All of those very hot bullets firing at such incredible hihg speed produce a lot of heat. This makes the accelerated spool up and sustained fire of the weapon generate heat that goes straight to Kril's pack. It generates a small amount of heat(~5) on startup, and continues to generate heat while it fires(probably at a rate of something like .75 per second).

"But kitteh" you may ask,"how is Lech Kril supposed to use all of this cool S#&$ if his arena makes it impossible?" Silly Tenno, I've already thought of that! For this fight, you interrupt Lech Kril as he leads his soldiers in a training exercise. The venue for this exercise is a new, flatter arena. "But wait, oh magnanimous feline, Kril's just going to shoot you with his Gorgon, and you'll have nowhere to run!" I already told you I thought about this. Being a training ground, there will be Blunt dispensers(not the kind you're thinking of, sorry kids) around the arena, meant for training exercises. These dispensers throw out several blunts around the arena when activated, giving you cover to run to. Careful though, his hammer smashes right through them.

Finally, insert some dialogue from Space Mom to make it clear how the fight actually works, rather than the clueless flailing that many new players do when they first encounter this boss.

With this new arena, new mechanics, and new moves, Lech Kril is shaping up to be a cool boss fight. Lets look at how this reworked boss fight improves on the original, and how it relates to the game, and play out a hypothetical scenario.

-Interactivity and clarity. The two seem like goals that should get their own headings, but their role in the original fight puts them hand in hand here. You're still waiting for Kril to become vulnerable, but now it's a more exciting experience, with clearly defined goals in survival. With the heat gauge, you always know how close you are to having an opportunity to go on the offensive, as well as quickly being able to tell if the fight has bugged out if the heat isn't building, or he doesn't vent at 100% heat. Clarity and interactivity, check.

Direction: I guess this can be lumped in with clarity, but I like to hear myself uhhh.... type. With instructions from the Lotus, we now know when Kril is vulnerable, and where, instead of just kind of figuring out to shoot his back when he freezes himself.

Fun: Why else are you playing this game if you don't enjoy it? Stockholm Syndrome? Being a swede isn't a disorder guys, come on.

I think that with the variety, but legibility in his attacks (jumping up with an animation like a slam attack, and charging a rocket hammer and looking at something are pretty clear declarations of intention) would make him a fun, challenging boss fight.

Where it sits on the star chart: True, being on Mars, this can be intimidating for new players. However, this is an important test of skill. Kril's charge which locks into place well before he attacks, and his slam attack are both easily dodgable. His freezing, while strong, isn't a death sentence. It has counter play. Being cold procced doesn't guarantee getting frozen. you can still GTFO and wait for it to wear off. The fight forces you to use core skills of Warframe: staying mobile(dodging his attacks), and teamwork(saving teammates that have been frozen). With the mobility of Warframes, dodging isn't exactly a tall order.

Lech Kril+Vor fight: His AI may need to be toned down for the fight, but this ain't exactly Ornstein and Smough. He's dangerous, but you still just shoot Vor a couple of times, then kill Kril, as usual.

Finally, a glimpse of my vision, a sample mission:

Tenno drop in, and start running to the objective

Lotus: "Tenno, you'e here to take out Lt. Lech Kril. His nearly impenetrable armor makes him impervious to most conventional weaponry. We've identified a flaw in it that leaves it briefly vulnerable. His weaponry generates large amounts of heat. When he builds up too much heat, he must vent the heat sink in its back. This leaves it vulnerable to attack while it's open."

Tenno enter training grounds and initiate fight

Lotus: "Kril wields a modified Gorgon and Jat Kittag. Use the blunt dispensers around the training ground to make some cover, and avoid his hammer attacks at all costs."

squadmate is frozen

Lotus: "Quckly Tenno, aim for his heat sink. His armor may be strong, but he still can't allow it to be fired on freely"

Kril loses his armor

"Tenno, you've destroyed his heat sink, and rendered his armor useless. Go in for the kill, but be careful. An animal is at its most dangerous when cornered. "

This creates a mission where you know what to do from the outset, and are given sufficient information to complete the fight. It fixes the issues with the current fight, and takes it to the next level, making what I feel would be a fun, challenging(for a warframe boss) fight.

Edited June 3, 2017 by Drkitteh

[BloodForCavalero]

Why would anyone hate the most laughable boss in the game? 

1. He's not "bugged". He only turns into an ice cube by his ice melee attack, AFTER his first pipe is disconnected. If you're not in his melee range, he won't turn into a Kril cube.

2. With corrosive, radiation, puncture, and slashing status/procs, all Grineer are easy to kill. More so for Kril, since slashing gunfire will keep affecting his "weak point" and piping.

3. Kril's entry in the wiki, shows a list of warframes that can cheese through his encounter. That's boring.

4. He has a simple design, not a poor one. Though, he could use a boost to his movement speed and tougher piping on his back.

5. Frustrating? No. Dumb as a hammer? You bet! Kril can be easily lured to an area where his back is always facing you. Namely the two level room found in his counter on Mars and the catwalks on Ceres.

Though I do like your suggestions :

1. We need to get rid of the "WATCH THIS" label on his heat vent.

2.Why would we need the Lotus, to hold our hand through the fight? For me, it would kill the feeling of accomplishment.

3. Come to think of it, you could just use his current locations. Maybe charging into one of the catwalk supports would weaken it, and falling pieces can hit you or Kril?



 

 

Edited June 4, 2017 by DimLamp
Punctuation. I had none.

[Chipputer]

1 hour ago, DimLamp said:

He's not "bugged". He only turns into an ice cube by his ice melee attack, AFTER his first pipe is disconnected. If you're not in his melee range, he won't turn into a Kril cube.

You've clearly never experienced the bug where he refuses to use that attack even after nearly an hour of trying to prompt him to do so.

1 hour ago, DimLamp said:

Why would anyone hate the most laughable boss in the game? 

Because he's a boring, poorly designed, RNG dependent grind. Having options to cheese through it doesn't make him good. I've developed a strategy of just leading a mob of enemies to him and hitting him with Radiation so they all shoot his backpack off for me. It's effective and faster than shooting him myself, most of the time, but it doesn't mean that he's suddenly well designed because I thought up a silly cheese-strategy.

[BloodForCavalero]

On 6/4/2017 at 4:24 PM, Chipputer said:

You've clearly never experienced the bug where he refuses to use that attack even after nearly an hour of trying to prompt him to do so.

No, I haven't. But, why does that matter? According to the wiki, and from my experience, a Kril cube doesn't give the player a significant upper hand.

On 6/4/2017 at 4:24 PM, Chipputer said:

Because he's a boring, poorly designed, RNG dependent grind. Having options to cheese through it doesn't make him good.

I didn't say it did, and every boss fight can be "cheesed". 

As my previous post stated, I did like the direction of the proposed suggestions. However, I believe DE needs to take a bigger step and redesign ALL of the bosses. Since they share similar weaknesses to their faction's fodder, all a player needs to do is figure out how to survive hostile arenas. 
 

On 6/4/2017 at 4:24 PM, Chipputer said:

I've developed a strategy of just leading a mob of enemies to him and hitting him with Radiation so they all shoot his backpack off for me. It's effective and faster than shooting him myself, most of the time,

I enjoy using Oberon, too. But you're crazy!  ( That's a good thing, btw. )

Maybe it's just me, but I thinking you're overworking yourself. A full-auto or sniping weapon modded with a slashing proc seems the best way to go. You just need to get him in a good position...

And, smack him on the head to clear out the room ... I love Oberon XD