My Infested sword and shield concept

[erebuscommando]

Hello community!

I posted this a while back on the Warframe melee weapon contest but since it didn't make the cut I figured I would post again and see if I could get some feedback on it. So the name of this pair is Garm and Grendal, my idea for the mechanics on this thing was that blocking damage with your shield would get the weapon excited, eventually when you blocked enough damage the shield would start flailing its tentacles around before spewing a toxic breath style attack (kind of like Chroma's but way shorter duration and proc'ing nearby enemies with toxic or radiation). you would then slash enemies with the rather nasty infested curved sword.

So there it is, I appreciate any feedback and ideas on how this thing stats could look like.

[Fihuren]

I like it ! This feels like a caustacyst/sword&shield and looks fun to use !

I like the concept of your weapon since it can be very rewarding to block with your shield !

Also, awesome visual (if we can say that) for an infested weapon.

[erebuscommando]

Thank you for your feedback Finara! the reason I wanted the acid on damage block mechanic was because I thought it would fit the infested aesthetic but also because there are not enough melee weapons that encourage blocking, so a sword and shield style weapon that rewards you with extra utility for blocking sounded like a fun concept.

And thank you for the kind words on the art! I've been reading about some great ideas here on this forum and I would love to draw and paint some of them, with the author's consent of course.

Edited August 7, 2017 by erebuscommando

[Urlan]

Looks interesting, would love to see such an idea in action.

[THeMooN85]

1 hour ago, erebuscommando said:

blocking damage with your shield would get the weapon excited

A living weapon... a masochist weapon... "SMACK ME HARDER!", "YES, YES, YES!!! Oh, I'm coming!" kinda weird/creepy if you think about it but idea is good... and DE would never agree for that... shield with better blocking mechanics than their ideas?

Edited August 7, 2017 by THeMooN85
added some smexy quotes ;)

[13QZXXTTX]

I can see why this idea would have not made it."Failing Tentacles" Sound like a Hydroid Speciality, unless you mean Nidus's Larva (2).

I can see that this Sword & Shield weapon being good, but the Stats, it would be OK, not Prime Level, probably Status focus, and under-average Critical Chances. Why? Even a Riven for this Weapons would not be Strong or Weak, it probably be Neutral.  Do enjoy the Shields and one Hand weapons.Yeah the visuals always throw me off, it still has personal taste to it or how some one might view the weapon, nice ideas and portray still.

 

Conclusion: Cool Ideas, Stats probably not too great, (Cool Concepts Ideas, does not mean Weapons do until Game-play). The Art does not give me the Infested Vibe exactly. I can see potential. 

 

[Epsik-kun]

The design is neat and the concept looks interesting enough. Save for the default color scheme, it looks like a weapon of the same family as Dual Ichor (maybe it might be good to make the default color scheme similar?).

Regarding the blocking gimmick, judging by the way you're describing it (at least, how it looks like) I'm afraid that it won't be used. Seeing the whole tentacles>nuke progression, I assume the idea is to have something along the lines of Vaykor Sydon's Blind passive with 15 consecutive blocks or so. Well, no one relies on that thing.

The whole "block enough to get a nuke" concept falls off short due to several reasons:
1) Even 85% DR blocking will get you killed on high levels
2) Incoming attacks are very inconsistent - getting an arbitrary number of consecutive blocks can take an absurd amount of time if AI decides so.
3) Unless the block nuke will be an AoE wiping out entire map, going for it would be massively inefficient. And Warframe, as a grinding game, is all about efficiency.

So, unless I'm judging the concept horrendously wrong, I would suggest not going for "charge up the weapon" concept. Especially Vaykor Sydon style.

What I can see working, however, is getting an immediate response from the weapon on a block.

For instance, every blocked attack could release an AoE status-applying nuke due to the shield retaliating. Or, alternatively, the nuke could be triggered Sydon-style by stopping blocking, however, the number of blocks required to charge it up should be no higher than a single one. It can deal 20%~50% of the weapon's damage if it doesn't require lowering the guard and 150%~300% if it does.

For the whole tentacle thing, a completely separate concept can be used. As an example, each block will give the frame a DR buff of, say, 10% that can stack up, thus giving a total of 50%~60% DR. The duration should be in the range of 10~15 seconds and getting a block during that time should refresh the duration of the whole bonus. As the stack count rises, the shield becomes more excited.
The DR stacking up time can be increased by lowering the DR per block amount to 5%~2%, but the total DR cap should remain the same - 10%~20% DR is worthless in this game.

This way I can see the concept actually working and being useful - not just a gimmick. After all, sword&shield combat is not about sitting behind the shield - it's about parrying and riposting, blending defense and offense together.

As for the stats themselves, I haven't done enough Sword&Shield testing to provide you with adequate numbers right off the bat but assuming the wiki doesn't lie about both stances not having any damage multipliers to speak of, here are my ideas:

From the aesthetical point of view, I would love the weapon to be an actual relative of Dual Ichor. So, I strongly suggest going for Toxic as the main damage type.
Next, what I would've considered a really powerful AoE proc from a purely Toxic weapon is Viral and nothing else. Viral is the only proc I can think of that would provide an adequate reward for going out of your way to block stuff instead of just simply hitting an enemy.

Finally, I can see two ways of approaching the stats of the weapon:
a) Ichors-style crit-oriented with a decent status chance.
20~25% x3 crit / 15~20% status chance might be good enough.
b) Mainly status focused
10% x2 crit / 25%~40% status chance.

Honestly, I would personally prefer the first version better because the second one goes into Silva&Aegis Prime territory too much.

If we're talking about x3 crit version, I can see it being viable with 60~80 base damage - depending on the ranges I've suggested. Having it to be on the faster end of Sword&Shield weapons (0.9~1 speed) seems adequate. I'm not sure if it should have the 90% DR block as Silva&Aegis prime has according to the wiki - all Sword&Shield weapons should, in my opinion, however, if it's to be considered a unique trait of Silva&Aegis Prime, it should probably remain that way.

For stats themselves, there are very important factors to consider, especially if some of the suggestions look too strong and over the top.
All and everything of these won't make the weapon a top-dog among melee. Not even close.
Current melee usually relies on either invisibility, huge total damage + decent status, huge status + CO.
While my suggestion might look like I'm making this weapon a case of pure power creep on Ichors (which I constantly compare it too), Ichors as Dual Swords would have access to one of the most powerful stances in the game, which is something impossible for Shield&Sword. Heavy Blades and Nikanas too have incomparably more powerful stances. Whips and Polearms have more reach so they're viable for spinning (and huge reach is not what I think is intended for this weapon). Polearms, in fact, have Shimmering Blight which while boring is quite powerful.
Also, this weapon offers nothing of value for invisibility-based melee which is huge at the moment. However, I can see it being a viable alternative to said melee for any frame - that's something we don't really have at the moment.

Edited August 7, 2017 by Epsik-kun

[erebuscommando]

Thanks for the feedback, I can see now that I made some mistakes presenting this design with the tentacles. I was thiinking that the tentacles would be more like a visual cue of when the weapon is about to go off spitting its acid, kinda like how the dual toxocysts open their little mouth thingies when you score a headshot, the tentacles themselves wouldn't attack the target, they would just let you know you are about to proc.

I didn't put in any stats cause admittedly I am terrible at that kind of stuff and I wanted to hear community ideas for those from people who have probably played the game longer than me and have some killer builds and understanding of the metagame. I never intended this thing to be top tier, it was more of a mid tier idea that would be fun to play around with and just to have an infested sword and shield type which we currently don't have. I also find the appearance of infested weaponry really varied and weird and I did use the dual Ichors as my main reference for colors and style with the bone protuberances and the nasty boils growing on them.

what I mean about appearance, for instance the Phage is a really strange looking bone rifle thing that doesn't really look anything like the rest of the infested lineup, and weapons like the Paracyst and Mutalist Quanta still have some elements of what they used to be. My idea for this concept was that a regular (by warframe standards) sword and shield was absorbed by the infestation and turned into a living weapon.

Edited August 7, 2017 by erebuscommando

[moose2142]

I LOVE THIS. The only thing I could think of to make it more visually appealing would be a pulsing flesh tube connecting from the hilt of the sword to somewhere on the shield. For combo stances, you could throw the sword straight at someone, then pull it back, same with shield. Below is a 40k tyranid bio weapon. Disgusting as it is cool, you have an amazing concept and I hope DE picks it up!

[erebuscommando]

Thanks Moose! I love the 40K universe and some of the biomorph adaptations on Tyranids are straight up nasty, definitely a great place to draw inspiration from, a barbed strangler would be really cool and would fit Saryn well.

Another thing that pops to mind is that gun from the movie Existenz, come to think of it, I'd love to see a gun that shoots teeth and has a secondary fire of chomping on enemies dealing more damage the more ammo you currently have on the clip, I am going to have to get drawing soon.

[Aldarys_]

Hello !

First of all I am not fond of infested weapons most of the time. But YOUR concept... It's something else. I like it, very much.

 

I can't wait to see those weapons in-game and maybe add them to my own collection