Aqua- Warframe Concept.

[Adumu]

Hello, everyone, my name is Adumu. I'm a random guy who saw this forum, made a post on someone else's thread, looked at it and thought "Hey, that was kinda fun." and figured I'd give it a go on my own thread. So, without further adieu, let us begin.

 

A Water based Warframe, which is an archetype we lack. At the same time, water based abilities are popular. First of all, what does one THINK of when they think of water? I'd say waves.

 

A utility frame, rather than a damage oriented frame. This is how I feel water is, at it's heart.

 

With that in mind, here is my take on the Aqua's 1 ability:

 

1: The Aqua uses their mastery over water to lob a projectile orb of water towards a target location. Upon landing, enemies in a small radius will be knocked down and slowed for X duration. Deals minor damage.

 

This, basically, is giving the Aqua an easily accessible crowd control with some skill involved. It will be an arcing projectile, and so aiming it will require some work and thought. It will explode upon hitting anything, be it enemy, ally, or inanimate. This will, again, require some aiming work so that you do not end up with a powerful CC that is easy to spam and use well. You can still spam it, but results may vary. For a 1 ability I feel it fits in decently well with the rest of the Warframes.

 

The 2 is where I start coming up with more unique ideas and mechanics.

 

2: The Aqua conjures a large body of water beneath themselves, spreading out to X distance. Enemies within are slowed and have X% chance to be knocked down (increased by leveling the mod.). Allies inside gain attack and movement speed. Effect lasts X duration. (The knockdown portion of this ability would be handled similarly to the Banshee's Soundquake, in that it would occur in "waves". That is to say, over the duration, X amount of "Waves" would be cast, each carrying their own chance to knock down the enemy. All other effects of the ability would be constant, in field effects.)

 

A useful ability, basically it creates an area in which the Tenno receive a watered down Volt speed while enemies are being slowed and possibly knocked down. This adds some interesting mechanics to the Aqua, namely in that one of it's abilities directly buffs allies while directly debuffing enemies in a field. In addition to that, it has a -chance- to knock down enemies. Most Warframe abilities just -do- what they do, it's not a -chance-. This adds some interesting bits to the ability. It doesn't need the knockdown to be useful, though, so it's being chance based is not a big deal. It's a bit like the Login Rewards. You get what you wanted? Cool. Didn't? No big. It's just a bonus anyway.

 

So, that's two abilities down. I'm feeling rather confident that I've captured a bit of water's real world and fantasy elements and adequately formed them into semi-unique skills. What now?

 

Spell number three. A spell with some oomph behind it. The other two are 1 and 2 spells, now that we're at 3 we can get some more "powerful" effects going.

 

This takes us back to the original though, crashing waves. This one will be something with some oomph, but also something that isn't point blank "click button get win". This isn't meant to be your "Oh S#&$!" button, it's something you put conscious thought into using because you're in a situation where you've got breathing room.

 

It's also another chance to add an interesting mechanic to the game.

 

3: Aqua creates a large orb of water at target location. Orb will have a Health bar. Upon complete depletion of health bar, orb will launch a large wave of water in the direction OPPOSITE of the direction the attack that depleted it's health came from. Orb is destroyable by the Aqua and other Tenno as well as enemies. Wave deals X amount of damage, and has a knockback and knockdown.

 

So here we have a "destructible terrain" with an effect that can be exploited. The orb can be used to stir up chaos in enemy ranks when they unwittingly destroy it, setting a large wave off in their midst in a random direction. It can also be used as a makeshift shield while it holds, or simply summoned and broken by the Aqua for a quick knockdown/knockback and some damage. Interesting mechanic, has some very useful characteristics, and fits the theme of "watery master of CC" well enough.

 

And last but not least, the Ultimate. The Uber. The 4.

 

What is the most destructive force of nature involving water? A tsunami. It's the first thing anyone would guess.

 

So obviously we're not using that. What is another extremely dangerous watery phenomenon? Whirlpools. Oh yes whirlpools.

 

The four is the only skill I've got a name I feel fits it, by the way.

 

Charybdis(4): Aqua conjures a powerful Whirlpool, with themself in the center. Enemies caught within are forcefully swept along the current of the whirlpool, knocked down and pulled clockwise along the whirlpool while slowly coming closer to it's center. Once enemies reach the center (or the ability ends) they are thrown high into the air, taking fall damage on their descent. Enemies within take X amount of damage per second.

 

Alright. The ultimate, named after a Greek monster myth if you couldn't guess, is a whirlpool with a twist. Much like it's namesake, it "belches" things up and they go flying. Has large amounts of CC, good damage, and is an aoe "oh S#&$!" button. While it's not horribly unique in it's usage (AOE ult, deals damage, has CC.) it's at least unique in how it goes about doing it. Forcefully moving enemies in a set direction, slowly pulling them in, and then lobbing them into the air? Nothing else in game does anything of that sort, though some do have similar effects (Bounce, Pull.) that are entirely different in practice.

 

With it all said and done, I think I've pieced together a decent skillset for a water themed Warframe. It could be tweaked here and there, and I'd love to hear suggestions, but so far I feel it's pretty solid.

 

Thoughts?

 

(Edited because it was too long winded with a lot of useless fluff. It's still a bit long, but most of that is stuff I feel is very necessary to give my thoughts on the warframe's abilities and stimulate discussion.)

Edited July 29, 2013 by Adumu

[asurako989]

too much info, please simplify it. many ppl who placed warframe concepts have made it easy for ppl to read and view. but, (my apologies to you) is too compact and too much info. and slightly confusing to read over.

[Adumu]

Ah, right, right, sorry. I'm a bit longwinded. You'll need to give me a few minutes, but I can compact it to just the necessary bits.

[Hipolipolopigus]

Well wave-based attacks are pretty much taken by Banshee, but there's still plenty you can do with water. Since most of the hostiles use organic bodies, we can assume they have a water percentage similar to our own - 75%. Imagine boiling hostiles from the inside with that much water. They'd pop like sausages in a microwave >:D

[BigSchmexy]

I like it overall maybe a few tweaks here or there but on the whole it seems like a balanced frame that could be useful one thing is the ult should make aqua invulnerable the whirlpool would block incoming attacks while pulling those in it's range or else it could be like banshee where you ult and it's great but you're dead by the end

[Adumu]

Well wave-based attacks are pretty much taken by Banshee, but there's still plenty you can do with water. Since most of the hostiles use organic bodies, we can assume they have a water percentage similar to our own - 75%. Imagine boiling hostiles from the inside with that much water. They'd pop like sausages in a microwave >:D

 

While the idea of using enemy's bodily fluids against them is very appealing, it's not really the direction I wanted to take this specific idea. Perhaps a "blood mage" archetype, but that simply wasn't the idea I had when I was coming up with this. And as for Banshee having a monopoly on Wave attacks, I kind of feel that's unfair. She uses SOUND. Her ultimate comes in waves, yeah, and she has a cone CC move, but that doesn't really make "waves". Not saying that your idea is bad, I honestly like it and it does fit the water archetype, but it feels like more of a damage ability than a CC/utility which is what I set out to pitch.

 

I like it overall maybe a few tweaks here or there but on the whole it seems like a balanced frame that could be useful one thing is the ult should make aqua invulnerable the whirlpool would block incoming attacks while pulling those in it's range or else it could be like banshee where you ult and it's great but you're dead by the end

 

The idea with the whirlpool ult was that enemies would be knocked down for it's duration, so the only things able to attack you would be ranged enemies outside of the ability's radius. Or if you accidentally pull a Toxic too close to yourself, but I imagine the "knock up" portion of the ultimate would kick in before doing so actually made a large dent in your health pool.

[izzygman11]

looks pretty sweet to me