Volt Changes

[Ventura_Highway]

2 hours ago, Koldraxon-732 said:

In my opinion these changes will make Volt the alternative to gunplay that his 'frame description says while enabling his powers to scale with enemies. At the very least this will put him up with Excalibur Exalted Blade or Radial Blind configurations in terms of effectiveness, and make him worth using again.

I personally do not feel like trying to maintain the damage-caster aspects of the frame will go anywhere since electrical damage is not very effective in general, which sort of dampens my regard for most of the electrical damage related changes, but I will try to treat this passage like it could fundamentally work.

2 hours ago, Koldraxon-732 said:

while affected by Speed

Volt is generally always affected by Speed. Nidus' stacks require him to use Virulence, which implicitly means Nidus is stuck on the ground, and he can only continuously fire when he knows he can hit three or more enemies, otherwise the excessive cost of the nuke will wear him down. I feel like this is not sufficiently conditional.

2 hours ago, Koldraxon-732 said:

reload speeds are increased.

I'd personally rather just have reload speeds in general increase. I think this is an everyone problem, not a Volt problem.

2 hours ago, Koldraxon-732 said:

The more stacks Volt attains, the faster he moves, the higher the damage (and damage cap), the faster his shields recharge, and his melee attack/reload speeds are increased.

A decent chunk of this passive is redundant because of Speed's existence.

2 hours ago, Koldraxon-732 said:

add an ability cast speed boost

This does nothing. Volt has three abilities that cast extremely quickly, and the fourth now may be safely aircasted, well, if it CC'd consistently.

2 hours ago, Koldraxon-732 said:

Add an electricity aura that stuns enemies Volt runs past

This is Shocking Speed. It is mostly fine as an augment.

2 hours ago, Koldraxon-732 said:

the shields connect and their durations combine

A lot of your rework emphasizes making him move faster, and you're giving him the ability to set up an entrenched defense? I think this is contradictory.

2 hours ago, Koldraxon-732 said:

While the new passive would enhance it, the AOE Overload would cover should gain a 'floor is electrified' effect - like the electrified water on Sealabs - but with significantly more damage to enemies. This would theoretically kill everything hit by Overload, if not the afterShock from Volt.

If you're description of an ability is that "It kills everything hit by Overload" then you've got something overpowered cooking. Especially when you're talking about an ability that attacks in a huge radius with a frame that now has practically unlimited energy thanks to the charge-drain portion of the passive.

 

These things aside, I feel like the suggestions in here are too extreme, meaning DE would be less confident about if the intended effects of your rework would actually happen, and would further likely end up taking excessive amounts of time to write into the game. Additionally, I feel as if the nature of your suggestions make Volt's abilities too incoherent, meaning that he'd be put in a position where, with enough "add this and that and these and those," one day we'd have a Speed ability that boosted Volt's Speed, booster everyone else's speed, boosted everyone's damage, their Orbiter's foundry, so on and so forth. Mentally, I associate this with the idea of a bunch of tangled cords that only get more tangled as you put more cords nearby for it to eat.

Less is more when it comes to suggestions. Play it like a game of golf, basically. What's the smallest tweak that can be made to get the best effect? Some people wonder why DE won't listen to their amazing designs, and it's partially because they're bound to have a different viewpoint from their players, and this viewpoint is probably not going to be as detailed with regards to how the frame actually plays, but it's also going to factor in whether or not they can spare the manpower to do these changes, and how it can affect the ecosystem of the game.

 

EDIT: I would like to note though I only bothered to write this out because I thought you put more thought into it than a lot of other proposals. Which may seem somewhat sadistic, arguably, but I have the best intentions, I assure you. My offer on my proposed changes thread to butt heads with anyone that comes in there is still up, and you are free to come in there and tear down my dreams.

Edited December 3, 2017 by Ventura_Highway

[Mudfam]

https://twitter.com/GooseDE/status/936740791900344323

So, DE tells us Volt is not a CC frame. I'm good with that, I really don't like mass untargeted CC or damage abilities, I prefer things that require more interaction than just pressing 4.

I try to avoid suggesting bigger changes, but this ability is such a mess that it might need one.

What if Discharge behaved somewhat similarly to Banshee's Resonance augment? It would initially act basically as it does now, applying 4 seconds of stun and damage to affected targets. However, if one of these targets is killed or has Shock cast on them before the 4 seconds is up, a new burst is released refreshing the 4 sec duration on nearby enemies.

Duration would now matter, after which the stun can longer be refreshed. Instead of just spamming 4 for area CC and damage, we get a much more interactive and tactical use of the ability.

To me this actually sounds like a lot of fun to use. It's skillful, tactical, allows your team to take advantage of it and doesn't have issues with uncontrolled scaling damage or passive use of long term mass CC.

[Koldraxon-732]

13 hours ago, Ventura_Highway said:

 

If I had to take two changes I'd like from the suggestion I put up, it would be his 1st ability and his passive:

Spoiler

1: what would happen to his 1st ability (short version; the single-shot-shock will remain, but a new full-auto, low-drain electric stream version would be added when the power is held).
How this would work: hold 1 would first cause Volt to fire his first ability like he always do, followed by his arm effectively locking in a looped version of the animation as a stream of shocking voltage fires at the enemy.
2: the other proposition for his passive (charge from running = duration and bonus damage during that duration).
How this would work: the passive's only change is that as soon as you deal damage, there's a short time where you can still deal that extra damage.

These to me would be enough of a change.

I respect that you think the main suggestions in my original suggestion pile sound too much like Nidus (and too overpowered, but as you put it yourself, electricity as a damage type is weak). Given that, in my opinion, Nidus' power damage output is the kind of damage Volt should be allowed to do. In addition, Volt still wouldn't have any way to recharge his shields, health, or gain extra lives as Nidus does, which would give Volt two main playstyles:
1: The guy who uses 1 and 2 all the time.
2: The guy who hunkers down in a shield-cube around the objective, uses 4 when enough enemies surround it, and then uses 1 to spread/refresh the stun/add damage.

Though these technically already exist, but without the addition of shock because shock is essentially harmless right now or the inclusion of other gameplay styles such as the shield-bearer and ult-spammer.

[Ventura_Highway]

7 hours ago, Mudfam said:

 

I think this idea needs some tweaks here and there to work out smoothly but if Discharge ended up anything like this, I think that would make me very happy.

Technically it would still be encouraging some more hard CC, but it looks like it would be CC the player would have to work for. I would say the range for the CC spread would need to be around the range of 5-7 meters at base, and I am a little worried a situation could arise where Discharge does something similar to a chain reaction explosion like Molecular Prime, but with far higher potential for lethality because MPrime's explosion only does 800 at base compared to the 4000+ Discharge may be capable of. But the base idea is excellent and I would hope it can be implemented.

4 hours ago, Koldraxon-732 said:

 

Nidus is an extremely well-made frame but he has led me to my current belief that if a frame is going to do damage with abilities, then their whole kit probably needs very careful planning around how to allow that frame to cause damage with abilities without running into the common trap of "it kills everything in sight brainlessly, and repeatedly at the start then starts to do nothing as time goes on." Which is somewhat why I do not personally like the idea of making Volt into a nuker.

I think your suggestion for Shock is generally fine, but Shock still would need some sort of mechanism to allow it to do respectable damage. I think your suggestion for the passive is fine, here. Gara's 1 seems to be able to scale based on melee mods though, and perhaps something similar could be done here as well, but I'm not sure.

That aside, I should note I think that as well, some other things would need to be done to Speed and Electric Shield to make Volt into a cohesive nuker. I think your idea for Speed is retoolable towards this end, Electric Shield seems harder. Potentially something like what Octavia has for Mallet is possible, where it returns damage back to enemies, but I do not have Octavia and do not plan on getting her, so I cannot tell how well that is working out.

Edited December 3, 2017 by Ventura_Highway