Long detailed response to recent Volt ability changes, and arguments for further necessary alterations, by a frequent Volt player.

[Ventura_Highway]

Hello, I am a frequent user of Volt. My time with the frame started a long time ago when the J-3 Golem was just a rather tough infested ancient, or whatever. It's been a long time and I've used this Warframe a lot ever since I got that last piece off the Golem. I've gone through so many different weapons, I've gone through so many other Warframes, but I've kept using Volt for a rather lengthy period of time. I'd argue at this point I sorta use him over a lot of other frames because "He is fun and they are not." even through they might be overall stronger, but I've never actually been upset enough with his performance to stop primarily using him.

The reason for this thread is that I read the changes to Volt that were added with his Proto Skin (I am sorry but I quite like the Prime form more) and I felt like they were not satisfactory. What I'd like to do is get into the code for Warframe, figure how to fiddle with bits of it and play around with some changes I think would work, maybe test them out, but that's not going to happen any time soon! so writing this thread will have to do. I wouldn't describe myself as upset, more like it just looked to me like there were unaddressed fundamental issues. So, as someone with a lot of experience using this frame, I will attempt to say my share of things regarding how Volt is right now, how much I actually think he needs to be improved, and where he needs to be improved.

Thread on Volt ability combos:

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https://forums.warframe.com/topic/887798-making-volt-ability-combos-useful/

Not to toot my own horn here, just didn't want to rewrite the information regarding my build/weapons/time on Volt, which is already there.

I have decided to take the opportunity to hopefully express my overall view on his situation. This will be divided into three sections.

1) Volt as things are, recent changes included.

2) Individual feedback on aspects of abilities, and augments.

3) Suggested changes to improve quality of the frame, as well as overall goals for changes.

I: Typical performance observed performance of Volt/Role of Volt in groups

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a) How my Volt missions tend to go

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The short thing I can say is that I typically can take Volt into most Tier 3 sorties in a setting of four players, and manage to, according to the end of mission report, typically be responsible for 35 - 60% of the damage of the group. When I am not responsible for most of the group's damage, typically what is the case is that someone else has brought an Atterax/Secura Lecta built to abuse maiming strike, or a well-built Mesa. Arguably, I seem to do rather fine.

However, I would like to say that this only happens in a four-player setting. I don't believe in complaining too much about how a frame performs against say, level 150-200 whatever enemies in extended survival, but, I think that if it is incredibly hopeless for a frame to be able to deal with a situation that is immediately presentable by the game, that is an issue, and I have had to solo Tier 3 sorties in the past with Volt, and one could argue I had to resort to heavy cheese tactics in order to kill Captain Vor on a Tier 3 sortie assassination with Viral-enhanced enemies, since I had to create a bunker of electric shields to Opticor inside of, drop a lot of energy pads, and occasionally hide as the operator from enemy attacks. I mean, yeah technically I won without reviving, but I played in a very not-Warframey way, I think, more like some cover shooter or something rather than the rampaging ball of lightning I l log on to play as.

Additionally, I have a rather lacking internet connection when I play, so I tend to find other groups rather than try to host missions myself, and I think the latency affects how quickly enemies pick up on my presence and start shooting at me, in my favor, because when I do have to solo endgame missions, I typically find that I have to be VERY good about not staying exposed unless I do not want to be instantly blown up. I will also note that in missions where there is a significant chance of energy drain, such as eximi strongholds and sortie 3 hyena, the power drain really tanks Volt's ability to do anything.

Summarily, it seems that I typically dish out tremendous amounts of pain, but am very likely to die if three big grineer look at me too long, which, since I have a melee-first, shoot-second playstyle, can happen quite often.

b) Personal belief on how Volt works

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As for the role of Volt, I have found more than anything that he is a Warframe that compliments rapid, dynamic offense, and works as a weapons specialist rather than as an alternative to it. I guess you could say this about a lot of Warframes, but I feel like I can compare Volt really heavily to the Red Mage I stuck in my party in Final Fantasy 1. I can hit enemies pretty hard by myself, but the abilities I pack allow my allies to hit as well. I can get in the thick of a fight, or I can hang back behind a shield. I can bolster my allies, and I can render my enemies less capable of striking back, so Volt's kit to me, is quite well rounded and works in a large variety of situations.

I'd say though, that rather than complimenting "rapid, dynamic offense" that in reality, that sort of fast offense is actually necessary to play the frame well. I got in the middle of a huge clump of infested earlier, and I didn't get rid of them as quickly as I thought, and surely enough the toxic damage from the ancients and the mutalist ospreys began to pile up, and I lost all my energy and bled out. I probably should have done a small retreat to cast discharge then come back in swinging. Similarly, again when I was in that fight alone against Vor, when I was forced behind my shields I found the Grineer would constantly encroach on my position, and I had to abandon my Electric Shield fortresses a number of times. I think that's normal, but I know if I had someone like my Ivara or Nidus for that fight, I wouldn't be nearly under as much pressure with either of those two, what with Ivara having Prowl and Nidus having Undying + Parasitic Link. So, yeah in challenging content I feel like if I don't respond fast and well to a situation, changing from close range to long accordingly, that gets me killed, and if I don't resolve conflicts quickly, my Warframe's performance starts to drop like a rock, hence this described style of offense is rather necessary.

Every ability is important! I try to make the best out of every ability on a frame, that usually means I try for well-rounded builds, Volt is no exception.

 

 

II: Feedback and usage on aspects of  each ability, and their augment.

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a) Shock, and Shock Trooper

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I use this ability for cheap, ranged stuns, and in blind corner situation where I cannot see what is lurking past a turn, I will fire off a shock to confirm the presence and position of enemies, in addition to the stun.

I do not think this ability warrants 25 energy. Which enemies it will try to target is very hard to predict, and assuming the shock works, I have seen enemies simply break out of the stun to cast say, radial blast when I began to approach, so it is not very effective even when I do shock with it. Neither synergy with Discharge or Electric Shield warrants attention due to lack of effectiveness for both.

I have seen only one person, ever, use the Shock Trooper augment. This is not an exaggeration, or a figure of speech. I have literally only seen but a single person attempt to make use of this since it was released.

b) Speed, and Shocking Speed

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Speed is generally the main draw of people to play Volt. It has a variety of effects that I use with Volt to positive effect. Faster movespeed means I get to and from fights quicker, that's always an advantage. Fast melee speed and reload times are meaningful offensive buffs.

I don't have much to say regarding its effectiveness besides that it's pretty good.

Shocking Speed shares the same issue with Shock I mentioned earlier, since they both apply Shock statuses, but Shocking Speed happens very automatically and usually I follow it up by killing very quickly with melee, so while it has technically same issue, it isn't nearly as badly affected. If there's any problem with it, I would like to say that it is really annoying on Corpus Ship Tilesets, because it ends up breaking the windows a LOT. Very inconvenient, but nowadays when I reach a room with glass windows I teleport across it as my operator. I still would like this issue to be fixed because I don't think it should exist. Why doesn't equinox maim have the same problem, for instance?

c) Electric Shield and Transistor Shield

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This ability is the other half of the reason I do not play Volt as a caster, but as a weapons specialist. Extra crit, extra damage to weapons, and I tend to preface a Discharge cast with this ability to prevent from dying during the cast. The stationary form is good for how I go about ranged combat, which basically means throwing out the shield, killing whatever stopped from doing melee, like a bombard or whatever, then going back to melee. I haven't had the opportunity to try the mobile form with the reduced drain too much, but I was generally fine with the reduced speed, and I think with melee, I can use it to stop enemy attacks if I am approaching something dangerous, but I would need to experiment first.

Every time I hear about this the uses of this ability defensively, the first thing I hear is "It has infinite durability!" Well, it also covers roughly only ninety degrees, which is fine, I think, but recently there have been enemies like Ogmas on the plains and eximi energy leech auras that this shield doesn't do anything against. What I'm getting at is that it's not actually too amazing defensively, and I actually tend to use it for increased offense with the defense as an appreciable side effect.

I will refrain from commenting on Transistor Shield as I have no experience, thus anything to say with it.

d) Discharge and Capacitance

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My use of Discharge should be fairly obvious since it is a radial disable. It's hard to mess it up. Arguably too, the Grineer are generally the only faction I am actually usually afraid of in terms of firepower, because the Corpus die very quickly when I turn my attention to them, and the Infested keep trying to get in melee range, which typically doesn't end well for them. Those two are the factions likely to break out of Discharge. The Grineer's armor leads Discharge to last really long on them, which is a good thing, but this state of affairs is still rather messy, I think. It is especially bad that Discharge's CC tends to break against large masses of enemies, because those are the exact situations you would want the CC to work.

I actually have not been impacted very much by the ability to aircast. For the longest time, I have practiced casting Discharge mid-slide, and the momentum afforded to me by the slide meant I was usually less of a sitting duck than if I was standing in place, and if I was standing in place, I did it behind a shield, in front of a wall. It's nice though, it's just not had a very dramatic effect on my ability to cast Discharge. I also really liked the idea of Discharge. It seemed to me like the idea was that you had to find somewhere smart to wind up the ability to get the massive radial CC and damage, which was fine, and I think very proper. Allowing for aerial casts sorta diminished that.

I think Capacitance is underrated and gives Shields one aspect of Health that makes Health more useful, namely manually, rapidly being able to restore it. Personally for most missions, I find the extra Shielding afforded to me to be rather useful for defense purposes. The stragglers I don't attack immediately after Discharge ends also tend to trickle back in more extra Shielding. Overall I think it's really helpful, and I like to avoid relying too much on Quick Thinking because of the stagger, and the Overshields from this help a lot. I should also say I am thankful for the indirect buff to this ability from the last update.

 

e) Passive

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I don't generally pay any attention to Volt's passive, sadly. I do not think it's effects are very substantial, and sometimes it replaces a useful corrosive or radiation proc with a shock proc, which I already inflict quite often thanks to Shocking Speed, so it is arguably detrimental to an extent.

 

 

III: Suggested changes to Volt's abilities, rationale behind them, and goals

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Weaknesses to address of Volt

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Volt heavily encourages an unsafe melee and ranged playstyle, but in endgame content does not typically have durability that allows for it.

Volt's ability to disable is uncomfortably unreliable

Aforementioned weaknesses of each individual ability

Suggested general solutions to overall problems

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I think Volt needs a method of accessing non-drastic damage reduction, and the ability to better generate shielding outside of Capacitance. The whole point of shields is to be easily restored, light-duty defense. The thing is, is health, which is supposed to be heavy-duty defense, is usually easier to restore, and if not health, energy can substitute for health because of Quick Thinking. I regard making him more able to use shields for defense as a better solution to his durability problem over attempting to make him capable of crucifying whole rooms with electricity repeatedly, ad nauseam. I like fighting, not picking on crowds of utterly helpless people. Grineer #1's friend can at least try to shoot me while I attack his subdued friend. I'd rather see myself taking a hit or two in a scrap and walking it off rather than locking down rooms repeatedly, and dying to the first stray shotgun blast I encounter.

We should be able to rely on our own tools. I mean Volt's shock and discharge abilities. Right now, we can't be sure if discharge will hold down a room for twenty seconds, or let everything walk free in five or four seconds, or if Shock will simply miss half it's intended targets, perhaps even fail to prevent whoever it struck from immediately retaliating. Neither of these abilities need to necessarily last longer, but please, if I use either of them, I have a specific intention in mind. I need something to stop shooting me!, and it needs to stop for a definite period of time, instead of maybe twenty seconds or maybe no time at all.

 

Suggestions for each ability/augment

Shock + Shock Trooper

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I would like Shock to truly stun for two to four seconds at base in a radius at it's impact zone, around, or a little smaller than Ivara's Sleep Arrow at rank 30. Compared to Sleep Arrow, it is available to cast almost any time, takes a little less time to cast than Ivara takes to draw the bow, fire the sleep arrow, and put it back. (I think) This should be scaleable with range mods. I think this arrangement should allow Shock to be a useful tool for on-demand light CC. It will not be the CC powerhouse that the aforementioned Sleep Arrow, or say, Desiccation are, but it doesn't need to be.

Shock Trooper should be thrown out or another Shock augment should be introduced.

Speed + Shocking Speed

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As part of my attempt to make Shields a viable defense mechanism on Volt, I think it would be possible to potentially let Speed increase the rate at which Shields are regenerated, make casting Speed instantly start Shield regeneration, or a combination of both. I am trying not to take away Capacitance's niche of outright restoring Shields. Letting it force-start Shield regeneration allows people to rely more on Shields since they do not have to wait as long for it to start recharging, and a similar argument can be made for letting it boost the rate at which Shields recharge. No one has room for Fast Deflection, assuredly. I will say that as a limiting factor, that getting hit will still cancel Shield regeneration. That is intended to encourage people to retreat for a little bit of time to recover. Shields are supposed to be for light defense meant to deal with the relatively rare hit, not for shrugging off an entire battalion like Inaros can. I am not sure if these things should apply to allies, but as this is I think that the shield recharge effects are mild enough not to be overpowered as a group buff.

I am generally fine with Shocking Speed, I would just like it to not shatter Corpus glass windows.

Electric Shield + Transistor Shield

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Another portion of my attempt to make Shields more useful on Volt is letting him potentially gain relatively mild damage redirection, possibly capped at a low amount like 40% to 60%, by running through the Electric Shield. One might say "You know 50% is not so far off from the 90% or so Nidus gets right?" Well, I'd argue a couple things.

1) 50% damage reduction means damage is cut in half. 90% means the damage dealt is but a tenth of what it would be. There is a huge difference here.

2)  Mirage and Trinity are capable of achieving 75% DR, Nidus, Nekros, and Gara can get 90% damage reduction, and Mesa is capable of a whopping 95% against ranged enemies! If any Mesa players want to tell me they actually got hit a lot during peacemaker usage on today's infested sortie, you know, the melee oriented faction, speak up!

3) The above statement does not pay attention to the immortal-in-chunks Valkyr, the outright immortality achievable by Wukong and Nidus, the offense crippling effects of Equinox's Pacify, and the three or more frames that are capable of invisibility.

4) Even just with Steel Fiber alone, not factoring in Parasitic Link or Undying, Nidus' Armor stat alone allows him to achieve 68% damage reduction, and then Parasitic Link takes a chunk of that away. (I think)

I actually do think, frankly, that giving Volt 50% damage reduction is a fairly mild, but calculated solution to his defense issue, even through the sentence gives off the impression of being very overpowered. Ideally, having 1.5k+ shields would mean something strong defensively, but I can't begin to fathom how to make shields, just by themselves, more useful, but I can think of ways to enable Volt to use them without rendering it too similar to say, repeatedly forcing it up like Health on Trinity. Unlike the Speed thing, this is definitely not something for Volt to pass around to every other tenno.

Unrelated to the damage reduction buff, I think this ability adds on a flat 50% electricity per shield. I mean, most of the time it just adds electricity, doesn't combine with other damage types or whatever. Electrical damage does not matter on the only faction for which more damage tends to matter, specifically the Grineer, so I think it should be allowed to combine with other elemental types, but this is not a big deal and I get plenty out of the extra crit damage already.

As with before, since I have no experience or regard with Transistor Shield, I have no comments on that matter.

Discharge + Capacitance

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Please separate the Discharge damage and disable effects. Discharge can stop damaging when the cap is reached, but please at least allow the stun to persist for a reasonable amount of time. I would honestly be fine with the base duration being lowered from 12 to 9, maybe 8 seconds if it meant I was guaranteed those seconds. I would seriously take some small nerfs to duration primarily, range less so, if it meant I could safely and definitely say "I have X seconds to attack the enemy while Discharge is up."

My thought for Capacitance is less dramatic. It just doesn't look like it ever affects my sentinel, or my dog. I don't know why it doesn't affect them, but I think it should because I would like for my dog and cat to be usable without having to use a frame with armor/health. I think the range it restores ally shields at should be larger too.

Passive

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I can't really think of anything I am sure would make the passive better, with certainty, but I do not think a largely static damage boost has any place here. Personally I would prefer some bonus for attacking shocked targets, or something like that, but the passive is still unlikely to ever be important to me as it is.

 

Thanks for reading this far! 'specially if you maybe got a [DE] tag anywhere on your profile. That's most of what I had to say about how I thought Volt could change. Summarily, I have tried to make him more defensible by giving him ways in his abilities to make his Shields more useful, as well as letting those Shields be replenished more quickly. I have also tried to make the two abilities he has related to disabling not necessarily stun more, but stun more consistently. I can understand not really wanting giant sweeping changes that could end up needing to be nerfed very immediately, but I do hope that the recent adjustments will be followed up very shortly by more changes. Personally I'm probably going to take him to a sortie tomorrow, end up doing pretty well actually, considering the general state of grief about this frame, and then probably do that again the next day, but I would like the issues I presented to be looked at.

 

If anyone wants to butt heads, I'm ready. I am willing to do a lot of things to get my favorite frame to the kind of great design I think Nidus for instance has.

 

RECENT UPDATE: I forgot to cover this earlier, but I'd like to say I just finished the devstream potato alert. This infested survival consisted of me browsing the forums, and tabbing into the game every 20 or so seconds to press 4 on Volt. Buffing Discharge with regards to damage will let me do this sort of laziness but on higher level enemies. Right now, the three starter frames are Excalibur, Volt and Mag. I think Excalibur and Mag have Fighter and Mage covered respectively, you should let Volt be the Rogue and not focus on ability damage, because all I can see is a frame with a damage type that scales poorly where it tends to matter, on Grineer. If the damage type was okay and I could reliably do discharge damage to all factions in endgame content, you would probably see more people doing the sort of laziness I just described. It's very boring for everyone. You don't want that.

Edited December 2, 2017 by Ventura_Highway

[Zukoku_Zero]

gotta go fast................ (that aside a well thought out post)

[CreamedSoda]

I like the idea, except the end part. Nidus is broken as all hell and I don't think other frames should be matched with him. Personally I don't care for the damage and I know that he is supposed to be tanky.

But 100% damage transfer, a self revive that does not count as a death and a passive healing of I think 15 per second? He is basically a god and never dies if you aren't stupid.

[Ventura_Highway]

18 minutes ago, Whitestrake0 said:

I like the idea, except the end part. Nidus is broken as all hell and I don't think other frames should be matched with him. Personally I don't care for the damage and I know that he is supposed to be tanky.

But 100% damage transfer, a self revive that does not count as a death and a passive healing of I think 15 per second? He is basically a god and never dies if you aren't stupid.

My response is that I do agree he is ridiculously strong, but when I say he is designed well, I mean I just can't emphasize how much I love the way I see his active abilities mesh. I think you could definitely argue at the very least that Undying needs to be more costly, but before saying anything about that I would prefer to look very closely at the ramifications of any nerfs  adjustments before doing anything.

I'd say for instance, if Undying was made to cost a percentage of Nidus' bacon stacks, potentially that could cause a sort of slippery slope situation where he couldn't make his 1 hurt enough fast enough to stomp everything dead inside larva, leaving him unable to recast it, unable to refresh his CC, potentially getting him killed again. Maybe it wouldn't, this is something to be studied more.

At one point too, I think I mathematically argued that if they simply removed the damage cap on Volt's Discharge, he'd be able to lock and fry any infested or corpus unfortunate enough for be in a group of five, six or above when he casted Discharge, disregarding Disruptors and Nullifiers.

Edited December 2, 2017 by Ventura_Highway

[CreamedSoda]

9 minutes ago, Ventura_Highway said:

My response is that I do agree he is ridiculously strong, but when I say he is designed well, I mean I just can't emphasize how much I love the way I see his active abilities mesh. I think you could definitely argue at the very least that Undying needs to be more costly, but before saying anything about that I would prefer to look very closely at the ramifications of any nerfs  adjustments before doing anything.

I'd say for instance, if Undying was made to cost a percentage of Nidus' bacon stacks, potentially that could cause a sort of slippery slope situation where he couldn't make his 1 hurt enough fast enough to stomp everything dead inside larva, leaving him unable to recast it, unable to refresh his CC, potentially getting him killed again. Maybe it wouldn't, this is something to be studied more.

At one point too, I think I mathematically argued that if they simply removed the damage cap on Volt's Discharge, he'd be able to lock and fry any infested or corpus unfortunate enough for be in a group of five, six or above when he casted Discharge, disregarding Disruptors and Nullifiers.

Mhm. Did you know that link also makes him immune to shockwave moas, ancient pulls etc. I think it actually makes him completely immune to any CC

[Ventura_Highway]

6 minutes ago, Whitestrake0 said:

Mhm. Did you know that link also makes him immune to shockwave moas, ancient pulls etc. I think it actually makes him completely immune to any CC

Hell yeah, now I use him whenever I think Volt's just not going to fly in a level, like Sortie-3 Phys/Elemental damage boost against a ridiculous amount of Grineer.

Again though, the thing I like more about his design are the incredible number of implicit synergies in his abilities. Implicit synergy between abilities is the best kind.

Edited December 2, 2017 by Ventura_Highway

[CreamedSoda]

2 minutes ago, Ventura_Highway said:

Hell yeah, now I use him whenever I think Volt's just not going to fly in a level, like Sortie-3 Phys/Elemental damage boost against a ridiculous amount of Grineer.

Again though, the thing I like more about his design are the incredible number of implicit synergies in his abilities. Implicit synergy between abilities is the best kind.

Although to steer it back onto topic. Synergy does not mean good, mesa is a excellent example I think they are actually ruining old frames with trying to force synergy with them. 

For example Hydroid, his only source of damage as a CC and Damage hybrid is his puddle at 50+ which is quite sad considering they didn't buff the damage for anything else, if his tentacles didn't ignore armor he'd be even worse off.

Edited December 2, 2017 by Whitestrake0

[Ventura_Highway]

1 hour ago, Whitestrake0 said:

Although to steer it back onto topic. Synergy does not mean good, mesa is a excellent example I think they are actually ruining old frames with trying to force synergy with them. 

For example Hydroid, his only source of damage as a CC and Damage hybrid is his puddle at 50+ which is quite sad considering they didn't buff the damage for anything else, if his tentacles didn't ignore armor he'd be even worse off.

I don't do Mesa a lot but whenever I see her in pubs I tend to characterize them as living unkillable turrets because of shatter shield + peacemaker, is that what you mean?

Likewise I don't even have Hydroid, so I'm mostly working with patch notes and the wiki page here. Hydroid from what I remember, is an example of explicit synergy instead of implicit synergy. Back to Nidus really quickly, Nidus will throw out two spike carpets with Virulence instead of one when Parasitic Link is up. That sort of behavior is something that has to be programmed in and spelled out for people to take advantage of. That's what I mean when I think about explicit synergy.

Right now, I think explicit synergy for abilities is something that has be used very judiciously.

Imo, there's a growing graveyard of these coded-in interactions between abilities. Like, Excalibur's Exalted Blade will unleash an energy slash as well, if you Slash Dash while it is being channeled, if memory serves. But no one really pays attention to that, I don't think. Someone spent time writing in this behavior and nobody ended up using it, because it really doesn't add anything of value to the abilities. They probably could have done something to encourage people to gap-close using Slash Dash while Exalted Blade was up. But, as I understand it, there's that, there's the two effects of Shock + Discharge and E. Shield that don't see use, and I guess poor Hydroid is stuck in puddle form pretty often if he wants to take advantage of a lot of his ability combinations.

I'm a little guilty of this needless combination thing too, arguably. In that volt ability combo thread I linked, I stuck something in there about needing Speed + Electric Shield to generate the damage reduction effect, and when I was writing a lot of this thread, I really don't know what I was thinking back there! Was there some purpose behind needing Speed + Electric Shield for the buff? I couldn't think of one. I'm sure if that got implemented, and people needed to always have Speed up before getting their DR from Electric Shield, eventually people would start saying that that this combination effect was ultimately very pointless and they shouldn't need Speed up while running through the Electric Shield. Right now I'd be inclined to agree.

So, yes I think that forcing spelled-out explicit effects between powers should be very close to a last resort. At a glance I like what they did with Oberon's extra effects with his carpet because they emphasize a degree of defensiveness, but there's a very good chance if they don't have a very good reason for cross-ability effects, at best nothing good will come of it, at worst they'll make their players bend over backwards constantly to get the most out of their abilities. Don't think anyone would like that.

 

2 hours ago, Zukoku_Zero said:

gotta go fast................ (that aside a well thought out post)

Sorry for the late reply but I was hoping to some degree, that while I'm not a part of the max power speed + melee school anymore, I was hoping that having a larger degree of damage reduction from electric shield as a side effect of maxing speed would be useful to this playstyle.

Edited December 2, 2017 by Ventura_Highway

[Ventura_Highway]

This is a response to something I heard recently regarding Volt's role.
 

Direct Response

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Saying that Volt is "not cc" is a mildly confusing statement, because arguably, all but two frames have the built-in ability to hamper crowds of enemies from attacking for some period of time, and this is Crowd Control. As with most things though, Crowd Control is a gradient, and not a binary. Ash's CC via Smoke Bomb only inflicts momentary stagger upon enemies, for instance. On the other end of the spectrum, there are Warframes out there capable of completely halting the motion of large groups of enemies for in excess of fifteen seconds, such as Frost, Gara, Vauban, and Volt. Hmm.

I have personally managed to make a build with Volt that utilizes the disabling effects of Discharge to lock down massive amounts of enemies in a way that would make Vauban cry tears of joy. It was really boring, so I stopped doing it. So, to an extent I would also prefer that Volt does not take on a heavy Crowd Control orientation.

Regarding the importance of Crowd Control

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But, some degree of Crowd Control is very, very necessary to surviving fights in Warframe. I think what I would prefer to do is jump in from the shadows, shoot/hack off a couple heads, and then retreat so quickly the enemies did not know what hit them, so that I could begin another ambush from another angle. That would be really fun and interesting, but since that is seemingly very unlikely to happen any time soon, I still need some way to stop the situation of having eight different enemies shooting at me all at once. Which is why some degree of Crowd Control is necessary, because I most definitely need some way to prevent at least five or so of them from attacking me while I dispatch the other two somehow.

One possible argument for Crowd Control not being a necessity on nearly every frame, is that if so many other frames have it they can supply it for you instead. I disagree. The problem with this line of thinking is that this is a very chaotic game, in some sense. A mission for me, consists of jumping into a fight, smashing and slashing up enemies for fun and profit, and then exiting out, mission complete. You'll notice I don't mention other people anywhere, and this is because for the most part, Warframe does not have a co-op mode, it has a "make two to four people tear up enemies in the same map" mode. Do I rely on the presence of three other Tenno to prevent me from getting overwhelmed, to help stem the tide of enemies, and maybe revive me? Yes. Do I actually cooperate to a meaningful degree where I base one quarter to a third of my actions on what the other three are doing? No, absolutely not. There is not a lot of group coordination in this game. The missions in the game that do require coordination, trials, have seemingly been assessed as non-viable because they were not popular enough, judging from the extensive lack of development on them as of late. That's fine though. I stopped playing DOTA partially because I didn't like playing salty esports leapfrog anyways. I'd say more than anything else that this state of affairs is very good, but with a lack of coordination, no one will cast Disarm or Chaos or Molecular Prime within seconds of me asking for it, so that I do not die. So, some appreciable degree of CC is very necessary for most frames because even within cells, Tenno are still highly independent. Accordingly, most frames do have this. The two off the top of my head that don't are Trinity and Mesa, both of whom are in that list of Volt changes under the "These guys are extremely hard to get killed normally" list in the Electric Shield discussion.

Another possible argument is that one should not be a loser and dodge. Oh man, I dodge. I dodge, I jump, I roll through eximi fire like it's second nature now, I backflip into enemies when I want to start laying into them really quickly. The only way you could get me to admit someone else was better at maneuvering was if that person was a frequent conclave player. I'll still get hit though, one way or another. And then there's the Grineer. Their weapons are either hitscan rifles that I simply cannot dodge, or they're rockets and projectiles that hit like the wrath of God. So, no eventually I'll fail to dodge, and that'll dead me. Getting hit is inevitable.

Presumed development path for Volt.

Spoiler

The message this is a response to, by itself, is fine, because Zip Zap Dance Dance Revolution Extreme is fairly boring anyways. It is only when this information is judged in tandem with the previous round of changes for Volt, that there is a cause for worry. There are two sets of changes on the list for 22.5. One set of changes includes allowing for aircasting Discharge, removing part of the drain from Volt's Riot Shield, and incorporating a minimum duration for the effects of Discharge. These are all popularly requested changes to Volt, so it makes sense they are there. The other set consists of a single black sheep change, specifically, increasing the damage per second of Discharge. This one is an immediate problem because it has managed to exacerbate the issues people had with the common popular use for Discharge, specifically, mass stunning. This is relatively non-important in this context, because there is a far more harrowing issue here. It is the possibility that it is expected that Volt should take the primary role of an ability-damage caster when all changes are said and done.

Reaction to above information (Feedforward??)

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This is simply put, very very not ok to me. Beyond that I do think I have valid arguments for why trying to turn Volt into a damage caster is inefficient in the extreme.

Counterarguments

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Essentially, there are a specific number of observations across multiple different aspects of both Volt and Warframe in totality that led me to my above statement.

Related to Volt

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I do not like using terms like "Nobody does this" or "Everyone thinks this way," but I must say I have absolutely, never ever seen anything among these forums about someone actually playing Volt to attack with Shock and Discharge. At this point in time, I have primarily encountered two general  archetypes for Volt users. There are a lot of people who use this frame to play as a fast swordsman, this should be obvious. Less prominently, there are others who will use Electric Shield in conjunction with the effects of Shock and Discharge to work as a ranged sniper. Again, this is a gradient and not a binary, hybrid play is possible. Is this playing the frame wrong? No. This makes sense for these reasons.

1) All four abilities are at least mildly useful from a ranged role. Shock, Speed, Electric Shield, and Discharge. Transistor Shield is noted.

2) At least three abilities are useful for common melee play. Shock, Speed, and Electric Shield. Shocking Speed is also specifically useful.

3) Only two abilities have any possible use to someone expecting to deal damage with abilities. Shock and Discharge exclusively.

So, of course no one would try to play using ability damage with Volt, because he supports the alternatives better.

Making Volt into an ability damage caster is like putting a grenade launcher onto a sports car. Whoever has that sports car doesn't really care about the grenade launcher, however nifty and expensive it is, because it's not what they were looking for at all when they got the sports car.

Expanding on those statements about combat types up above, it can also be stated that the other alternative, developing his weapon potential is easier to do, because there is a better foundation for it among his abilities than there is for ability damage.

Related to general mechanics

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What I've mentioned about Electrical Damage not being effective when it would matter to me applies here, for one. While one might say that Nidus does just fine with his Puncture Damage against Grineer, Nidus doesn't play in a kill-quick-or-be-killed-state. This is a frame that can sit back and Corrosive Pox Larva'd targets back down to zero armor and Volt does not have that luxury of time.

Damage Casters are generally the frames I use when I do not actually feel like playing the game well, with Nidus as an exception. I've been using the build from my thread  here experimentally across the starmap. I can spend most missions doing nothing but using Zenurik Energy Regen to fill up and cast Discharge and still do the most damage in the squad. It's so uninteresting, and that's what's encouraged to happen if Volt is expected to play by pressing 4 repeatedly to nuke down entire maps, doesn't matter if the Shock combo effect does anything or not. If some theoretical change to their combo allows Shock to combo effectively with Discharge, going from pressing 4 to pressing 4 and 1 is not going to be an appreciable increase in activity. I can almost guarantee another look-see at Volt will be necessary if this path continues. The Maim DoT Equinox I use to emit a walking instant death field is a Damage Caster. Radial Javelin Excalibur is a Damage Caster. Pre-rework Bladestorm Ash was a Damage Caster. When they are good here, they are automatic death generators that mostly only work in low-level areas, and inevitably fall off as time goes on, with no recourse because a nukeframe that can't kill can't get energy orbs, and if they can't get energy orbs, even with Zenurik regen they will have a hard time sustaining their destructive fire.

Finally, it involves so much more modspace sacrifice to do damage with abilities than it does with weapons. It costs nothing to put on a rifle where there was none, but in order to make the Discharge damage build earlier work, I had to sacrifice any semblance of survivability to achieve that level of power, and there were still enemies here and there in later levels that warranted gunfire. I'd rather be using my weapons for fighting. Weapons are more interesting to fight in general. I play Volt to utilize them more effectively.

 

Reactionary suggestions

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If there is intent to get people to rely less on Volt's CC ability, then any suggestions I have made regarding Volt's need for additional survivability tools are further emphasized, because something has to be done about his crippling lack of defense, and if we're not going to able to rely on CC from Discharge, ever, something definitely needs to stop Volt from needing to excessively use those four seconds of lockdown to constantly stop the stray bullet/tentacle of death.

This frame will still need some reliable way to reliably cause some targeted group of people to stop attacking for a period of time, just like I have argued most frames do. If Discharge isn't going to be intended for this effect, a more reliable Shock is pretty much the only other possible source. I would like to achieve some reasonable balance between defense mechanics like Electric Shield, judiciously applied CC, and non-negligible, non-impenetrable shields,

Finally I think if there is an intent to make Discharge into something not meant for radial Crowd Control, then it shouldn't at least be meant for damage. I'm fine with if Crowd Control remains as it is for this ability, maybe slightly diminishes. I'm a lot less appreciative of the idea that I'm supposed to kill things with it, because that is highly unlikely to work well, and I already have ways to deal with crowds, to deal with far range enemies, and to deal with particularly tough enemies among my weapons. There is no place or need here for Discharge damage here. I would rather see the primary effect turn into some way to convert offense behavior into extra defense here, or in general, some kind of buffed or reward for attacking affected targets. I would describe it like a warcry of sorts. Gets the adrenaline going, gets the enemies scared, puts your friends in a mood where they want to help you hit things, but such a vague suggestion should not be taken so seriously.

Final notes

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I have spent an extreme excess of time writing these pieces of feedback. I have some really important exams that can determine how the rest of my life goes soon, that I should be studying for, but I am so very intensely afraid of Volt being left in some dilapidated state for literal years to come that I am perfectly okay with this sacrifice.

Making Volt into a nuker will mean a lot of renovation besides tweaking Discharge. Every other ability will need extensive changing in order to accommodate this role, and it would be easier to shift him the other way. This is an attempt to fit a square peg into a round hole, from my perspective.

If Discharge is not meant to work as a crowd control tool, I would highly prefer that it end up as anything else but an way of dealing lacking damage to endgame enemies like in easily accessible sorties, and if Volt is not supposed to have extensive Crowd Control, then very certainly, some defense needs to be there to prevent the extremely quick deaths most frames without substantial armor and health suffer later on. I will admit I do still think the possibility of viable non-lazy damage via Discharge exists, but I think because of the nature of mass radial damage abilities, I would be very impressed if this ended up happening.

Thank you again.

Edited December 3, 2017 by Ventura_Highway