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Zephyr's "rework" is a disaster. She gained nothing and has lost more than was promised. Please hear a Zephyr main out.


Cryssoberyl
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2 minutes ago, Kurokoz said:

I really like the changes. I don't need more frames that can handle every bit of content. I just think its really fun.

See, We don't want her to handle all the content. We want her to be better at what she's supposed to do. We've been talking back and forth for years about the flaws in her abilities and how those abilities could be altered to properly fit her niche.

Instead we got an 'update' that fixes none of those issues, but did managed to introduce more. I can see how a hover might be interesting at first blush, but if I'm using Zephyr as I have been for literal years, then I am blasting around much faster than her new 2 could ever hope to be used for and the stop and charge to stop and hover is near infuriating. Her Tornado got nothing more than a gimmick to appease the players who still won't be using outside of a panic button. And they managed to ninja nerf turbulence and jetstream as well.

Ever since Zephyr was released, she's meant freedom to me.

I'm disapointed with what's been done.

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If I could have had my ideal...

Zephyr's passive: as current, except she also gains an increasing damage buff while she is in the air.

Tail Wind still gets dive bomb, context sensitive as a click when looking down. That's fine. Tail Wind itself is now primarily a toggled mode with an energy drain - while activated, Zephyr launches forward in whatever direction you're looking, and carries the momentum of the movement over when the ability is deactivated. Moving through enemies still causes damage. While flying, Zephyr can hold down crouch to cause herself to hover, though this significantly increases the drain rate on the ability. Good use of this ability would resemble a swooping bird - soaring up, deactivating the ability, popping off a couple shots to make use of her passive, and then reactivating as she starts to arc down, reorienting for another pass. Mechanical nuances: This ability has greater speed on outdoor map tiles than indoor ones, and there is a brief period after deactivation where Zephyr does not land, even if she is at ground height, allowing a Zephyr that is indoors to dash back and forth and still accumulate bonus damage, even in cramped corridors.

New second ability is Hunter's Sight. On activation, enemies are highlighted in red from a great distance and through walls in a cone, for a short duration. While marked, Zephyr's warframe abilities will cause critical damage to the enemy, the amount of critical damage scaling with power strength. The augment, Flock Sight (or Murder Sight, if crows are your thing), allows allies to benefit from this ability as well. Intended use: while soaring, invoke the appearance of a raptor descending on its prey. Dive bomb onto an enemy marked with Hunter's Sight to cause incredible damage.

Her 4 is the same as this patch. However, on performing a dive bomb into a tornado, Zephyr becomes it. The tornado becomes much larger, and pulls in enemies from a larger distance. Enemies marked by Hunter's Sight take critical slashing damage, and are in some cases torn to pieces. On the end of the ability's duration, with a satisfying crash like thunder, any enemy not defeated by the tornado suffers a minor ragdoll, leaving them nearby for a follow up assault, while enemies that were defeated suffer a much larger ragdoll, sending grineer, corpus, and infested corpses alike flying against walls.

That's how I would have enjoyed it, anyway.

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14 minutes ago, Caelward said:

See, We don't want her to handle all the content. We want her to be better at what she's supposed to do. We've been talking back and forth for years about the flaws in her abilities and how those abilities could be altered to properly fit her niche.

Instead we got an 'update' that fixes none of those issues, but did managed to introduce more. I can see how a hover might be interesting at first blush, but if I'm using Zephyr as I have been for literal years, then I am blasting around much faster than her new 2 could ever hope to be used for and the stop and charge to stop and hover is near infuriating. Her Tornado got nothing more than a gimmick to appease the players who still won't be using outside of a panic button. And they managed to ninja nerf turbulence and jetstream as well.

Ever since Zephyr was released, she's meant freedom to me.

I'm disapointed with what's been done.

The thing about the "hover" that was introduced is that we had that ability the entire time without any charge. Its called the instant takeoff and then aimglide paired with her passive let her hover while still having some ability to slide around making her both able to actually hover as well as still be moving. Now all we have is the most sluggish excuse of a strait line dash that completely locks you in worse than before. Switch TP is better than the current Tailwind which cannot be controlled when using enough duration to move a decent distance, and literally moves about 5m when using 100-130% duration.

You literally only have 1 choice of build now and that is full duration, dropping the already poor ranges of her abilities even further. I cant do any of the older things i could with tailwind at all. The new physics and mechanics are just that bad. I no longer have the choice to run my high range, lower duration(123-133%) build as her 1 literally does NOTHING with that duration.

In addition I used to do this kind of B-hopping effect with the takeoff where the frame i hit the ground i would hit 1 and bounce and that allowed me to be near impossible to hit even if turbulence turned off. It was the most fun and most free of movement I have ever been in this game.  All of that practice, all of those very useful, fun, and effective tactics are now gone, replaced by a bunch of slow, fixed animations which are objectively worse than what she already had. I just want all of these changes returned to how she was as she was actually usable with more than one build and not completely unable to work in hallways.

Edited by Kurayami_No_Yenshi
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Just what could we do with Zephyr before the Patch?

Have a look see. I have also played this game and I loved zipping around in the air raining explosive death on my enemies. This was Zephyr in motion.

Spoiler

 

If you're good, you should still be able to do... some of this. But a close look will help you realize many of the movement tricks here have been outright removed.

 

I'd like to give credit to the original poster, but I'm not going to look through the dev workshop megathread to go find his name.

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I am liking her rework so far but there is still some room for improvements.

 

Passive:

No changes to her passive but there are opportunities to further improve her unique aerial playstyle.

-Extend aim glide duration.

-Remove hard landings after falling from high heights. (cast tailwind upwards a few times and let Zephyr land on the ground to see what I mean)

 

Tailwind:

All of the improvements are good.

-The hover is really only useful with self-damage weapons. The maximum charge time is too long and should be reduced to 1 second max or when she does the crouch animation.

-Divebomb does not cancel tailwind's cast animation. This is quite problematic if you're using a high duration build and travel much farther than desired with no way of stopping.

 

Air burst:

A nice simple ability that ragdolls enemies caught in its path and within the explosion area.

-Should cost 25 energy instead of 50 to remain consistent with dive bomb.

-The Projectile speed is slow.

 

Turbulence:

I agree with the OP. The casting animation is slightly longer than the old and the turbulence effect is delayed as well.

 

Tornado:

Really good improvements but there is still an issue with it.

-Enemies need to be captured longer or the tornado pull strength needs to be stronger towards the center. There are times when a tornado will move towards a target, pulls them in while moving towards them, and then fling them out a second later. This actually happens quite frequently.

 

Edited by MrJxt
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2 hours ago, Cryssoberyl said:

Skill #2, Air Burst. This skill, the desperately needed new skill that was supposed to help give Zephyr new life, is nothing more or less than a slow, weak, difficult to aim projectile that has a small explosion on impact. That's it. There is, simply, no reason to ever use this skill at all.

[...]

Turbulence has been nerfed by its unnecessary and unasked for "new unique animation", which is just a casting animation - a much longer casting animation than it had previously. [...] But it gets worse, much worse. Jet Stream is now slower than it was for a given power strength. At 175% Power Strength, which is what I have long run, it is unambiguously slower than before. Jet Stream has been nerfed.

Even though you raised some good points in your original point which I more or less agree with, I have to completely disagree with the quoted bits.

Air Burst is actually quite useful as a CC. I don't know why you're trying to think of it as a damage projectile, just look at it like Harrow's 1 in form of knockdown (and short range ragdoll) instead of stun. It's perfect for hitting heavier targets, which not only disables then for a few seconds, but also opens them up for ground finisher. It also works when dealing with pesky things like ramparts and shield lancers that can get extremely annoying especially when the player is already overwhelmed by a bunch of heavier units, so Air Burst adds a pretty nice utility to Zephyr's kit for situations like those, without having to literally dive into the enemy's face. It also synergizes quite well with Tornadoes, and allows "pushing" enemies into tornadoes then just shooting the tornadoes to kill everything inside.

As for Turbulence and Jet Stream, after reading your post I looked up some random pre-rework gameplay videos and compared it to what we have ingame, and neither the cast speed of Turbulence, nor the strength of Jet Stream seems to be different. Turbulence animation only "feels longer" because it involves more movements, but it actually plays much faster than the old animation so it only takes slightly longer which is easily negligible... Plus, who casts their animation-locked powers while standing still anyways? Cast while sliding or aim-gliding.

The reason Jet Stream feels slower to you might be because Tail Wind actually seems to add some acceleration to the momentum now which lasts for a short while after landing, so it feels like Zephyr "slows down" to reach the Jet Stream speed after Tail Wind, whereas before the rework it used to speed up after landing (with anything more than ~140% strength) because Tail Wind didn't add any actual momentum.

That said, the new Tail Wind does feel clunky and the new Tornado does feel somewhat unintuitive to control, so there's no denying that the rework needs a whole lot of polish, but going as far as calling it a "disaster" and all those other nice words is an exaggeration and overreaction.
 


Any feedback that's posted within the first few hours of a rework will most certainly fail to provide any in-depth criticism of the actual changes, regardless of how many thousands of hours of playtime someone may have on a frame before that rework. I understand that you guys may be disappointed or frustrated that this rework wasn't what you hoped or asked for, but instead of flaunting your pre-rework playtime around maybe take the weekend to actually play the reworked frame, get used to it, experiment with different builds for it, and then write a calm and constructive post about it, focusing on explaining why it doesn't work and how the current iteration of the skillset can be improved (rather than just asking for your own version), so whoever's reading it actually bothers going through the whole thing, rather than getting irritated halfway through because of all this epeen-waving and decides to not even bother.

Zephyr is (and has been for over a year) my go-to frame whenever I'm playing solo or don't need to run a specific frame for the team, and admittedly I'm not completely happy with the rework either so I understand where you guys are coming from, but I personally like the general direction of the rework, and in my opinion it certainly has a lot of potential and the only thing it needs is some (heavy) fine-tuning. I'd love to see some more tweaks to Zephyr's current kit and will definitely post my take on it after I've had the weekend to actually put some hours in, but based on the "first impression" I've got so far after toying with it for an hour or so, it's a pretty solid basis for a rework (remember, the last two major reworks that involved actually reworked abilities - Oberon and Limbo - needed multiple passes to actually end up in a decent place) so taking to it with torches and pitchforks at this point would do anything but help.

Edited by aerelm
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2 hours ago, Cryssoberyl said:

Skill #1, Tail Wind. The horizontal movement portion of this skill is as clunky as it ever was. You still cannot change direction, still cannot cancel it by rolling or jumping. It does travel faster and farther now for a given build, but that may or may not be desireable as you will find yourself cannoning into walls and obstacles and having to wait out the animation.

And there is one of the big problems with the reworked physics of the ability, you have 1 build choice, longer duration, if you run in the realm of 100-130% duration and try to focus stats elsewhere you are incredibly immobile as this new ability does not preserve momentum at all after the animation ends and you get close to the ground, in the end this does just that, it relegates zephyr to duration builds effectively killing all build diversity like my 123% duration, 280% range build. This build behaves like a ROCK, casting 1, especially in the air, barely moves me at all and it takes dozens of casts to move any respectable distance. In addition, the takeoff is hot garbage, the old takeoff paired with aimglide would let you get higher and stay there longer than this awful gimmick does with a full 3 SECOND charge, and it didnt lock you in place for doing so, allowing you to get height and still move horizontally.

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I would like to offer a suggestion. :smile:

Tap the ability 1 key, while in the air, to hover.

Hold the ability 1 key, on the ground or in the air, to perform a channeled Tail Wind glide.

Tail Wind costs energy to activate from the ground, but is free if done in the air. Every second Tail Wind is channeled it costs energy/s and travel distance increases impact type damage and proc so you can swoop through enemies and bowl them over.

Finally, because Zephyr requires +range and +duration to make it work (eg. turbulence won't work if you have low range), Zephyr should get an addition to passive ability to relieve the need for such a strict setup of stat increasing mods. An example would be that while in the air Zephyr's abilities get +range or +duration when cast. Or perhaps an energy regen while in the air. That will give Zephyr users more room to build for this frame.

I think this frame can be tweaked to be very tactical and fun, but in a smooth and streamlined way.

Thanks for reading!

Edited by Redfeather75
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53 minutes ago, MrJxt said:

Tailwind:

All of the improvements are good.

-The hover is really only useful with self-damage weapons. The maximum charge time is too long and should be reduced to 1 second max or when she does the crouch animation.

-Divebomb does not cancel tailwind's cast animation. This is quite problematic if you're using a high duration build and travel much farther than desired with no way of stopping.

 

No, just no. NONE of the changes are good to tailwind. The hover entirely replaces the better, instant takeoff which you could already hover using aimglide and her passive. There shouldnt be any "charge" to hover in the first place. The actual physics behind tailwind also force you to build duration or you barely move a stones throw. This change has entirely removed any build diversity that doesnt include above 150% duration. In addition, when you are using that high duration you are now "expected" to use, you can easily get pinned to walls by the incredibly strong momentum that now is also only on high duration.

They basically botched the scaling so that lower durations have neither distance nor momentum to keep going but higher durations (most average zephyr builds) have too much of both to be usable anywhere but plains.

Before the changes, I could actually get decent distance with a build set between 123% and 133% duration to build my stats elsewhere. Now, I cant use that build at all because the low end scaling on duration make my build move only a few meters, hardly usable at all. The new physics are just completely unballanced. You either go nowhere in the regular dash, or you get pinned to walls outside of the plains(most of the game). Also you can no longer quickly bounce upwards with the ground takeoff to go over obstacles or change which platform you are on and such like before. Her 1 is no longer usable ANYWHERE without being objectively worse than before.

This change has actually removed most of zephyrs quick, reactive mobility to replace it with only duration builds and being a bit fast in a strait line with the hazzard of pinning you to walls in the majority of the games content.

Edited by Kurayami_No_Yenshi
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1 hour ago, aerelm said:

Turbulence animation only "feels longer"

Not the case. It absolutely does last significantly longer than the previous animation. I'm accustomed to short-hopping while activating Turbulence, and the new animation causes the skill to trigger much later in that very practiced sequence than before. Tested in and out of combat, in tiles and tilesets with which I am very familiar with the rhythm of running.

 

1 hour ago, aerelm said:

The reason Jet Stream feels slower to you might be because Tail Wind actually seems to add some acceleration to the momentum now which lasts for a short while after landing, so it feels like Zephyr "slows down" to reach the Jet Stream speed after Tail Wind, whereas before the rework it used to speed up after landing (with anything more than ~140% strength) because Tail Wind didn't add any actual momentum.

Not the case. Again, my testing involved extensive runs through familiar tiles of various tilesets, none of which involved using Tail Wind as I was concerned solely with judging her ground speed. Presuming my incompetence will not work here, I'm afraid.

You are doing the same thing as several others in this thread, trying to suggest my reasoning is wrong with no more of a substantive argument than "you're not doing it right".

I am doing it right. I have tested. You are the one relying on a baseless supposition.

Edited by Cryssoberyl
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54 minutes ago, Kurayami_No_Yenshi said:

No, just no. NONE of the changes are good to tailwind. The hover entirely replaces the better, instant takeoff which you could already hover using aimglide and her passive. The actual physics behind tailwind also force you to build duration or you barely move a stones throw. This change has entirely removed any build diversity that doesnt include above 150% duration. In addition, when you are using that high duration you are now "expected" to use, you can easily get pinned to walls by the incredibly strong momentum that now is also only on high duration.

They basically botched the scaling so that lower durations have neither distance nor momentum to keep going but higher durations (most average zephyr builds) have too much of both to be usable anywhere but plains.

Before the changes, I could actually get decent distance with a build set between 123% and 133% duration to build my stats elsewhere. Now, I cant use that build at all because the low end scaling on duration make my build move only a few meters, hardly usable at all. The new physics are just completely unballanced. You either go nowhere in the regular dash, or you get pinned to walls outside of the plains(most of the game). Also you can no longer quickly bounce upwards with the ground takeoff to go over obstacles or change which platform you are on and such like before. Her 1 is no longer usable ANYWHERE without being objectively worse than before.

This change has actually removed most of zephyrs quick, reactive mobility to replace it with only duration builds and being a bit fast in a strait line with the hazzard of pinning you to walls in the majority of the games content.

Yes, the current hover mechanic is terrible because not only does it have a long charge time but you can't parkour out of the hover. Currently, only tailwind and melee breaks you out of it. If the max charge time gets reduced down to a second then it would probably be better than the old ground cast because you can now control the vertical distance.

You're right about high duration pinning you against obstacles but that problem existed with the old tailwind. It's a lot more noticeable now because high duration builds now travel about 2-3 times further than before

What are you talking about? The new tailwind with 133% duration travels further than the old tailwind with 232% duration. Current 133% travels ~30m excluding momentum, old 232% traveled about 25-30m with little to no momentum. (I used to spam tailwind before unlocking archwing launcher and OPerator spam dash).

Halved energy cost from midair cast isn't good?

Instant directional cast on the ground isn't good?

Maybe we have different play styles and builds because all of the tailwind improvements (except the first iteration of charge hover) are good to me.

Edited by MrJxt
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11 minutes ago, MrJxt said:

Yes, the current hover mechanic is terrible because not only does it have a long charge time but you can't parkour out of the hover. Currently, only tailwind and melee breaks you out of it. If the max charge time gets reduced down to a second then it would probably be better than the old ground cast because you can now control the vertical distance.

You're right about high duration pinning you against obstacles but that problem existed with the old tailwind. It's a lot more noticeable now because high duration builds now travel about 2-3 times further than before

What are you talking about? The new tailwind with 133% duration travels further than the old tailwind with 232% duration. Current 133% travels ~30m excluding momentum, old 232% traveled about 25-30m with little to no momentum. (I used to spam tailwind before unlocking archwing launcher and OPerator spam dash).

Halved energy cost from midair cast isn't good?

Instant directional cast on the ground isn't good?

Maybe we have different play styles and builds because all of the tailwind improvements (except the first iteration of charge hover) are good to me.

 

I'm pretty much feeling the same way. I feel like Tailwind is in the right direction, it just needs some adjustments to help with hover and being pinned to walls. 

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It's not a disaster. Even though it doesn't live up to people's expectations, it's still an improvement over all.

Indeed, her hovering is not impressive. You can't move freely while hovering(it's more like suspended in the air). It takes too long to charge and has a bug currently.

But everything else is improved.

-Tailwind feels more awesome on PoE but still sucks at narrow tileset due to lack of control over travel distance and maneuverability.

-Airburst is a functional ability. But 50 energy cost is a bit high consider what it does and the projectile speed is slow.

-Turbulence got a cool casting animation but the cast time seems to have been increased?

-Tornado is much better and easier to use than it used to be. Every changes it got is great.

If you like Zephyr before the rework, you'll like her a little more. If you didn't, nothing is going to change

Edited by yles9056
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3 hours ago, GrimMonsoon said:

Alright, let me explain why I believe this is wrong:

tailwind is now so much more controllable than what it used to be. I can zip around much more than I used to be able to.

You need to get out of the plains to see what they speak of...

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11 minutes ago, yles9056 said:

-Tailwind feels more awesome on PoE but still sucks at narrow tileset due to lack of control over travel distance and maneuverability.

I've suggested this a few times now, but would anybody be interested in Tailwind stopping if Zephyr ran into a surface, causing a Divebomb AoE? I honestly think it's perfect to solve this issue. It keeps Tailwind from pinning Zephyr to a wall on indoor tiles, has cc and offensive capabilities, and it'd still get to stay as the amazing Plains-traversing skill it's become. 

Edited by EchoesOfRain
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Tailwind in general feels roughly the same as it used to be. But the launch I used all the time for an instant predictable jump is gone. I liked it because I knew exactly what that launch was going to do to me. If I wanted to just straight dash, all it took was a tiny hop and I was set.

Instead the launch has been replaced by two poorly implemented aspects that kill my flow. I do not consider this patch an upgrade. The rest of it, I can handle, I never expected [DE] to leave her intact. But this 'update' feels utterly tone-deaf compared to what I actually expected after literal years of conversation about everything that was done right and everything that could be done better.

My impression right now is 'This is the best that could be done? Really?'

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1 hour ago, Cryssoberyl said:

You are doing the same thing as several others in this thread, trying to suggest my reasoning is wrong with no more of a substantive argument than "you're not doing it right".

Not really.

If you go through my post again, you'll see I pointed out that I was initially left with the same impression as you, that it "felt" longer, but after doing a rather simple, quick and straight forward side-by-side comparison (that you can easily do to see for yourself) :

2 hours ago, aerelm said:

looked up some random pre-rework gameplay videos and compared it to what we have ingame

It turned out that although there's a slight difference in timing of the animation and the cast, it's in fact so small that it's easily negligible and is in no way the severe nerf your post makes it out to be.

That said, my post was in no way supposed to be a jab at you. It's just discussing the rework. I'd love to see this rework get some much-needed polish, just as much as you or anyone else who plays Zephyr regularly. 

Edited by aerelm
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Tell me what you guys think about this: Scrap the hover, lets get rid of it because it's essentially the passive. Charge stays because we can actually give it a genuine use here. Instead of charging up to hover in the air like a useless mong, we use that charge to instead upon full charge we get ourselves a fully controlled flight mode for her. Keep tailwind as is for quick presses(distance wise, still need to be able to aim it during cast) to give us that quick burst of speed, but also allow for the use of the charge to gain something worthwhile.

This would tie her augment for the ability in a much more meaningful way as you'd be able to have almost infinitely better control over her during her course of flight in both modes. This also eliminates the issue of tight corridors. Now as for divebomb, allow for that to be activated as a collision function instead of a downward aim function. Meaning hitting a hard surface or an enemy triggers divebombs effect in the direction you're traveling. As for whether or not this cancels the forward momentum from the burst or actual flight, I'm not sure, but for now what are your guys thoughts?

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I agree that the rework isn't going to win any hearts here.

Here's what I've got so far:

Tail Wind: Clunky, but manageable for the zipping around bit (got used to it chain dashing in operator mode). Charge up time is too long. Also, "hang time" isn't indicated in the abilities pane so I have no idea if I modded her correctly or if it even is affected by anything. Zephyr is too close to the center and I can't aim properly when hovering. Hover makes Aviator mod viable for her.

Fixes: Needs another mechanic that allows you to divebomb ANYWHERE. Reduce charge time. Let us know how long our hang time will be, AND don't cancel hover after we move unless we dive bomb. Move Zephyr away from the crosshair when hovering.

Sonic bo- Air Burst: My main problem here is how it spawns the wave and seems to snag on all the geometry. >_< by itself it doesn't seem to do much. I am amused with the cast animation though. as a CC power/buff it's... so-so.

Fixes: change the spawn point of the wave so it doesn't get snagged everywhere. I feel this problem is similar to how bows need a bit more movement before they shoot right if you're just stationary.

Turbulence: seems cool, needs faster casting. Needs a DR% indicator in ability pane even if it doesn't get affected by any mods.

Fix: faster cast, longer duration?

Tornadoes: just as hard to control and they're kinda annoying still. Is initial cast no element or linked to energy color?

Suggestion: Allow a zephyr grab the tornado and use it as a rotating shield (it won't block bullets because that's a turbulence ability). charge cast 4 to spawn tornadoes as normal, running into a tornado will allow you to grab it. tap 4 to release the tornadoes similar to how the teralyst ground slam works (spiral pattern) or something like that. Charge mechanic allows you to spawn 1, 2, or 3.

The kit has gotten a bit better but it still isn't something that will me me go "I want something different today, I'll use zephyr!"

Edited by UncaIroh
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Spoiler

Tailwind:

Tailwind's short-press I think should basically work the same way it does now.

To make Tailwind a lot more interesting, it should be given a long-press.

Long-pressing Tailwind will toggle it on and cause you to constantly be propelled forward, we'll call this flight mode (allowing you to steer and fly around by just pointing yourself in whatever direction you want to go). To make it more responsive when you long-press, it could propel you forward as soon as you press the button as it would with a short press, but then keep you moving as it's toggled on if you held it down for a long press (you wouldn't have to continue to hold it down after it's toggled on). While in flight mode you would deal Tailwind's damage to any enemies you came into contact/range of. 

If you press 1 again while this mode is active, you will slow down and stop, hovering in mid-air (tailwind still toggled on, but now in 'hover mode'). While hovering you can use your weapons freely. If you long-press tailwind while standing on the ground (short-press would still send you flying straight up), you will fly straight up and enter hover mode automatically. Short-pressing 1 while in hover mode will switch you back over to flight mode. Long-pressing 1 again while flying/hovering will end the ability.

To make it even more fun, I think they should add some additional controls while in flight mode. Since we can't use our weapon while flying (only while hovering), we can re-purpose the weapon control keys while in flight mode. For example, we could steal some ideas from Star Fox and do something like:

Pressing alt-fire while in flight mode will cause you to do a U-turn (same as in Star Fox where you fly up into a quick 180 and turn over).

Pressing left click/primary fire will tilt left, right click/zoom key will tilt right. While you will be able to turn to some degree normally in flight mode, these keys can let you turn more sharply.

You could even add barrel roll mechanics if she double clicks left/right click quickly. Since her 3 already deflects projectiles, the barrel roll could make her briefly immune to all damage (her 3 doesn't protect her from things like explosions). It could also interact with her 3 if it's active and give a powerful multiplier to any projectiles deflected while rolling.

 

Pressing dive bomb while in hover or flight mode would end it as expected and cause her to do a dive bomb.

I think this should have a lower base cost with something like 5 energy per second drain baseline while in flight/hover mode (again, not disabling any form of energy gain but just countering it), affected by duration and efficiency. This would cancel out zenurik regen baseline without investing into duration/efficiency, but allow you to choose between building for long sustain vs. more damage and more range.

In order to make the stat decision more difficult and have strength and range have a more meaningful impact, I think tailwind damage should be modified by melee mods in the same way that Gara's 1 is. That way a combination of power strength and decent melee mods will allow Tailwind to scale to decent levels and be a viable damage dealing ability (imagine flying through a group of enemies then hitting alt fire to U - turn and fly back through them). Range would increase Tailwinds radius as it does now, allowing it to hit more enemies.

The above in spoiler tags was my original idea for Tailwind. I just wanted to post it since I actually suggested a hover mechanic as part of it, but it worked considerably differently than this super slow charge + short duration thing and the main idea was to give Tailwind a long-press that essentially allowed her to fly continuously and give it several additional controls. I even mention having a long-press automatically go up into hover mode, but a long-press to me isn't a long charge. It just means you don't press and instantly release. A long-press should activate in less than a second. Think Gara's 1 which has both a normal and long-press cast. If Tailwind is going to have a hover mode, it should be on a long-press not an obnoxiously long charge. 

Since we're not likely to see major re-works or re-designs I have a few minor suggestions to improve Zephyr from her current state:

1. Trigger a Divebomb like effect when colliding with any surface when using her 1, including a wall. That way if you tailwind on indoor maps and collide with a wall it just triggers a divebomb against the wall. This way when you're using a Tailwind that can go a long distance and hit a wall, you potentially get some use out of it damage wise and get out of it faster. 

2. Make Tornadoes more reliable. These things just seem pathetic in testing. They don't hold onto mobs for long, so the damage the mobs in the Tornado effect wasn't as impressive as it sounded when originally advertised. 

I do also think my idea for changing her 3 for convenience purposes would have been nice:

Spoiler

Turbulence:

I think this ability should function basically as it does now, but be converted into a toggle with no up-front cost. Instead it would have an energy drain mechanic (that, again, doesn't disable any form of energy regen or gain). 

I would also make it so that this no longer scales with range in terms of the size of the shield around herself so that negative range no longer completely negates the ability. In order to make the Jet Stream augment more useful as a group buff, it should either give the buff in affinity range for as long as Turbulence is toggled on, or have a much larger base radius, independent of the bubble around Zephyr, modified by power range.

The idea would be that you could have a 3 that works the same and actually costs an identical amount of energy per time the shield is active. By having the drain per second scale with efficiency and duration in a way that would make the cost per time the shield was active identical to the current duration form. It would just be far more convienient as a toggle so you didn't have to constantly look down into the corner at a timer or wait for the animation to end to re-cast it. It also would not disable any form of energy regeneration or gain the way some major channeled abilities do. Bare minimum, the negative range rendering her 3 non functional or unreliable needs to be changed. I tested it in the Sim. It's still a problem. 

I really don't know what to say about her new 2. It seems like a rushed ability. I've seen people suggest similar things before and always thought they were some of the less interesting of all the available Zephyr suggestions. I assume you only went with it because it was easier/faster to implement. Its only useful purpose potentially is with tornadoes, but those are unreliable and clunky still. Perhaps make larger Tornadoes hold onto enemies for a lot longer or indefinitely at max size? That would make her 4 better and I guess give some purpose to this random new ability that doesn't otherwise feel useful. 

Edited by Borg1611
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vor 5 Stunden schrieb Cryssoberyl:

I have played Zephyr for hundreds of hours in all content. Forgive me if I assume that I in fact do "know how to use her".

Not that i can add anything prodictive since that rework has yet to come to consoles but what i can say is that this exact mindset disqualifies people from giving unbiased feedback...You've said it yourself, you had high exceptations and got used to what it was, which was somewhat of a completely unplayable state, only to be faced with something that did not only not meet your exceptations but also doesn't play as it used to.

Can you honestly say that those hundrets of hours playing a frame that played completely different did anything for you? Can you say that it's useless only because it didn't meet your exceptations? Have you adapted your builds? Since the prior max strength "meta" seems to be somewhat unproductive when faced with prolonged aerial movement and definitly sounds like something that would make you get stuck in the envirement... Wasn't range pointless beyond for what was needet for Turbulence? Min range/max duration builds that aim at min/maxing turbulence definitly sound like they may leave you with little to no results on her tornado and Air Burst related interactions..

Is something that sounds like it would give you better Cc, mobility and damage on range focused builds really as bad as you want to make people believe it is?

Edited by (PS4)CoolD2108
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1 hour ago, Borg1611 said:

1. Trigger a Divebomb like effect when colliding with any surface when using her 1, including a wall. That way if you tailwind on indoor maps and collide with a wall it just triggers a divebomb against the wall. This way when you're using a Tailwind that can go a long distance and hit a wall, you potentially get some use out of it damage wise and get out of it faster. 

Idk if people are too upset and are just calling for a revert, or what, but nobody seems to be reacting much to feedback on fixing what we now have. I've suggested this as well, multiple times, and nobody will even discuss it. It not only makes improvements to what we have, but it could pave way to some potential damage builds, if DE were to bump up the damage. 

 

Edited by EchoesOfRain
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35 minutes ago, (PS4)CoolD2108 said:

Is something that sounds like it would give you better Cc, mobility and damage on range focused builds really as bad as you want to make people believe it is?

I find the 'better cc' questionable. That could be vastly improved by speeding up the projectile, but it doesn't change my disapointment in them trying to hide divebomb in a difficult to find spot so they can pretend they did something with it... when they actually didn't.

Her Dive-bomb was implemented in such a way as to forever under perform and I never saw one change to try and remedy this problem. Not one, until now. They said screw it and tucked it under a rock so we didn't have to look at it. But we melee slam all the time, so clearly the function is useful. Was there really no way dive-bomb could have been improved in its own way rather than landing with a 'thump and a hey i'm here don't hit me"? Probably, guess we'll never know!

I wholeheartedly disagree with the 'improved mobility part. The changes from tailwind are what bother me the most. The stop and charge to use it? Why? The hover in mid-air? really? Aim-glide did the same thing, but was safer and I'd argue more intuitive. Zephyr is a gust of wind, not a gas balloon anchored down in four directions so it can't move. Surely there must have been much better ways to do this.

Ultimately Zephyrs ult is annoying and unreliable. I don't feel like this has substantially changed. It's still loud to be around and messes with vision and wanders all around the battlefield like a pack of lost children.

If this is the tack they are taking, I fully expect Zephyr to reach absolutely no greater heights than she has already achieved. I can't see her as being more than a distraction for most new players, and yet be put down by disappointed veterans like myself. Even if she manages to get higher than last or second to last place, I question how much more enjoyment I can get out of what's been my favorite frame.

@(PS4)CoolD2108

Unbiased opinions is what you're worried about? How is it not valuable to have the opinions of fully invested and highly passionate players. And I wonder how much of the conversation you've actually read and understood. The Build meta hasn't so much changed as it has apparently solidified. It was max duration that was meta in order to better use her turbulence. Now it's even more powerfully encouraged.

You say us not having our expectations met is too bad? What kind of statement is that? This is a game that we play because we love it an enjoy it. We have sunk hundreds of hours and many of us have spent far more here than we have in just about any game we've played. Having our expectations missed or betrayed isn't something you shrug off. It's a legitimate problem. Unbiased feedback isn't the problem here. Alienating these players who passionately care about the issue is.

Edited by Caelward
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