Idea to make bladestorm more useable

[DarthZ]

To me, Warframe has always been robot ninjas vs space marines, and Ash has been the stereotypically obvious embodiment of that since his inception.

The top of this was bladestorm. In one ability you could turn the fight into a wonderfully choreographed scene of ninjas wiping out an entire army, ending with Ash on a hill overlooking the recent carnage with nonchalantly crossed arms.

Then they added marking and bladestorm became a clunky mess of where's waldo in the middle of combat.

 

I get it at least, press one button and instantly target a large number of enemies and gain invulnerability for nearly a minute.

But I feel we can take at least one or two steps back towards that without crossing that proverbial line.

 

First off, DE has happily provided an option for those who hated the 'cutscene' aspect of bladestorm, however I feel it would work better if you automatically joined in bladestorm like before, but casting teleport during the animation would end your antics early and send you back to the bladestorm starting position.

This accomplishes two things. One, it keeps bladestorms 'invulnerability period' the same length, the opt in teleport buff was a secret nerf to this aspect of bladestorm because it requires more time to start the 'cutscene' which is where the invulnerability comes from. Bladestorm, if nothing else, is a panic button to give you a chance to become invulnerable, regain shields, and even take advantage of Vacuum over a large area of the field and the extra couple seconds added with the change could mean death where seasoned Ash players would be counting on that.

Two, it allows the use of fatal teleport during bladestorm on a target within the bladestorm (Like a boss or heavy enemy who needs more than the bladestorm damage). As of now it's impossible to do this. Making teleport an opt out instead of an opt in means you can use it to cancel then rejoin the fight without worrying about fatal teleports sending you into bladestorm.

 

Second off, bladestorm currently suffers from use speed, enemy coverage, and energy usage. On top of that, anything you do to alleviate one of these will inversely affect another. For example, attempting to use the ability faster will definitely lower the amount of enemies hit while taking time to aim and find the stragglers will up the time and energy spent. And I believe I have a solution that can at least remove one of these and lower the compounding affect mentioned.

Make bladestorm an AOE target on your crosshair, where holding the button will increases the range of the AOE. A minimum range where all targets within are instantly marked (Even those with line of sight blocked) can make for fast usage while not seriously cramping total enemies hit. A flat cost based on size of AOE rather than number of enemies can help with energy usage. And getting full, room clearing attacks, will still take a heavy wind-up so the ability is still balanced in the time spent vs clear area, without the annoying and frustrating game of duck hunt.

Also we can still keep the damage in check with the current 3 mark system, but have the marks be a function of how long an enemy spends in the AOE, allowing you to focus on heavies even if they take cover and still get your 3 marks.

 

I feel like this will make the ability more like it used to be, when it was great and people's only complaint was being in a cutscene, but remove that complaint without adversely affecting the ability's current usability. Of course both minimum and maximum range should be modable. Charge speed could be an inverse factor of duration (I.E. Lower duration means faster charge). Currently it seems focusing on a max damage bladestorm build ends up forgoing a decent amount of duration, but since smoke screen combined with fatal teleport is far more useful you need that duration for smoke screen, therefore if we make bladestorm viable then the loss of duration found in building it should benefit the skill to compensate the loss of smoke screen. (Let fast, consistent bladestorms be your survivability instead of smoke screen). Secretly, this also means modding out a max duration smoke screen means your bladestorm charging will be much slower, so using smoke screens to get easy full charges won't be as much of an option.

 

 

Just my idea. Bladestorm has always been my favorite ability in game, and I'm probably one of few who enjoys the massive spectacle of the 'cutscene.' In fact, my enjoyment of bladestorm has dang near permanently solidified Ash as my favorite frame, but sadly it's gimped usefulness means I've barely touched Ash in so long...even so my fond memory of the skill still leads me to tell people Ash is my favorite frame despite how little I've used him recently.

Edited February 19, 2018 by DarthZ

[DarthZ]

Edited for better organization and more description of idea, originally wrote this on mobile so I figured it'd be better to redo some of it.

[Dragazer]

On 14/02/2018 at 6:48 AM, DarthZ said:

Make bladestorm an AOE target on your crosshair, where holding the button will increases the range of the AOE. A minimum range where all targets within are instantly marked (Even those with line of sight blocked) can make for fast usage while not seriously cramping total enemies hit. A flat cost based on size of AOE rather than number of enemies can help with energy usage. And getting full, room clearing attacks, will still take a heavy wind-up so the ability is still balanced in the time spent vs clear area, without the annoying and frustrating game of duck hunt.. .

Something like Mesa Peacemaker reticle would be nice, you get a big AoE marking crosshair which shrinks as you mark more enemies. Perhaps the smaller the reticle, the more damage enemies take with each new mark. Otherwise the size can just remain the same althroughout as well. Another thing I'd like to see is the ability to apply all 3 marks on enemies right away, having to sweep over enemies 3 times is just clunky and pointlessly time consuming. Energy cost will be fine because BS refunds unused marks on targets killed early.

[DarthZ]

11 minutes ago, Dragazer said:

Something like Mesa Peacemaker reticle would be nice, you get a big AoE marking crosshair which shrinks as you mark more enemies. Perhaps the smaller the reticle, the more damage enemies take with each new mark. Otherwise the size can just remain the same althroughout as well. Another thing I'd like to see is the ability to apply all 3 marks on enemies right away, having to sweep over enemies 3 times is just clunky and pointlessly time consuming. Energy cost will be fine because BS refunds unused marks on targets killed early.

I was thinking most like Hydroid, where he drops the kraken right on his crosshair, but he can charge it for a few seconds to increase the radius, number of tentacles, and therefore enemies hit.

 

I think a cool visual effect would be ash dropping smoke bombs on the area, 1-5 based on the size of the AOE charged just for the effect of ninjas appearing within the smoke.

[(PSN)Ozymandias-13-]

On 2/14/2018 at 6:48 AM, DarthZ said:

when it was great and people's only complaint was being in a cutscene

Well, people's biggest complaint wasn't actually about the cutscene, that was the next biggest. The biggest complaint was that, with only occasional input, it was able to 'mark' 18 enemies, give long periods of invulnerability and deal the highest single target damage in the damage all at once, while actually making the 'marked' targets unkillable by anyone else on the team. It was spam-storm, worse than Ember's WoF. It needed to be changed in some way to address all of those issues. As an Ash main, i hated it in that state. 

In it's current state, i think it's closer to 'perfect' than it's ever been while addressing of the exploitable mechanics and balancing the amount of input required from the player to deal those massive amounts of finisher damage. It only needs QoL adjustments now.

4 hours ago, Dragazer said:

Something like Mesa Peacemaker reticle would be nice,

 

4 hours ago, DarthZ said:

charge it for a few seconds

I think a combination of these two ideas would be amazing. 

Give an area reticle to mark targets targets it passes over just once, and holding to charge it increases the number of marks (with appropriate energy cost) on all currently marked targets. That way you'd have a nice energy and gameplay balance for speed, cost, and damage. You're deciding between marking a lot of targets with a quick swoop or marking a few tougher targets and holding the charge to increase the number of marks they all have instantly, up to max.