Outdated Frames -Excalibur a Gud Boi

[Hrodgrim]

This is not a thread for complaining or flinging our feces at each other, but instead to consider which frames need a bit of a kick in the pants. These may be old frames, or simply frames with underwhelming or overshadowed traits or powers. We should discuss here how these frames should be improved.

We'll start with the most glaring offender: Loki.

Loki:

Spoiler

Loki is a frame that is heavily overshadowed by several other frames, everyone steps all over Loki's toes. I understand that he's meant to be the technical frame, the one that you need to use smartly to get the full effect from, but this has fallen to the wayside in the wake of some of the updates in the past few years. Let's examine his powers one by one and see exactly what's causing his viability to falter.

Decoy: Decoy seems somewhat useful at a glance, being able to point the enemies away from you and your team, but as the difficulty of the mission rises, the usefulness of this power wanes at an alarming pace. To begin with, the decoy is only as durable as Loki himself, which is "not very". Eventually (or even right at the start in many cases) enemies will just immediately destroy the decoy upon sight. This saves your team from like one or two shots. What's one or two shots in a horde of grunts spraying walls of bullets at you? One might also consider using Decoy as a target to Switch Teleport with, another power with limited utility, and an altogether different animal to tackle. Before we pose a solution, let's take a look at Switch Teleport.

Switch Teleport: This power, as previously mentioned, doesn't have the greatest utility. I mainly see it used merely to travel somewhere, a trait overshadowed entirely by Nova (and even Ash to a degree), and dampened as of the inclusion of Parkour 2.0 (best update so far). Switching with an enemy has no real viability in most cases; switching with an enemy just puts you in the midst of his friends who will mercilessly destroy you if you're not invisible.

To improve these two powers, I would lump them both into a single power, but only after patching them up.

Decoy's decoy is too fragile to be of any real use. This is an easy remedy, merely let the decoy absorb a flat amount of hits, a generous amount one would hope, this could be done by forcing the decoy to take 1 damage per hit, and giving it any multiple of 1 for its health. If power strength AND duration contributed to this amount of hits, the decoy would have no need of a timer, and would expire only after taking a certain amount of hits. This would let the decoy scale into any difficulty and always bring utility to the team. 

Switch Teleport would be included into this new power, but it would need a significant bump as well. There are a number of ways to make Switch Teleport viable, one of these effects is already in game, featured as a band-aid mod in the form of Safeguard Switch, a mod that causes Loki's target to become invulnerable for a short period after teleporting. It would be as simple as repurposing this already extant effect. Another way to address this issue is to cause Switch Teleport to stun, knock down, or otherwise control enemies in the vicinity upon arrival. As it currently stands, Switch Teleport is Dead On Arrival: The Power.

With these two powers lumped together into a single power (you could simply use the whole "hold to cast one, tap to cast the other" trick), this opens a new avenue for Loki in the form of an altogether new power. Ideally it'd be something that has synergy with the rest of his kit. We'll get into the meat of this later.

Invisibility: Arguably, this was what defined Loki up until Ivara came along and did it better. Invisibility makes Loki a real contender for being the team's heavy hitter. Stealth in this game causes melee to deal up to 6x damage to unaware enemies, and this puts Loki squarely in the melee fighter category. Being primarily melee-focused is just fine, especially with Loki's neat trick of being able to force enemies to fight with melee only, but, as previously stated, other frames simply do it better. I would propose giving Loki some sort of damage shield, or some other measure of defense while cloaked, to further emphasize his melee orientation, greatly improve his survivability, and set his own stealth skill apart from other frames'. Overall, Invisibility is one of Loki's better powers, but is still no reason to choose him over another frame that can do everything he can and more.

As you previously read, I believe Invisibility should be pushed closer toward a melee utility, be it a damage shield, or some sort of debuff for enemies within a certain distance, etc. This would provide a really natural and un-forced synergy (Oberon) between his disarm ability, invisibility, and his great speed. One route would be to do to Invisibility what I stated about Decoy above, to give Loki a flat amount of hits to simply ignore while under the effects of invisibility. Enemies already don't target him while he's cloaked and this would let him shrug off the few hits he might sustain anyway. This would allow for it to be used as a getaway power or to be used more offensively, ignoring hits as you approach a group of enemies. 

Radial Disarm: This power is what currently sets Loki apart from most other frames, however a dedicated Nyx can do this almost as effectively with the right setup. Radial Disarm, in all honesty, doesn't need much, if anything, to beef it up. It does its job pretty well. I would touch it up with some minor things though, such a guaranteed knockdown for close-by enemies or some i-frames while casting (something that Volt could benefit from as well).

New Power: I noted earlier that Decoy and Switch Teleport could be merged into a single power, opening a space for a new power. This new power, in consideration of the previously proposed changes to Decoy and Invisibility, would act as an AoE debuff to enemy accuracy, to further supplement the survivability of Loki and his decoy. Essentially this ability would cause enemies to simply fail to hit the target at all, not limited to just Loki or his decoy. As the new Decoy and Invisibility would have an amount of hits they could absorb, not taking hits from time to time would indirectly increase the strength of these two powers, providing another instance of synergy between Loki's powers. This is not outside of the classical powers of the Norse god, a wielder of illusion and trickery.

 

Excalibur:

Spoiler

Excalibur is, for the most part, a really good frame. Indeed, I have more hours spent on Excalibur than any other, more than double second place. Even though he's a great frame, he has two powers that don't see much use.

Slash Dash: Really, the only problem here is the iffy targeting. Originally, Slash Dash was quite literally a straight dash toward the cursor, moving across the ground. This dash gave Excalibur some i-frames as he careened through enemies and hallways, and had a pretty decent chunk of damage associated with it. Currently Slash Dash has far superior damage, but will seldom hit more than one or two foes. All I would like to see here is some way to improve the targeting or to work it similarly to Zephyr's first power, just dashing in a straight line.

Radial Blind: This power is pretty much fine. There isn't much that could be done to improve it without making it too good.

Radial Javelin: This power exemplifies the phrase "how the mighty have fallen", though not because it has been made any worse, but because of how irrelevant its utility has become. This power began as an omnidirectional spray of javelins outward from Excalibur. They were treated as projectiles and even synergized with Mag's Bullet Attractor. Sometime later, Radial Javelin was changed to summon javelins at nearby enemies to impale them with, even behind cover, very similarly to what we currently have. This ability to attack through walls was why it was, for a time, considered the meta (Memeing Strike was a mistake). Radial Javelin was later changed to require enemies or Excalibur to make line of sight to Excalibur or the foe respectively, further encouraging moving around rather than standing in one spot spamming the key. As of typing this, Radial Javelin's only real utility is that it deals damage in a fairly large area,but this damage falls off quickly. The only remaining use it has is that it stuns enemies for a bit as they writhe in pain, another effect overshadowed by Radial Blind. To fix this one, I'd just change it entirely. Perhaps some coruscating light from the heavens to come down and debuff the enemies in some way? As it stands, Excalibur has no need for any extra damage capability, and instead would do better to have some extra utility.

Exalted Blade: Oh precious Egg Blade. This power has a real problem. It's meant to be a melee weapon, but it constantly flings out shockwaves, making it the best ranged weapon in the game. Knowing that there's a melee rework soon, perhaps this power will get another looksee. What I propose is to remove the shockwaves from all standard attacks, and instead implement them on the charge attacks. You could soup up the blade's base range when swung, and increase the shockwave's raw power (due to it being a charge attack, a time investment). This would turn it into an actual melee weapon and not the best gun in the game. Also get rid of the slide attack blind. It looks really dumb, and a high-range horizontal cut would be a lot more useful. If you really want to keep the blind gimmick, just cut the standard blind's cast time while Egg Blade is currently active.

Regarding Egg Blade's blind: This little trait of Exalted Blade is just a parasite on the power. It doesn't have any of Radial Blind's associated perks, only the blind itself. If you want to waste energy, just use Radial Blind (or Radial Javelin since it does absolutely nothing :^) ).

Ash:

Spoiler

Ash is a very fun frame to play, especially the Prime version. He's fast, tough, and good at fighting. The only issue is that fighting is all he's good at. Outside of Smoke Bomb (and especially its augment) and just beating up enemies, Ash brings very little utility to his team. Eventually all that damage will begin to fall off!

Shuriken: This power is largely what makes Ash so fun for me. It's a very quick attack that homes in on and pierces through enemies. It innately inflicts a pretty stout bleed and overall has decent enough damage to warrant its use. Unless you're using the augment, this power serves no real use to your team outside of cleaning up weakened enemies. To fix this, I'd just add the augment's effect to the base power and create an all new augment for it. Perhaps something fun like causing Shuriken to throw even more projectiles at the cost of some percent of their damage. Someone in another thread noted that Shuriken could benefit from a combo thing much like Rhino's charge and Atlas' punching power, with each level of the combo adding more projectiles thrown.

Smoke Bomb: While smoke bomb is a pretty good power, I'd like to see an entirely separate stealth mechanic for Ash. Essentially, I'd like to see Smoke Bomb become a maintained area of effect around Ash that makes him (and allies close by) hard to see at a distance. This effect could also just be made into an augment. To elaborate further, the further away Ash is from the enemy, the "smaller" he becomes to that enemy, making it easier to hide in plain sight. Ideally, this "detection ring" would change in size depending on Ash's actions, such as sprinting would make him easier to notice, and lying still would make him very hard to notice. This could also have another effect tied to it, decreasing enemy accuracy versus these "smaller" targets based on how far away they are. This sort of effect would complement the suggestion below for Blade Storm.

Teleport: The first thing I'd do to Teleport, given the above suggestion for Smoke Bomb, is to make Ash totally invisible on teleporting for some seconds as long as his stealth power is active. Furthermore, it'd be neat to be able to teleport to marked enemies (before activating the attack phase) through walls.

Blade Storm: Blade Storm is a different power. Since its rework, it's become quite fun to use as a means to quietly attack an enemy from hiding without having to give up your footing. The only thing I'd do to Blade Storm is to allow it to show marked enemies through walls and on the minimap. Allies would see these effects too. This would give it another layer of utility when doing sneaky things, essentially tracking foes you've already seen. Perhaps a way to cancel the clones attacking would also be needed for such a thing, to prevent alarming any unaware foes. I've noticed several players complaining about how Blade Storm is somewhat tedious to mark enemies with; a valid complaint, but nothing gamebreaking. This could be fixed by having the reticle larger, targeting a larger area around the point which is being aimed at. 

Chroma:

Spoiler

Chroma, while a strong frame, is somewhat tedious to play. All of his issues stem from inefficient power management, be it clunky usage, underwhelming effects, or significant energy cost. On a related note, Chroma has essentially no passive; you choose which color Chroma you want and he gains no real benefits outside of that. Let's figure out how we can improve him.

Passive: Chroma is an energy pig, and desperately needs a proper passive. One that would fix most of his problems is to simply give him some method of regenerating energy. I would propose that he gain some minor amount of energy while he's near any enemies afflicted by status conditions. 

Spectral Scream: Considering the improvements made to this power in particular, I feel it's in a pretty decent spot, though it goes largely unused. It could use a damage boost, even considering it gets a multiplier from Fury, and perhaps could have an absolute minimum range of 10 meters (as opposed to the ~7 meters most players run). Combined with the proposed passive, it could become a method of generating energy if you're fighting in a big crowd. This power's augment may need a bit of a kick in the pants, easily done by simply increasing the maximum duration that damage is stored.

Elemental Ward: Depending on your build, this power is either very helpful or very redundant. Electric and toxic Chroma don't see much use since their Elemental Ward isn't quite as useful as fire and ice. These two (electric and toxic) wards are focused a little more on dealing damage to nearby enemies, something Chroma doesn't exactly need help doing. Their chip damage pales in comparison to the up front pain that Chroma's Fury effect can cause. One thing that would put electric Chroma back into popularity is to cause the ward to siphon energy from nearby enemies via some static cloud. On the flipside, toxic Chroma could leech life from nearby enemies via his flat 5% damage thing. This would cause the heal to scale with enemy difficulty and set it apart from fire Chroma's up front health boost by allowing it to become a passive (and shared) heal effect. This power's augment should be included in the base power. There's so much more you could do with a periodic aura buff, such as forcing each element to have its own unique debuff to nearby enemies. Fire ward could have an effect like Accelerant, ice ward could force cold procs to freeze enemies solid, electric ward could proc radiation or somesuch, and toxic ward could erode enemy armor. This would provide a strong incentive to actually use Chroma's first power.

Vex Armor: This power was, somewhat recently, nerfed. We were told it would be a nerf to Fury's damage output (which is now lesser than Rhino's roar and requires greater risk), but also received a nerf to his survivability (also less than Rhino's now). This power requires Chroma to receive damage to gain its effects. If the enemies can just kill you in one shot, then you're forced to gain these bonuses via self inflicted damage. This power essentially requires a particular type of weapon to properly use in more difficult content. As for the damage scaling, it simply needs some minor adjustment, flatten out the ratio of power strength versus damage bonus gained. The armor bonus needs something else. To fix Vex Armor it should have an additional layer of defense. In a similar vein to Nidus, merely giving Vex Armor the ability to simply ignore some percentage of damage will return his durability back to where it was and should be. On a somewhat related note, this power's augment is nigh useless; a very short range AoE burst of negligible utility that only seems to proc once every ten seconds or so. 

Effigy: The only problem with this power is its outrageous power cost. Tone it down for the love of all that is good and pure. I've seen several people mention that the augment should just be innate to the power, a point I find I agree with as the augment doesn't really add much at all to the power. If I were to create an all new augment for it, I'd give the effigy some other means of harassing enemies, perhaps giving it some sort of long-range fireball type deal in a similar vein to Spectral Scream's augment, trading off area damage for stronger single target attacks.

 

Limbo:

Spoiler

Limbo, overall, is in a pretty decent spot, though he's a real pain to effectively use. Most folk complain about him without aim, but here I will list exactly what's going on with him.

Banish: This power just needs to be able to push and pull enemies into the two planes that Limbo walks. It originally could do both and there's no really good reason it shouldn't now. Allowing Banish to do this would greatly ease the use of the power and allow Banish to be used more as an offensive power than pure utility. Another thing Banish could benefit from is leaving one of the little rift tears wherever you aim it, in case nearby allies want to jump into the rift afterward. This also helps alleviate being unable to attack banished enemies without using powers since you'd be able to go into the rift on your own.

Stasis: This power simply should not affect allied projectiles. As it currently stands, unless you waste a ton of ammo, or bring certain weapons, a particularly mean Limbo can force the whole ordeal into a melee battle. Perhaps the allied projectiles wouldn't be stopped, but their damages can be postponed much like Nyx's thrall or Nidus' host.

Rift Surge: Does this power actually do anything? You can use it to banish enemies in an area, but you can already do that anyway. Give this power some effect of its own! Before Limbo's rework I proposed turning this into an attack, where Limbo surges the rift with energy, causing damage to, and debuffing/controlling/etc. anything in the rift. I'm proposing again that this power be turned into an attack. Combined with Limbo's ability to regain energy by defeating enemies that are rifted, this could also create a sort of feedback if it kills enemies, potentially refunding the power entirely.

 

Nezha:

Spoiler

Nezha is one of my favorite frames, possibly third place behind Nidus. He's fast, fun, and quite outdated!

Fire Walker: This power is damn near perfect. It boosts Nezha's already great speed and leaves behind a trail that purges status effects and locks enemies down. The augment for this power puts it over the edge, allowing Nezha to store all the damage dealt by his flames and dish it out all in one big hit later. This power could use a wider trail of fire but should mostly just be left alone.

Blazing Chakram: This power is damn near unused, though the augment certainly helps it a bit. This power is unwieldy due to the way it bounces all over the place, generally only hitting one target unless equipped with the augment. Given the chakram's travel time and its propensity to only hit a select few targets this power really struggles to bring much utility to the team. Blazing Chakram really just needs the augment to be built into the base power. A new augment for this power, then, could allow it to bounce around between enemies, sort of an automatic ricochet effect, or perhaps reverse its role with Fire Walker by allowing the chakram to spread fire too.  As for the heal effect on Blazing Chakram, it really needs a clearly visible way to mark enemies that have been primed for releasing the healing burst. This could be as simple as a small ring hovering above the enemy's head. Perhaps the heal effect on this power could also restore Nezha's Warding Halo.

Warding Halo: This power is in a pretty decent spot, though its slash ring could use a larger base range. Perhaps Blazing Chakram's heal should replenish some amount of Warding Halo's durability.

Divine Spears: This power alone is pretty decent, but doesn't exactly compliment the other powers at all. It sometimes hoists enemies out of the range of Fire Walker and has absolutely nothing to do with Blazing Chakram. There's not much needed to "fix" it, though it could stand some means of meshing with Nezha's other powers. Perhaps Nezha's Fire Walker could erupt under the spears for a sharp burst of damage, and maybe speared enemies could take increased damage from Nezha's halo.

 

 

Work in progress:

Spoiler

Volt: A very confused frame. Poor direction.

Titania: Redundant and fun.

I will continue to expand upon this list, but let's get started with this for now. How would you improve these frames?

Edited June 22, 2018 by Reefermun
Egg

[KennBone]

volt and ash got a great rework recently  dont touch them !.. escal maybe just need at 1 and 3 abilities few tweaks and loki few tweaks too on 1 and 4 .

[Shiichibukai]

Loki is fine as he is....Dont touch him.

[EinheriarJudith]

1 minute ago, Shichibukai88 said:

Loki is fine as he is....Dont touch him.

i agree though i would prolly alter decoy with an augment to just remove the need for it to have health and loses recastability. don't even know why it does in the first place.

[tCartmant]

11 minutes ago, Reefermun said:

This is not a thread for complaining, but instead to consider which frames need a bit of a kick in the pants. These may be old frames, or simply frames with underwhelming or overshadowed traits or powers. We should discuss here how these frames should be improved.

We'll start with the most glaring offender: Loki.

Loki:

  Reveal hidden contents

Loki is a frame that is heavily overshadowed by several other frames, everyone steps all over Loki's toes. I understand that he's meant to be the technical frame, the one that you need to use smartly to get the full effect from, but this has fallen to the wayside in the wake of some of the updates in the past few years. Let's examine his powers one by one and see exactly what's causing his viability to falter.

Decoy: Decoy seems somewhat useful at a glance, being able to point the enemies away from you and your team, but as the difficulty of the mission rises, the usefulness of this power wanes at an alarming pace. To begin with, the decoy is only as durable as Loki himself, which is "not very". Eventually (or even right at the start in many cases) enemies will just immediately destroy the decoy upon sight. This saves your team from like one or two shots. What's one or two shots in a horde of grunts spraying walls of bullets at you? One might also consider using Decoy as a target to Switch Teleport with, another power with limited utility, and an altogether different animal to tackle. Before we pose a solution, let's take a look at Switch Teleport.

Switch Teleport: This power, as previously mentioned, doesn't have the greatest utility. I mainly see it used merely to travel somewhere, a trait overshadowed entirely by Nova (and even Ash to a degree), and dampened as of the inclusion of Parkour 2.0 (best update so far). Switching with an enemy has no real viability in most cases; switching with an enemy just puts you in the midst of his friends who will mercilessly destroy you if you're not invisible.

To improve these two powers, I would lump them both into a single power, but only after patching them up.

Decoy's decoy is too fragile to be of any real use. This is an easy remedy, merely let the decoy absorb a flat amount of hits, a generous amount one would hope, this could be done by forcing the decoy to take 1 damage per hit, and giving it any multiple of 1 for its health. If power strength AND duration contributed to this amount of hits, the decoy would have no need of a timer, and would expire only after taking a certain amount of hits. This would let the decoy scale into any difficulty and always bring utility to the team. 

Switch Teleport would be included into this new power, but it would need a significant bump as well. There are a number of ways to make Switch Teleport viable, one of these is already in game, featured as a band-aid mod in the form of Safeguard Switch, a mod that causes Loki to become invulnerable for a short period after teleporting. Another way to address this issue is to cause Switch Teleport to stun, knock down, or otherwise control enemies in the vicinity upon arrival. As it currently stands, Switch Teleport is Dead On Arrival: The Power.

With these two powers lumped together into a single power (you could simply use the whole "hold to cast one, tap to cast the other" trick), this opens a new avenue for Loki in the form of an altogether new power. Ideally it'd be something that has synergy with the rest of his kit. We'll get into the meat of this later.

Invisibility: Arguably, this was what defined Loki up until Ivara came along and did it better. Invisibility makes Loki a real contender for being the team's heavy hitter. Stealth in this game causes melee to deal up to 6x damage to unaware enemies, and this puts Loki squarely in the melee fighter category. Being primarily melee-focused is just fine, especially with Loki's neat trick of being able to force enemies to fight with melee only, but, as previously stated, other frames simply do it better. I would propose giving Loki some sort of damage shield, or some other measure of defense while cloaked, to further emphasize his melee orientation, greatly improve his survivability, and set his own stealth skill apart from other frames'. Overall, Invisibility is one of Loki's better powers, but is still no reason to choose him over another frame that can do everything he can and more.

As you previously read, I believe Invisibility should be pushed closer toward a melee utility, be it a damage shield, or some sort of debuff for enemies within a certain distance, etc. This would provide a really natural and un-forced synergy (Oberon) between his disarm ability, invisibility, and his great speed. One route would be to do to Invisibility what I stated about Decoy above, to give Loki a flat amount of hits to simply ignore while under the effects of invisibility. Enemies already don't target him while he's cloaked and this would let him shrug off the few hits he might sustain anyway. This would allow for it to be used as a getaway power or to be used more offensively, ignoring hits as you approach a group of enemies. 

Radial Disarm: This power is what currently sets Loki apart from most other frames, however a dedicated Nyx can do this almost as effectively with the right setup. Radial Disarm, in all honesty, doesn't need much, if anything, to beef it up. It does its job pretty well. I would touch it up with some minor things though, such a guaranteed knockdown for close-by enemies or some i-frames while casting (something that Volt could benefit from as well).

New Power: I noted earlier that Decoy and Switch Teleport could be merged into a single power, opening a space for a new power. This new power, in consideration of the previously proposed changes to Decoy and Invisibility, would act as an AoE debuff to enemy accuracy, to further supplement the survivability of Loki and his decoy. Essentially this ability would cause enemies to simply fail to hit the target at all, not limited to just Loki or his decoy. As the new Decoy and Invisibility would have an amount of hits they could absorb, not taking hits from time to time would indirectly increase the strength of these two powers, providing another instance of synergy between Loki's powers. This is not outside of the classical powers of the Norse god, a wielder of illusion and trickery.

 

 

Work in progress:

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Volt: A very confused frame. Poor direction.

Excalibur: A couple of largely useless powers.

Ash: A little outdated.

 

I will continue to expand upon this list, but let's get started with this for now. How would you improve these frames?

The fact that you see switch teleport as a movement like nova, means your just not using it properly.  I have used it many times to get into spy faults, for example. Here is a video of someone using it on the moon.

 

[Pie_mastyr]

how does ivara's invisibility invalidate loki's? He doesn't get a movement penalty. Octavia's maybe but not ivara. Decoy and switch teleport are useful together as a great movement option and their augments give them some good use beyond that. And almost effective doesn't cut it late game. Radial disarm has been and still is very powerful and consistent. 

Volt is great; he has room locking cc, one of the fastest frames, and a shield which can't be broken.

Ash is also super potent, though his damage does fall off eventually. But his kit does a great job at supporting his role.

Excal is one of the better straight dps frames. Radial blind is still great, dependable cc, and Slash dash is a very great skill for speedrunning. While Radial javelin isn't the best it definitely does a good job of taking out the trash.

 

I think you should revisit some of these frames yourself. None of them really dominate a niche but they definitely aren't slackers either!

[shut]

20 minutes ago, Reefermun said:

Invisibility: Arguably, this was what defined Loki up until Ivara came along and did it better. Invisibility makes Loki a real contender for being the team's heavy hitter. Stealth in this game causes melee to deal up to 6x damage to unaware enemies, and this puts Loki squarely in the melee fighter category. Being primarily melee-focused is just fine, especially with Loki's neat trick of being able to force enemies to fight with melee only, but, as previously stated, other frames simply do it better. I would propose giving Loki some sort of damage shield, or some other measure of defense while cloaked, to further emphasize his melee orientation, greatly improve his survivability, and set his own stealth skill apart from other frames'. Overall, Invisibility is one of Loki's better powers, but is still no reason to choose him over another frame that can do everything he can and more.

Invisibility, of all things, doesn't need a buff. Literally the only frame that does Invisibility better than Loki is Octavia, and Octavia is an outlier of outliers rather than a standard that the game should be balanced around.
No, Ivara's doesn't come close to Loki's, unless you absolutely hate movement for some reason.

 

I'm totally down with Decoy and ST getting some sort of buff. Like, giving Decoy a greater aggro pull and at least 3 seconds of invulnerability, and making Switch Teleport instantaneous and providing brief invul frames (just spitballing here).

But, Loki doesn't need a "damage shield" ability. Loki is conceptually all about avoiding damage, and controlling the situation through utility alone. Literally 3 of his 4 abilities are dedicated to this purpose. If you play as Loki and die, then that's on you, not the frame.

Edited April 15, 2018 by SortaRandom

[AlphaPHENIX]

40 minutes ago, Reefermun said:

Safeguard Switch, a mod that causes Loki to become invulnerable for a short period after teleporting.

Come again?

The ally you switch with gets the invurnability, not Loki. This allows for a little trick to make Decoy more useful. You guessed it, Decoy is considered an ally and is thus affected by the augment above, though a band-aid for sure, at least it's there.

I agree on the invincibility frames for Radial Disarm just as long as there are not too many.

Also how about moving the New Power you propose to Decoy instead? Something like it exploding like a flashbang when destroyed, maybe with a guranteed electricity proc. (inspiration taken from one of Zer0's skills in Borderlands 2) It would both stagger the enemies and reduce their acuracy for a short time.

Edited April 15, 2018 by AlphaPHENIX

[hellodownthere]

ok so make decoy and switch tele a single ability ? what about the augment for switch tele then ?

17 minutes ago, Reefermun said:

Arguably, this was what defined Loki up until Ivara came along and did it better.

that's subjective, can she stay invisible longer yes but does she have the mobility that Loki does whilst invisible ? no she doesn't

23 minutes ago, Reefermun said:

Stealth in this game causes melee to deal up to 6x damage to unaware enemies, and this puts Loki squarely in the melee fighter category

no, no it doesn't. Do you consider Ivara to be in the melee fighter category ? 

19 minutes ago, Reefermun said:

 This power is what currently sets Loki apart from most other frames, however a dedicated Nyx can do this almost as effectively with the right setup

almost?... almost?... really ? Loki's 4 has a 100% chance to disarm an enemy not the X% chance that Nyx has that can't be described as almost

25 minutes ago, Reefermun said:

would act as an AoE debuff to enemy accuracy

this is pointless as you'll be invisible all the time so them firing at you doesn't matter. "Can't shoot what you can't see." you might say

27 minutes ago, Reefermun said:

Volt: A very confused frame. Poor direction.

What you mean ? his 1 stuns, his 2 give him attack and movement speed, 3 puts an shield and his 4 does an AoE version of his 1... is it because he's versatile that you call him a frame with poor direction?

29 minutes ago, Reefermun said:

Excalibur: A couple of largely useless powers.

his 1 maybe but his other 3 no, his 2 is a blind, blinds are great in this game. 3 ive seen DPS builds of it... i don't need to mention his 4.

31 minutes ago, Reefermun said:

Ash: A little outdated.

he is the actual "ninja" of warframe no other frame comes close to a ninja than ash. His 1 shuriken, 2 smoke bomb, 3 teleport and 4 is pretty much a mass teleport with 3 other clones that kill everything you mark, how would you change this ? do note that he's role as the "ninja" frame won't t be changed 

34 minutes ago, Reefermun said:

I will continue to expand upon this list, but let's get started with this for now. How would you improve these frames?

Loki - doesn't need to be changed 
Volt - maybe make his 2 another offensive ability

Excalibur - make his 1 and 3 more powerful while i said that 3 has some dps builds the damage it provides is still sub-par

Ash - leave ash alone

[Hrodgrim]

1 minute ago, AlphaPHENIX said:

Spoiler

 

Come again?

The ally you switch with gets the invurnability, not Loki. This allows for a little trick to make Decoy more useful. You guessed it, Decoy is considered an ally and thus affected by the augment above, though a band-aid for sure, at least it's there.

I agree on the invincibility frames for Radial Disarm just as long as there are not too many.

Also how about moving the New Power you propose to Decoy instead? Something like it exploding like a flashbang when destroyed, maybe with a guranteed electricity proc. (inspiration taken from one of Zer0's skills in Borderlands 2) It would both stagger the enemies and reduce their acuracy for a short time.

 

 

Yeah, that was a typo on my part. It's already fixed as I type this though. Currently writing up a bit about Excalibur.

[AlphaPHENIX]

1 hour ago, Reefermun said:

Excalibur: A couple of largely useless powers.

Just 1 actually, Slash Dash is good for racing which means it provides good mobility (plus the invincibility frames); Radial Blind and I may be just a bit bias here because of my love for flashbangs but well...it's a flashbang, what more do you want? Exalted Blade is decent, I have no further comments sence I rarely use it.

The problem is with Radial Javalin, above level 20, it just doesn't scale so that alone being fixed by a simple change from flat damage to % should fix it. But as I always say, augment for making it a toggle, both gameplay and roleplay reasons here which today I will let be described by the gif alone.

Spoiler

Hey, at least it looks cool if nothing else.

I take back what I said about Radial Javalin after reading your finished suggestion...I still want that Gates's of Babylon augment though and while we are it, perhaps Unlimeted Blade Works too.

Edited April 15, 2018 by AlphaPHENIX

[tCartmant]

Just now, AlphaPHENIX said:

Just 1 actually, Slash Dash is good for racing which means it provides good mobility (plus the invincibility frames); Radial Blind and I may be just a bit bias here because of my love for flashbangs but well...it's a flashbang, what more do you want? Exalted Blade is decent, I have no further comments sence I rarely use it.

The problem is with Radial Javalin, above level 20, it just doesn't scale so that alone being fixed by simple change from flat damage to % should fix it. But as I always say, augment for making it a toggle, both gameplay and roleplay reasons here which today I will let be described by the gif alone.

  Reveal hidden contents

Hey, at least it looks cool if nothing else.

 

If you make a condition overload/healing return build with 100% status, exalted blade is super deadly and I have taken him into sorties with it and had no issues.

[AlphaPHENIX]

Just now, tCartmant said:

If you make a condition overload/healing return build with 100% status, exalted blade is super deadly and I have taken him into sorties with it and had no issues.

I wasn't trying to say it's bad and I know this, just choose to use it only as a last resort. Thanks anyway.

[Trichouette]

il y a 57 minutes, Reefermun a dit :

We should discuss here how these frames should be improved.

Disclaimer : An ability that isn't viable without an augment deserves a rework.

 

Titania :

• Shorter casting time (WAY SHORTER) that doesn't prevent her from moving
• Her 4 buffs (second ability) should be changed, they're useless. (especially thorn and entangle)
• Her 1 and 3 are kinda redundant, huge CC area that render every enemy useless for a huge duration
• Her 4th ability's melee weapon is useless (the toothpick)

Loki :

• The decoy dies so fast it's pretty useless
• The issue isn't with loki's invisibility, it's rather "invisibility" in itself that is an issue.
  That mechanic is old and OP as h*ck and should be changed.
• The third ability should be changed, it's pretty useless (especially without augment)

Trinity :

• First ability should be changed
• Second ability should be different (yes I do believe that, you can keep your stones no need to throw them at me). There is no reason to have an ability that grants infinite energy (unless maybe if it doesn't grant said energy to trinity herself)
• Third ability should have a bigger base duration
• all abilities should have shorter cast time and/or shouldn't prevent her from moving.

Excalibur :

• Right now he has only one and a half ability around the "melee theme": His slash dash and the melee part of his ultimate.
  He's supposed to be a MELEE frame, not a sentry shooting waves all around.

Nyx :

I don't play her enough to give any feedback, but unless chaos her abilities really feel... bad.

Just my opinion though.

Edited April 15, 2018 by Trichouette

[(XBOX)Sheady]

46 minutes ago, Reefermun said:

This is not a thread for complaining, but instead to consider which frames need a bit of a kick in the pants. These may be old frames, or simply frames with underwhelming or overshadowed traits or powers. We should discuss here how these frames should be improved.

We'll start with the most glaring offender: Loki.

Loki:

  Reveal hidden contents

Loki is a frame that is heavily overshadowed by several other frames, everyone steps all over Loki's toes. I understand that he's meant to be the technical frame, the one that you need to use smartly to get the full effect from, but this has fallen to the wayside in the wake of some of the updates in the past few years. Let's examine his powers one by one and see exactly what's causing his viability to falter.

Decoy: Decoy seems somewhat useful at a glance, being able to point the enemies away from you and your team, but as the difficulty of the mission rises, the usefulness of this power wanes at an alarming pace. To begin with, the decoy is only as durable as Loki himself, which is "not very". Eventually (or even right at the start in many cases) enemies will just immediately destroy the decoy upon sight. This saves your team from like one or two shots. What's one or two shots in a horde of grunts spraying walls of bullets at you? One might also consider using Decoy as a target to Switch Teleport with, another power with limited utility, and an altogether different animal to tackle. Before we pose a solution, let's take a look at Switch Teleport.

Switch Teleport: This power, as previously mentioned, doesn't have the greatest utility. I mainly see it used merely to travel somewhere, a trait overshadowed entirely by Nova (and even Ash to a degree), and dampened as of the inclusion of Parkour 2.0 (best update so far). Switching with an enemy has no real viability in most cases; switching with an enemy just puts you in the midst of his friends who will mercilessly destroy you if you're not invisible.

To improve these two powers, I would lump them both into a single power, but only after patching them up.

Decoy's decoy is too fragile to be of any real use. This is an easy remedy, merely let the decoy absorb a flat amount of hits, a generous amount one would hope, this could be done by forcing the decoy to take 1 damage per hit, and giving it any multiple of 1 for its health. If power strength AND duration contributed to this amount of hits, the decoy would have no need of a timer, and would expire only after taking a certain amount of hits. This would let the decoy scale into any difficulty and always bring utility to the team. 

Switch Teleport would be included into this new power, but it would need a significant bump as well. There are a number of ways to make Switch Teleport viable, one of these is already in game, featured as a band-aid mod in the form of Safeguard Switch, a mod that causes Loki to become invulnerable for a short period after teleporting. Another way to address this issue is to cause Switch Teleport to stun, knock down, or otherwise control enemies in the vicinity upon arrival. As it currently stands, Switch Teleport is Dead On Arrival: The Power.

With these two powers lumped together into a single power (you could simply use the whole "hold to cast one, tap to cast the other" trick), this opens a new avenue for Loki in the form of an altogether new power. Ideally it'd be something that has synergy with the rest of his kit. We'll get into the meat of this later.

Invisibility: Arguably, this was what defined Loki up until Ivara came along and did it better. Invisibility makes Loki a real contender for being the team's heavy hitter. Stealth in this game causes melee to deal up to 6x damage to unaware enemies, and this puts Loki squarely in the melee fighter category. Being primarily melee-focused is just fine, especially with Loki's neat trick of being able to force enemies to fight with melee only, but, as previously stated, other frames simply do it better. I would propose giving Loki some sort of damage shield, or some other measure of defense while cloaked, to further emphasize his melee orientation, greatly improve his survivability, and set his own stealth skill apart from other frames'. Overall, Invisibility is one of Loki's better powers, but is still no reason to choose him over another frame that can do everything he can and more.

As you previously read, I believe Invisibility should be pushed closer toward a melee utility, be it a damage shield, or some sort of debuff for enemies within a certain distance, etc. This would provide a really natural and un-forced synergy (Oberon) between his disarm ability, invisibility, and his great speed. One route would be to do to Invisibility what I stated about Decoy above, to give Loki a flat amount of hits to simply ignore while under the effects of invisibility. Enemies already don't target him while he's cloaked and this would let him shrug off the few hits he might sustain anyway. This would allow for it to be used as a getaway power or to be used more offensively, ignoring hits as you approach a group of enemies. 

Radial Disarm: This power is what currently sets Loki apart from most other frames, however a dedicated Nyx can do this almost as effectively with the right setup. Radial Disarm, in all honesty, doesn't need much, if anything, to beef it up. It does its job pretty well. I would touch it up with some minor things though, such a guaranteed knockdown for close-by enemies or some i-frames while casting (something that Volt could benefit from as well).

New Power: I noted earlier that Decoy and Switch Teleport could be merged into a single power, opening a space for a new power. This new power, in consideration of the previously proposed changes to Decoy and Invisibility, would act as an AoE debuff to enemy accuracy, to further supplement the survivability of Loki and his decoy. Essentially this ability would cause enemies to simply fail to hit the target at all, not limited to just Loki or his decoy. As the new Decoy and Invisibility would have an amount of hits they could absorb, not taking hits from time to time would indirectly increase the strength of these two powers, providing another instance of synergy between Loki's powers. This is not outside of the classical powers of the Norse god, a wielder of illusion and trickery.

 

 

Work in progress:

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Volt: A very confused frame. Poor direction.

Excalibur: A couple of largely useless powers.

Ash: A little outdated.

 

I will continue to expand upon this list, but let's get started with this for now. How would you improve these frames?

Defiantly excal, his 1 and 3 are underused in many situations. Loki is good, however i think his decoy shouldn't have a health bar, and should take agro priority over the player however only if the player is detected. If not then it just stands there as a target for his 3. Volt got a nice buff recently and Ash has been god tier for solo content for a long time; especially after the buffs to his 4. Frames that i feel need buffs and or changes would be Mag (i feel like her magnetize should CC any enemy that walks into the bubble at any point however in my experience this is not the case), Vauban (rarely used), Chroma needs to be re looked at because the nerf imo was way too heavy, Valkyr, and Nezah 

[tCartmant]

4 minutes ago, AlphaPHENIX said:

I wasn't trying to say it's bad and I know this, just choose to use it only as a last resort. Thanks anyway.

I am well aware of what you said. You said it was "decent", I am saying if you build it right, its way better then "decent".

[Hrodgrim]

6 minutes ago, Trichouette said:

Disclaimer : An ability that isn't viable without an augment deserves a rework.

 

Titania :

• Shorter casting time (WAY SHORTER) that doesn't prevent her from moving
• Her 4 buffs (second ability) should be changed, they're useless. (especially thorn and entangle)
• Her 1 and 3 are kinda redundant, huge CC area that render every enemy useless for a huge duration
• Her 4th ability's melee weapon is useless (the toothpick)

 

Everything you've mentioned about Titania is spot on. I really want to like Titania, but I just can't. It's still quite fun to fly around as a bug though.

[Trichouette]

à l’instant, Reefermun a dit :

Everything you've mentioned about Titania is spot on. I really want to like Titania, but I just can't. It's still quite fun to fly around as a bug though.

Well I took a lot of time thinking about that frame and really it could be great but they missed so many things.

Most players only use her because "pew pew pew i'm a flying pixie dealing sh*tload of damage"

It's even more pathetic with her latest augment, they tried to incentive us to use her abilities but they're garbage

[LSG501]

1 hour ago, davej83 said:

volt and ash got a great rework recently  dont touch them !.. escal maybe just need at 1 and 3 abilities few tweaks and loki few tweaks too on 1 and 4 .

I wouldn't say volt got a GREAT rework, he got a rework that many of us feel is worse than it was before due to the dual strength and duration fall off.

[KennBone]

seems u havent tried him on high lvls enemies with a litles tweaks on build.. it rocks . control, kill, escape , xD hes great if u know how to use.

[AlphaPHENIX]

11 minutes ago, Trichouette said:

Excalibur :

• Right now he has only one and a half ability around the "melee theme": His slash dash and the melee part of his ultimate.
  He's supposed to be a MELEE frame, not a sentry shooting waves all around.

He is supposed to be the jack of all trades (in which case, I guess Oberon has him beat) that also just so happens to be a swordsman...named after the sword excalibur no less. Mind you though, swordsmen were not limited to swords.

13 minutes ago, Trichouette said:

Nyx :

I don't play her enough to give any feedback, but unless chaos her abilities really feel... bad.

My russian commrade would like to have a word with you...but ya, I wish that Physcic Bolts wasn't preaty much reliant on Nyx's passive to have any amount of use.

[DaftMeat]

For Loki, I'd just be happy if at a minimum Decoy detonated on death or on a HOLD of the power button. Give it some moderate Blast damage to make it on par with some other frames' #1 attack abilities, and a guaranteed AOE Knockdown. At least it would serve a purposes when it squishes in an instant...

[Trichouette]

à l’instant, AlphaPHENIX a dit :

He is supposed to be the jack of all trades (in which case, I guess Oberon has him beat) that also just so happens to be a swordsman...named after the sword excalibur no less. Mind you though, swordsmen were not limited to swords.

He's presented as a sword themed frame and his passive is around sword.

Meanwhile he has a radial blind because logic and he summons sword behind enemies.

If you go with "sword themed" instead of "melee", ok. But the waves spamming everywhere is insanely stupid AND annoying in my opinion.

il y a 3 minutes, AlphaPHENIX a dit :

My russian commrade would like to have a word with you...but ya, I wish that Physcic Bolts wasn't preaty much reliant on Nyx's passive to have any amount of use.

I know that players who like nyx defend her like she's the perfect frame, but her kit is really awful in my opinion.

[AlphaPHENIX]

1 minute ago, Trichouette said:

He's presented as a sword themed frame and his passive is around sword.

Meanwhile he has a radial blind because logic and he summons sword behind enemies.

If you go with "sword themed" instead of "melee", ok. But the waves spamming everywhere is insanely stupid AND annoying in my opinion.

Finally someone who agrees with me on Exalted Blade being a mistake...now that is refreshing. And yes, sword themed works better for him...again he is named after the one set in stone after all.

Also Radial Blind is perfectly logical, just a reflection of light somehow strong enough to blind anything in an entire room for several seconds...tactical space sorcery.

[Trichouette]

il y a 4 minutes, AlphaPHENIX a dit :

Finally someone who agrees with me on Exalted Blade being a mistake...now that is refreshing. And yes, sword themed works better for him...again he is named after the one set in stone after all.

It's not "exalted blade" is a mistake, it's only the part of the ability that summons waves everywhere that is a mistake in my opinion.

My idea of an ultimate ability for a frame like excalibur (while keeping the exalted blade) would be something like "all abilities are more powerful and cost way less as long as you're using the exalted blade".

This way you enter a "swordsman mode" in which you keep dashing around slicing enemies in half.

And not stand behind a wall spamming E to kill everything on the map....