Zephyr QoL changes

[Rioma]

After applying some forma to my Zephyr Prime I've had a couple thoughts to help out her kit a bit. 

1-- After you've cast tornadoes if you shoot 1 tornado it will apply the new dmg type to all tornadoes. But if another player shoots a tornado that can overtake your current element than that single tornado will change.

--------- Reasoning is due to how unpredictable the tornadoes can be. Even on first cast they can be fairly split up and go around terrain fairly quickly. Even with punch through or weapons with a wide radius like the ignis if you're using the mini tornadoes augment funnel clouds it's difficult to hit them all while still focusing on dealing with the enemy. The dmg of individual tornados are not very strong, they're relatively slow moving and tend to spread out quite quickly. At no point could you consider zephyr to be a top tier damage dealing frame so easily spreading your dmg type shouldn't be much of an issue. Sure in the simulacrum if you have all funnel clouds on top of a small pack of enemies the status procs can be good, but in practice it's unreliable due to their nature.

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2-- When you cast airburst on tornadoes for all the tornadoes to grow in size or at least in a radius around the ones that were hit. 

-----------Reasoning: Airburst is already a very meh skill in the first place. It's slow to travel meaning it's easy to miss, it's radius isn't very large, and If you're using a tornado build I guess you want to be using the airburst synergy. But it really feels awful to use especially with funnel clouds augment. Even if you're airborne and cast Airburst at half energy hitting even 6 of your 12 tornadoes without colliding with terrain or straight up missing doesn't feel worth it all. Even if your tornadoes are relatively close together they it's still going to require quite a few casts for not much gain.

[BiancaRoughfin]

19 minutes ago, xXRiomaXx said:

Spoiler

 

After applying some forma to my Zephyr Prime I've had a couple thoughts to help out her kit a bit. 

1-- After you've cast tornadoes if you shoot 1 tornado it will apply the new dmg type to all tornadoes. But if another player shoots a tornado that can overtake your current element than that single tornado will change.

--------- Reasoning is due to how unpredictable the tornadoes can be. Even on first cast they can be fairly split up and go around terrain fairly quickly. Even with punch through or weapons with a wide radius like the ignis if you're using the mini tornadoes augment funnel clouds it's difficult to hit them all while still focusing on dealing with the enemy. The dmg of individual tornados are not very strong, they're relatively slow moving and tend to spread out quite quickly. At no point could you consider zephyr to be a top tier damage dealing frame so easily spreading your dmg type shouldn't be much of an issue. Sure in the simulacrum if you have all funnel clouds on top of a small pack of enemies the status procs can be good, but in practice it's unreliable due to their nature.

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2-- When you cast airburst on tornadoes for all the tornadoes to grow in size or at least in a radius around the ones that were hit. 

-----------Reasoning: Airburst is already a very meh skill in the first place. It's slow to travel meaning it's easy to miss, it's radius isn't very large, and If you're using a tornado build I guess you want to be using the airburst synergy. But it really feels awful to use especially with funnel clouds augment. Even if you're airborne and cast Airburst at half energy hitting even 6 of your 12 tornadoes without colliding with terrain or straight up missing doesn't feel worth it all. Even if your tornadoes are relatively close together they it's still going to require quite a few casts for not much gain.

 

 

Usually the highest damage is the one that Overrides. If i hit my Tornados with 2000 Corrosive, it wont change the damage type until someone hits it for 2001 of another element.
By me it can stay that way, only change i wish was done to Tornados is have it store some of the damage delt to them and then distribue it on enemies as it moves through them instead of just spreading the damage on hit if the tornados are in contact with enemies.

Airburst is a very useful skill and has helped me get out of many bad situations and save teammates. Its projectile speed has been doubled already. As for its Synergy with Tornados, i wouldnt mind it bouncing from one Tornado to the other doubling their size (once) and cutting through enemies on the way.

[Birdframe_Prime]

Well, the changing of all tornado funnels to the element on the one damaged would be great, but one of the things I've hated the longest is other people being able to change the elements from the one I choose.

The current iteration is just based on the largest damage, but luckily the damage type and status effects of the elements you shoot into Tornado are still transferred to the enemies within, even if the funnel is a different type of damage itself.

As for the 'synergy' with Airburst... it actually doesn't do anything at all. I would love for Airburst's interaction to actually do something, anything, or if it does do something, something detectable after hours of attempting to find it would be nice.

But believe it or not, Airburst is a pretty damn good ability, especially for Zephyr. Four years I've had her, and one of the key things that she needed was a direct CC ability on demand. Simply cast down a corridor to tumble enemies over in a line, or hit the ground in a vague 'eh, close enough' way and you have instant ragdoll CC. Why, though? Because she has the perfect ranged defense in Turbulence, but she's weak against chargers. Having this in her kit is her answer to having no actual melee defense in the rest of it.

If it really comes down to actually improving Zephyr, it would have to be the tweaks to Tailwind.

1. Decouple Tailwind from Duration.

Currently it's incredibly bad in the closer tile sets, sending you far off course if you cast it without proper aim.

Making the base distance travelled based on Range and the momentum after a cast based on Strength would fix this. We could completely customise whether we wanted a long-range Tailwind with a slow hang-time at the end, or a shorter actual cast distance, but the momentum afterwards stronger to ensure longer distance. A high-range and high-strength build would create the same effect as the current for use on the open Landscapes, but we could build for whichever was most comfortable for us. We could even make a mid-range Tailwind with less momentum to mimic the current Operator Dash functions, which are infinitely better for mobility.

2. Make the Hover mobile.

Allow us to cast it while moving, instead of squatting on the ground waiting to fart out our hover gas. Allow us to cast it in the air to lock our position; meaning that if we use Tailwind to travel, we can use Hover to brake.

3. Give us a visual cue for Dive Bomb.

Just a little change to the targeting reticle so that we can be certain when a downwards cast of Tailwind will actually be a Dive Bomb instead. We've all suffered the dreaded beak-grind so often already that most Zephyr players don't even try to cast Dive Bomb anymore.

[AlendasNaro]

Friend of mine said this about air burst "Sure it is a meh skill but I can not deny that it has saved my skin few times. It is an okay I need to prevent enemies from getting to objectives or when you are going to revive somebody and you need some room to breath. Although outside of that... It is somewhat useless because the tornado suction seems to be the same even if you increase their size with the airburst. This might already have been fixed but this is how I feel about it"