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reap-it-and-weep · 7 years ago

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The Rework Limbo Needs

In Warframe, I have played almost exclusively Limbo since I started playing (I purchased him outright so I wouldn’t have to start on another character), and with roughly 450 hours in the game so far, I think I have a decent understanding of Limbo, how he works, and his character. I may not know everything about the game itself, but I certainly feel qualified to talk about my favorite frame, Limbo and his somewhat-recent rework.

The rework for Limbo bothers me greatly. It did not buff or improve Limbo, so much as it fundamentally changed his character to be annoying and inconvenient in a different way.

The Old

First, we need to think about what Limbo originally was as a frame. What his character was, his personality was.

Limbo was an incredibly smart character, a master of the rift. He had complete control over who entered and exited the rift (or was supposed to). A master tactician with a good head for numbers, he made up for his fragile frame via complete control of the situation.

He originally had 4 abilities.

1. Send a single opponent into the rift.

2. Send himself into the rift

3. Increase his own damage inside the rift for a short duration

4. Cataclysm. A bubble area-of-effect that sends everyone into the rift, which quickly shrinks and explodes. Can be detonated to explode early.

You could generally play the old Limbo 2 different ways. You could use your 2 to keep yourself in the rift, sending individual targets into the rift with your 1 (very safe, but very slow and time consuming). Or you could rely on your Cataclysm, making a giant (but shrinking) bubble that both pissed off your teammates and risked killing yourself with, as you now had no rift to retreat into if things go awry (and thinks go awry very, very fast as Limbo).

Or you could go for pure damage and range, 1 hit KOing very low level enemies. But pretty much any character can do that.

But then his much-needed rework happened, with changes that were...unwarranted.

The New

Let’s look at what they changed.

First, he has a Passive now. His rolls now send Limbo into and out of the rift. This was a wonderful change for Limbo. A master of the rift should not be having to press 2 every minute if they want to stay inside the rift!

Second, enemies killed inside the rift grant Limbo 10 energy. It’s a small thing, but it’s a very good change because it keeps Limbo’s momentum going, as Limbo is a very energy-intensive character. All wonderful changes so far.

But let’s look at where things fall apart, now, Limbo’s new abilities.

1. Fires an invisible cone in front of Limbo, sending everyone in it into the rift. Can no longer use while inside the rift.

2. Stasis. All opponents inside the rift are completely frozen. Bullets are also frozen inside the rift. Firing just a couple bullets will end the stasis.

3. “Surges nearby Rift-bound enemies with Rift energy. When killed the Rift Surge is transferred to a nearby enemy outside the rift. Surged enemies that leave the Rift perform a radial Banish.” Basically, it makes mini-cataclysms.

4. Cataclysm. Basically unchanged.

Now let’s go through the problems with these abilities, in order.

1. First off, Banish, limbo’s first ability. Being able to send multiple opponents into the Rift was very much needed. Individually sending in people everytime is a very slow process, which made Limbo too slow and inconvenient to use. Pre-rework Limbo that relied on his 1 and 2 would only kill a couple targets a game, at best, even with fantastic efficiency.

BUT now you send a lot of people into the rift. And it’s very hard to tell who you will and won’t send. There is no visible cone to indicate your range. And now you have a lot of threats to deal with at once, on a very weak, easy-to-kill character. Which wouldn’t be too big an issue, because they all get knocked over when they enter the rift, right?

BUT that gets to the second, much bigger issue with Limbo’s new first ability: you can’t do it while inside the rift. EVERYTIME you want to rift an opponent, you have to unrift yourself, rift the people you want inside the rift, and then rift yourself again (all while getting shot at, on an incredibly delicate frame). It’s not just dangerous, it’s a time-consuming inconvenience. The new Limbo is just as slow as the old Limbo at getting kills because of this. Only now it’s more dangerous, because by the time you’re back inside the rift they’re already back on their feet ready to rip you a new one inside the rift where your teammates can’t save you.

2. But Limbo does now have one new saving grace, one ability to give him some durability inside the rift (thank christ). His second ability, Stasis. Everyone opponent inside the rift is frozen, for a kinda meh duration of 30 seconds. Considering the duration of Banish is also only 25 seconds, it’s a lot of inconvenient micromanaging that makes Duration mods a necessity, rather than a boon.

I really loved Stasis--for about 5 minutes, before I realized all the problems with it. It sounds super cool, right? You stasis, you shoot bullets at everyone’s face, and then all cool-like you unfreeze everything and their faces all explode. Super dope. But no, that’s not how Stasis actually works.

The limited number of bullets you can keep in Stasis means that, realistically, you’ll only have enough stasised bullets to kill 1 or 2 people at best. It’s horrifically inefficient with the majority of weapons. Shotguns? Don’t even try. Staticor? Nope. Panthera? Can’t even make the chainsaw come out for its alternate fire.

So this leads you into one of two situations if you try to use it this way. You either only have 1 target you use Stasis on, which it works and looks cool, but you didn’t really need Stasis anyway because it was ONE TARGET.

Or, you try to use it on large group of people and either end up running out of energy recasting Stasis and Banish over and over (while unrifting everytime you need to Banish them) or you only use it to kill 1-2 people and get shot by the rest. “Oh, but I’ll just send in 1 person!” Good luck with that, as the new Banish isn’t picky.

So most people end up circumventing this issue by using melee weapons. That’s right, melee weapons. Let me ask you this: What kind of character do you think of when you think of Limbo? A raging barbarian, ripping people apart with his bare hands? No, that’s Valkyr. Limbo...has a tophat and monocle. His entire character is designed around not getting his hands dirty, so to speak. But now one of the most effective ways to kill people using Stasis (which you now have to use, as you can’t send just 1 person into the rift at a time) is melee.

It completely ruin’s Limbo personality and character wise. It makes no sense.

3. Now let’s jump to Limbo’s third ability. It makes mini cataclysms. Clashes horribly with his 4th ability, but also is very random and inconsistent in its usefulness. It might help you, it might get you killed when you accidentally rifted that bombard firing a missile at you. I rarely see Limbos use this. But let’s also look at Limbo’s character and personality again. A master tactician, carefully selecting people to enter his domain. Now both his 1 and 3 send inconsistently-huge crowds of people into the rift. It just clashes with his character design.

4. And finally, Cataclysm. Pretty much the same as before, with the same problems as before.

I was quite disappointed with this rework, I’m sorry to say. It may have been a small buff, but it also destroyed and clashed with Limbo’s personaltiy 100%.

The Rework

But it’s not unfixable, and most changes needed to make Limbo a good/decent frame would be small.

I will go through Limbo’s abilities in order again, marking what needs to be fixed.

1. Banish, his first ability. It was too slow pre-rework, but too dangerous post rework.

The solution is simply to combine the two. Click 1, and you instantly rift 1 person. Hold down 1, and you fire off the cone, getting a group of enemies. Also give the cone a better indicator of what ground it covers.

Next, make it so you can use this ability while rifted. It’s a massive inconvenience otherwise, and slows down combat considerably. If you want to still ensure some danger is involved for Limbo, remove the knockdown stun when rifting the opponent.

Next, increase the duration slightly. A good 5 seconds extra would be plenty.

And finally, make the damage of rifting someone be based off of a percentage of their health. Power Strength on Limbo is 100% useless in anything but low-level farming. I don’t expect to be killing people by rifting them, but if it could actually take off a consistent percentage of their healthpool it would be useful to get Power Strength up.

2. Stasis, his second ability. Right now it’s utterly unusable with the majority of weapons, and the solution is not to just increase the number of bullets you can keep in stasis. No doubt that would screw over a lot of people, lead to crashing, etc. No, that’s not how you fix Stasis.

You fix Stasis by making it not effect bullets at all. But that would be kinda broken, right? I agree. Which is why instead of freezing opponents, it should slow them instead. Slow their bodies (like ice), but also slow down their movements. Imagine Limbo sidestepping a slow bombard rocket wizzing past his head, Matrix style. That would not just be super cool, but also allow Limbo to actually use his full range of weapons again. It would also make using his stasis less boring. The way stasis is used now, you freeze them, and then you just press E over and over. You couldn’t have a lower skill ceiling. This way you’ll still have to dodge

Next, make how much they’re Slowed be based off of your Power Strength. It would give Power Strength another use, but Duration and Efficiency would still be important.

To sum up, it should slow down enemies and their bullets, but not slow you down at all. You’re the master of the rift, after all. But not slowing you down at all brings me to the 3rd ability.

3. Rift Surge, a terrible ability now that doesn’t fit Limbo’s character at all. The old ability was decent, but there were too many things to micromanage already and it was kind of boring to use.

So let’s rework Limbo’s 3rd into something fun and useful, and make it connect to Limbo’s 2nd and 4th abilities better.

Instead of a straight up damage increase, Limbo AND all teammates inside the rift get a speed increase. Faster fire rate, faster movement speed. This scales with Power Strength, giving Power Strength another use (whereas currently power strength is 100% useless on Limbo in mid to high level play). Now not only are enemies slowed, Limbo will be darting in and out among them, a true master of the rift. It would also be much more fun than a straight up damage increase, while also giving it utility AND making it more fun for teammates. Limbo is notorious right now for being unfun to play with in a squad, but now instead of making mini cataclysms that screw over your teammates, you’ll potentially be giving them a speed boost when they hop into the rift via your Passive’s portal or fight with you inside your Cataclysm.

4. And finally, Cataclysm. As it is, the bubble shrinking just makes it a terrible ability. Like Frost’s bubble, but ten times worse. Make the damage of entering and exiting it percentage based, just like Banish, and make that percentage scale off Power Strength. It shouldn’t be a tool for instantly KOing low level mobs, it should be there to weaken enemies of all levels.

And just make it so the bubble doesn’t shrink. It’s just awful for defending objectives because of this, and makes pouring everything into range and duration a necessity for it to be even moderately useful.

Along with this, Limbo’s augments are in a terrible spot right now and in need of a rework too.

Current Haven: Allies Banished to the rift will have 25% of their health restored.

Reworked Haven: Allies (Including Limbo) inside the rift slowly regenerate health, akin to a more powerful Rejuvenation.

As it is, Haven is 100% useless. This would give it some good utility, but also it would mean you don’t have to individually rift/unrift a teammate 4 times just to heal them. It would also make more sense this way. Why would it just heal them when they go inside the rift via Banish? Why not through Cataclysm or the Passive’s portal? The rift is supposed to be a Haven for the injured, and this should include Limbo too. Plus, the rift already regenerates Energy this way. Haven making it regenerate Health this way too just makes sense.

Current Rift Torrent: Limbo deals 30% more damage for each enemy effected by Rift Surge while inside the rift.

Reworked Rift Torrent: Limbo and allies deal 40% more damage for each ally (including Limbo) effected by Rift Surge while inside the rift.

With the reworked abilities, this would need to be reworked too.

Cataclysm Continuum: Cataclysm duration increased by 1 second for each enemy killed. This is just fine as it is.

So those are my thoughts. I certainly appreciate feedback, so feel free to respond with your own thoughts and opinions on what Limbo needs.

#limbo #limbo rework #warframe #wf #rant

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