The newest Warframe added in Operation: Orphix Venom, Lavos, is a truly unique Warframe. Lavos’s abilities use a traditional cooldown (CD) system rather the energy system every other Warframe uses (even Hildryn, to an extent). This is a new path for Warframe, and definitely one that I’m interested in future Warframes exploring more. However, if this cooldown system is going to continue some changes to the system need to be made.
TL;DR
- Lavos’s ability’s CDs are too short, potentially leading to 100% of playtime
- Short CDs discourage the use of weapons, an integral part of Warframe
- CD based rotations don’t fit well into Warframe’s current playstyle as they encourage rotations rather pooling energy for the right situation
The Role of Warframe Abilities
This CD system has made me reevaluate what exactly I want from Warframe abilities. When I think of my personal favorite Warframes like Saryn and Nekros their abilities generally augment the core system of blade and gun. Even when their abilities don’t really interact with the core weapon based experience of Warframe, you’ll often quickly find yourself going right back into shooting and swinging.
The exception to this would be builds like Khora’s Whipclaw Crit build, where almost all of your damage ends up coming from the ability rather than weapons. Same with Volt Discharge in Sanctuary Onslaught; you end up just spamming the one ability rather than ever pulling out your weapon. The difference here though is that these Warframes still work as intended without these builds. Khora and Volt are perfectly effective with non ability-spam builds.
How Much Time is Left In-Between Lavos’s Abilities
Where I think the biggest issue lies with Lavos is that his cooldowns are so short that they encourage constant use. His abilities can be cast every 8/5/10/30 seconds respectively. Disregarding the CD reduction from Transmutation Probe, in any 30 second window Lavos can spend up to 22.29 seconds casting abilities. That’s just under 75% of his time casting abilities. To further add to this time, each ability can also be augmented with a single (ex. Toxin) or dual (ex. Viral) element. Augmenting a single element takes about one second, so a dual Augment (arguably what you “should” be doing) would add two seconds to every cast. As you can see from the table below, you can choose to focus 100% of your time on casting Lavos’s abilities.
| Ability | Cooldown (sec) | Cast Time* (sec) | Time Between Uses** (sec) | Max Casts / 30sec | Total Cast Time / 30sec* |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| (1) Ophidian Bite | 8.00 | 1.50 | 9.50 | 3.16 | 4.74 |
| (2) Vial Rush | 5.00 | 3.00 | 8.00 | 3.75 | 11.25 |
| (3) Transmutation Probe | 10.00 | 2.00 | 15.00 | 2.00 | 4.00 |
| (4) Catalyze | 30.00 | 2.50 | 32.50 | 0.92 | 2.3 |
| TOTAL | 22.29 | ||||
| Dual Element Augmented | 22.29 + 2(9.83) = 41.95 |
** CD starts after cast and/or ability duration
The Big Issue – Mixing Weapons Into Lavos’s Playstyle
The above information shows that it is possible to ONLY cast abilities with Lavos, leaving zero time for weapon usage. The obvious argument is to just leave some of these abilities off CD for a while and do some damage with weapons. While I agree that you can always choose to do so, we here at MarvWeb aim for efficient and optimal gameplay.
The truth is that one of these two styles will be more effective at any time. If your weapons are better at killing enemies than your abilities, you should never cast those abilities. Conversely, if you abilities are better at killing enemies, you should use them as much as possible. The latter is often true with most Warframes: it is often true that abilities surpass weapons in effectiveness, meaning they take higher priority for efficient gameplay. Again, think of Khora’s Whipclaw: because Whipclaw is stronger than weapons and you can constantly use Whipclaw, from a min/max perspective, weapons should never be used.
I don’t have a potato’d, max forma’d Lavos, so I can’t say for sure which abilities of his end up surpassing weapons. However, since I view Lavos as an experiment for future Warframes, there is a chance that all of a CD-based Warframe’s abilities “should” be cast as often as possible to maximize DPS. If Lavos’s abilities are good, they “should” be all you do; if they are not good, then you “should” never cast them.
This binary relationship is something that needs to be addressed with Lavos and any future CD-based Warframe. Weapons are an integral part of Warframe and a Warframe’s intended playstyle should not discourage their use.
A Smaller Issue – Energy Pooling vs. Casting on Cooldown
The idea of Cooldowns also poses another issue. Often time in Warframe you will save your abilities for the perfect moment where they will be most effective. The reason we have this flexibility is the ability to pool energy without a lose of theoretical DPS. The mod Flow that increases your energy pool is so widely used because often time the best way to use energy is to wait for a good time, rather than use your energy the second you get it.
CD-based abilities however cannot be pooled; you are losing potential DPS every moment they are off CD. This leads to a use-or-lose mentality that is not fun to play, and feels antithetical to what I’ve loved about Warframe over the past almost eight years. If you try to save for the perfect scenario, it’s likely that you’ll have been able to cast the ability multiple times in-between, effectively losing that DPS. If you use the ability whenever it comes off CD, it might be on CD when the perfect situation arises.
A Change in Playstyle – Putting All Your Eggs Into One Ability
Similar to the pooling issue, most Warframe’s can choose to cast their “best” ability over and over. You can choose to dump all of your energy into a single ability, essentially offsetting the relative ineffectiveness of your other abilities. You can cast Volt’s Discharge way more often if you choose to not cast his other abilities.
Lavos, and potentially any other CD-based Warframe, cannot choose to ignore their less effective abilities to increase the usage of their more effective abilities. For instance, you cannot cast Catalyze more often by choosing to never cast Vial Rush. Catalyze is on a 30 sec CD, and nothing can be done about that.
This leads to a rotation, a term often used in MMOs and RPGs. The most effective way to play a CD-based Warframe will often come down pressing abilities the moment they come off CD. The issue here is that it leads to players having to constantly look at the bottom right to monitor their CDs so that they can execute them at the optimal time.
Many RPGs offset this issue by presenting CDs visually in an easy to see manner, allowing you to focus on the gameplay and see that the CD is ready without moving you eyes away from the action. Warframe currently does not have a system like this. Playing Lavos I find myself constantly looking at the CDs to see what is ready.
How to Fix These Issues
The fix to the major issue of invalidating weapons is really quite simple. These abilities need to have longer CDs and shorter cast times. This nerf can be offset by buffing the ability’s effectiveness or duration. To address the constant casting on Lavos, Elemental Augments should not go away once selected. This alone will remove up to two seconds of casting from every ability. Just make a new chosen element overwrite the existing one, reset the elemental augment after a decent amount of time, or give us a new single button to clear the chosen element.
Another good change that can avoid this situation for future CD-based Warframe abilities is to make the ability augment weapon-play rather than be independent of it. Abilities should integrate into weapon gameplay, not replace it. Abilities could increase to weapon damage, add an elemental augment to weapons, add an AoE to weapons, etc. This would be great candidates for CD based abilities. Don’t give them constant uptime; let us activate them when we need the increased damage against groups or tough enemies. This temporary increase in power at the right moment is what is so rewarding about similar systems in MMOs and RPGs.
The issue with pooling vs. casting on CD can be offset with a simple charge system. Having multiple charges smooths CDs and allows you to essentially pool your CDs for the right moment. You don’t feel obligated to use an ability as soon as it’s ready because you are still actively gaining another charge, eliminating the potential lost DPS.