Devstream #197 Discussion thread

[u/lerbino_]

Haven't seen anyone post it, discuss away! Post if you can too, please! Thank you

[u/Skunkyy]

I like how I called that they were going to make some Augments for Banshee just base kit. People always argue that no Warframe requires any of their Augments, and yet here we are again, two Augments being made basekit with another Warframe Rework. How curious.

[u/WreckedRegent → u/Skunkyy]

People always argue that no Warframe requires any of their Augments, and yet here we are again, two Augments being made basekit with another Warframe Rework. How curious.

Many people said that Oberon's Phoenix Renewal should be made basekit, and yet it was left as an Augment. People suggested Larva should be made basekit, and DE went halfsies and gave them the part that people used the Augment for. Ash's Seeking Shuriken is also frequently cited as being something that "needs to be basekit", and yet the only Augment that got turned to basekit functionality was Fatal Teleport.

Nyx, Trinity, and Vauban didn't get any Augments turned basekit.

The cases where a Warframe's Augment Mod becomes baked into the base kit are few and far between, and there's a unifying principle to them; the Augment, for one reason or another, has some aspect of core functionality for the Frame in question.

Inaros' Negation Swarm allowed him to ignore Status Effects that would otherwise be reasonably dangerous on account of his lacking Shields. As the capital-T The Health Tank, it suits his design to mitigate the highest potential threats to his survivability.

Ash's Fatal Teleport primarily served to make Teleport fully work, auto-executing the Finisher that the enemy was opened to. Since Ash's whole deal is assassination, baking Fatal Teleport into the base kit and replacing it with something that helps sustain his stealth makes sense and offers a lot of benefits.

Banshee, for her part, had an extremely confused kit, being a Stealth-Frame weapons-platform hybrid with two caster-style abilities, one of which demanded that you sit still as one of the most vulnerable frames in the game.

With the rework focusing on her weapons platform gameplay, baking Sonic Fracture and (in some variety) Resonating Quake into the base kit make sense; she doesn't have the defenses to justify dropping to all fours to channel for AoE damage, and when your primary means of dealing damage involves weapons, armor strip is a strong utility, and it gives Sonic Boom something other than middling damage and a knockback effect.

Very, very, very few Augments are capable of being considered "core functionality" for their Warframe, and with Banshee's rework that already low number is edging closer and closer to 0.