Dev Workshop - 1999: Nyx & Trinity Light Reworks

With Lettie and Eleanor’s arrival in Warframe: 1999, we have cooked up some light reworks for their Warframe equivalents: Trinity and Nyx! Trinity’s rework was covered in Devstream #182, but this Dev Workshop offers a more extensive overview of her changes. 

The main goal of these reworks are to bring both Warframes’ kits to meet our current-day standards. As always, everything listed before is subject to change before release, so please refer to the patch notes for the official implementation of these reworks. That said, let’s get into it!

 

Nyx Changes
Nyx does not directly deal damage herself, but instead spreads chaos across the battlefield —  causing her very foes to turn on each other. We are keeping this theme as the core of her Abilities, and have made changes to increase the lethality of this chaos. 

New Passive

• If there are 5 or more Confused* enemies within Nyx’s Affinity Range, she gains +200% Critical Chance on her Primary and Secondary Weapons.
  • * specifically enemies suffering from Radiation’s status effect (Confusion) and Nyx’s Mind Control target

Nyx_Passive.mp4 NOTE: all videos showcase Modded builds. 

 

Ability 1: Mind Control

Since Mind Control is a single-target ability, we want to help turn your Mind Controlled foe into a killing machine —  coupled with a few quality-of-life additions to ensure players maximize their use of this ability.  

• Nyx’s Mind Control Target will more aggressively attack foes and deal guaranteed Radiation Procs on their attacks. 
  • Mind Control Targets are also crowd-control immune (like foes with Overguard) to optimize their time rampaging. For this reason, any crowd-control effects are also cleared from the target upon casting. 
  • Targets will also prioritize the enemies Nyx is aiming at!
• Mind Control targets are now highlighted like a summon to help you keep track of them, and Nyx will now see their damage numbers. 
• Added a HUD element when casting Mind Control that displays the duration and % of Bonus Damage done by your Target.
  • This HUD element will display a flashing particle effect when the Target absorbs incoming damage. 
  • Once the ability expires, this element will also briefly show the total damage dealt by your Target.
  • Mind Control’s duration will not start counting down until AFTER the 4 second “absorption” window has passed. 
• Nyx retains the functionality of recasting this Ability to release her original Target, but if done while targeting another enemy Mind Control will now immediately be cast on them.  

Nyx_MindControl_Highlight.mp4 NOTE: all videos showcase Modded builds. 

Ability 2: Psychic Bolts

Psychic Bolt’s strongest aspect is its ability to strip defenses. We’ve expanded on that by a) letting Nyx benefit from the defenses she strips and b) adding a means for Psychic Bolts to spread from enemy to enemy, adding to the overall chaos. 

• Killing an enemy affected by Psychic Bolts will cause two more Bolts to spread from it to unaffected targets. 
• Now displays Ability duration upon casting.  
• Nyx earns a fixed amount of the defenses she removes with Psychic Bolts. This effect persists for 20 seconds (scaling with Duration) and its duration refreshes when further defenses are stripped. The amount of defenses earned —  and the Armor/Overguard cap —  scales with Ability Strength. 
  • 25 Armor per Armored enemy, up to a cap of 1,000.
  • 75 Shields per Shielded enemy, up to the Overshield Cap (1,200).
  • 500 Overguard per enemy with Overguard, up to a cap of 7,500. 

Pacifying Bolts Augment

• Pacifying Bolts now applies 1 stack of Radiation upon hit. 

Nyx_PsychicBolt_ZoomIn.mp4  NOTE: all videos showcase Modded builds.

 

Ability 3: Chaos

Our goal was to leave Chaos largely unchanged, with a single tweak:

• Chaos applies 10 Radiation Stacks for the duration of the Ability, instead of simply applying Confusion. This means that Chaos’d enemies will now deal 100% bonus damage to your enemies. 
  • For clarity, Confusion is the name of Radiation’s Status Effect. 

 

Ability 4: Absorb

Absorb in its current state requires enemies to be shooting at you —  for a Warframe designed around making your enemies shoot at each other, this Ability felt at-odds with the rest of Nyx’s kit. 

• Absorb is now a duration-based ability: cast it to absorb all surrounding damage for 5 seconds (scales with Duration) and redirect it in a radial explosion. 
  • Instead of only absorbing damage directed at you, the damage of Confused enemies will also be affected by Absorb. This allows for increased synergy with Chaos and Mind Control, since those foes will no longer be excluded from this ability.
  • Since it is no longer a channelled ability, the “Drain 8 energy per 1000 Damage Absorbed” mechanic has been removed.
• Nyx will also be able to ascend and descend while in Absorb, using jump and crouch!
• For every 5,000 damage Absorbed, Nyx will remain Invulnerable for 1s after Absorb ends, up to a cap. 
• Added Weapon Damage Cap to the Ability stats for visibility. 

Nyx_Absorb.mp4 NOTE: all videos showcase Modded builds.

Assimilate Augment:

• Assimilate retains its infinite duration!
• Since we have removed the energy drain per 1000 Damage Absorbed, we have increased the energy cost from 4 to 6.5 per second to compensate.
• Added energy drain stat to the Mod description since it no longer applies to the base Ability. 
   

Trinity Changes

A large part of Trinity’s changes involve increasing her overall duration and changing most of them to be cast while moving. In revisiting her kit, we’ve also added scalability and additional functionalities to some of her Abilities to increase their usefulness to both Trinity and her allies.

New Passive

• Trinity and any allies within Affinity Range will gain 50% of Trinity’s Max Energy as Health. (25% in Conclave)

 

Ability 1: Well Of Life
Well of Life struggles the most in a game where enemy damage can outmatch its healing. To address this, we’re allowing Trinity to cast multiple Wells to increase its healing output, and are adding a way for her to negate lethal damage for herself and allies. 

• Can now be cast on 3 enemies total (previously was only 1).
• If Trinity or Allies die within the radius of the Well, the death is negated and the Well ends. 
  • The saved player is fully healed and experiences a brief period of invulnerability.
  • Saved players experience a 60s cooldown before they can be saved by Well of Life again (120s for Helminth version). This cooldown is indicated via an icon in their HUD. 
  • Added SFX and pop-up to indicate to a player when they have been Saved by the Well. 
• Can now be cast while moving.
• Increased Radius from 15 to 20m.
• Increased Duration from 12 to 20s.
• Improved animation so the enemy being lifted aligns better with Trinity’s hand motions. 
• Added a delay for recasting to avoid accidental dismissal. 

Trinity_WellfOfLife+Revive.mp4 NOTE: all videos showcase Modded builds.

Ability 2: Energy Vampire
Energy Vampire is an outlier in Trinity’s kit, where players are incentivized to build for negative Duration to maximize how quickly enemies emit four pulses of energy. We are removing the cap on energy pulses, and have changed Energy Vampire to better scale with Duration: 

• Energy Vampire is no longer capped at 4 Energy Pulses. Pulses are now released at a set Interval for the duration of the Ability.
• The Pulse Interval (ie. how often enemies emit energy) can no longer exceed 2.25s, meaning positive Duration is more viable for Energy Vampire usage. Increasing Duration will also increase the number of energy pulses released by the enemy, since they are now emitted at set intervals. 
  • We’ve added a Pulse Interval stat to the Ability screen to help players build around this mechanic.
  • Negative Duration will still decrease the Pulse Interval and Ability Duration, so traditional Energy Vampire builds should be largely unaffected by this change. In fact, at 13% Duration, this Ability still releases 4 rapid-fire Pulses that EV players know and love. 
• Players can now recast this Ability, causing the previous target to be released. 
• Can now be cast while moving.

Here's an example of what a High Duration build looks like with these changes:

Trinity_EnergyVamp_HighDuration.mp4 NOTE: all videos showcase Modded builds.

Vampire Leech Augment:

• Increased Shield Regen from 150% to 225%. 

 

Ability 3: Link
Link is one of Trinity’s stronger Abilities, so its changes are quality of life focused to bring it up to current Warframe standards:

• Trinity can now recast Link while it is active, and cast it while she is moving.
• The number of Link’s targets now scales with Power Strength. 
• Increased Duration from 12 to 17s.
• Updated “Damage Reduction” stat to say “Damage Redirection” since you are passing it on to your foes!

Trinity_Link.mp4  Note: all videos showcase Modded builds.

 

Ability 4: Blessing
Like with Link, Blessing is also one of Trinity’s stronger Abilities, so its changes are quality of life focused to bring it up to current Warframe standards:

• Increased Duration from 10 to 15s. 
• Damage Resistance from Blessing now persists upon recast. (this only applied to a few seconds during the start of the recast, but any loss of DR can be killer — literally.

Champion’s Blessing Augment:

• Increased Duration from 12s to 30s. 

Thanks for reading, Tenno!