Colyeses

I think the better way to phrase it is that they serve two halves of the same purpose. Together, they make one snap-nuke. While that is technically the definition of a caster, I also think it's rather unrefined. If you had a frame who had only one toggle ability that instantly killed all enemies within a range of 100 in all directions, you'd also have a frame that solves all problems through a cast, but that doesn't really fit the gameplay feel of a caster. (Aesthetically though, you are absolutely right about Dante, and I was massively hyped for him before his release) What I'm missing from Dante is the versatility. In any situation, provided the buffs are up, he really only has two things he can do: Stack DoT, or consume DoT. For comparison, a frame like Kullervo has more in his kit that he's juggling at any given time. 1 is for single-target nuke and mobility. 2 is for defense but requires you to get close enough to enemies. 3 is a companion ability that allows your 1 and 4 to function better. 4 is area denial. Ironically, gameplay-wise, I feel Kullervo does a better job of being a caster frame than Dante because his kit feels wider. There's more to engage with at any given moment. Similar goes for someone like Protea (Defense and long-form area denial on grenades, quick area control with turret, stationary support with dispensary). With Dante, I mostly just had to wait for a good enough grouping of enemies to justify committing to a 3-3-4, and otherwise just ending up on stand-by. I shouldn't derail the thread though.

Honestly, as a caster archetype, Dante is not a good design at all. Two actives (Light verse and Triumph are effectively identical, Dark verse and Tragedy are close to identical), two passives, and a weapon does not a real caster type make. Now that his nuke is nuked, he really doesn't have much to go on.

Do you have any idea of the scale of the overhaul you'd need to commit to in order to even come close to achieving that? You'd need to revamp the entirety of the modding system to such an extent that the game might as well not be called 'Warframe' anymore.

That requires just reading his abilities and checking how long they last. You have only two abilities to worry about.

I might be a little sore that this frame missed the mark so badly in terms of gameplay design. We've had such excellent frames tossed around that it's a pain that a frame with ostensibly 7 abilities feels so flat, spammy and un-engaging. Especially since, thematically, this is absolutely my frame. I just really don't like his gameplay.

I mean, everything clears everything on regular content. Tragedy's not special in that.

Wordwarden and Pageflight last like two minutes. You're not constantly recasting those, either. And Light Verse, by itself, does not grant that much. Final Stand is not Styanax' defense ability, that's Rally Point, at 75 energy. Also, I don't know what Xata Invocation has to do with this? Also also, you could use Xata Invocation on Noctua, but you're not gonna be able to keep that up, it's very hard to get it properly stacked, AND it cuts into Wordwarden. Is that supposed to be impressive? Steel Path enemies are in the millions of EHP. Slash damage does not bypass armour by default, only the DoT does, and Tragedy can't proc it, nor does it allow the remainder of the slash damage to continue to benefit from its armour ignoring quality. Test it out. Try the results. Dante isn't doing these wipes -nearly- as comfortably as many other picks. He puts in way more work, and it's way less reliable. And it's a snapshot nuke with no persistence. The problem is, though, that without any primer, Tragedy deals just 6500. You can keep stressing that this thing is a radial power, but enemies outside your frontal cone that have no status effects on them because you didn't hit them with a weapon, nor with your Dark Verses, are going to completely ignore this ability. Tragedy is, effectively, NOT a radial ability, because any damage on a non-primed target is negligible. Panzer's viral damage, that doesn't get amplified by Tragedy. I can tell you with absolute certainty that you are NOT seeing the big picture here. It really isn't. With that corrosive damage added, Prismatic Gem does a ton of damage. And no, Prismatic Gem is easier to automate. Once it's up, you just 1, and you're done. The gem will pick them off one by one, but Prismatic Gem stays up so you can just keep doing it. And you get a ton of energy back, if your STR is high enough. And you're supporting the rest of your team while doing it. Compared to Dante that constantly has to prime every single enemy and then detonate them. No, Dante just needs a plethora of other mods to kick his STR well over 200%, as opposed to one mod that Citrine doesn't -need- to be good. It's just what Citrine needs to be a solid nuker, which is outside her main role of support. That's still leagues better than Dante's nothing! And I've been playing him on Netracells, and he's been doing trash. But Crucible Blast is not dependent on it, is it? While that is true, Disometric requires one button press for the entire party, and moves with it. The only thing on that list that does that is Covenant. And people aren't gonna bring Harrow just for status resistance. That's why Triumph is the ONLY thing in Dante's kit that can be considered 'Overtuned'. It's a very bad thing to point to if you're trying to argue it is OP though, because Shuriken is a cripplingly low bar to pass. This is where you lose your perspective. Just because Dark Verse is better than Shuriken, does not mean Dark Verse is too strong, because Shuriken itself is obviously considerably too weak. I was talking about 3-1, but sure, Storm of Ukko. It's not a tag-on DoT, it's a persistent AoE. And with 3, its damage output increases based on the number of targets in it. And unlike Tragedy, when Storm of Ukko kills something, it doesn't go zip. Storm of Ukko stays and continues to do work. You may need to apply the 3, though. You're not doing any damage to anything you haven't primed, which effectively still restricts it to the same frontal cone as Kullervo's 3. Which is also an issue for Dante. Worse, I'd say. No, it's worse. Much worse. Like incomparably terrible in comparison. Whereas most other offensive support abilities just make sure that there is no need for a second hit. Except it's not arguably really good, it's barely functional, extremely niche, and it clashes with Noctua. So does Tragedy. Again: Tragedy will do trash damage against anything NOT in Dark Verse's cone. Heat strips armour though. And the ramp-up is insanely fast. And you'll want high STR for both Protea and Dante, so that's not a notch against Blaze Artillery. But this issue you point out? Is significantly worse on Tragedy. Protea at least has the option to make the turret's duration relevant, and it also helps the rest of her kit. For Dante, no matter how high you push your DUR, the duration of both Dark Verse and Tragedy is -always- zero seconds. You hit what is in front of you at that exact moment, and nothing beyond that. That is a restriction Blaze Artillery is not bound by. That is a notch against Dante, and in favour of Protea. But Tome mods aren't Dante's, are they? And before you say 'Noctua', Noctua is terrible at Invocations. Grimoire is much better suited for them. But your adaptation stacks up from damage to your Overguard, which protects the health bar underneath, allowing you to take hits when your Overguard goes down, and then you heal up when you generate new Overguard, resulting in a frame that is plenty durable. That's quite literally the opposite of saying Vauban is a glorified singularity and that Bastille does not exist, dude. So either you were being disingenuous before, or you are being disingenuous now. Don't appreciate that. How exactly is this an issue? I mean, I get that the ragdoll is annoying and can get some bodies stuck, but that's a very minor concern in my eyes. It just tosses extra CC on the pile and works well with his Flechettes. Also, how are these bonuses rarely applicable? I have had zero issue armour-stripping and keeping the bonus up on Vauban... Yes, and? I've already stated that Triumph can indeed be argued to be a problem. The problem is that you seem to have gotten it into your head that every part of Dante is extremely powerful, and that is shaping your perception. To the point that when I compare him to other frames, you point out flaws that Dante has too. Often Dante's are worse. Triumph is incredibly powerful. That's definitely true. Probably the only thing to fully match it is Covenant with OoB-reset, but beyond being a healbot, Dante is unimpressive. The rest of his kit is bog-standard or worse. A nerf to the impact that Triumph has on others in the party is the only thing that Dante could survive without immediately being kicked down to low C-tier. His damage output is nothing to write home about, and his utility is non-existent. We've had quite a few very strong Warframe designs lately: Dante isn't one of them. In fact, when it comes to design, Dante is notably clunky and unrefined. The selection of abilities for Final Verse is a very poor choice for the innovative control mechanism, Noctua and Wordwarden hate each others' guts, Pageflight fails its purpose, and you're left with a very spammy caster with basically just two things in a kit that's supposed to have seven abilities. Honestly, in terms of design quality? Dante's with Limbo. And that's not a good thing.

This is such an annoying part of Dante's design. Noctua's unique super special 'look at me' passive being "Give me ALL your tome mods" and then Wordwarden just going 'no'.

I am not constantly recasting Triumph, it's a persistent ability. If I catch someone getting low, I'll recast it, but otherwise I won't. And Triumph is, in effect, a 100 energy ability, which is higher than Styanax' defense pick. This is where you just go off the deep end though. Warframe is not Destiny. This is not a problem. This is just showing a flawed perception. You're selling Citrine short, and overselling Dante. First off: Dante's radial damage is terrible. Tragedy's damage is almost entirely in the multiplier for DoTs. The fact that it's stored in this particular element means that it requires supplementary status stacking in order to take off, which means that this kit-dependency that you mention for Citrine's Crystallise also applies to Tragedy. It's just that Dante needs status weapons, while Citrine wants precision. Additionally, Prismatic Gem can very easily be repositioned, so its location based restriction is easily overcome. It also affects status chance, which means it works with ALL status effects. It's significantly more powerful too, and with one Archon mod, it gets a ton of armor strip stacked on it. Yes, it requires targets to take damage, be it from a source within the gem's (generous) radius, or it requires the target to be in the radius, but her 1 also ticks it off. And that thing, coincidentally, also produces a ton of energy orbs. Dante, meanwhile, has to get multiple casts out to get anything done and then doesn't accomplish all that much. Also, you can bold 'damage multiplier' all you like, but 0 x 500 is still 0. Or are you going to make an issue over Vauban's Flechettes getting a basekit multiplier of x13 against level 130+ enemies, too? Disometric Guard does not require the pillars. Neither does Crucible Blast! Containment Wall does that! Actually, Disometric Guard is still pretty new at the time. It's status immunity for the team. That's immunity to all kinds of Eximus crap being tossed at you. That's good! It's a super convenient ability. That's why Triumph is the only thing worth considering a problem, because it's Disometric on steroids. 'Shuriken does 500' Shuriken is also not used for that very reason. A LOT of old frames have abilities that are so bad that they aren't worth the button-press. Dark Verse is not special. A lot of weapons will mow enemies down a lot faster than Dark Verse can. Kullervo with a quick 3-1, for example, does significantly more damage. (And sticks a colossal flat crit boost for a duration) You are staring yourself blind on that multiplier, buddy. All those multipliers can make a very pretty damage figure, I'm sure, but post-armour? It does nothing. 'But slash ignores armour!' Yeah, but Tragedy doesn't. That's why it hits like a wet noodle at higher levels unless you really overkill your STR. My apologies, it's 70% damage reduction, not 75%. Rhino roar is 50% at base in one button press with no question asked, and works with all builds. Also, it's not 30% extra firepower. That Noctua is not gonna keep up with better weapon picks. Its fire-rate won't keep up with rapidfire weapons, and slow-shooters are likely to kill the target before Wordwarden can hit it. So do mods. And again, it's not just less than some mods, it's less than half a mod, unless it's additive. You get 60% off the element/status chance mods. Dark Verse isn't affected by it. Both of them are frontal cone based. But where Dante drops three casts and 100 energy to snapshot kill enemies that got hit by all four strikes of the two Dark Verses, Protea presses one button to put down an autonomous turret that fully controls its space for an extended period of time. Something came around the corner after you started casting? Protea's turret will wreck it. Dante has to reboot his entire cast sequence. Kullervo is plenty tanky with Adaptation and the occasional 2 cast. Gyre's extensive area control makes it almost impossible for anything to threaten her, but swap Coil Horizon out for Pillage and she's unstoppable with her overshields AND she gets armour strip, at which point her damage becomes astronomical. Oof, you don't know Vauban well, do you? I mean, you're complaining about him being squishy, and then you toss 1K bonus armour and armour strip in the trash. I actually avoid his Vortex. Bastille + Flechette becomes a meat grinder all its own and can lock down a massive area extremely effectively. I did not bring up Revenant and I don't see why he's relevant. Sure, you can. But not with nerfs.

50K Overguard sounds amazing on paper, but the reality is that it's not that impressive. Citrine has a very long-lasting 95% DR spreading to the entire team on a single button-press. Qorvex immunises his entire team against status effects as well. Dante's only thing is that he gets both durability and status immunity to the team, so it's not that much above either Citrine or Qorvex. 'Radial expedite suffering with a bigger multiplier' sounds really broken if you fail to mention that Expedite Suffering is terrible. Baseline, Expedite Suffering effectively only applies a stagger. Tragedy has exponential power scaling and might be able to do quite a bit of damage with an absolutely min-maxed build, but that's hardly new. I wager many can outdamage the man with characters like Gyre and Kullervo. Invincible summons that distract enemy AI is on Octavia too, except that one pairs with another ability that also massacres them. And as far as I can tell, Pageflight does not increase status chance against the targets, but status damage instead. Meaning it has very limited application. 75% damage reduction is not 'slightly weaker'. Wordwarden is negligible at best. Not to mention that Noctua and Wordwarden hate each others' guts, design-wise. +50% status chance, unless it's flat additive, is less than half a mod. Dark Verse does not do 'large Slash'. Dante is being massively oversold here. In terms of his offensive potential, he is significantly weaker than a lot of other picks like Protea, Kullervo, Gyre and even Vauban. The only thing that an argument can be made for is that Triumph does too much, and I could see a nerf to the Overguard given to allies as being a reasonable one. But his damage can't drop further without him becoming a non-pick. He's good, but boring. Don't make him drop to 'ok, but boring'.

Abilities, plural? He has one thing that can be considered a problem, and that's Triumph. Everything else in his kit is bog-standard or worse.

True, but that's very limited, and Noctua's not even good at triggering its own tome mods. Also, it depends on your teammates. If you pass me a Wordwarden while I'm on Gyre or Citrine, that thing ain't firing.

Multiple abilities in one slot has consistently been a point of contention in the community, and the way Dante handles it with his Final Verse is a pretty cool solution to it. It's not exactly replicable, but it's good to see that things have gotten creative with how this works in terms of controls. Vauban's had issues with it, Ivara's had issues with it, Wisp has issues with it, Titania has issues with it, there's quite a list. Final Verse tackles this in a unique way, by having the 2 and 3 dictate which effect Final Verse will have. This is a very cool and popular concept, and it's working quite well, but... Issue #1: Final Verse doesn't utilise its unique casting system. My issue on Vauban is that I want to use both Flechettes and the Overdriver, but using both is a pain. The abilities don't last too long, and constantly having to cycle makes juggling the both of them a bother. Dante doesn't have this issue, as Triumph, Wordwarden and Pageflight are all set-it-and-forget-it abilities. They have incredibly long durations, which makes them very easy to use, but it also means that this clever system itself is going to see very minimal usage. You just pop these three abilities in any order and then forget about the whole system for two minutes until you get to roll the cycle again. The Invoker in DotA2 has a much larger kit, but he also doesn't have as many of these long-lasting abilities. This means he's constantly swapping between abilities and pulling from a larger toolbox to deal with immediate issues. Dante lacks this kind of versatility and drive. If Wordwarden and Pageflight are active, there is -zero- benefit to casting them again. Triumph has a benefit in being re-cast early, though it should also be said that Triumph and Light Verse are extremely similar abilities. Just setting up to cast Triumph may already do what you wanted Triumph to do. These kinds of larger kits are helped by having different tools fulfil more specific purposes. Wordwarden and Pageflight don't have this, as either one of these abilities is just always going to be on. There's no reason for them not to be active, which in turn makes their casting feel more like upkeep than opportunistic incidental usage that would better emulate the versatility this system is designed for. Issue #2: Final Verse becomes spammy. With Triumph, Wordwarden and Pageflight being occasional refreshes, that leaves just Tragedy as a reasonable repeat cast. And if all you're doing is 3-3-4-3-3-4-3-3-4, it becomes spammy, quick. If you were mixing in different abilities to deal with different scenarios or to take advantage of unique strengths, this would not be a problem. But as it is, if the other three abilities are active, you have no reason to cast them. (Except Triumph, if you or teammates run low) Tragedy, however, also scales its damage output off status effects. And barring weapon usage, Dante's only way of inflicting DoTs is with his 3. So if you get higher and higher in difficulty, you may need more repeated casts of 3 in order to accumulate enough damage to make Tragedy do its job. Which means 3-3-4 may become 3-3-3-4. Issue #3: Tragedy lacks visual flair. It is visually one of the most boring abilities, unfortunately. But this is a pretty minor concern. Issue #4: Wordwarden doesn't play nice with Noctua. I brought this up in this thread, but the short of it is: Noctua's super special ability is equipping tome mods without restriction. Wordwarden does not want -any- tome mods installed. Without the ability to proc canticles and invocations, Wordwarden works best off a build that is diametrically opposed to Noctua's unique trait. Issue #5: Pageflight doesn't gel well with the rest of the kit. They're not bad, and they're very pretty, but the issue is that Dante only benefits from them if they attack targets within his sight cone, the limit of three paragrimms makes them somewhat unsuited for horde shooters, and their range being the same as the rest of Dante's kit means that their ability to prime enemies for status effects usually comes in at the same time as Dante engages the enemy, meaning that this primer is going to come in -after- the attack. Taking their travel time into account, they tend to be a little late. Making their target range -slightly- bigger than the rest of Dante's kit means they're more likely to be first responders, making them better at fulfilling their role. (Like bumping their base range from 30m to 35m) These are the issues I'm able to articulate so far. I may be overly critical of Dante because I really want a wizard frame, and seeing Dante be a less satisfying caster than characters like Gyre, Citrine and Kullervo has kind of soured him for me.

Is this an April Fool's?

Xata would probably be the most impactful one with its potentially high energy regen, but I don't think the other Invocations would be anything out of the ordinary. Least of all Ability Strength, since Roar, even subsumed, is probably more impactful across the board for similar purposes. Duration, too, I don't think will be too much of a concern. The base value is 25%, though. I don't know what the highest ability strength ever achieved is, but I doubt it'd allow the Wordwarden to scale beyond the 60-75% margin you mentioned. 75% would already require 300% ability strength, after all. I'm a little less keen on that, but fire rate can afford to be a little more forgiving. I'm pretty sure Wordwarden doesn't even properly keep up with Noctua in terms of fire rate, somehow. Uncapped fire rate is a no-go though. Imagine a dex furis with uncapped fire rate Wordwarden. Even at 25%...

Could this be the host/client desynch issue? I really want to use Dante more, but when Tragedy hits for 400 client-side, but 40.000 host-side, it's kinda hard.

I have more qualms about Dante, but this is one that I can articulate effectively right now. Wordwarden grants allies a replica of your Noctua to assist their attacks. This replicated Noctua does only 25% of Noctua's real damage, and has a very limited fire rate. I think there's a lot of potential being wasted here. Noctua's unique ability is that it can equip tome mods without limitation. But since the Wordwarden only replicates basic attacks at 25% of their original value (And with hard-limited fire rate), it is extremely unlikely that any Tome mod equipped to it will ever function from Wordwarden's replica. This creates a conflict in design where Noctua itself may want to add multiple invocations, while Wordwarden ignores all of them. This is a pretty 'feel-bad' thing, but what bothers me more is that Wordwarden could be one of the most clever designs with a few tweaks. If Wordwarden had some way of periodically triggering Invocations and Canticles, the ability would have the potential to be built for damage, support, or some middle-of-the-road variant of both. You want to give your team extra flat damage and status spreading? Stuff Noctua full of damage (And maybe a Lohk Canticle). You want to give your team energy and ability parameters? Stuff it full of Invocations. Additionally, if Invocations worked from Wordwarden, I think Dante would be the first frame in the game with the ability to grant bonus duration to allies. That could be huge. As it is, Wordwarden ignores everything that isn't damage, crit or status (it also ignores fire rate I think), which severely limits its synergy with Noctua. Some possible options: 1) Have Wordwarden's replica occasionally fire an AoE pulse that triggers Invocations and Canticles. 2) Have the replicas max out their Invocations and Canticles upon casting Wordwarden. This may require Ability Duration to be applied to tome mods to be worthwhile. 3) Link the replicas to Dante's own Noctua, and have Dante's Noctua trigger the tome mods for all replicas. (This does make Wordwarden more dependent on Noctua, making it harder to Helminth) 4) Have the replicas occasionally fire alt-fire attacks automatically. (Also, Wordwarden's damage coefficient should 100% be affected by Ability Strength. Noctua is not that strong, and 25% is a base value low enough that even absolute min-maxed Ability Strength will not push it too high)

It's damage in general, the shockwaves aren't required. It's not even restricted to melee damage, I tested it with a MOA companion. It does require a channelled ability to be active though.

The description states: "While a channelled ability is active, Companion melee attacks create a [Range] shockwave for [%] of their melee attack damage. Damage dealt by your Companion increases your Ability Efficiency by [%] for [seconds]. Max 10 stacks." The full break between the two sentences led me to believe that the second effect, the Ability Efficiency one, did not require an active channelled ability, which is incorrect. It should be changed to: "While a channelled ability is active, Companion melee attacks create a [Range] shockwave for [%] of their melee attack damage, and damage dealt by your Companion increases your Ability Efficiency by [%] for [seconds]. Max 10 stacks."

"Haha, did you think you'd get to bring your favourite Warframe or something?"

What do you propose would be the reward for this activity?

Honestly, this doesn't look particularly interesting. This mostly appears to be a numbers thing with the abilities themselves having little to no relevance. It's also a shame that Undertow was axed while Tidal Surge was kept. It already looks messy in the gif, and that's in the open expanse of the ballroom simulacrum. It's borderline unusable on most tilesets due to how complex the level geometry is. It's probably going to stay a dud, and some corrosion isn't going to fix it. Undertow had potential with some creative design, but we just get a set-it-and-forget-it stat booster, which is... Uninspired. I'd rather have seen it become a deployable wide AoE, in which Hydroid gets different abilities. I was kind of hyped for the rework, but I don't think this is going to make me play him. Seems like it's the same Hydroid, just corrosive now. And he lost Undertow. I'm sure he'll be a touch more viable now, but less interesting.

I don't think the grimoire is out of place with how 'magic' Warframes can be, and I hope they do not make any changes. The game veered quite heavily into fantasy a long time ago, with things like Operator powers, the Silver Grove, Eternalism and more. Grimoires are just an extension of the void's paracausal nature. I'd say they're no more out of place than, say, Necramechs. Thinking about it, they fit that aesthetic kind of well. Like archaic Warframe had a more 'occult' theme to it.

They made material containers available as decorations, I want to have Duviri plants as decorations. Give me some Eevani plants!

I understand why you couldn't do this right now, but IF you ever make another Heirloom Collection or similar type of deal, I fully expect that the price will no longer be inflated by an overabundance of married goods. No regal aya, and more pick-and-choose than wholesale. These collections were truly DE at the worst it's been in years. That said, I do appreciate that you listened.