Revenant is the Worst Frame in the Game

[Howl4Me]

I think we all just kind of forgot about Revenant, and rightly so, after his release. I don't think, since a few weeks after he was released, I have seen even one player playing Revenant in any context. The reason why is simple—Revenant is the most poorly designed, badly misconceived and weakly balanced frame in the game. 

To make my point, I am going to systematically discuss every aspect of Revenant. Red text indicates a number that is affected by a relevant score, like power strength or whatever.

—

Retaliation — Passive, releases a shockwave whenever Revenant's shields are depleted.

This is... alright. It's fine. I guess. It's not very good, but it would be fine if the rest of Revenant's kit were alright. I don't think it's particularly creative (Nova's passive is basically identical except it's whenever she's knocked down, which I will agree is worse, but it was original upon implementation). It seems like it has a pretty small radius, too. I didn't see it doing too much.

—

Enthrall—First ability, mind-controls up to 7 enemies into fighting on Revenant's behalf, which spread the mind-control to each enemy damaged. Increases the health and shield gain/damage from Reave. Enemies, on death, produce pillars that deal 1,000 puncture damage to enemies and produce projectiles that seek out enemies, staggering them and dealing (?) impact damage. They also produce overshield pickups when killed by Danse Macabre, which give 50 overshields on pickup. As well, this ability costs no energy on enemies who are stunned by Mesmer Skin.

I don't understand this ability, even a little bit. I think it's a pretty critical symptom of one of Revenant's biggest issues: they tried to do too much, and then tried to balance too much. No part of Enthrall is individually any good, and altogether it's still pretty bad. Let's pick apart each bit of what Thralls can do:

Fighting on your behalf: Useless. Enemies deal paltry damage compared to the immense health and armor scaling that most enemies have. Your health and armor doesn't scale, but theirs does, and their weapons are built to work on you, not on each other. Nyx has this issue as well, and personally I think both should have something like Nyx's augment, Mind Freak, built in... except with way more of an increase. Certain enemies do have useful abilities that you can take advantage of, like Ancient Healers, which works well with Nyx's mind control, but is almost useless for Revenant because Thralls die so fast in the heat of combat that you'll have almost no time to benefit from them because of your allies unless you are VERY coordinated and nobody brought anything that does AoE damage. 

Death Pillars: Pointless. The damage they deal is not very much, and their duration isn't very long either. If these were actually way cranked up in damage, this could be a much more fun ability, but also it's impossible to control the positioning of Thralls without just enthralling and then instantly killing them, so this is a very inconsistent ability.  

Mesmer Skin Synergy: I mean... great, you get to cast a useless ability for free!

Overshield Pickups: 50 overshields is not very much, and shields on their own aren't even very good. There are very few frames who will find any use from this; most are either too squishy to get any real benefit, or too hardy to even notice. 

So, as you can see, this ability has a lot of components on paper... none of which do anything. Oh, and this ability is just a retread of Nyx's Mind Control, with more random stuff tacked on. 

—

Mesmer Skin—Second ability, reflects 6 attacks and stuns the attackers for 5 seconds. As well, Mesmer Skin can be given to allies if you Reave them while Mesmer Skin is active (only 1 charge), and each enemy who is Reaved restores 1 charge of Mesmer Skin, up to full charge (but not past).

This ability is... fine. I guess. Like his passive, it is unoriginal, plain, and utilitarian, but at least it does something. The protection is nice, the stun is decent, it's fine, it's just that this ability is a straight retread of Mesa's Stagger Shield augment, but with a better chance to stun, and a much shorter duration. It's really boring, and it doesn't actually do very much in the grand scheme. The ability to grant a single charge to allies is almost laughably bad when you consider that frames like Gara and Nezha can give allies a full 90% damage reduction for long periods of time.

—

Reave—Third ability, turns Revenant incorporeal and sends him dashing forward, reaping 8% (or 40% from Thralls) shields and HP from enemies, restoring that amount to his HP and shields. Can be used more freely when in Danse Macabre. 

This ability sounds good. It sounds like a pretty powerful recovery ability, and in some sense it's decent for recovery. But it's mediocre. The central issue with this ability is that it is slow, cumbersome, and doesn't really do much besides heal you. The percentile of enemy health is probably meant to make the ability scale, but instead, because it is as pitifully low as eight percent, it means that this ability will have awful damage against enemies whether they are level 1 or level 100. Sure, with high enough power strength it can instantly kill Thralls regardless of their level, giving a form of theoretical scaling, but it also costs a bunch of energy and you would probably find it faster to just gun the crowd down instead, especially since enemies who are Enthralled are already harmless to you anyway. 

The health and shields restored by Thrall are totally pointless, too, and not worth the energy cost. I could get as much health by using lifestrike and spending a whole 7 energy instead of 50, or by using Magus Elevate and just mashing the operator button a couple times, or Winds of Purity on the Furis, or pretty much anything that isn't going to cost me 50 energy and do practically nothing else besides heal me once and kill some enemies that are already harmless to me anyways. The synergy it has in restoring charges of Mesmer Skin is nice, I suppose, but the other synergy where it gives a single charge of Mesmer Skin to allies struck is pointless. 

Oh, and this ability is just another retread of Hydroid's Tidal Surge, except without the fun and ridiculous CC that throws enemies all over the place. 

—

Danse Macabre—Fourth ability, causes Revenant to start spinning around, emitting beams that deal 1,250 damage per second with 20% status chance, which can be boosted by using the Fire button, increasing their damage and status chance to 2,500 and 40% but also increasing energy cost by 20. Revenant can move around while spinning, at reduced speed, but cannot perform any maneuvers, use any weapons, or do any other actions besides use Reave, which costs 50% less when in this mode. As well, damage reflected by Mesmer Skin during this ability increases the damage of the beams.

This is Revenant's ultimate ability, and also by far his best. It is the most unique and powerful ability in his kit, and it's actually a pretty damn good damage dealer. I would argue that this is the only ability that makes Revenant even worth playing, because everything else he does can, without exception, be done better by another frame... but even this can be done better by frames like Mesa, who can deal much more damage for much less energy, just not in all directions simultaneously (but also more flexibly because Revenant cannot deal damage to enemies above or below him), and with Mesa's Waltz isn't stationary anymore, either. It is a relatively uninteractive ability, too, given that you can't do anything except move and Reave around. The synergy with Mesmer Skin is also pointless for one of the same reasons Enthrall suffers, too; enemy damage is weak and thus any damage you accumulate that way will be negligible at best.

Revenant's most unique and interesting ability is still an uninteractive 'kill everything' button that compares unfavorably to other frames. Oh... and it can arguably be considered a retread of Inaros' Sandstorm, which is also a spinny ability that makes you unable to do anything else and does lots of damage, but also CCs enemies, too! Yay!

—

So that's Revenant. That's pretty much all I got. No part of Revenant is really well designed or interesting. Every single one of his abilities can not only be done better by other frames, but is arguably a direct copy of another frame's ability except worse. His kit is overstuffed with meaningless synergies and abilities that pretend to do a lot, but in truth do very little. Revenant pretends to have complexity, but it's just a lot of impressive-sounding stuff that in action is totally pointless.  

Revenant would need a complete, sweeping kit re-design kind of like Limbo's to even begin to fix some of these issues, but some of them could be patched up with simple buffs or small tweaks. It's just really a shame that this frame got such a poorly designed kit and was basically dropped like a rock after release, quickly being overshadowed by Garuda, who is a much more fun and powerful frame than he is. 

Edited November 19, 2018 by Glyphicality

[Zavenosk]

Yup, pretty much this.  Copy and paste isn't bad in itself, but if the resulting ability is not worth using it just comes across as lazy.

[Dragoon]

And before him we had Khora, another endlessly hyped frame that became a mess over time and was released as-is without much thought after the initial post-release rework. At least Garuda actually has a singular theme, unlike the supposed-to-be-vampire-but-no-actually-eidolon Frankenstein abomination that is Revenant.

And again, much like Revenant, they needed fan backlash to create an Ult for Garuda rather than the one they had made. After 5 years of making warframes, and continually saying they didn't want people pressing 4 to win, their strategy for creating warframes remains unchanged. Reworks are left behind like so many other branches of the game in favor of the next big thing.

I honestly, really, truly want them to rework armor scaling and enemies rather than the constant nerf/buff cycle they go through with *our* stuff. I agree 100% that Revenant still needs a lot of work, but hey, they're already showing off the next warframe coming down the line, so don't bet on it lol.

[(XBOX)Valvatorez666]

100% right... Sad but true. Survivalbility like a hit'n'run frame (you'll never survive skill 3 to heal while boosting through 60minutes lvl100+ MOT enemies, useless.) and his ultimate DD skill can't hit above/ below him.

[Howl4Me]

3 minutes ago, SaberSentinel said:

And before him we had Khora, another endlessly hyped frame that became a mess over time and was released as-is without much thought after the initial post-release rework. 

Ehh, I really like Khora, actually. She does her job reasonably well and she doesn't suffer from the same 'this is just the same ability another frame does' thing. All of her abilities were unique, had good synergies, and were perfectly good at what they did. I don't think she's the best frame or anything, but she's actually my personal favorite and I think she holds up fairly well, nothing at all like Revenant who... just got screwed, honestly, because all of his abilities were not only bad but also copies of everyone else's abilities. :\ 

I think the big thing is that a frame can get away with either having a lot of similar abilities to other frames, or being really bad, but not both. A frame that copies others but is still good isn't great, but at least people will use them because they're good. A frame that is unique but not very strong will at least have some ardent supporters who enjoy the little stuff they bring to the table. Revenant gets neither. 

Edited November 19, 2018 by Glyphicality

[Zyneris]

As a Revenant player, I have to agree. 

Enthrall -can- have some use in solo play, but overall it's meh. 

Mesmer Skin isn't' original, but it's what allows him to shine in a variety of ways, BUT you have to mod for it. That means dumping as much Strength as you can in to him.

Reave: Nope, just nope. Too god damn expensive, 0 control, and does not even get close to synergizing with his kit despite the interaction bonuses.

Danse: Best ability by far, and the only one worth modding for (it actually go hand in hand with Mesmer Skin, so stock up on that strength!). However, this ability basically got slapped down, chained, burned, and buried. That energy cost is absurd IF you want to actually use anything while in it (looking at your Reave). 

Even with max eff, it's still not worth it to use the two combined, which was the whole point in the first place!

Ugh, I cry so hard.

But yeah, modding for Strength, only use Mesmer Skin and Danse with energy weapon and move along. I wish he was better, but I'm still waiting for Wukong rework......yeah.....I dream WAAAAAAAY too big.

4 minutes ago, (XB1)Valvatorez666 said:

100% right... Sad but true. Survivalbility like a hit'n'run frame (you'll never survive skill 3 to heal while boosting through 60minutes lvl100+ MOT enemies, useless.) and his ultimate DD skill can't hit above/ below him.

Actually you can hit below him. It's above that's the issue. 

ANNNND he can definitely survive an hour in Mot without issue. Even level 300+ enemies aren't really that terrible, though I haven't gone beyond that yet. In my 'to do' list.

Edited November 19, 2018 by Zyneris

[(PSN)XxDarkyanxX]

As someone who usually picks up pretty quickly on warframe's hidden gem of a power, I can tell you without a doubt that Revenant's entire kit is, as you said, boring and meaningless.

Enthrall will ever only work in solo mode, they'll die in less than a second after cast if you're in a team leaving a pitiful zone of 2-5 meters of damage behind.
Would only be efficient if you spent your entire time spamming it left and right, which is still worst than just shooting enemies.

Mesmer is just a sad attempt at damage reduction unless you put your entire build at stake.
There's way too much incoming damage for that little number to matter.
( Mesa's second ability isn't even a damage reduction one and it's doing 10 time as much work as this one even if you're not building for it )

Reave is just not usable.
It cost a lot, goes WAY too far and is hardly controllable.
Most of the time you'll get health and shield back from your dozen of automatics sources so it's just not worth it.

Danse Macabre is the most useful of the entire set, yet the most lack-luster and lazy ability I've seen from all warframes so far.
After all this time trying to make creative and active abilities, we somehow reverted back to "Stand in place and let your fourth ability do everything for you"
( And ironically, it's not even all that good. )

Edited November 19, 2018 by (PS4)XxDarkyanxX

[(XBOX)Knight Raime]

Yeah it makes me sad honestly.  I mean they've messed up with frame design before.  Heck limbo wasn't the amazing dude he is now.  But at least he was servicable in a few way.  Revenant just isn't.  I think they realized how poor his design was right off the bat but decided to leave him as something to do later on.  They wanted to continue to work on other content.  Which I can understand.  But I wish they'd have just not released him at all and take him back to the drawing board.  They did with octavia and look at how great she is?  Sad thing is I actually liked how his kit was before they started changing him.  It still had issues.  But it had my interest a lot more than this.  Maybe i'm still just tilted that they decided to scrap a pretty awesome utility ult for OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH SPINNY MEME DAMAGE HAHA. -_-

[(PSN)santospizarro]

the level /rank up systems just isnt rewardign enough, where instead the player could get some new passive traits, rewards, and unique freebies, such as unique weapons per warframe, and ships as they complete each planet or master weapons/equipment in warframe.

i havent played this warframe yet, but the bare minimum for any survival and platforming game is growth and unlockables, there aren't enough differents in the terrains and environments or randomized enemies per planet, little to say about the weather or destructive elements since the only thing to worry about is not dying and revives, as the abilities and passive traits dont allow for much transition between combat, and can't always be used as secondary tools, i'd be great if the level-up included some unlockables like other games where the players could choose one trait to equip out from two and select what passive trait to use before going on a mission, from a skilltree like rpggames, since the mods dont always have special features that are made for the warframe, and melee combat is gimp, am saying its basically the same on all warframes, revanet for example doesnt have a scythe or melee tools, or alternative things to  bring out when his energy and HP are low.

[(PSN)Rafahil]

Grind Hard Squad recently made a good video on Revenant which showed that it's not that bad for endgame, but yeah after playing around with him myself I do notice that even though he's endgame capable he's also quite boring and in some aspects unnecessarily complicated while there are other frames that do what Revenant does but better. They should have focused his powers more on the eidolon side and less on the vampire lord side.

[Howl4Me]

1 hour ago, (PS4)Rafahil said:

Grind Hard Squad recently made a good video on Revenant which showed that it's not that bad for endgame, but yeah after playing around with him myself I do notice that even though he's endgame capable he's also quite boring and in some aspects unnecessarily complicated while there are other frames that do what Revenant does but better. They should have focused his powers more on the eidolon side and less on the vampire lord side.

Any frame is going to be fine for endgame, because this game isn't particularly hard. Revenant's just the weakest of the bunch, and worse, far less interesting in design than most too, since all of his abilities are weaker carbon copies of those of other frames. 

[DUSTCLOUD]

Endgame for some is level 40 enemies
End game for others is 150-200.
I dont see revenant lasting long in the 100+ range.

The 2018 warframes seem to be about fashion over function.

Khora is okay.
Revenant is far from designed (Limbo with deluxe skin = better revenant)
Garuda has marginal hope (Good pieces but someone tried to hammer her jigsaw pieces to fit. Feels like they didnt actually test her. Then placed huge animations on her for no reason.)

[Howl4Me]

2 minutes ago, DUSTCLOUD said:

Endgame for some is level 40 enemies
End game for others is 150-200.
I dont see revenant lasting long in the 100+ range.

The 2018 warframes seem to be about fashion over function.

Khora is okay.
Revenant is far from designed (Limbo with deluxe skin = better revenant)
Garuda has marginal hope (Good pieces but someone tried to hammer her jigsaw pieces to fit. Feels like they didnt actually test her. Then placed huge animations on her for no reason.)

Khora lasts alright in endgame. Venari's heal is pretty nice when you can get the little bastard to work, her 4 is pretty good CC and distracts enemies not being CC'd, her Ensnare is actually deceptively amazing CC, and her whipclaw can dish out surprisingly good damage in many cases. 

Garuda seems reasonably good for endgame too. I don't think she's particularly ramshackle, really; her 2 and 1 both give her ways to reposition and jump into crowds, and her 2 has a lot of powerful healing potential, and although I haven't had an awesome chance to test it out on super endgame enemies, her 4 seems specifically suited to seriously weakening high-level enemies, with the ability to stack armor-bypassing bleed procs.

Revenant really is just the odd one out. He was poorly conceived, his themeing was obvious at first but became increasingly muddled and weird (why sentient mind control? That's not even like, #5 on the list of iconic sentient capabilities...) and all of his abilities are awful. 

[Bombarder0]

*cough* ember

[Howl4Me]

1 minute ago, Bombarder0 said:

*cough* ember

You mean that frame who's really good for trash clearing and still kills decently high (70-80) level enemies pretty fast? That one? The one with a specific niche where she works well, rather than Revenant who has absolutely nothing he's particularly good at?

Nah. Revenant is worse, I'm sorry. 

[Bombarder0]

Justo ahora, Glyphicality dijo:

You mean that frame who's really good for trash clearing and still kills decently high (70-80) level enemies pretty fast? That one? The one with a specific niche where she works well, rather than Revenant who has absolutely nothing he's particularly good at?

Nah. Revenant is worse, I'm sorry. 

i feel revenant was the name of the kid that bully you to much time in high school and now you hate that name so much Imao

[DUSTCLOUD]

4 minutes ago, Glyphicality said:

Garuda seems reasonably good for endgame too. I don't think she's particularly ramshackle, really; her 2 and 1 both give her ways to reposition and jump into crowds, and her 2 has a lot of powerful healing potential, and although I haven't had an awesome chance to test it out on super endgame enemies, her 4 seems specifically suited to seriously weakening high-level enemies, with the ability to stack armor-bypassing bleed procs.

Revenant really is just the odd one out. He was poorly conceived, his themeing was obvious at first but became increasingly muddled and weird (why sentient mind control? That's not even like, #5 on the list of iconic sentient capabilities...) and all of his abilities are awful. 

Cant use her 1 and 2 on bosses. that means no 3 or 4 unless you're looking to suicide in style.

Early idea revenant was amazing and strong with his ability that seemed like it could  take over entire maps.
Nekros 2.0.

Instead he's limited to a maximum of 4 pawns.
D.e. has a thing against anyone but nyx taking mass control of enemies for long.
Synoid Heliocor gives you a shadow clone for 30s of the defeated enemy. Only 1 at a time.
Balistica prime gives you infinite shadow clones of 1 each per deceased enemy for 7s max...

Nice effects but no desire to fight with those weapons and Revenant is a slightly better version but limited to max 4.
If you grab an ancient great stuff. Healing and 90% damage reduction.

Edited November 19, 2018 by DUSTCLOUD

[denis-ldv]

7 минут назад, DUSTCLOUD сказал:

Instead he's limited to a maximum of 4 pawns.

7 pawns since 23.8

[Borg1611]

After they removed the sticky on his megathread https://forums.warframe.com/topic/1001379-pc-update-235-revenant-feedback-megathread/?page=76 after minor changes and not addressing his major issues, including the completely contradictory kit, I basically gave up hope. They moved on and decided to leave him in his very bizarre state that makes little to no sense. I mean, his 1 design alone is mind blowingly awful and doesn't play well with his 4 at all. 

You could make a video of him doing any content probably, but you could also do the same content as any frame in the game potentially with the right weapons and never even touching their abilities if you really wanted to. Doesn't speak to how awful his kit is. It's very clearly an unfinished design that not only doesn't feel complete but actually feels like elements of his kit actively harm other aspects.

My suggestion in the megathread was to make his 4 not detonate the pillars from his 1 and allow the homing missiles from the pillars to convert enemies into thralls when not already at the cap. That way when they inevitably all die to your 4, or your weapons or your allies, the pillars stay up and spread enthrall the same way living thralls would have. They could add a hard cap on the number of total pillars active if there isn't already. They'd still do relatively small amounts of damage, but at least you'd actually be able to use the ability outside of standing semi-afk at a mobile defense console or something. 

 

[xkvnrichie]

I think I'm confused about is his passive.

 

We're supposed to keep Mesmer Skin up all the time (like Iron Skin, Warding Halo, Shatter Shield, etc), and with that, our shield will never get any damage, and that makes his passive impossible to proc.

[(PSN)UltraKardas]

35 minutes ago, Glyphicality said:

Nah. Revenant is worse, I'm sorry. 

Nah dude. 

Revenant may need some touch ups, but he's far better then Ember. 

His Ultimate is far, far better them Ember's WoF (Higher base damage, switches elements to do more damage, better range and no arbitrary target limit.) 

Revenant has better CC, and an actual defense ability lol. 

Not saying he can't be better, but he's infinitely better. 

[Howl4Me]

7 minutes ago, (PS4)UltraKardas said:

Nah dude. 

Revenant may need some touch ups, but he's far better then Ember. 

His Ultimate is far, far better them Ember's WoF (Higher base damage, switches elements to do more damage, better range and no arbitrary target limit.) 

Revenant has better CC, and an actual defense ability lol. 

Not saying he can't be better, but he's infinitely better. 

Err... sure, it switches elements and has higher base damage, but it also requires line of sight, drains vastly more energy and is thus less sustainable, and also, y'know, cancels out any DPS that might be attained by Revenant's weapons, since he cannot use weapons during this ability. Also, it can't hit enemies above him, either, and he has to cancel it any time he wants to get around reasonably.

The two abilities aren't even comparable, because they apply to two different niches. Ember's is for good, strong, passive damage that can be amped up with Accelerant, and Revenant's is for massive burst damage. Ember's ability is unrivaled in that class, where no other frame can attain nearly the level of passive damage and CC that she gets out of WoF (especially with Firequake), but Revenant is topped by at least Mesa in what he does.

Here's the thing: Yeah, Ember's abilities aren't very good besides WoF and Accelerant for buffing WoF. But the reason she's better than Revenant is because WoF gives her a niche where she works. There's a reason she's brought to missions that need lots of trash clearing, because no other frame can do it as good as her, and her Firequake amps that up even further by practically stunlocking enemies in a pretty big radius, AND her damage is much more sustainable, even if it is lower than Revenant's (which of course it is because those two abilities aren't meant to do the same thing).

Ember is poorly designed too, but at least she works for something well. She does bring something to the table that no other frame does. Revenant doesn't. At all. 

Edited November 19, 2018 by Glyphicality

[(PSN)UltraKardas]

1 minute ago, Glyphicality said:

Err... sure, it switches elements and has higher base damage, but it also requires line of sight, drains vastly more energy and is thus less sustainable, and also, y'know, cancels out any DPS that might be attained by Revenant's weapons, since he cannot use weapons during this ability. Also, it can't hit enemies above him, either, and he has to cancel it any time he wants to get around reasonably.

Revenant's ability has longer range (50 meters vs Ember's shrinking 15) which makes the LoS issue, a non issue. Revenant also isn't limited in how many enemies he can hit with the ability either. Ember at max power strength gets her ultimate to hit for 3k damage, Revenant's ult hits for 10300 damage at max, then any damage he takes makes his ultimate do even more. 
If his damage does 75% more due to enemies weakness, that's quite a large difference. 

Ember is also quite squishy. No defense ability, has very soft CC, no scaling to speak of. Also, her passive is atrociously useless lol. Setting herself on fire for a minor boost, when she is already quite squishy? You have to basically have a weapon modded specifically for it, and have it useless for any other purpose. Also, Ember is literally trash. Octavia does everything Ember does, only about 2-3x as good. Mallet being a better version of WoF that has the added effect of being able to Charm enemies with the roller, and scaling to enemies for massive damage. 

If you want low level trash clearing, only a dozen frames do it much better. For a better synopsis watch this 

 

[DUSTCLOUD]

7 is still bad.
mallet is good damage, doesn't last long decent range, crap movement. forces you to recast. Same with amp.
her 3 is nice as it stays with you but is limited to buffs and stealth.

 

Edited November 19, 2018 by DUSTCLOUD

[Duality52]

Aside from issues of originality, Revenant's potential is similar to Harrow's where they become more powerful in higher level missions to use their abilities to their fullest (not counting using Danse Macabe all the time).

Enthrall can completely negate high threats such as Heavy Gunners, Techs, and a favorite for everyone Ancient Healers.

Not much to mention about Mesmer Skin honestly.

Reave will allow you to kill your Thralls in just two passes for the majority of the builds on Revenant (can also be done in a single cast due to the free controls), which allows for infinite scaling.

If you want the "worse" Warframe in the game that would be Wukong. He's overdue for a rework for a long time,

Edited November 19, 2018 by Duality52