Frost on the chopping block

[Ice_Peck]

Now I'm no expert on the inner workings of DE, so I can't say they already have the title in mind to begin with or not. But with the games current direction it's worth consideration. Frost needs another revamp to his toolkit, stats, and he needs PBR treatment to his design as well. Specifically Frost Prime.... really ugly old textures compared to what we get now. But he especially needs tweaks to his numbers at least.

 

Firstly, his stats, just to get the big one out of the way. I'll just list off his problem stats and why they need to be tweaked (or buffed if I'm being honest).

 

Frost requires infrequent re-casting on his abilities. This means he requires a larger energy pool to work with than the current base amount he has. At base he only has 100, including his Prime. Bump it up to 150 base for both. He doesn't need a huge amount but his pool still requires a small increase to work with his need to cast as often as he does. Especially considering the fact that Snow Globe, a 75 base energy cost ability can be stacked 4 times and casted elsewhere with up to 4 globes max each capable of being stacked. That's a LOT of frikkin' energy being used there.

 

Frost is first, and foremost, a tank. Heavy crowd control and protective abilities with a minor capability of doing damage. His abilities base damage is all good across the board, his damage numbers are really pretty huge. Problem is his personal stats. Shield is largely viewed as a completely worthless stat by majority of the player base and for the warframe whose damage type already destroys shields to begin with it doesn't make much sense for him to have a larger than average shield stat. Move the 50 and 75 extra shield Frost and Frost Prime have to their health, respectively. Frost's a very big man. Broad shoulders, tall, all that. Gotta beef up his health to match, y'know?

 

While I'm at it, his armor in hindsight is pathetic. A warframe needs roughly 6,000+ armor (not specifically) to reach 95% Damage Reduction. Nothing can even get close to that currently besides Atlas, Chroma, Chroma Prime and Valkyr Prime (specifically, her prime). He's a tank. His 3 gains more Effective Hit Points (EHP) based on his armor, as does the Icy Avalanche augments affect. 300 Base armor just isn't good for a tank. At all. At base both Frost and Frost Prime only have 300. Beef it up to 400 for Frost and spice Frost Prime a bit more with 425 base armor. 450 just to be very generous. It might not sound like much but after a lot of time looking at it... he does need that buff but not a huge increase either. Just enough to solidify him more into the tank role he's in. We have DPS frames that have just as much if not more armor than a tank. That's just... not good. Really not good.

 

Now going over his abilities numbers (and affects to an extent). I doubt DE will want to give him a complete overhaul with a brand new kit, so let's just look at what he already has and how we can tweak them.

His passive is so forgettable I actually forgot to make mention of it, before editing. Seriously... Give him more for his passive. Like no friction when sliding. He's THE Ice frame. Why does he have friction? If we wanna be generous, add in immunity to cold procs. Like people have been asking for, for years now. He's a very warm boy in that trench coat. Why does he have to feel the cold when he is the cold? It's ironically one of Frosts biggest weaknesses, cold damage and the status affect itself. That's just silly.

Freeze as is, is mostly fine. It has its role in locking an enemy out of the fight, but it can stand to use some changes. Allowing the Range stat to affect the size of the ice-patch Freeze leaves on the terrain would give it the breath of fresh air it needs to being used a bit more often. Keep the ice patch's current radius for its base across all levels and simply allow Frosts Range stat to increase or decrease it. As an added bonus, make it a patch of yellow snow for Frost Prime. Can't leave out that "gold" affect, y'know?

 

Ice wave is perfectly fine as is. Although personally I would make the Ice Wave Impedance augment a basic function for the ability itself, and change the augment to instead freeze enemies solid for half the current duration on the mod.

 

Snow Globe, the good old bread and butter. Yeah... this thing needs some changes. For the love of all that is holy please remove the 1 million health hard-cap on Snow Globes maximum potential health. Or at least raise the cap to a much higher number. 1 million health is not a lot. At all. Even if you get it to reach that high to begin with during its invulnerability phase. By that point enemies will already shred it just as fast as the invulnerable phase ends. Secondly, make Chilling Snowglobe augments current function baseline for the ability and change the mod. Changed affect can make the snow globe become an snowstorm aura, similar to the Exploiter Orb in Orb Vallis, centered around and travels with Frost that slows (with a 50% to freeze) enemies in range and also allows it to deal minor damage every second. Maybe 5 or 10 damage per second, tops. We don't want Frost becoming the next Ember with low level missions in this case, but we would like it to keep enemies from regenerating shields.

 

Avalanche is mostly fine as is currently, honestly. Just raise the base cast radius around him by 5 yards if we wanna be generous. However, buff the Icy Avalanche augments armors health from 60 to 80. Capping at 1,000 for Frost and for his allies in range, but it only lasts 10 seconds (not affected by duration). Not refreshable while active. We don't want everybody becoming Rhino now. Even then I'm being very generous with this here. I have other ideas personally but this isn't a complete overhaul. Just chopping block stuff.

 

Now for his appearance.... honestly... just ask anybody.  Frost is ugly. Frost Prime even more ugly. People would likely complain if his model got changed, naturally. But he does need some updated textures. He just reeks of old pixels.

Edited November 22, 2018 by _IceCreamMan_
Forgot about Frosts Passive. Lol.

[ReshyShira]

25 minutes ago, _IceCreamMan_ said:

Shield is largely viewed as a completely worthless stat by majority of the player base and for the warframe whose damage type already destroys shields to begin with it doesn't make much sense for him to have a larger than average shield stat. Move the 50 and 75 extra shield Frost and Frost Prime have to their health, respectively. Frost's a very big man. Broad shoulders, tall, all that. Gotta beef up his health to match, y'know?

Why not, instead, make Frost's passive apply his armor to his shield as something like "Cryogenic Barrier" passive.  That way Frost subverts the usual "shields are a joke" trope?

25 minutes ago, _IceCreamMan_ said:

Freeze as is, is mostly fine. It has its role in locking an enemy out of the fight, but it can stand to use some changes. Allowing the Range stat to affect the size of the ice-patch Freeze leaves on the terrain would give it the breath of fresh air it needs to being used a bit more often. Keep the ice patch's current radius for its base across all levels and simply allow Frosts Range stat to increase or decrease it. As an added bonus, make it a patch of yellow snow for Frost Prime. Can't leave out that "gold" affect, y'know?

Why not also make frosted enemies take extra damage due to being frozen solid and thus brittle?  Like a more reliable version of Gara's 4 when it strikes enemies.

Edited November 22, 2018 by ReshyShira

[Ice_Peck]

Like a "Link Armor to Shields" thing? It would only work well when paired with Adaptation realistically speaking.

 

As for Freeze... well.. applying Avalanche's armor strip to it as well would be handy. But it's a CC ability. Avalanche is multi-purpose.

Edited November 22, 2018 by _IceCreamMan_

[(PSN)XxDarkyanxX]

Can I just be blunt and straight up disagree 90% of the entire thing except PBR treatment?

I mean, efficiency wise I don't think there's a single frost player out there that's actually missing energy on frost.
His entire kit requires so little stat upgrades that it's hard to put anything other than efficiency mods, doesn't even need to stack 4 frost globe to begin with because of all the innate effect.
If you wanna give him more energy, be my guest, but he definitely is one of the less likely to ever run out of energy due to his kit being so user-friendly.
That reason is a bit shallow in my book.
___

You claim frost as a tank, but from his base alone he's always been a Shield caster more than anything else, nothing in his abilities suggest that frost could take a huge chunk of damage and brush it off as nothing like any other "tank".
I can understand Inaros, Rhino or even Wukong to take on a tank role, but Frost is far from that bunch, he's just a big dude who had far too many ice cream for lunch.
Mind you, Icy avalanche being the exception, but then armor would still be a meaningless argument to this.

The frame you've used as an example of things capable reaching high armor capacities also all have their own armor boosting ability.
Not really the best comparison to be made in favour to more armor.

I can't stress enough that you tapped the role of tank onto his name without much of a reason.
Him being a big dude doesn't instantly make him reliable for the role.
If anything he's an armor stripping, crowd-controlling, objective defending shield freak. Not a bullet sponge.
____

I don't mind the Frost upgrade... Think that's the only thing I can agree with here. ( Except the piss yellow joke, but I'd rather not get wooshed away )

Ice wave impedance as an augment is fine, you underestimate how slow it puts enemies in its duration.
Giving it that much innate slow effect and then changing the augment to one that freezes enemies in place would just make the new augment redundant while making his basic ability a cheap static molecular prime.
Just wish they'd remove the ice-crystal effect that lags the game on every cast.

Can I know which enemies you fought that took down a million hp off of your snowglobe?
And how in the world did you come up with the idea that you should have an augment with which you can let yourself travel with a 20 meter wide snowglobe that travels through walls with an newly added innate 50% insta-freeze proc and conclude that it would be balanced?
And why didn't we fix the "You can't shot through snow-globe's outside" anywhere in this? Priorities please.

And finally, how did you manage to start with a rant about his armor only to then hard-cap his only blunt tank ability to a non-refresh 5-shot takedown cast?
Rhino has 10 time that hard-cap with little effort, Frost needs to gather about 30-40 enemies in one hit to reach even 10-20% of that.
What's the point of that hard-wall nerf to something that's just a bit helpful for the team?

Not only that you just mentioned not wanting to make another press 4 to win like ember, only to suggest an additional 5 yard to Avalanche?
The same avalanche that's used to nuke levelling session defence rooms permanently? Boi... why?
___

That's a bit of a messy text, feel free to stop reading at any time, but honestly I feel like you might wanna re-evaluate that rework.
( no hard feeling, just wanna point that out so you can progress toward something without sugar-coating.)

Edited November 22, 2018 by (PS4)XxDarkyanxX

[Ice_Peck]

Frost is the only tank frame that can't boost his own ability to sustain damage outside of augmentation. Yes, he's a tank. Soaking up damage? The thing tanks do? Gara isn't considered a tank and she's vastly more tanky. Mesa is DEFINITELY not a tank and sustains vastly more damage than Frost. Et-cetera, et-cetera. It's silly. Yeah there's Snowglobe but movement is so critical to the game (ironic I mention that with Mesa mentioned a sentence prior) you just shot yourself in the foot. Now every enemy aggro'd onto you doesn't even have to adjust their aim. That's pretty bad. The extra armor would simply improve quality of life in general. For his bread and butter and his own survivability. That's with the augment included. He doesn't cast anything frequently enough to really be a caster frame, but does cast enough to need a slightly larger energy pool. Don't defend Shield though. It's so widely considered an awful stat for a reason.

Speaking of the augment, have to keep in mind it's also buffing allies in Avalanches range. And it's affected by Frosts power strength and the buffed individuals armor to boot. It'd be outrageously overpowered if it was just as powerful as Iron Skin (but for everybody!). Need drawbacks to keep it in check albeit my ideas aren't the best to begin with.

Didn't say the snowglobe augment would keep the same radius. 10m radius capped and maybe removing the 50% freeze effect to keep it from being just an OP Coolant Leak. Idea though is to basically make Frost a walking debilitation. Probably make it a channeled ability if augmented in this case. Must've missed the part where I made it pretty obvious some of these are being "pretty generous" about it. It's an aura, not an actual globe. Like I mentioned... think what the Exploiter Orb does when you make it angry in Orb Vallis.

Avalanche freeze duration doesn't refresh. Impossible to "perma CC" with it. Though spamming it does severely hinder mobs. But spamming 100 energy cost ability? Nice. Now you absolutely need a bigger energy pool. Also your point can apply to literally every other frame that nukes a large area. Banshee, Oberon, Rhino, et-cetera. The suggestion was to keep Frost from being a walking low level nuke on legs. The constant here is all these nukes require you to stop moving for a moment. You're a sitting duck. Albeit Avalanche makes enemies flinch on cast to be fair... bit weird in hindsight...

Ice Wave slow and ice patch slow do not stack. Least as far as I'm aware. Ice Wave forces a Cold proc on struck enemies. Ice patch applies a "permanent" cold proc on enemies standing in it until they either walk out or the patch disappears.

Some things like "Frost is a big boy" in context is clearly a joke. I can use that exact same context to argue Vauban should be one of the tankiest frames in the game, if I felt like it, but this is about Frost.

Edited November 22, 2018 by _IceCreamMan_

[ADirtyMonk]

Agree with most of these complaints and suggestions. My biggest issue is how his "freeze" effects locks the enemy state and they cannot be status procced any more. This completely #*!%s a lot of weapons/builds and especially if a high armored target gets locked in and just tanks for days because no one can strip the armor anymore.

[(XBOX)GearsMatrix301]

Yeah, Frost is starting to fall behind with Snowglobe being his only ability that people use him for 

[(XBOX)BLACKSPECTRUM77]

To pull from various sources of feedback regarding Frost; such as personal use, various content creators, and this current thread; here's my own feedback and proposed tweaks/changes:

Role: First, let me address the idea of Frost being a tank. On this I have to also disagree and say that he is better defined as a Crowd Control Caster/defender. Frost himself DOES NOT soak up damage, his Snow Globe does. Inaros has the highest base health of any warframe, using CC and lifesteal alongside an augment which nullifies status procs to sustain himself in his tanking potential. Nidus also has high health and the same armor value as Frost, however Nidus is also the only warframe to benefit from innate stat boosts and health regen. He builds his tankiness and damage through his mutation stacks, on top of gaining 90% damage reduction/status immunity when linked to an enemy, further healing and slight CC form his 4, and the inherent CC form his 2. Also Nidus makes full use of his undying passive provided he can keep up his mutation stacks. Wukong simply doesn't die, and that's about all he does well. Rhino uses iron skin in conjunction with ironclad charge to reach laughable defensive values allowing him to question if the enemies even know what damage is in certain scenarios. Valkyr has the highest base armor of any frame and a 4th ability that grants her invulnerability and lifesteal. Frames like Gara, Mesa, Nezha, potentially even Trintiy can be considered "Tanky" because of their DR, CC, healing, DPS, or a combination of those aspects. Frost only has his crowd control, and the hope that nothing sneaks inside his snow globe and touches him while he's casting. With that out of the way, let's talk potential changes.

 

Energy pool and ability cost: People build Frost in multiple ways; max efficiency, max range, high strength, etc. But what you're doing no matter what as Frost is casting your abilities to stop damage from reaching yourself and/or anything you happen to be defending, to stop the enemies in their tracks, and more importantly to stay alive. Because of the potential build variety and the fact that not everyone uses the Zenurik focus school, energy restores, or even energy siphon for one reason or another, I would not be opposed to a larger energy pool and/or slight reduction in cost for an ability or two. Perhaps ice wave and avalanche, but that's up for debate.

 

Passive: Please for the love of Space Mom something better than what he has now. A small chance to freeze an enemy that melee's you? Honestly? That passive basically says afk and pray it activates. Oh wait, you got gunned down by the other enemies huh? Great passive right? Okay jokes aside it's almost universally considered a terrible passive, one of the worst in the game. I tend to agree with the thematic suggestion of making Frost immune to cold procs and arctic eximus auras. Personally I had the idea of a ~3m aura around Frost which freezes whatever enemies get that close. Essentially it's a better version of his current passive because it targets primarily melee units, except it actually works and protects him. But that's just my idea and I'm not the only one who has those so yours might be better. Feel free to discuss.

 

Quality of Life: Short list of QoL improvements.

• Sprint speed increase on Frost Prime specifically to at least 1.00 
• Please, please let us shoot through Frost's Snow Globe from the outside. It can be incredibly frustrating for teammates outside the bubble trying to hit enemies when their shots get eaten by the globe instead. And let's be honest not everyone is going to be standing in the bubble with Frost 100% of the time, especially not players taking advantage of the full range of movement we have access to. It's also incredibly dated because you can shoot through Gara's glass wall from the outside, so why not Frost's snow globe? 
• Speaking of Snow Globe, it would be fantastic to have a U.I. indicator for the health value of your Snow globe. This feature has already been given to Nezha's warding halo, Rhino's iron skin, and Gara's splinter storm (except in her case it's a damage value rather than a health value).
• PBR on Frost Prime. He was the first prime warframe (not counting Excalibur for obvious reasons) and it shows. His design is very basic and barren of much detail, especially compared to the effort that goes into frames nowadays. He could use a proper reskin of sorts, so we're less inclined to hide him under tennogen and deluxe skins, which tend to put his base model to shame unfortunately.
• I also wouldn't be averse to range affecting the AoE on Frost's first ability. 

 

Snow Globe: Okay, next to what I said about Frost's role, this will probably the most controversial topic on here. What I'm proposing is a mechanic ripped straight from the Nezha rework with slight alteration. When Snow globe is destroyed, Frost and any allies or defense objectives that were within the Snow Globe upon its destruction are granted 1 second, and only 1 second, of invulnerability. This is strictly a suggestion aimed at alleviating one shots in higher level gameplay, as that single second should be enough time to recast your snow globe and be good to go. I'd like to clarify that the 1 second invulnerability is not tied to casting or recasting snow globe, only it's destruction from incoming enemy damage. I feel this change would eliminate the need to be a 1 button wonder at higher levels, where your only goal as frost becomes to spam your snow globe and hope neither the defense objective or yourself get shot mid-cast. That isn't fun, nor is it engaging. That very brief period of immunity returns Snow globe to a set it and forget it ability, allowing you to continue making use of the other abilities in your kit to CC the enemies until the bubble's destruction. Additionally, I'd like to see a small increase to the absorption multiplier used to calculate the snow globe's health, allowing it to scale better in those higher levels where enemy damage can eat through its health incredibly fast. The longer lasting globe, in combination with the 1 second immunity again allows you to get further use out of Frost's entire kit. It's worth noting that nullifiers are still top priority despite my proposed changes. Yes, you'll get the immunity from your globe getting destroyed, but you'll likely spend that second killing the nullifier instead of recasting your snow globe, which is all it takes for a stray bullet to end your run. 

 

Thanks for reading to the end if you have, I tried to appeal to multiple playstyles/types of people with these suggestions and hope this opens the door for more feedback and discussion. This is my first time writing something like this and I don't expect everyone to agree with all of it. I just think Frost could be better than he is in one way or another and hope he gets a little love again someday. Stay Frosty Tenno. 

 

Yes, I did just make that pun. You're welcome.

 

 

Edited November 22, 2018 by (XB1)BLACKSPECTRUM77

[Dellehave]

i agree with you frost prime is more or less my main and he really needs a buff both energy and armor wise. and also the pause state enemies go into when hit with 4 should be removed or atleast allow status procs to happen while they are frozen. and maybe put globes as a duration thing with endless health so cc frost can also tank.

Edited November 22, 2018 by Dellehave

[(PSN)teacup775]

20 hours ago, _IceCreamMan_ said:

Specifically Frost Prime.... really ugly old textures compared to what we get now

Is that you chroma p?

DE pops out dangly bits that look like overly large brass handles and greasy thick rubber “cloth”. 

[Ice_Peck]

I typically run crit myself so the issue of enemies not being status procced during Frozen status is seldom seen as a problem for myself. But yeah, it does actually hinder combat effectiveness ironically. They just need to be able to be inflicted by status and the same should apply to Atlas when he Petrifies enemies as it's the same exact mechanic with different textures. (But we're talking about Frost, not Atlas)

[(XBOX)RPColten]

I'd hardly define Frost as a 'tank' in the traditional sense. He's a heavy caster with a focus on area defence and enemy debuff. In fact I would more confidently describe him as a support class rather than tank.

On 2018-11-21 at 3:43 PM, _IceCreamMan_ said:

At base he only has 100, including his Prime. Bump it up to 150 base for both.

At time of writing, I am literally looking at Frost and Frost Prime in the arsenal and they both have 150 energy at base. Mission accomplished?

[EriskRedlemur]

Frost is one of my fav warframes and first prime. I still love him. But he is NOT a tank first - as others said he's a support CC caster a mage of sorts then he's a tank. Now that may be opinion but it's sorta how he was designed and with some of the highest shield base in game - which is not good because shields are useless mostly. I love the idea of shields being an alternate tanking method. But it's not.

Buffing his armor - tbh - does little I mean, it helps - sorta - 450 - reducing shields - sure I take that but imo buffing his energy pool would be A LOT better BUT again I don't view him as a tank first.

His energy pool IS low for his high cost of abilities true I would love to see a little increase BECAUSE to me he's a caster CC support first - so I agree there.
Speed I like how he's slow fits his theme and having some disadvantages is nice, BUT it is a bit too low for the type of game WF is. Why I tend to use Rush/speed mod in exilus for him. We shouldnt have to do that though.

Frost has 3/4 augments that are very solid to play with. His Icy Avalanche doesn't make him a Rhino it is very nice, but high levels it's not enough and will be stripped quickly. My fav Frost to play adds lots of support to team and himself and sorta solves some of his less than tanky issues - BUT - again, is not the scaling monster Iron Skin is. Which IS good I sorta think it could use a tweak and not be OP. AND you shouldn't need an augment to solve any tanking issues yes.

So I mostly agree with OP except for how I view Frost I totally consider him having tank qualities but not first - but - other WFs have taken off leaving Frost behind - yeah Chilling Globe on high/long defense is still king BUT - not like it used to be with more options out there and more options isn't bad. BUT I'd love to see Frost return to compete more.

I love his Deluxe skin personally it makes him look very different and I don't get why peeps aren't fans of Harka skin it made me play frost a lot more. But that's fashion :D

 

[Caelward]

Frost is not for everything, but you can just about take him anywhere anyways.

@_IceCreamMan_

If I'm wrong I apologize in advance, but I have to assume you have a small selection of mods. There a plenty of different themed sets squirreled around the game. For ability modification, corrupted mods are very important.

It's a bit of a weakness of the game in general that the true power of most warframes and weapons comes after a handful of forma and with a wide array of upgraded mods. Frost is much like this too. Frost with max efficiency is absolutely redonculous, and it's not terribly hard to get there at all. Doing that also doesn't cost a great deal in terms of trade offs. But that's also the case for his range and power. Depending on his build you barely need duration either. For Frost, it is really easy to adjust his stats to absurd levels, he's extremely modifiable. If you don't have a selection of corrupted mods, they are a very important goal to pursue for every frame you use. I don't take my own Frost into low level missions unless I'm specifically helping someone because he's terribly overbearing.

Let me put this here by itself, if you don't have fleeting expertise, Frost loves this mod and it's a great starting point. Common core mods like this generally don't cost a great deal of plat if you are able to trade, but they are worth the trouble to obtain.

Most of his stats are fine at base levels, but I can't stress how much high efficiency makes a difference for him. He starts with a reasonably high energy pool, but more energy please can be said for many frames who don't seem to be getting it.

 

Also... he's not a tank, he's about prevention, not absorption. He prevents enemies from reaching objectives. He prevents enemy weapons from hitting you entirely. He has multiple ways to pursue this goal. I rarely actually run shield and health boosting mods, I barely need them. I don't absorb damage after all, I prevent it.

The first build is generally for snowglobe. Average range, max efficiency, power and duration variable. Stack those bubbles, stack them, the hp just goes up. There's a limit, that limit isn't worth worrying about for a long time. You can also move a misplaced bubble by casing another from within. With max efficiency you can spread bubbles over every point. (ability 1 to remove bubble and ragdoll enemies within). You don't want a small or a large bubble, but you can instantly make new and very hard defensive points, the augment also stops enemies in their tracks. This is fantastic. Don't do excavation without a Frost and a decent snowglobe build.

The second build is the ice wave build, using his ice wave impedance augment. Do you like to snipe? Have I got a build for you. With max range and duration you can lock down huge swaths of the map for what feels like nearly forever. I'm not kidding, this augment is easy to overlook but absolutely fantastic. Mobs just (slowly) line up and eat headshots for days.

Less necessary is a build around his avalanche and augment icy avalanche. It's actually pretty easy to slot this in with the other builds too. Avalanche is really strong, just like any ability that strips armor. Being able to lock down a huge area of enemies, tear down the few tough ones with actual armor and gain some debuff blocking health just makes it better. If you've built with high efficiency it can be chain cast to great effect.

[(PSN)MrNishi]

I was going to avoid chiming-in, but ...

I am confused as to why players want more armor?

Armor is a psuedo-stat that gets bypassed when it is actually needed.

✓Damage Reduction which is applied to both Shields and Armor-Protected health is better than just armor. 90% DR is better than 90% Armor Damage Mitigation; one reduces Bleed proc damage and the other is ignored. Why would you want the one that is ignored by Slash status?

(Icy Avalanche being an Armor bolster which can be ignored by Bleed procs makes it inferior to Gara's Splinter Storm Damage Reduction which applies to lowering Bleed proc damage)

Also Avalanche or any freeze/statue type ability that grants enemies status immunity is not high-level friendly and thus brings into question: Why do you want more armor and longer freeze durations or more freeze abilities; when they hinder high level content?

 

In high-level content Chilling Globe and Avalanche are not friednly for keeping killing speed up. Avalanche has strong-conflict as the armor removal is tied-to the freeze duration, making it become a shield on enemies at later high-level protecting these enemies from Condition Overload scaling as it Shields them from status procs. (Requiring the status procs to be applied before you stripped the armor by making the enemies into Ice Cubes***)

Snow Globe in high-level is not used to stack for health...it is used to make the most out of the 3-second Invincibility and then recast. There is no advantage in stacking 4 snowglobes with boosted Armor/health values in content where after the Snow globe will be downed in less than 5seconds. It is much more efficient to only cast a SnowGlobe every 3secs. (Even more efficient to cast a SnowGlobe and utlize a max range Ice Wave impedance as it will slow enemies while still allowing status procs to be applied to not hinder killing speed or damage ramp up.)

 

It seems like it is pretty clear that this rework is intended to improve star-chart and low Sortie Frost playing. Which would help to distinguish Frost as being new player friendly and Gara/Limbo as the more definitive endless/Arbitration/ESO frame alternatives.

 

Current Frost is still Adaptation and Rolling Guard friendly. Increasing more Frozen and status immune enemies would make them less useful. Enemies being slowed with their attacks allows Adaptation to be refreshed to keep up damage reduction and keeping Freeze-duration on enemies at a minimum allows the duration to timed to cover rolling Guard cool down. Increasing the freeze durations or making Ice Wave Impedance be a freeze would just hurt the current late game Survivability and as mentioned earlier: slow down Condition Overload damage ramp-up.

[Sasquatchias]

Personally regarding Frost the major changes I most want to see are to his abilities, two of which tends to not be as useful due to poor scaling and your most frequently used ability also being one that becomes a major nuisance to teammates or encourages you to stay in one place, which is contradictory to most modes in Warframe (aside from the defensive modes and survival where extra defense is always welcome).

1. Freeze could stand to have better damage scaling, and maybe some sort of secondary effect like the armor stripping that Avalanche does to make it worth using more frequently.
2. Ice Wave just needs to scale a little better, I think the ability is pretty much perfect as is (though I wouldn't mind the Augment being cooked into the base ability.)
3. Snow Globe should have two casts as a tap and hold ability - the Tap being not a globe, but more of a frontal facing shield (similar to Garuda or Volt but with health or damage being able to break through a bit like the reworked Warding Halo), and the Hold being the snow globe we all know and love. Keep the interaction with Freeze in both forms, with Freeze detonating the shield in a cone or long-ranged AoE attack that guarantees Cold Procs on all enemies hit.
4. Don't really think Avalanche needs any changes to be honest, though I think the augment could be changed to be worth considering.

The biggest limitation with Frost is his Snow Globe being entirely stationary, but I think if there were to be added mobility it might be a tad bit too strong and thus instead of a complete barrier it could be more of a frontal one, trading the absolute defense for increased mobility rather than just something like a decreased health threshold that won't ever actually come down unless you're playing and tanking the absolute hardest missions available.

[Azrael_V]

QOL suggestion for frozen enemies: they should be highly susceptible to impact damage or critical hits cause enemies to shatter if health is below a certain percentage. This makes up for the fact that no status can be proc'd. 

Edited November 24, 2018 by Azrael_V

[Ice_Peck]

On 2018-11-23 at 9:23 PM, Caelward said:

Frost is not for everything, but you can just about take him anywhere anyways.

@_IceCreamMan_

If I'm wrong I apologize in advance, but I have to assume you have a small selection of mods. There a plenty of different themed sets squirreled around the game. For ability modification, corrupted mods are very important.

It's a bit of a weakness of the game in general that the true power of most warframes and weapons comes after a handful of forma and with a wide array of upgraded mods. Frost is much like this too. Frost with max efficiency is absolutely redonculous, and it's not terribly hard to get there at all. Doing that also doesn't cost a great deal in terms of trade offs. But that's also the case for his range and power. Depending on his build you barely need duration either. For Frost, it is really easy to adjust his stats to absurd levels, he's extremely modifiable. If you don't have a selection of corrupted mods, they are a very important goal to pursue for every frame you use. I don't take my own Frost into low level missions unless I'm specifically helping someone because he's terribly overbearing.

Let me put this here by itself, if you don't have fleeting expertise, Frost loves this mod and it's a great starting point. Common core mods like this generally don't cost a great deal of plat if you are able to trade, but they are worth the trouble to obtain.

Most of his stats are fine at base levels, but I can't stress how much high efficiency makes a difference for him. He starts with a reasonably high energy pool, but more energy please can be said for many frames who don't seem to be getting it.

 

Also... he's not a tank, he's about prevention, not absorption. He prevents enemies from reaching objectives. He prevents enemy weapons from hitting you entirely. He has multiple ways to pursue this goal. I rarely actually run shield and health boosting mods, I barely need them. I don't absorb damage after all, I prevent it.

The first build is generally for snowglobe. Average range, max efficiency, power and duration variable. Stack those bubbles, stack them, the hp just goes up. There's a limit, that limit isn't worth worrying about for a long time. You can also move a misplaced bubble by casing another from within. With max efficiency you can spread bubbles over every point. (ability 1 to remove bubble and ragdoll enemies within). You don't want a small or a large bubble, but you can instantly make new and very hard defensive points, the augment also stops enemies in their tracks. This is fantastic. Don't do excavation without a Frost and a decent snowglobe build.

The second build is the ice wave build, using his ice wave impedance augment. Do you like to snipe? Have I got a build for you. With max range and duration you can lock down huge swaths of the map for what feels like nearly forever. I'm not kidding, this augment is easy to overlook but absolutely fantastic. Mobs just (slowly) line up and eat headshots for days.

Less necessary is a build around his avalanche and augment icy avalanche. It's actually pretty easy to slot this in with the other builds too. Avalanche is really strong, just like any ability that strips armor. Being able to lock down a huge area of enemies, tear down the few tough ones with actual armor and gain some debuff blocking health just makes it better. If you've built with high efficiency it can be chain cast to great effect.

Frost loses one of his 2 great strengths with use of Fleeting Expertise. He can do fine with Transient but anything under that in Duration drain will harm him. Severely.

 

I mean unless you're not too concerned with the Armor Stripping from Avalanche or CC duration on Freeze. Hurts Ice Wave Impedance of course to. Frost doesn't really need duration. But my point is negative duration hurts him. If efficiency is genuinely a problem let me be the first to point you towards the direction of pizzas, Zenurik, and Arcane Energize.

[Caelward]

On 2018-11-26 at 4:19 PM, _IceCreamMan_ said:

Frost loses one of his 2 great strengths with use of Fleeting Expertise. He can do fine with Transient but anything under that in Duration drain will harm him. Severely.

 

I mean unless you're not too concerned with the Armor Stripping from Avalanche or CC duration on Freeze. Hurts Ice Wave Impedance of course to. Frost doesn't really need duration. But my point is negative duration hurts him. If efficiency is genuinely a problem let me be the first to point you towards the direction of pizzas, Zenurik, and Arcane Energize.

I main him all the time, but I've been around long enough to have a solid collection of mods. My point is that he's very malleable for modding the way you want, even with heavy trade-offs for efficiency allowing him to spam abilities. He can't do all the things I mentioned in my post at the same time, but he can do one exceptionally well, or two with more than satisfactory capability by giving up the third.

Anyways, it may just be me, but my experience with Frost is that he is anything but inferior. I desperately wish my Zephyr had just a small fraction of the TLC that went into the chill dude.

Frost actually gets spontaneous updates, upgrades and fixes. I've been caught off guard more than a couple times, so I tell with you confidence that he's on DE's radar.

Zephyr only ever had turbulence fixes until they gave her a rework that failed for fix anything that players complained about for years...

[Synccccc]

I just wish that his 1 can be an aoe and his 2&3 can have better damage dealing potential

[Klokwerkaos]

Frost is a new player acquisition who is irrellavent by mid game.  I assume this is intentional to encourage players to branch out and acquire more stuff which ultimately results in more revenue as well as better gaming experience.

Would it be nice if he wasn't outclassed by other warframes in everything he does?  Probably,  but I am almost certain this is intentional.

Edited November 28, 2018 by Klokwerkaos

[Skoll-]

I agree with most of what you said. I've been playing Warframe about a month now and Frost is my favorite to play but aside from Snowglobe and Avalanche, he just doesn't bring enough to the table compared to other frames in high level content. If I don't babysit defense points with snowglobe, I find myself using Frost as more of a "combat caster" instead of a support role like Trinity for example. In fact, I've geared mine towards an assault / melee focus just so I can contribute in fights even though I am far, far outclassed by more combat centric frames like Ember or Umbra and whatnot. I'd be all for some kind of rework.

 

 

And oh god, yes, Frost and Frost Prime are ugly as sin. My favorite frame to play, but unironically the hardest on the eyes. All his skins are just recolors except for Harka, which you have to buy. All his helmets are insanely ugly too. Frost's entire aesthetic makes me wish you could build a frame like you can a zaw. It's just so blocky and ugly and you can't really do much with it even with the capes and armor additions. I wish Frost had more of a Rhino/Excalibur look sans obnoxious codpiece that Rhino has. Obviously, I doubt DE would rework is aesthetic (or at least, make it available for free), but something really does have to be done about it.

[(XBOX)SirMilkfiend]

I thought the same way but eventually I saw the value in Snowball and Ice Wave. The Snowball you throw out while reloading to buy that extra time and Ice Wave makes a good alternative to Avalanche in some situations because unlike Avalanche it doesn't protect enemies from extra procs. That and the augments are very potent.

There's very little I'd change about Frost. Just his passive make him immune to status effects whenever he's near a frozen or cold-procced enemy as an idea.

Edited December 1, 2018 by (XB1)SirMilkfiend

[Caelward]

A quick guide on building frost and what to aim for.

Spoiler

 

 

Ice wave and its augment is a powerful room clearing and Crowd Control tool. You can put whole rooms in near unmoving slow motion, giving you and all your friends all the time you want for whatever needs doing. Crowd control is king in warframe. Locking a whole room in stasis without preventing allied procs is important at medium and high levels of play. At low levels? Most mobs just die, but ultimately, ice wave cares not for the level of the enemies in its range.

A strong enough globe with the augment can be used in sorties to keep a group alive in those abusive assassination missions, throwing enemies outside when cast and freezing the ones who come too close after the fact. It is also key for keeping escort targets alive, a high efficiency Frost can push the bubble around the map to keep up with that wandering npc defense target.

With 250% power you can remove all the armor from enemies within the range of avalanche. So much of the end game is done with the consideration of armor needing to be removed entirely before certain enemies will even take damage. Most frames depend on their weapons for damage at high level, and with no armor left, you do so much more damage to those mobs.

How is this not end game, how is it not useful at all levels of play?

 

Frost isn't for every mission type, but he has something to offer at any difficulty level. He is not weak, he is not buggy with badly functioning mechanics. He does not need a rework. DE will give Frost adjustments when they see a need, but him needing a rework and you wanting him to be reworked because you haven't seen the depths of what he can do are different things. Him having designed weaknesses is also not a problem that needs fixing, it's a reason to try out different frames with different strengths. And don't get caught on a frames early level stats. Health, shields and energy increase as you approach rank 30.