Frost 2.0

[(XBOX)LightningRift]

I posted some ideas a while back about some changes I feel should happen to Frost. 

 

Frost is a good frame, I will be the first to argue that his Snow Globe is a defensive monster; however, I think he's getting outclassed by a lot of other defensive frames out there now (Gara, Limbo).

I have said this before, and will continue to say this: Frost's 1&2 are junk. Yes, every person can find a niche case for these, but that does not alter that overall, they are junk. 

What does Frost need?

First let's look at Gara:

Gara has a lot of kit that makes her awesome at defense.

1. Defensive Wall 
2. 90% Damage Reduction on self and allies
3. Healing (with Mending Splinters)
4. Scaling Damage 

Now let's look at Limbo:

1. Defensive wall
2. Complete DMG reduction on self and defensive people (Sorties), while banished. 
3. Freezing enemies completely (makes those riven challenges a cake-walk
4. Useful for Corpus spy missions
5. Healing with augment
6. Energy for self and team in the rift

Now let's look at Frost:

1. Freeze single enemies and deal some damage. There are some people who have niche uses for this, but overall this ability is under powered. 
2. Snow globe to protect objectives (static only, unless you want to continue recasting for a moving Sortie target)
3. Some armor reduction and can freeze groups of enemies, but you really have to sacrifice a lot to get notable range or armor reduction.
4. His 2 is garbage. Just trash, and this saddens me. There are some people who have niche uses for this, but overall this ability is under powered. 

Someone out there will argue why Frost doesn't need to be changed, and that's fine. But the reality is, he's getting far outclassed in his kit compared to other newer frames.

In my experience, the majority of his use involves Snow Globe. That's it. Sure, you could use some of his other abilities, but ask yourself, as these abilities to make Frost less painful to play, or are they contributing to his playability? 

The most common argument I've heard to prevent from changing his #1 and #2 is they can "freeze" or "slow down" enemies. Honestly, if you need to freeze or slow enemies, there are Novas, Limbos, and Equinox's out there to accomplish this. Freezing enemies individually with his #1 is niche. Slowing groups of enemies with his #2, is niche. I rarely see this play style, and I don't use it myself because it's just too under powered to use the energy on. I don't typically play low level stuff, in which these abilities would be considered "useful". If a frame's strengths only shine during low level content, then that frame is under powered. 

There are so many frames out there that have scaling damage (Saryn, Equinox, Gara), and massive armor stripping (Saryn, Mag), as well as others that can be used in multiple roles (Limbo for defense and spy; Gara for endgame and defense).

This ultimately begs the question: Can Frost compete with other defensive frames anymore?

I feel like the answer is "no". The only time he gets used is for his snow globe. Endgame material? Laughable, unless you are camping. His snow globe is great, but he can't really contribute much else to the group. A Frame like Saryn can strip armor, heal herself, deal infinitely scaling damage, etc. Gara also has a lot of kit as well. Yes, Frost can strip armor, but this ability is far outclassed by so many other frames, that it really becomes just a "here, we don't know what this ability should do, so here's a tiny bit of armor stripping, limited range, and huge power costs to accomplish it". Yes, Frost can do 100% armor stripping, but overall the power costs and limited range make this less than desirable. Mag can do legit scaling damage and armor stripping for example, at much larger ranges, and much lower energy costs.

I've made some suggestions to how Frost can contribute more to a squad (in my previous post) with things like energy steal, healing, etc. Another thing to consider is giving himself damage reduction (his #4 augment is junk compared to unaugmented complete 90% dmg reduction from Gara, etc). 

I want to play Frost more, outside of him being bubble boy. He's got good armor, and can lock down objectives decently, but his overall kit is just boring. I don't look at abilities 1, 2, 4 and go "Wow, this is just so cool". They are either too underpower, or too limited in other areas (range, energy efficiency). 

All of this coming from someone who wants to play Frost more, but it's hard to not choose Gara over him. Frost was my very first prime frame on PC, and that carries a desire for him to have a better kit. For the people who enjoy/argue his abilities at low/mid range levels, you are arguing that Frost is only good at low/mid range levels. He can't compete with other frames beyond level 80. 

 

Arbitrations? Yeah, Gara eats Frost's lunch every time. 

 

If he had 1 of scaling damage, healing, damage reduction on self, he would be a much higher tier warframe than his current state of just snow globing, occasional freezing enemies. 

Higher level enemies (lvl 100+) laugh at the majority of Frost's abilities. This is because Frost has no scale. He's a 1x, and stays a 1x throughout enemy leveling. 

[peterc3]

4 hours ago, (XB1)LightningRift said:

This ultimately begs the question: Can Frost compete with other defensive frames anymore?

I feel like the answer is "no".

Then you are 100%, objectively wrong. Adding crap like energy steal or healing is completely outside Frost's design.

[Eterud]

51 minutes ago, peterc3 said:

Then you are 100%, objectively wrong. Adding crap like energy steal or healing is completely outside Frost's design.

Agree completely,

Frost is fine as it is.

Although I hate it that his frost bubble makes me blow myself up when frost casts his bubble the same moment I shoot my zarr.

[(PSN)drollive96]

Technically we already have frost 2.0, his snowglobe used to be based on power duration instead of armor and power strength, this post needs to be renamed to "frost 3.0"

[Guest]

If anything, his 4 should strip Armor permanently like Oberon and he could get some scaling %damage on his 1 and 2 or something.

Rather than increase his tanking ability, they should increase his nuking power, just to mess with people who only use him for defense.

[moooooski]

its a free game dont complain play with limbo/gara 🤬

[NinjaZeku]

1 hour ago, Datam4ss said:

strip Armor permanently

That (and stacking effects with repeated casts) should really be the standard for all Armor-reducing abilities, yes please.

7 hours ago, (XB1)LightningRift said:

his #4 augment is junk compared to unaugmented complete 90% dmg reduction from Gara, etc

While you ignored the Squad status immunity part of the Augment which can help not least in Radiation Sorties,
I certainly wouldn't mind seeing the "Icy Skin" amount buffed, either a flat increase, say, +20 to +40 per enemy hit,
or involving enemy level in the calculation, like, 30 + [enemy level] or somewhere around that.

I'd also very much like it if Avalanche, with its somewhat lengthy casting animation,
was an ongoing effect that still froze enemies coming into range later,
and if the Augment counted all enemies that it ever touched, including those killed during the cast,
similar deal for allies that moved through but then out of Avalanche's range while it was being cast, have them still get buffed.

Plus of course, the freeze status (also on Atlas / Gara) should no longer prevent status infliction.

7 hours ago, (XB1)LightningRift said:

scaling damage

Just FYI, Globe pushing nearby enemies into walls on cast deals %-based Finisher damage.

Ice Wave ... dunno, it's super fun on a high-Range build, covering just everything in ice spikes,
the damage is neither amazing nor utterly terrible and the mass slowdown can be useful.
Really no idea whether this needs a buff, or if it does, what that should be. *shrug*

I would definitely agree that Freeze is quite meh, the Globe synergy
(which BTW should maybe give an Energy refund based on Globe strength, at least up to the Freeze cost)
is the most useful part about it, and that's a bit sad.

... hm, random idea, how 'bout this, turn Freeze into kind of an ice version of Spores. Let me explain:

Freeze is no longer a projectile, it's a "lock-on cast" like Spores / Smite (which not least would make the Augment more usable).
It targets a single enemy, who gets frozen as currently (status procs allowed plskthx) for X seconds.
If killed while frozen, the corpse shatters, dealing a little bit of radial damage (maybe even %-of-max-Health-based)
and spreading the freeze to nearby enemies, with the full X seconds duration, and so the cycle (possibly) repeats.

Give it a hold function, which would let you highlight and kerblast Globes through enemies and even walls,
aiming at a Globe while in this state would also show the current Health of that Globe
(and then aiming away and releasing would simply do nothing, at no Energy cost).

Edited January 15, 2019 by NinjaZeku

[birdobash]

I agree that frost needs some tweaks, literally the only time people play him is for his globe, if you aren't running frost globe you aren't playing a frost, you're playing frobo, especially considering half his abilities prevent status effects on enemies for your entire team which is a HUGE throw on the frosts part considering how status is so prevalent, because face it, having 1000 pseudo iron skin ain't gonna cut it when I'm running around with my status shotgun and condition overload melee and you're preventing me from killing literally EVERYTHING.

I like the idea of the guy above me, make freeze be able to spread when you kill a frozen enemy, and with the addition of making frozen enemies actually still take status effects.

Edited January 15, 2019 by birdobash

[TKDancer]

only thing'd i'd change about frost is making the avalanche augment give DR instead of a tiny ammount of buffer hp, and maybe tweak his 1, cause the age of meh 1s is long gone(yes, it can freeze, but unless you have like no efficiency: avalanche)

[(PSN)RenovaKunumaru]

I'd instead argue that Limbo's Cataclysm is too powerful, making snow globe seem not as enticing.

Frost is pretty good as is. The reason these frames have different moves that affect enemies in different ways such as a timed armor reduction is for variation.

No frame should be there omniframe, capable of conquering all aspects. Let them have strengths and weaknesses. Let them be different.

Also, 2 plays a role in slowing enemies from a larger cone range rather than jumping in the middle of them for avalanche. This was rather useful in LoR when you were not the tram mover for example.

 

[Caelward]

On 2019-01-14 at 9:31 AM, (XB1)LightningRift said:

I posted some ideas a while back about some changes I feel should happen to Frost. 

I have said this before, and will continue to say this: Frost's 1&2 are junk. Yes, every person can find a niche case for these, but that does not alter that overall, they are junk. 

 

1. His 2 is garbage. Just trash, and this saddens me. There are some people who have niche uses for this, but overall this ability is under powered. 

Man, you have not experimented with Frost enough. True, his 2 by itself is mediocre, which judging by pretty much every frame in the game, is not the end of the world. DE has a budget, I don't know how it works, but clearly they are adhering to it. But if you're going to call it garbage I'm going to call you uneducated on the matter.

Here's what's important, try out the augment for Frosts ice wave. Get yourself the largest range you can and just try it out. Frost is not just his bubble, and if you think he is, you haven't taken time to learn the frame.

[(PSN)lockonstratos38]

Ok here's my 2 cents on frost. For everyone saying his only useful skill is globe obviously hasn't put time in to working with him. I've made an avalanche build that is decent. I used it in an ESO and was more useful then out volt(o clue how his was set up) I kept the enemies off saryn, using avalanche not globe. I killed a few things, not a ton but we did have a saryn. Lastly I was giving the party some defence with his augment which helped us last a little longer, 1 wave I think, because we didn't have to stop and revive.

All I'm getting at is he has more then 1 useful ability.

[Herbeh]

Frost is meant to be a battlemage, so it's odd that he's fallen behind and isn't one. Here's a few changes that would help

 

Ice wave is now his 1st and causes cold procs 

His second is an ice shell that had a duration and gives increasing armor as things hit him. Not based on damage delt, just number of hits. This explodes on expiration as icicles that deal aoe damage. edit: actually what would be even cooler is if he converted his current shields into base armor for a duration. This would make his high natural shields more useful and gives him synergy with frames that provide overshielding. Redirection could have a use case!

Snow globe is fine I guess? It's currently hots best ability

Avalanche no longer prevents status application (this currently kills the ability). Increase the aoe, increase the armor stripping and make units effected deal %life as damage when they pop instead of a minor amount of flat damage

Those are just quick notes but I feel they would be a step in the right direction and make him much more rewarding to play in a crowd of enemies

Edited January 16, 2019 by Herbeh

[ScytodiDaedalus]

While I do know how redundant Ice Wave and Freeze can get thanks to Avalanche(also status immunity for enemies is straight up dumb), the main problem I'm seeing with this is that due to really old designs some Wf's 1's abilities are usually worse versions of their 4's, especially on the base elemental frames. Take a look at Volt & Ember, Fireball is by far one of the most useless abilities after you get WoF, Shock has a limited target count whereas Discharge does not, however I feel like Volt's Shock can be useful since it's a bit of CC and can have a decent reach and cast time unlike Discharge, which takes ages. In Frost's case however, Freeze is by far even worse, despite being CC which doesn't care about scaling but the fact it's got:

1. A Single enemy limit
2. Tiny, low duration lingering slow area
3. It's a projectile with the tiniest hitbox, so landing it on moving targets becomes extremely uneffective

Honestly, if Freeze was(atleast mechanically) a beam that pierced infinite or X amount of enemies it'd have an use but then it loses a thing of being unique on par with other frames.
Ice wave could use a bit of a longer range and maybe a bit of faster travel so as not to be easily compared to Avalanche and hitting redundancies with his abilities.
Also, status immunity to frozen targets needs to go.

[(PSN)Ozymandias-13-]

Frost is already one of the most balanced Frames who still excels at what he is designed to do. Not every frame needs to be able to do everything the same and they require different amounts of input for their output.

Gara and Limbo have their own drawbacks as well. Gara requires a lot of upkeep for increasing her damage numbers with her abilities and her wall can't be just be quickly placed. It also doesn't protect from above at all and frequently breaks open when enemies are coming from the same direction (which is common). For Limbo, no one can shoot in or out of the rift without having damage abilities and he requires constant micromanagement to keep from turning the battlefield into a nightmare for his allies.

Frost's abilities are simple but effective. 

[Elementalos]

4 hours ago, (PS4)Riko_113 said:

Frost is already one of the most balanced Frames who still excels at what he is designed to do. Not every frame needs to be able to do everything the same and they require different amounts of input for their output.

No one said Frost should be able to do 'everything' the same as every other frame.

But the fact that he has a solid place in the meta doesn't mean it can't also be true that he has a lot of design overlap and dead space in his kit.

Edited January 16, 2019 by Elementalos

[Leqesai]

The only issue I have with Frost is that his freezing of enemies prevents status procs. This has always bugged me. Sure 'frozen' is a powerful effect but in a game where things die instantly to other status effects it is more of an annoyance than anything else.

 

If they allowed other elements to proc frozen targets he would be a lot more useful.