Hildryn Feedback Megathread

[Mudfam]

OK, so I'v formaed, played and tested Hildryn a bunch now. At first I was optimistic, then the reality of her flaws started poking its ugly head out.

There were obviously some huge oversights in her design. Some of these problems were immediately obvious from the moment the basics of her were revealed, I hoped some clever solutions would be found, but it seems they were simply ignored and so we have an utterly broken warframe.

I'm still unclear about some things, and I'd like to hear about others' experiences and results. I played and did my tests using all max rank mods (including Primed Vigor) and maxed arcanes like Barrier and Aegis.

 

The problems

I will point out just what I found to be the most immediate serious issues with the frame.

Shields... Lol

No surprise, toxic ancients, nox, infested ospreys etc. simply oneshot Hildryn. Normally I'd protect a squishy frame with Quick Thinking, but Hildryn has no energy and the mod does nothing.

Slash procs also chew through her health in an instant, and these even ignore the little armour she has. 

Using abilities, even firing her exalted weapon, interrupts and resets shield recharge. Her 3 and 4 simply prevent shields from charging while active. I can kind of see why, but then this completely defeats the purpose of both shields as defence and shields as energy, with renewable source of energy like Zenurik not functioning.

Shields are bad and were a risky move for a frame, shields with no energy so that your abilities break the few advantages of shields is the worst possible combination.

1 Balefire
OK against mid level Corpus and Infested, but quickly becomes weak at higher levels. Against Grineer it's a complete joke thanks to the game's brilliant armour scaling and the weapon's lack of status.

The weapon also slows you down for an entire 3 seconds every time you fire it, for some reason.

2 Shield Pillage
Only works if nearby enemies have shields or armour. The shields are given by projectiles which inevitably just hit the environment if you're taking cover (because you know, you needed shields) and so do nothing. If enemies have no shields or armour, or the armour was removed, this ability doesn't even try to heal the walls anymore.

Clearly you are much better off not using this ability and instead letting your shields recharge, which using any ability prevents.

I tested armour stripping with 323% power strength for 80% "shield drain". It took 6 casts to remove armour from a level 100 gunner while also running Corrosive Projection. The mechanics make it unsuitable for armour stripping too.

So, basically the most useful thing here is removing status effects, where other frames just get immunity. Toxin and slash will kill you before you get a chance anyway.

3 Haven
What is this ability supposed to do besides stopping your shields from recharging until you turn it off? I've spent some time testing and trying to divine its effects, besides doing tiny bits of damage to nearby enemies it seems to do absolutely nothing. Contrary to the description, it also does not increase damage done to affected enemies.

4 Aegis Storm
Fun for about half an hour if you're doing point defence vs weak enemies in an open space (e.g. the event), but gets boring fast and is utterly useless. You hover in the air and become essentially static, you can no longer use your weapons (and your 1 cannot harm armoured units), you can no longer dodge or recharge shields and you can't even use your 2, the one time when it might slightly useful.

 

Solutions?

Can't criticise without offering some suggestions, right? I can't say I see a way to really fix this frame (yet), but I can certainly come up with some obvious improvements and fixes to specific problems.

 

Shields

The way shields work for her at least needs to change or she will always just be the frame that randomly drops dead because someone sneezed in the next room. Perhaps her passive could include no damage types bypassing shields.

I honestly don't know what to suggest for the energy stops shields charging problem. This just kills the frame. I think it was a terrible idea to make abilities use shields and it defeats their purpose. Whatever else is done to the frame's abilities, they will always be more of a liability than anything else due to this mechanic.

1 Balefire
Give this weapon some status chance or it can't deal with anything armoured. Or fix armour scaling already. Yeah...

2 Shield Pillage
This should at least instantly restore shields as the wave hits enemies, without useless projectiles and waiting for the wave to return (duration is both good and bad, that's stupid). The armour stripping mechanic could also be more useful, like Oberon's which synergises with Corrosive Projection and other sources of armour removal.

3 Haven
This ability could do something, that would be a start. However, as long as it's a toggle that prevents your shields from recharging until turned off, it will never be worth using.

4 Aegis Storm
This needs mobility. Hildryn has this cool dash / dodge, why can't she at least use that? Why can we not use weapons? And her 2? Useless restrictions that make a bad ability infinitely worse.

Again though, it prevents shields from recharging, defeating the entire purpose of shields and having a shields based warframe in the first place. Hard to overcome this problem.

Edited March 9, 2019 by Mudfam

[LuckyCharm]

Is there an enemy cap on the 4? Because it feels like there is and it's not very many enemies. I had it on with a decent range (of around 22m) and some enemies were still walking up to me and melee attacking me while it was active. Kinda defeats the literally only cc she has in her kit and thats sad because her 4 is kind of the most signature skill that she has, since the rest are really not flashy at all

[Amazerath]

Not suggesting this as a solution, but did you equip toxin resistance mods to see if it makes a difference? I'm wondering if this is one of those situations where DE thought "it's fine, they have mods to deal with it" or if they just really completely forgot some damage types bypass shields.

[KIREEK]

Warframes are only as good as the player

[selig_fay]

il y a 15 minutes, LuckyCharm a dit :

Is there an enemy cap on the 4? Because it feels like there is and it's not very many enemies. I had it on with a decent range (of around 22m) and some enemies were still walking up to me and melee attacking me while it was active. Kinda defeats the literally only cc she has in her kit and thats sad because her 4 is kind of the most signature skill that she has, since the rest are really not flashy at all

Its bug. One time i can conrol 20 mobs, another, contol nothing. The search algorithm works with errors and most likely small obstacles on the ground prevent it.

[Rey153]

To me , the problems are these :

 

Can't use 2 in aegis storm

No damage reduction = a "tanky" frame that gets absolutely destroyed in survival for some reason, which could be something you can work around with rolling and all but guess what you can't , because aegis storm locks you into a slow animation 

 

Balefire weak with enemy scaling and utterly useless vs nullifiers , also not having a zoom while in aegis storm which is really annoying

Energy drain so high even with arcane barrier and arcane aegis you will run out 

 

And also , what is the point of using the 3rd ability ? you become a shield osprey for a moment , cool , but you get absolutely nothing from it , and it doesn't do damage because of armor scaling as well , so really it's just another thing that depletes your energy. Also , I've been getting oneshotted by corpus grenades , because the shield gating on Hildryn only works if you're at max shields , which in aegis storm doesn't happen a lot since your energy is being drained.

 

 

Edited March 9, 2019 by Rey153
Needed to add something

[Mudfam]

3 minutes ago, Amazerath said:

Not suggesting this as a solution, but did you equip toxin resistance mods to see if it makes a difference? I'm wondering if this is one of those situations where DE thought "it's fine, they have mods to deal with it" or if they just really completely forgot some damage types bypass shields.

It might help at low levels, but the mod only gives 45%, and the aura 15% (and would replace CP), so you won't go far with it. She has very little health, and no healing.

Adaptation can help too at low levels, especially against DoTs, but the problem is she just gets oneshot anyway once the levels get just a bit higher.

[Rey153]

il y a 6 minutes, KIREEK a dit :

Warframes are only as good as the player

Wow ,guess none of the reworks were needed then , right...

[Mudfam]

10 minutes ago, KIREEK said:

Warframes are only as good as the player

Humans are only as good as their brain

[xxswatelitexx]

While visually Hildryn is extremely beautiful - gameplay wise she is sorely underpowered

1. Due to low health pool procs can skip her 4.9k shields and directly attack her 250 hp health. 
2. Her 1st and 2nd, 3rd, 4th abilities do extremely little damage the higher level you go, due to lack of damage scaling.
3. Ageis Storm - While CC is strong its a really disappointing ability for an ultimate. Long range units can easily snipe her due to her lack of mobility in the air. Basically, she is a flying target with a shoot me sign on her back. CC like Rhino Stomp is infinitely better where he does not lose his mobility while applying, even more, CC than her.

Some recommended changes.

1. Make Haven give her and her teammates in range immunity to status effects while active. Or at least give Hildryn 100% immunity while active. This will give her the survivability she needs in high level areas that have slash ] toxin \ gas etc. 

2. Shield Pillage - Make it take a percentage of armor \ shields based on Power strength 180% = 25% ripped. In compensation increase cost per use. 

3. Ageis Storm - Change Ageis storm functionality where the more enemies she captures the more her abilities get buffed. 20 enemies caught in the storm = 100% buff to all her abilities for 20s. Buff = power strength \ drain reduction etc. Also the higher her smash damage should increase by 25% per meter of height upto a maximum of 500%. The reason being many maps have low roofs limiting where she can use the ability, more importantly, the time it takes to to fly up that high and finally how small her cone becomes as she goes higher which should compesnate for buff. 

 

[Gashryo]

So if in general Hildryn can draw energy from shields and likewise the dropped orbs convert into her shields, then why is Melee Channeling in particular disabled for her?

Seems a rather hard handicap for a frame, even if the mechanic is currently one of a kind here. And in particular, this breaks weapons like Vaykor Sydon that have their passive triggers tied to the new Melee Channel toggle button.

Any chance you can rectify this?

[selig_fay]

il y a 58 minutes, Rey153 a dit :

And also , what is the point of using the 3rd ability ?

You deal your teammate immortal if he shield down. its best ability to save you Kavat. 

But I would like her to be able to link her shields to those of her allies, creating a common shield pool. In lvl 100 encourage the use max shield, in lvl 1000 call shield osprey specter, and using his shields. But nevermind. Just correct problem toxin and slash. And remember, the toxin itself ignores the shields!

Edited March 9, 2019 by zhellon

[KIREEK]

1 hour ago, Rey153 said:

Wow ,guess none of the reworks were needed then , right...

pretty much yeah

The road to be atleast half decent doesn't revolve around reworks,

Edited March 9, 2019 by KIREEK

[-ViperStrike-]

On 2019-03-08 at 3:46 AM, MacAaroni said:

I already see everyone is saying it, but i'll just add my opinion also.

I don't think it's a great idea having Hildryns BP behind a Maxed Ranked Vox Solaris. It's take quite a bit of time (Waiting for daily resets) and grind (Fighting the Orb) to get there. I'm a MR26 player and even i haven't maxed out Vox Solaris because of the grind of having to play the Orb fight over and over again to get the Crisma Toroids. Sola, Calda, and Vega Toroids are't worth farming to use for standing unless you have boosters when you consider the drop rate and difficulty of enemies when trying to get the most amount of Toroids to drop. 

My suggestion is either to move her BP down to a lesser rank, make her drop from the Profit-Taker Orb, something else related to Fortuna or increase Sola, Calda, and Vega Toroids standing gain from 1,000 to 2,000 to help with the ranking grind (I think this last suggestion should be done regardless to give players the option to farm Toroids if they want to rank up Vox Soloris at a decent rate. Crisma Toroids far out-weigh the point of farming the other Toroids to the point where you're basically forced to run the Orb fight, which is not fun for everyone or they don't know how to complete it.

This is exactly what I was thinking yesterday and curiously my current situation, even though I'm on my mastery 25 and I appreciate a challenge to my end game arsenal.

[(PSN)Unstar]

On 2019-03-07 at 8:03 PM, [DE]Danielle said:

An incredible new boss fight will unlock in the Operation: Buried Debts where you can earn Hildryn! We are expecting this to take approximately a week with the estimated pacing of this Operation. Free players - we appreciate your patience, rest assured Hildryn is a completely free Warframe for you to earn as the Operation unfolds! 

So players who pay Platinum for Hildryn get her a full week earlier than anyone can even start the process of earning her in-game?

In all the years I've played Warframe, when gameplay-affecting "items" have been released in the game, players have always had two options: buy it and get it right now, or start working towards it and eventually earn it.  This is unprecedented because right now, Hildryn can only be purchased.  So right now we've got a "pay-to-win" mechanic that players are supposed to be cool with because it will only be "pay-to-win" for a week.

One of the main reasons that I see people championing Warframe as a model of what free-to-play can be is that through iteration and trial-and-error, Warframe's devs have found a monetization scheme that both players and developers feel is very fair.  Hildryn's time-limited exclusivity is something that feels like it moves further from that fairness.

I really hope that this has been changed by the time this update reaches consoles, or at the very least that nothing like this happens again.  There's such a significant difference between these two things:

• downloading the update, seeing other people playing with the new Warframe, but immediately being able to start working towards having it yourself
• downloading the update, seeing other people playing with the new Warframe, and if you want it the only way to get it is to pay for it

And that's the experience that people are going to have for a week.

(also hopefully it's clear I'm using "pay-to-win" to describe the monetization mechanic, not suggesting that Hildryn is actually a win button)

[CerebrateJoe]

I'm loving Hildryn.  She's a lot of fun to play and has some great powers.  Here's my fast review.

Powers

1)  Op as hell.  Great damage and the huge status chance makes it shred armor with a corrosive build.  The blast radius is huge.  I don't want it to be downgraded, but it might be too strong.  If its fine with you, its great with me.

2)  Works well, but I do have one problem.  The line-of-sight restriction seems a little too restrictive.  Howabout a second or two of leeway on that.  The major drawback of this, though, is when you are waiting for the return of it, it seems like killing affected enemies denies you the return on shields.  This just makes me slow down my game-play, and I can't easily restore energy with this ability if I've got a really kick-ass team that's mowing down the mobs.

3)  Great defensively, but I see it shooting beams at my allies and its unclear what its doing.  I checked the wiki and understand, but I feel like it needs some in-game clarification.  Warframe, as a whole, relies too heavily on its wiki and not enough on in-game explanation.

4)  A fun ability that I enjoy, but I've got two ways to improve it.  First is when you're using 1 to blast enemies the camera feels like its behind Hildryn and its really hard to see what I'm shooting.  I say just move it a foot to the right and we're good.  She's HUGE and I can't quantify why I can see enemies when I use 1 on the ground, but I can't see them when she's in the air.  Is the camera moving?  Is it just her stance?  Is it just me?

**The largest problem is related to #4  I can't descend.  I figured out its related to crouch-toggle vs crouch-hold.  Hold-to-crouch descends just fine, but I don't use that.  I use a keyboard for movement and I use the crouch-toggle so I can't descend.

Overall, I'm having a lot of fun with her and I am very pleased with my purchase.

[Trickster_God_Loki]

21 hours ago, Trickster_God_Loki said:

Hildryn need a bit of tunning. but first and foremost:

WHO thought it would be a good idea to put 2 toggled abilities with ridiculous drain rates on a frame that uses shields as energy pool (AKA the first thing you lose when you're being shoot at)????

Her biggest problem right now  is the fact she need stats across the board (Mag has the exactly same problem) and the moment she gets more than 3 mobs in her  powers (be it either her 3rd or 4th ability) she done for. You will quickly lose all shields thanks to drain and being shot by mobs outside of your skill range.

List of  things to fix:

1. Balefire could use a bit of splash dmg , that travel time makes it a bit hard to aim properly.

2. Shield Pilage should be usable while using Aegis storm ( but then only restoring half the ammount of shield it does normally) that would save us from constantly turning off aegis storm  to replenish energy.

3.Haven - at least halve those drains!  constantly draining our first line of defense to deal little dmg is not a good trade off (tested on Pluto on lvl 30-40). Base range could also get a bit buffed.

4. Aegis storm - same problem as Haven - drain is too big considering the range and dmg of this skill. Also where's double bellfire during aegis storm? you actually need to turn it on yourself , increasing shield drain even further.

 

Even with both haven and aegis storm on, you need several seconds to kill normal lvl 40 something mobs (corpus dies a bit faster but grinneers are not impressed by it. get rid of "drain per enemy" becuase its not an ability you wanna have on while getting swarmed (in its present form). Not to mention, if you wanna do sorties with her you're better of just using Shield pillage. Or better yet, different frame.

I'd like to retcon some points of my previous post.

Tried to go ham on range with low power. JACKPOT

1.Balefire seems to to take splash dmg range from ability range. with 200% range it was hitting half of  the room (even on Sortie 2 & 3 missions) Just forget about charging it, spam it uncharged.

2.shield pillage - no change to my previous idea (50% effectivness if aegis storm is on)

3.Haven - Still useless. should be scrapped and replaced with another ability. Or turned into  duration based one.

4. Aegis storm - with all the range you can find, its pretty nice CC skill (and elevated postion is nice for balefire) but still, drain per enemy kinda criplles whole skill. you get 5 plus mobs, you will have just enough energy to sgout balefire twice before dropping down. cut those drain rates and we're good here.

Personal note :  Shield Charger, Guardian mods are your new best friends. Also Fortitude mod is nice to put on.

 

EDIT : Forgot one important thing - you should automatically equip balfire when using Aegis Storm.

 

Edited March 9, 2019 by Trickster_God_Loki
Did an oopsie.

[selig_fay]

il y a 19 minutes, Trickster_God_Loki a dit :

3.Haven - Still useless. should be scrapped and replaced with another ability. Or turned into  duration based one.

Don't listen. This ability is fine. It just performs well the function of helping the team, unlike anything else.

Révélation

 

Edited March 9, 2019 by zhellon

[HaydenSpirit]

Balefire:

-Toggle to change weapon type (e.g. Beam for armor shredding and single target)

    > Only using one type of weapon in her ult seems a little limiting (not many gadgets on the gadget-frame)

 

Shield Pillage:

-change from current shields/armor to %-total armor and shield of total hp/shield bar

 

Aegis Storm:

-maybe make ascending, descending, steering a little faster

-make it possible to fly over "holes" if not too complicated

-being able to use the roll/dash (maybe with added effect) > roll up-/downwards to  get to higher platform (problem with flight-height fixed without being able to be exploited)

(being able to use melee in aegis storm could be cool if it doesn't look to strange. maybe in a later melee phase)

 

shield-gating:

<feels really great >

-protects from self dmg weapon 1 hits

-makes shields an actual mechanic and something I care about

-invulnerability is very helpful for getting out of trouble

-makes me use mods like shield recharge

 

> could be used on all frames (maybe less invulnerability time > mod-able?)

Edited March 9, 2019 by SpiritForger

[(PSN)big_eviljak]

12 hours ago, (XB1)GearsMatrix301 said:

Oh definitely. Hildryns a frame that shows great potential and it always sucks when we get a frame like that that releases in such a messy state.

But there’s ALWAYS that one person that completely over exaggerates how good a frame is when they’re released. And it adds nothing.

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m glad the first from of 2019 is something like Hildryn. A unique design with actual clear potential. And I’m glad DE has found new, creative frame designs again.

Its not like Khora where after months of development Hell she released absolutely terribly and it took DE like 2 months to get her to a solid state. And even then she’s very much on the bland side.

But people shouldn’t just be like “This frame is amazing I love it and see nothing wrong it with whatsoever”. You can like a frame (except Revenant) while still seeing and acknowledging the problem with it.

You don't even have the frame yet. Your trolling.

[KesslerCOIL]

On 2019-03-09 at 8:15 AM, Yagamilight123 said:

So because people its lazy or dont like "x" content DE need to stop using it ? sure ... sounds legit . If you dont like it play any content you like , make plat and buy her .

No, it's been placed behind a grind that most people do not like at all, something I'm sure DE is aware of. So deliberately placing a #*!%ing WARFRAME behind that grind is kinda #*!%ed up, like if you had to do Tridolons 3 times in a night cycle to get a BP for a new warframe, it's just not cool and makes it all too apparent how desperate they are for people to spend plat on a warframe.

[(XBOX)GearsMatrix301]

27 minutes ago, (PS4)big_eviljak said:

You don't even have the frame yet. Your trolling.

*You’re

And you’re just trying to cover up for the fact that you have no good way to argue against me.

Edited March 9, 2019 by (XB1)GearsMatrix301

[birdobash]

Buff balefire when you're in aegis storm, give her 2 actual balefires instead of 1 during it just like how it looks visually, because atm it's still 1 balefire with the illusion that shes firing 2. 

While your at it, buff its other stats too, like its crit, and its explosion radius, or give it some unique effect that let's it do more than just flat damage without crit.

Edited March 9, 2019 by birdobash

[VieuxPappy]

Changes that should happen to make her more viable/fun: 

1)Balefire

• Remove the fact that she's slowed whenever she tap-shoots her 1
• Charged shots needs to deal more damage than it currently does + the size of the AoE of the explosion should increase the more it's charged

2)Shield Pillage

• Remove line of sight requirement
• Scaling off of the "current" shield is fine as corpus have incredibly huge shields (late game, ie: lvl 100+) that also regenerate overtime, on the other hand grineers do not regenerate their armor once it's removed/lowered. Therefore her 2 needs to scale off of "current" hp of the affected enemies as well. That will help both against armor-stripped grineers and make her Shield Pillage not completely obsolete against infested. 

3)Haven

• The sound effect is just too loud, I had teamates ask me to turn off the ability as it was too annoying.
• While Haven is activated, Hildryn and affected allies should be immune to debuffs and elemental effects/DoTs. Hildryn gets oneshotted, even at full hp, by the toxic ancients (lvl 80+) and their AoE toxin pulses even if you have umbral vitality (experienced it myself). There is absolutely nothing she can do about it other than to camp far away from the action which goes COMPLETELY against her kit and how she's built. She needs immunity (using Haven with this upgrade) against burst damage directly dealt to hp. Without this, there's barely any reason in using this ability at all.
• The radiation damage needs to have a great chance of proccing the confusion debuff on affected enemies. Maybe it's possible already but I have yet to witness it happen. 

4)Aegis Storm

• Either she gets to use her Shield Pillage while flying or enemies killed while floating from the effect of this ability directly refills a portion of her max shield.
• She should be capable of using her primary and secondary weapon while flying instead of simply having the choice to either use or not use her Balefire. While she's using either her primary or secondary, the Balefire Chargers should fire when the melee button is pressed, or should charge up if it's held.  
• When she chooses to not use her primary/secondary and only use the Balefire Chargers, every shot should be doubled (as there are two of those). This would give a good reason to use the Balefire chargers as main weapons as well while using the Aegis Storm. 
• Little QoL buff: faster horizontal movement please. If not possible, then simply giving her the possibility to "dash" foward or backward, like she does on foot using her shoulder pads when she dodge "rolls", would be awesome for quick repositioning or to...well... dodge!

 

Edited March 9, 2019 by VieuxPappy

[selig_fay]

il y a 6 minutes, birdobash a dit :

Buff balefire when you're in aegis storm, give her 2 actual balefires instead of 1 during it just like how it looks visually, because atm it's still 1 balefire with the illusion that shes firing 2. 

While your at it, buff its other stats too, like its crit, and its explosion radius, or give it some unique effect that let's it do more than just flat damage without crit.

x2 firerate fast atack, x2 damage charged atack. Be nice! 

Crit not need! 

Edited March 9, 2019 by zhellon