Frost Tweak Suggestion (End-game Viability)

[G0dsend13]

Before I begin with this topic, I want to make it perfectly clear that I am discussing the end game scaling and viability of Frost. (How effective he is against level 150+ enemies) I am not discussing how fun or creative he is. I am not saying hes a bad frame. I am not saying he needs a rework. I am just suggesting a tweak on numbers to improve his end-game scaling and explaining why I feel it is needed. I have played this game a couple years now with Frost being my most played frame despite the fact I haven't played him nearly as much this last year. I have made these suggestions on someone else's thread, and still whole-heartedly believe they should be implemented.

The suggested changes that I feel are necessary:

There are two popular builds for frost. The most popular is probably the avalanche or power strength based build, despite the fact that this one is probably the worst in terms of end game scaling.The other build and the one I personally like is the Ice Wave or Duration/Range Crowd Control build. Both builds utilize Frost's key skill... Snow Globe. The way that most players use this in the end game is to spam it every 4 seconds and keep a rolling invulnerability window because level 150+ enemies will destroy the snow globe by looking at it. To make this possible players have to invest in efficiency, and unfortunately 3-4 seconds is a very short amount of time to try and eliminate all of the level 150 enemies that will potentially get inside your snow globe and attack you, in particular Corpus Nullifiers. My first suggestion would be make this invulnerability window scale with duration and perhaps lower the base duration slightly. This will make efficiency slightly less mandatory (I would still focus heavily on it personally) and allow players to invest in duration (already favored by CC focused builds) to buy themselves more breathing room to eliminate nullifiers. Due to the threat that nullifiers pose to the snowglobe and lowering the base duration (even a duration focused build will only be able to achieve 6-8 second windows) I do not see this as breaking the skill. Harrows invulnerability already scales off duration, protects teammates from status and damage unconditionally, and is far less susceptible to nullifiers, albeit it does not protect defense targets and has a cooldown. While this change would benefit both builds, the Ice wave build would benefit from this more than the avalanche build, which I already believe needs more help.

The reason the avalanche build suffers in end-game scaling is simple. For avalanche to be a viable form of cc you need duration. However, avalanche renders enemies immune to status effects. Status effects are extremely important when trying to kill level 150+ enemies and using a high duration avalanche can actually make it difficult for you and your team to kill enemies. (depending on the types of weapons you bring) Now avalanche does remove enemy armor for the duration, but to remove 100% of armor you need to have 250% power strength. To achieve 250% power strength and a solid duration, you have to sacrifice efficiency. We have already explained why efficiency is important to the viability of Frost, without mentioning his extremely small energy pool. I would suggest tweaking the numbers so that 100% armor stripping could be achieved with 200% power strength rather than 250%. This armor stripping is not permanent like Oberon's and comes with the penalty of status immunity, so once again a tweak like this will not make Frost overpowered and will only serve to improve his end game viability without changing the frame's concept and role.

Suggested changes that might add more fun and uniqueness to Frost (BUT ARE NOT NECESSARY):

I honestly think that the place to adjust the fun and uniqueness of the Frames (Unless they need a rework) is in the augment mods. This prevents the changes from breaking the frame and allows players to actively make choices with their builds to enhance their own play-styles and specialize their frame with new builds and synergies. The snow globe augment is honestly a little lack luster as the enemies that enter the snow globe and do not pop it are already slowed or are shortly getting pushed out and frozen when you recast it. My suggestion would be to use the augment to provide more of a support utility to teammates. My idea would be a small amount of health regeneration or status immunity to all allies within the snow globe. I also might change the Avalanche Augment to providing a very small amount of armor like 2-5% per enemy hit rather than the health and status immunity. My rational for this is the armor would scale better into end game than a fixed amount of health and it has a fun synergy with snow globe.

[Atsia]

They're not gonna let the invulnerability window scale with duration, to keep it online with so they either while with the same window

[LupoDWolf]

I just wish his skills worked differentely iside his globe, like avalanche became a snowstorm that strips armor, icy wave used the globe area, etc

[G0dsend13]

51 minutes ago, Atsia said:

They're not gonna let the invulnerability window scale with duration, to keep it online with so they either while with the same window

At this point there is no reason not to. It already exists in the game, and the problem is that when you factor in reload times, cast times, other abilities, and enemy levels, 4 seconds is not a large enough window to deal with the encroaching enemies. Maintaining balance is why i suggested lowering the base duration, and I suppose maybe the energy cost could be increased a little, but Frost already has a very limited energy pool.

[G0dsend13]

Honestly disappointing that a post proposing modest and reasonable changes for frames that need them gets barely any replies; meanwhile, ridiculous suggestions to buff already top tier frames is hit with continuous walls of text. This is exactly why forums end up a waste of time and games implode at the hands of their own community. 😞

Edited May 26, 2019 by G0dsend13