Inaros 2.0: An In-Depth Rework Suggestion

[IdrisQe]

What is Inaros? A miserable little pile of secr- oh wait wrong game. Let's back up-
What is Inaros? The HEALTHiest. A tank. Pocket-Sand Man. Crowd control.
Okay, that's a solid start! What's his theme? Sand, more sand, pharaos, lifestealing...
Okay! Neat. What's his kit? Well he throws pocket sand... And... He eats but worse than Grendel... And... Uh... That one armor ability that's also CC with minor lifesteal but also-
Hm...
Okay, I hope I'm not alone in saying that our favourite Sandframe and former favourite Voreframe needs a bit of a rework. Not conceptually, but moreso... Cohesively.
In this ramble, I hope to come up with a rework that a solid 6/10 people can say "hey that's actually not utter garbage" about. I'll settle for 5/10 people though.

Anyhow, point-by-point what I want to do is keep Inaros as a wonderful tank-frame, but make his crowd control less... "ehh", and give him a fresh coat of paint... or... sandblasting?
So yes, starting off with the basics- his stats, they can all stay. They're nice. Shields? He don't want 'em. Armor? Can-do. Health? He's got it all. Sprint spe- oh please he's not Gauss or Volt! Besides, his Prime will probably switch things up a bit, and, I dread to think- maybe give him unneccessary shields, ugh... So let's not touch on that.

ABILITIES though! Those could use some tweaking, to say the least. I want to keep the idea of each, but balance them out a bit... I also want to make it so that Strength, Range, Duraton, and Efficiency are more useful to him, as currently they're all pretty unneccessary on him. I want to make building for his abilities more interesting, rather than just stacking as much health and armor as possible alongside Hunter Adrenaline or Rage and spamming his 1 to heal every once in a while.

So, here we go! Point-by-point!

PASSIVE: Undying
"Rather than having the standard Bleedout state of other Warframes, Inaros instead enters an immobile sarcophagus when downed. Aiming at an enemy or ally will siphon life from them, gradually filling his revive meter and allowing Inaros to resurrect himself. Otherwise, he can be revived by other players normally. However, Inaros is still in danger of bleeding to death if there are no enemies or allies in sight, or if Inaros is unable to fill his meter before his bleedout timer expires."

I'll be honest here... This sucks. It's downright awful, it doesn't fit, it feels bad to use, everything. It's bad.
He can't use secondary weapons, instead stuck with a slow, weak as heck beam that can't have its damage increased any way. Sure it kinda crowd controls enemies you're looking at... But it also is only usable when you're dying. Bleedout typically lasts 20 seconds, this can deal 75 damage per tick to an enemy, each tick, to my knowledge, is roughly 1 second... So that's 1500 damage over your whole bleedout. And it isn't affected by armor!... But is by shields. Ah- anyhow...
A single Butcher at level 45 has 1502 health. You need to drain 200% of health to revive. So you need to kill 2 enemies...
Okay but you can drain multiple enemies at once! Let's say you get 4 Butchers!
...Okay so you drain each of 25% of their health, and revive after a whopping 10 seconds of waiting. That's assuming you get lucky with 4 level 45 Butchers.
A lancer has more health at level 32. Let's assume you get a modest 2 enemies in your grasp when dying because the aiming is sometimes weird.
Both are level 20 Lancers. 641.5 health each. 1283 health total, you're doing 150 per second... 8.5 seconds to revive. Not great.
Allies will almost always revive you manually before then, as most people don't know that Inaros can revive from siphoned enemies who are killed by allies.
And Arbitrations? This doesn't work in them, at all. Cool. So let's just say... It's bad. Nevermind that you need to get into bleedout in the first place, which with Inaros is... a challenge, and that you have 4 revives by default, up to 6 with arcanes. Honestly, personally, I'd rather this not even be a thing, and have it replaced...

Also, part of this ability which didn't used to be documented ingame (but I believe is now) is the second part of his passive:
"Killing enemies with Finishers will restore 20% of Inaros' maximum health. This passive does not apply to Ground Finishers or the Parazon Mercy finishers."

Instead...

Taking notes from the identically-named passive of Nidus, Inaros puts his lifestealing sand to the ultimate test. When taking fatal damage, if any enemies are CC'd - specifically immobilized, by his abilities, they will function as a temporary health pool, the remaining duration of their CC cut in half, any damage he takes being split between all enemies CC'd by him. If the CC runs out, or the enemies are within a Nullifier bubble, etc., the enemies no longer provide health. It also, however, stops him from using abilities, using weapons, or regaining any health unless he uses a finisher on one of the currently CC'd enemies, thrusting his arm into them and draining their life, which will restore 25% of his health, and break all his CC. This stops him from entering bleedout, which means it functions in Arbitrations, and is far more useful in Solo play. It also takes more work to use than his current passive where you mostly just sit and stare at enemies, hoping they're low enough level that you can maybe trap enough to slowly revive. You need to make sure enemies are CC'd at all times, and take note of where they are, if you want to survive. Note that the finisher here functions even without a melee weapon.

Second part is fine, but I'd make a few tweaks, so instead, normal finishers would restore 10% (as let's face it, Inaros can chain finishers darn easily) and Mery Finishers, due to being more difficult to pull off, would restore 33%. Ground Finishers would also restore 10%. Any non-mercy finisher that kills would restore 20%. Just a bit more dynamic, and taking more modes of finisher into account.

Undying state could be visualized by Inaros turning into sort of a wavering sand-form like he has in the middle of his Sandstorm ability, minus the storm.

To simplify this all:
"Entering an undying state, any enemies immobilized by Inaros' abilities will take fatal damage for Inaros until their health runs out.
In this state, he cannot use abilities or weapons, and must use a finisher on an immobilized enemy before the enemies are freed to fully revive.
Additionally, melee finishers will restore 10% of Inaros' health, killing finishers 20%, and Mercy Finishers will restore 33%."

So, that was a mouthful! Onto his active abilities!

ABILITY 1: Dessication, 25 Energy
"Inaros scatters a wave of cursed sand that staggers all enemies up to [10/12/13/15] meters away in a cone in front of him, dealing [75/100/125/150] damage on hit, then [2/4/6/8] damage per second for [3/5/6/8] seconds; 25% of any damage dealt by the damage-over-time effect is conferred back to Inaros as Health. If enemies are facing toward Inaros as the sand wave strikes, they are also blinded and open to Melee Finisher attack prompts (default E)[which is out of date- actually X] for the duration."

This is his bread and butter. Cast every once in a while, finish the blinded enemies, grofit. This ability is a great first ability and I wouldn't change it. If anything, it needs a bit of a nerf, maybe making the cone a bit thinner, as it can currently blind tons of enemies really easily. If anything though, leave it as-is. Note that this won't IMMOBILIZE enemies and as such won't work for his new Passive.

AUGMENT 1: Dessication's Curse
"Killing a blinded enemy with a finisher has a [35/50/60/75]% chance of summoning a Sand Shadow."
...What? How is this worth a slot? Sand Shadows are useless! (I'll get to that soon...) Also it doesn't say how long they stay, when the ones from Devour are dependant on how long you're devouring for.

Instead...

I'd change this by telling how long they actually stay... And by improving Sand Shadows so this is actually an interesting idea.
Alternatively, I'd rework it entirely:
"Enemies affected by Dessication have 20% of their maximum armour sandblasted off. They are cursed to take +100% Finisher Damage for its duration."
Armor stripping is always nice, and fits since it's a sandblast, and more finisher damage fits thematically (and is nice in a post-Covert Lethality Melee 3.0 Nerf world).

ABILITY 2: Devour, 50 Energy
"Inaros sinks an enemy target within [20/30/40/50] meters into quicksand for [15/20/25/30] seconds, trapping it in place as it flails in panic becoming unable to move, attack, or use special abilities. While enemies are trapped, Inaros or any allies can perform the 'Devour' action on them by holding down the Interact key (default X); when devouring an enemy, the player (but not any companions) is completely invulnerable to damage and Status Effects as Shields and Health are restored over time, while also inflicting True damage per second to the victim. During the Devour action, the victim initially receives [25/50/75/125] damage per second, that ramps up to [50/100/150/250] damage per second over 2 seconds; damage is dealt in 5 ticks per second.
If an enemy is killed by being devoured by Inaros, a Sand Shadow is created, which is a friendly copy of the unit killed that will fight alongside Inaros. Sand Shadows last for a duration equal to the time spent devouring them, or a minimum of 15 seconds.
If cast on an enemy target by holding down the ability key (default 2), Inaros latches energy tethers onto the enemy from up to [20/30/40/50] meters away, dragging it towards him and automatically devouring it upon making contact so long as the key is held.
Ability Synergy: Enemies trapped by Devour will automatically restore health to Inaros and create a Sand Shadow on death when killed inside Sandstorm."

Overcomplicated? Just the way I like it. Has ally-interactions most people don't know about? Not so great. Has hold-abilities most people don't know about? Less great.
Slow? The slowest. Useful? Compared to a quick Dessication and finisher, not even remotely. Costly? Very. Taking 1 enemy out of the equation for 30 seconds, at the steep cost of 50 energy is not great. Healing off said enemy slowly while dealing negligable damage isn't great. Immortality at the cost of not being able to move, attack, or do anything else while doing so is also not good. The synergy is very energy-hungry if you want it to be that useful. It takes so long to devour most enemies that you'll never see a Sand-Shadow anyway.
This ability is nearly unsalvageable.

Instead...

Costing no energy to activate, Inaros enters a state similar to Ash's Bladestorm. Aiming at enemies up to [8/16/24/32] meters away marks them a maximum of one time, at the cost of 10 energy per enemy. Aiming at them again will unmark them and refund the energy. Pressing the ability again will lock all marked enemies in place for [10/15/20/25] seconds, trapping them in quicksand and shredding them with a sharp sandstorm, unable to move, attack, or use special abilities, taking [50/100/150/200] damage per second. Inaros, or allies within [4/6/8/10] meters will passively absorb health from the enemies, regenerating 1% of their max health every 0.1 seconds per trapped enemy in range, and dealing the regained health in damage to the affected enemy over the same time. Holding the ability key while enemies are still affected will immobilize Inaros, making him invulnerable while pulling them all toward Inaros at 5m/s, allowing you to more easily group up affected enemies for a better circle of healing. Quick to use, heals passively instead of taking over all actions to heal and locking you in place with a slow animation while healing. Affects many enemies. Big improvement! Synergy changed to: Each enemy immobilized by Devour within Sandstorm's radius will heal all allies within Sandstorm's radius, and Sandstorm will pause the trap duration countdown of all Devour-trapped enemies inside it. This is balanced out by Sandstorm still being channeled, so you can't just infinitely regain energy to keep it active forever without a squad set up to do just that.

Oh, and Sand Shadows... Uh... Yeah, nevermind those. Boost their damage to be reasonable to enemies, keep them to 15 seconds, make them spawn any time an enemy trapped by Devour is killed regardless of if it was killed BY devour. I guess? They're kind of an afterthought. I was actually in the process of putting all this into the forum post when I realized I hadn't talked about them after saying I would talk about them later in the post, and so I just haphazardly wrote up this paragraph. Hello from the future!

The short version:
"Inaros uses his accursed gaze to mark enemies, before with a single wave of his hand, pulling them into quicksand and surrounding them with a razor-sharp sandstorm.
This locks them in place, and prevents them from attacking. Inaros and allies near the enemies are healed, faster depending on the number of nearby affected enemies.
Holding the ability key will slowly pull all affected enemies in toward Inaros while he remains stationary and invulnerable."

AUGMENT 2: [None as of time of writing]
Proposition: Grasping Devour
"Enemies trapped by Devour gain a [2/4/6/8] meter circle of quicksand around them, and draw nearby enemies to them. Enemies that enter the quicksand are also trapped, and each one entering adds [0.5/1/1.5/2] seconds to Devour's duration, also making their own pool of quicksand."
This could allow locking down a huge number of enemies much easier than using the new Devour manually over and over. Remember, we're using an entire 1/8 Warframe mod slots for this, so it deserves to be powerful. I tried to keep the values reasonable regardless.

ABILITY 3: Sandstorm, 75 Energy, 10 Energy/second
"Inaros spins with great speed, creating a storm that pulls in and lifts all enemies within a diameter (though the in game description lists the range as a "radius" rather than "diameter") of [8/10/12/15] meters and dealing [200/300/400/500] Slash damage per second to them, preventing them from moving or attacking before flinging them away. Inaros himself is unable to attack or activate other special abilities while Sandstorm is active, and his movement is slowed to [25/30/40/50]% of his base speed. Sandstorm will also pull in nearby pickups while active. Enemies do [80/70/60/50]% of their damage to Inaros while Sandstorm is active.
Ability Synergy: If Sandstorm kills an enemy that is under the effects of Devour, a Sand Shadow will be created, which is a clone of the killed enemy that will fight alongside Inaros."
The cost is ludicrous for a channeled ability, and it's not all that powerful, it slows you to a crawl, and you can't do anything else during it, not to mention it flings enemies around making it near-impossible for allies to hit them. This move is bad, plain and simple. Nevermind the awful animation if you strip away the neat "transforming into the sandstorm" effect. It needs some work...

Instead...

Taking 50 energy to activate, Inaros creates a raging sandstorm in a [8/10/12/15] meter diameter around the target, and if no target is selected, himself instead. Multiple storms can be active at a time. Each active Sandstorm will drain [9/7/5/3] energy per second. Holding down the ability button will cancel all active sandstorms. Enemies walking through a sandstorm will have [15/30/45/60]% decreased movement speed, and will take [100/200/300/400] Slash damage per second. Any allies within the sandstorm gain a [15/20/25/35]% evasion buff, blending in with the storm through Inaros' power. Cancelling sandstorms with a button-hold, or by running out of energy, will cause the massive cloud of sand to fall to the ground instantly, knocking down all enemies within their areas. This doesn't slow Inaros or allies, and doesn't prevent attacking. It doesn't launch enemies around haphazardly either. Synergy changed to: Each enemy immobilized by Devour within Sandstorm's radius will heal all allies within Sandstorm's radius, and Sandstorm will pause the trap duration countdown of all Devour-trapped enemies inside it.

As usual, the tl;dr:
"Channeling a sandstorm that follows the target, Inaros hides allies among the winds, using sand mirages to trick attackers, while slowing and cutting enemies within the storm.
Holding the ability key will cancel all active storms, knocking down all enemies inside them with a horizontal wall of sand."

AUGMENT 3: Elemental Sandstorm
"Sandstorm has a [25/30/40/50]% chance of inflicting status effects based on the damage types and mods on equipped melee weapon."
This... Is not worth a slot normally. I fail to see any status this can add being of much use at all given how Sandstorm works, unless maybe you're in a squad and built SOLELY for Sandstorm, which would just be a pain all around. The whole idea of making it based off your melee weapon is also lame.

Instead...

Proposal: Staticstorm
"Enemies inside Sandstorm have a [8/12/16/20]% chance of getting Electric procced, and blinded for 5 seconds, opening them to finishers. Every enemy killed inside a Sandstorm has a [8/12/16/20]% chance to drop an Energy Orb."
More crowd control? Nice. Free blinds for finishers? Also nice. A built-in way to regain energy with Sandstorm active if you REALLY wanna keep it active as long as possible? Also nice! Also Sandstorms HAVE been known to generate enough electricity to cause actual electrical storms and lightning inside them. Electricity = Energy = Zaps and blinding lights. Makes sense to me!

ABILITY 4: Scarab Swarm [Known as Scarab Skin by myself], 25 Energy on "release"
"Inaros becomes immobile and converts his health into Scarab Armor, which permanently increases his base armor by up to 100%. When the ability is charged by holding down the ability key, Inaros loses 29 points of health for every 1% of converted additional bonus armor, for a total of 2,900 health lost to fully charge the armor. Inaros will continue in the animation until releasing the ability key or Inaros only has 2 points of health left but the health drain will stop once the bonus armor has reached 100%.
While Scarab Armor is active and an enemy target is near the aiming reticle, Inaros can consume 25 energy and convert 25% of his total armor bonus into a Swarm Projectile by tapping the ability key.
Once in flight, the Swarm Projectile travels up to [20/22/25/30] meters away before dissipating, infesting all enemies with scarabs on contact. Swarmed enemies will flail in panic and receive [100/150/175/200] Corrosive damage per second for [6/10/12/15] seconds, during which they cannot move or use special abilities, but can periodically attack. Each swarm host generates an aura with a [6/10/12/15] meter radius that converts damage dealt by Scarab Swarm into health for Inaros and his allies in range. Scarab Swarm can spread all of its effects to any unaffected enemies within a 5 meter radius from a swarm host for 100% of its remaining duration."
Possibly one of the weirdest and most convoluted abilities in the game... This one is... Interesting. Let's go over it bit by bit...
The amount of health taken per second, the percent armor gained, that's not alterable at all.
It works off Base Armor, so at 200 armor, you'll have 400 with 100%. Additive with armor mods, so with Steel Fiber for 110% extra armor (420 armor) you'll have 620 armor.
With Umbral Vitality, Umbral Fiber, and Armored Agility, for 565 armor, you'll have 765 armor.
With the most armor feasible... All three Umbrals, Gladiator Aegis, Armored Agility, Max Health Conversion, Stand United, Focused Defense... Barring other players... That's 2226 armor, and with Scarab Swarm, that becomes... 2426. Yeah, it's just a flat 200 armor no matter what, unaffected by any mods, armor, ability strength, anything.
Not TERRIBLE of course... But... As an ultimate ability? Not so grand.
The scarab launch, personally I don't use much since I always forget it even exists, despite being essentially an Inaros main, but friends tell me it's good so I'll take their word for it. That said... It could use some help.

Instead...

Inaros becomes immobile and converts his health into Scarab Armor, which permanently increases his base armor by up to 100%, with an additional 10% gained per enemy affected by his abilities at the time of casting, up to a maximum of 200% (400 extra armor). Inaros loses 20 points of health for every 1% of bonus armor, for a total of 4000 health lost to fully charge the armor. If kept held for 2s while at 200%, become invulnerable while holding the button down, but remaining immobile, draining [8/7/6/5] energy per second and drawing enemy aggro. New Synergy: If aimed at an enemy immobilized by one of Inaros' abilities in finisher range, Inaros will instead grab the enemy and drain their life to bolster his armor, instead of taking his own health.
With more than 25% armor, and over 25 energy, tapping the ability key will launch a Swarm Projectile, which travels up to [20/22/25/30] meters away before dissipating, with infinite non-terrain punchthrough, infesting all enemies with scarabs on contact. Swarmed enemies will panic, and recieve [100/150/175/200] Corrosive damage per second for [6/10/13/16] seconds, during which they are immobilized, occasionally lashing out in panic at the nearest thing, friend or foe. The scarabs on each host will attack anything in a [5/9/13/16] meter radius, including the host, the damage of which will heal Inaros and allies regardless of distance. Hosts can afflict other nearby enemies within a [2/3/5/6] meter radius, making them hosts too for the originator's remaining duration, also adding [0.5/1/1.5/2]s to both the originator and new host's duration.
Tapping the ability key with under 25% energy will also launch a Swarm Projectile, but with halved range and duration, taking [50/100/150/200] health from Inaros to do so.
Hitting an ally with a Swarm projectile will give them a 25% armor buff which lasts the swarm's duration.

Quick and dirty:
"Inaros becomes immobile and converts his health into bonus armor, up to 200%. Continuing to channel at 200% will make Inaros an immortal statue that draws enemy fire.
Tapping the key with over 25% bonus armor, or at the cost of health, will launch a scarab that makes enemies immobile and panicked, steals life, and can buff allies with bonus armor."

AUGMENT 4: Negation Swarm
"Scarab armor protects Inaros from status effects, consuming [6/5/4/3]% bonus armor for each effect resisted."
This is a nice augment that a lot of people like. Worth a mod slot? Depends. What would I do to change it?
Well... Given Scarab Armor can go to 200% now, I would raise its consumption to [10/8/7/5]% which is still a buff in total-number-protected.
What else would I do? Hmm... Maybe give it an additional effect to make it more interesting and worth a mod slot. Probably just applying Negation Swarm to bonus-armored allies too, without a armor cost due to the duration-based nature of the ally buff.

So... Complicated? Very. But Inaros is actually a surprisingly complicated frame when you look into how all his abilities work. I didn't even get into all the details in this.
I feel like these tweaks, buffs, and overhauls would keep the idea of what Inaros is supposed to be intact, while bolstering his crowd control, making his conditional-immortality more interesting, and mostly just updating his kit to fit with the current state of the game.

Let me know what you think below!
Please keep criticism constructive, don't just hate on me because you like Inaros as-is. I like Inaros as-is, but even I have to admit his kit is a bit stale and dated-feeling, even for when he was released. Oh and I hope you liked the little title thing and intermission graphics. I figured it was nicer than JUST a wall of text, even though I'm no artist.

[Drachnyn]

reading through it quickly all of your proposed changes sound like nice buffs but I'm honestly not sure if Inaros needs a buff/rework. IIRC he is one of the most used frames, if not the most used. Then again some of his abilities dont see a lot of use, so I like your ideas but i heavily doubt Inaros will get a buff or a rework anytime soon.

[(PSN)LoisGordils]

3 minutes ago, Drachnyn said:

reading through it quickly all of your proposed changes sound like nice buffs but I'm honestly not sure if Inaros needs a buff/rework. IIRC he is one of the most used frames, if not the most used. Then again some of his abilities dont see a lot of use, so I like your ideas but i heavily doubt Inaros will get a buff or a rework anytime soon.

Being used by a lot of players doesn't exempt him from a rework if his design is bad. People use him for his HP only.

Chroma is used by many, yet he's a terribly designed Warframe.

[Drachnyn]

vor 6 Stunden schrieb (PS4)LoisGordils:

Being used by a lot of players doesn't exempt him from a rework if his design is bad. People use him for his HP only.

Chroma is used by many, yet he's a terribly designed Warframe.

That is very true and as someone who has played a lot of inaros myself I definitely wouldnt say no any buffs to him.

[(XBOX)ZenithLord 42]

Very nicely done!