Can we talk about: Limbo, Stasis, Freeze and Status Effects

[Cryotron162]

 

On Saint of Altra (Update 25.7) released on August 9, 2019, [DE]Rebecca has posted about Cold Status Effects and somehow I've found posts that this change also affected Limbo in terms of pausing status duration. I noticed this when I was defending the railjack from Ramsled teams when I was playing Limbo (Yes, that Limbo that banishes and freezes enemies) and I have a Slash/Gas Status Zaw that applies both Bleed and AoE Toxin effect and noticed that some of the DoT Status has been expired. I did not play Warframe during this update and other players are telling me that this got changed months ago. So I went to the Simulacrum to test and made a conclusion that it did change. 

Here is a GIF demonstration of a Bleed Status Expiring.

I was immediately sad when I found out about a Status Effect being expired during Stasis. Stasis used to stop the status duration which is niche but pretty creative mechanic. If you've watched Triburos' Riftbound video where he gets to bleed procs, the foundation has been created that the status effects during stasis will last indefinitely until Stasis runs out or the affected target dies. While the video was years old, it was still prevalent until the update happened. It was a good survivability tool and the fact that it has taken away kind gimped Limbo's survivability against higher leveled mobs... since Status Duration is pretty decent against higher leveled enemies especially with Life Strike (This still works, just not effectively indefinite).

I've also noticed that the post [DE]Rebecca posted above has never mentioned once about Limbo. It mentioned about "Freeze" effects such as Atlas' Petrifying Gaze and Gara's Mass Vitrify. Frost's Freeze and Avalanche and Limbo's Stasis is implicitly mentioned since they are indeed "Freeze" effects. There are other posts that mentioned about Limbo's Stasis Change.

... So I have a question to Digital Extremes.

Time heals all wounds... except when you're frozen in time. Is it intended for Status Effects to expire when a target is frozen? Is it intended that Freeze Effect pauses the duration of a Status Effect?

This is a question that [DE]Tweep did not seem to understand: 

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The changes to the system are working as intended, enemies that are frozen act the same as if they are in stasis. Please let me know if this is not the case, otherwise please post in feedback. 
Thank you -[DE]Tweep

The change was that Freeze Effects no longer prevents other Status Effects to be applied. The question is whether or not a Freeze Effect supposed to pause the duration of a Status Effect. I'm asking for an intention here because the first statement was never the case for Limbo's Stasis. I also want to make sure because I'm also starting to think that [DE]Rebecca is also confused about the difference between a Cold Status Effect (Which is actually chill by the way) and an actual Freeze Status.

If it is intended to pause the duration of a Status Effect, then not only this change doesn't make sense but also Limbo players are not going to be happy. You might as well swap one of the Limbo's tip into something else since all other Warframe CC also does this.

If it is NOT intended to pause the duration of a Status Effect, then this may be a bug. A side effect of the change listed by [DE]Rebecca that Freeze no longer prevents other Status Effects to be applied.

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Currently on live: If you hit an enemy with a Status Effect (like Toxin) then Freeze them with a Cold Status Effect, it prolongs the duration, but only if you got the Status Effect in before Cold hit. You could never apply new Status Effects while an enemy was Frozen, which was detrimental in many ways to builds and teamplay. These Status Effects will run their normal durations for consistency after this change, while allowing new ones!

I'm about to assume it is intended after reading this closely but I want to know DE's stance on this because ironically this actually detriments Limbo's survivability against higher leveled enemies. Again, Limbo's Stasis did not prevent Status Effects to be applied. Don't get me wrong, Limbo will be fine after the changes. But I think it is unfortunate that this change botches one of Limbo's creative ways to use his abilities.

I SERIOUSLY think all Freeze Abilities (not just Limbo's Stasis exclusively) should allow all Status Effects to be Applied and SHOULD be able to halt the duration of the Status Effects until Freeze expires.

What do you guys think? What do DE members think?

P.S. Also please fix Cryotra's Visual Beam, my poor MOA misses it a lot. Also [DE]Rebecca, you might want to clarify the difference between a Cold Status Effect (Should be a chill, y'know the status effect that slow enemies) and an actual ability that Freezes enemies (Such as Frost's 1 and 4).

[(PSN)AlaTsuki-Ali]

I whole heartedly agree

[0verridden]

THANK YOU. Someone else has realised this as well. I've stopped playing Limbo frequently at this point because there just isn't anymore consistency with alot of things. 

 

To this day (correct me if I am wrong), sapping ospreys and a bunch of other mobs that do not communicate this, are able hit Limbo while he is alone in the rift. Combined with the fact that Stasis is no longer a status effect maintainer just destroyed Limbo's appeal to me almost completely. I still love his CC capabilities. But combined with the occasional loud mouthed hater, or the fact that CC is becoming more and more irrelevant in newer content (except Railjack which is nice), playing Limbo feels like a chore these days.

[(PSN)mahoshonenfox]

Ikr. His stasis didn't just freeze status. It also froze finisher states. I could use Zakti with with Covert Lethality Daggers on stasised enemies and one shot everything with Limbo. I could also stack infinite amounts of slash procs on enemies until they died. It was so much that the damage numbers couldn't pop up any more. My guess is freezing their status timer was never intentional. Kind of like I'm guessing how frozen or glassed enemies couldn't get status effects and thus ruined Condition Overload melee weapons.

Limbo also kind of got an indirect buff with melee 3.0 since all base damage of melee were increased significantly and Rift Torrent directly affects base damage of weapons. This includes heavy attacks. Would have been nice if we still had Covert Lethality, though.

[(PSN)mahoshonenfox]

6 hours ago, 0verridden said:

To this day (correct me if I am wrong), sapping ospreys and a bunch of other mobs that do not communicate this, are able hit Limbo while he is alone in the rift. Combined with the fact that Stasis is no longer a status effect maintainer just destroyed Limbo's appeal to me almost completely. I still love his CC capabilities. But combined with the occasional loud mouthed hater, or the fact that CC is becoming more and more irrelevant in newer content (except Railjack which is nice), playing Limbo feels like a chore these days.

Sapping ospreys don't hit him in the rift. Well it kind of depends. If the osprey spawns the little sapping bomb while inside the rift, it will hit Limbo. If they spawn it outside, it won't.

Limbo is a CC + Survival frame. As it stands, Railjack enemies one shots everyone unless you're a survival frame. If future content like New War and other Railjack expansions are anything as high leveled as we've seen already, Limbo will be relevant for a long time. DE is also going to reduce Grineer armor scaling but balances it out by making them hit harder. Any frame that doesn't straight up ignore damage will just die.