Pros And Cons Of Loki

[PFunDaddy]

Hey all, I'm somewhat new to posting on here but hear me out. I also have no idea how to do spoilers so have fun with this wall of text.

 

Quick intro:

I keep seeing people talk about Loki as being an awful frame, which annoys me as I have used him for most of my time in-game and can see that they are trying to use him in a completely wrong way. So this post will be about discussing the pros and cons of Loki and explaining some of his nuances, as well as addressing some of the complaints against him. I will also explain my build for him.

 

Tl;dr

Loki is not for low-level missions due to no direct damage abilities and reliance on good weapons, Ash is completely different, and build him around Invisibility and Decoy, using the rest of his abilities as supplements.

 

Firstly, the pros and cons of Loki.

 

Pros: 

1) When used right has incredible survival skills in Invisibility and Decoy, in addition to the highest speed which makes both of those skills all the more useful.

2) Highest melee damage out of all frames excepting Ash while invisible, which you should be whenever in combat.

2.5) Can actually use heavy melee weapons and DPS builds because he doesn't have to worry about getting hit.

3) High situational use in Switch Teleport and Radial Disarm.

4) Great frame for stealth and soloing.

5) Scales perfectly (Unless you are talking about Radial Disarm on Infested Chargers, which nobody cares about anyway).

6) One of two frames that can properly investigate hard-to-reach treasure rooms through a combo of Decoy and Switch Teleport. The other is Nova, who uses another 25 base energy to do it.

7) Can protect and revive other frames without worrying about taking damage.

 

Cons:

1) Extremely weapon dependent, as he has no abilities that do direct damage (again, nobody cares about using Radial Disarm on Infested Chargers). To play him well you need to be using weapons that are at or above the difficulty level of the mission.

2) Extremely Mod dependent, as his two all-around abilities (Decoy and Invisibility) need Streamline and a lot of duration to be used as often as they need to be, which is at least two rare mods.

3) Despite having the highest base speed of all frames, he is awful at rushing missions for reasons I will explain later.

3.5) As a direct result of this and his dependency on items, he pales in comparison to other frames early-game (Why he is a starter frame forever eludes me).

4) Low armor, health, and shields, making him fragile when visible.

5) Has a hard time using sentinels as his invisibility does not cloak them, opening him up to explosive damage and collateral damage from enemies aiming at the sentinel. This is not an issue for infested, as they cannot normally target your sentinel anyway.

6) Requires different builds for different mission types, will explain below.

7) Is very easy to use incorrectly due to a very different mindset than other frames.

8) Has no chin.

 

 

 

Some tips and tricks for Loki, if you do not already know them:

 

Decoy:

Enemies will prefer to attack your decoy instead of you or your allies, especially if it is closer to them than you are. It can also be used as an immediate shield by placing it directly in front of you. You can also switch teleport with it. I have also seen it turn to point at the nearest enemy, even if it is out of sight, though I haven't paid enough attention to it to be absolutely sure. Any point that you need to defend, or for any stationary battle, should have a decoy somewhere off to the side that is still close enough to enemies to attract them. Your bullets DO NOT pass through the decoy, so try not to put it in a doorway.

 

Invisibility:

I don't think it is a coincidence that "Invisibility" and "Invincibility" rhyme. Despite this, you need to keep a couple of things in mind. There is a brief cast time to invisibility, during which time you will be vulnerable. However, this is not nearly as important as the fact that enemies will keep shooting at the place that you disappeared for a few seconds, making moving immediately after vital, and to somewhere that isn't between them and your allies. Due to the damage boost and the fact that Loki is invisible, this skill makes Loki one of the few frames that can melee and not worry about dying. You can also use it as a delivery method for a Decoy or a Radial Disarm. Try to keep this on as long as there are enemies, which shouldn't be hard.

 

Switch Teleport:

His most situational skill, as his high speed and invisibility make the movement mostly unnecessary. As stated above, combos with Decoy if you need to get to a treasure room or save someone from certain bugs. Can be used on bosses and heavies to trap them or put them somewhere where they are less of a threat, but on most runs I would recommend leaving it off.

 

Radial Disarm:

Again, somewhat situational. It is always better to kill enemies, but in the case where this is difficult Radial Disarm will effectively remove 75% of the threat from a large group of enemies. Especially great on heavies, as it essentially turns them into tankier Prod Crewmen. On infested, just don't carry it. 

 

 

As you can see, Loki is wonderful on longer fights where enemies aren't dropping like flies. The biggest problem is that 90% of the experience people get with Loki is while levelling him. On easy missions, pretty much any other frame can do better as they all have some sort of multitarget high-damage ability. What people don't see is when you have your best gear out on a level 120 alert and can invisibly sprint around a corner, scope out the situation, and then either murder everything with a well modded heavy melee or radial disarm them to make sure that when your group arrives all major threats are gone. I didn't even realize that high level Grineer Scorches could be dangerous until I tried out other frames and got killed from behind in about half of a second. So basically, Loki sucks when you can still faceroll with offensive abilities.

 

 

The most common complaint about him naturally follows from this, being that Ash is much better, both in stats and abilities. However, the only real similarity between the two is the invisibility skills and arguably the teleport. The differences between the two invisibility skills are these: Ash's staggers and cloaks his sentinel, while Loki's doesn't need to be recast as much. In addition, Loki can focus more on this skill because two of his skills rely heavily on power duration, while Ash has only the one. So for each frame they serve entirely different functions, for Ash more defensively while Loki uses it more offensively. 

Their respective teleports are barely worth comparing, as Loki's is used for moving enemies with a side effect of moving you, while Ash's just moves you.

How anybody compares Shuriken to Decoy or Blade Storm to Radial Disarm is beyond me, unless it's at low levels, when enemies aren't threatening and can just be rolled over. Again, Loki is mostly for when pure brute force stops working.

 

 

 

How to build your Loki

 

I feel like a lot of people build (and play) him like other frames, leaving all abilities on all the time and thus not having enough space to make the abilities you will actually be using reach their full potential.

 

The vast majority of the time, you will have both Invisibility and Decoy going under heavy use, so as a general rule keep them on and maxed. As a result, having Continuity and Constitution maxed are a must, and of course Streamline. It is also important to have shields as high as you can get them, as most of the time when you take damage it will be only briefly. Health helps but it is not as important. The basic cost these incur on a non-forma'd Loki is 36, which with the Energy Siphon you should be using gives you 5 points for Vigor or Vitality, a corrupted mod, or other abilities. Formaing once for Constitution brings this up to 11 points, enough for a maxed Vigor.

 

Most of what will switch from game to game is the ability mods. Switch Teleport, only put on if there will be a lot of treasure hunting, Radial Disarm only put on if you cannot melee a heavy to death in under 10 seconds. Stretch is only useful for Radial Disarm (and I would recommend overextended), as it is impossible to target more that 50 meters away and thus will be wasted on any other ability, especially because Decoy is not affected by it. In fact, keep Switch Teleport at maximum cost 8, because any greater will be wasted even without a range increase. No other power-affecting mods are pertinent, as Focus will only help your Decoy if it is taking very heavy fire, and at that point it will barely last longer anyway. All of the mods in this paragraph are only to be used in specific situations, as in general another health or shield mod will help more than any of them.

 

Always use a melee weapon with high DPS or multiple target crowd control, because you don't have to worry about enemy attacks on yourself and can thus take enough time to deal the greatest possible damage.

 

Ranged weapons will be the same if you are min/maxing anyway, but being invisible means you can position more effectively and thus use puncture to greater effect and get headshots, making bows, sniper rifles, and weapons affected by armor more useful, though still less powerful than Soma+Acrid/Despair.

 

Unless you are trying to level them, just leave off sentinels.

 

 

 

So I hope this helped people understand Loki a bit more, and especially to not try to only test him out on mobs you can sleepwalk over. If you want to farm Venus, just grab an Ember and spam World on Fire while sprinting. If you want to make large sections of enemies nonthreatening in T3 defense or roam the map destroying all the difficult units play a Loki.

 

Feel free to disagree or comment below, but please explain yourself. "Nova/Rhino is better n00b get a gud frame" is not an explanation.

[Hayden11121]

What your thread does, the thread on my "About Me" page does better.

 

On topic: Of course a frame that has no direct damage abilities is going to rely on damaging weapons.

[Lady_Khaos]

All good points, but saying he is awful at rushing is false. Loki is my go-to rushing frame (assuming it isn't Exterminate, of course)

[LukeAura]

Narrow Minded, continuity, constitution. 
Streamline and Essence provide you all the efficiency you need. 
Have fun with your 30 seconds invisibility. 
Oh, and get enough energy back through energy siphon for another invisibility every two uses. 
Does no one find this ridiculously powerful? 

[ProjectKaeon]

Got to agree with Zand3r He is good for rushing.

[PFunDaddy]

All good points, but saying he is awful at rushing is false. Loki is my go-to rushing frame (assuming it isn't Exterminate, of course)

When talking about rushing, I meant that when enemies are low-levelled enough that you can kill huge numbers by simply pressing a single button instantly and thus spend the majority of your time sprinting and hitting your AOE damage skill every 15 seconds, Loki actually has to shoot and is thus somewhat slower compared to any other frame. If you aren't trying to kill things then I agree that Loki will win every time. 

[Jamescell]

Pros and cons of Loki: Pros? Everything. Cons? Too op.

[SquirmyBurrito]

I mostly use radial disarm for annoying the team frost/frost prime on defense missions.

[shut]

When talking about rushing, I meant that when enemies are low-levelled enough that you can kill huge numbers by simply pressing a single button instantly and thus spend the majority of your time sprinting and hitting your AOE damage skill every 15 seconds, Loki actually has to shoot and is thus somewhat slower compared to any other frame. If you aren't trying to kill things then I agree that Loki will win every time. 

So basically, assuming that it's kinda like Exterminate, or you just need experience.

I see where you're coming from, but Loki doesn't need to be anything more than rock-bottom in this regard (and, even so, certain weapon combinations can bring him straight to the top when combined with certain abilities, such as Disarm + Ogris or Invisibility + Ignis), considering how good he is at other roles.

 

EDIT: By the way, "invisibility" and "invincibility" don't rhyme.

Edited October 16, 2013 by SortaRandom

[Lil_Uzi_Vert]

I see your Loki pros and cons, and I raise you the pros and cons of Rhino Prime:

PROS:
- all of the abilities of rhino

- extra polarity slot

- helps fellow tenno in the void with traps

- looks cool and has gold trim and S#&$ (/!\ v important /!\)

 

CONS:
-
-
-

[shut]

I see your Loki pros and cons, and I raise you the pros and cons of Rhino Prime:

PROS:

- all of the abilities of rhino

- extra polarity slot

- helps fellow tenno in the void with traps

- looks cool and has gold trim and S#&$ (/!\ v important /!\)

 

CONS:

-

-

-

...

[Lil_Uzi_Vert]

...

Pro #5

- leaves people speechless

[shut]

Pro #5

- leaves people speechless

This is a different kind of speechless.

[LukeAura]

Loki Prime + Essence Helmet will be the greatest look of all time. 

[Mastikator2]

Very good post, but I got to disagree with the whole "don't bring radial disarm on infested missions". It disables ancients from using their abilities (destroy energy, create toxic cloud, heal) and automatically makes exploders explode. It's VERY useful even in infested.

[OmegaDas]

Cons:

 

4) Low armor, health, and shields, making him fragile when visible.

 

 

Err pretty sure Loki has 50 armor, which is considered average

[fatpig84]

I mostly use radial disarm for annoying the team frost/frost prime on defense missions.

 

You are doing it right.

Because if you radial disarm, my frost can use his huge &#! Galatine at last !

[Drogra]

 

Err pretty sure Loki has 50 armor, which is considered average

While true, his absolutely horrible HP mean he might as well have 0 armor.  Shields buffer your HP (Loki has no shields), Armor makes your HP go further (Loki has no HP to stretch, making armor almost useless).

And your running the Essence helm anyway, so your armor is actually 40.

You are doing it right.

Because if you radial disarm, my frost can use his huge &#! Galatine at last !

And the frost can just double bubble and /lol at all the cattle prods moving at .2kph while he casually gives them a lesson as to why Swords are better then sticks.

[LukeAura]

 

 

While true, his absolutely horrible HP mean he might as well have 0 armor.  Shields buffer your HP (Loki has no shields), Armor makes your HP go further (Loki has no HP to stretch, making armor almost useless).

And your running the Essence helm anyway, so your armor is actually 40.

And the frost can just double bubble and /lol at all the cattle prods moving at .2kph while he casually gives them a lesson as to why Swords are better then sticks.

 

Actually it's 47.5. It's essentially taking 1% more health damage. 

And even then 40 armor is 5% more damage. So you're realistically seeing that the extra damage numbers won't even -exist- until enemies start being able to kill you too fast anyways. 

Edited October 16, 2013 by LukeAura

[PFunDaddy]

Very good post, but I got to disagree with the whole "don't bring radial disarm on infested missions". It disables ancients from using their abilities (destroy energy, create toxic cloud, heal) and automatically makes exploders explode. It's VERY useful even in infested.

Prior experience and the wiki made me question this, but I hoped it was a ninja update (as this is one of the things that should happen with Radial Disarm but don't) and tried it out on a low-level infested mission on Venus. Completely false, chargers are the only infested affected by this ability, and it does direct damage to them as well as a stun. There is an observable cosmetic affect on runners, but they still then run up to you and explode in your face, and an ancient disruptor disrupted me a few seconds after I used it while giving him a hug. Again, no point in taking it on any infested mission.

 

I am disappoint.

 

EDIT: By the way, "invisibility" and "invincibility" don't rhyme.

Close enough. You have to give me assonance at least.

 

About armor, you guys are correct. My point was, however, that he is incredibly fragile and simply can't take serious damage like Saryn or Rhino. I would never even consider using Steel Fiber on him anyway.

 

I forgot another pro of Loki, and another reason why Switch Teleport can be brought on missions. You can mess with your teammates wonderfully and cheaply, similar to how a Nova can set up a Wormhole just in front of an ally and send them flying, or a Vauban can throw bounce pads everywhere.

[FireRampage]

Loki is, from my experience, the best frame for rushing. 

1- you can go invisible and complete the mission without killing.

2- get yourself a good side weapon with armor ignore and you will kill faster than most.

I sometimes when I am playing in a squad and rushing( mainly high level alerts) finish the mission and have to come back half level to help my allies get to the end(not that they specially need the help. it is just that the fun is far way behind)

 

Besides that, I agree with most of your pros and cons.

The 5th con can be helped by removing the shooting precept of the sentinel or by moving a lot( never stay static while invisible cuz your sentinel probably is going to die), but just helped, it will be a con anyways.

 

added cons:

-You will have an ULTIMATE that does NOTHING* to a complete faction.

-Even after you master your Loki, get invisible, infiltrate into the ancient Loki temple, steal the ancient scroll of How to use Decoy Properly, and master its techniques, 99% of the time, 75% of your squat won't know how to take advantage of decoy. 

 

*already includes useless damage against chargers 

Edited October 16, 2013 by FireRampage