Heart of Deimos: Xaku Feedback Megathread

[Moriscu]

7 minutes ago, Ocerkin said:

DE needs actual playtesting prior to release

Yeah definitely. 😞

They could run Xaku on a test cluster to flesh them out first. Looks like the idea with having a test cluster has been abandoned as well.

[Isokaze_BestKaze]

I've tried him a bit.

I think he's actually really survivable with the combination of Passive and his 4. I've tried in simulacrum against a bunch of lv125 gunner and honestly there's not many bullets that hits me. If you can kill enemies quickly it's fine. You can also use his 3 to creates chaos in the enemy rank and stay alive that way, it's better than both enthrall and mind control in that regard, because it target a whole group of enemies.

Damage wise he is absolutely pitiful. I thought his 2 was supposed to scale ? Where is the scaling ? 

Also he needs way too much investment in all stats. You need Range for 2 and 3 to work. You need 200% strenght for the 100% armor strip, and you need duration and positive efficiency so your energy just doesn't immediately vanish when using 4. Which means you need to forma him multiple time AND forget survivability mods like Adaptation because you just don't have the space to slot it.

It needs buff. Badly. Especially in regard to the damage scaling of his 2. Past lv30 enemies it just doesn't work at all.

Right now the only way to use it is keeping him for Scarlet spears event and give him a good nuke weapon, so he can at least reset sentients' resistance with void-infused weapons. And even then I think Excalibur Umbra would fare better.

[Adder114]

Last time I said that Protea seemed like the weakest Warframe on release. I was wrong not only because she wasn't actually as terrible as I thought (on release, after buff she's a monster and I'm very happy about that) but also because now Xaku has taken the cake and eaten it too. 

Xata's Whisper - Xaku is in a terrible position right now and one big part of that is void damage. One thing nobody seems to be talking about is how void damage's status effect is a bubble that directs bullets to the target. Here's the issue though, it goes for center mass. With my Rubico prime I can kill level 130 corrupted heavy gunners in about 3 shots. With Xaku's 1 active it takes me on average 6 to 7 shots to kill them, if not more. Because bullets are going for center mass and make it impossible to get head shots, even with non precision weapons you're still going to aim for the head, but with this you just can't. All of that is not even to say what everyone else is saying, which is void does nothing special. It doesn't deal more damage against anything except Sentients and those are rare and the only differences other enemies have are occasional resistances. Change void damage, make more enemies weak to it, get rid of the bullet magnet effect (or just make it target the head) and have the damage just happen simultaneously to our own, otherwise adding a new element can throw off some builds and make them less effective. 

 

Grasp of Lohk - I'm really not trying to be mean but seriously, DE, when will you learn that enemies do nothing to each other. At anything other than level 30 or lower enemies do basically no damage to each other at all. This is because they deal very little damage when compared to us. Enemies can have millions of points of effective health while as we can only get into the thousands. Thus enemies have to deal very little damage compared to us and so even less to each other. I just don't understand why DE doesn't see that everyone complains about Revenant's 1, Nyx's abilities etc. This happens constantly and I really just don't get it. There's a few ways to fix this. Either up the cap of weapons you can steal and multiply their damage by X amount so that they are more powerful and better in numbers. Or you can lower the cap a bit and make the weapons scale off of our weapon mods. Either way they'll be way better than they are now. 

The Lost - 

                 Accuse - Hey Speaking of Revenant, This is basically just his 1 but without any of the synergies. Enemies fight for you but can be killed by anyone and of course as I said, do nothing to each other. How to fix this? I have no real clue, DE has shown thus far that for whatever reason they don't want to make converted enemies scale in any meaningful way so without doing that I have no clue. In my humble opinion I'd say just change it so they don't even fight each other and make it something entirely different. What exactly? I don't know, but not a CC because he has potential for a better CC in Deny, which I will explain when we get to that. 

               Gaze - Ok finally one that's actually decent. Just a flat damage bonus on everything within it. I'd say it could use a bit more damage increase and a slightly higher range but otherwise I like this one.

               Deny - In it's current form? Basically useless. I'm sorry but it's true, it just does nothing, basically no damage, ridiculously long casting time, tiny AOE in front of us. This one however has potential. Make it a conical effect in front of you to just CC a group of enemies. Add in an effect with bonus damage or something similar and you have a pretty good ability. 

The Vast Untime - Hoo boy. Ok where to begin. Ok so, first the explosion does nothing (this seems to be a running theme with them, doing no damage) the void damage buff is useless with the current state of void damage, fix that and you'll fix this. Second, we were told that this would give us damage resistance and evasion, we only seem to have gotten evasion, we need both, full stop. Some people want this to be a toggle ability but I feel like there should still be a reason to turn it off sometimes, so I would be fine with it staying a timer, but if not, I'd throw something in there that you can't do in skeleton form, then you need to shift back sometimes. Also I agree with something another user said, It'd be really nice for skeleton Xaku to have a custom movement animation, have them float like Titania prime or Wisp. 

In summation. This Warframe needs so much work. I'm usually pretty optimistic about this stuff but I actually kinda regret the plat I spent on this one. Xaku is such a fascinating concept and design, please don't let their kit stay as broken as they are. If they do, then I doubt I'll ever play them. 

[IggySnow]

So main complaint I have is with his 4.

It cost 100 energy, and has a drain over time, and has a duration to it. If its going to have a drain over time make it a channeled ability that last forever, or remove the drain over time. Its also missing stats in the ability screen. How much faster does it make me? does it scale?

His 1 is kinda lame. Its not bad exactly, but its far from good. Void damage just doesn't have an advantages to it besides for the very, VERY few times you fight sentients.

his 2 needs scaling. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. As well as the void beams need to have a little more range for how far they shoot, or scale with range. Its really annoying to have to basically walk up to enemies for them to start shooting. And bonus points if the guns you steal actually effect how the ability works. If I walk up to 10 gunners and steal their weapons it would be nice if the guns had a faster fire rate. If I steal a bunch of shotguns the void beams should shoot out like a shotgun, etc.

Oh and you also need to be able to cancel the ability. Its such a pain when you mess up and only steal 1 weapon and you have to sit there for the ability to end.

His 3 is fine I guess, although Gaze is the only ability I actually use.

 

[Mephane]

As with other cycle-able abilities, unless you switch to a particular one and only ever use that one, they are quite awkward to use. I wish there was a way to add dedicated hotkeys for their sub-abilities.

At least change the setting that swaps hold and tap so that it can be applied individually for each Warframe. I experimented with both variants and some Warframes benefit from the inverted system, for others I found it better to stay at default. Xaku seems like a good case where inverting it (tap to cycle, hold to cast) would be the better option, for example. So please make this switch Warframe-specific instead of global.

------------------------------

Unrelated to this, what is up with the weird health and shield numbers for Xaku? Is this a lore thing? It feels bad especially because the numbers look nerfed from the nearest round number you would otherwise expect (e.g. 291 HP instead of 300, 137 armor instead of 150).

That said, I am generally not a fan of the defensive stat distribution. Shields lower than HP, alright, but then armor almost as low as Trinity (without the many ways that Trinity can keep herself alive in spite her lack of armor)? Modding for HP and armor while ignoring shields isn't so enticing with these stats, meanwhile modding for shields also is a bit lackluster.

[(XBOX)Cryoguard]

So far, aside from numbers tuning which I noticed others have mentioned, there are two quality of life changes that I think would improve the feel/flow of Xaku's gameplay.

1. Recastability for Grasp of Lohk and Accuse (recasting can reset the old cast if necessary, but the inability to recast if you don't get a successful cast feels bad at the moment)
2. Removing the movement-locking whenever using Accuse, Deny, or Gaze (the rest of their kit can be cast on the move, but using any of these three slows their momentum)

If anything else comes to mind while playing, I'll be sure to give more feedback.

[PsiWarp]

Feedback on Xaku as of Update 29.0.1.

Stats

• Naramon Aura, standard and alright.
• 2x Vazarin mod polarities, good for focus on survivability.
• Random-esque stat numbers, thematic, I appreciate that.

Passive

• Maybe add visual and audio feedback when Xaku doesn't take damage due to the passive (and The Vast Untime's dodge chance) activating. It feels like it's not doing anything.

Abilities

Xata's Whisper

• This ability is sorely lacking in fun and functionality. It's just a damage bonus on a refreshable timer, which also doesn't benefit Xaku's 2 and 3 abilities in the Void damage department (unsure if intended or bugged).
• Suggestions:
  • Void damage bonus benefits Xaku's Void damage on all of his abilities and enables them to proc Void status effect.
  • While active, Xata's Whisper grants 2 energy points per weapon kill (unmoddable). Grasp of Lohk's stolen weapons and The Lost's Deny Void beam are considered weapons in this case.
    • Note that this energy gain on weapon kill is allowed while The Vast Untime is active and channeling.

Grasp of Lohk

• I understand this is meant for close range combat, but a combination of slow animations and lack of immediacy of the disarm effect causes this power to be wasteful to cast. By the time the Grasp's Void fissure appears, enemies around me would have died from my teammates' attacks, resulting in a waste of energy with no weapons stolen. Damage-wise this does scale with enemy level, albeit only deals substantial damage to normal fodder enemies and barely scratching armored enemies.
• Suggestions:
  • Speed up the casting animation by 50%.
  • Ability is now a targeted area and ranged with a bigger value (e.g. 15-25 meters or infinite).
  • Disarm occurs immediately on cast, rather than waiting for the fissure to appear.
  • Require at least 1 enemy to be in the disarm radius to cast.

The Lost

• About the cycle selection wheel, it feels clunky to use at this time due to the slow cast times of each ability.
• Some casting inconsistencies between each of the sub-abilities (some can affect enemies under the influence of another sub-ability, some cannot).
• Suggestions:
  • Speed up casting animations of all sub-abilities by 50%.
  • Allow enemies under the effect of any of the sub-abilities to be affected by other sub-abilities.

Accuse

• As a CC power this is alright. However, Deny cannot damage or suspend Accused enemies (fixed with the suggestion above).
• Suggestion:
  • Show the number of Accused enemies as an icon next to the shield and health indicators.

Gaze

• Overall a good ability. If casting animations are sped up then it will be much easier to create 2 of these.
• Suggestion:
  • Bump max targets from 2 to 3 for thematic consistency (three fallen Warframes)

Deny

• Again, slow casting animation kills the accuracy of this ability (please speed it up). The Void beam is also quite thin so it requires precise alignment with enemies to hit them properly. Not quite for dealing damage even though it does deal Void damage, but the stasis effect is definitely good crowd control.
• Suggestions:
  • Allow the width of the beam to be moddable with Ability Range.

The Vast Untime

• Still need to find out how fast this ability makes Xaku when active since it's a hidden value.
• The slow effect is currently bugged to give 50% at rank 1, while at rank 3 it is 25%.
• 100 energy to cast, 7 / 6 / 5 / 4 energy per second to maintain, a duration on top of that, and line of sight for the Void blast are together very, very restrictive requirements on this ability.
• No suggestions at the moment.

[ArkThanatos]

OK lets break this down. 
Quality Triangle. all frames are in here a bit. Duration, Range and Power.
BUT Xaku is a Quality Square. because Efficiency is NOT on his side at all.
you can have 2 of these things. and suffer the other 2. 
most frames eff is normally decent. others can tank eff, some just need a little.

ok lets start from ground up. 
Passive. 25% to dodge bullets. sure thats nice. hit or miss. not a reliable passive. might wanna throw in something extra like "when he dodges a bullet he regains shield" 

Xatas Whisper. due to void dmg being kinda crap and has a really really really annoying status (bullet attractor that sends bullets into a humanoids crotch!) you arent getting headshots, so even with "all" the extra "damage" that his 1 gives you, is negated by a S#&$TY status proc. further more, it doesn't give Enough dmg to be worth a damn.
Fix idea: remove the status chance of void (or make bullet attractor locate the head of a unit!) . make the buff work as dealing a % of a targets HP(2/3.5/5/6.5%). (scaleability!) If enemy is under the affect of FIXED The vast untime it deals double the affect.

Grasp of Lohk. AI is crap, Range is Crap, duration is CRAP! and dmg is CRAAAAAAP!. this is only gonna do well in vanilla starchart. forget kuva siphons and Steel path earth butcher is just going to laugh at you. 
AI- too slow to target and shoot. if something is slightly obscured it wont lock on or shoot, a twig would be enough to stop this from working!
Range - on Cast waaaaay to low, this is suppose to be a ranged ability on cast and use. Cast range sucks, Usage is AWFUL!. these are GUNS!. WHY do i have to stand within 8m for it to function. 
FIX Idea: Faster lock on and firing, double cast range. give guns a 50m range! flat, un affected by mods. increase duration and increase Dmg massively make power strength affect this logarithmic not just basic multiplicative ! and take "Fix Idea" of his 1 and let it work with GOL weapons!. now it would scale with the game and actually have dmg. atm way too weak. terrible dmg dealing ability. cost too much for really small pay off. 

The Lost. 
The Accused. its a AOE mind control.
FIX - Duration increase, let mind controlled units benefit from 1. (YOU GETTING THE HINT HERE DE!!! CALLED SYNERGY! MAKE HIS DAMN KIT WORK TOGETHER!)

Gaze - Duration and range kinda meh.
Fix - Bump them up a little. 

Deny - deals Void Dmg in a straight line. picks up units and holds them there. 
this ability SUUUUCKs, does bugger all dmg, you wont hit S#&$ 80% the time because of the ability width is that of the dot in your crosshair.
How to FIX! - Make it DOT. deal 1/4 of the current amount but deals a DOT for the whole duration. its void dmg, it sucks against armour... and basically everything thats not sentient based. widen the cast. 

The Lost General Fix:
this frame requires too many mods to wast a slot on Natural talent. too many mods required to make him good, like you need every umbral mod to survive Plus Prime vigor, THEN you need all the power strength. and Duration and Range mods, and oh yeah you dont have this many slots, an even if you did! he still wouldn't be up to par with other frames, still too weak on all fronts. 
how to Fix the Lost, Half the cast time. make the Change ability a hold function and the cast a tap. issue solved. 

The Vast Untime 
the giant big fat NOTHING of an ability. only good thing about it is it Increases dodge chance on bullets. but baruuks 1 does it better.
damage is crap, slow is Eh, dodge chance is nice. drain sucks.
this is such a cool looking thing but its a whole lot of nothing, this is more cosmetic then anything else.

Fix - reduce cast cost! leave drain! ONE OF THE OTHER DE. stop double dipping into my energy! 
dodge chance is fine. the Damage sucks.
Wanna change this up a little. 
this warframe is made of broken and stolen parts. SOOO lets play on this allow him in this Form to Run THRU! and steal 1/2/3 HP and 0.75/1/1.25 armour OR armour (depending which they have) Permanently (can only affect an enemy once) (for the mission) from enemy dealing 400/800/1200 void dmg over 10 seconds. If 1 is active it deals double dmg DOT. 
just add this to the ability. 
decrease duration a little.


There kit makes more sense, focusing around his 1, letting it work with the rest of his kit, lets him deal damage and build sustain that can scale. 

at the moment he requires more mods then can be equipped.
his kit is disconnected. nothing really synergies. he is slow, weak. his kits barely functioning. not fun to play.
this is what happens when you take a meme idea and try to make something around that. just feels like this frame wasn't taken seriously at all. 
this should of been better. an this is hands down the worst frame release in yrs. he is just cannon fodder. 

[BacteriophageBS]

I hope Xaku is good at fighting Sentients, because it sucks at everything else.

Every one of Xaku's abilities is some combination of too weak, too short-ranged, and/or too short-lived.  This is clearly a frame with a lot of cool ideas that were nerfed into uselessness.  Good ideas, bad execution.  I almost never fight Sentients, and maybe Xaku is good for that, but if so, that's ALL it's good for.

Xata's Whisper - as a 1 ability, this isn't bad, but it adds 1/10 the damage that Mirage's 3 does, and is basically the only ability that's worth using at all.  Given that, it's nowhere near enough to save the warframe.  When I read the description, I thought that this ability might be cool if it worked on kuva clouds because I dislike using my operator on those, but even if it does (I haven't tried), the rest of the frame is so terrible that it's not worth trading off a useful frame for that alone.

Grasp of Lohk - The range is far too short, the duration is far too short, and the damage is just sad.  There is nothing good about this ability.  You can easily kill the handful of targets with a melee weapon in the time it takes to cast this, and it lasts for just a few seconds.  If you try to extend its duration with Narrow Minded and Primed Continuity, it almost lasts long enough to be worthwhile, but the range is so short (barely 5m) that it takes considerable effort to get more than one or two enemies in range.  It would be boderline useful if it lasted 30 seconds before mods, or had a MUCH larger radius (10m at least), or did a ton more damage, but as it is, it's not worth taking the time to cast it.

The Lost - too many options, and none of them good.  Cycling to the right ability, then holding to cast is a pain.  Worse, it's easy to accidentally cycle instead of casting the one you want, forcing you to abort or cycle twice more to get back to the one you want, then you still have to hold to cast.  This all takes far too long for some very weak abilities.

Accuse - Doesn't last long enough and doesn't have enough range.  Especially since you have to hold to cast, you could probably just kill the enemies in the time it takes to do so.  It might have a niche use for turning high-level enemies, but if you're using Xaku at high level, you need more than this ability to save you.

Gaze - Again, too little benefit for the cycle/cast time.  A 40% shield/armor reduction is just far too little, especially when it has to be within such a small radius of another enemy.  You're better off just spending the time attacking.

Deny -  This would be borderline useful if it didn't require hold to cast.  As it is, it's useless.  The damage is okay, but it basically only hits one enemy, and holding makes it harder to aim.  Add to that the short range, when most weapons can do several times more damage in the same amount of time, and this ability is worthless against any normal enemy.  It would be good if it lasted a few seconds and could be swept across several enemies like Wisp's Sol Gate, hoisting every enemy touched into the air.  As it is, the levitating thing is completely useless, since if Deny fails to kill the enemy, you'd have been better off just shooting them.

The Vast Untime - I really liked the idea of this one, but it turned out to be just another underpowered compromise.  The explosion is far weaker than most frames' AoE abilities, and it has a smaller radius.  The skeleton mode doesn't last nearly long enough, and if it increases sprint speed as the description implies, it's not even noticeable.  If you're using it for the dodge, it's...fine, but again, it doesn't last long enough unless you cripple the explosion with Narrow Minded, and even then, it's still pretty short.  Compared to other frames, it's a bad AoE coupled with an inferior defensive ability.  Rhino, Nezha, and Valkyr have both AoEs and defensive abilities that are vastly better, last longer, and do more damage.  Sure, they're separate abilities, but that also means you can use the right one when you need it, and they're SO MUCH better that it's almost unfair to compare them to Xaku.  Another comparison would be Titania, who gets 50% dodge off her 4, but can stay in it virtually forever, gets Exalted weapons, has razorflies to damage and distract enemies, can use Aviator to reduce damage, and, oh yeah, it lets her FLY!  Compared to that, Xaku's 4 is frankly pathetic.

If I could make one change to Xaku, it would be to make The Vast Untime last indefinitely (with a per-second energy drain) and give a very large boost to sprint speed (on the order of 30-40%).  That would barely make the frame worth using in normal play, and might make it really good against Sentients, since the movement boost would let you roam around hunting for them more quickly.  As it is, my Xaku isn't worth putting a forma into, and will probably just sit in my inventory doing nothing until I need to kill Sentients for some specific reason.

[BacteriophageBS]

2 hours ago, Mephane said:

Unrelated to this, what is up with the weird health and shield numbers for Xaku? Is this a lore thing? It feels bad especially because the numbers look nerfed from the nearest round number you would otherwise expect (e.g. 291 HP instead of 300, 137 armor instead of 150).

That said, I am generally not a fan of the defensive stat distribution. Shields lower than HP, alright, but then armor almost as low as Trinity (without the many ways that Trinity can keep herself alive in spite her lack of armor)? Modding for HP and armor while ignoring shields isn't so enticing with these stats, meanwhile modding for shields also is a bit lackluster.

I'd be willing to bet that it's because Xaku is "broken," cobbled together from several other warframes, leading to irregularities.

[Shadedraxe]

Hoo boy... Xaku is pretty bad. Because void damage is really bad. Now I hope everyone is aware that void damage isn’t even strong against sentients. It just resets their resistances. I do less damage to enemies when I use my damage buff, because void procs taking priority over good procs is making my weapons perform worse. Also as someone pointed out above, the procs don’t let you do headshots, HOORAY!!!
 

Void damage is weak against flesh and ancient flesh, and has no damage advantages of any kind. For the niche of a damage type that is is, that’s pretty bad. It’s the freaking void, should have no weaknesses and should have at least some minor advantages to other enemy types, and especially be most effective against sentients. And their procs don’t amplify damage at all. If they could function more like magnetize, that could really help.

Grasp of Lohk technically scales, but we all know that enemy health, shields, and armor scale vastly higher than their weapon damage does, so this ability falls off pretty quickly. Could use a scaling boost (alongside all other abilities that rely on enemies dealing damage towards other enemies).

The Lost is a 3-in-1 ability. With Accuse being a better thrall cast, but without the beneficial synergies of Revenant. So it’s just a decent cc. Gaze is what’s used to weaken enemies to your void damage. And it honestly sucks that it’s mandatory to make their void damage usable, and it still doesn’t feel like enough. Deny is a single beam damage ability that cc’s those that survive, so it’s just a bad, small aoe cc in higher levels. The swap mechanic feels very sluggish as well. Because I often find myself tapping 3 and wasting seconds of swapping my ability without casting it. I wish all of these abilities used the “hold” function to swap like khora does on venari, instead of the “tap” function.

At tennocon it was stated that Xaku’s ult gives them Damage Resistance. It does not. It grants them higher evasion (passive grants them 25%). With the vast untime, xaku gets up to 75% evasion. And as we all know, it didn’t work for Titania back then, why would It help xaku now... it doesn’t. (thank god Titania has more reliable DR now). And even with Xaku’s ult weakening enemies to void damage along with their Gaze, I still find myself having a harder time killing off enemies in higher levels than if I had not used void damage at all. Also, his ult doesn’t really indicate which enemies are affected. There’s no visual que or aura on them. They just get slowed down by around 20%, which isn’t that easy to notice when trying to frantically survive. This ability also has a duration AND a continuous energy drain on top of the 100 energy used to cast it. I don’t see why both a duration and a drain are needed (*cough* mirage disco ball *cough*) A continuous drain for a speed and evasion boost aren’t really worth keeping up the drain.

xaku really needs a bit of help. A void damage rework would fix Xaku’s biggest problems. His two needs better scaling. 3 feels clunky to cast. And please give their ult DR and get rid of the energy drain over time.

[SSI_Seraph]

- the passive is dodge chance, through frames like titania, it has already been stablished that this kind of defense is bad and had to be changed.

-void damage is meh and the multiplier on his one is hard gated as if it's some rhino roar ( that thing starts at 26% base)

- the 2 deals decent dps against non armored but scales with range which is odd and just throws off a lot of builds.

The range of the gun is extremely short. The base range to grab isn't justified when there is already a target cap implemented.

- his 3 is just the strip which is not permanent and needs a lot of str and has medium ish base range. The other options aren't even worth concidering tbh

- the 4 just  sucks and it being dodge chance instead of DR as advertised in the patch notes and during the demo makes it even worse to cast,the void debuff seems to be gated too and doesn't seem to work.
The only way Dodge chance is even worth concidering is if can stack to 99% and rely on shield gating for the 1% left, otherwise you're just rolling the dice each time which doesn't work in a game that thows hordes at you.
Why is the drain even there, the debuff isn't even persistant?

- his animations are worse than titania's on launch somehow.

 

[Shadedraxe]

On 2020-08-21 at 2:07 PM, [DE]Bear said:

The Vast Untime - shed your outer layers to grant 75% damage resistance and a speed boost! Cast it again to reform!

I just noticed this detail... man I wish that were true.

[waynexx]

just coming back after a year; i haven't tried grendel or protea yet. anyway,

xaku is the worst frame i've ever tried.

nearly every ability is clunky, underwhelming or useless. and if they weren't useless they'd still be boring.

she looks awful, and her animations are gross. 

incredibly low quality all around.

actually feels terrible having dropped plat on this, and it was like 325 at that. paid to test unfinished garbage.

[Shadedraxe]

1 hour ago, BacteriophageBS said:

I hope Xaku is good at fighting Sentients, because it sucks at everything else.

They’re not. They only get rid of the damage type resistances. Best to bring a better frame and bring out the operator for a zap here and there.

[Shadedraxe]

23 minutes ago, waynexx said:

just coming back after a year; i haven't tried grendel or protea yet. anyway,

xaku is the worst frame i've ever tried. and most of DEs frames are a mess at release.

nearly every ability is clunky, underwhelming or useless. and if they weren't useless they'd still be boring.

she looks awful, and her animations are gross. 

incredibly low quality all around

actually feels terrible having dropped plat on this, and it was like 325 at that. spending money to test your unfinished garbage. DE should probably reimburse anyone who bought it.

Grendel had a rough launch. His energy economy is the worst in the game, he can’t function without rage or hunter adrenaline. His 3 is useless, and nourish armor doesn’t actually give him armor... But he can at least tank. He can cancel enemies across the room. Give himself a toxic “not quite as strong but still decent” mini rhino roar that buffs weapons and his abilities. And while his ult is a gimmick to control and can’t keep up with other high range damage dealing frames whatsoever, at least its scaling is strong enough to destroy enemies regardless of their level that are inside his gut (not so much those that are on the outside though). Grendel’s not great. But he’s got his niche and his uses. He’s arguably really good at stripping sentient armor since he can eat them (even with the nerf).

Protea is great. Somewhat of a Vauban, Trinity, Mesa hybrid. Great with ammo hungry weapons, surviving, and great damage If you build for enough duration.

Just hoping xaku gets the Khora, Revenant, Baruuk treatment. And isn’t left collecting dust.

[waynexx]

1 hour ago, waynexx said:

just coming back after a year; i haven't tried grendel or protea yet. anyway,

xaku is the worst frame i've ever tried.

nearly every ability is clunky, underwhelming or useless. and if they weren't useless they'd still be boring.

she looks awful, and her animations are gross. 

incredibly low quality all around.

actually feels terrible having dropped plat on this, and it was like 325 at that. paid to test unfinished garbage.

some misc. testing vs. 135 heavy gunners.

• the 1, the bonus void damage, is not noticeable. i had heat on my weapon, and they end up flailing as long as the void status' lasts anyway. tried paying attention to the damage but couldn't really see my damage increase. might have, but whatever. i'd also like to point out that this is just a boring weapon damage buff ability-- don't the other frames w/ an equivalent at least have some sort of projectile use alongside theirs?
• the 2 is clearly implemented by the whoever's never learned their lesson over the last near-decade. enemy damage does not scale like their health; using their own attacks against them is, and always has been, useless. perhaps DE needs to hold some sort of math workshop for these guys.
• 3 is whatever. an aoe cc, a single target cc that strips armor in an aoe, and a beam that does nothing. what's the theme here anyway? besides, these all suck. the garuda-like altar corpse that strips armor is targeted by the stolen weapons from xaku's 2-- this target takes no damage. what synergy! the animations are somewhat slow. the beam and altar feel clunky anyway, and all values are too low. this is a relatively low impact ability despite the options. values aside, none of this is new or exciting. it's all recycled.
• the signature move, 4. what the #*!% is this? it does S#&$ damage-- static damage values like this have always been meaningless after the starmap. and its skeleton-mode running animation? lol. oh, and it doubles as a scuffed version of zephyr's turbulence; less reliable and more expensive.

there's almost nothing of value in this kit, relative to most any other frame. what a bummer.

[waynexx]

20 minutes ago, Shadedraxe said:

Grendel had a rough launch. His energy economy is the worst in the game, he can’t function without rage or hunter adrenaline. His 3 is useless, and nourish armor doesn’t actually give him armor... But he can at least tank. He can cancel enemies across the room. Give himself a toxic “not quite as strong but still decent” mini rhino roar that buffs weapons and his abilities. And while his ult is a gimmick to control and can’t keep up with other high range damage dealing frames whatsoever, at least its scaling is strong enough to destroy enemies regardless of their level that are inside his gut (not so much those that are on the outside though). Grendel’s not great. But he’s got his niche and his uses. He’s arguably really good at stripping sentient armor since he can eat them (even with the nerf).

Protea is great. Somewhat of a Vauban, Trinity, Mesa hybrid. Great with ammo hungry weapons, surviving, and great damage If you build for enough duration.

Just hoping xaku gets the Khora, Revenant, Baruuk treatment. And isn’t left collecting dust.

man, can someone help the guy implementing these frames? he has no idea how the game works, and definitely doesn't have enough time.

you'd think they'd throw more resources at the frame aspect of warFRAME. they're an afterthought at this point. well, i shouldn't need to worry about this anyway as most of the new content revolves around some half-baked vehicle mechanic.

[Pavel6692]

And we got first 2 You Tubers who praise this expansion but this looks like they didnt even played the game just read patch notes and expansion desc. plus they said that Xaku is BALANCED and FUN TO PLAY  😆  -  Even Vauban before rework was more balanced and fun 😛 , this frame is like worst parts from trash assembled together by drunken engineer 😛 

[BacteriophageBS]

Just now, Pavel6692 said:

And we got first 2 You Tubers who praise this expansion but this looks like they didnt even played the game just read patch notes and expansion desc. plus they said that Xaku is BALANCED and FUN TO PLAY  😆  -  Even Vauban before rework was more balanced and fun 😛 , this frame is like worst parts from trash assembled together by drunken engineer 😛 

Xaku is "fun to play" if your idea of a fun frame is one that has no useful abilities, so you just play Warframe as a pure shooter.

If I didn't know better, I'd think that Xaku was designed back when void damage was "pure" damage that bypassed armor, like slash procs.  It might have been useful if that were the case.

[Seorel]

I know some people here have problems with how the skeleton critter looks. Just gonna add my two cents and say I love it. Can't speak to usability as I'm a relatively new player, but looks alon are on point. Thanks DE! 

[ArkThanatos]

5 hours ago, Isokaze_BestKaze said:

You can also use his 3 to creates chaos in the enemy rank and stay alive that way, it's better than both enthrall and mind control in that regard, because it target a whole group of enemies.

 

please Enthralls way better. for 1 you cast it once and it spreads. plus u can cast it for free. 2 there isn't a chance you go to cast enthrall and end up with another ability. 3 enthral meet reave = dead enemy with pillar of pain left in place does nice tick dmg. 

its a weak chaos. average thrall, better then mind control. 


but yes you are right, his damage is god awful. i think he already needs a rework. too weak too slow too energy hungry. 
only good ability he has is the armor strip. thats it. 

[ArkThanatos]

5 hours ago, HerpDerpy said:

So main complaint I have is with his 4.

It cost 100 energy, and has a drain over time, and has a duration to it. If its going to have a drain over time make it a channeled ability that last forever, or remove the drain over time. Its also missing stats in the ability screen. How much faster does it make me? does it scale?

 

 

made this point in my review above.

DE double dipping energy. 
i gave a Fix idea to allow him to scale!. to where double dipping energy and duration WOULD be a far balance. 

but his WHOLE KIT has NO synergy. and his 3rds a nightmare to navigate in the thick of it

[Erl-King]

People already mentioned that all abilities need a general boost in power and I completely agree.

Now here is a random thought about their 3rd ability. What if we play up BROKEN aspect of the frame and make it unstable, malfunctioning. Merge all three abilities, making them much stronger, a bit more similar, but Instead of abilities being selectable, make it randomly cycling. 10-20 seconds you have one ability, then it is replaced by the next one.

It would have same three types - big AoE blast, medium lingering AoE aura and focused Void lance. All of them would have damage, debilitating effect, armor reduction, damage and vulnerability to void damage debuff.

Big AoE blast would have biggest area of effect, strongest debilitating effect (current chaos effect), small armor debuff -30%, miniscule damage and void damage vulnerability debuff (+10%).

Medium lingering Aoe that persist for the duration of effect - average area, but lasting for the duration, average debilitating effect (rooting enemies in place), average armor debuff - 60%, average damage and void damage vulnerability debuff (+50%).

Void lance - smallest area of effect (only those touched by the void ray), weakest debilitating effect (brief stun), strongest armor debuff -100%, strongest direct damage and void damage vulnerability debuff (+150%).

Overall it would be same ability, varying in focus. Wider the area of effect - weaker the effect. And downside of such ability would be it being unreliable, random. You won't be able to consistently sit and root choke point with the root ability. Instead you will have to make do with the powerful, but unreliable, BROKEN ability.

So, what do you think?

[JohnLemon123]

Oh boy, this one is... Not great

Seriously, this thing makes release revenant look like nidus, both in terms of kit design and actual gameplay relevance

The raw stats are horrendous, and the kit having no DR, and only damage Evasion (which is SOOO much worse) really doesn't help. It dies in a second, and doesn't even pack the kind of punch that'd justify such awful survivability. 

Void damage is bad, full stop. The sheer fact that the damage type want given some type of rework with the frames release is utterly baffling. It not working on Eidolons just adds more salt to the wound, even though it is understandable to some extent. 

The 2 is an unarguably massively worse version of protea's turret, with terrible range, laughable damage and a borderline e nonexistent duration

The 3. My God the 3.

Did we not learn from revenant and nyx? Enemy conversion does. not. work. Hell, it's actually even worse than the aforementioned 2 frames, since those goobers have zero damage buffs, no Interaction with the rest of your kit, and for some ungodly reason are vulnerable to the same things thralls are. Just... Why? 

The other two are mediocre filler cc/debuff nonsense that have equally pathetic range and duration, and would have been Okay at best on a frame released in 2015. On top of that, it (again) doesn't interact with any other part of the kit, and serves no purpose whatsoever

As for the 4, the only thing it has going for it is the admittedly cool name. 

The skeleton looks ridiculous. I'm sorry, but that just doesn't scream "big ultimate attack". Hell, it doesn't even have a unique animation set, so you just end up running around looking like some sort of Christmas ornament gone rogue. 

As far as power goes, it also doesn't feel like an ultimate at all. It's tied to both duration AND an energy drain (seriously, why?), the speed boost Is insignificant, the damage is nonexistent, and you only get evasion, and zero DR. Sure, you'll avoid a lot of bullets, but the moment one hits you, you're toast. 

So yeah, really not impressed on that one. No kit synergy, clunky and awful to play, and is only saved by the neat, unique visuals of the frame model

This really is revenant 2.0, isn't it?