Heart of Deimos: Xaku Feedback Megathread

[(XBOX)GearsMatrix301]

22 minutes ago, Zeratai said:

Maybe it's just me, but it feels like grasp of lohk likes to target enemies grabbed by gaze what is generally a big waste of time. Could you make this guns ignore enemies entwined by gaze? They are immortal anyway.

And they aren’t affected by the defense reduction, so even tho they do take all the dealt damage when the ability ends, it’s still a lot of wasted damage because their defense wasn’t lowered.

[Althaline]

Subsumed ability durations are currently not frozen by The Vast Untime, this disappoints me.

[Zilotz]

On 2020-08-21 at 10:07 PM, [DE]Bear said:

• Passive - Xaku has a 25% chance that shots will pass right through them!
• Xata’s Whisper - Add Void damage to all your attacks!
• Grasp of Lohk - Take the enemy’s weapons and use them to fight back!
• The Lost - Cycle through one of three abilities:
  • Accuse - create an area that turns enemies within its radius on their former allies!
  • Gaze - Trap enemies in a Void Cage, reducing Armor and Shields of other enemies in range
  • Deny - fire a Void beam that strips Sentient resistances, and hold aloft any survivors!
• The Vast Untime - Shed your outer layers to increase your passive evasion chance to 75%, and gain a speed boost! Cast it again to reform!

So after some changes it got at bit better but still Xaku looks underwhelming.

Xata's Whisper

• Not so bad in general, just needs more damage % at base.

Grasp of Lohk

• It needs optimization to targeting code(there is a big delay(around 3-4 seconds) before it targets and enemy that appeared in range).
• It needs more targets to grab.
• It needs to be additive with a cap of 10x initial targets.
• It needs double duration.
• It needs at least double the shooting range at base.

The lost

• It takes too long time(hold to use and casting animation time make it very slow) to use so most of time it does nothing as while you cast it there is a big chance that you are dead at the end.

The Vast Untime

• Too low duration, with such small pool of shields and health it should be like 3-4 times longer and hold to recast mechanics.

[Magneu]

Xaku only really becomes self-sufficient (no major Operator usage/gear usage/certain weapon setups) when they have a subsumed ability like Pillage, Fire Blast with augment, Bloor Altar, etc. With such low stats and a 75% DODGE chance with no DR, if you're not spamming CC at higher levels, eventually it's just GG. The CC isn't good enough to keep them alive either; Vast Untime is a small stagger, Accuse is clunky and makes it harder to kill enemies (non-recastable/no Grasp targetting!), Defy is a tiny AOE, Grasp is alright but limited targets and small range (plus they still have melee). Compared to something like Vauban who has no heals but (a) a big potential armor buff and (b) massive AOE CC also with scaling damage and armor strip, and I find myself only playing Xaku over Vauban for thematic reasons. 

 

What if Vast Untime had a either brief invulnerable period on cast (maybe even status cleanse? Bleed procs demolish Xaku) or some sort of heal based on enemies hit/enemies hit by Void damage/some sort of qualifer? The offense and control is there, but the lack of defense/survivability without Susbuming something feels like you just have to spam abilities CONSTANTLY just to stay alive in Steel Path-tier gameplay.

 

Maybe even tie a heal to Accuse? Currently it's one of Xaku's worst part of kit, being a CC that stops Grasp from targetting them and is not recastable at all; combined with Vast Untime, you frequently have to hunt down affected enemies to kill them with weapons before you can recast, which severely gimps the CC potential. Firstly PLEASE make it recastable, second maybe tie some sort of heal-per enemy so that Vast Untime doesn't become too overloaded? Anything to (a) help Xaku not really on RNG everytime they're shot at if they die or not and (b) anything to make Accuse something you actively avoid casting.

[RevanZim]

17 hours ago, Zeratai said:

Maybe it's just me, but it feels like grasp of lohk likes to target enemies grabbed by gaze what is generally a big waste of time. Could you make this guns ignore enemies entwined by gaze? They are immortal anyway.

Yes, either have it be unable to hit gaze targets, or only shoot at the gaze target if there's nothing else in range. This is the most important change to Xaku right now, I feel.

 

The only other change current Xaku needs imho is Grasp of Lohk prioritizing targets either based on proximity, or armed status. Currently disarm is seemingly completely random within range, which means you can't rely on it.

Ideally it would prioritize close enemies with guns -> then far away enemies with guns -> then close melee enemies -> then far away melee enemies in range, every cast.

But even just one of the two, or any kind of prioritization, would be enough to give the player control over the disarm mechanic, so that a group of enemies can be reliably disarmed with a fixed minimum number of casts required. The current randomness means that even after 5+ casts of 14 enemies disarmed per cast on a group of 20 enemies, multiple enemies often stay armed. It should not take more than two casts to disarm everyone in this example, thus enemy prioritization is vital.

[Leqesai]

With the changes xaku is a lot better.

Having said that these are my issues thus far:

1: whisper does not synergize with lohk

2: lohk doesnt add guns to the total pulled on recast. Currently it refreshes the whole lot which makes it awkward to use.

Lohk also targets many non essential or buggy targets such as invincible/invisible turrets in the kuva tile. Having many guns makes some appear in the floor below you it is not clear whether ot bot these guns can shoot up through the floor but i think they do shoot at enemies under platforms.

3: gaze and accuse are still getting adjusted so i will skip them.

Deny even with the changes is totally useless. It has large damage output sure but the energy cost is way too high. It is a 25 energy ability given that it has no aoe on impact. Punchthrough yes but it is something i would never take the time to use when our weapons exist.

4: untime is great now. Really really useful. Changes to the include aoe damage reduction have made xaku a lot more difficult to kill.

 

I am sitting on some heavily forma'd builds, each with a different subsumed ability, and in two of the three i have dumpes his third in favor of something else. Simply because his third doesnt bring anything to the table that his 1, 2, 4 or general weapon loadouts dont handle.

Defense reduction from gaze is about the most useful part of his 3 but even then i would rather use something else.

[AceXS2X]

Ok, so after some further testing with these new changes as well as some stress testing in SP mot for a few times, these are what I feel about Xaku currently. Also I would like to mention that I have invested 4 forma into Xaku, with one of them being an aura forma and an exilus adaptor. (since for some reason DE seems to see more forma investment in a frame as a more credible feedback, which is just plain wrong by the way as if a frame requires 6 forma or an umbral forma to be good, then that frame is not that good in the first place).

 

Xata’s Whisper

Other than the valid complaints about the void proc removing headshots from enemies, the void damage change seems to affect this ability for the better, however its damage buff is too small as other elemental damage buffing abilities through the use of augments already give around 100% extra damage buff at base, it would be more reasonable for the values of Xata’s whisper to be increased to the same values as the elemental buffing abilities. As a comparison I tested the damage output after Xata’s whisper’s buff and smite infusion on a lvl 100+ corrupted butcher since it has no weaknesses or resistances to either void and radiation and with smite infusion the damage output was more, even though it had less power strength for the damage buff (Xata’s whisper had 175% power strength and for smite infusion it had 155%).

 

Grasp of Lohk

This ability is, in my opinion buffed accordingly and is now a great ability. This ability being recastable makes it a better CC tool as well as the void damage changes made the damage output of this ability be good unless dealing with heavily armored targets, which is fine since they don’t often make up the majority of the groups of enemies you fight in warframe as well as since Xaku has access to gaze, which can completely remove enemy defences which allows the stolen guns to easily take down enemies, including those in steel path.

 

The Lost

Deny

While the buffs made this ability quite good, its damage output is only great against unarmored targets. Despite Xaku having gaze, this ability in the grand scheme of things feels redundant as Grasp of Lohk can basically do this ability’s job as well as being unable to notably damage any high level heavily armored enemies as well as costing more energy than Grasp of Lohk. Overall, in my opinion there is close to zero reason on why this ability should be put on Xaku at all. This ability would be better off be scrapped and reworked into an ability that can pull enemies in which synergizes with Xaku’s kit even more than what deny does currently.

Gaze

My primary complaint with this ability is mostly towards its cast time and activation as its way too slow and targeted enemies can often die before gaze can activate. Other than that the minimum power strength requirement for 100% armor and shield strip could be lessened as well as the base range of gaze to be increased, purely to allow more flexibility in the mod setups used for Xaku.

Accuse

The same as gaze, this ability’s cast time is way too long, outside of that this ability needs to be able to be recastable as well as its interaction with on kill procs be fixed potentially as currently accuse and revenant’s enthrall does not activate on kill procs when you kill a mind controlled enemy.

 

The Vast Untime

The changes done to this ability made it vastly (heh) better. The duration freeze is just plain amazing, and the drain removal made it one of Xaku’s best abilities. However, this ability should have something equal to an audio cue when it’s about to expire as it’s easy to miss this ability going inactive, despite the visual cue, as this is Xaku’s primary survivability tool this would be a good way to help the player to maintain this ability better. Other than that, the evasion of this ability is still not that good as I have mentioned before, evasion is not as good in warframe as in other games unless its at 100% evasion due to the sheer number of enemies attacking the player. So I personally suggest that this ability’s evasion and Xaku’s passive evasion stack additively as it allows the player to reach 100% evasion or let the evasion of The Vast Untime scale off power strength. Another method is to convert it to purely damage reduction however, if you are against this then buffing Xaku’s evasion to 100% should for the most part suffice as with the added AoE damage reduction on their passive will allow Xaku to easily handle most enemies and still can be taken down by AoE damage.

 

Overall, I think the changes made Xaku significantly better than what they were before. Through my experiences testing in SP Mot, I managed to survive 20 mins multiple times with little to no deaths and for the most part being able to survive without the need of life support towers, which was surprising as I couldn’t do the latter with some other frames (not the meta ones). I hope my feedback post Xaku’s changes are either insightful or helpful (or both) for the second wave of changes for Xaku as the recent changes made Xaku an even more interesting frame and hopefully the next wave of changes would be enough to make them great (not overpowered or in other words broken).

I thank you for your time in reading this wall of text.

[IggySnow]

I had an idea to make The lost feel much better while also keeping with the same theme of it being 3 abilities.

Instead of having it be a rotating wheal of 3 abilities, combine all 3 abilities into a single ability.

Casting the lost on an enemy would make it switch sides and fight for you, While at the same time the enemy becomes wrapped in void tendrils giving it an aura that removes enemy defenses, but not its own defenses. Enemies hit by the controlled enemy become lifted. The amount of weapons grasp of lohk has captured, multiplies the damage the controlled enemy does. Aiming at the ground and recasting causes the controlled enemy to move and stay where you aimed, or aiming at another target and recasting marks the target making your controlled enemy hunt/ prioritize shooting the marked target. Aiming at the controlled enemy and recasting gets rid of the abilities control.

I feel like this would solve most of the problems people have with the lost besides the very small range of gazes aura. Since the general consensus is that Gaze is the only worth while ability, and that its really hard to get the defense reduction to work effectively unless you camp in a small hallway.

[Pendragon1951]

To begin with your asking a very frail Warframe to be a close quarters combatant, which even with the great untime can be quite precarious, this is due to the very limiting range of Grasp of Lock. You have to put so much strength and range that even at over 200% on either one you still don't do enough damage fast enough or far enough to make the cost worth it. I for one don't understand that if I can grab the weapons at lets say just as an example 30 meters the range at which I can shoot is lower, that makes no sense, If I can grab the weapons at 30 why can't I shoot at the same distance?  I would suggest increasing the range to shoot as the same as the grab range. To be honest I'm kind of disappointed in this Warframe because if he is suppose to be a damage dealer, there are others that are more better at it and more efficient. If he is suppose to be a support frame, once again there are others that do it so much better, so I can't see myself investing any time in this Warframe when there are others that are just plain better at whatever Xaku is trying to be. I will say Kudos to the design team he looks great. I will say if M4D had not been nerfed I would definitely have replace Xaku's 1 with M4D, that would have really helped. 

[bladewolf35]

XAKU passive

is ok... but with The Vast Untime feles both  useless and ineffecttive 

 

Xata’s Whisper

 this ability needs some extra love the void prok that makes headshots not work needs to be removed from this ability or guarantee headshots and do something else beyond damage.

Some options would be a charge mechanic to his ability possibly  be invisibility or move Deny here an i explain it more in the The lost part.

 

Grasp of Lohk

It's ok just needs double base stats in range on stolen  weapon attacks and probably even more.

 

The lost 

Acuse-I haven't played enough with this ability but it needs to be changed abit  to be useful if exists a special interaction i dont know im sorry but if you mind control a minimum i should have his range weapon.

Gaze- a higher power strength multiplier and more range or more base targets other than that is ok.

Deny-the damage is ok i guess but xaku has enough damage on his kit that Feels redundant it needs some extra survivability like invisibility like Wukong and Ivara or defences like Rino or Messa the doge chane is nice but it shude'nt be hes only survivabilaty tool .

 

The vast untime  

is ok just neds an oudio warnig that the abilaty is coming to an end. 

 

 

 

in conclusion he needs more survivability to make his abilities work require a lot of resources and he still under performers with most frames he nedes buffs on hte stats changes on some of its abilatys ore make him more tank like becaus i can do evrifing he dos but bethe with Messa ,Ember Vauban etc..

i hope this helps and sorry for my writing mistakes this is not my native language.
Dyslexia does not help...

[Emolition]

Don't know of this is intended but just thought I would give some feedback on what could become a real troll thing. If you use xaku's gaze on a lich no one will be able to kill it and deppending on your build with the 4th power you can permantly maintain that if you want to troll othere players.  I just did this by accidently thinking I was gonna gaze and add to remove the lich defenses but the lich had duplicated itself so i gazed the real lich. I was able to turn this off  luckly for the other person but some 1 could ruin the mission by freezing the lich forever if they wanted.

[AlphaBankai]

VOID STATUS EFFECT
I'm sure someone must have compared already this effect to Mag's. But in general is disregards and gives negative incentive to good aim and good playing, as it attracts all shots to the midsection of an enemy. Would it be possible that, while the bubble is active, the enemy is weakened/corrupted by Void energy and every shot the bubble makes it hit them counts as a headshot? In which case status chance weapons become a little more interesting over the pure current multishot/punch-through focus, as you may want to proc the status effect more instead of dreading it when it does proc. Beam weapons, for example, can't even penetrate the bubble, so if my Gaze Primary by mistake (and it really shouldn't be a mistake) procs Void Status on the enemy, I have to wait for it to end to go back to killing them with my favored weapon.

 

Grasp of Lohk
Shooting range of this gun-firing ability is 8m base. Why? This is Xaku's main attraction of sorts in its ability kit, but I can probably kill every enemy 8m near me with a melee already. Why can't these guns have base 15m or 20m or so? Its already limited by line of sight, but the enemies we stole the weapons from hardly have trouble aiming at us from MUCH bigger distances. You currently need a MAXIMUM range build with very "veteran" mods to have it be an ability of satisfying usage.

 

The Lost: DENY
There is currently no use case for this ability in the game. At an INSANE base cost of 75 energy, instead of something like 25 or 15, there is no reason to spend the energy on this already frame hard to balance all its needs in, for what is essentially a gunshot. Even still, if the energy cost was low, the state of Warframe currently DOES NOT BENEFIT FROM USING LOW NUMBER TARGET ABILITIES FOCUSED ONLY ON DAMAGE SIMPLY BECAUSE THEY ARE COOL, so here's some ideas:

• It could be something more CONTINUOUS, like Wisp's 4, with all encompassing punch-through throughout its entire range, proccing void status effect with long durations (if this status effect if reworked, which IT SHOULD)
• It could actually synergize with the effects of other abilities, instead of the current other abilities making this one just do a bit more damage, when a gun headshot can do 10x its damage already. Maybe DENY can proc the effect of the last ability you used with it, be it solely from the Lost or otherwise, or just do ANYTHING of the following effects: It could Reset your Whisper or apply Whisper to friends if they are caught by the beam. It could Steal more guns for Grasp of Lohk without you needing to reset that ability in case you didn't pick as many as you wanted from your one cast. Or, Reapply Accuse and/or Gaze to your Deny target if those abilities are already up. This REINFORCED XAKU'S ABILITY USAGE, players will HAVE A CHOICE to spend just a little bit more energy to combo together their skills in some way

[Gonkish]

I have thrown four forma into Xaku now, mostly out of boredom. Some thoughts:

Passive:

The passive feels incredibly underwhelming, primarily due to the fact that Evasion isn't dependable at all. Defensive stats absolutely need to be dependable: "When I take damage, this thing reduces that damage." Evasion is "You MIGHT NOT take this damage, but if you do you probably die horribly." There's no dependability there, there's no guarantee that it will work. Every time something shoots at you, you're rolling the dice to see if you survive or not. That's not good, it's not fun, it's not enjoyable.

Swap the passive to innate damage reduction (amped up by The Vast Untime whenever that is active), and suddenly Xaku isn't a paper tiger anymore.

Xata's Whisper:

There's two problems here:

- Void damage, on the whole, isn't great. The change to make it truly neutral, resistances-wise, is good, but it's still not a desirable damage type. Why? The proc. Void bubbles are, at best, a gimmick. At worst, they actively make it harder for you to kill things with guns, or make certain guns and abilities unworkable (anything requiring headshots, in other words). Plus, proccing multiple void damage bubbles does... nothing. It even amplifies the problem. If the proc did something beneficial and stacked that benefit in some way, I might care about Xata's Whisper. As it is, I don't, and especially not when I come to the next problem with it...

- The scaling is anemic. I understand that it's intended to work with the AOE from The Vast Untime, but realistically the benefit here is so miniscule that I immediately knew I was going to replace this ability with Helminth. Considering that Strength is a secondary stat for Xaku, and essentially unnoticeable beyond 200%, the scaling on XW is... way off. If you actually want this to be used outside of very specific gimmick builds, the numbers need to be adjusted upwards SIGNIFICANTLY.

Grasp of Lohk:

The guns themselves aren't bad. Scaling them off of range is an odd choice, at first, but ultimately range is Xaku's favorite stat, so it works. With the change to TVU, this ability suddenly makes much more sense. The only real issue with it is the AI governing the targeting, and, more specifically, that the guns seem to love attacking a target affected by Gaze. They won't touch targets affected by Accuse (thankfully), but they just love pouring hell on the invulnerable Gaze target? They do this over attacking enemies that are actually a threat? Yeah, something is off there. Not insurmountable, but definitely needs to be looked at.

Grab range for the guns should be identical to targeting range, and both should be considerably larger. It's hard enough to consistently get your guns to shoot at anything without stacking range, let alone actually getting your maximum number of guns.

The damage with 16 guns isn't bad at all, though it does scale down HARD with armor, which is a consistent problem with Xaku's damage abilities. Armor is probably their biggest impediment, I assume by design because...

The Lost:

Before I say anything else, the "hold to cast, tap to swap" functionality is backwards. Tap to cast, hold to swap is much preferred, in my opinion. Anyway...

Gaze: Great, for the most part. AOE armor stripping that essentially lasts as long as you'd like it to should be... phenomenal. There are a few things holding it back here, though. First of all, the base range is so miniscule as to feel ridiculous. Xaku loves range, so I sort of get why it's low... but the base range being this low simply makes 280% range feel mandatory. On top of that, the difference between 99% and 100% armor strip is entirely too massive, essentially mandating a hard minimum of 200% strength on all Xaku builds. (More on this later.)

Accuse: Solid, but not hugely beneficial in groups. In solo mode, this is a good crowd control/survivability power. It distracts bad guys from shooting at you, and keeps them busy on other things. Cool. Neat. In groups, however, it suffers from the same problem as Revenant's 1: everything you hit with Accuse can and will be killed by friendlies, and usually in less time than it took to cast. Solo: not bad, but not incredible. Groups: essentially a waste of energy.

Deny: A giant void laser beam. Sounds neat. Straightforward. Realistically, it only works well on targets with no armor (which, presumably, would be anything you're fighting thanks to relying on abusing Gaze as much as possible). Suffers all the same problems as void damage, and most especially suffers against any kind of armor. The lifted effect is a semi-decent CC, but between cycling and holding to cast (and the horrendously slow animation on top of that), I have been pretty much ignoring this altogether. You could remove it tomorrow, and not only would I not care, I likely wouldn't notice. It either needs to be dramatically buffed, gain the ability to crit/headshot, or pierce armor... or all of those. Something. Anything. Deny is a total waste of time and energy as it stands right now, even after the changes to the scaling. I have 16 guns and this thing still hits anything outside of Gaze like a wet spitball.

I'd like to see more interaction between The Lost and Xaku's other abilities. TVU already does this by stopping their duration countdown, but I'd like to see more interaction between, say, Accuse and Grasp of Lohk, or Deny and Xata's Whisper, or SOMETHING. Right now, other than TVU, Xaku's abilities feel very much unilateral. They do what they do and they don't really interact with one another.

Someone below suggested allowing Xaku to cast Gaze on themselves, creating an AOE armor strip that follows the frame. That would certainly be interesting (and potentially wildly overpowered), but I like the idea. A tweak to that concept: reduce the max radius on a self-cast Gaze to something like 15-20 meters (at 280% range), and it could work. (Gaze cast on mobs would have its range unchanged.) You wouldn't be able to completely blanket a room, but you would still provide decent, and, more pointedly, MOBILE armor stripping to your team.

The Vast Untime:

The latest change here is actually completely perfect. Removing the drain, and allowing it to be recast is a MASSIVE quality of life buff, and the addition of TVU stopping the countdowns of your other abilities is brilliant. Those changes single-handedly took TVU from "ignore and never cast"-tier, to a central focus of the entire frame. Requires minimal duration for the purposes of upkeep (I run with 155% duration, thanks to Primed Continuity), and it works wonders for the rest of the kit. If it needs anything, it would be speeding up the animations a bit, but that's more of a general Xaku problem than specifically a TVU issue.

This isn't really a crucial issue, but I'll add it in here simply because it's crossed my mind a bunch: the only real addition I would make to TVU is a very short "grace period" between deactivating it and recasting it (specifically manually deactivating and recasting, not letting the timer run out). Why? Even as host, I tend to lose around 0.25 seconds of duration per recast, and since I'm recasting TVU fairly often (energy permitting) I'm steadily losing time on the cooldowns of my other abilities. This isn't really THAT huge an issue when hosting (realistically it's a very minor inconvenience), but as a client it can be INFURIATING. Any kind of lag on abilities can essentially make Xaku's life more frustrating, and TVU suffers the most from this, in my opinion. A short grace period (probably no more than half a second) between deactivating and recasting TVU which ensures that your ability durations stay frozen would at least help to alleviate this (very minor) issue.

Overall:

First and foremost, Xaku isn't simply a box breaker anymore. They're not perfect, they're not even what I would call outright "good", but they're certainly actually workable now. Numbers need tweaking, abilities need some reworking... but at least they're not a joke anymore. They're improving. That's fine. That's good.

I'd generally like to see most of Xaku's casting animations sped up. Specifically, Deny is painful to cast, between holding the key down to actually fire it off, and the agonizingly slow animation playing out. That's one of the reasons I don't bother with it at all, alongside the scaling. Currently there's not really any room for Natural Talent anywhere in a Xaku build, as hard as I try I can't seem to work it in. I don't really LIKE having the rely on NT to make abilities work right, but I'll do it if I can fit the mod in (see: Harrow and Garuda), but Xaku's modding is so restrictive that I can't find a spot for NT.

I'm also unsure how Xaku is supposed to work outside of a maxed-out Arcane Energize. All of their abilities are expensive, and I can afford to run Blind Rage solely due to having a rank 5 energize to lean on, but without that... the cost on everything is high. How is someone without rank 5 energize supposed to make this frame work? Admittedly, this isn't an issue with Xaku alone (the energy economy has been a longstanding issue for me), but I still wanted to make note of it. All three of the abilities on the 3 are expensive, the 4 is expensive, the 2 is relatively expensive... how is this supposed to function without energize and Zenurik?

Void damage is still remarkably underwhelming, especially thanks to the nature of the proc. That's not really Xaku's fault, but it does affect them for obvious reasons. A rethink on void damage, and specifically the void damage proc, could help immensely. The scaling on Xata's Whisper could be massively improved (like, to the point that it's equivalent to Oberon's Smite Infusion) and I'd still consider it mediocre, largely due to the proc.

Survivability on Xaku is all kinds of problematic. Evasion simply isn't a good, desirable defensive stat. It's essentially gambling with your life, and the odds are very much not in your favor. Basing the entire frame around Evasion just doesn't work, which makes it even more desirable to swap Xata's Whisper out for something, ANYTHING that helps you stay alive. The alternative is stacking armor and Adaptation, which works, but severely limits Xaku's build diversity.

Build diversity is... difficult. If you want to focus on your abilities, you essentially need to max out range to 280% or so, and you absolutely want Gaze to get to 100% armor strip, which mandates 200% power strength. Range and Strength are in opposition to one another thanks to Overextended, so now you're stacking four range mods (Augur Reach, Stretch, Overextended, and Cunning Drift) and at least three Strength mods (Blind Rage, Intensify/Umbral Intensify, and Augur Secrets or Transient Fortitude) to achieve that. That's the vast majority of your mods slots being spent just to make abilities "feel right". It's not even strictly to make them GOOD or AMAZING, it's just to make them feel like they're functioning properly.

(For the record, I'm aware that you can use the Carnis mod set to get Xaku up to 100% evasion -- so long as you're using heavy attack melee --  but I'm loathe to give feedback on any frame under the assumption that someone can use any mod set to fix an issue inherent to the frame itself.)

Attack range on the guns from Grasp of Lohk, in particular, feels completely myopic up until about 250% range or so. It's like they simply can't see any enemies up until that point, and then they suddenly open their eyes and start blasting the room. An increase to their base range could help, or tweaking their targeting AI. Something like that.

Gaze should either affect three targets at max (to give you more flexibility in terms of coverage), or have its base radius increased to at least potentially reduce the impetus to stack as much range as possible.

Alternatively, strength is really only there to make Gaze strip 100% of defenses. If that threshold was lowered significantly (say 130-150% for 100% armor strip, if I can spitball), suddenly you wouldn't need to stack quite so much ability strength to get to 100% strip. That would free up a few slots to allow for some more build diversity.

Focusing on survivability essentially nerfs all your abilities in favor of not getting blown up thanks to Evasion being unreliable as all hell. You need Vitality, always, but you probably also want Adaptation or Health Conversion (or both), etc., but the tradeoff for not exploding instantly is that you're pretty much just a gun platform at that point, and not even a good one. Mirage is way, way better for that purpose than Xaku could ever hope to be.

The biggest problem Xaku has, in my opinion, is that their survivability hinges entirely on luck. Yes, evasion CAN help you avoid damage outright, and yes you DO get quite a bit of it, and yes you CAN keep mobile and jump around like your crazy space ninja self... but this is a horde shooter. You're taking on entire rooms of things that are shooting at you from every conceivable angle, at all times. The law of probability states that no matter how high the percentage on evasion gets to, it's not 100% and thus isn't dependable. Given how much incoming fire a frame takes, relying entirely on evasion to survive is nothing more than gambling, and if casinos have taught me anything it's that betting your life on gambling isn't a good idea. Xaku suffers because of evasion's inherently unreliable nature. Change the passive to 25% damage reduction, scaling up to 75% with TVU active (and maybe throw some evasion on top of that), and suddenly Xaku's issues with staying alive are considerably less prominent.

There's a good frame buried under here, somewhere. I can see them. They just need to have their numbers adjusted, and some abilities tweaked, and Xaku would be in a much better place. They're not merely a box breaker anymore, which is great, but they've got a bit further to go to truly be a good frame on their own merits. TVU change was a step in the right direction, and a very big one. Keep doing things like that, and I think Xaku could work incredibly well.

[JustL1me]

Here's my feedback after using Xaku for a bit.

Xata's Whisper still has a graphical bug that's been around since release that covers Xaku in the Parasitic Link texture while it's active and makes them look weird. Please fix thanks :v

Grasp of Lohk shouldn't cost energy if it doesn't steal any weapons or if enemies die before you can disarm them (which tends to happen with a squad full of Bramma mains), and the firing range is atrociously small. 8m base range at max level? That's practically melee range, and it feels a lot smaller since the guns don't immediately fire when an enemy gets into range. I think it should be at least 20m at max level.

The Lost: Deny feels bad to use currently since you can't adjust your aim during the casting animation. I think it should either be changed to allow aim adjusting, or it should be retooled into a continuous beam that fires for a short duration that lets you aim while firing (which would be a lot cooler 🙂). (I also think the laser beam should be named Gaze, and Gaze should be re-named to Deny, but that's just my opinion.)

Enemies affected by The Lost: Accuse should deal Void damage so it can have synergy with Untime.

As for The Vast Untime, I think the duration pause while this ability is active is a really cool mechanic. So kudos on that.

[MunsuLight]

  

 Xata's Whisper 

• The no changes just made it not so good.. For a buffing ability it fall short of so many others, (Roar, Smite with augment, Shock With Augment, Toxic Lash, etc) I just dont get why the bonus isnt higher. 
• Second. The void proc itself is mostly a nuisance except in some rare cases like Exergis or similar weapon in the same way as magnetize. Change the proc to either make it a bigger bubble and embrace it being "mini mag" bubbles or just remove the "bubble proc" altogether

Grasp of Lohk

• It needs optimization to targeting enemies.. Once it is casted and after the weapon are acquired, they still take time before the weapons shoots. Remove the delay altogether. A CC ability should be instant (not with an overlong animation (it is still too long even after "buffs" )  and the effect it provide should be instant
• It needs more targets to grab. The base number of targets is still kinda low IMO, but it is alright. AS a CC you dont want to only make it affect X numbers of enemies.
• You changed the ACQUIRING range .. It was an excellent thing ....  I see no logic in not doing the same with the FIRING range.. with 265% it only shoot to a 21 METERS that need line of sight. A slide/jump + melee attack weapon will probably get that.  . At least double the range it has now, or make it the same as the ACQUIRING Range. 
• Make it so the guns dont target the GAZED enemies.... We dont want to lose dps on enemies that should be untargetable. 

The lost

General feedback for it : Lower the mana cast of it.. It is too high , except for maybe Gaze. Animation should be quite a lot faster for all of them

 

Gaze: Great, for the most part. AOE armor stripping that essentially lasts as long as you'd like it to should be... phenomenal. There are a few things holding it back here, though. First of all, the base range is so  again "BAD" ... Even with high range, it is like only around 20m of stripping . Why ? You are in a mobile game with some immobile mission sure, but make the base range higher . Without having 200+ range, the ability doesnt feel good . Also the fact that you need to put 200% strength , to make the 100% makes it feel bad, There is almost no build diversity for Xaku because of that.. Range Strenght and a little bit of the rest.

Accuse: Solid for interception, but not hugely beneficial in groups. In solo mode, this is a good crowd control/survivability power. 

Deny: Sounds neat in theory as a void laser... Straightforward. In practice it only works well on targets with no armor (which should happen because of Gaze). Suffers because the abilities doesnt have width or arc against each enemies . Make it a cone or something similar to PoE arc (except that maybe the damage would need to be adjusted).  We are in a horde game so why is it mostly one target.  Again, the idea of a cone makes sense. The lifted state is just bad CC and is too redundant with the rest of the CC from their kit.  I never use the ability because it is certainly is worse. The damage it does even with let say 16 weapons doesnt scale well at all in level 100+ enemies. It barely scratch them Deny is a total waste of energy.

The Vast Untime

• The Change of Making it the "untime" are amazing even with a kinda "alright duration" (155%) . It helps with the flow of the rest of his kits.. 
• But like his passive. the problem is that it provides a "CONDITIONAL" Defense that is super RNG, unlike DR%. Sure, it is thematically nice and fits, but in the flow of the game, it just feel bad to get shield gated and get hit a second time in a row to get one shotted because of bad "DODGE RNG". 
• Make it DR%

Build diversity is... difficult. If you want to focus on your abilities, you essentially need to max out range to 280%/265% or so, and you absolutely want Gaze to get to 100% armor strip, which mandates 200% power strength. Range and Strength are in opposition to one another thanks to Overextended,. So after that, you need to put strenght mod for 200%+ strenght + the range.. It let you with maybe 1 or 2 slots outside of that and probably those slots would be for survivability.. It all come down to the point mentionned in this feedback. The base stats of almost all abilities need to be retweaked so we could try either less strenght/range for more efficiency/duration (if you tweak the Base armor stripping or tweak the base range of all abilities)

[AlphaBankai]

An idea for Gaze: Make it similar to an old mechanic in Titania's ability, if you cast it while looking down you will APPLY GAZE ON YOURSELF, slowly reducing your armor (reset after the end of the ability) for the sake of stripping the armor of foes as you run past them, letting Void energy corrode its way out of your Warframe. Making Xaku one of the very few frames in the game that can Armor Strip while moving making it fit its own niche. It fits the frame's thematic appearance and can even be represented by Xaku entering its skeletal form during it. 

An idea for Accuse: Upon death, 50% chance the Accused enemy accuses another one inside the ability's range. Or, accused enemies do Void Damage if Xaku uses Whisper (see void status effect rework recommended in my above post). Or accused enemies more easily strip enemy armor. Or Accused enemies will try to spreadshot as much as they can, and hits they have reduce enemy resistance to void damage. 
Or better STILL: Turn Accused in a MUCH needed survivability skill, and Accused enemies are the MAIN TARGET of enemies around Xaku, and they Heal/OVERSHIELD Xaku as they get damaged either by you, squad members or enemies.

These changes would make Xaku play very differently from other frames currently in the game, in my opinion, and make them have a multitude of options on things to do.

 

[_Anise_]

I still dislike xaku's 3

 

in every other situation a rotating ability makes sense, ivara has several arrows to cycle, wisp cycles though buffs, khora switches though pet commands then xaku . . .

 

its like wanting to add 6 abilities to this frame but ended up grouped a 3 random things just to have a cycle list because, I don't know these names by heart either because they are so generic which makes it extremely clunky to use and cycle in middle of a mission

 

1)the defense/armor strip could be combined with the weapon stealing that way you would strip their guns and armor then shoot them with those guns #makes sense! and saves a button.

 

2)the aoe mind control could be left on its own on #3 but give it something else to help, to make it different to nyx, maybe the damage these guys deal transfers healing for the amount they do onto nearby players to help with xaku being squish ?

 

3)the damage ability from the 3 cycle could be made an aoe and activated/merged with the inital damage from activating #4 ?

 

that gets rid of his cycle abilities, makes the other abilities more useful while still retaining effects of all 3 and making it less clunky to play

 

ability #1 maybe void damage should have a good special property like how gas etc does, suggest that void damage have a random chance todo different things becuase void? maybe sometimes double crits, cleaves to a second target ect

 

passive... how about xaku unique passive, just throwing this out there as a wacky suggestion how about "xaku can take 2 simultaneous subsumes due to his broken nature and missing parts etc" might be bonkers but sounds fun and might like the players fix xaku without any dev intervention?

 

PS:Vast untime does not pause infused abilities!

 

pps:when an ability is changed by the devs that ability should be removed from infused warframes and the amount of resources the infuse cost be calculated and refunded

[GentlePuppet]

20 minutes ago, _Anise_ said:

I don't know these names by heart either because they are so generic which makes it extremely clunky to use and cycle in middle of a mission

I completely agree with this, the names are very confusing.

Accuse:
  What I expected: I guess I expected it to be like accusing an enemy of being a traitor so other attack them.
  What the ability is: Basically a Worse version of Enthrall or Chaos. Enemies turn on their allies. That's it, afaik they don't get any attack boosts or anything.
I guess the name makes a little bit of sense if you think about it for a long while.

Gaze:
  What I expected: Maybe some sort of ability involving a laser or something...
  What the ability is: An enemy is locked in place/stunned, made invulnerable, and they reduce the armor of enemies when they're in the AOE

Deny:
  What I expected: Something like CC Stun where it freezes enemies
  What the ability is: You shoot a small narrow laser beam straight forward

[Xepthrichros]

Beyond all the numerical tweaking, Xaku's 3rd ability needs to be changed from having a rotating wheel selection. This skill rotation selection does not work for every frame. On some frames, it is okay, like Ivara and Vauban. Because Ivara and Vauban favor a slower approach to missions, one is about stealthing around that has reduced move speed, the other sets up camp with Bastille and Vortexes and can lay his other mines around his camps.

On Titania, Grendel, and now, Xaku, the rotating wheels are bad because these three all involve more speeding around, Titania being known for her Razorwing flying action, Grendel for eating, rolling, melee action, and Xaku's kit is built towards evasiveness, which entails movement, and toggling the wheel can potentially be awkwardly gameplay-action halting.

Thus, please change Xaku's The Lost, and redistribute the abilities among the other 3 button presses, and perhaps rename the abilities and the frame's theme accordingly

Xaku: The Lost Broken Warframe

Button 1: Xata's Whisper. Basically same thing as now.

Button 2: Grasp of Lohk / Lohk's Denial. Tap for stealing guns. Hold for Deny's laser. With the tweak that added synergy between the laser damage multiplying with Grasp of Lohk, it'd make sense perhaps to make these connected also by the same button press. Perhaps enemy's hit by Deny's laser also become prioritized targets for Grasp of Lohk's guns

Button 3: Light of Ris. Tap for Gaze. Hold for Accuse

Button 4: Vast Untime. The buffs were good. Keep these buffs. Not much further needs to be changed imo. 

[(PSN)ZeKingIII]

Rework was great, but three things were skipped over...

1. After a certain amount of range Grasp of Lohk weapons start to go under the floor

2. Grasp of Lohk weapons target enemies affected by Gaze

3. The Lost should be hold to swap, click to cast

The weapons should either start stacking up left then right from around the lower leg, or from head top stacking down left and right in an arc. Hold to cast really is painful to console.

My additional suggestion is increasing base max targets of lohk to 7 or 8; and making it add targets how Mesmer Skin add charges (if you have like 10.5 it gives you 11).

[PsiWarp]

Still in the camp that wants The Lost's energy cost reduced to 50 and all casting animations sped up. Accuse recast, Gaze radius buff, and Deny reticle sweep are my top requests to that ideally makes the power worth frequent usage.

Grasp + Untime synergy creates a good safety killzone around Xaku to boost their survivability. Xata is supposed to be always on as designed, just that the status effect needs tweaking to enable headshot and weakspot plays (and hopefully made to affect Xaku's ability damage too).

[Doraz_]

Xaku "Denier" build proposal.

 

I don't like xaku's kit, as in the best abilities promote a playstile i don't find enjoyable.

 

Mainly, being stationary AND removing enemies defenses, instead of interacting with them.

 

So, i began experimenting and ended up liking the idea of a buffer Xaku that is able to nuke enemies with his "DENY" Ability.

 

Currently you do more damage with the stolen void guns (which hurt my ears, plz DE fix) and it ends up being a waste of energy.

It has a CC aspect to it, that i fear is what made you keep the damage low for balance.

 

So, to keep it balanced:

Xaku (similar to volt) is able to build void charge by dealing damage with his 1st or 2nd ability ( need both if one is replaced with helminth) and is added to deny Damage.

 

It must NOT have a cap, otherwise it is meaningless, as it will have no scaling potential.

 

The balance is that the player needs to have done that ammount of damage with other wepons and abilities, and gara already has a similar scaling.

[AeinzPrime]

The Lost: make it hold to swap, tap to cast 

-Gaze: decrease amount of strength to reach 100%  defense reduction, make it can freely cast like Accuse
 

The Vast Untime: either Increase duration or decrease energy cost, or both.

Xaku is a great warframe, i don't want it to turn into those frames that the number of time you see them in a mission can count on fingertip

 

....and fix the Grasp Of Lohk's gun sound for the love of god

[quxier]

 

[Mu_Gera]

grasp of lohk is still lacking because of the base range, the increase to the disarm range would've been completely fine on the firing range aswell since it's just as dependent on it as the disarm. especially considering the low fire rate and damage, despite it scaling off of enemy levels.

other than that, the ult evasion chance could be bumped up from 75% to 80%, and the void status effect could be more consistent across the kit. deny is also still pretty lackluster for cc as a thin beam with limited range, and the damage could've used grasp of lohks level scaling instead.