Upcoming Xaku Changes!

[Azvalk]

Xaku's changes phase 1 tested.
Love it ^ ^
Xaku became far more efficient on the field, thanks to Vast untime freezing the timers, and grasp of lohk reaching it's cap easily.
The passive changes are appreciated, as well as the true neutral damage of the void.

Now, let's see the lasts clunky things that remains..

Xata's whisper:
The bullet attractors, have to leave.
Why void's statut is bullet attractor ? What is the.. "lore" logic here ?
The lore makes us think the Void is wild, impredictible, strange..
A bunch of random status effects of all sort would make more sense.
An intensification or a random reroll of current status effects..
Bullet attractors give me the sensation of preventing the fun of my allies. I really don't want to be the player who prevents headshots of Harrow for example.

Grasp of lohk:
It's became efficient. Too efficient xD
But it's warframe, it's normal. So, I consider the ability is now perfect.
The only thing it lacks, is quite optionnal: gain damage with xata's whisper active.
Side note: I noticed some weird behaviors, it attacked an allied pet, without doing damage.
So, maybe the list of possible target needs a check ^^'

Lost: the clunky things here, remain the same.

• Gaze:
  Most of the target I choose, are dead during the cast, killed by grasp of lohk xD
  And, grasp of lohk continues to fire on this target. Why ?
  Could it stop when it "understands" that the target will be dead when released ?
• Deny:
  Again, most of the target I choose, are dead during the cast, killed by grasp of lohk, but worst, because It's cost 75. ( far more in my build )
  But the damages seem good, I saw them a few time..
• Accuse:
  How to explain the clunkyness of this thing..
  It's an ability I like very much in concept. I main Revenant ^^
  And, converting plenty of enemies in allies, to occupy the others, are quite fun and usefull for me.
  But for now, this ability is frustrating, because:
  • You can't recast when you want.
  • Now it can be "eternal" thanks to the vast untime..
  • The allies are sometimes targeted, sometimes not, by Grasp of Lohk shots.

And.. Vast untime has no clunky element I can think of right now..

So, I repeat my solution that could solve all of the Lost issues in one go.
"Keep holding" °^°

• Gaze:
  • Keep holding, and it will target the nearest enemy of the one you choosed and who was killed during the cast <.< Frustration is gone.
  • Keep holding, on your initial cast, to progressively increase the resistance debuff to the cap. Xaku will no longer need 200% power strength to reach this goal, and plenty or other builds would become interesting.
• Accuse:
  • Hold to cast, as usual. Can be recast. It has a cost, don't worry.
    The energy pool is supposed to be the spam limiter.
  • Keep holding, to overload the targets, may cost a little more.
    They will become explosive on death, and targetable by grasp of lohk, controlled chaos ^^
• Deny:
  • Keep holding, to fire a constant beam, no need of high fire rate.
  • Cost enery/sec. A cost that could increase during the use.

I like this solution of keep holding, because we already have the finger on the key °^° it' simple..
I hope you consider it, at least in imagination for five minutes please..

Last little things that would be nice:

• A visible counter of grasp of lohk weapons.
• Vast untime animation: Pieces of Xaku returning to them one by one as the duration ticking. But.. maybe make it an optional check box in arsenal.
  There are people who like the skeleton look, and people who complain about having to always be in skeleton form because of the new way of playing Xaku, and so, cosmetic are gone..
  But it's the community warframe, the maximum of people have to be happy with it if possible.. so.. I tried a suggestion ^^'

I return playing : D
Looking foward for phase 2 ^ ^

[sorcer3r]

On 2020-09-10 at 7:00 PM, [DE]Danielle said:

• • How it will work: AOE damage will simply take a 25% damage reduction (75% while The Vast Untime is active).

 

This is really bad. If it is only AOE damage let it be 100% with mods.

Casting time and energy consumption of "The Lost" is not good enough.

Hold 3 for The Lost feels also not so good. I don't have problems with Vauban's 2 but with Xaka's kit it feels wrong. Not broken but wrong ;)

Overall a step in the right direction but I guess we need lot more rounds to improve this frame...

[SeikanEkasin]

Xaku is a S Tier Box farmer.

[Rey153]

I also want to add

Why is accuse still in the kit or not changed ? It literally has an anti synergy with grasp of lohk making it unable to fire at the enmies accused  and is pretty useless because everything will be dead before it does anything, on top of not adding any extra damage to the accused enemies 

 

 

 

 

[Terawr]

Over all, i think  Xaku is in an Okay place right now, But just need a wee bit help.

Xata's Whisper is okay. and can be kept as is.

Grasp of Lohk: I really enjoy now with the QoL changes +The Vast Untime. People Seem to be talking about range, but i have no problem? It seems about right. As for the Firerate, I think It can be bumped up. That would be nice. But Over all that's the only thing I'd like seeing to this ability.

The Lost: Accuse and Deny are Worthless, And need incentive to use  the abilities. The only ability worth using is Gaze, Which the only fix i can think of is, more Range. and a faster cast speed.  I hate standing still, not being able to do much while i get attacked as i use this ability. It is not an enjoyable Experience. Deny i can see the use for it, but considering the slow cast speed, and even if it had more damage, grasp of lohk is just far Superior. I dont see myself using it? Accuse, I don't ever use. If i wanted That CC, I would play Nyx. ( which is far superior aswell.)

The Vast Untime:👀 i like this

[Electropuncher]

Can we rename The Vast Untime at this point The Vast Uptime?

[Amadurim]

Tried Xaku on endurance steel path. 

Xata's whisper: 2nd worst ability of xaku with Deny the worst. Just a straight up damage buff ability, nothing interesting, no synergy whatsoever. Even grouped with roar as damage buff ability in Helminth system with the latter is superior in every way except sentients. I replaced this.

Grasp of Lohk: Really good, kill steel path enemies with no problem at all. The buffs really make it flow better.

Gaze: Yeah, good but the range is abit too restrictive, buff it a little bit. And also make Grasp of lohk weapons ignore Gaze targets.

Accuse: make it recastable, even better cancelable.

Deny: Grasp of lohk can deal damage, the changes to deny is good still but dont need it. Instead, why don't Deny have synergy with gaze? Shooting deny on gaze target will disperse Deny affect to all enemies inside gaze radius, dealing damage and make them float. Just a little idea.

The vast untime: the changes to freeze duration is stupidly good. A single gaze target can last more than 5 minutes just by recasting TVU. The most significant change. It could has it's void damage vulnerability and slow to be an aura rather than in the initial explosion, but it's already strong so, just an idea.

 

[Uryel_Stormrider]

After testing the changes, I gotta say, I LOVE it !

Despite all the nay-sayers, I already liked Xaku, but they felt like they could have been more. Like, stealing guns from foes, sure, great control ability. His 4 was really good, but way too costy to reliably use.

Now ? Damn, that's quite some more dakka we got there. With proper energy management, one can keep Xaku's stolen weapons platform up at all time. The idea of building upon the "untime" to empower all other abilities through synergies was a really good thing to do. 

We're not talking Saryn-OP levels here, but Xaku is now a force to be reckoned, and that's pretty cool :)

[PsiWarp]

Xaku is feeling better to use. They are starting to shape up into a favorable frame for harder content.

Efficiency and Duration are seeing relaxed modding requirements with The Vast Untime's change. Strength and Range still are skewed due to incentive to build for Gaze and to bring low base values to workable levels. Xaku's durability is still fragile, so modding and Arcane supplements are needed to help bring security to their rather chance-based dodging.

Grasp of Lohk is in a good place with recast, disarm range and extended duration. Firing range can use a slight increase, so hopefully you guys see good results in your internal testing. A tweak to the stolen weapons firing sound may be in order to reduce noise overload to the player.

Deny has greatly improved in the damage department. If we are allowed to move the reticle to sweep the Void beam around as it fires, Deny would become a much better skill in terms of area of effect being on par with Gaze and Accuse, with some player input involved.

Accuse recast is what I'm looking forward to in round 2.

As other players have noted, some changes to the Void damage type's status effect would be welcomed.

[Bountyhunter02]

Nice changes but still an uncomfortable feeling having such small base range and trying to build both strength and range to make up for it as one effects the other's maximization. Doesn't leave much room in build for variety in high level missions.  

[MasterControl]

Okay, I've played Xaku a bit since the changes, and my initial impressions are positive - Grasp of Lohk is in a really good place now, which considering imo it is the core of their kit, is important. However, Grasp of Lohk ABSOLUTELY NEEDS to stop targeting enemies afflicted by Gaze. It's a generally unproductive and unhelpful interaction. I believe the Vast Untime buffs were successful - although, I would still like to see the slow/void vulnerability portion changed into an aura, as only having it on initial cast is a bit counterproductive to wanting to keep Untime up as much as possible to keep abilities up.

Xata's Whisper is still hampered by Void's status proc being absolutely horrible - It still prevents damage that would otherwise be dealt by way of making headshots harder and reducing the effectiveness of punch through. Save for some niche synergies, it's generally worse to have a void proc than to not have one. Mind that it has to compete with Roar - Which is a better damage buff, that also buffs abilities and your team.

The Deny buffs are.. Strange. I still don't think it is worth the energy to cast - It is very expensive and there doesn't ever seem to be a "right" time to use it. It would be better if Xaku had a means of grouping enemies for big damage, but the very.. static nature of Deny makes it clunky and very easy to miss, for not absolutely incredible damage. The damage is acceptable mind, just not for how finicky it is. I wouldn't be so hard on it, but it costs 75 energy at base, which is incredibly expensive.

I also still think Gaze needs a base range increase. It is almost required for Xaku to have max range for it to even be workable, and even at max range is still pretty small at 20m.

Casting times could stand to be increased across the board as well, especially for Gaze, as targets are often dead either from Grasp of Lohk guns or allies before the ability finishes casting.

[Somnia]

I'd recommend removing the cycling action of Xaku's 3 just for usability.

Combine Gaze with Deny's laser. The laser would be how you apply Gaze.
Make Accuse the hold-to-cast.

Alternatively, invert the cycle control. Tapping should cast, Holding should cycle.

[KingTaltia]

Now that I've gotten some hands on with the changes, I'm loving them. But he's still not up to snuff to other frames. Almost everything he does is easier, and more fun on other frames. (This saying as someone who's been maining him since he came out)

Feedback;

* Void damage is better, but it's still worthless. Not the damage just the ability. Xata does 25% extra damage right? That's equal to using, say, Saryn's or Volt's or any of the infusion frames ability on the enemy they're weak to. Which no one would ever do. This NEEDS to be buffed up to 50. (there's some psychology stuff in this number but I'm not sound enough of mind to explain it.) Also, if you buff Void damage's bullet attractor to aim AT THE ENEMY'S HEAD its going to buff the status as a whole I'm reiterating this from before the changes.

* Range on Lohk's aggro NEEDS to be buffed by 100% BASE I said this before the changes, I'm saying it again now. You LITERALLY differentiated between firing range and grabbing range in the patch notes IGNORING FIring range when the grabbing range was low but okay. There is NO REASON this ability should NOT shoot at things that ARE SHOOTING YOU when you have 250% range (Psst, I do, they are). PS There is two bugs at play with this ability. They shoot enemies affected by your armor reduction ability (Despite them being invulnerable) but NOT enemies under Accuse, who CAN be killed and therefore the guns could change to a new target afterwards. (Fix this, please, this is very annoying and flat out makes his abilities NOT synergize. No Warframe's ability should have anti-synergy. Ever. For any reason. And you shouldn't listen to anyone who says otherwise)

* Xaku has issues with energy management since the effects while decent on Lohk, Lost, and Xata, are slightly overpriced. Esspecially for the fact most of them have stronger versions for less cost on other warframes. To fix this I pose a synergy. Since his kit becomes VERY fun when you have his ult up (Though pricey to maintain) a new additional synergy for his ult. "While the vast untime is active, Xaku gains (75ish?) Efficiency" in addition to his damage reduction and other effects. Since his kit is heavy-weighted into his ult, lets go ham and make his Ult his identity. (It's cool to have the Skeleton warframe WANT to be in skeleton mode)

Please take this into consideration, I greatly enjoy this frame's concept but feel he's being too heavy handed as "This is too strong" on almost ALL his abilities and instead it makes him less enjoyable than any other warframe. And I really don't want this to happen a second time. I already love Equinox's concept but hate their kits, please don't give me another frame I "Greatly want to play, but never will"

[quxier]

Still I almost cannot see Void bubble proc. It should take color of the frame's energy or something.
We still can kill mind-controlled enemies. This could at least spread the effect of "mind control" like in the void fissures. Void thing appears and corrupt enemies. Please apply the same here. On kill it "mind control" another enemy or 2.

On 2020-09-18 at 5:50 AM, LumilSilvermoon said:

Move this Deny to skill 1, let's it be part of Xata's Whisper! Click for Deny, Hold for Void Buff, This skill not worth 75 en in any mean. And believe me. none of player put Xata's whisper to any other frame cause need this Deny.

Let's - Lost - left only 2 skill so we can get rid of skill wheel for god sake!  just click for Accuse, Hold for Gaze. or reverse i'm not really care. Deny is not worth to stay as 75 en - skill 3!  Or if you can't do that just get rid of Deny, skill wheel is very bad when you try to use skill and you waste time to rotate it. And the worst is it like you try to wheel 2 thing while got one junk keep switching in position.

Here is similar suggestion:

Quote

Suggested control changes to reduce fumbling with The Lost:

• Deny (tap) + Xata's Whisper (hold) on the 1st power slot. (void attack and void buff)
• Gaze (tap) + Accuse (hold) on the 3rd power slot. (defense debuff aura and... brain debuff aura?)

I agree. As you don't have to turn on Xata's Whisper very often you can put it "on hold".

Guns are strong... when they work. Very often they don't shoot Nullifiers, orokin sentries.
They shoot what's in front of you. You move a lot making Grasp of Lohk not shoot at all.
It shooting range is not good (it should be little bigger). Disarming range is nice. Disarming time is... slow. It's good that you can turn on this ability and just go.
I have been thinking. If this is hit or miss situation.... maybe each gun can buff Xata's Whisper (void buff)? This at least would make it more reliable.

Vast untime:
- "frozen time" fixes issues with low time of some abilities (the Grasp of Lohk, the Accuse & the Gaze) and make it better for stronger enemies (suspension time of the Deny)
- "frozen time" still doesn't fix that you want to spam some abilities (the Grasp of Lohk, although it's slow; Deny for weak enemies)
- there is no fix for not seeing affected enemies, they should be more distinguishable
- under ~50% slow there is no real difference between enemies speed - should be 50 at base
- if it kills enemies it basically 75% evasion + more time.... which could be just added to certain abilities (2nd & 3rd). For 100 energy giving your 2nd & 3rd ability ~45 seconds time is just silly. It should be aura that debuffs & slow enemies.

Passive:
75% is just nothing for higher level enemies.
What if you get 100% chance to avoid any damage while "rolling"? Certain conditions may apply, for example:
- 100% while Vast uptime is active & you are rolling
- 75% while Vast uptime is not active & you are not rolling
- 50% while you are not rolling & not using Vast uptime
- 75% while you are rolling & not using Vast uptime

Like with the Wisp passive, we get a little time after to do another action. So you can be 100% immortal while you roll all the time.

 

[Schwarzsturm]

Having played, finally after the massive patch, with Xaku and the changes, i think you are going for the good way. One complain i have still is the infested matter of Xata's whisper. It looks, well, horrible and out of place. If it where on Nidus it would be great. But what has to do the infected matter with the void? And worse it can be colored. The infested mass of Nidus 4 change color with Nidus, the one on Xaku keeps the normal infested black and red no matter what colors you use on Xaku fashionframe. Also i reading the this thread i would like to add my voice to the time element of some abilities. I am using Continuity Prime, not full but almost, and still Grasp of Lohk just last some few second. A little buff in duration, and possibly fire rate would do good on that :)

Thanks for the changes and hope to see more. Will keep experimenting and having fun with Xaku meanwhile, if i have any other comment i will post it. Thanks and have a good week :D

[ElderofCosmos]

XAKU is my favorite frame, great job so far but abilities need work that make sense with the names and lore. Here are my suggestions. 

Xata’s Whisper:

The neutral change was good but the status needs work, It is known that exposure to the Void may result in insanity and being out of touch with reality. I would like the play on this, so my change would be the void status make the enemy slowly lose his will to fight and take more damage from all sources. XAKU whispers into the void channeling it into his weapons exposing enemies to the vast Untime, driven to insanity the enemies lower there guard.

An increase to at least 75% damage increase @ 200 strength

Grasp of Lohk:

The new changes are fine, its the aesthetic of the ability I would like to be touched. I think a single orb with tentacles that orbit his head similar to Garudas ball would be better and the number of tentacles would change depending on how many weapons they have. This would clean up a lot of the gun screen clutter from the guns, while also showing off the great work from the void tentacle asset the team put together.

Also a number counter on the orb above there head showing how many guns are taken.

An increase in the range at which the guns target enemies, as well as better target priority. To often your guns will just spam gaze target and non NPC spots 

The Lost: Deny:

I think this ability as is has to high a cost for what it does, and would rather this be an AOE suspension in the air, this would play on the name and the fact that the void defies the laws of physics. any enemy who enters the area is denied movement and held in the air as the void distorts time and space. This would justify the 75 energy cost of the ability, as it stands now the bean is still to slow and the hit box is to small. In a simulation room this ability works fine but in a real mission where enemies are moving and you are trying to single out a target you often waste the energy on the cast hitting the enemy you did not want and it does not always suspend them in the air.

The Vast Untime:

The changes to this ability got it right fine as is. Great job!

Xaku’s Passive: 

The base function is fine, but I would add a extra feature. On dodge XAKU breaks apart his body becoming one with the void, thought the action was instant the void knows no time. XAKU cleanses any status conditions affecting them.

Either way I am going to play and enjoy the frame, the art collaboration was amazing and I truly feel there design is the best in game. 

Thanks for the Hard work during this tough time.

[SporkMaster5000]

So I just got around to running Xaku after the changes.  I spawned a lich and ran through the whole hunt with just Xaku, getting it up to level 4 before I finished.  between that, and leveling on hydron after 2 forma, here are my thoughts on the new community warframe:

General

the speed up on grasp and deny are much appreciated.  I think the other parts of the lost could stand to be bumped a bit, seeing as they are all hold-to-cast anyway.  the few times I tried to cast deny or accuse while in a squad (or sometimes with just a healthy grasp of guns), my target was often dead before I got it off.

in general, Xaku was very fun and effective at star chart levels.  in the 70-90 level range I felt damage start to drag, but it still worked, and over 90 I was relying on my weapons much more than my powers, and didn't feel like the damage they provided was significant to success.  when I finally killed my lich I just laid into him with melee, there was no one to grasp for a damage buff and I didn't have the energy to cast untime anyway.

It's a small thing, but range and duration of all of xaku's powers while underleveled feel incredibly small.  this won't be something a lot of players see, or experience for long, but I feel like just starting all of them higher and using smaller increments as you level would make the frame feel better to level.  It's already a pain to have to do, but other frames I've forma'd recently felt like they could still do their kit, at least after level ten.  Xaku felt like all of their abilities just weren't worth casting on hydron for any reason other than the XP because they were only available for seconds at best.

Passive

it's fine.  it's not stellar, but it's fine.   The change was a good one, no complaints here.

Xata's Whisper

Void damage is still a bad damage type.  the change to be "true neutral" is a big step in the right direction.  I don't know which bosses even have the health types that used to posess resistances to it, but just get rid of it on them too, please.  There doesn't need to be a downside to it, it's a very niche damage type and any buff this might provide to operators will be minor.  If its only upside is that it has no downsides then that's a fine characterization of it, but don't put an asterisk on it.  really as many people have said, making the status effect of void damage relevant, or having a functional stacking effect would be a big step to making it something you care about instead of just something that's there.

As for the ability itself, by my reckoning, this is the lowest self-buff ability in the game.  Roar and nourishing strike are +50%, toxic lash +30%, nidus link is 28.75, all of these are either flat damage buffs or better damage type, and not even considering the augmented abilities that grant damage.  I know some buff abilities work like a weapon mod, where they only take the base damage and multiply it, rather than the fully modded weapon and I don't know which are which, but still, on paper this sucks.  Especially notable is Roar since a subsumed roar is still higher than Xata's whisper at 30%, and only 5 seconds shorter duration.  sure, it doesn't get caught in untime, but that's a really unfavorable comparison since this is somehow in the same league as Roar as far as helminth is concerned, who approved these numbers?

Grasp of Lohk

I like this ability.  I like its aesthetic, I like what it's trying to do, I was honestly surprised to find that I liked its damage for a lot of my gameplay.  That said, it's not great. 

The base targeting range of the stolen guns is 7m, which is not listed in the ability card, but is affected by mods. This is garbage.  if you jump into the middle of a crowd and grab all their weapons then yeah, you'll probably be able to shoot them all with their own guns, but then what?  I tested a 102% range build in the simulacrum against most gun wielding enemies I could that appear with any frequency, most of them were very happy to shoot me from outside its effective range, or back away and find cover and just continually shoot me while my floating guns did not care.  A few would wander into range, but in a real mission a lot of enemies have ready cover that they'll snap to before considering an approach.  it's a bad look.  In addition to extending the effective fire range, I think it's be nice if the guns would target nearby enemies even if they won't fire on them, I really like abilities that "paint" targets in some way, warframe gameplay can be frantic and being able to pick out enemies in the madness is nice.  Having a floating badguy compass would be a nice little QoL for this ability.

Aside from the targetting range, the disarm range buff is great, before the fix I could not get more than 2 or 3 guns on hydron, I imagine the realistic cap on other missions wouldn't have been much better.  That said, the target cap is a weird feature of this power.  You're already going to be restricted by the practicality of how many enemies you can actually get in one place regardless of it, and increasing the range of the ability will naturally increase the number of enemies you can catch.  I don't know that I ever got more than 9ish guns in a really good pull with this ability, and I had a target cap of 11.  it seems extraneous and a low range, high strength or duration build seems unduly punished by it.  Yeah sure, if you team up with a vauban or nidus on a big open map maybe you can get a crazy number of guns, but then you already have all your enemies in a nice killable ball, so who cares?  If there's a technical limit to how many floating guns the game can support just set that limit, don't have it scale awkwardly.

I also ran into a couple weird behaviors with this ability.  For one, when Xaku is invisible, all of their grasped guns disappear.  They don't have the weird invisible energy outline, as far as I could tell, they're just gone.  This can make it really hard to tell whether you got a good pull if you cast it while invisible and it makes teaming with an octavia or ivara potentially frustrating.  if possible leaving just the guns visible would be nice.  For two, in a capture mission the grasped guns didn't seem to want to target the capture target.  I'm not sure if this is in general, or just after the target goes invisible.  and to be clear, I mean the target went invisible, went visible again, and the guns were not targetting the now visible capture target, who had not been reduced to 0 health, I had to finish them by hand.  Third, I saw an inconsistent behavior where sometimes if I grasped a melee enemy I would get the void orb thing xaku does, but sometime I would get a replica of my own gun floating over my shoulder.  I actually like the replica guns a bit better, they show where it's aiming better and it's a nice customization touch.

The lost

I hate this ability.  I hate that it's 3 abilities in one, I hate the names of the three sub-abilities, I hate the icons they use, I hate that it's the key to Xaku's high level viability.  Now, I get all the requiem references Xaku's carrying and when I say I hate the names, I do like the little nod to the ris mod text, but the names don't mean anything to me when I see them on screen.  I don't get how they relate to the specific effects they correlate to, and the symbols do very little to help explain.  What's worse, they are for some reason in the order accuse, gaze, deny which both screws up the reference and puts gaze, probably the most powerful and useful ability one rotation in for no reason.

Accuse

I really don't like mind control type effects.  The enemy AI is not great, turning it to your own ends is not an improvement.  I've seen some references to this as a CC ability and while that's true, I also feel like that's giving it more credit than it deserves.  The enemies it hits aren't made easier to kill or permanently incapacitated, they run off to shoot other enemies, which is fine and might give you a breather, but depending on the mission type it might mean you have to go chase them down and murder them later.  It's bad CC, which is still CC, don't get me wrong, but I would rather see this ability have a different primary purpose.  Also, be recastable.  As I said above, sometimes I'd cast accuse and it looks like everyone in the targetted area would die.  I'd run along looking for more enemies, find a likely group and try to cast it again "ABILITY IN USE" some dumb guy is off I don't know where shooting his friends, but that does me no good.  This is made worse by the fact that I'm encouraged to keep the vast untime up as much as possible, so any distant, forgotten targets stay on your team well beyond usefulness.

Gaze

I don't like that this needs a single target.  the frustration of the interaction between it and grasp of lohk is known, but its utility in general is really questionable.  So many times I come into a heavy unit, or my lich spawns and I think "oh crap, where's some chaff guy I can use to strip armor" and the answer was consistently either "not here" or "being shot by grasp of lohk, so now he's dead, lol." Even if you can just hit a heavy unit with this, the damage immunity makes it really frustrating to gauge when you're done killing them and can move on.  Maybe this is more applicable on some high level defense or something, but it always felt impractical to use, so the defense reduction it provides was never worth persuing, and that's an awful place for the ability to be.  Also why does this have a max of 2 targets?  If it was one, I'd understand.  If it was uncapped, that might actually make a lower power build feasable (assuming multiple stack), but why is it two?

Deny

I don't care about this ability.  I don't want to icrease its damage with grasp of lohk, I want to increase grasp of lohk's damage because it's a more usable ability.  I don't want a straight line laser that does damage after a hold-to cast.  The increase in cast time is nice, but I don't want to cast it, so who cares?  simply put, I would rather the beam have some duration, so I could use the lift as a CC effect by sweeping over a crowd, than use it as a weapon.  It has a relatively steep energy cost to be firing off over and over, and enemies don't form nice neat straight lines.  What's more, it doesn't even shoot in an actually straight line.  testing it in the simulator, if I was directly next to my target, the beam seems to just veer off at an angle, sometimes hitting nothing, sometimes hitting something off my reticle, up to at least 90 degrees.

The Vast Untime

You fixed it, congrats.  Good power, feels good.  One note is that the speed boost it gives Xaku isn't listed in the ability card.  What it is and whether it scales with anything would be nice to see.  I don't like that it doesn't effect helminth abilities.  Yes, this has potential for some abuses, maybe, but also if you're going to make this Xaku's shtick (and it's a great shtick) lean into it.

Overall/suggestions

Before the update I was unimpressed with Xaku while leveling and durdling in the simulacrum a lot of numbers seemed low.  Having gotten some playtime and seen the changes, all of the changes made were good ones, but most didn't go far enough.  Xata looking just at the numbers is weaker than a nerfed Roar, just make the numbers bigger and it's fine.  The targeting range for grasp is distressingly tiny, even just a couple meters more at base could improve it tremendously.  The aoe ranges on the lost's powers seem restrictive as well, but the finicky nature of the ability is a greater concern.  make gaze more broadly applicable, and stop treating deny like a damage ability, give it utility. 

I think the biggest problem for Xaku is how you want to build them.  Gaze can 100% strip armor at 200% ability strength, but because of the restrictive ranges on all of their abilities besides untime, this need for strength has to be balanced against overextended, because range increasing mods are all relatively tiny as well.  Having give and take in mechanics is fine and good, but the practicalities of numbers means if you want enough range to make most of Xakus abilities work, and strength to make gaze useful for very high end content, you have almost nothing left to fill your build.  Even without 100% armor strip, lowering power strength takes away from Xata's whisper and grasp of lohk, which really want to go as hard as they can to make the medicre void damage work. survivability, higher efficiency, more energy, all would have been useful but the cost for any of them felt to high to bring to a reasonable level.  if the ranges of xakus abilities were naturally higher, the need to maximize it for just viability's sake is lower and it then becomes a question of "how much" which is a place that allows for more diversity.

I found myself semi-often running into energy issues due to the lack of efficiency and max energy mods and having to recast my 4 as part of Xaku's play loop, but their kit has no source of energy to help with that.  some frames with similar use cases have augments to help with that, like ember's exothermic augment.  While an augment for Xaku would be nice down the road, I feel like there's an inherent issue here.  The duration on Xata's whisper is long enough to be usable even without untime, and the lost is generally going to be applicable in place as you drop auras and use the radius, so once enemies are dead you can move on, but grasp of lohk is really nice to just run around as an ongoing damage buff.  its duration doesn't really support this use case, so my experience was that it was only really good as a 1-2 combo with untime, and a 150 energy startup is big.  maybe discounting untime based on the number of active effects with duration you have up? or else put some kind of energy drop chance or low energy regen on accuse to shore up the bad CC as I called it above? I think this actually just needs a bandaid to be fine, but I'd like to see the bandaid be inbuilt, rather than have it be arcane energize, because I don't have any and that's kinda the problem.

[Markk_01]

I've been testing Xaku 2.0 and I really like them! I do have a couple of suggestions:

. With the added effect of The Vast Untime pausing the timers of other abilities, there's more emphasis on keeping all of them up. This means that Deny has little to no time to act on an enemy when they're getting shot at by the guns from Grasp of Lohk. Even with the firing time reduced. I believe it would be cool if we're allowed to fire it at the ground instead, leaving an AOE that procs something (fire? radiation?) meaning that enemies can't step into that zone, thus denying them access. See what I did there?

. The guns from Grasp of Lohk are not affected by  Xata's whisper and it really feels like they should. Also, they tend to target enemies affected by gaze and I would very much like them to not do that.

. Speaking of Xata's whisper, more people would like it if could be applied to allies. Similar to Grendel's Nourished Strike.

 

That's all I have in mind. Thanks for the first batch of changes! I'm looking forward for a second one.

[LumilSilvermoon]

More suggestion for QoL

1.Please remove Gaze target form Grasp of Lohk target, Yes, we can Accuse then Gaze to do so, but it's very trouble when you try to use 2 quite slow casting skill which need to rotate a skill wheel in the same time.

2.Please remove "Wild animal" form Grasp of Lohk target. Now Grasp of Lohk is kill any wild animal that we run pass in open world. I quite tried to heard one complain me about killing them when i use Xaku.

3.Please add some effect when Vast Untime duration end, This cause form Vast Untime now main skill that Xaku use to extend other skill duration and for sake of Energy consumption. But when it timer end, only effect we got is Xaku will be on armor again. Sometime during fight it's very hard to notice until "very low" duration of other skill has passed. So please add notice sound, or flash effect when Vast Untime duration end. This help us notice it even in busy time to alarm us for recast it.

4 For Xata's Whisper, I know Dev team think it's bubble effect was quite strong since it's both add defend and attack in same effect. Enemy will act as bullet shiled while got damage form bullet that drain in. I'm no object about how it work. But as many ppl already notice this bubble act like 2 edge sword. Yes it's effect good for both defend and damage. but it's also reduce headshot chance in the same time. Also to get good enough void proc form Xata's whisper you need high status chance weapon to do so, And it's damage add was not significant. By totally it's become (+) (-) = 0 That why many ppl say this skill is not worth right now. Please consider to adjust more about Void effect, Easiest way to do so imo is "Make Void effect center it self on enemy head than center of body. (Same to Scourge's effect)" Just this little adjustment will make void effect not cause problem on head shot while increase total damage without any real damage output adjustment. I'm sure that no one will complain about void effect anymore.

I can say now Xaku now is fun to play frame, I play him a lot lately compare to when first release that I'm not want to use him even to forma but I think Dev still need to solve 2 main problem on this frame.

1. Grasp of Lohk - Increase shooting range.

2.Fix Lost by move Deny to Xata's Whisper,  We will better with both Xata's whisper and Lost be "click and hold skill" than skill wheel. or just get rid of "Deny". We can live without it.

 

[RazerXPrime]

On 2020-09-10 at 7:32 PM, (NSW)Belaptir said:

However, Gaze strips armor in an area and not a targeted enemy, so you can cast gaze and every enemy inside the are will have strip when the others must be recasted every time you want to affect another enemy.

Except Nyx affects 6 enemies, not one. but most people think Nyx is trash and have never played her so they have no idea how she actually works so I'm not surprised.

[Circle_of_Psi]

So,  I've been testing the small changes for Xaku and so far they seem decent but they are clearly not enough, here are a couple of suggestions:

Passive & Void Damage: it's not stellar and an % chance to cause "x" is a terrible concept  for an Passive, on top of that Void damage still needs to have the Bullet Attractor removed.

Here is how I am changing the Passive: Enveloped in Void Energy, Xaku redirects damage into Void Damage, affected enemies also suffer 50% vulnerability to Void Status effects and reduced action speed. 

Void Status Effect: Void itself also now grants a 50% Vulnerability to any non-void damage that the target takes.

Here is how I am changing Xata's Whipser: Xata Whipser is now an "Tap/Hold" power, Tapping the power Wield Void damage for all attacks from equipped weapons when activated. Holding the power now Discharges Gaze.

Here is how I am changing Grasp of Lohk: Grasp of Lohk Turret Range is boosted, however each enemy hit is suspended in aerial stasis for 8 seconds.

Here is how I am changing The Lost: The lost is no longer a Cycle through power, it now is a single power called "Void Storm"

Void Storm: Xaku manifests a Void fissure distorting reality,enemies within the storm become corrupted by Void energy and Applies many different debuffs to the targets, including status effects. When killed the storm is transferred into Xaku granting him an high  energy regen. 

(The effects include all Status Effects and their respected damage, however only 2 can be applied at once. Note: It will always proc a Status effect that hasn't already being used, if all has been used, it wil reset)

The Vast Untime will not be changed
 

Note: The lost will always be a useless power and will always be replaced by something stronger, to prevent this, change it

[ttylerrocks4u]

My thoughts

 

[quxier]

 

[RazerXPrime]

The only thing they need to change/fix about Xaku is the 4th ability. Walking around like a skeleton the entire time is just a big nope.

[(XBOX)GearsMatrix301]

10 hours ago, RazerXPrime said:

Except Nyx affects 6 enemies, not one. but most people think Nyx is trash and have never played her so they have no idea how she actually works so I'm not surprised.

I know how Nyx works, and she’s trash. If Helminth subsumed Psychic Bolts from her there would be no reason to ever use Nyx.