Is Frost just outdated?

[ClosedBetaTester]

Howdy ya'll~ Returning player and was super excited to finally get Frost. But as soon as I hit 30, I found him to be very lackluster. Maybe it'll get better once I get the Helmith modifications. Any suggestions on how to take him out of a niche role?

[(PSN)IndianChiefJeff]

There are multiple ways to strip armor & several other Warframes that also play the role of defender well. He's an oldie, and I believe that means he should see changes in the future. There isn't too much else to Frost but armor strip & defense, his niche is solidified at the moment.

[taiiat]

no, Frost is extremely good. Frost is just purpose made for defending Health based Objectives, with some support stuff mixed in.
plus some of the best Damage in the game, if one makes use of that aspect.

but these traits just won't be very significant outside of Endurance Missions and such. elsewhere, Frost, and most of the Abilities in the game for that matter, are just insignificant because they won't actually affect your Mission whether you use them or not.

[Zeddypanda]

I think he's pretty good. There's noone I'd rather take when doing excavations and defense, just to be completely 100% sure we're not losing anything. I have two distinct configs I flip between:

Bubble

Fairly self-explanatory. You spec for max efficiency, just a little bit of range, and otherwise go for power. It's somewhat balanced, and none of the stats go below 100%. I haven't thought of anything better to helminth in, but I put Elemental Ward, replacing Ice Wave which gives some armor. Frost's bubble scales with Armor and Power Strength, and it's invincible for 3 seconds. With Zenurik you can maintain the bubble forever, as 3-6 seconds is plenty to get energy for another cast. Avalanche is there to help as well.

Another ability that could help in this setting is Petrify, as Ore Gaze could help you looting power cells for excavators.

Hunter

General-purpose build focusing on Ice Wave and Avalanche. Spec for range, strength, and duration in that order, and put on Ice Wave Impedance. This lets you slow down one or two rooms in one cast, and since cold proc isn't an ability, it lets you affect enemies you usually associate with being immune to abilities like Demolysts (extra weak to cold procs). Freeze is pretty good for Synthesis Targets and the grineer drones in Spy vault.

I've currently got Reave overwriting Snow Globe, and it's a nice little survival/mobility tool for doing damage, moving through crowds, and healing up, but there are many similarly useful abilities like Molt.

 

I don't do runs past an hour so if you were looking for extreme end-game builds then I guess sorry about wasting your time.

[NinjaZeku]

3 hours ago, ClosedBetaTester said:

Any suggestions on how to take him out of a niche role?

Depends, what niche role did you put him in? :P

Besides of course being a strong stationary defender, I also quite enjoy his mass damage & CC combo from Avalanche
(high Range and Efficiency FTW, some Strength, slightly negative Duration still works okay)
and then also further giving my Squad what basically amounts to Iron Skin via the Augment
(yay Status immunity for stuff like Radiation Sorties, also no need for Health etc Mods).

His 1 and 2 admittedly I mostly toss out for the lulz (or to pop old Globes),
though on a higher-Duration build, you could certainly have some fun with the 2 Augment.

For Helminth, you could e.g. try Fireblast (maybe in place of his 2), which apart from "woo Fire and Ice at the same time"
could be neat to get more Armor removal (without extreme STR amounts), as well as Condition Overload boosts.
Or, Radial Blind to ignore Armor via Finishers, maybe Pull / Ensnare / Larva (?) to facilitate the Snow Globe push out damage feature.

[(XBOX)GearsMatrix301]

He’s been effectively replaced by Gara.

[Birdframe_Prime]

12 hours ago, ClosedBetaTester said:

Any suggestions on how to take him out of a niche role?

A fun one is called the 'Snow Plough' build.

With a normal range, a decent Strength, and a grouping ability like Ensnare from the Helminth kit, you then use a weapon that can apply Viral quickly to a group (like the Kuva Nukor or the Epitaph) to multiply a very under-used part of Frost's kit.

When enemies are pushed away by Snow Globe's casting, if they hit each other or geometry, they take True Damage up to about 50% of their max Health. With Viral procs, this damage is multiplied up to 3.5x

So you group up enemies with Ensnare (I would replace his 2, because you'll need the bubble-pop on his 1 to get rid of old Globes) and occasionally freeze them with his 4, proc Viral on them all quickly, then jump into the group and cast Snow Globe to deal multiplied True Damage.

Kind of effort intensive, but a fun way to work with Frost.

[LagartoPunkarra]

Frost is currently good. Not amazing, but he doesn't really need a change in his abilities. Maybe in his passive he does.

If you want to play a different build for Frost, you can change his Bubble with Lavos' Vial Rush, putting Freeze Force and Ice Wave Impedance and make his build a mix of Strenght and Range/Duration. This makes him one of the best Warframes for Interruption missions, as Ice Wave with the augment slows down enemies a lot.

[ClosedBetaTester]

Thank you everyone for the input. I've been messing more with Frost and im going to attempt to get away from the globe builds and focus more on his other skills.

[Azamagon]

Frost isn't really outdated at all (as you've seen by the reponses). But Freeze and augmentless Ice Wave really could use some buffs.

[Orakan]

No , it isn't outdated . I can give you some proper builds if you want. I will glad to help and explain him

[Lone_Dude]

Compared to other frames - he is. Half of his kit is outright useless. Helminth slots at best. While you'll be busy slowing enemies down, everyone else will outright delete them. While you'll be stacking globes, Limbo or Gara will do a better job faster and safer. His whole "cold procs" deal can be replaced by any gun with decent status chance. Or by a sentinel/MOA.

He's one of those frames that became "meh" over the years - not terrible, just not as great if you actually want results. People who defend him are simply tryhards that will usually tell you that anything is good because they have mods, arcanes and additional equipment to fix it with. 

[Leqesai]

Frost is certainly not useless but his kit is pretty basic. All of the abilities work and can be mad useful but there isnt much synergistic-complexity. He could certainly use some QOL touch ups to bring his kit into the 21st century but for the most part he is one of the better early frames.

[Vyrron_]

Yes he is outdated. Does that mean he's useless? No. But he's outdated.

Passive - So terrible he might as well not have one.

Freeze - The only purpose of this ability is to pop his bubbles which is already an outdated aspect. You shouldn't have to rely on one ability to cancel another. Most abilities that can be cancelled have that effect built-in.

Ice Wave - Without the augment it's completely useless besides killing enemies below level 30 or so.

Snow Globe - Good ability but other abilities can do the same job now so it doesn't automatically make Frost good.

Avalanche - Decent for CC but also the worst armor stripping ability. It requires ridiculous amounts of Power Strength to fully remove armor, when there are much easier ways to do that now.

Overall I definitely think he's one of the frames that could use a revisit to bring him up to par with the newer additions.

[Proscriptor]

frost is not outdated. frost is one of the most powerful frames. i don't want any changes to frost.

[(PSN)CommanderC2121]

He is outdated. Anyone disagreeing is just using copium. 
 

With that said, outdated =\= bad, and he has some uses still. However much of his kit has been pushed aside by new frame mechanics, with some of his base ability stats showing their age (like his 4, only 40% armor strip base? Wtf. Only frame in a worse state is nekros’ terrify with a whopping 20% base armor strip xD ) 

[UUDDLRLRBA_START]

On 2021-05-13 at 9:57 PM, (PSN)IndianChiefJeff said:

There are multiple ways to strip armor & several other Warframes that also play the role of defender well. He's an oldie, and I believe that means he should see changes in the future. There isn't too much else to Frost but armor strip & defense, his niche is solidified at the moment.

Agreed.

When in doubt about a Defense objective, use Frost.

All the new Warframes for defence (Khora, Gara, Limbo, etc.) are similar to Frost, but not quite.

IIRC, Frost is also easy to get early on.

[(PSN)CommanderC2121]

3 hours ago, UUDDLRLRBA_START said:

Agreed.

When in doubt about a Defense objective, use Frost.

All the new Warframes for defence (Khora, Gara, Limbo, etc.) are similar to Frost, but not quite.

Thats usually because they are better. Vauban, Khora, and limbo are significantly better then frost vs infested, with limbo keeping that power vs gineer as well. When vs corrupted/corpus, you are better off with Gara or Vauban. Hell, a minimum range limbo could be argued to be the best defender of anyone, since nullifiers usually dont get within the range of a min size cataclysm to try abd shoot the defense target. 

Quote

IIRC, Frost is also easy to get early on.

Since Gara no longer requires Kuva to build, you can get her before you would get to mars where you farm frost

[(XBOX)Onyx Schnee]

On 2021-05-14 at 12:15 AM, taiiat said:

no, Frost is extremely good. Frost is just purpose made for defending Health based Objectives, with some support stuff mixed in.
plus some of the best Damage in the game, if one makes use of that aspect.

Im assuming this has to do with either:

 

1) utilizing a high damage + range avalanche to strip armor.

 

Or

 

2) max range + efficiency snow globe to just chop off 50% of literally anything's, barring bosses, hp?

 

If its neither, where can learn this magic?

[(PSN)mahoshonenfox]

He's obsolete but only to older players. New players will still find him useful. That's how game progression works. Imagine if the starter Skana was as good as a Glaive Prime and then apply the same thing to all stuff. No one would want to get new stuff. They'd just stick with their starter stuff. Some games tried that. They called it "lateral progression" and it didn't work.

[taiiat]

2 hours ago, (XBOX)Orcus Imperium said:

Im assuming this has to do with either:

1) utilizing a high damage + range avalanche to strip armor.

Or

2) max range + efficiency snow globe to just chop off 50% of literally anything's, barring bosses, hp?
If its neither, where can learn this magic?

the right answer is in that Post, but not exactly as described. you've got all the right puzzle pieces in there, though. just gotta put them into the right shape.

[UUDDLRLRBA_START]

11 hours ago, (PSN)CommanderC2121 said:

Since Gara no longer requires Kuva to build, you can get her before you would get to mars where you farm frost

You have to do a lot more Plains of Eidolon crap for Gara. Progressing through the starchart is usually faster until you hit Saturn/Neptune.

[Proscriptor]

On 2021-05-17 at 11:55 PM, (PSN)CommanderC2121 said:

He is outdated. Anyone disagreeing is just using copium. 
 

With that said, outdated =\= bad, and he has some uses still. However much of his kit has been pushed aside by new frame mechanics, with some of his base ability stats showing their age (like his 4, only 40% armor strip base? Wtf. Only frame in a worse state is nekros’ terrify with a whopping 20% base armor strip xD ) 

he isn't outdated anyone disagreeing needs to git gud

[Perfectly_Framed_Waifu]

30 minutes ago, Proscriptor said:

he isn't outdated anyone disagreeing needs to git gud

Ah, same as Hydroid, then. /s

[Proscriptor]

17 minutes ago, Perfectly_Framed_Waifu said:

Ah, same as Hydroid, then. /s

no hydroid is bad