Why no one is playing Harrow?

[SneakyErvin]

For me there is just little point to him aside from group support which is rarely needed and something I dont care about when running co-op due to the RNG nature of public. So it is just easier to bring a tankier frame that can take high content hits and just slap an Avenger on it, which gives the same effect as Harrow's 4. Sure you could double down on Harrow with an Avenger plus his 4, but he's sadly a squishy frame in higher content due to more being a Lindisfarne resident anno 793 than a WoW style Prot- or Retadin.

[Vaml77]

4 hours ago, Kel_Silonius said:

everybody waiting for Prime version?

not me.

Harrow is like nyx, octavia, nyx...nobody use this things.

[minininja77]

I love him, he is one of my go to frames on the SP as he in near immortal, but I tend to just use him when I am playing solo or with friends who are not nuking the maps making bringing him pointless.

[(XBOX)ScooterLaroo]

4 hours ago, WH1735S0W said:

I find this very odd but I have not seen a Harrow player in a very long time. I almost feel like they vanished. I cannot recall the last missions where I saw a Harrow. Which I find alittle odd considering he is said to be an alright Warframe with a pretty cool theme.

 

Even for Warframes I feel are not very popular I see then once and awhile, yet not with Harrow. Why is that?

It really depends:

1. If you are playing with other people, Harrow's abilities do not shine at all because he requires to either get kills or get hit. He needs enemies to fuel his kit, which doesn't work if they're all dead.

2. If you are playing alone however, his kit very much does shine. Good CC ability with his one, the ability to heal at the cost of shield (which you can get back right away), get energy back with each kill, and get a lot of crit chance whenever you use his 4th.

[DemonHoundRider]

As many have said he's a support frame in a dps world. Also the power creep has weakened or removed some of the benefits of his kit. Thurible restores energy to teammates in range after you sat there channeling it for long enough and you get kills. But between Zenurik's energizing dash and energy pulse, energy pizzas, arcane energize, subsumed Protea's Dispensary, etc. energy management isn't really an issue.

[kgabor]

I only take Harrow to higher levels.

Like there's a Mot/Aten Survival fissure, i either take Harrow or Khora.

At lower levels everything dies way too quickly to make any use of Harrow's abilities and all in all frames with drop multipliers tend to be more useful because not only do they trivialize the game with cc like Nekros-s, Khora-s, Hydroid-s, they also bring something beneficial like life support drops for Kuva Survival., that indirectly increases your Kuva rewards or Excavator cells for faster Excavations.

[torint_man]

Back when he first released, I tried desperately to get Harrow to work (due to increasing fire rate and reload speed making him entirely unique and appealing at the time), putting 4 forma into him, but he was impossible to properly mod to make him not feel like a clunky mess that dies even with all his stuff up. Thankfully I can now use helminth to replace his 1 with Hildryn's ability so you can dump stat range, but still, his survivability leaves a lot to be desired even with adaptation, and his main selling point is something other, better, frames have.

Gauss is unironically objectively better than Harrow in all meaningful situations bar that harrow with thermal sunder meme. Supporting other players is a meme, and if you care about that, then Wisp becomes objectively better.

[xcrimsonlegendx]

I farmed him, ranked him up and didn't like him. Fed him to the Helminth.

[p_silveira]

For me it boils to 3 reasons:

1 - he is very difficult to obtain (until his Prime comes out);

2 - he is not a "press 1 button to win" frame, like many players love to play as;

3 - in order to properly survive/deal damage (even if single target) in high levels, a Harrow player has to know how to properly use his abilities, and ideally what weapons / weapon builds works the best to take advantage of his abilities (his 4 headshot bonus is an example, his 2 lifesteal is another). Neither of these things is easy/available for players who just started the game, either for lack of proper knowledge of the game's mechanics and/or for lack of the proper mods/arcanes/weapons. He is definitely not a "beginner friendly" frame.

[Redfeather75]

I think only once a week do I hear a harrow in the group. That hush sound from the crit boost.

If I had to describe him. I really think he's cool, but his influence in the battlefield very mathy and not big on wowing the eyeballs.

[Galuf]

Harrow was feeling already clunky as hell at release and his buffs were way more impactfull than now. Also I agree with most answers on this topic :).  However you can still subsume a nuke ability and use thrucible to spam 24 7, arcane less mass destruction up to non sp pluto included ^^'.

Probable balance pass needed tho, this frame has no much more identity right now. But right now, I don't even know how to balance Harrow, all of his abilities are potentially gamebreaking if overtunned. OR DE releases again content based around short weapons burst windows and operator.

[Tiltskillet]

8 hours ago, Flannoit said:

You actually don't need to have aim. Many melee weapon stances will naturally have you come in contact with the enemy's head a lot. (Most notorious is Shimmering Blight)

You don't need headshots at all as long as you have good killspeed.

Playing him as the High Priest of Headshots is extremely satisfying though, solo or with the right squad.

[Flannoit]

1 hour ago, Tiltskillet said:

You don't need headshots at all as long as you have good killspeed.

Playing him as the High Priest of Headshots is extremely satisfying though, solo or with the right squad.

I have a relatively busted Daikyu, and it's SO satisfying to see 200k+ per headshot between his crit buff, Smeeta's orange+ crit chance buff, and the fire rate buff from his 2. I think the most I've ever hit with it is 2mil in SP. Absolutely ridiculous.

[Aldain]

Defection.

[Kontrollo]

11 hours ago, WH1735S0W said:

I find this very odd but I have not seen a Harrow player in a very long time. I almost feel like they vanished. I cannot recall the last missions where I saw a Harrow. Which I find alittle odd considering he is said to be an alright Warframe with a pretty cool theme.

 

Even for Warframes I feel are not very popular I see then once and awhile, yet not with Harrow. Why is that?

The problem with Harrow is that he is a kind of support and he's reliant on getting kills to work properly.

With how the game is, however, there's not much of a benefit to having a support anymore, and typically it's a contest to kill everything as fast as possible (at least outside Steel Path).

Harrow is still a cool and powerful Warframe, but best played outside of public matchmaking. Either solo or with a premade squad and in missions where he actually brings some benefit to the team. 

[Renan.Ruivo]

He has one of the best tennocon skins i've ever seen (the one with the hood, forgot the name). That skin alone made me stick with Harrow, and i'm glad i did.

However as others have pointed out, while he makes for a good solo frame for casual play, he has limited applicability for team work for reasons that have been stated above.

Dat skin tho..

[Danielw8]

Long cast animations/setup, long cooldowns (4º ability), harrow can be way better if his 2º and 3º ability can be shared between players, with higher range and if we can recast 4º ability

Lavos have similar problems, you can deal a lot of heat damage in aoe, but you are pretty much spamming abilities and not using your weapons

In the other side you can just use saryn and kuva bramma and kill everything in aoe, without any preparation

[_junguler]

because i gave up farming him after god knows how many runs i did at the kuva spy mission, i didn't even get to defection at all.

[Flannoit]

1 hour ago, Kontrollo said:

With how the game is, however, there's not much of a benefit to having a support anymore, and typically it's a contest to kill everything as fast as possible (at least outside Steel Path).

Nuker frames/weapons appreciate infinite energy and refreshing massive crit damage buffs, plus invincibility so they don't have to worry about dying ever.

"Support frames aren't useful outside of Steel Path" is literally incorrect, and also not a valid criticism for Harrow at all. Harrow isn't underused because of any of the reasons you listed.

Harrow is quite literally underused solely because he requires the worst, most glitchy mission type in the game with an abysmal drop rate. People like doing Gauss farm more than Harrow farm, and that's because even though Gauss has S#&$ty drop rates too, his mission is DOABLE and doesn't glitch out into a failstate that requires Loki (who isn't useful in Defection) to temporarily fix.

The issue is DE needs to move Harrow's system to literally ANY other mission type. Even if it was a Rot C Lua Spy, it'd be infinitely more accessable and easier to farm than Defection ever will be. And Orokin Spy tilesets are the absolute worst.

Majority of Harrow-owners bought him. THAT'S why he's not used frequently, because a lot of users don't want to outright BUY him and end up not liking him or whatever.

Harrow is literally one of the best support frames, if not THE best.

[NecroPed]

Don't like defection enough to farm him out yet. 

[Nira]

9 hours ago, sunderthefirmament said:

His playstyle involves too much plate-spinning.  Not as much as maxing out Gara's 2, but it's still kind of obnoxious.  His 2 and 3 should have their durations extended by a few seconds every time he gets a headshot.

This is the main one for me TBH. His abilities and aesthetic are fun and engaging, but the micro-management involved to play him effectively gets tiresome especially in longer missions.

As well as what a number of other folk mentioned - the kind of support he provides is not much use for the majority of content the average player runs, outside of tridolon.

[sunderthefirmament]

Just now, Dualice said:

This is the main one for me TBH. His abilities and aesthetic are fun and engaging, but the micro-management involved to play him effectively gets tiresome especially in longer missions.

As well as what a number of other folk mentioned - the kind of support he provides is not much use for the majority of content the average player runs, outside of tridolon.

Yeah.  It feels like I spend way too much time spinning that thurible.  It looks cool, but it gets really old fast.  I would love to see the headshots = added duration suggestion I made put into the game.  But if that's unrealistic (and even if it's not), it should also get a significant boost to base duration.

[Kontrollo]

17 minutes ago, Flannoit said:

Nuker frames/weapons appreciate infinite energy and refreshing massive crit damage buffs, plus invincibility so they don't have to worry about dying ever.

"Support frames aren't useful outside of Steel Path" is literally incorrect, and also not a valid criticism for Harrow at all. Harrow isn't underused because of any of the reasons you listed.

...

Maybe we're playing a different game. 🤔

Pizzas and Zenurik exist and unless you go against somewhat higher level enemies, there's not much of a point in playing Harrow.

People don't need invulnerability because there's no threat that's big enough to get through Shield Gate and health. And even if that happens once in a while, there are 4-6 get-out-of-jail cards for anyone.

People won't get energy because Harrow needs enemies he can kill to generate energy. The better the nukers are at killing the worse Harrow is at supporting, it's that simple.

[Flannoit]

Just now, Kontrollo said:

Maybe we're playing a different game. 🤔

Pizzas and Zenurik exist and unless you go against somewhat higher level enemies, there's not much of a point in playing Harrow.

People don't need invulnerability because there's no threat that's big enough to get through Shield Gate and health. And even if that happens once in a while, there are 4-6 get-out-of-jail cards for anyone.

People won't get energy because Harrow needs enemies he can kill to generate energy. The better the nukers are at killing the worse Harrow is at supporting, it's that simple.

Harrow gives people energy when they kill. Harrow killing with Thaum active only counts for his own energy, which you can pull off by just having a decent weapon, or supplementing with Zenurik or the occasional pizza. Saves resources for everyone, and literally everyone prefers to never have to worry about popping out of their warframe or dropping an energy restore every few seconds/minutes because their bar keeps tanking.

And nukers don't actually make him worse at supporting. It stops him from being able to reliably heal HP, sure, but you can supplement that by just having a decent weapon, which is a lot easier to build than a good frame. 

[Kontrollo]

3 minutes ago, Flannoit said:

Harrow gives people energy when they kill. Harrow killing with Thaum active only counts for his own energy, which you can pull off by just having a decent weapon, or supplementing with Zenurik or the occasional pizza. Saves resources for everyone, and literally everyone prefers to never have to worry about popping out of their warframe or dropping an energy restore every few seconds/minutes because their bar keeps tanking.

And nukers don't actually make him worse at supporting. It stops him from being able to reliably heal HP, sure, but you can supplement that by just having a decent weapon, which is a lot easier to build than a good frame. 

Trinity does the energy thing better, though. Also the heal thing, even when there are enough enemies. And energy pizzas on a hotkey or 5 / ctrl+space / 5 every 30s are not exactly demanding (if your build in a lower level mission even needs that much energy). Those are not all the energy sources, either.

Harrow shines when there are enemies he can interact with that are also a threat.

Nukers definitely make him worse at that in the situation I outlined, I've played him enough to know that.

 

Tbqh, not sure what your deal here is, but the OP is asking why he isn't seen very often and I gave an answer to that question. Do you see him often in your squads when you're nuking (or otherwise), then?