(PSN)Pablogamer585 Posted November 21, 2021 Share Posted November 21, 2021 (edited) Augments. Made to change how an ability of a frame works, or provide with extra functions to this same one, these little mods that we add to our builds have different levels of impact on both ourselves and that which surrounds us. While they are meant to be the cherry on top of builds, by consuming a slot on them they sometimes feel more like a cherry that replaces a part of the cake, instead of complementary. This is a variable issue depending of the frame, as some almost inherently require of certain augments to be usable (Nekros) or make some of their core abilities effective for the sake of their whole kits (Gyre), and some others, put simply, don't have the luxury of slotting an augment on their builds without sacrificing a mod that is important otherwise. In some other cases, the frame easily has more than one slot for an augment because they're splendid by default so not many mods are needed. Over time, it has been suggested creating an augment slot on the modding grid to fix this, or making all of them exilus-slottable, like Mesa's Waltz for example, which is not a bad idea, but one has to take into consideration when does an augment provide with more effectiveness, instead of just a gimmick, as is walking in the case of Mesa. Eventually I stumbled upon a suggestion I personally liked better, and it was infusing the augments directly onto our Warframes so they didn't take any physical space on the builds as we can do nowadays with Archon Shards. But, this carried a massive issue with it; By infusing, like we do with Archon Shards, it would change abilities to work certain ways that perhaps one doesn't want them to all the time. Because of that, I created my own concept, and called it Da'ats*. *Hebrew for knowledge Da'ats would be two extra slots reserved exclusively for augments that require of an adapter to be unlocked, similar to the Exilus slot. This is a massive upgrade to the current system for it straight up means more building space similar to how Archon Shards do, for no penalty at all, as Da'ats also remove the cost of augment mods when slotted on them - otherwise not even with all the slots of your frame Forma'd you'd be able to put them on :P Now, there's been some changes to the direction of "endgame" for Warframe this 2024 with the introduction of the Deep Archimedeas, which I feel are the way to go when it comes to challenging us in a significant manner, as just bumping up enemy level wasn't doing it. I do believe my original source of obtaining Da'ats to be far too easy for the severe impact they would cause, therefore I deemed moving them to be one of the high tier rewards for completing a full Elite Archimedea to be more fitting. If you've noticed, the progress bar or Deep Archimedeas doesn't stop after 37 which is currently the max level. To me it looks like there could be a lvl 40 or higher and they're holding back on that for now, testing the waters with the current state of these, which is a smart move. So, Da'ats, would be a secured reward as are the legendary arcanes for those even higher tiers. I truly do not think letting players have easy access to this resource to be fair, so burying it deep behind actual difficult content should prove rewarding enough, imo. ------------------------------------------ With that out of the way, I'll move on to my take on the augments for each frame, and now, after close to 8 years playing, I've also decided that I'm experienced enough to write full opinions for each frame, but on a separate section so that the one for augments isn't far too convoluted. This list also contains other player's concept-augments that are marked with a (!) and their user names, except those I've created myself, those only have the exclamation mark. Thanks a lot to the authors for letting me implement their ideas here too, but if you happen to stumble upon this thread and would like your ideas to be added, feel free to ask, we can make this sort of a community post that way! Augments Spoiler Ash Spoiler Seeking Shuriken Spoiler Seeking Shuriken is bad, as is the rest of Ash's kit outside of Smoke Bomb. It is old, useless considering the armour strip options available at the helminth system to be AoE with more benefits, and doesn't provide with enough of a bonus to really make one consider running it when Ash elevates the strength of slash procs which already surpass enemy armour, unless you plan on going for raw damage setups. Overall, the augment tries to upgrade an ability that put simply is 10 years old and has no effective use on modern day gameplay. Unexpectedly, if you want some actual good shurikens you might as well subsume Shuriken as a whole for Aquablades and add in the augment, or just put them on Rhino which will do a better job than Ash himself. Best part is that while the augment and ability basically haven't changed since their introductions, my opinion on them has due to the simple fact that the game has evolved without them. Smoke Shadow Spoiler Smoke Shadow is only used because of the crit chance buff it was given, for it also benefits oneself. However, the main idea of the augment was to make it affect your allies, giving Ash a more team-play oriented kit, which seems to be something DE is very fond about, the co-op scene. Ironically, Smoke Screen in Railjack, when used as a "crew ability" has an insanely large radius of effect, and cloaks everyone on said one. You can even deploy it remotely wherever your allies are, which is kinda dum dum if you compare the RJ ability with the augment. Even with this, disagreement of feature the augment is, with a single range mod like Reach, you can get 21 meters of radius and cloak everyone around you with ease, which is magnificent. Fatal Teleport Spoiler While the damage output with this augment is simply bonkers, as it was the meta to speedrun the last phase of Wolf of Saturn Six back then, there is nothing that makes this augment super impressive or different from the main ability. Paired with Marked for Death from the Helminth system, you can gain a much, much better version of Ash's Bladestorm, which begs the question; Did DE make Stalker's kit be like this on purpose? I don't really think the augment should change, it's fine as is, but it's a single-target oriented ability that may not work on everything, which is a problem of the ability itself. Rising Storm Ⅰ > Relentless Storm (Name change) Spoiler Rising Storm gives combo counter per enemy hit with the ability and +10s to your combo counter, which is extremely nice, but doesn't really fit the name of the augment. I think it is rather useful but it really feels like something you'd put on as exilus rather than a part of the main build... And for that reason, I would change the name of Rising storm to Relentless Storm, and create a new augment with Rising Storm that does as following ↓↓↓ Rising Storm Ⅱ(!) Spoiler Increases damage by 15% per enemy marked for 20 seconds, refreshes with each enemy you mark, with no cap, as does Target Fixation for Zephyr. You may be thinking: "But Pablo, isn't this too OP?" To which I'll respond with a question, as do most people from my region: "Is it?" Current Bladestorm is a weak ability held back by a handful of important factors, first of those being of course your melee weapon. Despite the ability having damage on its own and not requiring of a melee equipped to be used, the scaling factor for Bladestorm relies on two sub derivate factors of melee weapons that the game doesn't tell you, one your combo multiplier, and the second finisher damage. Finisher damage you can extract from other helminth abilities with their augments, such as Silence with Savage Silence or Radial Blind with theirs. The second of those primary factors of course is LoS. Most nuke abilities nowadays either have no LoS, or those that have a LoS have an absurdly fast ttk with spectacular scaling, just look at Dante's Tragedy with his Dark verses which also fit perfectly with his Paragrims, or Kullervo. No we won't speak of Ember for now, she's weak, we'll get to that on her section. Third of course, the game itself. What do I mean by that? Unless you are playing solo, it's most likely that your teammates will kill enemies way faster on their own than you'll be able to curse them with Bladestorm and deal with them. That is factual unless you're playing with someone who is new to the game and on a low level missions with a very wide-open tileset that lets you see enemies from every side. Now, do I believe that this should be an augment for Bladestorm instead of the base functionality of it? Honestly no, but put to throw ideas out there, might as well do. Atlas Spoiler Rubble Heap Spoiler Rubble Heap is a saviour augment for Atlas that - to me - is almost mandatory for all my builds on him, as removing the cost from Landslide helps a lot with Atlas' energy problem fairly well, though I've found new ways to deal with it, in the form of smarter building, and new arcanes, which is excellent. While I think this is the best augment for him, there's a tiny addition I'd make to render it awesome, and that'd be that when over 1400 rubble, his other abilities costed half the energy, except Landslide, which would keep the current buffs. Path of Statues Spoiler Path of statues is strangely rare, leaving a path of Petrify behind you would be okay I guess, if only enemies magically felt attracted to it, which is not the case. Randomly petrifying what you're currently punching is nice and all, when it happens, but ultimately not reliable nor that helpful. So, what you do is punch a bunch of enemies in different directions, so that it leaves patches of petrification, which can work, but it is not all that reliable. Really think this augment needs a change, or boost in some form, but I can't think of something myself. Seismic Pulse(!) Spoiler Because I deeply dislike Path of Statues, I initially created this augment to replace it as part of my Atlas Rework thread. It is very simple, and since there's a trend with vortex-s or so it seem from DevStream 163, this might pair well with Atlas. Worth noting that certain CC abilities can still move petrified enemies, I'd make this be one of those. Larva can't for example, but Coil Horizon does. So basically you pull in enemies towards you with your Landslide on 200% your abilities' range. That would make it so you aren't forced to run Nautilus exclusively for this purpose although all things considered that is still a better option since it has a lot of range and you wouldn't need to slot in an augment. Tectonic Fracture + Tectonic Fracture 2.0 (!) Spoiler I had partially reworked this ability on my Atlas thread, so it might be a little confusing at first how I have changed the augment. But overall, lets be honest, Tectonic Fracture is one of those augments that is really, really bad, but also Tectonics themselves are horrible. The only good thing about Tectonics is precisely the ability to displace objectives at will, which is rather helpful! But with the augments your chances of "covering more ground" are... well, strange and non reliable. So I had reworked the augment, but to fully understand the context one needs to read the original post first. Now sadly some of the embedded images have broken thereby now I've written down the descriptions for them: Tectonic fracture would turn Bulkwrath from a defensive ability to a flak cannon claymore of sorts. You cast it in front of you, it aborbs all damage as does now, but when that invulnerability period is over, it becomes a Claymore mine. You can detonate it to deal all that stored damage, or enemies that accidentally shoot it will trigger it too, creating a concentrated area of pure pain that would deal impact punture and slash all together to the enemies in its path, equal to the stored damage. Passively it grants 50% more range to Tectonics to aid with that boom. Bulk Up (!) Spoiler Also part of my Atlas rework thread from some years ago, this augment would consume the currently stacked rubble and sum it to an armour value at the cost of sacrificing the ability to cast Tectonics, making it work similarly to Inaros' Scarab armour so that it blocks status procs too. Yes, that would mean you can twice-stack rubble to gain high levels of armour, which seems fair considering you need to spend your rubble for it, and that you gain by using the rest of your abilities. Rock 'n Roll (!) Spoiler Yes, I literally couldn't come up with a better name for this augment and I love it. Enemies struck by the rolling Bulkwrath are knocked down and have their defences reduced by 70%. Petrified Bulkwraths draw enemies alongside the way, as does Tidal Surge, and create an explosion on their point of impact. With this augment, when the rolling boulder hits a wall, it detonates inflicting not only damage equal to all its stored health in the form of slash, but also makes affected enemies more vulnerable to damage. Ore Gaze Spoiler Ore Gaze shouldn't scale off Power Strength, and instead be a flat value, and a high one since this is the most expensive loot ability in the game, even if it happens to be subsumable, and is very limited in how it can be used, therefore making the augment better is the right call. Titanic Rumbler Spoiler My opinion on Titanic Rumbler hasn't changed lately, mostly because the Rumblers themselves haven't either. Their damage is still pitiful and their survivability at the new harder content is also somewhat of a joke. Still can't understand how they haven't made it so these work like the one protecting Inaros' tomb. Titanic Rumbler, disgracefully is more of the same although I can appreciate the intention behind this augment, as having an on-demand CC with an entity that pulls a massive amount of aggro away from the player is honestly not bad, but the damage output despite being "four times higher" it's still commensurably low. A bit of a debate, if you need to put so much work towards making an ability work with an augment, is it really worth it? Rumbled Spoiler Extracted from Conclave, this augment is the worst in the entire game to an extent so severe that it's almost impossible to measure. First, it restricts your movement; you cannot roll, you cannot jump, you can't do anything, therefore making you way more vulnerable and prone to taking damage from any possible source while also making you way less lethal since you cannot easily traverse the maps. Second, it is relying on your equipped melee weapon to do damage, more specifically this time it has a focus towards slam damage, for some reason. Third, it does abhorrently low damage, we're talking 4 damage per rock throw on an enemy without armour. Fourth, it's supposed to "absorb up to 300% damage to max health" which roughly means 300% of your HP becomes Overguard when activating the augment, which can scale off strength mods almost nicely, if it wasn't for the fact that you'll get shredded to bits in a matter of seconds. You are not immune to damage while casting it, you deal over 200 times less damage with the same stat stick you'd use for Landslide*, and overall, it is terrible. This is the exact opposite of an augment. There are no builds, no reasons that can make this piece of equipment good for any purpose or build, it's a disgrace. * This is not an exaggeration by any means, Landslide can hit for millions on average, yet with the same weapon and stills at x12 combo I haven't managed to deal more than 500 damage or so with the rocks. Banshee Spoiler Sonic Fracture Spoiler Pretty much the exact same thing as Seeking Shuriken, but better, for Sonic boom is a cone of damage instead of two-three projectiles which means you can both CC & armour strip with a single cast, effective. Nothing should change about this augment, it's perfect and suits well the frame it belongs to which is a damage enhancer. Echolocation (!) Spoiler I had been thinking, the only thing Sonar lacks is a bit of utility to it, so, this augment would let you see enemy silhouettes trough walls and objects with ease, aside of showing them on your minimap. Just like Argonak's Amalgam Metal Auger. A plus, because having "Old Void Stalker in a mod" probably isn't worth a slot to many, the augments adds +50% duration to the ability, so from 30s, to 45s, which would then be affected by mods. Reverb (!) Spoiler Sonar augment: Killing an enemy by hitting the weak spot increases the duration of Sonar by 3 seconds Resonance Spoiler Resonance is my favourite augment for Banshee and it is also exceptionally good! Part of my favourite builds for her. Overall Sonar is a great ability on its own but this augments really helps it spread, though unlike other abilities that may enhance damage, Banshee's are well kept in check due to only giving weak spots, even if these can have massive multipliers. Savage Silence Spoiler Awesome augment! You can pair it with Gloom and arcane trickery, and get excellent results becoming a true banshee of the battlefield, which mind you might be extremely important due to the fact that Banshee is hyper squishy and lacks any defence mechanisms. Resonating Quake Spoiler Resonating Quake doesn't really upgrade much the base ability, which is already the worst part of Banshee. A "good augment" back then, but now it is pretty bad. Banshee could use with a couple tweaks to her 4th ability eventually, but since she a good frame, I can see that being a bottom priority on someone's list over at DE, which is totally fine. Baruuk Spoiler Elusive Retribution Spoiler Baruuk's newest augment is for his least used ability, the one we more often than not subsume off, and the one that honestly makes counter-sense with his whole kit. But, the augment, is really good as it scales off power strength, which Baruuk wants more than anything, and duration. That is where the problem begins. Elude needs over 230% range to fully cover Baruuk's surroundings, you can't achieve this unless you run full range, which makes you lose strength and thereby power for Serene Storm and Desolate Hands. On the other hand, Serene Storm is very slow and benefits from critical damage very well which makes the augment, on paper, a really good choice so that you aren't forced to run attack speed mods or Arcane Strike, as most of us ultimately do. But both range and duration are counter effective for Baruuk, making it so you're better off slotting in archon shards and arcanes to make up for the problems you may face with Serene Storm, than trying to find an effective way to make this augment work, although it applies to regular melee weapons too so one could make the point of it being nice for pure melee builds without using Serene Storm, but are you really going to skip such a powerful exalted melee to focus on a regular melee weapon? The augment by itself is splendid, but it doesn't take into account any of Baruuk's problems and ultimately becomes not that good of an option when you realise what do you have to sacrifice. You might as well subsume Elude and put Warcry if attack speed is what you need, no? Endless Lullaby Spoiler The augments has gotten buffed, but I think Lull needs some change, this be not waking up enemies the moment they take damage and severally increasing the finisher damage enemies take when affected by this, as otherwise what's the point of putting them to sleep if they'll wake up the moment my sentinel tickles them? Reactive Storm Spoiler Brutal! This augment turns Desert Wind into an incredible melee with a lot of scaling potential! I am a happy customer for this augment :) Although not that much about ragdolling enemies away from my position with each hit... Caliban Spoiler Sentient Synergy (!) Spoiler Lethal Progeny augment: Shield recharge affects allies within range with a 150% effectiveness. Passive: Reduces shield recharge delay in by 50% Pandemonium (!) Spoiler Lethal Progeny augment: Summons 5 different sentients that scale off enemy level to fight along your side until they die. -75% ability efficiency Chroma Spoiler Afterburn Spoiler It is well known that Spectral Scream is one of Chroma's worst abilities alongside his Effigy, and the augment subtracted from PvP is... disappointing. I would propose to make the augment change from "when deactivated, blah blah 100 damage capped at 500" to "Increases Spectral Scream damage by 100% for each second used, without a cap." And then launch said projectile whose damage would be equal to all the damage "fired". Meaning It stores 100% of the damage you should deal, but not the one you deal. Sounds Godzilla levels of cool to me! And for it to deal great damage, you need to accumulate a ton of time using Spectral scream, which has its own downsides. Evergreen Vexation (!) Spoiler Because 99% of Chroma’s builds focus around himself, duration and strength leaving no space for range to buff allies unless you pretend to be on their neck, I had the idea of creating an augment that would help keep Vex Armour going on the more you kill so you do not have to focus so much on duration-modding your frame. Plus 2 seconds to Vex Armour per enemy killed, percentage scales off duration mods, so building for duration is now way less required! I comprehend Vex armour can be recasted, unlike elemental Ward, so the duration is not that much of an issue if you can keep casting it, but when one runs out of energy… losing the buffs at higher levels might mean not being able to stack up again with ease. This should help the player stay focused on his gameplay in order to stay coated, plus stop going for over 250% duration on most Chroma builds I see :P Guardian Armour Spoiler Chroma's newest augment is everything I wanted to do with my Evergreen Vexation suggestion and more. Buuut it could do with a little change to make Chroma highly valuable. As it is currently, Chroma will take 50% of the damage dealt to allies to his own health, but he isn't reducing the damage allies take by a 50%, just taking 50% of the damage they are being dealt, and dealing it to himself, which sounds painful to begin with, dumb in the second place. Now yes he has a healing factor which is nice as it is porcentually based, but put to provide with more utility to a frame that still only has two good abilities, might as well. Vexing Retaliation Spoiler Vex Armour is great, and probably what makes Chroma be Chroma besides Elemental Ward. The first augment for it however, is a disaster that has remained unchanged along the years, with the status effects it provided now not being what they used at the time. Blast doesn't knock down anymore, removing the CC capability of the augment, even if it allows for accuracy reduction, but eximus abilities and most high priority targets don't have accuracy issues precisely. Don't really know what to do with this augment myself :P It is bad, and unused that's easy to discern, but what should it become in order to be a-level with the new guardian armour which has all ups and no downs? Elemental Master (!) Spoiler I think this has been requested by some already, I am not sure by who, but most surely it has. Now, a second wheel appears, this one will be inside the currently existing one available on Spectral Scream, and will allow to combine elements just like Lavos, for new and interesting Elemental Ward buffs! (Affects Spectral Scream too.) Basically you tap on Spectral Scream to rotate elements and hold on Elemental Ward to select them, and when you've created the desired element, you either hold to fire Spectral Scream, or tap to create a new elemental ward protection! Exemplification for dummies of all platforms: Tap X/1 to switch between elements > Hold square /2 to infuse element(s) > Tap Elemental Ward (square/2) to cast ability Yes you can still hold X/1 to use his first ability, if anyone does that still, so no worries, no functionality has been lost, made sure of that. Everlasting Ward Spoiler It's cool! And if combined with the above mentioned augment, it could be really nice to give allies some cool boosts, for sure a great augment but most Chroma builds are kind of selfish or solo focused. This being said by someone who plays with a Chroma user on the daily. Guided Effigy Spoiler The recent buff to this augment is a similar case to Atlas. It is a nice augment mod, but it is a bad ability, so it is not a way of redeeming it, sadly. Citrine Spoiler Prismatic Diffraction (!) Spoiler Prismatic Gem's beam now chain to the three nearest enemies of the target. (+40% Prismatic gem Range) Prismatic Radiance (!) Spoiler Prismatic Gem's beam now has an AoE of 3m on impact. (+30% Prismatic gem duration) Prismatic Reactivator (!) Spoiler Killing an enemy affected by (X) status procs while Prismatic Gem is activated refreshes its duration for (X) seconds and procs a combined status effect to nearby enemies (7 meters) Mineral Catalyser (!) Spoiler Killing an enemy affected by Crystallize on his weak spot spreads the status affecting him to all other crystallized enemies. Recrystallize Spoiler Citrine's first official augment is here and it is pretty much a must have. Recrystallize makes it so every enemy you kill on their weakspot spreads the geodes to other nearby enemies, with a refreshed duration timer, virtually providing with infinite ability duration on Crystallize so long as you keep killing, which is superb as this ability grants critical chance to weapons that usually do not have it. Pair that with a status-enhancing kit as is Citrine's, and you can make a lot of low crit chance weapons hit for a higher amount of damage than usual. Dagath Spoiler Dagath has no augments so far nor do I have an idea for one yet, so she simply sits comfortably here for now. Dante Spoiler I don't think Dante will get augments on the foreseeable future due to his absurdly strong kit that makes other frames a joke. Ember Spoiler Fireball Frenzy Spoiler It's kinda useless when you take into account that Gauss' Thermal transfer can be put onto any other frame and the fact that the elements combine onto your weapon's making your build messed up. Ought this type of augment work like Lavos' new Valence Formation, then it'd be a totally different story. Immolated Radiance Spoiler Nothing like granting damage reduction to your buddies, this augment is simple and nice, but takes a spot on your build! Luckily, Ember doesn't require as precise modding as other frames do due to her fairly dim-lighted ability kit outside of her 2 & 3, so you have more freedom to play around with mods. Healing Flame Spoiler It simply works, but it's not really that good for the simply fact that as Ember, you don't want to be hit on your health ever, even while having a 90% damage reduction ability on your side. Focusing on shields though, turns you into a pretty much non-bothered tank even while under heavy fire. Purifying Flames Spoiler I wish it applied to oneself too, and it were better... Combining Immolated Radiance and Purifying Flames, Ember becomes a "nice" support frame, not that many use her like this (not that many use Ember come to think of it) but if more slots for augments were available, as recommended above, perhaps it'd become a nice build to try out. Stills, now that Overguard is a thing, old augments such as these have been casted into irrelevancy, for what point is there in using Ember over something like Dante who not only scales way better, but also provides the team with much better benefits? By herself, no augments that is, Ember is but a candle in a dark room with a lack of purpose but to shine for nothing. Exothermic Spoiler Exothermic is nice and is not at the same time. Just like Oberon's Reckoning requires you to kill enemies for them to drop health orbs, Exothermic requires you to kill enemies to drop energy orbs, but they gotta die from the ability itself, or the fire procs of this one, just to have a 15% chance to generate a 25 energy orb. Now if only I could have a source that makes it so every enemy I kill has a x% chance to drop me something that could replenish my energy, as is for example a Sentinel while providing many other benefits... oh wait, true I can. Rising Hell (!) Spoiler Inferno augment: Fire rings created by Inferno continuously apply heat procs for their whole duration and gain +100% damage for each time they hit an enemy. Inferno is far too weak in its current state, lets not lie to ourselves, this should make it somewhat better, it's basically Lavos' Vial Rush but gains damage over time and doesn't have a pitiful unscalable range. Pyrofield (!) Spoiler Hold to throw a barrage of fireballs at the ground to create an area of fire that slows enemies down and significantly reduces their accuracy. Cast a charged fireball at 90% immolation to refresh its duration and double its size. Equinox Spoiler Duality Spoiler Duality is nice and not at the same time. Conjuring your other half to deal with enemies with increased damage is nice and all, but that's just another "turret". Were this to cast abilities as does an spectre, maybe the augment would be much more interesting, but sadly that's not the case. With the changes done to spectres long ago because of Wukong, Duality did get nerfed in some way, and it's not like many used Equinox already, let alone with the augment. Long story short, it's almost the same but running out of ammo on a temporal summon isn't peculiarly nice. Calm & Frenzy Spoiler Great, but some newer augments for other frames make me wonder, why couldn't this work like those? By that I'm of course referring to Citrine's Recrystallize. Calm & Frenzy will spread the effect to nearby enemies for the remainder of the duration of Rest & Rage, but Recrystallize starts a whole new timer just for the newly affected enemies, which is massive as duration becomes not a concern. Stills, Rage works against the nature of this augment. By making enemies faster, a modifier I never understood why is part of a "debuff" ability, these can get away from each other, making it so the spread from Calm & Frenzy, isn't usable. Also they're bound to kill you faster and be less likely to be hit. Although it is fitting for the abilities' and augments names, it is simply counter-productive to make the enemies faster only on a specific area you've targeted, for that, a Speed Nova is already much better. This is the father of beam weapons split mechanic, and it helps a lot Equinox by allowing a single cast to turn into multiple with one button push, or press. (Which one is the correct way to say it?) Wish it worked subsequently too, as does Recrystallize, you know, kill an enemy who has been affected by that effect and keep going forever… Sonar does with the augment, why cannot Calm & Frenzy do too? Works better on high-density missions, but at the same time, in the case of Rage, it makes the mission more difficult by increasing the speed of enemies, and lethality. On one hand, the augment is neat, but on the other, the own ability works a bit against itself. Interesting how the augment is a polar opposite of the ability, just like Equinox is as a whole. Almost seems made und purpose! Peaceful Provocation Spoiler Half great, half not. While the slowdown the augment provides is much welcome and incredibly useful, - like Gloom before Gloom existed but without some of the advantages, such as the energy cap, most importantly - needing to take damage to HEALTH for it to work at full effect I've always found weird, given Equinox is a squishy frame. The added 15% power strength is a reasonable "extra", although Equinox cannot compete with Nidus in that sense. In general, it is a nice augment, and alongside Calm & Frenzy, the one I run on my support Equinox, as I am not that fond on using her as a nuke, since to get the best out of her nuking capabilities I require an armour strip ability, and having to use the helminth for Equinox is such a bummer when she's meant to be a frame you switch between forms, despite mostly no one doing that. Meld (!) Spoiler While playing the Circuit, there was one Decree that called my attention more than others. No, it was not the one that makes you spread statuses all over the place. No it's not any of the ones that makes it so you have infinite energy. It is one of the melee augments. The one that gives the player overguard on melee kill. And so I thought, there's a good amount of Warframes that give you shield on kill, or passively now - Protea, Styanax, Trinity, Mag, Hildryn... - but all of them do it better than Equinox. Protea gives instantly overshields to pretty much all frames, Styanax also gives energy and doesn't need to be a direct kill but an assist, Trinity is Trinity and with an augment she makes excess energy also become shields, Mag just the same, and Hildryn well, she gives super fast shield regen and extra shields, plus can cleanse status effects, but Equinox just does what Styanax does, with nothing more to it. Health on ability decast doesn't really matter because the amount of health is simply excessive and will top off everyone after killing a single enemy on higher levels, which is wasting a lot of stacked power. The thing is, with passive shield regen on kill, your health will (normally) remain intact, and you won't have a reason to deactivate this ability ever while in Night form. So I thought, what if I gave it a reason to do so? ____________________ Introducing, Meld. Meld is an augment I made for Mend & Maim that makes it so in Night form the excess stored health becomes overguard for you and your allies, while in night form it depletes defences equal to the accumulated charge. This would apply before Maim's "slash" proc, therefore finally making it so Equinox doesn't require of an armour strip ability subsumed onto her to have infinite scaling. Although my main focus was on the defensive aspect, I think I've brought a different an interesting form of defence-strip to the table that the game doesn't yet have, as it's numerical instead of percentage based. Technically it'd work, as accumulating millions of damage on Maim is easy, and I don't think that many enemies might have 5 millions of armour at, moderately high levels we play as could be Deep Archimedeas. As for the Overguard cap on Mend, I though having none to be justifiable. Why do I believe this to be balanced? Well, Equinox requires of quite a lot compared to most frames that provide overguard. It's not as simple as to press one button and go on with your day, no, you have to activate your ability, which will keep your shields up (hopefully), accumulate a lot of kills, and then deactivate your ability and therefor stopping your income of shields which is vital to stay alive. And she's a support frame what the hell, when was the last time we saw an old support frame being relevant in modern day era when the new gen ones are so op? Energy Transfer Spoiler This augment is bad, but not exactly because of what it does. The thing with Equinox is that "changing between forms", is part of her intended gameplay, however, loosing her charges by switching forms forces the player to stay playing one, or another, and not switch between forms ever. Requiring of an augment to make her kit usable is terrible design, and this should have been changed a long time ago, but it hasn't. The augment itself does something good, but requiring it to play Equinox as DE intended, is not. Excalibur Spoiler Purging Slash Spoiler Because in concept Excalibur is a master of the Sword, this augment would be one of the best survivability enhancements in the entire game if it applied to oneself too, instead of just “allies within the path of Slash dash”. Needless to say what would I change on this mediocre augment, I’ve just done. The thing is, Slash Dash, redirects itself towards enemies, so the chances of hitting an ally while performing this ability are pretty much 0. If done intentionally, why? your allies will be moving 95% of the time and probably not be even at ground level, so how many times are you going to use this augment effectively? The answer is, pretty much never. As a "selfish" build, if it affected yourself, sure, it wouldn't be bad, but maybe we can make it better by copying what another bad augment does. Path of Statues leaves a path of petrify, right? Purging Slash could leave a "purifying" trail as well, that is highly visible. This way, if you miss the initial slash (you will), allies and yourself, can still benefit from its effects. Surging Dash Spoiler Surging Dash got buffed exactly the way I wanted, so it is a really considerable mod to build up combo for Exalted Sword or your own melee now. Now, the augment on paper is really simple, but the implications are outstanding. Allowing you to build up combo by throwing yourself at group of enemies without having to even hit them in the first place is helpful when you do not run all the much combo duration and need to quickly regain it. This in exchange allows you to build up for heavy attacks quite easily to deal devastating blows at command, in case your allies haven't mowed down everything you were about to hit first, which sadly happens a lot when playing Excal. Radiant Finish Spoiler Super simple, it works, not much to say about it. It's the same as Savage Silence, but aboslutely reliable since it lasts for as long as the ability does. When it comes to performing finishers without being so much in a hurry, yes, Radiant finish is the best option. Being also Excal's subsume ability, putting this on other frames with exalted melees or weapons that benefit from finishers, such as Ash, is extremely good. Furious Javelin Spoiler Furious Javelin got buffed recently but my same view on it remains. Really useful on Steel Path thanks to the relentless and large enemy’s spawn! Though I do not comprehend why does it specify “Excalibur’s melee damage” instead of, melee damage in general. Chromatic Blade Spoiler I remember when this augment came out! Although, due to the modding limitations of Exalted Sword, even though the augment makes it better than the default, the ability remains weak compared to a normal melee you may carry to your everyday mission, which is a shame. 300% status chance would perhaps be notable has this been a flat additive value instead of just 300% of the base status chance, but sadly this is not the case, and probably out of fear, DE won't make it this way, won't it be "too op" to let Excal's ulti, do actual damage instead of being lacklustre on high levels against anything but Grineer or Infested. Frost Spoiler Biting Frost Spoiler Featured as part of the new augments for the Feb 9th update, Biting Frost is a really "cool" augment, works only on totally frozen enemies, and only his 1st, with a couple casts, his 3rd upon initial cast + augment, or his 4th, can freeze enemies in place for some seconds. Building for Avalanche full armor strip + explosive or AoE weapons* seems the best option here, moreover now with the changes to armour strip. *Since you know, unless you've grouped them before casting Avalanche it can take a few seconds before you finish them all off Freezing Force Spoiler Just like Fireball Frenzy, an augment that provides %status damage to your weapons is always useful, but cold is not the best status type, so it’s nooot that good IMO, but still useful for cold is a great status to proc on itself. Just not worth an augment, could really have been Frost's passive to be honest. Ice Wave Impedance Spoiler Ah, my favourite Frost augment, nothing like creating a slowdown path in front of you :) Problem is, like I’ve commented on other posts, that due to how you gotta build Frost, it is complicated to get a good build for everything at the same time, moreover if you need to sacrifice two mod slots for the augments because Frost doesn’t have the best stats precisely :P Brittling Ice Wave (!) Spoiler The problem with Ice wave as an ability, is that it has 0-to no use on missions. Yes, conceptually it's a good way to lock down a corridor of enemies by making them slower - only when you hit them and nevermore - but that's about it. So I made this augment: __________________ Brittiling Ice Wave: Enemies affected by Ice Wave take +60% damage (like a bane mod) || would take into consideration those enemies affected by Ice wave Impedance too. Chilling Globe Spoiler It’s chilly, it’s cold, and it can freeze the baddies, but, it could change for the better, if we first change cold procs. Ideally, I’d make Chilling globe forcefully proc cold procs on foes within its area, and when they reach 10, freeze completely. Just like Glaxion on kill, or Avalanche for on a static area. Snowstorm (!) Spoiler People has requested Snow Globe to follow Frost for a very long time, so we could create this augment to allow Snow Globes to do so, at the cost of a certain speed reduction, a bit like Nyx's Assimilate, with maybe a few other changes like less base range but considerably better EHP for the Globe. Icy Avalanche Spoiler Well, this one isn’t cool, quite ad litteram. If only enemies in Warframe didn’t do more than enough damage to take your stacked damage protection layer in a single hit, it would be fine. Not that I'd change the augment, but, eh. Could be better. Author's notes on Frost: Frost is a pretty old Frame, the first prime as a matter of fact, and over time he's been known for being a good defence frame, but Warframe is more than just defences now. Just like Ember, his first ability is, not that good on its own, but can get some use with an augment. Freezing Force makes it so paired with Avalanche you can have a great damage output towards all factions equally. Shields take more damage from cold, and armour-less enemies, well, they die easily. Now, you'd think this augment is good, because there's also Archon Flow, which says that on ability kill that deals cold damage, you can generate an energy Orb, which is really important for Frost as he has a small energy pool and his abilities are meant to be casted rather often, but it is the ability which needs to kill, and Frost's abilities, outside of a really gimmicky and specific Snow Globe build, can't kill on their own, so you can't really use Archon Flow on Frost, despite him being meant to use this mod! That leads us to Ice Wave, which in theory, is nice, but without augments it's far too bland of an ability, as only the enemies affected by the cast will be, well, affected. You also need some range to get good use of this ability, and given Frost's nature, you have two options; Augur Reach, or Overextended. If you choose A.Reach, things are mostly fine, as your Snow Globe will have a neat size, but not excessive. You'll also have good enough range for Avalanche, and full strip with a single cast if you've also equipped all three Umbral mods, as you'll have 177% strength and all you need is 168%. You can now slot two augments too, but here's the problem, polarity issues. Frost comes by default with two Vazarin polarities, which make it so Adaptation and Overextended fit nicely alongside Flow. With all three Umbral mods, you get really good usable stats for your Snowglobe, paired with Chilling globe, you generate a large area of not only protection, but also capable of freezing enemies. Biting Frost is, of course recommended as the second mod to slot. Now the whole grid is filled with mods, we have only 117% power Strength, but here's the trick, Corrosive Projection should be your aura if you plan on running this configuration, as reducing armour by 18% makes it so you only need 138% strength to fully strip. Adding Power Drift would set you at 132%, but would make it so you need three umbra formas instead of two, and that can lead to making different builds less doable. So, you have a few options. First one, have two normal crimson shards. Yes, you will have 99'4% armour strip. Likewise, using Zenurik is also a good option, as the reinforced well will grant you 20% ability strength. Subsuming Nourish for Ice Wave would allow you to make an even better use of Zenurik and help Frost's energy economy. This is what I'd recommend, as 0.6% shouldn't be a problem, after all, this way you can make your corrosive weapon deal maximum damage to targets, since they'll still have armour. Alternatively, adding Molt Augmented can make it so you can skip archon shards or using Focus schools, but I'd still pair Zenurik + Nourish + Molt Augment under the same build to get the best energy economy and damage output. All while having outstanding armour removal range, and absolute CC. Augments are totally optional, but Biting Frost and Freeze Force combined with Nourish, all umbral mods, Adaptation and Overextended plus Prime Flow, should bring really good results to any battle. So comes the question, there's plentiful of frames that do something the Frost does better, so should you invest this much on him? To me, the answer is yes, as even if Frost is not the best at any of those tasks, he is very good at all of them. It will require a lot of resources to be poured onto him, but he is in an extremely solid position as a frame, and doesn't need any rework of sorts, just perhaps a bit more energy max by default, and infusing some of his augments to his 2nd ability + remaking his passive. Frost has a hard time sustaining himself when it comes to energy, so a Zenurik user is highly advised if going alone, or even as a team as Zenurik + Nourish is an excellent team-wide combo. Now, after some more time, it has finally hit me what Frost's reworked passive could be; cold retaliation like Nourish's viral one, with a chance of freezing! Or, if that seems too much, just make him leak cold so he slows down nearby enemies. Come on, he even has the exhausts on his shoulders! Gara Spoiler Shattering Storm Spoiler Gara's new augment is good... but is it worth the slot? With the recent changes to Mass Vitrify's detonation from the inside-out, it's now much confier to play Gara. This augment makes it so all enemies who survive the initial detonation get a 35% damage debuff from any source, so in a way you can get a constant damage ramp up for those who remain alive. The thing is Gara does so much damage already that it's debatable whether you should bring an augment that makes her do even more damage, or use something else instead. I know I'd use something else, but the augment is good. Mending Splinters Spoiler Welp, Mending Splinters got a massive buff which is amazing, now I would consider running it instead of another mod, though I'd still prefer having an augment slot to put it on. Or, you know, I could use the Rejuvenation Aura mod... Spectrosiphon Spoiler Simply one of the best augments in the game. Converts a CC luring ability into a limitless energy fountain with extremely high drop chance for energy orbs. Absorbing Vitrification (!) Spoiler Augment I have created for Mass Vitrify as I find it awesome but a bit weak right now in terms of damage it can resist... Vitrified targets receive a 50% [At rank 3, that is] of all incoming damage to Mass Vitrify. 100% remaining health of the affected also becomes damage for Splinter Storm upon detonation. This would considerably enhance the resistance of Mass Vitrify, also I think it would be fair to make it be tied to power strength so 100%=100%, that way people doesn't just build for range + duration to get a basically unkillable wall of glass, which in spite of being the idea, it is still glass. Author's notes on Gara: Gara is... not really the type of frame I'd pick if given the choice. Her ability kit is simple and straightforward with simple interactions between abilities, which aren't amusing. Her prime sports a gorgeous design but that alone is not enough to make her interesting. While yes she does provide CC, defence and technically infinite scaling damage, plus energy for the team and herself with an augment, she's not an energy hoarder herself, as her abilities are either duration based, or a tap & done type of thing, and the infinite scaling damage is gimmicky at best. She's not a bad frame by any means, but to me she's highly uninteresting, and I'd say boring even, but serves well for what she's meant to. Garuda Spoiler Dread Ward Spoiler The buff to the augment has been really small, and while the idea behind it is good, having to pay attention to which enemy is ~40% health is pretty annoying. If only Parazon stab threshold was taken into consideration for this, I am sure the augment would be amazing even at higher levels, thing which it isn't right now. We don't pay that much attention to enemy's health, we just want them dead, just saying. Blood Forge Spoiler Although I personally do not use Blood Forge for I consider the reload times in this game to be fairly fast as to need instant-reload, I know quite some people uses it, so it is a fine augment I guess. Transfusion (!) Spoiler I love team support, so I made this augment. Bloodletting Augment: 50% of energy from Bloodletting is shared to allies within 25m. Blending Talons Spoiler Giving more combo counter to her talons is always nice, and this is actually a really nice augment for it removes the need of holding the ability button to get the best out of Seeking Talons. Needless to say, this is a great one that should not change. Author's notes on Garuda: Sort of a blood mage being her theme, Garuda sports big... reasons to be one of my favourite female frames, mostly attributed to her designs - with the exception of Hinsa deluxe - and overall very active & fun gameplay. She's pretty peculiar at what she's meant to for that matter, since her "team" ability, Blood Altar, is rather problematic for it forces you to stay in one place, and outside of a few mission types, you aren't going to stay in one place for too long, plus as Garuda you don't really want to take damage to your health if it's not from Bloodletting. Hence why I made that augment concept for her to lean a bit more towards team support, which somehow I feel fits her, even if she's not right now. Definitively a very interesting frame that anyone interested on a highly active gameplay should try out, nothing beat the feeling of launching a bazillion damage blood orb that nukes everything, though this one doesn't seem to synergize with her sometimes? Maybe a bug, maybe I haven't paid enough attention , hmmm... Gauss Spoiler Mach Crash Spoiler Hitting walls makes vacuums, and though my preferred Gauss loadout is range-less, it can be nice dropping a bit of duration in exchange for range for this one augment! Elemental Ricochet (!) Spoiler Standing on a Thermal Sunder with Kinetic Plating active and battery over 80% charge redirects incoming hits at 70% damage with the element of the Sunder. Thermal Outburst (!) Spoiler Casting twice the same element before using a different one provokes an expanding ring of the initial element inflicting 10 stacks of it (8 for cold, but well). Thermal Transfer Spoiler A pretty strong team and self damage buff to be fair, this augment is really nice! Supercharger (!) Spoiler Redline augment: While Redline is at 100%; ability duration is paused and abilities are 50% more effective (x1.5 to all their stats) -40% ability efficiency for Redline. Relentless Redline (!) Spoiler Just like the augment I designed for Vex Armour on Chroma, killing enemies while Redline is active will give you some very welcome extra seconds to it, but with the addition of pushing the battery from 100% to 200% for even crazier results! Author's notes on Gauss: It's a bit silly to say, but what sold Gauss to me instantly when he was first showcased alongside Railjack's introduction, was the fact that he could run on water. Yep, such a dumb little thing which doesn't get to be used almost ever, made me want to obtain that frame instantly, and what do you know, I got all his parts from a single run with a friend on the first try. I miss you Icarus. Now, Gauss is one of those frames who has a perfectly balanced ability kit by default, which allows for very flexible modding, and slotting augments to your preference. Converting Mach Rush to a grouping tool pairs really well with the armour strip of Thermal Sunder and its absurd DPS & CC properties, although disgracefully this is one of those abilities that is widely used on other frames, and makes Gauss most known for it, just like Gloom does for Sevagoth. That doesn't mean he doesn't get value from it, as it highly contributes to his battery, and armour stripping capability, plus survivability, which is greatly enhanced thanks to his Kinetic Plating. Being super-offensive makes him a good frame for killing, and defending simultaneously, thanks to area control with Thermal Sunder, quick repositioning with Mach Rush, and damage mitigation, and outright immunity to some types of it with Kinetic Plating. Redline also has its perks like increased casting speed and unlocking the full potential of both Thermal Sunder and Kinetic plating, which simply put, makes Gauss a 10/10 frame. Yes, it also enhances a bit Mach Rush, but it really isn't as noticeable on this one. Looks good, plays good, and is good, Gauss is a frame that pushes all the right buttons for a player who is no sitting duck or needs a good adrenaline-injected gameplay, and I absolutely love him for that. Plus he's got a superb design soon, which casually sports my favourite colours by default! Purely coincidence, but love it. Grendel Spoiler Anabolic Nourishment (!) Spoiler With Eximus unit in gut: can use their abilities at 50% their overall effectiveness. +30% ability range too. Gourmand Spoiler With changes done by Grendel's rework, my opinion on the augment remains the same, it is good, but doesn't do anything exceptional, although that extra armour it gives can be really noticeable, moreover now that Grendel is an absolute unit of a frame. Hearty Nourishment Spoiler Excellent to keep you safe from getting wasted, this is one of those augments I feel like are really useful for the frame they belong. Same case as Gourmand, the smaller changes from the rework have only made it better! Pablo may have been right when he said that he "may" have made Grendel too much of a tank... Acid reflux (!) Spoiler Regurgitate now leaves a acid puddle of corrosive acid for 12 seconds, dealing 3000 damage per second. Also slows down enemies. (For the same amount as Regurgitate slows by default, which is 80%) The idea here is not to provide more damage, Grendel now has, insanely high damage, so a bit of extra utility seems fair c: Catapult Spoiler A few have already asked Catapult to be part of Pulverize by default, and I couldn't agree more. Why do I need to waste a mod slot for this thing if the ulti is not even that good? Even with the lesser energy cost, I still think Catapult could easily be part of Pulverize by default. It is a dumb fun ability, moreover now that Pulverize is better (although not a great ability still) Author's notes on Grendel: I AM A MEATBALL! Unlike Gauss, Grendel was not a frame that called my attention but as much. While both feature unique designs and a lore that unites them, the abilities of Grendel were never that interesting or good to begin with, with the exclusion of eating the entire map. After his rework, it has been the opposite, Grendel is now a fantastic frame which brings everything the team needs to the table - not to cook it though. Damage, energy, CC, survivability, health regen, and armour stripping in two forms, there isn't anything Grendel can't do, except defend objectives, but that's not his role. Stills, it feels redundant that he features two abilities with armour strip capabilities, but in a way this is good because it allows for build variety... with helminth. Sickening Pulse for example pairs well with Regurgitate to double the effectiveness of the projectiles, which means you're effectively getting a 100% final damage multiplier on an infinitely scaling damage source, pretty neat, but that requires to play a bit differently from what you'd expect by spitting enemies as soon as you can. On the other hand, Pulverize also works as an armour strip, but a more mobile one and that is an absolute nuisance for enemies, as you knock them down, and make yourself hard to target, the AI doesn't normally understand why do they have to shoot a rolling meatball, and I can't blame them for that. Right now, Grendel is an outstanding and perfect frame, just like Gauss, and everyone should try him, although he's a bit tough to get, and disgracefully also suffers from the "Helminth top menu choices" syndrome, just like Gauss and others. Because of that, he is still not but as good as a team frame, as any other warframe can slot in Nourish, and right now, DPS frame can just slap on all the good helminth abilities to not only be even better on their own but in general, which is disgraceful sight to behold. Can't say that I don't use Nourish myself as it massively helps with some Warframe's energy economy issues, but it is what it is. Gyre Spoiler Cathode Current Spoiler I can't shake the feeling that this augment was done based on Gyre's decaying popularity after the initial "adjustments" she received. Not that she was all that popular to begin with, but those changes severally affected her potential. Now Cathode Current is here to band-aid this, while also granting an excellent buff that is extra duration on kill for Rotorswell. So, infinite energy, ever scaling damage, and endless durability? Sounds about amazing to me. Now pair this with Mofumofu_Wofie's Gyre Deluxe skin concept and I'll be using Gyre like no tomorrow. It's kind of mandatory to run this augment honestly, but... really upsets me DE has resourced to do this. Author's notes on Gyre: Gyre is a pretty strong frame to be honest, but simultaneously terrible. From both a design in visuals and kit perspective, she bears a lot of offensive potential, with 0 to no survivability or anything else. Energy regen, yes, for herself, and with a cooldown, which for a frame that forcefully relies on ability spamming to stay alive might not be that good of a design. What's more, in order to get the best out of her you're totally forced to use Cathode Current, and be extremely greedy because of that. If you don't kill with your abilities, you won't get more time for your timers, and therefore enter a cooldown that will be less CC and higher chances to die. As a team frame, Gyre would be excellent when paired with support / defence frames, such as Frost, to be the DPS role, but when it comes to competing against other DPS frames with similar AoE applications, like Ember for example, or Equinox, or Saryn, unless you put an armour strip ability and something else to survive, you won't be doing so hot when it comes to playing with others at higher levels. It's either you killing all of the time, or them. In solo, she's very practical and deals massive damage, but when armour comes into play, you get Gyre'd. Despite these flaws, which were worsened by the initial nerf she received due to "too much lightning", I still find her super fun and a nice frame to play whenever the opportunity is presented, but of course, I had to put Pillage on her, as it was the right option to get shields, defence strip, and since you just want strength and range, no duration or efficiency thanks to her 3 & 4. Harrow Spoiler Sentenced (!) Spoiler Condemn augment: Holding Condemn liberates chained enemies, knocking them down and making them more susceptible to status effects for 6 seconds. Useful to restore shields again! Tribunal Spoiler Now it grants 100% of the ability's effects, amazing! One of the best team-support augments imo :^) Warding Thurible Spoiler Even with the recent upgrade to this mod, while on paper the augments is excellent, giving a damage reduction only while casting seems... short. If so I would change this one to function as long as Thurible lasts, moreover considering how squishy Harrow is, even though yes, I know he does have a really good CC ability which also restores shields and can therefore grant shieldgating blah blah blah. Lasting Covenant Spoiler Source of inspiration for Relentless Redline and Evergreen Vexation, perfect, simply perfect. Author's notes on Harrow: Not my cup of tea. I've definitively tried making Harrow work, but he's just not the type of frame I enjoy playing as a support. While his looks and theme are pretty wicked and I like that a lot, all the ecclesial self-flailing and dps boosts aren't exactly sticking with me for some reason. The rate of fire is good, if you don't go uber crazy with power strength, but likewise you also want to slot in as much power strength as possible precisely to get the best out of his buffs, which is a bit contradictory for this purpose. Then there's also the lifesteal, which okay, it is great, but if they're harming your health as Harrow, you're most certainly dead before you can even regen it by shooting enemies, and of course the energy on kill, dual on headshots, which is fantastic. So, as a support frame, Harrow is amazing, but I don't quite enjoy his playstyle of taking care of timers and casting Penance to just not die on higher level missions, which, doesn't always work well depending of terrain, and enemies having overguard and all that stuff. A great frame with a very 40K design, but just like 40k, not specially my usual snack. Hildryn Spoiler Balefire Surge Spoiler Works just right! Though Balefire could do better on its own, needs some stat boost imo, but the augment is really helpful, considering you already spend shields to shoot. Guess we'll wait for Hyldrin Prime. Blazing Pillage Spoiler One of the most incredible augments in the game, this thing turns Hyldrin into top #1 support -and quite CC- mama for endurance runs, and also helps against infestation, as otherwise Pillage won't do crap to them. Perfect augments DO exist and Blazing Pillage is one of them. Can't help but to use it on all my Hyldrin builds to be honest. Redistributive Pillaging (!) Spoiler Ahoy Spunch Bop, I've pillaged thy shields for ye and thy crew, akakakakak. Basically, one thing I always wanted for Pillage was to share part of the shields you gained, just like I wanted Bloodletting to share part of the energy obtained, but having that alone was a bit too bland, so I made that each ally affected by Haven granted you +25% ability strength on Pillage to make it so you don't need to build for as much strength to full-strip, which would also double-dip with strength mods making it so you need even less strength and can perhaps focus on something else instead. Author's notes on Hildryn: My biggest issue with Hyldrin is writing her name correctly without looking it up. The amount of times I've wrote Hyldrin instead of Hildryn is just insane. Other than that, well, she's a pretty neat frame, provides more shields, was the precursor of shield gating, has a good weapon that can deal massive damage, moreover paired with her 3, and her 4 ability is clunky, sucks, but has a good use at the same time. Her kit in terms of abilities is simply great, but her 4 needs some changes to be smoother to use, as right now it's very slow for Warframe. On a slower game, sure there'd be no problem, but given the circumstances, having a landing animation like that does no good, aside from superhero landing effects, which honestly, thumbsup for it, but again, Aegis Storm needs a couple changes. Stills, it'll be absolutely subsumed by everyone unless the ability allows to use her other 3 abilities instead of just 1. Hydroid Spoiler Corroding Barrage Spoiler Creating an AoE corrosive field is simply useful, against any faction! It helps you focus on other elements for your weapons in order to squeeze the best results with ease, and that is why I think this augment is cool! The recent buff to give it 100% more power Strength is okay I guess, the ability kit is still the problem rather than the augments to be fair. When will Hydroid get a rework I wonder? Tidal Impunity Spoiler One of the best support-focused augments in the entire game for a frame that is NOT designed to act as such. Granting status effect immunity and clearing statuses from allies is one of the most appreciated things by anyone who is using a squishy frame and touches toxin clouds, or gets poisoned. Now it consumes less energy so it is even better. I really do not comprehend why Hydroid's augments are so good yet he is so bad. Curative Undertow Spoiler Just like Tidal impunity, combining both augments turns Hydroid into a mobile medikit for his allies, as he can use Tidal Surge even while on Undertow, how cool is that? Now with the buff to make it consume no energy when healing allies, it is even better :^) Pilfering Swarm Spoiler An augment in order for a pirate, finally! Pilfering Swarm has been one of the most popular looting sources since it was introduced! Author's notes on Hydroid: AHOY SPUNCH BOP I- wait, no, back to normal sorry. So, Hydroid, pretty complicated of a frame if you ask me, has two abilities with charge rates for no reason as you always want to fully charge them and there's no point on half-baking them, and two abilities that one; allows for quite infinite scaling damage and being untouchable and two, annoying any enemy you come in contact with. In concept, his kit is just good, but good for old Warframe, 2013-2016 Warframe to be precise, by having both corrosive and magnetic on his kit, but again, this was better back when corrosive took all armour off enemies, and not like now that it only takes a 70% of it. In current times, Hydroid serves close to no purpose, as his damaging abilities don't deal enough damage to be lethal - outside of very gimmicky tentacle swarm applications - , and his "displacement" ability is... unnecessary as a whole? It could have been a custom rolling animation, and built in for Undertow as well - no well puns intended here - so maybe a coming rework for Hydroid could take out Tidal surge and change it for another ability. Generally speaking, his kit is good, but needs better scaling by having either way higher base damage, or some better synergies / % damaging capabilities. A very peculiar frame Hydroid is, as a pirate, is really off, even with as many differently themed frames as we have. Inaros Spoiler Dissecation Curse Spoiler This should be part of the ability by default :| The buff to it isn't good, nor is the ability itself. If you want, check my Inaros Rework thread, made with the help of Steel_Rook (An Inaros main) and 45neo. I made notes about the augments there. Elemental Sandstorm Spoiler Even with the recent upgrade to the augment, and the changes to Sandstorm, it remains a crappy ability and a crappy mod. For more info on how I'd remake this mod and Inaros himself, visit the thread I made on him. Negation Swarm Spoiler Basically you become immortal, great. That is all a pharaoh has ever needed from an augment. Author's notes on Inaros: Despite being very fond on Egyptian mythos, Inaros is a frame that poorly reflects it, making barely justice to his "inspiration". He fits more being a sand-themed frame, than a god-kind emperor, as even if some minor parts of his visual design do reflect this, he overall doesn't. His biggest selling point; a large health bar, as none of his abilities do anything really special or noticeable for him or the team, and his passive makes it so you die a slow and painful death instead of being able to come back to life with ease, as one would want to. His first, a conic Radial Blind that gains a bit of uniqueness only when an augment is involved. It's cheap, it grants you health, and that's about it, simply, not interesting or brings nothing amazing to the gameplay. Then you have, another way of restoring health, but this one locks you in place, and deals laughable damage, but without opening an enemy up to a finisher like the first, so it's a worse, more targeted version of his 1? Then you have a spin to win ability, doing acceptable damage, which can be boosted to be quite effective, even on high levels, for what I've seen, but with a very aggressive cost for a frame that has very little energy. It makes you slower, has a not-so-good range, and also makes you take half the damage you would otherwise. Sandstorm is honestly not that bad of an ability compared to Disseccation and Devour, but similar to Aegis Storm from Hyldrin, it is clunky, and just like Effigy, has a very aggressive energy drain, which makes it unsustainable unless you're using Rage. Finally, Scarab Swarm is just used for the augment to negate status effects and further reinforce the tanking capabilities of Inaros, and that's the problem here. He's simply, extremely dull. No active gameplay, abilities with barely noticeable effects on practice, and also, pretty meh skins outside of his deluxe. He is like eating sand, the Sand of Inaros. Ivara Spoiler Empowered Quiver Spoiler Crit chance? CRIT CHANCE WOOHOOOO, oh also acts as a good way to stay hidden with little to no chance of dying because some stinky Knox is walking near you >:P (Basically this augment is amazing.) Power of Three Spoiler I find it unuseful and unneeded. Pulled from Conclave, but for what purpose? Had in granted some extra range or duration as well, it could be considered to run, but otherwise this is an augment I can picture having a 0% usage rate. And I mean absolute 0, not the typical "0'001%" player that might be out there keeping the line. Piercing Navigator Spoiler Have you ever heard about the Crit Chance Church? Ivara is the nun of it. Infiltrate Spoiler Become the best spy in the game with this nice improvement to Prowl :) Hunt (!) Spoiler Prowl augment: Killing an enemy while on Prowl infuses confusion and fear on nearby enemies, reducing their defences by 40% and makes them 20% slower, doesn't stack multiple times, but scales with power Strength mods. You kill an enemy; from the point where it dies, a single-time "pulse" affects all enemies within its range, reducing their defences, and slowing them. Killing another enemy would retrigger said pulse, but, this wouldn't further slow down enemies, or reduce more of their defences, only affect a new area of them. Of course, this was done so that an augment like Concentrated Arrow didn't mean 100% defence and slowdown on all enemies within a massive area that would trigger a chain reaction, which it still can (trigger a chain reaction from killing multiple enemies in one shot), but just with the mentioned numbers. Concentrated Arrow Spoiler Kuva Bramma is good, but runs out of ammo, has damage fall-off, and can stagger you in various annoying ways that might ultimately lead to your demise, plus it has been nerfed a couple too many times, unless you use plenty of ammo sources, then no problem, it's just good ol' Bramma. Artemis Bow with Concentrated Arrow does what Bramma does without any of the inconveniences... or almost, as it needs a lot more strength to do good base damage and get started, plus requires you to hit headshots. Talk about a friend for Galvanized Scope... if it worked on it. Indeed, casually Galvanized Scope and Argon Scope are not equippable on the Artemis bow, which is extremely odd. Seems almost made intentional, and it honestly cuts Ivara's damage by quite a lot. Author's notes on Ivara: I'm not fond on the "hunter" theme, not too much at least, but Ivara is a frame that is simply hard not to like. Great design, outstanding kit, and overall good amount of applications for plentiful of content that the game has to offer, besides an interesting farm that many are not willing to take because "I hate spy missions", she's simply an S+. I mean, if you don't like spy missions, you just need to get her Prime, just like it's case point for Equinox, which stills sort of anti-climatic to me... regardless, with a great kit, you'd expect augments that granted minor little upgrades, which some do like Infiltrate, but in general, Ivara's augment are just sheer brute force & pretty overkill. They synergize between each other really well, except Power of Three, which is simply unuseful(?) and since she has a great ability kit, you're granted a lot of flexibility when it comes to building her in different ways. Simple phenomenal :) But Artemis bow is a bit complicated. With Concentrated Arrow it is much harder to get started on SP, yet base Artemis is capable enough, and again, this is one of those cases where I wish the prime were simply better, as it deserves to. Khora Spoiler Accumulating Whipclaw Spoiler Say goodbye to strength mods for Khora, all you need for Whipclaw to do juicy big damage is this augment. Venari Bodyguard Spoiler Slot it alongside Accumulating Whipclaw for basically 1% chance of dying as long as you keep killing. Pilfering Strangledome Spoiler Become best immortal looting mommy in the entire game with this + Accumulating Whipclaw + Venari Bodyguard. Author's notes on Khora: One of the strangest frame in my opinion, for her thematic and design is still... ambiguous to me. Is she, a beast master? A metal-something themed frame? A spider-themed frame? All of these seem to check some box on Khora, but overall I can't find a word to describe her theme. She does have a whip, which contributes to the beast master quote, but then she has a strangledome which leans towards... something more explicit which puts in question whether the whip is for beast or other purposes. And she can also entangle enemies with the same thing as the strangledome, so, I am really suspicious about Khora's actual thematic inspiration, as it's quite clear that she's no beastmaster just for having a cat... Welp, outside of that, strange entanglement of a theme conundrum she has which makes me raise my eyebrow, Khora is a great looking frame in almost every possible version, be base, prime, or deluxe or tennogen, and sports an ability set which is... odd. She's undoubtedly the best looter alongside Nekros thanks to her damaging capabilities and the fact that the whip hits all the enemies of the Strangledome simultaneously, otherwise she'd be wack, but her ability kit is missing something to hold it together, by quite the mile. You can focus on Whipclaw to deal massive damage, as most builds do, you can focus on Strangledome, which provides more loot with its augment and pairs perfectly with a whipclaw focus as well, and if you've built for Strangledome, you've also built Khora for Ensnare, but what about Venari? She's sort of out of Khora's kit, despite being her signature pet, and is for something her most replace ability. Long ago, I tried to make a beast master Khora build by having both Mecha and Tek mods on her, but it was pretty difficult to be effective. Yes, Venari can equip Tek mods, don't recall if proc them as well, but, with this you loose two mod slots, and you want, normally, a large range to keep enemies CC'd so they don't kill you, Accumulating Whipclaw to deal with the damage loss you'll get from building for range with Overextended, Energy max with Primed Flow, and Equilibrium + dispensary replacing Venari for the energy economy. And what's most important about Venari, despite having an exalted pet being excellent by default, since, you know, free enemy radar & vacuum, her abilities are terrible! Khora can be built like a tank if you put Adaptation and three umbral mods, as her Prime has enough base armour to be a reliable tank, and paired with Synth mods to allow Venari to generate health orbs, adding Arcane Blessing is also a really good option, but then comes Venari. Yes her survivability will scale off you being stronger, given you've installed link mods, but her three abilities will still suck and do not scale well at all! Her offensive skill, targets a single enemy to ensnare it, and deal low damage to it. Her healing skill is numerical value like Oberon's Renewal, but weaker, and for a really short duration, plus works on a single target at a time. And her "protect" form, takes away the weapon of a single enemy you mark. This is the issue. Khora's kit is about CC and offence, with a massive issue being energy economy hence why Venari is very often replace for an ability that can generate a source of energy, like Lykath's Hunt, Dispensary, or Fractured Blast. So, Venari is more of a nuisance than a helpful ability, and replacing her doesn't remove her from Khora, so there's no point on keeping her at all, as even her "attack form" she already does on her own without needing command! Sooo, Venari needs a massive buff / rework, and I know how to not only simplify her usability, but make her better as well. First of, her forms need to be something more than just a cosmetic state upon switch. What I mean by this is depending of the form you've swapped to, Venari will act accordingly. You choose "Attack", Venari will attack all nearby (alerted) enemies, and can use a 50% effective (as in, your curent ability range, duration, etc, etc) version of Ensnare to trap enemies that aren't as far away when you order it to attack an specific target. And she will hit all ensnared targets simultaneously, just like Collective Curse does for Kullervo, be it from the mini-ensnare you've made it perform, the one you cast, or Strangledome. You choose "Heal", Venari now heals for a health % everyone in range of her. And then, if you target someone with this, she will make them status immune. Finally, if you choose "Protect", Venari will just zap around stealing weapons from enemies, instead of requiring to target ONE PER CAST, to disarm them. And, if you target an enemy, Venari will have maximum aggro towards that target, so she can be used to distract Eximus or enemies with Overguard without needing to remove it first. With these changes, replacing Venari could be much less of an occurrence for any build, moreover if we consider that it hitting multiple enemies at the same time would further boost the efficiency of the Synth Set and help tremendously with her energy economy problem. She could even become an energy generator + healer herself! But as it is right now, it's simply complicated to make a different Khora build that is both fun and effective outside of the meta for her, which is a pity, as she's cool, but doesn't see that much use outside of being a loot + CC + damage frame just like Nekros. But, unlike Nekros, she needs an augment to be a looter frame, so what's the real use for Khora at base? This is why I consider Khora so strange. She's great at what she does, but a couple things don't "click" about her to me. Kullervo Spoiler Kullervo joins the gang! Lavos Spoiler Transmutation Transfer (!) Spoiler Passive augment: 50% of combined elements' damage on Lavos's probe get infused to his weapons. (Free combined elemental damage for weapons, basically) Does not scale off power strength. Swift Bite Spoiler Less cooldown is always cool on Lavos. But, requiring to hit four targets at least is slightly complicated without the use of a full range build or subsumed Larva/Ensnare, given enemy spawns on normal startchart. On Steel Path this augment is pog tho. Author's notes on Lavos: Fun, very fun, that's how I'd describe Lavos. Not quite the alchemist myself, but his kit is very solid, and allows to deal insanely high damage, without relying on crits or anything, pure status and mixing stuff. Being also the only frame that doesn't use any type of "energy" but timers instead make him much more balanced that any other frame that might be able to spam abilities non-stop thanks to the energy economy the game allows. That said, given he does insane damage, it's only fair you have to wait until you can do it again, no? A great tank with good mobility and damaging capabilities, with sort of a possible application for "team support" with his probe, but this one is a bit tricky to use. You want a lot, and I mean, a lot of range for this one, though you want duration as well, as this is your ticket to faster refills. Plus, he's fairly easy to obtain being available on Deimos instead of being locked behind yet another "new resource from a new mode farm", just like other Open-world frame. Lavos is simply great all around, from looks, thematic, difficulty to obtain, and scaling potential, a frame that I highly recommend. Also, has a very nice Kuva skin! Limbo Spoiler Rift Haven Spoiler The recent change to Rift Haven has turned it from "not so considerable" to "Absolutely worthy" Magnificent change, great work :^) Execution Time (!) Spoiler Stasis augment: All enemies affected by Stasis are susceptible to finishers. It only seems fair to me that if you stop someone in time you can finish them off with ease, no? Rift Torrent Spoiler I will be honest, I never, and still haven't quite understood how Limbo's third ability works. If am not mistaken, it is basically a way to propagate his 1 when you kill an enemy who is on the rift? But, why do that if Cataclysm exists? Anyway, Rift Torrent is an excellent damage booster, but more interesting or rather, peculiar to use when compared to other damage-increase abilities. Cataclysmic Continuum Spoiler Same premise as Evergreen Vexation, Relentless Redline, or Lasting Covenant. Gud, but 1 second alone is too little. Author's notes on Limbo: Gentleman, magician, plague doctor, Watson or anything English, Limbo's looks I wouldn't exactly relate to what he does, but that's also due to how older frames like him didn't exactly look like what they did. Some had subtle hints on their looks, like Frost, but what would you think a distinguished gentleman like Limbo does? Controlling a personal dimension is the answer, and a lot of people hate him for it, but, he is a great warframe, just requires of more brain to play that anyone else due to how his kit works. Now, yes, casting his 2 and Cataclysm on a group of enemies is simple and doesn't seems like something that requires of more than two neurones to do, but that's the thing, those are the easy ones, the actual core gameplay of Limbo is not Cataclysm, but the Rift itself. Banish an enemy, tripmine him with his 3, unbanish him, and kill him, this will move all enemies around this "catalyser" to the Rift dimension, and it's much safer and chain-reaction possible to do than getting annoyed by a Nullifier's bubble. What's more, the augments make this even better! Rift Haven is the strongest heal per second in the game, but since so many people dislike Limbo, not many would consider entering the Rift as an alternative to simply dying. And then there's also the massive damage boost of Rift Torrent, which is amazing! And this is the thing, Limbo is a great Warframe, but the way he manifest his abilities is extremely annoying for teammates, and he is not as easy to play as any other frame because of that. Pausing projectiles like he was Dio when his "rework" was announced was funny, but ultimately bad. Banishing enemies makes people sick because "I can't kill everyone reeee", so in the end, the only use people gives him is Cataclysm. To put it bluntly, Limbo is extremely underused for anything but his 4+2, which is not even close to being his best ability, but again, he can become a headache to play compared to any other frame due to how his abilities interact with each other. He is quite complicated, no wonder he blew himself up. Loki Spoiler Saviour Decoy Spoiler Save yourself from dying 1. Deceptive Bond Spoiler Save yourself from dying 2. / Increase your chances of dying by a 500% Hushed Invisibility Spoiler Save yourself from being heard when shooting or what is the same dying 3. Safeguard Switch Spoiler Save yourself from dying after annoying for no justificable reason a temmate 4. Irradiating Disarm Spoiler Save yourself from dying by making the fools fight each other instead 5. Author notes on Loki: It might be noticeable I don't quite like Loki nor any of his augments, not that I can think of a better way to help a frame built around the concept of being a coward and hiding + deceiving others. Mag Spoiler Greedy Pull Spoiler Useless augment on Mag. Put in on a range Limbo to nuke entire rooms of containers and get all the fat loot you can as quickly as possible. No like, seriously, Pull as an ability is consistent and reliable, but using an entire mod slot for something you can do by just walking around with a pet, or even bullet jumping as Mag, is redundant, and should be a base capability of her Pull Electromagnetic Shielding (!) Spoiler Magnetize augment (for Hold): Magnetize now creates a small shield to protect Mag from all incoming projectiles, melee attackers get a guaranteed stun upon hitting the shield and deal no damage - strikes bounce off, basically. Can be casted on defence objectives & allies. Same base duration as the ability itself (15s). Magnetized Discharge Spoiler Awesome monster DPS increase for an already awesome ability. Not mandatory but recommended if you want to have big bubbles that could potentially save your life by drawing threats away from you, which, is pretty much a must for a squishy frame like Mag. Counter Pulse Spoiler Great CC and survivability enhancement for Maggie! If enemies cannot hit you, they cannot kill you. And honestly Mag needs all the help she can get when it comes that that. Fracturing Crush Spoiler Fracturing Crush is rather peculiar. Doing basically what Polarize does but better, getting to 200% power strength while using this augments grants total armour removal with no time limit, which combined with the addition of making enemies unable to move for 7 seconds, which is unaffected by mods, you can kill with parsimony. Not necessarily the augment I'd recommend to slot on a build for Mag has so much damage potential that it makes armours and shields be easily ignored, though it's the one I like the most from Mag. Stills, making enemies unable to move doesn't mean incapacitating them so they can't shoot you, which is a problem. Author's notes on Mag: Plentiful of good skins, a reasonably useful ability kit, moreover with the change to pull & Polarize, Mag is a really good frame, but highly overrated. Yes, she can deal really superb damage, but her survivability relies so much on shield gating that unless you equip her augments, you're going to be constantly casting Polarize to replenish your own shields, or die. And what's more, Magnetize might be "super op damage", but mostly for a reserved type of weapons, those with infinite punch-through & projectiles, so not really op with absolutely anything. It can be uber strong when used with the rest of her kit though, or using Breach Surge. Gives you a boom strong enough to kill fully armoured Steel Path heavy gunners, just saying. So, what do I recommend for Mag? Fracturing Crush and Counter Pulse for any build is perfect, some range, and purely focus on abilities, as your health isn't going to give for much. You want total Crowd Control, and for enemies that you cannot CC, like Eximus or so, simply put a bubble on it and shoot. It's simple to say on paper, but for things like Eximus strongholds, a helminth ability is a considerable choice. The one I'd pick is undoubtedly Breach Surge, not really for the damage, but for CC on Eximus units, which then you pair with the extra damage, a good kitgun, magnetic & Polarize, and you're served. In simple terms, Mag is super solid, and a frame you can enjoy and use reliably on plentiful of missions, but it seems to get waaaay too much praise from content creators. Mesa Spoiler Ballistic Bullseye Spoiler Ballistic Bullseye got a rework recently, and many content creators have covered it. To me, the damage amplification it got is severe, but it won't do more than what it did before for high level content. On the other hand, the crit chance being additive is a really good change. Needless to say, the augment is really good for weapons that have a single shot, or could use with some crit chance for they are status based - like the Sporothrix for example. Muzzle Flash Spoiler Radial Blind with no Line of Sight requirement that triggers when enough enemies are killed with the added bonuses of the base ability AND this being a Helminth subsumable one turns this augment into an incredibly nice upgrade to the ability and many builds in general. Staggering Shield Spoiler Rather helpful upgrade to Shatter Shield, this augment (luckily) doesn’t get affected by power strength as if not it would be broken to stagger enemies 100% of the times a reflected projectile hits them. Mesa’s Waltz Spoiler Most valuable augment to me for it allows you to walk while on Peacemaker with the addition of being one of the few exilus-equippable augments in the game, though, it has been requested to make it part of the base ability instead of an augment to which I very much have to agree with. Peacekeeper (!) Spoiler Peacemakers Augment: Limits the usage of Peacemakers to 20 seconds, each kill increases critical chance, status chance, and critical damage by 20% Passive: Free movement enabled, 10 seconds cooldown. [Augment's duration can be increased with duration mods, same way the % by power strength] Similar to Valkyr's Enraged! Author's notes on Mesa: Skkrrrr brr brr, that's basically Mesa, you activate your 2 & 3, and then use you 4 until you can't pick enemies any more due to some weird bug with the reticle. Jokes aside, she is extremely strong and not overrated at all. You've got, on a frame; - Damage reduction + redirection - Gun jamming that locks enemy in place + stuns non-melee units + gives damage bonus - P e a c e m a k e r s That's Mag with her augments, but without needing them. Mesa also has really good alt skins, although her base alt helmets are peculiar to say the least. And honestly, there isn't much to be said about her. She's insanely strong, has very reliable abilities, and even with the changes done to her Ballistic battery's augment, it remains the top-choice to subsume off her. She's so good that helminth only makes her better, as there's nothing that "fails" or needs to be "compensated" on her kit, aside of the energy drain from Peacemakers, which makes sense due to how op they are. Mirage Spoiler Hall of Malevolence Spoiler Death: The augment. 100% worth it. Explosive Legerdemain Spoiler Bamboozle mines, damage is rather low but it works for certain scenarios. Rather fun augment even if it is not that useful. Dual Eclipse (!) Spoiler Eclipse augment: Provides the benefits of both standing in light and standing in darkness independently of whether the player stands on light or dark, at lower values. (You will need more power strength if you want to hit that max damage reduction & damage boost) Total Eclipse Spoiler Better Chroma Vex Armour in terms of buffing allies. Prism Guard Spoiler Prism is weird but deals plenty of damage, this augment turns you into a walking death machine more than a “elegant entertainer” of sorts. Don’t recommend this one but it happens to work perfectly fine. Author's notes on Mirage: Simple, yet extremely unique, Mirage is a very odd frame with very odd issues precisely due to her nature. A frame that works depending of lighting is an extremely interesting concept, but given how complex are Warframe environments, the lighting and shadows can be pretty UGH to interact with, and what's worse, her abilities' performance depends on your own graphic setting! On top of that, the description of her abilities is not exactly true to what they do. So, Hall of Mirrors for example, does what it says truly, you create clones, that help you deal damage and divert damage from you, that is good, and is not affected by lighting. Then, there's Sleigh of Hand, and here's where things don't make that much sense. Conceptually, the ability is incredibly unique and interacts differently with many objects, in some cases one would think this is a good ability to play stealthily, but Mirage is not a stealth frame exactly. Booby trapping everything around you while also creating a distraction that works counter-intuitively (gems in the dark blinding and in the light exploding?) is, ideally, super interesting, and it does works wonders, moreover with the designated augment, but as it is to be expect, at certain point the damage of this ability simply falls off. Then comes Eclipse, which works as intended, but not fully accordingly to its description, and has the lighting inconsistencies I've mentioned. According to ability description, while on the dark, you'll not only suffer less damage, but be harder to track with Eclipse, but there's only a damage reduction from the ability? Not sure if the evasion is some sort of passive effect, flat not affected by mods or simply isn't present at all. Lastly there's Prism, which does massive damage - given you're doing certain things to help it - and has quite the energy consumption, which I still do not comprehend why. Like, it has, duration, initial cast cost, and then energy consumption per second. It is extremely weird that it also has a deactivation perk to it, blinding. I simply do not comprehend why so many numbers and different parameters are involved on Mirage's kit. She's simple to play, but has a lot of numbers going behind! Nekros Spoiler Soul Survivor Spoiler Actually extremely effective augment in my eyes for there’s nothing like becoming a ranged defibrillator to revive allies with ease, this augment has to be one of my favourites in the entire game, in spite of not necessarily being one of the best or worth slotting. Execrate (!) Spoiler Terrify augment: Enemies affected by Terrify take increased damage from all attacks. Increased damage vulnerability from Soul Punch & Shadows by an extra 300% Author note: I would like Soul Punch to take a % of enemy HP, instead of the current 500 damage, which is a joke. That way, this augment would turn it into a quick-Parazon finisher-opener ability, which is ideal. Creeping Terrify Spoiler Turns Terrify into an awesome slowdown with panic CC + Armour strip. With the recent tweaks to Terrify, this augment has become to me a 100% worth slotting, and replaces Gloom builds. Despoil Spoiler In the top best augments in the game imo for it allows you to get limitless energy as long as you keep killing, besides nice looting with no energy consumption to it, meaning that even if an Ancient Disruptor touches you, this one will remain running until you deactivate it/die. 200% worth it. Burial Ground (!) Spoiler Desecrate Augment: Desecrated enemies leave a 4m area that slows down foes that come in contact with them by x%, lasting 12s and inflict toxin damager per second equivalent to a x% of their maximum HP Shield of Shadows Spoiler The good thing about most of Nekros' augments is that their percentages and stats do escale based on power mods, rendering Shield of Shadows optimal if you happen to be running over 200% strength, as each shadow will absorb more damage, requiring only 6-7 to gain the maximum damage reduction. Needless to say, I do recommend Shield of Shadows for solo play, but not all that much on squads. Author's notes on Nekros: Nekros was my second frame to obtain, and I got him pretty early on to be fair, one of my first pub runs with a bunch of fellows from my own country (which is very odd given it was a random pub squad), and from beginning to end, he is one of my favourite frames. Great overall design, a thematic that I do admit I'm not uber-fond into but works, provides great support and utility... Nekros is simply great, and has outstanding scaling potential given how his kit works, plus possible application on many different mission types. Now, it is true his first ability, compared to the other three, is pretty mediocre, as it has a limited use, and without the augment it doesn't do much. It's simply weak. The rest of his abilities however, do work well on their own, even Desecrate, although you'll want to have a pet with synth mods for this, and the augments only make them better. Nekros is a simple frame that anyone should give a try. Old, but gold. Nezha Spoiler Controlled Slide Spoiler Use Power drift instead, this augment is completely useless! Though similar to Zephyr, I can picture people not liking hitting slide button and entering another dimension. But that's what Nezha's about! Pyroclastic Flow Spoiler Gud. Simply gud, but not that gud as to be slotted on any build or create an amazing synergy/blah blah blah. It just works as it has to. I mean, you can combine it with Archon Vitality to gain double the heat procs and accumulate much more damage faster, so that works too, but Nezha is a frame I play similar to Rhino for the Iron skin type of ability, and generally I do not use him all that much simply because I don't think he has that much use compared to other frames with similar abilites (in functionality). Reaping Chakram Spoiler Fire Walker + Equilibrium + Synth Fiber + Health Conversion + Reaping Chakram = Big Win and Big survivability enhancement. 3 of them go on your frame and honestly I do not use Nezha all that much but this is one of my favourite builds for him, and it works! Recommend this one for it is nice, though not better than Desecrate, obviously. Safeguard Spoiler Protecting teammates = Good, even if it is 50% effective, it still protects nicely. Draining Spears (!) Spoiler Divine Spears augment: Divine Spears now drain the health of affected targets to heal Blazing Chakram when at less than 50 meters of them. Reason I ideated this augment is that I feel Divines Spears are a good source of CC for a 4th ability of Nezha, but they don't fully synergize with the rest, so this should help it synergize with the rest of Nezha’s kit and in general make them useful for something more than impaling in place a couple enemies. Author's notes on Nezha: He is a peculiar frame to be honest. From being capable of getting you banned in chat, possibly game even, to being a better Rhino, a non-annoying Volt and a Citrine all-in-one, Nezha is a frame that I don't know where to pick from exactly, but once I get playing, I know exactly how to do anything with it. First ability makes you a speedy boi, more than you already are, like Volt, but you leave a trail of fire that deals okay damage. With the corresponding augment, you'll deal lots, so you could focus on that plus using his second ability to further amplify said damage. Speaking of his Reaping Chakram, this ability acts like a mixture of Equinox's Rage, and Citrine's Fractured Blast but without the weakness of each, as it provides health orbs with a chance of energy ones, damage vulnerability on enemies, and even teleport yourself to the onion ring's location. It's a multi-purpose tool, and it is really good at what it does, although the augment increasing the damage of the ring isn't incredible, as this doesn't work but as well as his 1st if it's damage you want to deal with the abilities. Increasing the chance to drop health orbs, on the other hand, is a very reliable way of boosting not only your own survivability but also energy economy, which isn't a problem on Nezha as his abilities aren't to be casted too often, which makes it so negative efficiency and no Primed Flow are needed in a well prepared build, although the extra energy pool always comes in handy. Warding Halo is also a good ability making you tankier in a nice way, but, this ability only has a problem, that it doesn't synergize in any way with the rest of his kit. But Divine Spears do, although this ability seems a bit out of place, a total CC that stops on their tracks all enemies within range similar to Rhinostomp, but why? When it comes to dealing damage, Divine Spears are not really good, they serve however a great purpose to make enemy brochettes and help spread Blazing's Chakram's effects, quite effectively, however, I would like certain small changes made to this. While yes it has its own form of synergy with Reaping Chakram by creating multiple ones bouncing off enemies, you need to aim at the enemy to allow Chakram to bounce off it, and its tracking is not always the best so it might hit two enemies who are close together on very even terrain, but come back instantly instead of trying to hit more targets. Another small issue, is the fact that the charged throw of the Chakram doesn't seem capable of triggering the synergy with Divine Spears. It will hit the first enemy and come back to you, and it can deal quite impressive damage, 7k per tick on a Steel Path Grineer lancer, thought it's not exactly good enough to kill it, plus it's a charged throw, and for that, well, Glaive Prime exists. I'm not too fond on glaives in general, as I've expressed a couple times already, but Blazing Chakram is really well blent into Nezha's gameplay and feels nice to use as a multi-purpose tool, but the teleport part can be a bit iffy too. So, what I'd like to change on Nezha is just the Chakram. Give it a bit more AoE so that it can be thrown down a hallway and ensure you hit enemies more frequently with more than the recall of it - funnily enough that works - and perphaps allow it to bounce to nearby enemies without needing to be on impaled ones. In general, Nezha is a super-solid, active and fun frame, but not one I use much, which probably will change soon! Nidus Spoiler Abundant Mutation Spoiler The downside of having a 35 second delay between being unkillable and being unkillable renders this augment useless, as you might die because of it. Teeming Virulence Spoiler Teeming Virulence is EXCELLENT, get it whenever you can. Larva Burst Spoiler Larva burst is perfect to apply some status, and as it is toxin and toxin gives +% damage for a small time window, combining it with Teeming Virulence gives you a massive damage output with the right elements. Larva Trap (!) Spoiler Larva augment: Creates a Larva that grabs multiple enemies from further away and lasts longer. When an enemy trapped on the larva is killed, this will throw its tentacles searching for the nearest target to trap it. (Think of it like Zephyr Tornado's) Passive: +5s to Larva base duration, +5m base range (Base as in, this sum to the ability base stats, and then get affected by mods :D) Symbiotic Link (!) [by @ZaneOlric] Spoiler Parasitic Link Augment: using parasitic link on an ally grants both the host and Nidus gain 10/14/17% damage reduction and immunity to status effects. Using Parasitic link on an enemy grants Nidus 7.5/10/12.5% extra ability strength and damage bonus. Insatiable Spoiler This one isn’t it chief. A 100% chance to generate mutation stacks while being in Ravenous just doesn’t work for Nidus, unless you are running Abundant mutation, but, I know how to make Ravenous a bit better by changing Insatiable into a really insatiable AoE of healing. Proposed changes: Insatiable now grants status immunity to allies and flat 50% damage reduction while standing on it. Author's notes on Nidus: I'm a huge fan of monsters and spooky creatures in general. Nidus satisfies that need for me with his festering looks and an ability set that is simple yet fun, who doesn't like stomping bad guys after all? Unlike Inaros, as a health tank Nidus is also much more interesting and reliable thanks to his mutations passive, although since I run Abundant Mutation, I gotta be careful with dying too often. Something that bothers me a bit too it how his 1's damage can scale reeeally well - it was nerfed initially - but when armour gets on the way, it's a problem. Luckily, Larva paired with Unairu's Caustic strike is a perfect frame-operator combo that makes it so you don't need to run a helminth ability on him. Parasitic link is also incredibly good thanks to how its power scaling works, but as a damage mitigation ability it is simple and straighforward, so not much to say about it really. Ravenous on the other hand, is very interesting. It's not a mere AoE heal, but a CC & damage ability that sadly does not work alongside the Strain mods :( Maggots that CC enemies and explode dealing considerable damage is once again mitigated by enemy armour and enhanced with the grouping of Larva and armour strip sources, but it really saddens me that the Helminth's charger set doesn't work alongside Nidus' maggots & kit. They seemed made for eachother as precisely the Strain maggots detonate dealing corrosive damage / with no status chance apparently which is actually problematic / but in the end they don't do much better in combination, if at all, which is a pity. Nidus is an extremely pleasing frame in general. It is easy to obtain, has an interesting quest, is very helpful, reliable, and looks fantastic. As it was to be expected, he is also one of my favourite frames! Nova Spoiler Neutron Star Spoiler Good and goodn’t. While being able to recast Null Star is a massive W for Nova’s survivability, requiring an augment to do so is not. Then, this augment got reworked recently and turned out busted, so it got nerfed (who would have expected that), but the change from blast damage to heat was good, and it can work as a radial CC with LoS checks. It might not be as good as it was pre nerf, but the rework definitively has helped the augment get on a better spot, although not by much, as, you know, it had a popularity spike due to AoE clearing, then it got reverted, so the final result is, what we had before the changes. Antimatter Absorb Spoiler Great one! Super fun too, releasing an antimatter drop that absorbs all damage is a perfect source of both defence and offence :) Antimatter Mine (!) Spoiler Drop an antimatter drop on the ground that will detonate after its duration expires (base 15 seconds), or when an enemy gets too close! Alternatively, you can manually detonate it. Combined with Antimatter Absorb... you may get the idea. Escape Velocity Spoiler Situational. That is what I can say about this augment. It is good, yeah, but should it replace anything on your build? I think not. Warp (!) Spoiler Wormhole augment: Creates a two-way portal with a much wider entrance and can be created by setting two portals in different places. Limits placeable portals to only 2 and marks them on the minimap/map for lesser confusion. Molecular Fission Spoiler Helpful to maintain your damage reduction from Null Star at max, a good augment to combine with Neutron Star, or any Nova build in general. Author's notes on Nova: Nova is a simple, fun and good looking frame that is easy to obtain and useful for plentiful of situations & mission types. Funnily enough, she has a very unique application by making defence missions faster by going negative strength, although Equinox has a similar application, just not but as good with her Rage ability. To be fair, there isn't much to be said about Nova, her first ability is a damage reduction ability that forces you to build always for as little range, which feels restrictive compared to all previous DR abilities, although hers doesn't have a duration, but scales off duration mods. Talk about conundrum. Antimatter Drop is a fun little ability that allows you to deal massive damage, if you remove defences on high level enemies - or you further boost it with strange and gimmicky stuff, like Mutalist Quanta's orb - but here's where the trouble begins, more on that later. Creating portals is also unique to Nova and extremely useful once more to speed up other mission types such as drone escort, but outside of this, Nova's portals don't really have a good use in the game due to the complexity of tilesets. They have lots of elements to them that prevent, in most cases, easy travelling with a forward advance like these provide, similar to how Vauban's vector pads are more of a troll tool that an useful thing. If they could be set with an entrance and end, like how it was shown on the game's CGI trailer, the usability of Nova's portals would skyrocket. But, it is true this trailer was made by a company with no relation to the game so I guess they were given a set of papers telling them "hey this one does this" and they figured something out themselves. And finally, Molecular Prime is very simple to understand. More strength, slower enemies, more duration offsets the range problem you'd face by using a full duration Nova for better DR, or you can go with as little strength as possible and great range so every enemy's detonation can trigger a fun chain reaction, plus speed up the mission. And that's it, that is the critical issue. With Nova, since she is squishy, you want as much damage reduction as you can possible stack, but to have damage reduction you need lots of duration AND as little range so your null stars don't try to blast themselves against enemies. Then, if they do, you need either A, a way to recast the ability, which forces you to run an augment, or B, a way to replenish them, which also forces you to run an augment. Second problem here is precisely due to running low range you can't make good use of Mocular Primed enemies detonations to trigger a chain reaction or something of sorts, like knocking down enemies which would be a nice extra layer of CC to offset the lack of survivability, and also, your portals will have an unuseful range, nothing you wouldn't be able to cover with a melee with Primed Reach. Nova is really good and comfortable, but her kit has a severe issue derivated from modding and outdated design, exactly like Frost. Nyx Spoiler Mind Freak Spoiler Honestly I do not understand whether this augment is a x% over the already done damage to the target OR a x% over the final damage multiplication which would turn then the mind controlled target into DEATH, which they already happen to be. Pacifying Bolts Spoiler This one is… useless. Completely useless, giving chaos’s effect to Psychic Bolts doesn’t make them any better simply because another ability of the same kit from the frame already does this! I would change Pacifying Bolts to make enemies hit by it put asleep, similar to Equinox Pacify. Chaos Sphere Spoiler Personally think Chaos Sphere isn’t bad but could be better. The problem with Chaos is having to cast it again if enemies enter your range but weren’t affected by it at first. Put simply, I’d make Chaos Sphere turn Chaos into AoE CC like Silence is, with no downsides whatsoever as it deserves to have none. Assimilate Spoiler While the simple ability to walk is often overlooked, for Nyx's 4th it is pretty game changing. Not only can you use weapons but also move around being immortal. The reduced mobility is not an issue when you take into account your operator, so why not slot this augment on your build? Singularity Spoiler Vacuum Nyx = Absorb more damage = Deal more damage. Conclusion; good, not worth slotting (imo). Author's notes on Nyx: Nyx is very minimalist compared to others, to the point that sometimes her kit feels like it barely does something for her or the team. Mind control, isn't a bad ability, but when you compare it to other summons / spectre type abilities, it is. You are limited to a single target, and you must shoot it in order for this to deal considerable damage. If we compared this to Nekros, for a quite similar example, Nekros can have 7 allies, with increased health and damage without requiring to be shot at, and has an area armour strip ability that can also slow down affected targets. Nyx on the other hand, has a defence strip ability too, that affects only a fixed number of enemies unless you equip its augment, which then can vary, and slows down infested. Oddly enough, no other ability in the game has a faction modifier quite like this one, that I'm aware of that is. It's pretty useless to have limited to Infested only, given the already limited use of Nyx's Pacifying bolts. In simple terms, Pacifying bolts are a weaker version of Terrify, or Tharros Strike with less usability by default. Tharros Strike stuns, strips forever and returns health, plus has a conic area of effect, which makes it so the number of enemies affected is only limited by range, whereas Psychic bolts require of an augment to do something similar. Yes, these have a lot of range, but affect few enemies on their own. Too simple. Chaos is, chaotic as an ability, a global "radiation procs" of sorts. It's far too simple of an ability to be considerable one, using an AoE weapon modded for radiation has the exact same effect but also makes it so enemies deal more damage to each other. Put simply, it sucks. The augment allows it to stay on an area that shrinks over time, but doesn't really provide anything. In general, this is the worst ability of Nyx because it provides nothing of use that an Epitaph with Primed Fulmination and radiation wouldn't. And finally is Absorb, which is very simple as well, and as an ability, without Assimilate, is worthless too. Yes you can absorb the damage taken and then boom, lash it towards enemies, but it isn't really that great as a "big badaboom" ability. Nyx's kit, is very plain and simple, just as she looks, but it isn't bad - when you slot in some augments - and she is super simplistic to build as well, which makes her really comfortable and easy to play. But, she also happens to be immensely boring due to how little her kit does, and how it has to be used. There are a few changes, nothing too absurd or out of place, that I'd make to her kit so she becomes more interesting, mainly to Chaos, which is the ability that bothers me the most. Making it so Nyx and allies are invisible to enemies affected by Chaos would be massive, otherwise, as I've mentioned, this ability is not better than dropping a 0 damage nuclear bomb on the area you're currently in, with no re-apply to it either as new enemies that come close won't be affected by it. Why do you think Chaos Sphere was made in the first place? Second, Psychic Bolts to apply their slowdown to all factions, not just the infested, plus a stagger on hit, this would help make the ability a soft CC and a better option than any other "armour strip ability" available on helminth to replace them, as shields aren't normally an issue, so using Terrify instead of Psychic Bolt is better than Psychic Bolts + Chaos together, ironically. Finally, Mind Control to be able to hold hostage more than one target, and apply them a damage boost based on ability strength rather than how much the player has shot it. Paired with Mental Monster scaling off ability strength, this would allow for a better, simpler and overall better focus on Mind Control for builds. With these simple changes, I'd expect Nyx's top builds to stop being just Absorb with Assimilate + a helminth instead of Chaos, and for new ones to flourish. I can't lie, Nyx is very simple in looks and gameplay, although she has a lot of excellent skins, but I can't bring myself to play her often due to her oversimplicity & uneeded stats simultaneously. Conundrum! Oberon Spoiler Smite Infusion Spoiler Like I’ve said on previous augments that grant % damage increase, they’re excellent, and Oberon’s one of the best for Eidolon hunting too. Hallowed Eruption Spoiler Double duration for Hallowed ground is always welcome, moreover if you can deal the remainder damage of it as a single damage instance, although this also means being unable to cover more ground with multiple casts of the ability itself. Quite a good augment but slightly forgettable. No like, seriously, if you make a Oberon with balanced range, strength and duration, you can armour strip enemies and then deactivate Hallowed Ground to deal a considerable burst of damage. I've managed to reach 80k on a single hit, although the forced radiation proc contributes nothing. If it were heat, on the other hand... it could be interesting, giving Oberon an alternative ability rotation to HG > Reckoning with Hallowed Reckoning for DPS puposes that wouldn't rely on grouped enemies. Sacred Ground (!) Spoiler Hallowed Ground grants a damage reduction of 40% to all allies within its radius of effect. Enemies that die within the area have a 50% chance to drop a health orb. +50% ability range. (The range scales with mods too!) Phoenix Renewal Spoiler 1 Up: The Augment But, in all seriousness, the augment is almost good. Problem is that making Oberon a support/healer who can only save you from fatal damage every 90 seconds is... not that good. Removing the hard cooldown or making it way lower would surely turn Phoenix Renewal into a much better augment than what it currently is. Hallowed Reckoning Spoiler "Enemies affected by Reckoning create zones that increase your allies armour by x and deal y damage per second" This mod helps Reckoning a lot. First, Hallowed Reckoning benefits low armour frames, for it gives armour directly instead of a %, which would only benefit, ever so partially, high-armoured frames, Nekros, to put an example, but Renewal does that already. And even though the buff has a duration, it requires you to get into a (by default) tiny zone, with vfx which may make it annoying for you to see. The damage over time makes it be like Hallowed Ground, but this does not provide a good scaling damage type, even though radiation provides good crowd control by making enemies attack each other. Although once more, Hallowed Ground already provokes radiation, so, not really useful either. But, the good thing is that kills done by the areas also count towards the 50% health orb chance, which doesn't really work by default as enemy level increases. In conclusion, it meh. But could it be worth slotting? Answer is; depends. You can make a build capable of killing Steel Path enemies with this augment, hand tested this personally, but, big disclaimer, it requires of a grouping ability. Either Coil Horizon, for it clamps enemies into one small spot, making it so they take the most possible damage from the zones converging into one another, or, better* in my opinion, Ensnare. *In terms of comfort, not actual damage. Why do I recommend Ensnare over Coil Horizon for this DPS cycle? Oberon has a massive survivability problem on tougher content. When you start a mission, you have energy to cast two or three abilities at max. With CH, enemies will ragdoll and not be CC comfortably for you to kill them / a pet to hit them to make good use of Synth Set + Equilibrium, making it mostly a waste of a cast, unless you have all your energy prepared to start a DPS cycle of Hallowed Ground > CH > Reckoning, then, it is better as the damage on ragdolled enemies of H.Reckoning is per body part, but, you also need something to slow down enemies so that they don't stop being ragdolled and go onto the "getting up" state, and you loose damage / not win but as much, so a weapon that procs cold - Gloom would be the best possible option but we already have a helminth on, unless we are playing with a friend - is pretty much imperative, and best choice, as per usual, is the Epitaph. In short, you need something to slow down enemies, something that procs viral so they take reasonable damage, and three casts of abilities, while probably having no room for survivability mods, as you'll need the range to pull in many enemies. However, with Ensnare, they'll be as still as a rock, allowing you not only to not take damage, but score headshots with ease to both kill & charge your Galvanized stacks with ease, and this will allow you to gain energy easily, and be setted for the rest of the mission. What's more, since now we don't have to worry about ragdolling and slowing down enemies, we can just cast our three abilities in comfortable rotation, and with just a range mod, Stretch for comfort, Overextended for best possible use, or both if you don't mind survivability / are going to offload it to something else, and although you won't kill but as fast as Coil Horizon's ragdolled enemies, the damage is still pretty good. Ragdoll is at the end of the day a status, so, theoretically, you could use a weapon / operator ability / something else to provoke a ragdoll on the Ensnared enemies, even though they won't look ragdolled, to get the best use of this. Which, when put in perspective, is quite a lot for just an augment mod. Author's notes on Oberon: I have a goat plush, might rename it to Oberon, but Oberon is not exactly the goat, in any of the senses / acceptions of the word. To me, he has a similar problem to other frames; a kit that is outdated in some aspects, but remains quite solid given enough investment. But not everyone can afford say investment due to how they play. Instead of talking about Smite, I will go directly to Hallowed Ground, for this is the ability that creates the issue within his kit. When building Oberon, Hallowed ground has "180º" , so why is it that 200% range isn't actually making it become 360º? Because of the formula behind it. In reality, you need 234% range to get 360º covered, which is a problem because in order to do that, you must equip both Overextended, and Reach, which makes it so two mod slots of your build are already taken. In an ideal scenario, where Hallowed Ground's degree coverage scaled 1:1 to range, equipping Overextended and Cunning Drift would be enough so that you still have one mod slot available on the build, as Exilus slots, are always auxiliary stuff. It would be perfect! And this is important, because while yes, you can just not run as much range or no range at all and cast multiple times HG to cover an area, it makes no sense for this ability to be the way it is by default. Covering 360º instantly is cheaper than casting multiple times the same ability in different directions, as for comfort's sake you also run into diminishing returns by casting it multiple times, as there'd be different timers you wouldn't be able to control, overlapping areas because you forgot to turn xº to place it right, and so on. Put simply, it's a bit annoying to not go with 360º, and you can't do it unless you run two range mods, instead of a range mod + exilus. So, with the complains about HG out, I move on to complain about how requiring to use Overextended so you can cover enough ground is problematic because you need a lot of strength as Oberon to be a considerable support. And to have strength, you also need something to give you energy, since energy economy as Oberon SUCKS until you start adding external sources of "income", lets say, but to use Rage you want also to have enough base health and armour so you don't get slapped instantly on "harder content" (SP) and then you'd need also Adaptation. In general, you need, for comfort, 200% strength, 234% range, and more health and armour than the ones provided at base, minimum to armour strip in one cast and also cover as much ground with HG so enemies fight each other instead of you, as even with more armour and health, unless you get a quantious amount, you'll get killed easily. So how come I keep talking about HG? Cause it limits Oberon's kit, massively. Imagine if all frames needed, not "could", but "needed" to use one of their abilities so another one does something remotely useful. Would sound absurd, right? Though, honestly that's the case of Reap & Sow on Sevagoth. Yikes. But that's what Oberon's HG does for Reckoning, an ability with okay damage, for start-chart and not-too high levels, maximum maximum don't go close to Circulus on Lua, that's where you'll start to say "yeeeeah, it's not enough to kill on its own". And do you know why is it important for this ability to kill? 50% Health Orb drop chance on kill. It's almost as if certain mod called Health Conversion, were made with this type of ability in mind to allow Oberon to stay alive and endure harder missions, or better yet, Equilibrium so you can sustain your energy drain from both Renewal and using the rest of your abilities. But guess what, your build is so tight right now it might just explode! And you can barely fit augments unless you sacrifice something else that is already important. Despite being a support frame, Oberon's kit screams of "I wanted to be a damage tank, but couldn't". Smite can deal great damage, given enough ability strength and other shenanigans, Hallowed Ground makes it so you are status immune and distract enemies, Renewal gives a pitiful amount of extra armour but a reasonable health/s regen, and Reckoning has a good concept, until you realize your damage isn't competent enough outside of what I mentioned on Hallowed Reckoning's analysis, and that your armour strip doesn't work unless you have your second ability affecting your targets. After multiple hours of pure testing, I found a build that convinced me for all-purposes. As I like to stick to a frame's kit and role, or base capabilities, I went for something that allows to be an acceptable tank by using Arcane Blessing + Adaptation + Health Conversion, a sort of DPS + Armour strip with Blind Rage + Hallowed Reckoning + Primed Continuity, and finally a sustainable energy pool with Primed Flow + Equilibrium. Overextended too so my abilities have enough range. All of this, one single forma for a Vazarin polarity. And of course I subsumed Ensnare for Smite, for the aforementioned reasons. I have little space for augments, but then, I'm not sure if I even want to run them given how they work. With Archon Shards, part of the mods that I feel are almost mandatory, can be replaced, but is it fair for a frame to require of such a thing to be great? This problem stems from a single thing, the way range mods affect HG. If it were 1:1, a mod slot could be freed for flexibility, and that can be a game-changer. Octavia Spoiler Partitioned Mallet Spoiler Because Octavia is simply OP and easy to play, her augments are completely unnecessary, but stills, both are actually great. Partitioned Mallet is great because it allows to create TWO mallets, so you can protect two zones. Conductor Spoiler Conductor makes me think about pets. Conductor allows your Resonator to follow the direction you aim at, basically it allows you to give it an order, which is something I'd love to do with my pets, but I cannot. Very practical Crowd Control that you can redirect by yourself, which makes it even better! Author's notes on Octavia; When I was little more than a noobie, Octavia was by far one of my most used frames. Now, it's close to the opposite, she is one of the least used ones, and the reasons are pretty simple; I got bored of her kit and how it works. Whilst being super unique with her Mandachord and ability to play tunes mid missions, making Metronome's buffs activate based on the tempo you carry for things is... cumbersome. Why does people for the most part use a pure tone mandachord? Because spamming crouch is much sounder that having to time it well with your rythm, as it's your survivability that's on the line with a close to none EHP frame as she is. Gyre comes close in that sense, but Octavia has her Resonator! And resonator is nice you know? But, once more, how the whole kit ties, is... meh. Infinite scaling damage? Check. Awesome CC that also looks fun? Check. Plethora of diverse buffs, which outside of invisibility aren't really noticeable or easy to activate? Check. Another version of Eclipse? Check. All works perfectly in synchrony and harmony, and yet, not quite, why? Because; timers and activation requirements. Mallets can do insane damage, but to get the best out of them, throwing a Resonator is advised, and would seem logical as well since both abilities last as long, no? But if the Resonator picks the Mallet, the enemies won't shoot it anymore, and thus this one's damage will be pitiful. Metronome does give great buffs, but again, to make them easier to activate you ought pick a tune that is either not of your liking, or that is annoying for the rest of teammates, and then, who is even going to pick your tempo with all the things going on around you? It's a terrible design! And yet so imaginetive and unique at the same time. And finally, amp is really simple. Doubles range of her abilities, which is good, and gives a damage bonus. Octavia's kit is simple to be honest, but not really exciting, and her teamplay ability is quite restrictive. Perhaps the ability to set her Mandachord's tempo to be different and make it so depending of a vivant or serene tempo Resonator slowed or sped up enemies that follow it, would be nice. But, this doesn't mean she's a bad frame, not at all. Protea Spoiler Repair Dispensary Spoiler It is a good augment, pretty useful moreover considering it can be put on the exilus slot, and Protea doesn't really need anything on her build because she is amazing. Recall (!) Spoiler Temporal Anchor augment: For each second spent on Temporal Anchor, +5% range to the final implosion. Tapping the ability again while active sends to back to the original position, detonating all stored damage. Passive: +50% duration to Temporal Anchor Temporal Erosion Spoiler Protea's newest augment is exactly what Temporal Anchor needed, but we didn't know. As I mentioned on my previous Protea notes (probably updated by now), I couldn't really think of something to augment her further, as her kit is just chef's kiss, and Temporal Anchor was daunting to fidget with given how interesting the ability is. However, someone as DE has delivered a very smart augment that boost not only her fourth ability, but her 2nd, and her team. And that's super cool! Author's notes on Protea; Opposite to Octavia, Protea has become one of my favourite frames ever since her annoucement & release. All around team support, damaging capabilities, and great survivability, all in one frame with a beautiful Deluxe skin, although I still fancy her cap & ponytail helmet! Now, the thing with Protea is that, as any other frame, there's one ability that doesn't get used all that much, and in her case it is her trademark, Temporal Anchor! Is the ability bad? No, an absolute nuke that can destroy any enemy it touches upon detonation if you've stored enough damage. But it isn't... for everyone lets say, unlike the rest of her kit. The going back to a position you were and causing an implosion can make some people dizzy, or simply unconvinced. Now, slotting any helminth ability on place of T.Anchor is not a big loss given the options available and how well do they synergise with the rest of her kit, but, with Temporal Erosion you get a free amour strip that is super fast, and can cover & recover much more area than any other frame, which makes her unmatched. It lets you selectively strip targets, which both in practive and theory isn't better than just getting everyone around weakened, but there's that. Now, as for helminth options think about a grouping ability. Will work wonders with Blazing Artillery as it has punchtrough and increasing damage per shot. Something like Molt? Even more survivability, though you don't need it, same as you don't really need Nourish for even more energy, but again, these pair well with Dispensary & Grenade Fan, plus also boost allies in the case of Nourish! Top this off with her passive 100% ability strength and you simply can't go wrong building her in any way, shape or form. Protea is simply the perfect frame, and has a very active playstyle, which makes her one of my favourites - unless you slot Gloom on her! Revenant Spoiler Thrall Pact Spoiler It should be +100% damage per thrall >:c Super low damage increase, why would anyone put this on our favourite spinning man? I mean, it does work, but base damage for weapons is not always the problem. the good thing is Revenant builds are very free in terms of slots, so you can slot this one easily. Mesmer Shield Spoiler Because Revenant doesn't have enough strength, now an augment will grant him 50% more for free on his Mesmer skin. Oh, also lets you protect your allies. Blinding Reave Spoiler We use Reave to kill, not to leave people alive. Don't need to blind them, just, group and use a 300% strength Reave and boom, all dead. I'll leave this one as it is as I cannot change its stats without changing the name, or can I. Author's notes on Revenant; Absolute other opposite of the spectrum, more than Octavia even, Revenant is a frame that doesn't call my attention at all despite how incredibly popular he is. Ever since the changes to Mesmer skin he went from a not common pick, to a frame I can see in almost every single mission I join, I kid you not. And I beg the question, is this justified, or is he just overrated? Thrall Pact grants you temporary allies, in similar fashion to Mind Control from Nyx, funny how these two abilities combine together for quite surprising results too, and this also synergizes with Mesmer skin for it makes turning enemies free. But then it has that one little extra thing that feels totally useless; the energy pillar on thrall death. No, seriously, this does basically nothing. Moving on to the equivalent of Gloom for Sevagoth, Mesmer skin is where Revenant becomes the laziest frame in the entire game. We all know what this does so there's no point on mentioning anything about it. But then there's Reave! And this is a pretty fun ability and one that really makes Revenant interesting (to me), and not Mesmer Skin, due to how it works, and synergises with Thralls, although once more, it's kinda ridiculous how this ability is so good on other frames... Kullervo being one of the most interesting cases. Finally of course, Danse Macabre, which is solid due to its adapting damage, but it isn't thaaat good at higher levels, quite good at low ones though, to be a spinny papa smurf of death. So comes the veredict, is Revenant really that good, or overrated (Like Mag)? Answer relies on Mesmer skin and how it works since the Eximus changes. Were it to work like it used to before that, would be Revenant a popular of a pick as he is now? Answer to me is absolutely NOT. Overrated, not really attractive without Tennogen or Deluxe skins, and overused, Revenant is a frame I simply don't wanna play, and it's not because of morals, but because he doesn't mesmerize me at all. Rhino Spoiler Ironclad Charge Spoiler Ironclad charge happens to be one of the two useful augments Rhino has. Increasing the armour of Rhino with this augment + Mecha set can lead to awesome numbers on Iron Skin, but as an augment for Rhino Charge, it is simply useless, as the ability is. Iron Shrapnel Spoiler Because Iron Skin does gain more health the more damage you take, this augment is actually good to become some, pseudo Nuke. If only it wasnt because of damage reductions such as armours or shields mitigating it by a lot. Only infested would get, some damage out of this augment. Piercing Roar Spoiler The selling point of this augment is not the largest part of its text, but the small one. Allowing to recast Roar is really helpful, whereas knocking down enemies and inflicting puncture procs, isn't. I DO recommend to use this augment BUT without upgrading it so it takes as little drain as possible. Reinforcing Stomp Spoiler Reinforcing Stomp sucks. While the idea of refilling your Iron Skin is exceptional, the heal of 80 is literally meaningless, unless you are playing vs level 1 enemies. The easy fix, as per usual would be, making it regen x% instead of a mere flat value. This way, building Rhino for strength and duration shouldn't be the bst option, if you could simply recast his abilities to heal your Iron Skin and Roar with both augments equipped. I would say healing an 8% of Iron Skin per enemy hit at rank 9 would make this augment really nice for Steel Path as it's the place with the densest enemy flux. Update: The augment now regens 4% of Iron skin! Really nice :) Author's notes on Rhino; Rhino is a simple boi which hasn't undergone any significant changes in over 10 years, or what is the same, as long as the game has existed. Now yes, there's the little Overguard adjustement of lately but that wasn't really a gamechanger for anyone, was it? He does now not have the weakness of Iron skin ferrite's armour, but that's about it. And you know, that's fine, for Rhino is a simple frame with a simple job, tank, CC, and boost himself and the team with, arguably, the best damage boost on the entire game due to how it works. Which really redirects my attention to that time DE said something about "consistency" on damage multipliers, ahem. And Rhino is really effective at all of those things! Although Rhinocharge isn't exactly the most amazing thing in the world, just like Slash Dash was before the Excalibur tweaks of 2022, but speaking of the devil, there are a few things I would change of Rhino. First of, to retain the momentum from Rhinocharge when performing it mid-air. Do you know how annoying is it to get a sudden burst of speed and stop so almost in place? Mach Rush does have its extra momentum and it's really neat! Also, giving Rhinocharge more uses, such as hold to run until you hit a wall provoking a shockwave that stuns nearby enemies would be great, instead of creating a new augment for it. Then there's Iron Skin & Roar, which all I want to is to be able to recast them! Like, that's the major issue with Rhino, your energy economy is not a problem but you must wait until your timers have run out to cast your abilities once more, and that makes him a little bit annoying to play. Simple, comfortable, but could be polished a tiny bit. Saryn Spoiler Revealing Spores Spoiler Saryn's newest augment provides a strange yet somehow useful quality of life improvement for her kit, by reveling enemies that have been affected by spores in green on your minimap, and also non-infected enemies too, this way, you know where should you cast spores in order to keep them alive. Super strange augment, not worth it to me, but I happen to find it good at the same time. Weird man. The newest change has made it so it works like enemy radar by default + it now scales off range mods, so... good? I still find this augment mildly irrelevant when pets and aura mods for the same purpose exist, but, when you combine all those things, you get a pretty good situational awareness of the spore state, which is honestly very useful. Venom Dose Spoiler I've already said all I had to say about ability augments that provide extra% status damage, it's simply great and worth using for allies, but since Saryn already has Toxic Lash it is kinda excessive. Who cares, we love doing damage and Saryn is the Queen of that deal. Regenerative Molt Spoiler Good for survivability, but Saryn is not precisely a super tanky frame so you shouldn't be taking damage to health one way or another. It is true she is one of the highest armoured female frames alongside Hildryn and Garuda, but that isn't really enough to keep her HP from being insta-deleted at higher levels. Just because of that, I don't recommend the augment all that much, but it is actually pretty good! Base molt is good enough. Contagion Cloud Spoiler It is a pre-meganerf Gas damage mod :| But with absolutely horrendous damage. And only works when using melees. And it has horrible range. Don't use this one mod, please, be smart. Author notes on Saryn; Just like Mesa, Saryn has the biggest reasons to be where she is right now, to the point even the developers are afraid to touch her once more, and honestly, I don't see why would they, as her kit is; good, fun, reliable, and useful! Wonderful amount of skins, though not a fan of her Deluxe, really easy to understand kit - although Toxic Lash is kindaaaa... out there lets say with how it works - and overall active gameplay which also allows for a focus on either ability DPS, or weapon DPS, Saryn is an absolute powerhouse when it comes to dealing damage, mostly due to Toxic Lash precisely. And Toxic lash is very important, because unlike many other elemental damage infusing abilities, Toxic Lash's toxin does not combine with your weapon, but add up instead, making your builds not be messed with in the process. All other damage infusing abilities should work this way so that they don't mess with builds. Do you know how annoying is it to get your corrosive + heat build turned into corrosive + blast? Spores are really nice, Molt is wonderful, Toxic Lash is superb, and Miasma is... not actually the best, but works well within her kit, given it multiplies the damage of the spores by four times, but it only inflicts one instance of viral damage, and outside of low levels, it won't deal much damage on its own, which is good, we don't want more press 4 to win without having to do anything to do in exchange for that matter - unlike Thermal Sunder Garudas. Now, one of the most important aspects to me about Saryn is how well rounded is she by default - no, not that "rounded" - given she has very good armour, excellent energy, health, and ability stats that allow for diverse and flexible building of the frame, and that is superb. A lot of newer frame don't really have stats that allow you to be that flexible with them, Voruna for example which has nor the armour or energy, but has the health, or Gyre, which has not the armour of health, but the energy. Saryn has all she needs, and that makes her a really good frame, so unlike Revenant, her popularity is based on something more than "I press 2 not to die haha". Though she can do "I press 2 not to die haha" too, now that I think about it, just that it's not as lazy by far as Rev. But, despite all the good things I say about Saryn, she is not a frame I play that much! Sevagoth Spoiler Shadow Haze Spoiler Sevagoth got his first augment! And h o l y s h is it good, much, much better than what the description makes of it. You get; Increased F L A T crit which is a very good friend of weapons with puncture and status now (Highly recommend the Sporothrix here), you can make weapons with ZERO crit chance do orange crits. Extra damage debuff for free as each shadow will self-reproc the effect. Free shadows for the cost of one! What a bargain! (Casually funny because it is very pirate-ish, like Sevagoth's ship) And the best part is this means you gain application flexibility! Now you can go weapon-focus Sevagoth by replacing Sow with something that removes armour, or, you can go Sow DPS by replace the Shadow with an armour strip! Life Seed (!) Spoiler Sow augment: Enemies killed while under the effect of Sow have a 50% chance of dropping health orbs. Sheltering Gloom (!) Spoiler Gloom augment: I love Sevagoth. A lot as a matter of fact. I like his kit a lot*, and I made a build for him that focused on team support but gives pretty bonkers damage for myself too. The thing about the build and Sevagoth in general is, that even with a 1420% armour buff, I still get slapped around on Steel Path, and getting revived by my buddies so often usually turns annoying, more for myself than for them as they do not mind it happening, so I thought, what is Sevagoth missing on his kit? And the answer came to me when playing Baruuk and Ember later on: Something that reduced the damage he takes. So I created Sheltering Gloom! Harderst part when creating an augment for me is not making the stats or mechanics behind it but giving them a name :P Sheltering Gloom provides a 30% damage reduction to all allies within Gloom's range, and scales with power strength. Why 30%? Sevagoth's Gloom works best the highest your power strength goes, up to 275% for a 95% slowdown, so should a damage reduction! This way, one doesn't simply have 90% damage reduction for free without having to build for high strength and sacrifice on other departments. *Not more than Atlas though, but he's my second favourite warframe now :) Guard Shadow (!) Spoiler Inspired by Wukong's Monky Bro and Blue Dragon Awakened Shadow anime®. Exalted Shadow augment: Hold cast to summon Sevagoth's Shadow to fight alongside you as an ally*. Consumes no energy, only Death Well, so killing with your abilities will refill the meter too. Shadow can still use its abilities, mostly 1st and 3rd unless heavily damaged, then it will use its 2nd. If lethally wounded, it will go back to Sevagoth, but can be recasted. If Sevagoth dies while Guard Shadow is active, the Shadow will sacrifice itself to heal its master, entering a 30 seconds cooldown** *Author notes 1: Shadow has really good damage on its own and is very easy to control, but if it were taken control by an AI, surely it would be clunky and miss a lot, or don't work as effectively, so I made this augment with buffs such as Arcane Contagion's damage boost to allies in mind to make really interesting builds with it. **Autor notes 2: It is only fair to be unable to cast your Shadow as soon as you've been revived, similar to how Venari Bodyguard works protecting Khora from dying, but this time the cooldown is way lower, and can't be fixed with kills. You would be able to use Shadow form, but you wouldn't be able to cast a Guardian Shadow as you wouldn't have "fully recovered from dying yet". Think of this as something like Transference static. Author's notes on Sevagoth: Unnecessarily annoying and (was) not really useful, that's the best way I can describe one of my favourite frames in the game! But why? It's not hard to understand and explain to be honest. First of, Sevagoth's passive is great, but the way the Shadow's Consume works is not. You get yeeted on one direction, with no maneuverability, and feels like only the first enemy you collide with counts towards being revived. Revenant has existed for literal years before Sevagoth and his Reave does exactly what Consume should. All targets you hit in your path should count towards reviving / healing yourself. Now, Reap is a good damage debuff ability, you can send it towards a group of enemies and it'll be a AoE debuff beacon you can even send to those enemies that are still far from your position, which is really nice! But it could be better. Having to direct an ability to debuff enemies yourself can be jarring, moreover on console when you need to hold the ability button and aim all in the same hand! On PC this is easier because you can hold 1 with a finger and aim + shoot with the mouse indepedently, but on console, PS at least, all those interactions are delegated just to three fingers. Not quite simple. I would make it so that tapping Reap launched the Shadow to scout for enemies to affect, and hold for a targeted but double as effective version. Plus make it draw fire away from you, would make sense, wouldn't it? Mirage's clones do. Then there's Sow. Sow, as a standalone ability, might be the most useless ability in the entire game, without exxagerating. You give enemies a laughable damage per second status, and only when you Reap them do they explode dealing good damage, that disgracefully we all know happens to it when its vs armoured enemies, might as well not exist as it is also blast type. What's worse, is this has damage falloff, and it cannot be recasted until all affected enemies have... expired. Now yes paired with an armour strip ability, and viral and what-so-not, the damage of Sow will be great! But we are talking about using 3 abilities to make 1 of them good. That doesn't sit right with me. Closest example I can think of is Petrify + Landslide or Ensnare + Whipclaw, both abilities work well independently but together they get the best results. Reap + Sow however, not quite. Reap works well on its own as a damage debuff, but Sow doesn't work well on its own as anything in particular. Moving on there's Gloom. Gloom is, really, really good for the slow-paced with tranquil and steady aiming for headshots gameplay I like to have from time to time. But it is not exactly made for the likes of Sevagoth. A life-steal on hit ability with a slowdown factor would work wonders on a frame with no shield but high base health and good armour values, like Kullervo. Kullervo has a fantastic, almost exorbitant amount of base health with an incredibly competent amount of armour, but on top of that, he has overguard, which is pretty much shields but with a lot of mental gymnastics not to call them shields. If Sevagoth were like Kullervo, stats-wise, Gloom would be, in my opinion, a much more fitting ability. For a "glass-cannon" like frame with an exalted form that is also way less resistant than Kullervo, it is out of place. No like seriously, picture the following; had Sevagoth the same amount of armour and health as Kullervo does, his energy economy wouldn't be so obtusely reliant on Equilibrium + Pets with Synth set or Arcane energize, but Rage or Hunter Adrenaline would be really considerable alternatives, and it would be almost logical design wise, for Sevagoth has a rather poor energy pool of only 188. With stats like Kullervo, while Gloom is active a retroactive loop of taking damage to restore energy and inflicting it to restore health would be possible, but right now unless you're running far too many Archon shards forcused on that, it's no use. Gloom is what Sevagoth is best known for, and it easily highlights the issues of the frame. Not only do plentiful of other frames but him make great use of this ability for any of the effects it provides, but also because it happens to be easier to maintain on them due to their kits, which is put simply, shameful. Despite being infusable on other augments, Gloom also doesn't have any altered effects, unlike Nourish, and still takes the whooping amount of 275% strength to reach its maximum potential, even on Sevagoth himself. Pondering on abilities with similar cases, like Pillage, I figured out based on a comment a user made a long time ago that it'd be only fair if the frames these abilities belong to required considerably less strength to reach their max performance cap, compared to others. Finally, the exalted form. It is such an unique ability, to be a frame within a frame, and it's such a waste how many formas does one need to spend to make both of them work acceptably. Now, Shadow's abilities aren't bad, you got a really good grouping tool, which requires of a lot of range for the reach on the claws is horrible and doesn't really seem to scale at all off mods, thanks for that DE, Consume, which I've already stated my opinion on it, and Death's Harvest, which is basically Reap but around Shadow. Which, is literally Reap... Well that's unfortunate. The Shadow is meant to be tanky, to feel powerful, but how come some sort of ghost of the death, a reaper itself, is weaker than a mere traitor who committed 7 crimes. To me it makes no sense. But Sevagoth isn't meant to make sense, and outside of Gloom, makes none. And yet I like him. Now Shadow Haze is a thing, and Sevagoth has a finally a role outside of "Gloom CC on any frame", becoming a team CC & DPS massive boost. Styanax Spoiler Styanax is augment-less, no more! Intrepid Stand Spoiler Now Styanax can provide overguard to self and allies. His role as a support frame has been uplifted, and now he can survive way better as well, which ironically fixes the problem with Axios Javelin, as Axios was meant to be one of his sources of survival by grouping and disabling enemies. Author's notes on Styanax; In similar fashion to Rhino and Sevagoth, Styanax is a frame with a very fixed purpose, but that is kind of annoying for more than one reason. Gifted for free twice, nerfed, and with an acquisition some people finds unfathomable - hehe - Styanax is not a frame you see often on squads, I saw one recently on Circulus, casually as I was playing him myself, oddly enough. Was a really fun chap to talk to as well. My only issue with this frame, is the damn Axios Javelin. A wonderful grouping tool with misleading stats, and an execution that is worse than any other of the ones available in the helminth system. There's literally no point on keeping Axios Javelin over any other grouping ability on the helmith system simply because of how it works. You MUST hit an enemy with it for it to pull them in, and then, the'll be pulled to wherever the struct enemy lands. Now, enemies getting pulled towhere Axios lands, is fine, having to hit a target first, is not. No other grouping ability in the game works like this. All of them do it in two ways; either A, you need to hit an enemy first and it will group up all of them close to the catalyzer, or B, you hit something and they get pulled in close to that position. Or, C, Vauban's Vortex. Axios is a projectile based CC ability that if it hits an eximus, is as good as doing nothing. Airburst, on the other hand, at least would CC all colindant enemies to this one. And this really annoys me, for all the other abilities of Styanax precisely work most effectively on a buncha enemies! Tharros Strike? You'd need to cast it fewer times to strip a large platoon of enemies. Rally point? You'd kill a buncha enemies fast and get a lot of shields and therefore more crit chance. Last Stand? You'd kill a buncha enemies with ease! It all is held together by a bad ability which is Axios Javelin! It should simply pull all it comes across in a radious along its trajectory towards the point of collision, similar to Mach Crash! Other than that, Styanax is honestly a pretty bland frame that was overhyped. He isn't bad, but far from interesting or revolutionary. Titania Spoiler Spellbound Harvest Spoiler Hmmmmmmm! This augment is good! But it is missing one teeny tiny thing to it! The thing is, hitting four enemies with the base range of Spellbind is actually a bit difficult unless on Steel Path, as per usual thanks to enemy density being amazing and super fun there, but, building for a lot of range isn't the answer either as you require space to build for a bit of everything + suvivability on her! So, in addition to what Spellbound does, I'd make it give a passive 3 meter radious increase to the ability itself And now you know what? With Lua's Prey augment buffs, Spellbound got exactly what it needed, a bit more range! Ironclad Flight Spoiler Ironclad + Aviator = Super Damage Reduction Bros. Almost worth slotting as it can go on the exilus slot, but then what mod would you replace for Aviator? Also the vacuum is off, which isn't helpful at all. Beguiling Lantern Spoiler With Lua's Prey the augment got the exact buff I suggested it should get! Though, I know it's not because someone came all their way down here, saw this and thought, yeah, lets do that. It was simply the most logical option. Good to go, but to be honest, with the current modding system it still seems a maybe-not-all-that-well spent mod slot to me. Razorwing Blitz Spoiler Gotta go fast: The augment. Great DPS increase and also very good way of traversing landscapes with a greater sense of size. Also enhances the chances of hitting walls on closed maps by 400% Razorwing Swarm (!) Spoiler Killing an enemy while all tribute buffs are active summons a new Razorfly that joins the swarm (Max of 30). Author's notes on Titania: It's almost diverse enough. So, the thing with Titania is that she's a pixie, right? A sort of benevolent spirit fairy of the woods, and she captivates that essence quite right being a CC, buffing & debuffing frame with exalted arch weapons that are... good. They aren't excellent, but they are good, solid. Diwata kinda meh though, it's just, how it is used, all the getting stuck to an enemy like a magnet or a fly while you hit it with basically a shaving razor that somehow makes a lot of damage, just kinda weird. And the problem to me is that there isn't that interesting of a focus on the Razorflies or a possibility to "mod" that well towards them. You get 6 from casting Razorfly, and 4 other for each buff of tribute, buffs which you need to cast first on an enemy, then pick up. And that's annoying. While the buffs of Tribute are good, pretty good as a matter of fact, they are somewhat unstable when applying to allies. So, picture this, I have all my 3 allies in range, I've managed to get all 4 buffs "auras" and now I just need to pick them up to trigger their effects, but for some reason, two allies get on my UI the buff of three of them, and the other, just of one. Why? I don't know, but the buffs seem to work regardless, so who cares? I guess it's some weird thing to do with affinity range and ability range, dunno, but, it kinda annoys me I cannot make the buffs better with strength! I can make them last longer, yes, they are probably one of the abilities with the best base duration in the entire game, I run with not much duration on Titania and yet got over 110 seconds of Tribute buffs, and I can affect their casting range, not effect range, and even cast cost, so why can't my strength affect them too! Maybe they'd be just too good, thinking about it... Anyway, Spellbind, you become status immune and gain HP regen. Yeah, I don't want to get hit at all if I'm Titania, being honest with you, build for pure evasion and damage reductions and bap, you're good. And then Lantern, which is pretty cool, it's basically a moth lämp meme in an ability, everyone comes near it, and to create a boom beacon seems like a great plan, if it did enough damage to kill enemies when it detonates - mind you, it doesn't on higher levels, as it were to be expected - but hey, at least you have a great source of CC and to get to cast your Tributes easily, right? Right? So, Titania's ability kit is really solid, A+ easily, but then there's the Razorflies. They do distract enemies, and they can deal some slash damage, although they are suuuper gimmicky, but then they die, and that's it, now enemies focus on you, and you need to recast Razorwing to get them back + Tributes. Couldn't them be like, exalted pets, or something of sorts? I would like to be able to do something with them, seeing how important they are for Titania. So, similar to how Grendel got tweaked, I'd like something of sorts to be done to her, cast all Tribute buffs in one go, or allow them to scale off strength but have a limited amount of them usable at the same time, whilst also not needing to pick them up after cast. On second thougth, limiting what buffs you have active at the same time but allowing to scale the tributes with strength sounds like a really, really cool idea, and hopefully, with the pets rework that will be shown at Tennocon this 2023, the Tribute buffs for pets become more considerable. Though then, I'd like to be able to be on Razorwing while my pet does its thing on ground, since as Titania, one doesn't really want to spend that much time on her regular form over Razorwing due to squishiness vs damage evasion. Pixie world problems I guess! Trinity Spoiler Pool of Life Spoiler Health Orbs + Health Conversion = Tonk Trinity. Gud augment, but is it worth slotting? Trinity relies purely on DR with Link + Blessing, her usage is limited as a support healer to the point you could clamp up all of her abilities into two; Energy Vampire + Well of Life & Blessing + Link, and give her two whole new ones. Vampire Leech Spoiler Basically turns an enemy into a shield gating dispensers, which is pretty good! Abating Link Spoiler 168% Power Strength + Abating Link = Say goodbye armour. Gud augment, worth slotting also. Champion's Blessing Spoiler Works a bit weirdly as the crit increase is charged based on health regenerated, so it works the best on squads instead of solos, but... its iffy. Good augment, worth slotting, but I feel is far too situational. Author's notes on Trinity: The supreme lobster prime lady is practically the same frame she has been since ever. No, seriously, she may have gotten a couple minor adjustements to her augments, increased armour - which does nothing for her - and her parts changed from Ceres to Pluto, but stills, she is the same she has ever been, and she is a very forgettable and not really played frame, but why? Well of Life, makes one immune to status and regen health in a very satisfactory amount - compared to other healing per second abilities, even Wisp's motes - but... you need to cast it on an enemy, doesn't last far too long by default, and it has a bit of a limited range. Even with the augment in mind if it is meant to be healing players in range constantly, it is not that useful to drop health orbs, least you're playing with an Equilibrium + Synth set - as it is very common. It's like Blood Altar, just less effective and grants status immunity, but you can only have one. And Blood Altar is Garuda's subsume, ironically. So, Other warframes 1 - Trinity 0 on this one. Energy Vampire, on the other hand is an utterly ridiculous ability. You get, % true damage, energy like no tomorrow - no one overtakes Trinity in this field - and with an augment, tons of shields as well! It's so strangely simple, yet so outrageously effective when built for it, like, you can kill any enemy in the game this can be casted on!* *Provided you proc them with viral & magnetic so they take more damage, and use a source of damage boosting Some would run Roar to further boost this abilities capabilities, but something tells me that using a damage debuff ability might be more effective, but only Sentient Wrath is available on the helminth system. Once more, this is where teamplay could come in handy, if it existed at the same level as conceptually for the game. But it quite doesn't. We play together, not all that much as a team. Moving on, Link, not the one from Zelda, but the one from Trinity; is it just a sort of glorified DR ability? Partially yes, since it works like any other DR would, but sadly for a healer / team buffer, it is only applied to oneself - lateby came Citrine and made a joke out of Trinity when it comes to true team support but anyways - and although it redirects all damage and status to whoever you've linked to, unless you are fighting anything without armour, this won't be that good. Now yes, Abating link exists, and it only requires of 168% strength to work at full effect, so no problem with that, but once more, isn't this just a glorified DR, with also 'dr' as in, damage redirection & Damage Reduction? It works just well for Trinity, and she really needs all the damage reductions she can have given how squishy she is, hence why Blessing also gives a DR, but at this point, you gotta ask yourself, is Trinity good enough for what she is meant to? Nowadays, with arcanes, helminth system and other things, even a frame that isn't meant to do what Trinity does, like Mag, just by equipping Molt Reconstruct can do the same as her Blessing, while still being super lethal. Polarize would restore shields and health equal to five times the energy spent instantly, that seems rather good to me. Styanax with Nourish would give a constant energy supply while also providing shields on assist for a really nice duration, while also being able to completely defence-strip enemies without needing an augment, and even more at the same time if they were grouped with Axios. Wisp, gives health regen for a much longer duration with also CC and DPS benefits in the form of her motes, with also a better CC & damage ability like Breach Surge is. Oberon grants status immunity on a really large area while also providing CC in the form of radiation, whilst also giving armour, constant health per second, and armour removal as well. Trinity is in a rough spot, as a lot of frames can do what she does but better while also being more usable outside of "I gib heal". She is a medic in a battlefield where a lot of soldiers already have their own medikits or do something she does better without needing that much investment. Unlike Frost, who even if he's not the best at the things he does he's still a very solid frame for he can do all of them, Trinity simply does not keep up. She is good at what she does, but excessively focuses on something that isn't as relevant once you have some time played and understand how things work, plus right now, she is obtainable at a later stage than Citrine, which is kinda ridiculous when you think about it... Energy regen? Zenurik + Nourish on any frame. DR for the team and healing? Citrine or Revenant with his Mesmer Shield augment. AoE healing? Molt reconstruct any frame. You can even just run a Rebuild shields + Molt Reconstruct for a knock-off Blessing on any frame, but Rebuild shields is kinda crappy if we're being honest here. Now, can you beat Energy Vampire DPS? Not really, it has infinite scaling as long as the enemy can be affected by it, but, we have weapons for that, don't we? And this is a very niche case made for levelcap runs most of the time, even when paired with Marked for Death to be an "AoE Nuke". With a few pretty skins, and a very tranquil gameplay, Trinity is a nice frame to chill around, and works just fine, but isn't competent anymore compared to plentiful of other frames. Does she need a rework? Maybe, but for a frame that is solely dedicated to "healing and supporting", am not sure if a rework should keep her being just that. One way or another, this lobster is in need of some love, like the one it shares around. Valkyr Spoiler Swing Line Spoiler Spider-Man: The augment. Dumb fun, I would leave it as it is just because of that. Plus now you've got extra velocity while being spider kitty. Eternal War Spoiler Simple and easy, since Warcry cannot be recasted, adding more duration per kill is simply a tremendous help, and makes it so you don't need to build for duration, which is good, as outside of Hysteria's hysterical energy drain, Valkyr doesn't need much more than the base 100%. Prolonged Paralysis Spoiler Prolonged paralysis has suffered both a considerable buff with Lua's Prey changes, and significant nerf to its synergy with Hysteria as pointed by many, specifically in this post: I do admit that I'm not a Valkyr player myself nor someone who uses her all that often, if at all, but I think this change is rather important for it kills one of the few synergies that this very 1 dimensional frame has. Would be nice to see if in January something is done about it, although I can think of a reason as to why the knockdown was changed. Enemies who were paralyzed and pulled towards Valkyr while she is mid air might not be able to be struct with ground finishers, and someone saw this as a potential problem. Sadly, instead of just fixing it, they created another. Of course this is just a theory, not saying it actually happened, none of us knows what goes behind the scenes! Enraged Spoiler Enraged is exceptional, in the fact that it changes how one plays with Hysteria. A short burst with much higher critical chance, base damage that adds to the mods of the Talons makes it so red criting with 0 combo is easy, but this begs the question, is Enraged how Valkyr is meant to be played? How do the DEvs exactly envision how Valkyr is meant to be used? Her kit speaks for itself that it is all about melee, and retroactively helps its exalted weapon, so how come one augment limits how much can you use it? Not to say Enraged is bad, quite the opposite, but when you look at Valkyr and her kit, it's difficult not to think about what is the focus of this augment vs regular Hysteria. Hysterical Assault Spoiler Should be part of Hysteria by default, same as Catapult is for Pulverize >:| Author's notes on Valkyr: Plenty of times do I hear that Valkyr needs a rework, but why exactly? Playing as Spider-cat I comprehend is not exactly what one would expect of a "Berserker" frame, but outside of that, her kit is very coherent and plays (almost) perfectly, which I suppose is where the digression of why she needs a rework begins. I won't go deep on Ripline for my notes because as an ability is doesn't really serve a purpose, when you could replace it for Mag's Pull and it would seem like Ripline is a buggy or broken version of it, just saying. Warcry is fairly simple, armour, attack speed, and enemy slowdown, it is like Gloom, but pocket edition and with more benefits as each player can basically become a mini slowdown beacon! There's no health regen, of course, but that seems fine when you play like what Volt should feel like when activating speed. You are faster, enemies are slower. Paralysis is simple. You spend a tiny amount of energy and some shields to make this ability work, but you don't really need the shields, at all, as going for damage on this is dumb. Yes, it can deal quite the damage, but this isn't going to be your DPS ability, it's an extension off CC for Warcry by stunning enemies, or knocking them down with its augment, which will also pull everybody in, and open them to ground finishers, which are really strong on Hysteria! However, Paralysis seems to have some code oddities that make it so recasting it on enemies removes the slowdown effect, and by casting it mid air with the augment, you will slowdown enemies and pull them towards the origin cast point, so no finishers for you. They'll still take more damage, steath melee apparently, but ideally, this is to open enemies to finishers. Now comes the problem, given how Warcry and Paralysis work, you want range, strength and some duration, but not much as for Warcry there's the augment of Eternal War, and Paralysis, doesn't really mind thanks to its really low cast cost. But you don't need range for Hysteria. Hysteria is the problem here, as the ability doesn't make much sense. You gain a very cool falling animation, an exalted weapon which is unconvincing - going over that in a moment - lifesteal(why?), and become invulnarable. Of course, the first thing is talking about why the talons are unconvincing, although this is a small rant about all exalted weapons, compared to Garuda. Now, we all know, that all exalted weapons have their prime counterparts, and Garuda's Talons are considered an exalted weapon, but unlike all other exalted weapons, like Balefire for example, these do get better on the Prime variant, and are amazing! Valkyr's Talons, on the other hand(s?) do not. They remain exactly the same base stats, and that should change, not only for her, but everyone else. Like, seriously, lets take a look at Mesa for the most obvious example, you are telling me, her toy-nerf-looking base regulators, are equally as strong as when they were on their Prime? Then aren't they on their Prime all the time if they are just the same? It boggles my mind. At the end of the day, this is what really makes me think if there's a point on using the Primes over the regular variants. Wisp Prime will release this week and she is only a tiny bit faster and has a tiny bit more armour, do I care about that when the important thing on a Prime frame is just the energy pool, and getting more than just 25 health and armour? Answer is no. So coming back to Valkyr, couldn't her Talons Prime be better? More damage, more status which is the primary issue with them, the super low status, and get a more logical damage distribution? We are talking here about c l a w s that deal as much impact damage as they do puncture & slash. That doesn't quite make sense to me. Like, look, different types of blows could slash and pierce, but to cause impact with talons is unlikely, and that leads me to talk about the stance, which is the other negative of Hysteria. As any other melee weapon, you have your combos, funnily enough, not a single combo of Hysteria forces slashes or punctures, but impacts, lifts, and knockdowns. It's almost as if you were punching someone more than slashing it. Meanwhile, Garuda's Talons can equip whichever claw stance they desire, therefore having much more usable procs, whilst also being able to equip Blood Rush and mods of such kind. They also have a much more usable base range of 2.2 meters instead of 1.7 like Valkyr's talons do. And the worst part about Hysteria's stance is how slow it feels. Talons have good base attack speed of 1.5, further boosted by Warcry, but all combos are very... marcial I guess could be the word to describe them. It's like executing a technique from a martial art while practicing it alone, a sort of "lunge" on many of the attacks that goes with a quick step forward, but not really a lot of momentum to it. Opposite to all attack of the guard however, is Launching Spring. 6 hits that deal 300% of the weapons' damage each, almost instantly, it is fast, it is dynamic, and seems like could be perfectly thrown in the middle of a savage combo. Although I've bashed enough the state of stances in my weapons thread, I can't help but to talk about it here because the stance is precisely one of the major drawbacks of this ability. And finally, invulnerability, lifesteal & building up damage with a ramping up energy drain. It makes no sense to me at least, how Hysteria is meant to be played for what Valkyr is. She is a berserker, meant to be taking damage all the time, so having lifesteal on your exalted weapon is logical, but becoming immune to damage isn't. What's more, having shields and a very basic amount of health isn't either, or so do I think. I've spoken of Kullervo and how he is a very interesting frame thanks to having what I would consider a really, really good amount of base health and armour that more frames should be closer to, so that health tank builds are better for higher level content than relying on iframes from either abilities, rolling guard of shield gate, and to me, Valkyr needs the same treatment as him. No more shields, much higher base health, and honestly, more armour as she levels up. Kullervo has 675 health and 650 armour at level 30, Valkyr Prime has 300 health at max level and always the same 700 armour. The possibilities are there, one just needs to want to apply them. My ideal changes for Valkyr wouldn't be exactly a full rework of her, as she is solid in her current state, but the obvious cannot be ignore. First of, what I've just mentioned, be like Kullervo, much more health, goodbye to shields, and don't be shy to capitalize on even higher armour. Second, Ripline to be more usable. On on side I think removing it for something entirely different would be fine, but on the other it seems unnecessary if it can be made onto a good grouping ability similar to Pull, but that knocks down enemies and maybe disarms them. Third, since no more shields, and personally I don't see why would anyone use Paralysis for its damage, increase the energy cost to 10-15, and get rid of the damage stat alltogether. It doesn't play any favour to Valkyr, and with how low her shields are, you'll be more often than not taking hits to health, or to neither because you're on Hysteria. And ultimately, Hysteria. Now, it is very dangerous to modify Hysteria from how it is right now. I do not want to keep the "damage aura" as a counterpoint to being invulnerable, but removing the invulnerability would probably make a thousand people cry, and I don't really like the invulnerability with damage aura because I feel it is one of the reasons why the energy drain was made so aggressive. What I would do, would be the opposite and yet same as Baruuk, a meter. Taking hits would build it up, but it'd decay passively over time when you are in peace. As long as there's rage, the damage you take could be converted to energy so that you're not forced to rely on Rage (mod) for energy economy and can do it by default, at perhaps a 30% rate instead of 40%, or make it be scaling to the rage meter, so the more enraged you are, the higher the conversion percentage is. This would pair with the lifesteal of Hysteria, and finally make it meaningful, as if it is healing you wanted to, using Hysteria was by far the best way to do so with how many options are available right now. And to top it off, a flat damage reduction like Serene Storm. Plus a more logical damage distribution and status chance to be better on the Primed Talons. So, to finalise, do I think Valkyr is in dire need of a rework? Nope, not at all, but she could do with one, and it is easy to come up with it due to the easy to see flaws her kit sports. Simplistic kitty, but works. Vauban Spoiler Tesla Bank Spoiler Death: The augment. Absolutely worth it slotting into your build, it helps a lot with nuking enemies, Corpus mostly, but it works nicely on all factions when you take Bastille's armour removal onto account. Photon Repeater Spoiler Good when paired with Bastille's Vortex, although annoying at the same time, since the Vortext will force the drop beacon to its center, and one doesn't always want to throw it there. The recent change is like +100% ability strength, in a way, or another cast for free if you prefer it, one way or another I find it a really cool and fun little change that makes Photon Strike even more enjoyable! Repelling Bastille Spoiler Works wonders for both parts of the ability! No need to change this augment c: Author's notes on Vauban: A frame I had overlooked for far too long, similar to Nezha, and just like with him, I regret doing so, as Vauban is extremely fun to play! However, I normally like to talk about that one thing I don't like about a frame's kit before moving out of the way, Minelayer. Minelayer is funny and stuff, but outside of the flechette orbs, and occasionally the tether mines can be hilarious, but they are not all that effective, when Bastille is a thing on the same frame's kit, just my opinion. Vector pads are pretty much useless, don't really have a place or reliable use for them, and the Overcharger although it is not bad, it works like Roar after all, is kinda forgettable because you deploy one at a time. Since I cannot think of a way to redeem Vector Pads at all, I would at least change Overcharger to deploy a couple of them with the cast, instead of one at a time, so that all allies can benefit from it without having to cast the ability multiple times, thing which doesn't feel correct to me. Moving on, to one of the simplest, most fun abilities in the game; Rollie pollies, formerly known as Tesla Nervos, a simple yet effective ability that paired with Archon Stretch - which you'll need anyways because who in his right mind runs Vauban with less than 200% something strength - gives you energy constantly, which you'll need, because Vauban relies on his abilities, a lot. The augment is also incredibly useful, despite its simplicity, so just like the base ability, it's simple, and it's great. Photon Strike, is a bit more debatable. If it is damage you're thinking about, you'll most surely go for Flechette Orbs, and I cannot blame anyone for that, since you can put multiple of them, they deal crits, status, and cover more ground by deploying a couple of them in different places, or just destroy a single spot for multiple seconds. Photon Strike, sadly, relies a lot more on range because its base blast radious is far too small, hence why this ability is the one you'd more often than not replace for Spectrorage. It can deal superb damage, but it costs more, and the too small base radious makes it so even with over 200% range, it's not as reliable as the Orbs, even if the augment basically gives you 100% strength and efficiency. And finally, Bastille, which wil be our major source of survival for today's build. To make a good Vauban, we need the following ingredients: Armour, health, range, duration, and absolutely 0 Forma. Our armour won't come from armour mods, as Vauban has far too little by default to make good use of it. Will it come from Archon shards then? No. Bastille, is the answer. And health conversion too. Our health, won't come from health mods, as Vauban has okay health, but this would cost us a mod slot. Arcane Blessing, is the answer. Our range, will come from mods, as there's literally no other way to get range. Archon Stretch to gain energy from our drones, and overextended, because we need as much range as possible to stay alive. And duration, which will come from a single Primed Continuity. Now, we cannot afford to have negative strength, so we need to also slot in, Molt Augmented. With these ingredients, we obtain a 2.5k armour Vauban with 1500HP and also, we have space for all three augments & Adaptation, which should be enough to allow us to play someplace else but inside the security of our Bastille, even if there's nothing wrong with that, as a matter of fact, Bastille is one of our sources to be tonk, and Vauban's train head, knows that. Although I disagree with Repelling Bastille kicking out enemies that come in contact with it after the lift cap has been reached, and I am sure most use this augment for the perpetual vortex part instead, Bastille as an ability is perfect, and so is Vauban as a CC & Damage frame, which self-compliments his survivability in a non-boring way. So if you can, try to get a Vauban from Nora's backshop. Volt Spoiler Shock Trooper Spoiler Gud, for Eidolon Hunters. Shocking Speed Spoiler Shocking Speed is actually quite nice. While the damage is not super high or will really make you destroy SP, it is probably the best augment in the entire game to clean low level missions in Volt fashion; fast. Put on a good amount of range and speed, and you will only need to cast Speed every now and then. It is simple, it works, and paired with Archon Stretch, it does make a noticeable difference, as you will be getting energy for free just by moving a bit close to enemies. Transistor Shield Spoiler Great augment to help allies, however, I would make the stored damage be used for his Discharge ability, not his Static Discharge as you can easily charge that in a single hit in high level missions, or continuously be making use of it with an automatic weapon. Newest changes have made it even better for teamplay, which is great, but does people really go picking up Volt shields nowadays? Player would need to communicate by themselves to their teammates that they can pick up the shields, as there isn't really any indication for this until the player is right on top of it, but between these having a duration, and not having that much content in the game that would let such a cool team communication moment happen, for now, I still won't slot this augment on any of my Volt builds. Recharge Barrier Spoiler Not bad, but not that good compared to Capacitance. Can be used to set shield recharges over the map, if only the ability wasn't time based. Capacitance Spoiler Git Overshields = Survive, so great augment as it also benefits your teammates. Author's notes on Volt: Now, Volt is a frame I normally wouldn't play much before, I saw him more as a "Eidolon" & "ESO" frame than anything else, and normally I don't do Eidolons, nor take him for ESO/SO, but eventually, doing my Frame-a-day marathon, I stumbled upon him once again, and with enough experimenting, and having the Velocyst skin for I cannot stand poor Volt's looks without some Tennogen skin and I really don't fancy his other "deluxe", I understood that Volt is the perfect general use frame, and now he is one of my go-to choices for pretty much everything! Just like "old elemental frames" (Ember, Frost, Oberon, Saryn as well although as I mentioned she does what these other four do but better), Volt has that one simple 1st ability that inflicts a basic element, and an augment that adds it to your weapons elements, which is bad. Can we for the love of god change this so that it is a basic funtionality of the ability and the augment makes it separate instead, as a way to prevent people from "wah wah, I liked it better this way", so everyone is happy? Seriously, non-combined elemental infusions are really good, we need more Saryn type stuff. Come on, Toxic Lash even gives you corrosive with its augment it's ludicrous! Speed, on the other hand, is much better than what it looks like, all thanks to the augment, and the synergy with Electric shield. Speed's augment on paper seems pretty meh, a bit too "does it really contribute to do this x damage to enemies I have to run close to", but, it is actually really good, as it gives you two things; First of them, a small cc source by proccing electricity, and second, precisely because of electricity, a better use out of Archon Stretch, as using Discharge on higher levels, even with full armour removal is simply unoptimal. And that I find a bit sad, ultimate abilities are normally meant to be really strong, but outside of the start-chart, or at higher levels of this, Discharge will fall short to kill enemies within its range, and you want to build as much range as possible for it precisely due to how it works. Yes, it will help you recharge shields almost intantly with Capacitance, but this is a similar problem to that of Mag; Volt is a bit too squishy, and his source of survival relies for a good part on CCing with electricity, which is Gyre's supreme weakness, however, unlike both of them, Volt has Electric shields! And electric shields, are super good. By making them have no health, and cover a really nice angle, they are a better version of Garuda's Dread ward, though yes these came first, but point still stands. Then they double your critical damage, and add 50% electricity to your attacks as well. Picking one and activating Speed with Shocking Speeds makes you much more endurable, which is the only problem you would have otherwise with Volt, plus you will CC everything you come in contact with one way or another. Now, because of this, using Recharge Barrier might seem a better option than using Capacitance, as Recharge barrier recharges a shield percentage, and its % scales off strength. It is 35%, so 286% are needed for a complete recharge, which is a very specific number, but with Molt Augmented things are much more flexible now, so not really a problem, is it? Well, almost. Recharge Barrier would make a brilliant Volt build, if the effect could be activated more than once per shield placed. So, disgracefully, your only source of getting shields reliably with Volt is using Capacitance, and using your shields + speed to stay alive. The good thing is that this keeps you pretty active, but not in a frenetic way so you're not, as a good tenno once said, a chumpkin after an energy drink. And, best of all you've got a use and place on pretty much any mission type of the game! Given yes, some people find annoying to get the speed boost because they cannot pilot a trolley faster than 5km/h, most people will be thankful for the speed boost on most missions, as there isn't really a downside to it. Be fast, never last, Volt is a frame that from beggining of the game when you get to pick him, to the "end", if there's that, we still dunno, is a top tier choice for multiple reasons! Voruna Spoiler Rashk Track (!) Spoiler Each enemy that dies affected by Fangs of Rashk triggers a pulse that inflicts one of their status effects at 10 stacks in a 12 meters radious. Feasting Ground (!) Spoiler Excess health while Lycath's Hunt is active grant overguard equivalent to 100% of the orb's value. Excess energy grants shields & overshields. Yes, this would allow to pick health orbs and energy orbs even when at max energy. Ulfrun's Endurance Spoiler Ah, Voruna finally got her first augment as well! And it's... extremely good, but, extremely bad at the same time. Why is it really good? Because it allows Ulfrun's Descent to finally be usable to its maximum potential. But why is it bad? Because it allows Ulfrun's Descent to finally be usable to its maximum potential. In case this isn't making sense, initially, allow me to explain with another example; Gyre's Cathode Grace, an augment that fixes Gyre's pitiful kit, for her main damaging abilities finally can be used continously and reliably, as they seem intended to given she either thunder-stucks, or dies. There was a similar issue with Ulfrun's Descent, due to your initial damage not being good enough, the chances of gaining the combo counter for the ability to be upkept were pretty much grounded, now that you can "recharge" pounds, not british pounds, you can finally, FINALLY, reach the uber potential of this Apex Predator that Voruna is. And it demonstrates how strong she is but how impossible it was to make good use of her 4th simply because of a missing QoL feature on the ability that has required an entire mod to fix it. Do I recommend the augment? Absolutely. Do I think it is a problem like Cathode Grace and that is is unfair that an augment is necessary for an ability to work as it was intended to initially? Absolutely. Author's notes on Voruna: God is she good, no matter from where you look at her. Voruna's design is incredible from a visual standpoint when compared to many other frames, and it shows how it was made in colaboration with Joe Mad, but her kit is outstanding as well! First of, we got 4 passives! Extra parkour velocity is actually absurd when paired with the Praedos & Shroud of Dynar's movement boost, you can pretty much travel through open worlds quickly without archiwing or teleports! Or, closed levels too. Really useful on gamemodes where you gotta move fast, like Disruption, which Voruna's kit works at perfection for. Status immunity is amazing when using Health Conversion, Adaptation, Arcane Blessing and Lycath's Hunt, which yes, it is what I personally use on my Voruna. You become super tanky but can be invisible if needed! Although, I find the parkour velocity to be much better to evade those attacks that normally would give you some pesky status. Heavy Attack efficiency, although not my preferred one, is super good when combined with plentiful of weapons, not her Sarofang particularly. Duviri brough a bunch of great ones, and if you plan on going on a full-melee Voruna, subsuming Kullervo's Wrathful Advance over Ulfrun's Descent will be a very, very good idea. And, of course, 1 Up! Because not always do you want to rely on health tanking, and you want to spend more mod slots on other things, so you get the option to simply not die when necessary, although the 60s delay after swapping passives from this one is a bit problematic imo, for it really cuts this "on command medikit" of sorts. Abilities it is then! Invisibility with extra benefits? Amazing, and check. It's basically Loki, but not cringe. True, your invisbility breaks when you attack, but it's much more dynamic to cast, and grants massive benefits that Loki's out of season (not -ing) invisbility doesn't. Inflicting 5 random statuses on enemies, which not only boost your melee, gun & ultimate ability potential, but also can kill on their own and help you refresh your 3rd? Hek yeah! It even helps you cut distances with enemies in a blink of an eye! Health orb & energy orb farming like Citrine but passively (and quite comfortably as well)? Sign me in. Getting down on all fours... and dealing massive damage - Though we still cannot run on all fours, lets pray for the best? Looks pretty good to me! But, here's the problem, that Ulfrun's Endurance fixed; While the scaling of Ulfrun's Descent is brutal, without the augment you won't really get the combo outside of lower levels, where the damage is already pretty overkill from the get-go, so it is good the augment has fixed this, or band-aided this as many of us would point out, but at very least now all parts of Voruna's kit are perfectly usable in unison, instead of replacing Ulfrun's descent with a helminth to focus totally on meleeing only, which works still. Farming Voruna is tougher than other frames, but she's really worth it, and I love her :) Wisp Spoiler Fused Reservoir Spoiler Nothing like a QoL augment, heavily recommended, moreover since this is one of those that does go on Exilus slots. Critical Surge Spoiler Give me a single reason to use this augment. Unlike Champion's Blessing, this augment applies ONLY to the player. And it works ONLY for sniper rifles, a weapon type mostly used for one thing in the entire game, which is Eidolon Hunts. Most sniper rifles have no DoT, excluding the Sporothrix or my favourite one, the Khomorex, so why would anyone bother using this one augment? Just by changing the critical buff to affect all weapons, this augment would be really considerable to use, but as for now, leave it as it is. Hey, guess what, Lua's Prey has indeed changed the augment to work on all primaries, not weapons but that's fine, at the cost of slightly lower critical chance, so, better! Stargaze (!) Spoiler Solar Gate augment: Can now strip % defence! Reason I thought of something like this is that I love Solar Gate, but on high level missions, even with the heat and corrosive proc, a lot of armored units can still take a lot of damage without dying, resulting more often than not in the player dying instead. Yes, Wisp does have two marvelous abilities that make her immortal for some seconds and another that blinds enemies, but stills, I think that if you were hit by a literal beam of plasma from a star, you'd most likely melt. And if you don't, your armour would. Supernova (!) Spoiler Solar Gate augment: Status and crit chance increase by 5% for each 0'5 seconds Solar Gate is used. (which can be increased with Power Strength) Author's notes on Wisp: Is Wisp the most overrated frame in existance, or completely justified for her to be this popular? Her figure alone speaks volumes when it comes to popularity, that I'm sure of, so are all of us, but is she really that good? The answer is, just like Mesa, yes. Her passive makes you invisible, and its just so easy to maintain. Ever her 2nd makes you invisible while it is active. Her first is a perfect teamwide buff. She has the best of Volt, Oberon, and Harrow, all in one single ability. The Speed of Volt, the health Regen of Oberon, the RoF buff of Harrow, the CC of Shocking Speed from Volt. All. In. One. Her second is not only the best decoy in the entire game (Loki keeps sunking in misery as he deserves), but also allows you to travel easily to places that might be far away, and removes negative status effects plus makes you invulnerable for three seconds. It combines the best of Nezha's Reaping Chakram, Loki's Decoy, and a mod like Rolling guard. All. In. One. Her third combines the best of Excalibur's radial blind, and Pax seeker, while working on Eximus unlike any other CC ability. All. In. One. And her fourth, is the weakest part functionally, but also the pretiest. Opening a portal directly to the Sun and channeling its energy is really, really amazing, but the damage output can be a bit too slow. While her kit works in beautiful harmony, Solar Gate is still a bit too weak on higher levels due to the rate of fire. The ability has dual linear scaling calculations: One, heat damage deals higher damage with each tick, and second, Solar gate deals more damage for each second an enemy is being "touched" by it, but it has a limit of 500% on non-boosted, and 1k% on boosted, apparently, which cuts its potential to scale faster a bit early, as it is a 50-100%/0'5s, so in 5 seconds of hitting an enemy you already reached the beam's maximum damage potential, even if subsequent status applications of heat will keep boosting it. In similar way to Revenant's Danse Macabre, what you end up with is an ability that conceptually is really, really good, but when you get onto a tougher missions you're not going to use it all that much if at all because you've subsumed it off. What's more, Solar Gate synergizes extremely well with Breach Surge, but you cannot cast it while it is active, so you gotta cast Breach Surge first and then beam em' Being honest here, Solar gate doesn't need massive changes to its default version to be more of an "ultimate", but it needs a small one; currently the haste motes grant corrosive damage, the health ones 25% more damage, and the Shock ones 25% more damage, however, a 25% higher rof on haste motes, changing the corrosive procs to be an extra instance of corrosive damage applied by the Shock motes, and keeping the 25% damage on Health motes, would be ideal. Of course, then Augment to focus on using this ability would be ideal, just like many other frames have. Another thing that impresses me about Wisp is how many skins she has gotten in little time. She is by far, the Top 1 frame in the game when it comes to this, no one else comes close to getting as many skins as Wisp has in as little time as she did, and honestly that's fine, she has all the reasons to be a beloved frame for many. Plus there's just something so ethereal and chill about her. With her Prime now my Wisp looks like she's wearing a jumper and is cozy. It's the perfect frame for anything. Well deserved popularity. Wukong Spoiler Celestial Stomp Spoiler It works well as a source of Crowd Crontol without needing to subsume nothing onto Monke boi. Worth slotting? Not really to be honest, and with the nerfs to Celestial Twin's lethality, well, adding CC isn't really making up for it. Enveloping Cloud Spoiler Provides a bit of team support but, the range is pretty small, could be a bit better so that with further modding it can be neat. Lua's Prey buffs have made it slightly better, but I don't think anyone is using Wukong this way to be honest. Wukong's Blessing (!) Spoiler Defy Augment: Increases Defy's armour cap by 100%, is now shared with all allies within affinity range. Primal Rage Spoiler You cannot equip Blood Rush on Exalted Melees, but you can put this, on Wukong instead? Only issue with Wukong's 4th is it deals mostly impact damage, so the damage towards most factions and in general falls pretty shortly the higher you go in a mission. The augment is neat and I do really recommend it, but Wukong's exalted needs something to it to be better. Yeah, I know it is a staff, but dude! It is not that amazing for a Warframe's 4th ability, moreover when Celestial Twin (was) is a thing. Author's notes on Wukong: Monke. Monke is gud. But, after the changes (nerfs) Wukong received post his rework, he isn't that good at what I believe his kit is meant to be. It is true he has a very reliable and easy to understand ability set that makes him the optimal multi-tool for newer players, having invisibility, high mobility in 3 dimensions, a way to heal quickly and without taking damage, and a way to obtain a large amount of armour that benefits any form of playstyle. He also possesses the best exalted melee of all warframes in terms of base stats, but not really in terms of actual performance. And that's what sort of bothers me, Wukong is meant to be fast, endurable, and lethal, but the lethality you'd expect to come from his Celestial Twin & Iron staff, which doesn't, when the actual ability that can deal the most damage of his kit is Defy, the one that keeps you alive in combination with Cloud Walker, which to me is simply redundant. The issue with the Celestial Twin isn't that it drains ammo from your reserve, which yeah, was op before with certain weapons, but his reactions and way of working restrict how you do. If I have a melee equipped, then he uses a gun, sometimes secondary, sometimes primary. If I use a gun however, then he picks a melee and doesn't do greatly. True, he can be given a target to deal twice as much damage to if you mark someone in specific, but neither the damage output is considerable as to make the Twin Worth it on higher level content, nor is it really that easy to apply in mission when either an explosive weapon or you yourself will wipe the floor quicker. Part of the problem here is that despite monky bro (CT) uses the same weapons as you have equipped, and so do these take into account their mods, galvanized stacks and arcanes do not apply at all, nor can he trigger them due to surely some funky code. Monky bro also seems quite... lazy or slow ever since the nerfs, but this may be due to how jarringly cumbersome certain older AI of Warframe is (specters), which is the type that CT uses. Newer enemies are much more active, animation & attacks wise at least, like Thraxes for example, and deal plentiful of damage which makes them wonderful enemies, but CT is just meh monke. Then there's Iron staff, which as every single exalted melee is meant not to equip certain important mods which cut its potential short - but Regulators can, mind you - but then it has a Blood Rush augment. Smart. Dealing mainly impact with 30% slash, more or less, doesn't make it too good for anything but Corpus, but at least has good enough base damage to be competente once modded. Now, if Shattering Impact was good on anything but gunblades, then perhaps more impact melee weapons would be highly usable against all factions, but that is not the case yet. It would surely help Iron staff be more multi-faction, which is sort of needs. So, Monke is a very reliable and easy to use frame, obtain too, but between the funky AI of CT and not that outstanding damage output of Iron Staff, yeah, his role as some form of DPS is relegated to an ability that forces you to be hit to deal damage, and on multiplayer that normally ends up with everyone around you dead, but not because of you. Do I use Wukong often? Nope, but I think CT needs an AI rework, and that Iron Staff is great, but could be better if the tools used to upgrade it were better. Xaku Spoiler Vampiric Grasp Spoiler Xaku's augments are completely new, and the first one is ever so slightly unsuitable, in my opinion. Why?, you may ask. Xaku is all about evading damage, and it has little health and armour to be the type of frame to handle shots or hits, and even if you happen to be hit, why would you put an augment that requires you to make use of two abilities to restore only 25 health per hit, when you can equip your Tenno with Magus Elevate and instantly replenish 300 health? It's just tapping a button twice! To me the change seems clear; make Grasp of Lohk weapons return health whenever they hit a target, instead of overly complicating things for no apparent reason. This way, even if they hp they return is low, it is constant, and more useful than nothing. The Relentless Lost Spoiler Absolutely amazing augment, this one IS a top recommendation of my list of augments, I think it is smart, and really really good. Giving you (up to) +105% power strength is a blessing as it allows you to focus on duration and range for Xaku instead of Power Strength. That way, your Gaze can easily strip enemies of all possible defences without having to focus on strength for it, and it also helps boost the damage of the hyperbeam, which I wish escalated off enemy level like Grasp of Lohk but welp, same scenario as Vauban's Flechette vs the Proton Strike. Lua's Prey augments have blown me off my socks. That 45% ability efficiency is wonderful, as The Lost is kinda expensive to cast on rotation, so, an amazing change, though not one I thought it needed, to me it was perfect as it was! Author notes on Xaku: Bad to the bone.mp3 - Reasons to like Xaku? 1) Skelebro 2) Has a bun, just like me! Three frames, apparently "controversial" due to being multi-genre (I still don't get it), but incredibly versatile, Xaku is an amazing frame! First, void damage is a pretty strong buff nothing else in the game can grant but Xata's Whisper, and the bullet-magnet effect is super nice on weapons with punchthrough, and not at the same time. It's a bit wonky to be fair but the damage bonus is pretty brute and as long as your first blow hits the head, consecutive ones will do as well, so no problem! And the damage calculation, although a bit weird yet sense-making when you start to read about it, is a pretty substantial buff. Stealing enemy weapons and using them for your advantage is a double edged sword, but only with negative consequences for the foes, not for us, as their damage increases with enemy level! Sadly, most frames do not have a scaling source of damage as good & reliable as this one. That said, the augment for Grasp of Lohk isn't really good or making any favours to Xaku. You get healed per hit of your ability weapons on any enemy affected by The Lost, but Xaku is pretty squishy, and therefore any damage directly done to health can be a cause of insta-death, or far too high DPS to be offsetted by 25hp/shot on some specific targets, even if it is basically a passive effect, which is why I think Vampiric Grasp is quite unsuitable for Xaku. Now, the Lost is the best ability of the kit, imo, as it has 3 uses, and each one of them is pretty good and interesting on their own; Accuse allows to be like Revenant, but cooler! A mini army of void-controlled minions is similar to the concept of the neural sentry of void towers, and while their damage output is as good as their level allows, having (with enough strength) 24 enemies to fight along your side, is quite bonkers. Neither Nyx or Revenant come close when it comes to mind-controlling targets, Xaku is THE MVP in this field, as 24 enemies are still more efficient than a single Nyx Mental Monster, and unlike with Chaos, none of them will attack you or your allies :D Gaze (or REEEEEEE) allows to completely remove enemy defences, and unlike Grasp of Lohk, the augment for this ability is incredibly worth it for this one of the three, for it basically frees and entire mod slot! It's sort of an "Amalgam Primed Intensify" if we could call it that, and makes it so you can build for high range without needing to worry about strength, as slotting molt augmented + The relentless Lost will give you a whooping 165% ability strength, and a nice 15% ability efficiency, and that makes it so even with Overextended you have enough strength to fully remove enemy armour. That's a single mod and an arcane, leaving you plentiful of room to equip other things on Xaku. Personally, I suggest max range, a bit of duration with Primed Continuty + archon shards, energy max with P.Flow, and since Xaku has two base Vazarin Polarities, you can use one for Overextended, and the other for Health Conversion, then your second arcane slot for Arcane Blessing, and also Carnis Caparace (plus if possible the other Carnis set mods on your other weapons) to get tons of effective health, and insanely high survivability while The Vast Untime is active. And then there's hyperbeam, or Deny as the game calls it, which yes, it isn't as good as the other two, but, it can deal nice damage. Now since building for range increases the amount of weapons you can steal in total (for some odd reason), this means that combined with Relentless Lost at max effect & the effects of the Vast Untime, you can deal 4k * (1+1.05) * (16+1) * 1,5 damage, or what is the same 209k damage, which then you (could) use on an Eximus' overguard to deal another 50% more damage to it so 312k more or less. Which is pretty good damage, but then you realize your Grasp of Lohk will probably shred far faster anything, and without requiring of as much preparation, which is an important factor to take into account, using Deny at max effect makes it so you need to do a couple more things than simply casting your 2. Ultimately, Bad to The Bone: The ability is what helps Shaku (wait, those are the nunchuks) stay alive, and with the Carnis Set, or Agility Drift plus the mods I mentioned above, you'll be pretty much a walking Juggernaut, and automatic, which is the problem I see with Xaku, it is far too "automatizable", afkable almost. If I were to make a change to Xaku so it wasn't as easy to use as simply cast two and run around killing everything, it'd probably be making it so your void replicas from Grasp of Lohk shot when you did, and to the target you are aiming. Perhaps for an augment that granted something else this would be super cool! But regardless, bone boi / girl, whatever you prefer, it is three so it can be one or the other, is a really neat frame, and very unique as well. Yareli Spoiler Cryotic Snares (!) [by @PsiWarp] Spoiler Sea Snares augment, snared enemies no longer receive damage per second, instead emit a 4 meters aura that stacks 1 / 1 / 2 / 3 Cold procs per second on nearby foes. Killing the source instantly freezes nearby enemies in place for 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 seconds. Bubble Wrap (!) Spoiler Sea Snares augment: Tap to cast 3 giant bubbles that seek out enemies and traps them inside, bubbles last 30 seconds by default. / Hold to cast a single massive bubble that seeks out all enemies nearby and traps them inside, suffocating them to death (deals true damage to health, 2% per second). Wave Crash (!) [by @PsiWarp] Spoiler (Exilus) - Merulina augment, perform K-Drive Tricks to expand the radius of the next slam shockwave up to 20 meters with each trick adding 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 meters. Dashing and moving dismount pull enemies along within 5 meters. Tidal Anchor (!) Spoiler Disables inertia on Merulina and reduces her movement speed to 70%. Hold crouch to sweep enemies around you with her tail and knock them down. Merulina Guardian Spoiler The ability to heal Merulina is the ability to stay alive! A good augment that helps greatly improve Yareli's survivability and DPS. Pair it with Arcane Pistoleer and get ready to go brr brr on anything you encounter. Pretty good alongside Yareli's changes. Surging Blades Spoiler Well wow, this one is deadly as hek! Hitting enemies will convert an 8% of the Aquablades damage to a charge that can be thrown like a Glaive in a good area and deals forced slash. Best part is said stacked up damage does not decay when you throw these! Only when timer runs out. Wowie. The best out of the 4 coming augments from what I've seen. Shattering Blades (!) Spoiler Aquablades augment: Reduces enemy armour by 10% per hit Tidal Burst(!) [by @PsiWarp] Spoiler Riptide augment, hold to create the tide centered on Yareli and follows her for the next 5 seconds. Recast while active to burst early, or dash with Merulina to launch at high speed riding the burst. Rising Riptide (!) Spoiler Riptide augment: Each enemy absorbed by Riptide increases its range by 20% and critical chance + critical damage by a 50% Author notes on Yareli: Complex to evaluate, for she is both great and terrible. From a meme level frame to a very capable one that is drawn back by her own signature trademark due to how it unmatches most environments of the game & quest alone, Yareli is a run (skate?) & gun frame that isn't that good at it. For example, Sea Snares work well as traps so enemies don't move - though the issue is more often than not your own movement, not theirs - but they are static, as in they stay where you throw them (plus their homing area, that is), which is good to keep something under control, but at the same time seems out of place for a frame that I believe is meant to stay mobile. Then there's Riptide which despite being the big badaboom, has the same issue as Gyre, armour cuts its damage potential short and therefore you rely on another ability to do the DPS, Aquablades in this case, similar to how Ulfrun's Descent wasn't all that capable before its augment was added and spamming Fangs of Rashk was simply more effective. Of course not all is doom and gloom for Yareli, but Merulina really hinders a core aspect of Warframe, movement, and this affects how you play with her severally. So while the survivability Merulina provides is actually baffling (seriously what the hek), your mental health may be detrimented from using it, so there's that. Does Yareli need a big rework because of that? Not really, but surely she could do with a couple changes to Merulina's movement flow so that Yareli feels better to use on more tilesets, as it's not really the speed which is problematic, plenty of frames can achieve absurd speeds, but the ability to control it yourself, which the inertia doesn't allow. Our cute - and interestingly dressed - waverider still has a bit of a way to go before she becomes a considerable pick for more players, despite having quite the power hidden under her ski- I mean, hood. Which includes doing the quest. And oh boi, do many not wanna do it to this day. I gotta keep on farming Ventkids rep to become a Tenno Master someday :( Zephyr Spoiler Anchored Glide Spoiler Copy pasta of Nezha's passive augment. I do not like it but some players don't like Zephyr's passive either so I guess it's only fair to leave it untouched, or at least allow it to give +15% duration and range too. Target Fixation Spoiler It does work nicely when using Zephyr's 2 to group up enemies, so cool augment! Not that you can deal much damage by smashing your head against the ground though... or can you? Target Fixation can make Zephyr deal infinite damage, as long as you can keep the buff up. The recent changes with Lua's Prey seemed unnecessary to me, but its a welcome QoL improvement for our favourite birbframe, which still can't fly. It's more of a jet. Airbust Rounds Spoiler Cool augment, another of my top recommendations. Wouldn't change anything of it. Turns out it got buffed, now damage is easier to achieve, so perfect! Violent Turbulence (!) Spoiler Turbulence augment: Enemies that come in range of Turbulence will be staggered every second, allowing them to be opened to finishers. +40% Turbulence duration. Jet Stream Spoiler Turn your Tenet Arca Plasmor into a sniper rifle with this augment. Dumb fun, but somehow recommendable. Funnel Clouds Spoiler I personally think the good thing about Tornados is precisely their ability to immobilise & group enemies, so Funnel Clouds, while it is an amazing way of making single target weapons become AoE, is not something I would personally use. However, you can still make them work like base Tornadoes if you apply the lifted status to an enemy, then the Funnel Clouds will pick them up. A bit odd, but it works. Hurricane (!) Spoiler Tornado augment: Generate a single massive and super violent Tornado that drags enemies from further away and gains 1 second of duration per affected enemy killed. Author's notes on Zephyr; The bird that cannot fly for its first ability is more of a jetstream propulsion than anything else, innit? Now, if you plan on traveling long distances, Tailwind isn't the tool. If you need to traverse short ones quickly, neither, as it's barely controllable unlike other things like Mach Rush. If you however need to move a distance that is somewhat in between, which newer tileset seem to offer a fair amount of these, Tailwind allows you to comfortably move around, and stay mid air for that nice critical chance bonus of Zephyr's passive. Additionally, if you plan on smacking the ground for its several warcrimes with your face, you can do that as well thanks to Target Fixation, takes a while to get it built up, but with enough repeated casts, you'll kill the ground as well. Don't believe me? Try it yourself! May take a while, but eventually you get there. Everything else also dies due to how much damage you'll be dealing so there's that if you're interested. Meanwhile, if you feel like going shopping for either container loot, enemies, or secondary damage buffs, Airburst is just what you need, and it works pretty well for all these things with & without its augment. Of course unlike other frames CCing isn't the only way to survive for Zephyr, for that there's Turbulene which basically says "no u" to any projectiles that may try and hit you, which really makes me wonder why more players don't pick Zephyr over Revenant. Now yes, Turbulence doesn't make you status immune or actually immortal, but it also allows you to protect nearby teammates and objectives, which makes Zephyr a much better defence frame than she might seem at first, although you'll have to be on your teammate's neck or smelling their nostrils for this to be effective. Then of course, Tornadoes are amazing, but they seem broken? As it is known, they seem to have an internal damage cap that once achieved they will deal no more damage until they are recasted, which is extremely odd as no other ability in the game works this way, with the only similar case that I can think of being Nova's Antimatter Drop, but that's different too. So with a neat deluxes skin and a handful of pretty tennogen ones, a simple enough kit and easy to obtain as well, there isn't much to be said about Zephyr from my side to be honest, she is a frame I enjoy playing but I'm highly surprised I don't see her more often! Highly recomend to run something else but the Arca Plasmor helmet of Harrier, really. Author notes: Kullervo is here! Warframes Spoiler Ash Spoiler Ash is an okay and capable frame for what he's meant to, killing, but his change from being obtainable from killing Grineer maniacs to Railjack, alongside Oberon, was not only thematically wrong, but a bad call, moreover now that the Circuit is a thing. Aside from that, he accesible to play, has great skins, and overall, is simply nice at what he does. Nice however, is not good, nor great. One of the major upsides he has is he doesn't require many forma to have a working build, and you can slot plentiful of augments on him simply because nothing matters for his survivability because he can become invisible, which is still very odd for one of the frames with the highest base health of the game. As I argued while reviewing his augments, all of his abilities besides Smoke Bomb, are in a very poor and weak state as of now. They haven't been nerfed or have changed, and precisely because they are stagnant they are mostly useless and could easily be replaced by 3 helminth ones if the player got the option to do so, which luckily they do not. If you decide to maximize the damage done by Bladestorm by slotting in a very prepared melee and an augment for a helminth ability that increases finisher damage, this is a final multiplicative value and therefore quite the buff, you can ditch tons of damage, to certain enemies. For example, SP Grineer may not stand a chance against you simply due to the fact that finisher damage will go directly to health ignoring armour and most of them do not have all that much health to begin with. If however you tried the same antics on one of the newer factions with special enemies like the Anatomizers, you may be disappointed. Performance of Bladestorm being so variable by depending not only on your own setup but enemy you face, is ultimately a massive issue when it comes to trusting your ULTIMATE ability to deal with high priority targets and because of that, nor worth it. Reflecting on the points made afore of this, it's hard to say that Bladestorm can compete with other players in the squad at doing what it's supposed to. Thus, comes the thinking; Ash is the space ninja, no one else comes close, and surprisingly, even with how much the game has changed over the years, Ash remains. Not necessarily good or powerful, he just is. Sometimes undocumented changes make him a bit better, sometimes minor adjustments, but much hasn't changed, and he is just ok at killing normal enemies. Other than that, Ash doesn't do much. He's plain, he's bland, and ultimately a frame I can comprehend why it is not played often. Be invisible, be stealthy, kill normal enemies & eximus, and that's about it. Not a very interesting frame, but very correct to his theme. Atlas Spoiler Undoubtedly, Atlas is my favourite and main frame. Although over the years many new interesting and lovely frames have come out - both visually and kit design-wise -, he's still the one I rock with. Now, it is true he's not the most popular, he's actually among the lesser used ones, and there are comprehensible reasons for it. His kit, is a bit similar to that of other frames which are a bit old/slightly outdated now, such as Frost or Chroma. Has two good abilities, these being Petrify and Landslide, and two bad ones that you can't really use for anything in gameplay. If that were not enough, between his two good abilities, one is hyper easy to upgrade, while the other requires quite a lot of maximisation, as it's a pseudo-exalted, with bad stats, just like Gara's greatsword, but unlike this one, Landslide only has one purpose, punching fools. And I love punching fools. With the use of the Helminth system, Atlas can be a pretty good frame in terms of damage, but the cost for him to be the best he can be, is very high, and can make him not have too many different builds. Some helminth abilities help with his problems, making Atlas be the best he's ever been, but once more, the helminth system is not the way to fix a frame, and Atlas definitively needs some changes to half his abilities to be up to date. Worst part about Atlas is the fact that his kit isn't meant solely for "punching fools", but sadly it is all it is effective for. Bulkwrath is meant to be some sort of defensive measure like Volt's shield is, but it has all the weaknesses a defence mechanism can have. Limited size, opaque, and with the classic "stores damage for health initially", bulkwrath is basically useless, even if it can displace certain targets. Then there's Rumblers. While they do draw fire away from you, which is good, and they too can punch fools, plus their effective health is acceptable at higher levels, they are also a bit of a waste of ability. Although replacing bulkwrath is always the better option, if need be, Rumblers is also easily replaceable, and that is incredibly bad when you think about it. Similar to Frost & Chroma, who both have abilities with "use, but do I really care about it", these being Freeze, Ice Wave, Spectral Scream and Effigy, it is sad to think that you could replace HALF the frame, and that would make them better. Atlas, has two very solid abilities that keep him afloat, but that is no excuse to keep him in his current state. Despite all the downsides he has compared to plentiful of other way-better-at-everything-he-does frames, he is still my favourite, and I don't think that will ever change if it hasn't already, though some newer frames have gotten a lot of love from my part due to how cool they are, even if not that popular. Banshee Spoiler Banshee's current state as of 2024 is that of a sadly withering frame when it comes to her base kit. Having a kit that focuses extremely on damage and CC evenly, Silence by itself while a wonderful ability, fits better on frames that may stand a chance at not getting killed within a few seconds of casting it. The stun is okay, so is the ability negation towards enemies, but you can't do much outside of that. Will you spam Sonic Boom to CC enemies every second? I don't think so, moreover when they are covered in overguard and you won't do crap to them then. Sonic Boom by default is also another very weak ability with no real purpose outside of lower levels of damage until you get the augment, that is. Sonar, on the other hand is a good scaling ability which provides an important bonus for both Banshee and her squad, giving her a role of support glass cannon. Stills, unlike other glass cannons like Gyre for example, Banshee lacks defences in either the form of shields, health, armour or some sort of DR ability by default to make her survive without the use of helminth abilities as are Gloom combined with her Silence or Eclipse now that is has been adjusted for better usability. This leads us to the fact that her "ulti" is also her most useless and weakest ability in terms of scaling, providing net 0 value on higher end missions, or even outside of lvl 20 start chart defences for that matter. Overguard was a nail in the coffin of CC frames, many say, and Banshee is no exception, if so, she's the Paragon of it. Even if her Silence can disable Eximus abilties, the lack of survivability and hyper focus on damage are ultimately her demise when it comes to solo play with a vanilla setup, this meaning no helminths, for there's no way to mitigate incoming damage, or avoid it. Is Banshee bad then? A dead frame? Not exactly, but she has to try too hard to compete with frames that right now provide a lot more than she does while having her most important attribute be part of the helminth system for others to pick, making her ultimately obsolete and worse than the rest on the long run. She is, put simply, being slowly pushed to the bottom of the list by being ignored and kept in the exact same state as she's been for years. Surprisingly enough, you may not see that many rework threads flying around for her, which to me is odd upon analysing her current situation. She need some form or refresh to be better and less of a one trick pony that you can pick apart and put on other frames, or rely on the wonderful interaction of Gloom and Silence just so she can more comfortably play. Baruuk Spoiler Whilst Baruuk is meant to be a, sort of defensive-support in a way frame, he's one of the most perfectly offensive frames in the entire game. Think about it, your first ability, allows you not to take damage at all while not shooting, your second, first slows down enemies, and then puts them to sleep, effectively being a great radial CC tool, your third, disarms them and provides damage reduction, making it so they have to melee attack you, increasing your survivability and making it so the blows from your fourth take full effect! But not everything is perfect. His 1 requires of a lot of range to be useful, and since your 3 already grants damage reduction alongside your 4, it makes no sense to have it. His 2 goes to waste more often than not as the slow isn't really usable nor is the sleep if enemies wake up the moment something tickles them, making it so you're better off helminth-in an ability like Radial Blind. Likewise, your 4, despite being an incredibly strong exalted weapon, has a hard time dealing good damage if you don't mod for crits, and then depends on your actual equipped melee's combo count and mods to be better, which makes no sense. What's more, without the augment for it, it can be quite disappointing, and due to the damage type it deals primarily, you'll have a tough time vs armored units, hence why adding Pillage to your build is the best option*. If that weren't enough, trying to build combo with Desert Strom is simply annoying, as you have little range, and your attacks just throw enemies a-ragdoll everywhere. It could make them stumble (stagger & big stagger status effects) instead of sending them to another galaxy, although it can be fun seeing a Thrax go from the Undercroft to Lua with a slap. Even with those little annoyances in mind, Baruuk is an amazing frame. He's simple to play, has some great skins, and simply has a very chill to use kit, which makes him very comfy for any situation. Despite being a 'pacifist monk', his kit is made to cripple enemies so he can kill them with ease, rather than "pacify" them. Octavia's Resonator is the true pacifier. *Regarding Pillage, there are a couple reasons for this. I have, two Baruuk builds, one with Sentient Wrath and making use of Enduring Affliction on Desert Wind, and another with Pillage on it. Both use the augment, and while the Sentient Wrath build is definitively more fun, it is worse than the other. With Pillage, you can strip defences easily, as Baruuk builds normally focus fully on strength, so reaching the 328% threshold with corrosive projection for Pillage isn't hard. This makes it so Reactive Storm can work at 100% effectiveness on all units equally, while also removing negative status effects from yourself, and replenishing your shields. Combine this with the damage atenutation of your abilities, and you have a perfect balance of defence, and offence. By keeping both his 2 and 3, you also have a great form of CCing enemies and helping the rest of your team. Baruuk, as I said, doesn't need much to be great, and despite his simple looks, is an amazing frame that anyone should give a try. Still would change his 1 so it doesn't require all range mods to be good, but what do I know, might as well subsume it off, as do we all. Caliban Spoiler I've really tried to make Caliban work, I really have, but he's simply not cutting it. His asymetric design is ugly, he has no augments to spice up his bland abilities, provides nothing helpful in team play that another frame can't do better, and with the exception of his fourth, his whole kit passive included, is poor, but DE has completely forgotten about him, not even joking, some frames that have come out after Caliban have already gotten augments due to how popular they are, as are for example Citrine or Kullervo, which says a lot about the state of this frame in particular. His first ability is below unusable, this is the one I cannot see being usable even with a buff to its damaging capabilities because it's annoying to use, restrictive, and more of a nuisance than a tool to do something it's meant to. This is meant to kill, apparently, but it's a cheap copy of Revenant's Danse Macabre, with none of its strengths. His second ability is off, but not by too much. The underlying problem is not (completely) the ability itself, but the lifted status working as it does. If you shoot an enemy, they go a-ragdoll everywhere, just like with Desert Wind - if you use a weapon with strong impact. In the case of more normal guns, the enemies just, fall after the first hit, and this is a problem. The way I want and I know is absolutely better for lifted to work, is simply copy Rhinostomp. Enemies get suspended mid air, and they don't move almost at all while you can strike and shoot them, instead of waiting so they flail around to a correct position so you can hit a headshot and oh wait, what was that? You missed because it kept spinning like crazy and now the enemy flew to the other side of the room? Too bad, it's your fault. There is no rhyme or reason to gatekeep the way Rhinostomp works just to Rhinostomp when Overguard can be put on any frame and even shared for the whole team by some. Sentient Surge also applies a fairly weak damage vulnerability when compared to other abilities of this kind as can be Reap or Blazing Chakram, which adds insult to injury to Caliban's kit. Lethal Progeny is almost acceptable. Having three sentients to fight along you whilst replenishing your shields is great on paper, but they aren't. Making the summons scale off ability strength is a pain for a frame that doesn't really benefit from achieving greater strength values than 200% for his last ability to do the biding. Did they scale off enemy level, then they wouldn't be such a waste of energy, as they die easily due to their horrible restrictions of not only being slow, but also melee units that perform attacks that make them even slower (the spin of death, theirs, not the enemy's). This isn't a cheap ability to cast thrice for it to be nullifiable by every enemy in the game in a sneeze. It is the epitome of bad design. Another issue with this ability is how the sentients won't regenerate your shields once these deplete, which doesn't really make Caliban better than any other frame who can just slot in Arcane Aegis and some mods to reduce shield recharge delay. There's so many ways Lethal Progeny can be changed to be excellent that it's beyond me why it hasn't already. And finally, his fourth ability is, in stark contrast with the rest, just good. 100% defence strip at 200% strength, permanently on an area and you can cast it twice? It's literally the best defence strip ability in the game, and it is good it isn't part of the Helminth system, or otherwise, Caliban would be an even more forgettable frame than he is already, which being honest, doesn't seem possible. The usage stats for frames this past year shown him to be the least used frame in the entire game across all mastery ranks combined, and it's not hard to see why. When it comes to building Caliban, you just replace his 1, because even if his 2 and 3 aren't that good, they aren't but as bad. Put on Resonator, if you want to stay alive for large amounts of time, and also slot in the Conductor augment, this way, you can not only divert all attention from you by combining his now 1 and 3, but you can also forcefully redirect all enemies towards the area you created with Fusion Strike. You can use your 2 then once all enemies are within its range so they take increased damage from your sentients and you, mostly you, and boom, that's a "good" Caliban right there. More or less okay, I tried my best :P Overall, the cost to make him "nice to play" is not high, depending on the level of investment you're willing to put on it, but at that point you may just be reinforcing onto some aspect of his that you couldn't touch with a more comfy and affordable build, so is it really worth it? The possibilities of making different builds on him are null, you need 200% strength, some range, and some duration, but that's all, there's no room for some creativity, with or without helminth. I like some things about Caliban, he has a very interesting theme and concept, but not exploited at all, and his potential is abysmal. So basically, Caliban is one of the frames to have ever existed, that's a good way to describe him. Chroma Spoiler If I had to describe Chroma, I'd say he's a complexly simple frame. You have, very simple and straightforward abilities which synergize partially with each other, but nothing really interesting going on for him. Focusing on his not-so-used abilities brings nothing to the table, focusing on his good abilities, it's what pretty much everyone does and also doesn't bring much to the table besides more armour, more damage, and a few simple buffs. Some of these buffs are more interesting than others, such as extra damage on weapon swap, amplified reflected damage so on and so forth, but in the end, it's not all that distinctive for an "Elemental master dragon-knight" frame, which is a pity for that sounds a fantasy+ level of character. He does work very well at what he does, not the best, but very well, and he is in a solid position due to this, just like Inaros is when it comes to tanking. But that doesn't mean that either of both are exciting to play. Problem of course lies in having a limitedly effective kits of 2 good abilities and 2 wastes of space. Citrine Spoiler Definitively one of the best frames we have gotten in years. Although not incredibly popular, Citrine is easily a S tier frame in my eyes. Provides energy orbs, health orbs and thereby added bonuses one might gain from mods such as Health Conversion or Equilibrium, damage reduction, status chance, status duration, critical chance and up to 6 different status procs for free on enemies. You cannot ask for more of a frame, even less when this comes with extremely solid base stats, boasting also an increased base health pool to further capitalize on her DR & HP regen, unlike do other frames with DR until they slot in an augment or external thing of sorts, as can be Ember for example. She's perfect. Fun and easy to understand abilities that synergize well not only within their context and kit, but with plenty of things, and helps pretty much improve every aspect of any mission and team. Aaaaalthough I still don't like her base helmet or her split calves + shoulders... really going to buy a deluxe for her whenever it comes out, as long as it's pretty that is. Seems I have a mania of branding her augments "Prismatic something"... can't blame me can you? Dagath Spoiler Dagath is a surprising frame since she has very simple lore which is easy to understand, a cohesive kit with no flaws, and overall stats that backed up changes done during her update, as were shield changes. Her focus? Kill, every single thing you can imagine, nothing else, no team buffs, no survivability, just a bit of CC from her Doom which is mostly to deal even more damage in the end. I really like that we don't need many mods to make her simply great and you can actually choose how do you prefer to survive with her, will it be shields or health tanking with some extra mods and arcanes? Answer is up to the player, personally chose to go both ways with Catalysing Shields since she has a low amount of them and just using Brief Respite + Blind Rage is enough to replenish her whole shields with a single cast, and in case that fails, I got Health Conversion with Arcane Blessing underneath. And, you know her passive grants a looot of energy so paired with Equilibrium running out of energy is almost virtually impossible. Now, not everything is perfect, while she's great and got a pretty neat "butcher" of sorts design (am I the only one who sees it this way?) she's ultimately pretty one-dimensional and prone to be built mostly towards a mix of abilities + gunplay with a degree of survivability, but you can't exactly focus on one of her "aspects" as all of her kit as I pointed out is single-purposed on killing, unlike other frames which might have more utility built into their others. In a way this makes her very akin to the older frame designs of 2015< that mostly tried to stick to a role and that was it instead of doing multiple things. And that's perfectly fine, so is Dagath. Not a fan of needing a separate Dojo room to get her just because some artist from the team got a cool idea for a room though. Like yeh mate, it's lovely, I'm not denying it, but this thing is devoided of functionality or purpose besides getting Dagath's stuff and getting to customize your Kaithe from the dojo, which is... not exactly all that exciting if you ask me. Dante Spoiler This man right here, got the quickest nerf in history, and honestly? Totally deserved. Providing Overguard, a free multishot of sorts, Overguard per second, status chance vulnerability, status damage vulnerability, slash damage on a conic aoe with absurd range, CC, and to top it all off a busted version of Sickening Pulse, Dante is a frame that with few mods can do more than most frames can with high-end builds and suffers not from any of the design inconsistencies of his predecessor, Qorvex. He single-handedly (since the other is on his Noctua) made a joke out of DPS frames with his Dark verses and Tragedies, and made a joke of support frames with the rest of his kit, by also complimenting his DPS half. He's pretty much one of the best frames in the entire game for high level content without helminth abilities or expensive mods. Best part is he also has an absurdly good exalted weapon that does not rely on gimmicky stat-sticking to make it good, as not only does this one have great damage and stats, but also mechanics with ricocheting (sort of) shots that chain to nearby enemies and an alt fire like the Arca Plasmor we all know and love, it even does radiation too! But, that's not even the BEST part, he is extremely tranquil to farm as his parts can be both bought and dropped from the new Armatus Disruption node which is the chillest high level mission of the game, making it honestly, much more fun and less stressing than a normal disruption. Not that these are but, it's way less, though the demos get very tanky on groups and that's ugh. So is Dante insanely powerful (and also very comfy to farm)? Yes, he is,the nerf he got somewhat was totally correct and in place - although almost immedietly reverted since, well, people bought and spent resources on OP frame because he's OP and when he got nerfed they got angry, can't blame them, that's an absolute rugpull and he shouldn't have come out with his level of power to begin with - , but even with his "readjustment" he's still a 100% meta frame that makes already struggling to see the day of light ones, get pushed deeper into the pit of Oblivion they belong to for simply not being as good, for he is the almighty Sun in a sky of distant stars that do not shine as bright as they used to before his appearance. And that's not fine. Do I believe he should be nerfed more? Probably woud get people trying to rip my throat for being honest and saying yes, but the real question is, how should he be nerfed? His Paragrims and Noctua, alongside Wordwarden are honestly very refreshing abilities that I believe to be alright, but his Dark verses are a boring and lazy ability that gets further reinforced by his Tragedy which also is somewhat unoriginal when you consider Sickening Pulse. And overguard, well, that's a whole 'nother mistake on its own that in retrospective only has made enemies tankier and to compenstate us too. No matter how Dante is nerfed now, no one will be happy about it. He simply shouldn't have come out this powerful, now it's undoable. Ember Spoiler KFC at home is a really nice frame for new players, and it's not hard to see why. Boasting an impressive amount of skins, most of them really pretty although her first deluxe is... funny, good abilities, and very useful augments, Ember is a fun to play warframe with lots of good things going on, when you're just getting into the game. Her passive gets the best out of her, and one doesn't need to mod towards anything in particular for her to be good, because she's very well balanced at base. Now, Ember, despite being good and capable of tackling lots of content, can suffer from some issues, mainly, energy consumption and poor damage scaling. At high levels, you must cast abilities constantly to stay alive, by killing, provoking small CC with the panic effect of heat procs, knockdows from Fireblast, and your immolation damage reduction, which can become unsustainable unless you have a way of getting energy constantly. A possibility is using Nourish as your first ability - which I do - to get a good use out of Exothermic, or instead of Exothermic, you can run Zenurik which pairs really well with Nourish! Both options are good. Disgracefully, a reason to slot in Nourish is not only to aid with the energy economy but to capitalize on the armour strip from her 3, since you're better off killing enemies with your own guns than you're with abilities, which is the main problem with Ember, she's a feeble flame. What does Fireball do for the player on high levels? Nothing. What does it do with the augment? Mess up your teams' and self setups. What does Immolation do? Provide a damage reduction and a rising penalty for casting your abilities that doesn't really pay off at all. The augment? Good idea to share your DR with allies honestly, Citrine does it without a cut in half to its effectivenes and she's not punished for keeping it up, quite the contrary. Fire Blast? It's a nice radial armour strip with a small CC besides your way to vent out part of your heat, nothing wrong with the ability... But healing on an augment? Again, you do not want to be hurt on your health to begin with even with a DR, and Citrine also does this passively, it's ironic. Immunity isn't so bad all things considered, but again, overguard killed the old kind of support frames and now reigns supreme. And finally, Inferno. It's a similar case to that of Bladestorm, while on paper great and pretty cool, or hot depending on how you see it, it ultimately falls very short due to unscaling damage. Gauss' Thermal Sunder does what Inferno should, without LoS restrictions, and with insanely fast scaling. Inferno though, relies far too much on external sources of buffing to deal acceptable damage, and even then, it won't really work out that well. Overall Gauss is a better Ember, so is Citrine, Lavos, or even Protea, which is quite ridiculous when you consider she's meant to be the fire frame, but her fiery nature is not strong enough to make her shine in current times. For new players, Ember will offer a lot of commodity while they grow used to the game, which is good, but as the game progresses and gets harder, Ember doesn't scale 1:1 with it, it's more of a 1:8 or less. You can make her way tankier, sort of a non-lazy and thereby respectable by my standards version of Revenant with a built-in armour strip, but other than that, your DPS will depend on your weapon builds rather than abilities. Alongside Caliban and Banshee, by default these three are kinda depressing to analyse, as not even other old frames are in such terrible state as these despite the pass of time. Now yes Caliban isn't as old, but the point remains. Equinox Spoiler For the longest time I put Equinox to the side. She wasn't a frame that peculiarly interested me or that called my attention, and her kit having multiple abilities seemed a bit daunting at first. So I forced myself to play her eventually, and honestly, she's "good" on her own, but it's with the augments and helminth abilities that she really gets to do something. As I've commented, I run only a support build with two of her augments, but honestly, it's an all-rounder. Not but as focused on AoE nuking, but still capable of inflicting damage as required with day form. Unfortunately, Equinox doesn't have too many skins that I like. Her deluxe is interesting, very androgynous, but the asymmetry really bugs me of. Overall it's not a design I can get behind although I love the material picks. She kinda looks like a Void Angel before Void Angels were a thing. As a support / "nuke" frame, Equinox is outdated when it comes to her role. Now, she does need a couple little changes, mostly to her passive and way switching forms works, which is a good concept, but not nice enough. Harrow got his changed so he can have a free Preparation mod and double overshields, so I don't see why Equinox can't have a 100% Equilibrium and Energy Transfer as her passives. You need to build her the right way, and she has her fair share of applications, be focus farming for entry level players, nuking on ESO, or providing reasonable support. She's well balanced, and her prime looks much better than any of her Tennogen skins or deluxes, although I still use one of the alt helments because I like it better. In general, she's nice, but on hard content, with no helminths or augments, and solo, she struggles massively. Not having energy drain cap as do other frames, and an outdated kit with issues that remain untouched after lots of protests against them, makes her be not so popular of a pick for what I've noticed, and reasonably so. Excalibur Spoiler I can't help but to talk about Excal with some nostalgia, as, just like many others, he was my first Warframe. He didn't have much going on for him at the time, which was around when the Kohmak was introduced (that's one of my earliest memories of Warframe, I started playing a bit before that, but I've never checked when exactly), nor had for many, many years. He was a simple frame, with some nice abilities and an energy sword (woooooo), but that was it. I used him for a lot of time, he's still one of my most used frames even to this day, and eventually started to build more frames (Nekros was my second!) and simply moved on from him, until The Sacrifice with Umbra, so I repicked him for a while. A while ago, Excalibur received some changed alongside Mag and Volt, and although they were small, they were pretty much perfect and have elevated his potential once more. He still serves the same purpose as he did, but now does it better. He's a simple frame from simpler times, but he manages to stay good, moreover since he's the only frame with an Umbra which I sometimes feel was only released from China because Excalibur Prime was simply unobtainable for everyone. Sadly, his exalted weapon leaves much to wish. His Slash Dash working like a pseudo exalted melee separately from Exalted Sword fully benefitting from the effects of incarnon weapons and acolyte mods, happens to be insanely strong in stark contrast to Exalted Sword, which is simply pathetic. How come just a "glimpse" of the sword of light happens to be about 20 times stronger than the whole thing? (This isn't even an exxageration, Slash Dash is that good compared to Exalted Sword) At the same time, the damage potential you can extract out of Radiant Finish is immense, allowing to hit for millions of damage on averge with each finisher, even on enemies that aren't primed or anything, normally killing them in that one hit, as any finisher should. On the other hand, Radial Javelin, while not doing much on its own, once it has the augment gives a Eclipse-like buff for Excals damage which is extremely potent but slept on. You have CC, iframes & damage on the same ability, and a DPS increase at demand! For a starter frame, Excal does quite some things, and all of them very well! Except, have a good exalted weapon, we will ignore Exalted Sword for this matter. He's Excalbro, that's all. We all love Excalibro. Now that I am done covering the augments, suggestions and frames, we move on to some frame mods that are very forgettable or that don't see their way onto builds around 98% of the times, for all the right reasons, even if it sounds exaggerated; Mods: Spoiler Antitoxin, Diamond Skin, Flame Repellent, Insulation & Lightning Rod Spoiler So, I was thinking, why do we have mods that grant resistance to certain damage types, when we have arcanes that directly stop them and take no space on our builds? It is absurd, even though the damage reduction they grant is nice, but it is just for a single damage type. Another issue is none of them being part of the exilus slot, but instead part of the normal grid, which render all these 5 mods into useless and forgettable items. I would create a single mod that gave +45% resistance to elemental damage and were slottable on the exilus, but also make it a rare mod instead of common/uncommon. This way, it would become a considerable option just like Shock Absorbers is. Maybe even have a Prime version that grants 75% resistance to elemental damage. Armoured Agility, Carnis Caparace & Gladiator Aegis Spoiler My only issue with these three mods is that the stats they grant are too low. Armoured Agility grants +45% armour, and it takes 11 of drain, while being a "rare" mod. Lets take a look at Steel Fiber for instance: it take 14 of space, and it gives 110% armour, which, considering how armour scales on Warframe for the frames, it is barely noticeable on higher levels but welp, still, it gives over double the armour increase only to take 3 spaces more, and for the same polarity even! I would double the stats of Armoured Agility to 90% armour and 30% sprint speed. That's all. It would be awesome and people would perhaps even start using it for something else than speedster meme build for Gauss! Carnis Caparace is closer to being great, but the HP increase is preeetty low. I would double or triple it. That said, the mod set bonus is pretty neat, so maybe it's not that big of a deal to change these. And then, Gladiator Aegis' armour buff is just a joke. Should be better, but won't give numbers for this one. Fast Deflection, Rapid Resilience & Undying Will Spoiler These mods are actually great, but they should go onto the exilus slot, or have Primed version that perhaps could spice up how we build frames. As for Fast Deflection I would give it a little plus and make it take 40% less to start recharging shields, that could be neat. Heavy Impact Spoiler The dumb thing about Heavy Impact is that it actually is useful mechanical-wise, but there's no reason to equip it. Melees can forcefully do what this mod does by default, whereas you need to build a lot of momentum and height in order to make the effect trigger upon landing, and then you gotta recover from the landing yourself :| Reflection & Reflex Guard Spoiler These mods belong to melees, not to the Warframes! Just change them from Warframe mods to melee mods, and in the case of Reflex Guard, half it's drain jeez, this takes a lotta space! Retribution Spoiler Useful vs 1 enemy in the entire game, the shield lancers. And not even that useful unless you happen to uh... well, not even to be honest. Removing this mod would change nothing. Warm Coat Spoiler I have one question for this mod; Why? There is no ultra cold world with hazardous zones where we could be damaged that badly by cold. I mean, Europe if so, but the cold zones don't do much damage, as a matter of fact, I'm not even sure if they do it anymore after you destroy the heat radiators, and for an exilus mod that takes 9 drain and takes only 12% of that damage... eh, not cool I guess. Even Insulation does a better work than Warm Coat! Archon Continuity Spoiler Now, Archon mods are pretty cool concept, and half of them work, although on just a few frames, but then there's this disgrace of a mod that is a waste of resources. So, archon continuity on top of Primed Continuity's 55% duration gives a corrosive proc to all abilities that deal toxin damage. There are some frames that can trigger this condition, excluding pseudo-exalted weapons (Khora, Atlas, Gara) or exalted weapons because then it is the weapon dealing the toxin, not the ability itself; Citrine's Prismatic Gem, and Citrine makes nice use of all Archon mods for she can proc all base elements, however, Fractlized Blast does what Archon Flow does better, and Prismatic Gem won't really benefit from proccing corrosive on enemies that much. You can use it on her, she's basically the only frame that will make "good" use of this mod. Lavos, of course our favourite alchemist could trigger this mod's effects by using Ophidean Bite, but it won't really be strong or noticeable at all, so do you really wanna use this? I think not. Voruna, also with Fangs of Rashk, but again, these can proc 5 random statuses on their own so 1 more, randomly, and that is capped at 10, won't be helpful in 1/16*5 times. Mirage with Explosive Legerdemain (did I write it right?), for that one veeery specific built that is only used on ESO. Grendel's Regugitate also! But regurgitate already removes enemy armour. :| So yeah, a few frames "can" make use of the mod, but not at the same time. It's more of "A few frames can trigger its condition but can't really make use of it at the same time", which is absurd. Fellow at DE who made this mod, what was its purpose? Archon Flow Spoiler In similar fashion to Archon Continuity, Archon Flow is a mod that one is hopeful for, but once you read its trigger condition, you redirect your mind to how many frames can trigger its effect, make a quick filter among them to see which one really needs it, and come to the conclusion that, effectively, this mod sucks. The ideal gent to slot this mod in is Frost after all, since he has some energy issues due to his small energy pool and ability cast cost. Unfortunately, one realizes that the only ability of Frost that can kill dealing cold damage is Avalanche, and his works well for lower levels, but on higher ones Avalance wont kill, your weapons will kill the frozen enemies instead, and then, it's a 10% chance, with a 10s cooldown. What for? Only other frames that can activate this mod are Gauss & Yareli, and neither of them needs it Provoked Spoiler This mod exists, it is in fact, one of the mods of all time, and we know that because it has been in the game since ever, but no one uses it. Unexpectedly, a mod that requires you to be in a state that is only possible on multiplayer and gives a deplorable buff for being on it, isn't exactly what many would consider "a worthy mod" for 14 drain this lad over here takes. A while ago an idea struck me on how to change this mod, and perhaps make it rise & shine in popularity; Making it work like Garuda's old passive, the less health you have, the more damage you deal, but instead of being an additive bonus like Serration, making it a multiplicative final damage bonus like bane mods. It would work based on % hp missing, so the closer you are to dying the more effective it is, which not many of us really want to be close to dying but I'm pretty sure someone would find a mod like this actually useful on some setups. Now, did I make Thermal Sunder Garuda seem even more threatening? Probably. Mandatory small line so that I can add new things here in the future with ease, which hopefully I do not. [Around 3rd quater of 2022] Eventually I will add a new section over here. I want to start creating new mods that bring some more direct build customization to the table, but that time is not now. I am prepping my ideas on some document, so that way I'm not just, updating the thread time and time again. [Last thread update date, 2023] So, post has been updated up to pre-Tennocon / Post Echoes of Duviri. Now, we wait to see what "the next era of Warframe" brings! Edited April 21 by (PSN)Pablogamer585 Refreshing the thread for 2024. Update pointer: Frost. 10 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
quxier Posted November 21, 2021 Share Posted November 21, 2021 32 minutes ago, (PSN)Pablogamer585 said: And it was creating a new type of, forma(?) or adapter(?) to infuse the augments directly onto our Warframes so they didn't take any physical space on the builds, in order to give deeper customization to Warframes the more we advance into the game. · But, this carried some issues with it: 33 minutes ago, (PSN)Pablogamer585 said: The idea is to add three new slots to the left of our modding grid, just like Focus Schools have 4, but these will be unlocked with new adapters obtained from Tenshin's Steel Path offerings. Conclave? Steel path? Some augments should be either part of an ability or system in general (e.g. Dispensary augment reviving companions). They are not worth the effort of SP or similar stuffs. It's like going to SP to increase your damage by 10. I have similar issue with the Weapon Exilus adapter. Why the.... they require Eidolon's stuffs?! SP, Eidolons, Orb mothers are just artificially increased "health" so you need more "power". Galavnized (or whatever they are called) mods are very powerful. They could be in SP. Augments' forma/adapter should be easily available (even buyable). 37 minutes ago, (PSN)Pablogamer585 said: Xaku's augments are completely new, and the first one is ever so slightly unsuitable, in my opinion. Why?, you may ask. Xaku is all about evading damage, and it has little health and armour to be the type of frame to handle shots or hits, and even if you happen to be hit, why would you put an augment that requires you to make use of two abilities to restore only 25 health per hit, when you can equip your Tenno with Magus Vigor and instantly replenish 300 health? It's just tapping a button twice! To me the change seems clear; make Grasp of Lohk weapons return health whenever they hit a target, instead of overly complicating things for no apparent reason. This way, even if they hp they return is low, it is constant, and more useful than nothing. No wonder Yareli is so "simple" when people are ok with "give HP, do damage for N seconds" of Xaku's. 39 minutes ago, (PSN)Pablogamer585 said: Armored Agility, Carnis Caparace, Gladiator Aegis Hide contents Carnis Caparace is closer to being great, but the HP increase is preeetty low. I would double or triple it. I'm not sure if doubling or tripling would help. The problem with Carnis Caparace is that it takes base, frame level 1 HP. That's very low for lot of frames. Umbra vitality gives: +440%+550%+770% (Vitality +440%). 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
(PSN)Pablogamer585 Posted November 21, 2021 Author Share Posted November 21, 2021 hace 11 minutos, quxier dijo: Conclave? Steel path? Some augments should be either part of an ability or system in general (e.g. Dispensary augment reviving companions). They are not worth the effort of SP or similar stuffs. It's like going to SP to increase your damage by 10. I have similar issue with the Weapon Exilus adapter. Why the.... they require Eidolon's stuffs?! SP, Eidolons, Orb mothers are just artificially increased "health" so you need more "power". Galavnized (or whatever they are called) mods are very powerful. They could be in SP. Augments' forma/adapter should be easily available (even buyable). I know I mentioned Conclave at some points but it was purely for the memes. Now, since you seem to be the only one who has put time reading this, lets discuss! I do agree that certain augments should be part of the abilities by default, just like I said for Grendel's Catapult or Mesa's Waltz. Stills, why wouldn't these Warframe "Da'at" Adapters be worth the effort in your opinion? With my proposed addition, it would add three extra slots to the modding grid, dedicated only augments mods and making them have no drain cost, allowing you to build your Warframe without having to sacrifice the space these take, I see it as an absolute win! If so, they could be changed to Arbitrations Store, but I personally prefer Steel Path as it is way more consistent at dropping the "tokens". Also I very much enjoy killing massive amounts of enemies non-stop. Going back to the "worth" point, I never specified how much would these cost so if they happen to be cheap enough, lets say 2 Steel Essence each, would you consider them a rather good deal, as you'd be able to buy plenty on the daily thanks to the Steel Path incursions, or still not that good of an option? hace 16 minutos, quxier dijo: No wonder Yareli is so "simple" when people are ok with "give HP, do damage for N seconds" of Xaku's. I think none of us can say anything possitive about Yareli right now, perhaps the augments I've created for her are actually nice? Moving on. hace 17 minutos, quxier dijo: I'm not sure if doubling or tripling would help. The problem with Carnis Caparace is that it takes base, frame level 1 HP. That's very low for lot of frames. What would you propose then? I think Carnis Caparace gives an acceptable armour increase, but the health one is simply unuseful, that is why I had thought about making it more severe/noticeable to render this mod worth slotting. I await your input Quixie :) 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
quxier Posted November 21, 2021 Share Posted November 21, 2021 6 minutes ago, (PSN)Pablogamer585 said: What would you propose then? I think Carnis Caparace gives an acceptable armour increase, but the health one is simply unuseful, that is why I had thought about making it more severe/noticeable to render this mod worth slotting. I await your input Quixie :) I don't know. It's like Xaku's 4th -> ball of features that are not great at anything. It gives you evasion which only whole set. It can go up to ~100% but then you don't even need HP/Armor. I would give it 20%-30% evasion per mod and 60%-90% per whole set. I would increase HP (maybe Armor too) as well. I'm not sure if it's possible for it to increase values per each mod but I would like it to have at least ~300% HP. 12 minutes ago, (PSN)Pablogamer585 said: 39 minutes ago, quxier said: I think none of us can say anything possitive about Yareli right now, perhaps the augments I've created for her are actually nice? Moving on. Sadly, none are making game more active (Aquables would hit just more while you are doing nothing seeing their deaths). On other hands it won't fix core issues with ability (e.g. 4th is short lived & throw enemies around; would your augment give some kind of duration so it can get more and more enemies as time increases?). If they've allowed modding Merulina then there would be a lot of "augments" for her. 21 minutes ago, (PSN)Pablogamer585 said: Stills, why wouldn't these Warframe "Da'at" Adapters be worth the effort in your opinion? With my proposed addition, it would add three extra slots to the modding grid, dedicated only augments mods and making them have no drain cost, allowing you to build your Warframe without having to sacrifice the space these take, I see it as an absolute win! If so, they could be changed to Arbitrations Store, but I personally prefer Steel Path as it is way more consistent at dropping the "tokens". Also I very much enjoy killing massive amounts of enemies non-stop. Going back to the "worth" point, I never specified how much would these cost so if they happen to be cheap enough, lets say 2 Steel Essence each, would you consider them a rather good deal, as you'd be able to buy plenty on the daily thanks to the Steel Path incursions, or still not that good of an option? I would prefer something 40-60 Lich fight. It was "hard" but doesn't required me to cheese stuffs. SP is too boring and Arbs are too unforgiving. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
(PSN)Pablogamer585 Posted November 21, 2021 Author Share Posted November 21, 2021 hace 8 minutos, quxier dijo: Sadly, none are making game more active (Aquables would hit just more while you are doing nothing seeing their deaths). On other hands it won't fix core issues with ability (e.g. 4th is short lived & throw enemies around; would your augment give some kind of duration so it can get more and more enemies as time increases?). If they've allowed modding Merulina then there would be a lot of "augments" for her. Well, since you're asking these are the augments I had created for Yareli in general... Had thought about making something for Merulina, kind of making it be healed per enemy damaged (Basically Primed Pack Leader but for secondaries) and intrinsecally make her scale off enemy level, as if not is simply sucks. hace 2 horas, (PSN)Pablogamer585 dijo: Yareli Ocultar contenido Yareli has no augments currently, and there's a lot of complaints about her still. Probably she will be forgotten until her Prime comes out, unless there's some Yareli main out there, which I am sure if they pull next year another "What frame is the least played" table type of thing, she will be below the bottom, if that's even possible. To me, she is no Warframe. She has nothing of "War" on her kit or appearance or lore. Stills, as it is menester, she deserves augments, like any other frame, so after playing around a bit with her kit I've ideated a couple ones that perhaps could turn her from "why would I use this" to "I can use this too!". Less chit-chat from my part, lets go: Bubble Wrap(!) Ocultar contenido Sea Snares augment: Tap to cast 3 giant bubbles that seek out enemies and traps them inside, bubbles last 30 seconds by default. / Hold to cast a single massive bubble that seeks out all enemies nearby and traps them inside, suffocating them to death (deals true damage to health, 2% per second). Shattering Blades(!) Ocultar contenido Aquablades augment: Reduces enemy armour by 10 per hit Rising Riptide(!) Ocultar contenido Riptide augment: Each enemy absorbed by Riptide increases its range by 20% and critical chance + critical damage by a 50% Author notes: Yareli has many, many issues. One of them is her poor survivability, another the damage type she deals being cold which is, not much better than impact, and lastly her damage being non-scaling at all outside of Aquablades, and for a frame that needs to be constantly moving and her only way of grouping enemies is her 4 which puts enemies out of aquablades' reach, it simply does not synergize. With these augments I intend to make Yareli keep the fun factor of her kit while also giving her a much needed damage increase against anything one might face. So no, I didn't quite fix the toss around aspect, but I made it be a bit more lethal. hace 13 minutos, quxier dijo: I would prefer something 40-60 Lich fight. It was "hard" but doesn't required me to cheese stuffs. SP is too boring and Arbs are too unforgiving. So you'd like to get a Da'at Adapter every time you kill a Lich/Sister. That would be cool I guess. Much more tedious and slow to unlock all three of the slots but reasonable since Requiems are more tied to frames than not just, some new adapted pulled outta nowhere. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
quxier Posted November 21, 2021 Share Posted November 21, 2021 30 minutes ago, (PSN)Pablogamer585 said: 45 minutes ago, quxier said: Well, since you're asking these are the augments I had created for Yareli in general... Had thought about making something for Merulina, kind of making it be healed per enemy damaged (Basically Primed Pack Leader but for secondaries) and intrinsecally make her scale off enemy level, as if not is simply sucks. I mean Merulina is a k-drive. When they allow mod her then you can create lots of "augments" for different actions. 32 minutes ago, (PSN)Pablogamer585 said: So you'd like to get a Da'at Adapter every time you kill a Lich/Sister. That would be cool I guess. Much more tedious and slow to unlock all three of the slots but reasonable since Requiems are more tied to frames than not just, some new adapted pulled outta nowhere. I guess you could have e.g. 20% from traiils 40% from parazoning Lich and 100% for killing. But I meant power/hp of enemies. Something around that level may be challenging. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
(PSN)Pablogamer585 Posted November 21, 2021 Author Share Posted November 21, 2021 hace 2 horas, quxier dijo: guess you could have e.g. 20% from traiils 40% from parazoning Lich and 100% for killing. But I meant power/hp of enemies. Something around that level may be challenging. I still prefer my method of buying them, as 20% per thrall stabbed is quite considerable taken into account how many spawn per mission. Also, 40% from parazoning a Litch could create some meta Da'at farm by making a lvl5 Litch and then stabbing him with the wrong parazon requiems for a chance of getting the adapter ON TOP of the thralls this one would generate. Now that I think about it aloud your idea seems the actually cheesing to obtaining this new item, that could be problematically fast 🤔 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
quxier Posted November 22, 2021 Share Posted November 22, 2021 1 hour ago, (PSN)Pablogamer585 said: I still prefer my method of buying them, as 20% per thrall stabbed is quite considerable taken into account how many spawn per mission. Also, 40% from parazoning a Litch could create some meta Da'at farm by making a lvl5 Litch and then stabbing him with the wrong parazon requiems for a chance of getting the adapter ON TOP of the thralls this one would generate. Now that I think about it aloud your idea seems the actually cheesing to obtaining this new item, that could be problematically fast 🤔 Everything could be cheesed. I've seen Xaku doing almost nothing killing some level 1k+ enemies enemies. Non SP/Arb is just less demanding and let you have more fun with variety of builds. And 20/40/100 were just a numbers. They can be changed. You must take into account how many you need them. If you take only 1 ability (no passives) then you have 4 formas/adapters per frame. Some will have 1-2 some will have e.g. 6. We have ~47 frames, as fair I remember. That would be 188 formas/adapters if you put 4. 94 at 2 abilities. Sure, it would be "reasonable" if augments were augments, changing a lot in your gameplay. However I don't think there are many such mods. They won't change that. They don't even have time to fix so blatant bugs with recent frames. So taking into account that you will create stuffs for today augments I can only see the being relatively speaking cheap. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
(PSN)Pablogamer585 Posted November 22, 2021 Author Share Posted November 22, 2021 hace 15 minutos, quxier dijo: Everything could be cheesed. I've seen Xaku doing almost nothing killing some level 1k+ enemies enemies. Non SP/Arb is just less demanding and let you have more fun with variety of builds. Xaku just happens to be an awesome frame :3 I do disagree with Non Steel Path being more fun though, most of my builds wouldn't work out as well as they do with lesser enemy density and if they happen to die instantly! hace 18 minutos, quxier dijo: And 20/40/100 were just a numbers. They can be changed. Secured farming with a preset cost VS RNG farming Quixie, I still prefer my way of obtaining these :T hace 20 minutos, quxier dijo: You must take into account how many you need them. If you take only 1 ability (no passives) then you have 4 formas/adapters per frame. Some will have 1-2 some will have e.g. 6. We have ~47 frames, as fair I remember. That would be 188 formas/adapters if you put 4. 94 at 2 abilities. Sure, it would be "reasonable" if augments were augments, changing a lot in your gameplay. However I don't think there are many such mods. 131 Adapters actually. Maybe I didn't put it in the boldest of ways but in the part of "Explaining the concept" (first spoiler) I said 3 Da'at slots per warframe, so it would be 131 adapters to buy in total. With a price of 10 per adapater, which seems fairly reasonable to me if the player were to make Steel Path incursions instead of long survivals or so, they could buy around 3 a day, taking a total of 40 days to put them in all of their warframes, if only they did Steel Path incursions + killed an acolyte in each, and played no more Steel Path for the rest of the day. hace 30 minutos, quxier dijo: They don't even have time to fix so blatant bugs with recent frames. Or bugs that have been present for quite some years in certain places buuuuut, I do not blame them right now as they're working on something else. May they fix these someday though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
quxier Posted November 22, 2021 Share Posted November 22, 2021 50 minutes ago, (PSN)Pablogamer585 said: Xaku just happens to be an awesome frame :3 Just because something kills everything it doesn't mean it's awesome. But whatever floats your boat. It's not how frame works. It's about ability to cheese everything. 54 minutes ago, (PSN)Pablogamer585 said: I do disagree with Non Steel Path being more fun though, most of my builds wouldn't work out as well as they do with lesser enemy density and if they happen to die instantly! Enemy density is indeed problem. SP just increases it globally. If you don't put every damage/crit/gold-riven/etc stuffs then enemies wouldn't die instantly. 1 hour ago, (PSN)Pablogamer585 said: Secured farming with a preset cost VS RNG farming Quixie, I still prefer my way of obtaining these :T Again, it's just an example. It could be Lich. It could be normal level 60 mission. It's not about mission type but about difficulty level". 1 hour ago, (PSN)Pablogamer585 said: 131 Adapters actually. Maybe I didn't put it in the boldest of ways but in the part of "Explaining the concept" (first spoiler) I said 3 Da'at slots per warframe, so it would be 131 adapters to buy in total. With a price of 10 per adapater, which seems fairly reasonable to me if the player were to make Steel Path incursions instead of long survivals or so, they could buy around 3 a day, taking a total of 40 days to put them in all of their warframes, if only they did Steel Path incursions + killed an acolyte in each, and played no more Steel Path for the rest of the day. Ok, but frames has more than 3 augments. 1 hour ago, (PSN)Pablogamer585 said: Or bugs that have been present for quite some years in certain places buuuuut, I do not blame them right now as they're working on something else. May they fix these someday though. Sure some day... they have time for few old frames per year. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steel_Rook Posted November 22, 2021 Share Posted November 22, 2021 To address the original topic - I'm in full agreement that Augments really should not take up a mod slot and mod capacity. Not only are few of them actually worth that, but this is a bit of customisation that I personally feel shouldn't really have a cost to begin with. Let players equip one Augment for no cost, then maybe let them equip additional ones as standard mods. The easiest way to do that is to just create a separate Augment slot (probably with some unlocker item, because grind) and leave it at that. Beyond that, though, a few Augments ought to just be part of their respective skills, rather than as separate additions. Dispensary reviving pets is a prime example of this, as is Rhino's Ironclad Charge. I would argue that Inaros' Negation Swarm ought to be there as well, though I've had people argue with me about it in the past. DE have a bad habit of implementing balance changes as additional items with their own cost, so you end up with "best in slot" items limiting diversity. It's obvious those abilities are balanced with those augments in mind, so just merge the augment into the ability and leave it at that. Finally, I'm of the opinion that Augments should constitute side-grades, not straight upgrades. It's for this reason that I consider Valkyr's Hysterical Assault to be one of the best-designed augments in Warframe. It doesn't just add an extra effect to Hysteria, but rather fundamentally redesigns its core function. Sure, right now it ALSO improves the ability drastically because it takes up a slot and capacity, but that's not the point. It changes the ability from a toggle into a click, this altering the overall build around it. I want more mods like this. I want more modes with substantial changes and substantial downsides. This is where the game's RPG mechanics actually get fun, more than just boosting DPS or EHP. I really wish DE would go back and revise how Augments work some day. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
(PSN)Pablogamer585 Posted November 22, 2021 Author Share Posted November 22, 2021 hace 12 horas, quxier dijo: Just because something kills everything it doesn't mean it's awesome Great Crowd Control, AoE armor stip, good to loot entire rooms by using his 4th + imbuing Mag's Pull with augment and an ability that scaless with enemies. It's not all about instantly nuking rooms, that's more of Saryn's work and I'm a poor Atlas main. hace 13 horas, quxier dijo: If you don't put every damage/crit/gold-riven/etc stuffs then enemies wouldn't die instantly. Clearly I am not going to play mod-less but I can tell you all of my high level builds do not require rivens to work wonders, I am sure you would enjoy them too! hace 13 horas, quxier dijo: Ok, but frames has more than 3 augments. Exactly. But I would like to have 3 augments slots only, where the augments would drain 0 capacity from the build. Think of it as slotting a mod in a forma'd slot with the right polarity but it makes it cost 9 → 0. The intention is not to let equip all the augments a Warframe might have in the same setup to get the "best most powerful 2022 no clickbait build" but to give an opportunity to customize the Warframes in a deeper level. hace 31 minutos, Steel_Rook dijo: "Finally, I'm of the opinion that Augments should constitute side-grades, not straight upgrades. It's for this reason that I consider Valkyr's Hysterical Assault to be one of the best-designed augments in Warframe. It doesn't just add an extra effect to Hysteria, but rather fundamentally redesigns its core function. Sure, right now it ALSO improves the ability drastically because it takes up a slot and capacity, but that's not the point. It changes the ability from a toggle into a click, this altering the overall build around it. I want more mods like this. I want more mods with substantial changes and substantial downsides. This is where the game's RPG mechanics actually get fun, more than just boosting DPS or EHP." Nice to see I managed to draw the attention of another user to this post, thought it would be like my weapons' one where the only person who replied was the guy who helped me a bit with it and noone else. I too do agree that augments could change the way certain abilities work instead of simply being upgrades to them, but perhaps this should be the task of some stranger and higher rarity augments that could be obtained via some endgame or whatever instead (please I already know endgame is taboo for us space ninjas, don't kill me D: ). I am fine with the way a lot of augments do work right now, same as I am not with some others that should be intrinsic to the frames, such as Catapult, Waltz, Assimilate or the one you mentiones, Hysterical Assault which is a rather fun augment but doesn't change Hysteria all that much imo. And honestly a lot of frames do require some EHP boost to their kits or DPS ones. Bearing that in mind, I think most of the new augments I have created myself focus on dealing more damage or increasing the frame's suvivability, but also tweaking a bit how the abilities do work, perhaps I can try to look for some and see if they interest you? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
quxier Posted November 22, 2021 Share Posted November 22, 2021 38 minutes ago, (PSN)Pablogamer585 said: 14 hours ago, quxier said: Great Crowd Control, AoE armor stip, good to loot entire rooms by using his 4th + imbuing Mag's Pull with augment and an ability that scaless with enemies. It's not all about instantly nuking rooms, that's more of Saryn's work and I'm a poor Atlas main. Ok, ok... I'm not going to argue about Xaku. I like some part of them and I hate/dislike other part. I mentioned him because I play it more than other frames. I bet there are other stuffs that could cheese SP. That's my point. Me wanting to play non-SP/arb isn't way to cheese acquisition of your stuffs. 43 minutes ago, (PSN)Pablogamer585 said: Clearly I am not going to play mod-less but I can tell you all of my high level builds do not require rivens to work wonders, I am sure you would enjoy them too! Give me an example. 44 minutes ago, (PSN)Pablogamer585 said: Exactly. But I would like to have 3 augments slots only, where the augments would drain 0 capacity from the build. Think of it as slotting a mod in a forma'd slot with the right polarity but it makes it cost 9 → 0. The intention is not to let equip all the augments a Warframe might have in the same setup to get the "best most powerful 2022 no clickbait build" but to give an opportunity to customize the Warframes in a deeper level. Make sense. Even when some has more than 3 we could put it in normal slots. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
(PSN)Pablogamer585 Posted November 22, 2021 Author Share Posted November 22, 2021 hace 2 minutos, quxier dijo: Give me an example My Tombfinger and Gaze kitguns with Arcane Demulcent + Residual boils. I've been using kitguns a lot lately, gotta love em' with Mecha Set on Predasites :) hace 3 minutos, quxier dijo: I bet there are other stuffs that could cheese SP. That's my point. Me wanting to play non-SP/arb isn't way to cheese acquisition of your stuffs. Of course, there's no one denying that. I am sure all frames and most weapons can beat normal start-chart with ease if built properly. Then again, Da'ats adquisition could be; Buy from Tenshin Offerings for Steel Essences/ Stabbing on Litch-hunting. A win for both! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
(XBOX)sinamanthediva Posted November 22, 2021 Share Posted November 22, 2021 On 2021-11-21 at 7:40 AM, (PSN)Pablogamer585 said: you can equip your Tenno with Magus Vigor and instantly replenish 300 health? It's just tapping a button twice! Not to be to critical of all your effort with this topic, but I believe you are referencing Magus Elevate R5 with regards to the Instant 300 Health Arcane. Magus Vigor is used to increase the Operator Health. It's nice that people still have some interest in Warframe other than the usual pitch fork mob ready to skewer DE for another bug from the latest update. They do scan the forums periodically for ideas i suspect, so maybe your voice will be heard and implemented! Who am I kidding, doubtful they take to much time with the forums, else they probably would all need depression counseling from all the toxic sludge that is thrown there way. Although sometimes they deserve a good smack for not testing there game enough with the guinea pigs, err I mean amazing PC folk. Have a pleasant tomorrow! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
quxier Posted November 22, 2021 Share Posted November 22, 2021 16 minutes ago, (PSN)Pablogamer585 said: A win for both! "That's my boy." I like when there are different methods of getting items. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
(XBOX)sinamanthediva Posted November 22, 2021 Share Posted November 22, 2021 27 minutes ago, (PSN)Pablogamer585 said: My Tombfinger and Gaze kitguns with Arcane Demulcent + Residual boils. I've been using kitguns a lot lately, gotta love em' with Mecha Set on Predasites :) I have all those strange Deimos Arcanes and I have never used them nor have I seen anyone, that I know of, use them and I have no idea what they do and how they do it? I just read so many negative things about how useless they were, blah blah blah, I simply never bothered to even try them out. Thanks for inspiring me to get creative, at least for 1 mission to see what they can do! I'm sure the novelty will be riveting for at least a few minutes, then back to the Meta...sigh Have a pleasant tomorrow! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steel_Rook Posted November 22, 2021 Share Posted November 22, 2021 1 hour ago, (PSN)Pablogamer585 said: I too do agree that augments could change the way certain abilities work instead of simply being upgrades to them, but perhaps this should be the task of some stranger and higher rarity augments that could be obtained via some endgame or whatever instead (please I already know endgame is taboo for us space ninjas, don't kill me D: ). The reason I propose this is two-fold. Firstly, the overall modding system already does a sufficient job in min/maxing our abilities (along with everything else). When it comes to Augments, it makes sense that they'd alter abilities in a far more fundamental way - that they'd offer gameplay variety more so than power. Secondly, Augments have the capacity to change up the core experience. I bring up Hysterical Assult because it does this quite well. Yes, it's fundamentally the same ability, but the dynamic surrounding it is different. Instead of trying to sustain constant Hysteria long-term and battling energy, the player has to make the best of it in 15 seconds, then do without. If this mod didn't take up a slot and capacity, you could drop the added crit chance and whatever other buffs entirely - it would still be worth using. That's not to say I don't want mods making abilities BETTER, mind you. It doesn't necessarily have to be a sidegrade. If we had a single dedicated cost-less Augment slot, then picking which ability to enhance is itself a tradeoff. Can't use Augments for all abilities at the same time. I just want to ensure that Augments do more than JUST improve an ability without altering the fundamental way in which it's used. If that's the case, then the thing really isn't worth being an augment. If I'm going to keep using my ability in exactly the same way as I did before except with higher efficiency, then what really changed? I personally envision Augments as Runes from Diablo 3, or Overclocks from Deep Rock Galactic, or Titan Kits from Titanfall 2. I would like for them to alter the way a Warframe plays, more so than how powerful it is. It's fine if they ALSO make our Warframes more powerful, as long as they bring gameplay with them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
(PSN)Pablogamer585 Posted November 22, 2021 Author Share Posted November 22, 2021 hace 1 minuto, (XBOX)sinamanthediva dijo: Not to be to critical of all your effort with this topic, but I believe you are referencing Magus Elevate R5 with regards to the Instant 300 Health Arcane. Magus Vigor is used to increase the Operator Health. Dang! You're right, I will correct it immediately! Thank you very much :) And yes, I am aware as probably 80% of the users who frequent the forum on a daily basis that there's the same chance of getting acknowledged by DE as to obtain Augur Secrets on a Fortuna Bounty, but I make this out of sheer entertainment and to bring some smiles here and there to the people. Also since I happen to think of loads and loads of things on the daily, this is a good way to channeling those ideas of mine, which I cannot cover otherwise, as Warframe is one of the few topics I control almost at perfection and I can have fun talking about at the same time. hace 5 minutos, (XBOX)sinamanthediva dijo: I have all those strange Deimos Arcanes and I have never used them nor have I seen anyone, that I know of, use them and I have no idea what they do and how they do it? The Arcanes from Deimos are actually pretty simple and nice, but crawling with flaws. Allow me to explain: The kitgun arcanes are really easy to understand: You stay on a zone for X time, you gain a certain % of an elemental damage for all of your weapons. Electric, Cold, Heat or Toxin are the ones you can get, BUT, turns out if you carry another kitgun (yourself, allies' residual arcanes do not count towards you) with a different arcane of those, the elements combine, giving you a combined elements!.I.E; I use Atlas, and now my Landslide can deal absurd heat damage without modding my Tekko Prime for Heat at all. But, I could carry two kitguns with Residual Shock and the other one that procs toxin, I can get Viral + Corrosive on Landslide for even more damage, cool right? Warframe Arcanes are 3, but one of them is simply awful: First one is my favourite: Theorem Infection gives you allies a damage buff of 360% as long as they are at less than 90 meters away from you, and I think it does stack if everyone carries his own for a whooping 1080% damage increase. The second is the one I use for Solo, this one offers a 180% damage increase to all your weapons for the same duration as Infeciton, 20 seconds. And then there's Arcane Contagion which can surround your Warframe with up to 30 little orbs that deal 200 damage per hit, and each one increases the damage these orbs deal to the enemies by a 200%. Basically, a worse version of Null Star whose range you can't even modify so you keep loosing orbs constantly and it doesn't even protect you. This is the one I hope they rework. The issues is with these arcanes are: They have a chance to proc of 20% on kill, meaning that on higher levels if you happen to loose your Galvanized + Residual stacks, say goodbye to the run as Kitguns have pretty low base damage and it will be hard to build it up again. The range and duration. The residual arcanes claim to have 10 meters (radious, diameter? who knows) but from the 4, only Maladour and Shock seem to have a range that allows you to stay mobile but remain on the zone to build up the damage (These seem to have 10 meters of radious, but it also happen to not charge the Theorem arcanes if you do not get pretty close to the middle of the area, which seems to be around the same size as the visual of Toxin/Heat residuals, which sucks). Heat and Toxin on the other hand, create really small zones, forcing you to stay on them to get the best results, as Toxin and Heat are basically the strongest elements from the 4 residuals. In conclusion: Deimos Arcanes are actually awesome (with the exception of Contagion), but if you can't get to refill the counter in the 20 seconds they last, which also seems to be un-refillable after you reach the x15 and go to another residual zone and decays instantly instead of 1 at a time, you won't get the benefits from them, which is uncool. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
(PSN)Pablogamer585 Posted November 22, 2021 Author Share Posted November 22, 2021 hace 17 minutos, Steel_Rook dijo: I bring up Hysterical Assult because it does this quite well. Yes, it's fundamentally the same ability, but the dynamic surrounding it is different. Instead of trying to sustain constant Hysteria long-term and battling energy, the player has to make the best of it in 15 seconds, then do without. Now I understand! You meant Enraged not Hysterical Assault. Hysterical Assault in the one that allows you to pounce onto targets, not the one that gives you 15 seconds of use to the exalted melee. I do agree that Enraged is amazing and highly helps Valkitty with her exalted which happens to be a bit... lackluster because of that energy drain + chance to kill you in place. I think you would like my Atlast Rework post seing how you'd like Arcanes to work. I am not a RPG games guy but I do admit that as of lately I am building my frames with combos instead of simply modding them for their abilities/kit. Thinking a bit outside the box we could say :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
(XBOX)sinamanthediva Posted November 22, 2021 Share Posted November 22, 2021 3 minutes ago, (PSN)Pablogamer585 said: The Arcanes from Deimos are actually pretty simple and nice, but crawling with flaws. Allow me to explain: I appreciate your insight and even after 6 years of playing Warframe, I still learn new things which is why I am still here I guess, and of course having kinship with the Warframe community such as the forums or general game-play. Thanks again and I will go forth and do some R&D with the Deimos Arcanes! Have a pleasant tomorrow! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joezone619 Posted November 22, 2021 Share Posted November 22, 2021 Didn't read all of it, but honestly, the idea of teshin getting the augments makes sense... so long as you don't need to enter THE CONCLAVE to get them. Or at the very least, i'd like an explination why these 6 syndicates know what warframes are, and have the technology to change their abilities. Did the tenno teach the how? Why would they? Who tought us? etc. At least with teshin, we have most, if not, all those answers already. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Atsia Posted November 22, 2021 Share Posted November 22, 2021 I disagree with the idea of a dedicated assignment slot as long as we have such augment disparity. Unless DE goes back and rebalances them all, most build are only just gonna use the exact same agents we already do. Excalibur for example of pretty much always gonna be Chromatic Blade, Hydroid with Pilfering Swarm, Volt with Capacitance, etc. It's a pure power increases with no downsides. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steel_Rook Posted November 22, 2021 Share Posted November 22, 2021 3 hours ago, (PSN)Pablogamer585 said: Now I understand! You meant Enraged not Hysterical Assault. Hysterical Assault in the one that allows you to pounce onto targets, not the one that gives you 15 seconds of use to the exalted melee. I do agree that Enraged is amazing and highly helps Valkitty with her exalted which happens to be a bit... lackluster because of that energy drain + chance to kill you in place. I stand corrected :) Yes, I mean Enraged - my apologies. I try to keep those things straight and even checked the Wiki, but apparently failed hard. Oops. But yes, I swear by Enraged - not because it's "better," but because it far more closely fits my preferred playstyle. I'm not good at maintaining energy and I'm not fond of using Arcane Energise, so I rarely used Hysteria much. With Enraged, I can pop it when it seems needed, go to town and not have to worry about managing it or dropping out and locking myself out of my other abilities. I wouldn't be opposed to similar Augments for other Exalted weapons, or even general toggles. There's a lot you can do with Warframe abilities without necessarily just buffing them. 3 hours ago, (PSN)Pablogamer585 said: I think you would like my Atlast Rework post seing how you'd like Arcanes to work. I am not a RPG games guy but I do admit that as of lately I am building my frames with combos instead of simply modding them for their abilities/kit. Thinking a bit outside the box we could say :) Possibly. Atlas is powerful but his abilities are... REALLY god damn weird. Landslide needs to be an Exalted Weapon in my opinion at the very least. Tectonics needs to... I don't even know - be an entirely different ability? If it's meant to be a decoy, make it an actual decoy with high aggro/threat. I'd personally prefer some kind of MUUUCH larger-scale wall that's actually useful for blocking open space. Or hell, even a Gara style ring wall for protecting objectives and penning in dumb escorts. I still have nightmares about Sortie Defence... But that's going off-topic. It seems to be a law in Warframe that every Warframe needs to have at least one "What the hell were you thinking when designing this?!?" ability. I mean... they could have just given us 3 abilities per Warframe if they couldn't think of a fourth for literally any of 'em. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
(PSN)Pablogamer585 Posted November 22, 2021 Author Share Posted November 22, 2021 hace 1 hora, Atsia dijo: I disagree with the idea of a dedicated assignment slot as long as we have such augment disparity. Unless DE goes back and rebalances them all, most build are only just gonna use the exact same agents we already do. Excalibur for example of pretty much always gonna be Chromatic Blade, Hydroid with Pilfering Swarm, Volt with Capacitance, etc. It's a pure power increases with no downsides. Warframes use to have one or two, if lucky, augments worth slotting into a build, so I am not sure if "fixing the rest" would be enough of a reason to put 1 of those that currently suck into your warframe setup. That is why these Augment Adapters are oriented towards high mastery rank Tennos (+24), as when one reaches that point there's little more to do with the frames or weapons, if you know how to make builds. You can do a normal build, one focused on certain abilitie(s), one that uses an augment, a meme one, another one for endurance runs... but why not allow for more customization at long? Why limitate the player? Certain frames do require of some augments to gain a bit of power as their performance can be underwhelming by default (Rubble Heap for Atlas or Despoil for Nekros as examples) What would you suggest instead? hace 45 minutos, Steel_Rook dijo: Possibly. Well if you feel curious enough to read a quite long yet explained in depth rework, here you have! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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