What am I doing wrong with Chroma?

[Angel-Nefarious]

I like Chroma's look and at least the concept of his kit.  I've read/watched that Chroma is basically an underwhelming/uninspired weapons platform - tank and spank.  And there are times that's just what I want.  But I can't seem to get the tank part to work properly.  I heard you don't need to mod your armor, because his 3 is just ridiculous amounts of armor already.  But with 193% strength, 205% duration, 650 modded armor plus  Health Conversion, and keeping his 3 up all the time and his 2 on cold, and with Vex Armor procced to my max at 675% and 530% - he still has no survivability.  If I get in a group of 20 enemies(L40-60) I'm dead in 5 seconds.  I feel like a naked Banshee out here.  My pure strength/duration modded Titania is tankier even out of razorwing.   Is he bugged?  Did they nerf something into the ground?  Some other mechanic I'm unaware of?  I'm flummoxed.  The only warframe I've seen die this fast is my Ivara when I forget my invis.
 

[BiancaRoughfin]

You missing Adaptation mod?

[quxier]

1 hour ago, Angel-Nefarious said:

 If I get in a group of 20 enemies(L40-60) I'm dead in 5 seconds.

Meanwhile I struggle to get down to hp at that level with my Xaku, 2x Umbra vitality, adaptation (afair).

Joking aside, what about additional health? Using: https://hypothermia.cc/tools and changing hp from 300 to 600 basically doubles your EHP. And as mentioned Adaptation, maybe Rolling guard.

[Angel-Nefarious]

1 hour ago, BiancaRoughfin said:

You missing Adaptation mod?

I mean, yeah, I don't have it.  But I also don't have it when I run Inaros, Nezha, and Wukong, and they do fine.  Honestly, Nezha and Inaros can tank damage without their buffs up better than Chroma can with his Vex Armor at max.  At least that's how I'm experiencing it.  He just feels like he did at zero rank and unmodded.

13 minutes ago, quxier said:

Meanwhile I struggle to get down to hp at that level with my Xaku, 2x Umbra vitality, adaptation (afair).

Joking aside, what about additional health? Using: https://hypothermia.cc/tools and changing hp from 300 to 600 basically doubles your EHP. And as mentioned Adaptation, maybe Rolling guard.

Yeah, that's just it.  I can use other tanky frames at these levels without breaking a sweat.  Even medium tanky frames like Gara or Nidus, I can do just fine.  But as soon as I switch to Chroma, it just feels like I'm running him without mods at all, no matter how I change his loadout.  All the numbers are there, and the buffs show up as intended, saying they're working, but I struggle to make it through fortuna bounties or ESO with my 4 revives.  I swear, I'm not just bad.  It's how I know it shouldn't be this hard, because it's only with this one frame.

Honestly, I would think it's a bug, if it wasn't for the fact that no one else seems to be experiencing it.  I just thought maybe someone would be able to tell me, "Oh, yeah, little known fact, but his 2 actually cancels out his three" or some other undocumented "feature" that was sinking me for some reason.

[(XBOX)sinamanthediva]

Change his color to red for the Health boost from his Elemental Ward which is more useful than just more Armor from Cold.  or Health Conversion Mods.  Not only does the Elemental Ward Give you Over-Health, you get to keep the additional Over-Health even when the ward expires.  In addition you are a walking Fire pit who will continually damage enemies within the wards range.  You should have a bit more power Strength on your Chroma as well so replace your Health conversion mod with some more power to boost your Vex armor even higher! Armor is wonderful but it's a combination of having a decent health pool (Elem ward-fire) and the bonus armor that will keep you alive much longer! Chroma is a bit of work to keep up his tankiness but you are rewarded with a nice bonus in damage for your efforts.  When I do the Profit taker I notice a huge difference when I switch sometimes to my Necramech, the loss in damage is significant, because I'm not getting the Vex Armor bonus on my Heavy weapon.  I would also suggest you remove his first power with something more useful from the Helminth options, which there are many to choose from.  I have several builds, Gloom and Yareli's swirling blades are fun as the blades can get pretty strong with the Vex armor boost added in with the Elemental Ward Fire!  I'm just glad there are still Tenno who actually enjoy Chroma so hopefully you will enjoy him even more now!

Have a Tau Blessed tomorrow!

[Artekkor]

Chrome is Valkyrie 2.0
He has insane innate armor and grows even more from his 3 skill.
The issue here is that unlike Valkyrie - Chroma doesn't have a reliable way to get HP back and that's pretty much the primary issue. Yeah, you can tank damage... You just can't do it forever.

My Chroma is very mildly moded compared to the min-max builds out there, but he seems to be holding the line fine. I've modded him with full set of umbra mods, put that one arcane that has a chance to trigger health regeneration and i think added an archon shards to do the same as well. As long as enemies can't deal 200 damage per bullet even through the 1000+ armor - i tend to be fine.

Too lazy to post an image because i hate 3rd party image hosting so here's the text variant:

1 - Umbral Fiber (Armor)
2 - Umbral Vitality (HP)
3 - Umbral Intensify (Strength)
4 - Primed Continuity (Duration)
5 - Rage (HP > Energy)
6 - Misc. (currently holding an effigy augment because lulz)
7 - Stretch (Range)
8 - Primed Flow (Energy Pool)

Pretty much a basic b~ quality build. Arcane Grace (On HP damaged: 9% chance to regenerate +6% HP/s for 9 seconds) takes care of the rest.

And of course: i don't just stand around and take the beating. That HP needs time to regenerate still, you know.

[taiiat]

stack Health, Armor, and Power Strength.
you for the most part can't have too much. Chroma is the OG Warframe where more Strength more better, basically always. and since you have quite a lot of Armor, youu can never have too much Health.
if you run out of Strength Mods or something, then fill that in with Armor from Mods. otherwise, prefer more Strength over more Armor. 
a common/basic Loadout for Chroma will be like 2.8x+ Strength.

Power Duration is functionally the same as Energy Efficiency for Chroma, since his two Abilities are long Duration things. the longer they last, the more efficient, and such.

use Fire Ward if you can readily Heal yourself, Ice Ward if you can't (though if you can't Heal yourself you're always going to die, so, be able to Heal yourself)

 

it'll be hard to die that way, as long as, yno, your Armor and Damage buffs have actually been charged up. your Shields charge Armor, your Health charges Damage.
you can add more on top of that with stuff like Adaptation, but without is already pretty good.

if you want to push that farther, Subsume in something useful. which would probably be some sort of CC? maybe additional EHP/DR, but CC will be very helpful for Chroma.

also a bit of Power Range is nice if you want to be able to share Elemental Ward and Vex Armor with Allies.

 

oh, and Health Conversion isn't useful on Chroma, there aren't enough Health Orbs. this Warframe is all about taking Damage constantly, you're never going to keep Health Conversion stacked up. easy space for more Health, Strength, or whatever.

[Angel-Nefarious]

On 2023-02-04 at 7:20 PM, (XBOX)sinamanthediva said:

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On 2023-02-04 at 8:27 PM, Artekkor said:

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22 hours ago, taiiat said:

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That's all helpful.  Thanks guys.

[Zakkhar]

Every mod you sacrifice for armor stacking is a mod not used for power STR stacking.

Why bother boosting your armor if the Armor Buff from Vex Armor is additive AND it offers damage as well?

Basically lose damage by using armor mods. You can pretty easily get into 320 str numbers with mods only, you can increase that with some operator, warframe and kitgun arcanes. Remember that the Vex armor grabs the current power STR and uses it whenever you refresh the ability regardless what your STR next time is.

[R4bbit0le]

Just like others have said, boost up your strength stat as much as possible and use adaptation with vitality and u can health tank most things thrown your way.

If you go beyond level 300 or so, depending on the faction you are against, you might need to use shield gate and your second ability (with heat) to heal you as needed. You can't recast his 2 while it's active.

Recasting his 3 (preferably before it runs out since it keeps its stacks) is a more viable strategy than modding for duration.
I only use continuity with him to counter transient fortitude. Stack that strength!