A weird but actually great synergy: Shield recharge mod with Rhino.

[Amolistic.]

PS: This is some Rhino techs from someone who is so no-life to the point he only play Rhino.

 

As you all may know, last time I introduce the tech of Rhino roar + thermal sunder aka the exponential triple dip (direct dmg, multiplier per cast, 2 heat dots), but this time? When i was messing around with rhino once again for a literally few hours, making huge amount of changes for the hundreds of time, i suddenly found this particular type of mod.

Most of the time, it is basically useless, your shields ded so quick, it gives little value, not worthy of a mod slot. But nonetheless, I gave it a try, if it is useless then so be it, no loss will I suffer.

To my surprise, i was shocked by the result. Since i bring dragon key with rhino, thus 113 shields, but before me proving how useful it is, lets talk about the problems and mechanics with iron skin, so that u actually understand the reasoning behind it.

(if you don't wanna read this explanation of iron skin, just skip it immediately to the juicy part)

 

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -  - - - - - - - - - 

- Iron skin.

Iron skin, no matter what setup you did with it, you will always run out of skin, since rhino is not a revenant, he provides huge amount of viability, probably able to do almost any mission, but in exchange, he lost some of his tanking prowess, thus even if he is the 2nd best tank, you actually had to put some effort to earn it, because your iron skin is still acts like mesmer, full dmg mitigation, status immune, but no dmg reflect and sleep effect, mostly the same, but with health instead of hits, and no 1s mechanics.

You may say just do the traditional iron skin setup with parasitic on 4, 1 with augment and some armor mods, but not only this ruins your kit, your versatility, it also affect your kpm, and taking away the best cc in game is obviously not a great choice, even now the no subsume rhino iron skin setup, you still in fact, wasting mod slot for an ability that will scale with the game, even with the best possible case you get, you are going to run out of skin very very fast after a certain level like 1000, and trading lots of potential outside just to tank, which is prob 95% of the time how rhino is played if someone get their hands on.

Rhino and Revenant had a flat line in "tanking ability vs enemy scaling", instead of like revenant being full horizontal line till 9999, rhino will obviously have better tanking potential in general mission, almost the same around base sp, but rhino will start to fall off to the point till a flat line of 3s+ skin health+ shield gate+ cc usage if endurance is taken into account, but still, you will fall into a rather thick "horizontal line" that shows how well you can tank, if well use, though you are still well above everyone else, but definitely below revenant.

A well built rhino tank is like you cast iron skin, absorb dmg for 3s, press 4 once the absorb phase ends (count 1 2 3 yourself, requires skill...), but there will be a point where iron skin will run out, and not every time you will absorb tons of health. So, now come some ways to fill this hole of invulnerability, since you can actually recast iron skin in quick succession where your shield gate isn't ready and just proc last gasp, or marytr symbiosis from panzer.

 

here are the ways you can execute:

1. Shield gating. Traditional brief respite + 2 augur, 100 efficiency, shield gate with iron skin, but not consistent in gaining the shields due to enemy still can hit you while casting.

2. Also shield gating, but now 150 efficiency instead of 100, shield gate with Rhino Stomp.

3. Rolling guard + partial shield gain from augur. Rolling guard could be use to aid the situation, making shield regen to max more often with a well used rolling guard. (shields down, roll, count 1 2 3, cast iron skin, absorb dmg, shields should start to regen when iron skin is in the middle of absorb phase.)

4. iron shrapnel, reinforcing stomp with partial shield gate.

 

All comes down to: You need a 1.3s shield gate ready.

but rhino mostly need to go above 100 effi, and fleeting expertise gives effi but cuts dur, although dur is not that important as many think on rhino, he still need a neutral dur, fleeting will place his dur below that.

Since high efficiency means that shield gating is no more, and although rolling guard is good, you still need high partial shield to aid it (like 40 shield on a 50 energy ability to shorten the time of gaining a shield gate).

And putting in brief respite means no growing power, which Rhino likes a lot.

 

So, how to solve this?

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the juicy part.

 

Shield recharge mod, aka fast reflection, which gives a 90% shield recharge speed.

shield recharge at a base of 15 plus 5% of current max shields (113) x 1+ shield recharge speed, in this case, rhino will recharge 15+5.65=20.65 shields per second, which will take a maximum 5.47s to full charge, with partial shield gain, should be around 3-4s..

a 4s delay, which means that in most cases, rhino will start to recharge his shield right after iron skin absorb phase ends, at lower levels, this is no issue, but when enemy level goes up, this is an issue.

But you cant just shield gate like nothing, energy economy suffers hard because of using the ability for the sake of just shield gating.

So, now, you just replace rolling guard with fast deflection, and now, rhino will recharge his shield at a rate of 39.235 per second, which is 2.88s at max, and it could be as low as 1s to gain a shield gate with partial shield gain, singlehandedly fixing almost all of the holes in iron skin, no more complicated shield gating, no rolling guard skill plays, just let the shield recharge very fast.

"Thus one could theoretically utilize the Decaying Dragon Key to increase survivability even without an on-demand method of restoring shields (such as the Augur Set bonus), as long as they have sufficient means of avoiding damage during the recharge period."

Which so happens that iron skin is full dmg mitigation, thus able to make use of the recharge speed well, making him the only frame that can actually utilize shield recharge mod without the feeling of "it is a waste of mod slot",

Now you can freely mod for 175 effi or 130 effi with primed flow or anyway you want and not worrying that your shield aren't going to recharge fast enough for a full gate, and that slot is originally for rolling guard anyways, no big deal, no more mandatory brief respite shieldgating, no more counter synergy between rolling guard and iron skin, you just cast iron skin, do some partial since I cast 4 after absorb phase ends, and your shield is probably back shortly after.

 

Thank you for reading my essay.

Edited June 18, 2023 by Amolistic.

[FiveN9ne]

 

 

Edited June 18, 2023 by FiveN9ne

[Amolistic.]

38 minutes ago, FiveN9ne said:

 

 

i do mention this iirc, but briefly.

"a 4s delay, which means..."

Edited June 18, 2023 by Amolistic.

[(PSN)Unstar]

Question from a non-Rhino main: I don't think I understand what problem we're solving here?  I've read the whole thing but there are so many details that I'm not sure what's going on.

[(PSN)rexis12]

Just now, (PSN)Unstar said:

Question from a non-Rhino main: I don't think I understand what problem we're solving here?  I've read the whole thing but there are so many details that I'm not sure what's going on.

Basically, the issue with Rhino is that when Iron Skin is depleted he doesn't have the usual 1s of invul others have like Revenant or even Nezha and Yarelli (I think), so if a hit kills his Iron Skin the next hit would immediately strike him directly and would kill his shields since at higher levels most enemies one shot kill your shields.

But this allows a Shield Gate strat to occur, by using Iron Skin again with the 1s invul from a full shield gate. Then added in with the 3-4 seconds of iron skins invul, with the shield recharge mod it allows hi shield to fill to full.

This allows Rhino to sheld gate, plus get a decent 'gating' to recast Iron Skin safely, and also refill his shields to the max to allow for another shield gate without having to sacrifice efficiency to fuel the Augur and Brief Respite mods.

[Cerenax]

Another day, another way of abusing shield gate found.

[--F--NerevarCM]

2 hours ago, Amolistic. said:

This is some Rhino techs from someone who is so no-life to the point he only play Rhino.

Hey, thats me!

[Skoomaseller]

1 hour ago, (PSN)rexis12 said:

Basically, the issue with Rhino is that when Iron Skin is depleted he doesn't have the usual 1s of invul others have like Revenant or even Nezha and Yarelli (I think)

Yareli (the better nezha) does get some invuln upon dismounting and mounting Merulina.

[FiveN9ne]

1 hour ago, (PSN)rexis12 said:

Basically, the issue with Rhino is that when Iron Skin is depleted he doesn't have the usual 1s of invul others have like Revenant or even Nezha and Yarelli (I think), so if a hit kills his Iron Skin the next hit would immediately strike him directly and would kill his shields since at higher levels most enemies one shot kill your shields.

Nezha can still get one shot with Halo active. 

This solves a non existing problem. If you need to be invulnerable 100% of the time in order for you to not die, you're playing the game wrong. 

Move behind a pillar, do a parkour manouver, cast CC. I imagine this is for people who just run into a bunch of enemies cast Iron Skin and then wonder why they died. Iron Skin needs to last a few seconds in order for you to have Shield Gate.

Rolling Guard is a stronger mod. Cast Iron Skin, have 3 seconds invulnerability. Enemies shoot and build up the skin. Enemies remove the skin. Shield gate happens. Recast Skin, enemies shoot and build up the skin. Enemies remove the skin. No shield gate this time, use Rolling Guard. Cast Skin again. Next cycle you have Shield gate. It's quite simple. This is also not recommended because all you do is stand and use Iron Skin instead of move and play.

This is also completely excluding helminth abilities, stomp that Rhino has available, operator and other things players can do.

[SneakyErvin]

This only seems like a problem solver if you lose skin so often that all you do is rebuff it, at which point you wont kill things so might aswell not stay in the mission to begin with.

[0_The_F00l]

While this is a "solution" , the problem is so niche that this will hardly be used , and you are replacing one spam tactic with a different passive tactic with less spam required.

But they both need a proper timing to work properly.

So yes , this is slightly better if your core purpose is to have such a setup.

 

Also , vigilante vigor might be a better alternative as you should still be able to meet the timings but get bonus utility.

Replacing rolling guard with fast deflection feels ... Kinda pointless to me personally.

[Packetdancer]

On 2023-06-18 at 11:45 AM, Skoomaseller said:

Yareli (the better nezha) does get some invuln upon dismounting and mounting Merulina.

Okay, I actually love Yareli quite a bit and play her fairly often, but I also play Nezha fairly often... and I feel like "better Nezha" is maybe pushing things a bit. I mean, yes, hitting a nullifier bubble doesn't immediately nuke Yareli's damage reduction a'la Nezha, and with Merulina Guardian you can actually replenish her defense while still using it, I grant all this. Merulina Guardian + Surging Blades can create what I jokingly call "Functionally Immortal Yareli" (though it's not that much of an exaggeration).

But on the other hand, I've also never gotten my head stuck in the ceiling on the Corpus ice planet tileset -- or gotten the camera so glitched I couldn't move any longer in a ventilation shaft -- as Nezha. ;)

On 2023-06-19 at 6:35 AM, SneakyErvin said:

This only seems like a problem solver if you lose skin so often that all you do is rebuff it, at which point you wont kill things so might aswell not stay in the mission to begin with.

To be fair, I can kind of see it if you're using Iron Shrapnel. If you see that your Iron Skin is getting depleted rapidly, I might lean towards a tactic of "detonate it and refresh it" to take all that damage and build up new Iron Skin instead. And I can see how the shield-gating could hypothetically be useful there. I'm not convinced it's the option I would use in that situation... but, eh, I mean, someone else might prefer doing it that way.

Edited June 20, 2023 by Packetdancer