Some quality of life for Equinox.

[Mazifet]

Me? Making an actual post that isn't just a funny clip? Impossible!

In all seriousness though, Equinox is starting to show a bit of age. She's still a solid choice for most content, but I feel like there could be a few modernizations and minor changes I believe she could have.

 

Passive

Her passive should be buffed, simple as that. Right now, 10% conversion is essentially meaningless. Especially considering Equilibrium is 11 times more effective than her passive. Increasing the conversion to 50-80% would make it a lot more noticeable, allowing it to replace equilibrium in her builds, freeing up a mod slot.

 

Metamorphosis

First change: The time it takes to switch between forms is quite long, and you can't do while switching. I would recommend making Equinox invulnerable while switching between forms.

Second change: Currently when switching forms you get a temporary buff. Extra armor and shields when switching to night, and extra speed and damage when switching to day. However, the lasts for a finite time and also decays, causing the buff to lose effectiveness quite quickly. Instead, increase the duration and strength of the buff, and make it so it doesn't decay. Alternatively keep the current strength, and make it last forever while in that form, not decaying at all.

Duality: I know some people will disagree with me for this, but on a hold cast of metamorphosis you switch to the other form like normal, and your other form breaks free like normal, but make it last indefinitely like Wukong's clone. To compensate, it the damage it deals is only 75% of normal, not scaling with strength. It's HP will scale with enemies, giving it the same level of effectiveness at all levels.

 

Rest & Rage

Rest: No proposed changes. the way it currently functions has no issues and it is an effective ability.

Rage: Unless you cast rest or some other form of crowd control onto an enemy beforehand, casting rage is almost always a negative due to the fact it buffs their damage. I simply propose that the damage vulnerability stays on the ability, while removing the speed buff. Given that abilities like Yareli's sea snares can not only cause enemies to take much more damage, but also disable them (essentially has the effect of casting Rest & Rage at the same time), I think this change is makes sense.

Calm & Frenzy: The only use this augment really sees is in farming affinity or focus, which are both pretty niche tasks. However with the proposed changes to Rage, I could see this augment becoming quite effective at dealing increased damage to multiple enemies.

 

Pacify & Provoke

Pacify: Having enemies be further away from the center of the circle causes the damage decrease to be less effective. I think this mechanic should be removed, as it causes a lot of inconsistency when it comes to your survival. Additionally, the energy drain currently scales off of the number of enemies within the circle. At times when there can be over a dozen targets near you, which is pretty much 100% of the time in steel path, the energy drain can scale to absurd levels. To counteract this I think the energy drain should scale to number of allies within the circle. Other players, companions, specters clones, defense targets, anything that's on your side.

Provoke: Currently provoke does its ability just fine. It increases your power strength, and it does it quite well. I don't really have any issues with this ability, and it can stay as it is

Peaceful Provocation: This augment is also fine as is. If I had to change something, maybe increase the rate at which the abilities get to their maximum potentials.

 

Mend & Maim

Mend: Simply increasing the amount of shield bonus this ability gives from 25 to ~30 would make this ability so much better, allowing for easier shield regeneration.

Maim: Maim is pretty much one of the only infinitely scaling nuking abilities in Warframe, scaling off of enemy health. However the damage it does is slash (not bleed, that's the status slash procs), which is pretty ineffective against armor meaning you either have to kill a ridiculous number of enemies before hand or helminth on some form of armor stripping ability to make it work well in high level grineer missions. Even then, it still is a powerhouse when built for.

Energy Transfer: There is no reason for this to not be part of the base kit. Equinox should not need to recast her 3 or 4 when switching forms. Replacing it, would be "Healing Hemorrhage". In night form: On ability deactivation, convert 1% of stored charge into overguard. I had a similar idea to this before Warframe overguard implementation happened, instead granting overshields. As it stands now, deactivating Mend does essentially nothing, other than healing you and restoring your shields. Most players just keep it active the entire time, as it is more beneficial that way. For day form: On ability deactivation: Convert 5% of stored charge into a bleed proc that effects all enemies within the area. This is the perfect solution to addressing the armor issues Maim has, as bleed does true damage, which bypasses armor.

 

If you have any suggestions or ideas, please feel free to comment below.

 

 

A couple extra changes for her 4rth ability I came up with:

It takes a few seconds to look through the 10+ buffs up on my screen to find how much damage I have built up. To fix this there should be a meter like Baruuk or Garuda, displaying the built up charge for her ability.

Maim also has damage falloff, so the further enemies are away from yourself, the less damage it does. This can lead to inconsistencies when using Maim, so I think the falloff should be removed entirely.

Edited October 13, 2023 by Mazifet

[(XBOX)Mastermitchel89]

Just tying up loose ends, if it is helpful

 

[AegidiusF]

I totally agree with everything, specially with this :

Il y a 1 heure, Mazifet a dit :

Pacify: Having enemies be further away from the center of the circle causes the damage decrease to be less effective. I think this mechanic should be removed, as it causes a lot of inconsistency when it comes to your survival. Additionally, the energy drain currently scales off of the number of enemies within the circle. At times when there can be over a dozen targets near you, which is pretty much 100% of the time in steel path, the energy drain can scale to absurd levels. To counteract this I think the energy drain should scale to number of allies within the circle. Other players, companions, specters clones, defense targets, anything that's on your side.

Sevagoth used to have the same problem with Gloom, but they fixed it (very soon, by the way) by introducing a cap of 10 enemies (7.5 energy points per sec) to be taken into account for the energy drain. I expected Equinox to get the same kind of cap at that time, but nothing changed for her.

But, in my opinion, the most needed QoL for her, is to remove Pacify's falloff.

[SteveCutler]

It would be nice if Pacify just gave allies within the aura a Damage Reduction, instead of applying a Weakness Debuff to enemies within the aura. The difference is, some enemies are immune to the current Weakness Debuff, e.g. Eximus enemies. Pacify does nothing to reduce their damage because they're immune to "CC" abilities, even though it isn't actually a CC.

[Venefik]

 I always felt her passive should be the ability to press and hold one of her abilities and lock that skill into her kit, keeping it in place of the other version when swapping. That would allow her to mix parts of her kit and make more interesting combos.

 Of course we know everyone would just swap either her 3rd or 4th to have both defence and damage but the idea is there.

 Her 1st buff could last a little longer and it could reapply when casting her 2nd and 4th. She should also share the buff with allies, as her kit in general tends to help the whole squad, it would keep in line with her 'enchanter' potential. Hold casting her 1st would then lock the current form's buff when swapping.

 Mend really needs a bit of attention. It gerenates shields per kill but if someone gets hurt you have to stop the shield generation to heal them. It makes the ability feel pretty weird. It would be nice if recasting would stack into overshields and give a max health boost based on the amount stacked up to a certain cap. That would give the recast some value and keep things up while you regen your energy before casting again.

 Pacify really needs the 'rings' or 'falloff' mechanic removed, yes.

 Finally, her Night form really needs some sort of energy economy buff. Either a reduction to Pacify's or Mend's drain, or giving Mend/Pacify a squad buff that increases energy gained from all sources.

[Fred_Avant_2019]

I'm mostly fine with how Equinox works right now.

I'm not fine with Metamorphosis buffs decaying though. That needs to go. Full effect for the whole duration. Period.

[SteveCutler]

It feels like Equinox is just two separate warframes stuck together. I don't think most players actually use both forms, outside of niche things like setting up Gloom with Day's Provoke, then swapping to Night for the rest of the mission. Generally people just play a Day Equinox for nuking, or a Night Equinox for supporting. I don't think this is a good design, and I don't think it's what DE intended either.

The way I envision Equinox, and the way I imagine it was intended (although I could be wrong) is that you would be constantly switching back and forth between Day and Night. An active playstyle, where one moment you'll be in Day, the next Night, then back to Day again.

The way abilities are set up at the moment, it's not like this at all. I'm not sure what the real solution is. Some random ideas:

• Maybe they could change 2, 3, and 4 to be Tap/Hold abilities, giving you instant access to all of them at any time, without having to first use Metamorphosis. For example, you could be in Night form, and hold 4 to cast Maim, which would also switch you to Day form. They could then scrap Metamorphosis and replace it with something else. This would probably require further changes though, as the 3 and 4 abilities aren't really designed for switching back and forth between forms.
• Maybe they could lean into the Yin & Yang thing, and do two resource bars for them, one each. Like how Baruuk, Gauss, Ember, etc. have resource bars. Performing actions in Night form would consume Yin energy but generate Yang energy, and performing actions in Day form would consume Yang energy but generate Yin energy. It could be Nidus and Baruuk like, where the abilities don't actually spend your normal energy bar at all, but instead spend these unique resources. As the two resource bars flip/flop, you'd be encouraged to switch back and forth to cycle through Night and Day forms, keeping the flow/cycle of Yin & Yang going.
• Following on from the above, Equinox's visible form could automatically change depending on the balance of your two resource bars. When you're Yin-heavy, you'd visibly have the Night form. When you're Yang-heavy, then the Day form. If you're balanced, you'd get the hybrid form. There could be some passive bonuses in these states, and maybe some extra reward (like a damage buff) if you keep your resources balanced.

Just some random thoughts that sound cool in my head, but would probably be too extensive a change at this point. All she really needs are some QoL changes.

Edited September 14, 2023 by SteveCutler

[Mazifet]

-Move to original post-

Edited October 13, 2023 by Mazifet
unnecessary

[PR1D3]

Pretty much agree with all this but slight tweaks. With the upcoming update Pablo is making it where Equilibrium can pick up orbs even at max cap to allow you to take the mirror effect. So if your health is full you can still pick up a health orb just to get the energy conversion. If Equinox's passive also got the same treatment that would really be super. Yes on the Rage problem however I would also like to have something extra added on to it. At bare minimum the Damage Vulnerability should be buffed. 50% in the current game is kind of meh when Nezha's Chakram can do 100% at base and they even buffed Yareli's Sea Snares to do a whopping 200% at base. Pacify and Provoke should be channels that can maintain itself through form swap. And everyone have said "Energy Transfer should be innate to her kit" to death now, with a laundry list of reasons and #*!%ing wish they just do it already. Maybe we can beg Pablo enough on Twitter/X to get him to do it lol. He realized how dumb it was that Voruna's 4 didn't count as melee kills so you couldn't synergize with her 3 and now that's on the upcoming update of fixes along with the reworks. With him at the wheel these fixes seem more possible now.