Xaku Passive

[Amylase722]

As a Xaku main, I find that building Xaku optimally is pulling build priorities in a lot of conflicting directions at once - range scaling being so important while also needing a high strength threshold for full defense stripping is a difficult thing to do, but it at least has a rewarding outcome, namely, a highly mobile, high DPS warframe. Where I find difficulty, however, is in resolving "toughness"/survivability at even medium to high levels.

Xaku's passive (with 4 active) provides AoE damage reduction, which is handy, but a chance to "dodge" that doesn't synergize with any other form of toughness or sustain I can come up with. This chance to "dodge" incoming projectiles, melees, etc. doesn't increment or have a chance to activate many of the more conventional options like Adaptation/Arcane Aegis/Grace/Barrier/Guardian, and it also doesn't encourage investing in Xaku's (already extremely low) armor, since without the previously mentioned options for sustain or increasing mitigation, armor won't stack far enough to let you take more than a few "unlucky" hits. This makes me feel as though I have very few options for raising Xaku's survivability. Currently the convention is to run Harrow's Condemn, but this isn't so much investing in my own "toughness" as constantly, proactively capping overshields and CCing enemies so that I can simply ignore his low eHP and brute force my way to victory, which becomes my primary concern when playing the frame, as opposed to focusing on weapon DPS or objectives. Xaku's passive simply ends up not mattering because I ignore it and spam Condemn on everything as if it can instantly kill me, because, well, sometimes things will.

This problem also holds true with "shield gate" builds - once you've committed to a reactionary playstyle of "use Rolling Guard and hit 4 a few times" every time your shield pops, then Xaku's passive again stops mattering - whether it's happening less than it may on other warframe without Xaku's passive, the result is the same, that I am ignoring the passive and changing my playstyle to simply survive, at which point the passive may as well not exist, and in fact gets in the way of some tools of these builds as well, like Aegis/Barrier. So if armor stacking largely doesn't work in letting the passive PASSIVELY work, and the more active survivability options ignore it as well, what's the point?

As a player, I don't feel it's my place to recommend a specific change to anything, but if the core of Xaku's passive, the "chance to dodge", were to remain, I think the only way to improve it would be to force it to interact with some of the above mentioned tools. I obviously can't speak to the technical difficulty of that, but it's a large suite of tools that Xaku is forced to ignore because a "dodged" hit can't activate most of the investment in my arsenal, so this feels like the "best" solution, and certainly my preferred one. Could the passive be entirely changed as well? Sure. Could some "dodge" specific synergies be introduced to somehow layer up Xaku's eHP? Certainly - I'm not recommending any sort of "just make dodge chance 100% with some extra tools" or anything like that, I think I recall changes being made to avoid this in the past, but I am saying that as it stands right now, Xaku's passive is uniquely unhelpful, except to lull me into a false sense of feeling "tanky" right up until the point I fall over again.

P.S. I will also voice my dissatisfaction with the "punishment loop" of Ember's Immolation causing the "fire warframe" to "overheat" and drain her energy - it's the primary reason I don't play her more, please consider reworking this as well.

[DarkSkysz]

39 minutes ago, Amylase722 said:

Ember's Immolation causing the "fire warframe" to "overheat" and drain her energy

Grendel had this issue and they finally changed it. Ember still have hope for the same treatment in the future.

I would love to see the old world on fire on her 2. When you reach the 90% you get the effect as long as you keep it at 90%.

[quxier]

35 minutes ago, Amylase722 said:

this makes me feel as though I have very few options for raising Xaku's survivability.

His kit is around not getting hit:

- Procing void (1st) makes enemies not shoot you

- Killing enemies with 2nd... makes less enemies that can shoot you

- Accused (3rd) enemies are taking shoots so you take less shoots. (More later as it needs some more info)

All above works ok with Xaku/4.

 

Except Accuse, above allows you to use a lot of styles. What about Accuse (mind control)? Well, this style works great if you "don't play" (not actively attacking) because you can kill accused enemies. 2nd (GoL) can kill non-accused enemies with some help of Armor strip (3rd) . You have Damage reduction with 4th that you can increase with Sly Vulpha.

You can use Carnis set but you have to use Heavies a lot.

 

Then there are other damage reductions. But sadly the best use is AFK style.

[KitMeHarder]

6 hours ago, Amylase722 said:

This problem also holds true with "shield gate" builds - once you've committed to a reactionary playstyle of "use Rolling Guard and hit 4 a few times" every time your shield pops, then Xaku's passive again stops mattering - whether it's happening less than it may on other warframe without Xaku's passive, the result is the same

This is a very poor take IMO. "Happening less" means it's happening 1/4 the amount of time. So every 4 times another frame had to reactively refresh their gate, Xaku only had to do it once. It sounds more like you don't trust the frame and simply spam Condemn (when you don't need to) regardless.

6 hours ago, Amylase722 said:

at which point the passive may as well not exist, and in fact gets in the way of some tools of these builds as well, like Aegis/Barrier.

• Firstly, he is intended to have a reactive type survivability, not a passive.
• And secondly, compared to a stock frame, his passive doesn't hinder any of these passive survival tools. The only exception is occasionally Adaptation and Guardian. All of the rest his passive makes stronger compare to using them on a frame like Banshee for example.

 

I don't think you understand how massively powerful his passive is in conjunction with shield gating.

[KitMeHarder]

5 hours ago, quxier said:

You have Damage reduction with 4th that you can increase with Sly Vulpha.

You can use Carnis set but you have to use Heavies a lot.

They do not stack, they are completely different stats. Xaku is "dodge chance" and the Vulpaphyla/Carnis is "evasion".

[Qriist]

7 hours ago, Amylase722 said:

Where I find difficulty, however, is in resolving "toughness"/survivability at even medium to high levels.

This build performs nicely for me playing solo well into at least the 5ks of SP Circuit. 

I've found that Arcane Blessing + Adaptation is a relatively cheap way to massively boost any frame's survivability.

For shards, I have 3 red shards on power strength to hit full strip with a single Gaze, 1 tauforged blue on +energy max, and 1 yellow on energy on spawn, so what you see here is the extent of the defenses on my build.

Get your armor strip fields up with Gaze and regularly use Accuse to make new friends, most things will be taken care of quickly.

 

6 hours ago, quxier said:

But sadly the best use is AFK style.

I disagree. I'm pretty much never stationary with Xaku.

[quxier]

5 hours ago, KitMeHarder said:

11 hours ago, quxier said:

You have Damage reduction with 4th that you can increase with Sly Vulpha.

You can use Carnis set but you have to use Heavies a lot.

They do not stack, they are completely different stats. Xaku is "dodge chance" and the Vulpaphyla/Carnis is "evasion".

Doesn't matter because they still makes you less vulnerable. From 25% damage that hits Xaku, Sly's & Carnis' set makes even less damage to Xaku. It won't go to 100% (like you said) but it's still pretty useful. Plus Carnis has status immunity.

5 hours ago, Qriist said:

11 hours ago, quxier said:

But sadly the best use is AFK style.

I disagree. I'm pretty much never stationary with Xaku.

Being stationary doesn't mean you cannot AFK. Put 2nd, put Gaze (armor strip) and keep your timer with 4th. You are just running around. Yes, that may not be stationary but it's not very active gameplay (aka close to AFK).

Even with subsumed STyanax armor strip (armor strip on cast, in front of you) it's still close to AFK.

ps. if it's so close to AFK style so I just say it's AFK style.

[Qriist]

38 minutes ago, quxier said:

Being stationary doesn't mean you cannot AFK. Put 2nd, put Gaze (armor strip) and keep your timer with 4th. You are just running around. Yes, that may not be stationary but it's not very active gameplay (aka close to AFK).

I genuinely have no meaningful response to this flabbergastingly contradictory logic.

[CatboyPrincess]

You can try stacking shield recharge delay reduction. This synergizes with evasion cuz evasion provides higher average time span between hits which means more time for shield recharge to kick in. You'll want both Vigilante Vigor and Fast Deflection at least. Catalyzing Shields might be good. I don't remember Xaku's max rank shield gate duration. (If it's <1 s by default then Catalyzing Shields would probably be worth it.) Putting on some max shielding might be a good alternative to Catalyzing Shields. Sacrificing 3 mod slots for survival is kinda painful though. Of course, Rolling Guard remains an obvious choice too.

I'd try out Vigilante Vigor and Fast Deflection together before adding more. Between that and the slow attached to Xaku's 4, their survivability should be solid.

Agility Drift is an exilus slot that would play into the theme of the survivability.

Edited December 30, 2023 by CatboyPrincess

[quxier]

4 hours ago, Qriist said:

5 hours ago, quxier said:

Being stationary doesn't mean you cannot AFK. Put 2nd, put Gaze (armor strip) and keep your timer with 4th. You are just running around. Yes, that may not be stationary but it's not very active gameplay (aka close to AFK).

I genuinely have no meaningful response to this flabbergastingly contradictory logic.

And I have no idea what you mean.... so no reply from me too.