First Impressions Dante

[Circle_of_Psi]

Hello Drifters!

So with the end of Devstream 177, we have had a full look at Dante's kit and what his entire playstyle is about. I'll be the first to admit that I am looking forward to giving Dante a good run as I do enjoy Mystic/Sorcery type of Themes and Dante fills all the tickboxes for that perfect type of frame that I was looking for.

However, there are some minor exceptions and 2 glaring issues that I have found that raise some concerns about this frame's performance and relevancy in the future and that he may naturally drift apart from the meta over time.

So let's go over his Abilities one by one to address the concerns:

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Passive: Noctua scans targets. Status Chance increases against fully Scanned targets.

While his Passive could make sense from a lore standpoint, gameplay-wise it lacks substance and for the newer players (or even vets) this passive will be borderline useless as not everyone scans targets, I don't know how many of you have fully unlocked your Codex but I strongly suggest that this Passive is injected into another passive along with it.

I have about 3 suggested ones:

Passive 1: If the Grimoire is equipped, the Noctua deals 50% extra damage & has a faster fire rate. 

Passive 2: If Dante is killed when his Noctua is out, his Noctua will be killed instead. (Cooldown of 90s) 

Passive 3: If Dante has no weapons equipped, he gains a boost in Health/Armor and has an innate 30% Ability Efficiency (Note: Dante will be the first frame to be able to equip no weapons at all)

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First Ability: Noctua

Open Noctua, Dante’s Exalted Tome, and unleash a tale of woe upon his enemies.

NOTE: Noctua has the Unique Trait where all Tome Mods can be equipped without restriction!

The main concern I have with Noctua is that it may be too costly to upkeep given the fact that the drain on many exalted weapons is often too high or counter to the playstyle of the frame, so to counter this I strongly recommend that it needs to have a Zero Cost (per-shot) and have a very low tick/drain while it's out and active.

Since Razorwing & Exalted Blade are both by Ability Efficiency and Ability Duration this makes it somewhat easy to manage, while Balefire is backed up by the fact that Hildryn has so many shields and has 3 ways of restoring them, managing it, and isn't too difficult either, however, it appears that Dante does not.

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Second Ability: Light Verse
Dante’s vitalizing composition grants him and his allies Overguard and increases their Max Health.

Third Ability: Dark Verse
Dante’s composition draws blood from nearby enemies, inflicting Slash Damage upon them.

Fourth Ability: Final Verse
Dante must compose two other Verses before his Final Verse. The last two Verses (ability 2 and 3) cast by Players are what affect the Final Verse, including the order you cast them in! Build a story with your Ability casts, and tell it with Final Verse!

Here’s a look at how each Verse manifests:

- Two Light Verses (2, 2) invigorate allies with Triumph, offering regenerating survivability stats.
- Two Dark Verses (3, 3) attack enemies with Tragedy, dealing lots of damage.
- A Dark Verse followed by a Light Verse (3, 2) summons Pageflight, Paragrimms who swoop at enemies and deal Slash procs!
- A Light Verse followed by a Dark Verse (3, 3) supports allies with Wordwarden, which summons a copy of Noctua

The other concern I have about Dante is the two powers above if his Light/Dark Verse has too much of a high energy cost then it'll be far too difficult for Dante to queue up anything for Final Verse and players will grow tired of him real quick, so ideally Light Verse and Dark Verse need to have a relatively low energy cost and high casting speed in order for his verse gimmick to actually be practical and on top of that I think low cost fits the very simple nature of those abilities as well.

While it's quite early to make any major judgment calls, I'm still hoping that DE is aware of the issues we've listed and at least considers them before shipping him out. However don't take my word for it, What do you all think?

Share them below!

 

-Psi

 

Edited February 27 by Circle_of_Psi
Moved to Feedback & Edited Main Topic

[Waeleto]

I like the 3rd one but not so much the other 2 ngl

Either way i'm really excited to try him out and i already have a few builds in mind but i totally agree his passive is very lame

[(PSN)slightconfuzzled]

Personally, I kind of like the passive as so far as if it allows me to scan a bunch of enemies, that I am too lazy to try and scan through other means, like many of the Duviri enemies, and certain rarer enemy types that pop up in certain Sorties with certain modifiers, that I forget about until I see someone mention it later..

That being said, I don't necessarily disagree with your assessment either. I think its accurate. I am just not really bothered with it either. I like the first and third suggestion, second considerably less so. I also can't really remember what the status chance percentage was going to be, but that could always be potentially boosted.

[Monolake]

The showing was very poor by someone who didnt understand anything and played it for the 1st time (new frame duh), so maybe its not as bad but still.

Its dead on arrival - too complicated for nothing special in return in a game where everything is trivial and half playerbase use frames with 1 button and cant even keep up buffs, while those who minmax just use a big gun that wipes out everything with no need to juggle frame skills. Thats why EQ and Sevagoth see no use. Same fate awaits this frame.

[Waeleto]

Just now, Monolake said:

The showing was very poor by someone who didnt understand anything and played it for the 1st time (new frame duh), so maybe its not as bad but still.

Its dead on arrival - too complicated for nothing special in return in a game where everything is trivial and half playerbase use frames with 1 button and cant even keep up buffs, while those who minmax just use a big gun that wipes out everything with no need to juggle frame skills. Thats why EQ and Sevagoth see no use. Same fate awaits this frame.

I also thought about this, i know dante will end up in the same place as baruuk/sevagoth simply because the MAJORITY of warframe players like to "press 1 button to win the game" and honestly that's okay, a lot of warframes who get released lately are press 1 button to win so it's fine if they introduce a more complex warframe every once in a while, after all how complex can they get ? the hardest warframe to learn in the game is probably easier than the easiest character in other games (and that's fine too)

With all that being said i LOVE sevagoth and i can't wait to play dante, if people don't wanna learn him it's their loss not ours and sevagoth is still 🔛🔝

[_Anise_]

28 minutes ago, Circle_of_Psi said:

honestly don't like his Passive

how does it work ? if its just scanning targets for existing I like it (free status chance?) but if its requiring the book be out in order to get the scans then not so much

Edited February 25 by _Anise_

[Hayrack]

As a person, who just recently played Nidus, churning through his stupid stack mechanics, I have a question: WTH is the point of all this? What will this new frame bring to the table? Useful if you are training to be secretary, I guess?

[Raikh]

Having access to Overguard + Shield Gating solves survivability, which is a good start for any Frame in my book.

The verse mechanic and combination effect on his 4 are conceptually neat, but Warframe is such a fast game that it has me wondering whether it will be practical enough. Especially with reagrd to reacitonary play, like casting 2 to gain Overguard to save yourself but wanting a 3-3 or 3-2 Final Verse. So now you have to cast additional abilities, spend more energy and delaying the next 4 cast.

Passive doesn't sound like much, depends on how fast things are scanned, whether this is instantaneous and quasi free Status on Noctua or maybe even in general or if this takes too long and doesn't really work on enemies that die instantly (so 99%+ of them). If he gives a considerable amount of Status Chance "for free" then I'm fine with it as a Passive, even if its not crazy exciting necessarily but if the functionality of the kit checks out overall I take it.

None of the suggested passives really speak to me and If I got to choose between some free Status Chance and a super specific perk that requires me to bring a specific weapon or none at all, I'd rather have the Status Chance.

Edited February 25 by Raikh

[Tiltskillet]

1 hour ago, _Anise_ said:

how does it work ? if its just scanning targets for existing I like it (free status chance?) but if its requiring the book be out in order to get the scans then not so much

Yeah, not clear to me from the video.  I hope it doesn't require Noctua to be out, because then that part is just a component of his 1 instead of being a "passive", and you'd lose it if replacing it.  (And it seems like it might be the most replaceable ability.)

2 hours ago, Circle_of_Psi said:

However I honestly don't like his Passive, it's too niche and doesn't provide anything besides a small Status Chance boost on scanned targets, while this could make sense from a lore standpoint but gameplay it lacks substance and for the newer players (or even vets) this passive will be borderline useless as not everyone scans targets.

So I think a new passive is in order, I have about 3 suggested ones:

I prefer DE's passive.  I'm actually pretty excited about it (for a passive) though I may change my mind if it doesn't work as I hope.

 

1 hour ago, Waeleto said:

. . . the MAJORITY of warframe players like to "press 1 button to win the game" and honestly that's okay, a lot of warframes who get released lately are press 1 button to win so it's fine if they introduce a more complex warframe every once in a while, after all how complex can they get ? the hardest warframe to learn in the game is probably easier than the easiest character in other games (and that's fine too)

Exactly this.

[(PSN)robotwars7]

1 hour ago, Hayrack said:

As a person, who just recently played Nidus, churning through his stupid stack mechanics, I have a question: WTH is the point of all this? What will this new frame bring to the table? Useful if you are training to be secretary, I guess?

The whole "scribe" theme is just that. A theme.. Mechanically speaking, it seems he's a caster with focus on high burst damage and team buffs, and while he arguably wont do anything unique, all we can really hope for with so many frames in the game now is that each new frame is viable for most content, preferably from release.

I dont mind his passive as is, it'll help with codex completion.

[ClockworkDirge]

Honestly, I’m excited to play Dante. I’ve had a Helios perma-equipped just for codex scanning on all my frames for almost as long as I’ve played Warframe, and have a nearly completed codex thanks to this. His passive, on top of the cool theming and abilities, have me more excited to play a frame than I’ve been since I first got my hands on the Warframe I main.

[_Anise_]

20 minutes ago, Tiltskillet said:

hope it doesn't require Noctua to be out, because then that part is just a component of his 1 instead of being a "passive", and you'd lose it if replacing it.  (And it seems like it might be the most replaceable ability.)

this was my exact thought process aswell ! 2, 3 and 4 are set in stone basically making #1 the only viable skill to replace, which might be ok since you can use other weapons and even another book with him ! but it would suck if it also meant disabling the "passive"

I also wonder if it synergizes with Helios scans

Edited February 25 by _Anise_

[(XBOX)Cram Duahcim]

He looks like an overly complex warframe that the majority of players that try him won't spend the time to actually learn what his skills are, only to complain and call him "trash" 

But the ones that do spend the time to understand how he works: Will absolutely love.

I'm very curious how he's going to play. I really like the ascetic design as well as how complex he's going to be. 

 

Edited February 25 by (XBOX)Cram Duahcim

[Tiltskillet]

As far as first impressions go, I was pretty excited. 

Second impression:  Equinox be like...

[Circle_of_Psi]

3 hours ago, (PSN)slightconfuzzled said:

That being said, I don't necessarily disagree with your assessment either. I think its accurate. I am just not really bothered with it either. I like the first and third suggestion, second considerably less so. I also can't really remember what the status chance percentage was going to be, but that could always be potentially boosted.

3 hours ago, Waeleto said:

I like the 3rd one but not so much the other 2 ngl

Either way i'm really excited to try him out and i already have a few builds in mind but i totally agree his passive is very lame

Hey, glad you like them, I was just spitballing ideas, so they are not supposed to be amazing

But I do agree, the Passive is weak as hek 

3 hours ago, Monolake said:

The showing was very poor by someone who didnt understand anything and played it for the 1st time (new frame duh), so maybe its not as bad but still.

Its dead on arrival - too complicated for nothing special in return in a game where everything is trivial and half playerbase use frames with 1 button and cant even keep up buffs, while those who minmax just use a big gun that wipes out everything with no need to juggle frame skills. Thats why EQ and Sevagoth see no use. Same fate awaits this frame.

3 hours ago, Waeleto said:

I also thought about this, i know dante will end up in the same place as baruuk/sevagoth simply because the MAJORITY of warframe players like to "press 1 button to win the game" and honestly that's okay, a lot of warframes who get released lately are press 1 button to win so it's fine if they introduce a more complex warframe every once in a while, after all how complex can they get ? the hardest warframe to learn in the game is probably easier than the easiest character in other games (and that's fine too)

With all that being said i LOVE sevagoth and i can't wait to play dante, if people don't wanna learn him it's their loss not ours and sevagoth is still 🔛🔝

Yeah, that is the issue sometimes, when someone does not understand anything and just "shows off" the frame, but hey.

However, I don't really agree with your assessment and that's okay, cuz there is nothing too complicated about him, but again I don't know what type of player you are, so I don't know your judgment.

But tell me, what makes you think Dante will be DoA?

3 hours ago, _Anise_ said:

how does it work ? if its just scanning targets for existing I like it (free status chance?) but if its requiring the book be out in order to get the scans then not so much

No Clue, sadly.

2 hours ago, Hayrack said:

As a person, who just recently played Nidus, churning through his stupid stack mechanics, I have a question: WTH is the point of all this? What will this new frame bring to the table? Useful if you are training to be secretary, I guess?

Hah, I love the joke here

But overall, we'll have to see I guess!

1 hour ago, Raikh said:

Having access to Overguard + Shield Gating solves survivability, which is a good start for any Frame in my book.

The verse mechanic and combination effect on his 4 are conceptually neat, but Warframe is such a fast game that it has me wondering whether it will be practical enough. Especially with reagrd to reacitonary play, like casting 2 to gain Overguard to save yourself but wanting a 3-3 or 3-2 Final Verse. So now you have to cast additional abilities, spend more energy and delaying the next 4 cast.

Passive doesn't sound like much, depends on how fast things are scanned, whether this is instantaneous and quasi free Status on Noctua or maybe even in general or if this takes too long and doesn't really work on enemies that die instantly (so 99%+ of them). If he gives a considerable amount of Status Chance "for free" then I'm fine with it as a Passive, even if its not crazy exciting necessarily but if the functionality of the kit checks out overall I take it.

None of the suggested passives really speak to me and If I got to choose between some free Status Chance and a super specific perk that requires me to bring a specific weapon or none at all, I'd rather have the Status Chance.

All of this ^

Having access to Overguard + Shield Gating solves survivability for any frame will make them a high-tier frame, given how stupidly strong it can get. As for his verse mechanic and combination effect on his 4 could be quite strong since everyone loves Slash Damage and given how strong (the stats anyway) looked in the play-testing, his book might be quite strong.

His casting speed doesn't seem too much of an issue, so I don't think the fast-paced will be an issue here but we'll have to wait a see and we always can slap in Speed Buffs.

As for the Passive, that's a fair point you have.

Edited February 25 by Circle_of_Psi

[Circle_of_Psi]

15 minutes ago, (XBOX)Cram Duahcim said:

He looks like an overly complex warframe that the majority of players that try him won't spend the time to actually learn what his skills are, only to complain and call him "trash" 

But the ones that do spend the time to understand how he works: Will absolutely love.

I'm very curious how he's going to play. I really like the ascetic design as well as how complex he's going to be. 

Yup, that's what I was thinking too that players will think he is "Too complex" and will just call him Trash, cuz he can't be like Mesa and press 4 to win (and I know a certain youtuber) will porb think the same

I will spend quite a bit of time with him, to see if I can max him out and I share the same assessment as you, I already have a build in mind for him lol, of course, it's just on paper right now. (cuz duh, not out yet xD)

8 minutes ago, Tiltskillet said:

As far as first impressions go, I was pretty excited. 

Second impression:  Equinox be like...

xD

Edited February 25 by Circle_of_Psi

[pwnSacrifice]

I'm looking forward to him. Untill we have solid numbers to go off of, I can't and won't comment on his viability. 

I do like his whole vibe. Combo-ing built into his kit could be cool. Noctua seems very interesting from a weapon build perspective, and he easily has the best beard in the game.

I get the same feeling with Dante as I did with Yareli. Intrigued and enamored with the visuals. Hopefully he works a bit better on release.

[PsiWarp]

The devstream overview descriptions (and Rebb's commentary, lol) are too vague to draw conclusive evidence on how viable Dante will be. Each frame requires thorough research to record on the wiki had nuances and hidden mechanics that complete their kit, and Dante being a creation of the new guard will be no different.

I hope the passive description meant Noctua in a thematic sense, not just the exalted weapon. Maybe all other abilities scan enemies, too, as DE technically said he brings the book out when he casts and you don't need his 1 to be active.

The Status Chance buff on completed Codex enemies sounds like it affects all his equipped weapons (because it would be useless otherwise if the Noctua ability was subsumed away).

Edit: also hopefully the energy costs are 25 (no drain/sec), 25, 25, and 50. Noctua with Xata Invocation would be blocked if it had a drain per second (no pls). Final Verse costs 2, 3, and 4 abilities combined.

Edited February 26 by PsiWarp

[Xzorn]

I would keep his passive because increasing status rates is the rarest thing in the game.

It's why endurance runners used status weapons boosted by abilities. Only Mirage can increase her status proc rates and even that was nerf'd.

In the end though. Numbers are what matter and we have none.

[Ace-Bounty-Hunter]

13 hours ago, Circle_of_Psi said:

However I honestly don't like his Passive, it's too niche and doesn't provide anything besides a small Status Chance boost on scanned targets

I think you are downplaying how strong status is in this game. Plus I love the fact he can function as a viable alternative to Helios with its augment. Depending on how good he is might finally motivate me to fill out my codex.

[Aldain]

I'm not super over the moon about him from what I've seen personally.

Really I'd be most worried about him having to do more work for the same output as other one-button solutions.

Also chances are he's gonna cost Entrati Lanthorn and *$&# farming that.

[Tiltskillet]

48 minutes ago, Xzorn said:

Only Mirage can increase her status proc rates and even that was nerf'd.

Check out Citrine's Prismatic Gem.

[Xzorn]

12 minutes ago, Tiltskillet said:

Check out Citrine's Prismatic Gem.

 

Ah, yea, Citrine and some Tenet/Kuva weapons are the only things I don't own at this point. It'll be a while before I will probably.

Pretty much down to the mind numbing farms. That would make two things in the whole game that increase status.

When Mirage could x5 status rates. It was so good. I hate seeing her in the condition she is now.

[Circle_of_Psi]

10 hours ago, PsiWarp said:

Edit: also hopefully the energy costs are 25 (no drain/sec), 25, 25, and 50. Noctua with Xata Invocation would be blocked if it had a drain per second (no pls). Final Verse costs 2, 3, and 4 abilities combined.

The dev build had unlimited energy from what I can tell (stupid way to show Players his powers IMO) so we're not entirely sure if Noctua will have a drain/sec and if I'm going to be purely honest here, if Noctua does have a drain/sec then that power is going to be the most stupidest power he'll ever have and it'll be likely the one power that everyone removes.

The issue is that the basic Grimoire is trash, so if DE expects us to use Noctua at all, it needs to have exactly Zero drain/sec, I don't mind it costing energy to cast but other than that, I think Noctua is gonna be DoA.

Given that Reb was able to use Xata Invocation, it looks like it might be usable but it'll become a "Must Have" mod installed (or as DE calls it: If you are not using this, you are bad at the game) type of situation. 

Fingers Crossed Noctua will not have any sort of drain.

5 hours ago, Xzorn said:

I would keep his passive because increasing status rates is the rarest thing in the game.

It's why endurance runners used status weapons boosted by abilities. Only Mirage can increase her status proc rates and even that was nerf'd.

In the end though. Numbers are what matter and we have none.

5 hours ago, Ace-Bounty-Hunter said:

I think you are downplaying how strong status is in this game. Plus I love the fact he can function as a viable alternative to Helios with its augment. Depending on how good he is might finally motivate me to fill out my codex.

Fair points, all around.

It's just I can't see his Passive being useful for players who either are New to the game or can't be bothered to fill out the codex since it's just a niche thing.

Edited February 26 by Circle_of_Psi

[SpiritTeA]

Look at Rhino, Oberon and Valkyre if you’re talking about “niche”(trash) passives. Dante has great passive, nothing overpowering nor underperforming. You just get free status and scans(depending on how clubky it is), very balanced spot.