Why is there such a hatred towards Caliban

[Raarsi]

Why do I get the impression that DE's response would be how he's "a misunderstood frame" and likely try to explain how all but his last ability aren't prioritized to do damage.  Something like how his first ability is a heal that just happens to do damage, his second being a CC that just happens to do damage and his third is flak maneuver that just happens to do damage even though that logic could be used to explain his fourth as an armor strip that just happens to do damage.

The other issue, as pointed out elsewhere, is that he was released seemingly as an afterthought tied to a highly anticipated patch that turned out to be a steaming pile of sentient scrap, leaving a frame with arguably one of the most different designs ever created to be left in the dust.  Between that and other frames that could be considered in greater need of reworking over the past couple of years (Grendel, Hydroid, Inaros, Yareli, Valkyr), I suspect Caliban will unfortunately be untouched for a good while longer.

[Tiltskillet]

14 minutes ago, Raarsi said:

The other issue, as pointed out elsewhere, is that he was released seemingly as an afterthought tied to a highly anticipated patch

Qorvex strikes me as mirroring this, though to a lesser degree.

[(PSN)Madurai-Prime]

Most players are lower tier and lack knowledge and skill and experience. There's nothing wrong with this, because games are supposed to be fun and not a job.

Since it's really hard for people to admit they aren't good at something, they instead turn their aggression outward and blame something else. It's always the devs fault or the game, or the mechanics or the enemies etc. 

This is why telling someone to practice or be better is met with such vitriol.

[trst]

38 minutes ago, KitMeHarder said:

If you extrapolate any frame's kit enough, 95-100% of them won't have another frame the does everything that the original frame does. This is just a bad justification, in the same sense I can say Caliban does nothing because he doesn't have status immunity, energy regen, bonus loot, invisibility, etc.... This doesn't really show what Caliban does better than another frame, you just created a pigeonhole you knew no frame could 5/5.

Not to mention many frames have just as many mechanics, if not significantly more (especially once you remove the arbitrary augment restriction). With many of said mechanics being significantly better than what Caliban offers.

It's hardly arbitrary as his kit encompasses the two main mechanics all builds require to some extent: survivability and damage. And within those categories Caliban has the two primary methods of both those systems with DR and Shield synergy for survivability and a damage buff plus armor stripping for damage. While for all other frames they're having to include additional upgrades like augments, Helminth, Arcanes, etc to get all of those mechanics at once. And all of those options come at some cost to a build either with sacking mod slots or restricting options in other categories meanwhile Caliban has the option to take anything else.

Now mind you I'm not saying that he's in a good place. And he definitely needs some new gimmicks either baked in or finally added through augments else he'll just be worse than Oberon who at least has some unique gimmicks to use. But also the comment I was responding to was "What does Caliban offer that other warframes don't offer better ?" and even if he's not offering something good or desirable his gimmick of having all these core mechanics innately is what he offers over other frames.

[KitMeHarder]

24 minutes ago, (PSN)Madurai-Prime said:

This is why telling someone to practice or be better is met with such vitriol.

It's more so because it's often disingenuously used as a "Catch-22". How can someone ever be correct if the other party can always just say they lack experience?

So it's better to articulate how someone is wrong and not just pull the "I have authority" button, as more often than not it's just used as a way to always be correct/never explain yourself.

28 minutes ago, trst said:

But also the comment I was responding to was "What does Caliban offer that other warframes don't offer better ?" and even if he's not offering something good or desirable his gimmick of having all these core mechanics innately is what he offers over other frames.

TBF, off the top of my head Gauss does all of those things "DR and Shield synergy for survivability and a damage buff plus armor stripping for damage" except the healing you brought up in your first comment. 

[UnstarPrime]

I've actually never even played as Caliban, as he's one of the few Warframes I have yet to farm.  But it's common knowledge that the overall community thinks he doesn't bring much to the table.  So when players goof about Caliban's efficacy, I laugh along.

That said, I hope that that laughter never targets Caliban's players.  If you like a frame that everyone else thinks is bad, that's 100% fine in my book.  In fact, I think that's great and I love to see it, because that means you're adding variety to Warframe and probably working that much harder to make interesting builds others wouldn't have thought of.

[(XBOX)Big Roy 324]

My biggest issue with Caliban is that DE obviously pre-nerfed him to a nearly irrelevant level.

The Spin move should be a pseudo exalted that builds combo count.

Sentient wrath shouldn't have a target limit

Lethal progeny should be Battalysts and not Conculysts.  So they actually shoot enemies and occasionally do the spin lazer move.

Fusion strike needs greater synergy with the rest of his abilities. Like the summons all perform the action or all enemies in the field of sentient wrath are affected by Fusion strike's defense removal. 

His passive should be the full adaption at 90%.

Each design choice shows fear that he was going to be too broken. So they just made sure nothing was considered too good.  Which translates to not good enough. 

[(PSN)Madurai-Prime]

2 hours ago, KitMeHarder said:

It's more so because it's often disingenuously used as a "Catch-22". How can someone ever be correct if the other party can always just say they lack experience?

So it's better to articulate how someone is wrong and not just pull the "I have authority" button, as more often than not it's just used as a way to always be correct/never explain yourself.

TBF, off the top of my head Gauss does all of those things "DR and Shield synergy for survivability and a damage buff plus armor stripping for damage" except the healing you brought up in your first comment. 

Caliban has both a vulnerability to damage ability (like Novas 4) and an armor strip ability. The animations are slow....but we have shards and natural talent. 

Yes, we all know there's a better frame that can do it better....since that's what everyone says. 

But the tools are right there to make any level enemy into paper. 

As I've said numerous times, and evidenced by one of the responses in this thread, people are wondering why his abilities don't do all the damage when we all know they have 2 guns and a sword. 

People shouldn't expect every frame to do all the work for them while they ignore their guns and melee. People are basing a frames usefulness on how little buttons they have to press.

[Aldain]

Ask DE, they're the ones who made him like he is.

That's more hateful than anything that comes from the players, his farm is a pain in the arse (needing both Railjack and RNG bounties), his abilities are mid at best and he's gotten basically nothing of value since he dropped.

[Slayer-.]

 

9 hours ago, Marvelous_A said:

and he looks kinda ugly.

Took me ages to fashion frame him TBH.

9 hours ago, Waeleto said:

What does Caliban offer that other warframes don't offer better ?

Trolling of new players that run around in sheer terror trying to kill the sentient that suddenly appeared next to them. 

3 hours ago, (XBOX)Big Roy 324 said:

My biggest issue with Caliban is that DE obviously pre-nerfed him to a nearly irrelevant level.

The Spin move should be a pseudo exalted that builds combo count.

Sentient wrath shouldn't have a target limit

Lethal progeny should be Battalysts and not Conculysts.  So they actually shoot enemies and occasionally do the spin lazer move.

Fusion strike needs greater synergy with the rest of his abilities. Like the summons all perform the action or all enemies in the field of sentient wrath are affected by Fusion strike's defense removal. 

His passive should be the full adaption at 90%.

Each design choice shows fear that he was going to be too broken. So they just made sure nothing was considered too good.  Which translates to not good enough. 

At least the spin move gives us an easy option to helminth out.

Sentient wrath shouldn't have a target limit I also agree on that point.

I fully agree the Sentients should be Battalysts with their special spin mode with lasers.

They could add a hold feature to drop all the Sentients at once instead of placing them one at a time, it is slow doing one at a time.

 

[Kaiga]

'Cause he sucks 

[(PSN)robotwars7]

10 hours ago, Dr.Tursko said:

STORY

it's mainly just headcanon, but based on him being described as an "heir of twin kingdoms" and a fusion of Warframe and Sentient tech, I'd like to think Ballas intended for Caliban to be a bodyguard/assistant, and a contingency should the Sentients ever decide to betray him. 

10 hours ago, Dr.Tursko said:

BALANCE AND GAMEPLAY

there's no way of getting around the fact he's sub par, and needs reworking. his kit would still be all over the place (CC, summons and a burst damage/debuff ult, hell of a mish-mash) even after a rework, but that shouldn't be a reason for him to not get one.

10 hours ago, Dr.Tursko said:

DEVELOPER IGNORANCE

I suppose given how many frames there are, on or two are bound to slip their mind.

10 hours ago, Dr.Tursko said:

. I simply made this post to discuss Caliban and his balance with my fellow players while hopefully avoiding the repeated 'jokes' about his irrelevance.

ultimately, I think it's not so much "hatred" for Caliban, but apathy.. which is arguably worse as it means people simply don't care enough for him to be looked at and fixed. I suppose it didn't help that New War's narrative was rushed and after like a year of hype we got a meh quest and the post-quest content was literally just reskinned bounties on the Plains and Orb Vallis. about the only truly good thing that came out of the whole ordeal was that Ballas died, so outside of prime trailers we never have to hear of him again. as a result of this, the community may associate Caliban with one of the less favourable periods of warframe's history as well, so that leads people to want to avoid talking about him.

on the plus side, he's yet to be primed, so He may finally get fixed then, but even that could be seen as wishful thinking.

 

[Berzerkules]

My main gripe with Cali is collision with lethal progeny. They fall behind then teleport in front of you and block your path. Rule number one for all summoners in any game is remove collision with summons. 

His kit might not be the most interesting but there is enough there to scale indefinitely. I like frames that you have to work on to get a balanced comfortable build and I got there with cali but those summons just kill it for me me. 

Lifted status is also garbage, remove that and make it a blind or anything else. 

[KitMeHarder]

1 hour ago, (PSN)Madurai-Prime said:

People are basing a frames usefulness on how little buttons they have to press.

I mean really people are basing it off of how well he preforms compared to other frames. Because even look at Gauss, the (better) frame I used to counter trst's claim, he's the embodiment of a frame that can't slow down if he wants to preform at max.

I believe we've had this conversation before, but the difference is you seem to see things on a "viable" scale, and I (and most WF players it seems) see things on a relative scale. And almost everything in Warframe can be made to be viable, but when another frame can do Caliban's job 3x better or another frame can do Caliban's job plus something else useful, then most people don't see the point in playing Caliban (and this affects non-DPS frames much more).

So it's not that people can't/don't know how to use him, it's just that on a relative scale there is little point in picking him. (Not to mention his 1 is awful and his passive ceases to exist if you want Adapatation's higher DR.)

[DeathOfASaint]

11 hours ago, Mazifet said:

I feel like that's the biggest issue with him, same with Styanax. They are both just kind of there, not really doing anything bad but also not having a unique identity.

styanax has NUTS damage and support capabilities with final stand and aug, alongside teamwide energy gen and 100% armor strip

if anything id rather have a styanax in my team giving 40k overguard over other support frames 

[Skoomaseller]

11 hours ago, Aruquae said:

No way that wasn’t intentional 

it was

[RichardKam]

1. It was locked behind the new war and my god it is painful just to type this two words Narmer bounties.

2. His kit is lackluster.

Given the current state, I won't be so harsh on him if he is available in clan dojo like volt. If he is locked behind one of the late game (or mid game now?) quest, he should be a bit more powerful.

 

[DrivaMain]

I have a feeling that Caliban still has that touch of ol' [DE]Scott. Yes, the man who is dubbed the "guy who nerfs everything in Warframe" or you can say the "Fun Police" by the Warframe community. From my observation, His approach to designing frames is to "release it weak and underpowered, but buff it quickly in the following update/hotfix based on feedback". What seems to be the problem is that Caliban was released when the Warframe dev team was undergoing a transition of leadership from the old guard to the new guard. It seems the new guard does not diligently follow Scott's frame design philosophy. If you look at recent Warframes after Caliban, only Kullervo received drastic changes post-launch; the rest are just bug fixes or minimal changes.

Caliban only has two major problems in my opinion: Hilariously bad first ability and the second ability disrupting gameplay. If Lethal Progeny rips a page from Lantern and makes enemies "anchored" to the ground preventing them from floating off and Razor Gyre is reworked entirely or has vastly improved scaling, then Caliban will be in a much better place.

[Almxce]

23 hours ago, Dr.Tursko said:

THIS ENTIRE POST HAS SOME BIAS AS A CALIBAN MAIN.

 

DE's negligence of Caliban as a whole has felt almost on purpose at this point. He released with The New War all the way back in 2021 and has received 0 love since then. Not counting minor bug fixes and tweaks to his abilities, Caliban has become the new punching bag of Warframe. 

If you bring up Caliban, you're met with 'who's Caliban' and other totally originally statements, which sure, are funny once or twice, but it's also a clear sign something needs to be done for the poor frame.

STORY
He has an interesting lore concept, being a blueprint by Erra that may or may not have been given to him by Ballas during the Old War. His presence during the Old War opens even more doors for story due to the fact he appears mostly Sentient, rather than a hybrid like Revenant. However, Caliban is instead locked behind Narmer Bounties, something very few people even do, and has no relevance to appearing there. There isn't even a Leverian for him, his prex-card is instead just located randomly in Drifter's Camp.

 

BALANCE AND GAMEPLAY

Caliban is notorious for being pretty bad in comparrison to other Warframes.

His 1st ability is basically fodder to put a Helminth infusion onto, which is already a bad sign. It also supposedly has a multitude of bugs as well as deals almost no damage, but I do not know how true or prevalent this is because I infused over it.

HIs 2nd ability is a crowd control that pushes enemies away and lifts them in the air. Okay, sure, not the most useful but has some utility. But oh wait, it has an enemy cap for some reason. I see no reason an ability that applies the most annoying status (lifted) in the game as well as pushes enemies away in a looter-shooter needs the hinderance of an enemy cap.

His 3rd ability summons 3 Conculysts. This gives him high survivability with Shield Gating since they restore his shields, but thats about it. The Conculysts have poor pathing sometimes, and they often get teleported back to Caliban because they go too far to try and attack an enemy. They also are the weakest Sentient (with adaptation) in comparison to the more interesting Sentients that arrived en masse with the New War. Even Battalysts would be better, but alas.

His 4th ability is the only arguably 'good' ability. It's an armor/defense stripping ability that can be boosted to 100% armor strip. This is fantastic. The only downside is the massive energy cost, slightly sluggish casting speed, and needing a good bit of range to be efficient. I will say that is has some utility over other armor strips due to it affecting things it probably shouldn't, such as Stalker, Eximus Units with Overguard active, and more. This gives Caliban a slight niche as an armor stripper, due to these unique properties. Should these ever be fixed, he will fall deeper into the pit of irrelativity.

His passive is negligible on himself, having relatively low health compared to his shields, but it can be useful for granting mini-adaptation to his allies. Inaros, Nidus, and Kullervo likely love a Caliban on their team. However, nothing a Wisp or Trinity couldn't do better.

His signature weapon, Venato, has no unique gimmick aside from having a chance to grant additional combo when wielded by Caliban. The scythes mediocre stats, along with boring bonus, make for a disappointing signature weapon.

All of these combine to make the most 'meh' frame in the game, aside from maybe Limbo, but even Limbo can have some use on defensive missions. Everything Caliban does can be done by someone better.

 

TENNOGEN AND POPULARITY

Due to all of the above facts, Caliban has an incredibly low play rate. The Warframe usage stats for 2023 show he has a 0.16% playrate. Qorvex, who released only a few weeks before the stats were released, was at 0.13% playrate. This is abysmal, and its the only base warframe Caliban beats that does not have a prime. This means Caliban loses in popularity to Yareli, Kullervo, Protea (soon to be released though), Styanax, Dagath, Citrine, Gyre, Voruna, and Qorvex, all who came after his release.

Obviously, due to lack of popularity, there is less of a want for skins or cosmetics for him, both from DE themselves as well as fans. As of this post, Caliban has two tennogen posts, one being a remake of the previous. Miraculously, this item was added, but it is only a helmet, not a skin. (Still a great cosmetic, and I even wear it! Go support the creator LostEpoch!)

 

DEVELOPER IGNORANCE
Last Devstream, they mentioned that Dante would be the first male-warframe that floats. This includes his animations while moving and attacking. While the last part is true, Caliban floats in his idle animations, making the statement untrue to a degree. While likely a mistake, it shows the developers overall indifference towards Caliban.

 

The last Devstream also showcased that some newer Warframes would be getting augments. This included Styanax, Citrine, Gyre, and Kullervo, all who released AFTER Caliban, who has not received a single augment since his release.

 

In Devstream 176, when Pablo asked chat to list who they thought was up next for rework, there were about as many 'Caliban' messages as 'Inaros'. As we know, Inaros is getting reworked. I am fine with this, due to Inaros being in-game longer, and being in more need than even Caliban of a rework. I still believe that the amount of people asking about a rework shows the communities general distaste for the frame.

 

CONCLUSION

As I stated at the beginning of this post, I know I have a lot of bias since I am a Caliban main. I simply made this post to discuss Caliban and his balance with my fellow players while hopefully avoiding the repeated 'jokes' about his irrelevance. I thank you all for reading and look forward to discussing our favorite useless Sentient Frame.

 

I play Caliban pretty regularly and enjoy him as he is, just subsumed his first ability off. A few things:

• In regards to Caliban a lot of people are just memeing and parroting opinions, they haven't played him much if at all. You'll find that after people are done with him they'll move to a new warframe to do this to e.g. I've seen an uptick in a few people S#&$ting on Excalibur recently.
• Him being "average" isn't a bad thing, it means he hits a baseline of being normal - not OP but not underpowered either. Him not being a busted room nuke doesn't = bad. I'd honestly say if people who have these opinions are struggling to clear normal and/or steelpath starchart then there's something wrong with their builds of both him and his weapons. Basically not even "get good", they need to "get average".
• He has a great defensive/crowd control kit: debuff & CC on stomp, full armor strip, high threat summons which can also replenish shields. With all that just mod your weapons properly. It's fair to say he needs some QOL, nothing insanely extensive though - change his first ability, maybe give him some synergies with sentient/tenno weapons as a second passive. If DE has some cool ideas for augments then maybe they're holding off on those as they might require whatever updates they want to do for him first.
• If they rework him and gameplay with him doesn't turn him into some insane meta-defining Warframe he'll remain niche.
• Lastly, there are plenty of professional yappers talking about who does bigger PVE numbers which doesn't actually mean anything in life or in the context of normal/steelpath gameplay.  Just enjoy playing him if you like him 

[Pizzarugi]

23 hours ago, Dr.Tursko said:

His 3rd ability summons 3 Conculysts. This gives him high survivability with Shield Gating since they restore his shields, but thats about it. The Conculysts have poor pathing sometimes, and they often get teleported back to Caliban because they go too far to try and attack an enemy. They also are the weakest Sentient (with adaptation) in comparison to the more interesting Sentients that arrived en masse with the New War. Even Battalysts would be better, but alas.

As a summoner nut, this is my biggest disappointment with this frame. You get 3 minions, they hardly do a lick of damage and their defensive utility falls off hard in higher level content, and worst of all, they have a virtually non-existent duration even if you minmaxed it. I was originally looking forward to Caliban since he was a Sentient frame and I was really enjoying Revenant which is borderline that, but it looks like I'm stuck playing with the latter if I want my minion army fix.

To be fair, all frames with minions have terrible damage, but at least Nekros and Revenant don't need to invest crazy high in stats just to have them last a decent amount of time, plus you get more than twice what Caliban has.

Edited February 27 by Pizzarugi

[Aruquae]

5 minutes ago, Almxce said:

He has a great defensive/crowd control kit: debuff & CC on stomp, full armor strip, high threat summons which can also replenish shields. With all that just mod your weapons properly. It's fair to say he needs some QOL, nothing insanely extensive though - change his first ability, maybe give him some synergies with sentient/tenno weapons as a second passive. If DE has some cool ideas for augments then maybe they're holding off on those as they might require whatever updates they want to do for him first.

As someone who’s played Caliban for quite a bit… this seems biased. 
First off, his CC just makes enemies drift away, which is fine... just tedious. The buff is great though. Full armor strip on a highly expensive ability? Cool free armor strip, but that’s it. Those “High threat Summons that replenish shields” was the idea… but they’re never near you. They go off doing something else leaving you screwed with no shields, and no CC. At least they scale with enemy level+strength, I like the bodyguard feel. If only they did what they’re supposed to do. 
His first ability is basic in animation, damage, CC, looks, just downright odd. Sure he can make a tiny tornado… but it drains his energy to death with nothing in return. 

 

10 minutes ago, Almxce said:

Lastly, there are plenty of professional yappers talking about who does bigger PVE numbers which doesn't actually mean anything in life or in the context of normal/steelpath gameplay.  Just enjoy playing him if

I agree with the last part, but just because a large majority is saying he’s bad doesn’t mean they’re “professional yappers.” His low usage shows that it’s not just the yappers. In fact… niche frames aren’t bad. Vauban is a great niche, he’s fun, engaging, and brings new things to the table. What’s Caliban’s niche? What does he do?

[Tiltskillet]

14 hours ago, Berzerkules said:

My main gripe with Cali is collision with lethal progeny. They fall behind then teleport in front of you and block your path. Rule number one for all summoners in any game is remove collision with summons. 

Yeah, Progeny blocking movement (and, if you don't have punch through,  shots!) is maybe the most irritating thing about his kit.  And to me one of the biggest signs people at DE don't play him.  I just don't see how something like that doesn't get fixed for over two years otherwise.

 

[Aldain]

2 hours ago, Aruquae said:

I agree with the last part, but just because a large majority is saying he’s bad doesn’t mean they’re “professional yappers.” His low usage shows that it’s not just the yappers. In fact… niche frames aren’t bad. Vauban is a great niche, he’s fun, engaging, and brings new things to the table. What’s Caliban’s niche? What does he do?

I still say a large amount of his usage number problem stems from a combination of being mid and having what is in the top 5 of worst farms in the game, if not top 3.

Needing both Railjack and Narmer bounties (the latter being an RNG hellhole) is a huge death knell for a frame's usage rates.

As awful as Citrine's farm can be at least theoretically the pity system will eventually kick in, Caliban...not so much.

Edited February 27 by Aldain

[Aruquae]

18 minutes ago, Aldain said:

still say a large amount of his usage number problem stems from a combination of being mid and having what is in the top 5 of worst farms in the game, if not top 3

Ahhh… yea that would do it. Good thing I never bothered farming a second one. 
Maybe someday Caliban will get some sort of pity system like Citrine… someday

[Aldain]

2 minutes ago, Aruquae said:

Ahhh… yea that would do it. Good thing I never bothered farming a second one. 
Maybe someday Caliban will get some sort of pity system like Citrine… someday

I'd remove the Anomaly Shards from the farm outright (or at least drop it to 1 per part) and make Narmer Isoplast a 100% drop from completing a bounty in a reasonable size as well as drop it to half of what it is needed per part to craft.

Add in the ability to buy the blueprints for him for Isoplast from Little Duck and BOOM no longer top 3 worst farm in the game.