Please God Just Buff Equinox

[CosmicSheepo]

I have a special place for Equinox in my heart, as she was my first prime, and has a pretty damn cool concept of a frame that is 2 frames in 1, with an emphasis on wanting to switch between her forms depending on the situation, which can be assumed since her 1 provides her with timed buffs that can be refreshed by switching forms. As such, it makes very upset that it really doesn't take much to make her, at bare minimum, capable of fulfilling her own fantasy, even if she wouldn't be super meta.

Fix 1: Make her 4 augment part of her base kit. That's it. Arguably her most well-known ability as well as her ultimate, actively fights against her own concept. That, to say the least, is a baffling design decision. So just make it work alongside her concept by making that bandaid of an augment part of her. As for what the augment could be changed to, a few ideas generated in 2 minutes are here:

- Excess healing from Mend turns into overguard, capping at 5k-10k, affected by Power Strength. Excess damage from Maim is dealt as an explosion around an enemy's corpse/Enemies damaged by Maim additionally explode, dealing 50% of the damage they were dealt in (insert radius) meters around them.

- Damage conversion to HP or Damage increases by 10%/15%/20%/25%.

Fix 2: Make her 3 remain active between form swaps. It is incredibly annoying to have to recast her 3 each time you swap forms, which is also another part of her kit which just really seeks to punish the hell out of her trying to have fun with her own concept. So, just make it so her 3 remains active, and make it so you wouldn't need to keep rebuilding her 3's augment each time you swap either. Though, truth be told, her 3 augment is also just incredibly boring, seeing as how it either makes her Day form have bigger numbers, or just gives her Gloom-before-Gloom-Existed. It could honestly just be folded into her base kit, and although her Night form would probably see a considerable boost in usage since she'll just have Gloom but with enemy damage debuffing instead of lifesteal, her Day form is still pretty weak, which could be fixed by reducing its numbers and making the buff multiplicative, like how Nidus' 3 works. As for what a new augment could do, here's a stupid idea crafted in 1 minute.

- Night form additionally provides 20%/30%/40%/50% DR, for when an enemy isn't in range for their damage to be reduced by the aura itself. Day form additionally increases cast speed by 20%/30%/40%/50%.

"Fix" 3: Just buff her 2 (Mainly Rage). Her 2, IMO, is really not great. Her night form is decent, with it being an on-demand sleep, but her Day form 2 is, for lack of better phrasing, really goddamn bad. Not only does it buff enemies (which, fine, it fits the name), but the boost it provides for your team is really crappy, all things considered, with only a 50% damage boost. Which yes, it's multiplicative, but keep in mind: Nezha's 2 provides double the boost, which to my knowledge, is also multiplicative, without buffing the enemy, and Nezha is also generally considered a better frame for the vast majority of content, excluding affinity farming. In the end, her Night form 2 is perfectly fine, but here's a few things her Day form could use.

- If we're keeping the enemy buff, boost the damage vulnerability to a minimum of 150%. If this sounds too high, remember: Nezha's 2 gives a 100% damage vulnerability, without buffing the enemy, being able to split (when combo'd with 4), boosting both HP and Energy orb drops, allowing for decent mobility (teleport on recast), and with its augment, do both decent damage as well as MORE orb drops. And oh, that doesn't include the fact the thing explodes if you teleport to it with 1 on. Or the fact that I'm fairly certain this thing provides CC as well, if the Heat damage can proc the status. In comparison, Equinox's day form 2 is incredibly bad, with half the damage boost, and an enemy buff, and nothing else.

- Make enemies affected by Rage generate double the charge (or just 50% more) for her 4, just for a bit of synergy. This could also be applied to her Night form, just so you do have reasons to continuously use her 2 in both forms outside of trying to get 1 mil affinity in 2 minutes.

- Double the range on the augment. That thing seems fun, but good lord, it really is kinda useless when the debuffs the enemies get (or buff in Rage's case) are far from very noticeable. The augment could also refresh the ability duration on spread as well, which could potentially break her Night form, but I severely doubt it could change Equinox's place in the meta very much. At worst, it can be made that killing affected enemies increases the timer by 0.5 seconds, up to the original max instead of a full refresh. While we're at, increase the max AoE of her 2 to 7.5 meters as well, because this ability needs all the help it can get.

"Fix" 4: Buff the buffs on 1. Her 1 is really the only part of her kit that really rewards Equinox for actually engaging with the main gimmick of her, so may as well encourage that. Here's the buff ideas.

- Make the buffs consistent for the entire duration, instead of gradually decaying. There's really no point in making these things decay, especially since Equinox will probably be swapping well before the buffs even run out. Though, I guess the decay could stay as another way to encourage constant switching, though it would make it so taking full advantage of either part of her a complete pain the ass.

- Why is her Day form buff additive? It is 25%, and if the wiki is right, only affects guns. Make this buff multiplicative, drop the numbers by 5, and make it work on melees. That's it. 

- Her Night form buffs are largely fine, IMO, but it definitely would be a bit better if her armor buff was instead changed to a flat DR, perhaps around 20-35% total. This should be roughly the same amount of tankiness she already gets, but this time also affecting shields instead of just health.

- If we want to be spicy, make it so transforming also gives allies within a small range 50% of the buff values, to help reinforce Equinox's position as a support frame.  

[(XBOX)zThulsaDoomz]

Honestly just being able to mod her forms separately would give her a huge shot in the arm.

Players have been asking for this for years.

[(PSN)robotwars7]

I always liked the idea of beign able to run both powers (day and night) simultaneously, but the power for the form she's NOT using at the time would be a little weaker, so it enocurages players to still switch form based on what powers they need at that moment, while also allowing players to make full use of equinox's kit, and those who can muster the effort -and energy-  to manage several draining powers at once would benefit greatly. I also wouldn't mind her "neutral" form being usable, where her powers are weaker but if you die, you just split into day/night form and the other form fights alongside you (Duality augment made base ability).

Equinox is unfortunately in that awkward spot of being too effective and popular to warrant a rework, but still not quite effective enough to be considered "perfect". 

[Hexerin]

I agree with folding Mend/Maim's augment into the base kit, because there is no legitimate reason it shouldn't be. Zero, none, period.

I disagree with folding Pacify/Provoke's augment into the base kit. It serves its purpose as an augment, and is definitely worth the mod slot. That being said, I would like to see it updated so that the Pacify portion also tracks damage to shields, as currently allies have to take health damage for the slowing effect to ramp up. That's anti-synergy with Mend, which keeps allies constantly topped up on shields. Changing it so that it also tracks shield damage makes it synergized, which is perfect.

I don't use Rest/Rage (it's a Helminth slot for me), so no comment as I don't have enough info to have an opinion on it.

Partially agree on Metamorphosis. The buffs should decay, but they should have a minimum value that persists while in the form. They should start stronger than current, and then the minimum value should be lower than the current initial value. This means the ability still encourages skillful gameplay (constantly form swapping as needed), but also still allows those who prefer to stay in one form most of the time to have some value.

Edited March 2 by Hexerin

[pwnSacrifice]

Some seriously great ideas here.

I don't play her enough these days, so I'm not going to say what she does/doesn't need, but I'd love to be incentivized to actually use both halves. As is, I feel stuck in one form or the other.

I think modding both halves seperatly would help tons, but I also don't think it's enough. I don't want to be punished for engaging with her core mechanic.

[UnstarPrime]

I agree with the proposed adjustments for her base 1, 3, and 4.  I think that would be all you'd need to do to breathe some more life into Equinox.  The only reason she's not one of my most-played frames is that she takes so much more effort than other frames just to get close to an enjoyable and functional build.  Not punishing her for making use of her 1 would make a world of difference.

Also wouldn't say no to being able to mod each form separately; that sounds fun!

[Xzorn]

Players have suggested similar for about 8 years.

They gave us a crappy band-aid augment instead and to my knowledge Equinox has never gotten a rework.

When they took away the ability to use double Energize I never used her again. I had a mostly max values dual form but the energy tax was insane.
Mend is pretty pointless these days as well. Rest/Rage you can at least double damage on consistent sleeping enemies with the augment.

[CosmicSheepo]

6 hours ago, Xzorn said:

Players have suggested similar for about 8 years.

Im not old enough of a player to have been around for original Equinox (I started right after Equinox Prime released iirc), and the fact that my complaints have existed for what I assume to be the entirety of her existence is generally a crime. All I can hope is that once Pablo gets around to fixing the even more egregious frames (looking at you, Inaros, and thank god you're getting reworked), he'll take a brief once-over for other frames, including Equinox.

[(XBOX)INe Saninus]

The problem with Equinox will always be that it takes an augment to make her function properly, and really 3 to make her interesting to play.

Minimum of 2. If you could equip 4, you would have something really cool.

 

Her 1 augment gives her a clone.

-gave that to Wukong.

Her 2 augment let's her spread her sleep. 

-cool, but a mod slot is expensive

Her 3 augment gives her the first version of "Gloom" in the game.

-gave that to Sevagoth

Her 4 takes an augment just to be usable per her kit and the coolest part, other than a big boom, (the shield per kill) Styanax does better.

 

If you build for any of those specific setups, you completely handicap the others.

You just don't have room...!

At that point it's just better to bring the frame that does it specifically.

 

I made a build with Gloom and 2 augs that simulates what could be, but it's still hard to fit all the mods for survivability, duration, efficiency, and range needed.

You still filled gimped.