Improvements to Frost (post Jade update)

[insanitybit]

That's a big QoL win and it might make me actually drop the whole "remove the cap on cast speed" thing, since this may buff the OG enough. Unsure.

[Windy_Wind]

His 2nd ability is still redundant, why bother with it when even his 1st ability is now even better at freezing enemies solid? and his 4th even gets major buff. It should do something else to be relevant. Something like hit enemies are marked and take 25% more damage OR drop more health orb/energy orb / ammo. Yeah I know I'm being uncreative here but I hope DE just make it more useful.

[insanitybit]

The thing is, at least you can Helminth off his 2. You really don't want to helminth off 1 because it's still the only way to break his globes manually + you may want to run Freeze Force. So I agree that 2 needs work, but at the same time 1 is a higher priority because you don't want to lose it.

I think Frost would really benefit from a Pull mechanic tbh. I guess most frames would, and Pull can be really OP, but I think a "Pull enemies into a spot based on their cold procs" would be interesting to play with.

Maybe something like:

1. Just like regular Freeze, Frost shoots an icy shard out that freezes enemies in an AoE that scales with range.

2. New - Enemies within that AoE are grouped together, frozen enemies 10m (scale with range) outside of AoE get pulled into the AoE.

 

Reasons why this is good:

1. Grouping is incredible for utility

2. Still gives us a projectile to break globes, is not so fundamentally different

3. Works really well with his passive, which relies on having enemies within your 15m range in order to give you the armor buff

4. Works well with Avalanche, which can freeze in a large AoE, then 1 pulls. Also works will with enemies detonating from Avalanche.

Reasons why this is not broken:

1. Enemies within AoE are inherently already somewhat close together, this just gets them tighter together.

2. Enemies outside of AoE are not effected unless they are already Frozen, which requires additional setup/ energy cost.

IMO this has a nice tradeoff. I haven't thought this through a ton, but I think it fits well with his kit. I love the idea of Avalanche explosions actually benefiting from the proximity of the pull, I like the idea of pulls increasing KPM, I like that the new passive would get a bonus as well.

Edited June 26 by insanitybit

[insanitybit]

I've updated the OP. I'm going to just copy the original post here for archival purposes:

Quote

 

I’ve been playing Frost a lot lately and I really enjoy the frame, probably it’s my favorite one so far. But there are definitely some Quality of Life issues, missed opportunities, and what seem like huge oversights to me. My hope is that some of these changes should be obvious but that they should all make sense. The goal is not to make Frost the most powerful frame in the game but to make Frost feel better to play and to make his kit feel more natural. I'm currently running 2 or 3 augments on this frame, which feels sort of crazy to me. I don't believe that any of these changes would make Frost absurdly powerful.

 

1. Nullifiers should not remove Frost’s Overguard. It doesn’t make sense that they do, there’s no ability that sustains the OG so why would it get removed? This feels like an oversight.
2. Nullifiers should not be able to break Snow Globe when it’s in its invulnerable state. I think it’s questionable that they insta-break it at all, but at minimum it makes zero sense that they can break it when it’s in the invulnerable state. Instead, a nullifier that touches an invulnerable globe should take damage to its bubble.
3. Avalanche needs to have its casting animation uncapped, it is crazy that it can’t be sped up right now. The animation has a fixed speed that can not be improved through Archon shards, Natural Talent, or Madurai. Just uncap the speed. Again, feels like this is a bug or oversight where the animation speed buffs only applied to the first part of the animation accidentally. Avalanche being this slow means that Frost is unable to use it for more than a small boost to survival, forcing "globe oriented" gameplay where you have to primarily maintain a bubble in one place and keep it up in order to survive, the OG from Avalanche ends up primarily adding status immunity and keeps you a bit safer when you have to exit the bubble to grab resources. This makes the gameplay less fun and less interesting. If Avalanche could be cast faster it would allow the player to actually leverage it for survival - it's expensive enough that it wouldn't be OP, in my opinion, and would just open up Frost to gameplay where he isn't strictly bound to a globe.
4. Freeze Force needs to either change or there needs to be a new augment with a different behavior. My suggestion is that there would be a new augment mod that adds Cold damage just like Freeze Force, except it isn’t shared to the team and it doesn’t combine with elements. Currently, Freeze Force is just a griefing tool to break other player’s kits and it forces you to build your own weapons around it on top of that. The new augment could work the way that Venom Dose on Saryn works (without the sharing), it doesn’t have to be like Toxic Lash (although I wouldn’t complain).
5. Icy Avalanche should add Overguard to Frost natively. The Overguard provided is not strong enough for this to be an augment mod and it fits well with the overall kit. Freeing up the extra slot would also help Frost a lot - I currently run three augment mods on this frame. I’d suggest that Icy Avalanche changes such that it provides two behaviors - the Overguard is shared, just like it is today, and the Overguard regens when Frost assists in the kill of an enemy frozen by Avalanche, with a cool down of some value equal to or greater than 1 second. That would make the Augment far more interesting but still less powerful than Dante’s 224, which casts faster, lasts for more than a minute, and applies to all kills and assists.
6. Frost's Passive is a joke, but there are so many passives that are bad in the game that I almost don't feel like it matters. Increased duration of cold procs feels like an obvious, simple win but I feel like it's not worth mentioning - everyone knows that Frost has a garbage tier passive and anything would be better than what it is right now.

 

The first 3 would be really nice QoL and should just be how the frame works. I can't see how anyone would argue against those tbh. It’s insane to me that OG gets stripped by Nullifiers, that a nullifier can tap your bubble while it’s supposed to be invulnerable and pop it instantly, and that an already extremely slow casting animation can’t be improved. I've seen the first two brought up so many times and I think it's way overdue to see them fixed.

 

I think 4 may be controversial, but I don’t think cold is such an insane status that this would be broken (even after the Jade buff). Giving us a way to apply cold without griefing our team and throwing away viral, or forcing us to subsume Nourish to get Viral back, would make Frost so much more enjoyable and interesting. Even if all that changed was not sharing the status it would at least prevent Frost from griefing other players, but I do think that cold suffers from being a part of Viral so having a separate cold status would be really, really nice.

 

I think 5 shouldn’t be controversial. Given how expensive the skill is and how little OG you get I see no reason for this to be an augment. The cap on OG is going to be ~25k to ~30k for most builds, I think, and regenerating it requires casting a slow, expensive skill that leaves you vulnerable the entire time and only adds a small amount of OG after the animation finishes. The only reason I can see 5 not being a good idea is that OG sort of trivializes early game content and you can farm Frost very early in the game, but it’s so expensive and so slow, especially for early game players who don’t have the ability to speed it up or put on mods like Primed Flow, that I don’t think it would actually break the early game. As for the augment adding Regen, I could take it or leave it - it feels reasonable but I really just think that the native behavior should change and that was my idea for making the augment relevant. If you want to just kill the augment, whatever.

 

As I said, I don't think 6 is worth discussing much. I think something like 25% longer cold proc duration (6 -> 7 seconds) would be very, very reasonable and fit well with the kit, but I'd take anything over what we have today.

 

[Windy_Wind]

Snapshot DR for snow globe based on his armor is nice, it would make snow globe more useful. At the current state, snow globe is an absolute joke, it breaks the moment iframe runs out.

As for his 1st ability, it's actually not useless at all like you said. You need to cast it on the enemy first before casting his 4th ability so that the augment can activate the extra 20% bonus from his armor for overguard. His 4th alone will not activate that bonus. Aside from that, I do think grouping capability would be nice for his 1st.

As for his 2nd ability, I'm thinking about a new addition for it. Something like casting 2nd ability inside snow globe will restore/add snow globe's hp by 25% of his armor per enemy hit.(scales with power strength). 

Edited July 3 by Windy_Wind

[(PSN)Frost_Nephilim]

On 2024-05-17 at 12:25 PM, insanitybit said:

Nullifiers

Yeah ive been disliking nullifiers for a minute now, they function like something that should be in an exclusive mode as they dont make things too fun to deal with all of the time

Dealing some moderate damage per second, and speeding up the duration timer of abilities would be a lovely change. 

On 2024-05-17 at 12:25 PM, insanitybit said:

Fixing Freeze Force

Theres so many instances where ally abilities can mess up the builds of others that we honestly just need a quick way to turn on and off whether you can recieve or give buffs to yourself and allies.

On 2024-05-17 at 12:25 PM, insanitybit said:

Frost's New Passive

Good idea 👍🏽 

 

Good suggestions, only thing is the overguard thing is fine. Theres plenty of ways to prevent yourself from being touched by a bubble without messing up the playstyle too much, nullifiers be just spawning anywhere and sometimes dont even put their bubble up till they see you. Way too difficult to keep a globe from being popped

[insanitybit]

7 hours ago, Windy_Wind said:

As for his 1st ability, it's actually not useless at all like you said. You need to cast it on the enemy first before casting his 4th ability so that the augment can activate the extra 20% bonus from his armor for overguard. His 4th alone will not activate that bonus. Aside from that, I do think grouping capability would be nice for his 1st.

 

I haven't tested this - does casting Avalanche twice work? TBH even with the augment benefiting from armor I don't expect to cast 1 ever anyway.

[Windy_Wind]

1 hour ago, insanitybit said:

I haven't tested this - does casting Avalanche twice work? TBH even with the augment benefiting from armor I don't expect to cast 1 ever anyway.

Like the mod says, it only works once per enemy, so the moment you damage them with his 4th, that's it. You have to make sure to spread cold status by other means to get that chunky bonus armor first before casting his 4th and the best one Frost has is his 1st ability because it got a huge range buff. His 2nd doesn't do the job well because it costs double energy amount and hits in a cone instead of a huge radius like his 1st. 

I Just want DE to do something more meaningful for his 2nd ability, like casting his 2nd ability inside snow globe will add more health/base armor to the snow globe based on 25% of his armor value.

Edited July 4 by Windy_Wind

[insanitybit]

One per enemy per cast though, right? So I'd imagine casting twice would still work?

edit: Yeah, 1 is still basically useless. You hit the cap almost immediately anyway so it really does very little, and it does seem that double casting 4 works just as well.

Edited July 6 by insanitybit

[AsffluffyZ]

Has no one here used the ice wave augment that practically freezes a whole room with just a little range? It is vastly better than frost 1.

[EinheriarJudith]

58 minutes ago, AsffluffyZ said:

Has no one here used the ice wave augment that practically freezes a whole room with just a little range? It is vastly better than frost 1.

frost needs a new 1 and his 1 should be rolled into hold cast for snow globe. 

i will always be on the side of wanting nullifiers removed. we have plenty of units that do their job without obliterating frame defense and defensive abilities.

Edited July 16 by EinheriarJudith

[AsffluffyZ]

2 hours ago, EinheriarJudith said:

frost needs a new 1 and his 1 should be rolled into hold cast for snow globe. 

i will always be on the side of wanting nullifiers removed. we have plenty of units that do their job without obliterating frame defense and defensive abilities.

The thing to me is that without an augment the 1 isn't even useful any more since there is no need to pop the snow globe since snow globe can now be shot through from the outside. And the 2 with the augment can literally just freeze an entire room for its full duration with one cast. 

Personally I swap the 1 with zephyr's ability for some nice grouping of my ice sculptures. I also don't have a major problem with nullifiers since they are literally the only corpus unit that poses a threat, though reworking them wouldn't be something I am against.

[EinheriarJudith]

13 hours ago, AsffluffyZ said:

The thing to me is that without an augment the 1 isn't even useful any more since there is no need to pop the snow globe since snow globe can now be shot through from the outside. And the 2 with the augment can literally just freeze an entire room for its full duration with one cast. 

Personally I swap the 1 with zephyr's ability for some nice grouping of my ice sculptures. I also don't have a major problem with nullifiers since they are literally the only corpus unit that poses a threat, though reworking them wouldn't be something I am against.

it wouldnt hurt adding AoE to shattering the globes ala gara.

we already have corpus units that cover what the nullifier does. bursa (which are arguably more threatening), and the scrambus crew.

[AsffluffyZ]

14 minutes ago, EinheriarJudith said:

it wouldnt hurt adding AoE to shattering the globes ala gara.

we already have corpus units that cover what the nullifier does. bursa (which are arguably more threatening), and the scrambus crew.

But those don't spawn in every corpus tile set and nullifiers also spawn as corrupted units. As such removing them wouldn't be the best course of action.

[EinheriarJudith]

3 hours ago, AsffluffyZ said:

But those don't spawn in every corpus tile set and nullifiers also spawn as corrupted units. As such removing them wouldn't be the best course of action.

the only thing stopping them from showing up in other corpus places is DE. bursa can show up as corrupted for the same reason machines show up in infested faction. there actually is no reason to keep them.

Edit: an overguarded bursa would literally have the same protection as a nullifier. DE already fixed the issue of neutering enemies completely with the addition of overguard.

the game needs a faction cleanup imo.

Edited July 17 by EinheriarJudith

[insanitybit]

I think I'm gonna add the 'Stop capping the Avalanche cast speed' back to the OP because it's really bothersome.

[insanitybit]

I've actually stopped playing Frost much recently. There's two major problems that I have.

 

1. Frost just can't nuke. That's fine, except he also isn't that tanky in late game. Keeping up with 100 KPM is not trivial since Frost's kit has no grouping, no scaling damage, and slows enemies down. He does great at killing but without a grouping mechanic or something scaling he just can't compete with other frames when it comes to KPM. Damage heavily relies on having a weapon that would be high damage on every other frame, like a Torid or Laetum.

2. I wouldn't care about (1) but he's not even tanky enough to justify it. Frost's late game survivability relies so heavily on his bubble. If his 4 weren't capped it would be one thing, but it is, and it *sucks*. Frost's 4 being so slow just feels bad. I can't really play him anymore tbh.

Frost is basically way worse than other tanks like Dante/Revenant while having way worse KPM than other frames. It just doesn't feel good enough to play.

I'd say that Frost desperately needs his (4) to be uncapped and would benefit a ton from even just a *minor* grouping ability.

[AsffluffyZ]

4 hours ago, insanitybit said:

I've actually stopped playing Frost much recently. There's two major problems that I have.

 

1. Frost just can't nuke. That's fine, except he also isn't that tanky in late game. Keeping up with 100 KPM is not trivial since Frost's kit has no grouping, no scaling damage, and slows enemies down. He does great at killing but without a grouping mechanic or something scaling he just can't compete with other frames when it comes to KPM. Damage heavily relies on having a weapon that would be high damage on every other frame, like a Torid or Laetum.

2. I wouldn't care about (1) but he's not even tanky enough to justify it. Frost's late game survivability relies so heavily on his bubble. If his 4 weren't capped it would be one thing, but it is, and it *sucks*. Frost's 4 being so slow just feels bad. I can't really play him anymore tbh.

Frost is basically way worse than other tanks like Dante/Revenant while having way worse KPM than other frames. It just doesn't feel good enough to play.

I'd say that Frost desperately needs his (4) to be uncapped and would benefit a ton from even just a *minor* grouping ability.

I use airburst on frost since it works with frozen targets and the ice wave augment.

[insanitybit]

That's a cool idea. It'd definitely help. I'd have to get viral onto a weapon to make up for the loss of nourish, and energy economy would be rough.

TBH the 4 being so slow just makes Frost too un-fun for me at this point.

[Famecans]

Nullifiers are horrible, I gave up on Limbo several years ago, I still play frost because my Globe build is smaller and revolves around energy spam.

Now bullets go through the Frost Globe so DE can use this new feature as an excuse to say "ShoOt the bubBles on the otHer side of GlobesSss"...

Hey, this doesn't solve the main problem, look at Limbo, he can't shoot nullifier bubbles outside or behind cataclysm globe, that's horrible.☠️