New Warframe: Equinox (U17 Megathread Topic)

[-InV-igo95862]

I crafted and level it up. Maim is the only skill worth using.

 

Rest and Rage. Single target skills were never good in warframe.

 

Pacify and Provoke. The effect is negligible.

 

Mend. What is the point of 20 000 heal if max health on warframes is around 2000?

[bubbabenali]

I crafted and level it up. Maim is the only skill worth using.

 

Rest and Rage. Single target skills were never good in warframe.

 

Pacify and Provoke. The effect is negligible.

 

Mend. What is the point of 20 000 heal if max health on warframes is around 2000?

rest is awesome with max reach it putts whole groups to sleep and dosn't even must be targeted exactly on enemys.

Mend and Maim divide the damage loaded with them; so 20000 is divided by 10 in your example (squad + sentinel/ Kubrows and 2 defence targets (maybe?))

Sadly Maim alone goes badass only till Saturn - cause enemys surviving the bleedproc also are not stuned anymore and attack as normal.

Edited August 10, 2015 by bubbabenali

[Archwizard]

Some notes I've been compiling from my own feedback thread:

 

Still leveling Equinox, not ready to say anything official yet, just some observations:

 

I keep being informed that the "brightness" of my energy color affects what form my Equinox starts the mission in... but in spite of using the brightest red in the Halloween color set, I keep starting missions in Night form. Would be nice if, like with Chroma, the Energy Color swatch in the loadout menu was marked with a moon or sun (Conclave symbols?) based on what form it will interpret that as.

 

I completely understand the complaints about Mend. Compared to Blessing, we have a more costly ability that takes longer to charge, has a more limited range and provides no other benefit to players upon activation. If it's ever discovered that Mend's ability to heal defense objectives is a bug, it'll really have nothing going for it.

 

In spite of the potential synergy for her abilities, I'm also finding that using Metamorphosis sort of... stops the momentum with her abilities, and not simply because of the cast time. Tapping Maim and then swapping to Night form just ends Maim. It would understandably be overpowered if you had both effects running simultaneously for no additional cost, but I don't see an issue with pausing one effect to start the other, or even just fully transferring the stored charge of one into the other, given that Metamorphosis itself bumps up the cost.

 

It's been brought to my attention that Mend has been patched, making these observations more apt.

[PsiWarp]

I was thinking about Mend and what it could do to make accumulating excessive amounts of health worthwhile, as well as figure out what it could do while the ability is active:

What if... Mend can passively perform multiple downed ally revives from a distance?!

Mend 2.0 - How it works:

- Activate Mend, accumulate health by killing.

- When ally Warframes or Kubrows in Bleedout state are in range, Equinox will automatically link to them via energy streams emitting from her, draining 75 / 100 / 125 / 150 health per second from Mend's accumulated health pool.

- Drain per second is affected by Power Strength. The higher your strength, the more of Mend's HP will drain, the faster you can revive downed allies!

- While streaming Mend's health into allies, their Bleedout timer will halt.

What to watch out for:

- In order to fully revive a downed ally, the health drained must equal to their total hit points (shield + health).

- If Mend's accumulated health pool has less than the amount needed to drain per second, the revive process will stop and any previously spent health from Mend's pool will be wasted.

- Likewise, If the downed allies somehow leave Mend's aura (you move away or they crawl away... just why lol), the revive process will stop and waste any previously drained health from Mend's pool.

- Obviously, if there are more than one downed allies, the drain will be doubled/tripled/etc to match the number of affected allies. Better keep killing to earn more HP!

Balancing Factor - Undecided

- Upon meeting the total hit points requirement, the downed ally is either a) revived at full shields and health, or b) revived at full shields but 75 / 100 / 125 / 150 health, similar to Nekros' Soul Survivor except at a set amount rather than percentage.

- Using the latter version allows synergy between Mend's active and deactivate effects. Get your ally up then deactivate Mend, healing him to full health if you still have enough HP in Mend's pool. I personally like this better because ranged revive is pretty powerful (broken/OP if designed badly), and it makes use of all this excess health we pour into Mend.

- Don't forget, you can mod the amount healed on revival for balance factor B with Power Strength!

Limiting factors:

- Unfortunately this does not benefit Sentinels due to how they die and Regen.

- Equinox herself cannot revive herself this way, because Mend deactivates the moment she is downed. Doesn't mean you can't bring another Equinox girlfriend though, hek do 8 Equinoxes in Raids xD

- Your Equinox's Mend does not stack with other Equinox players' Mend. Whichever one is active on a downed ally first drains from that Equinox player's Mend HP pool.

So, assuming you read the idea in spoilers, to illustrate a scenario where Mend's passive revival triggers- a rank 30 Excalibur has 300 shields/300 health. He is downed, so you as Equinox activates Mend and moves the aura to cover him, and starts killing enemies crowding around. At max ability rank Mend will drain 150 health per second, resulting in a fully revived Excalibur after 4 seconds (300 shields + 300 health = 600 total hit points / 150 HP drain per sec = 4 seconds).

If you have 3 Excaliburs in your squad, they are all downed and in your aura, 450 health drained per second from Mend's pool. Slap on some or max Power Strength (good luck managing your energy pool) and you can revive them and their trusty coolbros/catbras*soon simultaneously, if you have them all in the aura that is.

Imagine how useful Night Equinox can be on Raids and Nightmare missions! As long as enemies die near her fast enough, she can do other things while reviving players and pets. Of course, if she goes down during that and no one else is near, you are royally skoom-ed.

[plsql]

metamorphosis seems strange. really :(

 

[3] pacify/provoke - have no duration, but we need energy efficience and power. well, we have 2 mod with -duration on strengh and energy-conserve, right?

 

[4] maim/mend - similar.

 

so, now, metamorphosis de facto only change form. buffs? forget about them. and buff not so crucial, to make build on metamorphosis. may be, move buff to form property?

[VRHmason]

They say you should be encouraged to change the form constantly...and maybe I would do that if the change didn't take so much time or ultimate abilities took so much time...

I love this frame, it's fun to play it but still I won't even consider thinking about this frame if I plan to do some higher lvl stuff.

Mend is useless, completely, the time it needs to be cast is huge for such "basic" skill. If we also take to consideration that sometimes you need to change the form to cast it, its even more useless, rather drop health pod or bring vaykor marelok, or just rejuvenation 

Mend should recover shields as well have some CC otherwise its just waste of time.

 

Pacify is good but the drain thing is awful and it's not helping in higher level situations at all, I think it should just drain energy per second not per enemies in circle. Especially when you drain same amount of energy on enemy that is little bit far away (still in circle) and deals more damage. Just waste unfortunately.

 

Rest & Rage need to have more range, 2.5m is nothing, it should have at least 3-5m, when you take into consideration that Mend is useless and Pacify has silly energy drain. So putting everything into range, str and eff leaves you without any duration. So basically Rest&Rage sucks without duration and sucks without range. With max range its not even 6 meters

 

So for now im playing only day form and spamming 4, changing form takes too much time and there is not much use of it anyways.

I am starting to think they should just make 2 decent frames instead of 1 messy frame

[Sci_Ant]

So finally got around to playing Equinox and I couldn't help but notice that something was very wrong with Pacify. That led me to do some Simulacrum tests and confirmed what I suspected:

 

1. Power Strength does not increase the damage reduction multiplicatively, rather it does it with DE's new 'diminishing returns system' the formula for which no one knows.

 

2. Power Efficiency mods just don't affect the drain from Pacify outright, meaning they have 0 affect on it.

 

I have made a thread outlining the problems with a numerical analysis and videos here > https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/508917-equinox-pacify-ability-has-diminishing-returns-falloff-with-range-and-broken-efficiency-data-and-videos/

 

Please DE, see this and give us an answer as to why Pacify is made to work as it is, and why do Power Efficiency mods not affect it at all?? Would be a first for an ability to not be affected by Power Efficiency, if it was intended and not just a bug.

Edited August 12, 2015 by Sci_Ant

[aerosoul1337]

1.Day form is good, decent damage and CC.

2.Night form is a bit weak especially the ultra isn't good. Drain energy fast and not really safe your team in time.

3.Changing form has the delay that prevents you from casting any ability, it is too long and kills the potential of Equinox, most players just use day form since its CC and damage is much more useful.

Edited August 12, 2015 by aerosoul1337

[Darkmoone1]

I think Equinox is being held back too much to have any sort of meaningful impact of being an alternative to the frames we already use. 

 

Metamorphisis would benefit more from removing both the decay and duration so both forms can just have different stats to further the differences between the two forms. As it stands now the incentive to switch forms is just not there because the stat increases are gone almost has fast as it comes in. If you wanted those stat increases again you would have to switch twice, wasting energy, just to have those stats again for just less than 30 seconds while it decays(maybe slightly more than 30 seconds with duration mods.). 

 

On top of taking awhile to properly switch, I just don't think the ability works as it is.

 

It's already decided by most people that Rage/Rest need a range increase(If only slightly). Nothing much else to talk about. 

 

Pacify is also needs to be heavily looked at by DE, glad there are those who took extra detail in looking into this ability. As I said in another topic there is too many ins and outs for this ability. Provoke is an ability that makes me scratch my head because it should also affect us right? I don't understand why it doesn't....

 

Then there's Mend the relatively incomplete ability that lacks the initial effect like maim does. There already is a list of suggestions on what to do with this so hopefully DE takes note.

 

I wanted to like this frame so much, but in the end it's a half baked warframe that can barely do its job because its held back by so many restrictions.

[PsiWarp]

Regarding Pacify, I think the damage reduction scaling with distance from Equinox is a good enough balancing factor on its own, without needing to compound energy drain per enemy.

We've already seen from gameplay how self-contradicting this ability can be. When we need it to survive high level enemies that don't die in one hit, enemies will group up into armies and Pacify will empty out your energy pool in a flash, so we are forced to deactivate it and tough it out without our survivability tool.

I would suggest this:

- Regardless of how many enemies (though at least one) remain in range, Pacify drains 8 / 7 / 6 / 5 energy per second from Equinox.

- Enemies not only get their damage reduced, but their attack speed as well (percentages matching Pacify's damage reduction).

- Damage and attack speed reduction are scaled with distance from Equinox. The closer enemies are, the less damage and the slower attacks they deal.

With these simple changes, Pacify can become a potent damage control medium for Equinox and her fellow Tenno, without the insane energy cost per second draining her dry and leaving her a sitting duck (a caster frame without energy is a dead frame).

Edited August 12, 2015 by PsiWarp

[DarthVerna]

Regarding metamorphosis, if you want us to swich often then energy cost should be around 15-20, then it's said that the timer between the two forms can't be reduced, so, make the warframe invurnerable for those 2 seconds and add a 2 seconds delay between switching, people will switch much more. Then the buffs, i think buffs should be permanent for the form you are in, but when switching the buffs of the other form will decay over time.
Lower cost, invulnerability and permanent+decayng buffs will make people switch much more often. If not both then at least 2 of this changes should be made. Since almost all the builds have reduced duration (even to 15% duration) by now metamorphosis buffs are being ignored by most of players.

Rest/Rage, 3-5m of secondary range would be good, but is not needed like other changes.

Pacify/Provoke, as said many times pacify should have the cost per enemy effected by power efficiency (and i'd say even by enemy distance, so a 10% reduction to an enemy far away will drail less than a 50% to an enemy close to you.) or should have a fixed drain (the drain is active only if there is at least one enemy in range). Provoke is fine. Since many has reduced power strenght there are a bunch of complaints about this two abilities, but if you focus a bit on PS isntead of going only power range you'll see the benefits.

Mend/Maim, Maim very good, maybe too good compared with mend. The counter should be the same for both mend and maim, so you can switch if u need a fast heal or a nuke(or at least you should keep 85% of the current amount, so you lose a bit, but still remaining able to nuke/heal when truly needed). Mend still has some issues. a bit of heath over time would be good, and that heath will be drained from your actual pool. For the big heal bomb...overheath would be a big problem 'cause then even trinity and heath restores should give that (and also have no sense at all) so, or the remaining amount is taken as overshields, or it creates a shield wich take 80% of damage taken for x total damage reduction (where x is the remaining heal portion of each player from mend, so once mitigated x damage the shield will be gone).

Edited August 12, 2015 by Verna17

[VRHmason]

3.Changing form has the delay that prevents you from casting any ability, it is too long and kills the potential of Equinox, most players just use day form since its CC and damage is much more useful.

So much this!

[CounterOne]

Well the thing is some of these might be bugs or intentional gameplay mechanics. I do not know which is wich when it comes to Equinox.

 

1. We have no good mods to equally mod her abilities for battle. So a new set of mods for Equinox and certain frames would be nice.

 

2. Equinox's sleep ability has a weird activation range compared to the wake one. In other words Day form's will Wake all enemies in a small crowd grouped up all over each other. While Night's sleep seems to only affect 3-4 at times when shot in the middle of the same crowd. Not sure if its a glitch or just something the DEVs wanted to keep players from staying night if they were going to do a stealth mission.

 

3. Equinox's last ability ends and restarts. Generally no matter if Day or Night it will reset the counter if it gets to high. I would not mind this but when using Main/Mend for a critical moment and it resets at the second you were going to use it kinda sucks. It would be nice to have it burst off automatically in Main and slower distribute like Renewal for Mend. Rather than just randomly reset and screw up your match and make players hate you for not saving them with your Ulti cause it was on.(Not saying they do, but one person did say some mean things cause I could not cast my ult when he wanted me to because it reset to 239 Maim.)

 

So that's about all I see wrong with the new Frame?

[Anaphaxaton]

Regarding Pacify:

 

Firstly, it's obvious, but the current glitch which prevents efficiency from reducing channeling cost is a pain.

 

Secondly, the diminishing returns and mitigation falloff and channeling cost per target is too much drawback to be worth even bothering with. In a crowd you're running ALL your energy in under a minute for unimpressive results, even with Primed Flow. That is, of course, without any effect from efficiency, but still. The way I see it, 2 of these would be quite sufficient. Either: 

 

[A] Have the damage reduction be able to scale more sharply, I would say due to falloff & high energy drain over 100% mitigation would be fine since many in the AOE will still deal decent damage anyway. 

 

Reduce or cap mitigation falloff. It's principally because most of those affected get only a 20-30% reduction that the cost seems excessive.

 

[C] Change the channeling so cost is static or also falls off with mitigation. Why does it cost more for a 20% reduction on 3 or 4 lancers than an 87% reduction on a Manic Bombard? Again, it drives the cost so high that in a crowd (which one would at a glance think would be the best place for Pacify) it isn't even viable without an EV Trin or plates.

 

A is my preferred option because it would be not only viable but actually worth building for & because of how Pacify currently interacts with power strength;

 

With Overextended 5/6, that is 50% power strength, I believe the equation for Pacify's reduction before falloff runs thus;

 

Reduced Damage = Base Damage((50/(Power Strength = 50)) = 50/50 = 1)

 

Meaning the ability does absolutely nothing. Even if they can be made practically useless, I don't believe there's any other ability in the game that with the wrong build does nothing whatsoever.

 

With a full Overextended & no other power strength mods, the equation becomes;

 

'Reduced Damage' = Base Damage((50/(Power Strength = 40)) = 50/40 = 1.25)

 

& it becomes a full on grief tool with no use at all other than raising the difficulty. I mean, if it did something else too, like with Nova's Molecular Prime. it'd be understandable, but Pacify is only a 3rd ability (half a 3rd ability, really) so a single really good effect ought be enough. But on top of being pretty ineffectual for cost it's the only ability in the game which can be made so bad it's only use in the world is speeding up damage to a Nyx ball or Frost globe.

 

That's the biggest issue I see with Equinox. Now,

 

Regarding Metamorphosis, the buffs are a boon, & I like that you're able to set the starting form with energy colour. I was originally startled by the cost, but it's worth it for the other effects, & I suppose most anyone who got it by farming will already have efficiency mods. While I would be content with 6 abilities & a 10 energy or so switch, I believe the way it is atm is fine. The delay is a bit of a bother, but I feel it's understandable. Would appreciate at least making it affected by Natural Talent though.

EDIT: Though after a bit of thought, while I still don't mind the current state of it, I agree with Darkmoone that it'd be more interesting to have much lesser bonuses in each form but without decay or duration, making each form more specialized. I do realize the idea is that it incentivises switching forms, but I think given the current cast time the bonuses are too small a reward to make much of a difference in people's play styles.

 

Regarding Rest & Rage, the secondary range seems small, especially when considering that at max it's still under 6m, but other than that no complaints. 

 

 

As is, most people consider the 'Animus' form categorically more useful than 'Anima', due to Maim being usually more useful than a heal & Provoke being actually viable, but with a well working Pacify I would for my part say they were about equal. Anyway, that's all for now. Keep up the good work DE, looking forward to Equinox fixes & augments.

Edited August 12, 2015 by Anaphaxaton

[BlueOwlRest]

 lastest update = "• Power Efficiency Mods now apply to Equinox’s Pacify and Provoke."

 

Well, that's one improvement. Now for the others... doing good DE.

[Rhaenxys]

Pacify energy comsuption has been fixed, one less problem, now we need an effect while mend is active and some bonus to all that stored heal.

[low1991]

Can someone test this out?:

 

Have 2 Equinox with Max range, PE build.

Charge-up/accumulate damage for Maim (both toggled-on)

Upon 1 of the Equinox releasing accumulate damage, does the other Equinox gain damage charge-up according the damage deal to enemies done by Maim?

 

Does it works? 

*i sense fresh Nyx Infinite absorb damage abuse*

Edited August 13, 2015 by low1991

[Sci_Ant]

Can someone test this out?:

 

Have 2 Equinox with Max range, PE build.

Charge-up/accumulate damage for Maim (both toggled-on)

Upon 1 of the Equinox releasing accumulate damage, does the other Equinox gain damage charge-up according the damage deal to enemies done by Maim?

 

Does it works? 

*i sense fresh Nyx Infinite absorb damage abuse*

 

Maim is inherently capped at 75 % of the total HP of a unit killed within it's range.

 

This would mean that in a Defense situation with 2 Equinox's you are always at about 60 % damage effectiveness since every wave sees an increase in enemy number, HP and armor in case of Void / Grineer.

 

Even if a second equinox released all the Maim damage in the next wave, you would have to find a way to effectively trap / CC the enemies from the beginning to the end of the wave, and you also will have to take care of Nullifiers in the Void and Corpus missions.

 

This would mean that the final damage stored could be a huge amount but the output will always be on a lesser number of enemies than were killed to gain that damage in the first place but those enemies would have an increase in HP over their predecessors, effectively capping the damage output to 50 % of the number of enemies in every successive wave, while you will be forced to kill the rest of them by hand (guns or melee). Otherwise one could spend a lot more time gathering enemies with CC in order to one shot them all, but one couldn't do that anyway and it would take much lesser time to just kill half or more of them with weapons.

 

So there is no way to effectively abuse this power, unless maybe if you go as 4 Equinox's, but then that can be said about any power on any frame when multiplied by 4.

Edited August 13, 2015 by Sci_Ant

[FelisImpurrator]

Can someone test this out?:

 

Have 2 Equinox with Max range, PE build.

Charge-up/accumulate damage for Maim (both toggled-on)

Upon 1 of the Equinox releasing accumulate damage, does the other Equinox gain damage charge-up according the damage deal to enemies done by Maim?

 

Does it works? 

*i sense fresh Nyx Infinite absorb damage abuse*

I tested. It doesn't infinite loop.

[Star]

I haven't gone over every single post in this topic, but here are my thoughts on Equinox so far.

 

I am loving it. Its a really interesting and unique frame, I am having a lot of fun figuring out how to get the most out of its skills. So far, the only criticism I have is about Mend/Maim.

 

I am really liking the concept of using damage to build up healing, its a really neat new way to dish out heals. I think Mend has a lot of potential to be a really useful skill. The only problem is, that heals often are needed on a reactive and quick basis. Currently, MOST of  your time spent playing Equinox is going to be spent in Day form, giving damage boosts to your allies and building up Maim for good AOE. But, what happens when things go bad, and you find yourself or one of your allies very near death and needing a heal as ASAP? Well, I guess you pop your maim, then Morph over to day, then pop Mend and build up some damage to be able to heal them. This doesn't really seem efficient, and hampers the usefulness of what is actually a very cool healing skill. I think that the kills you build up during Mend/Maim should carry though when you morph between Day or Night, so that when those moments come when Mend should really have its chance to shine, it actually can. I saw someone above suggested keeping only a % of your buildup when switching, and I think this is a fair idea. Anything but having it reset completely to 0.

 

The other issue I see with Mend is that in comparison with the high utility of Maim, stunning and damaging enemies while accumulating kills for AOE damage, Mend has no other benefits while active. So while there is plenty of reason to run around as Day with Maim active, there isn't really a lot of incentive to do the same as Night, letting her fall to the wayside. Adding some kind of CC to Mend, perhaps slowing enemies instead of stunning them, or perhaps even disarming them.. or a blind, since it is Night after all.. can you see that well in the dark? Maybe it can prevent status effects or stagger? Whatever is added, I think it needs something in order to make it as useful as Maim, and perhaps give a little more reason to run around in Night form, perhaps preparing to cast off a heal when necessary.

Edited August 13, 2015 by Star

[low1991]

So there is no way to effectively abuse this power, unless maybe if you go as 4 Equinox's, but then that can be said about any power on any frame when multiplied by 4.

 

I tested. It doesn't infinite loop.

Thx for replying.

 

On-topic: Equinox is nice. Has the MOST unique ulti (#4) damaging system.

 

Off-topic: Regarding His/Her #3 ability, aura-type. is there any chance for more of future frame to have it?

[NedTyler]

I am really liking the concept of using damage to build up healing, its a really neat new way to dish out heals. I think Mend has a lot of potential to be a really useful skill. The only problem is, that heals often are needed on a reactive and quick basis. Currently, MOST of  your time spent playing Equinox is going to be spent in Day form, giving damage boosts to your allies and building up Maim for good AOE. But, what happens when things go bad, and you find yourself or one of your allies very near death and needing a heal as ASAP? Well, I guess you pop your maim, then Morph over to day, then pop Mend and build up some damage to be able to heal them. This doesn't really seem efficient, and hampers the usefulness of what is actually a very cool healing skill. I think that the kills you build up during Mend/Maim should carry though when you morph between Day or Night, so that when those moments come when Mend should really have its chance to shine, it actually can. I saw someone above suggested keeping only a % of your buildup when switching, and I think this is a fair idea. Anything but having it reset completely to 0

 

I totally agree with this. A differect suggestion will be to pop only a % (maybe 50%) of the stored damage when switching. This leaves the remaining % free for use in the next form. This way there'll be a bit of interaction between metamorphosis and R&R.

 

The other issue I see with Mend is that in comparison with the high utility of Maim, stunning and damaging enemies while accumulating kills for AOE damage, Mend has no other benefits while active. So while there is plenty of reason to run around as Day with Maim active, there isn't really a lot of incentive to do the same as Night, letting her fall to the wayside. Adding some kind of CC to Mend, perhaps slowing enemies instead of stunning them, or perhaps even disarming them.. or a blind, since it is Night after all.. can you see that well in the dark? Maybe it can prevent status effects or stagger? Whatever is added, I think it needs something in order to make it as useful as Maim, and perhaps give a little more reason to run around in Night form, perhaps preparing to cast off a heal when necessary.

 

This is another valid point. Maim should have a an addictional effect. Considering how Maim works with slash procs and a huge damage proc when released, I think a slight health regen should go nicely with Mend. But it needs to do something else at the very least.

 

Pacify I'm fine with. Provoke should at least buff you too.

 

R & R needs a range buff. Otherwise, I feel people'll use it just as often as they use psychic bolts.

 

Metamorphosis needs to change. There are different ways I can think of to make this ablilty better. You can:

      Make the temporary bonuses permanent. That'll make the Day and Night forms feel more unique.

      Remove the decay and increase the duration a little.

      Reduce that 2s cast delay and remove the decay.

 

 As things stand right now, the only reason I personally use metamorphosis is because it's the only way to switch forms.

[Kruglov]

DE.

 

 

Let us leave our auras on when casting metamorphosis.

Have saved up power transfer from Mend/Maim.

Have metamorphosis cost more based on power saved up.

 

Simultaneously, make the Mend aura give enemies a 30% chance of missing attacks entirely, melee and ranged. Possibly have the 30% effected by Power Strength mods.

 

 

Equinox Night will be perfect after that.

[plsql]

Hm. I hope, abilities night form will be buffed/reworked. If not, just change visuals. Day abilities and night visual - will be nice too.

[S7ORM]

I would suggest this:

- Regardless of how many enemies (though at least one) remain in range, Pacify drains 8 / 7 / 6 / 5 energy per second from Equinox.

- Enemies not only get their damage reduced, but their attack speed as well (percentages matching Pacify's damage reduction).

- Damage and attack speed reduction are scaled with distance from Equinox. The closer enemies are, the less damage and the slower attacks they deal.

I like these points. This would be a good skill, and even reflects the duality in a way not explicitly stated, but noticeable in the original design:

Day form damages enemies at a range. Maim hits enemies as they enter the range, not those that are closer (other than at the initial cast).

Night form affects close range enemies more than far ones.