Frost Rework (U17 Megathread Rework)

[-dicht.ThanksFrost-]

The only thing wrong with frost now is that he does not have pbr. Other than that the rework is sufficient

[Rozalinsnow]

I was wrong -- it is effect by power strength but capped at 90% reduction.

Really cool that we get to see this insight, thanks Glen!

[CGs_Knackie]

Dat new Frost is awesome, thanks DE! I hope the next will be as awesome.

[Valiant]

 

 

... now if only I could get my frame looking less dorky. Here's hoping for Frost Prime Access so my frame gets a visual revamp and cool accessories, ;p

Yes!

 

Like his helmet though.

 

Also think his avalanche needs a visual touch up too.

[NinthAria]

Not a huge Frost player but I have to say I've been greatly enjoying the rework. His abilities play very nicely together, and he really feels like a strong zone control frame now; Avalanche's freezing properties have come in handy when buying time to rez teammates, and not having to babysit a Snow Globe timer has made missions where Frost shines (defense and mobile defense in particular) much more enjoyable. Ice Wave traveling in a cone has also greatly increased the value of Ice Wave Impedance, which I'm liking a lot.

 

One thing I did notice, though, is that physics effects (knockbacks, etc.) don't seem to work properly on frozen targets, as I was to understand they would. I run with a Jat Kittag and Shattering Storm for my Frost loadout, and it seems like the ground slam attacks never have any effect on targets I've frozen with Avalanche. Not sure if it's a bug or not, but either way I'd like to get my ice breaker on.

[SilentMobius]

Just to remind everyone (seeing as [DE]Glen is here)

 

Frost Prime's neck is still borked (Where as regular frost is not) and many helmets clip through it:

 

https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/306094-frost-prime-neck-too-narrow-for-aurora-helmet-clipping-badly-black-texture-showing-through/

[VanguardT-EN-]

The only thing wrong with frost now is that he does not have pbr. Other than that the rework is sufficient

Frost prime doesn't even have that much gold, and if you use Immortal skin and the "cooler helmet" you'll lose all your gold parts :/ (same with mag prime)

[_FrostPrime_]

This isn't even my final form!

[[DE]Momaw]

Frost prime doesn't even have that much gold, and if you use Immortal skin and the "cooler helmet" you'll lose all your gold parts :/ (same with mag prime)

 

No dispute that Frost Prime is not a very "prime looking" Prime, but it's worth pointing out that you can add gold with Prisma armors which have shiny metallic parts.

[Swbn19]

Right up till now, Frost's rework is very complete and satisfying. The only thing it lacks now is the insufficient gold parts around the prime variant. Please DE!!!!! Just add more gold parts to frost prime to make it look more 'primed' and his rework would be considered complete!!!!!

[(PSN)NeroRedgrave]

Right up till now, Frost's rework is very complete and satisfying. The only thing it lacks now is the insufficient gold parts around the prime variant. Please DE!!!!! Just add more gold parts to frost prime to make it look more 'primed' and his rework would be considered complete!!!!!

 

^ THIS!

 

Frost Prime really needs more gold parts.

[Scottie_Auren]

^ THIS!

 

Frost Prime really needs more gold parts.

 

I would be more than happy with just PBR treatment of his existing textures. Even with prime/ prisma armor attachments, matching his gold is bloody impossible as it has some sort of luminescence. 

 

Although, adding cloth physics to bring it closer to the dark sector concept art wouldn't go amiss, in my opinion. It's just a matter of priorities. :/

[The-Storm]

The rework works like a charm, that's all I have to say, satisfied with everything actually. Although I do agree Frost Prime needs to be more "primish", but not overdone. This is what I have in mind by that, this would be perfect in my opinion.

[Swbn19]

The rework works like a charm, that's all I have to say, satisfied with everything actually. Although I do agree Frost Prime needs to be more "primish", but not overdone. This is what I have in mind by that, this would be perfect in my opinion.

Hopefully DE can implement this into frost prime

[FrackingBiscuit]

The rework works like a charm, that's all I have to say, satisfied with everything actually. Although I do agree Frost Prime needs to be more "primish", but not overdone. This is what I have in mind by that, this would be perfect in my opinion.

 

I am sexually attracted to those knee spikes.

[_FrostPrime_]

I am sexually attracted to those knee spikes.

 

The rework works like a charm, that's all I have to say, satisfied with everything actually. Although I do agree Frost Prime needs to be more "primish", but not overdone. This is what I have in mind by that, this would be perfect in my opinion.

 

I've never been so overwhelmed by myself!  *unzip*

[Sci_Ant]

The rework works like a charm, that's all I have to say, satisfied with everything actually. Although I do agree Frost Prime needs to be more "primish", but not overdone. This is what I have in mind by that, this would be perfect in my opinion.

 

++++1111111..........n

 

I've seen this before and I love it! If DE can give us something as good as this in the Frost Prime PBR update then I will definitely shed tears of joy! XD

[Swbn19]

If DE can answer to our needs back then when Frost rework was a hot topic, i hope they can listen to this regarding his prime appearance rework too. The appearance issue regarding frost prime has been going on for quite a while in the past and I feel that this issue is very needed to be worked on, just as important as his rework.

[Azamagon]

I was wrong -- it is effect by power strength but capped at 90% reduction.

The Frost rework is good and all that, but:

Iit's amusing that this wouldn't have been clarified unless a player tested it, got weird result from the tests, asked about it on the forums and was incredibly lucky enough that someone in the dev team jad to research about it and THEN directly told how it ACTUALLY works... doesn't this really show how we need these kind of informations and clarities IN GAME? The abilities and their descriptions and numerical facts ... well they are not actually saying all that much, they REAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAALLY need to be overhauled so they are much more clear and informative.

[aerosoul1337]

I was wrong -- it is effect by power strength but capped at 90% reduction.

 

If it is effected by power strength, the scale factor is really small...

Power strength 100% and 185% doesn't seem to have huge difference with the armor reduction.

Any detail please?

[[DE]Momaw]

If it is effected by power strength, the scale factor is really small...

Power strength 100% and 185% doesn't seem to have huge difference with the armor reduction.

Any detail please?

 

Well this is something we can test out.

 

TIME FOR TENNO SCIENCE

 

I'm going to start by looking at an armored enemy target. Let's go with Arid Heavy Gunner because she's armored, very tough, and near the start of the list.  What sort of damage should we use? It should be something that doesn't have any special modifiers against the armor or the flesh, so that we are strictly dealing with the armor reduction values.   All forms of physical damage is invalid, as are many elements. Neither the armor nor the flesh is resistant or weak to cold, and electricity.  I'll go with electricity since the only weapon that does pure cold damage is the Glaxion and that's a continuous weapons, and continuous weapons are too bizarre for good testing.  For the same reason I will not use amprex, quanta, or synapse.  Which leaves us with the Lanka, which does pure electrical damage in (big) discreet shots.  I remove all the mods from my Lanka which leaves it doing a base of 300 electrical.

 

Rounding everything to the nearest 3rd decimal place.

 

For the first test I will mod my Frost for 100% power strength and shoot a level 8 arid heavy gunner (minimum level) to get a sense of its damage reduction.  My rifle does 112 damage, which means my weapon is only 37.333% effective, which means

 

300 / (300+x) = 0.37333

300 = 0.37333 * (300+x)

803.572 = 300+x

503.572 = x

 

Considering that according to the codex the arid heavy gunner has an armor rating of 500 at level 1, I'd say we're spot on.

 

Now we spawn a higher level enemy. Level 100 ought to do it.  Against a level 100 arid heavy gunner my weapon does 12 damage. This means my weapon is 4% effective, which is an armor rating of 7200.

 

Yikes.

 

After I use (very carefully) use Avalanche on the level 100 arid heavy gunner, my shots do 19 damage, which calculates as an armor rating of 4437.

 

(For sanity checking sake, does this work backward?  Plug in the armor rating calculation, 300/(300+4437) = 0.06333,  times 300 damage is 18.999. We're good!)

 

Now the first moment of great curiosity:  Is that a 40% reduction in armor? .....   No.  It's pretty close though, at 38.375%.  I'm willing to blame rounding errors in my math and the information the game is displaying to me.

 

So now we go back to the ship (ugh) and outfit for higher power strength. My ordinary Frost build has 170% power strength (max rank Transient Fortitude, plus Arcane Squall helmet).

 

Using 170% power strength Avalanche against a level 100 arid heavy gunner, I see 34 damage. This is 11.333% effective, which means target has an armor rating of 2347.  This is 67.4% reduction in armor over the original 7200.  Is it what we expect to see?  We know the ability nominally reduces armor by 0.4, and we're multiplying that by 1.7 from power strength which gives us.... *drumroll*  68% armor reduction.  That's pretty damn close to the 67.4% we observed in testing.

 

Conclusion A: Yes, avalanche is affected by power strength.

 

But.....

 

The difference between a 300 damage weapon doing 19 damage versus doing 34 damage is.... basically irrelevant.  The armor reduction from Avalanche ends up being mathematically present and verifiable but pointless in gameplay because of the non-linear way that armor works.  Damage reduction from armor is calculated as

 

damage * 300 / (300 + a)

 

Where 'a' is the armor rating. What this means is that with an armor rating of 300 the target takes half damage. An armor rating of 600 means they take 1/3rd damage. 900?  1/4.  Armor is at its most "valuable" at low values, and Avalanche doesn't touch that.  It turns armor rating in the thousands into smaller thousands, and that still means they are barely grazed by your bullets. Against the tested arid heavy gunner at its minimum spawn level of 8, and a base power strength Frost, all you're doing is reducing their armor from 500 (incoming damage*0.375) to  300 (incoming damage*0.5).  Kind of pointless.

 

If you really want to fight armored enemies, Corrosive Projection in a squad is still by far the best solution. And if you're fighting solo, corrosion procs reduces their armor rating by 25% every time so it only takes 2 corrosion procs (leaves them with 56.25% of original armor, permanently) to beat Avalanche's effects.

 

Conclusion B: Armor reduction from Avalanche works but it's not worth caring about.

Edited August 21, 2015 by Momaw

[aerosoul1337]

There is something wrong with Frost's skill damage.

Then I started to test. Since the armor calculation is more complex, I started with infested

Most noticeable: I cast tons of AoE and couldn't kill a single level 1 Ancient Disruptor.

There was no any other enemy around.

 

Ice Wave with 100% Power Strength (Frost P max rank, Ancient Disruptor Level 1)

Damage = 26

 

 

 

Avalanche with 100% Power Strength (Frost P max rank, Ancient Disruptor Level 1)

Damage = 56

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ice Wave with 100% Power Strength on Swarm-Mutalist MOA

1572 damage

 

 

 

 

Avalanche with 100% Power Strength on Swarm-Mutalist MOA

3369 damage

 

 

 

 

Even if we ignore Ancient Disruptor's aura, there are still something unreasonable.

The following results are tested with max rank Frost P with 100% Power Strength.

All skills were aimed for torso, headshots were avoided.

Each result set has been tested for multiple times.

Extremely abnormal results are marked.

(Different browser may have different alignment.)

 

 

 

Type          Ice effect%     Test target            Freeze damage     Ice Wave damage         Avalanche damage

Infested        100%        expected result              350                         700                              1500             

Test result:

                                       Charger                      349                         699                              1497

                                       Leaper                        349                         699                              1497

 

I.Flesh          50%         expected result              175                          350                               750           

Test result:

                                       Crawler                     175                           349                               749

                                   Volatile Runner              175                           349                               749

 

Fossilized      75%       expected result              262.5                         525                              1125          

Test result:

                                       Boiler                        262                           524                              1123

                                   Brood Mother                 262                           524                              1123

                              Swarm-Mutalist MOA          262                          *1572                            *3369

                                  Tar-Mutalist MOA            262                          *1572                            *3369

                                   Ancient Healer               262                           *262                             *562

                                  Toxic Ancient                  262                           *262                             *562

                               Corrupted Ancient               262                           *262                             *562

                                 Ancient Disruptor              262                           *26                               *56

__________________________________________________________________________________________

 

If the table is not well aligned for your browser, check this picture:

 

 

 

Conclusion (TL;DR):

Infested health type takes correct damage from all skills. (99.7% of expected damage is weird but close enough)

I.Flesh health type takes correct damage from all skills.

Fossilized health type: only Boiler and Brood Mother take correct damage from all skills.

However, Moa type enemies take TRIPLE damage from Ice wave and Avalanche.

 

Ancients(Healer, Toxic, Disruptor and Corrupted) take correct damage from Freeze (skill 1) only.

Ice wave and Avalanche damage are halved.

Furthermore, any infested within Disruptor's aura will reduce damage taken from these skills by 90% further.

(end of TL;DR)

__________________________________________________________________________________________

 

P.S.

Unlike Ancient Healer, Ancient Disruptor's aura can cover itself and other ancients.

Also I tested Saryn's Miasma and Excal's Javelin, they both deal correct damage at 100% power strength against Ancient Disruptor.

 

It is too inconvenient to test all warframe's ability against each enemy.

I think it's developers' work now.

 

I ask for your help, if you can test other enemy factions, please help me out.

Or you can up vote this post thus developers may see it someday.

And I will probably post a bug thread with more test.

Edited August 23, 2015 by aerosoul1337

[aerosoul1337]

Using 170% power strength Avalanche against a level 100 arid heavy gunner, I see 34 damage. This is 11.333% effective, which means target has an armor rating of 2347.  This is 67.4% reduction in armor over the original 7200.  Is it what we expect to see?  We know the ability nominally reduces armor by 0.4, and we're multiplying that by 1.7 from power strength which gives us.... *drumroll*  68% armor reduction.  That's pretty damn close to the 67.4% we observed in testing.

 

I think you mean 34 damage from your gun (I thought it's Avalanche damage for a long while...)

 

And the most misleading thing is the skill info:

Power of armor reduction: 0.6

I thought this is the power that reduces 60% armor.

[[DE]Momaw]

And the most misleading thing is the skill info:

Power of armor reduction: 0.6

I thought this is the power that reduces 60% armor.

 

"Fixed Frost’s Avalanche not properly displaying the armor reduction in the Arsenal’s Ability description."

 

17.2.2 patch notes

[Muminidas]

IceWave-Great for mass CC Cold proc, add in augment mod and you will have  a room slowed down simaltaneously

Freeze-Works as advertised, the cold patch on floor needs to be more distinuishable but it's an excellent first skill.

Avalanche-10/10. Oh boy this thing got buffed

 

 

First it does great damage

What it doesn't kill is frozen for some period, seems to be affected by duration

Second if the frozen statues die they release an aoe cold proc slowing other things near them.

 

It's an excellent example of an Ultimate done right. No issues.

 

 

I would double that post about Avalanche in particular. Great power rework, decent dmg and that freeze duration. ^_^ 

Armor debuff and radial dmg + cold proc from killed frozen enemies also is something. 

Passive is pretty noticable too. In last few runs I noticed enemies get frozen when they hit me with meele attacks so it works pretty well. Moreover, I find it extremaly fun to play with the new Frost and the powers seem to synergize one with another. Rework done right. Frost done right.

Ultimate defensive Warframe done right now.