Equinox, True Balance?

[LAWD]

Hey there, we all love Equinox, i love her just cause she is complex and rewarding to use. She cmes with the 2 aspects, day and night, and ofcourse day is what i use most. The night however seems not to scale to well onto higher level enemies. What I'm really talking bout is her 3rd ability, pacify, which reduces incoming damage from enemies within the aura. It already scales with damage resistence by DISTANCE, but a Lancer;/Bombard can just knock you right down from the edge of the aura. Well my opinions on what should happen to make that skill more viable. In a roo with eneies over level 35, pacify won't last so long, so i say it should also scale well with enemy level. The 50% may be too little or too much depending on how you mod, but personally it's not enough for me.

Another thing about her Night aspect is her to be more tanky than the day, so she can atleast match up to the day aspect, i see so many guys hating on the night and comparing it to the Day aspect. It would make sense for her to have abit of armor boost in the night form.

[Senoinya]

It's not the armor that's the problem. It's the fact that her night capabilities just don't compare to the day's. She already gets an armor bonus when you switch to night form.

 

Rest vs Rage is pretty balanced. In fact, I'd argue that Rest is actually superior to Rage, as opening up enemies to finishers for a long duration is pretty nice. Very useful in spy.

 

But Pacify hardly compares to Provoke, especially in a team. Pacify needs to have more kick to it, it needs to have a bigger radius, and it needs to have a better reduction, because if you compare this to Mirage with her augment, Mirage can easily just get a 95% reduction by standing in darkness with a strength mod, Trinity gets 75% and 100% status immunity whenever she wants it, Valkyr can go full invincible, Mesa can get 95% reductions against projectiles, but then we get to Equinox and it's only 50%, which means you're going to have to use a lot of strength mods to make that even mildly useful at higher levels, and guess why that's a problem?

 

Almost everything on Equinox is greatly affected by every stat. Most Warframes have one or two stats that are the most important to them, and one that barely means anything.

 

Range: If you don't give her max range, rest and rage doesn't affect multiple enemies, pacify and provoke don't have enough range to be worth mentioning in actual play, Mend won't heal most of your allies if they're spread apart, and Maim won't build up damage all that fast if you have a team that's killing enemies outside its range. But if you DO max her range, it doesn't really matter, because Pacify and Provoke won't be doing enough to be worth mentioning anyway, her buffs when she changes forms will be weak, and rage's damage bonuses will be pitiful.

 

Strength: If you don't max strength, like I said, the switch bonuses are fairly pointless. Rage's damage bonus isn't even worth using most of the time. Pacify won't reduce enough damage, and Provoke won't help your allies much. Mend and Maim are the only two abilities spared from this, unless you count the fact that Maim deals less of its already pitiful passive slash damage. But if you actually max out your damage, you wreck your efficiency, and you wreck your duration, and that's a problem because...

 

Duration: If you don't max duration, those decaying buffs you get when you switch won't even be worth it at all. Rest and Rage are the same story, without duration, they're pointless. The other abilities, Pacify and Provoke, and Mend and Maim however, are spared, making Duration the one and only thing that doesn't destroy Equinox if you don't have it, althought it does render your switch buffs useless, and two very useful abilities, which is bad for the night form, because Pacify and Mend, the only two unaffected abilities, are quite subpar.

 

Efficiency: If you don't max efficiency, this frame will run out of power long before you get the job done. Switching frames isn't too frequent to cause concern of it draining you with that, but not enough efficiency will mean that you can quickly find yourself incapable of switching to the form you need at the moment. Rest and Rage only affect a single enemy, or multiple enemies if you have max range, but you'll still need to cast it multiple times to have any large impact on a crowd, leading to high costs if you lack max efficiency. Pacify can drain you in seconds when against a lot of enemies without max efficiency, and Provoke is no different if your allies are unleashing abilities left and right. Mend and Maim both require fairly long durations of activity to be used properly, since if you release Mend before your allies needed the heal, it's wasted, but if you use it only when they need the heal, they'll die before you can give it. Maim is fairly good, but you'll still need to leave it up for awhile since it seems that even when you're building up damage that's more than capable of one-shotting everything around you, it still only tickles them for some reason. The problem is that if you max efficiency, just like with strength, you're wrecking your duration, which you need if you're going to be making any use of the night form, or the switch buffs.

 

Because of this, most people just build for one specific ability and nothing else, because you can't make an effective build for Equinox without wrecking most of your abilities one way or another, which wouldn't even be a problem if Equinox's abilities were good without being maxed, but they're not. You can't just do with Equinox what you would do with other frames where you can max out the stats that are the most important to you, but still have uses for the abilities that are affected by the downside, with the only exception being Saryn.

 

But back to the disadvantage Night has over Day.

 

This disadvantage is even more noticable with their 4ths, Mend and Maim. When I activate Maim, I deal a relatively meaningless but still notable slash damage to everything in my radius, plus I get a QUITE useful stun that is dealt to anything that enters the radius, all in addition to the effect I receive when I release the ability.

 

But with Mend, I activate it, and absolutely nothing passive is done. The ability being active contributes to nothing other than me killing an enemy adding to the total. So unlike Day where I'm at least getting something out of that constant energy drain while it's active, Mend is basically just needlessly draining on me and doing absolutely nothing with it until I release the ability. It's pointless, stupid, and honestly should be changed beyond just "oh, now it replenishes shields too", because it's not like this ability compares to Trinity's blessing anyway, so it's not like that huge drain is really necessary if it's not doing anything except letting me build up and store my subpar healing ability.

 

The ability should offer a passive heal, where as long as the ability is active, me and any allies within my radius will receive a constant healing, either at, or above that of Rejuvenation. That would be the only justification.

 

Furthermore, Equinox needs to be adjusted so not everything is wrecked the second you make one thing useful. This can be easily done just by making some improvements so you get an actual effect out of the abilities she has without maxing them, because right now, it's max or nothing.

 

Honestly, Equinox's concept is great, I love the concept behind the frame and all the abilities, but the way they were actually implemented feels very rushed and not thought out at all. It feels like DE was more worried about pushing the frame out so they could scream "NEW CONTENT!" rather than actually thinking "hey, we should change this, this, and this, improve this, and consider how this would work in this situation.". I'm expecting Atlas to be no different, honestly.

[God_is_a_Cat_Girl]

 

But Pacify hardly compares to Provoke, especially in a team. Pacify needs to have more kick to it, it needs to have a bigger radius, and it needs to have a better reduction, because if you compare this to Mirage with her augment, Mirage can easily just get a 95% reduction by standing in darkness with a strength mod, Trinity gets 75% and 100% status immunity whenever she wants it, Valkyr can go full invincible, Mesa can get 95% reductions against projectiles, but then we get to Equinox and it's only 50%, which means you're going to have to use a lot of strength mods to make that even mildly useful at higher levels, and guess why that's a problem?

50% base isn't the problem, how power Strength mods affect the ability and the distance gimmick is what makes it worthless.

I have +80% Power Strength (180% by in game stats), and if the mods only added up to the ability I'd have 90% damage reduction at point blank, however, I only get 75% damage reduction at point blank. Though honestly, I wouldn't mind if it was capped at 75%, IF it affected every enemy in the circle equally, which it doesn't, and any enemy that is a few meters away from you won't be affected as much, and by the time you will actually need this ability for survivability, that will make it worthless as well, because you can also switch to Day, use Maim and the stagger to kill the enemies before they shoot at you. The poor defence capabilities just make it so using the offensive side is a better defence, which is sad (because I like the night form looks better).

[V4YR4]

The only build I really like is a max range/high power Maim, using brief activations to deal large amounts of spot damage when it gets crowded (large area makes a short activation proc huge amounts of damage), the rest is of mild use or not even noticeable, and definitely impossible to build for. Building for duration/str is another option, if his 1 wasn't losing power over time so much and if Night wasn't so lackluster. But on Mend & Maim; I feel that is a totally different ability to use than f/e Exalted Blade, this is the complete opposite of an ability you would want active all the time. Nobody has use for a damage spike that only works after 30 seconds, and nobody has use for a spot heal that you can't time properly. So short activations with major effect are useful, and efficiency really isn't that needed. This narrows down the viable builds. Just that duration... it kills skill 1-3 if you go for 4. Shame.

 

But what I am mostly missing with Equinox is visual feedback. It is minimal at best and I need to resort to looking at icons to spot what's going on. Overall Equinox seems a great idea that was rushed and needed a rework from the get-go, they just seem to have piled up some abilities that contrast well with each other and figured 'let's try this'... Even the Day/Night swap does not cater a versatile playstyle because of the cast / metamorph time. Swapping quickly? No sir! But you can do it while airborne... Sense, it makes none.

 

The paradox with Equinox.... if you want to be like Night & Day, you have a S#&$ty Equinox. If you focus on a single ability, you are useful. DE basically encourages us to play a warframe out of character. Food for thought.

Edited September 28, 2015 by V4YR4

[ashrah]

i really ejoy equinox