Inaros, the good, the bad and the sand in my pants (tl;dr included))

[Genoscythe]

So, after having played Inaros for a whole while, let him eat four forma and tried a lot of different builds I feel ready now to give some objective feedback about the new guy in the neighbourhood.

 

First off, I have to say that DE did a good job bringing in some fresh air. Not only because of the weird stats Inaros has but also because his playstyle is unique.

 

Now, let's start with his stats:

Inaros can reach new dimensions of health tanking, getting a whopping ~4500 health points when using a maxed vitality mod at level 30. His lack of shields and their natural regeneration is made up by his armor and the skillset, which we will investigate further down. His sprint speed is the solid standard 1.0, a rush mod seems a logical choice for almost every build. His 200 base armor don't seem to be much for a pure HP tank, however his 4th skill can double it. If one wants to play him as a pure solo-tank, armored agility and steel fiber can make him robust even against higher level enemies. His energy pool of 150 at level 30 seems small for a warframe whose regeneration is almost completely dependent of his abilities. A rage build turned out to be quite effective.

His special bleedout also brings in fresh wind, however the inability to move and the fact that armored or resistant enemies don't give as much resurrection power as others can be a hindrance.

 

His abilities:

 

1. Desiccation: A formidable CC ability with decent range, area and duration but very low damage. If used with mods like overextended One can easily handle crowds of enemies. The fact that enemeis are open for finishers makes sense as Inaros' passive ability restores health when finishing off enemies in melee. The lifesteal on the ability is negligible, even against a group of enemies while using a power strength build the lifesteal does not cut it. The lifesteal damage is also reduced by enemy armor and resistances, further reducing its effectiveness. One should also nota that power damage does not increase the percentage of life leeched and that the initial impact does not count for lifesteal.

 

2. Devour: A targeted single-target stun attack with high duration that enables inaros to pull it close and leech small amounts of life at a very fast rate while damaging the target. I found myself only seldomly using this ability as it only affects one target and it takes too long to pull it close. The biggest issue is that my whole gear is working against me: Targets pulled close are targeted by sentinels and mostly won't even arrive, making the skill basically unusable when having a good sentinel + gun equipped. Apart from that one can also devour targets at a distance when using sandstorm, but the combo is of very limited use due to the high energy cost (let us remind that inaros only hs 150 base energy) and the long casting time plus the fact that if playing with multiple other people, especially experienced players, the target won't survive to be drained. The ability could use some tweaks, maybe a way to mark multiple targets at once. Lastly it is a bursa-killer, stunning them for high duration and making them easy targets.

 

3. Sandstorm: One of the most complex skills in Warframe. Not only synergizing with devour, but also a possible source of great crowd control, damage and a way to tank damage while protecting the team or a tactically valuable position (choke points, crypods, consoles). I used this skill a lot. It kinda renders Vaubans vortex obsolete. Inaros can receive energy (EV or E-packs, no regeneration or pickups) while using this skill (a good decision, as it is not overpowered but powerful if used tactically). Inaros moves at half of his speed but also receives only 50% damage while using sandstorm.

The initiate range and damage are not very high, and the energy cost is fairly high. However the fact that this abilities eficiency scales not only with the warframe eficiency stat but also with duration bonuses makes it interesting. One has to find a balance between both stats (not only because inaros' other abilities are very duration-dependant, a pure STR and EFF build will not cut it for this frame). I preferred a build with maxed range, maxed damage and maxed out eficiency, leaving out rage and vitality, relying on my zenurik energy regeneration. It worked very well, also In ODD. Inaros is able to defend a cryopod against hordes of enemies, the 35 meters of range with overextended and stretch give it good range while not being too much. Of course this comes at the cost of around 50 cast cost and 5 energy per second. 

This skill really gives inaros a lot of build-complexety and variety. However it's range seems to be bugged as it does only pick up enemies on the same height level as inaros. The downside is that corrupted or infested ancients can almost completely negate his damage (which is rather a design flaw of this enemy type rather than of this ability in my opinion).

 

4. Scarab Swarm: This ability allows him to sacrifice health in order to reinforce his armor by up to 100%. For every percent of armor inaros drains 29 health until only 2 life points are left. For 25 energy he can use 25% of his armor to infect one enemy with a health-draining effect that spreads to other enemies 5 meters around the initial infescted. This can quickly spread against tight-packed enemies. Health drained is redirected to allies in a certain radius. 

My second least favorite skill, even though I like the fact that it's no simple nuke. The only thing I found really useful was the armor increase, however health drained does not scale with power eficiency and to gain 100% armor in one cast vitality is obligatory. The spread radius is also not effected by range, while the damage takes too long to spread. When playing with more people targets are likely to die fast, so this skill really needs some kind of higher area of effect and scale with more warframe attributes. Also the energy cost to sacrifice armor to heal seems unnecessary, if I already sacrificed 2,9k health I think that's enough. The next point is that the armor get's removed as soon as a nullifier touches you or when you fall off a cliff (again it's rather about bad enemy design here), forcing you to take a fast firing weapon as you cannot slide under the bubble to melee the nullifier without sacrificing your armor.

I rarely used this skill, mostly only when a trinity was covering my back. The drain damage heals reasonably but does not deal enough damage to engage enemies over level 30, but that's not what it was made either I think.

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Generally I think Inaros is too dependent of alive enemies to regenerate himself. When I played with randoms or my friends I did not have enough time to dish out the combos Inaros offers to regenerate myself or build up armor. All life in a room normally vanishes after a maximum of 5 seconds in this game, so some tweaks to the healing speed of inaros and the speed of some abilities would be welcome. My main source of self-regeneration was my trusty vaykor marelok (syndicate effect heals you), his 1 did not heal nearly enough even with STR builds while his 4 was too risky to use or simply too slow: low level enemies die before you can get good health from them, high level enemies with armor or resistances (again ancients, nullifiers) negated my healing. The best way is to devour and tornado or desiccate and use melee finishers, whcih does not always work with lag.

 

 

Verdict:  I can say that I really enjoyed Inaros and leveling him for 4 formas, I was waiting for health-vampire frame for a very long time now. I played all mission types except for spy and I had fun. His playstyle is really active compared to other frames, you will be shooting and casting multiple abilities constantly. The little to medium flaws I was talking about before could easily be buffed/changed, there are not too many things that this frame would need. I am not sure how he will hold against the most frequently used frames in terms of damage, utlity and CC, but he has a spark of everything. I can imagine Inaros being the new culmination of crowd control in ODD and infested defense and you can run exterminates and other defense missions fairly well. He also makes an awesome lootnado for survival and can CC enemies fast and cheap with his desiccation. Overall he is not perfect at what he wants to do, but I dare to say he is the most interesting Warframe released in the last 12 months. The biggest flaw is that he is busy too much time with sustaining himself, other frames can already act and CC or damage on a bigger scale in this timeframe.

 

Sheesh, this has mutated to quite some text, eh?

 

Tl;dr?

Good HP, nice armor, sprint speed OK, low energy for an ability dependent frame.

Desiccation: Nice CC bad heal, finishers regenerate Inaros so alternative way to heal.

Devour: Meh, not good cause sentinel shoots target, also really slow, other players mostly will kill marked targets.

Sandstorm: Good, complex to mod because eff. depends on eff. stat and duration stat, good CC and damage possible. Range bugged, only picks up enemies at the same height level.

Scarab Swarm: Almost meh, health drain should scale with eifciency, spreding range very low, again most players will kill targets too fast when playing coop. nullifiers and ancients ruin this skill. 

A cool frame, brings new playstyle, but overall usefulness in certain missions can be surpassed by specialized frames.

 

Let's discuss!

 

[phoenix1992]

22 minutes ago, Genoscythe said:

A cool frame, brings new playstyle, but overall usefulness in certain missions can be surpassed by specialized frames.

 

Can't this be applied to 90% of the current rooster?

Beside that... It feels like an frame that excels at low to mid combat (aka up to 40 level mobs). I would add that he has excellent mod capability (you can do some pretty hardcore combinations on him), and it brings interesting 0 shield policy. So far, mostly solo frame and I await augments to see how it will work out from there. 

[R34LM]

A fair review, but I find him to be an excellent solo frame, even up to 100 level.

I use his 1 in conjunction with covert lethality. It's obvious as to why.

I actally feel his 2 pull speed is fine. If it is too slow I'll just stun the target and bullet jump to it myself. The heal rate is fine, I just use it on a large enemy to stun them and leech them of tons of health.

3 could be toned down in energy consumption, but as you said it is great for protection.

I use his 4 to punish enemies for grouping too closely; I don't use it for damage. While his one does a better stun, 4 has a better heal and can repeatedly stun with no extra cost. But, I also feel that it is lacking somehow, as if it needs one more mechanic or synergy with another power.

 

He quickly became my main assault frame for solo, and my close group of squad mates love the heals I bring with him.

Edited March 9, 2016 by R34LM

[Genoscythe]

1 minute ago, R34LM said:

A fair review, but I find him to be an excellent solo frame.

I use his 1 in conjunction with covert lethality. It's obvious as to why.

I actally feel his 2 pull speed is fine. If it is too slow I'll just stun the target and bullet jump to it myself. The heal rate is fine, I just use it on a large enemy to stun them and leech them of tons of health.

3 could be toned down in energy consumption, but as you said it is great for protection.

I use his 4 to punish enemies for grouping too closely; I don't use it for damage. While his one does a better stun, 4 has a better heal and can repeatedly stun with no extra cost. But, I also feel that it is lacking somehow, as if it needs one more mechanic or synergy with another power.

 

He quickly became my main assault frame for solo, and my close group of squad mates love the heals I bring with him.

Yes, a formidable solo frame.

 

I just never was able to heal anyone as the people I play with are quite hardcore (playing for around 2- almost 3 years) and normally end everything 1-4 seconds after entering a room. If Inaros would add health regen for a certain duration for every enemy that died during his 4s effect and the heal radius would be abolished (or emit from Inaros) this skill would become much more versatile. Right now, as I said, his main problem is that he needs enemies to stay alive to actually heal.

 

12 minutes ago, phoenix1992 said:

Can't this be applied to 90% of the current rooster?

Beside that... It feels like an frame that excels at low to mid combat (aka up to 40 level mobs). I would add that he has excellent mod capability (you can do some pretty hardcore combinations on him), and it brings interesting 0 shield policy. So far, mostly solo frame and I await augments to see how it will work out from there. 

 

 I can't wait for the design council augment thread to open.

 

I think his high health and the ability to constantly CC make him useful for enemies up to level 200, finisher damage with some swords can reach extreme heights. An Ember with her fireball buff augment that casts accelerant on enemies caught in a buffed sandstorm can really ruin the day of even higher level enemies.

[phoenix1992]

Sorry for the overspam.
I would really like if someone makes an gif, how he showcases secondary weapons while in "noble" pose. It is mesmerizing.
I am happy that he does not wiggle like that all the time on the other side, it distracts me.

Edited March 9, 2016 by phoenix1992

[R34LM]

58 minutes ago, Genoscythe said:

Right now, as I said, his main problem is that he needs enemies to stay alive to actually heal.

Ironically, that becomes less of an issue at higher levels. At lower levels, you can kill anything in rapid pace that you don't need to worry about healing. At higher levels, enemies will have so much health that you can leech them for days since the damage doesn't scale. This, of course, doesn't consider weaponry of your sentinel and your teammates.

[hukurokuju5]

I pretty much use 1 and the armor buff on 4 and thats it....

 

2 3 and 4( the active) are not very rewarding because of :

- the sheer amount of time it takes to use them on top of bad DOT damage in a game that favors burst damage.

- cast times and usability do not feel like a good trade for the effect they grant. 

- sand minion mechanic is weak.  AI is already bad. no scaling. maximum time to make minions. 

 

his powerlevel right now it pretty much dictated by his godly amount of EHP.  however, this comment is in no way calling for a nerf to these attributes.

 

you can run only 3 mods : vitality steelfiber and rage, and be able to survive almost any mission with minimal skill usage.

[UltimateGrr]

Personally, I'm waiting for Damage 3.0 to ship before I reach a verdict.  So far I've got 3 Forma in him, and am still having fun, but it definitely feels like both he and Saryn were balanced around a damage paradigm that the frames weren't.

 

[Genoscythe]

35 minutes ago, hukurokuju5 said:

I pretty much use 1 and the armor buff on 4 and thats it....

 

2 3 and 4( the active) are not very rewarding because of :

- the sheer amount of time it takes to use them on top of bad DOT damage in a game that favors burst damage.

- cast times and usability do not feel like a good trade for the effect they grant. 

- sand minion mechanic is weak.  AI is already bad. no scaling. maximum time to make minions. 

 

his powerlevel right now it pretty much dictated by his godly amount of EHP.  however, this comment is in no way calling for a nerf to these attributes.

 

you can run only 3 mods : vitality steelfiber and rage, and be able to survive almost any mission with minimal skill usage.

His 3 can get 1,1k damage per second on a 35 meter range while halving all incoming damage, that's the best maintained DOT without target limit I know.

[MarcusGraves]

Too bad Devour doesn't do percent health finisher type damage which would help with the issue of enemies taking too long to drain with it since the ideal enemy to cast this on would be a heavy type enemy, but it takes too long to fully drain them and to even attempt to create a shadow which also womp womp, doesn't have any scaling bonuses to it like shadows of the dead has.

Passive should deal finisher type damage as well since higher level enemies make this less and less effective, just another DE oversight...

75 cost start up and a 10 energy per seconds drain on sandstorm on a frame with only 150 energy at max, this friggen balance team I swear, down to 50 cost then maybe talk and see if 10 per sec still too much.

Scarab Swarm should cost no energy since we're already spending a very large amount of our resource (health) to charge it up.

27 minutes ago, Genoscythe said:

His 3 can get 1,1k damage per second on a 35 meter range while halving all incoming damage, that's the best maintained DOT without target limit I know.

If we were going to compare I could easily say World on Fire which is

-cheaper to use with similar if not easily more damage

-lets you retain full mobility (this is honestly pretty important)

-lets you perform other actions instead of being locked in Darude mode and only spinning

To clarify, I'm not saying Sandstorm is bad function wise, I'm saying I think it's incredibly overpriced for it's function.

[hukurokuju5]

3 hours ago, Genoscythe said:

His 3 can get 1,1k damage per second on a 35 meter range while halving all incoming damage, that's the best maintained DOT without target limit I know.

honestly, it could do strong damage and i still wouldnt use it because of its terrible mobility, double cast time, and the fact that it can toss enemies outside of the DOT range,,,

it could do absolutely 0 damage, but if it had responsive usability, i would use it all the damn time

Edited March 10, 2016 by hukurokuju5

[Genoscythe]

8 hours ago, hukurokuju5 said:

honestly, it could do strong damage and i still wouldnt use it because of its terrible mobility, double cast time, and the fact that it can toss enemies outside of the DOT range,,,

it could do absolutely 0 damage, but if it had responsive usability, i would use it all the damn time

I found it to be quite powerful, also only dead enemies got thrown out when I was using the skill.

I agree on the cast time though, Inaros needs so many mods to build a good sandstorm that there is no space for natural talent.

It would be intersting to see base mobility reduced but have it scaling with power STR to a maximum of 1.

[tnccs215]

I'd like to add that you are heavily underestimating his 4. At low levels it is a killer, and at higher it not only gives a good amount of interesting CC, it also basically creates a zone where any ally can go closer to be healed. Only problem is if they start killing them before everyonegeta a chance to be healed, so team coordination s advised.

I love him. He not only excels on melee without being cheesie, he also is both a great solo and a great healer.

DE deserves praising for it latest frames. Hey really are improving,

[Genoscythe]

4 minutes ago, tnccs215 said:

I'd like to add that you are heavily underestimating his 4. At low levels it is a killer, and at higher it not only gives a good amount of interesting CC, it also basically creates a zone where any ally can go closer to be healed. Only problem is if they start killing them before everyonegeta a chance to be healed, so team coordination s advised.

I love him. He not only excels on melee without being cheesie, he also is both a great solo and a great healer.

DE deserves praising for it latest frames. Hey really are improving,

As for the praising, yes, inaros definitely breaks the chain of boring frames. However I am waiting for reworks fo the cornerframe (banshee, chroma, oberon, zephyr, even nekros as his only reason of existence is his 3).

You kinda said the same thing as me, if you play with well equipped players they will have the room cleaned before you can heal (why should they wait for only you to heal if other frames simply do not heal themselves like that? In the moment mates have to wait for you to do this you become a drag), on low level it instakills most enemies for me and thus has not time spread. I would like to see the DoT stay on corpses and spread to other nearby enemies from there for the rest of the duration. The spread and heal radius are too low in my opinion.