[U21 Megathread] New Warframe: Harrow

[[DE]Danielle]

Always prepared to sacrifice. This monastic Warframe uses the Void to bolster allies’ defenses and amplify their lethality. 

Get Harrow today by purchasing him in the Market for Platinum, or by completing the Chains of Harrow quest and finding his parts! His parts can be found in the Defection mission type, Grineer Fortress Spy missions, and from enemies corrupted by Void Fissures!  

Harrow's Abilities:

• Passive: Harrow’s overshield cap is doubled. 
• Condemn: Harrow casts a wave of energy that chains enemies where they stand. Each enemy held reinforces Harrow’s shields.
• Penance: Harrow sacrifices shields to boost reload and fire rate, while converting damage inflicted on enemies into health for Harrow and nearby allies (including companions). The more shields are sacrificed the longer the buff lasts.
• Thurible: Channel Harrow’s energy into the Thurible to generate a buff. The more energy channeled, the longer the buff will last. Once finished, killing enemies will bestow nearby allies with bursts of energy. Headshot kills reward four times the energy compared to body kills. 
• Covenant: Protect nearby allies with an energy force that absorbs all enemy damage and converts it to a Critical Chance bonus that can stack up to 2x for all those under the Covenant for a short duration. The more damage is prevented, the bigger the bonus. Headshots are amplified even further.

 

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Please note that we will be closely monitoring your practical feedback - feel free to share videos and discussions after playing with Harrow. Non-constructive feedback, dev-bashing, and any other content that violates the Guidelines will be removed.

If you have any bugs to report please post them here: 

 

[PsiWarp]

Alright, after playing Harrow to rank 30 with Formas and checking out his modding potential, here's my feedback!

First, a quick summary: Harrow is a squishy caster frame that excels at providing himself and allies various buffs while keeping his team's stats topped up to aid survival, as long as the team stays in a group formation. He has no means of ability damage, relying heavily on Condemn for CC, his weapons of choice for killing, and his teammates to fill in the gaps left by his abilities.

Stats:

• Health and Armor - reasonable for a caster.
• Shield - high for a good reason, will have to review when Shield Gating is added to see if modding for shield points is a good alternative or not.
• Energy - standard amount (100/150) seems low at first glance, but considering Thurible should see active use this is adequate. If changed to 150/225 it would alleviate modding qualms with Flow/Primed Flow.
• Polarities - appreciate the Vazarin (D) and Naramon (-), aura with - is also good.
• Sprint Speed - standard, players can compensate with parkour.

Abilities:

Passive - 2,400 Overshields is a high number, but compared to Health and its Armor relations, Overshields are less ideal for high level play. For now it is an adequate amount of hitpoints to help Harrow survive chip damage. As mentioned before, Shield Gating will or will not change how this passive performs, so I will have to see how that pans out.

Condemn - an OK first ability. Hard CC with low duration, helping Harrow rebuild his shielding meanwhile. However, the wave's arc or cone degree base value seems a bit too low, as very often it will miss enemies right on the edge of the wave. Below are my suggestions:

• Increase the wave width slightly at base value.
• Allow the wave to block or knock away incoming enemy bullets and projectiles to act as a makeshift frontal shield for Harrow, who becomes highly vulnerable after using Penance and while Covenant's Retaliation buff prevents recast. As mentioned in the passive feedback, Overshield mitigates chip damage well but not when enemies can break through shields instantly at high level play, so Condemn acting as a moving shield gives Harrow a scaling survival tool when his ultimate is not available.

Penance - fairly straightforward risk-vs-reward self-buff with a team aspect. Giving himself extra advantages with his weapons to continue his killing spree, while providing crucial healing to his team. But considering how vulnerable he becomes during cast, some tweaks would be welcome:

• Change the animation from full body to upper body, allowing Harrow to move while flagellating.
• The newly introduced cap of 60 seconds feels a bit short, considering that Harrow is spending 50 energy and his entire shield pool. Increase the capped duration to 120 seconds would help Harrow focus more on killing than watching his timer too much, similar to Titania's Tribute buffs.

Thurible - quite a big sacrifice of time, vulnerability, attention, and energy for nominal return. As an energy regain ability it is OK, but being tied to kills made solely by Harrow promotes selfish play (going off alone to secure kills) and suffers from the lack of enemies to kill with a strong team. Below are some suggestions:

• Enemies killed inside Thurible's aura rewards energy (both bodyshot and headshot kills) to Harrow when allies make those kills. This ensures that Harrow is rewarded for his investment if he gets into the thick of the fights happening and his teammates are doing the killing faster than he can. As a caster that relies heavily on abilities, energy makes or breaks his usefulness.
• Provide temporary cloaking (his incense shrouding him) to Harrow while he is channeling energy into his Thurible, ending when Thurible aura is created. This allows the ability to double as a high drain escape, which Harrow could use because he is very squishy otherwise.

Covenant - no big qualms about this power since as an ultimate ability it gives two powerful features. Really digging it being tied to Affinity Range which is already a big number by default.

• Consider reducing the casting animation time slightly. It looks cool but wastes 2 or 3 seconds of invulnerability being stuck in place.

My Verdict:

Fun support for players who can keep track of their active buffs. I like him a lot personally for both looks and execution, but of course there are still changes to be desired to really solidify his role in our growing cast of Warframes.

Edited July 1, 2017 by PsiWarp

[MobyTheDuck]

Could we get the actual drop chances and rotation?

[AerinSol]

Thurible practically does nothing.

[-NTB-Cris0407]

He is dying instant.

Shield is useless.. (as survivability :<)

He is really good but too soft.

Can we have any DMG reduction / Shield with armor? / Passive with survivability?

And please rethink the passive :<

 

Edited June 29, 2017 by Cris0407

[Fallen_Echo]

Looking at Harrow and how he was designed to be a shield frame while i just read about the grinner chem warfare unit gives me the creeps.

[Leqesai]

Thoughts:

Penance should be a toggle ability. DEFINITELY should be a toggle ability.

All of Harrows kit revolves around timers. It makes him very awkward to use because you have to monitor 4 separate timers, two of which can cause you death if you aren't constantly watching them (covenant and penance). If Penance was a toggle, that disabled shield regen on you while active, it would be a much more interesting ability (regaining shields while active only being possible via the 1 ability).

 

Second, covenant is very cool. This is in a good place, in my opinion. The only thing that might need adjustment is the extremely slow casting basically forces natural talent.

 

Thurible has not really impressed me much right now. I haven't built for it specifically, however, so more testing will be needed. I believe a pure thurible build might be an interesting replacement for an EV.

[JayZombieX]

My only problem with him so far is that thurible takes so long. If it's going to take so long then I think there should be a slight damage reduction. The animation already kind of looks like blocking with the melee.

[theMongoose]

I feel like until shield gating arrives Harrow is going too be very squishy. After you use his 4 or 2 while getting shot at you're probably going to go down. 

His 1 isn't as fast as I thought it would be.

Thurible seems slow but I haven't tried natural talent and I have a feeling it doesn't help. 

Other than he's fairly straightforward. Bind, penance, shoot to recover shields, 4 when in trouble or to just kick &amp;#&#33; after absorbing a lot of damage.

[Birdframe_Prime]

4 hours ago, Leqesai said:

All of Harrows kit revolves around timers.

Displaying results for 'Octavia'

[Ocerkin]

ive found i end up using a good 3-4 seconds of my 4's invince timer stuck in the animation to cast it, can we fix that? its a little annoying when the timer is a bit short on it already

ive found my 1 seems to cast slightly to the left of my targeting reticle, as in i have to aim a little left of my targets otherwise i miss completely, also, can we have it widen its coverage a bit similar to frosts ice wave since its only a cc not damage? maybe not as drastic but something similar? the narrow hit area is frustrating to use well

oh also, sword and shield weapons the shield is flipped backwards on harrow

Edited June 29, 2017 by Ocerkin

[Entharias]

Ok i played Harrow for solid 7 hours now, and my thoughts are:
I think the warframe itself is great, lovely gameplay and great sinergy between his abilities, the only thing, he can't gain kills or assists kills at all since you need to damage an enemy to get assist, but Harrow sadly has no damage in his kit, so i would like to see his 1st ability to do some damage, maybe something small just to gain asssists, or make cc skills count as assists, same goes for his buffs (4th ability).

[Kaokasalis]

Harrow feels overall like a very solid frame ability wise but his a bit squishy. Especially because shields are a very poor defense with basicly no scalling. Theres also another issue in the fact that Harrow cannot gain more overshields from enemies that have already been chained by Condemn which is a huge flaw for the ability in my opinion. If Nidus can gain infested stacks from attacking the same enemy with his Virulence then why shouldnt Harrow also be allowed to do the same? It limits Harrows survivability to much.

[Ultimate_Vault_Hunter]

8 hours ago, Cris0407 said:

He is dying instant.

Shield is useless.. (as survivability :<)

He is really good but too soft.

Can we have any DMG reduction / Shield with armor? / Passive with survivability?

And please rethink the passive :<

 

Squad up with Trinity

[--RV--arm4geddon-117]

The frame is cool and the synergy between the abilities is really nice and smooth, but like many others stated already until shields get some love, their utility is pretty much null survivability wise, he should gain some kind of more consistent damage mitigation, i'd say when using his 2 to fit the theme of sacrificing something for something else ( on top of the +fire rate & + reload speed )

[---Swaggi---]

Well since I have played a lot of time with him, I am not very satisfied with his 3rd Ability...

You can share the Energy from your Kills with your Allies but not vice versa...

If an Ally kills someone I gain no Energy :/ That is sad imo

They should add this aspect to make him more team able :)

What do you think about that or have you even additional Improvements on him?

[Kezriak]

First of all, very intriguing frame and kudos to you DE, that being said there are a few things outside of stat values I'd like to be addressed

-His 2 locks you in place entirely+the animation is a touch long for my liking. Increase its base casting animation speed to the level it has with Natural Talent applied to the frame+allow for lower body movement (much like you did recently with Mag's pull) and hes good to go. Same can be said for his 4 in my opinion.

-Not sure how his 3 works, does the energy regen on headshot/kill apply on any ally kill within the area? From what I've seen the buff and its mechanics are great, headshots (that extra level of difficulty/skill) reward you, as it should be. The area of effect is nice, but the real issues are A) enemies killed outside of its AoE don't give the energy restoration (not a huge deal but not what I was led to believe) and the bigger issue B) Harrow needs to get the kills to restore the energy, where it should be an AoE buff that restore energy to allies in the area of effect

-His 4 is fine, its a long animation but you are invulnerable during its animation, I'd just like to see its animation time reduced/sped up, aswell as being able to move while casting it (further testing required, this might be the case)

-His armor level caught me off guard, with his 2 depleting shields, I was under the assumption he'd have higher armor (atleast 225-250, making steel fiber somewhat viable) but this is a personal preference thing, not a FIX THIS NOW OMGWTF level issue, MAYBE look into this with more sample data from the playerbase down the road?

Anyone in the community, feel free to weigh in, havn't played him that much, so I might be off base/incorrect on some of these points, don't by shy on giving constructive input.

Overall, incredibly intriguing hero, looking forward to what the game holds and Tennocon coming up soon, keep up the good work Digital Extremes.

Edited June 29, 2017 by Kezriak
Revisions

[-TrueKing-]

I have this issue that sometimes I when started to channel Thurible the game crashed.

[SSI_Seraph]

his 3rd ability is actually useless in a number of comps in that regard.

How are you supposed to kill stuff to provide your team with energy when an equinox/octavia/ember or any aoe is nuking everything you are aiming at, not to mention the fact that everything is dead by the time you are done charging a decent amount. 

He's also gated by the fact that if he can't kill something on higher level, he can't do his job correctly. 

In his current, he can't replace a trinity in organized play for high level content (clan event and such) or even be useful in regular play because of all the aoes available.

They should either make teamates in range of the thurible contribute to the energy gain with their kills or make it restore energy on headshot (not headshot kills/kills).

[Genoscythe]

10 minutes ago, mcSwaggi-EGT- said:

Well since I have played a lot of time with him, I am not very satisfied with his 3rd Ability...

You can share the Energy from your Kills with your Allies but not vice versa...

If an Ally kills someone I gain no Energy :/ That is sad imo

They should add this aspect to make him more team able :)

What do you think about that or have you even additional Improvements on him?

I did not have the opportunity to play harrow yet, but overall his whole kit kinda looks sub-par to me. Did you find any niche for him yet? I kinda feel trinity will do the job faster and more accurate, as you only need one enemy to EV and refill the whole team with one cast. Apart from that trin can heal the whole team in an instant. Is the crit buff worth it?

[ironfirefist]

8 minutes ago, Kezriak said:

-snip-

Overall, incredibly intriguing hero, -snip-

Look who also plays overwatch :p

[SSI_Seraph]

Gonna copy my comment from another thread on the subject:

his 3rd ability is actually useless in a number of comps.

How are you supposed to kill stuff to provide your team with energy when an equinox/ember or any aoe is nuking everything you are aiming at, not to mention the fact that everything is dead by the time you are done charging a decent amount. 

He's also gated by the fact that if he can't kill something on higher level, he can't do his job correctly. 

In his current state, he can't replace a trinity to fit in a comp as the support in organized play for high level content (clan event and such) or even be useful in regular play because of all the aoes available. 

He can work well when he is alone to a certain lvl but that's it. He's not a defy wukong and he is supposed to be a support frame in the first place.

They should either consider making teamates in range of the thurible contribute to the energy gain with their kills or make it restore energy on headshot (not headshot kills/kills).

Edited June 29, 2017 by SSI_Seraph

[Hemmo67]

15 minutes ago, Genoscythe said:

I did not have the opportunity to play harrow yet, but overall his whole kit kinda looks sub-par to me. Did you find any niche for him yet? I kinda feel trinity will do the job faster and more accurate, as you only need one enemy to EV and refill the whole team with one cast. Apart from that trin can heal the whole team in an instant. Is the crit buff worth it?

i harrow extremely fun if u have bunch of (well lets say sortie enemies cuz they survive bit longer) been able to give allies 200% crits on demand is just sooooo amazing and giving everyone life leeching with 2 is rewarding in a regard that players gota contribute to gain benefit (trinity is just mindless spam harrow makes u play=funtimes)

and in endless missions / md his 3rd is good enough to provide energy cuz u can charge it in between clusters and decimate them with buffs from 2 and 4 and his chains are very nice cc in the heed of battle and it been castable during reload gives u bit more freedom to reload during battle and use something like gorgon with the horrendous reload speed without having to duck behind a box

Edited June 29, 2017 by Hemmo67

[Kurambik]

I know this may just be a quality of life suggestion but would it be possible to make Harrow's 1 highlight enemy heads? I am saying this because on some enemies, their heads are not where you expect them to be (for example on Moas I always thought that their gun was their head and they shot from their face until 5mins ago).

[Leqesai]

4 hours ago, Thaylien said:

Displaying results for 'Octavia'

The difference here is that harrow has multiple layers of timers. Octavia is pretty much a frame where you activate an ability and forget about it. Harrow is not like this.

You have to constantly monitor covenant and penance. Chains is less of a problem and thurible is more of one.

He has a timer for c.c., a timer for invuln, a timer for crit, a timer for charging thurible, and a timer that requires you to monitor both shield value and general threat (penance).

I have learned that currently the best time to use penance is while invulnerable from covenant, but being invuln kind of defeats the purpose of penance because of the lifegain.

Thurible charging is really pointless. Getting it to 4 or 5 energy is plenty, and the time plus energy investment of going higher devalues the overall effect. It feels like this ability should do something more than just provide energy. Like longer charge increases it's range. That would be helpful.

Edited June 29, 2017 by Leqesai