Duality Equinox. In deeps review.

[Chatv71e]

Hello everyone. Some time ago I got myself an Equinox and decided to try out her augment to first ability - Duality. And boy I had a lot of fun with it. 

So today I decided to make this post and store some information about this mod interactions that I already experienced as well as hear what you, Equinox Duality users, can suggest or advise.

But first of all TL;DR section! For those who are here 'I saw you destroying everything in index and I want dem builds'

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Equinox Duality clone uses your fully modded weapons (including rivens), deals 300% dmg, consumes no ammo and has aimbot. The weapon it will use will be the one you are holding at the moment of finishing abilitiy cast.

Build - you don't need to forma/potato your Equinox to experience the power of the build. Just get Duality and add  as much ability duration mods you can fit. The main power comes from your weapon.

Weapon - top wepoans so far.

Primaries

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Strun Wraith - a jack of all trades. Works well at almost every situation.

Sniper rifles - pretty much all of them are powerful  though when dealing with large group of enemies they are kinda weak. Vectis Prime shines the most de to how fast it fires and reloads, both are important stats for Duality.

Kohm - good at deleting high health targets at any range, but is a bit weak against large enemy group due to rather slow reload.

Baza - pin point accurate machine gun with deadly slash procs. Unlike Kohm, deals with groups great due to fast reload and high fire rate. The downside - damage is a bit low against high level.

Zarr - blows everything up while not blowing you up. Good on defense. Bad in open areas because cannonballs doesn't fly too far.

 

Secondaries

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Arca Scisco - the index destroyer. Good in many situations but reload can be a bit slow. Pin point accurate.

Stubba - good alternative to Arca. Faster reload, similar damage, deadly slash procs with high crits. But too much reliance on slash makes it weaker against slash immune enemies.

Atomos - room killer. Hits bunch of enemies at once, good on tight areas.

Melee.

There are no good melee weapons. Ai treats them poorly. You could use any dagger with Covert Lethality to use it on sleeping targets.

Weapons to avoid - bows.

More info in full guide. Weapons and index sections.

 

 

So first of all I need to point out that many people miss. Duality is affected by Power Duration, making it max over 30 seconds of lifetime with proper modding. In addition summoned copy will possess a fully modded version of your gun, including riven mods but with 300% damage buff. That's the basic info. Now let's talk about pros and cons of the Equinox specter.

Pros:

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- One of the biggest pros ( and probably the reason why would you use Duality at the first place) is that Equinox Specter takes no self damage. That's right. Give your Specter a good explosive and watch it decimates everything around you flawlessly.

- The second biggest one would be ammo advantage. Spectres have no ammo and thus can never run out of it (with one exception that we talk later). Give your Specter ammo inefficient weapon, or even build your weapon to be ammo ineffective, but have other advantages, and watch constant fire. For 19 seconds that is.

- Aim. This one is debatable. While Specter can lock precisely on target (sometimes even through walls) this has few downsides that will be listed below.

- 300% damage buff. This is self explanatory. The damage output of Specter is massive. In addition Specters are able to receive buffs. Like Rhino roar. That will put it's damage numbers even higher. Unfortunately only for same old 19 seconds.

- Meat shield. Specter benefits from Vitality and Redirection mods and is summoned with a copy of your health and shield. Unfortunately Equinox herself is rather squishy, but Specter still will soak a lot of shots for you. And even if it dies you can summon it again. And again. Ability has a fairly low energy cost. 

- Weapon variety. Unlike Tenno specters, this guys can use anything that was in your hand when you summoned them.

Cons:

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- The biggest one so far is spectres AI. Everyone know how dumb this things can be. From standing and doing nothing to running around with same result. Equinox Specter is not an exception. There are few cases of its frustrating behavior that should be listed:

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a) It seems that Specter has some weird lock on system where it picks one target and will track its movements until there are no obstacles between them. Then they fire and supposedly kill and switch to the next target. This wastes lot of time if locked on target is behind the wall. In addition if target dies during 'lock on' stage, locking on will reset and starts over for a new target. For some time during 'locking on' Specter remains idle.

b) It seems that Specters share the same perception problem as enemy units in the game. While able to see through walls, Spectre tend to remain oblivious about things that going two steps away, but behind its back. If its not facing enemy, it will not attack.

c) Constant 'follow'. Unlike Tenno Specters you can't force Equinox Specter to hold position. And because of it, it will spend some of its precious lifetime running around you in circles. The good part is, since Specter constantly moving, it has better chances to face an enemy.

 

- Built in negative accuracy. Specters can miss even with pinpoint accuracy weapons. Some weapons suffer less from it. Some suffer more.  On the bright side Specters suffer no recoil and it seems that weapons with low accuracy will not suffer major accuracy decrease and instead have standard Specter accuracy. Zakti being a perfect example.

Another part of this is the fact that specter always aims at the center of the enemy. Or where said center supposed to be. Specter can't hit knock down targets and will continue firing into the air. This interacts very poorly with Equinox Rest & Rage ability. Sleeping targets will be missed a lot. Head-shots will only occur if because of negative accuracy Specter will hit head randomly.

- Ability delay. This can be rather anooying. Metamorphosiss - the ability you need to use in order to spawn your Specter - has a 1 second cast time. While it kills your previous Specter instantly, the new one will only appear after 1 second.

- Burst fire and reloads. This guys looooove to reload. They adore it. Sometime to the point that they will reload twice. I saw my Specter makes 1 tonkor shot and then reloads it. And then reload it again, wasting lot of life time. This is not uncommon for many weapons and thus weapons with slow reload is not a good pick. As well as weapons with big magazine capacity. Spectres usually fire in bursts unloading about 15 bullets at once and then going to their precious reloading. Higher fire rate helps to improve bullet count per burst a little bit.

 

 

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Now lets talk about weapons. I only had to experience a few, but hopefully this list will improve with time and your addition. The weapon, of course, should be built around nullifying the cons or boosting the pros. Better yet do that simultaneously. 

Primary weapons:

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- Vectis Prime. is the best sniper rifle so far. The damage is high enough to take down level 100+ enemies in one crit shot. High fire rate and reload means that you won't even notice missed shots. Beast of a weapon.

- Opticor is great. It may be a bit slow and specter will take some time to charge it up, but it just oneshots. Like no questions. The damage is absurd. Grineer airships of higest level just die in 1 hit with a right mod set up.

- Kohm - Kohm is great. Infinite ammo,  for some reason no spread (all bullets line up perfectly) , no fall off in damage with range (? I just don't know why, but it does same damage on high range). No double reload even if you mod it for max fire rate. This weapon is a beast. Too bad I JUST got it and didn't mod it properly but I see great potential in it. And looks like I'm not the only one. Now the thing about Kohm I can't confirm, is that if it's hidden passive of firing more bullets works on Duality. It certainly ramps up fire rate the longer it's fired, but I'm not sure about extra bullets. Still the damage is insane. The downsides are - Kohm is projectile weapon and on a VERY high range, projectiles will curve down. You also might not use this weapon yourself because of it downsided like ammo inificince and wide spread.

- Paracyst / Tenora / Soma Prime - all this rapid fire single target hitting weapons suffer from 2 big issues. Specter low accuracy and inability to fire more than 60 bullets before reload. At range of 80 meters Specter will miss most of the shots and it can't unload 300 bullets like you would do with your soma. Would not recommend those weapons.

- Ogris is bad. It suffers charge mechanics issue. No mater how much fire rate you have, specter will hold the charge for a longest time. Also projectiles are rather slow.

- Javlok. Javlok felt nice in hands of Specter, but it has too much downsides. While being very accurate it has slow projectiles speed. The weapon itself has not the greatest damage. It constantly reloads twice. Reload however can be fixed by using Critical Delay. If Javlok is weapon of your choice you might as well try it out. Not the worst weapon for Specter. Not the best either.

- Quartakk performed very poor in hands of specter as well as in my own hands. 51.02 damage per pellet is just not serious when half of those misses. And it's also rather slow on reload.

- Arca Plasmor is decent. The damage is great, negative accuracy is barely noticeable. Ability to kill all enemies in line is great. The downside is as expected double reload. With high reload time on this shotgun being doubled it almost neglects all benefits. You can try and add reload speed mods though it will help a little bit.

- Amprex. Pretty straight forward. Infinite ammo Amprex with 300% damage. And it also helps a lot with the 'lock in' target system, because even though Specter will attack 1 target, Amprex lightnings will bonce around and will do a lot of damage. 

- Zarr. Clearly the top tier in my personal list. No self damage and damage boost makes up for every downside. In addition, Zarr reload makes it even better. For Specter reload means finishing reload animation. In hands of a player Zarr reloads one round per animation until magazine is full. Specter reloads it to full with just one animation cycle.

Note that Specter can't use alt fire what so ever. But you can. Don't blow yourself up. Use a barrage mode, while Specter will take care of explosives.

- Tonkor. Similar to Zarr it's a good-ish weapon to summon. The downside is, unlike Zarr you don't want to use it yourself. Tonkor also been spotted as a gun that constantly reloads twice.

Note even more downsides - Tonkor pellets have slow projectile speed and heavy arcing. Slow projectile speed and heavy arcing are things that you want to avoid because Specter aims precisely at target ignoring those 2 factors.

- Tigris. Our meta shotgun. Buffed by 300%. The damage output is crazy. But I personally don't like it. Specter tends to pick far away targets and Tigris also sins with double reload.

- Penta. Penta is okay. The damage falls off against level 100+ enemies but big con of this gun is Tether Grenades mod that also benefits your Specter adding a lot of CC.

- Ignis. It does what it's designed for. Clears crowds. It's hard to miss it. It doesn't run out of ammo. Reload is a bit slow. I personally not using it, because I feel that it's damage is lacking.

- Torid. It's not very good because of built in negative accuracy. Slow projectile speed and heavy arcing. And slow reload speed.

- Lenz. Lenz suffers from bow curse. Specters can't into bows. Or charge mechanics in general. They will charge and hold it last forever. While Lenz in hands of Specter can't run out of ammo or damage self, Specter might just not fire a single shot in 19 seconds.

- Miter. Speaking of charge mechanics. This one exception. Instead of charging it forever, it rapidly fires uncharged shots at the speed of your fire rate. Even if it's impossible for human, AI can do it. It's pretty good. The downside is - uncharged Miter shots are kinda meh. But it makes a huge broken discs pile around fat enemies which is fun. And nothing stops original YOU from charging shots.

- Panthera. It's pretty good! Like Miter, with high status and deadly slash procs this weapon can delete even 100+ enemies. It is slowly becoming one of my top used guns. It's damage is better than Miter in hands of Specter and pin point accuracy makes long shot kills fairly possible. 

- Synoid Simulor. It would be a good weapon. Negative accuracy on specter causes it to spawn lots and lots of vortexes ad damage is also good. But it has a tiny little problem. Once your specter expire, the vortexes it left can and will damage you and your team.

- Astilla - is pretty damn good. It's damage is probably one of the highest damages of my arsenal, it procs bleed, stuns enemies with impact, extremely accurate in hands of spectre on close and medium range as well as has some AOE attacks. But it also has some significant downsides. Double reload and limited range due to bullets trajectory.

- Sybaris Prime - finally got my hands on that beauty. Can't say anything bad about it in hands of Spectre exept maybe slightly low accuracy at high range. Yes, it's not Arca Scisco pin point accuracy, but damage is fairly high, fire rate and reloads are fast and it generaly feels good even though I'm not a fan of single target weapons.

- Attica - performed most unimpressive. I tried doing Thunderbolt build as well, and it looked like a really bad version of Explosive Hikou build.

- Argonak - performed poorly as well. It just lacks damage and accuracy to use it.

Secondary weapons are where things get real good:

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- Arca Scisco  - this weapon suffers little to no accuracy penalty. Yes Spectre can hit things with it. And because of how it's bullets work, Spectre can snipe enemies from a VERY VERY long range. This is by far one of THE BEST guns in hands of Duality. Even if it kills one target at time, it does it really fast.

- Atomos. Works similar to Amprex, allowing Specter to hit multiple enemies at once, drastically increasing the damage output. Not only damage bounces between enemies but also hits those who are in between. Damage is nice but falls of a bit after level 100. Alternatively you can build it for pure CC, if you need more CC on Equinox for some reason. This gun is one of my most used weapons, because how well it deals with crowds.

- Hikou / Hikou_Prime. This is the very first thing I tried on Duality build. And boy it's good. The main idea of how things works you can find in this video. With high fire rate, infinite ammo, no self damage this ninja stars can melt through almost everything. Add corrosive and level 100+ heavy gunner dies in a flash. Definitely on top of my list.

- Staticor. If there is anything that deals more damage than 500 explosive stars shot in 1 second - it's this. The damage amount this does is huge. And by huge I mean HUGE. It melted level 145 ambulas in few seconds. Grineer have no chance against radiation. The downsides are all the same. Specter can't charge it and thus radius of explosions is fairly small. Slow projectile speed also can be disturbing on a long range, but can be fixed with a good riven. It's a trade off for more damage but less area covered unlike Hikou.

- Zakti. Zakti is good. Since Specter has no recoil all shots will hit their target 90% of the time. Good damage, opens for finisher. But sometimes it feels a bit clunky. Sometimes Zakti explosion will deal no damage and on top of that, explosion has a wind up time, during which Specter will still focus fire the picked target, even if esentialy the target is already dead. Still a very nice weapon.

- Vaykor Marelok  bad choice for specter. It simply can't hit even point blank shot.

- Euphona Prime. It's decent. Specter will always use the primary fire mode, landing an accurate shots on medium range. Problem is, on a long rage it will miss 100% of the time, due to projectile arcing. The damage is great though. 

- Talons / Castanas are okay-ish. No self damage, infinite ammo. I haven't played a lot with those, because the fall off with high level enemies, but maybe with proper build they can be good. Slow projectile speed and limited amount of 'bullets' before detonation are big downsides. 

- Lex Prime/Aklex Prime both performed terrible. Low accuracy, high reload time just killed both variations of Lex for me. Maybe Lex enthusiasts can find a way to make it work. I failed in that.

- Lato performed poorly. The accuracy it has make specter miss a lot of shots.

- Tysis was a very weird one.... While in hands of a player it has perfect accuracy both with aim and w/o it, in hands of specter it misses ALL the shots. This might be a bug, but the bullet spread on it is absurd.  Other than that, it would be a nice status weapon.

- Stubba performed great. It shown to be very accurate and almost every single bullet finds the target. Almost like good old Arca Scisco. If you are into crit based weapons, by all means try it out on duality. Fast fire rate, fast reload, slash procs can melt through end game with relative ease. Tried it in index as well. From my experience Arca Scisco still wins because of status effects, but Stubba was powerful nonetheless. 

- Pox. Pox would be great addition to the top of the list, but it just doesn't work. For some reason, somehow Specter is able to detonate Pox manually, destroying the gas cloud prematurely. So big portion of damage just goes poof. Unlike Torid.

- Akstiletto Prime. Those are good. They do decent damage with right build and many people pick them as weapon of choice. In hands of Spectre though they are not as good. About 1/3 of shots misses and because of ammo pool of 40 and Specter loving reload it can't fully utilize all potential of the weapon. But it's not awful. After all you get a free pair of Akstiletto to assist you.

- Angstrum is by far the only weapon I found that utilizes charge mechanics in hands of Specter. About 50-70% of the time Specter will charge it up and fire all magazine at once. It can cover a decent area and deals decent damage. But only decent. Leaning towards to lacking. It also tends to reload twice.

- Kulstar is very similar to Angstrum but seems to cover even smaller area. Bomblets it spawns almost have no impact but direct hit deals decent damage.

- Dual Toxocyst. The idea behind using this weapon was utilizing its buff on head shot attacks. Sadly it doesn't work on Specter. They way mechanics works is - if Specter lands a head shot YOUR pistols get a buff. If you land a head shot, the buff will still go to YOUR pistols. - -

- Ballistica Prime - rigged again. Specter refuses to charge shots so can't make you an army of friends.

- Spira Prime - didn't look too impressive for me, but I guess you can experiment with it. It's slow and has a big curve, on top of that has a weird triangular attack pattern. All that is not very good for Specter. The damage is okay-ish

Melee weapons. Where things get real bad:

All melee weapons suffer from one same problem. The burst fire AI politics. What specter does is it slowly picks up a target, runs toward it and once its in melee range it performs a full button mash combo. It's very clunky. If target moves away or simply takes a step to the side, or gets staggered the whole combo might miss. Furthermore most combos makes Specter move forward ending up with Specter having his target behind his back. And he can't see anything behind his back. That forces him to pick another target and so on.

Another downside of melee weapons is that Specters loves to block. They can do that for days, just stand and block doing nothing.

So the idea behind melee weapons is - Big aoe, one heavy swing. So far I haven't experimented much with melee weapons but here is few examples.

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- Galatine / Galatine Prime - is a great choice. Big damage and good reach with topping of 360 degree attach. Even if AI misses the combo it will at least hit someone. The 300% damage boosted slash procs it produces are deadly.

- Jat Kittag. Big aoe, one heavy swing. Easy pick. In addition Vulcan Blitz mod works perfectly well on Specter. Even has its damage boosted but 300% damage buff. No. Not the % of max hp damage one. The flat part. This weapon destroys infested.

- Lesion seems to be performing very well. With Condition Overload being meta and having a little special effect on button mash combo makes it a good pick for Spectre. In addition, attack speed buff produced by Specter for some reason also benefits you. Even if you are not using melee weapon at the moment.

- Rakta Dark Dagger. An interesting one. It allows Specter to steal shield and even get overshields. But nothing more than that. 

Note that Specters can't perform finishers and Covert Lethality doesn't work in the hands of Specter. The only type of finishers they perform is non lethal ground finisher.

- Ack & Brunt. Since specters block a lot I though that having Electromagnetic Shielding mod paired with Guardian Derision will make a perfect combination for this weapon. And while both of them seems to work right (Guardian Derision requires more testing) it's so inconsistent that impact of it barely noticeable.

Still is a very good weapon when used with Final Harbinger. It will turns your Specter into your own Tyl Regor, making it jump around, stagger enemies and causing slash procs.

Note that Specters benefit from Reflex Guard but do that awkwardly. Being Warframe mod, it will apply its effect even when specter is summoned with no melee weapon (Specters are summoned with one weapon that you are currently holding). Doing so will force specter to auto block with empty hand. 

- Atterax. The meta whip. I was disappointed with it in hands of Specter. The button mush combo doesn't do all too much. Specter can't slide attack. And has no benefits from combo counter (requires more testing).

- Lacera / Mios. I tried those two in order to figure out if Specter can pull enemies with hook attack. Turns out Specter can't. 

- Vaykor Sydon. The idea behind this one was simple. Specter blocks a lot and can potentially blind everyone with the special effect of this weapon. It doesn't work. I tested it with Specter blocking 20 Hyekka Masters flamethrowers while standing on fire. It fills up stacks of block in 0.1 second. But no Radial Blind was released.

Note that specters do not benefit from syndicate procs simply because they can't collect affinity.

- Halikar - this weapon is just plain funny to use. It bounces around, disarming enemies. And now with Naramon rework, your Spactre can throw and disarm enemies too. How effective is that? I don't know. Probably not very effective. You first have to dash through enemies as operator to enable that and then use this weapon. Might not be the best choice to deal with things, but it's fun and offers a lot to experiment with. Or maybe even find some bugs, like giving your spectre sentient weapon. Who knows? Need to play more with it.

- Zenistar - idea was simple. Since now Spectre can use charged attacks, why can't it throw a 300% damage boosted disc? Idea failed just like idea with Pox. For some reason Spectre DETONATES the disc once its being thrown, causing explosion damage. It still deals with level 120 bombards in seconds, just performing ground fiishers after blast, but no disc, sadly.

- Caustacyst made me very sad. Spectre charge attack spawns a damaging projectile that pierces through enemies diealing damage, but it LEAVES NO POISON TRAIL. Charge attack still do high damage and proc deadly slash on a single target.

- Dual Kamas Prime - performed surprisingly well. While having very little range and most of the time dealing with just one enemy, the slash procs they cause on ground finishers and charged attacks of Specter are HUGE. Basically unmodded unranked version can take down level 120 bombard in seconds.

- Redeemer and Sarpa has very fun interaction. Both of them counted as melee weapon in Specter AI and thus Specter will run in melee range, causing blast procs and ragdolling enemies. After enemies are knocked down Specter will start performing ground finishers. That causes even more blast. 

Both of those would be great weapons, especially with Bullet Dance. But sadly they are also bugged in hands of AI. Blast they cause makes Specter miss ALL bullets gun-blade will shot.

 

 

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Tips and tricks:

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Duality Specter performs the best if you restrict its movements and give it a lot of view. This will stop it from wasting time running around in circles and locking on a target. That's why Duality Equinox performs well on Defense maps and can even outdamage regular Maim Equinox.

Note: If you are not the host the damage your Specter deal will not be registered in a damage tab. This is both annoying and hilarious since you can end up game with 0% damage even though you are the one who killed everything.

Here is a few spots where you can leave your Specter hang out, turning it into stationary turret of doom. (Works well with Hikou build.)

Jupiter Defense

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Europa Defense

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Orokin Derelict Defense (ODD)

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Index!

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Boy I'm happy I tried this build out in index. It slays. With so little enemies to target, Duality kills index dudes in a blink of an eye. Seriously, sometimes Duality goes on rampage and just snipes them from spawn over and over and over.

It's like you have Mesa with triple range on her Regulators and more damage!

On top of that, spawning Duality only costs 25 energy. You don't even need Trinity, you can just use energy dash, or pick up and orb and you are ready for a carnage.

Compared to other DPS frames

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Compared to Mesa

✓ Costs 25 energy every 28 seconds.                                                                                 ✘ Less tanky

✓ Can move freely and use your weapons and abilities including operator                        ✘ Can't deal with crowds of enemies just as fast even with a shotgun splash

✓ More single target damage                                                                                              ✘ Must have a specific camping spot for high perfomance. 

✓ More range

In conclusion - better Mesa. Even when clear speed falls off due to bunch of little drones that needs to be dealt with, it still kills faster than Mesa and on a longer range. 

 

Compared to Excalibur Umbra passive.

✓ Deals 300% more damage                                                                                              ✘ Costs energy unlike Excal passive.

✓ Can move freely and use your weapons and abilities including operator                        ✘ Doesn't use abilities.

While functioning the same way, Equinox clone kills enemies much faster. I would also add no limit in duration as a point for Exalibur, but in most scenarios Excal passive dies faster than Equinox duration would expire.

Here is some results of medium index run. It's funny because game still doesn't track your damage while tracks your kills. So apparently I was so pacific that 41 enemy died out of boredom xD

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Here is result of a solo Prodman run. Was not even hard.

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Here is some tips, at least it something I used and it worked for me. You may come up with your own crazy ideas.

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First of all Arca Scisco keeps proving to be the best gun for Duality because it doesn't miss. It deals a lot of damage against starting enemies and like I said can kill full party of them in millisecond.

I was using gas build because it adds a bit AOE and if enemy hide behind the wall or run, the toxin proc will finish them off.

The build itself.

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Then I was using Opticor with fast fire rate in case enemies will get a bit more fat. The thing about opticor.... While it deals huge damage it also may sometimes miss. That could be annoying. Might try out other weapons for primary slot.

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Now about hot spots to place your Duality. Naturally you can just let it run around with you, it will still perform well. And sometimes you have to, because your team running around and drags your kill targets with them, but there are few spots where you can leave your Specter and it will snipe stuff effectively.

Indoor Index.   Clearly the favorable map for this build. There are two great spots to place your Specter, regardless of what your team doing most of the time.

First position would be any suitable for you ledge on the wall. You can use left or right wall, upper or lower edge, pick what you feel like give you the best view of area you want to cover.

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Second spot - and I think the best spot - is the ledge over the mid passage. This gives a HUGE view for your Duality. You can use left or right one, usually pick one that gives better view of enemy base.

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Now about Outdoor Index.

That one can be tricky because enemy spawns are placed awkwardly and they tend to sneak in tight corridors chasing your team. In this index you might be better off by just ruing around with your Specter, but if you are feeling lazy, here are few hot spots.

The flag over the Vault.It's a good place to camp if you have a team. Simply group up around it and make enemies run to you. Alternatively you can just leave Specter there and go kill elsewhere by yourself. Preferably use the enemy vault.

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The flag to the side. No a bad spot either it covers a lot of spawning spots. 

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The top of the column. Can be useful sometimes. But not the best spot.

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Outdoor index is a bit harder because you only can cover 50% of the map at best. While at indoor you cover 75% 

 

 

 

Interaction with other warframes:

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Some other warframe abilities can both benefit your specter, or make it very very useless and some can be neutral.  Most of the time as DPS you are looking to have a defensive CC based allies to protect you or your specter. Here I will list my observations about the frames and their interaction with Specter.

- Banshee. Both buff and DPS Banshee performs well in team with Duality. Buff creates weak spots to boost already insane damage of Specter, while DPS can benefit from Specter killing staggered fat targets and fill up your Maim damage meter.

- Mag. Mag is great to have around. Her Magnetize bubbles redirecting Specters missed bullets right where you need them can make a huuuuge difference in damage output.  Armor/shield strip helps as well. On top of that, Specter will constantly feed bullets to bubbles, making explosion damage hit cosmical numbers, since Specter will never run out of ammo. Great synergy!

- Nova. Boost your damages. Nuff said.

- Oberon. Oh I really like that synergy with that frame! Smite Infusion can be used on Specter. Hallowed Ground provides knockdown and status immunity to your Specter, while confusing enemies. Great frame to party with.

- Limbo. Limbo is good. While his stasis prevents you and your Specter from using projectile weapons, it really makes your Spectre shine with some nice melee action.

- Harrow. Harrow has a decent synergy with Specter. His chains lock enemies in place making them easy targets. His buffs will have no effect on specter however, but will still benefit you.

- Nidus. Has the same problem as Nekros. Maggots messes up AI big time. But his Larva has a good synergy with Specter, making it perform ground finishers on multiple enemies at once. Works well with Jat Kittag.

- Nekros. Very bad frame to run a mission with. His shadows subtract from your AI brain, making it so, if shadow targets enemy, your Specter must choose another target. Basically makes your Specter stand and do nothing for the entire duration. But hey! When specter dies, Nekros can desecrate it for free health orb! Still, if you ask your Nekros not to use his shadows, you will be just fine.

- Frost.  You would think that Frost would be great at protecting you and your Specter. Turns out, it's very bad. It almost fully nullifies the Specter damage output because of how AI works. It seems that AI has low priority attacking frozen targets. It mostly just ignores them or just stares at them not attacking. The bubble itself blocks Specter view and you often might find your copy shooting things against the impenetrable wall of frost.

- Hydroid. One of the worst frames to you fight side by side with. Tempest Barrage and Tidal Surge causes knockdown, making Spectre miss all shots on laying down targets. Undertow and Tentacle Swarm removes enemies from Specter sights.

 

---

 

Build I'm currently using:

Note that while most of your damage will come from your Specter, you are nohow restricted in doing things yourself. You are still gonna be able to use your Rest & Rage (with max duration) and Mend & Maim (with Specter accumulating damage) effectively. You are also will be able to use your weapon or even combo it with Specter's. On top of that you will a decent amount of shield and health because Specter also benefits from it.

If you are going for a long run and you have someone to protect you (Like Frost with globe, or Vauban or even Limbo) I swap Health/Shield mods and add more range to have more area covered with Mend & Maim 

 

---

 

So that's it for now. In time I will add more info. Please comment discuss and share your tricks and tips about Duality Equinox, the useful ones will be added to the main post. Also I must apologize for any mistakes I've made. English is not my native language. 

Edited July 29, 2018 by Chatv71e
update

[Press-B-to-Blow]

seem pretty detail, the augment is ok, i know how the spectrer work, and the ai system. but why this mod not popular, because we mostly jumping around and do crazy ninja stuff, we just like , dont care anything until one of our teamate down. this mod need more testing thought, ill try it tomorow ! 

[Chatv71e]

On 13.08.2017 at 10:46 PM, superHEAT said:

we mostly jumping around and do crazy ninja stuff

Oh nothing stops you from doing that. You just drop your Spectre and continue doing your things :D 

Also this build is a legit way to cosplay ghostbusters. Grab a Vapor Spectre and bring them to your Harrow quest!

[Chatv71e]

Updated

Added few more weapons and a build itself.

[DeadScream]

Nice post ! (even though it's not in the good forum section, I guess a moderator will move it to warframes feedback :))

 

I also use this augment on my Equinox, but I didn't know it was affected by power duration. I don't spam it because I like to take advantage of the other abilities, and the fact they are based on a long use makes the augment difficult to be relevant with this gameplay... 

I hope Equinox will get some 2nd look from DE sometime, and get the possibility to make her abilities "fade and change" when she swaps forms instead of having to recast everything and wipe all the effects instantly.

Still one of my favorite augments, it does the job when you have to revive someone and it bugs people when they don't know it exists. 

Edited August 19, 2017 by DeadScream

[Hypernaut1]

My only issue with the ability is that it completely changes how I play Equinox. I pretty much have to ignore maim, and it doesn't synergize with pacify/provoke augment.

[Kalvorax]

I really wish that Duality was more of another Spectre that stays out until it gets downed....the pathetic 20 seconds it can get to is....well, just that..pathetic...more often than not it can get down long before that as it still uses the stats of Equinox going into it.

otherwise i would much rather the timer was buffed to match Equinox's one duration and then made invulnerable so AS to make use of the rest of her kit apart from changing every 20 seconds (or less)

[Scharfohr]

nice guide but one question. isn't the Overextended pretty much counter productive if you want the Spectre to do damage?

Edit: Well forget that i asked, just looked up the augment in the wiki. Its not affected by strength. 

Edited August 19, 2017 by Scharfohr

[Hypernaut1]

1 hour ago, Kalvorax said:

I really wish that Duality was more of another Spectre that stays out until it gets downed....the pathetic 20 seconds it can get to is....well, just that..pathetic...more often than not it can get down long before that as it still uses the stats of Equinox going into it.

otherwise i would much rather the timer was buffed to match Equinox's one duration and then made invulnerable so AS to make use of the rest of her kit apart from changing every 20 seconds (or less)

I like this idea, but they wouldn't do this because a Spectre could serve as an ult for some frames. They could at least give it more time though

[Zeyez]

looks like there's some problems in your equinox's build, besides of the generic idea of using Duality augment look good:

- i know that you want to use Mend&Maim and Rage&Rest, but with this level of power strenght, Pacify&Provoke becomes useless... is that you are searching for?

- you could swap Primed Flow for Streamline (unless you are going on energy reduction or eximus stronghold of infested), besides i can understand that you don't have points for Primed Continuity

- you only need to use Vitality or Redirection, unless you are bad at dodging damage, in place, you can use other mod, like Stretch

 

[Scharfohr]

32 minutes ago, Zeyez said:

- i know that you want to use Mend&Maim and Rage&Rest, but with this level of power strenght, Pacify&Provoke becomes useless... is that you are searching for?

 

. 

not OP here, but for me its looks like its the choice between using pacifiy & provoke and making rage & rest bigger aoe (tried around with the around 70% range from your recommendations for him but that makes rest & rage more or less a single target ability except they are group hugging) and for bonus there is a bigger aoe for mend & maim too.

But that seems to be something that comes down to preferred playstyle

Edited August 19, 2017 by Scharfohr

[Chatv71e]

7 hours ago, DeadScream said:

it bugs people when they don't know it exists. 

Oh you have no idea how triggered people can get because of this. 

[Chatv71e]

1 hour ago, Zeyez said:

looks like there's some problems in your equinox's build, besides of the generic idea of using Duality augment look good:

- i know that you want to use Mend&Maim and Rage&Rest, but with this level of power strenght, Pacify&Provoke becomes useless... is that you are searching for?

- you could swap Primed Flow for Streamline (unless you are going on energy reduction or eximus stronghold of infested), besides i can understand that you don't have points for Primed Continuity

- you only need to use Vitality or Redirection, unless you are bad at dodging damage, in place, you can use other mod, like Stretch

 

Thanks for your question!

Pacify&Provoke only boosts the initial damage of the Mend&Maim and has no effect on accumulated damage or heal. 

Vitality and Redirection both benefit spectre that as we know can't dodge bullets, but instead will take those to the chest like  a champ. 

I use Flow instead of Streamline because by the time I need to summon new Spectre, energy usualy recharges and I don't need to maintain energy drains from Pacify&Provoke + Mend&Maim. In critical situation, swarmed by enemies, you usually want to drops down your Spectre, and if you are in day form, use Mend&Maim to stagger enemies and let Spectre deal with them, or in a day form spam Rest to put everything to sleep. That course of actions require usage of your enery pool. But I will try doing it with Streamline.

I added Overextend becuase without it all your other abilities be about 3 meters around you.

Edited August 19, 2017 by Chatv71e

[DrBorris]

On ‎8‎/‎13‎/‎2017 at 2:10 PM, Chatv71e said:

You are still gonna be able to use your Rest & Rage (with max duration) and Mend & Maim (with Spectre accumulating damage) effectively. 

Ehhhh, not sure how valid that is. If you want to get the most out of those abilities they really should be left on, and not even in the sense of stacking damage with Maim. Being able to switch between a DPS supportive role to a CC supportive role whenever you want is extremely powerful, but in order to take full use of the augment you have to switch in the middle of a fight, which is generally the last time you want your entire play style to do a switcheroo.

Also, in order to get the full effect from Duality you do kinda have to gimp the effectiveness of her other abilities. 

 

The augment is honestly a pretty cool one, and could be (while never a "meta" augment) quite useful in some situations, but there is too much holding Equinox back. Maybe if her abilities did not deactivate when she switched forms and the augment itself had a bit higher duration it could find some more pronounced usage. 

[Chatv71e]

10 hours ago, DrBorris said:

Ehhhh, not sure how valid that is. If you want to get the most out of those abilities they really should be left on, and not even in the sense of stacking damage with Maim. Being able to switch between a DPS supportive role to a CC supportive role whenever you want is extremely powerful, but in order to take full use of the augment you have to switch in the middle of a fight, which is generally the last time you want your entire play style to do a switcheroo.

I can't say I follow your logic. Equinox build people mostly use right now can't switch forms because you are forced to stay in a day form and maintain Peaceful Provocation stacks. With this build you are free from that. 

Or do you mean that you are forced to constantly switch forms to spawn your Spectre? Well first of all you only need to do that once 19 seconds, and second of all, nothing stops you from switching twice, if you feel that you need your other form to stay. 

It really adds more interaction to Equinox gameplay where you have to think what form you will benefit the most right now, instead of just pressing 4. (Just kidding, most of the time you will just press 1 and afk as Spectre obliderates things)

10 hours ago, DrBorris said:

Also, in order to get the full effect from Duality you do kinda have to gimp the effectiveness of her other abilities. 

That's relatively true. You DO sacrifice Pacify & Provoke and will not be able to provied your team with 80% ability damage buff. But other abilities says funcional.The other thing you sacrifice is initial damage of Maim. But Spectre easily outdamages that. Especially on a high level when this damage will only tickle. 

[Chatv71e]

Update!

Added few more seondary weapons interactions as well as gunblades in melee section and some other weapons.

Updated build a  little bit thanks to Zeyez advices,

Also easy 5k cryotic on Hieracon. Spectre swinging that Jat fills up my Maim for 3 milion damage. Note that Spectre damage is not registred. Only damage I done with Maim.

Edited September 17, 2017 by Chatv71e

[Narubion]

One Point to consider: 40% Powerstrength is reducing the bonusdamage of the specter to 120% (as far as the wiki says!). It seems that the weapondamage is not changed based on powerstrength, but the bonus given through duality is. 

I still hope, that DE will increase the duration of this ability. 7 seconds base is pretty low and if you're not maxing out duration just because of this, it would make duality builds much more viable. 

Thanks for the guide! I'll try it out (again) in the near future :) 

[Chatv71e]

On 17.09.2017 at 3:39 PM, Narubion said:

One Point to consider: 40% Powerstrength is reducing the bonusdamage of the specter to 120% (as far as the wiki says!).

We must have different wiki then!

 

But just to make sure I'll run a damage test with more ability power and report the result. 

Test finished. Spectre damage output is not affected by Ability Power.

Quote

Thanks for the guide! I'll try it out (again) in the near future :) 

Thanks a lot for the reply! I'm very happy to see people try this build more. It brings a lot to evaluating weapons you don't use anymore because of their downsides.

Edited September 20, 2017 by Chatv71e

[SenorClipClop]

Props to you Tenno, for putting in some serious study and sharing it with us.

[Chatv71e]

35 minutes ago, SenorClipClop said:

Props to you Tenno, for putting in some serious study and sharing it with us.

Thank you!

I expect more people try it out and report with their experience and help this database grow.

I'm really curious how Soma Prime or Gorgon Wraith would perform in this build, but I can't test it myself right now.

[Hypernaut1]

I Just rediscovered duality and it truly is a fun augment. It's not as bad as people make it out to be. 

[(PSN)Yes-Man-Kablaam]

Dumb question and i doubt this works but can nidus link with the duality specter? Will it even do anything?  Idk i'm just having a stray thought.

[Chatv71e]

9 hours ago, (PS4)Yes-Man-Kablaam said:

Dumb question and i doubt this works but can nidus link with the duality specter? Will it even do anything?  Idk i'm just having a stray thought.

He can't. Even if he could ability power buff would not do anything to Spectre. Oberon with smite infusion however can buff your spectre.

Speaking of which.

Update!

Added ODD hotspots and interactions with other warframe abilities.

Edited September 21, 2017 by Chatv71e

[Chatv71e]

I decided to make this little updade for just one weapon, but it really takes an intereting place beeing the first long range wepon that actualy works in hands of Spectre.

For that reason I deceded to make it separate post. I will still add that into main post as well.

So lets take a look at this new magnificent sniper rifle - Arca Scisco. What do you mean it's a pistol???

Arca Scisco has few big advantages in hands of spectre, but as well has lots of downsides. 

The first and biggest advantage is - this weapon suffers little to no accuracy penalty. Yes Spectre can hit things with it. And because of how it's bullets work, Spectre can snipe enemies from a VERY VERY long range.

Here is a screenshot of Spectre taking out enemy 130 meters away. It also can snipe enemies 160 meters away with relative ease.

Spoiler

This wepon also has a high status chance with a decent crit chance and in hands of Duality can take down end games enemies pretty damn fast. With high fire rate it has and corosive damage it strips armor still a bit slower that Staticor, but still fast enough to kill multiple level 100+ bombards during its life time.

When I first saw how this weapon performs I was very excited. But downsides are here to balance things out.

High reload time of 2.2 seconds. You can really feel it, especially because Spectre is forced to reload after sniping 1-3 targets. Rarely 4. In a map with low level enemies it means reload every 3 shots. With magazine of 36. Very annoying.

And you can't mod it for reload speed OR fire rate. Becase it will trigger double reload.

Spectre targeting system can be slightly annoying at times. With it locking on far away target behind lot of obstacles and just waiting for it to show up. Or even try to shot it through wall. Can consume lot of life time. I have yet to try and and punch through for tis weapon to see if it will help with efficiency.

And last but not least - it's a single target weapon. You not gonna be able to take down a lot of enemies with it. Shoting things one by one might be a bit slow compared to giving Spectre explosive. But then again, on  large maps like that, it can snipe 1/3 - 1/4 of enemies before they even reach you. I still managed to be top DPS by just using Spectre on that Corpus map.

---

 This is truly a weapon to take a close look at, especially since POE promises to have maps where sniping could be a big deal. I'm looking forward to see how Spectre handles other sniper rifles that are not pistols, but so far negative accuracy pervented those from doing any good.

https://giant.gfycat.com/FakeAdoredFanworms.webm

[0_The_F00l]

I have equinox as my main , i have used all 3 augments at one time or another,

i have done this before, but i have kept the duality augment out of the configs because i dont need it for most runs ,

i usually have a daunting day (max effciency for maim) , sleepy night (with calm and frenzy at max range and duration) , or slow night (peaceful provocation at 200% strength) depending on the need of the mission.

Duality falls in a very niche category , i sometimes use it with the max efficiency config when i feel like confusing people ,

Its a good mod , but the problem with equinox (or its charm) is that it needs to be built for something trying to go jack of all arts will get you nothing,

Wanna buff / debuff ? build for strength + range,

wanna nuke a room ? efficiency + range,

wanna CC? duration + range (this needs to be built as a compromise between the range and duration cause of obvious reasons),

Duality is good for few things - burst DPS (good against certain bosses i guess), occasional back watcher when hacking/reviving and showing of an OP weapon, it could get better if the AI didnt act like it does,

this build depends on your weapon of choice more than it does on the frame itself (just make sure you have duration), have a good and well modded weapon (preferably with semi auto trigger and high accuracy, avoid beam weapons , as it acts all screwy with those).

This is a good augment but it is not popular because people have to change their usual playstyle , it can also not be used with same effectiveness across weapons, it basically " locks you" to specific weapons (melee is a big no), dual wield sidearms have been most effective i found, while automatic weapons give out less damage than expected.

 

Still there is no best way to build equinox , and if this works for you then its a good build.