Frost: Rework Theory-crafting
Frost: Rework Theory-crafting
Hello everyone,
I don't think it's surprising to anyone that some of the older warframes have lost some of their luster compared to newer releases and I've seen some of us already thearycrafting revamps of a few of the older 'frames so I figured I'd join in on the fun with an old favorite of mine, Frost.
Passive: Enemies who have Cold Status applied to them have a 1.25% chance to additionally Freeze increasing with the stack to 10% chance at 8 (max) stack for five seconds.
1, Freeze: Throw a burst of extreme cold, freezing weakened enemies in place.
Strength: 200 / 275 / 325 /4 50 Cold Damage + 75 / 125 / 175 / 250 AoE Cold Damage
Duration: 3/5/7/10 Seconds (Freeze)
Misc: 400% Cold Status Chance, 50% Freeze Threshold, 5m radius
Alt: Hold 1 to impart +100% Cold Status chance to the weapons of yourself and all allies in a radius centered on self
Synergy: Directly hitting a Snow Globe with Freeze will make it burst dealing 35% of it's remaining health as Cold Damage with 400% Status Chance to all enemies within and to a range of 7m from the edge of the globe
2, Cold Snap: Unleash subzero winds to flash-freeze the ground and any enemies in the affected area.
Strength: 300 / 445 / 565 / 700 Cold Damage, 25 / 30 / 35 / 50% Cold Status Chance per second in AoE.
Duration: 6 / 8 / 10 / 12 Seconds
Range: 20 / 25 / 30 / 35° Initial Angle, 10 / 12/ 17 / 20m Length
Misc: 200% Cold Status Chance, 60° (angle cap)
Synergy: Enemies affected by Absolute Zero take 50 additional Cold Damage whenever Cold Snap's frozen terrain adds a Cold Proc and Cold Snap terrain activates twice as often for them
Augment: Holding 2 to increase angle at expense of range, capping out at 90 / 180 / 270 / 360° & -50 / 40 / 30 / 20% Range
3, Snow Globe: Sap moisture from the air and freeze it into a protective and briefly invulnerable sphere, enemies within are slowed and have a chance to be frozen.
Strength: 1500 / 2500 / 3500 / 4000 Base Health, 1 / 3 / 5 / 7x Armor Multiplier, 30 / 35 / 40 / 45% Freeze Chance
Duration: 4 / 5 / 6 / 8 Second Freeze Duration
Range: 5m Radius
Misc: 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 Second Invulnerability, 40 / 50 / 60 / 70% Slow
Synergy: Directly hitting a Snow Globe with Freeze will make it burst dealing 35% of it's remaining health as Cold Damage with 400% Status Chance to all enemies within and to a range of 7m from the edge of the globe
Augment: Hold 3 to create Snow Globe of -75 / 65 / 55 / 45% size that will move with you similarly to an Ice Eximus. If Freeze is cast within the mobile Globe the reduced size isn't factored into the burst radius and the globe inherits Freeze's 50% threshold.
4, Absolute Zero: Reduce the area to absolute zero debilitating enemies as their defenses freeze and solidify ice around yourself and allies as buffer health.
Strength: 1000 / 1250 / 1500 / 1750 Cold Damage, 15 / 30 / 45 / 60% Shield and Armor strip, & 20 / 25 / 30 / 40 damage absorption per enemy hit to allies within range
Duration: 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 Seconds
Range: 8 / 10 / 12 / 15m Damage, 3 / 3.5 / 4 / 4.5m damage absorption
Misc: 800% Cold Status Chance
Synergy: Enemies affected by Absolute Zero take 50 additional Cold Damage whenever Cold Snap's frozen terrain adds a Cold Proc and Cold Snap terrain activates twice as often for them
Augment: Cold Snap terrain is generated surrounding the Warframe out to 10 / 15 / 20 / 25% of Absolute Zero's range
This is my first time doing anything like this and I haven't mained Frost in years so this'll be interesting... what do you think?
I might change the passive up a bit, because this kit has a lot of methods of freezing enemies but not a lot to actually do with frozen enemies, outside of CCing them.
I think the passive could be something like 'inflicting an Impact proc on a frozen enemy shatters them, dealing cold damage equal to X% of their HP (scales with strength) in an area around them (scales with range)' It would encourage using impact-heavy weapons, which would be a fun niche.
It'd probably have to start as a small percentage and small range. Something like 50% of HP and 10% on acolytes/demolysts/etc, within an 8 meter range. The goal is more to make clearing groups of frozen enemies easy than to make damaging a single frozen enemy a viable method of crowd control.
I like this, though I think I'll have to add Freeze to some other powers. A friend of mine off Lemmy suggested some nice effects as well. I'll be updating the powers a little later today. Hrm... if the exploding enemies explode with impact damage that'd cause some fun cascading.
I really love what happened recently to the game with helminth and armor rework and archon mods. Frost is in a decent spot IMO. Some additional tweaks would be welcomed for his passive, 1 and 2, but I replaced his 2 with Thermal Sunder and use his 1 as utility to shatter his globe. The full armor strip on his 4 is amazing and thermal Sunder makes him a decent caster frame, where you can actually kill enemies with abilities.
He's absolutely not in a decent spot IMO. He's still one of the worst frames. His globe is still just a major annoyance for everyone with blocking shots, it's completely stationary and his only way to survive at high levels, and his 4 is a really, really expensive, slow armor strip that lacks range when combined with the fact that Frost needs a dozen mods to do things and only has 8 slots (or 10 but 2 really aren't too relevant to boosting abilities).
His augments help, but the issue is they're fighting against the other things Frost needs like casting speed and range. Combine that with Eximus units that just completely ignore almost everything Frost does and he's really not that good at all.
I agree Thermal Sunder is great. I agree armor strips are good (but really, completely replaceable given viral/slash exists). I don't agree that Frost is good, decent, or anything above bad.
Here is my build: https://overframe.gg/build/386728/frost-prime/archon-thermal-sunder/
Energy cost isn't a problem with high efficiency and zenurik. Don't really need range since i usually move from pack to pack. I even put a lot of utility in my build with Mecha set and icy avalanche. I once out damage people in SP circuit with this build.