Having seen Reap & Sow tileset nuking builds slowly starting to gain exposure and traction over the past few months, when DE announced Sev Prime, a small part of me was genuinely like “oh dear”

If people think the current Wukong slam spam is bad, they won’t enjoy this :^)

I consider Ivara the Swiss Army Knife Warframe. If there’s some miscellaneous task to be doing (mining, fishing, Riven challenges), Ivara’s the one I’ll use. She’s versatile and useful. Her headshot bonus from her stealth, and Navigator shenanigans, begin to shine if you’re ever up against any tough single target enemies where it matters (Disruption/Cascade)

Considering Volt is genuinely meta for pretty much every activity in the game (Eidolons, Profit Taker, E/SO, general mission/relic speed runs, Aya bounty farms, level cap runs in Disruption and Cascade, etc), I’m surprised he didn’t get S tier

Yes it does! So for the event it’s worthwhile to “farm”

I was also super disrespectful on my first attempt hahahahaha, I went in with a Certified Health Tank Oberon so when I saw the laser coming I was like “let’s see how much damage this does”, fucked around and found out

Other than that, I’ve been loving that Oberon gets to shine as a solid support in this fight with his death prevention, radiation damage buff, and status cleanse. Feels so good bringing my favourite out for something!

A fancy unique Sumdali for your landing craft, plus seems to be a guaranteed Arcane drop (other than some of the weird loot bugs occurring atm - loot often teleports above where the boss died so players have to make sure to check above and jump up to get it)

It’s less of something to be farmed considering the difficulty and time it takes to do, and more something to do for fun and earn your trophy

Hey, you can always solo ;)

Hounds have always had some useful abilities, like Repo Audit, Synergized Prospectus, and even Null Audit, while being able to equip the robotic mod Guardian, and they’re now buffed by the new Bond mods like Manifold letting them use the abilities more frequently. Without perma-death it’s great being able to take them into higher level stuff and benefit from their CC and utility - they do very nice aoe status priming for any situations where that’s a benefit

I’ve found Sentinels most useful in terms of companion up-time, as they have the shortest base recovery of 25 secs with Primed Regen equipped, before the assistance of Bond mods, with a guaranteed 10 seconds of invulnerability when they recover. Plus since they naturally follow you around over your shoulder, any efforts you take to avoid enemies and damage naturally applies to them and benefits them too (simple parkour to reduce enemy accuracy, using cover from gunfire, Vazarin dashing the frame also catches the Sentinel, Zephyr’s Turbulence covers the Sentinel with enough range, etc). The other companions still get the benefit of manual revives, but the situations where you’re too busy to manually revive still apply the same as before the update so it’s not always a positive you can make use of

In very high level stuff all non-Sentinel companions still tend to spend more time on the floor recovering than up and active, so carefully choosing Bond mods that give you the most realistic and practical ways to quickly revive them becomes more important

I’ve been having a lot of fun with Dual Toxocyst Incarnon on Zephyr specifically. Her augment Airburst Rounds provides base damage, so it frees up the gun Arcane slot away from Merciless/Dexterity/Deadhead. So in the Arcane slot I put Cascadia Overcharge for extra crit chance while Overshields are active. Her 3 generally protects the Overshields and guarantees she can maintain them. She also gets another crit chance boost from her passive whenever her feet aren’t on the ground, and being up in the air aim gliding above enemies gives easy access to headshots, plus the grouping from her 2 helps the Dual Toxo’s richochet. Just feels all round great, very fun to play

It will be as niche as the content where shield gating builds were/are actually required

Ironically, since the Decaying Dragon Key will still reduce max shields, but also enforce the shield gate to the minimum possible 0.33 gate, the Decaying Dragon Key will now be the gear item of choice for builds that want to health tank and take health damage

How the turns table

Oh thank you, I had actually forgotten this was today!

I realised I hadn’t posted this here previously, and I want to make sure copies of all resources are here to help the community grow (and stay independent)

Trinity gets to boast a fun little niche as a Boss Unit killer, with the % health damage in her kit. High Strength (300+), very low Duration, with a Viral primer. Prime your target with 10 Viral stacks, cast Energy Vampire on them, and watch them explode. The main places where you’d utilise this are against Demolishers in Disruption, and Thrax in Void Cascade, though you can also pair it with the Marked for Death Helminth subsume to turn it into an area nuke. Due to the % health damage it doesn’t fall off as levels go up. It’s very silly and very fun. Not super practical, as with such low Duration only your 2 and 4 remain viable in her base kit, and you’re limited on what you can subsume, but grouping abilities are generally fine with low Duration so remain a good subsume (and the crowd control from pulling and displacing enemies can be vital to helping you survive in Void Cascade. In Disruption you generally run Vazarin so you’re fine, Void Cascade encourages Madurai)

Since there is the Phoenix Renewal for the health side of things, maybe Renewal could get another augment that adds some kind of shield replenishment to the ability. I feel like DE would probably make it slightly too conditional to be super realistic in actual gameplay, (like every enemy killed on Hallowed Ground restores X shields while Renewal is active) but I’ve always thought augments should lean more into slightly changing the way an ability works rather than just providing a buff. When it provides a buff, it ends up feeling mandatory in builds, and it can get annoying that it wasn’t just baked into the ability to begin with

I totally get what you mean with health tanking falling off, but if Renewal renewed shields it would also kind of clash with Oberon’s bread and butter Hunter Adrenaline builds. He’s one of my favourite and most played, but I know hit kit is very clunky, and if you want to do anything active (lots of 2 and 4 casts for frequent armour stripping, or big range Hallowed Reckoning builds) he gets very energy hungry very fast, and you can’t always guarantee aggro from enemies to get energy back, etc. He’s needs a modernising touch to smooth out his gameplay, but I always get very torn on what should be changed. Renewal having a drain cap like Gloom seems like a no brainer, Smite is actually a cool ability with some fun niche synergies so I wouldn’t want it changed drastically, and the combo of Hallowed Ground and Reckoning is fine, just clunky and expensive. He suffers a lot from wanting all stats, and sometimes struggling to weave in desired augments. He already feels great to play in the sense of bringing so much utility to a team - Phoenix Renewal, extra armour, status immunity/cleanse, rad procs for soft CC, armour strip, damage buff with Smite Infusion - so I’d only want tweaks to be small

Trinity desperately needs a modernising touch too. There isn’t really any justification for her short timers anymore. I really enjoy playing a min duration Marked for Death Energy Vampire nuke build, but I know it’s super memey hahahaha. If I ever get her in Circuit paired with a weapon that can prime with Viral well, I grab her and take that build every time. Her Well of Life is nice in theory but another jank ability that gets Helminthed over every time, so it could probably be reworked into something entirely new that could freshen up her kit a lot. Her augments need another look over too - Abating Link should just be baked into Link in some way imo, and Champion’s Blessing relies on actually healing allies which is impossible to guarantee, as even if you’re playing support heavy and watching teammates’ healthbars, you’re probably using it to reset their shield gates rather than actually healing them. Vampire Leech is great at least

I really, really want them to revisit Equinox and modernise her too, because the kit is way too cool for how janky and unrewarding it feels to play in its current state. I totally agree with your suggestion about being able to mod Day and Night separately, right now it feels like making too many sacrifices to use both, and the fast pace of the game means when I want to switch between them the moment has kinda passed by the time I pull off what I was trying to do. So I just tend to run with either Day or Night depending on what I feel like and what I want to do, but other frames can do what Day and Night do better. She was my first Prime so I have a soft spot for her, and I want her to be better. One thing I will at least always adore her Day form for is Zealoid Prelate

Your suggestions give me Illaoi vibes hahahaha!

It would be great if shooting/hitting the tentacles transfers the damage to the trapped enemy, but if it increases the damage in any way it will basically be a copy of Zephyr’s tornadoes so I don’t know if DE would go that route. But yeah - I’d honestly just rather the tentacles hold things still than flop them about all over the place, it’s a lot of visual clutter

At the very, very least, I would like his 4 to just hold enemies still and rooted to the ground, rather than flailing them around. It’s as annoying as swinging enemies in a Khora dome, and there’s no easy solution like the Khora actually using her whip. We’re away from the aoe Bramma/Zarr spam meta now, we’re in the precise headshot Incarnon meta :^)

I feel like his 1, 2, 3 all need some sort of extensive rework and possibly larger changes. Undertow is a cool idea but just… lacking in any oomph. Tempest Barrage’s cast time is too long. Tidal Surge just lacks oomph again. Any stronger and interesting synergy between the abilities would be better than what he’s currently got

Ahahaha, have fun!