sandriver

Definitely curious to see what the Stalker weapon augments will do!

No Vital Sense? Does it not stack well with Photon Overcharge, I thought they’d go hand in hand and stack crit dmg to ludicrous amounts?

I actually forgot, but critical stats define a curved surface (a hyperbolic paraboloid if you're curious), so they're actually a bit better than the linear growth seen in base damage and elemental damage. When you're considering ratios of mod configs, they're a bit more than the linear growth class, but much less than the exponential growth class (like adding on a Faction mod).

edit: I missed something and worded the above in a misleading way as a consequence. You get quadratic growth along the combined axis CC and CD, but you get linear growth just adding one. Crit has the unique property from that curved growth pattern that the complementary crit stat props up the other. Depending on the weapon's base stats, the linear growth in one or the other crit stat can outpace other kinds of linear scaling like base damage or more elements.

This is a Desmos 3D graph of the Tenet Glaxion's critical growth that should hopefully help tie what I'm saying to something concrete. It's vertically flattened by a factor of 10, but if you rotate the graph side on you can see the curve still. https://www.desmos.com/3d/czqqgsg13l

I’m using a basic stretch over overextended since strength affects the added cold modifier of Freeze Force too, and I don’t want to be freezing enemies too far from objectives anyway. With just BR+OE the armor strip on #4 is below 100% too so I’d need more mods, archon shards or molt augmented to get it back to over 100%.

And yeah I forgor that I put 40% ability strength shards in Frost basically as soon as I was able, lol.

Unhinged Caliban enjoyer here with some thoughts about the funny space man.

In overview: despite his bad reputation, Caliban is a crowd controller-debuffer type character, which gives him incredible offensive potential and a corresponding wide and flexible arsenal of weapons to play with. His reign as the spicier Nyx was short, however, with Zariman adversely affecting his playstyle due to the Overpocalypse killing all CC not named Chaos or Irradiating Disarm (or Resonator at the time; RIP Octavia).

So, let's talk abilities.

The passive is kind of meh, but, I did stress test a hyper-offensive mod build that only ran Aegis and Brief Respite, and it comfortably went to the mid 200s in Conjunction Survival, which is honestly pretty impressive. After the shield rework, it jumped to providing up to 75% DR on his very rapidly regenerating shields. I'm going to keep tinkering with the build until he can Eclipse tank Mot and EDAs.

Razor Gyre is rightly considered his helminth slot. It's broken in a basic way. The damage is acceptable given the synergy with his Sentient Wrath, but that's about it. He can AoE knockdown with it, and use it to dash to an enemy. It also heals him if for some reason you're trying to health tank on Caliban... which I may have tried when Veilbreaker dropped... In Pablo's teaser, he showed it functioning as a forward dash, albeit with no visible knockdown. May have Gloom synergies in the future? We shall see.

Sentient Wrath, my beloved. A big spicy combined CC and DV, kind of like a souped up Sea Snares. The target cap has gotten worse now that Precision Intensify exists. Has glacial vertical tracking, in tilesets where that matters such as Lua and Entrati Labs. It also scales harder than Roar, and does not trigger the mutually exclusive damage Helminth lockout, so you can slap it on Rhino or Mirage if you please. Works really well with the new Blast and its weird buggy calculations. Combined with Fusion Strike, Caliban is a spicy boy.

Lethal Progeny is great. Regenerating up to 75 shields at base is a huge deal, and they provide some minor distractions. I wouldn't call this CC, but they do keep the heat off Caliban. Basically a budget Aegis provided you use the Augur set or Brief Respite to stay above 0 shields, and combine very well with Aegis itself. That all said, this is the first of Caliban's ridiculous energy drains. At base, devours 150 energy every ~28s. A 95% duration, 175% efficiency build makes this much more manageable. In the rework teaser, this is shown summoning all your li'l sentient buddies at once, so hopefully this fixes the time spent casting and the energy burden.

And finally, Fusion Strike. The cooler Gaze, almost a functional nuke, and a horrific energy tax, all in one! Arguably poor scaling for endurance content due to the debilitating animation lock, although it might be a bit better with the Primed Redirection shield gate nowadays; in my experience not an issue in teams either, having gone into the 1000s in Circuit. For everyday use though, it's fantastic. Up to three fullstrip fields can be placed, which in most tiles is enough to ensure all enemies approaching have 0 armour or shields. But let's talk about that energy burden... fields last 15s. That 95-175 build I mentioned earlier will be eating 1.35 energy a second to keep all fields up, and with Lethal Progeny it's around 2.8, just a bit over energy neutral with Energy Nexus. The rework teaser showed the Conculyst buddies contributing their own beams, so I feel like this is going to become a powerful linear-style nuke, like Qorvex's laser.

Overall, I can't wait for the deluxe skin, and I hope the future is bright for one of my favourite, secretly OP Warframes.

Pre-rework Hydroid is definitely overselling how bad he is, lol. Pre-rework Hydroid couldn't even shieldgate without a Helmnith once they "fixed" his energy economy; pre-rework Hydroid had obnoxious charge casts and long casting animations all over his kit. Pre-rework Hydroid was a relic and clearly built around hiding in his puddle to get his crowd control off so he could play for a bit before repeating the cycle. Pre-rework Hydroid was what people who don't play Loki think Loki is: a slow, weak, pure CC frame.

In my opinion as an active Caliban player, there are four core criticisms of him that all appear to being addressed by the rework:

• his energy economy is absurdly stringent and even Dispensary/Equilibrium can only just keep up if you're trying to juggle all 3 of his buddies and all 3 fallout fields; good luck trying to manage a shield gating Helminth without Duviri decrees.
• his 1 was fundamentally bad at everything it tried to do (another CC, a mobility tool, and a nuke).
• his 4 is so close to being a functional nuke, but falls juuust short.
• much less time spent casting.

And as a bonus I seriously hope they unbug Sentient Wrath so it applies its DV through Overguard again, like it's supposed to. It works fine on Demos and Acolytes! Why is it broken suddenly!

Even though I think there are frames that genuinely need it more, I'm overjoyed he's getting a rework. I genuinely love the frame and how strong he already is, so I can't wait for what is hopefully another golden age for a hidden boss, like what happened with Sevagoth and Yareli.

Part of me misses hearing MY WARFRAME IS STRONG at random intervals.

• I love School synergies. So I don't use my Drifter as a "warrior" per se, but I do actively use School abilities. I typically run Vazarin, and the Void Snare mass-finishers are great for proccing Trickery and stacking Crescendo. Void Snare with the Phahd scaffold is exceedingly powerful. Drifter mode offers good mobility if I'm on Ivara.
• I have an Arcane Adapter-fitted 777 and 547. I plan to go through and make XX7s to get a feel for the other Scaffolds, but Phahd seems to generally be the best for Last Gasp recoveries.
• I use Magus Lockdown and Magus Melt for general use (Lockdown covers CC and demolysts; Melt covers Void Angels and Thrax). My 547 is fitted with... something. Whatever the standard became when the Zariman amp arcanes dropped.
• I almost always use Vaz. I started with Naramon. Vaz is, imo, the best general purpose school as it gives you free emergency invulnerability and lets you easily stack Crescendo. I use Madurai on Gyre and my health tank Sevagoth so I can lock in +125% power strength on their abilities. All my schools are maxed, and I have fully finished collecting all the Represent swag.
• I did most of my focus farm before Zariman, so my main methods of focus farming were fitting different nuke frames with Eidolon Lenses and farming ESO. When I managed to catch tricap groups with the alliance, I would use shards. I mostly did not enjoy the Sanctuary farm, as it was very repetitive and one-dimensional, but some methods were fun (like Nezha with the Akarius). Nowadays I could quite happily do it on Gyre or Sevagoth as they have very mobile nuking styles.
• Phahd spam is powerful, but it pales in comparison to the kinds of chaining beam incarnons we have now, like Torid and Boar. Void Snare spam is theoretically very powerful for objective defense, but I play Warframe for the movement, so it's not very fun.
• Everything about Vazarin is incredible.
• It's effective, but "maining" Drifter/Operator seems to run contrary to what makes Warframe compelling and unique. Drifter/Operator feels best to me as a component of your loadout.

So, Dystopia actually figured this out last month. It turns out Blast double dips Elementalist mods, and then Xata adds another factor for a cumulative triple dip of a 1.9^3 ~= 6.8x multiplier. I'm going to assume the extra damage comes from Empowered Dashwire, since Xata has some kind of spaghetti code to allow it to benefit from crit stats without critting.

Oh cool! Does that unkillable status still apply with Loyal Merulina or is it only a property when you're actually surfing on her?

HM is basically not worth it anymore, unless the weapon has very high crit and very low procs per second, which is definitely not the Glax family. (Candidates would be for example: crit snipers like Rubico and Vectis, radial weapons like Tenet Tetra or Kuva Tonkor... you get the idea.) Even under the ideal conditions of Biting Frost, HM is only a 10.5% damage increase, so its value before Jade Shadows came from that 10.5% increase being bigger than anything else you could put on your weapon whenever the enemy had more than 98% armour.

If you're using Galvanized Aptitude, base damage still beats adding another element, so it's still a valid choice if you don't want to run faction mods. Radiated Reload is a good option as it distracts any enemies with status caps, and reload is underappreciated as a way of increasing sustained DPS.

I previously suggested Corrosive, which was not a good suggestion for Frost, but it is your best bet if you want the gun for other frames.

Tenet Glax falls under the category of chain beams that can chain off punchthrough, so Primed Shred is basically locked in on the build.

I think Shivering Contagion may be a bit redundant on Frost, given he has Avalanche.

Currently my Tenet Glax build looks like:

• Mag progenitor.
• Galv Chamber, Galv Aptitude, Crit Delay, Photon Overcharge, Primed Shred, Amalgam Serration, Radiated Reload, Primed Cryo.

Rad Reload is the smallest loss if you want to keep Shivering Contagion. Faction would be better than Amalgam Serration.

For Frost, since I run Overextended and Blind Rage, and since I usually use him on endless missions with low mobility requirements, I run Equilibrium and Dispensary. (I also have a Sibear-centric build that runs Lycath over his snow globe, and keeps his Ice Wave for the Impedance augment.)-

A while ago Merulina gained a scaling mechanic like Warding Halo, so the "well it's only good for shield gating" isn't true anymore. Loyal Merulina is still relatively squishy, although you can do silly things like standing in jade lights and activating Merulina for the tail end where all the damage is.

Yareli my beloved. The frame that got me super into Warframe after dabbling casually on and off since 2015.

Along with Zephyr, I'd say she has a pretty safe shot at being the best Secondary Surge ~~ab~~user, which has all kinds of monsters like the Lex, Grimoire, Epitaph, Gammacor, Tenet Plinx, Zylok Prime... and hopefully the Catchmoon once they unbug Cannonade on it :^) #MoonMeta #BringingItBack

More in-depth comments from an enthusiast of Warframe's bestest mollusc frame (Hydroids don't @ me):

Sea Snares applies Damage Vulnerability, which applies at both steps of status calculations, meaning Yareli has some fantastic Blast setups. Unfortunately, as Sea Snares do not reliably target into Riptide, you would have to prepare Snares before Riptide; but honestly shooting a radial or punchthrough Blast into a Riptide kills everything anyway.

Merulina is Merulina, not much more to say. Pablo finally capitulated and let us play on foot... but a small part of me is a bit sad. Loyal Merulina opens highly accessible shield gating options such as Primed Redirection + Pillage or Condemn, and more reliable health tanking options such as massively stacking EHP Azures and Eclipse. (Or I guess Null Star if you want to nuke your range and run double augments?)

Aquablades is the most disposable ability for a helminth slot, although it can deal fair slash ticks with Surging Blades. Surging Blades was bugged for ages from release and didn't accrue damage on enemies in Riptide, so I never used it extensively. I also think that Slash is generally a weaker value proposition after the Jade Shadows armour cap, given Yareli's easy access to massive Heat and Electric dots through their respective primed element mods. On the flipside, this is crazy powerful for new players who pick up Yareli as a dojo frame for clearing the star chart.

Riptide, boy, what a journey this ult has been on. Will suction enemies over a decent range and leave a small persistent hazard. The suction range shrinks down rapidly, which can leave enemies behind if they get caught on things. Hold-casting for an instant detonation will knock down enemies in a wide radius. Fantastic for blocking a choke point in a tile's navmesh and shooting radial status effects into. Still quite functional as a nuke, and moreso now that we have Precision Intensify to play with. Loyal Merulina hugely facilitates this playstyle by making it easier to use armour strip helminths.