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Elemental Ward Depending on Chroma's elemental alignment, an offensive area-of-effect is created. Chroma and his nearby allies are imbued with defensive energy. Introduced in Update 16.0 (2015-03-19) |
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| Subsumable to Helminth |
Info
- Chroma expends
50 Energy to emit an aura of elemental energy, empowering himself and nearby allies within 
6 / 8 / 10 / 12 meters for ![AbilityDurationBuff](data:image/svg+xml,<svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="32" height="32"><rect fill-opacity="0"/></svg>)
10 / 15 / 20 / 25 seconds, providing both offensive and defensive buffs.
- Energy cost is affected by Ability Efficiency.
- Duration is affected by Ability Duration.
- Aura radius is affected by Ability Range.
- Elemental Ward exhibits different effects depending on Chroma's current elemental alignment, determined by Chroma's primary emission color or the selected element of
Spectral Scream.
- Emits an aura of noxious fumes around Chroma and affected allies that increases base Reload Speed by 15% / 25% / 30% / 35%, as well as weapon damage when Holstering by
15% / 25% / 30% / 35% for ? / ? / 3 / 3 seconds. Within a radius of 5 meters, the noxious fumes also have a 25% / 35% / 40% / 50% chance per second to deal 5% of an enemy's maximum health as 
Toxin damage with a 100% status chance.
- The Toxin damage will only be applied to an enemy if it is not already affected by a Toxin proc, but can occur as soon as an existing Toxin proc expires. As such, its effect cannot stack with itself but can refresh itself every 7 seconds.
- Damage bypasses obstacles in the environment and does not decrease with distance.
- Elemental Auras of any type from two or more Chromas do not stack and only the first aura will apply its benefits as long as the player is within buff range. For example, two Heat auras do not increase damage nor health values, and possessing a Heat aura will negate receiving a
Cold aura. - Has a casting delay of 1 second. The animation interrupts movement and other actions.
- Elemental Ward cannot be recast while active.
- Elemental Ward does not work on Nekros' Shadows.
- Subsuming Chroma to the Helminth will offer Elemental Ward and its augments to be used by other Warframes. The Ward's effects are determined by the Warframe's primary emission color.
See Also[]
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103 comments
Is anyone else having this bugged to default to Heat, no matter what colour you have on? I Subsumed over 1 and my UI says my Emissive should give Electric, but it doesn't.
Ever since Jade Shadows (and possibly before, but most noticeable past it), it's been bugged to default to Heat.
Which drives me nuts because I have a really fun build that involves Electric...
... but DE would rather fix Spectral Scream being SLIGHTLY useful (you could use weapons while it was in use) than actually do something properly.
It doubly sucks because there's little use for the Health buff now and the Heat effects are borderline irrelevant in every possible scenario.
Same, I mostly used Electric and Cold for my builds, sometimes Toxin. Chroma is one of my favourites and defaulting to heat is bleh... I read somewhere it's only when you subsume over his 1.
I wonder if its more worth using Ice elemental on broberon with %300 or more power strenght + his renewal flat armor buff to make squishy frames health tank instead of using heat for the health increase
So far if i remember i was able to get over 640 flat armor from renewal and 449% from cold ward
I can't math but i will make someone correct for me because i will be definitely be wrong
449% armor from cold ward is basically 5 times and a half of max rank Steel fiber
So even squishy warframes of the low and low 105 armor can get over 525 armor + the flat bonus from renewal to Health tank
Can't imagine how jacked up a Qorvex would be lol
1000 armor without any other form of damage mitigation is still as useless as 100 armor on higher levels. Only around 2k armor it starts somewhat matter but overall % damage reduction is still not that good (around 80%).
There's an error in the math for the given example for heat elemental ward "270 × (1 + 2 + 1 + 0.55 × 1.3) = 1,273.05." There's an extra '1' resulting in the math being skewed to show an extra 269 health. The actual calculation should be "270 × (2+1+0.55 × 1.3) = 1003.05" which gets rounded up to 1004 HP in game.
Fixed, thanks.
If Elemental Ward is placed on another frame via Helminth, whatever emissive coloring you have doesn't reflect which element it shows on the ability itself when you look at the ability description in game. At least not for me anyway. It just shows "Heat" all the time on my Saryn, which I replaced Molt for. But as far as I could tell, it does seem to still actually give you whichever element is reflected in the primary emissive color, despite not saying so in the ability screen in game.
Yeah, seems like a recent patch broke the description. used to be a huge wall of text showing the stats of all elements.
Does the electric variant work with Archon Stretch? That would actually make it somewhat usable as an energy source once Nourish gets nerfed and it's also a built in primer.
It works, but I'm not sure if it's worth the effort by itself, 2x5=10, 10 of energy every 5 seconds could seem fine, and it also stun, albeit a single target, when it procs, but "if" it procs, it happens forcefully after yoiu are hit, it cannot sustain high intensity activities and in espionage like missions you don't want to be hit or even seen, I tried it for a while, but there are better options out there, for energy, Nourish, nerfed or not, is still the superior choice.
I'm curious what the heat and cold auras will look like on Inaros post rework, heat will be great for his new health scaling abilities and cold should give him a ridiculous amount of mg reduction.
I was just thinking about this. Seems like this ability is pretty overlooked as a helminth option, at least for certain builds.
If you want a crazy time, try subsuming to yareli. two moving AoEs on the "you can't catch me!" frame sounds borderline excessive
Does the electricity's sheild increase buff affect the sheild-gating mechanic?
It should, because it increases max shield value.
But better test this.
It's kinda bad that it's doesn't work with companion, even with Everlasting Ward it's still doesn't work.
True
Welp, wasn't nerfed like the mods, so now (especially) the health boost got a huge buff.
Yes
Aaaaand it's gone
Now this ability is useless damm
Shit was funny tho
Also mentioned this on Vex Armor, but the cold-based Elemental ward armor bonus does wild things with the decrees in duviri circuit that are based on armor. Fortified Will and Fragile Vanity can get bonkers numbers very quickly. Especially if you use both vex and ward. I'm still doing some testing, but i think this could be an interesting option for helminth, if nayone is making circuit psecific builds.
I also noticed that my chroma was so tanky at lvl 1000+, things were doing 11 dmg, i wanna test cold elemental ward on nidus + link to see how much he can handle
I literally came to this page researching this ability precisely because my Mega DPS build was awful in the Circuit and needed a drastic overhaul lol.
"Hitscan projectiles are reflected directly to the source enemy regardless of distance from Chroma."
"Non-hitscan projectiles are reflected in the direction of the source enemy."
None of this is true. I've subsumed elemental ward particularly for the cold armor buff on my Excalibur Umbra, and once activated, despite him already having over 1,000 armor from mods, he still dies and I see no damage actually being reflected back onto to any enemy. He still takes damage normally as if not even having the armor buff.
And this article mentioned nothing about the base "3x damage multiplier" distinctly set on the cold element option. What does this damage multiplier apply to? Weapons, Abilities, or both because once I activate Elemental Ward, I so no damage increase whatsoever if it applies to anything.
After more testing, I've noticed the damage reflections, but are so insignificant to care about it. However, as enemies level scale upwards, so does the damage reflections, and I've noticed that too.
Still unclear on how the Armor Bonus is being applied. I currently have a 333% armor bonus on this helminth ability, and an accumulated 1,884 armor stat on my Umbra, with 1,160hp. Therefore, I'm assuming that once I proc Elemental Ward, (Cold Element) my armor should increase to 6,273 armor precisely since 333% x 1,884 = 6,273 armor. Not to mention, I'm also using an R5 [Arcane Reaper] which further adds another 660 armor bonus per kill per 10s upon which my armor should then increase from 6,273 +660 to 6933 armor.
You'd think I'd be literally damn near unkillable, or just tanky asf, BUT NO! Despite these huge armor applications and bonuses, my umbra shows just a mid-level tanky-ness almost to the point to where it isn't noticeable, still dies normally and takes damage normally as if none of the armor even mattered, so this makes me wonder if the helminth ability is bugged, or if I'm just not calculating the armor bonus correctly/accurately.
You're calculating it wrong. Elemental Ward's bonus (and most other similar bonuses) work like mods. Mods apply to base stats. Excalibur Umbra has 300 base armor, so +333% from Cold Elemental Ward will give you 300x3.33 = +999 armor. If you normally have 1884 armor, then you'll have 2883 with Cold Elemental Ward active.
If you want to maximise your health tanking, you're best off stacking entirely different kinds of bonuses. Health, armor, healing, and damage reduction. You get the best results on warframes that have built-in damage reduction abilities, like Trinity, Mesa, Nova, etc. as those abilities can't be replicated in any other way, whereas any frame can get health, armor, or healing.
For Excalibur, you'd probably get better results subsuming Gloom for the lifesteal, to constantly refill your health with every attack, but it won't help to prevent one-shots.
They seem to have sneakily removed the gloom healing from ice ward somewhat recently unfortunately...
Is the Cold Ward's damage reflection boosted by Vex Armor's bonus?
No. They both apply a bonus based on Chroma's base armour (i.e. before mods or abilities), then just add together.
I using cold elemental ward on Valkyr like a psycho
The Elemental Ward cold emissive option applies no noticeable armor buff whatsoever, and it does not deflect any damage back to any enemy. In fact, you'll just take damage normally as if you've never applied the buff to begin with. Stop lying to people.
Fyi, the scaling of armor in Warframe general drops off significantly around 900-1500 (check the armor warframe wiki page). And if you manage to scrape yourself to 3000 armor, you've realistically capped the amount of damage reduction you can get from armor and trying to stack more is a significant investment for no return. I'm saying for the tankiest frames in the game getting to 1500 is more than enough, and other sources of damage reduction should be sought at that point. Hovering over your armor value in the arsenal now tells you your armor's damage reduction. If you've ever played Gara or Trinity, you'll know that 90% damage reduction is NOT immortality. 90% damage reduction is Incoming Dmg times 0.1. Trinity has base 100 armor afair, which gives 25% dmg reduction a.k.a x0.75 incoming dmg. From this point don't quote my values just the operations. This becomes 0.75*0.1 when you stack it with blessing. Resulting in 0.075 incoming damage. Or 92.5% damage reduction. So if the only source of damage reduction you use is armor? You're likely slightly squishier than a Trinity with only Blessing up, that means no Link active. AND If you've ever played Trinity you know she still takes damage with Blessing and Link active. It's the constant reapplication of Blessing every so often healing you to full that really keeps her in motion--which is why another lone tenno suggested healing. If you plan on using Cold Elemental Ward you should consider avoiding Armor mods entirely so you're not wasting unnecessary build space, and remember that Cold Elemental Ward itself functions exactly like an armor mod. If you plan on health tanking there's Armor, Damage Reduction, Damage Mitigation, Healing and the often forgotten Enemy Weakening, provided by puncture procs. All these sources stack multiplicatively with each other. e.g. DR from Armor x Damage Reduction effect 1 (e.g. Splinter Storm) x DR effect 2 (Aviator Mod) x Dmg Mitigation effect 1 (Adaptation Mod) x....etc.
Baruuk with all of his effects stacked and using a dedicated build reaches something silly like >99.9% damage reduction.
Btw, if you want extra armor on a frame like Excal don't rely only on using Cold Ward (used Excal as an example as I assume you commented above), use Citrine or Voruna's helminths + Health Conversion + Equilibrium. That'll give you what you want: easy flat 1350 armor, healing, and energy. Upgrade this with Arcane Pulse if you want extra CC.
Trinity is one of the tankiest frames in the game. Blessing giving a full heal is just a bonus, but not really necessary.
Does anyone know how the damage reflecting portion of the Cold version of this works? Does it reflect the enemy weapon's damage roll back at them before or after your damage reduction?
I was wondering if using an archon shard to increase armor is technically increasing base armor?
No, archon shards are effectively extra mods that apply a flat modifier on top of everything else
Can someone explain why hildryn kit do soo much dmg with this thing? I guess is something with elec elemental ward and haven
Maybe this, from the Electricity effect?
"The final damage of an arc discharge is determined by the amount of shields and/or health lost by incoming damage."
[...]
"When infused into Hildryn by the Helminth, the Shield drained by skills is also converted into damage, but the base multiplier is 1x instead of 10x. Damage multiplier is affected normally by Power Strength."
Does ice elemental ward work with other armor additions?
Sometimes the UI doesn't show up at all
On Volt:
Will elemental ward + discharge cause radiation?
Also will ward + discharge (capacitance) allow for survivability in steelpath?
They will not combine. As each are a separate damage instance. While Electric Ward and Capacitance techincally has synergy, Overshield generation from capcitance makes the extra shield capacity less significant in Steel Path. If you had to choose, Toxin Ward allows you to deal some tick damage to nearby corpus units. Else, there are better alternatives for Volt for subsume (oberon smite if you really need radiation damage, or nourish for viral as well as insane energy regeneration with zenurik or archon stretch)