Frost

It's kind of mindboggling how they keep completely missing the problem with Frost, this rework definitely pushed me to quit for good.

Here are some facts about him:

1 ) Frost does not need defensive help against Frozen enemies. They are frozen or 90% slowed.

2) Frost does not need offensive help against Frozen enemies. They are frozen and armor stripped.

3) Frost overachieves by ludicrous levels every time there's more than 15 enemies in range, but is borderline useless when this isn't the case (ex: Necramechs and other enemies with status+damage attenuation)

The rework and the ulterior change to Avalanche's mod make him even stronger where he was overachieving, while leaving him dead in the water where he was struggling, which essentially didn't change anything other than having some nice QoL on Snow Globe, but at the cost of losing Frost's only contribution to a boss fight by losing the slow effect from casting Freeze on the ground.

"But Frost is supposed to be strong against hordes and weak against bosses!" That was 2013, now we have Dante, Kullervo, Revenant, Gauss, ETC. so I don't wanna hear it.

The most blatant example of devs not understanding Frost's actual gameplay is his passive Augment mod Biting Frost. There is absolutely not a single niche situation in the entire game where you would need 200% CrD and CrR against an Armor Stripped and Frozen Enemy, it is unbelievable and unneeded overkill while at the same time leaving you with a dead mod slot for any enemy which can't be frozen.

His new passive's 2nd effect is somehow even worse, 50 armor per enemy affected by cold in 15m? So when enemies can't attack me I get like 500 armor and when they can I have my standard amount? Make it make sense.

Please at the very least make the Overguard on Avalanche (which his is basic survivability outside of freezing...on an augment mod) give you 2000 by default when it hits an unfreezeable enemy, or make it so it changes Avalanche to a held ability that restores Overguard while channeled regardless of the enemies.

For damage, the armor strip is enough for people to cope by using very strong weapons (when it actually affects enemies), but the survivability is bad, especially with frames running around stacking 30k+ overguard in 1 second, or frames going to 90~100% damage reduction, and enemies being balanced around them.

Either that or just make a female ice themed frame and leave him behind cause it's obvious nobody at DE likes him.

As a 6 year and going frost main, mr 28 (almost mr 29) with 3000+ hours, 920 something login days and 33.8% useage on frost prime and 4% useage on normal frost, you can tell that i love this frame. he is comfortable to play, and the recent shadow buffs have done wonders! i have some ideas for a rework, ive put several years into this, but id be happy if he never receives a rework. i love how he is now, but here are my ideas, its in order and the augments are listed after the abilities. my main goal was to keep everything the same, but just either add new functionality, add complete and total synergy, provide a place for every ability, and to give him more ways to utilize his kit. here goes.

First things first is his passive, which is currently awful and entirely useless, its the only BAD thing about his kit aside from needing to rely on augments to make his abilities viable for the most part. here are my changes. [i also updated cold status, allowing it to freeze targets solid.]

(Cold Status Update-)

it now goes up to 15 stacks. no changes. 9 stacks=90% slow, stacks 10-14 do nothing, and stack 15 will freeze a crowd controllable enemy solid. stacks 10-15 do not add bonus crit damage. it maxes at +50% at 9 stacks.

(Passive-)

Old: 10% chance upon incoming melee attack that the enemy gets frozen for 20 seconds. not affected by mods

New: "Rimefrost Reinforcment" every cold proc that your abilites make will heal you for 15 health. if your health is maxed it will give you 15 shields (CANNOT GO INTO OVERSHIELDS), and once both are maxed, it will give you a seperate stack of armor called "Rimefrost Reinforcement" which will have a cap of 1500 armor, which will add on to your total armor while active. [teammates and objectives will get healed for 5 health or 5 shields for every cold proc you make depending on if their health is maxed, again cant go into overshields. teammates cannot get rimefrost reinforcement, and the damage reduction granted to your own icy avalanche overguard is not shared with teammates. these additions reinforce his role as a defender and protector of objectives and teammates.] 100 stacks max with a 30s timer that is not affected by duration. every stack refreshes the cooldown, and if you are at max stacks, every cold proc will reset the cooldown but keep it at 100 stacks. you can either keep it for damage reduction, or consume the rimefrost reinforcement to boost the health of snowglobe, or the overguard gain by icy avalanche. every 33 stacks will increase the ammount gained/the health by 100%. so 300% at 99 stacks. the rimefrost reinforcement will give damage reduction to your overguard, but you have to rebuild it after casting avalanche or snowglobe. {if your rimefrost reinforcement is over 50%, or 750/50 stacks. it will give 100% knockdown reduction.} <<< knockdown reduction is optional, and not required.

Augment 1

Biting Frost:

• Old: Enemies frozen by your ice will take +200% crit chance and +200% crit damage.

• New: same, but it will also account for CC immune enemies with 15 cold procs.

2nd is freeze, i changed the ability a bit by adding a tap and hold variant, but it still retains its original feel and utility of being able to remove snowglobe if cast from the outside.

(Freeze-)

• Old: fire a projectile of ice that does little damage but freezes a single opponent solid for a duration. if used on the outside of a Snowglobe it will remove it.

• New: tap for old effect, mainly for the utility of removing snowglobe. HOLD to summon a rimefrost battleaxe with its own unique stance. this weapon will have decent crit and somewhat decent status. like... 24-26% crit and like 15-18% status. and a 2.4x crit multiplier. it will drain like 5 energy per second when active. every swing is like mjolnir in thor 4, it shatters part of the axe and send out a shrapnel effect that explodes in a small 3-5 meter aoe. if you use a charge attack it will throw the axe, causing it to explode violently in a 15 meter radius or so, doing immense damage and costing 20-35 energy.

Extra effects: tapping your 1st ability with the axe out will cause you to point the axe forward and fire an icy projectile out of it. retaining your original functionality. the weapon will not have cold built into the stats, instead it will cause a cold proc when you hit a critical. kinda like the duviri decree, but it wont do an extra hit. a yellow crit will apply 1 cold proc, an orange will apply 2, and a red will apply 4.

Augment 2

Freeze Force:

• Old: hold the ability button to send out a wave of energy, applying cold damage to you and your allies weapons for a set duration

• New: summoning your axe will apply the same buff, and so will throwing it.

I think frost having an exalted weapon would be awesome! and it is one of the main things that helps his kit, you'll see soon.

Next is ice wave, and i am not going to remove it, i am going to make it viable!

(Ice Wave-)

• Old: punch the ground and send out a 45 degree cone of ice spikes that do mediocre damage and apply cold status with 600% status chance.

• New: same, but the damage scales with your axe mods, still force procs the cold status automatically, but can do other damage types as well with the mods, albeit it cannot apply any effect but cold as it has a 0% status chance for other elements and you cannot increase the cold status. also any enemies that arent cc immune will be stunned for a short period (2-3 seconds) after being hit.

Augment 3

Ice Wave Impedance:

• Old: everywhere your ice wave touches will leave behind an icy trail, slowing enemies by 75%. the trail lasts 12 seconds.

• New: same, but instead of slowing targets, the field will rapidly apply cold status effects. like 3 per second. quickly slowing enemies down. and in 5 seconds they will be frozen solid. also the base duration needs to be increased to 15 seconds, as 12 seconds is a bit uncomfortable, although this isnt a required change.

Ice wave now is the best way to build rimefrost reinforcement, and can do some decent damage as well as stagger enemies for increased crowd control, i.e. what frost was designed for.

Next is snowglobe, which is still amazing to this day, but i do have a few issues, the UI doesnt show important information, AND it gets paper shredded in steel path circuit, lets fix this with some QoL changes!

(Snowglobe-)

• Old: create a sphere of torrential wind and frozen vapor that blocks all shots. enemies inside are slowed by 67%, you can shoot out of it but not into it, enemies near you when you cast it will be violently shot back, if they collide into a wall they will take 50% of their max health as true damage, it also has 4 seconds of invulnerability to absorb enemy damage for extra health. you can cast multiple globes on top of each other to stack their health, and it has a 1 million health cap.

• New: instead of immediately slowing enemies, it will rapidly apply cold status at like 2-3 procs per second, any enemies caught by the initial cast will add more health to the globe, scaling off of enemy level. damage absorbed by the globe in its invulnerability period will be shown now on the top of the screen. max health will be increased to 100 million? or no cap if possible to make it steel path circuit viable, and the health should be displayed in compact numbers above 1 million [5.6m instead of 5,698,416] so you know when to add more health before it dies. {side note, you can also hold cast to create a globe that follows you like an eximus, with capped max range of 5 meters.}

Augment 4

Chilling Globe:

• Old: enemies that enter your globe have a 50% chance, not affected by strength, to be frozen for 8 seconds which is affected by duration.

• New: 50% chance to freeze enemies instantly the moment they enter not affected by strength, but also it will increase the globe's cold status rate from 3 a second to 6-8 per second.

Now that snowglobe has some QoL and scaling on health, its finally time for avalanche. i dont really have a LOT for it, most of the changes come with the new passive.

(Avalanche-)

• Old: freeze and shatter enemies around you. this permanently reduces their armor by 60% if they survive, and freezes them solid for 8 seconds base. this does decent damage and crowd controls all enemies before freezing them. applies cold with 600% status.

• New: the exact same but damage is affected by axe mods, but just like ice wave it has 0% base status chance for any of the mods, the 6 forced cold procs are built in and cannot be changed with mods. that is literally it, its a great ability as is.

Augment 5

Icy Avalanche:

• Old: gives 60 overguard per enemy hit, gives the same to teammates. multiple casts do not increase the overall value, but if you hit more enemies with a second cast it will replace the current value with the higher one

• New: scales with your passive, with 99 stacks it will give 240 overguard per enemy hit BASE. allies will only get 75% of this instead of 100% for balancing. it will consume 33 stacks for 120, 66 stacks for 180, or 99 stacks for 240 depending on what you have. if you cast with less than those thresholds you will not lose your rimefrost reinforcement. you CANNOT build rimefrost reinforcement with this if you have the augment equipped. ALSO the damage reduction from Rimefrost Reinforcement will apply to the overguard gained by icy avalanche. no other source of damage reduction effects it. the non stacking on multiple casts stays the same for balance purposes.

Do i wish for these changes to be added? hell yes. but id be happy if he kept getting shadow buffed. he is pretty good as is, but itd be awesome if all his abilities synergized and had a place without augments. he has some of the BEST augments in the game, gaining one of the best overguards (as it applies to teammates), slowing crap to a crawl with ice wave, and biting frost is just lovely. but his abilites are... lackluster without augments. sure, snowglobe and avalanche are both great and all. but i would much prefer it if his kit synergized and every ability was useful. yes ice wave is still just a discount avalanche, but if you equip the augment for avalanche it cannot build rimefrost reinforcement anymore. making ice wave your go to proccer as well as your axe. a quick final note, the only cold procs that affect your passive are ones generated by your abilities. lest it be overpowered when paired with a primary frostbite corrosive cold glaxion vandal.

I succeeded at my main goal of retaining his original feel, but adding synergy, and some damage potential. i do not want ANY of his abilites to feel different than they have before, and i want him to remain as is just with some changes to functionality without removing any abilities. anyway, as one of the biggest frost mains, i love him, thanks for reading if you did.

A few suggestions to make Frost a bit better:

Biting Frost: Literally just make this his passive and delete the current one. His current passive is godawful. Honestly, DE needs to revisit a bunch of the older frames and just rework their passives, because a ton of them are just terrible.

Freeze: Make this freeze in a small AoE around the impact zone, instead of just freezing one person. Makes this a CC on demand ability and lets Frost quickly freeze high threat groups to get some time to breathe. Also make it so an enemy does not break free upon taking 50% of their HP as damage. Why does this part even exist?

Ice Wave: Literally just delete this ability, it does basically nothing for Frost considering its damage is awful, and its augment does not do very much for Frost considering he has a 4 that just outright freezes everything. If anything, my suggestion for a new ability would be a drain ability which generates a snowstorm around Frost, slowing enemies down in the radius and building up cold stacks every few seconds until they're frozen, which should give Frost some survivability outside of his snow globe.

Snow Globe: Make the size of the globe unaffected by range, I swear that this ability actively gets worse with more range, since there's a larger area where enemies can just walk in and bypass the globe's protection (admittedly, you won't be able to yeet as many enemies by casting globe on top of them, but I am also pretty sure most people aren't using globe for that purpose). Second, make it possible for allies to shoot through the globe, which is self-explanatory. Third, make it so that the Chilling Globe augment freeze chance is affected by power strength, because right now its a coin flip to see if that augment does anything at all or sits as a waste of a mod slot. By allowing it to freeze at a 100% chance at 200% strength, Frost won't need to keep worrying about enemies wandering in and slapping him to death.

Avalanche: Fine as is. If there was any buff to be had, I would make it so that if an enemy is already frozen when Avalanche gets cast, they get a further debuff which makes them take an extra 50% damage from all sources, working like a faction mod but not scaling with ability strength, as well as having their freeze duration reset. This does make him want to double cast the ability, but honestly I would think of it as more of a small bonus for freezing enemies with his other abilities before casting instead of something strong enough to actively want to spend another 100 energy instead of blowing up the now fully-stripped enemies (assuming you built for a 100% strip).