PowerPoint Presentation Loki

I like writing articles about individual Warframes. Each one has got their own character about them. Volt is a derpy thing with square knees that throws lightning, Frost is a chill dude in a coat and Trinity is boring as fuck. Loki in particular is a nice character, boasting invisibility and speed, but being about as strong as wet toilet paper. But sometimes there’s a bit of overlap between characters. There has to be eventually, there are only so many ideas out there. But I didn’t think that such a large overlap existed already.

Let’s talk about Ash.

Ash is a weird character. You get parts of him by killing Grineer Manics, weird, teleporting, melee-only enemies that spawn rarely on various missions. There are several guaranteed Grineer Manics in the fight against Tyl Regor (that smooth-voiced Grineer scientist who pops up during the Second Dream and has parts for Equinox) but I don’t know if they drop the parts. Then again, there’s only a 33% chance of a Grineer Manic to even drop an Ash part, so you need to kill about 60 Manics to get all of them. If you’re lucky. I my Ash from the Pacifism Defect event, which had Manics spawning on a regular basis.

There’s also an Ash Prime, which has just been vaulted away but is still obtainable via his relics, who has increased sprint speed, armour and shields, but is just as ugly.

Anyway, Ash is a weird character. He’s much closer to the whole ninja theme than the majority of characters. Looks-wise, he’s like a cross between a Predator and a Xenomorph or something like that. Rather insect-y but also rather bulky. I prefer his normal look over his Prime version, because Ash Prime’s face looks a little bit over the top.

What makes Ash weird though is just how similar he is to Loki. Two of his abilities are INCREDIBLY similar. Think of Ash as a much more aggressive Loki who likes to make enemies bleed. Speaking of bleeding, Ash’s passive makes people bleed for longer and for more damage.

His first ability is a bog-standard shuriken, which is weird because there already is a shuriken weapon, the Hikou. It does slash damage and ties in to his passive bleeding ability. Other than his augment that removes armour, it’s a very basic ability, more along the lines of Frost’s snowball and all that.

Ash’s second and third abilities are the ones that are insanely similar to Loki. His second ability is a smoke bomb, which is basically Loki’s invisibility, but for a shorter amount of time and the ability to briefly stagger nearby enemies. Apart from the stagger, it’s incredibly similar.

Teleport is just like Loki’s Switch Teleport, but it only teleports you to your target. It has the added bonus of stunning enemies and making them vulnerable to Finisher Damage – a type of extra damage done to enemies under certain conditions, like using teleport on someone. On its own, Teleport is alright, but the reason people prefer Ash’s teleport over Loki’s is because of Ash’s Fatal Teleport augment, which allows him to automatically do a finisher move on enemies to kill them. Combine this with a dagger using the Covert Lethality mod, a mod that instantly kills when you do finisher damage, and you can kill almost anything.

But the weirdest thing of all is Ash’s last ability.

Blade Storm is the reason why I called this article PowerPoint Presentation Loki. Because Blade Storm is like a PowerPoint presentation.

Okay, so basically, when you activate Blade Storm, everything goes monochrome and edgy and you get the ability to ‘mark’ targets with pretty yellow symbols. You can mark enemies up to three times. Once you’ve marked the enemies you don’t like, you activate Blade Storm again and you’re greeted with… well, a PowerPoint presentation of you killing (or attempting to kill) all those people you marked. You watch as Ash (and two shadow versions of Ash) teleports around, stabbing people.

But that’s AFTER Ash’s rework. Before his rework, you didn’t even have to mark enemies, you just teleported around.

It is the most surreal thing I have encountered in Warframe, and that’s saying something, considering Warframe’s insane lore. I started playing Ash without looking him up, and activating Blade Storm confused the hell out of me. It feels so out of place in a game where everyone is highly mobile and everyone does everything themselves. I mean, there’s abilities where you root yourself (e.g. Volt’s Discharge or Mesa firing her Peacemakers everywhere) but watching Ash teleport around and kill everyone is…

It’s like a PowerPoint presentation.

And everyone I mentioned it to agreed with me, so I can’t be that wrong.