The Anti-Roller

Rolling is good in Warframe. It’s amazing. Rolling makes you a smaller target. Rolling makes you take less damage. Rolling enables you to reposition and change your direction in an instant. Rolling is a key part of being able to traverse maps quickly and efficiently. The only negative thing about rolling is the fact that it cancels reload animations, but rolling with some weapons at the end of the reload can shave a few seconds off.

Basically, rolling is great.

Unless you’re playing Limbo.

You see, Limbo doesn’t roll. When Limbo does his equivalent of a roll, he enters the Rift, a dimension between dimensions where nothing can interact with him or try to hurt him. When Limbo is in the Rift, he can’t shoot or maim or murder anything else unless it’s in the Rift too.

This little tidbit stops me from enjoying one of the more complicated and unusual Warframes around. Which is why I don’t play him. The only reason I’m playing Limbo right now is because I need to level up Limbo Prime and complete my mastery of all available Warframes. But it’s been a tireless slog due to the fact that I’m leveling up multiple things at once, and my current ‘carry’ weapon (i.e. the max level weapon I use to make sure I can actually kill things if things go bad) is the Twin Grakatas, a weapon that requires a lot of reloading and leaves you vulnerable while doing so.

The rest of Limbo’s kit though is equally convoluted. You know how most Warframes have a first ability that deals damage to enemies? Well Limbo’s first ability, Banish, does a small bit of damage and transfers enemies to the Rift for a while, meaning you have to go to the Rift to go and kill them. They return to our plane of reality eventually.

Normally a second ability is a more utility ability. In Limbo’s case, it’s a crowd control tool. Stasis freezes all enemies who are in the Rift. It doesn’t do anything if there’s no one in the Rift.

Limbo’s third ability makes no sense. Well, it does, but it’s hard to keep track of. It’s called Rift Surge. Basically anyone who’s in the Rift gets extra energy on them, and when they leave the Rift, they drag other, non-Rift enemies nearby into the Rift. The idea is to be able to drag more enemies into the Rift while not leaving the Rift yourself (something you have to do with Banish), but it’s possible to overwhelm yourself with enemies if you’re not careful.

Cataclysm is basically a massive dome of the Rift. You walk into the dome, you end up in the Rift. You walk out of the dome, you exit the Rift. Bullets don’t go through this dome, so you can’t shoot out of it or into it. You can combine Cataclysm with Stasis to make enemies immediately freeze as they enter, but since the dome is constantly collapsing in on itself and shrinking in size, you end up with this weird stuttering of enemies entering the Rift, being frozen, leaving the Rift as the Cataclysm shrinks then running into the Rift and getting frozen again.

Thing is, Limbo IS a very handy frame. In Mobile Defense, Defense missions and the odd Excavation mission, he can use Cataclysm and Stasis to make a massive NO zone around your target, freezing any enemy that comes too close. He’s useful in Rescue missions and Sortie Defenses since he can just banish the Operative and not worry about them getting hurt. Anywhere else, if you want to be effective, it’s almost too much hassle. You can spend time time making little traps (like Banishing and Stasis-ing enemies, throwing a Zenistar disc under them then unbanishing them) and really fuck around with your prey, although most of the time it’s kinda easier to just shoot them.

Especially if your team mates are complaining. Because even though allies can roll in and out of your Rift and can shoot their guns while in Cataclysm now, people really don’t like being messed around.

But sometimes I just want to roll without having to worry about inter-dimensional travel. I just want to roll to change my direction or cancel the end of the reload of my weapon. I don’t want to have to roll again to get back into a reality where everyone else is.

It’s not that Limbo is hard to play, you get used to him after a while.

But I like rolling.

And Limbo is the anti-roller.