Inaros Doesn’t Need That Much Work

With Inaros Prime having just arrived (and me having zero luck with relics), a lot of people have been complaining. People seem to want two things: Nezha Prime and a rework for Inaros. While the Nezha Prime complaints are somewhat fair (after all, he was supposed to be next), the Inaros rework seems weird. Inaros doesn’t really need a rework, does he? I’ll be honest, I don’t think so. And I definitely don’t think he needs an Ember-scale rework. Not at all.

But why do people want an Inaros rework in the first place?

Well, from what I’ve seen, the issues fall into two categories: Inaros is too boring to play, or he is too selfish.

I don’t really get the selfish part though. It’s not like we don’t have other frames that offer nothing to a team aside from staying alive and killing things. None of Gauss’s abilities really benefit team mates at all. Saryn will nuke maps before anyone else can do anything. Inaros is only selfish because… he doesn’t die? Well, he can heal team mates as well, so that’s not that selfish.

But the being boring part, I can somewhat get. Inaros’s main gimmick is that he has tons of health and simply doesn’t die.

The other, less often stated issue is that his abilities are kinda meh?

They’re definitely not all bad though. Desiccation (a.k.a. Pocket Sand) is a great ability that works really well with Inaros’s health-on-finisher passive, and Scarab Swarm does its job no problem. The problematic ability is Sandstorm, which is an energy-draining ability that flings enemies around and stops Inaros from being a space ninja.

Personally though? Aside from being slow, I think Devour is fine. It just needs speeding up, with some better scaling. Could also do with being more obvious to team mates, since allies can also heal from Devour.

Those two abilities aren’t even that insanely problematic.

I agree that Devour and Sandstorm aren’t that useful, but they can easily be redeemed. Devour at least doesn’t need to be nuked from orbit, it just needs to be faster and more mobile, like the rest of Warframe in general. No one likes standing in one spot, slowly consuming an enemy and turning them into a sand buddy. If anything, you should instantly devour someone and then spit out a sand buddy, who can be devoured more later on.

Sandstorm’s problem on the other hand is that it throws enemies around. Ragdolling enemies has always been a bit of a pain in the ass in Warframe because it stops people from easily shooting them. Unless you kill enemies by blasting them out of the map and into the world geometry completely like the Sonicor used to do. Sandstorm would be a billion times better if it did one thing differently: it blinded and stunned enemies, rather than ragdolling them. You know, like a sandstorm tends to do.

Inaros’s Passive though IS kinda crap.

By passive, I mean the whole “turning into a sarcophagus and sucking life out to revive yourself” thing. The health on finishers passive is great and ties Inaros together nicely. But Inaros’s Undying sarcophagus passive is actually a downgrade because all you can do is sit there and try to suck yourself back to life. Most of the time it doesn’t work, because you can’t kill enemies and drain them fast enough.

Really, the whole passive should be scrapped and turned into something else. But if that’s not possible, at least make it so the life drain is stronger and/or is based on your secondary weapons or something.

Right now though? Inaros is fine.

Sure, Inaros could be better, but he could also be a lot worse. Inaros is actually lucky that he has so much going for him. Okay, fair, he does have some boring abilities, but Inaros has a great niche that he’s carved out for himself, and he also has some great lore and a pretty good quest. Most other frames can’t claim that at all.

And just because Inaros isn’t getting tweaks now, doesn’t mean he won’t get them later.

Anyway, I’m off to try and farm Inaros Prime. But from the looks of the relic packs I just bought, looks like it’s gonna take me a while…