An Article About Our Trickster Warframe
I’ve always had a bit of a soft spot for Loki. When it comes to invisible Warframes, Loki was my first, and I got him pretty early on. He was also, surprisingly, the Warframe I ended up taking when I did the quest the War Within, where I unlocked my Operator’s true potential… and kinda left Loki trapped in a Grineer trash heap for two weeks while I struggled with invisible Golden Maws. But time has been cruel to the Trickster Warframe, and he’s really struggling to remain even remotely feasible these days. Today, I am going to discuss how I’d rework the poor bastard. I mean his abilities have remained the same since Warframe came out. He deserves a bit of help.
Decoy
Decoy is honestly just crap. I mean, the premise is great, but the decoy itself is godawful. It does no damage and has almost no health, so its use as a decoy is very limited. Instead, everyone just uses Decoy as something to use Switch Teleport on. To make matters worse, the decoy isn’t permanent and disappears after 25 seconds… assuming it lasts that long.
Luckily, this can easily be fixed by 1. letting its health and shields scale with level and mods and 2. simply buffing its health and shields. At the very least, the decoy should have the same stats the Loki that casts it has. Ideally though, it should at least have health stats close to Equinox’s twin, Wukong’s clone or Chroma’s dragon pelt. It’s supposed to be a decoy, it needs to last for more than a millisecond against anything above level 20. I don’t even think Decoy needs to deal damage, it just needs to be able to exist.
Its augments really don’t help either. Savior Decoy sounds great on paper, but you’d have to cast Decoy incredibly quickly in order to actually save yourself from death, because the decoy itself has no defenses. You’re better off using Invisibility and something like Quick Thinking and making use of Loki’s high energy pool if you want more survivability. And Deceptive Bond, I have no idea why you’d use it. In PvP, it’s just free damage on a Loki that uses it, and the decoy itself doesn’t last long enough to actually give much protection. But both augments would actually be okay if Decoy didn’t have such bad stats.
Invisibility
Loki’s Invisibility is great. The duration is pretty good and it scales nicely. The only problem I have with it is that Invisibility can’t be recast while it’s still active, which leaves a small window of opportunity for enemies to take you down. That’d be okay if you also weren’t locked into an animation while you cast Invisibility. So I’d either have one or the other: you should be able to refresh Invisibility while it’s active, or it should be able to be cast while moving, like Ash does with Smoke Screen. Considering Wisp can turn invisible by jumping, I think it’s fair Loki’s Invisibility can get a buff.
Hushed Invisibility though is kinda situational. While it’s nice having silent weapons, a lot of weapons have exilus slots, and the silence mods for weapons are pretty cheap. I have Suppress on my Twin Stubbas and it costs 5 capacity. Hushed Invisibility costs 9 capacity, so technically you are saving two mod slots, but melee is always silent anyway (aside from gunblades).
Switch Teleport
Switch Teleport is, well, fine. It does the job. And it does have its niches, like during Plague Star. There’s not really much you can do to improve Switch Teleport though, and it is functionally identical to Ash’s Teleport. I suppose you could make both abilities a tap/hold ability, allowing you to teleport to wherever you point your cursor if no target is available, but that’s about it.
The augment is pretty cool, but since players move around extremely quickly, good luck actually hitting them with Switch Teleport. Either way, no one actually builds for Switch Teleport, so the augment doesn’t see much use either.
Radial Disarm
I think Radial Disarm is a great move. It’s no nuke or anything, but it’s funny forcing MOAs to have to kick you. Unfortunately, in Warframe, the best crowd control is blatant slaughter, so Radial Disarm doesn’t quite cut it these days. That being said, I still think it’s a good ability and that it doesn’t really need any changes. In fact, the only change I’d make is to merge the augment in with the ability itself. Irradiated Disarm kinda doesn’t actually do radiation damage, it just does the status proc, which makes enemies randomly attack anything nearby rather than focusing on you.
And while we’re on the topic of forgotten frames, new deluxe skin for Loki when? The guy needs something cool to wear. The Knave skin is alright, but it is so outdated compared to modern deluxe skins. Come on give Loki a break…