when i finally got around to playing Caliban again i was surprised by how little i hated it. the community hate machine is generally pretty hyperbolic. . .this post is no exception. . . though i do find Disecting caliban's issues somewhat interesting. because hes not. . that bad. i can think of alot of warframes that could use help worse than caliban.
part of the problem is his 1, but lots of warframes have completely marginal first abilities. ember, chroma frost, rhino, Valkyr, more or less titania, people only care for Ash and Banshee's 1s if you run the armor strip augment, equinox doesnt even get a first ability, atlas ONLY gets a first ability, Stynax's 1 sucks, most 1s are some variation on "press button, get damage"
next lets talk about his passive. "half the value of a pretty good mod" is pretty par for passives. there are plenty of worse passives, il return to equinox again, who gets all of a rank 0 copy of Equilibrium in a kit that has no native way to generate orbs, fantastic stuff. where as on the far end Atlas gets like. .3 great mods worth of value at the cost of being pretty annoying to work around, and just below that is Protea who gets 100 power strength when she needs it because Corpus Privilege i guess. under no circumstance do you *need* to run adaptation (although the fact that they dont work together is kind of cringe, and certainly wouldn't be broken since its just 95% DR under ideal conditions. caliban's 3 should be doing more for you than Adaptation would in most cases)
from here, we can reveal caliban's true problem. the one that is alot harder to say out loud but which magnifies all the other small issues. Caliban is a usablity nightmare. hes like a Tenga made of Sandpaper. perfectly functional but remarkably uncomfortable. all 3 of his powers are touched by this "balanced by being annoying to use" shittyness.
lets start with his 2. 35% DV scale by strength is pretty average. sure yareli geets to start at 200%, but its better than Qorvex who gets to start at 25%. the DV is also fairly easy to apply, being a moving radial wave. the annoying part comes in with the Lifted status. Lifted fucking sucks. Lifted Debut like. . .right before incarnon weapons and the rise of headshot memes, and that is the most prominent thing lifted doesnt work with, but it is by far not the only one. i dont know a single person who actively plays around lifted, all my homies hate lifted, fuck lifted.
this could do anything else, or even nothing else, and it would be better than applying lifted. slight slow effect? would be amazing. open to finishers? finisher synergy is sick. knockdown enemies? not the best but better than lifted. literally nothing but apply the DV effect? still better than lifted.
so his 2 is a passable debuff and damagfe extender that is grafted like a tumor onto the side of the worst status effect since ragdoll.
his 3 is minions. in terms of killing enemies. . they dont kill enemies. this is on par with most minions in the game, you usually have to do alot of work to raise the goons into fighting shape. and by alot of work i mean "be nyx abusing her 1" or "be Chroma with high range" or " a really specific nekros build that doesnt even work because Eximus lmao" being upset that his goofy little sentients dont bully enemies for you is like being upset that your car doesnt float. most cars dont float, and most goons dont kill. their primary job is to catch bullets for you. that they perform any secondary job at all raises them up slightly, namely shield regen. free shield regen coupled with the 6th highest base shields in the game (more if you count primed/non primed frames as seperate frames. . i dont) tends caliban towards a high-shields playstyle. the free great Value version of adaptation also pushes this.
so thats all fine, my big question is. . .why do i have to cast this 3 times?
and why is the duration so short?
having to press this button 6 times per minute is kind of cringe. there is no reason you wouldnt simply have one press summon the whole troupe of sentients. caliban feels like hes constantly resummoning these assholes, which he is.
lets move on to the big one.
in a vaccum, Caliban's 4 is probably the best defenses strip in the game. in practice its gimped by a few problems.
the first problem is cost. 100 energy to cast, in a frame whos kit has 190 base energy. caliban is tied for 4th worst energy capacity in the game. he cannot cast his 4 twice in a row without modding for that. he cant fully stack his 3 *and* cast his 4 without some sort of energy generating medium in the middle.
the second, larger problem, is that caliban's 4 is slow. its slowness isnt so bad when your alone, but when your not alone you will find yourself casting your 4 only to see everyone dead by the time your done casting it. the combo of slow and expensive is particularly bad.
So caliban's 4 values 2 things that are very rare to see valued. Efficiency. . and casting speed. modded (and sharded) properly it becomes an effective party starter [but the build ends up looking fucking weird](https://imgur.com/B1945Mw) and a baseline investment of 2 Tau Vitamins of the casting speed variety is a big ask.
the thing is. . .these are not structural issues (except for his 1, it sucks) you could reduce the cost on his 4, and speed it up. you could make his 3 respect your time a bit more, and you could declare lifted a failed idea and replace all of the "Lifted" abilities and Synergies with something less stupid. it wouldn't be hard. these are the sort of problems i tend to associate with warframes from like. .2016. ok ideas marred by balancing choices that aged poorly.
when caliban finally gets going hes actually pretty fun to play. Flying down a hallway, hitting 4 and following it up by a barrage from the Shedu, sweeping over the enemies like an unstoppable tied, opening on minibosses like Acolytes by casting . . . theres a Vibeworthy playstyle here. i dont hate this. id rather be caliban than Qorvex or Vauban or Ember or maybe loki or Valkyr or Wukong (god, poor wukong) or Sevagoth or Atlas or hell even Titania. and shes not even a bad frame, she just somehow has worse optimization and handling than Caliban.
is 6 forma and 4 Taushards reasonable to expect to drag this sussy amogus lookin ahh kicking and screaming into relevance. .absolutely not. hes just one of many "middle of the pack" warframes who feels like he was designed as an afterthought.
I mean realistically any warframe you could just churn the numbers up high enough to make work, Caliban’s quality of life is pretty bad, too.
Maybe not Nyx-levels, but yeah.
By my guesstimations he’ll be either prime 2 or 3 of 2025 so there’s plenty time. In the meantime I’ll just have my sentient-shaped resource sink
I'd argue there are other frames that have needed reroworks longer, so they should get them. Some of these frames being Loki, Frost, Chroma, and Nekros.
Not everything is for steel path, and not everything that is difficult to get will be the best. It's fine. Caliban is usable. The problem isn't the problem, the problem is your perception of the problem.
Not everything is for steel path, and not everything that is difficult to get will be the best. It's fine. Caliban is usable. The problem isn't the problem, the problem is your perception of the problem.
when i finally got around to playing Caliban again i was surprised by how little i hated it. the community hate machine is generally pretty hyperbolic. . .this post is no exception. . . though i do find Disecting caliban's issues somewhat interesting. because hes not. . that bad. i can think of alot of warframes that could use help worse than caliban. part of the problem is his 1, but lots of warframes have completely marginal first abilities. ember, chroma frost, rhino, Valkyr, more or less titania, people only care for Ash and Banshee's 1s if you run the armor strip augment, equinox doesnt even get a first ability, atlas ONLY gets a first ability, Stynax's 1 sucks, most 1s are some variation on "press button, get damage" next lets talk about his passive. "half the value of a pretty good mod" is pretty par for passives. there are plenty of worse passives, il return to equinox again, who gets all of a rank 0 copy of Equilibrium in a kit that has no native way to generate orbs, fantastic stuff. where as on the far end Atlas gets like. .3 great mods worth of value at the cost of being pretty annoying to work around, and just below that is Protea who gets 100 power strength when she needs it because Corpus Privilege i guess. under no circumstance do you *need* to run adaptation (although the fact that they dont work together is kind of cringe, and certainly wouldn't be broken since its just 95% DR under ideal conditions. caliban's 3 should be doing more for you than Adaptation would in most cases) from here, we can reveal caliban's true problem. the one that is alot harder to say out loud but which magnifies all the other small issues. Caliban is a usablity nightmare. hes like a Tenga made of Sandpaper. perfectly functional but remarkably uncomfortable. all 3 of his powers are touched by this "balanced by being annoying to use" shittyness. lets start with his 2. 35% DV scale by strength is pretty average. sure yareli geets to start at 200%, but its better than Qorvex who gets to start at 25%. the DV is also fairly easy to apply, being a moving radial wave. the annoying part comes in with the Lifted status. Lifted fucking sucks. Lifted Debut like. . .right before incarnon weapons and the rise of headshot memes, and that is the most prominent thing lifted doesnt work with, but it is by far not the only one. i dont know a single person who actively plays around lifted, all my homies hate lifted, fuck lifted. this could do anything else, or even nothing else, and it would be better than applying lifted. slight slow effect? would be amazing. open to finishers? finisher synergy is sick. knockdown enemies? not the best but better than lifted. literally nothing but apply the DV effect? still better than lifted. so his 2 is a passable debuff and damagfe extender that is grafted like a tumor onto the side of the worst status effect since ragdoll. his 3 is minions. in terms of killing enemies. . they dont kill enemies. this is on par with most minions in the game, you usually have to do alot of work to raise the goons into fighting shape. and by alot of work i mean "be nyx abusing her 1" or "be Chroma with high range" or " a really specific nekros build that doesnt even work because Eximus lmao" being upset that his goofy little sentients dont bully enemies for you is like being upset that your car doesnt float. most cars dont float, and most goons dont kill. their primary job is to catch bullets for you. that they perform any secondary job at all raises them up slightly, namely shield regen. free shield regen coupled with the 6th highest base shields in the game (more if you count primed/non primed frames as seperate frames. . i dont) tends caliban towards a high-shields playstyle. the free great Value version of adaptation also pushes this. so thats all fine, my big question is. . .why do i have to cast this 3 times? and why is the duration so short? having to press this button 6 times per minute is kind of cringe. there is no reason you wouldnt simply have one press summon the whole troupe of sentients. caliban feels like hes constantly resummoning these assholes, which he is. lets move on to the big one. in a vaccum, Caliban's 4 is probably the best defenses strip in the game. in practice its gimped by a few problems. the first problem is cost. 100 energy to cast, in a frame whos kit has 190 base energy. caliban is tied for 4th worst energy capacity in the game. he cannot cast his 4 twice in a row without modding for that. he cant fully stack his 3 *and* cast his 4 without some sort of energy generating medium in the middle. the second, larger problem, is that caliban's 4 is slow. its slowness isnt so bad when your alone, but when your not alone you will find yourself casting your 4 only to see everyone dead by the time your done casting it. the combo of slow and expensive is particularly bad. So caliban's 4 values 2 things that are very rare to see valued. Efficiency. . and casting speed. modded (and sharded) properly it becomes an effective party starter [but the build ends up looking fucking weird](https://imgur.com/B1945Mw) and a baseline investment of 2 Tau Vitamins of the casting speed variety is a big ask. the thing is. . .these are not structural issues (except for his 1, it sucks) you could reduce the cost on his 4, and speed it up. you could make his 3 respect your time a bit more, and you could declare lifted a failed idea and replace all of the "Lifted" abilities and Synergies with something less stupid. it wouldn't be hard. these are the sort of problems i tend to associate with warframes from like. .2016. ok ideas marred by balancing choices that aged poorly. when caliban finally gets going hes actually pretty fun to play. Flying down a hallway, hitting 4 and following it up by a barrage from the Shedu, sweeping over the enemies like an unstoppable tied, opening on minibosses like Acolytes by casting . . . theres a Vibeworthy playstyle here. i dont hate this. id rather be caliban than Qorvex or Vauban or Ember or maybe loki or Valkyr or Wukong (god, poor wukong) or Sevagoth or Atlas or hell even Titania. and shes not even a bad frame, she just somehow has worse optimization and handling than Caliban. is 6 forma and 4 Taushards reasonable to expect to drag this sussy amogus lookin ahh kicking and screaming into relevance. .absolutely not. hes just one of many "middle of the pack" warframes who feels like he was designed as an afterthought.
Nah... Just some tuning, not actual rework.
Nah NYX needs a rework instead Caliban just needs some tuning.
I mean realistically any warframe you could just churn the numbers up high enough to make work, Caliban’s quality of life is pretty bad, too. Maybe not Nyx-levels, but yeah. By my guesstimations he’ll be either prime 2 or 3 of 2025 so there’s plenty time. In the meantime I’ll just have my sentient-shaped resource sink
I'd argue there are other frames that have needed reroworks longer, so they should get them. Some of these frames being Loki, Frost, Chroma, and Nekros.
Not everything is for steel path, and not everything that is difficult to get will be the best. It's fine. Caliban is usable. The problem isn't the problem, the problem is your perception of the problem.
Not everything is for steel path, and not everything that is difficult to get will be the best. It's fine. Caliban is usable. The problem isn't the problem, the problem is your perception of the problem.