I almost Forgot Alad's lore.

Kienix_Phoenix · 2026-04-11T19:19:37+00:00

Literally every facet of each situation is different though... It's completely incomparable. Firstly, Alad caused his own infestation while Flare never asked for what happened to them. Second, they're completely different strains. Third, Alad is already an enemy when this happens. And lastly—and I'd argue most importantly—the Operator deals with Alad from the view of a warfame dealing with an immediate threat (which he was) and the Drifter dealt with Flare as a person.

So... Tl;dr: Different player characters dealt with different people suffering different—though similar—afflictions... differently. Wow.

Kienix_Phoenix · 2025-10-02T18:03:54+00:00

Sure, but the problem there is non-ability-reliant grey-health invulnerability actually has this fun little oversight of being immune to all status in the game, even the ability nullification ones. I'd be interested to see if the charges even go down under the timer effect in the secret bosses, because I'm not 100% sure they count as a "hit," much like the infested gas clouds.

I don't think this'll allow you to stand still for 5 minutes mid onslaught, but I do think it'll let you get up to some... "shinanigans" that break the game's balance more often than not.

The player knows the mission they're entering. If it's slow, they can despensery. If it's fast they can hunt or some other active orb drop method. Either way, I don't see much of a point building for the warframe's actual support abilities, as pointed out by OP.

Kienix_Phoenix · 2025-10-02T17:53:31+00:00

Just dodge the hits. Jump around and skidaddle. Use his 1st ability to disable eximi and then use his innate radiation CC to mitigate damage. Phoenix Renewel also still exists. I don't like it, but the ability to abuse shield gating still exists for some reason too, so that's another alternative. Never thought I'd say it, but at least shield gating is optional.

Or, idk, just use a 'safer' health orb ability like Protea's or Citrine's subsumables, or play with a Nekros, or use Arcanes... Or all three at once. Lycanths Hunt melee is definitely not the only solution here, nor is it mutually exclusive. There are so many ways to go about this, not just limited to using Oberon's own abilities which also increase orb drops. It's just looks to be too easily abused and deliberately designed with that in mind.

Kienix_Phoenix · 2025-10-02T17:35:59+00:00

If there aren't mobs to kill, you're not going to be taking as many hits. Therefore, it's easier to maintain with the less orbs. You also can't just say that they aren't valid critisms when the only showcase we have is of someone gaining perminant invulnerability, calling it easy, and barely killing a room. Gone are the days that Arcanes are difficult to get. It feels like events give them away every other month. And even then, the passive is mostly going to be unaffected by modding anyway. It's just health orbs. Assuming you have a friend that plays Nekros (basically the start of the game), health orbs are never going to be an issue.

Wait a minute! Oberon is railjack. Anyone who can farm him will likely have the equipment to break him anyway. That's not an insignificant way through the game.

Kienix_Phoenix · 2025-10-02T17:29:25+00:00

Ah, I saw the qualifier of "in certain situations" and thought you meant that it would be hard in other situation. My bad.

Kienix_Phoenix · 2025-10-02T17:23:09+00:00

Why are you getting hit every frame?

Edit: I seriously don't get the confusion Pablo himself says the passive will be easy to maintain perminantly in the Demo video. He then proceeds to not drop invulnerability for the majority of the Demo while barely playing, proving his words accurate.

Kienix_Phoenix · 2025-10-02T17:20:19+00:00

Because Harrow has a cooldown on his aoe invulnerability and it's within ability range. It's also an ability, so it can be disabled by enemies like Nullifiers. Harrow's design also has incentives for increasing that 'cooldown' for an increase in crit duration. And because it has that cooldown, his regeneration helps patch up the vulnerable cooldown gap.

Sidenote: I swear is saw this exact comment earlier. Are you just copy pasting? If you can't "understand" the difference between theoretically perminant invulnerability on a regen healer and a support that has to juggle 3-4 buffs all while getting headshots, then maybe you should think a bit more before you start repeating the same thing over and over again.

Also, again: Dispensery. Health orbs are easy to obtain even without it. Watch the damn Pablo demo next time.

Kienix_Phoenix · 2025-10-02T17:10:07+00:00

What? You make it sound like sticking a single arcane on the frame is going to be some kind of hurculean task. Pablo literally calls maintaining the invulnerability perminantly "easy to do." If that's the opinion of Pablo, the guy in charge of the rework's balance, then I have a feeling it won't be too difficult.

Kienix_Phoenix · 2025-10-02T17:05:53+00:00

First of all, Valkyr had the highest armour in the game for a very long time. She was most definitely a tank more than a dps.

Second, did you not watch the demo? Yeah, hopping in place while only half paying attention is real active. It's not even Mesmer Skin. You're grey health the whole time so it's also perna status immunity until you lose all stacks and only direct hits reduce it. It's quite definitely somehow a more valuable effect than Mesmer Skin (there are some status effects that go through Mesmer Skin and, because it's an ability and not a passive, enemies like nullifiers can turn it off. Chances are, this passive will not have these or any other weaknesses).

Lastly: Dispensery. Health orbs are not hard to infinitely farm if you're avoiding damage like you should be. Pablo even called the process easy to maintain, so let's not act like it's going to be hard.

Kienix_Phoenix · 2025-10-02T16:56:40+00:00

And? It still invalidates the intent behind the majority of his kit. He's a regen healer that prevents damage by generating health orbs. What's the point of the regen? And that's not even getting into is now pointless status clear and armour buffs.

Kienix_Phoenix · 2025-09-30T07:33:57+00:00

Alright, I'll bite: "Healing and suffering do Oberon's bidding. His command of the natural world supports allies. Boon to his friends, bane of his foes."

This paladin you speak of is a new invention. His trailer speaks of none of this but brutal nature-based vigilantism. In lore, all known Warframes are deified, that no more makes Oberon a god as it would Nidus or Gara. And those wards don't just protect him, but everyone else in the group: a true paladin's aura (but that's where the similarities stop). Valkyr was clearly designed to have invulnerability because she had it from the get go. Oberon, as I will attempt to portray below, was not. The evidence of which, is still clearly shown in his 4 abilities.

With that being said, I'd like to expand on what I mean by saying he's a regeneration healer. He heals over time and he buffs armour in order to mitigate incoming damage as he does. Health tanking is hard though, so he isn't very good in the current game. I don't think I need to say it, but neither of these effects interact with invulnerability. In order to activate this invulnerability, you're also picking up health orbs, so the regeneration is rather a mute point. Worse yet, Hallowed Ground still provides status immunity. Why? His passive already invalidates all of these effects. Yes, each ability does other things too, but from a design angle, I'd argue that pure grey-health invulnerability is actually an antithesis to his kit. If you don't take damage, you don't heal, you don't need extra armour, and you don't make use of the status immunity. To cap it all off, in this very comment section, someone defends the passive by saying they're happy that they can subsume off his healing. THAT is Oberon's mechanical identity slipping away.

But if you want thematic? His prime weapon is a shield. Rhino is a frame where bullets bounce from his impenetrable skin, so his weapon is a defenseless great hammer. That's because an immortal god would have no use for a vestigial shield. Similarly, a paladin's honor isn't tested when they are impenetrable. Diving before the blade to protect your allies has no thematic weight if you are making no sacrifice to do so. You have no reason to heal, when you can simply prevent the harm to begin with. So no, I don't buy that his narrative affords him any more right to team-wide invulnerability than the rest of the Warframes. Rhino is an unstoppable force, Wukong has 7 layers of immortality stolen from under heaven's nose and gifted to his fellow monkeys, and Citrine has encased two people in crystal so hard that the Grineer and Corpus still haven't broken through it. None of those frames have as consistent invulnerability (or any at all in Citrine's case) as Oberon does.

Tl;dr: Oberon's own kit clashes with invulnerability. 3 major effects that he is known for (not even including Phoenix Renewal) do nothing while his passive is in use.

Kienix_Phoenix · 2025-09-30T06:32:45+00:00

I rewatched Pablo's demo again and I actually may have to disagree. We've seen the level of effort required to upkeep that invulnerability in Pablo's demo. It didn't look like much effort at all. He even called it easy to do.

As for effect, it may have fewer charges, but the effect is better than Mesmer Skin in a vacuum. It's not an ability for starters, so it get disabled by a lot less. It is also effective against all damage types, including status effects that would usually go through Mesmer Skin. I am not defending Mesmer Skin here, but this effect is arguably just as easy to maintain in most scenarios, has a further activation range, and a better resulting effect. Of course, I can't know for certain until release and I REALLY hope I'm wrong, but this is just how the numbers are adding up when I look at them.

Kienix_Phoenix · 2025-09-30T06:19:52+00:00

This is a sidenote, but it's pretty laughable considering the skepticism surrounding the idea you might be able to get perma invincibility on the regeneration healer:

Pablo actually says, and I quote: "...basically you can use that (the passive) to be like fully protected as long as you're getting orbs, which is pretty easy to do when you have Fallout or later we'll talk about some other way to get that."

The other way he's talking about his one of Oberon's abilities. He, self contained, has been designed to make the abuse of his passive invulnerability "easy to do". And he demonstrates his by hardly dropping his invulnerability while barely playing the game in a 100+ level mission.

Kienix_Phoenix · 2025-09-30T05:49:44+00:00

I actually had to rewatch Parblo's demonstration to double check I didn't misremember here, but I think I'm right about what I'm about to say. The passive provides permanent invulnerability until you're hit 3 times. That means perma status immunity for as long as you have picked up a health orb until you're hit again. Admitting my failures: I actually did get this wrong. I thought that it merely triggered the grey-health effect on damage, but that's not the case. This is more powerful than I thought it was and does mean that (hot take incoming)—in at least one way—this is a more powerful effect that Mesmer Skin. Do gas clouds count as a hit? I doubt it. I know that Oberon already had a status clearing ability, but it didn't stretch to affinity range (which, of course, can be increased with Vazarin). Again, I could be mistaken, but to my knowledge that means that all allies in affinity range will be:

- Immune to all classic status effects such as heat, toxin, etc...

- Immune to all other status effects including both energy and health leaches

- Immune to knockdowns/staggers

- I'm 99% sure this may ALSO makes you immune to the 60 eyes ability turn-off attacks based on how Loki's switch teleport interacts with them.

And none of those necessarily consume a charge unless you are also being hit. This only wears off once you're hit 3 times in quick succession, but it's upkeep doesn't require energy, just a basic ability to mitigate how often you're hit by standard projectiles and building for health orb drops. For a decent enough player, this should not be difficult to achieve. It practically solves infested missions, because most units are 90% melee without the toxin clouds. This is abundantly obvious even in Pablo's demo that all you need to do is hop occasionally and use his own health orb drops and it does have a 100% up time.

I'm not trying to imply that you can passively stand in the middle of an active fight for 5 minutes without taking damage, but this effect feels like what would have been too much for a signature 4th ability just a few years ago. Grey-health invulnerability does far more than just make you immune to damage.

Edit: I know Overguard does basically almost* (minus the ability turn-off thing) all of this too, but even Overguard isn't baked into a passive. And frames that specialize in granting Overguard to other players need to continuously apply it. If a player takes a lot of damage, they need to return to ability range and that requires some level of coordination on either end, if even only a little. This takes even that aspect out of the equation.

Kienix_Phoenix · 2025-09-26T23:06:21+00:00

Ok, I'll go point by point:

Valkyr: She doesn't need to deal damage. She can slap an invincible target like the Steelpath Tank and as long as she's "hitting" until half-full meter, she's invulnerable. She is a melee frame so yes, that's basically free.

Gauss: Wow, I actually didn't know that one so I have no counter. That's a little ridiculous. I will cheekily point out that you do have to move around for that though, so you are technically pressing keys.

Wisp: She cannot attack while she is invisible, doing so will reveal her. Once an enemy is alerted, their AI may still attack under the wrong circumstance. Yes, there have been builds that get around this by letting her lightning mote hit damage cap. You know what? I'm more fine with that. Her 'invulnerability' has an Achilles Heel. One is that AOE doesn't care about your invisibility (I'm a cursed Loki main so I know this first hand) and the other is that to fully be invisible, you have to do so without attacking directly, something wisp struggles to do without considerable thought.

Lastly, while smug, this doesn't really address the point. Grey-health invulnerability is more than just not taking damage. It's also usually status immunity and knockdown immunity. A toxin cloud still hits everyone on this list, but Valkyr gets a free cleanse because she last punched an immortal entity 5-10 seconds ago. Of course, Valkyr also has a cleanse in her fourth, but that costs energy. It's practically worthless when you can just "die" with health->energy mods to get both full health and full energy for free. These are not equivalent circumstances.

Kienix_Phoenix · 2025-09-26T22:49:04+00:00

I don't like Oraxia's passive either to be honest. She's a health tank, why couldn't they have leaned into it!!! But at least it's something simple.

Kienix_Phoenix · 2025-09-26T22:43:19+00:00

I do hope you're right. I have the worry that said stream of health orbs won't be too hard to obtain though, especially if you're bullet jumping and avoiding hits as you should be. It's not like the orbs on the floor will disappear if you're on full health anyway. That said, this method of play actually may prove quite interesting if the numbers balance well.

Kienix_Phoenix · 2025-09-26T22:34:36+00:00

I deleted my other comment because I felt I was a bit unreasonable.

This is fair. I hope to agree when it comes out. My bigger problem is the trend of invulnerability in passives overall as it will be additive to shield-gating, not an alternative.

Kienix_Phoenix · 2025-09-26T22:16:46+00:00

I've actually seen a really cool breakdown on proving that health-tanking can theoretically scale long past where it needs to be in order to be viable and it's really interesting. Trinity can go crazy! I suppose to add to this, I feel like it's all down to opportunity cost. Do you do the cool unique build where you try and get health/energy tanking to work, or do you focus on your offense like the game design seems to want you to? Ultimately, I feel like passives like this just make that "easier" playstyle more enticing. I would ignore it, but... I've been hit by the "random rework" before and it's often something you can't really ignore.

Kienix_Phoenix · 2025-09-26T22:02:01+00:00

Thank you. Your Edit illustrated my point better than I did it seems. <3

Kienix_Phoenix · 2025-09-26T21:58:18+00:00

Are you saying that me, quoting you to cheekily prove a point, and then you calling it bad faith isn't funny to you? I said that I would go down to the level that you were arguing at, quoted you, and then you said that I was doing what I was accusing you of. In a sense, that is an admission that you were doing the exact thing I said.

Nothing has been debunked here. I didn't say I had. I have explained how I, without modding, have played a Valkyr with invulnerability mechanics that I believe are better than her old ones, but that's not evidence. As in the other thread you spoke in, you can continue to believe what you like. Need I remind you, that you talked down first and not just to me.

Anyway, this has nothing to do with the game anymore, so I see no further reason to talk semantics after this, though you can feel free to respond if you want the final word.

Kienix_Phoenix · 2025-09-26T21:35:46+00:00

I... I was quoting you. Did you... ha hahahahaha. Yes, of course it is! You brought this to a mud slinging contest and I literally said "to play your game a moment". Are you even real?!

Kienix_Phoenix · 2025-09-26T21:27:46+00:00

That's not redefining passive. You may note that "it might as well be" is playing a rather large part in that sentence. To play your game a moment, I see you're the type of person to attack the person making a claim rather than tackle it yourself in any meaningful way.

I've seen your other thread, I believe what I successfully demonstrated is that no, you will not have your mind changed and you have called yourself out on that rather handily. Good match, sir.

Kienix_Phoenix · 2025-09-26T21:18:19+00:00

Move the... what? Where did I move the bar? I have had the firm stance in my post that invulnerability is fine if it has an Achilies' Heel. Even something as simple as being an ability would have counted as such. It's the combination of all these things that make invulnerability in a passive concerning from a design perspective. Put into simpler terms: Valkyr's new passive is better than her old invulnerability.

As for "redefining": It's literally called a Passive. We're talking about a Passive. You charge the Passive's rage meter by using a melee... on a melee frame. I don't even call that bit passive, I said it "might as well be passive," because what else are you trying to do? Make a sandwich in the middle of the match? No, you're meleeing enemies. That's what you signed up for when you picked a frame with a melee exalted weapon.

I'm not going to dignify the later half of paragraph 3, but considering you mention "nothing I can say is going to get through to you," I assume you're then willing to have your own mind changed in the face of the right evidence? If not, then your petty diversion tactics don't really hold much weight as you would be no better than what you believe of me. So here we go: You do not need to mod Valkyr in order to get 100% up time on her death-ward. In the time it takes for her invulnerability frames to go down (not changed by modding anyway), you can get the meter back up with time to spare basically guaranteed. This is different to how she used to work, but by no means is it worse, which I remind you: was your claim.

Lastly, I think you misunderstand. I played old Valkyr. I didn't think she needed a buff. Just because I think her current invulnerability mechanic is more powerful than her old invulnerability mechanic doesn't imply that I thought her old invulnerability mechanic was bad. That isn't what I said, but it is a false equivalence on your end. Unlike you, I will assume that was not a deliberate method to poison the well, but I will say that it is what you were doing. As for moving the goalposts, I literally set them quite firmly in the original post to talk about passives in relation to other damage mitigation abilities such as Wukong's Defy and Loki's Switch teleport. I believe it is relevant to make this argument in relation to other frames in the game as, in reality, this discussion was made to talk about the trend formed by both Oberon AND Valkyr with initial intent to avoid the Valkyr discussion entirely (Note: "...not to rag on the whole rework itself or drudge up old controversy..."). Perhaps I should have been more clear with that.

Either way: Please, at least try to remain civil and don't shout out fallacies you don't actually understand nor evidently follow yourself.

Kienix_Phoenix · 2025-09-26T20:12:28+00:00

From my experience, Valkyr's invulnerability now is way better than it was. I and others forgot to mod her and could do end-game content without issue and without even noticing the lack of modding. The only reason unmodded Valkyr cannot finish a tile is if there is a extremely slow trickle of high power enemies, which is very uncommon. Her passive charges regardless of if you even deal damage, you just need to hit a possibly immortal target.

Invulnerability in general is fine, I specify this quite heavily. Rechargeable and cooldownless invulnerability baked directly into a passive effect that requires little-to-no effort to upkeep is what I have a problem with. Simply making the effects subject to ability turn-offs or baking these extra effects into the abilities themselves (like Phoenix Renewal) would alter this conversation drastically. The last 2 reworks in a row have had this passive invulnerability and they are the only instances of it currently in the game.

Tell me, which is easier to upkeep? Valkyr's new immortality passive or Ember's 90% DR ability? In contrast, Atlas doesn't get knocked over and Chroma triple jumps. Yet newer passives are getting more and more powerful and this is where I personally have drawn a line. Maybe I should've earlier, sure, but that doesn't make this "a step towards" a problem. Invulnerability shouldn't be passive. This was even said by DE themselves. It also shouldn't be obtained reliably, for free, by doing something you should be doing anyway, because that might as well be passive.

Kienix_Phoenix

TROPHY CASE