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Warframe's Abyss of Dagath update focused on introducing some long-requested quality-of-life features and balance changes in the game. A highlight for many veteran players among this was the rework for Hydroid, a frame practically abandoned by all players as his toolbelt ran out of relevance in all domains of the game.
Hydroid is an exemplar of a long-standing design issue with the game. A lot of the old-school abilities of legacy frames do not sit well with the current pace of the title.
Last year, Update 32 overhauled all three starter frames (Excalibur, Volt, and Mag) to address this gap. Digital Extremes' drive to make all Warframes great again has touched suits as new as Grendel, but many older ones who fell out of favor are yet to redeem themselves. The following are arguably those in the most dire need of a rework to keep up with the rest of Warframes.
5 Warframes that need a rework (2024)
1) Inaros
Released in 2016, Inaros is the newest Warframe among those on this list. Inaros' reputation as a beginner-friendly tank precedes his name, with a whopping 2200 HP at base. He remains the frame with the highest raw Health Pool to this day, surpassed only by his primed variant.
However, Inaros does not represent the highest level of EHP (effective HP with all forms of damage mitigation taken into consideration) attainable in the game. Nor is he useful outside of his niche as a beginner-friendly tank.
Inaros' first ability, Desiccation, is arguably his only good skill. Devour takes nearly half a minute to take down a basic Steel Path target while also incapacitating you. Sandstorm is tackless both as a crowd-control tool and as a damage ability. Despite his natural durability, the extremely limited use case for these abilities leaves Inaros in dire need of a rework.
2) Frost
Released in 2012 alongside the first set of Warframes, Frost fits the MMORPG ice character trope to a tee. Between crowd-controlling and holding an objective, Frost fits a dual-role niche comfortably. Rather, he only used to be decent in these roles back in the day.
Nowadays, there are many other Warframes that get the job done better than him. Gara springs to mind as the most obvious example. Frost's Snow Globe, despite its success as an objective-protecting barrier, is completely outclassed by Gara's Splinter Storm, leaving Riven challenges as Frost's only useful niche.
Frost's passive ability is a dead giveaway of how outdated his kit has become. A meager 10% chance to freeze a melee attacker is nearly impossible to make use of in the current day of Warframe.
A series of augment mods have tried to add extra possibilities to Frost's Avalanche, including armor stripping and a critical chance buff. However, the long cast time makes both Ice Wave and Avalanche substandard as either nukes or hard crowd-control tools in endurance runs.
3) Loki
Among the eight original Warframes released with the first public build of the game, many founders vouched for Loki as the most powerful. He was almost irreplaceable in Trials, the now-retired end-game feature in Warframe, and his pure utility skillset meant potentially infinite scaling.
This principle still remains true. All of Loki's abilities work the same irrespective of the level of enemies you are facing - a decoy, invisibility, a repositioning tool, and an area-of-effect disarm that is permanent. In fact, Loki's invisibility still remains the highest-duration camouflage spell without the bells and whistles of trigger caveats and effects.
Nevertheless, Loki still feels somewhat flat compared to newer frames. Mirage has assumed the identity of the trickster frame, and there are many other ways in the game to obtain invisibility almost permanently.
Specifically, the problem can be narrowed down to two of his spells: Decoy and Switch Teleport. Without Banish as a Helminth ability, Decoy is simply too fragile despite its excellence at drawing enemy attention. Switch Teleport, on the other hand, is too basic and does not provide enough benefits to be worthwhile over Helminth abilities.
4) Chroma
Chroma used to be one of the best weapon-buffing Warframes a few years ago, but his relevancy has since fallen off from the meta. Helminth abilities that buff weapon, including even the diminished form of Roar, can outperform Chroma's Vex Armor under most circumstances.
This is not purely a numbers game, as Vex Armor still provides a respectable boost to any weapon's base damage, letting you completely forego Serration and Acolyte Arcanes.
However, the upkeep for its maximum buff still remains vexingly complicated. While other alternatives like Eclipse can give you the desired buff immediately, Vex armor comes with the caveat of having to take health damage to trigger Fury, its damage-amplifying component.
With some raw numbers boost, Vex Armor can still be made serviceable. The issue remains with the irrelevance of the rest of Chroma's kit. Spectral Scream is virtually useless and does not pair with anything. Elemental Ward's buffs are underwhelming, and Effigy has no uses outside of a niche Profit Taker exploit.
5) Valkyr
Valkyr is the prime example of a Warframe whose main design issue is that they were conceived of in the era of Parkour 1.0. Warframe's smooth and agile movement system was not initially the same as it is now. The first iteration of parkour in Warframe relinquished a lot of core maneuvers like wall-dashing and double-jumping to a retired Stamina resource.
Parkour 1.0 did not have the current parkour bells and whistles like the fan-favorite bullet jump, and momentum was in general harder to gain. To counter this slower pace, many players relied on glitches like coptering to navigate through the map quickly.
In this environment, the mobility options given to the earlier frames, such as Excalibur's old ability Super Jump or Rhino's Charge, were much more useful. Valkyr's Ripline currently falls into this outdated movement ability category, providing little practicality in the average tileset.
While the Valkyr is doubtless a powerful tool due to the on-demand invulnerability, the negligible impact of Paralysis and Ripline essentially leaves her with two serviceable abilities. Moreover, her invulnerability still comes with the melee-only restriction, whereas some other tanks can be unkillable with no such caveats.
