Looking over my personal usage stats and my clan’s usage stats; and contrasting with the community usage stats, I noticed something interesting. One of the least-used archetypes, and one rife with frames with bad or polarising reputations, is the hybrid damage buffer/CC frame. Meanwhile these are really popular in my Alliance, as we have a few stalwarts spreading the good word. (I’m doing my part for Banshee propaganda.)
I can say that the usage stats reflect a sentiment I hear a lot: “just use <purported best frame>”. In this case, Nekros and Octavia dominate this particular role at 3.2% usage apiece, reflecting community belief that Octavia is the best frame in the game and renders other CCs useless. Meanwhile there is a harsh dropoff in the buffer/CC archetype after Octavia (or Nezha if you count him). The next most used is Mag at 1.5%, then Frost and Zephyr at 1.1%. After this, the rest of the archetype all have less than 1% usage.
Other support archetypes are in a similar place: the healer/buffer is dominated by Wisp, and the damage/CC archetype by Khora.
A second factor is the “death spiral”. If a frame has a bad launch or a rough patch as the meta shifts around them, they seem to never shake that bad reputation. For example, year on year, even with extensive positive coverage, Zephyr sees very little change in equip time. Yareli is Turbomurder Water Nezha now, but it’s still a common sentiment that she’s squishy and has poor damage potential. Everyone has an opinion about Sevagoth even though nobody plays him.
A third factor, and I think another kind of death spiral, is unappealing meta builds. For example, Nyx is dominated by Assimilate builds, Banshee by glass cannon builds, Caliban’s meta being a complete mess, one-button Frost and Loki builds, and so on. People don’t invest into the frame because it has been typecast and the builds ossify, and if the builds aren’t fun to play, nobody invests or experiments, and the cycle repeats.
So, that’s my take. I’d love to hear your opinions!
I think support frames start making the cut only once you don’t need high damage frames to make up for lack of damage, unless you foresee playing with a team.
For instance, I never quite managed to master Volt in spite of it being one of my favorite frames, just because my low weapon damage output and survivability would always force me back into high damage/defense frames.
I also believe that the way some utility frames work is too much of a wall of text for me to care. I feel this especially with Octavia, Titania and a few others. Everything past Zephyr got too convoluted and it’s only logical that people won’t care for it unless there’s an extremely good reason for it (see people caring to learn how to use Wisp).
I tried to wrap my mind around Citrine, and even though I’m enjoying it, I can’t help but feel like the kit is as wonky and weird as it gets. I’m sure this happens with other new frames that are not purely “press 4 to kill”.