I’m looking through the old 2023 stats page, and I see Caliban is extremely unpopular. Part of this is definitely availability, since he’s gated behind a bounty farm after New War. But how much is it availability?
I get the sense that Caliban is a cult frame, split between people (especially YouTubers) who think he sucks and a minority that appreciates how wide his support toolkit is.
Will Caliban Prime give the sus space man some new appreciation, or will the stink stay on him forever?
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Unless they give him a major rework, no shot. Getting a Prime is his best chance to actually have a dev take a look at him, given that his painful acquisition and incredibly low usage rates don’t encourage DE to give him any dev time right now. His abilities and even his passive are all just so terribly mediocre/useless. His passive is just a worse adaptation that doesn’t stack with the original one. His first ability is a joke, it’s Rev’s 4 except terrible in every way. His second ability is worse Rhino’s Storm with a target cap for some unknown reason. His third summons brain-dead AI companions that spin around tickling enemies and give you shields except when you actually need them (they stop providing shields as soon as your shield gate triggers, exactly when you would actually appreciate some shield regen). His fourth is his only salvageable ability but it just got way worse with the changes to enemy armor making 100% strips way less necessary. There is nothing this frame does that another frame cannot do better while also having something else to add on top of that.
The problem isn’t just his acquisition, it’s that he sucks. His passive is a worse adaptation that doesn’t even work if you want to use the real Adaptation. His AI companions have the same braindead AI that enemies have, making them worthless. His slam is basically a worse version of the ability you get rid of on Rhino.
I think the combo of Razor Gyre dealing slash and Fusion Strike technically being a strip is all he offers right now, and that’s not very much. He needs a full Pablo rework before he’ll start seeing play.
I’d actually put him around about an “Equinox if she was a functional character”. Similar problems that make him unappealing unless you already like the frame or the concept too: he mashes together a whole lot of absolutely everything, but diminished with a “hybrid tax”. Other frames can do one or two things that Caliban does, and do it more effectively, but only Caliban does all of those things at once. I’d say it doesn’t help that he’s neglected and has a pretty bad bug too; currently Sentient Wrath is not applying properly through Overguard.
As an active Caliban player and having labbed him extensively recently, I’d say he has a lot more going for him:
The mini-Adaptation is only 1/5th as effective as the real thing, but it’s free and opens up a mod slot. It’s also twice as good as no Adaptation at all while you ease into the Arbitration farm!
With Arcane Aegis (and potentially Barrier on top), the mini-Adaptation shines with the Lethal Progeny to make him exceedingly durable. I tried a build with no defensive modding outside of Aegis/Barrier and pushed into the mid 200s on SP Conjunction Survival, which is more than my health conversion builds can do.
He has a good crowd control and personal defense kit with every single ability providing some kind of CC, including a moderate taunt from his Progeny.
Fusion Strike isn’t just full defense removal, it’s a large and persistent hazard that can be placed three times, so you can place it over potentially multiple choke points and fullstrip enemies as they come to you or an objective.
He definitely needs some augments and a bugfix pass though.
(I should say I love Equinox too, and mainly play Nightquinox, but DE has mistreated that poor frame so badly and half her kit is just inadequate nowadays.)
I think equinox is in a pretty fine spot tbh, I put gloom over her single target ability and use the augment for extra slow and extra power strength on her 3 and just roll around with a crazy stacked slow (gloom and her 3 slow are multplicitive) with free great survivability with her 4 shield restore. Or, in lower level content, just be a giant area of slash procs. It’s a good time
I have such mixed feelings about Equinox. On the one hand she technically has 7 buttons and basically unrivalled flexibility and capacity for self-expression. On the other, there’s an aura of disappointment about her that her two big, unique abilities are both tied to Day Form, while Night Form seems to have slowly receded to being the prototype for other frame abilities. To me she feels conceptually inelegant and unsatisfying, a complex and nearly unique 7-button frame who’s slowly faded into having two big buttons that are uniquely hers and remain powerful.
I think she deserves a deep rework to modernise her given the way the game is evolving past her, and to redress the way DE has basically pillaged her kit to give to later frames in an improved form. It’s fine if she’s a jack-of-all trades design that trades raw numbers for strategic breadth, but those numbers need tweaking and modernising.
Some things I don’t like:
- Peaceful Provocation’s Pacify effect seems overly stringent, having four zones of effectiveness makes the outer slow pretty meh. I don’t expect it to be Gloom, but maybe just two zones or reducing the harshness of the dropoff to the outermost zone. (Or maybe I’ve misunderstood and only the damage debuff falls off, I never actually labbed it.)
- Energy Transfer should be baseline so you can play a form-shifting style out of the box without giving up an augment slot for it.
- Mend’s passive shield bump isn’t really adequate with the amount of damage players take now on SP and beyond
He’s not terrible, but there’s no content he isn’t a third choice for.
His obtainability is the least of his issues.
Dookie frame
