Weekly Warframe: Caliban
Weekly Warframe: Caliban
The sentient-warframe chimera, the forgotten, weakest part of The New War - Caliban!
Release date: 2021-12-15
Passive: Adaptation, but worse. It applies to teammates as well but they are either shield gating or running the real thing.
Razor Gyre - Become a spinning vortex of death. Hold MB1 to accelerate the maelstrom, increasing damage or target an enemy by tapping MB1 to dash toward them. Hitting enemies inflicted with Sentient Wrath creates a destructive blast.
Sentient Wrath - Smash the ground sending out a radial wave of destruction. Those not killed by the initial blast are helplessly lifted into the air, where they take amplified damage for a short time.
Lethal Progeny - Call on Caliban's Sentient aspect to produce up three Conculyst comrades to fight by his side, and repair his shields.
Fusion Strike - Converge three streams of raw energy upon a single point, causing a massive reactive blast. The fallout from the blast will strip the armor and shields from all enemies that touch it.
Acquisition: Pure pain. Main blueprint is purchased from the Market. Component blueprints are acquired from Narmer Bounties after completion of The New War.
Unhinged Caliban enjoyer here with some thoughts about the funny space man.
In overview: despite his bad reputation, Caliban is a crowd controller-debuffer type character, which gives him incredible offensive potential and a corresponding wide and flexible arsenal of weapons to play with. His reign as the spicier Nyx was short, however, with Zariman adversely affecting his playstyle due to the Overpocalypse killing all CC not named Chaos or Irradiating Disarm (or Resonator at the time; RIP Octavia).
So, let's talk abilities.
The passive is kind of meh, but, I did stress test a hyper-offensive mod build that only ran Aegis and Brief Respite, and it comfortably went to the mid 200s in Conjunction Survival, which is honestly pretty impressive. After the shield rework, it jumped to providing up to 75% DR on his very rapidly regenerating shields. I'm going to keep tinkering with the build until he can Eclipse tank Mot and EDAs.
Razor Gyre is rightly considered his helminth slot. It's broken in a basic way. The damage is acceptable given the synergy with his Sentient Wrath, but that's about it. He can AoE knockdown with it, and use it to dash to an enemy. It also heals him if for some reason you're trying to health tank on Caliban... which I may have tried when Veilbreaker dropped... In Pablo's teaser, he showed it functioning as a forward dash, albeit with no visible knockdown. May have Gloom synergies in the future? We shall see.
Sentient Wrath, my beloved. A big spicy combined CC and DV, kind of like a souped up Sea Snares. The target cap has gotten worse now that Precision Intensify exists. Has glacial vertical tracking, in tilesets where that matters such as Lua and Entrati Labs. It also scales harder than Roar, and does not trigger the mutually exclusive damage Helminth lockout, so you can slap it on Rhino or Mirage if you please. Works really well with the new Blast and its weird buggy calculations. Combined with Fusion Strike, Caliban is a spicy boy.
Lethal Progeny is great. Regenerating up to 75 shields at base is a huge deal, and they provide some minor distractions. I wouldn't call this CC, but they do keep the heat off Caliban. Basically a budget Aegis provided you use the Augur set or Brief Respite to stay above 0 shields, and combine very well with Aegis itself. That all said, this is the first of Caliban's ridiculous energy drains. At base, devours 150 energy every ~28s. A 95% duration, 175% efficiency build makes this much more manageable. In the rework teaser, this is shown summoning all your li'l sentient buddies at once, so hopefully this fixes the time spent casting and the energy burden.
And finally, Fusion Strike. The cooler Gaze, almost a functional nuke, and a horrific energy tax, all in one! Arguably poor scaling for endurance content due to the debilitating animation lock, although it might be a bit better with the Primed Redirection shield gate nowadays; in my experience not an issue in teams either, having gone into the 1000s in Circuit. For everyday use though, it's fantastic. Up to three fullstrip fields can be placed, which in most tiles is enough to ensure all enemies approaching have 0 armour or shields. But let's talk about that energy burden... fields last 15s. That 95-175 build I mentioned earlier will be eating 1.35 energy a second to keep all fields up, and with Lethal Progeny it's around 2.8, just a bit over energy neutral with Energy Nexus. The rework teaser showed the Conculyst buddies contributing their own beams, so I feel like this is going to become a powerful linear-style nuke, like Qorvex's laser.
Overall, I can't wait for the deluxe skin, and I hope the future is bright for one of my favourite, secretly OP Warframes.
Oh Caliban! A frame so bad, so forgotten DE literally has to give him away to everyone upon his rework just so people actually get to experience the thing. I hope Pablo is cooking cause this guy needs a full course meal! With a single redeemable ability rendered obsolete by the armor/damage type rework Caliban has nothing going on for him. Add to that the abysmal acquisition with timegated droptables and high-end Railjack resources required to build him and it's no wonder the poor guy is completely forgotten. This guy is in a state as dire as old Hydroid was. Here's hoping his rework turns out as good as that one did!
Pre-rework Hydroid is definitely overselling how bad he is, lol. Pre-rework Hydroid couldn't even shieldgate without a Helmnith once they "fixed" his energy economy; pre-rework Hydroid had obnoxious charge casts and long casting animations all over his kit. Pre-rework Hydroid was a relic and clearly built around hiding in his puddle to get his crowd control off so he could play for a bit before repeating the cycle. Pre-rework Hydroid was what people who don't play Loki think Loki is: a slow, weak, pure CC frame.
In my opinion as an active Caliban player, there are four core criticisms of him that all appear to being addressed by the rework:
- his energy economy is absurdly stringent and even Dispensary/Equilibrium can only just keep up if you're trying to juggle all 3 of his buddies and all 3 fallout fields; good luck trying to manage a shield gating Helminth without Duviri decrees.
- his 1 was fundamentally bad at everything it tried to do (another CC, a mobility tool, and a nuke).
- his 4 is so close to being a functional nuke, but falls juuust short.
- much less time spent casting.
And as a bonus I seriously hope they unbug Sentient Wrath so it applies its DV through Overguard again, like it's supposed to. It works fine on Demos and Acolytes! Why is it broken suddenly!
Even though I think there are frames that genuinely need it more, I'm overjoyed he's getting a rework. I genuinely love the frame and how strong he already is, so I can't wait for what is hopefully another golden age for a hidden boss, like what happened with Sevagoth and Yareli.
Not a caliban enjoyer myself but oh how I wish lethal progeny was his helminth, tried to play caliban himself as summoner frame when he dropped but just couldn't enjoy him as all his other abilities felt very similar to existing ones. Looking forward to the rework to give him another try.