Review: Frost (Prime) (U25.7.5)

Frost, as his name suggests, is an ice-themed Warframe, originally released all the way back in U6. Frost Prime isn't much younger, being the first standard acquirable Prime Frame, released in U7.10. With several ways of slowing or stopping enemies, Frost is a potent, primarily defensive Warframe.

Acquisition

Frost's parts drop from Exta, Ceres. The boss here is Lech Kril + Captain Vor together (ignore the Phorid invasion...). His main blueprint is available directly from Market.

Frost Prime, as usual for Prime Warframes, has its blueprints available in various Relics. He is currently Vaulted, so Relics containing his parts cannot currently be acquired from missions.

Stats

Frost has decent Armour and above-average Shields. This is a bit awkward as Armour does not affect Shields at all. Additionally, in their current form, Shields are not a very good defence for the majority of Warframes. Frost Prime has slightly increased Shields, which as just mentioned, is not much help.

Abilities

Passive: Cryogenic

When struck by a melee attack, Frost has a 10% chance to freeze the attacker.

This is, frankly, a rubbish Passive. It has a very low chance of actually triggering, and does not even help much when it does. At high levels, where freezing enemies is most useful, a single melee strike from an enemy can deal quite significant damage, potentially even one-hitting you. As such, even if the enemy is frozen, you are left highly vulnerable to any other nearby enemies. In a horde shooter like Warframe, this is pretty insignificant overall when the other 20+ enemies are still charging at you.

1: Freeze

Frost throws out a projectile dealing a tiny amount of Cold damage (+Str) in a small area. Enemies directly hit by the projectile are frozen for a short time (+Dur), while other enemies within its area of effect are inflicted with a Cold proc.. The projectile leaves a small cold area for a short amount of time (+Dur) that slows any enemies in its area.
Freeze costs 25 Energy to cast and does not interrupt actions.

Frozen enemies cannot move or attack, however cannot be inflicted with new Status procs

Freeze is a relatively niche ability useful for quickly and cheaply stunning a particular threatening enemy. Being able to temporarily immobilise powerful enemies is quite useful, though Frost's other abilities do this function much better overall.

2: Ice Wave

Frost punches the ground, causing a wave of ice to travel forward a set distance (+Ran), covering a set arc (+Ran, to a maximum of 60 degrees). This wave of ice deals a little Cold damage (+Str) to any enemy in its path, also inflicting them with a Cold proc.
Ice Wave costs 50 energy, and interrupts actions.

Ice Wave is mainly useful for its slowing capability, as its damage output is poor at higher levels. It affects a far larger area than Freeze (1) but has a short travel time, making it a decent pre-emptive slow. Its hard-capped arc of 60 degrees limits its overall utility, restricting it primarily to use in choke points.

3: Snowglobe

Snow Globe creates a spherical barrier around Frost's current location, with a set radius (+Ran). It has a base health value (+Str, also increased by Armour), and for the first three seconds, also absorbs enemy fire to further increase its health. You can shoot outwards from inside the sphere, but cannot shoot inwards from outside. Enemies within the sphere are slowed.
You can have up to 4 separate Snow Globes at a time, and attempting to create another one will dispel the oldest.
Recasting Snow Globe while within an existing one will centre it around you, adding its existing health to the health of the newly-casted one, and gives it the 3-second absorption period again. The absolute maximum Snow Globe health is 1,000,000.

Any enemies caught within Snow Globe's radius upon casting is frozen and flung outwards. If they impact a solid object (e.g. a wall), they suffer a fraction of their health (up to half) as Finisher/True damage.
Casting Freeze (1) at a Snow Globe will destroy it, dealing a bit of damage to enemies nearby. This feature is more useful for removing unneeded Snow Globes than any actual damage potential. This is perhaps the most important tip for a newer Frost player to remember! Errant, unneded Snow Globes can be incredibly frustrating for you and other players, and at times hinder the mission as well.
Snow Globe costs 50 energy and interrupts actions.

Snow Globe is both an excellent defensive ability as well as a surprisingly effective offensive ability. Properly maintained, it makes stationary objects nigh invulnerable (barring the select few enemy attacks that bypass it...), which is especially useful at high levels in mission types like Excavation. There are few other abilities that are as good at defending vulnerable objectives. This alone would be enough to consider Snow Globe a good ability, yet it also has unusual (but impressive) offensive potential.

Enemies frozen and flung out of the Snow Globe upon casting suffer from Finisher/True damage when they hit an obstacle, which scales directly with the victim's health and bypasses all defences. At best, they suffer 50% of their health from smacking into an obstacle, meaning that optimally, two casts of Snow Globe will kill any such vulnerable enemy, regardless of level. This makes Snow Globe one of the only true infinitely scaling abilities, alongside things like Trinity's Energy Vampire (2).

4: Avalanche

Avalanche is a two-part ability, affecting all enemies within range (+Ran) of Frost. Firstly, all of these enemies are frozen, which lasts for a short time (+Dur).

Shortly after being frozen, enemeis are dealt some Cold damage (+Str), as well as having their armour reduced (+Str) for the duration of the ability.
Avalanche costs 100 energy to cast, and interrupts actions.

Avalanche is a powerful, of rather energy-hungry, ability. Like with many abilities, its damage output is not significant at higher levels, however it has significant other utility. It freezes all enemies within range for a short time, which is always useful. Additionally, it is one of relatively few abilities that strips a significant fraction of armour (40% at base), which is a huge help against armoured enemies. I've discussed why armour is so significant in Warframe before, and being able to mitigate that with a single use of one ability is quite powerful. It only lasts for the duration of the freeze, meaning that it sadly also prevents further Status procs from being applied, but is nonetheless quite helpful.

Augments

1: Freeze Force

Upon hold-casting Freeze, Freeze Force adds 100% Cold Damage (+Str) to all nearby allies' weapons, including yourself, for 40 seconds (+Dur).

Like the other similar Elemental Augments, Freeze Force essentially gives you a really big +Cold damage mod. Cold isn't a great damage type on its own, though contributes positively to Viral. Notably, it also interferes with Corrosive Status weapons. This is all before even considering the plethora of other good mods that Frost might want to equip - for the most part, Freeze Force is not worth including.

2: Ice Wave Impedance

Casting Ice Wave leaves an area for 12 seconds (+Dur) that significantly slows enemies in the area.

Ice Wave Impedance is quite useful for a wide-range CC build, as Ice Wave is relatively cheap to cast, and can be made to cover quite a large area with +Ran. This Augment makes Ice Wave's slow effect linger in the affected area, rather than only affecting enemies hit by the wave itself. This gives it a persistent CC effect, which is significantly more useful than the base ability.

Any enemies entering a Snow Globe have a 50% chance to be frozen for 8 seconds (+Dur).

This Augment makes Snow Globe just that little bit better at defending objectives, potentially freezing any enemy who gets past you into the Snow Globe. It is certainly not necessary by any means, but is a nice, if unreliable, safeguard at high levels where enemies can destroy objectives almost instantly.

All allies within Avalanche's area (including the caster) will be given a layer of ice armour (essentiall a weak Iron Skin), with 60 health (+Str) for each enemy affected. Subsequent casts of Avalanche will overwrite the existing ice armour if the new ice armour health value is larger, but will not stack.

Icy Avalanche is a useful Augment that gives an already decent ability some very good extra utility. On top of adding an extra amount of health, Icy Avalanche also blocks all Status procs and prevents knockdowns, like with Iron Skin. In a more enemy-dense mission, with reasonable Str and Ran, you can achieve quite large ice armour values, and the immunity to procs and knockdowns is always welcome.

Builds

Power Strength provides two main bonuses for Frost. It boosts Snow Globe (3) base health, and increases the armour reduction of Avalanche (4). With the Icy Avalanche Augment (4), it also increases the ice armour health produced. Since Snow Globe can simply be multi-cast to stack up health, Strength is only really necessary for Avalanche. +150% Str results in Avalanche completely stripping enemies of armour, though reaching this number requires several mod slots, very high mod capacity drain, and Corrupted mods. Personally, I find the armour reduction already quite effective even with just +85% Str (74% armour reduction), which is much easier to achieve.

Power Duration can be useful for Frost. It extends the slow time of the Ice Wave Impedance Augment (2), and freeze time of Freeze (1) and Avalanche. This is especially helpful for any sort of CC/Debuff builds.

Power Range is quite good for Frost. It wides and lengths Ice Wave (2), and widens Snow Globe and Avalanche. A wider Snow Globe may not be desirable for defensive missions, but does enhance its offensive potential. Range is useful primarily for for CC/Debuff builds.


Most of Frost's Augments can be useful, and it's definitely worth experimenting to see if you like any of them. I personally really like Icy Avalanche, as the ability to give a mini-Iron Skin to yourself and allies is always useful. There are none I'd consider to be mandatory, as they depend on which abilities you'd like to make the most of.

For survivability, I favour Health on Frost. His armour is decent, especially when augmented for stronger Snow Globes. Shields, as usual for the majority of Warframes, are pretty weak for Frost. He doesn't have a notably large Energy pool, so Quick Thinking is not especially good. Adaptation, if you have the space, can be a nice addition for survivability as Frost's armour will allow him to survive several weaker hits to build up the Damage Reduction.

Frost has one native - and D polarities, with the Prime having an additional D polarity. Both have a D polarity in the Aura slot.

Basic 0-Forma:

This is a general purpose, basic build that boosts all stats a little. +Armour is decent on Frost as he has good base Armour, and it also increases Snow Globe health. It's certainly not necessary however, and can be switched for another mod without issue, for instance more +Str. Accordingly, +Health is Frost's best survivability stat. There is enough space in this build for Primed mods or an extra mod, which could be an Augment or something like Natural Talent. I'd recommend starting with this sort of build to see which ability/ies you like using most, as all of them benefit from these stats.

Ice Wave 0-Forma:

This build is a high-Range CC build focused around Ice Wave Impedance. This Augment is not affected by Strength, allowing the free use of Overextended. More Duration is helpful, and could be slotted in instead of Steel Fiber. The primary use of this build is to slow down large groups of enemies as they enter a choke point, to make for easier kills and reduced damage output.

Snowglobe 0-Forma:

This build is optimised for Snow Globe spamming, with high Efficiency and low Duration. The extra Range may not be necessary (or desired), and can be removed. Instead of stacking entirely Armour and Strength, the most effective way to build up Snow Globe health is simply to multi-cast it, and take full advantage of the absorption period. Proper Snow Globe maintenance can make it and the objective effectively invulnerable provided you have the energy to sustain it.

My Builds:

I most enjoy using Icy Avalanche on Frost. The combination of Avalanche's armour stripping, coupled with the extra health and status immunity from Icy Avalanche, is great. This build focuses on a balance on Strength and Range, with some Efficiency and Duration. Duration is the least important for Icy Avalanche, but significantly improves base Avalanche.

This build is optimised primarily for CC using Ice Wave Impedance. As Ice Wave's base arc is 45 degrees, and cannot exceed 60 degrees, more than +34% Ran only increases Ice Wave's distance. Since its limited arc restricts its utility even with very high Range, I've elected instead to maintain the other stats, to ensure all abilities are still useful.

Finally, this build is optimised for Snow Globe, to defend stationary objectives. As discussed previously, the best way to increase Snow Globe health is to go for maximum Efficiency and spam it to stack health. Because Snow Globe is so potent both offensively and defensively, building exclusively for it is still an entirely viable build.

Roles

Frost is primarily a more defensive Warframe, with Snow Globe (3) of course being the star here. It is one of the few abilities that can (mostly) trivialise object defence missions like Defence, Excavation and Mobile Defence. Ice Wave (2) and Avalanche (4) are both mainly effective on nearby, closing enemies, and mainly hinder/weaken affected enemies. The Freeze Force (1) and Icy Avalanche (4) Augments offer Frost some supportive capabilities, but these are relatively limited. Overall, Frost is mainly a close range CC/Debuff Warframe, and is fairly effective at this role.

Funnily enough, the ability that has the most potential outside of a CC/Debuff role is Frost's feature ability - Snow Globe. As mentioned previously, its ability to deal True/Finisher damage scaling with enemy health makes it one of the few truly infinite scaling abilities, and arguably Frost's best DPS ability. However, it is limited in DPS potential due to low range, apparent inconsistency with damage dealt, and reliance on terrain for maximum effect.

Combat Use and Summary

Frost's four abilities fill several different roles, and are effective in different scenarios. Snow Globe (3) is fantastic defensively, and in the right terrain against the right enemies, can even be used for high-scaling damage. Ice Wave (2) is a cheap, longer ranged-CC, more so with Ice Wave Impedance. Avalanche (4) is more powerful, completely freezing enemies as well as temporarily depleting their armour.

Freeze (1) isn't much good compared to Frost's other abilities, but its guaranteed freeze on direct impact isn't terrible. Its ability to pop unwanted Snow Globes is very much appreciated. Icy Avalanche offers Frost an element of Tank capability, however it is too reliant on enemy density, and does not quite reach the same levels of survivability that other Tanks are capable of. Beyond low level, and barring Snow Globe's odd True/Finisher damage capability, Frost relies primarily on weapons to deal damage.

If you're looking for a Warframe easily capable of defending objectives and slowing down enemies, Frost is a solid option. His abilities for the most part are fairly simple while still being effective, and he can be built in a myriad of ways. Given Frost is also available relatively early (on Ceres), I strongly recommend grabbing a hold of him and trying him out. For me personally, I don't really enjoy his kit or playstyle, which is too defensive and stationary for my taste (see: my 1/3rd playtime usage of Saryn Prime...).

Weapon Combinations

There are no weapons that synergise notably well with Frost. With Avalanche's ability to temporarily strip armour, you can make good use of weapons with poor armour stripping/bypassing ability, but that's about it. It is worth re-iterating that because frozen enemies are immune to Status effects, Status-focused weapons do not work particularly well with Avalanche.