Update 17 is finally here! With it we got a much anticipated new warframe, Equinox! Wielding the power of both offense and support, Equinox can be an all around valuable and unique member of the team with it being the equivalent of 2 fairly different warframes. But the question is, how is s/he? Let’s find out!

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Overview

Equinox’s overarching mechanic is the well known “Metamorphosis” which transforms Equinox into either version of the warframe, day or night. With each form your abilities change drastically as they become almost opposites to one another. One protects from damage, the other enhances damage. One Heals, the other hurts. With this mechanic Equinox has a very wide variety of situations you can be helpful in either as a healer/tank or a damage dealer yourself. Equinox’s passive effect is an equilibrium effect. Whenever you pick up energy balls you get healed 2 HP and if you pick up a health ball you get 2 energy which is equivalent to an unranked equilibrium mod. Rather small but it can be of some use as I'll mention much later!

Equinox’s abilities at max are as follows:

Sprint speed: 1.0

Shield: 300

Power: 225

Health: 300

Armor: 100

Equinox comes with 1 D, 1 V, and 1 dash aura polarity.

Overall not bad stats, with the armor you won’t be taken out as easily as other frames and the high energy is a godsend since you’ll be using plenty of your abilities.

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Abilities

Metamorphosis

The most fundamental ability of Equinox. Upon using it you change into the mixed form for 2 seconds where you can not use any of your abilities and like most 1 abilities it only costs 25 energy. Once the time is over you will switch to the other form which then applies a buff and changes your abilities to the respective form. The buff for transforming into the nightform is a pretty nice 250 armor buff and a 150 boost to your shields. Every second the ability is active the buffs effects diminish so if you plan on staying buffed often you will find yourself switching fairly frequently to maintain good levels of buffing.

When changing to the day you gain a 15% movement speed boost. It states a 1.25 damage boost but I have noticed no boost in my damage.

When it comes to modding only power strength affects this skill by boosting the various buff values. Duration also comes into play by adding and reducing the duration of the buff. Since the buff decays over time having more duration means it weakens slower than it would otherwise.

Rest & Rage

Rest casts a small AoE that instantly snared enemies and putting them to sleep. While they are asleep they are open to finishers from the front or back. If attacked but not killed while asleep they will be ragdolled and stay that way either for the duration of the skill or if they reach the 50% health threshold. Because it puts enemies to sleep and opens them up for finishers I find that it helps out insanely for stealth since you can just put everyone asleep from around a corner and spin attack them all.

This ability is limited by it’s rather small range. Even modded you won’t be getting that many enemies per cast so if you want to use this to incapacitate larger crowds you should expect to be casting this ability quite a bit. Thankfully it’s cost is small at only 25 for a 2nd ability which can be minimized by power efficiency.

Rage casts a functionally similar AoE when you are near enough to an enemy that speeds them up by 20% and makes them take 50% more damage. This ability isn’t particularly amazing due to the fact that it’s range is as small as it is. If you want to be dealing extra damage to lots of enemies you will be casting it over and over again and only hitting ~3-5 enemies per cast if they are bunched up enough.

One thing to note about both Rest and Rage is that you can’t cast them unless you crosshair is in the range of an enemy meaning you can’t miss and are able to hit the floor 2 meters away from the enemy and it could hit them allowing you hit enemies you can’t see.

When it comes to modding Rage is affected by power strength but not rest by boosting the damage boost and speed buff. Duration and range both affect the abilities in the same way. Duration is duration and range affects the radius of the AoE at the casting location.

Pacify & Provoke

Pacify will put up a damage reducing barrier that reduces the damage dealt by enemies within that range. This ability isn’t very good. While the 50% damage reduction is nice it has some problems. Not only do enemies have to be in the range which is sort of small by default for an ability like this, but as enemies pile on, the energy drain increases. The drain isn’t bad since not many enemies are often in your radius at once, but at the same time if not many enemies are in your radius, the skill is useless. However if the ability is not currently being used by anyone, it costs zero energy to keep up.

Provoke is more useful because it is much more reliable. Instead of enemies having to be in your radius, it’s just you and your team mates. When cast it will set up an aura that boosts the power strength of your teammates by 20%. For every cast of their abilities, it drains 3 energy from you. If it is a channeling ability, you will only incur the activation fee it would appear. Because this affects you as well, you can always keep it on to give your abilities in day form a 20% boost at the cost of only 3 energy after the 10 energy activation. Much like Pacify, it only drains energy when activated and per skill cast so you can keep it up indefinitely.

When modding strength does it’s usual think in boosting the overall power of the skills, duration has no effect because it’s a channeling skill, range boosts the aura radius, and efficiency really has no effect past the activation cost. The energy drained per enemy and per skill used doesn’t appear to change.

Maim & Mend

This is where Equinox can get crazy and kind of confusing. The description states that your allies will get healed per enemy killed, which is sort of true. If an enemy dies in your radius you get “points” based on the kind of enemy you kill (trend is basically tougher units = more points) these points are the value that the skill goes by when deactivated to determine how powerful it will be. The way I understand it, if you get 1000 points for mend you won’t heal 1000, you’ll heal only a fraction of that. For example using Maim, racking up 1914 points and unleashing it on an ancient healer didn’t deal 1914 damage, instead it dealt 946.

Mend appears to have no effects for being in the aura except for the fact that it heals you when it explodes. Just as described for every enemy killed you get “Mend Points” which increase the potency of the heal. The casting animation takes time and you need enemies to die in it first so it’s not a particularly good off the cuff heal but proves to be useful if you have teammates constantly killing enemies and you have enough range on it.

Maim is the damage version of the skill. Upon entering the aura, enemies will be stunned with a similar animation as being blinded for a few seconds while also putting a bleed proc on them. Damage wise, the aura is terrible. The bleed proc is a 1 time damage tick that does low damage followed by a few seconds of even lower damage. It’s not constant damage either, once the bleed proc goes away they won’t take damage anymore. That kind of sucks but it’s fine because the aura damage isn’t what you should look for though, it’s the explosion! With explosive weaponry, teammates helping you kill, and enough range you can easily stack up some very high damage with this skill. The very high potential damage and the small stun make it a very good option.

A few things to note: While there is no cap. When you hit ~65k it will reset to zero but still add on more damage. The explosion dealt by the skill will deal slash damage. The explosions damage will be reduced by the distance from you. Lastly, because the damage is slash it cause enemies in the explosion to be dismembered frequently meaning it is a wonderful tool when paired with a Nekros. The built in equilibrium effect further enhances this little bit of synergy.

When modding this ability power strength does as you would expect, boosts the damage of the aura and explosion multiplier, duration has no effect due to it being a channeling skill, and range boosts the aura and explosion radius.

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Build Strategy

When it comes to modding Equinox I personally favor strength, range, and efficiency over duration with more of an emphasis on range for the third and fourth skill. Duration only has an effect on the buff you get for swapping as well as the 2nd skill, but I rarely utilize those since I only swap when I need to utilize a certain power and not to keep the buffs going. I don’t find Rest and Rage good enough to be used frequently outside of stealth and in those situations the duration is easily enough. The range benefits the third/fourth skill greatly allowing a lot more ease of use for you and your team. Mend and maim absolutely destroy with max range as well since you can cover more enemies meaning you gain points faster allowing you to deal more damage to more enemies.

The rage mod is a wonderful mod to have since you will be likely take a bit of damage here and there. Paired with the ability to heal off the damage you take, you can cast your abilities with a lot more frequency.

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Conclusion

Overall, this warframe is pretty damn cool. I’m not entirely convinced by the late game team play aspect this frame brings to the table past being there for power strength since other frames do the kind of support this frame can do but better, but at the very least it does an amazing job at being a very viable all around frame since it can bring support, tankyness, and offense once you get the hang of it. I’ve had a lot of fun with this warframe personally. Watching enemies slump over when shot while asleep is rather hilarous