So before I start here’s my build for reference:
Review
So overall I think Jade is a cool concept, having a ‘biblically accurate’ angel warframe is a nice change from another speedster frame or whatever cali…something is meant to be. I know some people find the whole, well if you played the quest you know; thing a bit uncomfortable but in retrospect its a pretty masterful move by DE because a biblically accurate angel should be unsettling. Onto the review:
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Lights Judgement:
This is a pretty great ability, it effectively acts like blood altar but without requiring an enemy and with extra synergy with other parts of her kit. It does suffer a bit from the same issue as Trinitys ‘well of life’ in that despite being an objectively good ability its a bit overshadowed by the rest of her kit. -
Symphony of Mercy:
This is basically a 3rd aura, and honestly outright unbalanced compared to other support frames but it is fun. I like to use the strength buff before casting my 4 for the free boost and then maintain damage to buff my own glory weapon, occasionally switching to the shield buff to quickly recharge if I’m taking a lot of damage. Its worth noting that this scales with affinity range so it can benefit from PoE consumables and the Vazarin focus school. I also suspect the % shield regen could make for an interesting tanking method when combined with primed redirection but I haven’t tried that yet. -
Ophanim Eyes:
Another strong one and Jades subsume the defense strip is not only good but also stacks addatively with corrosive projection allowing you to speed up armor strip by about a second. The ability also has slow but most enemies die before it can make a difference (The abilities own damage is not worth mentioning). On Jade only this can also revive allies but it really doesn’t come up much. -
Glory on High:
Mandatory if you want to look like an awesome angel instead of a pile of wet towels this ability is also fortunately pretty damn strong. The drain isn’t crazy and the weapon is also strong in its own right, 30-50% damage reduction is also icing on the cake; combined with aerodynamic and aviator you can hit abnout 75% damage reduction in this state.
Glory:
Once again here’s my build for reference:
Easily one of the stronger exalted weapons right now being somewhere beteen dex pixia and peace makers in terms of raw damage output while being easier to use than both. It can handily take down level 200 steel path grineer without any armor strip, and with range and sufficient enemy density it can maintain her 2 forever all by itself, particularly in steel path. It can also synergize with her 1 for a massive room nuke but honestly thats overkill.
If you want more single target damage simply swap fulmination for pistol elementalist to roughly double its damage output.
Conclusion
Overall Jade is a really strong frame who’s fun to use with a kit where every ability has its place and feels worth using… yet its feels vaguely dissapointing. Despite being good it doesn’t really feel like Jades kit. Particularly with her 2 and 4 it feels more like DE took all the things they should have done to rework, Hildryn, Equinox and Titania and combined them all together to make a new frame instead.
Overall I’m happy with jade but I think I would have been happier if Hildryn had a 4 that felt this good, if Equinox wasn’t saddled with awkward limitations and uncapped energy drains, and if Titania (while still strong) just had a little more usability and synergy in her kit.
I think old modding habits are really inhibiting your Jade. She’s got two aura slots and a healing ability. To me, this immediately screams Combat Discipline + Archon Intensify; and it’s really hard to justify not using it.
Light’s Judgment has one other important effect besides the healing: it tags enemies with her passive. Not only does the passive make targets more vulnerable to damage; it also sets them up to be detonated by her 4, Glory on High.
As for Glory on High, please keep in mind that damage types, statuses, and enemy resistances just got massively reworked. Yes, Viral + Slash/Heat is still great; but blast just went from zero to hero. If you’re encountering enemies sporadically, the viral+heat build will serve you well. But if you are fighting hordes, please10x just try a blast build (I’m using blast+electric). Paradigm-shift type effectiveness.
A little more specifically, I’m curious as to why you’ve built in so much range. With her 2 and 3, I’ve personally been very reluctant to sacrifice strength. I got the impression from your overview that you weren’t focusing too much on her 1, but I see why you wouldn’t want to spam it with that efficiency. I’ve seen a few people opt for Blind Rage, but it’s always paired with Overextended, which means there are essentially three slots serving range (counting Stretch), which really only serves to boost your coverage of the Glory detonation, which may or may not actually be effective; all while also tanking your efficiency. I slotted in a Casting Speed shard so I can just cast twice if needed, and also have better control of the coverage.
She’s a great frame, and a great opportunity to try out some new damage combos and techniques. She very much feels like a spiritual foil to Dagath, so I went back and refactored Dagath to complement my playstyle for Jade. Fun stuff.
So my build largely focuses on using her 4, I have tried nuking with her 1/4 but her 4 on its own is so powerful that it doesn’t really come up much. Range directly increases the AOE size of glory (with or without alt fire) and past a certain point glory can fully sustain her 2 because it has so much range that the 10% tag rate becomes enough due to all the overlapping hits. last I checked her 1 can’t currently trigger archon intensify though thats likely a bug.
Interesting. I guess that’s your helminth slot, then. There’s not really much else to do with the ability in that case.
I’ve been using her pretty heavily, and I’ve never had any issue with Archon Intensify. Of course, you need Combat Discipline to trigger it reliably.