Warframe: Valkyr rework some thoughts

Valkyr rework seems to fail to hit the desired goals.

Valkyr’s rework focuses on her core identity: the rage of a berserker. She’s receiving a top-to-bottom ability refresh, including an updated Passive that leans into a new mechanic: Rage. With this, we intend to capture the essence of reckless commitment. No breaks allowed.

Currently, Valkyr has one of the highest Armor stats, with room to acquire much more, but that Armor became meaningless with Hysteria’s invulnerability. Here, we aim to amplify Valkyr’s Armor capabilities, combined with her death prevention while above 75% Rage and Life Steal improvements.

This update is an improvment to ripline and warcry everything else is well worse or not very good still. Paralysis still remains rather weak, just loses it major weakness. Hysteria gets a major nerf and reasoning behind it is odd. For me seems she going to move towards shield gate spam and abusing her passive for invulnerability over health tanking. Core problem here is damage taken vs total health pool. Extra stats are nice but if you’re taking 21 million damage and your health pool is 19 million you still die.

I don’t believe these changes fully address her weaknesses. This update is an improvement, but Valkyr is still overshadowed by other options, making her difficult to justify using in high-level content. Her identity as a melee berserker remains intact, but the changes still leave gaps in her survivability and overall effectiveness. I would have taken a different appoarch being inspired by wolveine from Xmen comics. Giving her the ablity to heal lethal damage and unable to die. Change how the Hysteria invulnerability works, linking it to the new passive. I would have also increased her base range on everything including melee attacks.

Here some quick thoughts on the rest

Passive changes, bonus damage is nice. I don’t like adding invulnerability here but if you take my lethal damage idea this be nice cushion. This Rage is consumed to grant invulnerability with no cooldown, but the decay rate will be key. It better than nothing but I don’t think the trade off elsewhere is worth it. 

Stat Changes

Health and armor increases are a welcome change, though I would have liked to see an increase in her base energy pool to better support her abilities. Normal valkyr only has 100 base energy. I don’t think this changes much really.

Rip Line

Rip Line is a clear improvement—faster, able to group enemies, and includes a melee attack. However, the base range needs to be increased. Valkyr does not build range.

Warcry

Warcry can now be recast, lasts longer, and applies within affinity range instead of ability range. This just good news.

Paralysis

Paralysis now costs energy and applies melee damage vulnerability and a slow, with an increased radius. While this is good improvement, it’s still a weak ability overall. Feels like a waste really.

Hysteria

The removal of invulnerability is a major shift. The rework compensates with increased armor from Warcry, status immunity, and a lower energy drain (5 instead of 15), but this still reduces Valkyr’s ability to survive in high-level missions.

• Lifesteal is now a flat 50 per hit, rather than percentage-based. This is a massive downgrade, scaling off power strength it still a major loss.
• Self-reflection damage is removed, which is a positive change.

Talons

While Talon stat changes are nice, the attack range increase from 1.7m to 2.15m feels inadequate. Something closer to 5m would be more appropriate, or even introducing ranged attacks for more flexibility.

Overall Concerns

Valkyr will still struggle to health-tank in content above level 500, which is increasingly common. Health tanking has always been less effective due to requiring multiple components to function properly, and Valkyr’s low melee range combined with her close-range focus hurts her damage output compared to other frames. She can still deal damage, but less effectively than many alternatives.

I feel like rage system could work like Baruuk, hysteria changes feel like a massive downgrade. I’m willing to test these changes, but I don’t believe they fully fix Valkyr’s issues. There were many possible directions to take her rework that could have enhanced her playstyle while preserving her melee berserker identity. Hopefully, further adjustments will be considered based on player feedback. Right now things don’t look good some ways it makes her worse for the content I enjoy.