Warframe - Understanding Equinox's Pacify & drain (Duration vs Efficiency)

Hello everyone,

Might be some issues with the recording, sorry in advance. Feel free to test out this for yourselves however

So this is something that I am constantly explaining to people (especially at Reddit) about Night form Equinox's 3 and how you are supposed to be building for it. I'm seeing a whole lot of "build for Duration" or "Only build for Range" and those builds are honestly not good, and I'll demonstrate why.

The short of it is: Duration does nothing for your Drain when it comes to Pacify, only Efficiency, which is the reason why I've told people over the years it is a core stat for many of Equinox's builds, especially the Night form ones based around Pacify. Not only does Efficiency significantly reduce the Energy/s drain down (to a min of .12/s), but it also does not impede any form of Energy Restoration (directly from Abilities, conversion from mods, pick ups, on kill activations, energy pads or regens).

Because of this, even just Energy Nexus alone can be enough to not only sustain Equinox with all the Energy she needs to maintain Pacify, but also cause her to actually gain Energy amidst enemies depending on how many there are, how much your Regen is (because Energy Nexus is the only one here), and if you are using Nourish.

With just Zenurik's Wellspring (5 en/s) and Energy Nexus (3 en/s), you'd get 8 en/s regen. At a rate of .12 en/s per enemy, you could sustain Pacify among 66 enemies and still gain roughly .6 en/s, as if you had on the Aura Energy Siphon. And that's without Nourish's multiplier.

Gloom will also allow you to Regen Energy from things like Energy Nexus, but only while there are no enemies within the Ability Radius. So unlike with Pacify, you cannot infinitely slow enemies with Gloom like you can with Pacify + Peaceful Provocation, especially with multiple Night Form Equinox running similar builds.

This is why in recent times I tend to not run Gloom as much because while there are some builds I can use where I can maintain Gloom, Pacify and Mend throughout the entire mission, it is a lot easier to use an Ability such as Ophanim Eyes or Terrify with the Augment to "freeze" enemies, so I can basically have unlimited Energy through just casual pick ups/Energizing Shot.

The other thing to keep in mind is that Duration also does not reduce the amount of Energy your Ability costs when you cast it, which with some Abilities and builds ends up with you quickly burning through your Energy, especially with some of the late game Day form builds you can do with Maim and other Abilities such as Reave, while buffing things with Rage/Provoke. Some Duration is nice for Abilities, but you do not want to forgo running any Efficiency with a lot of builds, or you end up having to run things like Equilibrium (which is a waste of a core mod slot on most builds) or Arcane Energize (which even maxed is also a waste of a slot for most builds that are properly optimized).

I pretty much never run either of those things on any of my builds and I regularly do high level/level cap stuff on most of my Equinox.

That's all for now, and I hope this can clear some things up. As usual questions and comments below.

The music is MC2 by Fat Jon

Timestamps

0:00 Equinox build (Duration)
0:20 1st run (drain out timing)
2:00 Equinox build (Efficiency)
2:08 2nd run (Drain out timing)
6:40 Adding Energy Nexus.
6:55 3rd Run (w/Energy Nexus & Nourish)