The shield maiden, muscle mommy, justice rains from above - Hildryn!
Release date: 2019-03-08
Passive: Utilizes shields instead of energy to power her abilities. Overshields protect Hildryn’s Health pool from damage types that normally bypass shields to directly affect health, such as Toxin damage and Combat Discipline’s health loss per kill.
Hildryn’s Shield Gating grace period is 3.5 seconds when fully charged.
Balefire - Charge and launch devastating bolts of fire (the game lies, it’s actually electricity).
Pillage - Pillage a percentage of Shields and Armor of nearby enemies to replenish Hildryn’s own Shields and Overshields.
Haven - Create a shield aura around allies. Enemies that approach shielded allies will take damage.
Aegis Storm - Take the skies and rain Balefire rockets down on the enemy. Nearby enemies are blasted into the air where they will create an Energy Orb every few seconds. When shields run out the enemies are smashed into the ground.
Acquisition: Main blueprint can be purchased from Little Duck upon reaching Rank 2 with Vox Solaris. Component blueprints can be acquired from Exploiter Orb.
I wanted to revisit Hildryn first cause she’s gotten a massive glow-up since her original post in the form of her new augment, Aegis Gale. No longer is she forced into the incredibly boring Blazing Pillage spam gameplay, she can now take to the skies and rain down death like she was intended to! She went from a frame I farmed purely so I can subsume her for Pillage to one of my absolute favorites all thanks to this augment. The augment allows you to turn your Balefire while in Aegis Storm into a burst fire cannon, firing out 4 projectiles with a single button press and adding extra damage to it scaling with your maximum shield capacity (which given that you are Hildryn, should be pretty impressive). Changing it from the clunky charge-up into a burst fire alone is a huge QoL improvement already (especially with the accessibility settings letting you turn it into a proper full auto), but the extra scaling damage is what really pushes your Balefire into a proper endgame capable weapon. My one complaint is that I really wish this would just replace your actual primary fire, having to hold down M3 is pretty awkward. I know there is the augment for her 1 that you could run with this one, but no one is gonna be doing that given how much stronger the alternate fire is compared to the charged primary.
As a big hildryn fan I would like to remind people that this mod exists, 300 shields every 5 seconds. Great for suplementary shielding or keeping you topped up during luls in enemy spawns.
Her rework made her so much more fun and viable, I love the new balefire augment - the only wish I have is that they made it replace the primary fire so I dont have to click the alt button. Her shield management is still a bit tough in higher level missions like EDA since taking damage reduces how much you can dish out and if you suddenly find yourself surrounded with fully armor stripped enemies, you are seconds away from dying due to low shields, but in the rest of the content she is amazing.
I’ve heard good things about the blazing pillage augment but I can never figure out what to drop in order to fit it into the build, it’s already tight enough as it is.
I will also take this opportunity to complain about her prime skin being inferior to the base one, I love the simplicity and silhouette of the base hildryn and I will die on the hill that the prime is too tacky and detailed. Einheri is neat but I wish I could remove some of the glowy bits.
My solution to the “running out of shields” problem, which is especially prevalent against the Infested, was subsuming Rebuild Shields (Condemn is a solid option too) over her 3 which you don’t really use now with no need for it for Blazing Pillage anyway. Pay 500 shields (or much less if you run efficiency) to get almost 7k back every 12sec, pretty good deal!
Edit: Forgot to mention Sentinels are also very good with the Guardian mod, couple it with the Bond mod that I forgot the name of that reduces all companion ability CDs when killing enemies with 3 or more statuses and a Tazicor or Helstrum on your sentinel to prime for you and you can lower the 30sec CD by a lot.
Or just Cast Pillage with the augment. You do still use it, right?
The whole point of having Aegis Gale is to free yourself from the Blazing Pillage spam. That and it’s genuinely hard to fit in two augments at the same time without making serious sacrifices to the build.
Yeah, that’s the issue I had when I tried it.
Aegis storm feels much better with the rework for better mobility and finally being able to cast abilities while it is active. It’s a little unfortunate that the Alt-Fire augment for Balefire does require the player to be using Aegis Storm, because it does feel significantly better to use than the charge fire mode. I do wish that it was possible to use other weapons than balefire while Aegis Storm is active, and being able to aim down sights to try to get Hildryn a little more out of the way when you’re trying to aim.
Balefire did get some buffs too recently like staggering enemies instead of ragdolling them, and charged shots consuming less shield and a slight increase in damage.
Hildryn has always been a frame I want to enjoy. Having such a massive pool of shields that’s used as energy is a cool concept, but I’ve always struggled to feel like I’m making an impact with my abilities, and there are other frames I would rather use as a weapon platform.
Combined with Lavos, she gives me total coverage for Sortie and Nightmare modifiers. I have an extremely cursed Perspicacity Hildryn when the mission type calls for it too, since she can just keep casting it at will.
With the new augment, she is highly functional as a tank, having high radial damage, a large AoE CC, and party survival support. Really the only thing she lacks is the ability to put Fortifier on her Balefire.
Also, having spreadsheet Avenger Outburst combos, Balefire actually benefits hugely from the combo, in case you want to pump more damage into your funny little death cannon. In a stroke of good fortune, Ceramic Dagger is coming back next week too, so you have the perfect Outburst companion!
