Chroma moveset preview

Chroma

Chroma is one of the many Warframes in hit multi-player free-to-play MMO competitive shooty up game Warframe. As a member of the space ninja group known as the Tenno, Chroma is tasked with taking down evil forces that threaten the universe, such as the Grineer and Corpus organizations. Despite being a space ninja, Chroma is one of the many Tenno that forgoes any sense of stealth and goes straight to mauling his enemies with a variety of devastating powers and weapons. Taking cues from mythological dragons, Chroma has elemental breath, and is nearly impenetrable

As each Warframe is basically a blank slate, there's not much else to talk about other than his incredibly unique powers. Chroma is the only character in the game who's gameplay is affected by the game's customization system. By editing the colors of his energy segments (Those would be the little orbs all over his body), Chroma can change which of the four elements he can attack with. These consist of Heat, Cold, Electricity, and Toxin. It definitely makes him a very unique character, and he's considered a fan favorite because of it.

Chroma is also known for being basically a meme brought to life in a pretty spectacular way. Originally, someone on the Warframe forums suggested a dragon character, and this unsurprisingly caught on. Eventually, the dragon idea was brought to life in an incredibly creative way. Chroma is also known for being an absolute pain to unlock without spending money, as his blueprints require the parts of FOUR different characters, which means you have to do double the grinding in order to get. This was most likely done as a weird thematic thing, considering the four characters needed each represent the four elements Chroma can use.

Like most other Warframes, Chroma comes to Smash equipped with a Primary, Secondary, and Melee weapon. These would be the Ogris, an incredibly powerful rocket launcher, the Kohmak, a miniature, rapid fire shotgun, and the Ripkas, buzzsaws that you wear on your hands. But wait, Chroma is also bringing in a fourth weapon! This is the powerful Dominion Blade, his own personal weapon (Now available for 225 Platinum in the marketplace!). Why does Chroma get to break the rules and bring in this massive beast? Well, you'll see soon enough.

Stats
Weight - 108
Running Speed - 1.5
Walking Speed - 1
Air Speed - 0.95
Fall Speed - 1.5

Chroma is a fairly standard heavyweight character. Chroma's overall stance looks like a lot like this (Include image here when you can) piece of concept art, though obviously more specified for his standard costume. This means he's fairly wide, but he's also remarkably tall, around the size of Samus, even while hunched over. Statistics wise, he isn't insanely interesting. He's slow and not great in the air, but there's a bit more to these stats than there would seem at first. But that's, again, for later.

Elemental Dragon
As mentioned above, Chroma's main gimmick is that, depending on his color, he's given a different element for his attacks.However, instead of having to go through a match with a single element at his disposal, Chroma instead can switch his current color via the taunt buttons. Up switches him to Heat, left switches him to Electricity, down to Toxin, and right to Cold. This plays out through a quick animation, no longer than a usual taunt, where Chroma lets out a roar and pounds his chest, causing all the energy spots on his body to switch colors in a flash of light specific to that color. Each element is represented by a color, which you might be able to tell (Remember to format all element names in their colors). Heat is red, Electricity is blue, Toxin is green, and Cold is white. In addition to the parts on his body switching colors, the energy parts on his weapons will as well.

Chroma does still have normal taunts, however. By pressing the taunt button of a corresponding color while already having that one active will have Chroma pull off one of his taunts. He still only has three taunts, as left and right still cause the same taunts.

Costume Elements
While Chroma can switch his element during a match, he also has a unique property in that each of his costumes starts him up with a different element! His first color is his primary red, which grants him Heat. His second turns him a dark blue, and grants him Electricity. His third is white, and gives him Cold. His fourth is a murky green, and grants him Toxin. His fifth is an incredibly light blue, granting him Cold again. His sixth is a dirty yellow, granting him Toxin. His seventh is bright orange, giving him Heat. Finally, his eighth turns him purple, giving him Electricity. As a note, these color changes only affect Chroma's actual suit, his energy segments are kept the same red, blue, green, and white, just changing which one is default with each outfit.

Specials
Neutral Special - Spectral Scream
Chroma pulls back for a moment, before spraying out a blast of elemental energy in front of him. Contrary to the name, this is less a scream and more a full on breath attack. Yes, in regards to animation, it comes out almost exactly like Bowser or Charizard's NSpecs, fittingly enough. However, Chroma has enough subtle differences to make this not completely a clone move. There are two notable changes, the first being that Chroma can actually move while using the attack, and the second is that the breath actually has functionally different hitboxes. However, both these changes also correspond to which element Chroma is currently affiliated with. As you might have been able to guess, the element switching does affect an incredible amount of Chroma's set.

First, we'll start with Chroma's usual default, the Heat element. Surprisingly, this doesn't actually turn the attack into an exact clone of Bowser/Charizard's flame breath attacks. Instead, it functions fairly differently, functioning as a single hitbox that reaches forwards as far as Bowser's flame breath in Melee/Brawl. Which, of course, means that it has pretty pitiful range, but Chroma can move around during it, though he can only walk forwards at his walk speed, which makes him fairly slow. However, this speed is good enough that it can be used fairly well for approaches. On that hitbox, if an opponent touches it, they will take a hefty 10% damage and some decent backwards knockback that can KO at around 200%. It isn't especially strong, but with the walking speed, it is entirely possible to juggle an opponent, which can wrack up damage fairly decently. Heat breath is the most basic, but it has use for approaches, and is always a nice, basic move to fall back on.

All of the breaths have a limit to them, like Bowser and Charizard's breaths. The biggest difference is that Chroma's breath degenerates EVEN FASTER than those two's, due to him being able to move. Each move has different degradation rates, with Heat having the slowest, taking around 1.5x the amount of time for Bowser's breath to degrade. Like with Bowser's breath, this results in the hitbox shrinking, but unlike with Bowser, where the hitbox is still technically there, but the opponent just has to walk into it on their own, Chroma's breath will stun him for a moment as it reaches its lowest degradation. This is a very slight amount of lag, making it easy to punish, but not by much. After this, Chroma will have to wait 5 seconds before he can use his breath again. The breaths charge back up during this 5 second period no matter what point you let go (EG. It can be three seconds of charge before its full again if you cancel out of the move at its mid-point) But during that time, he is gifted with a new move, a roar that hits in front of him, and pushes opponents back slightly. This is mostly a way to get opponents away while you wait for his breath to recharge.

Back to the breaths,next is is Electricity breath. When using this, Chroma will spew out a stream of electricity, obviously. This has the same range as Bowser's flame breath in Smash 4, meaning that its given a fairly decent boost on the range front. The hitbox also acts the same as well, dealing rapid hits of 2%, considerably more than Bowser's, and keeping the opponent locked in hitstun. Chroma can move while while using this, which you think would make it a completely terrifying power... but there are two things holding it back. The first is that Chroma's walking speed is an incredibly abysmal 0.73 speed units during this. This is equivalent to Ganon's walking speed, just so you know. The second is the degradation rate, which is twice as long as the degradation on Bowser's third custom NSpec. If you know what that is, you'll know how fast that happens, and even with the boost of time, its still remarkably bad. Electricity breath is almost entirely to dish out quick damage at close up ranges, and is completely useless while mobile.

Cold breath is a bit more unique than the other two. It behaves as sort of a mix between the previous two, but is also considerably different. For one, the hitbox is more similar to Smash 4 Bowser's range, but slightly shorter, by just a bit. Chroma's movement speed is a fairly better 0.9 units, which makes it slightly faster than Electricity breath's speed, but not by a whole lot. Cold breath's hitbox acts a bit like Bowser's flame breath/the Electricity breath, as it traps opponents and deals multiple hits to them, but it does so in a completely different way. When an opponent is trapped, they will take 3 hits of 4% damage, with the final hit dealing knockback, functionally making it a combo. On that third hit, the opponent will also be frozen, but they can break out of the ice by air dodging out of it. This knockback can KO at 150% damage. For its degradation, the rate is exactly the same as Bowser's normal degradation rate. Cold breath is a good heavy hitter, and, while not one of his best, is potentially his fastest KO move.

Finally, Toxin breath, which is potentially the most unique. Instead of spewing an active hitbox from his mouth, Chroma will now spew a passive one, coming out in the form of a cloud of green smog in front of him. Instead of pointing his head downwards for this, Chroma keeps his head level, making sure that the smog covers up a large area. And while the smog technically has the worst range of all the breaths, covering an area as wide and as tall as Chroma is, it is also simultaneously the one that's able to cover the most area. This is because of many different reasons. First, the smoke actually lingers on stage for 3 seconds. Each cloud deals 1% damage every 10 frames, which can wrack up a lot of damage if you get lucky. The second reason why this can cover a lot of damage is Chroma's movement speed, which is actually FASTER than his normal walking speed, boosting it to 1.2 speed units. As Chroma moves around while spewing this smog, the clouds will merge and are capable of covering a large part of stages. The last reason is that this breath also has the slowest degradation rate of the four breaths, coming out at 2x Bowser's standard degradation rate. This is completely ridiculous, right?

Well, since this is passive damage, it only works on opponents standing in the clouds, during which they are entirely capable of moving, as they take no hitstun. The opponent suffers no movement problems during this either, and if Chroma takes a hit and is knocked out of the attack, every cloud that's currently on stage will disappear. This will also happen if Chroma runs out of time on his breath, basically destroying all the work he did, entirely because he got too greedy. Toxin breath is good for gathering up quick damage, and can easily segue into some of Chroma's heavier KO attacks, but it requires paying attention and planning to pull off well.

Side Special - Afterburn
Chroma rears back, and then flings his head forwards, launching out an elemental projectile based on his current elemental affiliation. Like with Spectral Scream, this move changes drastically depending on the element. In general, the start-up and ending lag are both fairly slow, with Chroma pausing for a moment before launching the projectile. Each projectile also has a special effect that it causes when it hits an opponent. These are status effects, and each one lasts for exactly five seconds (Except one of them) before wearing off. Now, on the actual projectiles themselves.

Heat gives Chroma an unsurprisingly simple fireball attack. This behaves a lot like Bowser's second custom NSpec, except that the fireball is slightly thinner than his. It moves fairly quickly, and has a range of a full main battlefield platform. On contact with the opponent, it will deal 5% damage, and cause knockback that can KO at 180%. Overall, this is incredibly simple, and meant as a basic projectile move, but its slow start-up makes it a bit hard to spam, though Chroma can only have 2 on screen at a time. This start-up is to make up for the status effect. When hit with the fireball, as soon as the opponent hits the ground, they will catch on fire and start to uncontrollably panic. Opponents will gain 0.8 speed units, but lose some traction in the process. This sudden speed boost can be disorienting, which in turn makes it easy for Chroma to take advantage of. Opponents can still attack during this period however. An important detail to note about every status effect is that they do not stack, and the opponent will become immune to the effect for 5 seconds after it wears off, preventing Chroma from inflicting it on them twice  in a row.

Second is Electricity, which has Chroma shoot out a very large ball of electricity. This isn't like the fireball, as this is like a miniature version of Pikachu's Final Smash, a full orb of electrical currents. It's a fairly big projectile, taking up around the size of a Party Ball. Though, calling it a projectile is a slight stretch. It does move, but it moves at a rate that is only just barely noticeable. It has a range of 2 Battlefield Platforms, however, which means it can be on-stage for a very long time. It's still capable of being cancelled out by other projectiles, however. When an opponent touches the orb, they'll be shocked for an incredibly pitiful 2% damage and literally no knockback. However, the opponent is also completely stunned, frozen in a frame of their hurt animation. Unlike other status effects, this only lasts for 2 seconds, which gives Chroma just enough time to hit the opponent, preferably with a nice, heavy KO move. Chroma can only have one of these on stage at a time.

Cold is up next. Cold has Chroma fire an icicle from his mouth. This is significantly smaller than the other two projectiles, equivalent to a slightly longer version of Samus's missiles. It moves at a speed even faster than the fireball, and doesn't have any acceleration problems like some of faster projectiles in Smash. It also has infinite range, but Chroma can only shoot one at a time, which means its very hard to hit with. If it does manage to hit, it deals 10% damage, with knockback that can KO at 150% damage. This is a considerably decent KO projectile, but being difficult to hit with doesn't make it that viable. However, this can be made up for with its status effect. When the opponent lands, they will turn a bit blue, and slow down by half their speed. This affects all of their animations besides projectiles, and is a very good way for the already fairly slow Chroma to even things out against faster opponents.

Finally, back to Toxin. Chroma will now spew out a stream of toxic green sludge from his mouth. This has very low range compared to every other projectile, and can practically be counted as a melee move. Some of Chroma's actual melee attacks have farther range, actually. It still reaches out a Battlefield Platform forwards, still giving it some considerable reach. This is technically the fastest of these moves, as it lasts the shortest amount of time, but that also means that its incredibly easy to whiff with. When the attack is used, the sludge will drop to the ground and then vanish. This isn't a Splatoon set. Anyway, on contact, the opponent will take 4% damage alongside light knockback with some bad hitstun. The opponent is now poisoned, and will take 3% damage each second for the entire time the effect remains. This doesn't do much else, but if you combined it with the Toxin Spectral Scream, Chroma is able to cause incredible amounts of damage while barely even doing anything.