The protector of Mars, spin 2 win, Khora’s new cat friend - Inaros!
Release date: 2016-03-04
Passive: On fatal injury and entering Bleedout, Inaros entombs himself into a Sarcophagus and incarnates as a sand version of himself, able to revive himself by melee attacking enemies and siphoning their life force.
Desiccation - Blast enemies with a wave of cursed sand that blinds them and steals their health.
Sand Storm - Become a sandstorm. Inaros devours enemies pulled into his whirlwind, healing himself.
Scarab Shell - Activate to form Armor by draining Inaros’ Health. Activate again to stop the formation early. The protective layer reduces incoming Damage and absorbs Status Effects.
Scarab Swarm - Summon a Scarab Swarm to attack enemies with guaranteed Corrosion Status. Damage scales with Inaros’ Health. Enemies killed while immersed in the swarm summon a Swarm Kavat that fights alongside Inaros and guides the scarabs to other enemies.
Acquisition: Main and component blueprints are obtained from the Sands of Inaros quest.
Inaros’ rework turned him from a frame with no useful abilities to a frame that actually has a kit worth building around! The new Sand Storm seems like the clear winner of the rework, this ability can do some serious work on a high power strength Elemental Sandstorm build with a Slash/Viral melee statstick. The spin 2 win is back! It helps that Scarab Shell also likes high power strength, scaling it’s armor value with it. The one ability that I just couldn’t find a use for is Scarab Swarm, you could technically use it with some green shards to fully armor strip enemies in 7ish seconds but at that point why not subsume Terrify or Pillage with Precision Intensify and just do it instantly. Also, Sand Storm does Slash damage so armor is not really an issue for Inaros. This is likely his subsume slot, plenty of good options with him actually wanting to mod for something besides HP and armor now!
Here’s an absolute banger build I cooked up:
- Max range + Elemental Sandstorm.
- Plague Keewar modded for Viral (innate), Gas, Electric. Melee Exposure in the arcane slot (it activates every time you nado, and works with Elemental Sandstorm).
- Helminth Sickening Pulse over anything other than his tornado.
Basically spin around the tileset vacuuming up as many enemies as you can. After the tornado ends, cast Sickening Pulse immediately. Funny business ensues.
It actually does pretty well in steel path missions, but it does almost no damage to high armour units, even with 10 corrosive stacks. Also completely useless against Overguard units, since for some reason Elemental Sandstorm doesn’t seem to apply to them.
I don’t especially have any insights, but with the rework, Inaros is going from “so boring and awkward to play that I never use him” to “always worth considering.”
The Daikyu/Nikana life steal combo makes him essentially immortal.
Yes! I was an Inaros main for most of my time playing, so when I came back to the game having him be largely considered bad was sort of a kick in the nuts.
But this new kit is great! Keeps the same general theme- spooky mummy guy that doesn’t really understand what this “dying” thing is- while also making him new and fun.
Edit: and most importantly, pocket sand was preserved.
I used to not care about inaros, but now I’m interested in playing around some more with him from time to time. I’m playing around with a heat sandstorm + heat elemental ward + archon vitality build, and it’s doing it for normal dante farming.
