Limbo's a bit like this.
Sounds like a whoooollllleeeeee lot of work compared to "Press 4 to win" Ash, Nova, others. Now, in high level gameplay he does sound useful because those are extreme conditions requiring extreme, broken measures. But again, there are less temperamental frames and powers for that. (Nyx comes to mind.)
Secondly, the Limbo Theorem quest isn't easy.
Isn't easy? It's a goddamn nightmare even with a Press 4 to win frame. I solo'd the whole thing and I've got to say, those Excavations were the most frustrating thing I've ever had to do in WF. (I erupted about it a page or so ago actually.) The Arch Wing Interceptions were, by comparison, 1000x easier even with a shit Archwing, but that's entirely due to the AI in Archwing Interception being garbage.
But thanks for reminding me how much I loathed doing the quest to get the frame I haven't even used yet.
If anything, he's -the- hipsterframe and you've probably never played with him.
I have but since he didn't banish me I didn't notice what he did. The world all kind of looks the same to you when you're Bladestormin' 24/7.
I wouldn't say that there are any frames that are 'useless'. Though some are definitely more situational than others.
Some frames wreck and some frames support a group in a very specific mission type or at a certain difficulty level. But seriously, some are almost useless IMO. I like Zephyr, but I'm not sure she brings anything to the table other than the player's own enjoyment of the flight and gravity mechanics. Her 4 power is practically detrimental to the team even at max damage. I've yet to get the syndicate mod that would remove its biggest problem: the fact you can't do shit to the guys being hit by it.
In a game that for me has become about repetitive grinding easy stuff, playing a WF with nuance that doesn't do speed gameplay well, or can't kill 25 dudes in 3 seconds with the push of a button, just isn't going to get my time. If WF had more evolved gameplay where that nuance had a real place in the grand scheme of the design, it'd be a different story. But as long as WF is based around recyclable missions where you have to kill hundreds of dudes, what matters is how fast a WF kills shit. I suppose I'm just jaded because the days when anything less than Lvl 30 being a challenge are long behind me. So the entire game is either too easy, or winnable by the skin of your teeth or the right combination of frames together with the right mission type.
TBH, after doing sorties for a couple weeks, I'd welcome more consistent higher level gameplay like that, where shit is on a knife's edge. As it is, you're in for at least a 20 minute grind on Survival before enemies get that tough, and that's just more of the same we've all been doing since beta.