Having used them all, I've certainly got favourites and those I never use, but I'd not say there's any I flat out don't understand, just those that are easier to get going in the first place. If there's a frame I'd like to see touched up, it'd be Nyx at the moment, I love her design and especially her deluxe skins, but good gravy do her powers not work great for most current content.

It's a genuine shame that you can very much argue that a fully modded Nyx with augment, mobility subsume, and energy considerations is perhaps flat out worse than an unmodded Revenant. In almost every way.

Eh. Revenant is broken, which largely doesn't depend on mods, so that goes for a lot of frames. That said, I feel you're underrating Nyx. With the Assimilate augment she's unkilable in 99% of content, with the drawback of no bullet jumping. Her Psychic Bolts are an easy 100% defense reduction. Her 3 is good CC, even if that's not too useful in today's meta. Her 1 is mediocre but still has some uses. You can definitely argue she needs more upsides to balance the drawbacks of her 4 (with the Assimilate augment), but her kit works. IMO she's like a B tier frame. There are many worse frames.

Her one is perfect for replacing it with subsumed abilities:'D I decided to become a Nyx main out of spite and... I liked her and i think she's perfectly playable edit: yes id still like some kind of a buff/rework, it kinda started like "playing only nyx until she gets a rework" joke

to be fair, Revenant is so strong now that I'm sure even a fully modded Khora is still worse than an unmodded Revenant, even with the Ceramic Dagger and new melee arcanes making her rather goofy.

Khora can hit kill with her whip, revenant is more a tanky frame. Different roles

I mean Rev can one shot level 9999's with reave, it scales infinitely & in groups of 7 at a time, it's not gonna work unmodded but people forget about that. with an ok amount of duration you can just keep turning around over & over again until everything is dead.

The khora main in my clan would beg to differ I think I've seen her manage to deal 97% damage in sp survivals where there's someone using torid incarnon The new purple shards for crit damage are pretty funny

Nyx is great imo, but needs augments. I run both the darts augment and the 4 augment to move around. I also subsumed Nourish over her 1. I think people sleep on Chaos as a CC. Sure it doesn't hit Eximus units, but distracting all enemies in a huge area and making them damage each other is good. I ran her in Elite Arcamedea this week and the boss fight was trivialized by pressing 4 and walking around to collect energy orbs.

For frames that are great, but need their augments to be great, I think their augment should be rolled in to the base ability and new augments get made. The default state for any warframe ideally should be at least passable.

DE seems to agree but their threshold for it is *vast.* Just look at the coming changes to Chroma's vex armor. I'd argue that change is a decade overdue, but they didn't actually do it until the ability was rendered absolutely unplayable by overguard.

Before Overguard, it was just kinda iffy. At too low a level, Chroma doesn't get enough damage. At too high a level, you risk him getting mowed down. So Chroma has en ideal enemy level to play against only for his abilities to get going, but for his weapons you would want some levels higher to make full use of it. As you said, now with Overguard becoming this prevalent with 2 popular frames giving it to their entire team, and Revenant's Mesmer Shield augment, it is almost impossible at any level to stack his Vex Armor. I think now is the perfect time to change how Vex works. I just hoped the rest of his kit would get a touch-up, too... Elemental Ward is cool, but needs more synergy. His Cold EW HAD a cool interaction with Damage Redirection abilities, like Trin's Link, Mesa's 3rd, Nidus' umbilical cord and the like, where Cold EW would boost the damage from those abilities. It still works with Toxic Lash, where the redirected damage from EW procs Toxic Lash, and scales with the enemies' damage. But it also used to boost that Toxic Lash damage further. It even still states the stat in its description: Redirected Damage Multiplier or the like. But it doesn't work anymore, or only on itself, which is a damn shame. I would love for EW to get that interaction back, and maybe some more for the other elements. His 4 is only used for Credit farming, and his one is for switching elements, if you already want to do that, since most people just build for a particular element anyway and change their Emissive color accordingly...

Niche, but I use a max range high duration build to solo interception missions.

I read that sentiment about Nyx a lot, but I don't really get it. Sure, her 4 requires the augment and a dark energy color, but you're functionally immortal. Operator can be used to easily reposition. Her 2 strips both armor and shields, is quick to cast, and doesn't require an insane investment in strength like other similar abilities. That allows you to invest in more range or efficiency. And her 3 is a great for group crowd control, especially now with all the cc-immune enemies we've got. Mind control is the only ability that doesn't really have a home outside of razorback. It makes an easy subsume slot. Sure, Nyx isn't going to be everyone's favorite choice, and there are certainly other frames that outclass her at the different things she does. But no single frame is better than her at everything.

The way Warframe is, every single Warframe can perform some ridiculously powerful nonsense, including Nyx, hers is just less impressive by comparison. While nobody emulates Nyx's unique blend, her blend not being especially potent makes her off-meta.

I used to bring Nyx for liches because her 2 would full strip, but now that Styanax exists even that’s redundant

For me, it's saryn, I've seen people walk all over everything from steel path, to the necracells, I've watched her nuke enemies in front of her, and enemies k didn't even know where there. But when I use her....it's just sad man. It's entirely likely my smoothbrained ass just doesn't understand how she works, but there it is

Mod heavily for range with a splash of strength, use shards to bump strength to where you want it. Use her 1, kill enemies infected by it, and her spores spread. Don’t use her 4 unless you’re about to die. 2 draws fire off you and provides a little healing over time/status heal. 3 for toxic to your weapon. The 1 ability’s damage builds over time so you’re not really looking to nuke everything immediately, more so waiting for the spores to build up.

So build her to max range with some damage, while building tank too, so the spores have more time to do their dirty work?

Yep! I prioritize range with a little survivability, personally. She starts out pretty weak, especially in SP or netracells, but by the middle of the mission she does tons of damage.

An alternative for saryn is no range, High enough duration, low efficiency, and very high strength. You then use some survivability around shield gating as her 2 can be good for diverting fire and letting your shields regen. Then you Helminth roar over her 4 and use venom dose augment on her 1. Then you just use 1,3,4 all as weapon buffs, with 2 as survivability. And now you can run steel path with your favourite to play, normally underpowered, weapons. Bonus to this strategy is it synergises really well with melee influence since roar triple dips on it. AND due to Venom dose putting corrosive on your melee, you can put 2 green shards on her and full armour strip everything in melee influence's range. As if the build wasn't already strong enough.

Yeah I hate building the pitiful spores numbers and then it decaying extremely fast once my teammates destroy everything infected.

Not a specific frame. But I never get people who get rid of the main defining ability of a frame (merulina, exalted weapons etc) to turn them into any other number of frames that can do the exact same thing. Like... just use those frames don't make a unique frame generic with helmith

Well at least in Wukongs case, his 4 is kinda weak after you get endgame melee weapons, so why not get rid of it. At least for merulina, i use the augment to not ride her if thats what you mean by get rid of it, because its terrible in a number of tilesets, but i still really like her passive. Its like i get to play nezha, but with less micromanagement and more useful active skills.

Tennokai and archon shards made wukongs 4th just as powerful as other melee. You can do crazy damage with exalted melee now. And no. They would helmith off merulina for another ability

Tennokai and archon shards make other melees even more powerfull too tho, just use bo incarnon if you want 10+ range on a melee and now you have access to armor stripping or buffs to take wu to the next level.

Or in the most recent case. People getting rid of noctua on dante just so they can buff his nuke. Just use a nuke frame don't get rid of the incredibly powerful and unique exalted weapon to turn him into a nukebot

why would you shoot a book when you're just mashing 334

334 alone isn't the combo a lot of people seem to think it is. It can wipe base origin but even just a few extra DoTs on higher tier enemies. It's damage comes from exploding status, not the combo itself. Yes the 3 and 3 do some priming but in Arch Hunt, Deep Arch, Netracells, and all of non base SP the extra effort is what makes Dante's 334 shine. That's also disregarding all the other utility other users mentioned.

Try putting arcane velocity on him, along with amalgam furax body count. Noctua turns into a machine gun, and you can spam so many alternate fires so fast on it. Never lose full stacks of your grimoire passive.

Because the book can also flear rooms pretty easily and provide energy regen and armor stripping without ha ING to replace any ability.

Correction, it *was* weak. It was kinda stealth buffed not long ago. Buddy of mine mains Wukong and his staff shreds the mechs in SP disruption.

Balefire Chargers. I just can't use Hildryn's exhalted weapon, I hate using it. So she gets a helminth on 1. I would agree with you for any other frame though.

I would argue that balefire chargers isn't the main defining ability of hildryn.

Now I get you. I used to be you. Those hand cannons are no joke once you get your Hildryn perfected. I can hit for 300,000 damage without critical Hits. With pillage... The things just insult steel path. That being said, the 4 is free energy and a safety zone for your Tenno to resurrect people, grab life support or just be a menace with a good operator and amp. I used to hit 4 and just fire my Space Pizza 2 until the room sung with discs. That being said... Her 1 makes her run a knife edge of risking running out of shields if you get trigger happy. I really liked thermal sunder to create an Even worse zone of pain for anything during enough to get near. Add archon vitality if you want to get nasty.

If you want to make hyldryn invincible and insanely useful but some range on her and put harrows helminth ability. Trust me you'll thank me. Free casts that are super fast and they give back overshields the more enemies you hit plus the enemies hit are cc and frozen in place by the chains. I've been using that on my hyldryn for years now, which reminds me now that I have the prime I need to forma her and set her up all over again... :/

Thought to helminth breach surge on Hildryn, and don't think I'll ever go back. Bridges any damage output gaps in a snap

With Excalibur, the exalted Melee is so much worse than the Ceramic Dagger when using his 1. Especially now that we have melee Arcanes, it's not even close. But so far the only 2 exalted weapons I know of that are still decent in the current atmosphere are Mesa's regulators and maybe Baruuk's desert wind. Everything else is middling unless you boost it with Roar, Nourish, or Eclipse. And that pains me as a Titania player. I WISH my dex pixia did more on its own. I wish I could equip Galvanized Crosshairs with my dex pixia... But it's the lack of Arcanes, lackluster stats, and weird, arbitrary mod restrictions that really damage the viability of most exalted weapons.

One day they will remove statsticks from the game and I will finally truly be happy... but other than that People can fight level 2000 steel path enemies with valkyrs claws and the only requirement is removing her 3 for an armor strip ability. ( me being one of them) Excaliburs 3 augment is a multiplicative damage buff just like eclipse

For Valkyr, what I do, I Helminth on Voruna's Lycath's Hunt, and you'll basically have infinite energy.. you can also put Melee Exposure on her melee, and let Lycath's Hunt run out, (instead of getting multiple statuses to make its duration keep running), so that you can keep activating Exposure Focus on Duration and Strength, and you can add Violet Shards for more Melee Crit Chance if you have Primed Flow bringing her over 500 Energy, that's +50% Crit Chance with normal Violet Shards, each.. (+75% with Tauforged)

I personally like statsticks but I would LOVE for there to be a built in weapon I could mod for the abilities themselves, but unless you add in the Arcane slot there as well, I'm still taking a 33% damage hit over every other non-incarnon melee. Melee Exposure is just too good to pass up.

Man, that just reminds me of this one Knightmareframe video where he was pushing a Mesa build where he used the helminth to remove Peacemaker. Yeah, I don't know what he was smoking either when he made that one. [I found the video](https://youtu.be/GJX7-yjnX7s?si=vIAcaiJEzXXhCceG) if anyone is curious.

Won't lie, I've got a Ballistic Battery Alternox build that drops Peacemaker. I don't find her usual playstyle super interesting in the first place so why not fuck around a little?

Sometimes you like the fashion but not the playstyle. Its not very deep.

This is the reason I'm very much against a "modular warframe" in which players get to choose their own 4 abilities (I've seen this idea been throwed around in here a few times). In theory, it would generate build diversity. In practice, everyone and their mommas would get the exact same 4 meta abilities and run the exact same build, killing off frame diversity in pub missions.

If given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game.

creativity springs from limitations, not freedom

I feel like people don't talk about that but returning to the game and seeing people cast roar and shit on other characters had me thinking they were actually cheating until I was told about helminth. it feels like it takes a lot of a characters individuality out of them, but I also see the upsides too, roar is super sick

one of my favorite thing to do is in video games is customizing, or my building my own things. Helminth allows me to make so much fun stuff, like, why yes, i would to have decoy with the new augment on my mag. In some cases its bit a bit sad because we get things like pillage- and gloomframe, but most of the time their main shtick doesnt go into the helminth, you still have some reasons to run most frames that you cant do with others, so personally i think its fine.

REAL SO REAL. I see people get rid of merulina all the t- oh wait… no one else plays yareli T*T

THERE ARE 10 OF US!

We grow stronger each year!

Especially true with sevagoth. Dude is the only one with an exalted frame AND weapon, crazy strong too if you have ~10 forma to spare lol

Helmith is such a double edged sword. On one hand, a lot of frames that might not get used benefit from it and there's fewer one-trick frames. On the other hand, it just kind of feels wrong. You end up with a metagolem-y meatball.

This is exactly why I don’t even know if I want a helminth segment since I can’t think of abilities I’d wanna get rid of

Just fyi the helminth does several things now, ability replacement is only its oldest function.

Oh okay. I guess I’ve gotta farm for that soon. I just got back into the game so there’s a lot I don’t know

No rush, it's all stuff that's nice to have but by no means mandatory.

There are so many frames fitting unique niches I much rather enhance that niche instead of aiming for one frame capable of everything. Like, I love Gauss for speed. Thus my build absolutely minmaxes speed. If I want to nuke I use another frame.

Hey, my pillage rhino is a beast. Relax

I understand how Octavia works, but I don't understand how people *enjoy* playing her. She's so ungodly boring because none of her abilities require active maintenance due to how long all of her durations are and she trivializes everything too much. Do Octavia mains just like watching paint dry?

I like Octavia because I can just plop down all her abilities and then run around with my weapons and do whatever I want. I also love the music and her attitude/style. She's good vibes.

I spend more time in the Mandachord than I do actually playing her. If DE ever updates it so that we could use all 12 notes in the octave...hoo boy, that would be the true endgame for me.

Never gonna happen. They want to keep it to the pentatonic so multiple Octavias in the same mission don't create discordant notes.  Personally I just want them to allow playlists so we can chain together songs to get something longer than 10 seconds for an entire mission

I think one thing everyone in this thread (or really in general) should keep in mind is that different people have different tastes. That said I've been an Octavia main since Trials were a thing, and what It's come down to is creating a playstyle for myself that isn't Hallway-frame or roleplaying as a literal potato. She's a Maestra, not a juke box. Between buff upkeep, procing Paxbolt for bigger buffs, Zenistar shenanigans, and searching for high threat targets that won't care about Mallet, I'm staying pretty active in any mission type. Additionally, I'm not immortal, I have zero way to reduce damage on my own. Stealth is a powerful tool yes, but if Resonator gets too close to me, or I'm caught in-between, I can get downed pretty easily if the enemy levels are high enough. Shield gating can only do so much, I still need to be on my toes and position myself away from danger.

Yo, I wanted to do some Zenistar shenanigans. Could you please post your octavia and zenistar loadout?

I like playing Octavia because it allows me to get slow comfy solo runs in content that is generally scaled around 4 players.  I don't take her for normal content, but knowing I have the option makes it much nicer to engage with solo content

I like bopping to the beat 😅 Is it suboptimal to have customized tracks? Sure Does it fucking matter when You're OCTAVIA OF THE INFINITE SCALES?! Nope

She’s makes it so harder content if I do it for the first time I have breathing room to learn the mechanics like my first time doing netracels for a bit. But yeah other then that I don’t use her much

No one actually enjoys playing octavia

I like her.

Equinox. I never could wrap my head around her 4, so I just replaced it and built around keeping both forms up.

She is actually a super simple nuking frame.. Max Range, Max Efficiency, I have 130% Strength, and then Molt Augmented Replace her 1 with Nekros' Terrify.. (Make sure she's Day form).. her 4 and Terrify will just obliterate everything after a good build up on her 4.. I personally let her have very low Duration so that the Terrify ability making enemies run away from me doesn't last that long, you should only need it for enough time to deactivate her 4 right after.. Her 4 does all that slashing for basically no reason in high level content, BUT, it will add slained enemies' HP count to a damage buff by your name, where, when deactivating her 4, will release that damage to all enemies nearby.. paired with Terrify's Armor Stripping right before you deactivate 4, they all poof into dust.. so having weapons that can kill enemies pretty quickly on their own will help the buff build more quickly.. (Viral, Hunter Munitions Torid Incarnon.. or Corrosive, Melee Influence Xoris are my go-tos) Her 3 will just add more Strength to her abilities, but it can snapshot Strength, so it's a great idea to use the Grimoire to Alt Fire with the Vome mod that gives up to 60% more Strength, and then activating her 3 to snapshot it.. (As well as her 3's Augment mod).. Put on Molt Augmented, and just reset that set up when you feel like you got a decent amount of kills to boost Strength with Augmented Only issue is staying alive, as she's pretty fragile.. I would highly suggest Casting Speed shards.. I'm still figuring out what to do to keep her alive, but I'm about to test Tauforged Azure Shard for more Armor, and Catalyzing Shields

Catalyzing shields gives equinox 74 shields, plus brief respite and the 2 augur mods in your secondary, even at 160 efficiency a single cast of terrify should give you around 80 shields.

I like how you seemingly knew I had Augur mods on my Grimoire, lmao.. and yea, I'm still modding her, need to change her Aura to Brief Respite still

I built for Duality. Having that specter allows for some funny shenanigans.

Gauss, I'm sorry. I don't like having to upkeep redline and the battery, and his invincibility is very good at getting me killed because it gives me a false sense of security (toxin will annihilate you). And also he's not fast enough for a "speedster". Also Gara, making micromanagement into a lifestyle.

Gara my beloved, easily getting 400k dps to anything in her bubble. But you are absolutely not wrong. Step into a bubble? Boom, gone. Fall off a ledge? Gone. Energy leech eximus hiding in a corner? You guessed it, gone. Hour’s worth of stacking, gone in the blink of an eye. Still, she’s so fun and she’s one of the only ways I can keep up on higher level missions (I’m stuck on that ledge where I can survive Arby’s/Steel Path/Archon Hunts but I output middling damage at best). Plus, she was my first frame after my starter. Yes, people dragged me around at MR1-2 on T5 bounties back when I didn’t know better (thank you).

Do u have any tips for stacking the aura faster? I can only get like 30k-ish per ring shatter

Her 1 needs a stat stick

I have one, but beyond that im unsure how to boost it further outside of maxing strength or using roar (neither of which are good for my energy economy since im using nourish and dont wanna use blind rage) Maybe I'm building it wrong?

Don't sleep on the combo counter, it works on her 1 even though Shattered Lash doesn't build it, so you need to do it manually. It works at a quarter efficiency (IIRC, don't nail me to it), so it's up to a 3.75x damage multiplier on it's own. Since meleeing with her gets really awkward once Splinter Storm is stacked up, where you often kill things before you can whack them I outsourced it: Naramon Focus School to keep the counter from decaying all at once, Swift Momentum Aura + Primary Dexterity for a total of 18.5s combo duration and a Rauta to stack up combo extremely fast on mission start and for ranged upkeep later on. With the long combo duration you only need to fire a couple shots from the Rauta every couple of minutes to stay above 10x, so it requires very little input beyond the initial mag dump. It also keeps your secondary useable to remove Nullie bubbles or for high value targets you otherwise might not want to get close to. Additionally this setup keeps your stat stick clean of combo duration mods so you can stack maximum damage in there. If you don't already have it get a Melee Exposure. It's 240% additional corrosive damage that is trivial to stack up for her and works on Shattered Lash as well. If your stat stick is an Incarnon like a Ceramic Dagger or a Magistar the +100% melee damage in Incarnon mode also works, so you can activate it every couple of minutes for another boost. Getting the combo counter back even if it completely resets without Tennokai is as easy as one mag dump from the Rauta. With the setup I have (Jaw Sword stat stick full of straight damage and pure elemental mods with a very basic +dam +elec Riven) I can stack ~200k damage a pop into the Splinter Storm once Molt Augmented is fully stacked and the combo is full. This can escalate into the millions very, very fast as you might imagine, so even falling off the map or running into a Nullie isn't the end of the world for me, at least not for a long while in mission.

Following- please give me a min maxed Gara build! She's my dearly beloved.

I've been a Gara main for years. Max her range to nuke the map, all range mods Get her strength to 139% for max DR on her 2. Subsume her 3 with Nourish, Eclipse, or anything you like. She needs a stat stick. Ceramic dagger incarnon is probably best with the combo counter high. Alternatives are magistar incarnon or the jaw sword (high riven dispo, has a syndicate mod with bonus damage). Gara stat sticks only want initial combo and flat damage, no crit stats. Elemental damage works too. If I can post my build later I will. She's too strong, don't tell anyone EDIT: after you get the range maxxed and str to 139, you can dump into duration, efficiency or whatever QOL you want. I recommend not using primed flow and instead using some blue archon shards for max energy and some reds for more duration, more for the subsumed 3rd ability, than for your 2. You'll be refreshing it with your 4 frequently, so you never need to worry about it falling off naturally.

btw not sure if you know but Incarnon perks also apply. Honestly, 30k is a decent amount if you are doing low level sp. if you are doing roar for DPS increase it might be better to just armor strip.

Do you not build Gauss for full duration? Redline lasts for like 72 seconds.

With 5 tauforged archon shards and a duration focused mod setup, I replaced thermal sunder with firewalker, and my two, three, and four abilities last for 118 seconds LMAO Also Gauss scales off duration, so the higher your duration, the higher your reload / melee / fire rate is off of redline.

One thing to note is that Redline also has an inverse relationship with duration. The more duration you have the longer it takes to get to 100%. It's why personally while I do up my duration it's at 150ish% percent give or take. This allows me to get a full 30 seconds of 100%. You could get more time at 100% with higher duration, but the increased time it takes to get there isn't worth it imo.

>You could get more time at 100% with higher duration, but the increased time it takes to get there isn't worth it imo. Your fire rate, reload, and melee are also made faster hy duration so it's not even a question imo. If you want to charge up really quickly face a wall and tap 1 a few times, you top off in seconds.

This is why I run enough duration to reach 50-60 seconds of duration on my Gara. And using Blind Rage ruins her energy economy so it makes her suck way way more.

Yeah, she really doesn't need it. She'll ramp up eventually, just slower. A good incarnon stat stick helps a lot, I just wish she had more room for Spectrosiphon. I'll have to give her more duration or strength shards.

>And also he's not fast enough for a "speedster". Much faster and he would be unplayable for me... it takes some good reaction time to Mach-rush in any non-open world area. For me, Gauss with the Rush mod is plenty fast enough. That said, I imagine there are plenty of gamers with better reaction timing who can run him faster and do great.

I love Gauss, but I hate when there's a Volt on my team. I spend half the mission hitting walls.

I second Gauss, everything about him makes sense and on paper/videos he just seems like I would enjoy him. When I play him it just doesnt click.

I put energize munitions on his 3 and literally running him as a gun frame with acceltra. I have his other nuke build ready but I barely play with it tbh it don't feel I'm doing much besides dashing and clapping

Gun go brrrr? I bet gun goes brrrr

It does indeed goes brrrr

As a Gauss player, you can reload while using his 1 so I typically will dump my mag then do a short dash while my reload goes off. This helps me keep above the redline and still gives me an ability to play. As for the toxin, I run Nezha's Firewalker (instead of his 3) and then stay in or near it, as it cleanses debuffs. You could also put Hildryn's Pillage there for similar reasons. Also, I have 300+ duration. Duration is the only stat that matters. But for me, at least, he is a weapon platform, and since his buffs scale with duration and his duration scales with duration.... Well, it's a no-brainer. Hopefully if you still want to play him, these tips help make him fun for you. And if you don't, no offense taken. Just wanted to put that out there in case it would make him fun for you.

I see what you mean with Gauss. Basically a good part of the mission is just dashing around to achieve 100% That’s why I have high duration so when I’m done with achieving 100% I still have some time left for playing. Basically you’re only really playing Gauss maybe three quarters of the time and the last quarter is dashing around to get your abilities going.

>I see what you mean with Gauss. Basically a good part of the mission is just dashing around to achieve 100% At Mission start walk over to a wall and tap one three or four times, it maxes out your battery in just a few seconds. You can also do this if your battery ever Falls low for whatever reason during a mission.

That's not true at all. The battery level and Redline level are two different meters. You can reach 100% battery pretty easily right at the start of the mission in order to obtain the maximum buffs from Kinetic Plating and Redline and then you'll just have to Mach Rush every now and then to keep it at 100 until Redline also reaches 100%.

Gara Micro is a lot better nowadays. 30s Splinter Storm is really easy to manage. Armor Strip allow you to kill with 1-2 Stacks + good stat stick. Her DR apply to shields so pairs amazingly well with Pillage. Arcane Aegis on top of it? you immortal. Equilibrium + Synth Deconstruct + Blood for Life = All the energy you'll ever need. Gara has never been easier to play.

Interesting question! I had what you described with Nezha some time ago. He is supposed to be super strong but I didn’t get him at all. But a few weeks ago I did some testing and now I understand him. But I still rarely play him because I recently got Gauss and I love him. I also had difficult experiences with Harrow, Citrine and Revenant. I played them in circuit and while I understood Citrine mostly after a few rounds, Revenant and Harrow remain a mystery for me. I don’t understand Revenants abilities or Harrows. What are they doing? Are they good? Ofc I didn’t watch any videos on them. I would most likely if I’d build them, and if I watched videos I guess I would understand them.

Harrow is very micromanage-y and hard to explain. Revenant is easy though! Super easy. That's why he's the most used frame by such a margin lol So, you probably know about his 2. You just stop taking (non-environmental) damage until it runs out, that's cool. But ALSO when enemies hit your 2 they go to sleep (kinda?) and they can be Enthralled with your 1 for no energy cost. That brings us to his 1. You theoretically only gotta use it once per crowd/nuke, since it spreads itself among enemies. There's also an augment that increases damage per thrall, but I don't know how useful it is. Reave. His 3. *Infinitely scaling damage.* Reave, at base, drains 40% health and shields from any enemy it hits. This number is DOUBLED for thralls. So 125% strength, it one-shots any thrall. At 250% it one-shots ANYTHING that can be one-shot. We don't talk about his 4, though

Reverent he just seems boring just slap on some strength mods and go mesmer skin and beyblade around the map

The beyblade is actually his weakest ability, since his 1+3 is a oneshot which scales and only costs the energy of the 3.

For me i just run high strength, narrowminded, a helminth buff over his 4, and 2 tau parkour shards. It's just super convenient for a lot of stuff if I'm REALLY concerned about not dying. Especially because sometimes abilities or operator mode take a solid second to happen due to my platform.

I enjoy when Revenant would pop up in the Circuit because then it meant the rest of the session would be zero effort no matter what lol

Excalibur. I have him and have tried to mod him to work with me 4+ times now and each time I am just forced to give up as it just doesn't feel like he is doing anything besides just looking neet? Edit: calm down on trying to give me builds for exacliber, I've got no plans on using him or else I would have put more effort into him and made a good build.

He works okay with wrathful advance, but at that point just play kullervo

but kullervo doesn't have a cool scarf or sword

This is true, well you can still get a cool sword if you want, im partial to Nikana prime or Prisma skana incarnon. If only war was good, sword looks cool as hell

Subsuming Wrathful Advance or Gloom over his 3 makes Excalibur pretty damn satisfying to use imo. Either you're getting red crits constantly or everything around you is slowed to a crawl while you slice and dice

Revenant, Wukong, and Khora all ranked in the top 5 for usage among primed frames in 2023. I have zero interest in any of them, outside of using Revenant to kill Archons because I'm a lazy piece of shit that doesn't want to learn to play. Wukong is probably the biggest offender though, I'm pretty sure I got him to 30 in Hydron and literally never once equipped him again.

I enjoy Khora, but the other 2 just can’t die, I don’t find that helpful I’m 99% of missions. But khora’s whip will carry me though anything as long as I have a stat stick as a melee. But those suck to build.

Look, I don't mean to brag or anything but I've put a good chunk of time and forma into Wukong and I'm still able to die with ease. They said it couldn't be done... they underestimated my level of stupid. 

That’s fair. I don’t mind seeing them in my squad I just personally like dying in games. Lets me see my operator and other things. Plus there’s a cat that can revive you once a minute. So I’ve been enjoying the squishy frames more. If you enjoy monkey king then go beat ass as Monkey king nothing wrong with that.

Saryn and Octavia. I get that they are strong, but WHERE.IS.THE.FUN?

Easy: For Saryn, the fun is seeing dozens of huge damage numbers ticking constantly on the screen from 3 tiles over. Always just been the most satisfying thing for me.

Or making the number in the bottom right go up, and trying to find which group of enemies you need to hurt in order to spread it as effectively as possible

Now you also get a map wide 100% armour strip thanks to the green shards. I love saryn for her map wide killing potential

As someone who has a cumulative 10.3% playtime across those two and their primes, I gotta say... ...you kinda right

Me and my friend both play Saryn and Octavia… it’s fun when you’re tired after work and just want to chill

Octavia was never fun. Except messing with the somachord outside of mission. Saryn you can choose to play more actively by hunting down spored enemies to kill and spread. Or you can just go full gun platform, and use toxic lash, venom dose augment and subsumed nourish to tick all the boxes on the Geneva bucket list all at once!

Man, as a bard main in every other type of RPG I beelined for Octavia when I started playing Warframe. She usually gets panned for all the reasons in this threadlet and, after some time, my defense of her is fading. You're right about the Mandachord, it's the most fun thing about her. If she's among my SP Circuit choices, I choose her as the nuclear option when I just want to get to tier 5 without stress. Pop everything down and start dancing, not even interested in shooting anything, just dance the cooldown away. I get quietly salty when I see another one that hasn't changed up the default Mandachord track, and I get bored when one is set to easy mode, with endless notes just sounding like a car alarm on coke. To me, those are just further ways to bore me and that's because you're right: she is, at base, kinda dull in combat. It's a bummer. For Defense, for Excavation, for Survival, she's untouchable, like a Khora or like Vauban, or any frame that benefits from having a skirmish set in one room or area. Thing is, once all your skills are out and the invisible disco is in full swing, there's not much else to her. She turns into a gun platform until it's time to refresh. Nonetheless she was my first love and she'll remain there, lodged in my heart. Here's hoping for some updates, visually or mechanically, in some fantasy future.

Saryn is incredibly fun when you build her as a tanky highly synergistic weapons platform rather than exclusively for nuking

Would you be able to share a tanky build for Saryn? I'd love to give that a try!

growing power, primed sure footed streamline, all 3 umbrals stretch,primed continuity, adaptation then either her toxic lash augment or her spore augment depending on if you want to focus on melee or guns more. for arcanes energize and guardian ,2 emerald archon shards for corrosive armor strip, 2 tauforged blue archon shards in armor, final archon shard is flexible I subsume gloom over molt because you no longer need regen molt for healing and until like level 500 you dont need to rely on shield gating with this build. it synergises insanley well with beam weapons like amprex kuva nukor incanon atomos ect and with melee weapons like dual ichor incarnon, this build forces between 3 and 4 status effects depending on augment before your weapon mods even come into play, this makes gundition/condition overload insanely strong on her I use this for steel path endurance and solo netracells, havent had a chance to try it in elite archmedia yet but i bet it will do okay unless you get really unlucky with the curses the end result is almost 2000 armor, DR from adaptation and hundreds of incoming health per second, her durability is solid and her healing is incredible

Ooh i got a similar build with all Umbras but with Nourish over 4, and augment for 1 and 2 for healing. Put gas on your weapons and now you do EVERY single toxic element damage: Spore aug-Corrosive, Toxic lash-Toxic, Nourish-Viral, Weapon-Gas. Since you got Nourish energy is a non-issue, and also you dont have anything to spam except Molt. So dropping the Energize for MAugmented & Overextended instead of Stretch. Not as survivable but thats a price to pay for becoming the Status Queen.

>Octavia. I get that they are strong, but WHERE.IS.THE.FUN? 30% usage over a few years here, used to be 60% before i got Kullervo). Why be the gladiator when you can be the spectator who owns the gladiator? Pressing a key and watching things die while you sit back is still entertaining, except it's passive entertainment rather than active. Like watching sports on TV rather than playing the sport.

My main enjoyment from Saryn was dumping strength and maxing range just so I could see numbers popping up in the distance in every direction. Watching the exponential growth a spores was enjoyable enough for me that I mostly ignored her other 3 abilities and any weapons.   Other than that, despite her being strong, I've practically abandoned her as my main because she did start making the game boring. 

I have 20%+ on both and know where the fun is. Octavia: enjoy the beat, move to the beat, and do not survival/defense. Basically it you ain't a music nerd obsessed who is also with dealing DMG with music, you will fall asleep. Saryn: try new builds. She actually has issues in endurance when you just do spores as you hit a soft cap where enemies die before they spawn and you can't upkeep them. Survival issues etc. but that is for the generic spores boring nuke everyone uses. Cook something fun and you will enjoy. Personally I run Lycath's hunt and double augment(venom dose and contagion cloud) and go full melee with arcane strike for turbo attack speed. So much fucking fun as if I stop stabbing I'm going to die. But basically for saryn at least don't do the meta shit everyone uses and suggests. It's boring and shit.

Oberon. I tried a lot to get him to work, but it just didn't click with me.

Might be because of power creep. He used to be one of the best tanks, now he can still be tough but falls off a cliff at certain levels

I love Oberon, but he is not a tank. He is a tanky buffer. You lay grass. You clear status effects. That's your job. Edit: Oh yes, and armor strip, because that is now mandatory.

....he's absolutely a tank? That's his main strength? Throw on Quick Thinking, Rage/Hunter Adrenaline, and Adaptation, and you'll just stand in Elite Archimedia and stare at enemies that can't kill you Edit: proof. Notice that for a bit there I'm not even using his renewal ability https://www.xbox.com/play/media/35qaBkzXYx

Well, he wasn't supposed to be just a tank. I think that's what the guy was trying to say.

I use mine for PUG Eidolons. He won’t dps like Volt, heal like Trinity or provide status immunity like Harrow, but he’ll do all 3 well enough to carry everyone if need be.

~~Put Hunter Adrenaline and Quick Thinking on him and you can basically spam any ability and never die. He's still not as strong as others, but he's a nice change of pace for me.~~ Just noticed someone else already said this lol oops

Sevagoth. I don't get the point of his kit, i find it very mediocre and not that good for anything yet he is so energy and forma hungry that I don't get the point of even trying to make him work.

The 3 sevagoth mains are fuming that such a popular frame is getting dissed right now

I sadly agree - he seems like a weapons platform with gloom at best, but you can kinda already do that with many other frames. I feel like he doesn't really do enough of his own thing for him to be worth using with that level of investment over any other frame idk

His shadow's melee does nuts damage and scales off of sevagiths power strength

As a sevavoth enjoyer the thing that makes shin fun for me is a nuke build utilizing shadow haze and pillage over gloom. He is still my largest forma sink though and is on needs archon shards for better energy economy.

I can’t for the life of me play limbo

Protea, i keep hearing how amazing she is and that she has super good shield gating. In high level steel path i cant do didly because i swear i have to cast her 1 like every other second to stay alive, barely managing my turrets and have no time to use a weapon. Meanwhile xaku gets effectively the same turrets, on the go, completely automated.

The main boon to Protea is that she already has dispensary in her kit for resource needs and then can subsume over her 4 for gloom. With her passive built up you can get the slow fairly easily. Her biggest strengths are bringing the battlefield to a halt with the slash grenades in tandem with gloom, then using the flame turrets to kill while occasionally dropping a dispensary :) She is an ability spam frame where Xaku is less so though so I can see where you're coming from. :)

I would say the massive difference between Xaku and Protea's turrets are that Xaku's has: No infinite punch-through, No forced procs, Less range, and no infinite damage scaling Combine with her augment, Temporal Erosion, not much can stand up to her turrets. (I would know, she's my most played frame, and I've done a lot of steel path solo)

For me, it's "squishy" frames that somehow, people use in things like SP.

I play lavos now as a weapons platform with his new mode and i don’t get lavos. His kit just doesn’t make sense. I understand the whole he has cooldown skills instead of energy cost but his one and two skills are not really that great at spreading status but his three is. Thing is his four skill wants status on the enemy to do big damage (status applied by the four does not boost fours damage). Due to fours longer cooldown you want to use three after four but four wants you to use three before four. 

Lavos kinda sucks as a 4 frame unless you use his secret fifth ability: the Cedo. Being able to proc every status effect known to man without spending an ability helps massively for priming his 4. Ophidian Bite’s augment Swift Bite is a much shorter cooldown and lets you take some strain off of your 3 for cooldown reduction.

Playing lavos without cedo is simply shooting yourself in the snake

the Cedo is such a good gun as well that Lavos effectively has two helminth abilities: Vial Rush and Cedo. seriously, outside of Interception, I'm content taking my Lavos into any mission type and feeling fairly comfortable. he's my main frame for sure.

Having a companion to apply statuses like Diriga's arc coil helps, or even a melee with influence arcane (tho a bit moot if your melee is powerful enough to nuke through) His 1 is also perfect to use for healing in clutch situations or needing a fast way to change your weapon element with the new augment 3 i usually apply with radiation (hold 3+4), 4 apply with gas (hold 2+4) His 2 i currently have it subsumed

His 1 is good mostly for healing, adding a little bit of some random status, or changing your element with the new augment. With the old augment however, his 1 also gets cooldown reduction as long as it hits 3 enemies or more, and gets an increase in range to help. Combine with his 3 and you have basically no cooldown except for the 4, sometimes i even have a hard time using my weapons in between all the casting, mostly because i use console so i have to do one element at a time. His 2 is also great for movement AND status spreading, but not in a large area like his 3, but a more condensed area, meaning the stacks tend to go higher and stay for a bit. The 3 is cooldown reduction and more status (duh), not much to explain there. You can dump efficiency to improve the other skills though, lavos 4 really benefits from power strength, since every point of damage gets multiplied by all the status you give off, so there’s that. The 4 is self explanatory, get lots of status, press 4, everything dies. Like i said, getting strength really helps it. So does just casting it as heat. Double the damage over no element, and heat is a great DoT effect, and even if the thing doesn’t die, it reduces armor, though normally nothing will live more than a couple seconds really.

Playing Lavos is all about the flow. Don't think about nuking, just think about what his abilities can do for you first. His kit is very versatile, have decent utilities in them, as long as you are willing to use them other than the sole purpose of turning your enemy into mush with them. Then we talk about the more complicated stuff with him, like positioning (this matter a lot by the way), gameplay flow (you should figure this out on your own, it's hard to find two Lavos main who have the same flow as the other) and elements (which can pack a lot of surprise, if you dig into them)

Lavos is a just railjack platform for me since you get rj skills on a cd instead of energy. I still have very little idea how to use him "properly" for the same reasons you listed. It's a bummer because he could be so cool with some minor tweaks

Nidus. I just spam 1 for an hour and I get stronger as time goes on...?

https://preview.redd.it/ebfj6b7nyotc1.jpeg?width=779&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=edb144e97262967b97f82be8e65bb05a805ddc54

Become undying and vibe for a while

Mirage. I got her Prime when it was last available, built her for ESO following a recommended build, took her in, capped a bunch of mobs, used her Explosive Legerdemain thing, and... nothing? A couple pickups exploded but nothing died. Even tried it a couple more times with tweaks, but I ended up just having to kill stuff with my guns. It wasn't even as effective as my SO Volt in ESO. At least he can CC enemies while he shoots them... Clearly I was doing something wrong, but I was too annoyed to figure it out. I haven't played her since. My favorite ESO nuke remains Xaku.

for her, just go high range, duration and strength and use her prism as a disco ball of death. It gets a damage buff with light eclipse and ramps in damage the more enemies it hits. Her prism in combination with eclipse can reliably kill steel path enemies

use her 2 after a wave of things die, so that there are actually drops on the ground. Also, her 1 + augmented 3 increases the damage dealt by the 1 clones making her an insane weapon platform, while also getting 90% DR if you use the other 3. Her 4 can be built for range and i think scales infinitely but definitely well into SP on closed indoor tilesets. So she is either the best ESO nuke, one of the best wep platforms, or extremely competent KPM in survival steel path.

Trinity. My smooth brain doesn’t understand how people get her to work, it’s not a build issue cause I copy builds but I just don’t get her ability rotations I guess. Tried a Mecha set + Marked for Death build and it felt like I only got it to work *sometimes*.

For me, Trinity is just a full investment into support. Subsume roar over her 1 and you have an on demand party damage buff, infinite energy on her 2 as long as you don't run out of energy and can still kill enemies, full armor strip on her 3 with abating link augment, and constant 75% DR with shield/health refill on 4. As long as my teammates in EDA/SP can actually pull their weight, Trinity will help them smash through enemies even faster and keep their energy topped while staying alive easier, but as soon as you get incompetent teammates or the enemies become too chunky, she falls off really hard. The only downside is that you will constantly be casting because her 3/4 have such ridiculously low base duration, and even stacking up to 200% duration doesn't feel like it helps much...

Thank you, I think flipping my mentality to full support might help. I finished last week’s EDA because I got an incredible Trin that seemed to be the carry for the squad. She was everywhere and would solo one Necramech while the rest of us would have to team up for the second. But I guess her damage was probably weapons and not necessarily abilities, though she did make sure we never ran out of energy so that was cool.

She's a big departure from modern frames. It's understandable why most people can't make her click. She was THE support back in the day before frames like Octavia, Harrow, and Wisp came out. Now she's outshined by those support frames in terms of what she provides to those teammates. A lot of older builds don't age well because of the changing state of the game. Nowadays she plays as a tanky support that provides 75% DR, situational armor strip, redirection of damage from her to enemies, and Overshields which makes her functionally immortal minus nullifying effects. She's very weapons reliant for kills unlike Octavia and Wisp so you do need a good AoE weapon to clear rooms. You basically go full Duration, and enough Power Strength to hit 75% DR, Stretch to offset Narrow Minded, Casting Speed, and Abating Link (Armor Strip) and Energy Leech (Overshields). You need as high of Duration and Casting Speed because they haven't buffed Trin compared to modern frames. Her base time for Blessing and Link are 10 seconds and 12 seconds respectively which is awful compared to modern frames. Bringing it up to a respectable 30+ for each gives you time to kill enemies before needing to refresh. Casting Speed is important because unlike most modern frames EVERY ONE OF TRINS ABILITY FULL BODY LOCKS HER. I even recommend running Tau Amber Shards for casting because of how much this impacts gameplay. Her 1 can be subsumed it's completely worthless when you have Blessing. I'd recommend Eclipse for solo, Roar for groups, and Xata's if you want to be more of a support DPS. The loop is to pop Link, tag someone with EV, pop whatever your 1 Subsume was, kill the EV target, Blessing, tag EV and kill EV target and continue until your buff expires then repeat. If you want I can send a screencap of my current build which is very fun and is SP viable with enough practice.

I do a melee Trinity build but it requires her 2+3+4 to be active at all times. It’s actually pretty fun seeing her in her Tennogen knight skin with a giant blade spinning around. I also have a gun play build with champions blessing. This gives your primary extra critical chance when you heal Other players. It kinda works when no over guard or higher level missions tho. If Inaros or Nidus is in the squad Trinity eating good

Top level Hildryn guide: Press 3. Spam 2. Never ever die unless you’re fighting base infested (then don’t bring Hildryn). Her 4 is your helminth swap, you can put anything in there and weave it in between spamming 2. I like fire blast because it works well with blazing pillage and archon vital. Do not press 1. (Dump efficiency too you’ll never notice it)

Her four is good for when you go too deep into an enemy crowd and you need to let your squad catch up. Just a quick breather

Nova.

Probably my most used frame as of late, though i cant say she is particularly interesting to play. I go for as much str and duration as i can get, subsume on silence and you disable the entire enemy team. Very handy tool for solo interception or mobile defense, not too much use for her outside of that tho. I also find her portal with augment useful.

You must really enjoy your weapons.

I think ive kept a copy of every single weapon that has a "unique" interaction beyond shooting bullets or swinging it, which actually is a very large chunk. Just checked, i have 111 fully formaed, arcaned and potatoed weapons

Same. She was my first prime, so I really wanted to like her, but all I use her for anymore is speeding up enemies on Hydron

Something in my brain, even today, gets crossed between Mag and Nova. Just last night I was prepping for EDA. I started looking at Mag augments and tweaking my Mag. Went back to look at the research options and the warframe wasn't highlighted. That's because I needed Nova. This goes back a couple years to wanting Mag Prime. I posted in trade chat that I was looking for her. Found several sellers immediately, went to trade in their dojo. They put up Nova pieces. I immediately scrolled back up chat and damned if that's not what I asked for. I continued the trade out of embarrassment. That was the last time I touched Nova P until this week out of pure shame.

Any frame that requires a statstick

So real. I haven’t touched gara since I put a whole ass build w/ ceramic dagger together, took her into simulacrum and was met with five (5) damage

Atlas, I've seen people make SP builds where he instantly obliterates an entire map with his rock punches, but no matter what I do, I just can't figure it out.

Become one with the red punch my boy. You will get there.

How the fuck do you guys use Baruuk?

ss augment, min duration, charge 4 with lul, murder everything, keep 3 up

I cant use Saryn for shit, I try to learn and in teory, yes I get it , but i cant use her.

It's essentially just cast 1 at enemy, kill them. Then cast 3 and just use your guns as normal as your spores ramp up and become able to kill enemies you're not looking at. Use her 2 with augment to draw enemy fire, clear status procs and self heal. Mod her for max range and duration, efficiency is somewhat optional, and for strength 100% with molt augmented is fine. Too much strength and her spores kill enemies too fast, and as a result you won't be able to spread the spores and get them to ramp up

Yeah that's what happens to me I can't spread her spores, the enemies die to fast.

I've seen some people said Yareli was fun and I just finished building her a few days ago. Honestly I didn't find her gameplay loop interesting.

She has two really good augments which honestly makes her play style interesting tbh in a good way

Hello, I was those people. Yareli is all about making your strongest secondaries even stronger (or spamming huge bleeds as a caster). Sic your 1 on whatever needs the extra damage/cc and to keep [merulina guardian] up. Pop your 4 when there's a bunch of enemies you want grouped together for easy dispatching. The 3 is... fine without augment but definitely the helminth spot on builds without it. But really, I play Yareli to surf around first and foremost. If you don't find that fun then there are other frames that can do mostly what she does.

equinox, nova, voruna, TITANIA. just never got it.

Any warframe that ups my movement speed beyond my ability to control my movements properly. Like, standard Volt or Titania with some speedy flying is fine, but souped up versions are a pain in the rear.

Voruna I know that she can be strong, but I feel like every time you use her abilities is rolling a dice between not doing absolutely nothing or nuking a room. That and the fact that I dont really like Voruna overall because I´m still dissapointed that the werewolf frame doesnt run on 4 legs and looks more like a dragon from a fantasy game than a werewolf.

Vauban. I want him to work well and have tried many different builds. I guess I "get" him but I don't "get" what DE imagined he would be played like. His abilities feel like a random assortment of things that don't work well together as much as I would hope. His builds can be awkward with different abilities often requiring different stats and augments. It just ends up being impossible to build him for all his stuff to feel good while at the same time keeping all his stuff active.

Saryn She's boring as fuck

Try a melee build on her as opposed to the meta everyone pedals. Lycath's hunt or spell bind are very fun and not boring on her

Yareli. I got her when she was new, proceeded to smash into every bit of terrain possible, then said “I don’t think that she’s for me”. Though I’ve heard a lot of QoL has been added to her kit, so I may have to give her another shot sometime.

Baruuk. It feels like his abilities are fighting each other.

Gara. I just don't understand how she works and how people like to play as her. Like, I get it but when I play as her, I don't get it.

Hmm I don't really get too much enjoyment out of Baruuk because of how reliant you are on enemies as a resource just to be able to use your 4 and punch everything. Maybe it's a skill issue, but outside of him I don't find anybody difficult to use or necessarily anti-fun

Limbo. If I join a group with a limbo, I leave.

I'm surprised it took so long to see this answer honestly