My Fabulous Four Frames

At the time of this writing Warframe has 53 different ‘frames on offer (not counting Prime or Umbra variants), with the 54th to be released two days from now.

Of course not all of those are available to new players right away – in fact you start with only one out of a selection of three, the rest have to be farmed and/or unlocked through various methods. After playing the game for a while an embarrassment of riches sets in though, so much so that you may find it hard to decide which of your shiny new battlesuits to invest precious resources like Orokin Reactors and Forma into.

Once you do have souped up a couple and have gotten used to a much higher power level it becomes even harder to evaluate the relative strenght of new additions to your roster, because most of them will inevitably feel rather weak in comparison due to the severely restricted mod capacity.

However, there’s no need to fret too much about those choices. Warframe isn’t actually a hard game once you get the hang of it, and unless you intend to play endless missions until enemy levels approach four digit territory you can beat pretty much any type of content while just using the ‘frame you like the most.

Me, I always gravitate to those that offer a healthy mix of Is really fun to play and Kicks some serious ass. Alternatively, if the content I’m trying to to clear annoys me in some way, I usually look for something that Makes the annoying thing trivial.

Over time these criteria have led to four ‘frames becoming my go-to tools for at least 90% of the stuff I do in the game. These are…

• • Mesa
    

l’ve already spent the better part of a post praising Mesa soon after I’d built her, and ever since then I’ve been using her more than any other ‘frame.

The combination of having up to 95% damage reduction against ranged attacks from her third ability and blasting everything to bits with Peacemaker is just too strong and too much fun to not use her whenever I don’t feel I need anything more specific. Granted, that damage does fall off a bit when facing extremely high-health and -armor enemies (i.e. Steel Path), but since she can also equip two ranged and one melee weapon, like any other ‘frame, there are other tools for those.

Her 1 isn’t really needed (or, well, good), so I’ve replaced it with Rhino’s Roar via the Helminth system for yet another multiplicative damage boost, but honestly, I hardly ever use it because it ain’t necessary in most situations. She’s that strong. Also stylish and fun. What’s not to like?

• • Gara

Meet the bull in the china shop. Gara is all about glass, and the nasty things you can do with it.

First off, she can erect a circular wall of glass panels to block enemy attacks as well as the enemies themselves, like seen above. On first glance this seems to be her cornerstone ability (and it is her fourth, which is the “Ultimate” of more than a few ‘frames), but you can’t really use it for that purpose in high level missions as the panels don’t have a lot of hitpoints and break far too quickly. If you want to protect certain objectives in that manner Frost’s and Limbo’s bubbles are far more efficient.

However, when used in conjunction with her 1 and 2 it’s still good, and also an integral part of her kit. It seems a bit complex at first, but bear with me, it becomes second nature pretty quickly.

If you cast her 2, Splinter Storm, a flurry of glass shards starts floating around her. These give her up to 90% damage reduction against all kinds of attacks and deal damage to all enemies in range each second. Now, this damage is laughably low at first, but don’t dismiss the ability just yet.

When you smash the panels of your own 4 from outside the glass ring with your 1 the whole thing shatters, dealing quite a lot of damage to all enemies in the vicinity, and more importantly, 50% of that damage is also permanently added to your Splinter Storm, as long as it remains active. As casting your 4 also renews Splinter Storm’s duration this all fits together quite nicely.

You can stack this basically forever, and I’ve had it deal well over a million damage per tick on a number of occasions. Which, frankly, is overkill for most normal missions. Even long before reaching such a high number all you need to do is run past or through enemies, and they drop dead instantly.

How much damage is added each time depends on your equipped melee weapon, by the way. Gara is one of the ‘frames that utilizes what the community refers to as a “stat stick”. The weapon itself is completely irrelevant, the only thing that matters are the mods you use on it. In Gara’s case only raw damage actually carries over to her abilities, so don’t use any crit, status or attack speed mods. I was lucky enough to get a Riven mod for a pretty crappy and thus rarely used melee weapon (Rivens for such weapons get their stats boosted) with nothing but damage on it, as seen above. Without any other bonuses my Splinter Storm’s number increases by 31k each time, so having it deal hundreds of thousands of damage per tick doesn’t take very long at all.

Last but certainly not least, you can cast Splinter Storm not just on yourself, but also on your teammates, companion and even inanimate objects like mobile defense terminals or excavators. Protecting those when they too have 90% damage reduction is obviously a much more relaxed affair. Just keep in mind that the duration of your 2 as shown by the UI depends on the last one you’ve cast, so better refresh your own by hitting another 4 afterwards. Losing a Splinter Storm already stacked up to half a million because its duration ran out sucks.

I quite like this playstyle, and more often than not when I finish a mission with Gara I’ve hardly fired any shots with my weapons. Since she really shines when there’s stuff to protect I mainly use her for Defense, Mobile Defense and Excavation missions though, as my other favourites don’t require quite as much buildup and maintenance.

• • Octavia

Octavia is another ‘frame I’ve talked about at lenght before, and I’m still using her regularly. If you want to run a mission but aren’t really in the mood to kill stuff yourself just punch all of her abilities, make yourself invisible and watch (and, of course, listen to) the show.

She’s especially great in the open world zones where her disco ball can’t wander off to other rooms, and she’s also my go-to for Spy missions, with maxed out ability duration so she can stay invisible for ages. But, seriously, she can do anything, and since she makes the enemies kill themselves there’s basically no limit to how high in difficulty she can go.

If there’s one thing to criticize about her it’s that she’s a bit…boring to play, I guess? Some might feel that way. I like her though, not least because I get to rock out to my own versions of Kernkraft 400 or Through The Fire And The Flames whenever I play her.

• • Inaros

If you watch any Warframe tierlist on YouTube you will most likely be told that Inaros is crap and you shouldn’t use him. Now, I get where those folks are coming from, but I don’t care because I know for certain that I approach the game completely differently than they do.

Pro gamers, and I’m not using the term ironically here because they are playing better than me, will tell you that stuff like “shield gating” or mods like Rolling Guard are the only things that can keep you alive at endgame. But, again, I simply don’t face enemies as strong as that. That’s by choice, mind you, mainly for two reasons. One, there’s no real incentive to even do it except for the challenge, and that’s not what motivates me. Two, I don’t fancy having to play around mechanics like shield gating at all, and I sure as hell don’t want to move around the map by doing one dive roll after the other and stuff like that. Playing the game “normally” suits me just fine, thank you very much.

That being said, there are situations where survivability becomes an issue, even at my level of play, and that’s when I hop into Inaros and instantly feel comfortable because I know that absolutely nothing will be able to bring me down. His abilities are crap and I don’t use a single one of them, true, but being immortal without the need to use any skills (unlike, say, Revenant) is already an impressive feat on its own, isn’t it? Just slap health, armor and Adaptation mods as well as a rank 1 or 2 Arcane Grace on him and you’re good to go. Hell, if you have the latter at a higher rank (mine’s at 4 currently) you can even go AFK while standing in a room full of baddies and you’ll most likely still be alive when you come back. If that’s not a relaxing way to play I don’t know what is.

I do use other warframes too of course, but these four are far and away my favourites. Your list may well look completely different, and that’s totally fine and working as intended. Which, if you ask me, is just one more thing about Warframe that’s simply awesome.