By Nelson Schneider - 07/09/23 at 05:35 PM CT
Recently, I’ve shared some of the best weapon choices for players looking to break into “Warframe’s” endgame content. Of course, the titular warframes are just as important, and serve as they keystone in a player’s loadout. Each ‘frame comes with 4 unique active abilities plus a passive, with a huge variety available across 53 unique discrete options (most of which also have power-crept Prime variants). Here’s a short list of the top 5 warframes and where they’re the most useful.
1. Khora (Prime)
Khora is a spider/cat-lady themed warframe who can really act as a Swiss army knife for nearly every in-game situation. She can bring two companions into battle, thanks to her passive ability being a unique Kavat named Venari, who, unlike most Kavats (or beast pets in general) can cycle between three different stances to provide offense, defense, or healing, as needed. Aside from the pet-stravaganza, Khora also features extremely useful crow-control abilities, with Strangledome offering a long-term area control effect and Ensnare providing short term immobility that works on a large number of minibosses who would otherwise be immune to crowd-control. Even better, feeding a non-Primed Khora to the Helminth unlocks Ensnare for use on ANY warframe. And while we’re on the topic of Helminth subsumes, I really don’t care for Khora’s basic Whipclaw ability, since it’s just a melee attack that costs energy to use instead of being free. So I always subsume over that particular skill with Xata’s Whisper from the androgynous Xaku warframe, which grants a big self-buff in weapon damage as Void damage, which can trigger magnetic bubbles around enemies, causing them to get hit by the same bullet multiple times, and strips adaptive damage resistance from Sentient faction enemies.
2. Wisp
Wisp is the only top-tier warframe who hasn’t been Primed yet… but that’s allegedly going to change on July 27. Wisp is a speedy frame who becomes invisible while in the air, and provides a wide variety of long-lasting team buffs via her Reservoirs, which last indefinitely once plopped-down. The Motes from the Reservoirs grant healing, haste, or offensive sparks (which are a form of crowd control), and she has a unique Augment mod that allows for a single Reservoir to dispense all three types of Mote simultaneously. Opposite of her buffing skills, Wisp can also debuff enemies via Breach Surge, which blinds, confuses, and damages enemies over time. Really, Wisp’s only downer ability is Sol Gate, which deals fairly sub-par damage with a high energy cost… but subsuming over it with something else is an easy fix.
3. Ivara (Prime)
Ivara is a stealth-focused, huntress-themed warframe who makes dealing with Spy, Rescue, or any other mission type where being seen or triggering alarms is a problem into complete non-issues. With her unique Augment, Infiltrate, which allows her to completely ignore security lasers while Prowling around invisibly, using her for her niche almost feels like cheating. Of course, Ivara isn’t just a niche player for stealth, since the ability to become completely invisible for geological spans of time is useful in nearly all situations – except when an enemy or boss is spamming a lot of area of effect abilities without aiming at the player’s ‘frame specifically. She can even share her invisibility shenanigans with team-mates, to a limited extent, via her Quiver of utility arrows. The huntress side of Ivara’s skillset includes the ability to pilot projectiles fired from her guns with the Navigator ability and the ability to summon a special exalted Artemis Bow. While it is possible to get her bow to deal decent amounts of damage, pairing her with a Nataruk and using Navigator is actually a lot more spectacular in effect (and energy efficient). I typically subsume Khora’s Ensnare over Ivara’s Artemis Bow, giving the huntress a useful trap to immobilize particularly nasty prey before stabbing them to death with a dagger while invisible.
4. Vauban (Prime)
Vauban is an engineer-themed warframe… and the art department at Digital Extremes decided “engineer = trains,” so the poor guy looks like a train. Vauban specializes in area control, and he absolutely dominates the category. Between his Tether Coils and Flechette Orbs, he can make huge regions of the mission map uninhabitable for long periods of time. Even better, the number of these things he can throw out are much greater than Khora – who can only have two Strangledomes up at once. Furthermore, Vauban has his Bastille, which sets up an impassible forcefield that, upon expiring, collapses into a singularity that sucks enemies into a helpless clump. A good Vauban can use Bastille singularities to suck every enemy in the mission into a single cluster-eff that never expires thanks to his Repelling Bastille Augment that allows the player to refresh the duration at their leisure. On top of its incredible area control, the damage dealt by Flechette Orbs scales natively, without relying on Ability Strength boosting mods or abilities, allowing it to shred end-game foes with ease.
5. Volt (Prime)
Volt is the original buffing frame. While his kit may pale in comparison to the likes of Wisp, he still dominates in battles against super-tanky bosses with BS damage reduction calculations. Volt’s two main buffs are Speed… which does what it says on the label, boosting the entire team’s movement and melee attack speed by… a LOT; and Electric Shield, which puts down stationary barriers that both block incoming fire from enemies and buff outgoing shots fired through them (which is a key strategy in taking out the three Eidolons in the titular Plains of Eidolon). Volt even has a third team buff via his Shock Trooper Augment for the Shock skill, which allows him to apply a huge 100% damage boost to all allied attacks as Electric damage. His last ability, Discharge, and his passive are underwhelming and could definitely stand a rework… but a bad ability just gives an easy slot for a Helminth subsume! In my case, I like to put Limbo’s Banish over Volt’s Discharge, since that ability, combined with Volt’s Speed, make the aggravating Defection mission type trivial.
