Loki is a pretty cool guy. His helmet is incredibly silly though. But Loki don't care what you think of his silly looking helmet. Loki just continues posing for the camera, even when surrounded by a cloud of soft giggles about his handlebar / hammerhead / whateverthefuck helmet.
SO, Loki is a pretty versatile frame. While the whole 'master race' meme is mostly a silly term amongst players, Loki is capable of pretty much anything. From solo play, to team play.
Unfortunately, most people - especially newcomers - look at Loki with this mindset:
"Oh, Loki is a starter stealth frame! I'll just use him with Invisibility to be all ninja until I can unlock Ash and be even MOORREE NinjaAAAA!"
And then they chuck out tools like Radial Disarm, Switch Teleport, and yadda yadda. This results in quite a handful of useless Lokis. Even though Ash is quite poor in team play, he atleast hurts S#&$ with Blade Storm. A Loki without his other abilities is a poorman's Ash when it comes to defense.
And one of the most important fields in Warframe is how well you can do in Defense. Defense is quite an important mission type, especially late game. Having a good frame for these missions is quite important. The more you can help your team, the better.
Whilst some other frames in your group might downplay your usefulness - such as a Nova nuking an entire map, which can make you feel useless - it's always best to try your best to defend your objective anyways. I personally don't see any kind of defense frame as 'redundant' just because another joins the fray. I like to see my team's defenses as 'layers'. A Nova might be nuking the map, but a Loki Disarming everything is a second line of defense. A frost's snowglobe is another line of defense, and so on. You simply want to be trying your best to benefit the team, even if it feels redundant.
So, this is just going to be a quick little guide on how to be an effective Loki in these missions. So without further adeu, let's start off with my own Defense oriented build:
===Build Setup===
The above image is what I like to call the "Oh-God-Can-I-Possibly-Stretch-Radial-Disarm-Further-Out" build.
Focusing on Radial Disarm, equipping Overextended and Stretch is more than enough range to cover an entire map in Disarm goodness. It also retains all his other abilities, whilst adding duration to his Decoy and Invisibility. There really isn't much else to say here. It nukes the entire map with Disarm.
Short section. LET'S MOVE ONTO ABILITIES.
===Abilities===
Loki's second most important ability in Defense is Decoy.
Soooo, Decoy has the unfortunate disadvantage in that it's health and shields do not scale upward with enemy levels and damage outputs, resulting in Decoy having armor made of graham crackers wrapped in tinfoil when it comes to any mission above level 10.
Luckly however, Decoy is blessed with the 'F***-You-Model-Collision' ability, that allows it to be placed in... Practically any nook and cranny in the map. I mean, look at this.
The good news is that Decoy's aggro generation works even when ranged enemies do not have line of sight. Infact, ranged enemies like standard Grineer and Corpus units kind of... Get confused when Decoy is out on the field and in a tight position like this.
For some reason, ranged unit A.I opt to find cover and run to it rather than attempt to shoot where the Decoy is located. This happens whenever they don't have line of sight. Occasionally some rogue units will find a tiinnnyy crack in your Decoy's hiding spot and start shooting, but this only happens with a few units.
This results in most of a wave being completely brain #*($%%@ for some reason and opting not to shoot you, the objective, or the Decoy. Unless they get too close of course. If a Corpus waddles too close to the cyropod it'll be like "OH S#&$" and aimbot to it and start shooting at it. So be careful about that.
If this is confusing to understand, here's a Try It Yourself experiment. Go to Xini, and put your Decoy here.
Then, run back to the cyropod and just sit back for awhile. Make sure to pick off any enemies that happen to get too close to the cyropod or find a gap in the Decoy's hiding place.
You'll start to notice some things. Moas might start jumping on top of the crates then just stand there, some corpus units might start aiming at the crates until they can get line of sight (they refuse to shoot until they can get line of sight, remember), and other than the occasional mob wandering to the objective, most mobs will just kinda... Stay in hiding or just remain passive in general.
And then once Decoy wears off they will immediately snap their aim to you and start blasting your A****** full of plasma. So be careful.
But this ability makes Decoy incredibly useful for when you're waiting for an entire wave to spawn before popping Radial Disarm. It keeps your Cyropod safe from enemy fire until juussttt the right moment to pop Radial Disarm. It also works very nicely with Radial Disarm when you put the Decoy out in the open too. Herds the sheep to the slaughter. Of your blade. Or possibly your hammer.
Loki's third most important skill in Defense is Invisibility.
"Whaaa?! It's less important than Decoy?!"
Well, yes. When you get right down to it, Invisibility isn't a skill that benefits defense missions. It simply improves your own survivability and damage output. Now, this is great for when you pull of a Decoy + Radial Disarm combo, since you can just sit back and slice the hell outta mobs stupid enough to attack your decoy with their prods, but when it comes to actual defense... It's not that good.
Invisibility is better off in other missions types. HOWEVER, you do want to keep it on your person for the melee damage buff obviously, when you need to save your own &#!, and when you need to res a team mate.
Loki's least important skill is Switch Teleport.
Switch Teleport is an ability I adore. Not only is it the perfect ability for dealing with annoying team mates, but it's also a great mobile tool when combined with Decoy. There's alot this thing can do from saving team mates, killing team mates, trapping team mates, moving yourself to places no other frame can reach, ect ect.
However, I do have to tell the truth here; Switch Teleport is near useless in Defense.
You're not going to be moving around alot, there's not much use in switching an enemy around, yadda yadda. I do however still bring it to deal with rude door heroes. Because like I said before; you can trap them in certain locations. Troll the trolls, amirite?
But in terms of benefitting the actual mission, if you feel like you could use Switch Teleport's slot for something better, by all means do so. I simply use it for the occasions when we have an annoying team mate that we want to get rid of.
Radial Disarm is Loki's most important ability in Defense.
Radial Disarm is very simple. Press 4, turn all enemies on the map into Infested.
That's about it. Incredibly under rated - possibly because most Lokis never use the S#&$ting thing - Radial Disarm is an incredibly useful Crowd Debuff AoE.
Removing their guns might not seem like a huge thing at first, but consider these points:
*Corpus and Grineer now have very predictable paths that they'll take to get to your Cyropod to start doing damage. This means your team mates dont have to go running around trying to shoot enemies hiding up on the rafters or something.
*An AI has higher DPS with their guns than they do their melee weapon, as well as higher damage per shot by default. Melee units have long swing time on the other hand. This effectively also makes Radial Disarm a damage nerf to mobs.
*Loki benefits from this the most in combination with Decoy, as he becomes a better A.I manipulator than even NYX. He was already capable of causing mobs to go passive with Decoy in a hiding place, but now he can not only turn on their melee A.I script, but he can also alter their pathing with Decoy?!
*Unlike damaging abilities like Blade Storm, Radial Disarm is guarenteed to be useful, no matter the difficulty or level of the mission. Damagin abilities by nature will start becoming less effective as enemies get tougher and tougher.
But Radial Disarm doesn't do any damage... Unless you use it on Infested which is a bad move anyways. This means that Radial Disarm is useful at any stage in the game, so it scales very well into Endgame.
The best part is that Loki with his Essence Helmet along with Streamline makes this quite a spammable skill. Now, you do need to choose the best times to use it still, since it is still very possible to run out of energy. But compared to most other frames, he can activate this quite often.
===Closing Tips and Tricks===
0. Hide your Decoy.
I'll admit. This is 0 because I felt it was best at the top of the list and I don't wanna renumber everything.
Decoy is in a similar boat to Radial Disarm; underused and under appreciated. Decoy is incredibly useful as a 'staller' skill for when you need to just distract most of the wave of enemies. But, it's best used when it has a hiding spot like the two places I showed you before.
Sticking it out in the open will have it killed in no time. Only time you shouild do this is when you need to res someone, and even then you should use Invisibility for that if you can afford it. Decoy is best used for tip number 1 in my opinion.
1. Use Decoy to buy time for Radial Disarm.
If for whatever reason you want to challenge yourself to solo a defense mission, the best strategy is to find a good hiding place for Decoy. I showed you two for Xini's map.
Place the Decoy then wait for mobs to show up. Once you see a good group, unleash Radial Disarm if needed and go to town. Just remember to shoot any mobs that do happen to find a crack in your Decoy's hiding spot. Which leads to tip number two:
2. Use your freakin' gun / kill whilst waiting for Radial Disarm!
Loki might get damage bonuses with melee in combination with Invisibility, but when you get right down to it, guns are more effective and faster beasts.
When you have a Decoy set up and you're waiting for the majority of mobs to spawn; SHOOT THEM. There's little point in just waiting for the first round of enemies to spawn in a wave, Radial Disarming then killing them, only to have the next round in a wave spawn.
An entire wave does not spawn all at once. It spawns mobs in rounds. The next 'round' slowly trickles out as your kill mobs, meaning that if you wait for one round to appear, then use Radial Disarm, by the time you kill them the next round of the wave will be flowing out.
You should be shooting mobs whilst Decoy is out and only using Radial Disarm when the time seems right. With that said...
3. Don't spam Radial Disarm / Wait for the right time.
Whilst Loki may have access to a large energy pool and higher energy efficency than normal with Essence Helmet, please avoid spamming Radial Disarm. As I said before, you want to pop RD when the time seems right. When alot of enemies are around. When Decoy just wore off and the majority of a round in a wave has been spawned. When you have max energy and energy orbs on the ground are going to waste.
Things like that. Don't throw out your Radial Disarm just as mobs start to appear. The only time you should do this is if you want to make a Nukeframe like Nova's job slightly easier, since she's going to be killing stuff as soon as it spawns anyways. Or, wait until the next round spawns to pop Radial Disarm.
4. Essence Helmet, or Swindle Helmet?
Loki was blessed with two useful helmets; Essence to provide better skill spam, and Swindle to provide larger Radial Disarm range.
I'm personally a bigger fan of Essence. I feel that Radial Disarm's range is far enough with Overextended and Stretch, so I don't use it. But both are very useful, and this is purely up to you. I personally like having Essence for when I need to re-apply Radial Disarm.
5. Decoy and Radial Disarm synergize very nicely. Pair them like a fangirl pairs males in their fanfics.
If you couldn't tell by now, these two abilities work as well together as peanut butter and jelly. Learning to use Decoy is just as effective as learning to use Radial Disarm.
I've already mentioned how Decoy can be used to stall for more mob spawns, but Decoy can also cover for any mobs that happen to start spawning as you start killing off those affected by Radial Disarm.
After casting Radial Disarm, put your Decoy back into it's hiding place. Then slaughter the melee mobs. The decoy will do an excellent job distracting and stalling the newly spawned, ranged mobs until you can find time to Radial Disarm again. This combination is what helps me solo defense missions. Yes; even Tier III Void missions.
===Ending===
And that's me guide. I'm really hoping this helps some Loki looking to learn a bit more about his defensive abilities rather than his Invisibility uses. I spent a few hours writing this and re-examining my knowledge to best provide for all members of the 'master race'.
Now let's just hope that the majority of Loki can start doing things other than Invisibility + melee, eh?
Question
Triburos
Grrrreetings!
So I play Loki. Do you play Loki? I like Loki.
Loki is a pretty cool guy. His helmet is incredibly silly though. But Loki don't care what you think of his silly looking helmet. Loki just continues posing for the camera, even when surrounded by a cloud of soft giggles about his handlebar / hammerhead / whateverthefuck helmet.
SO, Loki is a pretty versatile frame. While the whole 'master race' meme is mostly a silly term amongst players, Loki is capable of pretty much anything. From solo play, to team play.
Unfortunately, most people - especially newcomers - look at Loki with this mindset:
"Oh, Loki is a starter stealth frame! I'll just use him with Invisibility to be all ninja until I can unlock Ash and be even MOORREE NinjaAAAA!"
And then they chuck out tools like Radial Disarm, Switch Teleport, and yadda yadda. This results in quite a handful of useless Lokis. Even though Ash is quite poor in team play, he atleast hurts S#&$ with Blade Storm. A Loki without his other abilities is a poorman's Ash when it comes to defense.
And one of the most important fields in Warframe is how well you can do in Defense. Defense is quite an important mission type, especially late game. Having a good frame for these missions is quite important. The more you can help your team, the better.
Whilst some other frames in your group might downplay your usefulness - such as a Nova nuking an entire map, which can make you feel useless - it's always best to try your best to defend your objective anyways. I personally don't see any kind of defense frame as 'redundant' just because another joins the fray. I like to see my team's defenses as 'layers'. A Nova might be nuking the map, but a Loki Disarming everything is a second line of defense. A frost's snowglobe is another line of defense, and so on. You simply want to be trying your best to benefit the team, even if it feels redundant.
So, this is just going to be a quick little guide on how to be an effective Loki in these missions. So without further adeu, let's start off with my own Defense oriented build:
===Build Setup===
Edited by TriburosThe above image is what I like to call the "Oh-God-Can-I-Possibly-Stretch-Radial-Disarm-Further-Out" build.
Focusing on Radial Disarm, equipping Overextended and Stretch is more than enough range to cover an entire map in Disarm goodness. It also retains all his other abilities, whilst adding duration to his Decoy and Invisibility. There really isn't much else to say here. It nukes the entire map with Disarm.
Short section. LET'S MOVE ONTO ABILITIES.
===Abilities===
Loki's second most important ability in Defense is Decoy.
Soooo, Decoy has the unfortunate disadvantage in that it's health and shields do not scale upward with enemy levels and damage outputs, resulting in Decoy having armor made of graham crackers wrapped in tinfoil when it comes to any mission above level 10.
Luckly however, Decoy is blessed with the 'F***-You-Model-Collision' ability, that allows it to be placed in... Practically any nook and cranny in the map. I mean, look at this.
The good news is that Decoy's aggro generation works even when ranged enemies do not have line of sight. Infact, ranged enemies like standard Grineer and Corpus units kind of... Get confused when Decoy is out on the field and in a tight position like this.
For some reason, ranged unit A.I opt to find cover and run to it rather than attempt to shoot where the Decoy is located. This happens whenever they don't have line of sight. Occasionally some rogue units will find a tiinnnyy crack in your Decoy's hiding spot and start shooting, but this only happens with a few units.
This results in most of a wave being completely brain #*($%%@ for some reason and opting not to shoot you, the objective, or the Decoy. Unless they get too close of course. If a Corpus waddles too close to the cyropod it'll be like "OH S#&$" and aimbot to it and start shooting at it. So be careful about that.
If this is confusing to understand, here's a Try It Yourself experiment. Go to Xini, and put your Decoy here.
Then, run back to the cyropod and just sit back for awhile. Make sure to pick off any enemies that happen to get too close to the cyropod or find a gap in the Decoy's hiding place.
You'll start to notice some things. Moas might start jumping on top of the crates then just stand there, some corpus units might start aiming at the crates until they can get line of sight (they refuse to shoot until they can get line of sight, remember), and other than the occasional mob wandering to the objective, most mobs will just kinda... Stay in hiding or just remain passive in general.
And then once Decoy wears off they will immediately snap their aim to you and start blasting your A****** full of plasma. So be careful.
But this ability makes Decoy incredibly useful for when you're waiting for an entire wave to spawn before popping Radial Disarm. It keeps your Cyropod safe from enemy fire until juussttt the right moment to pop Radial Disarm. It also works very nicely with Radial Disarm when you put the Decoy out in the open too. Herds the sheep to the slaughter. Of your blade. Or possibly your hammer.
Loki's third most important skill in Defense is Invisibility.
"Whaaa?! It's less important than Decoy?!"
Well, yes. When you get right down to it, Invisibility isn't a skill that benefits defense missions. It simply improves your own survivability and damage output. Now, this is great for when you pull of a Decoy + Radial Disarm combo, since you can just sit back and slice the hell outta mobs stupid enough to attack your decoy with their prods, but when it comes to actual defense... It's not that good.
Invisibility is better off in other missions types. HOWEVER, you do want to keep it on your person for the melee damage buff obviously, when you need to save your own &#!, and when you need to res a team mate.
Loki's least important skill is Switch Teleport.
Switch Teleport is an ability I adore. Not only is it the perfect ability for dealing with annoying team mates, but it's also a great mobile tool when combined with Decoy. There's alot this thing can do from saving team mates, killing team mates, trapping team mates, moving yourself to places no other frame can reach, ect ect.
However, I do have to tell the truth here; Switch Teleport is near useless in Defense.
You're not going to be moving around alot, there's not much use in switching an enemy around, yadda yadda. I do however still bring it to deal with rude door heroes. Because like I said before; you can trap them in certain locations. Troll the trolls, amirite?
But in terms of benefitting the actual mission, if you feel like you could use Switch Teleport's slot for something better, by all means do so. I simply use it for the occasions when we have an annoying team mate that we want to get rid of.
Radial Disarm is Loki's most important ability in Defense.
Radial Disarm is very simple. Press 4, turn all enemies on the map into Infested.
That's about it. Incredibly under rated - possibly because most Lokis never use the S#&$ting thing - Radial Disarm is an incredibly useful Crowd Debuff AoE.
Removing their guns might not seem like a huge thing at first, but consider these points:
*Corpus and Grineer now have very predictable paths that they'll take to get to your Cyropod to start doing damage. This means your team mates dont have to go running around trying to shoot enemies hiding up on the rafters or something.
*An AI has higher DPS with their guns than they do their melee weapon, as well as higher damage per shot by default. Melee units have long swing time on the other hand. This effectively also makes Radial Disarm a damage nerf to mobs.
*Loki benefits from this the most in combination with Decoy, as he becomes a better A.I manipulator than even NYX. He was already capable of causing mobs to go passive with Decoy in a hiding place, but now he can not only turn on their melee A.I script, but he can also alter their pathing with Decoy?!
*Unlike damaging abilities like Blade Storm, Radial Disarm is guarenteed to be useful, no matter the difficulty or level of the mission. Damagin abilities by nature will start becoming less effective as enemies get tougher and tougher.
But Radial Disarm doesn't do any damage... Unless you use it on Infested which is a bad move anyways. This means that Radial Disarm is useful at any stage in the game, so it scales very well into Endgame.
The best part is that Loki with his Essence Helmet along with Streamline makes this quite a spammable skill. Now, you do need to choose the best times to use it still, since it is still very possible to run out of energy. But compared to most other frames, he can activate this quite often.
===Closing Tips and Tricks===
0. Hide your Decoy.
I'll admit. This is 0 because I felt it was best at the top of the list and I don't wanna renumber everything.Decoy is in a similar boat to Radial Disarm; underused and under appreciated. Decoy is incredibly useful as a 'staller' skill for when you need to just distract most of the wave of enemies. But, it's best used when it has a hiding spot like the two places I showed you before.
Sticking it out in the open will have it killed in no time. Only time you shouild do this is when you need to res someone, and even then you should use Invisibility for that if you can afford it. Decoy is best used for tip number 1 in my opinion.
1. Use Decoy to buy time for Radial Disarm.
If for whatever reason you want to challenge yourself to solo a defense mission, the best strategy is to find a good hiding place for Decoy. I showed you two for Xini's map.
Place the Decoy then wait for mobs to show up. Once you see a good group, unleash Radial Disarm if needed and go to town. Just remember to shoot any mobs that do happen to find a crack in your Decoy's hiding spot. Which leads to tip number two:
2. Use your freakin' gun / kill whilst waiting for Radial Disarm!
Loki might get damage bonuses with melee in combination with Invisibility, but when you get right down to it, guns are more effective and faster beasts.
When you have a Decoy set up and you're waiting for the majority of mobs to spawn; SHOOT THEM. There's little point in just waiting for the first round of enemies to spawn in a wave, Radial Disarming then killing them, only to have the next round in a wave spawn.
An entire wave does not spawn all at once. It spawns mobs in rounds. The next 'round' slowly trickles out as your kill mobs, meaning that if you wait for one round to appear, then use Radial Disarm, by the time you kill them the next round of the wave will be flowing out.
You should be shooting mobs whilst Decoy is out and only using Radial Disarm when the time seems right. With that said...
3. Don't spam Radial Disarm / Wait for the right time.
Whilst Loki may have access to a large energy pool and higher energy efficency than normal with Essence Helmet, please avoid spamming Radial Disarm. As I said before, you want to pop RD when the time seems right. When alot of enemies are around. When Decoy just wore off and the majority of a round in a wave has been spawned. When you have max energy and energy orbs on the ground are going to waste.
Things like that. Don't throw out your Radial Disarm just as mobs start to appear. The only time you should do this is if you want to make a Nukeframe like Nova's job slightly easier, since she's going to be killing stuff as soon as it spawns anyways. Or, wait until the next round spawns to pop Radial Disarm.
4. Essence Helmet, or Swindle Helmet?
Loki was blessed with two useful helmets; Essence to provide better skill spam, and Swindle to provide larger Radial Disarm range.
I'm personally a bigger fan of Essence. I feel that Radial Disarm's range is far enough with Overextended and Stretch, so I don't use it. But both are very useful, and this is purely up to you. I personally like having Essence for when I need to re-apply Radial Disarm.
5. Decoy and Radial Disarm synergize very nicely. Pair them like a fangirl pairs males in their fanfics.
If you couldn't tell by now, these two abilities work as well together as peanut butter and jelly. Learning to use Decoy is just as effective as learning to use Radial Disarm.
I've already mentioned how Decoy can be used to stall for more mob spawns, but Decoy can also cover for any mobs that happen to start spawning as you start killing off those affected by Radial Disarm.
After casting Radial Disarm, put your Decoy back into it's hiding place. Then slaughter the melee mobs. The decoy will do an excellent job distracting and stalling the newly spawned, ranged mobs until you can find time to Radial Disarm again. This combination is what helps me solo defense missions. Yes; even Tier III Void missions.
===Ending===
And that's me guide. I'm really hoping this helps some Loki looking to learn a bit more about his defensive abilities rather than his Invisibility uses. I spent a few hours writing this and re-examining my knowledge to best provide for all members of the 'master race'.
Now let's just hope that the majority of Loki can start doing things other than Invisibility + melee, eh?
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