[starter tips]

2 hours ago, Ghostshottgg said:

thank you fellow Tenno

You're welcome! 😊

[starter tips]

It's probably just time to grab a new weapon and/or look into changing your mods around - Ability Strength, Armour and then Health most suit Rhino, so stacking those as high as you can tends to be a good idea. As a general rule of thumb melee tends to hit the hardest, so if you're looking for weapons to get you to the real good stuff then you're probably best trying out a few Melees (I recommend one later in the post).

Also, with these new updates, corrosive isn't the go-to element anymore, that would be viral as it generally outperforms corrosive even on armoured targets (it's probably going to see nerfs eventually, but for now you probably want to use Viral on almost everything.).

If you can, definitely mod weapons for both Crit and Status. Going for one or the other is usually a bad idea unless the weapon is so bad at one of them that the other is the only good choice. Not to say Crit or Status specific weapons are bad, it's just that to be good they usually compensate in other ways such as high base damage or gimmicks.

Honestly though, a lot of the generally better weapons will be higher MR - not to say that you will have to grind, but you'll have less options until you do, and that can be a factor for sure. At MR7 your best option is probably Broken War, a sword and a quest reward, since it's technically a MR10 weapon (and a melee at that) that you get early and it definitely feels like one (I remember it carrying me pretty far TBH.).

If you don't have the mods to keep your survivability up, then of course Melee might be an issue, but as Rhino you should be able to make it through the entire star chart. Of course you still probably want to have a respectable primary or secondary to shoot trickier targets, usually the flying ones (A lot of people recommend the MR4 Hek shotgun, but at MR7 you can get the MR5 Ignis through clan research - you have a good number of options.), but a good melee will definitely help you conserve ammo if that stays a problem.

At worst, trying out new weapons will get you MR ranks, and you'll have access to much better weapons in no time.

Also, here are some easier to get mods I'd highly recommend focusing on getting/upgrading:

• Intensify for Ability Strength
• Steel Fiber and Armored Agility for Armour (Armored Agility may be a little harder to get)
• Vitality for Health
• Hunter Adrenaline is usually a pretty good pick just because it will make you less reliant on Energy drops or teammates. Might be a little clunky for Rhino, but should let you cast Iron Skin whenever you're in trouble, which is incredibly important for survival.

These probably seem pretty obvious honestly, and these mods won't stay relevant for you forever so I wouldn't care a whole lot about maxing them out completely if you don't need to, but they'll likely get you through the content you need (They definitely helped me.). --and if you do plan on using Hunter Adrenaline, having some form of health recovery would also be a good idea but maybe not neccesary (Life Strike if you have it on your Melee weapon should be more than good enough.).

That's probably the best info I can give you with what I know about your weapons, build, etc. (which is not much) but generally speaking these are solid ideas to look into.

[Pets attacking?]

Pets tend to act weird... AFAIK, to stop them from absolutely destroying the point in stealth frames and/or drawing too much aggro and getting themselves killed, they tend to not attack unless something attacks your frame first. Though they might also attack a target when you do, that I'm a lot less certain of. But being attacked by something with even a tiny shot definitely sets them off.

I mention the thing about it being specific to the frame, by the way, because if your frame isn't the one taking damage, they don't seem to care - including when they themselves take damage... Which is frustrating, and definitely feels like an oversight.

Spoiler

Operator mode will also stop them from attacking completely in my experience, for some reason...

There's apparently some changes in the works (AKA "soon") to companions that will make them a little less braindead, such as issuing commands, but in the meantime they're more of a utility that you shouldn't rely on than a damage output. Still can be very helpful though, if that's what you were worried about.

If you're wanting it to kill things for ranks on the other hand, then it's probably best to get your affinity from it using abilities instead. I honestly don't remember if they gain affinity from objectives either (it's been a while), but Spy missions tend to be a good way to farm affinity without having to kill anything - worth a shot. Specific to Kubrows - I also think that all Kubrow Mecha set kills count for the Kubrow, not you - again, worth a try if you have it.

[Umbra Forma Blueprints in RJ missions]

29 minutes ago, (XB1)COA Altair said:

Finding rare storage containers in RJ is like finding a needle in 10 haystacks.  Could run a few RJ missions every day for months and never see one.  At first I was ecstatic when I heard they were farmable, however, DE quickly nerfed the drop rate of them because if I recall correctly some people got dozens of blueprints from earth missions before they patched it to be exclusively veil.  

The Earth Proxima drops were seemingly a bug, as I don't think they were dropping from Saturn Proxima at the time either. Seems like too weird of a weird drop table to be intentional.

I think DE even addressed it, but I personally can't say for certain.

1 hour ago, (XB1)Nittymaster said:

So DE why even advertise them if you'll going to bury them under 50 tons of RNG?

To be fair to DE, I don't think they ever intended to make Umbra polarities available in the first place before masses of player feedback made them reconsider, so it could really be worse. Not saying that it's good right now, just saying that it could definitely be worse, especially since Umbra Forma are basically considered some of the rarest of rare rewards from what I understand.

It's not even really the case that you have to ever get more than one Umbra Forma to fully upgrade a frame too, so I don't feel like this is too much of an issue unless you seriously intend on putting Umbra Forma on every frame you own, which isn't really necessary either. The only two that I've used were from Nightwave, and I honestly haven't felt a need to use any more than that - used one for my main frame, and another for my secondary, and that was it. Mostly for build flexibility over strength. I would like another, I'm just not struggling without it. It's not that important really, and there's also a good chance Nightwave will bring more of them, or that more Umbra Forma drops in general will get added later, so I'm just being patient instead of dealing with the grind instead (and I like Railjack so it's not like I would find it boring, really). I'm fine with that.

--and at least with Umbra Forma there are workarounds that will still get the job done - Umbra mods are mostly just non-mandatory stat-sticks to make life easier when it comes to current content, so they aren't doing anything too unique and can usually fit into barely sub-optimal builds if you Forma the hell out of the other slots anyway - but some of the other farms out there really don't even have that option, especially for the rarer unique mods (most notably the time-gated ones) where you either have those mods or you don't, some of which can make or break Weapons/Frames entirely.

All in all, it's not really like this level of RNG is new (I honestly don't think you can complain about RNG in relation to Umbra Forma and not bring up RNG in Warframe as a whole, because then it just feels like cherry-picking.), it's just unfortunately more likely a mix of player burnout setting in, while farmable Umbra Forma have been asked for for a good long while and people don't want to wait any longer, as well as the fact that Railjack honestly isn't the most popular piece of content to begin with.

[Umbra Forma Blueprints in RJ missions]

They're a (likely very low chance) drop from reinforced storage containers in Sentient Anomalies. AFAIK, they spawn in rare container locations separate to regular container locations, and from my short experience with Sentient Anomaly maps they also have some walls you have to break using your operator. There's a good chance that some of those rare container spawns are behind those walls, so... Definitely get a good look around, and scan for containers through walls for hints.

[The Museum of Warframes]

Leverian is a really nice little feature. For me it's less about the stories and more about the close ups with the models and the art on the Prex cards, as well as seeing what the "signature gear" of a frame is up close too. But the stories definitely make for a great finishing touch since they're usually about the Warframes' defining moments, adding a good deal more personality to them in the process. The one about Ivara made me appreciate her a little more even though I never really clicked with the frame from a gameplay standpoint. So I think it does it's job as a little side-feature within the game as a whole more than well enough.

[Is Harrow Viable?]

I spent very little time with Harrow because I personally didn't like the playstyle, but in short: Definitely viable from what I've seen of other players.

Harrow is a powerful offensive support frame with okay defensive skills too - most people praise Harrow for his amazing crit bonuses from Covenant (his 4th ability) AFAIK, but Thurible and Pennance are also pretty good abilities that stop him from being a one-trick pony, so to speak. Just know that Harrow can be kinda tough to use, and for the best results you ideally want to be killing things yourself with headshots, so you'll effectively be trying to beat your team to kills to help them.

I honestly can't help with builds, but building for certain frames like Harrow, you probably want to try a little of everything anyway, so going searching for builds or even theorycrafting around which tools you like is probably for the best. However, I can say for certain that most players would recommend using Harrow at least with the Natural Talent mod to fix his slow casting speeds since he's so ability intensive. Since he's also buff intensive, Ability Duration will probably also be a good investment. --and I don't think I need to explain that Ability Strength is a no-brainer for most frames.

[Help Request: Solo Railjack]

At the start of solo railjack, you're going to be struggling just because your Railjack isn't strong enough for you to carry it through missions. Work on upgrading to higher ranking equipment first and foremost - I'll be giving recommendations throughout. The "Sigma" stuff available in your clan dojo is very worthwhile, but I would advise prioritising your Avionics capacity (Reactor), as that will get you the furthest (MKIII Sigma Reactor can get you to Veil Proxima - speaking from experience). Shields and engines aren't anywhere near as important as working on your hull with Avionics either, as hull upgrades will buy you precious time to complete objectives (far more than shields ever can).

As for what to do within the missions, your Railjack won't get you anywhere if it can't take hits because it's far too risky to use it to chip away at enemies that way, so I highly recommend parking your Railjack in a sheltered area (between or behind asteroids is a good idea), boarding a Grineer Crewship, and instead of destroying the Crewship, using it in the meantime to protect your own ship, as it generally does much better damage in the early Railjack experience than your own. When there isn't a Crewship available for you to hijack, it might be worth considering your Archgun, though I find Archwing to be really underwhelming. If you still struggle, pick up a Cryophon Railjack Turret. They're slow and clunky, but they will at least get you to the part of a mission where a Crewship is available.

It's going to be tough because if your Railjack takes critical damage and you're in a Crewship, you'll have to rush back quick. But it is possible. You won't have to do this strategy for too long hopefully, but expect some extra wait times while you craft better Reactors and Avionics, as well as a pretty big farm on Earth while you get a Railjack worth a damn.

If you find that you're struggling with Revolite (Omni ammo), prioritise fighters as early as possible within missions, but keep an eye out for Crewships and Cannon Batteries, as destroying them will reduce a good amount of damage you recieve. Also be aware that boarding parties are a real threat too, and bringing a frame that can wipe them effortlessly will be a massive help (I personally use Grendel because Feast is just so good, but you can probably do better with other frames and kill them outright.).

Main recommendations for getting a Railjack that isn't a burden:

• Hull upgrades - A lot of Railjack is surprisingly not that focused on the strength of your Railjack weapons, but it's defenses are key. Look into the Health and Damage Reduction of your hull. Time is precious in Railjack and making more of it will get you a long way, even if it means missions will drag.
• Particle Ram - If you pick one of these up, equip it. It's an effective way to get a decent, constant damage output on your Railjack, and speed up the process of destroying fighters for forge materials. Even as far as Veil Proxima. It will also stay active while you're piloting a Crewship, making it a form of defense for fighters looking to fly-by and shoot your Railjack. It can be clunky to use offensively because it is a close range weapon, and I highly recommend having a respectable hull first (as well as Piloting Intrinsics Rank 1), but because it will keep you close to your targets you're also less likely to leave behind loot including Forge materials, which I feel is a good trade-off. Its also a respectably small investment compared to higher ranked weapons, if you can get a Particle Ram to drop in the first place.
• Rank 1 Intrinsics - While Tactical 1 isn't that important, it is a good stepping stone for a key solo Railjack ability later. However, Piloting 1, Engineering 1 and Gunnery 1 will all massively improve the early experience IMO. They're very cheap upgrades, and you'll want a little of everything later, so I highly recommend taking these first steps.
• As a last resort, as I mentioned before, getting hold of a Cryophon Turret will massively help with destroying fighters in the early game (if you can't get a Particle Ram or just don't feel quite as comfortable using it), reducing your reliance on Crewship hijacking to kill fighters. They aren't quite as powerful as they used to be, and they're slow and close ranged, but Cryophon still feels like the best fly-swatter you can get your hands on, at least for the early game. You won't be able to restock your Ordinance until Engineering 3, so while you're working towards consistent Ordinance damage, a good turret will at least get you over the bump of "not doing enough damage".

That all said, I don't think the struggles with solo Railjack end there - that was mostly advice to get you out of Earth Proxima and stopping your Railjack from being more of a problem than a help - but luckily, it will become a much more straightforward deal from here on out. Keeping in mind that you'll need a tanky railjack, good boarding party killer as your Frame, and at least respectable weapons for your Railjack, here are some extra recommendations for making it to Veil Proxima with as little investment as possible:

• Tactical 3/4 and Gunnery 4 will save you massive amounts of time within missions and also save you the headache of using squishy Archwings to board Crewships. Farm your intrinsics to get these as soon as possible, and use your newly acquired Railjack Slingshot and Teleports to safely and quickly destroy Crewships, and also to advance on objectives from safe spots such as parked behind asteroids. It will also save you time travelling to your forge, or engaging boarding parties. I can't recommend these Intrinsics enough!
• Engineering 3 and a good Ordinance will really improve the consistency of your damage output if you need it. Being able to basically """spam""" Ordinance makes for a good time save in missions. It might not make the experience easier per se, but the time saved chipping away at fighters with weaker weapons will make the experience less of a chore. I personally like the Galvarc because it encourages close-range use like the Particle Ram which I also recommended above, but really, as long as your Ordinance is comfortable for you to use and you're keeping on top of its ammo with your Forge and new Engineering skills, it will do its job.
• Get yourself a respectable Railjack speed. There are a few ways to improve it - Engine upgrades, Avionics, Piloting Intrinsics - but personally, I dipped into a little of everything. Like the above case, it won't neccesarily make the missions "easier", but it will buy you a lot of time and make everything generally less of a chore. It also has the added benefit of making repositioning less time consuming when you get stuck in a bad spot, but smart parking of your Railjack for when you absolutely have to bail and go do objectives should be a priority anyway.
• Continue with your Hull Upgrades. I feel like this one is pretty self explanatory. More time to lose, more success. Give yourself that leeway.
• --and of course, getting to Veil requires at least one rank 7 Intrinsic. This one is up to you. I personally went for Piloting, which made it an even longer grind. But since 4 in Gunnery is already recommended, you can go for Gunnery 7 instead and cut time down while still getting some good skills too.

As for some general mission tips that are good at all levels:

• Fighters aren't a huge threat, but destroying them can get you very useful Forge supplies early on and keep that supply strong, so don't neglect to destroy them when you can. If you're low on Forge supplies and you don't want to take risks with Crewships and boarding parties, definitely focus on these until your supplies are no longer a struggle. If you can't forge more Revolite for your Omnis, you're in a bad spot. This includes the start of the mission, IMO, as you don't want bad RNG to never give you that extra health.
• Prioritise Cannon Batteries in early missions, prioritise Crewships almost always, and definitely deal with boarding parties as soon as you can - once they split up they're much harder to deal with, so save yourself that trouble. Know where those Ramsleds are coming from, too. Crewships and objectives tend to launch them, and they move in pretty predictable patterns. It's entirely possible with good movement and weapons to destroy them before they even have a chance to board, saving you a lot of effort. It's entirely possible if you're in the wrong place to get constantly boarded, giving you absolutely no time to breathe. At that point you might just have to retreat, or suck it up and destroy a Crewship within the minute or so you have before your Railjack bites the dust (much easier with Tactical and Gunnery 4).
• Objectives should be done last. You want to stay away from them because not only are they not as important as the imminent threat of Crewships and Ramsleds, but some of them will actively launch more Ramsleds your way if you park too close in my experience, in some cases being close to unavoidable. Dealing with them once the Crewships and Fighters are dealt with is so, so much easier, especially the Shipkiller Platform objective, which will massively restrict where you can put your Railjack, and should not be taken lightly.
• Keep an eye out for safe parking spots. Put walls between your Railjack and targets when necessary, but don't waste time with them if you're, say, only destroying a single Crewship. I mostly only recommend this for the aforementioned Shipkiller Platform, because that thing 100% lives up to its name, but other Objectives might be easier if you have a safe spot to park, too. Use your slingshot from your parking spot to save yourself the hassle of using Archwing to close the distance too, as it will usually cover the entire travel distance to objective entrances.

 

This is all from personal experience. I know it's not a short post, and some of it is repetitive, but I didn't want to just leave some sub-average tips that will barely get you out of Earth Proxima. But if I had to recommend taking away only a few things from this - AKA the TL;DR:

1. Hijack Grineer Crewships and use them to kill fighters in early missions until you have a Railjack hull that isn't made of paper, and weapons that aren't bubble blowers. It's gonna be a full-blown Defense mission for a while.
2. Upgrade your hull with Avionics. Your hull is basically the most important upgrade for progressing beyond being exploded every two minutes.
3. Particle Ram if you can get it for easily upgradable damage, a Cryophon turret in the meantime will be okay for getting you out of Earth Proxima. Ordinance will do a lot of work later if you want to invest in Engineering 3, but the Particle Ram is honestly amazing.
4. Get Tactical and Gunnery Intrinsics to Rank 4 so you don't have to use your Archwing basically at all, and you can save huge amounts of time teleporting and slingshotting yourself around. This is mostly important later when your Archwing can't even really take a single shot.
5. If you don't have enough Avionics capacity for hull upgrades, etc. get a better Reactor. I recommend a MKIII ASAP. I only have the Sigma Reactor MKIII (from Dojo) and can do Veil content. Your Shields and Engines basically don't matter at all in comparison (still using the unranked Sigma ones).

[Relic Forma Reward]

In regards to the fully built Forma comment, since people are talking about it.

On 2020-03-15 at 4:14 AM, (NSW)Conn1496 said:

It'd probably have to be a pre-built Forma or something to be worth it IMO. At least then you can bypass the time-gate on crafting them, which is a little more relevant.

I know that this comment was OTT. It was... -kinda the point. I don't feel like there's much that can honestly be done to make Forma a good uncommon reward basically ever just short of making it basically unreasonably good like in the example. Would it be good for players? Sure. But I definitely understand DE needing to incentivise paying for Forma too (Note that rushing Forma costs half of just buying it outright though. -and even a Forma Bundle will lose you 5 plat over rushing 3 BPs. Minor I know, but still relevant.).

I'm not even sure I really like the idea of a multiple Forma BP reward that can be built separately to the regular Forma BP - it's an okay one, I'm just on the fence about it because personally I don't feel like as a player that I truly need that many Forma that fast (if I'm that desperate I'll go throw myself at the Lua music puzzle or even Earth Sabo if I'm new). Maybe it's just because I tend to be pretty relaxed about picking up weapons like Paracesis/Kuvas for MR (though I do still have roughly 4 done at this point), so Forma feel a lot less mandatory (and the MR thing is a whole other topic I could get into), and I'm honestly not quite as bothered by time-gating as a lot of players seem. The fact that the game gives me downtime to go do other things, even within game, isn't always a bad thing.

I kinda just want something else at uncommon tier. Forma are a nice filler for common rewards (because at common they're actually relevant as a good source of Forma BPs), but anything above that could definitely stand to be consistently better, or at least unique in some aspect. Prime parts, even if just for ducats, are good incentive to upgrade relics because it's the only place you can get them short of trading other players - making that a more consistent thing (upgrading to get those unique rewards and not "more forma" etc.) with relics would go a long way for me. I'd say the same for Requiems, too (I feel like these are much worse offenders for rewards than regular relics) - I don't hate the rare Requiem reward, it just doesn't feel that worthwhile compared to even the Riven Silver common reward, so you can imagine my disappointment when I really want one of the mods and I get something worth ~75k rep (a resource I don't really use anyway, so it piles up quick) that I'll use less than Forma, to boot.

[Relic Forma Reward]

4 hours ago, Avienas said:

Though honestly, i would likely just state D.E. needs to just make it so forma only shows up on the common pool 100% of the time so its always 2 bronze parts, 2 silver parts, 1 gold part and 1 forma in bronze. Keep the crap simple and there is an issue on rarity spread of parts, then D.E. can easily fix that but making farming parts from relics be a whole lot less of a hassle on the loops needed to be jumped thru for it to be done at all.

Honestly, I thought about this exact idea when I made that post. Like, yeah, I'd trade every relic having a common Forma reward over no uncommon Forma any day. It'd just bring some consistency to the whole system, primarily around the value of void traces since upgrading relics would finally net you mostly consistent gains, rather than that fully upgraded relic sometimes rolling face-first into uncommon Forma, even if it's technically more chance I'll walk away with no Ducats per average relic.

I am wary about shuffling around all relic reward rarities though, too - you never know what'd end up where and there'd be a slight mess in the market for a while as everything hops prices... It'd probably be worth it.

5 hours ago, Avienas said:

prime parts have inconsistent ducat values, some being 25, some being 15 despite being silver rarity and even some specific silvers being 65 or so.

This I can excuse. I don't think it's really that unfair to say some Prime parts, even ones in the same rarity, are more valuable than others due to the time-based nature of them and the way rarities can change, so fluctuating Ducat costs are honestly not a bad thing. If anything, the rare cases where Ducat prices are higher are a pleasant surprise. There was a common reward a good while back going for 45, though I don't remember which one. I farmed the hell out of those relics.

It's basically just down to when rewards change rarity tiers (which, thank God they do, because double rare drop primes are torture in comparison to the rest), and to not screw people they give them the leeway of "sell these before the Ducat prices match the tier". At least, as far as I can tell.

 

I agree with a good deal of what you said, but I don't think the whole system really needs an overhaul like you suggested. Just some very heavy tweaking to iron out the really dumb stuff with the system. Which is mostly the rewards.

5 hours ago, Avienas said:

the erratic-ness of gaining void traces(with a lack of a proper scale up bonus)

Like, this? Seeing single digit void trace rewards crushes my soul. They're changing some of the game rewards to trim off the lower end, so hopefully that's indicative of more changes like that in the future, because it suuucks when you roll low on void traces. It's 6-30 traces per relic, so you can literally get a fifth of the maximum with the lowest roll. A damn fifth. Literally the difference between 4 missions (30 traces) or 17 missions (6 traces) to get the traces to fully upgrade a relic. I know it's never truly that skewed, but the idea that I could roll that far below average at all is gross - even a completely average trace number (18 traces to be precise) would be only 6 missions.

 

Quick anecdote relating to relic farming and bad rewards, since that's the current topic:

I never want to see another Ayatan Amber Star ever again after farming Requiem relics ('cause it ain't just regular relics with bad/weird rewards, that'd be too simple). At one point, I picked an Ayatan Amber up in a mission, forgot that I picked it up and that I wasn't doing Requiem relics anymore (I had gone AFK for a long while mid-mission. I play solo.), but because I'd gotten so many that day I just assumed I had done a relic mission again and got another (it was like my 10th that day - I got like 4 in a row at one point, and they were fully upgraded Requiem relics, too). I was genuinely furious until I realised that I'd been doing a completely unrelated mission, my luck was really that bad that day. lol

Anyway, point is: Ayatan Amber Stars are a massive slap in the face that are probably worse than uncommon Forma TBH.

[What makes a weapon a meta?]

12 minutes ago, kwlingo said:

If you do a full build no riven lots of weapons can clear rooms super quick compared to the redeemer that does damage only LOS.  Slash was and still is the quickest proc killer for all weapons in game. The only thing is if you can proc Viral its gets better. No other two can bring down enemies quicker except if enemies are immune to slash procs.

Honestly gunblade's are for only a few specific play styles. Either invisible frames to build combo counter, or tethering all enemies in one spot like Nidus or Vauban. This is a great way to use the weapon but like you said you need the right frame to make it work efficiently. If not the other melees will be much quicker at killing a whole slew of enemies. For example you dont see Redeemer being a meta for ESO because it requires killing in large area asap. People rather bring long ranged weapons that have a large 360 degree swings.

You're talking about a very specific part of the meta - high-end endless mission crowd clearing. It's a fair point, and I understand that crowd clearing is a big part of the game (I did mention that previously in a post), but it's not everything and most modes really won't need such a high power crowd-clearing output to be viable, so it's kind of negligible whether they hit that hard or not when other weapons cover so much more.

If we're talking about absolutely perfect (and probably unnecessary) efficiency for a majority of missions, then sure those weapons are probably better than Redeemer Prime, but you can only ever kill so fast and resist so much - you don't really need to push things so hard to get the most out of Warframe, and the difference between killing everything instantly with a gunblade and killing everything instantly with a huge sword usually doesn't matter quite as much as it does in your example with ESO, though I will give you that one point with no question - if you wanna do something like ESO with melee as your focus, then you probably do want a good-reaching Slash weapon.

But even then, the same weapons you use for high-level ESO won't necessarily be the most efficient for clearing every piece of content (if you really do care about the absolute, most perfect efficiency), because the damage ceiling is lower in a lot of cases, so you can trade power you don't need for reach, speed, etc. and save time (I think used an example of relic farming at some point, which is much much lower level content - why run to a point and instakill everything in melee radius when you can blast a whole area with an Ignis Wraith for less than half a second from 27m away, y'know?).

Also, I don't really think Gunblades are too playstyle specific. All you really need to do is cover it's AoE weakness (which isn't always relevant, TBH), something a lot of good primaries, secondaries and frames are built for in the first place. -and as you pointed out, a lot of frames can CC enemies into one spot, completely negating a need for AoE weapons in most cases at all (though personally I'd still bring one on the uncommon chance I run into CC resistant enemies).

I also basically said this in one of my other posts, but context is very important for what is and isn't meta. Weapons don't have to be good in all contexts to be meta, just the relevant ones - I get the impression that in your case, that seems to be killing the toughest of the tough, which is only one goal which not everyone will take on, but definitely a fair goal to have.

To be "meta" to me, weapons can either be good enough at most things (a reliable pick when you don't want or need to think too hard lol), or just really good in a specific way that means you really want to hold onto them for one or two specific reasons, and I think Redeemer Prime (just using it as an example again because it's a weapon I know well, more than anything) does a little of both, having pretty sufficiently carried me through more content than I'd like to admit at one point in the past, and is again great for Eidolons, while rarely being so flawed it actively weighs me down (though yeah when I need to kill huge, high level groups insanely fast, it might, haven't run into that yet personally though). --and I could probably say the same for, say, Gram Prime (a very Slash-weighted, long ranged heavy blade - to have another example) being good for most content and also ESO, but not as good as Redeemer Prime for Eidolons. Both are good in their own way without invalidating eachother. It just really, really depends on circumstances.

3 hours ago, (NSW)Conn1496 said:

Basically speaking, there are way too many factors to judge if a weapon is meta or not without just talking about those weapons' intricacies...

...if a weapon hits enough of those key factors in practice, it tends to stick out.

I think this sums it up well for me. If it does what you need it to do (usually the fastest, though not neccesary), then it's meta. It doesn't have to be perfect.

[Any tips for gathering resources in Railjack?]

If you're talking about forge specific stuff, prioritise Fighters as soon as possible and make 100% sure you check for their loot drops, even if you haven't killed one in a while - little, light blue orbs of light which are pretty easy to miss unfortunately. Fighters definitely are a lesser threat, but killing them nice and early compared to everything else will usually net you a good buffer of resources, so I find that I never run out (of course I'll go out of my way to get rid of a really big threat that's making me eat resources in the first place, but it's usually just a Crewship or two at most).

As a quick aside, I use a lot of short range weaponry (Galvarc and Particle Ram mostly, though I don't use Cryophon even though this point would apply to it too) - I know it's not everyone's favourite, but getting up close and personal means you have to worry less about going out of your way to pick up loot drops after you kill an enemy. So utilise that Particle Ram more often, for sure.

I play Railjack solo, so... -I don't know if it's any different, but that's what I do and I find that the only time I run out is when I don't prioritise those fighters early, or get really bad luck.

I also know this is a no-brainer, but being more careful with those resources in the first place is a good idea (not implying you aren't careful, but you can definitely always be more careful, myself included - if you're on your last uses of revolite/Omni, wait for major hull ruptures and use the countdown and invulnerability time as a buffer to get more, etc. etc.), and that includes how efficiently your Railjack uses them too. Upgrade your hull Avionics if you find that you have to repair too much, mostly (TBH I don't really focus on my shields at all and it works out).

The only other thing I can think is, if you're in a team, make sure your teammates are pulling their weight, too. It's definitely plausible that teammates responsible for boarding crewships and other objectives are ignoring containers that have those resources in them, but don't be too harsh because... -well, in my experience it's not the main source of forge refills anyway, it just helps especially when you're running low and desperate.

[Relic Forma Reward]

Yeah, this has bothered me in the time I've spent playing, too. Kind of frustrating that something is used in filler for multiple tiers of rewards. Personally though, I'd just rather not see plain-ol' Forma BPs on the rewards for anything higher than common at all, 'cause I don't feel like anyone would ever specifically want to farm for multiple Forma when Forma are pretty easy to get already, so it doesn't really feel like a good uncommon reward substitute. I'd still take it over what we have now though.

It'd probably have to be a pre-built Forma or something to be worth it IMO. At least then you can bypass the time-gate on crafting them, which is a little more relevant.

It's not, like... -game ruining, but when I'm going for prime parts and I don't get the one I want, I'd definitely rather have ~45 ducats over a single Forma to compensate for that. So, minor irk, but I'll definitely back changing it since it feels so... -pointless?

[What makes a weapon a meta?]

9 minutes ago, kwlingo said:

Yes but it cannot one hit kill like back then while other weapons with slash can do one hit kills "non-heavy attack"

It's still a real damn good, meta-viable weapon with great positives that massively outweigh a lot of Slash-based weapons' positives. It doesn't need to one-shot things on a regular hit to be better.

The build-up on Redeemer Prime's combo/heavy builds is quick as hell. It's barely a downside, especially when considering that you probably want to build combo for Weeping Wounds/Blood Rush on Slash-based non-'heavy build' weapons anyway. It also has arguably much better peaks for damage output, given that in cases where Slash weapons should have a notable advantage (such as armoured targets), Redeemer Prime barely lags behind most of them without even having to take armour bypassing effects into account in the first place (which can come from other sources ^[*^]).

With the correct ability/weapon synergies, etc. it likely outperforms those other weapons without a doubt. In short: Redeemer Prime just hits like a truck. What it lacks in an easy utility to bypass armour basically doesn't matter since it will one-shot a majority of relevant targets anyway, and the fact that it's even comparable without synergies (which Slash DoTs have a lot less of than raw damage) speaks volumes about just how good Redeemer Prime is.

The raw power of weapons aside - Redeemer Prime also has the benefit of being a gunblade. It trades a little bit of regular melee weapons' AoE coverage for great reach and precision, making it a really preferable pick as a single target nuke, or boss killer too (especially those bosses which are immune to status). It does something unique with very little drawback, and is rewarded for it.

TBH, in my original comment I was mostly just making a silly point about how good Redeemer Prime is without Slash (I mean, I definitely understand how good Slash is too, I don't think that's disputable. It's the only thing stopping some weapons being totally trash TBH.) but your original point--

2 hours ago, kwlingo said:

Or you could just make sure your melee does slash. If not your melee will never be meta.

--while I understand is probably hyperbolic, just doesn't really hold up, and not even just to Redeemer Prime. I mean, even in this same thread we have melee weapons that could theoretically be better - it really depends on what you need to beat the content you want to do, and what you're looking for personally as a player (it's not always good mob clearing damage, even if that's what most melee is for).
 

^[*^] I wanted to add this as kind of a niche point in favour of both sides, because again, I know slash is good (i just don't think it's completely meta defining). Something I enjoy doing to really push a lot of my weapons' power is to use Garuda, since her 4 makes any weapon capable of making enemies hit bleed, including Redeemer Prime, so it only makes sense to want to see what happens. It's an insanely powerful synergy and really shows you why Redeemer Prime should never be allowed Slash procs on those shots in the first place. lol

[Why can't every Flood mission award this much Kuva?]

1 hour ago, NigglesAU said:

Because a lot of people dont care about kuva and rivens?

I think it's less that people don't care about Kuva and Rivens (I mean, I don't but other people clearly do, so kind of a moot point), and more just that honestly, Kuva isn't that hard to get? I mean, unless you're flipping rerolled Rivens across the market like pancakes.

Maybe I just haven't been around that long, but I don't find myself really caring about rerolling rivens I don't/won't use, or think are good enough, so I have a lot of Kuva to spare just from naturally playing the game. Just gotta be smarter with your investments, or put in that good ol' grind if you're intent on being a Riven farmer.

[Accessibility of Prime Parts and Warfame]

Honestly, most frames are easier to get than their Prime counterparts. More importantly, they're not time-gated. It's not that big of a deal, really. Even when they are easier to get (Equinox comes to mind for me - I had Equinox Prime before even completing Equinox's quest, just by sheer good fortune through opening relics, though on part it's because I procrastinated doing Equinox's quest), you're still gonna have to grab those regulars anyway to get their MR, so I don't think it changes too much other than what you invest, and it's good practice to invest in the long term anyway. Though investing in something short term isn't really a loss if you use the thing enough before you move on to it's direct upgrade.

Though yeah, it kinda sucks having to rebuild a frame from scratch when you upgrade to Prime (I did this recently with Oberon Prime after maining Oberon for 90% of my time playing.), but it really doesn't take an experienced player that long. I mean, I've only been playing for ~7 months, and the resource and time cost for the transition between Oberon and Oberon Prime was barely a dent. If anything I feel worse about the fact that when I first modded Oberon I was really bad at modding and ended up spending like 9(?) Forma on it, and even then didn't have an optimal build. Still doesn't bother me, though.

As for the missions themselves, well, you're not always doing them for the reward. Suggesting that is a matter of personal opinion - whether you care about that content in other terms than its reward, which I personally do.

So... Just not really feeling this as a "problem".

[What makes a weapon a meta?]

As an over-generalisation you're mostly looking for a good theoretical DPS for as many situations as you can or a very good theoretical DPS for one specific difficult task. Some weapons just have it better than others not even necessarily because they have the best numbers, but because they have significant numbers and other advantages - good innate damage types, good area coverage or accuracy, unique gimmicks, synergies with other powerful tools, etc. - so it's not really a secret that some weapons are meant to be better than others.

I think a lot of weapons would struggle without mods, since the way they capitalise on good mods or have their only weaknesses fixed by modding (not even necessarily modding the weapon itself) is pretty important, especially those who have unique mods. Personally, I dump weapons into three categories: Mob Clearer, Single Target, and Utility/Gimmick. That's not to say there aren't weapons in all three categories though, because it's entirely possible that a weapon has good enough single target damage but in an AoE area, while also stacking statuses at a crazy fast rate (although that isn't the most unique utility in the world - more of a realistic baseline), but usually those weapons aren't also the absolute best at one of those core 3.

In my experience, most objectives primarily rely on mob clearing as the core mechanic, with the obvious exceptions being boss fights or things like spy missions where fighting at all isn't really neccesary. So if a weapon clears mobs well, it tends to become meta pretty quick from what I can see, and then other weapons will come in and fill the gaps that those meta weapons can't reach. --and even then, different levels of content might even have a different range of meta weapons because frankly, you only need to hit as hard as is neccesary to kill your target. Going for massive amounts of overkill when you could be shooting more often really isn't worth it if you're looking to be efficient at farming low level content, for example. In the opposite direction, if you're looking to kill a boss with weakpoints, you really don't want to bring your 'giant flyswatter' style weapon because it probably won't be able to pinpoint those weakspots very well, and probably doesn't have a comparable single-target DPS to the better weapons.

That's not even getting into the rare cases of missions with complete gear restrictions, like some Sortie missions forcing one weapon type or Grendel Missions blocking mods.

Basically speaking, there are way too many factors to judge if a weapon is meta or not without just talking about those weapons' intricacies. You can guess and theorise on first look by comparing it to past weapons, but it won't always work out as anticipated. Either way, if a weapon hits enough of those key factors in practice, it tends to stick out.

 

Also just wanted to give kudos to @Vaeldious for their really good multi-utility example in the Rakta Dark Dagger - it can't be exaggerated just how good some otherwise weak weapons' utilities are. I'm sure the RDD is not the best at destroying groups of enemies or boss slaying, but it fills such a unique niche of restoring three resources when modded correctly that you can't say that it's not good.

Personally, I wanna shout out the Sancti Magistar (another syndicate melee, huh) and it's utility for similar reasons, because even though it doesn't cover as many bases as the RDD does (and honestly it probably doesn't have as good of a damage output if you want to go there), it does something arguably even more unique with its healing pulses in that it can heal not just yourself, but allies and even objectives (which I should point out is something that some healer frames aren't even allowed to do).

They're good weapons to compare IMO, because even though they have a good amount in common (and arguably are sometimes interchangeable), they still shine more than the other in different situations. -and both weapons don't even have restoring resources as their only utilities - RDD makes you less visible when wielded and Sancti Magistar resists statuses when wielded, too - minor points, but worth mentioning.

 

1 hour ago, kwlingo said:

Or you could just make sure your melee does slash. If not your melee will never be meta.

Someone tell that to Redeemer Prime's shots. Absolutely no Slash on those non-blade attacks (if it does have it, it's not really relevant from my experience), still utterly deletes even armoured targets before armour strip.

[Ivara Neuroptics]

Literally just a 7-8% drop chance from T3 Spy missions (so Sedna, Pluto, Neptune, Uranus - though I guess you already knew that) when you complete all three hacks (alarms can be triggered, just don't fail them). Nothing more to it, it's just that those 7-8% drops aren't always the kindest.

It's 100% possible to just have RNG slam you like that - I remember having to crack almost 30 fully upgraded relics open for a 10% drop when I was farming Redeemer Prime (and I was already having not-so-great luck with the relics - it's rare, but it happens. Though honestly I have more positive surprises than negative ones in this aspect. Just keep at it, and 100% double check your info is good if you have any doubts.

[Arbitrations are hard for caster frames]

9 hours ago, protecttheplanet said:

strategic would be a team of frames with different roles like in any other game. 1 tank, 1 healer, 1 buffer, 1 dps. u could even make entire new builds dedicated to teamplay instead of the solo builds one normally uses.

honesty i fail to see the strategy in making casters less effective, leaving a whole role out of one of the most rewarding game modes. where is the strategy in shooting with ur aoe weapon in the general direction of the enemies? where is the strategy in melee spamming when u will eventually hit the drones anyways with primed reach? i dont wanna criticize it too much because thats like 99% of what I did, do and will do and i love it. but that gameplay is not changed for the better just because i will shoot and melee onlyt instead of shooting, meleeing and casting.

Well, basically speaking, taking the correct weapons and frames is strategy. Just because it happens out of the main action doesn't make it not part of the game. If loadouts weren't part of the strategy, you'd drag your ass out there with just a Stug and do fine. Sure, it's restrictive to ask the player to bring specific things in specific circumstances, but Warframe doesn't do this just for Arbitrations (and speaking about game design as a whole, it definitely isn't limited to Warframe). --and it's basically down to personal preference whether you like that or not (As a quick note: I personally think Warframe does enough justice by their frames by rarely making a frame completely worthless even if their gameplan doesn't fit the mission quite as well.) and thinking it's bad just because it restricts certain options really isn't a fair assessment to me when not only is that quite clearly the intent - to test you without certain tools at your disposal and make sure not only your kit, but your in-game strategy as a whole is thought out - but it definitely is a way to shake the game up.

Now does it fully work as intended as a part of game design? Not completely, no. Warframe in general is on the easier side, so kit restrictions usually fall flat a little anyway. It'll be a minor inconvenience at most, but unless you really mess up your loadout you can pretty much brute force your way through anything. The scales of "player power" and "skill needed" are pretty clearly weighed often towards players being powerful, so of course it's jarring when that power doesn't work in the same way anymore. Though, along the same thought of balancing player power and skill, I'm sure someone has walked into Arbitrations with a Stug as their only weapon (AKA: really messing up their loadout), despite weapons being important in Arbitrations, and somehow done well because their skill as a player just completely ignores balance altogether.. I'm sorry to all of the two Stug fans out there, I'm just excessively using it as an example of a bad gun because it's notorious. In the same way you can walk into Arbitrations with a caster frame if you want and still do well. It's just, of course, a little more effort. Not everything has to be easy free in Warframe, even if that's honestly the trend. I honestly don't think DE even intended the game to be so damn easy in the first place, they just really clearly care about not frustrating their players and made a few balance slip-ups that threw the game in that direction naturally.

Overall I just don't think you can really criticise only Arbitrations alone for negating the use of certain tools (and not even completely, mind) when other parts of the game quite literally restrict certain tools in much much less fun ways (Hello Grendel missions and "___ only" sorties. Still slog my way through those though.), and most other parts of the game are also skewed towards certain strategies, but in more natural ways like requiring either a very offense  ^{_{*very quiet sobbing about trying to solo ESO*}} or defense heavy build (some of which honestly are far, far worse than Arbitrations).

Now, am I gonna say "get good" like others have? Nah. But I don't think there's anything wrong with saying "get better if you want to use whatever you want and still win", because your preferred tools just won't work for everything... -unless you're just really damn good at it, obviously.

[Arbitrations are hard for caster frames]

Arbitrations only really hurt frames who rely too heavily on things like CC or damage abilities (CCs making enemies basically as good as dead in a lot of cases, TBH.), which isn't really that new of a concept between things like nullifiers and energy drain units spawning in regular missions, or certain bosses just not being affected in the first place. If anything, Arbitration drones are more forgiving than most other sources of that kind of thing because they generally affect less abilities in the wider scheme of things, and killing them gives you some reward in the form of AoE damage - though I should also add that damage frames still can still be effective by finishing those now exposed units when the drone explosion isn't enough.

DE haven't really been subtle about wanting certain tools to matter more in certain circumstances either (hell, it's a big portion of what the newest update was about, as far as I can tell - shields, frames' survivability, proc effectiveness, etc.), and frames are just a part of that. Nuke frames are a very notable example, and so things like Arbitrations incentivise the use of other frames without actually nerfing those good nuke frames, and I like that. If anything we really need more content where strategy matters, because it's clear that balancing with raw numbers is not working out all that great.

Yeah, the "forced meta" aspect is a little annoying - I enjoy playing Grendel even though a stiff wind could probably disable his entire kit, so I get that - but it's not quite as drastic as people believe, especially not compared to other content, and is definitely not new in terms of MMO games as a whole. If anything, Warframe is pretty relaxed about that kind of thing, and I feel it's a little weird even that Warframe hasn't leant into it quite as heavily, given that it wants to promote teamwork, which feels like the kind of thing strategic gamemodes would really incentivise (though as a solo player I would definitely not want to be forced to basically figure out a 4 player job in every game mode - and that's coming from someone who truly enjoys solo Railjack).

Oberon main, btw. :^)

[The stug, warframe's most overlooked weapon]

KUVA TWIN STUG WRAITH!?

Kidding aside (or am I?), there are definitely a handful of weapons that feel like joke weapons, and the Stug is the king of them all. I know that not every weapon has to be good, and some people probably have an ironic love for the Stug's awful factor, but the Stug is a unique type of bad. Everyone knows the Stug is bad, and even the MK-1 Braton is only bad in the sense that it just can't kill things - it still somehow ends up being useful though, at least when you're starting the game. You can't even say that for the Stug because it has other drawbacks and can't be grabbed right away.

I think what makes it the most upsetting is that, design-wise, it honestly looks like it should at least be a status thrower to me, but it doesn't even do that. It's also honestly kind of an interesting weapon in terms of gameplay, so the fact that it not only doesn't reward you for the one cool factor it has, but in some cases actively punishes you for using it?.. Yeah... It's upsetting.

I've seen what this weapon does (or rather doesn't do, at all) and even though I'm a newer (though definitely not new) player with one sitting in his foundry waiting to be MR farmed... I just don't wanna. lol --and that's coming from someone who loves challenging themselves with gimmicky, bad weapons. It's just a little too far - I used the Fang pre melee 3.0, I know how irredeemably bad weapons can get. I'll get to it some day... Some day.

[Volt needs a rework]

1 hour ago, DudeOsm said:

It would be cool to race other players with these two frames.

There's a community member who already does races of sorts - go look up XandyPants' Driftframe stuff, I think he streams it mostly(?). Though honestly I don't really know a whole ton about it. What I do know though, is that outside of the frames which are banned for trivialising races by teleporting or flying, Volt is considered the best or at least second best IIRC (he's up there, regardless). Gauss, ironically, really doesn't even come close. Gauss feels fast, and runs respectably fast, but... -isn't actually "fast".

Beside that point, "rework" really wasn't the right word to use here. This change at best would be a minor buff, and also one that isn't really needed IMO. Volt's speed increase improves melee attack speed as well, making it a little more beneficial than what Gauss can do in a more traditional setting, and Volt's speed buff also scales with ability strength, which Gauss, even if his speed does scale, doesn't match up to at all somehow.

If we were talking a full scale rework, though... Nah. Volt is a very respectable frame right now, capable of being good for a nice variety of content (notably Eidolons), and the big changes have only buffed him too, giving him better survivability where he kinda needed it, and a very minor buff in the fact that his abilities' main damage type (Electricity) saw a very minor buff too.

Volt is doing pretty damn good right now. Give him a little credit. lol

[About player retention]

Honestly when I started the game I personally looked at the market for weapons I thought I'd never get. I was planning to play the game solo (and still do play solo), so I was under the very wrong impression I'd never have any of the clan weapons, for example. It was something that bothered me because I really did want a few of the cooler looking ones - and let's face it, some of the clan unlocked weapons are the most fun ones - and admittedly, it was very off-putting for me playing the game in the long term.

But all it took was a little bit of searching for details to realise that the only weapon I'll probably never get because of limitations like that is... -maybe the Hema?.. --and even then, I can get the Hema if I just persevere and care enough. Which, to some is a pain in the ass, but 1) I don't really care too much about the Hema honestly and 2) I kinda just don't mind the grind(? I like having long-term goals. Call me crazy.).

--and I think that's emblematic of everything that puts players off of Warframe. Even though you can do everything solo, clearly, there's so much research to do to figure out that that's true in the first place. Then you end up doing more research to find out how to get into the game and achieve these certain goals... It goes on and on from there, and unless you're prepared in the sense that you either enjoy digging your way through the wiki (as an example), or simply figuring things out like that for yourself, you'll run into a lot of bumps in the road and moments where you reconsider the game for good. I spent a lot of time wondering if I'd keep playing Warframe in the same way, but after pushing through those doubts I think I'm here to stay.

It's not a secret that the new player experience requiring a lot of community input to be good is a problem. Plat costs "scaring" players is, quite honestly, a very tiny fraction of that.

[Void damage deal half damage to robotics health class.]

18 minutes ago, Tyreaus said:

I'm not sure where you're getting this from, since the wiki page you posted and the damage page both list robotics as neutral, and the former only mentions Void being weak against Machinery (typically a Grineer health type for robotics). So it seems like there's something amiss somewhere...

I just looked again and it's definitely been changed since I last looked (even looked at the edit history of the page). So either it was wrong at the time, or is wrong as of now.

Either way, not very helpful...

[Void damage deal half damage to robotics health class.]

50 minutes ago, Avienas said:

In any Case, Void damage is quite trash and honestly needs to be updated to be neutral against everything with a major damage boost against Sentients in particular. Since it does not exactly fall in the same category as what other damage types exist as, it should basically get no real resistance from shields & armor, if D.E. continues to have amps have no mods, Which we all know how fun weapons are without any mods in any content with level 20 or above enemies.

I feel like the real problem is that Void damage clearly is meant to have very niche uses - stripping resistances from sentients, taking down Eidolon shields, etc. etc. - so to counteract that they don't really make sources of it comparably useful in any other way unless you use very specific set-ups*. Personally I think Amp damage output (talking about amps because they're basically the only source of Void damage) is okay given it's niche status, and I enjoy using (most of) them, but they definitely do run into problems at notably higher level content - things like 3rd sortie, max level Lich, or Kuva Flood - where they're clearly being shoved into their niche roles as Void damage outputs almost exclusively. That said, that basically makes it an Amp problem right now and not a Void damage one, since Void damage hasn't really been applied anywhere else to my knowledge. If Amps in general were better, then Void damage by proxy would receive a buff.

Though I will say, damage output and resistances aside, I do think the proc on Void damage is an absolute disaster, and it desperately needs a rework. Just because it's a niche element doesn't mean it should be left behind with the proc rework, IMO.

(* For reference, I use Unairu for the Wisp and Sundering Dash to increase damage output in Operator mode. I also occasionally mix in Mutalist Quanta bubbles, though by that point we're not even really talking about the properties of Void damage. Still, it makes the damage output of those Amps better than some actual weapons I've had the misfortune of grinding for MR.)