Warframe abilities that scale well into steel path?

[AzureScion]

Most of the time when getting tips and watching videos on YouTube on how to tackle steel path, it mostly comes down to having a Kuva Nukor/Nuva Kukor (T. Cycron) as a primer and the same melee weapons with the same builds with condition overload scaling. Given how strong the scaling of CO melee is, no wonder people still find level 9999 contents easy. 

 

I've been wanting to play normal steel path contents (level 100-ish) with warframe abilities and primary guns used to do damage. I know a couple of primaries that can scale pretty well too with the help of Hunter Munitions with viral, but what I've been wondering is, are there any warframes with damaging abilities that scale well into higher level contents? Not counting CC of course, since CC is mainly used to immobilize enemies and then be killed all the same with status stacking and CO melee. I can think of a few, maybe like Saryn with her spores and Gara with her infinite scaling Splinter Shard, which makes them S tier picks in many warframe tier lists (also my beloved Protea) but are there any more? I somehow find it funny if caster frames become completely obselte when it comes to late game content since their abilities can barely do any damage and they're gonna have to rely more on their weapons to do all the work, in which case there's no point in using caster frames anymore. 

 

Keep in mind I'm strictly talking about damaging abilities, so abilities like breach surge, silence, sonar, etc shouldn't be counted since they don't actually do damage but multiplies all incoming damage which in turn comes back to... using melee/guns again.

[XaoGarrent]

1 hour ago, Leqesai said:

 

On subject, the best scaling abilities IMO are going to be from Xaku and Ember. Ember has the ability to fully strip armor and deal fire dots that decimate grineer.

Xaku can scale infinitely due to built-in scaling on Grasp of Lohk and total defense strip (shield+armor) with Gaze. Give Xaku Miter to pop nullifier bubbles and you're pretty much set for 99% of steel path content.

Nova is the S-tier option for Steel Path though. Her slow also applies an added damage bonus to enemies and the slow is powerful enough for her to steamroll through nearly everything Steel Path has to offer. Layer this on top of her massive damage reduction with Null Star and you've got S-tier level cohesiveness that most frames can't compete with.

Nope, I'm right and you can't handle it. :)

[DarknessNightshade]

I'd say Sevagoth's Gloom or Banshee's Sonar are very useful abilities, Gloom slows enemies and gives you heals within a visible boundary, Sonar amplifies your damage on top of your existing loadouts.

Mirage's Eclipse is great for a damage buff (of over 300%) but Sonar still outclasses it, usually Mesa mains will be using either this to boost their Regulators or Dispensary for the energy drops.

Most actual damage abilities don't scale all that well, Yareli's Aqua Blades being an obvious example, and others such as Ember's Fireball, Grendel's Regurgitate, and a few others I can't remember the name of.

Hence why people tend to gravitate towards passive buffs to damage instead.

[IMP_102]

I would recommend a Nezha with breach surge infused in slot 1. Warding halo scales decently enough as a defensive ability with some invulnerability built in when it runs out. Then just breach surge in the middle of enemy group, throw your chakram at a hard target and let rip with the gun of your choice.

Just be careful with Malice, that mag bubble apparently affects breach surge particles. I one ended up with a 26 Million warding halo, because I recast it just before all that reflected damage hit me.

[Perfectly_Framed_Waifu]

4 hours ago, Leqesai said:

Xaku can scale infinitely due to built-in scaling on Grasp of Lohk and total defense strip (shield+armor) with Gaze. Give Xaku Miter to pop nullifier bubbles and you're pretty much set for 99% of steel path content.

Give Xaku Roar and GoL will start doing serious damage even without Gaze.

[(XBOX)Cotton Tail]

If I'm not in a hurry I quite enjoy Ash (Prime)  - blade storm and smoke screen mainly. A mitre with augment to pop annoying nullifier bubbles. Also blade storm on acolytes is a nice lazy way to watch them bleed to death(? Can they die?)

Other than that I'll second Xaku and another slow but fun one I enjoy is Baruuk with Lull's augment.

[prot0mega]

ember with a single intensify mod can strip 100% armor when the heat gauge is full. and her 2 coupled with adaptation provides decent survivability. transplant gloom for enhanced CC and suvivability. you'd need a decent gun modded with toxic and/or magnetic for the corpus though.

[XaoGarrent]

10 minutes ago, (XBOX)Obi Wan Dandobi said:

Mag. With the secura penta with punch through. Delicious.

As for the Kuva Nukor, it still covers everything in status,  just doesn't chain to as many enemies. You just have to wiggle it around a bit. Just because your favourite youtuber says it's trash everyone just follows like sheep. By all means please stop using it and maybe they'll stop nerfing it.

Actually, all the youtubers are repeating what you're saying, and they're wrong too. :)

[XaoGarrent]

31 minutes ago, AzureScion said:

I appreciate all the tips and advice given in the replies so far. Nova in particular comes up as interesting to me because I always view her as very squishy and only used for speeding defense missions. Also Zephyr?? That name came up outta nowhere lol. Wasn't expecting her to come up in meta discussion at all, let alone bringing into steel path. It'd be lovely if someone can elaborate on how Zephyr works in high tier contents, cause all I do with her is float up high while barraging enemies with rockets a la Pharah from OW or Drogoz from Paladins. Birb girl has a soft spot in my heart so I'm excited for this.

Nova and Zephyr both have ways of multiplying damage, and mitigating damage, past armor and shields.

Nova's null star has percentile DR, 5% for each star, and the number of stars scales off Duration, something Nova wants lots of. With the augment it's fairly easy to maintain. Molecular Prime has enormous range and doubles the damage enemies take in addition to making them explode, and is very strong when combined with something like a Glaive or a launcher. Molecular Prime can be built to speed up, slow down, or not effect enemy movement speed at all. Making Molecular Prime neutral is as as simple as slotting power donation as your aura.

Zephyr's Tornados amplify damage fired into them in two ways: Weapons with punch through or splash can strike both the target in the tornado and the tornado itself, and critical damage that strikes the tornado gains a 200% bonus. The pull on the Tornados is also quite good now. Zephyr's 3 also makes her almost invincible to ranged attacks targeted directly at her, and its augment makes many weapons really, really goofy, not least of which is turning the Tenet Plasmor into a sniper cannon.

31 minutes ago, AzureScion said:

But then again what I originally asked was if there's any pure damaging abilities that scale well into high level content. Possibly with infinite scaling mechanics or % based damage. I've gathered so far that Saryn, Gara, Ember, Xaku, and Hildryn are quite the destructive force. Also another name came up to mind, which is Revenant with his enthrall-reave combo which I've been enjoying these past few days.

Saryn falls of pretty fast. She needs to rely on weapons much more in SP. I believe there are some infusions that can amp up her damage, but I don't bother. She's a noob starchart clearer or a so-so debuffer in the current meta. Gara actually does have infinite scaling, but it flatlines if you fail to maintain splinter storm stacks even just once. Not a fan. She is super, super strong.

The rest of the frames you have listed there all have ways of bypassing or stripping armor. You'll notice a reoccurring theme: AoE damage amps, buffs, and armor stripping paired with survivability are how you SP effectively. Big guns and melee then become the go-to, as weapons can be modded much harder than warframe abilities.

Even Nyx is kinda OK in Steel Path. I almost want to say more frames are viable in Steel Path, despite the overall lower ability to deal damage with frame abilities in SP.

31 minutes ago, AzureScion said:

I want to enjoy steel path in a different way, which is with utilizing frame abilities and ability button mashing while micro-managing, not primering clumped up enemies with status beam and then whacking them to death with CO. I want to know if there's any purpose in giving warframes pure damaging abilities at all, because if not then why do they exist in the first place?

Umbral Mirage, I guess? Disco ball is super, super strong, and nobody even knows. Not to mention her damage amps are absurdly strong. Throw it down a brightly lit hallway and everything just melts. She's even squishier than nova, though, using helminth to give her something to help with staying alive is an absolute must.

[(XBOX)Obi Wan Dandobi]

Mag. With the secura penta with punch through. Delicious.

As for the Kuva Nukor, it still covers everything in status,  just doesn't chain to as many enemies. You just have to wiggle it around a bit. Just because your favourite youtuber says it's trash everyone just follows like sheep. By all means please stop using it and maybe they'll stop nerfing it.

[AzureScion]

I appreciate all the tips and advice given in the replies so far. Nova in particular comes up as interesting to me because I always view her as very squishy and only used for speeding defense missions. Also Zephyr?? That name came up outta nowhere lol. Wasn't expecting her to come up in meta discussion at all, let alone bringing into steel path. It'd be lovely if someone can elaborate on how Zephyr works in high tier contents, cause all I do with her is float up high while barraging enemies with rockets a la Pharah from OW or Drogoz from Paladins. Birb girl has a soft spot in my heart so I'm excited for this.

But then again what I originally asked was if there's any pure damaging abilities that scale well into high level content. Possibly with infinite scaling mechanics or % based damage. I've gathered so far that Saryn, Gara, Ember, Xaku, and Hildryn are quite the destructive force. Also another name came up to mind, which is Revenant with his enthrall-reave combo which I've been enjoying these past few days.

I want to enjoy steel path in a different way, which is with utilizing frame abilities and ability button mashing while micro-managing, not primering clumped up enemies with status beam and then whacking them to death with CO. I want to know if there's any purpose in giving warframes pure damaging abilities at all, because if not then why do they exist in the first place?

[MorkiePrime]

You don't need damage abilities, Just use Primary or melee as source of damage

Ensnare, Shooting Gallery, and Gloom

Ensnare - good grouping enemies and use AOE primary

Shooting Gallery - for guns enemy like Grineer and Corpus, they jam enemy guns

Gloom - for Infested, cause it's melee they come close to you, so make it slow...

[Leqesai]

31 minutes ago, XaoGarrent said:

Nukor is garbage now. Dump it into the MR fodder bin and get yourself a Sporelancer (or just ignore secondaries altogether, DE nerfs any good secondary into the ground).

 

 

On subject, the best scaling abilities IMO are going to be from Xaku and Ember. Ember has the ability to fully strip armor and deal fire dots that decimate grineer.

Xaku can scale infinitely due to built-in scaling on Grasp of Lohk and total defense strip (shield+armor) with Gaze. Give Xaku Miter to pop nullifier bubbles and you're pretty much set for 99% of steel path content.

Nova is the S-tier option for Steel Path though. Her slow also applies an added damage bonus to enemies and the slow is powerful enough for her to steamroll through nearly everything Steel Path has to offer. Layer this on top of her massive damage reduction with Null Star and you've got S-tier level cohesiveness that most frames can't compete with.

[XaoGarrent]

Nukor is garbage now. Dump it into the MR fodder bin and get yourself a Sporelancer (or just ignore secondaries altogether, DE nerfs any good secondary into the ground).

Get yourself a good launcher/AoE Primary and pick a frame who's abilities amplify damage or bypass/strip armor/shields. Mod for Viral/Corrosive/Toxic/Fire, those are the elements that matter. Corrosive isn't for the status (It helps, but viral is way better) but the bonus against ferrite armor. Radiation can situationally be good too. If you can completely strip armor very quickly, Viral is pretty much all you need.

Vauban, Mirage, Nezha, Zephyr, Nova, Xaku, Hildryn, etc. This is the steel path meta.

[Soy77]

octavia's mallet.

 

*drops mic*

 

 

 

Spoiler

*picks up the mic again from the floor*

so octavia's mallet is one of those oldschool "counter" abilities in videogames.
it doesn't care about how hard the enemies hit, or how much health they have. it just take all the damage, and return it.
it doesn't care what it fights, it will win. period.

of course it performs the best on survival-ish missions where you can just stay at one spot, so it's not the ultimately perfect ability.
but if the keyword you're looking is "scaling", then this is your answer. the harder enemies hits, the harder mallet will return the hits. it doesn't care.

also, kuva nukor is pretty trash right now.
you might want to try watching newer videos and learn about the gun arcanes and galvanized mods.
after you got the basics just ditch youtubers entirely. more of them are misleading than those who are actually helpful.

*puts mic back on the stand and politely walks off*

 

[Butterfly85]

4 minutes ago, AzureScion said:

It's percentage based? Looks strong. Never used Hildryn before but might have to try her some day. Also I may heard this wrong but was her passive nerfed somehow?

It's a flat 25% unmodded, which you increase via power strength. 300% gets you to around what I said, you can go higher if you want though.

Her passive still works, but it's not so unique now every frame has sheild gating. Hers is 3 seconds rather than 1 second. Also her oversheilds has a similar mechanic, and also blocks toxin doing direct health damage while her oversheilds are up.

Given you go through the level constantly casting her 2 whither her 3 active you should pretty much always have oversheilds active at that level anyway 

[AzureScion]

1 minute ago, Butterfly85 said:

Hildryn with Blazing Pillage works well. 70-80% armour strip which scales with level and you set things on fire so theyrecc'd and taking fire damage while you either whomp them with a weapon or leave them to burn up.

Just avoid Infested though, she doesnt have a good time with them.

It's percentage based? Looks strong. Never used Hildryn before but might have to try her some day. Also I may heard this wrong but was her passive nerfed somehow?

[Butterfly85]

Hildryn with Blazing Pillage works well. 70-80% armour strip which scales with level and you set things on fire so theyrecc'd and taking fire damage while you either whomp them with a weapon or leave them to burn up.

Just avoid Infested though, she doesnt have a good time with them.