What can I change to be able to handle Steel Path enemies?

[D3adPix3ls]

I just cleared the star chart and started doing Steel Path. The enemies seem WAY harder to kill than anything in the normal chart and it's pretty depressing lol... My main loadout is below. If anyone would be kind enough to suggest some things to change or work towards I would greatly appreciate it!

[img]https://pasteboard.co/6Yc4RPG9ntEt.jpg[/img]

[img]https://pasteboard.co/JrqOnLGaLZFB.jpg[/img]

[img]https://pasteboard.co/97y0JJzJ4e3J.jpg[/img]

[img]https://pasteboard.co/p1O1A788wFqE.jpg[/img]

[Flannoit]

Status is king, so first and foremost it's important to make sure you have at least Viral on your weapons. This will make your weapons inherently do more damage.

Corrosive or Heat are also great to have, since it's a full (corrosive) or partial (heat) armor strip. This will make especially Grineer-type enemies more manageable.

I heavily suggest putting Rolling Guard (available from Arbitrations, including the Arbitration rewards store in any relay from the guy on the left inside the Arbitrators of Hexis room), possibly over Vitality (RG gives brief invincibility + status cleanse, so you'll get more for your HP bar if you learn how to use it effectively. Plus you can still utilize Wisp's vitality mote for more HP, too.)

For your Fulmin, I suggest getting your hands on Galvanized Aptitude & Chamber. Aptitude is essentially Condition Overload but for rifles, while Chamber will make your multishot go up more and more as you kill more and more. Both of these are obtainable from the Arbitrations store in exchange for Vitus Essence, like with Rolling Guard.

For your Atomos, I suggest getting your hands on Magnum Force (corrupt mod, available from Orokin vaults on Deimos missions, not to be confused with the vaults on the Cambion Drift. Orokin Vaults are ONLY in mission nodes - NOT the bounty in Deimos.) as 165% more damage will help greatly and the accuracy penalty for most weapons is basically nonexistent, including Atomos. As with Fulmin, get your hands on Galvanized Diffusion & Shot - same effects more or less as Aptitude & Chamber but for pistols/sidearms. Also from the Arbies store.

When it comes to applying status with guns, depending on the multishot tier, you can generally get away with 50-60% status, as multishot will make effective status chance roughly 70-80% anyways. At the very least, 30% status is enough to make status chance relatively reliable. You can still keep the higher status chance, ofc, cos that makes applying stacks easier and more reliable, but if you feel you need more damage, you can drop a little bit of status chance in favor of damage. (Such as trading a status element mod for its full element version, ie Rime Rounds → Cryogenic Rounds)

For your melee, I heavily suggest getting Condition Overload. It's an essential mod for essentially any melee weapon. It might be a bit harder to get due to the low drop tables, but in the meantime you can use Pressure Point or Primed Pressure Point to make up the difference. Once you get CO, PPP basically becomes obsolete because returns drop drastically. You can also slap Healing Return on it, which will let you actively heal yourself by smacking things with status effects.

Your companion will also matter quite a bit, too, since companions are currently more of a utility tool. The three biggest suggestions are either a Smeeta Kavat for its roving Crit Chance buff (seems to guarantee orange or higher crits when it activates), Panzer Vulpaphyla for its ability to relatively reliably inflict Viral on enemies and the fact its technically unkillable, or a Vizier Predasite for its ability to heal allies. Unfortunately, Sentinels are currently garbage and most are not really worth using and fall off hard fast. Hounds are also currently quite bad, same with MOA.

Now for modding your companion, for the most part mods that give health/armor/shield links are generally stronger than their individual counterpart. This is because even at 300 HP, you'll be giving your pet more HP at max rank than a max rank HP mod would. Combined with the Vitality mote, your companion will get a nice HP boost. For armor/shield links, it heavily depends on the frame. Some frames will give better armor/shield boosts while some will provide little if anything at all. You'll have to determine yourself which will be better, since many frames have little if any armor.

EDIT:

Just for clarity - you do NOT need to be in good standing with Arbiters of Hexis to access either Arbitrations or the Arbies store. If you haven't unlocked Arbitrations already, you already qualify for having SP unlocked. Simply go into any Arbiters of Hexis room in any relay and talk to the first NPC you see on the left in their room. This guy will both unlock Arbitrations for you and give you access to the Arbies store.

You get Vitus Essence from Arbitrations missions, which are random missions I believe every hour with a limit of one run per mission cycle. (So if you do an arbitration at 2:50, you'll be able to do another at 3:00, but if you do one at 3:01 you won't be able to do one until 4:00) Vitus is both dropped from Arbitration Drone enemies in those missions (abilities for the most part do not work on these drones, and enemies affected by drones are immune to most/all abilities and damage until the drone dies, but drones explode and damage linked enemies on death in range) as well as from round rotation rewards sometimes.

[TheGrimCorsair]

Adapting your elements and weapons to the enemy faction you're fighting will help.

When dealing with armored enemies keep in mind their EHP is massively inflated thanks to their armor and high levels, so making use of crit slash procs and damage amplification from Viral will help, but in general you're gonna need very hard hitting weapons, significant damage amp, or armor stripping to make fighting them easier.

For Corpus, giving Viral application and lots of Toxin damage to bypass their shields rolls them up easy.

...Infested just need shooting. If you have easy access to Rad procs they're not much to deal with.

Don't waste space on Rolling Guard or Adaptation if you're Wisp, you already have plenty of ways of making yourself untouchable and untargetable. Probably also not much reason to invest in Vitality with her, either.

[Flannoit]

1 minute ago, TheGrimCorsair said:

Adapting your elements and weapons to the enemy faction you're fighting will help.

When dealing with armored enemies keep in mind their EHP is massively inflated thanks to their armor and high levels, so making use of crit slash procs and damage amplification from Viral will help, but in general you're gonna need very hard hitting weapons, significant damage amp, or armor stripping to make fighting them easier.

For Corpus, giving Viral application and lots of Toxin damage to bypass their shields rolls them up easy.

...Infested just need shooting. If you have easy access to Rad procs they're not much to deal with.

Don't waste space on Rolling Guard or Adaptation if you're Wisp, you already have plenty of ways of making yourself untouchable and untargetable. Probably also not much reason to invest in Vitality with her, either.

I still suggest RG for the status cleanse. Plus having a backup method of invincibility for any instance you might be out of energy is crucial, especially an invincibility where you can still use all your weapons and abilities.

Adaptation I agree is mostly not worth it since there will be a point where 10% of an enemy's damage will still be enough to oneshot even 1k HP.

[(PSN)Malik_The_Gent]

More condensed version.  Don't go into Steel Path yet.  DO Arbitrations to get the mods for your weapon type. especially the dmg per status mods.

[Wyrmius_Prime]

Work on the Galvanized multishot and status mods first, and go heavier into status in general in your builds. Fulmin shoots really slow, thus it also applies status really slowly. Atomos is simply a really weak secondary weapon in comparison to everything else, so I would advice getting either a Kuva Nukor, Kuva Brakk or any Tenet secondary (except Diplos) of your liking first. Condition Overload is an absolute must on melee to replace your Pressure Point.

After reaching that point, I'd finally consider Steel Path. In Steel Path the most important objective would be to start farming the new arcanes from the acolytes to further increase your damage. If you can get friends or clan mates to help you out, that would make it even smoother. Infestation missions are by far the easiest, and the Steel Path Incursions often have active public squads in them for easy Steel Essence.

[D3adPix3ls]

Thank you so much for the responses and advice. I will definitely work on my mods more before I head back into SP. 

I’m not very satisfied with the Fulmin. Any other primaries that you would recommend that would go with the Atomos (Kuva Nukor one day) and the zaw?

[Soy77]

yeah i took a glance on your builds and it doesn't look steel path ready, my friend. i'm sorry. but don't worry, we're all been there before.

first of all, warframe abilities demolish normal starchart. nukers going on rampage destroying nodes is not an uncommon sight.
but in SP, it's the weapons that'll be doing most of the killing. so now we're going to build you some SP ready weapons.

quick glance at your weapons, you can easily tell what's missing.
in normal starchart, ez: just go to modding screen and make green numbers.
for SP, the damages are dealt over time. so your numbers on modding screen should look worse than normal build. you'll want slash procs, heat procs, condition overload, blood rush, galvanized mods, stuff that may look weak on first slash, but monster on your 12x combo multipler.

also, the new gun arcanes. they help A LOT.
i know, i know, it's stupid cuz you need to kill SP acolytes to get the arcanes, to kill SP acolytes. 
so i'll start with more viable stuff, do arbitrations and get those galvan mods. once you can tackle quick SP missions like capture or exterminate, do the daily incursions and slowly start getting your gun arcanes.

best of luck, mate.

[Fallen77]

Well, don't even attempt steel path until all your mods are maxed.

It would be possible with your current level of upgrades and a few tweacks, but it's more as a general idea of when you should even consider jumping in.

Where you are at right now, fresh from regular starchart, you are still WAY too young for SP. Go do other things, own your skills and knowledge, and only once you have all the tools and know what you're doing, then and only then, you can try steel path.