I realised that this was a resource that seemed to be missing, so I have made a (mostly) comprehensive spreadsheet detailing: WHICH WARFRAME PASSIVE ABILITIES WORK WITH ARCHWINGS
There's a quick and lazy overview and a section-by-section breakdown, but in short: most warframe passive abilities don't work with archwings. 21 out of the 49 currently available are outright useless. Members of this club include Garuda, Volt, Wukong, and Wisp.
Warframes were graded by how much their passives work for ARCHWINGS, ignoring basically all other modifiers. This doesn't measure viability, as you'll soon see.
Limbo, though relegated to F tier, does get some benefit from their passive! However, he requires you to come out of Archwing mode to create a rift in order to fly through it, and you can only do that in Landscapes.
Equinox is a special case, where their passive is bugged for archwings - instead of granting 110% energy or health restore from orbs, they sometimes get 10%. They get a special BUG rating.
Oberon, Yareli, Mesa and Nidus make up the E tier. Nidus's Mutation stacks remain while in Archwing mode, which means that in Railjack and Submersible segments, if they're downed, they can consume them to get back up - but they can't generate them while in Archwing mode. Yareli and Mesa's passives only works with secondaries, which are only used with Archwings in landscapes. And Oberon just can't get the allies he needs in anything other than Landscape areas...
Baruuk, Gauss, Lavos and Octavia are D tier. Their passives all sort of work. You can generate charge or effects for their passives when out of the archwing, and it carries over into archwing mode, but you can't generate it while in archwing mode. Grendel might go here. He might also be F tier - we'll see.
Harrow and Hildryn make up the C tier. Half of their passives work everywhere - Harrow's initial energy booster and Hildyrn's improved shield gating - but the other half is based around overshields, which archwings just don't have a way to generate.
Next, B Tier! Ash, Ember, Saryn and Vauban. Aside from Vauban, this tier is made up of warframes whose passive effects rely on dealing statuses to enemies. Enemies which, in Railjack missions, are immune to status effects. It's not catasrophic, but it drops them down from a perfect score. Vauban was penalised because the only archwing that can trigger his passive is... Odonata! Odonata's 'Repel', if it doesn't instantly kill the enemy, disables them for (at base) 11 seconds. Since Odonata fares so poorly next to Amesha or Itzal - the two 'meta' options - it's hard to ignore this pretty drastic limitation.
And finally, A tier! Banshee, Caliban, Ivara, Mirage, Nekros, Nova, Nyx, Protea, Trinity and Xaku. Everyone in A tier has their full, unmodified passive ability in all situations with their archwing. Let's actually consider how important that is.
Banshee makes all weapons silent. That's it. Always a bit niche, and no less so here.
Ivara grants a permanent 10 meter (40 meter in archwing missions - scaling, you see) enemy radar. While this is nice, this basically means you have to be rubbing up against the enemy, and isn't worth much without some sort of range increase from auras or other mods.
Mirage has a 50% faster maneuver speed. Dodging, especially for high level play, does actually matter, and your dash refreshes faster too.
Nova, when bumping level geometry or otherwise stunned, generates a 6 meter (24 in archwing, like Ivara) blast that deals a little damage to enemies. This does stun enemies it hits... Which, since you're also stunned, isn't as helpful as you might like.
Trinity can revive downed allies from further away, and faster. Especially with the improvement to Vazarin's revival ability, this combos for some lightning fast revives.
Nekros heals 5 points of health any time an enemy dies within 10 meters of him. This one can be useful if you're blitzing your way through enemies in melee, but you'd need a reason to be using your melee instead of, say, a Mausolon.
Caliban, Nyx and Xaku all offer defensive boosts. Caliban's reactive armor protects against the main type of damage you're getting from enemies for the entire party. Nyx makes them hit a little less often than before. Xaku is a more effective version of Nyx, who is also resistant to Area of Effect damage.
Protea stands out. After casting three abilities, the fourth cast has an extra 100% ability strength applied to its effects.
With all that laid out for you, who do I think are actually the best choices? Well, for pure archwing content, Caliban provides an absolutely amazing buff that is hard to pass up. Saryn, Ash, Protea and Ember are powerhouses who will help you get through anything. Xaku is a ghost, Nekros and Hildyrn just can't be stopped. Trinity - like always - is invaluable for support.
But, you probably barely noticed this all, right? I didn't. This is the sort of niche power booster that might just barely let you edge out some of the higher end content, but absolutely is not required for anything below Steel Path. Not even the Proxima stuff. Atlas might not provide any bonuses to your Archwing, but he still rocks, and picking the Warframe you like looking at the most is always a correct choice.
Also I could use a hand testing Grendel - I think his passive will work if you first consume an enemy and then transfer to Archwing mode but I can't check because I don't have him unlocked and I haven't been able to get anyone I know to test it yet OKAYBYE
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Ewelyn_Prime
I realised that this was a resource that seemed to be missing, so I have made a (mostly) comprehensive spreadsheet detailing: WHICH WARFRAME PASSIVE ABILITIES WORK WITH ARCHWINGS
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YGD76mQYMFfYxIEXkTCKL3pgsQH8ocAp22MhVyubtio/edit?usp=sharing
There's a quick and lazy overview and a section-by-section breakdown, but in short: most warframe passive abilities don't work with archwings. 21 out of the 49 currently available are outright useless. Members of this club include Garuda, Volt, Wukong, and Wisp.
Warframes were graded by how much their passives work for ARCHWINGS, ignoring basically all other modifiers. This doesn't measure viability, as you'll soon see.
Limbo, though relegated to F tier, does get some benefit from their passive! However, he requires you to come out of Archwing mode to create a rift in order to fly through it, and you can only do that in Landscapes.
Equinox is a special case, where their passive is bugged for archwings - instead of granting 110% energy or health restore from orbs, they sometimes get 10%. They get a special BUG rating.
Oberon, Yareli, Mesa and Nidus make up the E tier. Nidus's Mutation stacks remain while in Archwing mode, which means that in Railjack and Submersible segments, if they're downed, they can consume them to get back up - but they can't generate them while in Archwing mode. Yareli and Mesa's passives only works with secondaries, which are only used with Archwings in landscapes. And Oberon just can't get the allies he needs in anything other than Landscape areas...
Baruuk, Gauss, Lavos and Octavia are D tier. Their passives all sort of work. You can generate charge or effects for their passives when out of the archwing, and it carries over into archwing mode, but you can't generate it while in archwing mode. Grendel might go here. He might also be F tier - we'll see.
Harrow and Hildryn make up the C tier. Half of their passives work everywhere - Harrow's initial energy booster and Hildyrn's improved shield gating - but the other half is based around overshields, which archwings just don't have a way to generate.
Next, B Tier! Ash, Ember, Saryn and Vauban. Aside from Vauban, this tier is made up of warframes whose passive effects rely on dealing statuses to enemies. Enemies which, in Railjack missions, are immune to status effects. It's not catasrophic, but it drops them down from a perfect score. Vauban was penalised because the only archwing that can trigger his passive is... Odonata! Odonata's 'Repel', if it doesn't instantly kill the enemy, disables them for (at base) 11 seconds. Since Odonata fares so poorly next to Amesha or Itzal - the two 'meta' options - it's hard to ignore this pretty drastic limitation.
And finally, A tier! Banshee, Caliban, Ivara, Mirage, Nekros, Nova, Nyx, Protea, Trinity and Xaku. Everyone in A tier has their full, unmodified passive ability in all situations with their archwing. Let's actually consider how important that is.
Banshee makes all weapons silent. That's it. Always a bit niche, and no less so here.
Ivara grants a permanent 10 meter (40 meter in archwing missions - scaling, you see) enemy radar. While this is nice, this basically means you have to be rubbing up against the enemy, and isn't worth much without some sort of range increase from auras or other mods.
Mirage has a 50% faster maneuver speed. Dodging, especially for high level play, does actually matter, and your dash refreshes faster too.
Nova, when bumping level geometry or otherwise stunned, generates a 6 meter (24 in archwing, like Ivara) blast that deals a little damage to enemies. This does stun enemies it hits... Which, since you're also stunned, isn't as helpful as you might like.
Trinity can revive downed allies from further away, and faster. Especially with the improvement to Vazarin's revival ability, this combos for some lightning fast revives.
Nekros heals 5 points of health any time an enemy dies within 10 meters of him. This one can be useful if you're blitzing your way through enemies in melee, but you'd need a reason to be using your melee instead of, say, a Mausolon.
Caliban, Nyx and Xaku all offer defensive boosts. Caliban's reactive armor protects against the main type of damage you're getting from enemies for the entire party. Nyx makes them hit a little less often than before. Xaku is a more effective version of Nyx, who is also resistant to Area of Effect damage.
Protea stands out. After casting three abilities, the fourth cast has an extra 100% ability strength applied to its effects.
With all that laid out for you, who do I think are actually the best choices? Well, for pure archwing content, Caliban provides an absolutely amazing buff that is hard to pass up. Saryn, Ash, Protea and Ember are powerhouses who will help you get through anything. Xaku is a ghost, Nekros and Hildyrn just can't be stopped. Trinity - like always - is invaluable for support.
But, you probably barely noticed this all, right? I didn't. This is the sort of niche power booster that might just barely let you edge out some of the higher end content, but absolutely is not required for anything below Steel Path. Not even the Proxima stuff. Atlas might not provide any bonuses to your Archwing, but he still rocks, and picking the Warframe you like looking at the most is always a correct choice.
Also I could use a hand testing Grendel - I think his passive will work if you first consume an enemy and then transfer to Archwing mode but I can't check because I don't have him unlocked and I haven't been able to get anyone I know to test it yet OKAYBYE
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