What are the best caster frames?

[elmetnuter]

Trinity.

[Alpha_Tango]

Loki.

Yes he is a stealth frame but he has one of the most useful casting abilities in the game

[Mieo_Mio]

Octavia. It's hard to build her wrong.

[(PSN)Unstar]

19 hours ago, (XBOX)Upl0rdYT said:

I'm just a little bored so I just wondered what frames that are mostly ability focused for damage are out there? (Essentially frames who use abilities as opposed to weapons) 

There are so many, honestly:

Ash, Atlas, Baruuk, Ember, Excalibur, Gara, Garuda, Hildryn (Augment), Ivara, Khora, Mesa, Mirage (Augment), Nidus, Octavia, Protea, Saryn, Titania, Valkyr, Volt, Wisp, Wukong, Xaku, Yareli (Augment)

And probably some other frames that I'm less familiar with.  But all of the above can go on killing sprees with just their abilities.

 

 

[Numerikuu]

Too many, though if I had to pick one it'd be Mag--especially with that incoming rework to her Pull etc 👀

[PhiZero]

Khora is definitely a good Caster pick, as she can get some pretty absurd numbers on her 1. Though the biggest downside to pseudo exalted casters is that melee rivens are almost mandatory for SP and onwards.

Though if you prefer your melee weapon over abilities, I'd steer clear of Khora, Atlas, and Gara as you can't mod your melee weapon freely without affecting your abilities through stat stick mechanics... (feels bad, I wanted to use a pure electric ohma and a corrosive whip claw.)

[Mazifet]

Lavos can nuke a group of steel path corrupted heavy gunners in seconds if you use a gas + sickening pulse build. And thanks to his augment and lack of energy requirements, abilities are able to be spammed infinitely as long as there are enough enemies. And if you start to not instantly kill them to can always use an epitaph or cedo to multiply the damage many times over due to his built in condition overload.

[SneakyErvin]

On 2022-08-29 at 7:05 PM, (PSN)Cargan2016 said:

Not really thats only for her number 1 her 4th ability melts about everything right out of door

Her 4 does nothing on its own when you get to higher levels. Just as her 1 kills slowly at start at that point, which is why you need weapons to get it to spread and stack up. In low content any frame with a damaging AoE can be a caster. Heck, Volt nukes lower level content aswell with his #4, but when you get higher up it is like watching paint dry.

[(PSN)Cargan2016]

On 2022-08-30 at 1:10 PM, SneakyErvin said:

Her 4 does nothing on its own when you get to higher levels. Just as her 1 kills slowly at start at that point, which is why you need weapons to get it to spread and stack up. In low content any frame with a damaging AoE can be a caster. Heck, Volt nukes lower level content aswell with his #4, but when you get higher up it is like watching paint dry.

same could be said about ember her abilities are more or less useless highend content other than the armor strip effect

[(XBOX)Eye0fTyphoon]

Overguard killed ability-dealing based warframes. But Saryn still works well.

[SneakyErvin]

18 hours ago, (PSN)Cargan2016 said:

same could be said about ember her abilities are more or less useless highend content other than the armor strip effect

If you use the whole kit on Ember she kills with it. Armor strip enables her 4 to kill effectively since only armor holds it back really.

18 hours ago, (XBOX)Eye0fTyphoon said:

Overguard killed ability-dealing based warframes. But Saryn still works well.

Huh? No damage ability was impacted by overguard, so if they dealth good damage prior to overguard they will deal good damage now aswell.

[PupSqueaks]

Really just chiming in here with my two cents... No one has mentioned it yet, (personally I think it needs some buffing nowadays but eh, discussion for another thread another day) but Oberon can be a ton of fun with a smite spam build, highly entertaining for me personally. Oberon has fallen by the wayside for a while now and I would need to basically entirely rebuild him after so long though, his survival has been lacking personally and the healing doesnt seem as effective?

 

On a side note, it is tricky when someone asks questions like "What is the best <insert thing/type here>" because a lot of it is intended to be up to personal preference and flavors, I chose a frame that I have fond memories of even if it doesn't perform as well as it used to now, maybe someone else can make it work better than my last attempt and enjoy it more than others. For outright power, I could say that I love Baruuk as a caster but not everyone would agree with me interpretation to what "makes a caster".

 

Ember is probably what a lot of people first think of as being a caster, spamming fireballs or calling down meteors has a very "pyromancer" feeling to it personally.