What frames do you guys put your Archon shards into? What builds?

[Zakkhar]

I have around 20 shards, 6 tauforged and have not put them on any frames yet. Maybe I do not run Steel Path endurance, so i do not see where they would fit. Or maybe I just play too many frames to decide on a few. Some of my played frames have outdated builds, I admit. I am looking for inspiration. Thanks.

[chaotea]

Sofar, 5 blue ones onto my Xaku, all but 1 on sheild, 1 on hp regen. Just because i never up any def mods on him anyway.

As far as the rest, im hoarding them. 5 stength reds on wisp prime when shes out.

[quxier]

3 minutes ago, chaotea said:

Sofar, 5 blue ones onto my Xaku, all but 1 on sheild, 1 on hp regen. Just because i never up any def mods on him anyway.

As far as the rest, im hoarding them. 5 stength reds on wisp prime when shes out.

Wouldn't it be better to put some armor instead of shield?

[Mover-NeRo]

Chroma : 3 Blue (HP) 2 Red (Strength)
Mag : 3 Blue (2x Armor 1x HP) 2 Yellow ( Casting speed)
Saryn : 4 Red (Strength) 1 Blue (HP)
Titania : 1 Yellow (casting speed)
Trinity : 1 Yellow (casting speed)
Yareli : 1 Blue (armor) 1 Yellow (casting speed)

..so far

[Pakaku]

Hildryn, two Reds to top off ability strength, three Ambers for bullet-jump speed

Currently working on more ambers for Zephyr bullet-jump speed...

(Obviously I'm not taking the shards super seriously)

[(PSN)haphazardlynamed]

Red ones (primary/secondary stat/crits) go on gunframes

Blue ones (HP/Armor) go on glass cannons

Yellow ones ... I'm really not using, they need a buff to be worth it over Red/Blue, maybe use one for Energy Orb, but there's so many other ways of having infinite energy that this isn't a priority.

 

but yeah

Shards are a pretty bad idea as far as game balance goes.

I can just fill up blues for HP/Armor on a glass cannon nuker like Saryn or Mesa, and now they don';t have a weakness to balance out their offensive abilities...

I wonder how long till that becomes meta and gets hit with a nerf.... I can almost imagine DE doing something like capping the max number of the same stat you use (no more 5x tau blue all for armor, must pick different buffs for each one....)

[drnlmza]

Stuff I've done with shards so far (although I haven't used all of mine by a long way - the pain of indecision is a real issue) 

 

Nidus - I added 3 blue shards for energy max - I've always wanted it in my builds, but never found a way to fit it in that didn't feel like I was sacrificing something else important

 

Gara - I added some red shards for duration (3, IIRC) so I could replace Augur Message with Augur Reach. The extra range on Splinter Storm and larger spectrograph is a nice to have, and now I don't have to sacrifice duration for it.

 

Titania - 2 amber shards for energy on spawn. Having a bunch of energy at spawn is really nice (especially if you want to spent most of the mission in Razorwing), but I don't want to replace Aviator with Preparation to get it.

 

Khora - I added a couple of blue shards for health - it makes using her just a little bit more comfortable for me (especially if toxin damage is in play). At some point I'll add some red shards for melee crit damage for whipclaw, because there's no kill like overkill.

[AntifreezeUnder0]

Grendel, only frame , which suits my lazy playstyle.

3 crimson - duration(2 tauforge/1 normal) and 2 amber for casting speed.

What build? I cant call it a build.  Aura - Steel charge, 3 augments(gourmand,catapult, hearty nourishments), 3 Umbral mods, and max fleeting and streamline. Arcanes of choice.

Good enough for casual playthrough and nonsense meatballing arround tilesets. With occasional minute long status immunity. 

My way to have fun and use most of grendels kit to help playing missions .

And also i main stug... 

[LostImbecile]

Valkyr: red (melee crit), 2 amber (parkour velocity) and some health for negligible buffs overall.
Amber shards on ivara, mesa, gara, some slow casters or clunky frames would be nice, the other shards don't feel like they make enough of a difference to care where to put them unless you're using multiple at once, but they do round out the builds very well

[(XBOX)ECCHO SIERRA]

1 hour ago, Zakkhar said:

I have around 20 shards, 6 tauforged and have not put them on any frames yet. Maybe I do not run Steel Path endurance, so i do not see where they would fit. Or maybe I just play too many frames to decide on a few. Some of my played frames have outdated builds, I admit. I am looking for inspiration. Thanks.

Mesa has 3 blue shards 1 being tau forged for armor. 2 red sharts for secondary cc although im kinda "meh" on that. They might be armor.

 

I used to run guardian/energize on mesa. I feel like guardian was comfy because yes, there are things that can bypass shattershield. 

I can run enough armor in blue shards to comfortably remove guardian and also not have the "cant refresh" problem or the "has to tank long enough for it to proc" problem.

Inaros wants 5 armor shards imo just cuz more ehp/effective healing but i might put 2 into health just to get him to 10k without sacrificing any of the mods he currently has. 

 

Im waiting on baruuk prime to be a thing. Because i want to use red shards on him, and an umbral forma. Basically i want 328 power strength to get him to 100% armor strip with pillage and one corrosive projection (him) with at least some decent energy economy. Red shards might be necessary to comfortably hit that number and whatever else can go into melee crit damage. 

Garuda i actually have a mix on. A tau yellow casting speed, i think 3 blue healing, (inf energy and a bit harder to kill), and a melee crit damage. That last one i might change. Parkour velocity maybe. 

 

A few general opinions: 

Armor shards are comfy on any "i have low base armor and rely on an ability upkeep to stay alive" frame. Mesa ivara mirage loki etc. Necessary? Not really. Just comfy. 

Armor shards make wisp pretty comfy.

Dont sleep on parkour velocity if you dont know what else to put. 

I wanna experiment more with energize rank 5 vs yellow +energy effectiveness shards. 

I feel like + shield is useless in most if not all cases because of shield gating being the way it is. 

I feel like + primary status chance is useless in most cases. 

I feel like secondary cc is "meh" in most if not all cases. 

I like a little casting speed on garuda and revanent idk what else id put it on.

I feel like +health orb effectiveness is useless in most if not all cases. By the time you have access to that as a player you probably have other, better ways of healing. 

Out of all the shards i find myself wishing i had more blue the most, so far. 

I dont like the current tau forged system/acquisition.

 

[Vahenir]

So far ive put most of the shards i got into titania prime. Specifically, tauforged amber to boost cast speed, a blue one to boost armor (I may swap this eventually) and then three reds that boost power strength.

The next project is garuda prime where i plan to user one amber to boost her casting speed and then four red ones to boost melee crit damage to make her even more of a walking blender than she already is.

[AegidiusF]

Five Azure on my Banshee (2 Tauforged) for Armor buff (to tank a bit if nedded).

Five Amber on my Mag (3 Tauforged) to get very fast casting speed.

Five Crimson on my Nyx to get even more duration.

Two Azure on my Yareli to get some HP regen while on Merulina (I don't use Gloom infusions anymore).

Two Azure on my Oberon to get a bit more armor.

Two Crimson on my Valkyr to get even more crit damage with her Talons.

Two Amber on my Mirage for increased casting speed.

[RottedApples]

34 minutes ago, (XBOX)ECCHO SIERRA said:

2 red sharts

you might want to get that checked out.

So far i've only put them on my main frame, oberon. I've thought about others i just haven't followed through on anything, i do just play oberon 95% of the time anyway.

2 tauforged reds for strength, 3 blues mixing armor/health 

i've been thinking about if i want to give some to like saryn, just to make her even more of a pubstomp frame for ESO and stuff

also thought about giving ambers to like nezha or nekros or the likes because they generate a lot of orbs.

I just haven't committed anything to anyone besides oberon, which is basically what i've done with umbral forma, i have like 5 sitting around, but i've only used 2 on oberon and none on anyone else.

[Mediloric]

Right now, I'm running a full set of shards on Nekros, Atlas, and Protea just to beef up areas I wasn't happy with. 

With Nekros, I got 2 blues for additional health, just for an additional buffer for Desecrate, though I could possible swap one for health regen? I'm also running two reds for a slight increase to duration, and power strength, for Shadows and Terrify. I could honestly just put both in power, but having slightly longer lasting Terrify and buffed Shadows can be helpful. Finally I'm running an amber for increased health orb effectiveness. I'm not 100% sure this does anything? I don't really see a difference but other Nekros players swear by it so I dunno. 

On Atlas I have 1 Amber for increased casting speed though I could possibly drop this for more health/armor/power. 1 Red for a bit more power strength so I can do 100% strip with Tharros Strike. And 3 blues, 2 for armor (Tau) and 1 for health, this gives my Atlas 1981 Armor and 2022 health. with Arcane Guardian active too, he just brushes off most of the damage Archon and Steel Path throws at him. 

Putting shards on Protea was interesting. She doesn't really need much? I've just dumped all reds on her to get more power out of her already pretty damaging turret with 2 for Strength and 3 for Duration. Outside of maybe swapping one out for casting speed, I can't see what else you can do? 

I'm actually excited to see how I can mess with the new wolfy frame with these shards! But that's really depend if I like the skills. 

I will say, I find it a lot easier to shard up armor/health based frames rather than shield ones? Maybe cause armor heavy ones are lot more forgiving? I dunno.

[(PSN)robotwars7]

3 hours ago, Zakkhar said:

6 tauforged

mind sharing some of that luck around? literally only had 1 Tauforged from the very first hunt and never got another since.. some people still got none at all. 

I'm just slotting mine on primes here and there because I hope to have a set of 5 on each prime: not tauforged obviously, because that's just not feasible, especially with my luck. my setup is 2 blue, 2 red and 1 Amber. That way it's a pretty balanced setup; more armor/health, a little more power (not that the red shards give you that much anyway) and the amber usually ends up being +casting speed, because when I press buttons, I want results, not funky gestures that can get me killed. 

 

[--END--Rikutatis]

Out of everything I've done with shards, so far my favorites were:

- 5 parkour speed on Loki to just blaze through missions. Since I sometimes use him for disruption and void cascade, the speed really helps there as well.

- 5 azure shards on Lavos, a mix of HP and armor. It really pushes his tankiness into crazy levels of just facetanking base level Steel Path without a care and without needing to do an umbral build (I just use adaptation and archon vitality). 

I also have 3 azure shards on Mirage and that by itself is already enough to do an adaptation build on her instead of using shield gating. Other than that I dumped 5 STR shards on Nidus just for the heck of it, but that didn't really change the gameplay on him. 

[Yakhul]

I only have a full set of shards for my main Frost Prime.

2 Azure: health and armor
1 Tau Azure: Armor
1 Amber: Cast speed
1 Tau Crimson: Power Str

All i need is a Tau amber and another pair of Tau Azure, and my frost gonna be complete.

[(XBOX)Lord ChibiVR]

3 hours ago, Zakkhar said:

I have around 20 shards, 6 tauforged and have not put them on any frames yet. Maybe I do not run Steel Path endurance, so i do not see where they would fit. Or maybe I just play too many frames to decide on a few. Some of my played frames have outdated builds, I admit. I am looking for inspiration. Thanks.

It really depends. 

Rn I put 3 blue and 2 red shards onto my revenant for power strength and energy (to make Mesmer skin stronger than it already is), while I'm saving my yellow shards to do a dispensary build on a frame I want to give infinite energy...

[chaotea]

3 hours ago, quxier said:

Wouldn't it be better to put some armor instead of shield?

Na. (this is my steel path build) So because xakus alway got his ult up, that 75% dodge chance means my sheild rarely takes enough hits to actually go down, so health based increase isnt worth while, as while your not getting hit the sheild recharges. Its more about helping me with a larger pool if i need to react to an aoe or dot.

[(XBOX)Lord ChibiVR]

3 hours ago, (PSN)haphazardlynamed said:

 

Shards are a pretty bad idea as far as game balance goes.

I can just fill up blues for HP/Armor on a glass cannon nuker like Saryn or Mesa, and now they don';t have a weakness to balance out their offensive abilities...

I wonder how long till that becomes meta and gets hit with a nerf.... I can almost imagine DE doing something like capping the max number of the same stat you use (no more 5x tau blue all for armor, must pick different buffs for each one....)

This has already happened with other frames tho...

Garuda post prime release (especially with vazarin for infinite free heals and invulnerability), Revenant with breach surge turning off the entire game, any of the top warframes using dispensary to spam forever, the list goes on...

[(XBOX)Lord ChibiVR]

2 minutes ago, chaotea said:

Na. (this is my steel path build) So because xakus alway got his ult up, that 75% dodge chance means my sheild rarely takes enough hits to actually go down, so health based increase isnt worth while, as while your not getting hit the sheild recharges. Its more about helping me with a larger pool if i need to react to an aoe or dot.

Ah so you are running shields for the recharging hp pool... 

 

[RobWasHere]

I use them only on Banshee to un-paper her. All no tau:
3x blue 150 armor
1x orange energy orb efficiency
1x red 10 power str

I still won't take her anywhere endurance, but with Unairu 200 armor and Molt Reconstruct she's tanky enough for all Liches and Sisters (thats my current main goal now, all ephemeras with side objective getting all relevant weapons to 60% element bonus). She is also usable in non-endurance SP missions except maybe Surival or Disruption.

[The_Royal_Elf_Mika]

here is what i have been doing and future plans:

Mesa: 5 Red shard secondary Crit chance

Titania: 5 yellow shards with 1 start spawn energy and 4 energy efficiency.

Styanax: 5 blue shards all shields

Valkyr/Baruuk/Sevagoth: 5 red shards melee crit damage 

Wisp: 5 red shards Strength

Yareli: 5 red shard secondary crit chance

Garuda: 5 red shards for either Melee crit damage or Power Strength or Power Duration. (hard one to choose)
Octavia: 5 red shards for Power Duration

Mag: 5 red shards for either Power Strength or Duration

[SiriSnugglebottoms]

I also play a lot of different frames and these are my plans in general for the different colours:

Red: Hit specific breakpoints for ability strength, usually to achieve full armour strips in one cast but also things like gloom slow cap.
Yellow: Casting speed. There's not a lot of frames where Natural Talent feels like a must have but casting speed just makes so many things feel nicer. Occasional one-offs for starting energy. Titania is a good example of this for me because she feels terrible if you don't get some drops early and having that extra buffer is nice.
Blue: Max Energy. There's some frames I don't want to use Flow on but some extra energy is nice. Nekros, Rhino, and Mesa all fall into this category. Armour once I've filled all the energy needs.

I don't think I have 5 shards on anything at all yet, maybe Volt.

[0_The_F00l]

Equinox is the only frame that has all slots for shards filled up.

It lets me tweak her just right.

I used tau crimson for duration , tau amber for cast speed ,

Azure X2 for health and energy max ,

Regular amber for Parkour velocity.

This is more to compensate her stats than to build even more towards one particular aspect.