Who Is The New Useless Frame?

[AuroraSonicBoom]

I don't get how valkyr is lowest.. I use her to solo Phorid and it makes it easier than with any other frame.

 

The overall worth of a warframe is based three different criteria:

1. How many enemies can it kill how fast?

2. How fast can it move from group to group in order to do(1) or reach the objective?

2a. How successfully can it keep the enemy from destroying [mission objective]?

3. How much damage can it absorb while doing (1) and (2) without going down?

 

In Defense scenarios, (2) is removed and replaced with (2a).

 

That's all that matters in endgame, as the only enemy attribute that scales is health and damage output.

Edited January 22, 2014 by AuroraSonicBoom

[-CM-Syein]

not blind rage good old rage turn health dmg into energy rage ... get hurt... hysteria... hulksmash...full health.... rinse repeat... 20 mins. Solo in

nuovo ceres high lvl survival....

umm 20min....lol. That's 20min. 

 

At 20min, Valkyr's hysteria punches still able to deal decent dps against mobs, and that still able to keep her alive. 

I did ceres a lot just for orokin cells, and I know how well valkyr can last with ceres. At around 30min or so, try to use hysteria on bombard or napalm, and tell me how long it'll took.

Then after that, you relies on gun more rather than just punching power, her HP will drop pretty fast for her to activate hysteria on time, so gun is out of the question. 

Edited January 22, 2014 by SElZE

[Auramaru]

I gotta say: I was working hard on trying to make a decent Oberon build... but holy %#*!... 

 

The only thing I can think to say is that if you reworked his healing mechanic so that IT DOESN'T FOLLOW PEOPLE AROUND FOR A YEAR AND A HALF, then he'd be fairly viable.  At least mid tier.  

 

Seriously: If they rework that mechanic alone, Oberon would be pretty well balanced.  His heal is damn good, and I like to take it along on missions.  It's just that I have to tell my team to stop moving when I send a heal out.

[RawGritz]

hmm I am just going to put in my 2 cents I have played every frame to 30 with a reactor on it and well you have to look at this in the perspective of what missions you are playing and if you have a team or not, and how good your guns are.

 

also I don't think we should say a frame is the best just because it is the best at mass killing

 

ok I am just going to go though each frame as I see it

 

Oberon- he is more for support really, Reckoning just is not powerful enough or good enough cc to be viable later. He is not bad but he has his own style still mid tier though.

 

Valkyr- she is mobile, and can go invulnerable for a pretty long period of time, But her ult kinda annoying just to tap e a bunch and in late game you do not want to lose use of your guns, so mid tier for her

 

Nekros- this frame actually has some pretty good cc, with terrify and he can summon a bunch of decoys essentially and they can even fight back. I would put him at mid tier still but he is desirable on higher level mission because of desecrate and assuming you have good weapons.

 

Nova- high tier I think we all know why so no point in me reiterating

 

Vauban- high tier he has lots of energy and awesome cc abilities that last a long time, these with along with good weapons make him awesome

 

Banshee- she is probably more in the support category, her ult can lock down a large group of enemies but a vauban can do it better, her other abilities are pretty good (not counting silence) so she is mid tier but desirable for late game if she has a good team that she can support and good weapons of course. 

 

Saryn- she can kill but in late game that starts to fall off and is replaced by cc abilities so mid tier

 

Trinity- Mid tier only because she has team invincibility and that has to be mod properly for duration to make it worth it.

 

Volt- he is not a high damage alternative to gun play but he does have some good stuns and his shield can augment weapons and speed is fun, so Mid tier

 

Ash- low tier, not good enough damage or a long enough invisibility.

 

Nyx- High tier, great cc

 

Ember- low tier, she has ok damage but it is only fire damage and without overheat she just is not so good

 

Frost- mid tier but needed on high tier because of globe

 

Excalibur- not sure why he gets put into low tier by people he is at least mid tier because of radial blind, it is pretty cheap and pretty good cc, he also has pretty good utility in slash dash and super jump

 

Mag- with pull she can cc a good amount of enemies and shield polarize is pretty good, I would put her at mid tier

 

Rhino- high tier he is all around good with ok damage, a buff, and cc, as well as the utility of rhino charge, and of course the survivability of iron skin

 

Loki- high tier but only if you have good weapons, seriously, modded correctly you can remain invisible for a long time and during that time with a good gun you can kill everything. Also you can support your team by taking care of heavy units either by killing them or taking away their guns. He is not for everyone but still he is a god :D

I agree with pretty much all this... +1

Edited January 22, 2014 by RawGritz

[Aigloblam]

You're simply wrong.

 

At "high level" Rhino gets one shot killed like anyone else. Sure, he's technically tougher so you can draw an arbitrary line at some group of 5 waves where Ember dies in one hit but he takes TWO hits, but that's not really meaningful in the long run. Ten waves later they're both in the globe but only one of them can recast CC as needed while the other is limited by DPS/power in use.

Rhino is considered very strong, but he's an ineffective hybrid who gets locked into long cast animations and high power costs coming from a small power pool. Ember is considered weak and useless but she suffers none of his limitations and has a better power situation. The only thing Rhino has over her is defense which is eventually made meaningless within your own criteria. There's clearly something wrong with the perception here.

 

If you're talking "high level" and the team stacks fire mods the damage buff is very close to Nova and it applies a hard stun, casts faster, and fire mods take fewer mod slots than rainbow or multiple elements, which means everyone has more crit damage or more fire rate or bane mods, or some such source of additional DPS, rather than using those slots for elements that cap at 75% vs one resist at a time. More damage through higher bonus vs all surfaces, from fewer mods.

 

 

 

As we get more heat based weapons people will catch on and start using her, but she's already very very powerful just with fire mods.

In short, you have to build an entire team around Ember, and use nothing but Fire Elementals for your plan to work. Good luck with that. I'm out.

 

[Ishki88]

I agree with the tier list.  It's funny...if you remove the Nuke frame the tiers change dramatically. 

 

;_: Valkyr 

 

ohhhhhhhhhh the high hops I had for ya

[RawGritz]

I gotta say: I was working hard on trying to make a decent Oberon build... but holy %#*!... 

 

The only thing I can think to say is that if you reworked his healing mechanic so that IT DOESN'T FOLLOW PEOPLE AROUND FOR A YEAR AND A HALF, then he'd be fairly viable.  At least mid tier.  

 

Seriously: If they rework that mechanic alone, Oberon would be pretty well balanced.  His heal is damn good, and I like to take it along on missions.  It's just that I have to tell my team to stop moving when I send a heal out.

Hit the Z key! Now you can see the health bars for all squad members. Monitor this during your missions, along with your own. Use renewal proactively to top them and yourself off. That's a compassionate Druid-Paladin-Reindeer-Thingy.

 

Use maxed Vitality with max Rage mod so you are constantly full on energy to activate Renewal frequently. You can even put yourself in the line of fire just to take dmg to health and convert it to special ability energy from the Rage mod.

 

Renewal will even raise downed enemies if it's activated before they go down.

[Sixty5]

Ok after some thought, here is the order in which I'd pick which Frame to use.

Banshee

Rhino

Nova

Vauban

Loki

Nyx

Nekros

Frost

Mag

Oberon

Excalibur

Valkyr

Ash

Trinity

Ember

Saryn

Volt

List is highly opinionated, and based on playing a t3 mission.

[Auramaru]

Hit the Z key! Now you can see the health bars for all squad members. Monitor this during your missions, along with your own. Use renewal proactively to top them and yourself off. That's a compassionate Druid-Paladin-Reindeer-Thingy.

 

Use maxed Vitality with max Rage mod so you are constantly full on energy to activate Renewal frequently. You can even put yourself in the line of fire just to take dmg to health and convert it to special ability energy from the Rage mod.

 

Renewal will even raise downed enemies if it's activated before they go down.

I have that up 24/7.  It's just that I can't heal people when their shields and health pop instantly.

And to address your second (underlined) statement: I don't think that is true.  It will raise downed enemies IF and only if they are hit by the heal and go down while being healed.  Not if the heal is still travelling to them.  I might be wrong about this factually, but I have done extensive tests on this mechanic and found that it doesn't work when they go down before the heal hits them.

Edited January 22, 2014 by Auramau

[DHKany]

God Tier: Vauban/Rhino/Nova/Trinity

High Tier: Loki/Nyx/Mag 

Mid Tier: Oberon/Nekros/Ember/Volt/Frost

Low Tier: Ash/Valkyr/Excalibur 

 

all based on personal experience, even though a true analysis would have to require a full best vs each faction and certain game types. 

 

Yes, I put frost mid tier cause his other abilities are useless. I value overall Frame usefulness. 1 god mode button doesn't make him high tier, let alone god tier in my eyes. 

[taiiat]

like many frames, i generally find myself quite disappointed at how uncreative players are.

Saryn has always been plenty reliable for me, with Molt being my most used Power. and if you think Decoys are useless, you are seriously not very creative with using them.

 

changes should certainly happen, but it also doesn't help that some frames are just better at pretty much everything while others are situationally great and otherwise average - which is how Warframes are supposed to be.

[Kyte]

While I think we can all agree Frost is really useful, this is mostly a function of Snow Globe, with his other abilities being lackluster. I'd bump him down a tier.

 

Mag, Volt & Oberon show all go up a tier, IMO. Mag & Volt have a great skillsets now and Oberon, while not great, only needs some tweaks to get there.

[Aigloblam]

Excalibur honestly has the most utility. Radial Javelin is the only thing he does that isnt utility based. Radial Blind is an amazing Stun, Super Jump is his least useful, but its still situationally amazing. Slash Dash makes him the fastest frame in the game, simply because of the maneuverability it gives you. Granted, Rhino's Charge can be made to go father, faster, but that the issue with it, It either goes almost nowhere, or shoots you 120+ meters across the map. Slash Dash can be tailor made to how far you want to go. Excalibur can really do absolutely anything, Just nothing in particular better than the others. Except his speed with Slash Dash of course. In all honesty, he should be dead middle of the road based on all around utility.

[Aigloblam]

like many frames, i generally find myself quite disappointed at how uncreative players are.

Saryn has always been plenty reliable for me, with Molt being my most used Power. and if you think Decoys are useless, you are seriously not very creative with using them.

 

changes should certainly happen, but it also doesn't help that some frames are just better at pretty much everything while others are situationally great and otherwise average - which is how Warframes are supposed to be.

I couldn't agree more. When you think outside the box, its amazing what these frames can do. 6 months ago Loki was thought of as useless, but some of us had caught on to how devastating his invisibility and radial disarm could be when used Properly. Its pretty much the same with all the frames. While i still hold true that Ember is the most useless, Every frame can be truly amazing, If you put the work and thought into them.

[Anzuul]

Loki god tier. Based on one thing. Perma invisibilty with the 3 duration mods and power efficiency mod + helm. You can solo everything with that without taking 1 dmg except high lvl defenses. Same can be said for Trinity actually. Any form of perma invis or perma invulnerability is OP. (Only good thing that Valkyr has going for her is perma ult but its impossible to hit high flying enemies with that)

[TennoSimons]

I don't know about "most useless". Certainly I strongly disagree with the original poster that Valkyr is useless - especially now with her rejuvenating invinsible 4th power, she is amazing-sauce for soloing. Most frame's are extremely useful. Trinity, for example, is extremely useful to me for gaining mastery on my backlog of melee weapons (just equip rage and max vitality mod and use link and melee away - if ever in danger use her ultimate).

 

The one thing I will say is that if there is one power in this game that is most useless, it is currently Banshee's silence. I have a use for pretty much every other power out there, personally. 

[TennoSimons]

....Only good thing that Valkyr has going for her is perma ult but its impossible to hit high flying enemies with that)

 

It's not really impossible to hit a lot of flying enemies (especially if you're indoors). For more distant enemies while in hysteria mode: Ripline or Paralysis will do the trick. Once you get a hang of Valkyr, she is just as viable for soloing as Trinity or Loki. 

[XxMAGGOTxX]

I feel that Frost could be godly if his powers/abilities were reworked. While Nova can still kill armies, Frost's Avalanche just turns into a cute snow fall. It's quite frustrating, because in the high level missions everyone is either Rhino (because of his Iron Skin mainly) and Nova because of her Molecular Prime. Frost's abilites I feel are lacking, but that's just me. Nekros is pretty lacking, considering Oberon, who is considered his counterpart, has much more direct damage abilities. Nekros and Frost could both use some re-working. Frost can be used for End Game, however not nearly as well as Nova or Rhino. The only place where Frost shines is Defense, which kinda dissapoints me. Nekros on the other hand, can't be used for much other than Survival, even then he just can't seem to bring enough to the table. Frost's abilites are amazingly cool and awesome, but they lack power. Lots of power. I'm not saying make him completely over powered, but I feel that it's kinda lacking considering his coolest ability, Avalanche, becomes pretty much useless when Lvl 30 enimies walk in, where as Nova just decimates every single one. That's just my own personal view there.

[[DE]Momaw]

My completely subjective opinions, buried deeply in the abyss of a thread which is too long for anybody to read.

 

Of the frames I have used:

 

Ash: Mediocre. His attack abilities do simple straight up damage and his invisibility isn't nearly as cool as... Yeah. Everything works, it's just gameplay-boring and doesn't offer any high level potential.

 

Frost: Mediocre. Insanely useful for defense, moderatley useful for survival, but he is very much a one trick pony whose sole purpose in life is to make snow globes.

 

Loki: Awesome. Decoy is useful, invisibility is unspeakably amazing, teleport is meh, disarm can save your bacon in any number of ways. Also insanely fast. The absolute master of assasination and ninja'ing objectives by avoiding unwinnable fights.

 

Mag: Mediocre with caveat. Her ability to juggle enemies is lethal at low levels but swiftly becomes an annoyance to the team. Bbullet attractor a waste of energy most of the time because most things that have enough hitpoints to justify using it are things you only want to shoot in a weak spot.  Caveat: extremely deadly to Corpus with all of their shielded units.

 

Nekros: Bad. Complete do-over required. His only useful contribution to the team is making enemies cough up loot which doesn't even make sense giving that he's supposed to be a necromancer.  Everything else doesn't work well enough to justify the effort.

 

Nova: Awesome. Has strategic mobility, crowd control, damage amplification, and an ungodly powerful attack capability.

 

Nyx: Awesome. Her ability to make entire armies harmless is indispensable,and her capacity for damage is limited only by the numbers of enemies that she can manipulate.

 

Oberon: Mediocre. He's fun to play, needs some minor tweaks to make all of his abilities practical, but offers nothing that will scale into high level gameplay.

 

Rhino: Awesome. Crowd control, immunity to almost anything, and a team damage buff. Very flexible member of a team.

 

Saryn: Bad.  My most recently acquired frame, I honestly can't see that she does ANYTHING that other frames aren't doing better.

 

Trinity: Awesome. Her restores are awkward to use because team mates tend to annihilate everything enemy-shaped, but her ability to resist damage and keep the team safe through incalcuable damage are essential to some missions.

 

Vauban: Mediocre. Very very useful for defense missions, lacking elsewhere since his abilities are about tactical landscaping and Warframe is not a game that encourages you to sit around long enough to landscape.

 

Volt: Mediocre with honrable mentions. Capacity to unleash death on low level enemies is absolutely unbelievable. His damaging abilities taper off in lethality at high level, but they always remain effective and very quick interrupts. Going crazy fast is always fun and even occasionally useful.

[RawGritz]

I have that up 24/7.  It's just that I can't heal people when their shields and health pop instantly.

And to address your second (underlined) statement: I don't think that is true.  It will raise downed enemies IF and only if they are hit by the heal and go down while being healed.  Not if the heal is still travelling to them.  I might be wrong about this factually, but I have done extensive tests on this mechanic and found that it doesn't work when they go down before the heal hits them.

Mm! You are right on that 2nd point. That should be changed...in all honesty.

[VoidPunch]

There are definitely other frames that belong in the god tier category, that's for sure. Also, no one plays without mods so there is no point in judging frames that way. There are lots of frames that some deem useless that others seem great. Due to play style, mission type, wielded weapons, etc.

There are several missions and ways to play, also the difference between solo and co-op changes game play and frame worth as well. This chart does not take much of this into account it would seem, I would like to know what criteria this was based on exactly.

 

 

Also why are Loki users so bias? Loki maybe be good to people who prefer his play style but is for sure NOT the only god tier frame, Loki users, although he is a decent frame, need to get over themselves. As far as survivability goes, you can't only judge that on his abilities alone. Loki is probably the squishiest frame which counters his "good" abilities.

[Aigloblam]

Oberon's Renewal at least needs the speed of like, a Max Rush Loki. Right now it can be outrun by my Thrak Rhino. I honestly believe Oberon is an amazing frame, he just requires a specialized build. Renewal DEFINITELY needs a rework though.

[UnbeBleeder]

Booben and Trinity need God tier.

[Guest Shibboleet]

Tier list needs to be faction and type of mission specific. Also need to specify if by tier 'you' or 'we as a whole' are debating early, mid, or late game.

Edited January 22, 2014 by Shibboleet

[Cranial_Enigma]

Trinity needs god tier since she can keep invincibility on a team for 30 seconds and virtually never run out.

 

I would argue that mag needs to be high tier due to being able to hit 10k+ damage on shield polarize on corpus but that is only one faction so she is probably good in mid tier.

 

Nekros is just useless without desecrate, that is his only savings grace.

 

I agree with valkyr with where she is at.

 

Banshee should be mid tier because she has great CC, if they would change silence I would even say she is almost high tier.

 

Volt and Saryn both need some work done on them, not really sure what should be done though.

 

Overall I pretty much agree with the list.