My Frame Builds, For Help, Critique And Discussion

[Darzk]

So here we go! Put them together in Warframe Builder because I still find it a pain to take SS's and upload. I've completed all of them as shown except Volt, and a couple of the aura slots are still using V. Also my Nova has a 4th polarity because I got rid of the second V before they released the Blind Rage mod. :-(

 

In general my builds list Corrosive Projection aura. This can be changed to Energy Siphon or Enemy Sense by preference, and should be changed when not facing mid-high level Grineer or Corrupted enemies.

 

One thing I really love about Warframe is how each frame can fill different roles, by 'investing' in certain abilities.

 

Ash is pointless. I never use him, and don't care.

Banshee can use all 3 abilities, or focus on sonar.

Ember (Prime) can focus on World on Fire, or go nuts throwing fireballs.

Excalibur (Prime) can blind a room, or shove lances down their throats.

Frost (Prime) can shatter his foes, or protect the objective.

Loki can focus on staying invisible or disarming the room, or do both effectively.

Mag (Prime) can decimate Corpus or heavily damage the Corrupted, but is weaker against other factions.

Nekros can spawn loot in a group or with a Trinity, and isn't bad all around.

Nova is effective at low-level and mid-level using MP, and uses AMD at highlevel.

Nyx is the only frame with a single build; variants remove FE but I don't like a long Chaos/Absorb.

Oberon can smash the room, or lay down fire and heal.

Rhino (Prime) can buff his teammates, stomp a room to death, or cc and rush through levels.

Saryn is most effective at Miasma spam. Hopefully a build for Contagion/Venom will be more useful in Melee 2.0.

Trinity can make the team immortal, or provide near limitless amounts of energy. See quote below.

Valkyr can focus on Hysteria, or use Warcry too.

Vauban is master of Infested/Melee CC, and not bad against ranged enemies either. This alternate build gets more health mods, but the range on Bastille suffers.

Volt can do lots of damage, give super speed to the team, or plant lots of shields everywhere. Setup like this, Overload has a MASSIVE range, great for clearing low level maps.

Zephyr is immortal, or can do great storm damage.

 

Anyhow, take a look, let me know what you think. If you see something I've obviously screwed up on, let me know, or if you want to discuss a mod choice post below or feel free to send me a PM.

 

I think I'm about 5 forma away from obtaining all these builds... no idea what I'll do then. Max out every weapon? :D

 

Trinity:

I'm working with two builds right now.

 

Long duration: http://goo.gl/vk1Bfd

-I pop Blessing whenever I get really low on health or after QT kicks in, giving my teammates a good ~28 seconds of ~99% damage reduction, and myself nearly always 100% reduction coupled with Link. Use EV to keep energy topped up, acting as an effective health pool (450 energy is a 1080 health buffer), but the aura's kinda small so gotta be close to the targeted enemy. Might even make self nuking an option again with 99-100% reduction. ~3750 damage from Corrosive Castanas would deal only ~40 damage to me, so could be viable again.

 

Negative to this build is I have no way to heal teammates if they start to die between Blessings before I get QT to activate - If I use Blessing to heal them, we're stuck with a period of probably 70-80% reduction at best and if they die while that's active I've got no way to heal.

 

Short Duration: http://goo.gl/xb94oG

-Not sure on the last slot. Maybe Vigor, Constitution, Stretch, R2 BR, or Sure Footed. Also considering a low rank WoL for the insta-kill combo, but its tedious and a little less energy restoring than just shooting something. Might be nice to have at high levels.

-Uses Blessing mostly for the heal and basically ignores the damage reduction component. 1.5 sec lockout is pretty negligible, and allows for a 6 sec Link, just enough for short firefights or to prevent an incoming knockdown/nuke. EV is much more effective with this build, providing the same 130 energy to teammates but ~118 to me with each cast.

-Considering dropping Link for QT and using Flow in the last slot for a lot more emergency health (1080)

 

Updates:

 

U13.0:

Valkyr now has a very viable melee only build. Keeping Warcry up more than doubles attack speed and means she has >7700 effective health. Coupled with a Life Strike weapon Hysteria isn't needed. 

 

U13.3:

Trinity can make the team immortal, or react to teammates dying by healing them. A variant of the latter has >3700 ehp but no Link.

 

U13.4:

Nova can debuff enemies in a massive area, or provide a decent nuke with MP in a smaller area.

Edited June 10, 2014 by Darzk

[Axeroix]

I see you dont run rush, why?

this is my volt speed build http://goo.gl/OrScQ8

Edited March 26, 2014 by Axeroix

[Zhoyzu]

I see you dont run rush, why?

waste of a mod slot. anyone with knowledge of the tiles can out run a rush mod user.

[Wallace24]

awesome, and very well-organized and thought out. I recently brought my ember prime out (I got bored, I'll admit. so I was spicing things up), and it's good to see that my intended build lines up with your recommended fireball spam build (I'm on the second forma, but I mis-forma'd, so I still have all 4 ability polarities instead of switching one to tactical. so embarrassing). I'm really enjoying accelerant with heat damage weapons

 

anyhow, this is really a great reference, and good examples for people to see what some of the ideal builds for each frame are. I'll probably check this out again if I decide to give loki another try, but most builds are fairly intuitive

 

I prefer a slightly different setup on my immortal trinity. the 25 energy blessing spam kind of build. let's see if this worked. I use rank 4 fleeting+rank 4 streamline to get the 75% efficiency exactly, but you can go max streamline+rank 3 fleeting to get 70%, and 1 extra second of invincibility. but in the case of disruption, I'd rather not have to wait for the extra 5 energy and just pick up a blue orb and go. another personal preference is sure-footed for passive knockdown resistance. I used to have sure-footed and fortitude for 80% resistance, but then natural talent was released, and that's a pretty nice one to have. oh, and my redirection isn't maxed, but you can fit a maxed on in with that build (I should probably do that. but I've been lazy)

 

the efficiency is huge, fleeting is too good a mod to not take advantage of. it's 70 energy for 28.2s vs. 25 energy for 23.2s. means you'll have to spam it nearly 3 times a minute every minute once enemies start hitting hard enough in survival, but the HUD timers are pretty convenient for that. your build focuses more on rage, with the addition of vitality, and brings in overextended so link is a lot more useful. but I like the rage+vitality combo to gain back energy. makes up for the lack of fleeting expertise, somewhat. guess it's important to note that I don't spam link like I do with blessing, I'll use it later on in a survival, when I really need to stay on my feet or really lay down some hurt with the penta

 

 

anyhow, great work! also glad to see I'm not the only one who dislikes ash with a passion (though ash can be helpful, I'll admit. but as you've subtly stated: anything he can do, loki can do better)

 

edit: one other note on the trinity build, the last mod slot (used to be last 2, but natural talent is a must, I think) is basically left up to user's choice. you can even put rush on (but see Zhoyzu's comment above) if you're that way inclined. sure-footed is decent passive knockdown resistance, overextended is an option if you want to utilize link more. rage or quick-thinking are generally useful too. or you can use redirection/vitality, whichever one you haven't already equipped. but some of these may require an extra (4th) forma. those would be my top recommendations for that slot, but that's just based on the core build I use. if you use a different core (with rage+vitality, for example) it might be different. mine just happens to have a free slot, to a degree

Edited March 26, 2014 by Wallace24

[Tatersail]

(in my opinion)

 

 

Sayrn Miasma spam, swap out rage (or health or shields/health) for Continuity and you get a 3rd tick of miasma with only a drop of around 50-100 damage.

you have 1.4 so you get the initial tick 588.7, then 1 tick 588.7

if you add continuity you get 2.8 seconds, which does initial tick 500ish then 2 ticks 500ish

 

the math is broken on it, weirdly this does alto more damage, at 2.8 seconds than 1.4 but taking it past 3 seconds drops the damage to stupid amounts.

I also found removing blind rage in certain duration combos INCREASES the damage..... 

 

I found with flow, and only 25 energy miasma, I don't need shields and health as much because I can use the 4 second stun on Miasma to stop things shooting at me.

 

 

 

Also nova, I prefer to have a 25 energy ability vs the 40+ energy builds, the damage Mol prime does it not as important as the debuff. 

 

and you don't use flow in any of your builds, which means you have less buffer, for continuous use on abilitys during low orb drop times.

and I always take energy siphon as a must have Aura.

 

You really seem to love rage?    I find at any level where I loose all my shields, usually 50+ that I loose 300 health so fast it hardly matters that I gained 120 energy.

 

Alot of these builds almost require you to have, other players using Energy siphon, and something to heal, otherwise Rage is only going to work once.

Edited March 26, 2014 by Tatersail

[Cryozar]

I'm curious about the build you have for Frost (Prime) for protecting the objective. Doesn't Steel Fiber help increase snowglobe health? Is the health gain from it that small or is it just limitations on mod capacity?

[Darzk]

Sayrn Miasma spam, swap out rage (or health or shields/health) for Continuity and you get a 3rd tick of miasma with only a drop of around 50-100 damage.

you have 1.4 so you get the initial tick 588.7, then 1 tick 588.7

if you add continuity you get 2.8 seconds, which does initial tick 500ish then 2 ticks 500ish

 

the math is broken on it, weirdly this does alto more damage, at 2.8 seconds than 1.4 but taking it past 3 seconds drops the damage to stupid amounts.

I also found removing blind rage in certain duration combos INCREASES the damage..... 

 

Quick correction for you; -65% duration does the most damage, and still stuns for 3 seconds. If I were to equip Continuity the damage would drop from 4037/ Miasma to 3260/Miasma, a decrease of nearly 20%. Not worth it for an extra second of stun. If I wanted to stun for a long time I would go for a long +duration build.

 

To clarify; at 1.4 seconds you get 2 full ticks and a partial invisible tick. Damage per tick base is 1500/1.4 = 1071.5. 

 

See here: https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/194462-so-crap-miasma-deals-invisible-ticks-f-e-should-be-maxxed/

 

 

Also nova, I prefer to have a 25 energy ability vs the 40+ energy builds, the damage Mol prime does it not as important as the debuff. 

 

and you don't use flow in any of your builds, which means you have less buffer, for continuous use on abilitys during low orb drop times.

and I always take energy siphon as a must have Aura.

 

You really seem to love rage?    I find at any level where I loose all my shields, usually 50+ that I loose 300 health so fast it hardly matters that I gained 120 energy.

 

Alot of these builds almost require you to have, other players using Energy siphon, and something to heal, otherwise Rage is only going to work once.

 

For Nova, the HighLevel build where MP is no longer used for damage does indeed use only a 25 energy MP.

 

I'm not a fan of Flow, as with at least 50% efficiency on n all the builds I feel there is no need for it. I've almost never run out of energy, so long as we keep killing and picking up orbs. Even with bad RNG on orb drops I'm not afraid to drop a med energy restore, which is 50 energy on the first tick.

 

I do love Rage, for frames that have a defensive or escape ability. I don't generally deliberately dip into my health pool to fund abilities, but I do love having that extra energy when I really need it. Most of the frames using Rage wont ever take health damage unless they're out of energy to cast abilities.

 

Again, not afraid to drop health restores if I need them, to recover. Most of the time tho a teammate has a healing ability, and I can get by again without dropping to taking health damage for a long while. 

 

I'm curious about the build you have for Frost (Prime) for protecting the objective. Doesn't Steel Fiber help increase snowglobe health? Is the health gain from it that small or is it just limitations on mod capacity?

 

Steel Fiber adds around 1k health to the globe. IMO, its not enough to justify taking up a massive amount of points. It barely adds any ehp to you when not using Vital, and I generally prefer shields, as they regenerate. SF has no benefit to other abilities. The globe is cheap enough to be recast as often as needed, imo, and the added health is not needed.

 

If they let the globe have armor reduction to damage based on our armor I would use it, and the +armor helmet.

 

 

I prefer a slightly different setup on my immortal trinity. 

 

 Yeah there's quite a few variations on the build, I believe I mentioned a few in the build comments.

 

When playing solo I often swap in FE R4 and Energy Siphon, but I find when playing in groups I never have energy management issues due to the abundance of orb drops from kills, and prefer to have to stop to cast Link/Blessing less often.

 

Knockdown is a grey area. I like having Link up, not only with the Penta but sorta as an enemy sense. When I don't have it up I can generally see the knockdown coming and cast something in time to negate it. Both casting animations prevent knockdown and Blessing I believe will activate even if you die during the casting animation, making teammate revives really easy.

 

Personally If I do want to build against knockdowns, I would go with Handspring over SureFooted any day. The quick flip back up every time is safer, imo, than being knocked down and helpless for longer, some of the time.

 

Link is pretty useless without Overextended. In your build I would drop it entirely for another mod (Fortitude to round out handspring?). 

 

 

I see you dont run rush, why?

this is my volt speed build http://goo.gl/OrScQ8

Because I care about teammates as much or more than myself, and Rush doesn't help them. I don't use Rush in general because I find it unnecessary, mobility is fine with a quick melee weapons and abundant wall launches. 

 

You're speed build has a distinct lack of range, making it basically only affect you. Shame.

 

I would consider Sprint Boost but I actually don't have it. Might be worth looking into I guess.

[(PSN)ShadowDancing-]

That's more or less what I've been running on Nova, but I'm finding replacing Overextended with Quick Thinking is a really nice boost in durability for the mid to high levels short of endless-everything-one-shots.  

 

http://goo.gl/fqh6aJ

 

I'm still experimenting, but this seems to cover a nice range of difficulties like (levels 0-50) more flexibly than Blind Rage MPrime or the AMD endless builds.  If not better, than at least more fun/tactical options being able to run and gun, take some hits, and not get embarrassed by the slash procs or toxin damage.  It effectively has 1800 health with only a small reduction in Mprime effectiveness and AMD isn't effected.

 

Also, Wormhole is greatly unappreciated on the non-endless missions.  Run faster than Loki, rescue the entire team, go crazy.

 

edit: I realize Fleeting and Streamline don't both need to be max'd for this build, but I don't have that many Fleetings and it doesn't make a difference in the number of forma.

Edited March 27, 2014 by (PS4)ShadowDancing-

[reXXer]

Bump to this guy for awesome build ideas. I'll get to dismantling them and calling them sub-optimal soon. I shall have my revenge, Darzk! ;)

 

P.S. Tatersail, awesome name, awesome book series.

[(PSN)supramurkat]

Agreed. Darzk, you do some great builds with a lot of thought into them. Big fan I am.

 

[(PSN)Hiero_Glyph]

Quick question:  On your Banshee Sonar build, why not max Fleeting and add two additional ranks to Blind Rage?

 

You would be at -2% duration instead of +8%, so a minor change given the 18s duration of Sonar (17.6 vs 19.4), but would add 18% power damage, which scales incredibly well with its 500% base damage bonus (1100% vs 1010%).  Efficiency would remain at 50% and the changes would not require any additional forma.  I guess it comes down to whether or not 1.8 seconds is worth +90% damage.

Edited April 15, 2014 by (PS4)Hiero_Glyph

[DPV111]

I throw a basic build on every frame consisting of Energy Siphon, all 4 abilities, Vigor, Flow, Streamline, Intensify, Stretch, and Constitution.

I then throw 2 more builds on each frame: a specialized build to take advantage of a frame's unique characteristics based on my preferred playstyle, and a fun build with a bunch of utility and gimmick mods that let me screw around in lower level zones.

For instance with Volt for a specialized build I slot Steel Charge instead of ES, Redirection instead of Vigor, and I swap Energy Shield out for Berserker and Overload out for Quick Rest.

This lets me alpha with Shock and turn my entire team into melee monsters who can do more damage with one use of Speed than if we all used our Ults.

With a Carrier slotted with a maxed Spare Parts, maxed Vacuum, and unranked Striker you have plenty of energy for perma Speed, channeling, and the occasional Shock. With Dual Zorens slotted with a full spectrum build you never need to touch your guns unless you have to disarm a trap or something.

[Darzk]

Quick question:  On your Banshee Sonar build, why not max Fleeting and add two additional ranks to Blind Rage?

 

You would be at -2% duration instead of +8%, so a minor change given the 18s duration of Sonar (17.6 vs 19.4), but would add 18% power damage, which scales incredibly well with its 500% base damage bonus (1100% vs 1010%).  Efficiency would remain at 50% and the changes would not require any additional forma.  I guess it comes down to whether or not 1.8 seconds is worth +90% damage.

 

I actually considered doing this, and decided not to for 2 reasons:

 

1) I don't actually have a Rank 9 Blind Rage, and no other build seems to use it, so it'd be a pain to level it for one build. And I do have and use Rank 7 for other builds.

2) Making that change would increase the damage done on a sonar hit by 8.9%, but decreases the duration of the sonar weakpoint by 9.2%, so numbers suggest they work out DPS wise to about the same, maybe even better as-is; as most things die in a hit or two a longer duration might increase the chances of hitting an extra enemy before reacasting, while really all the extra power strength is adding is overkill damage.

 

Basically it boils down to personal preference. You can scale Blind Rage and Fleeting Expertise down or up at a 2:1 ratio, maintaining the 'sweet spot' of 50% efficiency, depending on preference and content. I often run without Energy Siphon, so I like to have a touch more efficiency over maximizing damage.

 

I actually use a scaled down setup like http://goo.gl/6hjNfr for lower level content. And a really scaled down version for helping newbies through low level content - http://goo.gl/m4Wqix, with a long duration and range but barely any power strength.

[(PSN)KonnecT]

Hello Sir, first of all fantastic builds thank you for sharing. 

 

I honestly feel that the rhino build that you posted before with rejuvenation/vit/rage is the best energy efficient high level endgame build you could make, surprised that you did not post it here.

 

 I have some question with the volt speed build that you posted. Would having a maxed narrow minded gimp *chain* range of shock? I was under the impression the range affected shock's arc range, chain range and intial power range as well. But I think with this build the only thing that you would be trying to achieve would be using speed effectively in which it excels at.

 

 I build volt for speed/shock/and energy efficiency for high level play in which power damage drops off. I have great speed to buff the team and can spam shock as much as I want for a great CC stun with great effective range. I wish that I was able to buff his speed more using build rage or narrow minded but i'm not sure if the trade off is needed, because I could ditch rush. My EF is at 70% the build is below tell me what you think 

 

http://goo.gl/Vn5Gwl

[Darzk]

I honestly feel that the rhino build that you posted before with rejuvenation/vit/rage is the best energy efficient high level endgame build you could make, surprised that you did not post it here.

 

I actually couldn't find it again when I made the post, and then decided to leave it out, as its more of a personal survival build and doesn't really help much with team synergy. Plus these are my *actual* builds, not theoretical - I only have one Rhino and hes got a - polarity, so then Rejuv is out and we're looking at using health restores in order to utilize rage at all. And Corrosive Projection is so incredibly useful against Grineer and in Void that it's hard to give up.

 

The build I tend to use the most is the middle one, which at least does incorporate Rage for emergency IS/Stomp, but isnt intended to use it as a constant source of energy.

 

 

I have some question with the volt speed build that you posted. Would having a maxed narrow minded gimp *chain* range of shock?

Sigh. Shock is complicated.

 

The answer is both yes and no. From what I can tell, +/- range effects only the targets hit by the initial impact of damage. Think of it as a small AoE around the reticle that damages enemies with a 100% status chance electrical effect. The chaining resulting from the 'proc' of the effect is NOT affected by +/- range. This is because enemies hit/chained after the initial damage done are being hit by the elemental proc of your damage, not actually hit by your ability itself.

 

Imagine you had a Lanka with 100% proc chance. Obviously, when you shoot someone, the range that the proc affects is not changed by +/- range mods on your warframe.

 

So while you definitely want maximum range to deal DAMAGE (as the initial impact is the strongest/most damaging), using the ability as CC is not as dependent on range as you would think - so long as you're accurate with your activation. If you're in the habit of hitting enemies with it directly, as opposed to a few feet to either side, you should be okay to lose some range.

 

I'm using stretch as well so its not so bad. And generally that particular build only comes out to do Captures, in which case the Shock is just to hold that damn target still :D

 

 

I wish that I was able to buff his speed more using build rage or narrow minded but i'm not sure if the trade off is needed, because I could ditch rush. My EF is at 70% the build is below tell me what you think 

 

http://goo.gl/Vn5Gwl

 

If you compare my speed build to yours, apart from the 70 vs 75% efficiency thing, the only difference is I've ditched rush for blind rage, and Continuity for Narrow Minded.

 

Now given that you like to spam Shock, I would keep Narrow Minded off, and use Continuity as you have. IMO the 69% duration is not worth the -66% range, especially because that range will help keep speed up on teammates.

 

However I would recommend dropping Rush for Blind Rage. The reasoning being that abilities are waaay cheap enough already, moving them to 2 per orb from 3 isn't bad - I never run out of energy. The extra 54%-72% power strength (depending on how you set it up with maxxing FE or not) will mean your Shock will hit harder, which even if it isn't used for damage is always nice, but more importantly - your Speed will be faster. You'll run slightly faster while it's active, but teammates will run *much* faster.

 

Also, I would keep an eye out for the alert helm... groan I didn't even realize I did that. Actually, either helm works well - I actually prefer +str just because giant eyeball is creepy.

[Darzk]

Bump. Updated with some thoughts on Trinity and new builds for her. Also added the melee only Valkyr build I've been using since U13.

[-Ryuken-]

Darzk, I love your builds, this is a great resource for me. I just wanted to post this (what I would consider) now viable late-game Nova after her changes, and hopefully get some feedback from you.

http://goo.gl/agUk7N

MP for debuff, AMD for damage.

Maxed efficiency. Since you can't activate MP again until it finishes dissipating, you can just spam as soon as possible for the 200% damage bonus to be almost constant.

Zero percent mob slow-down, which I hated with the old prime. Always would hit some mobs in the distance, and you'd have to go look for 'em. This keeps the mobs coming, which is far less annoying in Survival and Defense in my opinion.

Max possible range for prime detonations to overlap.

All with +21% duration so your dome of pain goes a pretty reasonable distance.

Thoughts?

Edited May 27, 2014 by -Ryuken-

[Darzk]

Yeah, I've yet to really experiment with 13.4 Nova builds. 

 

I would point out that 0% PS would still snare enemies to 70% movement speed. You could probably drop BR and get closer to no speed reduction. If you swap BR for Continuity, Max Narrow Minded, and drop a rank in Fleeting Expertise, you can keep the same efficiency, but go up to 69% duration, making MP affect a huge area.

 

However with so much -strength from OE you're likely not gonna see a huge benefit from MP explosions. I would ditch the range mods (maybe just stretch if trying to keep it at -30% strength) for more duration too.

 

I did a little bit of testing and -30% strength seems to speed mobs up just a tiny bit. -20% would probably keep their speed unchanged.

 

http://goo.gl/MZdNER will give you a massive +107% duration dome, +9% power range so explosions are about 11m, no mob slowdown, and maxxed efficiency. MP won't have to be cast as often so that frees up some energy to use AMD more often, althouth it sucks that it doesn't have much +range.

 

The other build I'm looking at is http://goo.gl/Qbzp8e, which gives you +84% power strength, +45% range, and +8% duration, with only 50% efficiency, for a MP nuke build. The area affected is not so large, but the explosions hit HARD in a decent area (14.5m). You can scale BR and FE to fit your ideal setup, for example maxxing BR and dropping FE for Flow makes the area effected larger and explosions MUCH more effective, but MP costs a massive 125 energy.

 

Edit: Updated OP with the links from this post.

Edited May 27, 2014 by Darzk