Frames for New Husband/Wife Duo Team

[DaBruuzer]

Greetings all!

Disclaimer: I am VERY new to WF, so please forgive any ignorant questions from me - I really did try to read a lot of the forums and watched many YouTube vids as well, before asking.  I am also in my mid-40's and still try to be an active PC gamer, as is my wife.  So we don't pretend to have the same reflexes that we did 'back in the day', nor the ability to be as social (like voice chat, etc.) as we were back in our MMO days in the 2000's.

I am very pleased to have found Warframe (wish I had discovered it a while ago).  We both have very busy work schedules, and now find gaming time to be at a premium; we're lucky to get in an hour a night, and a few on the weekends.  Warframe seems almost made for us, being able to jump in for a quick mission or two, etc.  We live only 2 hours from London, ON, so we're even heading to Tennocon in July!

Anyway, to my question:

My wife and I, being new to the game, are proceeding cautiously, not power-leveling, etc.  Reading/watching guides, and trying to take a LOT of the info in.  The only Plat we have spent is on a Reactor each, thus far.  My wife has more difficulty than I performing the quick movements that the game rewards, but she is coming along slowly.  We're both using Excalibur for the moment, and it's been fun!  But we're both wondering what to aim for next.  IS there any logical progression for 'Frames?  Or is it really just, "aim for what looks cool to you"?  I like a mix of ranged and melee, wife loves melee, but tends to get overwhelmed and die a lot.

In any case, we're happy to have discovered the game, and so far the community has been great, providing a wealth of knowledge and information.  We'll most likely look for a clan to join soon, but for now we're enjoying duo-ing (if that's a word!).  Thanks in advance for any help and advice!

Dab

Edited May 27, 2016 by DaBruuzer

[Xaero]

[Mulk]

Me and a buddy of mine play Frost/Rhino a ton; we both have the primed variants of those now, but it works almost as well with the non-primes.  Rhino can take an absolute beating due to iron skin and inherent/modded armor and packs a pretty good wallop too, Frost provides extra CC plus some high damage skills.  Given what you say of your wife, I think she'd enjoy the rhino charge ability, plus the area stomp is an amazing CC.  You're light on healing that way, but frost snow globe or avalanche and rhino iron skin/stomp combo give you needed immunity to rez each other as needed.  Defense missions with this pairing are amazing, and a good way to rank up.

Good luck, whatever you choose!

[DaBruuzer]

27 minutes ago, Brasten said:

In terms of safe, "we aren't as fast with the twitch shooters," frames I agree with Frost (you) and Inaros (your wife). Folks have already stated the reasons but both are fairly stable frames... (clipped)

Some awesome info there - thanks!

[Lijka]

My husband and I did it a little differently: when we started we bought a frame and a set of weapons (primary, secondary, melee) which seemed most fun to us and with that we went to explore the game. I'd like to share a few tips with you, I wish someone shared with us back then:

Try as many things as you can. For a long time I used the initial set of frame and weapons that I bought, since I enjoyed them and they served me well, but when I actually started to try new things for a change, it turned out I found so much more weapons and frames that I loved.

Each planet ends with a boss. When you defeat it, at the end of the mission you will get a part of a warframe. Take your time to kill each boss a few times so you complete the set: helmet, chassis, systems. It might require you to farm a little bit for materials needed for bulding it, but you can just get them "by the way" when doing missions on planet that drops given resource.

When you start getting Void keys, use them. For quite a while we used to think that Void is super duper hard and we need to get much better in terms of skill and gear to try it. It is not so. The first tier, assuming it's a non-endless mission, is doable even for inexperienced players.

Don't be afraid to play in public games. As you learn the game, I'm certain you will spend a lot of time in missions with just the two of you, but it do not hesitate to open the game to public if the mission seems too difficult or just to talk to other players and ask about their frames and weapons.

Use Warframe Wiki to learn more about skills of the Warframes you're using, because the ingame info is minimal to the point of being useless. The game won't tell you of synergies between the abilities, about all the little side-effects they may have. It won't tell you about a lot of things. I can't stress enough the importance of this point s it will make your life so much easier.

Personally I do not fully agree with the list of frames @PsychedelicSnake suggested, since they are neither easy to obtain, nor the easiest to play. Oberon due to his healing may greatly aid you at the beginning of the game and Nezha is great for melee play (warding halo that absorbs some damage and stuns the enemies that get close). I have a set of Nezha parts which I will happily gift you, just contact me ingame, please. However Chroma and Equinox are not as straight-forward. Neither is Wukong, but Valkyr and Inaros are good choices, however Inaros again is not easy to obtain, especially for starting players, other than, of course, the market.

Ultimately Warframe is about "go for what is fun to you" at least at the beginning :) Later on you will start learning that certain weapons are weaker and why but for the moment, the best thing you can do is go for whatever seems fun and try as many things as you can :)

If you really want me to name some frames to start with, it would be Rhino, Frost, Nyx, Inaros, Nova, not neccesarily in that order.

7 hours ago, Windspike said:

1.  Frost and Ember - There's something so lovely about the high defensive capabilities of Frost mixed with the high offensive capabilities of Ember.

For the record it's what my husband and I went for initially. I went with Frost, because of weaker reflexes and wanting to not die too much and her went with Ember, because fire! :D

Also Orthos remains my favourite melee since the moment I bought it as the part of my "starting set".

Edited May 27, 2016 by Lijka

[DatDarkOne]

Welcome to Warframe.  I wish you and your wife the best.  Hope you continue to have fun gaming together.  Happy hunting Tenno.  

[DaBruuzer]

15 hours ago, Lijka said:

My husband and I did it a little differently: when we started we bought a frame and a set of weapons (primary, secondary, melee) which seemed most fun to us and with that we went to explore the game. I'd like to share a few tips with you, I wish someone shared with us back then... (clipped)

Thank you for another great post!  And it was great meeting you in game.  All of this advice is very much appreciated.

[SquattingMouse]

Greetings from another husband wife pairing!  In fact we have our own clan which is and will always be just the two of us.  We tend to run whatever we feel like.  My wife like excalbur and tends to prefer straight forward damage dealing frames where as I tend to run a more control build using Nova or Nyx.  We have recently acquired trinity but I'd say just experiment.  The whole idea of warframe is to keep trying new things and once you find frames that match your play styles you'll be working together very effectively.  Rhion may be a good first stop for your wife as he's quite easy to get hold of and can tide you over until you get to better frames (I still use mine and he did ALL of the rathuum missons without a hitch so he is quite capable).

On a side note my wife and I were part of a 20 wave void defense team and when in chat we pointed out that we were in the same room the other team asked if we were brothers.  The 34 year old maths teacher and 32 year old accounts manager nearly fell off our chairs for laughing.  Welcome Dabruuzer and myself and my wfie are glad to know we're not alone out here and there are others around! 

[DaBruuzer]

Update (if anyone cares LOL):

So far, things are going great, and we're having a ton of fun.  We're still learning about WF, using the Wiki, and exploring the different mission types.  I'm now MR3, and have maxed Excal and Frost, working on Saryn (although I keep going back to Frost).  The wife is now MR2, and has maxed Excal and just built Rhino.  Odd thing is, after watching her play Rhino for a bit, I kinda like what I see.  We usually duo-mission, just the two of us, since we seem to play at a slower pace than most of the PUGs we have grouped with (man, some people really tear all over the place - so fast!).  So I now have a follow-up question:

Is there anything wrong with both of us running Rhino? My wife tends to need more survive-ability, whereas I like to deal a little damage.  Would two Rhinos, one eventually spec'd for Stomp and Roar, and the other spec'd with more defensive Mods be a viable, fun duo to run with?

[Skaleek]

Play Equinox. You're both the male and female portions of your team, you can ditch the wife and play solo! No one holds papa back.

Edited May 27, 2016 by Skaleek