Un-Official Warframe Tier List

[Nerokerubina]

As much as I agree with the OP, I believe what first needs to be done is reevaluate Volt and Mag. They're beyond underpowered compare to the other frames.

[lZerul]

Having played all the Frames I'd say:

 

Top Tier: Vauban, Banshee, and Nyx

 

Vauban mostly because Tesla can be placed infinitely, and is the solution to just about any problem. Bastille is also a great CC skill.

Banshee just has a really strong skill-set overall, with the sole exception of Silence.

Nyx's Chaos and Mind Control are simply the best solution to any problem, with bosses being exempt.

 

High Tier: Frost, Saryn, Excalibur

 

Frost has an infinitely scaling bullet Shield and good CC utility on his other abilities. Destroys Corpus even better then the Volt.

Saryn's sole claim to fame is Miasma, which is basically where all her power lies. It is the single best wave clearing skill in the game.

Excalibur possess a good mix of damage and utility skills. Slash Dash and Radial Javalin both do very high damage against all enemy types.Radial Blind is also an exceptional CC skill.

 

Mid Tier: Ash, Rhino, Loki, Ember

 

Ash is a solid all around frame that only really lacks a good wave-clear skill. Shuriken is great for dealing with small numbers of enemies.

 

Rhino is a seriously underestimated frames nowadays. He possess a good mix of CC abilities, and Radial Blast does ult level damage. Rhino Stomp also floats every boss to my knowledge. Iron Skin is also effectively 800+ extra shield with CC immunity. While it may get shredded quickly at higher levels, every other frame would fall under far less damage.

 

Loki possess exceptional utility, but has no ability to quickly clear enemies, unlike basically every other frame. It also is extraordinarily fragile, with Decoy being the only real reason it doesn't die immediately in a higher level fire fight.

 

Ember, in contrast, does a ton of AoE damage but has very little in the way of utility. It slaughters anything not Grineer, and even they are only an exception at higher levels.

 

Low Tier: Volt, Mag

 

Volt us just ultra specialized and has minimal usefulness against anything not Corpus

Mag has too much mundane utility in its kit, with Crush being the only truly good skill

 

 

God Tier doesn't exist in this game, it would imply that frame could literally solo anything in the game, including high wave Defense missions. The Vauban is exceptional, but isn't THAT good, trust me.

Edited June 18, 2013 by lZerul

[Hezekiah]

I do not think Volt or Rhino are "Low Tier".  Now it could  be that Volt was my first frame (And I loved him) or that it took me 60+ runs to get the parts for Rhino, but both of these guys can easily hold their own in the right situations.    Excal and Ash belong in Higher tier, they are extremely versatile and offer great survivability and direct damage attacks, not to mention they are both fast and strong making them great for speed runs or long term survival.

 

I personally think Saryn is overrated, I do not like that frame at all, but Ember (one of my favorites) is totally underrated, and deserves some respect.

 

I have not played Mag, Banshee, Vuban, or Nyx so my voice will be mute on their placement.

[LongDraw]

Hmm, I am interested in what the rest of the community thinks of this list. Do you agree/disagree? Have you played all 13 frames, or are you in a clan or squad with access to all 13, and found clear disadvantages as suggested in this image?

I have played all 13 frames, and played Excaliber Prime and soon hopefully will get the parts for Frost Prime. I would put the frame in the following positions:

God Tier: No frames

 

High Tier: Vauban (Best abilities hands down are Tesla and Vortex. Vortex to suck enemies and drops into small collection area and Tesla to find those pesky hidden/invisible enemies), Saryn (Mid-High way to God Tier because of Miasma), Ember (Solidly High Tier with Ring of Fire and World on Fire damage and range), Frost (Mid-High way to God Tier thanks to Frost Globe duration and effects and Avalanche damage and range)

 

Mid Tier: Ash (Blade Storm makes him very quick to clear hidden enemies in the room he's in, but he's a one trick pony. Teleport is not very useful), Excaliber (Slash Dash is great if you have the right melee weapon on and maxed and mod maxed, and his Radial Javelin can finish off mass spawns, but he can easily get himself in trouble from body blocking).

 

Low Tier: Volt (Overload is near useless with diminished range, but still has potential with intact electronics nearby), Mag (Crush hasn't been that great from the beginning, but it still does decent damage), Nyx (went from being a GOD with its bugged Chaos to being extremely weak), Rhino (Simply put, a tank that can't tank effectively any longer) and Trinity (Okay, so she can heal, but not really much else. I can get that from an artifact)

 

Useless Tier: No frames

Edited June 18, 2013 by LongDraw

[Beelzebubbles]

I think the only things you're going to be able to agree on in this thread are the "high-powered" and "low-powered" frames.

 

Everyone will say that Vauban is the bees knees. So, please, DE, find out why the other frames aren't as good as Vauban!

 

I think it mostly comes down with some of the powers needing reworks.  Like Nyx's Absorb, Volt's Overload, Rhino's loss of tankiness, and Mag's, well... Mag's everything.

[plznohurtme]

I find lists like this generally to be laughable at best because of the massive amount of variance in the uses of the frames. Anything from normal missions to void missions to endless defense missions not to mention the difference between playing by yourself or with other people. Right now enemy level has everything to do with it, because I can tell you with utmost certainty that I can destroy any mission just using a volt until enemies reach a certain level. This is any enemy, not just Corpus. The thing is that after a certain level things seem to be much more highly resistant to spells (I'm assuming this is in general I don't find any of the other casters to be worth using for the way I play so I haven't taken any to void).

There are big advantages and disadvantages to almost every single frame, and it's the ones that are easy to play with one or two really strong abilities that people tend to gravitate towards. Would Frost be highly ranked without Snow Globe? no, is Snow Globe actually worth a S#&$ on anything other than defense? no, not really, can get the same effect in normal missions via stealth or volt shield or mind control/chaos. Hell predominantly used for res, you can put mods on your sentinel to help with that, and if you're using shade you're probably good to go already.

Again with any list they're subjective, so I can't really say that I'd agree with any list, or even have a list of my own. I have reasons for choosing certain frames over one another and why I wouldn't choose to use one over another, but I don't think that inherently makes any of them "bad" frames. The only frame that I've had that I've given up using is Mag and this is due to the ~75% damage reduction her ultimate suffers from against Grineer. While I don't particularly think that Mag should be the unique flower that gets to hit everything for maximum damage even dropping that to 50% reduction would go a long way towards making the ability more useful.

A specific thing I would like to note about Rhino and Iron Skin is that it should retain its non shield benefits once it goes down. I'm also an advocate for getting rid of the shield entirely as it makes it strong against enemies that aren't likely to kill you anyways, but weak against really high level things that will wreck you if you make a mistake. I still think the original idea of knocking it down to a percentage was the better idea, but if it worked like Ember's overheat and could be increased with Focus.

Another issue with ultimates in general is that since immunities were removed they cannot be used in an "oh S#&$" defensive manner which makes any ultimate that forces you to be stationary without a cc less usable (sup volt, assuming excalibur isn't invuln it would go here too).

Essentially in the end unless there's something seriously wrong with a frame I don't see any point to "ranking" them above or below one another. Even then I don't really see a point in ranking them, because they're subjective... there should simply be a list of the frames that are usable and those with huge problems.

Edited June 18, 2013 by plznohurtme

[NewClearWaist]

Vauban's so good you don't even need to make use of Bastille and Vortex, just attach some teslas to yourself and become a walking voltage generator of death.

[Sideway]

High Tier: Ember (Solidly High Tier with Ring of Fire and World on Fire damage and range)

 

Low Tier: Nyx (went from being a GOD with its bugged Chaos to being extremely weak)

 

You can't be serious. Ember is Low Tier when placed above Wave 20 or in Void Tier III Mission. She's good vs Infested till ~30 Wave and on Kiste (so is any other frame). Sure... she can burn through any normal missions and Tier I/II but again... so can anyone else.

 

Nyx in Low Tier? Right now I'm not sure if you're not trolling. Obviously broken and bugged Chaos was fixed. And it's still amazing, so is Mind Control. Life savers, one of the best in this game. All she needs now is Aggro on her Ulti and Psi Blades tweak. But calling her a "Low Tier Frame" is blasphemy.

[Beelzebubbles]

[GIANT WALL OF TEXT AND UNALLOWABLE HTML TAGS]

 

Might wanna fix that there, mate!

[plznohurtme]

Might wanna fix that there, mate!

Yeah I love the inconsistently working forum replies, fixed it when I saw it.

[Notso]

You can't be serious. Ember is Low Tier when placed above Wave 20 or in Void Tier III Mission. She's good vs Infested till ~30 Wave and on Kiste (so is any other frame). Sure... she can burn through any normal missions and Tier I/II but again... so can anyone else.

 

Nyx in Low Tier? Right now I'm not sure if you're not trolling. Obviously broken and bugged Chaos was fixed. And it's still amazing, so is Mind Control. Life savers, one of the best in this game. All she needs now is Aggro on her Ulti and Psi Blades tweak. But calling her a "Low Tier Frame" is blasphemy.

 

I agree with you about Nyx, but Ember seriously deserves high-tier. She has a better tank skill than Rhino, her uber does 20000 damage over the space of a few seconds when fully modded [WAT], and Ring of Fire staggers all enemies that walk into it. Great if you have aggro.

[Nerokerubina]

If anything, I think whenever you're using Ash, this song should play constantly.

 

Edited June 18, 2013 by Nerokerubina

[Notso]

If anything, I think whenever you're using Ash, this song should play constantly.

 

 

 

I had to.

[KitsuAccalia]

I honestly think pretty much every frame is high Tier~ I personally have played all of them and enjoyed them, each with their own distinct abilities they make up for weaknesses. Plus mag is fun ;w;

[CrazyCatLad]

Rhino is not low-tier.

[fishworshipper]

Disagree with Rhino's placement, as well as Vauban's.

Rhino is incredibly useful grated you handle him correctly (not to mention that Snow Globe+Iron Skin delicious synergy), and Vauban, while good, is not God-Tier.

But yes, all the other rankings are pretty spot-on. Especially Mag.

[JollierThanThou]

What's the Snow Globe + Iron Skin synergy?

[Wriith]

I'd say that list is pretty accurate.  I'd consider bumping Frost into God Tier (I'm reluctant to use that term too, seeing as I wouldn't consider any frames godmode by any stretch, just over-performing) if we were taking it purely from a defense mission standpoint (I feel that outside of Snow Globe, Frost doesn't bring a whole lot to the table... but Snow Globe itself is massively important in many defense missions), but otherwise I wouldn't really make any changes.

 

You hit the nail on the head with Mag.  Mag is beyond worthless and it really hurts me to say that.  I love her concept, but in practice she's basically out-done by every single other frame.  Her 1 skill is only useful when a teammate screws up and dies IF you can target them properly, which is easier said than done when they're being swarmed with infested.  Her #2 is useless for anything outside of endless defense and even then it isn't anything to write home about.  Good luck ever applying it to a teammate in the heat of combat and don't even think about using it to strip shields when a gun can do the job better and faster.  Her #3 is seldom useful for the cost and more or less requires an Excal be strapped to her hip for it to be worth the energy (if you can coordinate that, it's suddenly an amazing boss killer, but it's pointless for a skill to be SO reliant on another frame to function).  And... well, her ulti has pretty huge range with her alt helmet, but outside of that it has nothing going for it and it certainly won't be killing anything in higher waves.

 

I agree that Vauban is a bit outside the realm of what I'd consider balanced, but I'm not sure what I'd advocate changing about him.  I think his Tesla could use a deployment cap, but it would have to be sufficient to not completely destroy the skill (IE 2-3 Teslas would be seriously lackluster whereas 10 is too many imo).  His Vortex needs some tweaking to fix some of the bugs associated with it and I think it could greatly benefit from NOT pulling allies.  I think if those two changes were made, I'd be satisfied with him.

 

EDIT:  And to answer DERebecca's question - Yes, I more or less agree (see body for details).  I have played all frames except Trinity (she's done cooking today) but I have grouped extensively with her.  And yes, I do think there are VERY clear disadvantages that some frames have relative to others and that quite a few need to be buffed up to be brought in line with the higher tier, more recently designed frames.

Edited June 18, 2013 by Wriith

[Nerokerubina]

 

I had to.

 

I'm not sure what you're trying to say with this image.

 

I think it's a sound and honest idea that most people would enjoy to have. Ash needs a deep and meaningful soundtrack to go with it. Other bands who would be good would be Kamelot, Linken Park, System of the Down, Marylin Manson, and a few others. I also feel that when given the color black as the major color of the frame, should increase it's attack and defense ten fold.

[Rockerfox]

He means that the thread is derailed with that comment since the thread is not about music to be played with your warframe but about the teir warframes sit at.

[PeterKha]

This Tier List does make sense. I would say Banshee COULD be in the Mid Tier.

I wouldn't say Vauban is THAT much better.

 

I agree with most of this list, though.

I still want Mag reworked. Maybe reworked in terms of art too...?

 

I mean, she's the one you would see as the noob-newbie unless you saw them with a Sentinel and a Dread. If she looked a bit more powerful or elite, I'd definitely get her in terms of Fashionframe.

Her looks don't compare to Loki in terms of starter frames.

I don't understand why people are bashing on Mag. I mean, I don't know how she was before but I still love her the way she is now. She's strong regardless if Crush ignores armor or not. If you were to ever play with me as a Mag, I don't think you'd ever classify me as noob nor newbie. With a semi decent team, Mag can make it up to about waves 20 - 25 on defense. I end up racking 3 - 5x more kills than everyone else on my team as a Mag. I mean if she gets a reworked and buffed, I'm all in for it but I seriously don't think she's underpowered of considered to be useless. I even go as far as carrying my whole team on either Kappa or Ciste Mobile Defense.

 

I actually am interested in knowing how she was before though and what made her not so viable to everyone here and why so much hate towards her because I love her! I personally think she's broken since I clear mobs in like a split second.

[Nerokerubina]

He means that the thread is derailed with that comment since the thread is not about music to be played with your warframe but about the teir warframes sit at.

What I'm trying to say is that Ash deserves to be in God Tier for the sheer fact of how cool he is. When I play him I imagine I'm like Sasuke from Naruto; that Chinese Cartoon.

 

His attacks and everything about him spell out my emotional feelings about the world and how deep and sophisticated I am.

[Notso]

He means that the thread is derailed with that comment since the thread is not about music to be played with your warframe but about the teir warframes sit at.

 

Thank you.

[Rockerfox]

What I'm trying to say is that Ash deserves to be in God Tier for the sheer fact of how cool he is. When I play him I imagine I'm like Sasuke from Naruto; that Chinese Cartoon.

 

His attacks and everything about him spell out my emotional feelings about the world and how deep and sophisticated I am.

no

[Countess_Hapmuhr]

I disagree with this list because as others have pointed out, this list is seen through the goggles of someone whose got a very narrow definition of usefulness as it relates to high tier defense missions.

 

I can't comment on either Banshee or Vauban, as those are the only ones I've not used so far, but as for the other Warframes, I find that they all have their niche they fit into perfectly. If I spec my gear and frame according to the mission parameters, whichever they will be, I will always excel.

 

Mag is incredibly useful in the right hands on a normal mission. Her pull together with a high leveled melee weapon enables her to act as a sort of tank towards heavies, she can single them out, pull them close (and prone them) and then hack away at them. Really, in DnD pen and paper, knocking an enemy prone is about as useful of a skill as you can have and many builds of fighters tend to be based off that. So really, calling pull situational just shows how little OP knows about battlefield manipulation.

 

I will agree however, that Shield Polarize is in essential only usable in defense missions as in normal missions shields regenerate way too fast. I've seen that Banshee has a sort of "push" ability, I would have liked to see this one replaced with that for even greater single-enemy management. For example, being in a team and pinning an enemy to the wall with repeated pushes would be incredibly useful.

 

As for bullet attractor, it's useful in two instances, when you have an enemy that deals heavy DPS with ranged (and you need that to stop NOW) or when you want to deal heavy damage to a single other target. Mix this with heavy hitters using Hek and an Exalibur or two with a radial spear and you cannot lose.

 

I'm personally fine with her ult because it enables me to get some breathing room if I need to switch my strategy. I would only like to have it be armor piercing though, so that it works on two factions rather than one. Same for the Volts ult too, now that I think about it.

 

I often find that people that complain about the frames usefulness pretty much fall into two categories:

 

1) The power players, really, I don't care about your level 100 Xini/Palus/Outer Terminus OP builds. You complain about warframes not being high tier when you as a player aren't even mid tier in skill. Stop trying to pidgeon-hole every frame into one particular situation. This game is more than just super high level stuff, thus we have differently suited frames for it.

 

2) The newbies, so you tried Ember and thought she sucked and all the while you had no idea you were running around on Pluto with your starter weapons that didn't even have damage increase mods on them. You're excused, because you clearly don't know any better.

Edited June 18, 2013 by Hap-muhr