Un-Official Warframe Tier List

[Niryco]

This tier list is definitely biased toward defense. And any frame with good CC is going to seem like God mode. That's going to put frames like Vauban, Nyx, Frost up top. But you have to look at everything a whole not just defense. And you also have to look at the base stats and survivability of the frames as well.So far no one has mentioned any base stats of any frame or taken them in consideration at all. Everyone has been focusing on raw abilities, but that's not the entire picture.

 

Vauban has good CC because he has low survivability with 25% less shields, average health, and 40 armor. He cannot tank at all. I would actually place him below Saryn and Frost on the Tier list because they are better all around frames because they have a better mix of high base stats including shields, health, and armor, good damage, and a decent CC ability.

 

I have a 4 forma'ed Vauban, so I've been playing him awhile now. Most of the people who think he is god mode haven't even played him yet. He is no God frame. He is a utility frame based on control. He is fragile, and his damage isn't that high considering Vortex isn't doing hardly any damage right now, not even enough to kill a low level heavy target. He is fun to play, the powers are entertaining I'll give you that, and I enjoy him immensely. But just because he is good at a couple things doesn't make him the best by any means.

 

You can't balance the game around defense. You need to look at everything as a whole.

They said his vortex killings everything.

[weezedog]

They said his vortex killings everything.

 

It kills nothing right now but light targets. Unless by killing them you mean makes them bug out and disappear completely with the only want to kill the target is by dropping teslas and waiting 10 minutes for the invisible target to die. It is very very buggy. When Vauban first came out in May his Vortex did crazy damage at the center and would instagib any boss but it has not done since the first week or two of release. Vortex right now does 14-15 damage per tick, and I think I've seen some higher ticks at the center but level 20-30 heavy targets are getting back up after a Vortex with half their health left.

[marharth]

Problem is that being nearly unkillable and being able to heal anyone isn't usually as important as killing everyone in the room in one skill use. Also Energy Vampire loses a lot of usability when your whole team is nearly instakilling an enemy before you can even get the cost of the skill back. Mid tier is a good place for her, in fact it could be argued that she might belong lower.

Being able to kill stuff with skills isn't as big of a deal as people make it out to be. You can kill large groups of enemies with certain guns in a few seconds, having a skill to do that is nice and all but the only thing it really does is save time. Not every mission type is defense. Consider trinity for boss fights and other mission types as well. You can solo any boss with trinity without problems. You can hack consoles while 100 enemies attack you, without taking damage or getting stunned. Trinity can go ahead of the team and tank for the team. You can give energy to people in mission types that don't drop orbs everywhere. You don't need to ever revive anyone if you time skills correctly, but if you do need to revive someone you can get them up even if theres 100 things shooting you.

 

There are a lot of frames with killing abilities and a lot of guns that can kill a large number of enemies. Having a frame that can make the team unkillable is far better. If you have a good trinity and a reasonable team you can't fail missions. You can do all the damage you want with skills but evenutally people will need energy, health, or quick saves/revives.

 

Also its not that hard to get back the cost of energy vampire when you just need to do a single melee charge on one enemy to fill back up. If you can't manage to find one enemy to get back energy from then thats not really a problem with the frame.

[Niryco]

Being able to kill stuff with skills isn't as big of a deal as people make it out to be. You can kill large groups of enemies with certain guns in a few seconds, having a skill to do that is nice and all but the only thing it really does is save time. Not every mission type is defense. Consider trinity for boss fights and other mission types as well. You can solo any boss with trinity without problems. You can hack consoles while 100 enemies attack you, without taking damage or getting stunned. Trinity can go ahead of the team and tank for the team. You can give energy to people in mission types that don't drop orbs everywhere. You don't need to ever revive anyone if you time skills correctly, but if you do need to revive someone you can get them up even if theres 100 things shooting you.

 

There are a lot of frames with killing abilities and a lot of guns that can kill a large number of enemies. Having a frame that can make the team unkillable is far better. If you have a good trinity and a reasonable team you can't fail missions. You can do all the damage you want with skills but evenutally people will need energy, health, or quick saves/revives.

 

Also its not that hard to get back the cost of energy vampire when you just need to do a single melee charge on one enemy to fill back up. If you can't manage to find one enemy to get back energy from then thats not really a problem with the frame.

I would like to support your arguement that at higher level missions, 40 and above, insta gibbing is not possible most of the time and trinity shines there.

Edited June 20, 2013 by Jacate

[Watlok]

Insta gibbing is still easily possible.The healer role is completely useless in current content unless you are grouping with bad players.

[lstalri]

The other issue is that there is currently not very much high tier content that caters to classes with other niches (loki and ash), so we're not really capable of testing their end-game capabilities. 

[GTG3000]

Haha.

Hahahaha.

HAHAHA.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

AAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

 

You're either terrible with Vauban or don't have him unlocked. Vortex kills everything.

 It got nerfed. Doesn't kill anything now.

[Fire_Ashes]

I like this thread a lot and i would like to make a point.

 

Excalibur is my favorite frame and i am about to get Excal Prime. However i am always playing with friends and excal's has barely any team playing skills. I wish he could be put in a place where he is good for a team of 4 skilled players. Also i think his skills deserve a little buff, just a small one, because he is almost useless on wave 30 OT.

 

Excellent thread but i just want to point that out. Excal should be buffed in a team play kind of way.

[HammerMill]

Volt definitely needs a buff on SHOCk, at the moment it's next to useless.

[Fire_Ashes]

Volt definitely needs a buff on SHOCk, at the moment it's next to useless.

Yes, Chain shock would be nice as well

[FrostWolf]

Why is it... when people do the Helmetless look...

 

 

9 times out of ten

 

 

Mag looks like Saber, Is that just the vibe she gives off?

Edited June 20, 2013 by FrostWolf

[Buddlschlumpf]

I have played all warframes except vauban and I mostly agree with this list (only slight deviations) except one thing: Ember is definitely up to par with the other high tier frames. Once WoT starts failing due to high level enemies, you can always rely on Overheat. 91% damage reduction with a staggering AoE is just sick (not to mention immunity to disruption and toxic DoT - 5-6 dmg once in a while for touching a toxic is "acceptable"). Throw in a trinity or even a reju articaft and you just can't die. And with a little game knowledge and skill, stunlocking is not a issue.

 

Or put in other words: Ember is the better Rhino.

Edited June 20, 2013 by Buddlschlumpf

[Ruzu]

I've never understood these standpoints. Any game where different and varying player controlled elements are present can have tier lists. By saying that there Tier Lists are useless (in the literal meaning, not "screw the man, I'll play [trash tier] because I can, therefore it isn't relevant"), only 2 conclusions can be drawn: that Tiers are so obvious that they do not need to be pointed out, or that everything is in the same tier. I'd like to see a serious argument put forth for this.

 

Tier lists are pointless, because of one factor that they cannot accommodate for no matter what. Individual skill. Here's the blunt straight-forward truth behind any tier list ever created for any game. They are all created based off the creator's relative skill to the characters he uses and plays against. This is why there is no perfect tier-list.

 

To take it a step beyond the comprehensible, let's imagine 2 Excalibur players facing off each other in a contest. Whether it's PVE or PVP makes little difference. Assume one of them gets completed dominated, while the other is completely dominating. How can you say Excalibur is OP or UP if one of them dominates while the other gets dominated? You can't. Truth be told, in that kind of situation, even I'm dumbfounded. This is why tier lists are pointless except for personal reference.

 

Edit: Let's also say that there are 2 battles going on. Both are between an Excalibur and an Ember. Let's assume that all contestants are playing to the best of their abilities. In one battle, the Excalibur players is utterly overwhelming the Ember, while in the other one, the Ember player is utterly overwhelming the Excalibur. Now let's assume that these 2 battles are actually between the same 2 people, except on different days. Neither can be considered better or worse then the other. The only option left to consider is that they are both "equal" and that the key difference between the two battles was that the current mental and physical states of both players were drastically different during each battle. That would be the only explanation for such wild results.

 

This list suffers from a serious "I only play Xini in high waves" bias.

Vauban is god tier only against infested. Vortex isn't a killer ult

 

I couldn't have said it any better. Only against infested is Vauban unmatched. Against anything else, Vauban suffers unless used wisely.

Edited June 20, 2013 by Ruzu

[Sideway]

This list suffers from a serious "I only play Xini in high waves" bias.

 

Too bad you don't want to read more than the last 2 pages of this thread, I've explained our testing method more than once. You are wrong.

 

To take it a step beyond the comprehensible, let's imagine 2 Excalibur players facing off each other in a contest. Whether it's PVE or PVP makes little difference. Assume one of them gets completed dominated, while the other is completely dominating. How can you say Excalibur is OP or UP if one of them dominates while the other gets dominated? You can't. Truth be told, in that kind of situation, even I'm dumbfounded. This is why tier lists are pointless except for personal reference.

 

What's the point of compairing Excalibur to Excalibur? Take Excalibur and Saryn. Compair them. Easy cake. Take more frames, compare them to eachother under every possible situation in this game (Defense, Capture, Sabotage, Void etc)

 

Tier List is the result. Some things are more "important" and "skill dependent" than others. That's why normal planetary missions like Kappa or Hades were less important in this test than Void Tier 3 or Outer Terminus for example. Take any frame, give it lvl 6 Redirection and a good weapon Rank 30. You don't even need your skills to win every single "normal planetary" mission in this game. Even Bosses. So if something is not a "challenge" at all then it doesn't matter that much in the test.

 

That's why Ember is Mid Tier. She is similar to Saryn (Pure Damage Dealer) but her damage is not scaling... therefore she's too weak to be considered High Tier. She's devastating in these "normal", "easy" missions like Kiste. That's nice... but Metagame is merciless.

Edited June 20, 2013 by Sideway

[JollierThanThou]

Personal preference and skill level isn't (very) relevant in the game's most punishing content. On Outer Terminus or Xini, a team of mediocre players with Frost, Nyx, Vauban, and Banshee mops the floor with a team of excellent players playing Mag, Excalibur, Rhino, and Volt. Damage-dealer frames lose the cryopod before utility frames, every time.

 

Besides, isn't this list an aggregation of 150 players' opinions? I didn't think it was just Sideway.

[Ruzu]

What's the point of compairing Excalibur to Excalibur? Take Excalibur and Saryn. Compair them. Easy cake. Take more frames, compare them to eachother under every possible situation in this game (Defense, Capture, Sabotage, Void etc)

 

Tier List is the result. Some things are more "important" and "skill dependent" than others. That's why normal planetary missions like Kappa or Hades were less important in this test than Void Tier 3 or Outer Terminus for example. Take any frame, give it lvl 6 Redirection and a good weapon Rank 30. You don't even need your skills to win every single "normal planetary" mission in this game. Even Bosses. So if something is not a "challenge" at all then it doesn't matter that much in the test.

 

 I've seen a lot of tier-lists and the explanations behind all of them, but in the end, they're meaningless to me because there are certain meta-factors that are never accounted for that make a huge difference. No one is ever always in a "perfect" state of mind. We get angry, happy, sad, stressed, confused, and mystified all the time. All of these factors that the more logical minds consider useless in making tier lists, affect us when we play. Someone who's happy and is alert to every detail in the game can easily make Rhino seem god-tier, while someone who's sad and whose concentration is lacking might make poor decisions, will make Rhino seem trash-tier.

 

While tier-lists might be a good foundation when just factoring in raw skills without taking anything else into consideration, they become flawed when millions of players with millions of different states of mind take these characters and start applying them in battle. Their moods will considerably alter their ability to interpret the information given to them, and their physical state will alter how well they make use of a given ability or character. After you sort that out, you get vastly different tiers that are different to everyone, that also change every second.

 

Therefore, while I appreciate the logic behind tier-lists, I see absolutely no serious logical meaning behind them. If humans did not experience emotion and could play the exact same way each time, with a peak state of mind that was in permanent-stasis, then tier-lists would be logical to use.

 

But yes, as Jollier has pointed out, this is simply an aggregation of player opinions.I consider the math behind the tests you did for your tier-list calculations in particular to have no real relevance for me since everybody has a different approach and style to battle.

 

To end this post, I am probably biased in my answer due to the fact that I mostly only play high-level stages. Low level stages do not provide me with the data I need to make an accurate assessment of how well a frame works for me. At low level stages, i would consider every frame to be god-tier. At higher levels, when things start getting rough, the frames that get me out of danger more easily and more smoothly are the frames that I consider candidates for god-tier.  Anyways, that's merely my own logical assessment of tiers and the math behind them.

Edited June 20, 2013 by Ruzu

[JollierThanThou]

 I've seen a lot of tier-lists and the explanations behind all of them, but in the end, they're meaningless to me because there are certain meta-factors that are never accounted for that make a huge difference. No one is ever always in a "perfect" state of mind. We get angry, happy, sad, stressed, confused, and mystified all the time. All of these factors that the more logical minds consider useless in making tier lists, affect us when we play. Someone who's happy and is alert to every detail in the game can easily make Rhino seem god-tier, while someone who's sad and whose concentration is lacking might make poor decisions, will make Rhino seem trash-tier.

 

I get what you're saying. A frame's tier isn't the only thing that determines its success in-game. Not all players make better use of Ash than Rhino, even though Ash is in a higher tier.

 

But even when you take all those factors into account, there are a few constants. For example, Outer Terminus will kick your butt if you bring Rhino instead of Frost. In all circumstances, all emotional states, all skill levels, all play-styles, and all team compositions, you will lose before wave 100 without Snow Globe. For high wave defense, Frost is objectively better than Rhino. And when some frames are objectively better than others, well, there you have tiers.

[Dolomaticus]

I get what you're saying. A frame's tier isn't the only thing that determines its success in-game. Not all players make better use of Ash than Rhino, even though Ash is in a higher tier.

 

But even when you take all those factors into account, there are a few constants. For example, Outer Terminus will kick your butt if you bring Rhino instead of Frost. In all circumstances, all emotional states, all skill levels, all play-styles, and all team compositions, you will lose before wave 100 without Snow Globe. For high wave defense, Frost is objectively better than Rhino. And when some frames are objectively better than others, well, there you have tiers.

Wrong again, played with several people who have brought Rhino to Outer terminus and was doing just fine. Your assesment that Rhino((or any warframe)) has to make it to wave 100 is not only flawed, but it shows your flaws in the tier system you are pushing.

[ROSING]

I always feel like ash is the most controversial player to buff, but maybe that's because I just follow those posts.

Anyway, my feedback on this is to make shurikens do puncture again, as if it were homing throwing knives.

That would make it so much more crowd controlling and would put it on par with slash dash, if not more.

[Skepsis]

Personally I don't see why Vauban would be "god tier" If anything he's decent. in later tier, his tesla just doesn't stand up to match much for damage, yes you can stack it, but his only useful ability I've run across is his stasis, which is pretty awesome. Ember is one of the best frames per utility, and damage. Rhino is still the king of tanks, though he's offensive, he still backs a punch and has the highest mitigation of the 150 armor category.

 

Also Volt? don't understand why he's so low on the totem pole, He's not been touched, and still is an awesome support frame.

 

Each frame brings to the table something different.

 

Mag? Yes, I know seems useless. But shield polarize? saves lives, Pull? Can as well. Can't say much about bullet attractor outside of a boss fight, and LOL Crush.

 

I wouldn't consider one frame better than the other, sure there are frames with stronger abilities, more damage, less damage, more or less shields, but it all comes down to Playstyle, if ANYONE is a "God Tier" frame, It's Banshee for the team utility. hands down.

Edited June 20, 2013 by Skepsis

[GunmanRex]

I agree with you on volt. With Vaubon. When I first saw one in a defense mission I though it was awesome, he just sat back while his teslas ripped everything to pieces.... Then wave 15 came in, they trudged through the teslas. Next I did a regular mission with him. Once he could no longer huddle completely behind his teslas he got ripped to pieces. Next comes Rhinos, as for the wave 15 thing; from what I've noticed pretty much everything below your heavy hitting things starts to degrade in use as the enemies scale up. Rhino can go toe to toe with some pretty nasty bosses. As for Ash, I feel that he could be moved up, he seems to be a complete upgrade from excalibur (I feel that Ash should have his health/shield nerfed a little. He is meant to be a stealthy frame after all.) Now, on to Mag. Mag is very, very far from useless. I've seen her do massive amounts of damage and destroy the enemies charging in, I'm not sure if you've played mag or not, but if you are, you seem to be doing it wrong. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that I absolutely love fighting with Mag. Her crush ability kills more enemies then Excalibur's radial javelin.

[lstalri]

I lol'd @ ember being better than vaub >.>

[Skepsis]

I lol'd @ ember being better than vaub >.>

How does Ember not outclass Vauban? More damage higher tier, crowd control, nearly 90% damage mitigation if built correctly, Vauban has what, stasis and paper armor? ontop of zappy balls that do nothing but piss things off on higher tier? lol.

[fishworshipper]

Rank 9, Own and play all frames. List is truthful and i agree with every placement. Except id put Rhino with Mag in the useless tier.

Ha ha ha.

No.

[fishworshipper]

How does Ember not outclass Vauban? More damage higher tier, crowd control, nearly 90% damage mitigation if built correctly, Vauban has what, stasis and paper armor? ontop of zappy balls that do nothing but &!$$ things off on higher tier? lol.

Vauban is God tier for Infested defense and that's about it. Ember is overall far more useful.