Un-Official Warframe Tier List

[JC-Jalokim]

I don't think rhino is a low tier frame. and to be honest I don't know what the fuss is about the iron skin mod. I don't use it. Further more I polarized one of the "=" polarities on rhino to make sure I never use iron skin. I prefer buffing my redirection and other mods that make my rhino powerful.

 

But sticking to topic there are a few frames that are weak as hell, and could use a buff.

It would also be great if warframes had unique skills and team buffs not only for the current frame. I might even have used iron skin if I smacked it on all my mates in battle. 

About the uniqueness... i mean most frames have first power a dashing/charging move or a point select target move. then many have statis power and then the 4th and so called most powerful power involves doing radial damage around the frame.

 

Each frame should be good at something, not that all frames are pretty much the same in what they do.

 

Maybe some frames should be better against infested, or buff rifles, or be immune to an element (to a certain extent). More variety

 

TL:DR:

* I don't use iron skin and my rhino is awesome

* Yes, some frames are weak, and most frames are identical in what they do

* More variety/specialization please

Edited June 19, 2013 by JC-Jalokim

[Dolomaticus]

 Directed at Middle: 

 

  Don't have to go higher when the team gets a Void Key level 3. See I was actually looking for a new flow mod for another frame and HEY a void key drops in my lap?!?! Heck I am taking it whether or not  the team is doing good. Actually from how you framed and stated your intentions, it does NOT come across as helping or trying to fix the problems with the warframes. The thread LOOK AT MAG, is the way you go about trying to come up with  ideas and taking a look at a frame to tweak powers so that they become more effective.

 

  Also your sarcasam is fail and you come off as condensending, talking like you have a clue. You may have one, but your attitude and how you present it is *Puts on sunglasses* Not STREAMLINED. YEAHHHHHHHHH!!!!

Edited June 19, 2013 by Dolomaticus

[LongDraw]

@LongDraw

The issue with scaling to max HP is that you lose its effectiveness at the lower levels. If they have a floor of the minimum effectiveness of abilities, say at their current strength and then only scale upwards as the enemies get tougher I can see that working a lot better.

Otherwise you have lower leveled frames who get an ult and can no longer use it to clear the room around them and escape from hairy situations because it only deals say 30% damage to the HP of the enemy, where currently it will most likely kill them and be a much bigger benefit.

Finally, if you scale it off of the HP of the mobs then abilities become the end all be all of boss killing. If they have a base damage that then scales up with the enemy level somewhat they will be useful, but not over powered. Otherwise if it takes off 25% of mob HP think of what that would do to some of the high level alert bosses. Four casts and the boss is dead (which is very easy to do with the energy system and either energy vampire or 4 siphons).

Well, I admit I probably should have gone into a little more detail in my previous reply.  What I meant by scaling to Max HP is that you make an ability do a base minimum (ie 100-150 damage) on level 10-15 enemies.  Then on enemies level 20-25, it might scale up by 10% higher than the base minimum value.  Enemies 30-25 it might scale up to 20% higher than base.  Level 30-35 it might go 30% higher than base.  Then for level 40-50 it might scale up to 40% higher than base.

[Tsukinoki]

@LongDraw

That sounds exactly like how I was thinking of scaling the damage based off of enemy level would have worked. Apparently I wasn't being clear enough with my idea either.

That would go a long way to keeping damaging abilities useful at all levels and close the gap between CC frames and damaging frames.

[TunaMayo]

Facetanker? She is a facetanker when you wish her to be, there's nothing wrong with designated support classes having tanking capabilities(though there's something wrong when she's doing it better than the designated tanker frame). With Energy Vamp working like how it currently is, it's hard to use it to benefit your teammates(but comes in dead handy against Infested when your accidents happen). Also all this is of course, provided that we're using high level endless defense as comparison.

 

Sorry i didn't mean to sound like there is anything wrong with the facetanking that's fine, keep the support alive.

I just feel that Trin could use more support powers (perhaps with upcoming new abilities?), the only 100% consistent one in her arsenal for support is blessing.

I would like a gun damage boost, or a massive shield regen boost, something like that.

[LongDraw]

+1 for Tsukinoki

[Taiki]

volt is far from underpowered sure on zini it isnt any good but on griner defense i can rack up 3-450 kills easy lead the board everytime, on corpus it is not even funny what volt can do with overload, almost overpowered is more like it 

 

sure shock isnt realy good and the shield could use some help but speed is fun

 

dont underestimate volt

[plznohurtme]

volt is far from underpowered sure on zini it isnt any good but on griner defense i can rack up 3-450 kills easy lead the board everytime, on corpus it is not even funny what volt can do with overload, almost overpowered is more like it 

 

sure shock isnt realy good and the shield could use some help but speed is fun

 

dont underestimate volt

agreed on shock, and shield may need some additional help, but I honestly think it's fine for Volt use. It's great against corpus and if you have banshee + volt shield there is no faster way to destroy infested ancients. So perhaps something to make shield better for the group, but as it stands it's good dps wise against two fractions and has the cover benefit against the third.

[Sideway]

Well would you look at that, they've mentioned me on the Livestream... MY JOB IS DONE HERE, FAREWELL.

 

But seriously now, it was all about it. To get their attention. To upgrade some old Frames. I'm really glad we will finally see some progress on that.

 

That was my final post here, thank you all for the feedback and your support (and critique harrharr).

[Fire_Ashes]

I have played every single frame to 30 multiple times (with the exception of Mag; once is enough) in every type of mission possible (4 clanmates in a similar situation), and I would 90% agree with the OP save a few minor changes (ie. Trinity and Nyx in God Tier due to technicalities - you will not take a single point of damage in any situation if you know how to play).

 

I disagree with Vauban needing any sort of nerf though, as he isn't pervasive in his strength like the old Banshee ultimate. While this would exclude him from being labelled God Tier, I believe that Vauban has enough tools to adapt to any situation, simultaneously earning him his place in the God Tier and making him perhaps the most enjoyable frames in the game.

 

God Tier contains the frames that are able to manipulate enemies and the field into a state of no-lose (an alternative definition is that God Tier contains abilities that are straight up more powerful than everything else), where you cannot be beaten while playing these frames. Being a co-op game, this isn't an enormous issue, but some attempts to rework the two "technically God Tier" frames should be made, as they are effectively one-trick-ponies without anything else going for them (as opposed to something like Meta-Knight, who has the best in every single area).

 

High Tier contains the most enjoyable frames to play in my opinion. They are never useless in 99% of situations and all have a nice theme. Some adjustments are needed (Saryn's 1&3, and as a consequence, 2&4) but overall, they are fine, balance wise.

Banshee, Queen of All Trades - The most flexible frame by far, containing 1 powerful ability in the Offensive, Defensive, and Utility area.

Frost, King of Defence - An Immovable Object that is fully equipped to hold his ground against any enemy.

Saryn, the Gymnast - Incredibly flexible and moddable to suit any situation. Owner of the only ultimate that is blind to all situations.

 

Mid Tier frames tend to be specialists in their abilities. Good to Excellent in one area, but lacking in others that are important for control in various other situations. By this definition, Saryn fits in Mid Tier, but she remains in limbo-High Tier due to Miasma's indiscriminate nature being too valuable.

Ember, the Exterminator - Good for committing genocide on the most evil scale, roasting thousands of enemies in minutes, however loses effectiveness when enemies are able to resist her extremely high damage.

Excalibur, Jack of All Trades - Similar to the Queen, but more specific and slightly less suitable to the current map and enemy designs.

Loki, the Loner - Extremely powerful in his own right, but simply does not offer enough to the team.

Ash, the Nuker - Powerful direct damaging abilities that are blind to race make him superior to Volt, but the scope of their function is rather small. Smoke Bomb's stagger effect is his saving grace from the damp darkness of Low-Tier.

 

By extension, Low Tier is further specialised, but in a way that is so narrow that it excludes too many game elements to be useful. Both Ash and Volt are good at dealing damage with their spells, but this is a VERY weak strength to have, which makes Low Tier their home. As with the alternate God Tier definition, it contains things that are simply outclassed in their function, such as Rhino.

 

Lastly and most obviously, Trash Tier contains the characters that are have extremely weak or niche strengths that simply aren't needed in too many situations.

 

e: Wow, typing this up reminds me of reading and writing Pokemon and Super Smash Brothers Tier Lists. *nostalgia*

 

Disclaimer: the advice below contains generalisations. Use your brain.

Now, drawing on my balance experiences indirect combat interactions from many other games, I can loosely say that High Tier and Mid Tier are mostly okay to be left alone. A few damage nerfs on High Tier and a few ultility buffs on Mid Tier should establish a solid balance reference for all future frames to come.

 

When we come to Low and God Tier though, super-buffing or super-nerfing them is not always the best solution. Using the insight of years of DotA balance, it is often better to stab a powerful warrior's sword arm to hinder him rather than take away his skill with the sword. What I mean by this is that it is preferable to make easy, powerful feats slightly more difficult to achieve, rather than to turn them into easy, less powerful feats. And of course the inverse is true for buffs.

 

In Trash Tier though, a whole rework is necessary. I'm sorry, but you're going to have to put in work.

 

Further edit: Here's my opinion of game stages at the moment.

 

Early Easy Game - All the planet missions

Can be done with sub-optimal weapons, enemies and challenges may be 'brute forced' with some effort.

 

Mid Medium Game - T3

Early game tactics and equipment are less suitable here, where effective equipment is strongly preferred. Despite this, enough patience will see the success of Early Game tactics.

 

End game - Non-existent

End game content requires fluid teamwork, effective strategy and the very best equipment to overcome. There is no currently existing content that fits this description.

 

High Wave Defence (HWD) is simply abuse in its most literal meaning. There is no rational motivation to enter HWD, and it consists of only specifically tailored skills that are conceivably infinitely useful (Snowglobe/Chaos, Bastille). Therefore HWD belongs in Easy Game. However, effective equipment is highly desirable in the interest of time, placing HWD in between Easy and Medium Game. As a player who has fought many level 300+s, after extrapolation, I can confidently say that I could (theoretically) train a chimpanzee to do my job for me. Fun factoid: Lack of mental stimulation for an intelligent being is akin to torture.

holy crap.

[Tulzscha]

I have all of the frames except for Nyx maxed out to 30, and the tier rankings do match up to how I think they perform in-game.

 

Rhino's 80% damage reduction Iron Skin was already fine IMO, all it needed was a tweak to be immune to poison, stagger, ancient/shockwave MOA knockdown. Like Ember's Overheat, it would scale better the higher level enemies got, compared to the terrible 800 damage cap now, in Pluto or high level defense it gets shredded in seconds.

 

I would actually put Volt close to useless tier because of his severely limited skills. Shock is garbage. Speed needs a tweak to accelerate your melee attacks too IMO, currently where you get stuck on stairs all the time there's no reason for me to use it. Electric Shield's size is laughably small and it's effectiveness as a defensive skill compared to Frost's Snow Globe? It's no contest. Overload is nice on Corpus ships with lots of "electronics" to add more damage but everywhere else, every other frame's AOE ultimate (save for the atrocious Rhino Stomp lol) just leaves it in the dust.

 

I've not used Volt in over two months, where the rest of the roster sees regular play... :(

[NessOnett]

Not that I'd be against a buff, but I think people really undersell Rhino purely by virtue of "He's not as good as he was, so he must be bad."

 

When I compare him to say, Excalibur. I can't honestly think of a realistic scenario where I'd want Xcal over Rhino. Rhino bringing more damage, more CC, more survivability. At the cost of a little speed(which if you're comparing along endless defense lines, speed doesn't mean as much).

 

So why was Rhino put in low when Xcal was in medium?

 

 

I'm glad he's getting "fixed" and I like what's happening to him. But his current form isn't as dire as a lot of people are saying.

[BoompigXD]

*Sighs* 

 

Newbs to the internet SAY HELLO TO TIER LISTS AND ALL THEIR BULL****TY GLORY

[LongDraw]

Not that I'd be against a buff, but I think people really undersell Rhino purely by virtue of "He's not as good as he was, so he must be bad."

 

When I compare him to say, Excalibur. I can't honestly think of a realistic scenario where I'd want Xcal over Rhino. Rhino bringing more damage, more CC, more survivability. At the cost of a little speed(which if you're comparing along endless defense lines, speed doesn't mean as much).

 

So why was Rhino put in low when Xcal was in medium?

 

 

I'm glad he's getting "fixed" and I like what's happening to him. But his current form isn't as dire as a lot of people are saying.

No, I got my rhino built after the nerf, and he SUCKS HARD!

[Kaian-a-coel]

Mag user here, and... yeah, it sucks. I currently have it equipped with all the resilience mods (+shield, +life, +shield regen, +armor), and crush lvl 0. that's it.

-Pull is near useless and should be reworked (in over 50 hours of playtime, I encoutered maybe 3 situations where it would actually have been useful.).

-Shield polarize is near useless and should be reworked (It's faster to just shoot the ennemy, and things happen too fast to use it effectively on allies)

-Bullet attractor is near useless and should be reworked (if you cant hit the boss without it, what are you doing with a gun in your hands?)

-Crush is the standard "nuke-a-room button", but subpar. It won't affect ennemies entering the AoE after the cast, is average at best in damage... Okay, it stun for the duration of the casting, but if the ennemies die it doesn't matter, and if they dont, well...

 

My mag is max level already, with a max level potato'd Latron (which I like very much), and decent sidearms/melee, but I still feel like I am being carried by my friends. They all run ahead of me and slaughter ennemies with abilities I can't hope to match. Seeing an Ember, an Excalibur and a Frost doing all the work for you is depressing.

One of my friends have a mag, and he has fun with a really long range Crush, but if he doesn't OS the ennemies with it, he's suddenly as useless as I am.

 

I really want to have some fun with actually useful abilities, and that's why I am looking toward a Banshee or a Saryn.

But I love my Mag, so please buff it...

[Luciuris]

I disagree with your list. Vauban is not that good and I personally believe that every warframe is good when playing it right using the advantages and avoiding the disadvantages. If you like playing casters you will definitly like Mag. She can be a real live-saver in defense-missions. You seem to like Vauban. I dislike him because he does not suit my playstyle. I am more stealth player and like to use my meele weapons. My favourite warframe is Ash. My brother hates Ash, Loki or Banshee because he likes to tank. Frost, Saryn and Rhino are his favourite warframes.

Every player/playstyle favors a bunch of different frames.

If you play your cards right every warframe can by a "god-tier"-frame

In my opinion they should stop nerding and start buffing the counter-parts instead.

And please, please, please create tougher bosses!

sorry for bad english

[Jeffaffah]

In my honest opinion, Loki is 'just an assassin', he has little use for anything, other than dropping a clone. Vauban being God Tier... only in defence missions I'd say. In normal map runs, you can usually just run straight through, and with a strong gun, you don't need to use skills. His skills are of great use, though maximised in defence missions only.

 

Can anyone tell me why Saryn is high tier? I have a saryn, but I am not very impressed. How is it used in high level gameplay?

[DAwGi]

I agree with most of the list.  Except Excalibur should be on high Tier, and Vauban should be Mid Tier.  Mag's Crush ability is really the only thing I find useful about her, and it is exceptionally good.

 

 If we were to look at this for Dueling, I would put Banshee at the top, simply because her Sonic Boom will put everyone else out of commission indefinitely.  It will even knock Frost straight out of his globe.  Rhino would be High Tier, as long as the user doesn't try Iron Skin and instead relies on Slash Dash and the Ground Slam attack (forgot what it's called).  Nyx and Saryn would be low Tier, and Excalibur would be High Tier due to his extremely epic Slash Dash.  I have not seen Mag used in PVP, but if her Pull ability can pull Frost out of Snow Globes and stun like it does in PVE, then she could very well be High Tier.  Trinity might also have some very powerful tricks up her sleeve.  Frost is obviously High Tier at the moment, just under Banshee.

 

I have yet to see a Vauban out DPS my Saryn.  Mostly he just likes to bug out maps, and he never survives long enough in PVP to use any of his higher level abilities.

 

Now for Endless Defense, the list would change significantly.  Frost would be in the highest tier.  Vauban would share it with him if his abilities didn't break all of the game mechanics.  And of course Nyx would be up there, with Banshee and Sonic Boom.  Ember would be on the High Tier for lower Infestation waves, but would drop to Mid Tier for High level waves.  The same would hold true for Saryn, except she is good against any faction.

Trinity would be High Tier for Defense Infested, due to the Toxic Clouds just taking its toll, where Excal would be effectively mid-tier, starting off in High Tier until Slash Dash fails to mow through targets.  Rhino I would place at mid to high tier.  Volt, Ash, and Loki are just kind of Meh.

 

The one good thing I can say about Loki is that I've heard of people using his Decoy with a Rocket Launcher to obliterate Defense waves all on his own.

 

Volt would be interesting to try out with the Dera, firing it through his shield, which supposedly makes it work like a Sniper Weapon.

 

Mag needs some new abilities, she's all utility, and most of the utilities aren't all that enjoyable.  Her ultimate is pretty sweet, but many other classes also have great ultimates.

[Watlok]

Vauban's turrets needs a nerf. Either a serious reduction in duration, a hard cap to the amount, or something along those lines. He's not so crazy overpowered otherwise.

 

I'm glad you put Ember in mid tier and not low tier. If this were a "solo tier list" Ember would be high tier. Overheat is one of the best abilities for soloing in the game. When I want to farm with only looking at my monitor every 20 seconds I pop on overheat and run around throwing kunai. You can't die outside of HWD. Even in T3 exterminate, you need no defensive mods. You just keep overheat up 24/7 in any mission and you can't die. It's a completely broken ability, but it doesn't push ember above mid tier due to her bringing nothing to the team. Overheat actually being an aura and applying to teammates would be an instant fix to ember, although overheat could probably use a nerf+buff combination (increased range, damage scaling, decreased damage reduction). WoF is okay as it is, even though weapons outscale its damage slightly. It's still easy to use, and because of the current game content dying in 1-2 ticks the weapon outscaling is irrelevant. It might have relevant damage per execution. I didn't bother doing math because there's no content to min-max like that. Ember's other two abilities are useless, but that's not so bad. Most frames have a few useless (flavor or low level) abilities.

 

Nyx is high tier, but Nyx is also somewhat awkward if you are soloing things that aren't effected by Chaos or Mind Control. In groups, absolutely amazing. Chaos is absolutely amazing. 

 

Banshee being high tier is somewhat debatable. It's closer to a mid tier frame unless there is something I am missing. Sonar is great, Banshee's other abilities not so much. Banshee's 1 has reasonable situational usefulness, Banshee's ult is pretty boring as-is. Nyx's ult is also pretty boring. A long channel is pretty lame and awkward in general.

 

The biggest problem right now is that there is no endgame content. Weapons outscale everything in existence. HWD is the closest to endgame, because T3E can be solod on a low level frame with decent weapons fairly easily. HWD is not really an intended endgame as far as I can tell. It's just a bonus challenge for people who want to go that route. How things balance in there is probably not their concern because the mobs output significantly higher damage than anything intended, although it can certainly throw questions to potentially under or over powered things.

 

edit: I guess I am saying I agree with your tier list. I just think your viewpoint toward certain things is slanted way too far toward utility due to how the game currently works. It probably also helps that there are tons of completely broken utility abilities and no really broken damage abilities (Vauban maybe has one). I wouldn't switch anything around, but the middle tier could certainly be snapped into two groups and have Banshee moved to the top-mid. Weapons are king, so utility is all that really matters outside of Saryn who is neat. Loki, for example, suffers mostly from decoy not scaling well and two meh abilities (swap/radial). You can exploit on the narc map and place it on the low ground edge so things run toward it without attacking anyone or anything, but that's clearly unintended because they have already attempted to "fix" it once.

Edited June 19, 2013 by Watlok

[Armerkat]

MAG USELESS!?!?!  I have Mag as my first frame and loved her so much the I potatoed her. While running some pug defense missions, I ended up carrying the other 3 to wave 20 and they had Loki, Excal, and Frost. There was no excuse for higher level frames with better weapons to be carried by Mag whose frame at the time was only 10 (non-potatoed), and with starter weapons.

 

ALL the frames, if played right, can be godly. It isn't the frame or the weapons that should ever be on a list. It should be player's skill at the time. 

[lstalri]

What were you on kiliken?... mag's ulti won't do anything to wave 20 on xini/outer terminous... Loki's decoy would be more useful than your ulti thanks to ogris. 

[fishworshipper]

If you're standing inside the Snow Globe it already stops ranged attacks... You don't need Iron Skin... You just wasted 50 energy

Except Iron Skin draws aggro.

Sit in a Snow Globe, drawing all the pew pew to yourself without taking a single point of damage.

[CaramelSalted]

so far i only have excalibur ember and rhino as my frames iv gotten to play a little bit of trinity and frost from someone else and i would have to say my opinions are that:

Ember: one trick pony the only thing that really seems worth the energy most of the time is world on fire if there were no world on fire then her area denial fire blast would be the next best thing and still it wouldn't be enough to keep me with ember

Rhino: steel fibre that chubby dude and if you fall after that you should probably laugh at yourself did a lvl 25 infested mobile defence with a rank 15 rhino no potato no forma with 2 powers rhino charge and radial blast and a steal fibre and stock vitality mod not once did i fall. this is the only thing going for rhino however hes all defence but its like his fist are marshmallows when compared to the dps of other frames i generally rely much more on my weapons when using him

Frost: not too powerful unless you snow globe properly all the time a good frame rarely used his ultimate id say hes well balanced

Excalibur: Good starter not much else used him until i got my ember after the 500th time fighting her boss

Trinity: not the frame for me i enjoy dps style powers far to much to use a support style power making link my only acceptable option

Volt: decent mainly balanced frame view it as a slight controller dps

the way i view these frames are like this ember=glass cannon if done wrong slight tank cannon if done right rhino mainly tank frost=area denial tank excalibur=balanced dps controller trinity=support with a touch of tank

part of a frames tankyness can come from just how much damage they do i never use over heat on ember i never use iron skin on rhino or the electric wall from volt also rarely use radial blind on excalibur used to use it on krill until he became easy with that red bubble (i think he became infected by the infested) but i also think that the purposing and abilities of the frames are up to just how the player uses it so these frames could get totally flipped from how i view them when in someone else's hands

Edited June 21, 2013 by XfynxX

[NessOnett]

No, I got my rhino built after the nerf, and he SUCKS HARD!

 

Well a very well thought out response, with such detailed point-by-point counters to the things in the post you quoted.

 

To refresh your memory, Rhino has a better version of Slash Dash. He has more overall disabling power, and damage than Xcal. Better base stats. And even IF Rhino Skin is a useless skill(it's not), it's still better than Super Jump in every scenario. So why is Xcal rated medium and Rhino low?

 

 

I mean I'd love to hear any Objective reasoning behind why Rhino is so poorly rated. Seeing that he has above average CC, above average damage, a good mobility skill, and great base stats. The only thing people say is "Iron skin is useless" which is the stupidest statement I've ever heard. Having an extra chunk of health comparable to what most people have as their entire health bar, that allows their shields to regen, prevents stagger, and draws aggro. And no discussion of the fact that the rest of his skills are very strong, and other frames have completely useless skills(Superjump, Silence, Radial Disarm, etc).

Edited June 20, 2013 by NessOnett

[Reichmar]

I agree with the OP on his categorizations except on one thing: I wouldn't put Rhino in low tier. His abilities are more useful than Excal's, which definitely get him a spot in mid tier if anything.