How does Chroma work?

[(XBOX)Jack Turton78]

I am currently mastery rank 8 and am doing raids, sorties etc... And I'm thinking of getting chroma but I'm still not sure about how elemental ward works, or what would be good weapons for him? Any suggestions on weapons?

[Trichouette]

Chroma is simple.

1. Max the strength and duration
2. put rage and steel fiber
3. remove all your weapons except melee
4. put life strike on your melee
5. chose an energy color to make your chroma ice or electricity

Then simply go in a mission, press 2 and 3 (never press 1 or 4) and just keep slashing the enemies with your melee.

Once you get destroyed a bit, simply start leeching HPs with your life strike

[Tendou_Souji]

Here's an explanation for Elemental Ward:

 

Depending on your current energy color, elemental ward can do a couple of things to benefit you and your squad mates.   

Red, magenta, brown, orange and bright yellow hues create fire element,  blue and purple create electricity, green, lime, teal and dark yellow colors create toxic, and  white, grey, black, and faded colors create ice element.

Fire ward gives you and allies in range an increase in health and a small ranged fire aura that deals fire damage over time or ignites enemies.

Electric ward gives you and allies in range extra shields and a lightning arc attack that damages enemies every time you take shield damage.

Toxic ward gives you and allies a small range toxic aura that ignores shields and increases reload speed.

Ice ward gives you and allies extra armor and reflects projectiles back at enemies, giving them a freeze debuff.

 

In general, you wanna build towards duration and strength; strength will increase the effectiveness of your aura and duration is pretty self explanatory. Range mods won't do a lot to help you since the aura range is relatively short, and requires allies to stay huddled close to you.  There is a way around this though; if you can get your hands on an Everlasting Ward augment mod, the effect of your aura will remain with your allies just as long as they enter the range for a short moment.  After that, they can go about their business until it's time for a recast.

Edited July 4, 2016 by Tendou_Souji

[taiiat]

Elemental Ward does a lot of things depending on your Elemental choice.
it's better if you just read the Article. http://warframe.wikia.com/wiki/Elemental_Ward

most go with either Electric or Ice. Ice adds a little bit more Survivability and slows down nearby Enemies, Electric massively multiplies incoming attacks(any) and hits Enemies back with them.

 

in general, what you'll be doing with Chroma, is loop casting Elemental Ward and Vex Armor.
any Weapon goes well with Chroma. the massive Damage Bonus from Vex Armor makes any Weapon great.

 

[Arkvold]

Chroma doesn't synergize particularly well or poorly with any weapon or weapon type by default, but he is a tanky, sturdy warframe so long as Vex Armor and Elemental Ward are up and saturated.  When picking a melee weapon, pick something with some reach and damage potential, since you're probably going to be fighting hordes.  Similarly, pick primary and secondary weapons that have AOE but won't hurt you with their splash, like the Synoid Simulor, Ignis or any shotgun (Sancti Tigris and Vaykor Hek are standouts in that category).  Range isn't so important because you've got the durability to get right in an enemy's face and maul him.  It's better to pick weapons that will maul just as many enemies at once as you possibly can.

When choosing an element, Heat and Cold are the big standouts, mostly due to Elemental Ward.  Heat Elemental Ward will buff your maximum health - it also heals you by the same amount that it buffs, and so you can use the buff as a pseudo self-heal.  Great if you lack the Life Strike mod or some other means of self-sustaining HP recovery.  It does, however, lack the raw defensive prowess of Cold Elemental Ward.  If you do have Life Strike, Cold Elemental Ward is strictly superior to its Heat cousin.

Spectral Scream and Effigy are generally of questionable usefulness.  Spectral Scream does mediocre damage at best and doesn't synergize well with builds focused on Elemental Ward and Vex Armor.  You also can't use your weapons while doing it, and it slows you down.  Effigy has its uses for defending Defense or Mobile Defense objectives, or as an area-denial tool when you're being overwhelmed, but using it reduces your armor while it's active and Chroma's massive armor potential is a big reason why he can soak so much damage safely.

One thing to remember - try to have 400+ shield when you activate Vex Armor.  The amount Vex Armor boosts your armor is based on how much shield HP you've lost since activating it, and it takes about 400 shields lost in order to fully saturate Vex Armor's defensive buffs.  Being able to fully saturate Vex Armor without having to step out of combat to let your shield recharge will let you spend more time under fully-saturated Vex and thus make more efficient use of your health.

If Chroma has a problem, it's energy.  The Rage mod goes a long way to fixing that though - more than any other Warframe bar Inaros, Chroma can make the best use of Rage.  This is thanks to his penchant for losing all of his shields deliberately and then taking hits to health just to activate Vex Armor's damage buff.  This, in turn, gives him energy back at the same time thanks to Rage.

Since these buffs are on a timer, you need to practice conservation and timer-management.  You don't need to keep Vex Armor and Elemental Ward up outside of combat - to conserve energy, only reactivate these buffs when you find yourself under significant attack.  When they have a few seconds remaining before expiring, get into cover before reactivating them, so that you're not killed while reapplying your buffs.

Edited July 4, 2016 by Arkvold

[(XBOX)Jack Turton78]

1 hour ago, Trichouette said:

Chroma is simple.

1. Max the strength and duration
2. put rage and steel fiber
3. remove all your weapons except melee
4. put life strike on your melee
5. chose an energy color to make your chroma ice or electricity

Then simply go in a mission, press 2 and 3 (never press 1 or 4) and just keep slashing the enemies with your melee.

Once you get destroyed a bit, simply start leeching HPs with your life strike

Thankyou for the answer, are there any primary's? Just because 

[(XBOX)Jack Turton78]

1 hour ago, Trichouette said:

Chroma is simple.

1. Max the strength and duration
2. put rage and steel fiber
3. remove all your weapons except melee
4. put life strike on your melee
5. chose an energy color to make your chroma ice or electricity

Then simply go in a mission, press 2 and 3 (never press 1 or 4) and just keep slashing the enemies with your melee.

Once you get destroyed a bit, simply start leeching HPs with your life strike

Thankyou for the answer, are there any primary's? Just because I would like a primary and a melee

[(XBOX)Jack Turton78]

1 hour ago, Tendou_Souji said:

Here's an explanation for Elemental Ward:

  Reveal hidden contents

Depending on your current energy color, elemental ward can do a couple of things to benefit you and your squad mates.   

Red, magenta, brown, orange and bright yellow hues create fire element,  blue and purple create electricity, green, lime, teal and dark yellow colors create toxic, and  white, grey, black, and faded colors create ice element.

Fire ward gives you and allies in range an increase in health and a small ranged fire aura that deals fire damage over time or ignites enemies.

Electric ward gives you and allies in range extra shields and a lightning arc attack that damages enemies every time you take shield damage.

Toxic ward gives you and allies a small range toxic aura that ignores shields and increases reload speed.

Ice ward gives you and allies extra armor and reflects projectiles back at enemies, giving them a freeze debuff.

 

In general, you wanna build towards duration and strength; strength will increase the effectiveness of your aura and duration is pretty self explanatory. Range mods won't do a lot to help you since the aura range is relatively short, and requires allies to stay huddled close to you.  There is a way around this though; if you can get your hands on an Everlasting Ward augment mod, the effect of your aura will remain with your allies just as long as they enter the range for a short moment.  After that, they can go about their business until it's time for a recast.

Thanks for the explanation, any ideas on a build?

[Trichouette]

16 minutes ago, (XB1)Jack Turton78 said:

Thankyou for the answer, are there any primary's? Just because I would like a primary and a melee

On regular mission, play with anything.

On a hardcore one (survival at high level and stuff) you can only play melee.