Do I switch weapons once I get them to max rank?

[nicky2tymes]

Extreme noob here, but I have Excalibur at 30 (only frame I have) who is melee. I also just maxed my Skana. I'm building another melee sword, so do I level it when it's complete? I've also read that I should now max my primary and secondary to 30 by only carrying one of them at a time to maximize experience. Also, I've read to sell weapons at 30. Why? They are the only weapons I have at the moment. I'm really confused.....

[-Amaterasu-]

Depends on your interests and how good you are at getting plat.

Most people would reccomend selling weapons once you hit 30 with them because leveling gear gives you mastery XP for the first time you level it (100xp per level and 200xp for frames and sentinels) and weapon slots cost plat so to save money you just sell them. I keep every weapon I get and just buy slots but that might be a little harder for a newer player although plat is reletively easy to make so if you have items like prime parts and syndicate mods you could try to sell them in trading.

As for wheather or not you "need" to switch weapons after leveling, it's all about your priorities, If you like the weapon why not keep using it? the reccomendation to switch is for Mastery farming which potentally allows you to use more weapons however once you hit MR13 you can use all weapons in the game so it's up to you how fast you want to rank.

Carrying one weapon at a time while you're ranking everything in your loadout won't help you level faster, if you only need to level one thing than use it as the only item in your loadout since XP is distributed to everything in your loadout so if you have a fully ranked item it is technically "stealing" xp from your items that need to be leveled.

Potential spoiler:

Spoiler

You may also need a higher MR to use Riven mods but I don't know what the upper limit is on those the highers I've seen is for MR16

 

Edited January 22, 2017 by -Amaterasu-

[(PSN)watt4hem]

You can swap weapons any time you like, rank only detirmines the number of capacity the weapon has to be moded (so more is better).

However, maxing a weapon to 30 gives you 3000xp to your mastery rank (that number besides your name, it's like the rank of your overall profile) and each frame gives 6000 xp. This only happens on the first time you level it to 30.

So as to why people say max them first before selling, it's so you get every bit of xp before you sell it, otherwise if you need the xp later on you'll need to recraft it and relevel it from 0.

As for why would you rank up your mastery rank, well, it gives you access to some mastery locked quests, weapons, and some other benefits

 

Edit : amaterasu beat me to it

Edited January 22, 2017 by (PS4)watt4hem

[nicky2tymes]

Ok thanks guys. So for now I'll hold onto them since I'm not slot starved? I'll level other weapons/frames as I get them for mastery. Does that sound about right for a new player? Thx again.

[TheAceOfSkulls]

Okay so let's explain this:

In the early game, before you can level things very quickly, having level 30 gear is really helpful, as its base stats are upgraded and you have room for more mod slots.

However, your global level, or Mastery Rank, which has many important benefits for leveling up, only gains xp when you're leveling new gear. If you sell a weapon before you finish leveling it, you only start gaining mastery once you relevel it to the same point it was previously at (which means you can't just build a lot of cheap weapons and level yourself up to max Mastery).

This is why people encourage you to level your early gear to 30 and then sell it, because a lot of stuff you can get at lower mastery won't compete with higher end gear (frames are a bit of the exception). If you're not yet ready to spend money on slots for weapons, those weapon slots are more useful for new weapons thank keeping old gear. Plus if you play the game long enough, it's really not as much of a hassle to rebuild early gear if you need it to build something else.

As for only equipping one item, it's true that it levels it faster, but if you're just starting out and don't have a good potato'd frame/weapon (a frame where you've used an Orokin reactor/catalyst to double your mod slots in order to put your higher level mods in) and get the benefit of starter mod capacity from your Mastery Rank, you don't want to cripple yourself since you don't really have the gear to offset that right now.

My biggest piece of advice as someone who picked some bad gear in the early game and felt they got stuck with it: if you're really having no fun with a gun, go ahead and sell it and use what you're comfortable with while you build up resources, mods, and credits to try another pick. Another bit of advice is to check out the Recruiting chat window for a clan to see if you can't find a good one that will help take you on missions and answer questions about weapons so you've got some advice on what you might want to be building towards next.

Edit:

Ok thanks guys. So for now I'll hold onto them since I'm not slot starved? I'll level other weapons/frames as I get them for mastery. Does that sound about right for a new player? Thx again.

I'd recommend keeping frames almost always but I'm a fashion framer (don't worry you'll get to that once you've collected enough stuff). As for keeping starter gear, It really depends on what you picked and if you can get the regular version of it rather than the Mk-1 (which is usually better). I think there's also some good lower tier weapon blueprints from Junction Rewards these days which you might want to play with.

 

Edited January 22, 2017 by TheAceOfSkulls

[Archeyef]

Selling weapons after maxing them is a strategy for saving on the Platinum currency, which is used to buy weapon and frame slots, among other things. There is no rule stating you must sell them once maxed, it's entirely up to you. If you would rather keep your weapons, and do not want to purchase plat from DE, I suggest you look into the trading system, assuming you are at least Profile Rank 2. You are able to sell mods to other players in exchange for plat, which you can then use for slots.

The level you see when viewing a weapon applies only to that individual weapon. If you get a new weapon or a second copy of that weapon, you will need to rank them.

If you are new, I would not suggest running missions without all three weapons. That's more of a strategy for experienced players who have upgraded their mods to the point where they can afford to do that. Running mission with only one weapon will make them level faster if you're in a group, but when you're new it would really just unnecessarily gimp your ability to do damage.

[-Amaterasu-]

6 minutes ago, nicky2tymes said:

Ok thanks guys. So for now I'll hold onto them since I'm not slot starved? I'll level other weapons/frames as I get them for mastery. Does that sound about right for a new player? Thx again.

Basically, yes but warframe doesn't give you too many slots to start with (2 warframe slots and I don't even remember how many weapon slots) so it's recommended you use your starter plat on them since even if you're selling weapons you should at the very least never be selling your frames. easiest way to make play I can think of is probably to join a syndicate and sell the mods (10-15p each) or the weapons (30-40p and then the Secura Lecta which is 75-100p for whatever reason) it's slow at first since you need to save your standing to rank up but once you hit rank 5 you'll have a slow but passive income of plat.

[nicky2tymes]

Thank you for all the replies and help! I'm definitely holding onto my frames for now, and probably my skana until I get a better melee weapon. My guns, which I don't use with this frame, I'll likely sell once they are max rate.

[Karazu6401]

About melee weapons:

I got Volt as starter so my skana was a bit left behind alongside any other melee weapon. But once i got my first blue print of a melee weapon(The heat sword) i made it and well... it was the same as the skana but whit a bit more dmg and a nice aoe fire burts on air drop. What really surprised me was the Galatine... and OMG it changed my world xD.

I thought "oh, all melee weapons work the same and the game have a detailed melee combat system but whit one sword, you learn it and you are done"... but once i got the galatine it showed me... each melee weapon class has its own combat mechanics, they share some moves but the speed, arcs and damage are so different. After Galatine i started building other melee weapons i found, got a two handed hammer, the dark dagger, ethereal double daggers, double heat sword and my favorite(after Galatine) my own Nikana.

The other big surprise was: Style mods. At the point i found them i was like "forget everything you know about melee combat" xD. For example, you have your skana, it is maxed so i assume you use it... a lot. So you are used to its speed, the combos and the range of it... What if i tell you that whit a simple mod, the damage, combos, speed and moves of your sword will be totally different? And along side, by doing that, you weapon will have extra mod capacity? well, thats what  a Style mod does.

A Style mod change the combos, damage of each hit and overall "feel" of the weapons. For example: skana is a sword class weapon, so the style mods are: Crimson Dervish,Iron Phoenix,Vengeful Revenant and Rising Steel.

So, my conclussion is try to hold into it, later on you will get a stance mod and it will feel like a different weapon.

[nicky2tymes]

44 minutes ago, Karazu6401 said:

About melee weapons:

I got Volt as starter so my skana was a bit left behind alongside any other melee weapon. But once i got my first blue print of a melee weapon(The heat sword) i made it and well... it was the same as the skana but whit a bit more dmg and a nice aoe fire burts on air drop. What really surprised me was the Galatine... and OMG it changed my world xD.

I thought "oh, all melee weapons work the same and the game have a detailed melee combat system but whit one sword, you learn it and you are done"... but once i got the galatine it showed me... each melee weapon class has its own combat mechanics, they share some moves but the speed, arcs and damage are so different. After Galatine i started building other melee weapons i found, got a two handed hammer, the dark dagger, ethereal double daggers, double heat sword and my favorite(after Galatine) my own Nikana.

The other big surprise was: Style mods. At the point i found them i was like "forget everything you know about melee combat" xD. For example, you have your skana, it is maxed so i assume you use it... a lot. So you are used to its speed, the combos and the range of it... What if i tell you that whit a simple mod, the damage, combos, speed and moves of your sword will be totally different? And along side, by doing that, you weapon will have extra mod capacity? well, thats what  a Style mod does.

A Style mod change the combos, damage of each hit and overall "feel" of the weapons. For example: skana is a sword class weapon, so the style mods are: Crimson Dervish,Iron Phoenix,Vengeful Revenant and Rising Steel.

So, my conclussion is try to hold into it, later on you will get a stance mod and it will feel like a different weapon.

Yeah man, I have Iron Phoenix and I agree it changes everything. I haven't found enough resources yet to build anything but the cronus, but thanks for the tip on the heat swords and galatine!

[Shockwave-]

I'd say keep 1 primary, 1 seconday, 1 melee that you like and is lvl 30. Use your other 6 slots to build more of those. (a 2nd melee a 2nd pistol, a 2nd primary). Then when your slots are full and it's time for  a new primary, sell the primary you hate the most, when it's time for a new melee sell the melee you hate the most.

*NOTE - many weapons are used as ingreditents for other weapons. You might as well rank them to 30 then use them to build the new weapon. There is a chart in the wiki on which weapons will be base ingredients for other weapons

At that point ask clan mates or people you play with if the weapons is really that good (skana... not likely as you can get a prisma skana from baro eventually that will be better, Soma? nope, Soma prime eventually, etc). Though some weapons are vaulted and harder to find there are a TON of weapons you will never use again as they are too similar to something else like say latron prime and latron wraith, or you hate the mechanic (i'm looking at you miter). My rule is keep things you can rebuild easily from the market or dojo.

I'd try to keep every warframe you can't get a prime for (primes generally replace non primes in WF slots, at least for most players (so you delete nxy when you get nyx prime, etc), but if you think you will get the prime eventually (it's not the next one up for vaulting) then you could delete the non prime early to use the slot for another frame, though i'd never sell a prime frame if it could be helped unless you REALLY hate it.

Eventually if you stick with the game and end up with lots of plat you can buy alots to hold every weapon, but if you play that long you likely won't feel the impact of rebuilding the old weapons you may have discarded.

If you really get pinched for slots early on before you get your trading going or you buy plat, drop me a msg.