Why bother picking Mag or Volt?

[DarkFlameZealot]

Volt is the one starter that requires you to get into a clan and then bother with research and such just to obtain should you not pick him from the start. Excal and Mag are both available from bosses that you can be taxi-d to (well, not Ambulus anymore for excal due to the new fight being like Kela), but you see the point. Excal is also quite worthless without mods while Volt is able to put down an invulnerable shield, mag has some dps with her abilities, but Excal is very very weak without EB or blind.

[(PSN)fullblast35]

you probably like nuke frames.  the news is frame mechanics are slowly changing now, you can experience these changes eversince nidus,  limbo rework, octavia and recently oberon.  the habit of using frames where 1 ability does it all is not letting you experience new mechanics presented in the game.  Some call them nerfs because they were very comfortable with the way things worked before with 1 particular frame, but now it seems every frame so far got subject of revisits where you can identify certain similarities in the way they combine abilities to deal with the enemy.  Volt is a good frame when it comes to crowd control and even helping a team survive, mag may need some tweaks on her first ability imo, but besides magnetize, polarize does wonders alone and combined with magnetize there is no way an enemy can survive.

[Sloan441]

On ‎6‎/‎8‎/‎2017 at 0:59 PM, LabMan95 said:

With the release of the new exalted blade augment...

If you think this augment is going to remain unadjusted going forward, you're cruising for a rude awakening. It won't remain as it is. It is genuinely overpowered and from what I've seen of it so far, it's already beginning to distort what you see in matchmaking (though, there's the new shiny factor, but still...).  

Excalibur is in a lot of ways the most flexible starter 'frame, but Mag and Volt both can get the job done. I selected Mag way back when and it wasn't really an issue getting myself going in the game. Would I do it again, knowing what I do now? Yeah, I would.

On ‎6‎/‎8‎/‎2017 at 2:09 PM, SergeantSunshine said:

Excalibur is one of the hardest warframes to get later in the game.

There's an element of truth to this, but difficulty in obtaining him is a very low bar. He isn't what you'd call hard to get compared to any prime warframe or the quest-oriented warframes. All you have to do is unlock the starchart for a crack at him. It's more of a matter of it just takes longer to get to him.

And a final thought: Excalibur and Rhino are pretty similar in what they bring to gameplay. Rhino is the first warframe you run across and pretty easy to get early on. A strong argument could be made of choosing Volt or Mag as a starter just based on this fact. They bring something to the table much different than 'Cal or Rhino.

Edited June 10, 2017 by Sloan441
Further cogitation

[Air-mage]

shhh....

jedi ninja grandama is one of the most fun frames, its perfect for luring beginners into the game

as for electric chicken: he is really easy to use, and you can support even high lvl/mr players right away

Edited June 10, 2017 by Air-mage

[polarity]

There will always be a portion of the playerbase who need a little help in getting over the game's difficulty curve.  Excalibur fills that role.

Meanwhile for the rest of us, Mag and Volt provide far more engaging gameplay than can be had by simply activating an ability, and then running around waving your sword about, like a demented toddler with a giant sparkler.

Edited June 10, 2017 by polarity

[MagPrime]

3 hours ago, Air-mage said:

shhh....

jedi ninja grandama is one of the most fun frames, its perfect for luring beginners into the game

as for electric chicken: he is really easy to use, and you can support even high lvl/mr players right away

I knew I was a jedi!

[SenorClipClop]

On 6/8/2017 at 1:10 PM, LabMan95 said:

i understand that completely. But i tried getting volt through the star chart and got stonewalled hard at saturn because volt (not prime), even with great mods, has horrendous survivability and suffers from "one shot by napalm and bombard" syndrome. I like his abilities, but until you get vault mods and max out your health and shield mods, volt is very fragile

Yes, at base Volt is quite fragile. But then, so are most of the Warframes in the game if they get caught out, and Volt has numerous ways of avoiding this:

• Quick, cheap area CC
• Electric status procs everywhere
• Duration-based shields that absorb infinite damage
• The ol' tried and true Quick Thinking (pair with Rage for added effect)
• Mobility, enemy radar and the retinue of tools every frame has access to

"I was not successful" =/= "One does not succeed using this"

On 6/8/2017 at 0:59 PM, LabMan95 said:

With the release of the new exalted blade augment, it got me thinking about the other starter frames. I made the horrendous choice to start as volt and i feel incredibly behind because of it. Not even mentioning excal is the only frame of the 3 where you can't get the prime version. Each of Excal's abilities is very good, as opposed to volt having capacitance (maybe, since enemies bug out of it often) and shield, and mag having magnetize as her only relevant ability. I hope something good happens for mag and volt so i can actually see these frames again when i play

If you're digging the augments, check out what Volt's new one can do here. If you don't know what you're doing with Mag, check this out, though there have been numerous Tenno in the replies already explaining the good use of Mag. Makes me proud. (Chose her as my starter.)

[TenGaugeBoson]

Mag or Volt. Especially Volt are a million times more better than excal. Volt is borderline OP

[-Temp0-]

On 08.06.2017 at 11:59 PM, LabMan95 said:

With the release of the new exalted blade augment, it got me thinking about the other starter frames. I made the horrendous choice to start as volt and i feel incredibly behind because of it. Not even mentioning excal is the only frame of the 3 where you can't get the prime version. Each of Excal's abilities is very good, as opposed to volt having capacitance (maybe, since enemies bug out of it often) and shield, and mag having magnetize as her only relevant ability. I hope something good happens for mag and volt so i can actually see these frames again when i play

Maybe should have read beforehead about the frames.

It even says in the description that Excalibur is better for new and inexperienced players so to speak because of his balance. That being said, having both mag and volt is indeed stupid, at least Loki was somewhat different from those. For real tho, at least one of starters should be rhino, frost or nova. Not that garbage.

Quote

Excalibur is in a lot of ways the most flexible starter 'frame, but Mag and Volt both can get the job done. I selected Mag way back when and it wasn't really an issue getting myself going in the game. Would I do it again, knowing what I do now? Yeah, I would.

Only little 'problem' mag wasn't as useless and complicated as she is now.

As warframe does a godawful job at explaining how the game works, new players don't need frames like Mag because they barely will be able to understand how she even works. It's all about being effective and easy to use, which is volt and mag both aren't. The difference between you and those players is that they do not know what you do now. They will just not use their abilities to even 50% of their potential and get frustrated as hell as a result, that's all.

Idk why starter frames are so crappy when you can get access to rhino and valkyr for example so early on, you will dump them as soon as you will do it anyway.

Edited June 12, 2017 by -Temp0-

[LabMan95]

Also, as a side note, i tried farming for nav beacons. It doesn't help that you can't get more than 10 per mission if you dedicatedly farm for them and rng is on your side by giving you the one tileset on outer terminus. Otherwise you get at most 5 in a mission. Excal to me, next to mesa (due to time investment for mutalist coordinates), Saryn and chroma (both because of rathuum, thankfully recently with lowered point requirements), ivara (very low drop rate) and ash (do manics even spawn?) is the most difficult non-prime frame to get. Because of the low spawn rate of beacons, I'm placing this difficulty over saryn and chroma, which leaves 3 frames harder to get than excal, despite being able to get around it by just selecting it as your starter frame

[nickelshark]

Volt is fun to use and mag is decent like, but excal is still the best starter hands down nowadays. First the other two are very easy to get later on while excal could be a pain. Plus excal has good cc that also boosts his damage. Some may say that exalted blade doesn't do much damage early on w/o many mods but that's not true. I agree that mag needs love and a much better passive.  I think that maybe a fourth starter, ember imo should be a thing. She would be a viable alternative choice for excal since she does really well through the star chart and doesn't need a whole lot of mods to work well.

[MagPrime]

20 minutes ago, nickelshark said:

I agree that mag needs love and a much better passive

Her passive isn't that bad, honestly.  It gives new players a poor mans Vacuum and encourages movement.

[Vafthrudnir]

On 13/6/2017 at 12:33 AM, SenorClipClop said:

If you're digging the augments, check out what Volt's new one can do here.

You do realize that Volt needs an augment to make use of his passive? The whole mechanic is horrible, and even then it's not good as in that video he doesn't show how much he has to move to set up a shot, in normal plays against infested there are not enough ranged enemies to charge it reliably. And in high content it's not as good as stuff that has 700%+ damage multipliers since it's capped.

"Oh look I did 25000 bonus damage once in a while" Picks excal "Oh look I've killed a whole wave of lvl 150 enemies with just 4 swish swooshs"

And I was about to forget the mighty Mag, that to control her 2 explosion needed an augment that has disarm, which hurts her gameplay but whatever.

Edited September 14, 2017 by giovanniluca

[SenorClipClop]

4 hours ago, giovanniluca said:

You do realize that Volt needs an augment to make use of his passive?

You're going to pick on something I wrote 3 months ago? Alright, let's get to it.

4 hours ago, giovanniluca said:

The whole mechanic is horrible, and even then it's not good as in that video he doesn't show how much he has to move to set up a shot, in normal plays against infested there are not enough ranged enemies to charge it reliably.

It's true that Volt's passive normally requires a bunch of movement to get the full bonus damage, but the passive itself clearly isn't meant to be dictating Volt's playstyle. It's a small boost to his next engagement, giving him a little extra damage here and there as he boogies at speed around the map. Not all passives are created equal (cough-Frost-cough), but it's something to be considering while you play for a bit of extra help. The reason I was excited about the augment is that Volt can now charge his passive without having to move around, which synergizes well with the defensive enemy-turned-bugzappers created by his ult. I was really excited about this because I'm also a big fan of Crit-heavy bow weapons. No, this strategy is not effective against Infested due to their scarcity of range attacks, but a build doesn't have to work well in all situations to be good. (If I'm playing Volt against Infested, I'll run a Capacitance/Shocking Speed Volt and play melee for that extra attack speed.)

4 hours ago, giovanniluca said:

And in high content it's not as good as stuff that has 700%+ damage multipliers since it's capped.

"Oh look I did 25000 bonus damage once in a while" Picks excal "Oh look I've killed a whole wave of lvl 150 enemies with just 4 swish swooshs"

Just because a strategy isn't competitive, doesn't mean it's bad. In case you haven't noticed, Warframe is a co-operative game, and so consecrating one's self to the meta is pretty much for one's own entertainment. I like the augment because it offers a Defense/camp Volt more damage as compared to a Volt without the augment. If I want super duper damage, I have other options and will take them.

Warframe is also pretty easy. It doesn't matter how quickly I can kill things. As long as I accomplish the mission and enjoy doing it, there's no issue.

4 hours ago, giovanniluca said:

And I was about to forget the mighty Mag, that to control her 2 explosion needed an augment that has disarm, which hurts her gameplay but whatever.

With the augment, Mag can control when the bubble detonates. But without the augment, she can still know when it'll detonate on its own and then control where nearby enemies will be when that happens. When a bubble gets toward the end of its life, I'll either stand in the bubble or on the opposite side to my enemies and Pull them to/through it. Time it right for lovely damage. It doesn't work in all situations (and neither does Mag), but that's why we have over thirty Warframes.

If you don't like something in this game, you have options. Mine serve me well. Do you have an issue with that?

[malekas]

Excal has better CC than the other 2 starter frames.

Excal has better damage than the other 2 starter frames.

Excal has more survivability than the other 2 starter frames.

Excal is much more difficult to farm than the other 2 starter frames.

 

It's a no brainer. No matter what their style of play I will always, ALWAYS, tell a new player to grab Excal as their starter frame.

[VergilDT]

On 6/8/2017 at 12:27 PM, (PS4)Joshhwwaaaaaa said:

This is a general problem with newer players, most of this stems from when you don't understand their abilities fully or don't have access to the mods that make them great. What you should be doing is looking on youtube for each way to build that frame (simply search on youtube: "Warframe Mag build").

Volt has amazing crowd control and his speed increase affects melee which means slow heavy strong weapons like the War become awesome in Volt's hands. Mag can keep up Magnetize bubbles with good duration and while you are inside of those bubbles you will receive no damage from enemy fire (bombards are the exception and of course melee enemies will still hurt you).

Pick any frame and I will show you their strengths. 

Speaking of Volt and heavy weapons. If you want some real fun, grab a Jat Kittag modded for Magnetic(I'm a nerd so I call it my mag hammer) Go into a corpus mission. Press 2 and go on a whack-a-mole spree a la:

 

[Vafthrudnir]

2 hours ago, malekas said:

Excal has better CC than the other 2 starter frames.

Excal has better damage than the other 2 starter frames.

Excal has more survivability than the other 2 starter frames.

Excal is much more difficult to farm than the other 2 starter frames.

Adding some context.

1)Yes, at least it lasts for more and triggers finishers.

2)Mag can do amazing damage but needs a way longer setup and the time you accomplish it the enemy is dead by another source, watch excalibur's chromatic blade video again.

Volt can only dream that.

3)Yes.

4)Relatively recently yes.

[TheMightyBaloon]

Because volt ends up being one of the better supporting frames for public games. And mag can be used to do lower lvl relic farming, also pretty good for killing bosses when you are first starting out. 

[Mudfam]

Mag and Volt are in my top 4 most used frames, I much prefer them to Excalibur, but it's just personal preference. Both frames have serious problems imo.

Mag's 2 is extremely powerful, this is a frame you can take against scaling enemies far beyond what you find in sorties etc. Her 1 is okay but a bit unpredictable which can be a problem. Her 3 does not scale and quickly becomes worhless. Her 4 is just a pure garbage low level enemy killer, for some weird reason the augment's armour stripping is capped.

Volt's speed and shields are both great abilities that never stop being great. His 1 chains to random targets instead of closer ones making it random and unreliable. His 4 is mechanically broken due to the cap, allowing clustered enemies to break free from CC in < 1 second.

I really like these frames, but they have some of the worst abiities in the game mixed in with good ones. I wish these got some attention from DE so we had reason to use more of their kit.

 

[RistN]

With knowledge I have now, if I started again from scratch I would pick out Volt again without any doubt.

[(PSN)Chel-El]

Mag is my starter and I felt her low energy + low efficiency right away. Then I watched YT and saw her potential. Best advice given was to get energy mods right away to fix that problem.  

The rest were easy to figure out even for a beginner- range and duration for pull and magnetize.  

One cool, unexpected thing was that the maxed out energy and speed mods I needed for Mag and Volt just came to me out of luck. (I was bargaining for cool stance mods).

So you can make it work with a bit for research and good fortune. 

Now, Mag is my go to, play-to-win assassin frame with her magnetize setups. Her abilities synergise very well like someone said. 

[Xzorn]

While I would agree that Excal is the simpler first pick. I would also tell most new players to immediately get Rhino since he's a better newbie frame than any of them and quite early to attain. So I'm not sure it really matters all that much 3-4 days into playing the game. I don't think you should be behind at all in that case regardless of what you pick.

Of course when you're talking about actual performance, versatility and group value. I'd take Volt any day over Excal.

Excal is the most tragic "Melee" frame in the game. He can dish out ridiculous damage.... or none at all.... because he's dead....

RIP Excal when Naramon is gone.

[(PSN)Chel-El]

Just added the polarize to crush combo I learned here to my already OP pull to magnetize and it slammed!

thanks for the tips