[Guide] The Volt

[Engelheim]

 

The Volt

 

 

VOLT can create and harness electrical elements. This is a high-damage Warframe perfect for players who want a potent alternative to gun-play.

Volt, the electric Warframe, is often overlooked in terms of efficiency in battle. Whilst praised for his damage against Corpus, he is regarded as a handicap against Grineer and Infested. Despite the popular bias, let me assure you that Volt is one of the best Warframes to use for damage and offers a wide array of utility as well. In this guide I'll talk about every aspect of the Volt and his stylish good looks.

Volt was my first frame and I find him to be one of the most enjoyable to play. To add some credibility to my guide I'm a rank 10 player that has played and maxed all frames.

 

Updated since 9.8.

Popular Belief

It is common knowledge that electricity damage is more effective against Corpus than the other factions. Grineer will take less damage from it and Infested will receive fifty to zero percent. Although it is true that Volt is less efficient against these two factions, many players overlook one crucial element; tile set.

Overload will increase damage and range based on how many electronics are nearby and the Corpus ship tile set is full of them. Grineer tile sets are not as dense as Corpus ships and thus Overload will not do as much damage. Further complicating things is the confusion over the effects of Shield. It is because of these beliefs, that opinion has further shifted towards Volt as an exclusive Corpus killer.

Besides Overload we will look at his other skills and attributes to bring them into a more favorable light.


Basic Attributes

Volt can be farmed from Thermisto, Jupiter. You'll probably get all of his components accidentally farming Orokin Cells and the Stalker.

Volt has the highest shield of the Warframes and is tied with Mag, Frost, and Rhino. This makes him into one of the more durable frames. Volt also comes with — and V polarities; both which can help you with durations mods. His aura polarity is a V. His health, energy, and sprinting speed are average and his armor is negligible.


Skills

Volt's skills are comparatively diverse among Warframes giving a mix between offense, defense, and utility. All of his damaging skills will do or add electric damage.

Skills: Shock

This skill has many utility functions such as stunning, hitting multiple enemies, and auto aim. It's damage is rather low but it will annihilate lower level missions. For higher level areas you can remove this.

Skills: Speed

Speed is useful for all types of missions and will buff allies within a certain radius. As its name suggests it will increase  running, melee, and maneuvering speeds. Certainly a powerful skill and a very useful one, the cons are its low duration and increased strain on stamina.

 

Speed may be disorienting because it changes the field of view and, of course, you will go faster. It is suggested that you turn off motion blur and bloom to make things a bit easier on the eyes.

Skills: Electric Shield

By far Volt's best skill and arguably one of the best in the entire Warframe arsenal. This skill serves an offensive and defensive role. It turns Volt into an impenetrable turret of death. The shield will block all damage that hits it, including those of explosions. The duration is extremely long (increased by mods) and will allow more than enough time to dispatch any enemies.

 

Besides protection it also serves a much greater purpose as a damage enhancement skill. It is one of five skills capable of increasing the damage of weapons; the others being Saryn's contagion, Rhino's roar, Nova's Molecular Prime, and Banshee's sonar. It will turn the damage of energy and bullet weapons into armor ignore, add 50% electric damage (including mods), remove fall off damage from shotguns, and turn energy weapons into hit-scan.

 

Because of its armor-ignoring conversion Volt becomes a much more viable frame for damage at higher levels and against all factions. When using shield (especially in infested defense missions) be sure to place yourself at the end of a bottleneck or hallway. If enemies flank you the shield is useless. It might be hard to snipe enemies as the shield may obscure vision.

 

A full list about the shield it's bugs, what it works with, etc. can be found here.

Skills: Overload
 

To be honest I find this skill to be very lackluster, especially for an ultimate. Yes, it has the potential to do amazing damage in the right environment but it's also a suicide skill. Damage is mediocre at best when not used besides electronics. When using the skill Volt is suspended in the air for its duration. The duration is already pretty long and when combined with duration mods you'll be a sitting duck. Furthermore enemies are only temporarily stunned by the initial hit and will recover before it's finished. When using this skill make damn sure that it will kill them.

 

 

Loadout

 

 

Supercharged un-formaed Volt. Constitution and Continuity for shield/speed durations. Vitality and Rush for flavor. I advise against using Stretch and Focus mods unless if you really want to increase your Overload damage. Flow isn't really necessary. The Pulse Helmet would be a good choice if you can get over how ugly it looks.

 

For guns use any kind of bullet/energy weapon to maximize the potential of shield. Sobek and Hek are very good guns to use with shield as you can snipe with them (good old closed beta days). Similarly using Flux Rifle and Spectra will increase the range as well.

 

Melee is the same as any other frame and you can capitalize on Volt's large shield capacity. For sentinels, keep in mind that Electric Shield does work with them so it's good to use Dethcube.

 

 

Conclusion

 

Overall Volt is an amazing damage-enhancing frame but suffers from lack of damage for his direct damaging abilities, contrarily to his in-game description. Because of the higher spawn rates of infested he will often become swarmed with them if care is not taken. Furthermore he lacks a "panic button." Shield is, by far, Volt's most powerful and useful ability; efficient use will be very rewarding.

 

For regular missions he is a great frame to use, specifically against Corpus and Grineer. For defense missions he is, in my opinion, one of the best for all factions but again is reliant on the environmental layout.

 

Use the power of storms well, Tenno.

Edited September 11, 2013 by Engelheim

[123Olympian]

+1, I planned to make guide for some I already have, nice job.

[IndigoChild25]

Really useful. I had no idea which mods would be most beneficial before reading this. Thanks!!

 

At the moment i am using a sobek, kunai and dual ethers. Sobek because of electric shield, dual ethers as they are fast and work well with speed for normal swings. I use kunai because they are good:)

 

What weapons would you suggest for volt? 

[ElkenLAK]

Volt's abilities made warframe a true ninja with incredible mobility with the help of Speed,

Maxed Speed+Maxed Fury+Dual Zoren's air slide attack = super straight line travelling machine :D

Other than that,just an advice for new Volt player or people who really hate Speed's effect due to the blur effect:
-Switch off Motion Blur for better gameplay

 

Speed give bigger depth of field view as well.

So far I think Volt is the best boss material farming warframe but since I don't have platinum for more Warframe slot I will sell Volt soon after farming up to minimun 30 Morphic,Neurodes,Orokin Cell and Neural Sensors.To be honest,Volt's offensive ability compare to Nova,Vauban or Frost in defense is really weak.

While for my Warframe's mods mainly for speed running,I picked:

1)Electric Shield

2)Speed

3)Redirection

4)Fast Deflection

5)Fortitude

6)Vitality

7)Flow

8)Streamline

9)Continuity

10)Constitution

Aura:Energy Siphon

Edited August 5, 2013 by ElkenLAK

[Engelheim]

Really useful. I had no idea which mods would be most beneficial before reading this. Thanks!!

 

At the moment i am using a sobek, kunai and dual ethers. Sobek because of electric shield, dual ethers as they are fast and work well with speed for normal swings. I use kunai because they are good:)

 

What weapons would you suggest for volt? 

Your current weapons are pretty solid. Although Kunai will not gain any bonuses from the shield, it already does armor ignore damage anyway.

 

For weapons, as said earlier any bullet weapons with decent accuracy would be good. Ideally you'd want to use shield for mid to long range offense as having them too close would increase the chances of enemies getting between you and the shield. As such weapons with high spread are generally not useful against infested with the shield such as Boar, Strun, Bronco, Grakata, etc. Personally I like to use shield with any of the Latrons and Bratons.

 

For melee choices it really doesn't matter as all frames are more or less equal for melee in this regard with the exception of some. Volt has the highest shield among frames so really you can use anything. Just note that Glaive and Kestrel will bounce off of the shield.

 

On a side note I recently began using clan weapons and have been testing the Dera. Dera is the only weapon so far that uses laser type damage (similar to freeze but will not slow enemies down). Shooting through the shield makes the lasers hit-scan and it will receive electrical bonuses. However it will not gain armor ignoring properties and thus is a poor choice with Volt.

 

Volt's abilities made warframe a true ninja with incredible mobility with the help of Speed,

Maxed Speed+Maxed Fury+Dual Zoren's air slide attack = super straight line travelling machine :D

Other than that,just an advice for new Volt player or people who really hate Speed's effect due to the blur effect:

-Switch off Motion Blur for better gameplay

 

Speed give bigger depth of field view as well.

So far I think Volt is the best boss material farming warframe but since I don't have platinum for more Warframe slot I will sell Volt soon after farming up to minimun 30 Morphic,Neurodes,Orokin Cell and Neural Sensors.To be honest,Volt's offensive ability compare to Nova,Vauban or Frost in defense is really weak.

While for my Warframe's mods mainly for speed running,I picked:

1)Electric Shield

2)Speed

3)Redirection

4)Fast Deflection

5)Fortitude

6)Vitality

7)Flow

8)Streamline

9)Continuity

10)Constitution

Aura:Energy Siphon

 

Good point, I forgot about motion blur.

 

It depends on how high level and what wave of defense. Initially yes, Volt will have a mediocre damage output. But unlike other frames (with the exception of Saryn) his damage will remain constant. This means that during later waves/levels he will eventually have more efficiency than other frames because of armor and resistances depending on what weapons you're comparing to.

 

Many armor ignoring weapons have travel time and I find using the shield with bullet weapons extremely helpful when dealing with fast moving and smaller targets. I also really like the feel of Bratons and using Volt makes them more viable as an end-game weapon.

 

Also why no rush?

Edited August 6, 2013 by Engelheim

[IndigoChild25]

Your current weapons are pretty solid. Although Kunai will not gain any bonuses from the shield, it already does armor ignore damage anyway.

 

For weapons, as said earlier any bullet weapons with decent accuracy would be good. Ideally you'd want to use shield for mid to long range offense as having them too close would increase the chances of enemies getting between you and the shield. As such weapons with high spread are generally not useful against infested with the shield such as Boar, Strun, Bronco, Grakata, etc. Personally I like to use shield with any of the Latrons and Bratons.

 

For melee choices it really doesn't matter as all frames are more or less equal for melee in this regard with the exception of some. Volt has the highest shield among frames so really you can use anything. Just note that Glaive and Kestrel will bounce off of the shield.

 

 

Thanks Engelheim.

 

I will give the braton and the latron another try with volt.

 

On the rush mod. Is rush really worth it? its just a movement speed boost right? or am i missing something? 

[Engelheim]

Also don't forget that shotguns will receive the most bonuses from the shield as it will remove their fall-off damage besides the regular bonuses.

 

It is depending on what you're doing. Although it is just a speed boost, when you're farming you want to think of time-to-rewards efficiency. The faster you can get things done mean the more you can get. And considering how much of a grind this game is you want to capitalize on this. Rush has many uses, of course the most obvious would be the increase in sprint speed. Besides that it also increases the rates of your maneuvers, notably that of slide-slashing. It also has the potential to increase your longevity against Corpus and Infested; Corpus because their weapons have travel time so being faster will have less bullets hit you, and Infested because you can simply outrun them.

[Remorc]

 

While for my Warframe's mods mainly for speed running,I picked:

1)Electric Shield

2)Speed

3)Redirection

4)Fast Deflection

5)Fortitude

6)Vitality

7)Flow

8)Streamline

9)Continuity

10)Constitution

Aura:Energy Siphon

 

I use a somewhat different setup for my own Volt.

I build my warframe as a caster/melee type based frame with these mods:

-All of Volt's skills, with both overload and shock maxed

-Flow (Lots energy means lots damage from skills)

-Vitality (For better survivability against shield ignoring damage)

-Redirection (gives a high shield for overall defence)

-Fast Deflection (having this with my electric shield allows me to quickly recharge my high amount of shield in a matter of no time)

-Thief's Wit (For easier finding loot and energy to keep a good flow of energy)

For the last one im thinking of either streamline or focus.

I try to give him a big energy pool so i can spam my abilities more, giving more damage and utility. 

For weapons i use a Burston for medium and long range fights because of the high damage and accuracy and combined with electric shield it packs a good punch.

For medium/close range i use Twin Vipers (with ammo mutation for ammo efficiency), since it can very quickly burst down most big mobs (which are the biggest of my problems most of the time), and for melee i use orthos as it gives me a viable option if i encounter infestation.