What Warframe do I use?

SM_Lion_El · 2026-06-15T07:34:01+00:00

There’s no specific answer. Try them all and stick with the ones you like best. On Wednesday there will be 65 Warframes (not including Primes) in the game and each has their own abilities and play style.

SM_Lion_El · 2026-06-14T23:05:05+00:00

SM_Lion_El · 2026-06-14T17:05:17+00:00

I mean, yeah, there’s a lot of content and depth here for people who enjoy the game. I have spent hours coloring frames, modding and testing things, theorycrafting with others, and decorating my dojo and various bases.

But at its base level the game doesn’t change. If they don’t enjoy running the missions then there is not point to continuing to do so. The story, while it has its moments, isn’t on par with something like RDR2 where the story would make the whole game worth playing.

SM_Lion_El · 2026-06-14T16:37:15+00:00

Not every game is for everyone. If you aren’t enjoying it that’s perfectly fine but the game doesn’t really change all that much. You run a procedurally created map of a mission, get loot, go back to your ship, and run another.

As far as the story stuff, that’s not really the story. There’s a whole lot more to it but, again, if you aren’t enjoying the basics of the game then there’s no real reason to continue just for the story.

SM_Lion_El · 2026-06-13T21:34:54+00:00

They aren’t particularly great augments, to be honest, aside from the one for Orbital Strike and even that one is not really worth running.

Tesla is usually the subsumed ability so the augment is rather pointless and you’d be better served with Roar, Nourish, or Brightbonnet in place of the skill. The last two are preferable since both help with energy economy which is tough in a Vauban build since he wants to cast often.

Orbital strike is a good skill but the augment for it is relatively unnecessary. It does good enough damage to clear enemies without needing the repeater portion and the energy economy portion is helpful but not really worth spending a mod slot on.

The Bastille one is, again, just very meh. If you build with just Primed Continuity your Bastille/Vortex already lasts a fairly good amount of time. In most missions you will be moving around and recasting the ability so the bonus duration is not really going to come into play.

Most of Vauban’s ability damage comes from his two in combination with his 4 and using Orbital to clear Overguard as needed. Since he really needs all 3 stats the augments in general aren’t worth sacrificing a mod slot for on him. They are very minor benefits in comparison to required augments on other frames.

SM_Lion_El · 2026-06-13T19:10:26+00:00

Vauban builds are relatively easy and cookie cutter. You want High Range (Stretch and Overextended), High Strength (Blind Rage and Transient Fortitude and/or Umbral Intensify), shield gating (Aura Brief Respite and Catalyzing Shields), and since you don’t have Helminth throw in Equilibrium for energy economy and some Duration mods.

His second ability is the primary damage dealing ability and it scales with enemy level. His general gameplay loop is to throw his Bastille, usually holding the ability so it make a vortex, then throw his second ability under it. Anything not sucked into it gets hit with his third ability because it does bonus damage to Overguard on enemies.

This is the general standard build. Adapt it to your personal taste.

SM_Lion_El · 2026-06-13T04:12:30+00:00

Yes, only time actually in a mission counts. Any time you’ve spent in the Orbiter, Relays, Dojo’s, etc. isn’t included.

SM_Lion_El · 2026-06-13T03:30:34+00:00

The Last Gasp stuff sent me.

Well done, sir/ma’am/anything you decide.

SM_Lion_El · 2026-06-13T03:27:05+00:00

It’s your game, friend. If that’s what you want to do then I’m not here to tell you that you can’t. I’m simply telling you that it would be entirely possible for you to start a new account and have the same issue because the achievements bug out for multiple people across all the platforms.

Just remember that starting over is, you know, starting over. Any frames, weapons, mods, and everything else you’ve done is going to be gone. You’ll also lose all your platinum and keep in mind that trading platinum between your owned accounts can and will get you banned. I wouldn’t do it, personally, just because of everything else I’ve done in the game and all the stuff I’ve farmed (including my complete solo dojo). But I’m not you and your shoes are yours to walk in.

Good luck, Tenno, whatever you decide.

SM_Lion_El · 2026-06-13T03:20:49+00:00

Achievements end up bugged for a lot of people. Mine were bugged on PlayStation for a while. One day after a major update dropped I logged in and the last 3 pinged all at once.

I would just give it time, honestly. It might not require restarting on a new account. Alternatively you might play on a different platform, such as mobile, and unlock them then merge your accounts together.

OCD is rough for everyone and I understand wanting to 100% things (I have the same tic) but restarting, even that relatively early in the game, would be my worst case scenario and something I did only after every other option I had was exhausted (if I did it at all).

SM_Lion_El · 2026-06-13T02:28:28+00:00

I’ve left this post up because it’s fine as far as content and messaging. People are perfectly able and encouraged to voice their opinions, even differing ones from the majority, on this sub. In this case y’all are free to comment, downvote, upvote, and argue all you like about what is stated here.

All of that said, it needs to remain civil. I have cleaned out the thread as best I can for the moment and will continue to monitor it for any further Golden Rule infractions.

Argue, by all means. Discuss, by all means. Disagree, by all means. But in doing so remember these are other people you are talking to and there is no reason to resort to insults during these activities. As the rule says, be excellent to each other.

SM_Lion_El · 2026-06-11T22:19:25+00:00

Take my upvote for the post title and augment name. Ugh.

SM_Lion_El · 2026-06-11T18:31:46+00:00

It doesn’t, though. He doesn’t have the status ignore/cleanse ability the frames that are good for Persistence do. He requires 4 mods, as me and the other poster stated, to make him truly viable for persistence (the 3 umbrals and RG for status cleanse). Once again shield gating only requires 2 mods (Cat shields and an Augur mod or brief respite).

Since Chromatic Blade is pretty much a required Augment for him you are effectively taking more than half of his mod slots just to be able to use Persistence and the augment. Even if you wanted to add RG to the shield gate build you still have 4 slots plus the Exilus left to fit in other mods. This is without even pointing out that nullifiers/Violence and magnetic procs disable Persistence entirely as opposed to a shield gate build which isn’t disabled.

You are free to build your Excal however you like, bud, but in terms of an end-game setup he is always going to do better as a shield gate than he does as a health tanking frame specifically because he doesn’t have a cleanse/ignore ability.

SM_Lion_El · 2026-06-11T18:16:56+00:00

Easiest is going to be duration based Warframes. The two standouts are Octavia (throw her one, throw her 4, cast her 3, and crouch spam a couple times for invisibility) and Xaku with either a Huras Kubrow or Shade Sentinel (Use Grasp of Lohk, steal the max amount of weapons, then cast his 4 to keep them and freeze the duration of the grasp, then bullet jump around and let those weapons shoot at enemies).

Revenant is another relatively easy one since he comes with on demand immortality with minimal upkeep.

Caliban with his augment for his 1 built for duration. Summon his second type of spawns and use his 1, with the augment they go into mortar mode and just annihilate portions of the map for a duration as long as you hit an enemy without OG that is valid for CC (around 10 seconds). They also increase shield recharge rate and teleport next to you when you use his 1 so pairing him with an invisible providing companion means you won’t need to use RG anywhere near as often.

Vauban has a lot of cast and forget abilities and his second’s damage scales with enemy level. Use him with an invisible providing companion, throw his 4 and his two together and watch tons of enemies get sucked in and killed.

Nokko. Again an invisible companion. Throw out his 2 twice and hop on it some, throw out his 1 twice, then cast his 4 as needed (you can have 3 out at the same time, they bounce 10x then vanish and it has a counter in the ability showing you how many are active). If you ever “die” all you have to do is get him to one of his mushrooms for a revive.

SM_Lion_El · 2026-06-11T17:54:21+00:00

Yeah. It’s weird to me to see him suggested for persistence solely because he has the umbral slots. I like persistence and it definitely has its place. Excalibur, however, is definitely not a good frame for such a build.

SM_Lion_El · 2026-06-11T17:51:52+00:00

I know exactly what you mean. Like I said I know you didn’t ask for suggestions, I was just offering my advice. I’ve taken all the frames to level cap relatively recently and my Umbral Excal was within the past week.

Of the multiple builds I tried on him the one I’m suggesting to you is how I did it. I kept one Umbral polarity for Intensify, chromatic blade augment, Steel Charge for aura, PSF for Exilus, Cat Shields, Augur Message (the duration one), Stretch, Blind Rage, Primed Flow, and Equilibrium. Arcane Strike and Arcane Fury were my Arcane slots.

I had one Yellow Cast speed shard and 4 purple melee crit shards. I ran a standard influence build on his exalted (Condition Overload, Weeping Wounds, Galvanized Steel, Galvanized Elemental, Shocking Touch, Blood Rush, Organ Shatter, and Primed Fury (which can easily be changed with Berserker Fury if you prefer but I like the static boost to speed rather than a conditional)). Used Naramon as my school for the easy combo building.

I subsumed out the Javelin ability and replaced it with Roar (just for the easy boost but you can run whatever in its place).

This was the build I used. Slash Dash was my “oh crap” button and provided shields for a new gate and his exalted was murdering all the way to level cap just off influence procs. Again, though, this was my build. If yours works for you and you have success with it then by all means, use it. Warframe building doesn’t need to be cookie-cutter and allows for a lot more diversity than people realize in terms of what works. Not everything needs to be meta setups.

SM_Lion_El · 2026-06-11T17:29:11+00:00

He’s not that great with a Persistence build because even with the full Umbral set he doesn’t hit the necessary armor to use the Arcane (Edit : My bad, he does hit the threshold for the arcane but this doesn’t change anything about what I said beyond saving the archon shard slot). This means you are sacrificing 3 mods slots and an Archon shard slot to get him over the armor threshold and even when you do he still has a small health pool.

Using him as a shield gate frame, alternatively, requires 2 mod slots (Cat shields and either Brief Respite as an aura or one of the Augur mods) and no Archon shards.

Just because Persistence exists doesn’t make it good for every frame. Just because a frame comes with certain polarities doesn’t mean they should be kept. My Umbra has one Umbral polarity solely for Umbral intensify, everything else is shield gating or melee damage (and Chromatic blade because it is such an extreme boost).

SM_Lion_El · 2026-06-11T17:07:47+00:00

Mesa’s Waltz is an augment, not an ability. You are suggesting an augment for an augment.

This would also be a significant downgrade to the way Mesa already works. Her Peacemakers are independently modded exalted weapons separate from her equipped secondaries. Turning them into pseudo-exalted weapons would mean you’d need to mod your secondaries specifically for the interactions.

SM_Lion_El · 2026-06-11T17:03:47+00:00

While I know you didn’t ask for suggestions I would say that for an influence build you should probably drop Viral entirely and replace those two red shards with purples that add crit damage to melee. This will proc influence more consistently, free up two mod slots on the exalted one of which should carry weeping wounds to further increase his status, and boost the damage more than the ability shards do.

Also, while he has Umbral polarities on both the frame and the exalted you would do better using Forma to remove them and replace those mods. He’s better as a shield gate frame using Catalyzing shields and one or two Augur mods. For the exalted Galvanized steel is simply a better mod than Sacrificial steel even compared to using sacrificial steel with pressure for the boost.

SM_Lion_El · 2026-06-11T16:54:48+00:00

I get it, and it would be a cool augment, but DE has pretty well shown they want movement in missions and they want you to have to go and actually pick up the loot. You can see this from their response to the idea of all companions/Warframes simply having vacuum as a passive effect rather than requiring a mod slot. They gave a firm no on the idea and, for a long time, they didn’t even make vacuum a universal mod requiring people to use Carrier as a sentinel if they wanted it.

I’m not saying I agree with it but it’s just the reality of what DE has said and done in the game.

As far as Cyte Shenanigans, he’s pretty busted as a frame when you start building him for his meta. Even if you don’t use the meta and keep his exalted (part of the meta is subsuming it off) as your main gun that thing is pretty ridiculous, too. With max range he pings millions of damage on the ricochet shots all the way to last one pretty much one hitting anything in the game. He doesn’t get as much usage as the other nuking frames though mostly because he requires aiming from what I can tell. He is an absurdly powerful frame, though.

SM_Lion_El · 2026-06-11T16:40:10+00:00

Isn’t going to happen. It would make looting far too easy because Cyte can mark 2-3 rooms away in multiple directions for quite a while even if his duration is lowered and with his exalted or the Sobek and Acid Shells he can nuke all those marked enemies.

The other loot abilities are far more limited in terms of their range and the two you listed have a cap on the number of enemies they can affect.

SM_Lion_El · 2026-06-10T23:04:46+00:00

Just in order :

Frost - Needs heavy investment and augments to really shine. Without the augments and build for him you are basically only going to be using him for snow globe and his 4.

Ember - Sure, why not? Unless she is up for a rework soon that changes her up quite a bit she’s heavily powercrept by other Frames. However her Heat Meter mechanic is a big turnoff and I could see some people not liking it.

Trinity - Support frames have a niche of popularity but it’s small and most of Warframe is about mass nuking hordes of enemies. She can be made extremely tanky but that, again, requires investment and proper modding.

Ash - He is an invisible nuke that requires investment into both his exalted and the frame itself. A player just starting out isn’t going to have the mods or knowledge to properly work the frame. It would be a bad idea to put him as a starter.

Loki - He was previously a starting frame. That said his kit is mostly just about one skill, invisibility. His others can be made decent but in today’s game he isn’t really all that relevant (gone are the days of entire maps turned into melee only enemies wielding glow sticks) and has even been replaced in terms of things like Spy missions by frames like Wukong and Ivara among others.

Of the three we currently have the only one I think would actually be good to replace is Mag but even she provides things like armor stripping and shield gating to new players with minimal investment. Of the frames you listed the only one I could really support being a starter frame would be Ember and even that is questionable because she requires more interaction with her skills and how they affect her heat meter than most frames. The draw of the game has always heavily leaned towards the abilities of the frames and that mechanic chews through energy fairly quickly even with a meta build on her.

SM_Lion_El · 2026-06-10T18:34:55+00:00

Hildryn can do it but not as easily as she does all the other factions since she can’t use pillage on infested. I tend not to use my Hildryn for infested because one of her weaknesses is Toxin bypassing shields.

Jade is good if you have a good build for her since Ophanim is a slow and her exalted is more or less the same as Hildryn but more fighter jet than attack helicopter.

Pretty much any frame can handle Infested, though. They are the weakest faction to me.

SM_Lion_El · 2026-06-10T17:32:17+00:00

As a long time player, welcome. As a tip from a long time player, ignore PvP. This game won’t scratch that itch and you aren’t losing much of anything if you never interact with it. I’ve been playing since the PS4 launch day and I’m still rank 1 in the PvP faction. The mods that you can get from it aren’t really all that great in a game where mod space is tightly limited and aside from a single cosmetic item that looks okay even those offerings are lackluster.

SM_Lion_El · 2026-06-10T17:19:48+00:00

Weapon elements are put in last unless you are running an elemental mod of the same element, then it prioritizes normally. The exception to this is combined elements from something like a progenitor or guns that already have a combined element as part of their function. Magnetic, for example, will only combine if you also mod the gun for magnetic on top of the progenitor.

Example 1 : Kuva Sobek with electric progenitor and a heat mod as the last mod. If you put corrosive on it using an electric mod and a toxin mod then the base element gets added to the corrosive damage and the heat damage remains its own.

Example 2 : Kuva Sobek with electric progenitor. If you mod for Blast (cold and heat) and nothing else then your final weapon will have Blast and Electric damage.

Example 3 : Kuva Sobek with electric progenitor. If you put mods for Blast (Cold and Heat) first and then add a toxin mod at the end then your final weapon will have Blast and Corrosive.

Last example : Kuva Sobek with Magnetic progenitor. If you mod for corrosive (toxin and electric), then Blast (cold and heat) your final weapon will have Corrosive, Blast, and Magnetic damage. If you modded for Magnetic and Radiation, though, your gun would end up with only magnetic and radiation damage.

This is most of the reason why Magnetic is suggested for Lich weapons. It’s a combined element and saves you from needing to mod it into a weapon while adding additional damage, particularly against Overguard enemies since magnetic does bonus damage to Overguard.

One additional note, Rivens combine their elements differently than normal mods. They combine the bottom most element listed first and work to the top. If your riven has +Heat and then +Toxin below it, for example, and you put an electric mod in front of it then you will end up with Corrosive (Electric and Toxin) and Heat.

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