I recently replaced Mag with Frost as my EDA frame. Specifically, I run Silence on him so that Hollow Vein enemies and blitz eximus can’t put their powerful nuking abilities through my snow globes. Freeze Force is also amazing for Disruptions.
I love Frost. He’s been a godly frame since Veilbreaker, and he keeps getting better over time.
Her finishers are also notably powerful in Hysteria, so you can run Pull to scoop enemies up and oneshot them with a ground finisher.
There’s some further inconsistencies such as Gyre’s ability crits not being real and not subject to absolute crit buffs like Shadow Haze, nor crit damage buffs like Tenacious Bond.
Still, I think Vauban’s flechettes’ odd status as hybrid ability-projectiles is the progenitor of any other bugged ability projectiles.
I have a few loadouts for my baby, lol.
Volatile Quick Return heavy build:
If you’re running Galv Reflex, an option is to add in Weeping Wounds too since it’s a free ~66% absolute extra status chance.
Weeping wounds and the remaining slots are flex. I like Amalgam Organ Shatter for wind up, but I also have a build that runs Mark of the Beast + Combo Killer so I can power up a pistol. If I’m on Zephyr it’s usually the Akarius Prime, but she works great with Prisma Angstrum too. Power Throw is another option, and technically the absolute best mod you can put since it’s a separate 3x multiplier, but I personally don’t like the playstyle. Play around with it and see how you like the feel.
Another build path is to swap Volatile Quick Return for Volatile Rebound, and then put Whirlwind in the Exilus, and now you have a sniperang that travels around 60 meters and hits a lot of enemies. The Rebound build can even swap out Reflex if you’re sure you’ll never be heavy attacking; or you can keep it and use your flex slots to tack on Blood Rush and Weeping Wounds.
The big one is to swap Life Strike for Corrupt Charge since it’s a free x2 damage. If you’re willing to play around with melee arcanes, for bossing specifically you can play with Exposure, Retaliation, and probably build around Doughty. Corufell is well worth your arcane adapter since it has a great Influence and later Duplicate build.
I can’t believe I’ve been playing WOKE-frame this entire time! I should have suspected this game was political given the ecofascists are aligned with the space merchants and against the lesbian space school faction!
I haven’t noticed Link (nor Blessing) mitigating EB, so I would guess it’s using the same code as Hildryn’s shield drain. There are some other quirks too, like it will consume shields even when you’re otherwise protected by Overguard. I’ll need a better test setup but I believe it drains energy during Ivara’s Prowl too, although it’s not “damage” so it doesn’t trigger Avenger or Aegis/Barrier.
If it is using Hildryn code I wonder if it’s subject to global efficiency effects like Impetus 🤔
Real, lol. But I think frames that have some kind of specific interaction with Influence are in a class of their own when it comes to OP melee nuking.
Time to finally make that spreadsheet to keep track of my shards.
Grouped her and Vauban as good general content frames!
Wonder if this same bug triggers with other guns that leave bullet-buffing fields behind. Time to find out if the old Muta Quanta-Azimuth setup is back!
Conceptually this is right, but if I can be a bit pedantic on two points: critical maths isn’t quite right, the actual critical component of the damage formula is 1+crit_chance*(crit_damage-1); and faction bonuses are slowly drifting out of the meta for various reasons (like Elementalist mods and just not covering the factions people fight anymore). The last holdout for faction damage is basically Disruption and maybe Profit Taker if you’re trying to do it as quickly as possible.
Regular Babaus do spawn freely, I got my scans done with an Influence Heliocor while I was farming Pistol Acuity. But I think the Ballistica Prime probably makes it go by a lot faster.
Some paths that process damage are signed 32 bit ints. You can get overflows in the display code and I think also the scoreboard (where people will drop to 0% damage dealt).
In terms of rounding out your Warframe toolkit, my personal opinions about priorities are:
Checked the build I used, I started with Avenger for +45% “final” crit. Tried a different build with Worthy Comradery instead of Discipline aura and got to tier 5 crits instead.
There’s some kind of bugged interaction between Nyx’s passive and the Acuity mods that causes the passive to multiply after Acuity. I use a chain of “final” crit, Acuity, and Nyx passive to get a weapon with 9% crit to over 300% crit. As a bonus I demonstrate that radial weapons don’t even really need aiming and can still benefit from Acuity.
If you run Target Fixation, you can freely double jump out of Tail Wind at any time, as it resets your parkour maneuvers. Another tip is to run a lot of parkour velocity on your loadout (such as Consequence, your choice of electric weapon to proc it, and Praedos) so you can more selectively use Tail Wind as a “skip past a long straightway” or something you work in as you become more comfortable with specific tiles.
edit:
I actually remembered wrong. You don’t need Target Fixation. You can actually cancel Tail Wind any time you’re in contact with a wall by wall jumping. This is my Speed Zephyr build, + Praedos or Telos Boltace for more parkour speed. I use Electric Akarius to keep Consequence going.
Zephyr was the first frame I ever truly fell in love with and has shaped the entire way I play this game. She’s been an integral part of my experience of Warframe since 2015. Nothing beats the joy of flying with tailwind or that dreamlike floaty movement. My peak 1999 experiencing was Tailwinding around and wall jumping off buildings.
Oh yeah and Funnel Clouds is one of the strongest damage buffers in the game due to Blast shenanigans. Give her Fortifier and she’s nigh invulnerable too.
There are many good reasons to play Zephyr. Really the only downside is that she’s a life-altering experience…
Yareli my beloved, one of the high femme frames in terms of design, maybe even the highest. The frame that got me back into Warframe and in fact turned me into a Warframe main. Stop delaying Yareli prime, please!!!
With Loyal Merulina, she finally has easy level cap potential and access to her full arsenal. Like Nezha, she has a kit that naturally lends itself to both wide-range nuking and single target priority killing. Contrasting to Nezha, she’s much more oriented to crowd control, including being able to animation lock CC-resistant enemies with Loyal Merulina and max efficiency ;)
With a large natural shield pool, she can very easily reach 2.5s shield gate, or close to it, with minimal effort and no shard investment. I use this for my level cap oriented Pillage build. The lack of reliance on shards also gives her an offensive edge over Nezha if you choose to invest in her abilities as an “assassin” or priority killer.
As a priority killer and Influence nuker, she has some powerful interactions with Xata’s Whisper, especially with Cascadia Accuracy/Secondary Deadhead, Acuity and Worthy Comradery all scaling Xata’s damage unusually highly. Spreading bubbles benefits Influence through multidip, and Riptide has obvious synergies with Influence.
I generally run Furax Wraith Incarnon on Yareli since it’s an extremely powerful heavy slam and light attack Influence nuker, and Amalgam Body Count naturally fits Yareli’s focus on murdering things with her pistols. I do have a Praedos loadout specifically for Archon hunting too.
Speaking of pistols, what do I personally recommend?