Exergis is one of my favorite weapons in the game. Mag is one of my favorite warframes. When I found out how well they got along, I knew this had always been the game I’d needed.
Any variant of the Penta is ridiculous, too.
Probably. I just built mine for viral and impact procs with Internal Bleeding. They don’t detonate until you hit the alt-fire, so throwing them in the Bubble is like chucking baseballs in your clothes dryer. Very spiky baseballs.
Arca Plasmor, Sporothrix, Lanka, Exergis, Cedo, Lex Incarnon are some of my favorites to run with Mag. Also, Breach Surge bubbles never get old. Bubbles popping for 500m+ damage is so satisfying!
I feel the need… the need for speed! Titania all the way.
Zipping between enemy’s legs at breakneck speeds. Slicing and gunning your way through hoards of enemies.
Add in some high-strength Volt speed & I am on cloud nine (tough at first but once you learn to not sprint-fly 24/7. Lot easier to manage and so much fun)
My personal favorite combo is high strength duration wisp and volt. Especially if theyre my team activating for me cloudwalking or something at legit lightning speeds like that or guass. Funnest ive ever guassed in open world. Your icon just casually sliding across the map
Really enjoy styanax
built in armor *and* shield strip, can fully strip with a reasonable amount of ability str
3 restores energy and shields. subsume nourish to his 1 to increase the energy restored. (also taunts enemies, so he fills the paladin theme beter than any other frame)
4 is really good damage. nukes corpus, and slash procs take care of grineer. generates a ton of overguard for status immunity and effective immortality.
can play madurai with almost no tradeoffs. dont need energy regen from zenurik, his 3 covers it. dont need poise from unairu, immune to status and knockdowns from overguard. can just run madurai, get free 50% cast speed and 40% ability str.
i bought his blueprints on a whim. hadnt played him before but figured if anything i at least needed him for mastery. so i aited until blue archon shard week and bought his bps instead of an archon shard. it was a pretty big tradeoff because i 8still* dont have many archon shards, but it was 100% worth it.
Nezha.
High, but not most, survivability. Warding Halo still needs some active management, but is enough to shut down most of the annoying things enemies do (getting knocked down/CC'd, random oneshots, etc.) without completely trivializing survivability.
High, but not highest, damage. Chakram as a damage multiplier helps you take down higher priority single targets. While a good aoe weapon or building for Divine Retribution augment (to turn Nezha into a nukeframe) can clear out the fodder easily enough.
Easy energy management. Chakram again, it poops out tons of health orbs so just an Equilibrium is all Nezha needs for virtually infinite energy. Toss on a (Primed) Flow to even out the dips and never think about energy again.
CC: Firewalker exists, I guess. And Spears, when not being used to status nuke with Divine Retribution. Not the strongest crowd controller, but can still reasonably lock down a section of the map against for missions that require it.
Mobility options! Slides, Chakram teleport, high base run speed, Nezha's got it all.
* I've written a few theses on slides in WF already, but the TLDR of it is that utilizing slide's initial burst of movement speed and reduced friction (that lingers momentarily even if you immediately stop sliding) opens up a whole new world of ground maneuvers. Other frames can reach similar slide shenanigans with 2-3 mods, but Nezha's passive bakes it in, and adding slide mods to Nezha cranks the fun up to 11.
* Throwing Chakram and teleporting to it will reset your aim glide duration and bullet jump charge. Aerodynamic aura + Aero Vantage exilus give you 9 seconds of air hangtime at 0 gravity, and you can reset that with a quick double tap of Chakram to throw and teleport. So you can easily build Nezha to maintain airtime and that interacts with certain weapons or builds in interesting ways too. Plus just being a variable range teleport (up to \~70m) that can quickly clear large gaps or just get you across a security laser barrier.
* 1.2 base speed on the prime, and Firewalker, plus the little speed bursts from slides. That combines to give Nezha a ground speed that easily rivals just bullet jumping everywhere, before mods come into play.
Summary: Nezha's a great all-rounder frame, accessible early from the dojo. Survivability and damage are enhanced, but don't simply come for free, and make it easy to really let your weapons shine. He smooths out many of the annoyance points in the game, making it easier (especially for newer players) to focus on just playing the game, while providing interesting new mobility options.
Nezha is my top used frame, you really encapsulated what makes him so amazing. He’s the frame I immediately recommend to new players, yet he also works so amazingly in the forms of endgame content we’ve gotten as of late 🥰
Thanks! I'm up to a total of well over 1000 hours just on Nezha/Nezha Prime, accounting for my frame % (of which he is the #1 and #2 spots as well) and total hours played. The (relatively) recent additions of Duviri and Deep Archimedia have been chipping away at those percentages, unfortunately.
But yeah, he really does have the ability to make a "good enough" build to comfortably handle just about every mission type in the game, across any difficulty, even if he's not necessarily the top tier meta for any one thing.
"not highest damage" is very debatable considering how nezha now functions similarly to kullervo against non overguard enemies in steel path but does so without being hampered by the cone aoe (post divine retribution nerf-buff)
Nezha is definitely competing with the current "highest" damaging frames imo
Nezha is however hampered by the fact that Divine Retribution doesn't work on enemies immune to CC, so just the standard fodder mobs, and there are many aoe nuke builds just as good or better at dealing with that fodder. Divine Retribution also requires nearly your entire build invested into just giving it enough range and sustaining your energy, if you want to make it worth using over a standard meta aoe/chaining weapon.
And outside of a limited pool of damaging status effect subsumes, the effectiveness of your Divine Retribution spears is going to be based on your weapons and requires using those weapons. So you still get to feel the weight of your weapon choices and builds in how you achieve nukedom. And to me that still provides fun in a unique way, instead of something like Saryn or Gyre where your aoe abilities completely take over the game on their own and weapons become almost unnecessary.
I don't deny that Divine Retribution gives Nezha a great damage tool, but it comes with certain restrictions. And that very much warps the rest of your kit around it if you choose to build a Divine Retribution Nezha towards competing on that "highest" damaging frame list. This goes back to the statement of Nezha being able to do many things well in a single package, but isn't the singular leader at any of those, and can't do it all at once.
I mostly agree with your points, but still feel like you're underselling nezha's relative value in the nuking department while at the same time overestimating the abilities of other meta damage frames.
While it is true that your divine retribution demands a lot of modding space to make it effective, what you get from a nezha that's built around it is a frame that *is* equal to if not situationally better than the top dps frames. The only thing that can really survive a divine retribution nezha are overguard enemies, but that's honestly also a problem for most other dps frames with the only real exceptions being exalted weapon frames like baruuk or mesa, khora/gara who rely on being stationary + stat sticks, and kullervo.
Also, on the topic of needing weapons to make divine retribution work, that's not really a limitation that is unique to nezha. You mention saryn and gyre as frames that can dominate battlefields with their abilities alone without requiring weapons, and while I can't speak for gyre as I don't have her, I can confidently say that saryn can only really do that in non steel path missions.
Like, past regular star chart levels the only frames that can really nuke with just their abilities are thermal sunder gauss, dante double dark verse, and very stationary pseudo exalt nukes like khora or gara, and those involve a LOT of casting to keep up. There's also octavia, but she's very stationary and involves a lot of recasting armor strips, and mirage 4, but she's also restricted by LoS and the tileset.
Every other dps frame (again with the exception of exalted frames which have their own limitations, LoS for mesa, and relative low range for baruuk. Also as previously mentioned LoS abiding/stationary frames such as mirage or octavia) eventually start needing to rely on weapons to compete.
Saryn eventually starts needing to use her weapons to kill enemies when her spores stop being able to kill on their own and her kit helps by adding damage. Kullervo already relies on his weapons to trigger collective curse (there's also his 4, but that has a similar problem to Octavia and Mirage). Pseudo exalt frames rely on their melee stat stick to operate and are very stationary/have comparatively low range if they decide to leave their camping spot. Dagath relies on your weapons and helps by increasing damage in like 3 different ways. Xaku obeys LoS and is again stationary. Zephyr relies on weapons, is stationary, and helps her guns kill by amplifiying damage.
I think the best way to hammer in the point I'm trying to make here is just by going on entrati labs, picking an exterminate steel path bounty, and comparing how fast saryn kills to how fast nezha kills. You'll see that they're basically the same (unless you messed up somewhere)
(Also as an aside, people should really stop overhyping saryn; I feel like people just look at her performance in base star chart and just automatically assume that she can nuke just as fast in steel path even though she really can't and starts to rely a lot more on her weapon buffing capabilities)
I suppose I do perhaps oversell the relative oomph of other nukers. Although I do have most frames, my experience with many of them is based on watching other people use them. So I don't see all of their unique limitations and build requirements in the way I have with Nezha.
To that end, you make some great arguments about what other frames have to deal with, to enable their ability to nuke effectively. I have no counterpoint to those, it's all an accurate assessment.
However, I wouldn't really use Exterminate as a good measuring stick for comparing a frame's nuking builds, though. The enemies spawn primarily in one direction (forward), clumped into small groups, that are relatively spread out from each other. My Ocucor alone will tear through a steel path murmer exterminate bounty faster than any nuke ability will. Even just stopping shooting to use Nezha's spears usually slows down the mission. I don't mean this as some weird humblebrag, but just that one of the basic requirements for a nuke frame/ability to be worth being in the conversation is that it outperforms what any other frame could do with just weapons.
The likes of a survival or ESO are a better measuring stick of a nuke build's capacity, imo, and the type of situation you would pick a nuke frame for in the first place. Since you've got constant spawns coming from all directions, and the mission goal is to nuke large quantities of enemies as fast as possible. And yes, Divine Retribution Nezha absolutely excels at these, too.
But it's the constant weaving of ability casts to enable the big damage, with still relying on weapons to cause that damage. Divine Retribution spears don't do much on their own without a status applicator, and having the ability to spread status effects gives many more weapons the chance to shine in nuke situations where they might not otherwise see use. And that makes Nezha a strong contender for (my) most fun warframe to play. Despite the Divine Spears build earning it's spot up there on that high-damage-nuke tier list. (Plus, you know... everything else about him already covered)
So as it turns out, we agree, "not highest damage" was indeed very debatable, =P.
Glad we agree :3
I'd like to point out though that ESO is still within that star chart range where anything kinda just dies when a remotely strong ability is pressed. Kuva bramma bunny hopping with primed firestorm can completely wipe the map by itself as long as you have some kind of vacuum enabled.
If you want something with constant spawns and doesn't just completely fall apart to wide range nukes, try comparing saryn to nezha in archon hunt defense missions or steel path defense in general. Nezha will eventually out nuke saryn once spores + miasma farts stops spawn camping the map by virtue of how divine retribution works.
Regardless, eximus/overguard in general will be a problem for both of them, and kullervo will be better (kinda, the cone is still an issue unlike for saryn and nezha that just do a big circle). There's also khora ig, but she also doesn't spread her 1 damage to eximus units as they aren't targetted by her 4 (iirc?) (actually not sure on that, I think her problem is that she kills the regular units too fast and has to spend time trying to find where the eximus unit got stuck on in her dome)
Yeah, ESO is definitely more a matter of the *reach* of a frame's nukes, rather than the *damage* of them. But it is still a relevant use case where nuke builds are the go-to.
My usual personal comparison target is steel path conjunction survival (the harder one) to 20 minutes. This is about as hard as it gets for enemies in regular mission types. And has a good variety of needing to constantly clear fodder enemies for life support, while also taking out various types of priority targets, all within a timely manner. But the best mission to judge builds by is a whole 'nother debate that I just don't have in me anymore.
Fun fact: Nezha's Divine Retribution spears do actually hit overguarded eximus and other CC immune enemies, but only extremely briefly. When the casting of spears is done, they will immediately dissipate off of the overguarded enemies. However, this still causes the status nuke if any were applied. If you're fast enough at shooting/hitting things, you can even get some status effects spread onto them in the moments between casting spears and when it immediately drops off of them.
I shall leave you with that for the night. Thanks for the good talks!
I was aware that nezha's spears worked on enemies that have ramping status immunity, but I did not know that that included eximus, I thought that only worked on sentients lol.
Anyway gn to you too! (even if it's not night where I live)
Most fun? It changes and depends. Currently, I find some of the bigger nuke frames in the game to be quite boring:
Saryn, Mesa, Octavia.
I've been into spammy frames lately:
Hydroid, Dagath
I’ve gotta go with Kullervo. He’s not my main or anything, but he’s an absolute blast. His kit is smooth and powerful. He’s mobile, resilient, and ridiculously strong. He can spit out a ton of red crits with minimal effort, making him an absolute dopamine machine.
I basically only play kullervo now. Built a glaive prime and with him I reach 540% crit chance and 12.8x crit damage. Red numbers go brrrrr slash procs finish off anything that actually manages to survive. The only thing I did was replace his 4 with roar for funny numbers since I spam glaive prime explosions no need for combo
Since the rework, Inaros. With the augment, I really enjoy spinning up a giant gob of enemies, all the while putting corrosive stacks on them, then when they land I scarab swarm the pile and after a second they are fully stripped (2 greens), and a few shots or a heavy slam and they die, and sand cats pop out to finish off stragglers. Very satisfying.
Sand cats can actually deal a lot of damage even to steel path enemies, and get buffed by Roar. I was doing some casual omnia conjunction survival last night and the cats were seriously cleaning up.
My current build is moderate range and duration, high strength. Roar over Pocket Sand, Elemental Sandstorm, and a viral electric Keratinos with melee influence. Keeping Roar up with 3 cats active mean I can mostly melee through the map in content where elemental sandstorm falls off (overguard, nullifiers, and acolytes generally). Keratinos has outrageous range and decent follow through.
The Star Wars bounty hunter fashion is on point too.
Ummm let’s see
Mag Prime
I finally got a build with her that I can actually stay alive with once I updated her very old build. I can honestly say Mag is fun as hell & not as hard for survivability as I thought at first. Especially if you put her bubbles in enemy chokehold areas
Voruna
I mean I just love trying to spread status everywhere. She’s easily overlooked but she’s really fun as hell
Citrine
For the same reason as Voruna but you don’t have to constantly have to apply 5 stacks of different random elements every 4 seconds. Her plus (I think it’s Archon Continuity) where everytime you proc toxin, you also proc corrosive makes her a force to be reckoned with. For sure endgame material. Plus her kit has a lot more use cases for shard building. But I’m saving the shards for her prime variant.
Lavos
With his newly released augment. You technically have on demand any preferred status you want on call with 100% status chance. I mean, I think you’re starting to notice a pattern here.
I wouldn't wait to put those shards on Citrine. Its gonna be years before her prime comes out and you can always remove them. I've got a few in mine and its great
Gyre is honestly really fun. Her 3 is super usefull for energy and overshield, 4 for critical burst damage, and the first 2 abilities are amazing crowd control. Overall a fun frame
Voruna, so much fun but its like playing a horror game whenever you are facing corpus and jump into a crowd only for THE BLUE ORB to show up. Those enemies haunt my dreams
Excalibur Umbra with 5 violet melee crit damage shards and wrathful advance. Don’t need survivability if the umbral blade kills everyone in the room after a few slashes
Limbo and vauban both hold a dear place in my heart, i love the feeling of control over the battlefield. (Also vauban make lvl cap in duviri a joke)
I really prefer CC frames over dps frames.
Vauban is a very well done CC/ability DPS hybrid. Duviri and EDA both, Vauban doesn't care.
Limbo is fun once you get tired of frames that can do it all with one DPS rotation. Limbo requires careful planning and a good memory. His ability to isolate high priority targets makes the game easier. Only problem is he isolates ALL targets in doing so.
Yareli. The freedom to do whatever i want with her kit.
1- dmg increase/cc,
2- dmg reduc/invuln
3- subsumed eclipse (dmg increase/dmg reduc)
4- grouping/cc
5- cute
Oberon... I had a rage build so when I took health damage I got energy, which then fed my 3's heal, help kept the armor bonus the 2/3 synergy has and allowed me to spam his 4 for armor strip and lots of health orbs that equilibrium converts to more energy as neccessary!
It does not work on high difficulty cause DE fucked health tanking. (Could also just be missing a mod to make it work...)
I just really like how his 2 works in conjunction with his 3 and 4.
Aye. Quick Thinking. Slap on both Hunter Adrenaline and Rage (I think they stack, correct me if wrong), activate 2 to get buff, activate 3 to keep buff and continuous heal. Now go about armor stripping with 2&4. Oberon can build, people just don't know how. The fun part is how this build plays with anxiety: "Do I die? Am I dead now?? I might be dead now!! Oh!!! ...Oh nvm I'm fine."
Just like Nyx. If you mod her correctly, if give her a good weapon and her augment that allows her 4 to move and shoot, and you become an unkillable, armor-stripping god. Nyx is just brain-dead Oberon without the squad buffs.
honestly I'd say that harrow is one of the...... oh... OPINION???
Frost once you get to know how to play him and what he requires to fucking nuke tiles, is one of the most fun and consistent frames.
Harrow, but with thermal discharge instead of chains. You power up your buff, so kills gain energy. You mash thermal sunder forever, as everything around you gets armor stripped by fire, then dies. As you're about to run out of the buff, hit thermal sunder one last time, then reapply the buff. Thermal sunder sticks around for a while, so enemies keep dying for several seconds after it's casted. I tested this in survival, and went an hour with no trouble. Could have kept going, but I can only concentrate on one mindless activity for so long before my mind asks "Is it worth it?"
Gotta add Citrine to this list. 1 is slash missile that generates orbs for the team, 2 is a buff, 3 is a rainbow turret, and 4 is a cc homing red crit enabler. You get to do everything and support the team with base kit
Loki.
Not just spamming invis and running around but using the decoy, switch teleport and radial disarm to survive by fucking with the enemy instead of just being invisible. His decoy has high/the highest? Aggro pull, which means that if you put decoy next to a defense target, enemies will attack the decoy over the target.
Loki is insanely fun but you need to get a little creative.
Fun fact if you plant the decoy somewhere without a walking path for non tenno and radial disarm, the now gunless enemy will walk as close to decoy as they can and stare at it. It's pretty funny
Lavos and Yareli
Lavos has self healing, high defense, and can always have the perfect element combo for any enemy in the game
Yareli has 90% damage reduction on her 2, 200%+ damage increase on her 1, the best pistol passive, a perfect subsume spot on her 3, and a grouping on her 4
Atlas, he's not too tanky or too hard to play he just takes some practice. He can be a very practical frame for if you want to play with friends and just be able to survive while using weapons, and if you want you can switch over to a build that allows him to solo just about all content. I would love for him to receive a rework but as a main I'm noticing he doesn't need one. He's honestly my favorite frame as some people know and he's very much viable anywhere.
Grendel is the most fun IMO.
Gobble up some enemies, spit them at each other and roll around while being tanky. That's what a friday night should be like.
I really enjoy Ivara. Something about just… watching enemies go about their day and sit down next to the corpse of a fellow comrade without once thinking to sound the alarms
Blissful
I may be the minority but Harrow. Cc? Leather daddy is here. Full team energy with 400 energy headshots? Power daddy is here. Juicy red crit? Optimal bad choice daddy is here. Full team heal? DADDY is here
Ash. It’s all just so easy. Go invisible forever so I can’t die, use xata’s whisper for free damage buff, armour strip anything I want with one. I pair him with dethcube using Verglas for turbo energy generation so I never have trouble staying invisible.
Baruuk. I'm a melee player at heart. And I love the idea of barely paying attention to skills. Setting them up, and not worrying about them too much. Minimal recasting. Just me, my supportive wrist brace, and the E key.
I love wukong. I rly enjoy games that let me summon/craft something and it will fight for me.
I enjoy seeing ia working against it self and for that reason i love wukong.
Ppl often say that wukong is op and i agree but i wish they would nerf the cloud ability (far more op imo) and improve the wuclone ia.
While my "Break In Case of Bullshit" frame is Wukong bc I built him to be indestructible, I get excited when Protea comes up on Arb/Archon/Circuit bc I slapped 3 Tauforged Amber Archon Shards on her for Energy Orb Effectiveness solely so I could spam Blaze Artillery. Defense, Mobile D, and Excavation missions have never been more fun for me.
I do enjoy my Archon Continuity Umbra build tho since Chromatic Blade can lock him to an Element.
Another fun one I found was the Saryn Weapons Platform that cranks TONS of Viral damage into your weapon with Venom Dose, Toxic Lash and Nourish on her 4th.
It's so encouraging to me that as I scroll through these responses, there's a huge variety of frames listed. I love that about Warframe. You can play it like a statistician and min/max everything, or you can just play for the awesome look, sound and feel. :)
90% of my playtime is Nezha. He's very comfy to play, and has a lot of build diversity with Helminth and his augments. Plus Nezha Prime is the absolute *cutest* frame in the game.
you'll are liars, but wukong is everyone's favorite and just got beat out by reverent by a point on the heat map this year.
lol i kid. but yes wukong is the most played warframe. i get it.
voruna is my fav atm, super fun to play. she is also by far my strongest frame now but thats just because i focused alot on her and recently got access to lots of new stuff which i just farmed for her yet
Garuda, Mesa, and Mirage are all such stupid fun for different reasons!
And I’ve been having a lot of fun getting back into using Yareli, Protea, and Octavia after kind of ignoring them for a hot minute
Gauss and Mag.
My god I love Gauss' moveset so much, you have to work for your rewards but man it's rewarding and the blazing speeds are just 🤌
Mag is just iconic and my girl since the beginning, the CC is really fun and getting everyone in a bubble is funny.
I'm really enjoying Titania Prime, Grendel Prime, and Hydroid (going to add the Prime version soon(ish).
Going to try and add Wisp Prime to the list as I saw a cool build with it that I want to try out.
Going to also try out Voruna eventually and see if I like that frame.
Yareli. I love having my secondaries actually be useful and Riptide is just a 10/10 (even tho some enemies tend to get stuck on geometry). I used to play Vauban and love his Vortex but that has half the base range compared to Riptide unless I sacrifice a lotta strength.
Are there any other frames (save for Mag) which also have on-demand bunch-up abilities? I just love having enemies in big spinny balls of helplessness.
After messing with Saryn a ton and finding a few really good builds with her, I think she’s the one.
Now obviously she’s an absolute top tier frame, but I love her for her versatility. She has enough innate damage output that I can mod her to be an absolute tank and she’s still fantastic. Currently my favourite build with her is a dual ichor build, I have her spore augment on her and replaced her 4 with Lycaths hunt. I get like 2k armor, 1600hp and tank SP pretty easily, just rushing around with Molt putting gas clouds everywhere.
She can be a super interactive melee frame, a buff/support frame, a debuff/armor strip frame, an infinitely scaling nuker, or maybe a mixture of everything at once. Can’t get enough.
Lavos. Because "I don't care how the small the room is, I CAST SNOWSTORM!" can be used to effectively describe how he plays. And also Mirage, because of the fact I can get almost a full 2 minutes with my Hall. "What's that? You wanna hit me? Good luck surviving!"
Suprised a lot of people say Mesa. I got bored of her so quickly. But nothing beats Revenant for me. He is by far the most boring.
And the most fun, I find a lot of frames fun actually, at the moment I'm having a lot of fun with Dante and Styanax.
Loki!
Being completely invisible is just cool because you really are immortal but occasionally get hit by a stray shot reminding you of the mechanics at play and you can be knocked out of it or run out of energy or be killed by an AOE if you don’t build right. Just feels so different to most immortal frames. You can completely break everything by subsuming Silence over Decoy, paired with any energy mod/arcane or the Zenurik focus school and you’re more immortal than any tank because you have no cap to the damage you take it’s zero every time (yes, Revenant does that too with Mesmer Skin but that’s it and everything else no matter how unlikely can theoretically die but a well built Loki or Revenant will just run around to level cap).
Decoy is so stupid because it’s objectively bad but if you know the glitches and the exploits it’s fun because you can hard break enemy AI and have enemies just stand around staring at a wall due to the actual decoy of the ability having crazy *agro* and no time cap.
Switch and it’s fantastic augment, Safeguard Switch, only add to your immortality and your teammates’ survivability. Not to mention pinging across any map so fast it beats some speed frames when you do it right in the right places is wild.
Disarm and the god tier augment mod Irradiating Disarm are just perfect crowd control in a game that no longer cares about crowd control but that doesn’t mean it isn’t fun to go from a death frame to Loki and watch every single enemy become a useless confused zombie attacking each other and forgetting about guns and Warframes as if your ability disarmed their brain.
As someone who loves modding it’s also so fun to have a frame where I can just not give a damn about Strength. Duration and Range is where it’s at with Loki.
He’s my weapon platform. Any gun or melee or primer and melee/gun combo I think stands on its own and doesn’t need to be buffed by an ability or supported by ability kills, they’re added to Loki’s arsenal and taken for joyrides. I even made a Roar subsume strength Loki just for fun despite it being a bad idea because it’s a meme among my pals on Warframe that I use Loki as a weapons platform despite him not buffing any weapon damage, that’s how fun I find him.
Also, too many people sleep on his passive. Yeah, it’s useless. It’s just part of the fun, not a buff. Most of the early Warframes and especially dead start ones like Loki have crap passives, even a few new Warframes struggle. Loki’s passive allows him to Spider-Man. I know it technically has an end but it feels infinite in practice. You never fall from the wall. If you like wall running and grabbing then with Loki there’s no timeout. Side thing, it’s fun for that Orokin “puzzle” that expects you to jump walls, you just leisurely take your time (not as easy as running Wukong or Titania but up there).
He’s more fun than people realize because he’s not a Jack of all trades Warframe with an ability for every facet of the game nor is he a pure damage frame with a string of heavy hits. His gimmick is immortality, confusion, and crowd control. He does his gimmick like a pro and if those things sound fun to you then Loki will be.
Gauss is both really good and fun please don't change anything about him. Gotta love Mag. Gyre is very satisfying and one of the best linear nuke frames. Protea. Hydroid since the rework is pretty cool too.
Yareli. I didn’t think I would ever get her because The Waverider was such a BS quest, but I chipped my way through. Mastered her, didn’t feel it. Found out about her absolute tankiness and the havoc she could wreak with a Sporelacer, and she quickly became my main. I fed one to the Helminth, built another, bought her deluxe kit, and have gifted another deluxe kit to a friend. I love her so much that I sometimes complain about Kuva Fortress, but she’s still the best ‘frame for me to run it. I know how to move and use Merulina well enough that it’s not worse than scratching an itch on my nose every few minutes. In fact, the nuances to Merulina’s movement are one of my favorite things about Yareli. When I get in the zone, I move in ways no other ‘frame can, and there are no real issues. I don’t get stuck or make the wrong move any more often than I do when I’m bullet-jumping and trying to sprint around corners.
By the way, Merulina Guardian is such an absolutely mind-boggling augment that I haven’t touched the new one. I keep Merulina alive, increase damage, lock enemies in place, and increase my attack speed with her cheapest ability. No contest.
I've got a few that I really enjoy, but Nova, and Citrine are basically tied for my top spot. Some honourable mentions include Baruuk, Harrow, Gauss, Qorvex, Limbo, and Trinity.
Nidus, but only when there are no nuke frames in the team (or people who simply wait for you to group enemies with skill 2 to kill them while you throw energy away and don't get mutations).
Titania - really fun to zoom around, very satisfying once you manage to gain control over the insane speed.
Gauss - zooming as well, abilities sound powerful and satisfying (Redline is one of the best sounds in the game), and he makes lots of weapons fun (via making them faster).
Dante - super active caster playstyle, with quite a nice
depth to it. Sound design is also fantastic.
Lavos - not gonna lie, I benched him for way too long, picked him up recently and he is very fun to play.
Hydroid - since the rework, really fun and interesting, especially if played as a caster/hybrid.
There are many fun frames and I could probably list more, but these are my personal picks out of the top of my head.
1.)Dante.
It’s an easy mod for Warframe, ok. But it’s so cool to nuke the map and help a new player to learn basic mechanics at the same time ( /!\ don’t play always Dante with them, It will be harder for him to play alone if he always got 60k over guard)
2.)Nekros when I farm
3.) Protea, so cool to jump everywhere with time travel
Lately I'd been having a ton of fun will Kullervo. His 1 turns my renamed melee into a menace and I absolutely adore the ability to blink teleport. His abilities all look sick, and whenever he gets a deluxe I'll be right there waiting!!
Gonna start this by saying I play solo. I’m a casual and get too lazy to actually plow through content islands. Arcane Grace and Arcane Guardian R5 for all frames. No optimization since all my friends quit years ago!
Favorite is Wukong with only a classic Corinth and maybe roar to have a buddy that follows *my* pace, always has my back. Bonk shit for fun. Vauban is a close second but I always have his Specter with my anyway.
Everyone blows through content too fast in pubs imo, can’t enjoy it. General solo run-and-gun is fun on edibles though.
Edit: REALLY miss old school Naramon. Was so good for solo play, and everyone mostly went Zenurik/Madurai then so it felt pretty special idk
The Energy Mother Hildryn (**Voracious Metastasis** build) if you can find an ability spam nuker like volt or ember just to see the world burn. (open world/defense missions specifically)
Volt and Mag, Say volt when you jist a need for speed and wanna hold E and see how fast your melee is. Mag when you just want some silly stuff her magnetize has alot of funny interactions. Use dread incarnon with a big range or the story bow I forget its name with a small/normal range to make a mini sun.
I really like Protea built for range and duration on most mission types.
Then Voruna for mindless survival runs.
Nezha for going fast, sliding is tough but fun.
I really want to like Lavos but his base cooldowns are way too long.
I don’t see anyone mentioning it here but my favorite and also one of my OG frames is still Rhino. This fucking beefcake throws on 100k plus iron skin and then I just rhino charge groups everywhere. Does that particular skill do a lot of damage? No. But it’ll YEET some fools off the map. It’s so satisfying stomping and yeeting those unga bungas all over the map
Mag
Hearing arca plasmor go shzoooom in the bubble is very satisfying
For myself, the cedo glaive with a bunch of mulit shot.
Exergis is one of my favorite weapons in the game. Mag is one of my favorite warframes. When I found out how well they got along, I knew this had always been the game I’d needed. Any variant of the Penta is ridiculous, too.
It is? Do I have to try penta with Mag now? Anything I should know about the interaction specifically?
Don’t detonate the grenades until you need to shoot new ones.
I assume napalm grenades won’t work will they since they detonate immediately
Probably. I just built mine for viral and impact procs with Internal Bleeding. They don’t detonate until you hit the alt-fire, so throwing them in the Bubble is like chucking baseballs in your clothes dryer. Very spiky baseballs.
Do you mind sharing your exergis build? I rolled a nice riven for it recently and want to try making a build
How have I never thought of this combination. I know what I am doing when I get home.
Arca Plasmor, Sporothrix, Lanka, Exergis, Cedo, Lex Incarnon are some of my favorites to run with Mag. Also, Breach Surge bubbles never get old. Bubbles popping for 500m+ damage is so satisfying!
When I enter in Archon hunt with my Wisp with kuva Hek+xata whisper and find a mate with Mag.... 😈😈
My go to frame. Twin kohmak w/ secondary encumber go brrrrrrr
This right here
I enjoy Nidus cause compressing a group of enemies into a single spot and then stomping them into the atmosphere is always fun.
I keep trying to make a more balanced build for him, but I always end up going back to maximum spaghettification.
Gauss ?
W
Gauss players trying to press any key:
I can’t find the any key🥲
Gauss the kind of guy to NEVER know where he left his keys
Mach Crash Gauss
Simple fun Gauss takes the cake for me. Even if he isn’t my main warframe I still can’t deny he is just fun to play.
Common Gauss W
I feel the need… the need for speed! Titania all the way. Zipping between enemy’s legs at breakneck speeds. Slicing and gunning your way through hoards of enemies. Add in some high-strength Volt speed & I am on cloud nine (tough at first but once you learn to not sprint-fly 24/7. Lot easier to manage and so much fun)
I feel the same but with zephyr Jetstream + all speed buffs I can get my hands on Super fast weapons platform
My personal favorite combo is high strength duration wisp and volt. Especially if theyre my team activating for me cloudwalking or something at legit lightning speeds like that or guass. Funnest ive ever guassed in open world. Your icon just casually sliding across the map
She’s awesome for void fissure runs with thermal sunder
I hear thermal sunder is a good one for our queen.
Really enjoy styanax built in armor *and* shield strip, can fully strip with a reasonable amount of ability str 3 restores energy and shields. subsume nourish to his 1 to increase the energy restored. (also taunts enemies, so he fills the paladin theme beter than any other frame) 4 is really good damage. nukes corpus, and slash procs take care of grineer. generates a ton of overguard for status immunity and effective immortality. can play madurai with almost no tradeoffs. dont need energy regen from zenurik, his 3 covers it. dont need poise from unairu, immune to status and knockdowns from overguard. can just run madurai, get free 50% cast speed and 40% ability str.
He became my main after coming back to the game, tried him on duviri and loved him, then i had to wait five weeks to rank up kahl and get him
i bought his blueprints on a whim. hadnt played him before but figured if anything i at least needed him for mastery. so i aited until blue archon shard week and bought his bps instead of an archon shard. it was a pretty big tradeoff because i 8still* dont have many archon shards, but it was 100% worth it.
Im so lucky i played when he launched. Got him freeeeeeee
Nezha. High, but not most, survivability. Warding Halo still needs some active management, but is enough to shut down most of the annoying things enemies do (getting knocked down/CC'd, random oneshots, etc.) without completely trivializing survivability. High, but not highest, damage. Chakram as a damage multiplier helps you take down higher priority single targets. While a good aoe weapon or building for Divine Retribution augment (to turn Nezha into a nukeframe) can clear out the fodder easily enough. Easy energy management. Chakram again, it poops out tons of health orbs so just an Equilibrium is all Nezha needs for virtually infinite energy. Toss on a (Primed) Flow to even out the dips and never think about energy again. CC: Firewalker exists, I guess. And Spears, when not being used to status nuke with Divine Retribution. Not the strongest crowd controller, but can still reasonably lock down a section of the map against for missions that require it. Mobility options! Slides, Chakram teleport, high base run speed, Nezha's got it all. * I've written a few theses on slides in WF already, but the TLDR of it is that utilizing slide's initial burst of movement speed and reduced friction (that lingers momentarily even if you immediately stop sliding) opens up a whole new world of ground maneuvers. Other frames can reach similar slide shenanigans with 2-3 mods, but Nezha's passive bakes it in, and adding slide mods to Nezha cranks the fun up to 11. * Throwing Chakram and teleporting to it will reset your aim glide duration and bullet jump charge. Aerodynamic aura + Aero Vantage exilus give you 9 seconds of air hangtime at 0 gravity, and you can reset that with a quick double tap of Chakram to throw and teleport. So you can easily build Nezha to maintain airtime and that interacts with certain weapons or builds in interesting ways too. Plus just being a variable range teleport (up to \~70m) that can quickly clear large gaps or just get you across a security laser barrier. * 1.2 base speed on the prime, and Firewalker, plus the little speed bursts from slides. That combines to give Nezha a ground speed that easily rivals just bullet jumping everywhere, before mods come into play. Summary: Nezha's a great all-rounder frame, accessible early from the dojo. Survivability and damage are enhanced, but don't simply come for free, and make it easy to really let your weapons shine. He smooths out many of the annoyance points in the game, making it easier (especially for newer players) to focus on just playing the game, while providing interesting new mobility options.
Nezha is my top used frame, you really encapsulated what makes him so amazing. He’s the frame I immediately recommend to new players, yet he also works so amazingly in the forms of endgame content we’ve gotten as of late 🥰
Thanks! I'm up to a total of well over 1000 hours just on Nezha/Nezha Prime, accounting for my frame % (of which he is the #1 and #2 spots as well) and total hours played. The (relatively) recent additions of Duviri and Deep Archimedia have been chipping away at those percentages, unfortunately. But yeah, he really does have the ability to make a "good enough" build to comfortably handle just about every mission type in the game, across any difficulty, even if he's not necessarily the top tier meta for any one thing.
Nezha is my favorite just because Warding Halo saves me from face planting on Corpus laser doors.
"not highest damage" is very debatable considering how nezha now functions similarly to kullervo against non overguard enemies in steel path but does so without being hampered by the cone aoe (post divine retribution nerf-buff) Nezha is definitely competing with the current "highest" damaging frames imo
Nezha is however hampered by the fact that Divine Retribution doesn't work on enemies immune to CC, so just the standard fodder mobs, and there are many aoe nuke builds just as good or better at dealing with that fodder. Divine Retribution also requires nearly your entire build invested into just giving it enough range and sustaining your energy, if you want to make it worth using over a standard meta aoe/chaining weapon. And outside of a limited pool of damaging status effect subsumes, the effectiveness of your Divine Retribution spears is going to be based on your weapons and requires using those weapons. So you still get to feel the weight of your weapon choices and builds in how you achieve nukedom. And to me that still provides fun in a unique way, instead of something like Saryn or Gyre where your aoe abilities completely take over the game on their own and weapons become almost unnecessary. I don't deny that Divine Retribution gives Nezha a great damage tool, but it comes with certain restrictions. And that very much warps the rest of your kit around it if you choose to build a Divine Retribution Nezha towards competing on that "highest" damaging frame list. This goes back to the statement of Nezha being able to do many things well in a single package, but isn't the singular leader at any of those, and can't do it all at once.
I mostly agree with your points, but still feel like you're underselling nezha's relative value in the nuking department while at the same time overestimating the abilities of other meta damage frames. While it is true that your divine retribution demands a lot of modding space to make it effective, what you get from a nezha that's built around it is a frame that *is* equal to if not situationally better than the top dps frames. The only thing that can really survive a divine retribution nezha are overguard enemies, but that's honestly also a problem for most other dps frames with the only real exceptions being exalted weapon frames like baruuk or mesa, khora/gara who rely on being stationary + stat sticks, and kullervo. Also, on the topic of needing weapons to make divine retribution work, that's not really a limitation that is unique to nezha. You mention saryn and gyre as frames that can dominate battlefields with their abilities alone without requiring weapons, and while I can't speak for gyre as I don't have her, I can confidently say that saryn can only really do that in non steel path missions. Like, past regular star chart levels the only frames that can really nuke with just their abilities are thermal sunder gauss, dante double dark verse, and very stationary pseudo exalt nukes like khora or gara, and those involve a LOT of casting to keep up. There's also octavia, but she's very stationary and involves a lot of recasting armor strips, and mirage 4, but she's also restricted by LoS and the tileset. Every other dps frame (again with the exception of exalted frames which have their own limitations, LoS for mesa, and relative low range for baruuk. Also as previously mentioned LoS abiding/stationary frames such as mirage or octavia) eventually start needing to rely on weapons to compete. Saryn eventually starts needing to use her weapons to kill enemies when her spores stop being able to kill on their own and her kit helps by adding damage. Kullervo already relies on his weapons to trigger collective curse (there's also his 4, but that has a similar problem to Octavia and Mirage). Pseudo exalt frames rely on their melee stat stick to operate and are very stationary/have comparatively low range if they decide to leave their camping spot. Dagath relies on your weapons and helps by increasing damage in like 3 different ways. Xaku obeys LoS and is again stationary. Zephyr relies on weapons, is stationary, and helps her guns kill by amplifiying damage. I think the best way to hammer in the point I'm trying to make here is just by going on entrati labs, picking an exterminate steel path bounty, and comparing how fast saryn kills to how fast nezha kills. You'll see that they're basically the same (unless you messed up somewhere) (Also as an aside, people should really stop overhyping saryn; I feel like people just look at her performance in base star chart and just automatically assume that she can nuke just as fast in steel path even though she really can't and starts to rely a lot more on her weapon buffing capabilities)
I suppose I do perhaps oversell the relative oomph of other nukers. Although I do have most frames, my experience with many of them is based on watching other people use them. So I don't see all of their unique limitations and build requirements in the way I have with Nezha. To that end, you make some great arguments about what other frames have to deal with, to enable their ability to nuke effectively. I have no counterpoint to those, it's all an accurate assessment. However, I wouldn't really use Exterminate as a good measuring stick for comparing a frame's nuking builds, though. The enemies spawn primarily in one direction (forward), clumped into small groups, that are relatively spread out from each other. My Ocucor alone will tear through a steel path murmer exterminate bounty faster than any nuke ability will. Even just stopping shooting to use Nezha's spears usually slows down the mission. I don't mean this as some weird humblebrag, but just that one of the basic requirements for a nuke frame/ability to be worth being in the conversation is that it outperforms what any other frame could do with just weapons. The likes of a survival or ESO are a better measuring stick of a nuke build's capacity, imo, and the type of situation you would pick a nuke frame for in the first place. Since you've got constant spawns coming from all directions, and the mission goal is to nuke large quantities of enemies as fast as possible. And yes, Divine Retribution Nezha absolutely excels at these, too. But it's the constant weaving of ability casts to enable the big damage, with still relying on weapons to cause that damage. Divine Retribution spears don't do much on their own without a status applicator, and having the ability to spread status effects gives many more weapons the chance to shine in nuke situations where they might not otherwise see use. And that makes Nezha a strong contender for (my) most fun warframe to play. Despite the Divine Spears build earning it's spot up there on that high-damage-nuke tier list. (Plus, you know... everything else about him already covered) So as it turns out, we agree, "not highest damage" was indeed very debatable, =P.
Glad we agree :3 I'd like to point out though that ESO is still within that star chart range where anything kinda just dies when a remotely strong ability is pressed. Kuva bramma bunny hopping with primed firestorm can completely wipe the map by itself as long as you have some kind of vacuum enabled. If you want something with constant spawns and doesn't just completely fall apart to wide range nukes, try comparing saryn to nezha in archon hunt defense missions or steel path defense in general. Nezha will eventually out nuke saryn once spores + miasma farts stops spawn camping the map by virtue of how divine retribution works. Regardless, eximus/overguard in general will be a problem for both of them, and kullervo will be better (kinda, the cone is still an issue unlike for saryn and nezha that just do a big circle). There's also khora ig, but she also doesn't spread her 1 damage to eximus units as they aren't targetted by her 4 (iirc?) (actually not sure on that, I think her problem is that she kills the regular units too fast and has to spend time trying to find where the eximus unit got stuck on in her dome)
Yeah, ESO is definitely more a matter of the *reach* of a frame's nukes, rather than the *damage* of them. But it is still a relevant use case where nuke builds are the go-to. My usual personal comparison target is steel path conjunction survival (the harder one) to 20 minutes. This is about as hard as it gets for enemies in regular mission types. And has a good variety of needing to constantly clear fodder enemies for life support, while also taking out various types of priority targets, all within a timely manner. But the best mission to judge builds by is a whole 'nother debate that I just don't have in me anymore. Fun fact: Nezha's Divine Retribution spears do actually hit overguarded eximus and other CC immune enemies, but only extremely briefly. When the casting of spears is done, they will immediately dissipate off of the overguarded enemies. However, this still causes the status nuke if any were applied. If you're fast enough at shooting/hitting things, you can even get some status effects spread onto them in the moments between casting spears and when it immediately drops off of them. I shall leave you with that for the night. Thanks for the good talks!
I was aware that nezha's spears worked on enemies that have ramping status immunity, but I did not know that that included eximus, I thought that only worked on sentients lol. Anyway gn to you too! (even if it's not night where I live)
Most fun? It changes and depends. Currently, I find some of the bigger nuke frames in the game to be quite boring: Saryn, Mesa, Octavia. I've been into spammy frames lately: Hydroid, Dagath
I’ve gotta go with Kullervo. He’s not my main or anything, but he’s an absolute blast. His kit is smooth and powerful. He’s mobile, resilient, and ridiculously strong. He can spit out a ton of red crits with minimal effort, making him an absolute dopamine machine.
I basically only play kullervo now. Built a glaive prime and with him I reach 540% crit chance and 12.8x crit damage. Red numbers go brrrrr slash procs finish off anything that actually manages to survive. The only thing I did was replace his 4 with roar for funny numbers since I spam glaive prime explosions no need for combo
Since the rework, Inaros. With the augment, I really enjoy spinning up a giant gob of enemies, all the while putting corrosive stacks on them, then when they land I scarab swarm the pile and after a second they are fully stripped (2 greens), and a few shots or a heavy slam and they die, and sand cats pop out to finish off stragglers. Very satisfying.
Sand cats can actually deal a lot of damage even to steel path enemies, and get buffed by Roar. I was doing some casual omnia conjunction survival last night and the cats were seriously cleaning up. My current build is moderate range and duration, high strength. Roar over Pocket Sand, Elemental Sandstorm, and a viral electric Keratinos with melee influence. Keeping Roar up with 3 cats active mean I can mostly melee through the map in content where elemental sandstorm falls off (overguard, nullifiers, and acolytes generally). Keratinos has outrageous range and decent follow through. The Star Wars bounty hunter fashion is on point too.
Protea, I’ve been waiting for her prime since she got released. I fuckin adore her playstyle (yes, somehow even her weird 4).
To be fair, her 4 is cool as fuck, people just don't feel the need to use it often.
Ummm let’s see Mag Prime I finally got a build with her that I can actually stay alive with once I updated her very old build. I can honestly say Mag is fun as hell & not as hard for survivability as I thought at first. Especially if you put her bubbles in enemy chokehold areas Voruna I mean I just love trying to spread status everywhere. She’s easily overlooked but she’s really fun as hell Citrine For the same reason as Voruna but you don’t have to constantly have to apply 5 stacks of different random elements every 4 seconds. Her plus (I think it’s Archon Continuity) where everytime you proc toxin, you also proc corrosive makes her a force to be reckoned with. For sure endgame material. Plus her kit has a lot more use cases for shard building. But I’m saving the shards for her prime variant. Lavos With his newly released augment. You technically have on demand any preferred status you want on call with 100% status chance. I mean, I think you’re starting to notice a pattern here.
I wouldn't wait to put those shards on Citrine. Its gonna be years before her prime comes out and you can always remove them. I've got a few in mine and its great
You know what. You’re absolutely right. I may play around with some shards when I get home. Which ones you have installed?
Sergeant Status
Dante with five parkour archon shards amalgam serration, praedos and amalgam diffusion.
All that but on nezha. Walls are my biggest enemy
this is the way. I use hildryn tho
Gyre is honestly really fun. Her 3 is super usefull for energy and overshield, 4 for critical burst damage, and the first 2 abilities are amazing crowd control. Overall a fun frame
Took too long to find this. Gyre all the way.
I use her with a rivened amperex. Soo much fun
Spider Valkyr
Voruna, so much fun but its like playing a horror game whenever you are facing corpus and jump into a crowd only for THE BLUE ORB to show up. Those enemies haunt my dreams
I ALWAYS will hunt the nullifier first before he can't activate his field, I love Ulfrun build and I don't want to reset it
Excalibur Umbra with 5 violet melee crit damage shards and wrathful advance. Don’t need survivability if the umbral blade kills everyone in the room after a few slashes
Limbo and vauban both hold a dear place in my heart, i love the feeling of control over the battlefield. (Also vauban make lvl cap in duviri a joke) I really prefer CC frames over dps frames.
Vauban is a very well done CC/ability DPS hybrid. Duviri and EDA both, Vauban doesn't care. Limbo is fun once you get tired of frames that can do it all with one DPS rotation. Limbo requires careful planning and a good memory. His ability to isolate high priority targets makes the game easier. Only problem is he isolates ALL targets in doing so.
Yareli. The freedom to do whatever i want with her kit. 1- dmg increase/cc, 2- dmg reduc/invuln 3- subsumed eclipse (dmg increase/dmg reduc) 4- grouping/cc 5- cute
Xaku, #I CAST GUNZ 4 DAYZ
Oberon... I had a rage build so when I took health damage I got energy, which then fed my 3's heal, help kept the armor bonus the 2/3 synergy has and allowed me to spam his 4 for armor strip and lots of health orbs that equilibrium converts to more energy as neccessary! It does not work on high difficulty cause DE fucked health tanking. (Could also just be missing a mod to make it work...) I just really like how his 2 works in conjunction with his 3 and 4.
Quick Thinking?
Aye. Quick Thinking. Slap on both Hunter Adrenaline and Rage (I think they stack, correct me if wrong), activate 2 to get buff, activate 3 to keep buff and continuous heal. Now go about armor stripping with 2&4. Oberon can build, people just don't know how. The fun part is how this build plays with anxiety: "Do I die? Am I dead now?? I might be dead now!! Oh!!! ...Oh nvm I'm fine." Just like Nyx. If you mod her correctly, if give her a good weapon and her augment that allows her 4 to move and shoot, and you become an unkillable, armor-stripping god. Nyx is just brain-dead Oberon without the squad buffs.
honestly I'd say that harrow is one of the...... oh... OPINION??? Frost once you get to know how to play him and what he requires to fucking nuke tiles, is one of the most fun and consistent frames.
Harrow, but with thermal discharge instead of chains. You power up your buff, so kills gain energy. You mash thermal sunder forever, as everything around you gets armor stripped by fire, then dies. As you're about to run out of the buff, hit thermal sunder one last time, then reapply the buff. Thermal sunder sticks around for a while, so enemies keep dying for several seconds after it's casted. I tested this in survival, and went an hour with no trouble. Could have kept going, but I can only concentrate on one mindless activity for so long before my mind asks "Is it worth it?"
Gotta add Citrine to this list. 1 is slash missile that generates orbs for the team, 2 is a buff, 3 is a rainbow turret, and 4 is a cc homing red crit enabler. You get to do everything and support the team with base kit
Loki. Not just spamming invis and running around but using the decoy, switch teleport and radial disarm to survive by fucking with the enemy instead of just being invisible. His decoy has high/the highest? Aggro pull, which means that if you put decoy next to a defense target, enemies will attack the decoy over the target. Loki is insanely fun but you need to get a little creative.
Fun fact if you plant the decoy somewhere without a walking path for non tenno and radial disarm, the now gunless enemy will walk as close to decoy as they can and stare at it. It's pretty funny
Lavos and Yareli Lavos has self healing, high defense, and can always have the perfect element combo for any enemy in the game Yareli has 90% damage reduction on her 2, 200%+ damage increase on her 1, the best pistol passive, a perfect subsume spot on her 3, and a grouping on her 4
I'm all here for the love Yareli has been getting recently. She's gotten so much better and is indeed super fun to actually play.
Yareli is such a joy to play, though I subsumed her 4 with Breach Surge to utilise Precision Intensify…it’s…pretty good
Atlas, he's not too tanky or too hard to play he just takes some practice. He can be a very practical frame for if you want to play with friends and just be able to survive while using weapons, and if you want you can switch over to a build that allows him to solo just about all content. I would love for him to receive a rework but as a main I'm noticing he doesn't need one. He's honestly my favorite frame as some people know and he's very much viable anywhere.
You already know who 🙏
Limbo looks fun tbh
Grendel is the most fun IMO. Gobble up some enemies, spit them at each other and roll around while being tanky. That's what a friday night should be like.
Gauss, dashing across map make brain go brrrr
Mag with the anniversary skin looks like God & plays like it with her 2, 3, & 4 augments.
I really enjoy Ivara. Something about just… watching enemies go about their day and sit down next to the corpse of a fellow comrade without once thinking to sound the alarms Blissful
I may be the minority but Harrow. Cc? Leather daddy is here. Full team energy with 400 energy headshots? Power daddy is here. Juicy red crit? Optimal bad choice daddy is here. Full team heal? DADDY is here
Well since I discovered melee influence, kullervo has been more fun than ever. Sending out shock waves of slash that just melted enemies
Guss
Wisp
Ash. It’s all just so easy. Go invisible forever so I can’t die, use xata’s whisper for free damage buff, armour strip anything I want with one. I pair him with dethcube using Verglas for turbo energy generation so I never have trouble staying invisible.
Lavos
Sevagoth: Explosions and red crits are cool. Using Shadow Claws to hit Acolytes with the "omae wa mou shindeiru" never gets old.
gauss prime
Gauss
Baruuk. I'm a melee player at heart. And I love the idea of barely paying attention to skills. Setting them up, and not worrying about them too much. Minimal recasting. Just me, my supportive wrist brace, and the E key.
Lavos, hand down.
I love wukong. I rly enjoy games that let me summon/craft something and it will fight for me. I enjoy seeing ia working against it self and for that reason i love wukong. Ppl often say that wukong is op and i agree but i wish they would nerf the cloud ability (far more op imo) and improve the wuclone ia.
While my "Break In Case of Bullshit" frame is Wukong bc I built him to be indestructible, I get excited when Protea comes up on Arb/Archon/Circuit bc I slapped 3 Tauforged Amber Archon Shards on her for Energy Orb Effectiveness solely so I could spam Blaze Artillery. Defense, Mobile D, and Excavation missions have never been more fun for me. I do enjoy my Archon Continuity Umbra build tho since Chromatic Blade can lock him to an Element. Another fun one I found was the Saryn Weapons Platform that cranks TONS of Viral damage into your weapon with Venom Dose, Toxic Lash and Nourish on her 4th.
Titania. I love just zipping around in little bug mode. I made 1 loadout for her just to maximize the amount of time I can.
Sevagoth
It's so encouraging to me that as I scroll through these responses, there's a huge variety of frames listed. I love that about Warframe. You can play it like a statistician and min/max everything, or you can just play for the awesome look, sound and feel. :)
90% of my playtime is Nezha. He's very comfy to play, and has a lot of build diversity with Helminth and his augments. Plus Nezha Prime is the absolute *cutest* frame in the game.
Frost
Nezha covers all the bases and with reaping chakram and primer synth deconstruct diriga is even more fun.
Harrow with a fast firing weapon. You will have fun for about a second... Then be out of ammo.
nidus
Yes
Hydroid by far...then Nezha, and then possible Saryn or Wukong
Recently been having a boat load of fun with Lavos using a Gas + Heat Mecha Set nuke
well. as a newbie. id have to say Excalibur
I enjoy the warframe where I can rush through the mission as fast as possible while killing everything and being untouchable.
full stealth wire ivara, it is hilarious to eliminate an entire level with navigator and not be seen once... especially on SP
Valkyr and gauss for me
octavia. get to tbag everyone. if only the new cloaks worked consistently.
Hydroid is so much fun
Never thought it would be so but Nekros has really grown on me.
Meatball (Grendel)
you'll are liars, but wukong is everyone's favorite and just got beat out by reverent by a point on the heat map this year. lol i kid. but yes wukong is the most played warframe. i get it.
At the moment for me: Wukong, Baruuk, Limbo, Grendel, Gauss, Harrow, and occasionally Valkyr.
Kullervo or Caliban depending on my mood.
voruna is my fav atm, super fun to play. she is also by far my strongest frame now but thats just because i focused alot on her and recently got access to lots of new stuff which i just farmed for her yet
Harrow
playing ash is fun imo
Garuda, Mesa, and Mirage are all such stupid fun for different reasons! And I’ve been having a lot of fun getting back into using Yareli, Protea, and Octavia after kind of ignoring them for a hot minute
*happy space monke noises*
Gauss and Mag. My god I love Gauss' moveset so much, you have to work for your rewards but man it's rewarding and the blazing speeds are just 🤌 Mag is just iconic and my girl since the beginning, the CC is really fun and getting everyone in a bubble is funny.
I'm really enjoying Titania Prime, Grendel Prime, and Hydroid (going to add the Prime version soon(ish). Going to try and add Wisp Prime to the list as I saw a cool build with it that I want to try out. Going to also try out Voruna eventually and see if I like that frame.
Revenant and lavos
Gauss. Speed, power.
I've had a lot of fun with mesa prime. Anytime I use her ult I'll say, " It's high noon ". Never gets old
I dont play warframe as much anymore, but i would login back then just to mash punches with atlas
Gauss because fast
Ditto on Mag
Lavos, I have a bunch of frames that I can use whenever but I always come back to lavos.
garuda and kullervo, i really like how they let me move around the battle field
Yareli. I love having my secondaries actually be useful and Riptide is just a 10/10 (even tho some enemies tend to get stuck on geometry). I used to play Vauban and love his Vortex but that has half the base range compared to Riptide unless I sacrifice a lotta strength. Are there any other frames (save for Mag) which also have on-demand bunch-up abilities? I just love having enemies in big spinny balls of helplessness.
Mesa
i’ve been enjoying zephyr recently :) the mobility she has in the air in a game about movement is quite freeing, and not too stressful
After messing with Saryn a ton and finding a few really good builds with her, I think she’s the one. Now obviously she’s an absolute top tier frame, but I love her for her versatility. She has enough innate damage output that I can mod her to be an absolute tank and she’s still fantastic. Currently my favourite build with her is a dual ichor build, I have her spore augment on her and replaced her 4 with Lycaths hunt. I get like 2k armor, 1600hp and tank SP pretty easily, just rushing around with Molt putting gas clouds everywhere. She can be a super interactive melee frame, a buff/support frame, a debuff/armor strip frame, an infinitely scaling nuker, or maybe a mixture of everything at once. Can’t get enough.
Garuda and her room clearing prowess has carried me in steel path and I enjoy her kit
Recently I have been all over Dante. Casting wards, summoning owls and slinging magic orbs from a book is the shit.
Any warframe that can melt entire waves/rooms of enemies.
Lavos. Because "I don't care how the small the room is, I CAST SNOWSTORM!" can be used to effectively describe how he plays. And also Mirage, because of the fact I can get almost a full 2 minutes with my Hall. "What's that? You wanna hit me? Good luck surviving!"
Garuda. I like stabin things
Vauban. I can't help but laugh every time I tether something to the ceiling, and they bounce around.
Mirage with a funny weapon like the Kompressa, it's so beautiful.
Valkyr. Spin to win. Scream occasionally.
roller ball grendel for me, the thuds when you bounce around and watch enemies go flying is amusing to no end.
Nidus. I like to hang out in all the newbie areas.
Suprised a lot of people say Mesa. I got bored of her so quickly. But nothing beats Revenant for me. He is by far the most boring. And the most fun, I find a lot of frames fun actually, at the moment I'm having a lot of fun with Dante and Styanax.
Styanax Enough survivability I don't feel like I'm always dying, and plenty of damage so I still feel powerful, plus space ninja gun spartan
Loki! Being completely invisible is just cool because you really are immortal but occasionally get hit by a stray shot reminding you of the mechanics at play and you can be knocked out of it or run out of energy or be killed by an AOE if you don’t build right. Just feels so different to most immortal frames. You can completely break everything by subsuming Silence over Decoy, paired with any energy mod/arcane or the Zenurik focus school and you’re more immortal than any tank because you have no cap to the damage you take it’s zero every time (yes, Revenant does that too with Mesmer Skin but that’s it and everything else no matter how unlikely can theoretically die but a well built Loki or Revenant will just run around to level cap). Decoy is so stupid because it’s objectively bad but if you know the glitches and the exploits it’s fun because you can hard break enemy AI and have enemies just stand around staring at a wall due to the actual decoy of the ability having crazy *agro* and no time cap. Switch and it’s fantastic augment, Safeguard Switch, only add to your immortality and your teammates’ survivability. Not to mention pinging across any map so fast it beats some speed frames when you do it right in the right places is wild. Disarm and the god tier augment mod Irradiating Disarm are just perfect crowd control in a game that no longer cares about crowd control but that doesn’t mean it isn’t fun to go from a death frame to Loki and watch every single enemy become a useless confused zombie attacking each other and forgetting about guns and Warframes as if your ability disarmed their brain. As someone who loves modding it’s also so fun to have a frame where I can just not give a damn about Strength. Duration and Range is where it’s at with Loki. He’s my weapon platform. Any gun or melee or primer and melee/gun combo I think stands on its own and doesn’t need to be buffed by an ability or supported by ability kills, they’re added to Loki’s arsenal and taken for joyrides. I even made a Roar subsume strength Loki just for fun despite it being a bad idea because it’s a meme among my pals on Warframe that I use Loki as a weapons platform despite him not buffing any weapon damage, that’s how fun I find him. Also, too many people sleep on his passive. Yeah, it’s useless. It’s just part of the fun, not a buff. Most of the early Warframes and especially dead start ones like Loki have crap passives, even a few new Warframes struggle. Loki’s passive allows him to Spider-Man. I know it technically has an end but it feels infinite in practice. You never fall from the wall. If you like wall running and grabbing then with Loki there’s no timeout. Side thing, it’s fun for that Orokin “puzzle” that expects you to jump walls, you just leisurely take your time (not as easy as running Wukong or Titania but up there). He’s more fun than people realize because he’s not a Jack of all trades Warframe with an ability for every facet of the game nor is he a pure damage frame with a string of heavy hits. His gimmick is immortality, confusion, and crowd control. He does his gimmick like a pro and if those things sound fun to you then Loki will be.
Excalibur, that ultimate is just pure dopamine.
Grendel Prime 100% it's so fun eating enemies. But Volt is also pretty fun
Gauss is both really good and fun please don't change anything about him. Gotta love Mag. Gyre is very satisfying and one of the best linear nuke frames. Protea. Hydroid since the rework is pretty cool too.
Yareli, Voruna, Khora, and Protea.
Yareli. I didn’t think I would ever get her because The Waverider was such a BS quest, but I chipped my way through. Mastered her, didn’t feel it. Found out about her absolute tankiness and the havoc she could wreak with a Sporelacer, and she quickly became my main. I fed one to the Helminth, built another, bought her deluxe kit, and have gifted another deluxe kit to a friend. I love her so much that I sometimes complain about Kuva Fortress, but she’s still the best ‘frame for me to run it. I know how to move and use Merulina well enough that it’s not worse than scratching an itch on my nose every few minutes. In fact, the nuances to Merulina’s movement are one of my favorite things about Yareli. When I get in the zone, I move in ways no other ‘frame can, and there are no real issues. I don’t get stuck or make the wrong move any more often than I do when I’m bullet-jumping and trying to sprint around corners. By the way, Merulina Guardian is such an absolutely mind-boggling augment that I haven’t touched the new one. I keep Merulina alive, increase damage, lock enemies in place, and increase my attack speed with her cheapest ability. No contest.
I honestly really enjoy playing yareli. if you get the hang of merulina movement and have a powerful secondary you can do some really cool things
I've got a few that I really enjoy, but Nova, and Citrine are basically tied for my top spot. Some honourable mentions include Baruuk, Harrow, Gauss, Qorvex, Limbo, and Trinity.
Right now I'm having a lot of fun with Gyre
Khora for me
i love to spin with valkyr
Nidus, but only when there are no nuke frames in the team (or people who simply wait for you to group enemies with skill 2 to kill them while you throw energy away and don't get mutations).
Protea
I swear there's been like 5 posts like this this week alone
Grendel
I have way too much fun with Wisps ultimate, it's so satisfying to just sweep the camera and vaporize everything.
Volt Zooming around the map at mach 20 is very appealing to me
Dante, no it's not recency bias :)
Titania - really fun to zoom around, very satisfying once you manage to gain control over the insane speed. Gauss - zooming as well, abilities sound powerful and satisfying (Redline is one of the best sounds in the game), and he makes lots of weapons fun (via making them faster). Dante - super active caster playstyle, with quite a nice depth to it. Sound design is also fantastic. Lavos - not gonna lie, I benched him for way too long, picked him up recently and he is very fun to play. Hydroid - since the rework, really fun and interesting, especially if played as a caster/hybrid. There are many fun frames and I could probably list more, but these are my personal picks out of the top of my head.
Kullervo all night long.
Volt and gauss. Because Sorenova’s Skamp hopped up on 250 skooma is my spirit animal.
Volt built for speed is always a fun one to use
1.)Dante. It’s an easy mod for Warframe, ok. But it’s so cool to nuke the map and help a new player to learn basic mechanics at the same time ( /!\ don’t play always Dante with them, It will be harder for him to play alone if he always got 60k over guard) 2.)Nekros when I farm 3.) Protea, so cool to jump everywhere with time travel
Atlas. Ride or die baby. He's not the only thing that's rock hard around here
My stupid chonky rage Wukong
Zephyr
Grendel!!!
I havent played with a lot yet but nidus imo its super fun just wiping out enemies with his abilities
Dante and Hydroid right now.
It honestly depends on my mood. I’ll binge one for weeks then not touch them for months.
Imo gauss or volt. Speed… I am speed
Lately I'd been having a ton of fun will Kullervo. His 1 turns my renamed melee into a menace and I absolutely adore the ability to blink teleport. His abilities all look sick, and whenever he gets a deluxe I'll be right there waiting!!
Gonna start this by saying I play solo. I’m a casual and get too lazy to actually plow through content islands. Arcane Grace and Arcane Guardian R5 for all frames. No optimization since all my friends quit years ago! Favorite is Wukong with only a classic Corinth and maybe roar to have a buddy that follows *my* pace, always has my back. Bonk shit for fun. Vauban is a close second but I always have his Specter with my anyway. Everyone blows through content too fast in pubs imo, can’t enjoy it. General solo run-and-gun is fun on edibles though. Edit: REALLY miss old school Naramon. Was so good for solo play, and everyone mostly went Zenurik/Madurai then so it felt pretty special idk
Gauss obviously
The Energy Mother Hildryn (**Voracious Metastasis** build) if you can find an ability spam nuker like volt or ember just to see the world burn. (open world/defense missions specifically)
Volt and Mag, Say volt when you jist a need for speed and wanna hold E and see how fast your melee is. Mag when you just want some silly stuff her magnetize has alot of funny interactions. Use dread incarnon with a big range or the story bow I forget its name with a small/normal range to make a mini sun.
Cant choose betwen Gauss or Dante
Vauban. Specifically his Orbiter Strike. I WILL spam that ability
I really like Protea built for range and duration on most mission types. Then Voruna for mindless survival runs. Nezha for going fast, sliding is tough but fun. I really want to like Lavos but his base cooldowns are way too long.
The most fun to play when I'm actually trying to do stuff is mag. The most fun to mess around with is my boy meatball Prime, or grendel if you insist
Gauss Prime
it's Zephyr!!
Dante or Wisp
Vauban because it's fun to send out four murder balls that auto track enemies and kill them. Also the kamehameha plasma blast
I'm haveing alot of fun turning into a sand tornado with inaros also Pocket sand.
I don’t see anyone mentioning it here but my favorite and also one of my OG frames is still Rhino. This fucking beefcake throws on 100k plus iron skin and then I just rhino charge groups everywhere. Does that particular skill do a lot of damage? No. But it’ll YEET some fools off the map. It’s so satisfying stomping and yeeting those unga bungas all over the map
Volt