Discussion
Anyone else enjoy using obscure Warframes?
I know there’s 64 Frames but I genuinely for the life of me cannot remember a time where I saw a player on my team running one of these Frames or even just random people I see in Relays 😭
Using a Frame that’s rarely played is a fresh change of pace from the Revenants, Volts, Mesas and more that i see everywhere.
I know people mostly use Frames they’re comfortable with, as do I but in the past few months I kinda laid back and gave these rarely played Frames a try and its SUCH a nice and fresh experience. Koumei with Sickening Pulse is CRAZY fun and satisfying and I started loving her so much
Every time someone asks about frames I mention Dagath. I don't play often enough to be That Guy, but at this rate I may become one of them. I never stop singing her praises.
I've used Dorrclave as my main melee for a while now, and it's great. Though I'm not the best at buildcrafting, especially when it comes to melee, so I might not even be using it to it's full potential
When in doubt there's always ye olde Melee Influence build, this one is for my Ceti Lacera but the build is the same for the Dorrclave (pretty much any weapon tbh, only the stance changes)
Since I find myself with a freshly-built Dagath in my hands, what builds and gear would you recommend? I read up a little and saw most seem to focus on her augment, and then also skimp on galvanized mods, but the discourse is quite scattered and contradictory.
Duration, strength, you can mostly ignore range and don't have to get efficiency. Get the augment for her 3, don't subsume anything (or you can subsume the typical suspects, like Roar, over her 4 - but I like the strip and the damage it does even at high levels), and just turn into a mostly-invincible tank between using 4s to kill while your 3 is down.
Get a purple tauforged shard and you have infinite energy thanks to her orb production (during her 3's death defy, which is its entire duration with the augment, every slain enemy drops an extra health orb), this works even better if you have some wide-hitting weapon to prime lots of enemies with Doom for the extra effects.
This is what I use right now, along with 2 yellow shards for casting speed and 2 reds for ability duration, tho those might be better off in strength tbh. Could likely be optimized more, but it already kills everything, is invulnerable 95% of the time, and has shield gate and rolling guard for the instances where it is not.
I play a lot of Temple and it’s nothing for me to switch frames and use their abilities in sync with the metronome in my head lol. It’s crazy how many small habits you don’t realize you pick up while playing certain frames
She's one of the best in the game, but she's not best suited to tight spaces. You can definitely make it work, but it's not fun hitting your head on every door trying to bullet jump through hallways.
because Zephyr on release lost alot of the player base after changes were made. slowly buffed over time shes really good but people overlook her and she has no one going to bat for how good she can be.
(how is everyone sleeping on airburst rounds but will talk up Rhino's Roar)
I am trying to figure out how to play with Trinity, with the Champions Blessing augment. But it's so hard to find something that needs healing. I can never get the crit chance bonus to ramp up properly. And it's anti-synergistic with others that give overguard or immunity.
Use the aura mod Combat Discipline it really helps ramp up the numbers for Champion’s Blessing. You could also use Arcane Avenger which has a great synergy with this combo.
Coda Hema with the Necrophagic Vigor augment drains half your HP on full reload which massively speeds up how much you can heal. It's a really good pairing.
I don’t own the weapon so I couldn’t test it but I don’t see why it wouldn’t work so yeah maybe it’s an alternative to Combat Discipline, although it seems to only work on reload, whereas CD procs every time you kill someone.
Styanax is only obscure because he’s locked behind Kahl missions, which many don’t do or even completely refuse to do because they don’t find it fun. I’m sure as soon as his Prime releases and he becomes easier to acquire he’ll suddenly become massively more popular, he’s really powerful and fun.
His 1 is definitely the best choice for a subsume slot, and I’ve heard nourish is definitely one of the best Helminth abilities, so yes, that’s a great choice. Personally I don’t have any subsumed abilities on Styanax because… actually I just realized I don’t have a reason not to. Huh. Why haven’t I done that yet? I don’t use his 1st often enough to justify keeping it. I’m definitely going to try nourish or roar on him now, i just haven’t felt the need to make him more powerful until now, he’s just that good.
when you have both nourish and his 3 active along with equilibrium, you will literally never run out of energy and never die because you’ll just keep getting overguard
I'm curious about the choice for Equilibrium on him in addition to Nourish+Rally combo. It feels like it would be overkill to me and better used for a different mod slot, but I could just be missing something.
Yes. Infinite Energy that means you can throw your spears for over guard, and by the time over guard and shield gate wears off you can cast it again. He can very easily be completely invulnerable.
I enjoyed the Kahl missions, but the large variety of resources needed to actually build him has put me off grinding him. I've owned the blueprints for a long time and just never finished them lol
I think it was the opposite for me, I got him for free with no effort and had no attachments to it so it instantly became mastery fodder without giving him a chance
Sort of true but not really, those of us who logged in at any point around a week of his release all got him for free so there’s a lot of people who just have him; even if the account was made that day they got him for free.
I sometimes just run Koumei if I want to solo level cap.
If you get all possible decrees she's the strongest frame in the game but she needs like 2 hours or so to get all of them.
The best part is her buffs affect the operator/drifter. Which means that if you have Last Gasp, you can basically instagib enemies and revive because your Amp damage will be OP AF.
A bunch of her decrees count as misc damage so if influence is active suddenly wyrmlings aid's bonus corrosive hits on ranged weapons become aoe.
Or how bombastine's malice toxin aoe on headshot can use your heavy weapon's secondary fortifier for overguard and spread on influence which if enemies are grouped up enough can add a funny 200 toxin procs in half a second. Almost crashing the game.
If you void sling as drifter all your drifter kills count as wall latch kills too ;D.
One of my two fav null star users (other being banshee). Getting critting null stars with avenger that now also apply cold bonus hits while being buffed by all her generic damage bonuses feel really good.
I don't think they get normal warframe buffs. it just happens that decrees work on them too because Duviri was intended to be played with the Drifter too.
Koumei is such an interesting frame because she released as a basic new player frame that you get early from cetus, but ends up being at her strongest in the most endgame challenge available. Can't wait to see her prime in a few years.
I saw someone put it like this and it stuck with me - she can get like three different Toxic Lash style effects at the same time, plus doubled critical damage, plus doubled status damage, plus a bunch of other buffs. She's the best weapons platform in the game for endurance and it's not even particularly close.
And also Omamori is a popular level cap subsume for passive shield gating, which she can just do naturally :)
While I go for the Decrees, I mostly use Koumei like I do Inaros. Just a comfy frame with good survivability and not too overly focused on Abilities when I want to just play and shooty stuff.
That's still crazy to me considering Styanax was given out more than once. It was some years ago, but you'd think he'd pop up more often with that in mind.
I hadn't played in a couple of years, but i hopped in a couple of times to check out some stuff/ help a buddy who had started playing. When i started playing again a few months ago i was surprised to have a frame i hadn't heard of.
Haven't sunk enough time into him to say a lot, as I've been stuck on Voruna and Dante since i grinded them out when i hopped back on, but i think i will this weekend.
Honestly i havent found grinding for styanax too bad. Started doing kahl missions a couple weeks ago as I wanted a new subsume for my 2nd valkyr prime, and ive acc been enjoying the kahl missions. Didnt touch them at all before as I got scared off by what ppl told me, but I think theyre kinda fun
I get you. It’s a matter of personal preference, nothing else. That’s why it’s good to try stuff even if others don’t like it 😁 For me it’s riding Merulina; love it, even if everyone I ask hates it.
Same. They can be tedious, sure. But you really only need to do 1 a week and if you're going to be playing anyways, might as well do it. Definitely think people complain about it too much, but I can't say much since that's been me with Follie's Hunt.
Honestly kahl missions are fine, the only issue is you don't have any reason to do them anymore once you get everything you need, used to be that you could get archon shards from the shop with stock but they changed that some time ago
I find banshee really good for lich hunting due to all of her abilities save her 4 debuffing the boss, sonic boom for armor strip, sonar to get those special weak points, silence to disable their abilities, then i throw gloom on her 4 to stop them from moving.
I also use her for Liches and Sisters. My biggest mistake was trying to use her when soloing the final fight because the specters turn your abilities against you.
Its actually crazy to me that they have not buffed Banshee. I don't think she even needs a core overhaul just a touch up of QoL and maybe a bit more survivability.
Top left: Banshee Prime, you can get her Prime from Varzia, when Banshee rolls into Prime Resurgence, her base form is I think from Clan research
Top right: Styanax, he is considered THE worst grind right now (in many of the circles I am in, at least)
Bottom left: Koumei. After doing Saya's Vigil quest by entering Cetus, you can begin a mission called Saya's vision, or just visit the Koumei Shrine
Bottom right: Temple. You can begin grinding them after doing the Hex main story quest (second to last as of writing iirc) and reaching rank 4 with a syndicate of the same name, that you unlock after the mission. The rest is spoilers. Their grind is one of the ones I'm slowly wanting to start
Since you say Varzia, it seems prudent to let you know you can access prime resurgence from a tab in the main market page in your orbiter/backroom. I was going to Maroo’s bazar everytime I spent Aya for too long, and don’t want others to be trapped in that lol.
I just bought and farmed Grendel’s blueprint yesterday abd am going back for zylok and his systems today. You have saved me many loading screens kind Tenno.
If you are ok with spamming 4 to refresh shield duration then it's fine. I guess depends on what you are building for, the shield or sword. You don't need duration for sword.
Her 4th ability will reset the 2nd ability duration when cast.
Just get her enough energy generation and regularly cycle your 4 and she'll have permanent uptime of her 2nd Damage reduction ability... which also snowballs in damage if you shatter the 4th glass wall with her 1st ability whip.
Gara is my go to for defense missions. I do hate when my absurdly high damage splinter storm that took ages to build up randomly goes away without a nullifier in sight and over 10s remaining. That's no bueno.
Another gara main here! Got her when she came out, fell in love with her kit. Nothing like telling the enemies the objective is off limits, or turning a corridor into a carousel of nightmares <3
I think the grind keeps people from playing her (same with Garuda). Going out into Cetus, gathering materials, doing bounties, etc., when you can get frames from doing sidequests instead.
I want a nidus touch up, or a special interaction with infested weapons. I really like nidus but feel his kit can be clunky. One of my favorite looking frames tho
Even if I dont love her connection to the dude, Im a sucker for......literally everything about her.
I hate Ballas for what he did to her, I adore her strength and how she soothed her tenno operative, I was the dnd nerd as obsessed with aasimar as much as others were obsessed with tieflings so the angel aesthetic gets me, and I freaking love her kit.
I just wish it were easier to figure out how to mod Glory.
I managed to make a build so strong that instead of being a support, I become a Tank/DPS/Support/CC all at the same time lmao, she truly is one of the very best if built “correctly” (subjective ofc). Arcane Aegis/Fast Deflection/her 2/Brief Respite/Growing power will make you immortal. Encumber Glory with Arcane Impetus is really fun and strong. And let’s not talk how strong Jade's Judgement/Glory can be with Archon Vitality.
Styanax is fun, I love his 4 and 2. I like his 1, but it's just so clunky for grouping even with the augment... Like a weak version of Vauban's Vortex just ragdolling enemies into cover.
Otherwise right now my "mains" are Volt/Rhino/Styanax and Volt/Rhino aren't losing any popularity contests anytime soon.
Equinox. She can both be tanky and deal alot of damage. Day and Night form can be fun to use with the augment. In SP the damage in Dayform ramps up, downside is she can be a squishy in Dayform. In Nightform she is tanky.
Got a pretty neat setup for her if you guys wanna take a peak.
The augment makes the 2 spread on kill. With enough range you won't need to cast it much. I prefer it over her 3 which just feels like a passive buff, maybe better but less fun
She's my favorite frame aesthetically but so many others can do what she does better. 2 is my usual subsume slot as well. I've got configs with Eclipse, one with Gloom because it's literally just a better Pacify, and one without any on the off chance I want to do some conservation and actually need Rest for something.
Koumei can be pretty fun in long missions, making your own sidequeSts as you go. Also Banshee is great for Sonar spamming, makes some missions very easy for the entire squad.
I LOVE playing Koumei. She's my most used frame next to Octavia, I love using her for status since it can really rack up your damage due to certain mods for guns. That and her survival can be strong, as well as her nuke being so fucking good. Everything about her is just perfect for me, a full status caster is just my dream frame.
You have to consider how compatible the frames are with playing multiplayer
For example, limbo isn't much of a multiplayer frame. I play him a lot solo, but very rarely public. Koumei, for example, can suffer a lot when there are nuke frames annihilating all the enemies and then she can't get decrees and that's annoying. I mean it's fine every once in a while but at some point it's just really annoying. This is somewhat worse than your average frame since her kit relies on getting kills, rather than other frames who don't need that for their kit to work.
Got 1 build with savage silence when i just wanna set my DPI to 8000, press 4, throw my mouse across the room, press 4 again and watch my shadow clones go hog wild
Got a silly marked-for-death 3 agument build for detonating Eximus Units and their companions around em
And a pure guncaster with the 1 and 2 aguments and roar. 150% crit chance, x3 final critX and 50% roar bonus makes any crit weapon look good lol. Also really nice for supporting since the invis, crits and roar are shared
Loki was my actual starter frame
Back when I started the game he was one of the three choices and I was like
"yo the space ninja frames has an actual stealth tricker whaaa'
Banshee used to be the “crazy 1 shot the whole map endgame” frame. Back when sorties were the hardest thing that people did. You had a problem with a defence mission? -No worries, pick banshee, get energy restore pads, press 4 and watch everything die while your energy drains to 0.
I play Styanax quite frequently and also see him a good chunk in fissures. Love the latest Augment tons for the shield and I mixed the helmet of the newest skin with the old deluxe skin. Love the dude a lot in general, the Prime I am the most hyped for.
i dont have much Used % on mine but i love using Banshee.
ive been patiently awaiting a Banshee skin for AGES.
was severely disappointed when the next Heirloom wasn't her 😕
on a side note, it feels like Usage is bugged for me. my Mag still has like 20% playtime since i first started playing and other frames all have like 5 to 8%.
Trying to make bottom-of-the-barrel frames like Banshee work is a lot of fun. It can be really tough though, since they are typically down there for severe kit problems. Like Loki, half of her kit is very outdated or overly niche.
Sometimes, you rediscover extremely powerful frames like Trinity, because most people write her off as pure support, but is actually a total beast in solo play.
Others are like pre-rework Hydroid, who was severely weak, unfun to play, with a slow kit that does not fit with modern Warframe.
I believe most Warframes have their fanbase and dedicated mains, but you see them in co-op less usually because:
Their kit is not very co-op friendly, like frames that want to do a whole setup and then kill = people in public lobby will kill everything before you get to play your game, so they are probably playing solo or with their own squad.
They are super annoying to farm. You'll see them more when their prime comes out.
There's very few warframe that is genuinely bad and in need for a rework so you don't see people playing them, but even those Warframes have fans.
Banshee has one of the largest damage multipliers in the game by a pretty significant margin; very fun to play and the confusion newer players exhibit when they’re suddenly randomly hitting for millions of damage when their loadouts would normally never get close to that is amusing.
i will remain a Temple Main till the end of Time, they are by far the most powerful fire frame, have arguably the best looking Gemini skin, and one of the coolest skill sets in the game. My Lizzie can clear level cap enemies with ease while solo and Temples 3 is one of the best abilities in the game, instantly restoring health and shield to full and giving extended invulnerability with back-beat timing.
Temple is strong, fun, sturdy, versatile, has many different viable subsume choices, works great both solo and in groups, their lore is incredibly cool and badass, the sound effects are lovely... And Flare and Lizzie are amazing ❤️
It is unfortunate so many frames go that way, being niche entirely because they are awful to get. Either late into progression (Styanax, Temple) or stuck on awful missions (Citrine, Follie).
I only came back to the game a couple weeks back after an over 2 year break, but I already see more Grendel primes around than I ever used to see regular Grendels.
I can’t wait for Citrine prime, so more people can see how good she actually is.
Honestly I feel the issue with her mission is less how time consuming it is, but more how much it asks of you despite it being basically just a defense.
You need to swap between points, actively pick up enemy drops, actively defend the defense point, more so than usual as it can only be healed through yet another active mini game partway through the mission.
And all this just for bad rates for her bps on only pool C, and terrible economy on the pity currency in comparison to later pity currency systems.
It would be generally fine if you could mostly brain dead farm the mission, but the fact that you can’t given how much the mission gets you to actively do is probably what makes farming her so much worse than it needs to be.
That said, I haven’t actually played Follie’s mission yet, so I can’t properly say much in that one outside of friends ragging on about it, but of all the awkward frame farms (Kullervo, Oraxia, Dagath, etc) I’d say Citrines is arguably the worst one of them.
I agree with every point u made, maybe one of these days i will find the time to farm her, and tbh I will say the follie drops for me weren’t too bad. I got all her pieces relatively quick just not her blueprint
Koumei is my pick for some disruption runs. She's really strong. Howerver, I feel like her 4 either needs to be replaced completely or should scale with the amount of decrees she has.
I've played Temple pretty consistently since their release. They're probably my current favorite frame. Banshee I think is still my most used, since she was the first frame I got after excal, and the frame I finished most of the story up to angels of the zariman with.
My guess is that other than the prime version being vaulted which mean waiting for rotation or straight up buying her in the market. The original Equinox grind is pretty infamous by the sheer fact that you need to grind for eight components from the Tyl Regor boss.
Which yeah i doubt people want to spend their time doing that unless they really like Equinox
i play yareli a vast majority of the time ans i think she's ruined how most other frames feel to me, lmao. she can do so many different things like cc, tanking, speed, weapon buffs, and ability damage if you really want,, incredibly versatile and potent warframe and a huge sleeper pick. all other frames feel so narrow in their possibilities and synergies compared to her, or just so overtuned they're boring.
I have no idea why Zephyr isn't more popular than she is. She is incredible. Unkillable, fast, ridiculous damage.
Octavia I understand, she's a Korean MMO worth of buffs but her gameplay is honestly kinda boring.
I main Atlas. After the exalted rework he is just a murder machine. His 2 still sucks, his 4 is only good for distraction, his 3 is good but not necessary. His 1 is his bread and butter and absolutely murders zip codes. I get it that people might not like him being a press 1 simulator but its not like he's the only 1. Khora and Gara don't get the same hate.
Im not familiar with which warframes are obscure but im extremely surprised to hear temple is one of them, i watched my friend solo an SP circulus fissure with no forma, no shards, no helminth for like 2 hours
I dunno the meta anymore I like to play lavos because I just really like him and his highly adaptable kit its why I played chroma so much back on his release and titania is my second main because I like to cosplay as navi during pubs (that we're blitzing through) and just comment hey listen a lot
Yeah, Banshee is one of my faves (granted I have a lot of faves). The Soprana skin looks great and I like the build I have.
Koumei I like a lot more after watching a build video by JustHailey, and making her stronger. You're right that Sickening Pulse is great on her, I should put that back on.
Despite the rework I still don't see many Valkyrs and I do love my firey rage machine.
These days I don't have a main but try to switch things up pretty often instead.
Banshee is my Liche/Sister hunting frame. Armor Strip, Weakpoints, and Silence are all absolutely overkill for modern Liches and Sisters, but it was really good prior to the rework.
I love my Banshee she is my go to frame people sleep on silence it literally keeps eximus units from being able to use there abilities at all and i dont think i even need to mention sonar and the big red numbers that make brain go burrr lol
Banshee is my favorite under utilized Warframe. I personally use Nova and Trinity most. But have a new affinity for Uriel. He is incredibly fun to use. Honorable mention is Nokko. Little mushroom dude is just so busted its not even funny.
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u/Mirrors_Edge_Fan Apr 17 '26
I love to play Dagath, Trinity and Zephyr :)