Topic: Warframe

Primed Sure Footed obtained. I reached the 900th log-in reward the other day, the reward for which is primed sure footed. One of the overpowered frame mods that leads into Warframe's meta, which is dominated by AoE weapons. Kuva Bramma and Kuva Zarr are two of the most popular weapons in game due to their ability to one-shot or two-tap a wide swath of mobs, with the only drawback back being the stagger users of those weapons experience if they're too close to the explosion.

PSF provides 100% protection against stagger, allowing you to run'n'gun most mission types.

The ability to blitz through missions, carpet bombing the whole way through, is seductive.

Bored, just rambling.

PSF also lets me pursue my latest loadout for general play (until power creep changes the meta again). Sporelacers for my primary and my secondary, along with an ooltha for my melee weapon. None of which would be considered top tier in the meta, but I like how these weapons play. And when combined with a 100% armor strip-Trinity...handle steel path well enough. Now I have to go through the painstaking process of putting a d-polarity on the exilus slot for all the frames in my rotation.

I love these zaws and kitguns. The ability to name my weapon allows me to conduct a wonderful play on words. Anyone who glances at my loadout while mid-mission with me might blush or chuckle, depending on their sense of humor.

Anywho, getting back to the official stat page I listed above. I'm surprised the Sporelacer primary doesn't rate higher. Granted, the Sporelacer causes stagger like the Bramma since it's a shotgun that requires you to be at close range with the enemy. But to see its usage at 0.14% seems criminally low.

I'd rate its time-to-kill and damage-per-second to be better than most of the weapons listed above it.

Hmm, those incoming eximus unit changes though. As a veteran with 3,800+ hours in the game, I assume these changes won't present much of a challenge. More like...an annoyance. From my perspective, DE have continually dialed back player power in terms of frame abilities while keeping a consistent power creep through weaponry. DE insist the scaling for the new eximus units will be measure and scaled, but I can't help but feel this will present more of a challenge for newer players and be little more than speedbumps for veterans.

Meh, regardless, we won't know until the changes go live.

Feels bad for those players who haven't complete the steel path star chart.

And all those frames that depend on Gloom for survival in high level content just made its use...useless.

Well, the new Zariman hub and its bounties sure are a sobering experience. These are missions that require you to flip-flop between your frame and your operator regularly. Unfortunately my operator, amp, and focus school progress are not great. Looks as though I can't put off working on those aspects of the game anymore if I expect to contribute anything to playing in a squad going forward.

To my surprise Harrow + Fire Blast has quickly become my favorite combination for low-level defense relic grinding. Basically infinite energy regeneration while locking down a tileset with spam AoE knockdowns and DoTs. And if my squadmates decide to run with a Spova (Nova + Overextended to increase enemy movement by 60% but take double damage) it's even quicker. Now I just need to find that sweet spot within the build between power strength and efficiency.

The top two frames that need a rework are Banshee and Nyx. Both of their fourth abilities keep you rooted to one place. Abilities that are serviceable for newer players to the game, to help you through the star chart. But once you reach the mid-game and the grind sets in, WF suddenly becomes a game about blitzing through missions, being mobile and minimizing your time-to-kill (the best defense is a good offense).

Not a tier list, not a top-ten best frames list, just my personal rotation of frames for certain mission types.

Trinity + Infested Mobility - my main for open world and every mission type not listed below
Gara + Dispensary - high-level defense / excavation
Harrow + Fire Blast - low-level defense
Nekros + Gloom - survival / material farm
Equinox + Empower - low-level exterminate
Nova + Dispensary - interception
Saryn + Dispensary - sanctuary onslaught
Titania + Golden Instinct - capture & Maroo's weekly mission
Inaros + Gloom - hijack & mobile defense
Loki + Rest & Rage - Lich & Sister vanquish cheese

So far I'm a fan of the focus school rework. Previously, most players ran either Zenurik for energy economy, Naramon for melee, or Madurai for hunting eidolons. But now we have Unairu with resurrection way-bounds (passives that can apply to most every frame regardless of the school currently active) and operator abilities that strip 100% shields and armor. Basically...there's no point in running 100% armor strip on my Trinity anymore.

Nice.

Although, I'm not enthusiastic about the prospect of grinding out the millions of focus points necessary to cap each school. Unairu alone will require 10.5m focus points to top off. And considering the daily cap for focus grinding is 350k...this will take some time. Never minding the fact this is just one of five schools.

I'm closing in on catching up to the current content. My holdfast standing is capped. I'm half a dozen pinions away from building all the new weapons. And after that I'll be about half a dozen gear items away from legendary rank two.

The new Zariman tileset and missions types have given me an excuse to dust Nyx off and run her against angels. Her second ability, psychic bolts, is the most potent enemy debuff in the game outside of the operator abilities from the Unairu school. And is quite easy to maximize with just a maxed out intensify mod equipped.

Wake the angel, pop assimilate for protection, pop psychic bolts to pull the angel's defenses down, melt the angel with weapons, repeat. It should take less than an hour to get the remaining pinions I need. Nyx shall enjoy her moment in the sun before being placed back on shelf. For who knows when or if I'll ever use her again?

So my concerted effort on the focus school grind began over the weekend. It wasn't too terrible while the global affinity boost was live. But now the gravy train is over, and I have to come to terms with the time investment it'll take to get all five schools capped.

All five schools, a combined 52.5 million focus points will be required. The daily cap for focus point gain as a rank legendary one player is 405k. So...130 days of effort, give or take. It'll probably take me much less than that considering I have millions of points that carried over from the previous version of the focus school. But the game doesn't give me a good indication of how much progress has been made.

Anywho, with a lua lens equipped on my Saryn, one run of sanctuary onslaught nets me roughly 90k. One run of SO takes about twenty minutes. So...a time investment of an hour and a half a day. 130 days minus whatever progress had been previously made = 200 hours...minus.

So I built myself a new melee weapon yesterday. The previous iteration of this weapon felt...inadequate.

Ooltha
Peye
Vargeet II Jai

I'm a huge fan of the Swooping Falcon stance for the sword weapon type. Fast, shoulder-high swings that have an above average tendency to land headshots. For example, in a sanctuary onslaught run where I only used this melee weapon I killed 136. Of those 136, 37 were headshots. The mods...are no surprise, they're the usual suspects for your typical non-stat-stick non-heavy-attack build.

Sacrificial Steel
Sacrificial Pressure
Condition Overload
Primed Fury
Primed Reach
Blood Rush
Organ Shatter
Riven

It's your basic build for damage that isn't faction-specific. DE haven't changed Warframe's overall damage system and/or mod system much in the game's nine years. The same mods are used on most melee weapons with a critical chance of 20% or higher so that the blood rush mod can take you across 100% crit chance for guaranteed yellow crits.

But with the zaw components I listed, my weapon's base crit chance is 32%. When combined with Sacrificial Steel and Sacrificial Pressure, automatically starts my crit chance at 120%. Blood rush could potentially add another 140% crit chance (if my combo meter reaches the max of 12x), for a total of 260% crit chance.

Guaranteed orange crits with a 60% chance of red crits. On a weapon with a base 6.5x crit damage multiplier (or 26x crit damage with a red crit) and a reach of 7.44m. Both thanks to the riven on this weapon. Although...to be honest the rolls on this riven are trash. This weapon could be better if I were to ever get a "g roll" on it.

Anywho, not bad for a box breaker.

For a while now the Kuva Nukor had been the WF community's favorite secondary.

Well, it seems the Zariman update gave us a new meta.

So yesterday I managed to unlock all of my way-bounds. Which means I'm roughly 17m through the 52.5m grind. I have a lua vazarin lens on my Saryn and unairu lenses of varying sizes on the rest of my gear. As a Trinity main and Harrow first-alt, I'm eager to top off Vazarin first. The increase in affinity share range from 50 meters at base to 75 meters will help with certain frame abilities.

The march towards profile legendary rank two is nearing its end. 668/673 gear items acquired and leveled. All that remain are the cortege and morgha (which just came out of the foundry this morning), the hespar (which I've had zero luck getting parts for even after several runs), the vitrica (which is a limited access reward; I have to wait for keys to become available through nightwave), and the shedu.

The shedu, I'm saving the worst grind for last. It has four components, each with a 1% drop rate from a tileset of 20 randomly spawning enemies. And of those 20 enemies, there's no guarantee the one I need to spawn...will spawn. In addition to that, if parts do happen to drop, there's no security against doubles.

Nothing says "fun" like needing a barrel, receiver, and handle...only to have a second chassis drop.

Tick tock tick tock. Tennocon is less than a month away. Expectations from the community are high. The assumption is that this will be the introduction of another content island. And usually new, substantial mechanics are introduced alongside the addition of content islands.

I'm eager to see what potential power creep weapons will be introduced.

Although it'll be difficult for any new weapons to retire my Zarr, my Laetum, or my Ooltha.

I've maxed out the Vazarin school. One down, four to go. I find myself attempting to get a feel for other frames besides Saryn who would be good to run sanctuary onslaught in order to grind out the other schools. I don't want to waste the Lua Vazarin lens currently equipped on Saryn by replacing it with another.

Bomb-Mirage is quite good. Volt is a good option as well. But I'm eager to see how well a Garuda equipped with breach surge might perform. On paper it seems like a match made in heaven.

Lua's Prey update goes live on November 30th.

The introduction of the werewolf frame, Voruna.

And on a side note, the changes to ammo drop frequency and nerf to AoE weapons has made me shelve the Kuva Zarr in favor of a Catchmoon primary. It melts sub-level 90 enemies well enough, which is a majority of the content I play anyhow. Besides, the Laetum is still there to handle steel path content.

I played around with the Nataruk for a bit. Sure it's the best bow, but I've never been a fan of charge weapons, no matter how short the charge time is.

https://forums.warframe.com/topic/1330771-warframes-next-upda...

In lieu of the changes to ammo drops I've been using various primaries in search of a long term replacement for the Kuva Zarr. I was enamored with the Catchmoon for the past couple weeks, but the fact that it's a railgun with some harsh recoil that gives me a bit of motion sickness is a turn off. But the fact that kitguns can be modded for infinite ammo economy still makes them very attractive.

Enter...the Vermisplicer. I had no idea what I was missing out on.

If you love you some tentacle hentai, then my friend this is your weapon. It's a beam weapon that extends a tentacle-like member that tickles your target to death, along with a few other enemies at the same time as long as they're within 6m of your initial target. You could take the easy route and name the weapon the "ten-tickle", but that's a little too on the nose. I simply opted to name this beauty "bad touch".

The build really isn't complicated: Pax Charge + Primary Merciless

Components: Vermisplicer + Brash + Splat (Brash gives you 30m of range on your beam; 2m more than Tremor + Sinister Reach, using the Brash is worth giving up 15% base damage.)

Rime Rounds
Hunter Munitions
Galvanized Chamber
Critical Delay
Vital Sense
Vigilante Fervor
Vigilante Armaments
Riven (crit chance / crit damage / multishot)
Vigilante Supplies

Build Theory
Status chance takes a backseat to a crit build because with the Vermisplicer's rate of fire (10), you'll be laying status procs down in quick succession regardless of status chance. In addition, since galvanized aptitude doesn't work on the secondary tentacle extensions, you might as well lean into the vigilante mod set for the 15% chance to upgrade orange crits into red crits. Or an even higher percentage depending on the frame you main.

Although it takes a few seconds for primary merciless to build stacks on steel path, once those stacks are built up you'll be melting rows of sp enemies in a few seconds.

I would like to take this weapon to the next level by getting cold on my riven (rather than multishot) so that I would be allowed to slot Hammer Shot rather than Rime Rounds, but I'm usually not that lucky with my rolls.

Hmm, the vermisplicer's damage flatlines against corpus units and eximus units on steel path. I'm going to put Xata's Whisper on my Trinity and see if that helps. If that doesn't improve my ttk against those enemies I'll have to consider using a cold / gas combo instead of straight viral. I would have to swap out hunter munitions in favor of thermite rounds. The increase to status chance would be nice but losing the forced slash procs wouldn't.

Lots of testing to be done over Thanksgiving break.

A devstream is scheduled for today ahead of the Lua's Prey update going live on Wednesday. I haven't watched a devstream in four years, but the Voruna frame has me hyped. I'm partial to werewolf and vampire inspired lore and entertainment in general. At the same time, I wonder if DE are going to announce the next prime access for the middle of December?

The hype for Baruuk Prime or Grendel Prime is real.

Both amazing frames that are...less than fun to get.

https://forums.warframe.com/topic/1331719-coming-soon-devstre...