So with the 1999 update, a lot more people are getting into Warframe and may be a bit... Overwhelmed by everything there is to see and do.
I've played for a long time so I though I'd just make a nice little blog where I can dump advice and useful things.
My name is P.W. I've sunk too many hours into this game, and I know too much.
I'm gonna say right away I'm not a particularly Meta player, my goal has always been to try and make it so I can play whatever I want whenever I want - to squeeze every ounce of 'oomph' from every weapon. And have as much fun as possible with everything.
Asks are open if you've got a specific question you want answering.
I wasn't kidding.
Play Times circa 27th Jan 2025 - its only gonna go up from there.
Beyond the correct-but-unhelpful answer of "all" or "the one you like", there are some really good picks amongst the Coda weapons.
The Dual Coda Torxica are a really excellent pair of pistols, and their effect of inflicting Cold Procs is actually quite unique for its category. Cold procs in general are really powerful for CC and improving Damage, but they're not often the go-to since all of Cold's combos (Magnetic, Viral, and Blast) are really good.
The Coda Mire is a status machine and can use the exclusive Red Veil Toxic Blight mod.
And the Coda Bassocyst is a very cool weapon conceptually but the Mercy Kill Alt Fire is the only one of its kind in the game, buffing the weapon and if you mod your Parazon right, buffs your Warframe too. It also hits very hard but is not especially great for lots of targets since its bass wave isn't super wide and the fire rate isn't quite there.
As for the not-so-greats... Let me be clear, I'm not saying no to these, just low priority, y'know?
I'd say the Coda Pox isn't... Isn't especially interesting, it'll kill stuff sure but it takes time and the AoE isn't especially grand but maybe I'll figure something out with it.
The Coda Pathocyst feels a lil slow and clunky to me without much benefit over other Glaives.
And the Coda Sporothrix probably isn't especially worthwile without the Augment.
So my buddy - @well-seasoned - found their Titania struggling a bit so we sat down and refreshed the build. The idea emerged to start sharing the loadout advice.
So let's start off:
Titania
High mobility, great damage, and a very unique playstyle. The Cons, she's not the toughest, needs sustain, and lacks an inherent armour solution.
I've taken two Green shards for extra Corrosive Stacks, two Tauforged Blues for Armour to hit the armour sweet spot between 500 to 600 armour, and a Red Tauforged for Strength.
I've tried making Crit work, just doesn't feel worth it for me.
I've stacked Shields and Aviator (plus Boreal's and Aerodynamic) for overall survivability, but a Shield Gating build would probably work better (not my thing), and you can tweak it for more health/armour tanking if that's more your jam.
Arcane Pistoleer's a great pick for Titania since it'll give her Dex Pixia infinite ammo when it procs which synergizes nice with Razorwing Blitz.
Arcane Energize is the gold standard for Energy, so if you don't have one, drop Streamline for Fleeting Expertise, and Augur Secrets for Augur Message.
I've Helminth'd in Ophanim for CC & Armour Strip, over Lantern since it feels like a very weak ability, but I also think Terrify & Pillage are solid picks.
Could quite happily swap the aura out for Corrosive Projection for easier armour stripping, Brief Respite for Shield Gating, Combat Discipline for proc'ing Arcane Avenger, or Growing Power.
Dex Pixia
For the Dex Pixia, because they lack access to Arcanes, the build has to be pretty basic, so the principle here is to stack multipliers.
Base Damage (Galvanized Shot)
Elemental (3 Elementals, adjust per faction)
Multishot (Lethal Torrent & Galvanized Diffusion)
Faction Mod (Expel)
Pistol Elementalist
The logic is that stacking just say, more raw damage or more elemental is additive, but adding these other mods is multiplicative.
Diwata
The Diwata is kind of garbage but I have found use for it by stacking corrosive, status, Shattering Impact, Healing Return, and attack speed to make a nice utility item
Weapons
Titania wants to spend most of her time in the Razorwing mode, so the weapons she uses doesn't matter as much but there are some nice options:
Kitguns, either in the Primary or Secondary, add a means of getting extra power strength and efficiency from Pax Bolt
The Grimoire, with most of the Invocations for more Strength (Vome Invocation), Duration (Ris) or Efficiency (Netra) but skip Xata / Energy Regen since it will be turned off during Razorwing.
Explosive Weapons of all kinds are a nice synergy for Titania - her 1st ability when alt-cast gives status immunity, making her immune to the knockdown.
Rakta, Synoid, or any weapons that can use the Blight or Entropy mods, can be a nice extra source of energy.
Pistols that synergise nicely with Pistoleer - most of them - are also a nice pick, but special mention for the Pyrana Prime.
I've gone with the Kuva Tonkor for a nice explosive option, nice to deal with little crowds or loot rooms and the aforementioned Knockback Immunity.
For the secondary, I had the Atomos there for trying it against the H-01, but I think I would actually take the Kitgun for Pax Bolt.
Now the Prisma Dual Cleavers are very specifically there because this is Salt's build, and those are their favourite melee weapons.
Companions
When Titania is in her Razorwing, a pet will disappear into some grey area, as will their Sentinel. This makes pets less overall useful to Titania, but I recommend a Vasca Kavat as they make for an excellent 'extra life' if you get taken out.
Focus
I would say Vazarin, Unairu, and Madurai are all solid choices, mainly because Zenurik and Naramon are not. Zenurik's energy regent will get shut off during Razorwing, and the Power Strength is only 20%. Naramon is too melee and finisher focused, and the Diwata is hot garbage.
So we got the Exalted Rework so I thought I should come back here and make some notes.
TLDR - Its reall good; crits for days
You can now use Crit Damage mods on the Dex Pixia, using Secondary Enervate for Additive Crit Chance. You could also use Arcane Avenger but I prefer Pistoleer & Energize
The Diwata now rocks a lovely crit build via Blood Rush (made all the sweeter by the new Omni Forma). If you notice I've got a rank 9 Blood Rush, this gets me a little closer to exactly 100% crit chance at a full stack of Combo, for a better efficacy with Melee Duplicate. A rank 10 is fine, better in almost all cases.
The Void Trader will return every weekend this month with goods new and old!
Baro is back — and this time he's got an overstock of inventory! To offload these luxury goods, the Void Trader has made the generous decision to swing by every weekend this April. Starting today at the Kronia Relay on Saturn, Baro will visit the Origin System with a new set of inventory every week this month.
If that weren't enough, the magnanimous merchant will be selling brand-new items — such as the Primed Steady Hands and Primed Stabilizer Mods — alongside 3-Day Boosters with his usual assortment of goods. His new bonus weeks will also bring back all Prisma and Ki'Teer items for sale, making this the perfect time to complete your collection!
April 4 at 9 a.m. ET - April 6 at 9 a.m. ET
Special Items:
Baro Ki'Teer Floof
Primed Steady Hands
Entrati Eye Glyph
Heart of Deimos Login Music
BONUS WEEK | April 11 at 9 a.m. ET - April 13 at 9 a.m. ET
Special Items:
All Prisma Customizations and Equipment
3-Day Credit Booster
April 18 at 9 a.m. ET - April 20 at 9 a.m. ET
Special Items:
Inaros Floof
Primed Stabilizer
The Old Blood Login Music
Corpus Glyph
3-Day Resource Booster
BONUS WEEK | April 25 at 9 a.m. ET - April 27 at 9 a.m. ET
Special Items:
All Ki'Teer Customizations and Equipment
3-Day Affinity Booster
Don't forget: you need Ducats to purchase most of Baro's wares! You can acquire this unique currency by claiming Prime parts and blueprints from Void Relics throughout the system. You can then trade in your unwanted Prime components at the kiosk near Baro on any Relay in exchange for Ducats!
... I'm gonna keep it real; I am all for non-meta picks, I am all for modding the weapon so it feels good, and I have been eagerly awaiting new Primed mods to use my pile of Legendary Cores on.
But
I am struggling to think of a use case for Primed recoil mods.
Oh and I also "dug up" my old sahasa kubrow because of your loadout help post. I realized I get way more use out of energy orbs than I did before, now being equipped with Archon shards and the Zenurik way. Thanks for the tip!
I set up Arcane Truculence with my atlas and it works really well!
The slam from the ability syncs with the viral pulse too and it looks really cool.
I forgot that Rumbled even existed despite being an atlas player myself, and it slots into this newly refurbished ability strength build with Archon Intensify nicely cause it gives me a buffer on my damaged health so i get the buff consistantly without dying.
So I was struggling to figure it out and had to keep brute forcing it which felt... Inelegant.
The rounds between the fights with the boys, you need to avoid getting hit by the stage effects
If you get hit three times, you will get a debuff and take double damage
Plus the Codas themselves all hit decently hard, so even without the debuff its a tough fight.
You can't use Operator during the stage effect sections since that would be too cheeasy I guess?
So jump over the floor-fire
Watch the sides for lasers and jump up to avoid.
Mind the speakers, they'll blast in a diagonal criss cross.
Watch for the artillery barrage and keep moving.
But most of all fuck those magnetic sweeping light show bits, cause they don't just come towards you, they go back as well.
The flyers like Titania, Hildryn, Zephyr, and Jade could probably cheese most of the effects vertically but I'd be wary of the magnetic sweeps.
Loathe as I am to suggest brute forcing it, this might be one of those times an unkillable meme Inaros might be useful - stack Health, Armour, Regen, healing, Adaptation, and just faceroll those suckers.
You can't call in a Necramech until the last round, but if you're got a built up Voidrig, turret mode just decimates everything.
Take a Vasca Kavat and Unairu's Last Stand ability for an insurance policy.
I've recently learned that you can spam Atlas's 1 for invulnerability frames which is excellent.
So, I want to preface this in that I don't think its ever been officially confirmed (I could be wrong) but there is a general consensus wisdom about the platinum discounts.
Warframe tracks how often you play, how often you log in, and how often you buy platinum.
The general hypothesis is that Warframe is more likely to give you bigger platinum discounts, the longer you play without buying platinum.
So if you play a little every day, but never buy platinum, you'll probably get the 20%. And if you don't use it, you'll probably get the 50% before too long. And then if you don't use that, that's when you'll get the 75%
I don't know if it takes into account packs like Prime Access or various cash bundles like for the Gemini skins.
I imagine that can come across as a bit... Predatory? But given how good Warframe is most of the time about monetization, I'm not so worried
Start with Health and Armour to stay alive. His 1 is a nice in built healing means.
Pretty much all stats are useful on Lavos, there's not really a clear dump stat so but Range and Duration are your highest priorities. Arguably, you can drop a little strength or efficiency but you couldn't really drop both cause Blind Rage.
Bring the Cedo (Prime if you have it), and a melee weapon with Condition Overload, and you've got the basics.
More detailed thoughts under the cut.
Survival Stats
Lavos Prime's a really good contender for the Umbral Mods, and thankfully we're getting an Umbral Forma on in a few weeks from Nightwave, and there'll be another one in the first week of April.
Until then, I think Archon Vitality and Steel Fiber should do the trick, maybe add Arcane Grace or a Blue-Regen Archon Shard for a little more toughness in Steel Path.
Ability Stats
Like I said before, Lavos doesn't have any especially 'obvious' Dump Stats since all of his stats have some use. To the extent that I would say which stat you use as a 'dump' differs depending on the game mode;
For example, Steel Path Survival, sure, dump Efficiency because there will be way more enemies and you'll need the extra 'oomph'
However, sub level 50~ish enemies? Dump strength, invest more in your Efficiency and Range since you'll not have that many enemies even alive long enough to bring down your cooldowns.
Anything inbetween 50 and 100+? Try a liiiiittle bit of Efficiency.
I'd always have at least Archon Continuity for the Duration and added benefit to any Toxin Procs.
Augments?
Valence Formation is a really solid Augment, offering an unmoddable (meaning even with negative strength, you'll always get the same amount) 200% bonus weapon elemental damage, with guranteed procs. (The duration is moddable). Excellent with Corrosive for Armour Stripping, excellent for Profit Taker, and a nice damage boost all around.
Swift Bite is... Nice but I can't say I would dedicate a mod slot to it as I find I don't use Ophidian Bite as often. Maybe if I dropped armour so I was taking more damage? Maybe for like a specific build if you wanted to play around with this specifically.
(If you figure out some crazy combo with this, do let me know)
Archon Shards?
I've gone with two Greens for extra Corrosive Stacks, a Purple for Ability damage on Electric Procs (but another Green for damage on Corrosive stacks, or an Orange on Radiation would also work just fine), a Red for more Duration, and a Blue for Health Regen.
You'd probably be better off with more Duration / Strength / Ability Damage shards, but I like to be "Dummy Tanky".
Helminth?
Helminth'ing Lavos is a risky business since any ability you overwrite won't be usable for elemental mixing anymore. For example, getting rid of Ophidian Bite means you lose Toxin, which also means you lose Viral, Corrosive, and Gas.
I think I'd probably go with either Catalyze or Vial Rush, if I was Helminth'ing. Catalyze could go for Roar if I'm doing a pure weapons build, for Profit Taker or something? I'd lose Heat which means no Gas, Radiation, or Blast which isn't too bad I guess.
For Vial Rush, I'd probably change it out for something like Sickening Pulse to help stack up Corrosive quicker.
But now, I don't think I'd Helminth Lavos at all, I like the elemental mixing aspect of his abilities.
Weapons?
Well, the Cedo (Prime or otherwise) for starters. In addition to being his signature, its also really quite good.
For a secondary, maybe something like the Lex Prime with Secondary Fortifier.
I'd take a Melee Influence melee weapon, naturally.
Companions?
The Parvos Hounds are quite good, and you can use Manifold Bond and Repo Audit to spread a huge amount of Status Effects in 30m so that's a strong pick, but the Nautilus also works quite well.
Heavy Weapon?
Pick whichever you fancy, but I like the Larkspur Prime.
"Exalted Weapons", "Pseudo Exalteds", and the upcoming changes.
So you might see this word floating around and if you're new to warframe it might be a bit unclear what this means.
Exalted Weapons has become the basically official term for Weapons that are generated as part of Warframe Abilities, named for the Exalted Blade that was added to Excalibur's kit upon his rework many years ago.
They generally follow the model of Strength increasing the damage, and then having a continuous drain (A 'Channelled' ability) affected by Efficiency and Duration. They were later changed to be separately moddable.
Then a bunch of stuff happened, and in March, as part of the Techrot Encore update, there's a lot of changes upcoming to Exalteds.
So I thought - let's get into it.
What Exalted Weapons Are There?
Melee
Baruuk has the "Desert Wind"
Excalibur has the Exalted Blade
Valkyr has Valkyr's Talons
Wukong has the Iron Staff
Titania has the Diwata
Primary
Cyte-09 has The Neutralizer
Ivara has the Artemis Bow
Secondary
Dante has the Noctua
Hildryn has the Balefire Charger
Jade has the Glory
Mesa has the Regulators
Titania has the Dex Pixia
And then there's Sevagoth who has an Exalted... Warframe, with Exalted Claws.
Also the Voidrig and Bonewidow Necramechs have an Exalted Archgun and Exalted Sword, respectively.
What are Pseudo Exalteds?
Pseudo Exalteds are Abilities that use stats from a relevant weapon, they're all "Melee Abilities". These abilities have a 'pseudo' weapon, with its own stats that we can't see but the community has figured out what the stats are through data mining and experimentation.
So this encourages people to build a melee weapon with stats that will benefit that ability; Atlas's Landslide ability deals pure Impact damage but has no crit chance, so on the melee weapon putting crit mods is a waste but Impact damage mods are much more useful. There's a whole Meta around combo stacking, raw damage, so on and so forth. I've never been particularly fond of this cause it often makes the melee weapon not useful.
However, that'll soon be changed.
What are the Upcoming Changes?
So in March, we'll be getting an update where this will all be changing quite a bit:
Pseudo Exalteds will be separately moddable. This has been on the To Do list for a long time, but it's been delays because the Developers and Players realised that changing it to be separately moddable, would actually greatly reduce the damage ceiling - the Min Maxers have worked out ways to take Pseudo Exalteds to such high levels that the change would make it much less powerful (but overall more accessible). They are planning to tell us more later in the DevStream and a Developer Workshop, but they have apparently found a way to make the damage comparable.
Pseudo Exalteds, and Exalted Weapons, will be able to Equip Arcanes. This is huge because we've been denied this since Arcanes for Weapons became commonplace, on the grounds that Exalted Weapons are already really powerful but this will elevate them to a whole new level.
So Primary Exalteds will get Primary Arcanes. So on so forth.
I'm a big fan of this because it means more options in builds, a huge step up in power, and I've desperately wanted Pseudos to be separately moddable for a long time because I'm not huge on the Min Maxed builds.
Apologies if this somehow lands in the Arcane tag. Anway. Today I found a fun way to use Truculence and I thought I'd share some thoughts on how it can be used.
Arcane Truculence works simply, its application is a bit more complex. So essentially every time you gain 3000 overguard, you make a radial attack (maximum 30m, unmoddable) that applies max Viral to all enemies.
Which is a 325% multiplier. Holy shit I didn't know it was that high, I thought it was only 100%
Anyway.
So naturally, its good on Warframes that are equipped to get themselves some Overguard:
Rhino - Iron Skin generates Overguard, using his Armour and Power Strength plus the amount of damage he takes upon casting (3 second window) so that's not too difficult to get a 3000 overguard... But! If you get the Reinforcing Stomp Augment, you restore 4% of this overguard by using Stomp. Meaning you can keep reapplying the viral so long as you keep taking damage.
Once we get the Exalted rework from Techrot Oncore update in March, Exalted weapons will be able to use Arcanes - this means Mesa, Hildryn, Titania, and Jade will be able to use Secondary Fortifier which will not only massively benefit their damage against Eximus units, but also help with their survivability.
Dante and Kullervo both have abilities that give them Overguard, so... Yeah?
Ember, Styanax, Frost, and Atlas have augments that add Overguard into some of their abilities. Special mention to Atlas however, since Rumbled can be turned off at will, and activated at will with no concerns about how many enemies are around. Ember can make extra good use of Truculence since the viral stacks will synergise with her heat - making her one of the best Warframes for fighting the Infested.
What Arcanes should I buy from Belly of the Beast?
Arcane Energize, first and foremost. I realise that's a cold take amongst cold takes, but seriously.
Arcane Energize is such an abundant supply of energy and its one of the few ways to get energy back while using a Channeled ability, and almost every Warframe benefits from Energize (Except Lavos and Hildryn)
Other honorable mentions go to Arcane Guardian, Arcane Avenger, Arcane Grace, and Arcane Nullifier
So we got an update last night with a BUNCH of stuff
New Nightwave season, Belly of The Beast, Stardays.
What should you focus on?
Firstly, grinding away at Belly Of The Beast is likely to be the most beneficial in terms of gameplay because you'll get Arcanes both from the Event itself, but also from Ordis in Larunda Relay. Plus Star Days will last a little longer, Nightwave you have plenty of time on, so this is where I would focus on.
However, its the same mission, over and over again, and it is not the 'loot cave' it was the first time around. If you desperately crave Arcanes, by all means, but just make sure to change it up again by running the Alerts that pop up.
Nightwave is pretty easy to tackle, most of it can be accomplished by just playing whatever you want, and the rest is usually a 'two birds, one stone' situation. The big one will be doing Eidolon Hunt, which isn't too tough.
Stardays is really nice, you can trade Fortuna resources for Debt Bonds and buy the stuff you want - so long as you have the resources to spare. If not, then you might need to do some Bounties
Right about the time Warframe introduced the Steel Path, we got a series of new Arcanes for Primaries and Secondaries, the means to unlock them, and also the Galvanized mods.
These were overall an increase in power but with the caveat that they were weaker at the start, but gained power the more we used them.
New opportunities opened up but that doesn't mean these weapons are always the right call.
Let's start with something simple - Galvanized Multishot mods like Chamber and Diffused.
Are these always the right choice over Split Chamber and Barrel Diffusion?
And the general thing to ask is "am I killing enemies? Or hurting them?" So you might be fighting a boss like The Fragmented One, the H-09, or what have you. You aren't necessarily getting many kills, and stopping to get them might not be worth the loss of DPS against the boss.
You might not be using the weapon, using a different one.
So I'd always recommend planning. Know which bits of your equipment are doing what jobs.
A primer doesn't need conditionals, cause you're not getting kills with it.
If you're using an Exalted weapon, or a 'mode' like Titania, you're not using your main weapons for damage.
There are of course some specific cases I want to point out:
Primary Plated Round is conditional, but is activated by Reloading rather than scoring a kill which is much easier to do when dealing with say, a Boss, but might not always be more powerful
Primary Crux only requires you to land a Weak Point (headshot) Hit to activate the effect
Secondary Encumber, Cascadia Empowered and Secondary Fortifier act more like passives, requiring no kill or condition to effect.
I also want to mention Snapshotting briefly - this is especially important for Warframe abilities; if you have any stat increases, such as to Strength, Efficiency, or Armor - these are 'saved' at the time of the Casting, and do not change for the duration of the ability. If you gain an armour buff, then cast Iron Skin, it will use the buffed Armour. If you then gain even more armour however, this won't be reflected.
This also applies to DoT status effects but that's a more complicated conversation.
It's a wonderful time - a new Prime is on the Horizon (as well as an exciting new update). Lavos Prime, with his Cedo Prime and the Dual Zoren Prime. All excellent additions to the collection.
So you wanna get yourself the new hotness nice and easy?
Well its all in the prep work.
So presuming you're not spending money on the Prime Access - no shame there by the way, if you got more money than time, do what feels right.
The name of the game is Syndicates.
These six. With a bit of management you can juggle four, and much more easily three - Red Veil, Loka and Perrin OR Suda, Arbiters and Steel Meridian.
An in essence, your goal is to load up as much Standing as you can. If my case here, I'm gonna load up on New Loka, then Red Veil, and I'll have a nice standing stockpile ready to buy the Relic packs.
Additionally, if you do the Syndicate Missions, make sure to find and stockpile the Medallions - little collectables hidden in the mission that can be traded for Standing. They don't count towards that daily cap.
Then once Lavos Prime opens up, I just need to buy all the relics I can.
You'll also want to stock up on Void Traces for Radiant'ing the rare relics.
And of course, always work on Mastery Rank to increase your caps.
Be sure to colour your Volt red to get a 69% Speed Multiplier, as we all know - the red ones go faster. (this is a joke)
Redirection should be your first priority, it'll be the best source of 'not dying' early on in the game. (this is the actual advice, from here on)
For your Ability stats, your priority is Duration, then Strength. Try and keep Range and Efficiency at base. Continuity, Intensify, Augur Message, and Augur Secrets - any combination thereof.
Duration will benefit your Shield and your Speed, which are mainstays of Volt's kit.
You're using Shock to stun enemies for a lil Crowd Control, you're keeping your Speed up for the extra melee attack speed and movement, use your Electric Shield to cover yourself and buff your damage with guns, and Overload as the big damage/crowd control.
I wouldn't invest much more than a Reactor and maybe two Forma - tops - until you get Volt Prime. He's one of more accessible Primes by virtue of Baro Ki'teer selling his relics from time to time. Volt Prime gets a touch more armour, and one of the biggest base energy tanks in the game.
If you can get a hold of Energy Nexus through trading, that'll be very nice to have for your energy needs early on in the game. Pair with Flow for a bigger energy tank.
Once you get access to Augment mods, pretty much any of them are really nice to have but I'd generally say only use one per build, probably Shock Trooper.
Obviously upgrade to Primed Mods once you've got them, and ranked them up to at least match the regular versions. Primed Continuity, Primed Flow, Umbral Intensify.
You'll want to eventually start running the Deimos Derelict Missions for Orokin Vault mods like Transient Fortitude, Blind Rage, Fleeting Expertise, and Overextended to start opening up more specialised builds - high range high strength builds for using his 4 in Sanctuary Onslaught, high strength high duration for going very fast for a long time, or all in on Duration for his shields when Eidolon hunting. Stuff like that
As you start getting into higher level missions, I might suggest adding Adaptation to add Damage Resistance to your Shields, or Quick Thinking as a safety net if you catch a stray shot or twelve from behind your shield.
Maybe a few Archon Shards for extra Strength, Duration, maybe some Armour.
For his weapons, make sure to pack lots of Crit on his guns - his shield adds a 100% Crit multiplier that is separate to the weapons own Critical Damage. Number Go Up.
I like a high speed status melee with Healing Return, since with Volt's Speed, you can rapidly gain back and health, and with Condition Overload you can get some very nice damage numbers.
