#build- frame

[in-case-of-grace-in-space]

BUILD: Dry Eye Yareli

Yareli is one of those frames I absolutely did not vibe with on release. This was largely due to the circumstances she came out in, I think, and I needed some space from both the disappointing state she'd started in and the frustrating quest she was locked behind before I could give her a proper try.

Now, years later, her prime gave me that opportunity. And this time? She clicked! I'll preface that this is a build suited to my tastes, it's Elite Archimedea ready, but not minmaxed to level cap. The point here is to strike a balance between something strong, something survivable, and something I find fun. Another benefit is that this is a 0 forma build!

This build's particular focus is on comfort and buffing secondaries.

THE BUILD

Roles: Weapons platform (secondary), CC. Position: Mobile. Survival: Tank, shield gate, ability. Sustain: Third party. (i.e. companions, Zenurik, squadmates)

A key component here was one of the augments Yareli received since I last played her: Loyal Merulina.

As much as I enjoy frames with unique movement mechanics, I do still unfortunately find Yareli's built-in k-drive to be clunky in a majority of content. I think that's just down to it being in the wrong place, for me. The k-drive was designed for open worlds, but most of Warframe is in tighter corridors— so playing Yareli can often turn into a How Many Times Can I Bump Into This Wall simulator. I do still appreciate the experiment in that design, though.

For folk who don't enjoy playing Tony Sawgaw's Pro Skater, this augment covers that pain point by turning Merulina into a support summon. It still absorbs damage in our place (greatly increasing our survivability), and it attacks enemies with its own version of Yareli's Sea Snares while doing so! What's more, these stack multiplicatively with your own. This lets us double dip the vulnerability debuff!

This is the Dry element of the build's title. (I am aware that this is a misnomer, since the rest of her abilities are still water themed, but that just makes it funnier.)

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The other big element, the Eyes, is my subsume choice: Jade's Ophanim Eyes, replacing Aquablades. Now, I do actually quite enjoy Aquablades— I think they're really cool! But, my build leans more into buffing secondary weapons, which means my Yareli is typically too far away from enemies for Aquablades to do much. Aquablades are her Helminth ability anyway, so I do get to enjoy them on other frames, still. (I have a Grendel Aquablades build that's one of my favorites!)

Ophanim Eyes does a few things for Yareli, here. 1- It strips armor and shields, further increasing the damage our secondaries can do. 2- It slows enemies, giving us some CC. 3- Once armor is stripped, it proc heat status on enemies, allowing our secondaries to get use out of topaz archon shards, and synergize with Cascadia Flare. Point 3 here should be treated more like a bonus rather than as an essential aspect of the build, given, again, that the heat procs only apply once your target's armor is stripped— typically, you'll probably kill them before then, since it takes ~10s to melt them.

But sometimes? You're gonna get some extra spice, and you'll probably max out the topaz shard crit chance in endurance runs.

It also acts as a flashlight, which she needs, because the ocean is quite dark.

I am aware that if I truly wanted to boost my secondaries as much as possible, Roar is mathematically better— but I'm simply bored of using it on every build. Yareli, as a Warframe, is all about fun, after all, so I felt it was more in the spirit of things to try something new!

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SURVIVABILITY

For survivability, there are 3 layers that make this build functionally immortal:

1- Merulina. Since Merulina gives Yareli 90% DR, and an on-demand invuln period when recast, it's always going to be our #1. That second part is extremely important to keep in mind, especially in harder content. Whenever we double-tap 2, we get a comfortable 4s of invuln!

2- Shield gating. Augur Message and Augur Reach give us shields on ability cast, as well as overshields. Primed Redirection increases our shield gate invuln period to a comfortable 2.5s. Arcane Aegis also helps keep our shields replenished without active babysitting.

Primed Redirection may be a slot I play around with in the future, as it is admittedly a little overkill. Fast Deflection would serve a similar purpose, or I could pop in...well, anything else, really. Maybe more strength?

3- Adaptation. Merulina gives us 90% DR, which enables Adaptation to multiplicatively scale us up to 99.9% DR when it gets ramped up. Mind that you have to actually get hit for that to stack, first, though.

Overall, this gives me a mostly hands-off survival setup. Yareli wants to cast abilities constantly, so between the Augurs and Aegis, shields should be up most of the time. Merulina's DR + Adaptation help those stick for longer, too.

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OTHER BITS

Fleeting Expertise reduces the time between Loyal Merulina's Sea Snare casts, which, yes, is affected by efficiency and not duration. This also has the benefit of aiding our energy economy, since Yareli wants to cast abilities quite often.

For the rest of the mods, I spread focus between strength (Umbral Intensify, Growing Power) to boost our Sea Snare's debuff, and duration (Primed Continuity, Augur Message) to offset Fleeting Expertise's drain + give a little extra.

The arcane Molt Augmented further boosts our strength, without taking up a mod slot, bringing us to ~204% strength when fully ramped. Strength is extremely useful here as it boosts

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SHARDS

For my archon shards, I've got...

1x Amber cast speed

1x Crimson secondary crit chance

1x Topaz secondary crit chance on heat status affected kill

I'm still hoarding a lot of my shards and avoiding filling all 5 slots on frames that aren't Favorites or who don't particularly benefit. Yareli does a lot at once, and doesn't really have glaring gaps that shards can fill. Aside from cast speed, but every frame wants that. Eventually, I'll likely fill her remaining slots with crimson ability strength or more topaz/crimson crit chances.

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PLAYSTYLE

Notation (see pinned): Focus secondary. K2 > K3 > 4 > S1 | 2 DOUBLE TAP for panic iframes. Verbose:

Yareli's passive grants 200% crit chance to your secondary as long as you've been moving for the past 1.5s. The crimson + topaz shards also buff this. As far as we're concerned, there is no such thing as a primary or melee weapon. Only secondaries exist in this wet, wet world.

Merulina is your lifeline, keep it alive and active. Uncast and recast it (double tap) to gain 4s iframes on demand.

Ophanim Eyes is low maintenance armor strip + heat priming. Keep active.

Riptide groups enemies together for CC + easier shooting. It'll also suck in any nearby Sea Snares while active, so put it down often!

Spam Sea Snares as much as you like. It's frequent CC + damage vulnerability debuffing, like. It's the main benefit to playing Yareli.

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OPTIONS

Any primed mods could be swapped with their regular counterparts for budget builds.

If you do want to ride Merulina, Merulina Guardian can replace Loyal Merulina. This also gives extra buffs to your secondary! It may be worth replacing Fleeting Expertise with Flow or Equilibrium, since you no longer need to reduce Loyal's cooldown.

Primed Redirection could be replaced with Fast Deflection, or really anything of your choosing, based on what stats you'd like to shore up.

Instead of Ophanim Eyes, you could use Roar, Nourish, or Xata's Whisper for your subsume— Roar will be the strongest option of all these.

If you feel comfortable with your survivability, Arcane Aegis could be swapped out with Arcane Velocity to further boost your secondary. I may play with this, myself.

Exilus slot can go to Power Drift or Primed Sure Footed. (You'll need forma for this, though.)

Adaptation could be swapped with a defense mod of your choice, like Rolling Guard.

Shards aside from the cast speed are really just to taste.

I have an Aquablades build too I just don't find it fun. Here's that:

I don't want to go into detail on this one (hence it being a footnote here). Just keep Aquablades active, spam em to stack Surging Blades' boost. You can replace Loyal Merulina w/ Power Drift to stack more strength, if you'd like.

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SCORING

Fun: B+ I find Yareli fairly fun, and largely lifted (for me) by the way she acts as a weapons platform while playing like a caster. Her presentation does a lot for me, too. The sound design is fantastic, and the aesthetics of her design and abilities are delightful!

She's getting a rare B+ fun score as I'm not sure whether or not I totally like her. I've had fun with her so far, but I also don't think she'd be one of my top picks in a lineup of other frames. There's a chance she may climb up in time, though.

Performance: B Yareli is more than capable of tackling high level content, she's pretty broadly useful, but most of what she can do is done better by other frames. I'd play her to play her.

The fact that Merulina is still unfit for most tilesets does unfortunately drag her down a bit, especially given that she is supposed to be the k-drive frame...yet that k-drive is her weakest component.

[in-case-of-grace-in-space]

BUILD: Portable Protea

Once again, I'm revisiting a frame I didn't super love at release— and finding a good bit of enjoyment in them after several years of hotfixes and augments. I think Protea is quite likely to be a frame I play a fair amount of now!

This is a build suited to my tastes, it's Elite Archimedea ready, but not minmaxed to level cap. The point here is to strike a balance between something strong, something survivable, and something I find fun.

This build's particular focus is on comfortable use of Protea's Blaze Artillery, and costs 3 forma.

THE BUILD

Roles: Attack, Support. Position: Mobile. Survival: Shield gate (via ability), ability. Sustain: Self.

This build heavily utilizes two of Protea's augments: Temporal Erosion, and Temporal Artillery. Both require her fourth ability, Temporal Anchor, to be active— so I'll note upfront (and will repeat later in the Playstyle section) that inverting Protea's press/hold keybinds is strongly recommended. This way, you can cancel Temporal Anchor right before it rewinds you by simply tapping.

Temporal Erosion is key for Blaze Artillery's damage, while Temporal Artillery is more of a comfort/cool pick. Normally, Blaze Artillery is cast on a fixed spot and only lasts for a couple seconds— single digits even on a duration heavy build. So, you need to spam it in order to retain your offense, especially in mobile mission types like exterminate.

I don't love that playstyle, but Temporal Artillery easily creates something I find much more enjoyable. With this augment, whenever you cast Temporal Anchor, one of your Blaze Artillery turrets will stick to your side and remain for the entire duration of Temporal Anchor. This means that we get a turret that is both mobile, and long lasting.

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It is also important to note Archon Vitality's use here, as this greatly increases the damage of Blaze Artillery, even if Protea does not personally benefit from the increased health. This mod could be used unranked, as the important part is its secondary effect: doubling Blaze Artillery's Heat status application.

Heat status can stack infinitely, as applying a new stack refreshes all older stacks, thus increasing that damage the more stacks you apply. If you're utilizing Heat inherit, then this can get even crazier. The simple version of Heat inherit is that all Heat stacks are calculated off the damage of the first applied Heat status. So, if you use a heavy hitting weapon to apply the first stack, then use something weaker but faster at applying status for the rest, all of those secondary stacks do as much damage as the first.

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SURVIVABILITY

There are 2 survival layers that make Protea quite hard to kill:

1- Shield gating (via Grenade fan). Protea's first ability can toss shield drones that, once touched, nigh-instantly charge her shields. If her shields are lost, then the drone is destroyed and you gain double her typical shield gate for a total of 3.4s on this build, long enough to recast Grenade Fan and regain your shields.

It is extremely important to suggest that you do not use Brief Respite or Augur Mods on Protea. Instead of Grenade Fan rapidly refilling her shields, casting the ability will grant tiny shields from BR/Augur and cancel your shield gate early. It's possible that you may not have long enough to recast Grenade Fan before this shortened gate is over, therefore catching you in a panicked survival loop, or leading to your death.

This does mean that teammates using Brief Respite can similarly cut your gate in half, as the effect is applied to the whole squad. I do hope this is addressed some day.

2- Temporal Anchor. If you die while Temporal Anchor is active (and it should always be active), it will immediately undo the death and rewind you, before shutting off.

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OTHER BITS

Equilibrium is important for sustain, here, as it allows Protea to gain energy from the empowered health orbs dropped by Dispensary— or to work with whatever third party methods (i.e. companions) you've got for orb generation.

For the rest of the mods, I spread focus between Duration (Primed Continuity, Narrow Minded) and Strength (Growing Power, Coaction Drift, Umbral Intensify), with Stretch to somewhat offset the negative range from Narrow Minded.

Arcane Concentration further boosts our duration, while Molt Augmented stacks more strength over time.

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SHARDS

2x Amber casting speed

3x Crimson duration

The Ambers are very very helpful for ensuring that you can regain your shields via Grenade Fan quickly, while the Crimsons are more for comfort.

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PLAYSTYLE

Inverting Protea's press/hold keybinds is strongly recommended. These are inverted on this build, so this section is written with that in mind. Notation (see pinned): K3 > K1 > H1 > 2 > K4 > (SH1 / S2) >> 4 | CANCEL 4 before end, recast.

Verbose:

Keep Dispensary active for energy. Recast near you if you're in a mobile mission.

Inverted keybinds allows tapping Grenade Fan to cast the essential shield drones, make sure to pick one up and keep one on you at all times. When your shields are down, you should have just enough time to regain a drone.

Grenade Fans' Shrapnel Vortex is still useful for some damage + mass armor stripping via Temporal Erosion, so hold your first ability to cast these next.

With Protea's passive, every 4th ability cast gets an extra 100% strength, so here we cast our first Blaze Artillery, allowing it to build up its +100% damage-per-hit multiplier a little, too.

With the stage set, activate Temporal Anchor to glue our boosted Blaze Artillery to yourself, and everything that gets near you will Simply Die. Make sure to keep an eye on TA's countdown, and simply tap the ability again right before it runs out to avoid the rewind.

While TA is active, spam Blaze Artillery and Shrapnel Vortex to your content. While the glued turret gets its per-hit damage multiplier capped at 20x, you can still cast stationery turrets that don't have their multipliers capped (aside from their time limit, at least.), so they will still do a ton of damage that also increases with enemy density and health pools (more hits = more damage.)

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OPTIONS

Any primed or umbral mods could be swapped with their regular counterparts for budget builds.

Archon Vitality can be unranked, but if you can't get your hands on it, you can replace it with Power Drift or Constitution depending on whether you'd like more strength or duration.

Equilibrium could be replaced with Constitution (same polarity), as long as you've got purple shards to replace the energy effect, or a third party sustain tool.

Molt Augmented could be replaced with Molt Efficiency for extra duration.

Exilus slot could be replaced to taste, I just used Coaction Drift to double dip on Growing Power. It's ultimately a pretty small bonus, and not essential to the build. Power Drift should be stronger, but will cost an extra forma. I'm just cheap :)

I've got a Roar build too which subsumes over Temporal Anchor, if you want to really focus on raw damage. This does mean neither augment is usable, and I find it much less fun— but from my testing it is ~20-30% stronger than the augment build. Just make sure that Roar is always boosted as a 4th ability cast.

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SCORING

Fun: A I really enjoy this build! Temporal Artillery really opened me up to Protea, having a glued turret just feels really fun. It's kind of similar to Xaku's Grasp of Lohk but in a way that just jives better with my brain. The tension with having to work around Temporal Anchor constantly is also kinda fun, but it does mean she's not a total brain-off frame, as you do need to pay frequent attention to that timer. (Unless you enjoy being rewound ~30 seconds at a time.)

This is one I'll likely be taking out a fair bit going forward, I'm real glad I gave her a second chance!

Performance: S Protea does a ton of damage that scales well into high levels, especially if you play with goofy mechanics like heat inherit. She sustains her own energy, while providing ammo, energy, and health for the whole squad. She's got Shield Gate But Actually Fun, since she gets the double duration. Add in mass armor strip and light CC via Shrapnel Vortex + Temporal Erosion and you've got a frame that does a lot at once!

I'd struggle to think of many situations Protea would struggle in, frankly— even with the Brief Respite issue, she can still get by!