Hi all,
I’m a returning player, and I’m kind of stuck a bit in terms of progress. I have caught up on all quests and have a great wealth of frames and weapons, but I’m still struggling a fair bit every time I load into a steel path mission, or even really some particularly high level normal missions.
I was away for essentially the entire shield gating defensive meta and the AoE weapon meta, and while I feel my modding has caught up somewhat I’m still not sure I’m particularly good at finding or making builds. My warframes feel flimsy, almost regardless of defensive buffs, and while my Kuva Chakhurr hits hard enough to put things down, its somewhat slow and unwieldy while my more responsive weapons feel like they don’t put out enough damage to get the galvanized stacks rolling.
So what I want to know from my fellow Tenno is, what do you think is required to really excel in Steel Path? Arcanes, archon shards, helminths, focus trees, weapons, incarnons, specific mods, etc. Anything you can think of that you think “I need to have this set before I toggle over to steel path”
Without knowing the specifics of your preferred builds, I’ll talk about broad strokes and my current setup. Also fair warning, even though I played this for a little bit, I never got much into the mechanics meta and don’t know a lot of intricacies, I mostly look up builds online and copy them :P
The three basics you’ll have to focus on, no matter if its Steel Path, Archon Hunt or Netracells, are Survivability, Debuffs and Damage Types.
For Survivability, buffing your Armor, Shields and Health is the ‘raw’ way to progress, but any other type of Damage Reduction will be more than welcome, Nova’s particles for example. Hildryn, Rhino, Wisp, and Citrine are some of my easy to build survival options.
In regards to Debuffs, Armor Stripping is almost always going to be your top choice. Corrosive Projection aura is a great pick for a lot of builds, and so is getting Hildryn’s Pillage through Helminth.
And a variety of Damage Types is always good, but even more for high level missions. You’ll want at least something that can deal with Shields and something for Health at the same time, though your arsenal and your frame will both have several options to play around. Saryn, Citrine, Hydroid are all interesting, and of course any mod you play up and slot in your weapons will aid.
My current Netracell/Archon/Steel Path destroyer is Gyre. Her 3+4 has a constant electric output that melts shields, and I generally wield a Ignis Wraith to deal with the remaining health. She’s so good I barely focused on Arcanes for a while, but Arcane Energy and Barrier are both ‘default’ options when you don’t know what to slot, and I also only started fusing Shards in her after I was ‘done’ with the build. I also run her with CorPro and Pillage, as well as a Helios Prime for extra damage.
These are the general builds I use, though you can always adjust to your liking:
https://overframe.gg/build/432688/gyre/the-ultimate-gyre-guide-easymode-steel-path-infinite-energy-armor-strip-guaranteed-red-crits/
https://overframe.gg/build/798/ignis-wraith/pestilence-carrier/
https://overframe.gg/build/1022/helios-prime/helios-the-tourist-prime/