I know I said last week that the upcoming frames are all powerhouses…here we have an exception. She’s not bad and you can make her work, even if some of her abilities feel really clunky to use, but she gets completely overshadowed by all the frames that follow her. I might be a bit biased against her as she is a melee frame and I really don’t like melee much in Warframe, but I don’t think I’m being that unfair when in 2 weeks we will discuss arguably the most powerful frame in the game right now.

As we approach the more recent frames, most of these are going to be absolute monsters. Styanax is no exception. This guy’s got it all and then some! Near unlimited energy for you and your team? Check! Full armor strip on demand with no prerequisites? Check! A huge AoE nuke that deals Slash procs on every hit and provides you and your entire team 30k Overguard? Check! This frame is insanely powerful and I’m constantly surprised to never see anyone play him despite DE handing him out multiple times for free with a potato included.

There are a bunch of volume sliders in the settings, lowering Transmissions down to 0% should silence them

Glad to see that, for how squishy this frame is she definitely deserves to have the damage and AoE to wipe the whole map with ease. I might try her out instead of Saryn the next time I need to erase a Grineer galleon worth of troops from existence!

I remember this frame being insane on release to the point her rapid damage ticks crashed the game for some people. Then she got “fixed” which also nerfed her to the point of irrelevancy. I never seen much of her since then. I never played her much myself, especially post her changes, did this frame ever get her teeth back or is she still just a worse Volt?

Oh Caliban! A frame so bad, so forgotten DE literally has to give him away to everyone upon his rework just so people actually get to experience the thing. I hope Pablo is cooking cause this guy needs a full course meal! With a single redeemable ability rendered obsolete by the armor/damage type rework Caliban has nothing going on for him. Add to that the abysmal acquisition with timegated droptables and high-end Railjack resources required to build him and it’s no wonder the poor guy is completely forgotten. This guy is in a state as dire as old Hydroid was. Here’s hoping his rework turns out as good as that one did!

Merulina works the same way Rhino’s Iron Skin and Nezha’s Warding Halo work, during the 4sec invincibility period after casting all damage you take adds to it’s HP pool. Even with no HP absorbed, getting an extra 10-15k effective HP (depending on power strength) for 25 energy with a guaranteed 4sec of invulnerability is nothing to sneeze at! As always, the best defense is not getting hit, and not being bound to clunky K-drive controls thanks to Royal Merulina helps a lot with that.

Yareli really went from rags to riches since her release! Changes to her 4 and her new augment, Loyal Merulina, contributed the most to making her into a really good generalist frame. That augment alone just does so much for her. No longer are you bound to the clunky K-drive movement, but on top of that you also get 5 sec of invincibility whenever you cast this ability. And you can recast it as often as you want! It also lets you use subsumes on her 3, before it was very clunky to do so as you couldn’t use them while riding Merulina. On top of all that, it even shoots out Sea Snares for you! She’s up there now with the likes of Nezha, Rhino, Revenant, etc. as a solid good-at-everything kind of frame. She’s got the damage buffs, grouping abilities that act as a low level nuke and a very solid survivability ability. Give this frame a go again if you only remember her release state!

The newest upcoming Prime is here (sorry Lavos and Xaku)! A Warframe know more for his amazing subsume ability than the frame itself. I gave this guy an honest shot when he came out, I even managed to farm 2 of him rather painlessly, he just never felt good to play to me. Not only is he a massive forma hog, being 2 whole frames in one with an exalted weapon on top, his killing potential always felt…lackluster. His shadow is also rather disappointing, normal melee or just any good gun will be far more deadly (Exalted weapons in general are long overdue a rework). Gloom is an absolutely amazing ability to give to other frames, though. Any frame that struggles with surviving can benefit from the massive slow and lifesteal Gloom provides, it makes Saryn literally immortal (baring one-shots) with the constant damage ticks from Spores.

I really like Lavos in concept. A frame utilizing cooldowns in place of the traditional resource like energy or shields other frames use is really interesting. But his CD numbers are just too high for what you get out of them. That and the requirement to prime enemies with status before being able to nuke just makes him really clunky to actually play. His 4 also has a very awkward hitbox, being a circular AoE but not really as only the probes actually hit enemies, leaving a ton of gaps between themselves as they expand.

While undoubtedly very powerful, Xaku wasn’t a frame I personally enjoyed playing. With a scaling damage auto-targeting ability and a full defense strip they are a powerhouse, but their defense relying entirely on chance and shield gating just wasn’t my cup of tea. They are the best box breaker frame and I have used them much for that purpose, though!

We’ve caught up to the Primes! With the easier acquisition I imagine a lot more people are getting their hands on Protea and discovering what a powerhouse of a frame she is. Step aside Vauban, this is what a true engineer is! Granade Fan is incredible in both modes, the shrapnel grenades can stun lock enemies with their forced slash procs and tear through anything non steel path with ease. Low level defense alert? Spam shrapnel grenades on all spawn points and watch as the mission plays itself! The shield grenades are functional immortality for you and your team so long as you avoid the extremely rare toxic damage. Blaze Artillery is the main way you will deal with anything Steel Path and beyond, massive stacking damage with forced heat procs. Use Archon Vitality for silly damage if you feel like you need it. Dispensary is what allows you to completely forgo efficiency and not care. Just slot in Equilibrium and enjoy near infinite energy supply (this is a good ability to use with your passive, the extra drops help a lot!) Temporal Anchor is your subsume slot, this ability just doesn’t work well with how you actually play Warframe. Even it’s augment is not enough to salvage it. Use Roar for more turret damage or Gloom to completely shut off enemies coupled with Shrapnel grenades or whatever other subsume you want.

Unless they give him a major rework, no shot. Getting a Prime is his best chance to actually have a dev take a look at him, given that his painful acquisition and incredibly low usage rates don’t encourage DE to give him any dev time right now. His abilities and even his passive are all just so terribly mediocre/useless. His passive is just a worse adaptation that doesn’t stack with the original one. His first ability is a joke, it’s Rev’s 4 except terrible in every way. His second ability is worse Rhino’s Storm with a target cap for some unknown reason. His third summons brain-dead AI companions that spin around tickling enemies and give you shields except when you actually need them (they stop providing shields as soon as your shield gate triggers, exactly when you would actually appreciate some shield regen). His fourth is his only salvageable ability but it just got way worse with the changes to enemy armor making 100% strips way less necessary. There is nothing this frame does that another frame cannot do better while also having something else to add on top of that.

Modding is one of those few gaming things that still remains a massive pain on Linux compared to doing it on Windows, if they actually commit to supporting Linux and making sure it works on Wine/Proton games as well this would be massive! I’ve been modding my games manually ever since switching but having a mod manager is just so so so much nicer.

I really like Grendel since his most recent rework! He’s got the general good package of things: survivability, damage, armor strip and even weapon buffs + effortless energy economy. He’s also deceptively fast with the Catapult augment, when his Prime came out and I used him a lot in the Entrati tileset I often outraced other speed-focused frames to extraction. My one complaint is that his stomach deals too much damage to things, especially during Pulverize. Keeping your belly full is nearly impossible during any non-Steel Path mission, enemies just die too fast while you’re just bouncing around. His Feast can be a bit hit-or-miss too, some enemies cannon be devoured (especially prevalent against the Murmur) and some just disintegrate but don’t actually go to your stomach.

My brain is still very much filled with Elden Ring DLC and Gauss is not a frame I touched much so I have little to add this week. Thermal Sunder is an awesome subsume that gives plenty of other frames the means to do damage where they had none before, I honestly used it more on other frames than Gauss himself.

Her 4th, I even joked about it in the first paragraph. Cool as it sounds, Sol Gate is absolutely useless, it’s an energy hog that does tickles of damage. You’re far better off replacing it with something that benefits from what Wisp usually already mods for, power strength and duration.

Wisp is here! Probably the second most popular community frame after Excalibur, because of her considerable assets. Doesn’t hurt that she’s also the best, most convenient support frame in the game. Pop down your motes and your job is done! More HP and regen, speed buffs and some soft CC! Add to that a free ability slot to Helminth over and you can easily slot in Roar or Pillage to deal with armor (it helps that Wisp is one of the few frames that can go for a full 100% strip with 400% power strength as that’s something she already kind of wants to do). The only time you are sad to see a Wisp on your team is if you already have one.

Hildryn is not a frame I have much experience with. Her style of tanking was never my thing, I prefer to stack damage reductions instead or ignore damage altogether through abilities like Rhino or Revenant. I’ve gotten a lot of use out of her Pillage on other frames, though! She does make the absolute best use of it thanks to having access to Haven enabling her to use the Blazing Pillage augment to stack infinite heat procs on anything while also completely stripping it’s defenses.

I love that the modding system in Warframe allows you to hyper-focus on optimizing for one specific thing like that. Corrupted Mods are still the best designed mods in Warframe, sacrificing one stat to greatly boost another is a great design, especially when you can turn a downside into an upside like with Baruuk! I just wish weapon modding was even a quarter as flexible and involved as frame modding is.