In terms of community usage stats.
I really like Banshee, but I was shocked to learn she was at a mere 0.53% usage on last year’s published stats. I’m also really fond of Yareli and Gyre.
Probably Yareli, she is quite tanky even in steel path and even if your surfboard dies, its one button press and instantly back up. Combine with ocucor and you just sorta roomba the map. Screw some of the grineer layouts tho.
I don’t see other Zephyrs but I assume it’s low usage. She’s got EVERYTHING.
Zephyr is probably my top used frame, very slept on, whats not to like about effective immortality and with subsumbed spectrosiphon, infinite energy and crit bonus. I still run the projectile speed mod too, since it makes shotguns stronger and boltor/nataruk hitscan.
I always forget about Zephyr but she’s pretty badass too.
Grendel. I love him after his rework, and wish he’d get more spotlight in the community. He’s super fun
Agreed, Grendel is crazy fun, even in regular missions where i’m one with the wall half the time cause i meatballed at mach 3.
Grendel is actually my favorite “active” frame but honestly it feels like a huge struggle to keep his belly full most of the time in pubs.
Gyre: Pillage build and unhealthy amounts of strength bring me a lot of satisfaction
Caliban: Nourish and Primed Flow give him as much energy as he needs to shine. His 4 is kinda like Xaku’s 3, but where Xaku’s 3 lasts more and is wider, the defense strip from Cali’s 4 is permanent and drains both shields and armor at the same time (also it stacks an infinite amount of times
Zephyr: has it all, many fun and viable helminth combinations (coil horizon to put enemies into tornado range from further away, silence to negate eximus and make overguarded melee enemies your only threat, spectrorage to generate energy from tornado kills), AND she’s the best frame for solo SP Circuit (in fact, i’ve never gone levelcap yet, but i believe Zephyr with Silence and Assimilate Nyx with something to slow overguarded melee enemies down OR Dispensary is a perfect duo). Also, if your starter frame was Volt and you switch with Zephyr but miss the speed, Jet Stream has you covered
I also slapped Silence on Zephyr, bricking Eximi and Thrax is great
Also when enemy armor is less of an issue and I don’t feel like playing around the tornadoes, Target Fixation goes brrr
Gyre has been my absolute queen of Steel Path content in recent months thanks to swapping coil horizon out for tharros strike and making incredible use of her cathode grace augment. Duration and efficiency are now dump stats lmao
Tharros Strike… now that’s a good swap for Coil Horizon
Would’ve replied to this far earlier, but apparently Lemmy doesn’t properly work on mobile browsers. Cool.Isn’t…that the exact opposite of what you’d want to do? Tharros Strike pairs exceptionally well WITH Coil Horizon, not in its place. CH is her grouping ability. Tharros strike is a strip in a small contained area. Dunno why people are so insistent on replacing her 2 when her 1’s right there. It’s never been particularly good.
Isn’t her 1 kinda needed for getting electric procs so she can crit?
Honestly? With how her 3 gives her crit chance (that also effects her abilities) it basically invalidates the need to focus on her passive. You’ll still get some benefit out of it from her abilities, but, eh, the fact that her 2 is a basic grouping ability (good to have at worst) and her 3 and 4 are essentially irreplaceable means 1 is just by default on the chopping block.
Additionally, while I’m here, forget Tharros Strike. Subsume Pillage onto Gyre. She needs both Armor Strip -and- survivability, which Pillage provides both of in spades as she is one of the few frames who just naturally builds enough power strength to hit Pillage’s breakpoint (which Corrosive Projection greatly lessens). Attached below is an example of my build. Energize is for QOL and basically unnecessary after her 3+4 get a safe buffer of kills , Molt Augmented can be replaced by some strength shards and another arcane to your taste. I have two energy max shards, 1 +max energy filled on spawn shard, and 1 Parkour Velocity shard on, but, again, those are to your taste and effectively QOL.
Would Silence work on her instead of Tharros Strike? I can’t seem to stay alive using TS so maybe some pointers on using it?
I’m the one Hydroid weirdo that has nearly 20% playtime.
What are your favourite Hydroid builds?
There’s very few frames I don’t like to play but Zephyr (Prime at 0.78%) would be my pick. Huge damage, great CC, borderline unkillable. I also really enjoy Gyre, Yareli, Hildryn (tho the last one might end up actually decently used since her prime got released, we’ll see this year). I became very partial to Lavos too once I stopped going for minimum efficiency.
what would be a good build for zephyr
Here’s the build I use the most - archon shards are: 1x blue (tauforged energy) 2x yellow (cast speed), 2x red (duration, one tauforged). You likely won’t need that many forma, I just had to swap polarities sometime ago so that’s why there’s 6.
Helminth is optional but if you use base build and use her 1 to hover Archon Stretch will be useless.
Helminth in this build is Spectrorage. Archon Stretch procs via tornadoes if you use an electric weapon (viral+electric). Phantasma Prime is my pick for that usually but you can use Amprex or whatever other weapon that works with that build. You can also use Gas weapons (for example, Gas Nataruk) and use normal Stretch. However the problem with Gas is that there’s a nasty bug that will force you to recast 4 every so often as the tornadoes will disappear due to damage being capped at 500k (which is fed into by the gas clouds). Energize is flexible, you can use something like Arcane Arachne or some other damage boosting arcane. Not that more damage is required on her.
You can also put Spectro over her 2, replace Archon Stretch for normal and discard Funnel Clouds and feed your 1’s hover via Energize.
Playstyle: keep up 3 at all times, use Rolling Guard when it expires or to protect from eximus abilities/Thrax Legatus BS stuff. Pick a nice spot, cast Spectro, hold cast 4 inside Spectro circle, use 2 to pull enemies into tornadoes (the tornadoes with augment will not pull enemies in by default but her 2 offers a bigger pull/ragdoll range anyway and will pull enemies into the tornadoes as if it was regular case). Aimglide to activate passive if you desire. Fire weapon into tornadoes. Watch everything die. Her 3 will protect objectives too and with big range you will not be affected by any ranged attacks, even aoe stuff. You just need to make sure you do not get melee’d.
Alternative Helminth skills, I haven’t tested them all yet but I’ve seen those on different builds:
-Dispensary - with Equilibrium in place of Constitution and it’ll let you drop Energize
-Silence
-Fire Blast - you’ll need to swap Cunning Drift for Power Drift and swap Enemy Radar for Corrosive Projection so you can strip in two casts
-Nourish - for use with Gas bows to get Viral procs in cases of not being able to have the Panzer Vulpaphyla, energy multiplier is 1.4x at 40% STR but I swap Energize for Molt Augmented in there for full multiplier. Also great in Circuit with the energy generation on full HP decree.
-Spellbind + Spellbound Harvest augment (Molt Augmented in place of Energize) - status immunity on hold and energy recovery on regular cast
Dunno if it’s the best build but it’s the one that works best for me.
Zephyr really, really loves Aerodynamic and the Boreal mods.
With a combined total of 0.58% - Baruuk.
He has double-dip damage reduction, he has an insane ult that synergizes well with Archon Shards, and you can very easily Helminth your 1st or 2nd ability for Tharros Strike.
Baruuk is pretty much my favorite frame to play in Circuit. Add in all the melee buffs and it’s just gigantic red crits everywhere at ludicrous speeds.
But what if I want to get rid of his 4 for Silence? 🤔 (Don’t worry, I only made that build for funsies.)
There is a weird Lull build I tried for him paired with Savage Silence. Not super efficient but a fun change up of play style.
My only gripe with Baruuk is the initial charging of the 4, but then i find i am only using the 4 and might as well nto have anything else equipped.
I really enjoy Nidus even though he is at 1.88% so not exactly low usage, but compared to wukong’s 9.02% hot damn. My first frame I bought straight from the market back in 2014 with plat because I just liked “how her head looked” was Zephyr haha. I started playing her again recently and my god is she fun with high crit weapons like nidus is.
I used to Banshee main 7 years back. She needs speed and good aim to stay alive, always liked that about her. Enjoying pulling out old frames in the circuit
That’s my favorite part of the circuit, slap some melee mods on Valkyr and just scream and shred everything for a few rounds.
Nyx is entirely unnecessary in the normal star chart:
-Armor strip isn’t needed when they die to normal weapons
-Chaos isn’t needed when they die too fast to be CCed anyway
-Mind Control has no effect when enemies do low damage
But on the Steel Path all these things are inverted and Nyx shines. Enemies still have trouble killing each other, sure, but they stay busy trying. Nyx’s armor strip takes less power strength to get to 100% than any other frame.
In any case I have a soft spot for her. Still have my original, which I literally farmed by accident. My first built frame, and also the one I did the Second Dream with.
My usage stats across all frames are basically an inversion of DE’s published ones: Rhino/Mesa/Saryn/Wukong are at the bottom for me, and Nyx/Ivara/Mag/Zephyr at the top.
Speaking of: Ivara trivializes about half of the Steel Path. You don’t even need to change your frame build for it.
In a similar vein to Ivara, Ash is also quite strong in steel path though mediocre in regular star chart.
My best girl, Garuda.
When I see her in the Circuit I know I can solo basically anything, regardless of the weapon choices.
Do you have any infinite scaling builds for SPircuit? I know I can just make yet another Condemn build, but I gotta start weaning myself off just putting Condemn on everything, lol.
I just got back on WF after about a year of quitting. What’s condemn build?
Condemn is Harrow’s helminth. 25 energy, one-handed cast, shoots out a conal AoE that roots enemies in place and restores 150 shields per enemy hit. Very easy way of shield gating on any frame provided you don’t dump either range or strength.
I replaced Blood Altar with Breach Surge, they synergize really well. I use a heavy attack build with Life Strike on my claws to heal so Blood Altar isnt needed. [Blood Rush, Pressure Point, Killing Blow, Amalgam Organ Shatter, True Steel, Corrupt Charge, Life Strike + one elemental mod] One heavy slam near an enemy fills my health. If you arnt feeling super confidant with the healing claws as your only source of healing, id suggest subsuming Dread Mirror until you can wean yourself off Blood Altar.
Im not sure how Exalted weapon builds are selected for Circuit, and since ive gotten shafted with the wrong Dex Pixia build with Titania, I just slap the same build in every slot now.So the build Im running is mostly strength and range [Transient Fortitude, Continuity, Auger Secrets, Intensify, Stretch, Power Drift] but the real key to the build is Adaptation, Quick Thinking and Primed Flow.
With Quick Thinking and Primed Flow your energy pool is now your health pool. Prioritize keeping energy full over your health with Bloodletting, its actually worth more effective health as energy than actual health. Adaptation helps you squeeze even more effective health out of your energy, in SP Circuit your shields are just going to be down pretty much all the time so you will likely need this.For the Aura, you could do the basic bitch Corrosive Projection, or if you want to coke out those heavy attack claws a little more you could run Swift Momentum for that sweet +30% heavy attack wind up speed. Spam heavy attacks and basically be unkillable, Eximus seethe, Thrax boys melt, health goes up.
If you arnt running the coke claws but still dont want to run Corrosive Projection, try out Brief Respite and get 150% energy spent back as shields.Basic rotation for dealing with a stack of enemies is: Seeking Talons -> Breach Surge -> Bloodletting while enemies are CCed by Breach Surge -> heavy attack or heavy slam at least once for health -> heavy attack spam or use weapons if you got something decent until your talons wear off -> repeat.
With her combined massive 0.73% playrate, 0.63% of which lies in the Prime, Equinox is my favorite Warframe and the one that instantly caught my eye when my friend introduced me to the game and I was skimming over the wiki because of her Day/Night mechanic. Nowadays I main her for the silly little dopamine rush Terrify + Maim gives me, but it’s still the same frame nonetheless.
Other than her… my next favorite low %-er frame would have to be Gyre. I enjoyed her in the past and just wish she got the tiniest bit of an extra boost, which Cathode Current provided in spades. Real fun and Pillage is an easy slot.
Damn how do you survive as equinox? I know im meant to use 4 but þen im in night form and I can’t get my increased utility from day form and anyway þe end animation for her 4 is long enough þat sometimes I just die before it finishes
She needs armor strip (Terrify over her 2) so badly that unfortunately your gameplan tends to revolve around “kill everything before it gets a chance to hurt you”. Fortunately due to just how busted Maim is with armor strip (as Maim scales off of enemy health and Slash damage, which Maim’s burst deals, gets cucked by grineer armor pretty badly) that isn’t too much of an issue…up to a certain point, where shieldgating (with a decaying key, unfortunately) becomes the only real option. Luckily unless you’re playing Endurance runs you don’t really need to do that, though. Even in SP she does just fine until… probably around the third C rotation or so, afterwards you’ll want to swap to a slightly different shieldgating setup. Attached below is an example of two builds I use. The first one is my daily driver no muss no fuss it gets things done setup for when I don’t want to actively pay attention too much. Second is the shieldgating setup, note the slightly lower efficiency on it. This allows 1 cast of Terrify to completely refill your shields and re-enable your full shieldgate, rolling guard’s just there for added survivability. Again, though, the shield-gate build NEEDS a decaying key to work properly, she just has too much base shields otherwise and thus this build…doesn’t -quite- work in SP Circuit, but you can make due by falling back to the typical strategy of ‘nuke it with Maim before it nukes you’. 2 casting speed shards, 1 tauforged parkour shards, and 2 strength shards (for the first build, mainly) mostly just for taste and QOL. Molt Augmented’s a requirement for the shieldgating build, less so for the 1st and you can just slot in whatever there.
You do not transition into Night Form at all with either build, but you still keep the 1 due to an annoying host migration bug that will oftentimes force you to swap into Night form regardless of whatever form you were in at the beginning of the mission due to your colors. If I had to guess, it’s a weird coding thing with how Equinox’s “default” state is code-wise. The amount of times I’ve seen Night form, or part of Night form, pop up randomly in mission end screens/host migrations/MR 30 bless statues confirms in my eyes that Night’s just… the default/“first” in the code, if that makes sense.
Sitting at a whopping .09% is atlas. Probably my second favorite warframe :)
I love Gyre too. I’m currently trying to make her more viable for SP. Does Ash count? Because I just got his prime and he’s been so much fun so far. When I played WoW years and years ago, I played as a rogue just going invisible all the time and it was way more fun than any of the other classes I tried. I’ve never been big on invisible frames (I use Ivara for spy missions and open world farming/hunting, Wukong’s invisibility isn’t manageable for me, I’ve never played Loki, and Octavia’s is fun but doesn’t last long enough) but Ash’s invisibility is easy and cheap on energy to use. Plus my favorite thing to do is use his teleport augment and one-shot every Eximus I see.