All right, after last week I aminvigorated. We’reso close to being done with every single frame in Warframe! (We aren’t.) I can be done with this very soon! (Doubtful.) But the important thing is that I’m not letting another month and change go by without updating this guide, so we are going to move forward and keep at it. And this time we have a group of frames that I am… I mean… they have a… well, honestly, they have no real theme and no particular tie to one another aside from release.
Actually, I do think this marks where things had started to take a turn in the overall frame design philosophy. I feel like you really saw it starting with Wukong and moving forward, but increasingly, there was less of an emphasis on “we need to have a frame themed around This Broad Concept.” Ember, for example, is a broad concept, but increasingly the frames are very specifically based around a more narrow fantasy instead of just “a frame with guns.” But now… well, let’s just keep going.
Nezha
Apropos of nothing, did you know this is about how far our image database stretches back? Good times, great oldies. Anyway.
I have honestly kind of forced myself tonot learn a whole lot about Nezha as a character, but I know enough to know that the character is intensely popular in China, and so making a Warframe based upon him for a game that Digital Extremes wants to make play in China is almost as much of a no-brainer as making one for Wukong. Nezha is, unfortunately, not nearly as good or as cool as Wukong. Part of this is because he has a far worse passive, and part of this is because he’s just not as good or as cool. That’s fine. He’s still more than good enough, and if you’re someone who really likes spreading status effects or sliding all over the place, he is actually a really mobile and solid Warframe.
In many ways, I really do maintain that Nezha is kind of Worse Wukong. He wants a status-inflicting weapon, but that’s most weapons… the difference being that Wukong is fine without one. He has his signature weapons and defenses… but they’re notquite as good as Wukong’s. He’s fast and mobile but notas fast and mobile. But he’s a cool twist on the fire theme as well, so if you like doing a lot of fire stuff but aren’t as fond of Ember’s gameplay, he’s another option.
I don’t see Nezha around all that often, though, and I think part of that is because other people also think he’s Worse Wukong in a way. He’s a Warframe who Does Warframe Stuff, but he’s not as good at it as the other median never-bad-pick frame. And if you want a reallyunique playstyle, there are other options. But I can understand people who really like him. His fans are deserved.
Inaros
All right, so Inaros is definitely where we start moving into what I consider the more modern and more fun era of frame designs, because Inaros isbasically the villain from The Mummy. Yes, I mean the 1999 films starring Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz. Inaros is basically an immortal creature as must formed of sand and spite as he is of anything else, an armored and functionally unkillable force that can rip through enemies over time simply by virtue of his implacable progress.
Why isn’t he incredibly dominant? Well, because that’s not actually all that useful in this game. See, the problem isn’t that Inaros is functionally nigh-on immortal, with Arcane Persistence letting him become even more impossible to harm thanks to his natural lack of shields. The problem is that even though you can make his abilities damaging and give him a good gun, most of his gameplay is based around a level of damage he just does not possess. He has options, like the Coda Hema (which scales nicely with his healing), but at the end of the day “never dying” is not actually dealing damage or winning. It’s just making it harder or impossible to kill you. Useful, sure. Important, frequently. Aggressive, not so much.
That being said, I think Inaros also has a major advantage here in that even though he may not be all thatgood as a frame (he easily sits alongside Atlas’ power level) he is a lot offun, and if you’re willing to take his immortality as a means to be reckless you can get a lot of fun out of him. I don’t see him blowing along on the desert winds very often, but I’m glad when I do, because he’s cool. They really went “let’s make us an immortal mummy frame” and then did that. Respect.
Titania
So, full disclosure, I kind of hate the Titania Gauss build that has become a meme build for rapidly clearing Exterminate maps at times. I have one, it works, but I don’t find it fun. Fortunately, I don’t need to, because Titania is fun anyway… although she’s kind of fun in the same way Mesa is, where her fun is all baked into a single signature abilities and her other stuff is slightly less useful.
Really, Titania’s first three abilities are useful but not exactly fun and often kind of counterintuitive… but they’re all made worth it for the way that they feed into her fourth ability, where she turns into a tiny flying engine of death that will shred enemies like they owe her money. This basically is what makes Titania worth playing. She instantly turns every single map into a badly designed Archwing mission, and not only is that inherently kind of ridiculous it also makes her incredibly good at dodging, bypassing jumps, and generally ruining the lives of every single creature on the map not named Titania. It’d be even worse if, say, she had a swarm of metal-shredding minions following her around the whole time… which she does. So that’s even better.
Now, Titania is not up at the very top of what a Warframe can do. She’s running around in the same basic tier as Wukong, although she’s less a case of “can do almost everything adequately” and more “can do one thing, but that one thing is rarely less than useful.” She has her weaknesses, she’s a bit vulnerable if she does get hit without a few mods, and the best builds with her rely on a speed that can be hard to control. None of that matters, because someone wanted to make the faerie queen be an avatar of murder and she more than lives up to that idea. And people who want to just be tiny flying engines of death will find her delightful.
Pick a ‘Frame, any ‘Frame! The Warframe galaxy is in danger, Tenno, and Space Mom needs help to combat it. Are you in the right Warframe of Mind to join in? The MOP writers have enlisted, suiting up in their favorite ‘Frames to fight the good fight, blasting the Grineer and Infected into smithereens.
